I have been recently reading a bit on the subject of organizational theory. This is the study of the way institutions and organizations like schools or firms operate. One particular idea that is important to grasp, is that all organizations operate somewhere on a continuum between transparency at one end and defensiveness with tight boundaries at the other. Thus at one extreme you have an organization that is totally open to the world beyond itself. Sometimes it is so completely open so that there is little to distinguish it from what is outside. At the other extreme is the closed organization. This represents the kind of group that erects protective walls around itself so that those within have a strong sense of being separate from all that is outside.

Looking at this simple description of the open and closed in respect of organizations in general, it is easy to see how the church also conforms to this pattern. We have a contrast between churches that are open to the outside world so that there are few, if any, barriers existing. People can be members with no more than minimal attendance at these kind of churches. Welcome is given to all and maybe only a small number are completely identified with the organization.   At the other end are the churches which are seen to be closed and exclusive.   This is done by erecting strict barriers of membership. This might involve refusing baptism to any but the committed and insisting on regular attendance.   Members would also support the church by giving a tithe of their earnings and agree to submit to strong leadership. The dynamics of these ‘closed’ churches are quite different from the typical Anglican church.

The book I am consulting, The Incestuous Workplace, by William L White, in describing closed organisations, like certain companies and hospitals, could in fact be describing ‘closed’ churches. The words he uses, ‘high priest’, ‘charismatic leadership’ and ‘discipleship’ are theological in origin. He also reminds us of cultic groups when he describes the way that stress within an organization encourages this process of pulling up the drawbridge and having minimal contact with the outside. Within this ghetto, there is a strong resistance to change.   White also notes the way that mission statements or the traditional products of the company are clung to as though they were a form of dogma, faith in which will somehow protect them all from disaster.   Loyalty and trust in these codes of practice and in the leaders is required of everyone and any sort of questioning is regarded as disloyal heresy which cannot be tolerated. Those guilty of questioning the anxious defensive paranoia have to be excluded. A particularly insightful point that White makes concerns the vulnerability of socially isolated people to these closed groups. He says that such people, experiencing anxiety, can be made to believe ‘almost anything if it is delivered in the context of a supportive relationship that promises immediate comfort and continued safety security and happiness.’

White says so much in this vein that I kept having to check that this was not a theological treatise, that I was indeed reading about the world of secular organizations and institutions. The fact that there is such a close overlap between sacred and secular confirms a crucial point in our understanding of the church.   The point is that, in more ways than we would like to admit, the Church is a human organisation, subject to the same failings and dangers as every other institution. Whatever we may want to claim for the church in terms of its divine origin, this does not remove it from the inevitable fallibility of its humanness. While non-Catholic churches do not use words like infallibility to describe their institution, the authority given to some leaders often takes on a form that appears to be beyond ordinary human fallibility. The way that the Bible is proclaimed as ‘infallible’ truth is nearly always a claim for the unassailable correctness and unquestionable power of the preacher.   Such claimed power and authority is probably similar in kind to that found in all closed organizations, particularly those which, according to Williams, are facing threats to their continuation and functioning. People start to draw together under ‘infallible’ leaders, often the same ones responsible for bringing the organization to the point of collapse. The nearer the institution draws to extinction, the more irrational and uncritical is the confidence shown towards the leaders.

A further insight into closed organizations that runs closely to the understanding of the church, is the idea of homogenization. This predicts that people in a closed organization are likely to be very similar to one another. The non-conformist, the one with ideas to challenge the status-quo is likely to have been excluded. In organizational terms, appointees are likely to be conformists. In a church setting, nobody of an independent spirit is likely to feel at home with this ‘sameness’ among church members. But ‘sameness’ and predictability do have their attractions . Some people will find it an energising factor and thus be prepared to work and give generously. Thus companies with a clear mission statement will do well.   A church with a clear but simplistic statement of faith combined with demanding ethical standards, will also often do better than churches where the boundaries are fuzzy. White sees that the closed organisation, with its permanent sense of crisis and even paranoia about the outside world, will often have an addictive quality about it. Both leaders and led find a sense of purpose in responding to these crises and this may distract the individuals concerned from facing up to and dealing with their own internal issues.

White’s description of a closed institution is set out as the description of an organization probably in terminal decline. He makes the assumption that the pace of overwork, frenetic activity combined with the sheer exhaustion of keeping people together in this kind of setting will eventually result in overload and collapse.   We do in fact see examples of ministries that fall apart with the strain that comes from trying to work such an organisational pattern. Other churches avoid total collapse by re-inventing themselves totally.   Many years ago Weber noted the way that charisma often gives way to institutional openness after a generation. White’s insights give us much to ponder. It is certainly worth using his yardstick to measure institutions that we are involved in, whether a church or workplace.  Whether open or closed, every institutional setting seems to have the capacity to create stress for those caught up in them. Human beings are very similar the world over when they gather into groups, whether commercial companies, schools or churches. Negotiating with the stress of these systems is probably part of everyday life but books like this can help us to do it with wisdom and even humour.

In the previous post I wrote a piece about an archetypal fundamentalist system of theology emerging from the Diocese of Sydney in Australia.   What I was basing my findings on were two books published three and five years ago respectively. Time moves on and there are two important events that have taken place since the situation that I reported. One salient event was discussed by Muriel Porter’s book, namely the meltdown in the finances of the Diocese of Sydney. The second event is the election of a new Archbishop, Glen Davies to replace Peter Jensen.

