Christian News Today Abuse

Christian News Today

Ephesians 5:11 & Mark 4:22

The Southern Baptist Sexual Cover Up

On December 8, 2003, Daniel Stahl, Senior Pastor and the leader of Bay Life Church of Brandon, Florida announced from the pulpit that he was resigning to focus on repairing his marriage, which he admitted was strained partly because of an affair he had. The resignation capped a six-week sabbatical Stahl had taken from one of the area's larger (Southern Baptist Convention) churches, boasting 2,400 in the pews each Sunday. Stahl had hoped to work out marital problems with his wife of 28 years, Billie. He was on leave when church elders recently recommended he resign. Stahl, 49, has been a minister for nearly three decades, working at churches in Kentucky, California and Texas before arriving in Brandon 23 years ago. He once worked at Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon - but long before another pastor, the Rev. Ken Alford, 47, resigned February 25,2002, under similar circumstances. Alford led Bell Shoals Baptist for 8 1/2 years and has been a pastor for 21 years, said he was resigning after marital problems and a "one-time moral indiscretion." Alford was later hired to be the interim pastor at Calvary Baptist in Clearwater.

On April 2, 2004 the Media reported Adam Michael Frazier, a District 4 School Board candidate and the youth minister at Landmark Baptist Church in Brooksville, was arrested Thursday and charged with having sexual relations with a 15-year-old girl. The charge - lewd and lascivious molestation of a minor - was a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Frazier, 20, the son of a Baptist minister, has admitted his actions, according to an arrest report, and was being held Thursday afternoon at the Hernando County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.

According to the report, the sexual contact occurred in June and July when Frazier was 19. He ministered to the girl at Landmark Baptist. The sexual relations were consensual and, according to authorities, witnessed by several of the girl's friends, who are also minors. The encounters happened at the girl's house and while Frazier was driving her home from church, according to the report. In addition to mutual fondling, the girl on several occasions performed oral sex on Frazier, who bragged to a friend about the incidents, the report states.

Dan Earl Allmond, Youth Pastor of Tampa Baptist Church, Tampa, a Southern Baptist Church, and a married man, suddenly resigned on December 9, 1998 and disappeared off the scene when the police were called in concerning a complaint made by a female high school student that she was having sex with the pastor as a minor.

Senior Pastor McCormick of Tampa Baptist Church denied all knowledge about the sexual activities and ordered the staff of Tampa Baptist Academy to stay silent on the whole matter and not to discuss Dan's previous sexual escapades with no one! McCormick's own daughter was sexually promiscuous and had to leave school for a while for fear of being pregnant.

The bible states that a Senior Pastor must be one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?). Hence Senior Pastor McCormick resigned as pastor in the spring of the next year when he sought to divorce his wife.

Dan Earl Allmond faced two counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. Police said that the youth pastor had sexual relations with the girl on church property and at his home on W Paris Street. The sexual relations occurred between August and October, Cole said according to jail records reported the Tampa Tribune.

Allmond is a Sex Offender under Florida law and now the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Sexual Offender/Predator Unit has his picture posted on the web at http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/sexual_predators/OffenderFlyer.asp?keys=26812

Most Southern Baptist pastors and preachers are hypocrites in that they don't practice what they preach. According to Southern Baptists own statistics and reports most of their pastors are sexual perverts and reality shows their church leaders protects their pastors and not the sheep.

Just as a hidden iceberg destroyed the Titanic after the crew had ignored multiple warnings, lives and ministries of pastors and other church staff are being destroyed at a remarkable rate by sexual infidelity, the president of the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board warned a group of pastors, missionaries and other denominational leaders.

Robert E. Reccord cautioned pastors, missionaries and other denominational leaders attending the April 10-13 Connection 2002 conference in Ontario, California, about avoiding temptations that lead to sexual infidelity.

Reccord cited survey statistics from the book "Men's Secret Wars" by Patrick Means that indicated 64 percent of pastors or church staff struggled with sexual addiction or compulsion. Twenty-five percent admitted to having sexual intercourse with someone besides their wife while married, and after they had accepted Christ. Another 14 percent admitted some form of sexual contact short of intercourse.

Reccord also noted the importance of every Christian leader having someone to whom he is accountable, someone who will ask him the hard questions about his personal life and thoughts. He noted research which found little in common among more than 200 fallen ministers except two things: all no longer had a regular quiet time in fellowship with God, and none had made themselves accountable to a person or group.

Ann Graham Lotz, the second daughter of Southern Baptist Evangelist Billy Graham, stated in Tampa, Florida in April 2002, ``I'm not accountable to my critics, I'm only accountable to God.'' And her father Billy Graham had tried to avoid accountability for his criticism of Jews that was caught on tape decades ago on his age and forgetfulness. The "I don't recall" technique was used often by former president Bill Clinton to avoid accountability concerning his sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky in the White House.

