Another one?

December 21, 2006

Just last month, a gay sex scandal forced Ted Haggard to resign from his New Life Church in Colorado. Last week, Paul Barnes, founding pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel, also resigned in a gay sex scandal. This week, Christopher Beard, a pastor at the exact same megachurch as Haggard, resigned after acknowledging “a one-time sexual encounter he had several years ago, before he was married.”

And today, another key evangelical pastor at a well-known megachurch is facing yet another sex scandal.

A church whose former pastor was president of the Southern Baptist Convention has been rocked by allegations of child abuse, PageOneQ has learned.

Pastor Paul Williams, who directs prayer programs and special projects at the Bellevue Baptist Church outside of Memphis, has been forced to take a leave while a church committee investigates charges that Williams sexually molested a family member 17 years ago. Williams has been at Bellevue for 34 years, reports Agape Press, a news service run by the American Family Association.

In a statement issued by the church and obtained by PageOneQ, the church’s personnel committee says that Williams has taken a paid leave of absence in the wake of “a past, but highly concerning moral failure.”

In the evangelical community, this is no small matter — Bellevue Baptist Church has more than 27,000 members, and is one of the largest churches, of any denomination, in the United States.

Wow.

Hillbilly inbreeding marches on.

  • Judge, lest ye be judged.

    Makes one seriously ponder why the fundie leadership uses arguments as polygamy and beastiality as reasons why gay marriage is wrong. I hope Rick Santorum doesn’t own a dog.

  • Former Dan, you are deliberately misquoting?

    It’s “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

    I think Christopher Beard should had stuck it out. After all, the argument is that Christianity and faith helps one overcome homosexual urges. Once before marriage is hardly that terrible, especially if you confessed and atoned. Isn’t that what they say?

    But I suppose the Theocrat Reactionaries just spout this stuff without actually believing it.

  • I keep thinking about some carpenter-type fellow from Nazareth, who told people to “go into the closet to pray privately.”

    Something tells me that he doesn’t exactly think a church THE SIZE OF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER qualifies as “a closet.”

    *And somewhere, an intoxicated chimpanzee is complaining to a bartender about the ridiculous notion that “man” evolved from “ape”—and the bartender (who also happens to be a chimp), replies wryly : “Actually, they de-evolved from us….”

  • The thing that gets me about these guys is the same as with politicians – it’s not so much the crime as it is the coverup. They hold themselves out as trustworthy leaders and then lie and deceive – and do not remove themselves voluntarily from their positions of power until they are brought down.

    The turmoil of the 60s largely came about because people became disillusioned with the lack of credibility on the part of the government, the military and the corporate world (collectively, the “Establishment”) – and compared to the conformity of the 30s and 40s where the government was a force of good, and the 50s where the corporate world order prevented another Depression and brought most of America into the middle class, the lessons of the 60s was not to trust authority.

    We are now in such a period again – once again the credibility of the Establishment is in tatters – only between these scandals and the Catholic Church altar boy molestation cover-up, the world of the religious authority is proving to have as little credibility as the others. It will be interesting to see if this ends up in a backlash like the 60s.

  • Gee, do you think at least some of the radical Christians will see the difference between molesting a child (a crime) and consenting adults having sex? Of course, if the victim is male we’ll have to deal with more Santorum-ing. Gag.

    Regarding the hairshirt wearers who can tell the difference between a child and an adult: if sHaggard set off the latest round people quitting because they’ve “strayed,” here’s to him.

  • Steve —

    Ever heard a Dave Bartholomew song called “The Monkey Speaks His Mind?”

    Sample lyrics:

    Here’s something you’ll never see/A monkey fence around a coconut tree
    …
    Why if I put a fence around this tree/Starvation would force you to steal from me

    Man descended, the worthless bum/But from us he did not come

  • What should disturb these megachurch members is that with their teachings, their belief system, and their sanctified purity is that they have failed. These kinds of people were only supposed to be produced by lib’ruls, pagans, evildoers, and the permissive hedonistic life styles of our immoral culture.

  • Back when the Haggard scandal was in the news, a blog showed a picture of the staff of his Colo Spgs “mega-church”.They were ALL young men, 20’s and 30’s, and ALL, I mean ALL, looked gayer than Gay Gayerson’s Christmas tree filled with Christopher Radko ornanments!

    I’m waiting for the entire staff, particularily the two brothers named Parsley (one a choir master and the other an asst pastor), to be exposed in the coming months. One by one, we’ll yank those fuckers out of their communal closet!

  • The harsher the messages coming from these preachers the more hypocritical they are. I bet Fred Phelps has a closet that is bursting with nasties and that James Dobson has a lot he hopes the world will never know about him.

  • They just need to make a rule that nobody who works in a church can have had sex, ever. With anybody. Total celibacy, that’s the answer.

    Or would that be too much like Catholic priests?

    I hate these moral conundrums, don’t you? 😉

  • I realize some of you think that all Christians are hillbillies who commit incest regularly. Your counterparts on the right think similar thoughts about all muslims. While this is probably wasted energy, let me point out that if you think of homosexuality as a sin (which I don’t), and you want desperately not to be a homosexual, then it makes sense to seek refuge in a church where your god will give you strength. That is what you are told and maybe if you repeat it often enough it will become true and you can defeat these sinful urges.

    Yes, these ministers are hypocrites, but I am willing to bet you that they all truly wish that they did not have these urges. I feel sorry for them. Their church failed them because it could not alter their basic sexual orientation. It must be excruciating for them to acknowledge this and they would hide from the reality as long as they can. It’s very much like Bill Clinton lying about having an affair – he was ashamed of it.

    My hope is that Christians will re-examine their false idea that homosexuality is a choice. Maybe something good will come of all this.

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