One of the components of a traditional education in the Ancient World was the ability to use rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of using words, particularly the spoken word, in order to persuade people of your cause.  Thus rhetoric is of importance to politicians, social reformers and preachers alike.  We do not often link the word rhetoric to the topic of sermon presentation but the connection is there.  How words are used, the speed at which they are used, will make a huge difference as to whether the content and meaning of words are communicated to an audience.  We all know how some preachers can move us while others are dull and uninspiring.  We also know that most long sermons seldom achieve their aim of persuading a congregation of anything. No doubt we can think of many other reasons why some sermons often fail to hit the mark.

The word rhetoric carries with it the idea of contrivance or technique in the art of using words.  One could even speak of trickery being implied when we talk about rhetoric being employed.  I want us to think about some of the typical ‘tricks’ that are used as rhetorical devices in sermons because once we can identify them, they cease to have power over us.

A typical rhetorical technique used by the evangelist Charles Finney in the 19th century and his many followers since, was to use words to bring the audience to some sort of emotional crisis.  I have heard this standard ‘conversion call’ many times over the years and it has become, to say the least, a little stale.  The typical exponent of the call will begin by talking about his own experience of conversion and will often lace it with details of the unregenerate life.  This tale of pre-conversion days describe how smoking, alcohol and bad language were leading the preacher to certain perdition and the flames of hell.  These will be described with great detail and even relish.  Then the change, the conversion came and as a result the preacher can now look forward to the bliss of heaven.  The congregation is then invited to come to a point of decision.  Do they want to join the swearers, the sexually depraved and the drinkers in the flames of hell or are they ready to make the act of belief in the saving power of Christ?  This approach, particularly when it is heard for the first time, is not without its rhetorical power.   Many have heard such a message and have gone forward, buoyed up with the emotion of the occasion.  Some may even have become Christians for the long term as the result of this message.  But there are, of course, problems.

The first problem is that the emotions of an evening meeting among huge crowds do not always survive the cold light of the following day.  When I was a parish priest, I would occasionally receive commendations from the Billy Graham crusades pointing me to individuals who had signed a piece of paper at a rally.  The pledge to re-link individuals to the church they were connected to already was an indication of the ecumenical sensitivity of the later phase of the Graham crusades.  On the two occasions when this happened, the individual concerned was embarrassed to receive a visit and played down the significance of what had happened.  Certainly nothing came of it.  Meanwhile those individuals had entered the statistics of the Billy Graham organisation as people who had responded to ‘the call.’  The second problem, and this is more serious, is that many of the people who made a ‘decision’ did so in response to the moment of real terror that was placed in them by the rhetoric of the speaker.  I myself attended a meeting run by David Watson as part of his mission to the University of Oxford in 1974.  I had heard that he was a rising star in the evangelical world and I was hoping to hear a fresh presentation of the Gospel.  But no, even David Watson stuck with the Finney script of the moment of decision.  We were called to decide between heaven and hell and the decision had to be made at that moment.  To say that such evangelism is exploitation of deep-seated fears of annihilation is perhaps an understatement.  The words uttered in the context of evangelical meetings of this kind do have the power to unsettle, at the very least, most normal people.  The vulnerable, as Chris often tells us, are particularly sensitive to this kind of pressure from the man at the front. (They are normally male.)  Should emotional decisions be made in the context of group pressures, stirring music and strong rhetoric, not to mention blood curdling threats?

A separate blog post is needed to unpack the rhetoric of the charismatic renewal but it can be said here that there well-known techniques of creating the kind of crowd excitement that makes charismatic phenomena more likely.  I will be talking about something called ‘voice-roll’ which is used to great effect by some charismatic preachers.  Also, as a brief comment, it is hard to see how charismatic phenomena are reproduced week after week, unless some rhetorical and other techniques are applied by the leader up front.

The link between rhetoric and preaching, particularly conversion preaching, seems clear.  Perhaps in our discussion we can share our experience of this kind of preaching and ask the pertinent question.  When you extract the rhetorical devices, the emotional pressure and the induced terror, what exactly is left of the Good News?  Is there anything we can retain from this kind of preaching which is wholesome?

Thanks to the internet we are able to see and hear the Archbishop of Canterbury speaking at St Edmundsbury Cathedral on the subject of same sex marriage.  It is clear that he is enormously exercised by the question and he seems aware that there are traps for him whatever side he takes.  On the video clip that I watched from the Bury Free Press, he emphasised how the church has found itself under pressure to make decisions with a far greater speed than is usual.  Changes in an understanding of what marriage is, are not normally effected in such a short space of time, and this is what seems to be happening today in the rest of society.

I have some sympathy with the Archbishop up to this point.  He wants to carry everyone with him and the Church is like an ocean liner which is not used to turning round in such a short time.  But it is some other arguments that he raises (not on the video) that I do find myself at odds with him.  Apparently, according to another report, he brought up the issue of what the Anglican world thinks outside the UK, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.  The argument seemed to run as follows.  We in England have some half million members while the Anglican churches of Africa have some eighty million souls.  They are against the very idea of same sex marriage, so we have to more than cautious in what we say on the subject.  They look to us for guidance and leadership on this so we must be careful so that they do not feel betrayed by an apparent shift in our stance.

