In my recent blogging and asking questions about the Smyth/Fletcher scandals, I have been wanting to do far more than simply chronicling a series of events. As a former parish priest with almost a half-century of service in a variety of congregations, I approach this open-source material with what I hope is an informed perspective. Congregations and their leaders, as well as most groups, behave in predictable ways. What I offer in my commentary on this material, is a reflection about patterns of behaviour. Placing such material into a context of history and theology is also an important task, but these speculations have to remain provisional.
A couple of weeks back, the story of PC Andrew Harper, killed by thieves in Berkshire a year ago, resurfaced. Those guilty were convicted and sentenced to prison for manslaughter. The Press contained some discussion about whether this verdict should be overturned in favour of one calling it murder. The part of the story that caught my eye was not that debate. It was the mentioning of the detail that, while the police were originally investigating the killing, they had received absolutely no cooperation from any of the residents of the travellers’ sites where the guilty lived. It appeared that every single member of the communities where the thieves lived, was bound by an unwritten rule that cooperation with the police (and thus the wider society) was impossible. Even a terrible death was not sufficient to overcome this. In pondering this complex breakdown of communication and mutual understanding between two sections of society, we seem to be touching on something resembling the mindset of a cult or extremist political group. There was a norm, a group mind, which laid on the entire community a rule of silence. Everyone automatically fell into line. No single individual there was operating as an independent adult with a conscience that could operate on behalf of those outside the tribe.
A similar kind of group mind seems to be affecting parts of the so-called Villages, a wealthy enclave for retired people in Florida. Apparently, the divisions between Trump and Biden supporters have broken out into open conflict among some of these elderly residents. Any kind of political display, a flag or poster, has the effect of creating torrents of anger among those on the opposing side. Somewhere in the heat of political debate, groups of elderly American citizens have lost the ability to imagine that other people might have a valid reason for thinking and feeling in a different way.
These two examples present to us a mentality that flourished in the period before the Second World War. Two political systems were then on offer in continental Europe. One, Communism, was represented by Stalin and Soviet Russia. The other, Fascism, was imposed in Spain, Germany and Italy. Both systems were a different expression of what we want to call the group mind. The first, Communism, strove to create a consciousness that would claim to be building a communal society where corporate values were supreme. This of course was the ideal rather than the reality. Fascism on the other hand was promoting crude forms of individualism, the extolling of brute strength and the destiny of the strong to dominate over the weak. The values of both systems had much mass appeal. Anyone who happened to be living empty or unfulfilled lives could look to the leader and internalise the values that were being shared every day through the output of propaganda. Lives that were felt to have no meaning suddenly were imbued with significance. The secret weapon of both these systems was that once the ideals of the regime were internalised, the follower was relieved of having ever to make decisions and accept responsibility. In psychological terms, being part of the national group mind allowed a comforting regression to infancy. Daddy will sort everything out. You can trust the leader to sort out your life and provide fulfilment. For an uncomfortably high percentage of the populations, this was a cult-like consciousness they were happy to wallow in. Devotion to the Leader or Fuehrer was total for large sectors of the population. It was uncritical, unreflective and devoid of questioning.
Some understanding of the totalist regimes of the 1930s is helpful for the understanding of cults and cultic movements of today. In all of them, there is the same avoidance of rational individuality which accepts responsibility for decisions. There is always what we would consider an unhealthy devotion to a charismatic leader who does the thinking for his followers and keeps them at the maturity level of small children. As long as no questions are asked, all seems well. But the awakening from such cult-like control is painful. A human being cannot live with their individuality and necessary choices supressed for ever.
There is a painful truth that the Church is also sometimes very good at keeping people at a low level of maturity. While we are not suggesting that the Church is like a cult or a mass political movement, there are some uncomfortable parallels. I have often in this blog complained about the way that some church leaders adopt the role of a coercive benevolent dictator, telling their followers in detail how to live and exactly what to believe. Membership is restricted to those who are Sound, and preferment to those who are Keen. Clearly a congregation where everyone believes the same things and adopts the same modes of behaviour, is likely to be a tidy place. The preservation of these tribal loyalties may seem like a good thing. The problem is that leaders are fallible. When they fail, as in the current cases around Smyth/Fletcher, the fallout and damage can be appalling. The tidy systems of control, that worked so well for a long period of time, start to crack open and people realise that the certainties that the institution stood for had been based to a considerable extent on fantasy and deceit.
