Trump Evangelical Spiritual Advisor Caught In Sex Scandal
Another sexual scandal has enveloped yet another of trump’s spiritual advisors while others have become embroiled in various ethical and criminal lapses.
The latest revelations come just weeks after trump was found guilty of filing false records to cover up a sexual relationship with an adult entertainment star.
The Rev. Robert Morris, a spiritual advisor to trump and pastor of Gateway Church, one of the country’s largest megachurches, resigned last week after admitting that he had “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a woman who says he sexually abused her when she was just 12 years old.
Morris, a strong trump supporter, was named to then-candidate trump’s 25-person, right wing, Christian, Evangelical Executive Advisory Board during the 2016 presidential campaign. The list had two women and the rest are men. The evangelical advisors offered spiritual counsel and advice on moral and ethical issues arising during the campaign along with vital political support. They attended meetings at the White House, exchanged calls, texts and emails with administration staffers and they occasionally prayed with the president. Many are back on board to back for trump’s 2024 presidential bid.
Gateway’s services draw 25,000 people a week, making it the ninth-largest church in the country. Gateway’s YouTube channel has nearly half a million subscribers, and the church’s worship music was streamed more than 300 million times last year. Gateway also hosted a trump fundraiser during the 2020 campaign, where Morris explicitly offered thanks to God “for this administration.”
In past years, Morris has been repeatedly accused by tax experts of violating the law that prohibits churches from endorsing political candidates.
The latest scandal came to light after Cindy Clemishire, a 54-year-old grandmother of three from Oklahoma, told The Wartburg Watch that Morris had sexually abused her beginning in 1982, when she was 12. The Wartburg Watch is a religious watchdog blog that focuses on church issues involving authoritarianism, complementarianism, sexism and spiritual abuse in churches.
In a statement issued on Friday to Gateway’s elders, Morris admitted that “in my early twenties, I was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying.” Morris described the behavior as “petting and not intercourse” and said it happened “on several occasions over the next few years.”
Clemishire, however, said the abuse was much deeper and over a much longer period of time. She said it started after Morris asked her to come to his room when he stayed with her family for Christmas in 1982. She was 12 and he was 20 at the time. Clemishire said Morris molested her and ordered her not to say anything about his behavior “because it will ruin everything.” The abuse continued for years before Clemishire confided in a close friend, prompting Morris’ wife to find out and Morris to step down from the ministry, according to the blog.
Morris eventually returned to the church and in 2000 founded Gateway Church, a Bible-based, evangelistic, spirit-empowered church. Last week, the board of elders accepted Morris’s resignation as senior pastor and retained a law firm to investigate the report of past abuses from 1982–87.
“The elders’ prior understanding was that Morris’s extramarital relationship, which he had discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with a ‘young lady’ and not abuse of a 12-year-old child,” the elders’ statement said.
The church website claims it is “all about people because God is all about people. One of the ways we express our love for Him is through our love for people, and we do this by helping people who come to Gateway grow in their relationship with the Lord.”
Morris and his wife, Debbie, have been married 44 years and have three children and nine grandchildren. Morris also is chancellor of The King’s University (TKU), an accredited evangelical ministry in Southlake, Texas, and is the bestselling author of numerous books, including “The Blessed Life,” “Dream to Destiny,” “The God I Never Knew” and “Grace, Period.”
In 2020, Trump visited the Dallas campus of Gateway Church as part of a trip that included a fundraising dinner. Trump and senior administration officials spoke at the church about several issues, including the George Floyd protests and the coronavirus pandemic.
Morris is the latest in a line of trump’s evangelical advisors who have been accused of various sexual improprieties and moral and ethical lapses. Others include:
James MacDonald
The Rev. James MacDonald, formerly senior paster of Harvest Bible Chapel megachurch in Rolling Meadows, Ill., also hosted the church’s former broadcast ministry, “Walk in the Word.”
MacDonald was fired from Harvest Bible Chapel in 2019 after more than 30 years as senior pastor as a result of allegations that he had engaged in conduct “harmful to the best interests of the church.” Former Harvest members, elders and staff accused MacDonald of bullying, sexual harassment, authoritarian behavior, lack of transparency in finances and misappropriation of church funds.
In January 2019, MacDonald took an “indefinite sabbatical from all preaching and leadership,” and said in a statement that he has “…battled cycles of injustice, hurt, anger, and fear which have wounded others without cause” and that as a result he has “…carried great shame about this pattern in certain relationships that can only be called sin.”
