High profile Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias from RZM Ministries has been posthumously accused and investigated for "sexual misconduct."
https://www.rzim.org/read/rzim-updat...ravi-zacharias
Based on what I have read beyond this article it sounds like he had a reputation for propositioning and abusing massage therapists—many of whom were possibly illegal immigrants who succumbed for fear of deportation.
This has raised an important question for me about the role that the Bible plays in perpetuating this behaviour among Christian leaders. As I see more and more Christians on social media excuse these scumbags on the basis that they are only human, and that even the best of us are prone to such spectacular failings, the more I am convinced that the problem is less-so with human depravity, and more-so with stories from the Bible like those of King David's sin, recorded in 2 Sam 11–12.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, David was the most virtuous, popular and most successful king in the ancient history of Israel. According to the story he spotted a naked, beautiful Bathsheeba bathing on the roof-top of her dwelling, and sent to have her brought to his house where he had sex with her. She became pregnant, and the king panicked at the discovery that she was the wife of one of his high-ranking military officials named Uriah. To cover for his crime, David arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle, and then took Bathsheeba to be his wife. YHWH was angry with David. As punishment the son that Bathsheeba bore did not survive, but David lived long and died in peace and prosperity. The End.
(In a slightly altered version the punishment for David's crimes are suffered by the people of Israel, not the king himself.)
One will notice that the story itself is a story about men, written by men, for men. Bathsheeba is nothing more than an object to forward the narrative. She has no agency at all in the story, and her own feelings and her fate are entirely ignored. She has no power at all to resist the king, his advances, his sexual appetites, and ultimately his enforcement of marriage. In turn, the crime that David commits is not against her, but rather against her husband and his god. When Christians retell this story it is always as one of foreboding caution issued to Christian leaders, warning of the dangers of sexual misconduct to their own reputation and ministry. Again, the woman, her mistreatment, her feelings, and the consequences suffered by her are completely ignored. It is repulsive.
Is it any wonder that this is such a pervasive problem in the modern Church?