Back in March, Exodus International President Alan Chambers (pictured) told the Oprah Network’s Lisa Ling (Our America, March 8, 2011) there was such a thing as a gay Christian:
Is there condemnation for those who are in Christ? No there is not. There are people out there living a gay Christian life, active gay Christian life. God’s the one who called them and has their heart. And they are in relationship with him. And do I believe they will be in heaven with me? I do. If they have a relationship with Jesus Christ, they will. We serve that kind of God that says, “Come to me as you are.” His love is unconditional. He wants our heart more than anything else.
a) Alan meant it is possible to be a genuine Christian, on your way to heaven (in Exodus’s evangelical world, the Christian/non-Christian question is largely about being “saved” and going to heaven), and be openly gay and in or open to a gay sexual and romantic relationship;
b) Alan meant you can be “same-sex attracted” and Christian, as long as you’re celibate, and you toe the conservative Christian line and believe that “practicing homosexuality” is a sin; or
c) Alan was lying.
My instinctive interpretation was that Alan meant b) and tried to be vague enough that open-minded viewers would assume he meant a). Not an outright lie, but certainly deceptive. On the question of whether you can be gay and Christian, the Exodus website reads:
However, if someone actively pursues homosexual involvement and refuses to acknowledge this behavior as sin, it’s valid to humbly question whether his or her commitment to Christ – and especially to growth in holiness – is genuine.
It’s hardly the enthusiastic endorsement of gay Christians Alan tried to portray. Not long after the Lisa Ling interview aired, Alan posted a newsletter article that addressed this imbalance by assuring Exodus’s conservative audience that yes, gay Christians really are as bad as you think they are:
Today many Christians with SSA … are choosing to keep the gay identity/label. This falls short of God’s best because identity matters. … [The] grace-only approach … gives license to sin. This is taking over many churches and denominations. Allowing clergy to be ordained while living in sin, heterosexually or homosexually, makes the Church irrelevant. The basis of a Christian life is that it is set apart. It is different from the world. Redeemed. Living in sin is the opposite of living redeemed. Anyone can be redeemed, but the result of redemption is a turning from what we once were through the power of repentance. In order to accommodate sin one has to ignore biblical truth or revise it to fit their life choices. Church is no longer church then, just a club for people to gather based on their common interests. In my opinion the problem with being a gay Christian is that gay comes first and takes center stage. God won’t share His throne with anyone or anything. (Emphasis his throughout.)
Evidently, this forceful take-down of gay Christians wasn’t reassuring enough for Exodus’s followers, and Alan posted a further addendum to the Lisa Ling comments in the April newsletter. He repeats his view that, although they’re deceived and very, very sinful, there are gay Christians:
I do believe that there are gay-identified people who truly know Christ – ones who are active in the sin of homosexuality and ones who are celibate. However, I also believe there is a tremendous amount of deception in anyone who chooses to define themselves as gay and certainly deception in anyone engaging in deliberate and habitual sin.
But the post is, on the whole, a pandering to Exodus’s supporters (and donors), who are generally even more conservative than Alan:
My comments on Lisa Ling caused uproar among some, maybe even you, who feared I was condoning sin or allowing for someone to be comfortable in their sin and therefore taking Exodus down the new road of ambiguity that is plaguing our churches today. To that end let me point you to my life and this ministry for the definitive answer on what I believe. I think my article last month on identity might have helped, too. My identity is solidly IN Christ. I am not a gay Christian or an ex-gay Christian. I am a Christian period. I am a man. A husband. A father. A son. While still a human with fallible flesh, I have a new heart and am therefore a new creation in Christ Jesus. Because of that I am no longer able to find comfort in sin, though I will be tempted by it until death. As will you.
He’s desperate to allay the panic that, judging by his reaction, is seizing Exodus’s support base.
Here’s what Exodus doesn’t get, or gets but avoids: People just want yes-or-no answers to questions. Can you be gay and Christian? Are you gay? Are you homosexual? Can prayer make a gay person straight? Can therapy make a homosexual heterosexual? Can homosexuals change? Exodus exploits the haziness of terms like “change,” “healing,” “freedom” and “transformation” to have it both ways. It will hide behind the half-truth that labels, categories, questions and either/ors are limiting, and that the truth is complicated and ambiguous, but in Exodus’s case it’s just an excuse to have its cake and eat it.
