Last time we met up, we talked about an evangelical leader named Mike Bickle. He founded and used to lead an evangelical group called International House of Prayer (IHOPKC). Over a dramatically short time last year, his star crashed to earth. The truth came out at last: For decades, he’s preyed upon, groomed, and sexually abused a number of the young women. Even now, as he no doubt hopes for a return to power, evangelicals still refuse to understand why this keeps happening.
So today, let’s prepare an answer for the question they do not dare to ask: Exactly why do hard-right Christian groups keep sprouting sex abuse scandals?
This question has answers. But none of them are what evangelicals might be imagining.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 4/18/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now!)
Why evangelicals can’t ask the right questions
Almost a decade ago, an evangelical pulled me up short by asking a question so obvious and so plaintive that it helped determine the future course of Roll to Disbelieve. In 2016, Buck Hill asked this question in the course of a series of news reports about a minister in his area who’d been caught in a pedophile sting operation—not long after another similar minister, Timothy Thompson, had been caught doing something similar in 2014. Here’s what Buck Hill asked:
“So when I heard about Joe, was I surprised? No, but I was sickened. Just like when I heard about Timothy Thompson. How do we get to this place, where this stuff happens?”
“How do we get to this place, where this stuff happens?”
His question is just so startling. So bewildered. This guy doesn’t sound like a bad egg at all. He clearly believes that Christians shouldn’t even be wanting to do “stuff” like that. And yet here were a bunch who most certainly did.
I remember reading that question and just stopping cold to think about it.
“How do we get to this place, where this stuff happens?”
“How?”
This is an extremely dangerous question for any Christian to ask, but for evangelicals, it’s impossible. The answers to it took me years to untangle, but we got there in the end: A series of serious flaws in their group structure and beliefs that are impossible for evangelicals to formally recognize, much less address, much less fix.
And now, we’re going to ask that same question about Mike Bickle. How did evangelicals get to this place, where a Mike Bickle happens?
The First Dealbreaker: Mike Bickle, the venerated, admired evangelist and preacher
Right-wing Christian churches don’t have a surplus of hugely-charismatic preachers and pastors. That requires showmanship and creativity, which most of them lack. The men who possess those qualities, however, can go very far in that end of Christianity.
Of course, they’d go a lot further in the secular world if they didn’t also tend to be control-hungry narcissists looking for prey. The secular world tends to weed them out fairly quickly. But in their end of Christianity, they get rewarded handsomely for their talents—while their abuses and excesses get ignored and covered up. Even their own victims cover up for their abusers out of reverence for their evangelism or preaching skills. Here’s an early victim of Mike Bickle’s, Tammy Woods:
Woods said she and Bickle had no contact for five years. She continued to keep the secret, she said, “because he’s doing all these amazing things.”
“He got literally a get-out-of-jail card,” she said. “And he was doing it right. We were doing it right. Everybody deserves a second chance. He got his from the Lord, from myself. And I was growing in wholeness. He was growing in notoriety as this godly man, as this incredibly generous man, as this anointed teacher. So I’m thinking, ‘We did it. You know? We really did it.’” [. . .]
When Woods found out that Bickle had groomed and sexually abused another young victim in exactly the same way he had abused her, she felt incredibly duped. But it wasn’t her fault. These abusers are past masters of manipulation. They use their talent as leverage.
I’ve been there myself: When I found out that my Evil Ex Biff’s testimony was completely fictional, I wanted to out him immediately. Our church friends tried to silence me as well, claiming Biff’s soul-saving skills justified his lies.
Right-wing Christians love and revere their leaders. They think Jesus appointed those people to their roles. So accusations of abuse and predation would remove those Jesus-commanded people from the roles Jesus had reserved for them.
Moreover, anyone accusing their leaders of wrongdoing becomes a target for the rest of the followers. They can dole out an unthinkable amount of abuse and betrayal. Perhaps that’s why Tammy Woods’ friends and family frequently saw Mike Bickle behaving inappropriately with her, but none dared sound the alarm publicly.
The Second Dealbreaker: How Mike Bickle became a pastor
In 2016, the satirical website Babylon Bee ran a story titled: “Youth Pastor Promoted To Real Pastor.” In it, a youth leader exults that after years of “not-quite-a-real-pastor” volunteering, he has finally landed himself a paid pastor position.
