Former Calvinist pastor and author Joshua Harris participates in gay parade after apologizing to LGBT activists

By Julio Severo

Former Calvinist pastor and author Joshua Harris has demonstrated his support for homosexual activism by marching in Vancouver’s annual gay Pride Parade in Canada less than a month after announcing he no longer considers himself a Christian.

Joshua Harris in Gay Pride Parade in Canada

On August 4, 2019, Harris, former pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, shared several Instagram photos of himself participating in the Canadian gay parade with LGBT activists.

“An American in Canada marching with the British Consulate in the Pride Parade,” he captioned one photo.

Harris also shared a photo of himself alongside homosexual activists, including Matthias Roberts, host of “Queerology: A Podcast on Belief and Being,” and gay rock singer Trey Pearson.

Joshua Harris with gay activists

His participation in Vancouver’s gay Pride Parade comes after he announced that he and his wife Shannon are separating, he no longer considers himself a Christian, and he regrets having taught that marriage is a union only between a man and a woman.

Years earlier, Harris denounced his 1997 bestseller I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which discouraged dating and influenced the purity movement. Just this book has sold 1.2 million copies worldwide, making Harris a millionaire. He also wrote other books that gave him much profit.

“I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is 'deconstruction,' the biblical phrase is ‘falling away,’” Harris announced on Instagram on July 26. “By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.”

“To the LGBTQ+ community, I want to say that I am sorry for the views that I taught in my books and as a pastor regarding sexuality,” he continued. “I regret standing against marriage equality, for not affirming you and your place in the church, and for any ways that my writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry. I hope you can forgive me.”

Harris’ announcement has shocked his former Calvinist community, leading many to question if he was ever saved. Considering that some major Calvinist leaders knew Harris before, how didn’t they notice he was not saved? I do not know if he was saved or not, but it seems that Calvinists think: “Once saved, always saved.” So whenever a Calvinist chooses apostasy, which is Harris’s case, they assume he was never saved. If lost people can accept the Savior, cannot saved people reject Him? The Scriptures give a partial, not total, support to the rigid Calvinist view, which was ardently embraced by Harris.

Harris’s apostasy also shocked other evangelicals.

My friend Rebecca Kiessling, who is a pro-life attorney who travels the world defending the lives of unborn babies, made an excellent Facebook post about Joshua Harris, who made conservative arguments about dating and marriage, but today he defends homosexuality and says who abandoned patriarchy — a system in which the husband is the leader of the family and the wife is submissive.

Kiessling then argues that if Harris did indeed abandon patriarchy, then why did he make an unilateral statement — in practice posing as the supreme patriarch? If he had abandoned patriarchy, instead of making an unilateral statement saying that he is supporting homosexuality, abandoning conservatism and Calvinist faith and divorcing his wife, he should make a joint public statement with the opinion of his wife and children, letting each of them speak their mind about his decision and the issues he dealt with unilaterally. Check out Rebecca Kiessling’s Facebook post:

“I’m still really upset about former pastor and author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris, announcing he’s divorcing his wife of 21 years, and renouncing his Christian faith and Christian values, including his beliefs on patriarchy. But as a family law attorney, there’s something that really bothers me about this — the fact that he has unilaterally made these announcements when these are huge issues affecting his entire family! The ‘Patriarch’ has made the public statements, and for a guy who claims to be rejecting patriarchy, it’s extremely audacious to be publicly announcing such monumental matters. How you will raise your children is an issue in divorce cases, and in my experience with Michigan courts, they’re typically to be raised in the faith both parents have been raising them in, maintaining the status quo. So it’s alarming to me that there’s no joint statement here, when his words will affect everyone in his family deeply. So much for his rejection of patriarchy…”

By participating in a gay parade, Harris broke his own recent promise when he wrote on Instagram: “I need to avoid audiences and the pressure of becoming a spokesperson for anyone or any cause. That has gotten me into trouble in the past.”

After breaking his promises to God, he broke his promises to himself.

Is Harris’s apostasy a sign that the Bible and its prophecies are weak? On the contrary, sadly his apostasy is an absolute evidence that God’s Word is correct when it said 2,000 years ago:

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.” (1 Timothy 4:1-2 ESV)

Harris is now included among these “some” in our time departing from faith to devote themselves to the deceitful homosexual spirits and teachings of homosexual demons.

With information from Christian Post.

Portuguese version of this article: Ex-pastor e escritor calvinista Joshua Harris participa de parada gay depois de pedir perdão a ativistas LGBT

Source: Last Days Watchman

Recommended Reading:

Ed Shaw, Gospel Coalition and Homosexual Feelings: What They Say and What Jesus Said