The Asheville, NC Citizen-Times ran an article Monday on Exodus International’s annual conference, which started yesterday in neighboring Ridgecrest. The article profiles Exodus and its activities, as well as Equality Asheville, which is offering counter programming with the message “you’re okay the way you are.”
Both sides are given equal time, with quotes from Exodus leaders presented alongside statements by Wayne Besen and several members of Equality Asheville. For the most part, it’s business as usual. What stands out is a rather surprising comment by Alan Chambers:
“The truth is that homosexuality does not send people to hell. Gay people live in heaven. It’s not about fire and brimstone, it’s about an alternative option,” Chambers said.
While Exodus and its allies have for some time avoided directly stating that “gay-identified” Christians will end up in hell, this is nonetheless an extraordinary statement coming from the head of an organization founded on the premise that homosexuality and Christianity are completely incompatible.
Whether this latest admission really means anything in practical terms is a separate issue; Exodus has a track record of adjusting its public image to suit the situation without making substantial changes behind the scenes, as evidenced by Chambers’ announcement earlier this year that the organization was withdrawing from political activism.
In this case, Chambers’ statement appears calculated to reinforce the impression that Exodus’ highest value is the right to self-determination, and that it has no interest in converting GLBT individuals who accept themselves as they are. Given the progressive and gay-friendly nature of the Asheville area, it makes sense that Exodus would want to soften its public image.
However, while it may be accurate to say that Exodus does not directly try to convert people (that job can be left to churches and to other ministries), it seems less than honest to suggest that Exodus genuinely respects the rights of gay individuals to make their own choices in life. From actively opposing legal protections for GLBT individuals, both domestically and overseas, to characterizing such protections as “evil,” to ostracizing those who leave the ex-gay lifestyle, Exodus’ track record suggests that it values self-determination only for those who make the “right” choice.
That Exodus is willing to leave the question of each individual’s salvation to God is noteworthy, but it should not be interpreted as a lessening of its traditional hostility toward those it characterizes as “militant” gays.
I’m curious if their willingness to leave the question of gay people’s salvation to God will cause them much flack with any of the churches or other ministries that ally with and support them.
Perhaps, but Alan has wiggled around positions like this before. I suspect that behind the scenes he may clarify the issue in a not so charitable manner. Consider only one example, the excerpt from his book “God’s Grace and the Homosexual Next Door.”
Now if he were to openly renounce this and other past comments which are at odds with his statement in the Asheville article, and reinforce this new view with future comments, then I would certainly consider it a positive move. But from experience I have to be skeptical; his claim that homosexuals will be in heaven may be qualified later to mean that people who continue to have same-sex attractions will be there.
I also find it interesting that Alan used the term “gay people” instead of “gay-identified people.” If he and Exodus drop their odd Orwellian use of the latter from this day forward, again I will take his comments more seriously. If not, I will have to assume he was simply playing to a progressive, gay friendly audience and adjusted his verbiage accordingly. It would not be the first time.
It’s not about what’s true, it’s about where you put your emphasis. Jesus even forgave a man moments before he died but we emphasize living a whole life or repentance, not just the last few moments. Even if homosexuality is incompatible with Christianity, it doesn’t mean they’re damned. It’s very hard for anyone’s ideology to be completely compatible even with itself, let alone a particular religion.
And, I think, Alan Chambers feels he himself is still gay at some level and can’t damn himself.
This is a very salient point.
This is not the first time I have heard a major ex-gay leader state that gays go to heaven. But all the previous times have been behind closed doors and off the record.
In the past year we have Alan Chambers publiclly question two of the anti-gay evangelical church’s key points when he said in so many words:
1. Change in orientation is NOT really possible (LA Times, summer 2007).
and now
2. Gay people (and I would hope lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people) are not excluded from heaven.
Of course many of us have known this for some time, although it took me nearly two decades to figure it out. The fact that so many people of faith who are also openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender cannot be ignored. With or without the conservative church’s permission or approval, we are still having church, and the LGBT people of faith are proving to be a tremendous gift to their faith communities.
