Yet another sex scandal involving a fundamentalist mega church pastor. There are so many of these, I don’t usual cover them as individual events, but I am doing this story because there are so many of these scandals it is clearly a trend. Evangelicals pastors, like Roman Catholic priests, clearly have issues with their sexuality. The difference is priests are supposed to be celibate, whereas evangelical pastors are supposed to be faithful to their wives, or celibate if not married. Yet in both instances puritanical religiosity is unstainable, and these men pray on women, girls, and boys. These are not just sexual moves, they are power moves, using what is supposed to be their spiritual authority, to force sex on their religious followers.
Pastor Robert Morris, seen in a 2020 photo, resigned after a woman said he had abused her on multiple occasions in the 1980s, beginning when she was 12, according to a June 2024 statement. Credit: Alex Brandon / AP
Summer was off to a tumultuous start when allegations of child sexual abuse surfaced on a blog dedicated to Christian survivor stories. This time, the man involved had gone on to lead one of America’s largest megachurches.
Robert Morris, who founded and led Gateway Church for nearly 25 years in the affluent Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake, Texas, resigned after the scandal came to light in June. His exit sent thousands of evangelicals into a season of struggle that has lasted months.
Last week, a pastor who oversaw all of Gateway’s campuses departed amid an undisclosed “moral issue,” becoming the latest in a series of changes for the church: The cancellation of its annual conference. The departure of Morris’ successor. The renaming of its Houston campus and an exodus […]
