Wayne Besen assesses a speech by exgay activist Tim Wilkins to 200 2,000 conservative Christians in North Carolina earlier this month:
In his sermon, Wilkins repeatedly made the stunning acknowledgement that people do not choose to be gay. Instead, he erroneously blamed homosexuality on a wide array of possibilities including the standard pseudo-scientific canards of parental abuse and dysfunction. To his credit, Rev. Wilkins confessed that his “theories” could not be applied to all gay people.
Equally surprising was that Wilkins unwittingly admitted that he was not cured, but merely suppressing his sexuality. He tried to spin this message by reducing the deep, intrinsic identity of “sexual orientation” to a nagging “temptation.” However, it was striking how after 30 years of ex-gay ministry and marriage, Wilkins was no more than a wink from a twink away from falling off the hetero wagon.
To drive home this point, he reiterated that he would not watch Brokeback Mountain because he feared that his resistance might melt like butter near a fire. I pointed out that as a gay man I have watched hundreds of heterosexual dramas and not once was enticed to become straight. Watching Pretty Woman, for instance, did not make me want to sleep with Julia Roberts. He had no answer for this.
Wilkins stressed that those who don’t become straight or successfully celibate fail because they are not sufficiently obedient to God. From my experience this message is particularly dangerous. People who don’t “change” after long and emotionally draining efforts often think they have been rejected by a God who doesn’t hear their prayers while He helps others become heterosexual. This can often lead to low self-esteem, severe depression and even suicide.
Read more of Besen’s column.
For reactions, check out Pam Spaulding, who remembers some other things that Wilkins has said recently, and Good As You, who finds humor in Wilkins’ message.
Dispatches from the Culture Wars says that Wilkins still has some lessons to learn about compassion, pragmatism, and grace.
Wilkins’ antigay revival was a defensive move against several initiatives by Christian leaders to condemn the use of religion to assault same-sex-attracted persons.
For example, former Rev. Jimmy Creech has formed Faith In America, a national organization “dedicated to the emancipation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from bigotry disguised as religious truth. Such religion-based bigotry has been used throughout history to justify discrimination against other groups of people, including women, racial and ethnic minorities, and people of minority religious beliefs. Faith In America is committed to ending this misuse of religion.”
And Queer Faith and The Empty Closet make note of a Sept. 11 gathering of 25 Christian leaders who called for five steps to end discrimination:
- Realize that the “relationships of same-gender loving couples are equal” and are worthy of both the right to civil marriage and the rites of Christian marriage.
- Reaffirm the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to full equality under the law, including adoption rights, employment and housing protections, and the right to serve openly in the military.
- Refute the “ex-gay notion that sexual orientation and gender identity can and should be changed.”
- Refuse to cooperate with or support political or religious leaders who condemn the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
- Reclaim faith and speak boldly on “God’s call for justice, wholeness and peace,” working on behalf of all oppressed people.
In Bensen’s original article, he says “2000 conservative Christians,” not 200.
Those five steps are all good, but then what you’d end up with wouldn’t be Christianity. It would be the Christianity Lite that the fundamentalists all complain about as being the death of Christianity and behind the moral degeneration of America.
How do you get past Leviticus, Paul in Romans and Corinthians/Timothy, Jude’s homophobic interpretation of the story of Sodom and Gamorrah, and and also Thomas Aquinas application of the Aristotlian natural law that the mainline Churches all ascribe to? Those five steps are all at odds with those teachings of the mainline churches.
Thanks, Andy, I’ve made the correction.
Lij, you seem to assume the Bible (and Paul) are infallible and that the Biblical God’s will is inflexible and unchanging. I don’t assume that, nor does traditional Christianity.
Fundamentalism is a relatively new branch of the religion that has only evolved over the past couple hundred years. And even if it weren’t a newfangled branch, the Bible depicts God’s will as changing frequently.
The last two comments were made by me.
It would be nice (and more informative/interesting) to read what Wilkins actually said, instead of Besen’s spin/interpretation of it.
Can somebody send me the link please?
Its ridiculous to have to form an opinion of an opinion of an opinion, particularly when the latter opinion is what is ultimately at stake.
Cranson,
Good point.
