Rick Warren's Ex-Gay Group: What You Need To Know

December 19, 2008

Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish reported this morning on Rick Warren’s Ex-Gay group. The following (excerpt only) was received from one of his readers.

Most people probably don’t know this, but Warren’s Saddleback Church has a Friday night program called Celebrate Recovery. On the whole the program is modeled after the twelve steps, albeit with an evangelical supplement to it. There are subgroups in the program that cater to men with “addictions” to pornography, recovery alcoholics, and women with codependency issues. There is also a group for those who struggle with “same sex attraction”, the discourse of which is directly borrowed from the ex-gay movement. I know this, of course, because I was involved with the group in Spring of 2007.

I looked up Celebrate Recovery (again with the acronyms!), and found that in fact the group is listed on Saddleback’s website as a Signature Ministry. Here’s a link and a screencap of the page in case they decide to delete it from their site. While they’ve done their best to scrub any reference to homosexuality (or as they call it, “Same Sex Attraction”) from the ministry’s main website, there are traces out there. That’s one of the problems with selling your hate far and wide; you can’t control what everybody does with it.

I found one trace at Jubilee Celebrate Recovery, an affiliate group in California. Here’s the page and another screencap, because I expect the post to be gone soon. Note that this is not the page linked to at the top. It’s a post from March 2, 2008 on the apparently defunct blog. “Same Sex Attraction” is listed (way down at the bottom) as a treatable condition along with Chemical Dependency, alcoholism, overeating, and others.

Same Sex Attraction

Is your relationship with God characterized by shame and guilt? Have you pulled away from healthy relationships because of homosexual issues? If you relate to these struggles, we welcome you to join us for hope and strength as we learn how to apply the 8 Recovery Principles to our lives.

But maybe that Jubilee group is just misusing Saddleback’s materials, you know? Could be, except for the group I found in Loveland, Colorado. Crossroads Church did me the great favor of putting the pamphlet for Celebrate Recovery’s Same Sex Attraction group online. Here’s a copy, supplied by the church in handy-dandy pdf format! I found the symptoms of Same Sex Attraction quite interesting. They include stereotypically closeted gay qualities such as:

• Has more opposite-sex friendships than same-sex friendships
• Is overly sensitive to criticisms
• Cannot take good-natured joking or kidding from other men
• Can only guess at what it means to be a “man”
• May have acted out sexually with other men
• Secretly craves healthy, affirming affection from other men but feels awkward accepting or expressing such affection
• Feels unsure of himself
• Plagued by self-doubt and regrets
• Is very sensitive

And that’s not even half of them. Folks, this is Ex-Gay 101. Don’t let the Hawaiian shirts and Krispy Kremes fool you; Jim Dobson’s got nothing on Rick Warren. They are peas in a pod. (A totally heterosexual pod, of course.)

 

President-elect Obama, there are 33 days left to keep this from becoming the first major blemish on your presidency. Supporting an ex-gay proponent is not acceptable. You cannot support them and expect LGBT people, many of whom bear the psychological and spiritual scars from their abuse by ex-gay groups, and expect us to support you. This is non-negotiable.

33 days.


  • Beth

    Just want you to know I appreciate you collecting and presenting this info re: Rick and minions. I am appalled by the fact that Obama is currying favor with this foolishness. But I am enraged that so many people I would otherwise consider not brain dead are OK with it.

    Padded walls keep the noise in and the concussions out.

  • Beth

    Just want you to know I appreciate you collecting and presenting this info re: Rick and minions. I am appalled by the fact that Obama is currying favor with this foolishness. But I am enraged that so many people I would otherwise consider not brain dead are OK with it.

    Padded walls keep the noise in and the concussions out.

  • Michelle

    I am a former participant in Celebrate Recovery. My leaving the group has been very sad for me, but I cannot in good conscious participate in something that encourages and/or endorses reparative therapy. I didn’t know about reparative therapy one way or another when I joined, but over the two years I learned alot about it and CR’s intentions to help people 12-Step their way into being straight.

