A prominent gay ‘Christian’ journalist and son of former a SBC president, Jonathan Merritt, announced his apostasy on Twitter over the weekend. Merritt joins Joshua Harris, Marty Sampson, and a string of others who have renounced their Christian faith over the last few weeks.
We have written about Merritt many times before, including the post Can Evangelicals Stop Acting Like Jonathan Merrit Isn’t Totally Gay? Most recently Merritt spoke up for Democrat presidential candidate and New Age mystic, Marianne Williamson, said that legalizing pot was a ‘social justice issue,’ and promoted drag queen library storytimes. Merritt is a strong supporter and close colleague with Beth Moore, Ed Stetzer, Russell Moore, and many in the Evangelical Intelligentsia.
After being ‘outed’ as a homosexual by another gay writer with whom he had a gay relationship, Merritt was helped by Ed Stetzer to do damage control in Christianity Today. Later, Stetzer and Merritt opined in a video that far from being a “curse,” homosexuality was a “crown.”
Merritt has used his credentials as the son of James Merritt, a former president of the SBC and a leader in the ‘woke’ SBC Social Justice Movement, as well as his history as an evangelical, to drive evangelicalism to the hard-left through his reporting for various news agencies. He has been a constant and steady proponent of progressive evangelicalism.
And now, like Rachel Held Evans before her timely death and so many others, Merritt is denouncing evangelicalism altogether and is acknowledging that he is abandoning that faith.
No doubt, Merritt will be seeking a faux-Christianity in one of the liberal non-evangelical denominations, like the progressive Episcopalian Church. This is where pro-LGBT apostates seem to find a home when they announce their departure from authentic Christianity. After Jen Hatmaker announced her support for sodomy and gay marriage, she joined the Episcopal Church (Beth Moore congratulated her for leaving and being baptized by a famously pro-gay bishop).
Likely, this means that Merritt will soon be coming out of the closet for good, being surrounded by pseudo-Christians and functional universalists who maintain a soulless liturgy that maintains the feel of the Christian tradition but is void of any of its historic beliefs except for mere theism.
Beth Moore, Ed Stetzer, Russell Moore, and almost the entirety of The Gospel Coalition leadership council have repeatedly leaned upon Merritt to express their culture-changing and doctrine-waffling agendas in the mainstream media. They would have been better off evangelizing him rather than using him.
