Tag: Hemant Mehta
The God Illusion: Megachurch Pastor Robert Morris accused of sexually abusing 12-year-old girl
Here’s the link to this article by Hemant Mehta.
JUN 16, 2024
Morris, a Donald Trump ally, admitted to “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a “young lady”
Robert Morris, a megachurch pastor who used his reputation to help Donald Trump get elected, admitted to sexually abusing a child for a “few years” beginning when she was only 12. He was in his twenties at the time of the attacks. Morris is now downplaying the severity of what he did by referring to it merely as “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.”
Before going into the details of the allegations, it’s important to understand Morris’ standing in the evangelical world.
When Trump was trying to convince conservative Christians to support him in the summer of 2016, he released a list of his “evangelical executive advisory board,” a collection of mostly white, mostly male Christians who would be guiding him in the months ahead. That list included the likes of James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Ralph Reed.
It also included Robert Morris, the senior pastor of Gateway Church in Dallas, Texas.
Morris is the sort of person who claims his prayers can cure women’s infertility and that it’s “scientifically impossible to be an atheist.” He even prayed over Trump in the White House in 2019.
In 2020, Trump visited Gateway Church for an event on race relations and the economy. During the event, he thanked Morris and other church leaders by saying they were “Great people with a great reputation.”
The reason Morris amassed the sort of power that allowed him to be that close to the president is because he was able to hide his own actions for decades.
According to the Wartburg Watch, which first broke this story, Morris was a traveling evangelist in 1981 when he visited Tulsa, Oklahoma and met a family with an 11-year-old daughter named Cindy Clemishire. (Because she’s gone public with her story, I’m naming her here.)
Morris, along with his wife and son, stayed with Cindy’s family frequently. They all became very close.
On Christmas Day, 1982, he allegedly invited Cindy to come to his bedroom where he proceeded to touch her beneath her clothing. He then told her, “Never tell anyone about this because it will ruin everything.”
As a little girl, she didn’t know any better.
Part of the reason Morris was able to get away with it, and the way he was able to get so much alone time with the child, was by telling his wife he was “counseling” the little girl.
This sort of behavior continued for years, through 1987.
At one point, Cindy told a friend what had happened and the news came back to her own father, who “demanded that Morris get out of ministry.” Morris stepped down for two years. When he finally returned to preaching, he began the church that would later become Gateway Church.
It wasn’t until Cindy was much older that she realized the extent to which she had been abused and just how inappropriate (and criminal) it was.
In 2005, she obtained an attorney to file a civil lawsuit. Robert Morris’s attorney responded by implying that they believed it was her fault because she was “flirtatious.” She asked for $50,000 (which was not much in my estimation.) They responded that they would give her $25,000 if she signed an NDA. She refused, so she can now tell her side of the story.
If that story is true, it’s appalling (but not surprising) that the attorney blamed the child for what Morris did to her. No 12-year-old girl can legally consent to sex with an adult. She was not flirting with him.
(Interestingly enough, in one of Morris’ books, he writes about how he stepped down from ministry in his mid-20s—a time period that coincides with when Cindy’s father demanded he get out. The book, however, says God told Morris to take time away from the pulpit to deal with his “pride.”)
When reporter Leonardo Blair of the Christian Post asked Morris for comment about these allegations, the church responded with a confession of sorts. But they’re all acting like it’s not that big of a deal.
“When I was in my early twenties, I was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying. It was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong. This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years,” Morris said in a statement to The Christian Post after Gateway Church was asked about the allegations.
“In March of 1987, this situation was brought to light, and it was confessed and repented of. I submitted myself to the Elders of Shady Grove Church and the young lady’s father. They asked me to step out of ministry and receive counseling and freedom ministry, which I did. Since that time, I have walked in purity and accountability in this area,” Morris added.
He explained that he returned to ministry in March of 1989, two years after his abuse was exposed with the blessing of the survivor’s father and the elders of his church. He further noted that he and his wife met with the survivor and her family in October 1989.
“I asked their forgiveness, and they graciously forgave me,” Morris said.
She was not a “young lady.” She was a 12-year-old girl.
It wasn’t merely “inappropriate.” It was criminal.
It wasn’t just “kissing and petting.” According to Cindy, Morris “touch[ed] every part of my body and inserted his fingers into me.”
And Cindy’s father did not give Morris his blessings.
“My father never ever gave his blessing on Robert returning to ministry! My father told him he’s lucky he didn’t kill him. I am mortified that he is telling the world my dad gave his blessing! Of course, we forgive because we are called to biblically forgive those who sin against us. But that does not mean he is supposed to go on without repercussions,” she said.
The statement from Gateway Church also included comment from the church’s elders, but it’s no better than anything Morris said.
“Pastor Robert has been open and forthright about a moral failure he had over 35 years ago when he was in his twenties and prior to him starting Gateway Church. He has shared publicly from the pulpit the proper biblical steps he took in his lengthy restoration process,” they said.
“The two-year restoration process was closely administered by the Elders at Shady Grove Church and included him stepping out of the ministry during that period while receiving professional counseling and freedom ministry counseling,” they said. “Since the resolution of this 35-year-old matter, there have been no other moral failures. Pastor Robert has walked in purity, and he has placed accountability measures and people in his life. The matter has been properly disclosed to church leadership.”
It wasn’t a “moral failure.” It was criminal sexual assault.
He didn’t share publicly from the pulpit why he needed any kind of “restoration.”
The fact that it happened 35 years ago is irrelevant largely because this was never made public until the survivor told her side of the story. (The Catholic Church learned the hard way that people won’t forgive them for clergy abuse that occurred decades ago.)
And no one should simply accept that Morris has had “no other moral failures” since that time because we already have evidence of this particular crime being covered up.
If “church leadership” knew all about what he did, what does it say about them that the congregation was never told Morris was a child sex predator? (In an internal Slack channel for Gateway, church staffers were given the same statement with no further details about how Morris sexually assaulted a child for many years.)
There’s simply no accountability of any kind happening here.
Morris is still, as of this writing, the senior pastor of Gateway. He’s not facing any punishments from his church, much less criminal charges. Hell, there’s a good chance he’ll downplay this story whenever he talks about it and receive a warm embrace from the people in the pews who he’s been lying to for all these years.
