From time to time I hear individual stories of people who have been treated badly by religious groups. When faced with a situation of mental distress the churches seem to have responded in these accounts with an unholy combination of zeal, ignorance and an unbelievably incompetent exercise of common sense. There is one story of a young man who died recently in my part of the North of England after being rejected by his church even though he was overwhelmed with mental distress. He then took his own life. It would be wrong to give further details of this story because I have received what I know second hand and so I do not have all the facts of the case. So I will tell the story of another young man who was also, in the course of inept pastoral care, treated appallingly by a church in the States. I hope those who knew Richard and may be reading this blog will recognise that Ken’s story is being told in memory of Richard.

Ken Nally was a member of a Los Angeles megachurch called the Grace Community. The story goes back to 1973 when Ken, then in his late teens, first went to the head of the counselling arm of the church, one Lynn Cory. The minister overseeing the entire church was John McArthur, a prolific author and a well-known opponent of the Pentecostal influences which were becoming more significant in the evangelical churches of the 1980s. Ken was directed to another member of the biblical counselling centre called Duane Rea. Like Cory and the other members of the counselling team at Grace church, Rea had no qualifications in mental health problems or professional counselling training. In spite of this the team as a whole claimed competence to treat disorders ranging from depression to schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. When Ken went to Rea to consult him about his problems with women, the answer given was simple and unambiguous. In common with many biblical counsellors of that period, Rea told him that sin was at the root of his problems, particularly in his desire for intimacy outside of matrimony.

The depression and sense of failure felt by Ken drove him to speak to yet another counsellor as feelings of suicide came to oppress him. He asked this third counsellor whether a person who committed suicide would forfeit eternal salvation. The answer that he then received was theologically correct, but the way it was told him hardly enhanced Ken and his sense of well-being. He was told of course no one could lose their salvation through suicide. In March 1979 Ken attempted suicide. His parents became involved and he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. While there he told Pastor Rea that he would try to commit suicide again. This information was not shared with his parents or the doctors. These latter who were involved with caring for Ken saw only improvement. A Dr Hall, a psychiatrist, tried but failed to establish what kind of counselling he had received at Grace Church. He was in particular concerned at Ken’s statement that ‘my counsellors have advised me not to go to a psychiatrist’. In Ken’s mind there seems to have been a direct conflict between the sin based diagnosis of mental illness preached by his church, and the no blame understanding of illness which undergirded the approach of the hospital. After he finally left the hospital Ken spent most of the time reading the Bible and listening to recordings of John McArthur’s sermons.

Ken saw his father for the last time and in that conversation Ken said ‘they told me it was God’s punishment’. Ken’s father, Walter Nally, could not believe his ears. ‘Tell me which one of the bastards said that?’ he exclaimed, but it was too late for Ken. He committed suicide a few days later. The story does not end there. The church was allowed to organise the funeral and Pastor Rea announced to the congregation that Ken had disobeyed God in the final act of his life. ‘He took what did not belong to him.’ Adding to this appalling insensitivity Walter was shown a testimonial from Ken which stated that he had tried to kill himself prior to 1979. Rea maintained throughout that Ken’s death was not the result of poor counselling but of unresolved sin.

John McArthur, the leading minister of Grace Community Church also piled on the pastoral insensitivity by declaring to Walter that the suicide was in no way the fault of Walter but that Ken alone was responsible. He repeated the idea that the whole situation was brought about by ‘unresolved sin’ and had nothing to do with poor counselling. Walter’s reaction was then to take out a legal challenge and he proceeded to sue Grace for clerical malpractice. After the case went through several stages, it was in the end refused by the California Supreme Court who found in favour of the church. This unfavourable judgement has had the bitter result that US courts since that time been unwilling ever to find clergy guilty of professional malpractice or incompetence. The same protection has been extended to ministers of other groups, such as the Scientologists. No minister is ever held responsible for their actions in counselling, even if their lack of competence and ignorance can result in such tragic outcomes.

We have not in this post unpacked the cluster of ideas connected with ‘Christian counselling’ that helped to cause the tragedy at Grace church. Suffice to say they belong to the principles thought up by Jay Adams and his ideas about ‘nouthetic counselling’. Without being able here to unpack Adams’ noxious ideas, it can be said that this strand of teaching rejects modern psychiatry in favour of ‘Biblical’ teaching. Once again we see the dangerous idea that the world we live in is a threatening place. The Bible and what it teaches is juxtaposed with the demonic which is believed to lurk around in much of secular ideas and knowledge. This paranoid universe which is inhabited by large numbers of so-called Christians is an uncomfortable and fear-ridden place.

All of us have encountered the caricature of an Englishman abroad who believes that everyone should understand his language. All he has to do to communicate with foreigners is to shout a bit louder. Behind this satirical image is the revealing of a condescending attitude towards others sometimes displayed by our countrymen. Some English people apparently do take on their travels the assumption that everybody is or should be just like them, able to speak English as well as think within a similar cultural framework. In the first place we would note that such an attitude is based on a failure of understanding. Ignorance of this nature goes back to a failure ever to engage properly with history or geography. But such gaps in knowledge will be compounded and made worse by a lack of imagination. It is through a lack of imagination that we sometimes cannot appreciate that there are people in the world who do not think and speak as we do. Without this capacity to imagine that things elsewhere in the world are sometimes radically different from what we know, we can find the rest of the world to be a place of darkness or even threat.

The Englishman abroad caricature might well remind us of an ardent Christian evangelist trying to make converts. Just as the failure to communicate sometimes causes expatriates to shout a bit louder, so some evangelists engage in a more intensive repetition of their well-worn slogans when they are unsuccessfully seeking converts. Two particular things stood out as being absent in the hypothetical conversation between the imaginary Englishman and the uncomprehending foreigner, both of which are also missing in the street evangelist’s encounter with its hyped up rhetoric. The words are knowledge and imagination. A lack of knowledge of where a person is coming from will always make communication between people difficult. It may be a failure to speak the same language. It also may also include an ignorance of the culture, philosophy and religious background of the other person. It goes without saying that it is important to know something of where another person is coming from in any attempt to communicate with them. Expecting them always to understand our words and our point of view because we are shouting a bit louder, is demeaning and insulting.

