As a “voluntary cooperative fellowship,” the Common Council mentioned, it runs background checks and units skilled requirements for credentialed clergy however leaves native congregations to manipulate themselves — a construction leaders describe as central to the denomination’s id. “Affiliated church buildings share doctrinal beliefs, however are impartial in nearly each different means, together with their native bylaws, staffing, insurance policies and practices.”
The Assemblies of God might make anti-abuse insurance policies obligatory at its 13,000 U.S. church buildings. The Common Council debated doing precisely that in recent times — then backed away after legal professionals warned it might expose the nationwide workplace to pricey lawsuits.
The choice left survivors reeling. In interviews with NBC Information, they described being molested in a church van. Stalked in a church nursery. Raped with a statue of Jesus plucked from a mantle. Instructed to repent.
What number of extra, they questioned, must endure earlier than the Assemblies of God determined that defending kids mattered greater than defending itself?
Repeatedly all through its historical past, the Assemblies of God was warned concerning the hazard of sexual abuse. And repeatedly, survivors say, it prolonged grace to abusers moderately than pursue justice for victims.
The sample started within the Seventies, when the denomination confronted a problem: what to do with ministers who fell into scandal.
Leaders created guidelines to self-discipline and restore pastors for offenses starting from false educating to monetary misconduct to sexual sin. The framework emphasised mercy, citing Galatians: “Brothers and sisters, if somebody is caught in a sin, you who reside by the Spirit ought to restore that individual gently.”
The coverage mirrored foundational beliefs. Born in Scorching Springs, Arkansas, in 1914 amid a nationwide Pentecostal revival, the Assemblies of God unfold shortly. At its core was a conviction that the Holy Spirit strikes by believers in supernatural methods — talking in tongues, prophecy, divine therapeutic and different miracles.
Pastors who demonstrated such presents of the spirit have been handled as God’s anointed, their charisma seen as proof of divine favor. Probably the most gifted preachers remodeled that aura into non secular empires, drawing hundreds to megachurches, filling tv airwaves and generally amassing private fortunes.
This theology has helped make the Assemblies of God one of the crucial dynamic forces in world Christianity, with 3 million members within the U.S. and almost 90 million worldwide. Nevertheless it additionally meant that when non secular leaders strayed, church buildings massive and small typically prioritized redemption over accountability.
One early case: Illinois minister Allen Lehmann.
In 1979, Lehmann was accused of molesting two women in his household, in response to inner Assemblies of God paperwork filed in a lawsuit. Quite than name police, the denomination’s state district council suspended his ministerial credentials and positioned him in a two-year restoration program, which included conferences with a psychologist.
Though the ladies Lehmann allegedly abused have been elementary school-age, information present, his ministerial file described his misconduct as “indiscretions with a younger girl.”
The denomination’s nationwide workplace obtained common updates. In July 1980, a district official famous Lehmann’s restoration was “progressing gradual.” One yr later — 4 months forward of schedule — the identical official reported Lehmann had been “totally rehabilitated.”
With that stamp of approval, he transferred to a different Assemblies of God church in Louisville, Kentucky. Quickly, extra allegations adopted.
From 1993 to 2000, Lehmann sexually abused three different younger kinfolk who visited his dwelling on church mission journeys, in response to felony information. Every woman mentioned the abuse started when she was 6; one mentioned it continued into her teenagers. She instructed police Lehmann raped her with a baseball bat, beat her with a leather-based strap and choked her, telling her “love has to harm.”
Years later, Lehmann’s grownup son — additionally an Assemblies of God pastor — reported him to police. He instructed investigators he found that the denomination had “lined up” his father’s earlier offenses, information present.
Lehmann pleaded responsible to youngster rape in 2018. He was given a 15-year suspended jail sentence and let loose on probation. Survivors sued the Assemblies of God nationwide workplace and its Illinois and Kentucky district councils, settling in 2022.
Reached by telephone, Lehmann mentioned, “Not ,” and hung up.
