Regular readers of this blog will know that I keep a close eye on the events at Trinity Church Brentwood. The recent news from this church seem to indicate that at last the log jam is clearing. The terms and background of the Commission of Enquiry have been published and promises of dates, publication of the findings etc have been circulated. I have to say that in spite of a few phrases which, on their own, might be read as a pre-emptive attempt to anticipate findings generous to the present leadership, there are also phrases that suggest a steely determination to get to the bottom of all that was horrendously wrong in the past and see how the corruption contaminates and haunts the present. One can see in the document possible evidence of the way that the ‘doves’ and ‘hawks’ have sought to get their perspective into the text. I may be completely imagining this, but I suggest that a lot has been going on behind the scenes. Needless to say, the report, when it appears in the Autumn, will be of prime importance to the understanding of the way that cultic churches operate. Existing reports on dysfunctional churches have tended to focus on areas that constitute illegal and even criminal actions. I am thinking, for example, of a Charity Commission report which investigated a large Black-led church in London. The report said nothing about the life of the church, but focussed entirely on bad book-keeping and failures of financial management. In this particular report, it was revealed that millions of pounds were siphoned off by crooks who were supposed to be investing the money for the benefit of the church.

In looking at the terms of the Commission I detect a readiness to face the past failures, even if these are not in fact criminal. The Commission has said that it will not, in fact, be addressing issues of a criminal nature, nor those which might potentially involve the claiming of damages. Since many past members were financially exploited, this may seem, on the face of it, a set-back for the cause of justice. The misappropriation of funds, particularly the holding of special collections to buy property which was then put in the name of the leaders, is one area of particular concern to ex-members. However, in contrast to this area of church life, there seems to be some important concessions to the to the issues aired by the other blog. A commission that is prepared to look at issues of culture and theology in a church that led to abuse, is, as far as I know, a first in the history of report writing. This will make my detailed interest in this process understandable.

The first statement by the Church leadership concerning the Commission, is to say that, under Michael Reid, things were taught as biblical which were not. These same false teachings infected the church like yeast infecting dough. This unbiblical teaching caused ‘hurt and grief’. This image of yeast is a powerful one and shows that the Commission does not seem afraid of some strident theological deconstruction of the teachings of MR. This may, we hope, offer some trenchant critique of the theology which undergirded the cultic techniques used by Reid. The fact that he enriched himself in the process has to be acknowledged and it is difficult to see how the financial aspects of MR’s ministry will not be, in part, addressed by the Commission. The money spent by MR on himself and vanity projects which took him all over the world business class, may have vanished, but the theology that sustained this opulent life-style may yet be revealed.

The second statement about the Commission that I have picked up is the following: ‘We hold out a hand of fellowship to all those who have been hurt and assure them ….be reconciled to them in every way and move forward with them and with the whole church as brothers and sisters in Christ, whether they still attend Trinity or not.’ This statement that the church is going to regard its ex-members as possessing the status of ‘brothers and sisters’ is a massive subversion of the cultic structure of the church. Many churches play the projection game on their ex-members as a way of keeping the faithful close to the leadership. In other words, if the leadership can persuade its members that the former members are apostates and renegades, then the sense of solidarity is greatly strengthened. The Commission is setting out firmly that this cultic trick is no longer to be tolerated. The ex-members are brothers and sisters in Christ. Nigel is not to be regarded as the enemy at the gates, but someone to be offered the hand of fellowship.

The dynamic of Trinity will need to change to accommodate this new way of thinking and for many it will be extremely difficult. It is so much easier to believe you are a member of a persecuted misunderstood group than to acknowledge, as seems inevitable, that Michael Reid ran a church which exploited and cheated you. It is even more difficult to recognise that the individual at the gate, in the person of Nigel Davies who ‘prophesised’ week by week, was actually speaking the word of God more accurately than was being said inside the walls of the church. No, either of these two new ‘truths’ will be deeply subversive to the existing membership of the church and it is very hard to see how it will continue in its present form.

One detail who gives me great hope for the Commission is that ‘Gail’, the American Bible Student, whose allegation of rape began this whole process has great faith in the integrity and thoroughness of John Langlois, the chairman of the Commission. I have no hesitation in agreeing with her assessment, having read one of his earlier reports. I have already suggested in a previous blog that the Evangelical Alliance has had its own reputation challenged by its past support of Trinity in the face of challenges and complaints. It would help the EA if the entire structure of Trinity collapsed before being reformed, so that a reputation for toughness and impartiality could be claimed. In the meantime watch this space. You can be sure that the report when it finally appears in the Autumn will be scrutinised extensively by this blog. It may be one of the most important documents on the subject of ‘abusive churches’ ever to have been published.

In a recent blog post, I looked at the issue of women who find themselves part of families where the dominant Christian teaching around them requires that they, in faith, bear large numbers of children. Some of these women might claim that they are willing participants in this extraordinary experience of family. Others might claim that they had no choice in the matter but that it was forced on them by husbands and church. Clearly there has to be a point along a continuum where free choice gives way to a submission to external pressure. Where exactly that point is will probably be unknown even to the woman concerned. But it is important that the question is asked. It is right also at least to acknowledge that pressure from others could well be a factor for decisions that we make about our actions as well as our beliefs. It would be worrying if the truth were always so ‘clear’ that at no point had doubts or queries been raised in us along the way. Decisions that are made without the experience of looking at all sides of the question would seem to be decisions that are shallow and probably reflect what is known legally as ‘undue influence’ by others.

