Apostolic churches are a Christian denomination with Pentecostal origins. The name is in reference to Jesus’ 12 apostles. Bishops are generally consecrated by an ecumenical council of bishops within a region.
Dwight Reed “was baptized by his father and pastor, and filled with the Holy Ghost in 1972 at Calvary Church of God in Des Moines,” says a biography on the church’s website. “He began his preaching ministry at 18 years of age.”
He succeeded his father as minister at Christ Apostolic Temple Inc. a few years ago, not long before his father died, according to the website.
According to an obituary published in 2018, Bishop Jeremiah Reed became a pastor in Des Moines in 1969. He helped develop programs to help youth offenders and people struggling with substance abuse and hunger, according to the obituary. “His ministry touched the lives of thousands locally, but also reached billions more through the Apostolic Oneness Network television station, around the world,” the obituary said..
A nonprofit agency formed by the church in 2003 came under scrutiny a few years later over alleged misspending.
Dwight Reed previously preached at a church in Louisiana. Sinegal is one of several people, including from Reed’s family, who have said that Jeremiah Reed excommunicated his son from the Des Moines church. Dwight Reed returned in 2017 as his father’s health was declining and took the helm.
Under Reed’s late father and predecessor, Napier wrote on Facebook, “The Christ Apostolic Temple has been marrying off young girls for decades.”
A longtime church member I spoke with, who attended when Jeremiah Reed was the bishop, said her 16-year-old daughter was betrothed to an 18-year-old man in 2006 while the surprised mother was watching the church service virtually. “My late mother called me and said, ‘Your daughter’s getting married,'” she said. “I didn’t want it, but didn’t want to be badgered by his father. He wasn’t nice when you didn’t do what he wanted you to do.”
Under Jeremiah Reed, “15,- 14-, 16-year-old girls were married to young men,” she said. “I know at least 10 sets. Only one of those couples is still together.”
Napier, who saw such arrangements take place, described them this way: “The females would come up like livestock and the men would pick them.”
Responding to a Clubhouse Live discussion on such practices, Dwight Reed at a subsequent Sunday sermon insisted his father never forced people to get married. “You jumped up when he asked who wanted to get married,” he scoffed. “You put your hands up.” It was unclear if he was referring to the teens or their parents.
Sinegal says people are leaving the church every day in this climate. “People are emotionally, spiritually, mentally fatigued,” he said in a Clubhouse forum. “…There are numerous proven track record of attempts at intimidation, at muting and muzzling the mouths of people.”
He also faulted what he called a level of apathy within the broader African-American community “about our responsibility to one another, especially as people of God.” He said the misuse of power is enabled by admonitions to “mind your business. Nobody’s perfect.”
Pastor responds from the pulpit
Reed has devoted his last two Sunday services to decrying his critics and, in some cases, shaming them personally. Of Sinegal, he said, “We’ve got a preacher down in Houston running his mouth who’s a homosexual!” He then suggested his followers get “stirred up” against same-sex marriages. Sinegal said that he’s not gay but that such a claim against others weaponizes the idea within the church that homosexuality is ungodly.
In response to a woman who quit the church and claimed in an online forum that Reed had threatened her, Reed chided, “You slept with a pastor for eight years and he was married. Keep running your mouth, I’m going to put your business out there.”
He referred to his nieces, one of whom has spoken out publicly against him, as “my rotten, no-good nieces,” called another critic a “(expletive) liar” and agent of Satan, and responded this way to a woman who said Reed had shown an inappropriate interest in her when she was 15: “Looking like a gorilla!” He shouted, “You are lying! Ain’t nobody went after you since you were 10.”
Neither the Iowa Attorney General’s Office nor the Polk County Attorney’s Office is likely to launch investigations on this, according to people in both agencies, unless police file criminal complaints against Reed. The Attorney General’s Office is focusing on offering victim assistance to people who need it.
People say they have called police but couldn’t generate any interest. Des Moines Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Parizek said the department has had no reports and has no ongoing investigation involving Reed.
A marriage between a 63-year-old and a teenager is troubling, especially when that man, as a pastor and church school dean, was in a position of authority over the young woman. Iowa lawmakers should also consider raising the age of legal consent; 16 is awfully young to marry. Also of concern is an issue Sinegal has raised about the tacit acceptance by church members, sometimes expressed in the mantra to mind one’s own business. A type of groupthink and even complicity can set in when loyalty to a charismatic leader — especially one interpreting the word of God — becomes paramount.
Now some longtime church members are choosing to leave, feeling the church hierarchy can’t objectively investigate itself. That warrants an outside investigation.
