A Detroit-area man is on a crusade against his former Zeeland church after a recent sermon compared homosexuals to ax murderers.
Daniel VanderLey, who is openly gay, is now staging a series of protests against Zeeland Baptist Church and calling for the pastor to apologize.
Outside First Baptist Church, a sign reads “growing together,” but growing apart is how one former member is now describing his relationship with his childhood church.
“I knew I was gay the entire time I went to this church, and I knew it was not an accepting environment. I came out while I was in college and at that time I left that church,” says Daniel VanderLey.
Now, a pastor’s sermon from earlier this month is putting an exclamation point on the fractured relationship between VanderLey and his former church. VanderLey, who is now 32, moved to the Detroit area, where he heard the audio recording on the church’s website. In it, Pastor Clinton Echols compares homosexual impulses to those of an ax murderer.
“It may be after they are married for ten years and have two kids and they say, ‘Oh wait a second, I’m gay, I’m bisexual, I want to change my gender,’ and so, for instance, on another completely, other playing field, if tomorrow I woke up because I have this internal compass that’s telling me what truth is, if tomorrow I wake up and say, ‘I think I’m an ax murderer and now I’m an ax murderer,'” Pastor Echols is heard saying in the recording.
“I personally find it to be hateful speech; if not hateful, definitely beyond anything that needed to be said from a pulpit,” says VanderLey.
Click here for more.
SOURCE: WZZM-13
Alex Shabad
BCNN1 WP 