This is the second installment in a three-part story. Read part 1 here.
When the nation heard Donald Trump brag to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush that he could treat women any way he pleased–even “grab ‘em by the pussy”–just because he was a celebrity, most of us thought that Trump was finished. But he survived in no small part because the religious right had made what can only be described as a Faustian deal with him. Even now, nearly seven years later, I cringe when I recall reading how the likes of Ralph Reed, James Dobson, Tony Perkins and others told us that Trump’s debauched comments didn’t matter nearly as much as his promises to give them everything they wanted and then some on policy–and above all else, stack the courts with conservative judges.
Granted, we already knew why the nation’s so-called moral guardians prostrated themselves before Trump. But how they were able to do so remained far less clear. How could the prospect of rolling back abortion and marriage equality be so important to them that they were willing to condone this man?
A large part of the answer to that question can be found in the way a number of evangelical leaders have responded to sexual assault in their own ranks. In recent years, we have heard stories of survivors turning to their churches or other faith communities for support, only to be greeted with indifference or even outright hostility. If these leaders are willing to take such a cavalier and unsupportive attitude toward their own, it should come as no surprise that many of them were willing to dismiss Trump’s depravities with women.
For example, when Guidepost Solutions delved into the extent of a years-long cover-up of sexual assault in the Southern Baptist Convention, it revealed that one of the SBC’s longtime titans, Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, had completely failed in his duty to protect children. According to the report, when Graham learned his youth pastor, John Langworthy, had molested a number of boys, Graham simply hustled him out of town. In so doing, Graham disregarded his legal and moral duty to report the abuse to police. Even worse, according to victim advocate Amy Smith, at least one of Graham’s deacons–her own father–pressured one of Langworthy’s victims to keep quiet. These multiple failures almost certainly allowed Langworthy to remain at large for 20 more years, during which he molested boys at his new church in Mississippi.
Another evangelical titan, John MacArthur, found it acceptable to publicly shame domestic violence survivor Eileen Gray for refusing to take back her abusive husband. This public shaming was the culmination of one of the most outrageous campaigns of victim-blaming and victim-shaming on record, which included both pastors and laypeople at MacArthur’s Grace Community Church attempting to browbeat Eileen into reconciling.
Believe it or not, though, there are some Christian leaders who make Graham and MacArthur look like paragons of honor, integrity, and decency.
JOHNNY HUNT, WOODSTOCK, GEORGIA
From 1986 to 2019, Johnny Hunt grew First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia–a suburb of Atlanta–into one of the largest churches in the country, with over 19,000 members. His tenure coincided with Atlanta’s explosive growth in the last two decades of the 20th century. He served as president of the SBC in 2008 and 2009. In 2018, Hunt became senior vice president of evangelism and leadership at the SBC’s church planting arm, the North American Mission Board. He began transitioning out of his pulpit at the same time, formally stepping down in 2019.
However, his new career abruptly ended three years later when the Guidepost report revealed that he had sexually assaulted another pastor’s wife–a woman young enough to be his daughter– at a Florida vacation condo in 2010. This claim was subsequently corroborated by veteran counselor Roy Blankenship and at least three other witnesses. Tellingly, the Guidepost team concluded that Hunt’s statements on the incident “were not credible.”
While Hunt denied wrongdoing, he resigned from the NAMB shortly before the Guidepost report became public. He subsequently admitted in a letter to his former parishioners in Woodstock that he had gotten himself into “a compromising situation” with the woman. He claimed that the encounter was “an awful sin but a consensual encounter,” and that he “crossed a line” by entering her condo in the first place. Watch coverage of Hunt’s confession from Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA-TV here.
Hunt spent most of the rest of 2022 in a restoration program with four other pastors, who greenlighted him to return to public ministry in November. That wasn’t nearly enough for current SBC president Bart Barber, who made his feelings clear soon after the news of Hunt’s restoration came across the wire.
Barber went further in a post on his blog soon afterward. He noted that in 2021, the SBC had resolved that anyone who committed sexual abuse should be “permanently disqualified” from serving as a pastor. Saying that he would personally “defrock” Hunt if he had that power, Barber claimed that the restoration panel’s declaration amounted to “the individual opinions of four of Johnny Hunt’s loyal friends.”
The four pastors overseeing Hunt’s restoration said that Hunt had displayed “genuine brokenness and humility.” However, precious little of either trait was on display in January 2023, when Hunt preached a defiant sermon at Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, Florida. Hiland Park’s pastor, Steven Kyle, had been a member of the restoration team, and Hunt had been a rank-and-file member of that church since 2022. Hunt claimed that while some of the allegations were true, they were easier to take than the “false allegations” made against him.
Nor were they on display in March, when Hunt sued the SBC for defamation. While Hunt conceded that his actions were inappropriate, he accused the SBC of making him a scapegoat for its past inadequate handling of sexual assault. He claimed that the 2010 incident involved “noncriminal conduct,” and in any event was a private matter that should have never been made public. But nowhere does he explain why he never disclosed this incident to his former church or to the NAMB.
