An Influential Pastor of a Mega Church Changes Mind About Gays and the Church
The pastor of one of the more influential global megachurches has declared that his church is in “an ongoing conversation” about same-sex marriage — saying that it is appropriate to consider the words of the Bible alongside the changing culture and the experience of people in the pews.
The comments by Brian Houston, the senior pastor of Hillsong, immediately attracted concern from the right and applause from the left, coming as many Christian denominations and congregations are struggling with how to respond to rapid expansion of gay rights and legalization of same-sex marriage.
Mr. Houston’s church, which is based in Australia, is known largely as a musical powerhouse because of the popularity of its recordings of contemporary Christian worship music, but its youthful congregation is vast — about 100,000 weekly worshipers at campuses in a dozen major cities, including New York and Los Angeles — and its cultural reach broad.
“The world we live in, whether we like it or not, is changing around and about us,” he said. “The world’s changing, and we want to stay relevant as a church, so that’s a vexing thing.”
Mr. Houston, as he has done in sermons, ruefully noted the experience of gay children growing up in Christian churches, saying that some feel rejected by their youth pastors or even their parents, and that as a result, some young people “literally are depressed, maybe even suicidal, and, sadly, oftentimes grow up to hate the church because they feel that the church rejected them.”
He said he lived by “what the Bible says,” and his spokesman said on Friday that the pastor personally agreed with traditional Christian teaching on sexuality. But Mr. Houston said he did not think it would be constructive to delineate a public position on same-sex marriage.
“It’s very easy to reduce what you think about homosexuality to just a public statement, and that would keep a lot of people happy,” he said, “but we feel at this point, that it is an ongoing conversation, that the real issues in people’s lives are too important for us just to reduce it down to a yes or no answer in a media outlet. So we’re on the journey with it.”
Some of Hillsong’s churches appear to be open to gays and lesbians. Josh Canfield and Reed Kelly, a gay couple featured on the current season of “Survivor;” worship and sing in the choir at Hillsong New York; Mr. Canfield is a volunteer choir director at the church.
Mr. Houston’s comments were welcomed by Matthew Vines, a young gay evangelical who is trying to persuade the evangelical world that faith in the Bible is not at odds with openness to gays and lesbians.
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| Brian Houston is senior pastor of the church Hillsong, which has campuses in a dozen major cities, including New York. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
“Is Hillsong influential primarily for doctrine and theology? No, it’s not, but its music is as evangelical as you’re going to get, in terms of reach and impact, and that’s very significant,” Mr. Vines said.
But Andrew Walker, the director of policy studies for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, expressed concern about Mr. Houston’s remarks, blogging for the journal “First Things,” “let’s be clear that this is not the route of faithfulness,” and calling Hillsong “a church exchanging compassion for cowardliness before culture’s consistory.”
Mr. Houston’s remarks on same-sex marriage were one of several instances this week in which he and his church differentiated themselves from some other segments of the evangelical world.
His wife, Bobbie Houston, who is also a senior pastor of Hillsong, responded to a question about women’s roles in evangelical churches by saying, “Really, the church needs to come of age sometimes, and just grow up.” Hillsong allows women to preach and teach; many evangelical churches do not.
And in an era when many religious leaders are defensive about the issue of clergy sexual abuse, Mr. Houston offered several searing, and at times self-critical, descriptions of how he handled the realization 15 years ago that his own father, also a Pentecostal pastor, was a pedophile. The episode has returned to the public eye because last week Mr. Houston testified about it before a royal commission investigating institutional response to child sexual abuse in Australia; in New York he talked with the press about the subject on Thursday and then with 5,500 people attending a Hillsong conference on Friday at Madison Square Garden.
He said he believed he did the right thing by removing his father from ministry as soon as he became aware of an abuse allegation. However, he said, in hindsight he should have informed the police at the time, even though the victim had asked him not to.
“There’s a difference between being pitiful and being transparent,” he said Friday, explaining why he chose to speak about the issue. “Authenticity always works, in every situation.”
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