Pray Away Full Movie

[Niobe Hennigan]

Myname is Anthony Sytsma and I work for Resonate Global Mission in Uganda. Learning a new culture in Uganda has also helped me to reflect upon my own culture. While the two cultures are incredibly different, I've observed the same false prosperity theology manifesting in both. The wreckage of the prosperity gospel in Africa is obvious, but surprisingly there are similar theological ideas that have driven North American Christians to go astray in their views of marriage and sexuality. Thank you for reading and reflecting with me.

The problem with the prosperity gospel is that people are given false hope, a guarantee. People are promised that God will act in the way they want if they have enough faith. There is a big difference between believing that God can do miracles, and believing that God is obligated to give me the miracles I want. We cannot promise Christians who experience same-sex attraction that they will experience such a profound transformation in this life. Just as Scripture clearly shows that many Christians remained materially poor, Scripture also teaches that Christians continue to experience some desire to sin until we are made perfect when Jesus returns.

And this leads us to the deepest problem of all with the prosperity gospel. With this false gospel, people tend to seek after God for his gifts more than for God himself. It is idolatry. It is a way to try to utilize God to get the things people want, whether that be a life without suffering, riches, or romantic and sexual fulfillment. Instead of living for the glory of God, people use God for their own ends. Of course, all of us struggle to some degree with this type of idolatry.

The film vividly helps us to see the damage the prosperity gospel has caused to so many Christians with same-sex attractions. You see the damage in the stories of guilt, self-loathing, and crushed hopes. You see the damage in the stories of people being pressured to share dishonest testimonies to prop up the prosperity gospel in churches. You see the damage in people moving to churches who will affirm homosexual partnerships and in the people who have rejected Christ and the Church completely.

This is an area where I see the traditional view of sexuality and the revisionist view of sexuality intersecting. Both views have too often been infused with prosperity-gospel teaching. On the traditional side, we have often made an idol out of marriage. We think that faithful American Christians are entitled to have romantic and sexual fulfillment in marriage as a gift from God. We think a person cannot live an abundant life without his or her sexual desires being fulfilled. I believe this is one reason why divorce is so common. We cannot imagine staying together with someone for life who is no longer fulfilling us or making us happy. This idolatry of marriage also leads us to look down on single or celibate people. We can treat them as if they are unable to have a full and meaningful life while single. We may even treat single people as less valuable members of the church or people who are not fully adults. And coming back to our topic, we have too often pressured Christians who experience same-sex attractions into reparative therapies because we have devalued the single life in our marriage idolatry. We have not fully valued single Christians with same-sex attractions in our churches who are living a holy life and resisting temptation. Instead, as the film highlights, we have often felt discomfort around them and cared more about them somehow becoming heterosexual than about their walk with Christ.

The film presents a false dichotomy, that if you are a person with same-sex attractions, you really have only two life choices. 1. You could try to pursue a change in attractions through prayer and therapy which will end only in misery or deception. 2. You should stop denying your sexual desires and pursue a same-sex partnership. The emotional power and momentum in the film easily can make the viewer convinced that these are the only two choices, but there is a third choice that they never discuss!

When I watched Netflix\u2019s documentary called Pray Away, I went into it with some bias. The film is a critique of the so called \u201Cpray the gay away\u201D movement. The film reviews the American Church\u2019s response to Christians who experience same-sex attraction over the last several decades. It examines Exodus International, ex-gay ministries and conversion therapy approaches. I had already read critical reviews which claimed the film is an attack on the Church, and the reviews made sense to me. But when I watched it myself, I was pleasantly surprised. I discovered that the film was not so much an attack on the Church, but rather I saw it as an attack on the false prosperity gospel operative in some churches. While I strongly disagree with the film\u2019s main message, which is basically that sexual desires cannot be changed and therefore should not be denied, I think the film is an important one to engage. In this article, I will explain three reasons why I recommend watching this documentary, articulate a brief response to prosperity gospel teaching, and end with a critique of the false dichotomy the film presents.

1. History of Church Ministry - We should all be aware of our collective church history regarding ex-gay ministries, our successes and failures, our joys and our sorrows. And it\u2019s helpful to be aware of how our mainstream culture is interpreting such history. The history shown is at times encouraging, and at times distressing. It should inform our efforts to have healthier ministry to people with same-sex attractions today.

The filmmakers presented the history in a fairly balanced way. While they unfortunately avoided interviewing people who were greatly helped by the ministry of Exodus International, they also did not demonize Christians or the Church. They pointed out what they believe Christians did wrong, but they inferred that ex-gay Christian ministry leaders were nevertheless generally compassionate people. Little was shown of the extremes of reparative therapy sessions. The film actually made such therapies look rather mild compared to many of the disturbing stories that are out there. Christianity was not rejected by all of the film\u2019s protagonists and some were filmed fellowshipping in their churches. There was even discussion about people disassociating the truth about who Jesus is from the hurt that they went through.

2. Stories of our People - We need to hear these stories. The film\u2019s protagonists were our people in our churches. Some of them were held up as heroes by American churches. And yet now many of them are living in homosexual partnerships, many of them have left traditional churches or churches altogether, and many of them feel deep pain over what they went through during Christian therapy. We should listen to these stories, to understand why they left and to repent of what we may have done wrong to cause them to leave. Additionally, as we continue to preach the Gospel and reach out to people with same-sex attractions with the love of Christ, it is important to understand their previous experiences with Christians and the Church so that we can be sensitive, gentle and strategic in our evangelistic approach.

3. The False Prosperity Gospel \u2013 As I said earlier, the film focuses its attack on \u201Cpray the gay away\u201D teaching, rather than the Church. I view this teaching as a subset of the more general prosperity gospel. My third reason for recommending this film is that it illustrates vividly the damage that the prosperity gospel can do to people and their relationship with God.

The prosperity gospel teaches that if people just have enough faith, pray hard, and live a holy life, God will give them what they want and a happy life free from suffering. This may mean God will take away people\u2019s poverty and provide for their needs, but the teaching is often extended to mean God will provide riches and a luxurious life. \u201CPray the gay away\u201D teaching follows the same general pattern. The teaching is that if people experience same-sex attraction, then through strong faith, prayer, and living a holy life, God will give them what they want; that is, God will remove their same-sex attraction and replace it with opposite-sex attraction so that they can have a sexually-fulfilling marriage. If they have faith, God will remove their daily struggle with temptations. Of course, this analogy is not perfect. We know that poverty is not a sinful condition whereas same-sex attraction is one element of our sinful nature. But the pattern of thought is very similar.

It is important to carefully nuance why this is false teaching. The problem is not proclaiming that God has the power to make Christians rich, or proclaiming that God has the ability to change a person\u2019s sexuality. God is almighty and he can do anything. In fact, there are many testimonies of people who have become Christians, experienced profound transformation in belief, habits, and character, and then experienced a great reduction in their material poverty. And amazingly, there are testimonies of Christians who formerly experienced same-sex attraction who are now happily married to people of the opposite sex, some who say the old attractions have largely disappeared. We should thank God for the change in both of these types of situations!

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