Like everyone else, I have been appalled at the events taking place in Paris over the weekend. I myself was in London moving among crowds of people out enjoying themselves. It was easy to imagine the havoc and chaos that could be caused by someone blowing themselves up in the middle of such crowds. Readers of this blog will first of all be imagining terror and grief experienced by thousands of people in the French capital today. But there is another act of imagination that we should attempt. We have to try and get inside the minds of people who are prepared to kill random strangers in the cause of a political/religious agenda. This task is much more difficult but it is one that this blog is constantly trying to bring to my readers’ attention. What are the salient points of an ideology that is at the same time a death cult? At one level there is a profound jealousy of the freedom and the way of life enjoyed by Western societies. There is a particular hatred among Arab men for the lifestyle of Western women who enjoy choices and freedoms which would not be tolerated in their own societies. Jealousy changes very quickly into hatred and it has as a kind of justification the idea that people who do not live by the stern commands of the Muslim faith, have somehow lost their way in the task of righteous and godly behaviour. Such ungodly behaviour must be punished by death.

There are of course in our own societies strands of belief which parallel the hatred and intolerance of the Arab terrorists. The extreme right wing in America preach a version of Christianity that is sometimes intolerant in the extreme. But, apart from the case of a few disturbed individuals, this intolerance does not usually give way to violence. But it is still right for us to compare certain extreme forms of Muslim ideology with beliefs practised by Christians. The most important link is in the binary thought processes of Arab terrorists which is something that is shared by conservative fundamentalists in the West. Binary thinking says, in a few words, that because this belief is right, the opposing belief is wrong and must be resisted at every point. Binary thinking thus excludes paradox, tolerance and inclusivity. It is a state of living with only black and white. All forms of grey are rejected. Such thinking is probably to be found more often among the less educated in society. It is also the form of argument and understanding adopted by a child. The adult who thinks in this way has either been part of an extreme group all their life or they have been failed by the educational process. In many cases the people who remain stuck in black/white thinking are not themselves to blame. They belong to groups who want to deliberately keep them in a state of mental and emotional subordination. They need the liberation afforded by education but this will be hard to do when the institutions to which they belong have a vested interest in keeping them in a state of intellectual dependency.

The power of bigotry and ignorance has been powerfully demonstrated this weekend. If I am even partly right in my assessment that it is poor education which creates this terrible narrowness and lack of tolerance, then urgent action is needed. If we believe in accepting other people who are different from ourselves, then we should be setting an example and living out this tolerance in an active rather than passive way. We need also to be the kind of people who go out of our way to be exposed to ideas quite different from our own. Every society needs people who seek out new cultures and different ways of doing things and are able to show that this is an important aspect of being a citizen in their own country. Discussion with others must not just be an opportunity for repeating long held ideas. It should be a conscious attempt to learn from hearing the ideas and experiences of other people. In this way we can play our part in making learning and listening a proactive part of our interaction with other people.

Within the minds of the fanatics who kill people in the name of a single version of truth, there is an inability to accept the otherness of individuals around them. Truth for them in other words is a monochrome, unbending and inflexible reality. Because there is no other reality, the true believer has to kill and use violence against anyone who does not agree with this version of truth. This way of thinking and practising a religious faith has always to be challenged and defeated. We can begin to do this by our own challenging of exclusivity, bigotry and intolerance by Christians towards those who are different from them. When Christians use harsh and discriminatory language against those who do not belong to their tribe, we are on the beginning of the process which may eventually lead to the violence and hatred that we saw enacted in Paris this past weekend. In the last resort inclusivity, tolerance and love are matters of life and death. All of us have a responsibility for promoting these values so that our society can never descend into the horrors of IS. Jesus welcomed many people whose lifestyles and failures horrified the respectable Jewish establishment. How much more should we err on the side of generosity in welcoming and loving people who are both different from us and who think in ways that we find difficult?

Some of my readers will have been aware of the Synod in Rome for leaders of the Catholic Church to discuss the issue of family life. As might be expected this meeting has been a tussle between conservatives who want to preserve traditional teaching which excludes divorced couples from the Eucharist as well as same-sex couples, and others who wish to see a more compassionate stance towards these groups. Somehow the Synod has concluded with a statement offering concessions to both sides. Neither group has had to feel that they have lost the battle for the heart and soul of the ‘true’ Catholic Church. Anyone outside that church following this debate must have wondered which side they would support. My readers will guess that I would be on the liberal inclusive side of the argument. But the question remains: on which side are the true Catholics? Pope Francis is obviously wanting to push the church more in the direction of a compassionate and tolerant set of values. But even if he is successful, who is to say that a successor will not arise who will reverse the new change of atmosphere in the Catholic Church a few years down the line? One has to come to the conclusion that the Catholic in good standing at one particular moment may be a Catholic who is later seen to be holding views that are outlawed by another version of orthodoxy which may be waiting just round the corner.

A similar thought struck me when I was reading the biography of Jim Packer. In 1967 at a big conference for Anglican evangelicals at Keele, Packer was right at the centre of the planning and of the statements that came out of that conference. The same group met 10 years later at Nottingham to discuss the situation of Anglican evangelicals but here Packer found himself on the fringe of the discussions. In ten short years the orthodoxy or, should we say, the fashionable preoccupations of Anglican evangelicals had shifted significantly. It had become more open to biblical scholarship and the discipline of hermeneutics. Packer himself felt alienated at the conference and this was part of what contributed to his decision to leave Britain for Canada in 1979. That is where he has remained and has made his home. The same question I asked in the previous paragraph about who are the true orthodox Catholics could be asked of Anglican evangelicals. Are we to suppose that each generation of Anglican evangelicals has a distinctive ‘correct’ version of orthodoxy which inevitably will be different from that held by the older generation?

Moving away from church politics for a moment, we may look briefly at the situation that seems to be engulfing the British Labour Party at present. We are witnessing an internal struggle for what is thought to be the ‘soul of the party’. The question has to be asked: who in fact encapsulates and represents this soul? Is it to found among the politicians who learnt their trade under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, or is it to be found in the activists on the extreme left who have recently joined the party? Could it be right to say that the orthodoxy of the labour movement has shifted in recent months and that a true member and supporter is someone who has likewise shifted their opinions and attitudes? Is the person who is a true orthodox politician or churchman like the Vicar of Bray? He was the fictional hero of an old song who shifted his theological views every time there was a change of monarch in Britain?

