There are some words in the English language that are not very useful unless they are placed in a clear context or have an adjective attached to them. One of these words is charisma. This is a word that has currency in a religious setting, but it also belongs in a number of other contexts, including the political and sociological. In any use of the word there has also to be some indication as to whether the word is signifying something good or something toxic. The word used on its own carries no value judgment built into its meaning. We see the negative use of the word as it was applied to the notorious and evil career of Chris Brain. He was brought to account in the course of the past week at a courthouse in London. The ministry he engaged in in Sheffield in the 80s and 90s certainly possessed charisma, but the word here does not denote anything good or wholesome. In fact, the character of the charisma on display was that of ruthless control and exploitation. It is this negative meaning that we project on to the word as we think of the Brain ministry over seven or eight years in Sheffield.
Why am I focussing on this single word charisma? It is because I believe that understanding charisma in its negative manifestation helps us to understand better the horror of the events in Sheffield thirty years ago. It may also help us to build institutional structures that make it difficult or impossible to repeat them. Before we think further about charisma operating in its negative manifestation, we need to think about its meaning with its neutral connotation. The word, when stripped of both its negative and positive connotations, is one that is descriptive of a quality of human personality that is able to attract and impress others. The charismatic personality has considerable relational power. This power can be said to simultaneously charm, dazzle and intrigue those drawn into its orbit. The charismatic personality is also one that creates followers and admirers around him (normally a him) even while keeping the bulk of these followers at a safe distance. Getting close to a charismatic leader is a status achieved only by a few. The cult leader, who is the typical expression of a negative exploitative form of charisma, will somehow know exactly how to share with followers enough attention to keep them loyal but also subservient. In many cases, this subservience makes the follower ripe for exploitation. We can summarise our understanding of the word by noting that charisma implies a form of intense relationship for an acolyte, which is fascinating, mysterious, but also dangerous. The picture of a moth attracted to a flame is a good analogy. Getting too close to the charismatic personality may burn or harm some of those who are drawn to it.
The story of Brain’s tenure of the so called Nine O’Clock Service (NOS) in Sheffield has been told sufficiently often not to need repeating here. Most of what happened in this ministry between 1988 and its collapse in 1995 can be gathered from reading Roland Howard’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Nine O’Clock Service. This book appeared remarkably quickly after the events it records. The fact that it has taken a further three decades for the story to come out fully and for justice to be obtained, has allowed the suffering of the victims to be grievously prolonged. The recent statement from some of Brain’s 19 victims contained these words. “Shame on the Church of England who never came and asked us a single question about what had gone wrong, at the time of disclosure, or for the intervening 30 years. Who sat on the sidelines, smug and self-satisfied while the pews filled? Who ignored the warning signs because it was in their vested interest to do so.? Who failed utterly in their duty of care?”
Two things strike me about these words. It is clear that the powers that be in the Church of England failed to engage with the massive suffering of the victims because first, it was too costly and complex to deal with. Too many important people in the Church had colluded with the ‘success’ of NOS, right up to the level of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The apparent ‘success’ of the experiment was such that no one was prepared later to question a number of anomalies and concerns that were brushed under the diocesan carpet when NOS was given a CofE imprimatur. The words of the victims speak about a hierarchy who were ‘smug and self-satisfied while the pews filled’. This is another way of saying that it is OK to cut corners of training and scrutiny as long as the scheme or experiment makes the Church look good. Filling pews has to take precedence over all else – safety, goodness and truth.
