November 7, 2026

Today the church is reckoning, again, with what happens when spiritual authority becomes a predator's cover. Tom Keesee, an Ohio megachurch leader, was convicted on 27 counts of child sex abuse. A Philadelphia Pentecostal pastor pleaded guilty to federal child exploitation charges the same week. And in Kenya, cult leader Paul Mackenzie received a life sentence for the deaths of 191 people, most of them children, who starved following his teachings. Three cases. Three continents. One pattern: men whose religious authority went unquestioned until bodies were counted.

Religion News Service is asking the sharper institutional question: why did Christian leaders keep platforming Russell Brand after rape accusations were public? Brand has since been convicted. The piece names names. Compassion International, separately, is defending its child protection record after grooming allegations surfaced involving a staff member. Their defense may be legitimate. The problem is that every institution under scrutiny says the same thing. Mere Orthodoxy's piece on conspiratorial thinking this week is about something different on the surface, but it touches the same nerve: Christians who are trained to see hidden enemies everywhere are often the last to see the predator in the pulpit. Discernment, it turns out, requires looking inward as much as outward.