The Two Faces of JD Greear on Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty

In a stun­ning dis­play of two-faced hypocrisy, for­mer South­ern Bap­tist Pres­i­dent JD Greear spoke out against Andy Stan­ley’s drift­ing regard­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in a Feb­ru­ary 9th Gospel Coali­tion (TGC) arti­cle. In light of the unfold­ing dra­ma regard­ing Stan­ley’s recent con­fer­ence, TGC tweet­ed out the arti­cle. In that arti­cle, Greear makes the claim that while Stanley’s evan­ge­lis­tic heart is in the right place, he has cho­sen the wrong approach by down­play­ing scripture’s clear injunc­tions against prac­tic­ing a gay lifestyle.

Set­ting the Scene

Before we delve into the specifics of the arti­cle, first con­sid­er Greear’s pri­or state­ments on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and exam­ine them to see how his cur­rent posi­tion con­tra­dicts these past claims. If you’ve read our arti­cle on Al Mohler’s response to Stan­ley, then you can skip to the next sec­tion:

·   2015: Greear claimed, “the church ought to be the safest place on the plan­et for a teenag­er with same-sex attrac­tion to reveal that… we must be the biggest advo­cates against dis­crim­i­na­tion and abuse against the gay com­mu­ni­ty, and where we have not, we must repent.”

·   2019: Dis­cussing trans­gen­derism, Greear assert­ed that we should lie to trans­gen­der peo­ple by using their pre­ferred pro­nouns in “a gen­eros­i­ty-of-spir­it kind of approach” over the truth-telling approach.

·   2019: In a ser­mon on Romans 1, Greear said (1) the Bible whis­pers about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty com­pared to its shouts about mate­ri­al­ism and reli­gious pride; (2) being gay won’t send you to hell because being straight won’t send you to heav­en; (3) it would be eas­i­er for a homo­sex­u­al to enter the king­dom of heav­en than for a reli­gious­ly proud or mate­ri­al­is­tic per­son; and (4) we should advo­cate for the “dig­ni­ty and rights” of gay peo­ple.

For each claim Greear made here, there are bib­li­cal pas­sages reveal­ing the oppo­site is true. It is also worth not­ing that TGC has like­wise tak­en a loose approach to bib­li­cal truth on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, in 2021 anoth­er TGC arti­cle claimed that wise Chris­tians should “affirm the legal right of con­sent­ing adults to order their lives with­out fear” and “affirm their right to mar­ry.”

It is clear that Greear and TGC have been will­ing to com­pro­mise on and down­play the truth when it comes to the top­ic of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, mak­ing them appear more appeal­ing and mod­er­ate to a cul­tur­al­ly influ­enced audi­ence. With that back­ground in mind, let us turn to the TGC arti­cle.

The Arti­cle

As the arti­cle opens, Greear sets up Stanley’s argu­ments which he will lat­er cri­tique:

“For Stan­ley, this isn’t about a cul­tur­al argu­ment to be won; it’s about peo­ple to be reached. Rela­tion­ships come before truth, he often says. Not at the expense of truth, he’d add—just before it. Hard con­ver­sa­tions need to hap­pen across cof­fee tables, not pon­tif­i­cat­ed from stages or dog­ma­tized in doc­u­ments… So that’s the ques­tion: Does down­play­ing this issue give us an evan­ge­lis­tic advan­tage? Could it be con­sid­ered faith­ful to the Great Commission—even nec­es­sary for reach­ing the next gen­er­a­tion?”

In Greear’s mind, Stanley’s method of reach­ing homo­sex­u­als is to put rela­tion­ship over facts, con­ver­sa­tions over doc­u­ments, and to down­play the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Notice how Greear is going to cri­tique Stanley’s approach to putting rela­tion­ships before truth. That method is exact­ly what Greear employed when he explic­it­ly stat­ed that we should use pre­ferred pro­nouns instead of telling the truth to trans­gen­der peo­ple. Though Greear has tried to dis­tance him­self from his past com­ments, (he leaves those past com­ments up, and still directs peo­ple to them) he seem­ing­ly ref­er­enced Stan­ley’s words, “We’re not just called to defend truth but to win peo­ple,” and said he would still know­ing­ly call trans­gen­der peo­ple by their pre­ferred pro­noun.

