Sex scandal hits Atlanta-area megachurch. This house of worship, incidentally, isn't anti-gay, but the brazen behavior of Archbishop Earl Paulk is pretty mind-blowing.
The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother's wife and fathered a child by her.But wait, there's more.Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk's family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test.
In truth, this is not the first — or even the second — sex scandal to engulf Paulk and the independent, charismatic church. But this time, he could be in trouble with the law for lying under oath about the affair. The living proof of that lie is 34-year-old D.E. Paulk, who for years was known publicly as Earl Paulk's nephew.
"I am so very sorry for the collateral damage it's caused our family and the families hurt by the removing of the veil that hid our humanity and our sinfulness," said D.E. Paulk, who received the mantle of head pastor a year and a half ago.
D.E. Paulk said he did not learn the secret of his parentage until the paternity test. "I was disappointed, and I was surprised," he said.
The archbishop, his brother and the church are being sued by former church employee Mona Brewer, who says Earl Paulk manipulated her into an affair from 1989 to 2003 by telling her it was her only path to salvation. Earl Paulk admitted to the affair in front of the church last January.I’m sure there’s a joke about spilling seed somewhere in there.In a 2006 deposition stemming from the lawsuit, the archbishop said under oath that the only woman he had ever had sex with outside of his marriage was Brewer. But the paternity test said otherwise.
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I was interested in the term one of the former churchgoers used for the church: cult. I couldn’t find much more about it online, but I’m a lazy googler. So was there even more wrongness happening here?
And I bet the lesson that similar churches will learn from this is not “Don’t use your position of power to coerce people or just generally be a hypocritical jerk about things.” I’m guessing it will be more along the lines of, “See? This is what happens when you start lettin’ them gays in!”
If the brother had been dead, the pastor would only have done his old testament duty…
‘Spilling your seed’ is masturbation.
He followed the ‘religion of the sperm’ and didn’t leave it in a sock, although perhaps he wishes he had….
“‘Spilling your seed’ is masturbation.”
And “if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off” (although this is to be interepreted as “eliminate negative influences in your life” and not literally.)
Of course, “any man who looks at a woman in lust has already committed adultery with her.”
I’m sure the usual “Forgive the sinner” card will be used–as usual. Remember kids, “sin” is only wrong when done by infidels (i.e. liberals or those who are neither white, nor male, nor straight).
“Archbishop?” How is this guy in the Apostolic Succession? Oh well, at least he didn’t call himself Pope, or Metropolitan.
I wonder about DNA testing in this case, though. Wouldn’t your brother’s DNA be a lot like your own? I mean, by the time it became part of your child? I have a vague notion that this is how sibling bone marrow and kidney donation works.
Hector B.,the DNA-similarities between brothers sure are close enough for bonemarrow or kidney donations,but not close enough to fool modern paternity tests.Unless you’re talking identical twin brothers.
Identical twin brothers…Hmm!*retires to bunk*
don’t be embarrassed, resident alien, you have to specify “identical twin brothers” because they could be fraternal.
aimai
According to the Old Testament, you’re supposed to wait until your brother’s dead. I think it was supposed to be an early form of artificial insemination, when they hadn’t quite worked out the “artificial” part. (Onan’s child by his brother’s wife would apparently have been considered his brother’s child, not Onan’s. Viewed in this light, it seems God smites people for refusing to become sperm donors. However, it seems obvious that there was no “seed spilling” by the megachurch preacher, so no biblical violation?)
38:8 And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
38:9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
38:10 And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.
Semi-related noted, but…wow…this isn’t a doctored picture, is it?
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/11/21/by-their-fruits-shall-ye-know-them/
I am the daughter of an identical twin; once as a kid made the joke to my mother that if she had fooled around with Dad’s brother, I would have looked exactly the same!
Mom had NO SENSE of humor THAT day…
Well, Louise, you wouldn’t have looked _exactly_ the same since the sperm you get is random (as is the egg), but the contribution of dad’s DNA would have been the same, in the abstract, either way.
Now that we’ve sucked the humor from that joke. . .
