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Robert Morris, the founding pastor of a prominent Texas megachurch, has spent years telling congregants about a “moral failure” from his past. The evangelical Christian didn’t go into detail, but he conceded that it involved a sexual sin that he committed as a young minister.
This week, as NBC News reported, the story took a dramatic turn when Morris confessed to having engaged in “sexual behavior” with a child.
The woman, Cindy Clemishire, told NBC News that Morris, now a senior pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, was staying with her family on Christmas night in 1982. She was 12; he was 21. Clemishire, now 54, said he invited her to his room, where he instructed her to lie on her back. He then touched her breasts and felt under her panties, Clemishire said — the first of several similar encounters that would span the next 4½ years, she said.
After the revelations reached the public, Morris, not surprisingly, resigned as the church’s senior pastor.
It’s important to emphasize at the outset that what matters most in a story like this is the victim and the support she’s entitled to. That said, there’s also a larger context to consider.
This week, for example, my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones described Morris “as a true MAGA movement acolyte” who has “used his platform to support the right-wing assault on school learning plans that acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ people and classroom discussions about social inequality.” The NBC News podcast “Grapevine” also detailed how his church has been aligned with right-wing portrayals of LGBTQ+ people as being dangerous to society.
The hypocrisy — or more to the point, the latest example of such hypocrisy — is overwhelming.
But let’s also not forget that Morris’ reach wasn’t strictly theological. It was also political.
The Texas megachurch pastor also served as a spiritual adviser to Donald Trump, joining the Republican’s spiritual advisory board during the 2016 campaign and being welcomed at the White House during Trump’s tenure. In June 2020, Trump visited Gateway Church in Texas and touted Morris as a “great” person.
In a statement to NBC News on Monday, a campaign spokesperson for the former president said Trump was unaware of Morris’ abuse, adding that the pastor “does not have a role with the 2024 campaign.”
I have no reason to believe otherwise, though I can’t help but wonder what the Republican reaction might be if we were talking about a sexual abuse scandal involving a spiritual adviser to President Joe Biden.