Sydney Diocese for many decades has been one of the wealthiest dioceses in the Anglican communion. This was based on endowments and property holdings. With that wealth came power and influence. Quite a sizeable amount of the costs of the first GAFCON conference in 2008 in Jerusalem were met from the endowments that flowed into the Sydney coffers. Money was also found to base this organisation in Sydney, providing office space and administrative backup. Archbishop Peter Jensen was the first secretary, a post he retains in his retirement. Another organisation which benefits from this largesse is the organisation in England with the misleading title of Anglican Mainstream. This organization appears to do everything with a web-site and while it sponsors gatherings it has no membership structure. To judge from the web-site it has a task of criticising real mainstream Anglicans from an ultra-conservative position.

The extensive wealth of the Sydney diocese received a severe dent between the end of 2008 and 2010. Although the fall in stock-markets was a factor, more serious was a remarkable degree of amateurish decisions made by enthusiastic but naive members of financial sub-committees. Borrowing money to buy shares and then selling them at the bottom of the market wiped out some 200 million dollars worth of investments. Muriel Porter details the various stages of the meltdown in her book. The consequence of the collapse was that the income of the diocese was halved and halved again. Many of the ambitious projects for converting ten per cent of the population to Calvinist Christianity within the diocese had to be put on hold and there was little money to employ all the new eager graduates of Moore Theological College. The Archbishop at the time, Peter Jensen put a brave face on things, but it is clear that he was fairly shattered by the whole fiasco. Before we leave the finances, it is worth noting that three areas of outreach did not have their support cut in any way. The first is Moore Theological College which continues to receive 1 1/2 million dollars a year. The second is the support for GAFCON, both the secretarial support in Sydney itself and grants for their gatherings. Thirdly the support for Anglican Mainstream is left unaffected.

In June 2013, Peter Jensen was required to retire as Archbishop on reaching the age of 70. The task of appointing a successor attracted a lot of interest from church and media alike. The legacy of Peter in preserving a ‘pure’ form of Calvinist theology was something that many of his supporters were anxious to ensure. Lobbying, political manoeuvring and canvassing were the order of the day for several weeks last summer. The two candidates were an existing Bishop, Glen Davies aged 62 and a priest Rick Smith aged 49. Both candidates came from the Sydney mould and it is difficult this far away to distinguish them on the grounds of theology. But Rick Smith attracted the support of Philip Jensen, the Dean of the Cathedral and many of the Standing Committee. Whether this association with a Jensen brother was a handicap or whether the reputation of the Standing Committee was still in doubt after the financial debacle is unclear.   For whatever reason Glen Davies was elected. Sydney may be beginning to row back from the political extremes of theology and intolerance. Let us hope so. The signs look good that eventually Sydney may begin to move back towards the central ground.

The Anglican Communion may well have been irrevocably fractured by the political shenanigans exercised in America and Australia with the help of allies from Africa. But there is in this Sydney election the first sign of a ray of hope that theological extremism is no longer going to be the order of the day in an entire diocese. One would hope that Archbishop Glen will make it his task to reach out to the embattled Archbishop of Canterbury to articulate a very small gesture of support which say just this: ‘I may not agree with your theology but I defend your right to hold this different point of view.’ That courtesy has been absent from recent statements from GAFCON as recently as last week. Is that very much to ask of one Primate to support another?

One of the problems of trying to study fundamentalist Christians 15 years ago was that it was very hard to find one. This may sound a strange thing to say when I was meeting conservative Christians all the time in my researches. But all too frequently the individuals would deny that they believed this or that doctrine which was supposed to be typical of conservative belief. I was dealing not just with the difficulty of defining what fundamentalism was but also finding it embodied archetypically in an single individual. People seemed very ready to back pedal on belief systems that might sound strange to another person or look somewhat extremist. When challenged on particular texts, the proponents of literal beliefs about the Bible would find some way of blunting the edge of what they believed, so that it was less offensive than when it had been uttered from the pulpit. I remember once hearing some bizarre ideas about demonic possession reported, which were apparently taught at a local healing centre. They fitted exactly a pattern that was ‘fashionable’ in the early 90s and I had no reason to suppose that my source had got it wrong. I did question the leaders concerned but they denied all knowledge of such teaching. A few days later I was in the back seat of a car and these same leaders were discussing transgender issues which were in the news at that time. Their comments fitted precisely the extremist language of moral condemnation of people in the unhappy situation of having an ambiguous sexual identity. Christian morality, according to their understanding, apparently had to condemn those who sought a sex change operation. I said nothing, but noted internally that conservative Christianity finds it easier to deal in precise categories of good and bad, light and darkness.   The concept of ambiguity in a moral situation did not exist within their thinking.

I write this preamble because it is extremely difficult to pin someone down as an archetypal fundamentalist Christian. The typical conservative Christian who sits in the pew is most likely full of inconsistencies about belief.   Even the most devout will not have internalised the ‘sound’ teaching perfectly . For most, there will be a muddle of correct teaching mixed up with all sorts of other ideas which compete for attention. Complete consistency of beliefs is quite hard to achieve. No Christian leader can ever completely police the thinking of his flock. Among Christian leaders you will probably find a layer of tribal ‘correct’ thinking and belief which they present to their congregations. In addition they will also have private doubts and questions which are kept to themselves Perhaps the only place we can find an archetypal Christian position expressed is in the writings of those who lead or represent denominations or Christian conservative networks. Whatever problems of faith such individuals have , these need to be kept firmly under wraps so that their followers see only the calm and clear presentation of consistent Biblical teaching. As far as this audience is concerned, doubts or hesitations have to be invisible.