That’s what conservative Christians have a habit of doing whenever their pastors are forced to admit an incident of sexual assault that they thought they had swept under the rug. They do it so often that pastors have developed a playbook for these things. All they have to do is say they did something immoral, but it happened in the past, and they prayed on it, and God forgave them, and they’ve been doing great ever since. Rinse, lather, repeat.
There’s never any mention of all the people they hurt. There are never any details offered about the exact nature of their “immorality.” There are never any serious consequences for their actions.
The Dallas Morning News says that Morris wasn’t around on Saturday as this story began to spread:
Morris did not preach at the Southlake campus’ Saturday afternoon service, and the allegations were not addressed by pastors during the service. Several attendees either declined to comment or said they were unaware of the allegations.
It’s unclear if he’ll be in the pulpit today.
Morris has spent years preaching about sexual ethics and sin and consequences for one’s actions. During that time, he promoted a presidential candidate (and later president) who did all the things Morris urged people not to do because Christians like him love hypocrisy.
And all those years, he’s been hiding his own troubling secret. If the church’s initial response is any indication, they’re all still trying to bury the story.
The God Illusion: What we learned from the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting
Here’s the link to this article.
Most delegates still oppose women pastors, IVF is evil, and abuse reform can wait. But at least the new president doesn’t wear jeans in the pulpit.
JUN 13, 2024
The Southern Baptist Convention, which has been dealing with a massive sexual abuse crisis for years now, finally got its priorities in order this week at its annual meeting… by threatening churches that believe women can serve as pastors and agreeing that in vitro fertilization is “dehumanizing” and must be opposed at all costs.
Let’s start with the sexism.
On Tuesday, delegates (“Messengers“) at the convention voted overwhelmingly (6,759-563) to expel Virginia’s First Baptist Church of Alexandria, a church that currently has a woman serving as “Pastor for Children and Women” and openly declares on its website that the Bible “not only permits women to serve in the offices of pastor and deacon but confirms this with examples by name.”
The church saw the writing on the wall two years ago when they were first ratted out for their disobedience. It didn’t matter that the church, which has existed for well over a century, donated millions of dollars to the SBC for missionary work. The Associated Press said that “the pastor of a neighboring church reported” them to the SBC after discovering they employed two women as pastors. (A man was still the “senior pastor,” but that was irrelevant.)
Their open belief that there’s nothing wrong with having women on staff as pastors is what pushed the SBC over the edge.
The vote came after the denomination’s credentials committee recommended earlier Tuesday that the denomination deem the church to be not in “friendly cooperation,” the formulation for expulsion, on the grounds that it conflicts with the Baptist Faith and Message. That statement of Southern Baptist doctrine declares only men are qualified for the role of pastor. Some interpret that only to apply to associate pastors as long as the senior pastor is male.
It would be unfair to call this church progressive given that it opposes same-sex marriage and denies the existence of transgender people, but even symbolic gender equality was a bridge too far for most Southern Baptists who voted.
The expulsion came a year after the SBC kicked out Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church for ordaining three female pastors.
But all of that was merely a prelude to what happened Wednesday when the SBC voted on a formal policy (called the “Law Amendment,” after the name of the person who proposed it) to banish any SBC church that placed women on the leadership hierarchy or openly supported that idea.
The policy, which needed two-thirds of the vote, two years in a tow, ultimately failed. They couldn’t get over the 67% threshold this time around.
Still, it’s hardly a victory when over 60% of SBC delegates support the Only-Men-In-Power doctrine. (Had this Amendment passed, the First Baptist Church of Alexandria would have been expelled from the SBC for having a female pastor and believing women can be co-equal leaders. As it stands, they were only kicked out for the latter offense.)
As reporter Kate Shellnutt of Christianity Today explained, the SBC will still be able to punish churches with “female lead pastors,” like they did with Saddleback, but they won’t have a zero tolerance policy for churches that place women in other leadership positions.
Had the Law Amendment passed, it could have led many churches to step out from under the SBC umbrella, as Bob Smietana noted at Religion News Service:
Southern Baptist churches have long relied on women to teach Sunday School, lead outreach ministries and do all the behind-the-scenes work to keep their congregations running smoothly. Southern Baptists also raise hundreds of millions of dollars every year in the names of legendary missionaries Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong. But they have also banned women from the pastorate — especially serving as senior pastor of a church.
… Passing this new rule, known as the “Law Amendment,” could lead to hundreds or thousands of churches leaving the SBC.
Just because the vote failed, however, doesn’t mean those churches will stay put.
The fact that this rule—no women in church leadership!—was even an issue tells you a lot about where the SBC is at. They’re literally arguing about a mild version of gender equality while the rest of their house remains on fire. Sexual abuse runs rampant within the SBC but a large part of the focus this year was on whether a woman serving as associate pastor was substantially different from a woman serving as senior pastor. For the majority of delegates, it’s better to have women labeled as servants and let them keep doing the same work, I guess.
Had they chosen to expel churches that employ women as pastors, the expectation was that a lot of churches would quit before they could be fired. Some still may.
Some churches made the decision to leave before they might be asked.
…
The Rev. Christy McMillin-Goodwin, pastor of First Baptist Church in Front Royal, Virginia, said she was surprised to discover that another Virginia clergyperson had listed her church as an example of one whose clerical leader was “sinning against God.”
“Our church decided to take a vote last May (2023) and the decision was unanimous,” she said of the church that had long stopped sending donations to the SBC and is affiliated with the more moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. “People actually yelled ‘Yes.’ It was very impassioned that we don’t want to be a part of an organization that does not fully support women in leadership in the church.”
They were proud to be part of a historically racist and currently anti-LGBTQ organization, but punishing churches that have women in leadership was a dealbreaker? Got it. (Someone make that make sense.)
It’s not just slightly progressive churches that need to decide their membership status. A lot of Black churches are making similar decisions, turning an organization that’s already known for its support of white Christian Nationalism into one that more closely looks the part.
When that happens, it will be a completely self-inflicted wound.
Telling women they’re equally capable of spreading the Gospel seems to be the sort of thing that would draw in more Christians than it alienates. But dogma, for many of these Southern Baptists, overrides common sense. The majority of Southern Baptists want to force underage girls to bear their rapists’ babies but they can’t handle a grown woman in the pulpit.