I was having conversation only last week with a senior clergyman who has recently left a well-supported evangelical parish in a large town. I asked him why there was a problem in finding a successor for his parish. I had heard that the committee were refusing to shortlist any of the candidates who had applied so far. His answer was interesting and reflects the issue that I have mentioned above. He said that for 20 years he had steered his parish away from the factionalism of evangelicals which he felt to be such a problem within the Anglican Church. This church was thus not a member of any of the evangelical tribes (my expression). In practice this meant that his church did not subscribe to Reform, New Wine or any of the other lobbying groups concerned with women clergy or the gay issue. He suspected that that all the best qualified up-and-coming clergy in the evangelical world had found it necessary to join one or other of these groups. The fact that he had kept his church out of church political tussles meant that his church was not attractive to a member of the new generation of politically aware clergy. Clearly fighting political battles is thought to be part of the identity of a young evangelical clergyman.

This conversation made me realise how fragmented the church is becoming, whether in its Protestant, Anglican or Catholic versions. It is very difficult to know where the emotional and intellectual centre of any of these churches is nowadays. The question remains for me and my readers as to what we do about the situation. Do we look for a factional group which more or less says the things we want to be articulated in the wider institution, or do we somehow go it alone and try to preserve intellectual and spiritual integrity? I am not sure I know the answer to this question. Speaking personally, the situation of retirement allows me the freedom not to have to identify with particular factions within the church. I have the freedom to seek other individuals who may share a common view on the issues of faith or indeed church politics. On many questions I am in a community of one! It would appear that for any Christian who wants to get it right in terms of their standing and orthodoxy within a group or denomination, they face an impossible task. Today’s orthodoxy will often prove to be tomorrow’s fringe idea or even heresy. This was the problem for Jim Packer and it will be true for anyone who wants always to be ‘orthodox’ in any institution, political or religious.

From time to time Chris has asked me what I think about a particular item of doctrine. Sometimes I have been able to give him a straight answer, but other times I have had to say: ‘I don’t know’. Perhaps the new orthodoxy will be, not certainty about a range of doctrines and issues, but a generous and compassionate refusal to be committed to any single exclusive position. As a title of a course that I led in my last parish was entitled, perhaps we all need to learn to ‘ live the questions’. This open non-dogmatic approach may be more successful in finding truth than always expecting answers. For the time being my orthodoxy is something along these lines, knowing the right questions to ask and then learning to live with the tension of having these questions not completely answered. I will no doubt have more to say on this matter and the way that having questions in the pursuit of truth is what helps to inform my approach to life and to God.

Following my commentary on the Langlois report, I received an email from ‘Amanda’ about her 37 years as a member of Peniel (she only escaped in 2009) I asked her if I could offer her some support by writing her an open letter so that the things I was saying to her might possibly be found of some help to others in a similar position. The letter is generalised but I hope I may get from her some particular points to address out of the sea of abusive practices that Langlois and his commission have identified. I shall try then to give the commission topic a rest, particularly as I seem to have stunned my regular commenters into silence by all this Peniel material!

Dear Amanda,
Thank you for being in touch with me after the recent publication of the Langlois report about Trinity Church Brentwood. Like most people I have probably not read every word of the 300 page document but I have been struck by all the details of peoples’ suffering that have been recorded in this report. Also like John, I have been struck by the remarkable consistency of the witnesses who spoke to him and his commission. As he said, the facts speak for themselves and there is no justification for any suggestion that the report is some political attempt to destroy the church. The truth will always have its own power. Even if the report does not receive wide circulation, it will be one of the most powerful documents about the dynamic of a conservative cultic church in Britain ever to have been published.

Reading the report as an outsider means that I can have only a partial understanding of the pain and the suffering that have been caused by this appalling church regime. There are numerous issues to be to be noted in describing the dynamics of this congregation, but two in particular stand out on first reading. I want to address these two as well as recognise that they will probably have impacted on you personally. My writing to you about these two issues will perhaps bring some insight and encouragement to you and to the others who have endured similar things over 30 or more years.

John Langlois’ report spoke about a pervasive atmosphere of fear that existed in Peniel church in the time of Michael Reid. He was talking not only about the sheer fear-inducing bullying aspect of Reid’s personality but also the theological underpinning of this terrifying regime. Michael Reid had the power to control people through fear because he could tell them that they would go to hell unless they followed his precise instructions. This kind of tyrannical oppression in the context of a church is not uncommon but it remains obscene and unwarranted. The problem is that many churches have been sucked into a kind of Calvinist thinking which basically paints God as an angry irrational tyrant who needs to be appeased. This kind of theology needs to be identified and resisted. It is unhealthy, poisonous and the cause of a great deal of unhappiness. It is particularly unwholesome when used in the presence of children. They are easily affected by such a message which is calculated to induce terror on all who hear it. I was struck by the accounts of witnesses who spoke about services when people were encouraged to weep, groan and lament their sins when very young children were present.

The second horrific aspect of the Peniel regime was the effect that it had on some families. When one person in a family wanted to leave the congregation, the rest of the family were forced through bullying and coercive techniques to cut themselves off from the ‘erring’ member. This is a typical behaviour of cultic groups and it is done as a practical way of retaining control of members. Unless this utterly barbaric practice of ostracism is strictly enforced, the departing family member may act as an influence to compete with the cult leader. I note that John Langlois refused to get involved in discussing whether Peniel is a cult. He would have found that the current academic definitions of a cult would fit Peniel extremely well. Shunning behaviour is one of the typical characteristics of a cult as outlined by the International Cultic Studies Association. Again and again the representators to the Langlois Commission reported this shunning behaviour. The suffering caused by these enforced family break-ups is always going to be immense. I had already read the published account of Caroline Green (Sarah Jones) and the way that her husband was forced to divorce her. He then subsequently married another member of the church.

