The Rev. Andy Stanley, one of the country’s most noted evangelical preachers, has drawn stinging criticism for a sermon at his North Point Community Church in which he suggested homosexuality is an immutable characteristic Christians need to accept.
Gay people “find themselves in a battle not against a behavior,” Mr. Stanley said in the Oct. 1 message in Atlanta. “They find themselves in a battle against a defining attraction that they did not choose, but somehow has chosen them.”
Same-sex attraction, he said in the sermon, “is not like anything” that heterosexual Christians have battled. “This is a category all unto itself,” he said.
“All of us have felt shame about things we’ve done. All of us have felt shame about things we haven’t done. But I bet you’ve never carried shame about who you are. That’s the difference,” he said.
Mr. Stanley also defended his church’s Unconditional Conference, a two-day event in late September for Christian parents with LGBTQ children and “ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children in their churches,” according to a conference website.
The conference was intended, he said, “to equip parents to connect with their kids, and to reconnect with their kids and to stay connected with their kids, so they would have [the] influence to keep their kids connected to their faith and keep their kids connected to Jesus.”
Critics are particularly incensed that the conference hosted two men, Brian Nietzel and Justin Lee, who are in same-sex marriages.
Mr. Stanley said Mr. Nietzel and Mr. Lee are “so excited about what we are doing, because they, like you, like me, like compassionate persons, don’t want another generation of LGBTQ+ kids to feel like, ‘hey, who I think I am is incompatible with at least attempting to follow Jesus.’”
The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, noted in a World magazine opinion piece that the conference was “a departure from historic, normative biblical Christianity” and that Mr. Stanley “has been moving in this direction for years, often by suggestion and assertion but clouded by confusion and the deliberate avoidance of clarity.”
Evangelical Christianity has historically cited biblical prohibitions against homosexual behavior, found in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, as reason to bar gay people from serving in ministry or as lay workers in congregations. Evangelical churches also have opposed same-sex marriage and transgender people, saying the latter violates God’s order of creation in which males and females were divinely created.
However, a subset of evangelical pastors have embraced an affirming posture toward LGBTQ people, and critics say Mr. Stanley is now firmly in that camp.
In his sermon, the North Point founder shot back at Mr. Mohler’s criticisms.
The Baptist theologian, Mr. Stanley said, “is actually accusing me of departing from his version of biblical Christianity. So I want to go on record and say I have never ascribed to his version of biblical Christianity to begin with, so I’m not leaving anything.”
Mr. Mohler’s “version of biblical Christianity is the problem,” Mr. Stanley said. “His version, this version of biblical Christianity is why people are leaving Christianity unnecessarily.”
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