The hazard of restoring offenders has performed out in much less formal methods. The Assemblies of God enforces a nationwide credentialing system for ministers, giving the Common Council energy to self-discipline, restore or expel those that fail to satisfy its theological and ethical requirements. Nevertheless it solely requires a church’s lead pastor to be credentialed. That hole offers congregations vast latitude to rent and restore youth pastors, worship leaders and different affiliate ministers — together with these with histories of misconduct.
At Landmark Christian Heart in Downey, California, the senior pastor selected his son, Timothy Scarr, to steer music. He was compelled to discover a substitute in 1985 after Scarr pleaded responsible to molesting two boys from the church — however his departure was short-term.
5 days after Scarr’s launch from jail in 1988, his father threw him a celebration to welcome him again as worship chief.
The Bible says when sins are confessed, they’re solid into the ocean and remembered no extra. It additionally warns that wolves typically come draped in sheep’s clothes.
Over the subsequent decade, Scarr sexually abused two extra boys, in response to felony information. One teen mentioned Scarr routinely pressured him for oral intercourse, together with within the sanctuary, and threatened to kill himself if the boy refused. The opposite mentioned Scarr took him to close by Disneyland and invited him to sleep at his dwelling, the place late at night time Scarr undressed and climbed on high of him.
After the kids went to police and filed lawsuits, Scarr’s father, who has since died, defended restoring him. He mentioned he believed God had miraculously cured his son’s attraction to kids, in response to courtroom information, so he noticed it as his responsibility to reinstate him. “So highly effective is the command to forgive beneath these circumstances,” the daddy’s lawyer wrote in a submitting, “that failure to take action is itself a mortal sin which may bar one’s everlasting soul from Heaven.”
Scarr was convicted of kid intercourse abuse in 1998 and given 30 years in jail. At sentencing, considered one of his victims rebuked him: “You used the church as a looking floor,” he mentioned. “You harm those that have been harmless and referred to as evil goodness.”
Launched a number of years in the past, Scarr didn’t reply to messages.
Landmark Christian Heart, which has since closed, settled the kids’ lawsuits for $3.5 million, however not earlier than a choose dismissed the Assemblies of God from the case.
Scarr’s victims argued the denomination was negligent as a result of it lacked insurance policies to bar a intercourse offender from ministry. The choose disagreed, saying courts couldn’t power the Assemblies of God to police its church buildings.
Doing so, the choose wrote, would violate non secular freedoms enshrined within the First Modification.
By the late Nineties, the scourge of sexual abuse in church buildings had grown too public to disregard, and the Assemblies of God confronted strain to do greater than merely encourage safeguards. Stories from Catholic and evangelical congregations have been starting to make nationwide headlines, elevating questions on how non secular establishments protected kids.
These questions got here to the fore on the Assemblies of God’s 1997 biennial Common Council assembly in Indianapolis, the place hundreds of ministers thought-about a decision barring anybody convicted of kid intercourse abuse from holding ministerial credentials. Proponents invoked a Bible verse declaring anybody who harms a baby is best off having a millstone hung round their neck and “drowned within the depth of the ocean.”
However some ministers pushed again. What about pastors who abused kids earlier than changing into Christians? Others debated whether or not the ban ought to prolong to pastors who molested 16- and 17-year-olds with out having intercourse.
In the long run, delegates voted to shelve the measure for 2 years so legal professionals might examine it.
When ministers reconvened in 1999, the Government Presbytery — 21 senior ministers who act as a board of administrators — urged in opposition to adoption. Requiring background checks of each minister, they mentioned, could be costly, wouldn’t cut back authorized legal responsibility and will unjustly punish these convicted of “comparatively minor” offenses earlier than discovering Jesus.
“Ought to such an individual be perpetually barred from qualifying for ministerial credentials?” the presbyters requested.
Delegates let the proposal die.
