Another Evangelical leader’s hypocritical infidelity was exposed today. Dinesh D’Souza is divorcing his wife and marrying his mistress. Guys like D’Souza are like the gift that keeps on giving.
Warren Cole Smith, in a short article titled, King’s Crisis, reported today:
About 2,000 people gathered on Sept. 28 at First Baptist North in Spartanburg, S.C., to hear high-profile Christians speak on defending the faith and applying a Christian worldview to their lives. Among the speakers: Eric Metaxas, Josh McDowell, and—keynote speaker for the evening—best-selling author, filmmaker, and Christian college president Dinesh D’Souza.
D’Souza’s speech earned him a standing ovation and a long line at the book-signing table immediately afterward. Although D’Souza has been married for 20 years to his wife, Dixie, in South Carolina he was with a young woman, Denise Odie Joseph II, and introduced her to at least three people as his fiancée.
Finally, near 11 p.m., event organizer Tony Beam escorted D’Souza and Joseph to the nearby Comfort Suites. Beam noted that they checked in together and were apparently sharing a room for the night in the sold-out hotel. The next morning, around 6 a.m., Beam arrived back at the hotel and called up to D’Souza’s room. “We’ll be down in 10 minutes,” D’Souza told Beam. D’Souza and Joseph came down together, and Beam took them to the airport.
The next day another conference organizer, Alex McFarland, distressed by D’Souza’s behavior, confronted him in a telephone conversation. D’Souza admitted he shared a room with his fiancée but said “nothing happened.” When I called D’Souza, he confirmed that he was indeed engaged to Joseph, but did not explain how he could be engaged to one woman while still married to another. When asked when he had filed for divorce from his wife, Dixie, D’Souza answered, “Recently.”
According to San Diego County (Calif.) Superior Court records, D’Souza filed for divorce only on Oct. 4, the day I spoke with him. Under California law, that starts the clock on a six-month waiting period for divorce. D’Souza on Oct. 4 told me his marriage was “over,” said he “is sure Denise is the one for me,” and said he had “done nothing wrong.”
The episode is a strange twist in D’Souza’s otherwise meteoric rise in the evangelical world. He developed a reputation among evangelicals with a string of best-sellers, including The Roots of Obama’s Rage, which spawned a movie,Obama: 2016, which has now grossed more than $30 million. He broke into the Christian conference and megachurch market in 2007 with the release of a book that year, What’s So Great About Christianity.
D’Souza now receives speaking fees sometimes in excess of $10,000 from Christian groups, putting him in the top tier of Christian speakers. In 2010 he became president of The King’s College, New York City, which is supported by Campus Crusade for Christ, now called Cru. At that time he moved from California to New York, with his wife staying in California.
D’Souza said King’s board chairman Andy Mills has known about his marital trouble for at least two years. Mills confirmed that through a spokesman, Mark DeMoss, who added that Mills was “hopeful about restoration and both he [D’Souza] and Andy were praying to that end.” DeMoss said The King’s College board met by conference call to begin “looking into the situation.” D’Souza participated in a portion of that call, DeMoss said. Following that meeting, on Oct. 15, D’Souza wrote in a text message to me: “I have decided to suspend the engagement.”
The King’s board plans further discussion at a regularly scheduled meeting on Oct. 17 and 18, DeMoss said.
This is a picture of D’Souza’s mistress,
It appears that the young woman, Denise Odie Joseph, is 25-30 years younger than D’Souza.
This made my day. Dinesh is a fast talking, name dropping, fanatical gasbag. He is a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person looks and sounds like. I always enjoyed watching Christopher Hitchens make a complete fool of him in debates on religion. Such a shame that gay rights have somehow wrecked his marriage! I’m sure that must be what is destroying all the evangelicals’ marriages, right? Couldn’t be good old fashioned adultery,with a heavy dose of self absorption and hypocrisy thrown in for good measure, could it? These guys make me gag.
He has driven me nuts for a long time. I agree with ^Rob^… plus he is dangerously influential.
I like it when the self-proclaimed self-righeous have the shit all over them.
not likely to make much difference due to tribalism.
the liberals went crazy demanding the resignation of oregon senator packwood for allegations of sexual harassment, but when clinton was accused, suddenly they’re completely quiet, or saying it’s a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
the fact is, most of what passes of politics and religion is more tribalism — if he’s my guy he can do no wrong, and if he’s your guy he can do no right.
very few people have any principles any more that they’re willing to apply equally to everyone. particularly applied to powerful politicians, banksters, and religious leaders.
Totally agree.
Friggin unbelievable!
