Top Religion Scandals

Stories that Shook the Religious World

By Omar Sacirbey

This decade had more than its fair share of betrayal, deception, and abuse of power in the name of God. While many of their beliefs are different, Christians, Muslims and Jews all share the experience, pain and disappointment of having been taken advantage of by those who claim to represent God, or at least do good works in a religious guise.

Some scandals that marked this decade were less about private lives and salacious details, and more about the deceptions of individuals that harm the public. When those deceptions are committed by individuals who base their power and moral certainty on something divine, the transgression seems all the more contemptible.

We look back at those stories that shocked the public and tested the faith of believers.

Omar Sacirbey writes for the Religion News Service, and other outlets.

Clergy Sexual Abuse Scandal

Though its epicenter was in Boston, the clergy sexual abuse scandal in 2002 reverberated across America and all the way to the Vatican. It was horrifying enough that scores of priests had sexually molested minors, but revelations that many bishops moved guilty priests from parish to parish to conceal the crimes, brought the Catholic Church to a new low. In some cases, bishops allegedly entered into secret settlements to keep the allegations from becoming public.

Protests and mounting lawsuits forced Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston to resign in 2002, but in 2004 Pope John Paul II chose Law to serve as archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome, a move that angered and dismayed Law's critics. Meanwhile, Boston and other dioceses offered millions of dollars in cash settlements to victims and their families who sued, hastening a financial catastrophe that forced some dioceses into bankruptcy. Bishops adopted a "one strike and you're out" policy to permanently remove priests who have abused minors, but lay Catholics pushed for a bigger role in church decisions.

The Boston Globe earned a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the scandal. As the decade wound down, the story continued. In May 2009, Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse issued a report finding that rape and sexual abuse had been "endemic" in Catholic run schools in that country. In November, the Murphy Commission Report traced a pattern of clerical physical and sexual abuse from 1975 to 2004, and two bishops have since resigned.

Prophet Muhammad Cartoons

On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ran 12 cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Some associated the prophet with terrorism, some did not. The cartoons offended Muslim sensibilities over Islamic prohibitions on depicting their prophet. The real scandal emerged when it was learned that imams in Denmark, in a dossier provided to members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, falsely assert that the newspaper was government-owned, and included offensive images of Prophet Muhammad that were not among the original 12 cartoons. To many observers, this seemed a conscious effort to inflame tensions. OIC and other Muslim officials demanded that Denmark apologize, and in early 2006, several European newspapers reran the cartoons.

Many Muslim leaders called for peaceful protests, others issued death threats, and riots erupted in several Islamic countries, killing more than 100 people, mostly Muslims, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Nigeria. Two of the Danish imams were filmed, in separate instances, discussing the need for violence. Many American Muslims criticized the cartoons, but acknowledged the right to freedom of expression, and lamented the reaction of their co-religionists as un-Islamic.

The Fall of Ted Haggard

As founder of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard was one of the most influential Christian leaders in America. He was confident, charismatic, and a confidante of President George W. Bush. We discovered he was also a hypocrite. In November 2006, a male prostitute alleged that Haggard, who campaigned for banning same-sex marriage in Colorado, paid him for sex for three years, and used crystal methamphetamine. Haggard tried to sidestep the charges but eventually confessed to "sexual immorality," and resigned from his NAE post and from his senior pastor position at New Life Church, which by then had grown to 14,000 congregants. "I am a deceiver and a liar," he wrote in his resignation letter.

Although Haggard owned a home reportedly valued at $700,000 and received some $200,000 in salary and bonuses in 2006 and a $138,000 severance package, in 2007 he released a letter soliciting donations to support his family. In 2009, Haggard confirmed he had another inappropriate relationship in 2006 with another male volunteer at his church. In November, Haggard, now an insurance salesman, started holding prayer meetings in his Colorado Springs home, and has ambitions to start a new church.

Jeremiah Wright

Jeremiah Wright was a fiery black preacher who used incendiary language. Barack Obama was one of his congregants at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and his opponents sought to exploit their relationship to scuttle his presidential ambitions. Instead, Obama parlayed the controversy into one of the most memorable speeches on race, but he ultimately had to break with the church.

Wright accused America of being "the No. 1 killer in the world," starting AIDS, and after 9/11 said "America's chickens are coming home to roost." The media pounced on Obama, who responded with his now famous "A More Perfect Union" speech" in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008. Obama criticized Wright's remarks as "wrong" and "divisive," but added that the anger was "real" and "powerful," and that surprise over Wright's anger was a reminder "that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning."

While many observers credited the speech with helping Obama win the presidency, it did not quiet Wright, who several weeks later reignited controversy with several anti-Semitic remarks that ultimately compelled Obama to resign from Trinity.

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme Ruins Jewish Charities

Bernie Madoff had risen to become one of the most powerful men on Wall Street, and earned a reputation as one of the most generous sustainers of Jewish philanthropies in America. He was also a fraud, arrested on December 11, 2008 for running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that ruined scores of religious charities, and sparked crude anti-Semitic stereotypes in some Americans.

