Paul Pressler, the monumental Southern Baptist leader and Republican activist at the center of a major sex abuse scandal, died on June 7. He was 94.
It’s unclear what Pressler’s cause of death was, but a funeral service for him was held in Houston on Saturday. Pressler was one of the most influential, if lesser-known, evangelical figures of the past half century, having helped lead a movement in the Southern Baptist Convention that pushed the nation’s second-largest faith group to abandon literal interpretations of the to adopt the Bible. strongly condemn homosexuality and align themselves more closely with the Republican Party.
His death came just six months after he confidentially settled a high-profile lawsuit with a former member of his youth group who accused him of decades of rape. As part of the lawsuit, at least six other men came forward claiming they were abused or solicited for sex by Pressler in a series of incidents between 1978 and 2016. Pressler denied the allegations and was never criminally charged.
As monumental as Pressler’s legacy was, his death was largely kept quiet until Saturday, when a Baptist outlet first reported the memorial service. Last week, the Southern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting, and it appears no leader made any comment about his passing.
Herman Paul Pressler III was born in Houston in 1930 and attended the exclusive Phillips Exeter Academy in New Jersey before attending Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton in 1952, he attended the University of Texas Austin Law School and, as a 27-year-old student, was elected to represent a Houston-based district in the Texas House. He was later appointed by Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe to a powerful seat on the 14th Texas Court of Appeals, where he served for 14 years.
While on the bench, Pressler helped plot and lead the SBC’s “conservative revival,” a twenty-year power struggle in which Pressler and his allies expelled more moderate Baptists from the denomination, successfully pushed for a ban on female pastors and white evangelical support for the church. the Republican Party.
Pressler was also an early member of the Council For National Policy, a secretive network of powerful business, religious and media elites that pushed the Republican Party toward deregulation and further brought their conservative Christian views into public life . In 1989, Pressler was nominated to lead the Office of Government Ethics under President George HW Bush, although his nomination was later withdrawn.
From 2000 onwards – and as the battle for the SBC was won – Pressler increasingly focused on Republican Party politics. In 2007, Louisiana College announced its plans for the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, although the school never opened due to funding and accreditation issues. The school’s board included Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, and David Barton, the Texas activist who has argued for years that the separation of church and state is a “myth.” The school’s dean was Mike Johnson, who was later elected Speaker of the U.S. House.
In 2012, as U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, a Mormon, was leading the Republican Party primaries, Pressler gathered some of the country’s most powerful Christians at his West Texas ranch, where he brought them together for two days to meet fellow evangelical Rick Santorum. In 2013, the Texas House honored his service to the conservative Christian cause in a resolution introduced on the floor. A year later, Pressler served on the advisory team for incoming Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And Pressler was an early and key backer of Ted Cruz in his Senate campaign and when he ran for president in 2015.
While Pressler continued to exert political influence, he also allegedly raped, groped or provoked at least six men, including one who says he was 14 when he was first sexually assaulted while a member of Pressler’s youth group. These allegations were detailed in a 2017 lawsuit that also accused prominent Southern Baptist leaders and churches of covering up or enabling Pressler’s behavior, which they deny.
The lawsuit sparked a major 2019 investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, which found that more than 400 Southern Baptist church leaders or volunteers had been accused of sex crimes since 2000. The series also led to reforms in the SBC. as an ongoing investigation by the Ministry of Justice into the handling of complaints about sexual abuse by the denomination.
Pressler was a member of First or Second Baptist Church in Houston for most of his adult life.
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