Suburbia, USA– In a series of events that most people outside his congregation saw coming, a prominent conservative, evangelical megachurch pastor with a national following was recently found to have engaged in abuse and corruption.
The pastor, known for preaching that God shows love to the world by sending most people to a place of eternal physical torment, was accused of abuse and corruption by multiple people. Each came forth independently and described similar occurrences.
The pastor’s church released a statement, apologizing “to anyone who may have felt offended by these minor indiscretions our pastor may have committed many, many years ago.”
The statement added: “These incidents are between the pastor and God, and we have been assured that repentance has occurred. We have yet to decide whether to retain our beloved pastor, or to let him go before allowing him to reemerge in another context to continue his abusive and corrupt behavior.”
Shortly after the abusive and corrupt behavior was revealed, the abusive and corrupt pastor, who is not a drag queen, commented on X, “The devil is alive and well! But he is already defeated.”
Asked to comment while walking into one of the church’s 12 Sunday services, a church member said, “All our pastor has ever tried to do is teach that God loves and accepts most of us and that only men can lead families and churches, and for us to trust that the church’s affairs conducted behind closed doors are on the up-and-up. I don’t know how this could have happened.”
The member added, “The woke mob has been after him ever since he became a part of Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory committee. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had something to do with this.”
We explained the situation and asked a young person across the street from the church who identified themselves as an “ex-evangelical” for a comment. They responded, “Yeah, that tracks.”
The pastor rose to national prominence when his church grew from just 20 members in a strip mall a few miles outside a large city to over 50,000 members after numerous high-dollar housing developments engulfed the area.
In a January 2016 interview on Fox News regarding the church’s growth, the pastor noted, “We didn’t plan to grow this large, but God had other plans. The fact that we started in the nation’s fastest-growing area and that I never preached from Matthew 25 was inconsequential.”
In the same interview, the pastor expressed a feeling that God requires moral excellence from his leaders and that the church is called to have dominion over the world.
He said, “The church is called to establish control over the media, government, the family and every other aspect of society. We can only achieve that by electing no-compromise Christians to higher office. This is why Ted Cruz would be the best person to lead our country.”
Shortly after Donald Trump won the Republican Party nomination, the pastor began regularly tweeting, “All Lives Matter!” and “Make America Great Again!,” landing himself in Trump’s inner circle of evangelical leaders.
We contacted the church and asked if the pastor and church would reconsider their theology, which many scholars have found associated with cultures of abuse and corruption. A spokesperson replied, “Not a chance in hell.”
Whether there is a chance on earth remains unclear.
Many of the nation’s leading deconstructing and anti-Christian Nationalist social media influencers were quick to respond to entirely predictable revelations of abuse and corruption. On X, they asked, “How can evangelicals keep following these people? None of them act anything like Jesus.”
When asked how they came up with such piercing, riveting analysis, most replied, “Honestly, I just typed the letter H and predictive text did the rest.”
As of press time, over half of these influencers have been booked on NPR’s Morning Edition or MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show to discuss their response. A quarter have received book deals.
Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.