Damon is an apprentice devil tasked with learning to undermine and weaken the Church of England and wider Anglicanism. Lucius is a senior devil mentoring apprentices overseeing the work on all denominations. Lucius refers to the Church of England as the ‘English Patient’. Lucius is particularly keen to encourage the Church of England’s peculiar ecclesionomics, bloated ecclesiocracy and unaccountable episcocrats. Lucius draws on C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, published in 1942. These letters are published by Lucius for the benefit of new apprentices. – Lucius. 

Worship Workshop

Dear Lucius,

As you know, we have had a lot of success over the past fifty years with our long-term strategy of encouraging the churches to thin out the content of hymns, and replacing them with bland modern choruses that largely describe how the worshipper feels about G*d, and they would like G*d to feel about them. These choruses are often sung repetitively, have little core dogma, so from our point of view are very time-consuming and content-lite, which is ideal. The choruses are promoted by the churches under the banner of ‘relevance’’, which is also helpful, as the content increasingly has no relevance to core Christian teaching.

Admittedly we did not devise this strategy. But it is another one of these ‘bold initiatives’ of the church that we have been happy to support, as it has divided congregations whilst also gradually undermining shared Christian teachings and creating a vacuum where personal feelings and individualism can flourish.

Of course, I always worry that our PR team and Spin-Meisters go too far when they suggest novel projects like the Laodiciean Hymnal, with new hymns for the 21^st century changed slightly to get away from the stuffiness of the 19^th century. Some Christians might not notice the likes of ‘Take My Life and Let Me Be’, ‘O God Our Enabler in Ages Past’, and ‘All Hail the Influence of Jesus’ Name’ sneaking under the radar. But we still have some way to go before the likes of  ‘What an Acquaintance We Have in Jesus’, ‘Sit Up, Sit up for Jesus’, ‘Spirit of the Living God, Fall Somewhere Near Me’, and ‘Be Thou My Hobby’ feel normal.

We are also some distance from the kind of rendering of Oh Jesus I have Promised that we committed ourselves to at the last Apprentice Conference. You may remember Diablo proposed some new words before he graduated and went to work on American Methodism:

Oh Jesus I have tentatively committed

To serve thee for an agreed period of time, 

(subject to review)

Be thou ever near me, 

(but not too close, cause I need my space)

My colleague and my friend.

I do actually fear the battle

On grounds of health and safety

I and I will only wander from the pathway occasionally,

For some shopping and a coffee break

For which you can still be my guide.

I think as we agreed at the time, although these words are accurate in terms of where we want believers to land, the hymn doesn’t scan to any of the tunes Christians use. So I have been developing my thinking as part of my portfolio for assessment later this year, and specifically from the module on Worship Disruption, which has been superbly taught. Not only is the history of liturgical and hymnody conflict well presented, we have also been able to liaise with students studying Anti-Pastoral Theology and Deliturgical Studies.

Can I therefore run this by you for informal assessment? It is set to the tune and metre of Michael Saward’s ‘Ch***t Triumphant’ and I have rewritten this for our English Patient as ‘Church Triumphal’. I think this works well, but before I submit for formal assessment I wonder if you could take a look and comment? I’d be most grateful.  Your Servant, Damon

1. Church triumphal, ere’ mansplaining,

Ruling everything!

Just the greatest, Ever English

Hear us as we sing,

We’re the greatest show in town

Such high renown, with eternal fame.

2. Church of England, ever glorious

Super-Duper-Thing!

Best of churches, none our equal

Hear the others whinge!

We’re the greatest show…

3. We’ve got bishops and cathedrals

Lots of pretty bling

None can match us, we’re fantastic

See the others cringe!

We’re the greatest show…

4. We’re not Baptists, nor like Papists

All those others err

We are best and loved by God

His True Church on Earth!

We’re the greatest show…

5. Church Established, Truly Awesome!

Our Leader is the King! 

Nonconformists can’t do ritual

Incense! Censors! Swing! 

We’re the greatest show…

6. Church of England, slightly sexist

Soaring on our wings!

Pompous, classist, condescending 

Loves to do its thing.

We’re the greatest show…

7. Self-regarding, few Remaining

Slightly short of cash

Give us all your hard-won earnings

Help restore our stash.

