“To go along to get along, to bargain with bullies by repeating lies and affirming someone else’s delusion, will never bring harmony. It cracks open the door just enough for darkness and destruction to flood in and take over lives and churches. Christians must stand for God’s truth, or we will not stand at all.”
A school administrator at Grace Christian School in Florida says that he has received death threats after the school announced that, in accordance with decades-long policy, it would not allow any students living a transgender, homosexual, or sexually immoral lifestyle to attend the school. No, it is not a Seventh-day Adventist school, unfortunately.
The school is not backing down.
"If I backed down from something like this, I'm abandoning what God has said is the truth. I …. kind of rack my brain to like, ‘How is this hard for people to understand? This is what God said.’ This is one of the many reasons we have a Christian school, and we're not going to abandon this policy. God has spoken on these issues," Grace Christian School Administrator Barry McKeen told Fox News Digital in a phone interview Sunday.
The threats came in reaction to an article by NBC News, which published several paragraphs of a June 6 email in which McKeen reiterated to school parents the school’s commitment to biblical sexuality. The email,
“We believe that God created mankind in His image: male (man) and female (woman), sexually different but with equal dignity. Therefore, one’s biological sex must be affirmed, and no attempts should be made to physically change, alter, or disagree with one’s biological gender — including, but not limited to, elective sex reassignment, transvestite, transgender, or non-binary gender fluid acts of conduct (Genesis 1:26-28). Students in school will be referred to by the gender on their birth certificate and be referenced in name in the same fashion.
“We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church (Genesis 2:24; Leviticus 18:1-30; Romans 1:26-29; I Corinthians 5:1; I Corinthians 6:9; I Thessalonians 4:2-7),” the email added. “Students who are found participating in these lifestyles will be asked to leave the school immediately.”
Grace Christian School “fielded hundreds, probably thousands, of phone calls Thursday, Friday, over the weekend, with just some of the most outrageous things: People threatening to burn my house down, threatening to kill my family,” said Barry McKeen, school administrator and pastor of Grace Community Church of Valrico, Florida, which runs the school.
In response, Pastor McKeen published a video address on Thursday night insisting that the school would not back away from its commitment to follow the Bible. “Why we were chosen for this experience, I do not know,” he said. “Almost every Christian school has such a policy.”
But Pastor McKeen did know one thing. “I don’t answer to NBC,” he explained. “I answer to God. And so, if a lot of people are mad at me, I’m sorry. I don’t like that they’re mad at me, but at the end of the day, I answer to God.”
We appreciate this school’s commitment to God’s expressed will for human sexuality. It is a commitment that we share at Fulcrum7.
Contrast this school with several Adventist institutions who have already capitulated on the topic of biblical sexuality (two schools in California, for instance).
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“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13).