Around Dallas, the Church Scandals Seem to Have No End
The Youngs’ joint sermon came in late June, days after Robert Morris, the founder of the nearby Gateway Church, resigned as senior pastor after being accused of sexually abusing a child in the 1980s.
The week before, another local pastor with a national profile, Tony Evans, shocked many evangelicals by stepping away from the pulpit over an undisclosed “sin.”
Gateway is one of the largest churches in the metro area, which is known for its many and mammoth-size congregations. Mr. Evans’s predominantly Black church in South Dallas, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, claims a membership of about 10,000 people.
The drumbeat of downfalls, surprise departures and even arrests continued all summer and into the fall. An associate pastor at Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco (3,700 attendees) was fired in July for a “moral failure.” The lead pastor of Cross Timbers Church in Argyle (5,000 attendees) resigned over “inappropriate and hurtful” actions.
Another local pastor with a national profile, Steven J. Lawson, fell in mid-September, when leaders of Trinity Bible Church of Dallas announced that they had removed him over an “inappropriate relationship that he has had with a woman.” A running list of local pastors “involved in controversies this year” maintained by the local television station WFAA now contains 17 names, including five involving criminal charges. This week, a leader at Revival City Church in McKinney was arrested on a domestic violence charge.
“It’s like the unbuckling of the Bible Belt,” Mr. Young said in an interview last week.
There’s no clear pattern to the scandals, which range widely. The churches are all Protestant but belong to different denominations — or none at all — and have different theological beliefs and worship styles.
But the cumulative impact has been unsettling for many Christians and their leaders in Dallas, a city that the magazine Christianity Today once declared “the new capital of evangelicalism.”
At Gateway, the revelations unfolded over time. Mr. Morris, a onetime faith adviser in President Donald J. Trump’s administration, had disclosed a “moral failure” decades ago to elders at his previous church and even referred to it obliquely from the pulpit, though he never offered specifics publicly.
This summer, a woman named Cindy Clemishire came forward and said Mr. Morris began abusing her when she was 12 and he was a married pastor. The abuse continued over the course of five years in the 1980s, she said.
After her account became public, Mr. Morris confessed from the pulpit in June to “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.” The backlash to his characterization of child sexual abuse as “inappropriate” and his adolescent victim as a “young lady” was immediate. He resigned days later; his son James, who had been named as his successor, also left the church, along with a founding elder.
https://dnyuz.com/2024/10/03/around-dall...ve-no-end/
The Youngs’ joint sermon came in late June, days after Robert Morris, the founder of the nearby Gateway Church, resigned as senior pastor after being accused of sexually abusing a child in the 1980s.
The week before, another local pastor with a national profile, Tony Evans, shocked many evangelicals by stepping away from the pulpit over an undisclosed “sin.”
Gateway is one of the largest churches in the metro area, which is known for its many and mammoth-size congregations. Mr. Evans’s predominantly Black church in South Dallas, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, claims a membership of about 10,000 people.
The drumbeat of downfalls, surprise departures and even arrests continued all summer and into the fall. An associate pastor at Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco (3,700 attendees) was fired in July for a “moral failure.” The lead pastor of Cross Timbers Church in Argyle (5,000 attendees) resigned over “inappropriate and hurtful” actions.
Another local pastor with a national profile, Steven J. Lawson, fell in mid-September, when leaders of Trinity Bible Church of Dallas announced that they had removed him over an “inappropriate relationship that he has had with a woman.” A running list of local pastors “involved in controversies this year” maintained by the local television station WFAA now contains 17 names, including five involving criminal charges. This week, a leader at Revival City Church in McKinney was arrested on a domestic violence charge.
“It’s like the unbuckling of the Bible Belt,” Mr. Young said in an interview last week.
There’s no clear pattern to the scandals, which range widely. The churches are all Protestant but belong to different denominations — or none at all — and have different theological beliefs and worship styles.
But the cumulative impact has been unsettling for many Christians and their leaders in Dallas, a city that the magazine Christianity Today once declared “the new capital of evangelicalism.”
At Gateway, the revelations unfolded over time. Mr. Morris, a onetime faith adviser in President Donald J. Trump’s administration, had disclosed a “moral failure” decades ago to elders at his previous church and even referred to it obliquely from the pulpit, though he never offered specifics publicly.
This summer, a woman named Cindy Clemishire came forward and said Mr. Morris began abusing her when she was 12 and he was a married pastor. The abuse continued over the course of five years in the 1980s, she said.
After her account became public, Mr. Morris confessed from the pulpit in June to “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.” The backlash to his characterization of child sexual abuse as “inappropriate” and his adolescent victim as a “young lady” was immediate. He resigned days later; his son James, who had been named as his successor, also left the church, along with a founding elder.
https://dnyuz.com/2024/10/03/around-dall...ve-no-end/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
