Attending conferences abroad has become an increasingly difficult undertaking for me as I get older.  I have doubts that I will want to face the challenges of Manchester airport during the holiday period in the future.  However, this year the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) chose the vibrant and attractive city of Barcelona in which to hold their annual three-day event.  I attended and presented a paper on the issue of exorcism and the way it is sometimes used inappropriately as a way of ‘caring’ for members of the LGBTQ+ community.  This theme has become topical through some recent events in the Diocese of Sheffield.

The blog is not going to be a rehash of my words at the conference as most of this material has been shared with my blog readers over the years. I want, rather, to try and share a few of the main insights of some key contributors.  These are those whose professional life has been dedicated to supporting and rebuilding those whose lives have been devastated through their membership of malign and controlling political or religious groups.

One topical idea circulating in the conversations and papers was the notion that a large sector of the population in the States is being recruited to join a massive societal cult under its leader, Donald Trump.  The mechanisms that bind so many people to such a human leader, so eminently unsuitable for this leadership role, are not easy to explain.  It seems we have to explore the ideas that come from attachment theory.  All human beings, as children, pass through the stage of making strong attachments before they eventually become secure independent adults who know who they are and what they stand for.  Another way of expressing this idea is to say that we aim to develop a strong core personality.  This normal process may be disturbed in one of two ways.  Some individuals never grow up in the sense that they continue to need their early attachment relationships for psychological survival.  Others have made it through to the adult stage but then some serious experience of stress pushes them back to a childhood stage of vulnerability and an immature dependence on others.  This vulnerability of immature dependence is found in many people.  A failed marriage or the loss of a job may place the individual in a place where he or she is now ripe for recruitment to a cause or a person at the heart of a cultic group.   Instead of having a strong mature personality at the centre, the vulnerable dependent person reaches out to find a strength in attaching him/herself to another.  This may be a person or an idea/movement.  From this attachment comes a ready-made instant cluster of ideas and opinions.  No longer does one have to think or make decisions; the cult/ideology/cause/strong man does it for you.  The individual personality, as far as it can be said to exist, has become largely an extension of the movement and of the leader at its head.  The MAGA types in America have allowed Trumpism to be their mode of awareness.   This way of thinking has the immediate advantage of relieving any stress involved in thought and reflection.   To be able to say ‘this is what we think’ also gives the individual a reliable and gratifying sense of personal power and agency, a power mediated by the membership of the movement or the cult.

In the academic circles where the issue of cults is studied, the notion of ‘brainwashing’ has largely gone out of fashion.  Rather than having something removed from the mind, the cult member has had something added on.  The cult member is thought to have acquired a cult personality which may have successfully overlaid the true or core personality. This core is never in fact destroyed and it is the task of the therapist to excavate the buried core personality, a complex task.  The fact is that there are precious few therapists in the UK who understand the dynamics of cultic groups.  It requires a particular kind of insight to help extract this core personality which needs bringing to the surface and allowed once again to be the salient expression of who I or you are.

This model of thinking that presents the personality as possessing several layers is quite a challenging one to all our thinking about ourselves.  How much of our presented personality is an extra defensive screen to keep others from knowing us too well?  No one is likely to arrive at the perfect balance between living out the core self and the opposite extreme of hiding behind a variety of masks or defensive personae.  Somewhere we try to achieve a ‘good-enough’ position which allows us to give and receive love in a way that nourishes us and at same time transforms and supports the people around us. 

The conference in Barcelona was largely using the discourse of secular therapy in its efforts to provide support for cult victims.  These victims had suffered because of the toxic and harmful ideas emanating from extreme political or religious groups. What was not brought up was, of course, any theological or biblical teaching that would help stop us falling into this trap of putting on a personality that betrayed or buried our true core identities.  One of my favourite passages from Paul is the one where he expresses his joy at the thought that one day he ‘shall know even as I also am known’.  This suggests to me that the Christian task is to have a great deal of concern for finding out our true identity and cutting through self-deceit.  Such acquired fake personalities are at the heart of the cult problem.  The Church of course also has a problem in this area.  For example, how many of us have been to services where we feel caught up in an imposed but inappropriate jollity which is completely out of sync with the actual mood of the congregation.  It is also vitally important for pastors dealing with individuals to discern what their clients are really feeling as opposed to coming to the ‘correct’ solution to their problem. Joy and sorrow are both part of human experience and thus being alongside another person may involve sharing their happiness or sitting with them in their pain.  Once again, we have a passage that shows how Paul is able to reach and affirm the full reality of another human when he says, ‘rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep’.  The capacity in this way to give of ourselves to others in need is one of the greatest gifts we have to offer.

The ICSA conference has left me with insight as to the way human beings are all somewhere on a journey towards authenticity or what we describe as wholeness or integrity.  My Christian faith, together with my understanding of cult exploitation, has given me insight into the many ways this process can be disrupted when someone with an narcissistic appetite for power and gratification is allowed to corrupt and interfere with another person’s journey.   The ways that we can hurt or be damaged by others, not least by being made to become something we are not in ways to benefit them, are examples of the power of evil at work.  Somewhere in the middle of all the horror of human exploitation and abuse, whether in the cults or churches, there are biblical images that show what true relationships look like.  Although some Christians seem very adept at extracting from scripture those texts and passages that assist them in nefarious activities of abuse, we can also find models that show us decisively how to love in a way that does what it is meant to do.  It should ideally be all that strives to build up, transform and help others to find life in all its fullness.  Although the world of relationships is seemingly hard to engage with, without ever causing any harm to another, we do have the possibility of evaluating our motives. This allows us to enable true transformative goodness to flow through us.   Sometimes the apparent good and generous act turns out not to be so, but merely to bring benefit to the doer.  Christian discernment and the traditions of ethical goodness should help us to know fairly accurately when things are genuinely altruistic and Christ-like.    Christians cannot always be counted on to provide shining examples of human goodness but, at the very least, we should expect Christians to recognise goodness when they see it. Sadly, the safeguarding catastrophes of the past two or three decades have borne witness to a blunted and impoverished awareness of the nature of goodness, even among those who should be our esteemed leaders. 

       by Hatty Calbus  

In my pieces about the influence of HTB, I looked at its charity, the Revitalise Trust, and the questionability of some of its trustees, then at the safeguarding danger of following the megachurch model. The two issues come together in another member of the leadership body, its Patron Richard Chartres, Bishop of London from 1995 to 2017, who used to attend HTB’s Focus annual summer holiday, with his loud shirts a humorous tradition. For teenagers and vulnerable adults, Chartres’ approach to safeguarding could be much less amusing.

        Just before he retired from the biggest diocese in the country in 2017, he complained about the frustrations Church bureaucracy had caused him.  https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Bishop-of-London-speaks-of-career-frustrations-ahead-of-retirement This dislike of bureaucracy may partly explain his lack of oversight of Martin Sargeant, whom he appointed as Head of Operations, and who in December 2022 was jailed for five years for defrauding the diocese of £5.2 million over a decade. It was unclear how much of that money had been donated by parishioners. An investigation in 2023 found that Sargeant was seen by other staff to be acting “with the authority of the Bishop.”

          Chartres’ dislike of bureaucracy definitely extended to safeguarding procedures for vulnerable adults. For several years the diocesan website included his opinion that the law protecting adults judged to be at risk was “the elaboration of defensive bureaucracy based on a culture of suspicion” and he put “vulnerable adults” in political-correctness-gone-mad quotation marks [I have a printout of the webpage.]. This critique was there at least as late as October 2012. There had been a legal requirement since the 2006 Vulnerable Groups Act to have a policy and procedures for vulnerable adults as well as children. London was the last diocese in the country, Anglican or Catholic, to comply, and by some time, not meeting the requirement till the end of 2012. In 2011, he claimed it was up to individual churches if they wanted to apply the safeguards required by law [in a letter]. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2013/27-september/comment/opinion/the-hidden-scandal-of-adult-abuse

           The lack of oversight of Martin Sargeant and dismissal of the need for care to be taken with vulnerable adults came together terribly when a suicide attempt by Fr Alan Griffin was ignored and Sargeant also decided he had used underage rent boys. Fr Griffin converted to Roman Catholicism and these allegations were passed on to the Diocese of Westminster. He killed himself. The coroner, Mary Hassell, reported that the allegations were “supported by no complainant, no witness and no accuser.” She commented on “the breadth of the systemic and individual failings.”  https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/23-july/news/uk/church-s-safeguarding-blunders-could-cause-more-deaths-coroner-warns A review in 2022 noted,“It is abundantly clear that [Sargeant] was allowed to function with little accountability or supervision during the tenure of the former Bishop.”  It also suggested that he “chose to leave his post when the new Bishop came into post, partly because of her insistence on greater accountability.” According to the Church Times, “The report found that there was insufficient understanding of appropriate practice when it came to handling safeguarding allegations.”          