On top of that, the SBC also voted to oppose IVF treatments, even though plenty of white evangelicals have used the technology to have babies. While the vote wasn’t a surprise, it’s an extreme approach that may signal the next phase in the Christian Nationalist attack on reproductive rights.
IVF, of course, is a procedure in which a sperm and ova are joined outside the body, in a laboratory dish. It’s meant to help couples struggling with infertility or other health problems. The concern for anti-abortion extremists is that, in IVF, the embryos that aren’t implanted inside a uterus may be discarded or placed in a freezer. They believe that’s tantamount to murder. (Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers has said parents who use IVF are “waging an assault against God.”)
If you cut through the fluff in the actual SBC amendment, these paragraphs are what it boils down to:
IVF destroys human life. IVF promotes eugenics. IVF will lead to the murder of millions of teeny tiny “human beings.” Therefore we must oppose IVF no matter what.
It’s a thoughtless statement from a heartless organization.
It’s also a slap in the face to all the Christian women who have used IVF to have babies because, without it, they were unable to have children.
While the resolution has no teeth, and people who use IVF will still be allowed to stay in their churches, it’s a signal that conservative Christians are not satisfied with the Supreme Court banning abortion rights and that they fully intend to support politicians who want to ban IVF, too. They will also use this vote to put more pressure on Republicans who support IVF because it’s overwhelmingly popular.
POLITICO puts it bluntly:
Though the resolution is nonbinding, nearly 13 million Southern Baptists across 45,000 churches may now face pressure from the pulpit or in individual conversations with pastors to eschew IVF.
…
The Southern Baptists’ Wednesday vote could encourage other evangelical denominations and churches to follow suit in declaring — or at least teaching about — their ethical concerns with IVF.
All of this is happening while membership in the SBC is at a 47-year low.
In 2003, the SBC had a record high 16.3 million members. In 2023, the number dropped to 12.99 million, continuing 17 straight years of declining membership.
Meanwhile, the sexual abuse crisis remains a massive problem for the SBC.
It all stems back to revelations from 2022 about the SBC, in which we learned that, over the previous decade, more than 250 SBC staffers or volunteers had been “charged with sex crimes” against more than 700 victims. We also learned in the SBC’s own investigation that a private list of alleged predators (that wasn’t shared with member churches) included “703 abusers, with 409 believed to be SBC-affiliated.” The situation was so bad that the Department of Justice announced it was investigating “multiple SBC entities,” though not specific individuals, about their mishandling of sexual abuse cases. Last month, a former seminary professor became the first person indicted in the investigation. (He has pleaded not guilty.)
This month, we got an update from the SBC as to how its internal investigations are going… and it was predictably disappointing. A volunteer task force that was supposed to implement reforms announced that it would close up shop. While they created some resources to help churches deal with the problem, the biggest reform they could have made was creating a database of abusers so that criminals and known problematic people couldn’t church-hop after getting kicked out of one place… but that “Ministry Check” never happened because of a lack of funding and fears over getting sued.
To date, no names appear on the “Ministry Check” website designed to track abusive pastors, despite a mandate from Southern Baptists to create the database. The committee has also found no permanent home or funding for abuse reforms, meaning that two of the task force’s chief tasks remain unfinished.
Because of liability concerns about the database, the task force set up a separate nonprofit to oversee the Ministry Check website. That new nonprofit, known as the Abuse Response Committee, has been unable to publish any names because of objections raised by SBC leaders.
The SBC raked in over $10 billion in 2023. They could fund abuse reforms if they really wanted to without even noticing a change in their bank account. They just don’t want to. They would rather form a task force with no teeth than risk the world finding out just how many of their leaders are alleged (or charged) abusers.
When Lifeway Christian Resources (an arm of the SBC) released the results of a survey of congregation leaders last month, they found that only 58% of them required background checks for staffers who work with kids. With the number that low, the abuse is bound to continue.
Lost in the shuffle of all these votes was the election of the SBC’s new president, Clint Pressley, a megachurch pastor from North Carolina who represents the more conservative wing of the already conservative denomination. (The Religion News Service article about his election says, in the first paragraph, that Pressley “does not wear jeans in the pulpit.” Because that would be heretical.)
Pressley supported the anti-women Law Amendment and had “questions” about the proposed database of abusers, in case you had any questions about where he stands. Oh. And a volunteer at his megachurch was arrested in May after being accused of sexually abusing his own daughter. (The church thankfully reported the man to secular authorities leading to his eventual arrest.)
Keep in mind that the second largest Protestant denomination recently voted to get rid of its anti-LGBTQ policies and allow gay clergy members.
The SBC, on the other hand, is still debating which way to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
Please share this post on Reddit, Facebook, or the godawful X/Bird app.
Subscribe to Friendly Atheist
By Hemant Mehta · Hundreds of paid subscribers
Commentary about religion and politics, centered around atheism.
A Tennessee high school let a Christian preacher lead the basketball team in foot-washing
Here’s the link to this article.
Pushing Jesus on public high school students is coercive, immoral, and illegal
NOV 4, 2023
Here’s a quick tip for Christians who want to proselytize in public schools: When you get away with it, don’t brag about it publicly. Because even when you think all the evidence has been scrubbed from the internet, some people (*waves hello*) may have saved screenshots.
Speaking of which…
On Wednesday, Andrew Fortner, the leader of a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter in Tennessee, posted about how students at White House Heritage High School (a public school) ended their practice in an unusual way.
They held a free-throw shooting contest and five players on the team “won”… the chance to wash their teammates’ feet just like Jesus. The FCA leader shared pictures and explained how he told team leaders to “chase the TOWEL over the TITLE.” Fortner also included an image of himself reading the Bible to the kids.
That post is no longer online. Fortner deleted it. But not before it was shared on TikTok by a concerned woman (who also deleted her video to avoid local backlash).
Still, it happened. And now the Freedom From Religion Foundation is getting involved. In a letter, legal fellow Samantha F. Lawrence calls on the Robertson County Schools to investigate the matter:
We ask that RCS investigate this matter and ensure that the White House Heritage HS basketball program ceases infusing the program with religion. The basketball program and its coaches cannot be permitted to invite and allow an outside adult to proselytize student athletes and require them to engage in religious activities.
