The preacher who rocked a Cleburne church last week after reports of his sexual assault conviction surfaced went public with his past on Sunday.
Preaching to a full house, the Rev. Claude Gilliland III poured oil on the troubled waters at New Heart Family Worship Center, saying that when he became senior pastor, he had been too embarrassed to tell his flock that he’d spent four years behind bars in the 1990s.
“I told you before I had some things in my life that were dark,” he said, pacing in front of the worshippers and once stopping to wipe away tears. “I never thought it would be dragged out in the media and newspapers.”
Church leaders knew his history when they hired him, but when word surfaced that he was convicted in 1995 of sexual assault of a 35-year-old woman, Gilliland, who identified the victim as his then-estranged wife who is deceased, members were shocked and in some cases, skeptical of his ability to lead them.
On Sunday, however, the 54-year-old novice preacher, ex-con and admitted former methamphetamine and LSD dealer found acceptance and empathy.
“Our church is going to grow in a big way. This man is anointed,” said Phyllis Kaylor, who last week told the Times-Review that learning her minister was a sex offender was “terrible.” “We’re all washed in the blood.”
After the service, Dorothy Vaughan, a member for five years, agreed, adding that she believed God put Gilliland in the pulpit.
Gilliland was by turn defiant and remorseful as he spoke to the packed room.
“I didn’t want to share my secret because it was so hideous,” he said. “You don’t just go up to people and say ‘I’m a felon and a sex offender’ ... I didn’t really want to confess my past because it’s embarrassing.”
From the audience, someone asked, “Who does?”
Gilliland paced in front of worshippers and told them that drinking, drugs and pornography put him on the path to that led to his conviction.
“Some may leave,” Gilliland said. “That’s expected. That’s not going to stop me from what I’m doing.”
The congregation responded with encouraging shouts and murmurs as he told them that he, like a leopard whose spots — his sins and crimes — had been changed by Jesus.
The full-gospel service was punctuated by the sound of at least one worshipper speaking in tongues. During the altar call, Gilliland himself spoke in tongues for a few seconds before again exhorting the flock again in English over the piano music.
Among the gray hairs of the congregation members were a number of heads covered by bright bandanas, worn by men and women in black leather motorcycle jackets.
Patches on their jackets identified them as members of the Circuit Riders ministry, who filled a substantial number of the chairs in the sanctuary of the former Presbyterian church on North Anglin Street in the old residential area a few blocks from the courthouse square.
Afterwards, a female biker said they were not New Heart members, but were there to support Gilliland, who himself rides a Honda Valkyrie and has worked with the Circuit Riders.
In the sanctuary, Gilliland spoke to reporters after the service as his wife stood by.
“This is a great opportunity for me,” said the bespectacled Gilliland, who wore a necktie, black double-breasted suit and white shirt instead of black leather. “I wanted to hide my past but God moves in mysterious ways.”
Seated in the empty church where he had earlier walked back and forth in front of the crowd, Gilliland was candid.
“Me and my ex-wife were in pornography. We were renting movies and we were involved with other people who were into the same thing,” Gilliland said. “We had people in our lives, they wanted to swap.
“I did have some kind of morals. I didn’t want to share my wife with anybody.”
But he was a drug user and dealer.
“I was a dealer for LSD. I also was a dealer for methamphetamine,” the former truck driver said. “I was my best customer.”
Gilliland said that he believed at the time that the sexual intercourse that resulted in his conviction was consensual.
“What it was, we were separated,” Gilliland said. “She filed those charges. It mind boggled me.”
He asserted again that he isn’t a rapist.
“That’s what I’m convicted of,” he said, “but I thought I had consensual sex. She made the people believe that I did this to her.”
Gilliland said that the woman who had been the mother of his first child was angry because he had not assumed responsibility for their daughter until she was 5 years old.
“It was my first marriage,” he said. “It was heartache after heartache after heartache.”
When another man beat her, Gilliland said she took photos of her battered face to the police.
“She tried to do a dope deal and the dope deal went sour,” Gilliland said. “And she got beat up. This is my speculation. She told me she wanted to get back at me.”
The assault charges were dropped after a polygraph test, Gilliland said, but the sexual assault charges stuck.
“He couldn’t afford an attorney,” said his wife since 2001, Vicki Gilliland. “He had to take a court-appointed attorney.”
Gilliland, the grandson of a Pentecostal preacher, said he cleaned up in the pen when he read Revelations.
Vicki Gilliland said her husband takes pains to reassure church members that his behavior now is above reproach. The couple met at work and she knew his mother and his story before they got together.
Confession and repentance
William B. Lawrence, dean of Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and professor of American church history, said there’s ample precedent for those with felony records — the pastor of one Scottish church had been convicted of murder before repenting and changing his ways — to lead congregations.
The key is confession and repentance.
“At some level,” Lawrence said, “the appropriate Protestant theology would say there’s a reasonable level of repentance that should be shown. Repent literally means to turn around and go in the opposite direction.”
As for ministers who have themselves come back from drug or alcohol problems, Lawrence said they can be effective with their church members who face the same problems.
“Don’t give me any excuses,” Lawrence said those ministers can tell their members. “I know you’re lying.”
But Lawrence said there’s no way of knowing whether a minister who confesses his checkered past to the congregation after being outed did so out of sincere desire to make a clean breast of things or simply because he got caught.
And he cautioned that with independent congregations, where there may not be a layer of oversight outside the congregation, such as a church conference, there will likely be questions about how to monitor and control questions of charges of ministerial misconduct.
That’s not an issue, Vicki Gilliland said.
“He was very upfront with me,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for a better husband.
“He has never been left alone with any children. He does not want to be left alone with any women.”
“He calls me,” to the front of the church when members come forward, Vicki Gilliland said. “I lay my hands on the women. He’s very cautious about that.”