          The case of church youth worker and ordinand Timothy Storey in 2016 showed Chartres’ attitude to safeguarding children and teenagers was no better. This was a shocking case, all the more so because rather than historical abuse, it involved a recent predator operating for years when strict child safeguarding should have been assumed, but where there was, in Judge Philip Katz’s words, “wholesale failure.”

          Storey was convicted in 2014 of grooming hundreds of children on Facebook, sexual assault, inciting children to engage in sexual activity and making indecent images of children, and jailed for three years. In 2016 he was convicted on three counts of rape and jailed for fifteen years. From 2002-2008, he had not only been able to work as a youth pastor at St Michael’s, Belgravia, but trained other youth pastors in child safeguarding and was put forward for ordination. Complaints only seem to have been recorded in 2008 and 2009, despite how prolific his abuse was in the youth group and at church camps.

         When two of Storey’s teenage victims reported their rapes to Chartres, Storey was withdrawn from ordination training. No help was given to the victims, though Chartres told one of them who had written to him that he would pray for her “at the end of the week.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3160116/Bishop-London-s-apology-joke-says-alleged-rape-victim-Oxford-youth-pastor.html But then Storey had been personally sponsored in his application for ordination by Chartres. Judge Katz said his protestations of innocence reeked of “false religiosity,” yet this false religiosity was apparently invisible to one of the most senior churchmen in the country. And the Diocese of London was actually ‘slated’ (the Church Times’ word) by Katz for lying. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/22-april/news/uk/judge-slates-london-diocese-over-storey-case  Katz accused the diocese of a “shameful misrepresentation of the truth” when at the end of the trial, a spokesman claimed they had acted appropriately at all times, and implied the police were at fault for not properly pursuing the matter earlier. Katz said the police had “investigated diligently and sensitively — something the diocese had been incapable of.” https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Judge-s-fury-at-Diocese-of-London-after-rape-sentencing

  https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/26-february/news/uk/diocese-admits-safeguarding-failure-over-rapist-ordinand The 2020 IICSA report says Storey was permitted to continue working with children, as he expressed remorse. He was assessed to be “basically a good man who could be an effective priest.”

          After the trial, the diocese claimed safeguarding had been much better since 2010, yet, to repeat, Chartres’ criticism of safeguarding procedures was still on the website late in 2012 and there was no policy and procedure for vulnerable adults till the end of 2012, so the law was still being broken. And St Michael’s continued to have nothing on its website about safeguarding: no policy, no contact details. When I questioned this, the woman I spoke to there was “shocked and horrified” and was going to pass it straight on. Eighteen months later there was still nothing. It took a couple more years.          

          None of this puts Justin Welby in a good light either. Large question marks have been placed by John Smyth’s victims and Channel 4 over how much he knew about his abuse, but there should be none over what he knew about Chartres, as Storey’s trials were reported in the press. Yet Welby said nothing. When he told the IICSA  inquiry in 2018 that clergy were given training that made it “quite clear” that if a safeguarding issue were not reported it was a disciplinary matter, he omitted to say how recently this had failed to happen in London. Three months after Storey’s second sentencing, Chartres was on the stage at HTB’s 2016 summer holiday being extravagantly feted. Welby, there on the stage with him, described him as “quite simply one of the best, if not the best, bishop that we’ve had in the Church of England since the Reformation.” https://m.youtube.com/watch?sns=em&v=pA9j17re5CE (2 mins 42). This is supposed to square with a Church of England spokesperson’s statement after Smyth’s death in 2018 that “Safeguarding has always been an absolute priority of [Welby’s] ministry.” And then his reported choice to succeed Chartres, fitting his businessification of the Church, was Paula Vennells, whose leadership of the Post Office, similarly to Chartres with Martin Sargeant, featured suicides.

          Rather than resigning in disgrace, Richard Chartres retired in 2017 accepting outpourings of praise and the grandeur of a peerage, becoming the Right Reverend and Right Honourable the Lord Chartres GCVO – Baron Chartres, of Wilton in the County of Wiltshire. And none of the above was deemed serious enough to disqualify him from being appointed Patron of Revitalise, the charity to a significant degree determining the Church’s direction. To give him such a prominent role shows a continuing disregard for victims. For all the periodic bouts of handwringing and pious statements, how is anyone to believe that those with most power in the Church of England really care if lives are destroyed by abuse?

by Martin Sewell

Just when you thought the CofE ( aka “ the Post Office at Prayer ) could not make things worse on the Safeguarding front, along comes Synod Paper GS2364 in which the Church’s Jay Review Response Group delivers only one clear message –

“ Hold my beer!”

Be under no illusion; this paper is an attack on the Jay review, its clarity, its independence, its call for urgency and above all its promise to put the victims and survivors first. The General Synod is not being asked  to debate what is right about the Jay and the Wilkinson critiques, but rather to focus on how disturbing establishment group-think regards such incisive challenges.

If Jay and Wilkinson opened the Safeguarding can of worms which remains episcopally led and synodicaly governed, the good folks behind GS2364 are urging Synod to kick that can further down the road once again. With this Response Paper- which Synod will probably pass- we will not discuss it again until February 2025 and probably not conclude matters until 2026 by which time an entirely new Synod will be elected many of whom will lack historic memory.Of course many of those responsible for the abuse debacle will by then be dead or retired. It is the perfect “Sir Humphrey solution” to the embarrassments of the past.

Except it is not “the past”; talking to survivor supporters last week I learnt that new scandals are emerging with the same problems being encountered, and why would that not be the case? The same people who let victims down two years ago are still in post unchallenged and unaccountable, and there are still no conflicts of interest policies in place, or other improved safeguards for due process. Jay identifies that our Safeguarding falls well below the secular world and is inconsistent between Dioceses. That is not being addressed and will not be anytime soon.

Worse; the Archbishops have previously assured us that they deprecate the silencing of victims by the use of Non Disclosure Agreements. I already knew that these have been re-badged as “confidentiality clauses” or “non disparagement clauses” but I have now learnt that the Church has begun sending “cease and desist” letters to troublesome folk allegedly “ harassing” the institution by refusing to be fobbed off. Coming from lawyers charging £500 per hour, the threat of costs orders is plainly intended to intimidate critics into silence. Perhaps we can shame the Church into addressing legitimate grievances rather than bullying the already damaged and vulnerable in this way. Frustrated people became irritated and angry; solve the problem – not the predictable response. Think of your worst experience with a call centre then magnify it by a thousand.

If the Church’s response to its safeguarding crisis  have got worse “on the ground”, it has turned equally sour institutionally. After spending £1m on two professional and timely produced Reviews from Dr Wilkinson and Professor Jay and her team, the Church had clear narratives of how incompetently and inconsistently the Church has been led. Nobody knows where “the buck stops”, everybody denies personal effectiveness and responsibility- but all was not lost.

First Dr Wilkinson identified that after it had been arraigned before IICSA and given one last chance to put its house in order, the Church Establishment bulldozed the creation of an “ Independent” Safeguarding Board ignoring pleas from the floor of Synod to build into the process some key performance indicators.

Her report was brilliant, comprehensive, incisive and produced at pace. It stunned the Archbishops Council. It has never been comprehensively examined and debated by Synod. We learned that there was a fundamental failure to establish from the outset what “independent” was supposed to mean.The ISB members came from secular backgrounds where there is a commonly understood culture of independence, yet as former ISB member Steve Reeves, identified, what the Church actually means by ‘independent’ is “semi detached”.

This is no mere aphorism. The Church operates as a chumocracy, with a number of “good chaps” ( usually chaps ) who can be relied upon to “do the right thing” without formal limits in place. Thus it is bad form to expect the inconvenience of “conflicts of interest policies” or clear role definitions. Managerialism has been criticised for permeating the leadership culture but basic good management practice continues to evade us. Define the problem carefully before you try and fix it.

