Powerful pastor Robert Jeffress says conservative Christians should "impose their values on society" - LGBTQ Nation
By: Alex Bollinger
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Powerful anti-LGBTQ Texas pastor Robert Jeffress said that the U.S. was "founded as a Christian Nation" and that conservative Christians should "impose their values on society."
Jeffress, who is the senior pastor at the 14,000-member First Baptist Church in Dallas, was on Real America's Voice talking about rising Christian nationalist sentiment in the U.S.
Christian nationalism is the idea that the U.S. should be an explicitly Christian nation and that there should not be a separation of church and state.
"We always put our love for God above everything, even allegiance to our country," he said about conservative Christians. "But that's not what they're really talking about. Listen carefully. They say they are opposed to people who say America was founded as a Christian nation, Americans who believe not only in the spiritual heritage of our nation, but believe that we ought to use elections to help return our country to its Christian foundation."
"If that's Christian nationalism, count me in," the pastor laughed. "Because that's what we have to do. And what's so hypocritical about this, Tim, is the left don't mind at all imposing their values on our country through the election process. They don't mind forcing their pro-abortion, pro-transgender, pro-open borders policy upon our nation."
"But they object when conservative Christians try to impose their values on society at large. It's complete hypocrisy."
Jeffress has had access to some of the most powerful Republicans in the country. He was a member of Donald Trump's Evangelical Executive Advisory Board and had Mike Pence speaking in his church back when he was vice president. In 2017, he spoke at a private inaugural service for the Trump and Pence families.
He also has a long history of anti-LGBTQ sentiment. In his 2004 book Hell? Yes! (which was re-published in 2008 under the title Outrageous Truth… Seven Absolutes You Can Still Believe) contained the "truth" that "homosexuality is a perversion."
In that chapter, Jeffress wrote about a high school senior called "Susan" who had just come out.
Jeffress said he asked her how "God feels about your homosexual activity?"
"I understand now that God created me with these desires, desires that I have had since I was a little girl," she responded, according to Jeffress. "For years I have been miserable trying to deny those feelings and have seriously contemplated suicide. But now that I have accepted who I am, I am happier than I have ever been in my life!"
Most people would probably be glad that a teenager who was considering suicide was feeling better, but not Jeffress. He wrote that "homosexual relationships are neither 'normal' nor 'healthy'" and that gay activists are really working "to cover over the darkest secret associated with this perversion: child molestation."
"None of us gets a 'pass' from God for rebellious behavior just because it arises from our innate desires, regardless of the cause of those desires," he wrote. "But here is the good news: Through the power of Jesus Christ, all of us can be freed from acting on those desires."
He added that it's a "myth" that "homosexuality is a fixed desire and cannot be changed."
As for Susan, he concluded: "I wish I could report that after hearing the above information, she renounced her homosexual tendencies, confessed her sin to God, and left my office with a newfound attraction to the opposite sex. She didn't."
Jeffress has supported conversion therapy as late as 2014 when he told a local TV station that he supports conversion therapy.
"I have talked to people who have undergone therapy like this and they have said as Christians it has helped them manage their temptations," Jeffress said. "No therapy can remove those desires that we all have in different areas of life, but as a Christian, we have the power to overcome those desires and I think that's the true reparative therapy that only comes to those who know Jesus Christ his savior."
In 2008, he delivered a sermon entitled "Gay is not OK" in which he called gay people "filthy."
"It is so degrading that it is beyond description," he said in the sermon. "And it is their filthy behavior that explains why they are so much more prone to disease."
He has also said that marriage equality is a sign of the "last days" and in 2011 he said that he learned about the "brilliant plan of gay activists to normalize the abnormal practice of homosexuality using the same brainwashing techniques that had been used by the Chinese for hundreds of years."
In 2015, he insisted that Christians are being "martyred" by LGBTQ people for being asked to follow the law.
