Category Archives: Scandal

Current Events, Scandal

Spinning Scandals Redux

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Most of you have read the post I did some time ago about the 4 steps of spinning fundamentalist scandals. Today, however, I was provided with such a stellar example of this process that I couldn’t help revisiting it.

To give some background, you can read the news item I posted on May 20th describing the arrest and subsequent suicide of Texas fundamentalist pastor Matt Jarrell. The story goes that Jarrell allegedly met a woman in a West Virginia bar (while his family thought he was in Pennsylvania) and then raped her while giving her a ride home.

But as if this story wasn’t already horrific enough, now fellow-fundy “Dr.” Dennis Corle (who credits himself with over over 60,500 souls saved) writes a glowing memorial to Jarrell in his publication “Revival Fires”.

The transcript is as follows:

Goodbye, Old Friend; See You On The Other Side

“”My heart is heavy today in the loss of a dear friend, Pastor Matt Jarrell.There is a lot of unsolved mystery concerning the last few days of his life. Rather than try to solve mysteries, let me mention what I know to be facts.

He was a preacher whose messages were greatly used of God to encourage,challenge and inspire folks to serve the Lord and keep on keeping on, even when times are tough. He loved his wife and children dearly and spoke almost non-stop about them when we were together.

He was one of the most generous and compassionate men that I have ever known and went the extra mile to be a blessing to me, as well as many other people, more times than I can count.

He had a tremendous burden for church planting and was actively involved in the establishment of several local churches. Every place that he served he built something rather than tearing something down. He labored to win souls, to salvage marriages, to recover backsliders, to grow new converts to maturity, to build a great work with high standards, and he took a very strong stand against sin and corruption at every level of society, including government.

Everything I have seen and known to be true only elevate my respect and deepened my friendship with him. I, along with many others,
will miss his friendship and fellowship, and the cause of Christ will feel
the impact of his absence. Please join me in prayer for his precious family, which includes his wife and four children, all of whom I know well and love dearly. They are a godly, close-knit family. Please also pray for his parents and other family members who will feel his loss keenly. If you would like to be a blessing to the family, please contact me through our office. Revival Fires! P.O. Box 245, Claysburg, PA 16625”

To summarize, Matthew was a real mensch and candidate for fundy sainthood…right up until he apparently raped some women and then took the coward’s way out in a West Virginia jail. In fact, the whole rape thing is so inconsequential, it’s not even worth mentioning. But hey, you’re on a roll, Dennis, don’t let me cramp your style.

Child Abuse, Scandal

Ernie Willis: Guilty

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The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.

After a decade of justice delayed for Tina Anderson, her rapist, Ernie Willis, has been found guilty on all four counts of rape brought against him. Finally, there is not only vindication for Tina and her supporters but also encouragement for other victims who have suffered under the hands of abusers who have taken a cowardly refuge behind a corrupt religious system. Bravo, Tina. Bravo.

I’m sure that we’ll hear much in the coming days from fundamentalists who seek to spin this story and question the facts. They’ll either be forced to do so or left to admit that their own system harbored a rapist for years and did not help his victim to find justice. Prepare yourselves to see character assassination and mudslinging on an epic scale.

But whatever they do to malign and tear down this verdict, they cannot change the facts. They cannot change the truth not matter what tales their cowardice compels them to concoct.

My heartfelt thanks goes out to Tina Anderson for being willing to face down her attacker and those who defended him. Thank you, Tina, from the bottom of my heart. This world is a better place with brave people like you in it.

Scandal

IFB Preacher Charged With Raping Woman in Texas (Update 1)

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Another fundamentalist pastor has been arrested for sex crimes, this time in West Virgina. “Dr.” Mathew D. Jarrell is the pastor of the Open Door Baptist Church in Mesquite, Texas.

According to The Charleston Gazette:

[T]he woman was approached by Jarrell, whom she did not know. She needed a ride home [from a Charleston bar], and he said he would take her. Instead, he drove to an area off Martins Branch Road, where he held the woman’s face down on the seat of his truck, forcibly pulled her pants down and sodomized her, according to the complaint.

After the woman escaped, she contacted police and described Jarrell and his truck. When a sheriff’s deputy detained Jarrell, he originally denied having sex with the woman, but later admitted to it, according to the complaint.