Hector B, “bishop” in a protestant church can mean that the person simply manages more than one church. You’re a Pastor until you get a second church, in which case you’re a bishop.
alien_r, was that a snit about “identical twins”? Catch up if you don’t mind: fraternal twins exist.
Hey, the Amazon ad directly beside this is listing “Unfinished Course: The Inspiring Story of Earl Paulk” by Bishop Earl Paulk…..
Isn’t PRIDE or VANITY also one of the big sins????
I’m guessing the *retires to bunk* was a Firefly reference; Jayne: “I’m gonna be in my bunk.”, when Inara’s client turns out to be a gorgeous woman.
“Spilling your seed’ is masturbation.”
No it isn’t. It has nothing to do with masturbation. It refers to a Biblical story where a man, Onan, was instructed by God to impregnate his dead brother’s wife. Instead he pulled out and spilled his seed on the ground. God struck him dead.
Eric,rom:I am aware of the existence of fraternal twins.I am also aware of the fact that fraternal twins don’t have the same DNA,like identical twins do have.Fraternal twins are no closer genetically than regular siblings.Therefore,a modern paternity test cannot be fooled in a case of fraternal twins,only if the potential fathers are identical twins=same DNA.Maybe it’s you who needs to do some catching up?
All I kept thinking when I heard this story was: How does someone get manipulated into a 14 year-long affair?
LOL. The ad at the top of this post is for PacHills Rehab Centers — “America’s Leading Christian Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Centers.”
Also, I wonder of John “Ex-Gay” Paulk is any relation to these people?
It’s alright, everyone. The Paulk family has expelled Satan from their lives and may now concentrate on living Christ-like, moral, pro-family values… while they defame Mona Brewer and insist she’s a confused whore out for cash.
Jesus saves.
It’s gotten really bad, cause my first thought was, at least this one slept with someone his own age.
I googled and the first hit brought up this article and interview with Mona Brewer:
“I mean, everybody wanted to talk to him. And he just invited me to his office to talk to him for a few minutes. And that was really incredible.”
“He said, ‘well, I guess you will just have to take your clothes off, because I’m going to have to love you.’ Whoa. And I thought, oh, God. You know, I didn’t want to do it, but what choice did I have? I mean, I have been taught for all these years not to question him. And I had this word from God. I mean, God obviously wanted me to do this. And it was so foreign to me, but I — I didn’t know what else to do. I was on the spot. So, I took off my clothes, and we did it.”
She went on to explain how she was at his beck and call for sexual services for the next fourteen years. Paulk shared her with members of his family and visiting charismatic preachers. Paulk excused his behavior with his own personal theology called “Kingdom Relationships.”
That is a cult, when the concentration of power is on one individual and the individual’s needs trump the supposed goals of the organization, or when the organization has no other goal but to worship at the feet of the leader(s) as a supreme being who claims to have superseded and/or readjusted the most basic human moral codes in order to satisfy themselves.
Like all other organizations like this, what a tragic waste of human energy, funds and resources!
Now, are we supposed to stone the two adulterers in the marketplace, or should we wait for the Lord to smite them? I forget how these rules work.
ra, if you’re so knowledgable, why the original snit?
my uncle…my father… my uncle … my father
/obligatory chinatown “joke”.
the part I missed is why exactly the younger paulk took it into his head to do this paternity test thing. Did he start to suspect something?
@ Eric:What snit exactly?Hector B. questioned whether the DNA-sets of brothers were at all sufficiently different for an effective paternity test.I explained that only the DNA of identical twins is sufficiently similar to render a paternity test ineffective.(My dirty mind then produced some rather impure thoughts involving identical twins,which I continued to savour offline.)I later logged on again to find you telling me that fraternal twins exist,which is kinda akin to saying:”There are cars that run on diesel,didn’t you know?”If I weren’t aware of the difference between fraternal and identical twins,I hardly would have specifically said “identical twins” in my first post,right?EVERYBODY knows twins can be fraternal or identical,so you basically called me an idiot.I heartily return the compliment.
I think I get it. Suddenly, resident alien was no longer Master of His Domain, in the Seinfeldian sense.