rhiannon
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(12/4/02 4:29 pm)
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Southern Baptist
Coverup
This is cut and pasted from another thread and thought it was
relevant here
Darlene
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wise seeker
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(12/4/02 1:18:25 pm)
Reply The Southern Baptist Sexual Cover
Up
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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
www.fdle.state.fl.us/sexu...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, 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.
Check out
search.news.yahoo.com/sea...C++PRIESTS
www.phoenixnewtimes.com/w...index.html
www.bfafraud.com/
headlines.yahoo.com/full_...enry_lyons
sptimes.com/News2/lyons/default.html
www.courttv.com/trials/ly...9_ctv.html
www.davidicke.net/religio...fraud.html
tmatt.gospelcom.net/column/1996/12/04/
www.christianitytoday.com...te026.html
www.deceptioninthechurch.com/graham.html
www.webprowire.com/summaries/32914.html
www.counterpunch.org/alexgraham.html
www.worldmag.com/world/is...onal_1.asp
www.christiannews.0catch.com/graham.htm
www.christiannews.0catch.com/bakker.htm
www.christianitytoday.com.../32.0.html
www.maclaurin.org/article...hp?a_id=31
www.maranathaprophecypage...riting.htm
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