Bishop Eddie Long and New Birth

Who Eddie Long Was

Eddie Lee Long was an American pastor who led New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, from 1987 until his death in January 2017, and who built it from a congregation of a few hundred people into one of the largest predominantly Black churches in the United States. He was known almost universally by the title bishop, preached a message that joined spiritual authority, personal breakthrough and material blessing, ran a broadcast ministry, and hosted the 2006 funeral of Coretta Scott King with four American presidents in his sanctuary. In September 2010 four young men filed civil lawsuits alleging that he had used his pastoral position to coerce them into sexual relationships that began when they were teenagers.

Long denied the allegations, publicly and repeatedly, from his lawyer's statements and from his own pulpit. The four lawsuits were settled out of court in May 2011 on confidential terms that carried no admission of liability or wrongdoing. No criminal charges were ever brought against him, no trial was ever held, and no court ever made a finding about whether the alleged conduct occurred. Those four facts belong beside every mention of the case, and this page repeats them deliberately, because a summary that drops them turns an untested allegation into a verdict.

What follows sets out what the public record supports: a career, a congregation, a body of teaching, a set of financial questions raised by a newspaper and by a United States Senate committee, and a legal episode that ended without adjudication. Where the record is open, this page says so rather than filling the gap.

Early Life and the Road to Lithonia

Eddie Lee Long was born on 12 May 1953 in Huntersville, North Carolina, and grew up in a Baptist household in the segregated South. He spoke in later years about a distant relationship with his father, a Baptist minister, and about the effect of that distance on his own understanding of fatherhood, which became one of the recurring themes of his preaching to men.

He studied business administration at North Carolina Central University and later took a Master of Divinity at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, a consortium of historically Black seminaries. Before entering full-time ministry he worked in sales for the Ford Motor Company. That business background is worth noting, because the church he later built was run with the vocabulary and the organisational habits of a corporation, and Long made no secret of the fact.

Arrival at New Birth

Long became pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in 1987. The congregation at that point numbered in the hundreds and met in modest premises in DeKalb County, on the eastern edge of metropolitan Atlanta. The area around it was in the middle of a demographic transformation, as a large and increasingly prosperous Black middle class settled in the southern and eastern suburbs of the city. Long's ministry grew into that population, and the growth was rapid.

The congregation's Baptist identity matters for understanding what came later. Missionary Baptist churches are congregational in government, which means the local congregation is self-governing, calls and dismisses its own pastor, owns its own property, and answers to no bishop or synod. Our guide to Baptist beliefs and church government sets out how that polity works, and our page on the National Baptist conventions covers the historic Black Baptist bodies. Nothing in that structure obliged Long to answer to any authority outside the room, and the absence of external accountability is a structural fact about the case rather than an accusation about the man.

What New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Became

New Birth grew under Eddie Long from a congregation of a few hundred into one of the best-known megachurches in the United States, with a purpose-built sanctuary in Lithonia large enough to hold several thousand worshippers, a broadcast ministry, conferences, and a large staff. Press accounts through the 2000s commonly described a membership in the tens of thousands.

Source note on numbers: the membership figures repeated in news coverage of New Birth, most often given as around twenty-five thousand, were supplied by the church and were not independently audited. American congregations count members in different ways, and the counts include people who attend rarely. This page treats the figure as the church's own claim rather than as an established number.

The scale is part of the story because it shaped everything else. A congregation of that size supports a professional staff, a media operation, a security detail and a building programme, and it concentrates enormous informal power in one preacher. Our guide to megachurches and how they work covers the model in general: the single charismatic communicator, the auditorium, the tiered small-group structure beneath, and the fragility of an institution whose identity is one person's voice.

Youth ministry and mentoring

New Birth ran an extensive youth operation, including a mentoring programme for boys and young men that paired them with adult leaders and, in some cases, with Long himself. Programmes of this kind are common in American churches and answer a real need, particularly where they set out to give fatherless boys structured adult attention. The 2010 lawsuits arose out of relationships that the plaintiffs said began in that programme. Long denied that anything improper occurred, and no court examined the claims.

