By Edmund Weiner
In this guest post Edmund Weiner, a Iwerne alumnus, reassesses, in the light of Graystone’s book, his attitude to the Iwerne camps and the wider evangelical constituency of the Church of England. Among his memories, he makes the telling observation that the Iwerne camps did not implant into his mind any systematic structure of Christian teaching. What remains in his memory are the words and music of CSSM choruses, a prominent feature of camp worship. His post Iwerne experience in evangelicalism, which eventually led to a ‘parting company’ with the movement, is explored. The reader obtains a flavour in this piece of the way that one Iwernite pilgrim negotiated his way through and beyond the evangelical institutions of his youth. We are given some new insights with which to understand better what, to some of us, is still a strange Christian culture. – Editor
In my previous contribution to this blog, I rather dismissed the suggestion that Iwerne was a cult. But reading Bleeding for Jesus has disturbed and shaken my previously quite positive attitude to Iwerne. I agree with the general feeling that labelling the movement a cult is not particularly helpful. The important thing is to identify the actual quality of Iwerne that underlies the feeling that the label cult could apply. In what I say below I’m trying to identify from my personal experience what that might be.
I parted company with the con-evo Anglican church thirty years ago (I was a committed Christian before joining it). Subsequently, I associated the bad experiences that led me to leave it, but which nonetheless dogged me for at least another decade, with the general ethos of evangelicalism that I picked up as a fervent member of my university Christian Union. I did not especially connect it with the Iwerne Minster camps which I attended during my undergraduate years fifty years back. In fact I tended to look back on the Iwerne experience slightly more positively, or perhaps more indulgently, than on my experiences in the CU, the various churches that I later attended, and the other evangelical groups that I belonged to.
But after reading Graystone I now regard my pleasant feelings about those camps with a certain degree of suspicion. For one thing, why have I not got — and why did I not have, twenty-five years ago, before ageing set in — the slightest memory of any of the talks given to the whole camp, or of any of the numerous Bible readings and Bible studies for officers and senior campers, which I attended? It’s odd, because the sentimental CSSM choruses that we all sang, over and over, are stamped on my memory: I could sing you a dozen of them if you could endure it! Were these the emotionally-charged honey which carried the pill of Iwerne teaching into my system? By contrast, I can certainly remember bits and pieces from Bible readings and Bible studies in the Christian Union, where the atmosphere, though quite intense, nevertheless partook much more of the general feel of university life, in which you discussed and critiqued your ideas, and your peers with different beliefs could scrutinize them.
The Iwerne setting was very different from this. The academic world, the family world, the normal world, were all shut out. Everyone in the group was on side. Everyone around you was ultra friendly. You were kept frantically busy from morning to night, so that when the talks and studies came round, you were ready to relax all your faculties and give yourself over to whatever was on offer. The use of isolation, intense friendliness, exhausting activities, heightened emotion, and simple, direct teaching have been identified as key elements in brainwashing. Now, I certainly don’t believe that we were brainwashed coercively, as people were under communism or still are within movements widely labelled as religious cults. I think it was a great deal more subtle. My hypothesis is that we were enticed into brainwashing ourselves. I think it was a profound inner pressure rather than an outward one.
Clearly, successfully conditioned Iwernites to end up with very similar sets of beliefs, similar ways of speaking, dressing, and even wielding filofaxes, but I wonder now whether this is driven not so much by a need to conform to a group per se, as by an inner attitude, willingly adopted, that imperceptibly controls a person’s whole being: an ‘interior cult’, one might call it.
I did not become a Iwernite. After being let go by Iwerne, without any warnings, reproaches, or even expressions of regret from them, I continued life as an ‘ordinary’ evangelical for twenty years. But far from settling into a cheerful routine of believing and doing all the right things, I constantly questioned and examined the Christian assumptions and practices around me. There was an ongoing inner dialogue. I tried earnestly to make my understanding of the evo Way work. I wanted it to do for me what it said on the tin. It never quite did. I tried charismaticism in various forms. I frequently reached the point of disillusion, but something within repeatedly drew me back to what I came to think of as an ‘absolutist’, all-or-nothing commitment. The final such rebound brought me into a church splinter group with various extreme ideas, such as manipulative ‘prayer counselling’. The year we spent with them was extremely deleterious for me and my family. Its one and only benefit was that I finally woke up to the toxicity of evangelicalism (as I had practised it) and liberated myself from it.
