The Archbishop of Canterbury has called on Anglicans to ‘disagree well’ in the debates that divide Anglicans. However a recent survey indicates that so far from disagreeing well, the majority of male Anglican evangelical clergy believe that separation is a better option than tolerating disagreements in the Communion. They would also prefer that agreement would somehow be insisted on by a central authority. Their support for such a (papal?) pronouncement would, of course, depend on it conforming to their pre-existing convictions.

It is important to unpack what is being said on both sides in this debate. The Archbishop with his elegant phrase, ‘disagree well’, captures a gracious ability to live with people who do not agree with you or who use a different set of concepts and language to talk about God or moral issues. The ability to allow for a different narrative about such things alongside your own, is not difficult for the inclusive Christian. They will have a strong awareness that their own position is never the last word. The liberal inclusive thinker will also recognise, as this blog has emphasised many times, that words themselves are sometimes unhelpful in the task of describing truth.

The contrasting position, which has been revealed in a recent Yougov poll organised by the Westminster Faith Debates, reveals that two thirds (68%) of male evangelical clergy have no sympathy with the idea that the Anglican Church as a whole should embrace diverse ideas. A smaller number (61%) of evangelical women clergy would also take this line. For both groups, the idea of propositional truth trumps any idea of the possibility of ‘disagreeing well’ with those who do not follow the ‘correct’ line, whether it be on moral issues or on doctrine. From this perspective, truth, as presented in doctrinal statements or in the words of Scripture, cannot be changed or compromised. God’s will has been revealed in words and any attempt to change these words and propositions will be firmly resisted.

Overall the Yougov poll shows that most clergy approached support Archbishop Welby with his call for the church to ‘disagree well.’ 75% would back this appeal. But the problem of a fixed determined intransigence among a certain proportion of the clergy seems to be not easily resolved. As I have said recently on this blog, the reason for this failure to agree or to tolerate difference is unlikely to be completely theological but rather to tap into other aspects of personality and psychology. This blog continues to explore what these non-theological factors might be. But whether this intransigence comes from an individual psychology or a tribal mentality, it continues to be an institutional nightmare for our leaders in the church. The days of absolute episcopal power seem to be over as lay people, who pay for the church, begin to flex their institutional muscles. These same lay people will listen, not to a remote bishop, but to the clergyman at hand. If he defies the local bishop, then they will support him, when necessary, by withholding the Parish Share. A financial famine is the one thing that could cause the whole Anglican structure to collapse. It appears to be quite close in certain Dioceses in the North of England and in the Diocese of Truro.

The ability to ‘disagree well’ is something that I, as the editor of this blog, can firmly endorse. The problem is, however, not what I, as an individual, think but whether the church as a whole allows its intransigent minority to become more and more dominant. This year, according to the poll, those who cannot and will not shift from a fixed position numbers 25%. In five years time, what will that total be? This blog has its aim the desire to suggest that the tsunami of conservative thinking in the church should be challenged and if possible checked. Resisting intransigent thinking, even in a very tiny way, is a worthy activity, not only because it stands up for truth of a generous and inclusive kind, but also because truth of this type is less likely to cause pain and suffering to those who encounter it. Truth and compassion are two very good reasons for welcoming the Archbishop’s call on all of us to ‘disagree well’.

The Anglican Church has recently been completing the crossing of the final hurdles before women in England are permitted to become bishops in England. A female bishop could be in post as soon as next year. But in noting the historic events taking place at General Synod today (Monday), I am immediately led back to some reading I did some weeks ago about the depths of misogyny that is practised by most religions not least Christianity.

At the time when women were first ordained in the Church of England in the early 90s, I was asked to speak to a group of sixth formers in a girl’s private school on the issue. At that time the prominent opponents of female ordination were the Anglo-Catholic party in the Anglican Church and I spoke about their reasons for opposing it. I thought I was being perceptive in focusing on the issues around impurity and the uncleanness of women to perform sacred acts, like celebrating the eucharist, while ritually unclean. This sense of the unclean is what also lies behind the so-called ‘churching of women’. In the past women who had had children could only re-enter society after they had been to church to be ‘churched’ or purified. It was quite clear that the origins of this ceremony reached back to the Old Testament, and the ideas there and taboos surrounding the uncleanness of women after they had had a child. These visceral feelings about the nature of women’s bodies and its functions were presented alongside the rather tired arguments about how Jesus only chose men as his disciples. More recently I have discerned still deeper levels of hatred against women which lies behind the opposition to women priests and, by extension, to the notion of women bishops.

One strand of opposition to the ministry of women as priests and bishops is held by conservative evangelicals. This resistance is not universal among evangelicals but is expressed forcibly a strand of evangelical theology represented in the UK by a group called Reform. The Diocese of Sydney in Australia is a whole diocese that has set itself apart from the mainstream of Anglican church life by declaring that it will not ordain women to the priesthood nor receive the ministry of women ordained elsewhere to practise as a priest. A woman bishop from New Zealand was only allowed to preach in the Sydney diocese by being robed as a deacon. This solid opposition to the ministry of women priests is something that needs to be explored. What possible reasons are there that lie behind this implacable opposition to the idea of women exercising a priestly ministry?

