The decisive vote on women bishops in the Church of England has thrown up some interesting comments from the rest of the Anglican Church. I am not going to comment on these in detail but we should note that the woman bishops decision has been welcomed by the Anglican church in Uganda. The Archbishop of Uganda, who has welcomed the vote, leads a church that is part of the GAFCON group. As we noted on this blog large parts of the GAFCON grouping are virulently against the idea of women becoming priests, let alone bishops. These churches, particularly the Diocese of Sydney in Australia, would claim that their position is made inevitable by the passages from St Paul which speak of men being in a position of headship over women. Their position is well summed up on the REFORM website by their leader Rod Thomas. To be fair to members of GAFCON, they did admit at their conference in Nairobi last October that their members differed on certain issues, including their position on women. But one still wants to ask: ‘If you can differ about this very serious issue in the life of the Church, one that has caused grief and pain for large numbers of your members, then should you not come together and learn how to read the bible together? It is after all the same bible that you are reading.’

Coming at this issue from a quite different perspective, one would suggest that the reason Sydney, Uganda and members of REFORM disagree about the ordination of women has nothing whatever to do with biblical interpretation but everything to with history and sociology. I do not have all the facts to prove this point but if we were to look at the church history of Uganda and Sydney respectively, I would expect to find particular personalities and local traditions that caused the bible to be read in these different ways. To suggest that the leaders of the Australian diocese of Sydney read the bible in any other way than strict Protestant scholarship allows them to, would of course be thought by them to be insulting. But it would seem obvious that local factors, many of them not theological, can be found to account for the way this particular tradition in Australia grew up. One idea I have seen floated is that the paucity of women in the convict period of Australia meant that men were disempowered by the ability of women being able to extremely choosy as to whom they took for husbands. Whatever the reasons, the Sydney position is one that diverges not only from mainline Anglicanism but also from fellow conservatives in Africa.

Some might wonder why I have continued this discussion about women bishops. The answer is simple. Those who claim to follow the bible as being the inerrant word of God seldom agree as to what it actually says. Even those who gather in great international assemblies such as GAFCON 2008 and 2013 for the purpose of undermining, even destroying, the Anglican Communion, cannot agree on what the bible says. One response to this failure to agree on women’s ordination might provoke a response of humility. We do not agree, therefore we will seek to discern in humility and patience what God might be saying on this and other contentious issues. There is in fact not a smidgeon of humility in either of the statements from Jerusalem 2008 or Nairobi 2013. If we were to summarise the tone of both statements, they might be held to say simply ‘We are right and anyone who does not agree with us is wrong. ‘

The number of Anglicans who read the bible in the Sydney way and believe in the notion of headship is, thankfully, tiny. But there are many who read their bibles in a way that leads to dogmatic and fiercely partisan oppressive ways. Many women and children have suffered over the centuries because the male sex has taken upon itself the right to dominate and control everyone else. It is a serious matter that the Bible is claimed to be the source of this dominance. If the bible is a cause of stumbling for many, then let us learn to read our bibles in a new way. If we cannot manage that, let us at least introduce a note of humility before we declare that we KNOW what God’s will is for our fellow human beings.

I belong to the generation which once accepted as cast in stone that the clerical profession in the Church of England was male-only territory. My own acquiescence in this situation was reinforced by a knowledge of the way that the Eastern Orthodox (and the Catholic Church) thought on the matter. They were unable to accept change in this area (or in any other!) and I assumed that Anglican church would never decide to abandon its claim to ‘catholicism’ by considering the claims of women for priesthood, let alone episcopacy.

By the time the Anglican Church in England accepted the right of women to be ordained in 1992, my thinking had shifted considerably. I had begun to understand some of the deeper reasoning that prevented the Orthodox Church from accepting women to occupy a sacred role in the church, and it was not very edifying. According to Scripture (Leviticus) an issue of blood, including menstruation, made the individual unclean. In the Orthodox book of rules, called the Rudder, or Guide, no woman could receive communion or even enter church at the time of her period because of this uncleanness or impurity. Behind this reasoning lies a primitive horror of blood that makes her taboo. Such a reaction to the mystery of menstrual bleeding is of course far older than Christianity or even Judaism, but has been there in primitive thinking from the dawn of time. This kind of reasoning, I felt, was way out of date at the time of Jesus. It could hardly be appealed to in the twentieth century (or the twenty first!). An attempt to argue women out of priesthood was to some degree steeped in this kind of pre-rational sensitivity.