One of the models I find helpful for my understanding of extreme conservative (toxic) Christianity, is to suggest that it is a perpetuation of the experience of the child who looks up to a parent to discover what are the answers to life’s issues. This may sound like a provocative statement but I cannot find any other way of accounting for the extraordinary way that some people believe that a problem can only be solved by consulting a text or an authoritative person The belief is that this text or other authority can be appealed to without any discussion, argument or appeal. To take the opposite point of view, I would claim that debate, discussion and the development of opinions about the world’s issues are all part of the world of true adult functioning. This is why we have disagreements in society and politics. The world would be infinitely poorer if everyone agreed with everyone else. Sometimes political systems have arisen, as in Nazi Germany and North Korea, where political and social uniformity is compulsory. Everyone is effectively ordered to think in a particular approved way and the penalties of failing to conform are severe. To judge by the readiness of the vast bulk of citizens in totalitarian regimes to think and act in a ‘correct’ way, it is obvious that fascism or dictatorship is able to tap into a universal psychological trait common to us all. My simple explanation is that the dictator or leader presents himself (normally a him) as a benevolent father who knows what is best for his children. Because a take-over by the extreme regime is normally preceded by a time of chaos and confusion, which has caused widespread fear and anxiety, the population are grateful for a ‘daddy’ appearing to sort everything out. I can remember, while growing up, the longing for a parent to come home and put something right in a way that only a grown-up person can do. Dictators are good at reactivating in people these kinds of longings.

The main feature of being an adult is the readiness and ability to make choices and decisions for oneself. We cannot and should not depend on another person to do this for us. The ability to make these choices involves our being ready to live with the consequences of such choices, sometimes for a long time. If we are to make such choices, then it is necessarily to look carefully both sides of the decision, looked at the pros and cons. The important decisions of life, like where we live, our choice of partner, are extremely critical for our happiness and well-being. We are not normally prepared to hand these over to another person or group, nor should we. The only time of life when it is appropriate to hand over decision making to another is when we are children. Hopefully all good parents allow their children to make increasingly complex choices as they get older as this is a rehearsal for the serious business of being grown up.

One question that has to be raised about our individual church experience is whether its culture allows the members to function as adults or children. Obviously there is going to be a continuum. At one end there will be a clustering of churches where the practice of infantilising all the members is the norm. In these churches the message of what to think, how to behave and what books to read will be stated authoritatively. Other churches will oscillate between treating their members as adults some of the time, while making them obey the instructions of the leaders in a parent-child model at other times. Yet other churches may succeed in treating their members as adults all of the time. These churches will probably not be the most popular, or even successful The task of making adult decisions all the time will deliver, not clarity and certainty, which people often crave, but ambiguity and lack of precision. Clearly being adult requires a tolerance for untidiness and uncertainty. Few of us who think for ourselves in religious matters have a tidy belief system.

To summarise this post it has to be said that being adult involves genuine choices. The task of making genuine decisions is hard, uncertain and possibly we can be simply wrong in these decisions. But even the possibility of being wrong or mistaken should not put us off the struggle to make such choices. The alternative, to have someone else making them for us, is dire. And yet this common pattern, whereby church members are allowed to opt out of decision making in important areas of life, seems to be a relatively common pattern across the world. The title of this post ‘choice or coercion’ sets out what seems to be happening in the places where people fear to take grown-up decisions. They often lapse into the kind of group or infantile thinking that is a feature of totalitarian regimes of both past and present. To have something think and decide for you is a form of coercion, even if it may be experienced as benevolent care. A father helping a child make decisions for life is one thing, but for a fully adult person to be told exactly what to believe and what the Bible says, is another. In too many churches we find an endemic coercion caused by leaders telling people what to think and believe. They are locked into immaturity and dependence. Such immaturity is hardly a feature of the kind of life that Jesus wanted us to have, life in all its abundance.

On the blog connected with historic abuses at Trinity Church, Brentwood, a discussion has arisen about the role of the Evangelical Alliance in the UK. This body has a membership structure and is open to any group or church who can sign up to a simple evangelical statement of belief. Beyond signing this statement, nothing further is required of those who would wish to be members. There is no signing up to a code of conduct, allowing visits from the outside, or agreeing to any kind of supervision. It is a bit like a dodgy trade organisation which sounds great on paper but makes no attempt to regulate or discipline its members even when they stray badly. The only exception is made for a church group that enters the perdition of announcing support for gay relationships!

The Anglican Church which is my particular branch of the church, cannot always be proud of its record of ensuring the safety of people in its congregations. Officially it practises oversight and supervision but in normal situations this can mean very little if the Vicar keeps the powers that be at arm’s length. This is partly because of a system known as ‘freehold’ which makes a Vicar very hard to discipline or remove. This has now been replaced by a system called Common Tenure. In theory this allows for more flexibility, including the possibility of moving a Vicar on. Employment law in the UK means that a clergyman still holds a great deal of power in standing up to those set over him. Nevertheless diocese and bishops do exercise their power in indirect ways. A recent good example of this is in the fact that child protection measures have to be in place in every parish and it is compulsory for every officer, including us retired clergy, to attend a child protection event. We are also facing the same procedures over the care of ‘vulnerable adults’. While I disagree as to who are the vulnerable adults, the efforts are important and worthwhile in the fight against these particular areas of potential abuse in the churches.

The churches that submit to this degree of supervision, do have the result of providing a measure of protection for some of their members. It is in looking at the independent churches that real problems can be seen. Both in the States and in Britain the pursuit of religion and the conduct of worship is normally assumed to contribute to the public good and they thus receive tax exemptions which are worth a great deal of money to the organisations concerned. Independence from one point of view implies freedom while from another angle it can suggest a total lack of accountability. Because I write looking at these churches from the outside, I see the lack of responsible supervision or oversight that can be the bane of these communities. A leader, bolstered up with a number of Biblical texts, that imply that he is the ‘Lord’s Anointed’, will often resist any attempt by Trustees to hold him to account for misdeeds, whether financial, sexual or to do with bullying. Having, over a period of years, appointed Trustees that are compliant to his wishes, the Pastor will have no problem in controlling the whole church, its finances and life, without any dissenting voices. In the case of Trinity Brentwood, the situation is that the Trustees are mostly related to the Pastor by marriage or blood, and it is improbable that any would wish to challenge their own relative. One suspects that there are other favours given and received but that has to remain speculation.

