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Attending the fourth\u00a0Global Anglican Future Conference<\/a>\u00a0(GAFCON) in the landlocked East African nation of Rwanda, Elizabeth Woning is a long way from home. Handing out pamphlets for a suggested donation at the event, the pastor and co-founder of the U.S.-based \u201cex-gay\u201d organization Changed Movement shared why she came all this way.<\/p>\n \u201cGAFCON is focusing on the places where, in my opinion, Christianity is spreading,\u201d Woning, a self-described former lesbian,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0an interviewer on camera. \u201cIt\u2019s vital to be able to seed them with the vision for wholeness from the LGBT experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Organized by the conservative Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage, GAFCON IV gathered more than 1,300 delegates, including 315 bishops, from fifty-two countries in the Rwandan capital of Kigali in April 2023. While Woning\u2019s homophobic message of becoming \u201cex-gay\u201d has lost favor in countries like the United States and United Kingdom, because of how harmful and dangerous\u00a0it is<\/a>, anti-LGBTQ+ Christian organizations including the Changed Movement have now found a new target: the people of Africa.<\/p>\n Or, as Woning told her interviewer in 2023: \u201cChristianity is spreading quickly in the [Global] South, as it declines in the [Global] North.\u201d<\/p>\n The Changed Movement exists in an ecosystem of conversion therapy-focused projects, initiatives, and groups supported by two other organizations: the Core\u00a0Issues\u00a0Trust (CIT), a registered charity in Northern Ireland, and the U.K.-based Marriage, Sex and Culture (MSC) Group.<\/p>\n The CIT may be based in the United Kingdom, but its International Foundation for Therapeutic and Counselling Choice (IFTCC) project, which\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0itself a \u201chome for the once-gay,\u201d has a\u00a0leadership team packed with Americans. Two out of the five members of the executive board\u2014Carolyn Pela and Laura Haynes\u2014are U.S.-based. Both Woning and Ken Williams, co-founders of the Changed Movement, sit on the general board.<\/p>\n GAFCON\u2019s 2023 meeting turned out to be pivotal for the CIT and its interest in spreading conversion therapy and the \u201cex-gay\u201d message across Africa, where LGBTQ+ rights are less advanced and social acceptance is relatively low. In its\u00a0post-meeting report<\/a>, the CIT highlighted that attendees from Uganda, Rwanda, and Nigeria in particular \u201ccould not seem to get enough resources\u201d from the conversion therapy organization. While homosexuality is not penalized Rwanda, it is\u00a0illegal<\/a>\u00a0in Nigeria and infamously\u00a0carries the death penalty<\/a>\u00a0in some cases in Uganda. Inspiration was taken from GAFCON to create the\u00a0Africa Project<\/a>. As the name makes plain, the effort seeks to export the values espoused by the CIT into Africa. The Africa Project is \u201cinformed by the [IFTCC] with regard to the clinical and pastoral care of those with sexuality and gender issues.\u201d<\/p>\n For Woning and the Changed Movement, traveling to GAFCON was a \u201cpivotal event in the global church that united in agreement on biblical interpretation of ethics relating to LGBTQ+ sexual relationships,\u201d she tells\u00a0The Progressive<\/em>. Despite bringing her approach from the United States to Rwanda, she frames the \u201cex-gay\u201d movement as an opportunity for sovereignty.<\/p>\n \u201cAfrica and the Global South are being pressured to embrace Western social agendas on sexuality and sexual identity,\u201d Woning says. \u201cOur presence affirmed their independence from governmental and social pressure to embrace the LGBTQ+ subcultures not indigenous to Africa. Though same-sex sexuality and gender incongruence have historically existed in Africa, the social frameworks and cultural demands of LGBTQ+ do not. Africa has the right to hear alternative views.\u201d<\/p>\n Organizations involved in promoting conversion therapy are acutely aware of the scientific and political backlash against the\u00a0unproven, unscientific, and harmful practices<\/a>\u00a0falling under the conversion therapy umbrella. Instead of using the term \u201cconversion therapy\u201d in their lobbying, several terms including\u00a0SAFE-T<\/a>\u00a0(Sexual Attraction Fluidity Exploration in Therapy), are used to rebrand the debunked methodology. On the IFTCC \u201clearning\u201d digital platform,\u00a0two courses<\/a>\u00a0are offered by Joseph Nicolosi Jr., founder of\u00a0the California-based Reintegrative Therapy Association. Nicolosi purports that \u201cspontaneous sexuality change\u201d is possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, CIT is\u00a0taking<\/a>\u00a0the next step of assembling Christian leaders from across the African continent who are willing to join its advisory counsel. In the longer term, the goal of the Africa Project is to create up to three \u201ceducative experiences\u201d for both African pastors and pastoral care workers each year\u2014and to ultimately influence African organizations and religious associations to perform conversion therapy.