Before we attempt to answer this argument, it must be said that the Archbishop has personal links with many Christians in Nigeria and so feels his role as Anglican leader very acutely.  No doubt he is under pressure to say the things that they want him to say, loudly and unambiguously.  But it is a pressure that has to be resisted.  Why?  In the first place we need to examine why the Nigerians and other sub-Saharan Anglican are so set against the possibility of any compromise on the topic of gay sex.  The stand they are taking is not without cost for their churches and their links with other churches and sponsoring groups.  A short article like this will only scratch the surface of the deeper reasons for this visceral abhorrence of gay relationships.  But I suggest that the opposition is rooted in two areas, cultural and theological.  On the cultural side there are traditions peculiar to Africa which make this issue of far more significance than for the West.  The theological resistance is, on the other hand, not an African issue at all but one largely exported from the States.  In summary (and I have written about this on an earlier post) same sex marriage is the chosen battle ground for conservative Christians in America to fight the forces of modernism and change, the so-called culture wars.

It is obvious that the point I have just made is one that can be debated as to its truth and accuracy.  But the other point I want to make is less contentious and it concerns the differences between the outlook of us in Britain and those who live in Africa.  We are different in our outlook and to say otherwise, I would suggest, betrays an extreme cultural blindness.  Every culture is defined to some extent by its history.  I indicated the other week the way the Orthodox think quite differently on theological matters because they never experienced the Reformation.  This in no way is a put-down but simply a statement of fact.  I would argue that, in fact, the theological perspective of the Orthodox is in some ways richer than ours precisely because of this.  But to return to the differences that are apparent when looking at Western Christians and those who live in Africa.  Those of us who reflect on the cultural history of our country will be aware that we live within a developing cultural framework.  This is a huge subject and not one on which I would claim any particular expertise.  But I would think it a commonplace to suggest that our political and intellectual history arises out of developments that took place in previous centuries.  The system of government we have did not arise overnight but evolved out of the developments that took place after the bloody Civil War of the 1640s.  Similar things can be said about out theological traditions.  These look back to debates in the 19th century and before.  The liberal-conservative debate has to be set in an intellectual setting that goes back at least 150 years in this country.

One of the things that belongs to modern theologians working in Britain in the 21st century is the right to work in a post-Enlightenment way, questioning and challenging assumptions as they feel necessary.  This right to question and challenge is what has allowed science and technology also to move forward with rapid speed over the past 250 years.  The thought that theology works in a different way here in Britain from the way it does in Africa is thus hardly controversial.  Any fair minded person will recognise that an attempt to suggest that African theological reflection might have some veto over the work done by theologians in the West would be an intolerable state of affairs.   Obviously African traditions in theology, politics and culture generally have a right to be heard in the wider world but never in a way that accords them special privileges.

The strong anti-gay rhetoric coming out of Africa is the business of the West as we see actual harm caused to individuals in the way of mob violence and imprisonment.  Beyond that we may have to accept that African societies will always have deeply conservative social attitudes in these area.  But if we are to work with such a differing perspective we need to insist that our history and traditions are also respected.  Just as African perspectives on morality come out of their particular history, so do our own.

The Anglican Communion faces a crossroads.  Can we tolerate a situation where one side is allowed to deny to the other the right to think and reflect in accordance with traditions developed over  decades?  If African Churches really find our debates on the gay issue so viscerally offensive that they deny us the right to even air these debates, can we really walk together in any meaningful sense?  Archbishop Welby is asking us to moderate the expressions of opinion on the gay issue in this country.  Is it not time that he demanded from the African primates a level of rational courtesy in this discussion?  Without basic courtesy, it is hard to see that the Anglican Communion can or should survive in its present form.

This account of an abusive church is of a very different kind from the account of Trinity Brentwood.  It is not about a single congregation but concerns a whole diocese on the other side of the world.  The church concerned is the Anglican Diocese of Sabah which is situated in Malaysia and the northern part of the island of Borneo.  My account is based, not on gossip or hearsay, but on a sober report commissioned by the provincial House of Bishops for South East Asia.  The report, as we shall see, paints a dark picture about the behaviour of the Bishop of Sabah, Albert Vun.  It is still unclear why the House of Bishops, having read this devastating report about the Bishop’s conduct, did no more than offer a slap on the wrist.  Clearly the church politics in this part of the world are beyond the comprehension of a blog reader based in the UK.

Bishop Albert Vun was consecrated in 2006, having conducted a ‘successful’ ministry in one of the major parishes in the Sabah diocese.  I put the word ‘successful’ in inverted commas, because as readers of this blog will know, I do not regard  filling a church with worshippers as necessarily implying that the leader is either godly or promoting the values of the Kingdom.  In this part of the Anglican world, charismatic renewal is the norm for church practice.  In an Asian context this style of worship might be thought something of a cultural ‘fit’ and clearly some Christians here in the West are also excited by this heady brew of uninhibited Asian worship styles and an extremely conservative fundamentalist theology..

The problems that arose with Bishop Vun’s ministry were nothing directly to do with his style of worship or indeed his theology.  The latter owed much to the ultra-conservative Moore College in Sydney which teaches a fairly austere brand of Calvinist theology , but now often mixed with Pentecostal-style worship.  This college situated in Sydney is largely responsible for the reactionary tone taken by some Australian bishops, especially Bishop Peter Jensen, the secretary of the conservative group known as GAFCON.

To return to Albert Vun.  The problems which lay people brought up to the House of Bishops and the secular courts of Malaysia fall into two categories –pastoral and financial.  To take the second first, it is enough to say that the Bishop was constantly involved in complicated land and property deals which were, according to the complainants, unsupervised and questionable, both legally and ethically.  Also there appears to have been a culture which allowed the Bishop to spend large sums of money, both on his family and on those favoured by him.  He also travelled all over the world business class on ‘mission’ trips.  These seem to consist of the Bishop preaching to large gatherings, using all the techniques of charismatic rhetoric.  One particular institution in this country blessed with his missionary activity is the Anglican theological college, Trinity Bristol.  I do not think it unfair to suggest that such hyper-active ‘big tent’ activities only form a tiny part, if any, of a rounded missionary outreach.  To have a overexcited Malaysian bishop visiting you for a one off charismatic event is of doubtful benefit for the health of your church, whether in Australia or Britain.

