In an age of Trump and Stormy Daniels, evangelical leaders face sex scandals of their own
By Sarah Pulliam Bailey March 30 at 1:15 PM
As white evangelicals have been some of President Trump’s staunchest defenders, a handful of their leaders find themselves contending with a problem all too familiar to the commander in chief: a sex scandal.
As the allegations by Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress who says she had an affair with President Trump, captures the nation’s attention, and as the #MeToo movement highlights sexual abuse, harassment and impropriety in the workplace, at least four leaders in the evangelical movement have been accused of violating the tenets of their faith, from adultery to sexual abuse. Now some observers wonder whether evangelicals are experiencing a repeat of the scandals that led to the downfall of several well-known televangelists in the 1980s.
“There’s a reckoning taking place across evangelicalism right now,” said Russell Moore, who leads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and compared recent events to those scandals of the 1980s. Moore said the #MeToo movement has ushered a “welcome development in American culture toward believing women who have been harmed. I also think there’s a growing — but not fast enough — realization in church life of the way that power can easily be abused in predatory ways, especially spiritual power.”
Most recently, Frank Page, president and chief executive of the SBC’s executive committee, announced his resignation because of an “inappropriate relationship.” Page did not divulge the details of his relationship on Tuesday, but in a statement he called it a “personal failing” that has “embarrassed my family, my Lord, myself, and the Kingdom.”
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/03/30/in-an-age-of-trump-and-stormy-daniels-evangelical-leaders-face-sex-scandals-of-their-own/?utm_term=.77ded9905aca
= new reply since forum marked as read
