The events of this past year that have led to the need for this statement have been the most difficult and traumatic of my life. The effect on my personal and professional life has been devastating, the pain it has caused my wife and children has been immense and unrelenting, and the attack on my faith disillusioning and truly diabolical. I have been maligned and humiliated, falsely accused of criminal behavior, and treated like a pariah—all by people who profess to be Christian. I wish I didn’t have to write this but for the sake of my family I feel I must bring painful realities to light.
Most of the readers of this statement will have already come to know that over three years ago I had a brief (six-month) extramarital affair with Jill Szoo Wilson. The affair was tragic, sinful, and deeply hurtful for each of us, our families, and beyond. My grief and deep remorse have been acute, not just three years ago, but recurrently to this day. Gratefully, and by God’s grace, I have received forgiveness from my wife and family.
As tragic as it was, this extramarital affair was, nonetheless, entirely consensual. The notion that I targeted Jill, groomed, manipulated, or intentionally engaged in emotional or spiritual abuse is completely false. Even more egregious is the accusation that the affair was a form of clergy sexual misconduct/abuse. Likewise, this accusation is categorically and wholly false. Clergy sexual misconduct/abuse is a serious abuse of power and violation of trust by a spiritual leader toward someone under their spiritual care. Because of the imbalance of power, consent can never truly be consent —it is coercion and rape—and it is rightly criminalized in many states. Jill Wilson was never under my spiritual care in any way, either formally or informally, throughout the entirety of our relationship. I was never her boss, her pastor, her employer, her professor, or fellow congregant. The relationship began and ended outside of any professional or pastoral relationship or institution. The power dynamics were equal between us as two consenting adults who willingly entered into an extramarital affair. Our actions were morally and spiritually wrong, but there was absolutely no abuse of any kind. To characterize our relationship as clergy sexual misconduct is deplorable and defamatory. More importantly, such mistruth denigrates those who have actually experienced such abuse.
Beginning in August 0f 2025, (more than two years after the end of the affair), I was forced to reach out to a lawyer and initiate a defamation suit. We proceeded carefully through litigation. At all times during the litigation, Jill Wilson was represented by two experienced attorneys as well as the First Amendment Clinic at Washington University. Attempts of her attorneys to throw out the case and to delay discovery all failed. The case was extraordinarily serious, as any accusation of rape and sexual abuse should be. However, through the adversarial litigation process the truth came clearly to the light: Jill Szoo Wilson had lied about the alleged “clergy sex abuse,” the alleged grooming, the alleged manipulation and the alleged spiritual abuse and admitted her lies under oath, stating unequivocally that our affair was entirely consensual and involved no clergy sex abuse, rape, or abuse of any kind. (See her affidavit below).
Wilson also alleged that I participated in an institutional coverup of the affair with Concordia Seminary and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. This is also false. The affair was never a “public sin.” It was ended privately between the two married couples involved and a pastor. Nonetheless, Wilson chose to disclose the affair to my ecclesiastical supervisor (the Missouri District President) after several weeks. There were no accusations of sexual misconduct or abuse and consequently no need to investigate anything. Instead, admitting the truth of the affair to my district president, and following his guidance and the bylaws of the church, I resigned from membership of my church body (the LCMS) and the seminary “for personal and private reasons.” Privacy was recommended for the sake of all involved, so that marriages could seek guidance, reconciliation, and healing. Our privacy (and the privacy of Wilson and her husband) were respected.
But privacy is not the same as secrecy. There are very few reasons for a sudden resignation from synod membership from someone occupying my position, and I assumed—quite rightly—that most would conclude an affair as the cause. The LCMS is also required in its bylaws to publicly announce every resignation from membership in its official publication, the Reporter, available to readers online and in print. This includes its 12,000 digital subscribers, distributed in print to roughly 31,000 recipients, in over 200 countries. This wide notification of my resignation in the Reporter occurred in August of 2023.
