Paul Pressler

Herman Paul Pressler III (June 4, 1930 – June 7, 2024) was an American politician and judge who was a justice of the Texas 14th Circuit Court of Appeals in his native Houston, Texas. Pressler was a key figure in the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention, which he initiated in 1978. He was accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least seven men, some of whom were underage at the time of the alleged activity. His mother was highly active in Houston cultural and civic life, a fifth-generation Texan from a prominent family who helped found the Baptist church the family attended. He attended The Kinkaid School, later transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy at the age of sixteen. He was elected as a Democrat, and remained a member of the party until joining the Republican Party in 1982.

Anne Nelson's 2019 book, Shadow Network, alleges that after orchestrating the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, Pressler convinced the senior Republican Party leadership to attempt to use the same methods to establish minority, one-party control of the United States federal government.

Ministry In the 1960s, Pressler became deacon at Second Baptist Church Houston, and founded a youth group at Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church. In 1967, Pressler and Paige Patterson met in New Orleans to plan a political strategy to elect conservative convention presidents and in turn members of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) boards.

In 1978, Pressler along with W. A. Criswell, Adrian Rogers and Paige Patterson, met with a group of determined conservative and Republican pastors and laymen at a hotel near the Atlanta airport to launch the resurgence. The Atlanta group determined to elect Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, as the first Conservative Resurgence president of the convention.

In the 1980s, Pressler became deacon at Houston's First Baptist Church. He served on the SBC Executive Committee from 1984 to 1991 and on the International Mission Board from 1992 to 2000.

During his time as a leader of the SBC, Pressler was instrumental in pushing its 47,000 churches to adopt literal interpretations of the Bible, strongly denounce LGBTQIA+ acceptance, ban women from preaching, align with the Republican party's political stances and goals, and help members of the GOP get elected into public office.

In 2004, leaders of Houston's First Baptist Church investigated claims that Pressler had groped and undressed a college student at his Houston mansion.

Sexual abuse allegations

In April 2018, the Houston Chronicle reported that Pressler was accused by Toby Twining and lawyer Brooks Schott of sexual abuse in separate court affidavits. Both men said Pressler molested or solicited them for sex. In the Chronicle report, Toby Twining was a teenager in 1977 when Pressler, a youth pastor at Bethel Church in Houston, grabbed his penis in a sauna at Houston's River Oaks Country Club. Woodfill provided sworn testimony that he had known of a child sexual abuse allegation against Pressler since 2004. According to the Chronicle, Pressler agreed in 2004 to pay $450,000 to Rollins for physical assault. Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson is also named in the suit, for helping Pressler cover up the abuse. The SBC settled the Rollins case out of court for an undisclosed sum and the case was dismissed with prejudice on December 28, 2023.

In 2019, after the scandals of sexual abuse accusations involving Pressler and sexual abuse cover-ups involving Paige Patterson, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary removed the stained glass windows depicting the actors of the conservative resurgence, located in the MacGorman Chapel and opened in 2011.

In May 2022, Guidepost Solutions released an independent report stating that Pressler was the defendant in a civil lawsuit alleging that he repeatedly abused the plaintiff beginning when the plaintiff was 14. Two other men submitted affidavits accusing Pressler of sexual abuse.

By December 2023, seven men had accused Pressler of sexually abusing them. Pressler denied the allegations.