A month later, MacDonald was fired from Harvest by the church’s elders after disclosure of alleged recordings of MacDonald making inappropriate comments. In the recordings, MacDonald joked about orchestrating a plot to blackmail Harold Smith, the CEO of Christianity Today magazine, by planting illegal child pornography on Smith’s computer.
In May 2019, radio personality and personal friend Mancow Muller, said that MacDonald had, on two different occasions in 2018, asked Muller if he knew of a hitman for hire. Similarly, former Harvest bodyguard Emmanuel Bucur said MacDonald had asked him in 2015 to kill MacDonald’s former son-in-law.
On March 22, 2023, McDonald was arrested for allegedly assaulting a 59-year-old woman in a parking lot. Police said that MacDonald, 62, was parking his truck when he hit a vehicle in an adjacent spot. When the woman got out of the other vehicle, MacDonald allegedly “jumped out of his truck and attacked the victim,” according to police. A gun also was found in MacDonald’s truck.
Ralph Reed
Years before he was named as a trump advisor, Reed resigned as leader of the Christian Coalition amid a federal investigation into charges made by the Christian Coalition’s former chief financial officer. Reed then moved to Georgia at a time when the coalition’s finances were collapsing, and the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Election Commission were investigating.
Reed was a political consultant and lobbyist and was the first executive director of the Christian Coalition during the early 1990s. He ran for the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia but lost the primary election. Reed started the Faith and Freedom Coalition in June 2009. Reed and his wife JoAnne Young were married in 1987 and have four children. He is a member of the Council for National Policy.
Jack Graham
The Rev. Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, was named in a May 2022 report on sex abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. The report said Graham had allowed youth music minister John Langworthy to remain in his post at Prestonwood Baptist Church after Langworthy had admitted to church officials that he had molested at least one student in the late 1980s.
Langworthy later was a youth music minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., where he pleaded guilty to five of eight counts of molesting five boys between the ages of 6 and 13 between 1980 and 1984.
Ronald Floyd
The Rev. Ronald Wayne Floyd resigned as Southern Baptist executive on Oct. 14, 2021, in the midst of a sexual abuse scandal.
Floyd was the Senior Pastor of Cross Church, formerly First Baptist Springdale, a Southern Baptist megachurch in Northwest Arkansas, and served as the 61st president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2014–2016. In October 2019, at a conference about caring for sexual abuse victims in Christian contexts, Rachael Denhollander referred to abusive treatment of a sexual abuse victim by Floyd and other leaders at the Executive Committee.
Denhollander is a lawyer and former gymnast and was the first woman to publicly accuse Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor, of sexual assault. Nassar admitted guilt in a plea agreement and was sentenced to life in prison. Before he was sentenced, more than 200 women gave testimonies about his abuse.
In May 2021, internal whistle blower reports alleged that Floyd had sought to intimidate victims, advocates, and stall progress in the sexual abuse inquiry within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Jerry Falwell Jr.
Jerry Falwell Jr., the son of conservative televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., resigned in 2020 as president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., after he posted a photo to social media which showed him with his pants unzipped and his arm around the waist of a woman whose shorts were similarly unzipped. Falwell claimed that his wife had had an affair and that they had been targets of blackmail. The next day Reuters published a story in which the man with whom Falwell’s wife had an affair claimed that Falwell regularly watched him engaging in sexual activities with Falwell’s wife. The next day, Falwell resigned from Liberty University.
In November 2016, Falwell said that President-elect trump had offered him the position of Secretary of Education but that he turned down the offer citing personal reasons and because he did not want to leave Liberty University for more than two years. On January 26, 2016, Falwell endorsed trump for the Republican nomination. It was later revealed, in a secretly recorded conversation with comedian Tom Arnold that trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, had helped Falwell recover compromising photos prior to endorsing trump.
In April 2017, Falwell referred to Trump as the “dream president” for evangelicals and cited “reuniting Israel with America” and Trump’s appointment of “people of faith” in his administration as the reasons why evangelicals support Trump.
Ethically-challenged clergymen for trump include Sean Feucht, a Christian singer, songwriter, former worship leader at Bethel Church, and the founder of the “Let Us Worship” movement. Feucht also ran unsuccessfully as a Republican in California’s 3rd congressional district. After his defeat, Feucht hosted large outdoor worship gatherings to protest government restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Feucht and 50 other worship leaders visited trump for a faith briefing at the White House amid the run-up to trump’s first impeachment in December 2019. “We just laid our hands on him and prayed for him. It was like a real intense, hardcore prayer,” Feucht said.
