Here we are: another pastoral scandal, and this one is somehow even closer to home than the one I wrote about just a couple of months ago. Where the disgraced and disqualified pastor in my previous essay was once a respected hermeneutical hero and dear acquaintance of mine, the subject of this present article was a friend, a cohort of sorts. We met early in my youth, and as he was a few years older than I was, I had the privilege of often enjoying his fervent preaching and passionate antics early on in his own fledgling years of ministry just before beginning my own. Our paths diverged early on: his path led to national fame and accolades while inheriting a large church, and mine led to pastoring a small church in Maine.
Two days ago, I learned that this man was arrested for repeatedly engaging in predatory homosexual behavior with a minor.
So you’re going to address it like everyone else, I’m guessing
You’ll be happy to know I’m eager to spare you the typical “this means we need to pray harder for our leaders” and “hey, no one’s above sin” and “well, he loved Jesus but just fell into sin” stuff. Every other barely-informed person’s social media feed is rife with sentiment like this, and not only is this sort of thing almost entirely inappropriate for when someone is exposed as a predator, but it simply comes across as cloyingly familiar and increasingly meaningless as time goes on. We need way less “he was a good guy who made a bad choice” and more “we need maximally increased accountability to protect our flock from predators and wolves going forward.”
So in case I haven’t been clear, I’m fully fed up with the slogans and mantras around these sort of sick, perverse occasions. Spouting little aphorisms like “well, we’re all just one step away ourselves” and “were it not for grace” while sanctimoniously shaking our heads doesn’t quite cut the mustard when you’re dealing with someone who clearly had a pattern of sexual immorality in his life for a while. This may be presumptive, but I am confident that you don’t do what this pastor did without having been comfortably mired in sexual sin for a protracted period of time. No, this wasn’t “stumbling into sin” or anything like it; this was predatory. It was wolf-like. And we need to start holding our “heroes” and “favorite preachers” to the same standard we would if it were a stranger engaging in depraved sexual behaviors with your child.
So you’re just ranting, then?
I am actually writing this article with another sort of corrective in mind, which is as follows: I have seen, multiple times now, the “I-told-you-so”-style posts on social media.1 I won’t link any directly, but I will paste a quote from one of them (I’m not bothering with the “[sic]” application in this quote lest I wear out those four keys on my keyboard): “Many of you were warned over a year ago! Didn’t listen then & probably won’t listen now….but when the MUSIC goes, the MANUSCRIPT goes, the MODESTY goes & for sure the MORALITY will go! Exodus 32 lays that out definitively! Quit giving place to these guys who are constantly leaning left! Jezebel has joined the church y’all!”
Ah, so he lays out a pattern, you see? He states it clearly: Music goes first, then manuscript, then modesty, and then finally morality. He’s not the only one to make this statement or similar formulations of it, but he’s ranked highly — very highly — among my personal list of the more obnoxious and harmful pastors in the world today, so I chose his quote. Of course, as one might expect, this got over a thousand “likes” on Facebook. Never mind that this professed pattern of slipperyslopery2 is demonstrably false, and never mind that this boorish pastor was conspicuously silent about his “Music > Manuscript > Modesty > Morality” pattern when a KJV-only, hymns-only, suits-and-dresses-only pastor debased and disgraced himself a couple of months ago. No, this is just a convenient way to equivocate positions he doesn’t like with moral failure. And it’s a nasty, disingenuous thing to do.
I heard a similar pattern when I was an assistant pastor at a church in Maine; interestingly, it was the pastor’s wife who said it to me: “First, the music goes, then the dress standards go, and then the Bible version changes.” She shook her head before finishing up in her southern accent: “Every time.” So for this pastor’s wife, the order was a little different, but the premise was the same: it’s a surefire pattern. Once you start surrendering your dress standards and music standards and your — gasp — Bible translation, you’re bound for failure of all kinds. So I feel quite impelled to dismantle this inane foolishness by exposing two underlying fallacies as follows:
Movement 1: The Slippery Slope Fallacy
First: It is patently untrue on its face that music standards, Bible translation choices, or even general dress standards in a church act as preventatives for predators, and the transitive implication is untrue as well: that shifting in these things inevitably leads churches down a slippery slope that results in, well, homosexual pedophilia. What an outrageous suggestion. In fact, historically, insular environments like the ones cultivated by the IFB culture often provide the best camouflage for wolves, not deterrents. Why? Because an embrace of arbitrary music standards, misinformed adherence to a particular translation of the Bible, and outlandish emphasis on odd standards of modesty are all mistaken for holiness in camps like these. And they often are seen as a near-automatic safeguard in the church. But the facts reveal that this is simply not the case.