Beyond the financial shenanigans which , I regret to say, are seen to be increasingly common among a certain genre of charismatic leaders (the famous Yonggi Cho of the million strong Yoido Church in Seoul has been recently jailed for fraud) we come to look at the pastoral issues that were raised by the complainants.  In summary, the compilers of the report saw no reason to doubt the accusations of pastoral abuse on the part of the Bishop.  The events included refusing to allow a clergyman to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral even though there were other clergy able and willing to step in to cover for him.  Another incident was the refusal to allow a clergyman who had had a heart bypass operation to have adequate recuperation time.  He died a few weeks later.  The diocesan staff, particular the women working in the office, were treated with contempt by Bishop Vun.  A particular technique was to shout loudly at them and other clergy over periods of up to an hour.  This would also happen at church meetings.  Bishop Vun was also an expert in holding threats over people’s head that he would sack them.  When individuals were dismissed by him, including his Archdeacon, they received less than a week to pack up and vacate their homes.

To say that the diocese was demoralised would be an understatement.  A further power game that the Bishop has played was to control totally the intake of future clergy, making sure that none of them were intelligent or independent enough to challenge him.  They were then trained ‘in house’ in a course that was not accredited for any other diocese.  Thus none of them had the option to move elsewhere in the country, if and when they realised that their future under this bishop was bleak and uncertain.  The poor training that was being given to these clergy resulted in sermons lifted from the Internet and inept pastoral care.  One sentence sums up their conclusions over the charge of pastorally offensive behaviour.  ‘The committee believes that that Bishop Vun needs professional help to assist him through this ‘dysfunctional behaviour’.     This was a mild way of saying that the Bishop was guilty as charged of sociopathic and narcissistic tyranny against the majority of the people in his diocese.

What did the House of Bishops do?  They took the option of asking the Bishop to take a six month sabbatical to receive spiritual support and time for reflection.  He then took his family off around the world visiting his supporters and receiving their hospitality.  On his return he appeared to have learnt nothing but resumed his vitriolic attacks on those who had challenged him before his departure,  The story has recently taken a new twist, in that Bishop Vun has recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  The gloomy prognosis for his earthly survival does not appear to have lessened his anger and vindictiveness towards those that he believes to be his enemies.

The story of  the Diocese is, from the point of view of the editor of this blog, a story ultimately about the use and abuse of power.  People who acquire power of whatever kind often want to use that power for their own gratification.  Bishop Vun first of all found a power given him by his ability to move people through charismatic rhetoric.  This, we would speculate, went to his head so that when he became bishop, he started to use power for his own ends.  I have spoken before of the three ways of exercising power – sex, money and power games.  Thankfully the sex  part appears not to play a part in this story but clearly the other temptations were part of Bishop Vun’s ‘dysfunction’.  If there is any conclusion to be drawn from this saga, it is that the powerful charismatic preacher must never be allowed to believe that his power and inspiration extends in every direction.  Even he/she can be wrong and they should surround themselves with people who are ready to tell them so.  Power corrupts and absolute power should be checked at every point – to misquote the old saying.

This is the concluding section of James’ very wise reflection on the Pilling report.  Among other things it picks up the fact that certain Christian groups find it hard to tolerate opinions that are different from their own.  Unbending inflexible opinion in the Church is something that many of us find hard to stomach.  We know the effect it has on people within the Church and the impression it gives to those outside.  This blog wants to defend people from all kinds of tyranny and enforced ideas.  The damage of such things is too great.

The Science of Homosexuality. In 2009, Gillian Cooke and Alan Sheard in ‘Christianity and Homosexuality in the 21^st century’ stated that “the (scientific) evidence is clear that sexual orientation, whether hetero or homosexual, is not under the control of the voluntary will and is determined by the time of birth, partly by genetics but more specifically by hormonal activity in the womb.” Pilling, four years on, states: “The idea that science can give us clear and unequivocal answers, even on its own terms let alone in the field of morality, turns out to be over-optimistic.” These two statements can’t both be right. The reason this matters is because it addresses a key question: Are homosexual desires sinful? The so-called ‘Higton motion’ passed by General Synod in 1987 (and which Pilling observes is still valid) states: “homosexual genital acts…fall short of this ideal (an act of total commitment), and are (likewise) to be met with a call to repentance and the exercise of compassion.” If you call someone to repentance (and how often do we these days hear a call for repentance to any other kind of sin than homosexuality?) you must accept per se that there is a sin which requires repentance. Therefore the science is critical. If homosexuality is not an act of choice but is pre-determined at birth, might it be God-given, and if it is God-given, how can it possibly be sinful?

In view of the critical nature of this question, the visible science in the report is lamentable. The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ submission is the only one that the panel received from a scientific body, and its thin evidence is belittled in the report by the ‘Core Issues Trust’. This Trust is a non-scientific body which seeks to encourage those trying to move away from their homosexuality. They are one of a raft of Christian-based bodies globally who are desperate to prove that people can be ‘cured’ of their homosexuality, so far with not a shred of evidence that such ‘treatment’ is effective and with a growing body of evidence globally which implies that such treatment can be deeply damaging to gay people. N Coulton showed in 2005 that homosexuals accounted for more than half the male youth deaths from suicide in this country. This evidence is brushed aside in Pilling, courtesy of S L Jones, who is quoted as saying that any psychological distress arises because homosexuality “cuts against a fundamental, gender-based given of the human condition.”

