We are now heading to Texas where our pastor is confessing to moral failing, or as we say here at the nonprofits, just another Wednesday. Eli has the story, Hey Eli, what say you?
Heys Cynthia, I say In Frisco, Texas, Tony Kimerotis serves as the pastor for Stonebrier Community Church for over eleven thousand members, or at least he did until he confessed a moral failure to the church leadership, which rendered him unfit for the cloth in the church's opinion. It is also the church's opinion that discussing the event at all
is like foosball the devil. In a letter to congregants, the church leadership urged members not to allow the devil making it worse through any one of us end quote, highlighting, of course, that if you step one toe out of line,
you will be lightly tortured, but only for eternity. This isn't the first megachurch pastor in that corner of Texas to leave their positions since just the beginning of last June, and I have to say it's nice that they're finally giving other people a chance to take advantage of all those church members. This story is from The New York Post by Alex OLIVERA on July sixteenth, twenty twenty four.
You know, I think, Eli, the problem was is that that you know, this particular pastor did not know how to shut d dough to keep out d devil, shut the dough in the middle of the night.
I think we're making different references, but I like yours too. I practice, are you going to bring in the song right here on the non profits?
You know?
And if I had room, I will put in a dance, But unfortunately I don't. Well, we'll implore my son to come back later and he can do it for you. But guys, we actually have a discussion to do. So let's let's bring it on back. And since you had the last word, Eli, I'm going to come back to you. I wanted to know what are some of the potential reasons that a pastor might step down due to moral failures.
So here's like the logical chain of events that I that I follow backwards basically, right, I think if he just did something that he's like, oh, I shouldn't have done that, there wouldn't be a conversation about this. Somebody, a congregant probably caught him doing something that he shouldn't been doing, or perhaps another like one of the church leaders. But how I followed it was like a congregant catches
him doing something he's not supposed to be doing. It's like, well, I better come clean, do like the leaders, because it's going to come out and also be like, hey, this person saw it, so everybody's going to find out. And that's why they're like trying to dissuade people from like
talking about it. The other thought I had is the only reason he would like maybe not the only reason, but another reason that he would go straight to them, and like they're also involved, like as the article mentions, like there's three other megachurch pastors in the area in like the Dallas Fort Worth area. Tony Evans Oak Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in the beginning of June. A week after that, Mike Buster of Preston Wood Baptist Church he denied any wrongdoing Tony Evans. He said he committed no
crime but failed to use righteous judgment. And then Robert Morris of Gateway Church four days after Mike Buster stepped down, I'm in allegations of long term sexual abuse of a minor lasting a very long time, beginning when she was twelve years old. So it reeks of cover up. And there it's it's it seems like the churches thing, we don't want any hear any rumors about what happened. It's
not rumors. Somebody knows, and the news is going to spread and they're using eternal threats to terrify people into protecting this guy's reputation.
Well, you know, I know that there you're particularly saying that you know, there's some type of cover of some type of conspiracy theory that's happening. But you know, I think the Scott said in another perspective could be another burger.
Yeah, I mean, if if if we want to be fair here, you know, from one perspective, there's you know, this is just nothing. There's a nothing burger, right, This is nothing, nothing really interesting.
That I was trying to say, is nothing nothing right there?
The I mean, churches are private organizations and they can hire and fire, you know, within legal limits of whoever they want, right, and we don't know what happened, and we don't know if it was illegal or harmful. We know that religious moral codes can be rather obscure and and uh separated and departed from what we would normally
consider to be a moral activity. And so leaving for moral condition, you know, under for moral reasons could be or a moral failing, sorry, could be something rather benign. And so so I just want to make sure that we uh don't jump to conclusions here. However, however, on the other hand, there's a big butt here, there's a big butt. But on the other hand, there is a history here of this type of thing happening. There's a history here of this type of thing being covered up.
It's very common that like, for example, why did they expose so much as much as they did? You know, why did they say as much as they did? You know, very commonly we'll see things like they'll say that the person left to spend time with their family, or their path of God has led them elsewhere. There were lots of more benign ways of describing this. Why why would
they give as much detail as they did. They didn't give a ton of detail, but they did, you know, imply that something negative or something untoward was happening here. And so so we can wonder why they did that. As long as we make sure that we're clear that we're not leveling any accusations and things like that. But we also can look at well, why pull out the big guns, right? They said, and this is a quote
from the letter. It says, and please guard against the devil any foothold for more damage to our church through unnecessary speech and speculation. This is a sad day and we don't want the devil making it worse through anyone of use in these days ahead. And so, like I said, that's the big guns. Right. If they're saying, if you do something like this, or if you talk about this, or if you spread these words, you're doing the devil's work. That's a heavy hit. That's a heavy hit to a
religious congregation. And so you know why why it seems like a pretty strong reaction if it was, if it was a benign action. They're equating what they're talking. They're equating talking about the issue with actions of the devil. And that's as serious as you as you can get. If you're one of us, you have to behave this way. If you're not one of us, you'll behave differently. And so you know, we need to guard against jumping to conclusions.