The second word I brought forward as being always needed in any attempt at communication is the word imagination. The ability to use the imagination effectively is sadly something not always encouraged in the schooling process. It does however develop as a by-product of certain disciplines within the curriculum which are labelled under the title of creative arts. These are not always the ones most valued in a system that places science, maths and verifiable information at the top of the educational tree. While imagination is hard to teach, it is nevertheless naturally built into every growing child and parents and teachers can do much to encourage it. I am reminded of an advertisement on television for a make of packaged cheese. Two men dressed as knights in armour are portrayed on top of a hill discussing how they are feeling peckish. They are then seen eating the advertised cheese before setting off down the hill to do some heroic act. We then discover that these same two knights are in fact two small boys on bicycles. They had imagined themselves into the personae of two mediaeval men-of-war. Such a fantasy life is both healthy and normal. Indeed, it is part of the child’s growing up and learning about the world through imaginative play.

Why is imagination so important for all us? It is because it is the part of ourselves that enables us, among other things, to understand what another person might be feeling at any particular point. To put it another way, imagination enables us to enter the subjectivity of someone else’s experience. All of us know that the world is a better place when ordinary people have no difficulty in feeling what other people are experiencing, whether their joy, grief or pain. Imagination also crosses boundaries, not only involving feeling, but also of those of understanding. Our imagination can help us to see and at least partly understand what another person might be thinking. Even if this knowledge is not complete, at least we have enough information to grasp that there are differences between us. That differences of thinking and feeling exist between individuals is not something to be deplored. We need to learn to accept and respect it. Jonathan Sacks summed up this point in the title of his book, The Dignity of Difference.

Those of us who claim to be Christian realise, on reflection, that our faith is a complex combination of thinking, feeling and knowledge as well as experience. In a subtle way faith binds together all these elements of personal experience with a body of knowledge which we call the Christian Tradition. If someone tried to persuade me to express my Christian hope in a few sentences, I would probably try to refuse. My position would be that any verbal expression of the totality of the Christian faith as I understand it, would do violence to its integrity. The few words that I might eventually use to explain my faith would be words that never tried to enclose or define anything. They would always be words that pointed beyond themselves to hint at a deeper, wider and broader reality than I could possibly convey only through the use of words. It is because of this that I instinctively shudder at the sight of the street evangelist with his uncompromising message of repentance or destruction. His words are a kind of desecration of holiness and divine depth by what I see as a shallow use of words and slogans. The ‘turn or burn’ message of Christian popular evangelism is an example, for me, of how not to share divine realities. This is comparable to the way that the picture of the Englishman shouting ever louder and louder to the uncomprehending foreigner is an example of how not to communicate to people who do not speak your language. This blog post leaves unanswered the question of how we do communicate God to people with whom we do not share a common culture and language. That has to be a question that I leave for another day.

One of the most wonderful things about watching children growing up is to see the way that they gradually assert their independence from their parents. When a baby is first born it seems that the personalities of mother and child are effectively fused together. But, as time goes by the individual personality of the baby becomes identifiable. As the child progresses through his young life, it is customary for us to celebrate the different moments that mark this gradual growth towards independence. As examples of this we have the appearance at a nativity play, the first day of school and the loss of baby teeth. Later on, the time of adolescence can be a stormy time for many young people but essentially the same processes are at work, the exploration of the boundaries of distinct separate personalities. Whatever the problems we recognise that some kind of rebellion is probably to be expected so that the development of an adult identity can actually happen.

This evolving and changing relationship between a child and her parents is not dissimilar to other relationships that exist in people’s lives. Psychologists have particular words to describe the way we relate to people above us or whom we admire. These targets of admiration, pop stars, Olympic heroes or political leaders are normally not known to us personally but we bond with them in our minds in an act of projection or identification. These two words hint at the way that that a celebrity-fan relationship is an attempt to create a kind of fusion, the kind seen originally as existing between the small child and his mother. This desire to fuse with another person, one whom we believe can give us some of their strength, wisdom or glamour, goes on to some extent throughout life. It is a kind of continuation of the way that we looked up to our parents to give us some of their strength and wisdom where we were small infants. In this way children are pulled in two directions. On the one hand they are desperate to become independent and gain control over their lives while at the same they are aware of their need for the strength that other people can give them. Dependence and independence thus coexist in every growing child. This need to be dependent on others who are stronger than she is does not disappear suddenly when a particular age is reached. It is not surprising that young adults will seek out parent substitutes, perhaps a guru figure, in the long transition between childhood and full maturity. He or she will thus want to admire teachers, youth leaders and even clergy, who will act in the place of their birth parents. With their help the task of growing up toward independence and maturity becomes slightly easier. However, at some point the young adult finally has to let go of all these props and negotiate adult life and its responsibilities alone.

Jesus himself seems to have been aware of the way that his disciples wanted to use him as a parent figure or as a guru. St John’s Gospel in particular picks up what we might describe as an adolescent dependency by the disciples on Jesus’s teaching and his words. This dependency caused them to have constant misunderstandings about his mission and purpose. Eventually Jesus utters those classic words ‘it is good for you that I go away’. Perhaps we can understand these words as the action of a parent/guru who wants to shock his followers out of an immature dependent relationship on him. Why is it good for the disciples if Jesus goes away? The answer I am suggesting here (I am aware of many other ways of interpreting these words) is that it would have been terribly easy for the followers of Jesus to remain in a permanent state of over-dependency on him. He needed to break up the old relationship in order to rebuild and renew it.

In our churches we often see a kind of passive dependency on others by those in the pews. In most cases the dependency is not directed at Christ but it is focused on those who stand up and speak for him in church pulpits. Such a dependent passive relationship is often encouraged by these same Christian leaders. They teach obedience, not to Christ but to themselves as anointed representatives of Christ. In insisting on obedience they are missing out another important area of Christian living – the ability to stand on two feet and discover what real Christian maturity in fact is all about.

Two reasons for some Christian leaders failing to teach independence and maturity occur to me. One is the fact that ministers recognise that many individuals in their congregations would indeed have some difficulty in accepting individual responsibility for their lives. They prefer to be told what to do and what to think. We can thus describe the care of a minister in this situation as an attempt to exercise care and kindness. Nevertheless, even if we want to interpret the minister’s behaviour in charitable ways, we can still see that the congregation is being let down in some way. Perpetual mothering of the immature is hardly in their best interests. Another dishonourable, indeed sinister, reason for keeping congregants in this state of dependency is in order to provide narcissistic supply for the leader. In other words, like a fond parent who does not let children grow up because he enjoys the experience of parenthood so much, a narcissistic leader holds on to his flock possessively, inappropriately and against their best interests. I have repeated over and over again the common pattern of cultic groups, and indeed many Christian congregations, of a collusive and ultimately destructive relationship between the leader and those who are led. Writing about it does not make it disappear, but at least the reader of this blog can be sensitised to it as a common pattern in religious and other groups.

