Thirty Ministers Unite Following the Event to Denounce Their Assertions
Christian Action League
October 2, 2013
By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
HICKORY — “Politics, Religion and LGBT Equality” was the title of a Lenoir-Rhyne University event Sept. 28 that featured two pastors who “completely misinterpreted, denied and twisted Scripture,” said Dr. Gary Dull of the American Pastor’s Network, one of 30-plus ministers who united at a press conference following the event to share the truth about homosexuality.
“What we have heard in the forum this evening has violated God’s truth on every level,” Dull said. “… For pastors to support or encourage any sinful activity such as adultery, idolatry, theft, murder, abortion, pornography, lying or homosexuality, is the highest form of unfaithfulness to their Divine call.”
Moderated by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, the 90-minute discussion included LGBT activist and forum sponsor Mitchell Gold as well as the Rev. T. Anthony Spearman of Hickory’s Clinton Tabernacle Church and the Rev. Jack McKinney, a former pastor at Raleigh’s Pullen Memorial Baptist. Both ministers said the Bible is not definitive on the topic of homosexuality; and Rev. McKinney lamented that Christians didn’t talk enough about God’s message of love.
But Sam Rohrer, president of the American Pastors’ Network, told the press conference crowd that the Word of God is “clear on marriage and all matters of life, and that He has promised to bless all nations that follow His model and judge all those who refuse.”
“It is because of our commitment to the authority of Scripture, our love for our families, our love for our communities and our nation that we stand here tonight and assert the necessary of opposing what God has opposed and supporting what He has established,” Rohrer said. He made it clear that heterosexual infidelity, sex outside of marriage and before marriage, homosexuality and same-sex marriage, or marriage between multiple men or women all violate God’s order.
Rev. Dave Kistler, president of HOPE Ministries International and a member of the North Carolina Pastors’ Network, said his presence at the event was “not about hating anyone,” but about “communicating the truth regarding the most basic and fundamental relationship in life — that of marriage.”
Pastor of First Baptist Church of Charlotte and president of the N.C. Baptist State Convention, Dr. Mark Harris had wanted to attend the press conference but had a schedule conflict.
“I applaud the courage and conviction of the pastors that were present and the stand that they took,” Dr. Harris said Tuesday. He was a founding member of Vote for Marriage NC, which led the fight for the 2012 passage of the N.C. Marriage Protection Amendment.
Dull said even though “the language of the gay rights movement is changing in the world around us, God’s language has not and will not change. God’s truth is absolute.”
“God is the Creator of marriage and thus has designed and defined it according to His will in order to give the human race the highest form of intimacy and pleasure,” he added.
Dull said he believed the forum presenters were “sincere in their thinking,” but that their thinking is “biblically incorrect and thus they are sincerely wrong.”
Saturday’s forum was sponsored by Lenoir-Rhyne University, Faith in America, an organization started by Gold, and Catawba Valley Pride, which bills itself as “affirming the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, two-spirited people, and their supporters.
