Apparently David Virtue claimed that there were two hundred bishops present. I find this hard to credit since two days earlier they had 53 people in total in the same room and it was quite full. Perhaps one could have squeezed 80 in, but where were the other 120? David says they "piped the sound" into other rooms, but no other room was anywhere nearly as large as the main room. Did they allegedly pipe it into three rooms?

In any case, if the U.S. is any indicator, there were a good percentage of lesgay friendly bishops present, and the applause was not uniform. Bishop Otis Charles attended. Todd Wetzel attempted to exclude him on the basis that he was a "reporter." Otis had to agree not to report on the meeting.

Apparently there were four persons who claimed to have been healed of their homosexuality. Otis described their witness as ones of journeying in the spirit. He said that it was not unlike his own, except that it led to very different places. Those speaking, moreover, kept to the personal and did not present statistics or other broad claims about homosexuality, though they did claim some amazing statistics about "cure rates" (very close to 100%). Significantly, too, only one even hinted at a connection with the Church of England (they were all English), so in that respect it was quite like the U.S.

It always amazes me that anyone can be fooled by these presentations. We had no materials available on this. Although I brought several discs of material on the "ex-gay" movement, I was forbidden to create anything for two reasons: the only two women in the Changing Attitudes group were friends of Britain's leading 'ex-gay' and the ssue was too peripheral -- it was important only to tell our own stories as were going to the next day.

The following material was distributed at the "Bishops Only" meeting on Wednesday, July 21, 1998

• Pursuing Sexual Wholeness: How Jesus Heals the Homosexual
  Andrew Comiskey
  Foreword by Leanne Payne
  Creation House, Lake Mary, FL, 1989, 206 pages
  Comiskey is with Desert Stream Ministries, Anaheim, CA

• Setting Love in Order
  Mario Bergner
  Foreword by Leanne Payne
  Fleming H. Revell, a division of Baler Book House Company, Grand Rapids, MI, British edition by Monarch Publications, 1995, 201 pages
  Bergner is with Redeemed Life Ministries, Wheaton, IL

• Striving for Gender Identity: Homosexuality and Christian Counseling, A Workbook for the Church
  Edited by Christi Ruth Vonholdt
  German Institute for Youth and Society, 1996, 230
  This is a publication of The Reichenberg Fellowship ^Ö Christen in der Offensive

• Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic
  Elizabeth R. Moberly
  Joseph Clark & Co., Cambridge, U.K., 1983, 56 pages
  Moberly is self-described as "the originator of gender-affirmative therapy for homosexuals"

• The Handwriting on the Wall: A Plea to the Anglican Communion
  Stephen F. Noll
  Foreword by Canon Bill Atwood
  Litimer Press, 1998, 61 pages
  This is an anti-gay but not ex-gay tract

• Telling the Truth About Homosexuality
  Mario Bergner
  The Resurrection Light, Winter 1998, 9 pages
  Bergner is now Director of Redeemed Lives Ministries and is "Associate Pastor at Church of the Resurrection" but where it is located is never stated

• Emotional Dependency
  Lori Rentzel
  Exodus International/InterVarsity Press, 1984, 32 page booklet
  Former staff member of Love in Action, San Rafael, CA

• The Healing of Relationships through the Power of The Cross
  A pamphlet by The Living Waters Ministry
  They are in England

• Understanding Homosexuality and the Reality of Change
  The Reichenberg Fellowship
  A series of 6 undated pamphlets:
  1. The Three Major Myths 1
     
  2. The Three Major Myths 2
     
  3. The Gift of Judaism to our Culture
     
  4. Homosexual Versus Gay
     
  5. Coming Out
     
  6. The Male Homosexual Lifestyle
     

The last cites a "study" by a German "sexologist", Dr. Martin Dannecker which claims that a survey "of 900 male respondents in a 'steady' relationship, 83% (747 persons) said they had frequent homosexual contacts outside their 'steady' relationships within the last 12 months. Of those who were in a steady relationship at the time of the survey, the average number of homosexual contacts per person was approx. 115 in the last year. homosexual men without a steady relationship on the other hand, only had an average of about 45 homosexual contacts."

Hmm!

On hearing that Section 1 allegedly approved unanimously a resolution, which affirmed only traditional marriage between a man and a woman, David Virtue became visibly agitated. -- Yesterday was a debacle. They had very few bishops, half of them conservative. This is a loss big-time.

• Return to Louie Crew's collection of materials on the Lambeth Conference.
• Louie Crew's Anglican pages.
• Louie Crew's home page.
• Send mail to: lcrew@newark.rutgers.edu

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