The Rainbow Belongs to God: The British Connection

There has been a certain amount of hilarity in recent weeks over Scott Lively’s promotion of a ludicrous anti-gay song called The Rainbow Belongs to God, following its appearance on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight show.

Lively explained the background back in June:

It was written my friend Johny Noer, a Danish pastor living in the Negev Desert of Israel, and performed by the very talented singer/composer Signe Walsoe.  Johny was an attendee and guest lecturer at my Bible seminar in England last fall and was inspired by my article/strategy “The Rainbow Belongs to God” which I created to encourage the Russians to reclaim the rainbow as a Christian symbol during the Winter Olympics.

This followed Lively railing against the gay “appropriation” of the rainbow the previous September, on the birther conspiracy website WND:

The rainbow belongs to God and was created by Him as a symbol of His authority over creation. Revelation 4:3 describes a rainbow around His throne in heaven. Genesis 9:13-15 declares that He placed the rainbow in the sky as a promise to never again punish the earth by flood. Then in Genesis 19 He gave a preview of the future destruction of the earth by fire – by incinerating Sodom and Gomorrah. Both Peter and Jude remind us that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a warning to all generations not to follow the gross sexual immorality of those cities (1 Peter 2:6, Jude 1:7).

Who were the sinners of Sodom that prophesy warns will rise again in the end times to dominate society (Romans 1:26-32 and 1 Timothy 3:1-9)? They were first called “Sodomites,” then “homosexuals,” and now “gays.” Their movement has adopted the rainbow flag as an act of defiance against God, and their final attempt to sanitize their sin is to wrap themselves in His own cloak.

Presumably, this was also Lively’s theme at his Bible seminar in England; details of his visit are scarce, although it appears that the UK Christian Right lobby group Christian Concern was involved: Noer writes on his website of meeting Christian Concern head Andrea Minichello Williams in London in September 2013, and of travelling to a location called “The White House” in Bournemouth. Meanwhile, a certain Naomi King left a comment on Cranmer‘s website saying that she had seen Lively in Bournemouth around the same time. The event was apparently an epic 10 days long.

While he was in the UK, Lively provided Christian Concern with an exclusive video interview, which seems to have taken place in Williams’ own home (the sofa appears in a 2008 documentary on the UK Christian Right). There are also other links between Christian Concern and Lively: Christian Concern’s barrister of choice Paul Diamond has appeared at a event alongside Lively in Massachusetts, and Williams’ recent visit to Jamaica – where she reportedly urged a crowd to link homosexuality with paedophilia – also included input from Lively’s associate Peter La Barbera.

Williams also has her own links with Johny Noer – she can be seen addressing a Danish audience alongside Noer here, with the help of an interpreter. In true British style, she facilitates communication by speaking very slowly and somewhat loudly (and for some reason, links to this video and to two others involving Williams were recently deleted from Noer’s website).

Noer’s song is a bizarre mix of evangelical-chorus sentimentality and apocalyptic fury: the singer, Signe Walsøe, asks “who is the one that dares to try to wipe God’s promise away?” and explains that “The rainbow belongs to God, untouched by evil DESIRE”, at which point the video turns a lurid and unhealthy green. Clearly inspired by Lively’s linking of of the Noah narrative with Sodom and Gomorrah (and Robert Frost’s sense of rhyme), she continues:

Who is one who dares to doubt, God’s warning: that next time is fire! Ohhhh, fire! Ohhhh, next time is fire!

Walsøe has since been somewhat aggrieved by “pretty hateful comments” about the song and her performance.

For those looking for other collaborations between Noer and Walsøe, there’s also “The Temple Shall Be Built Again.” Noer believes that the European Union will form an “aggressive army” that will later become a global army and attack Israel. The plan also includes “Darwin’s theory of evolution, which discards God as Creator”, and “The enforcing of a homosexual society, which will persecute all Bible-believing Christians”.