In the past week or two I have come across two books which actually make it possible to study the archetypal conservative Christian. The books* make it clear that two brothers, Peter and Philip Jensen, both Anglican leaders in Sydney, Australia, have been teaching a coherent and consistent version of strict Calvinist Christianity for 20+ years. Peter Jensen served until recently as Archbishop of Sydney while his brother is Dean of the Anglican Cathedral.   The teaching of the brothers has acquired a fixed structure partly because the Sydney diocese has within it a strictly conservative Anglican college known as Moore Theological College.  This college through it principals and teaching staff developed a system of theology which can be thought of as an ‘ism’.  In church political terms, the Jensen brothers achieved supreme power in the diocese which allowed them almost complete control of church life in their diocese. No clergy were allowed to come from outside the diocese to ‘corrupt’ any of the parishes, and every ordinand has had to pass through Moore College. This Calvinist ‘take-over’ of Sydney Anglicans was of significance not just to the church in Australia but it is even now a threat to the world-wide Anglican Communion. What has happened is that the energy created within this conservative ‘ghetto’ has raised the confidence of this style of theology so that it believed that the whole Anglican communion is ripe for take-over by a confident Biblical Christianity. With the help of conservatives in America and across Africa, the Jensen brothers and their supporters believed that their time had come. Their version of Christianity was thought to be the only truly valid expression of Anglicanism. I have spoken of the influence of America in encouraging African churches to make a great issue over the topic of gay marriage, but it would appear that the Diocese of Sydney also has had comparable influence in this matter. The Diocese of Sydney and the now retired Archbishop Jensen form a crucial part of the so-called GAFCON group of disaffected Anglican churches across the world. They believe that they alone stand for Biblical Christianity.

In Britain, the greater part of the Anglican church has little time for GAFCON. While many churches and even dioceses follow a conservative path, few want to go the Sydney/ GAFCON way. The only allies in England for the Jensen brothers are the group of 30 or so parishes under the auspices of an organisation called REFORM. This conservative group has no representatives on the Bishop’s bench. Even in the one college that supports the Moore College ethos, Oakhill in London, there is far greater a degree of plurality than is allowed in Australia.

Conservative Christianity, à la Jensen brothers, has been indeed powerful in the Anglican Church but in many ways its power base is too narrow to take over the whole church. I suspect that all GAFCON and the other international groupings of conservative Anglicans have achieved is to help fragment the church. In the face of such uncompromising extremist teaching, Anglicans may, as I have suggested in another post, have to walk apart. It will always be impossible to talk to those who believe, as the Jensen brothers do, that the entire truth of God is preserved in a single theological system – theirs. Such a theological system is in fact a creation of their own hubris and must ultimately fall. My next blog post will indicate some of the cracks in the edifice that are beginning to show.

To return to the question at the beginning. To find true fundamentalist teaching we must look beyond the muddled thinking of individual Christians to the coherent ‘political’ systems set out by networks of destructive ideologies such as Sydney/Moore theological College/ GAFCON. Such ideologies must be studied and refuted with energy. This energy for such a task is sadly not in evidence.  (I will be writing more on this topic as further information come my way)

*Philip Jensen: Bible Believer. Psychology of Fundamentalist Leadership, Peter Herriot Amazon Kindle Book, 2009

Sydney Anglicans and the threat to World Anglicanism Muriel Porter, Ashgate, 2011

Years ago at the end of the sixties, I went on a 4 month study course sponsored by the World Council of Churches at Bossey near Geneva. The course was an international affair with some 60 attendees from every part of the globe. It was an experience which was designed to immerse us in the issues of ecumenism as well as different approaches to theology. Most important it introduced the participants into the cultural variety that exists in the world and the way nationalities see problems differently. To cope with the sheer variety of approaches, it was important that each person there was ready be, at least, a little flexible in their thinking. Some managed this well and grew as a result. Others struggled and I have a particular memory of a conservative American Baptist minister. After one lecture he was in the throes of expressing a sense of dissonance between what his training had taught him and what he was now struggling to understand. I watched this uncomfortable scenario for a moment and then scribbled a note and pushed it to my neighbour. The note summed up what I thought was going on and read: ‘An ex-fundamentalist with nowhere to go.’ What I was witnessing was a man who knew that his conservative theological training was incomplete but he did not know how to process new ideas into the thought-system that still dominated his mind. What I would say now in the light of my subsequent reading is that not only had this American received an education which did not equip him for new learning, but it could even be called an anti-education.

In thinking about the Baptist minister of 45 years ago, I am also reminded of the couple encountered by Chris at Skegness. In each case there is an apparent inability to process new information successfully. Being able to decipher new knowledge or information is a very important part of our ability to flourish both in the world of work and in our participation in a modern democracy. Society expects us to be able to take part in the jury process when called upon to do so, so an impairment in our ability to reason, to weigh up varied arguments and points of view is, to put it mildly, something of a handicap. If we are right to suggest that our Skegness couple and the American Baptist minister cannot process new information adequately, how may we account for this? The answer lies, I believe, in the nature and assumptions of a style of Protestant religious education, particularly that found in America. This tradition, as we shall see, stands in contrast to the main-stream ideas of a liberal education which have around since the 18th century.