The Title Bishop in a Baptist Church

Eddie Long was known as Bishop Eddie Long, and the title raises a real question, because Baptist churches historically have no bishops. Baptist polity is congregational by conviction: the local church governs itself, and the offices the New Testament names for it are usually read as pastor or elder, and deacon. A Missionary Baptist congregation with a bishop is doing something that its own tradition did not do for most of its history.

From the 1990s onward a number of predominantly Black congregations in the Baptist and charismatic streams began adopting episcopal language and structures, with senior pastors consecrated as bishops within voluntary fellowships of churches. The best-known of those movements is the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, founded in 1994, which brought charismatic worship and a bishopric into Black Baptist life and drew both enthusiasm and criticism from older Baptist bodies. Our page on the charismatic movement describes the wider current these churches drew on.

This page does not state which body conferred the title of bishop on Eddie Long, or on what date. He used the title throughout his public ministry and it was used of him by his church and by the press. The specific act of consecration behind it is not something this page can source, so it is not asserted.

What a bishop is in Catholic teaching

The Catholic understanding of the office is different in kind. A bishop receives the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Orders through episcopal consecration, is inserted into a college of bishops in succession from the apostles, and holds his office under a public and canonical structure that includes obligations to other bishops and to the Bishop of Rome (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1555 to 1557). Our guide to the Catholic priesthood and holy orders sets out how ordination works and why succession is treated as essential.

The practical difference is accountability. A Catholic bishop can be investigated, removed, or laicised by an authority above him, and the Church has published procedures for handling accusations against him. A pastor with an honorific bishopric in a self-governing congregation has no such authority above him unless the congregation itself creates one. That observation is about structures. It says nothing about whether the allegations against Eddie Long were true.

What Eddie Long Preached

Eddie Long preached a message built on spiritual authority, personal breakthrough, manhood and material blessing, delivered in the cadence of the Black Baptist pulpit and with the emphases of the word-of-faith stream. Three themes recur across his sermons, his conferences and his books.

Taking authority

The first is dominion or authority: the believer is described as holding delegated power over circumstances, and is urged to speak, decide and act as one who owns that power rather than as a passive petitioner. Long applied it to careers, families, cities and finances. The strand has genuine roots in Scripture's language about authority given to the Church, and it becomes a problem when the language of authority is turned into a technique for controlling outcomes.

Manhood and fatherhood

The second is manhood. Long built a large part of his ministry around men, and specifically around men who had grown up without fathers. He held conferences for them, preached to them about responsibility, discipline and provision, and mentored young men through the church. This was among the most admired parts of his work, and it is the reason many people trusted him with their sons.

Prosperity and blessing

The third is prosperity. Long taught, in common with a broad American stream, that God intends material blessing for believers and that giving to the ministry is a channel of it. He also displayed the resulting wealth: the cars, the house and the tailoring were part of the message rather than an embarrassment to it, on the logic that a preacher of blessing should visibly be blessed. Our guide to the prosperity gospel and what Scripture actually says about wealth sets out the Catholic and mainstream Protestant response in detail.

The Catholic objection to the prosperity teaching is doctrinal. The Gospel promises the Cross before it promises anything else, Christ tells his disciples that following him means taking up a cross (Luke 9:23), and Paul writes that he has learned to be content in plenty and in want (Philippians 4:11 to 13). Scripture warns specifically against those who imagine that godliness is a means of gain (1 Timothy 6:5). A message that guarantees material return for spiritual investment misdescribes the Christian life, and it does the most damage to the poorest people in the room.

Public Profile: The King Funeral and the 2004 March

Eddie Long's public standing peaked in the middle of the 2000s, when he was one of the most visible Black clergymen in the United States. Two events fixed that standing in the public mind.

