The Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention has chosen a new president who is known for his work on racial reconciliation. Alabama pastor Ed Litton beat out Georgia pastor Mike Stone in a surprise win on Tuesday.

Litton’s election is seen as a slight rejection of the more conservative wing of Southern Baptists. He was nominated by former SBC president Fred Luter, the only Black minister to ever serve in the role, who described Litton as a uniter.

The denomination is deeply divided on gender and racial issues. For instance, delegates representing congregations spent much of the day debating whether to condemn “critical race theory” and forbid its teaching. Litton calls that a “distraction” and says members can see racial injustice all around them.

“I think a movement could be started very simply if we would encourage our people to get out of the bubble and actually look around, begin to ask people to open their eyes,” he said at a press conference Tuesday night.

If Litton’s more conservative opponent had prevailed, at least one Black Southern Baptist preacher said publicly he would leave the denomination.

Cloud of sexual assault investigations

Litton’s more immediate task will be helping the SBC navigate an investigation into sexual assault and efforts to conceal cases within congregations. A Texas pastor released secret recordings last week trying to show the convention has been more concerned about preserving the core of the denomination than caring for survivors.

“It might be the most important crossroads of our generation,” outgoing president J.D. Greear said in his final sermon as leader.

Thousands of Southern Baptist Convention churches send delegates, known as messengers, to these annual meetings. And they vote on all sorts of proposals and position statements. Tuesday morning, pastor Grant Gaines of Murfreesboro stood at a microphone in the sea of people, flanked by a church abuse survivor with tears in her eyes.

“Quite frankly, SBC messengers and especially SBC abuse survivors deserve to know the truth,” he said to applause.

Gaines and others have pushed for the denominations leaders to widen a probe into sexual abuse and attempts to conceal those incidents.

Tanya Price, who represents Cornerstone Baptist Church in Nicholasville, Ky., says everyone deserves more transparency.

“There are victims,” she says. “There are real, live, hurting people that God would never want us to abandon those people and to leave them in a situation where they continue to hurt.”

But the denomination’s executive committee has resisted calls for an open-ended, outside investigation. The panel’s leader, Ronnie Floyd, says the investigation he’s authorized is sufficient. He notes the denomination has amended its constitution to allow dropping any churches that continue employing abusers.

Released audio

Last week, another minister from Texas released audio recordings that he said show Floyd has been more concerned about preserving big church donors than hearing from victims.

Floyd is seen as a more conservative leader of the already conservative denomination. And much of this discord has been with those seen as relatively more progressive, like Russell Moore who stepped down last month. He was constantly rebuking President Trump when he was in office, even though the denomination has been closely tied to the Republican party. It turns out that behind the scenes, his push to address abuse more publicly ruffled the most feathers.

The outgoing elected leader, Greear, has been one of Moore’s allies. He used his last sermon to discourage members from acting like the religious leaders of Jesus’s day.

“It happens when we care more about our reputation than the victims safety or when we defer to the protection of the institution rather than the protection for the vulnerable, for whom Jesus died,” he said.

Greear says the denomination’s future is on the line. Southern Baptists are already struggling to attract its new generation. And he says the convention’s mishandling of hot-button issues hurts the cause.

The SBC is down to 14 million members as Christian denominations of all kinds battle sliding numbers. Departures in the last year include Maina Mwaura of Atlanta, who served as a minister in the Southern Baptist Convention.

“We didn’t leave it. It left us,” he says.

Mwaura says he looked at his daughter and saw a church where she could still never be a pastor, and a place where his gay friends may be welcomed but uncomfortable.

With the sexual assault investigation, he says Southern Baptists have an opportunity to show they want to make things right.