One of the questions raised in Andrew Graystone’s book, Bleeding for Jesus, is whether the Iwerne movement should be considered a cult? He writes (p200): I sometimes reflect on whether it would be appropriate to call the Iwerne movement a cult. It is a rather arbitrary classification, since there is no agreed definition of a cult; one person’s cult is another person’s highly successful religious movement. The boundary between what is legitimate exercise of religious freedom and what is abusive mind-control can be hard to draw. This makes it all the more important to determine some markers of orthodoxy, if only for the protection of vulnerable believers. I want here to reflect further on this question. Graystone’s mention of this word cult allows us to explore further to see if the Iwerne movement strays into this dangerous territory. Here, in the world of so-called cults, people can sometimes suffer real harm. I have lived with the word and the realities implicit in it for over a decade through my membership of the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). I have come to see that the word cult is a useful shorthand for particular harmful religious or political groups. Usually, however, the word needs to be avoided. The main reason for side-stepping the word cult is that its use, in some contexts, is disputed and the cause of misunderstanding. The problematic nature of the word is especially found in two areas of discourse.
- The word cult has, I believe, no validity in a court of law. It is not acceptable for the simple reason it has no universally accepted meaning. If lawyers cannot agree on what a word means, the best that can be done is to find other words or expressions that do have meaning and precision in a court of law. This has happened as we shall see below.
- The word cult is highly contentious among some scholars and students of contemporary religious movements. There are some scholars who are extremely hesitant to identify any religious group as being intrinsically harmful. Calling a group a cult is a kind of name-calling, and does little to convey precisely what is being asserted about it. If people have indeed been, in some way, harmed by choosing to join a religious group, it was as the result of a mature personal decision, assuming they were adults when they joined. They have to accept their responsibility for having made a bad choice. These scholars will also argue over expressions like brainwashing and indoctrination, querying whether such things even exist. Other scholars, more sympathetic to the cult idea, will want to emphasise the involuntary aspects of cult membership. Genuine choice may have been absent in the recruitment process at the beginning of membership. The literature explores how joining a harmful cultic group can take place at a moment of extreme psychological vulnerability. There may be, for example, an acute need to belong. The guru or cult leader may also be exercising any one of a variety of coercive psychological techniques, such as chanting or hypnosis, to draw members in. The leader’s motivation may be to serve his own psychological needs. These are being met by the exercise of domination and control over others. The typical young person’s search for meaning and certainty provides an opportunity for a leader to gain kudos, personal power and maybe other sources of gratification.
Andrew Graystone’s original question and the title to this post is probably then unanswerable because of these problems that cluster around this use of the word at the centre of the question. Nevertheless, such a question, even when unanswered, remains an important one, even if we need a change of wording. Fortunately, legal terminology comes to our rescue by providing two expressions which do have currency in legal discourse. It is these words/terms that point to the possibility that, at some time in the future, the legal system may become more active in the oversight of what we might consider to be harmful expressions of religious practice. Most of the readers of this blog will be familiar from their own experience of religiously inspired activities that can, on occasion, do serious harm to adherents.
The two expressions which have currency in legal terminology and are useful in describing what many people mean by cult, are the terms ‘undue influence’ and ‘coercive ‘control’. Undue influence is a legal term which goes back centuries in English law. It implies that one party is exercising influence over another in order to persuade them to act in ways that do not benefit their interests. It is normally used in legal arguments relating to money or property matters. A good example would be where a vulnerable person comes under pressure to change their will. There is one fascinating English legal case from the 19th century which brings the concept of undue influence into a religious context. A young woman had joined a Roman Catholic community in the 19th-century. She was deemed by a court to be unable to decide on the right way to administer her property, once she had become a full member of the community. The community of nuns was felt to exercise an undue influence over her so that she was no longer deemed to be a free agent in making decisions. The principle of undue influence has not, as far as I know, been brought up in any more recent cases involving a religious group. Clearly there is a potential for this 19th century precedent to be applicable if, for example, a Moonie member hands over all the family fortune to a bank account in South Korea.