Unfortunately, Wilkins’ web site does not offer transcripts of his speeches, either for free or for a fee.
The web page for Wilkins’ More Than Words one-day conference does offer a video excerpt and an outline of questions to be answered by the conference.
In order to receive the answers, though, one must hire Wilkins and pay his conference fees. One can’t simply obtain the answers for free from his web site.
As for Besen’s account, he attended the conference and spoke with Wilkins afterward. Besen’s account is not based on some third-party source.
Mike:
If God’s will is constantly changing, than God cannot be perfect and he is a moral relativist. If homosexuality is bad one day and good the next, who is to say that God won’t decree that child molestation is good tomorrow? God’s will is nothing more than arbitary in this Christian Universe.
Of course, anyone can see that it is impossible for the Bible to be infallible as it contradicts itself numerous times. But liberal Christians love to cherry pick all of the nice parts and ignore the bad parts. However, you can’t explain away all of the many rotten parts of the Bible unless you reject the document as having any sort of divine inspiration. It’s just a book, nothing more.
Reclaim faith and speak boldly on “God’s call for justice, wholeness and peace,” working on behalf of all oppressed people.
Yes, God is a liberal Democrat and probably voted for Al Gore! I must have missed this call, and I have voicemail. Funny that the Supreme Being overlooked me.
Posted by: Mark at September 23, 2006 09:25 PM
Posted by: Mark at September 23, 2006 09:28 PM
Mark, could you distill some sort of point or question out of that?
Anon wrote: Lij, you seem to assume the Bible (and Paul) are infallible and that the Biblical God’s will is inflexible and unchanging. I don’t assume that, nor does traditional Christianity.
Huh? Wow, news to me and the Pope, not to mention all the Baptists in the US. Fundamentalism isn’t a new branch of Christianity, it is what the Catholic Church, Baptitst, and many other mainline Protestant churches have always been. And what Mark said in his 9:25PM post.
I have to concur with Lij on this one, Mike. Traditional Xianity is inflexible or unchanging, and the newer trend is not Fundamentalism but Liberalism. There’s nothing wrong with that, and the relative newness of Liberal theology does not make it less valid. More importantly, Lij’s post brings up an important issue—how we convince society to embrace the Five Steps when the meme of Xianity Lite is already out there.
Oh good heavens… what the heck is “traditional” Christianity? That term depends entirely on your “traditions”. The entire history of Christianity has been one of dissent and disagreement. Y’all may recall the protestant reformation and before that the wars in Europe over which Pope was to be followed. For that matter, why do you think we have an Eastern Orthodox church? This doesn’t even begin to address the gnostics, marcionite, ebionites, coptics, proto-orthodox or all the other early Christian sects.
Even going back to the very birth of Christianity – as seen in the text of the New Testament – it was clear that the Christian leaders strongly disagreed with each other. Peter’s vision of a sheet from heaven was obviously a rebuttal to the Jerusalem Christians’ (lead by Jesus’ brother, James) insistence on adherence to Jewish law.
In other words, insisting that there is only one way to view Scripture and that therefore either
a) you have to live exactly this way; or
b) you have to throw out Christianity altogether
is clearly two sides of the same coin. Both are rigid and, frankly, arrogant. Anti-Christianity based on a closed-minded and rigid interpretation is no better than anti-gay arguments based on the same. And claiming “tradition” is no more than a feeble effort to prop up your own sense of being right.
If Christianity has any “tradition” at all, it is a tradition of questioning dogma, challenging predeterminations, and mutation of doctrine to find relevance in each era.
Wow, Timothy, those are some strong words for a rather simple point that was being made.
It is not anti-xianity to point out that the traditional arm of the religion is geared towards the status quo, not towards progrssiveness. And as much as you want to assert otherwise, history is against you—xianity has NOT had a tradition of questioning dogma; rather, it has a tradition of creating dogma. That’s why those early xian leaders disagreed–it was a battle to determine which dogma would become THE dogma.
