Recent articles on this blog have considered the way that the institution we know as Holy Trinity Brompton has come to exercise a dominant position within the Church of England.  The importance that it possesses is not only financial and structural; the overall HTB culture appears to be what the typical non-Church member, the person in the street, regards as true of all Christians in Britain.  Increasingly Christians have come to be understood by ordinary folk to hold extremely reactionary attitudes on sexual morality issues.  Also, their musical preferences seem to an older generation, whether church members or not, to have far more in common to the offerings of a night club. This new music has eclipsed the traditional hymnody that used to bind the whole of British society together in something like a common religious culture. Those of us who are outside the orbit of HTB may sometimes also be made to feel that we have no part to play in the Church’s future. The moderate liberal-catholic perspectives which were in the ascendant in the C/E until 20 or 30 years ago, are now considered in many places to be old-fashioned and of little relevance to a younger generation.

The articles by Hattie Calbus may have alerted some SC readers to the thought that the HTB universe and its power should and can be challenged.  Any concentration of so much power operating within a single institution, the C/E, is likely to have the potential for becoming corrupted.  The wise words of Lord Acton about power come to mind.  All dominant cliques in any sphere of life have this potential.  Our minds are currently being drawn to the immense power of the Post Office management over their employees and the way that the voices of the powerless were never heard.  Those of us who are uneasy at the extent and nature of the HTB’s power might want to understand better what might be going on in the somewhat secretive universe that it occupies.  The tools with which to make sense, psychologically and theologically speaking, of what is going on within that world are not readily available. This powerful attraction of charismatic evangelicalism is frankly puzzling to those of us of a more traditional approach to the Christian faith and to the Church of England in particular.

In recent weeks I have been helped, through reading a book, to go further into this mysterious culture, which can be best summed up in the two words, charismatic evangelicalism.  One of the commenters on this blog drew our attention to this newish published account of the culture shared by so many congregations that look to HTB for inspiration and guidance.   The book is entitled Immanuel.   The book successfully draws together and describes the life and culture of two charismatic congregations.  Both, one in Lagos Nigeria and one in Winchester UK, are expressions of the charismatic evangelical tradition which has come to dominate Christian practice right across the world.  There are of course enormous differences of style between the two congregations, but each would see itself as drawing from the same theological and spiritual well-springs.  The main focus of this fascinating book is to describe how a group of very young members of the Winchester house church found their way to becoming members of the Lagos ministry under the leadership of the powerful founder, TB Joshua.  The book helps us to understand the extraordinary cultural and theological adjustments that needed to be made by these charismatic pilgrims.  Their efforts to be faithful to the Nigerian expression of this culture involved a great deal of pain, experiences of humiliation and other forms of exploitation that we associate with the cults.  The author of Immanuel, Matthew McNaught, had been a fellow member of the Winchester house church and is thus able to present sympathetically the motivations and background of these members of his old Christian group, as they pursued a path which would seek to become part of one of the highest expressions of Christian power available.  TB Joshua evidently was a powerful presence, and he possessed a range of gifts that we lump together in the word charismatic.  Claims of prophetic gifts, deliverance, second sight and healing were communicated to this group of idealistic young people through the medium of video tapes.  The house church movement of the 80 and 90s to which the young people belonged, was constantly preaching the arrival of God’s ‘new thing’.   This was the age of the Toronto Blessing and other ‘revivals’ believed to have begun in places like Pensacola and Brownsville.  TB Joshua appeared to be yet another example of revival, and Nigeria was presenting a version of God’s new outpouring which demanded, on the part of these fired up young Christians from Winchester, a sacrifice of youth, education and futures.  These young people, one only 16, were ready to decamp to the poverty and enormous discomfort of the Christian complex and community known as the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) under, as was soon to be revealed, a deeply flawed leader, TB Joshua.

The strength of the book is the way that it gives the reader a sense of how attractive the culture of charismatic evangelicalism is and the way that it connects well to the yearnings and idealism of youth.  We are given the substance of conversations where the author recounts the motivations which took this group of young people to Nigeria.  The story in fact has no happy ending.  This ministry shared with others of this kind a dark side, including sexual and financial exploitation. Some were able to escape while others, who remained faithful to the leader up to his death at the age of 57 in 2021, were told to leave.  McNaught, the author, well captures the idealism of youth which is prepared to sacrifice everything in pursuit of an ideal, even if the ideal is based on a lie and the grandiose narcissism of a deeply flawed leader.  It is this sympathetic and insightful telling of a saga of church life, both in England and Africa, from the perspective of deeply devout young people that gives the Immanuel its special value.   

McNaught’s book allows us to eavesdrop on the thinking and feeling of a highly motivated group of young people who were formed by the charismatic impulses of the 90s.  The history of that period is immensely complicated, but the main feature of the time was an atmosphere of restless striving.  During this early period, well before the influence of HTB had come to be felt by a large section of the Church of England, there was already a sense of restless agitation among many who thought of themselves as charismatic Christians.  Although they had some evidence that God was alive and working his Spirit in their congregations, they still found it necessary to jet off to Toronto or Lagos to meet God there.  The story of the 90s charismatic Christian experience may be regarded at one level as a form of religious addiction.  Such addiction is never satisfied or complete; it always demands to be fed more.