When a church abuses its members, as Trinity is alleged to have done over many decades, then it ought to be possible for an outside body to offer to inspect it and write a report for the scrutiny of the public. Although churches do not take public money, their situation of tax exemption should make it possible for them to accept a degree of public scrutiny on the part of wider society. This task at present could be done by the Charity Commission but they seemed powerless in a recent case with a Brethren group after a heavy campaign of letter writing to MPs. Numerous letters have been written to the CC over Trinity Brentwood but once again these letters have apparently fallen on deaf ears. The Evangelical Alliance has also received a torrent of letters but, as we said at the beginning, the organisation seems only interested in the fact that a group affirms a statement of approved belief. Nothing else, whether misbehaviour or scandal, seems to impress them.

What is the solution? The solution might that any church who wished to have an independent constitution would opt into a Christian organisation which had the right to inspect these churches at any time. It would be a kind of Church Quality Care Commission. Its concern would be far more to look at the practical aspects of church life rather than the theological. It would not be willing to lay down the law as to the quality of sermons and teaching, but it would be concerned, for example, to see that the staff working there had proper terms of employment. It would employ people who were sensitive to the dynamics of organisational life, so that it was alert to the possibility of bullying within the structures. Every time an inspection was made, there would be an opportunity for individuals within the church to approach the inspectors with their observations about the dynamics and life of the church. Over a period, this Church Quality Care Commission would develop the expertise to set out a code of conduct that all independent churches would be invited to sign. In effect such a church would be opting in to accord the highest standards of care and respect for its congregation. Such churches would be given a Church Safety Award. In short such churches, while still independent, would be given the CQCC gold star. Without this award, or with the award of ‘could do better’, the other churches so designated would be affected by the public gradually shifting their allegiance to places that had a proven safety record.

At the moment, notions of a Church Quality Care Commission are a long way off. But sometimes ideas have to thought before they can become a reality. Almost all the problems, which this blog is concerned about, would vanish overnight if such a body were to exist. Its authority would only ever be a moral authority. Legal sanctions are unlikely ever to work. But it is just possible to imagine that many churches which at present have no external supervisory structure might submit themselves to an independent body of this kind. As long as such a body did not interfere with the theological insights that were claimed as precious to the group, it might be able to claim some moral authority over the other areas of life, the dynamics of the relationships where abuse is able to happen. Let us hope that such an idea may one day take root. At least a start has been made by thinking this thought, the first stage on its way to becoming a reality.

As readers will know I am often exploring the Internet to discover new aspects of Christian behaviour which may become abusive to those who come under their influence. The Quiverful Movement is such a movement while, on the face of it, it teaches something apparently wholesome. It commends to families a practice of family life which welcomes the ‘blessing’ of numerous children in accordance with Psalm 127. This psalm states that a man is happy when he has a quiver full of children. It goes on to say ‘such men shall not be put to shame’. The movement, which takes its name from this verse, believes that a Christian family, by welcoming the ‘blessing’ of as many children as the Lord provides, can trust in him to meet their material needs. I am grateful for the information put out by Vyckie Garrison on her web-site and her blog about this distinct movement within conservative Christian circles in the States.

While I would not want to suggest that large families are necessarily a burden to those who have them, a setting which puts pressure on a woman to go through child-birth year after year, for theological reasons, is likely to be an abusive one. Living in a family with eight, twelve or more children will bring the mother of the family to a place of exhaustion. In the conservative evangelical setting of the Quiverful movement, the father of the family is likely to leave most of the work to the mother while adopting a controlling, even abusive, patriarchal role within the family structure. This unequal division of labour is, as we have seen, in accordance with ‘Biblical principles’. The exhausting round of cooking, feeding and caring will leave the mother with effectively no time to have any social life or interests beyond the family. Vyckie Garrison suggests that the women who submit to what is effectively an abusive style of life, are often those who have known only chaotic patterns of living in their birth families. By entering into a ‘quiverful’ marriage, they may well believe they are entering an environment of encompassing love that they lacked for themselves as children. What is not clear to them, in their state of vulnerability, is that they are also being sucked into an abusive controlling environment which will suck them dry. The demands of a controlling husband and the needs of numerous offspring threaten to overwhelm such a mother. It is a kind of martyrdom, a self-sacrifice to an ideology that insists that it is indeed Christian to have total disregard for one’s own interests and comfort.

The reader might wonder as to who benefits from these large families. Even though the father, in his divinely ordered patriarchal role of authority, does probably far less than might be expected in normal families to care for his large brood, the struggle to provide financially will probably hang heavy on him. However much the church, to which the family belongs, proclaims that father and mother are fulfilling God’s word in Scripture, the costs, financial and emotional, are heavy, particularly when there is not sufficient money. But one group does benefit. This is the industry that sells the products promoting the idea of ‘Biblical Family Values.’

Vyckie’s article, on which this post is based, spells out the extent of this industry. Publishers are pouring out books on the importance of bringing children up in a Christian fashion against the background of a world that many believe has reached the ‘end-times’. This also creates a huge market for home-schooling materials. Typically children of ‘quiverful’ families will be taught at home by the mother, using the material from Christian publishers. The home-schooling material consists, as we have seen, of workbooks which present the world in a very binary fashion. History and politics are presented with strongly right-wing views while science is also contaminated by creationist and anti-evolutionary ideas. The children of these families will grow up socially and ideologically isolated. It is hard to see how they can ever adjust to a society where opinions and attitudes are varied. Can they ever get used to the idea that it is possible to get on with another person who does not share their biblically-formed version of truth?

Vyckie writes as a survivor of this particular strand of fundamentalist culture. Having been burdened in three ways, – by a fundamentalist patriarchal culture which sees the mother as the main nurturer of the children, an abusive husband and the practical demands of a large household, it was hard to escape. Somehow Vyckie did escape and was able to write a book about the experience and maintain a blog on this issue. While applauding her liberation, we can see that the vast majority of ‘quivering’ women will never escape. Vyckie makes the point that the women who do not escape, but continue until death within this patriarchal biblical straightjacket, are nevertheless examples of enormous strength and single-mindedness. They have nevertheless had to expend all this strength just to be able to physically survive and enable their children to grow up. They have been pushed beyond all reasonable limits – in short they have been abused by a system thought up by men. To quote Vickie’s article, ‘women are knocking themselves down trying to maintain a lifestyle which was manufactured by greedy, controlling men who don’t actually care about the well-being their wives and children at all’. In a later sentence which is worded yet more colourfully she says, ‘The rigidity and restrictiveness in maintaining strict gender role-based relationship will result in narcissistic assholes for husbands and manipulative martyrs for wives’.