Dr Wilkinson further identified a failure to properly resource the ISB to meet its challenges; under resourced ab initio, it was further debilitated over the prolonged period during the suspension of the Chair who was thus unable to exercise her allocated role to advance the 12 critical Reviews into the acute and chronic needs ofvulnerable survivors.

It is now over a year since the ISB was peremptorily terminated without what Dr Wilkinson identified as  ‘trauma awareness’.   Those cut adrift were confirmed to have suffered ‘significant harm’ by Prof David Glasgow, a consultant Clinical Psychologist, who had had been recruited (but never deployed) by the Church to advise on such matters. Nobody within the Church has resigned or suffered any consequence for such failure, but worse has ensued.

One of the ‘ISB 12’ chose to walk away from the outstanding Review process but the remaining ‘ISB 11’ continue to agitate for justice. Some have spoken of  suicidal ideation – our victims were already people acknowledged as  hurt and vulnerable.

Without consultation (a continuing grievance in this and other cases) a reviewer was appointed. Pastoral support continued to be provided to the ISB 11 by Steve Reeves and Jasvinder Sanghera on a voluntary basis because of their conscientious acceptance of ongoing professional responsibility.  Ms Sanghera became Dame Jasvinder Sanghera because of such commitment to supporting the abused.

One year later, not one of the urgent reviews has even been commenced let alone concluded. 

Let’s do that again…

One year later, not one of the urgent reviews has even been commenced let alone concluded.

The blame lies once again with the project management rather than the individual reviewer who, I am given to understand, is deeply frustrated; there is evidently not even a required data sharing protocol in place; the ISB had similar data management issues 12 months ago;  nothing has changed

The costs however continue to mount. Questions will be asked at General Synod as to the costs of the Reviewer and support staff to date.  Mr Crompton was engaged on a two day per week consultancy contract, with support from a Business Manager specifically recruited for the task. The costs to date of achieving no progress is unlikely to be much shy of £100k based upon known comparable payments. Added to the £700k costs of the Jay report, the £350k costs of the Wilkinson Report and an unknown portion of the £300k budgeted for the ‘Response Group’ and we have a lot of expenditure for not a lot of tangible outcome to date.

Our victims continue to be sidelined and to suffer.

The Response Group has recently delivered its first report. They have collated and presented views on ‘the way forward’ together with research that confirms that the closer you are to responsibility for the way things have been badly done, the more resistant you are likely to be towards the proposals of Prof Jay. The one thing it is clear about is this: notwithstanding the suffering of the ISB11 and importantly – new survivors coming forward to join the ranks of neglected victims of injustice – the Response Group lacks any sense of urgency.

Worse, it has failed to address the fundamental question which anyone examining the shambles need to ask.

‘Given that a key failure of the ISB arose from a mismatched understanding of the word ‘independence’ between secular world safeguarding experts and the Church Establishment (Archbishops’ Council, Secretariat, House of Bishops, DSA’s etc) why has the Response Group made not the slightest effort to grasp that nettle and articulate what it thinks independence means? Is it yet again a case of  ‘Not my job, squire’?

The Response Group employs the terms ‘independent’ and ‘independence’ 175 times in its report. This implies a degree of importance to be attached to it. Unless and until we have a clear benchmark meaning of the term, all discussion is mere ‘blah, blah, blah’.

The Church has dispensed a great deal of time money and cruelty yet its Response Group has failed to even see the wood for the trees.

Professor Jay has delivered a simple and effective model of how to deliver independence in accordance with commonplace secular modelling. Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors/Officers would continue to do the work in situ as at present according to the duties set out in Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors  Regulations 2016; a few housekeeping adjustments would need to be undertaken to align those duties with the new structure but the outcome would be minimal on the ground but with one primary vital change.

There would be no confusion as to where the safeguarding buck stopped.

 It would be the duty of one charity to deliver independent Safeguarding without conflict of interest and it would be the duty of a second charity to oversee the performance of the first. Both would have independent Trustees with expertise and be required to focus on one issue only – delivering Safeguarding properly.

All DSAs would work to a common standard and be independently regulated; they would equally be resourced externally to a consistent level. If the two charities were not well run by their respective Boards of Trustees, they could be suspended and  replaced without complications; now apply that test to Diocesan Bishops.

Whether General Synod members have the time, motivation expertise, and desire to examine the deficiencies of the Response Group, we shall soon discover.

If this is how we put survivor interests first one might have wondered what a low priority looks like, however we do have one useful piece of evidence of what CofE ‘business as usual’ looks like.

The Makin Report into the crimes of John Smyth, first reported to Lambeth Palace in 2013, is now 1500 days late; the copies were due to have been sent out to named persons in the report for the process known as Maxwellisation on the 13th May. They were  sent out last week to some organisations, some of whom might be significantly ‘lawyered up’.

How long it will take to assess their representations is anybody’s guess. Prof Jay delivered a clear functional structure for reform with a plea to act urgently and not to tinker; the Church knew better.

The Church always ‘knows better’ and therein lies the root of the Safeguarding shambles we are in.

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For a variety of domestic reasons, I have not been very active recently on the blog. One thing that is preoccupying me at present is the paper I am preparing to present at the ICSA (International Cultic Studies Association) conference in Barcelona at the beginning of next month. I may have something to share about the conference as a whole on my return to England. Meanwhile I can reveal that my topic is about the way that some Christians speak about exorcism and deliverance in the context of pastoral care.  All too often the discourse becomes far from being pastoral but abusive in the way it is used.  Conversion therapy, the controversial method of ‘healing’ LGBTQ individuals, is one that sometimes uses ideas from what we can call Christian demonology to reinforce its ideas and methods of practice.

There is a theme that binds together two recent stories that have been drawn to my attention about safeguarding.  Both illustrate the way that important safeguarding stories often get overlooked.  One suspects that those involved want them buried in a sea of information.  There is the hope that they will achieve minimal publicity in spite of their importance for the maintenance of high standards right across the Church.  The first story concerns the Diocese of Sheffield and some ‘final recommendations’ from the Bishop of the Diocese following an ‘independent Review of Safeguarding Arrangements in St Thomas’ Philadelphia Church’.  St Thomas’ is an ecumenical parish in Sheffield known as the Network Church.  It is jointly run and overseen by Baptist, Independent and Anglican trustees.  The Review was in connection with a complaint about abusive pastoral practice towards a gay man, Matt Drapper.  The details of this episode, involving an attempted exorcism and its outcome, are vividly described in his book Bringing Me back to Me.  The authorities of the Church of England, and the other Trustees, commissioned Barnardo’s to carry out an independent Review.  One of the outcomes was a formal apology by the Trustees to Matt for the episode which took place in 2014.  This apparent triumph of safeguarding protocol is marred by the fact that the Barnardo’s Review is being placed under an embargo so that no one, not even Matt, can read it or have access to it in the future.  It is not surprising that the complainant feels aggrieved when, although he has received an apology, he is shut out from knowing anything that was recommended in the report.   Matt makes the valid point that any discussion about healing prayer, exorcism and conversion therapy has implications for the wider church.  An apology with no attempt to attribute responsibility or explain how things went wrong is a poor thing.  Theological differences about the nature of prayer, healing and deliverance are maybe just too difficult to find agreement on. In this way the church finds it easier to close down the details of any discussion on the topic.  Thus no one has to face the issue of how some Christian beliefs raise profoundly important pastoral issues.  Should Church leaders ever tolerate ‘biblical ministry’ harming and abusing vulnerable individuals in the name of following biblical values?  Readers of this blog will be familiar with the way that the criminality of John Smyth was backed up by some deft quotes from Scripture which suggested that the suffering of Christ was a path to be followed by his followers.   The Sheffield episode leaves us with an admittance that abusive practices took place, and which needed to be apologised for, but currently, no one wants to discuss the implications of what happened.  It is also scarcely credible that such practices were only a one-off event.  It would be very interesting to know what the Barnado’s reviewers had to say about this question.  What is described in Matt’s published account described practices which go way beyond the authorised guidelines published for the Church of England’s deliverance advisers.

