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May 31st, 2012
05:17 AM ET
Church videos with harsh words for gays go viral onlineBy Richard Allen Greene and Dan Gilgoff, CNN First it was a Christian pastor in North Carolina who told his congregation on Mother's Day that the way "to get rid of all the lesbians and queers" was to put them behind an electric fence and wait for them to die out. That video went viral, fetching more than a million views on YouTube. On Sunday, Pastor Curtis Knapp of Kansas preached that the government should kill homosexuals, in another videotaped sermon that drew lots of online attention. "They won't, but they should," Knapp said, according to a recording of his sermon posted online. Since that sermon, another church video with harsh words for gays has caught fire online. This one shows a young boy singing an anti-gay song while the congregation cheers him on in what appears to be a church in Indiana. "I know the Bible’s right, somebody’s wrong,” the boy sings near the pulpit of a church. “Ain't no homos gonna make it to heaven." As the boy repeats the line “Ain't no homos gonna make it to heaven," congregants from the pews rise and cheer. The video, which was anonymously posted online and has received more than 300,000 views on YouTube, appears to show a service at the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Indiana. Calls to the church this week went to voicemail, with an automatic message saying the mailbox is full. But a message posted on the church’s website on Wednesday appears to address the controversy, offering no apology for the video. “The Pastor and members of Apostolic Truth Tabernacle do not condone, teach, or practice hate of any person for any reason. We believe and hope that every person can find true Bible salvation and the mercy and grace of God in their lives,” the statement says. “We are a strong advocate of the family unit according to the teachings and precepts found in the Holy Bible,” said the statement, which did not explicitly refer to the video or mention homosexuality. “We believe the Holy Bible is the Divinely-inspired Word of God and we will continue to uphold and preach that which is found in scripture.” The viral videos have drawn criticism from gay and lesbian groups and their allies. Charles Worley’s sermon at Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina, sparked a protest that drew more than 1,500 people last weekend. In Kansas, Knapp's voicemail at the New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca was filled with messages saying "things you don't want your kids to hear," he told CNN affiliate KTKA. An official with the Kansas-Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists issued a statement to CNN on Thursday saying that Knapp’s church had left the Southern Baptist fold in 2010. “Obviously, he has taken a radical and unbiblical stand in regards to homosexuality,” said Tim Boyd, communications director for the convention. “We look at homosexuals as we look at all sinners,” his statement said. “God loves them. Christ died for them. The Gospel calls them to repentance and salvation. Therefore, we as Christ-followers should hate the sin and love the sinner.” But Knapp is not backing away from his comments. "We punish pedophilia. We punish incest. We punish polygamy and various things. It's only homosexuality that is lifted out as an exemption," he said. He cited the Biblical verse Leviticus 20:13: "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act. They shall surely be put to death." But he said gay people had nothing to worry about from the government or from him. "I don't believe I should lay a finger against them," said Knapp, of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas. "My hope is for their salvation, not for their death." Preaching against homosexuality the same day, another pastor appeared to wrestle with how conservative Christians should respond to proposals that people should literally mete out biblical punishments. "What about this guy down in North Carolina said build a big prison, a big fence and put them all in there and let them die out?" Dennis Leatherman asked in a sermon at the Mountain Lake Independent Baptist Church in Maryland. "Listen, I don't know that fellow. As far as I can tell, he seems like a decent guy, but he is dead wrong on that. That is not the scriptural response," Leatherman said in his sermon "Homosexuality & the Bible," according to a cached version of the transcript posted online. The audio of the sermon does not appear on his church's website. In the sermon, he floats