Christians shouldn’t attend same-sex wedding ceremonies, as attending would be to an inherent show of support, according to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr.
In an episode of Mohler’s “The Briefing” podcast that aired Friday, the Evangelical theologian was asked by a listener about what to do if one is invited to a same-sex wedding ceremony.
Mohler responded by noting that the “whole context of the wedding as a public event is the public exchange of vows and the public declaration of the rightness of this relationship.”
“Remember that the traditional word used of those who are attending a wedding is that they are celebrants,” he added. “They are there to celebrate the wedding. It is virtually impossible to go to … a wedding of a same-sex couple and go and smile and not give affirmation to what you believe to be fundamentally contrary to nature and injurious to human flourishing.”
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr. gives a speech at the Centennial Institute’s Western Conservative Summit, held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado, on July 12-13, 2019. | YouTube/Centennial Institute
Mohler went on to say that “if you are consistently biblical in your thinking, you simply can’t go to a wedding that actually isn’t a wedding, for a marriage that you don’t believe is actually a marriage.”
“One of the principles that has guided the Christian church through the centuries is that the Church cannot sanction and Christians should not celebrate weddings that are illicit or unlawful according to Scripture.
“Now that can include some situations in which it would be a man and a woman standing at the altar, but we would believe there are biblical reasons why they should not be joined together, why it would not be a biblical marriage, it is not a rightful wedding. You extend that to the LGBTQ revolution and we have a whole new set of complexities, but in reality, this isn’t a new question.”
Mohler tackled other listener-submitted questions in the podcast episode, including, when is a child too young to have a conversation about transgender ideology.
“The one thing we must always do is say what is true,” Mohler replied. “But understanding how much to say and how much to explain at any one moment to any given child, well, that is something that only faithful parents can actually well understand.”