Pastor Alistair Begg recently reaffirmed his controversial advice to a grandmother in 2023, which encouraged her to attend her grandson’s wedding to a transgender individual.
Begg, whose radio ministry “Truth For Life” is broadcast by nearly 1,800 radio stations across the country, faced significant backlash that year when his comments went viral on social media. He advised the Christian grandmother that she should attend the wedding and buy a gift to avoid reinforcing “judgmental” stereotypes about Christians.
During an interview published this week by the Christian podcast “Expositor’s Collective,” Begg explained that he was trying to be compassionate with his advice.
“If people said, ‘What do you know about Begg?’ I don't think compassion is necessarily the first word that they would use,” he stated.
He clarified, “I'm not trying to be unkind to myself,” regarding how others might perceive him. “I think, realistically, they might say he's very direct, they might say he's funny. They could say a bunch of stuff, but I don't think they'd say ‘compassion.’”
“So now, in my one attempt at compassion, I should have known better,” he added, as the audience laughed. “I don't do compassion. I do compassion, all hell breaks loose against me.”
Begg, who has been in pastoral ministry since 1975 and served as the senior pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1983 until last year, echoed the sentiments he expressed in a recent sermon following the controversy. During that sermon, he stated he feels no need to repent over his advice.
“I repent for a bad attitude, or an unkindness, or whatever it might be, but I'm not going to repent for giving somebody compassionate encouragement in relationships,” he said.
Begg further claimed that he was attacked by his own friends for showing compassion, some of whom turned against him without reaching out first.
“I had guys that I played golf with, Christian guys, who went on and did podcasts and [were] throwing me under the bus,” he explained. “But they never, ever picked up a phone. They never verified anything at all. That's distressing.”
The late pastor John MacArthur, who claimed to know Begg well enough to have known his son as an infant, publicly rebuked him for his advice. MacArthur suggested that Begg’s ministry would be judged by his stance on the transgender wedding.
Days after his comments became widely circulated, Begg was removed from the website of the Shepherd’s Conference, which is a ministry of MacArthur's Grace Community Church.