the idea of killing homosexuals, whom he refers to as sodomites, then backs away from it. "There is a danger of reacting in the flesh, of responding not in a scriptural, spiritual way, but in a fleshly way. Kill them all. Right? I will be very honest with you. My flesh kind of likes that idea," Leatherman said. "But it grieves the Holy Spirit. It violates Scripture. It is wrong," he added immediately. The Southern Baptist Convention distanced itself from Worley's remarks. The nation's largest Baptist group said Providence Road Baptist in Maiden is not affiliated with its 16 million-member denomination and condemned the comments. But the influential head of the giant movement's seminary does argue that homosexuality "is the most pressing moral question of our times." In a comment piece for the Belief Blog in the wake of Worley's sermon, R. Albert Mohler Jr. dismissed critics who say conservative Christians focus on homosexuality while ignoring other things the Bible prohibits. He contends that laws about keeping kosher, for example, do not apply to Christians, while commandments about homosexuality do. "When it comes to homosexuality, the Bible's teaching is consistent, pervasive, uniform and set within a larger context of law and Gospel," he wrote. "Christians who are seriously committed to the authority of the Bible have no choice but to affirm all that the Bible teaches, including its condemnation of homosexuality," he said. A member of Worley's 300-member church defended him in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper. "Of course he would never want that to be done," Stacey Pritchard said of the proposal to put homosexuals behind a fence and leave them there to die out. "But I agree with what the sermon was and what it was about." CNN Belief Blog co-editor Eric Marrapodi contributed to this report. soundoff (4,073 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 Next »
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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Jesus own words "let those without sin cast the first stone". This false prophet must think he is without sin. Why does he want the government to do the killing. The Ponchas Pilot of are age.
That passage is spurious. It was added much later – it is not in any of the earliest Bibles.
So he won't feel guilty for killing. He thinks he is still he is going heavan.
PASTORS ARE KNOWN TO HAVE A LIFESTYLE THAT THE POOR AND DESPERATE DO NOT HAVE: LUXURY CARS, EXPENSIVE TRIPS IN HIGH-END HOTELS, MORE THAN ONE WIFE, AND THEIR LOVE FOR MONEY. THEY USE THE BIBLE AND THE NAME OF GOD TO FOOL THE IDIOTS THAT FOLLOW THEM. CLOSE YOUR DOOR, PRAY TO GOD, DO GOOD DEEDS, BUT PLEASE DO NOT SUPPORT THESE CORRUPTED PASTORS, ALL THEY DO IS STEAL YOUR INCOME!
What about liars and theives and adulterers thewse are all sins as well should these people be killed as well ?
The Great commandment, LOVE ONE ANOTHER...
Yeah, and you can get that from the Golden Rule. Earlier than Christianity, no god required.
Doesn't everyone know?
The Second Coming has already happened. Jesus is currently relaxing on the beach in the Hamptons planning the demise of all the sinners of the United States with all the successful people who are reaping the rewards for following His Capitalist teachings.
Jesus was a proto-Marxist.
Not to mention that evangelicals hope to become communists when they die.
The expect to go to a place where everyone is equal, there is no rich or poor, no possessions, needs or wants. everyone is the same. They will spend their days praising the authority in change, who has absolute control and will never give up any of their power, and who removes anyone that does not recognise their authority.
In other words, a communist utopia.
PASTORS ARE KNOWN TO HAVE A LIFESTYLE THAT THE POOR AND DESPERATE DO NOT HAVE: LUXURY CARS, EXPENSIVE TRIPS IN HIGH-END HOTELS, MORE THAN ONE WIFE, AND THEIR LOVE FOR MONEY. THEY USE THE BIBLE AND THE NAME OF GOD TO FOOL THE IDIOTS THAT FOLLOW THEM. CLOSE YOUR DOOR, PRAY TO GOD, DO GOOD DEEDS, BUT PLEASE DO NOT SUPPORT THESE CORRUPTED PASTORS, ALL THEY DO IS STEAL YOUR INCOME!
All of this talk makes me hungry for some pork, shrimp, and barbecued bird of prey.
God is going to punish EVERYONE for the crime of organized religion.
The existance of Org. Religion IS the punishment.
Oh religion, is there anything you won't destroy?
Pickles. They have been spared the wrath of all the gods.
i dont understand, he is calling for the death of people and nothing is being done about it. what is the difference if he said the same comment about blacks or jews?