The particular Christian educational pattern that is provided to many Christians in conservative settings is based on a theory from 18th century Scotland known as Common Sense Realism. This philosophy states that any statement which can be taken at face value has to be taken in this way.   The ‘realism’ being propounded was in contrast to the ideas of philosophers such as David Hume who put high importance to scepticism and doubt.   Common Sense philosophy found a ready home in 19th century American universities, and can be seen to undergird the philosophical ideas of early fundamentalism. When applied to Bible, it is claimed that the meaning of statements in Scripture are the meanings that can be deduced by anyone through the exercise of common sense. If the Bible says that God created the Bible in six days, then that that is the truth, the literal truth. This belief allows the ordinary person with a Bible to have access to enormous areas of knowledge without having to defer to ‘experts’. The ordinary Christian thus also has in his hands the key to understanding history, both past, present and future. This idea of such truth being given to the ordinary man was very popular in the egalitarian early days of the American Republic. It was an idea that contrasted with the elitism that seemed to be dominant in the Europe that American citizens had left behind in emigrating to the New World. There are obviously other strands in the emergence of conservative Biblical scholarship, but this anti-elitist common sense dimension is important to understand.

What is the consequence of putting this approach to Scripture at the heart not only of Christian formation but also into the general education of millions? Conservative Christianity has always had a strong influence on the formation of the young, right up to college level. It does not take a great deal of imagination to see how a belief in ‘common sense’ will flatten any understanding of complexity or nuance, whether it be found in dealing with Scripture, morality or social issues. God has spoken. What else is there for us to learn?

The typical conservatively trained American Protestant minister will have a good knowledge of the Bible. He will also have studied great preachers of the past, Charles Finney and Jonathan Edwards to name but two. But his entire education will have been neutralised (sabotaged?) by this overriding assumption that the entire body of truth and history – everything of importance has already been revealed. The skills that are needed are those of faithful study and re-presenting of this truth of Scripture week after week. Novelty of any kind will not be possible because the system of thought makes such newness unacceptable. The ‘common-sense’ words of Scripture and the permitted interpretations are all that is possible to hear in church.

It can be seen, from what has been said, that the undergirding principles of a conservative Christian education are in a collision course with the principles of a broad Western education. We describe such a broad education as a liberal education, recognising that this word ‘liberal’ is a hate word in large swathes of American society. Liberal values in education are nevertheless still upheld in most of the centres of higher education on both sides of the Atlantic.   There seems little chance at present that this dominance will be overturned. In spite of being accused of obscurity and elitism, liberals will continue to fight for the values arising out of paradox, plurality and complexity as well as novelty.   Truth cannot not be reduced to a democratic vote or be surrendered to the highest bidder. But meanwhile in a variety of educational institutions up and down the land, the values of anti-education rule. These deny the liberal values of the unexpected, the new and the constant possibility of change. One particularly depressing facet of fundamentalist behaviour, which arises from this type of education, is the inability to be wrong.   We noted the failure of humour in the conservative personality and we could add to this a smug complacency of ‘knowing’ that they are always right.

In our newspapers today we read about the issues of an illiberal education being offered by certain Muslim schools in Birmingham. We would be right to call this anti-education. But we would want to extend this description to the way that countless Christian people in this country are taught, whether in school or in church.

Last week I wrote about the ideas of Lord Owen about the way that an individual could be corrupted by holding a position of great power in politics. Owen referred to this as ‘hubris syndrome’.   This study is, in many ways, backed up another piece of research undertaken in the early 70s, known as the Stanford Prison experiment. The author of this experiment, a social psychologist called Philip Zimbardo, wanted to see the extent to which ordinary people might change when put in a new unfamiliar situation. He chose twenty male volunteers, from a student population, who were screened for obvious mental disorders. Then these volunteers were divided into two groups for the purpose of the experiment which was simulate the experience of prison life. One group were to act as guards while the other group were to be the prisoners. To make the experiment realistic, the ‘prisoners’ were taken into custody by serving policemen before being deposited in the cellars of a university building at Stanford under the care of those designated as guards. The crux of the experimental finding was to observe how both groups threw themselves into role. The realism of the roles that both were playing was so vivid that the experiment had to be cut short lest one of the participants suffer mental collapse. In summary the ‘guards’ started to act with cruelty, using their authority to undermine the ‘prisoners’ as much as possible. No physical punishment was permitted but mental and emotional abuse became rampant. Everyone in the experiment knew that they could leave at any time but none did, apart from one prisoner who started showing signs of complete mental collapse.  He was withdrawn for his own safety. The whole experiment was meant to go on for two weeks, but in the end it was stopped after five days when Zimbardo’s girlfriend recognised that there was a rampant evil in the environment that was affecting even the observers. Cruelty and an enjoyment of inflicting pain seemed to have taken over the minds of the ‘guards’ while the ‘prisoners’ seemed to have forgotten how to stand up for themselves to withstand this onslaught.

When the experiment ended, Zimbardo expected that the those among the guards who had behaved particularly badly would eventually be shown to have a recognisable pathology over the long term. But, although he followed his ‘guards’ over thirty five years, none ever showed in their lives any tendency for cruelty, either in the family or in the work place. It seemed that the sociopathic behaviour displayed had been provoked entirely by the experimental environment. In short the evil that was unleashed through the experiment was a product of the artificial environment. Absorbing expectations as to how to behave in fulfilling a role, had completely taken over their personalities.