Knowing the history of an idea often helps one to remove its power to impress and convince. Once I had personally encountered some of these unedifying roots of misogynist attitudes in the church, I was not likely to be convinced by all the special pleading of those who argued that Jesus only chose men. No, as far as I was concerned, the prejudice against women being ordained was far more rooted in cultural, pre-rational feelings than any serious theology. How could anyone seriously argue against the equality of the sexes when at least some of the reasons for their inequality had been exposed by this appeal to history and anthropology?

The case for the ordination of women is not just about equality and fairness. My own studies in the nature and dysfunctions of leadership have shown me that in some important respects, women are less likely to abuse their power than men. In particular they are statistically less likely to suffer from the personality disorder known Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). The exact reasons for women being less likely to be drawn into this disorder cannot be discussed here but probably are connected to the fact that women, as a rule, seek a consensual rather than a confrontational solution to problems. I hate generalisations about the sexes as much as anyone else, but it is apparent from common sense observation that there are differences between the sexes and some of them make women better able to perform the functions of priesthood. It would probably also be true to say that each of the sexes brings different strengths and gifts to the tasks of priesthood. I am still pondering from the lecture earlier this week the implications of the theology of God as ‘mother’ and the idea of mothering as being an apt metaphor for the pastoral care.

Having placed women firmly into the role of priesthood, it is but a small step for them to become bishops. Episcopacy itself in the Anglican Church has become far more challenging today than it was and it is no longer possible for a bishop to get his/her way by simply expressing a point of view. Like with all authority positions, bishops are under challenge as never before. But there is a particular reason for welcoming bishops from the ranks of women priests at this time. This is because it is suggested that the pool of talented men to serve in this function has begun to dry up. Able candidates for the top jobs are in short supply. To have a cohort of able women to draw on for the next generation of episcopal appointments may give the leadership of the Church of England a shot in the arm which it needs. Perhaps the women bishops about to achieve preferment may bring in an entirely new feel to the Church of England. Perhaps they will also bring into the church a sensitivity to the issues of power abuse with which this blog is concerned. Let us hope so.

This week I am on yet another conference, but this time in Britain.  It is a gathering of around 80 people who are supporters of an approach to theology which is broad, liberal and inclusive.  I have not been to the conference before but I decided to come because the organisation has graciously over the past couple of years published four articles by me so I felt it important to meet them.  As is typical of conferences of this kind, the conversations are the key part of what brings one to these sort of gatherings.  I make a rule never to sit with the same person twice at meals so that I have met up with a wide range of people as a result.  There are also two or three individuals who I knew from college days 40+ years ago and it is good to meet up with them again.

Among the talks we have listened to over the past three days on a variety of topics, there was one that stood out as being good to share with the blog.  It was a discussion on a little known passage in I Thessalonians 2.7-8 where Paul likens his ministry to that of a nursing mother.  Emma Percy, the speaker,  sees the nursing mother as a paradigm for pastoral ministry.  This surprising metaphor seems to work at various levels.  It points to a relationship of tenderness and care between the pastor and congregant.  Although there is an obvious mismatch of power between mother and child, there is no way that a mother would ever abuse that power and harm the infant in any way.  In the context of our concern to see that power is not abused in the pastoral relationship, it is of interest to ponder the nature of a  relationship where the ’leader’ cannot abuse the relationship.  I place the word leader in inverted commas, because the nursing mother metaphor makes it a decidedly inappropriate word to capture the nuance of Paul’s metaphor.

A further way in which the metaphor of nursing mother works as a description for the relationship of pastoral care, is the way that the supply of milk is (normally) experienced as inexhaustible.  Emma pointed to the way that  infant’s milk is something that flows through the mother.   It is as though the mother just has to put the child to the breast for the miracle to begin again.  This she likened to the experience of the Holy Spirit filling the pastor with the words of comfort and consolation that appear apt to each occasion.  That is indeed my own experience of pastoral care working properly.  Meeting people at times of need, does seem to draw on a fountain of wisdom and grace which flows through one in a most extraordinary way.  Once again power abuse is ruled out of any pastoral encounter of this kind.

