Right-wing Christian worship leader Zach Radcliff charged with child sex crimes
The alleged crimes stretch back to 2014
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Zach Radcliff is a 29-year-old graduate of Liberty University. A worship director at Oakwood Church in Michigan. A guy who performed original music at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2019. A supporter of Donald Trump.
That video, by the way, was literally removed from YouTube by Liberty Music Group as I was writing this post. But not before I got a copy of it.
Anyway, in news that won’t be shocking to anyone at this point, Radcliff just got arrested for sexually abusing children.
Zachary Joseph Radcliff, 29, was arraigned on two charges of aggravated “child sexually abusive activity,” two charges child sexually abusive activity and six charges of using the internet to communicate with another to commit a crime. He is facing up to 25 years in prison.
It’s actually much worse when you read the details. Radcliff has been accused of producing illicit content involving kids stretching all the way back to 2014. He’s being held on a $3 million bond in the Washtenaw County Jail and is set to appear in front of a judge on October 31.
Liberty University has now deleted the page touting his CPAC appearance and the church’s home page now includes a giant We Know Exactly Why You’re Visiting Our Website disclaimer:
We received some very disturbing news about our music and youth director, Zachary Radcliff who is also the son of our senior pastor, Frank Radcliff. We realized while talking to him that there was more to the situation than was being expressed. He was suspended with pay on October 3rd, pending further investigation. More information was given to us on Saturday, October 12th, at 4:00 in the afternoon. Pastoral staff met with our church that evening and Sunday morning. Zach was terminated from his job, without pay effective Saturday, October 12th.
The State Police were notified by families that were involved and our church staff. We are not aware of the full extent of his crimes, and we are doing everything we can to cooperate with the ongoing police investigation.
The information that we received was shocking. We were told that Zachary had been soliciting inappropriate photos and possibly videos from teens. We have also heard other stories. This information has ripped our hearts apart. The safety and protection of the individuals in our church is what is paramount to us. We are devoted to doing what we can for the care of the victims of these crimes.
Every one of our staff members and individuals working with our children, teens, and adults go through background checks. We do our level best to make sure all are protected.
The church added that anyone with more information should contact the Michigan State Police, which is the least they could do. Certainly the staffers at the church can’t be trusted. The kids would have been infinitely safer listening to drag queens read stories at libraries than attending youth group at this church.
The timeline here is also interesting. The website says the church learned about the allegations earlier this month and suspended Zach (with pay) on October 3. On October 6, Frank Radcliff delivered a sermon—the series was ironically titled “Not Today, Satan!”—in which he said nothing about the allegations at all. He ended the sermon by telling the congregation, “We always finish a service with song. We're not gonna do that today. We always finish a song by hearing Zach tell us to go be the church. Go be the church. Give somebody a hug.”
The sermon dated October 20, given a week after Zach was “terminated from his job,” included no mention of him at all. (It’s not clear if they held a service on October 13. No video of it is on their YouTube channel, though a service is listed on the church’s calendar that day.)
This is a family, though, that has delivered many messages trashing All Things Liberal. At the height of the pandemic, when people were literally avoiding going outdoors as much as possible, Zach Radcliff led church members in a downtown, maskless sing-along that marched to a local cemetery.
And in 2022, in an interview with Christian radio host Chris Ayotte, Zach’s father Frank Radcliff went off on the supposed immorality of the left:
AYOTTE: Then you have this gender identity ideology, which is from the pit of Hell, because it is confusing our children. These are children. And we're going to enable and reward gender dysphoria… which may be a real issue. I'm not saying that these things aren't legitimate issues that can be worked through, but I'm gonna affirm the child, male or female, or I'm going to try to help people in a constructive manner, Pastor Frank, win over whatever issue it is that they're dealing with. But I think, as Christians, we should be able to speak the truth in love, should we not?
FRANK RADCLIFF: I believe so. I believe that… that's where we get in trouble. We have become so afraid of what someone's gonna say about us, or we have become so tolerant, that somewhere in there we have forgotten our job is to help people grow and change. And sometimes that means sitting down and saying, “This lifestyle that you're choosing is immoral. It's wrong.”
Instead of sitting down and looking at little people that we won't allow them to have a drink, we won’t allow them to smoke a cigarette, we won't allow them to do all these other things, but we'll literally do child abuse on that kid…
Our whole church is looking at each other and saying, “It is my job to love on you, and it's my job also, every once in a while, to take you out to the woodshed and spank your butt.”
Even if you ignore the inadvertently awkward phrasing at the end, during that segment of the interview, Zach can be heard multiple times chiming in with words like “Right” and “Yep.” He was fully invested in treating trans people as immoral even though he knew he was the guy children needed to avoid.
The same people who condemn trans people in the name of denouncing immorality ignored the sex predator sitting right next to them. And the sex predator may have gotten away with his alleged crimes for years largely because he was protected by the shield of Christianity, which gave him access to children along with unearned levels of trust.
It’s always the ones you absolutely expect.
It has gotten to the point where these things are more expected than shocking. At least the victims are being listened to and believed at long last. I can only wonder about the countless cases of sexual assault that went unreported, or were never prosecuted over the years, thanks to Christian privilege. His MAGA hat is also revealing. The preachers warned of the anti-Christ for centuries, then when he showed up, they voted for him. That the evangelicals can support such a grotesquely immoral man, is all you need to know about what their morals amount to in practice.
Whoop-dee-fuckin'-doo, won’t you believe it? Another one of these cases.
It’s not gay people or trans people or drag queens that we should be scared of, it’s the 'family values' crowd that are actually coming to groom your kids.