It is reading the arguments put forward by the representatives of the Diocese of Sydney over a number of decades that allows us to get the flavour of the argument put up by this strand of conservative evangelicalism. Elsewhere in the Anglican world, the arguments against the ordination of women is not allowed to be the dominant voice in the discussion. It could almost be said that the case against women’s ordination is a lost cause among evangelicals, even though there remain strongholds of resistance in every Anglican country. In every presentation of the evangelical case against women being ordained, we hear the argument about ‘headship’. From a number of texts, mainly in Paul but also from Genesis, the argument was put forward that God’s will, as revealed in Holy Scripture was against the ordination of women. Headship in both church and family belongs to men. This is a fundamental truth revealed by God. In a revealing interview given by Peter Jensen when newly appointed a Archbishop of Sydney in 2002, he indicated that he would be more concerned about a Rector who supported the ordination of women than he would about one who questioned the nature of the resurrection. Whatever Peter Jensen meant to say in this comment, it is clear that his version of Protestant Christianity puts the opposition to women’s ordination very high up on the agenda of the important marks of a ‘true believer’.

What does this inordinate opposition to the ordination of women actually say to us? We had cause in a previous blog to claim that the opposition to gay marriage had more to do with politics and psychology than with theology. The opposition to women having authority of any kind over men could also be seen as a political struggle tinged with deep psychological roots. What do we have here? What I believe we find in this theological position is nothing less than a theologically flavoured misogyny. Hatred of women by men can come from many sources, but it is a truism that that throughout history men have found it necessary to dominate and control women. The feminist literature has explored the extent and breadth of this warfare against the female sex. In summary the female voice has been suppressed or ignored, her sexuality tightly controlled and her rights to dispose of her property as she thinks fit severely limited. It is clear that men traditionally have found the ways of the feminine deeply unsettling and their need to control what they cannot understand has been overwhelming. The traditional patriarchal societies of the past evoke a strong affection from evangelical thinkers. They appear, through rose-tinted spectacles, to be havens of order and godliness where women knew their place in society under the total dominance of men. It is perhaps no coincidence that that two consecutive principals of Moore College in Sydney, from where the anti-women theology receives so much support, were both experts in Reformation history. The period of the Reformation, to judge from comments of Luther, Calvin and John Knox, was a period that allowed women little power or influence. They too seized on stories of the failings of Eve and God’s will for the headship of man from Paul with great alacrity.

The ordination of women as priests and now as bishops may create problems for the Anglican church as it loses its relationships with the Catholic church and the Orthodox. It does however represent a victory over a rather seedy piece of theologising that passes for biblical theology. We in the Anglican church have not been taken in by this attempt to pass off misogyny as good or even adequate theological reasoning. The misogyny of certain Christian groups has caused untold suffering to many, and its final defeat in our church is a cause for celebration and thankfulness.

The final denouement at Trinity is yet to take place but the sense of drama and activity at the church continues apace. Since the revelation of the historical allegation of rape which was reported on this blog, the church has put out a number of statements. One contained the closest thing to an apology that the church has ever published but there was little sense of the incongruity of the words after six years of secrecy, forgetfulness and a seeming total unwillingness to unpack the events of the past. The latest attempt to stave off the wall of criticisms and recollections of the appalling events of the Reid era was the request to send in messages of support for the leader Peter Linnecar. The invitation was extended only to current members, with the implication that comments of former members would be ignored. In the event the church published results of the opinions of members and ex-members alike. It showed predictably that Peter L still has a lot of support from his congregation, many of whom are related to him by blood or through inter-marriage. The statements were slightly tempered by the suggestion that the church trustees was minded to appoint a new assistant pastor from outside the church. Such a person, it was suggested, might help the church to deal with the past. The tone of the messages suggest that the trustees may be being pulled in two directions. One group actually wants to deal with the past while another is in strong defensive mode with and for their pastor. A future of honesty and openness for the latter group is just too much to face.

Meanwhile the blog continues to recount some pretty awful stories by ex-members. None of them cross that line into illegality but they make painful reading all the same. A fourteen year old was expelled from the school with no notice after some apparently harmless behaviour and it was suggested that this action was taken by Peter Linnecar as a way of getting back at the parents who were challenging the church in some way. Another ex-pupil recalled being humiliated and lambasted for his ‘sins’ in front of the whole school assembly. What made his account poignant was his thought that this was a Christian thing to do in making his humiliation so public. Clearly there are numerous other stories that do not make the blog but there seems general agreement that the school was the scene for some foul power games against the parent of the children there. Humiliate the children so that parents fall into line.

The latest piece of drama is that Peter and Carolyn Linnecar have flown to the States. It is suggested that they have gone off to consult George Kovoor, now in America. George was formerly Principal of Trinity College Bristol and was reputed to have helped the congregation recover from the Michael Reid era. One blog comment however has suggested that he failed lamentably to challenge the church when particular allegations of misconduct were raised two years ago. George was handed an open letter asking him to question Peter and other officials, when he came to preach, about an extensive correspondence sent to the church over misconduct at the school. There was a suggestion that the entire batch of letters was shredded. His demeanour on that occasion suggested that his task was not to challenge anything in any way but simply to enjoy the church’s lavish hospitality. While George may have helped the church pick itself up after the departure of Michael Reid, there is absolutely no evidence that he has ever challenged it in the six years since then. For a man of wide experience of ministry, it is curious not to see evidence that he has offered any guidance or advice of a constructive kind since then.