…
… When coaches promote their personal religion to students and invite an outside adult, such as Mr. Fortner, to instruct students to act out a biblical story while reading them scripture, the student athletes will no doubt feel that agreeing with their coach’s religious viewpoint and participating in the religious activities is essential to pleasing their coach and being viewed as a team player. It is unrealistic and unconstitutional to put student athletes to the choice of allowing their constitutional rights to be violated in order to maintain good standing in the eyes of their coach and peers or openly dissenting at the risk of retaliation from their coach and teammates.
As Lawrence points out, the Supreme Court’s Kennedy decision (where a football coach wanted to pray at midfield after games despite the coercive effect) is irrelevant here. This was a direct attempt to merge church and state. There was very clearly coercion. Fortner isn’t even a coach. He’s just a random guy whose Christianity gave him access to the team.
No representative from a different religion, or an atheist, would be given the opportunity to push their beliefs on the basketball team in the name of self-described morality. And they shouldn’t be! But Christian privilege is a hell of a drug.
The coaching staff at this school had no right to invite a Christian preacher to a practice in an effort to convert children. It’s appalling that the adults involved here were so comfortable with what was happening that they allowed photos to be taken and posted online… at least until, perhaps, they realized they were doing something wrong.
Fortner did not respond to a request for comment.
Former Southern Baptist leader: My sexual misconduct is “nobody else’s business”
Here’s the link to this article.
Johnny Hunt, who condemned same-sex marriage, says his own infidelity is a private matter
SEP 25, 2023
This newsletter is free, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe to Substack or use my usual Patreon page!
Upgrade to paid
The religious hypocrisy of a former Southern Baptist Convention leader is center stage in an ongoing lawsuit, arguing that one man’s private sins shouldn’t be fodder for public allegations.
It all stems back to revelations from 2022 about the SBC, in which we learned that, over the previous decade, more than 250 SBC staffers or volunteers had been “charged with sex crimes” against more than 700 victims. We also learned in the SBC’s own investigation that a private list of alleged predators (that wasn’t shared with member churches) included “703 abusers, with 409 believed to be SBC-affiliated.” The situation was so bad that the Department of Justice announced it was investigating “multiple SBC entities,” though not specific individuals, about their mishandling of sexual abuse cases. That investigation is ongoing.
But the relevant part of that document for today’s story was the allegation about former SBC president Johnny Hunt.
According to page 149, another pastor and his wife reported that Hunt, who ran the SBC from 2008-2010, “had sexually assaulted the wife on July 25, 2010.” (That would have been shortly after Hunt completed his second one-year term.)
Hunt, the report said, “groomed the couple with flattery and promises of help in ministry.” At the SBC’s annual meeting that year, Hunt invited the couple to spend time with his family at a beach where he was spending his planned sabbatical. They grew closer and, at a later date, the woman stayed alone at a condo that Hunt recommended. Unbeknownst to her, he was right next door.
One night, when both of them were alone, he invited her back to his place. It took a dark turn from there:
Dr. Hunt then moved towards Survivor and proceeded to pull her shorts down, turn her over and stare at her bare backside. He made sexual remarks about her body and things he had imagined about her. During this time, Survivor felt frozen. Survivor said these were some of the longest moments of her life. She mustered the courage to ask him could she turn back over, and Dr. Hunt said yes. When she turned back over, she began to pull up her shorts. Dr. Hunt then pinned her to the couch, got on top of her, and pulled up her shirt. He sexually assaulted her with his hands and mouth. Suddenly, Dr. Hunt stopped and then stood up. Survivor pulled down her shirt. Survivor said she did not want him to ruin his ministry, at which he responded he did not want to ruin hers. But he then forced himself on her again by groping her, trying to pull her shirt down, and violently kissing her. Survivor did not reciprocate, but rather stood eyes open and very stiff, hoping he would just stop and leave. He finally stopped and left.
The victim said that Hunt spoke to her shortly after that and told her “he would like to have sex with her three times a day.”
It was only the next morning that he apologized, begged for forgiveness, and asked for her to keep this a secret.
Hunt was scheduled to return to preach at his home church in Georgia following his sabbatical, but he soon announced he would be extending his break “citing physical and emotional exhaustion”
Bob Smietana of Religion News Service explains what happened after that:
Without telling his congregation — or the millions of Southern Baptists he had represented as their president — Hunt went through a secret restoration process that included counseling sessions with the woman he had fondled and her husband. He then returned to the pulpit.
For a dozen years, no one was the wiser. Hunt retired from First Baptist in 2019 and took on a new role as a senior vice president for the SBC’s North American Mission Board and continued his busy and often lucrative career as a preacher and public speaker.
Life is good when you’re an alleged sexual abuser who belongs to a religious denomination with a history of ignoring sexual abuse.
Again, all that occurred in 2010. The details of the alleged assault weren’t publicized until that report came out in 2022. Until that report was made public, it was all but impossible to connect the dots to understand the real reason for Hunt’s extended leave.
Hunt initially denied those allegations. He then claimed everything was consensual. But by the end of 2022, after going through another “restoration” program, Hunt was declared “eligible to return to professional ministry.” He returned to the pulpit earlier this year.
There were never any criminal charges filed against him. His professional career didn’t suffer any real hits. It was like the SBC didn’t really care. (Surprise.)
But Hunt seems determined to get the last word here, so this past spring, he filed a defamation lawsuit against the SBC saying they ruined his life by including him in the report. The encounter, his lawyers explained, “involved only kissing and some awkward fondling.” Infidelity, sure, but not assault. Plus, Hunt was no longer the SBC president at the time, just a civilian. Including him in the report was nothing more than a “strategic decision to deflect attention from the SBC’s historical failure to take aggressive steps to respond to reports of child sex abuse and other sex crimes in its past.”
“Pastor Johnny was not the president of the SBC or a member of the Executive Committee at the time of the incident,” they wrote in a memorandum, opposing the denomination’s attempts to have the case dismissed. “He was merely a private citizen whose marital fidelity was nobody else’s business.”
That’s the sort of sentence that will give your eyes a workout as they roll back.
First of all, citing the SBC’s “historical failure” to deal with sex abuse as an excuse for them coming after him is wild considering that Hunt was the leader of the SBC at a time when many of those failures were occurring. He’s blaming the SBC, which he led, for not doing enough to stop guys like himself.
