There is a story that is coming out of the area of South London where a long time ago I used to work as a clergyman. It concerns a clergyman, originally from Uganda, who was until 2011 the Vicar of the parish next door to where I had been in the 1970s. His alleged misdemeanour is a strange one. It was to officiate at the marriages of people who had no right to be in this country and thus provide them with the right of residency. The numbers of couples involved came to almost 400 over a three year period. The story, as recorded in the newspapers, described couples queuing up to be married, sometimes changing for the service in the church loos and normally having no witnesses or guests.

Having been a clergyman for many years, there is one part of the story I can identify with. There is the moment when by handing a green certificate to a happy couple, you are party to a fundamental change in their life story. Because of something you have helped to set up, you have become part of a life-changing moment in the couples’ lives. You are a bit like a midwife to a new birth.

Obviously the clergyman concerned may have been motivated by money and there was a missing £50,000 sent off to his homeland of Uganda that had not been declared to the diocese. But the crime seems an extraordinary one to commit for money as it is extremely hard to hide evidence of this particular crime. Also as the South London Vicar knew, you cannot conduct bogus weddings without the cooperation of others. So in court with the Vicar is a verger and a PCC secretary. They presumably were complicit with all the fake paper work that had to be sent off the Registrar at the end of every quarter. While filling up registers is not hard, it does take an eye for detail. It is no fun having a query from an eagle-eyed registrar in Basingstoke who spots some discrepancy or actual mistake. I am also puzzled by the fact that the same registrar, that sometimes queried my marriage returns, did not apparently wonder why the numbers of weddings in the parish in South London had shot up from 6 a year to 200. Do registrars not communicate with Archdeacons when something deeply suspicious takes place?

There are various aspects of the story that do not add up and I shall never know the answers. But I want to add my commentary on the story by noting that it may not have been primarily a matter of greed that sent this particular clergyman apparently down the path of illegality and crime. I would suggest that at the heart of the crime, there is also the possibility that it may have all began when the Vicar found for himself enjoying the power of taking marriages. Possibly he learnt to enjoy this exercise of power in people’s lives so much that the whole thing went to his head. Power is something is addictive and insofar as a Vicar exercises real power in acting as a registrar for the state, this enjoyment of power may eventually come to be a motive for crime.

It is hard and probably wrong to speculate about the motives of another person’s actions. But it is, I believe, instructive to think about the way that the love of power is at the heart of most wrong-doing and crime. Gaining money is of course one particular manifestation of human power games but Christian ministry in fact offers multiple ways of enjoying power. One can almost say that for the wrong kind of personality, the ‘vocation’ to ministry might be a calling to the enjoyment of privilege and power. Most enjoyment of power in ministry can be achieved honourably without illegality, but when power is through the naked pursuit of money or sex, the minister at some point will be tripped up. In the case of the Vicar who is alleged to have made money taking illegal weddings, it may have been a case of two sorts of power games colliding in one person. As the chances of getting away with a crime on such a scale are fairly slight, one might claim to see an addictive, almost self-destructive aspect to the Vicar’s actions. Whether the Vicar was addicted to power of money or the power of having control and influence over people’s lives, there was a kind of recklessness about his behaviour which suggests he was strongly driven in a self-destructive way. But there is an important difference between the moment of satisfaction in handing over a certificate to a happy couple to the desperate murky manipulation of the system which is alleged in this case. One was, hopefully, a legitimate satisfaction as part of the role, the other a grubby grabbing attempt to bolster up deep inadequacies. But once again we enter the realm of speculation and hypothesis.

Every church leader is given the responsibility of exercise of power. Some do it honourably and well while others find themselves propping up character weaknesses by using the same power in a self-directed way. When power is used badly by those in charge in any institution, then someone gets hurt. Abuse of individuals in the church is always through the abuse of power. That is why we keep coming to this subject and reflecting on its manifestations from one of its many angles.

I have already, in an earlier post, mentioned the preference of the Christian Right in America for Old Testament law rather than the mercy-laden commands of Jesus. Much of the current rhetoric aimed at homosexuals, is indebted to passages from the Book of Leviticus. Previous hate-targets of decades gone by include those involved in abortion, feminism and secular humanism and all these ‘evils’are attacked with similar quotes from the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The question might arise as to why there is this obsessional attachment to books of Jewish law, while apparently ignoring the commands of Jesus to love enemies, serve others and practice mercy and forgiveness. The reason for this Old Testament approach to society and its ordering can, to a degree, be laid at the door of one R.J. Rushdoony, an American of Armenian extraction. He wrote a huge three volume work in 1960s, known as the Institutes of Biblical Law. This was modelled on Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion. In this work, Rushdoony proposed that Old Testament law should be applied to modern society. We have met the word ‘theocratic’ to describe the thinking of the Witnesses. The word to describe Rushdoony’s thinking was a similar one ‘theonomy’, which means the application of the law of God. He argued for a Christian theonomy to be applied to society. Thus, in accordance with Mosaic law, the death sentence would be administered for homosexuality, adultery, incest, lying about one’s virginity, bestiality, witchcraft, idolatry or apostasy, public blasphemy, false prophesying, kidnapping, rape and bearing false witness in a capital case. I cheerfully copied this list from a web-site, wondering if Rushdoony had left anything off. Apparently there is one death deserving crime omitted and that is drunkardness. Also, Sabbath breaking is also quietly left off the list, even though the Old Testament thought it worthy of the death sentence.

