Dinesh D'Souza faces questions about relationship with woman not his wife

RELIGION | After a meteoric rise in the evangelical world, The King’s College president Dinesh D’Souza now faces his board’s likely questions about his relationship to a woman not his wife

About 2,000 people gathered on Sept. 28 at First Baptist North in Spartanburg, S.C., to hear high-profile Christians speak on defending the faith and applying a Christian worldview to their lives. Among the speakers: Eric Metaxas, Josh McDowell, and—keynote speaker for the evening—best-selling author, filmmaker, and Christian college president Dinesh D’Souza.

D’Souza’s speech earned him a standing ovation and a long line at the book-signing table immediately afterward. Although D’Souza has been married for 20 years to his wife, Dixie, in South Carolina he was with a young woman, Denise Odie Joseph II, and introduced her to at least three people as his fiancée.

Finally, near 11 p.m., event organizer Tony Beam escorted D’Souza and Joseph to the nearby Comfort Suites. Beam noted that they checked in together and were apparently sharing a room for the night in the sold-out hotel. The next morning, around 6 a.m., Beam arrived back at the hotel and called up to D’Souza’s room. “We’ll be down in 10 minutes,” D’Souza told Beam. D’Souza and Joseph came down together, and Beam took them to the airport.

The next day another conference organizer, Alex McFarland, distressed by D’Souza’s behavior, confronted him in a telephone conversation. D’Souza admitted he shared a room with his fiancée but said “nothing happened.” When I called D’Souza, he confirmed that he was indeed engaged to Joseph, but did not explain how he could be engaged to one woman while still married to another. When asked when he had filed for divorce from his wife, Dixie, D’Souza answered, “Recently.”

According to San Diego County (Calif.) Superior Court records, D’Souza filed for divorce only on Oct. 4, the day I spoke with him. Under California law, that starts the clock on a six-month waiting period for divorce. D’Souza on Oct. 4 told me his marriage was “over,” said he “is sure Denise is the one for me,” and said he had “done nothing wrong.”

The episode is a strange twist in D’Souza’s otherwise meteoric rise in the evangelical world. He developed a reputation among evangelicals with a string of best-sellers, including The Roots of Obama’s Rage, which spawned a movie, Obama: 2016, which has now grossed more than $30 million. He broke into the Christian conference and megachurch market in 2007 with the release of a book that year, What’s So Great About Christianity.

D’Souza now receives speaking fees sometimes in excess of $10,000 from Christian groups, putting him in the top tier of Christian speakers. In 2010 he became president of The King’s College, New York City, which is supported by Campus Crusade for Christ, now called Cru. At that time he moved from California to New York, with his wife staying in California.

D’Souza said King’s board chairman Andy Mills has known about his marital trouble for at least two years. Mills confirmed that through a spokesman, Mark DeMoss, who added that Mills was “hopeful about restoration and both he [D’Souza] and Andy were praying to that end.” DeMoss said The King’s College board met by conference call to begin “looking into the situation.” D’Souza participated in a portion of that call, DeMoss said. Following that meeting, on Oct. 15, D’Souza wrote in a text message to me: “I have decided to suspend the engagement.”

The King’s board plans further discussion at a regularly scheduled meeting on Oct. 17 and 18, DeMoss said.

49 posted on Tue Oct 16 2012 18:37:50 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by ThePatriotsFlag: “World magazine should likewise face questions about why they pay women to come forward to make these claims.”

You do know that World Magazine is a conservative Christian publication? If there's anyone on their staff not voting Republican in the presidential race, it might be a few people who think Romney is too liberal and decided to vote for the Constitution Party instead.

12 posted on Wed Oct 17 2012 15:52:03 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by GeronL: "I thought it was from WORLD magazine, a Christian conservative publication?? Just because he is on “our side” does not make him above the same standards we hope to see others follow."

That is exactly right, GeronL.

This story happened because a reporter covering a Christian conference found out that the speaker, a Christian college president, was being accused of sharing a hotel room with a woman not his wife. At the very least, it looks as if the Christian college president acted very foolishly.

I realize this looks like an Obama hit job, but I think D’Souza did this one to himself.

And there, frankly, go all of us without the grace of Christ.

It appears that Satan found the chink in D’Souza’s armor. We all have our chinks and our temptations that we need to fight.

