Pastor Who Resigned Over Adultery Accused of Taking Virginity of Purity Ring Wearing Teen Girl on His Office Floor
This news story is 50 levels of gross and terrible.
If you’ve visited this blog before, you should know the drill:
Being married and/or a parent, contrary to what many churches and socially conservative think tanks teach, is NOT a guarantee of making a person loving, ethical, godly, or responsible.
(Not that marriage or parenthood are horrible or wrong, but neither life station necessarily produces upstanding, loving, ethical citizens, either.)
Self professing Christian men fail so often, and sexually exploit so often, that churches need to start re-evaluating their “male headship” and “complementarian” teachings, because obviously, men are not fit to lead, and, the “Equally Yoked” rule is a waste of time (and quite possibly a misapplication of a Bible verse).
If you’re a single Christian woman who was raised (as I was) to believe in “Equally Yoked” (Christians should only marry other Christians), and that church would be a good, safe place to meet “Mr. Right,” this goes to show that you’d be better off chucking those teachings to the curb.
The professing Christian man you meet at your corner church is not necessarily going to be any more stand-up than the non-Christian Joe Blow you meet on Tinder or Match.
This pastor, or his church, mischaracterized statutory rape as being “adultery.” Churches really need to get on the ball about this – stop depicting statutory rape as being “adultery.” This was not a case of “adultery.” (Edit: The articles say that the woman’s age at the time – 16 – is legal. But the nature of it, the age gap – it looks like he exploited her.)
I think the pastor in this story was or has been married for years – this goes to show that the standard Christian advice to singles I used to see all the time that says you, the single, have to obtain some level of perfection or spirituality before God will permit you to have a spouse is false.
If God allows deviants like this pastor to get married, rest assured, He is probably not with-holding one from you because you don’t read the Bible often enough, or whatever.
May 24, 2022
by Jennifer Smith
A 65-year-old Indiana pastor has stepped down from his role in the church after admitting he had an affair with a 16-year-old girl in front of his entire congregation.
Pastor John Lowe II stepped down from the New Life Christian Church after being confronted on stage by Bobi Gephart, a 43-year-old woman who came forward with a microphone to tell their church in Warsaw, Indiana, how he’d groomed her as a teen, starting when she was 16 – the legal age of consent in the state.
…He begged for the church’s forgiveness, then received a standing ovation.
Bobi then stormed towards the stage with her husband, Nate, to say it ‘was not just adultery’ because she was so young at the time.
By Leonardo Blair, Senior Features Reporter
May 23, 2022
A Warsaw, Indiana, pastor who drew a standing ovation from his congregation after telling them he was stepping down because he committed adultery with one person at least two decades ago drew their wrath minutes later after a woman tearfully alleged she was only 16 when the pastor took her virginity on his office floor while she sported a purity ring.
Pastor John Lowe II told his congregation at New Life Christian Church and World Outreach on Sunday that he needed to make the confession because it was the “biblical” thing to do, according to a (Link): Facebook Live broadcast shared by Maisey Cook.
[The pastor – Lowe – stood before his church during a service and confessed he had committed adultery years prior.]
… He [Lowe] painted himself as a hypocrite who applied discipline to others for sexual failure while hiding his own.
He asked the church for their forgiveness and announced that he would step aside and face discipline from the church.
…Soon after he stepped down from the pulpit, a woman and her husband went to the pulpit to address the congregation. The woman said that what Lowe did was not just adultery but a crime because she was only 16 when he took her virginity in his office 27 years ago.
While the age of consent in Indiana is 16, a person who is at least the age of 18 in a position of supervision or trust that engages in any sexual activity with a child over the age of 16 but under the age of 18 commits child seduction, according to state law. …
[During the church service, the victim, who is now an adult, spoke in front of the church of the sexual abuse from the pastor that began when she was 16 years old]
… “People knew but were too afraid to come forward. And they have now. The lies and the manipulation they have to stop,” she added. “I was just 16 when you took my virginity on your office floor. Do you remember that? I know you do, and I have plenty of other stories that I can bring to your remembrance. You did things to my teenage body that should have never been done.”
[The woman claimed that the pastor and others on the church’s staff had also sexually abused other teens.
The woman’s husband stepped forward to the pulpit during this church service to tell the pastor how wrong he was to write off statutory rape as “adultery,” claimed the pastor began grooming his wife when she was 15 years old and continued the sexual abuse for nine years, and he returned his wife’s old purity ring to the church, and he then literally dropped the microphone and left.]
… Lowe took the microphone and confirmed that he began having sex with the victim when she was a teenager.
[The pastor’s church (Link): released a statement about the incident on the church’s site]
— end excerpts —
May 24, 2022
A 65-year-old Indiana pastor has stepped down from his role in the church after admitting he had an affair with a 16-year-old girl in front of his entire congregation.
Pastor John Lowe II stepped down from the New Life Christian Church after being confronted on stage by Bobi Gephart, a 43-year-old woman who came forward with a microphone to tell their church in Warsaw, Indiana, how he’d groomed her as a teen, starting when she was 16 – the legal age of consent in the state.
