By James Fenton
London Evening Standard
September 24, 2010
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23881928-gay-sex-fraud-and-a-bishop-dripping-with-diamonds.do
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| Praise the Lord and pass the cash: Bishop Eddie Long believes his congregation has a duty to enrich him |
Bishop Eddie Long, one of the stately homophobes of the American South, was accused this week by three young men of having induced them, over the years, to have sex with him.
The charges, which the bishop, a high-octane preacher, vehemently denies, are not criminal. All of the young men were over 16, the Georgia age of consent, at the time. At issue are allegations of breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, fraud and other civil matters.
Nonetheless it would come as a blow to the 25,000-strong congregation of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church if the pattern of behaviour outlined in the three very similar complaints was shown to be correct, if there had indeed been “oral sodomy” at the bishop's guest house in Snapfinger Road, Lithonia. Sodomy in Snapfinger Road: you can see what the press might make of this.
The mega-church that Bishop Long built up from a core of 300 souls is one of the astonishing success-stories of the South. It is a great money-spinner. According to a report in 2005 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of Bishop Long's charities, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc, paid him more than $3 million between 1997 and 2000, in addition to a luxury home and a Bentley. If, as we read, Bishop Long appeared before his congregation “dripping with diamonds”, that might be part of the reason why.
“Jesus wasn't poor” is a rallying cry in this version of the faith. “We're not just a church, we're an international corporation,” said Bishop Long in an interview. “We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptising babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.”
This contempt for the traditional old gospel of poverty is expressed in a manner refreshingly straightforward. “You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering.”
Long described himself as representing “a paradigm shift” in the black church. He didn't want, the report tells us, to be like other pastors, dying broke while giving everything to congregations who “wanted them to live in poverty and preach to them about prosperity”.
Instead, in the bishop's model, the duty of the congregation was to enrich the pastor. “We have to come bearing gifts,” says a member of the church. “When you come before the priest and he gives a word to you, then it's your duty to meet the needs of the priest.”
The church is much more than just a church (in the sense of a place of worship). It runs financial services, education and athletics programmes, and, according to the legal complaints against Bishop Long, a Longfellows Youth Academy, providing tuition for young men between 13 and 18, training them to “love, live and lead” as they proceed on their “masculine journey”.
If the allegations are true, it was from such young men that Bishop Long would select his cohort of “Spiritual Sons” on whom he would bestow gifts of “cars, clothes, jewellery and electronics”. These Spiritual Sons, the plaintiffs say, entered into a private “covenant” with the bishop, which sounds strikingly like a form of gay marriage.
“Defendant Long typically engages in a private spiritual ceremony described as a covenant' between himself and each young Spiritual Son (the Covenant Ceremony'). The Covenant Ceremony includes an exchange of vows and assurances by Defendant Long that he will forever protect the young man from harm by anyone. Defendant Long uses various rituals in the ceremony including candles, exchange of jewelry, and discussion of Biblical verses that reinforce the spiritual and God-like connection between himself and the young man.”
This vow to protect the young man, in the case of the third complainant, would have had a specific meaning. The plaintiff's father had “not been a positive figure in his life” and Bishop Long told the boy that he would protect him and “never let another man hurt him like his father did”. He encouraged the boy to call him Daddy. Then the sexual touching sessions allegedly began in the guesthouse in Snapfinger Road, and the bishop “would discuss the Holy Scripture to justify and support the sexual activity”.
This private side of the deal that the Spiritual Sons found that they had signed up for may prove very hard to establish in court, since the young men's characters can easily be presented in a bad light. But it should not be difficult to determine whether the alleged pattern of exciting air travel by private jet and other gifts is supported by the evidence. We learn that on some trips the Bishop would use the pseudonym Dick Tracy when checking into hotels with his Spiritual Sons. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tells us that “according to online service Accurint, a Dick Tracy Long lives in Lithonia at the same address as Eddie L Long”.
The picture given in the legal documents is of young men introduced to a high-flying life, in which they get to see a bit of the world, travelling as far afield as New Zealand, and mingling with various celebrities and figures from the music industry. (One of Bishop Long's many sidelines is in music publishing.) Where the relationship between bishop and acolyte tended to run into difficulties was when the young men began to take up with girlfriends.
Sex certainly seems to lie at the heart of the Bishop's message. “God is potent. The word of God is his sperm,” he shouts in a clip you can see on YouTube, and “the job of the preacher is to bring fresh sperm”.
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