ELCA Bishop Goes Public Telling Teenagers "I Am A Gay Man"

7/27/2015

Rev. Dr. Kevin S. Kanouse, bishop of the ELCA's Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Mission Area, spoke to the youth of his synod while in Detroit for the ELCA's National Youth Gathering and told them he is gay.

ELCA transgender pastor Megan Rohrer tweeted this -

Congrats on coming out in a sermon at the ELCA Youth Gathering, Bp. Kevin Kanouse of North TX - North Louisiana Synod #IamLutheran #love
— Rev. Megan Rohrer (@mmrohrer) July 21, 2015

Two gay news websites also reported this

A few days later, Bishop Kanouse wrote a letter to his synod explaining what happened. (read here) There are a number of things to be said about this letter:

1) The bishop spoke to 400 youth and adults announcing he was gay, something that was previously unknown.

This is what you subject your children to when you remain in a denomination that has denied God's Word regarding homosexuality.

2) The bishop spoke of his homosexuality saying that is how God made him. He wrote, "Being gay is not a sin. My sin was a lifetime of denying that the God who created me, also accepts me and loves me. It was faithlessness."

If the bishop means "same-sex attraction" is not a sin, but rather a temptation, when he writes, "(b)eing gay is not a sin," then I agree. But if he means acting on that attraction in thought and deed, then he is 100% wrong. How do you think the youth understood this message from the bishop?

3) The bishop painted a dark picture of the Biblical view of marriage and homosexuality if his letter is any indication. He writes, "the arguments defending those few scriptures condemning gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual persons sounded more and more hollow. It did not sound like the truth of the Gospel I have been preaching."

4) Bishop Kanouse says he and his wife of 40 years, "are both committed to our marriage."

I commend him for this decision and pray that they remain committed to their marriage in every way.

Then strangely enough Bishop Kanouse wrote this about the same event on his facebook page -

Click the day and date link below to view the post yourself -

400+ youth and adults gather for Story Day. I told the story of my call, including my refusal to listen to God's call...
Posted by Kevin S Kanouse on Saturday, July 18, 2015

Does God speak like that? Who is really speaking to this man? I would be very upset if I had sent my children to the youth gathering and they were indoctrinated toward believing same-sex attraction is from God and that it is good. This man needs us to pray for him, as do all who listened to his non-God-glorifying message.

12 Comments

Didaskalos link

7/28/2015 12:14:42 am

Pray not only for Kanouse, but also for parents, friends, and other laborers in the harvest to present Biblical truth to this bishop's audience and help to snatch them from his clutches. [Jude 1:23]

. . . "There is no "homosexual voice within the Church," for the homosexual's conversion entails a choice—This, or That—the sin, or the Faith. He cannot have both, nor can the Church in any way accommodate the sin from which he has been cleansed. It is wholly and actively and vehemently against it as a destroyer of the souls it has been called to save. It labors among the saints only in the accomplishment of what has already been done in Christ: cleansing, sanctification, and justification in the Name of the Lord.

[ . . . ]

"The Church never can and never will give satisfaction—and the homosexualist knows it, for he knows the words against him are ineradicable—to the declared and impenitent homosexual, the person who, through an act of the vermiculate will, has identified his person with a sin, whether he demands acceptance of his sin through "love," or vindication through identification of his perceived enemies as bigots. Whether he presents himself as an object of love or indignation, what he demands in either case is acceptance not of the person, but of the sin-bound and sin-defined person. He demands the declaration of spiritual authority that there is nothing objectively disordered about this binding of man to sin, and assurance that this monstrous amalgam can indeed enter the kingdom of heaven. This can never happen among Christians until they abandon Christianity, which is at war with every sin, and whose indelible constitution places all perversions of the perfect man at the muzzle of its canons. •

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-04-003-e -- "Just Christians"

George

7/28/2015 08:58:31 am

Evil has grasped this church leader. God does not speak in the way this man says God did. The ELCA is not church but an organization which gathers congregations under its banner. May God cleanse certain people, clergy and lay, who lead within this organization.