There were other points made in the talk but it was refreshing to have set out a model of care that ruled out the possibility of power manipulation.  The New Testament is full of metaphors of this kind.  Each one can form a bulwark against the possibility of a ‘leader’ harming a congregant in order to satisfy a craving for domination.  Let us all be sensitised more and more against this sad andtragic feature of church life.

As part of my theological formation over quite a number of years, I learnt to respect the academic tradition of study and writing. For a piece of writing to be considered ‘academic’ it must be presented with rational arguments. Statements cannot be plucked out of the ether, but they must be backed up by argument or an appeal to the position of others who are considered authorities in the field. Each discipline of study has its own rules, but they all look ultimately to the scientific model to validate their worth. Science itself always looks for proper evidence, repeatable experimentation and other factual material. This overall method of testing and scrutiny is applied, as appropriate, to all disciplines across the board. Theological writing of course does not have to read like dry scientific study to justify its worth, but neither would it be able, in academic circles, to appeal to a Biblical ‘proof’ text to justify a truth claim. A proper method of seeing a text in its historical and theological context would have to be undertaken first. All theology has to be argued with clarity and rationality, drawing where necessary on other disciplines such as philosophy and history. Where there are in addition relevant archaeological or psychological insights to be noticed, these also should be considered.

While at my American conference last week, I came to an insight about the cavalier and confusing use of historical material by many extreme religious groups. History, when written by professional historians, is normally presented as an interpretation of events in the past. Historians can and do differ in the way that such events are interpreted but overall there is a consensus about the facts of historical events. If there are gaps in the records about a particular period, then the historian will be ready to admit to the limits of his knowledge. They will then proceed to a presentation of what can be reasonably surmised from the existing evidence. When I was at school and studied Roman history, I initially wondered why the syllabus stopped at 180 AD. The reason turned about to be that the 3rd century is lacking good contemporary historical writers so that we know comparatively little about this period.

Last week I was confronted by two distortions of history that are put out almost universally by extreme religious groups. The first one is the story of their origins. In many cases the facts of how a particular group came into being is a story of conflict or a massive falling out between individuals and groups. Michael Reid, whom I have mentioned on this blog before, was asked to leave one Christian group for his aggressive behaviour. He then went off and founded another group which grew into Peniel church. The ‘success’ of this in terms of numbers and finance cannot be disputed but the people who still attend after 30+ years have bought into a massive distortion of many historical facts about exactly what went on, in terms of lies told, corruption in money matters and sexual scandal. This church, even after Michael’s departure, is still suppressing the history of its past.   The dispassionate scrutiny of good historical enquiry will never be applied to this church. How many other churches gloss over history to sanitise the story of their origins?

The second ‘lie’ that permeates almost every Christian cultic group, and many others for that matter, is the one that says; ‘Our teaching according to the Bible is the one that is completely true, and no other church reads the Bible in the faithful way that we do.’   When we consider this claim, which is being made up and down the country and across the world, it beggars belief that anyone can fall for it. How likely is it that God’s final correct revelation should end being correctly interpreted by an often poorly educated Pastor in a small out of the way place in, say, deepest Oklahoma? The only way that such a claim gets accepted is because of a chemistry between charisma on the part of the Pastor and need on the part of the congregation. I would want to say more on this but now is not the time.

Back in February the bishops of the Church of England put out a statement on their position on same-sex marriage. Within the statement they spoke about the way that church teaching on marriage issues and the law of the land had always been in harmony. Professor Linda Woodhead, a distinguished academic from Lancaster University, immediately emailed the Director of Communications, Arun Arora, to challenge this claim. The examples from history she gave of the church and state diverging in the teaching about marriage, are not important here, but what is important was the response that came out of the debate a week or two later when other academics had become involved. A disparaging email was sent to the Archbishops from Mr Arora describing the challenging of historical fact as taking a different ‘view’ and that it was being organised by ‘liberals’. In one sentence the ‘establishment’ of the Church of England seemed to be turning their backs of properly argued debate and suggesting that ‘academic’ equals ‘liberal’. The second word was being used in its political sense and there was the strong implication that the Bishops knew best and how dare anyone challenge them. If the Church of England ever does turn its back on the academic theological/historical contribution to church teaching in favour of subjective, arbitrary dogmatism, that will be a sad day. It is hard to see, in such a church, how there will even be the potential for the bishops to stand up the powerful forces of obscurantism and fundamentalism and help the victims of this theology. This blog, or at any rate its editor, recognises the need of good academic theology, to help fight for truth in the battle against abuse. Much of that abuse, as we have seen, comes from the bad theology preached in cultic churches.