We’re the greatest show…

8. Hopeless bishops, stuck for ever

Enthroned on High above

Sin and Faults and Hell shall never

Shut their PR up!

We’re the greatest show…

9. Hearts and voices ever-whingeing 

Through the aeons long

All is lost through steady phasing –

Still, we’re never wrong!

We’re the greatest show in town

Such high renown, with eternal fame.

Dear Damon

Your new hymn perfectly captures the essence – indeed, the very worshipping heart – of your English Patient. The patient is in love with themselves, and like Narcissus, just besotted with how they look to others and how they appear to themselves. So, well done on putting into a hymn such ignoble truths!  I can see that this portfolio of yours is going to be a rich and rewarding read. Naturally, I can’t see the English Patients ever singing your revised hymn collectively and out loud. But under their breath, smugly, they’ll be humming it all the time.

What I think you could usefully develop in your portfolio a little bit more is to explore how and why all the best ideas to undermine the church actually come from within the church itself. We really don’t need to do a lot, other than encourage every manoeuvre that the English Patient makes.

Perhaps your portfolio might want to reflect on this a little bit more? I mean, we obviously teach Anti-Pastoral Theology as an art.  But if you take a look at how an ordinary diocesan HQ works these days, the theory, art and practice are all areas we could hardly improve on.

Also, our Anti-Pastoral Theology is an optional module. But your English Patient has made this a compulsory subject and one that is permanently assessed, and inflicts all manner of box-ticking pointless bureaucratic nonsense on churches, and frightful organisational migraines on ordinary clergy and congregations. Hell would be sheer hell if it was run like that! Honestly, if we were devising a strategy from scratch to demoralise churches, I have to say the hierarchy of the English Patient beat us to it long ago, and we could hardly better their results.

I think the ‘Lessons Learned’ (pun intended) review of our module and your portfolio for assessment is already clear. Less is more? Your English Patient is the architect and expert of their own implosion. All you need do is encourage them to keep digging. As you can surely see, the holes just get deeper. Anyway, many thanks for the new hymn, which I will cheerfully hum in my lunchbreak.

Your Mentor, Lucius.

In the last week or two, we have seen a group of survivors of sexual abuse bonding together so that their joint protest can be heard.  The group in question has absolutely to do with the Church of England.  Indeed, it has nothing to do any church; it is rather a cohort of women victims of Jeffrey Epstein, those who have been abused or trafficked by him.  They are, metaphorically speaking. shouting from the rooftops.  These women realise that speaking their truth to a society, dominated by a rich and powerful elite, is an uphill task.  Their cause and their longing to be heard must be spoken out in the open air to those who are prepared to listen.  So, this group of survivors have been to Capitol Hill in Washington to tell their story to a society which has, up till now, always silenced them.   Communicating these cries of the weak and vulnerable has been hard in a society which is now under the authority of a President who cares little for truth or the rule of law.  Trump’s indifference to the needs of abused or downtrodden victims of any kind is notorious; his example has been followed by many others who do little to show compassion for ‘the least of these my brethren’.

Before I suggest some uncomfortable parallels with our own situation in Britain, I need to summarise the story that has created headlines in the States and will be familiar to the many readers of SC.  The women on Capitol Hill form part of a cohort of survivors/victims who have been both ignored and marginalised after being abused, many in their mid-teens.  Their exploiters were men, wealthy and well-connected men, many of whom control the organs of political and legal power right across American society.  What chance did such women have of being heard when they realised what had been done to them?  They had been promised money and careers as models.  The actual reality saw them picked up and then discarded the moment their usefulness as sexual play objects for the rich ceased.  Many of them are now adrift in a society where the compassion or support to help them rebuild their lives has always been in short supply.