The victims of this particular abusive culture are once again individuals who have learnt to think that God wants them to be devoid of self-esteem, pride in themselves and a sense of their unique value. Fortunately this particular abusive system of thought does not appear to have reached the shores of the UK. But, as we have seen, misogyny within UK conservative Christianity is alive and well. We must all remain vigilant that these particular mysogynistic ideas do not take root in this country to add to the sum total of pain and suffering endured by women whose only wish is to serve God. Tragically they are made to pay a high price for that loyalty and devotion.

In the hospital last week, while doing ‘cover’ for the full-time chaplain, I met a man in his 40s who was one of the patients. It was not a particularly religious conversation but it was significant in that he opened up about issues that were on his mind. He told me about his daughter of 21 who had, in the past twelve months, dropped out of studying because of bullying by a member of the college staff. The case was complicated because the staff member was himself off work for ‘stress’ and so nothing could be resolved through tribunals or enquiries. The daughter was having to carry this unresolved episode around with her. She had done a number of temporary jobs but re-entering college was still on hold. On the surface she was claiming that the incident was not affecting her, but it seemed clear that there was still things to be worked through. I suggested that a counsellor might be able to help her see the extent she was perhaps suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress from the incident. In short, a proper owning up to what she was really feeling (and suffering) might assist the moving on process.

I mention this incident because it reminded me of the way that bullying is everywhere. Few people escape it at some point in the lives. Although, in this blog, we are focussing on the abuse that happens in the context of the church and religious organisations, we must not forget that almost every firm or organisation suffers from bullying somewhere. I decided to look at some of the literature about bullying to try and understand it better in whatever context it takes place. Two facets of bullying need to be thought about. One is the part of the bully – why they do it. The second part is what happens to the victim as the result of this psychological, physical or cultural violence.

Let us first address the first part of the equation. One thing to be noted about the bully, is that they do not normally fit the caricature of bullies that we carry in our heads. They are not necessarily brutish or crudely threatening, the picture that we carry forward from playground experiences. The sheer variety of abuses of power that we can describe as bullying is endless. It can occur using obvious coercive methods or it can be manifested quietly and barely noticed by the outsider. Another word which is almost a synonym for bullying is ‘manipulation’. Manipulation also occurs through both violence and flattery. In both words power is being used and abused so that one person can achieve ignoble ends, such as emotional or financial gain.

The great Burmese female politician, Aung San Suu Kyi, said some words which get to the heart of bullying and why individuals practise it. Her words were uttered in the context of the long political struggle with military dictatorship (or bullying) in Burma but they still illuminate our quest to understand. She said: ‘It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it’. It is a commonplace to say that bullying is practised by individuals who feel inadequate or isolated in themselves. A psychologist, Melanie Klein, spoke about the inner rage that the bully feels over their own inadequacy. They thus seek to relieve this feeling by projecting their weakness on to someone else. That ‘bad object’ that really belongs to them can then be harassed in the other person rather than in themselves. The more that other person is humiliated, the more relief the bully feels by not having to face up to their own emptiness and low esteem. A summary way of putting all this is to say that the bully is the little person, tormented by low self-esteem, fear or inadequacy, who has to bluster and manipulate others in order to relieve the inner emptiness.

Other psychological insights come from those who describe narcissistic behaviour. To summarise these ideas, it can said that bullies are self-obsessed, self-important individuals who have a powerful inner motivation to create a world around them that serves their emotional needs. They will bully and cajole others to serve these needs and they are often good at doing this. The malign charismatic personalities have, as we have described in another blog post, a particular gift in this distinctive type of manipulation. Further remarks could be made about the way that bullying and sadism are connected, but space does not permit.

Moving from an account of the profile of bullies to the description of those who receive such treatment, we can see that the targets of this treatment can suffer profoundly. Outwardly the victims may have to take drastic action to escape a bully, like move house or change jobs. Others collapse inwardly and may commit suicide. The reason that the bullying is so powerful is that the vulnerability of the bullied individual has been exposed and their self-esteem has been undermined. In the process they have felt themselves marginalised and of no possible value to anyone. Few people are so strong that their sense of who they are cannot be attacked and undermined by a determined bully. Within an organisation an individual cannot just walk away without severe consequences. As long there are bullies in any organisation for the reasons we outlined above, there are always going to be power games which are going to be won by the person who is further up the hierarchy. A common consequence is the one that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, the experience of severe stress. Whether it results in the acute form, this stress can interrupt the normal processes of life. Damaged self-esteem takes a lot of rebuilding.

I am conscious of there being many more things I would like to say on this topic, but I always fear my reader will lose patience if I write too much. I will just end with a reflection from St Matthew’s gospel. In chapter 25, Jesus speaks of the people that his followers are to serve as a sign of being his disciples. They are to serve the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the ill and those in prison. In doing this they are serving him. ‘Anything you did not do for one of these, however humble, you did not do for me.’ What greater proclamation that followers of Christ are never to be complicit in any culture of bullying but rather be among those who always seek to build up the weak? The church should be a place where bullying cannot happen. May we all work to play our part in ‘naming and shaming’ it wherever it occurs.

In a blog that looks to understand the nature and extent of abuse among Christians, it is not always easy to find happy endings. Many of the stories that I have encountered do not have such endings. People remain in the middle of their pain, without obvious solutions or justice. One would love to be able to say that every account had a long-lasting solution. When Jesus said ‘you now have sorrow…. I will come to you and your sorrow will be turned to joy’, we want that to be true for every suffering person. But so often that does not seem to be the reality.