Behind this nutty version of Biblical interpretation is a visceral hatred of democracy. ‘Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies’, Rushdoony is reported to have said. ‘Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristocracy.’ Such sentiments of course fit neatly into a right-wing paternalistic version of politics, and it is not surprising that his ideas have been embraced by another version of politics known as Dominionism. This is a right wing political vision that embraces the death penalty for all the categories mentioned above and proposes a Christian dominated system for American government. This combines a laissez-faire attitude towards economics and the violent oppression of all thinking and actions that are not approved of.

It was probably obvious to Rushdoony and his followers that his political vision was intemperate and totally impracticable. But the very existence of his massive tome and its apparent closeness to Calvin provided it with great influence both on Calvinist Christianity as well as other right wing forces at work in America. The idea that society can be run according to the Laws of the Old Testament sounds very grand until you start to think it through in practice. Quite apart from whether we wish to stone a public blasphemer or a Sabbath breaker, there is the unpalatable picture of group of unelected men gathering together to administer God’s law in his name. When they are no checks and balances in a system, the consequences for any society are potentially catastrophic. There is nothing to stop such a system becoming similar to that which prevailed in Nazi Germany during the 30s and 40s. The one who takes the power is the one with the guns and the largest ego. Even if such a scenario is hard to imagine even in the States, where guns and survivalist ideas are widespread, such ideas can still become influential in the thinking of mainstream parties. That is where Rushdoony and his ideas have become important as well as dangerous. They are not an actual political blueprint but they act as a kind of evil political virus, working on the imaginations and thinking of those who think they want to bring ‘Christian’ ideas into society.

Why do I bring up the rantings of Rushdoony on this blog? The reason for this is that much of the right-wing rhetoric that spills out against the rights of women and gays has already been rehearsed in the pages of Rushdoony and his followers for decades. Ranting against ‘public blasphemers and false prophesying’ may have been quietly suppressed but pressure can still be placed on the wicked, in the form of those who practice gay sex. Today in the Anglican Church, we who suffer from the poison of Christian homophobic vitriol, do so partly because of the dangerous rabid ideas of a fundamentalist preacher of 60 years ago. I need to repeat, once more, the simple observation that Jesus did not come to reinstate the harsh tenets of Old Testament law. He came to fulfil them, which in practice meant that he came to neutralise the poison, the bile and the hatred that flows through some of these texts. We cannot allow our thinking, political or religious, in any way to be influenced by an atrocious piece of writing which owes more to the murky depths of Fascist rhetoric of the 1930s than to anything emerging out of modern political or religious thought. Even when the origins of these primitive and bestial ideas have been long forgotten, we still need to be reminded how easily Christian thinkers have been prepared to drink at the cess-pit of extremist thought. We must not be among them!

It is a source of pride in many churches to have pew bibles for the use of every congregational member. I, for one, question why these Bibles are needed since each member of the congregation will have a Bible of their own at home. If having the complete text in front of them at every service is really important, then the Church leader could encourage them to bring their own copy.

What do I think is really being said when Bibles are provided for everyone in the pews? I offer my interpretation as it might apply to some more conservative churches. Followers of this blog will expect me to come up with a somewhat perverse interpretation of such an apparently innocent act, and they will not be disappointed. By giving my opinionated interpretation for this action, I hope, at least, to get us thinking about the use of the bible in church. While thinking about what pew bibles signify, we may also reflect on another related topic. This is the fact that among the churches, where Scripture is most outwardly honoured and respected through preaching and mission statements, there is also an apparent laziness among members when it comes to their knowing what the text actually says.

The placing of a Bible in front of each person is done in many places so that when the preacher refers to a particular text, the person in the pew can look it up. This will assume a facility for this kind of switching from book to book or from text to text and this ability is taken for granted in most Bible believing churches. There will be also the implication that the argument of the preacher has added weight and authority because it is supported by particular texts. The preaching is then perceived to be authoritative and this in turn will boost the status of the preacher. In other words the provision of pew bibles seems to link in with a particular somewhat ponderous style of preaching in that church. If I wanted to be critical of this style of preaching, I would describe it as tending towards being heavy and dogmatic. While taking its authority from scripture, the preaching will probably sit lightly on other sources of inspiration, for example, the images derived from nature or the wider culture. The style of preaching that I and many others would prefer, is one that can reflect on a passage, draw insights from everyday life and also seek to encourage an understanding of the mind of Jesus to deal with the business of living in the world.

The second reason for my not being enamoured of the pew bible idea concerns the way the bibles, that are used in this way, come to be thought of. I would suggest that the practice of focusing on single verses or even single phrases, gives the Bible a bitty quality. In other words, people get used to the idea that the best way to read it, is as a series of quotes or proof texts to support preaching. What is tacitly discouraged is the idea that the Bible should be read as a continuous narrative. From a cynical perspective, if anyone actually does read the Bible in this way, they might find out that certain strands of teaching are not precisely as they have been taught. Woman in one version of the Genesis text was created simultaneously with man (not after), seven pairs of some animals went into the Ark (not two) and you must not speculate where Cain’s wife (Genesis 4.17) came from! If you sit faithfully in the pew and only consult the verses the preacher tells you, then your little brain will never have to bother itself with these sorts of imponderable questions.

