Police arrested a pastor Tuesday after a member of his McAllen church accused him of sexually assaulting a teenager for more than two years.
Elliot James Wickboldt of McAllen is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl from July 2015 to Oct. 12, 2017, according to a criminal complaint.
On multiple occasions, Wickboldt sexually assaulted Jane– a pseudonym assigned to the teen in the criminal complaint–at an Edinburg home and at Awaken Church, according to the criminal complaint.
On Oct. 24 during an interview at the Children’s Advocacy Center, Jane said “Wickboldt would tell her not to tell anyone or he would go to jail,” according to the criminal complaint.
Awaken Church Lead Pastor Bentley Sargeant issued the following statement to CBS 4 News:
“Elliot Wickboldt was removed as pastor of Awaken Church due to a moral failure. He was not the pastor at the time of his arrest. Please direct additional questions regarding the alleged crime to the local authorities.”
McAllen police met with an Awaken Church “overseer” on Monday, who said Wickboldt “had admitted to kissing, holding hands and touching Jane’s privates and vice versa,” according to the criminal complaint.
After obtaining several statements, police issued an arrest warrant for Wickboldt on Tuesday, according to the criminal complaint.
Wickboldt was charged with sexual assault, a second-degree felony; and indecency with a child with sexual contact, a third-degree felony.
A former McAllen pastor has been charged with indecency with a child—again.
Elliot James Wickboldt was charged with indecency with a child with sexual contact, a second-degree felony, on Nov. 1.
….
The incidents allegedly occurred in both McAllen and Edinburg, and were reported to both police departments.
Wickboldt’s third charge is in connection to the alleged sexual assault of Jane Doe at the Edinburg home, according to a criminal complaint from the Edinburg Municipal Court.
According to the criminal complaint, Wickboldt assaulted Jane Doe “during game/movie nights” at an Edinburg home. The criminal complaint doesn’t specify dates.
James Stangle II, lead elder at New Life Assembly of God (New Life Church) in Circleville, Ohio was arrested Wednesday and charged with soliciting a prostitute.
A lead elder for New Life Church was arrested by police and charged with soliciting a prostitute.
Plain clothes officers were working a busy part of the city when they busted James Stangle II in broad daylight Wednesday afternoon. Stangle was later released from the PIckaway County Jail.
Nobody answered the door at the Stangle family home. Neighbors said they were shocked that Stangle was arrested. “They have been pretty private and to themselves other than I guess probably church people coming over to see them,” said Kenny Hunt who lives across the street.
Nobody of New Life Church would talk on camera about the arrest. But the lead pastor Tim McGinnis said the following statement:
My name is Tim McGinnis, lead pastor of New Life Church. The church is aware of the alleged situation, and will fully cooperate with authorities. There is no other evidence except for information that is available to the general public to make any further comments regarding the alleged charge. We fully support the judicial process and believe truth prevails. The alleged charge did not take place on church grounds and was not associated with any church activity. We support Jim, his family and everybody involved with our prayers. New Life will continue as a growing fellowship to promote the love of Jesus to our hurting community.
Hunt said he thinks people of faith should be held to a higher standard.
“I have nothing for ministers. He is just another man that had an urge and decided to try to get it satisfied other than at home,” said Hunt.
Shane Cruse, pastor of Restoration Life Church in Hamilton, Mississippi, was arrested Saturday and charged with “illegal sex act with a minor and prohibited use of electronic communication system to procure a minor.”
A Mississippi business owner and pastor was arrested in Kentucky as part of an online sex sting operation.
Michael Shane Cruse, 46, of Columbus, was arrested Saturday in Danville, Kentucky, WCBI reported, and charged with an illegal sex act with a minor and prohibited use of electronic communication system to procure a minor, also a sexual offense.
Cruse is accused of communicating with whom he believed was a 16-year-old boy online and arranging to meet for a sex act. Cruse was actually communicating with an undercover law enforcement agent in Boyle County, Kentucky.
He was released by the Boyle County Sheriff’s Office on a $20,000 bond.
A Hamilton pastor and local businessman is behind bars in Kentucky on a charge of an illegal sex act with a minor through use of electronic communications.
Shane Cruse, 46, was arrested in Danville, Kentucky, on Saturday as part of a Boyle County Sheriff’s Office online sting operation targeting child sex offenders.
BCSO said a detective, posing as a 16-year-old male, met Cruse online and agreed to meet Cruse in Kentucky to have sex.
