Exodus International closes down
Jun 20, 2013, 6:48 AM | Updated: 8:59 am
(AP Photo/File)
Alan Chambers, the President of Exodus International, which was established to help Christians limit their homosexual desires, has now rejected that whole idea – and is closing down.
“Ninety-nine percent of the people I’ve met, myself included, continue to struggle with or have same sex attractions, and for the majority of people those things don’t go away,” said Chambers.
Chambers has acknowledged before that even though he’s married to a woman, he himself still has homosexual attractions. But in a halting and clearly painful speech at the group’s annual conference Wednesday night, he apologized for promoting that idea those desires could be changed – or that God even wanted them to change.
“Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism. For quite sometime we’ve been imprisoned in a world view that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.”
He said the group had made the mistake of judging people, instead of accepting them and that closing down was God’s will.
As for what will happen to the members of Exodus International – he told them to go to church.
“We believe the time is now for the church to open its doors and let the marginalized in, to allow the spiritual refugees that have been kept out to find a home in the church.”
Alan Chambers – now the former president of Exodus International, “It’s just simply a new time.”