The former music minister for Bethany Baptist Church was caught molesting a 15-year-old girl in a parked car. Mark William Michaels was fired by his homophobic church on the spot.
Michaels was not scheduled to lead worship services June 5 and was supposed to be out of town in San Diego. Church members noticed the absence of the girl, the youngest member of the choir and the only minor. Michaels’ wife, who is church pianist, was reportedly ill at home.
Why homophobic you ask?
The congregation is affiliated with Transformation Ministries, a network of churches renamed after leaders of American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest withdrew from American Baptist Churches USA in 2006 over irreconcilable “differences of theological convictions and values.” Those differences included refusal by the national body to withdraw fellowship from congregations that are welcoming and affirming of gays.
Bethany Baptist Church sounds like a creepy place practice your faith. Why do people define their holiness by what the hate? We believe…
We believe that biblical marriage consists only of the union of one man and one woman, and that biblical marriage is the only legitimate and acceptable context for a sexual relationship
Source: Bethany Baptist about page
I performed the scandal test on Bethany’s website. It failed. What a church does when its confronted with the reality of a sexual abuse scandal, says a lot about its core values. In this case, they removed any reference to Michaels and have no comments or information on the scandal. What are their core values? Well – truth does not play a major role.
