One particular proclamation of the Christian gospel which is made in many places is that it is God’s will to heal the sicknesses of those who follow in the Christian path. The example of Jesus in his earthly ministry will be pointed to as well as the words recorded in St John, ‘greater things than these will you do’. There are also the instructions of Jesus which occur in Mark’s gospel in chapter 16. Although these words do not occur in most of the original manuscripts of Mark’s gospel, it is clear that the early Christian church took seriously the command that healing was to be a continuing and important aspect of the church’s life.

Throughout the 2000 years or so there has always been a somewhat ambivalent relation with healing in the Church. Some Christians claim that healing continues to be part of the church’s ministry while others take a different line. They justify the fact that healing, if it happens at all, is a very rare unusual occurrence. This reticence about healing is expressed in a doctrine called ‘cessationism’. This, in brief, states that although miracles happened in the time of Jesus and the Apostles, this is no longer the case. Miracles belonged to that early period in order to get things going, but once it was established, it is no longer needed for later generations.

In some evangelical circles Christians are invited to take a stand and declare whether they are on the side of the cessationists or those who oppose them. This debate is a bit like the one that goes on between charismatic-evangelicals and non-charismatic evangelicals or between Arminians and Calvinists. From the outside, which is where I stand, I can see positives on both sides in all these debates and thus I would refuse to place myself on either side of these positions. In the case of the cessationists and those who oppose them, my position would be to say that both are right and yet both are wrong.

To explain what I mean by such a paradoxical statement I want to look at the arguments of the cessationists. They would claim that healings in the name of Christ belong only to the years of the early church. For myself I would argue that they are wrong in their assumption that healings do not happen today and have not taken place across the ages. I have in my possession a two volume book which relates the accounts of the miracles that took place at the tomb of Thomas Becket soon after his death in 1170 at Canterbury. The accounts of miracles and healing were written down at the time and were carefully recorded by monks who were chosen for their accuracy and probity. The details of these miracles is remarkable. If miracles of healing happened then, why should we doubt the miracles at Lourdes or many other places today? The issue of how the mechanics of these healings works is one that we must leave to one side for now. The cessationists are however right in some of their claims. In particular they are right to be suspicious of the instant miracles that are manufactured to order by big named healing evangelists across the world. There are just too many stories of fakery and dishonesty in this world. The cessationists can thus be forgiven in part for being cynical about any reported healing in Christian context. The truth within this debate lies, I believe, in a process of exercising careful discernment. Neither side seems to be very good at this. The one side, I shall call them the enthusiasts, seems to be guilty of exaggerating the occurrence of healing, while the other side, the cessationists, is guilty of downplaying it. Christian healing happens, but not with the regularity or tidiness that the enthusiasts would claim for it.

It is in this world of debate between those I call cessationists and enthusiasts, that a dark side of healing emerges. It is a memory that comes from Chris’ time at Bible College in the 60s that has reminded me how the enthusiasts’ arguments can result in enormous amounts of suffering for the sick. We have, over the blog posts, looked at the issue of poverty in the context of Health and Wealth teaching. Poverty is, according to this teaching, caused by not exercising sufficient faith. The poor may have not given enough to the church to harvest the material riches that God wishes them to have. The same thing will apply to sickness. If anyone is sick then that is a result of failing to exercise faith. Chris told me over the phone how the practical outworking of this teaching meant that fellow students tried to ignore, not just coughs and colds, but quite serious illnesses. In one case a student nearly died in the attempt to exercise ‘faith’ and deny the possibility of sickness. The dark side of a culture that exaggerates healing, is the dangerous inability to deal with sickness and physical or mental weakness of any kind.

No doubt we will be returning to this theme again. But this blog post simply wants to draw attention to a style of teaching that once again puts disadvantaged people into a place of despair because their poverty or sickness ‘proves’ that they are failures in the sight of God. The Christianity of Health and Wealth teaching succeeds in pushing already disadvantaged individuals further into a pit where they feel abandoned by God and unworthy of his attention and support. What a hideous contrast with the message of the actual Jesus of the gospels who said: ‘Come unto me, all you who are burdened with heavy loads.’

Years ago as a child, I tried, as a somewhat pointless exercise, repeating the word ‘tomato’ endless times. I can’t remember why I did it but I do remember that the repetition of the word had the effect of changing it from being a sound that pointed to a particular fruit to a sound with absolutely no content or meaning. Repetition of a word will always eventually destroy or remove its meaning. We can think that a word is always able to suggest a defined meaning but that link eventually breaks down in our minds when the word is repeated too much.

I was reminded of the tomato ‘experiment’ after listening to a sermon recently when the word ‘love’ was endlessly repeated. I don’t know how many times it was used but by the time I thought of actually counting the occurrences, the word had already drifted into the category of cliché so that no meaning was being shared by the preacher when he used the word. Perhaps this is the meaning of cliché, the repetition of a word so much that any possible impact from using the word is lost. During the recent election campaign, I wanted to shout at the television every time a politician came up with a well worn but largely meaningless slogan. The one in particular we heard repeatedly used was ‘hard-working families. I am sure my readers can think of several other examples.

In my last post, I mentioned the problem of using words so that they can have precisely the same meaning for both hearer and speaker. All too often this is not the case. I now want to refer to another problem that occurs even when speaker and hearer do know exactly what a particular word means. The problem, this time, is that the meaning that both sides extract from the word or expression is such that there is a kind of coded shorthand in operation. The common understanding of a particular word has become an unquestioning assumption of some ‘tribal’ commonplace. To use a slightly irreverent example, and thinking back to my time as a member of evangelical prayer groups, I noted the interjection of the word ‘just’ into many prayers offered to the Almighty. ‘We do just pray to you Father for the problems of the church overseas’. The word ‘just’ adds absolutely nothing to the meaning of the prayer, but it does have the effect of linking the prayer to other people either in the room or elsewhere who also pray in this way. In other words a word has become a kind of tribal marker for a particular style of expressing the Christian faith.

