Mar 14, 2024

Demons in San Francisco Bay: How a Street Preacher Launched Modern-Day “Conversion Therapy”


Demons in San Francisco Bay: How a Street Preacher Launched Modern-Day “Conversion Therapy”
University of California Press: Demons in San Francisco Bay: How a Street Preacher Launched Modern-Day “Conversion Therapy”

Chris Babits
Pacific Historical Review (2024) 93 (1): 63–96.


PDF

"In 1967, street minister Kent Philpott began outreach to lesbian, gay, and bisexual hippies in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Over the next decade, he counseled those who purportedly wanted out of what he referred to as “the gay lifestyle,” combining charismatic religious beliefs in demons, divine healing, and glossolalia with psychological theories on gender and child development. This article examines Philpott’s efforts to provide the nascent “ex-gay movement” with cultural, social, and intellectual foundations. This article specifically documents how sexual liberation, hippie culture, and conservative religion converged in San Francisco and spawned the “ex-gay movement.” Philpott, swept up by the Jesus People Movement, incorporated religious and psychological beliefs prominent in the Bay Area and infused charismatic Christian influences and
traditional understandings of masculinity and femininity into the 'ex-gay movement.'"

https://online.ucpress.edu/phr/article/93/1/63/198853/Demons-in-San-Francisco-BayHow-a-Street-Preacher

No comments: