Gateway Church pastor Robert Morris resigns after sex abuse allegations surface

Robert Morris, a founding pastor of Gateway Church who has been accused of sexually abusing a girl when she was between the ages of 12 to 17, has resigned, the Southlake church announced Tuesday.

The Oklahoma woman, now in her 50s, told The Dallas Morning News that Morris abused her on multiple occasions in the 1980s when he was working as a traveling evangelist. In the one-page news release, Lawrence Swicegood, a church spokesperson, said the church elders “did not have all the facts of the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the victim, including her age at the time and the length of the abuse.”

“The elders’ prior understanding was that Morris’s extramarital relationship, which he had discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with ‘a young lady’ and not abuse of a 12-year-old child,” Swicegood said in the release.

Morris has not been criminally charged. The 62-year-old has not responded to repeated messages from The News seeking comment since Saturday.

The alleged abuse first gained wide notice Friday on the religious watchdog blog Wartburg Watch. In a statement to The Christian Post, which published a story detailing the allegations Saturday, Morris said he was “involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.”

An internal memo sent to Gateway employees as the allegations came to light said Morris “has been open and forthright about a moral failure he had over 35 years ago.” He underwent a two-year “restoration process” that was “closely administered” by elders at Shady Grove Church in Grand Prairie, according to the one-page memo. That church later became Gateway’s Grand Prairie campus.

The memo continues that he returned to ministry with the “full blessing” of the Shady Grove elders and the woman’s father.

The woman, Cindy Clemishire, who said Morris was married with a child when their families met in 1981, denied that her father gave their blessing for Morris to return to ministry. The News does not typically name victims of sexual abuse, but Clemishire has allowed her name to be published.

In a lengthy statement Tuesday afternoon, Clemishire said she had “mixed feelings” about Morris’ resignation, though she had sought his exit from ministry for years. She said she first contacted Gateway leaders, including Morris, with the allegations in 2005 and again in 2007.

“Gateway had the information but intentionally decided to embrace the false narrative Robert Morris wanted them to believe,” Clemishire said in the two-page statement. Referencing her faith, she said, “Though we are called to forgive those who hurt us, please understand that forgiveness is about you and can take time. We should expect and demand consequences.”

The Gateway elders, Swicegood said in the release, are “heartbroken and appalled” by the allegations, saying, “we express our deep sympathy to the victim and her family.”

“For the sake of the victim, we are thankful this situation has been exposed. We know many have been affected by this, we understand that you are hurting, and we are very sorry,” the statement reads. “It is our prayer that, in time, healing for all those affected can occur.”

Morris is a prominent televangelist and has been politically active. In 2016, Morris was named as a member of an advisory board — called the Evangelical Executive Advisory Board — for then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The 25-member board was created to advise Trump on “issues important to Evangelicals and other people of faith in America,” according to a Trump campaign news release at the time.

Morris, in a Facebook post last fall, said he became a Christian when he was 19 years old, months before he met James Robison, a widely known televangelist in the Moral Majority movement of the 1980s. Robison asked Morris to travel with him to preach to students in junior high and high school, and the duo have remained close friends since then, Morris wrote in the post.

Robison is the president of LIFE Outreach International. In a statement to The News on Tuesday, the organization said Morris joined the James Robison Evangelistic Association in the late 80s as a morning supervisor for a call center. During his employment, Morris’ duties did not include public speaking, according to the statement.

Before the recent media coverage, Robison was “not aware of the specific details surrounding” Morris’ departure from Shady Grove Church, according to the statement.

John Huffman, the former mayor of Southlake, posted a statement Tuesday morning to X prior to Morris’ resignation that also condemned his alleged behavior. He said Morris should have spent time in jail and “ruined” a 12-year-old girl’s life.

“Some sins are so egregious and vile that they disqualify a person from holding an office of trust like a pastorship,” Huffman said in the statement.

State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, said in a text message that legislators must improve laws to ensure justice for victims of child sexual abuse.

In February 2022, Morris nominated his son, James Morris, to the church’s elders to be his successor and the next senior pastor of Gateway Church. After a “rigorous, six-month interview process” that included interviews with elders and outside consultants, the younger Morris was selected that September to take over as senior pastor in spring 2025, according to the church’s website.

Gateway was founded by Morris in 2000 in Southlake and has expanded to nine campuses across the Dallas-Fort Worth area and offers services online. The church has about 100,000 attendees each weekend, according to its website.

The church’s board retained the law firm of Haynes & Boone to conduct an “independent, thorough and professional review” of the allegations to “ensure we have a complete understanding of the events” from 1982 and 1987, according to the statement.

In her statement, Clemishire said she was skeptical of the investigation. She echoed her attorney, Boz Tchividjian, who questioned why elders are seemingly limiting the investigation to a five-year period.

The Gateway statement does not say whether the investigation’s results will be made public. Swicegood, the church’s spokesperson, did not immediately return a phone call or an email seeking more information.

In a statement Tuesday, Jacob Bourne, a spokesperson for Haynes & Boone, confirmed the firm “has been engaged” to conduct an investigation but did not answer a question about its scope or a possible timeline.

CORRECTION, 2:20 p.m., Oct. 31, 2024: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Clemishire’s age when the alleged abuse ended. She was 17 years old.

Arts and entertainment reporter Kajsa Kedefors and breaking news reporter Matt Kyle contributed to this report.