A word that is frequently used in certain circles to have a precise meaning for those who use it, is the word ‘saved’. The question ‘are you saved?’ may be said less often than in the past, but as an example of coded ‘in’ language, it has a very precise meaning. To offer a longer ‘translation’ for those not in the in the loop of this coded language, it might mean this: ‘Have you made an active acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal saviour? Have you accepted his death as the one atoning death for the sins of the world and do you believe that the Bible contains the inerrant word of God, possessing all that is needed for salvation?’ A Christian who lives in the world that is defined by such a statement of belief, will have large numbers of words defined for them by their church. These will have only a single way of being understood. The permitted interpretations of these words will be endlessly repeated in sermons. This tight definition of particular words like ‘faith’, ‘salvation’, ‘truth’ and ‘love’ will fit in with a philosophical idea which is found in conservative churches, the notion of propositionalism. This is another way of saying that truth can always be rendered accurately and precisely in words. After all, the argument goes, the Bible, God’s Word, come to us in the form of actual words. If God reveals his truth in words, who are we to demand anything beyond the same words?

The great fallacy of this position is that it is untrue to say that God only reveals himself to us in words. Words have a built-in limitation. After a while they can become meaningless when they are misused or repeated too much. Human beings are also not just cerebral creatures, They respond to truth in a variety of forms. They respond to symbol, colour and visual experiences of all kinds. Above all they respond to other people. God, in his wisdom, has chosen to reveal himself, not in propositions or philosophies defined by words, but in a person, the person of Jesus Christ. The encounter with a person, getting to know someone, requires a quite different set of human skills to that of understanding particular words. The encounter with God in Christ is at the heart of what the Christian faith is all about. But annoyingly for those who want to create a single pattern of encounter, using approved words, the range of possible ways that this encounter is realised has many manifestations. Some encounters will use words to describe the experience. Others will be far more sparing in the way that language is used. Some encounters with God in Christ may even wish not to use words at all. A word that I use frequently is the word ‘mystery’. It is a word that at its heart has the meaning of keeping silent before what is unknowable, least of all through the medium of words.

St Francis of Assisi had some fitting words to say on the topic of evangelism. He said: ‘ Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.’ Perhaps Francis had a deep recognition for the limitation of words in our communication of the Christian faith. He saw how eventually they, in the words of T.S. Elliot, ‘strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden, under the tension…’ Words will always be an important part of our culture and our faith. But perhaps we need a new reformation where Christianity is rediscovered using a minimum of words. The task of presenting the faith should be handed over to the artists, the musicians and those who understand best how human beings form relationships to each other. Through this new reformation we would start to see an end to the dry cerebral dominance of verbal presentations of our faith. In its place we would learn better to glimpse the heart of God, who is best understood as transcendent beauty and mystery.

The Church of England has been engaging in the process of what it calls ‘facilitated conversations’ on the topic of the gay issue. Groups of Christians who take opposing views on the subject have been brought together in a hotel to hear what others have to say about their stance. Because there are professional facilitators present, the conversations have not been allowed to degenerate into a slanging match or any kind of confrontation with those who take a different view from their own. The emphasis is on listening in a spirit of generosity. We have been reminded once again, as we emerge from the exhausting process of a General Election, that positions on any topic can be held passionately but these are also often immovable and fixed. It is not my intention to say anything further about the rights and wrongs of the gay issue; my purpose is rather to reflect on the general matter of communication, particularly where two sides have trenchantly opposed positions.

There are many problems that occur when we meet an individual who takes a point of view about anything which is both passionate and convinced. Before I suggest what can be done to try and engage with this depth of conviction, I want to mention one particular reason why two people may find themselves in a place of passionate disagreement. This reason may be that they have grown up speaking different languages. I am not of course suggesting that this is an explanation in the current debates within the church but I am thinking of any kind of language miscommunication that may take place in a debate. I want to illustrate my point by referring a literal linguistic confusion that left a terrible rent in the church in the 11th century. This was the formal separation of the Orthodox and Catholic churches which took place in 1054 AD. It is generally accepted that a major cause of this split was because of the fact that the two sides had become ignorant of each other’s language. Few theologians on either side had any knowledge or fluency in the language of the other. As part of a study I once made on the issue of the influence of Greek ideas in the West in the early mediaeval period, I learnt that the work of one single translator, Amalarius of Metz in 725 AD, spread a number of influential Greek theological ideas into the West during his life-time. For the next hundred years or more there was no one else qualified to continue this task of translating Greek into Latin. The result of this was that the vast resources of Greek theology remained obscure and virtually unknown in the West at the time of the great schism in the 11th century. There was an additional problem. Even if an adequate knowledge of the language of the other was available to theologians, there were, and still are, many problems of translating Greek technical theological terms into Latin and vice-versa. A good knowledge of Greek requires a student, not only to understand how words should be translated, but also the exact nuances in the way the words are used in the original. It will be recognised that translation is always an approximation of what was written in the original context. Theological education for the clergy today will, if possible, include some knowledge of Greek and Hebrew precisely for this reason. The ancient languages yield their deeper meanings only after imaginative penetration of their cultures.

Today when we talk about failures of communication, we are probably not normally talking about people using different languages. But we are talking about the way that the words we use can be distorted in their meanings by the way that words acquire particular meanings from the education and culture of the speakers. All of us can think of occasions when we have come unstuck in talking to someone, because an English word is being used by another person to mean something different from our use. What do we do? Do we insist on using only our meaning or do we rapidly try and adapt ourselves to what we think they mean? The possibilities for misunderstanding what other people are really saying in conversation are endless. In this blog I have the luxury of being able to define my meanings so that the reader has a good chance of knowing what I am talking about All too often in actual conversations words will be used in such a way that two people will be at cross-purposes even though they are using the same words. We may use theologically profound words, like ‘truth’, ‘salvation’ and even ‘God’ but each be meaning something subtly different when we use them.

