Over at Essence.com there is a frank piece about adultery in the church by Dr. Betty Price, the wife of televangelist Dr. Freddy Price, Jr. of the Ever Increasing Faith Ministry. He’s from the “prosperity gospel” approach to Christianity.
Apparently the rampant fornication by the men up in the pulpit (with the wives looking the other way), has reached the boiling point for Price, who started receiving letters from women who were engaged in affairs with pastors. It’s not news that it’s going on—what’s newsworthy is this area of “dirty laundry” in the church has not been discussed so publicly or critically by someone within the flock. A common thread—access to money, and coercion by the pastor using biblical bullsh*t—may not be surprising to some, but a whole slice of the public may not know the dynamics going on in this sphere. Her book is sure to rock more than a few boats in a faith community rife with denial and hypocrisy.
The first letter was from an older, mature woman. She’d just bought a luxury condo but lost her government job after 25 years of service. Her self-esteem was very low. She didn’t know what to do because she was financially strapped. And, she was older and didn’t think she would be able to find another job in this economy. She reached out to her bishop for counseling. They began an affair. It’s been going on for three years. The second woman was from a different church. She works on a committee in which she interacts with her pastor daily. They began spending long hours together. Then the affair began. Now, she is desperately trying to get out but doesn’t know how.
Both of these women said they know what they are doing is wrong but expressed they don’t have the strength to leave. Both ministers have threatened and coerced these women. They told them, “If they stop the affair then they would be dishonoring God.” However, both women expressed they were benefiting financially in the relationships. They were stuck. Unsure of what to do.
Do you even have a second thought that these same women probably condemn LGBTs, even as they engage in this behavior? Price recounts her own brush with her husband’s “itch”, and this is another reason she has written the book ‘Warning to Ministers, Their Wives and Their Mistresses’.
It bothers me to know many ministers have mistresses sitting right up in the church. Their wives and children are subjected to public humiliation. Some ministers even have children with their mistresses and leave their wives. I’ve talked to a lot of women and they say that in all the churches they’ve attended the ministers have been unfaithful and run around. I personally know so many that it’s scary. These women know what they are doing. Don’t be fooled. I wrote my book because I want to expose these types of men, and women, who do this.
More below the fold.
Well, the blame starts at the top. If these married ministers can’t keep their peckers in their pants regardless of the women throwing themselves at them, they shouldn’t lead the flock and talk about commitment, fidelity and sin. They do need to be exposed, just as the wives who look the other way because they see their man as a big fat wallet. What is the point of religious principles and beliefs if you can’t even handle the Ten Commandments? How can you selectively condemn the LGBTs sitting in the pews? If you cruise around the web site, there’s a section that condemns homosexuality through exclusion by by design in the section “Avoiding the Sex Trap”:
Too many Christians are ensnared in the sex trap. Although God created sex for the enjoyment of a man and a woman in the context of marriage and for procreation, both fornication and adultery are weakening the fabric of the Body of Christ and making its witness of no effect. Many are falling into the sex trap because they are seeking love in all the wrong places rather than submitting themselves to God. I Thessalonians 4:3 says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality…&qhot; Sexual immorality is not only pervasive in the world, but the Church. Sexual immorality hinders a Christian from being all they can be in God.
Of course it doesn’t state that sexual orientation itself is a sin, as far as I can tell. The church seems to do the usual head fake of “you can be alone, celibate and give when the basket comes around.”
Of course the bottom line is that those black LGBTs who are sitting there closeted (and trust me, more than half of the congregation probably knows you’re a homo), silently taking the biblical beating from the adulterer in the pulpit, the hypocrisy will continue.
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The problem is the concept of sex. You’ve got people who get shoe-horned into marriages by economics or by child birth or by family pressure or just by a society more ready to say, “Run out and get hitched!” than “Hang on and think this through”. The idea is that you’re not allowed to get laid until you tie the knot. So you’ve got all these horny people running around that think their only form of release is the honeymoon.
And then you get a religious figure in place who is allowed to break all the rules, because he was the one that got to make them all. So the secret double-standard becomes the real sex trap. And “everyone shut up about it” becomes the only real commandment. Pleasure and pain get shoved under the rug because it makes everyone uncomfortable. And women who should be out dating and socializing and falling in and out of love normally get shoved into a religious straight jacket. And the alpha men have no one to hold them accountable, so they get to keep their affairs in the closet where they pull all the strings while castigating the evil outsiders for whatever the taboo du jour happens to be.