Sexual involvement by Baptist leaders with others is a real problem in North America. A 1991 national survey of mainly Protestant pastors by a group at the Center for Ethics and Social Policy, Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California -- described by its researchers as "small and not scientifically controlled" -- uncovered similar findings: About 10 percent of those surveyed had been sexually involved with a parishioner. Another study published in the winter 1993 Journal of Pastoral Care found that only 6.1 percent of Southern Baptist pastor respondents admitted to having sexual contact with a person either currently or formerly affiliated with their church.

Surveys of ministers reveal the existence of a growing moral breakdown in pastors' lives. Almost one in four pastors answered yes to the question, "Since you've been in local church ministry, have you ever done anything with someone (not your spouse) that you feel was sexually inappropriate?" One in five pastors confessed to sexual misconduct of some kind, with one in eight admitting adultery, and only 4 in 100 were found out by their local church. (1988 survey in Leadership magazine).

On April 8, 2002 the Christian Science Monitor reported that 'Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers. These are findings from national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources (CMR), a tax and legal-advice publisher serving more than 75,000 congregations and 1,000 denominational agencies nationwide.

The CMR findings also reveal:

- Most church child-sexual-abuse cases involve a single victim.

- Law suits or out-of-court settlements were a result in 21 percent of the allegations reported in the 2000 survey.

- Volunteers are more likely than clergy or paid staff to be abusers. Perhaps more startling, children at churches are accused of sexual abuse as often as are clergy and staff. In 1999, for example, 42 percent of alleged child abusers were volunteers - about 25 percent were paid staff members (including clergy) and 25 percent were other children.

On March 25, 2002 the LA Times in an article by TERESA WATANABE, Times Staff Writer Sex Abuse by Clerics-a Crisis of Many Faiths wrote

The wave of clergy sex scandals now engulfing the Roman Catholic Church has battered other denominations as well, producing an uneven record of response that ranges from the Episcopal Church's aggressive and detailed policies to the Southern Baptist Convention's widespread lack of written standards…

Similar charges have been leveled against the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest of the Baptist bodies in the United States. Dee Ann Miller, a victim's advocate and author of books about the topic, said she had received complaints from victims in 30 states, half of them involving minors. She said church officials have not been responsive.

When she first told church officials about her own sexual assault by a Southern Baptist missionary in Africa several years ago, Miller said, she was told by two leaders that it was at least partly her fault.

In a 1993 survey by the Journal of Pastoral Care, 14% of Southern Baptist ministers surveyed said they had engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior, 70% said they knew a minister who had and 80% said they lacked written guidelines.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist ethics committee, said the convention's churches are fully autonomous and probably did not adopt written policies because it was obvious that sexual misconduct was wrong. He said training about sexual misconduct is conducted at Southern Baptist seminaries, which produce about half of the convention's clergy, and that the cases he knows about led to swift removal or resignation of the guilty party.

"Most Baptist ministers know sexual misconduct is a career-ending move," he said.

It's amazing that no one is alarmed that the survey reported that "14% of Southern Baptist ministers surveyed said they had engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior." But because Southern Baptist churches and Assembly of God Churches are fully autonomous it's very easy and convenient for these churches to bury a scandal as was done with Tampa Baptist Academy?

A full blown scandal came out in November 98 in the four million member Church of God headquartered in Tennessee. The Church of God is one of the oldest Pentecostal denominations in America even though about fifty percent of its members do not have a Pentecostal experience with the evidence of speaking in tongues. The senior pastor of RiverHills Church of God, Tampa Florida, was also a long-running adulterer for five years. His adultery was with another pastor's wife of University Church of God. Tampa Florida.

The denomination and key members of the church knew about the adultery for around nine months and did nothing about it. That is until someone threatened to post the story on the internet and then the pastor Dempsey resigned.

Riverhills Church of God accepted Senior Pastor Dempsey's resignation but the other church voted to do nothing about the adulterous affair by the pastor's wife as it was considered to be the pastor's problem. Pastor Dempsey was also actively involved in and pushed the Assembly of God Revival in Brownsville. Florida where the financial integrity of pastors and secret way of doing things has also been questioned and brought out by the media.

Without telling the sheep the reasons why the Senior Pastor resigned the Church of God leadership led by interim Pastor - Florida State Overseer J. Smith fleeced from them $ 6,000 to help the wolf in sheep's clothing. The denomination once again put the interests of its pastors above those of the sheep.