The next story, involving the shutting down of information in a safeguarding case, comes from Northern Ireland. It concerns a Church of Ireland priest by the name of Bill Neely.  In October 2022 Neely was revealed to have been a prolific child molester when a survivor of his abuse forced a substantial settlement on the Church of Ireland (COI).  The offences went right back to the 1970s and it was clear that senior churchmen had been aware of the situation.  Neely had been quietly shuffled off to a parish in Co Tipperary from his parish in Belfast, no doubt in the hope that his past behaviour would be forgotten.   No sanctions were ever taken against Neely.  The move, from the Belfast parish of Mount Merrion to a rural outpost across the border is suggestive that senior churchmen were anxious to remove a problem rather than concern themselves with the danger he posed to children in the new parish.   The Church of Ireland is not large, and Neely as the founder member of the prestigious Church of Ireland Historical Society, would have possessed a certain status and importance and this was never challenged while he was alive.  This allowed him to be buried in the Cathedral of his diocese.  It appears that the COI, through its solicitors, went to considerable trouble and expense to try and protect the posthumous reputation of Neely and that of the wider Church.  They were however compelled to pay out a substantial sum to Edward Gorman, the persistent and courageous survivor.  Sadly, he did not live long to enjoy his legal victory but died shortly afterwards.

As a counterbalance to these two stories, involving cover-up and apparent zeal for reputational protection, we must mention the recent honouring by King Charles of two champions for those afflicted by institutional bullying.  Alan Bates’ organisational skills and eventual triumphs against the juggernaut of the Post Office and its well-paid lawyers are well known.  We should be allowed the conjecture that Jasvinder Sanghera’s award to become a Dame in the King’s Birthday Honours, was at least in part an acknowledgment of her recent part in representing and gaining the respect of the survivors of church abuse. This hard-won trust was itself a notable achievement.  It stands in marked contrast with the way that hardly any of the internal church appointees have earned the confidence of survivors. Clearly the main work of Jasvinder’s professional life has been the support of women in situations of forced marriage and honour abuse, but this recent stage of her work on behalf of church survivors may yet prove to be just as important, even though of brief duration.  Although Dame Sanghera is no longer working for the Church, she helped many, just by being a person of integrity and honour, at a time when these qualities seem in such short supply within the Church itself. We will never be permitted to know exactly what was discussed by the Honours Committee but the reputation of the former Independent Safeguarding Board remains high even after its demise.

It now appears that the Barnado’s Review is to be published, following pressure from interested parties.

There is one well-known popular expression which is often trotted out when some policy decision relating to a large organisation fails to gain much traction or support from those who work for it.  Too many people within the organisation stand to lose something if the policy is implemented.  People declare that to vote for the proposal would be like ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’.  For an organisation like a company or a school, new policies often involve the loss of jobs and the slashing of budgets.  It is not difficult to persuade a substantial group to vote to attempt to see off the threatening proposal.  To pass a proposal that in any way challenges the existing power and privilege of the status quo is seen to work against the apparent interests of all in the organisation.  The turkeys being fattened for Christmas have no say in their inevitable fate but, if they did, they would not permit something so obviously contrary to their interests to take place.  The recent survey taken by the Response Group that is trying to find a way forward after the Wilkinson and Jay reports for the Church of England has found, unsurprisingly, that the Jay report is unpopular with many senior church officials and the newly created profession of safeguarding ‘experts’ within the Church.  Jay’s conclusion is that the entire safeguarding enterprise should be handed over to two new safeguarding charities, entirely independent of the church structures. This radical proposal was never going to win prizes for popularity.  I dare also to suggest that the level of acceptance would be the lowest among those who have spent the least time reading and studying it. 

The Church of England should have counted itself as extremely fortunate to gain the services of the most qualified expert in Britain (the world?) on safeguarding to advise it.  Jay was asked by the Archbishops’ Council, in the aftermath of the ISB debacle, to show the Church ‘how to form an independent and scrutiny body for the C/E’.  Now that the Church has received her report and has had its first opportunity to read the conclusions, it is showing strong indications of cold feet.  Clearly for many the independence that is pointed to, as an important ingredient of future safeguarding, would have substantial implications.  These would challenge the total independence of the 42 dioceses and the vested interests of those with power in the national church.  Organisations always stand to lose something when any power at the centre is devolved to groups on the edge.  The common-sense interpretation of independence will indicate that, unless it is truly detached, as Steve Reeves pointed out in his memorable speech at General Synod, it will not fulfil the criterion of proper independence or be worthy of that description.   Those with the most power to lose, the bishops and those employed to be diocesan safeguarding officers across England will be among those likely to resist a radical understanding of independence.  The proposed new structures would continue, according to the proposals, to work with existing employees.  Clearly there would have to be changes in areas like professional accreditation and oversight and this would, no doubt. be seen to challenge existing patterns of power and control.  The fact that Jay has identified serious examples of failing and dysfunctional process in the course of her numerous interviews with individuals involved at every level of the safeguarding process, is quietly overlooked by those anxious to oppose her recommended reforms.  Whenever power in an institution is threatened, those who stand to lose power will always be found manning the barricades.  That is what we see.  Broadly speaking the survivors’ groups and their supporters are most supportive of Jay, while the individuals with the most to lose take a stand that, with honourable exceptions, wants to resist any move in the direction of an outside body taking independent responsibility for the implementation of all safeguarding activity. 

In writing this piece, I was guided by the videos prepared by Martin Sewell and Clive Billenness entitled the Jay Report.  I do not intend to repeat all their points but one particularly useful statement, defining ‘independence’ located by Clive,  would help the Church if it became part of the of the Church’s thinking.

Independence of mind is the state of mind that permits a member to perform a service without being affected by interests that affect professional judgement, thereby allowing an individual to act with integrity and express objectivity and professional scepticism.

The reason for Jay recommending two new totally independent bodies managing and overseeing safeguarding in the Church came from her observation that the existing functioning of safeguarding protocols in the Church was highly variable in quality.  An individual could be in a position where life-changing decisions about their future could be taken by individuals ‘with little safeguarding knowledge or experience.’  Jay interviewed at depth dozens of individuals and received written submissions from hundreds more.  Safeguarding in the C/E, even from my limited experiences of listening to the stories of those who have gone down the rabbit hole of seeking justice and accountability, is a postcode lottery.  In some places, to back up what was said above about ‘life-changing decisions’, rulings and decisions are made with no possibility of any appeal. Core groups sometimes seem intoxicated by an access to a power over peoples’ lives when at their most vulnerable. They seem sometimes to ignore common sense and the right of everyone to a fair hearing.  The European Court of Human Rights speaks about the right of everyone to a fair trial.  The two words used are independent and impartial.  Also, the importance of being free from conflicts of interest is a basic principle of justice.  If church institutions ever think that they can offer justice without the counterbalance of separate structures providing checks and balances, they are likely deceiving themselves.  Jay’s gathering of evidence to add to the material that she had already heard and read in the 7-year ICSA hearings, has given her the status of knowing more about the implementation of safeguarding than anyone else in Britain.  Her concluding recommendation for two properly independent bodies to manage safeguarding on behalf of the C/E is not just an idea sketched out on the back of an envelope; it is a compellingly argued position that has the ability to convince, like a well-presented case in a court of law.  

The current hesitancy, shown on the part of many church leaders and safeguarding professionals in the survey recently conducted by Church’s Jay/Wilkinson Response group, should not surprise us.  For such a surrender of institutional power to be a reality, there has, in addition, to be an honest recognition by the Church that the past thirty years have frequently been a disaster area in this arena of safeguarding.  A system which allows the top layer of management to be the chief pastoral figure while expecting them to be judge and jury with regard to suspected miscreants, is never going to operate well. There are still hundreds of damaged survivors and victims who seek healing and justice from harmful episodes in the past.  Some trust, against all the evidence, that the Church is an institution able to provide balm for the wounds she has inflicted on them in the past.  The history of safeguarding has not been a story of binding up wounds and providing compassionate care for the afflicted.  Rather it has revealed itself to be, for those of us who scratch below the surface, an institution that consistently puts organisational reputation ahead of pastoral integrity.

The provision of safeguarding services to all, providing love and healing to all who have been wronged or harmed by the institution is perhaps an achievable task.  It will however not be achieved in any system where reputation and a illusion of goodness are upheld to the exclusion of honesty and integrity.  There is a verse in the Bible which comes to mind, but in a parody form. ‘What gain is it for a Church like the C/E to gain wealth, status, privilege and power, if it is obtained at the cost of honesty, integrity and truth.’  The answer to the question in the title of this piece may very well determine the future of the Church over the next fifty years.  Jay is calling the Church to honesty and truth.  A failure to respond to the values of our founder can only end in emptiness and tears.  I hope the General Synod are fully aware of their responsibilities when they come to discuss this matter in July.