Amanda, you have been a victim of an environment that uses induced fear to control people alongside a readiness to break up families to achieve the same end. I first want to suggest that the God that was preached in such a church is not a God I and other mainstream Christians recognise. I accept that there is such a thing as sinful, selfish and brutish behaviour on the part of individuals. Some people go through life without ever learning the meaning of love, in the sense of giving to other people something of themselves. Their perspective on life is to grab as much as they can for themselves and for the feeding of their bodily appetites. The accounts of an afterlife in the New Testament as well as in other spiritual traditions do suggest the notion of judgement, but I would reject the heaven/hell dichotomy as being far too simplistic. Even the wickedest people on this earth who have been weighed down by their excessive self-indulgence may not lost be for ever. When Jesus spoke about ‘many mansions’ this could imply that there are variety of levels within the afterlife for us to occupy. The selfish and the wicked may find that they have to learn all the things they refused to learn in this life in another dimension beyond the grave. What they did not learn of joy, compassion and love has to be learnt elsewhere. The God I identify in Scripture is one that calls us to love. This is another way of saying that we all are all called to journey out of ourselves to reach a place where we can eventually enjoy the eternal bliss that is the prize for us beyond. Some in this life go some way along this journey through the practice of goodness and virtue while others make virtually no progress at all. The Christianity that constantly teaches the inevitability of eternal punishment for Christians who are not like us, is a form of faith that I have no time for. I want people to discover freedom from fear and also to know love and joy in this life which is an anticipation of the life beyond. There is a book which had the title ‘Love conquers all’. It was not popular in conservative Christian circles because it removed from controlling Christian leaders to power to say who was and who was not going to heaven. The reality that we see through Jesus is a God who accepts us with all our failings and this is a form of faith that I wish to commend to you and you ex-Peniel friends. ‘There is no fear in love; perfect love casts out fear.’

I cannot tell you how aggrieved I am to hear about the stories of family breakup that have been revealed in the Langlois report. The thought that a pastor should somehow engineer the breaking up of a family is something which should be declared as criminal. There are one or two Scriptural passages, unfortunately, that can be manipulated by an unscrupulous teacher to suggest that it is right to leave one’s family for a ‘higher’ cause. But there is in fact no higher cause being served when somebody is forced to leave husband or wife so that the control of a corrupt leader can be maintained and strengthened. The problem here, as throughout the history of Peniel, has been that obedience to Michael Reid and others, has been inflated and assumed to be the same as obedience to God. This is utter blasphemy.

You, Amanda, and all the others who are survivors of this wicked regime need to know that there is another kinder, more compassionate version of Christianity out there. Michael Reid appears to have relentlessly exploited the Bible and Christian theology for his own selfish and wicked ends. This activity makes him guilty of tremendous evil and one can believe that he will discover one day the full extent of the horrors that he has perpetrated on others. I hope you will regard me as a representative of this other compassionate face of the Christian faith. I am hoping that you and those you are in touch with will read this open letter and begin to believe that there is a way forward through the terrible experiences that you each have endured at Peniel. I want to leave you with two further verses which are constantly repeated in my mind and which for me sum up the Christian promise. The first is a passage from Revelation which says ‘Behold I make all things new’. The other passage is one from John, ‘I have come that they may have life, life in all its abundance’. In my future letters which I hope you will read, I will want to explain further about this newness and indeed about the fullness of life that Jesus wants us all to find. This will be something far better than the fear soaked faith of Peniel and Trinity. You are still living and breathing, you are still capable of learning, growing and being transformed by the power of God to change and to renew. I want to assist in a small way in that process.
Stephen

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e3578t7pt87jvci/Langlois%20report.pdf?dl=0

To access Langlois report copy/paste above into your search engine

Since the publication of John Langlois’ report on historical abuse at Trinity church Brentwood last Sunday, there seems to have been a deafening silence all round. Nigel Davies has published the full text of the report in four sections but his supporters so far appear to have been overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of reading matter. There are three hundred pages of text. The comments there have disappeared to zero. Meanwhile the official website of Trinity Church Brentwood has chosen to ignore the report entirely, even though it has a great deal to say about their church, both past and present. It falls on me to offer further comments. The Langlois report for me represents the most meticulous account of the workings of an abusive church ever published, at least in the UK. The other ‘approved’ report is given pride of place on the web-site, but for the reasons mentioned in the previous post we intend to ignore it. The church has published a list of vague promises to look at its past and certain issues of governance but it would appear that the present trustees are trying to pretend that John Langlois’ incisive report does not exist. Meanwhile Peter Linnecar has declared that he is resigning but he intends to return as a member of the congregation at Trinity. It has of course nothing to do with John Langlois’ devastating comments of last Sunday. How he could presume appear in public again after the extraordinary conclusions of the report about his conduct shows a marked absence of shame. To have such a notorious ex-minister in the congregation after everything that has come to light, means that the task of taking over the congregation and moving forward by a new independent minister is going to be almost impossible.

It is at present unclear when and where John Langlois report will be published. It is not available as a hyperlinked document anywhere so far and it is hard to see how people are to hear of it except through this blog or the one that Nigel writes www.victimsofmichaelreid.blogspot.co.uk . I keep hoping to hear that the Evangelical Alliance is going to take it seriously and publish it. I am sure that John himself will be sending a copy to the Director, Steve Clifford. Nevertheless it may be politically too hard for the Alliance to want to sponsor such a devastating critique of a church under their overall supervision without upsetting other churches which are uncomfortably close to Peniel/Trinity in culture. From my point of view the report is just what I have been looking for a period of time. It is a credible account of the way that abuse can take root in a Christian setting and flourish because power issues are not owned up to and ‘bible teaching’ is allowed to give individuals influence and authority which creates tyranny, abuse and fear among people in their congregations. The particular point that I want to stress about the value of the report is that although a rape allegation sparked off the original commission, it is not sex that is at the heart of the horrors of Peniel/Trinity Brentwood. It is a clear setting out of all the myriad ways that power can be misused by people in Christian leadership. It will be unavoidable, given the sheer quantity of material in the Langlois report, for me to avoid returning again and again to this key source document. Even if the document is supressed in some way, I shall go on quoting it because it is by far the best account of fundamentalist abuse that is likely ever to be published. As far as John Langlois was concerned the witnesses to his commission were totally credible and what they said was confirmed again and again by others. Although the leaders and trustees, by dissolving the commission in this August, never had the opportunity to respond to the allegations, the commission found themselves unable to suggest that anything they were told by their 77 representors was in any sense a slander or a lie.

In my years of thinking and writing about Christian abuse, I have always wanted to make the point that Christian abuse is so much more than just about sexual matters. The very word ‘abuse’ nearly always conjures up ‘affairs’ by clergy or acts of molestation against children. Such stories do happen and sometimes involve ministers coming before the courts. But there is a wider problem over power abuse by clergy which technically may not actually break the law. Because of the sex scandals affecting every denomination, the hierarchies of the various churches have become blinded to this wider abuse scandal which may have nothing to with sex. They fail to see the fear, terror and complete disempowerment in congregations where Calvinist hell-fire teaching is presented in a way that gratifies the leaders’ desire for abject obedience by the people in the congregation. Within the 300 pages of the report we have set out all the crazy and horrific manifestations of what happens when clergy act out their base motivations of dominance and use the name of God to make it an easier process. Power is a corrupting force – that we all know. But somehow corrupt power within the church is doubly obscene. At Trinity and Peniel before it, every form of power abuse was practised. In the report we have many examples of what happens when people come under spiritually corrupt leadership. Whether we are talking about the humiliation of small children in the church school, the exploitation, whether financial or sexual, of the adults, or the miasmic pervasive atmosphere of fear, it is all there in the report to be studied and reflected upon for years to come.

