West Virginia pastor rejects food over LGBTQ support. Now his food bank is empty.

Alvin Christian says he won’t accept food from groups that support anything LGBTQ-related—even if that leaves countless families with nothing

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Evangelist Alvin Christian is the man behind God’s Store House Food Bank in Bluefield, West Virginia, a city located in the southernmost part of the state. Since 2023, the pastor has helped feed up to 800 families a day.

Alvin Christian in 2023 (screenshot via WVVA)

If you’ve ever worked at a food pantry, you know donations can come from individuals, larger food banks, or local businesses with excess product they can’t sell anymore. As recently as last week, Christian was letting supporters know everything he had in store for them.

But he recently filmed a video showing viewers that his freezers were completely empty. There was no food coming in, and therefore no food going out.

In the now-deleted reel, Christian explained that there were outlets trying to give him the resources he needed… he just refused to take them. Because, after doing his own research, he found out those groups worked with or supported LGBTQ people.

A copy of the video was preserved by Facebook user nes.quick.737, who said the pastor “would rather let his people STARVE than to accept food for the pantry from the LGBTQ community.”

Good morning, folks. This is Pastor Alvin over here at God’s Store House Food Bank. I know I’ve had a lot of messages and a lot of concerns and wondering when and why we haven’t given out food.

As you can see, our cupboards are empty, our freezers are empty. We have nothing in the warehouse as far as food-wise at this moment.

But to let you know, the reason why we’re in this position is because I’d done some research. I made the phone calls. I talked to the proper people, and I asked a question: Are y’all tied in or partners with LGBQT-whatever movement? And they said yes.

I done some more research and found out that they are part of the gay rights movement.

Well, as a man of God, and standing in faith with God, I refuse to receive food from anybody that has anything that is tied into that. Now… hear this, I will not—will not!—turn anybody away. I will not discriminate against anybody. I will be honest. I would love you the same. I will pray for you. I will give you food if we got it.

But I want you to know that I am, first of all, a man of God, and I serve Jesus, and I serve him faithfully. I’m not perfect, but I’m faithful to God. And that’s why we haven’t got food here, folks, is because of that. I refuse to be tied in to something of that nature that’s totally abomination against God.

And so that’s why I have searched and have been searching and still searching hours, different hours, at night, days, trying to find food to bring here that I don’t have to be tied in with that stuff.

So, um, I don’t understand why a lot of you preachers do what you’re doing, but that’s between you and God. But I’m gonna stand up for righteousness no matter what it costs. If it costs me my life, then I know where I’m going. It just don’t matter because my life don’t belong to me, it belongs to Jesus. And when you realize that you were paid with the price, and you don’t belong to yourself when you become one of His own, and then you begin to walk in the uprightness of God, you have to make a stand somewhere.

And I make a stand right here, right now, that, uh, that’s why we haven’t had no food here in a while, is because I will not be a part of a “gay rights” movement because the Feed America [sic] is partnered up with them, and I will not be a part of that. So, y’all keep us in your prayers. Pray that God will open another door because the food belongs to him anyway, that he can continue to hopefully start shipping us food here soon. So always remember, all you need is faith in God. Continue to pray. Pray for God’s Store House Food Bank that God will open that door…

So if I have this correct, he has no food to give away… because the people who want to offer him food to feed the hungry are also the ones who love LGBTQ people. (That implies other Christian bigots don’t want to help out at all.)

He’ll gladly give away food to anybody, he promises. But he won’t accept food donations from individuals or groups that ally with gay people.

Why not? What does he think will happen if a bunch of canned goods come from a local LGBTQ pride group? Is that how the cyclosporiasis outbreak began?! Why would it matter if a donated box of cereal came from a lesbian mother or a Christian father who’s a sinner in plenty of other ways?

Feeding America, by the way, is the nation’s largest hunger-relief charity and has topped the Forbes list of Top Charities for four consecutive years. They’ll work with—and accept donations from—pretty much anybody. To reject their services because some of those partners may include LGBTQ-affiliated groups is ridiculous.

What’s really messed up about this is that Pastor Christian is doing an otherwise thankless job that should be praised! But in this case, he’s choosing selfishness over generosity. He’d rather let people go hungry than work with groups that spread Gay Cooties. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)

There’s a famous parable you may have heard about a man facing life-threatening flooding who climbs to the top of a roof, hoping to be saved before it’s too late. As the story goes, a canoe, a motorboat, and a helicopter all come by to rescue him… and he refuses their help, saying “The Lord will protect me.” Then he drowns. When he gets to Heaven, he asks why God didn’t help him. God says he sent two boats and a helicopter—what more could he have done?!

That’s what this sounds like. Alvin Christian needed food to help feed the hungry and the offers came pouring in! But because of his own faith-based vanity, he said no to those offers for the dumbest of reasons.

When one critic called him up to complain about it, saying this was not the message of Jesus and that they were praying for God to have mercy on Pastor Alvin’s “cancerous soul and the lives that you have negatively affected,” Alvin Christian had a simple response: “You must be gay. You must be gay. That’s just what I feel that you are.”

So this is how he conducts research, apparently. He just uses his own Gaydar. If it seems gay, it must be gay, and that’s why people should go hungry.

The irony in all this is that if you look up Alvin Christian’s personal history, there’s no shortage of sins he’s committed. But only one ever seems to matter to religious zealots these days.

That is the hypocrisy at the heart of his whole stand. Christian insists he would never discriminate against LGBTQ people himself, but he’s rejecting perfectly good food because someone involved in providing it might support LGBTQ rights. And when his freezers are empty, his promise to not “turn anybody away” from receiving food is meaningless. He doesn’t have to turn LGBTQ people away because his bigotry has already ensured there’s nothing to give anyone.

There’s nothing courageous about this “sacrifice.” The only people paying the price for his arrogance are the people who have to go hungry so Alvin Christian can cosplay as a martyr.

A food pantry should exist to feed people, period, not to serve as a religious purity test. Canned goods aren’t contaminated just because the donor attended Pride. Cereal doesn’t have a position on transgender people playing sports.

But Alvin Christian would rather have empty freezers than long lines.

By the way, Christian announced earlier this year he wanted to move his food bank to a larger warehouse worth about $650,000. His GoFundMe hasn’t received a single penny yet. Maybe the problem is all the potential donors are LGBTQ-friendly, too, and he’s rejecting every donation.

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