The Robert Morris scandal explains how the religious right knuckled under to Trump
To understand how the religious right bowed down to a manifestly unfit man, you have to consider how Morris was able to get away with his own deceit for four decades.
It has been amply established that the religious right made what amounted to a Faustian deal with Donald Trump. The nation’s so-called moral guardians rallied to Trump, and have spent the last eight years bullying evangelicals into doing so, knowing full well that he is a boor, a bully, a gangster. And they have continued doing so even after you could add “traitor” to the list. But none of that mattered to them because he was willing to give them what they wanted on policy.
Trump is arguably the most outrageous example of a trend I’ve seen in the religious right—supporting outright reprobates just because they check the right boxes on belief and policy. Recently, we got a particularly grotesque example of the mentality that resulted in the religious right bowing and praying to an orange god it helped make. That came from one of the biggest stories of 2024 that isn’t related to the election—the dumpster fire that is Gateway Church. On the weekend before Election Day, Gateway elders revealed a summary of an internal investigation into founding pastor Robert Morris’ four-decade effort to cover up the fact that he was a child molester.
For those who don’t know, in 1982, while Morris was an up-and-coming youth evangelist, he groomed then 12-year-old Cindy Clemishire before molesting her at her Oklahoma home. He continued molesting her for four-and-a-half years, and only stopped when confronted by her family. For the next four decades, Morris claimed that he had merely had “moral failure” when he engaged in a “sexual affair” with a “young lady” who was “a consenting adult.” He tried to spin this lie again when Cindy finally came forward to Dee Parsons of Wartburg Watch. However, the ensuing outrage made his position untenable, and he resigned.
It initially appeared that statutes of limitations would make it all but impossible to right the horrible wrong that was done to Cindy four decades earlier. But this writer was able to learn exclusively that Oklahoma attorney general Guenter Drummond has spent the last four-plus months leading a criminal investigation in hopes of getting justice for Cindy in this world.
The disclosures made by Gateway elder Tra Willbanks were stomach-churning. But two in particular stood out. Willbanks revealed that numerous Gateway elders and staffers had known long before Cindy finally found someone to listen to her that Morris had not merely had an affair, but had groomed and sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl. He also revealed that the now-infamous press release Gateway churned out describing Morris’ misdeeds as “moral failure” with a “young lady” had been crafted at Morris’ direction in “a final attempt to conceal the truth.”
Hearing this made my blood run cold. Gateway, though Willbanks, had just admitted that a lot of people had known that Morris had committed one of the most monstrous crimes you can commit short of murder. And yet, they didn’t do what common decency demanded they do, what longstanding Texas law required them to do; ministers have been mandated reporters in Texas since the 1980s. Worse, when Cindy finally came forward, anyone responsible for drafting that press release reasonably should have known that they were complicit in victim-blaming and victim-shaming of the worst type. They also reasonably should have known that a 12-year-old girl is most assuredly not “a young lady,” but a child. And yet, they churned it out anyway.
When the shock of the moment wore off, I was able to draw two conclusions right away. First, Gateway, through Willbanks, had singlehandedly crapped away its remaining legal capital. It’s already been reported that people at Gateway knew as early as 2005 that Cindy was not merely a “young lady.” But it’s quite another thing for Gateway itself to admit it. Initially, Cindy’s lawyer, noted abuse advocate Boz Tchividjian, had claimed that the statutes of limitations for Morris’ misdeeds had long since run out. But to my non-lawyer’s mind, if anyone at Gateway, and presumably at Morris’ previous billet, Shady Grove Church (which merged with Gateway in 2013) knew what Morris had done and helped him cover it up, that’s the literal definition of fraudulent concealment. On paper, this disclosure allows Boz to take a battering ram to the statute of limitations—in which case the only question ought to be how many zeroes are in any settlement paid to Cindy. And if I were a Gateway or Shady Grove staffer and I knew the true nature of Morris’s crimes, I’d have a lawyer on speed dial.
Second, Willbanks had just disclosed a textbook example of how Trump has held white evangelicals in such thrall for almost a decade. The religious right has continued to support and enable Trump despite knowing that he is a boor, a bully, a gangster, a criminal, a traitor. It’s no different in my book from being willing to serve under and enable Morris despite knowing that he was a groomer, a pervert, a predator.
When the news of Morris’s crimes first broke, I fully expected a lot of people to circle the wagons around him in the same manner that the religious right has circled the wagons around Trump time and again, despite knowing full well who Trump was. Not long after the Access Hollywood tape came to light, former Christian Coalition chairman Ralph Reed told NPR’s Scott Simon that hearing Trump boasting about forcing himself on women wasn’t nearly as important to “conservative people of faith” as a president who would oppose abortion, strengthen the economy, and scrap a nuclear deal with Iran that he and his compatriots considered “an existential threat to Israel.” Franklin Graham claimed—with a straight face—that as bad as Trump’s comments were, the Supreme Court mattered more. That sentiment rang especially hollow to survivors of domestic violence and advocates for survivors, especially when put next to the 25 women who have accused Trump of sexually assaulting them.