The book Immanuel is then a work which is able to further our understanding of the Christian phenomenon known as charismatic evangelicalism.  Its real value is the way that it gives an inside feel for the lived reality of the experience without writing it off as mere fantasy or evil.  The heightened insights into what makes someone a charismatic – particular a very young adult – allows one to return to our current dilemma in the C/E, namely the dominance of HTB in our national Church.  The kinds of question that come from Immanuel are, in many cases, common sense questions.  Some of them want help in understanding why there is a potential and propensity for young people to embrace the values and leadership of what I would describe as cult-like churches.  TB Joshua is clearly an example of a sociopathic leader who possessed psychic gifts which were able to seduce a group of articulate but impressionable young people.  How much does the Church understand this personality type?  Will ‘large’ personalities (I can think of several examples) go on being allowed to sweep up the vulnerable among the young to gratify their narcissistic impulses and appetites?  The charismatic evangelical world continues to create new big names because there is a appetite for chasing after the new things that God is supposed to be doing.  As long as the wider church refuses to engage with questions thrown up by Immanuel, it will suffer.  Already the wider population has, as I suggested, come to identify Christianity as being closely identified with extreme moralism and addictive chasing after novelty.  It will also learn to miss examples of Christian behaviour connected with tolerance, human flourishing and the practice of love undergirding all human behaviour.  Such teaching does not require hyped-up preachers who try to batter down the capacity of listeners to think or reason.  It needs teachers and leaders who are at home with the peace and stillness of God and who understand the importance of teaching their flock to find ‘rest’ in God’s peace.

by Graham

“I have been asked to publish this piece. It was written by Graham, a victim of John Smyth QC on 19 May 2020, the day that the Makin Review into the abuse fell overdue. The Makin Review was promised in August 2018 when John Smyth died, but took a year to commission after his death. It was announced as starting on 19 August 2019, to take “no more than nine months”, so to be delivered by 19 May 2020. But, rather than nine months, the Review now enters Month 57. Ed

A frequent, if not constant theme, with the therapist I am seeing is: what will I need for closure ? What will I need to move on and put the Smyth abuse behind me, as best I can ?

The outstanding focus is the Review. I get drawn in to participate, comment, criticise, steer, stir and chivvy. I am like moth to a flame and the engagement with the Review is fundamentally unhealthy for me.

The Smyth victims were denied justice. Smyth should have been investigated in 2012 when I came forward. He should have been investigated with more urgency in 2017, when Channel 4 ( and not the Church, though they had known for five years) broke the story. I hesitate to criticise the Police, but it was a great disappointment to us that it was 18 months before they made the decision to seek extradition. He died before we got any justice through the criminal justice system. Our justice now is in a full, no holds barred, narrative and analysis of the abuse and the Church’s response.

And a Church investigation into the abuse has been blighted by delays. I was told there could be no investigation or Review while the Police investigation was live. Eighteen months were lost. Then Bishop Peter announced on 12 August 2018, the day Smyth died, that “It is important now that all those organisations linked with this case work together to look at a lessons learned review”. However, it took a year and a day, 13 August 2019 before the Review was launched, another year of waiting. For reasons that are still not clear, the start was then delayed from the announced date of 19 August 2019, to “in October”. And the review would take “no more than nine months”.

And now, another year’s wait ( I will put a fiver on the table that final publication has not happened by 30 April 2021). While I see all the arguments about doing it properly, making it comprehensive and thorough, it is not “frustrating” (the word used in the release), it is agonising. It pushes the day when we can move on, another year away.

And I am afraid I will not entertain the excuse of the Review being wider than anticipated. Simple due diligence before the Review, simple knowledge that there were 100+ victims, over 20 years, reading what was, by August 2019 in the public domain, would have shown the complexity of this story. I wrote in November last year about the lack of resources, the limited time ( then two days per week), the lack of photocopying and recording capacity, the absence still, after eight months of a signed protocol between reviewers, stupid things such as no easy way to access Counselling ( my therapist has not been paid, three months later, my expenses, submitted in November, just a few train fares, still not paid). The under- resourcing of this Review has been known about for months and months. That is no excuse.

So, what does the delay mean for me ? another year of waiting, agonising. Another year of not being able to move on. Next March will be NINE years since I reported the abuse.

Another year of getting angry, frustrated, manic, depressed. That is the effect of a year’s delay. You have condemned me to another year without closure.

