The Mark Driscoll controversy, explained

Mark Driscoll is an evangelical pastor and co-founder of the Mars Hill megachurch, although many people first heard of the controversial pastor thanks to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, which exposed a different side of the pastor to the world.

The podcast saw huge success with 12 episodes as well as several bonus episodes that had listeners hooked. It provided a deep dive on the numerous scandals that ultimately led to the decline of the church and its pastor through interviews with a variety of guests including followers and historians who all give a little more insight into what it was like, and who Driscoll really was. Before we delve into any of that, let’s take a look at where this controversial pastor came from.

Who is Mark Driscoll?

Born in North Dakota in 1970, Driscoll was raised a Roman Catholic, although he converted to evangelical Christianity at the age of 19. Around the same time, he began discussing the idea of founding a church despite never really being a member of one nor having any kind of seminary training. To be fair, being a pastor and part of a mega church is a surefire way to make a lot of money.

Anyway, his lack of experience never really got in his way, and by 1996 Mark along with two others, Mike Gunn and Leif Moi, had launched their very own church. Driscoll was actually a pretty charismatic speaker with a great sense of humor, according to the podcast. Things were going pretty well, the church was seeing a growth in numbers reaching a high of 12,000 attendees a week at one point. As for Mark, he was the main pastor and face of the whole thing. Of course, as Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, “with great power comes great responsibility” — Driscoll had a huge influence over the church as a whole, and in time, people would start to learn that the power was definitely going to his head.

Culture of fear within the church

Whilst Driscoll appeared to be a down to Earth and kind pastor who preached about equality, even claiming that the other co-founders, Moi and Gunn could remove him, saying “if they wanted to get rid of me they could.” But it turns out he was a bit of a tyrant behind closed doors. There were numerous instances of him locking horns with other elders within the church and even firing people for simply disagreeing with him. 

Driscoll ran the church under a culture of fear and abuse with a hierarchy that allowed elders to exercise a great level of authority. Some would go as far as separating husbands and wives for a season, or demanding written confessions and even shunning former staff members.

Views of gender roles

We also have to look at Driscoll’s views on gender roles; he would frequently talk on the topics of sex and manhood in his sermons. The podcast episode titled, “The Things we do to Women” goes into more detail regarding his attitudes. In his sermons he claimed that the role of the wife was to “please their husband sexually whenever and however they wanted, otherwise their man would clearly go outside of marriage for sex.” Effectively placing the responsibility for a husband’s infidelity on his wife.

That’s just one example of Driscoll’s views; in one instance, he outright refused to speak to the wife of one of his fellow pastors stating, “I reserve the right to speak to the heads of households.” In 2014 a controversial rant that he had written under the pseudonym, “William Wallace II” back in 2000 was released. In his rant Driscoll was highly critical of feminism, homosexuality, and emasculated men, calling for “real” men to rise up. 

Book controversies

In 2013 Driscoll took part in an interview with radio host Janet Mefferd. During the interview, Mefferd accused the pastor of plagiarism pointing to 14 pages from his book, A Call to Resurgence, which quoted without citation from two different books by Peter Jones. Afterwards, a slew plagiarism accusations were made against Driscoll.

The final notable controversy, (at least the final one so far) came in 2014 when it was revealed that $25,000 had been paid to a marketing firm to manipulate sales numbers and get one of Driscoll’s books on the New York Times bestsellers list.

The end of Mars Hill

Scandal after scandal ultimately led to the church collapsing in 2014, an investigation from the church elders discovered evidence of bullying and sinful behavior on Driscoll’s part. This led to the disgraced pastor resigning from his position with the church disbanding effective from the 1st of January 2015. Mark went on to form another church in 2015, known as the Trinity Church, although there were still calls for him to resign from former Mars Hill elders.