At a news conference in late July, reported by religionjournal.com, Exodus executive director Alan Chambers publicly acknowledged that the national office has shifted away from its already feeble efforts to minister to gays.
Instead, Chambers says Exodus intends to work even more closely with antigay churches “to proclaim a clear message of the power of Jesus to change lives,” religionjournal.com reported. “Our desire is … to equip an army of believers to really attack this issue head-on.” Some might view Chambers’ appeal to attacking armies as an admission that his goal is culture war, not ministry.
Former Exodus leader Joe Dallas is quoted with some irony:
Some Christians have a “harsh, judgmental, unloving indifference or outright hostility” toward homosexuals, Dallas said. Such an attitude “negates the church’s ability to be what the church is meant to be: a visible representation of God’s heart and mind in the literal world. Many (homosexuals) feel as though the church represents an oppressor, an enemy population of people who loathe them, fear them, who would just as soon they didn’t exist.”
At the other extreme, Dallas said, some Christians are sacrificing truth in order to be inclusive. “More and more denominations are compromising basic doctrinal principles about the person of Christ, about the relation of God to humanity, (and) specifically about human sexuality,” he said. “This makes it impossible for the church to call people to repentance.”
Dallas calls for compassion — which is incompatible with tendencies among some ex-gay activists to:
- favor discrimination and prosecution against homosexual persons
- mischaracterize homosexual persons who maintain orthodox Christian belief and practice
- decline to launch or support antiviolence programs in public or private schools, and
- impugn the moral values of tolerant places of worship.
One might recommend that the ex-gay movement leaders, including Chambers and Dallas, pay closer attention to Dallas’ own words.
This brings to mind a comment made by O-Jo Taylor of the CCM punk band Undercover several years ago:
“The problem with institutions is that institutions become self-perpetuating. And when institutions become self-perpetuating, the people become secondary.”
Sounds like Exodus, based on what you’ve described. Keep the institution going at all costs: “Michael Johnston? Nothing to see here, please move on.”
“At a news conference in late July, reported by religionjournal.com, Chambers publicly acknowledged that the national office has shifted away from its already feeble efforts to minister to gays.”
Oh, Michael, let’s get something…uh…straight. When they say “minister,” you really do need to translate that to “market.” In other words, the “ex-gay” operations are shifting away from marketing themselves to gay people.
One might seriously ask why they would do such a thing, if they believed that their mission was to try to de-gay gay people. The obvious answer is that their mission is not to de-gay gay people. Their mission is to get money from people who want to de-gay gay people.
And that is why they have stopped their marketing to gay people. There’s no profit in it for them to market themselves to gay people.
Oh, Raj, if I were completely cynical, I’d agree with you in total. Maybe it’s just that they’re getting how little we want to hear about it, hence the shift in direction!