As a young child in the 50s, I grew up with very little understanding of politics in Britain. I knew, of course, that there were two major parties called Labour and Conservative, but no one explained to me the idea of left-wing and right-wing politics.  Still less was I aware of the endless permutations of political ideology that existed.  It was on a visit to Italy in 1964 that I began to be educated in the huge range of political options that people in European countries take for granted. The meaning of left and right began to take some sort of shape in my mind.  For the first time I was observing the reality of high octane political life – strikes, demonstrations and governments collapsing every week, or so it seemed.  The pattern of daily life in Rome, where I was staying for several weeks, seemed to continue in spite of the political dramas. It was not until I lived in Greece in the academic year 67-68 that my experience of politics took on a serious, even frightening, turn.  In April 1967 a group of military men, mainly with the rank of colonel, had taken over the government of the country with the ostensible justification of preventing a left-wing government coming to power.  I do not propose to say much about the ideology of this militarised regime, but it is safe to describe it as a fascist dictatorship.  The aim of the governing clique was to establish their political will over the entire nation.  Fascism is about unchallengeable political power which is typically focussed on the personality of a leader who knows how to ‘seduce’ large numbers of citizens.  In taking over all the organs of power in a society, a fascist system does not have to concern itself with the irritations of a legal system, the press or public opinion.  In Greece at that time, the will of the governing military clique reached right across society and affected even me, a foreign student with no prior political allegiances of any kind.  If I was entering Greece as a political innocent in the autumn of 1967, I was, certainly by the time I left in the summer of 1968, a would-be political subversive, though without any platform from which to ventilate my stirred-up passions.  The story of how I unsuccessfully tried to return to Greece in 1969 to write a report for Amnesty International must remain for another day.

 What was it about the fascist ideology that riled me to the point that I might have been tempted to do something equivalent to the young men and women who joined the Spanish International Brigade in the 30s?  Fascism. whether in its 60-70s Greek manifestation, or as the ideology of modern Russia, Hungary or pre-war Italy, Germany or Spain, challenges and threatens the human soul.  The fact that an authoritarian government can take power and, in using that power, can redefine reality for its citizens, is hard to take.  This reality, where the will of a few dominates the whole, diminishes the happiness and well-being of a substantial swathe of a country’s population. This is, or should be, a matter for great concern. Even if we are fortunate not to be beholden to such a rule in Britain currently, a natural concern for the happiness of humankind around the world should make us want to understand more about this poisonous but apparently attractive political option in our world today.

Going back to my 1960’s experiences of the lived reality of fascism, I want to draw attention to three interrelated facets which it manifested.  These three dimensions revealed by Greek fascism are not a textbook exposition of this ideology, but a personal impression based on one person’s experience. The first aspect was the suffocating and infuriating promotion of propaganda.  I was not an avid reader of Greek newspapers, partly because of their censored content and partly because the writers were forced to use an archaic style of Greek which was not the spoken form that I was studying.  I was however subject to the dreadful experience of newsreels at the cinema.  The ‘news’ was the content of the speeches by the ruling group.  I quickly became familiar with this style of sloganized speech.  We were constantly exposed to the main slogans, such as  ‘Long live the 21^st April 1967’ and ‘Greece of Greek Christians’ and frequent references to the ‘revolution’.  The Greek word for the latter idea was uncomfortably close to the Christian word meaning resurrection.   No doubt we were meant to think of Easter and the Colonels’ takeover in a similar way.  The Colonels were also fairly adept at creating a form of Christian nationalism that is not dissimilar to Trump’s MAGA version of Christianity.

Propaganda was infuriating and frustrating, but it could be borne if it had been the only trial.    Propaganda is, however, indicative of a second deeper and more insidious poison that was penetrating Greek society: the corruption of truth.  The salient versions of political truth were those which the population was expected to assimilate without question.  There was also a ‘correct’ version of history to be imbibed, particularly by children at school.  The rewriting of history included the trashing of the previous generation of ‘failing’ politicians.  Correct thinking, as defined in the turgid speech making of the political leaders, was mandatory, particularly if you worked in any capacity for the State.  This included civil servants, teachers and those working for universities.  Deviation of any kind was downright dangerous.  Spies were everywhere and the suspicions that were created by this fact poisoned many potential relationships.  Britain, then under the Labour government of Harold Wilson, was not considered a friendly nation.  Critical remarks from the British were taken with great seriousness and the Greek press was encouraged to attack the Britain government in return.  My own situation in my student hostel became increasingly uncomfortable.  Thankfully there were places of refuge once I travelled away from the urban centres.  The rural areas, particularly on the island of Crete, remained largely politically peaceful.  Greek monasteries also always remained free of the nauseating political propaganda.  But, speaking of the bulk of the population, the abnormal was becoming normal and the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood was being blunted for many around me.  Bland unquestioning conformity became the safe option for the majority.  Those who resisted this social pressure were careful not to utter opinions in a public place.  Loss of livelihood, imprisonment or worse awaited those who thought thoughts that were unacceptable to the ruling powers.

The fate of what happened to some of the political opponents of the Colonels’ regime leaked out during the winter of 67/68.  Unheard of forms of torture were meted out to some prisoners and these notoriously included the beating of the soles of the feet with a metal pipe.    The use of such torture on politically active citizens, pointed to an appalling fanaticism and cruelty that was infecting parts of the police and other state bodies.  The Greek word ‘fanatikos’ is made to cover a number of levels of conviction, from the mild to the extreme.  Greece saw during its fascist period the unleashing of the worst kind of fanatic.  These types will always appear when fascism or other extremist ideologies become dominant across a society.  We need to understand how convinced politicians, who want to change the world with high-sounding principles, may sometimes have surrendered themselves to tolerating, even promoting, cruel and immoral behaviour as a way to achieve those ends.  Conviction, commitment and total dedication to an ideology all have a very nasty shadow side which is devoid of justice and compassion. The gradual descent from conviction to a tolerance of cruelty is the third stage in the corrupting force of fascism.  In summary, we suggest that fascism is a state of mind that is so convinced of its correctness that all the human rights of those who disagree can be totally disregarded. 

