Thread by @JMHendersonSr

Read your blog entries on my former "friend" and former employer, @JaySekulow.

The money grubbing should disturb.

The equating of prosperity with God's blessing should disturb.

@JohnFea1

But none of you folks that ever peek over at #Sekulow dig into some of the truly pathetic aspects of #Sekulow's "Christianity."

I always start by thinking about Maria, an elderly Bolivian-American naturalized US citizen. Maria worked for the @ACLJ in DC.

I opened an office for CASE (Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism) in December 1989, at #Sekulow's request. This was the beginning of a 23 year adventure that abruptly ended in 2012 when I identified my homosexual orientation to my employer, the @ACLJ.

CASE later took on a DBA, ACLJ Office of Chief Counsel. That DBA allowed fundraising that appeared to be for Pat Robertson-founded @ACLJ to actually make its way into the accounts of Sekulow-controlled CASE dba ACLJ Office of Chief Counsel.

In any event, when we opened our Capitol Hill showplace office in the early 2000s, we needed someone on hand for light housekeeping, and for support services when we hosted various meetings on Capitol Hill (House/Senate staffers, donor relations, etc.)

One of our Senior Counsel, Colby M. May, recommended a woman that had worked in his employ as a housekeeper. Colby had employed Maria, and some of her family, as housekeeper, and the family members as servers for events he hosted in his Great Falls, Virginia, home.

Maria was in her 60s. English was not her first language and she spoke and understood with some difficulty. During the decade or so of our acquaintance, she would speak to me in English and insisted that I try to speak to her in my long forgotten high school Spanish.

Maria was reserved, thoughtful, and kind.

She had the opportunity to return to Bolivia to visit family; upon her return she brought everyone in the office small souvenirs of her home country.

Like the woman with the tiny coin in the parables of Jesus, her gift was bigger than most might have realized. She also brought me a home remedy when she noticed that I was working my way through a cold.

Maria's office duties included typical housekeeping in an office:

Dusting, sweeping, emptying bathroom trash cans.

For our special events, she received guests and hung up their coats/umbrellas/etc. She prepared trays of beverages, coffees, teas, sodas. And she cleaned up after such events.

All these activities, to my witness, she accomplished in a commendable manner.

But then, in addition to our 201 Maryland Avenue NE office, ACLJ Office of Chief Counsel/CASE purchased the neighboring townhome. Unlike our fabulous digs (2.5 million to buy, 2.5 million in rehab and furnishing).

During my tenure, the principal use to which that new purchase was put was to provide a "bed & breakfast" for @JaySekulow, family, and friends when visiting the DC office next door.

As to that townhouse, Maria's duties were more like that of a hotel housekeeper. She was required to change bedding every day when #Sekulow and company were in town, to keep fresh towels available, and to do the same light housekeeping as in our office.

Then, in late 2011, I was sitting in my office on the 3rd floor at the @ACLJ's 201 Maryland Avenue NE office, when an explosive stream of screeching arose from the floor below. My office was directly above Colby May's.

I could hear the screeching WITH my door closed.

It was Jay Sekulow. I'd seen him angry before, I'd never heard him screeching as he did, and continued to do for some 15 minutes.

Silence followed. Then footsteps and the closing of our office entry door.

I waited a bit. Then I stepped down to Colby's office.

Colby invited me in and answered my question of what in the hell had just gone on.

"Jay just fired Maria!"

It turned out that Maria, having been hectored on numerous occasions about getting the guest house ready according to Sekulow's standards, had done too good a job:

She threw out something that appeared to be trash, an old box, from one of the bedrooms that would be used that evening by #Sekulow.

Except, as it turned out, no one had told Maria that one of Sekulow's security detail had placed a family heirloom, an old hatbox, in the room.

Sekulow's cousin was scheduled to perform at the Kennedy Center. To honor his cousin, Sekulow had located an old hat box used by one of their grandsires to bring his shtreimel to America from their European home.

He had a small plate engraved for the box. His intent was to have the plate attached to the box and to give the box with the engraved plate to his cousin as a congratulatory gift.

Sekulow had sent the hatbox ahead with one of his security team that had driven up from Va Beach.

Sekulow's security put the box, without any explanation or warning to Maria, in the bedroom of the guest house.

Maria was directed to get the bedrooms ready for Sekulow and his guests.

When she started cleaning, she found what she thought was trash. And having been corrected for, purportedly, a lack of attention to detail in the past, she dutifully removed the trash to an outside garbage can. DC's trash service picked up the trash shortly after.

When #Sekulow arrived at the guesthouse, he went to locate the hatbox and then learned of its disposal.

Mind you, Maria did not engage in an antisemitic act by deliberately ruining a minor bit of Judaica. She threw out what appeared to her to be trash.

And that was led to the disturbing, fifteen minute, screech fest conducted by #courtevangelical @JaySekulow.

The upshot?

A woman, elderly, naturalized as a US citizen, and one quarter away from having become fully vested for purposes of Social Security, was unkindly, ungodly, and unceremoniously tossed out like the hatboxes she mistook for trash.

So, I understand all the examination of doctrine and associations and motivations. But I am always perplexed that no one that examines #Sekulow and his history ignores the human wreckage left in his oh so godly wake.

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