In his reflection on the experiment after forty years, Zimbardo in his book, The Lucifer Effect, wants to alert the reader to the enormous power of situations and the way that they can overwhelm the consciences or what he calls the innate ‘dispositions’ of the participants. He sees similarities with the situation at the Abu Graib prison during the Iraq war where ordinary soldiers committed offences of cruelty and humiliation against their Iraqi prisoners. While it would not be right to declare the perpetrators free of all responsibility, the situation they found themselves in was a mitigating factor in their defence. This should to be taken into account.

Why is this research of interest to our concern for abuse and manipulation? It is because churches sometimes become ‘total’ environments where people behave in ways that not necessarily in accordance with their normal nature. The situation or the environment becomes the dominant reality. This may not necessarily lead to immoral or cruel behaviour, but there are a variety of other ways for people to behave out of character in a group situation.   These may involve regression, immaturity or inappropriate dependency on a leader. Few manifestations of this kind of group behaviour are in the individual’s best interests. The zombie-like convert that we may meet on a street corner muttering his pious platitudes may simply be acting out the expected personality that his group may have placed on him. The earnest Christian who treats your questions about the Bible with undisguised hostility or suspicion may once again be expressing an aspect of some sort of group personality. He or she is so much a product of group conditioning that he does not have any sense of a right to an individual opinion.

Zimbardo’s research of forty years ago could not be replicated today because of ethical considerations. But the research remains as a terrifying reminder of what can happen when a group’s norms and assumptions take hold of individuals so that they act out the norms of the group rather than their own.   Social influence is indeed a powerful and potentially catastrophic power. We must make sure that our churches do not become places where people lose their separate selves and become part of the herd.

Some time ago I mentioned the relevance of tears to the spiritual life. I hope to return to this topic, but meanwhile I wish to reflect on the apparent opposite, the existence of laughter. Humour and laughter represent a culture that crosses age, class and race. We laugh at the absurdities that are revealed in the programme ‘Have I got news for you’ on Friday evenings. Most of us can find humour in our immediate environment and we also admire the people who can stand on a stage, sometimes with no props, and make us laugh.

What is humour? Although there is a humour and laughter which is linked to the humiliation of individuals, the humour with ‘bitter springs’ as John Masefield put it, most laughter enables us to take a relaxed view of the world and of ourselves. To be able to laugh at ourselves means that we let go of over-seriousness and pomposity. Humour is also a great community builder. To share a joke is to share something human with others and it is difficult to feel animosity towards the person who has laughed with us.

This morning I was talking to the local hospital chaplain about the importance of humour in the ward. I do a regular general visit of two particular wards on her behalf and I find myself wanting to encourage a smile on the faces of those I visit. I don’t in fact crack jokes but I may gently point out some point of incongruity in the environment. If there is a ward ‘joker’ I tell them that they have a very important job, keeping up morale in both staff and patients. In the literature on healing, there is an important book, Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins. This is an account of an American journalist who healed himself through the practice of laughter. His sense of humour, watching endless Candid Camera programmes, might not appeal to us, but he recognised intuitively that humour could change the course of his illness. It appears he was right.

Why is humour and laughter important to our theme? It is important because where there is no humour or laughter something sinister may be going on. There is no humour in a terrorist camp where people are plotting to kill or maim others in the name of Jihad. There was no humour to be found in the encounter that I reported as taking place in Skegness last week. An inflexibility of approach towards other people and lack of humour are frequently found in the same person. When someone speaks to us with the words ‘What I always say is ……’, it is hard to imagine that they will find it easy to enjoy laughing with us. A readiness to laugh and the ability constantly to learn new things seem to go together and these are attractive qualities .

Those of us who have a flexible approach to life, or indeed Scripture, can respond reasonably well to the unexpected.   Not always knowing the answers means that we do not fret when we meet something for which there are no set responses. The honesty of not having a complete answer to a problem will generally be accepted by another person.   It is certainly preferable to the hypocrisy of pretending that we are infallible in knowledge or expertise. To make out that the Bible has an answer to every conceivable problem is actually dishonest and unrealistic.   The person who, thanks to the Bible, ‘knows’ the answers to all life’s problems may believe he is superior to the seeker. But because the assumed superiority is based not in reality but in a fantasy about the purpose of scripture, it will always have a an air of defensiveness about it. As a lot is at stake in this defensiveness there will be no room for humour. The opponent who wants to argue for a liberal approach to Scripture is, it may be thought, trying to deflect you away from your state of ‘blessed assurance’. You will defend your right to this, your place in heaven and your access to infallible truth with a grim determination. Am I the only person to notice a humourless unsmiling steeliness among many conservative Christians?

References to laughter are not frequent in Scripture. The only one that comes to mind is the account of the visit of angels to Abraham at Mamreh when Sarah was heard to laugh at their promise of her fertility. Nevertheless there is something of humour in the way the parables are told. Was Jesus not speaking with humour when he referred to the beam in the eye of the one criticising the man with a mote in his eye? The ability of Jesus to pluck illustrations from life shows gifts of imagination, flexibility and yes, humour. There is nothing legalistic about Jesus, tying him to a script of ‘correct’ answers and solutions. We could even claim to see Jesus in a process of learning through experience. His first response to the Syro-Phoenician woman, who called after him to heal her daughter, was somewhat legalistic and defensive. But we see in his subsequent reaction that he accepted that she was teaching him something by her witty and apt reply. Such flexibility and readiness to learn, gives us a glimpse of a person of humour, who was never proud or pompous with those he met.

