Warn­ing: Phil Vis­ch­er Has Depart­ed from Bib­li­cal Teach­ings

In mid-Novem­ber of 2022, Can­dace Cameron Bure declared that the Great Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly TV net­work (GAF), of which she is the chief cre­ative offi­cer, “will keep tra­di­tion­al mar­riage at the core.” This has been tak­en by many to mean that GAF will not fea­ture same-sex cou­ples, and it  has led to a firestorm of crit­i­cism against Bure. Sad­ly, her appar­ent defense is not as strong as it ini­tial­ly  seems to be, as she lat­er told IndieWire: “peo­ple of all eth­nic­i­ties and iden­ti­ties have and will con­tin­ue to con­tribute to the net­work in great ways both in front of and behind the cam­era, which I encour­age and ful­ly sup­port.”  What’s inter­est­ing about this whole dust-up is not that Bure rushed  into the breach to defend ortho­doxy (which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, has not occurred), but rather the vit­ri­olic response to her benign  state­ment by Veg­gi­eTales co-cre­ator Phil Vis­ch­er. In episode 537 of his Holy Post Pod­cast, Vis­ch­er said “My fear is that GAF (Great Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly) is going so far as to erase the exis­tence of sex­u­al or gen­der minori­ties.” 

This is some­thing of an about-face for Vis­ch­er, who said in 2019 that it was “a mat­ter of time” before shows geared to Chris­t­ian kids would have to address LGBTQ issues from a bib­li­cal per­spec­tive. He said he would refuse to por­tray homo­sex­u­al “mar­riage” in his shows “[b]ecause that’s not what I believe is best for kids.” Even here, though, his appeal to a “bib­li­cal” per­spec­tive is short-lived as he states “the nuance of how to treat LGBT issues isn’t agreed upon with­in the Church” and, “It would be hard to do it in a way that works and match­es every­one’s expec­ta­tions.”  His refusal clear­ly was meant to be tem­po­rary, how­ev­er: “I’m por­tray­ing the pos­i­tive rather than the neg­a­tive. At least for now [but] I do believe that at some point we’ll be forced to fig­ure out how to explic­it­ly address it.” 

Evi­dent­ly Phil Vis­ch­er believes that time has come. While in 2019 he was talk­ing about deal­ing with these kinds of issues “from a bib­li­cal per­spec­tive because chil­dren are already see­ing these sto­ry­lines in sec­u­lar movies and TV shows,” his crit­i­cism of Can­dace Cameron Bure gives us rea­son to won­der about the extent to which he wish­es to uphold bib­li­cal teach­ings on these issues. In crit­i­ciz­ing Bure, Vis­ch­er has joined a tru­ly illus­tri­ous com­pa­ny, includ­ing pan­sex­u­al influ­encer and LGBTQ icon JoJo Siwa and GLAAD. 

Lat­er in Holy Post episode 537, Vis­ch­er queried: “Even the notion that noth­ing tru­ly con­ser­v­a­tive can last, at least not for long, how do we know if that’s not a good thing?” A con­ser­v­a­tive attempt to defend “the per­ma­nent things” is bad, he con­tend­ed, because “who gets to decide what are the per­ma­nent things”? Vis­ch­er then insist­ed: 

For a hun­dred years, what con­ser­v­a­tives fought to con­serve in Amer­i­ca was racial hierarchy.…[T]he one thing that all Con­fed­er­ate the­olo­gians agreed on in 1865 was that the Bible was on their side.…[N]ow we say, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they were wrong. Oh, yeah, that wasn’t one of the per­ma­nent things. Now, we know what the per­ma­nent things are — and the per­ma­nent things are the nuclear fam­i­ly as came into exis­tence in 1952…and ahh, het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage.

Might Jesus ask Vis­ch­er the same ques­tion he asked the Phar­isees when they brought up the issue of divorce and asked Jesus whether or not it was “law­ful for a man to divorce his wife for just any rea­son”? (See Matt. 19:1–10.) Here was Jesus’ response.

Have you not read that He who made them at the begin­ning “made them male and female,” and said, “For this rea­son a man shall leave his father and moth­er and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. There­fore what God has joined togeth­er, let not man sep­a­rate.

In a bit, we will cite these vers­es once again, along with state­ments from Mark’s account of the same inci­dent. We’ll also cite sev­er­al oth­er, crys­tal-clear state­ments from Scrip­ture about mar­riage as well. We aren’t left to won­der if Vis­ch­er has depart­ed from bib­li­cal teach­ings. He has.