Cruse came into public attention in 2012 when, on behalf of the church he pastored, he offered a $175,000 bid to purchase the Lee Middle School property, which had been put on the market a year earlier. Then the pastor at Point of Grace Church on 18th Avenue in Columbus, Cruse told the Columbus Municipal School District board he hoped to expand his church’s operations through the purchase. His offer was declined because it did not comply with state criteria governing the sale of school properties.
Cruse later moved into the restaurant business, purchasing Cattleman’s Steak and Fish on Tuscaloosa Road in Columbus in October 2016 and, just three weeks ago, purchasing the Highway 45 North restaurant Little Tokyo, which he renamed Samurai Sushi and Steakhouse.
Cruse is listed as pastor at Restoration Life Church in Hamilton. According to the church’s Facebook page, it was launched in July 2016 ….
A former assistant pastor was sentenced to 13 years in prison Tuesday for sexually assaulting a girl that initially was covered up by church leaders and the girl’s father, the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said.
Robert Wyatt, 51, repeatedly sexually assaulted the now-15-year-old girl whose family attended Agape Bible Church in Thornton, prosecutors said.
Wyatt gained trust from the girl and her parents, and got access by home-schooling her in his residence.
The girl told investigators the inappropriate touching started when she was 12 and had been going on for nearly two years.
In March 2016, Wyatt offered to take the girl on a field trip but instead they went to a hotel where he sexually assaulted her, prosecutors said.
“Mr. Wyatt describes this as a ‘stupid decision’ but this wasn’t a mistake. He saw he could manipulate the victim and her family. It was a calculated, methodical decision by the defendant to take advantage of this young girl,” senior deputy district attorney Patrick Freeman said.
“He is a sexual predator.”
Church leaders and the girl’s father tried to keep Wyatt’s crimes from being reported to police.
“Those who attempted to hide him from justice share blame,” Freeman said.
“You were in a position of trust with the church and as her teacher,” Adams County District Judge Don Quick told Wyatt at the sentencing hearing.
“You preyed on her emotional and physical vulnerabilities. Over and over again you planned how to groom her so that you could commit these acts. You took advantage not just of her body but her heart, telling her that you loved her.”
Quick was also critical of church leaders and the girl’s father for how they shifted blame to her and trying to handle things internally.
“I’m still shocked at how certain adults responded to this,” Quick said. “She didn’t put him in prison. He put himself in prison.”
Wyatt pleaded guilty in July to attempted first-degree assault and sexual assault on a child.
He was charged last year with one count of sexual assault on a child, one count of sexual assault on a child as a pattern of conduct and one count of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust.
Police documents and former congregation members allege that Agape’s head pastor, Darrell Ferguson, knew about the allegations in July and refused to go to police.
A 16-page arrest affidavit describes evidence that Ferguson knew about the allegations by July 21, when Wyatt reportedly confessed the crime to the girl’s parents.
“Ultimately, Darrell and [the girl’s parents] agreed to not report the sexual assault to the police or social services because they were concerned with what would happen to Bob,” the affidavit alleges.
It is important to know when Ferguson found out about the alleged abuse because in certain circumstances, if a member of the clergy knows about child abuse and does not report it, it might be a crime.
The Problem Solvers pressed Ferguson on the issue. In a recorded phone conversation, he said he didn’t report it earlier to police or the congregation because “the sexual assault on a child, that wasn’t known until the arrest.”
Wyatt stepped down from his leadership position on July 21 and remained at Agape as a member of the congregation until his arrest.
On Tuesday, Ferguson was asked, “You’re saying you, as church leaders didn’t know that it was sexual assault against a child?”
Ferguson replied, “The, uh, the eldership, let’s see I’m just now getting on the highway here. The eldership, you’re asking when the eldership, when the leadership of the church discovered that it was sexual assault on a child?
“That happened the day of the arrest. That’s when that came out.”
Over the weekend, Ferguson sent a letter to the congregation apologizing for making what he describes as misleading statements.
“Dear Agape,
In my phone conversation with the reporter from FOX31, when I answered her question about when the leadership knew, I said it was when the arrest was made. I began my sentence with “The other elders … but that part was edited out.”
FOX31 edited Ferguson’s response for time in the story that aired. In no part of the interview did he specify he was talking about the other church leaders, excluding himself.
Since Ferguson is the head pastor at Agape, it was FOX31’s understanding that when Ferguson was asked “When did you as church leaders know?” Ferguson’s response was referring to himself too.