Impact of False Accusations and Defamation
What follows is a description of what our family has had to go through because of the false allegations and defamation against me. It is difficult to write, and it is, no doubt, difficult to read. But it is the truth and God can use truth to make something new.
The effect of the affair on my life and the life of my family was traumatic and yet the Lord has been gracious to us. My own faith suffered deeply under the weight of guilt and shame and loss. Learning to believe in forgiveness, to not let shame and despair overwhelm me–this was a long and arduous journey. My wife became my tether as repeatedly she would speak the gospel to me, pray for me when my heart could find no words, and weep with me as grief covered us both, wave after wave. My children, too, were remarkable Christians, loving me and patiently reminding me of forgiveness again and again. Eventually, my marriage found healing, though the scars were fresh and the wounds left us feeling fragile.
But then, at the beginning of last year (2025), just as we began feeling a bit more steady, everything changed.
For whatever reason, near the start of 2025, Jill Wilson began an aggressive written campaign against me. It began as anonymous emails to my employer (at that time I was a part-time adjunct at the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) with an honorary title, “distinguished professor and research fellow”), suggesting that the “exposed” affair entailed “substantial ethical and professional breaches” that should invite a reconsideration of ILT’s willingness to employ me.
Wilson then began engaging in sub-Reddits, creating an anonymous account (u/LegOld6895) to stoke outrage that I had found another teaching job in my academic field. She argued that losing my previous job was not sufficient “accountability” for my actions, but that my affair with her should be made public and no school that taught theology should employ me. However, that did not seem to produce the intended overall reaction and result, and so she changed the narrative. Wilson began falsely suggesting that I was a narcissist and predator, someone who targeted her, groomed her, and manipulated her. She then went even further and began speaking about “power imbalances,” “spiritual abuse” and clergy sexual misconduct and abuse, falsely accusing me of criminal behavior. And that is when she struck a chord with her readers.
Victims of abuse, understandably, rallied to her with sympathy and support. Pastors sought to help her champion her cause and promote her story. She moved her material to Substack under the moniker “Casual Impact” and created a new name for the effort: Iris Lennox. Through this, and several other pseudonyms on other social media platforms, she aggressively spread her false accusations to my students, colleagues, employer, friends, and family. On her substack, nearly every post had a starting germ of truth–a text, a conversation, a moment that really happened–but always quickly twisted and recalibrated to tell a fundamentally different, fabricated story. Increasingly, plain lies were introduced, conversations that never happened, words I never said, and all the while the false accusation of clergy sexual abuse was drummed throughout, using every SEO technique available.
Hundreds and then thousands read her near daily posts. Some shared it. Some began reposting and commenting on it. Over a thousand became Iris Lennox’s social media “friend.” Others, with prurient curiosity, subscribed to her substack and gained access to her paywall to read even more private texts–many of them were pastors, seminary students and professors, employees of the LCMS, employees of Concordia Publishing House, even members of my own congregation.1
And no one reached out to me.
No one contacted me to find out if it was true. No one checked to see if I was okay. No one even contacted me to tell me it was happening. My former faculty colleagues at the seminary went radio silent. Family members quietly shared posts among themselves and my wife’s family without telling us. Pastors — so many pastors— read and shared and reposted without once stopping to consider what this might be doing to me or my family. By the end of the year the total number of people who finally did reach out to me remained countable on a single hand.
The internet isn’t magic. Posts don’t go “viral” by themselves. Defamation and the destruction of a reputation doesn’t happen without the collaboration and complicity of a community.
During this time I had no voice. I was reluctant to engage or defend myself online–not only because it is such an inappropriate and disastrous forum, but also because I still believed that these were personal and private matters that should not be turned into a spectacle. Since I ended the affair three years ago, I have not contacted Wilson or spoken of her to anyone. The same has been true even during her internet campaign.2 Instead, my wife and I just prayed that it would stop, that the near daily attacks would exhaust themselves. We prayed that Christians–my friends, my colleagues, my former students–would stand up for me, defend me, or at least try to help me. But no one spoke up and I had no one that I could talk to.
