Having been raised in the South in a fairly conservative area, and having been raised in a fairly conservative church and, for a time, a conservative Christian school, one would think that most of the people I grew up with are fairly active church-goers. Not the case. In fact, it’s been sort of interesting to see, particularly starting with my generation [I'm an X-er, but barely], how few of them actually have remained active in any sort of “faith” community. The Evangelical Barna Group recently did a study to find out why all the young folks are leaving, many never to return. I’ll excerpt the broad headlines and let you jump over to read their explanations:

1. Churches seem over-protective.

2. Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.

3. Churches come across as antagonistic to science.

4. Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.

5. They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.

6. The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.

Okay, so those are the broad categories. Wingnuts will ignore most of them and focus on number two, arguing that tradishnul Christianity just isn’t wingnutty enough anymore to keep the flock under lock and key [they will phrase that differently, I guess], but a couple of them merit closer examination. Here is Barna’s explanation of number three:

One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is “Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that “Christianity is anti-science” (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have “been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.” Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.

Shorter version of that: younger people are better educated in science these days, simply because there is far more information out there than there used to be, and it’s becoming harder and harder for them to stick their heads in the sand and deny the reality that science presents when it comes in conflict with the creation myths of ye olde time religion. Or even simpler, it’s hard to look at a young cancer researcher and say, “evolution is a myth,” when they can look back and you and say, “dear sweet moron, I’ve observed it in a lab.”

That’s also related to number four, and Barna’s explanation of their own research leaves something out that’s kind of key, as the Public Religion Research Institute points out:

But buried within Barna’s category of “sex and sexuality” is something quite specific: churches’ stances on gay and lesbian issues. Research from earlier this summer reveals that nearly 7-in-10 (69%) Millennials agree that religious groups are alienating young people by being too judgmental about these issues. Only 37% of seniors agree.

This is also part of the reality-denial thing. It is simply a bridge too far to ask a sentient, educated human being to adhere to the sorts of belief systems advocated by the Matt Barbers and the Bryan Fischers of the world. Kids these days just aren’t that stupid. They have Google at their disposals, as well as their own experiences with gay and lesbian friends and family members to be able to look at the teachings of wingnuts on these issues and say, unequivocally, “what crazy, unhinged liars.” And if their churches are pushing that crap, they’re not likely to stay around.

Granted, there are many religious people who are involved in churches and faith communities which don’t strenuously seek to deny reality at every turn, and I know many of them. If that’s your path, go for it. But I find it encouraging that, at least among the generations who will be handed the torch when it comes to determining public policy and whatnot, we’ve finally reached the point where the insanity of anti-gay, anti-science teachings just don’t resonate. Update your résumés, professional Religious Right hacks.

Exodus International today announced the reformation of its church network as the Exodus Church Association.

In an e-mail message to supporters, Exodus Church Association director Jeff Buchanan declared:

Our goal is to empower pastors to meet this challenge so that those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions will find the freedom so many have experienced first-hand. In the future, the ECA will be developing resources specifically designed to meet the needs of pastors and ministry leaders to help meet this goal.

Remember: Exodus’ idea of “biblical truth and Christ-like compassion” just two months ago was to co-launch a Uganda campaign of antigay vigilantism, imprisonment, and forced ex-gay therapy. (Read More)

Exodus appears to be leaving its network of ad-hoc “ex-gay” ministries in the dust as the political organization and its primary benefactor, Focus on the Family, reach out instead to antigay churches with false messages about the struggles of same-sex-attracted persons.

Just last month, Exodus quietly laid off two key ex-gay outreach workers amid severe budget constraints and lackluster fund-raising efforts among its member “ministries” and antigay churches.

Yet now Focus on the Family boasts:

In the last six years, the organization [Exodus] has grown from 117 member agencies to 234 — including churches, counselors and parachurch ministries.

“When you call Exodus, we offer our point of view ‚Äî which is biblical (and) redemptive, but also practical,” said Randy Thomas, the group’s executive vice president. “We understand what it means to deal with same-sex attractions and have to live out our faith in light of those attractions.”

Exodus’ viewpoint is not Biblical: There is no Biblical basis for Exodus’ secular Freudian myth that sexual orientation is determined by lousy mothering or fathering or by sexual abuse. Nor is Exodus’ viewpoint “redemptive”: Exodus routinely excommunicates ex-gays from its movement when Exodus’ sham treatments and Scripture-lite prayers fail to achieve the promised “change” of sexual orientation.

