Explained: Who is Michael Brown and what are the allegations against him?

An investigation has been launched into allegations against the well-known Christian apologist and revivalist Michael Brown by his own ministry, The Line of Fire.

The board of The Line of Fire has commissioned an independent inquiry to look into accusations Brown kissed and inappropriately touched a young woman over 20 years ago.

Brown has denied any sexual impropriety and welcomed the investigation, although he did concede to acting foolishly in his relationship with the woman.  

Who is Michael Brown? 

Brown was born in 1955 into a comfortable New York City family who were nominally-observant Jews. In his teens he got into rock music and soon after became a heavy drug user, before some friends brought him to a Pentecostal church. After he converted, he abandoned his drug-taking and instead pursued study of the Old Testament scriptures and the Hebrew language to assist him in debating his conversion with his family’s Jewish rabbis and friends.  

He eventually got a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University, and is the author of dozens of books and pamphlets arguing the case that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah the Jews have been waiting for. Via numerous TV and radio debates, including on Premier Unbelievable? he has become one of the most prominent apologists in the Messianic Jewish movement.  

In the mid-1990s he became one of the leaders in the Brownsville Revival, an intense multi-year charismatic outpouring at an Assemblies of God church in Florida. Initially Brown ran the school of ministry set up by the Brownsville church to try and spread their revivalist message but in 2000 he fell out with the church’s leadership in a dispute over accountability and finances. Forced out, Brown took some of his teaching staff and students and set up his own college, FIRE School of Ministry, in the same town.  

What are the allegations against him? 

It was in the early years of FIRE that Brown came to know a young woman, known only by the pseudonym ‘Erin’. Erin had experienced the Brownsville Revival in the 1990s and been so enthused she’d taken a secretarial job at the FIRE School of Ministry under Brown, according to an account published by the Roys Report – an investigative Christian news website. 

Brown fostered a very close relationship with Erin, positioning himself as a surrogate father and even asking her to call him ‘Dad’. Numerous people who worked at FIRE at the time have told the Roys Report they remember Brown and Erin being extremely close and spending a lot of time together, including in the home Brown shared with his wife of many decades, Nancy.  

However, Erin said that gradually Brown began to act inappropriately towards her, including kissing her on the mouth, snuggling up to her while she sat on his lap, and smacking her on the bottom.  

Others have said it was common knowledge on the FIRE campus at the time that Brown would regularly hold hands with Erin in public and drive her alone in his car, despite a more than 20-year age gap between them. The pair would also send each other written notes covered in love-hearts.  

Later while house-sitting for the Browns, Erin said she stumbled across documents in their bedroom about an inappropriate relationship Brown had had with a married woman also at the FIRE school. The letters said that the relationship had not yet become physical, but intense and sexually explicit messages were being exchanged.  

What happened next? 

One employee at FIRE told Brown’s boss about the handholding, which he readily admitted but dismissed as insignificant. Brown did not tell the board about other elements of his relationship with Erin, including the kissing or bottom-smacking. He also chastised the staffer for passing on his concerns to Brown’s boss, according to the Roys Report, although he later said this pushback was only to accusations he was having an affair with Erin.  

However, Erin was now reconsidering Brown too after discovering he had a previous inappropriate relationship with another woman via the letters in his bedroom. She had thought of him as a father but now worried their intimacy was wrong.  

She told the Roys Report that she confronted Brown and his wife about the letters, but they insisted it was an indiscretion which had already been dealt with and resolved. Instead of confessing his misconduct publicly or to his superiors, Brown asked if he could apologise privately just to Erin, who could stand in to represent the entire FIRE college. However, Erin said she later saw Brown alone with the woman from the letters, despite the revivalist claiming to have cut off his friendship.  

Erin then abruptly quit her job at FIRE and left Florida entirely, although she stayed in occasional contact with the Browns over the subsequent years.  

How did the allegations come to light? 