Three years ago the parable that spoke to me most was, unsurprisingly, the prodigal son. My Father not only waited for my return but sought me out in my “far country,” chased me down and brought me home. But now it is a different parable. My wife and I have felt like the man who was attacked, beaten, and left for dead on the road side with people who just gawked at us as they shook their heads and walked away. We both felt deeply isolated and alone.
I know that it is a logical fallacy to ascribe the failures of the church to the claims for the truth of the faith, but the failure to try to uphold the eighth commandment3 at even a basic level has been so catastrophic, widespread, and so devoid of conscience, that I have been repeatedly tempted to call many fundamental aspects of the faith into question. The silence and disregard of God’s people made the silence of God to our prayers that much more unbearable. We perceived the diabolical at work, undermining my belief in the possibility of forgiveness and cutting into the healing of our marriage. We felt utterly hollowed out, and beaten down–like a bruised reed broken and a smoldering wick quenched.
After several failed attempts, Wilson eventually got external media outlets to run her story against me. In August, Ministry Watch and the Wartburg Watch each ran stories about me and clergy sexual misconduct, followed soon thereafter by Christian News.4 If one typed in my name, the first several pages of internet searches were nothing but slander.
As a result of this massive defamatory campaign, I lost all employment.5 In trying to apply for (secular) positions for which I was qualified, I have been unable to secure even an interview. I have been exposed to ridicule and active efforts of others to further hurt my reputation and employment possibilities. Even my independent academic work has been threatened. Academic conference committees have been approached to have me removed from membership and participation. One publisher has refused to accept any proposals from me or publish anything with my name. In the end, I had no choice but to hire a lawyer.
I don’t know if my reputation will ever recover and I don’t know what lies ahead for me in life. But in the midst of this all, I do recognize that the generosity of my Lord has been continually extended to me in the gift of my remarkable wife and children. He has also given me back a few of my friends and former colleagues whose presence and kindness remains life-giving. From these few I have learned, gratefully, what love truly looks like.
The extra marital-affair was deeply damaging to both Jill Wilson and me and those we love. I have deep remorse and regret for the betrayal of my family and the pain I caused all involved. I have found forgiveness from my wife, my family, and my God, though truly living in this forgiveness remains a daily struggle.
I have also forgiven Jill, and I entrust her to the Lord.
- Every subscriber to the Casual Impact substack was handed over in the legal discovery–every email and every instance of access has been recorded. ↩︎
- During the campaign Wilson regularly suggested that I had slandered her, tried to discredit her, or mobilized people to oppose her online. This is completely untrue. My wife did reach out to Wilson’s husband to ask them to stop the written campaign and false accusations. But her request was posted online, mocked and subjected to ridicule. ↩︎
- The traditional numbering has the eighth commandment as “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In the large catechism of the Lutheran church it states: “Over and above our own body, spouse, and temporal possessions, we have yet another treasure, namely, honor and good report with which we cannot dispense. For it is intolerable to live among men in open shame and general contempt. Therefore God wishes the reputation, good name, and upright character of our neighbor to be taken away or diminished as little as his money and possessions, that everyone may stand in his integrity before wife, children, servants, and neighbors. … Here belongs particularly the detestable, shameful vice of speaking behind a person’s back and slandering, to which the devil spurs us on, and of which there would be much to be said. For it is a common evil plague that everyone prefers hearing evil to hearing good of his neighbor.” ↩︎
- Truth and Light Media approached her already in April (you can see the text exchange HERE). Wilson also tried to convince the Roys Report but to no avail. Both Ministry Watch and Wartburg Watch pulled down their articles when they became aware of Wilson’s affidavit with Wartburg Watch publishing a retraction, apology, and a copy of the Wilson Affidavit. ↩︎
- Several LCMS pastors actively (and illegally) pushed for my termination at ILT, threatening to pull funding from supporting institutions. As a result all of my teaching contracts were canceled. ↩︎
