Despite credible misconduct allegations, Christian radio host returns to ministry

Investigators said Michael Brown committed sexual misconduct, but his inner circle gave him the green light to return anyway

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A right-wing religious radio host accused of sexual misconduct now says he can resume his ministry after getting the green-light from his buddies. And if that sounds messed up, just wait till you hear the details.

Michael L. Brown has been an apologist and evangelist for decades now, promoting Messianic Judaism and anti-LGBTQ talking points. Through his show “The Line of Fire,” his “FIRE School of Ministry,” and other outlets, he has linked homosexuality with pedophilia and said that a potential president in a same-sex marriage would “contribute to the further degeneration and moral confusion of our society.”

Michael Brown (screenshot via YouTube)

He’s pretty much a conservative comment thread come to life, yet he presents an “aw shucks” demeanor that comes across like he’s willing to listen to all sides of any argument. (He’s a reasonable bigot, you see.)

But all of that came crashing down last December when a former secretary at his school (“Erin”) accused him of crossing physical and ethical boundaries.

Erin told The Roys Report (TRR) she left because she felt trapped when revival leader and FIRE School of Ministry founder Michael Brown—a man she called “Dad”—would frequently cross physical boundaries. He’d hold her hand, kiss her on the lips, and slap her bottom, she said.

“He was supposed to be a spiritual father,” Erin said. “He was supposed to look after me.”

At the time, Brown told his board members about the allegations (before they were published) and also admitted to have an “emotional” connection with another woman years earlier. He basically told them he made mistakes in the past but they were behind him now. Or, in Christianese, he told them he had repented. Brown issued a statement acknowledging his “lack of judgment” but also said some of the accusations were false, mischaracterizing what happened.

Still, the board hired an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into the matter while assuring supporters they would make a “summary” of the findings public. (Actually, they hired someone who routinely defends other accused predators… which made for horrible optics. They eventually hired a different firm called Firefly to investigate.)

In the meantime, they asked Brown not to make any public statements and he deactivated his account on X/Twitter.

But the situation got worse from there. “Erin” revealed herself and said there had been no apology from Brown (as he had insisted) and that Brown was basically trying to cover his own ass. Details about Brown’s “emotional” relationship with another woman—a friend’s wife!—came out and they were also disturbing. Brown released a since-deleted video in which he said he wanted to confess all this to his church community earlier, but everyone involved told him not to. (Sure.)

It was a huge mess.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, Firefly released its report. Not just a summary, but the full 47-page report. In short, they found that his “actions toward the two females were inappropriate and unacceptable for his leadership position within the ministry.” The report also said that conduct “violated the ethical standards expected of someone in his role and undermined the trust and integrity essential to leadership within the church community.”

It concluded:

Based on gathered information and consistent accounts from multiple witnesses, it is evident that BROWN engaged in an inappropriate relationship with [Identified Survivor #1], as well as an inappropriate relationship involving sexually abusive misconduct with [Identified Survivor #2, “Erin”].

…

… Although the lack of direct proof of intent leaves room for speculation, the numerous interviews and, in many cases, corroborating documentation, point to a deliberate involvement of sexual misconduct within BRSM or FIRE SCHOOL, which could also be viewed as sexual harassment and/or a hostile work environment, especially with BROWN holding a position of power within the school generally and more specifically, with IS #2 Sarah.

Seemed pretty damning!

The board of Brown’s ministry took that report to heart and told Brown he needed to resign or he would be fired.

I’m just kidding. They actually rejected the report’s findings and blamed the victims.

For example, they said the definition of “sexual abuse” had been waaaaaay too broad. It’s only called sexual abuse, you see, if it comes from the sexual abuse region of France, otherwise it’s merely misconduct!

The Elder Accountability Team argued in their review that the Firefly investigators overreached in their investigation of Brown's actions when they expanded their definition of “sexual abuse” beyond the “historically narrow understanding of those terms” to classify his conduct with the two women in 2001-2002 as, “sexually abusive misconduct.”