Good communication between two or more people on profound topics will probably happen most easily when the people concerned have had a similar type of education. They thus instinctively know, reasonably accurately, how the words of the other person are being used. This sounds like an elitist comment but I believe we need to be more open about the problem of communication when people share ideas, while using language in subtly different ways. One of the advantages of having received a relatively good education is that I would claim, not to know many things, but to be able to recognise how seldom I can be sure of knowing anything securely. For every educated person, I believe, knowledge is seen to have the element of being provisional; it is capable of being changed when new information comes along. This would apply to the scientist as well as the person who, like me, has had some theological training. The readiness to articulate ideas with a degree of tentativeness is a great aid to true communication. The person whose educational background has taught them only to deal in solid ‘facts’ is unlikely to respond positively to this kind of insight. They will not understand ‘knowledge’ as a work in progress. Knowledge of the facts of our faith is believed to be contained in the words of the Book, the Bible. For others of us, the words provide a beginning of the process of understanding, not the conclusion.

Christianity has in many places across the world been taught in a dogmatic way which denies the possibility of sharing in the way I have indicated above. In other words it possesses none of the humility, the sense of permanent growing into knowledge and the incompleteness that I would want to claim for it. This task of holding ‘facilitated conversations’ in a Christian context may be about teaching people the art of humble listening and learning to recognise that the other person may be speaking a different ‘language’. Learning that language, recognising how our background may have predisposed us to understand ‘truth’ in quite different ways from the person we are speaking to, will always be salutary. Although I am a believer in the provisionality of theological statements, I have to learn and communicate with people who reject the idea of ambiguity in the language we use to describe God. No doubt the other person feels safe in having the ‘word of God’ between their fingers in the form of a Bible. I would want them to understand that way of believing better. But also I would ask them to listen and know that the language I speak is a language that embraces mystery, beauty and unknowability. For myself, the language to talk about God and Christ is explored far better, not in the edgy dogmatic discourse of Paul, but in the visual symbolic language of St John’s Gospel. Both ‘languages’ are valid Scripture, and a Christian needs, not to choose between them, but to become fluent in both.

There are numerous patterns of behaviour that occur under the umbrella of religious abuse, and one of the most disturbing is incest within Christian families. By incest I am here referring to the sexual exploitation of girls by members of their own family. The study I am basing my comments on is a Dutch one and appeared in a book which first appeared in 1985 and was translated into English in 1992. I have no idea as to whether the figures quoted in the book about the incidence of incest would apply to this country. But a survey in Holland reported that 15.6 % of women reported sexual molestation within the family before the age of 16. The figure for boys is much lower which is why the published study focuses on the female experience. Altogether a total of 34% of women in Holland experiences sexual abuse in or beyond the family before they reach 17. This statistic fits with figures produced by Marie Fortune for the USA where one in three girls is sexually abused in some way before the age of 18.

These statistics are horrifying in themselves but they take on a still darker tone when we discover that ‘many’ survivors of incest had been made, ‘through their religious upbringing, easy prey to sexual abuse in the (extended) family’. The study does not make clear how many survivors of incest overall come from such religious backgrounds but it is clearly a significant proportion. This blog piece does not claim that religious incest is in any way common but the fact that it occurs at all is something to be addressed, as the Dutch study has done. Any overlap between Christian beliefs and incestuous abuse should not even exist. Because it does, it is important for us to explore. The possibility that religious teachings can be and are, from time to time, used to batter and dis-empower the weak and defenceless – in this case girl children – must be looked at.

Readers of this blog will already know that I have little time for the ideas of complementarianism, which is an idea among certain conservative Christian groups that forbids women to take a position of leadership in the church. This is based on some words attributed to Paul about the need for women to submit to men and to remain silent in church. This idea is also held to be implied in the story of Adam and Eve. Eve is held to be somehow more responsible for the evil that that comes through the event of the Fall. These highly selective readings of Scripture are used to prop up a patriarchal understanding of Christianity, which keeps women firmly in their place and subject in obedience to their menfolk.

The issue for this post is not whether or not women should exercise power, but whether the culture of the church also creates an environment where men feel free to dominate and control their women in any way they choose. In some cases this culture of control can lead to rape or sexual abuse. Kathryn, the Bible school student at Peniel Church Brentwood, identified the way that certain abusive teachings by Michael Reid created an environment where young unmarried women were looked down, humiliated and treated with contempt. In such a setting, the sexual humiliation of these women might even be understood to be a perk owed to the powerful dominant males of the church. At least one of them, we now know, did in fact act out this fantasy in the appalling crime of rape.

One issue that is raised by the Dutch study on the occurrence of incest in Christian families is the place of bible teaching in the minds of both abusers and abused. From the interviews with the victims, it is clear that within some Christian families some kind of perverse justification for the activity is felt to be found in scripture. The first message that many young girls in a conservative Christian culture will hear is the story of the disobedience of Eve. As we have seen, this sends a powerful message about her own need to obey. The girl should be subordinate to the will of the father, no doubt following the example of her already subservient mother. To follow a ‘biblical’ model, girls also have to be self-effacing, silent and certainly never aggressive or assertive in the ways that boys can be. The mother of the family will also be teaching her female offspring how to placate the father and endure whatever anger and tantrums he may wish to indulge in as ‘head’ of the family. Any deviation from this path of forgiving obedient compliance is seen to be inviting sin. Sin leads to the terrors of hell.

