A well written article in Christianity Today begins:
American evangelicals, who profess to be committed to Truth, are among the worst abusers of simple descriptive statistics, which claim to represent the truth about reality, of any group I have ever seen. At stake in this misuse are evangelicals’ own integrity, credibility with outsiders, and effectiveness in the world. It is an issue worth making a fuss over. And so I write.
The article goes on to examine a claim:
“This generation of teens is the largest in history—and current trends show that only 4 percent will be evangelical believers by the time they become adults. Compare this with 34 percent of adults today who are evangelicals. We are on the verge of a catastrophe.”
That 4% statistic began as a informal survey done by an author of a book on youth ministry and eventually worked its way up to 4-page magazine advertisements for a national leadership summit seeking to “re-educate 20,000 youth pastors in 44 cities around the nation.”
Christianity Today’s article does not seek to catalogue other bad statistical behavior by Evangelicals but rather to inform the reader of the importance of using statistics accurately. One can only hope many ex-gay leaders I write about regularly will learn from this.
Friend of Ex-Gay Watch, Jim Burroway, also posted on this article.
(Love the on-the-fly preview at the new look XGW!)
I fear many eyes will simply glaze over, but the conclusion to that great artcile was profound:
Yeah, as they said. Expecially the “and maybe money” 😉
My best friend is a minister at the largest Evangelical church in this area–it is a megachurch, but he considers himself an academic. He is very disturbed by the growing unintellectual movement in Evangelicalism. People, even in his church, tend to thrive on fear, and they want to here fear preached.
Many people will not think about the issues clearly, and they will trust anything said by the minister. My friend hates that, but the majority of his church acts that way.
My firend and I disagree on homosexuality, of course. He believes in the Bible, and I don’t; however, he also feels you can’t deny reality, and statistics and facts should not be manipulated for political outcomes. So he believes homosexuality is a sin, but he believes gays should have some protections, and he does not believe the stats can confirm origins of homosexuality. He tries to avoid such discussions in church since so many want him and other ministers to rip into homosexuality, but he feels that is wrong. Honestly, they have lost some people because they do not tend to stereotype or treat issues in an extreme manner. Still the congregations seem to want to be shown extremity, but the ministers try to deal intellectually with reality, and I am impressed by that. We may never truly agree with each other, but we respect that we both search for truth in our different ways. He is very fearful that Evangelicals are actually losing their way in terms of intellectualism. There is a deep sense that emotions should govern all; logic be damned.
True. Some people cannot be happy unless they can believe themselves to be better than others. They delight in hearing how evil and wicked “the homosexual” is.
We too have to careful that we don’t do the same thing with ex-gays or fundamentalists or evangelicals. When we start seeing them as stereotypes and as “the religious right” or “the christian conservatives” then we too can begin to justify attitudes towards them that are bigoted and cruel.
And just as some anti-gay evangelical leaders get lots of press and praise for their extremist views, so too do some anti-Christian gay leaders get attention for their extremist views as well. And this just leads to further polarization. It would be nice if the media were a little more responsible about presenting more nuanced views instead of providing fodder to those who thrive off of fear and villification.
I found my way out of the evangelical movement mainly becuase of the hyper emotionalism and fear based hatred and anger most Evangelicals project on gay men and nearly any other subject they don’t understand. I have so much I could say on this subject but I’d need days to just to organize all my thoughts.
In the meanwhile…take a look at this video and you’ll get the idea of where most evangelical minds are heading. This man sincerely thinks he’s doing a good work with this music video:
https://www.eveningservice.com/Video
What the hell?!?!? What was that bizarre video from Evening Service? It seems like parody, but everything I can find suggests it is a real video. If you go to the singer’s page, he advocates prisoning gays because it might lead them to Christ. Weird stuff–and the music is terrible. Lyrics like “God hates fags” are not quite gospel material.
That was my first thought too….a parody…but he has a MySpace page and nothing seems to indicated its a joke. I wouldn’t be surprised if its for real. I guess he wants to do one up on Fred Phelps.
My favorite has to be the page listing dangerous bands to keep kids away from. Among the “bands” listed: Cole Porter.
Brett, he has Sufjan Stevens on there too (there are a lot of bands I listen to on there), but that makes no sense. Sufjan is often lumped in with Christian singers and has addressed in numerous interviews. What he has to do with homosexuality, I don’t know, but that website thinks somethings up.
Perhaps NARTH and Exodus both can learn from this excellent article. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that several Ex-gay leaders are grabbing statistics out of thin air like the nutbar Alan Chambers. It’s ludicrous when you think about it.
Umm… re: the video link… it’s a brand new (1/21/07) production, so maybe we’ll hear more about it soon. If it’s not a parody, I’d say it’s the most pathetic example of self-loathing I’ve seen so far.
I’m pretty sure it’s a parody, and the other site, lovegodsway.org, has to be. Perhaps a way to get instant notoriety for a band? Ministries don’t normally hide their domain registration behind a proxy and real record labels do not use gmail addresses. Time will tell for sure I guess. I suspect what happened here might be what they were looking for.