The first crit­i­cism Greear gives to Stanley’s approach is that it is func­tion­al­ly a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” pol­i­cy that avoids talk­ing about the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty:

“The most strate­gic thing I can do is clar­i­fy what we actu­al­ly believe: it’s pos­si­ble to love some­one and treat her with respect, dig­ni­ty, and hon­or even while dis­agree­ing with her con­vic­tions. If I don’t deal with this awk­ward ele­phant in the room, this issue remains the silent “defeater” that keeps thought­ful seek­ers from con­sid­er­ing mean­ing­ful union with the his­toric church.”

It is impos­si­ble to dis­cern what the dif­fer­ence between this approach and Stanley’s could pos­si­bly be, since Greear does not elu­ci­date what “the ele­phant in the room” actu­al­ly is that should be said in gospel con­ver­sa­tions with gay peo­ple. One may assume that this ele­phant is that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is, with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion, a sin, but as we’ve seen, Greear has his­tor­i­cal­ly “whis­pered” on that sub­ject. If Greear, even after “clar­i­fy­ing” his stance on pro­nouns, would use some­one’s “pre­ferred pro­nouns,” then it is hard to read a robust mean­ing into Greear’s words.

Sec­ond­ly, broad­ly speak­ing, Greear eval­u­at­ed Stanley’s approach from the Bible and found it want­i­ng. There is much truth to what Greear says in this sec­tion. For instance, speak­ing of the Bible’s pro­hi­bi­tions on homo­sex­u­al sins, Greear pro­claims that, “It’s God’s gra­cious word of warn­ing to a per­ish­ing world, and fail­ing to make it clear would be the great­est unkind­ness we could inflict on our gen­er­a­tion.” Fail­ing to make it clear. This claim betrays a shock­ing lack of self-aware­ness or dou­ble mind­ed­ness on the part of Greear, like one face is con­demn­ing the oth­er. He has no room to crit­i­cize Stanley’s lack of clar­i­ty on this issue when Greear is infa­mous for main­tain­ing that the Bible “whis­pers about sex­u­al sin” and that “being gay won’t send you to hell.” Despite clear warn­ings against prac­tic­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty through­out the Bible, includ­ing in Romans 1. Greear has down­played the sever­i­ty of a sin that is a clear sign of rebel­lion against God. If we are to hold Greear to his own stan­dard, his rhetoric is the great­est unkind­ness we could inflict on a gen­er­a­tion.

Although Greear wants to unhitch from Stanley’s the­o­log­i­cal wag­on for now, Greear and Stanley’s approach­es to the gay issue are not as dif­fer­ent as Greear would like the audi­ence to believe. Even in this arti­cle, Greear’s crit­i­cisms are couched in praise for Stanley’s over­all body of work as a pas­tor, say­ing that Stanley’s “focus on reach­ing people…moved me deeply.”

In addi­tion, both Greear and Stan­ley in 2015 spoke of their church being a safe place for gay youth to come out of the clos­et in a way that seems more affirm­ing than cor­rect­ing. This seems to be more than a sim­ple case of simul­ta­ne­ous cre­ation, and it appears that Greear, who made his state­ment nine days after Andy, picked up the talk­ing point from Andy. Com­pare Greear’s, “the church ought to be the safest place on the plan­et for a teenag­er with same-sex attrac­tion to reveal that, or to come out,” to Andy’s, “[church­es should be the] safest place on the plan­et for stu­dents to talk about any­thing, includ­ing same-sex attrac­tion.” This seems to be a case of one kid snitch­ing on anoth­er to get out of deten­tion, and may explain Greear’s praise of Stan­ley mixed into what is sup­posed to be a cri­tique.

Just as Al Mohler’s cri­tique of Stan­ley was self-defeat­ing, so is Greear’s. Both men, along with TGC, are attempt­ing to have a veneer of a more con­ser­v­a­tive, bib­li­cal sound­ing stance on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, with­out clear­ly dis­avow­ing of any of their pre­vi­ous con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments. Andy has pro­vid­ed a good oppor­tu­ni­ty for Greear and Mohler to score some points from their con­ser­v­a­tive sup­port­ers, many of whom will not be aware of any pri­or state­ments these men made. At least, that appears to be the only log­i­cal con­clu­sion unless either of these men ful­ly retract, repent of their pri­or state­ments, and remove them. Clear teach­ing on this issue could have saved many out of the gay lifestyle had they heard the gospel unfil­tered from a pop­u­lar preach­er like Greear. Then again, the same could be said for Stan­ley.