A 65-year-old pastor in Des Moines, Iowa, is under fire for reportedly marrying a woman who was 19 at the time.
Bishop Dwight Reed of the Christ Apostolic Temple angrily confronted his parishioners during Sunday service about accosting his wife, whom he married two years ago. Reed was 63 when the two exchanged vows, The Des Moines Register reports.
Pastor fires off warning about confronting his young wife
Reed reportedly warned those few who came at his wife wrongly that there would be physical repercussions if that happened again.
“And I wish some of y’all would mess with my wife, Jordan. Talking about, ‘What you gonna do if you see her?’ Well, you will see me on the news!” he barked.
“You better walk by and say, ‘Praise the Lord!’ That’s what you better do because that’s my wife! And she has grown! She didn’t need anybody to sign any paperwork for her. If this was out in the streets, y’all would be saying she made a come-up, but you are a hypocrite.”
The video has gone viral, two years later, with folks conveying dismay at the more than 40-year age gap between the two.
Reed explained that he is unbothered by the blowback from critics, locally and nationally, because he said he has done nothing wrong. In the state of Iowa, the legal age of consent is 16.
He then recited scripture discussing the value of marriage and told everyone that he and his wife were happily married and had done nothing wrong: “And we sleep well at night! Ain’t nobody up all night worried about these crooks.”
The newspaper stated that Reed met Goodlett when she was a teen student at the church school where he was a dean, and he offered the underage girl “special guidance.”