I have called this blog reflection the ‘triple whammy’ of abuse.  What do I mean by this?  I am describing the way in which the abuse of children and young people involves three distinct stages or levels, making it far more heinous than an assault perpetrated against an adult.  Any sexual assault against a child will always be massively damaging.  Recovery from that abuse event requires the support of a highly specialised therapist and cannot be completed in a short series of sessions.  There seem to be at least two stages of recovery that have to be gone through.  My description of this process to be undertaken by the abused will of necessity contain generalities as I have no training or expertise in this area.   A first stage of recovery does, nevertheless, seem to require a victim to be able to face up to the original assault whether it was a single event or repeated many times.  It takes a very special skill and patience on the part of a therapist to bring to the surface such an event that may have taken place thirty, forty or fifty years before.  Having excavated, as it were, that terrible episode, the therapist has a second task.  This is the attempt to untangle and repair any distortions in the personality that have been caused by the assault or abuse.  The victim of abuse may typically have had to battle to preserve a capacity for trust, so that the ability to form normal relationships later in life is maintained. It is for this reason that sexual abuse is sometimes described as soul murder.  The selfishness of the abuser has been the possible cause of the death of part of the personality of a young person.   Seeing a young person as a delicate precious entity that calls out for protection and cherishing to promote growth and flourishing, should be built into the instinctual sensitivity of every human being.  To allow abuse to children, at a time in their lives when they can neither understand what is happening nor defend themselves and their emerging personalities, is a deeply serious affair.

There is a third part of the ‘triple whammy’ which we have only briefly touched on.  The victim/survivor seeks not only therapy and healing as part of the process of recovery.  He/she also may seek justice and accountability.  In the case of the Capitol Hill women, there is the profound symbolism of raised voices close to the centre of the American government and the justice system.  In a sentence, the survivors/victims of the appalling abuse inflicted on them by Jeffrey Epstein and his wealthy friends want to see that the ruling authorities are on their side and justice be administered.  They want to believe that all the material which has been gathered by the Department of Justice, the so-called Epstein files, will be shared with them and the public in general.  This information will shed light on those who knew about the scandal of their abuse as well as the activities of those who were the actual perpetrators of the terrible evils.  Why, for example, have the recordings of abuse in Epstein’s homes and recovered in the FBI raids, never been shared or made public?  Are the interests of the powerful abusers thought to take priority over the hundreds of victims who were taken to these homes?  These survivors have now found each other, and their combined voices create an instrument of real power, able to stand up against the institutional cruelty and inertia of powerful institutions who are concerned only for their wealth and their reputations.  The victims of Epstein and Maxwell who have suffered the abuse of trafficking and sexual exploitation have never had the chance to receive justice.  Together it just may be possible, even in a country now ruled by the forces of the authoritarian Right, that public opinion may demand the purging of such dreadful evils.  It is this fight, waged by the aggrieved victims against powerfully embedded systems of power, that is this third difficult stage of the struggle that many survivors are making.  The plea of the Epstein survivors is also a plea that every American citizen is or should be caught up in the same search for the path back to integrity and truth.  The current political climate has allowed many American citizens to collude with shameful and corrupting ideologies which will weigh them and their society down for many decades to come.

American society needs to wake up to the fact that the voting choices of tens of millions of its populace have created a situation of toleration for, even promotion of, misogyny, racism, greed and the constant oppression of the poor to allow the rich to become even richer.   Voting for candidates who bury truth in the cause of increasing the power and privilege of the rich is in essence a surrender to a corporate evil of massive proportions.  We do not know whether the infection of the evil, which tolerates the oppression and exploitation of the weak and vulnerable, has become so endemic that it can never be eradicated from American society.  The restoration of respect and honour for the stranger and the poor is far from the concerns of those currently in power and those who support them.  The voices of the abused women calling out on Capitol Hill are a challenge to these profoundly evil attitudes which bury and distort anything resembling a Christian morality.  The Bible that is claimed to be at the heart of American Christian values speaks extensively of justice and compassion for the poor and oppressed.  Perhaps one day the Christian instincts of the American people may return to these values and be able once more to hear those in need.

My readers will not be surprised to learn that the voices on Capitol Hill in Washington DC are a reminder for me of another struggle much closer to home.   Like the Epstein victims the survivors of sexual abuse in Christian churches also cry out to be heard by their fellow Christians and by society at large.  Also, like the Epstein abused women of the States, they also face enormous obstacles on the path to healing and justice.  The members of both groups have been the recipients of repeated blows to their bodies, minds and souls.  Indifference and acquiescence in a system that accepts without question the interests of powerful institutions is widespread.  These attitudes often re-victimise and threaten damaged and abused members of our Church.  Like the women on Capitol Hill, the survivors of church abuse face the ‘triple whammy’ of sexual abuse.  It is for the rest of us to understand and, where possible, to alleviate their pain.  We long for them to recover the shalom with which they were born.  Those of us who claim membership of Christ’s church are entrusted with the task of doing all in our power to create around us, with others, a place of safety as well as healing for all who have been wounded through the sin of others. 