In the third place the choice of edition is important. There are some versions that are, on the basis of a few verses translated conservatively, considered ‘sound’ translations. The versions that are generally recognised to take a more scholarly approach to disputed passages are discouraged. In the New International Version, much favoured by conservatives, Isaiah 7.14 is translated as ‘virgin’ to reflect the conservative theology of the translators and their convictions about prophecy. The other versions, which are faithful to the actual Hebrew words, have the translation ‘young woman’ . The Revised Standard Version which first appeared around 1950 was publically burned in the streets in America for containing such a heretical translation of the Hebrew word ‘almah’. While overall the number of these disagreements across the versions are few and relatively minor, no conservative church would tolerate the current New Revised Standard Version. From a scholarly point of view it is considered the best translation, but this NRSV version is never found or read from in conservative churches.

For me, the provision of pew bibles contains the implied message that ordinary Christians should not read their Bibles except under supervision of a preacher. It is easier to go along with the preacher’s pronouncements about the bible as a ‘God-breathed’ text, if you are in fact ‘protected’ from reading it for yourself. For anyone who does in fact read the text properly, the claims of inerrancy for the narrative may very quickly become fantastic and unsustainable. The faithful and loyal members of the ‘bible-believing’ church will thus often desist from the attempt to study it for themselves, precisely because they want to avoid feelings of dissonance that the reading of the actual text may stir up in them. For that reason the Bible continues to remain a virtually unknown text for countless thousands who nevertheless will express great admiration and respect for it. What remains in their memories are up to a hundred verses committed to memory because they are frequently mentioned from the pulpit. Psalm 23 can be recited virtually from memory and most people will know 1 Corinthians 13 and John 3.16. But these will be like choice pearl nuggets mined from the vast but unknown depths of the biblical text. The bible in conservative churches remains the world’s bestselling book which is the least likely to be actually read. Sadly, for perhaps different reasons, most Christians share with conservatives an indifference and ignorance about the content and meaning of Scripture. How many times in Bible study groups have I had to give page numbers? The members do not know which Testament a particular book is in, let alone whereabouts in the Bible it is to be found!

Several decades ago, the distinguished sociologist Max Weber made some important observations about the nature of charisma. I hope my readers will not mind if I record his ideas in a less than precise way, but the gist of what he noted was as follows. Charisma is a kind of effervescence that attaches itself to an individual in the realm of politics or religion. The charismatic leader will infect the followers with a sense of the beyond, new possibilities and new horizons. This community of followers will have an energy about it, and for a time the energy of this original vision will be sustained. I do not remember what Weber said about the way the charismatic energy was renewed, but the important thing that follows is what Weber calls routinisation. This process involves a collapse of the original energy. This takes place when the founder has died, moved on or simply lost the early vision.

Since Weber’s day, no one has seriously questioned his observations that enthusiasm gives way to routine and flatness. Obviously there are countless other things to be said about charisma in a religious setting but the basic claim of Weber about what happens to charisma has not been challenged. Take any group of Christian set on fire by ‘enthusiasm’ and thirty years down the line the nature of that enthusiasm will been transformed into dull old rules and regulations.

I mention Weber’s observations in connection with the work of Trevor Dearing among villages in Essex that Chris raises in a comment. Without knowing about these original missions I would expect that little remains of the ‘fire’ that spread across these villages in 1970s. If ‘revival’ actually hit a parish church, the next generation of ‘routinising’ Christians will have elbowed out the remaining enthusiasts. Some few might have joined an independent church and tried, probably in vain, to keep alive the original excitement. The churches that they belong to now are subject to the same social forces that Weber described and probably if any of us who strayed into one of them, we would not detect any of their early history. The churches that buck this Weberian trend the longest, are those that are found in towns, i.e. with congregations well above 50. A different dynamic again is found in the largest churches with congregations of 200+.

Chris is right to suggest that there are places that have congregations which are strongly fundamentalist in tone which were once touched by charismatic enthusiasm. But I would maintain that the fundamentalism style is often all that remains to them from the original package. They have a loyalty to ‘inerrancy’ doctrines, not because they are convinced by them, but because the original ‘prophet’ thought in this way. A loyalty to his vision is expressed by a loyalty to his theology. Now that much of the charismatic excitement has vanished, the prophet’s doctrine is all that remains to them. This is in fact a feature of many of our churches. There is a memory of something from the past, which is kept half-alive by the singing of tired ancient chorusses. The preaching may be about enthusiasm but there is normally little sign of it in practice, especially when the congregation numbers around 15 -20.

The reality that Weber pointed to is that vision and charisma are things that quickly fade unless they is renewed from within. Many of the people within the so-called ‘Charismatic-movement’ have realised this, and so we have the new ‘outpourings of the Spirit’ from places like Toronto, Penascola or Brownsville. To use a cooking analogy, these outpourings seem to be the old dishes which have been re-heated. Only a few will get to taste this food that has, with great difficulty, been kept warm. The normal way that this enthusiasm is mediated to ordinary Christians is by attending large gatherings like Spring Harvest, but most find it hard to take the excitement of the large group back into their local gatherings.

