SOUTHLAKE (TX)
The Roys Report [Chicago IL]
June 27, 2024
By Julie Roys
(Opinion)—Gateway Church Pastor Robert Morris has been exposed as an alleged child molester and defenders of John MacArthur are outraged.
“If parents come to a church & say a pastor has sexually molested their 12 year old daughter, you call the police. Full Stop,” posted Daily Wire Culture Reporter Megan Basham on X.
Similarly, prominent Southern Baptist Pastor Tom Buck posted about Morris, “Not only should he not be in ministry, he should be in jail. There should be no statute of limitations for molesting a child!”
(Please see original article for additional information.)
Podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey likewise chimed in: “Let’s (g)et something straight: repentance and restoration does not include restoring an accused abuser to a leadership position . . . He can be forgiven. He can be restored to the body of Christ. But he failed to fulfill the requirements for overseer God gives us in His Word . . . A person like this should NOT be a pastor again.”
I agree with these sentiments. But it’s ironic that none of these righteously indignant commentors said anything when I exposed John MacArthur two years ago for protecting pedophiles at his church. Basham, Buck, and Stuckey—like much of the evangelical establishment—continued to support and praise MacArthur, despite overwhelming evidence of MacArthur’s misconduct.
Last February—two years after MacArthur was exposed—Basham posted about MacArthur’s 55 years in ministry, saying he had “enduring relevance for new generations.”
Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals responded with a clipping I’d published in a 2022 article of MacArthur praising the “steadfast faithfulness” of David Gray. Gray is a former teacher at MacArthur’s church, who is serving 21 years to life for sexually molesting his children. And he was serving time for this heinous crime when MacArthur publicly praised him!
“Tweets like this are a great reminder how little you, and folks in your sphere, actually give a damn about protecting children,” Whitaker posted on X. “Imagine saying this to a man you hired who is in prison for molesting his own children.”
As if that weren’t bad enough, three years prior to Gray’s conviction, MacArthur publicly excommunicated Gray’s wife, Eileen, because she refused to take David back into her home.
At the time of the excommunication, MacArthur didn’t know about David’s sexual abuse. But he did know about David’s physical abuse.
Eileen had told MacArthur’s Grace Community Church (GCC) that David had tried to suffocate one of their children and had obtained an order of protection from her husband. GCC knew about the order of protection. And in letters from GCC I published, the church repeatedly pressured Eileen to drop the order of protection!
David had also confessed his abuse to a GCC pastor during counseling. In one of my 2022 articles, I included a sworn court statement from Eileen’s hometown pastor, Alvin Barber, who confirmed that GCC knew about David’s horrific abuse—but urged Eileen to take David back anyway.
“I have listened to one of the counseling sessions on tape between (GCC Pastor) Carey Hardy, David, and Eileen and found that Eileen was being told to just accept her husband as he was and submit to him, even in spite of his admitted abuse of her and their children,” Barber wrote. “Thankfully Eileen has chosen the legal protection of herself and her children over the obvious intimidation and questionable counsel of Carey Hardy and Grace Community Church.”
My reporting on MacArthur’s cruel mishandling of the David and Eileen Gray situation has been confirmed by Christianity Today and former GCC Elder and Attorney Hohn Cho. But to this day, MacArthur has refused to repent for what he has done. And his supporters have only doubled-down—not only in their defense of him, but their attacks against me.
Tom Buck dismissed my reporting on MacArthur by saying it was part of a conspiracy “to deconstruct conservative evangelicalism and stand against the social Justice movement.”
This is absurd because I am a conservative evangelical!
But for the past two years, MacArthur defenders have lied about me and my reporting—all in an effort to protect a celebrity pastor who has clearly protected abusers and punished victims.
Perhaps the most egregious lies were published by Stuckey. In a video, she falsely claimed that I “had it out for MacArthur.” As evidence, she claimed that I accused MacArthur “of being a prosperity preacher, which if you know anything about John MacArthur—he is not at all a prosperity preacher.”
I never accused MacArthur of being a prosperity preacher. I published an article, noting that MacArthur was an “anti-Prosperity Gospel preacher,” but had prospered greatly from his $130 million ministry empire.
Stuckey also mischaracterized me as being “on the progressive end” without offering any evidence to support her claim. And she grossly mischaracterized my reporting on MacArthur’s mishandling of the David Gray case.
