The Rev. Kenneth Flowers, the prominent former leader of the Greater New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, once described by a judge as a “Christian superstar,” was sentenced Thursday to spend four to 15 years in prison for the sexual assault of a 17-year-old boy in his home.
“Today’s sentence means that Kenneth Flowers is being held accountable for his actions,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said, according to MLive. “Our focus throughout the process was providing a just outcome for the victim.”
Flowers, 64, was sentenced as part of a plea deal he made in April when he pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree criminal sexual assault. He will also be required to register with the Michigan Sex Offender Registry as part of his sentence.
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Available details of the assault are limited, but Flowers allegedly committed his assault of the teenager, who lives in his Farmington Hills neighborhood, on Dec. 20, 2023. He was also arrested the same day and charged with one count of criminal sexual conduct with force or coercion and one count of criminal sexual assault with intent to commit sexual penetration, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Flowers’ warrant was amended last October, and his charges were increased to first-degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping.
Officials at Greater New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church did not immediately respond to calls for comment from The Christian Post on Friday. Although he’s no longer listed on the church’s website, Flowers had served as their senior pastor since July 1995. He was described as an internationally recognized human rights activist who sought to build relationships between people of different races and religions.
Until the charges against him emerged, Flowers was also celebrated as a respected member of the Detroit community, where he had been briefly appointed to serve on the city’s Board of Ethics. His tenure was cut short because it was discovered that he maintained his residence in Farmington Hills.
The politically connected leader is also seen as a champion of women’s rights in the church, becoming the “first Pastor ever at Greater New Mt. Moriah to license and ordain females to the preaching ministry and to ordain females as Deacons,” according to his congregation.
He was even once described as a “Christian superstar” by U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Damon Keith.
My job as a federal judge is reading people, and as soon as I saw him and talked to him, I knew we had a Christian superstar on our hands,” Keith said, according to the Michigan Chronicle.
“That’s wonderful. He succeeded Ben Hooks, and they had to select (a new pastor), someone with the potential that could keep up the tradition of Ben Hooks, and I’m very proud of him. He’s involved himself in the NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, the Black Pastors of Detroit, and I’m just so proud. … Detroit has never been the same since Rev. Ken Flowers came.”
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