Peter and Carolyn return from the States today (Friday) and there is some expectation, once again, that important announcements will take place this w/e. Will Peter continue as chief pastor or will he succumb to the pressure of the continuing revelation of the appalling events of the past? Meanwhile Nigel Davies, the blogmaster, has been invited to a meeting with the Trinity trustees at 7.30 am on Saturday December 6th for 30 minutes. No doubt that will be an important and interesting encounter. We wait to see.

The intense hostility of conservative churches within the Anglican Communion over the issue of gays has been alluded to several times on this blog. As I explained in the previous post, it would be hard to claim that the divisions are purely matters of theology. The battles within Anglicanism are also a direct out-working of other wider struggles that are taking place across the world, most notably the push by the political right in America to obtain power and influence over their opponents. Where there is politics in America, there is nearly always someone who is motivated enough and wealthy enough to throw a great deal of money to support the chosen cause. The struggles to promote the cause of the extreme conservative right against the liberal mainstream within denominational Christianity in America have drawn considerable sums of money from right wing foundations in the States. There are in fact five secular organisations which ‘throw’ money at any situation which might promote the ultra-conservative position. There is also a notorious individual called Howard Ahmanson, a follower of Rushdooney, who supports with his interest and money the Anglican conservative cause which has as its target, the ‘gay lobby’ within the church. The money flowing from all these sources has allowed a small of activists to mount campaigns of considerable strength against the Episcopalian Church in the States, particularly after the consecration of Gene Robinson, the gay bishop in 2003. These funds support right-wing lobbying groups such as the so-called American Anglican Council and the Institute on Religion and Democracy. American money also reaches conservative groups in the UK, in particular Anglican Mainstream.

We cannot on this blog uncover all the strands of activity that have been unravelled by careful investigators over the years. But enough material has been gathered to indicate their methods and allow their opponents to cry ‘foul’ at some of their machinations. In this post I want to focus on the activities of lobbyists at one particular meeting, a gathering of Anglican Primates at Dromantine in Northern Ireland in 2005. The meeting was supposed to be a private gathering of bishops under the chairmanship of Archbishop Rowan Williams. In fact it was the interference of those outside the gathering that dominated the proceedings of the conference. One the issues to be discussed at this meeting was how the Anglican Church as a whole was going to react to the American Episcopalian Church after Bishop Robinson’s appointment. Was the Episcopalian Church to be removed from the Anglican Communion? Some of those present, the Archbishops of Uganda, Kenya and the Southern Cone were closely working with the organisations in the States who were lobbying hard for this outcome. The situation of the meeting began to descend into farce as the Primates in the meeting were being in part coordinated by activists who were staying nearby. Notes were being passed to conservative sympathetic Primates as to what they should say and how they should vote. Expensive dinners were organised (and paid for) by the American lobbyists and it appeared that everything said at the meeting was reported to these same activists. It was even claimed that Archbishop Akinola was having material drafted for him to say and even the final communiqué was altered by the lobbyists on the outside. The discussion on this final text went on into the late evening, after Archbishop Akinola staunchly defended this lobbyist text.

The highly respected Archbishop Robert Eames who had been brought in by Archbishop Rowan to assist with the process of holding the Anglican communion together declared that he was ‘quite certain’ that African bishops were being offered money to cut their ties with the Episcopal Church. Archbishop Akinola challenged Eames to produce evidence but the claim was supported from other sources. The provincial secretary to the Uganda Archbishop confirmed that US conservatives contributed towards the salaries of provincial staff from 1998. Archbishop Akinola hinted strongly in a sermon to his fellow African Anglicans that the resources of the conservative Anglican Communion Network were only available to those who had cut themselves off from ECUSA, the mainstream American Anglican body.

Enough has been said to give the flavour of the way things were operating in the years that led up to the founding of GAFCON in 2008. The claim of this blog once again is to say that the so-called divisions in the Anglican church have much more to do with politics and psychology than to theology. Of course the Bible is quoted and used but one suspects that political agendas are at the foundation of many of the disputes that take place among the churches. I for one would feel greatly cheated if my church started to pursue right wing political objectives but wrapped them up in the language of piety and holiness. That is, in fact, precisely what seems to be happening right across the world in conservative congregations. We have to face up to the fact that the rich can choose to use their money to obtain power and influence in church and society as they wish. What they can do, they often will do. The church, as with other institutions need to guard against this invasion of political manipulation by the wealthy. The cause of honesty, truth and integrity needs to be defended against those who would destroy it in the name of what we would identify as an abusive manipulative form of Christianity.