Avoid­ing the Core Issue — And Mis­rep­re­sent­ing His­to­ry

After the pod­cast in which Mr. Vis­ch­er made his out­ra­geous claims, Woke Preach­er Clips appealed to him on Twit­ter, ask­ing whether a monog­a­mous, legal­ly “mar­ried,” phys­i­cal­ly-absti­nent homo­sex­u­al cou­ple was guilty of sin. Vischer’s response? “Not the top­ic of the thread or the show,” and he would be “[h]appy to have a cof­fee and dis­cuss.”

To begin with, call­ing Vischer’s his­tor­i­cal under­stand­ing sopho­moric would be an insult to sopho­mores. Based on the phrase “for a hun­dred years” and his men­tion of 1865, Mr. Vis­ch­er pre­sum­ably was refer­ring to Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion poli­cies and “con­ser­v­a­tive” oppo­si­tion to the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964, with a virtue-sig­nal­ing swipe at slave­own­ers thrown in for good-mea­sure. Con­trary to Vischer’s impli­ca­tion, slav­ery and sup­port for racial hier­ar­chy were nei­ther unique­ly con­ser­v­a­tive nor exclu­sive­ly South­ern. Con­sid­er con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern pas­tors (or “Con­fed­er­ate the­olo­gians,” if you will), such as James Hen­ley Thorn­well and Thomas Smyth who, though they sup­port­ed slav­ery, also pro­claimed the full and com­plete human­i­ty of black peo­ple on the basis of Holy Scrip­ture, fierce­ly con­tend­ing that all per­sons have descend­ed from Adam and Eve and there­fore are equal­ly human, equal­ly sin­ful, equal­ly in need of redemp­tion through Jesus Christ, and equal bear­ers of the Ima­go Dei, the image of God. Accord­ing to Thorn­well, if South­ern­ers denied that white and black peo­ple were of one blood, such a claim “would have just­ly drawn down the curse of God.” He con­tin­ued: 

[T]he Negro is of one blood with ourselves…Science, false­ly so called, may attempt to exclude him from the broth­er­hood of humanity…but the instinc­tive impuls­es of our nature, com­bined with the plainest dec­la­ra­tions of the word of God, lead us to rec­og­nize in his form and lin­ea­ments [dis­tinc­tive traits or fea­tures], in his moral, reli­gious and intel­lec­tu­al nature — the same human­i­ty in which we glo­ry as the image of God. We are not ashamed to call him our broth­er.

Thus, despite his sup­port for slav­ery, James Thorn­well viewed blacks as per­sons — and per­sons who, like all oth­er human beings, bear God’s image. The Wikipedia arti­cle on Thorn­well notes that 

con­trary to many pro­po­nents of slav­ery, he preached that the African Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion were peo­ple cre­at­ed in the image of God just like whites and that they should call slaves their brothers.…Being an orphan him­self, Thorn­well con­sid­ered slaves should be treat­ed with lov­ing care and pater­nal­is­tic guid­ance. He advo­cat­ed a lim­it­ed slav­ery which was humane and in line with God’s pre­cepts.

All of this is a far cry from the por­trait Phil Vis­ch­er, with his broad brush, paints of “con­ser­v­a­tive” South­ern­ers. Yet Thorn­well and Smyth weren’t writ­ing in a vac­u­um. Pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial Har­vard pro­fes­sor Louis Agas­siz (1807–1873) was teach­ing that white and black peo­ple rep­re­sent­ed two dif­fer­ent species of human beings.¹ Indeed, he observed in a let­ter to his moth­er that the more he inter­act­ed with black peo­ple, “the more…impossible it becomes for me to repress the feel­ing that they are not of the same blood as we are.” Else­where he expressed his hope that, once the War was over, most of the black peo­ple liv­ing in the North would move South, “while the weak­er and lighter ones will remain and die out among us.” Agas­siz desired this mass emi­gra­tion of blacks out of the North because he thought “amal­ga­ma­tion,” mean­ing mar­riages between white-black cou­ples, would endan­ger “the progress of civ­i­liza­tion.” 

Sim­i­lar­ly, Ralph Wal­do Emer­son (1803–1882), who was lib­er­al, a tran­scen­den­tal­ist, and an abo­li­tion­ist, wrote that he opposed slav­ery because of his racial prej­u­dice: “The abo­li­tion­ist wish­es to abol­ish slav­ery, but because he wish­es to abol­ish the black man.…[T]he brute instinct ral­lies & cen­tres in the black man. He is cre­at­ed on a low­er plane than the white….” Else­where, Emer­son jot­ted down his belief that black peo­ple would go extinct: “The dark man, the black man declines.…It will hap­pen by & by, that the black man will only be des­tined for muse­ums like the Dodo.” 