What I’m saying in a perhaps long-winded way is that I’m now beginning to think that the toxic attitude that heavily influenced my thinking for twenty years was not caught in a general way from the CU, but was implanted quite specifically by the refined methodology of Iwerne. I’ve called it ‘absolutism’. I’m quite prepared to concede that some people have an element in their make-up that predisposes them to it more than others (my wife, for example, never caught the bug). But that doesn’t lessen the fact that it’s deeply embedded in Iwerneism. It’s an all-or-nothing teaching that ‘Bash’ imbibed from his mentor R. A. Torrey: the idea of ‘total surrender’ to God.
I never succeeded in ‘surrendering’ fully to God, but spent years feeling guiltily that this was really what you should do. The people who teach this doctrine have ingeniously seized the high moral ground, since every Christian who disagrees with it thereby makes himself or herself feel like a half-hearted, compromising worldling. However, I’m inclined to think that at least some of those who successfully ‘surrender’ to God in this way undergo, not a genuine experience of God’s grace, but a dangerous act of psychological self-mutilation that can lead them into callousness and exploitative behaviour. I could say more, but I’ll leave it at that.
Thanks Edmund, I found this really insightful.
A very insightful self examination which helps those who have had no experience of this world and it’s says.
My first thought is that if the “absolutist” view were correct, such adherence should excise the parable of the Prodigal Son from their bibles.
It would be good to have a list of teachings that were found at Iwerne but not in UCCF, or at Keswick, or in Conservative Evangelical or indeed Pentecostal parishes (the latter typically agree in full on the doctrine but added other bits).
To my knowledge, the overlap was very large. Is it therefore a matter of degree of emphasis – e.g. on ideas like total surrender?
Other than that, if the idea is that conservatism or biblicism on doctrine is a deviation, that does not stand up historically. The vast majority of churches have always been – for better or worse – both of these things.
And in case anyone might doubt the truth of Chris’s final paragraph above, here is Kirsopp Lake: “The Bible and the corpus theologicum of the Church are on the fundamentalist side.” This testimony is all the more striking when one learns of Lake’s dubious motives for taking holy orders, as well as his son’s remark that “I do not believe that theology entered very much into his sermons”!
Why examine only beliefs? It is possible to postulate that it is practices which form identity, habit and character. And it is the practices of the Iwerne phenomenon, as they developed, which this piece puts most in question – at least on my reading. The theology we espouse and the theology we enact can be different: I know of at leat two rather dramatic examples of this in a Iwerne context (though I never attended the camps). “By you fruits you shall know them …” and not be what they say they believe – if I read my Bible correctly.
Probably your youth and relative inexperience were factors in making you more susceptible. We all tend to be more susceptible until we have garnered more experiences and birthdays. The awful thing is that bad influences like this experienced early in life often do have a lingering bad effect. Thank you for an enlightening blog. Hope you are in a better place now.
Yes, thank you. Immaturity definitely contributed. But I think this form of belief encourages and prolongs immaturity.
Thinking about it for a few hours,” absolutist “ theology is essential for those who seek to dominate, but is wholly unnecessary for those whose priority is to serve.
Thinking of the man who above all fits the category of “priority is to serve”, how might his theology be described?
Wounded healer?
Thanks for sharing your growing pains, Edmund. Appreciated.
I had to fine tune some of what I learned from Iwerne as well, in some instances strongly, but in others only marginally. Still, there was a great deal that I learned then that I still appreciate and hold on to. Regarding total commitment to the Lord, I still believe that “if he is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all.” I forget who said that – can anyone advise? I don’t know where I heard it.
But in the main, the emphasis on reading the Bible, having a ‘quiet time’, learning verses like Romans 3:23 and 6:23, Rev 3:20, John 3:16 etc I found excellent. I had a repertoire of 300 learned verses by the time I was twenty-two which I still have now, and find very useful.
I think my biggest concern was the idea that you should not rush into marriage, and if possible delay it altogether. I don’t think this was or is a helpful idea to present to people, even if it was or is wise advice. Better to say something like, “personally, I decided not to marry until I was such and such an age, and it has served me well.” Testimony is more helpful than instruction, in other words.
