Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
(1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

Unrepentant Homosexual Practice Is As Much A Sin As Adultery

Another born again practicing homosexual “Christian”? Apparently so; over at Slaughter of the Sheep we read the following from Chrystal:

In People Magazine’s newest issue, Clay Aiken is on the cover with his infant son.  The headline accompanying the cover says, “Yes, I’m gay.”  Big shocker, right? That headline isn’t what drew my attention.  People magazine refers to Aiken as a born-again Christian. (Online source)

This coming on the heels of “Christian” singer Ray Boltz who made a rather shocking announcement in Washington Blade: Gay And Lesbian News, Entertainment, Politics And Opinion which was that he is unrepentant in his practice of the sin of homosexuality:

He’d visited the mostly gay Jesus Metropolitan Community Church in Indianapolis and liked Rev. Jeff Miner, so he decided to give him a copy of his 1997 holiday recording, “A Christmas Album”… Boltz brought the Christmas CD with him to MCC-Indianapolis on that cold, sunny December 2007 day and slipped it to Miner on his way out with a note taped to it on which he’d jotted his e-mail address…

Ostensibly it was an innocuous thing to do, but for Boltz it was a big step. It eventually led to him opening up to Miner, one of the first times anybody outside Boltz’s circle of family and friends knew his long-kept secret: Ray Boltz is gay. “I didn’t make a big deal of it,” Boltz says during a 90-minute phone interview from his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. “But I was trembling. I’d kind of had two identities since I moved to Florida where I kind of had this other life and I’d never merged the two lives. This was the first time I was taking my old life as Ray Boltz, the gospel singer, and merging it with my new life. Emotionally it was kind of a big deal to think about that.” (Online source)

Which brings us back to Aiken. In the article “Clay Aiken Speaks Out About Rumors” we read:

Clay Aiken is no longer the charmingly awkward, self-confessed “dork” who came in second on 2003’s second season of American Idol. He has a new look, a new album – A Thousand Different Ways, which hit stores Tuesday – and some new, hard-won wisdom. “I learned this year that you can’t make people like you or care about you or love you,” the 27-year-old, Southern Baptist-bred singer, whose 2003 debut album Measure of a Man sold 2.6 million copies, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. (Online source)

And one of these “rumors” which Aiken speaks out about is found in a piece called “Clay Aiken: I’m a Gay Dad”. There we’re told:

Following the Aug. 8 birth of his son Parker, singer Clay Aiken is following through on a promise he made to himself as a new dad: to publicly acknowledge that he’s gay. “It was the first decision I made as a father,” Aiken, 29, tells the upcoming issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday. “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not going to raise a child to do that.”

Aiken says he expects the news may overwhelm some of his fans. “Whether it be having a child out of wedlock, or whether it be simply being a homosexual, it’s going to be a lot,” said Aiken, who returned to Broadway last week as Sir Robin in Monty Python’s Spamalot. He adds that he hopes his fans “know that I’ve never intended to lie to anybody at all. … But if they leave, I don’t want them to leave hating me”…

The born-again Christian singer also reveals how he told his mother Faye he’s gay four years ago. After dropping off his younger brother Brett, who was being deployed to Iraq, at Camp Lejeune, “I started crying in the car,” Aiken remembers. “It was dark. I was sitting there, thinking to myself. I don’t know why I started thinking about it … I just started bawling. She made me pull over the car and it just came out.” (Online source)

The Insider actually broke this story on September 23 in “UPDATE: Clay Aiken Reveals He’s Gay”:

It was the first decision I made as a father,” Clay Aiken says about coming out as a gay man in the new issue of People. “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not going to raise a child to do that.” Clay makes the revelation in the next edition of the magazine, which hits stands this Friday. He will be pictured with his newborn son, Parker, and talk about the importance of being truthful regarding his sexuality.

“Whether it be having a child out of wedlock, or whether it be simply being a homosexual, it’s going to be a lot,” he says regarding the reactions of his fans. Still, he says his fans “know that I’ve never intended to lie to anybody at all. … But if they leave, I don’t want them to leave hating me.” (Online source)

Aiken then places his Christian testimony on national television as he discusses the issue with Diane Sawyer in the video clip below. There he comes off as rather flippant concerning his sin:

Expel The Immoral From Among Other Christians

As a pastor my concern in bringing this before the Body of Christ is not in any way meant to belittle Boltz or Aiken. Rather it is to show you another of the tragic effects of the Emerging rebellion against Sola Scriptura. Here we have two men who claim to be Christians but still they remain content to be in open, unrepentant, and blatant defiance of God’s Word. And yet it appears rather obvious that we’re witnessing just the tip of the Iceberg of Apostasy so we have not heard the last of these kinds of expressions of Christianity which clearly contradict sound Biblical teaching.

