UNITED STATES
Baptist News
In the works for 10 months, a story in the February 2106 Washingtonian brings to the public details of an alleged conspiracy to cover up sexual abuse by a prominent evangelical megachurch.
By Bob Allen
The story behind a sex-abuse scandal at an evangelical megachurch near Washington, D.C., kept out of court by a statute of limitations, has hit newsstands in a long-form story in the Washingtonian, a monthly lifestyle magazine read by 400,000.
Written by Tiffany Stanley, managing editor of the online journal Religion & Politics who formerly worked for The New Republic and Religion News Service, the “The Fall of a Mega Church” details what some have called “the largest sexual abuse scandal to hit the evangelical church.”
The magazine, available online only by paid subscription, contrasts the decline of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., with former pastor and Sovereign Grace Ministries founder C.J. Mahaney, who came away relatively unscathed.
“A college dropout with no formal training, he became an in-demand public speaker and befriended influential New Calvinist leaders,” the article introduces Mahaney — “a group that included prominent Baptist minister John Piper; Albert Mohler, president of the powerful Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Mark Dever, leader of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church, a go-to place of worship for evangelical Hill staffers.”
No longer officially in leadership of Sovereign Grace Ministries, Mahaney now is senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Louisville, Ky., a church plant which recently joined the Southern Baptist Convention.
Along with Mohler, Dever and Presbyterian Ligon Duncan, Mahaney is a founder of Together for the Gospel, a biennial preaching conference first held in 2006. Mahaney dropped out of the T4G gathering in 2014, saying he didn’t want public questions about his handling of the scandal to be a distraction.
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