“We believe a more accurate and historically consistent characterization of what Dr. Brown did is Moral Indiscretions in the case of the Wife and Leadership Misconduct in the case with [“Erin”],” the elders wrote.

They said the report’s finding that Brown “groomed” his former secretary was unfair since it was just “a grievous lack of judgement and a violation of the conduct established by his standards for Fire School of Ministry.”

They said the report didn’t include statements from Brown or his wife but did include unchallenged statements from people in the know who spoke out against his actions.

They said the Bible has a set of instructions for dealing with alleged sinners in Matthew 18, and those rules were not followed, in part because the survivor did not first go to Brown himself. Instead, they wrote, the allegations “were relitigated with accusations, judgement and sentencing by a jury on social media.”

Basically, by ignoring the forest and focusing on on the imperfections of various trees, the Elders concluded that the most damning elements of the report could be ignored.

“It appears clear to the Elder Accountability Team that throughout this process, dating back 23 years, Dr. Brown has been repeatedly questioned about these two situations and has answered his interrogators consistently with honesty and remorse,” the group said. “The Elders Accountability Team believes it is time to finally put this matter to rest and allow these transgressions to remain where they should be—nailed to the cross of Christ, cast as far as the east is from the west and no longer used against him.”

Apparently conservative morality says it’s perfectly fine to emotionally or physically abuse other people as long as it happened in the past. Under their logic, there’s nothing that can’t be forgiven with the passage of time even if the scars of Brown’s actions are felt by his victims long afterwards.

“Erin,” whose name is Sarah Monk, wasn’t surprised by any of this but it stung.

The report drew criticism from other whistleblowers and a victim hoping for public affirmation of the investigation and stronger discipline for Brown. Monk told The Roys Report (TRR) it was a “gut punch.”

“What hurt the most was seeing how they decided that they didn’t like the wording of the ‘sexually abusive misconduct’ when it came to me,” Monk said. “That’s why victims don’t come forward because those are supposed to be helping and protecting and counseling, they just don’t care.”

The bottom line is not that Brown did anything criminal. It’s that his actions violated the very rules his school promoted and that he says is essentially for a moral life. In that sense, it’s not all that different from what Jerry Falwell, Jr. did. If Falwell were a random guy, no one would care about his sex life. But what he and his wife did was wildly hypocritical given the rules at Liberty University and what the couple said publicly. (Their actions very clearly crossed the line at times.)

It’s deeply ironic that Brown believes gay people in monogamous relationships contribute to “moral confusion” in society but a straight man manipulating women through a power imbalance can run a ministry without a problem as long as he promises he’ll do better. #Logic.

Brown’s wife Nancy also released a statement gaslighting everyone who’s ever accused her man of any wrongdoing:

I must state here categorically and in no uncertain terms; Mike is not, and has never been a sexual predator, groomer, or deviant nor has he EVER exploited a single human being for his own personal gain or ego whether it be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. That is not who he is and never who he was. This is fantasy. He has never attempted to overpower or manipulate ANY female or force himself on them for sexual or emotional or physical gratification nor has he used them to stroke his ego or to get something from them. NEVER.

… And although Mike’s interaction with [“Erin”] was certainly foolish and irresponsible, his intentions were completely innocent with absolutely no malintent. He viewed her as a father to a daughter. Unfortunately, he has been made to look like a diabolical deviant and predator and nothing could be further from the truth. That is not Mike Brown.

She says Brown treated Monk like a “daughter,” which might sound innocent until you remember that conservative Christianity is full of stories about children being abused.

The (misnamed) “Elder Accountability Team” then said Brown could return to public ministry as long as he followed their recommendations in the future.

“Since Dr. Brown’s sins were committed long ago without any repeated behavioral patterns of like conduct, considering that these issues were believed to have been dealt with using Biblical Due Process as they understood it in 2002, considering his recent confession and repentance of his sins, considering his willingness to step back from ministry until the completion of the FIREFLY Investigation, believing he is trustworthy, presuming the above recommendations will be followed,” the group said, “the Elder Accountability Team recommends that Dr. Brown be released to public ministry with the hope that a new dimension of humility and strength of character may be added to his already broad field of Biblical knowledge, believing that the years ahead will be the most fruitful of all, marked by a greater humility and Christlikeness.”