The second thing that should have been clear to Church leaders in the 80s is the risks and dangers of church life when it seems to gather most of its energy from the dynamics of crowd behaviour. Anyone with the slightest understanding of modern history, and that would have included all the bench of bishops in 1995, would have had cause to feel concern over the phenomenon of crowd dynamics and some of the potential dangers that such large gatherings can cause for church congregations. The ability of a crowd, a political rally or a football crowd, to destroy rational thinking and decision making must have occurred to our church leaders as they surveyed the revival activity in Brain’s Sheffield church. Brain’s gatherings would have exhibited many of the danger signals of crowd behaviour that had been exhibited 50+ years before in Rome, Berlin and Nurenberg. Why does it never occur to church people that mobs, rallies and crowds are given to volatile and irrational behaviour? When people come into such environments, they can quickly become vulnerable and suggestible. This suggestibility puts them in a place of danger. Safeguarding training has been alerting us for decades to the idea of grooming by powerful personalities. Does no one see clearly that a charismatic environment is also a place which, in the hands of the unscrupulous, can lead to exploitation of various kinds? Needless to say, there are wholesome charismatic ministries, those which never use the dynamics of the crowd as a tool of exploitation. But every ministry that we describe as charismatic needs to be closely mentored to ensure that the dynamics of the crowd manipulated by a charismatic leader have not introduced a dangerous toxic harm into our church life.
The lesson of Chris Brain is larger than a single serious lapse of professional ministerial conduct by a leader. The lesson that was not learnt in the 90s is that any preacher, whose ministry can be described a ‘charismatic’, will always need careful monitoring to protect them from the vulnerabilities of this role and the dangerous dynamics that seem to emerge in so many settings of this kind. Nobody blew a whistle on Mike Pilavachi even though the Brain episode must have alerted many responsible church leaders to the possibility that the charisma he possessed was being used for his gratification. When abusive behaviour is revealed as having taken place at major hubs of church life in Britain (St Ebbes Oxford) over long periods of time, one sadly contemplates how poison has been absorbed not only by victims, but also by those who stood by and said nothing. Every flawed ministry has allowed poison to flow through the veins of the Church of England. Allowing a few leaders, like Brain, to go to prison will not solve anything until we insist on proper oversight for all who exercise spiritual authority. We desperately need men and women with spotless integrity to lead our church. The recent cases of bishops ‘standing back’ has left us all wondering where the next generation of trustworthy leaders is going to come from.
I have spoken about the different contexts in which charisma is exercised within the church. I should conclude this piece by pointing us to the charismatic power that we ascribe to the ‘Lord the giver of life’. The charismatic gift that is the most needed today by the church is not the gift of tongues or the gift of administration. It is the gift of leadership that should have exercised discernment, wisdom and integrity, one that would have been able to spot the terrible damaging failure in the ministries of Brain, Pilavachi etc. Our bishops who are to be chosen in the next few months need to have the spiritual gift of integrity for themselves and for those they oversee. Perhaps the next ten twenty years will rebuild some of the institutional trust that has been tragically lost recently. A slogan that was around in the 80s needs to be asked again. ‘Is your Church worth joining?’. Much depends on the answer we can honestly give.
A perceived need to-‘take risks’-can be one Anglican senior leadership response to our secular age. Vast numbers of mainstream UK urbanites have limited interest in the Church, or indeed any in depth knowledge of its central credal message. But there is absolutely no need for Chris Brain or Mike Pilavachi type crowd stunts, if we just get back to the two Kantian basics: “starry sky above, moral law within”.
Love that Kantian quote. Thank you
I think the other reason behind the failure to see what was going on at NOS was misogyny. According to The Rise & Fall of NOS, 4 women had independently complained to the Archdeacon of Sheffield about Brain’s abusive behaviour, but he had patronised and dismissed them. The male leaders right up the hierarchy had decided Brain was a good thing, and they weren’t going to listen to mere women – and young women at that -telling them differently.
While NOS was apparently flourishing in Sheffield, I was leader of one of three congregations at a large charismatic church elsewhere. My congregation grew in numbers, while the other too did not. My superior didn’t ask me what I was doing or how I accounted for the growth of my congregation – he consulted church growth expert Robert Warren (vicar of NOS’s home church) who had never met me nor attended my service. And Warren never asked me. But my father had been a noted missiologist and I had spent my childhood at missionary training camps, leadership training camps, and among missionaries and evangelists. They might have reflected I’d learned something from them.