It does not take a great deal of imagination to see that undue influence could be said to apply to other situations in a religious context. An unscrupulous cultic leader might demand sexual favours from a new member as part of the cost of belonging to the group. Other rules of a group which demand an oppressive conformity may undermine the individuality of a member. This also could be considered undue influence. Those of us who are concerned for victims and survivors of all kinds have observed many times the way that people are coerced and controlled by others in a religious setting. This single word control is a good description of what we see in operation in many authoritarian religious groups. The control exercised in such a setting is seldom experienced as a benign act.
I want to suggest that the way our original question can be asked, avoiding the contentious word cult, is this. Have the Iwerne camps used undue influence and authoritarian/coercive control over their members? Are the members in any way harmed by some aspect of the teaching or the authoritarian culture of the camps? I do not offer a definitive answer to this question, but Graystone’s evidence points to numerous ways in which the camps seem emotionally and spiritually unhealthy places. This is quite apart from the beatings that some of the attendees received.
As a way of extending the reader’s appreciation and understanding of the systems of authoritarian control, I want to introduce my reader to the BITE model of control proposed by Steven Hassan. He is a cult expert living in the States and I have had the pleasure of meeting him at several of the ICSA conferences that I attended. This is a gathering of experts in authoritarian groups from all over the world.
Hassan suggests that there are four areas of control that authoritarian groups/cults use with their members. Each one corresponds to one of the letters in the word BITE. Here I can only offer the barest outline of how these control methods work in so-called cults. Some methods are gentle while others involve a level of open compulsion. BITE stands for Behaviour, Information, Thought and Emotion. The first, behaviour control, requires the individual who has joined a group to conform to a laid down pattern in the way they live their life. Certainly, Graystone’s account describes the conforming tendencies among Iwerne alumni, including the amusing anecdote from a member of a college at which some Iwerne men attended for ordination training. The fellow student noticed that Iwerne men seemed always to dress in identical ways, all using identical Filofaxes.
The second area of control exercised by closed authoritarian groups is the control of information. The Iwerne movement like many other religious groups does not encourage reading theological books beyond a small carefully vetted range of works. The version of the Bible used by Nash was always the King James version. Bible studies were used to present the approved teaching of the group rather than lead on to any kind of personal exploration of the text. To be a Iwerne man, you had to know and be a confident expositor of this official teaching of the movement. Such teaching, according to Graystone, was bereft of theological nuance or depth. Such control of access to information leads into the third of Hassan’s categories – thought control. We have often described in this blog the black/white, binary thinking of conservative Christian groups. Needless to say, such narrowness of thinking will produce an imagination deficit. Such a control of thinking will also never be able to produce much in the way of newness or creativity in theological understanding. The maps of reality adopted by Iwerne men as part of their tribal identity, will prevent the emerging of healthy intellectual or spiritual development. They will also find it extremely hard to learn from or relate to other Christians who come from different traditions.
The final letter in the acronym BITE is E for emotional control. If you are part of a religious movement like Iwerne, you will be encouraged to think and feel in predictable ways. One negative emotion that was prominent in the 31:8 report about the ministry of Jonathan Fletcher was the presence of fear. Alongside fear is the constant activation of guilt in the individual. This was a common feature of many of the Iwerne evening teaching sessions. Feeling constantly guilty and afraid seems to be a crucial part of the Iwerne emotional identity. Certainly, we saw the evident results of emotional control at Iwerne, particularly among Smyth’s victims. Through no fault of their own, they found it near impossible to understand the terrible things being done to them, let alone talk to others about it. They had been ruthlessly manipulated, not just by Smyth but by the mind and emotion numbing routines of the camps.
The question with which we began needs to be rephrased. Do the Iwerne camps, based on the evidence provided by Graystone, show aspects of authoritarian control and undue influence which Hassan so clearly describes in his BITE model? If the question is phrased like this, then the answer has to be a categoric yes. Our conclusion has to be that to a greater or lesser extent, generations of conservative Iwerne Christians have been exposed to a mind changing experience. This has, to varying degrees, negatively changed them and inculcated in many of them a harmful, mind-numbing version of the Christian faith. That is a terrible and terrifying conclusion to be extracted from Graystone’s book.