The Interpretation of Scripture. The Bishop of Birkenhead claims that his position on scripture is the traditional one in the church, but this ignores Augustine of Hippo’s statement, (which goes back much further than the Bishop’s literalist views) that it is our duty always to seek the most charitable interpretation of the text. As we know, Christians through history have used the Bible to support slavery, the death penalty, apartheid, the suppression of women in the Church and the barring of remarriage among those divorced, among many other things now considered unacceptable. If the Bible is so clear, why have we changed our views on these things? And why is it that those who think the Bible is clear are so selective in their reading? There are very few verses in the Bible that actually address homosexuality. One of them, Leviticus 20:3, states: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” Why is it that Pilling quotes not this verse but Leviticus 18:22, which does not refer to the death penalty? Could it be that those who would want us all to take the Bible literally might find it uncomfortable to campaign to bring back the death penalty for homosexuality, particularly in the light of their statement that they “welcome the presence and ministry of gay and lesbian people”? Or should we, when identifying ‘tradition’, read history selectively? It’s not the only place in the report where claims are made to have the only definitive answer. The Report as a whole, and the Bishop of Birkenhead’s submission in particular, makes a number of jaw-dropping claims about scripture. For example, The Bishop states that an exclusive relationship between one man and one woman for life is ‘the only form of partnership approved by God.’ It’s hard to know where to start with such a prejudicial reading of the scriptures and it’s frankly frightening that we have people with such views as Bishops in the Church of England. There is actually no word in Hebrew that means ‘marriage’ in our modern sense. The phrase used instead is ‘to take or give a woman or daughter as a wife.’ Anyone who has studied the position of women even in the first century, let alone through the Old Testament period, would shudder at the thought of women being returned to such a state of ‘biblical marriage’, held out as exemplary by the Bishop.

One of the aspects of Church life for which we may have our new Archbishop of Canterbury to thank is an encouragement to deal with controversial issues by a process of facilitated discussion and listening. Such a move must surely be welcome in a Church where so many hurl bricks at others who hold opposing views, whom they may never have met, let alone engaged with. However, the monumental task ahead, upon which the whole of the future of this debate depends, is underlined by the fact that the Bishop of Birkenhead states: “I am in agreement with Recommendations 5-7”, but he dissents from the rest. Recommendations 5-7 cover rejecting homophobia and making a commitment to pay close attention to the science. But, pointedly, he does not agree with Recommendation 11, which encourages “the Church to continue to engage openly and honestly and to reflect theologically….to discern the mind of Christ and what the Spirit is saying to the Church now”, which is one of the main conclusions of Pilling. Why? Because the Bishop fells that if facilitated listening and discussion take place, they will undermine the Church’s teaching. So we should apparently refuse to listen to debate and address this subject with a closed mind? If this is what he is proposing, and he seems to be, let me quote the Bible back to him. In Acts 7, there is the story of the stoning of the first Christian martyr, St Stephen. There we read “they covered their ears and with a loud shout all rushed against him.” Isn’t covering of ears exactly what happens when abuse takes place? Isn’t it as true now as it was in the first century? Isn’t it the story that Stephen has written about on this very blog, relating to Trinity Church, Brentwood?

The Issue of Church Leaders. The official Church policy on active homosexual relationships, which Pilling saddles us with for at least another two years, sets a lower standard for ‘laity’ than for those who wear a dog collar. The policy, which Pilling seems to think is acceptable, includes this statement: “Because of the distinctive nature of their calling, status and consecration the clergy cannot claim the liberty to enter into sexually active homophile relationships”. I must admit to a shudder when reading these words, which surely cannot be healthy if we are serious about driving abuse out of our churches? I would even go so far as to suggest that this statement is close to idolatrous. Pilling states that it is legitimate for the Church to require higher standards of conduct for its clergy than for laity. We have seen elsewhere on this blog, particularly from Chris’s posts, how dangerous it is to place clergy on such a ‘holiness pedestal’, using words like ‘distinctive’, ‘status’ and ‘consecration’. How does this play into the abuse issues that we’ve looked at on the survivingchurch blog? Requiring clergy who may have been born with attraction to members of the same sex to live their lives in celibacy might sound like a good idea if you start from a position that homosexuality is a sin. But the history of churches where celibacy is a requirement for the priesthood, would not suggest that this rules out abuse; rather the opposite. And, worst of all, it implies that it is perfectly acceptable to be an autocratic and domineering leader, so long as you are married to someone of the opposite sex. How sad. How very, very sad. Surely there can’t be any safe or fair standard for clergy other than equality with the people in the pews and a commitment to see themselves as sinful people ministering to other sinful people? Anything else must surely be doomed to fail and to lead to further abuse?

Summary. The Pilling Report looks like an old-fashioned English fudge to me. Sir John Pilling seems to have glimpsed the intractability of the disagreement underlined by this issue, which probably exceeds even that of the debate on Women Bishops, and has decided to kick the can two years down the road. This may well result in an even bigger problem breaking out in 2016, if no consensus is possible even then, which seems likely. Who are the losers? It’s not those who will vote with their feet and decide that the Church, as a place that rejects them and everything they stand for, is a place that they can do without. No, the real losers will be those clergy who can’t let go of their deeply-held faith, despite being rejected by their own Church, and even more so for their partners, who have even less choice. And finally, those in same sex relationships who sit in the pews whose hopes have been dashed by Pilling and who will continue to feel the pain of being told from the rooftops that they must repent, by a Church whose feet are set in clay.