I cannot of course in a single post do justice to this huge range of types of abuse that the report reveals in connection with Peniel/Trinity. But I thought that it will be useful to begin by mentioning something which I touched on in my previous post, the use of the Bible as a way of demanding total slavish obedience by the congregation. John Langlois and his commission traced a moment when obedience to God was subtly changed to mean obedience to God’s representative, Michael Reid. I mentioned in the last blog post two or three of the texts that were commonly exploited in Michael Reid’s desire to dominate and control. Once the domination and control were in place then the abuse could begin. One feature of the church that was picked up by the commission was the use of constant humiliation as a tool of preaching. Basically Michael Reid would use the pulpit as a way of controlling anybody who appeared to question his decisions or insights. (My wife and I witnessed this personally in 1998) The humiliation that he dealt out was made in public and then reinforced in private. The power of his personality was such that few people could stand up to him. Having at some point accepted him as a man of God, the member of the congregation could not muster any argument which would offer some kind of defence to self-esteem and human dignity. These verbal attacks were so devastating that men, women and children were left shaking and terrified. Many wanted to leave but most found this extremely difficult because they knew that they would have to abandon families, friends and an entire social network. I want to finish with just one testimony about the effect of the verbal bullying that Michael Reid used with such powerful effect. We can be sure that this kind of behaviour is not unique to this single church in Britain. This blog is in the business of naming and shaming such disgraceful behaviour which takes place within not a few Christian churches.

455. I should have seen the things that were wrong but unfortunately the ‘fogging effect’ of constant elevation of Michael Reid and devaluation of my own value worked against independent thinking. Constant preoccupation with activities at church/school prevented me from having time to think. The relentless erosion of self respect through sarcastic, abusive preaching (withholding hope of the full assurance of the gospel) led to lack of trust in one’s own opinion. It also led to loss of hope in God’s love.

To read full report copy/paste below into your search engine

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e3578t7pt87jvci/Langlois%20report.pdf?dl=0

After a long wait the two reports on Trinity Church Brentwood have been released on the same day (November 1st). To remind my readers, the first report turns out to be a hard hitting 300 page document written by John Langlois and the two surviving members of his commission. This commission was officially disbanded by the church on 17 August and it is not hard to see why the church would have been fearful of its conclusions. The second less important report which Trinity church itself commissioned was written by two Pentecostal ministers, Phil Hills and David Shearman who have had links with the church over the past few months. They have been particularly in evidence since Peter Linnecar took extended leave from his leadership role.

It will be impossible to do more than give a brief account of what these reports say. My comments here on John’s report are based only on a synopsis of the full version and I await to receive this full report in due course. But to reduce the report to a single sentence we can say of John Langlois that he and his fellow commission members provide a brutal forensic description of what has taken place in Trinity/Peniel church over 30+ years. I hope that the full report will be published and made available to all those who have anything to do with the training of ministers in independent congregations. Of particular interest is the way that Langlois identifies a moment in the early history of Peniel when there was a shift in attitudes. First it expressed itself in church members feeling spiritually superior to those outside, and then this attitude of superiority infected the leaders so that they believed that they had the right to dictate to members exactly how they could obtain access to God and his salvation. In other words the criterion of membership became obedience to the leadership and not anything to do with an individual journey of faith. Once this pattern of control was established and accepted, the results in people’s personal lives were devastating. Members were forbidden to have contact with the outside world and when one party in a marriage wanted to leave, the spouse was forced to divorce the departing family member. To quote a single sentence which occurs in the report to describe the culture:’ an atmosphere of fear was pervasive, fear of the leaders spreading false rumours, fear of false accusations, fear of Inquisition, fear of ostracism, intimidation, crashing of spirits, lack of encouragement, a lack of openness, resulting in despair and feelings of inadequacy’. This description particularly applies to the period of the church when Michael Reid was in charge but the situation after 2008 when he was ousted had not improved significantly.

I will be writing much more about this report, particularly after I receive the full 300 page version. It is very much in the style that I was expecting from a lawyer who knows how to discern truth from propaganda and lies. Although he was never able to receive a response from Trinity leaders because of the way that his commission was dismissed in mid-August, the report uses a legal principle that the facts speak for themselves (res ipso loquitur). All the allegations about events in the church were backed up by third-party evidence and John and his commission are quite confident that what was reported is a fair recollection and statement of what really happened at the church. The comments about the leadership over the decades is completely devastating in its outspokenness. Of Michael Reid it is said: ‘it is hard to imagine the conduct of a Christian being more corrupt than the stories we have received. We are lost for words to describe his disgraceful conduct’. Of Carol Linnecar the report says: ‘there is no redemptive feature that can be used to describe Mrs Linnecar’. Even more devastating are his words about Peter L. the present leader (he announced his resignation on 1 November). The report states that: ‘we are unable to identify one redeemable feature of Peter Linnecar’s conduct’.

John Langlois’ report spends some time in analysing the changes or non-changes that took place in 2008 when Reid departed. The report concludes (in contrast to the second report) that apart from a few cosmetic changes that the old culture was allowed to continue, ‘the old habits of lying/criticising/cynicism etc continued’. There was also a complete lack of remorse among the leaders who took on the responsibility for leadership after Michael Reid about what had happened under his charge.

Moving from the important report by John Langlois’ commission, we come onto the official but highly compromised report of Phil Hills and David Shearman. They were able to hear evidence from 77 individuals and also examine documents that they requested. They in addition received representations from the current leadership. The first impression of looking at the report is to observe that it is rooted in an attempt to apply Scripture to the situation. Interestingly the report begins by examining the passages much used by Michael Reid in his successful attempts to control and terrify his congregation. Nigel’s blog had already mentioned the excessive use of an obscure passage from Romans 9.13.’ Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated’. This passage was apparently frequently used by Reid to humiliate and exclude any people of whom he disapproved. He was also fond of the verse from 1 John 2.19, ‘they went out from us because they did not really belong to us’. These and other passages were used to humiliate and control anybody who was felt to be a threat to Reid and his leadership. But in stark contrast with the first report makes out that things have much improved under Peter Linnecar’s leadership. Such criticisms as can be read of the current leadership are muted and indirect. Indeed the report speaks of ‘no sense of any superiority from the current leaders’. It is in this evaluation of the present leadership that the two reports most strongly diverge.