The rest of Ferguson’s letter to the congregation goes on to support FOX31’s interpretation of his answer:
“I did not intend to deceive her — I just wanted to make the point that the other elders did not know until the arrest. Nevertheless, I do think what I said was wrong. I knew she wanted to know when I found out, and I had been advised by our lawyer not to discuss that in the press, so I got flustered and just tried to divert to something I did want to talk about rather than answer her question. This was wrong, and it ended up being very misleading.”
Ferguson sent a separate statement to FOX31 over the weekend clarifying that he knew about the accusations of abuse before the other church leaders. He also said that under Colorado law, he does not believe that he had an obligation to report the suspected crime to police.
The full statement reads:
“Regarding the Bob Wyatt matter, it is very important to us at Agape Bible Church that all of our communications be completely accurate. To be clear, the statement about first becoming aware of the allegation on Monday applies to the other elders, but not to Pastor Ferguson, who did have prior knowledge. Also, it turns out the other elders actually became aware of the allegation of sexual abuse the day before the arrest.
It is not true that there was collusion with the father to withhold the information. The things that were said to Darrell by the family in confidential pastoral contexts in July were kept in confidence as required by Colorado law (C.R.S. 19-3-304 II and C.R.S. 13-90-107 (1) (c)). Any information that came to Mr. Ferguson outside of those confidential contexts was reported by Mr. Ferguson to the Child Abuse Hotline (report #667944).”
Tamil Nadu police have arrested a pastor accused of trafficking girls through a Christian-run orphanage that was taken over by authorities two years ago during an investigation into the unregistered children’s home.
Police said they arrested Pastor Gideon Jacob on Saturday after he arrived from Germany and he has been charged under trafficking and juvenile justice laws.
Denying the allegations, Jacob’s lawyer told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that his client had voluntarily appeared before the police and was cooperating with the investigation.
The Moses Ministries home in Tiruchy, run by Germany-based Christian Initiative for India that was founded by Jacob in 1989, housed 89 children, all said to have been rescued from female infanticide from Usilampatti in neighbouring Madurai.
However, the home had no proper records of the children, all of whom are now aged 18 years and above.
In December 2015, the home was taken over by the social welfare department after a court directive.
A wave of claims by people saying they were the children’s parents prompted a local court to rule that all the children should undergo DNA testing to establish their real families.
In 2016, DNA results showed at least 32 matches. None of the girls, however, have yet been reunited with their families.
“We have been counselling the girls, who have known no other life since they were babies,” said Tiruchy district head Kuppanna Gounder Rajamani.
“We have also identified the parents willing to take back their daughters and, following Saturday’s arrest, things will move faster and we are hoping to reunite the girls soon.” More than 40 per cent of human trafficking cases in India in 2015 involved children being bought, sold and exploited as modern-day slaves, according to government crime data.
There has been a recent spate of reports of the trafficking of infants and children for adoption and raising funds through charity-run child homes and private hospitals.
In Tamil Nadu, state authorities closed 500 homes between 2011 and 2016, citing mismanagement, a lack of registration and misconduct.
Rights groups have long complained that children’s homes in India are poorly regulated, not inspected often enough, and that many privately-run institutions are able to operate without a license leaving thousands of children open to abuse.
“The arrest gives us hope that there will be justice,” said A. Narayanan, the director of advocacy group Change India, who outlined the scope of the problem in a petition filed in Chennai’s High Court.
“The real worry is when and how these girls will be rehabilitated. Right now, it seems like a life sentence, where they are resigned to live in an institutional home.”
More than 40 per cent of human trafficking cases in India in 2015 involved children being bought, sold and exploited as modern-day slaves, according to government crime data.
There has been a recent spate of reports of the trafficking of infants and children for adoption and raising funds through charity-run child homes and private hospitals.
In Tamil Nadu, state authorities closed 500 homes between 2011 and 2016, citing mismanagement, a lack of registration and misconduct.
The investigation began after two interns from Chennai-based NGO CHANGEindia visited a few unregistered children’s homes in 2015 to gather evidence for a High Court petition on illegal childcare institutions. The interns, Vikas Christy and Babi Christina, reportedly walked into Mose Ministries and spoke to the inmates for three hours.
“It was surprising; they were all around the same age,” Christy told the Hindu. “All the girls said they had been rescued from female infanticide.”
She added, “They were brought up in an unhygienic, isolated environment, without counsellors, or mentors. The older girls took care of the younger ones; they cooked, cleaned and did domestic chores. No local person, except the Pastor’s friends, ever visited. They were forcibly involved in prayer and groomed for evangelist work.”