“According to family members, Jarrell was supposed to be in Pennsylvania,” Lt. Sean Crosier of the Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.

The church website is allegedly “down for maintenance” but the cached site pages report the following facts about Jarrell:

Pastor Jarrell was born in Louisa, Kentucky. He was saved while serving in the Army with the 160th Special Operations Task Force stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. While attending a church service, the preaching of Dr. Jack Hyles brought Holy Ghost conviction and Pastor Jarrell repented of his sins and received Jesus Christ as he heard the sermon entitled, “Judasitis.”

Pastor Jarrell joined Temple Baptist Church in Clarksburg, Tennessee, where God called him to preach. Pastor Jarrell attended Austin Peay State University, Hyles-Anderson College, Atlantic Baptist Bible College, and Calvary Baptist Seminary. In 2004, he accepted the pastorate at Open Door Baptist Church in Mesquite, Texas.

Jarrell has a wife and 4 children.

Update: Sources are now reporting that Matthew Jarrell has committed suicide while being detained facing these charges. A sad end to a sad story.

The church website now reads:

Thank you for visiting and we covet your prayers during this difficult time.

We will update this site as more information is available. However, during this time, we will continue to serve the Lord as we have for the past 46 years.

Hope to see you Sunday,
The Entire Church Membership

Child Abuse, Scandal

Defense Lawyers Claim “Clergy/Congregant Privilege” in the Tina Anderson Rape Case

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Here’s an interesting tidbit from the ABC 7 News about the ongoing trial of Ernie Willis for the rape of Tina Anderson.

Smukler [the judge in the Willis case] has yet to rule on whether Phelps must testify about admissions Willis made to him about the alleged assaults. Willis’ lawyers claim that they are privileged. Coull argued that Phelps had a lawyer present during the conversations and that undermines any privilege between a member of the clergy and a congregant

This is interesting on a couple of levels.

1. It means that Willis did talk to Phelps about his crimes AND had his lawyer present while he did so.

2. It means that Phelps is not voluntarily forthcoming about this conversation and the lawyers are trying to keep him from having to testify about what Willis told him.

3. The lawyers are invoking a religious privilege that is normally reserved for confessions made in the Roman Catholic church. So is Phelps tacitly agreeing that Willis was making a Roman-style confession to him…with his lawyer present?

The longer this case goes the more Phelps appears to not only be ignorant and impotent as a pastor but also to be plain evil. If you want the truth to come out, why not just take the stand, Chuck? Why not just tell the prosecution that you’ll make a clean breast of it and that there’s no such thing as a clergy/congregant privilege in an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church?

Someone needs to be asking these questions…

Bob Jones University, Scandal

Fundy Pastor Caught Lying About Being A Navy SEAL

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Meet Jim Moats, BJU grad and pastor of the Christian Bible Fellowship Church of Newville, PA. It seems that Jim wanted to really wanted to impress his church and make them believe he was a real tough guy. So he told them all he was a former Navy SEAL who was decorated for his valor in Vietnam. Only problem is…he wasn’t. In fact, He had never even been to Vietnam.

Whoops.

As reporter Liz Goodwin writes:

Moats told his church for five years that he was a former SEAL, and even once wore the elite program’s gold Trident medal around town. He elaborated on that tale when his local paper contacted him last week as it was reporting a story about the rigors of SEAL training in the wake of the SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

Among other things, Moats said he was subjected to waterboarding when he trained at Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach in 1971 and was assigned dishwashing duty for his bad attitude. “I had almost no discipline. I was as wild as they came. That was my nemesis,” he told the paper. “They weren’t looking for a guy who brags to everyone he is a SEAL. They wanted somebody who was ready but had an inner confidence and didn’t have a braggadocio attitude.”

Several former SEALs wrote into The Patriot-News casting doubt on the reverend’s account of his service.

One of the SEAL’s also added this:

“We deal with these guys all the time, especially the clergy. It’s amazing how many of the clergy are involved in those lies to build that flock up,” said retired SEAL Don Shipley. Shipley also speculated the waterboarding and kitchen details came from the action depicted in “Under Siege.”

So he not only lied and wore medals that he hadn’t earned but he also took his plot points from an R-rated movie that contained strong violence, language and brief nudity?

For Shame, Fundy Pastor! For Shame!