The teaching of passive compliance as the ideal of biblical womanhood is complemented by some strange notions of the role of sexuality. Women in many conservative circles, are sometimes seen not to have sexual needs but nevertheless they are quickly blamed for arousing sexuality in men. They are, consciously or unconsciously, the temptresses and seducers. I myself have heard a woman blamed for the misbehaviour of a Baptist pastor who used his influence to coerce her into an abusive sexual relationship. When sexual misbehaviour occurs in the family, the other members, if they cannot blame the woman for what has happened, may be very quick in demanding that the Christian has to forgive. This is required even when the rapist or abuser has not asked for forgiveness. The main teaching which may have been internalised by a young girl in a conservative family will be the importance of passivity before those to whom she owes obedience. A father, an elder brother or an uncle will always find a way of justifying their abusive behaviour, if that is their wish. It is hard to fight off a sexual aggressor when you have been conditioned always to see them as your divinely sanctioned betters. The failure of mothers to protect their female offspring in these patriarchal families is tragic. They appear to have internalised through decades of practising ‘biblical’ passivity not to question the decisions of the dominant men in the family. Also the child will find it extremely hard to see themselves in the role of a wronged victim. All the teachings that they have absorbed in a conservative setting about the importance of chastity and obedience will make the experience hard to interpret. If incest takes place, there will be no clear understanding of the significance of what has been done to her except the feelings of intense shame and painful confusion. In all likelihood she will be convinced that she is in some way responsible for what has taken place. In some way, she may feel, God has allowed this terrible thing to happen. It must be his will and, if something sinful has taken place, then the girl will feel that she has to take some of the responsibility. The trauma of the event may even be understood as God punishing her for some unspecified sin.

A lot more could be added to this brief reflection about the experience of incest in a Christian family. It is an appalling crime but perhaps far commoner than we would want to believe. We have seen that churches can, by distorted teachings on women, sexuality and forgiveness, contribute not only to the possibility of this crime happening, but also they can obstruct the process of recovery. Any church teaching which places the woman in the role of temptress, subject to male authority in church and in the home will indirectly foster an environment receptive to incest and rape. Of course we know that such teachings officially provide no justification whatever for the evil of incest, but, it is clear from the research, men will do in fact twist scriptural ideas to suit their nefarious purposes. Also a superficial teaching on forgiveness will add to the trauma of guilt and pain suffered by an abused child. The Church much be extremely careful in the way it presents it teachings about the role of women. Perhaps Kathryn would wish to comment on this post about the teachings at Peniel that, according to the reports, degraded and humiliated women. Christian misogyny is indeed an evil and needs to be named and banished from all our churches.

It appears that of all my blog posts, the one that has attracted the most attention is my piece on God TV (Jan 1st 2015). I want to add some further thoughts to that blog post, not only about that particular TV channel, but about the phenomenon of religious broadcasting generally.

In a conversation with Chris he described to me the picture of an elderly widow, with few outside contacts, sending quite large sums of money, which she cannot afford, to a religious TV channel. The motive for such giving is, no doubt, the thought, encouraged by the TV channel evangelist, that this money is kind of seed which will grow and provide her with an abundance of blessings both material and spiritual. I have no doubt of the texts used to encourage such ‘generosity’ . There will be the example of the widow casting her two copper coins into the Temple treasury, which Jesus commended. There will also be the quoting of texts about God loving a cheerful giver.

What is the real motivation for these relatively small donations repeated some thousands of times? The first thing that this money buys is the creation of a fantasy world for the giver. Well dressed presenters sit around in opulent studios telling the listener the old, old story that God has promised them all his blessings. With sufficient faith, which is expressed by a sufficiently sacrificial donation to the channel, all the blessings of health and prosperity can be theirs. The first-fruits of prosperity can be seen right before them on the screen in the expensive suits and coiffured hair-dos. The message is implied rather than precisely stated. ‘If you want what we have, then think like us, have faith like us and follow us’.

The attraction to a channel like God TV is like a process of seduction. The presenters, with their homely, pseudo-intimate ways, become important to the listener. Over a period they will become fantasy friends and attract a kind of brand loyalty which is all the more attractive to the listener if they are lacking real friends in their own restricted worlds. Once the listener is ‘hooked’ by the fantasy that Wendy on God TV actually cares about them personally, then the purse strings are automatically opened. The sums of money that are needed to keep the TV on the air start to flow. All this is possible because TV evangelists have discovered the secret of how to milk the vulnerable, the needy and the lonely of their hard earned money. Those who give to the religious channels have entered a fantasy promised land created by the presenters. They are now like drug addicts and it is almost impossible to break free of this fantasy without suffering massive withdrawal symptoms or breakdown. Many watchers of these programmes continue in this addiction till death finally frees them.

What does the money sent to a religious channel like God TV actually get used for? It has to be admitted that running a religious TV station is pretty expensive. Sometimes, however, even religious broadcasters overreach themselves and find that their ambitious empire building goes beyond their capacity to pay. A God TV project to convert a cinema in Plymouth into an international prayer centre seems to have stalled. The financial challenge to get this centre up and running has apparently proved too much for the directors. The builders employed to complete the project have simply walked out, not having had their invoices paid for work already done. A branch of God TV in Sunderland has reportedly simply closed with all those employed losing their jobs. It is reported that a number of people in Plymouth, working for the station, have also been ‘let go’, but not before they were forced to sign ‘gagging orders’. It is hard to imagine why such orders should be required unless the organisation has secrets, such as being a massive cash machine for those in charge. Those who look into these things, report that Wendy Alec, the owner and chief presenter, is paid £100,000 plus expenses. With all the perks of her job, her package is reportedly worth around a million pounds a year. In spite of the stalling of certain projects in the UK, there is no evidence that the perks of running this franchise have lessened for those in charge.