None, he said something stupid, not illegal. People call for the deaths of all sorts of people all the time.
@Keven: or Christians.
So gays should be killed by the govt? Really? I almost dont have words for this nonsence. I am so baffeled by this. Yet again another reason I walked away from organized religion and just live my life as a good person. I find it sad that a person like this can say this and still go around calling himself a good man. I only hope he has a child and that child turns out to be gay. Then we will see how he deals with that. Or is found in bed with a man or outed by a rentboy like many men before him who had nasty things to say about us gays. I call for a gay strike!!!!!
Preaching the killing of others. Gotta love religion.
Feel the love.
Love my god(s) . . . or I'll kill you !
These are the same views that Hitler pedaled prior to the Holocaust... first gays and lesbians, then anyone else who doesn't conform to your ideal.
For a pastor such as Curtis Knapp to tell his congregation that the government should kill gays is just pure evil. The comment goes way beyond free speech. I would argue that comments like his are incendiary and possibly prosecutable. Pastor Knap and his congregation should be very ashamed of this very unchristian behavior.
The basic human right to loathe pederasts is universal. It is great that freedom of speech exists,
Interesting how out of the millions of Christian preachers, CNN finds the one or two extremists in the bunch and constantly publishes stories about them. One might almost think that CNN has an anti-Christian agenda.
Only if one is paranoid
You that thinks CNN is anti anything, go somewhere else and read your news. You got your 1 second of fame, now go crawl in a hole where you belong, maybe a FOX hole
It is the soup of the day for the media right now. Many preachers don't have a new opinion on this. Just now it is in the public's eye, and these preachers are commenting on their pre-existing stance.
Go back to the 60's, southern preachers were talking about how the bible supported segregation or desegregation (depending on the preacher's POV).
It is proof that there is no god when a pastor can blabber insanity from the front of the room.
If there was a god, we would all be members of the same religion, knowing the same things and following rules that made sense.
IIsn't this true about mass media and religion, in general? Why take issue with "anti-Chrisitan" writings when there have been uproars surrounding other non-Christian religions. For example, although there are a billion Muslims in the world, the mass media (CNN included) focuses on the religious extremists and sensationalists. Isn't hate and fear the seller of advertising in this market?
A paranoid one might.
Other actions specifically prohibited by Leviticus; wearing cotton and wool at the same time, raising two types of livestock next to each other, divorce, eating shellfish, and touching the dead flesh of a pig (sorry football players). And the silly little list goes on and on.
Living in the South for most of my life – I've found that the line between sin and tolerance / acceptance can be pretty stark. At one end of this debate we have the hard-line-everything-is-a-sin if your pastor says so crowd – and at the very opposite end of religion there is the God-loves-all and who are we to judge folks. And that's OK, unless the first group wants to make their dogma our laws, because there is a great number of people in the group in the center.... the ones who don't participate in organized religion but are good people none-the-less and realize that there is merit in the separation between church and state.... The first group will also be the first to condemn any religion that is not their own and point out the evils of countries that are ruled by other religions that are not their own and rail on how tyrannical and evil they are.... REALLY? What most people that want to make marriage or family equality against the law because of their religion don't realize is – that IF we allow just one religion to dictate law, then every other religion could be subject to being banned or restricted legally....that's what happens and has in other countries in the past and in the here and now. These pastors and their churches should loose their tax exempt status because they are preaching public policy and pushing for the government (state and nation) to legislate who can and who can't live together, raise a family, and contribute to the greater good of our communities.... What I find so very disturbing is the hypocrisy of groups like the Tea Party who demand that government stay out of our bedrooms and boardrooms, yet are extra quick at pushing their personal and religious agendas on the rest of us.
They use the bible to bend it and twist it's meaning until it makes sense to fit their insanity and bigotry.
My gaydar went off went i saw/heard this guy.. I think we know who's in the closet.
Absolutely. He hates his secret urges and is probably repulsed by his wife.
I said the same thing earlier! My gaydar went off right away too; it's never wrong!