When Scandal Became Strategy: The SBC Abuse Crisis Power Play

Shocking documentary probes how insiders used the SBC’s abuse crisis to engineer a denominational meltdown...and a transfer of power to themselves.

This analysis is free, but with Premium Membership you get MORE. Join today.

by The Baptist Report
May 10, 2026

A new documentary by CrossPolitic examines the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) abuse crisis through a sharply different lens than the one that dominated national headlines in 2019. According to the filmmakers, the story the public heard—predators in pulpits, institutional indifference, and long‑awaited justice for survivors—misses the deeper procedural and political forces that reshaped the nation’s largest conservative Protestant denomination.

The film traces its origins to July 23, 2019, when Founders Ministries released a trailer for By What Standard. The trailer briefly included a blurred image of attorney and abuse survivor Rachel Denhollander. Within days, three board members resigned from Founders Ministries, a moment the documentary now frames as an early indicator of the cultural pressure surrounding the SBC’s unfolding crisis. As the narrator recalls, “They did no…