Parody or not, people will respond thinking that its genuine. But if not, lets go back to that “and maybe money” clause. If it hypes his band to bash gay men so he can use the momentum to make money he turns God into a source of income for exploitation.
If he is for real as an independant venture, then I agree with Rick. Its a pathetic example of self-loathing. “Donnie” claims to be an ex-gay on the website, so what kind of person would put that out there if he didn’t mean it or didn’t plan to use it for publicity’s sake.
And as expected…it grows:
https://www.myspace.com/donniedavies
Aaron wrote:
Sufjan has a gay fan base and has been rumored to be gay. Some of his music has lyrics that express longing for men, but it isn’t clear whether that is supposed to be his own voice or if the song is written to be the voice of a woman.
I thought that I had read that he came out… but I can’t find the reference and that may have been my imagination.
I wrote Donnie Davies and asked: “I cannot tell if you mean your song as a parody or not. Could you please explain?”
He wrote back and said “No, no Sir. We’re very serious. We made the video for serious reasons. Some people seem to think it is funny. I guess we can understand that but what’s been happening in this country isn’t funny unless you have a really dark sense of humor.
If have to have people in authority, we think they have to be trustworthy and honest. We hate what homosexuals liar like Ted Haggard, John Paulk and Mark Foley are doing. We hope that our song can help just a little bit to run sick creeps like that out of town on a rail. We hope people will learn that they can’t trust people so easily.”
Wow.
Thanks for getting the scoop, Warren.
T. Kincaid typed: “Some people cannot be happy unless they can believe themselves to be better than others.”
I think what Mr. Kincaid is really talking about is people being sanctimonious.
Kincaid again: “When we start seeing them as stereotypes and as “the religious right” or “the christian conservatives” then we too can begin to justify attitudes towards them that are bigoted and cruel.”
Could it perhaps be we all are guilty of being somewhat pious or bigoted but sometimes justifiably because, as a group, we are the oppressed? I guess it would be prudent to just ignore sanctimonious people but that does not work all the time.
Taking the high road can be easier said than done. What about when your dearest, closest family & friends are being taught/preached weekly about how “the homosexual” is wicked. They don’t understand my gay friends nor will they reach out to them as equals. The time when gay and non-gays can be assimilated as one cohesive group is not just over the horizon…far from it…especially when people continue to use the “f” word.
I, too, think it is noble to take the high road and rise above emotive blather we read/see on the internet…(especially that little music video). The video will fade with time but I would really love to do a music video in response to the one above. Something to the music of Willie Nelson’s: He Was A Friend of Mine.
Looks like the video has been pulled, anyway. On the ‘ministry’ website, the link has been replaced with “Removed Due to Abuse.”
But it can still be found on this website if you want to take a look at it.
https://www.eveningservice.com/Video
Its true.. its better to take the “high” road, unless the “high” road becomes a source for superiority. The cause of all this “blather” is the ego’s way of trying to prove its superiority. Like individuals, groups and organizations, even nations can have their own “group ego”. This mindset is keyed directly into the individuals’ belief system within that organization and when threatened, the group reacts.
Ex-gay and pro-gay factions continue to fire off mental and emotional hand grenades at each other. The resulting spiritual and emotional damage kicks the ego into high gear and a defensive posture takes place. For those who are unaware of this shift in their mentality, they continue to react through the ego which is proven to be constantly violent and fueled by unconscious rage.
Fixing the problem isn’t easy nor do I believe a complete solution can be found. Unless each faction can step away from their egos and choose to look at the data without inciting their “story” or their need to feel right, the war between ex-gay and pro-gay groups will continue to build.
On the issue of Evangelicals using statitistics that are just not true, we have to include references to success rates in ex-gay therapy programs. They have never supplied the public with real numbers, but we hear various statistics thrown out by ex-gay leaders all the time. The lowest number that I have heard is about 30%, and it is never clear if that is a conversion to heterosexuality or just an abstinence rate.
I would encourage the ex-gay ministries and Exodus to be honest about their true success rate, or more likely lackthereof. They should provide this to the public and anyone who takes an interest in spending money on one of their programsl. They should also make it clear what they mean by success. Their whole tortured language about Identity, what being gay is,what being ex-gay is, etc. is a perfect example of the dishonesty that is addressed in the above article.
Well, Christian Smith didn’t say it but flim-flam statistics, along with flim-flam rhetoric are the marketing tool du jour of the religion industry. Uh, make that every industry, to be fair. But when your business is in the business of honesty and telling the truth and morals you shouldn’t be selling the truth with a lie. I anticipate no change will be forthcoming from the religious industrial complex. It’s a business and they have to compete with Hollywood, the homosexual menace, and the porn industry to win the hearts and minds of American youth. Statistics lie and so, apparently, do religious leaders.
The Donnie Davies video is a parody. There is a blog “video” in which he is thanking Andrew Sullivan and wants him to get behind him. Also, his style is a bit too much.