In the movie, Boy Erased (2018), the director of a
church’s conversion therapy program invites the immediate family members of one
gay boy to hit him with a bible to drive out the underlying demon. The boy
subsequently commits suicide. Lest this notion of using violence to remove a
sin in the twenty-first century is assumed to lie in the realm of fiction, John
Smyth, an Anglican, was accused in 2017 “of subjecting at least 22 teenage boys
to savage beatings in his garden shed” at “an elite Christian camp for boys.
His intent was “purging them of perceived sins such as masturbation and pride”[1]
A Christian charity group oversaw the camp, yet I contend that the camp was not
Christian.
The full essay is at "The Anti-Christian."
[1]
Ceylon Yoginsu, “Doubt Cast on When the Archbishop Knew of Abuse,” The New York Times, October 15, 2017.