As the reader of my blog posts will know, my concern for the problem of power in churches in Britain extends far beyond my own Anglican set-up. Many of the worst cases of clergy or ministerial abuse in fact take place in independent churches. These abuses, like those of Trinity, Brentwood, typically take place because of a complete lack of proper oversight. Such oversight would hopefully spot and call into question financial or emotional manipulation of members of congregations. The Anglican church does, however, have a particular issue connected with power of a somewhat different kind. The institution of bishops provides needed oversight but this management structure is counterbalanced by the extraordinarily power, rights and privileges invested in each clergyman who is appointed as an Incumbent. In the past every Incumbent possessed what is known as the freehold. This made him or her virtually unsackable. If the Church is determined to rid themselves of a particular clergyman for whatever reason, a legal process of immense complication and expense has to be followed. The institution of freehold has been weakened over recent years in favour of a system called Common Tenure. This sets out in details of what is expected of the clergy, their rights and privileges, including their access to support. It also importantly provides for a weakening of the freehold principle. The big draw-back to Common Tenure for the church as a whole is that it cannot be applied retrospectively to those who already possessed the freehold. As before they remain powerfully unsackable to all intents and purposes.

The anomaly of the continuing of the freehold for many thousands of Anglican clergy has emerged with a powerful topicality in recent weeks. I wrote about the trial of a priest in South London who was accused of conducting sham marriages over a long period of time. He and his co-accused were acquitted after the prosecution blundered in their presentation of the evidence. Technically the priest came out of the process innocent of the charges. There does not seem, however, to have been any argument that 400 weddings had taken place. As any priest knows, there is a proper process to be followed in accounting for the fees for these weddings. These all belong to the Diocese. In the case of the accused priest some £50,000 to £70,000 had gone missing. The trial which collapsed had focused on the illegal weddings so the issue of apparent theft was seemingly forgotten. The priest, now acquitted, was allowed to return to his Vicarage and the whole incident of missing money apparently ignored.

The question that occurs to me is this. Is there any institution in the world that would be unable to have a process for disciplining a member of its staff who had apparently failed to account for £50,000 + of the organisation’s money? It seems on the face of it that the freehold of the clergy is a more powerful legal force than the matter of large sums of missing money. Is the church going to have to take out a private prosecution to recover the money as, presumably, the police will no longer be interested in pursuing this man? The situation is full of anomalies and must be giving the legal advisers of the Diocese of Southwark a complete nightmare.

The power of the freehold is also emerging as an issue in my own Diocese of Carlisle. I speak in general terms as I don’t want to identify individuals. Briefly the situation is this. In the face of decline in both congregations and money, the Diocesan authorities have produced, with the leaders of both the Methodist and United Reformed Churches, a scheme for dividing up the diocese into 40 Mission areas. This was voted through at the last Diocesan Synod at the beginning of October 2014. The idea is that eventually each of these areas will have a paid ordained leader from one of the denominations, who will oversee a cluster of churches served by non-stipendiary local people. Some of these latter will be ordained and some not. The idea seems good in theory but in practice, it may never work, at least not for decades to come. The reason for this is simple. Several Anglican clergy with the freehold have been heard to say that they want no truck with the new system. Their legal quasi ‘ownership’ of the parochial areas under their charge is, as far they are concerned, not going to change for anyone. They also have no experience of working with other denominations and don’t want to start now. They know that no directive from the bishop or archdeacon will be able to force any change in the way they choose to do things, at least as long as they are around. Some freehold clergy are still in their 30s and thus it could be a very long time before future clergy, who do in fact buy into the Mission Areas idea, take over in every area of this diocese. The fact also that many of the clergy in this diocese are deeply conservative theologically, means that the practical difficulties of successful ecumenical co-operation are compounded still further. Supporters of groups like GAFCON are not good at conceding that people who are different from them theologically, or who come from another denomination, might have something important to say.

In these two cases it would appear that the clergy freehold is able to strangle both the proper administration of the institution and the ability to adapt and change to fit new circumstances. The task of the Bishops and other members of the hierarchy seems more and more problematic as they deal, first, with a laity who have increasingly the power of the purse-strings and, secondly, a clergy who can, when they wish, block change and the smooth running of the institution. The situation in South London is an organisational nightmare and the problems of unveiling and putting into practice an imaginative plan in Cumbria will become increasingly apparent over the coming months and years. Although I have set out the problem, I can see no obvious solutions. All that I would ask for is that someone in the institution would wake up and admit that there is a serious problem about both authority and power in the Church of England.

One of the topical issues in the church today is whether one group of Christians can stay in the same communion with other Christians who think in a different way from them. The particular example I have in mind is the fragmented state of the Anglican Church over the situation of gay sex and the ordination of practising gay people. In the past Christians separated over differences of doctrine, especially, in the first five centuries, when there were different views on the nature of Christ and his relationship to God. In 1054 the Eastern Church formally separated from the West over the question of whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father or from the Father and the Son. Obviously there were other cultural and political factors at play, but there were some serious theological issues to be resolved. Maybe they would have been but for the enormous issue of the fact that hardly anyone in 11th century Rome was familiar with the Greek language. It was never going to be easy to discuss erudite the theological points that were outstanding between the churches, when the language of one was so little known by the other.

