Pastor, author, and apologist Sam Allberry has resigned from his position at his church and from the Keller Institute after revealing that he had been involved in an inappropriate relationship with a man several years ago.
Allberry, a gay Anglican priest who endorsed celibacy for the same-sex attracted, served as associate pastor at Immanuel Nashville Church alongside leaders such as Russell Moore, Ray Ortlund, Gavin Ortlund, Barnabas Piper, and T. J. Tims. According to a statement from The Gospel Coalition:
A statement from Immanuel Church about Sam Allberry reveals they knew he engaged in an inappropriate relationship with another man in 2022 but didn’t believe it rose to the level of being disqualifying, and decided to retain him as a pastor. They later discovered new information about this relationship that was previously undisclosed, and then terminated his employment.
Note: A previously published version of this article read, “still decided to bring him on as a pastor,” implying the church knew about the 2022 relationship in 2023. The church’s statement, while confusingly worded, does not necessarily indicate this.
In addition to his apologetic work, he wrote several books, including Is God Anti-Gay?, Biblical Manhood, One with My Lord: The Life-Changing Reality of Being in Christ and What God Has to Say About Our Bodies. He was a prominent partner and editor with The Gospel Coalition, the founding editor of Living Out, a ministry for those struggling with same-sex attraction, and one of the key architects for the acceptance of same-sex attraction within evangelical circles.
SSAC is the movement within the larger evangelical movement that narrowly defines the sin of homosexuality to include only acting upon one’s sinful desires, and defines the sinful desires themselves as simply a part of a person’s identity and something God is content with not changing in the heart of the believer.
The false beliefs of the SSAC movement include:
- Same-sex attraction is not a result of early childhood abuse and is always unchosen.
- Same-sex attraction only becomes sin if it is acted upon.
- Homosexual acts are no different than other sins.
- Christian regeneration has no influence over same-sex desire.
- The church is guilty of oppressing this group instead of helping them bear their cross of unchangeable same-sex attraction.
Pastor Shawn Mathis on X (@ShawnMathis1972) reveals troubling elements of Allberry’s past ministry, whose ideology may have played a part in his actions, writing:
Back when Allberry was a writer and eventually an editor at @TGC, he used his status to soften the churches’ resistance as I show below.
Will they recant from using and endorsing him, participating in the queering of the American church?
He denied personal attraction to gay sex was wrong & was OK with being gay while teaching that “David was a pretty boy.”
1. OK with personal attraction to sex w/ men: “So, I would be uncomfortable with saying same-sex attraction is sin.” Interview on White Horse Inn, Sept. 2015
“I think if you say to someone that their same-sex attraction itself is sin you are effectively saying you need to repent of being fallen. And I am not quite sure what that means or what that looks like.” Sam Allberry, “Is Same-Sex Attraction A Sin?” @ Moore’s ERLC website
2. OK with being gay: Questioner: “If you could be shown the roots of your same-sex attraction …and you could be brought to complete heterosexuality, would you be open to that?”
Allberry: “Would I be open to it? I mean yes and no actually. There are times I would think, “Actually I would like to be a husband to a wife and a father to a kid”…But in another sense, I really don’t mind…”—2017 interview at Lansdowne church.
While working at Living Out (which he founded), they published an article stating this: “Godliness is not heterosexuality – in fact, we would say that we are perhaps more godly due to our homosexuality than anything else.”
3. OK with breaking gender stereotypes: “in contemporary language, David was a ‘pretty boy’ [1 Samuel 16:12] and he was someone who spent an inordinate amount of time playing the harp and writing poems about his feelings.” He based this absurdity on a double error. He wrongly assumed that music and poetry are not manly pursuits and misapplied the Old Testament Hebrew word.”
“He knew what it was like, if I could put it this way, to have body image issues because we are told in Isaiah 53 that people turn their faces away from him…there was no greater dysphoria than when He who knew no sin became sin for us. That is the ultimate experience of being in the wrong flesh.”
Allberry: “Am I saying that transgendered people are all futile in their thinking, foolish in their hearts, and darkened in their minds? No. I am saying that is true of all of us, without exception. Paul is making those comments to the human race…None of us, not a single one of us, is qualified to determine our own identity. And whatever identity we come up for ourselves will not be a good fit.”–“How Can I Know My Gender?”
