The Allendale United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg, Florida, has blatantly distorted scripture to promote drag and even featured a drag queen teaching children during a service this month.
An October 2, 2022, stream shows the service held at Allendale United Methodist Church, which featured a drag queen — Ms. Penny Cost (a spin-off of Pentecost) — who spoke to children at the front of the church.
“I kind of feel powerful when I put on a dress like this and a big wig and lots of makeup,” the drag queen told two masked-up children, who were called up to speak to the man at the front of the church.
The drag queen explained that dressing in drag “kind of helps me to say things that I don’t have a confidence to say outside of it.” He later added that he uses the name Isaac and they/them pronouns when he is not dressed in drag. He also revealed that he is a seminary student.
“My family didn’t go to church; we were barely not religious. We wash our hands before and we pray. They were both kind of equal, praying and washing hands,” he said.
“When I got to college, I started asking deeper questions. And I found a boy that I loved, and he invited me to church and so I went to hang out with them. And I kind of found an outlet and so several years later, I am still asking a lot of questions,” the 24-year-old drag queen added before the church official used the moment to completely distort scripture.
“One of the things I think is great about Miss Penny Cost is she reminds us that we follow a God who calls us to not conform the things of this world, that we’re supposed to be transformed by the renewal of our minds,” he said, distorting Romans 12:2, in which followers of Jesus are instructed to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
However, the church took a completely different approach to the scripture, which calls on Christians to renew their mind in alignment with God’s instructions and ways, using discernment. These leaders, however, appear to be bending scripture to promote un-Biblical leftist doctrine pushed by progressive leaders.
“And that means that what I think today may have to change tomorrow if I continue to renew my mind, and it’s so cool that we serve a God that calls us to continue to grow and continue to change into something new, and to not be bound by the ways that the world confines us sometimes– that we’re supposed to live differently,” he said.
His remarks are ironic, given the fact that he is using the scripture in reverse of what it actually says, contending that one is to conform their mind to push the ideology widely accepted by the world rather than using the Word of God to conform one’s mind to reject things of the world:
The church leader continued, thanking God for calling the drag queen to “a life of service and preaching and pastoring and taking care of your people.”
The drag queen eventually took the stage again, telling the congregation that they were “here to learn and to grow and to deconstruct and to reimagine what church can be, who church can be for, and how church can feel together.”
“It can be a place unafraid to denounce queerphobia, a place unafraid to name the sin of racism and to call for an end to white supremacy, a place where all have equal and equitable access not just to the pulpit itself, to the sanctuary, but to God themself, and all that it represents within the community, so that we may be a community called forth to collective flourishing,” he said, assigning God a nonbinary pronoun.
The drag queen later announced that he is a candidate for ordained ministry.
“That’s right. They’re gonna give me a church one day,” he said excitedly to applause. “This hot mess express up here is going to be preaching regularly.”
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