The funeral of Coretta Scott King

In February 2006 the funeral of Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., was held at New Birth. The service drew a national audience and was attended by the sitting president and three former presidents. Hosting it placed Long at the centre of American civil rights memory and confirmed New Birth as a church with reach far beyond DeKalb County.

The 2004 march on marriage

In December 2004 Long helped lead a march in Atlanta that began at the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr. and supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and at the time an elder at New Birth, took part in the march, and the choice of the King tomb as a starting point drew sharp criticism from civil rights figures who objected to the association. Long was firm in public about traditional teaching on marriage and sexuality, and he preached against homosexual practice.

That public position is part of why the 2010 allegations landed as they did in the American press, and it is worth being precise about the reason. An allegation is neither strengthened nor weakened by the accused person's stated views. The hypocrisy narrative was the frame most coverage used, and the frame is not evidence. Catholic teaching holds marriage to be the union of a man and a woman open to life, which our guide to Catholic teaching on marriage sets out, and it holds equally that every person is to be treated with respect and that accusations are to be judged on evidence rather than on the politics of the accused.

Money, Compensation and the Senate Inquiry

Eddie Long's compensation came under public scrutiny twice, once from an Atlanta newspaper and once from a committee of the United States Senate, and neither inquiry produced a finding of illegality.

The 2005 newspaper reporting

In 2005 the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on the compensation Long received from a charitable organisation associated with his ministry, describing a package that included salary, benefits, a substantial home and the use of a luxury car, and totalling several million dollars over a period of a few years. Long defended the arrangement in public, on the grounds that the ministry was an operation of a size that warranted executive compensation, and made no apology for the visible wealth.

Source note: the compensation reporting is attributed here to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which examined public filings by the associated non-profit. This page does not restate exact dollar figures, because the figures reported covered different entities and different year ranges and are easy to garble. Readers who want the numbers should take them from the original reporting and the filings.

The Senate Finance Committee review

In November 2007 Senator Charles Grassley, then the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, opened an inquiry into the finances of six media ministries and asked each for detailed information about compensation, expenses, board governance and the use of donated funds. Long's ministry was one of the six. The others were led by Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, and Randy and Paula White.

The review closed in January 2011 with a staff report. It brought no charges, imposed no penalties, and made no finding that any of the six had broken the law. It recorded that the level of cooperation varied among the ministries, and it raised broader questions about the governance of religious non-profits, the treatment of housing allowances, and the weakness of the reporting requirements that apply to churches in American law. The committee's conclusion was that reform, if it came, should come from within the sector.

What that inquiry establishes is limited and worth stating plainly. Long was asked questions by a Senate committee and no wrongdoing was found. The wider issue the inquiry identified is structural: churches in the United States are exempt from the annual public financial reporting that other charities file, so a congregation that wants to know what its pastor is paid usually has no document to consult.

The 2010 Lawsuits and Long's Denial

In September 2010 four young men filed separate civil lawsuits against Eddie Long in DeKalb County Superior Court in Georgia. Each alleged that Long had used his standing as their pastor, together with travel, gifts, cars, cash and access to his personal circle, to draw them into sexual relationships beginning when they were teenagers involved in the church's youth and mentoring work. The suits were brought by the same attorney and were reported nationally within hours of filing.

The claims were civil claims for damages, framed around the abuse of pastoral authority and the duty owed by a spiritual counsellor to a young person in his care. The age of consent in Georgia is sixteen, and the plaintiffs were reported to have been in their late teens at the time the alleged relationships began, so the cases were not brought as statutory offences. That legal point was widely reported at the time and it explains why the matter proceeded in civil court.

Long's response

Long denied the allegations. His attorney issued a categorical denial within days of the filings. On Sunday 26 September 2010 Long addressed his congregation directly, told them that the man being described in the media was not the man he was, said that he would fight the accusations, and compared his situation to David facing Goliath with five stones. He did not resign, and he continued to lead New Birth.