As someone who lived through the 70s and who followed the early days of the Charismatic movement with some interest, I was at the time deeply disappointed with the way things turned out. At the very start of the movement before it had been strangled by fundamentalist theology, there was a vision for a different future. Christian charisma, without its theological trappings, is in essence a spirituality. It is also a spirituality that allows Christianity to look with sympathy at other spiritual traditions across the world. As a spirituality of openness to the unseen, it can be compared to shamanic traditions, traditional African religions and the religions of the East which focus on spirituality before dogma. The charismatic contribution to the existence of a Christian tradition of healing is massive. I doubt very much whether the tradition of laying on of hands would exist at all without the charismatic impulse. At the same time this spirituality aspect of charisma receives absolutely nothing from the crude Protestant straightjacket which normally imprisons it in the West.

In this post I have appeared to say two contradictory things. One is to support Weber in his claim that ‘charisma’ invariably becomes routinised over time. The freshness of charismatic excitement cannot be sustained for very long within our Christian institutions. And yet I have hinted at another direction. I have suggested that were charisma to be released from the dogmatic straightjacket that Christians have placed it in, then it could be set free to sustain itself in a new way. It could be seen to be an impulse that exists within all spiritual traditions, including our own, which speaks of freedom, enthusiasm and newness. My own vision for the potential of charisma is at present a work in progress. All I can say at this moment is that my vision for it grows as I read and expose myself to spiritual traditions other than my own. This ‘work in progress’ may form part of my blog posts in future months.

(* I am of course talking about JWs but don’t want this article to pop up on searches by the supporters of said group. Just as I don’t enjoy having my door knocked on, neither would I enjoy an online attack.)

My blog posts have, up till this point, been confined to examining the behaviour of Christian bodies. I don’t intend to deviate from this, but I feel it appropriate to bring to attention published material that sets out how Witnesses deal with uncooperative and dissident members of their group. I make no claim to have ever involved myself with the Witnesses so what I write is based solely on what they have written themselves. This material opens us up to a world-view and a mentality which may or may not help us to understand the mindset of other extremist cultic groups. I shall leave that for others to judge. What is true is that ‘religion’, as exemplified by the Witnesses leadership, can think and act in what seems to be a completely cruel and heartless manner towards some of their own membership.

Apart the practice of refusing blood transfusions, the practice of ‘disfellowshipping’ is the one that most disturbs the general public when encountering Witnesses. Two quotations of chilling brutality sets out the context of ostracism, as practised by the group. ‘The one who deliberately does not abide by the congregation’s decision, puts himself in line to be disfellowshipped’. One can only speculate what the words ‘abide by the congregation’s decision’ actually means. One imagines that it basically believing without question what one is told. A second quote: ‘any attachments to the disfellowshipped person, whether these be ties of personal friendship, blood relation or otherwise, must take second place to the theocratic disciplinary action that has been taken.’

I pause to consider what might be the meaning of the innocent sounding word ‘theocratic’. It literally means the rule of God, as opposed to other systems like democracy or even non-democratic systems like Marxism or Fascism. To the untutored ear it sounds like a good idea, in that brings divine values into society, rather than relying on the untidy methods of democratic debate for political decisions to emerge. In practice, there are always specially chosen groups of men, who have a ‘hot’ line to God and know exactly what his will is. History, even that of our own time, tells us exactly what theocracy actually looks like. Whether it is expressed in a Christian or Islamic form, it normally involves a fierce autocracy that suppresses any idea of cultural or social advance. It is conservative in its passionate embrace of the idea that nothing of any value can be discerned outside the group, or the society, it is trying to create. Education is about mastering the tools of literacy and numeracy but little more. Theocracy comes down hard on creative ideas or innovation, whether these are expressed among the Witnesses or in the so-called Caliphate in Iraq. To put it bluntly, you are more likely to survive in this ‘theocratic’ society if you have never eaten the apple of thinking for yourself.

Further instructions about the treatment of the ‘disfellowshipped’ follow. “Those in the congregation will not extend the hand of fellowship to this one, nor will they so much as say “Hello” or “Good-bye” to him. … Therefore the members of the congregation will not associate with the disfellowshipped one, either in the K. Hall or elsewhere. They will not converse with such one or show him recognition in any way”. Further instructions specify: ” we also avoid social fellowship with an expelled person, This will rule out joining him in a picnic, party, ball game, or trip to the mall or theatre or sitting down to a meal with him either in the home or in a restaurant.” While it is true that there have been adjustments to this system over the decades, the ‘system’ still comes down heavily on anyone who even questions, even inside themselves, the teachings of the movement. What we witness in these instructions is that people are encouraged to cut themselves off from others and silence them, not on grounds of dislike but because the Movement decides that this is right. There is a justification for this behaviour offered when instructions state: ” If you shun a person enough leaving her down and without friends, she will have no other alternative but to reintegrate the Movement and submit again to its control.” This sounds like a generous slave owner trying to recapture runaways! One’s heart goes out to such survivors who are the subject of such barbaric treatment.

I need hardly say that the line of ostracism and shunning loved ones in the Witnesses movement has caused massive unhappiness worldwide. That a body of religious leaders, at the instruction of those set over them, should decide to fracture so thoroughly human relationships of people they know well, is incomprehensible. Such a system, according to these dreadful injunctions, invites no sympathetic understanding from the outside world. Indeed it is hard to imagine how an individual could get close enough to study their beliefs and listen to them without finding their sanity and sense of identity under attack. I am not encouraged, after reading this material, even to extend the hand of friendship to those who come knocking at the door. I am even less inclined to embark on any discussion with them, knowing that our perspectives on the Bible and God are so far apart.

