Jennifer Lyell's Accusations Fall Apart

There is a crisis of legitimacy in our country because of legacy institutions who failed to live up to their own standards. When this includes organizations that represent the moral anchor of society, it deepens the severity of the problem. Unfortunately, the largest Protestant denomination in the country has done just that. Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention squandered much of their moral credibility crusading for causes on the Left, such as amnesty with extra steps, DEI-related policies, and a costly thirteen million dollars and counting alliance with the #metoo movement.

The pretext for this alliance, which has exposed the denomination to significant legal liabilities and contributed to the decision to place its headquarters on the market to cover expenses, is mostly attributed to actions taken in 2021-2022. These included paying Guidepost Solutions over two million dollars to investigate the denomination, waiving attorney client privilege for the Executive Committee, and developing a survivor hotline. However, to get to this actionable point required a moral justification that developed several years earlier. First was the 2018 firing of Paige Patterson, a conservative stalwart and president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, for remarks concerning marital submission in abusive situations. Second was a 2019 series of articles in the Houston Chronicle reporting over 700 victims across a twenty year period within the denomination. Third was the 2019 Jennifer Lyell case at the denomination’s flagship seminary, in which she reported that missions professor David Sills had abused her.

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Panic in the Convention Hall

The controversy surrounding these situations was used to create the impression that a sex abuse emergency was taking place in the denomination and that no sacrifice was too great in order to solve it. Patterson stood by his conviction that abused women should avoid divorce, but he expressed regret for any hurt he may have caused. I was a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina at the time. I noticed that fliers for Safe Space Inc. appeared in the student center. There was also a controversy over whether Patterson, who had also been the previous president of the seminary, had advised a student to not report an alleged rape incident to the police in 2003 during his tenor. This incident was never confirmed, but at the moment it mattered most, directly before the Southern Baptist annual meeting, SEBTS stated there was “no evidence discovered that disputes or discredits our former student’s account,” thus framing the alleged incident without the presumption of innocence.

As the controversy developed, the Southern Baptist Convention met in June and adopted a resolution on abuse that encouraged “ministry leaders . . . to implement policies and practices that protect against and confront any form of abuse.” Reform advocate J. D. Greear, a Southeastern graduate and pastor at Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, was also elected president of the denomination. He launched the Sexual Abuse Advisory Group in response, which in turn published the Caring Well Report in 2019. This report accompanied a conference and an initiative of the same name sponsored by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the denomination.

By this time, the Houston Chronicle had released its initial bombshell story in February of that year. Al Mohler, the president of the denomination’s flagship seminary, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who had gained the trust of Southern Baptist conservatives largely through his previous stands against women clergy, authenticated the story by calling it a “crisis.” In a CNN interview, President Greear said the denomination had “created . . . safe spaces for abusers.” The following month, Baptist Press published its story on the accusations against Professor Sills. Amid the outcry to act, the Caring Well initiative adopted much of the #metoo movement’s assumptions, particularly the elevation of victim perspectives as superior in addressing abuse and the encouragement to believe accusations automatically, regardless of corroboration.

A Manufactured Crisis

Thus, the crisis atmosphere that preceded SBC President Ed Litton’s appointment of a Sexual Abuse Task Force and the contracting of Guidepost Solutions in 2021 rested primarily on three contestable incidents. These included one seminary president’s off color remarks and an unconfirmed accusation that he had discouraged a former student from reporting abuse fifteen years earlier; the impression that a denomination composed of autonomous churches harbored an unusually high number of sexual predators based on 380 credibly accused Southern Baptist leaders over a twenty year period within a body of 47,000 churches (journalist Megan Basham has repeatedly noted that this figure is actually far lower than the sexual predator ratio in the general population); and the case of Jennifer Lyell, which has now completely unraveled, much to the embarrassment of reporters like Bob Smietana at Religion News Service and Liam Adams at the Tennessean, who failed to critically examine her story.

Sadly, Jennifer Lyell passed away earlier this year at forty seven years old. Her death was covered widely, from Christianity Today to The New York Times, with near universal praise for her courage and activism. The Times reported that her “activism ignited an agonized reckoning over sexual abuse among the Southern Baptists.” It is fair to say that Lyell had a social justice orientation. In 2001, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Southern Illinois University, where she was mentored by retired Democratic United States Senator Paul Simon. She later earned a Master of Divinity in Theology and Intercultural Studies from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2005 and pursued a Juris Doctor at Syracuse University College of Law with the stated goal of “representing undeserved populations” through public policy and legislative advocacy. She wrote for The Gospel Coalition, spoke at multiple seminary events for students and faculty, and worked in Christian publishing for Moody and later Lifeway, where she rose to Vice President of Book Publishing and Merchandising. According to her now deleted LinkedIn page, her professional goal was to “cultivate solutions for systemic challenges facing marginalized communities.”