His denial was consistent and he never withdrew it. He made no admission at any point, before or after the settlement, and he maintained the denial for the remaining six years of his life.

The 2011 Settlement and What It Establishes

All four lawsuits were settled out of court in May 2011. The terms were confidential, the settlement contained no admission of liability or of wrongdoing by Eddie Long, and the cases were dismissed without any trial. Long's representatives characterised the settlement as the most reasonable way to resolve the matter, and the specific amounts and conditions have never been made public.

What a confidential settlement does

A civil settlement ends a lawsuit by agreement between the parties. It substitutes a private bargain for a judicial decision, and it decides nothing about the underlying facts. Defendants settle claims they consider baseless, for reasons that include litigation cost, the exposure of unrelated private material in discovery, and the desire to stop a story. Plaintiffs accept settlements for reasons that include certainty, exhaustion, and the prospect of years of cross-examination about the worst period of their lives. Both sets of reasons are ordinary and neither is evidence.

What it does not do

A settlement of this kind establishes no fact against Eddie Long. It also clears him of nothing, because a case that never reaches judgment produces no finding either way. Any account that reads the settlement as a confession has overread it, and any account that reads it as vindication has done the same in the other direction. The correct description is that the allegations were never tested.

That leaves an uncomfortable but honest conclusion, and this page will not improve on it by pretending to more certainty than exists. Four young men said something happened. Eddie Long said it did not. The dispute was bought out of court and no one adjudicated it. Everything written since has been argument about that silence.

Why No Criminal Case Followed

Eddie Long was never charged with a criminal offence in connection with the allegations, and understanding why requires separating two different legal systems. Civil claims are brought by private plaintiffs seeking money and are decided on the balance of probabilities. Criminal charges are brought by prosecutors on behalf of the state, require proof beyond reasonable doubt, and depend on a prosecutor concluding that a specific criminal statute was broken.

Three features of the case bear on the absence of charges. The conduct alleged was said to have begun when the plaintiffs were in their late teens, at or above Georgia's age of consent, which removes the most obvious criminal categories. The alleged events were several years old by the time they were made public. And the plaintiffs chose the civil route, which they were entitled to do, and which does not require a prosecutor's agreement.

This page does not state whether any law enforcement agency reviewed the allegations, or what any such review concluded. No prosecution was ever brought, and that is the extent of what can be said with confidence.

The absence of charges is a real fact about the record and it is stated here for that reason. It does not follow from it that nothing happened, and it does not follow that something did. Cases involving adults and pastoral authority frequently sit outside criminal law entirely, which is one reason churches are expected to set standards for their leaders that go beyond what the criminal code requires.

The Investment Losses at New Birth

A separate controversy involved members of New Birth who lost money in investments promoted by Ephren Taylor, a young financier who spoke at the church around 2009 as part of a touring wealth seminar. Members later said they had put retirement savings into the schemes he pitched, and that the setting had given him credibility he did not deserve.

Taylor was subsequently prosecuted in federal court and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and he was sentenced to a substantial federal prison term. That part of the record is a criminal conviction and can be stated as fact about Taylor.

Some members brought claims against Long and against New Birth, alleging that the church had lent its credibility to the promotion. Long and the church contested the claims, and the church's position was that it too had been deceived by Taylor. This page does not state how each of those claims was resolved, because the procedural history was complex and this page cannot source the outcome of each one.

The general lesson stands regardless of the litigation. A pulpit confers trust, and trust transfers to whoever is invited to stand in it. A congregation that would not hand a stranger its savings will hand them over when the pastor introduces him. Our page on wolves in sheep's clothing deals with the pattern in detail.

The 2012 Torah Ceremony and the Apology

In January 2012 a ceremony at New Birth drew widespread criticism after Eddie Long was wrapped in a Torah scroll, carried aloft in a chair, and declared a king by a visiting speaker, Ralph Messer, who presented himself as a rabbi. Video of the ceremony circulated rapidly. Jewish organisations objected to the handling of a Torah scroll in that manner, and Christian commentators across traditions objected to the declaration of a living pastor as a king.