According to Reuters, a number of people have since stepped forward claiming to be the children’s parents. In 2016, DNA results showed at least 32 matches, but none of the girls have yet been reunited with their families.
“We have been counselling the girls, who have known no other life since they were babies,” said Tiruchy district head Kuppanna Gounder Rajamani. “We have also identified the parents willing to take back their daughters and, following Saturday’s arrest, things will move faster and we are hoping to reunite the girls soon.”
Speaking to ChristianToday in 2015, Pastor Jacob claimed strongly denied the allegations, which he said were motivated by Hindu nationalists. He argued that the children had all been brought to the orphanage as an alternative to infanticide, thus explaining the lack of records.
“When you bring a baby to give her away you are committing a crime for which you can be imprisoned,” he said. “If you give away your child you aren’t going to give your telephone number.”
He added, “I don’t know what lies in the future, but God can do the impossible.”
Jesus, a character on The Walking Dead, is currently among the living. Whether by Negan’s hand or a walker’s bite, this Jesus will one day die, joining all the Jesus’s that have come before him.
Over the past nine years, countless Evangelicals apologists have emailed me or commented on this blog in hopes of winning me back to Jesus. Reclaiming an Evangelical-pastor-turned-atheist for Jesus would certainly be big news and viewed as a sure sign that God is still in the soul-saving business. Why is it, then, that former Evangelical pastors rarely, if ever, return to the faith?
Many apologists suggest that the reason former pastors can’t be reclaimed for Jesus is that they are apostates or they have committed the unpardonable sin. (Romans 1:18-32) These pastors are blasphemers who have trodden under their feet the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:26-30), degenerates who have crossed the line of no return. Apologists will often engage former pastors anyway, seeing it as an opportunity to hone their apologetical skills or preach the gospel to those who are lurking in the shadows.
Assuming that I am not a reprobate that God has turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, why, then, do Evangelical apologists fail to win me back to Jesus? One reason is that the behavior of apologists towards me is contrary to everything the Bible says about how we are to treat other people. Some of the most arrogant, nasty, judgmental people I have ever met are people who attempt to win me back to Jesus. I have never understood how behaving this way is conducive to reclaiming me for Jesus. As a pastor, I talked to hundreds and hundreds of people about the state of their souls. I found that being loving, kind, and compassionate helped in setting the tone for a presentation of the gospel. Leading with hell, judgment, and the wrath of God generally turned people off. Sadly, many apologists are oblivious to these things, choosing instead to bully people with the Bible. (Please read Bible Thumpers: Dealing With Evangelical Bible Bullies.) In doing so, these apologists give Christianity and God a bad name. When such people savage me with their words, I often ask them, what is it in your behavior that would make me want to return to Christianity? Granted, just because the messenger is an asshole doesn’t mean that the message is untrue. That said, kindness and respect will open far more doors than hatred and judgmentalism — a lesson some apologists need to learn.
Another reason that Evangelical apologists fail to win me back to Jesus is their belief that the Protestant Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. I recently wrote a post titled, Why Biblical Inerrancy is Not Intellectually Sustainable. This post attracted an apologist who was certain that his intellectually superior arguments would destroy any criticism of the Bible. His arguments failed to convince anyone that the Bible was inerrant. The only people who believe the Bible is inerrant are presuppositionalists who assume, without evidence, that the Bible is without the error. The Bible says is it is without error, so it is. End of discussion. This is, of course, a faith claim that cannot be refuted. Once apologists appeal to faith — which is inherently subjective — all rational discussion ends. Faith, according to the Bible, is belief without evidence. Hebrews 11: 1,3, and 6 states:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Creationists love to argue that the events recorded in Genesis 1-3 are scientifically accurate; that God created the universe out of nothing in six twenty-four-hour days, 6,022 years ago. Everything that science tells us about the universe says that creationists are wrong, that the universe is billions of years old, not thousands. Vast amounts of scientific data must be rejected or misinterpreted for creationists to conclude with a straight face that Genesis 1-3 is how the universe came into existence. Lost on creationists is the fact that the Bible says that believing Jesus created the universe is a matter of faith, not scientific fact. Millions of Christians reject creationism, yet believe God is the grand architect of the universe. Creationists, on the other hand, refuse to budge on their ignorant beliefs. Why? Their commitment to literalism and inerrancy forces them to embrace beliefs that are absurd. One need only drive to Kentucky to visit Ken Ham’s Creation Museum and Ark Encounter to see colossal monuments to Evangelical ignorance.
Let me conclude by giving three obstacles apologists can’t overcome in their attempts to win me back to Jesus:
The Christian God is the creator of everything.