Three years later, after The Boston Globe’s bombshell investigation uncovered sexual abuse and cover-ups within the Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God launched a press release saying it had lengthy maintained a “zero tolerance” coverage barring ministers discovered responsible of sexually abusing kids from being credentialed. “This isn’t a brand new place however one the church has at all times held,” the assertion mentioned — seemingly at odds with the factious debate just some years earlier.
The Common Council did not present NBC Information with a duplicate of the coverage or say when it was adopted. Even so, such a prohibition would have utilized solely to credentialed ministers, leaving native church buildings free to nominate anybody they selected for different roles.
Some continued permitting convicted intercourse offenders round kids. The outcomes have been disastrous.
A Florida church let a person lead a Royal Rangers troop 20 years after his conviction for youngster molestation, in response to police and information studies. In Indiana, a church employed a janitor convicted of molesting a 7-year-old woman. A Pennsylvania congregation employed a counselor regardless of his conviction for sexually abusing two brothers. Every man went on to abuse once more, felony information present.
In New Jersey, the Everlasting Life Christian Heart employed Shawn Butler, regardless of a conviction for sexually assaulting women, in response to a lawsuit. The Assemblies of God-affiliated church gave him unfettered entry to kids for many years, permitting him to molest at the least three extra kids, lawsuits say.
As youth minister, Butler groomed teenagers to consider God spoke by him, then exploited his divine authority to sexually abuse them, victims mentioned.
“He made himself look like he virtually had these particular powers,” mentioned one survivor, whom NBC Information isn’t naming at her request. “God despatched him to do this stuff — and when you didn’t do these issues, it’s virtually such as you have been going to be in bother spiritually.”
Butler was convicted once more in 2018, and his victims sued the church. An insurance coverage firm that offered legal responsibility protection to Everlasting Life Christian Heart additionally sued, arguing that as a result of the church had “knowingly endangered” kids by using Butler, the insurer shouldn’t be compelled to pay civil damages ensuing from his crimes. The lawsuits have been later settled. Everlasting Life Christian Heart didn’t reply to messages.
The lady who mentioned Butler had manipulated her religion to abuse her as a teen blamed the Assemblies of God’s lack of safeguards for enabling him.
“They’re irresponsible,” she mentioned. “I don’t know if they really care about younger folks.”
The Assemblies of God’s program for rehabilitating pastors accused of sexual misconduct has lengthy operated in secrecy. Restoration information are saved on the Common Council’s workplace in Missouri, the place they’re saved confidential.
The method, carried out by regional district councils and overseen by the nationwide workplace, requires disgraced pastors to step away from ministry for at the least a yr and bear Christian counseling, in response to a 135-page restoration handbook obtained by NBC Information. The rules paint an image of a type of non secular rehab, the place ministers transfer from confession to renewal on the trail again to God’s glory.
Practices have different over the many years — and from area to area. Courtroom information present that as just lately as July 2018, Assemblies of God district officers sought to revive a New Jersey pastor accused of molesting 5 kids. They by no means obtained the prospect; that very same month, the minister, Orlando Martinez-Chavez, was charged with sexually abusing a 10-year-old woman from church and was later sentenced to eight years in jail. In response to a lawsuit from the woman, the district council denied it was negligent.
The restoration handbook, up to date in 2021, bars reinstating pastors who sexually abuse kids. Homosexuality can be disqualifying. Nonetheless, the rules depart room for restoring ministers who admit to “flirtatious, inappropriately affectionate” conduct with minors, in addition to misconduct with adults that falls in need of sexual assault.
Some fallen pastors have been despatched to Emerge Ministries, a counseling heart in Akron, Ohio, based in 1973 by Assemblies of God minister Richard Dobbins, a pioneer of Christian psychology.
Dobbins, who died in 2014, helped craft the denomination’s restoration program and endorsed a whole lot of pastors, some for melancholy or marital struggles, others after sexual misconduct. At Emerge, pastors learn scripture and mirrored on the roots of their “ethical failure.”
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