Darrel Scott
The Rev. Darrell C. Scott is a pastor, radio station owner/host, and a former advisor to trump. Scott is a co-founder of the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and he Michael Cohen co-founded the National Diversity Coalition for Trump.
In 2011, Scott was one of the first African-American pastors to support trump for president and was a key figure in leading other African-American pastors to attend meetings at Trump Tower.
After the 2016 presidential election, Scott described the Democratic Party as “pimps” who “pimped out the inner city” like a “pimp stands next to a prostitute.” On February 1, 2017, trump responded positively to Scott’s suggestion that Chicago gang leaders wanted to meet to help reduce gun violence. The next day, Scott said he had “misspoken” due to lack of sleep when he said Chicago’s “top gang thugs” would “lower the body count” if new federal programs were provided. On August 1, 2018, Scott said during a White House gathering of faith leaders that he thought Trump would be “the most pro-Black president” in his lifetime.
Gregory Locke
The Rev. Gregory Duane Locke is a non-denominational evangelical Protestant pastor. As the founder of Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., Locke kept his church open through outbreaks of COVID-19, and claimed that it was a “fake pandemic.” He said people who wore masks to his church would be asked to leave, and discouraged vaccination among his congregation.
Locke was in Washington, D.C., during the January 6 attack on the Capitol by trump supporters. He condemned the violence but maintained, without evidence, that it had been instigated by antifa. Locke has been a speaker at several stops on the far right wing, pro-trump ReAwaken America Tour, which features conspiracy theories about vaccines and the 2020 presidential election.
During a sermon on January 23, 2022, Locke claimed that obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism spectrum disorder “could be” forms of demonic possession. On February 2, 2022, Locke held an event of burning of books and materials related to witchcraft and the occult. During a sermon on February 13, he claimed to have discovered six “witches” within his congregation during an exorcism and threatened to expose their names.
During the early days of the bombing campaign in Gaza in October-November 2023, Locke advocated for violence against Palestinians and called on Israel to launch missiles to destroy the Dome of the Rock and called Islam a Satanic cult.
Paula White-Cain
White is a televangelist and a proponent of prosperity theology, which is part of the Word of Faith movement, which teaches that divine favor is expressed in material and financial blessing, and that giving to ministries unlocks the favor.
She was chair of the evangelical advisory board in trump’s administration and delivered the invocation at his inauguration. In November 2019, trump appointed her special advisor to the Faith and Opportunity Initiative at the Office of Public Liaison. She used her religious notoriety to seek votes for trump when she warned that “Christians that don’t support President Trump will have to answer to God,”
A day after trump lost the 2020 election, White was seen in a video, leading impassioned prayer and speaking in tongues. She offered the opening prayer before the rally that precipitated the January 6 Capitol attack.
White has been married four times, first as a teenager when she became pregnant a year after she converted to Christianity. A second marriage ended in divorce as did her third to Pastor Randy White, which lasted from 1989 to 2007. In 2010, White was photographed leaving a hotel in Rome holding hands with televangelist Benny Hinn who said “a friendship did develop” though “the relationship is over.” Both denied an affair.
In late 2014, White became engaged to musician Jonathan Cain of the rock band Journey. Cain had finalized his divorce from his second wife and became engaged to White, who he had been seeing during his marriage. They married on April 27, 2015.
Richad D. Land
Richard D. Land was the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., from July 2013 until his retirement in 2021. He was president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention before he resigned after making controversial comments over the Trayvon Martin case.
Land accused the Obama administration and civil rights leaders of using the Trayvon Martin case to stir up racial tension and “gin up the black vote” for Obama in the 2012 presidential election. Martin was an unarmed, 17-year-old African-American from Miami Gardens, Fla., who was fatally shot in Sanford, Fla., by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic American worker at the complex where Martin died.
James Dobson Jr.
James Clayton Dobson Jr. is an evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder of “Focus on the Family,” which he led from 1977 until 2010. In the 1980s, he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesmen for conservative social positions in American public life.
Dobson was an ally of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore starting in the early 1990s when Moore refused to remove a Ten Commandments display from the Alabama Judicial Building. Moore was removed from office for judicial misconduct. He later ran for U.S. Senate in 2017 but was accused by several women of sexually assaulting them when they were minors. Through it all, Dobson remained supportive of Moore’s political campaigns.
