Sex Scandals and the Evangelical Mind

When news of Matt Chandler’s “inappropriate” online relationship popped up in my phone notifications last week, I was in the middle of a church staff retreat with my copastors, who are all male. I interrupted one of them to read the story aloud.
The news landed like a lead balloon between us, and then we came together as a group and talked about how stories like this make us feel and whether our own ministry friendships might be “inappropriate.”
The larger evangelical world was shaken too. Twitter exploded with a reanimated debate over the Billy...