Tim Tebow has booked a speaking engagement at a Texas church run by an infamous anti-gay, anti-Semitic pastor, according to the Daily Mail.
The Jets reserve quarterback will talk at First Baptist Dallas Church on April 28. Rev. Robert Jeffress, the church paster, has said that “70 percent of the gay population” has AIDS and that Island, Judaism and Mormonism are religions that come from “the pit of hell.”
Tebow’s message to the church’s 11,000 members has not been released. He’ll be speaking at two services that Sunday morning. In the past, the devout Christian and son of missionaries has been quiet about his views on gay marriage.
Tebow speaking at churches is common. He talked at Arizona’s Impact Church in Scottsdale on Feb. 3 and spoke in front of 30,000 at the Celebration Church in Georgetown, Texas. Tebow has trademarked his “Tebowing” celebration, which is him demonstrably getting on one knee with his head bowed in prayer.
Jeffress, meanwhile, has come under fire for his hateful comments.
“There are a disproportionate amount of assaults against children by homosexuals than by heterosexuals, you can’t deny that,” he said in July.
In November, he told his congregation that President Obama’s re-election was “paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.” Jeffress did say he will be changing the way he speaks about homosexuals from the pulpit – he’ll no longer single it out for special condemnation.
“It would be the height of hypocrisy to condemn homosexuality and not adultery or unbiblical divorce,” Jeffress said.
Jeffress said that he is now open to the possibility that sexual orientation is something that you are born with and it cannot be cured. He does still feel, though, that homosexual acts are sinful and he still plans on talking about that with churchgoers.
“We cannot pick and choose what parts of God’s word we are called to share,” Jeffress said. “God gave it to us, not to hurt people, but to help people.”