Calling it a betrayal of Christ and his core Evangelical audience, outspoken megachurch preacher Mark Driscoll offered a strong rebuke to Christian producer and reality TV star Chip Gaines for defending the inclusion of a gay couple on his new television series “Back to the Frontier.”
“I’m assuming the Gaines’ are a little perplexed at the backlash that they deserve,” said Driscoll, founding pastor of Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the now-defunct Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, in a video response to Gaines on Monday.
“So, the way it works is this. If you profess Christ, you need to be loyal to Christ,” he continued. “And if you profess Christ, those who profess Christ, they have a measure of trust that they give you, not because you’ve earned it, but because they love Christ. So when you see something like the massive, very wealthy platform that has been built, it is built with a core base audience of people who probably love Christ or at least hold to conservative traditional values that are somewhat based on biblical teaching. And so for the Gaines’ to deviate from that is to betray their entire core audience.”
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Driscoll also called the couple “remarkably tone deaf,” claiming the American people recently rejected the liberal shift in American values with the election of President Donald Trump to a second term.
“We just had an election. I don’t know if you guys saw that. It seemed like a resounding national referendum to stop this spread of trying to sexualize children and normalize perverse behavior,” he said.
The new series, executive-produced by Chip and Joanna Gaines, premiered a week ago on the couple’s Magnolia Network. It features gay couple Jason and Joe Hanna-Riggs as one of three couples living without access to running water or electricity as homesteaders did in the 1800s. The couple appeared on the series with their two children, Realtor.com noted.
Even though he doesn’t know the couple, Driscoll said he and his wife, like many Evangelical families, have long enjoyed the Gaines’ television productions. The Gaineses are known to attend Antioch Community Church in Waco, Texas, which promotes a traditional biblical view on sexuality.
On Sunday, however, in response to social media backlash from conservatives, Chip Gaines suggested that his critics were being too judgmental and engaged in an extended defense of their presence on the show.
“Talk, ask [questions,] listen.. maybe even learn. Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. Judge 1st, understand later/never. It’s a sad [Sunday] when ‘nonbelievers’ have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian,” Gaines wrote in a post on X.
Among the critics were Franklin Graham, conservative Christian blogger Matt Walsh and Joel Berry, managing editor of the satirical website The Babylon Bee.
Driscoll said that until the 1970s, homosexuality was classified as a mental health disorder and claims it is now on a “slippery slope” towards being normalized in the Christian community.
“This behavior was listed as a mental illness during my lifetime. And it has gone from a mental illness to a civil right. And it has gone from those who don’t love Christ advocating it to those who do claim to love Christ tolerating it,” he argued.
“One generation tolerates a sin, the next generation celebrates that sin and then the generation after that no longer knows that it’s a sin. This is the slippery slope. This is using a platform that was given to you by using the name of Christ and by exercising some commitment to traditional values. And this is a betrayal of Christ and your core base,” Driscoll said in his open rebuke of Gaines.
“If you’re online defending yourself and shooting people and you’re being judgmental and accusing other leaders of criticizing you, well, shame on you,” he added. “You’re the one who farted in your own elevator. So, you got to smell it. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
Driscoll also briefly rebuked Baylor University, which is also in Waco, Texas, where the Gaines are located, for what he calls betraying traditional Christian principles by embracing diversity, equity and inclusion ideology. He then called on Chip Gaines to “lead with courage.”
“Chip, you’re a husband and a father. You’re a Christian and you’re a man. And you have a responsibility in the sight of God to lead with courage and with authority and with clarity,” Driscoll said. “If you fail to do so, you’re just another guy who failed and failed miserably and failed publicly. That doesn’t make you a victim. That makes you a fool.”
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