UNITED STATES
The Wartburg Watch
“It’s reckless and callous when clergymen give prominent positions to colleagues who face charges of concealing child sex crimes. It actually makes churches more dangerous. It discourages other church members and staff who see, suspect or suffer child sex crimes from speaking up. It emboldens those who commit and conceal child sex crimes.”
David Clohessy, Director of SNAP (statement from recent press release)
Today may be April Fool’s Day, but it’s no joke that the ‘protest’ against C.J. Mahaney speaking at the upcoming T4G conference is growing by the day. Mahaney, who moved the Sovereign Grace Ministries Churches headquarters from Gaitherburg, Maryland to Louisville, Kentucky, plans to deliver a message entitled Sustained in Suffering by the Saga of Job. As senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, Mahaney did a series on Job from which his talk will most likely be taken. I have listened to a number of those messages, and it sounded to me like he was playing the victim card.
With the recent arrest of an alleged pedophile at Covenant Life Church (CLC), attention is once again focused on Mahaney, who served as CLC’s senior pastor for 27 years. It hasn’t been that long since Nate Morales, a former youth group leader at CLC, was convicted of sexually abusing young boys and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Mahaney, who was named in a lawsuit that was dismissed on a technicality, has never been exonerated. To be clear, Mahaney has not been accused of pedophilia but of concealing pedophiles/failing to report them to the proper authorities at his former church.
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