Christianity without humour is something depressing and grim. It denotes a legalism and heaviness which Chris and many others want to flee from. Becoming a Christian is supposed to remove burdens but instead it has become increasingly oppressive. A good motto might be that where there is humour and laughter, there is also freedom, lightness of touch and the ability to experience joy. Surely all these things qualify as part of the fullness of life that we believe Christianity wants us all to have. Sadly they are often absent in places of legalism, oppression and fear.

The Spring Harvest event at Skegness (and Minehead) is an annual event for Christians of a fairly conservative bent and takes place in the week leading up to Easter.   It was Chris’ wife Mary who went as a registered participant, but Chris accompanied her to offer support as she remains physically a little fragile after a car accident. Last year the same event had aroused strong negative emotions in Chris, but this year he felt better prepared to cope with the experience.   Dick Davies, a contributor to this blog was also present and ready to offer his help and support.

I spoke to Chris on the phone at the week-end, after he got back from Skegness.   He told me about a conversation with an elderly married couple who had seen him walking with a stick after sustaining a injury to his foot. This couple assured him that God would definitely heal the foot and it was a matter of certainty. Without even asking permission, the husband launched into prayer for the injured foot. He then declared that the only thing that would prevent healing was a lack of faith. Chris then explained that he had had bad experiences at the hands of Bible Christians and that among other things he found it extremely difficult to square up what he had been told to think about the Bible with the actual content of Scripture. The Old Testament was supposed to be an accurate revelation of the will of God, but there were passages that Chris had read that made this whole idea impossible for him. What about Psalm 137 for example? Were we supposed to think that it was appropriate to take small children and ‘dash them against the rock’ ? The couple looked puzzled and had nothing to say. Chris suspected that they had never been confronted with or read this passage before.

Hearing this small anecdote, I noted a number of things that would have distressed me as well. The act of praying about the foot was immediately thrust on Chris as though it was a given that this is what he needed and wanted. There was no sense that healing might involve cooperation from the sufferer or even a measure of preparation. God’s force of healing was seen to be irresistible. But although God’s power could not be turned back, the couple did have a let-out clause to explain why it might not work on every occasion. That is the lack of faith. This places those who offer prayer in a win-win situation. They are simultaneously seen as faithful mediators of God’s promises for healing, at the same time having a convenient excuse if the act is not followed by an actual healing. Their sense of righteousness and faithfulness can remain intact. No doubts need to be entertained as to whether they did anything unhelpful in such an encounter. Chris’ challenge to them to question their belief in the infallibility of Scripture was met by a blank silence. Nothing had prepared them for such a challenge and nothing in the way they had studied Scripture could provide any answers to this exposure to an uncomfortable and challenging text. The only way that a belief in Scripture of this kind is possible is because the vast bulk of Scripture has been ignored in favour of few proof texts that appear to make claims for the whole Bible.

In a way the couple have no guilt, but they are themselves victims of a system of theology and a culture of control that puts them in a place that is disastrous in two directions. Not only was their intervention unhelpful to Chris, to say the least, it also demonstrated how they had been infantilised. They had been stopped thinking or growing in any way. They have learnt to react to the world and its problems in a crude mechanistic way. The Bible is applied to every situation as though it were a hammer and that is the tool of choice for every possible situation. An injured person in a place like Spring Harvest can be presumed to be in need of prayer and willing to receive it. No more information is needed. But when the potential recipient does not fit this model, the limitations of the assumption become apparent. There was nothing in their book of rules to cope with such a dissonant situation like the one that Chris provided. They are left with their silence and the discomfort of their own ignorance being revealed.

Suppose their assumptions about meeting a fellow Bible-believing Christian had been realised? Are we to believe that the encounter would have been less disastrous for both sides? If the Bible-believing sufferer had willingly received prayer with the right degree of faith and had still not received healing, what would we say about the situation? The praying couple would still have retained their smug untouchability with their faith in God unsullied, while the recipient of the prayer would have felt more demoralised and perhaps doubting his own grasp of the Christian faith.   Neither scenario, the one that actually happened, or the one they wanted to happen, can be described as healthy or helpful.

The conversation and my commentary on it picks up a number of themes which are the concern of this blog. Perhaps my readers can further unpick what might have been going in this scene at Skegness. It may be just one encounter but I suspect that similar unhelpful attitudes are being taught and shared among Christians in many places. Vigilance and scrutiny need to be applied to examine the attitudes and assumptions that Christians in some fellowships and churches take on. The unexamined faith is not and never will be a healthy, life-giving means of growth into fullness of life.

One of the themes of this blog is finding a way to understand leadership, especially as it affects the church.  The study of leadership, whether in business or politics, is an area of interest and study for numerous disciplines, so it is unlikely that we can do more than discuss one aspect of this theme at a time.  Our particular interest is to talk about leadership when it becomes oppressive or even irrational so that the led, whether members of a congregation or citizens of a country, feel bullied and abused.

Recently I came across a fascinating study by Lord Owen (formerly David Owen), the politician/doctor who was writing about what he called Hubris syndrome among politicians.  He was casting his study back over a century of US Presidents and English Prime Ministers.   His definition of ‘Hubris syndrome’ has many similarities to the personality disorder known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  Clearly the sample of world leaders is a small one and the inability to get close to people who are no longer alive, or too important to be willingly subjected to psychiatric examination, means that the study has inbuilt limitations.   But given the fact that there is plenty of biographical information describing the life and times of such people as Theodore Roosevelt and Clement Atlee, means that the study is of great interest.

