Four months after a Courier Journal investigation revealed allegations of student mistreatment at Louisville’s Highlands Latin School, the church where the private school has been housed for over 20 years has voted to sever its ties with the school.
“The Cost of Empire” project, published in September, presented accounts from past students about their treatment at the classical Christian school and investigated how branches of the Highlands Latin empire attracted educators with far-right, extremist views.
Students described being publicly shamed by adults, and said lessons were sometimes rooted in what they described as racism and homophobia. Some said the high-pressure environment drove them to self-harm and thoughts of suicide.
Leaders of the school have not responded to repeated requests from The Courier Journal for comment.
The school, founded in the 1990s, has been a tenant of the Crescent Hill Baptist Church on Frankfort Avenue since 2002.
Crescent Hill Baptist has a reputation as a progressive church with a diverse congregation. It was kicked out of the Kentucky Baptist Convention for allowing gay marriages, including that of their current co-pastor.
Martin Cothran, a prominent member of what has become the Highlands Latin empire, has publicly spoken out against gay marriage.
“The argument that the gay rights issue is a civil rights issue is basically saying that gays are in the same position as Blacks,” he told PBS News Hour in 2015. “… I’m sorry. They were not shipped over here in slave ships. They didn’t have to drink at different drinking fountains. They were not persecuted in the way Blacks have been persecuted. Gays are not politically powerless.”
On Sunday, members of the congregation voted against allowing the school to reside on their property beyond its current lease. The school will need to move before May 2026. The vote was 82-2, with five members abstaining.
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“The allegations of public shaming, the allegations of groups including LGBTQ+ folk being specifically targeted, is unacceptable to our congregation, and we were horrified to read the allegations in the paper,” said co-pastor Jordan Conley.
Church leaders met with Highlands leaders days after The Courier Journal’s series, he said, “to see what steps they were prepared to take to address the allegations in the articles.”
But, Conley said, Highlands leadership said nothing would be done in response to the articles.
“These folks who have bravely come out years after their experiences to talk about what happened and give their side of the story, they deserve a fair hearing, and it was clear to us after conversations with school leadership, that they would not have a fair hearing,” Conley said. “And that is unacceptable.”
Conley described Highlands’ decision as a typical but troubling response.
“The Christian faith and religious institutions who bear the name of Christ, such as the Latin school, unfortunately have a history of practicing silence and silencing folk who come forward to share their experiences,” he said. “That is not acceptable practice; that is not Christian practice.”
Prior to publication of “The Cost of Empire,” Conley said the church’s relationship with the school was simply landlord-and-tenant, with very little interaction.
Church leadership was not aware of any of the allegations published by The Courier Journal, nor the former employment of two men who espoused Christian nationalism.
“I think we knew that the school was different from us in some ways. We did not know that there were ties to — however loose they may be — to Christian Nationalists, as reported,” he said, noting that the church hosted an author to speak about the dangers Christian nationalism presents to American democracy just a month prior to the project’s publication.
More: Ex-Highlands Latin students start website calling for accountability, further investigation
“We believe Christian Nationalism is a threat to our democracy, and as Christians, we believe Christian Nationalism is anything but Christian,” Conley said. “It is not. It is taking the image of Christ and making it something that it is not. It is harming our country, it is harming our churches and we would never associate with anything even remotely tied to Christian Nationalism.”
The ethos of the Baptist faith, he said, is rooted in dissent and allowing others with different beliefs to exist in the same space. Crescent Hill Baptist Church has been a place of worship for other faiths multiple times, and Conley said there isn’t a test on who can or cannot worship in his church.
But, “when folk in our space have been accused of harm, have been accused of shaming children, then when we approach those conversations and are told ‘we will not be looking into this,’ that is not something we can’t accept,” he said. “… We have to ensure that the sacred worth of every individual is valued or we don’t have a community. We have something that is pretending, masquerading as a community.”
Highlands Latin School already has a second campus in Louisville on a 20-acre Shelbyville Road property the school purchased for $3.8 million in 2010. Between the two campuses, there are roughly 700 students. It is unclear if that second campus is large enough to absorb the first — though the school will have about 15 months to find a solution.
Highlands Latin School campus on Shelbyville Road in Louisville, Ky. Aug. 29, 2024
Crescent Hill congregants had to consider the financial implications of losing a tenant that provides revenue to the church, Conley noted.
“This is not the first time Crescent Hill Baptist Church — in its over 100-year history — has faced uncertain times, and we believe that the God who makes a way when there seems to be no way will make a way for Crescent Hill Baptist Church on the other side of this decision.”
Located on Frankfort Avenue in what he described as one of the best corridors of Louisville, Conley is not worried about finding another tenant, though, and said he’s already received calls from people interested in leasing the space.
“We are excited to see how God will open our space, how God will open our doors even wider for what is next for the life of our congregation.”
Reporter Josh Wood contributed to this report. Krista Johnson covers education and children. Have story ideas or questions? Contact her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Crescent Hill Baptist Church ending lease with Highlands Latin School
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