Contrast this with how Josh Duggar responded when it emerged that he’d been trolling for affairs on Ashley Madison. We learned this when hackers pilfered a tranche of user information from Ashley Madison and posted it online. Rather than rant and rave about how his privacy had been invaded, Josh admitted that he had in fact cheated on his wife, Anna, and that he was “the biggest hypocrite ever.”
Granted, we learned soon afterward that Josh had no qualms about using the pictures of not one, but two innocent third parties while trolling for affairs. But for a brief fleeting moment, he seemed to be taking responsibility for what he did. Hunt apparently hasn’t even begun to do so. It takes a lot of effort to make Josh Duggar look like a model of “genuine brokenness and humility. But Hunt may have done just that. And the fact any church could give him a platform when he hasn’t even begun to come to a mature understanding of what he did proves that former Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission president Russell Moore wasn’t kidding when he called the SBC’s handling of sexual abuse an “apocalypse.”
JOHN LOVE II, WARSAW, INDIANA
On May 22, 2022, John Lowe II, founding pastor of New Life Christian Church and World Outreach in Warsaw, Indiana, stunned his congregation when he announced he was resigning due to having committed adultery 20 years earlier.
But just seconds after he stepped off the stage to thunderous applause, a woman and her husband took the mic and detonated a bombshell. She had been the woman with whom Lowe had had an affair. However, she said, Lowe “took my virginity on (his) office floor” when she was 16 years old.
Moreover, she claimed that other girls were “sent away” after being sexually assaulted by New Life pastors—which likely explains why she didn’t speak up sooner, despite Lowe having done “things to my teenage body that should have never been done.” She was only released from what she called a “prison” when her younger brother recalled seeing her in bed with Lowe—a sight that had troubled him for years. Her husband revealed that Lowe had started grooming his now-wife when she was 15, and had continued having sex with her for nine years.
The mood at New Life changed quickly, with members demanding that Lowe confess in full, which he did, amid demands that he go to prison. Later, the woman on the stage was identified as Bobi Gephart. She told Fox News that she wasn’t even planning to be at church that day, but hightailed it to Warsaw after several relatives texted her and urged her to tell the rest of the congregation what she’d privately told others in the church. According to a statement from New Life, Lowe had already confessed to the rest of the leadership team after they confronted him.
Gephart later spoke with Fort Wayne ABC affiliate WPTA and said she hoped to use her voice to “help other girls to come out.” She added that many girls groomed by pastors think, “this is ok, he loves me, he likes me,” and don’t realize “what it’s actually doing to you and the damage it’s doing.”
Fortunately, Indiana law recognizes the difference. While the legal age of consent in Indiana is 16, any adult in a position of trust who engages in sexual activity with a child between the ages of 16 and 18 is guilty of child seduction. The message is clear: There are times where the power differential is so great that it is not possible for even an older minor to consent to sexual activity. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations has long since run out for Gephart. Prosecution must begin before the victim turns 31, and she is in her forties.
After Gephart broke her silence, several former members spoke with Fort Wayne CBS affiliate WANE-TV about the atmosphere at New Life. One of them, Laura Bohnke, took to Facebook to claim that Lowe’s son, Jeremiah, started grooming her when he was 18 and she was 11. It quickly progressed to outright abuse over the next year. Bohnke claims that John Lowe and his wife Debbie were well aware that Jeremiah “had a problem controlling himself sexually and did nothing about it.” Bohnke kept silent about it for five years, until she told her then-boyfriend about it. The Kociusko County sheriff’s office refused to press charges, though according to WANE, a state Department of Child and Family Services investigation found Bohnke’s claims credible.
Jeremiah would go on to marry another New Life member, Abbey Plummer. According to Plummer, her marriage to Jeremiah was a litany of abuse.
Plummer claimed that Jeremiah’s parents were well aware of their son’s behavior. However, Plummer says, they downplayed it—a sentiment expressed by others at the church as well. It was only when Plummer started telling people outside the New Life bubble what was happening that she realized it was indeed abuse.
How could such debauchery be allowed to take place for so long? Well, WANE’s reporting reveals the answer was New Life’s rigidly authoritarian atmosphere. Bohnke’s mother, Kelly Thompson, the first woman whom Lowe married when he founded the church, shed some light on the environment that played out there for many years.
Thompson recalled that Lowe ruled the church with absolute authority. He claimed that God had chosen him to lead the church, and therefore his word was the law. The question of “why” was literally never part of the New Life vocabulary. Thompson recalled being taught that the Greek form of the word “why” meant “chaos.” Lowe even taught that questioning leadership was tantamount to “critiquing God’s decision to put those leaders over you.”
Underlining this, Bohnke shared a page from the church’s employee handbook with some pretty breathtaking passages. It made clear that there were only three ways to do things at that church: “the wrong way, the right way, and Pastor’s way.” In such an environment, it’s no wonder that Lowe and others were able to get away with their depravity for so long.
But believe it or not, one disgraced Christian leader makes Graham, MacArthur, Hunt, and Lowe look like a choirboy.
This is a three-part story. Read Part 1 here, and look for Part 3 on Sunday.