It is sometimes said of Christians that they are ‘Easter people’. I am sure that there are many ways of understanding what this might mean, but I want to suggest a way that we can be Easter people in the context of the concerns of this blog. One of the things that we learn, as we go through the sombre events of Holy Week and contemplate the awful suffering that Jesus endured, is to see all this suffering in the context of the coming events of Easter. In other words, our imaginative immersion in Jesus’ suffering is made possible because of what we know is to come afterwards in the narrative. Without Easter, Jesus’ suffering and death would have no point or purpose and it would be utterly demoralising even for us to read about it. We would have to conclude that power always wins over goodness, strength defeats weakness – the bullies always triumph. But, as we all know, the story does not end on Good Friday. The gospel accounts tells us that the story has an unexpected twist. Christ rises from the dead and somehow the terrible suffering is able to be seen as a victory. The power exercised over Jesus during his Passion is seen to have no lasting hold. Death itself can be said to be defeated in some way by an act of God.

The central theme or message of Easter seems to have these two facets. The first is that Christ is the victim but at the same time we find him to be the one who, in and through his faith in God, is also victorious. He endures more in the way of abuse and torture that we can ever imagine. But he enters the place of abuse and torture willingly, confident that God was with him and would accomplish his purposes through him. We could go on to suggest various Old Testament passages that encouraged him in this hope in God, even though his humanity recoiled at the prospect of death. The final words on the Cross – ‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’ are a summing up not just of this life-long sense of trust in God, but also of his confidence that God would receive him at the moment of death.

The event we call the Resurrection is not easy to understand in all its aspects. Many Christians stumble over the details as to whether or not Jesus returned with the same physical body. Some Easter accounts in the gospels suggest this is what was believed while other passages can be read as suggesting something quite different. The important thing in all the accounts is that Jesus was in some essential way alive. He had passed through to a dimension that is beyond the grave but in a new way he was and is alive and among us. His death and resurrection is also in some way a prelude to our own death and life within eternity. ‘I go before you to prepare a place for you so that where I am, you may be also.’

The first message of Easter is then, in summary, that Jesus is the victorious victim. The second message, of particular relevance to victims and all who suffer in the world, is that we can come very close to him as our risen Lord even now. In his earthly life, it is testified that Jesus sought the company of the poor, the sick and the outcasts. Today we would add the victimised, those who receive humiliation, violence as well as the victims of prejudice. It is not so strange that we should look for the same reality to be at work in his risen life. There is an old tradition of Christian prayer popularised by St Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century which put a great emphasis on our imaginative participation in Gospel events. The individual follower of this tradition would use the mind and imagination to reconstruct the events recorded in the Gospels. In short we are enabled to meet the risen Jesus by being imaginary participants in particular episodes within his earthly life. Ignatian prayer encourages the practitioner to see the sounds, smells and textures of the Gospel event as a prelude to a personal encounter with Jesus. The point at which such an inward meeting ceases to be product of our imagination and becomes a real encounter with Jesus is not for me to define. It should be noted however that the Ignatian tradition has been followed for hundreds of years and has been a source of blessing and comfort for many. Whether we seek to meet Jesus through this actual method or through another way, the Christian tradition of prayer has always invited the faithful follower to meet the risen Jesus. The record of his earthly life shows him as the particular friend, comforter and encourager of all who have passed through pain or abuse. Of course everyone is invited to be in this place, whether or not victims, but the Gospel testimony suggests that the risen Christ has a particular longing to place his hands on those in pain and who are the victims of bullying and abuse of any kind.

Easter, the story of victimhood followed by ultimate victory, is one that should especially resonate with the abused everywhere. The Christian tradition has always allowed us to know within our hearts, not only something of the transcendent God but also the human face of God in Jesus. As I write these words, I am reminded of the prayer of Richard of Chichester which speaks of Jesus as Redeemer and Friend and Brother. May the risen Jesus be such a redeemer, friend and brother to all, but especially those who need comfort and healing in the darkness of their abuse.

In reading around the subject of the Reformation, I came across a summary of the issues that I would like to share with my readers. It has a simplicity about it which helps to make it useful to our thinking about the Reformation, as well to our interest concerning power and its abuse.

The classic principles of the Protestant Reformation (Anglicans like me have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with them) are threefold. First there is the principle of ‘justification by faith alone’. This is in particular read out of the Epistle to the Romans. In the second place there is the teaching that Christ on the on the cross died a substitutionary death in an act of atonement for the sins of mankind. Thirdly there is the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. These principles of theology were read out of Scripture and proclaimed by all of the Reformers with different emphases throughout the 16th century and later. Even though my reducing so much theological writing into a small compass will probably meet with scepticism, I ask that the reader bears with me sufficiently as I observe that each of these principles has to do with power, particularly reclaiming power from the religious monolith that was the mediaeval Catholic church.

It is a commonplace to note that the Reformation was a movement of protest. This word ‘protest’ has a double meaning in modern usage. It contains the idea of objecting to and targeting an idea or principle, but also simply making an opinion known. The early Protestants were in fact doing both these things. They were attacking the power of Catholic authority and at the same time they were articulating (protesting) a new way of being Christian. This new vision of how to be a Christian stood on its own but it had, at the same time, the effect of attacking the monopoly of the powerful institutions of the Catholic church. How were the three planks of Reformation teaching undermining the power of the mediaeval church?

The first principle that I mentioned as a key to understanding the Reformation ‘protest’, was the rediscovery that faith, as understood by Paul, was a matter for the individual and his relationship with God. This possibility of a relationship of faith with God, without the mediation of sacraments and the entire paraphernalia of clerical structures, was deeply subversive to the old order. A second principle to challenge what had gone before was the new understanding of how Christ’s death had been an atoning sacrifice. This sacrifice did not need repetition and Protestants, by making their claim that Christ’s death was a once-for-all event, were effectively undermining the Catholic claims for its theology of the Mass. Why was it necessary to re-enact the death of Christ over and over again in the Mass, when the original event was decisive? If the Lord’s Supper was to be remembered, it was a mere remembrance of an event in the past. It did not involve some magical process as suggested by the teaching on transubstantiation. The third point was the inner relationship with the Holy Spirit as taught by Scripture. This did not need anything beyond the believer and his life of personal inner growth to make it happen.