For anyone who has ever studied ancient history, the religious world of the Greeks and the Romans is an enigma. Greek and Roman myth is all about the gods being capricious, spiteful, and downright cruel – and often for mere sport. Think of the worst kind of bullying at school, and map it on to some kind of spiritual cosmos. 

Never challenge the powers of the gods. Give them your total respect. Because if  you so much as look at them in a funny way, your life might be cursed and ruined.

The ancient gods were worshipped out of fear and admiration. People had their favourite gods in much the way that they love celebrities today.  Nobody expects an ancient god or a modern celebrity to be a flawless being. They just dole out favours. And the followership can be as fickle as the object of adoration on any pedestal

I am writing this on the day that Lord Peter Mandleson has been sacked as His Majesty’s Ambassador to Washington DC. It appears that the due diligence in his appointment was not as thorough as it might have been, and that Mandelson had continued to support the convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein long after was deemed to be moral or wise. Leaving aside the Icarus myth that seems to be super-glued to Mandelson’s CV, we are left with the usual questions over the probity and integrity of individuals in government.

But they are not gods. You can get rid of them. They may be tragic heroes in myths; or may prevail in some epic saga. But gods, they are not.  It is different in the Church of England (CofE). The leaders have no accountability, yet demand your fealty.

Stephen Parsons’ Surviving Church website often deals with leaders who have feet of clay, cult-like churches, cultures of obeisance and abuse, and terrifying stories of torment and anguish. So it will not surprise readers when I say that the hierarchy of the Church of England (CofE) act just like capricious Greek and Roman gods.

The gods of safeguarding are particularly fickle, vindictive and cruel, and if this were an ancient religion, they’d be venerated (or feared) for their evasiveness, spin and ambivalent relationship with truth. They would not be trusted, and could never be loved. But they demand that we take their word at face value.

Question their statements, and they’ll shun you. Persist with your questions, and they will go after you. The CofE’s Cult of Safeguarding, with its Guardian Bishops, NST, Officers, Acolyte Committees and devotees is a nasty, capricious vindictive affair. But if you don’t appease the Cult, woe betide you.

Many readers of this blog have followed the debacle with Kennedys LLP, the law firm instructed and contracted by the Archbishops’ Council to deliver a Redress Scheme to victims/survivors of abuse.  The Germanic word ‘gift’ is a well-known example of a linguistic paradox, like ‘false friend’. A ‘gift’ can be both a blessing and a curse.

The Redress Scheme fits the bill precisely. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Because it will not be what it seems.  And so it has turned out. Kennedys appear to have been involved in previous litigation against – yes, against – victims and survivors likely to be eligible for the Redress Scheme.  Did the CofE know this? Some of those pushing for Kennedys to run the non-independent scheme are likely to have known that, which raises questions as to why Kennedys were awarded the contract.

Mandelson, of course, was sacked for failing due diligence. But now we know Kennedys have acted against victims/survivors of church abuse, will the CofE act? Not likely. ‘Alea iacta est’ (the die is cast) with the CofE’s repeated re-abuse of the word ‘independent’.  The gods of CofE safeguarding have their own definition of that word. It means ‘at arms-length’; some third-party conduit.

We know this because the CofE Redress Scheme Working Group is no longer operating, yet Kennedys Law LLP still require instruction and payment from their client in order to carry out their work, task and role. The client is most likely the Archbishops’ Council, which de facto means it will be William Nye as the Secretary to that body.  If it were claimed General Synod is the client, William Nye is also the Secretary to that body. Many victims and survivors of abuse would not choose to place any matter of safeguarding redress in Mr. Nye’s hands. Ever. They do not trust him, and do not regard him as a person of honesty, probity or integrity. But he’s a god in the ancient Greek sense. You don’t cross him.

If Mr. Nye has now become, effectively by default, the senior party instructing Kennedys, that is a matter of grave concern to victims/survivors . It plainly casts considerable doubt on the possibility of this process being an ‘independent’ means of arbitrating and determining redress, as the CofE has wished to claim.

