Exodus International President Alan Chambers is happy to affirm LGBT Christians as his brothers and sisters in Christ, at least according to his opening gambit at the GCN conference last week:
I honestly trust [GCN leader Justin Lee], and I honestly like him, and I honestly believe that he loves Jesus and that we are brothers in Christ and that we will spend eternity together … and because of that, the thing that brought me here first and foremost is: We’re Christians, all of us. We may have diverging viewpoints … but the thing that brings us together, the thing that causes us to even want to have this dialogue, or need to have this dialogue, is the fact that we all love Jesus. We all serve him. We serve the very same God and believe very different things.
He received applause for the comments. Yet in an interview with Christian radio host Janet Mefferd only the day before, Chambers failed to challenge a series of remarks that characterized gays and lesbians as people in darkness, who don’t know God and belong to a community at emnity with the community of God.
First, Mefferd said:
One of the things the LGBT world does not understand, simply because they don’t know the Lord, is, as you said, we all struggle with sin, we all struggle with temptations to varying degrees, but when you know Christ, and when you are a new creation in Christ, what changes in you is the “want to.” All of a sudden you go from loving sin, embracing sin of all kinds, to not loving it. … This is, I think, a hard thing to communicate to the people who are just still in darkness. [Emphasis mine]
[Audio: Chambers_Mefferd_Clip_1.mp3]
While a little over 24 hours later Chambers told the GCN conference he believed they did know the Lord, he allowed Mefferd’s offensive statements to go unchallenged. She later said:
You’ve been on both sides. You’ve been a part of the homosexual community, and then you’ve been delivered over to the kingdom of God as a Christian and now have left that lifestyle behind.
[Audio: Chambers_Mefferd_Clip_2.mp3]
Again, Chambers failed to challenge the assumption that “gays” and “Christians” are two opposed, mutually exclusive communities and that you must be “delivered” from one to join the other. On the contrary, he played into the assumption by recounting how, six years after he “left the homosexual lifestyle,” he looked at a group of gay men and realized, “I’m not one of them any more.”
Playing to both sides on this issue of gay Christians is not new for Exodus International. In March last year, Chambers enthusiastically affirmed the existence of gay Christians in an interview with the Oprah network’s Lisa Ling, only to water down his statements when challenged by his conservative evangelical constituents. What is new is that some gay Christians are now taking him at his word.
The audio clips above contain Mefferd’s remarks with Chambers’s responses, to give some context, but you can listen to the entire interview here (starting at about 20 minutes in).
This is quintessential Alan Chambers. To believe there has been some fundamental shift in his or Exodus’ ideology, one must first deny his own words and deeds. There is no reconciliation here. But for some, the longing for a crumb of acceptance seems to overwhelm reality. I don’t get it.
Take note also that Alan has repeatedly praised Janet Mefferd and loves to appear on her show.
Thanks for pointing this out, it was certainly one of the things I noticed when listening to the audio.
He is very deceptive in how he frames his answer mainly because he can come back latter and change what he means by Gay to mean different things to different audiences.
Honestly I think asking Alan Chambers about, (gay Christians) gives him to much wiggle room. He needs someone to ask if he believes that, someone can be actively engaged in a same sex relationship and still be a Christian. That gives him no wiggle room or ability to be vague so that his answers can be interpreted differently in deferent contexts, the only problem would be getting him to answer such a question that would actually force him to give an honest answer.
Thanks lots for tracking Alan Chambers. I listened to the podcast of his panel remarks at the recent GCN conference, wanting to listen and understand a bit of what I myself could grasp of what he was saying, along with the flow of contexts, overt and implied. I have to admit I was a bit shocked that he would start his remarks by being so far out front about everybody being included in the Body of Christ, whether gay Christians of Side A, Side B, and/or what has come to be called Side X. The difficulty is not Alan Chambers saying that kind of thing in public, the difficulty is Alan Chambers still presiding so publicly over Exodus International and all its affiliated exgay programs or services. When panel members tried to gently pin Mr. Chambers down on all sorts of things, he really expressed a confusing variety of witnesses: (1) he seemed to claim that he had absolutely no antigay animosity whatsoever (aka “I left the gay lifestyle out of my love for Jesus, period. Thus, “I am who I am out of living something positive for Jesus, not categorically against anybody else in particular.”), or (2) he redirected the GCN panel conversation into murky, vague definitional realms (aka “I don’t use the word gay because I don’t think it fits me, or is accurate”), or (3) he disclaimed any responsibility for past serious human damages done by any Exodus affiliated past program or service (aka “We can’t police in detail what each and every program does or has done in the past” … nicely mixed with “Current Exodus policies and practices are changing because we talk about these heavy issues all the time, and so past damages are irrelevant to any of us now at Exodus”), or (4) he claimed or implied that past damages or problems legitimately noted from time to time in the past or present stemmed mainly from a mild-mannered, good-hearted Exodus International being hoodwinked or take advance of, by some unscrupulous or shady particular people at particular times in particular situations of exgay business.
Since I have been having negative stress flashbacks for about a year, really surprising because my own exgay years are forty years behind me of all things, I was also listening to the panel discussion in hopes of finding better clues to my own inner healing or recovery from my own personal damages. No luck, sadly. Alan Chambers seems not to have any particular clue about how exgay programs or services hurt and damage folks like me in the first place, let alone what specific healing, support, or recovery in daily life now might lead me out of the Exodus affiliated wilderness wherein my emotional life continues to languish. I don’t consciously believe any of the antigay, negative Exodus type stuff any more, have not thought that way for decades, yet find my deeper emotional self still held hostage to fear, self-loathing, and the over-arching cosmic doom which categorically is supposed to afflict any and all non-straight personhood and living. I would metaphorically kick myself for thinking in the first place that Alan Chambers could or would offer any real help, but thanks to ten years of exgay involvements forty years ago, I already have too many other reasons on my feeling list that tell me to kick myself. It is, alas, a daily battle, sometimes an hourly battle … even after 40 years of thinking otherwise. Lord have mercy.
In that personal context of ongoing struggle then, I have a real hard time seeing Mr. Chambers and/or Exodus International as fair, friendly, positive table companions. Good thing the feast is not my wedding feast, huh?
@drdanfee,
Your observations are spot-on, and they mirror my own, which I’ll be writing about soon. This, for me, was one of the biggest problems with what Alan said — his utter failure to acknowledge the damage and his attempt to wash Exodus’s hands of responsibility. His first response to each allegation was not regret but denial.
Interesting that you mention the flashbacks, as someone in another comments thread spoke about their response to Alan’s presence. They were very traumatized by it.