Janet this is a very interesting observation. I’d be interested in what you think about these …
1. I recently led a seminar in the USA on whether there is a link between complementarianism and abuse – does the former create a culture where abuse goes unchallenged? In the course of this I referenced NOS and Soul Survivor Watford, both of which seemed to support women in leadership in theory. I suggested they were not truly egalitarian as they did not see the deeper issues of gender equality and only really paid lip service to women in leadership.
2. Discussing NOS with a student group recently they (all too young to remember NOS!) suggested that it bought into club culture (which it was reaching out to) in its predatory approach to women as sexual conquests.
What do you (and others!) think?
I can’t really comment on 2) – though Brain’s history suggests he bought into club culture at least partly because it enabled him to abuse women, rather than club culture having him the idea.
As for 1), I’m convinced that’s the case, and have a few books on my shelves which support that theory. I see lots of current examples on social media, too. One of the more extreme is Steven L. Anderson, a complementarian pastor who recently posted: ‘If your husband slaps you down and you call the cops, you’re evil. Period.’ According to Wikipedia his four oldest children, who have now left home, have all alleged domestic abuse.
That is horrifying but Anderson is not alone. The Transformed Wife also teaches a rather extreme form of submission.
I actually think those who claim to champion equality while practising more subtle forms of discrimination are more insidious and in some ways more dangerous. You will remember the occasion on which I was interviewed for the post of woman tutor at a theological college. They were required to have a woman on staff in order to train female students – but it became very clear that they were looking for a person who technically qualified as female, but had no concern for women’s issues or women’s experience, and thought very much like a man. The last thing they wanted was a woman’s voice. Naturally one of those who I had most difficulty with at that interview was later made a bishop – (as was one of those involved in the episode I mentioned in my previous comment) and has had a very poor record in dealing with abuse cases.
Complementarianism involves a power imbalance, and where that is the case some of the powerful will always abuse the less powerful.
Joel Webbon, another US complementation pastor, has recently posted: ‘Physical abuse is not a justifiable case for divorce because it’s not in the Bible. We’re going to ban no-fault divorce. She belongs to him. He owns her.’
Charles, what was your experience of leading a seminar in the States on this subject? Did you encounter any of this extreme misogyny and ‘Christian’ manosphere?
No – I was speaking at a CBE conference so they are all egalitarian, but I had plenty of conversations with women (and few men) who told of pastors condoning abuse (or worse) as in the examples you give.
I think the political situation in the USA is a factor in this legitimation. Could it happen here? As you note, it is not hard to find examples of bishops and others who just don’t get it.
“Ideas have consequences” and what you say makes perfect sense. I have seen women get very poorly treated by conservatives within Anglicanism.
Chris Brain wasn’t a complementarian, he was very much – at least in his words – an “egalitarian” – although ego-litarian might be more accurate.
He was ignorant and opinionated, spouting memes from Moltmann that he didn’t understand. He disparaged evangelicalism.
And he was nasty to everyone, male or female, who didn’t bow to him.
I lived in York diocese at the time of his fall and it was obvious to everyone he should never have been ordained. But the Archdeacon – who gave NOS a good whack of his own money – was thrilled with something thst seemed to work aming the young that wasn’t evangelical but something else, podtmodern in its vibes. The hierarchy abandoned critical thinking.
It seems clear, to me at least, that senior leaders know full well about crowd manipulation and mob mentality and gainfully utilise it (usually at some plausibly deniable distance) to help open people’s wallets (ultimately)and empty them into Church coffers. They deliberately go along with the charismatic’s “pull”. They have no interest in how much people are damaged. They are only interested in power, position and prestige.
There’s no mechanism for change. The institution cannot improve itself.
I find it hard to imagine that Churches will ever be safe.
Not while they’re full of human beings!