Finally, I met a retired minister this week, who told me of his experience as follows. “There was a young person going off to college, and I said to him, ‘set your alarm for 0730 and make sure you have a quiet time each morning, before breakfast at eight and lectures at nine’. Six months later, when I met him again, he said it was the best thing anyone had ever said to him. But then I said the same thing to another young person going off to college, and when I met him six months later, he was very upset, saying he couldn’t do it and I had burdened him down and caused him to feel so guilty.”
Perhaps the conclusion to draw from that is that we are all unique, and respond in different ways: one person’s brain washing may be another person’s soul nourishing. The example of John chapter four comes to mind, where Jesus clearly had the right touch with the Samaritan woman (look at the outcome). He only ever did what he saw the father doing, John 5:19, not a verse I heard quoted at Iwerne incidentally, and maybe we should aim to do the same in advising others.
As regards remembering talks, I recall very few of them indeed. I remember a tape one from 1990 given by Paul Cain on Jeremiah 33:1, and a taped talk on Prophecy today by David Pawson I heard in the mid eighties. That’s it, out of around ten thousand!
Songs are much easier to memorise. Indeed, if I listen to a pop song with its inbuilt repetitions, I end up with an ear worm if I am not careful.
Similarly with meals – I can recall a few outstanding ones from more than a month ago, but not many. The important things was that I ate them three times a day and absorbed the nourishment.
A good cook has imbibed the principles and can deliver great food from the materials with which they are presented. They do not learn recipes by rote. Similarly good jazz musicians know the theme then understand the chord structures and can create relevant music spontaneously because it is the musicality which has been imbibed – not the routine reproduction of notes. I think our Christian lives need to be more Keith Floyd and Django Reinhardt – less repeating other people’s efforts. I’m never impressed by people quoting Bible verses and made a deliberate decision never to deliberately learn Chapter and Verse numbers which are routinely used to show off and dominate. They exclude those not brought up in that tradition. The numbers are, of course,not strictly scriptural!
In response to David Pennant, the quote you included from a retired minister was almost word for word what Jonathan Fletcher said to excuse his behaviour.
‘Finally, I met a retired minister this week, who told me of his experience as follows. “There was a young person going off to college, and I said to him, ‘set your alarm for 0730 and make sure you have a quiet time each morning, before breakfast at eight and lectures at nine’. Six months later, when I met him again, he said it was the best thing anyone had ever said to him. But then I said the same thing to another young person going off to college, and when I met him six months later, he was very upset, saying he couldn’t do it and I had burdened him down and caused him to feel so guilty.”’
Who was the retired minister?
Yes indeed, Tiger Tea: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9JF2CI1odI&ab_channel=TheTelegraph at 2:20
The pingbacks are worth reading! The Reader who noticed that the Mission Plan included areas that would be under water by the time the plan was realised! Less funny is the story of the cleric who chased down an allegation of abuse and secured a criminal conviction, and had a CDM taken out against him for his pains.
‘The particular form of uncompromising evangelical theology, combined with public school culture and an authoritarian atmosphere, creates an environment in which abuse is almost inevitable. You can’t believe the sorts of things these people believe about God without it making a terrible mess somewhere.’ Taken from:
http://journeyman.online/book-review-bleeding-for-jesus-john-smyth-and-the-cult-of-iwerne-camps-by-andrew-graystone/
I came across this review of Graystone’s book by a former member of Emmanuel Chuch Wimbledon. The interaction of Iwerne with Jonathan Fletchers abusive ways is also discussed. I believe this is an important testimony.
Maybe it is; I’ll look at the review when I have a break from work. But I’d be interested to know what what are the “things about God” whose belief is claimed to lead to a “terrible mess” e.g. out of the attributes, whether cataphatic or apophatic, listed in say the Westminster Confession or any number of classic Protestant statements of faith. Hopefully the review will expand with some pointers.
One of the ‘things about God’ that I learned as a conservative evangelical is that God has a terrible temper, and is capable of inflicting the most frightful punishments on those who fail to measure up to his impossibly high standards. In theory Christians are OK as long as we trust and obey and cling on to our faith until the bitter end – but somehow the anger, the fear, and the danger seemed more real than the assurance.