<\/p>\n According to plans published by the nonprofit to its supporters, leadership teams from the United States and United Kingdom at the Core Issues Trust want to support alternative structures to \u201cchallenge the new orthodoxy in the state, its educational establishments, and the church.\u201d Recent years have seen a growing number of countries and U.S. states and municipalities\u00a0banning<\/a>\u00a0unscientific conversion therapy practices, particularly those aimed at children and teenagers. Twenty-eight states and Washington, D.C.\u00a0currently have<\/a>\u00a0some form of conversion therapy ban in place. Neocolonial endeavors that seek to impose Western concepts of sexuality onto African nations are nothing new. But efforts to foster global collaboration and help church leaders to\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0those \u201ccoming out of LGBT\u201d in Africa, are clearly a threat to already marginalized LGBTQ+ people living across the continent.<\/p>\n In Europe, the CIT has extensive experience in building up cross-border networks to push back against conversion therapy bans and what it\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0\u201cLGBT ideology.\u201d The IFTCC project of Core Issues Trust\u00a0holds<\/a>\u00a0annual conferences dedicated to helping anyone experiencing \u201cunwanted same-sex attraction.\u201d<\/p>\n Attendees of these conferences usually number in the low hundreds and include delegates from dozens of countries. The ninth annual IFTCC conference, held in Poland in October 2023, drew more than 200 participants from thirty-four countries.<\/p>\n In spite of CIT\u2019s public message of support and help for those with \u201cunwanted same-sex attraction,\u201d deeply homophobic and violent language was used at the IFTCC conference.<\/p>\n Fiona Wyatt, who co-hosts a discipleship series for the organization with her husband and CIT trustee Simon Wyatt,\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0at the event how she wanted to \u201cget some research about what\u2019s really happening, what\u2019s really true. These LGBT freaks\u2014do we have them castrated?\u201d She laughed. \u201cWhat do we do? We need to know.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s no question that the United States has an outsized influence in the global conversion therapy movement. Close to half of speakers at the IFTCC conference were from the United States, many coming from Christian organizations that have long fought against LGBTQ+ rights, such as Glenn Stanton of the fundamentalist Protestant Focus on the Family, and Quentin Van Meter, former president of the\u00a0anti-gay<\/a>\u00a0organization, American College of Pediatricians.<\/p>\n One of the leaflets handed out by the Changed Movement at this IFTCC event reads: \u201cCan a person leave homosexuality? We did.\u201d Offering \u201cencouragement, resources, and community for all who are impacted by homosexuality,\u201d the literature continues to promote the falsehood that it is possible to choose to stop being gay, against the guidance of all mainstream medical organizations.<\/p>\n The Changed Movement is only one of several controversial ministries based at Bethel Church, a megachurch in the Northern California city of Redding. The Healing Rooms ministry is\u00a0promoted<\/a>\u00a0by Bethel as a place where \u201cjoy-filled believers\u201d can experience the complete healing of physical ailments, including late-stage cancer. The church has also\u00a0attempted<\/a>\u00a0to resurrect dead people through prayer, most notably a dead two-year-old. These efforts were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n More than twenty books and resources are offered on the official Changed Movement\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0to GAFCON attendees. These materials include books for children and teens, such as Choosing<\/em> by Ellie Klipp, which purports to show the risks of puberty blockers and gender affirming medical care, as well as how science shows it is allegedly impossible to change your sex or gender.<\/p>\n At the bottom of the webpage about the Africa Project, the CIT\u00a0offers<\/a>\u00a0the \u201clatest information from Peter in Kenya.\u201d Peter Mulinge, who is \u201cwell known to many for his ministry among Kenyan men leaving LGBT behaviors,\u201d is introduced by Lisa Nolland, chief executive officer of the Marriage, Sex, and Culture Group in the United Kingdom, as an \u201cex-gay leader,\u201d who is \u201cone of our partners, and someone we have worked with for many years.\u201d In a YouTube video from October 2023\u00a0linked<\/a>\u00a0on the page, Nolland points to the challenges Mulinge has allegedly faced during his work.