In this way Luther and the other Reformers of the 16th century challenged the institutional power of the Roman church with their ‘plain’ reading of Scripture. Whether they were in fact handling Scripture correctly through these attacks is arguable, but I have to leave that point to one side for the moment. What is important to realise is that, at an important level, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation after it were struggles for power. Theological ideas read out of Scripture had massive implications not just for the Christian faith but also for the world of politics, society and the whole course of history. John Calvin took political authority in Geneva in the name of the principles set out in his Christian Institutes. In every society in Western Europe since that day, power, political and sometimes military power, has often been exercised in the name of Christian truth. Arguably when Christian truth believes that it has the right to dictate to others, believers or not, how to live and behave, it then has the potential to become an abusive system. This is true whether it takes place at a national level or at the level of an individual congregation, or even at a family level. We can always imagine the authority figure being able to say: ‘God has given me the power to tell you how to live your life’.

The argument of this blog piece is simply to point out the way that power and thus power-games have infiltrated into Christian institutions at every level, sometimes to their enormous detriment. Obviously institutions have to have rules and order, but these rules and the order they promote, have often become instruments of control. Protestant and Catholic institutions have both failed in this area in many places. We need to remind ourselves, once more, that the Christian way, as proposed by Jesus, was a way that completely turned upside down the rules of power. Jesus stated quite clearly that while the kings and governors made people feel the weight of their authority, ‘it shall not be so among you’. The crucifixion, which is very much in our minds and imaginations at this time, was a powerful living out of a protest against conventional power and the way it is used. The way of God was to be the path of powerlessness and humility. Somehow we keep losing the plot over this call to learn the meaning of humility and love. Christian institutions should not be places where people are bullied sometimes and humiliated. I find it hard to understand why there is not within the churches a massive amount of knowledge and experience with which to put into practice the way of powerlessness as taught and practised by Jesus. We have had 2000 years to get it right. There are of course some places which seem to understand gentleness, true altruism and the way of service, but they are not as common as one would like them to be. Above all the Church should be far better at spotting very quickly when things are going wrong in terms of the failure to use power appropriately. Sadly the Church is better at leaving things to fester. Sometimes dysfunctional structures continue for decades before they are challenged, having left pain and abuse in their wake.

In the Church Times this week and elsewhere online, a row has blown up about the future of theological education for would-be clergy in the Church of England. The cost of training men and women to become clergy is not inconsiderable and it is normally borne by the central church funds. Back in the 60s when I received my training, the cost of vocational training was met by central government through the grants system. People like me could cheerfully clock up five years residential training as a full-time student at university and theological college paid for by the long-suffering tax-payer. I even succeeded in persuading my local educational authority, through whom the funds were mediated, to let me have four months absent from theological college, at a course in the World Council of Churches Institute in Switzerland. Such largesse and generosity to students, theological or not, has gone, never to return.

This basic pattern of training at residential colleges has continued for would-be clergy, while many others have done training at local centres in a kind of night-school structure. The latter scheme has proved popular with individuals who, for financial reasons, have to keep working while they train. The cost to married students, where two parents may have to give up jobs to migrate to a residential theological college for up to two years, is just too high. Although there are increasing numbers of unmarried candidates in their twenties coming through the system, there has been in the past an assumption that most clergy candidates will start training after some years in another profession. These older married candidates are expensive to train when they opt for residential training, particularly if they opt to study for a university degree at the same time. This latter option, as we all know, has become horrifically expensive in the past few years.

At the beginning of this year, the Church of England, responding to a simultaneous increase in the number of clergy in training and a massive rise in costs, produced a report. This report proposed devolving all decisions about clerical training to the individual dioceses. The dioceses would make a decision as to whether the candidates would be allowed to receive residential training or be trained ‘in-house’ with the resources that the dioceses can muster. On Friday last a letter was published in the Church Times questioning the wisdom of this policy. Various points were raised by the 17 signatories, all of whom are involved in theological study and research at the highest level. The complaint was that the dioceses would find it expedient, for reasons of expense, to opt for the cheapest option in most instances. This would have a knock-on effect on the centres of theological excellence as fewer and fewer students entered them. The norm of five years training in the 60s would become the preserve of the few and immensely privileged.

The debate, no doubt, will carry on for months to come and a debate is to take place in the Church of England General Synod in February 2016. Having set out in summary this report about clergy training, I want to express my own concerns within this debate that relate to the themes of this blog. The first issue to note is that the depth of theological education offered to many ministers in the independent part of the church is often very superficial. When I was talking to people in the 90s about the qualifications required of ministers in one branch of a Pentecostal group of churches, I was told that a man could be appointed as a Pastor in charge of a congregation after six months non- residential training. In that period of time, I reckoned, one could be taught a rote system of doctrine, buffered by a number of ‘proof texts’. This would enable the candidate to produce sermons which would cover a number of well worn themes such as conversion, receiving the Holy Spirit and the task of ‘witnessing’ to Christ on the part of church members. While the Church of England will never allow individuals to be ordained after such a cursory training, the fact remains that it is easier and quicker to train someone where the theological system being taught is fixed and unchangeable. The broader Anglican tradition, embracing as it does both protestant and catholic teaching, is more nuanced and complex. It will, for example, want to present a variety of approaches to single passage of Scripture, probably involving some knowledge of the original languages. Such learning does, however, require a higher level of educational sophistication. This educational sophistication, without beating about the bush, takes time and is expensive to acquire. How much easier, particularly if the demand is there, to educate the clergy to teach according to rote? It is said that many of the people in the congregations want to deal in certainties as far as the Christian faith is concerned. Why not provide them with a clergy (cheaply trained!) who will oblige them with these answers? Wrestling with questions about faith and doubt is too expensive for the church of the future. Learning to understand the point of view held by someone else is also too expensive for future educators to pass on to their pupils. The binary world, the world of facts can be efficiently and cheaply handed on.