It’s very convenient when your buddies clear you, the head of a ministry, to continue working and making money for the ministry.

And then on Wednesday, after nearly six months out of the spotlight himself, Brown released a video announcing his return:

He told the audience that he’s “encountered God” in new ways—at this point, a standard part of the Pastor Comeback Playbook—and that he’s not interested in re-litigating the allegations.

… I know that as I’m speaking to you, some of you are thrilled to see me back online, and others—you’d rather never see my face again. So I want to make it clear: I’m not here to debate. I’m not here to argue. I’m not here to prove a point. I’m not here to chase down this rumor or refute this allegation. I’m not going to be putting up screenshots and video clips and getting into some kind of internet war.

Of course he’s not interested in that. It all makes him look very, very bad.

How did he summarize the damning report from Firefly and the Elders’ self-serving rejection of what it said? Just looks at how he tap dances around that whole thing…

This was the process I was asked to submit to, and I said, "Yes, let's do it." The investigation was turned over to an independent team of Elders. They looked at the results of the investigation. They evaluated me and then they rendered their verdict. And on April 28th, they released me to resume ministry, effective immediately. And that's why I'm here now speaking to you today.

Notice how he conveniently doesn’t mention anything the investigation found. He acts like the Elders’ rejection of the investigation is the final verdict on the matter, details be damned. If the investigation said Brown was unfairly accused of anything, he would absolutely have mentioned it. Instead, he just glosses over all the specifics while insisting the Elders’ response to it is all that matters.

You can guess what happens now: Brown will continue making videos as if none of this ever happened. His supporters won’t give a damn because they never did in the first place. (Hypocrisy isn’t an issue for conservative zealots. It’s why they have no problem voting for a sexual predator while demonizing trans people and refugees as threats to women.)

Not all the people in Brown’s orbit agree with this, though. One of his long-time ministry partners, Ron Cantor, released his own statement condemning the Elders’ decision. It’s worth reading because of how incredibly detailed it is. He wrote about how Firefly’s contract defined “sexually abusive conduct” in advance, so the Elders’ conclusion that the investigators deliberately broadened it were ridiculous. He said the Elders promised a “trauma informed counselor” would help keep Brown accountable throughout the investigation process, but one was never assigned.

It goes on like that for a while.

Cantor writes at the end:

Sadly, this report seems to have one goal: to get Mike back in the ministry. Five people, none of whom are trained psychologists with experience in Clergy Sexual Abuse, are telling 5,000,000 people that this is over.

…

I hope he is broken and ready to do the long and hard work of making amends. I told this mutual friend that if I believed he were truly broken, I would drop everything and fly to Charlotte to help him. Repentance is a word. But one must show fruit to prove the repentance. I hope we see that very soon.

Another former ministry leader, Robert Gladstone, said he was “disappointed” by what the Elders did. He pointed out that Firefly said these incidents were isolated to a few years a while back, but that’s not accurate:

While the [Accountability Team’s] recommendations failed to account for the changing stories, it did emphasize the supposed isolated nature of the abuses. But as I have stated before, they were not isolated to the past. They continue with the victims’ pain and the alleged ongoing lies. In other words, in my opinion, the AT rewrote history regarding the original problem, calling it something they prefer and then isolating it to the past, and then they disregarded a very credible account of cover up.

He also said the “injustice continues” because the report “insults the survivors, further injures them, ignores many who testify of Michael Brown’s coverup and lies, completely misjudges the need for public exposure, and then commends a man back into ministry while giving those he mistreated further pain.”

The thing about conservative groups is that there’s always a figurehead with way too much power, and everyone else, no matter how much they warn others, are routinely ignored. If Michael Brown’s own ministry won’t hold him accountable for what he did, there’s no hope for any of them.

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