Witnesses are clearly outside the mainstream of Christian life in this country, but it is clear that they operate in ways that are practised by a variety of extreme religious groups and cults. What is interesting and unique about the JWs is that they have actually printed instructions for local leaders which we can read and study without having to get close to the group. We can begin to understand a deviant world of belief and practice and recognise that however much we may be enthusiastic for God, their so-called ‘ theocratic’ pattern of church life, is one that holds absolutely no attractions.

Having written over a hundred pieces for this blog, I ask myself whether I have got anything more to say. The answer is probably yes, as long as I keep reading and drawing on the insights of wiser people than myself. What does surprise me is that I have, more or less, not deviated away from the main theme of the blog, the abuse of Christians by other Christians. I sit down at my computer two or three times a week wondering which issue to speak about. Sometimes it is easy, sometimes I find it less straightforward. What keeps me going are two reasons. The first is the thought that some of this material in the blog may help victims of various kinds of Christian mistreatment to have a clearer understanding of the forces that have been deployed against them, intellectual and emotional. The second reason is perhaps more selfish. It is a recognition that if I keep writing things down, like a student writing essays for a university tutor, I am giving myself an extra incentive for keeping up my reading in fascinating areas of study. Without this incentive, I might wonder if there was any point of keeping myself informed. As a retired clergyman , I don’t have the stimulus of adult confirmation classes or discussion/teaching groups anymore. So you, my blog readers, are a kind of substitute ‘parish’ discussion group.

This brings me on to a second point. There is a small group who make comments, not always complimentary but all of them to the point. Without these comment makers, I would feel that I was speaking into a great silence so I am very grateful to all who do comment. Beyond the group who comment there are also others who come on to the blog more or less regularly but who do not say anything. Although most of these individuals are unknown to me by name, there are some who have written to me privately to let me know of their existence. I am extremely grateful to them for this. In some ways it is more encouraging to have a general expression of support than a strong reaction of disagreement to something I have said. As an encouragement to others, I am mentioning here the possibility of communicating with me direct, via the main page of the blog, or direct to my email. My email address is stephen@parsons262.orangehome.co.uk Talking to an invisible crowd has its own challenges.

As you all know the genesis of this blog was the letter sent by Chris Pitts to the Church Times in June 2013. This letter set out way in which Chris had suffered negative experiences at the hands of other Christians. Chris and I are regular telephone contact with each other and I try to reflect his concerns in the topics of the blog. His experiences are obviously grounded in a set of particular events, past and present. I have interpreted the theme of this blog within a wider context, without losing sight of the basic theme that Christians can and do hurt each other. Some of this hurt may be unconscious or unintentional, but a lot is caused by the crassness and cruelty of human beings who use power abusively. A particular complication is caused by the fact that there are theological systems that appear to encourage human cruelty, by the use of such techniques as shunning or ostracism. I have also spoken about the use of fear tactics in preaching. Both ostracism and fear tactics can be justified from the words of Scripture, but that fact does not, according to my thinking, remove them from needing to be scrutinised in accordance with our moral and ethical reasoning. There is something quite terrifying about evil being perpetrated from the words of a book that is supposed to promote life and goodness.

So this blog post is a commitment to carry on with my posts for the foreseeable future. My determination will be increased by hearing, even briefly, from those of you out there who follow but do not comment publically. There is a programme run by Google, called Analytics which gives me total of hits each day. I cannot completely interpret them as it is difficult to decide who are regular visitors and who are those who stumble on the blog by chance. For the record there are about 35 hits each day. Not a huge number but it is sufficient to encourage me to think that there some people, even though a small number, who think this project is worthwhile. I for one think it is!

Followers of this blog will have noticed that I do not resonate with various of the standard statements of Evangelical theology. In particular I have shown my unease with the standard, and to some, essential explanation of the death of Christ as a substitutionary atonement. My main objection to the doctrine is biblical. Granted that the doctrine can be read out of certain biblical texts, there are also other models. Logically, to be properly ‘biblical’, we should be prepared to hold all the models together and see them as different but complementary attempts to explain something that is by nature beyond explanation. My particular favourite model is that given in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Christ is seen to fulfil the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement. By his sacrificial death, he enters into the Holy of Holies, the actual presence of God. We who are his followers go with him into the heavenly realms. This theology is reflected in the passage in Hebrews 4.14, ‘Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession…..’

A second reason for querying the standard protestant explanation of Jesus’ death is that there is another branch of the church, the Orthodox, that have never given much attention to our Western preoccupation with doctrines that have as their aim the avoidance of Hell. I cannot of course in this short piece, do more than outline these differences but I want to begin with a much overlooked text in 2 Peter 1.4 that has inspired the Orthodox to develop theology in a different direction. The passage reads as follows: ‘Through these (power and knowledge) he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.’ This passage seems to have been unnoticed by the Augustinian/Calvinistic strain of Christianity that wanted all Christians to ‘grovel’ in their utterly depraved wickedness. Instead of being required to wallow in filth and depravity, the Christian is being invited to contemplate the possibility of sharing with Christ the divine nature itself. The same theme was expressed by Athanasius who in around 350 AD summed up the Incarnation in the famous words, ‘God became man so that man might become God.’

