Actress Ellen Page is blasting Jurassic World star Chris Pratt for his support of an “infamously anti-LGBTQ” church.
Pratt recently made an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to promote his new film Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, and ended up speaking about Hillsong Church.
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Page retweeted a Hollywood Reporter story about the interview, and added, “Oh. K. Um. But his church is infamously anti lgbtq so maybe address that too?”
Oh. K. Um. But his church is infamously anti lgbtq so maybe address that too? //t.co/meg8m69FeF
— Ellen Page (@EllenPage) February 8, 2019
Page is not the first person to draw attention to the fact that Hillsong Church leaders have not expressed strong support of the LGBTQ community in the past.
In a resurfaced GQ interview from 2015, Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz stated that he believes homosexuality is a sin, and added that he would not allow anyone who identified as LBGTQ to hold a position of leadership in his church.
He then went on to speak about a specific situation involving two men in the choir at the church’s New York division.
“These two men in particular are amazing human beings. And they are going through a really amazing journey called life. Yes, their sexuality is involved with it, but it’s not as cut-and-dry as you think it is. And if they make a decision to live as gay men, they are going to get married, our stance in this church is there’s going to be a limited involvement when it comes to leadership, because you don’t believe what I believe,” Lentz explained
“This would create friction that wouldn’t be fair to the people that we’re serving,” he added. “If you believe that homosexuality is God’s will for your life, and I disagree, well, what if you’re a leader and, you know, a young man comes up to you, and he has questions about his sexuality? What are you going to tell him? What I believe or what you believe?”
In a blog post that same year, Hillsong senior pastor Brian Houston confirmed Lentz’s statement on the church’s stance, by stating that the church welcomes gay members but does not “affirm” a gay lifestyle.
“Hillsong Church welcomes ALL people but does not affirm all lifestyles. Put clearly, we do not affirm a gay lifestyle and because of this we do not knowingly have actively gay people in positions of leadership, either paid or unpaid,” he wrote. “I recognise this one statement alone is upsetting to people on both sides of this discussion, which points to the complexity of the issue for churches all over the world. This won’t make everyone happy and to some, this stance may even be seen as hypocritical. We are a gay welcoming church but we are not a church that affirms a gay lifestyle.”
In addition to Pratt, other celebrities such as Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Hailey Baldwin, Nick Jonas, and Vanessa Hudgens have also been known to call Hillsong their place of worship.
