Kim Burrell Loses Radio Show After Calling Homosexuality 'Perverted' as Backlash Mounts

Jan 06, 2017 01:54 PM EST

The Kim Burrell saga isn't over.

On Friday, it was announced that the Gospel singer's radio show, "Bridging the Gap," had been cancelled amid backlash from LGBT activists over anti-gay comments she made in a sermon delivered at Love & Liberty Fellowship Pentecostal Church in Houston, Texas.

Burrell's show was broadcast on Texas Southern University's KTSU-FM. "The Kim Burrell show is no longer airing as part of KTSU Radio programming," KTSU-FM said in a statement to Deadline on Thursday.

The controversy stems from a sermon in which Burrell warned her congregation that if they engaged in homosexual behavior while they professed to be Christians in 2017 that they would die from it.

"Anybody in the room who is living with a homosexual spirit, beg God to free you. If you play with it in 2017 you'll die from it. If you play with it in 2017 in God's house you'll die from it. Y'all came to hear about carnal, I came to tell you about sin," she declared.

"That perverted homosexual spirit is a spirit of delusion and confusion and it has deceived many men and women. And it has caused a stain on the body of Christ. And those homosexual spirits have been angry and they come up against you [saying] 'you gotta love everybody.' Sit down you serpent."

"You cannot give instructions to God's holiness with that much perversion," she continued. "You are perverted, and its coming into our church and it has embarrassed the Kingdom of God."

Shortly before footage of the sermon footage surfaced, Burrell was set to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that aired on Thursday to sing "I See Victory" With Pharrell Williams, a song from the film Hidden Figures. But DeGeneres canceled Burrell's appearance after she said the singer said some "not so nice things about homosexuals."

During the show, Pharrell also weighed in on the controversy, telling Ellen that "there's no space, there's no room for any kind of prejudice in 2017 and moving on."

[Burrell]'s a fantastic singer," he continued, emphasizing that "God is love". "I love her, just like I love everybody else, and we all got to get used to that - we all have to get used to everyone's differences and understand that this is a big, gigantic, beautiful, colorful world, and it only works with inclusion and empathy."

While Burrell has endured criticism for her comments, she's also received a fair amount of support. In a tweet, Pastor Shirley Caesar suggested that Burrell should've stated her opinion about homosexuality sooner, and TV personality Tamar Braxton said Americans should show the embattled singer "love and prayers" instead of hate.

In turn, Burrell took to Facebook Live in a series of videos to clarify her comments for anyone affected by the sermon video clip.

"I never said that all gays were going to Hell. That never came out of my mouth. Y'all quit spreading that. And if you're gonna listen to the video, listen right, it's not of my nature, natural or spiritual," she explained. "I was addressing church people, and let's get specific, ones who were in my church."

"We're not in a war against flesh and blood. We are not in a war with that. I care about God's creation and every person from the LGBT and everything else, any other kind of thing that is supporting gays. I never said LGBT last night. I said S-I-N. And whatever falls into sin was preached," Burrell said.