As I reflected on the phenomenon of religious broadcasting, I realised that the only theology that could work to get such a station up and running is the ‘Prosperity Gospel’. Why would anyone send money to fund the expensive lifestyle of a Wendy Alec, unless there was something in it for them? More cynically, why would anyone go to the trouble of setting up a religious broadcasting station unless there were worthwhile returns, and I mean financial ones. The Christian tradition does provide, when we read Scripture very selectively and in a distorted fashion, the possibility of meeting the needs of two groups of people. The first group are the lonely, the disconnected, the unsuccessful and the generally needy. This group, because they cannot get out of their homes, have become addicted to their television sets, which appear to offer them hope in the shape of Christian prosperity teachings. On the other side is a small group who have discovered how to exploit the needy group by using Christian language to create a fantasy world of hope, promises and colour to the grey dull lives of their audience. Do the providers of these cloying programmes actually believe their messages of hope or do they, as some would suggest, see their audiences as suckers to be exploited? My understanding of human nature would suggest that probably the owners of religious TV stations are probably not completely heartless scam artists. At some level they have come to believe their own rhetoric but the harm that these stations do to the integrity of the Christian faith is massive.

To finish I wish to list some of the reasons why religion broadcasting that uses the ‘Prosperity Teaching’ (I don’t know any other type) is a massive blot on the Christian landscape.
• The dynamic of religious broadcasting aims to create ‘addiction’ among a group of very needy people. This experience of dependency among this group constitutes abuse.
• The Christian teaching of religious broadcasting narrows the gospel down to encouraging people to believe that the only thing that matters is the access to health and wealth for the individual. There is no awareness of society or the place of the individual within it.
• The Christian teaching of the religious broadcaster is a version that eviscerates the tradition and takes it far from any challenge, set-back or pain. Such things are said to be the result of a lack of faith. When this message is internalised, the levels of despair among those addicted to the prosperity teaching become even greater.

I shall go on reflecting on the issues of religious broadcasting, as I suspect that most ‘main-stream’ Christians ignore it as not being worthy of their attention. Chris has helped me to see that it is in fact a big deal to many people who live on the edges of our society, those whom this abusive form of Christianity is able to touch and in some cases destroy.

A story on the Internet about the failure of a church to deal with a severely mentally ill member (more of which later on) reminded me of a pastoral encounter from some twenty five years. I was away at a conference when my wife rang me to say that she had had a phone call from a mother about her 22 year son who was close to death with cancer. I returned home immediately and visited the family that evening. I felt that my visit, and the effort in making it, was more appreciated by the mother than her son. Even though he was very close to death, he was unwilling to discuss anything about death, putting things right with the world and least of all about God. In a paradoxical way there was something courageous about this defiance of death and his refusal to take on board a belief system at the last minute which might, conceivably, have eased his passing. I left the house promising to call the next morning. I returned at 9 am only to find the mother in a dreadful state because the son had, at that moment, just died. My practical help at that moment was to close his eyes and try and say something comforting to the mother. I eventually left the house, not feeling terribly effective but at least glad that I had not arrived too late for one visit to the dying man.

There was a strange follow-up to this story some weeks later. While walking around the parish, I met up with a woman, who was a member of a extreme Pentecostal group, and who knew the young man who had died and his mother. I mentioned that I had seen him within 12 hours of his death, without mentioning how ineffective I had felt. Her response was to state categorically that if there had been a death-bed conversion through the acceptance of Jesus as his personal Saviour, God would have healed the young man instantly. I did not argue with her but pondered about which planet she was living on. Did she have evidence that anyone in a terminal state, as the young man had been, had ever received such a healing? I certainly had never encountered such a claim in the books I had read. At the time, I hoped that she would not add to the pain of the young man’s family by repeating such a claim to them. As far as I know, her extraordinary understanding about what might have transpired did not get back to the boy’s family.

I tell this story as an example of the potential abuse of the very sick, by a belief system which is sincerely held by many Christians. It is abusive because it loads people, who maybe are carrying extreme illness or pain, with many extra burdens. The last thing a person who is dying needs, is a confident fanatical Christian coming and telling them that they lack the faith both to get well and to get to heaven. That encounter did not, in my story, take place, but presumably members of churches of the type this woman belonged to are saying this all the time. Pastorally and theologically it is a disaster area. I cannot here unpack all the problems in this type of attitude except to say that I am relieved that none of the chaplaincy volunteers at our local hospital think and act in this way.

The Internet story that brought back this event after so many years was a story about one Abraham. I reproduce the story straight from the net.

‘ In the 1970’s, Emmanuel Baptist Church was a large church, one of the largest churches in the United States. The church ran buses all over the Pontiac/Detroit area. During my time at Emmanuel, the church operated 80 buses.
One of the bus riders was a young man name Abraham.
Abraham was a walking contradiction. He was a brilliant, crazy, mentally ill young man.
Abraham would walk up in back of people and snip hair from their heads. A week or so later Abraham would bring the person a silk sachet filled with the hair and his finger nail clippings. Needless to say, most of us were freaked out by Abraham and kept a close eye on him.
One day there was an explosion at the church. Abraham had built a bomb and brought to church. He carried the bomb into the restroom and, whether accidentally or on purpose, the bomb detonated. It was the last strange thing Abraham ever did. The bomb blew Abraham to bits. One man who helped clean up the mess said bits and pieces of Abraham fell from the drop ceiling.
At the time, I thought all of this was quite funny. I thought “I guess Abraham won’t do that again.” Years later, my thoughts are quite different. The buses brought thousands of people to the services of the Emmanuel Baptist Church. Most of the riders came from poor and/or dysfunctional homes. Their need was great, but all we offered them was Jesus.
Jesus was the answer for everything. Except that he wasn’t. As I now know, the problems that people face are anything but simple and Jesus is not the cure for all that ails you. What Abraham really needed was residential treatment and psychiatric care. What he got was a Jesus that could not help him. In the end, his psychosis won. ‘