Good points. I was dubious about labelling, as I don’t think the label is the point. Being obsessed with applying the correct name is not necessarily helpful. But I totally take your point. Just to explain mine, the church I was brought up in, the Christadelphians, is often called a cult, which denigrates and insults the members. But it really isn’t. One of my brothers has absolutely not been shunned, and is still good friends with many members. (I and my other brother are out of touch, but not avoided or anything) I wasn’t pursued, indeed, my mother did think they could have made more effort to keep me! They don’t accept the Trinity, but most Anglicans don’t! They believe in salvation by works, but most people do! And they really try to live out their faith. Where I part company from them is mostly that they are a closed order. But Roman Catholics don’t allow shared communion, either. But, I agree with your comments about the effect Iwerne must have had on people.
‘They don’t accept the Trinity, but most Anglicans don’t!’
Some Anglicans don’t, despite regularly affirming in the Creeds that they do so believe. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say that most Anglicans don’t believe in the Trinity. It’s one of our most important articles of faith.
I meant, the people in the pews! But it doesn’t make it a cult, anyway.
No, it doesn’t. Like Stephen, I’m slow to use the ‘c’ word.
However, I wasn’t referring just to clergy in my comment above. Laypeople too regularly affirm their faith in the Creeds, of which the Trinity are a prominent feature. The Trinity are often sung in hymns too.
Conservative evangelicals do have their faults, but lack of belief in the Trinity isn’t among them. And when we consider how many ConEvo and evangelical churches are full, and how many people take Alpha courses where the Trinity are emphatically taught, I think it’s fair to say the Church of England is generally characterised by people believing in one of our major articles of faith. Cathedrals and theology departments, of course, may differ from the general.
If you ask most people about the Holy Spirit, they don’t think of him as God. And sure, they recite it or sing it. Doesn’t prove a thing.
I remember someone telling me once that David Fletcher led seminars on ‘how to persuade people iwerne isn’t a cult.’ One feels that if you need to lead a session on that…..
Shouldn’t laugh….
A couple of points. First, the word “cult” can also be used neutrally as well as pejoratively, and is used, for example, for a group of religious practitioners worshipping the same God/ess (eg “the cult of Athena”) without any implication of coercion etc
Second, most of the extant faith growth models, and at least those which link with developmental theories (eg Erikson), record a period in many (most?) faith stories in which certainty (black/white thinking). Now the whole area is contentious, but there are indications that the black/white stage is necessary for many of us. On this theorising the problem would be leaders who don’t have the maturity to allow people to grow beyond this transitional stage to a mature faith, and lock people in to an early stage of faith development. There is little thinking about this, but some of the problematic features, seen from one perspective, look like necessary aspects for the duration of this stage of growth (that is, if you believe the theories).
If you want a perspective, think about how many children grow through their early stages to a more nuanced understanding of the world, and the idea of “teenage rebellion” – those are the kind of things which are mirrored in the faith growth theories.
So one way of describing part of the situation would be as a failure to understand Christian maturity and the means by which it is attained (which would be vehemently denied …). The whole area is under-explored.
😀. The cult of Athena! Yes! I think we all know the word has other meanings.
Very interesting second paragraph, Mark Bennett. Thank you. Appreciated.
Two girls outside my Iwerne dormitory in the Easter 1991 camp were on the phone home: ‘We want to go home! It’s a cult!’. A young man of pleasing maturity took them for a drive in his car at the same time as he was dropping me to Poole Bus Station. Mark Ashton (Surviving Church 19.9.21 discussion) clearly took the overlaps seriously. I went through 9 cult characteristics in my analysis in the Surviving Church 26.11.19 discussion to see which ones applied and which didn’t and to what extent.
There is nothing instrinsically wrong with being a sect (it just means you are smaller and not mainstream, or not yet, not elite, not in a position of power), but some cultic characteristics are harmful.
This is very helpful, Stephen. Your use of terms with some legal definition, undue influence and authoritative / coercive control is very helpful. As are the four aspects of BITE.
I’ve sought to engage over the years with many people in groups that could similarly be easily called a cult. My approach is, I’d say, guided not by an analytical /legal approach but by a pastoral one. In other words, how can I best help this person reflect on their own situation and act appropriately. My experience is that calling something a cult is never really helpful. I’ve tended to talk about the characteristics of a cult. The four components of BITE do that, but I have found it most helpful to focus down on characteristics that can’t be argued about – on the basis that coercive control tends to numb the mind. After they’ve agreed several characteristics do indeed seem cult-like, they’ll still have a “…. but it’s not like that with ….” I’ll generally leave it there, without trying to prove my rightness.