It is now four or five days since the last blog but my small band of readers will understand when I tell them that getting back from the States was complicated and tiring. A plane to Reykjavik from Washington was delayed and I missed my connection to Manchester. I was then put on a plane to London which was also delayed and so I was scrabbling around to find the hotel booked for me in London after 11 pm. The final indignity was the discovery that the boarding pass for Manchester did not work at 6 this morning so I missed my plane while getting a replacement pass. Luckily another ticket was given me so I finally arrived home safely, but 24 hours late!

I am still in a state of jet-lag tiredness but I wanted to say a few things about the way the conference touched on the themes of this blog. I am hoping that some new American readers, recruited at the conference, will want to join in the discussions with their ideas and experience. They are very welcome.

One of the overarching themes of the conference was the way that laws of different countries approach extreme religious groups. I think I mentioned before that the American system is very reluctant to interfere in any situation where religion is mentioned. Thus cases of extreme emotional cruelty towards children are sometimes tolerated on the grounds that they are an expression of religious belief. The laws in this country are also confused in this area. An interesting point was made by one person on the issue of grooming. Legal processes are having to take into account that children are gradually sucked into an abusive relationship by the person wishing to abuse them. A legal definition of ‘grooming’ might well prove useful in describing the way high-demand groups operate and provide some legal recourse over cult’s more nefarious activities with vulnerable individuals. When I use the word ‘vulnerable’, I do not use it in the normal way because it seems that there are a multiple list of ways in which people are vulnerable and thus capable of being drawn into extreme groups. I personally believe that every young person negotiating the passage into adulthood is ‘vulnerable’ in my sense. There are in fact very few people who are never in a state of this kind of vulnerability and thus potentially capable of being drawn into this kind of leadership and idealism. Vulnerability is a notion that needs to be re-interpreted and re-defined.

The conversations I had with individuals who had spent anything up to 30 years in groups were fascinating. One of the things that came out of discussions and conversations was the fact that the early 70s was a ‘golden age’ for starting new religious groups. It was a time when the anti-Vietnam protestors and political agitators shifted from the outer issues to the inner. Hippiedom sometimes became a spirituality of an extreme kind. This is a theme that I know I have discussed before, but somehow the understanding of this historical fact achieved new depth when I talked about the way the world was in 1968, 1972 or 1975. My own memories of this period gave me fresh insight into what made some groups attractive and how the idealism of the times was tapped into by these same groups.

There will be various other themes that I want to share on this blog arising from the conference. But I want to finish this post with one particular insight. One discussion was speaking about the way that a powerful leader can affect the personalities of every member of his or her group. In various subtle ways the member will reflect the characteristics as well as the weaknesses of the leader’s personality. This is to preserve the leader’s power over the follower’s personalities. One aspect of this insight is to note that not only will followers subtly reveal aspects of the leader’s unpleasant characteristics -paranoia, hubris and contempt for the world outside, but also their personalities will never be able to grow beyond that of the leader. The insecurity of the kind of leader we are talking about, the brash charismatic controlling leader, will prevent the flourishing and creativity of all the followers which belongs to their uniqueness and individuality. The merging of minds, emotions and hearts which is sold as ‘Christian community’ is in fact an assault on integrity and personhood. Such cultic behaviour, wherever it occurs, is something that is to be resisted and fought. Love, as I have said elsewhere, wants human flourishing. In the same way, the loving Christian leader will allow the untidiness of difference, even if everyone has to live with the potential conflict that will arise when people are allowed to live with the discovery of who and what they are.

