When Kim Burrell apologized for past comments she’s made against the LGBTQ community in 2024, it was because she felt “it was time.”
The 52-year-old pastor and gospel star appeared on a recent episode of the Jamal Bryant podcast “Let’s Be Clear” when a thoughtful discussion about the Black Church’s evolving relationship with the queer community arose. Burrell reflected on her past comments and shared more of her insight behind her apology.
“I decided to hear what they had to say, and I felt it was time, because what’s an apology if it’s not needed?” she said, adding that the apology came after she took the time to really listen to the response she was receiving.
“I didn’t hear it as ridicule, I swear it,” she said of the pushback. “I heard it as ‘Help give me clarity. You hurt me.’ That was wrong. I don’t care what my motive was … It was wrong, and so it needed to be fixed. Those people matter that heard it wrongly.”
She went on to say there are many who have been living by “misapplied scripture” and it has “given [the Black Church] a place in the world that is not respected.”
“We have to almost beg people to believe in God again, because he has been named something that he is not, and he has been represented in large spaces, in the nature that he is not,” she continued. “A version of him has been taught that has made a lot of people not want the true and living God.”
In 2017, the “Thank You Jesus” singer came under fire when comments she made during a sermon deemed anti-LGBTQ were leaked in footage online. At the time, she defended referring to the “homosexual spirit” as “perverted.”
“To every person who is dealing with the homosexual spirit, that has it, I love you and God loves you, but God hates the sin in you and me. Anything that is against the nature of God,” she said. “I make no excuses or apologies. My love is as pure as it comes.”
Then, in July 2024, the gospel singer sang a new tune and formally apologized during her acceptance speech at the Stellar Awards.
“There’s nothing more hurtful than to think—to imagine—that you’ve said something in the name of God, and it hurt somebody,” she said during her acceptance speech. “You know, we have church lingo. We have church jargon that everybody doesn’t get. And sometimes you have to say it for the people in the back. And for that, I want to apologize to the LGBTQ community.”
She added, “We want them to have strength and to sincerely know that we must all do the work to embrace all of what God’s people—and show forth his love to everyone. Amen,” she continued. “Tonight, I hope this award and this moment can be the beginning of bridge-building and listening to each other as we follow peace with all men and develop the character of God, which requires seeing God.”
In a response to the apology GLAAD recgoinzed it as a “first step toward full accountability” and “evidence of a tipping point where Burrell, the Black church, and the gospel music industry can recognize and accept us all as people of faith and as worthy of Black liberation as anyone else.”
While talking to Bryant, Burrell implored those who have been put off of God by hateful rhetoric to not let that keep them away if the desire to know God is still there.
“He exists beyond our inabilities to say that we’re sorry. He exists beyond what we call church,” she said. “And I just want those who have an interest in God to take interest in him based on your own account, search for him through what where it is you believe he is.”
She added, “I just hope that people who have been offended by me, by other preachers, will consider God again beyond us.”