No doubt much of this reflected my father’s own temper and the punishments he meted out. But then, he was another conservative evangelical abuser.
Did Lord Justice Fulford fly into a “temper” when he sentenced Wayne Couzens last month? Please don’t trivialise issues by using misleading terms. So, God is strict – and? So are the laws of physics – see how a slight deviation out of tolerances can spell disaster for an aircraft etc.
I read the review and was no clearer about what the author was getting at.
I wasn’t trivialising. That was the impression I had of God until I was well into my twenties. You might be familiar with the emotionally repressed English conservative evangelical – and again, you might not, I’m not presuming. But I grew up among American evangelicals and with a father who was a noted conservative evangelical preacher, but emotionally unstable.
There are plenty of Old Testament, and even New Testament verses which those who want to portray God as angry can and do draw on. Have you never read Jonathan Edwards’ sermon ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’? I grew up on the Reformation, and the preachers’ mantra that you have to ‘dangle people over hell’ and ‘break them’ before they can be saved.
I actually don’t entirely agree with Andrew Graystone’s view that evangelicalism (as distinct from conservative evangelicalism) is intrinsically damaging. And there are abusers from every theological perspective. But I do see some aspects of evangelical theology and spirituality that can all too easily be exploited by those wanting to do harm.
I’m totally with you on that, Janet. And you know that I am sorry that your father gave you such a punitive and violent image of God, and thankful that you have found the different, loving God now.
I don’t see how we can eradicate abuse within the church, until we deal with the abusive theology/beliefs that underpin it. I don’t think its just that abusers exploit such beliefs; I think it fosters abuse.
The idea that God would test Abraham by asking him to kill his son; the penal substitution model of atonement; some of the ‘texts of horror’ about rape and sexual violence; these paint a picture of an abusive, violent and sadistic God, so why would Christians not model themselves on him?
Its enlightening to reflect on who are the theologians and church influences calling out such abusive theology? To begin with, almost exclusively womanist, feminist and liberation theologians, it seems to me, though happy to be corrected.
I wrote my rant before reading your post, Jane! Quite right.
Jonathan Fletcher, in his book, was completely dismissive of (the science of) psychology, the way the human mind works, describing it as psycho babble. In one stroke he removed arguments about the effect his actions might have had on mental health.
The rigidity of thinking sometimes found in conservative evangelicals can embrace exact sciences (if such a thing exists) and ignore the more fluffy ones. Other persuasions also have rigidity.
Some of us over time have discovered the rigidity of mind can fracture easily and new things have to be learned to piece our lives together after an ineffective “set” at an early age. The reviewer makes a lot of sense to me.
Play fair, Dan. Janet was making a dramatic point, rather effectively I thought. It does look like that. The C19th Gothic model of the atonement is awful. “God wanted to kill someone and didn’t much care who”! So the one perfect man gets it in the neck. It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t speak of love. It’s not “strict”, it’s going to put off any rational person. Rant over.
Not specifically to you Athena so please don’t take this personally it just seemed a suitable place to interject my comment. Often, and one can see it on this blog, the theology of conservative evangelicals is described as bad, dangerous, and poisonous within the Church. Any who espouse it are to be caught and hopefully ejected or be deradicalised of their ancient beliefs. Is it any wonder then that we see the Church of England shrinking as numbers turn away to find more conducive places to be. That place may be good and helpful or it may be decidedly ‘dodgy’ but a welcome is seen that they feel lacking in the CofE ? A lack of respect will only increase the dispersion. I must add that behind it all there are plenty of Aunt Sallys who are brought in to assist in the ejection probably because sensible, reasoned arguments are not seen to be as effective in the battle. That’s my rant over with apologies to those contributors who are not like that.
I’m not offended, Leslie. I know we differ. I’m glad you’re still here to put another side.
To enter this discussion would mean a longer look at the atonement and at our trinitarian theology that ‘God was in Christ reconciling us to himself’. Child abuse by an angry God is so far from our gospel of the grace of God as the East is from the West. One abused pastor who has been well used to dealing with abused sufferers yet holds firmly to the substitionery nature of the atonement gives his understanding here.
https://www.9marks.org/article/pastoring-abuse-sufferers-with-the-doctrine-of-penal-substitutionary-atonement/
[I realised I posted this on the wrong thread. Stephen, please feel free to remove it from there.]
