Surprised we missed this, but a prominent Southern Baptist pastor from my neck of the woods turned a lot of heads at the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission's Leadership Summit earlier this week. J. D. Greear, the pastor of Summit Church in Durham, claimed that pastors who preach against homosexuality are in roughly the same position as pastors who condemned slavery before the Civil War.
"Preaching against homosexuality in our day is about as popular as preaching against slavery and racism in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1861," said Greear at the ERLC summit. "And back then, I'm sure the politically correct people were like, 'You're just creating a lot of waves that are unnecessary, just preach the Gospel.'"
Watch the whole thing
here.
Let's see if we've got this right. Preaching against something that doesn't really hurt anyone else is akin to preaching against an institution that degraded the people who had to endure it in every conceivable way? The mind reels.
I had hoped the ERLC had changed its tune after longtime president Richard Land was pushed out for suggesting the White House was using the Trayvon Martin case to turn out more voters at the polls. It turns out those comments were not only bigoted, but plagiarized as well. Boy, was I wrong. But then again, Greear's statements were to be expected considering one of the panelists was Mark Regnerus, the author of a completely discredited study on the effects of gay parents on kids.
I'd heard a lot about the Summit Church, and actually thought about paying it a visit if I ever spent a full weekend in the Triangle. But after seeing this, this is one church neither I nor any other reality-based Christian should go near with a 10-foot pole.