She asserted that MacArthur didn’t know about David Gray’s abuse of Eileen and their kids when he excommunicated Eileen in 2002. Her basis for this was that David Gray was convicted of sexually abusing his kids in 2005.
But as I stated earlier, MacArthur and GCC clearly knew about David Gray’s physical abuse of Eileen and her kids in 2002. They just didn’t know about the sexual abuse.
But Stuckey either didn’t read my articles—or she purposefully obfuscated the facts. Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals brilliantly exposes this in a video critiquing Stuckey, which I highly recommend watching.
What’s clear is that neither Stuckey, nor Buck, nor Basham truly care about abuse victims. They care about protecting MacArthur and their Reformed, anti-Charismatic tribe.
The only reason they’re calling out Robert Morris and Gateway Church is because Morris is a prosperity preacher and Charismatic.
The same could also be said about Justin Peters, who’s likewise continued to promote MacArthur, knowing full well the overwhelming evidence against him.
Yet, when evidence surfaced about Morris’ abuse, Peters was quick to platform Pastor Stephen LeBlanc, who had damning evidence against Morris. I could hardly stomach hearing Peters express shock and disgust over Morris, knowing Peters has been mum about MacArthur’s shocking mishandling of the David Gray case.
Certainly, what Morris did to Cindy Clemishire is not worse than what David Gray did to his children. But Gray isn’t the only pedophile MacArthur has protected.
As I also reported two years ago, MacArthur likewise protected Paul Guay, a former GCC pastor who confessed to MacArthur in 1979 that he molested his daughter, Wendy Guay.
My exposé on Guay included a 2003 written declaration from former GCC member John Tucker, who was there when Guay confessed to MacArthur. I also talked to Tucker, who recounted the events to me just as he had written in his declaration.
I also published a 1979 handwritten letter from MacArthur to Wendy Guay. In the letter, MacArthur writes that he’s “so sorry about all the problems you have been through, but I believe the Lord is working in very special ways. Your dad is really sad about it all and we have met and talked at length about the situation.”
MacArthur writes that Paul Guay will continue to be “a faithful part of our staff” and urges Wendy to forgive her father.
Guay stayed on staff at GCC for three more years before being dismissed for sexual misconduct with a GCC secretary. Guay then went on to serve another 40 years in pastoral ministry and God only knows how many others he abused in that time! (Paul Guay died in 2012.)
In 2003, Wendy learned that her father had sexually molested other people in her family. So, she contacted MacArthur, asking for his help confronting her father’s elders with the information.
In an email I published, MacArthur stunningly denies Paul Guay ever confessed to him. Yet, MacArthur concludes the email with shocking callousness, saying to Guay’s victim, “I’m not sure why all this has become an obsession for you after so many years . . .”
With this story in mind, someone named Rachael Anne confronted Megan Basham on X, following her post last week about Morris.
“And if the pastor is employed at Grace Community Church, and the pastor who’s told about it is John MacArthur? What then?” Rachael Anne wrote.
Basham replied, “MacArthur denies he was ever told such. Roys is going by records created many years after the fact, nothing from the time period iirc other than JM’s letter to Wendy which does not specify the ‘trouble’ in question . . .”
This response reveals just how disingenuous Basham truly is.
All Dee Parsons had to go on when Cindy Clemishire told Dee her story was Cindy’s first-hand account and a vague reference to what Cindy described in a book Morris had published. Yet, Basham doesn’t discredit Dee’s story for lack of evidence.
Similarly, I had Wendy’s first-hand account of abuse by Paul Guay, and John Tucker’s first-hand account of Paul Guay’s confession to John MacArthur.
But I also had the statement Tucker had written in 2003—the year Wendy confronted her father’s elders with evidence of his pattern of abuse. I also reported testimony by Wendy’s mother, who corroborated Wendy and Tucker’s story.
Most notably, I have the incriminating handwritten letter from MacArthur himself. Though it’s true MacArthur didn’t “specify the ‘trouble’ in question,” given all the other information I reported, what other plausible explanation does Basham or anyone at GCC have? No one from GCC has ever offered any alternative explanation—and I’ve repeatedly asked for one.
The bottom line is that there’s a mountain of evidence showing that MacArthur protected pedophiles and harmed their victims. Yet, he has never owned it or apologized. And his supporters don’t care.
So please, spare us your indignation over what Robert Morris did to Cindy Clemishire until you’re ready to call out John MacArthur for what he did to Wendy Guay and Eileen Gray. Your hypocrisy is glaring—and none of us buy your alleged outrage.