"What is happening is that we are becoming desensitized to the persecution of Christians just not globally, but also in our Country," he said. "The fact is that we are being told that Christians who refuse to serve a wedding cake to a gay couple, that they are extremists, its OK to take their livelihood and shut down their business. I believe that we are getting desensitized to that, which will pave the way for that future world dictator, the Antichrist, to persecute and martyr Christians without any repercussions whatsoever."
Jeffress has denied that he is a Christian nationalist in the past, but he has also said that the separation of church and state was only meant to keep the government from favoring one form of Christianity over others, not to keep the government from forcing people to follow Christianity at all.
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Onward Christian soldiers....
I went on a fishing trip last year with my BIL, cousin, and one of my cousin's friends. the friend was invited along by my cousin because he was having a crisis of faith and my cousin was trying to distract him. he was the IT guy and accountant for some pastor in dallas and had learned thru his job functions that his boss/religious leader was enjoying the benefits of a double life. it was all my BIL and I could do to keep from cracking up when he was pouring his guts out about it on the fishing trip, but I think we got him straightened out on what a major scam religion is. if not, too fucking bad for him.
Just grab them by the pussy and impose your values.
Ah yes, the Christian right spewing their BS once again.
No surprise either.
fundamentally unamerican...
They probably don't care.
Martyr: noun - a person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs.
Asking someone who has chosen to bake and decorate cakes and sell them through a business that is open to the public to bake, decorate and sell a cake to a member of the public who happens to be lgtbq is not being a 'martyr'. It's simply asking them to bake a cake. They are not being flogged, they are not being killed, they are not martyrs, they're religious bigots. It's no different than a cake baker refusing to bake a wedding cake for a mixed-race couple's wedding claiming their religious views are that God doesn't want a 'mingling of races'.
Now if the baker wants to open his own private wedding cake shop that isn't open to the public and only allows straight white Christian members, then that's fine, discriminate all they want, that's their right. I'm sure they'll get lots of business from their religious conservative fan base, they'll be churning out confederate flag wedding cakes and MAGA hat wedding cakes for those who celebrate their bigotry, but if they expect to have a business open to the public then they better serve the public, all of it. They should not be given extra rights to decide which segment of the public they have deemed worthy of their products and refuse to sell to those they consider lower class, lower caste or sinners.
Asking Christians who run businesses open to the public to serve all the public and to not discriminate based on race, gender, gender identity, age, disability, skin color, sexual orientation, faith or lack thereof is NOT persecution. Asking society to give special discrimination privileges certain business owners based on their religious beliefs is effectively giving those with such 'special discrimination privileges' the right to persecute law abiding, tax paying members of our society.
Christian nationalists want to be left alone but they dont want to leave anyone else alone.
I'm not aware of where anyone is forcing Christians to get abortions or gender reassignment against their will. Also, I'm assuming by the words attributed in their book attributed to Christ himself that they would be all for helping the poor and oppressed wherever they come from.
Come on. We all know Jesus would be there building a wall and throwing people out.
All the while throwing transgender people into the pits of hell.
Yes, the Jesus we know and love...
They will keep tossing people until they have to look around and start on each other.
The border can be a legitimate public policy issue. But I agree no one is forcing these people to get abortions or be trans. I guarantee you, though, if one of their perfect Evangelical Christian teens ever got pregnant, they’d be getting that girl an abortion by lunchtime.
I'm not saying it can't. I'm saying these people that profess the Love of Christ keep turning their back on the very Word they claim to follow. They are hypocrites, pharisees and deceivers in the biblical sense.
This dude would fly her to a liberal state on his private jet paid for by their fleeced flock to get one.
not always, a lot of those thumpers will still insist on child birth and then use a private adoption service to get rid of their little princess's mistake, especially if the baby is a little off-white.
Ah, the old we had to ship them off to 'boarding school' thing....
Pastor Robert Jeffries is simply ignorant and wrong. Imposing ones views on a segment of the population is wrong. It cannot be effective without coercion and coercion is always violent. We all know violence is always wrong by he or she who initiates so.
Intolerance is a plague of the mind and the primary victim is always self. It is a symptom of fear. We should offer compassion to these weak minded individuals that suffer this affliction. Angering them only furthers their condition.