Micah Moore is scheduled to stand trial next month on charges he murdered Bethany Deaton two years ago in Kansas City suburb. The case has drawn national attention because both Moore and Deaton were affiliated with the International House of Prayer (IHOP), and Deaton’s husband, Tyler Deaton, is said to have taken IHOP’s teachings to extremes, creating an abusive cult in his small sub-community, leading to his wife’s death.
After Bethany Deaton was found dead, Moore confessed to the murder. But now his lawyers, in a pre-trial motion, argue that the state’s only evidence against him is that confession, and that no other evidence — physical, witness testimony, circumstantial, or otherwise — links him to her death. Moore’s lawyers’ brief includes a detailed account of her mental health issues, and considerable evidence they say establishes her death was a suicide, not a murder.
Earlier this month, I published a piece about IHOP at Talking Points Memo (note that the full text is for subscribers only). A snippet:
Through IHOP and its associated church, Forerunner Christian Fellowship, [founder Mike] Bickle claims to be cultivating an elite class of “forerunners,” or people who “represent God and his interests,” and who “prepare the people to respond rightly to Jesus by making known God’s plans so the people can make sense of what will happen before it actually happens.” His vision of the end-times, which is central to his teaching, maintains that these “redeemed” people will be raptured just as Jesus begins his “royal procession” into Jerusalem. Bickle believes they will return to earth as “resurrected saints” who will “possess supernatural abilities.” When Jesus rules as “King over all dominions and spheres of society,” these resurrected saints will rule with him, “as kings and priests.”
Bickle is a major figure in what is known as charismatic Christianity, a sprawling movement with no clear organizational structure or hierarchy, led by magnetic and often authoritarian figures who proclaim themselves to be modern-day prophets and apostles. Driven by the passionate pronouncements of these “prophets,” rather than by, say, a denominational creed, the movement derides mainstream evangelical churches as moribund and dull – and in so doing has forced them to adapt to its presence. Lest you think these movements are fringe, just look at Republican politics, which has increasingly embraced the charismatic movement and its leaders in its quest for the evangelical vote. Outside of politics—but still crucial to its ongoing and future entanglement with religion—movements like Bickle’s entice the very young people evangelical leaders fret are slipping away from their faith. In one sense, IHOP, with its heterodox theology, inhabits a world of its own. But its draw to young people has led evangelical, and even mainline Protestant churches, as well as word of mouth and social media networks, to advertise its virtues to parents and teenagers who think they want to achieve more “intimacy” with God.
Because my piece focused more on IHOP itself, I touched only briefly on the Deaton murder. Still, though, in reporting the story, I did talk to a number of people who were at IHOP at the time, and knew either the Deatons or Moore, or both. Several of them told me that although IHOP tried to distance itself from Tyler Deaton after Bethany’s death, IHOP leadership did know about the abuses of his housemates well before that, and failed to act to reign him in or address the mental health issues suffered by some of his followers.
In their brief, Moore’s lawyers argue that Moore was brainwashed into confessing after an “exorcism.” From the brief:
During an evening session on November 8, 2012, it was made clear to the community [that followed Tyler Deaton] that IHOP believed the community was not just a community but a cult and called into question everything they had been doing under Tyler’s command. Leaders of the session made it clear that everyone had been hurt and controlled supernaturally and needed an exorcism, though the term exorcism wasn’t expressly used. A large group of people, called the Prisoners of Hope – an IHOP affiliated prayer group – prayed for the group. Putting their hands on the cult members, shouting at demons to leave and scream-praying in tongues, soon had many in the group crying and yelling and falling to the floor. In that atmosphere – loud, frenetic, chaotic – all the pent up emotion from their friend’s death and from being accused of being a cult – spilled out. In the hours that followed, the men and women would be separated and it would come to light that Tyler had physically intimate relationships with several of the men. Homosexuality is strongly condemned within the church though Tyler had masterfully managed to convince these men that the relationship was one of intimacy, not sexuality. Ultimately it led to an unraveling of others within the group that were equally vulnerable and fragile. And, it led to the completely false statements by Moore relating to Bethany’s death. Notwithstanding that Moore told police unequivocally while in custody, after he finally had some sleep, that he did not kill Bethany, murder charges were filed and a full investigation launched into Deaton’s death.
According to the Kansas City Star, IHOP has denied that an “exorcism” took place, and maintains that the meeting was intended to “help” Deaton’s followers grieve Bethany’s death. (I have a source who was not at the meeting, but says “exorcism” was not a word IHOP would use; “deliverance” would be more like IHOP terminology. In any case, casting out demons and speaking in tongues are practices that have been described to me as commonplace by former IHOP followers.)
At the meeting, “it came to light that several young men may have been having sexual relations with Tyler Deaton,“ and as they shared these stories, Moore confessed to two IHOP leaders that he murdered Bethany. They accompanied him to the police station. When Moore initially confessed to the police, he said that Tyler put him up to murdering his wife.
Moore’s pre-trial motion details what Moore’s lawyers say were Bethany’s mental health issues, including her hospitalization for depression and suicidal thoughts just weeks before her death. It’s extremely chilling reading: that her husband refused to have sex with her, had sex with the men who lived in the house with them; that he accused her of narcissism, shunned her, forced her to sleep on the couch, and “ex-communicated” her. According to other sources, Deaton did not visit these sorts of abuses only on his wife, but on other members of his community as well.
According to this piece in Rolling Stone, Deaton was inspired by IHOP’s apocalyptic teachings but crafted his own theological twists and cult-like following. IHOPU, the unaccredited university arm of IHOP, claimed shortly after Bethany’s death that “Mr. Deaton led his religious group entirely independently from IHOPU, though he and some of his members were enrolled in our university.”
Moore’s trial will likely draw even more national scrutiny to IHOP. It is scheduled to begin November 17.
