The Most Stupid and Insensitive Things Ever Said From a Pulpit

When I was a very young pastor, I once said something in a sermon that actually made people leave the church in disgust. To you it might seem rather benign but to some in my church, it was so offensive that by the time I arrived at work on Monday morning, there was a pile of emailed complaints waiting in my inbox, and the odd abusive phone call as well.

I made the mistake of talking about a neighbourhood near our church that had a particularly bad reputation — being known for its high crime rate. I said in my sermon that when I drive through that part of town, I wind my windows up and lock my doors. The problem was that some of the people who came to that church lived in that area and were offended by my comment.

Offended is too light a word. Outraged is more like it. Those who weren’t outraged by the comment itself were outraged on behalf of those who were outraged by the comment.

The complaints came thick and fast. My boss, the senior pastor — a man known for his endurance in ministry achieved largely by throwing others under the bus, rather than any particular gifting, calling or strategic ability of his own — distanced himself from me and my comment, and joined the chorus of disapproval. At his request, the elders of the church demanded that I issue a public apology which I did so the following Sunday from the pulpit.

And I meant it.

I was not the kind of preacher who wanted to make people angry or upset for the sake of it. And, despite what you might think, most preachers don’t actually mean to be jerks on purpose.

There are exceptions, of course. In fact, some preachers have made a name for themselves by being jerks and intentionally riling people up with deliberately controversial statements. Others honestly believe that their harsh and unforgiving religious dogma is actually what God has called them to say.

Whether through stupidity, ignorance or design, sometimes a preacher says something from their lofty pulpit that beggars belief. It flies in the face of cultural sensitivity, political correctness, Biblical accuracy and even common sense. As someone who writes about religion, I am always on the look out for these kinds of comments. And now, for your reading displeasure, I present to you my list of the most controversial and insensitive things ever said from a pulpit.

Women are homes for penises

Mark Driscoll is a preacher who will feature more than once on this list. The founder of the now defunct Mars Hill megachurch, Driscoll was known and loved for his “say-it-like-it-is” preaching style.

In what was dubbed the “Testosterone Gospel”, he preached of a muscular, angry Jesus and told men to take responsibility and stop being “wusses” and told women to serve men. But it was the more extreme of his remarks that upset some of his female parishioners, in particular when he referred to women as homes for a penis. Here’s exactly what Driscoll said:

“The first thing to know about your penis is, that despite the way it may see, it is not your penis. Ultimately, God created you and it is his penis. You are simply borrowing it for a while.

“While His penis is on loan you must admit that it is sort of just hanging out there very lonely as if it needed a home, sort of like a man wondering (sic) the streets looking for a house to live in. Knowing that His penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife and when you marry her and look down you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home.”

Though you may believe your hand is shaped like a home, it is not. And, though women other than your wife may look like a home, to rest there would be breaking into another man’s home…if you look at a man it is quite obvious that what a homeless man does not need is another man without a home.”

I’ve heard plenty of sexist and misogynistic comments from the pulpit over the years, but the devaluing of women expressed here by Driscoll is truly breathtaking.

Mr Driscoll was forced to resign as pastor of Seattle’s Mars Hills Church in October 2014 after staff protests and an internal church review found him guilty of arrogance, “responding to conflict with a quick temper and harsh speech, and leading the staff and elders in a domineering manner.”

Withint three months, Mars Hill Church was effectively dissolved.

Female preachers should just go home

Speaking of misogynistic preachers, John MacArthur, a prominent evangelical pastor in the United States has caused quite a stir back in 2019, for asserting that Bible teacher and preacher Beth Moore should “go home.”

His problem with Beth Moore?

She is a woman.

And, according the Macarthur, Bible verses like 1 Timothy 2:12, which says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” are supposed to be plucked from their ancient middle eastern context and applied word-for-word to modern day America.

That’s what God would want… apparently.

The comments were made at the “Truth Matters Conference,” held to honour John MacArthur’s 50 years of ministry, held at his church, Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California.

Panellists were asked to play a word association game and the first word — two words — given by the host were “Beth Moore” and were greeted by mocking laughter by the crowd.

MacArthur followed up his “go home” response: “There’s no case that can be made biblically for a woman preacher, period, paragraph, end of discussion.”

This comment was met with rapturous applause.

Another co-panellist added his thoughts, accusing Moore of being narcissistic and MacArthur added: “Just because you have the skills to sell jewellery on the TV sales channel doesn’t mean you should be preaching.”

Just sickening.

Slavery was a blessing

Back in 2020, Atlanta megachurch pastor Louie Giglio ignited controversy when he suggested during a recorded event at his church that the phrase “white privilege” could be replaced with the word “white blessing.”

In the wake of national protests over police brutality, and the death George Floyd, lots of white pastors chose to step up and try to address racism. But Giglio clearly missed the mark when he said:

“We understand the curse that was slavery, white people do, and we say that was bad. But we miss the blessing of slavery, that it actually built up the framework for the world that white people live in.”

Oh boy.

See for yourself.

God made some of you to burn in hell

Back to Mark Driscoll. Not only was Driscoll reknown for his sexism and mysogeny, he also had no problem telling people that they were going to hell.

“God hates sinners,” he said once.

In another Twitter post, he was more than comfortable telling people if they are not a Christians — and by “Christian” he really means a “Christian” like him — then you are going to Hell.

But the hell-fire comment that really got up the nose of plenty of people, including me, was when Driscoll was participating in a forum at a Christian conference some years ago, turned to his audience and made the the comment “In the end we just have to realize God created some of you to be matchsticks.” In other words, God actually created some of you, purely so he can send you to hell.