Back in 2018, an 8-month investigative report3 uncovered at least 412 accusations of sexual misconduct in 187 IFB churches and institutions in the USA and Canada. Note that these aren’t churches that had “compromised” on their “music, manuscripts, and modesty.” No, the overwhelming majority of these churches were KJVO, hymns-only, and had a list of modesty standards a mile long. But that didn’t stop sexual predators from infiltrating their churches; instead, it did the opposite: it generally facilitated them.
In this same report, 168 church leaders were accused or convicted of sexual abuse particularly against children, and at least 45 of those who were accused as abusers remained in active ministry after the allegations surfaced, often relocated through informal pastoral networks. Forty-five. That’s forty-five too many. Or to source from a Lifeway study4:
- 1 in 8 Protestant pastors reported that a church staff member had engaged in sexual harassment or misconduct with a member of the congregation at some point in their church’s history,
- 1 in 3 Protestant churchgoers believe that many more Protestant pastors have sexually abused children or teens than have been exposed so far, and
- 15% of Protestant churchgoers admitted that if a sexual misconduct allegation was made against their pastor, they would want it “dealt with quietly.” Also, 14% would want the pastor protected, and 11% would automatically doubt the validity of the accusation.”
So you can miss me with your anecdotal slipperyslopery. Instead, give me facts rather than your ridiculously unfounded formulas. Sexual predators exist where the music is conservative, the translation is the King James, and the dresses go past the ankle. Probably more there than anywhere else, if we follow the data far enough. To allow a dear friend to say it for me, as lifted from the comments section in this same foolish post: “Wild that someone can hear about a predator sexually abusing minors and think ‘yeah, this is really just the ultimate effect of shifting to a different music standard.’ Wild.”
Wild, indeed, my friend. And well said.
Movement 2: The Talisman Fallacy
Holding these particular music, textual, and modesty preferences as inexorable totems of holiness is not only not an effective safeguard against sexual predators, but it’s a massive, total reversal of Biblical priorities. Jesus didn’t rebuke the Pharisees for their music or translations or modesty (that’s something they would have rebuked people for, not him); instead, he called them out for being whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones.
Don’t you see? The Pharisees were pristine on the outside. Their dress standards were flawless, their Bible translation standards were perfect, right down to counting the exact jots and tittles on a scroll, and their music was surely ancient and sacred — no drums or CCM here. But despite all of this, our Master Jesus looked them dead in the eye and told them they were rotten to the core. So it turns out that the whole “first your music goes, then your dress standards go, then your Bible translation changes, and then you’re bound to sin” formula wasn’t something Jesus believed at all.
When we, like the Pharisees, treat secondary or tertiary issues like music or even Bible translations as talismans of holiness, or when we gauge someone’s spiritual character by how excited or animated they become when they preach, we are actively creating an environment where a predator only needs to perform the right external rituals to have full, unmitigated, unquestioned access to our children.
If we really want to stop sexual predators from infiltrating the church, we need to stop looking to what kind of music or Bible translation or even dress standards exist in the church. Instead, we need to work fervently to prevent the celebrity-pastor mindset, establish instant, zero-tolerance reporting structures, and insist on radical, full accountability within the church, from the pastor to the pew. And this begins by realizing that a nice suit and a King James Bible have never once stopped a wolf from devouring a lamb.
Oh, I thought you were done
My point is simple: if your primary takeaway from a scandal involving the sexual abuse of a minor is, “See? That’s why we stick to the King James Bible and hymns!”, then you haven’t simply missed the point. You’ve become part of the very problem that created this predator in the first place. You’re suggesting that a certain translation or style of music or even length of hemline could have prevented this, all while constructing an edifice in which they can — and will — hide.
And, quite frankly, I’m going to be more wary of your pulpit and pews than of others.
As always, my articles are entirely and wholly written by me, never any LLM or so-called “AI.” My use of LLMs is reserved for research purposes only, with no exceptions. Please join me in committing to never putting your name on any creative work that someone — or something — else created for you, in whole or in part.
- Lest you think that social media isn’t important, please consider that it very much is today’s version of the stoa, with the unfortunately-added characteristic that wildly unqualified people are allowed to speak just as much as informed and rational people are. No longer can we say, “ah, that’s just Facebook / Twitter.” No, these digital fora matter, perhaps more so than ever. For better or for worse. ↩︎
- This is a word now. I have spoken. ↩︎
- Priest, Jessica, and Johnathan Silver. “Abuse, Betrayal, and Cover-ups: An Investigation into Independent Fundamental Baptist Churches.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 9, 2018. ↩︎
- Lifeway Research. “Protestant Churchgoers Believe Pastoral Misconduct Is More Common Than Reported.” Lifeway Research, September 28, 2021. ↩︎