The differences that exist today between Anglicans in different parts of the world is, arguably, quite a different kind of separation. A large group of Anglicans stretching from Sydney in Australia to sub-Saharan Africa with supporters in Britain and America have chosen to withdraw from association with other Anglicans on the grounds that some Anglican churches are turning their back on centuries of Anglican tradition by tolerating a gay life-style and ordained gay clergy. Although formal separation has not yet taken place, the rhetoric put out by GAFCON, the conservative Anglican grouping, in 2008 and 2013 makes it unlikely that a full gathering of Anglicans will ever take place again. This is tragic but we need to understand that unlike schisms in the past, the differences are not matters of theology. They should be seen as divisions that involve visceral dislike, even disgust, on the part of one group of Christians for the acceptances of another.

The Christians represented by GAFCON affirm that they are minded to separate from the wider Anglican body because they find it impossible to receive communion, or share it with someone in a gay lifestyle. This extends, not just to gay ministers themselves, but to entire church bodies which are tolerant on the gay issue. Although the expression is used ‘unfaithful to Scripture’ to justify this stance, one suspects that here, in this area, theological issues are not in fact high on the GAFCON agenda. In the past Christians did argue and separate on theological questions and some of us have had to revisit the finer points of Arianism or Monophysitism as part of our theological training. But I am suggesting that in this case Christians are separating because of an intense dislike of the lifestyle of others. The separation is wrapped up in theological language but psychological issues seem to be pre-eminent in this case.

If we have to find a theological/historical precedent for the present schism, we need to go back the heresy of Donatus in 4th century North Africa. The issue was about the acceptability of certain bishops who had handed over their books to the persecuting emperor Diocletian as a way of warding off martyrdom. As far as Donatus and his followers were concerned, this bishop had for ever cut himself off from the Christian body, and thus would never again be able to administer valid sacraments. This presumption that valid sacrament could only be offered by sinless clergy was clearly unacceptable to the wider church. St Augustine, a century later, in particular stood out against this puritan rigorist idea. It made the institutional integrity of the wider church impossible to sustain if a group of Christians could declare a sacrament invalid because they did not like the lifestyle of a particular bishop or clergyman. The validity of the sacraments had to depend on the action of Christ, not the moral rectitude of the individual priest.

Thanks to Augustine in particular, Donatism was defeated decisively even though it lingered right up to the time of the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century. We do however seem to be having a re-emergence of the Donatist heresy in the actions of GAFCON today. They disapprove of the life-style of certain bishops and clergy and for them that is a reason for splitting and schism. It is not possible for Anglicans beyond GAFCON to allow one group to decide what is and what is not acceptable behaviour on the part of clergy. If such decisions are to be made, it must be with the mind, wisdom and understanding of the whole church. Anglicanism along with most of the rest of Christendom has firmly rejected Donatism. The present splitting is at heart not theological but, as I have said, ultimately to be understood through psychology, history and culture. If there were real theological issues but genuine goodwill on both sides, then the theological issues could be unpacked and, hopefully, resolved. Psychology and visceral hatred however are not so easily resolved. The issue is further complicated by the way that conservatives appeal to a unworkable pattern of reading Scripture. This sometimes claims that a single text, even taken out of context, can be made the foundation for a complete theological system. That problem goes on raising its head every time we try to understand and respond to conservative Christianity which, according to this blog, uses and abuses Scripture in a flagrant and unhelpful way.

In following the Brentwood saga as reported in the last blog post, I found myself making a comment about the nature of cult-like churches on the other blog. I mentioned that cultic leaders create rigid boundaries. These have two purposes. One is to stop people finding out information about what goes on inside the group. The other is to stop people inside finding out about the way that the rest of the world lives and thinks. These boundaries afflict those in leadership as well as the ordinary members.

What are the boundaries that are built around authoritarian churches and groups? Obviously they are not physical, but they might just as well be for the way they function. The way into an authoritarian set-up is relatively easy, but the way out is extraordinarily hard. The first part of the boundary is created by the paranoia of the leader, which is then passed on to his followers. He will teach those in the group that the world outside is incredibly dangerous. Michael Reid found a good way to terrify young parents who came to his church. He told them that local schools were hotbeds of loose morals and Satanic activity. The only safe place for their children was to attend his Peniel school. Once the children had entered the school both children and parents came under his dramatically volatile exercise of power. Reports indicate that some of the parents who displeased Reid were then controlled by unfavourable treatment being meted out on their children. The paranoia was also a constant part of the preaching. In common with many similar churches, the preaching emphasised how all other churches failed to provide access to God. The fate of those who did not had proper access to God, was, needless to say, a place in eternal damnation. The only safe place was to be a member of Peniel. Whether this humiliating, coercive style of preaching still exists, it certainly was still around at the time when Gail attended the Bible School at the church.

The second part of creating boundaries in a church is the personality of the leader. A leader who uses charisma in its secular sense, sets up a vulnerability in those who are initially attracted to the larger than life personality. Many people lack a full dose of self-esteem, so that when they meet a large powerful personality who takes an interest in them, they are attracted to them. Charisma is quite simply the ability to attract others to oneself, whether because of a magnetic quality or because they put forward a vision that seems both to make sense and provides a direction for life. The interaction between charismatic leader and led is of course not an equal one. However exciting the initial contact had been, it quickly develops into a relationship of dependence. The ‘big’ personality needs the fawning adoration of the acolytes while the dependent ones hanker after the scraps of attention from the leader. It is unhealthy in both directions.