There’s more. Many 21^st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cans are unaware that Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion began in the North decades before the erup­tion of the Late Unpleas­ant­ness Between the States, as C. Vann Wood­ward notes in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow: 

Seg­re­ga­tion in com­plete and ful­ly devel­oped form did grow up con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly with slav­ery, but not in its midst. One of the strangest things about the career of Jim Crow was that the sys­tem was born in the North and reached an advanced age before mov­ing South in force.… [White North­ern vot­ers] firm­ly believed that the Negroes were inca­pable of being assim­i­lat­ed polit­i­cal­ly, social­ly, or phys­i­cal­ly into white soci­ety. They made sure in numer­ous ways that the Negro under­stood his “place”….One of these ways was seg­re­ga­tion, and with the back­ing of legal and extra-legal codes, the sys­tem per­me­at­ed all aspects of Negro life in the free states in 1860.

Van Wood­ward then illus­trates his point with a lengthy quo­ta­tion from Leon F. Litwack’s book, North of Slav­ery, in which Litwack asserts that in the pre-war North, black peo­ple were seg­re­gat­ed from white peo­ple “[i]n vir­tu­al­ly every phase of exis­tence,” hav­ing sep­a­rate rail cars, bus­es, boats, and stage­coach­es (or sep­a­rate sec­tions in those con­veyances), and sep­a­rate sec­tions in lec­ture halls and the­atres. Most resorts, hotels, and restau­rants were off lim­its to black peo­ple unless they were employed there. Black folks who attend­ed white church­es were assigned sep­a­rate pews, and if they par­took of the Lord’s Sup­per, they had to wait until the white con­gre­gants had gone first. Blacks liv­ing in the ante­bel­lum North also gen­er­al­ly had sep­a­rate schools, pris­ons, hos­pi­tals, and ceme­ter­ies.

In the mid-20^th-cen­tu­ry, even as many oppo­nents of deseg­re­ga­tion act­ed out of racial prej­u­dice, there were oth­ers who had legit­i­mate con­cerns about the expan­sion of Fed­er­al pow­er involved. Famed black author Zora Neale Hurston opposed the Supreme Court’s anti-seg­re­ga­tion rul­ing in Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion because she thought the rul­ing vio­lat­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion. She wrote to the Orlan­do Sen­tinel in August, 1955: 

In the rul­ing on seg­re­ga­tion, the unsus­pect­ing nation might have wit­nessed a tri­al-bal­loon. A rel­a­tive­ly safe one, since it is sec­tion­al and on a mat­ter not like­ly to arouse oth­er sec­tions of the nation to the sup­port of the South. If it goes off fair­ly well, a prece­dent has been estab­lished. Govt by fiat can replace the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Oth­ers shared Hurston’s con­cerns. US Sen­a­tor Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter had fought for equal civ­il rights in his home State of Ari­zona, but he refused to vote for the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964 because he con­sid­ered parts of the bill uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. 

You see, the real­i­ties sur­round­ing these kinds of sit­u­a­tions are com­plex and nuanced. In part because they’re not sim­ple but mul­ti-faceted, they’ve been wide­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed, paving the way for the peo­ple involved to be thor­ough­ly mis­un­der­stood. Recall Phil Vischer’s descrip­tion of the con­ser­v­a­tives in the South — and the nuclear fam­i­ly, and het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage. At bare min­i­mum, his­to­ry is far more com­plex and active, rather than the car­toon­ish, flat car­i­ca­ture Mr. Vis­ch­er presents. 

