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Disgraced Senior Pastor Robert Morris was allowed to resign on Tuesday. There are a lot of people, including his admitted victim, who think he should have been terminated. Someone in his position of moral authority must be held to a higher standard. He’s already admitted what he did and also acknowledged he’s been lying for years to cover up the criminal part. Cutting him any sort of break, other than the spiritual break of offering to pray for him, is total hypocrisy on the part of Gateway Church leadership.
Pastor gets off easy
Dallas-area Gateway Church angered a whole lot of their nationwide followers on June 18, when they “accepted the resignation of senior pastor Robert Morris.” The Board of Elders had been aware of an unpleasant affair in the early 1980’s involving a “young lady.”
The Christian thing to do is forgive the sin and move on, which they did when they hired Morris. The only problem is that they didn’t have the whole story. The fact just surfaced that the “young lady” was way too young. Twelve. That part isn’t just a sin. It’s a crime and Morris had help covering it up for years. He should have been terminated.
Blind Alfred Reed nailed it all the way back in 1929 when he wrote the song “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” It may be a dusty old song but well worth a listen. The original version, that is. It’s so spot-on it’s been warped, censored and destroyed with “remakes.” One line in particular stands out against today’s headlines. “Most all preachers preach for gold and not for souls.”
He was in 20’s. She was 12 years old. That wasn’t inappropriate behavior. It was rape and a felony. Robert Morris is a pedophile and should be in prison, not behind a pulpit in church. https://t.co/Pj0BEI980z
— Hey Jo 🤍 (@joe_jo4) June 17, 2024
At least, the ones in “megachurch” pulpits beaming their holier-than-thou-ness over the airwaves day and night in 6 languages. Like Senior Pastor Robert Morris. Gateway is scrambling to distance themselves by claiming that they didn’t know about it.
According to their statement, “the elders’ prior understanding was that Morris’s extramarital relationship, which he discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with ‘a young lady‘ and not abuse of a 12-year-old child.”
That’s because their trusted pastor sinned and lied. By allowing him to crawl away without a blemish on his work record with the church is dragging them right into the center of his controversy.
Heartbroken and appalled
The elders want all the millions of their viewers to know it’s okay to keep sending them ten percent of their paychecks each month.
They were “heartbroken and appalled” when they heard the truth. But not appalled enough to terminate the child abusing criminal pastor. Morris issued a statement of his own, confessing to molesting a minor while swearing up and down they never had actual intercourse.
“When I was in my early twenties, I was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying,” he explains. “It was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong.”
BREAKING: Days after allegations surfaced that he molested a 12-y-o girl, @PsRobertMorris has resigned from @GatewayPeople. The church claims it didn't know the victim was 12 years old or the length of the abuse. But victim says that's not true… 1/2 https://t.co/QYxjMAvcvZ
— Julie Roys (@reachjulieroys) June 18, 2024
It wasn’t a one-time occurrence. “This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years,” the pastor admits.
According to the victim, Cindy Clemishire, what the pastor did was even sicker because he criminally abused her for the first time on one of they holiest days of the year. She informed the press that “the abuse started on Christmas Day in 1982 and continued until 1987, when she told her parents.”
Apparently, the family helped Morris avoid criminal charges, acknowledging an incident occurred but not that it happened before she was a teen. They don’t seem to have reported it to police, either. “Though I am grateful that he is no longer a pastor at Gateway, I am disappointed that the Board of Elders allowed him to resign,” she laments. “He should have been terminated.“
