YouTube bans John Piper’s audiobook, ‘Coronavirus and Christ’
YouTube has censored the audiobook version of Reformed theologian John Piper’s new book, Coronavirus and Christ, claiming it violated “community standards”. “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” reads a message on the now blocked video by Piper who is the chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minnesota and the founder of DesiringGod.org.
The video got over 187,000 views within roughly five weeks that it remained on the platform, according to Disrn. It was released on April 8th until it was blocked last Friday. An archived version of the audiobook is still available here and on the Crossway Podcast here.
The censorship came amid a call by twenty-two military chaplains to “discipline” and possibly court-martial a senior army chaplain for sending nearly three-dozen other chaplains an email containing a copy of the e-book, Coronavirus and Christ.
The twenty-two military chaplains, some of whom are from the LGBT community, had a problem with the book because it says that “some people will be infected with the coronavirus as a specific judgment from God because of their sinful attitudes and actions.”
Representing the twenty-two, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which advocates for a strict separation of church and state within the U.S. military, urged Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to punish Senior Chaplain Col. Moon H. Kim, the command chaplain of U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys in South Korea. This unit is the largest U.S. military installation outside of the United States.
In a section titled, “Examples of Specific Judgements on Specific Sins,” Piper wrote that one example “is the sin of homosexual intercourse,” citing Romans 1:27 in which the Apostle Paul states that “men committing shameless acts with men” received in themselves “the due penalty for their error.”
Source: christianpost.com