Jesus said that ‘it is good that I go away’, because, I believe, he recognised that an immature and grasping dependency on him was not in the best interest of his disciples. They needed, as we do, to rise above always wanting other people to do our thinking for us. Nor should we always expect others to make our decisions for us following the precept that ‘minister knows best’. Of course we need to belong in some sense but this belonging should never involve surrendering our individuality, our intelligence or our ability to make decisions. There is not space here in this present blog to spell out in detail the nature of what I consider to be Christian maturity. I can just reiterate that Christian maturity will always involve an ability to undertake adult responsibility and make decisions for oneself. While we will have received much from the teaching and encouragement of Christians who have gone before us, we must never allow ourselves to become clones of those we admire.

Jesus left his disciples for a period to return to them in a different kind of relationship. While he was with them in the flesh they had been ready to hand over all their responsibility for thinking and understanding to him. The post-resurrection experience seems to have allowed them to mature and become their own people. New qualities of courage, insight and vision seem to flow out of this new more complete relationship with Christ. We could ascribe these new qualities as belonging to their new status of being apostles. Before they had been apprentices or disciples.

Immaturity, dependency and the wrong kind of obedience still today presents a challenge to the integrity of all branches of the Christian church. Far too many leaders and ministers seem to want to hold their people in a state of permanent dependency which does not allow them to become mature Christians. Equally a tendency to worship Christian celebrity leaders, a cultural phenomenon of our day, seems to infect many branches of the Christian church. The path of responsible maturity may indeed be quite hard to find. My instinct tells me that this is a place that God would want us to be. Because that place has not yet been clearly defined those who search for it may find themselves best by many problems and misunderstandings. But I believe that the place of maturity is a place of joy, transformation and true freedom.

Among the many churchy words and doctrines that we possess, there is one that will always provoke disagreement among Christians. The word is ecclesiology. It is not a word at that is used much in ordinary Christian conversation but it does describe an area of theology where Christians are often deeply divided. The word simply means the doctrine of the church, its nature, its purpose and its place in the world. This blog post is an attempt to show that although the word ecclesiology is not much used, the areas of doctrine which it covers are of great importance. We need to talk about them to understand one area of division in the church today.

The Anglican church in which I served as a full-time clergyman for some 40 years has a variety of perspectives on ecclesiology or the nature and purpose of the church. I myself represented and stood for a traditional understanding of Anglican ecclesiology. This traditional approach has always emphasised the relationship of the church congregation to the wider community of which it is part. The word ‘parish’ has always had two meanings. It means (in the Church of England context) the gathered Christian congregation. Simultaneously it refers to the wider community, which is made up of every single person who lives in the locality. The church, the parish church, has always accepted some responsibility for everyone. Parishioners had certain rights in relation to their local parish church. They could on request be married there, have their children baptised and in the end request the services of a clergyman to conduct their funeral. For most of my ministry this loose relationship between the local church and the wider community was an active reality. In trying to make it work I found that I got to know an enormous number of people. My first church in Croydon had 20,000 souls within its boundaries. This, back in the 70s, required the clergy to be very busy with weddings baptisms and funerals. Obviously the three members of staff could not know more than a tiny percentage of the people who lived in their parish, but we still felt under an obligation to serve everyone as best we could.

In the smaller parishes where I served as a Vicar, it was possible to build a relationship with a considerable percentage of the people who lived in the community. In Gloucestershire I had a single church benefice with around 1200 houses. It was physically possible to knock on every single door before Christmas, even though some houses were only visited every other year. Not everyone was at home when I called with a Christmas card, but the effort to go door-to-door in an attempt to see the faces of residents, represented a vision for parochial work that has now been effectively abandoned. The vision I had was that, as far as possible, every single person living in that community would regard the church as their church, even though they never came to the services. William Temple, the wartime Archbishop of Canterbury, once said that the church was the only institution that existed for the benefit of those who were not its members. That was very much my vision, even though for practical purposes, the church played a very small part in the lives of many people who lived within the physical boundaries of my parishes. The idea of the church, clergy and people, existing to serve the people of the wider community was still a vision that sustained many of us. The words of the communion service, ‘send us out into the world to live and work for your praise and glory’ were words of a church that firmly believed that it existed in order to go out and serve.

The older vision of the church as a community which gathers to be resourced for the work of service and love has, in many places, been superseded by another priority. Theologically speaking, the church has become a place where people come to be ‘saved’. The church is understood to be like an ark sailing across a tempestuous sea, trying to rescue individuals who are drowning. This particular vision is quite radically different from the first. The church is no longer seen in its corporate dimension but more as a collection of individuals who have made a choice to be saved. The emphasis inside the building is one of looking inwards, focusing on providing salvation and ensuring correct doctrine. The world outside is no longer a place that needs to be leavened like a loaf requiring yeast, but it is a place of darkness, corruption and danger. This particular emphasis in ecclesiology is often rooted in a vision of great pessimism for the future and which finds its inspiration from passages in the book of Revelation. The future coming of Christ to judge the world will involve great destruction and there is very little optimism for the world in this perspective. It is then better to focus on the salvation of individuals than to worry about trying to save the world. It is already hastening towards its own destruction.

I have presented two visions of ecclesiology which are at two ends of a continuum of belief. Most people will not hold consistently to either one of these extremes, but a majority will be found somewhere in the middle. Although I am trying not to caricature the ideas of conservative Christians over their understanding of the church, I am still suggesting that we all have to face that there are these two contrasting visions and emphases of what the church is for. Is it mainly for the salvation of its members or is it a place where people can come in order to serve the world better? Another way of stating the question is to ask whether Jesus died for Christians or for the whole world. When we quote the famous verse from St John’s Gospel, which contains the words: ‘For God so loved the world’, do we emphasise the first past of the verse which speaks of God loving the ‘kosmos’? The alternative is to read the verse with an emphasis on the second part: ‘Whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life’. In a way our ecclesiology will be defined by which part of the verse we want to emphasise. I personally will always wish to focus on working out the implications of God loving the world and what this might mean for the work of the Church and the Christians within it. Of course we need Christians to be people of conviction and passion, people who are confident of their salvation. But we also need a vision of the way that Christians are to be people who want to continue the work of loving the world as God in Christ does. This New Testament vision of what a disciple is, a continuing to love the world, is a vision for the Church itself. This speaks far more of the way that disciples are in the business of being light and salt to the world than being only concerned for their individual well-being in the place beyond the grave.