Long issued a public statement afterwards saying that he had not intended to be declared a king, that the ceremony did not convey what he had understood it to convey, and expressing regret for the offence caused. He distanced himself and his church from Messer.

Why the episode matters

The ceremony belongs to a wider current in which Christian congregations adopt Jewish symbols, feasts and vocabulary in ways that Jewish communities generally regard as appropriation and that Christian theology has trouble justifying. Our page on the Hebrew Roots movement describes that current and states the Catholic position, which holds the covenant with Israel in high honour and treats the Church's liturgy as the fulfilment rather than as a set of borrowed props.

There is a second point, and it is about the room. A congregation with strong formation would have stopped the ceremony before it started, because the language of kingship applied to a living pastor has no Christian meaning available to it. Christ is the King, and every office in the Church exists as service under him (Matthew 20:25 to 28). The willingness of a large church to sit through a coronation of its own pastor is the part of the episode that deserves study.

Final Years and Death in 2017

Eddie Long remained pastor of New Birth for the rest of his life, continuing to preach and to lead the congregation after the settlement in 2011. Attendance and giving at New Birth fell in the years after the allegations became public, which was widely reported, and the church continued to operate.

In 2016 photographs of a visibly gaunt Long circulated online and prompted public concern about his health. He responded in a video message describing a change of diet and a health regimen, and did not disclose an illness at that point.

Long died on 15 January 2017 at the age of 63. New Birth announced that he had died after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. He was survived by his wife Vanessa and his children. His funeral was held at New Birth and drew a large congregation of members and clergy.

His death also closed the possibility of any further legal resolution of the 2010 allegations. Whatever a court might have determined, it will not now be determined. That fact is worth stating for the four men who brought the claims as much as for Long.

New Birth After Eddie Long

New Birth Missionary Baptist Church continued after Eddie Long's death and in 2018 called the pastor Jamal Bryant as its senior pastor. The congregation is substantially smaller than it was at its height, which is the ordinary pattern when a church built around one preacher's voice loses that voice.

The succession problem is generic to the model. A congregation gathered by a single communicator has no obvious way to transfer the thing that gathered it, because the thing that gathered it was a person. Denominational structures with assigned clergy handle succession badly in other ways, and they handle this particular failure better, because the congregation was never asked to attach itself to one man in the first place.

The members are the part of this story most easily forgotten. A very large number of people were baptised, married, buried and fed at New Birth, gave money they did not have to spare, and raised children in its programmes. Their faith was real whatever is true about their pastor, and the sacramental logic of that is the oldest settled question in Christian history, taken up in the section below.

The Catholic Response

The Catholic response to the Eddie Long case runs along four lines: what is owed to the accused, what is owed to those who came forward, what the New Testament requires of a church leader, and what happens to the faith of a congregation when its pastor is disputed.

What is owed to the accused

The Catechism is direct about the sins against truth that surround accusations. Rash judgment assumes the moral fault of a neighbour without sufficient evidence, detraction discloses another's faults without objectively valid reason, and calumny harms a reputation by remarks contrary to the truth (CCC 2477). Charity requires interpreting a neighbour's words and actions favourably where a favourable reading is available (CCC 2478). Eddie Long denied these allegations, no court found against him, and no criminal charge was ever brought. Writing about him as a proven abuser would be calumny.

What is owed to those who came forward

The same commitment to truth forbids the opposite error. Four men made detailed claims under their own names in a public court filing, exposing themselves to enormous scrutiny. Treating them as obvious liars is also a judgment without evidence, and the Church has learned at devastating cost what happens when institutions default to disbelieving young people who come forward. Our page on scandals in the Church sets out that record, and a Catholic writing about another communion's leader has no standing to write from a height.