In looking at the history of Peniel as revealed through the blog and recalling my one visit to the church, it would seem that the present dynamic is vastly different from the old. The current leader, Peter Linnecar, does not seem to exercise power in the same way as his former mentor, Michael Reid. MR exercised a lot of power through the exercise of charisma, of which much was self-serving and malign. PL, on the other hand, exercises his power by appearing to cultivate a mystique around himself. He appears to do very little in the way of pastoral activity and, apparently, never answers emails or phone calls. But, by being inaccessible to the ordinary members of the congregation, he is able to suggest that he is a man of depth who is too important to bother himself with the day to day issues of the church. By concentrating his appearances to Sunday mornings, Peter maybe is exercising a charisma of remoteness which is in the last resort is just as powerful as the former regime. In the present regime, there is still in the congregation a hunger to be dependent on a charismatic personality who can solve the problems of not feeling sufficient self-esteem. MR did this by the exercise of charismatic power which involved shouting and humiliating alongside occasional words of encouragement. PL exercises a form of charisma which does not use force but the power of an inaccessible mystique.

How does the exercise of charismatic power create boundaries? The best way to think of this dynamic is to think of iron filings. Anyone who submits to charismatic authority is like one of the charged pieces of metal that are drawn to a magnet. In looking at the pattern that is set up, the observer can note other pieces of metal that have not been charged in this way. The boundary lies clearly between the two types of metal. Many people look on churches and cults where the strong charismatic figure at the centre holds so much power. How is this possible they think, why do people get caught up in this? It is possible because this seems to be the way that groups operate. People will always follow the strong personality who will help to make up for their own feelings of not being complete. They are drawn to the magnet and after a time they become dependent on its energising qualities. They cannot imagine ever living beyond the orbit of that energy again.

The situation at Brentwood is still unresolved. No resignations have taken place and PL has challenged the congregation to come out and say if they want him to go. As at least 50% of the congregation is related to him by blood or through marriage, such a vote is unlikely to go against him. He has also created, as I have tried to describe, a charisma of mystique which operates in a gentler way than before, but may be equally powerful. The situation is finely poised. Gail’s testimony may indeed have opened a flood-gate. But we will see.

Back in March I did a blog post about the church in Brentwood which suffered under the cultic regime of Michael Reid. MR, as I shall call him, was removed from post after details of an illicit ‘affair’ with the choir mistress came into the public domain in 2008. In fact there were numerous skeletons which tumbled out of the cupboard and these included the use of arbitrary power and manipulation as well as highly questionable financial dealings to benefit MR and others among the charmed circle of leaders. Following massive legal expense for the church, MR was removed from office. It still took a further five years to get a court order to evict him from the church premises that he occupied.

With the removal of MR, it might have been thought that the church could have a new start. But unfortunately for the church, the trustees appointed MR’s number two, Peter Linnecar, as pastor. Paying him an inflated salary of £80,000 pa, they believed that he could take them to a new future. The trustees had not calculated how much remained to be done to remove the old patterns of cultic church life that remained and in which Peter Linnecar had been deeply involved. A blog was begun by one Nigel Davies asking that a full account of the abuses of the past be acknowledged and proper apologies made. Many people had left the church with the departure of MR and the majority of them had suffered severely at his hand. These people wanted the church to come clean about the appalling events that the church had allowed to happen over 30 + years. From my point of view the church had exhibited all the typical signs of a cult so this blog, which I followed avidly, was of great interest, particularly as it revealed attitudes of both current and ex-members. From time to time I had cause to comment based on my studies of church dynamics or arising out of reflections on a visit to the church in 1998 in preparation for my book.

About five weeks ago, our blog came to interact with the Brentwood story. I had a chance email from one Gail (a pseudonym) who had visited this blog and liked the tone taken here on the theme of abusive religious groups. She had been part of Peniel, as Trinity church was then called, some thirty years ago. As a young woman from America she had been sent here to study in the so-called Bible school at Brentwood. In practice that meant the church had a group of young females to do chores around the premises of the church. Eight of them slept in a room with one toilet between them. In addition they were subject to relentless and aggressive bible indoctrination when they were humiliated and generally made to feel worthless. Gail also hinted to me of a darker aspect of her time in Britain.

I responded two or three times to Gail expressing my appreciation of the fact that she had chosen to trust me with this personal information which I promised not to pass on. I was also pleased that she had found helpful some of the material on the blog. The situation changed dramatically a week ago when Gail asked Nigel to publish on his blog a full account of her traumatic time in Brentwood at the so-called Bible school. The account is well written and is devastating in its effect on the reader. For those who do not want to read the account in full (connection to post given at end), Gail’s story is a description of cult life where total control was exercised. This extended to clothing, social contacts and even diet. Passports were taken away and money that had been sent by parents was intercepted and doled out in arbitrary small amounts. The dark secret, which Gail had hinted at in communicating to me, was rape at the hands of a church member. In spite of the devastation caused, Gail has emphasised in a subsequent contribution to Nigel’s blog that even more painful were the months of endless humiliation and mistreatment that preceded the sexual violence. Her words are as follows: ‘The emotional damage done by that night is terrible but, in all actuality, it pales in comparison to the damage done in the weeks and months leading up to that night. ‘