The only difference between us and D’Souza is most of our sins and foolish actions will never be found out as publicly as his — but that's a job hazard of seeking a position of Christian leadership. Satan works harder to target generals and colonels since he can do much more damage when leaders fall.

James 3:1-6 has clear applications to those who seek out positions of Christian leadership:

“3:1 Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2 We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check. 3 When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. 4 Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. 5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”

85 posted on Tue Oct 16 2012 19:40:44 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by FNU LNU: “Honest question I should have thought of asking on FR long ago: What does the word “evangelical” mean as you’re using it here? I know the word stems from the “gospel,” but even after looking it up in Webster’s, I don’t feel like I have a correct definition. How’s it being used in opposition to Roman Catholicism Thanks to all who can help!”

The scary thing about your question is I think it **IS** an honest question, and it is our own fault that we haven't made it clear.

I'm pinging the Reformed ping list since I think this may be an opportunity to answer some important questions. If we spend so much time talking about conservative Christian politics that we never get around to the fundamentals of the faith, it is our fault.

(BTW, tjd1454, my wife is a Wheaton graduate from their doctoral program on clinical psychology. I'm guessing from other items in your posts that you went to Wheaton many many years ago and probably didn't run into each other. She finished college and her masters long ago at a different school, and went back for her doctoral degree at Wheaton a dozen years ago).

FNU LNU, here's your short answer: Assuming you're a Roman Catholic, think of evangelicals as being the traditional Protestant equivalent to a traditional Roman Catholic — i.e., someone who actually believes what their faith teaches rather than mucking it up with watered-down stuff. Frankly, while evangelical Protestants and traditional Roman Catholics can and do argue about important differences, we have a lot more in common with each other than we have with liberals who call themselves Christians but deny most of what Christ taught.

A longer answer, of course, is important. You can't summarize Roman Catholicism in ten words and you can't summarize what evangelicals believe in ten words either.

Trying to be simple without being simplistic, an evangelical is someone who believes certain core doctrines which themselves proceed from the belief that the Bible is without error and is sufficient to tell us what we need to know to be saved.

Among those core doctrines are the nature of human sin, the need for salvation from sin by grace alone, the Trinity, the death and resurrection of Christ as our substitute for the penalty we deserve, and the need for Christ as our personal savior. We differ with Roman Catholics on some of these issues dating back to the Council of Trent; on other issues our differences are more a matter of emphasis, and there are some traditions within the Roman Catholic Church (the Augustinian tradition, for example) which come very close to what many evangelicals believe though we will still differ with Roman Catholics on the sacraments, the role of Mary and the saints, and the authority of the Pope and the councils of the church.

I generally agree with tjd1454’s description of evangelical emphases, though I'd differ with him on the emphasis of certain pietistic lifestyle issues (”We don't smoke, drink, dance or chew, or go with those who do”).

That is a fair evaluation of American evangelicalism but not of the broader evangelical Protestant tradition outside the United States (and places where our missionaries have brought those emphases). One would be hard-pressed to argue that Luther, Melanchton, Zwingli, Calvin or Knox would have had a problem with smoking or drinking, and dancing in the 1500s and 1600s would have mostly been a problem as an opportunity for lewd contact between young men and women. Let's just say we have a lot more such opportunities today than dancing.

Also, you are correct that evangelicals believe salvation is a personal relationship and God has no grandchildren.

Two qualifications must be made to that, however:

First, that does not mean that Christian parents don't have a responsibility to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Some evangelicals **DO** let their kids act like little hellions waiting for God to convert them. That is no more faithful to evangelical teaching than a Roman Catholic who does nothing to teach his children.

Second, different evangelical traditions will place different levels of emphasis on the institutional church. None of us believe the church is infallible, but some evangelicals, including Lutherans and Calvinists, place a very strong emphasis on the importance of respect for the teaching authority of the church and its ordained pastors.

More can and perhaps should be said. Evangelicals can and do differ on important secondary items — a Calvinist is not a Lutheran or an Arminian, and there are additional issues such as when children should be baptized and whether speaking in tongues continued past the days of the early church. We're going to have some pretty major internal disagreements within evangelicalism on those issues — but then again, the Roman Catholics have their own internal disagreements, too.

However, the items I cited are among the “big ones” which are critical to being evangelical.

I hope that is of some help.

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