My story of interactions with the Colonels’ fascist regime and their acts of stupidity and cruelty could be lengthened considerably.  During my ten months in the country, I managed to upset the powers that be sufficiently to appear on a list of those forbidden re-entry to the country.  This ban remained in place until the collapse of the government in 1974.  Whatever my exact misdemeanour, I had acquired a visceral dislike of fascist ways of thinking and this aversion continues to this day.  I have identified the use of propaganda combined with the enforcement of a political ideology where disagreement or even discussion is strictly forbidden.  This promotion of an infallible way of thinking results in a level of fanaticism which drives out all generosity of spirit in favour of a steely and determined grasp of the ‘truth’.   Fanaticism as a close companion of fascism could, in the case of the Colonels and their supporters, lead to the horrors of physical torture.

One of the reasons for writing this short piece was a realisation that the Sunday 21^st April was the 57^th anniversary of the Greek military take-over.  This had triggered in my mind a memory of the way an entire nation had been bombarded with fascist fantasies and cruelty for seven long years.  Might this powerful triggering also have some connection to the struggle that I continue to have with forces of propaganda, power abuse, manipulation of truth and deliberate cruelty that I still find in some of the institutions I observe to this day?  Is it too strong a claim to make to suggest that fascism, as a state of mind or a temperament, is still to be found in some of these institutions, even our churches? It is especially to be found among those individuals who accept the blandishments of  ‘certainty’ while ignoring the gifts of human compassion and democratic reasoning and debate. 

    by Hatty Calbus 

    The final article in a series of 3   

          In the previous two articles I wrote about HTB’s influence on the Church of England and the influence on it of the megachurch movement, especially disgraced Hillsong. In his leadership podcast, Nicky Gumbel says what he is doing,: that “we’re always looking outwards.” He states categorically that a church’s number one aim must be evangelisation and presumably believes this aim to  justify his methods. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/ podcast/get-to-know-nicky-gumbel-his-journey-to-church-leadership/id1537327121? i=1000496021910 (23 minutes)  However, Pope Francis has warned, “It is tempting for pastoral ministers to adopt not only effective models of management, planning and organisation drawn from the business world, but also a lifestyle and mentality guided more by worldly criteria of success, and indeed power, than by the criteria which Jesus sets out in the Gospels.” Did nobody on the Archbishops’ Council or among the senior leadership at HTB see this or do they disagree?

Worldly criteria of success are the great idol of the megachurch movement and success is itself a type of power – the opposite of failure and powerlessness, of vulnerability and weakness. Evangelisation is crucial, but constantly looking outwards can come from a need not to look too far within – which is where Church leaders fixated on number success would find vulnerability and powerlessness. Such avoidance means also needing to avoid the reminder of others’ vulnerability and powerlessness. This affects pastoral care.

Plenty of people have commented on megachurches’ lack of pastoral care. Mike Cosper of Christianity Today: “Ministry success allows leaders to create layers of insulation between themselves and the people that they are supposedly serving.” Erik Strandness: “Sadly, when pastors expedite church growth, they distance themselves from the flock.” Niro Feliciano, a psychotherapist interviewed in The Secrets of Hillsong: “You need systems in place to meet the needs of the people who are in your community. And I think where it gets tricky is when the expansion is going faster than the ability to show compassion, to still meet needs.” Alison Milbank, specifically on the Church of England: “Generally, in this planting/resource church model, the central parochial work of the care of souls is just not valued or practised” and “Huge megabenefices are being created with vestigial pastoral care.”

 A grave manifestation of this lack of care is sexually abusive behaviour –  megachurches have frequent sex scandals. Brian Houston’s father, a minister at Hillsong, was a paedophile. Because he failed to report his father to the authorities when he found out in the 1990s, Houston was tried last year, though he was judged to have a “reasonable excuse” for not disclosing the abuse. Houston denies he blamed one victim, seven at the time, for tempting his father. What forced his resignation, as with other Hillsong pastors, was his behaviour with women (“Lots of pretty Swedish girls here!” a BBC extract shows Houston announce to his stadium congregation.) https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ episode/m000y2g7 (17 mins)

According to an internal investigation, there were incidents “of serious concern” involving inappropriate messages and a hotel room visit, with $25,000 of hush money allegedly paid. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ mar/23/hillsongs-brian-houston-resigns-from-megachurch?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Another high-profile resignation because of behaviour with women was Bill Hybels of Willow Creek, who spoke at an HTB leadership conference.

https:// www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/february/willow-creek-bill-hybels-investigationiag-report.html Both protested their innocence.

