Missouri Pastor Rick Morrow resigns from school board after claiming children with autism are possessed by a ‘DEMON’ and ‘God doesn’t make messes’
- Pastor Rick Morrow of Beulah Church has resigned from the local school board
- He claimed that autism can be cured by exorcising a demon
- Morrow stands by his comments and reiterates that demons cause autism
A Missouri pastor has resigned from the local school board after claiming that children with autism are possessed by a “demon” because “God doesn’t make messes.”
Pastor Rick Morrow of Beulah Church in Richland sparked a huge backlash in the community after he said autism can be cured by casting out a demon during a livestreamed sermon.
“Well, either the devil has attacked children with autism, he has brought this weakness upon them, he has them, or God doesn’t love them like that, and he made them like this… my God doesn’t make them like that. garbage,” Morrow said during his Sept. 6 sermon.
“Stop putting on a Band-Aid and saying, ‘Oh, we’ll be fine. We just need to treat this or that.’
“How about we just cast out the demon and then deal with all the issues?”
Pastor Rick Morrow of Beulah Church in Richland caused a huge backlash in the community after he said autism can be cured by casting out a demon
“My God does not litter,” Morrow said during his Sept. 6 sermon
Morrow’s comments were rejected by the families of children with autism, prompting his resignation from the Stoutland School Board.
But the pastor stood by his comments in an interview with KY3 and reiterated that autism is caused by demons.
He claimed: ‘Yes, in or around, somehow it affects… And when I say a demon, like I said, you guys want to get that Hollywood description of what a demon is so nasty , so ugly and, and that’s not the case, it’s just an evil presence. It’s just the presence of evil.’
He also clarified his comments about ‘junk’.
“Junk introduced me to autism, that condition, the disease or the neurodivergence,” he explained.
‘We all have problems; we all have problems. We all have conditions. We all have diseases and ailments and ailments. And I just refuse to blame God for those things.”
Marrow claimed he knew a preacher “who has seen many autistic children, he cast out that demon, and they were healed, and then he had to pray and their brains were rewired and they were fixed.”
The Stoutland School district said in a statement: “The district is aware that a member of the Board of Education, in a setting and capacity outside of his role as a board member, has made comments that have been interpreted as derogatory toward individuals with certain disabilities.
“One member of the Board of Education does not speak for the Board of Education as a whole, nor for the District itself.”
Social media users were quick to condemn Morrow’s comments and have flooded his Facebook with negative comments.
One comment read: ‘You don’t have a degree in theology or medicine, do you?’
Another added: ‘What the hell is wrong with you? It’s people like you who are driving people far away from Christianity. Your day will come and you should fear it.’
A third echoed: “You are the reason a lot of people are leaving the church.”
Morrow told his church Sunday that children with autism aren’t messes, but the disease is.
“I have been told that autism is a blessing from God. I’ve been told I’m the evil one,” Morrow said, according to the Kansas City Star. ‘
But you know what? If I stood up here and said cancer sucks, people would agree. If I stood up here and said addiction sucks, people would agree.”