For what it’s worth, these people also practiced what they preached in this instance. There aren’t many groups that will rat out one of their own.
http://www.worldmag.com/2012/10/king_s_crisis
Not quite. The board at King’s College knew of his marital problem for 2 years. I think his introducing his fiancee while still married was the act that pushed everyone over the edge. Pretty bold act on his part. I am surprised he didn’t think this through…Evangelicals love you until they don’t and then they will rip out your heart and eat it. They are ruthless to those they have decided are no longer worthy to be part of the club.
He had “marital trouble” for two years, but it’s not said that it involved other women. Maybe it did.
At least this gossip page hasn’t yet been updated to reflect it:
http://www.whosdatedwho.com/tpx_1731431/dinesh-d-souza-and-dixie-dsouza/
I just watched this debate, in which I think he did pretty well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNuJ6A6iGP4&
I think it reinforces the idea that religions can be a net force for good, to the extent that people don’t take the evil parts seriously.
Unfortunately there’s no constituency for it. One side believes good results can never obtain from “superstitions” because, dammit, it just shouldn’t be that way, and the other won’t admit that they pick and choose from their supposedly infallible sources.
Also, toward the beginning you can hear Rabbi David Wolpe, D’Souza’s debating teammate, making a point that would have struck fairly close to home, if he had been seeing other women then. He said something like “I can’t believe this was done in a synagogue!” is the reaction people sometimes have to sin in holy places, implying their association with what they consider to be good. I think this is part of what D’Souza now faces.
BTW, for hyperlinks to show up I have to add a space to the beginning of the line. Otherwise I see them in the editing box, but not in the final post.
Come to think of it, D’Souza must have known “ideniselustafter” with her “With an Avarice for Accoutrement” for longer than the week between her first recorded appearance and the divorce filing. John Loftus [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Loftus (the other one) [url/] once commented on a happiness study he was conducting that people in his circles are after what they’ll never find, “a Playboy Bunny who reads Torah.”
But the issue is how will most in the Christian community react. They do compromise on a lot, but they have much less tolerance on family issues.
Let’s see if I can get the embedding right with [url=http://tinyurl.com/d79edm7]
this link.[/url]
Damn! It worked on YouTube.
http://tinyurl.com/d79edm7
“But the issue is how will most in the Christian community react. They do compromise on a lot, but they have much less tolerance on family issues.” Shadow Mountain Community Church, led by David Jeremiah (formerly led by Tim LaHaye, in El Cajon California, removed from their website the video of D’Souza’s June 10 2012 sermon. They removed it Oct 17th, that’s a quick distancing. Personal disclaimer: I avoid churches that openly co-mingle religion and politics.
Re “Personal disclaimer: I avoid churches that openly co-mingle religion and politics.”
I have never understood this, because it seems to either say that there is no such thing as a value in the area of politics, or that religion, while supposedly having the ultimate answers to every other question in life, has none in this one area. Indeed, Romans 13:1-7 seems to say the Will of the Fuehrer supercedes anything else in the Bible.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+13%3A1-7&version=NIV
Unless it’s the Fuehrer of some other country, in which case we’re now stuck having to posit parallel universes, each with their own supreme leaders and truths. And of course the Fuehrer status only applies when he’s of one’s favorite party. More universes. I never did get how it was all supposed to work.
I’m waiting for someone to claim that it’s really a secret plug for a world government and a top-down, one-party system, with the state being everyone’s employer, since this would put everyone under this umbrella of absolute sinlessness.
Conservatives never knew what to do with these verses. I once counted about one dozen different interpretations, all apparently based on the rather interesting hermeneutic of “it can’t mean what it says here, so let’s try to read something else into it.”
I really do want to have a source I can point to whose every syllable communicates perfect goodness and divine perfection, but it’s not looking like we have such a thing.
In Obama’s America, 2016, we’ll all have to stick with our first wives, even when they aren’t hot any more and we’re totally tired of their bullshit.
“Evangelicals love you until they don’t and then they will rip out your heart and eat it”. Classic, Bruce! I’m stealing that one!!
Desouza has good taste, she’s cute. A little too thin for me, though. I’m not into the “Olive Oyl” look. Never did much for me
Use it freely, my friend.
I experimented with embedding some links and the whole thing disappeared when I clicked submit. I’m guessing it ended up in the spam folder.
Anything with more than one link will be flagged for moderation. No need to use html . Just paste the link itself.
“No need to use html”
But I saw what it did for you. It looked so cool, turning several words in each post into clickable links like that, instead of doing it the old way. It made me feel important.
I think he’s just using an Old Testament view of marriage (multiple wives) and adapting it to modern times by making them slightly overlapping serially. Christians are, by and large, OK with multiple marriages as long as they aren’t served concurrently.
Truly amazing:
“The thing I will admit: I did not have any idea that it is seen as wrong in Christian circles to be engaged prior to being divorced even though separated. … That was a true error of judgment, but it was truly a case where I didn’t know better.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/october-web-only/dinesh-dsouza-denies-infidelity.html?paging=off