  A large group at risk of abuse in successful churches with a need to feel powerful is single women, traditionally the bedrock of the volunteers churches rely on, in the case of megachurches in large numbers. The Hillsong documentaries have allegations of bullying, exploitation, inappropriate sexual behaviour and a lack of accountability. One volunteer said, “I gave everything to these people that really didn’t care about me.” Maria Siegler and Oli Coleman at the New York Post’s Page Six reported that a group of whistleblowers, all women volunteers, wrote to the Hillsong leadership to complain about “vague or absent sexual harassment/sexual assault” policies at the church and a dangerous environment that was “a breeding ground for unchecked [sexual] abuse.” https:// pagesix.com/2020/12/17/hillsong-rife-with-inappropriate-sex-members-claimed/ Comments in The Secrets of Hillsong are “You are indoctrinated into this system of violation, abuse and cover up” and “[There were] widespread issues, it was very alarming and it wasn’t being dealt with at all.” Abuse allegations were seen as “an irritant.” In their letter, the women wrote: “When a church is less like a family and more like an enterprise, its leaders act less like pastors and more like commanders, this puts everyone in danger.”  I shall only cite here my harassment experience at HTB from three leaders: a married one telling me I was “a peach” and asking if I had a boyfriend; an engaged one trying to put his arm round my waist and on another occasion running his finger down my back, which I also saw him do to another woman; a different married one touching my backside. He and a man with a reputation as a womaniser were put forward for ordination and are now vicars [the backside one is Mr “Sex O’Clock ” etc, now actually in charge of a resource church, which I’ve omitted in case it’s too specific]. A senior leader dismissed this as “generalisation;” another said I “shouldn’t be looking at the behaviour of these male leaders.” I say the options here are a) I’m a mad fantasist; b) boys will be boys – it doesn’t matter or c) a culture can be inferred and that matters. The Hillsong volunteers’ letter received little attention. It was only when big-name pastors were involved that sexually abusive behaviour at the church was finally addressed. It does now have a sexual harassment and assault policy. HTB does not.

          A Megachurch Exposed, according to the New York Times, “depicts the megachurch as a toxic institution obsessed with image, control and growth at all costs.” https:// www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/us/hillsong-church-scandals.html? referringSource=articleShare

Julie Roys, who keeps watch on megachurch scandals in The Roys Report has said, “Once you become a corporation, you’ve got to manage that image.” A need to avoid vulnerability and powerlessness is dangerous to those who make complaints and megachurches tend to use corporate methods to deal with them, including Non Disclosure Agreements. Prior to the 2018 Data Act, HTB’s privacy policy said they would use people’s data to protect themselves from legal suits [I didn’t take a screen shot of this, but could they deny it?]. The Hillsong women’s letter claimed the church fosters a “culture of silence and fear.” Similarly, there have been allegations of bullying and surveillance at HTB. One former staff member spoke on the Cult Forum website [and I then had some communication with him] about “control, monitoring and intimidation.” [I have two other people’s experiences in the iBook] A curate involved is now vicar of a plant.

          Most churches collect data but not sensitive data. In the rare cases that they do, they give a reason, for example, children’s allergies. In a far-from-prominent part of its website, HTB states, “As a church, we collect data about services and events you attend. Some of this information may be considered to come within the definition of Special Categories of Personal Data. Special Categories of Personal Data includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data.” More than a few plants are also doing this. No explanation is given as to why such data is necessary. Stephen Parsons has said, “Far too often, the large church, in terms of numbers, is a place where leadership is corrupted, the weak are bullied and abused and evil is allowed to find a home.” Is that data used in a way that is not abusive or bullying, that is free from evil?

          Abuse and scandals drive people away. The resignations of Brian Houston and Bill Hybels have meant large numbers of Hillsong’s affiliated churches breaking away and so many people leaving Willow Creek that almost a third of its staff were made redundant. https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/willow-creek-church-forced-to-layoff-30-per-cent-of-its-staff-amid-drop-in-attendance?

utm_source=Premier%20Christian%20Media&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1321805_daily%20news%2023%20May%202022&dm_i=16DQ,7VAX9,635JCB,W5811,1

These facts don’t take into account the devastation and disillusionment of church members, which, as with the lack of a theology of suffering, leads many to reject not just the particular megachurch but God, because that is always a result of such scandals. Attractive worldliness may bring people through the doors, but it also drives them out. The disciples-per-pound approach does not seem to have factored that in.          

A single-minded focus on evangelisation and growth has to downgrade pastoral care. A need for the power and invulnerability of success inevitably leads to sins of omission and commission. Many people go to HTB and many people leave. A member of a non-Evangelical church in the area [Holy Trinity, Prince Consort Road] spoke of all the “HTB casualties” who moved to them. But the de facto plan of the Archbishops’ Council seems to be to create, via HTB, lots of little Anglican Hillsongs. Will they continue with this strategy or will they dare to admit they have made a serious mistake that will make their execrable safeguarding record visibly worse?

by Hatty Calbus

          After he became Vicar of HTB in 2005, Nicky Gumbel brought major change.  Barbara Ehrenreich devotes a chapter of her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World to the Church Growth Movement which produced the megachurches. She reports how its leaders conducted surveys of potential parishioners, who wanted something less like traditional Christianity and more like the world. So these leaders obliged with corporate-looking buildings, high-tech, feel-good entertainment and cafés serving smoothies. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California proclaims in his bestselling The Purpose Driven Church, “A good salesman knows you always start with the customer’s needs, not the product” (sic).  Nicky Gumbel began inviting Warren and other megachurch founders to speak at HTB services, conferences and the annual church holiday. He also visited and spoke at their churches. The megachurch approach was what he saw as the best way forward to achieve the “evangelisation of the nations, the revitalisation of the Church and the transformation of society.” Now similarly much-repeated by Vicar Archie Coates, this is also the tag for the Revitalise Trust, HTB’s charity, https://revitalisetrust.org/plants-and-revitalisations, whose huge influence I wrote about in my previous article.

