An anti-LGBTQ+ pastor in South Carolina described as Trump’s top pastor has announced plans to open a K-12 Christian military academy free from LGBTQ+ and other “woke agenda” teachings.
Pastor Mark Burns of the Harvest Praise & Worship Center in Easley announced the creation of the new Burns Military Christian Academy in a post to Facebook this month. Burns, who was featured by Time as one of Trump’s top pastors and has a history of transphobic and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, said the new military academy will use curricula based on Abeka Curriculum, a Christian homeschooling company, and will open its doors for the 2024-25 academic school year.
“Our mission is to provide an affordable, pro-American education with a strong emphasis on biblical teachings, and to create an environment where children can learn and grow without the need for discipline or court-ordered attendance,” Burns announced in a post to Facebook, adding, “Our school aims to instill good morals and a love for our country in our students while ensuring that they are not exposed to LGBTQ, CRT, or ‘woke’ teachings.”
“I believe it is the obligation for the Body of Christ to protect our children from such liberal unbiblical ideologies, which is why I've founded the Burns Military Christian Academy,” Burns told Newsweek. “Our focus is not to wish harm on any LGBTQ persons but to pray for them and show them the love of Jesus Christ while teaching against that and other sinful lifestyles that the Bible warns us against.”
Burns regularly attacks the LGBTQ+ community and the transgender community in particular.
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“Transgenderism [sic] is a mental disorder,” Burns said in a video posted to Facebook. “And it needs to be dealt with by medical professionals, not encouraged by woke-ism or liberal left parents or liberal left psychiatrists or even liberal left doctors who are trying to challenge biology.
Burns added that “transgenderism” needed to be “solved” by those who “understand it is a mental disorder.”
He has called for the arrest of parents of trans kids and has compared the LGBTQ+ “agenda” to the techniques used by the Nazis to indoctrinate children. According to Right Wing Watch, he described LGBTQ+ studies as indoctrination and akin to the practices used by the Nazis to train “future stormtroopers” while they were young.
“That is 1922 Nazi Germany all over again,” Burns said before later correcting himself on the rise of Hitler. Hitler was imprisoned in 1923 for a failed coup, and he and the Nazis did not seize power until 10 years later in 1933.