The New Testament standard for a leader

Scripture sets a standard for church leaders that is higher than the standard of criminal law and independent of it. An overseer must be above reproach, temperate, hospitable, not a lover of money, and well thought of by outsiders (1 Timothy 3:1 to 7). Titus repeats the requirement for a steward of God (Titus 1:7). Peter instructs elders to shepherd the flock willingly, not for shameful gain, and not domineering over those in their charge, but as examples (1 Peter 5:2 to 3). James warns that teachers will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). Ezekiel condemns shepherds who feed themselves rather than the sheep (Ezekiel 34:2 to 4).

Those texts give a congregation a set of questions it can ask without waiting for a lawsuit. Is the money visible. Is there anyone the pastor answers to. Can the leadership be questioned without the questioner becoming the problem. Are the young people in the church's care supervised by more than one adult, under written rules. A church that can answer those questions well is far harder to injure.

The faith of the congregation

Christians asked early whether sacraments administered by an unworthy minister were valid, and the Church answered no later than the Donatist controversy that they were, because Christ is the one who acts and the minister's holiness is not the guarantee. Paul, writing to a church dividing into parties around its leaders, says that he planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the growth (1 Corinthians 3:5 to 7). Applied here: the members of New Birth who came to faith under Eddie Long's preaching came to faith in Christ, and nothing about the disputed record touches that.

The framework for judging whether a group has crossed from a legitimate church into something abusive is worked out on our pages about cults and how they differ from Christianity and false prophets and how to test a teacher. Those pages own the general tests. This page covers one man, one congregation, and one record that was never adjudicated.

How to Read a Case Like This

Cases that end in a confidential settlement are the hardest kind of religious controversy to think about clearly, because the two available conclusions are both wrong. The temptation on one side is to treat the settlement as an admission and write the man off. The temptation on the other is to treat the absence of charges as proof and write the accusers off. Both moves buy comfort by inventing a finding that does not exist.

Separate the claims into categories

The record about Eddie Long contains at least four different kinds of statement, and they should never be handled the same way. There are established facts, such as his pastorate, the size of the congregation, the 2006 funeral and the date of his death. There are documented public events, such as the Senate inquiry, which closed without a finding of wrongdoing. There are disputed allegations, such as the 2010 claims, denied and never tested. And there are matters of interpretation, such as whether prosperity teaching is compatible with the Gospel, where the argument is theological rather than factual.

Ask what a fact would change

If the allegations were true, the correct conclusion would be that a man in pastoral authority did grave harm to young people in his care and that the structures around him failed to prevent or detect it. If they were false, the correct conclusion would be that a man was ruined in public by claims that were never proven, which is also a grave harm and which the settlement did nothing to repair. Both scenarios indict the structure. Neither is established.

Judge the system, since you cannot judge the case

What can be assessed without any finding of fact is the arrangement itself: a self-governing congregation with no external oversight, a pastor with an honorific bishopric and no superior, a mentoring programme that put a small number of teenagers into close personal contact with the most powerful man in the building, finances that no member could inspect, and a culture in which questioning the leadership read as disloyalty. Every one of those is fixable, and none of them requires anyone to decide what happened in 2010.

The Christian conviction about unresolved cases is that they are unresolved here and not everywhere. Judgment belongs to God, who sees what neither a newspaper nor a settlement conference could reach. That conviction calls for humility about verdicts. Structures are a separate question, and they are ours to fix now.

What This Page Does Not Claim

Much of this record is open, and naming the gaps is better than filling them.