I have always had an interest in Russian history.  My sister married into a family of White Russians who settled in London in the 1920s.  The Revolution was, from their point of view, a cataclysmic event which destroyed their way of life and had left them for a time as stateless refugees.  Part of the family made it to the West and part was left behind, only to disappear during the purges in the 1930s.  My interest is thus tempered with a sense, through others, of the emotions of exile, bereavement and sheer horror at what went on in that tragic country.

I have no real qualifications to comment on the present upheavals that are going on in Russia and Ukraine.  But I cannot help noticing the sentiments of the Cold War that are appearing in the current disputes between Russia and Ukraine.  The word Ukraine, for me, sums up the massive famine of the 1930s when the peasant class was systematically destroyed  over large areas to destroy resistance to the Soviet experiment.  This was but one of the many horrors perpetrated in the name of socialism.  At the same time Stalin was destroying the entire class of revolutionaries, who had brought him to power, through show trials.  Tens of thousands of people were swept off to prison camps in remote parts of Siberia and Northern Russia, many of them to die of hunger and privation.  When I was at university, there was a fellow student who was Polish.  He described how his parents had escaped during the war from one of these camps, clinging to the underneath of a train all the way into Persia.  Why do I mention these things in this blog?  It is because the one thing that has been absent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 is any real ownership of the horrors of the soviet past.  The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in a few people becoming extremely rich while the rest of society carried much as before.  If some people expressed regret about the past, there was nothing which was loud enough to be heard by the rest of the world.

In South Africa, Desmond Tutu presided over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission but nothing similar has been heard of the territories of the former Soviet Union.   Why does this matter?  It matters because, as someone said, those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them.  The horrors of autocracy, suppression of dissent and complete distortions of truth are back in the news as though the collapse of the Soviet Union never happened.   In short Russia is stumbling back into the mire of tyranny and arbitrary rule partly because they have never owned up to what actually happened in the 70+ years of Soviet misrule.  It was not just misrule, it was the grotesque and arbitrary mistreatment of human beings by those who believed in a bizarre corrupt ideology.

Although one can point to other countries around the world who do not own up to their histories (Japan), the Russian failure is perhaps one of the most serious.  I bring it up now not only because it is in the news but also because I am reminded of the situation at Trinity Church, Brentwood, described in the previous post.  This is a church is condemned by its own inability and refusal to face its own past.  Because of living in a miasma of falsehood, it contaminates all who attend it.  Even those who use the facilities it offers become guilty by association.  A particular guilt falls on a small group of apparently honourable churchmen who come to the church and, in return for substantial ‘love offerings’ ,preach and provide  an aura of respectability to the church.  I used the anonymity of a blog response to challenge a particular Anglican notable to explain why he did not use his influence to challenge the refusal of the church to face up to its past.  The 600 ex-members who have been betrayed and shunned deserved better than hearing the message ‘business as usual’.

For over 70 years the citizens of the old Soviet Union lived in a place of pretence, falsehood and the miasma of propaganda.  Truth was something that few people were in touch with and consciences and humanity were blunted in this so-called experiment to make the new Soviet citizen.   The refusal to tell the truth about anything was the chief way in which the fantasies of the system were able to be sustained.  When Christian groups fail in the basic task of honesty towards their members, then a similar crime against humanity is being committed.  How can human beings in any situation, Christian or otherwise, flourish in a situation where lies are being told?  A good definition of what Christianity has to offer is the enablement of human flourishing.  Lies, suppression of truth make that flourishing impossible to sustain.  Trinity Church Brentwood and other churches like it,  thus fails this fundamental test of credibility

I have now written roughly 50 blog posts and I suspect that my readers may be getting weary with the theoretical material that I have unloaded on to this site.  Today I am going to present material of a different kind.  This is information from a well respected blog which I have been following for the past two and half years.  It concerns an actual church in the here and now that epitomises many of the issues that we are concerned with.

Trinity Church, Brentwood (formerly known as Peniel) is a Pentecostal independent church founded some 35 years ago by one Michael Reid.  There is much material from its early history that is fascinating, especially how it grew (house-church style) from a domestic front room to the large edifice it has today.  It maintained a reputation for healing miracles and advertised widely on billboards to this effect.  I personally had a fleeting contact with Michael Reid (and his assistant Peter Linnecar) on a visit, way back in 1998.  I dwell on this visit for a moment because in the light of all that has happened since, it does fit into an overall pattern.  The Sunday I attended with my wife was the Sunday after Christmas, one of the few Sundays available for a working clergyman to attend church elsewhere!  I remember no details about the sermon, except that Reid included an order to everyone in the building to turn to their neighbour and tell them that they were ignorant.  It was, in retrospect, a deliberate and blatant attempt to humiliate and disempower the people there.  To compensate there was entertainment from well sung music, though as I have said in a previous blog post, such entertainment is a block to proper thinking.

Reid’s church was part of my overall research on abusive churches at the end of the 90s.  It does not get a mention in my book as I had no personal contact with anyone there.  The church achieved a certain notoriety in 2002, I think, when Martin Bell stood against the local Tory parliamentary candidate as a way of pointing to a claimed infiltration into Tory ranks by members of the church.  More importantly, six years ago, (almost to the day) Michael Reid was suspended from leadership on the grounds of adultery.  It appeared that he had engaged in a relationship with the choir mistress for some eight or nine years.

This shock to the church might well have closed down many other churches in this situation, particularly ones that were so much an outworking of a single personality.  But such was the wealth of the church and the power of the founding families that the church has struggled through to reorganise itself and carry on.  As a stop-gap, it was thought then, the trustees appointed the assistant, Peter Linnecar, to the job of chief pastor.  To keep him sweet, they also agreed to pay him £80,000 p.a.  They then decided on a name change from Peniel to Trinity Church.