Recent articles on this blog have considered the way that the institution we know as Holy Trinity Brompton has come to exercise a dominant position within the Church of England.  The importance that it possesses is not only financial and structural; the overall HTB culture appears to be what the typical non-Church member, the person in the street, regards as true of all Christians in Britain.  Increasingly Christians have come to be understood by ordinary folk to hold extremely reactionary attitudes on sexual morality issues.  Also, their musical preferences seem to an older generation, whether church members or not, to have far more in common to the offerings of a night club. This new music has eclipsed the traditional hymnody that used to bind the whole of British society together in something like a common religious culture. Those of us who are outside the orbit of HTB may sometimes also be made to feel that we have no part to play in the Church’s future. The moderate liberal-catholic perspectives which were in the ascendant in the C/E until 20 or 30 years ago, are now considered in many places to be old-fashioned and of little relevance to a younger generation.

The articles by Hattie Calbus may have alerted some SC readers to the thought that the HTB universe and its power should and can be challenged.  Any concentration of so much power operating within a single institution, the C/E, is likely to have the potential for becoming corrupted.  The wise words of Lord Acton about power come to mind.  All dominant cliques in any sphere of life have this potential.  Our minds are currently being drawn to the immense power of the Post Office management over their employees and the way that the voices of the powerless were never heard.  Those of us who are uneasy at the extent and nature of the HTB’s power might want to understand better what might be going on in the somewhat secretive universe that it occupies.  The tools with which to make sense, psychologically and theologically speaking, of what is going on within that world are not readily available. This powerful attraction of charismatic evangelicalism is frankly puzzling to those of us of a more traditional approach to the Christian faith and to the Church of England in particular.

In recent weeks I have been helped, through reading a book, to go further into this mysterious culture, which can be best summed up in the two words, charismatic evangelicalism.  One of the commenters on this blog drew our attention to this newish published account of the culture shared by so many congregations that look to HTB for inspiration and guidance.   The book is entitled Immanuel.   The book successfully draws together and describes the life and culture of two charismatic congregations.  Both, one in Lagos Nigeria and one in Winchester UK, are expressions of the charismatic evangelical tradition which has come to dominate Christian practice right across the world.  There are of course enormous differences of style between the two congregations, but each would see itself as drawing from the same theological and spiritual well-springs.  The main focus of this fascinating book is to describe how a group of very young members of the Winchester house church found their way to becoming members of the Lagos ministry under the leadership of the powerful founder, TB Joshua.  The book helps us to understand the extraordinary cultural and theological adjustments that needed to be made by these charismatic pilgrims.  Their efforts to be faithful to the Nigerian expression of this culture involved a great deal of pain, experiences of humiliation and other forms of exploitation that we associate with the cults.  The author of Immanuel, Matthew McNaught, had been a fellow member of the Winchester house church and is thus able to present sympathetically the motivations and background of these members of his old Christian group, as they pursued a path which would seek to become part of one of the highest expressions of Christian power available.  TB Joshua evidently was a powerful presence, and he possessed a range of gifts that we lump together in the word charismatic.  Claims of prophetic gifts, deliverance, second sight and healing were communicated to this group of idealistic young people through the medium of video tapes.  The house church movement of the 80 and 90s to which the young people belonged, was constantly preaching the arrival of God’s ‘new thing’.   This was the age of the Toronto Blessing and other ‘revivals’ believed to have begun in places like Pensacola and Brownsville.  TB Joshua appeared to be yet another example of revival, and Nigeria was presenting a version of God’s new outpouring which demanded, on the part of these fired up young Christians from Winchester, a sacrifice of youth, education and futures.  These young people, one only 16, were ready to decamp to the poverty and enormous discomfort of the Christian complex and community known as the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) under, as was soon to be revealed, a deeply flawed leader, TB Joshua.

The strength of the book is the way that it gives the reader a sense of how attractive the culture of charismatic evangelicalism is and the way that it connects well to the yearnings and idealism of youth.  We are given the substance of conversations where the author recounts the motivations which took this group of young people to Nigeria.  The story in fact has no happy ending.  This ministry shared with others of this kind a dark side, including sexual and financial exploitation. Some were able to escape while others, who remained faithful to the leader up to his death at the age of 57 in 2021, were told to leave.  McNaught, the author, well captures the idealism of youth which is prepared to sacrifice everything in pursuit of an ideal, even if the ideal is based on a lie and the grandiose narcissism of a deeply flawed leader.  It is this sympathetic and insightful telling of a saga of church life, both in England and Africa, from the perspective of deeply devout young people that gives the Immanuel its special value.   

McNaught’s book allows us to eavesdrop on the thinking and feeling of a highly motivated group of young people who were formed by the charismatic impulses of the 90s.  The history of that period is immensely complicated, but the main feature of the time was an atmosphere of restless striving.  During this early period, well before the influence of HTB had come to be felt by a large section of the Church of England, there was already a sense of restless agitation among many who thought of themselves as charismatic Christians.  Although they had some evidence that God was alive and working his Spirit in their congregations, they still found it necessary to jet off to Toronto or Lagos to meet God there.  The story of the 90s charismatic Christian experience may be regarded at one level as a form of religious addiction.  Such addiction is never satisfied or complete; it always demands to be fed more.

The book Immanuel is then a work which is able to further our understanding of the Christian phenomenon known as charismatic evangelicalism.  Its real value is the way that it gives an inside feel for the lived reality of the experience without writing it off as mere fantasy or evil.  The heightened insights into what makes someone a charismatic – particular a very young adult – allows one to return to our current dilemma in the C/E, namely the dominance of HTB in our national Church.  The kinds of question that come from Immanuel are, in many cases, common sense questions.  Some of them want help in understanding why there is a potential and propensity for young people to embrace the values and leadership of what I would describe as cult-like churches.  TB Joshua is clearly an example of a sociopathic leader who possessed psychic gifts which were able to seduce a group of articulate but impressionable young people.  How much does the Church understand this personality type?  Will ‘large’ personalities (I can think of several examples) go on being allowed to sweep up the vulnerable among the young to gratify their narcissistic impulses and appetites?  The charismatic evangelical world continues to create new big names because there is a appetite for chasing after the new things that God is supposed to be doing.  As long as the wider church refuses to engage with questions thrown up by Immanuel, it will suffer.  Already the wider population has, as I suggested, come to identify Christianity as being closely identified with extreme moralism and addictive chasing after novelty.  It will also learn to miss examples of Christian behaviour connected with tolerance, human flourishing and the practice of love undergirding all human behaviour.  Such teaching does not require hyped-up preachers who try to batter down the capacity of listeners to think or reason.  It needs teachers and leaders who are at home with the peace and stillness of God and who understand the importance of teaching their flock to find ‘rest’ in God’s peace.

by Graham

“I have been asked to publish this piece. It was written by Graham, a victim of John Smyth QC on 19 May 2020, the day that the Makin Review into the abuse fell overdue. The Makin Review was promised in August 2018 when John Smyth died, but took a year to commission after his death. It was announced as starting on 19 August 2019, to take “no more than nine months”, so to be delivered by 19 May 2020. But, rather than nine months, the Review now enters Month 57. Ed

A frequent, if not constant theme, with the therapist I am seeing is: what will I need for closure ? What will I need to move on and put the Smyth abuse behind me, as best I can ?

The outstanding focus is the Review. I get drawn in to participate, comment, criticise, steer, stir and chivvy. I am like moth to a flame and the engagement with the Review is fundamentally unhealthy for me.

The Smyth victims were denied justice. Smyth should have been investigated in 2012 when I came forward. He should have been investigated with more urgency in 2017, when Channel 4 ( and not the Church, though they had known for five years) broke the story. I hesitate to criticise the Police, but it was a great disappointment to us that it was 18 months before they made the decision to seek extradition. He died before we got any justice through the criminal justice system. Our justice now is in a full, no holds barred, narrative and analysis of the abuse and the Church’s response.

And a Church investigation into the abuse has been blighted by delays. I was told there could be no investigation or Review while the Police investigation was live. Eighteen months were lost. Then Bishop Peter announced on 12 August 2018, the day Smyth died, that “It is important now that all those organisations linked with this case work together to look at a lessons learned review”. However, it took a year and a day, 13 August 2019 before the Review was launched, another year of waiting. For reasons that are still not clear, the start was then delayed from the announced date of 19 August 2019, to “in October”. And the review would take “no more than nine months”.