Sadly, the growing acceptance of the Emerging Church within evangelicalism has much to do with this wrong kind of tolerance for the sin of homosexuality within the Christian Church. Once “churches” like Metropolitan Community Church were rightly largely outside even the mainline denominations. But as the Cult of Liberal Theology killed more and more of these groups we have come to see an acceptance of unrepentant sinners grow to the point where the Episcopal Church even put them in charge of other churches as evidenced by Practicing Homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson: “This Is Where God Is Leading The Whole Church”.

What blasphemy it is to say that God is leading His Church to embrace what He has clearly called sinful behavior. And it gets worse than Robinson’s mere speculation. O yeah, we even have the “gay-affirming” Emerging Church “pastor” Jay Bakker who shares his direct revelation from the Lord on the subject. You see Bakker’s “god” told him personally that the practice of homosexuality is no longer sin:

“The more I follow grace, the more I’m drawn to him [God], the more I’m willing to stand up for people being persecuted,” says Jay today. “This sounds so churchy, but I felt like God spoke to my heart and said ‘[homosexuality] is not a sin.’ ” (Online source)

But such is the sad state of affairs in the Emergent Church and postevangelicalism. Because they have rejected the final authority of God’s Word ala Emergent icon Rob Bell in favor of highly subjective experience, which Bell refers to as “mystery,” they have no real way to test whether these existential feelings and impressions really are from God. Therefore they have no choice but to be “tolerant” of anyone who claims they are Christian regardless of their lifestyle.

As a matter of fact in a phone conversation Tony Jones personally confirmed to me that he stands by the following quote from his interview in Relevant magazine, which I use in Tony Jones And The Emergent Church: “Christian” Gay Is A-Ok:

[In Emergent Village w]e have everything you could imagine. We have Texas Baptists who don’t let women preach, and we have lesbian mainline pastors in New England… We haven’t yet found that there’s anything that justifies us breaking fellowship with somebody else who loves and is trying to follow Jesus. 

Kind of sounds like ever pragmatic Rick Warren doesn’t it. AM has shown Warren accepts apostate Roman Catholicism as a legitimate expression of the historic orthodox Christian faith in “Bible Scholar” Rick Warren Reversing The Reformation and he’s also on record emphatically declaring: “I see absolutely zero reason in separating my fellowship from anybody” (Online source). These people-pleasers sound good but the Lord has already told us there’s also a good reason why; they are speaking from the flesh — from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them (1 John 4:5).

Men and women, most certainly we need to be praying that God would grant both Ray Boltz and Clay Aiken repentance. Also their rebellious actions indicate they likely may not be regenerated; if not, may the Lord have mercy upon them and save them. However, until such time as they confess and renounce their sin the proper Biblical admonition is the same for these two men as it was for the fornicator in Corinth; they should not be allowed any fellowship within the Christian community until they have forsaken their willfully sinful lifestyle:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.

I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”
(1 Corinthians 5:1-13)

Or maybe you think that Rick Warren, Tony Jones, and the postliberal Emerging Church of postevangelicalism really are smarter than the inspired Apostle Paul, huh. By the way; whatever happened to the man above who was expelled from fellowship with other Christians? It might be worth your time to look it up and see what happens when the Church actually does things God’s way.

See also:

BRIAN MCLAREN, THE EMERGING CHURCH, AND HOMOSEXUALITY: WHAT’S SO HARD ABOUT THAT?

EMERGENT CHURCH OPENLY ACCEPTS PRACTICING HOMOSEXUAL “CHRISTIANS”

ROB BELL ON THE ISSUE OF HOMOSEXUALITY: MUM’S THE WORD

CROSSTALK RADIO: SEXUAL NEO-GNOSTIC SPIRITUALITY AMONG EVANGELICALS

EMERGING CHURCH: “GAY AFFIRMING PASTOR” JAY BAKKER ON A MISSION FROM GOD