This will be the second blog post from my conference on cults in Washington DC.  The full conference began yesterday (Thursday) with a plenary lecture.  This covered the topic of the extent to which extreme religious groups are covered by law (in this case American law).  There seems to be a visceral reluctance for the courts here to interfere with anything that has religious content.  Keeping a child in isolation for his entire life on the grounds that his parents have allowed this, seems to be OK as long as no physical cruelty is perpetrated against them.  It is however possible, apparently to bring a case if ‘undue influence’ is exercised in money matters, though this is by no means easy to do.  Another potential opening is being explored through society’s recognition of grooming.  It is only a matter of time before grooming becomes legally defined and religious coercion may possibly be linked to this in due course.

My own paper was given yesterday morning and was well received.  My problem in speaking to an unknown audience of ‘experts’ is that I fear they know far about the subject than I do.  But it seems that my maverick approach to the topic of cults, namely to point out interconnections between the phenomena of extreme religious groups and (this year) themes of social psychology, is welcome.  I believe it important to share the insights that come from extensive reading and the raw data that comes from talking to people like Chris.  This is after all the blog is about.   My paper was a discussion of the way that social environments and institutions have a far more powerful effect on people’s thinking and attitudes than they would like to admit.  We think and make decisions all the time, not from our independent thinking process, but out of an unconscious reaction to what we feel that our environment expects of us.  I mentioned the way that a church building and architecture has a powerful effect on the behaviour of the congregation.  I noted that hospitals have the same effect on patients, not always to their own benefit.  Cults are perhaps just an extreme example of a group where the unconscious situational forces work frequently in a malign way.

My body clock seems addicted to waking up at 7 am UK time which of course is 2 am American time.  Today the hour and half for lunch was taken up with sleep.  The four strands of the conference programme, that I have attended, have been fascinating and I cannot separate them all out in my mind.  But I do want to share one intriguing talk this afternoon.  This was from a retired psychotherapist who had worked with Vietnam veterans and cult survivors.  There was no doubt in her mind that cult survivors were as much victims of post traumatic stress as the ex-soldiers.   The symptom s experienced and the treatment offered are identical.   The other point that I have picked from the other talks, and indeed my own paper, is that there are no instant cures for people who have been traumatised by exposure to an extreme religious group.  The current thinking  is that changes occur in the brain to the limbic system and difficult therapy is required to retrain these neural pathways to operate outside the influence of the cult.  One acronym that is banded about here is SGA which means second generation adult.  These are adults who were born into the cult and have never known reality outside it.  There is thus no ‘norm’ for them to return.  They thus have to learn the norms of society from scratch.  It is like growing up all over again.

The individual conversations continue and I learn from people many fascinating stories.  Many individuals have spent some time in a dysfunctional group before escaping and taking on training as therapists of various kinds.  There is a great deal of wisdom gathered here, both academic/professional and practical.  It would appear that the impact of ‘Christian’ religious groups outnumbers the ‘traditional’ cults.  My interest in abusive churches fits in with the profile of most people here.

The conference finishes tomorrow (Saturday) and I will be staying with a friend in Washington for two nights.  He is an active retired Episcopalian priest and I am meeting up with him at a gay-friendly church in the city where he is preaching.  It will be interesting to record how such a church deals with all the bile and hate that is handed out to gays in this country from some sectors of the population.

I am writing this at the conference of the International Cultic Studies Association in Washington DC.  Although the weather is extremely hot, we cope by relying on the massive amount of air conditioning flowing into every room of the Sheraton Hotel which is the setting for the conference.  The conference proper begins tomorrow but I arrived for the pre-conference session.  One of the topics was to discuss the academic research that is being done in the broad area of cultic studies.  I went along to this anxious to find out the academic tools that are used to research this area of life that is so hard even to define.

The session passed off fairly uneventfully with individuals describing aspects of research work they were undertaking in different parts of the globe.  My own method of research, which is to range widely across relevant disciplines seeking insights into this difficult area of study, seemed more interesting than collecting vast amounts of interview data before subjecting it to analytical scrutiny.  I told the assembled group about my random methods of study and then the woman next to me began to speak.

What follows is an impression of her story and some of it was gathered afterwards at lunch.  I asked her whether I could include it on the blog  and she agreed.  She was particularly grateful to me because I had been able to put some of her story into a wider historical and theological context.