The questions I leave with my readers from the two stories are these. Does the promise of ‘salvation’, physical, emotional and spiritual, come as good news to people who are burdened down with poverty, sickness and other intractable issues? Whatever we understand by the offer of Jesus to meet the needs of a suffering world, should we ever be so blind to the obvious needs of individuals that we fail to help them where they actually need help? Sadly we do not live in a world where the answer to every problem is ‘Jesus’. All of us crave simplicity in the face of the complexities of our world. Some will claim that they have found simple answers, through faith, to these complexities, while the rest of us know that many such answers point to their living in a fantasy world. The struggle to find paths to walk along, both for ourselves individually and collectively, is difficult. How many of us are now struggling with the question of who to vote for in a way that does justice to our Christian faith? The best we can, perhaps, hope for is to learn to live with the questions, than declare we have found the answers.

On many occasions in my life I have listened to the archetypal Christian sermon. I call it archetypal because it is the sermon/testimony that I have heard in a variety of settings and contexts up and down the country in a variety of conservative churches. The sermon will begin with a description of the way society and morality has gone to the dogs. Human beings have surrendered their morals and politics to the ‘spirit of the age’, which is sometimes revealed to be no less than Satan himself. The particular sin that today causes the most outrage is the practice and tolerance of homosexuality. This particular sin is so heinous that I have never heard any preacher admit to practising it himself, even if the rest of his unredeemed pre-Christian life was fairly murky. From his past, the preacher may admit to other gross sins, drink, bad language and different forms of lust. In making these experiences part of his testimony, the sermon will have this ‘before and after’ narrative. Before his moment of conversion, life was, for the preacher, a time of depravity and wanton behaviour. That was a pathway which leads straight to Hell. Even though the preacher has now moved beyond any thraldom to depravity, he will describe it with great relish, giving the hearers the impression that sin was, in fact, rather fun. The narrative will be punctuated with dramatic pauses to emphasise the horrors of hell that had been awaiting him if he had not left his unredeemed state. The middle part of the sermon/testimony moves on to the moment of conversion and how the depraved life was turned around by a statement of trust in Jesus and the uttering of the ‘sinner’s prayer’. Now that this moment of new life had arrived, he could look forward to the joys of eternal life in heaven. The whole purpose of Jesus’ life, birth and death was, seemingly, to provide a way out of the terrors of hell for those who make this particular commitment to him. This will include openly expressing their faith in his substitutionary death on the cross. Through this sermon/testimony, a message of hope is being offered, but the offer has the implication that a refusal to accept it is to invite a future eternity of pain and despair in the never-ending punishment of hell.

My account of the ‘archetypal’ evangelical sermon may have some elements of caricature but it is still close enough to the reality for my readers to recognise it from their own experience. It is in fact based on the mediaeval/Reformation model that understands that the point of Christianity is to provide the means for an individual to escape the horrors of hell. It is not an exaggeration to draw attention to the way that medieval Catholic piety was obsessively focused on presenting the sacraments and observance as being about avoiding hell and the uncertainties of purgatory. The Reformation itself was initially brought about by the protest of Martin Luther over the way that indulgences were openly sold to lessen the time to be spent in purgatory. In many English parish churches are chantry chapels, built for the purpose of offering masses for the souls of the benefactors. Priests were employed to do little else but offer these masses. Much, if not all, pastoral work was centred on preparing people for death, so their souls were fit to be received by God.

The mediaeval obsession with the eternal state of a man’s soul passed straight through to the Reformers but the proffered answers to this quest for eternal safety were to be entirely different. No longer was the believer to focus on sacraments and indulgences but on the pure word of God and the possibility that faith in Christ and his atoning death would release the soul from the horrors of hell. This binary world of heaven and hell still filled the imaginations of Christian men and women right up to the present. To be saved was to be able to be free from these terrors. Ordinary Christians, captivated by their own terror of this fate, were prepared to do anything, say anything, to receive some reassurance that they would not enter hell at the moment of death.

I am surely not the only person who has noticed that much traditional Christian teaching, especially when it has been presented to ordinary people, has been concerned with teaching how a individual can avoid hell. In practice this has meant that much preaching, whether Catholic or Protestant, has been openly using the weapons of fear and terrorisation. What has been heard by many has been this: ‘Unless you do and say these things, you cannot expect any place of safety (salvation) when you die.’ Such a stark message is still heard in many churches today. It goes without saying that such a threatening message, when internalised, creates enormous fear. I need at this point to remind my readers that this is not the message of Jesus as recorded in Scripture. Most of this mediaeval/Calvinist version of the Christian faith is lifted straight out of legalist passages ascribed to Paul, while we find little support for any heaven/hell obsession in the words of Jesus himself. If we take the heart of the teaching of Jesus as being about the ‘Kingdom’, we see that his concerns were about transformation of human beings and society. His followers are called to live in a different way, not in order to escape hell, but in order to change themselves from within. The way of preaching at people using power and terror tactics was one of the temptations clearly rejected by Jesus in the desert. He was offered the possibility of using political power to enforce obedience through terror tactics, but he chose not to. Instead the method of Jesus was to make an invitation, open listeners up to a new vision of what God was like and see what the way of love might lead to. In the Beatitudes Jesus speaks of a way of living which turns conventional values upside down. His is a way of humility, surrender of power and finding God in each other, but especially the weakest, the children and the people who are despised by the world. The proclamation of the Resurrection, for me, is the statement that, at a very simple level, if you live like Jesus, following his path of love and in a refusal to manipulate and control people, God himself will be with you for ever.

