For nearly 40 years the Christian ministry organization Exodus International has been preaching that homosexuals can, and should, change. Change from being gay. Exodus was an umbrella organization for 100- 200 others that pushed the same claim, including places that sought to re-educate teenagers to change their sexuality.
Wednesday night Exodus’s president, Alan Chambers announced that Exodus was shutting up shop because they had been “imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.” The board of directors unanimously voted to close Exodus – and start a new ministry to “work with other churches to create ‘safe, welcoming and mutually transforming communities.’”
Chambers issued an eloquent apology on the TV program Our America With Lisa Ling. “Our ministry has been public and therefore any acknowledgement of wrong must also be public. I haven’t always been the leader of Exodus, but I am now and someone must finally own and acknowledge the hurt of others,” he said.
The expanded form of the apology on the Exodus website is addressed to “Members of the LGBTQ Community” and begins with an account of a time Chambers caused a 4-car pileup while swatting at a bee. “I never intended for the accident to happen. I would never knowingly have hurt anyone. But I did. And it was my fault.”
Chambers in 2012. Still asleep.
He talks about wrestling with his same-sex attractions, and hiding them in the hope that they would go away. “Looking back, it seems so odd that I thought I could do something to make them stop.”
Recently, I have begun thinking again about how to apologize to the people that have been hurt by Exodus International through an experience or by a message. I have heard many firsthand stories from people called ex-gay survivors. Stories of people who went to Exodus affiliated ministries or ministers for help only to experience more trauma. I have heard stories of shame, sexual misconduct, and false hope. In every case that has been brought to my attention, there has been swift action resulting in the removal of these leaders and/or their organizations. But rarely was there an apology or a public acknowledgement by me….
Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents. I am sorry that there were times I didn’t stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite—or worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.
More than anything, I am sorry that so many have interpreted this religious rejection by Christians as God’s rejection. I am profoundly sorry that many have walked away from their faith and that some have chosen to end their lives….
I cannot apologize for my deeply held biblical beliefs about the boundaries I see in scripture surrounding sex, but I will exercise my beliefs with great care and respect for those who do not share them. I cannot apologize for my beliefs about marriage. But I do not have any desire to fight you on your beliefs or the rights that you seek. My beliefs about these things will never again interfere with God’s command to love my neighbor as I love myself.
You have never been my enemy. I am very sorry that I have been yours. I hope the changes in my own life, as well as the ones we announce tonight regarding Exodus International, will bring resolution, and show that I am serious in both my regret and my offer of friendship.
Dave Rattigan of Ex-Gay Watch writes of the cynicism with which he awaited Chambers’ latest appearance on Our America. “I steeled myself for more hazy, defensive posturing that failed to get to the heart of the issue”
Earlier he wrote, “I am really gonna flip if he tries any of the following tacks:
a) we’re sorry “if” we unintentionally hurt anyone;
b) we never meant what you thought we meant – we just communicated it badly;
c) sorry you misunderstood our message.”
But Rattigan was impressed. “Finally… No ifs and buts – just sorry.”
There might be another reason for Exodus International to close down besides remorse and breaking out of their imprisoning worldview – financial trouble. Another writer on Ex-Gay Watch, Mike Airhart, noted that in 2008 Exodus bought a $1 million building in Florida for their HQ, just before the real estate market there tanked. They lost members when they participated in a 2009 conference in Uganda “which precipitated that country’s kill-the-gays legislation.” They also lost members when Chambers admitted at a 2012 Gay Christian Network meeting that most “ex-gays” haven’t changed their sexual orientation.
Airhart says that Chambers’ apology “by most accounts seems sincere” and forces ex-gay activists to decide which way they’ll go.
I think it’s a great apology. It takes responsibility, and it does so in some detail. It’s an amazing precedent.
Not going there.
One thing’s missing for me – an explanation. Why did Chambers (for one) work so hard attacking and denying the reality of people so much like himself? And all in the name of a God of love and mercy? Was he trying to change his own reality?
“Today it is as if I’ve just woken up to a greater sense of how painful it is to be a sinner in the hands of an angry church,” he said. How was he able to sleep through all that? It may be a long complicated story. It may take him longer to figure out. Maybe he doesn’t have an short explanation he can trot out. Indeed the apology shouldn’t be about him and his journey. But I can’t help wondering what the hell he’s been thinking all these years.
Oh! This is making me cry.
I remember one of the umbrella organizations from this one coming to our college and ending up in a debate. I have all the scriptures they used, written in the cover of my Bible, and was still so confused at how they could “prove” the unprovable and talk about changing orientations. As a college fresher, I knew NADA about anything, and the memories of this bewilderment are so clear. It might seem hard, to the outside observer, to see how anyone could “sleep” through this, and what the hell they’ve been thinking, and how on earth they could deny themselves so fully, but they truly, truly, truly felt like the only way to be loved was to be someone else, and with what they believed was a “thus sayeth the Lord” behind that, that’s an awful lot of impetus.
What a mess, when people play God.
Thanks for writing this up. I too am looking forward to the deeper story, but you’re right – the apology isn’t about him or his journey. There’ll be another time for that.
I heard Chambers interviewed on BBC today. The interviewer did not pull any punches, and made some effort to box Chambers into enough of a corner that Chambers could have gotten defensive, and Chambers just didn’t. When asked how he felt that one person the interviewer knew, had turned to drugs as a response to the Exodus Int’l message, Chambers ducked nothing. He said he felt absolutely horrible about it. It does not do anything for the guy addicted to drugs, but either Chambers was totally sincere, or he’s one of the best liars I’ve ever heard.