Tammy was born to parents who had converted to an obscure Protestant sect in around 1971.  The date is significant because it is the time when vast numbers of ‘baby-boomers’ moved away from Vietnam protests and the ideas of ‘hippiedom’ to  embrace evangelical ideas and groups.  The whole family had joined including her uncle and aunt and her maternal grandmother.  At first the sect was fairly typical but very early on the group embraced fashionable teaching of ‘shepherding’.  This teaching ensured that everyone was under the ‘covering’ of someone else.  The whole church was like a massive pyramid so that each person was obedient to someone over them.  I explained that this teaching had emerged in the 1960s in Argentina to help beleaguered Protestants survive a period of oppression by a military dictatorship.  It was then imported to the States and countries around the world.  Whatever the intentions of its founder, Juan Ortiz, it was applied with great crassness and even cruelty.  The movement was officially abandoned in the mid 80s but, as Chris will testify, the ideas have lingered in many churches up to this day.  The church members received little benefit from being shepherded and instead many suffered severely when the care was applied by immature shepherds.  These no doubt were attempting to gain compensation from being badly shepherded by others above them.  Tammy mentioned that the leader of her group was supposed to receive oversight from some ‘high-ups’ in the movement but broke away from them when they demanded he go through a session of deliverance from spirits.

Higher education was denied Tammy as being inappropriate for young people, so Tammy was married off at the age of 18 to another member of the group.  The marriage produced three children but eventually broke down when Tammy began to question the teachings of the group.  It was easier for her when the dispute between the leader and those above him became an issue and the energy of the group was deflected to this rather than retaining control over the lives of all the members

In due course Tammy and her children fled leaving behind the husband in the group.  To date Tammy has had to spend vast sums of money to prevent the father claiming custody.  When the lawyer helping her had explained to  him the issues and patterns of control that existed in the group, he expressed surprise.  The simple answer is that almost anything in America goes in the religious realm on the grounds of freedom of worship.

Tammy is making a good recovery, and in her 40s has stated studies which will lead her to being a counsellor.  I have not recorded every detail of the conversation but I was struck how many times over lunch, I would comment, when she referred to some practice by the leader in the group, ‘that was to maintain their control’.

Shepherding was one the massively abusive practices by the church which spread from obscure beginnings in Argentina via the States to be found all over the world.  It provided a method of coercion and control which fed the egos of those in charge and left those at the bottom with very little sense of self-worth.  Such identity that remained was  often filled with shame and self-loathing.  I hope that my ability to interpret in part Tammy’s story will help her on her path to healing.  She has done well to escape but in telling a part of her story, one is reminded of all the many, many others who still remain in thrall to extreme cultic groups.

I expect to have more to report over this week.

The two words of the blog post’s title describe two very different ways of being and doing church. An inclusive church is one which welcomes all types of people, people who might otherwise be rejected for reasons of class, race, sexual orientation or age. Such a church tries, sometimes with difficulty and cost, to live out Paul’s statement that ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ’.

Exclusivity in Church presents a quite different vision of what it is about. For exclusive Christians, there is placed a great priority in ensuring that those allowed in church are worthy or pure enough to be there. They will also all have passed through a common conversion experience of ‘giving their heart to Jesus’. They will then be examined to see if they believe a series of statements connected with Christ, his sacrificial death and the need to trust divine revelation revealed in the Bible. They are then believed to be part of a redeemed humanity which, so their church informs them, is saved and destined for eternal life with God in heaven.

This second way of being church is linked to a world view that places a great gulf between good and evil. Human beings are engaged not only with defeating temptation and evil in their lives but also they are called to fight in the cause of righteousness against the forces of evil in the world. The powers of evil are believed to be full of lying and deceit and so exclusive Christians are encouraged to be suspicious of everything and everyone who is not closely identified with their cause. Even those who call themselves Christian must be regarded with, at best, suspicion if they do not speak in the same way as the exclusive Christians. They must be rejected if they allow people who are ‘sinners’ to be part of their fellowship, especially homosexuals. In some places Christians who submit to the ministry of female clergy are also to be shunned.

