CHUCK SWINDOLL AND THE STONEBRIAR COMMUNITY CHURCH IN FRISCO, TEXAS, FIRE TONY CAMMAROTA FOR A “MORAL FAILURE”
DANIEL WHYTE III, PRESIDENT OF GOSPEL LIGHT SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL, SAYS THE SO-CALLED “PORNOGRAPHY ADDICTION” (COINED BY EVANGELICAL LEADERS) CHICKENS ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST, AND WE ARE WATCHING GOD CHASTISE, DESTROY, AND DISMANTLE THE EVANGELICAL MACHINE. WHYTE URGES CHRISTIANS EVERYWHERE — RED, YELLOW, BLACK AND WHITE — TO REJECT THE TERM “EVANGELICAL” GOING FORWARD AND CLAIM THE NAME “CHRISTIAN,” AND THEN ACT LIKE CHRIST, FOR WE WERE FIRST CALLED CHRISTIANS AT ANTIOCH.
Stonebriar Community Church in North Texas announced the firing of a longtime pastor Tony Cammarota this week for a “moral failure,” adding to a recent string of megachurches in the region that have seen religious leaders resign or be removed in recent months.
This past Sunday, Cammarota, a former associate pastor at Stonebriar, based in Frisco, Texas, “confessed to church leadership of a moral failure,” the church said in a Tuesday email to congregants, per Adrian Ashford of the Dallas Morning News. “He is deeply remorseful but his sin disqualifies him from serving on our staff as a pastor.” Various videos of Cammarota leading online devotionals were posted across Stonebriar’s site and its social channels, but all remnants of him had apparently been scrubbed as of Thursday.
Cammarota, who writes for an online blog about running triathlons and coaching his kids’ athletic teams, has worked at Stonebriar for more than 17 years, according to his LinkedIn page. It still remains unclear what kind of “sin” Cammarota allegedly committed and the non-denominational church did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Amy Smith, a Texas-based blogger who covers sexual abuse crimes in churches, posted a screenshot of the email on to X Tuesday, and highlighted how Stonebriar appeared to tell readers to remain silent about Cammarota’s dismissal. “Please guard against giving the Devil any foothold for more damage to our church through unnecessary speech and speculation,” the email read. “This is a sad day and we don’t want the Devil making it worse through any one of us in the days ahead.”
The remarks come after several high-profile pastors resigned from megachurches in the DFW area. Tony Evans on June 9 stepped down from his long-held post at the 10,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, also due to an unnamed “sin.” Evans described that he had “committed no crime,” but that he “did not use righteous judgements in my actions,” according to the Austin-American Statesman.
Then Prestonwood Baptist Church Pastor Jack Graham on June 16 abruptly announced that his executive pastor, Mike Buster, would retire after 35 years of serving the organization. Graham, a spiritual adviser to former President Donald Trump, leads the Southern Baptist megachurch in Plano, in the DFW metro, boasting 45,000 members. The church has denied circulating rumors that Buster participated in any financial wrongdoing.
Then Robert Morris, founder of Gateway Church in Southlake and another Trump spiritual adviser, resigned on June 18 from his post as senior pastor after he was accused of and later admitted to sexually abusing a child in the 1980s. The non-denominational church touts more than 100,000 attendees.
Stonebriar, founded in 1998 by Pastor Charles Swindoll, claims that it reaches more than 3,000 people each Sunday and about 16,000 online, according to the Dallas Morning News. In April, Swindoll, who is 89 years old, announced he would step down from leading the church yet said he’d continue preaching on Sundays. Jonathan Murphy, a professor and department chair at Dallas Theological Seminary, became the next senior pastor in May.