This kind of advancement has become more unusual nowadays. It’s more of an old-school fundamentalist thing. But in the 1990s, I can tell you it was still 100% happening and had been for years. My Evil Ex Biff tried using this strategy to get himself into what he called a “professional Christian” job. And he wasn’t the only guy I knew trying it. In the 1970s, when Mike Bickle converted to a fundamentalist form of Christianity, it was the route he took as well. He led Bible studies and small-group meetings for a while before suddenly landing a job as a pastor with a small church in St. Louis in the 1970s.
This kind of advancement is a red flag.
In Mike Bickle’s end of Christianity, predators can easily deceive other church leaders. Their entire culture is very surface-level and transactional. Just speaking the right jargon and making a few requisite gestures can convince others that a predator is a real deal, true blue Christian.
Of course, those other church leaders certainly pray to Jesus before making their hiring and advancement decisions, and somehow Jesus agrees with their assessment.
When evangelicalism fused with fundamentalism around the 1980s-1990s, sweat-equity advancement became more a phenomenon seen in much smaller, less moneyed churches. These churches can’t really afford pastors with genuine credentials to their name, so they take whatever they can get. But there seem to be fewer and fewer churches these days that allow such advancement. Unfortunately, we may see a return to the custom if churches begin having a lot of trouble finding eligible candidates.
The Third Dealbreaker: Mike Bickle, the crony in good standing
And that brings us to the evangelical crony network. In evangelicalism, we find a number of cliques of similar-level leaders who help each other out in various ways. They give each other speaking engagements and book blurbs, hang out with each other, do sermons and events for each other, and most importantly help each other out of tough situations. They only stop doing that if they think the disgraced leader is far too radioactive for even the mildest shows of support.
One of the best ways to figure out who’s in what network is seeing who writes blurbs for each other’s books and who shares stages with whom. That’s how I realized Mark Driscoll will never again be a major player in the big leagues of pastoring. They’ve shut him out, just like the similar cliques did to former big names Josh McDowell and James MacDonald.
For Mike Bickle, his crony network included some really big names—like Rick Joyner.
Rick Joyner founded MorningStar Ministries in 1985. (Yes, that’s also what the Bible calls Lucifer. No doubt Joyner’s riffing on Revelation 22:16.) The business owns a hotel and conference complex called Heritage USA. Along with Mike Bickle, Joyner is strongly associated with the far-right, disturbingly Christofascist New Apostolic Reformation.
I mentioned last time that Rick Joyner is one of those names that just keeps coming up in stories of pastoral restoration. Pastoral restoration is a farcical display of sorrow, repentance, and busy-work meant to get a crony back into the saddle of leadership. Typically, evangelical cronies a bit higher-ranking lead this farce, then declare the pastor in question cured through Jesus Power. The farce involving Ted “Completely Heterosexual” Haggard might be better known, but it happens for pastors all up and down the leadership ranks.
Back in 2004, Rick Joyner and Mike Bickle totally restored Paul Cain to active ministry. Joyner also restored Todd Bentley after a series of scandals emerged about him.
How cronies protect each other
So nobody should feel surprised to learn that Rick Joyner defended Mike Bickle when his major scandal broke in October 2023, as well. In November 2023, one YouTube commenting channel, “Torn Curtain by Joshua Simone,” even said he’d known from the get-go that Joyner would do that. At 7:42 in his video, you can see Rick Joyner characterizing the Mike Bickle scandal as a “nothing burger.” (I tried to time-stamp it in the below clip.)
Let’s quote that bit, too, just to illustrate that no low is too low for a crony:
That is such a nothing burger. I can’t believe these people made such a big deal out of that! Yes, it was worthy of correction, discipline, and all. But listen, I don’t care. What I know: there was exaggeration in that accusation. And that is one of the most serious things. That’s probably far more serious than anything that Mike did. Because the Lord said to become a stumbling block, it’d be better for you not to even be born!
Considering what the public knew about the scale of Mike Bickle’s sexual predation at the time, that’s quite a bold defense. But Joyner would go on to preach a March 2024 sermon that doubled down on his support of Bickle. It caused quite a kerfuffle in MorningStar.
Of course, this is not the first time an evangelical leader has accused an ally’s accusers of something in turn. In 2007, Frank Page—then the President of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—hinted that sex abuse reformers were “opportunistic” and attacking the SBC for “personal gain.”
More recently, on April 11th a story broke on “12 On Your Side” about lawsuits filed against an SBC church. These lawsuits allege that the pastor and other adults of Bethany Place Church (later bought by Coastal Church) knew youth leader Gerald Ray Thomas was sexually abusing girls from 2006 to 2009, but did nothing. These allegations led to Thomas pleading guilty in 2010 and getting charged and convicted for another case in 2020. This case is horrifying but unsurprising, since the most reliable allies any abuser has are fellow leaders at the same church, who often prioritize protecting their paychecks over victims.