The Orthodox have developed a theology that is optimistic and more focused on the potential of human beings on their Christian journey than in emphasising how they are a hair-breadth away from Hell. I am one of many people in the West who appreciate these positive themes within Orthodox theology, while recognising that it has suffered from many reactionary conservative forces over the centuries that sometimes make it difficult for the Westerner to penetrate and properly appreciate it. But I would like to continue with this theme of an optimistic, hopeful theology about humankind that I find in the classic presentations of Eastern Orthodox teaching.

Orthodox theology has never downplayed the fact of Original Sin and indeed the disobedience of Adam is spoken about in many texts in strongly literal way. But although there is agreement with the West over the way that corruption has, through Adam, entered the entire human race, there is a softer tone in this presentation. After the fall, humankind still has some freedom and there is nothing to suggest that total guilt and depravity is what marks the human race. When presenting the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the Orthodox put a greater emphasis on the Resurrection than on the crucifixion. The Resurrection is the climax of his life and the full revelation of the way that God and the human race are joined in a burst of glory. The story of the Transfiguration is also celebrated as an anticipation of this triumphant proclamation that God has broken into our material world. The Crucifixion is also celebrated but it is never allowed, as in the West, to be separated from the Resurrection. The two belong together.

The life of the Christian following the Resurrection can be summed up in this single word implied in the 2 Peter passage, ‘deification’ or participation in the divine nature. The Orthodox point to other New Testament passages that imply this idea, notably the passage from the ‘High Priestly prayer’ in John 17. ‘As thou Father art in me and I in thee, so also may they be in us.’ Deification is a strong theme through the centuries and it undergirds what can be called Orthodox mysticism. The Orthodox also have a strong sense of the way that the human body is to be involved in spiritual practice and the literature is full of accounts of the bodies of saintly people glowing in a physical manner. The tradition of icon painting also shows how the saints and men of prayer possess the radiance of a heavenly light.

The emphasis on ‘deification’ or the transformation of human beings through prayer and attention to the sacraments of the church is a simple one. I cannot of course discuss it in any further detail at this point, but to repeat what I said earlier that it is a hopeful and attractive presentation of the Christian faith. I share it with my readers because it summarises part of the reason why I am so critical of other presentations of the faith that use fear and the threat of deep despair in promoting the Christian faith. Perhaps this short piece will help some of my readers to see that Christians who promote their version as the only version of the faith are simply wrong. There are versions of the Christian faith, far older than our own, that have nothing whatever to do with the squabbles in the West around the time of the Reformation. To breathe Orthodoxy, even if only for a time, is like breathing fresh air, after being for a long time in the fug that we call Western Christianity. From the Orthodox point of view, having never known a Reformation, our theological debates all seem rather petty and provincial!

In my ministry I have, on one occasion, been accused of ‘not preaching the gospel’. I was puzzled about this statement and I wondered how the person concerned thought of the good news contained in the bible. I began by looking to see what churches, who supposedly did ‘preach the gospel’, actually did which was different. What I discovered was not something I wanted to copy, so I knew I would never be able to qualify to be one of this select company. My investigation of what preaching the gospel meant in practice was to discover that many people go to church in order to have a profound emotional experience. The experience normally consists of three parts. The first stage is what I call the ‘grovel’ part. The audience is invited to reflect on their sin and utter degradation. The preacher will add his commentary with an account of his own ‘unsaved’ self. There will be metaphorical chest beating, spiced up with memories of how the preacher used to drink, smoke and indulge in other doubtful activities which might be described or hinted at. The second part would be a description of the moment of conversion and how all this was put behind him The congregation are invited to remember or renew their own conversion experience and feel the sense of freedom coming from this salvation from future hell and damnation. Alongside the feeling of newness and safety that the climax of the ‘gospel preaching’ is designed to promote is another feeling. That is to look out at the unsaved world around them, lamenting its descent into hell. The congregation is exhorted to preach the gospel to the unsaved around them. That is to be the mark of their discipleship, whether or not they preach and teach others about Jesus. This third section evokes feelings which combine a sense of superiority and smugness with a sense of pity for people who are unsaved.

I hope my readers will believe me when I say I have heard this ‘sermon’ many times. Its main feature, one that I do not copy, is the deliberate arousing of emotions in the listener. I suspect that my accuser was someone who associated this range of emotions with preaching. Therefore when he did not have these emotions of loss, rescuing and sometimes smug pity, the task of preaching for him was incomplete. But there is something more going on for me than a distaste for the arousing of emotions. The whole theology of ‘gospel preaching’ as I have summarised it is based on a thoroughly un-Christian reading of Scripture. Perhaps I should qualify that by saying that it is an Old Testament God who is presented rather a New Testament one. I need to explain what I mean.

At the start of the events of Holy Week, Jesus is presented as riding on the back of a donkey into Jerusalem. Apart from any Old Testament allusions that may be claimed for this act, it is clear that Jesus was acting out a gesture of profound humility. Kings did not arrive on donkeys, they mount war horses, ready for battle and domination. This is clearly how the writer in Revelation thought, when he describes the ‘Word of God … clad in a robe dipped in blood’ with ‘the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, following him on white horses’. (Rev 19.14 ) Such language echoes the concepts of God in some parts of the Old Testament, a God who clearly is understood to reflect the way certain humans behave. Thus he is sometimes merciful but at other times vindictive, vengeful and ready to smite his enemies when they oppose his will or disobey his law. (See how people are treated in these random passages, Deut. 13.12-18, Exod. 31.12-15 & Hosea 9.11-16) The model that seems to have been in the mind of the Old Testament writers who wrote in this way, was the idea of an earthly monarch or ruler. It is, we might remark, all the more remarkable that Jesus had such a different picture of God. Jesus spoke about a father who loves his enemies, one who is prepared to forgive many times, even when the child has wandered off into the desert of his own selfish desires. The doctrine of ‘infallibility’ and the cliché, ‘all scripture speaks of Christ’, has blinded us to these contrasts in the doctrines of God within the Bible. Without going to the extreme of rejecting the Old Testament, we do have to realise that at times this part of the Bible shows a God that is some way from the God that Jesus came to proclaim.