The results of the Reviews by Keith Makin and Thirtyone:eight into the behaviours of Smyth and Fletcher respectively, are both delayed until next year. There has been some comment about the reasons for these delays, but the outsider is permitted to speculate further on these hold-ups. Thirtyone:eight included the somewhat ambiguous reason which I and others have not known how to interpret. “Non-disclosure-related information emerging late”. Speculation is of course not fact but in the case of the Smyth enquiry at any rate, there seem to be one of two reasons at play. The less likely theory, arising out of what I have said on the functioning of cultic groups, is that there is so much new material available that the reviewers are finding it hard to process what has come in. The other more probable theory is that the communities that surrounded and protected charismatic leaders like Fletcher and Smyth are still in a state of post-cultic shock. While they are now able to recognise a new reality, that old leaders are fallible, they have not lost the old tribal habits of the group mind. In short, there is some suggestion that the enquiries currently under way are being met with the obstructionist habits of closed groups.
We thus suggest that a picture of dozens of individuals queuing up to speak to Keith Makin about their experiences of Iwerne camps, good and bad, is a very improbable one. The most likely scenario is that there is considerable difficultly in getting individuals to speak openly and that makes the task of writing a Review harder. The omerta culture seems alive and well and we would naturally expect that to restrain a free sharing of Iwerne memories by the majority of the alumni. Another thing that seems extraordinary is that there is no open debate about whether the Iwerne ideology of ‘Bash’ is still worth defending. Am I the only person to have noticed that the military ethos of the camps was first conceived of in the 1930s and may perhaps have been influenced by other elitist youth movements were being created in continental Europe? Has no one anywhere wanted to discuss whether the semi-militarised Christian training of Iwerne camps has done anything positive for the Church of England? Is it raw fear that prevents this discussion? Some of the alumni of Iwerne appear to be behaving like people coming out of a dark place blinking into the light. Like cult survivors, they have a variety of stages yet to go through, like Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief. At present most of them are still at the stage of shock and denial. Perhaps church history will one day come to see, when examining this extraordinary tale of the Great Leader Betrayal, that the Church of England was let down badly by giving so much influence and power to this small but influential group of Christians who continue to operate this highly controlled form of Christianity. To judge from the literature of cult studies, it will take several years if not decades before many of the Iwerne victims/survivors will be able to speak and speak clearly about what they have experienced. The process might be speeded up if their current leaders, who still exercise a great deal of influence over the rank and file, were to give permission for the cathartic opening-up that is needed to heal so many, the directly abused and the bystanders. So far that permission has not been granted and the journey through the stages of grief cannot proceed with ease.
Cults, extremist political or religious ideologies and closed communities of all kinds draw their strength and their toxic influence by drawing people into an unhealthy relationship with leaders. That relationship can be poisonous. It stops the process of growing into freedom and responsible living and the making of life choices. We call this fullness mature independence. This is what Jesus was talking about when he declared: ‘I have come that they may have life, life in all its abundance.’
Stephen, you’ve hit the nail on the head yet again.
Regarding the mindset of traveller communities, however, I don’t agree that they resemble extremist religious or political groups – except perhaps for the omertà that prevented them co-operating with the police. I have worked a little with travellers, both Romany and what are sometimes (not very accurately) called Irish travellers, and they more nearly resemble a cultural enclave within our society. ‘Tribal’ is a good description. Some Romanys don’t even speak English – I have done baptism interviews where a youngster had to translate for the adults. The travelling lifestyle means they don’t have an opportunity to integrate with our society, and so there is mutual suspicion. I’ve never had any trouble with either kind of traveller personally, but of course the PC Harper killing and the theft that preceded it were very wrong and deserve punishment.