As third-party investigators found about Mike Bickle (on p. 10 of the PDF of their recommendations report; local archive):
IHOPKC leadership team used biblical language and imagery to provide coverup for the victimizers versus helping and intervening on behalf of the victims. They used their positions of authority to preserve their leader, Mike Bickle, their organization, IHOPKC, rather than those who encountered unwanted sexual behavior. In numerous cases, these accusations should have been reported to legal authorities for the protection of victims and the accountability of the abusers.
But they sure weren’t reported.
The Fourth Dealbreaker: Beliefs about rebirth and the possibility of enormous personal change with Jesus Power
Perhaps ironically given that this is the Easter season, evangelicals’ beliefs about rebirth play into their ready acceptance of sexual predators back into ministry. Many evangelicals really believe that Jesus Power can bring about enormous personal changes to a believer. It doesn’t, but they sure like to think it does. This belief makes it impossible for them to truly impose accountability on any sexual predator within their ranks.
In December 2023, Mike Bickle released a personal statement about his scandal. In it, he specifically frames his longstanding pattern of sex abuse as “past sins.” Then, he issued dogwhistles to his flocks about those sins’ forgiveness by Jesus:
I asked my family for forgiveness. I now ask for forgiveness from the IHOPKC family and many in the body of Christ. [. . .] I was recently confronted about things that I said or did 20+ years ago—things I believed were dealt with and under the blood of Jesus. Since this has now become public, I want to repent publicly.
By the standards of abusers making demands for everyone to shut up, it’s smartly-done. Referring to Jesus’ already-bestowed forgiveness about a past offense is a great way to silence other evangelicals. It makes them feel like it’s not okay to bring that offense up ever again.
Indeed, that’s how Bickle silenced one of his first victims, Tammy Woods. He began grooming her at his first church in St. Louis. At the time, she was only 14 years old. He maintained his control over her long into her adulthood, however:
He even showed her the statement he released in December [2023, PDF source online and local archive] admitting an inappropriate relationship with Jane Doe and wanted to know what she thought. She said there was a portion at the end where he implied he was being noble by speaking out.
“And I just said, ‘I would take that out. Because nobody wants to hear how noble you are right now.’ And then I look back and just go, ‘Tammy, what were you thinking?’”
Now, she said, she realizes that when there have been rough times in her life, Bickle has increased his presence to try and make sure she stays quiet. [Source: Kansas City Star, February 7, 2024]
I hope she doesn’t beat herself up too much. Abusers know how to manipulate their prey, and this one started his campaign when she was way too young to resist. Even years after his abuse technically ended, her religious indoctrination about forgiveness remained too strong to question for years.
She wanted to believe he’d taken the forgiveness she’d extended and mended his ways. She needed to believe she’d protected him and his family from the fallout of crimes that could be forgiven and washed away in Jesus’ blood.
The Fifth and Last Dealbreaker: More rules will definitely stop this bad thing from happening
Possibly the biggest obstacle to installing real accountability into right-wing Christianity is the tribe’s belief that enough rules and safeguards can protect anybody from any future harm.
In March 2025, the third-party investigative group that reported on Mike Bickle’s abuse (local archive) released a report on their recommendations (local archive) on how IHOPKC should deal with Bickle. Here is their exhaustive list of recommended rules and safeguards for Mike Bickle and any other abusive IHOPKC ministers:
Should he [Bickle] desire to return to informal ministry, there must be a full release in writing from the ICP [Independent Council of Presbyters] with the approval of any therapists with whom he has received counsel. These recommendations should be implemented and overseen by the ICP and reported in writing to the IHOPKC Board of Directors and made available to the IHOPKC congregation and the public.
7.1 They [all abusers in ministry] should be removed from ministry, if still engaged on any level, until a process of repentance, counseling, healing, and restoration has taken place. Because of their failure to use their higher role in leadership to appropriately confront Mike Bickle and protect the innocent, we recommend the following individuals should step away from all public ministry for a minimum of two (2) years, be permanently disqualified from holding oiice [sic; it probably means “office”] at IHOPKC, be required to repent publicly, and receive accountability from outside counsel/auditing with the assistance of the ICP[. . .] We also recommend that IHOPKC not rehire them in the future, both for the well-being of the individuals and for the credibility of IHOPKC.