Jesus was born of a virgin.
Jesus was executed on a Roman cross and resurrected from the dead three days later.
These three things ultimately stand in the way of me returning to Christianity.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
The Apostle Paul said the universe itself gives testimony to the existence of God. Look at the wonders of the earth and beauty of the star-lit sky. Sure this is proof that God created everything? Perhaps, but what evidence is there for this creator being the God of the Christian Bible? I have long argued that I understand how someone could look at the night sky on a clear summer night and conclude that a deistic God of some sort created the universe. What does not make sense to me, however, is that this creator God is the triune God of Christianity. What in the night sky tells me that the Christian God is the creator? Why the Christian God, and not any of the other Gods human worship? I see no intellectual bridge that gets me from A GOD to THE GOD of Evangelical Christianity. Again, the belief that the Christian God created everything rests on the presupposition that the Bible is the Word of God and whatever it says is true. Believing this way requires faith, a faith that I do not have.
The virgin birth of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead thirty-three years later, are equally problematic for me. Virgins don’t have babies and dead people don’t come back to life. Pregnancy requires the uniting of a female’s egg with a male’s sperm. Believing Jesus’ mother Mary was a virgin requires me to ignore what science tells me about where babies come from. But, Bruce, with GOD all things are possible! So Evangelicals say, but one thing is certain: millions and millions of people have prayed to God asking him to give them a baby. God has — supposedly — answered these prayers countless times. I have heard numerous testimonies about how God “blessed” people with children. What is the common denominator in all these stories? — a female egg united with male sperm, and nine months later a child was born. There’s no evidence that God played any part in these births. Believing so requires faith.
So it is with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Billions of people have lived and died on planet Earth, yet not one of them has come back from the dead. Cemeteries, funeral homes, and crematoriums are reminders that when people die, they stay dead. I believe Jesus was a real person who lived and died in Palestine two thousand years ago. How Jesus died, it matters not. Jesus lived, died, end of story. Evangelical apologists offer no evidence for the claim Jesus resurrected from the dead. Again, believing this to be true requires faith, a faith I do not have. Either someone accepts as fact what the Bible says about the things mentioned in this post or they don’t. I don’t, and this is why apologists fail in their attempts to win me back to Jesus. I want evidence, not special pleadings that appeal to Evangelical faith and the inerrancy of the Bible. Until apologists can come up with arguments that are more substantial than the litany of proof texts and faith claims they currently use, I remain unconvinced. The ball is in your court, Evangelicals.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Growing up in a small town on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, I knew that the vast majority of people belonged to some sort of evangelical Christian church. Those who did not were considered the worst type of heathens, ready targets for “witnessing” about the “Good News” of the Gospel. As Southern Baptists, we attended Sunday School and church services on Sunday morning, Training Union and prayer service on Sunday evening, and prayer service (and youth group for teens) on Wednesday evening.
After my parents separated when I was 3 years old, my mom and I moved in with my maternal grandparents and my great-grandmother. My grandparents were extremely active in the church — Grandpa was a deacon and Grandma taught women’s Sunday school and Women’s Missionary Union classes during the week. Grandma spent a couple of hours each day studying the Bible, referring to her small library of Bible concordances, Bible history books, and books by prominent Christian writers. My mother, a rarity as a divorced single woman in the early 1970s in our community, had a hard time fitting in at church, but work and church were her only places to make friends.
As a small child, I was taught all the Bible stories in Sunday school. I always had a lot of questions. When I was 5 years old my mom said I pestered her with so many skeptical questions about Santa Claus that she finally admitted Santa was a made-up story for children but not to tell the other kids who still believed. I was very pleased with myself. The same thing happened with the Bible stories — I asked lots of questions: how was it possible for Jonah to breathe while he was in the belly of the whale? What did the animals eat when they were on the ark during the flood, especially the meat-eating animals, if there were only a pair of each animal? How could plants grow so fast after the flood for the bird to bring back an entire branch? How come there were giants like Goliath but there aren’t giants anymore? Why would God, who is supposed to be loving, ask Abraham to kill his son Isaac just to test his obedience? And why in the world would Isaac just lie down and allow himself to be killed? Why didn’t God like Cain’s offering of produce as a farmer but he liked Abel’s offering of animals as a shepherd – how is that fair? How could Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego possibly survive a fiery furnace? Finally, my mom admitted that some of those stories might just be allegories in order to teach lessons, but that I shouldn’t go around saying that at church. Again, I was pleased with myself.