    The experience hurts my heart on so many levels. I hurt for the gay and lesbian people who love Jesus but are being put through the ringer by CR. I hurt because I left a recovery group that was powerfully healing for me. I hurt because I miss them. Many people with whom I’ve discussed this think I’m taking a stand that is odd because I’m not GLBT, but, I just can’t do it. I can’t be part of a program that tries to turn people straight, especially when so much of what makes the program work is the group dynamic.

    Matt, this kind of approach is so entrenched with conservative evangelicals that I doubt it will be scrubbed from their documents. It’s in their printed, published materials as well. The CE’s have such a different world view and paradigm about gay = sin = choice = changeable…. They hold strongly to it, so I doubt it will change.

    • Chaucer7

      lol first of all seriously wake up. You’re stuck on a silly agenda because it’s *popular* to affirm that gays are living a natural life. I’m a really good looking guy and I work with lesbians a lot mainly becuase I run a handyman company and they need handymen more often than they would care to admit in public *GASP*. And they generally despise me lol but that doesn’t matter. I also went to christian school and have been teaching the bible to people for many years. I know it well including the supposed wrong greek and hebrew translations that gays would like to call accurate scriptural recitation. I know several celebrate recovery counselors personally and it really works better than any other recovery program out there. Mainly because God is heavily involved and therefore cures many things that worldly recovery programs can’t even touch. If I bump into a wall several times and decide that it feels good and I’m actually atracted to the wall. Then I can tell everyone I was born that way I’m genetically predisposed to an attraction to walls be they wood or brick *doesn’t matter*. Then I can tell everyone that the scriptures that say that having sex with anything but women are completely wrong and I can twist them to suit my unhealthy relationship with bricks. However, in effect I’m telling God that I’m wiser than he is and I know more than he does about walls even though he manufactured the very atoms that compose the wall. I’m being very arrogant and ungrateful by trying to twist the words that he wrote for my own selfish silly impulses. There you have it in a nutshell.

      • http://blog.mattalgren.com Matt Algren

        A) God didn’t write the Bible, people did, on top of which, people translated it.

        B) You fail at metaphors.

        C) Thanks for stopping by to comment on a nearly two year old comment!

        • Mustlovetrucks

          GOd’s word was written by God inspired, God’s intervenning, men of Faith in Christ Jesus who seen the actual accounts. The translations were of God fearing men who understood, totally studied and researched the translations they were writting, then had others of the same convictions and knowledge, proof and reproof the translations that were then comliled by many others of the same conviction, same knowledge and Has changed many peoples lives who have lived what they believed on, where a truely God/spirit inspired word of God.
          Sorry you find that hard to believe, but that’s what faith is all about.
          I have homosexual relatives and I have expressed what the Holy bible has spoke of freely, to much avail of any respons. Anyone who hears the word of God, and chooses to not respond, is then under the wrath of He who inspired such words.

          Michelle was only giving a true response by his own faith in that inspired word.

  • Michelle

    I am a former participant in Celebrate Recovery. My leaving the group has been very sad for me, but I cannot in good conscious participate in something that encourages and/or endorses reparative therapy. I didn’t know about reparative therapy one way or another when I joined, but over the two years I learned alot about it and CR’s intentions to help people 12-Step their way into being straight.

    The experience hurts my heart on so many levels. I hurt for the gay and lesbian people who love Jesus but are being put through the ringer by CR. I hurt because I left a recovery group that was powerfully healing for me. I hurt because I miss them. Many people with whom I’ve discussed this think I’m taking a stand that is odd because I’m not GLBT, but, I just can’t do it. I can’t be part of a program that tries to turn people straight, especially when so much of what makes the program work is the group dynamic.

    Matt, this kind of approach is so entrenched with conservative evangelicals that I doubt it will be scrubbed from their documents. It’s in their printed, published materials as well. The CE’s have such a different world view and paradigm about gay = sin = choice = changeable…. They hold strongly to it, so I doubt it will change.