The Sacred­ness of Man-Woman Mar­riage

As the sto­ry of sin­ful, fall­en human beings inter­act­ing with one anoth­er con­sis­tent­ly affirms, his­to­ry is com­plex. On the oth­er hand, bib­li­cal teach­ings con­cern­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and mar­riage are not at all com­plex. Holy Scrip­ture is as clear as crys­tal, which is why it’s dou­bly con­cern­ing to find Phil Vis­ch­er over­sim­pli­fy­ing the com­plex­i­ty of his­to­ry while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly com­pli­cat­ing the sim­ple, straight­for­ward teach­ings of God’s Word. By say­ing that the con­ser­v­a­tive defense of the “per­ma­nent things” has shift­ed from “racial hier­ar­chy” to “the nuclear fam­i­ly as came into exis­tence in 1952…and het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage,” Vis­ch­er has drawn a false equiv­a­len­cy between pride and eth­nic vain­glo­ry on the one hand, and a Chris­t­ian, bib­li­cal defense of God-ordained mar­riage on the oth­er. Let there be no equiv­o­ca­tion here — “racial hier­ar­chy” has no bib­li­cal basis, so any Chris­t­ian advo­cat­ing such is out­side bib­li­cal con­ser­vatism and bib­li­cal truth. By con­trast, both the Old and New Tes­ta­ments give numer­ous exam­ples of God’s crys­tal-clear def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage as a union and holy covenant between one bio­log­i­cal man and one bio­log­i­cal woman. Noah and his sons each had only one wife (see Gen. 7:13). The Apos­tle Paul says clear­ly: “let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own hus­band” (1 Cor. 7:2), and he just as clear­ly exhorts each man to love his own wife and each woman to respect her own hus­band (see Eph. 5:33). Both the Lord Jesus (Matt. 19:4–6, Mark 10:5–9) and the apos­tle Paul (Eph. 5:22–33) quote Gen­e­sis 2:24 as author­i­ta­tive and exem­plary: “There­fore a man shall leave his father and moth­er and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” In Matthew 19 and Mark 10, Jesus addi­tion­al­ly cit­ed the cre­at­ed order giv­en in Gen­e­sis 1:27: “male and female He cre­at­ed them.” Mark this down as well: The writer of Hebrews also declared, “Mar­riage is hon­or­able among all, and the bed unde­filed; but for­ni­ca­tors and adul­ter­ers God will judge” (Heb. 13:4). 

Thus, we see only affir­ma­tions of man-woman mar­riage in Scrip­ture. By con­trast, in both Tes­ta­ments, the Bible con­sis­tent­ly refers to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a crime against the law of God and a vio­la­tion of His cre­at­ed order (see Gen. 19:1–29; Lev. 18:22; Lev. 20:13; Rom. 1:18–32; 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 Tim. 1:10). There­fore, homo­sex­u­al “mar­riage” is not mere­ly a con­tra­dic­tion in terms; it is an act of defi­ance against God, His cre­at­ed order, and His design for human­i­ty. 

Vischer’s false par­al­lel isn’t just ground­ed in ter­ri­ble exe­ge­sis; it also draws a moral equiv­a­len­cy between sin and the God-estab­lished insti­tu­tion that is the sine qua non [essen­tial ele­ment, char­ac­ter­is­tic, or qual­i­ty] of all civ­i­liza­tion. In oth­er words, Vis­ch­er is call­ing good evil, some­thing the prophet Isa­iah warned against in no uncer­tain terms (see Isa. 5:20–21). Per­haps Vis­ch­er is gen­uine­ly con­cerned that Chris­tians might be mis­in­ter­pret­ing or inten­tion­al­ly mis­us­ing the Word of God; such abus­es can and have hap­pened. How­ev­er, if this is the case, he has yet to “con­nect the dots” between his expressed con­cerns and authen­tic bib­li­cal teach­ings. Or per­haps he mere­ly is par­rot­ing pop­u­lar and palat­able opin­ions, choos­ing to be swept along by the spir­it of the age rather than guid­ed by the Spir­it of the Lord. 

Sin­cere or not, Mr. Vis­ch­er clear­ly has failed, and may have inten­tion­al­ly refused, to prop­er­ly inter­pret Scrip­ture and to love, pro­claim, and defend its teach­ings. With this fail­ure, he has fall­en for the old­est trick in Satan’s play­book. As the ser­pent asked Eve, so now does Phil Vis­ch­er ask the church: “Has God indeed said?” 

Let’s be sure we respond with the cor­rect answer, and with con­vic­tions to back it up. Yes, God real­ly has said, and He meant every word!

Unless oth­er­wise indi­cat­ed, Scrip­ture has been tak­en from the New King James Ver­sion®. Copy­right © 1982 by Thomas Nel­son, Inc. Used by per­mis­sion. All rights reserved.

¹Edward Lurie, Louis Agas­siz: A Life in Sci­ence (Chica­go, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, 1960), 256–259.
²Ibid., 257
³C. Vann Wood­ward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, Com­mem­o­ra­tive Edi­tion (Oxford, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2002),17–18.
⁴Ibid., 18–19, quot­ing Leon Litwack, North of Slav­ery. Wood­ward cites no page num­ber, but Litwack’s book can be accessed here for free: https://archive.org/details/northofslavery00leon/page/n5/mode/2up