Owen describes 14 characteristics which he believes to be symptomatic of Hubris syndrome.  Most of them, as we have indicated above, are common to Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  These cluster around the need to be seen as superior, important and in need of the adulation of others.  NPD could well be summed up as a combination of grandiosity and overblown self-image.   The characteristics of Hubris syndrome are a kind of enhanced NPD, especially designed for those in positions of great political influence or power. Among the additional criteria for HS are a tendency to speak in the third person or use the royal ‘we’,  an unshakable belief that all their decisions will be ultimately vindicated, together with a tendency for ‘restlessness, recklessness and impulsiveness’.  Although the article has some fascinating insights about George Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair as suffering from HS, further discussion of the article needs to move in a somewhat different direction.  This is the question of which comes first.  Are the sufferers of HS predisposed to the syndrome as the result of their upbringing, or is it the situation of actual political power that brings it alive?  It is the old question -nurture or environment?

In the literature on NPD, the overwhelming assumption among psychoanalysts is that sufferers from NPD will have had some disturbance in early childhood that render them susceptible to this disorder.  Heinz Kohut, the Austrian/American writer, in particular speaks about incomplete attachments to parental figures as lying behind the emergence of narcissistic symptoms in later life.  Recently there have been discussions as to the way that certain environments, particularly that in show business and youth culture, may create narcissistic tendencies.  In summary, the writers are describing what they call ‘situational narcissism’. This may have little to do with upbringing.  Owen, in his studies, seems to come down on the side of those who would argue that a particular environment can lead to a personality disorder.  He notes from the biographical material of both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair that we can trace a creeping development of HS as each of them became more fully immersed the power of their position.  In Tony Blair’s case it is most clearly seen in the events of the Iraq war where his messianic tendencies are in full spate.  In the case of Margaret Thatcher these hubristic  tendencies are particularly obvious in the final two years of her time as Prime Minister.  In both cases, Owen seems to believe that HS only exists when there is real power given to the sufferer.  For both Blair and Thatcher the symptoms seem to subside once the time of power is over.

How is this article relevant to our interest?  It is relevant because there is a strong case, yet to be made by the experts, that the church in many of its manifestations might be a context in which individuals could develop narcissistic or hubristic tendencies.  I have already suggested that dysfunctional Church leadership, especially among charismatic leaders, may be seen as a manifestation of narcissism in those same leaders.  Owen’s article may point us to the thought that just as political power brings out hubris in certain leaders, so the Church provides an environment and culture which sometimes encourages its leaders to develop similar personality disorders.  In a previous blog post, I mentioned how the positioning of the pulpit and altar put the minister in an exalted position, which may convince him that he is indeed ‘above contradiction’.  Were the church ever to accept that NPD is a real issue among the clergy and ministers, which I firmly believe, it might have to go a stage further and recognise that the issue is not just a matter how these leaders are trained, but also a matter as to how church culture is ordered.

During this Passion season (I am writing this on Good Friday), I want to draw attention to one part of the story that we have never really internalised.  In Carlisle Cathedral last night, the Dean symbolically washed the feet of eight people.  This is an evocation of the command of Jesus to ‘wash one another’s feet’.  Such an act of service was meant to undermine the pomposity, the power-seeking and the endemic hierarchy that is so common in human affairs.  Washing feet is a cure against the self-importance and omnipotence that litter the affairs of the church.  If the church was a place of service and feet washing in reality, it could no longer provide the context for the abuses of power that so much besmirch and undermine what the church tries to do and be.

I have indicated on various occasions that I am not greatly impressed by wordiness when it comes to talking about the Christian faith.  But the parallel between our theme of the abuse of power and the Passion Story cannot go uncommented on during this Holy Week 2014.  Were I an active parish priest I would be preparing numerous services for this special season, but in retirement I find I have the leisure to prepare something for this blog.

One of the striking themes of the gospel accounts of the Passion of Christ is the way that the authors present Jesus as a victim.  Not only does he undergo a terrible and cruel trial and death, but he is also shown as doing nothing to defend himself.  The account of his trials reveals the fact that, for most of the time, he was silent, patiently enduring the floggings and tortures prepared for him.  He becomes the object of the narrative, the one to whom things are done.  Up to the point of his arrest he had been the active subject, the one at the centre of the action and decisions.  It may be that the writers deliberately wanted to identify him with the mysterious figure of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah.  This servant is the one who bears ‘our infirmities and carries our diseases’ .  He also, by being ‘numbered with the transgressors .. , bore the sin of many’.  One way of reading the Passion story in the Gospels is to see the whole account as allowing Jesus to fulfil the vocation of the Servant.  He is the innocent victim, through whom God can mediate his forgiveness to the human race.

It is possible to read the accounts of the giving of the Last Supper to support this interpretation.  In Luke’s account of the giving of the bread, Jesus says ‘Do this as in remembrance of me’.  Looking at the word ‘remembrance’ with its associations with sacrifice in the OId Testament, we can see that Jesus may have understood his death to be a sacrifice.  An innocent death, the death of a victim as Christ’s death would be, could be re-enacted endlessly in a ritual act to ‘remind’ God to fulfil his promise to forgive sins.  Jesus on the cross, like the Servant of Isaiah, is the God-given means of reconciliation for humanity.