The defamation argument is also absurd. He was a public figure. He was the immediate past president of the SBC. He was a hypocrite. He was a part of the abuse that the SBC swept under the rug. There’s no evidence that the allegations were made by people who secretly knew they were untrue (which is the whole idea of defamation).
But setting that aside, it’s ludicrous that a preacher who made everyone else’s sex life his business now demands privacy regarding his alleged assault.
As Smietana points out, Hunt was one of the signers of the 2017 Nashville Statement, which declared marriage could only be between a man and a woman, that all married couples needed to be monogamous, and that transgender people didn’t exist.
He also signed the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s “Statement on Marriage” written in response to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling, which said the decision was the result of “marriage’s decline through divorce, cohabitation, and a worldview of almost limitless sexual freedom.”
Finally, it’s deeply ironic that in 2008, at the same convention when Hunt was elected SBC president, the SBC Executive Committee condemned sexual abuse in all forms:
“The Southern Baptist Convention is on record for having stood strongly against sexual abuse. We have long condemned those who would use our churches as a hunting ground for their own sick and selfish pleasure,” Chapman said. “At the same time, sexual abuse is a growing crisis in this nation and we must continue to do everything within our power to stop this horrendous crime. Even though the number of Southern Baptist ministers who are sexual predators may seem to be relatively small, we must be on watch and take immediate action against those who prey on the most innocent among us. One sexual predator in our midst is one too many!“
We gotta stop the sex predators! Now everyone please clap for the new guy in charge, Johnny Hunt!
Notice how they acted like Southern Baptist predators were few and far between even though sexual abuse was rampant in the culture. Meanwhile they elected a man was was two years away from being credibly accused of that same behavior. They were also in the midst of covering up their own behavior, as the 2022 report would later reveal.
If Hunt wasn’t an anti-LGBTQ preacher who made sexual ethics a focal point in his personal ministry, maybe this wouldn’t have to be a public story… though I would argue it still deserved to be taken seriously because (1) if the allegations were true, it would be a serious crime and (2) he used his religious authority to gain unearned trust from another woman.
It important to remember that Hunt has always pushed the false idea that a Christian ethic means taking the moral high road. Yet he’s a living example of how Christianity can sometimes just be an excuse to cover up bad behavior. He implied that those who reject his belief system are more likely to be sinners worthy of condemnation while never taking those beliefs seriously himself. He acted like his marriage was worthy of praise while treating monogamous same-sex couples as if they were being led by the devil.
He’s not the only Christian leader who turned out to be a complete hypocrite. Ted Haggard and Jerry Falwell, Jr. had their reputations destroyed for similar reasons. (At least they were never accused of assault.) But Hunt seems intent on making sure this story stays in the public eye by making the idiotic argument that it never should have been told.
To be fair, that may be the most Southern Baptist thing about him.
Bremerton’s praying football coach got what he wanted, so now he may quit for good
Here’s the link to this article.
Christian football coach Joe Kennedy returned to the field Friday night, perhaps for the last time
SEP 2, 2023
Last night marked the first football game of the season for the boys at Bremerton High School in Washington—they won 27-12—but the majority of spectators were there to watch something else entirely: A post-game prayer from assistant coach Joe Kennedy. A prayer made possible by a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court that ignored the facts in order to let Kennedy have his moment at the 50-yard line.
After the game was over, Kennedy walked to midfield for a brief, uneventful prayer during which he wasn’t surrounded by anyone. He got the attention he wanted before heading back to the locker room.
For all the events that led up to that moment, it may have been his last time on the field.
A quick refresher in case you forgot: Kennedy argued that he lost his coaching job in 2015 because he wanted to deliver a quiet Christian prayer at midfield after games. All of that was exaggerated or untrue. He was never actually fired. The prayers weren’t “quiet.” And the concern was far more about the coercive nature of his showboat prayers, not his ability to privately pray. But the only reason the Bremerton case was in front of the Supreme Court at all was because, theoretically, their decision was the only way Kennedy could regain his job and the right-wing justices were eager to jump into the fray.
In 2022, the Court’s conservative majority ignored the facts of the case and sided with Kennedy, further eroding church/state separation and requiring the district to give him his old job back. The district is now obligated to pay attorneys’ fees amounting to over $1.7 million, some portion of which will be paid through their insurance.
The irony with the Supreme Court’s decision was that it seemed hard to believe Kennedy was just going to waltz back onto the football field. He moved away from Bremerton to Florida years ago. Was he seriously going to move back for a low-paying coach position?
Last September, months after the decision came down, the Seattle Times reported that Kennedy was nowhere to be found. Was he too busy being a conservative celebrity to actually do the job he claimed he wanted (which is precisely what atheist groups predicted would happen)? Yes and no.
It’s true that Kennedy will soon release a ghostwritten memoir called Average Joe: The Coach Joe Kennedy Story. There’s also a movie about him in the works produced by the God’s Not Dead people; while he’s not directly involved with it, he’ll presumably be involved with the publicity campaign. But the delay on the field likely had more to do with paperwork than anything else. Only this past March did the district announce that everything was finally completed:
Mr. Kennedy will be an assistant football coach for Bremerton High School for the 2023 season. Mr. Kennedy has completed human resources paperwork and we are awaiting the results of his fingerprinting and background check. Mr. Kennedy will need to complete all training required by WIAA. Football coach contracts are approved by the Board at the August 3, 2023 board meeting, and begin in mid-August. As with any other assistant coach, Mr. Kennedy will be included in coaching staff communication and meetings, spring football practice and other off-season football activities.
That’s why it took until last night for Kennedy to finally get back on the field. First Liberty Institute, the conservative legal group that backed him, urged other coaches to pray at midfield Friday night in solidarity, though it’s not clear if anyone did that.
But despite everything Kennedy went through to get back his position, it may also have been his final game because the pull of Christian celebrity is as strong as ever. Besides the book and movie, the Seattle Times notes that Kennedy gets paid to give speeches and that politicians like Ron DeSantis have attempted to get his endorsement. (Not surprisingly, Kennedy is a firm Donald Trump supporter.)
Need more evidence coaching isn’t in his future? He hasn’t bothered moving back to Bremerton.