One of the strengths of this, admittedly extreme, presentation of conservative Christianity is that it is so counter-cultural that those who support it are paradoxically made to feel special. Because they feel the irritation and even hostility of those around them, they have to cling together for mutual support and protection. That closeness is a source of warmth and strength. They also find consolation from the passages in Acts which describe when Christians are persecuted.   If we are persecuted, so the reasoning goes, then it must be because we are true Christians.   The passages from Acts where it is said that the Christians attracted the good-will of the surrounding population are conveniently forgotten in order to sustain the martyr narrative.

To return to the inclusive Christian group, the disadvantage of seeking to live in harmony with the neighbourhood and indeed to serve it, is that no one is trying to persecute you. You will lack that self-righteous buzz of being martyrs for God. There is no reason to have to live in close dependence on your fellow Christians for your survival. The stories of how you became a Christian which draw on a fairly predictable conversion narrative, are absent. Indeed the sheer variety of members’ narratives in an inclusive church could be a problem in taking a church forward because there are so many versions of what it means to be a Christian. It will be for the minister to attempt to identify a common thread in the many accounts that all can identify with. The inclusive church will thus often be untidy and unpolished in exactly what it stands for.  No doubt the more confident exclusive churches around will describe it as ‘wishy-washy’.   But meanwhile it will continue its vital work of trying to reach out to people of all kinds.  Individuals, rich and poor, black or white, native or foreign, young or old, male and female will hopefully find themselves drawn to seek out the mystery of depth that is known to Christian tradition as God. The journey into that depth is helped by the experience of other human beings who have travelled a similar road. Above all, Christian people are drawn into a pondering of the life and death of a particular human being known to us as Jesus. His life and teaching, as well as the events of his death and resurrection, contain within them clues to the greatest mystery and question of all. The question is quite simply: How are we to live? Do we clutch on to safety and security and avoidance of pain, or do we cast off, as in a boat, to explore the new, the unexpected and the real and trust and hope to find God there.

Some eleven years ago my wife and I moved to the city of Edinburgh. At first, as in any new city, we found ourselves easily lost in getting from one place to another. But over a period of time we began to see the connections between one landmark and another so that setting out for a new place no longer filled one with dread that we might end up in a totally strange part of the city not knowing in what direction to go.   Certain parts of the city did remain strange to us and even after seven years I dreaded being asked to officiate at a particular crematorium on the far side of the city.

The task of getting to know a place involves a process of internalising a map inside of one’s head. The map that one carries around inside is no longer a map marking particular places but it also includes the connections between them. One learns a series of alternative routes to get from A to B. You have successfully put each landmark into a setting of relationships with other landmarks. To know a city is to understand how one place connects with everywhere else.

The task of getting to know the Bible is one that goes far beyond being able to quote particular passages. The Jehovah’s witnesses who bombard you with texts taken out of context, are rather like travellers who claim to know a city because they have visited certain landmarks. Metaphorically speaking they were taken there by coach and never understood how they got there. Far too many preachers endlessly quote high sounding passages from a pulpit as though that concludes any discussion. But every text has a setting and a context. Every text is linked to other texts and not to understand these connections is to show little understanding of the whole. Just as the map needs to show the roads that connect the landmarks, so the Bible texts and passages need the context in which they belong as well as their connections with the whole.

One of the great ‘aha’ moments in my own study of Scripture was the realisation that Paul, no less, evolved and changed in the time he spent writing the letters. One is able, for example, to trace a line of development in the way he understands the end of the world. The early language of I Thessalonians uses fairly crude literalistic language of apocalyptic to describe the coming of Christ and the way that people are physically ‘raptured’ to meet him. The language of I Corinthians 15 shows that Paul has re-thought his teaching as he realises that there are problems in his earlier ideas. Now he proposes that the earthly or physical body is raised as a spiritual or imperishable body. To use our map language, one is being presented with an understanding of the way that these two sections of scripture are connected. The route that joins them together is the idea of an evolution of thinking by Paul.

The problem about thinking about the Bible as being like a map, is that very people have cottoned on to this very basic idea. Even those who have years of study still seem very adept at treating a particular passage as though its context did not matter. And yet every single passage is rooted in a context of history, theology and culture. It will of course never be possible for anyone to know all that there is to know about the detailed map of the Bible and to see all the connections. But equally it would be wrong to pretend that that there is no map, that the Bible is a series of disconnected blobs of truth scattered over the landscape.