This second report speaks about the failure of good practice in the governance of the church but overall impression one is left with is that almost all the problems of the church and school belong firmly to the past and can be blamed on the unbiblical character traits of Michael Reid. The report speaks of aspects of a historic culture which continue to exist but for the most part every negative comment about the church and its teaching refer to episodes which took place before 2008. Speaking as an outsider, my comment would be that this is a dreadfully feeble analysis of a highly dysfunctional institution, even though its writers had potentially access to far more documentation and material. They also had the opportunity to speak to and question the leadership denied to the compilers of the first report. For me the only useful thing to come out of this report are the list of ‘abusing texts’ which that writers noted were used frequently by Michael Reid. No doubt other church bullies use them with equal effectiveness as a way of controlling congregations which have the temerity to question their authority or answer back. All of these texts were used with great effectiveness by Michael Reid in his overweening attempt to retain power through the tools of corruption and self-aggrandisement.

I will probably not be returning to this somewhat feeble official report, unless the Trinity Church tries to use it in a way that seeks to undermine the far more powerful testimony of the John Langlois report. The 300 pages of this latter report will need time for analysis and further reaction. Because this report is, I believe, a first of its kind in the history of church abuse, it is incumbent on me writing a blog on this topic to give it my closest attention. I hope that my readers will travel with me on this journey of exploration and analysis.

To read full Langlois report copy/paste below into your browser

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e3578t7pt87jvci/Langlois%20report.pdf?dl=0

I recently picked up in a charity shop the McGrath biography of Jim Packer, the eminent leader of conservative evangelicalism in this country and across the world. It is in many ways a remarkable story, particularly in the way that it relates the story of Packer’s determination to remain part of the Church of England when many others wanted to separate off to form a pure version of the faith. Although he had developed firm Calvinist beliefs through his education and study, he recognised the importance of being part of an institution which contained people who did not think like he did. He believed, at least at the beginning of his ministry, that the Anglican Church could be changed from within. Latterly, (he is now 89) he has found himself outside the Anglican Communion and part of a dissident Anglican group in Canada.

In many ways Jim Packer is an honourable theologian who, as the biography chronicles, has developed a theology for himself which resolved his own personal inner struggle to understand the meaning of God. I personally do not share his Calvinist solutions which he was able to articulate, particularly following his doctoral studies of the Anglican Puritan Divines of the 16th and 17th centuries. Packer himself began his theological formation during a period (the 1940s) in the Church of England when there were virtually no heavy-weight thinkers among the evangelical constituency. His theological position on such things as the meaning of the death of Christ, the infallibility of Scripture and the institution of the church drew, as we have indicated, extensively from his studies of writers of several centuries before, people like John Owen and Richard Baxter. Packer is able to put together in his writings a presentation of evangelical thought for his constituency, and this has had wide circulation, particularly in the absence of other suitable resources available for conservative evangelicals at that time. But there is one major problem in the way that this writer has been received and used by evangelicals in the Church of England and elsewhere. The problem is not with Jim Packer himself or his writings but in the way that the published work came to be used. Large number of people have come to identify with every word and argument, spoken or written, that has emerged from his mouth. I can remember hearing him speak at a Christian Union meeting in Oxford in 1964 and it was clear, even though I do not remember the content, that he was a powerful speaker. The influence of Packer was something more than that coming from a man proficient in rhetoric. As a college lecturer and later a theological college principal, Packer gathered to himself generations of students who wanted to become his disciples, or should we say, his clones. Such followers not only became dependent on him for their thinking and beliefs but they also expected everyone else in their circle to regard Packer’s version of Christian orthodoxy as the only valid one to follow.

In short, Jim Packer became a kind of guru for many people in the evangelical world of Britain in the 60s and 70s. By calling him a guru, we are not apportioning any blame on him. As far as he was concerned he was simply setting forth a version of evangelical Christian truth that he believed in and had the facility to articulate in a written and spoken form. The issue that I see is the way that the whole institution, here the conservative evangelical Christian world in Britain of the time, becomes hyper-dependent on one single individual. One person’s Christian orthodoxy, carved out of a particular personal journey of faith, suddenly becomes the standard for the faith of many. People in the evangelical world were proud to be the clones of the great Jim Packer. More sinisterly they looked down on others who were not, for whatever reason, inclined to follow this path.

I have in previous blog posts criticised the dynamic within a congregation that makes members subservient and obedient to their leaders. This dynamic effectively stops them growing in an individual and creative way. Deviation from the thinking and believing style of the leader is not tolerated. This we would describe as a form of cultic behaviour – intolerance towards difference. People are simply not allowed to grow or to change in a way that is not approved. The result is that a visitor to such churches or groups is met with a stereotyped language which describes the spiritual in identical ways. Some would claim that not only are these theology and praying styles identical, but also the displayed grins of the faces of members are somehow all very alike. Many people may feel safe in such an institution. They think they are being obedient to the injunction that Christians should think and feel like. Other Christians would find such an atmosphere utterly oppressive and they would not last very long in such a congregation.

The problem with the influence of an individual such as Jim Packer is, to repeat, not in his theology or his personality. I do not happen to agree with many, or even the majority, of the things he said but that is here not the point. What is the point is the way that the theological journey of one single individual should become dominating in the thinking and beliefs of so many others who do not share that pathway. Jim Packer single-handedly presented an influential defence of the words ‘inerrancy’ and ‘infallibility’ for Scripture as well as a restatement of many central Protestant doctrines. He was perfectly entitled to present these arguments and ideas as well as make the case for a conservative Calvinist position in these and other areas of theology. But having this particular way of doing theology disguises a profound weakness. The weakness is this particular presentation of Christian theology was conceived the mind of a single individual. While others, no doubt, read the manuscripts of his books prior to publication, there does not seem to have been any proper challenge or debate about these ideas. There was no process through which the central theses could be refined or qualified. In the absence of other theologians of Packer’s calibre among evangelicals of the time, his ideas were simply swallowed whole by the evangelical constituency and achieved a status of being words of near ultimate authority. If the evangelical world refused to challenge anything said by Packer, the non-evangelical world failed to engage with it at all. In the late 50s the ascendant liberal theological elite felt able to treat the theological goings on among evangelicals as not being worthy of attention. These ideas of the Puritan fathers were also not considered to be any more than of historical interest by the mainstream academic world. Liberal theological thinkers, then as now, would simply not engage with them directly. The liberal assumption is that theology, like any other branch of knowledge, has to engage with contemporary political and social forces. Lifting unmodified theological ideas direct from a period several hundred years before does not play much part in the process of producing a contemporary (liberal) dogmatic theology.