I see that right now in Malta where I am the guest of Drachma, an LGBT Catholic group and recently at the European Forum of Lesbian and Gay Christians.
The exciting part of it for me is seeing the new life these LGBT people of faith are breathing onto the dry bones of traditional religion.
What David Roberts said.
At first glance, “The truth is that homosexuality does not send people to hell. Gay people live in heaven” sounds like a pretty revolutionary statement for Chambers to make — but without any qualifiers, it’s perfectly consistent with the “hate the sinner, love the sin” spiel; i.e., you can be as gay as a daisy in May, and God (or at least the “ex-gays”) won’t condemn you — unless you act on your nature.
At least these clowns are finally starting to get a clue that sexual orientation, while mutable, is not like a light switch — and that changing one’s behavior is not the same thing as changing who one is (which is impossible).
All I can say is… isn’t that nice. G’s all encompassing love is so great that even gay people are allowed into heaven.
Did G explain this to Chambers, or is he a big boy that figured it out all by himself? The fact that no one has been to heaven and returned to let the rest of know what it is like, let alone who may or may not be allowed there, doesn’t seem to sink in.
Oh, of course they will be allowed. It’s only gay people that are such SPECIAL sinners.
Spiritual arrogance, no matter what kind of drag it appears in, is such a drug. given what Jesus had to say about the beams and specks in people’s eyeballs, one has to wonder if the those who are addicted to their arrogance are going ot make it to heaven, either.
I don’t see anything “extraordinary” about Chambers’ statement. Nor is it representing any change in his opinion expressed elsewhere. It’s commonplace. Break it down:
It follows paragraphs about Exodus “workshops” about “overcoming” sexual abuse, same-sex attraction, and spouses (referring, of course, to a heterosexual marriage). And that current Exodus canard about not choosing SSA, but choosing (non-gay) behaviour.
What Chambers offers is “Come to us, and you can find a way to Heaven. We can help.”
Unsaid: Unrepentant, unchanged gay people will not be in Heaven. Don’t delay, ring today.
Same Old Message: Reject the gay, act heterosexually, be celibate for life… or else.
Soft-selling doesn’t alter that underlying message. A good decade (or two, depending on where you are) behind the times, Exodus has established that being viewed as unpleasantly anti-gay will see people reject their efforts from the get-go. Instead, now let’s rely on classic bait-and-switch: there will be time enough for the unpleasantly anti-gay after we’ve got them through the doors of a ministry. Change the public messages to support that approach, rather than spend time defending messages that are too obvious.
I’ll stand corrected if we see any change to how Exodus/ministries actually behave. As with the original statement about withdrawing from politics, it will take no time at all until we’ll see facts to the contrary.
Except that it’s not about an “alternative option” as much as it’s about the political promotion of that alternative option. So to say that “it’s not about fire and brimstone” is to say that ‘it’s not about hate.’ And if it’s really not about hate, you shouldn’t have to say so.
Must be all those “gay people out there who are Christians,” February 6, 2007:
That being well after the above mentioned quote from his/Exodus’ book from 2006:
They use “gay” vs. “homosexuality” when it suits their purposes, and often times use the term “homosexuality” to conflate (or not) same-sex attraction with same-sex sexual behavior.
He could have easily said that homosexual behavior doesn’t send people to hell, or conversely, that homosexual attraction doesn’t send people to hell. But he didn’t. And knowing that he knows the intensity of the controversy surrounding the whole thing, I can only surmise that he chose his words
dishonestlycarefully and specifically, to play to the widest audience possible.I don’t have any problem being “condemned to hell” by others, but the moment they try to hide it, they end up with less credibility than the Phelps clan. At least in my book.
That he still promotes the book without any addendum or clarification on this issue gives me more reason to suspect that what he is saying now is not so different that what he said then. The flurry of verbal distortion coming from both Alan and Randy is simply disgusting, and painfully dishonest.
