{"id":7176,"date":"2011-05-30T17:25:50","date_gmt":"2011-05-30T21:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=7176"},"modified":"2011-05-30T17:25:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-30T21:25:50","slug":"bishop-eddie-long-settles-with-accusers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=7176","title":{"rendered":"Bishop Eddie Long Settles With Accusers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ATLANTA\u2013<strong> Bishop Eddie Long<\/strong>, the Atlanta-based megachurch leader,\u00a0has reached an out-of-court settlement with four young men who accused him of sexual coercion.<\/p>\n<p><strong>B. J. Bernstein<\/strong>, the attorney representing the men, said in a statement that\u00a0the lawsuits against <strong>Long<\/strong> and his church have \u201cbeen resolved.\u201d<br \/>\n<strong>Bernstein&#8217;s<\/strong> two-paragraph statement\u00a0said that neither she nor the accusers would talk about the lawsuits \u201cnow or in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Art Franklin<\/strong>, a <strong>Long<\/strong> spokesman, said Thursday that the pastor settled because it \u201cis the most reasonable road for everyone to travel. This decision was made to bring closure to this matter and to allow us to move forward with the plans God has for this ministry,\u201d <strong>Franklin<\/strong> said in a statement.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Long<\/strong> is an internationally known\u00a0televangelist who crusaded against gay marriage, and the lawsuits against him drew national attention.<\/p>\n<p>The settlement comes eight months after <strong>Long<\/strong>, the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia,\u00a0said from\u00a0the pulpit of his 25,000 member megachurch that\u00a0he vowed to fight the accusations against him, with the\u00a0congregation cheering in response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ATLANTA\u2013 Bishop Eddie Long, the Atlanta-based megachurch leader,\u00a0has reached an out-of-court settlement with four young men who accused him of sexual coercion. B. J. Bernstein, the attorney representing the men, said in a statement that\u00a0the lawsuits against Long and his church have \u201cbeen resolved.\u201d Bernstein&#8217;s two-paragraph statement\u00a0said that neither she nor the accusers would talk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}