• This page does not state that Eddie Long committed the conduct alleged in the 2010 lawsuits. He denied the allegations, the suits were settled out of court in 2011 with no admission of liability, no criminal charge was ever brought, and no court made any finding of fact.
• This page does not state that the four plaintiffs made false claims. Nothing established that either, and the settlement decided nothing in either direction.
• This page does not name the plaintiffs. Their names appear in the public court filings and in press coverage from 2010. A summary page has no need to attach them here.
• This page does not state the terms or the amount of the 2011 settlement, which were confidential and have never been published.
• This page does not catalogue claims made publicly by other individuals after 2011. Those claims were not tested in any court and this page cannot verify them.
• This page does not state which body conferred the title of bishop on Eddie Long, or when. He used the title throughout his public ministry and it was used of him by his church and the press.
• This page states no audited membership figure for New Birth. The figures in circulation were supplied by the church.
• This page states no dollar amounts for Long's compensation. Reported figures covered different entities and different year ranges, and are easy to misstate.
• This page does not state whether any law enforcement agency reviewed the 2010 allegations, or what any such review concluded. What is on the record is that no prosecution followed.
• This page does not state how the individual claims arising from the Ephren Taylor investments against Long and New Birth were resolved. Taylor's own federal conviction is separate and is stated as fact about him.
• This page does not address Eddie Long's marriage or family life beyond noting that he was survived by his wife and children. Private matters that bear on no question of public ministry are excluded.
• This page reports no developments after mid-2026 concerning New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, its leadership, or any further litigation.
• This page makes no judgment about Eddie Long's standing before God. That belongs to God alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Bishop Eddie Long?

Eddie Lee Long was an American pastor who led New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, from 1987 until his death in 2017, building it from a congregation of a few hundred into one of the largest predominantly Black churches in the United States. He was widely known by the title bishop, preached a message combining spiritual authority, personal breakthrough and material blessing, and hosted the 2006 funeral of Coretta Scott King. In 2010 four young men filed civil lawsuits alleging that he had coerced them into sexual relationships when they were teenagers. Long denied the allegations, the suits were settled out of court in 2011 with no admission of liability, and he was never criminally charged.

What were the 2010 allegations against Eddie Long?

In September 2010 four young men filed separate civil lawsuits in DeKalb County Superior Court in Georgia alleging that Eddie Long had used his position as their pastor, along with travel, gifts, cars and money, to coerce them into sexual relationships that began when they were teenagers enrolled in a church mentoring programme. The claims were civil claims about the abuse of pastoral authority and the duty a pastor owes a young person in his care. Long denied the allegations through his lawyer and from his own pulpit, said he would fight them in court, and never accepted that any of the conduct described had occurred.

Was Eddie Long ever convicted of a crime?

No. Eddie Long was never charged with, tried for, or convicted of any criminal offence in connection with the 2010 allegations or anything else arising from his ministry. The four cases brought against him in 2010 were civil lawsuits seeking damages, brought by private plaintiffs rather than by a prosecutor, and they ended in a confidential out-of-court settlement in 2011 that carried no admission of liability. No criminal investigation against him resulted in charges, and no court ever made a finding that the alleged conduct took place.

How did the Eddie Long lawsuits end?

The four lawsuits were settled out of court in May 2011. The terms were confidential, the settlement contained no admission of liability or wrongdoing by Eddie Long, and the case therefore never went to trial and never produced a judicial finding about what happened. A settlement of that kind ends the litigation without deciding the facts. It leaves the allegations untested by a court, and it leaves Long's denial standing as his answer to them.

How did Eddie Long die?

Eddie Long died on 15 January 2017 at the age of 63. New Birth Missionary Baptist Church announced that he had died after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. In the preceding year photographs of a visibly gaunt Long had circulated widely online, and he had responded in a video message describing a change of diet and a health regimen rather than an illness. He was survived by his wife Vanessa and his children.

What happened to New Birth Missionary Baptist Church after Eddie Long?

New Birth Missionary Baptist Church continued after Eddie Long's death in 2017 and in 2018 called the pastor Jamal Bryant as its senior pastor. The congregation is smaller than it was at its height, which is the ordinary pattern when a church built around one preacher loses that preacher. The building, the ministries and the members remained, and the church has continued as an independent Missionary Baptist congregation in Lithonia, Georgia.