7.2. They should publicly and in writing take responsibility for their sexual misconduct, manipulation, and abuse.
7.3. They should publicly and in writing apologize to the victims, their families, witnesses, and the body of Christ for their abusive behavior.
7.4. They should submit to the recommendations for discipline, counseling and restoration process set forth by the ICP.
7.5 They should submit to clinical/psychological evaluation as well as long-term professional counseling with qualified professionals and accountability.
7.6 Should they desire to return to ministry, there must be a full release from the ICP and signed by the approved therapist with whom they have received counsel on a one-by-one basis.
These recommendations should be overseen by the ICP and reported in writing to the IHOPKC Board of Directors and made available to the IHOPKC congregation and the public.
In answer, all I need to say is that all of these rules are enforced by the same people who likely enabled Mike Bickle to abuse young women for decades. All of them require other IHOPKC leaders to do the right thing. But there’s no way to force them to do that. Without an immovable object forcing them to do the right thing, they have repeatedly demonstrated that they won’t.
Only a third-party watchdog could force IHOPKC ministers to act in good faith around other abusers. But I doubt IHOPKC ministers would ever consent to a third-party group holding veto power over their behavior. If their abusers and abuse-enablers could deal with that, they wouldn’t need to be in this flavor of Christianity in the first place. They’d be able to make a lot more money and hold a lot more power in the secular world. They’re here and not there precisely because this is where they have the easiest access to money, power, and victims. They aren’t interested in doing hard work to get those things when they can get them far more easily elsewhere.
Back in 2015, we saw a similar emphasis on safeguards and rules with Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. When they realized their eldest son Josh was molesting his little sisters in their home, they decided to put together tons of “safeguards” to stop him from doing it. They didn’t immediately report him to the police, of course. Instead, they were that sure their safeguards had solved the problem without that embarrassment! But they hadn’t. Josh just found ways around all of them.
So even if IHOPKC adopted the watchdog report recommendations, I have zero faith that those new rules and oversights would keep the flocks safe.
So here’s exactly how “we get to this place, where this stuff happens”
If I wanted to deliberately create a social system where abuse happens constantly and abusers are never held to any kind of accountability, I don’t think I could outdo what right-wing Christians have created for themselves. Of course, I don’t think they deliberately did that. I don’t even think they want such a system. But it’s what they got and what they have.
First, such a system needs followers who venerate their leaders. Followers need to regard their leaders as speaking for an honest-to-goodness god, and for those leaders to have gotten their assignments directly from that god. They need to put their group’s and their leaders’ missions—whatever these might be—far above any offenses committed against themselves.
Second, this system needs leaders who can get into power more easily than they can in more reputable groups. Becoming a credentialed minister costs a lot of money and many years, after all. It takes money and years to obtain even a vastly-cheaper Bible College diploma after nothing more than high school. It’s not that abusers don’t often get those credentials, of course. But when a group commonly allows ministers to slide into home base without those credentials, we are safe in assuming that bad-faith actors have already infiltrated their leadership. It’s just a question of when we find out, not if.
Third, the system needs a tightly-knit clique of cronies to help each other. Once bad-faith actors have attained leadership in the system, it won’t take long for them to start breaking the group’s rules. They’ll need enablers and offensive linemen to clean up after them and keep victims and potential whistleblowers silent.
Fourth, the system needs to emphasize forgiving and forgetting. That way, victims and whistleblowers will become the enemy, not the person abusing power.
Last, the system needs followers with an authoritarian faith in rules as a deterrent to abuse. The more rules, the better! They’ll never ask exactly who enforces these rules or how. (I call this the Principle of OR FUCKING WHAT.) Instead, they’ll just trust that their leaders will always act in good faith. And, of course, the flocks will be bound about by rules themselves—with their untrustworthy leaders holding them accountable for obedience.
IHOPKC certainly isn’t the only right-wing Christian group that’s been caught trusting foxes to guard the henhouse. It’s only one of the more recent. Almost all right-wing Christian groups do the same thing—and I’m being very generous with that “almost.” There’s no fixing something this abysmally broken. All its members can do is walk away and try to find a group that doesn’t fall into these errors—or, as people are increasingly doing these days, just abandon church culture entirely.
NEXT UP: Thank you so much for listening! I appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed today’s topic. If you’d like to support my work, please check out the links at the end of today’s writeup, wherever you found it. Next up, we’ll see how Christians are trying to make the irrelevant relevant again. See you soon! <3
Please support my work!
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of our community! Here are some ways you can support my work:
0 Comments