The CofE announced that it £150 million had been set aside for the Redress Scheme(https://www.churchofengland.org/media/press-releases/general-synod-approves-redress-scheme-survivors-church-related-abuse). However, we do not know how much of that £150 million will be claimed by Kennedys as part of their administration and legal fees. We do know, for a fact, that Kennedys indicated that the total amount was inadequate for the work envisaged. We also know that this was raised as an issue with the Archbishops’ Council. The gods waived this away.

Plainly, a major risk is that in the running of the Redress Scheme, the biggest beneficiary will be (drum roll)…Kennedys. For those who followed The Great British Post Office Scandal, one will recall that the first cases settled in 2017 amounted to £58 million. However, the claimants only received £12 million of that, with £46 million going to the lawyers in costs and legal fees.

In other words, victims of the Post Office injustices received just 21.4% of the amount awarded. Since there are several hundred victims of the CofE’s abuses, there is a significant risk that of the £150 million allocated, perhaps only 20% of that sum will be available to compensate survivors and those abused. [See the relevant article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal].

Without sight of the Terms of Reference under which Kennedys were appointed, clarity on who is now instructing them, and how compensation is to be apportioned from the £150 million, victims/survivors are at serious risk of (perhaps) having their cases heard; securing judgment in their favour; yet winning very, very little by way of redress/compensation.  Just whatever is left after Kennedys have claimed their fees and expenses. 

As the legislation to approve the Redress Scheme must go to Parliament, victims/survivors will be aware that another risk is that those who drafted the legislation – lawyers and legal officers working in Lambeth Palace and Church House Westminster – all reported directly to (drum roll)…William Nye. 

If the legislation is to be approved by Parliament, then victims/survivors and MPs ought to have complete and unambiguous reassurance that no senior staff from the CofE will be involved in the interpretation of the legislation. Otherwise, that could be construed as an extremely serious conflict of interest.

It could effectively lead to a situation whereby the legislation approved by Parliament will be drafted by the very body that is responsible for the abuse of the victims. To put this in simple terms, imagine a scenario in which lawyers for the Post Office and Paula Vennels set out the terms for drafting the binding legislation and the total amount for compensating their victims. Just imagine.

Given the CofE’s repeated claim that Kennedys are delivering the Redress Scheme as an (allegedly) “independent body” victims/survivors, are now placed in an impossible position. Confidentiality with the NST, Archbishops’ Council and CofE has been wholly breached. But Kennedys, are now blocking communications with victims/survivors who question this. We also have strong reasons to believe that some victims of abuse have previously encountered Kennedys acting against them.

This suggests that impartiality has already been undermined in the Redress Scheme, if not fatally compromised. Correspondingly, full transparency is now essential. But these gods do not like to be questioned.  In the CofE Cult of Safeguarding, with its Guardian Bishops, NST, Officers, Acolytes and devotees, all questions will be ignored, dissenters shunned, and complainants subjected to intense cruelty.

Remember when the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) was deemed by the Archbishops’ Council to be “too independent…and too survivor-focussed”, the ISB was sacked. Can the Archbishops’ Council sack Kennedys  for the same reasons? Of course they can. So, will they sack Kennedys for the data-breach, or if it is found that they have previously acted against church victims/survivors? Probably not.

In all of this, the NST, desperate to keep control of their Cult and to appease their gods, will offer the usual crocodile tears and concern. The NST will never accept that they are a major cause and source of trauma for victims/survivors. Yet it would be astonishing if they didn’t know that. After all, it has been said often enough and repeatedly so by victims/survivors. 

Meanwhile, the NST is offering (independent) “help and support” from somebody indirectly in their employ.  Naturally, it must be somebody that the NST approves of and can rely upon for their purposes. The Cult will only use its own Guardians and High Priests that it can control. The NST will not pay contributions towards the ongoing therapy costs that victims/survivors might have already established outside the control of the Cult. The person chosen by the NST to deliver “help and support” is not regulated by an external professional body. So if that person fails any victim/survivor, there is nobody to complain to except (drum roll)…the Cult.

