Bill Lee’s Uber-Conservative Home Church
Grace Chapel, the Williamson County evangelical church of which Governor Lee is a longtime member, and its association with Islam is quite literally damning. One guest pastor, Michael Brown, gave a sermon on March 1, 2015, on “Understanding Radical Islam,” which he says he was specifically asked to give by Grace Chapel’s pastor Steve Berger. Brown started his sermon admitting that maybe not all Muslims support violence or are trying to take over the country with Shariah law, but as he went on, the implications are clear: Christians in government are only trying to do “what’s right,” whereas in Islam, “there’s no separation of church and state,” and if Muslims take over we could all be beheaded.
Pastor Steve Berger
Governor Bill Lee and Grace Chapel Pastor Steve Berger are proponents of gay conversion therapy, i.e., the discredited belief that one can “pray the gay away.”
Tennessee is unfortunately not one of the 15 states and territories that has banned the practice, despite opposition by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the World Health Organization. But Berger not only preaches about the practice, he’s on the board of the Reformed Hope Network, which describes itself as “a coalition of ministries serving those who desire to overcome sinful relational and sexual issues in their lives and those impacted by such behavior, particularly homosexuality.”