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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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Wow. The people who preach this kind of hatred are so stupid they don't think what they say IS hatred. What is more frightening is that these awful people also get to vote. God help us all. To my gay friends out there, I am so sorry. I believe God loves all of us, just not everything we do.
If someone should happen to kill a gay then they broke the law and should be jailed. However, I will not feel sorry for the gay because they were acting against God. One less sinner in the world is not a bad thing.
Amen.
i was raised in a christian home-all i can say is that i'm glad you were not part of it-nazi pig
Doesn't your book of fairy tales say everyone is a sinner? So that means if you got hit by a bus there would be one less sinner.... That would be tragic 🙂
@HeavenSent
People like you make me sad for the entire human race. Your idiocy, hate, and self-indulgent crap that you spew all over these boards are an affront to every thinking individual on this planet.
That "One less sinner in the world......" could be someone you love. Still feel as nonchalant?
Then you put "Amen" at the end. Kinda disappointed in you, HeavenSent.
If people truly followed the bible women wouldn't be voting or working and have 10 children. and 90% of the world would have been murdered by the crusaders.
Disgusting
Yes and no. Murder is not okay but one less gay person in the world is a blessed thing.
Amen.
"Yes and no. Murder is not okay but one less gay person in the world is a blessed thing."
Emotional maturity is defined as: the ability to express one’s own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts and feelings of others.
Who cares what it says in Leviticus? The book talks about witchcraft and sorcery as if they are real things. If you believe there are people who are witches and can cast spells, then I guess you can go ahead and follow Leviticus. Otherwise, just face reality and realize it was written by someone who had no idea what he was talking about. It's not a credible source of information - unless you believe in witches.
Yep. When you believe in fantasy, you can be led astray by fantasy. These people believed in blood sacrifices, capital punishment for finite crimes, and that witches really existed and could do real magic. It's ludicrous and yet here we are in the day and age of space stations and instant worldwide communication and there's a segment of our population that still takes what these people said as gospel truth. It's downright scary.
If you claim to be a Christian but don't like what Worley and Knapp said, then you have to admit you don't take every rule in the Bible to be true. You have to ignore or "clean up" Leviticus. Good luck with that...
Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain.
"THE BIBLE WAS INSPIRED BY GOD!"
"How do you know that?"
"MY PASTOR TOLD ME."
"How do you know s/he knows?"
"MY PASTOR TOLD ME.
"What if s/he's wrong?"
"LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!
"Some people simply seem to need to have somebody to tell them what to do. HEY!!! DID YOU MISS THE PART WHERE JESUS SAYS LOVE IS THE GREATEST OF ALL???? How is it that you construe murder as love?"
"MY PASTOR TOLD ME."
Starting to question this whole tax exempt status thing...
No kidding. They're political, abusive, and incite violence. They deserve to be on watch-lists not tax exemption.
Seriously, an Imam says the government should step up and genocide an entire portion of the population and the CIA would have listening devices in dude's office by nightfall, but a Baptist says it and oh, it's just those wacky Baptists!
Can we just kill these "loving" christians?
Romans were too easy on the early Christians...
...they should have had more lions eat all of these b@stards that have been a scourge on earth for the last 2000 years...
I stand by Pastor Knapp's right to say what he did because it clearly falls under free speech protections, but I'm not at all swayed by his claim that gays have nothing to fear from him because he just thinks that the government should kill them. I know that the corollary to Godwin's law is that the first person to introduce a comparison to Nazis automatically loses any debate, but I can't shake the mental image of "good Germans" standing by approvingly while gays were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.
It might not be the dumbest thing Pastor Knapp ever said, but if he's said anything worse I'm not sure I want to hear it.
In Matthew 5:17-19 Christ makes it very clear that all Mosaic Law is to be upheld.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
According to Jesus, to this day, Christians must not eat pork, wear blended cloth, should murder gays and non-virgin brides, stone their disobedient children and women must marry their rapists.
"In Matthew 5:17-19 Christ makes it very clear that all Mosaic Law is to be upheld."
This has been answered many times obviously your just an immature child that can't get the message. It's par of it's part of the Holiness Code, a ritual manual for Israel's priests.. So are you going to tell women now they have to marry their rapists and all the other sins listed in that particular scriptures? Duh!
Look you're not eve a Christians but a troll do us all a favor and grow up.
blah, blah, blah-u'r bordering on psychotic now -idiot
In Matthew 5:17-19 Christ makes it very clear that all Mosaic Law is to be upheld.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
According to Jesus, to this day, Christians must not eat pork, wear blended cloth, should murder gays and non-virgin brides, stone their disobedient children and women must marry their rapists.
Think you missing the point. Christ was talking about the time he was living in which was still under the levitical law. However the apostle Paul clearly indicates that we are under the dispesation of GRACE and not under the law which NO ONE can fulfill. So murdering Gays is NOT GRACE. It's what Jesus gave his life for.
Pastor Knapp is probably a tea partier who wanta the government out of his life except to kill the gays, and likely has or will have a gay child that will have to be killed.
religious ppl using violence with things they don't understand....I don't get it....I thought God was about Peace...guess not
Well, sir, how about the government execute YOU instead. That would make the world a much more pleasant place.
A religious person wants to co-opt the government into oppressing people? SHOCKER!
Nothing wrong with Baptists, they just don't hold them underwater long enough....
Don't know that that's really all that much better than what he said...
I would marry my cat if I could. I love her.
The cat might have other ideas though.
The cat could probably do better.
I am a Conservative Catholic and I find this preacher revolting. I doubt seriously God would condone what he is advocating, in fact he is exactly the same as the terrorist by preaching "death to the sinners". He needs to look into his own heart and confront the evil within.
I'm with you!!! Nicely said!!
phew, thanks. i thought GOD may actually condone this!
No, God does NOT condone them and God is about peace and love. He's probably very angry right now. This very devout Christian does not agree with these nut jobs at all. They are a disgrace.
So, er, you can simply pick and choose which parts of the Bible to agree with? How convenient..
He says these things because....HE IS GAY.
And very likely he is molesting little boys