Once again I find myself needing to draw things to a conclusion for fear of overrunning my self-imposed limit. But my summary would be to say that my accuser was pointing to a presentation of God which was not the gospel of Jesus. Rather it was a presentation of a mishmash of ideas and concepts from certain parts of the Old Testament that want us to submit to an arbitrary and tyrannical ruler. The good news that I find in the teaching of Jesus is not all about punishment and separation but rather about reconciliation and forgiveness. The Jesus I follow is not one who rides on a war horse but one who rides a donkey in humility. Christians perhaps need to be braver in their reading of the Old Testament. Because many are committed to a doctrine of infallibility, they consequently have to find ways either to explain away or simply ignore the parts that are, quite bluntly, unedifying. There has to be another way and I believe it is possible to read this literature with the eyes of Jesus. It is he who reads out of scripture and the God who is found there, the qualities of mercy and compassion. At the same time he passes over the passages that seem to imply that God is only interested in revenge and punishment. A doctrine of gradual revelation will allow us to sit more lightly on the ‘difficult’ parts without denying its overall inspiration. My version of the ‘good news’ will draw mainly on the teaching of Jesus, his offer of the Kingdom, a place where the will of God, his ‘shalom’ may be done and experienced. But to this we will return …….

There is a version of the Christian faith that in effect says this: ‘Do whatever you like. If you believe in Jesus and that he died for you, then all your sins are taken away.’ In essence there are Christians who believe that all we have to do is to believe and receive. The content of what we are expected to believe is carefully set out in a few sentences. It will always include a version of the typical conservative understanding of the death of Jesus alongside a belief that he is the Son of God. There will also be a statement to the effect that the Bible contains all the truth we need. The particular teaching on the meaning of Jesus’ death is, for evangelicals, non-negotiable. It is a teaching which is commonly described as the substitutionary understanding of the atonement. I have, in a previous post, discussed the content of this belief which is one that sets out how Christ’s death is one that releases us from the punishment that we have deserved.

I have in a few words set out the faith statement of countless conservative Christians across the world. I call this version of Christianity, a ‘lite’ one, insofar as it focuses on the believing side of faith while partially or sometimes completely ignoring the behaviour and ethical teachings of the Bible. Many conservative Christians would immediately defend themselves by saying that there is a great deal about ethics in their versions of the faith. In practice, however, there is a disproportionate amount of attention on issues around sex. Conservative teaching seems to focus extensively on particular aspects of sexual behaviour. We hear from conservative preachers a great deal about homosexuality but very little about divorce. Jesus actually spoke about the latter but said nothing about the former. One is begins to see how the ‘doing’ part of Jesus’ teaching is taking second place to a stress on believing in this presentation of the Christian faith.

From a book I am reading, I can mention a scandal that took place in 1993 at the Mississippi Bible College to illustrate the point I make about the relative unimportance of doing as opposed to believing. The president of the College, one Lewis Nobles, embezzled $3 million from his college and compounded his offence by spending $400,000 on the services of prostitutes. The reaction of many people around the community was to say, ‘But Dr Nobles is a good Christian man.’ They could not accept that his behaviour was thoroughly bad, un-Christian and was undermining the integrity of the faith he was supposed to confess. Somehow the fact that Dr Nobles had said he was a Christian, that he had accepted Jesus as his Lord and Saviour, trumped the disgust that many must have felt. Making allowances for other people, who are signed-up Christians, also appeared in the trial of Eric Rudolph who was involved in a fatal bombing of an abortion clinic. One woman said of him, ‘He is a Christian and I am a Christian. He dedicated his life to fighting abortion. Those are our values.’

In thinking about the implications of this bizarre statement, we may note that such a stand is supposedly based on an adherence to ‘Biblical values’ The anti-abortion position would no doubt appeal to the commandment not to kill. But there is a grotesque irony in the fact that not only that Rudolph himself killed someone, but he seems to have completely bypassed other moral teachings of Jesus. It would be tedious to list all the ways in which the gospel moral commands are being totally ignored by Rudolph but it is hard to see how the command to ‘love your enemies’ is being followed. No doubt Rudolph was receiving support from his fellow Christians for his behaviour and, in particular, the leaders of his church. They were in effect teaching that it was not important to follow the teaching of Jesus but more important to surrender to their highly politicised version of the faith. We might summarise their message ‘Do as we say; don’t do as Jesus says.’