Does the person proposed by the NST have her own indemnity liability insurance in the event of causing further harm to a victim/survivor, or is the Archbishops’ Council covering this? The NST won’t say. The Cult has no need to answer such questions. Does the NST’s nominee have a relevant degree or accredited professional qualification in safeguarding or therapy? Perhaps an academic award such as a Masters or PgDip? How and by whom is their much-vaunted “experience” evaluated – and what are their qualifications and accreditation for doing so?  The NST won’t say. The Cult has no need to answer such questions.

Why would any victim/survivor ever want to avail themselves of another of the NST’s unqualified, unlicensed and wholly unregulated staff? Especially as the CofE’s Cult of Safeguarding operations are unquestionably a major cause of the harm and the trauma that victims/survivors experience?

Can the NST not see how inappropriate and abusive it is to compound their damage by offering to make it right? Is the position of the CofE that the best people to help survivors/victims are their actual abusers? Is this “safeguarding”?

There are no answers to any of this, because the CofE hierarchy with its Safeguarding Cult all acts “as though they were gods”. That’s why the major common denominator for victims/survivors is this: they’ve all left the CofE. This Cult is abusive, and its gods are capricious and cruel. Escape is the only safe option.

We have finally reached the end of another stage in the long-running saga of the Sheffield Nine O’Clock Service and its one-time leader, Chris Brain.  A jury in a London trial has found Brain guilty on 17 counts of sexual assault and sentencing is due at some point in the near future.  This story in one way is very old news.  The older among us have known most of the details of Brain’s offences for 30 years.   The newspapers gave extensive coverage to the scandal when it broke in 1995, and Roland Howard wrote a competent account of the story in his book The Rise and Fall of the Nine O’Clock Service A cult within the church (1996).  I do not intend in this blog to go over the details of this material which has been rehearsed again in the trial.  My task is somewhat different.  I want to remind my readers that there is another story to be told.  The Nine O’Clock Service (NOS) is an important story in any history of church work among young people in the 20^th century.  However much we want to focus on the scandalous aspects, or criticise it and its theological and practical outworkings, it did, in its day, attract a significant level of support from the wider church and its leaders.  The ‘rise and fall’ of NOS, in short, remains a notable event in the history of Church of England youth work.  The problem was, as the Soul Survivor drama also clearly demonstrates, that few people are ever willing to critique ‘success’ or ask uncomfortable questions.  Still less has there been any real understanding of the toxic dynamics that are so often a feature of large crowd events.  Even now there is remarkable little insight into the vulnerability of the young to large group dynamics which can overwhelm them, both spiritually and emotionally.

  My interest in writing about Brain now is not to comment or add anything new to the material presented in the NOS court case about his criminal behaviour towards young women.   My purpose is to recall another aspect of the Brain story, one that does not seem to have attracted much discussion.   This is the way that the NOS innovative worship style for young people had then many imitations right across England.  To say that NOS was influential is not in any way arguing for the quality and soundness of what Brain was doing in Sheffield.  But it is true to say that in youthwork circles there was a feeling that something new and exciting was going on.  Up to the moment of its collapse, NOS was also being regarded with approval by church leaders from different theological traditions.  Certainly, I cannot recall anyone speaking out against the rave services, planetary masses and the highly idiosyncratic teaching.   At the time I was open to the teaching of Matthew Fox, an American Dominican, who provided some theological mentorship for Brain and the distinctive themes of his teaching.  Like many of the fashionable ideas current in the 80s, Fox’s ideas on Creation Spiritualty have receded in their influence but, no doubt, they will be dusted down and ‘discovered’ again at some point in future.  A greater influence on me at the time were the writings of Lesslie Newbigin.  In his book, The Other Side of 1984, Newbigin, like Matthew Fox, had attempted to challenge the dominating ideas of the 18^th century Enlightenment about the nature of truth and reality.  The Enlightenment had given the facts revealed by science a privileged and esteemed place within Western thinking and culture.  This approach needed to be challenged and certainly not assumed to be the only manifestation of truth.  Interestingly, John Wimber was saying some similar things to his audiences and the resulting discussions helped to give rise to some interesting theological discussions in parts of the Church.