And now, another year’s wait ( I will put a fiver on the table that final publication has not happened by 30 April 2021). While I see all the arguments about doing it properly, making it comprehensive and thorough, it is not “frustrating” (the word used in the release), it is agonising. It pushes the day when we can move on, another year away.

And I am afraid I will not entertain the excuse of the Review being wider than anticipated. Simple due diligence before the Review, simple knowledge that there were 100+ victims, over 20 years, reading what was, by August 2019 in the public domain, would have shown the complexity of this story. I wrote in November last year about the lack of resources, the limited time ( then two days per week), the lack of photocopying and recording capacity, the absence still, after eight months of a signed protocol between reviewers, stupid things such as no easy way to access Counselling ( my therapist has not been paid, three months later, my expenses, submitted in November, just a few train fares, still not paid). The under- resourcing of this Review has been known about for months and months. That is no excuse.

So, what does the delay mean for me ? another year of waiting, agonising. Another year of not being able to move on. Next March will be NINE years since I reported the abuse.

Another year of getting angry, frustrated, manic, depressed. That is the effect of a year’s delay. You have condemned me to another year without closure.

As a young child in the 50s, I grew up with very little understanding of politics in Britain. I knew, of course, that there were two major parties called Labour and Conservative, but no one explained to me the idea of left-wing and right-wing politics.  Still less was I aware of the endless permutations of political ideology that existed.  It was on a visit to Italy in 1964 that I began to be educated in the huge range of political options that people in European countries take for granted. The meaning of left and right began to take some sort of shape in my mind.  For the first time I was observing the reality of high octane political life – strikes, demonstrations and governments collapsing every week, or so it seemed.  The pattern of daily life in Rome, where I was staying for several weeks, seemed to continue in spite of the political dramas. It was not until I lived in Greece in the academic year 67-68 that my experience of politics took on a serious, even frightening, turn.  In April 1967 a group of military men, mainly with the rank of colonel, had taken over the government of the country with the ostensible justification of preventing a left-wing government coming to power.  I do not propose to say much about the ideology of this militarised regime, but it is safe to describe it as a fascist dictatorship.  The aim of the governing clique was to establish their political will over the entire nation.  Fascism is about unchallengeable political power which is typically focussed on the personality of a leader who knows how to ‘seduce’ large numbers of citizens.  In taking over all the organs of power in a society, a fascist system does not have to concern itself with the irritations of a legal system, the press or public opinion.  In Greece at that time, the will of the governing military clique reached right across society and affected even me, a foreign student with no prior political allegiances of any kind.  If I was entering Greece as a political innocent in the autumn of 1967, I was, certainly by the time I left in the summer of 1968, a would-be political subversive, though without any platform from which to ventilate my stirred-up passions.  The story of how I unsuccessfully tried to return to Greece in 1969 to write a report for Amnesty International must remain for another day.

 What was it about the fascist ideology that riled me to the point that I might have been tempted to do something equivalent to the young men and women who joined the Spanish International Brigade in the 30s?  Fascism. whether in its 60-70s Greek manifestation, or as the ideology of modern Russia, Hungary or pre-war Italy, Germany or Spain, challenges and threatens the human soul.  The fact that an authoritarian government can take power and, in using that power, can redefine reality for its citizens, is hard to take.  This reality, where the will of a few dominates the whole, diminishes the happiness and well-being of a substantial swathe of a country’s population. This is, or should be, a matter for great concern. Even if we are fortunate not to be beholden to such a rule in Britain currently, a natural concern for the happiness of humankind around the world should make us want to understand more about this poisonous but apparently attractive political option in our world today.

Going back to my 1960’s experiences of the lived reality of fascism, I want to draw attention to three interrelated facets which it manifested.  These three dimensions revealed by Greek fascism are not a textbook exposition of this ideology, but a personal impression based on one person’s experience. The first aspect was the suffocating and infuriating promotion of propaganda.  I was not an avid reader of Greek newspapers, partly because of their censored content and partly because the writers were forced to use an archaic style of Greek which was not the spoken form that I was studying.  I was however subject to the dreadful experience of newsreels at the cinema.  The ‘news’ was the content of the speeches by the ruling group.  I quickly became familiar with this style of sloganized speech.  We were constantly exposed to the main slogans, such as  ‘Long live the 21^st April 1967’ and ‘Greece of Greek Christians’ and frequent references to the ‘revolution’.  The Greek word for the latter idea was uncomfortably close to the Christian word meaning resurrection.   No doubt we were meant to think of Easter and the Colonels’ takeover in a similar way.  The Colonels were also fairly adept at creating a form of Christian nationalism that is not dissimilar to Trump’s MAGA version of Christianity.

Propaganda was infuriating and frustrating, but it could be borne if it had been the only trial.    Propaganda is, however, indicative of a second deeper and more insidious poison that was penetrating Greek society: the corruption of truth.  The salient versions of political truth were those which the population was expected to assimilate without question.  There was also a ‘correct’ version of history to be imbibed, particularly by children at school.  The rewriting of history included the trashing of the previous generation of ‘failing’ politicians.  Correct thinking, as defined in the turgid speech making of the political leaders, was mandatory, particularly if you worked in any capacity for the State.  This included civil servants, teachers and those working for universities.  Deviation of any kind was downright dangerous.  Spies were everywhere and the suspicions that were created by this fact poisoned many potential relationships.  Britain, then under the Labour government of Harold Wilson, was not considered a friendly nation.  Critical remarks from the British were taken with great seriousness and the Greek press was encouraged to attack the Britain government in return.  My own situation in my student hostel became increasingly uncomfortable.  Thankfully there were places of refuge once I travelled away from the urban centres.  The rural areas, particularly on the island of Crete, remained largely politically peaceful.  Greek monasteries also always remained free of the nauseating political propaganda.  But, speaking of the bulk of the population, the abnormal was becoming normal and the capacity to distinguish truth from falsehood was being blunted for many around me.  Bland unquestioning conformity became the safe option for the majority.  Those who resisted this social pressure were careful not to utter opinions in a public place.  Loss of livelihood, imprisonment or worse awaited those who thought thoughts that were unacceptable to the ruling powers.

The fate of what happened to some of the political opponents of the Colonels’ regime leaked out during the winter of 67/68.  Unheard of forms of torture were meted out to some prisoners and these notoriously included the beating of the soles of the feet with a metal pipe.    The use of such torture on politically active citizens, pointed to an appalling fanaticism and cruelty that was infecting parts of the police and other state bodies.  The Greek word ‘fanatikos’ is made to cover a number of levels of conviction, from the mild to the extreme.  Greece saw during its fascist period the unleashing of the worst kind of fanatic.  These types will always appear when fascism or other extremist ideologies become dominant across a society.  We need to understand how convinced politicians, who want to change the world with high-sounding principles, may sometimes have surrendered themselves to tolerating, even promoting, cruel and immoral behaviour as a way to achieve those ends.  Conviction, commitment and total dedication to an ideology all have a very nasty shadow side which is devoid of justice and compassion. The gradual descent from conviction to a tolerance of cruelty is the third stage in the corrupting force of fascism.  In summary, we suggest that fascism is a state of mind that is so convinced of its correctness that all the human rights of those who disagree can be totally disregarded. 

My story of interactions with the Colonels’ fascist regime and their acts of stupidity and cruelty could be lengthened considerably.  During my ten months in the country, I managed to upset the powers that be sufficiently to appear on a list of those forbidden re-entry to the country.  This ban remained in place until the collapse of the government in 1974.  Whatever my exact misdemeanour, I had acquired a visceral dislike of fascist ways of thinking and this aversion continues to this day.  I have identified the use of propaganda combined with the enforcement of a political ideology where disagreement or even discussion is strictly forbidden.  This promotion of an infallible way of thinking results in a level of fanaticism which drives out all generosity of spirit in favour of a steely and determined grasp of the ‘truth’.   Fanaticism as a close companion of fascism could, in the case of the Colonels and their supporters, lead to the horrors of physical torture.