The study of Scripture is to see, even in part, the way that the idea of a God who is concerned for the human race takes shape. Different aspects of this revelation are discernible at different times. Different insights, not all of equal value are presented to us within the text. The notion of inerrancy, which we have discussed many times before, destroys the richness and complexity of the way that truth is handled in the text. We need to affirm the connections that exist within Scripture that allow us to understands the untidinesses and even contradictions of the text. There are no simple or ‘common-sense’ solution to the many problems that confront the reader who really wants to understand. The only way forward is to study at depth or to find a teacher who also wants to see the Bible, not as blobs of truth, but as vast interlocking system of reflection that presents to us some of the ultimate questions and the way that human beings have tried to respond to them in the light of their experience. Truth will always be more than uttering platitudes. It will involve detailed and painstaking engagement with the detail of the maps of truth that we have in Scripture.

A problem for Christian leadership?

Next month I am off to the States as a first time visitor for nine days to attend an international conference on cults. I have little direct experience of what are normally known as cults, Moonies, Hari Krishna etc., but I found that the organisation was interested in the study I had made on Christian groups which behave in cultic ways. Increasingly the articles in its journals seem to touch on groups that would normally have been thought to be part of main-stream Christianity. Because I am not a specialist, I am offering a paper which is based on my reading of the literature around the subject rather than some in-depth study with statistical charts. My offering this year is an attempt to apply some of the fascinating insights of social psychology to an understanding of cults.

Today I am not going to try and summarise the entire argument of the paper in 500 words, but rather to share with the blog one part of the discussion which is provided by an article written by Lord Owen, the former politician and medical doctor. The essence of his article is to postulate something he calls ‘hubris syndrome’, an affliction he ascribes to politicians, bankers and other very important people. The syndrome affects anyone, Owen believes, who has become self-important over a period over a period of time, through a constant exposure to the public admiration or scrutiny. He shows that the syndrome is similar, though not identical to narcissistic disorders. Both demonstrate a tremendous self-importance, sense of entitlement and messianic pretensions. Owen believes that both Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher developed the syndrome while in office. Interestingly he believes that in these cases the power of being Prime Minister gave rise to the hubris. It was this exposure to power that created the syndrome rather than a character flaw they possessed before they took power. This fits in with other material I have unearthed that talks about the power of the environment or situation to affect an individual in radical and unexpected ways.

Lord Owen’s article raises the intriguing possibility that religious leaders may be among those who are susceptible to hubris syndrome. He mentions cult leaders in passing but I am raising the thought that anyone who is put in a place of great responsibility and power may develop hubris in this way. The word hubris with its associations with classical Greek mythology is a better word than narcissism to describe the tendency of certain religious personalities to become overwhelmed by their sense of importance and entitlement. The unhealthy hankering after privileges and titles among some leaders is unhealthy to say the least. It is good that Pope Francis is beginning to challenge the pomposity of honorary titles, monsignors etc among the Catholic clergy, not to mention simplifying their accommodation arrangements. Within Greek mythology hubris is followed by nemesis. Nemesis implies a collapse of reputation, of power through having acted inappropriately or wrongly. It is true that many of the scandals involving Christian leaders, financial or sexual, involve the individual clergyman believing that they are in a place above rules, above conventions and even above people.

Hubris in short needs to be reflected upon as a failing which is possible for every person who takes on power in whatever setting. As part of clerical or ministerial training I can see a place for hubris sensitivity training! If such training were to be offered it may be that not only would clergy and pastors avoid it themselves, but perhaps they would pass on to their laity the ability to challenge it wherever it appears. The best antidote for hubris at the earliest stage is humour. It difficult to develop such hubris when those around you are laughing at the pomposity that is being developed. Before the full-blown syndrome has been developed, there is something rather sad and pathetic about its early stages. The best cure for this is to have it made the subject of ridicule. If it develops beyond the ridiculous, it then can become something sinister, dangerous or harmful. The political classes are to some extent held in check by such programmes as ‘Have I got News for You’. We need some equivalent mechanism within the Church ! ?