Alan Chambers of Exodus International faced a tremendous amount of criticism from anti-gay activists after he spoke to the Gay Christian Network and said that a celibate gay Christian can go to Heaven. Chambers also renounced his group’s slogan on “curing” sexual orientation, saying that in his opinion 99.9% of people who have sought to alter their sexual orientation have not experienced any change. Aghast, many on the Religious Right quickly rebuked the man WORLD Magazine just last year named “Daniel of the Year.”
The attacks continued on Americans For Truth About Homosexuality Radio Hour with AFTAH president Peter LaBarbera and co-host John Kirkwood. LaBarbera said that the idea that someone can be both gay and a Christian and declining anti-gay animus in the church represent “a corruption of evangelicalism,” and Kirkwood even said that gay Christians are “satanically inspired.” Later, LaBarbera compared Chambers to Afghanistan’s “green-on-blue” attackers, or Afghan soldiers who are ostensibly allies who shoot at NATO forces. According to LaBarbera, by renouncing a sexual orientation “cure” Chambers was really leveling an “an attack on Jesus Christ.”
Listen:
LaBarbera: We’re talking about Christianity and homosexuality, the age old struggle between sin and righteousness and the growing confusion within evangelical circles. We saw it in Catholicism, I think the conservative Catholic movement is coming out of their confusion although there are still a lot of nominal Catholics who support gay so-called marriage and the like, but I think evangelicals are becoming—there is a corruption of evangelicalism which is seeking to sort of throw up the white flag as it were, and say ‘we can merge these two, we can do the gay Christian thing.’
Kirkwood: Part of it is ignorance, we talked about being biblically illiterate, they don’t know what the Bible clearly states on this. But part of it is cowardice. Let’s face it, this group, this movement—I believe it is satanically inspired.
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LaBarbera: It’s almost like a pincer movement, there’s so many different attacks on the truth, coming from so many different directions, but this thing with Chambers, this is almost like inside the camp, this is almost like Afghanistan where our allies are shooting our own soldiers. When you have a guy whose got the leading Christian—Alan Chambers, Exodus, this was the gold standard, supposedly, this was the ex-gays, this was ‘Christ can change people.’ And now you have the same Alan Chambers, sitting before a group of unrepentant homosexuals and saying I apologize, we don’t use the phrase ‘change is possible’ anymore, to me that’s an attack on Jesus Christ.
