Jenni Frencham
In the third installment of the “homosexuality chapels” last Wednesday, Bob Jones University’s Dean of Men John Daulton referred to the story of “A Girl Named Chris,” who apparently was rescued from a life of lesbianism when she embraced Jesus. I was curious to read this particular story, as it seemed that Daulton had found evidence that Jesus can save people from homosexuality. However, as the author of this story was never mentioned, it was hard to find. As a librarian, I’m pretty good at tracking down hard-to-find books, sometimes based off of a character description or the color of the cover, but this one eluded me. The closest I came was a 1968 short story published in Australia. This story was entitled “A Girl Named Chris,” and the girl was a lesbian, but the story was only two pages long and didn’t mention Jesus.
The collective brain that comes from networking with colleagues over the internet finally yielded a result. The story of Chris is from Anne Paulk’s book Restoring Sexual Identity: Hope for Women Struggling with Same-Sex Attraction (Harvest House Publishers, 2003). You can read Chris’s story beginning around page 20 here, but it goes something like this:
Chris’s parents did not get along well. Her dad was often frustrated with her mom, and Chris saw her mom as a weak person. So naturally Chris decided to be like her dad. She was also shy and didn’t make friends easily in school. In middle school she gravitated toward sports, and eventually became friends, and then girlfriends, with a teammate. This led to Chris going to gay bars, being involved in various relationships of different lengths, etc. Chris’s mom became a Christian, and Chris felt the pull to become one, too. So she spoke with Paulk at an Exodus conference, got saved, dumped her girlfriend, and gave up her lesbian ways. And they all lived happily ever after.
I now remember reading the story of Chris many years ago when I was in graduate school. Paulk’s book was one of the few possessions that traveled with me across the globe when I taught on a remote Pacific island. I read this book almost as often as I read my Bible, in the hopes that someday I would read enough, pray enough, believe enough, or do enough good things that Jesus would rid me of my SSA.
Chris’s story is similar to mine. My parents, too, married young. They didn’t get along well, either, and when I was in kindergarten and my sister was an infant, my parents divorced. My dad left, and my mom, who had always dreamed of staying home and raising a family, was forced to find work. We moved a lot. Mom worked a lot. She was often very tired. Consequently, I was forced to grow up quickly. By the time I was in third grade, I was doing the dishes, cooking basic meals, doing the laundry, and babysitting my 3-year old sister during school vacations. I, too, decided I didn’t want to be “weak” like my mom. I, too, was a shy kid who didn’t make friends easily.
I think our fractured family was what drew my mother into the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church. There, she was offered stability, a community, and help for raising her kids to be good people. So when my mom accepted Christ, she probably felt a lot of relief, just like Chris did. Her problems had been solved. She had inherited a huge spiritual family, a heavenly father who loved her, and the promise of heaven. Having people around who cared about her probably solved a lot of her problems. She knew the kids my sister and I hung out with would be good kids. She never worried about us getting into trouble. She knew God was watching over us. She still had to work a lot, she was still often tired, but at least now she had the stability that comes from a community.
Like Chris, I realized in high school that I was gay. Unlike Chris, I never had a girlfriend. I never went on a date with anyone of either gender. I never kissed a girl. I squashed my feelings and went to college. During my last year of graduate school, in response to a chapel on homosexuality, I came out and sought help. [You can read that story here.]
I was in an online reparative therapy program for eight years. For eight years, I read everything I could on being healed from same-sex attraction. For eight years I prayed and memorized Scripture and had accountability partners who monitored my computer use and asked me about what kinds of thoughts were in my head. For eight years I participated online with other “SSA strugglers.” If this had been a class, I would have aced it. I was an A+ student. But for all my studying, all my praying, all my time-filling activities so that I wouldn’t be alone at home, I was still tempted. I still liked girls. I may have earned an A in “SSA recovery,” but I never graduated.
This is why I don’t think Chris’s story is complete. We don’t know what happened to her a year, five years, ten years later. I doubt that she found the “healing from SSA” that she was looking for. Please notice her story doesn’t say, “And Chris woke up attracted to men, and she dumped her girlfriend, found a guy, and got married.” It says that she decided it was wrong to be gay, so she dumped her girlfriend and all of her lesbian friends. It doesn’t say she was healed at all, because she probably wasn’t. What she did find was a stable community and adults who were like parents to her. These are good things, and they likely improved her life and brought her happiness, but they didn’t make her straight.
This is why I’m bothered by Chris being held up as a shining example. I’m afraid that students who hear about Chris will decide that they, too, can find healing like she did, and they will ultimately be frustrated when they don’t wake up straight. This story implies that Chris’s life situation caused her to be gay, and that the only solution was for her to find Jesus. Neither of these is true.