It is ironic that two great systems of presenting the Christian faith, the Catholic and Protestant, seem to have had so little regard for the words and message of Jesus himself. Obviously I have had to drastically summarise what he seems to have been about, but it is clear that he very little to say about people going to hell if they did not conform to a particular series of actions and beliefs. He also had absolutely nothing to say about homosexuality that preoccupies so many Christians today and for some has become the touchstone of orthodoxy. It is as if large numbers of Christians read a different Bible, one that records only the obsessions of the mediaeval and Reformation period. That is not the Bible I read, or indeed the one that reflects what I understand Jesus came to present to us. If I read the Bible to discover what Jesus was really about, then I read a Bible that teaches nothing about control, has no interest in terror and uses nothing in the way of threatening language. Scripture, as taught by Jesus, invites us to a new experience of life, life in all its fullness.

In a recent discussion on this blog I threw out the comment that I did not agree with the definition accepted by the church as to who is a ‘vulnerable adult’. I have now checked the various web-sites that deal with this question, and I have discovered that the Church of England and the Methodist Church have worked together on a definition which fits into a use employed by society at large. A ‘vulnerable adult’ is defined as any adult who is receipt of statutory care of some description. This might mean a resident in a hospital, a care home or receiving some other form of care, whether residential or not. Excluded from this definition are groups of people who have a particular health issue, mental or physical which do not require any sort of institutional care. This is to avoid the idea of stigma, that an individual can be labelled for life as vulnerable when they succeed in living quite independently and capably.

Before I express my reservations on the question of the high-jacking of the word ‘vulnerable’ to fit a particular definition, I want to talk about the word itself. It comes from a Latin word which means to wound, so that the English derivation has the meaning of one who is in danger of being wounded, emotionally or physically. It carries with it the notion of being defenceless or incapable of sticking up for oneself against a strong opponent or attacker. Clearly it is a useful word to describe anyone who is a victim of the aggression or power games of another. A person is vulnerable when there is some kind of threat of an attack to their wellbeing. He or she also remains vulnerable after the attack, of whatever kind, has taken place.

It is clear that from my mention above of the formal definition of ‘vulnerable adult’ that we have an example of a situation where a word used in a particular way has taken to itself a defined meaning which is far narrower than the word on its own would suggest. My understanding of the adjective ‘vulnerable’ wants it to have a larger meaning than that its defined use and it is this wider meaning that this blog post sets out to reclaim. In this post, I want to suggest that we need to find some way to articulate the truth that most human beings at some stages in their lives are vulnerable.

Before writing this post, I had a conversation with Chris on the phone, and he agreed with me that his story would suggest that he himself fitted into the category of someone who could be rightly described as vulnerable. To think about the adjective as it applies to his particular story, the word describes the way he was initially encouraged to see God as the answer to a number of personal and emotional issues, including his failures at school and lack of qualifications when young. His experience of illiteracy made him an extremely suggestible personality and thus he was attracted to the religious rhetoric he heard as well as to the confident personalities of Christian preachers. The word I have here used to replace ‘vulnerable’ is suggestible. It does not quite capture the same meaning, as vulnerable picks up better the emotional aspect of the tendency in an individual to follow a powerful piece of persuasion, whether religious or political. For Chris and others like him, this attachment resulted in a rollacoaster of feelings from elation followed by a sense overwhelming self-abasement and self-loathing. The Christianity that he heard was a Calvinist amalgam of threat and promise. It used his vulnerability to create hope but this quickly was followed feelings of fear and self-hatred. Chris was hooked by the promises of this faith but was then left traumatised by his internalisation of a harsh punishing God. No doubt we will be returning to this theme of the damage caused by ‘terror preaching’. Only a few of us have never heard it expounded, but Chris to some extent remains one of its victims.

The word ‘vulnerable’ is a word that needs to be reclaimed by those of us who are interested in the way that religion is sometimes taught and presented abusively. It is an adjective that describes, less the individual personality, but more the particular setting that he or she finds themselves in. I want to list now just three of the particular settings within people’s lives that render them vulnerable to an abusive version of Christianity. I will not describe them as vulnerable adults but as adults who pass through a period or state of vulnerability. One of these arguably happens to everyone, the other two are the result of economic and social events.

The first vulnerability that some experience is that of poverty. Although I was brought up in a home that, by modern standards, was lacking in many respects, we were never poor in terms of going short of food and clothing. The fact that I never had new clothes, but survived on hand-me-downs, was more a general feature of the 50s than any particular poverty within our family. I cannot claim to have known the sort of poverty that even today destroys hope and causes depression and despair. I can imagine that this kind of poverty would make me very vulnerable to promises to sort out the problems of despair.

The second vulnerability, the particular one that Chris faced, is the total powerlessness of leaving school without a proper grasp of literacy. In Chris’ case this problem has in fact been overcome, but for many it remains a lifelong blight. With such a handicap how do you discover whether a preacher is genuinely telling what the Bible has to say or whether he is reading extracts with the aim of manipulating you into attending his church? That powerlessness is also a path to inappropriate dependency to people who are more capable than you.

The third area of vulnerability, and this is probably one that few escape, is the period of transition from childhood into adulthood. There is a great deal to be said about the negotiation of a new independent identity following the years of dependence on others. Religious groups are good at exploiting this period of vulnerability for their own purposes, whether malignly or for the good of the young person. A faith, whether a cultic variety or more mainstream, provides support in this time of, often, chronic uncertainty. Space prevents me from saying any more on this point but the reader can no doubt reflect on the particular difficulties that he or she faced as they passed through this particular ravine of human experience.

I could easily add to my list of three ‘vulnerabilities’ that impact on the way that a individual is rendered more susceptible to the blandishments of religious teachers. Some of these may of course have deeply caring motives, but others, as this blog never tires of saying, have exploitation of the vulnerable high on their agenda. Let us always learn to be aware that human vulnerability is a fact of life, and that it is always immoral to take advantage in any way of another person who is in this state for whatever reason.

