A Lutheran pastor in Germany called God “queer” during a politically-charged service held this past Sunday.
Quinton Ceasar, the pastor who closed out the German Protestant Church Congress in Nuremberg on June 11, describes himself as a “theologian activist” on his Instagram. Ceasar’s Sunday sermon was littered with progressive talking points which promoted Black Lives Matter, immigration, environmentalism, and gender ideology.
“Now is the time to say, ‘we are all the Last Generation’,” Caesar began, referencing a radical environmentalist group. “Now is the time to say, ‘Black Lives Always Matter’. Now is the time to say, ‘God is queer’,” he continued.
“Now is the time to say, ‘we leave no-one to die.’ And now is the time to say again, ‘we send a ship and much more’,” he added, in support of illegal migration into Europe. “We welcome people at Greek safe harbours. Safer spaces for all.”
“We all have privileges, and can use them for more justice. We can be allies for each other. We are here. There are also many of us. And we are never quiet again,” he concluded.
Ceasar was slammed by Jürgen Braun, a member of the German Parliament for the right-wing populist AfD group.
“’God is queer,’ says one of those sad, stupid jokes of a ‘pastor’,” Braun tweeted in German, adding that he believed Ceasar’s comments would have been labeled as “blasphemy” if they had been uttered in the past.
The Lutheran Church in Germany has lost 400,000 members in recent years, and their embrace of progressive politics is often cited as the cause. Controversial leftward moves have included the direct funding of migrant “rescue” ships in the Mediterranean.
Last year, Annette Kurschus, the Chairman of the Council of the German Lutheran Church, demanded that “gender departments and equality bodies” be instituted into the regional churches in order to combat “screams of hatred” against LGBTQI individuals.
But the Lutheran Church is not the only religious institution in the country facing criticism for having shifted too far left.
Last July, the “Synodal Path,” a Catholic group calling for the blessing of same-sex marriages and for women to be admitted into the priesthood, was condemned by the Vatican. In a statement, the Vatican warned the group that they had no authority to “instruct bishops on doctrine or morality.”
The progressivism of the German Catholic Church had even caught the attention of the late Pope Benedict XVI.
In January, posthumous writings from the Pope were released which revealed his opinion of the Church in Germany. The Pope alleged that some within the nation’s Church held a “fury” towards his conservative beliefs, and that “the appearance of my every word immediately causes a murderous shouting from them.”
