The preacher knew that cheating on his wife was wrong. He prayed for strength, but the flesh is weak. Years passed; infidelities festered. When his lovers complained to church officials, the cleric lost his marriage -- and his pulpit.
The fallen clergyman is not alone.
While tales of sexual misconduct by men and women of God often focus on the Catholic church -- one study found 4,392 American priests were targeted by accusations between 1950 and 2002 -- Protestants are not immune to temptation.
Responding to the problem, Houston leaders of two mainstream denominations -- the United Methodist and Evangelical Lutheran churches -- hosted sexual ethics training for hundreds of metro-area pastors.
In both cases, the sessions are part of ongoing educational efforts to alert ministers to the dangers of potentially career-ending, church-rattling and, in some cases, criminally prosecutable actions ranging from an inappropriate embrace to the sexual abuse of children.
Lutherans, said Michael Rinehart, bishop of the 112-congregation Gulf Coast Synod, have "zero tolerance" for sexual misconduct by clergy or church officials. "Fortunately," he says, "it doesn't happen very often."
In his eight years as bishop, Rinehart has headed four investigations -- three involving male clergy and adult women, one involving pornography.
"In every case," Rinehart says, "the pastors no longer are serving as pastors."
Nationally, the United Methodist Church, the largest American mainline Protestant denomination, investigates 140 to 500 cases of clergy sexual misconduct annually, according to a 2010 report. More than three-fourths of Methodist clergy -- men and women -- and half of laywomen report suffering sexual harassment in the church.
"Our whole covenantal promise is that everyone is valued," said the Rev. Gail Smith, director of the 676-church UMC Texas Annual Conference's center for clergy excellence. "If you're not safe in church, where are you safe?"
News reports gravitate to the most egregious cases, often involving Catholic clergy.
In a 2004 church-sanctioned study by the City University of New York's John Jay School of Criminal Justice, researchers found 4 percent of priests active between 1950 and 2004 had been the subject of complaints that "were not withdrawn or known to be false."
VIOLATION OF TRUST
Responding to clergy-inflicted sexual abuse of children, Pope Francis in his September U.S. visit acknowledged that clerical miscreants had "violated that trust and caused them great pain." He begged forgiveness of survivors and their families for church leaders who failed to adequately address abuse allegations.
In Houston, headline-grabbing cases include that of youth pastor Chad Foster, who in 2013 was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he used the Internet to solicit sex from a 12-year-old girl and engaged in sex with a 16-year-old.
The younger girl's parents sued Foster's former employers, Second Baptist Church and Community of Faith. The case was settled out of court earlier this year, said the family's attorney, Cris Feldman.
Foster, 36, was considered for, and denied, parole in August.
Most cases originate and are resolved in obscurity, largely affecting only the perpetrators, their victims, victims' families and the home congregation.
In an ongoing national study, Baylor University's Diana R. Garland School of Social Work reports that more than 3 percent of women who attend church at least monthly have been targeted by church officials' sexual advances.
CONGREGATIONAL BIAS
In a survey of 280 of the larger study's participants, said the school's associate dean, David Pooler, only 60 percent "strongly agreed" that they remained congregation members after their encounter; even less, just 9 percent, strongly agreed they had received adequate support from fellow church members.
"The average church attendee ... will side with the perpetrator," Pooler said. "The congregational response often is victim-blaming, not being willing to hear the story, pushing many victim/survivors out of the congregation. ... I was shocked and appalled. This is not who the church wants to be."
Another study examining 1,500 evangelical Protestant ministers -- one-third of them Southern Baptists -- finds that 13 percent of preachers leaving the ministry do so because of alleged "moral failure," a condition that includes sexual misconduct, alcohol or drug abuse, gambling addiction and other significant personal impairments.
Clerics, church leaders say, are emissaries of God, and, as such, the power relationship between them and church members always favors the person in the pulpit. That's especially true when illness, job loss, divorce or other crises leave congregants vulnerable.
"Any time there's a boundary violation in which there's sexual harassment, sexual talk or an experience which a person in church finds intrusive, it's traumatic," Pooler said.
In sexual relationships involving clergy and church members, he added, "We don't even call it an 'affair.' We call it an abuse of power."
Some errant clergy are sexual predators, but others simply blunder into dangerous situations.
"Sometimes," Smith said, "we may break boundaries we're not even aware of."
That's especially possible, she said, when clergy suffer from the stress of overwork.
"Isolation is a killer," added the Rev. C. Huston McComb, who runs a national program for "morally failed" pastors at Houston's First Baptist. "There are not many places that a pastor can go to relieve himself of what's going on," he said. "If he talks to Joe church member, Joe might just help him lose his job."
THE AFTERMATH
Regardless of the emotional travails facing clergy, church leaders say, survivors of clergy abuse fare even worse. Often they blame themselves for what has occurred. Always there is collateral damage.
"I would say forgiveness is not my biggest problem," Rinehart said of incidents he has investigated. "I can forgive at the outset, but I still have to clean up the mess. There's forgiveness, but still resentment, anger and disappointment and a sense of lost possibilities. The congregation loses traction."
When faced with the removal of a pastor, Rinehart's Lutheran synod responds by assigning an interim preacher, who typically guides the flock for a year to express "grace and compassion."
"When a congregation recovers, and most of them do, they come back stronger, wiser and with higher expectations," he said.
The take-away points from the Lutheran and Methodist training sessions largely will be practical suggestions widely endorsed by contemporary Christian denominations.
Key to avoiding problems, suggests the Rev. Kai Ryan, canon to the ordinary at the Houston-based Episcopal Diocese of Texas, is for clerics to develop an awareness of their limitations. For a group viewed as God's spokesmen, that feat can be hard.
"Clergy are trained to do a certain type of work, and the type of counseling that addresses life's big hurts is something they are generally not trained to do long term," she said.
Church members needing intensive help are best handed off to mental health care professionals, she said.
Still more practical, said First Baptist's McComb, are tips such as: Don't meet privately with female church members. Don't share details of your personal life. Above all, keep it "professional."
"Pastors are held to higher standards," McComb said. "They have to have strong boundaries. When you are counseling with a woman, you can't cross those lines. The last thing you want to do is mess up your family life or jeopardize your position and reputation."
Religion on 11/07/2015