Episode 012 – What about Gay Pentecostals? – Anthony Venn-Brown OAM (Part 2)
22 May 2021
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This transcript has been edited for clarity.
B: All righty, welcome back everyone to part two of Episode 11 where we’ve got our special guest Anthony Venn-Brown. We have just left at a place where we are going to launch into the next phase of things that happened in Anthony’s life. We’ve heard a bit of background, we’ve heard a couple of stories, but before we do that I’m just going to throw to T, who’s going to read some notes off the back of Anthony’s book. We will put the book in the show notes, where you can track it down, whether it be a physical copy or an electronic copy. So we’re going to hand over to T and T is going to read the blurb out, because I think it gives a really good snapshot of Anthony.
T: It’s also a good picture of what the book is like, and what the book is about. I remember I got the first edition of this, I don’t know how long ago it was, but I got the first edition and read it in almost a day. The names, the stories, everything about it was compelling. But anyway, it says here:
On the surface, everything looked perfect. Anthony Venn-Brown was a popular, high-profile, Pentecostal preacher in Australia’s growing mega-churches, such as Hillsong, and happily married father-of-two. Behind the scenes was a different story. Believing homosexuality made him unacceptable to God and others, a secret battle was being fought. After twenty-two years of prayer, struggle, torment, gay conversion therapy and marriage, a chance meeting forced Anthony to make the toughest decision of his life.
So I’m going to throw to you Anthony, and we want to hear all about this story.
A: Yes, so we just finished off the last episode talking about trauma and being hurt. I’m just going to share with you an abridged version of the first chapter of my autobiography which is called The Confession, I have shared this with various pastors and church leaders when I go in to a situation where I’m doing consulting work. It gives people a real snapshot of ok, this is what I’ve been through and here I am today, which I think is a miracle.
It was a tragic way to end a successful and rewarding career. I lived most of my life with one ambition – to preach God’s word. During the last eight years especially I’d seen the fulfilment of my lifelong dream. At 40 my entire world was caving in, watching everything I’d accomplished crumble away by the hour, left me weak and in a state of shock. I wept frequently and wondered how I could have lost all I valued in just a few days. There were times I’d feared this might happen, but like so many things in my life I put it out of my mind unwilling to face reality, and now reality was screaming in my face, refusing to be ignored. As an ordained preacher in the Assemblies of God church, I’d invested my life in becoming one of Australia’s leading evangelists, flying all over the country preaching to thousands at youth rallies at Australia’s largest congregations like Hillsong; on other occasions I’d been a guest speaker at National Leaders conferences, and had also been invited to represent Australia at national religious gatherings. What thrilled me most of all was that thousands had become Christians after hearing me preach, convinced that God was real and Jesus Christ could change their lives, but now it had all come to an end. That April Sunday morning in 1991 was beautiful, the sun shining, the sky a cloudless rich blue and the slight chill of an early autumn morning had melted around the central coast. Families were getting ready for the usual morning service celebration, oblivious to what they were about to encounter. I dragged myself out of bed, showered, and sat with my bible on my lap, trying to desperately get some words of encouragement from the scriptures to help me through the next few hours. I wistfully flicked through the light, rice paper pages of my well-worn bible. It was useless. The words melted into a blur, as my eyes kept filling with tears. An air of grief permeated the Venn-Brown household, not unlike the heavy, uneasy silence that settles on a houseful of relatives waiting to go to a funeral. Helen my wife was putting on a brave face and doing everything she could to pretend this was a normal Sunday morning. Over the last few days I’d witnessed a strength in her I’d never seen before. It was difficult to tell what she was really feeling, as she’d put her emotions aside in order to sustain the family cohesion. I was really worried about her though, knowing the stress of our crisis was driving both of us to breaking point. The doctor placed her on medication only a few days before she collapsed in my office after making the frightening discovery, but now it was time to go. It had to be done. The leaders of my denomination told me it must be done, as this will be part of my healing and restoration, and demonstrated I was genuinely repentant.
The foyer was a usual scene for a Sunday morning at 9:55am, people hugging each other, saying God bless you, nice to see you Tony, how’s the ministry going, are you preaching this morning. I tried to smile but it was obvious to most people that something was drastically wrong. My walk and demeanour was the posture of a broken man. Walking through the crowd I tried to deflect eye contact. Helen knew the fewer people I had contact with the better, and with a firm grip on my arm, manoeuvred me through the auditorium. Joining the songs was difficult, as every attempt made me cry. Helen stood on one side and Paul, one of my closest friends, on the other. The girls sat with their friends elsewhere in the congregation. There were moments when I thought I wouldn’t make it through the service. I had never known one could feel so numb, and yet be in such pain at the same time.