In the week since the publication of the account, the publicity machine at the church has gone into overdrive. There is a hint of panic in their public utterances. In a statement published some four days ago, the statement spoke of their intention to ‘investigate formally an allegation of impropriety’. A further statement spoke of the leaders desire to ‘apologise unreservedly for the hurt and distress caused’ and they expressed shame for ‘negative attitudes shown by the leaders towards various people at the time’. The statements represent a massive shift by Trinity Church even though genuine remorse for the events has yet to be shown. But the statements are possibly preparing us for a change of regime at Trinity and the removal of the chief pastor Peter Linnecar. Why do I think this? The language being used has for the first time used the language of apologies, something they have hitherto been unwilling to do. Previous statements by the church have spoken of regret that some people felt they had suffered. It has always been said that Trinity could not apologise because it would open them up to court cases. Now that they have been pushed into a corner by this allegation of a crime committed on their patch, they see perhaps that the fastest way out of the problem is to ditch their leader who was deeply implicated in everything that Reid was up to in the Bible College days.

I am of course speculating as to what will happen next, but the path to truth and justice for hundreds of people abused by the narcissism of Christian leaders is always difficult and tortuous. As I have pointed out before, the narcissistic fantasy for a many leaders like MR and Peter Linnecar is to believe that their utterances are beyond argument and infallible. This position of course goes hand in hand with a belief in the infallibility of the bible text. Gradually the authorised expounder of the infallible text becomes infallible themselves and it becomes almost impossible for them ever to admit being wrong. Gail’s testimony (and Nigel’s blog) is a powerful weapon against such pretentiousness and pomposity. Events are moving fast and things may change as soon as tomorrow. Meanwhile we believe in a God who scatters ‘the proud in the imagination of their hearts’. More to come.
Here is ref. to the student’s testimony
http://victimsofbishopmichaelreid.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-cautionary-tale-from-survivor.html?showComment=1414146863353#c4239206485157513377

There is a word that resonates across Christian history which means ‘destruction of images’ which is iconoclasm. There were two times in history when Christian leaders attempted to destroy every vestiges of picture or representation of religious themes, whether carved or painted. The two main periods of this iconoclasm were the eighth and ninth centuries in the Christian East and the sixteenth century in the protestant West, particularly in Northern Europe In many ways Eastern Iconoclasm is the more interesting, especially in the way that iconography was first rejected and then reinstated in the churches of the Byzantine Empire after 843 AD. This episode, although it is something I personally resonate to, is less relevant to our overall theme than the massive destruction of art and imagery in this country, among others, at the time of Edward VI right up to the English Civil War. Only this morning I walked past empty plinths on Carlisle Cathedral which would once have had statues on them. These were then prised from their place by puritan zealots in the name of a reformed faith in the mid 1500s.

In both East and West the reason given for removing images and statuary was that it was essential to destroy idolatry and the worship of ‘graven images’. The argument as to whether images on church walls could be said to constitute real objects of worship, needless to say, was debated extensively in both parts of Christendom. Clearly there were also deeper issues at stake. In the East the Byzantine Emperors were influenced by the iconoclastic behaviour of the Arab invaders. They had their own cultural reasons for rejecting imagery but to say here more than this would be to lengthen my post too far. As far as protestant Western Europe was concerned, the old medieval symbolisms of Catholic theology seemed to be a distraction from the new protestant emphasis on the Word as the means of approaching God. The ordinary faithful member of congregation had been cut off from the Bible text because of illiteracy and the refusal of the church authorities to tolerate translations of any part of the Bible. One the main spurs of the Reformation was the availability of affordable printed Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. This could now be studied free from the control of the priests and other church authorities. All the pictorial imagery of the churches which had been the ‘Bible of the Poor’, now seemed to be a drastic filtering and censoring of the plain message of the Bible. Art which had communicated the Christian faith to the illiterate church members now came to be seen as the enemy of the protestant faith sweeping across Northern Europe.

The destruction of countless statues, paintings and illuminated manuscripts in the name of the ‘new’ religion represents the greatest acts of cultural vandalism the world has ever seem. But however much we may decry this period of our history, we may be grateful that most of the cathedrals and parish churches of England were spared, a fate not afforded to the equivalent buildings in Scotland. If anyone has ever been to the city of St Andrews in Scotland it is possible to see the fate that might have befallen all our cathedrals. We have to ask the question as to why there was so much hatred of art and sculpture. We have hinted at the way that the written word was a dominating idea in the understanding of what faith. If you had the written text, so the thinking went, you had direct access to the mind and laws of God himself.

The English parish church never plumbed the depths of artistic austerity that we find in protestant Northern Europe. There the pulpit was placed right at the centre and raised up high. This communicated clearly the idea that the preaching of the Word was the most important thing that happened in the church building. Preaching of necessity involved actual words, so this currency of the word became the chief method of communication. Images, symbols and pictures became redundant to the supremacy of verbal communication of saving truth.

