Pastors who counseled Johnny Hunt say he should return to ministry

ATLANTA — Four pastors who spent months counseling Johnny Hunt are drawing criticism from victim advocates and some Southern Baptist Convention leaders for saying the disgraced evangelical leader is restored and ready to return to ministry.

Hunt, a former SBC president, was named in a landmark third-party investigation by Guidepost Solutions into the mishandling of sex abuse allegations in the denomination after the wife of a fellow pastor claimed he sexually assaulted her in 2010 in a Florida condo.

Hunt denied the allegations of assault or abuse and apologized for what he calls “a brief, but improper encounter” with the woman, who was not identified. He said it was consensual.

The report, released in May, found the allegations to be credible, although Hunt has never been charged with a crime.

The fallout was swift.

Organizers asked Hunt not to participate in the 2023 Great Commission Weekend event at a Florida church.

His title of pastor emeritus is still suspended at the Woodstock church he led for more than three decades and his name has been removed from an academic chair, a five-year bachelor’s degree and other things at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, which Hunt attended.

When The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked the school via email about the status of those efforts, a school spokeswoman said President Daniel L. Akin’s response was: “Tell her they were removed, will be renamed, and will not be brought back.”

The restoration also did not sit well with current SBC President Bart Barber, who said in a statement that he would “permanently ‘defrock’ Johnny Hunt if I had the authority to do so,” according to articles in the Religion News Service and The Washington Post.

He said SBC churches are autonomous and that he did not have the authority to permanently remove Hunt from ministry.

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