An Audience with Steve Chalke
Alan Williams reviews a meeting hosted by Hull and East Riding LGBT Christian Fellowship at Hull Community Church.
Conducted in two sessions on Oct 20th 2017, with a tangibly anxious audience, Steve Chalke talked about himself and how he created Oasis, now a large charity organisation. An Anglo-Indian with a resolute English Christian mother, he recalled an early life of poverty and low academic expectations from his schools. Then a ray of sunshine in the form of a pretty girl regularly attending his local Church Youth Club encouraged his church attendance. Here he learned of God’s love, and even though she rejected him as her boyfriend, a personal epiphany convinced Chalke that God loves him. And today it is this conviction that drives his adult life.
Determined to express his faith in more than confessional terms he set his heart on establishing schools, hostels and hospitals for the disadvantaged. To this end he disciplined himself in learning church leadership skills. In 1980, while still training to be a Baptist minister he married Cornelia. The following year he was ordained and they quickly set to work. His wife suggested the name Oasis for their first hostel that continued into the charitable organisation they set up.
Early in his ministry an emotionally needy homosexual began to attend his church looking for acceptance and Chalke, empathising from his own childhood experiences, gave it. This resulted in more from similar backgrounds attending his church. Then one of them confided he had come to believe that homosexuality wasn’t his problem; it was his evangelicalism! And Chalke believed him. Turning a deaf ear to the call Jesus made for sinners to repent, and falling for gay propaganda (After the Ball, Kirk & Madsen, 1989) he now accuses what he calls the “non-inclusive” evangelical churches of being responsible for higher suicide rates among gays.
His pastoral response is to offer public celebrations of what he regards as “faithful” same sex relationships. Chalke along with millions of others seems completely oblivious to the fact that “faithful” in same sex “marriage” culture means mutually admitting extramarital sexual encounters while limiting them to a “reasonable” number like eight per month! He also ignores the fact that same sex desires can be transcended and is becoming more manifest in the growing ex-gay movement (Voices of the Silenced, 2017). Nevertheless his Oasis Church officially registered to conduct same sex marriages in 2016.
Misunderstanding the nature of Divine love and the meaning of true compassion Chalke seems unaware of the deceits practised and openly confessed by gay rights propagandists. Knowing it to be false from the outset activists have popularised the highly successful born “gay” idea as a ruse to place same sex relationships beyond moral criticism. Also the health hazards of homosexuality (MassResistance, 2017) are carefully hidden by highly sophisticated, extensive, well-resourced media campaigns depicting gay people sympathetically while demanding special legal protections from discrimination.
While claiming to be Biblically based Chalke has ignored Jesus’ warning about false teachers misleading the church and failed to detect neo-Marxist infiltrators substituting a “social” gospel for the individual one of personal salvation (Skoussen, 1958). Instead he advocates following the views of E P Sanders a secularised theologian with a new attitude towards homosexuality. So when he publicly denied the doctrine of Christ’s substitutionary atonement he lost his membership of the Evangelical Alliance and invitations to speak at conferences. Not something he seems a bit bothered about.
Dedicated to answering questions the second half generated some frustration. Skilled practitioners of Q & A sessions can deal with three questions at a time in about six minutes but after Chalke answered three questions no time was left for any more. The first was about the possibility of the established church changing its attitude to same sex marriage. Chalke said that the Archbishop of Canterbury had personally confided having to restrain his public sympathy for it to maintain church unity. He concluded his lengthy answer with the analogy of successive LGBT waves destroying conservative sandcastles!
The second question based on I Cor 6 v.9 excluding unrepentant homosexuals from God’s Kingdom, also received a very long reply. Analysing the roots of the uniquely used ‘arsenokoites’, Paul’s term for men who have sex with men, Chalke disingenuously argued that it only applied to men who sexually exploited slaves, not to those in “faithful” relationships. Rejecting well established Biblical teaching and exegesis as unintelligent he rebuffed the questioner’s attempted intervention. Disappointingly no other references to the Bible were made.
The third “question” turned out to be thanks for reassuring those with LGBT identity that they would be welcomed in church. This gave Chalke an opportunity to expand on his sympathy for them and hopes for a more inclusive future. This closed the public session but allowed a private opportunity for my question about transgenderism.
It was put to him that although both anorexics and “transgenders” refuse to accept the forms of their bodies only “transgenders” are treated as if their self-perception is realistic. Claiming to be in the “wrong” sexual body they can have hormone treatment and surgery. But anorexic’s claims are rightly regarded as fantasies. They are never counselled to lose non-existent excess weight.
Initially Chalke was flustered by this inconsistent attitude by mental health professionals. Struggling to regain some composure he said there was a problem with the clinical governance of gender dysphoria, and that only over 18s should be treated. Then he added a most extraordinary example. He said that he could well understand a bullied fat teenage girl wanting to rid herself of her breasts to “become” a male to stop the bullying! Clearly it didn’t occur to him that as the girl was being bullied for being fat “transitioning” to being a fat “boy” wouldn’t solve the problem. Also by posing this particular hypothetical situation Chalke unwittingly illuminated the fact that most school bullying concerns appearance not “gender” (Ditch the Label, 2017).
Then a male onlooker with shoulder length pageboy hair and narcissistic anxiety in his eyes interrupted us. He declared that we were talking about him but fell silent when it was pointed out that it was ideas that were being discussed not him personally. This brief exchange prompted a rather desperate lady to say that hormone imbalances in the womb during pregnancy caused transgender desires in later life.
Chalke finished his answer by denying the validity of the anorexia nervosa/“transgender” comparison despite both sufferers manifesting personal bodily fantasies. Differences do lie in the way they present themselves. Anorexia is a life threatening condition that demands attention and is very difficult to treat. On the other hand most sufferers of gender identity disorder now renamed as a dysphoria, seek attention by acting out but eventually accept their biologically recognised sex without treatment.
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