From pastor to plaintiff, veteran Southern Baptist platform personality Johnny Hunt continues to deny allegations of sexual abuse made against him almost a year ago by an investigation into the SBC Executive Committee’s handling of sexual abuse cases between the years 2000 and mid-2021.
Results of the investigation by Guidepost Solutions were released publicly by the SBC Sexual Abuse Task Force on May 22, 2022. Hunt disappeared from public life until late November 2022, when his accountability team announced his return to ministry (read more about the sequence of events here).
Hunt has been preaching in churches since December and hosted a men’s conference March 17–18, the same time period his attorneys filed suit against the SBC, EC and Guidepost (read lawsuit here).
While he admits to a brief, inappropriate encounter with the wife of a fellow pastor in 2010 (a month after his two one-year terms as SBC president ended), Hunt contends the situation was consensual and outside the bounds of the Guidepost investigation. The woman involved has not been identified publicly and, according to the Guidepost report, her alleged description of the encounter says force was involved (read the Guidepost report here).
The debate about Hunt goes beyond whether he should have been included in the report’s findings, however. Some are asking whether he took appropriate action initially in 2010 for restoration to ministry. Others are concerned about the churches who are currently supporting his recent return to ministry (read more here), but those churches are not backing down (read more here).
A flurry of comments related to Hunt’s lawsuit continue building on social media platforms, but those involved have not responded.
Jared Wellman, EC chair and pastor of Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, shared with The Baptist Paper that the EC’s policy is not to comment on active litigation.