He’s currently housesitting, and said he and his wife have talked about parking an RV on her sister’s property in the area during football season.
They’re not looking for homes in the community. They haven’t sold their property in Pensacola. Kennedy wouldn’t answer questions about his plans beyond Friday:
… Will Kennedy stick around after the first game?
On the last question, he’s not saying. Everything’s been leading up to Friday’s game, he said, “the fine bow” on top of his Supreme Court victory, which overturned lower court rulings and the public school district’s directive against overt activity while on duty that could be taken as an endorsement of religion. He insisted he can’t think further ahead than Friday.
What sort of football coach can’t see past the first game of the season? One who’s already heading toward the exits, that’s who. Kennedy also added that his future plans might include “some ministry or something.”
If and when he walks away, it’ll be definitive proof that he’s only coaching for the purpose of praying on the field. Does anyone seriously think he’s doing this for the students? How shitty must those athletes feel knowing that, regardless of how they play, all the media attention will be on a coach who has already planned a future without them?
As any high school coach could tell you, the job is a sacrifice. You don’t get paid much and it takes a lot of time, but you do it because you love the students. You do it because what you get out of it is more valuable than a paycheck. When Kennedy used his platform to advertise his religion, it was clear the students were not his main priority. It’s clear that hasn’t changed in eight years.
He never cared about the kids, the team, or the job. He only ever cared about himself.
Last night, the Freedom From Religion Foundation announced that they had placed a billboard about two minutes away from the high school. It says, “Wishing Bremerton High School a safe, secular & successful school year.”
It’s a fine message that capitalizes on the story, but it’s telling that the atheists are focused on what’s best for students while Joe Kennedy’s main concern is staring back at him in the mirror.
“Coach Kennedy’s antics are a desperate way of keeping his unconstitutional agenda in the spotlight,” says FFRF Legal Director Rebecca Markert. “We’ll be countering it whichever way we can.”
To their credit, the district issued strict guidelines about Kennedy’s prayers in accordance with the SCOTUS decision and the law as it stands: Any prayers (a.k.a. “personal conduct”) had to occur outside of game time when coaches were on duty, and only when students were at least 25 feet away at the start of it. In short, they were saying the prayer had to be a solo event after the game even if students decided to join in after it began. Looks like the students didn’t want to do that last night.
If Kennedy really cared about these students, he’d accept his SCOTUS victory and let the kids play without him there. He has no reason to be there other than a desperate desire for the spotlight—and to create a postscript for the movie version of his life. He could easily have stayed in Florida and said that God gave him the ultimate victory so now, for the sake of the children, he’ll stay put in Pensacola so that the attention remains on the student athletes where it belongs. He didn’t do that. He wanted to bask in the glory once more because he thinks high school football is all about him.
Once he’s gone, which could be very soon, the attention will finally be where it belongs: on the students playing the game, not the coach using them for his personal benefit.
A Texas district called for 22 days of prayer to launch the new school year
Here’s the link to this article.
An atheist group called on the Burnet CISD to “cease promoting prayer and remove this post”
JUL 28, 2023
This newsletter is free, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe to Substack or use my usual Patreon page!
Upgrade to paid
Earlier this week, the Burnet Consolidated Independent School District in Texas posted an official call for prayer leading up to the new school year.
Their image was even titled “Pray to the First Day,” with each of the next 22 days dedicated to a different school or group of adults, with the students themselves saved until the very end.
Needless to say, a public school district has no business telling people to pray, even if it doesn’t go into detail regarding which religion or what to say.
On Thursday, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the district urging officials to “cease promoting prayer and remove this post from its official social media.” Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow Samantha Lawrence wrote:
The District serves a diverse community that consists of not only religious students, families, and employees, but also atheists, agnostics, and those who are simply religiously unaffiliated. By promoting prayer, the District sends an official message that excludes all nonreligious District students and community members. Thirty-seven percent of the American population is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent who are nonreligious. At least a third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) have no religion, with a recent survey revealing almost half of Gen Z qualify as “nones” (religiously unaffiliated).
This wasn’t a lawsuit. It wasn’t a threat. It was a reminder that calls for prayer shut out every member of the community who isn’t religious. And let’s be honest: The implication is that these are Christian prayers, so non-Christians are excluded too.
If a church in the area wants to waste its time praying for a better school year, that’s their business. But it sure as hell shouldn’t be something district officials call for.
The good news is that the Burnet CISD has already relented. In an email to FFRF sent less than 90 minutes after the initial letter went out, Superintendent Keith McBurnett wrote, “The Facebook post referenced has been removed, and the District will refrain from posting anything similar in the future.”
Problem solved… unless people notice and complain, in which case it’ll be interesting to see how district officials respond.
In any case, if the people in the community actually want to make a difference, then they should demand the Republican-dominated state legislature give educators raises to keep them in the profession and reverse a statewide teacher shortage, stop banning books that challenge students’ minds, end the assault on LGBTQ students, and do more to prevent gun violence instead of putting more armed guards in schools.
They won’t. Instead, they’re just praying (for nothing in particular in most cases) while voting to make schools worse. 78% of the county voted to re-elect Republican Greg Abbott as governor in 2022. Other Republicans on the ballot won by similar margins.
The end result is that students will continue to struggle because most of the adults in their lives have no clue how to fix the problems they’ve created.
Survey: Belief in God, Heaven, Hell, angels, and the devil is lower than ever before
Here’s the link to this article.
While a majority of Americans still believe in supernatural entities, Gallup found declines over the past two decades
JUL 20, 2023
This newsletter is free, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe to Substack or use my usual Patreon page!
Upgrade to paid
Belief in the supernatural is at an all-time low, according to a new survey from Gallup. While the majority of Americans still believe in God, angels, Heaven, Hell, and Satan, those majorities continue to dwindle, which could be bad news for the religious institutions that treat fiction as fact.
Since 2001, belief in God has gone from 90% to 74%—which implies more than a quarter of Americans are either unsure or reject the idea of God altogether. The percentage of believers has not gone up in the past two decades.
Meanwhile, while belief in the devil saw a slight rise during the George W. Bush administration, that number has also seen a drop from a high of 70% to 58% today. (Ironically, 69% of Americans still believe in angels. People seem to prefer their spiritual entities in a “glass half full” sort of way.)
