Suspended Southern Baptist pastor who sexually assaulted another defiant pastor’s wife RETURNS

A suspended Southern Baptist Church (SBC) pastor who sexually assaulted another pastor’s wife has returned to the pulpit, but in a new church in a new state.

Former Southern Baptist Convention president Johnny Hunt, 69, took the stage at Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, Florida, on Sunday to deliver his first sermon in eight months.

“It hasn’t been easy for me to preach this morning,” he said after Pastor Steven L. Kyle brought him up on stage. ‘If you can imagine, since I haven’t preached in eight months, the longest time I’ve gone without preaching in 46 years. I felt like I was going to the grave this morning. He was excited for him to get up, but he was nervous at the same time.

Hunt used to preach at Woodstock First Baptist Church in Georgia before being suspended after the SBC Executive Committee released an investigative report in May that found truth in the sexual assault allegations against him.

He was accused of sexually assaulting the wife of a young pastor, who was 24 years his junior, and telling her he wanted to have sex with her three times a day while vacationing on Panama City beach in 2010.

The pastor was found guilty in the report of kissing the woman and “touching her chest over her clothes” and “pulling down [her] pants.’

He was suspended from ministry after the Southern Baptist Church (SBC) found validity in the sexual assault allegations against him. The report found validity in claims that Hunt (pictured with his wife) sexually assaulted a pastor’s wife, who was 24 years his junior, in 2010 while on a beach vacation. The report says he kissed and touched the woman’s breast on top of her clothing and pulled down her pants before stopping and walking away.

He preached at Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City (pictured)

In a May 2022 declarationAfter the 288-page report was made public, Hunt admitted to getting into a “compromising situation” and having a “brief but inappropriate encounter” with the man’s wife, who was not named. He said she “fled” from the room after having an “overwhelming feeling of conviction.”

He maintains that it was a “consensual encounter” and that “it was not abuse or aggression.”

On Sunday, he spoke about decisions he ‘wish you could undo’ and told the crowd of believers: ‘How many of you know that God’s calls are irrevocable? Sometimes you may think, “Well, you know, I made some bad decisions in my life.”

‘And by the way, have you ever made a decision that you wish you could undo but can’t undo? What do you do with the things you can’t undo? You give it to Jesus and He washes us clean in the blood when we repent and turn to Him.’

He went on to say that God knows ‘your past, your present and your future when he called you’ and ‘has laid his hand and his calling upon you.’

He called God’s call for him to be in the ‘irrevocable’ ministry.

Hunt and his wife Janet joined Hiland Park Baptist Church in 2022 after being introduced by Kyle, who called the Georgia pastor “one of the best pulpits of our generation.”

He admitted to the encounter with the younger woman in a statement in May (pictured), but maintains it was a ‘consensus’

He was allowed to return to preaching after a panel of four pastors, including Kyle, Mark Hoover, Mike Whitson, and Benny Tate, declared that Hunt had completed a program of restoration and was ready to return to ministry.

However, not everyone was happy with Hunt’s return as a religious leader. Texas pastor Bart Barber, who is the current president of the SBC, called Hunt’s return a “disgusting” act in a declaration.

“I would permanently remove Johnny Hunt if I had the authority to do so,” he wrote in a November statement. ‘The idea that a council of pastors, assembled with the consent of the abusive pastor, possesses any authority to declare a pastor fit to resume ministry is an assumption that is completely absent from Baptist policy and New Testament testimony.

He used to preach at Woodstock First Baptist Church in Georgia (pictured) before being suspended

‘Indeed, it is repugnant to all that those sources extol and represent.’

Tiffany Thigpen, an abuse survivor, said Hunt’s return to ministry only highlighted that the SCB had not changed its culture around sexual abuse.

“We’re always going to have this network of powerful men who can do whatever they want and think they can get away with it. And they’re right,’ he told Religion News Service in November, according to the Washington Post.

Since Hunt’s return on Sunday, he said he plans to lead tour groups to the Holy Land and will travel to Uganda to train other herdsmen.

Hunt was not the only pastor to be investigated by the SBC Executive Committee. After several allegations of sexual abuse were ignored by the largest Protestant denomination in the US, the SBC investigated several pastors and staff.

The church has been accused of ignoring or covering up clergy sexual abuse for decades.

In a 288-page report, SBC detailed its seven-month investigation into the hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse by pastors and staff.

Not everyone was happy with Hunt’s return as a religious leader. Texas Pastor Bart Barber, who is the current president of the SBC, called Hunt’s return a “disgusting” act in a statement.

The seven-month investigation was carried out by Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm hired by the Executive Committee after delegates at last year’s national meeting lobbied for outsiders to investigate.

The report claims that an Executive Committee staffer kept a list of Baptist ministers accused of abuse, but there is no indication that anyone “took steps to ensure that accused ministers were no longer in positions of power in the churches of the SBC’.

The most recent list includes the names of hundreds of abusers believed to be affiliated with the SBC at some point. Survivors and advocates have long called for a public database of abusers.