Sovereign Grace Ministries, which recently moved from Maryland to Kentucky to rebuild a fractured network and strengthen ties with Southern Seminary, is now in the news for allegedly covering up allegations of child sexual abuse committed by church members.

A controversial church-planting network with ties to a Southern Baptist Convention seminary has been sued in Maryland for allegedly covering up allegations of sexual abuse of children in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to the Associated Press [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.], the lawsuit filed by three unnamed female plaintiffs claims that Sovereign Grace Ministries did not report abuse allegedly committed by church members to police. The lawsuit says church leaders counseled suspected pedophiles about how to avoid prosecution and forced victims to meet with and “forgive” their abuser.

Sovereign Grace Ministries, which moved its headquarters recently from Gaithersburg, Md., to Louisville, Ky., released a statement saying officials had not yet received a copy of the lawsuit and were in no position to comment on the allegations.

“Child abuse in any context is reprehensible and criminal,” said Tommy Hill, the organization’s director of finance and administration. “Sovereign Grace Ministries takes seriously the biblical commands to pursue the protection and well being of all people, especially the most vulnerable in its midst, little children.”

The scandal comes at a particularly bad time for Sovereign Grace, a 30-year-old network of about 80 churches at the center of a multiple denominational Neo-Calvinist movement that emphasizes God’s sovereignty and downplays human free will.

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