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder the Biden Administration, some call it \u2018regime,\u2019 things have gotten much worse in places like Africa. Because LGBT groups are hugely funded. It\u2019s very, very worrying,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Through Life\u00a0Choices, a program\u00a0run by Mulinge, he works with close to sixty boys and men whom, he says, are struggling to quit homosexuality. In the linked video, Mulinge explains that he has been an \u201cex-gay\u201d for many years, since he was \u201cdelivered from this madness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt has not been a walk in the park. It has been a tough ministry . . . . This has not gone well with the gay activists, the progressives. These guys are funded from abroad, they are given a lot of money,\u201d says Mulinge, whose own Life Choices program is used by U.K. charities to raise money.<\/p>\n In 2019, Nolland traveled to Kenya to see Mulinge\u2019s work firsthand. In an\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0published by the Christian newspaper Heart<\/em>, Nolland says she is \u201cparticularly impressed by Life\u00a0Choices, a program\u00a0run by once-gay Peter Mulinge,\u201d as he has \u201cbeen able to help many with unwanted same-sex attraction.\u201d<\/p>\n In a\u00a0fundraising appeal<\/a>\u00a0promoted by both the Core Issues Trust and the Marriage, Sex, and Culture Group, readers are asked to give generously to fund a Christian library, a program discouraging abortion among teenage girls and young women, as well as the Life\u00a0Choices initiative.<\/p>\n Particularly aimed at teenage boys, youth counselor Mulinge, who is said to have successfully overcome a \u201clifestyle of same-sex relationships,\u201d administers the program to those who want to \u201cescape this way of life.\u201d Both spiritual and psychological counseling is provided to these teenage boys.<\/p>\n Despite not calling these practices conversion therapy, any efforts to \u201ccure\u201d or \u201cheal\u201d so-called \u201cunwanted same-sex attraction\u201d\u00a0would be viewed<\/a>\u00a0as clear examples of conversion therapy by all mainstream medical, psychotherapy, and counseling organizations.<\/p>\n The American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, American Counseling Association, and many others are uniformly\u00a0opposed<\/a>\u00a0to conversion therapy, in all its forms, due to the harm it inflicts upon survivors.<\/p>\n Soon after the delegates filed into the Kigali Convention Centre, the prime minister of Rwanda, \u00c9douard Ngirente, opened GAFCON IV and\u00a0thanked<\/a>\u00a0organizers for \u201cchoosing to hold this important conference in Kigali.\u201d At a large booth promoting the CIT and the Changed Movement, the IFTCC Declaration was on display.<\/p>\n With more than 2,000 signatures and dozens of co-signing organizations, the declaration argues against banning conversion therapy across the world. More than half of signatures listed on the public declaration list come from the United Kingdom and the United States, with dozens of others signing from African countries including South Africa, Uganda, Cameroon, and Namibia.<\/p>\n Building a truly international network to spread conversion therapy is increasingly a reality thanks to the literature, fundraising, and organizational support offered by Western organizations. From Kenya and Rwanda to South Africa, under the guise of spiritual counseling and religious freedom, harmful conversion therapy practices are taking root across Africa.<\/p>\n Back in the United States, the Changed Movement, which\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0itself a \u201cgrassroots network of people who have left LGBTQ behind to follow Christ,\u201d remains active from its home base in Northern California.<\/p>\n Woning and Williams formed the Changed Movement in 2018 when California State Assemblymember Evan Low\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0AB-2943, which would have banned conversion therapy in the state. Williams and Woning, together with almost thirty others, went to the California State Capitol in Sacramento to share their stories and offer their \u201cex-gay\u201d testimonials book to state senators. Assemblymember Low later\u00a0shelved<\/a>\u00a0the bill.<\/p>\n But the reach of the Changed Movement spans beyond California. In 2023, Changed Movement member David Reece\u00a0testified<\/a>\u00a0in favor of an anti-gender-affirming health care\u00a0bill<\/a>\u00a0in the Montana Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n While primarily focused on the United States, testimonies from those who have shared their stories of conversion to the Changed Movement come from countries including Colombia, Australia, Malaysia, and South Africa. One South African who contributed his account of surrendering his sexuality to God is Leon Jonck.<\/p>\n Like others, Jonck\u00a0describes<\/a>\u00a0a vivid experience of God talking to him directly. \u201cI watched as He pulled my spine out of my brain, and it looked like a bunch of loose wires,\u201d Jonck shares. \u201cHe said, \u2018We are going to rewire your mind. It\u2019s not going to be easy, but I am going to do it with you.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Fellow South African \u201cex-gay\u201d Jandr\u00e9 van der Walt, a student at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry,\u00a0makes<\/a>\u00a0a similar declaration of his \u201cfreedom\u201d from homosexuality: \u201cGod told me, \u2018Jandr\u00e9, you are not gay. That\u2019s not who I made you to be.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n