Things may have turned out differently for me if I had not been sent to a fundamentalist evangelical Christian school. There was a rumor that students from our part of the town would be bused to a “bad” section of Nashville, so my grandparents and mom sent me to the Christian school for admission testing. I passed and was enrolled in 5th grade. I hated the dress code — girls had to wear skirts all the time, and skirts must be a certain length or one would be sent home to change. In the handbook, it stated that girls should dress as God made them — “feminine.” I despised that. My mom let me wear shorts under my skirt so I could hang upside down from the monkey bars at recess until a teacher told me that was inappropriate and I was no longer allowed to hang upside down from monkey bars. Boys could but apparently that behavior was unacceptable for girls. We were taught young earth creationism and required to take Bible class with a Bob Jones University curriculum. In middle school and high school, we had Bible class 3 days a week and chapel service 2 days a week. Sometimes it was possible to sneak notes into the Bible to study during chapel if the teachers didn’t see it. There was an annual week-long Bible Conference where guest preachers were brought in for an intensive “soulwinning” week. I’m pretty sure I was “saved” every year at Bible Conference for fear of hell.
There were a lot of rules at the school, some applicable outside school as well. Any student caught with tobacco or alcohol on or off school property would be expelled; pregnant girls were immediately expelled; being caught attending the local rollerskating rink would result in suspension. There were also the prejudices we learned from school — that certain Christian sects such as Catholics were not “real Christians”; that people who were not part of fundamentalist Christianity were apostates and in need of salvation; and of course, homosexuals were sinful and misguided people whom we must “turn” back to heterosexuality and to salvation.
I hated this school so much, but I didn’t feel I could tell my family because they were paying for it, and they were so convinced that it offered a superior education, taught values, and would provide an environment away from “bad influences” at public school. But teachers were underpaid and overworked, so the faculty had either been teaching there forever or left within a year or two. New teachers were required to have graduated from Bob Jones University, Pensacola Christian College, or some other fundamentalist-approved school. Students were urged to attend those schools too (though they left me alone when I stated my goal to attend Vanderbilt University and had the test scores necessary to gain admission). To their credit, they did everything to help me with my application, and they never treated me differently intellectually for being female. I know, shouldn’t that be normal in the “real world”? Of course — but for fundamentalist Christians that was a big step.
Finally in college, I had my freedom. While I did join the Baptist Student Union and went to First Baptist Church Nashville the first 2 years, my church attendance waned. My first big shakeup was when I took a History of Christian Thought class. There I learned that the books of the Apocrypha were canonized scriptures. Canonized! How could Protestants have it both ways, stating that canonized Scriptures were inerrant and inspired by God, yet rejecting certain canonized Scriptures? I had always felt that fundamentalist Christianity was anti-intellectual and was embarrassed around my educated peers to admit that I was part of this branch of religion, but this information about the Apocrypha being canonized scriptures proved that the concept of inerrancy of Scripture was a lie.
After college I married a man who was raised nominally Catholic, and we attended progressive Christian churches. Even when he declared his agnosticism, he still liked the people at the church and continued attending. Then Chichen Itza happened.
Our kids were 7 and 5 when we went on a trip to Mexico and visited the ruins at Chichen Itza. We learned about the Mayan culture and about a special ball game in which the winner would be sacrificed to the gods to ensure good crops next season. There were other times when people were sacrificed to the gods, either to appease the gods or to ensure good weather/crops/etc. For some reason, this information hit me like a thunderbolt with the realization that the ancient Mayan religion and Christianity (and ancient Judaism) were no different with regard to blood sacrifice. The god(s) get angry, thus something has to die. This thought made me sick to my stomach. We were taught that somehow Christianity was different, that God is good and love, but no – God was no different from any other gods requiring a blood sacrifice for appeasement. I told my husband that I couldn’t go back to church, even though our progressive church focused primarily on teaching members to be good people and serving the community. I could not support any religion based on primitive blood sacrifice. For a decade I declared I was “taking a break from religion.” In reality, I wasn’t ready to admit that I might be an atheist, because I still felt strong aversion to the word. Atheists, I had been taught, had no values, had no moral compass, had no compassion, had nothing to live for … yet my husband eventually became an admitted atheist and he has some of the best values I have ever encountered. He cares about other people, he has purpose in life, and I am fortunate that he has shown me that an atheist can be an exemplary member of the human race without needing any “gods” in his life.