It was only after that Reid had left that the full horror of his cultic empire began to come clear.  All the tricks of cultic manipulation had been practised over the years, especially the tactics of fear and threats.  With Reid gone, there was a mass exodus of around 600 people.  These joined other churches in the area or simply stopped attending.  But Trinity was not going to die.  One of the things that has kept it going is the way that members have allowed their children to marry one another so that for many, church members and close relatives are the same people.  Obviously not being close to the situation I do not know the details, but there appears to be a hard core of intermarried supporters of the church who are unlikely ever to leave.

The other strength of the church is in its considerable wealth.  It had acquired a large building for a school and owns other premises which are a magnet for other church organisations in the area who lack these sort of facilities.  One evangelical organisation, Amnos, runs its activities from the Trinity buildings.  The source of this wealth may be traced back to the 30 + years of hard tithing but it is questionable whether all of it has ended up being used for charitable purposes.  Apart from spending large sums on law suits, the sacking of Reid has proved very expensive for the church.  Reid himself, though discredited, has still ended up an extremely wealthy man in retirement.

The source of extensive information on this church has come via one Nigel Davies.  Nigel attended Peniel/Trinity for some years and was, to all accounts, a respected member.  His gifts as a musician seem to have utilised by the church and his own father received a dramatic healing at the hands of Reid sometime in the early 90s.  At no time has Nigel attempted to downplay this healing event.  Nigel’s blog, http://victimsofbishopmichaelreid.blogspot.co.uk , is an attempt to get the church to own up to its cultic past and make a public apology for the suffering caused to a  large number of people.  His blog is now beginning to wind down, but sadly it is evident that the present leadership has no intention of looking under any stones, in spite of the three year campaign.  From the outsider’s point of view the blog has operated at more than one level.  On the one hand we have the campaign itself and its demands.   But we also have all the information about the church that finds its way on to the blog, particularly the details of the interactions between the church members and others.  On many Sundays, Nigel parks his car close to the entrance of the church with banners asking for an apology for past failures.  It is clear that the church does have many skeletons lurking in the cupboards.  A refusal to face up to them and make a clean breast of them is hampered by the continued leadership of Reid’s former right hand man, Peter Linnecar.  Nigel’s campaign also demands his resignation.  Clearly Peter knows many of the church’s dark secrets but he has too much to lose by resigning.  His continued position as leading pastor has so far kept a lid on the situation and prevented the kind of frank openness that Nigel is demanding.

Nigel’s blog, and my own participation in it, has in some ways inspired my present efforts on surviving church. org.  At a time when I am reflecting on and studying charismatic and church leadership, the Reid/Linnecar saga has provided week by week material to test various theories about the nature of such leadership.  What are the themes that I take from Nigel’s campaign?  Some of these I have already spoken about.  Others I have yet to discuss.

• The potential for large sums of tithed money to corrupt and undermine both leaders and members in ‘cultic’ churches.
• The issue of unlimited power enjoyed by charismatic leaders translating itself into sexual exploitation.
• The lasting effect of Christian betrayal on the spiritual and psychological health of ex-members.
• Churches that consist mostly of people who are related to one another by blood or marriage are going to preserve some suffocating dynamics.  This is also an issue for some small churches in the deep countryside.
• Giving too much power to a single individual in a church is seldom healthy.  Few people will exercise unchallenged power properly over a long period of time.  This is as true of politicians as it is of church people.   The Greeks had a word for it – hubris.  I shall be writing on this at some point.

Over the past few days, I have been wrestling in my mind with the issue of politics.  The reason for this is that I feel that some of Chris’ concerns for the disadvantaged and poor need  to be approached as a political issue.  Theological platitudes will never on their own be adequate to deal with the real problems of society.  This blog post is, however, not going to be an adequate response to many of the issues of poverty and deprivation but merely to indicate how difficult  I find it to have a secure political opinion.  My problem in finding it difficult to take a strong political position on most issues is one probably shared with countless others.  As far as I am concerned, most political issues draw from me two separate responses.  One is my outward approach to political questions which is based on my reasoning, intellect and Christian outlook.   The other is my personal emotional reaction to the same political questions.  This latter reaction arises out of my family background and the particular experiences of life that I have had.

I want to start to start with second of these two approaches.  I realised, as I was reflecting, that the story of my grandparents’ families has affected the way I think about certain political questions .  In each account there is a story of struggle.  As far as my paternal grandfather was concerned, it was the story of his struggle to cope with poverty and the effect of losing his father while still a small child in the 1860s.  The family moved from Brighton to London to live with an aunt while my great-grandmother eked out a living as a seamstress.  My grandfather was, however, fortunate.  He, with a group of other bright boys, attached themselves to a sympathetic schoolmaster in Tottenham for extra teaching.   Thus he was taken through an enhanced curriculum which included Latin and English literature.  He was able, in due course, to get a reasonably senior job at the Church Times.  He also acted as the English Correspondent for an American church magazine.  We still have the volume that Living Church sent him after his retirement from that post in the mid-30s.  This grandfather died the year I was born, 1945.

My maternal grandfather died in 1924 leaving behind my grandmother and my mother, then a child of 10 and three other siblings.  The family had been reasonably prosperous but their world was turned upside down by this catastrophe of his death.  My mother’s childhood was overshadowed by the real fear of poverty, not the extreme kind, but one that threatened the loss of the middle class status that they had enjoyed up to that point.  Somehow my grandmother juggled the finances so that she never had to go out to work, but it was a lean period.  In those pre-war days, all education had to paid for beyond school and it was by hard effort that a Trust Fund was tapped to release some money to enable my mother and her sister to attend teacher training college.

