NewsRescue
A German pastor was mocked and condemned for preaching a sermon packed of liberal catchphrases, including the claim that the Christian god is “queer.” Meanwhile, an unprecedented number of Germans are abandoning the church.
On Sunday, Pastor Quinton Caesar told delegates at the Evangelical Church Congress in Nuremberg that “now is the time to say” that “black lives always matter,” that “God is queer,” and that migrants must be welcomed to Europe, among other liberal affirmations.
While the audience applauded enthusiastically, Christians online were perplexed.
Caesar’s speech was regarded by American Christian author Michael Sebastian as a “succinct description of all key points of the Regime religion.” Auron MacIntyre, a conservative author, accused progressives like Caesar of “hollow[ing] out your religion and wearing[ing] its skin like a trophy,” while other comments called the lecture “disgusting,” “heretical,” and “Satanic.”
Caesar’s address concluded a five-day congress that drew 100,000 Protestants to Nuremberg for sermons, debates, and performances of Christian music. Despite the fact that it is not organized by the Evangelical Church in Germany, an umbrella group to which the majority of German Protestants belong, the event has been conducted every year since 1949 and is a fixture in the country’s religious calendar.
Caesar, a South African native, portrays himself on social media as a “activist pastor.” His viewpoints are not uncommon among Protestants, as his speech came just a week after an Anglican church in London hosted a drag queen performance for local “LGBTQAI+ communities and other marginalised people and groups.” In 2019, a protestant church in Sweden received harsh criticism for replacing an altarpiece depicting Adam and Eve with one depicting homosexual couples in provocative poses.
Since 2016, the German Evangelical Church has allowed pastors to perform gay marriages, and one of its bishops made news in 2021 for publicly requesting the LGBTQ community for “forgiveness” during a ‘Pride’ march in Berlin.
Despite its liberal worldview, the church is losing members at a rapid pace. In 2022, a record 380,000 members resigned, breaking the previous record of 340,000 in 2021. The Catholic Church is not faring any better, with 359,000 members expected to leave by 2021.