If Church members rise up against bullies we will see positive developments……
You’ll be lucky! I was involved in a nasty case of ecclesiastical bullying, and learned at first hand how the system is stacked against ‘church members who rise up.’ Status quo, boats which must not be rocked, deferential respect for a particular rank and title make good supports for corruption. No wonder the CofE don’t want genuinely independent safeguarding, who will understand all too clearly what’s going on – for the hierarchy’s comfort..
Stephen,
When I was a Monk for many years at Roslin within the Community of the Transfiguration, The Founder the late Father Roland Walls who had first been an Anglican Priest then was later ordained as a Roman Catholic Priest, and had been involved in the training of Anglican Priests at Cambridge, Church of Scotland Ministers in Edinburgh, as a University Lecturer in two Universities, first Cambridge then Edinburgh and ran an experiment in Industrial Chaplaincy in Sheffield for Anglican and Church of Scotland Ordinands, before he started out at Roslin, used to say to me and others in the Community at Roslin that in many Churches there was ministry a lot of going on that was no ministry at all, as much of it was self referential where some were ministering to themselves, and that may very well have been the case of the NOS. Jonathan
Being brought up in a conservative environment I’ve had a lifetime of reflection on our attitudes to women, as men, and our/my complicity and attempts at repentance. It’s an ongoing work in progress, with costly mistakes still being made.
I recall one church service from my childhood, where i emerged from a micro snooze as a woman stormed out of the building, mid-sermon. Frantically I rewound my mental tape of what he might have been saying to have offended her so. I was too busy (in transference) shielding myself from anticipated blows from my parent, to find the source of offence, relieved it wasn’t me. I never did find out for sure, but it was something to do with being “emotional”, and I knew we didn’t allow that sort of thing.
But it was sad she left, and wasn’t heard after that. I didn’t storm out when I left, but was emotional. Maybe we both should have stayed and continued not to be heard, but that is hard to do. Certainly, speaking for myself, it was making me ill, and in the subsequent years have made great strides in health.
In the “secular” world they are decades ahead of the Church in hearing, learning from, and employing (for example) women in senior positions. I’ve worked with and for them for many years. But there are still glass ceilings, obviously. Also sexism. To exclude up to 51% of your talent pool is catastrophic and foolishness. But to limit the competition for leadership is weak, and shows insecurity and incompetence. That’s what the outside world sees.
Thanks for writing this Stephen. On this “one sadly contemplates how poison has been absorbed not only by victims, but also by those who stood by and said nothing.”, I think a large part of the problem is that so much of local church governance is malleable, and susceptible to the same charismatic authority it is charged with governing. Vulnerable to the same dynamics you describe in your post – acolytes too.
There is not enough curiousity in the church.
Funny, that’s exactly the conclusion I am coming to after reading this post, and also other recent SC postings. Is there an Anglican ‘elephant in the room’, or a ‘beast that cannot be named’? I saw three senior professionals shaken, when all were perturbed by evidence of savage or sadistic bullying of a ministry trainee. Attempts to register concern met opposition or resistance. The bewildered professionals were amazed at how Anglican Church leaders refused to accept full responsibility for dreadful practices. The scale and severity of the crisis being flagged up was stunning. Yet senior Church leaders just sidestepped away from taking full responsibility for the savage maltreatment of Church members. Our denomination is engaged in suicidal self-destruction, and this cannot be stopped until independent protection of adults and children is ubiquitous across absolutely every diocese. A very small number, of distant-remote-independent legal officers, is what will finally collapse the attempts of our bishops (or archbishops) to routinely cover up savagery.
Thanks for sharing your experience James. It’s like a nettle in the room that nobody is prepared to grasp. Its honestly quite shocking how often I hear “I’m glad that you brought that up, I was thinking the same but didn’t want to say anything” when its quite literally their legal responsibility to bring it up, and ‘bringing it up’ carries social penalty. People I like, people who are loving, welcoming and kind. I can imagine how the conditions form for people to end up acting in anything but loving, welcoming and kind ways (there’s a spiritual tragedy there in many ways, but would be inappropriate I think to dwell) and am at a loss that there is so little in place to stop it.