Jim Packer produced for his generation of evangelicals a tidy coherent set of teachings which had enormous influence. This was widely welcomed by the many who wanted a statement through which to express their evangelical faith. A failure to challenge these writings or enter into any kind of constructive dialogue with their limitations, has meant that the evangelical world has remained in some sense trapped and restrained by them. Other writers have arisen since Jim Packer, but the same uncritical expectation that a fashionable guru will define orthodoxy for the mass prevails. In other words the ordinary conservative Christian knows that he/she can depend on someone else to tell them what to believe. To stray from this defined orthodoxy is to be an apostate so few dare to question or criticise. That is a place of bondage. I myself and this blog continue to stand for the untidiness of theology as well the messiness of every individual journey towards truth and towards God. Scripture continues to be a major guide without needing words like ‘infallibility’ and inerrancy’ attached to it. In the last resort I hope to be judged not on whether I was a devoted follower of any particular Christian expositor of the faith like Jim Packer, but whether I used my intelligence, my spirituality and my devotion in discovering the will of God for my life as set out by Jesus.

It is not often that I get ideas for this blog from advertisements on the television, but today I saw one for Guinness which has set me off on a chain of thought. It was the first time that I had seen this particular advertisement and I probably missed some of the detail as I was not giving it my full attention. Somewhere in the advert was an implied contrast between the two words, power and strength. The advertisement appeared to imply that power was something that was often negative especially when it was often used against people. Strength on the other hand was a positive manifestation of power, which enables an individual human being to flourish. Strength is something in particular that one person can give to another.

In my reflections on power abuse in the church and elsewhere, I have often noticed that some individuals seem to want to gain power at the expense of others in many walks of life. Whether through persuasion, coercion or even the threat of violence, some people are able to take power in a way that weakens and depletes others. The action of gaining some power by doing someone else down is nearly always an act of abuse. The bully in the playground is trying to gain something for himself at the expense of others. He achieves for a short moment the exhilaration being in control, in charge. Someone else is dependent on his wish, his word for the next few moments. As long as the bullied person is under this control the bully feels the thrill of power. In the context of the church, the power to bully is normally accomplished in a far more subtle way. But the same ingredients are often present. There is the same dependency, the same thrill of control and the same looking up to the person in charge by the victim. A lust for power that we see in the bully is a constant temptation for people who may have lacked power in their childhood. Perhaps they have also never been the recipient of the respect of others which implied that they were people of merit and integrity. So such people, the bullies and the power abusers alike, have to force their authority on others to give back to them the semblance of a sense of importance and meaning.

In the Guinness advertisement the exploration of the word strength indicated that this was something that was being given by one person to another. It may be shared by a person who has power, but this sharing of strength in no way harms the person receiving it. The sharing of strength has nothing to do with boosting the flagging self-esteem of a bully. Rather the person of power is sharing something of themselves to enable the other person to feel good about themselves. The recipient is given strength in this process, strength to cope with any number of issues and problems that life may throw up. This is the act of, for example, a parent, a teacher or even a member of the clergy. Power other words is being used not to dominate or control but to empower another person.

When I reflect on a lifetime of pastoral care within the parishes where I have served, I remember particular incidents which have resulted in increased strength in another person because of what I believe to have been the right words at the right time. Alongside the word we have mentioned, empower, is another word which is found in Scripture, the word encourage. To give someone the courage to do things that they did not know they could do, is to give them a great gift. We see Jesus encouraging his disciples, gently showing them how they could do more than they expected. With that encouragement they set out to announce the kingdom of God. The gospel also record the disciples’ words on their return, their excitement at discovering what they could, with Jesus’ encouragement, do.

The typical cultic group or church is one where we can see that those in leadership have absolutely no interest in a genuine exercise of Christian power. To put it bluntly, these cultic leaders have put themselves in a place of authority so that they can extract as much as they can in the way of money and power for their own personal benefit. They appear to have neither love nor even concern for the people in their charge. The compensation they seek for going through the motions of preaching and performing other ministerial tasks is simply to exercise a position which will inflate them alongside the other material and financial benefits. If the care by a minister of his people is not present, then there will be a coldness and emptiness in that church. Those ministers and clergy who abuse their power also forego a relationship of community and mutual support which would sustain both parties. I have my own theories which might explain how money and emotional abuse is considered to be so much more important than any enriching experience of the warmth of community. Somewhere the abusing minister has become an addict to a need to have the power to be in total control. In this scenario the members of the congregation are pushed away and become just fodder in a complicated and ultimately futile and sterile power game.

Power and strength are two similar but very different words. The first is something that appears to promise a great deal, but having obtained it, the person of power often finds that it does little more than assuage a great craving which cannot be filled. It is like a drug which creates dependency but never satisfies. The ability and readiness to encourage others, to share one’s power in a ministry of encouragement is a task of enormous importance as well as creativity. Although this piece has been written from a retired clergyman’s perspective, this strengthening and encouraging is something to which we are all called to play a full part. ‘Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of love’. That perhaps is a key to biblical relationships and we can all aspire to following such a command.

In the news yesterday (October 21st) was an account of the conviction of six church leaders who have responsibilities for a church known as City Harvest Church located in Singapore. This court case has been going on for around five years and it is interesting to see the ramifications of this case in other parts of the world. It would appear that some £23 million went missing in what was apparently a vain effort to prop up the musical career of the wife of the leading pastor called Kong Hee. Various accounting frauds had taken place over a long period of time. In one detail I picked up, a church financial official claimed that she had been asked in 2008 to spend a huge sum of money on buying bonds but that no minutes had been taken of the meeting. On the face of it would appear to be a case of a church leader using the considerable funds of the church for his own purposes.

It is not unexpected to discover that the City Harvest Church is one that uses Health and Wealth teaching to promote its cause. This is a message which appeals to a young, typically single middle-class clientele who live in Singapore and who want to hear a version of Christianity that fits in with their particular lifestyle. Health and Wealth churches tell their members that it is okay to be rich and to spend your money in whatever way you please as long as you pay the church ten per cent of your income. With this mutually beneficial contract between members and church, it is not difficult to see how a church like this would have a spare £24 million to use on the promotion of Ms Sun Ho who was trying to make a musical career in America. With 30,000 members attending this church and all tithing, it would not take long to amass this sort of money.

