In a U.S. News report, titled “Southern Baptist Churches Hired Accused Ministers,” it was recorded that more than two dozen Southern Baptist church leaders had faced sexual misconduct charges, but churches employed them anyway. The article goes on to explain how the largest coalition of Baptist churches in the U.S. has refused proposed reforms and hired at least 35 Southern Baptist pastors, youth ministers, and volunteers despite their being convicted of sex crimes or accused of sexual misconduct.

Looking at this news through a sociological lense, it is interesting to note how a certain religion has differentiating set of values and beliefs than what many of the rest of society do. To explain, institutes would not accept people with history of convictions for sex crimes or sexual misconduct due to the morality and possible danger they could be putting other people in,  yet a church has decided to ignore the past convicted crimes of certain people and accept them into their church. What does this action show to the rest of society? Are the people of Souther Baptist church simply accepting and forgiving to those who have done what most would call wrong? Or do these people not care about people’s wrongdoings and they don’t necessarily matter in their religion? There are many ways to evaluate and interpret this news and its effects on society.

More questions that I would be interested in knowing are how do the people associated with the religion support their decisions they have made and what is to be said about what their beliefs are as a religion? What subcultures and underlying themes are there associated with this church?

Here is the link to the article to read more.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-02-12/southern-baptist-churches-hired-ministers-accused-of-sex-offenses-report