Moore said the #MeToo movement has ushered a \u2018\u2018welcome development in American culture toward believing women who have been harmed. I also think there\u2019s a growing, but not fast enough, realization in church life of the way that power can easily be abused in predatory ways, especially spiritual power.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\nMost recently, Frank Page, president and chief executive of the SBC\u2019s executive committee, announced his resignation because of an \u2018\u2018inappropriate relationship.\u2019\u2019 Page did not divulge the details of his relationship on Tuesday, but in a statement he called it a \u2018\u2018personal failing\u2019\u2019 that has \u2018\u2018embarrassed my family, my Lord, myself, and the Kingdom.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
In his role, Page oversaw the nearly $200 million budget of the SBC\u2019s cooperative program, which Southern Baptist churches contribute to and which funds the convention\u2019s ministries. Page was among a group of evangelical leaders who last September met with and praised Trump in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
In another case, Bill Hybels, who co-founded Willow Creek, one of the nation\u2019s largest churches, came under the spotlight last week after the Chicago Tribune published a series of allegations of inappropriate behavior that included suggestive comments, extended hugs, an unwanted kiss, invitations to a staff member to hotel rooms, and a consensual affair with a married woman. The woman who said she had an affair later retracted her allegations. Hybels denied all of the allegations in an interview with the Tribune.<\/p>\n
The church conducted its own review, and an outside attorney who investigated the allegations told the Tribune his work led to no findings of misconduct by Hybels.<\/p>\n
In the Tribune\u2019s report, other high-profile evangelical leaders, including John and Nancy Ortberg, suggested that the church\u2019s internal review of the allegations was inadequate. But after Hybels responded to the allegations to his congregation, calling them \u2018\u2018flat-out lies,\u2019\u2019 he received standing ovations.<\/p>\n
Hybels, who was a spiritual adviser to President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, said he will stick to his earlier plan to retire in October.<\/p>\n
Some fear that women are still being discredited in a climate in which a high majority of white evangelicals support Trump despite the multiple sexual harassment and misconduct allegations he has faced. Nearly 8 in 10 white evangelicals approve of Trump\u2019s job performance, compared with 39 percent of all Americans, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018[Trump\u2019s supporters] seem enthralled to his approach to life. They seem completely untroubled by the . . . women who accused Trump of harassment or assault,\u2019\u2019 said Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. \u2018\u2018For some large number of white evangelical men, there seems to be an attitude toward women that\u2019s disturbing and not biblical.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Wehner says he fears the \u2018\u2018circling-of-the-wagons\u2019\u2019 approach toward protecting leaders instead of victims.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018A lot of people are going to think it\u2019s laced with hypocrisy,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u2018\u2018They say one thing and do another. And that the faith is not transformative, faith is just a proxy for political tribalism. It doesn\u2019t transform lives in the way it should.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Scott Thumma, a professor of sociology of religion at Hartford Seminary who studies megachurches, said he doesn\u2019t believe that scandals take place in bigger churches more than they do in smaller ones, but that we hear about them more.<\/p>\n
In a recent piece for the Gospel Coalition, evangelical author and speaker Andy Crouch wrote about the danger of evangelicals\u2019 attraction to celebrity power.<\/p>\n
Thumma noted how the recent allegations come on the heels of the death of evangelist Billy Graham, who would avoid being alone with any woman besides his spouse, a practice that became known as \u2018\u2018the Billy Graham Rule,\u2019\u2019 which Vice President Mike Pence reportedly follows and many high-profile evangelical leaders have adopted.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Megachurch pastors have the temptation of being a celebrity of sorts and have an aura around them,\u2019\u2019 Thumma said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, a woman said Andy Savage, a megachurch pastor in Memphis, sexually assaulted her 20 years ago, when she was a high school student and Savage was a youth pastor in Texas. After he addressed his congregation, apologized, and asked for forgiveness, it applauded him. He has since resigned.<\/p>\n
In another case, late last year, Paul Pressler, who helped lead a conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s and early \u201980s, was accused of sexually abusing a young man for several decades, starting when the alleged victim was 14. A pending lawsuit against Pressler, who is a former justice on the Texas 14th Circuit Court of Appeals and who served in the Texas legislature, also names Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and its president, Paige Patterson, as defendants. Baptist News Global, an independent Baptist news outlet, reported that Southern Baptist leaders were mostly silent about the allegations.<\/p>\n
Sex-abuse scandals in evangelical churches have been highlighted recently by Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to make allegations against sports physician Larry Nassar. Denhollander has since focused on speaking out about sexual-abuse allegations in Sovereign Grace Churches, a network of congregations across the United States. The network\u2019s leadership team wrote in a blog post that her allegations \u2018\u2018have profoundly damaged the reputations and gospel ministries of innocent pastors and churches.\u2019\u2019 Christianity Today magazine has called for an independent investigation of the group.<\/p>\n
When the Catholic sex-abuse scandals emerged in the United States, part of the larger outcry was how the church hierarchy was involved in covering up cases. In evangelical circles, where churches are often nondenominational or loosely connected to each other, the lack of hierarchy can cause a different set of problems, said Heath Carter, a professor of history at Valparaiso University.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018In the evangelical world, the independence of evangelical leaders and . . . lack of authority structure mean they can go on for a while and then explode when they come to light,\u2019\u2019 Carter said.<\/p>\n
Some high-profile evangelical leaders who have been accused of misconduct continue their work.<\/p>\n
Ted Haggard, who was once a megachurch pastor and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned in 2006 after a male prostitute said Haggard had paid him for sex. Haggard now leads a church in Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n
In the 1980s, sexual and financial scandals involving televangelists Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Paul Crouch sent shock waves through the evangelical world. All three continued in smaller versions of their ministries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Sarah Pulliam Bailey\u00a0WASHINGTON POST\u00a0\u00a0MARCH 31, 2018 ASSOCIATED PRESS\/FILE 2006 Frank Page, president and chief executive of the Southern Baptist Convention\u2019s executive committee, resigned this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":844,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-family"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gopplaybook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-31_19-58-58.jpg?fit=825%2C518&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8VBh7-dB","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":379,"url":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=379","url_meta":{"origin":843,"position":0},"title":"Trump says he’ll ban bump stocks through executive order","author":"Donnie","date":"March 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0POLITICS MAR 1 2018, 7:34 AM ET BY\u00a0ALI VITALI WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his administration was drafting an executive order that would\u00a0ban rapid-fire gun bump stocks\u00a0and appeared to embrace a series of gun-control measures that his party has long rejected. 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![\"Frank](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/c.o0bg.com\/rf\/image_960w\/Boston\/2011-2020\/2018\/03\/31\/BostonGlobe.com\/National\/Images\/AP18087437553397.jpg?ssl=1\")