          The megachurch with the stand-out  influence has been the particularly energised Australian Hillsong from the same movement. At its peak, it had 150,000 weekly attendees worldwide. When its leader, Brian Houston and his wife Bobbie came to HTB, they were introduced so rapturously by Nicky Gumbel, I wondered who these exceptional beings could be. Preaching at the London Hillsong branch, Gumbel said HTB and Hillsong were “the only good churches in London” [a friend happened to be trying out Hillsong the week he was their speaker].

          HTB’s small groups were changed from ‘Pastorates’ to ‘Connect Groups’, like Hillsong’s. The chairs were removed and in came sofas, floor cushions, plasma screens, church notices as video adverts, rock venue lighting and sound systems, and rappers. Panini and smoothies were prepared at the back of the church during services.         Megachurches love the attractiveness of celebrity and youth. The Alpha Course used to draw all ages, but not long before Gumbel retired, he said he was aiming it at twenty-four-year-olds. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/get-to-know-nicky-gumbel-his-journey-to-church-leadership/id1537327121?i=1000496021910  (25 October 2020, from 23 minutes) The photos and videos on HTB and many plants’ websites mostly feature attractive twenty-somethings.

          At HTB, I heard a curate, since given considerable responsibility in a plant, justify the ironic name of a nightclub-like Sunday evening service: “the Sex O’Clock – because it is sexy!” He described a Good Friday service as “cool.” And he said prayer was meant to be “fun” – because your customers need to be kept engaged with the product. An episode of the BBC series Rev reproduced some of this with what looked like parody but wasn’t. https://youtu.be/mGfsd03KZAQ Taking general aim at the megachurch movement, an episode of The Simpsons has Lisa ask, “What are they doing to [our] church?” She’s told, “We’re rebranding it. The old church was skewing pious.” (series 13, episode 6) https://youtu.be/gggCcXroOcc When HTB took over neighbouring St Paul’s Church, naming it ‘HTB Onslow Square’, they did indeed describe this as ‘rebranding’.

          All this has been labelled ‘McChurch’, defined by Wikipedia as “a McWord used to suggest that a particular church has a strong element of entertainment, consumerism or commercialism which obscures its religious aspects.” A ‘McWord’ is defined as “designed to evoke pejorative associations with the restaurant chain or fast food in general, often for qualities of cheapness, inauthenticity, or the speed and ease of manufacture.” Some excesses have gone, but the McChurch influence is still quite evident at HTB.                      

          One point is that entrusting the revival of the Church of England to HTB’s Hillsong-like methods through ‘planted’ resource churches hasn’t been working. The target for new worshippers expected  by the Archbishops’ Council with appalling precision has come nowhere near fulfilment: 89,375 forecast, 12,075 achieved (the Chote Report). This has been calculated as costing £5800 per new worshipper. In her book The Once and Future Parish, Alison Milbank points out that “the Episcopal Church in the United States has been employing managerial mission now for fifty years and there has been steady numerical decline.”

          And there are other problems with how the ‘product’ is packaged. According to research by James Wellman published in University of Washington Today, “American megachurches use … an upbeat, unchallenging vision of Christianity.” A key means of achieving this is rock-style worship music, much of it produced by Hillsong, earning it millions of dollars a year. https://www.thefader.com/2018/10/11/hillsong-church-worship-songs-music-industry Writer and former pastor Bill Blankschaen notes that “a church oftentimes will pour much more resources, energy, thought and time into making a killer worship service” than more mundanely-theological aspects.

          This criticism has been made at HTB plants. Milbank says HTB’s music, “relentlessly upbeat … does not speak into the difficulties, suffering, tragedies and failures of human life, except in order to recount rescue from them by conversion, with the hint of a more successful life-course to ensue in the future” and that “While HTB is careful not to embrace the Prosperity Gospel, a major proponent, Joyce Mayer, addressed their leadership conference. HTB comes close to it in some talks, so sure is it that God’s blessing will rest on those who follow Christ, in contrast to the many saints who have insisted that God’s gifts to us may include an intensified yet redemptive suffering of wrongs. This positivity is one key factor in its success.” The worship highs make it feel impossible that God won’t come through with success and happiness for you personally. The disillusionment when people realise what they have been sold is faulty causes many to reject not just their own church but God.

          Given the worldliness, it is no surprise that scandals keep emerging in megachurches with the ‘successful’ leaders so admired by Nicky Gumbel, none more than at Hillsong, where at least four pastors have fallen. It has now been the subject of three television exposés: Hillsong Church: God Goes Viral; the three-part Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed and the four-part The Secrets of Hillsong, eachwithnew revelations.

