Its our urgent duty to inform you that Dr. Teresa Brown, the assistant pastor at New Bethel AME church in Lithonia, GA is spreading a deadly disease called SIV.  The Spiritual Immunodeficiency Virus is a highly infectious spiritual disease which disables an individual’s ability to know truth and defend themselves against false teachings. The consequence is those who are infected, infect others and can kill the spirit. SIV is an equal opportunity killer and those who do not embrace God’s truth are at high risk.

Brown, also a professor at the Chandler School of Theology, told NBC’s progay, African American flavored newsblog The Grio multiple lies and distortions about homosexuality, the bible and the church [source].

The article itself attempts to do in the “black church” what political homosexual activists have done in the military with the Dont Ask, Dont Tell policy. As we have told you before, the church activists have the same agenda as the political activists. Tear down any and all barriers to homosexuals gaining unrestricted access to positions of power within the church.

Long before Clinton’s time, the same issue was alive and well within the black church, said Dr. Teresa Fry Brown, professor of Homiletics and director of Black Church Studies at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA. And it began not long after integration.

Prior to integration, during, say, the Harlem Renaissance, a person’s sexual identity was not an issue, Fry Brown said.

“That was what you did and who you were,” she said. “But the more we identified with other cultures, the more we would step on one another. We became so mind-alteringly obsessed with others’ sexuality. It made us turn on one another.”

At one time, the black church was the home of unity, love, and acceptance. It was the black church that served as the home of the civil rights movement. It was the black church that helped strengthen the black community. But then the obsession with sexuality made its way into the church — thanks to the influence of some conservative capital.

Who a person slept with and how they lived became a cause of critique — that is, except when it came to the choir director or minister of music, in many cases.

Cultural Lies

Dr. Brown’s first set of lies center on the revisioning of a historical/cultural period.  Considering Brown has multiple educational degrees, its rather disconcerting to see comments devoid of any evidence to support her wild claims.

First, Brown attempts to make the church and the Harlem Renaissance one and the same. They are not and if history is correct, the Harlem Renaissance occurred within the confines of a small area of New York and ended abruptly with the onset of the Great Depression. A person’s sexuality may not have mattered in the Cotton Club and to the “new negro” elites that rose to prominence during the decade, but there is zero evidence that one’s sexuality “wasnt an issue” in the church.

In fact back in March, GCM Watch published a story showing  Brown’s claim to be false. In November 1929, prominent Harlem minister Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. published a series of sermons on sexual perversion. Powell said sexual perversion was steadily increasing in large American cities, particularly among women and ministers.  Powell, whose church which was a landmark  institution in Harlem, had seen the effects of homosexuality during  the HR era and knew that if the church was to survive, someone had to combat it.

What’s more, if black folk were so “obsessed” with other black folk’s sexuality, how can  Brown claim in the same thought group that a person’s sexuality didn’t matter to anyone else? It can’t be both.

Brown uses the same illogical argument the deceased John Boswell promoted in his book Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality. Boswell argued that  homosexuality was always accepted and celebrated within the church. That is until mysterious outsiders changed everything. That’s not only historically inaccurate, but shocking coming from a teaching theologian in an institution of higher learning. Read Greco-Roman history as well as the background of Paul’s letters to Corinth and Rome to get your bearings.

Church lies

While the church version of DADT is in full effect in some predominately African American churches, the same is true of its counterparts with other predominately racial makeups. Its part of a biblically unacceptable undercurrent of sin in the church that will eventually collide with the judgment of God.

Growing up with a mother who was a choir director in Kansas City, Fry Brown said the main critiques of the choir director were that he, or she, was either sleeping with all the women in the church (if they were a man), or was gay or living with their mother.  No one talked about the sexual identity of the choir directors then, but everyone knew about them. Labels like, “He’s special” or “She’s special” were always placed upon the director. But that was as far as it went.

Why?

“It is because of the importance of their role in the worship experience,” Collins said of choir directors. “It is because of the pure benefit that these men and women bring to the church. They are creative; gifted, and I dare to say…anointed at the highest level. They add to the religious experience. And when done with excellence, as many of these folk are capable of achieving, the church experience comes alive.”

“Showstoppers” is how Philip David Hill, minister of music of the Victory Church [article does not identify this church as a progay with a homosexual leaning pastor] in Stone Mountain, GA, describes many choir directors in the black church.

“It seems as though the most talented singers in the church, the most talented musicians in the church just happen to be gay,” he said. “I don’t know why that is. People go where they are most talented. It just is what it is.”

Hill said it is not a matter of trying to hide the fact that these individuals are gay. It just is not talked about.
But is it okay that their sexual identity not be addressed?
Fry Brown considers it an issue of integrity on the part of the pastor. She calls it a form of dehumanization. When she was entering ministry, she was told she could be a minister, but as a woman, could not cry because crying was seen as a sign of weakness. It was like asking her to not be who she was.

The same is being asked of individuals who are asked to hide their sexuality, she said.

Brown is joined by another apostate teacher who repeats the very questionable claim. He says “the most talented musicians in the church just happen to be gay”.  According to what survey? What statistics  bear out this out? Who determines what constitutes “the most talented”? And since when does “talent” become criteria for right relationship with God? Hill admits he has no factual evidence to back it up his assertions, but in the same breath passes it off as if it was written in stone.

One of the issues the church hasn’t resolved and probably never will is that it has allowed the worship of music to eclipse the worship of God and devotion to his Word. That’s why churches easily fall into the trap where they can be at the mercy of homosexual musicians et al. Churches that do put music and Word in proper priority don’t have the problem of  asking homosexuals to “hide their sexuality”.

Emotional lies

False teachers like Brown capitalize on the emotional brokenness of homosexuals. They stroke the flames of isolation, alienation and hatred of the truth by telling homosexuals they are being “discriminated” against by the church. But this is another odd irony. How can homosexuals (according to Brown and Hill) command the top positions, lead the top choirs, be hailed as the most talented, and at the same time be discriminated against?

“You want them to lead your choirs, entertain you every Sunday, but they have to hold back a portion of who they are,” Fry Brown said. “As long as you are making money for the church, they don’t care what you do as long as you don’t self identify.”

So why do the choir directors and/or ministers of music do it? Not necessarily for the money and their livelihood, but because alienation outweighs accountability, Fry Brown said.

“Love is one of our basic human needs; it is critical,” she said. “It is at the core of our humanity. When there’s a threat that love will be withheld, then we will be who we have to be to keep from losing that love.”

And while it is an issue that needs to be dealt with, it is not safe to say that this goes on in every black church, said Fry Brown. Geography and denomination are major factors in whether or not a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is present.

But the bible does discriminate, separate and judge! That’s why Brown is a false teacher sick with SIV and no better than the people she accuses of taking advantage of homosexuals in church. False teachers dont teach the truth, they teach a socialized, political version of the bible.

How does the AME Church allow someone like an assistant pastor to make such anti-bible statements with no consequences?  Brown should be quarantined from preaching by her denomination until she is healed of SIV.