Nothing happened for many years until 2017 when Brown posted in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement in support of women telling their stories of harassment and abuse. One former missionary associated with FIRE challenged Brown in a message about this, accusing him of being quick to condemn others for their failures but brushing his own misconduct under the rug.  

Another flashpoint came around the same time when FIRE hired Brown’s son-in-law onto the staff a year after he had been made to stand down from another Christian college after having an affair with a student.  

More recently, Brown also commented publicly on the downfall of prominent Christian leaders such as Todd Bentley and Mike Bickle, which has prompted other FIRE employees aware of elements of his relationship with Erin to come forward and eventually tell the story to the Roys Report.  

After the website approached Brown for comment, he told the board of his personal ministry The Line of Fire about both Erin and the other woman.  

What has Brown said about the accusations? 

In a lengthy statement, Brown said he was “shocked and horrified by the mix of accusations, allegations, false statements, and mischaracterizations” in the Roys Report story. He said he backed the board’s decision to launch an independent investigation.  

He said that he had treated Erin as though she was his daughter, which he now recognised reflected a “definite lack of judgment on my part”. Nevertheless, their relationship never became sexual and he said that he thought they had resolved the problem and reconciled when Erin left FIRE in 2002. Brown also said he was under the impression Erin remained on good terms towards him and his family until the Roys Report story was published, and questioned why Erin had not sought him out directly if she remained uncomfortable about their time together rather than going to a media outlet.  

“The fact is that my actions towards her were certainly foolish and irresponsible – but neither sexual nor amorous in any way– and my highest priority, as well as Nancy’s, is to have the opportunity to meet together in a setting acceptable to her and bring healing, where I can take full responsibility for the things which apparently hurt her so deeply, things which I thought we addressed 23 years ago,” he concluded.  

In a separate video posted on his website, Brown said that when he confessed his emotional but non-physical dalliance with a married friend in 2002 he had wanted to also tell his FIRE superiors, but was persuaded not to by his wife who did not want further embarrassment.  

In the video Brown said he wanted to offer full transparency and disclosure, but said he would not “confirm or deny specific allegations” made by Erin and instead leave it to the investigation. He reiterated that he had apologised to her in 2002 when she first told him he’d made her uncomfortable. But he conceded it was now clear that he had “failed to understand the depth of what she was experiencing” and asked her to forgive her for causing her pain.  

What did Brown’s ministry do in response? 

After it was told about both Erin and the other unnamed woman, the board of The Line of Fire, Brown’s personal radio ministry, hired a law firm to carry out an independent investigation. The board said it would publish the final report once the lawyers had completed their probe.  

However, this prompted a backlash online after the law firm was revealed to have also represented those who have been the subject of allegations, raising fears The Line of Fire’s supposedly independent investigation was actually a whitewashing exercise.  

In response, the board said they understood the “optics of that decision could appear that we hired a firm that would exonerate Michael” and dropped the lawyers. Instead, they wanted to find an organisation which was “trauma informed and is sensitive to the advocacy community”, eventually hiring a group called Firefly which also worked for the International House of Prayer during their own investigation into the allegations against Mike Bickle.  

However, other elements of Brown’s ministries have forcefully pushed back and told supporters he was under satanic attack. A fundraising letter sent to The Line of Fire mailing list said that the Browns were facing “the fiercest, most intense, demonic attacks in our ministry’s history – it has been insidious and ugly, an effort of Satan designed to weaken us, deplete our energy, drain our funds, and stop the work”.  

Other ministries affiliated with Brown, including the church he founded, have also urged supporters not to be taken in by the reporting around the allegations against him. In one message, his church attacked those covering the scandal as being “in agreement with the Accuser of the Brethren”. 

The board of The Line of Fire have apologised for the fundraising letter, saying it was written before the Roys Report story was published and the text was not approved by them (and that Brown now agrees it was wrong too).  

Brown has been “strongly encouraged” by the board to step back from all public ministry during the investigation by Firefly, cancelling all speaking engagements and ceasing his regular writing for the website. However, Brown has continued to publish his regular videos and podcasts online since the scandal broke, although some videos were recorded earlier.