As the service was ending, a feeling of nausea overwhelmed me. My time had come. Kevin the pastor closed the service with a special announcement. Those of you who feel Christian Life Centre is your home church, we’d like you to stay for a few moments please. We have some church business to attend. People that are visiting today, thank you for coming, we hope you enjoyed the service, you are free to leave. What was about to happen would not be pleasant and certainly something not to be witnessed by visitors or non-Christians.
Helen’s and Paul’s grips on my arms began to strengthen as I began to sob, an uncontrollable sobbing deep within that began to shake my entire body. No Tony, you can’t let go, be strong. Kevin made a statement about difficult things needing to be done in churches sometimes, and that one of our leaders had fallen. There was an instant gasp from parts of the congregation. He motioned for me to come forward. I felt like an old man as I slowly rose to my feet and shuffled towards the front. Reaching the podium, I turned around and faced the congregation of 800. I will never forget the faces. On the rare occasions when I was in town I would preach messages of encouragement and hope from this pulpit; now, the usual responsive faces were replaced with wide eyes and mouths open in shock. Some who had already heard the news began crying, others placed their heads in their hands, husbands and wives clutched each other tightly. Helen had lost her composure and was being comforted by friends. Rebecca and Hannah were sitting near the front, crying as well. The weight of my humiliation instantly increased as I became even more aware of what my wife and girls were going through. It wasn’t fair. I deserved to be punished, not them. I leant on the pulpit to support myself and counteract the weakness in my legs. I’d rehearsed the brief statement repeatedly in my mind, even though I knew it would take less than 60 seconds. I had been directed to make the confession general and concise, and not to give excuses. Thank God I didn’t have to mention the most horrifying detail of all – the one that would have made me the worst of all sinners. My voice trembled as I began. Last week I preached my last sermon. I’m resigning from the ministry today, I’m sorry that I have to confess to you that I have committed the sin of adultery, and I ask you to forgive me. I’m so sorry for the shame that I have caused my wife and family, the church, and God. Please forgive me.
I wished I could have said more, some words of justification or mention my midlife crisis, or being on the edge of a nervous breakdown or burnout. Now exposed and humiliated I sobbed uncontrollably. Of course this wasn’t the entire story. I had transgressed beyond other disgraced ministers. Kevin and other leaders of the church rushed to my aid trying to console me, the support of their arms stopping me from collapsing. Friends helped Helen to the stage, she stood beside me. Kevin took the microphone and began to pray. We thank you God for Tony’s life and ministry, and we ask you to heal and restore him. We pray also for Helen, Rebecca and Hannah, and ask you to give them strength at this time and let them know your love. We ask your power and forgiveness to surround Tony.
Prophetic words of encouragement came from the various leaders, saying God would take this experience to strengthen, restore and use me in a greater way than he had before. I didn’t believe them. I knew my time was up. The entire congregation was now in tears. This could never have happened. Tony was a good preacher, a loving husband and father. My brief confession had actually created more questions in people’s minds. Who was it with? Was it someone in the congregation, when did it happen, how long had it been going on for, was it a once only fall or an affair over time? I knew the gossipers would fill in the gaps. The congregation slowly dispersed, some to the foyer, others slowly walked down the front to offer words of support, and a few just held me and wept. If there was ever a time I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me, it was then. I didn’t want anyone to talk to me or touch me, let alone tell me they loved me. I was so unworthy. It felt like I’d given away the last thing I owned – my self-respect.
It was done. I’d made my public confession, and hoped things might become a little easier. There should at least have been a feeling of relief, like a load lifted off me, but there wasn’t. Just numbness. It was like a funeral, and I was the corpse. So much of what I had loved had died, and the man that people perceived me to be had ceased to exist. Had my entire life been a lie? I wondered, in view of what I’d done, if I could ever be forgiven. Surely I would live with the shame and humiliation the rest of my life. I wanted so desperately to save my family and myself from the pain and darkness ahead. But no, sin has its consequences, and I must pay. That chance meeting with Jason, only weeks earlier, had set my life on a course I could no longer control.
T: When I was watching you read that, did I see tears in your eyes?