Having failed (according to its own studies) to achieve “change,” Exodus has allowed its network of approximately 100 ad-hoc amateur ex-gay “ministries” to shrink in recent years, cutting services to these programs while Exodus has instead grown a sizable political network of antigay churches that are committed to prejudice, discrimination, and quack counseling against same-sex-attracted churchgoers and neighbors.

Exodus piggybacks a portion of it antigay church outreach on the marketing budget of Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out” ex-gay roadshow. Focus again boasts:

Focus on the Family’ Love Won Out team, which works alongside Exodus, is encouraged by the expansion.

“This is really exciting because churches are getting behind this movement of teaching people about healthy sexuality and teaching people that they don’t have to be gay,” said Jeff Johnston, gender issues analyst at Focus on the Family and part of the Love Won Out team.

Johnston’s unholy objective: Convince same-sex-attracted persons to call themselves heterosexual, lie to themselves and their families, deceive and marry hapless persons of the opposite sex, and conduct marriages marred by sexual dishonesty, celibacy, denial, and hypocrisy.

Addendum: It is sadly ironic that Exodus’ antigay church network makes churches unsafe for would-be “ex-gays”.

In a new documentary set to air on HBO next month, a disgraced evangelical pastor comes clean. “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” directed by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, was filmed with Haggard’s cooperation — and how.

You may recall that two years ago, Haggard stepped down from his post as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was sacked as senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs after a former male prostitute alleged that the cleric paid him for sex and used illicit substances.

I have yet to see the documentary, but published reports say that Haggard speaks onscreen, speaks about his new life. The father of five remains in his marriage for the same of his children and apparently has been living with shame. While he doesn’t speak of his sexual improprieties in detail, he does admit to “sexual immorality” and says, “I really did sin.” Haggard tells of his longtime struggle with his same-sex desires, insisting that he never claimed to be heterosexual.

“The reason I kept my personal struggle a secret is because I feared that my friends would reject me, abandon me and kick me out, and the church would exile and excommunicate me. And that happened and more,” he says in the film.

He also reveals that while he purchased methamphetamine, he never used it.

Haggard’s wife Gayle speaks in the documentary as well, and offers what perhaps is the reason behind the couple’s participation in the production: “I know to restore the honor to our children is to help restore honor to their father.”

That may be a long, hard road. Right-wing Christian leadership isn’t treating Haggard with honor, and most GLBT people probably will say that a man who worked so hard against honorable treatment for us is not worthy of anything resembling honor. Many believe he’s getting his just deserts.

After the scandal broke, the Haggard family fled Colorado for Arizona, where the former preacher confesses thta he is having a tough time making ends meet as an insurance salesperson. “At this stage in my life, I am a loser,” Haggard says.

I suspect Haggard is a loser only if he does not come to grips with his reality and learn to embrace it. If he can emerge from this crisis a better human being, then he will deserve to be honored. He doesn’t have to abandon his family to do it: Many gay and bisexual people end up in marriages with heterosexual partners. (Exhibit A: Me.) Sometimes those marriages work; often they do not. But the real losers are the misguided ones who work to diminish others. The Religious Wrong is filled hypocrites who divide people and spead a message that does not include anything Jesus would champion — things like forgiveness, compassion, and acceptance without judgment.

Haggard could choose to re-up as a fundamentalist Christian soldier — or he could take another road, one that leads to justice for all of God’s children and could help him right the wrongs he committed. That second path leads to honor. At this point in his now-difficult life, the choice is his.

You know what? I hope he makes the honorable choice — and I wish him and his family well.

“The Trials of Ted Haggard” is scheduled to run Jan. 29 on HBO.

In a way, you have to feel for Old Spice.

A recent effort meant to reinforce the Procter and Gamble men’s product line’s ruggedly macho image backfired in a big way. Old Spice sponsored the Art of Manliness‘ 2008 Man of the Year poll, which existed to crown a paragon of masculinity, a regular guy who, among other traits, “is loyal to his friends and family… does the right thing, even when it’ not convenient… serves and gives back to his community… [and] sacrifices for the good of others.”

Nominations were submitted by the public and P&G whittled the list down to 10 finalists. Voting in the unscientific poll took place between Oct. 20 and Nov. 9, and roughly 10,000 votes were cast.

The winner announced Dec. 15 was: Matthew L. Chancey, a sharp-dressed Christian missionary and lawyer who works to save lives and souls in Africa. Chancey received roughly 30 percent of readers’ votes, largely on the back of a loving testimonial from his wife Jennie.

