19 May
2014 A.D. SGM-Mahaneygate: Torpedoes Amidship—SGM Ship Listing Badly
& Sinking
Bailey, Sarah Pulliam. “Megachurch
Pastors Leave Reformed Evangelical Network Amid Child Abuse Scandal.” 18 May 2014. http://www.religionnews.com/2014/05/18/megachurch-pastors-leave-reformed-evangelical-network-amid-child-abuse-scandal/.
Accessed 19 May 2014.
Two
pastors are no longer listed on a Reformed evangelical group’s leadership after
a different pastor from their church confessed to covering up sex abuse
claims. Pastors Joshua Harris and C.J. Mahaney have left the Gospel Coalition
council after a trial involving child abuse in the church they have both
overseen.
A criminal
trial that concluded last week has raised questions about which pastors
at Covenant Life Church, a megachurch in Gaithersburg, Md., knew what
about the abuse in which years.
Nathaniel
Morales, 56, was convicted Thursday (May 15) of sexually abusing three young
boys between 1983 and 1991 when he was a youth leader.
Former
Covenant Life pastor Grant Layman suggested while testifying about
allegations against Morales that he withheld information from the police about
the abuse.
“Did
you have an obligation to report the alleged abuse?” public defender Alan Drew,
who represented Morales, asked during cross-examination. “I believe so,” Layman
said. “And you didn’t,” Drew responded. “No,” Layman said.
Layman,
who is Mahaney’s brother-in-law, stepped down from his role at Covenant Life in
March.
Mahaney
founded Covenant Life in 1977 before passing the leadership of the church
in 2004 to Harris, author of the once bestselling “I Kissed Dating
Goodbye” book. Mahaney now leads Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville.
Mahaney
and Harris are no longer listed on The Gospel Coalition website, which boasts
of leaders such as Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary; Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York
City; and Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington,
D.C.
An
employee of TGC said it will not be putting out a statement on the matter.
Initial attempts to reach Mahaney and Harris were unsuccessful.
Harris,
the current head pastor of Covenant Life, said in a tearful sermon Sunday (May
18) that he has asked the church’s board to consider placing him on
administrative leave while the church continues to investigate the issue. “We
have a zero tolerance policy of abuse of any kind,” Harris said, urging people
to go to the police if they know of any abuse.
Harris
said that because of a separate civil lawsuit, church leaders are unable to
speak openly about what pastors who knew what when. “Right now, we’re still
getting conflicting information,” Harris said. In a statement released
last year, church leaders said they didn’t know about the abuse until “many
years later.”
Nearly
a year ago, several leading evangelical pastors and authors came to the defense
of Mahaney who was accused in a lawsuit for covering up sexual abuse
of children. Mahaney announced that he would pull out of a conference
called Together 4 the Gospel due to ongoing lawsuits, though he was seated in the front
of the audience with conference leaders.
Mahaney’s
Covenant Life was the flagship for Sovereign Grace Ministries, an association
of 80 Reformed evangelical churches, based in Louisville, Ky.
Mahaney
took a leave of absence from the ministry in 2011 after other pastors in the
Sovereign Grace network charged him with “expressions of pride,
unentreatability, deceit, sinful judgment and hypocrisy.” Six months later, the
group reinstated Mahaney, declaring full confidence in him.
The
same month that a lawsuit was filed, Mahaney told the Sovereign Grace
board that he would step down to focus on pastoral ministry. Two months later,
Covenant Life voted to leave Sovereign Grace.
In
a sermon a year ago, Harris acknowledged that he had been sexually abused
as a child, telling the congregation amid the ongoing lawsuit, “Please
don’t allow the circumstance to draw you away from faith in Jesus.”
No comments:
Post a Comment