Allan

7/28/2015 07:35:47 am

The world usually fails to realize that to speak of a sexual "preference" is to presuppose a sexual freedom that traditional Christian morality does not allow. Oftentimes (especially in the case of males) the person labeled as a "homosexual" (meant as an insult) is simply someone who doesn't live up to the world's standard of womanizing. "They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you." (1 Peter 4:4)

Jeffrey

7/29/2015 10:35:54 am

Being same-sex attracted is a sin. Concupiscence, that is the temptation or inclination to sin, is correctly recognized by the Lutheran Confessions as a sin itself.

Kathy Suarez

7/31/2015 04:32:22 am

Jeffrey -- It is important to be precise here. A thought about being homosexual is a suggestion from Satan. Homosexual inclination is the result of concupiscence coming from our fallen nature. These things are not sins: they are temptations to be resisted. It is only when we dwell on the thought or inclination, or worse, commit a homosexual act, that we sin. Sins are acts of the will. A thought or inclination is a temptation.

Unfortunately the ELCA is too blind to understand this.

Kent Wallace

8/1/2015 09:34:11 am

This was my last ELCA Bishop. I sent my letter of resignation to him.
When he was elected I was his first exit interview in 2000. I'm stunned! Now I know why he said not a ford to me at the 100th Anniversary of my former parish. I voted for him for Bishop because he was down to earth and not into church politics or PC baloney. Then I watched him gradually succumb to the lure of the miter and crozier. Kevin, you are in my prayers!

M. Halberg

8/3/2015 11:53:20 am

The everyday meaning of "concupiscence" is "sexual desire." The less-common sense of the term, which theologians use, is "excessive desire of any kind," or "covetousness." There is no sense of the word that means "homosexual desire." All of the above applies also to the word "lust." Read the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article 2) on original sin at http://bookofconcord.org/defense_2_originalsin.php, especially the part where Romans 7:7 is quoted. "I had not known lust (concupiscence), except the Law had said, Thou shalt not covet."

8/4/2015 03:02:52 am

Well, I'm not a theologian: I was just offering a common sense explanation. Many, many gays believe they were "born that way." I am just trying to understand why they believe that.... Regardless of definitions or explanations, entertaining homosexual thoughts or committing homosexual acts is against Scripture, Tradition and the Natural Law. You don't need to be a theologian to know that. And btw, Catholics and many Lutherans can totally agree on this point.

8/4/2015 05:24:32 am

I venture no opinion as to when sexual thoughts count as sin. But I object to equating sexual desire with original sin--the suggestion that sexual desire is the root of all evil. Children do not have sexual desire; yet it would be ludicrous to conclude that they therefore do not have original sin.

8/4/2015 04:50:52 pm

Scripture says: "All have sinned..." There is no situation that cannot be sin-saturated. St. Augustine was quoted as saying that there is no possibility not to sin (Latin: non posse non peccare). The sense of original sin is that the origin begins in each person because we individually are born into sin. What other reason for Christ death than for sinners? With all the talk of relativizing sin, one takes away the power and magnitude of Christ's death. See Apology of Augsburg Confession article 4.

8/5/2015 03:49:22 am

This is not complicated. Jesus was very clear that our thoughts are the root of sin. Obviously there are different kinds of sexual thoughts. There are good sexual thoughts: a wife's love for her husband; and bad sexual thoughts: adultery and gay acts. A bad thought may seem like a "small" sin, but as Luther clearly taught: a sin is a sin, big or small.

Jeanette H

8/4/2015 05:19:27 am

This sounds like it was pre-planned, to come out in front of these children without their parents' knowledge. This is deviant, inappropriate behavior for a man of God. What is wrong with him that he behaves like this!

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ELCA Bishop Goes Public Telling Teenagers "I Am A Gay Man"

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