At a recent meeting of the Methodist Council it was announced that a proposal was going to be brought to the Methodist Conference on the topic of bullying and harassment in a church context. If these proposals are passed, the Methodist Church will be expecting to spend £140,000 to develop further work in this area. One Tony Tidey, with the splendid job-description as the Connexional Wellbeing Advisor spoke about the topic. He suggested that it was ‘uncomfortable and difficult to admit that bullying and harassment do sometimes occur in our churches’. Everyone in the church is called ‘to treat one another with dignity and respect’.

The Methodist record in the area of abuse has, to my mind, always been one of high standards. Obviously, not being a Methodist, I have not followed the detail of their child-protection policies etc over the years, but it was noticeable for me personally that, when I was collecting stories to illustrate the incidence of Christian abuse in the 90s, not one of them occurred in a Methodist setting. That is not to say that such incidents never occur, merely that this group of churches, with their traditional hierarchical oversight of ministers, was less likely to harbour abusive clergy or have so many intractable structural problems which allow this bullying and harassment.

For this post, I would like to set out some of my own thoughts, based on my reading, on the kind of work that might be attempted by the Methodist Church. If the proposed research does result in some fresh insights in this area, it will not only be the Methodist Church that benefits but all churches that work with similar structures, including my own Anglican Church. One common structure shared by both our denominations is that ministers are nationally accredited and subject to a degree of oversight. Arguably the Methodist ministers are more accountable to their central structures, but that point can be left to one side for the present. What I would like to examine are first some issues that to do with the personality of the minister in both churches. Secondly, I want to think about the role of volunteers within congregations.

For me the first and most obvious area which requires study is an examination of the latest research about the personality profiles of those who seek ordination. We have lived for a long time with the idea that, if someone believes that they have been ‘called’ to ministry, then that indeed is a sign of divine choosing. The candidates for ordination are, in fact, scrutinised fairly thoroughly but we still end up with a fair number of people who are bullies and guilty of harassment of various kinds. We urgently need a fresh assessment of the nature of vocation, using the latest insights from the world of secular knowledge to see whether ‘vocation’ may be a cover, for some, to seek a life of power and influence. Obviously the clergy are not the only factor in the occurrence of bullying and harassment in churches, but they are generally able, by being in a position of influencing the culture of their churches, to stop a bullying style from developing. Obviously there will be exceptions to this situation, including the scenario where the minister is him/herself bullied. We will, however, start with the hypothesis that much bullying behaviour is either initiated or condoned by the minister/Vicar in charge.

A couple of years ago I wrote a paper for a magazine ‘Modern Believing’ looking at the incidence of narcissistic behaviour among the clergy. This personality disorder will be expressed by a constant need on the part of the sufferer to receive praise and affirmation from people around him or her. In the case of a minister this will inevitably involve the congregation. He/she will have the uncanny ability to manipulate those under his influence so that a regular fix of narcissistic feeding is available to this minister. The current research into this kind of behaviour suggests that it is caused, either by a deficit of parental attention in early childhood, or through giving the child too much in the way of praise. Within these scenarios, the child grows up, either having to make up for the lack of attention, or to seek a continuation of what he/she had got used to having in abundance when very young. Whatever the cause, the narcissistic clergyman is going to be a menace as the one in charge of a congregation. If we recognise that bullying, among other things, provides an enjoyment of attention, then the narcissistic personality may well be one explanation for this kind of behaviour. Some recent study also suggests that narcissism, as a personality trait, may arise solely as the result of being constantly at the centre of attention. This observation would apply particularly to celebrities and politicians. To be praised, to be made the centre of attention constantly, is, for some an addictive experience and to be sought for its own sake. The clergy are, like politicians, constantly at the centre of their worlds, albeit far smaller. One aspect of a narcissistic addiction to attention is that a leader will be hyper-vigilant to any challenge to their authority and power. We thus have the common phenomenon of anger and shouting at individuals which is a frequent manifestation of bullying. Needless to say, sexual acting out can also be traced back to a narcissistic profile, but that cannot be examined here.

Another area which needs a thorough investigation by the churches is the issue of volunteers working within congregations. When an individual offers their services as a volunteer, it sets up a dynamic which is quite different to that of the workplace. The volunteer, because he/she is unpaid, may feel that certain rules do not apply to them. Just as the clergyman may feel a sense of entitlement because they are perceived as a man/woman of God, so the volunteer may feel that they can do their jobs with a great deal of leeway as to how the tasks are done. The rules set out by employers do not apply to the volunteer. This status as a volunteer, in other words, will even allow them, in extreme cases, to attempt to manipulate and control the work of the church. One really useful thing would be if the Methodist research came up with a thorough understanding of the way that church voluntary work operates, for good and bad. It might then publish a set of guidelines which could show what is expected of all volunteers. Too many churches are battlegrounds between strong personalities among their volunteers. Some use the church to carve out an area of influence and power as way of furthering personal needs. The strength to do this comes from their status as volunteers. No one wants to seem ungrateful for what they do. No one dares to challenge them and make them accountable, let alone ask them to leave. If a set of guidelines could be published when sets out clearly the incidence and danger of these kinds of power games in voluntary organisations like the church, then it would be far easier for councils to oversee the work of church workers, volunteers or not.

The conclusion of this blog post is to suggest to the Methodist group that we need to use existing research from social psychology and psychoanalytic thought to set out clearly the power issues that exist in churches which make the bullying and harassment possible. I believe that every example of bad behaviour can be understood if we apply the right tools of analysis. I look forward very much to see what comes up at the Methodist Conference in July.

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.