The idea of Jesus as a victim is not suddenly introduced in the Passion accounts.  We see, throughout the gospel story, Jesus involving himself with the marginalised and the poor.  This focus of concern is anticipated in the words of the Magnificat when it is said that God ‘has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly’.  There is a lot to suggest that Jesus spent far more time with the ‘riff-raff’ of society than with the respectable.  The story of the Good Samaritan can be read in a way that is deeply subversive to the established religious order.  The account of the Passion can be seen to continue this theme, except that instead of Jesus involving himself with the poor and oppressed, he in fact becomes one of them.  There is no place or situation more shameful than to be executed on a cross.

In thinking about our overall theme of the abuse of power in the church, we can see that Christ in the passion story (and before) would always be on the side of the victim.  They might be a victim of illness, a sufferer from a life-time of exploitation or being in an abusive relationship.  It would not be wrong to suggest that Christians should always seek to identify with victims of all kinds.  But we know in practice that the Church is better at cosying up to privilege and wealth and this has gone on for centuries.  The task for those of us who are privileged in any way is, first of all, to enter with our imaginations into the victimhood of Jesus in his suffering and see how it was a deliberate choice.  In that act of identification we may find ourselves more sensitised to the victims who are all around us.  If we want to know what Christian love actually looks like, we have before us the love being demonstrated as Jesus moves out to embrace the victims of society during his ministry.  Then there is his supreme act of identification with the lowest of the low in accepting death through crucifixion.   It is quite hard for us to grasp the breadth and depth of that love, but at least it is demonstrated to us in a concrete form.

What is our task?  The first is to identify with Jesus as the lover and healer of the victims and follow him in bringing love, healing and comfort to them as much as we can.  The second thing is to follow him as far as we can in his identification with the victims and suffering of our world.  Jesus is the minister to the suffering as well as the one who suffers by being himself a victim.  The story of the Passion once more stretches our imaginations to understand anew this supreme involvement by God with the human race.  It takes guts and strength after this to be able to sing that line of the hymn which says ‘ Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.’

As part of my post-retirement activity,  I act as a volunteer in the local hospital.  I have been allocated two wards to visit weekly on behalf of the chaplain, so that individuals in particular need do not get overlooked.  Most of the patients are new when I see them, as the turnover in beds is very rapid these days. Few patients stay more than a few days.  I know that for those who do stay longer, there are real dangers in what many describe as ‘institutionalisation’.  This is a creeping malaise that depletes the patient of the ability to think for themselves or make any kind of decision.  The task of living and making decisions is being done for them and so their own self-determination becomes gradually atrophied through lack of use.  The task of leaving the hospital and resuming normal living is for them a real ordeal.  It is not dissimilar to an addict trying to live without a drug of dependence.

Readers of this blog will know about my interest in Trinity Brentwood and the blog that is seeking to obtain an apology on behalf of all those who have been damaged by the church over 30+ years.  Recently the blogmaster, Nigel Davies, received two telephone calls from current members.  They pleaded with him to stop protesting outside the church on most Sundays.  During the conversation they admitted that Nigel’s campaign was legitimate but they were locked into the church because they had never known anything else.  The protests upset them.  Leaving was something impossible to contemplate.  Nigel commented that this was a clear case of institutionalisation.

Somewhere on my shelves is a book with the unlikely title, When God becomes a Drug.  The incident from Brentwood and my book title led me to thinking about this whole topic of churches becoming foci of addiction and institutionalisation.  It is not clear where, in fact, the boundary between being in thrall to an addictive institution and developing a healthy routine of loyalty to an organisation lies.  Probably the role of stopping people becoming unhealthily dependent on a group is something that falls to the leadership of that group.  But of course the leaders of addictive churches may not want their members to escape from the thrall of their dependency.  Out of the dependency comes tithing,  adulation and the sense of power.   A leader who, for reasons of his own, needs these things will not want to discourage this creeping dependency and institutionalisation of followers.  Under such a leader a church  becomes an increasingly addictive institution.

I write these words without any specific solution to the issue but as an attempt to name a problem in the church.  Awareness of something is one way of stopping it getting worse.  As a former person in charge of congregations (I hesitate to use the word ‘leader’), I know how much I longed for people metaphorically to get up out of their seats.  Far too many of the congregation seemed content to remain totally inert in the pews.  The architecture of the building seems to encourage such passivity.  Rows of seats face an altar and a pulpit, both of which are raised up high and this setting seems to suppress the possibility of genuine dialogue between teacher and those who are taught.  People in real teaching situations would find impossible to tolerate the lack of engagement between teacher and taught that seems normal in a church setting.

The problem of institutionalisation and passivity becomes worse as you enter churches where theology and tradition make it part of the way things are.  I remember the Baptist lady in a former parish who could not understand discussion groups because the Bible’s authority meant that there was nothing to discuss.  Such a reliance on the Bible and on the ability of the minister always to interpret that Bible correctly, mean that many churches have little chance of escaping the accusation of being hotbeds of dependency and addiction.

I return to the image of patients in a hospital gradually losing their ability to make decisions and take any kind of responsibility for their lives.  If this is an accurate description of what at least some churches do to their congregations, then we are moving a long way from the good news of Jesus.  Jesus talked about ‘life in all its abundance’ and this is not something you see often in churches of any kind.  The challenge for all of us is to rouse ourselves to take a stand against passivity encouraged by authoritarian teaching and institutions, especially in the church.  All of us need to take steps to see that our faith is leading us, not to some kind of inertia, but to an active life-enhancing way of moving forward.  Laying claim to ‘life in all its abundance’ is hard work but eminently worth pursuing.  Abundant life has little in common with the addiction, obedience and dependency which is all that many churches seem to offer.