Ex-gay activists are bracing for the June 20 episode of Our America with Lisa Ling, in which survivors of ex-gay ministry abuses share their experiences on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Some ex-gay activists will acknowledge that these survivors and their families indeed suffered long-term medical, relational, and spiritual harm caused directly by the activists’ misguided counseling methods.
But not all activists are quite ready to confront this reality. Restored Hope Network, for example, has already sought to spin the episode as a tale of archetypal unreformed godless disobedient homosexual heathens telling lies about innocent Christian believers. RHN posted the following sanctimonious warning to Facebook tonight:
“I wanted to let you all know that Lisa Ling’s America show will be airing what looks to be an expose on Exodus on June 20th. I don’t want you to be caught off guard, so I am letting you know. I am in prayer for them and those who will hear this program.
“In advance, I just want to say that our God in Jesus the Messiah has set apart people for himself, saving his people from all sorts of sins–including homosexuality–before any of us were here to talk about it. He is not powerless to transform surrendered individuals into alignment with His own clearly expressed will in the Bible.
“1 Corinthians 6:9-11 speaks to rejection of sin, cleansing FROM sin, sanctification and justification for men, women and children who are redeemed. That is better news than you can hear on any TV program!
“‘Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.'”
This sanctimony is a pious variation on that old last-resort conversational tactic of shutting one’s ears and shouting — at God and everyone else — “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”
I could provide any number of Bible verses against RHN here: verses that warn against deceit, hardening one’s heart, weighting the innocent with your own millstone, blackmailing God into performing a miracle, abusing people in God’s name, or projecting one’s own sins onto the person being judged.
But the Restored Hope Network is neither Biblical nor orthodox — except when it’s politically and financially convenient. So quoting the Bible to them here would be pointless.
While RHN continues to blackmail God with its threats of harm and banishment against anyone whom God doesn’t cure, it remains to be seen who among conservative Christians is willing to learn from past evangelical mistakes and avoid sinning against people going forward.
I’m waiting to see this episode. I hope it’s put online, otherwise I’ll have to do with only recaps. :/
It will not be streamed online, but OWN plans to release a series of short videos online with material from the TV Special.
Well, balls. Someone give me a play by play, let’s hope Alan changed from being a monstrous demon to much a gentler, but still broken, person.
Kind of off-topic but just a week before that show FRC is hosting an event from a “former lesbian” who’s making the rounds among the “ex-gay”/anti-gay circle
https://www.frc.org/newsroom/frc-to-host-webcast-lecture-on-testimony-of-former-lesbian-university-professor
Google her and it is all adulation and rave reviews. She’s gonna rake it in on the ex-gay roadshow, at least for a while. Anne Paulk for 2013.
“It’s testimony time!”.
I suspect that at least the information, if not the complete show, will be available through one source or another.
love your work Mike
you never expounded on the passage cited 1 Cor. 6:9-11. Maybe I’m not well verse in your mission statement. I honestly don’t see the logic of your argument in cited this verse and not illuminating on it at all. Is the passage at fault or the so called christians?
The Spirit of the Virginity of Christ has been my antidote to sexual sins for over 35 years! Sanctimonious? Who? you too? I do believe that many american religious people who make an overzealous claim to Christ have failed to understand the truth of Christ crucified. I agree; they say they do but with their actions they deny the intrinsic value of this basic truth. The same power that raised Christ from the dead, has worked in my life making me free from sexual sins. If this power to raise the dead really didn’t work, I would have gone through with my suicide. something powerful happened to my on the 21th of October 1977. till this day, that power has never failed to secure my confidence and faith in the resurrected life of Christ working in me. Religiosity is useless to transform. the living Christ in us does. don’t sign us all off as sanctimonious, or hypocrites. there is a remnant that has truly gone through the same resurrection change as Christ Himself.
When you come to Las Vegas, google me out, lets talk some more.
Everyone has a right to their own faith and beliefs, and to seek out the mysteries that are not subject to the scientific method. If you believe that it was the real spirit of Christ that both kept you from suicide and has enabled you to behave sexually in a way you feel is correct, then that is fine. However, it would seem established that the power of the human mind is such that belief in anything, if it be strong enough, will accomplish that and more.
There are very devout members of other faiths, some which have nothing to do with the person of Jesus, who could give the same examples of life changing revelations. It is one thing to say that you believe this or that, but it is quite another to state something as fact which can easily be contradicted. You can say that you believe Jesus to be the savior of mankind, a matter of faith, but you can not, without speaking an obvious falsehood, say that what happened to you is only possible if Jesus rose from the dead.
Nailed it, David.
Regarding 1 Corinthians 6.9:
New research findings (vetted by leading New Testament scholars) show that Paul condemned the rapists of young boys (not homosexuals) in this passage. The full research findings that are changing Bible scholars’ minds have been donated to the public domain, and can be downloaded in a PDF format at:
https://www.MichaelWoodCrypto.com/Downloads/
The link also contains quotes from both Christian and secular scholars regarding the significance and veracity of these research findings. It looks like both 1 Corinthians 6.9 and 1 Timothy 1.9 won’t be able to be used against the LGBT community any more!
Well, I think Paul’s writings need to be understood in the context they were in. Whatever you want to argue about what he was describing, the word ‘homosexuality’ as we understand it in English didn’t exist then in that language. And if he was trying to condemn persons who espoused a sole attraction to their own gender he had other words and terminology he could use.
The article doesn’t “argue” what Paul was describing so much as document how that word was used in the Koine Greek period. The word was only used in one way, and thus there isn’t really anything to argue about.