In Christianese, fallen pastors are pastors who have lost their pastoring jobs after causing a scandal. But even good, rules-abiding pastors have a tough time finding employment after leaving pastoring behind. The ones trailing scandals behind in their wake have an even harder time. And in the twilight of evangelicals’ cultural relevance, fallen pastors have even more reason to fight to stay in their jobs.
Today, we’ll look at the different ways that fallen pastors try to stay behind the pulpit—and tie this situation to the religion’s overall decline.
(From introduction: The Happy Pretendy Fun Time Game and the subtle art of just not giving a fuck. This post first went live on Patreon on 10/1/2024. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available to anybody by the time you see this!)
An anatomy of fallen pastors
Fallen pastors are simply pastors who’ve been caught in a scandal. They disgraced themselves. They betrayed not only their partners, not only their church congregation, but also their god.
In a lot of ways, pastors have a similar job situation as teachers do: They spend years training for this one job. Their training includes years of specialized training specific to that one field. And if they lose their eligibility to work in that field, there aren’t many other fields where employers value that training.
In the case of the affair-having Steven Lawson from last week, he’s in his early 70s. (His very good friend and golfing buddy John MacArthur, the currently-reigning Lizard King of Calvinists, is in his mid-80s!) I don’t think Lawson is going to rush right off to the Help Wanted ads in his local newspaper.
But for younger fallen pastors, they definitely will continue to need some kind of regular income. Depending on exactly who they are, who their crony network includes, and how powerful they are within that network, they might have more options.
As Lawson no doubt found to his surprise, though, even a powerful heir-apparent can sometimes find himself cast into the outer darkness.
The drumbeat of the early 2000s: Family values conservative caught with hookers and drugs
Years ago, Ted Haggard was the poster child for fallen pastors. He rose through the ranks to become one of American evangelicals’ loudest voices of homophobia. He delighted in his bigotry-for-Jesus, talking about it with pride on various documentaries (like Jesus Camp in 2006) and interviews. At one time, evangelicals considered him one of their most influential leaders. In 2003, he even regularly met with a sitting President to discuss policies. (Sure, it was Dubya. But still.)
For their part, evangelicals delighted in Ted Haggard’s delight in bigotry—all the way until they found out in late 2006, just a couple of months after the limited U.S. release of Jesus Camp, that he was involved with drugs and gay sex with male prostitutes.
Haggard was certainly not the only bigot-for-Jesus who got caught around that same time having all the homosex he could handle. For a few years, it seemed like every single proponent of “family values” got caught in similar scandals. No, Haggard was just the funniest.
I remember that at the time, non-evangelicals seemed pretty confused about Haggard going through a fairly short “restoration” process. Beyond mockery, they had no idea how to handle Haggard’s claim about being Grade-A-Prime-Cut-Completely-Heterosexual. And when he started a new church in 2010, the move only cemented a growing number of people’s distrust of evangelicalism as a whole.
For evangelicals, though, this entire circus was simply part of their culture. Haggard might be one of the most famous outside of evangelicalism to perform in that circus, but he was very far from the last.
In fact, there were so many other fallen pastors that he organized a conference for them in 2012!
A 2012 conference for fallen pastors
About fifty people showed up for this conference. The host of it, pastor and therapist Fred Antonelli, lamented how little “Christlike restoration” evangelical pastors experienced after causing scandals:
“In short, the evangelical community’s emphasis on the law has created, as a byproduct, a culture of fear when it comes to confessing personal sin. Yet it’s time to create a new culture where transparency is encouraged, safety is assured and agape love is practiced.”
One of the people who attended this conference, Ruth Graham, is no stranger to controversy herself. She’s Billy Graham’s daughter, but she’s also been divorced twice and suffers from mental health challenges. Around that same time in 2012, she complained about how hard it is for scandal-causing pastors to confide in each other:
It is scary to open up to people – its a risk of being black-balled or marginalized. Someone once said “The Church is the only army that shoots its wounded.” My comment is that they are lucky if they get shot – usually they just get buried alive and are left to suffocate!
Of course, there are good reasons for evangelical leaders to fear such vulnerability. In dysfunctional authoritarian groups, they operate with huge disparities in power. The more powerful a leader is, the less oversight he has and the fewer checks there are on his power.
These groups give rise to nearly-untouchable leaders who can do whatever they want to anybody. In addition, these groups also give rise to slobbering sycophants who curry favor with that top leader in hopes of being promoted or appointed to some plum role within the organization.
This is why evangelical leaders are wise not to trust anyone with their worst secrets. This is exactly why they can’t confide in each other.
The moment their secrets become currency, those secrets will be traded for attention and favors up the line. Willy Rice, a onetime candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), learned this to his detriment. But then again, so did Tom Buck, who was the guy who exposed Rice’s secret to get him out of that race.