I think it's fair for us to indulge in a little bit of conjecture here based off of building off of this history of much worse things happening, as long as you know, as long as we kind of take those two things in equal measure, well.
To your point, the moral failing if we're going to conjecture, could be that the pastor all of a sudden aligns with left wist wing values and he's woke.
Yeah, definitely, you know.
That that could definitely be a thing. Yes, yes, and he could possibly support DEI hires perish the thought.
Yeah, we want no never, never.
In a million years. But Jonathan, I'm coming to you because you actually happened to see a pattern going on with some pastors in Texas. Do you not?
Yeah? I do. I'm just the megachurches apparently, and I don't and just my bias, I don't have a lot of respect for megachurches. To me, there's really just my making machines for a bunch of con men. But you know, they had four resignations in a thirty two day period in Texas, nothing but a vague reference to misconduct in one, one for pedophilia. Yep. These guys speak for their God, all right. I wish these were isolated incidence, but it's
not the only only Baptist or Protestant churches. It's everybody has these incidences, and they almost always involve children. Now this again, as Scott said, no jumping to conclusions here. He could have just simply, I don't know, got caught picking his nose and that was a moral failing, you know, But that's not what I think.
Maybe he has a crushed testicle and he's no longer allowed near the altar. Maybe that's it.
Yeah, it could be all sorts of ridiculous moral failings that some of these very evangelical devout by. Maybe he failed to inform the congregation that he had a disobedient child and didn't stone them, you know, could be all sorts of things. But the whole idea that this many there might and I'm not being thinking there's a conspiracy. I think it's just endemic in the culture of these
churches that people have to hide who they are. And having been somebody who did that for a great portion of my life, I know how much pressure that develops. Eventually it breaks out. They have that non kosher ice cream, you know, they have that forbidden piece of cake, you know, or they do something more severe that in this particular environment is going to mean you're gone, buddy. You know, we can't have that example for our masses, and they're
all huge masses. One of those congregations is over one hundred thousand people. Imagine that that's bigger than most cities, you know, small cities.
You know.
It's like, that's a lot bigger than the town I'm in and the surrounding town's put together. So when you think about this, this seems to be happening to a certain section, a certain subset of the pastors, and they all have megachurches or is that a bias that was in the reporting? The smaller churches we probably don't care about. And I'm beginning to think that that was probably a
bias in how the news cycle goes. In other words, a megachurch with all these people in it, something happens, and it's big news for the town because almost everybody's a member of that. But for the smaller churches, the chapel on the side maybe had their guy do something really nasty and nobody hears about it because it's just not a big deal. It's on the police blodder for that week and fades out of the memory. So I just think that that's what we have to be looking
at as well. But what is going on here? I can't say, but there's something going on here. They think they're invulnerable and they're doing stuff they should and they're getting caught.
Well to well to your point, oh dear, Indeed, there is this particular moral code that Christians are supposedly supposed to live by. And I know that like all of us here are secular, all of us here are atheists and have been confronted in some ways or another about well, where do you get your morals from? And you know,
we have different answers for that. However, when you are a person that believes in God and believes that God happens to be the way, the truth, the life, and you're supposed to follow all of the words that happens to be in his book, a lot of times those words can be antithetical to how one is naturally, So a lot of times that happens to be the case, and you find yourself and I know, like I believe that all of us want at one time I were some form a Christian that we would start to fight
our cognitive dissonance because naturally we are one way, but the book says that we need to be in another way. And I believe because we've covered stories like this, some pastor did some shitty thing and now everybody's up in arms.
And to your point, Jonathan, the mega pastor is just more visible, so they get talked about more when something happens instead of like, you know, your Tom Brown church on the corner in the neighborhood where only you know a few blocks may be familiar with whoever the Angel of the house is there. Right, But it's not that a mega church would make this moral failing better or worse. It just means that that's where that moral flailing happen.
But I want to know, Eli, I'm coming to you, what do you think a role would be of watchdog groups like watchkeep dot org And how would it play in holding church leadership accountable for their actions.
So this whole resonate like this story, like Tony Cameron's resignation, basically reminded me of the practice we see in the Catholic Church all the time to just like relocate somebody who did something, or like in plenty of other churches, is like, okay, well, you know, we'll kind of remove you from like the spotlight until like the person is, you know, twelve years older than they are now or something, and they forget about it, which isn't going to happen,
but that's what they think. And then they put them right back in front of you. And having these watchtones groups that would like watchdog dot org has the is intended to have the list of all the background checks of all the clergy that have complied a background check, I mean something like that, to say like, yeah, this
person has been convicted of these things. Then you can decigne if you want your family to be around and learning from those people and the families that may be affected by Let's say something untowards did take place in Tony Camroda's place, which I appreciate the three of you making it clear, like you know, it's important not to speculate or or make assumptions or conject about crimes. But let's say something on towards did take place and it
affects some of the people in the congregation. Having had that knowledge beforehand, could have you know, protected this family or you know, whoever may have been affected from that trauma or that experience. Had they had, had they been armed beforehand with the knowledge to make a more informed decision.
