“Ronnie Floyd, the highest-ranking official of the Southern Baptist Convention executive committee announced his resignation Thursday evening, following weeks of contentious committee meetings about a sexual abuse inquiry. ‘Due to my personal integrity and the leadership responsibility entrusted to me, I will not and cannot any longer fulfill the duties placed upon me as the leader of the executive, fiscal, and fiduciary entity of the SBC,’ Floyd wrote in a letter sent to the executive committee members Thursday night. The executive committee, which handles convention business when the full SBC isn’t in session during its two-day annual meeting, met in recent weeks to vote on waiving attorney-client privilege for an investigation into the committee’s handling of sexual abuse claims. Floyd sided with legal counsel who advised the executive committee against waiving privilege, though the committee ultimately voted to do so at an Oct. 5 meeting.”

“Floyd said his resignation is a direct result of that. The decision to waive privilege, ‘now place our missionary enterprise as Southern Baptists into uncertain, unknown, unprecedented and uncharted waters,’ Floyd said in his resignation letter. ‘In the midst of deep disappointment and discouragement, we have to make this decision by our own choice and do so willingly, because there is no other decision for me to make.’ As chief of the executive committee staff, who work for the executive committee representatives, or members, Floyd’s resignation is the latest and most significant of others that followed the committee’s vote to waive privilege. The law firm that served for 56 years as legal counsel for the executive committee and the entire SBC resigned Monday. Ten executive committee members also resigned last week” – The Tennessean.