Inside, I was tormented with the concept of hell though. What if I was wrong? What if I had removed my children from church and any opportunity to be “saved”? What if I was single-handedly responsible for my children spending an eternity in hell? That thought nagged at me for years. I would push it away, but it came back again and again to haunt me. Yes, an educated, rational person who no longer believed the tenets of evangelical Christianity still had this fear. I started reading books by Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Christopher Hitchens, and other authors. My husband implored me to speak with a pastor friend whom we knew before I turned toward atheism. This puzzled me, but he said he wanted me to have a forum to speak with an educated Christian about my questions before walking away from the teachings of my upbringing. But for me, the door was closed. No amount of Christian apologetics could turn me around. I no longer feared hell, I no longer believed it existed, and I believed that the probability of a god or gods — especially the one depicted by Christians evangelical or otherwise – was near nil.
I haven’t “come out” to my Nashville family members or to my Catholic in-laws. I told one close friend from childhood who is a progressive Christian, and she didn’t seem surprised. Apparently, only about a quarter of our Christian school classmates remained in fundamentalism and most became progressive Christians. Any atheists have kept that information confidential.
My teen children are well-adjusted individuals with good values. I have asked them whether they are interested in pursuing any religions, and while they have friends from a variety of backgrounds – protestant Christian, Catholic Christian, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, no religion — they say they aren’t interested. They don’t even label themselves with regard to religion — my daughter was filling out the common application for college and asked me what she should put with regard to religion, and we settled on “none.” My kids aren’t afraid of hell, they don’t feel that they have to serve an invisible deity, yet they are kind humans who try to do the right thing and help others. Before my mom died a few years ago, she expressed that she hoped that all of her children and grandchildren would be “saved” before she died. I told her that we would all be fine. And they are saved — from the shame and fear inherent in fundamentalist Christianity.
The Houston Police Department (HPD) arrested at least 140 men in a 10-day sting at a massage-parlor-turned-brothel on Westheimer.
Among the men arrested was Emonte Moliere, whom the First Haitian Community Church lists as the senior pastor.
Public records and the arrest complaint obtained by Chron.com match the same address for Moliere and his wife.
The records also show that other than a minor traffic infraction, Moliere has no prior criminal history.
Moliere’s church bio states:
Ermonte Moliere was born on October 19, 1976, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. His father Raoul Moliere and mother Marie Fanfan Mercile together conceived five children. Pastor Ermonte Moliere has served diligently in ministry since his childhood. He was baptized at the age of 18 and two years later, he enrolled as a Sunday school teacher at “Mission de l’Eglise Evangelique Communautaire de Santo”. Empowered with God’s anointing, he helped people in his community to serve God and experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s power through redemption.
In 1997 Pastor Moliere graduated from high school at Lycée Alexandre Pétion and continued his studies in the sciences of Agronomy where he earned a license in management of natural resources in 2003 from “Université Caraibe”. 2 years later Pastor Ermonte Moliere married *****, and they now share joy in their two lovely daughters: ***** and **** and son ****.
Pastor Moliere graduated from the Theological School of Boulvard on October 15, 2004 located in Tabarre, Port-au-Prince, Haiti where he studied Theology. After working for 5 years for the “Conseil National de Financement Populaire, (CNFP)” he travelled to Fort Myers, Florida, in January 2010 to rejoined his wife. Once arrived in Fort Myers, Florida he started preaching the Word of God to his people. In late 2010, with Cenel Benel, he founded the church “Riocher de Delivrance” at Fort Myers, Florida.
Pastor Ermonte Moliere is committed to winning souls for Jesus-Christ and uses preaching, and formation to provide God’s Word to help people understand how important it is to have Christ in their life. His ministry is based in the scriptures “God has saved us through his only Son Jesus-Christ who accepted to give his life on the cross for our sins”, this is how we know what love is when Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”, John 10:11.
While he was collaborating and serving people, the people at the Church of Rock deliverance, He had a vision of God, in which God asked him to go to Houston, Texas to work in a ministry he reserved for him. Pastor Ermonte Moliere and his family accepted to travel to Houston, Texas where they did not have any family members, but God has planned everything because he gave the vison. When God gives vision, he provides means for it.
After 3 years of ministry in different churches in Houston, Texas God guided Pastor Moliere through the ministry he has prepared for him. He is now the Senior Pastor of First Haitian Community Church, an assembly where the people are dedicated to serve God and help spread his words according to Mark 16.15-16. Pastor Moliere’s emphasis on the need for spiritual growth and development through the teaching of God’s Word, has resulted in dramatically increased attendance at Bible Study and Sunday School. In addition, the Church School curriculum has been expanded to accommodate the participation of all age groups of the Church.