A: Yeah. I can’t…I can’t. You know, I can’t read that – how many years is it? It’s 30 years ago. It’s very rare for me to read that without – it’s almost like retraumatising, but it’s important for people to, you know – I don’t hold back the emotion, if it’s coming, I let it come, because it was fucking horrendous.
B: Tell us about that. What was it like to leave? For everything to be pulled out from under you.
A: It was um, you have nothing. I’m never going home after that service – I used to walk around and bump into furniture. I wasn’t there, I had been destroyed by that experience. What was I going to do with my life? I went to the CS office – Centrelink? Because I wanted to get some unemployment – there was no income. I remember sitting there – I’m getting emotional thinking about this, I’m sitting there and there’s an 18 year old girl asking me what have you done? Where’s your resume? I’ve never had a resume in my life. Oh, well what training have you had? Well I used to be a preacher. What skills have you got? I don’t know. Being already totally traumatised by the experience I just shared with you, it kept on compounding, and then there was the abandonment by many of my big church friends.
T: This is my question to you about this – looking back now, rather than what it was at the time, but looking back now, why do you think you were expected to make a public confession? What was that about? Why did it have to be public? Why couldn’t you have just stepped down, walked away. Why did you have to stand before everyone?
A: It was not a new thing, but it had been introduced earlier, I think it was in the Charismatic movement, that there had been a minister who had fallen, and you know there is that scripture I think it’s Paul that says anyone that teaches is going to be judged more strongly, and does it say also there needs to be a public confession? I’d have to look that up.
T: There’s something about before the brethren, there’s some sort of I don’t want to say dressing down, but you know what I’m trying to say, but I don’t think there’s anything about you needing to be there saying it yourself.
A: Ah no, I think it had become a bit of a thing. It was new but not all that new. I was not one of the first, there had been others, but because of my – I mean, I did all this confession to the National Executive, I confessed to almost every single person. I got my preacher friends together to share with them so they weren’t hearing all this stuff on the grapevine, they were getting it from me, and I was really so sorry, so it was about being genuine about repentance, because ok you really say you’re sorry well get up in front of the congregation and tell them you’re sorry, and confess, that will really prove that you’re repentant and you’re really sorry. That was the basis of it.
T: Do you know what I thought when I was listening to you and watching you is it’s like a crucifixion. And I don’t say that with any sort of sarcasm or belittling anyone’s belief, but it was that my God my God why have you forsaken me moment, when you were just alone, standing there. Where was God, where was the disciples – I’m using this as archetypes, as metaphors, as stories, but that’s exactly what it was.
A: Yeah, and you talk about me and what I went through and the impacts on me, but you think about my former wife. Thank God my children are ok today. My former wife was more abandoned that I was, if that’s possible.
B: She was cast aside as well?
A: People did not know what to do. I remember the pastor of the church coming to my place in the next 12 months – if I said three times, that may have been an exaggeration. It may have only been two. He sat down on our lounge and burst into tears.
B: What was that about.
A: I know what that was about. Because he had been through that with his father who was also a preacher. That’s my assumption but the fact is that people did not have the capacity or certainly not understanding of PTSD or trauma or counselling to do anything, and I think that some of my friends, the reason why they abandoned me was they just had no idea what to say. If they called me, what would they do? And I was being honest with them. There were a couple of times when people would make contact, and they’d ask how I was, and I’d say I’m not doing well.
B: And no follow up from that.
A: Nah. Honesty was really challenging for some people, but I had to be honest. Why should I pretend and go yeah, I believe God’s going to get me through this – no, I feel like jumping off a fucking cliff.
B: In reading your book, you had got to a place where you felt you could no longer live that double life, and live in that conflict, so you chose to be true to your sexuality.
A: Mmm.
B: Do you look back on that and have regrets about it, in that you wish you’d been able to marry up the two, or do you look back at it and go I had no choice?
A: Um, I had no choice. There was nothing in my world – if I would have said to any of my preacher friends or any of the congregation, can you be gay and be a Christian, every single one of them would have said no, and that’s what I believed, and that was my conflict. It was that what I am experiencing, what I feel is an abomination, that old King James word.
T: What about the more liberal denominations – you had spent time in Anglicanism, or was it not even there then, that you can be gay and be a Christian. What’s it called, the Metropolitan Community Church was like a gay denomination, if that even exists. Why didn’t you go there?
A: Because I was a teenage fundamentalist.
T: High five brother, high five.
B: So it was the indoctrination?
