WSB Radio has learned another Atlanta minister with a sordid sexual past mentored Bishop Eddie Long as a young preacher. Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation, a watchdog organization which monitors clergymen like Long, says the late Bishop Earl Paulk mentored Long as a young pastor. ... Paulk, who died last year, was an evangelical mega church leader accused of having sex with many women in his congregation including his brother's wife and his own granddaughter. Anthony compared Long's "Spiritual Sons" program in which his three young accusers were members with Paulk's "Kingdom Relationships," saying both were really designed to sexually gratify the clergymen.Paulk's church, Chapel Hill Harvester Church, once had 15,000 members but after a paternity suit which revealed that the assistant Pastor, D. E. Paulk, was really Paulk's son and not his nephew as everyone thought, attendance declined.
The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother's wife and fathered a child by her.
Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk's family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test.("Megachurch leader in mega-sized sex scandal," MSNBC [11/19/2007]).
The revelation came out as a result of a civil lawsuit filed by a former church employee, Mona Brewer who says Earl Paulk manipulated her into an affair from 1989 to 2003 by telling her it was her only path to salvation. Earl Paulk admitted to the affair in front of the church last January.
Under oath in a deposition, Earl Paulk claimed that Brewer was the only woman besides his wife that he had slept with. The paternity suit proved otherwise. Paulk died in 2009 before he could face trial for perjury. His once great mega church property was sold and the few members left moved and changed their name. Is this going to be the future of Eddie Long's empire?
Where is Sigmund Freud now that we need him? I think there's a connection between sexuality and spiritual leadership - especially when both are based on a dubious sense of entitlement. EFH
ReplyDelete"Where is Sigmund Freud" LOL
ReplyDeleteMy thought is that it must be almost frightening as a charasmatic individual, to begin to see what power you can have over other people as a "man of God."
Think about it-how many men can walk onto a stage and have thousands of men and women on their feet cheering and clapping and jumping up and down? (And you can't even play a really good guitar! But you ARE a good talker.) What does that power do to your head as a pastor?
And that's on just a regular Sunday. What if you'd just been accused of awful things? Then you walk in-and they don't "boo" you-they cheer! What incentive do you then have to be a decent person at all?
Ole Anthony, the self-appointed watchdog of other ministries, is the reason I de-converted from evangelical Christianity and my experience with his group was the reason I wrote the book, I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult.
ReplyDeleteWendy,
ReplyDeleteThanks. I don't know anything about Anthony and I am certainly not endorsing his "ministry." Your book looks very interesting!