Daniel Shaw, whose work I used in my book, was himself in a religious cult and now works as a psychotherapist with former members of cults and their family and friends. He’s based in the US.
He defines how a group or a community becomes a cult when it is dedicated to the mission of the leader, who is always a traumatizing narcissist. This kind of narcissist is someone who claims to be pursuing a mission to help others empower themselves, either spiritually or financially, and to change the world in some uplifting or purifying way. Followers are introduced to practices and rituals meant to strengthen and purify them, which actually are designed to test their devotion to the leader and to train them to depend on and submit to the leader. I think this is where Smyth’s abusive practices fit.
Shaw sees that the exploitation of the followers fulfils the cult leader’s actual mission, which is always to bolster and maintain his or her delusion of omnipotence. Smyth’s delusional omnipotence was shrouded in theological justification that worked as a distraction from his own mental instability. Iwerne was for him the means to an end.
Smyth was, of course, not the leader of the camps, and would not have been thought of by the boys on camp as the leader, despite his role for 7 years as Trust leader. It is because his own aims and objectives were slightly at variance with those of the camp leaders -and because he would not tolerate being below them in a hierarchy, given his social status (he later claimed they were jealous of his African ‘success’) – that he branched off and did his own thing.
If Smyth’s aims and objectives were only slightly different from those of the camp leaders, it does suggest that the camps themselves were abusive.
‘Slightly different’ on some matters, but on the pertinent matter (which Fletcher and Ruston viewed as very wrong and criminal) poles apart. The Ruston Report final para 22 lists 8 separate things wrong.
To clarify, you mean David Fletcher don’t you. After all, even Smyth himself warned people against Jonathan! Oh what a tangled web….
But DCMF and Mark Ruston, plus the small group of others in the know, never did enough to nip the thing in the bud. If only.
The analogy that came to mind was this – suppose you’re an Indian villager and you see a tiger approaching, which you know has killed people before. You have a gun in your hand – but instead of shooting it on the spot, you drive it away by brandishing a flaming torch – shoo! shoo! baaaaad puddy tat! So it slinks off back into the jungle and never returns.
Well done, you’ve protected your village. But you haven’t solved the problem.
What if said tiger wanders through the jungle and comes out on the other side, where it finds another village and kills a little girl on her way to school?
Yes, exactly. They probably expected he had learnt his lesson (as a non-human tiger would be less likely to). Ruston did not live to see what transpired in Africa. Yes, David not Jonathan.
Whether or not the Iwerne movement can properly be described as a cult (or cultic), it is noteworthy that Mark Ruston’s 1982 report, after describing (in paragraph 7) the way that Smyth “seem[ed] to have conned men into accepting the beatings” (a talk on ‘Wholeheartedness’ with the emphasis on naming sins, followed by a talk on Sex and one or two ‘personal talks’ with mention of the ‘blessing’ to be had, and then, in the shed, the benefits of nakedness as a self-humbling), concluded:
“At that stage there was considerable pressure for anyone who held back. It had become almost a cult, with a powerful dynamic.”
And in paragraph 11, after mentioning the passages of Scripture commonly used by Smyth to justify his crimes, Ruston wrote:
“But none would have suggested the practice [of the beatings] to anyone not already emotionally committed (cf. the hold the cults have)…”
(see ‘Bleeding for Jesus’, pages 68-72, where the text of the Ruston report is set out.)
That Smyth’s movement was cultic is undisputed. The Iwerne movement (which opposed and banished the former) is a separate issue. Easy yes/no answers should give way to detailed analysis.
In the secular world Iwerne could be thought of as a brand. And in brand terms it is surely heavily tarnished.
I don’t know if you remember the Perrier benzene scandal of 1990. Perrier was an almost ubiquitous highly prized mineral water. Almost overnight its reputation was ruined by the discovery of benzene in some bottles. 260 million had to be destroyed. Sales collapsed.