51% of Americans believe in all five of those spiritual entities. 7% of Americans are “unsure” about all five. 11% reject all five. (Those 11% are correct.)
All of this is happening while plenty of other surveys have found a dramatic rise in non-belief. The Pew Research Center has found that 29% of Americans have no religious affiliation at all.
So how many atheists believe in these spiritual entities? (How many people are full of logical inconsistencies?) That’s a little harder to say. While Gallup doesn’t address the issue in this particular survey, Pew found in 2017 that 9% of people who didn’t believe in God did believe in some “higher power.” There’s a flip side to that too. There are a lot of Americans in this survey who say they believe in God but reject the concepts of Heaven, Hell, or the beings that supposedly live in them. What the hell is going on there? It suggests many Americans take a cafeteria-style approach to religion, picking and choosing the parts they like instead of purchasing the entire package.
Gallup found (perhaps not surprisingly) that believers in all of the Big Five include Protestants more than Catholics, frequent churchgoers more than casual ones, people without a college degree more than college graduates, Republicans more than Democrats, people in households that make under $40,000 a year more than those making over $100,000, adults 55 and older more than younger ones, and women more than men (except when it comes to the devil, when both numbers are the same).
All of this is bad news for church leaders that use these beliefs to bring in and control members. When fewer people believe in the devil, it’s a lot harder to scare them straight. When fewer people believe in Heaven or Hell, it raises questions about why people need to follow religious rules that don’t make sense.
Many atheists could tell you that their belief in God didn’t fade away in a split second. Rather, there was some aspect of religion that stopped making sense to them. That led to them questioning other ones. Once that first domino fell, the others followed in succession until even God couldn’t stand up to scrutiny.
What these survey results show us is that the dominoes are falling. It’ll take a while for the entire chain to go down, but religious leaders should be worried.
These Christians took preacher Robin D. Bullock seriously. Now they’re screwed.
Here’s the link to this article by Hemant Mehta.
This is the tragic story of what happens when a YouTube ministry becomes real life
JUL 21, 2023
One of the reasons websites like Right Wing Watch track the deranged statements of certain Christian preachers is because those comments often have real world consequences.
When someone like hate-preacher Greg Locke falsely claims children with autism actually suffer from demon possession, for example, he’s not just some fringe pastor saying something virtually no one will hear. He’s a preacher with a large online following and plenty of connections to prominent Republicans saying something that could impact his followers’ lives in a bad way.
Robin D. Bullock is another one of those right-wing preachers whose clips evoke more laughter than fear. He’s claimed, among other things, that he saw a dinosaur in Heaven, that Jesus had five houses, and that God lives inside a cube of gelatin.
His leather jacket and wig-like long hair and faux rock-star vibes don’t help his credibility.
But Bullock makes plenty of political and theological statements, too, from his perch at Church International in Warrior, Alabama. So when he spreads conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden and COVID vaccines, and says God wants people to join his church, that message actually gets through to people who watch his services online.
Reporter Lee Hedgepeth recently published a truly disturbing article about one Ohio family—Jacob and Tammy Partlow and their two children—that literally sold their house to move closer to Bullock and his Alabama church. They discovered rather quickly, however, that Bullock functions as more of a cult leader who puts himself above God rather than a preacher who can convey biblical messages in an effective way. Once Bullock realized they weren’t interested in worshiping him, he effectively shunned the family, leaving them with nothing to show for their faith.
Now, the Partlows have found themselves rising to challenges made all the more difficult by their experience with the Warrior church. The family, which had been able to make ends meet in Ohio, has found it hard to get by in Alabama, a state whose social safety net has holes so large it’s easy to fall through. Tammy, for example, found out she suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), a degenerative disease that has already made it difficult for her to walk. And the diagnosis, she said, has become a financial albatross in a state that has refused to expand Medicaid for low-income Alabamians.
The Partlows had stepped out in faith, they told Tread. Now, they’re struggling for food.
The Partlows, we’re told, saw Bullock’s services on YouTube and became hooked. They quickly became donors, giving the church “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars.”
During a recent trip to Florida, they stopped by the church and met Bullock, who told them God wanted them to move to Warrior. So they did. They began attending services in person. That’s when they realized Bullock wasn’t just preaching the Bible.
Bullock would sometimes go on tangents the family felt didn’t have any Biblical basis, for one — “prophetic” visions, he would often explain.
And sometimes, the family said, Bullocks’ long-winded, winding sermons would devolve into diatribes of paranoia and hate.
That’s what happened during the Sunday service that would ultimately lead to the end of the family’s relationship with Church International.
Being in the room that day, Jacob said, it quickly became clear that Bullock has an obsession with power.
“He wants to be completely in control,” he said. “That’s obvious.”
When Bullock later claimed people were trying to divide his church, the Partlows felt he was speaking directly to (and about) them. They needed to get out. But where would they go? They gave up their Ohio home and are now living in a rural part of a red state that’s not about to assist with the family’s medical issues.
(Incidentally, Greg Locke pulled the same trick, accusing some members of his church of being “witches” and threatening to out them if they didn’t leave his church.)
“Robin Bullock caused me to come here and lose everything,” Tammy Partlow told Tread. “I don’t even know if I have enough gas money to get home. I don’t even have money to buy food. And before I moved here, I was okay.”
It’s such a depressing story. It’s not an isolated one either. In fact, Hedgepeth also reported on another woman who moved to Warrior a couple of months ago… only to find herself on the outs with Bullock. 82-year-old Janet Ndegwa moved to Alabama from Pomona, California all because she felt God was calling her to do that. Bullock literally urged viewers to do that in a sermon.
But when she arrived at Church International earlier this week, Ndegwa did not find the open arms she’d expected. Instead, as the sun set over Warrior, the 82-year-old curled up under a street lamp in front of the church with only the concrete to comfort her.
Thankfully, Warrior’s police chief made sure she had shelter when the temperatures dropped to below freezing. Because she wasn’t going anywhere on her own, the cop threatened to arrest her in order to get her to go indoors instead of staying in the church’s parking lot. (To their credit, Bullock and his wife offered to put Ndegwa up in a hotel, but she refused.)
The biggest concern, though, is that Bullock urged viewers to pack up and move and join his church with no plan in place to help anyone who took him seriously. A 911 dispatcher that Hedgepeth spoke to said there were six or seven people who slept outside the church in a similar way; sometimes it was the church itself calling police to take care of the situation.