Keith Haskell, pastor of Bridges of Hope Community Church in Owatonna, Minnesota, has been charged with five counts of misdemeanor fifth degree assault, impersonating a peace officer, and felony use of tear gas to immobilize.
A pastor in southern Minnesota is facing charges for pretending to be a police officer and pepper spraying a teenager he caught shoplifting.
Keith Douglas Haskell, 55, faces five counts of misdemeanor fifth degree assault, in addition to the charge or impersonating a peace officer and felony use of tear gas to immobilize.
“I think he got what he deserves,” said Abraam Rodriguez, one of the teenagers at the center of the case.
Rodriguez said on Sept. 4, he and his cousin went to the Cash Wise grocery store. He admits his cousin shoplifted about $10 in snacks. In the documents, Haskell told officers he saw the teenagers grab cereal and fruit snacks without paying. He said he went outside to write down their license plate, then followed them when they left.
Rodriquez said he pulled his SUV into a nearby apartment parking lot because he didn’t want Haskell to know exactly where he lived.
According to the court documents, witnesses who live near the scene told investigators they could hear Haskell identifying himself out loud as a police officer and trying to pull the teenagers out of the SUV. Haskell is a pastor at Bridges of Hope Community Church.
“He’s like, ‘Put your hands up, put your hands up, I’m a cop. I need you to get out the vehicle,’” Rodriguez said.
In the documents, Rodriguez told officers his cousin swung at Haskell because the pastor aggressively pulled him out of the SUV. Haskell said he then pepper sprayed the teenager in self-defense.
When his cousin ran off, Rodriguez said he stayed put in the driver’s seat.
“I thought he was a police officer, that’s why I didn’t do anything,” Rodriguez said. “I’m not going to not follow orders of a cop.”
In the documents, Rodriguez told investigators that Haskell took his car keys from him and tried to take his cell phone away. Rodriguez was on the phone with him mom to call for help when he said he was pulled out of the SUV by Haskell.
When his mother came outside, she told officers at the scene Haskell had her son pinned up against the SUV. In the documents, Haskell admitted to police he was holding a baton at the time. He told officers that he told the teens he was trying to make a citizen’s arrest.
“I was actually pretty scared because if he was a cop and you see all those videos of cops, police brutality and stuff,” Rodriguez said.
Police took a can of pepper spray and a baton as evidence. When asked for a comment, Haskell referred WCCO to his attorney, Chris Ritts, who released a statement saying: “The police investigation is absurd and flawed. My client was the victim. We will fight these allegations in the courts.”
….
In an article titled, What Would Jesus Do to a Teenage Shoplifter, the City Pages reports:
Probably not what Keith Haskell is accused of doing. Haskell, 55, and a pastor at Bridges of Hope Community Church in Owatonna, faces numerous criminal charges for his ham-fisted attempt at vigilante justice against two criminals.
The perps in question? Two teenage boys, one of whom was trying to shoplift $10 worth of snacks from a Cash Wise grocery store.
The incident occurred on September 4, WCCO reports, when Haskell spotted the shoplifter pocket “cereal and fruit snacks without paying.” According to the Steele County Attorney criminal complaint against Haskell, the pastor went out to the parking lot to take down the license plate of the teens’ vehicle.
Haskell also followed the teenagers, who pulled into the parking lot of an apartment building, at which point Haskell approached, identified himself as a police officer, and told them to put their hands up. According to Abraam Rodriguez, one of the two boys involved, Haskell roughly grabbed for his cousin, the one who’d stolen the snacks.
The boy took a swing at Haskell, who responded by pepper-spraying him before he ran off. Haskell says he used the pepper-spray in self defense, but he’s facing a charge of unlawfully using of tear gas, a felony.
By that time, Rodriguez had used his cellphone called his mom for help. When she arrived, she found Haskell, who was holding a baton, had pinned Abraam against his SUV. Haskell would later tell police he was merely trying to execute a citizen’s arrest of the teenager.
Rodriguez, for his part, says he wishes Haskell had done the easier thing and called the actual cops.
“If I were to be in his shoes or whatever, I wouldn’t chase after people that stole candy from a store,” Rodriguez told WCCO.
Haskell faces five counts of misdemeanor assault, one of impersonating a peace officer, plus the felony tear gas charge. Haskell is due in court November 30. His defense attorney Chris Ritts told the station the charges have the whole situation flipped around.
“The police investigation is absurd and flawed,” Ritts says. “My client was the victim.”
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