Who?
Not only name them and shame them, but get the message out that the supposedly sanctified and redeemed are not who you believe them to be. In this case it is Pastor Robert Morris.
For some, that name takes us right back to my opening question – who?
OK, let’s start there.
Who is Robert Morris?
In some circles his is a very well-known name. He is not just one more evangelical minor league player, but instead is in the major leagues, and so this is newsworthy. He runs the Dallas-Fort Worth megachurch, Gateway, that was founded in 2000 and claims to have grown to over 100,000 active attendees. I also have a specific interest here because I know some of those active attendees.
Obviously, like many such guys, you might speculate that his reach is broader than just the church. You would not be wrong. Check out his biography on his own personal website for a brief summary of the details …
His television program airs in over 190 countries, and his radio program, Worship & the Word with Pastor Robert, airs in more than 6,800 cities. He serves as chancellor of The King’s University and is the bestselling author of numerous books, including The Blessed Life, Dream to Destiny, The God I Never Knew, and Grace, Period.
As an influential evangelical there is also of course one other box he ticks. When it comes to his stance regarding a rather well-known convicted felon and fellow sexual abuser, then I can safely predict, without using any supernatural ability, that your guess, also deployed without leveraging a direct line to a god, would indeed be correct.
But has he fallen a long way down that rabbit hole into a world of total political fantasy?
Yes indeed he has. When you are deeply in love with your lord and saviour, then you will of course not miss an opportunity to go visit his house to pray for/to him …
As a brief reminder, their beloved Lord and Saviour famously quipped as follows when he engaged with them …
Trump seemed delighted by the “scam,” Cohen recalled to me, and eager to highlight that the pastor was “full of shit.”
“They’re all hustlers,” Trump said.
So what is the story here?
The alpha source for the latest revelations comes via The Wartberg Watch, a website run by several Christians who are deeply disturbed about some of the terrible stuff done under the banner of “Christianity”. They picked the weird name “Wartberg” because that’s the name of the castle where the famous reformer Martin Luther hid and proceeded to work on his bible translation when the pope wanted to kill him.
Their story is that the girl who was sexually abused by him, when she was 12, has gone public with all the details.
One important legal term is in play here – It is “alleged” abuse.
I believe her, and many other do also. There is also a great deal of other stuff that confirms everything she has been saying. However, Morris himself also confirms it.
The core of it all is this …
In 1981, Cindy and her family met Robert Morris at a youth revival in Tulsa. He was a twenty-year-old traveling evangelist married to Debbie, his current wife. Cindy was eleven years old. Her family was involved in many evangelistic events, and they were active in church. Morris was invited to do a youth revival in her hometown of Hominy, Oklahoma. After that, he began to regularly preach at their church on Sundays. He would often stay at her home and sometimes bring his wife, Debbie, and their little boy, Josh. Robert and Debbie Morris quickly became family friends, and Cindy viewed them as safe and friendly. Their families would often go on trips with each other.
All that changed for Cindy on 12/25/1982. Yes, Christmas night. The Morris family came to visit and spend some time there. Cindy sat in the back seat of the car with Robert. He asked her to visit him in his room that night. She shared a room with her sister. Cindy, an innocent twelve-year-old girl, movingly described what she was wearing. She was wearing pink pajamas with bloomer pants. She wore underwear underneath. She had a snap-up robe on. I laughed. I used to dress for bed similarly.
She thought nothing of visiting a family friend in their bedroom. He told her to lie down on her back and touched her stomach. He told her to close her eyes. Then he touched her breasts and felt under her panties. He warned her:
“Never tell anyone about this because it will ruin everything.”
She returned to her bedroom and didn’t tell her sister what happened.
Robert Morris repeated this behavior until March 1987. This would happen in Texas and Oklahoma, and the family would stay at the Morris home in Texas. Her father donated money to Robert’s ministry, not realizing what was happening to his daughter.
Morris wanted to make out and engage in heavy petting. He reportedly told Debbie that he was “counseling” Cindy. Cindy wondered if Debbie was in denial about what was happening.
Things changed when she turned sixteen. He would take her out in his car and attempt to have sexual intercourse. Once, he was fixing a vanity in his home and held up a screw and asked Cindy if she wanted to “do this.” By this time, Morris was a pastor at Shady Grove Church, which would eventually become Gateway Church-Grand Prarie Campus.
What happened after this?
Cindy told a friend who then insisted she tell her parents. As you might expect, her dad hit the roof and demanded that Morris should immediately leave the ministry, which he did.
But Morris was back into the ministry scam two years later with his sights set on the big league.