Pastor Lowe II had just told the church that he ‘sinned’ 20 years ago by committing adultery, without mentioning how old the woman or girl was at the time.
…Bobi’s husband Nate then added: ‘This is a lie. This is not just adultery.
‘It’s another level. It happened for nine years. When she was 15, 16, the grooming started.’
He presented a pearl necklace that his wife had been given by the church and a ‘purity ring’ that he said the pastor gave her during their affair.
Nate returned both items and said the pair ‘were not stretching the truth’, but encouraged other women who had been these ‘gifts of the ministry’ to return them too.
As the couple left the stage, the pastor then faced angry calls from the congregation.
…Because the legal age of consent in Indiana is 16, Lowe is not likely to face criminal charges for the relationship.
He has stepped down from the church and has been scrubbed from its website.
— end —
And there you have it. I’m really not seeing where Christian teachings such as “find a mate at church if you’re single and want to marry,” “equally yoked,” “male headship” and “complementarianism” are benefitting anyone.
I keep seeing news story after news story like this one, and these self professing Christian men who attend church regularly sometimes turn out to be abusive.
(Link): For abuse survivors like Jules Woodson, the Indiana pastor video is all too familiar
May 25, 2022
In a dramatic viral video, an abuse survivor confronted a pastor for abusing her, starting when she was 16. In the video, the pastor admits his sins but the congregation still sides with him.
Edit
Indiana woman who confronted pastor about having sex with her at 16 recalls years of living in mental ‘prison,’ coming clean to husband
By Stephanie Pagones | Fox News
May 31, 2022
…”I had family members texting me … saying, ‘You need to get to the church. You should be there. They need to hear your story,’” she recalled to Fox News Digital. “I was not ready for church. I just threw my sandals on and told my niece that was here to take me.”
Gephart’s husband, Nate, had planned on confronting the New Life Christian Church and World Outreach’s beloved pastor, John B. Lowe II, himself about how the longtime clergyman had sex with Bobi when she was only 16.
Instead, that Sunday, May 22, was the day Bobi revealed the truth with Nate by her side.
“What I wanted was freedom,” she said during a Zoom call. “And for my husband to know my heart, and for people not to be lied to anymore.”
“We took it upon ourselves and went right to the stage without anybody’s permission and took the mic,” she recalled.
… Fox News Digital made multiple attempts to reach Lowe for comment regarding Gephart’s allegations, including through the New Life office, with no success.
Gephart, who is now 43, said her family was “so intermingled” with the Loweses at a young age. Not only did Gephart’s mother work as a nanny for the Lowe family, but Bobi and her brother even lived with the family for a short time, she said.
“They were like a family to us,” she said. “And that is what was the hardest part … hard for people to realize that we were there all the time and heavily involved in our church. And this whole time, stuffing those secrets inside me.”
She described how she was kept “as a prisoner without bars in his life,” and was not freed from Lowe’s “grasp” until she met her husband.
“Everything I knew was that church. My whole life was that church. I went to school at that church,” she said.
When she spent a year attending Bible school in Texas, Gephart said, “he would continue to communicate, even come down and make a visit.”
Gephart would not speak to how the relations with Lowe initially began, but said they began “the way a lot of grooming starts.”
“Shoulder massages, lap sits, long hugs, things like that nature that would get longer and deeper,” she said. In one instance, he allegedly laid his head in Gephart’s lap while they were sitting on a couch, though she would not go into further detail.
The legal age of consent in Indiana is 16. Gephart told Fox News Digital the sexual aspect of their relations began when she was 16, but “molestation happened prior to that.”
…When asked if she had any message for people who might be in similar situations, she said she hopes that they speak up, “no matter what.”
“Find someone you can talk to. Because that was the thing – I didn’t. I was trying to protect my family. I was trying to protect other people,” she said. “You can’t just live your life trying to protect others. You also have to free yourself.”
Related:
(Link): Progressive Are Now Marketing Their Own Version of Christian Purity Culture as “Radical Monogamy”
(Link): Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Gospel of Shame-Free Sexuality by W. Hill
(Link): Cops Searching for Married Church Preacher Who Raped Teen Girl and Impregnated Her
(Link): Abstinence and ‘Purity Culture’ Are Often Conflated but Aren’t The Same, Tim Keller Explains
(Link): No, Christians and Churches Do Not Idolize Virginity and Sexual Purity (they attack both concepts)
(Link): Why Are Young Feminists so Clueless About Sex? by M. Wente
(Link): Slut-Shaming Is Bad—But The Overreaction Against It Also Hurts Women by J. Doverspike
(Link): Why Sex-Positive Feminism is Falling Out of Fashion
(Link): Atheist Video About Being a Virgin of Sexually Abstinent – My Critique of the Atheist’s Critique
(Link): Christian Preacher Admits He Won’t Preach About Sexuality For Fear It May Offend Sexual Sinners
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