In 1998, “Focus on the Family” established a program called “Love Won Out” which promoted conversion therapy, the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to make gay people straight.
After the 2012 mass shooting and deaths of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Dobson said in a broadcast that the rampage was a judgement by God because of American acceptance of gay marriage and legal abortion. Dobson also said that mass shootings like the 2019, massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that killed 23 people and injured 22 others, happened because “the LGBTQ movement is closing in on the God-inspired and established institution of the family.”
Kenneth Max Copeland
Copeland is a televangelist associated with the charismatic movement. He is the founder of Eagle Mountain International Church Inc. (EMIC), based in Tarrant County, Texas. Like White, Copeland also preaches prosperity theology.
Copeland has been married three times and has amassed significant wealth during his career, with a reported net worth of $750 million. In 2008, the ministry owned five airplanes, and continued to purchase more. Copeland’s use of private jets, luxury cars and lavish houses has been widely criticized.
Copeland and his wife were featured in a 2015 episode of “Last Week Tonight” , where host John Oliver criticized the Copelands for using tax laws to live in a $6.3 million mansion as the parsonage allowance for their home is not subject to income taxes, for using church donations to buy a $20 million jet that was used for trips to a ski resort and a private game ranch and for promotion of healing through faith and skepticism of medicine.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Copeland claimed that the pandemic had ended or would soon end and that his followers would be healed from the virus. He encouraged followers to continue giving to his ministry, even if they had lost their jobs.
Before the 2016 election, Copeland said that Christians who did not vote for trump would be guilty of murder, referring to the pro-choice stance of Hillary Clinton. He said that trump was “led by the Spirit of God.”
John Burns
Burns is an evangelical minister, televangelist and political candidate who is the pastor of the Harvest Praise & Worship Center in South Carolina. He is a member of the current Pastors for Trump organization.
Burns unsuccessfully ran for the Congress in 2018 and 2022 and has trump’s endorsement in his current bid to represent the 3rd congressional district in the 2024 election. Burns is co-founder of the NOW Television Network.
Burns claimed to have held a bachelor of science degree from North Greenville University and had served six years in the U.S. Army Reserve. In August 2016, the claims were disproved by CNN. Burns said the false claims about his life on his website were the result of the website being hacked. Later, he admitted that he had lied about his education, but said he was attacked because he is “a black man supporting Donald Trump for president.”
Burns offered the benediction on the first day of the 2016 Republican National Convention. In August 2016, Burns was criticized after retweeting a digitally manipulated image of Hillary Clinton in blackface.
Burns called for the arrest of supportive parents of transgender children, comparing them and pro-LGBTQ teachers to the leaders of the Hitler Youth. He further called for their conviction for treason.
Many of the 2016 evangelical leaders are back on board for trump’s 2024 presidential bid. Returnees include Paula White; Ben Carson, the doctor and author who served in trump’s cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development; James Dobson; and former congressman and GOP presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann, who compared America under President Joe Biden to Israel under Pharaoh.
Another group, Pastors For Trump, formed in 2016 by avowed Christian nationalist, Jackson Lahmeyer, and is mobilizing evangelicals again for trump.
“There has been no president in our lifetime that has been as welcoming to Christian leaders as Donald Trump,” says the Pastors For Trump website.
Lahmeyer leads Sheridan Church in Tulsa, Okla. Among his more colorful comments, Lahmery has targeted Dr. Anthony Fauci, was trump’s chief medical advisor from 2021 to 2022 and led the formation of the nation’s response to the COVID -19 pandemic.
Lahmeyer called Fauci a “mass-murdering Luciferian.” He labeled former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. as a “DEMON” and claimed the Jan. 6 attack at the capitol was an “FBI Inside Job.”
Lahmeyer also has claimed that conspiracist radio host Alex Jones “did nothing wrong” when he spread lies about the 2012 Sand Hook Elementary School mass shooting. In October 2022, juries in Connecticut and Texas awarded a total of $1.487 billion in damages from Jones to a first responder and families of victims. The plaintiffs alleged that Jones’s lies led to them being threatened and harassed for years.
Pastors for Trump offers monthly prayer conference calls and helps people to organize prayer meetings and home gatherings. The organization claims to have the backing of dozens of Christian pastors and more than 200,000 congregants.