In the mid 1970’s I was friends with a charismatic house cult here in Birmingham – I use the word ‘cult’ deliberately – which was led by a leader with clear vision and strong personality. He was essentially a decent man, with very strong, fixed ideas about how the new charismatic churches which were then beginning to emerge should be run. Sadly, it all went wrong. I remained friends with some of the members and, from them heard how the survivors had been shunned and ostracised by the other local churches – essentially we were left to pick up our own pieces. From what I remember reading about the Brain case, and have witnessed subsequently, that seems to be a pretty common occurrence.
It seems that so long as powerful ‘successful’ leaders put butts on seats, discernment and wisdom on the part of their superiors goes out of the window. My friends were under the ‘oversight’ of two prominent local charismatic leaders, one CofE, one Baptist (both now dead) but we hardly ever saw them. It was during a time when ‘community’ was the buzz word, even Bugbrook met with approval, and questioning was discouraged – you could easily be accused of quenching the Holy Spirit or otherwise obstructing the will of God.
I’ve thought often about this in subsequent years – the renewal movement was a reaction to – or rejection of – a top heavy and academic church structure, with an emphasis on freedom. All too easily that collapsed into chaos. But what effective structural oversight was there then, or now? It’s very hard to remove a ‘turbulent priest’ who is pretty well protected by the church structure and entrenched attitudes. The old term for a vacancy, interregnum or ‘between reigns’ defines the problem. Via the various organisations, including the EA and others, we were constantly told that ‘faith is spelled r-i-s-k’ and if we didn’t take risks (like the NOS) then we weren’t stepping out in faith. But, in the face of complacency and conformity, how successful can such hopes be?
We seem to be caught between two equal rocks, a Scilla and a Charybidis of responsible freedom and accountability, both for the overall organisation and groups within it. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any easy centre ground – and in that I fear we’re reflecting the mess in the wider community from which we’re drawn. And, no, there aren’t any easy answers that I can think of.
Naming the beast in Anglicanism is very helpful, even if no magical or immediate answer to cultist leadership practice is obvious.
Anglican cultism cannot bear (survive) the prospect of independent oversight of bullying-abuse-harassment allegations.
The UK and Irish scene tells a very plain story:-
1) Archbishop Welby of Canterbury had to go in 2024!
2) Archbishop John of Bangor had to go in 2025!
3) Primus Strange remains in Scotland, but did failure to follow the Torrance report grossly undermine credibility, and did Bishop Dyer eventually have to go in 2026?
4) A 9 June 2026 BBC SPOTLIGHT documentary-FAITH AND FAILINGS-exposes dreadful past and recent cases in the Irish Anglican Church. Should heads roll?
5) ‘Woke’ slavery reparations, and a recent ‘interfaith’ photo scandal, leave Archbishop Mullally exposed. Her failure to address CoE crises is cringeworthy.
what about:
The Makin report was due “by the end of April.” Rico Tice left on 26 April.
On 18 January 2024, the National Safeguarding Team confirmed that the Makin review would be “received by the end of April with a view to publication as soon as practically possible after that date.” That was the only firm date given. It was in the public domain. Anyone in the C of E knew it.
Tice announced his departure on 26 April. Four days before the deadline.
His stated reason — “a church that no longer affirms Biblical orthodoxy, especially with regard to preaching repentance” — is a position he had been articulating publicly since at least 2018. It was not new. It did not require a specific date. It could have been deployed in 2019, 2021, or 2023 with equal force. The specific trigger he names — Prayers of Love and Faith — was four months old by the time he left. The vote was 12 December 2023.
The only thing that was time-specific to April 2024 was the Makin report’s deadline.
Under Protecting All God’s Children, in force from 2004, where are the documented referrals from All Souls Langham Place regarding John Smyth?” The answer: There aren’t any.
Stott, Bewes, Palmer, Tice …