The emphasis of being a ‘correct’ Christian rather than actually doing what Christians are called to be and to do in the New Testament reminds one of the game of Monopoly. Sometimes the player picks up a card which says ‘Get out of jail free’. This can be played whenever you happen to fall on the ‘go to jail’ square. This ‘believe and receive’ version of Christianity is a bit like having a permanent ability to escape the consequences of immorality and evil, regardless of what you do. The kind of Christianity, that emphasises belief along with little sense of responsibility for one’s actions, will also have other unfortunate results. It will do little to encourage the Christian believer to feel any responsibility for those beyond the congregation, the poor, the hungry or the unemployed. On other occasions I have mentioned how these attitudes translate into a political world view that defends low taxes for the rich and a rejection of public funding for healthcare. I am course here speaking about the situation in the United States.

Some of my readers may feel that I am presenting a version of Christianity, which does not really exist except in my imagination. I would ask such people why it is that some Christians have failed to applaud the work and vision of fellow Christians who have laboured to transform the lot of humanity through compassionate service in countries overseas. The readiness with which some Christian groups go to proselytise in areas of the world where the Church has been long established, on the grounds that the people of the area do not have the truth of Biblical Christianity is, to my mind, a disgrace. Surely the work of decades, even centuries to transform a culture and civilisation through Christian teaching and service is something that all should applaud. I am of course thinking of the work of Roman Catholics in South America in particular. Even if we do not agree with everything that this original group taught (and I don’t), can we not perhaps recognise God at work in this mammoth effort of service to humanity?

One of the words that commonly came up, when people were describing at the Washington conference their experiences of having been in a cult environment in the past, was the word ‘trigger’. This word signifies an event in the present that evokes very powerfully something from the past that was highly unpleasant or traumatic. The individual, in experiencing a ‘trigger’, has a past event replayed in his mind in a way that is highly distressing. Triggering is a concept that is frequently used in the context of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The disorder, normally shortened to its acronym PTSD, has been identified and described for some 35 years. Before it was included in the third edition of American Diagnostic Manual of mental disorders in 1980, it had existed as ‘severe shock’, ‘shell shock’ or ‘gross stress reaction’ . The new PTSD diagnosis was able to be used to describe the survivors of the Vietnam war and others affected by notorious disasters in the 80s and 90s. For us in the UK, the Lockerbie plane crash and the Dunblane shooting constituted the most memorable public traumatic events. In such incidents trauma spreads out in waves from those immediately affected to enfold those who are bystanders, members of the wider community, not to mention those who have the task of physically removing the traces of the horrors that have overtaken the communities. To some extent the horror of such events touches everyone in society.

Not everyone who witnesses terrible things or experiences goes on to develop PTSD. But among those who do, maybe through having to experience the endless loop of reliving the traumatic event, it is a highly distressing mental condition. It is in this context that the word ‘trigger’ comes to the fore. The event that sets off the trigger may be of little or no consequence but it powerfully reminds the sufferer of what he or she went through in the moment of trauma. The soldier who saw comrades blown up in war, may react violently to unexpected noise. The woman who has been raped may find that any form of touch makes her freeze and tense up. In both these situations the individual has been forced to experience again an event which had once completely overwhelmed the human capacity to process and assimilate what was happening. Something else that took place afterwards brought the original event to mind, had the power to set up a highly distressing reaction in the individual concerned. This trigger reaction is not only distressing and unpleasant but it is also mentally disabling. Normal functioning and living is put on hold for minutes, hours or even days at a time.

There is much more that could be said about PTSD, (Cindy has sent me details of an up-to-date online presentation The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk, MD) how it manifests itself and how it may be treated, but I want to move on to considering how traumatic stress affects those who have had abusive experiences in a church context. What might these experiences consist of? One whole area of traumatic experience might centre on the moment when an individual found themselves excluded or shunned. This, I have suggested, cuts deep into one’s experience of personhood and sense of self-worth. Although physical violence may not have been involved in the event, feelings of shame and intense abandonment may have been involved in the event. Another traumatic moment might be the shock of betrayal when there is a realisation that the Christian follower has invested years of loyal service to an organisation that is through and through corrupt and self-serving. What had been heard as the word of God was found to be the words of a dishonest and maybe greedy leader. Another area of church life, on which Chris may have something to say, is the constant exposure to guilt and shame. This is subsequently recognised to be part of a subtle and deliberate attempt to control the individual. Even after it has been so identified, the trauma of feeling constantly guilty has been so internalised that it cannot be easily shaken off. There are in fact numerous areas of awareness that are constantly drummed into member of extreme high-demand churches and groups, which continue to cause inner havoc long after the member has left. We might mention the habit of obedience without question so that independent thinking is almost impossible. Some of the particular experiences of belonging may not of themselves be trauma in the narrow sense, but they, taken together, can leave the ex-member with a mountain of baggage and traumas which affect him or her every bit as a survivor of Dunblane.

This thinking about the survivor of a cultic church and that of a disaster having areas of common experience, no doubt needs further working out. Perhaps in the earlier paragraphs I have focussed on a survivor of a disaster or trauma which has lasted perhaps only a few minutes or hours. The survivor of a trauma connected to a church or cult may be the survivor of a less intense experience, but one that has lasted for years or even decades. These two areas of experience do however seem to share the same effects in the way that past events constantly threaten to overwhelm into consciousness and disrupt and disturb the task of ordinary living. To quote one of the criteria for PSTD, ‘the disturbance must cause significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas functioning important to the person’. That anything to do with God could have such a terrible legacy in its wake, is a horrifying indictment of the way that Christianity is sometimes taught and practised in our world. Jesus came, not to bring distress and disturbance, but light, freedom and the fullness of life.