15 responses to “Pastor Sam Allberry Resigns From Church After Revealing ‘Inappropriate relationship with another man’”
What is meant by, “A statement from Immanuel Church about Sam Allberry reveals they knew he engaged in an inappropriate relationship with another man in 2022 but didn’t believe it rose to the level of being disqualifying, and still decided to bring him on as pastor.” According to Immanuel’s report which you included in your article is says that they learned about the relationship in 2024. They hired him in 2023. Saying that they knew about the 2022 relationship “and still decided to bring him on as pastor,” is inaccurate because they hired him in 2023 and did not learn about the relationship until 2024. It’s clear that whatever they were told did not encompass everything, given the new revelations in 2026. Allberry can definitely be accused of dishonesty. And you can criticize the leadership for bringing on someone who taught things which are objectionable. But I’m concerned that the leadership of the church is being misrepresented here as willfully hiring him despite being informed of the 2022 relationship. According to the report, they had no knowledge of the relationship when they hired him.
Yes, thank you for the clarification! We’ve updated that section.
White Horse Inn and Michael Horton are compromised on this subject also, as the quote above indicates. Jon Harris did a podcast on their compromise a few years ago.
Its devastating news for me. I thought Sam was an example of someone that had a sin “thorn in the side issue” that he was overcoming by trying to walk with Christ and maintain a biblical conviction. I struggle with same sex attraction. I responded to the gospel at the age of 8,long before any awareness of sex same sex attraction was known. But I still developed that problem. In the years after that,I sought assurance of my salvation. If its true that salvation completely delivers someone from same sex attraction and that they wont have that anymore after salvation,where does that leave the numerous folks who have come to Christ,believed the gospel,hold to the biblical standard on homosexuality,but still do struggle with same sex attraction. Are we all deceived and unsaved,and unable to be saved? Thats more or less whats being said here
Repentance is not the idea that you rid yourself of all sin or disordered desires before you come to Christ. No, repentance is turning to Christ WITH all of your sin and saying, “help!” It is turning from the sin in faith that Christ will wash you and make you holy. The point is, all of us have disordered desires that need to be submitted to Christ. We all need to humble ourselves before God in recognition that our hearts are far worse than we know, and the Holy Spirit is continually sanctifying us. Whether a person is lusting after men or women, they should never be content with that. It isn’t that you are “all deceived and unsaved and unable to be saved,” it is that you should never resign yourself to that label. You should be willing to call it sin and work to mortify that sin in your life.
Chris, I would encourage you to see a biblical counselor–someone who will ask the right questions, take you to Scripture, and help you begin putting off your old desires and putting on the new. I have discovered that often people think that they are innocent in their desires and/or thoughts (that they aren’t asking for them, but they just happen). And yet, they learn that the heart is indeed deceitfully wicked and often more complex than they know. It is humbling, but you bear more responsibility than you realize. The good news is that Christ can indeed expose the root of the sin and transform your desires.
Romans 1 Judgment being fulfilled before our very eyes.
[…] Nashville, Tennessee, church’s statement, first reported by Protestia, said church elders were first made aware of the relationship between Allberry and another man in […]
[…] Pastor Sam Allberry Resigns From Church After Revealing ‘Inappropriate relationship with another m… […]
[…] Nashville, Tennessee, church’s statement, first reported by Protestia, said church elders were first made aware of the relationship between Allberry and another man in […]
[…] Allberry, who joined the church in 2023, was found to have engaged in the relationship prior to his appointment. The church leadership, which includes figures such as Russell Moore and Ray Ortlund, initially did not consider the incident disqualifying. However, their stance shifted with new information surfacing in 2024, as reported by Protestia. […]
[…] Protestia reports that the relationship had already ended before Allberry’s appointment and that the church became aware of it in 2024 but did not believe his conduct amounted to disqualifying behaviour. The church leadership changed their position after new information came to light. […]
[…] Nashville, Tennessee, church’s statement, first reported by Protestia, said church elders were first made aware of the relationship between Allberry and another man in […]
[…] Protestia reports that the relationship had already ended before Allberry’s appointment and that the church became aware of it in 2024 but did not believe his conduct amounted to disqualifying behaviour. The church leadership changed their position after new information came to light. […]
[…] Nashville, Tennessee, church’s statement, first reported by Protestia, said church elders were first made aware of the relationship between Allberry and another man in […]
[…] “There are no rocks being thrown from this corner,” says Dominic Steele on a special edition this week of his Pastor’s Heart podcast. Sydney Anglicanism’s leading podcaster is speaking about Sam Allberry, a strong advocate for celibacy among LGBT Christian has been “revealed to have engaged in an inappropriate relationship with an adult man,” according to a statement from Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tennessee. (The statement was first reported here.) […]