Megachurch pastor forced to repent for recording consensual sex with his wife
Nathan Peternel is caught up in a number of scandals. But he's being punished for the only one that shouldn't matter.
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Nathan Peternel, the leader of Life Church, an Indianapolis-based megachurch affiliated with the Assemblies of God, is caught up in a bizarre sex scandal that’s a mix of horror as well as a self-inflicted wound based on a Purity Culture mindset.
Making this even more relevant, Peternel (pronounced PETE-ur-NELL) is a close ally of Indiana’s Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, a Christian Nationalist who fantasizes about living in a fundamentalist theocracy during damn near every interview. Peternel hired Beckwith to lead one of his churches in Noblesville, a position Beckwith still holds today, and co-hosts a podcast with him called “Jesus, Sex & Politics.”
More recently, Beckwith’s office hired a law firm with close ties to the church with the help of a no-bid contract, a decision that ethics experts would describe as batshit crazy.
Anyway, to make any sense of what’s happening, you have to go back about six months when Peternel’s 24-year-old son was arrested for online crimes involving children. Law enforcement had evidence that he possessed and was distributing illicit material via a Snapchat group for “Diddy Disciples” (ugh) and had even more on a computer back at his house.
The church put out a statement at the time saying they were “deeply saddened” by the allegations:
We are deeply saddened by the recent allegations involving Pastor Nathan’s adult son and want to express our heartfelt sympathy to all those affected. Our prayers are with Pastor Nathan and his family during this incredibly difficult time, as well as with the families and individuals impacted by these events. Our hearts remain heavy for all who are suffering.
As we walk through this challenging moment, we are committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, accountability, and transparency. We hold fast to our mission as a church to offer hope, bring healing, and stand firm in our faith, seeking justice while shining a light in the darkness.
To be clear, there’s no reason to believe Peternel himself knew about any of this, much less condoned it. In fact, multiple episodes of his podcast with Beckwith featured the two men discussing sexual morality and child exploitation—always insisting that this is a sin problem, and blaming liberals for supporting LGBTQ rights, and saying that pornography of any kind would destroy relationships. People with rock-solid faith would never be caught up in such shenanigans.
But when police were searching through the son’s computers, they also discovered that he had on his phone over 50 photos/videos that apparently showed his parents naked and/or having sex. (Which raises a host of very different questions.)
Were any of those videos illegal or problematic? Nope. There’s no reason to believe there was anything wrong with those videos. If a couple wants to videotape themselves for their own pleasure, or even to share with others consensually, who the hell cares?
Apparently, everyone in Peternel’s church, because they have a completely unhealthy approach to sex.
In December, Peternel addressed his church about the scandal and said that “within the covenant of our marriage, my wife and I created private intimate photos and videos.” Those files were on a password-protected part of his computer, but his son “who was high at the time” apparently hacked into the system and got access to them.
He later reassured the church that “everything has been deleted.”
So to recap: Peternel’s son did something criminally horrible… but the apology he gave at church concerned only the private videos he made with his wife, videos no one needed to know about and videos he had no reason to apologize for.
While all this was happening, people who attended his church were going public with the fact that this dude has been obsessed with sex for decades to the point of asking underage girls about their sexual habits. He’s just plain creepy to the point where other church leaders reprimanded him for taking things too far. Some members of his former youth group, which he called “Stormfront” like the neo-Nazi organization, said his behavior amounted to “grooming.” (Kudos to the outlet 24sight News and reporter Tom LoBianco for covering all this. If you’re not subscribed to him, you should be.)
One of those girls posted a video to YouTube with receipts about what she experienced during a “counseling” session with him, including him asking her (a 17-year-old at the time) whether she orgasmed with her partner, “if her breasts had to be touched” in order to climax, if they used sex toys, etc. That couple never returned to that church again.
It should be noted that this arguably wouldn’t be okay even if the girl was older only because it’s not actual therapy or counseling. But this is how many conservative pastors talk about sex. They make it sound like any kind of pre-marital experimentation whatsoever is The Worst Kind of Sin… but that from the moment you’re married—like the split-second after you’re married—you and your spouse can explore every possible kink to your hearts’ desires. What they usually fail to mention is that the lack of experimentation means many people marry young so they can finally have sex, that they get married before they have any clue what they actually enjoy sexually, that they feel obligated to go through with what someone else (usually the man) wants even if they’re not enjoying it (sometimes to the point of abuse), and that they often feel like failures if they’re not enjoying marital sex after years of being told it would be nothing but fireworks every time.