The organizations who received gift money from or had money - sometimes all or much of it - invested with Madoff were a who's who in Jewish philanthropy, including the American Jewish Congress, Hadassah, Jewish Funds for Justice, United Jewish Endowment Fund, The Elie Wiesel Foundation, Yeshiva University, and many others. The Picower Foundation, the Betty and Norman F. Levy Foundation, and the Chais Family Foundation were among those who lost everything and had to close.

Top God: Proselytizing at the U.S. Air Force Academy

The United States Air Force is one of the most recognizable symbols, here and abroad, of American military might. That's why many observers were disturbed over allegations that officers, staff members, and senior cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs had used their positions to push their evangelical Christian beliefs on cadets.

The controversy first surfaced in 2004, when a "Cadet Climate Survey" found that more than half of cadets polled had heard religious slurs, and almost half felt ostracized if they weren't religious. The survey also found about one-third of the non-Christian cadets polled believed Christian cadets were given preferential treatment. That same year, a Yale Divinity School team reported they saw proselytizing during basic training, and in 2005, Capt. Melinda Morton, a chaplain at the academy, said religious proselytizing was "systematic and pervasive" there. Morton was later transferred, she says because of her public criticisms.

The accusations led to an investigative commission who concluded that there was no overt religious discrimination, but that there was "a failure to fully accommodate all members' needs and a lack of awareness over where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs."

Ministries Under Investigation

Most Americans don't mind their pastors living well. But Rolls Royce cars, private jets, and multi-million dollar homes? Such extravagance didn't sit well with Americans, who persuaded Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, to investigate.

Citing concerns that they were misusing donations and violating their religious tax-exempt status, Grassley (pictured above) in November 2007 requested financial statements from Kenneth Copeland Ministries and Benny Hinn Ministries in Texas, Creflo Dollar Ministries and Bishop Edie Long Ministries in Georgia, Joyce Meyer Ministries in Missouri, and Paula White Ministries in Florida.

Hinn and Meyer sent the requested information within weeks, and said they would institute voluntary reforms – moves which Grassley praised. Meyer went on this year to join the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a standards and accreditation group in Winchester, Va. Copeland, Long, and White released incomplete records, but have been accused of foot-dragging, and are still being asked to send-in their financial information. Dollar has refused to comply at all. With five of the six ministries blocking a look into their accounts more than two years after Grassley's original request, seems this story will be around next decade.

Holy Land Foundation Convictions

The Holy Land Foundation was once the largest Islamic charity in the United States, lauded for its work in Palestine, Bosnia and Turkey, as well as after the Oklahoma City federal bombing and the Iowa and Texas floods. Holy Land, however, was also connected to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, and closed-down in 2001by the U.S. Treasury, which alleged the foundation sent money to schools and hospitals affiliated with Hamas. It didn't help the foundation that two of the defendants were related to Hamas leaders in Syria, while one of its founders, Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, was a Hamas political leader who designated the group as its top fundraising entity in America.

The first case ended in a mistrial in 2007. "The whole case was based on assumptions that were based on suspicions," said one juror. "If they had been a Christian or a Jewish group, I don't think (prosecutors) would have brought charges against them." The government had better luck in 2008, obtaining convictions against Holy Land and five employees, who received sentences that ranged from 15 to 65 years.

Political Islamophobia

Bigotry is nothing new in American politics, but what made it noteworthy this decade was that there was a new target, Muslims, and that Republicans committed many of the offenses. For some Republicans, conflating Islam with terrorism almost seemed like a campaign strategy.

Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani kept advisors who favored locking Muslims in internment camps, and embraced an endorsement from Televangelist Pat Robertson, who called Islam "satanic." Guiliani's GOP rival Mitt Romney said Muslims would not serve in his cabinet, while another White House candidate, Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, said he would respond to a terrorist attack by nuking Mecca. Arizona senator Jon Kyl got chummy with racist Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, while Virginia congressman Virgil Goode led a collective conservative tizzy against the decision of Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, to be sworn in on a Quran. Then there was the "Obama is a Muslim" smear.

But some Republicans spoke out against the smears. Sen. John McCain rejected the endorsement of Ohio pastor Rod Parsley when he said America was founded to destroy Islam, and Florida Governor Charlie Crist chastised congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite when she said all terrorists are Muslims, except Timothy McVeigh.

Fundamentalist Mormons and Child Abuse

Despite being known polygamists, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have mostly avoided scrutiny, save the 1953 Short Creek Raid, when Arizona officials arrested some 400 followers, half of them children, making it the largest mass arrest of polygamists in American history. But history began to repeat itself this decade as several FLDS males were either convicted or indicted for having sex with minors, and revelations emerged that followers had expelled several teenage boys from the church to decrease competition for wives.

The events culminated in the arrest and conviction of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs in 2007 as an accomplice to rape, and the 2008 raid of the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas, in which more than 530 children and women were removed from the ranch. The raid was especially controversial, as it was triggered by a false tip, and resulted in many children being separated from their mothers and put in the custody of the Texas Child Protective Services agency. Many of the children had broken bones, while 31 girls aged 14-17 were either pregnant or already mothers. Today, about two-thirds of the families are back at the ranch, while church leaders have promised to end underage marriage.