I believe there’s unity on this particular issue because of my view of pastoral authority. I believe that what the Scripture has to say about the role of spiritual leaders makes it abundantly clear from the Bible that there’s no such thing as a pastor-congregant “affair.”
(Pulpit & Pen) Tullian Tchividjian, when defending his return to the pastorate after being defrocked by his Presbytery and fired from multiple churches for both adultery and subsequent cover-ups, claimed that having sexual relations with a church member was not “abuse.” He is wrong.
Pastors, church leaders, evangelists, and church elders do not have affairs with congregants. They commit abuse upon congregants.
What we desperately need people to understand in the age of #ChurchToo, in between all the wild-eyed fanaticism and shameless victimology, in between the “believe the woman no matter what” nonsense and the incentivizing of false accusations by the celebritization of victims, is that no matter what, there is no such thing as a pastor-congregant “affair.”
Tullian told the Christian Post, “I don’t care what role a person has, a consensual relationship between two adults is not abuse. And some of these people will try to make the case that, ‘Well, because you’re in a position of authority, it is abuse. And I’ll go, ‘Okay, I can see how that has been and can be used by people in those positions.’ … [But] that just was not true for me. I was not abusing my authoritative role to try and find women.”
Research
Tullian Tchividjian holds to the heresy of Antinomianism