There are of course many Christians who agree with the iconoclasts of the past and can say nothing good about imagery and symbolism. The idea that truth can be shared through a picture or image simply means nothing to them Such Christians probably also reject beauty and architecture as relevant to the task of worship. Once again I find in this discussion an awareness of a parting of the ways in what one might call Christian imagination. For me and for many others, both past and present, both external and internal pictures enable a participation in mystery and the aspect of the divine which can never be reduced to words and concepts. To take away such images, of whatever kind, is to impoverish my grasp of religion enormously. Iconoclasm is not just a destruction of images, it is a destruction of faith.

I am one of those people who rejoices in the aesthetic, the symbolic sides of religious faith. I rejoice that the human spirit can use to its enrichment the art of every culture and age to penetrate and to understand better the mysteries of faith which so often transcend words. We all need words (as for this blog post) but let us never be trapped and strangled by them. Artistic images and symbols, mental images, all form part of the means whereby human beings can ascend to the knowledge and contemplation of God himself.

I have just been reading a blog post by the Secretary of the organisation called Modern Church on the topic of the parochial system in the Church of England. The reason that I refer to this blog post by Jonathan Clatworthy is because it has got me thinking about the question of the future of the parochial system in the Church of England. My original comment can be read on the link that I shall give at the end, but my present blog post is an extension of my reply to Jonathan.

Among the many problems of the Church of England is the question of finance. The most expensive part of financing the church is the provision of clergy and paying for them and their housing and pensions. One existing solution to the expense of stipendiary clergy is to employ ‘self-supporting’ clergy who earn a living elsewhere and provide support for churches at week-ends. This system is in part a response to a need, and we can say that it is thanks to these non-stipendiary clergy that the parish has just managed to limp along and survive. But there is one great draw-back to any dependency on not paying an increasing percentage of the clergy in the Church of England. The draw-back is that it will never be possible to reproduce the educational standard that was required of clergy in the past and to provide it for this army of part-time unpaid clergy. In my generation the State paid for my undergraduate theological studies and my two years in residential training. They even agreed to pay for a four month sojourn studying in Switzerland. Such largesse is no longer to be found and the fact that ordinands are to be found in an older age group, means that few of them would, in any case, have the time to take the training that those of us in our twenties could once enjoy.

For a whole number of reasons the ordinands of today, particularly the non-stipendiary ones, have to enter ordination with less time for study under their belt. This does not make them second-class clergy but it does mean that many of them will find the teaching and preaching role something hard to sustain. Jonathan Clatworthy’s solution is to face this situation head-on and suggest that teaching and preaching should be a specialised ministry, undertaken by a few specially trained people. This would mean that the parish churches would be places where people gathered for worship and prayer. The teaching role would a parallel but less frequent occurrence, either taking place in particular centres or as an itinerant ministry. I mentioned in my response to Jonathan’s post the existence of preaching crosses in many villages, which is where people gather to listen to a passing Dominican friar in the mediaeval period.

I don’t want this blog post to be too critical of the sermons I have heard since retirement, but some have been dire. My criticism of many of the sermons I have heard is two-fold. Some have been poor because of a simple lack of understanding at any depth of the Bible or Christian theology. Others have been below standard because the preacher is operating out of a theological perspective that is narrow and deeply partisan. There is an evangelical-type sermon that has a few endlessly repeated motifs and too many clergy are repeating this litany of appeals over and over again. For me, and this is a controversial criticism of the evangelical conservative position, there is a type of preaching that finds its appeal only because it is simplistic, banal and without subtlety. For anyone who likes to be taught something in the experience of listening to sermons, these appeals are irritating at best. They potentially destroy any sense of adventure or growth in the activity of going to church.

What might church be like if the attempts at preaching were removed? For a start the services would be shorter. Instead of sermons there could be times of reflection when the leader invited the congregation members to offer their own take on scriptural passages. There could also be times of silence and an attempt to experience what it is like when words stop. There could be a dynamic closer to a social meeting but interspersed with prayer and reflection. The church building might not necessarily be the best place for this kind of gathering. However it takes place, it would not require an expensively trained clergyman to lead it. To make up for the lack of sermons at these gathering there would be a monthly occasion when there would offer a first-rate professional teaching event at a near-by town. This would be led by someone who understood communication and teaching. Alternatively/additionally the same teacher/preacher would come, say, once a quarter to each church to deliver a memorable address which could be chewed over in the following weeks.

Moving preaching from being an ordeal to something exciting and worth waiting and travelling for, could inject a new energy into the Church of England. The small often demoralised churches in the countryside could be places of gathering and prayer, led by local people, while the teaching and challenging aspect of church life would be done by those who knew what they were doing. From my personal position, there would be an escape from the bondage of an ever-increasing dominance of conservative dogmatic preaching. If the Anglican Church stands for breadth, it would never hand the task of teaching only to those who advocate a partisan and narrow point of view. The level of theological learning required of these diocesan teachers and preachers means that that the vast majority anyway would come from a liberal perspective. In this case liberal is not about a party line but about taking a perspective that is grounded of an in-depth broad non-partisan view of theology. All that would of course have to worked out in detail by the powers that be in the future, But meanwhile it is an idea that possibly may represent the future, a future where there is genuine hope for the Church in England.
See: http://clatworthy.org/wordpress/2014/10/does-the-church-still-need-parishes/