I have recently discovered a remarkable book published earlier this year by a young American academic, John Weaver. It is a history of a movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. It is a very detailed account. One is in fact overwhelmed by the information and left fairly confused about the interrelationships of groups and people that are connected in various ways across this NAR network. To try and put the argument of the book into a few words, I would say that the author claims there is in America, and to some extent in the UK, a distinctive but loose confederation of NAR churches and ministers, hitherto below the radar of academic scrutiny. These NAR individuals, institutions and congregations have similar views about the nature and future of the church. The network can be identified by a common dedication to a charismatic style of teaching, preaching and worship. The word Apostolic in the title betrays another feature of this huge international network. All those who belong are united in an acceptance of being under the leadership of ‘Apostles’. These Apostles are charismatic leaders who are regarded as having a special ministry which gives them authority over dozens, even hundreds of congregations. The authority that such Apostles possess, transcends denominations and, it is claimed, comes from a divine call and the recognition by many Christians of their charismatic standing.

The Reformation part of the title for this neo-Pentecostal grouping, comes from the common understanding within the network that all Christians are called to be involved in a revolution. The task before them is to conquer nations and society for God. The rhetoric of NAR followers is one of battle, conflict and struggle. This war is to be waged against satanic and demonic forces that are arrayed against God’s people and his church. One particular feature of the movement is the idea of spiritual mapping. This strange idea, which I have encountered from time to time, suggests that particular places, even countries, have evil spirits which have control over them. The task of a Christian is to confront such spirits with the power of intercessory prayer. I once went to give a talk on spiritual deliverance to a Bible college in Gloucester and I was puzzled to meet a woman who was doing a year’s dissertation on the spirits that were oppressing the city of Gloucester. I was not able to get any detail about what precisely she was doing, but no doubt she was actively engaged in researching local history to see if there were any hotspots of evil activity in the city. Her task was to draw up a map of the city which would identify areas of particular concern. No doubt then she and others in the college would go down to those areas and pray the oppressive spirits out of existence.

While it is impossible to present any more of the detail in this remarkable book, I can share with my blog readers one particular section which fills me with a special horror. This was the section which reviewed the ideas of one C Peter Wagner, one of the Apostolic founders and gurus of the movement. He wrote an influential book in 2002 containing his ideas called Churchquake. In it he discusses what he thinks of ministerial training. Although Wagner had received himself a very thorough education in theology at the Fuller Seminary, he expresses the desire to simplify the training of the ministers and pastors of the church to having technical competence in the main principles of NAR. The job of ministry has become something very practical in nature. He is more concerned that students focus on the doing side of ministry rather than the theoretical study of scripture and theology. He wants power evangelism, exorcism and spiritual warfare to be taught in preference to the detailed study of scripture, history and theology. He is contemptuous of traditional theological training. Certainly from reading this approach he would not want any student to be allowed to have a mind or opinion of their own. In thinking about Wagner’s model, one is reminded of the warriors in a Lord of the Rings film, the Orcs. Spiritual warriors are needed. In one case for the cause of God but in the other to do the will of Lord Sauron. It is important in both cases that these warriors act together and never deviate from the prescribed text or opinion. Another way of describing this model is to see ministry and church life as a kind of franchise for a particular style of church life. Training would not be the same as study; rather it would be the practice of particular techniques connected with evangelical/charismatic rhetoric and technique.

John Weaver points out very fairly that it is completely unsatisfactory if a first generation in a religious movement deprive the second-generation of followers of the same formation and education that they received. The task of leadership, management of change and developing ideas is not best conducted by people who have only learnt one trick, like a chef who only has one dish on his menu. It goes without saying that if you spend decades following one particular rhetorical style and spiritual technique, it will eventually become stale and wearisome. I have often complained about the repetition that is involved in so-called gospel preaching. Not only will congregations become bored through hearing the same sermons over and over again, but the same thing will happen to the preacher. The provision of a good theological education for anyone who takes up the task of teaching and preaching in a congregation is important, not only for the congregation, but also for the minister concerned. If one has studied various traditions within Christianity, then it will not be necessary to present the faith only in one cultural form. Speaking personally, I have been very grateful for my own studies in the Orthodox tradition. Having experienced the Christian faith in a Greek speaking context has given me quite a different take on how to understand the Christian faith. I have, in consequence, become a far more visual person and I constantly use verbal pictures in my preaching. This also means that I am extremely critical of any verbal formula that verges on cliché.

John Weaver thus strongly criticises this emphasis on praxis rather than theory in ministerial training. He foresees how the church run in this way will never be able to change and develop. Christian ministers, who are at best clones of their teachers, will never be able to overtake and develop what they have received. If the second-generation of New Apostolic Reformation leaders cannot bring anything new into the tradition, then it follows that the third and subsequent generations will be even more impoverished. Lack of theology, lack of understanding of the skills of secular knowledge will create a ministry that is isolated by its own ignorance and inability to understand the wider culture. The Church is already involved in a crisis of communication with the public opinion when it speaks the language of reaction and yesterday’s morality. How much worse this would be if the church was seen to be openly endorsing the values of ignorance and obscurantism? The educated section of our population may not be the only group which is worth evangelising, but to invite contempt and ridicule from this section would be to expel the church into an intellectual and cultural dark age from which it might never recover.

This blog, survivingchurch, is passionate about the Christian faith being credible and able to commend itself to people of all backgrounds and educations. For the church to retreat into the shadows of obscurantism and ignorance by deliberately withholding a decent education from its ministers would be a path of destruction for the church. C Peter Wagner and his New Apostolic Reformation must be resisted for the sake of the long-term survival of our Church. The Church and its message must always be able to commend itself to people of all kinds, including those of culture, education and sophistication.