Mrs. Chancey’s nominating essay on her man’s manliness is truly touching. It speaks of his kindness and strength, lauds his perilous work in Darfur, and describes him as a churchgoing John Wayne-style Rennaisance man who can “read G.A. Henty’ historical fiction aloud to our [eight] children at the dinner table and fix the brakes on a 1964 Ford pickup.” And never, never let you forget he’s the man. “He’d never sing his own praises, but, as his wife, I never tire of doing so,” she writes.

Her words are very moving and obviously persuasive to many. What’s more compelling, however, is what Mrs. Chancey did not share. Her reference to the writer G.A. Henty hints that there is more to the story: Henty was a writer in Victorian England who specialized in youth-focused adventure tales that supported his racist, classist, imperialist worldview and who is beloved by many archconservative Christian evangelicals.

Turns out Old Spice’s 2008 Art of Manliness Man of the Year is deeply involved with Vision Forum, a ministry so reputedly racist and radically right-wing it couldn’t support Sarah Palin for vice-president. On his Web site, Chancey praises pastor Doug Phillips as his “patriarch par excellence.” Check out what Vision Forum thinks of LGBT people:

Homosexuality is not a victimless crime. It is a cruel moral perversion that wreaks moral, physical and spiritual havoc on men, women, children, families and institutions. The Bible makes no distinction between homosexuals, pedophiles, bestials and rapists. All are criminals, the toleration of which brings judgment on the land and devastation to children.

… It is the mission of the Christian, and is no contradiction, that we lovingly preach repentance to sodomites, even as we seek to drive from the land every manifestation of homosexuality. Furthermore, Sodomy was a punishable crime at common law and should remain such. Any politician who supports same sex marriage or civil marriage for sodomites is complicit in a moral crime against God and should be actively opposed.

He’s a state leader of the Family Policy Network, a right-wing political group that works the same turf as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. He’s also a politician — Chancey recently lost a bid to become Alabama’s public service commissioner. and though he ran as a Republican, he was endorsed by the ultra-right Alabama Constitution Party. He even gained some notoriety in 2005 when the Washington Post discovered communications specialist Chancey — apparently no bastion of manly ethics — playing fast and loose with Gov. Tim Kaine’s (D-VA) Internet domain name. And he’s earned quite the reputation for ruthlessness in evangelical Christian circles.

His Biblically inspired views on marriage, gender roles, and family are ultra-traditional. Men are meant to be in the world and to serve as heads of households. Women, from birth, are groomed for service in the home, as the following photo from the Vision Forum Father-Daughter Discipleship Retreat shows.

Vision Forum girls compete to see who can do the best job at grooming, shaving, and tying a tie on their dads.

Matt Chancey’s daughters don’t get to go to college — they don’t even get a Rumspringa. And Chancey — his wife also doesn’t divulge that she runs the Ladies Against Feminism Web site — believes women should not vote.

That’s right. He’s a real man’s man, a regular guy.

Art of Manliness and Old Spice say their hands are clean and that the vote is a win for diversity:

It was not possible, or even desirable to quiz each candidate about their political, religious, and social views. While we selected the finalists, the winner will be determined by you, the reader. If you don’t support a particular candidate’ message, you should vote for those you do believe in and spread the word about that candidate. The contest is not about who AoM or Old Spice believes should be the winner, but who the public determines should be the 2008 Man of the Year.

Matt will be receiving the $2,000 cash prize sponsored by Old Spice along with a manly assortment of Old Spice products. Congratulations, Matt. Right now Matt’ in Africa working for his non-profit. … His $2,000 prize will be going to Darfur to help refugees from the genocide.

Chancey works for the Persecution Project Foundation, which is run by Vision Forum leader Doug Phillips’ brother Brad. The group’s mission is to “take the gospel message of Jesus Christ to the people of Africa, simultaneously bringing them physical supplies and food.”

Whatever one’s views of its captive-audience evangelizing, PPF helps people in desperate need That, of course is an admirable thing, no question. But if P&G knew the whole story, would it be so blithely accepting of having Chancey serve as the epitome of “good, clean, wholesome manliness?” Is this the role model they were seeking? And now that the announcement is out there and the boycott-threatening complaints by outraged customers are coming in, can you imagine how P&G execs must feel about the whole once-avoidable mess? Chances are, they are praying this controversy just goes away — and fast.

