Earlier this month, a bombshell report from the religious watchdog group Wartburg Watch roiled one of the largest megachurches in Texas. Robert Morris, the founder and pastor of the influential Southlake-based Gateway Church, had in the 1980s repeatedly sexually abused a child over the course of four years, beginning when the girl was 12 years old, as recounted by the survivor to Wartburg’s Dee Parsons. According to the victim, Cindy Clemishire, the abuse took place in both Oklahoma and Texas.
The public allegations toppled Morris, a highly influential conservative pastor and a key emissary for the religious right in Republican politics. In a statement following the Wartburg report, Morris admitted to “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.” He resigned as pastor of Gateway on June 18—his name was promptly scrubbed from the Gateway website and those of its many affiliated organizations. The bio of his son, in line to succeed Morris as senior pastor, now lacked any mention of his father.
Before his fall from grace, Morris wielded significant political influence, endorsing candidates and promoting Republican legislative priorities from the pulpit while serving as one of ex-President Donald Trump’s key advisors. Morris has made visits to the White House and even hosted Trump at a Gateway campus in Dallas, where Trump described Morris and his colleague Steve Dulin as “great people with a great reputation.”
Under Morris’ leadership over 23 years, Gateway Church ballooned to around 100,000 congregants at campuses spread across North Texas. The vast network has become a hotbed for Christian nationalism, “an ideology that seeks to privilege conservative Christianity in education, law, and public policy,” according to David Brockman, a religious scholar with the Baker Institute at Rice University and a Texas Observer contributor.
Photos with Texas politicians posted by Morris recirculated following the news this month. (Courtesy)
Gateway has a long history of promoting right-wing candidates from the pulpit and beyond. The church is closely aligned with Patriot Mobile, the Christian nationalist cell phone company whose PAC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars backing candidates who campaigned on claims that children are being deliberately “sexualized” in public schools. The church has also allowed Patriot Mobile to use its facilities to host voter registration events in partnership with Citizens Defending Freedom, a right-wing activist group with chapters across the nation that is a founding member of the Remnant Alliance, a new coalition of Christian nationalist organizations that are also targeting school board elections. Morris and his church also promoted voter guides published by groups like Vision America and the iVoterGuide, both of which are linked to the right-wing network Council on National Policy.
Gateway consists of a sprawling web of churches and affiliated educational organizations. It features nine Gateway campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, four prison ministries in North Texas, and a satellite campus in Jackson Hole, a preferred vacation spot among America’s wealthiest elites. According to Gateway, it also provides support and resources to a vast network of 98 churches in 24 states, with 32 affiliated ministries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area alone, and a total of 275 churches across 80 countries.
One of those affiliates is Mercy Culture, an openly political megachurch that has become an engine for Christian nationalist politics where GOP state Representative Nate Schatzline is a pastor. Schatzline is a firebrand Christian conservative from Tarrant County who openly mixes religion and politics. During his first term in 2023, he led a group of Mercy Culture congregants in prayer at the Texas Capitol. On April 21, Schatzline led the Mercy Culture congregation in prayer for a list of candidates supported by For Liberty and Justice Tarrant, a Mercy Culture-affiliated nonprofit that Schatzline also leads. Several of the endorsed politicians were in attendance. He’s also led “Candidate University” trainings for aspiring candidates and activists who “will stand for righteousness” and “make an impact for the Kingdom in government.”
Schatzline has been at the forefront of a crusade to ban drag shows and remove LGBTQ+ content from school libraries, often describing his opponents as “groomers”. Notably, the word “groomer” was not among the 418 words in the statement Schatzline issued on June 18 regarding Morris’ past child molestation.
“For years, Pastor [Morris] has shared about a ‘moral failing’ in the early years of his marriage and ministry, after which he submitted to restoration,” Schatzline’s statement on X reads. “While I believe in restoration, the details that have recently come to light are deeply disturbing and are unacceptable for anyone, especially a spiritual leader.”
Schatzline’s statement did not call for Moore to be criminally prosecuted. For “continuous sexual abuse of [a] young child,” there is no statute of limitations under Texas law. Schatzline did not respond to Observer requests for comment.
In a June 20 post on X, Schatzline said: “Leftists will use the recent evil actions of celebrity pastors to CONSTANTLY redirect & deflect from the sexual indoctrination in the pub ed system. Let’s unify against both. Both are evil!”
Other prominent Texas Republicans—who’ve also made political hay of stopping child predators or preventing the sexualization of minors—have also met and been pictured with Morris over the years, including Governor Greg Abbott, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, and Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn. None of them appear to have issued any public statement about Morris, nor did any respond to the Observer’s requests for comment.
In 2020, Trump spoke at length with Morris during a public event at the Gateway Church campus in Dallas. The former president has repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories that cast his political enemies as Satanic pedophiles and validated the delusions of QAnon adherents.
In 2015, Morris posted a photo of himself shaking hands with Abbott. In 2017, Morris said Abbott had personally called him seeking support for a so-called bathroom bill to ban transgender Texans from using public restrooms that align with their gender expression. The right’s main talking point for the bill was to stop potential predators from accessing bathrooms to prey on women and children. In 2023, Abbott made a comment on X suggesting that children are the targets of “sexual activism,” and he has helped advance the right’s narrative that public school teachers and administrators are intentionally sexualizing children.
Morris also posted a photo with Cruz after a meeting in 2016. In 2022, Cruz said on X: “The radical left wants to sexualize kids. We ought to be protecting the innocence of kids.”
Waybourn, the top lawman in Tarrant County where Gateway Church is headquartered, also has a connection to Morris. In 2023, Morris posted photos with Waybourn and members of his staff after attending a Sunday service at Gateway. The conservative sheriff has campaigned heavily on the idea he would crack down on human sex trafficking, including minors.
Morris has been condemned by many conservative Christians, including John Huffman, the former Mayor of Southlake, where Gateway is headquartered. “Gateway Church says it’s ‘All about people.’ It’s time they prove it,” Huffman wrote in a lengthy post on X criticizing the church leadership’s response.
Local outlets have reported that some Gateway congregants have chosen to leave the church in the controversy’s wake.
But, in a June 18 audio recording reported by NBC News, one church elder said that there is “an anointing” on Morris even after “there was some stuff that was done. They both can exist,” he said.
In a since-deleted Facebook post, one congregant questioned the motivations of Morris’ victim, Clemishire. “Gateway Church is my church and Robert Morris was my pastor,” the congregant wrote. “Here are my thoughts on this sad day he resigned. I find several things to question: Her timing…why now? Why did she not write a book or take info further 10 to 15 years ago as an adult?”
Clemishire emailed Morris about the abuse as early as 2005 seeking compensation, in response to which Morris replied with a legal warning that Clemishire could be “criminally prosecuted.” At least one church elder was aware that Clemishire sought compensation from Morris at the time.