Does that mean that anyone is suggesting that one throw out xianity altogether? No, not at all. But there is a big gulf between belief that the Bible is the word of God and the habit of tossing out those verses that make one feel uncomfortable. Every xian does that to some extent, there’s apparently nothing wrong with it. That does not mean that there is a big contradiction between treating the Bible as sacred on one hand and negotiable on the other. Rather than think this is an attack on xianity, perhaps it would be more effective to recognize that contradiction. It isn’t going to go away, and it isn’t really any different than when others (such as Creationists) ignore science because it doesn’t jibe with what they believe.
Robis, I frequently respect your views, but you and Lij seem to know little about Roman Catholicism.
I was raised Catholic, attended a Catholic university, took four courses in religion there. So I know a thing or two about Catholicism from the inside.
From that perspective, there is a huge difference between fundamentalist faiths — which pay lip service to “traditional values” while mocking the importance of church history, much less world history — and tradition-based faiths such as Catholicism and Judaism, which define truth not only from the Bible, but also from thousands of years of what they consider to be divinely guided history, tradition and various subsidiary theologies, all of which pass through cycles of status quo, self-criticism, reform, excess, retreat, status quo, and so on.
I think you are right that both tradition-based faiths and fundamentalism are slow to adapt to change. But equating fundamentalism with traditional historic Christianity is ludicrous. Fundamentalism is (fundamentally) an abandonment of history and tradition in favor of whatever trendy modern-day interpretation of the Bible happens to be current in the reader’s own language.
I don’t believe I conflated Fundamentalism with Traditionalism, Mike, and I took great pains to use the separate terms “Fundamentalist” and “Traditional”. I can see where you would get the impression that I did, however, since I state that Liberalism is the newer trend (and it is). Both Liberalism and Fundamentalism are new trends in xianity, and Traditionalism is completely different than both.
Robis,
sorry if that seemed like an attack on you, personally. it wasn’t meant to be.
“But there is a big gulf between belief that the Bible is the word of God and the habit of tossing out those verses that make one feel uncomfortable.”
This only makes sense if one looks at Scripture as though it is comprised of a series of stand-alone statements each of which is independent of all other statements but which must not contradict any of the others. And that just doesn’t (IMHO) make sense.
It isn’t a matter of “tossing out” anything. It’s a matter of reading all things in context, recognizing both linguistic and cultural limitations, and understanding the common underlying theme. Proof texting (using decontextualised quotations to establish a proposition) can appeal to those who require literal acceptance of each Biblical verse without context, but it’s theologically immature and is discouraged (as best I can tell) by all established theological seminaries, both conservative and liberal.
Of course conservative Christians tend to view things much more literally than liberals but even they don’t think every verse is absolutely literal for everyone at all times. Otherwise you end up dogma based on wacky things like:
“May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus”
Clearly the Bible says we should all name our children Onesiphorus so God will show mercy to their household!!
WHAT?!? You don’t think so? You can’t throw out the verse about Onesiphorus!! It’s in the Bible!!
Well, maybe you don’t throw it out. You just place somewhat of a limit on its importance to you at this particular place and time.
The Bible was written over a very long period of time and is intended to be applicable to nomadic tribes wandering a desert, Greco-Roman culture, agrarian communities in the middle ages, jet-setting folk living today, and whatever is to come. Assuming that every verse should apply to us today in exactly the same way that it did to all those past and those to come is AMAZINGLY arrogant. It assumes that all of history is focused on ME. And that seems to me to be what those who proof text do.
Timothy said:
The Bible was written over a very long period of time and is intended to be applicable to nomadic tribes wandering a desert, Greco-Roman culture, agrarian communities in the middle ages, jet-setting folk living today, and whatever is to come. Assuming that every verse should apply to us today in exactly the same way that it did to all those past and those to come is AMAZINGLY arrogant. It assumes that all of history is focused on ME. And that seems to me to be what those who proof text do.
Agreed. How God dealt with those in another place and time does reveal His personality, from which we can understand how he relates to us today. God is the constant, while scripture is the historical narrative with inspired truth.
Robis, is there any particular reason you sub “Xianity” for “Christianity” in your posts? It interrupts the flow while reading (I don’t think most people are accustomed to that term) and, to be honest, it makes me feel a bit like I do when Alan Chambers, et al, insist on using “the homosexual” instead of gay. Perhaps you could use terms like that on your personal blog and stick to the standard terminology here? I understand the background for using “X” instead of “Christ” in certain terms, but other than “Xmas”, it’s not common. Some new readers coming in from our recent coverage may assume some agenda where there is none and take offense.