I think a better example is perhaps the revelations about Falwell’s behaviour and their impact on Liberty University and other Falwell followers. It seems there had been ample evidence for some time that Falwell was not all he claimed to be, but those with the power to do something did not want to recognise it. At least the university’s trustees have now engaged an independent lawyer to investigate all aspects of Falwell’s behaviour. The Church of England should go and do likewise.
Many thanks! The similarity of the Iwerne camps with other ‘militarised’ movements in the 1930s was touched upon in response to your blog of 3 December 2019. However, I suspect that Nash was inspired more by the Scouts and the Boys’ Brigade than Mosley’s New Party. Compare with Marciel Maciel’s ‘Legion of Christ’ established in 1941, in which a cadre of RC clergy would be a spiritual army against communism or the aggressive secularism of the ruling PRI in Mexico (Maciel, though, was an infamous abuser and spiritual opportunist).
It was not unusual at that time for Christianity to be thought of in militaristic terms, assailed as it was from all sides by doubt, liberalism and ‘modern life’. A famous instance of this is the famous hymn of J. M. Neale (1862), supposedly translated from a text of the seventh/eighth century Andrew of Crete (a text which never appears to have been discovered):
“Christian, dost thou see them
On the holy ground?
How the troops of Midian
Prowl and prowl around?
Christian, up and smite them,
Counting gain but loss;
Smite them by the merit
Of the holy cross.”
Query whether Neale had in mind not only Darwin and Huxley, the positivist movement, but also the ‘enemy within’ (the authors of ‘Essays and Reviews’ (1860)).
Since you have mentioned totalitarian regimes, it might be worth considering how they have come to an end and how their legacy was ‘resolved’ by their host societies. The Nazi regime ‘ended’ at Nuremberg. The USSR ended with nothing at all. There has been, at best, a very slow and incremental coming to terms with the past in Iberia. There have also been investigatory and reconciliation processes in countries like Cambodia, Liberia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The most famous instance is South Africa, but even there the outcome was highly imperfect:
“Given the lack of political will to implement significant structural change in South Africa, hopes for the implementation of recommendations are limited. Despite the Commission’s attempts to promote reconciliatory practice, by emphasising accountability for violations, allocating responsibility for apartheid and detailing options for change, these have all been neutralised in practice. Judicial and political policies have outweighed any Commission challenges to the ‘perpetrators’, beneficiaries or structural conditions of apartheid. Simultaneously, ‘victims’ and survivors have seen little change to their daily treatment and social standing. Promises of reparations have been dashed and the state has demonstrated little impetus to transform the social, economic, judicial and political landscape. With such disregard, it seems unreasonable that anybody should demand this group to be reconciled; why should they?” (Elizabeth Stanley ‘Evaluating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ Journal of Modern African Studies (2001) 542-3)
ICCSA is a form of TRC. Should the Church have its own TRC? Would it make any…
…difference if it did?
There is another review by thirtyone:eight that is due out this month and that is one the commissioned by Crowded House church Sheffield into the alleged abuse by their former lead elder Steve Timmis. This will be published on their website and may serve as an early indicator of the kind of report that will be published about Jonathan Fletcher. I’m interested in this as the church’s leadership structure is very similar to the Newfrontiers churches I used to attend.
https://www.thecrowdedhouse.org/news
Thanks for this Jon. Perhaps you can post a comment when this report appears so that my blog readers can be reminded and go straight through to the report.
I’d agree with Froghole on the “military language” at the camps. I was in Crusaders in the 60s, notably not a uniformed organisation nor one, as far as I am aware, which has had allegations made against it. At that time it was specifically recruiting boys (the girls had their own organisation) from independent day schools, this having been noted as a “gap in the market” by its founder back in about 1906. Unlike Scripture Union, it was not schools-based; unlike Covenanters and CYFA, it was not church based. Since those days it has become much more inclusive and is always linked to a local church.