In my last blog post I referred to the division that exists between so-called critical ‘cult watchers’ and people in academia who want to describe controversial religious groups with the neutral title of ‘New Religious Movements’. I have been reading further on this subject to discover how it happens that intelligent people who investigate a group or church can come to such different conclusions as to what they find. I suggested in my previous post that it was as the result of the nature of the particular academic discipline in which the researcher has been trained. Sociologists and social psychologists will see quite different things from psychotherapists and psychologists. That observation, I believe, remains true. But there are further reasons for differences among researchers and students of religious groups when they investigate an abusive organisation.

I want us to imagine the task of researching the true nature of a large organisation, whether a church or a firm. How do you find out what is really going on in such an institution? Do you go to the very top and question the managing director or the minister in charge and ask them to tell you the true story of the dynamics of that institution? Most people can see that the only thing that you would learn from this approach would be the perspective of the person in charge. This may or may not be an accurate one. The same thing would happen if you meet up with the officers or members of a governing board. Whoever you spoke to in that group, at whatever level, would be anxious to put on a good defence of the institution. It is likely that whatever was told to you as an outsider would, up to a point, be biased and not totally reliable information. Anyone who belongs to a church or another organisation will normally be defensive in their support of the image and reputation of the group. If they are being paid by the group, then their very livelihood depends on the need for people on the outside not uncovering any skeletons. If their membership is voluntary, they still have an emotional reason for belonging to the group. This has created a loyalty, a loyalty not necessarily compatible with totally objective and clear-sighted truth.

From what I have said, it will always be difficult and often impossible to find out the inner dynamics of an organisation by just speaking with its members and its leaders. Whatever discontent an individual may feel, he or she, while they are still part of the organisation, is never likely to open up to a stranger. The same thing applies in a family situation. As long as the family is physically together in the same place, it is difficult to see how any member will find it easy to express unhappiness even in a situation of violence and emotional abuse. It is only when a child or mother escapes out of the situation that the catalogue of horrors can normally begin to be uncovered. The task of extracting the truth from an abused mother or child still within a family setting is one of great complexity and requires considerable skill. Somehow the barriers created by loyalty and tribal identity have to be penetrated and overcome so that truth can be told.

The great debate among cult apologists and cult watchers, as we shall call them, is over the question as to whether the testimony of leavers can ever be trusted. I have already suggested that cult apologists are an unreliable group of witnesses to tell the truth about a high-demand group. There are many well-attested allegations that in some cases such scholars have taken money from the very people they study. But a further cause for concern is that one of the main contentions of ‘cult-apologists’ is that testimony from ex-members must be disregarded and ignored. It fails the test of academic objectivity. Common sense, on the other hand, suggests that the evidence of a mother who has fled to a refuge should always be taken into account when deciding on the guilt of a violent husband. The same principle would seem to apply when trying to evaluate a particular group or abusive church. Speaking merely to existing members would be unlikely to penetrate any possible collusion on the part of those who are still in the group. Of course there are many groups that operate without any guilty secrets or abuses of power in their current practice or history. But when there are serious complaints by former members it should be possible to evaluate these and to see whether there is a case to answer. At present we are in the middle of various investigations connected with the sexual abuse of children in churches, homes and other institutions. Some of these claims have been shown to be false. But even when one false claim is found this should not stop investigators believing that it is normally possible to evaluate witness statements and get to the truth. It takes the application of common sense together with a skill, not compromised by credulity on one hand, or weighed down by cynicism on the other. It must be possible to find individuals who have these skills. Not everyone can be said to have a vested interest in either finding abuse everywhere or always denying that it exists.

The refusal of the cult apologists to engage with ex-members, because their perspective will be biased, seems to fly in the face of common sense. Are we to refuse to speak to victims of sex abuse in case their evidence may be confused and muddled? It is a position which to me completely lacks integrity. This observation has made me far less likely to read those authors who approach the whole subject of cults and extreme religious groups in a way that wants to deny the reality of pain, emotional devastation and long-term post-traumatic stress. They do not speak to the victims so they do not acknowledge what they suffer. The Langlois report in this respect possesses enormous value because of the way that it presents clearly the evidence of ex-members. Church officials at Trinity Brentwood were given every opportunity to respond to all these allegations but they never availed themselves of that opportunity. If the present generation of cult apologists had been given the same opportunity to study Peniel/Trinity Church, we would probably have a laundered anodyne account of all the wonderful things that the church had done – i.e. an account of the way that the church and its leaders understand themselves. What we in fact have from John Langlois is a presentation of many normally excluded testimonies but which have all passed through a strict forensic process. As a lawyer John was able to see that the testimonies of those who had left were coherent, consistent and highly credible. His report, in other words, gives the lie to the position that it is not possible to listen to the evidence of survivors and ex-members of an abusive group or cult. It is, to repeat, impossible to see how any organisation can be studied only by listening to the official line of leaders and members. They obviously will always have a vested interest in presenting the best possible perspective on their particular group.

The Child Abuse Enquiry in the UK thankfully has not been given to academic sociologists and social psychologists trained in the academic cult apologist style. It has been given to lawyers and judges who will listen to anyone and everyone who has something to say. Then they will assess the truth on the balance of probability and it is the skill that lawyers have for ferreting out the truth. Although mistakes have been made, I for one will always have a degree of confidence in the legal processes to find truth. I certainly prefer their methods to the methods of academics who refuse, on spurious grounds of objectivity, to listen to every source of information from wherever it comes.

Although the Dallas conference ended a month ago, I am still finding myself interacting with members of the Conference through an on-line discussion group. The particular discussion I am linking up to is one that is trying to find a possible new name for the organisation known as ICSA. The discussion is relevant to this blog but to explain the background I need to go back a stage and explain a little of the politics of ‘cultic studies’.

The arrival of cults and high-demand groups in Britain and the USA is a relatively recent phenomenon. It could be claimed that most of the religious and political groups that we describe as cults only appeared at the beginning of the 70s. In some ways many of these so-called cults were an outgrowth of the hippie movement of the 1960s. The use of drugs in the 60s by these alternative groups in many places turned into a search for spirituality. The Beatles with their pilgrimage to India to experiment with meditation typified this new social movement which was sweeping through Western nations. Many people followed the Beatles in their search. It is not hard to see how there would have been leaders of small groups who would be ready to take advantage of impressionable and idealistic young people who were looking for enlightenment. The cultic movement is then a phenomenon based on idealism and desire for spirituality but which in many places descended into exploitation and excess.