One of the reasons for writing this short piece was a realisation that the Sunday 21^st April was the 57^th anniversary of the Greek military take-over.  This had triggered in my mind a memory of the way an entire nation had been bombarded with fascist fantasies and cruelty for seven long years.  Might this powerful triggering also have some connection to the struggle that I continue to have with forces of propaganda, power abuse, manipulation of truth and deliberate cruelty that I still find in some of the institutions I observe to this day?  Is it too strong a claim to make to suggest that fascism, as a state of mind or a temperament, is still to be found in some of these institutions, even our churches? It is especially to be found among those individuals who accept the blandishments of  ‘certainty’ while ignoring the gifts of human compassion and democratic reasoning and debate. 

    by Hatty Calbus 

    The final article in a series of 3   

          In the previous two articles I wrote about HTB’s influence on the Church of England and the influence on it of the megachurch movement, especially disgraced Hillsong. In his leadership podcast, Nicky Gumbel says what he is doing,: that “we’re always looking outwards.” He states categorically that a church’s number one aim must be evangelisation and presumably believes this aim to  justify his methods. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/ podcast/get-to-know-nicky-gumbel-his-journey-to-church-leadership/id1537327121? i=1000496021910 (23 minutes)  However, Pope Francis has warned, “It is tempting for pastoral ministers to adopt not only effective models of management, planning and organisation drawn from the business world, but also a lifestyle and mentality guided more by worldly criteria of success, and indeed power, than by the criteria which Jesus sets out in the Gospels.” Did nobody on the Archbishops’ Council or among the senior leadership at HTB see this or do they disagree?

Worldly criteria of success are the great idol of the megachurch movement and success is itself a type of power – the opposite of failure and powerlessness, of vulnerability and weakness. Evangelisation is crucial, but constantly looking outwards can come from a need not to look too far within – which is where Church leaders fixated on number success would find vulnerability and powerlessness. Such avoidance means also needing to avoid the reminder of others’ vulnerability and powerlessness. This affects pastoral care.

Plenty of people have commented on megachurches’ lack of pastoral care. Mike Cosper of Christianity Today: “Ministry success allows leaders to create layers of insulation between themselves and the people that they are supposedly serving.” Erik Strandness: “Sadly, when pastors expedite church growth, they distance themselves from the flock.” Niro Feliciano, a psychotherapist interviewed in The Secrets of Hillsong: “You need systems in place to meet the needs of the people who are in your community. And I think where it gets tricky is when the expansion is going faster than the ability to show compassion, to still meet needs.” Alison Milbank, specifically on the Church of England: “Generally, in this planting/resource church model, the central parochial work of the care of souls is just not valued or practised” and “Huge megabenefices are being created with vestigial pastoral care.”

 A grave manifestation of this lack of care is sexually abusive behaviour –  megachurches have frequent sex scandals. Brian Houston’s father, a minister at Hillsong, was a paedophile. Because he failed to report his father to the authorities when he found out in the 1990s, Houston was tried last year, though he was judged to have a “reasonable excuse” for not disclosing the abuse. Houston denies he blamed one victim, seven at the time, for tempting his father. What forced his resignation, as with other Hillsong pastors, was his behaviour with women (“Lots of pretty Swedish girls here!” a BBC extract shows Houston announce to his stadium congregation.) https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ episode/m000y2g7 (17 mins)

According to an internal investigation, there were incidents “of serious concern” involving inappropriate messages and a hotel room visit, with $25,000 of hush money allegedly paid. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ mar/23/hillsongs-brian-houston-resigns-from-megachurch?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Another high-profile resignation because of behaviour with women was Bill Hybels of Willow Creek, who spoke at an HTB leadership conference.

https:// www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/february/willow-creek-bill-hybels-investigationiag-report.html Both protested their innocence.

  A large group at risk of abuse in successful churches with a need to feel powerful is single women, traditionally the bedrock of the volunteers churches rely on, in the case of megachurches in large numbers. The Hillsong documentaries have allegations of bullying, exploitation, inappropriate sexual behaviour and a lack of accountability. One volunteer said, “I gave everything to these people that really didn’t care about me.” Maria Siegler and Oli Coleman at the New York Post’s Page Six reported that a group of whistleblowers, all women volunteers, wrote to the Hillsong leadership to complain about “vague or absent sexual harassment/sexual assault” policies at the church and a dangerous environment that was “a breeding ground for unchecked [sexual] abuse.” https:// pagesix.com/2020/12/17/hillsong-rife-with-inappropriate-sex-members-claimed/ Comments in The Secrets of Hillsong are “You are indoctrinated into this system of violation, abuse and cover up” and “[There were] widespread issues, it was very alarming and it wasn’t being dealt with at all.” Abuse allegations were seen as “an irritant.” In their letter, the women wrote: “When a church is less like a family and more like an enterprise, its leaders act less like pastors and more like commanders, this puts everyone in danger.”  I shall only cite here my harassment experience at HTB from three leaders: a married one telling me I was “a peach” and asking if I had a boyfriend; an engaged one trying to put his arm round my waist and on another occasion running his finger down my back, which I also saw him do to another woman; a different married one touching my backside. He and a man with a reputation as a womaniser were put forward for ordination and are now vicars [the backside one is Mr “Sex O’Clock ” etc, now actually in charge of a resource church, which I’ve omitted in case it’s too specific]. A senior leader dismissed this as “generalisation;” another said I “shouldn’t be looking at the behaviour of these male leaders.” I say the options here are a) I’m a mad fantasist; b) boys will be boys – it doesn’t matter or c) a culture can be inferred and that matters. The Hillsong volunteers’ letter received little attention. It was only when big-name pastors were involved that sexually abusive behaviour at the church was finally addressed. It does now have a sexual harassment and assault policy. HTB does not.

          A Megachurch Exposed, according to the New York Times, “depicts the megachurch as a toxic institution obsessed with image, control and growth at all costs.” https:// www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/us/hillsong-church-scandals.html? referringSource=articleShare

Julie Roys, who keeps watch on megachurch scandals in The Roys Report has said, “Once you become a corporation, you’ve got to manage that image.” A need to avoid vulnerability and powerlessness is dangerous to those who make complaints and megachurches tend to use corporate methods to deal with them, including Non Disclosure Agreements. Prior to the 2018 Data Act, HTB’s privacy policy said they would use people’s data to protect themselves from legal suits [I didn’t take a screen shot of this, but could they deny it?]. The Hillsong women’s letter claimed the church fosters a “culture of silence and fear.” Similarly, there have been allegations of bullying and surveillance at HTB. One former staff member spoke on the Cult Forum website [and I then had some communication with him] about “control, monitoring and intimidation.” [I have two other people’s experiences in the iBook] A curate involved is now vicar of a plant.

          Most churches collect data but not sensitive data. In the rare cases that they do, they give a reason, for example, children’s allergies. In a far-from-prominent part of its website, HTB states, “As a church, we collect data about services and events you attend. Some of this information may be considered to come within the definition of Special Categories of Personal Data. Special Categories of Personal Data includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data.” More than a few plants are also doing this. No explanation is given as to why such data is necessary. Stephen Parsons has said, “Far too often, the large church, in terms of numbers, is a place where leadership is corrupted, the weak are bullied and abused and evil is allowed to find a home.” Is that data used in a way that is not abusive or bullying, that is free from evil?

          Abuse and scandals drive people away. The resignations of Brian Houston and Bill Hybels have meant large numbers of Hillsong’s affiliated churches breaking away and so many people leaving Willow Creek that almost a third of its staff were made redundant. https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/willow-creek-church-forced-to-layoff-30-per-cent-of-its-staff-amid-drop-in-attendance?

utm_source=Premier%20Christian%20Media&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1321805_daily%20news%2023%20May%202022&dm_i=16DQ,7VAX9,635JCB,W5811,1

These facts don’t take into account the devastation and disillusionment of church members, which, as with the lack of a theology of suffering, leads many to reject not just the particular megachurch but God, because that is always a result of such scandals. Attractive worldliness may bring people through the doors, but it also drives them out. The disciples-per-pound approach does not seem to have factored that in.          