Or another parallel could be seen in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Basically wealthy investors lost in the region of $50billion. They’d been attracted to invest in Madoff’s investment firm. It was invitation-only and the exclusivity and promise of unbelievable and consistent returns, such as 12% p.a. were too hard to resist. The con was that few funds were generating growth at all. New investors’ funds were used to pay exiting investors. The money ran out. A few people knew what was going on, a number worked it out and most never twigged. Hardly anybody said anything. Those lone voices who did speak up were ignored or ridiculed. Sound familiar?
In the private dining clubs and unofficial selection processes for senior leadership in the C of E, I’d be surprised if attendance at Iwerne was considered worthy of mention anymore.
I hope, despite this thread being some way back in time, that this comment will be noticed. A new book by Richard Beard, Sad Little Men, explores the predicament of the private schoolboy and the effect of this kind of schooling on politics and society in this country. It has great relevance to both the Iwerne affair and the governance of the Church of England, so I would recommend it. While it is a fairly passionate book, it is not immoderate and the tone is compassionate towards the members of the elite whose lives have been warped by private, especially boarding, schooling. Personally I found it disturbing and enlightening.
It shows on the recent posts section. Thanks, and hello!
Good! Thank you! I really do recommend ‘Sad Little Men’. It explains a lot. It actually references the Smyth affair at one point, even though the author is not a religious man: as a schoolboy he attended two ‘Iwerne’ camps at Swanage.
Thanks for the recommendation Edmund, and the book does offer a stark insight into boarding school life and the enduring aftermath. Richard is still suffering 40 years on and the rage drips of most of the 270 pages, to this reader at least.
Written often in the first person plural, he hasn’t been able to extricate himself from his school trauma. The dissection is comprehensive and still in pieces by the end. We’re left in no doubt either, that the destructive nature of other attendees, mainly English prime ministers, having been thus formed, are largely responsible for society’s ills. In theory many here will gleefully buy into these rants, mapping onto their own agendas. But this is not a comfortable read and it was clear to me that he is much in need of professional help. Self help alone would be typical of the public school mindset, but it won’t be enough. Letting off steam is one thing, but there is no sense of him getting any better by the end of the book.
At one point he does touch on the trapped nature of the teachers at school. Many, with tied accommodation and not being formally qualified, had no escape either. It would have been useful to have seen some more constructive analysis around this and many other areas. There’s not much.
That he wasn’t able to see outside his own bubble, lends the book no perspective. Theoretically yes, we should abolish this system, but in practice, human nature would soon find something else to replicate the ability for parents to subcontract their children, to push for social advancement and other ills he repeats. Anyone who has been in the state sector would be able to cite myriads of dysfunctional people arising from there too.
Richard knows this really, but hasn’t been able to disguise his bitterness. By p192 he’s still finding new ways to belittle the inner core of top boarding schools such as “offering apprenticeships in charlatanism”.
Too much protesting leads me to more questioning. Get help mate. You owe it to yourself.
Anger can be protective and prevent total collapse. Of course he is entitled to recovery. Let’s pray that talking about it helps him on the road.
Interesting comment Steve Lewis. I have the book but haven’t read it yet. I would take issue with you on a couple of points, however. Your idea that if the boarding school system was abolished something else will take its place may have some truth, but the fact is that the British boarding school system (especially early boarding) is a unique culture, quite different to anywhere else in the world apart from places to where it has been exported, i.e. the former colonies. It was originally designed to provide the manpower to staff the Empire, and the whole idea was to separate a child abruptly from his home, especially his mother, at a tender age in order to “make a man of him”, and fit him to control natives in foreign lands without too many tender feelings. The effect on the emotional lives of such children is not difficult to imagine. It’s an absolute travesty that this system is still alive and well today.
You say ‘anyone who has been in the state sector would be able to cite myriads of dysfunctional people arising from there too.’ Of course, but the point is there is a particular kind of dysfunction that boarding schools produce that is unique to this country and highly present among our governing classes, including the church.
The textbook on this subject is “Boarding School Syndrome” by Joy Schaverien.
Yes, I take your points and I’ve read her book too. I’m no defender of boarding school, quite the opposite. Best read Richard’s book and see what you think as my comments were in relation to his position.