What happens to fallen pastors: Viable crony network member edition
This 2012 conference highlights one of the biggest problems in evangelicalism: The sheer conflict and friction between their stated beliefs and their lived experience. In effect, they need a god to be at the center of their religion to make everything work correctly. But their lived experience tells them that no gods are involved with their lives at all.
The results are a complete mishmash of blahblah that tries to reconcile the two mindsets and only makes each one worse. Their lived experiences become the basis for what this conference calls the Law, which is usually Christianese shorthand for Old Testament rules. The Law is bad. Christians think that Jesus transformed it into just two rules: Loving their god and their neighbors. They argue a lot about what the word “love” means here, with evangelicals often deciding it means abusing and controlling people for their own good.
Meanwhile, their stated beliefs become “Christlike restoration.” Their god totally lives in each of them, and so his power influences all that they do. All they must do when they’ve failed to follow their own rules is to telepathically confess their sins to Jesus, which he of course forgives immediately, and then they’re licky clean again.
For fallen pastors, the restoration process may also involve counseling from other pastors, who probably aren’t doing it for free, as well as a sort of probation involving oversight from a committee of elders and pastors. Afterward, all those people declare the fallen pastors ready to rumble again. Though Ted Haggard didn’t quite finish that process, that’s largely what he did before starting his new church.
If a fallen pastor gets help from the network, chances are extremely good his flocks will fall right into line. Dysfunctional authoritarianism runs in both leaders and followers, after all! The flocks learn early to run cover for their leaders whenever needed.
But not all fallen pastors receive an offer of restoration. Worse, some don’t need the offer. And a few outright reject the offer.
The other two options
However, some of these fallen pastors are on the outs somehow with their circle of allies. They’re not as high up in the crony network. Or somehow, probably in events that outsiders will likely never know, they became more trouble than they’re worth. Nobody in the network will stick out their neck for them. So these pastors just get fired out of hand.
Some very high-level pastors face this edition of the story. Besides Steven Lawson, so have former powerhouse evangelical leaders like terribad apologist Josh McDowell and megapastor James MacDonald.
Other fallen pastors cruise right through the accusations. The most powerful people in the network land here: Johnny Hunt, who controls a huge empire within the SBC, as well as Paige Patterson, who got fired from his SBC seminary leadership job but still holds vast power over others—including other seminary students. For men like these, sex and abuse scandals barely even bother them.
Sometimes, fallen pastors throw a real Hail Mary pass. Back in early August, Rodney Finch resigned from pastoring after allegations of bullying, financial improprieties, sex abuse of his own son, drug addiction, and—get this—trying to sell the church building out from under its unwitting board of elders (WTAF?!?). Last week after what sounds like a truly epic shitfight behind the scenes, he showed up at his church. He declared that he was reclaiming his former job. The congregation laughed and clapped, so I suppose his gambit worked.
Last but not least, fallen pastors can just flounce away. I’ll never like Mark Driscoll or agree with his views, but I’ll never fault him for walking away from his megachurch, Mars Hill, rather than participate in such a farcical process. Dude reveled in his power. No way, no how would he accept a king’s crown while it had a clunky Jesus-flavored Magna Carta firmly attached to it! I’m just glad he didn’t waste anyone’s time, so everyone could move right along to closing his former church.
And now, an entire podcast from fallen pastors
A few days ago, the Roys Report told us about a new podcast. “MisFit Preachers” is presented by two fallen pastors, Tullian Tchividjian and Byron Yawn. Both men lost their pastoring jobs after having sex with congregants. I’ll say this for them: their podcast goes for broke on Millennial quirk chungus energy. Here’s the Roys writeup about it:
Tullian Tchividjian and Byron Yawn both engaged in sexual misconduct with parishioners — something experts classify as clergy sexual abuse. Now they plan to talk publicly about it on a new podcast called “MisFit Preachers” whose irreverent trailer advises you to “clutch your pearls” because “you can’t cancel the cancelled.”
“In the history of bad ideas, this might just be the baddest,” the trailer states. [. . .]
“Some say they are too real,” the trailer says. “Some say they are too raw. They say you can’t cancel the cancelled. So, hide your kids, buckle up, and clutch your pearls.”
Someone’s already pointed out that this energy might be coming too soon:
[T]he mocking tone is especially concerning, given that men who engage in adult clergy sexual abuse don’t just abuse women. They silence, inappropriately blame, and traumatize them, she said.
She’s right, too. Evangelical leaders don’t take sex abuse nearly as seriously as they should. In the world of dysfunctional authoritarianism, doing the right thing only gets people in trouble.
These two fallen pastors are trying very hard to laugh about what a terrible idea this podcast is, but wow. It really, really is.