          One part of the worldliness is, of course, money. Megachurches’ huge congregations make them very wealthy, the pastors frequently ostentatiously so. Steven Furtick, invited to speak at HTB’s leadership conference, has an estimated worth of $55 million [various sources]. Designer clothes and trainers, fast cars and even private jets are common. https://instagram.com/preachersnsneakers?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=  Hillsong leader Brian Houston published You Need More Money: Discovering God’s Amazing Financial Plan for Your Life in 2000, iebefore Nicky Gumbel embraced his theology. In The Secrets of Hillsong, Geoff Bullock, one of Hillsong’s original musicians, says, “It was about counting numbers and counting money.”

          The Australian authorities are currently investigating claims by MP Andrew Wilkie of fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and extravagant spending, based on thousands of financial documents from a Hillsong whistleblower. To select from an outrageous list, he has alleged “the kind of shopping that would embarrass a Kardashian” and Houston “treating private jets like Ubers.” Wilkie also alleges that Phil Dooley, who took over after Houston had to resign, spent tens of thousands of dollars on business-class flights for himself and his daughter. Hillsong have denied many of the allegations as  “taken out of context” and say that things have changed. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-10/federal-mp-accuses-hillsong-money-laundering-tax-evasion/102077080

          Although a different style, HTB’s top-public-school ease with wealth may be why Houston’s approach has seemed acceptable. It was a surprise to me how many HTB members I met working in gas and oil (as did Justin Welby) or providing concierge services for West London’s very wealthy, including, almost inevitably, tax-avoiding Britons and money-laundering Russians.

          Alastair Roberts in his blog Alastair’s Adversaria says, “HTB often strikes me as an example of a highly successful ecclesial adaptation to contemporary capitalism.” In the previous article, I looked at the influence of Paul Marshall, like Gumbel a Revitalise trustee, who is a multimillionaire hedge fund manager.  Ken Costa, an old friend of Gumbel’s, was a preacher and churchwarden, then CEO of Alpha International. His involvement in tax avoidance schemes was reported in Private Eye. [He didn’t sue: I checked.] It has been claimed that potential curates were interviewed on his yacht. I have been unable to verify this, but  it should be too far fetched to need checking and it isn’t. At one prayer meeting, it was announced the church was aiming to raise a million pounds the following Sunday [I was there]. A staff member who’d been working on a video advert for Alpha said that was costing a million pounds. HTB clergy do not have ostentatious wealth and have not  been convicted of fraud, as has happened at other megachurches. But all this might explain why “marketized evangelicalism” in Milbank’s phrase, has seemed natural. And despite Hillsong’s disgrace, as recently as summer 2023, the Revitalise Trust’s email newsletter showed a speaker against a background with just the Hillsong logo.

          The American journalist Julie Roys reports daily in The Roys Report on scandals in rich and worldly megachurches that, despite all the image control, eventually become public. I wonder why HTB and the Archbishops’ Council think it will be immune. Behind Church scandals are Christians being hurt, often profoundly. I shall look at this in my next article.

!st part of a three part enquiry

by Hatty Calbus

        In a blog which aims to cover the topic of power in the Church, it is a matter of note that I have not felt qualified to carry any examination of one clear focus of power in the C/E, Holy Trinity Brompton. The author of the following critique, Hatty Calbus, gives us a well informed account of the way that HTB, its theology and money, has not only come to dominate the evangelical/charismatic network but increasingly the entire Church of England. It is not necessary to agree with all the conclusions of these three articles to realise that any church or network exercising so much institutional power needs to face challenge and questioning. Is the wider CofE really prepared to allow HTB to define such things as clerical formation, liturgical practice and the necessary skills associated with pastoral work? Already there are a substantial number of clergy, whose sole experience of church is what they have learned from the HTB network. Thus traditional Anglicanism is for them unfamiliar territory and they may find it hard to operate within the pastoral/liturgical roles which have existed in England for several centuries. – Ed

There are two significant aspects of Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) that are not well known enough, but which are significant. The first, of which there is some awareness, is the enormous, subsuming influence it has acquired. The second is what has influenced it to a similarly large extent which is now influencing the wider Church.

          I shall try to make clear first the extent of its influence in the wider Church of England. Nicky Gumbel was Vicar from 2005 till 2022 and is still involved with the Alpha course he made into the international, interdenominational phenomenon it has become (over twenty-four million attendees). Because of its success and the consequent numbers attending HTB – ten Sunday services there and in what were nearby parishes, now referred to as HTB ‘sites’ – it was asked to start ‘planting’, that is sending curates and groups of parishioners to revive churches with small congregations. Because of the success of that, it was rewarded with a huge role in halting Church decline via, since 2017, its charity, the Church Revitalisation Trust, now the Revitalise Trust. https:// revitalisetrust.org/plants-and-revitalisations Andrew Graystone, author of Bleeding for Jesus about the –  continuing – John Smyth abuse scandal, has recently reported on the controversial multimillionaire Sir Paul Marshall and his very large financial contribution to the Revitalise Trust. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/65007/paulmarshalls-hateful-likes-make-him-unfit-to-be-a-media-mogul  To quote Graystone: “HTB is already by some distance the richest parish church in the UK. It has a budget of around £10m a year and a staff of 118, making it larger than several Church of England dioceses. Most parishes in the Church of England struggle to afford a curate. HTB has 28. In addition, there are no fewer than 14 ordinands—people in training to be priests or ministers. Together with four ministers, that totals 46 in leadership or training roles for one parish.”

