Seminary president Albert Mohler is forcefully defending C.J. Mahaney, a Maryland pastor and popular author who has taken a leave of absence over allegations of spiritually abusive and dictatorial practices in the church network he leads.

C.J. Mahaney, longtime president of the Sovereign Grace Ministries, has acknowledged the accuracy of some of the charges against him, including failing to be held to accountable by others in his church network and using coercive tactics in a dispute with an estranged colleague with whom he has since reconciled.

“I always have had only the highest estimation of C.J. Mahaney as a man and a minister,” Mohler said in an interview — his first public comments on the situation involving Mahaney, one of his fellow leaders in the Reformed, neo-Calvinist movement. “That continues absolutely unchanged. There is nothing in this current situation which would leave me to have even the slightest pause of confidence in him.”

Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, has worked closely with Mahaney for years as leaders of a revival of teaching on Calvinist theology, male authority and church discipline among some conservative evangelicals.

Mohler said he believes Mahaney and the Sovereign Grace board are being prudent in planning an independent investigation from people outside the denomination to make sure those involved are above reproach.

But Mohler has already drawn his own conclusions.

He based that on hundreds of pages leaked to the Internet last week, detailing correspondence between Mahaney, his main accuser and former colleague, Brent Detwiler, and other Sovereign Grace leaders.

“There is nothing disqualifying in terms of anything that is disclosed in this,” said Mohler, who regularly speaks on programs along with Mahaney. “It’s just evidence we knew all along, that C.J. is human but a deeply committed Christian and a visionary Christian leader.”

Sovereign Grace itself is taking a more cautious approach. A statement from its board called the allegations “serious.”

“These charges are not related to any immorality or financial impropriety, but this doesn’t minimize their serious nature, which include various expressions of pride, unentreatability (inability to accept correction), deceit, sinful judgment, and hypocrisy,” the board said. (One reader last week wondered how the board was defining “immorality” in light of that catalogue of sins.)

And in a Sunday sermon, Mahaney’s successor as pastor of the denomination’s flagship congregation, Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., refused to downplay them.

“We are walking through what is without any exaggeration the most difficult challenge that we’ve faced as a church,” said the pastor, Joshua Harris.

Harris called his former mentor a “father in the faith to many of us” but that Mahaney had “confessed to some of these sins” while disagreeing with others.

“It is as bad as it seems, and it is the fault of your leaders, and we desperately need the help of God and the wisdom and the accountability of the people who have looked to our leadership to sort through this mess,” he said.

In his own statements, Mahaney said that “God is disciplining me for my sin and leadership failures and I am very grateful for this discipline.”

“I was difficult to entreat,” he told the Covenant Life congregation Sunday night. “I sinfully judged their motives. I was arrogantly confident in my perception.”

Mahaney has been in ministry since the 1970s, when the one-time drug enthusiast was converted to Christianity through the hippie-friendly Jesus Movement, according to the 2008 book, “Young Restless, Reformed,” by Collin Hansen.

The bald-headed Mahaney captures audiences with his earnestly enunciated phrases and a broad circumference of gestures. His popular books include one titled, “Humility: True Greatness.”

The Maryland-based Sovereign Grace network has a network of 97 churches in the United States and abroad, many on the East Coast, known for their unusual combination of Reformed theology and a history of Pentecostal-like spiritual gifts such as divine prophecy. None of its congregations are listed in Kentucky and Indiana, although Mahaney has spoken to enthusiastic crowds in Louisville this February at Southern Seminary and last year at the Kentucky International Convention Center.

Mahaney’s leave follows years of once-secret deliberations among its leaders. The dialogue reflects a specialized vocabulary of a culture within Sovereign Grace of relentless scrutiny of one’s own sins and those of other members.