In 2005 she filed a civil lawsuit and her lawyer asked for $50,000. Robert Morris’s attorney countered with a claim that she had been “flirtatious.” and attempted to settle for $25,000 if she also signed an NDA. She refused.
“flirtatious.” !!!
She was 12 and he was a grown married man.
Also this happened, after he found Jesus and not before.
Once Wartberb broke the story it got picked up by the media
Here is an example of that…
- Fox 4 (June 16): Woman claims Gateway Church founder Robert Morris began sexually abusing her when she was 12
The pressure then mounts on him so he needs to say something, and he does. A statement is issued to The Christian Post …
- The Christian Post: Pastor Robert Morris confesses to ‘moral failure’ after woman claims he began molesting her at age 12
Let’s do this once more. It was not just a case of consenting adults, this was Pedophilia.
She was 12 and he was a grown man. It was not just once, but continuous … yet it has been the supposedly godly who fear monger about drag queens, yet here is the reality.
It his statement, he claimed …
… that he returned to ministry in March of 1989, two years after his abuse was exposed with the blessing of the survivor’s father and the elders of his church.
In response to his claims, she said this …
“I was 12 years old. I was a little girl. A very innocent little girl. And he was brought into our home. He and his wife, Debbie, and their little boy, Josh, and trusted and preached at the church that my dad helped start and then began grooming all of us to do this, which took me decades to wrap my brain around as an adult,” she said.
“It went on for many years. He says there was no sexual intercourse, but he did touch every part of my body and inserted his fingers into me, which I understand now is considered a form of rape by instrumentation. I was an innocent 12-year-old little girl who knew nothing about sexual behavior.”
…
“My father never ever gave his blessing on Robert returning to ministry! My father told him he’s lucky he didn’t kill him. I am mortified that he is telling the world my dad gave his blessing!
What does Gateway Church say about it all?
Generally not very much. They kept their members in the dark and said nothing last sunday, but did issue a statement to the Christian Post when they asked.
As far as Gateway are concerned, they more or less confirm, reading between the lines of that CP article, if I may paraphrase, they are saying “Yea, we knew about this, but we happily covered it up“.
In other words, not only is it fine for their beloved lord and saviour to be a convicted felon and sexual abuser, but apparently it is also fine for A-list pastors as well, and long as it can all be covered up because it was a long time ago.
Nope sorry, but “Long long ago” is for fairytales, not this. Grown ass pastors, (he was close to 30 at the time), sexually molesting 12 years girls should be a permanent deal breaker for the career of pastor.
He Resigns … and yet did not resign … and then he did.
The Roys report, a journalistic site run by Christians, reports on June 17 – “Robert Morris Resigns as Overseer at Alabama Megachurch, Following Sex Abuse Allegations“.
So here is what has actually happened – he resigned as an overseer at Church of the Highlands (COTH), the largest church in Alabama, following the allegations, but he remained a pastor at his Texas megachurch, Gateway Church.
Why?
It would appear that the AL church knew nothing until the news broke, so they started an investigation, but before that went anywhere, Morris quit. Meanwhile, Gateway, who did know, but covered it all up, retained him … and then this happened yesterday (June 18) …
Robert Morris has resigned as senior pastor at Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, three days after confessing to engaging in “sexual behavior” with a child over the course of a few years in the 1980s.
The board of elders at Gateway made the announcement Tuesday in a statement to NBC News.
“The elders’ prior understanding was that Morris’s extramarital relationship, which he had discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with ‘a young lady’ and not abuse of a 12-year-old child,” the church leaders said in their statement, noting that they had not known the victim’s age or the length of the alleged abuse. “Even though it occurred many years before Gateway was established, as leaders of the church, we regret that we did not have the information that we now have.”
There are a couple of key points to make here
Resigned?
Morris was due to retire in spring next year. All that has really happened here is that he has retired a few months early.
Did not know?
Gateway claims they did not know that his victim was 12, but that is a demonstrable lie, they are simply covering their arses (and income). They have sat on this for several decades and did nothing until forced to do so …
You might wonder if he will face charges because she was 12. Under Texas law, there is no statute of limitations for most sexual offenses against a child, so either ex-“Pastor” Morris will be rapidly switching his residence to another state, or alternatively, Gateway church might soon be expanding their prison ministry.
One last thought
Hey, do you remember that wild conspiracy theory about a cabal of pedophiles that run the world?
Well, it appears to all be true, but it turns out to not be Hollywood or even drag queens; instead it is the self-appointed “morality” policy, the pastors, youth leaders, and priests.