During Trump’s first impeachment, Perry Stone called Trump’s foes in Congress “demonic,” and threatened to ask God to smite them if they didn’t leave Trump alone. At the same time, Hank and Brenda Kunneman tried to spiritually “shush” the evil forces that were supposedly driving the impeachment effort. In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, Graham railed that the 10 Republicans who supported impeaching Trump for inciting it had forgotten “all he has done for our country.” Even worse, Graham claimed the Democrats had induced Liz Cheney and nine other Republicans to impeach Trump in return for “30 pieces of silver,” suggesting that they had betrayed Trump in the same manner that Judas betrayed Jesus.
How could this have happened with Morris, you ask? Well, consider that the biggest reason this story got so much attention was that Morris was one of Trump’s top spiritual advisers; he was a member of an “evangelical advisory board” that was a virtual who’s-who of religious right luminaries. I fully expected people to rail that it wasn’t a coincidence that one of the men helping Trump make America Christian again was facing this less than six months before Election Day.
Now throw in how much Gateway grew under Morris’s watch. According to an archive of Gateway’s history page—which was saved before Gateway tried to airbrush any ties to Morris from its Web and social media presence—Gateway began with 30 people meeting in Morris’s living room in February 2000, and held its first official service on Easter Sunday 2000 with 180 people. It has since grown to 11 campuses in three states, with over 100,000 people attending at its height.
Take it from this charismatic Christian—in this world, this kind of growth is usually taken as a sign that God is moving at a church. My hunch is that those who knew about what Morris did to Cindy swept it under the rug because they wanted to be “part of what God is doing” through Morris—especially since they likely saw it as a sin to be forgiven, not a monstrous and disqualifying crime. I suspect that’s how the religious right’s so-called leaders saw Trump’s past misdeeds as well.
That’s why I’m somewhat befuddled by the not-inconsiderable number of people who rushed to condemn Morris and yet still support Trump. This is next-level cognitive dissonance. How do you condemn someone who acted as depraved as Morris, and yet have no qualms about supporting Trump? For instance, one of Cindy’s staunchest advocates from the beginning has been Wade Burleson, a Baptist pastor in Oklahoma. As it turns out, the snowball that crashed into Gateway’s headquarters in Southlake, Texas in June started rolling down the hill in May, when Cindy told Burleson her story. She’d tried to speak up several times over the years, but Burleson was one of the first pastors who didn’t essentially kick the door in her face. Burleson connected Cindy with Parsons, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Burleson has been one of the loudest advocates for rooting out abusive pastors in his own Southern Baptist Convention. And yet, he is a hardcore Trumper who is an open and unashamed promoter of the Big Lie. To his credit, Burleson maintains he’d be screaming for Trump to be thrown in prison if he sexually molested a minor. But I have to wonder if the news of a massive conspiracy of silence around Morris would have been enough to change his mind about Trump. After all, it’s a safe bet that Trump would have never even been in a position to run for president had someone listened to his accusers. It’s no different from the conspiracy of silence that allowed Andrew Cuomo to be reelected as governor of New York despite facing allegations of sexual harassment dating back to 2012. Moreover, it’s a safe bed Burleson encountered conspiracies of silence while exposing abusive pastors in his day. That’s one reason survivors don’t come forward for years, if at all—and it’s an outrage regardless of how old someone is when they’re assaulted.
Recent developments at Gateway make the dichotomy between those calling for Morris to be brought to justice while supporting Trump all the more staggering. By the end of the summer, attendance was down by 19 percent. Shortly after Willbanks announced the results of the investigation, victim advocate and Metroplex resident Amy Smith got her hands on a video message to Gateway staffers from Kenneth Fambro, one of only three elders left at Gateway after the church purged those whom it says either knew about Morris’s crimes or failed to ask questions they should have asked. Fambro revealed that tithes are down 35 to 40 percent, though Smith thinks that number is closer to 50 percent. He also announced staff cuts are in the offing.
Put simply, Gateway is in a death spiral; I’ll be surprised if it’s still around in its present form by Easter—its 25th anniversary. By all rights, Trump and all those around him should have gotten the same treatment—if not after the insurrection, certainly sooner. That’s not partisan. There are people who engage in conduct that is so far below the standard of acceptable behavior that they have no place in polite society. By all rights, Trump should be as much of a pariah as Gateway and Morris are now. If you want to know why Trump isn’t a pariah, you have to understand how Morris was able to get away with hiding his depravity for so long.