The second influence from NOS, one which affected me only indirectly, was the way that church youth work all over the country seemed to want to copy some of the practical aspects of the NOS worship experiments.  Youth workers from many churches travelled to Sheffield to attend the highly innovative forms of worship and seek to copy ideas for their own ministries.  Brain seems to have been able to recruit some highly gifted people to help him create dramatic expressions of worship, using light and sound to foster a highly charged atmosphere for his services.  I never became familiar with the detail of these styles of worship, and certainly nothing changed at the level of our Sunday worship where I was serving.  But the NOS influence was strong at the Diocesan level of youth work.   The youth worker for the Gloucester Diocese had embraced the NOS vision with a degree of enthusiasm which now seems, in retrospect, to have been almost idolatrous.  Once bitten by the NOS bug, the youth worker seemed unable to focus on any other type of youth work in our diocese.  His whole energy seemed directed towards organising NOS look-alike services around the larger churches of the diocese.   There were, I believe, some older church people who wanted to identify with this new energy for youth work and so the worker was able to raise the necessary money to buy lights, sound systems, smoke machines and other equipment for these services.  The fact that my parish was right on the edge of the diocese, meant that my young people were unable to attend unless they had very obliging parents.  I also had queries and concerns of my own which made me less than 100% enthusiastic for these new forms of worship.

What were my worries about the stories of NOS inspired worship that came back to me as a parish priest?  In the first place there was an uncomfortable level of control (manipulation?) of feelings and mood at play.  If an idea is powerfully shared through the forceful use of symbols, it may have the effect of taking over the feelings and driving out any rational process.  In other words, the worship was, for me, a bit too physical and overwhelming; there was no opportunity to reflect.  It seemed to be a matter of surrendering to these powerfully induced emotions.  Teenagers are not a group easily able to work out how best to resist uncomfortable attacks on their rationality, especially when these assaults are made with the help of sound, light and imagery. 

The second and perhaps more serious problem that I felt at the time, but probably never gave expression to, is what we would refer to now as safeguarding concerns.  If you are skilled at creating highly emotionally charged atmospheres in a nightclub style environment, then it is not hard to see how such a setting can be exploited.  When I heard that at our local Gloucester NOS services, routine hugging was included in the expression of love and mutual acceptance, I began to wonder whether such episodes might soon get out of hand.  Intimacy, embrace and love may all be words that potentially fit into a Christian setting, but they may also be words used by a predator who is able to exploit the fact that personal boundaries may be routinely undermined in the new styles of worship.

The end of NOS in Sheffield was sudden and dramatic.  The NOS events that I was observing with concern locally in the Diocese of Gloucester probably did not, in fact, get out of hand because our local NOS-inspired events also stopped when the Sheffield ministry of NOS came to a sudden end in July 1995.  Brain’s dominance over the project had been total and so, with his sudden resignation, everything connected with the NOS effort all over the country stopped overnight.  All that was left behind was a sense of shock, trauma, disillusionment and, no doubt, a sense of betrayal.  It would probably be difficult now to discover how far the NOS influence had spread around the country and whether the effect on my diocese was typical of other areas.   Almost instantly after Brain left, the diocesan Youth Officer in Gloucester resigned, and all his future local planned services were cancelled.  I have never seen any discussion on the impact that NOS’s experiments had on church youth work, not only in Sheffield but around the country.  A ‘learning lessons’ was probably just too difficult a task.  It was also realised, probably, with some embarrassment no doubt, that the oversight of Brain by senior church figures had simply not been undertaken with any degree of thoroughness.  No one among the senior clergy in Sheffield, who had offered an extensive welcome to the NOS experiment, resigned or even showed a real desire to understand what had gone wrong.  For me there was a realisation that senior clergy in the Church of England also had very little understanding of what I was beginning to see as the central problem at NOS – the issue of power.  Throughout the project, there seems to have been an inability to understand, let alone deal with, the power dynamics at NOS.   Accountability and democratic decision making were nowhere to be found and no one senior in the hierarchy was prepared to challenge the dynamics of the group as long as the project appeared to be successful. 1995 and the aftershocks of the NOS experiment also marked the beginning of my own interest in power abuse in the Church.  Much of the focus of my more recent writing, in the blog Surviving Church and my book Ungodly Fear, looks back to this theme of power and its abuse and this had been vividly displayed in Sheffield.  The aftershocks of NOS still reverberate.   A continuing failure to fully understand how power operates within its structures contributes to a serious weakening of the Church and its capacity to influence British society over recent decades.