The second problem that I foresee in delegating theological training to the dioceses is that the Dioceses themselves may well, if they so choose, become monochrome in what they offer their ordinands. One diocese, which has to be nameless, has already decided that it is ‘evangelical’ and want all its future clergy to be entirely focussed on mission at the expense, one suspects, of theology. The care of the sick and the dying will thus take second place to a constant drive to make new disciples. The churchmanship that is implied in this approach will be clear to my readers. Of course this approach has its place within the total range of church practice, but it becomes dangerous if it is the sole model available in an entire geographical area. It is instructive to see what happens when a single theological vision takes over a diocese in the Anglican church. This is what has happened in Sydney Australia. Over several decades the Anglican Church has been taken over by a single theological vision, an extreme Calvinist perspective. This ‘take-over’ was achieved by insisting that no priest could work in the Diocese unless they had attended the diocesan theological college, Moore Theological College. Thus the liberal parishes have gradually lost their distinctive ministries by no longer being allowed to appoint clergy who follow their vision. The whole diocese is almost totally monochrome and, as I have said in previous blog posts, it sees itself as the model for Anglicanism world-wide.

The unnamed Anglican diocese I mentioned above, could also eventually become a monochrome Calvinist church within a church having prevented any of its ordinands from going to an academic institution for training. It will perhaps take some forty years for this process to be completed. At the end of this time, with no academically trained clergy in post, the whole diocese will no longer be recognisable as part of the wider Anglican set-up, with its tolerance towards many shades of theological opinion. Prompted by the ‘success’ of this single vision, it might then seek to impose this view on the entire church, as Sydney is trying to in Australia.

I have managed to write an entire post without so far mentioning the word ‘abuse’, but perhaps my long-term readers will realise that I see a church in one flavour of churchmanship, where debate and disagreement are not tolerated, as being an abusive scenario. Where there is no possibility of disagreement or debate in religious affairs, there we find intolerance, authoritarianism and eventually abuse.

It was recently suggested that this blog does not address the issue of how to help people move on from the experience of being abused in a Christian setting. I want, in this post, to address this problem and suggest that every post which analyses and discusses this topic is, in fact, a potential tool for healing. I feel that Chris will agree with the statement that it is of vital importance to have a traumatic experience interpreted and understood as the first stage on its way to being healed.

My role as an Anglican clergyman over forty years has left me with competent pastoral skills but I am, of course, aware of the specialist training that is needed by therapists to help the thousands of people who want to recover from cults and cultic experiences. Such training is more likely to be offered in the States than in the UK. Of the people that I spoke to at the Washington cultic conference last July, almost all of them appeared to be therapists who had themselves been former members of abusive groups. Being able to offer therapy to other sufferers appeared, for this group, to be a help in dealing with the trauma of their own cultic involvement. I am probably over-estimating this preponderance of therapists, but there seemed very few who, like myself, were concerned simply to understand more about these issues without a background of former cult membership. Whatever my reason for being involved in this whole area, I have been made me realise that my own role is different from the therapist role. My path, and I believe the task of this blog is, first of all, to try to make people in the wider church aware that this is an important issue. It has to be addressed theologically, pastorally and politically (in a church context). This can be done in a very small way by feeding relevant information and opinion into this blog. I also have a role, in a very small way, to help sufferers that I encounter to know that their pain is understood and normally falls into a recognisable pattern. This is the stage in the healing process that this blog addresses. The various therapists that I have met at my conferences would be, I believe, grateful for any help they can receive in offering their clients fresh levels of interpretation and understanding. What I offer and have offered, is not therapeutic in the ordinary psychological sense, but it is therapeutic in that it offers, hopefully, fresh understanding and insight – the first stage in the healing process..

In writing this, I am reminded of a phone call that came to me in a roundabout way from someone who wanted to come to terms with a bad experience in a cultic church in Sussex. At the time I was in the process of writing an article about the way that the charismatic culture is often infected by leaders who have what is known as a narcissistic personality disorder. As my caller began to describe the antics of the minister of his church, I interrupted in a way that would be totally inappropriate for a professional therapist. I said to him, ‘let me try and complete this description’. I then reflected back to him the classic description of a narcissist in charge of a congregation that I was putting on to the page. You could hear the excitement and pleasure in his voice as I, without being told, seemed to know exactly what was going on in his church. The further comments that I went to make were practical ones and the whole conversation probably had little formal therapeutic content. My caller was, however, enormously empowered by realising two things. First I understood what he was describing about his experiences in his church. Secondly the dynamics of the church he was describing fitted into a predictable pattern. I remember him describing the way the minister of his church had an inner circle of ‘groupies’ who surrounded the minister and had special access to him. These inner circle members then became distant to the ordinary members of the congregation. I was able to indicate that this was merely a method of enhancing control by the leader. The inner circle group were given privileges and in return they protected the leader from having to engage with the mundane day to day matters of the congregation. His messianic status needed by his narcissistic personality could thus remain undisturbed.

Empowerment through understanding is, I believe, one – indeed the first – part of healing. What comes after that will depend very much on the situation that the abused sufferer finds himself in. Some will need intensive therapy, others will gradually recover through being part of a middle of the road congregation where one or other of the abusive practices that we have identified in previous posts do not occur. While being part of ‘ordinary’ non abusive churches, one hope is that the abused individual may meet a pastorally competent minister who will be able to teach once again the basic attitudes required of a Christian. These would include the ability to love, the capacity to forgive and the readiness to grow in prayer and to learn. The most important thing is that none of the experiences of abuse are repeated in this place of safety. English Athena referred to parishes for abused clergy where they were safe. Finding a safe place ranks alongside the acquiring of new insight and relevant information as the vital prerequisite to real healing.

I would like to think that this blog is one place of safety for those who have been through bad experiences of Christian abuse somewhere in the past. It cannot by definition provide a personal place of safely as my readers do not necessarily make themselves known. The most vulnerable and battered are probably the least likely to comment publically. But it is my hope that the task of healing can begin through reading material that shows understanding of the issues. If the intellect can make sense of events that have taken place in the past, then the emotions have a better chance to recover. In the past, my small part in the process of healing for abused individuals has been to say to them after a conversation. ‘This event that has left you demoralised and damaged, does fit into a predictable pattern. It makes a lot of sense. Now that you have some handle on what has happened to you, you can draw on this new insight. When you go to a pastorally competent person or a professional therapist, you can explain to them coherently what has happened to you. They will understand and they should be able to take you on to the next stage in your healing.’