These family stories have of course seeped into my thinking about political issues.   I recognise that access to education, beyond the basics, has played a big part in my family’s history.  My own valuing of education is in particular inspired by my grandfather’s story.  In his case education was the route out of abject poverty while, in the other account, education allowed my mother to retain her future (and her middle class background).

Access to education is one crucial area of political debate. It is clear that the better educated part of the population possesses greater wealth and status than those without such advantages.  Logically if everyone recognised this fact, as my grandfather did, then there would be an enormous struggle to learn on the part of all.  As it is, it is the ‘pushy’ middle class parents who juggle the application criteria to make sure their offspring go to the best schools.  My own children both received very good educations but I am haunted by the tens of thousands who do not receive the best possible chance.  There are various reasons for this.  Some are political, the lack of financial resources provided to schools, but there are also problems with an endemic lack of understanding of what education is for on the part of many parents.  It is here my Christian outlook and my reasoning powers come into play and I find myself in a conundrum.  Instinctively I recognise the desire of ambitious parents to do the best they possibly can for their children.  That may include the right to spend money on school fees when practicable.   I also recognise that the very effort and sacrifice put in by these parents acts as a divisive factor in schools, with some children left at the bottom of the heap in schools which lack ambition on behalf of the students.  If no one believes in you and your potential, then there is little chance that you will be able to achieve.

It is here in the educational debate that I am divided internally.  My left wing side says that every child should reach their potential in education whatever the cost.  My right wing side says that we must honour the struggle many parents and their children make to acquire a good education.  Any attempt to discourage these sacrifices, whether financial or in terms of effort, should be resisted.

A similar conundrum exists within me over wealth.  My left wing reasoning (Christian?) side says that a greater equality in wealth is desirable.  My right wing emotional side tells me that motivation and reward for hard work is a good way of organising our economic life.

I leave the reader with my dilemma.  Is it possible to resolve, internally, these and other political attitudes and retain consistency?  Chris has made me more acutely aware of the problems and issues around those who are disempowered in society.  He has also emphasised how right wing attitudes, that are tolerated by many Christians and espoused by Thatcherism, have made inequalities worse.  Should a Christian ever collude with policies that may cause disadvantage to a group in society?   As far as education is concerned,  is it actually possible for everyone to get a decent education?  A good education would itself empower many vulnerable people and help protect them from the danger of exploitation by employers or by churches?   That is one of the issues raised by this blog on behalf of the abused in churches.  There was someone who once said that he could never enjoy the blessings of heaven if he thought that a single individual was being tormented in hell?  If that is a true Christian sentiment, then it might also be right  to ask if it is possible for one child to enjoy a first rate education which, indirectly, contributes to another child being let down by the system.

This afternoon, my wife and I made a short drive to walk on the hills that overlook our village.  From the place where we leave our car, it is but a short amble to a point from which we can look in three directions.  In each direction we can see a different part of Britain.  To the north are the hills of Dumfries while to the east, the range of the Pennines is clearly visible.   In the other south westerly direction are the Fells of Cumbria, with a snow capped peak of Helvellyn just visible.

My readers might wonder why I bother to recount this anecdote but the crucial point for this blog post is in this word, viewpoint.   Each of the ranges of hills I have mentioned could be looked at from many other places but  the particular distinct perspective that we were able to enjoy belonged only to that one place.  A viewpoint is the thing that is visible to an individual who stands at a particular point.  No one else can see the same view unless they go to that particular spot.  This viewpoint is not something to be argued about because, although the individual has only glimpsed one particular view, it in some sense belongs to him.  This  is where he/she was standing when he gazed at the view.

Each of us are the proud possessor of any number of viewpoints on a whole variety of things.  Each viewpoint we possess will be a combination of our life experience and things we have been taught or learnt.  This will of course apply to our theological position as with all the others we have.  No two people will have exactly the same viewpoint.  But the leaders of some groups will choose to encourage their members not to dwell on these natural differences among individuals.   They believe that the belief system of the members must be presented  and understood in an identical way.    I have often complained that when a congregation or even a group of churches is presented as all thinking in an identical way and having identical viewpoints on a topical issue, there is something artificial and wrong.  The only reason for a whole group of people expressing the same opinion and having the same viewpoint is to support the leadership in some particular power and political games.  We have read recently of the Archbishops of Nigeria and Uganda supporting the political leadership of their respective countries over the gay issue.  There is no way that these Archbishops can really claim to represent the viewpoints of every Anglican in their countries.  This is what they are claiming to do.  When a Christian leader says ‘what we think’, it is always wise to be a bit cynical as to whether this is indeed true.

The other point I want to raise, connected with  viewpoints, is the importance for everyone to try and understand other people and the viewpoints they hold.  All of need to recognise and respect that viewpoint, along with the particular personality, history and understanding of the individual which makes it unique.  Everyone sees the landscape, whether it be politics or the Christian faith, in their own way.  It will always take a particular set of qualities to enter someone else’s viewpoint – imagination, flexible thinking and empathy.  But these qualities of standing inside someone’s space and seeing the world  as they see it, are much needed.  We often fall into one of two positions in our approach to the viewpoint of others.  The first is to assume that we know the viewpoints of another person when we have not made any real effort to find out where they really are.    The second position, in many ways worse, is totally to ignore the viewpoints of other people as though they have no importance.  Being totally ignored or having your views subsumed into a group is, sadly, the experience of many Christian people.  The ‘group-mind’ takes over and the individuals become depersonalised in the process.  There is a wonderful passage in the Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass when the author is talking about his experience in a study group.  He says, and I quote from memory.  ‘I looked at the leader to find out what we think.’