Peternel’s advice was awful to begin with. That the girl was underage just made everything that much worse.
Beckwith, meanwhile, appeared to be running PR for the family. He told churchgoers that the “enemy” was spreading “lies” about the family and people should stop challenging anything Peternel was doing.
A couple of weeks ago, Peternel’s son was finally sentenced to jail for his crimes. He’ll spend about four years behind bars, be on probation for two years after that, and have to register as a sex offender for life. Okay. Fine. No one’s defending the son here.
But here’s where things take a(nother) bizarre turn.
While all this drama involving the son has been going on, the Assemblies of God can’t get over the fact that Peternel made sex videos with his wife. Their by-laws mention that “Moral transgression involving pornography” could be a cause for disciplinary action.
That presumably refers to people who watch it or are addicted to it. We could have a separate conversation about whether than makes any sense—we know how much conservative Christians love to punish even healthy forms of sex—but that’s also very different from filming yourself within the consensual bounds of marriage.
Yet on Friday last week, Peternel announced that he would be stepping aside from his church role while an investigation takes place and he goes through a “restorative process.”
“After a careful and thorough review, the District Executive Presbytery concluded that certain personal behaviors related to my use and retention of private digital content involving my spouse fell short of the standards expected of a credentialed minister and were determined to be unbecoming of ministerial leadership,” Peternel wrote in his email obtained by 24sight News.
Peternel wrote he would step aside beginning March 1, he did not say how long the “restorative process” would last.
To which I can only say… WHY? This guy should be reevaluating his views on sex entirely. He should stop treating homosexuality as a sin. He should stop asking kids about their sex lives. He should apologize for suggesting that religious faith would override any potential “sins”—much less crimes—since his own family is proof that being devout Christians doesn’t magically fix everything.
The only thing he doesn’t need to apologize for is making sex tapes with his wife, and yet that’s the only problem the Assemblies of God has with anything he’s done. That’s the only reason he’s stepping away from the pulpit.
That denomination, by the way, has already been exposed as a safe haven for sex predators.
Now, it’s entirely possible that Peternel isn’t telling us the whole truth. Maybe he was reprimanded for all the ways he’s tried to get off on talking about sex with children over the years, but this is the excuse he’s sharing publicly. (It’s not like we’ve seen the internal report from the Assemblies of God.)
But if this truly is the only reason he’s being punished, it’s absurd. Of all the reasons Peternel should be stepping away from the spotlight, he’s doing it for the least problematic one and the only one that doesn’t need to change.
Meanwhile, as all this is going on, families are leaving the megachurch and pastors are resigning. So at least some people have reached their breaking point with this ridiculous ministry. Maybe not for the same reasons I would have bowed out a long time ago, but whatever. The podcast he has with Beckwith hasn’t aired any new episodes since September, but select episodes involving Peternel’s own sex life have been deleted.
This could have easily been a story about a pastor apologizing for his son’s crimes and acknowledging that their faith didn’t prevent any of it. Peternel could have admitted that crimes involving sex don’t stem from being gay or trans, and they’re not stopped by being Christian. Instead, his own sex life got caught in the crossfire of a denomination that has a completely unhealthy idea of what sex of any kind ought to look like.
Now Peternel is being forced to repent even though he personally harmed literally no one. (Well, not from the sex tapes, anyway.) He deserves to be punished for traumatizing children, or for not paying closer attention to what his son was doing, or for forging an alliance with Beckwith. But he’s only being punished for recording consensual sex with his wife. In any sane ethical framework, that’s not a sin. It’s not even a scandal. It’s quite literally no one else’s business.
But when you live in the warped moral ecosystem of Purity Culture, even consensual intimacy becomes a punishable offense if it’s not done by the book (boring, missionary-style, for the purpose of child-bearing, etc). The Assemblies of God is demanding contrition for the one thing Peternel did that wasn’t weird.
What can we learn from all this? When church leaders obsessively monitor private sexual behavior between consenting adults, you can bet good money that they’re ignoring things like coercion, grooming, and institutional protection. Peternel is now repenting for harmless personal conduct while never confronting the deeper structural problems he helped create.
Another pious paragon of virtue bites the dust. I will never understand why people willingly delegate an important part of their thinking to the clergy. They are as deeply flawed as every other human being, and if anything they’re bigger hypocrites.
Once got reprimanded privately by a pastor as a kid because I didn't take or sign an oath to be sexually "pure" until marriage.
I pointed to the scripture where Jesus told his followers not to take oaths at all as it was a sin. `