The political issue that arose in the early days concerned the question as to how these groups were to be studied. One group within academia, mainly sociologists and religious studies experts, wanted to see the phenomenon of cults described in strictly neutral terms. These communities were to described as new religious movements. As such no judgements about the ethics and behaviour within the groups were to be made. They were to be described and accounted for in the language of neutral scientific investigation. Another group, consisting of concerned psychologists and therapists, started to discover that former members of these groups had been damaged with what we would now call ‘post-traumatic stress’. The word ‘cult’ was used as a convenient shorthand to describe these groups because they were seen to be creating actual psychological harm. Such harmful groups are also to be found among the Christian churches, the ones that are described here as charismatic and conservative. The ‘neutral’ sociologists meanwhile were able to suggest that the harm experienced by followers was not widespread. Anyway, it was claimed, these young people were adults and able to take care of themselves. Any attempt to assist the departure of an individual from a so-called cult would be to deny their legal and human rights. They had made an adult choice to be in the group in the first place.

This debate between academics has become quite a difficult problem. There is this constant tension between those who believe that there are many religious and political groups which cause actual harm and they are set against those who want to downplay the problem. A further issue is that there are accusations of foul play on the part of ‘cult-watchers’ who claim that the neutral academic sociologists sometimes take money from the groups they study. Money is said to be given by groups like the Moonies so that friendly academics will support them and speak of them favourably in legal cases and generally in the world of academia. These ‘friendly’ academics are also thought to carry weight with governments and other important agencies. In the UK, in spite of many stories in the press describing the baneful effects of cults, the neutral sounding experts on ‘new religious movements’ hold the high ground in academic university circles. Their work, not the work of the groups who work with families and victims of cults, are the ones who receive money from government funds. The resources available for those who want to help victims of extreme religious groups is, in this country, pitiful in the extreme.

The organisation whose conference I attended in Dallas this year has the acronym ICSA, which stands for International Cultic Studies Association. The attendees from Britain numbered only six. A larger number from the UK attend when the conferences are held in Europe as they are in alternate years. ICSA promotes study of cultic issues but it also gives a lot of time to providing a network of support to victims of all the different groups. Possibly two thirds of its energy is expended in this important work of victim support. Nothing exists in Britain on anything like this scale, even allowing for the enormous disparity of populations between our countries. But, in spite of the much greater awareness of the importance of helping victims of extreme religious groups, the same debates rage here about the academic validity of the word ‘cult’ or whether these groups should ever be called by this name. The very word offends those academics who prefer the neutral, less judgmental expression ‘new religious movements.’ ICSA, because much of its work is directed towards helping victims as well as studying the issues, is regarded by these academics as an ‘anti-cult’ movement. It is hard, I believe, to be anything else when you encounter the raw suffering of those who have been the mill of belonging to a high demand group. Nevertheless, the organisation wants to retain its place at the table of respected academic research. It already publishes serious material in this area which it hopes will influence public debate and political policy around the world. It sponsors two journals, one popular and the other peer-reviewed and academic in tone. The annual conferences attract participants from around the world and this year 100 pre-approved papers were presented at Dallas.

ICSA is looking for a new name so that it does not use the contentious word ‘cultic’ in its title. The online discussion, in which I have taken part, has come up with lots of ideas. Some want to continue to use the same acronym while others have tried to produce a title which better sums up what is going on in the organisation. It is interesting to note the words that have come up most often in the discussion. One is control, while coercion and abuse have also appeared. I wrote a contribution suggesting that control and abuse were two words that summed up the harm done by extreme religious groups (including the Christian ones!). I offered the thought that the word abuse described well the emotional suffering that many victims suffer, while control could be held to refer to the intellectual scrambling that takes place when people experience cultic ‘thought-reform’. Having pointed out the two directions from which people have their integrity assaulted by such groups, I realise once again how difficult it is to recover quickly when someone has been a member of a group with extreme ideas. When for example, people are held in an emotional thrall to a leader, and have their thinking process corrupted by an irrational doctrinal structure of belief, returning to normality will be a lengthy process. In this blog some of the comments made in response to my attempts to look calmly at the meanings of Scripture make me realise that there are many people who cannot or will not listen to a way of reading the Bible which is different from the one they were taught. According to the ‘orthodoxy’ taught by thousands of churches across the world, we are required to believe in a God who speaks directly through each word. If this were the case, then the protestant discovery of ‘sola Scriptura’ would have resulted in a single understanding of the way that message is to be received by all Christians everywhere. But as we all know, this is not the case. Every teacher of an infallible Scripture has his own take on what this doctrine in fact means. The more dedicated a preacher is to proclaiming the authority of God’s Word, the more that the same preacher seems to condemn everyone else who does not agree with his personal interpretation. How many times have I heard the message – God speaks infallibly in the words of Scripture and this church is the ONLY one where you hear what this really means? When this message is given and people collude with it, I see it as a clear example of conceit and intellectual abuse of the worst kind.

The debate within ICSA will continue and I will let my blog readers know if we reach a consensus over our name. Meanwhile I am proud to be part of an organisation that takes seriously the task of serious study of extreme religious and political groups, while caring passionately for the many victims that these groups create all around the world. I am coming to see clearly how profound can be the damage done to the innocent victims of narcissistic Christian leaders, not to mention all the other wacky dysfunctional religious and political groups that are so common in our modern world.

Over my years of studying the issue of abuse in churches, I have found that certain key ideas and theories have become, through my reading, much easier to understand. In the past I would not have been able to fathom or account for the dynamic which creates an impression of ‘success’ for some churches. Some of these apparently flourishing establishments have, as I shall explain, a shadow side, one that all too easily results in both the leaders and the led acting out in unhealthy ways. On the surface many of these congregations appear to have everything – large amounts of money, young people and families attending and a vibrant energy emanating from their worship. But behind this façade of success there often lurks abusive practice. The large numbers involved in some of these churches is often conducive to a situation of chronic vulnerability and danger for both leaders and led. Some of the particular dangers arise out of the dynamics of crowd psychology. When these come into play they are difficult to manage and control, even with goodwill and integrity at work on all sides. The crowd experience, wherever it occurs, is one that sometimes works in quite frightening ways. It has the ability to supress rapidly the rational processes of the individual, while at the same it gives everyone in the crowd a sensation of energy and power.