J. Smith, the Florida overseer or bishop who handled the crisis for the last three weeks concerning the adultery with the pastor of Riverhills church of God, Tampa and the pastor's wife of University Church of God, Tampa had to have serious heart surgery.

Church officials denied it had anything to do with his dealings concerning the adulterous pastor who was on the state board for Church of God or Smith razing or fleecing money from the sheep at Riverhills without telling them why the adulterous pastor resigned.

Pastor Dempsey broke his oath as a minister by being an adulterer and deceiver for five years and was not entitled to a penny including severance pay with out the church members being told the truth first of what had gone on. But pastors and overseers always try to take care of their own? Then they wonder how they ended up on a hospital bed?

According to insiders, the adulterous Church of God pastor's wife was let off with a slap on the wrist and the State overseer, Smith, would not allow dissenting voices which would have had her removed from the church of God. Other more intelligent churches would have dealt with the adulterous pastor's wife differently. But then in a wise church this matter would never had been covered up for nine months with out exposing and bringing the problem out on the surface for all to see.

So much for the Doctorate degrees which the Church of God leadership has? Definitely they are not worth the paper they are written on if the leadership by their unwise actions have given more people reasons to call Christians hypocrites, liars, thieves and false ones. Definitely they are not true men of God, for true men of God would have dealt with the problem rather than try to hide it.

The Salvation Army would not remove its minister, Gary Hallock of Pennsylvania, from his duties teaching children bible stories, even after he had been arrested for sexually abusing children at his church! The "captain," an equivalent of minister, had victimized seven children, ages four to 15, and even a profoundly retarded 15 year old boy. He was sentenced in 1990 to up to 72 years in prison. Meanwhile, a civil suit was launched against the Salvation Army for their negligence by parents of victims.

The extent to which a minister-molester is held above suspicion, despite blatant criminal acts, is exemplified by a 1987 criminal suit in Nashville. The arrest of Rev. Jack Law, a Baptist minister, was heralded by a headline, "Girl, 5, Raped Under Pew." He was accused not only of that, but of molesting and raping her two sisters.

These crimes took place at the family home as well as during an outing arranged by him so the girls could help him distribute religious tracts. The girls had tried to tell their parents, but were not believed. "Being a preacher," the father said of him to local media, "we thought he was a good man." Law killed himself that year rather than face trial. (The Scandal of Pedophilia in the Church By Annie Laurie Gaylor © 1992)

The Associated Baptist Press reported that SB Denomination Chooses To Be Blind About Sexual Abuse

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (ABP) -- Dee Miller, and her husband, Ron, envisioned serving God in Central Africa perhaps for the rest of their lives. But more than 10 years ago, their careers as Southern Baptist missionaries ended traumatically. The couple now is serving an American Baptist church in Iowa and speaking out on an issue that is close to home -- the problem of clergy sex abuse and the church's collusion in keeping it quiet, reported the Associated Baptist Press - Victim of sexual abuse by clergy battles code of silence in churches June 2, 2000 - Volume: 00-48 By Laurie Lattimore, http://www.abpnews.com

Miller first told her story of being sexually assaulted by a fellow missionary in a 1993 book, "How Little We Knew," published by Prescott Press. But it was not the attack, she says, but the denomination's efforts to cover it up, that eventually caused her to resign. "They wanted me to go back to sleep, and I'm not going back to sleep, " said Miller.

Miller's alleged perpetrator went on to become pastor of a church in Texas one year after being confronted with claims he sexually assaulted her, plus other co-workers and two children, while on the mission field. Miller and her husband left Southern Baptists in 1990, but they have done anything but leave their mission to help put an end to ministerial sexual abuse.

Every pastor knows of a colleague who was forced to resign amid a sex scandal. In an oft-cited Christianity Today survey, 12 percent of ministers admitted to having engaged in extramarital sex and 23 percent in some other form of illicit sexual activity.

Yet Miller claims that in her case and many others, it is the victim who comes forward to report sexual misconduct, and not the perpetrator, who is put on trial. "Everybody just wants everything back where it was, but a healthy church shouldn't be hoping to go back to where it was," Miller said. "What it was before was a pile of manure with frosting on it. That's all."

Miller admits she "comes down hard" on Southern Baptists and all denominations that turn their heads to the problem of sex abuse by clergy, but she makes no apologies. A desire for a "quick fix" is the worst approach Baptists or any faith group can take in dealing with what experts say is a growing problem, Miller says.

Only recently, however, has any other approach been tried. "The thinking is that we have a quick-fix God, so we want to fix the church quickly and fix the offender fast," Miller said. The quick fix usually involves getting the pastor out of town in a hurry and into another church.

The Associated Baptist Press reported Christian educators take aim at problem of clergy sex abuse and detailed what was going on in present and former Southern Baptist churches. The article also stated "People come to ministers for help by virtue of their office, so there is automatically a power imbalance, so it is always their responsibility," Sapp said.

