During the final days of LGBTQ Pride in June, the founder of Freedom March and a leader with the Changed Movement, Jeffrey McCall confirmed his appearance in a new documentary that presents a different message than the one for which he’s gained national attention in forsaking a transgender woman identity.
The unreleased documentary, Pray Away, was screened at a Chicago film festival on June 25. It explores what the Doc10 festival calls the “pray away the gay” movement in a synopsis of the film, scheduled for broadcast by Netflix in August.
McCall’s role is small, compared to the documentary’s primary “gay Christian” figure whose marriage ceremony to a female is highlighted during filming inside the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
“Yes, I’m in this upcoming documentary,” confirmed McCall, whose ministry For Such a Time offers hope to people who want to leave behind LGBTQ lifestyles.
McCall plans to attend a private screening of the documentary next month in Tennessee, which was filmed over a two-year period beginning in 2018.
He said the Lord’s invitation to him to participate in the creation of Pray Away was strategic.
“I felt the Lord lead me into the documentary to be as innocent as a dove and cunning as a serpent—to get into more people’s lives,” McCall said.
Though the director, crew and featured personalities don’t share McCall’s biblical beliefs that change is possible through relationship with Jesus, “this documentary will be showing my story, and about Freedom March,” McCall explained.
“Although they don’t have biblical viewpoints, they did allow me to share my biblically-based life,” he said.
Strategically, millions more people will be exposed to McCall’s message, which is different than the film’s and the culture’s perspective of LGBTQ pride.
“It was strategic to get into this non-Christian documentary to reach more people,” said McCall, whose own memoir, For Such A Time, shares his journey out of deception, failed relationships, suicide attempts, club life, prescription and illegal drug use, alcohol abuse, eating disorders, homosexuality, transgender confusion, mental illness, gender dysphoria, and eventually into supernatural encounters with God.
A “gay Christian,” Julie Rodgers appeared at Chicago screening of Pray Away (Pray Away—Doc10 ), which highlights her exodus from the change ministry McCall leads. Rodgers joined a LGBTQ-affirming Episcopal church, she told Religion News Service in an interview before the film’s debut.
As part of a group that embraced biblical views on marriage, gender and sexuality, Rodgers believed in the sinfulness of homosexual practice like its leaders and followers looking to overcome same-sex attraction and gender confusion.
In crossing over, Rodgers left behind her beliefs about marriage and sexuality, uniting with a woman.
What she once considered evil, she now endorses.
Just as Rodgers promotes a message of affirmation in Pray Away, McCall believes Freedom March and the Changed Movement proclaim hope and change through relationship with his Savior, Jesus Christ. {eoa}
Steve Rees is a former general assignment reporter who, with one other journalist, first wrote about the national men’s movement Promise Keepers from his home in Colorado. Rees and Promise Keepers Founder Bill McCartney attended the Boulder Vineyard. Today Rees writes in his free time.
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