I invite my reader to reflect back to a time when they were part of a large gathering which was involved in a common purpose. It could have been a football match or even attendance at a concert. Without any action on our part, our consciousness slips into becoming part of the crowd mind. Our thoughts and feelings are, in a sense, taken over. This is not an unpleasant or particularly harmful experience. Nevertheless, the irrationality that sometimes takes over when we are in a large crowd indicates to us clearly that independent thinking is not best conducted in that particular setting. I have read a few of the many studies into the irrationality of crowds, whether they be political rallies or lynch mobs. All these studies draw attention to the way the crowd mind takes on a life of its own. It is as though thinking, feeling and decision making are done by the entire crowd and the individual finds it almost impossible to resist this dynamic and stand outside it.

For most of us the irrational crowd experience is fairly frightening, though it can also be for a short time exhilarating. Any exhilaration that we do experience comes to us from the sense of power that every member of a crowd finds they participate in. In a political context this crowd power can unleash societal changes which have been historically significant on some occasions. But while the individuals within a crowd may find themselves energised by this participation, a greater power is given to the leader, the one who orchestrates these power dynamics through the tools of speech and rhetoric. Through history political demagogues, like Hitler or Lenin, have exploited this power of the crowd with effect. They have been able to promote their ideologies whether left or right wing through certain well studied techniques. It is possible to train to be a Mussolini, a Hitler or leader of a successful cult or church.

It is of course not just the members of a crowd who experience an inrush of energy when they are part of a large event. The leader, or we might say, compere of the event also experiences a gratifying, even intoxicating sense of importance and power. The power and energy of the crowd that the leader has helped to bring into being is in some way is mirrored back to the crowd’s conductor. This front-man in some strange way absorbs much of the crowd energy into himself. He is a kind of representative; he embodies the crowd and he becomes the crowd. At the same time every member of the crowd may feel him or herself merged into the speaker in some way.

Previous blog posts have tried to describe the narcissistic processes which have the effect of pumping up the morale of the speaker or leader in a charismatic church. This boosting is a kind of psychological feeding of the psyche which needs this kind of attention after it suffered damage at some point in early childhood. We spoke in an earlier blog of an insatiable hunger for adulation on the part of the leader and in serious cases it can only be described as an addiction. The typical narcissistic leader will use his skill at crowd manipulation to draw attention on himself to feed his massive and unending hunger for affirmation by others. The psychological historians who have looked the life of Hitler claim that the vast rallies of Nazi power can be understood as, at one level, an attempt to relieve a massive sense of inferiority on the part of Hitler. By standing up in front of tens of thousands of his supporters, the symptoms of his depressive illness were lifted. What we are claiming is simply that being at centre of attention in front of a large crowd is not only enjoyable, but it may also be able to relieve mental distress; in short it is a form of self-therapy. It is likely that whenever a leader, politician or Christian minister becomes addicted to this kind of activity, that they are probably sufferers from a narcissistic disorder. While we cannot ascribe this suggested interpretation to include every Christian speaker or minister who stands up in front of large groups, clearly this kind of situation is an ever present danger. Narcissism and an addiction to manipulating (abusing) crowds of followers will always be an issue to be watched in every church within this culture.

For reasons of space I have to compress my ideas and state here that the needs of a congregation sometimes are very similar to those of the leader. A narcissistic leader will, in other words, create narcissistic followers. Each will seek to achieve a ‘fix’ through the energy that is generated in the crowd dynamic. This dynamic will promote a sense of unity and artificial goodwill, particularly if it is boosted by the use of music and singing. The music that is typically blasted out at charismatic meetings will, like the crowd dynamic itself, do little to promote clear rational thought. The message that is given out by the preacher will normally be reassuring and fuzzy. As long as everyone gives of their money, the individual is told that he or she is safe, free from the effects of the past and able with confidence to look forward to the future, a future ultimately with God.

Many services in Christian churches today in Britain, America and no doubt elsewhere conform to these dynamics and structures. A critical analysis may reveal that such acts of worship are often conducted as a way of meeting psychological needs of the leaders as well as the led, rather than proclaiming a challenging Gospel truth. I have to question whether a narcissistic Christian leader can avoid doing immense damage to the vulnerable members of his flock when he has so little insight into his own psychological profile and the dangerous processes that are potentially present in a crowd situation. There are far too many uncomfortable parallels between large political rallies from the 1930s and Christian gatherings that take place for the purposes of evangelism. Because many people lead isolated and lonely lives there is always a great hunger for crowd events which will allow the individual to be subsumed and swallowed up into a large group with a charismatic leader. No one would suggest that such a longing is in itself unhealthy or pathological. I just find it difficult to justify the way that some Christian groups and their leaders knowingly exploit this common vulnerability of many people in our society. The needs of such people will be complex and various. I fail to see, and Chris is constantly reminding me of this, how what is offered in a typical charismatic service can ever do very much to meet their real needs. The ecstasy of being in a crowd together with words of platitude will do little to resolve the kinds of problems that such people are facing. These will, along with everyone else, centre around relationships, money problems and stress. What is needed to help with these has to be something far more substantial than the fluffiness of charismatic religion.

Recently in the news we have been reading the reports on Sir Philip Green who has been enjoying himself on his luxury yacht in the Mediterranean. The account of his stewardship of BHS, which was published on Monday by a parliamentary committee, indicated that his care of the company had been lax at best and cynically exploitative and dishonest at worst. Regardless of the final verdict in this story there was something insensitive in his choosing to be out of the country when the report was published. The company with its 11000 employees and 20000 pensioners has been left in a fairly bad place. We might have expected some immediate positive action on Sir Philip’s part to relieve the plight of these former employees. We are still waiting to hear any words of remorse or genuine regret.

Jesus told a story, not about a man going on holiday to enjoy himself but one going to the temple to make an offering. He like Philip Green had pressing business to attend to but which had been ignored. In both examples there was matter of a brother(s) who had been wronged. ‘First, reconcile with your brother and then make your offering (or go on holiday)’, said Jesus. The situation of a relationship that needs sorting out should always be one that troubles us until we have resolved it. We call this the nagging of our conscience. In Jesus’ example the conscience is telling us that being right with other people is an important issue. When for any reason the conscience does not function well we might be concerned. The reason for a non-functioning conscience probably lies in the same area of a personality dysfunction as a general insensitivity to other people. In other words, as we recognise from experience, there are some people who simply manage to focus so much on their concerns and their entertainment that they can simply push other people away from their minds and from their conscience.

