Benham Brothers: HGTV Flap Won’t Silence Our Faith
A week after their show got axed by HGTV, brothers and business owners David and Jason Benham are still making headlines.
But instead of defending their reputation, they’re now using each interview to share their Christian faith.
“We feel as though God wants us to actually stand up, lift Him up—lift up His standard, silence this bully and lift up the banner of Jesus Christ in this situation. So that’s our goal right now,” Jason told CBN News.
The twins say that bully is an agenda from some militant gay groups and others on the left bearing down on America in what some describe as a “silencing war” on religious freedom.
“We do feel compelled by God that we need to point this nation back to our foundation in Jesus Christ,” David told CBN News. “We need to point this nation back to the fact that we do have religious freedom and religious liberty and the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press and freedom of expression.”
“And that any agenda that would seek to silence anyone on either side of any issue, for any matter, that forces them back into a closet, we’ve got to stand against that,” he continued. “And it’s Christians that have be the salt and the light of the earth to lead the way in this charge.”
On May 7, HGTV canceled the brothers’ reality show Flip It Forward because of complaints about their Christian faith.
The network’s decision came after the website Right Wing News, which is funded by the liberal People for the American Way, published some of David’s past comments regarding his pro-life and pro-traditional marriage views.
“Where we are in terms of national sin, where we approve of what God disapproves of, when we do that it will ultimately get to the point where that sin will become an agenda that not only dominates and permeates, but it seeks to assassinate anyone who speaks out against it. That’s where we are as a nation,” David said.
Surprisingly, they lay the blame for the nation’s moral decay on the church.
“We have more churches in America than we have ever had,” David noted. “Just in our city alone we have 1,300 churches, and yet we’re aborting millions of boys and girls—little image bearers of God.”
“We can’t keep just having church and allow this to happen and think that the blessing of God is going to be on our nation,” he warned.
While they’ve endured nasty criticism, they say they’ve also been encouraged by the support they’ve received both online and in person.
Their biggest supporters, however, are the women who know them best: their wives who spoke exclusively to CBN News.
“It’s really neat to see how the Lord has prepared us and our kids during this time,” Jason’s wife, Tori, said. “There’s been such grace over us. And a lot of people have reached out with support and love.”
CBN news asked them what they would tell the world about who their husbands are.
“I want people to know that he has a huge heart for the Lord and a huge heart for people,” David’s wife, Lori Benham, said. “And when you get to know him, if you speak to him one-on-one, and it’s not just through media, you’ll see that it is the real deal.”
Meanwhile, Tori described her husband, Jason, as a man of God and a good father and husband.
“I live with him every single day, and I can honestly tell you that there’s nobody that I respect more than Jason Benham,” she said. “And I’m so thankful for the man of God that he is and the husband and the father he’s become.”
The brothers’ wives have been surprised at the support they’ve gotten from people from across political and ideological spectrums.
“We can’t even count how many letters, emails, Facebook, even tweets that are coming to us from folks in the gay community, from Muslims, from so many different people that completely disagree with our beliefs but that say ‘We stand with you. Thank you for taking this on. This is not America. It’s about time someone stood for the principles for that founded this country,'” David said.
Despite the recent turn of events, the brothers are devoted to finishing the projects from their now-cancelled show.
They’re also offering to take no commission on the homes they sell to help the cash-strapped families who were slated to appear on the HGTV program.
The brothers say at least one of the families used their entire life savings to learn about what they describe as “principled flipping,” which focuses on building relationships between spouses, parents, and children while buying property to turn a profit.
The twins have emphasized that while they don’t hate or discriminate against homosexuals or anyone else, when it comes to the battle against religious freedom, they won’t back down.
“What we want to do is not just represent Christ in a loving way. What we want to do is win this battle. We don’t just want to fight it. We want to win it,” Jason said.
“Nobody in the world knew who we were,” he continued. “And God had simply just told us the same thing he told every human being today: Be faithful right where I put you and when the enemy shows up, don’t back down.”