The case reminds us of a similar one in Seoul in Korea. There the leader of the largest congregation in the world, David Yonggi Cho, was found guilty of gargantuan financial fraud. Incredibly Cho was not sent to prison or even removed from his post. He received a suspended sentence which has allowed him to continue serving his congregations which number in the hundreds of thousands. Clearly the congregation are very forgiving and are prepared to put up with almost anything in the way of financial dishonesty so that they can retain their pastor and his comforting message. This is one that allows them to enjoy wealthy lifestyles without having disturbed consciences.

In reading the details of the Singapore story we find, once again, examples of incredible loyalty to the leader who has been found guilty of a serious crime by a court of law. Members of the church queued to be in the court building to show support for those convicted or gathered outside for the same purpose. Kong Hee seems to have attracted the same uncritical devotion on the part of the members as David Cho in Seoul Korea. This uncritical devotion towards a Christian leader is an example of what I was talking about in my previous post when I was talking about loyalty. In this case the loyalty to the pastor is similar to that of a small child clinging on to a parent even though they have caused the child pain. The ability by the vast bulk of the membership to ‘forgive’ these massive financial scandals indicates, I believe, a dynamic of infantile dependency. Some churches seem to have no problem in inducing such devotion in their members.

At a time when we are waiting for the reports connected with Trinity Brentwood, it is probable that we will not see any detailed financial exploration of the church’s past. But the same dynamic of infantile dependency seems to have infected Trinity Church as it has in Singapore and Seoul. This uncritical devotion towards leaders has created an environment where leaders are able to commit fraud and exploit the naive trust of the membership. I wrote a piece for this blog on the subject of tithing and I pointed out that all the biblical references to tithing were talking about a kind of tax which would enable not only the worshipping life of the nation to take place, but also the educational and legal systems as well. The idea that members of churches should be required to hand over 10% of their income to the leadership who can spend it in any way they wish is not what the Bible suggests. The large sums of money paid over to the leadership of Trinity Church made possible a lifestyle for the leaders which was unimaginable for most of the members. The same leaders have also amassed considerable capital assets. As Ron Hubbard was supposed to have said in the 1950s, ‘if you want to get rich found a religion’. The financial irregularities of Trinity may never become public knowledge. What will continue is the ongoing poverty of those who gave their all because leaders convinced them that this was the Christian thing to do.

Of the three main motivations to abuse power, financial reward is possibly the most important. The other two are the power to gratify sociopathic or narcissistic needs and the power to abuse sexually. The news stories coming from Singapore all centre on financial misconduct in a church context. Simultaneously they reveal an enormous reluctance on the part of victims to believe that they have been cheated and conned by those in authority. This naivete often seems to be part of the personality of those who join these massively ‘successful’ megachurches. Of course it is exciting to be part of a huge gathering of apparently enthusiastic Christians, but the price to be paid is very often far too high. Somewhere along the line the member is often taken advantage of emotionally, financially and sometimes even sexually. The large gathering, as I said in my previous blog, may be a setting for grooming the individual, making them ripe for abuse. Along the way they regress and become dependent like small children; like small children they are vulnerable to those who want to exploit them in some way. Sadly the church is a place where such exploitation can and does take place.

A few blogs ago, I spoke about the hold that some Christian leaders have over their followers by appealing to their loyalty. The loyalty thus obtained was subsequently sometimes exploited in various ways, perhaps financially or sexually. I have been thinking what this word ‘loyalty’ involves and how it has different manifestations at the various stages of our lives. One of the first lessons that child is taught is to stick up for his or her family. If people on the outside criticise the family then the child will instinctively defend the honour of their close relatives in whatever way they can. Loyalty is then demanded of the young person in respect of the school, the team or, in some cases, the street gang. There is at one level an almost instinctive component to this tendency to show tribal loyalty. When we support our tribe, our community or our family, we feel at the same time a strong sense of belonging to that group. This sense of belonging is of course very important for our social functioning. As I said in my Stockholm paper on ostracism, belonging is a part of psychological and emotional health. The alternatives to belonging, i.e. isolation and loneliness, are extremely damaging and we can see how people will do almost anything to avoid the desolation of being alone.

Loyalty to the family, a group or a church is for the most part a positive emotion because it connects us to other people. The problem of course is that sometimes this connection binds us to the group in a way that can frustrate our ability to act, feel and develop as an individual. The person who is unable ever to stand outside the group and see it objectively, is likely to be sucked into its values even when these are antisocial or even destructive. The police seem to have some difficulty in gaining the trust of people in certain areas of our cities. The individual living there may not have had any bad experience of the police himself, but he/she is bound by a kind of area tribal loyalty to mistrust the forces of law and order. He will thus not cooperate with them any more than he has to. Still more obvious for understanding malign loyalty is to observe the behaviour of a gang member. His actions will always reflect the value of the gang and in particular that of the leaders. The members of the gang have been socialised to behave only in a way which conforms to the group values and assumptions. We can say that the gang member has had his identity defined by the gang. He has become virtually incapable, not only of acting as an individual but also possibly of feeling like a distinct person.

For many people, to be part of a close-knit group like a family where the decisions of life do not have to be made, is a place that is utterly desirable. They can, as it were, re-enter childhood where other people made all the big decisions and all one had to do was to do what one was told. There are many churches that behave like this towards their followers. They give them plenty of reassurance and security but allow them emotionally to live like children within an extended family. This is a place of warmth and uncomplicated existence. Loyalty to the leaders and to the values of the institution secure a place in this warm protective environment.

My reader will of course expect me to point out the shadow side of this kind of loyal behaviour. When it is practised within the environment of a smothering church set up, it will be an environment which prevents the individual from maturing and indeed growing up to take on adult responsibilities. There has to be always a balance between a secure belonging and a readiness to accept the responsibility of thinking, deciding and acting for oneself as a mature person. Not many churches get this balance right. Some, as I have already implied, provide too much in the way of comfortable belonging with an inability to challenge their members to behave like adults, Christian adults. In other churches people are deprived of any sense of proper belonging and they are left isolated in their small corner of the building and nobody bothers to find out much about them and their particular Christian journey. The ideal church would be one where people are allowed to belong, not as children, but as adults who are prepared to stand up and move along the path which God appears to be showing them as an individual. In other words the ideal church should be a place where each member can find his or her ‘vocation and ministry’, as the collect puts it. We tend to use the word vocation as referring to the particular role played by clergy and other ministers. But of course if the clergy were treating the members of their churches as full adults, then this word vocation would be applied to every single member. Such a church would be an untidy place and it certainly would not be easy for hundred or more people to discover what would be their vocation within the limitations of congregational life. But this is where of course churches should be able to encourage their members to become active in outside society in a whole variety of ways. The church should be a kind of filling station from which people go out and work in all kinds of places which need Christian vision, a passion for healing and reconciliation and service of every kind. All too often the offered ‘jobs’ to church members by their leaders is to play a part on the tea rota or possibly to lead intercessions at a service. Offering people only one of a number of fairly limited and menial tasks does have an advantage for the leader. It allows him to remain unchallenged in his power, having appropriated for himself all the main responsibilities for leadership and care. In this way no one is allowed to challenge his position.