Antigay youth activist Mike Ensley — along with his “ex-gay” colleagues at Exodus International — has spent years encouraging same-sex-attracted persons to stay in the closet, refrain from calling themselves “gay,” and falsely tell their churches that they are “heterosexual” people with an attraction issue that, surely, some prayers and reparative therapy can fix.

So when an ex-gay tells his youth pastor that he’s still “struggling,” Ensley feigns shock that pastors respond with feelings of betrayal. Ex-gay activists have made churches unsafe for persons who experience predominant and persistent same-sex attraction, and now Exodus needs someone to blame.

In an article in the current issue of Focus on the Family’s Boundless youth magazine, Ensley writes:

I thought that stunk. In fact, I was pretty ticked that Josh even had to be a part of my little group over at the Exodus ministry where I volunteered. Not that he wasn’t a good guy to have around ‚Äî always has been ‚Äî but all he needed was a safe place to be transparent and find acceptance and support. It saddened me that he felt his church couldn’t offer that. Knowing that a real community was what he needed, and not a special ministry group, I often encouraged him to open up to someone in his life that he felt was safe. Maybe just the youth pastor to start.

When Josh finally did tell his youth pastor about his secret struggle, things drastically changed for him. He wasn’t allowed to be in student leadership anymore, or participate in the worship band. For some reason, the youth pastor felt it necessary to enact almost every level of church discipline on Josh, despite that he wasn’t in rebellion and didn’t want to be. Worst of all, he added insult to injury by asking Josh to refrain from any contact with children on church premises.

Through misleading marketing about “change” and “freedom” — not to mention the parroting of far-right hate propaganda about homosexual child molesters and about uppity gays who dare to protest votes against their freedom — Exodus has made celibate gay Christians unwelcome and feared in the nation’s conservative churches. (Read More)

Exodus International, the North American network of so-called “ex-gay” activists, is steadily building a network of affiliated churches even as the organization’s ex-gay membership declines.

But, despite a $50 annual membership fee, Exodus appears to offer these churches little besides false promises.

Exodus Church Network director Jeff Buchanan tells Ministry Today:

If we’re honest, the issue of homosexuality intimidates most church leaders. It makes us feel helpless. When someone pulls us aside and confides in us that he or she struggles with same-sex attractions, we diligently put on our “leader face” while we shrivel on the inside, feeling absolutely incompetent to address the situation.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If you believe God’s Word to be true, then you automatically have the needed tools for effective ministry, since all Scripture is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, NIV). Therefore, we are equipped as the church to minister to anyone who walks through our doors‚Äîhomosexual or not.

With the exception of the introductory, cherry-picked verse that is cited above, the remainder of Buchanan’s article fails to cite a single Bible verse that would provide church leaders with guidance in addressing someone who struggles with their sexual orientation. Buchanan fails to justify the central thesis of his article — the dubious notion that the Bible is all that one needs to become a counselor to a gay individual in distress.

Of the three vague tips offered by Buchanan — that a person needs 1) compassionate truth, 2) discipleship, and 3) community — none has a stated basis in “God’s Word,” nor are any explained with useful examples. Indeed, this trite list of needs is unworthy of serious ministerial discussion: Exodus is touting tips that appear to have been borrowed not from a Bible or a professional guide to pastoral care, but from fortune cookies or a second-rate horoscope. (Read More)

In an Apr. 23 column in the Cherry Creek (Colorado) News, the Rev. Rebecca Kemper Poos recalls how her church’s Christian ceremony for a female couple’s daughter gave a glimpse of true hope to an ex-gay woman named Rachel.

The church and the ceremony also offered Rachel a taste of freedom:

Freedom from fear of damnation, freedom from self-contradiction, freedom from isolation, freedom from prejudice, freedom from judgmentalism, and freedom to be a good mother to her kids.

In other words, they offered Rachel freedom to love and be loved.

Ex-gay activists from Exodus, Focus on the Family and their political co-warriors often talk vaguely about “freedom” — freedom from love, freedom from sexuality, freedom from non-judgmental faith, freedom from having gay neighbors and co-workers. For example, also on Apr. 23, Baptist Press — steered by ex-gay Southern Baptist strategist Bob Stith — launched a series of columns “focusing particularly on the freedom that former homosexuals have found in Christ.”

Ex-gays like Rachel, and former ex-gays, have learned from experience that talk is cheap — that ex-gay ideology is neither hopeful nor freeing.

Whatever their religion or creed, gay-affirming people of faith can offer ex-gays true personal and spiritual freedom — not mere talk.