After a "lesbian identified" Methodist minister is acquitted in an official church trial, Exodus executive director Alan Chambers criticizes the church leadership before launching into a tirade against "liberal" churches as a class.

Chambers begins by accusing the Methodist jurors of honoring an imaginary manual of homosexual politics rather than the Bible, but he offers no quotations from the jurors to substantiate his ridicule.

Chambers then dictates that same-sex attraction ("homosexuality") is punishable by death, according to the Bible. So why doesn’t Chambers obey the Bible on this matter? Chambers does not answer this obvious question. Instead, he further asserts that even if the Bible were unclear about homosexuality, the book does not need to specify that an act or feeling is a sin in order for everyone to know it is a sin.

Chambers quotes II Timothy 3:16 out of context, apparently to justify an inerrantist view of the Bible. Based on this view, and despite the Biblical God’s frequent changes of heart and direction (often in response to prayer), Chambers dictates (again without elaboration) that God never, ever has a change of mind.

It is then that Chambers launches into an assault upon "liberal" churches as a class.

It is time for the liberal and passive social clubs that refer to themselves as Churches either change their inaccurate description of themselves or start truly reflecting and representing Christ’s absolute truth and grace. God will not be mocked, especially not to those who are dying and going to hell for lack of truth.

Had he thought more about the targets of his stereotypes, Chambers might have realized that his broad condemnation of liberal "social clubs" to hell happens to cut across the Roman Catholic Church, whose official social-justice policies are extremely liberal by his standards: Antiwar, antinuclear, antipoverty, anti-death-penalty, pro-welfare. Chambers’ sweeping verdict of damnation against liberal churches also covers some African-American denominations, the pacifist Anabaptist churches, countless foreign orthodox Christian churches that oppose U.S. conservative foreign policy, and all Jews.

In my past faith explorations, I have occasionally encountered some liberal churches that were lacking in various respects — no charisma, no enthusiasm, no extracurricular prayer, no support programs for the poor, the ill, the oppressed in their communities. But I also found conservative churches — often Southern Baptist or Assemblies of God — that lacked these very same characteristics. They were preoccupied with correctness and prosperity as representations of God’s favor. These particular churches were devoid, in my view, of the values of the Gospel.

One wonders about the source of Chambers’ stereotypes about "liberal" churches.

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