Yeah, I think that when we think about keeping church leadership accountable, I think that far too often, especially like in megachurches, it's very dictatorial. I love saying that word every nonprofits and I'm just getting better at every time that I say it, even though I say it slow
yay me. Regardless, there's this hierarchy that's there and whatever say ye the pastor, that's what goes and you can't question it because the pastor almost serves like a proxy to God, just like the pope does in the Catholic Ture. I know it was very much so like that when I was centered, and it makes it very difficult for the people who has the butt in a pew to be that watchdog to say like, hey, pastor, you shouldn't do that. Hey pastor, you need to be more vigilant
on how your actions occur, you know. But like they say, well, they will tell you that old adage that's in the Bible, touch not my anointed, didn't do my profits no harm. That's just a good way just to tell you to shut the fuck up. And that should not be the case. That that should not be the case. But you know, it's kotint of gonna come to you because I want to know from you. How do you think I touched on a little bit more, but you know, expand on
a little bit. How do you think religious teachings about sin, forgiveness, and redemption come into play in situations involving pastoral moral fail.
Well, for one thing, it's hard for us to really tell because there's such a lack of transparency. I mean, you know, we we're not being shared the proper information, the complete information. And maybe we deserve to be shared, you know, maybe we deserve to know that, maybe we don't. But I think that you know, that lack of transparency
and the lack of desire for transparency. You were mentioning some quotes from from the Bible there that basically instruct the congregation to just go along with whatever the leadership says to do. And so, uh, you know, from their perspective, they're fulfilling their end of the bargain. They're they're they're doing what they're supposed to do. They're they're doing, you know, their side of the deal. They're submitting to the to the church, to their God, and and they consider that
to be a good thing. And I think whether it's being intentionally taken advantage of or whether it's inadvertently being taken advantage of, I think it is being taken advantage of. I mean, we we we talk about how we have so many of these stories happening, and very often we do that some of the details do come out, whether that be improper sexual advancements, whether that be some kind of financial theft or you know, or any any of a variety of ways that church leadership could be taking
advantage of the situation. And so I think that it's it's something that's part of the of the concept of religion itself, that idea of don't question, just do and and by by by bowing and in obedience to the church leadership, they see that as a way of honoring their God. And so that's that's that kind of feeds into that. Now, does that is that going to attract predators? Yes, it's going to Is that going to encourage people who maybe wouldn't be a predator otherwise to kind of lean
in that direction? Possibly? Possibly? And so it's just a risky situation. It's it's an unfounded trust put on people that are human beings and that are you know, we're atheists. We don't think that they're envoys of God or being you know, the avatar or representative of God, or however you want to describe it. However you want to put a label on that. We you know, they're just people, and so we should expect them to have uh, normal everyday shortcomings. And if the it's it's it's the religion
that clouds that. It's the religion. It's the act of having something that's sacred like that, and that cannot be questioned and that cannot be addressed. It's just it's almost inevitable. You know, it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't happen.
I hear that. And I'm coming to you for the last word. Since you went ahead and brought this story to our attention, if you were able to sit in front of the governing body of Tony Cameroda's church and was able to give them some advice on how they can develop better policies and procedures to actually address moral failings of their leaders, what would you tell them?
I mean, I have It would depend I guess on sort of the nature of what types of moral failings they are, their experience, their moral failures they're experiencing. If it's I mean, is this a church code moral failing, well, then I mean that's just what you think is moral.
There's not.
I mean, you can change that, but you probably won't. We can talk about it, but I probably won't change
your mind. I think in the instances where maybe not this particular instance, but where crimes have taken place or have alleged to be taken place, to actually report those to the appropriate authorities and get the victims of those crimes, if there is one present in the congregation, support and actually like address it, rather than the vague descriptions of you know, somebody did something bad, but you better not talk about it and just kind of moving on.
Well, you know. The resignation of Pastor Tony Kamarota and the subsequent handling of the situation by the So and Buyer Community Church serves as a reminder of how the importance of transparency and accountability in leadership, and by fostering environment of open dialogue and critical inquiry, communities can better address ethical breaches, support those who are in fact who are affected and work towards a more just and equitable society.
And on a side note, moral failings is a so so subjective, such a subjective term, And if we're going to be objective about what a failing is, first, let's start by allowing people to be who they are.