The healing needed after an encounter with Christian abuse can never happen through a web-site or a blog. What a blog can do is to suggest patterns of understanding and interpretative tools to make sense of things that used to make no sense. That is what this blog tries to do. In these posts, based on my reading and my experience, some clarity may possibly be found which may be of use not only to the abused but to those who want to help them. That is my earnest hope.

After writing my nine faces of Christian abuse and reading the comments, I began to see further configurations on the way I could set out my material. Before exploring these ideas, I want to share again the thought that Christian abuse is an aspect of church life that many Christians have never encountered. There are also some who would deny that such abuse exists. The argument might go along these lines. ‘Christians are people who believe in God’s love, so they cannot possibly be among those who cause harm to others, least of all their fellow Christians.’ Given the fact that not a few Christians would prefer that Christian abuse, even as a theoretical possibility, remained suppressed and denied, it is, I would claim, not helpful to talk about forgiving such abuse when it is not yet owned up to and acknowledged. For a genuine process of forgiveness and healing to begin, there has to be a realistic facing up to the evil that has been perpetrated. That is the process that we hope is going to happen at Trinity Brentwood. Acknowledgement of past hurt has to take place before forgiveness can be shared and the process of reconciliation and healing begun. I shall more to say on this in the next post.

My new configuration of an understanding of Christian abuse is to suggest that it operates at one of three levels. The first is at the institutional level. Some Christians, who believe that they have the monopoly of truth, will sometimes agitate to show how this truth functions at every level, including the political. They thus believe themselves required to be activists at a political level. The classic examples of this kind of thinking are, as we have seen, in the ideas of Rounas Rushdoony, the Calvinist thinker, whose ideas set out a way of claiming the whole of society for Christ, a method of rule we would describe as theocracy. Thankfully, his ideas have not succeeded, but they form an inspiration for the Christian Right in America. Other expressions of the way that institutional power is claimed, have been seen in the process that saw the entire Southern Baptist Convention taken over by a fundamentalist clique in the 80s. A similar movement exists today within Anglicanism, attempting to control the whole institution, but so far it has not met with success.

As far as individuals are concerned, little personal damage is caused by an institutional takeover like that of the SBC in the States. They will of course be grieved to see their beloved denomination change direction away from its historical roots, but individually the members will not be damaged psychologically. They will have the freedom, if they so wish, to move to find more congenial surroundings that suit them.

A second level of Christian abuse is through the fact that, when churches begin to teach with particular emphases, individuals can get hurt. The particular damage caused to these individuals is not the aim or intention of these styles of preaching and teaching, but people are sometimes harmed in a kind of ‘collateral damage’. There has always existed in Christian theology a tension between a teaching about a loving generous God who receives all to himself, and another version which puts a greater emphasis on sin and the possibility of eternal punishment. In addition there is a version of the Christian faith that seems to humiliate women, alongside certain minorities who cannot aspire to the standards of the preacher. People who hear messages which evoke fear and contain aspects of threat, may find themselves deeply affected as they absorb over a period the negative elements in a so-called ‘good news’. Not a few people will become completely demoralised and depressed by the constant teaching of certain strands of Calvinist rhetoric, for example. One writer described the psychological state of constantly agonising about one’s eternal soul as like suffering an ‘evangelical anorexia nervosa’. Also the group of churches, which teach a form of Christianity with a strong patriarchal emphasis, can lead women feeling devalued and sometimes accepting ill-treatment from their husbands. To repeat, these types of churches do not set out to abuse individuals, but they can create collateral victims through what we would describe as an, arguably, abusive teaching style. Further expressions of potentially harmful churches are those that teach Health and Wealth ideas, Shepherding or present everything in terms of a binary universe. This will populate the world with demons and devils who are constantly around, trying to defeat and destroy the unwary Christian. These kinds of teachings create many victims through control, fear or terror.

The third level where a church can cause harm, is where individuals are targeted in a deliberate and calculated way by another Christian, often the minister or leader. A member of a church becomes a target for exploitation, whether financially, sexually or simply as a pawn in a complicated power game played by powerful dominating personalities. There are two broad settings for this kind of individual exploitation. One is the ordinary parish or congregational set-up where leadership or power has been surrendered to a personality (not necessarily the official leader) who may have an undiagnosed personality disorder. Such a person has successfully convinced the congregation that their position of influence is appropriate and necessary. They will use charm and skilful manoeuvring to retain their position. Only an outsider would be in a position to spot the dynamics of such a church and how charisma, charm and occasionally outright threats of anger are used to keep everyone in their place. The extreme form of this kind of exploitative church process is the cultic variety. Here the malignant charisma of the leader is fairly clear. In such a cultic church there will likely be an attachment on the part of the leader, not only to power for its own sake but also possibly to sex and to money. Money will have the habit of disappearing into ‘projects’ under the leader’s control. Sexual exploitation of the women in the congregation will also be common in the cultic church, alongside a unnatural devotion and loyalty to the leader on the part of all the members. There will often also be a deliberate use of rumour and innuendo as a means of keeping control. A lot more could be said about the dynamics of such a cultic church, but suffice to say it is a dangerous place to be for the members, in terms of their financial, spiritual and psychological health.

In this summary, we have set out our nine categories in a somewhat different way. The main issue to address in this categorisation is to ask whether the Christian abuse is being aimed at institutions or individuals. In the case of the latter, we ask whether they are deliberately targeted or just ‘collateral damage’ in a broadly abusive situation. Our first category, the abuse attempted by large bodies to take over or control other institutions, while of historical moment, will affect the individual least. The third category, the targeted individual in the dysfunctional or cultic parish run by, or giving freedom to a narcissistic personality, is in most danger for their personal safety and well-being.