What Death of The Pastor’s Wife Gets Right—and What It Left Out

Screenshot: Death of The Pastor's Wife. Netflix.

Netflix Documentaries have taken the platform by storm recently. It seems every month or so there’s another high profile true crime story that was in the headlines pretty recently that they’re doing a deep dive into. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen, as at least in a few cases, it felt like irresponsible journalism or at the very least, that the documentaries left out some crucial details. 

Death of The Pastor’s Wife is the latest iteration, and before we get into it, I’m going to, as the person writing this, expose my biases. I am someone who deconstructed from the evangelical Christian church, having grown up in it. An “exvangelical,” if you will, and that means that I’ve got years of experience inside places like Solid Rock church. For better or worse. But mostly worse.

There’s a lot that can be said about J.P. Miller. He’s running all the greatest hits from the Narcissistic Abuser playbook. His father started the cycle and he picked up the baton directly from him and ran with it. He’s a groomer, he’s coercive, controlling, and manipulative. If he can’t use direct brute force, he’ll attempt emotional manipulation, literally writhing around on the ground and whimpering like a hurt animal, hoping to garner enough sympathy to regain control.

Mica was 13 when she came to the church. Thirteen. I’m not sure if you recall being thirteen, but it’s a really fucked up age to be, for almost everyone I’ve ever talked to about it.  Hormones, puberty, the weird in-between place you find yourself in where you’re not really a little kid and you’re not really an adult.  You need somewhere to belong. You want to feel loved and special. You’re ripe for picking to people who prey on vulnerability. 

A church, at the heart of it, is a community of people who share the same faith, and as evangelicals like to say “a body.” And this body betrayed Mica early on. She was initially married to a high school sweetheart she met in the church, Jeremy, at only 18 years of age. He was heavily involved with the leadership at the church, which led Mica to meeting JP, and becoming his assistant, a babysitter to his kids, and leader of the worship team. It’s a whole lot of status and power for someone so young, and a whole lot of attention from a guy 15 years older. 

What I’m glad for in Death of The Pastor’s Wife is that they make it pretty clear that something went wrong in this death investigation. There’s a very clear, very damning pattern of behavior that started with the early grooming and unfortunately, ended up with a very suspicious suicide shortly after Mica began to pull herself out of the relationship for good. And if you know anything about escaping abuse, you know that the danger escalates exponentially when you actually leave, and just after you leave.  JP’s stalking behavior was in broad daylight. It was reported to the police. It was witnessed by church members.

I’m going to repeat that part. It was witnessed by church members.

The thing that I think the Netflix documentary shies away from that I wish it wouldn’t is the fact that while this sort of thing can and does happen outside the trappings of the evangelical church, its rhetoric and culture make it that much easier. We’re not afraid to say it when it’s a non mainstream “cult” but I think it needs to be said: Mica Miller was in great danger at least in part because her husband was a pastor. In the hierarchy of the church, women are oftentimes defined by the men they married. Mica got close to JP initially because her first husband was involved in the church. When JP wanted what someone else had, he took it, and called it “God’s plan” to make something good out of his “sin.”

You see, it’s not an isolated incident for a charismatic narcissist to come to power in a “Christian” church. It’s fairly normal. It’s just not talked about so much, because it’s so often swept under the rug. And it’s never their fault.  They were tempted by Satan, tested like Job, caused to stumble by women who were wearing spaghetti straps and 13 year olds in swimsuits at youth group pool parties.

Behavior is constantly surveilled and judged. The hierarchy is oftentimes dictated by proximity to leadership and superficial things like physical appearance. Everyone’s an informant, so if you “stumble” everyone else will know before long. Not only that, but questioning authority? Doubt? Those are things that will get you pushed out of the same circles you worked so hard to get into. 

It’s why I can so easily believe that the congregation didn’t blink when JP checked Mica into a mental facility. She was taught, as I was taught, that your husband was appointed by God as head of the house. You were to obey, and serve, and not question. You were to believe that as long as your husband was a “godly” man, there’s no reason to question him. Doubt is deviance. Defiance is punished. Questioning is sinning. And that’s how she got admitted to an inpatient mental hospital with JP taking her car, electronics, and other belongings, and how she ended up on the phone to the police, calmly asking them to intervene.

They of course didn’t. But how? Why? JP was at the scene before people should’ve been allowed there. Why?

It’s possible he was a chaplain, or even if not, had been involved enough in community affairs and outreaches to have buttered the right bread with law enforcement. And butter that bread he did, because post documentary articles have since revealed that JP Miller once ran over an ex wife with a car, reversed and rolled over her body again and somehow it just didn’t stick.

When she left, she tried to voice her truth. He took to Facebook and posted pictures. She continued to speak out. He continued to stalk her.  All the while, this man was getting up on stage playing a cute little ragtime, talking about how if you don’t provide for your husband’s needs he’ll find 20 other people who will, and, when she was finally separated, seeding it in the congregation’s minds that she was mentally ill and hitting rock bottom. He asked them to pray that she would, in fact, hit rock bottom. 

And then she was found shot in the head, face down in a river at a state park.

Whether that was directly by JP”s hand or not is still under investigation. It would certainly be no surprise.

The most chilling thing for me watching Death of The Pastor’s Wife isn’t that it happened, it’s that it didn’t surprise me one bit. In 3 churches and 4 pastors, we had 3 incidences of adultery and embezzlement leading to pastors “stepping down” tearfully after getting caught, but not before veiled and direct threats to staff, character assassination of those who accused them, and worse.

What the Death of The Pastor’s Wife misses that I think we should be examining closely is the direct role that evangelical Christianity as it’s practiced today contributed to her death, and the death of so many others. It’s much more comfortable for you to think it only happens in compounds in rural areas with a few men who fancy themselves direct lines to God, but it’s in fact baked into the version of evangelical Christianity that JP Miller came to power in. It’s a system where a woman’s value is directly tied to her purity, and she can cause grown men to stumble because her shorts aren’t down to her knees. Where everyone just shifts in their seats a little upon hearing the pastor’s wife is in a mental facility and reaching her “rock bottom” and prays she’ll get there sooner. Because there is real, immediate danger there.