The plethora of different viewpoints in any organisation or church is always going to be an untidy, even messy affair.  The task of coping with the variety of these differing positions is not going to be met by suppressing or ignoring them.  The cost of doing this will involve the disempowerment and devaluation of the richness of individual experience and knowledge.  There is another path which is  to develop at a profound level the ability to listen to where individuals are coming from.  This does not necessarily involve condescension or control.  The task of representing all these views, experiences and insights in a group situation is the task of leadership.  The true leader is the one who can articulate a position which has weighed up what is being said to him/her.  Listening profoundly and sensitively so that everyone feels that they have been heard is a rare but not impossible task.  The leader cannot of course agree with every viewpoint in the organisation, but if he/she can show that each one expressed has been respected and heard then at least the individuals represented by the leader still feel affirmed by the process.

Listening to, respecting and honouring the many viewpoints in a group or a church is a major responsibility of leadership.  Enforcing conformity and suppressing dissent in the group is sadly a more common scenario.  May the readers of the blog do all in their power to promote the first kind of leadership so that the richness and variety of people’s experiences and understanding can be allowed to flourish within the church.

One of the issues that Chris brings up in my conversations with him is the way that vulnerable people look to the church for certainties.  They have good reasons to hope to find certainty, because that is what the church in many situations seems to be offering them.  The lure of belonging to a church which purports to have these certainties is very seductive.  If someone, the church leader, has the ‘truth’, then I am safe.  There is the unspoken message that this same church leader will negotiate on my behalf all the difficult questions of life and allow me to feel protected and safe with God for all eternity.

The downside of all this certainty is that the individual, by handing over his thinking and his critical processes, has given away too much.  The situation of handing over this level of power is that you become vulnerable to being exploited in a number of ways – emotionally, financially or even sexually.  That people remain in this kind of toxic situation for any length of time is a possible indication of one of a number of things.  One is that their level of ‘need’ was acute when they joined the group.  They may have come out of a situation of domestic or personal chaos and the order and stability of the group was just what they needed.  More typical would be a deficit in their relationships, whether through isolation or breakup.  The religious group appears to fill that empty space and their experience of  well-being rises.

For a period of time all is well.  The individual with strong social needs achieves an equilibrium within the group together with a sense of meaning and direction.  Why would anyone want to disturb that apparent harmony?  The first reason for disturbing the harmony is the potential for abuse as I mentioned above.  I don’t want to develop that point here but rather talk about another aspect – the intellectual problems of this search for certainty.  It was Bishop Richard Holloway who said when talking about the meaning of faith, that its opposite is certainty.  He was saying that certainty is not a Christian value at all and that is not what he finds in the Scriptures.

There is a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. 11) where the author asks the question, ‘what is faith?’  He answers it with a brief definition,  ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for’. Then he goes on to give examples from the Old Testament of the heroes of faith and what they had done to express this facet of personality.  The typical exponent of Old Testament faith was of course Abraham.  The quality of his faith led him to leave the place where he lived and wander about, ‘not knowing where he went.’  This simple phrase ‘not knowing’ is perhaps indicative of why pilgrim Christians like myself do not deal in certainties.  Even though, as I indicated above, there are many people who long to have certainties because of their own personal needs, that does not make it right for leaders to promise them.  Superficially, the church that promises certainties is stronger and more attractive than one who offers the uncertainties of the search for truth.  But in pointing to that ‘unknowing’ journey there is no disempowerment, no control or any other of the infantilising aspects of many authoritarian churches who deal in certainties.

My ability to explain why I want to remain in the area of mystery and not knowing everything is, of course, no help to many of the people that Chris encounters.  Their need for reassurance in the midst of their vulnerabilities still remains acute.  To quote Bishop Holloway at them is not going to sort out any of their problems, even though I believe that he is completely right to make this contrast between certainty and faith.

The answer to this conundrum is, I think, to see that the level of wanting certainties is a stage in a process of growth.  It may sound condescending, but I think it would be right to see the demand for certainty as the demand of someone who lacks maturity both in faith and also in life.  All of us would deal gently with the young, immature or vulnerable.  We would also recognise that the stage they are at is not one where they should be left for any length of time.  Just as it is a failing on the part of a parent to try and stop a child growing up and leaving home, so it is also a failure to leave a Christian at the first stage of learning and discovery.  There is a fascinating passage, again in Hebrews (ch. 5), when the writer compares the sharing of milk with the sharing of solid food.  Milk is for the young while solid food is for those who are mature.  The Hebrews writer believes that his audience are still at the milk stage and not ready for solid food.

The conundrum which we have outlined over the contrast between faith and certainty may perhaps be resolved in this way.  Certainty may be appropriate for a short time with those who have started on the Christian path.  But as part of the path to a greater maturity, a Christian teacher should encourage his pupils to see, quite soon, that the dealing with the reality and mystery of God involves us letting go of the crude certainties that we were given as children.   The word ‘children’ might apply to anyone who is starting off to understand the Christian faith whether as actual children or as adults.  But what is appropriate to the child is not appropriate to the mature.  The mature Christian person should be able, like Abraham, to continue the journey of faith without knowing the exact route.  He or she will have many internal promptings of the spirit to help him decide that the path he is on is one that makes sense and will ultimately lead to deeper and deeper discovery of God and his will for their lives.

The Christian people that I admire in particular in history are the martyrs.  They were a group who were known for their faith.  This was expressed in them as a fearless openness to the reality of God and an enormous courage in the face of pain, loneliness and death.  Obviously there is a lot we do not know about their inner motivation, but the fearlessness of a St Perpetua faced with the horrors of the Roman arena is moving.  What she had and what we all should seek, was not a certainty or a truth statement but an encounter with a reality of God to which she responded with her openness, love and faith.