Even when the truth comes out about a spiritual leader’s secret life, the kinds of lawyered-up semi-confessions that they and their team use to respond to their victims, congregants and the general public seem to be missing a key element: true regret. Leaders likeDoug Phillips or Bill Gothard engineer almost-apologies. As I’ve followed these cases over the last year or so, it strikes me that those apologies are loaded with exit-clause “buts” as a way to leave wiggle room for their defense if they know they’re going to end up in court. Others like C.J. Mahaney orMark Driscoll have exhibited long-standing patterns of denial, deflection and repeated attempts from their current positions of power to diminish or destroy their accusers. [Read more]