A single-minded focus on evangelisation and growth has to downgrade pastoral care. A need for the power and invulnerability of success inevitably leads to sins of omission and commission. Many people go to HTB and many people leave. A member of a non-Evangelical church in the area [Holy Trinity, Prince Consort Road] spoke of all the “HTB casualties” who moved to them. But the de facto plan of the Archbishops’ Council seems to be to create, via HTB, lots of little Anglican Hillsongs. Will they continue with this strategy or will they dare to admit they have made a serious mistake that will make their execrable safeguarding record visibly worse?

by Hatty Calbus

          After he became Vicar of HTB in 2005, Nicky Gumbel brought major change.  Barbara Ehrenreich devotes a chapter of her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World to the Church Growth Movement which produced the megachurches. She reports how its leaders conducted surveys of potential parishioners, who wanted something less like traditional Christianity and more like the world. So these leaders obliged with corporate-looking buildings, high-tech, feel-good entertainment and cafés serving smoothies. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California proclaims in his bestselling The Purpose Driven Church, “A good salesman knows you always start with the customer’s needs, not the product” (sic).  Nicky Gumbel began inviting Warren and other megachurch founders to speak at HTB services, conferences and the annual church holiday. He also visited and spoke at their churches. The megachurch approach was what he saw as the best way forward to achieve the “evangelisation of the nations, the revitalisation of the Church and the transformation of society.” Now similarly much-repeated by Vicar Archie Coates, this is also the tag for the Revitalise Trust, HTB’s charity, https://revitalisetrust.org/plants-and-revitalisations, whose huge influence I wrote about in my previous article.

          The megachurch with the stand-out  influence has been the particularly energised Australian Hillsong from the same movement. At its peak, it had 150,000 weekly attendees worldwide. When its leader, Brian Houston and his wife Bobbie came to HTB, they were introduced so rapturously by Nicky Gumbel, I wondered who these exceptional beings could be. Preaching at the London Hillsong branch, Gumbel said HTB and Hillsong were “the only good churches in London” [a friend happened to be trying out Hillsong the week he was their speaker].

          HTB’s small groups were changed from ‘Pastorates’ to ‘Connect Groups’, like Hillsong’s. The chairs were removed and in came sofas, floor cushions, plasma screens, church notices as video adverts, rock venue lighting and sound systems, and rappers. Panini and smoothies were prepared at the back of the church during services.         Megachurches love the attractiveness of celebrity and youth. The Alpha Course used to draw all ages, but not long before Gumbel retired, he said he was aiming it at twenty-four-year-olds. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/get-to-know-nicky-gumbel-his-journey-to-church-leadership/id1537327121?i=1000496021910  (25 October 2020, from 23 minutes) The photos and videos on HTB and many plants’ websites mostly feature attractive twenty-somethings.

          At HTB, I heard a curate, since given considerable responsibility in a plant, justify the ironic name of a nightclub-like Sunday evening service: “the Sex O’Clock – because it is sexy!” He described a Good Friday service as “cool.” And he said prayer was meant to be “fun” – because your customers need to be kept engaged with the product. An episode of the BBC series Rev reproduced some of this with what looked like parody but wasn’t. https://youtu.be/mGfsd03KZAQ Taking general aim at the megachurch movement, an episode of The Simpsons has Lisa ask, “What are they doing to [our] church?” She’s told, “We’re rebranding it. The old church was skewing pious.” (series 13, episode 6) https://youtu.be/gggCcXroOcc When HTB took over neighbouring St Paul’s Church, naming it ‘HTB Onslow Square’, they did indeed describe this as ‘rebranding’.

          All this has been labelled ‘McChurch’, defined by Wikipedia as “a McWord used to suggest that a particular church has a strong element of entertainment, consumerism or commercialism which obscures its religious aspects.” A ‘McWord’ is defined as “designed to evoke pejorative associations with the restaurant chain or fast food in general, often for qualities of cheapness, inauthenticity, or the speed and ease of manufacture.” Some excesses have gone, but the McChurch influence is still quite evident at HTB.                      

          One point is that entrusting the revival of the Church of England to HTB’s Hillsong-like methods through ‘planted’ resource churches hasn’t been working. The target for new worshippers expected  by the Archbishops’ Council with appalling precision has come nowhere near fulfilment: 89,375 forecast, 12,075 achieved (the Chote Report). This has been calculated as costing £5800 per new worshipper. In her book The Once and Future Parish, Alison Milbank points out that “the Episcopal Church in the United States has been employing managerial mission now for fifty years and there has been steady numerical decline.”

          And there are other problems with how the ‘product’ is packaged. According to research by James Wellman published in University of Washington Today, “American megachurches use … an upbeat, unchallenging vision of Christianity.” A key means of achieving this is rock-style worship music, much of it produced by Hillsong, earning it millions of dollars a year. https://www.thefader.com/2018/10/11/hillsong-church-worship-songs-music-industry Writer and former pastor Bill Blankschaen notes that “a church oftentimes will pour much more resources, energy, thought and time into making a killer worship service” than more mundanely-theological aspects.

          This criticism has been made at HTB plants. Milbank says HTB’s music, “relentlessly upbeat … does not speak into the difficulties, suffering, tragedies and failures of human life, except in order to recount rescue from them by conversion, with the hint of a more successful life-course to ensue in the future” and that “While HTB is careful not to embrace the Prosperity Gospel, a major proponent, Joyce Mayer, addressed their leadership conference. HTB comes close to it in some talks, so sure is it that God’s blessing will rest on those who follow Christ, in contrast to the many saints who have insisted that God’s gifts to us may include an intensified yet redemptive suffering of wrongs. This positivity is one key factor in its success.” The worship highs make it feel impossible that God won’t come through with success and happiness for you personally. The disillusionment when people realise what they have been sold is faulty causes many to reject not just their own church but God.

          Given the worldliness, it is no surprise that scandals keep emerging in megachurches with the ‘successful’ leaders so admired by Nicky Gumbel, none more than at Hillsong, where at least four pastors have fallen. It has now been the subject of three television exposés: Hillsong Church: God Goes Viral; the three-part Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed and the four-part The Secrets of Hillsong, eachwithnew revelations.

          One part of the worldliness is, of course, money. Megachurches’ huge congregations make them very wealthy, the pastors frequently ostentatiously so. Steven Furtick, invited to speak at HTB’s leadership conference, has an estimated worth of $55 million [various sources]. Designer clothes and trainers, fast cars and even private jets are common. https://instagram.com/preachersnsneakers?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=  Hillsong leader Brian Houston published You Need More Money: Discovering God’s Amazing Financial Plan for Your Life in 2000, iebefore Nicky Gumbel embraced his theology. In The Secrets of Hillsong, Geoff Bullock, one of Hillsong’s original musicians, says, “It was about counting numbers and counting money.”

          The Australian authorities are currently investigating claims by MP Andrew Wilkie of fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and extravagant spending, based on thousands of financial documents from a Hillsong whistleblower. To select from an outrageous list, he has alleged “the kind of shopping that would embarrass a Kardashian” and Houston “treating private jets like Ubers.” Wilkie also alleges that Phil Dooley, who took over after Houston had to resign, spent tens of thousands of dollars on business-class flights for himself and his daughter. Hillsong have denied many of the allegations as  “taken out of context” and say that things have changed. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-10/federal-mp-accuses-hillsong-money-laundering-tax-evasion/102077080

          Although a different style, HTB’s top-public-school ease with wealth may be why Houston’s approach has seemed acceptable. It was a surprise to me how many HTB members I met working in gas and oil (as did Justin Welby) or providing concierge services for West London’s very wealthy, including, almost inevitably, tax-avoiding Britons and money-laundering Russians.

          Alastair Roberts in his blog Alastair’s Adversaria says, “HTB often strikes me as an example of a highly successful ecclesial adaptation to contemporary capitalism.” In the previous article, I looked at the influence of Paul Marshall, like Gumbel a Revitalise trustee, who is a multimillionaire hedge fund manager.  Ken Costa, an old friend of Gumbel’s, was a preacher and churchwarden, then CEO of Alpha International. His involvement in tax avoidance schemes was reported in Private Eye. [He didn’t sue: I checked.] It has been claimed that potential curates were interviewed on his yacht. I have been unable to verify this, but  it should be too far fetched to need checking and it isn’t. At one prayer meeting, it was announced the church was aiming to raise a million pounds the following Sunday [I was there]. A staff member who’d been working on a video advert for Alpha said that was costing a million pounds. HTB clergy do not have ostentatious wealth and have not  been convicted of fraud, as has happened at other megachurches. But all this might explain why “marketized evangelicalism” in Milbank’s phrase, has seemed natural. And despite Hillsong’s disgrace, as recently as summer 2023, the Revitalise Trust’s email newsletter showed a speaker against a background with just the Hillsong logo.

          The American journalist Julie Roys reports daily in The Roys Report on scandals in rich and worldly megachurches that, despite all the image control, eventually become public. I wonder why HTB and the Archbishops’ Council think it will be immune. Behind Church scandals are Christians being hurt, often profoundly. I shall look at this in my next article.