A demand for loyalty in a church appeals to an instinct which was fostered in our early membership of families and groups of all kinds. The other imperative, namely to pursue our own distinct earthly pilgrimage under God, may well conflict with a demand to be loyal to the institution and its leadership. Every church should be a place where this tension can be identified and explored. The church needs to become a school of maturity and individual creativity and also expert in the task of enabling people to live life to the full. Anything less is short-changing Christian disciples. If Jesus called his followers to this life in all its fullness, how can the church today call its members to anything less? Encouraging maturity and individual progress in the Christian life, the pilgrimage journey, may be untidy and indeed hard work for Christian leaders. But to look for anything less leaves the Christian follower with something incomplete and half done.

In using a provocative title for this blog reflection, I am trying to make two claims. In the first place I am challenging the commonly made assumption that the Bible, and the Bible alone, is the source of all Christian morality. The second assumption that needs to be questioned is that the people of the Bible always thought like ourselves over moral questions. Thus we can look to our biblical heroes to give us guidance about how we should live today.

In 1861, a preacher called Joseph Wilson preached a memorable sermon in the state of Georgia, USA. It made such an impression on his local congregation that it has come down to us as a newspaper report. The topic of the sermon was a biblical defence of slavery and it explored the right relationship between slave and master. The Bible gave him extensive support for all that he had to say. Both Old and New Testaments assume the institution of slavery; even sexual slavery is tolerated in the stories of conquest by the people of Israel. A similar sermon to Wilson’s could also, if required, be preached on the legitimacy of polygamy. In an obscure passage in 2 Samuel (3.2-5) we read of the children of King David, listed according to which wife gave them birth. Whatever David’s God thought about his stealing of Bathsheba from her husband, it is clear that no prophet was sent to challenge his behaviour in respect of his taking more than one wife. The institution of polygamy, long outlawed by modern Western societies, was clearly never a moral issue for the Patriarchs and those who came after them.

One particular moral issue that greatly concerns many Christians today, abortion, is barely discussed in the pages of Scripture. The traditional teaching of the medieval Church was that a child received a soul at the moment of quickening. The Bible itself does not make such a distinction and also it does not teach that the foetus receives a soul at the moment of conception. Modern conservative Christians are prone to pick and choose which moral injunctions from Scripture they choose to obey. Few people are prepared to give away all their earthly possessions to the poor or to give their second coat to someone who has none. We have, by and large, chosen to ignore the injunctions about women covering their heads in church and few people agree with Paul that celibacy is superior to marriage. It is still more striking how many Christians spend a lot of time condemning behaviour like swearing, promiscuity or drinking while ignoring the virtues of generosity, compassion, meekness and mercy. According to Jesus in Matthew 25 the ones condemned to eternal punishment of those who have failed to give water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, comfort for the sick and care for those in prison. It is striking that few Christians become indignant when they see others failing in these fundamental moral commands.

It is clear from these introductory comments that modern biblical Christians do not and cannot derive all their moral priorities from the clear teachings of Scripture. We do not have a set of guidelines telling human beings how to live in every situation. It is only by making choices to accept certain parts of Scripture, while ignoring other parts, that any kind of moral system can be created. Taken as a whole the Bible, to put it bluntly, is a morally ambiguous document. Listening to Christians speaking about the moral teaching of the Bible, you would think that without it, we and the rest of the world would fall into complete moral anarchy. This does not seem to be the case in most societies across the world. Every society appears to develop guidelines for behaviour. These guidelines can be seen to evolve as a way of sustaining these societies with minimal violence and conflict. Morality is not just a God-given set of rules, but it also seems to be rooted in a desire among most human beings to live together in harmony and cooperation so that the good of the whole may be preserved.

The process of choosing one set of rules from a sacred text in preference to another is potentially fraught with danger. People of zeal have a tendency to make absolute certain texts or passages which fit in with their own inner political or social agendas. We call this absolutism fundamentalist. We see it work among the Daesh fighters of Syria and Iraq. They have chosen to interpret the texts of the Koran through the perspective of Jihad or holy war. In short they have effectually manipulated the text to suit their bloodthirsty purposes of violence and revenge. Because their ideas are so extreme, it is impossible for anyone enter into dialogue with them. Justifying a course of action by appealing to sacred authority has effectively shut down the normal moral reasoning possessed by the majority of humanity. In a similar way Christians will sometimes loudly proclaim that they know beyond any discussion the will of God as set out in his ‘laws’. Within my own Anglican church we are now witnessing the consequence of this scenario of non-discussion in the face of certain binding texts that are reputedly handed down by God. The African primates and their supporters in Australia, America and Britain will not enter into discussion on the gay marriage issue because a few ambiguous texts which refer to it have become for them equal to the texts of the creed.

What is the solution to this dilemma? The first thing to be recognised by Christians in the moderate centre is the fact that morality is not just based on the supposed words of Scripture. It is rooted in a variety of places. Of course the teaching of the Bible and the insights of Jesus into the nature of God are key components in the construction of a Christian morality. But Scripture is only one source of a moral code for Christians today. Traditional Anglicans, such as myself, regard all truth as having three sources. These are Scripture, tradition and reason. Sometimes a fourth, experience, is added. In the case of morality, reason forms a large component. It is reason that can untangle the cultural and contradictory aspects of the biblical witness to morality. It can also suggest which parts of the Old Testament story have absolutely no relevance on the way we should think today about moral issues. Tradition, as I suggested in my previous blog, will demonstrate how morality as well as theological thinking generally, evolves and changes over time. In short the Anglican tradition, when presented at its best, will be able to indicate, not a blueprint which is applicable in all places and in all times, but a way of approaching moral issues which is compassionate, realistic and able to embrace the sheer complexity of moral reasoning. Morality is not solved by shouting slogans and quoting texts but through a slow methodical study of both texts and seeking to apply them in the light of the knowledge and understanding that is available to us today. That is hard work and will not produce the quick answers that many people crave. Applying the method of studying problems through the lens of Scripture, tradition and reason will always be hard to do. But it will be worth it just the same.