Lyell’s social media activity confirmed her progressive activist posture. She posted in support of the Black Lives Matter narrative, criticized conservative SBC presidential candidate Tom Ascol for “attacking the vulnerable,” and contributed financially to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. None of this proves that she was not abused. It does, however, demonstrate that she was motivated by a progressive framework that prioritized perceived victims within a broader social justice narrative—an interest she shared with some of her strongest advocates.

Her relationship with Professor David Sills began in 2004 and lasted approximately twelve years. During that time, she continued the relationship even as she relocated first to Chicago and later to the Nashville area. In Sills’s 2008 book The Missionary Call, published by Moody Press, he thanked Lyell for her encouragement. In his 2010 book Reaching and Teaching, he praised her for going “above and beyond” in her support. I first learned of the relationship between Lyell and Sills in 2020 during a series of interviews with former Southern Seminary Hebrew professor Dr. Russell Fuller concerning theological drift at the institution. Fuller told me privately that among those on campus who were aware of the situation, it was commonly understood that the relationship had been consensual. He further stated that President Albert Mohler made the decision to frame the situation as abuse after Lyell reported it and the seminary conducted its investigation. A letter from Mohler to Lyell dated May 23, 2018 demonstrates how early he adopted the abuse framing.

Initially, Baptist Press described the situation as “a morally inappropriate relationship” in March 2019. That article was later retracted after Rachel Denhollander, an attorney and abuse survivor advocate, publicly rebuked the outlet at an Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission summit for using “the same language to describe her abuse that is used for consensual affairs.” On stage, she told ERLC President Russell Moore that “a survivor of horrific predatory abuse, instead of being surrounded with love and care and support, was cast away as someone involved in a consensual affair.” In 2022, the SBC Executive Committee, which oversees Baptist Press, issued an apology for the initial language and paid Lyell more than one million dollars in a settlement. A trailer for a documentary centered on Lyell’s account, titled Out of Darkness, featured Mohler reaffirming his original assessment, declaring unequivocally, “It was abuse.” The documentary has yet to be released.

#ChurchToo Backfires

If one were a filmmaker, hesitation would be understandable if the central antagonist in the story, along with his wife, decided to pursue defamation lawsuits against institutions and individuals who, in their view, had promoted false accusations. In late 2022, David and Mary Sills filed a defamation lawsuit against multiple parties, including former SBC presidents, Guidepost Solutions, and the denomination itself. Discovery in that case has revealed, among other things, romantic private messages between Sills and Lyell, as well as an expert assessment by Clear Resources, LLC of Guidepost’s investigation, which relied heavily on Lyell’s testimony.

In a 2007 email, Lyell wrote to Sills, “I really need to see you somehow soon,” expressing distress at the prospect of not seeing him for a month. In another email, she wrote, “I miss you. It is making me grumpy. I am going to try to get you on an earlier flight out of Newark on Sunday. Did I mention I miss you?” In a sharply critical review, Clear Resources concluded that Guidepost departed from any recognizable professional investigative standard by permitting conflicts of interest and failing to uphold due process. Rachel Denhollander, who had previously represented Lyell against the Executive Committee, was directly involved in the investigation of that same committee and, along with Lyell, was allowed to edit the final report. Investigator Samantha Kilpatrick and Denhollander were both participants in the Caring Well Initiative, making any claim of neutrality implausible. In March 2019, Kilpatrick emailed Lyell stating, “I support you.”

Clear Resources also concluded that Guidepost denied due process by treating Sills’s refusal to respond publicly to accusations as evidence of guilt and by interpreting decisions not to communicate with alleged abuse victims as mistreatment. In 2021, Dr. Fuller publicly remarked, “Southern Baptists, not only do we not know what a pastor is, we do not know what adultery is either.” His observation appears increasingly accurate. The repeated and deliberate efforts by two adults to rendezvous and sustain a relationship over more than a decade, even when separated by hundreds of miles, with no indication that Lyell sought to escape the relationship, and while she later held authority over Sills in her role as a publisher, point clearly in one direction.

The logic of the #MeToo framework seeks to redefine such a relationship as abusive solely on the basis of age and gender differences. That framework is incompatible with any biblical standard. At this point, those who insist on framing Lyell exclusively as a sex abuse victim must reinterpret the romantic correspondence as evidence of psychological domination so extreme that it compelled genuine romantic attachment. Some have already begun hinting in this direction. Baptist News Global, for example, described the discovery materials as a “harrowing glimpse into the specific nature of the abuse Lyell reported,” claiming they “paint a far darker picture” than mere adultery.

What is being surrendered is not merely due process or journalistic integrity. What is ultimately being abandoned is the biblical foundation upon which those principles rest. This is a conflict over whether the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” retains any meaningful authority. It is a battle for the Bible itself, and it is one that must be won. Gratitude is due to those who refused to bow to the #MeToo agenda when institutional pressure made resistance costly. Gratitude is also due for at least one reporter at The Daily Wire who has challenged the obvious gaslighting taking place within the Southern Baptist Convention. Any restoration of trust will require a new generation of leaders committed to truth with a proven track record. Christians must apply standards to themselves that are definitionally part of the reason their organizations exist in the first place.

From the Desk of Jon Harris is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.