I was initially reticent to comment much, out of concern that the thread would get derailed and Stephen would reasonably exercise his prerogative to trim out the diverting posts. But now that many such have been left on record, in principle it would seem permissible for me to say a good deal more without compromising his efficient editorial management of the blog.
However, I will confine myself to just one point, which possibly hasn’t been raised before, and to which therefore I’d ask for everyone’s serious attention.
To illustrate the significance of the point I’m about to make, I would like to draw a contrast between the present subject-matter and the Ravi Zacharias scandal.
Steve Baughman, the freelance American attorney who first investigated RZ’s academic credential claims, who then when he discovered that they were overblown, attempted to draw wider attention to the deception, found himself facing a dilemma. He knew that as an atheist his testimony would likely be regarded with suspicion by the Christian leaders to whom it was most important to make the matter known. On the other hand, he was mature enough to realise that if he attempted to say nothing about it at first, there was a risk that someone would ‘out’ him as an atheist before he could self-declare, and then he would immediately be suspected of craftiness in his dealings. So he decided that it would be better to be open about it at the outset, even though it still meant that many of the relevant Christians found it hard to take him seriously. And he has stated as much for the record, concerning his strategy. But there’s another aspect that’s worth mentioning. Having heard a fair bit from him recently, I think he also takes care not to criticise Christianity as such – in fact he often says how much he admires many Christians and finds Christian philosophy interesting, etc. And above all, while there’s been plenty of recognition of the danger of evangelical celebrity culture and what Baughman calls the “evangelical industrial complex”, neither he nor anyone else I’ve ever heard of has attempted to claim a causal link between Christian theology as such, and Ravi’s various offences.
Now let’s turn to the other side. If theological liberals truly wish Iwerne types, or indeed CEs more widely, to truly learn lasting practical lessons from the Smyth scandal and its aftermath, what do they think would be a good strategy for doing so? Is it to come out all guns blazing and blaming CE theology per se as the direct logical progenitor of Smyth’s shocking deeds? Do you seriously think that’s going to be effective, any more than the wind in Aesop’s fable managed to blow the man’s coat off? Let me tell you frankly: you are shooting yourselves in the foot and sawing off the branch on which you sit. So there’s one respect in which your method is the exact opposite of Mr Baughman’s…
[ctd.]
And so is the other respect. Having first demanded absolute openness from the Iwerne fraternity, few if any of you have been open enough to declare your true theological colours at the outset, as though pretending to be neutral participants in the fray. Occasionally someone will drop a side hint such as “…in my conservative evangelical days…”, without ever letting on just how far from such doctrine they have long since moved.
And having overrun one permitted post length, I think I’ll pause there and leave some of you to reflect very, very carefully on what you are doing and the way that you’re doing it. Search your hearts as before the Lord. Do you really sincerely want Iwerne’s ways permanently reformed, or are you just venting a moss-grown grudge?
Thanks for these last 2 comments which I value Dan. I read Baughm’s book a while before the abuse scandal broke and I can see the dilemma he faced about communicating his findings and being dismissed. As it happened, Ravi Z was far worse than we realised.
I consider myself to be a committed Christian and have read the bible daily for over 40 years. Probably I’m still evangelical, although the strictest conservatives would dispute that, and some might even consider me apostate.
The congregation of my upbringing would be strongly discouraged from reading this blog, except for a couple of trusted hardliners who would be tasked with monitoring it and keeping tabs on other (considered unsound) church leaders.
A few genuinely open people come to this place for information, and over time a picture builds of the issues being discussed and it’s possible to consolidate a comprehensive view of power abuse. This is also a place where survivors of such abuse can connect and realise their experiences were not unique.
I don’t really think Iwerne people, for example, can easily be approached even, let alone changed. Ditto strict con-evos. I’d be delighted to be wrong on this.
The appearance of passion and emotion in these discussions is a significant sign. It can be the prelude to change but also re-entrenchment. The latter is more likely.
However there will be many folk, more on the periphery of congregations, perhaps newbies, perhaps parents thinking of sending their children on church camps, for example, who will want to think very carefully about the cultures they are submitting to.
In theological terms I tend to put more store on leaders who act with integrity and discount views of those who bully or are demonstrable hypocrites. I don’t have a badge for this at present.