A: Yes, my belief was in the infallibility of the bible. Therefore there are those six passages that talk about supposedly homosexuality, and I’d read all the books, I knew all the verses, so there was nothing in my mind that said this is ok. So anything outside of that, you mentioned the Metropolitan Community Church which was actually founded by a former Assemblies of God minister, one year before the Stonewall riots. So he was very much before his time. If I would have had a contact with those people, I would have thought oh you’re deceived. You’re of the Devil, you can’t say this. So when I walked away from everything, I was walking away from God, I was walking away from my faith, I was walking away from my family, because there was nothing in my mind that could reconcile those two things, it’s either one or the other.
T: You know Anthony, I want to tell you a story. Because in between my time in the Revival Centre and joining Great Big AOG, I met a guy I’m going to call John. And John was a medical student. He had come from a strong Baptist family – I didn’t know this at the time. We were just clubbing, and he was one of the friends in our group, and he was gay. That was John. He showed me one day the scars on his wrists, they weren’t those little horizontal crying out for attention, they were deep, deep scars, because he was a medical student, right. Right down the veins, on both sides, very deep scars. He started to tell me his story about how he was gay, and he couldn’t be a Christian, but what that translated into was he was gay and couldn’t exist. So there was nothing about what he shared and seeing the scars on his wrist that said to me anything about choice, anything about a decision of the will, it was life or death for him. How would you respond to that, knowing what you know now?
A: Four years before my autobiography came out, I founded a Yahoo group of survivors of what we call conversion therapy, or what we called in those days, ex-gay organisations. I had 400 people in that group, so I knew from 2000 – so the last 20 years – that I had been dealing with people in this space who are so conflicted about the perceived conflict between their faith and their sexuality, or their gender identity. That they are incredibly vulnerable, and it just gets too much for some people, and they check out, which is incredibly sad. But this is what we are working with, and the church does not know the incredible harm they are doing. They are literally driving people crazy and killing people because of their ignorance about sexual orientation, gender identity, and a few verses in the bible.
B: Speak more to that, Anthony. Speak more about those verses in the bible and how you see them now, but also interweaved into that, what would you say to someone that came to you that they were conflicted, and they had to choose one or the other.
A: Right, well what we know now is those six verses or passages, I did what most of us do which is read it in an English translation. We don’t know that the word homosexual was put into an English translation of the bible in 1946, for the very first time. Up to that point it didn’t appear. We don’t know the history of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it was really about raping angels and what that was about. We don’t know about Romans 1, that it was a pagan ritual. We don’t know that 1 Corinthians 6:9 was mistranslated and it was supposed to be corrected, but it wouldn’t happen for another ten years, and in the mean time the Living Bible, the NIV, all these other translations were all based on the RSV in 1946. So there was all these things that were not available for us to access, but they’re there now. On our website ABBI.org.au, you go to the audio and you will get all that information either in audio or pdf, within an hour.
T: So are you saying there are other translations – I think B talked once about there being another version of that truth. Is that what you’re saying?
A: Well there’s not another version of that truth, what there is there is insight into what those verses mean, not what they say. Because you’ve got to have historical context behind it. Can I give you an example?
T/B: Please do.
A: For example, Romans 1 – people read that and they make assumptions by their own prejudices and experiences that that’s talking about gays and lesbians. But if you really knew what was behind that was that actually Paul was writing that in Corinth. At the top of the hill was the temple of Aphrodite. And there were incredible processions, rituals, orgies that went on that he is describing in the first chapter of Romans. He’s not talking about me, he’s not talking about my gay and lesbian friends in a long term loving relationship, he’s talking about straight people in an orgy and idolatrous pagan ritual. Everybody in that day would have known about it, but we don’t know. And it changes the whole meaning of Romans 1 when he talks about how he’s burying their body – well they cut themselves, they cut their testicles off and threw them into a house.
B: I just cringed a little bit Tony, and crossed my legs unconsciously.
T: I was going to say, sounds like a party, but keep going.
B: This is probably a good time to call the end of this episode I think, and go to the next episode.
T: On cutting of your nuts, would you like to put a pin in this one,
B: I need to go have a drink or something just to calm down from castration talk.
T: So what do you reckon B, in our next episode why don’t we hear about what Anthony is doing now, the positivity that’s come out of this, how people can get help – and again we’re going to drop this the same day, so we’re doing a triple episode today, so don’t feel you need to wait til next week. You can get this pretty much right away.
B: That’d be great, and I’m really interested to know where you’re at with God.