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 Rape in the Sanctuary: It's Time for Outrage Do we just pretend it doesn’t affect us when a pastor is sentenced to prison for raping church members? We need to rend our hearts. Last month a bizarre drama unfolded in a courtroom in Fort Worth, Texas, involving a flamboyant prosperity preacher and the women he raped. But you probably didn’t hear anything about this on Christian television. We don’t talk about the church’s mistakes if they make us look bad.
I think it’s time to face the ugly facts. Something very sick is happening in the so-called Spirit-filled church. And we need a national outcry.
Rev. Terry Hornbuckle, pastor of Agape Christian Center in Arlington, Texas, was sentenced on Aug. 28 to 15 years in prison for raping three women who were at one time members of his church. One of them, Krystal Buchanan, 23, a former University of Texas,Arlington, basketball player, testified that the pastor drugged her and then raped her in her apartment.
On the day of sentencing, Buchanan’s mother took the stand and read a somber victim- impact statement written by her daughter. It said: “Hornbuckle, I hated you for a long time. But there came a point in my life when I realized I was chosen by my Lord and Savior to be used in a most difficult way. He needed me to stop you from doing this to everyone and anyone who you may come in contact with.”
I don’t know if Buchanan’s theology is quite right, since I am certain God did not intend her to be raped. But I hope church leaders listen to her painful plea. She is not talking just to Hornbuckle but to the body of Christ at large. She is asking for accountability.
Is anybody listening?
How did we ever get to a place where a “man of God” who prays with passion from his pulpit on Sundays also preys on vulnerable women parishioners on Mondays by giving them methamphetamines and then sexually violating them?
The root of the sickness lies in the fact that those of us in the pews have lowered our standards. We don’t demand character of our leaders. All we ask is that preachers make us feel good, tell us we will be prosperous, stroke our egos, tickle our ears and whip us into a frenzy so that we will think we have been in God’s presence. Oftentimes the whole experience is a sham.
In the squirrelly world of nondenominational charismatic churches there are con men, drug addicts and even rapists who know how to wow the people with their mega-decibel oratory. They know how to touch our deepest “felt needs” and are quick to sell us a book or video on the same subject. But when their sermons are over, they have done nothing but inject their congregations with a spiritual drug.
I suspect Rev. Hornbuckle did more than rape three women. (Prosecutors say he still faces three more charges of sexual assault as well as a drug possession charge.) This minister is also guilty of spiritually raping his congregation. And in a sense he raped us all by tarnishing the credibility of the church as a whole.
But what are we going to do about it? Most of us assume this is just an isolated instance of a good pastor gone bad. Or we are so used to hearing about rapes and drug abuse every day in the news, we don’t think it is that strange when such wickedness takes place in God’s house. We’ve been spiritually desensitized.
We need to feel Krystal Buchanan’s pain.
We read in the book of Judges about a time when a woman was violently raped by a worthless gang of men from Gibeah. When the woman’s master found her abused body at the doorway of a house, he cut her corpse into 12 pieces and sent them to every tribe in Israel in order to shock the people into action (Judges 19:22-30). The Israelites were so appalled by the brutality of the crime that they took swift action against the rapists.
In the same way, we need to let the crimes that happened at Agape Christian Center shake us to the core. Why are we allowing women to be victimized in the church? Why are we tolerating corruption in the pulpit? Why are we chasing after ministers whose lifestyles should disqualify them? Why are we not demanding accountability of those who claim to be shepherds of the flock?
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