Believe it or not, this is a fairly mainstream belief amongst those who subscribe to a doctrine known as Calvinism. This asserts that God knows before people are even born whether or not they will accept him and therefore, their eternal future is locked in even before they take their first breath.

Personally I find this belief incompatible with the notion that God is all-loving. But, the way that Driscoll turned to his audience and said with such coldness, “God made some of you for hell,” even if it were true, was purely and utterly unloving, insensitive and well… nasueating.

Wives should lose some weight

A southeastern Missouri preacher named Pastor Stewart-Allen Clark became a social media hit for all the wrong reasons in March 2021 after giving a sermon where he breated married women who “let themselves go” and held up former first lady Melania Trump as the pinnacle of feminine beauty.

In the video, Clark — himself not exactly the picture of physical fitness — berated wives who gained weight after marriage and admonished that they should look good for their husbands, adding, “It’s important that he thinks you’re hot!”

“I’m not saying every woman can be the epic — the epic — trophy wife of all time like Melania Trump,” Clark said, as a photo of the former first lady appeared behind him on a screen. “Most women can’t be trophy wives, but you know … maybe you’re a participation trophy.”

Check it out for yourself. Have a barf bag handy.

Source: YouTube

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Of course, there’s no such pressure for men to continue to look good for their wives, as Pastor Clark so clearly demonstrates. As you can imagine, the sermon was widely condemned. Pastor Clark was stood down from his church and instructed to seek professional counseling.

A statement from the General Baptist Council of Associations, with which Clark’s church is affiliated, also condemned Clark’s sermon. “General Baptists believe that every woman was created in the image of God, and they should be valued for that reason,” the statement said.

Jesus would come back if people would give more money

In September 2021, hardcore, right-wing evangelical preacher Jesse Duplantis speaking at a four-day-long fundraising event for Kenneth Copeland Ministries — a live TV event called ‘Victorython’ — claimed that Jesus has not returned because people aren’t generous enough with their donations to the church.

You heard that correctly.

Check it out for yourself:

Source: YouTube

Jesse Duplantis’s claim that the reason that Christ has been holding out on his second coming because the offerings aren’t big enough: “I honestly believe this — the reason why Jesus hasn’t come is because people are not giving the way God told them to give,” Duplantis said, “When you understand this, you can speed up the time.”

Later on, in the show, Duplantis further explained that if everyone called the number listed at the bottom of the screen to donate, “God the Father would say ‘Jesus, go get ‘em,’” and unleash Jesus on a waiting world… apparently. Given that Duplantis himself has a net worth of over 20 million, it seems a little rich — pardon the pun — for him to expect us common folk to foot the bill to expedite the return of Christ.

God was the mastermind behind racial separation

Time for one from the archives. Less than three weeks after the 1961 attack on the Freedom Riders, Montgomery’s most prominent pastor, Henry Lyon Jr., delivered a fiery sermon before the local white Citizens’ Council, denouncing the civil rights protesters and the cause for which they were beaten — from a “Christian” perspective. Here is what he said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, for 15 years I have had the privilege of being pastor of a white Baptist church in this city. If we stand 100 years from now, it will still be a white church. I am a believer in a separation of the races, and I am none the less a Christian.”

The crowd applauded.

“If you want to get in a fight with the one that started separation of the races, then you come face to face with your God,” he declared. “The difference in color, the difference in our body, our minds, our life, our mission upon the face of this earth, is God given.”

Lyon saw himself as a devout Bible believer, and he was far from an extremist in the Southern Baptist world. A former president of the Alabama Baptist Convention, his Montgomery church had more than 3,000 members.
His sermon certainly hasn’t aged well, has it?

So, we abused some kids… what about all the good stuff we did?

In June 2021, Pastor Owen Keenan of Merciful Redeemer Parish took to the pulpit to complain about how roughly people had been treating the church after the discovery of the remains of hundreds of first-nation children on the grounds of former church-run residential schools.

“Two-thirds of the country is blaming the church, which we love, for the tragedies that occurred there,” he said. “I presume the same number would thank the church for the good done in those schools, but of course, that question was never asked and we are not allowed to even say that good was done there. I await to see what comes to my inbox.”

When it comes to being completely tone-deaf, this comment takes the cake. Pastor Keenan makes out that the church is being unfairly treated for its complicity in the mistreatment of children, and then bemoans the fact that no one seems to notice the good that the church did. Respectfully, Pastor Keenan, no amount of good makes up for the abuse of children.

The Archdiocese of Toronto condemned Keenan’s comments and he has since issued an unreserved apology.

…

The responsibility of the pulpit

The Bible is clear. A person who wants to teach others will be judged more harshly for what they say.

We know this to be true. Anyone who presumes to mount a pulpit can expect to be treated with a higher level of scrutiny because to mount a pulpit is to assume the authoirty of God. That is why it is so abhorrent when preachers mishandle and misuse their pulpit. That is why people are outraged.

Macarthur, Driscoll and DuPlantis make no apologies for their statements. Some of these men believe they are being attacked — not because they are spouting insensitive and inappropriate rhetoric — but because they are God’s anointed tasked with the responsibility of delivering a hard message to the world. Nothing you could say to them could convince them that they are in need of repentence.

On the other hand, the mark of a truly spiritual man is how he responds to the the outrage. Louie Giglio issued a tearful and heartfelt apology just days after he realized the damage of his “white blessing” comment. He was humble and contrite. He was was genuinely sorry. I’m not one to bear a grudge. And, where repentence is evident, we can forgive and move on.

After all, preachers are human.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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