The governor of Alabama is no longer a member of First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa after allegations he had an inappropriate relationship with a female adviser, also a member of the church.
“While church discipline is a church family matter, both Governor Robert Bentley and Mrs. Rebekah Mason are no longer members of First Baptist Church Tuscaloosa,” Senior Pastor Gil McKee told the Christian News Network March 25 after release earlier in the week of audio recordings implying the two were in a physical relationship.
Robert Bentley
“I continue to pray for each of them,” the pastor of the 3,300-member church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention said without getting into when the church fellowship ended or under what circumstances.
Bentley, a Sunday school teacher and four-time deacon chair at First Baptist Church, apologized for making “inappropriate comments” to his senior political adviser, who is married with three children, but denied his sexual advances led to a “physical affair.”
Telephone conversations secretly recorded by Bentley’s then-suspicious and now ex-wife in 2014 suggest otherwise, leading to calls for his resignation and an investigation into whether he misused state funds to facilitate the relationship.
In 2011 McKee invoked God’s blessing on Bentley at his gubernatorial inauguration. “God has indeed called Dr. Robert Bentley to the task of being governor of our state,” McKee said of the retired dermatologist he had pastored for 11 years.
In 2015 the pastor urged Bentley to fight a federal court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in Alabama. The Republican governor didn’t take McKee’s advice, saying he believes strongly that marriage is between one man and one woman, but the issue should be “worked out through the proper legal channels” and not through defiance of the law.
Last August First Lady Diane Bentley filed for divorce, saying their 50-year marriage had suffered an “irretrievable breakdown.” An unsealed divorce settlement revealed financial arrangements but not the reasons for the breakup.
Rumors soon began circulating that the governor had had an affair with a key female staffer.