I had no idea who Kim Burrell was up until she became a major news headline lately, as well as the subject of a number of conversations that went on around me. For those who quite possibly didn’t hear about this already, the quick summation is this. Burrell is one of the singers on the soundtrack for the recent hit movie titled Hidden Figures. She’s also a pastor at the Love & Liberty Fellowship Church in Houston, Texas where one of her sermons went viral and showed her preaching that gay people are “perverted” and an embarrassment to God (To see that part of her sermon, click here). When approached with the backlash to her sermon, her response was “I make no excuses or apologies.”
Hearing something like this truly saddens me, not because it was about a person who was expressing their anti-gay views, which is something I’ve actually grown used to hearing in the past two decades, but more so because they did it on behalf of God, meaning they felt they were speaking directly for God.
As far as I know, Kim Burrell isn’t God, nor am I, nor are any of my friends or family. But all too often, there have been far too many people who come along and express their religious views and do so by justifying that it is God’s will, solely because of their own interpretation of God.
Look, everyone is entitled to their own views and opinions in this world, but when someone begins speaking for God and throws a whole class of people in a bucket labeled “perverted”, it bothers me greatly. Frankly, I’m not sure if Burrell realizes that Jesus himself said to never judge another, yet she did just that not only in front of her congregation, but to millions and millions of people in the rest of the world too when her sermon went viral on the Internet.
It also seems as if Burrell is forgetting about the main message that Christ hammered over and over again and that’s the principle of love. Jesus said the greatest commandment was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and will all your mind. And the second was to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I have a hard time believing that Kim Burrell was actually practicing either of those commandments by denouncing the entire LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender) community, given how far from loving her statements were.
Ironically, Burrell was actually scheduled to appear on the Ellen DeGeneres show around the same time her sermon ended up going viral. And being that Ellen is a very open lesbian, as well an extremely pro-LGBT activist, it goes to show why it was decided to pull Burrell from appearing. Since then, Burrell’s weekly radio show has also been cancelled and she was uninvited from appearing at a gospel awards show as well.
It’s kind of sad that Kim Burrell has had to experience the fallout she has, given how good a singer she truly is. Her talented voice is ultimately God-given, and one that can really move the soul. But how easily it was for her to use that same God-given voice to let other words come out of it that weren’t moving to the soul at all.
So, while I do feel everyone is entitled to vocalizing their own personal views on anything, like I do quite a bit in my blog on a regular basis, doing so in a way that judges and hurts others and claiming it’s God’s will is something I don’t support. If love is all that matters to God, is saying statements that claim all gay people in this world are “perverted” and an embarrassment to God being loving? I think you already know the answer to that, regardless of where you stand on the subject of homosexuality.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