David Roberts wrote:
I don’t think any reasonable person could ever have accused either one of them of being straight forward or honest.
It would be wrong not to acknowledge that Alan has been more candid and honest with me privately in the past. My sense is that he has has been torn at times between a better path, and the one that his conservative, political world expects of him (and Exodus). At times that struggle has been subtle, but it is there.
The worst influence driving him in the wrong direction would have to be Randy Thomas. No one with such an immature and bitter core should be anywhere near the leadership of a ministry. At best Exodus seems to be his personal substitute for sex; he worships it as his salvation and is nearly paranoid that others want to destroy it. Exodus is his lover, and he is a mean and jealous mate.
In the end, however, Alan is responsible for what Exodus and their member ministries do, and we see the debris of that mission every day. Simply adjusting the rhetoric does not make things any better.
Exodus’ recent emphais that alternatives need to be respected has several flaws in it mainly from what they leave out. For hundreds of years many, many gays and lesbians have felt compelled (coerced?) to chose an option to live a heterosexual existence, passing as straight, partnering with someone of the opposite, with varying degrees of success and failure (usually more failure and at the expense of various of the players involved)
The reality is that this straight or no-longer-gay (ex-gay)choice remains impossible for most. Some may be biseuxal or have a lower libido or may manage it for a season. For most who have tried, we see all sorts of casualities to individuals and families.
Exodus and other proponents of suppressing one’s orientation in order to elect an alternative straight identity do not give their clients informed choice. They do no make clear that most people do not and cannot maintain an ex-gay life. In fact, more and more we hear from former ex-gays who outline the harms they have experienced long-term. We have begun to chronicle how the ex-gay life made both their faith and their sexuality far more complicated and unhealthy.
Over at Beyond Ex-Gay we just posted the narrative of a man who for years struggled to live a straight life, aided by Exodus programs and Christian leaders, only to devolve into unhealthy habits as he developed a negative image of himself.
Exodus and others who promote and provide some sort of option for “change” by whatever name they call it, need to take responsibility for the many many people who have been negatively affected by ex-gay practices and theories that most often serve to undermine a person’s self-esteem, mental health and personal relationships while as they infuse the “struggler” with fear, shame and a great deal of misinformation.
Grantdale is right. Chambers probably just means celibate gays, as most evangelicals have always believed that celibate gays will go to heaven (though I’ve known some nuts who think that even celibate gays are damned). This is not a change in position, it’s a clever marketing ploy to make Exodus come off better than it really is.
John Weaver said:
Did you see the second comment above?
I think Alan is sincere and confused. I believe he struggles between what is (he’s gay) and what he believes (he cannot be gay). I feel sorry for him and I feel sorry for the people he leads on to a similar path of pain and confusion. I don’t think he is purposefully deceptive. Any time you try to make a square peg fit into a round hole, you’re going to get gaps.
I think that Alan Chambers’ greatest strenght is his sincerity. When speaking in public, he always comes accross as very sincere.
The problem is that he sounds just as sincere when he says “A” in front of one crowd or says the exact opposite of “A” in front of another crowd.
At Love In Action we try to help people to find freedom in Jesus Christ. GLBT live by their own rules and many expect to go to heaven when they die. I believe that is between them and God. We try and help those who believe God is not pleased with their choices. No one is forced and some do not give up their choice. The body parts simply do not fit for those of the same sex. the real question for all of us is whether or not we fit into God’s plan for men and women.
The body parts simply do not fit for those of the same sex.
I can assure you, they do.
I think you have homosexuality confused with poorly-made shoes.
Concerning the comment above from “Jim” and referencing “Love In Action,” I’m not entirely sure of the authenticity. We are checking on it, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously just yet.
It’s interesting that the gay life spans are being highlighted when class and location have much more to do with it.
American inequality highlighted by 30-year gap in life expectancy