Christian woman credits 'God's sovereignty' with helping her persist through legal challenge

Christian photographer Chelsey Nelson says her belief in “God’s sovereignty” gave her the courage to challenge a nondiscrimination law that threatened her ability to run her business in accordance with her religious convictions.

In a video interview with The Christian Post, Nelson reflected on her legal victory against the city of Louisville, Kentucky, that resulted in an $800,000 settlement after a federal court sided with Nelson in her challenge to the city’s prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. 

Nelson identified “God’s sovereignty” as what motivated her to persist in her years-long challenge to the nondiscrimination law.

“There’s really nothing special about me. I’m just a mom … trying to have a photography business to help support my family and have a flexible schedule and be home with my kids,” she asserted. 

The photographer detailed how she and her husband came to the conclusion that “the right thing to do to honor the Lord in this particular situation was to just move forward with it.”

“You try to count the costs as best as you can right beforehand, but there’s really no way to know what that’s going to look like, and you just have to do the next right thing for the glory of God that’s in front of you,” Nelson said. 

“I feel more grounded than ever in my beliefs and in Scripture. He just grounded me so much in reminding me not to fear man but to honor the Lord,” she proclaimed. “That takes its form in so many different ways. It just happened to look a little bit more public for me.” 

Nelson also offered advice to anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation: “Guard against the cultural pressure to try to conform to whatever our current cultural flavor is of what ‘nice’ is. We can’t outlove God. God is love. If that is true, then upholding the Word of God is loving.” 

Nelson stressed the importance of “being grounded in what is true so that we can spot when the enemy is trying to take down their beliefs or make them doubt, because it’s not whether or not standing for your beliefs is going to come at a cost.”

“It very likely will, and it’s hard to know what that’s going to look like. But you can trust the Lord to sustain you through that and grow you through that," she said, reminding Christians that “you’re going to be answering to the Lord after this life, not the people that you may be tempted to fear in that moment.”

Nelson said that what led her to bring the lawsuit in the first place was the litigation against Colorado-based Christian baker Jack Phillips for declining to bake cakes for same-sex weddings because of his religious beliefs. It's important to note that, at the time, Colorado banned gay marriage.

Noting how Phillips and others make a living by making “custom things for weddings where you’re expressing a certain type of message,” Nelson lamented that “if that message goes against your convictions, unfortunately, in these areas, these laws are being used like as a gauntlet against these creatives to essentially say, ‘Well, actually, you have to say something you don’t believe.’”

Nelson said she “proactively filed with Louisville” to share with the city what she wanted to post on her website about her “belief system” and the messages she was willing and not willing to promote based on her deeply held religious beliefs.

“They came back and said, ‘No, you can’t post that on your website,’” she recalled. “And they went a step further. They actually said, ‘You can’t even discuss this with a potential client in person.’” 

“It seemed like such a no-brainer,” she added. “It seemed like such an obvious overstep that even someone who holds a very different view than I hold would look at that and say, ‘That doesn’t seem right.’” 

Nelson also expressed gratitude for the support she received from her inner circle as she undertook the years-long legal battle.

“My pastors at the time … my husband, my family, I had such a wonderful, close, tight-knit bubble of people supporting me that … it made me feel like I was almost like in a fortress over here while all of the battle was going on somewhere else,” she said.

At the same time, she described the experience as “disorienting” because she found herself feeling “misunderstood” as she was “losing relationships” and “referral sources” as well as the resultant “financial implications.” Despite the difficulties, Nelson insisted that she “would go back and do the same thing all over again.”