
By Janet Fife
I was unprepared for the impact the John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher review reports, issued recently, had on me. I’m not one of those directly affected: I didn’t know either of the men and if we had met they wouldn’t have thought me worth their notice. I do know some victims of both men, some who were part of their circle, and some of those people mentioned in the reports. I was prepared for the implications of that and the inevitable emotional impact and stirring of compassion for the victims and survivors.
What I didn’t expect was that the reviews would force me to reflect on my own family history. The world described by the reviewers was both familiar and utterly strange to me; it was those contrasts which struck me so forcibly. I grew up among conservative evangelicals, mostly in the USA, and retained that allegiance when we returned to England in 1974. I was a member of Church Society until they passed a resolution against ordination for women while I was training at Wycliffe Hall.
Reading about the privilege that comes with going to the right public school, I understood afresh why my father and his three brothers all emigrated in the post-war years. Cockneys from the slums around the Old Kent Road, their intelligence, talents, and acquired middle class accents would not have got them far had they stayed in England. Percy, a Scotland Yard detective, found he wasn’t going to get promotion within the force, so he moved to Tasmania. There he reached a senior level in the Australian police while writing radio plays and studying law in his free time. He eventually became a barrister, specialising in defence – as a change from his former career prosecuting. Reg went to the USA where he became business manager of the Christian Literature Crusade. Harold, a Baptist minister in England, took a large church in Toronto before working for the Far Eastern Gospel Crusade, spending half of each year in Japan. He wrote several books.
My father, Eric S. Fife, was much the youngest. He was only two when his father died, leaving the family to subsist on a widow’s pension. At 16 Dad had to leave school to help support his mother and himself. After serving in the RAF during WW2 he took a correspondence course with the London Bible College and was ordained as an FIEC (Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches) pastor in Winchester. During the war he had been stationed in North Africa for a considerable time, which sparked an interest in foreign missions, so he joined the board of the North Africa Mission. In 1955 he was sent to the USA to found a branch of the NAM over there, and so we emigrated. He must have been quite effective, because in a few years’ time he was appointed Missionary Director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (now known in the UK as UCCF). There he became involved in the Neo-evangelical reaction against Christian fundamentalism – a kind of conservative evangelicalism broader, and with more intellectual credibility, than the Iwerne version. In his role with IVCF he held his own among university students, professors, and world Christian leaders such as Billy Graham, John Stott, Festo Kivengere, and P.T. Chandapilla. Many of them visited our home. Dad’s books, especially those on missions, are still available (second hand) in several languages. He was a powerful preacher, too, and in demand across the USA, Canada, and much of the world – except in his home country. Many, many people owed their faith or their missionary vocation to him.
He was a remarkable man, to achieve so much with little education and no advantages except his own talents. What might he have accomplished with the benefit of a public school education, university, and good social networks? And how many other men and women might have exercised a very fruitful ministry in the UK, but for the lack of the ‘right’ class background?
In his youth in England, Dad had been a disciple of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the celebrated Reformed expositor and president of the British wing of Inter-Varsity. Before ordination Lloyd-Jones had had a distinguished career in medicine, becoming assistant to the King’s own physician. John Stott, who had himself been a disciple of E.J.H. Nash, the founder of the Iwerne camps, once observed to my father that ‘Martyn Lloyd-Jones had an inferiority complex because he didn’t go to public school’. The language and world view of conservative evangelicalism is very familiar to me, but between the social world of Fletcher and Smyth (and their followers) and my own there is ‘a great gulf fixed’ – just as there was between Nash and my father, or Stott and Lloyd-Jones, all those years ago.
The class differences were huge and prevented my father from ever being much recognised over here. In other ways, though, he had rather a lot in common with Smyth and Fletcher. He had a charismatic personality and a natural air of authority which meant that wherever he was, he was generally assumed to be in charge. He was very intelligent, widely read, articulate, sensitive, perceptive, thoughtful, and could be charming. He inspired great devotion in his followers. But he was also narcissistic, manipulative, violent – and a paedophile. We will probably never know whether he kept that in the family, or whether he sometimes preyed on the children of families he stayed with on his travels. I hope he didn’t.
One of the themes identiifed by the thirtyone:eight review into Jonathan Fletcher is that of ‘homogeneity’:
‘The Review illustrated that one of the biggest difficulties in identifying and disclosing the behaviours was the myth of homogeneity. The Review evidenced that a person who possesses positive characteristics and is widely highly-regarded could nonetheless display entirely inappropriate, abusive and harmful behaviours which render them “unfit for their office”.
Furthermore, those who wish to disclose abuse or harmful behaviours can be caused to question their experience and reality where the predominant narrative outlines the positive traits of an individual. When this is combined with a narrative of protecting the gospel above all else then this becomes a powerful barrier to disclosing abuse or harmful behaviour.’
That aptly describes one of the major issues of my life. I don’t think ‘homogeneity’ is quite the right word, though. It’s probably apt when a charming, intelligent, and kind person is revealed as a malignant narcissist and an abuser. The contrasts between the different aspects of their personality are confusing and damaging to their victims, especially where there is a myth that people are either good or evil, rather than a mixture of both. When an effective spiritual leader, through whom God is seen to work, is found out to have done cruel and evil things over many years, profound questions are raised about the nature of Christian ministry and the work of the Holy Spirit. Why would God choose to use such a bad person? Were their gifts really God-given? If some of what they said and did was false or had evil motivations, was any of it true and real? I have never managed to answer these questions to my own satisfaction, and probably never will.
Astute regular readers of Surviving Church may have realised by now why I often express concern not just for survivors, but also for the family, friends, and followers of those revealed to be abusers, and those who have failed in safeguarding. I know how heavy a burden they carry, and the anguish that they may be feeling.
In the last few days we have seen some very good survivor-centred responses from leaders in the ReNew constituency. We have also seen a few abysmal ones which amply illustrate the malign culture described in the reviews. Many in that network, both leaders and followers, will still be reeling from shock. It may take them years to come to terms with it all. But I have a word of encouragement for them: if you can find the courage to break ranks and tell what you know, to admit that you too were taken in, you will find that between survivors and anti-abuse campaigners class barriers break down. We support each other support in a fellowship of suffering, passion for justice, and righteous anger which I believe truly does come from God. It’s at least the equal of the fellowship found in good churches and one of the best things in my life. It gives meaning to my history, my suffering, and my future.
Many victims of abusers like Smyth and Fletcher have, understandably, lost their faith. I don’t blame them for that and I’m sure God doesn’t either.
In this Holy Week I remember that Jesus raged against the exploitation of vulnerable people. He was subjected to physical brutality and public sexual humiliation; he identifies with our sufferings. And no one who beats, torments, or humiliates other people does so in his name.