FORT WORTH, Texas (RNS) — Katherine Leach’s stomach churned while she was driving to Saturday worship at Gateway Church early this summer.
Leach, who has been attending the nondenominational North Texas congregation for the past three years, has also tithed — a practice of giving a tenth of one’s income to a church or religious organization. She was also considering joining Gateway’s prayer team.
Then, on June 18, Gateway’s founder and senior pastor, Robert Morris, resigned after accusations made by an Oklahoma woman named Cindy Clemishire, who told the Wartburg Watch that Morris had sexually abused her on multiple occasions in the 1980s, starting when Clemishire was 12 years old.
Since Morris founded Gateway church in 2000, it has grown into one of the largest megachurches in the nation, with roughly 100,000 active attendees at its main campus in Southlake, a Tarrant County suburb, and nine campuses across Texas and two others in Missouri and Wyoming.
“This is an unthinkable and painful time in our church. Our church congregation is hurt and shaken, and we know that you have many important questions,” Gateway Church elders said in a June 21 statement, saying the church hired law firm Haynes and Boone LLP to conduct an independent inquiry on the matter.
The following service, on June 22, as Leach pulled up to the church, a group of protesters carried signs reading “She was only 12” and, citing the Gospel reading forbidding the corruption of children, “Matthew 18:16 Millstones not cover ups!”
Leach also made a sign, but she wanted to hear what leadership would say at the service. After …