On Our America, Alan Chambers tried to convince America he was a modern, tolerant person who accepted gay Christians. He wanted us to believe that Exodus International is a modern, tolerant organization. Now he’s backtracking to a position that’s amounts to “Okay, technically there are gay Christians, but in reality, they pretty much don’t exist.” He clearly worries that this take on the question — which he describes as “an unfailing and generous grace” — is still too liberal for his conservative audience.
At least with extremists like Peter LaBarbera you know where he stands. With Exodus, it’s double-speak, obfuscation and a different story spun every day, depending on who’s listening.
Great work, Dave. I don’t know that I’d have the strength to go through another of Alan’s doublespeak essays.
also, isn’t there a Biblical story about trying to have your foot in two doors? Serving God AND Baal, mayhaps?
I have repeated consistently that I believe Alan is utterly amoral.
However, I think his constant doublespeak is driven by his own brokenness. No, not his sexuality, but his ongoing, desperate need to be liked. Seen through that lens, everything he does and says that’s utterly inconsistent and contradictory makes a kind of weird sense.
The sad part is, he’s misidentified his brokenness as his sexuality, and has projected his brokenness outward onto everyone else. But since he makes a $93K+ yearly living at it, he can afford to keep going the way he’s going.
Until he melts down. Which I think is coming, eventually.
Excellent analysis, Dave. I’ve personally engaged Alan on the apparent duplicitous nature of his view on being Christian and gay. The results have been just about as difficult to interpret. It would be absurd to not factor in the reaction of Exodus’ supporters, and I think you have rightly judged that. Alan sees others in this space showing a much more realistic, and I think, Biblical view and he sees that it is gaining ground. He wants that for Exodus, but is the victim of his own ideological past. I don’t envy him — Exodus will most certainly continue it’s decline and cause him even more grief.
Rachel and I saw that episode and we were shocked by what he said. We were hoping that Exodus was shifting its position, but I guess not. Thanks for clarifying this, Dave.
Time and time again, every day straight folks believe discrimination against gay men and women is VALID because of people like Chambers, Thomas and their supporters from other family advocate groups and faith communities all over the country.
Their votes, their Constitutional amendments and other fundamental aspects of public policy are firmly in the belief, if not understanding that HOMOSEXUALITY can be changed and SHOULD be, if gay people are to be accepted as a citizen.
There is no discussion on the possibility of bisexuality and asexuality and disclaimers of that’s who we’re actually dealing with. That THEIR orientations are not broken, but non existent.
Thomas and Chambers are so public, are so engaged in the public media PRECISELY to chum up support for what they do.
But since discrimination, open hostility and actual threat against gay people is in effect, their activity is essentially rather evil.
If they went on QUIETLY with their lives as straight people, without publicity like this, or they INSISTED that their backgrounds not be exploited politically against gay people, I might halfway respect what they SAY is their choice.
And a choice that is open to other gay people or should be.
But by their very omissions, lack of being blunt about the reality of discrimination and exploiting an anti gay environment, I can only concluded that they agree with the discrimination, without actually being honest about it.
After all, openness and honesty about the very nature of sexual orientation and the moral implications would diminish their influence.
More acceptance, understanding and empathy that sexual orientation IS fixed would do the same.
More importantly, EXPECTING gay people to change on condition of their civil rights and equality, is the most damaging of all in this.
Heterosexuals are not put in the position of even considering what would make THEM change, or if they COULD. Yet conclude that gay people are in the position to be able to.
And Chambers, as does Exodus advertises they are the ‘living proof it’s possible’.
Completely screwing it up for everyone, and NEVER admitting what a commitment that is.
This is why he’s not to be believed, nor is he at all sincere. Those living like straight folks would have no need to advertise it in an atmosphere of full acceptance. There is nothing to exploit.
However, Chambers knows the environment is still ripe of anti gay political hype and expectation. And uses it to his and Exodus advantage and denying that’s so, or acting like he has nothing to do with that makes him the full on moral coward he actually is.
I knew Alan was lying the second he made that statement on the Lisa Ling episode. He left it vague enough so that it could be interpreted incorrectly. What he meant was that just as the thief on the cross next to Jesus renounced his life and went to Heaven, a sexually active gay could at the last second repent of his evil and then go to Heaven to meet Exodus executives.
These guys are always dishonest about this stuff. It’s the same thing they do when they constantly quote Leviticus and say “If a man lies with another man, it is an abomination” while very carefully and deliberately truncating the very next sentence “They shall be put to death. Their blood is upon them.” This is all for the sake of public consumption. They also quite literally believe that Jews will burn in an unimaginable and horrible fire for eternity. They believe this literally and without question. Yet if you ask them about it, they will hedge with the same smoke and mirrors as the gay issue.