Book Review: A Life of Unlearning One Man’s Journey to Find the Truth (Audiobook) by Anthony Venn-Brown

Would You Jump Off A Cliff to Save Yo... Be Ye Transformed

Book Review: A Life of Unlearning One Man’s Journey to Find the Truth (Audiobook) by Anthony Venn-Brown

My assistant introduced me to the work of Anthony Venn-Brown. Immediately, I was intrigued by his story: a former Assemblies of God evangelist gone gay. An oddly familiar theme.

Venn-Brown has an impressive list of ministry credentials and achievements. He was born and raised in Australia, where he currently lives. As I listened to him tell his story of rising through the ranks of the Assemblies of God in the ‘80s, I imagined where I was at that time in the U.S., deeply entrenched as an Assemblies of God music minister. We celebrated our charismatic and successful evangelists. I’m sure I heard of him, but I don’t remember.

Venn-Brown doesn’t hold anything back. Sometimes it felt as if I was listening to a novel, and at other times erotica. I wasn’t sure who his audience was. The information is much too risqué for your average church-going, American family, who simply wants to understand the homosexual struggle. Though titillating, the details didn’t seem relevant to the story. (Not to say I didn’t enjoy them…ahem.)

I also didn’t need to hear all of the relationships and encounters Venn-Brown painstakingly described. By the time I neared the end of the book, I began to wonder if he had any concept of love at all. Each of his many sexual trysts were positioned as though he had found the one person with whom he would experience lasting love. Inevitably, however, those relationships ended and the cycle repeated itself. Those were the kinds of stories I’d heard about in the ‘80s that drove me to ex-gay ministry for help. In his defense, Venn-Brown didn’t give up on love in spite of the odds against him.

He aptly identifies his struggle with God. The mental acrobats of trying to make sense of events, such as hearing God give him a specific date he would be released from the army and seeing it come to pass, countered other experiences which led him to question if anything he believed as a Christian was ever really true. It’s a human struggle to which most of us can relate. For those of us who served in ministry, it is a bitter battle between what feels like the two halves of our core.

I have to give Venn-Brown props for the courage to tell his story. My heart ached for his children and his wife as he repeatedly let them down. It was especially difficult to hear how he eventually left them without ever saying goodbye. As a father, leaving my children is an act that is unfathomable. Still, Venn-Brown never attempts to justify or make excuses for his behavior. He simply told his story.

Venn-Brown eventually comes to many of the conclusions I came to in my book: God is bigger than we believed Him to be and we are called to be authentic and honest with others and ourselves. It is then that we find our purpose. His conclusion is brief in comparison to his story.

Venn-Brown was ahead of his time by coming to terms with his sexuality and, eventually, his Christian faith. Many of the things he has worked for through his organization, Ambassadors and Bridge Builders International, is beginning to have a worldwide impact. Many more loving and LGBT accepting Christian organizations, particularly in the traditional evangelical churches, are popping up around the world. Anthony Venn-Brown has long since been leading this reformation.

Regardless of whether or not one agrees with Venn-Brown’s conclusions, his story is worth reading. It contains the history of where we have come as a Christian LGBT community and offers a gentle reminder of a history we don’t want to repeat.

Click here to buy a copy of A Life of Unlearning from Audible.com.

Tim

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