          As well as ‘planting’ churches nationally, it creates ‘resource churches’ and ‘hubs’ like itself. The literature says this type of church “resources mission across a city, by planting and revitalising churches, developing leaders and providing other resources for mission.” The Archbishops’ Council sees this as the way forward for the Church of England. In 2019, John Spence, then chairman of the Strategic Investment Board, used the phrase “good value for money, good value for Christ” – in that order, which does seem to suggest favouring a business approach to salvation. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/ articles/2019/22-november/features/features/revitalising-mission-but-at-what-cost

      According to the 2021 Chote review, more than half (£91.3 million) of the Church of England’s total Strategic Development Fund (SDF), now Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI), awarded between 2014 and 2021 was given either to new resource churches or to turning existing churches into resource churches. Of that, the Church Times reported that “14 percent of funding has gone to projects exclusively made up of plants from the Church Revitalisation Trust (CRT) network linked to Holy Trinity Brompton, and a further 29 per cent has gone to projects where CRT churches are present among those of other networks and traditions https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/11march/news/uk/strategic-development-fund-opens-a-route-to-faith-says-study Most resource churches’ ‘planting curates’ have been or are being trained at HTB. Within the HTB network are more than 100 congregations, plus over [30] larger resource churches. https://www.htb.org/sunday-talks-archive/2021/10/5/its-time-to-rebuild-nickygumbel-htb-live-stream?rq=Nicky%20Gumbel%20

       The Save the Parish campaign and, in her book The Once and Future Parish, Alison Milbank, have demonstrated theological and practical problems with this. Objections include downgrading the traditional parish, prioritising quantification, an urban focus, crude dismissal of sacramental spirituality –  many resource churches are Evangelical – loss of parishioners for neighbouring churches and high handedness with the churches being planted.

     The Chote review acknowledged some of this. More money is now being given to Anglo-Catholic and rural churches. But very large sums are still being given to resource churches. According to Bishop Ric Thorpe of Church Planting, “By 2030, there may be as many as 300 resource churches playing their part in the renewal and reform of the Church of England.” In a letter to the Church Times in 2023, General Synod member RG Faulkner said that “the Archbishops’ Council has promised to provide an extra £100 million per annum to the dioceses for the period 2023-25. Informal discussions that I have had with bishops indicate that it will be spent solely on more resource churches” (my italics). And the Chote review, very much using the language of the business world, states, ““Given the professionalism, shared services support and track record of that [HTB] stable, it is hardly surprising they are often the first port of call for a diocese seeking numerical growth relatively quickly. One key success factor has been CRT’s ability to leverage lessons to both develop and replicate its model.”

       I have given this background to demonstrate the centrality HTB’s methods have acquired in the Church of England and how much is being invested in those methods spiritually and financially, with the two aspects brought disconcertingly close together.     

       According to Graystone, the income of the Revitalise Trust for 2020 was £10 million. Its trustees include, along with Nicky Gumbel, Paul Marshall and former Bishop of London Richard Chartres – with his controversial safeguarding record. There are also half a dozen hedge fund managers and investment bankers. Marshall co-founded GB News and is aiming to buy the Daily Telegraph and Spectator. He was recently found to have liked and retweeted anti-Muslim tweets, including in January: “If we want European civilization to survive we need to not just close the borders but start mass expulsions immediately.” The charitable interpretation of this extreme position is that it shows the strength of his feeling for his Christian faith, though of course his is a very particular type of Christian faith: top-public-school, self-confident Charismatic Evangelicalism, as found at HTB, where he and his wife have been members for many years. In a part of London thick with millionaires and billionaires, it is a church where the ease of upper and upper middle class life can get confused with signs of God’s favour.

          Graystone observes, “It will not be lost on [Justin] Welby and his colleagues that the evangelical movement and its supporters are, to an extent, bankrolling the church, and that to lose them would be financially disastrous.” He describes HTB without exaggeration as “the engine room that now drives the Church.” For one parish to have such great influence on the wider Church could only be acceptable if that were by reason of its sanctity. That it is doing so because of its very wealthy members is problematic, to say the least – however convinced the patrons and clients are that they are carrying out God’s Will with their money. But what should ring even louder alarm bells is what has been the great influence on HTB: the American megachurch movement and, deriving from that, Hillsong: the Australian church even wealthier than HTB and now disgraced. This influence is spreading, via the Revitalise Trust and its resource hubs and plants, a confident fusion of Anglicanism with megachurch – ideology seems a more appropriate word than theology, as worldliness pushes ‘theos’ – God – out. And with that influence comes the serious potential for abuse inherent in its type of power. In my next article I shall look at Hillsong in more detail and show how relevant it has become to the Church of England.