If that’s the case, it suggests Bullock will make all kinds of prophetic declarations with no regard for people who actually listen to him. Instead of restraining himself from saying those things, he just continues doing it, because that’s what it takes to get views and keep the money rolling in. (Enough money to purchase more and more property in the area.)
Preachers like Bullock say increasingly outlandish things because it brings in the views, which brings in the money, but the consequence of having a YouTube ministry is that some people want to make it their in-person church home. Instead of welcoming those people, Bullock is treating at least some of them like agents of Satan eager to cause harm.
He’s leaving the people who trust him behind while continuing to elevate himself.
Most Christian pastors use armed church members to thwart a possible mass shooting
Here’s the link to this article.
Prayer is not a part of their safety plan
JUN 12, 2023
This newsletter is free, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe to Substack or use my usual Patreon page!
A recent survey from Lifeway Research, an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, found that most Protestant pastors (54%) plan to thwart a potential church shooting by having armed members of the congregation. (In 2019, that number was 45%.)
Only 5% of those pastors said their safety measures involve having a uniformed cop on site while only 20% have “armed private security personnel.” Shockingly, for people who seem to think a shootout could occur on any given Sunday, only 1% of pastors bother with metal detectors at the entrance.
It might make sense if smaller churches with less money felt like hiring security wasn’t a viable option so they relied on their own armed members… but that’s not the case at all. In fact, it’s the larger churches (with over 250 attendees each week) that are more likely to have armed members.
That means more pastors think they’re better off having random church members with weapons on them instead of hiring private or public police officers with presumably more training in those situations.
None of the security measures involves praying more. Which is telling since that’s the typical response from Christian leaders whenever there’s a shooting in a public school. Thoughts and prayers are the default conservative responses after mass shootings, but conservative Christians refuse to let Jesus take the wheel when it comes to their own safety. They want action. They’re wrong about which action to take, but they know something needs to change, and a Higher Power won’t help.
It’s also noteworthy that so many of these pastors have just accepted that their places of worship could become actual battlegrounds. Apparently God can’t protect them as much as an assault weapon could.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with having a plan in place in the event of a mass shooting, even in church, and there are legitimate debates to be had about the best ways to stop someone with the intention of harming others. Arming “good guys” isn’t always the best option. We’ve unfortunately seen multiple situations, like in Parkland and Uvalde, where armed cops did nothing significant to stop the shooters.
Given all that, it would be nice if these pastors put an ounce of thought into why gun violence is on the rise.
You may recall that, shortly after the Uvalde shooting, a (now-deleted) tweet from a gun manufacturer called Daniel Defense went viral. That was the company that made the weapon used to kill 19 children and two adults. The tweet featured a child holding a weapon, justified with a Bible verse (Proverbs 22:6).
That wasn’t an accident. Daniel Defense is a Christian company that mixes religion and death for an audience that eats it all up. That company also created the weapon used in the mass shooting in Las Vegas, which killed another 60 people and injured literally hundreds more.
Conservative Christians think guns are the solution to a gun culture they helped create. Just as God is their solution to another problem they created (sin), they see more weapons as the response to a society made worse by more weapons.
Last year, historian Peter Manseau published an essay in the New York Times (gift article) in which he linked the conservative Christian obsession with guns and God:
In Florida, Spike’s Tactical (“the finest AR-15s on the planet”) makes a line of Crusader weapons adorned with a quote from the Psalms. Missouri-based CMMG (“the leading manufacturer of AR15 rifles, components and small parts”) advertises its employees’ “commitment to meet each and every morning to pray for God’s wisdom in managing the enormous responsibility that comes with this business.” And in Colorado, Cornerstone Arms explains that it is so named because “Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of our business, our family and our lives” and the “Second Amendment to our Constitution is the cornerstone of the freedom we enjoy as American citizens.”
For many American Christians, Jesus, guns and the Constitution are stitched together as durably as a Kevlar vest.
There’s a reason those companies exist. White evangelical Christians have a higher rate of gun ownership than any other religious (or explicitly non-religious) demographic in the country. The people who loudly and proudly declare themselves to be “pro-life” are also the most eager to put a bullet in a theoretical enemy. And the companies that profit from their gun fetish have helped create a culture where mass shootings are commonplace and citizens are falsely led to believe more guns are the solution to any safety issue—even though other countries are well aware that fewer guns and more restrictions on them are the way to go.
Manseau also (correctly) pointed out that this created another obstacle to gun safety measures: Anything politicians do to keep weapons off the streets and out of the hands of people who might use them for evil is inherently seen by these zealots as anti-Christian.
To imagine yourself as a Good Guy With a Gun… may inspire action-movie day dreams, but it is ultimately a religious vision of a world in which good and evil are at war, where God and firepower make all the difference.
Some of us want to see guns regulated like cars. Owners should have to go through a registration process that involves significant training and insurance and a license that could be taken away if you’re irresponsible. But the conservative Christians who see guns as an extension of their faith—and the solution to a potential shooting in church—refuse to accept any kind of sensible restriction on them. They couldn’t handle attendance restrictions or mask mandates in church during the pandemic, and they can’t handle red flag laws or mandatory registration on their weapons.
They believe freedom involves their ability to hurt as many strangers as possible. (It’s what Jesus would have wanted.) And they apparently also think freedom means having people in their churches who spend at least a part of Sunday morning thinking about how they might have to kill someone that morning in case of an emergency.
Obviously, #NotAllChristians are on board with this belief. Many side with progressives on gun safety and understand what all the data in the world has repeatedly told us about what we need to do to save lives. They are victims and first responders and as troubled by the right-wing obsession with guns as the rest of us. But unless they acknowledge the role their religion has played in creating this increasingly dangerous environment Americans currently live in, it’ll be virtually impossible to create change from within. That means pastors with a spine need to speak out against the Second Amendment extremists even if that means denouncing their fellow Christian leaders.
Disarming the church doesn’t mean putting their congregations in harm’s way. Disarming everyone means more safety for more people. At the very least, weapons should be limited to the hands of trained professionals as opposed to anyone who can get his hands on a weapon and wants to cosplay as a hero.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
The Pencil Driven Life 