I digress! The point I want to make is that, certainly up to the early 1970s, Crusader camps had a Commandant (“Commy”), an Adjutant (“Adjy”), a Quarter-master and Tent Officers (one of which I became). But the atmosphere at officers’ meetings seemed fairly convivial and there was no “eminence grise” to whom everyone deferred. (Later I helped out at the much more strictly Evangelical United Beach Missions and there were one or two members of that organisation who were always referred to in hushed and respectful tones!)
I would also say, admittedly based on my experience of only one group, that as time went on we were encouraged to think. Certainly there was no heavily-enforced doctrinal “party line” in my group: it was broadly Evangelical and conversionist but questioning was definitely allowed – to the extent that 18-year old I thought that some of our leaders were a bit “liberal”! So a very different “feel” to Iwerne or VPS, I suspect. (Was VPS linked to Iwerne or Scripture Union? The latter, I think).
The picture of all white bishops in the pingback article is at least ten years old!
According to the Church Times former Archbishop Rowan Williams has joined in protests by extinction rebellion. Others elsewhere have noted Bishop’s publicly challenging those in authority on issues they consider important, whilst keeping quiet about church related abuse. It is the public media and journalists and lawyers who have been our best friends in bringing this to public notice . Without publicity safeguarding abuses will not be tackled by the very church hierarchy who are still trying to keep a tight lid on their own misconduct and apparent lack of curiosity in regard to allegations.
I note 31/8 are calling for a safeguarding Sunday to be observed shortly. I fear that unless those of us who are able to, are allowed to give our accounts in the churches on that Sunday, we will not mobilise our fellow parishioners on behalf of victims/survivors. Personally, I have not heard of any parish even praying for let alone discussing the issues. It is the elephant in the room. We need to appeal personally to parishioners who have so far behaved as if it is not an issue for them. Without a swell of opinion backing us, General Synod will continue to fail to call the Church to account.
Without our personal contribution, safeguarding Sunday will merely pay lip service to the problem, and we will be told about the change in culture and new regulations. We will not be told of current cases proving that guidelines are being ignored and manipulated in our own dioceses. I fear the Church will just ignore the day or worse still, use it to prove that everything is now quite different, complainants are listened to, and misconduct dealt with appropriately.
Perhaps we should put pressure so that an account can be read out at every service detailing that gross failures need to be addressed, but are not, and call for parishioners to call for justice and an end to cover ups.
It is strange that many of those who have been in the forefront of publicising the true facts and calling for justice have not done so on behalf of the church. As long as church goers either remain ignorant of the issue or perhaps choose to, victims/survivors will continue to be portrayed as trouble makers by the church.
We need now to ask our parishes why they are not asking questions and not speaking up. It is noticeable that the public outcry over black lives matters has helped those enduring racism, although of course there is still much to do. I think it has helped enormously that white people have spoken up and stood to be counted.
We must now ask our fellow parishioners to do the same.
The 1970s changes in terminology in Crusaders represented a deliberate policy of eschewing the military ethos. Adjy became Organiser (unfortunate obvious abbreviation to Orgy!); Padre became Chaplain; Commy became Leader. All this was precisely because I and many others who had found faith though Cru camps didn’t want that odd public school/military stuff still permeating the organisation. It also became much less hierarchical (as was the zeitgeist), and the appeal was to kids from ordinary grammar/comprehensive schools. I think you’re also right that we encouraged people to discuss the bible and think for themselves. But perhaps I have rose-tinted spectacles…
Thanks Pete. I agree, and Crusaders – sorry, “Urban Saints”! – was deliberately trying to broaden its demographic. I’m 66 and I must have come in just at the end of the “old days” – I think that all, or virtually all, the boys in my class (Mill Hill) came from independent schools. Strangely enough, that didn’t seem odd to us – it was simply the world we lived in.
….. and as for “Urban Saints” !!! If “Crusaders” had an unfortunate societal understanding, did nobody think “Saints” did too?
What’s wrong with ‘Saints’?
I’d have thought ‘Urban’ was more problematic – at least for those in villages and small towns.
“Oooh, your going to be a saint then?” Children in the street don’t understand saint as you and I do.