Court-ordered mediation between a former Southern Baptist Convention president and lawyers for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination failed last week — meaning the dispute between the 2 parties is probably going headed to a trial in November.
Johnny Hunt, a former Georgia megachurch pastor and denominational official who served as SBC president from 2008 to 2010, sued the denomination in 2023, alleging defamation. Hunt was named within the Guidepost report on abuse within the SBC — for allegedly sexually assaulting one other pastor’s wife. He initially denied the incident and has since said it was consensual.
Lawyers for Hunt have claimed the previous SBC president’s misconduct was a non-public matter and the SBC ruined his popularity by making it public.
On September 19, the 2 sides met for a court-ordered mediation, which resulted in an impasse, in line with a report filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court of the Middle District of Tennessee.
The lawsuit has cost the SBC’s Executive Committee about $3 million in legal fees to date. Those legal fees, together with about $9 million in fees related to the Guidepost report, led the Executive Committee to put its Nashville, Tennessee, office constructing in the marketplace.
Last week, current SBC President Clint Pressley tweeted that no settlement had been reached. The possibility of a settlement was raised during a recent Executive Committee meeting.
“Despite what it’s possible you’ll be hearing, there isn’t any settlement with Dr Johnny Hunt,” Pressley tweeted on Thursday, the identical day because the mediation.
The trial for the lawsuit is about to start November 12 in Nashville. Hunt’s lawyer recently petitioned the court to dam the SBC from calling several witnesses, including Kevin Ezell, the president of the denomination’s North American Mission Board, on the trial. After stepping down as pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia, Hunt served as a vice chairman at NAMB. His resignation from NAMB was announced following the discharge of the Guidepost report in 2022.
No details of the settlement discussions were made public. However, earlier this yr, lawyers for Hunt claimed greater than $75 million price of damages.
Those damages, in line with court documents filed within the case, include a lack of $610,000 in annual income and advantages, a lack of $360,000 a yr in book sales, a lack of $350,000 in speaking fees and an extra $80,000 in other lost income, for a complete of $1.4 million a yr. The lawyers also claim that Hunt intended to work for 11 years — or until he was 80 — when the Guidepost report was published—for a complete alleged lack of $15.4 million. No supporting documents were included to substantiate those claimed losses.
The court filing also claims at the least $30 million in reputational harm and at the least $30 million in emotional distress.
