Two Lawsuits Filed Against Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock
News and Analysis
Dec 6, 2024
NEWS. On December 3, 2024, two lawsuits were filed against Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock. One lawsuit addresses the alleged conduct of Patrick Stephen Miller, the former children’s pastor at Immanuel. The second deals with Reagan Gray, the former Sylvan Hills teacher who carried on a sexual relationship with an underage male in the student ministry of the church while she was a member of the church’s staff.
Both lawsuits are filed by attorney Joseph Gates, of Little Rock. Both are filed in the Pulaski County Circuit Court, which is also the county in which Immanuel is located. The lawsuits mark another stunning chapter in Immanuel’s history.
As the oldest southern Baptist church in Little Rock, Immanuel has been known for its evangelism to the upper class of Little Rock and symbolized by its prominent place on a hill in West Little Rock on Interstate 430. However, these lawsuits mark a new blemish on this saga of the storied church.
Initially, church leadership kept all news and information about the alleged abuses secret. It only revealed the allegations on the same Sunday morning that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette printed its report in its Sunday paper. By that time, Miller had been arrested for felony child abuse and allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. He was actively seeking to have the conviction sealed after moving to Oklahoma to take a new position as a children’s pastor at a different church.
Immanuel never reported the allegations against Miller to his new church-employer and failed to report the allegations against Gray, who was briefly suspended by the church when it learned of the sexual relationship with the teenager, to the school in which she worked with children as a licensed teacher.
Miller is accused of molesting children in the church during Wednesday and Sunday services. Gray is accused of performing sex acts on a student of the church on or near church grounds and using church functions to facilitate the acts.
Both lawsuits allege that the leadership of church was aware of the actions of Miller and Gray, did not take any measures to protect the children or congregation, and instead engaged in an active cover-up. Additionally, both lawsuits allege a failure of the church’s leadership, who are mandated reporters of child abuse, to report the suspected child abuse to the Arkansas hotline.
John Doe’s case against Patrick Miller is assigned to Judge Herb Wright, who will soon be leaving the circuit court bench for a district court position. The case will likely be reassigned to Judge Shawn Johnson after January 1st. Jane Doe’s case is assigned to Judge Tim Fox.
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ANALYSIS (the author is a licensed attorney). Not reporting child abuse never ends well. This was a really, really bad move by Immanuel. Additionally, how Immanuel handled the matter is reprehensible. As former Special Counsel Ken Starr once said about the sex scandal at Baylor University (another Baptist institution), there is no greater disinfectant than sunlight.
Instead of using transparency and bright lights, Immanuel hid these actions from its congregants. Attendance fell dramatically at the church, and it appears to be financially suffering as its facilities are appearing unkempt and dated.
What’s worse, is that these lawsuits are being used as a public exposition of the failures of the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole. The dirty laundry being aired implies that the then leadership of the church had, for years, fostered a systemic method of covering up abuses.
This is only a legal complaint. Allegations in a complaint are not evidence. The jury will likely never read the complaint and its salacious allegations. Instead, former Immanuel member Joseph Gates is taking the Baptists to task in his filing that appears to be made to generate headlines (like the one in this article).
Nothing wrong with that but see it for what it is—a public rebuke by a former congregant-lawyer and a reckoning for the bad behavior of church leadership.
At the end of the day, the question will not be if Immanuel should pay, but how much. If Immanuel was smart, they would pay, say they are sorry, and move on to rebuilding trust and relationships because there is a lot of that to do in the coming years.
Attorney. America First. Sued Hunter Biden for child support. Represented President Trump in the 2020 Wisconsin election challenge. Former attorney for the Wisconsin Special Counsel. An official “Tough Cookie” per President Trump.
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