Sapp said ministers sometime feel flattered to think a parishioner finds them attractive, but he insists the affair has nothing to do with physical attraction. Church members come to the pastor for ministry, not for sex. "I tell them not to get too puffed up on themselves, because that had nothing to do with it," he said. "It was their position, not their handsomeness or whatever."

Because of that unbalanced environment, pastors should follow certain precautions, Sapp says. Likewise, churches need to recognize when they have a potentially dangerous situation and have prevention and intervention policies in place.

The fact that sexual misconduct by ministers is an issue of power and not just morality is part of the reason it is so damaging to churches. Smith says she thought opening up the topic of misconduct for discussion in Baptist circles would reveal a lot of men in midlife crises who become attracted to young, energetic women working in the church. Instead, she discovered a syndrome that involves predators and victims.

"I didn't want to learn that, because it changed how we could handle it," Smith said. She assumed writing a curriculum for seminaries and educating pastors and church members would be enough to remedy the problem. What she discovered is that the solution would have to be much more involved. "I realized we can't just be educators, but we have to be shepherds watching out for our flock to spot the wolves."

Hypocrisy of sex scandals is not limited to only Southern Baptists or Catholics, Charisma News Service reported that Writer Jamie Buckingham's handpicked successor admits affairs with members.

The Florida church founded by the late Jamie Buckingham, visited by thousands during two years of revival meetings, has been rocked by a sex scandal involving the pastor who was handpicked by the famous speaker and writer to replace him, reported Charisma News.

Elders at The Tabernacle Church in Melbourne have enacted strict disciplinary measures against Michael Thompson, 40, after he admitted affairs with three married women he came to know through counseling.

The leaders told the congregation in April that Thompson, married with three children, had been "disfellowshipped" according to the passage in 1 Corinthians 5 in which Christians are counseled to "not keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral," and "deliver such a one to Satan."

Church members were advised to "have nothing to do with him," by the elders, who also destroyed the Plexiglas pulpit used by Thompson. Administrative pastor Don Williams told members that "a word from God" had said that the pulpit was tainted.

In a report in the July issue of "Charisma," out today, the Tabernacle's five elders tell the magazine that Thompson had admitted to two short-term affairs several years ago, and one that lasted six years. Each started during counseling.

Ralph Mull, one of the elders, said that Thompson told them that "he'd lied so much, he didn't know what the truth is." The church had offered to pay for Christian counseling for Thompson, his family members, the women and their families. In addition, "mature" women unrelated to staff or elders had been appointed to offer confidential counseling for anyone.

In a statement to "Charisma," Thompson admitted "long-term, sexual sin due to sexual addiction," as well as "massive deception, manipulation and hiding," for which he said he was "truly sorry, broken-hearted and deeply repentant."

He said that he was working with a Spirit-filled therapist who specializes in sexual addiction, and had joined several support and accountability groups. He said he would not return to public or professional ministry, and his first goal was restoration with his wife and children, from whom he was separated.

Although he has not yet supplied a statement of repentance to church elders, he said that he was "prayerfully assessing how to make amends and restitution for my damage to the body of Christ, particularly the Tabernacle church." He said that he wanted to wait until he personally understood the full extent of his sin's impact "so that my repentance and restitution will be authentic and lasting."

Named pastor by Buckingham, who died in 1992, Thompson had stepped down from preaching at the church late last year to pursue itinerant evangelism and promote his book "Face to Face: Beyond Revival." Published in February, the title has been pulled from the shelves of some Christian bookstores since the scandal broke.

Hypocrisy is all over the place amongst the religious right. Operation Rescue (OR) founder Randall Terry had been publicly censured by his pastor for a "pattern of repeated and sinful relationships" with women, "The Washington Post" reported. The accusations were made in a letter by Daniel J. Little, pastor of Landmark Church in Binghamton, N.Y., where Terry had been a member for 15 year

"Many of his longtime friends...are shocked and bewildered that a man who has traveled the country pleading with Christian people to think and act biblically is now thinking and acting so anti-biblically," Little wrote. His letter was posted last week on the Web site of Operation Save America, the new name for OR.

Well-known for his leadership of militant opposition to abortion, Terry called the charges "absolute nonsense, insanity." He told the "Post" that he and his wife had separated and their marriage was in crisis. Their problems were "personal, painful and private." Little had violated a confidential pastor-parishioner relationship, he said.

Terry recently founded Loyal Opposition, a group dedicated to preserving the sanctity of traditional marriage and opposing the legalization of same-sex union moves in Vermont. Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Hebrews 13:4.is still in the bible.