I reckon in this economy, neither of them wants to be job-hunting right now. It’s pure hell for former pastors trying to get into a new line of work even without scandals destroying their reputations.
The problem of recidivism for fallen pastors
One of the prime reasons why fallen pastors seem to upset and confuse normies might be the frequency and commonality of their return to power. Even if they don’t reach the same heights they once enjoyed, which I’m sure has Mark Driscoll eating his own liver every night, they once again hold power over others. That is a red flag to most people—and it should be.
Very few people would happily send their children to a private elementary school that employed convicted child sex abusers. Even if those teachers swore upon the grave of St. John Baptist de La Salle that they were completely reformed, claim they had done magic rituals to cleanse themselves, and swore they didn’t even feel lust toward children anymore, I doubt that’d set most parents’ minds at ease. They’d rightly consider past performance an indicator of future success—and find a different school for their kids.
But somehow, evangelicals do exactly that with fallen pastors.
In point of fact, Tullian Tchividjian himself looks to me like a major problem waiting to happen to any evangelical outfit that hires him. He hasn’t fallen once but twice. In 2015, he resigned from one church after his scandal came to light. He said the sex had totally been consensual. For good measure, he blamed his wife for cheating on him, which he said led him to seek “comfort” from another woman. (WWJD?)
Then, the next year, a second church hired him. Soon after, they fired him after finding out he’d actually had sex with two women. They were not happy that he hadn’t disclosed everything to them. Chances are good there are even more women, even, but two was enough for them. Nobody involved here even seems to care if the sex was abusive or truly consensual.
And now, this same guy is pastoring again at a third church. I’m sure it’ll all go just fine for the women there. (/s /s /s /s /s /s)
Alas, this problem doesn’t demonstrate a lack of pattern-recognition within evangelicalism. Rather, it reveals the fight between beliefs and reality that Christians face every single day.
Evangelicals can’t act according to reality when responding to fallen pastors
This whole situation reminds me of an outburst I had when I was around eight years old. After an early childhood raised largely free of religion, my grandparents plunged me into German-style Catholicism. Being a dreamy little child with a vivid imagination, I threw myself into it.
But the day I found out about Jesus’ crucifixion, I freaked right the fuck out. I was devastated at the idea that my sins had caused this terrible thing to happen to him. I cried the entire way home from church.
My mom had no idea how to handle my reaction. According to our shared beliefs, everyone really should be that devastated. She couldn’t really tell me to lighten up, or that it was just a story. To us both, it wasn’t something to take lightly. It wasn’t just a story. Really, I’m sure it troubled her to see that I was losing my spaghetti over the Crucifixion when most Catholic adults probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it at all.
That’s where evangelicals are with their belief system.
They must believe that Jesus lives inside them and helps them make enormous personal changes. Whether he does it through instant magic, divine nudges, or lots and lots of real-world personal growth hardly matters. Either way, they insist that he is the author of personal change—even when coming face-to-face with yet another hypocrite who really didn’t change at all.
I’m sure a lot of people defending Ted Haggard’s opening of a new church felt kind of silly when he got caught in yet another sex scandal. This time, one of the new church’s ministers has accused Haggard of sexually touching at least two boys there. For his part, Haggard’s already started yet another congregation.
Redemption: The belief that cannot be challenged
Moreover, they must believe that absolutely any terrible person can become good within their religion. They must believe in real-world redemption and massive 180 shifts in personality and behavior. In their religion, such miracles abound: Saul the persecutor of Christians becomes Paul the powerhouse of Christianity; flawed Abraham becomes the father of Israel; a slave trader goes on to write “Amazing Grace.”
So if they even try to react according to reality when it comes to fallen pastors, the rest of the tribe jumps on them with both feet:
- How dare you not be forgiving like Jesus!
- Don’t you think Jesus can change people?
- It’s so mean that Christians always shoot their wounded!
- Satan just tempts our leaders more! Obviously that’s why they keep falling! It’s proof that we’re TRUE CHRISTIANS™! It’s accepting defeat from Satan to fire them!
Evangelicals prioritize protecting their leaders and their religion’s credibility above the safety of the flocks.
In reality, though, leopards can’t change their spots. No divine agents stand by to help us make magic changes. But that, again, is what makes real-world redemption so powerful and so world-changing. It’s hard. And it should be. There aren’t any substitutes for doing the work. There aren’t any magic Jesus buttons to press, no incantations that do the trick, no spells, no greasy potions.
And there never will be.
NEXT UP: Women are continuing to flow out of evangelical churches. Hilarity is already ensuing. See you soon!
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Endnote: If you’re wondering about how my distress as a child got resolved, Mom handed me off to my aunt-the-nun—her sister, ten years or so older—who was a teacher at a parochial school and whose students tended to be right about my age. My aunt got my mind off things with the time-tested tactic of distraction.
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