“Statement from The Gospel Coalition’s Board of Directors
TGC was informed yesterday by Sam Allberry about “an inappropriate relationship with another man a few years ago” and that an announcement would be made today at Immanuel Church regarding his resignation as a pastor.”
Allberry, once an Anglican priest, had wormed his way to Reformed denominations being championed by other sodomite-adjacent clergy, advocating a position styled as “celibate but gay.” The whole side-b sodomy argument denied that the fact that men admitting that they were sexually attracted to other men was sin. The position that Allberry championed was that as long as a man remained celibate, he could continue in the ministry while having this un-natural lust.
That whole thing was warped from the beginning. What made it doubly warped is that so many of the Reformed clergy supported this kind of thinking as seen in the Greg Johnson case in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). In the PCA Rev. Greg Johnson took much the same position as Sam Allberry and there was found little will in the PCA to take disciplinary action against Johnson. Johnson finally left the PCA on his own accord taking the congregation he Pastored with him.
All that aside I want to briefly speak to much of the hand wringing that has gone on with the fall of Sam Allberry. In many quarters people are being tongue lashed by the same clergy who simped in support of Allberry and Greg Johson (and others like them) that we should not rejoice in the fall of Allberry. Sarcastic comments like, “Who could have ever seen this coming,” or, “I miss the good old days when clergy were drummed out of their congregations for liking women not their wives” were seen as being in “poor taste,” and “demonstrating a lack of maturity.” We are now being told that we should not rejoiced in the fall of Sam Allberry.
I dissent.
Understand the irony that is currently occurring in the PCA churches. This denomination can’t run out on a rail fast enough anyone who embraces the historic position of the church on race-realism while at the same time they couldn’t find the ecclesiastical will to even bring up charges against a man (Rev. Greg Johnson) who had spoken glowingly on the need to accept sodomites in the Church as long as they remained celibate.
It is one thing to admit one’s besetting sin. It is quite another to expect the Church to no longer call besetting sins, “besetting sins.” Men like Allberry and Johnson and their advocacy was proof positive that the Church no longer viewed sodomy or the desire for sodomy to be particularly heinous. The fact that all of this side-b sodomy was a mainstreaming of sodomy is seen in the fact that no one (yet) would use the same logic for side-b bestiality. No one would accept in the Church people who admitted into the mic that they had a physical attraction to farm animals, but it was all ok because they were celibate. Side-b sodomy is just as repulsive as side-b bestiality and yet clergy in the PCA refused to discipline it.
