Pastor: Preaching Against Homosexuality Akin to Preaching Against Slavery

Twitter is still buzzing over what a Southern Baptist pastor said at the denominations summit earlier this week.

The setting was the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty summit. The topic: preaching about homosexuality in the gay rights era.

Summit Church’s Pastor J.D. Greear certainly got the audience’s attention when he started making comparisons between preaching against homosexuality in modern days to preaching against slavery in the 1800s.

With the hashtag #erlcsummit, RNS’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey quoted Greear on Twitter as saying, “Preaching against homosexuality is about as popular as preaching against slavery in South Carolina in the 1800s.”

Another tweeter, Ruth Graham (@publicroad) wrote, “@jdegreear compares preaching against homosexuality today to preaching against slavery in South Carolina in 1861.”

So who is this brave pastor? Greear became the pastor of a church called Homestead Heights Baptist Church in 2002. According to his bio, he led a 40-year-old, plateaued church of 300 to re-launch itself with a new name and a new vision to reach its community and world with the gospel. Now, over 8,000 worshippers gather weekly, making The Summit Church one of Outreach magazine’s “top 25 fastest-growing churches in America” for several years running.

Do you agree with Greear? Is preaching against the sin of homosexuality today akin to preaching against the sin of slavery in the 1800s? Certainly, preachers heralding these messages in either era weren’t popular.