Mike Airhart wrote: Robis, I frequently respect your views, but you and Lij seem to know little about Roman Catholicism.
I was raised Catholic, attended a Catholic university, took four courses in religion there. So I know a thing or two about Catholicism from the inside.
Gee Mike, I guess I know nothing about the religion I grew up in, played the pipe organ for masses, funerals and weddings, and lived for 46 years in mostly a small farming town in Indiana. Where I come from Notre Dame is considered to be a den of wayward liberals, except for the football team. And don’t get people talking about the Jesuits at St Louis University.
I know that my former faith includes a large body of knowledge from several “Doctors of the Faith.” But that body of knowledge though bendable is often just as set in stone as the Bible. And the main one is the Thomist reiteration of Aristotlian natural law which would class homosexual acts and even homosexuals as about the lowest of the low. In certain ways (Catechism, for one) the Church has set the natural law philosophy in stone. And that keeps Church teaching even less flexible on the issue of homosexuality than another Christian sect which may not include the natural law in its teachings.
Now of late, the fundamentalist evangelicals and even the Baptists have joined forces with Roman Catholics in many endeavors related to social issues in America. Roman Catholic may be among the more liberal of groups, individually, but the organizational hierarchy of the American bishops is not. They are in accord with these other protestant groups on certain fundamental social issues. So call it semantics or what-have-you, but the effect whether of the traditionalistic Catholicism or fundamentalist Protestant, is still fundamentally the same!
Heck, I couldn’t even get a note back from my Bishop or his secretary when I asked him (in writing) if the Indiana Constitutional Amendment (much like Ohio’s) did not go too far and thus constitute that undo discrimination against gay peoples which is spoken of in the Catechism. In other words is not simply defining marriage as heterosexual enough, what is the point of creating roadblocks to even the legal instruments that were used before which the amendment might then allow for a disavowal in a court of law. It would seem that the simple definition should be enough and actually all that a Catholic should favor with their vote. But Catholics all over the nation are going along with the more oppressive versions of these state amendments in lock-step with the fundamentalists. So I don’t see much of a difference between traditionalists or fundamentalists in terms of their opposition to creating an ethic in law for gay peoples.
Timothy, I don’t think we neccessarily disagree, I think it’s more a matter of where our perspectives lie. When you say:
“Of course conservative Christians tend to view things much more literally than liberals but even they don’t think every verse is absolutely literal for everyone at all times. Otherwise you end up dogma based on wacky things like…”
What I see (and what I have experienced from Fundamentalists (and I refer to them instead of conservative, a completely different animal, IMHO) is that scriptural literalness is placed upon those verses that do not directly affect them (as a group) and scriptural liberalness is placed upon those verses that do. That’s why homosexuality is such a great sin, and greed is a minor one, even though the opposite should be true.
I don’t have as much faith as you do in groups of people for whom the Bible is a political tool, and that is exactly what is going on with FOF, LWO, NARTH, et. al., and those who put their faith in such groups. It would be wonderful if we could discuss the virtues of Biblical text without those politics informing it, but I just don’t think it’s possible in this context.
David: I use the x in xianity because I have trouble typing out the whole word—the r and the i and the t all get mixed up, and I end up typing Chirsitanity. I’ve tried to correct it, and I just can’t get my fingers to wrap around the keyboard the right way. If I were typing the word just once, I might slow way down, type it out and triple check it. But when typing out a whole thought in which the word appears numerous times, it gets to be too much. I don’t want to appear W Bush-like. That’s why I use xianity.
I also can’t type scoial–s-o-c-i-a-l–but unfortunately there is no way around that one. I used to work for a nonprofit for s-o-c-i-a-l workers, so you can imagine my frustration in that position!
You said “in order to receive the answers, though, one must hire Wilkins and pay his conference fees. One can’t simply obtain the answers for free from his web site”.
It is not true! I am from Brazil and I obtained Wilkins’ CD and tape for free. Why don´t you try it?