Why are there such people who have a remarkable ability to cavort and enjoy themselves when around them is pain and suffering? We think of the reported words of Queen Marie Antoinette who is said to have responded when told that the common people of France had no bread, ‘let them eat cake’. The story ascribed to the Queen may never have actually happened but it speaks to us of people who live in a cocoon world, detached from the people around them, unable to understand or in any way relate to their concerns. There are plenty of such people living in Britain today but rather than be jealous of people who have more than enough, we should in fact feel sorry for them.

Why do I say this? At the root of excess wealth and extravagance, as Jesus recognised, is often a deformed sensitivity and awareness of others. The ability to enjoy extravagant lifestyles while there is pain and want around takes some effort. Something inside them has been closed down. Whether we call it lack of conscience or insensitivity, it takes a certain panache to pretend that all is well when so often it is not. This is not going to be the beginning of a political rant which suggests that everyone should have the same as everyone else in terms of material wealth. Nevertheless, there are times when the discrepancies of wealth are so great that there is a strong feeling in the gut that something is completely wrong. Normal communications between individuals and groups have broken down. Bonds of normal care and concern for one’s neighbour no longer seem to exist.

A Christian might at this point want to revert to a reflection on the word ‘love’ as being the Christian attitude that can hold people together to prevent the fragmentation of society that excess inequality produces. But there is another word which avoids the potential sentimentality of the word love and that word is empathy. The word empathy is a good word to use in this context because while it includes the idea of love, it also is suggesting practical action by one person on behalf of another. To have empathy implies that one person has attempted to enter into the thought and feeling world of another and based their practical support on the insights thus gained. Empathy is, if you like, skilled love, a love that knows what to do. It makes sure that the love that on offer is not based on the needs of the one who offers it but on the recipient.

The people who find empathy most hard to put into practice are the individuals who are congenitally incapable of reaching out of themselves to other people. These are the same people whose deformed consciences allow them to live in extravagance and excess while those around them have little or nothing. These are the people like Grace Mugabe or Philip Green who seem to have no problem with spending vast sums of money while others, those for whom they have responsibility, suffer and sometimes die. The personality problem that such people have is one we have spoken about often, the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Such people have limited sensitivity, stunted consciences and an insatiable appetite for wealth, status and power. The most important thing that they lack is the quality we have already mentioned which is empathy. The lack of this quality means that they are condemned to live lives of shallowness and superficiality. Wealth may give them a sense of power and significance but the affliction of NPD will never allow them to remain content with their lot. They will ever be searching for greater and greater sensation, at the same time becoming less and connected with ordinary people.

Thank God for the gift of empathy. May we cultivate it and hold it precious. Through it may we allow ourselves never to be wrenched away from the gift of other people, the people we love and the people for whom we have responsibility. This latter group is a large one as it covers, potentially, the whole of humanity. Through empathy and with empathy may we, however imperfectly, remain connected to the other members of the human race. To have such gift is to have understanding and this is the first stage of the Christian command to love.

I have in a previous blog post told the story of the young mother in my parish who, on the death of her baby, felt she had to go 50 miles outside the area to find a ‘Christian’ undertaker. Having had good relations with other undertakers who lived much closer, I was surprised at this slight to the professional and spiritual integrity of these other firms who served the local neighbourhood. My reader will no doubt be familiar with the way the word ‘Christian’ has been appropriated by particular groups in society to denote what this blog would describe as a conservative legalistic version of the faith. When the UK MP Andrea Leadsom was described by the press as being a Christian, we all knew how to understand the way this word was being used. Her faith turns out, unsurprisingly, to be an extension of her right-wing opinions. To be a Christian in 21st century Britain and America means for many to be a person who knows all the things that they disapprove of. In particular, they deplore same-sex marriage and a variety of other behaviours which are deemed to be unbiblical in some way. We could summarise by saying that a Christian is defined more for the things that they disapprove of than for the things they want to promote. Such a perspective of the meaning of the word ‘Christian’ is not in fact completely false. It is rather, we would claim, one sided and at the very least incomplete.

It is worth reflecting once more on Jesus’ story of the Samaritan. This is a parable that needs to be told over and over again. It is told in the context of a conversation between a lawyer and Jesus. This lawyer who asked the question – who is my neighbour?- knew perfectly well what was the proper answer in terms of Jewish law. But Jesus responded not in legal categories but in terms of practical action. A question that we might well want to ask Jesus today is a similar one- who is a Christian? The story of the Samaritan might easily form the response to this question as well. The lawyer’s question was answered by contrasting good conventional Jewish behaviour which was correct by the laws of the day with the action of a person who was right outside the orbit of the Jewish community. In Jesus’s day the good Jew was someone who kept the laws of purity, worshipped in a correct way and generally conducted himself properly according to the social and religious norms of the time. What today we regard as proper Christian behaviour will involve an individual saying the right things when faced with a number of moral issues. The correct Christian response to gays is, according to numerous Christians, is to avoid them or have as little to do with them as possible. The only reason for talking to someone with a gay life-style would be to try to convert them and convince them to turn their backs on their old behaviour. Such people, the conservative Christian believes, are destined for hell and this involves eternal punishment. That these attitudes held by sincere Christian people, I find puzzling but simultaneously utterly repugnant. In a moment of extreme anger with another person, I might conceivably desire them to experience pain but this stage does not survive for very long. Hatred for another person and wanting their eternal punishment would take energy out of me, and I for one do not have the stamina to attempt to keep it up on such a futile activity. Am I in some way deficient as a Christian because I cannot summon up sufficient hatred towards an individual to want to consign him/her to hell? Everything that I have learnt about the Christian faith does in fact tell me that no one can ultimately escape the orbit of God’s love. I recognise that some human lives are lived in such a way that the process of ultimate redemption will be hard and extremely painful. I do not anyway believe that members of the gay community are behaving in a worse way than those who allow their Christian faith to adopt attitudes of hatred and condemnation towards others whose behaviour they disapprove of.

To return to the story of the Samaritan and our suggestion that Jesus is answering our modern question – who is a Christian? The Christian, according to Jesus, is not the one who merely believes things and behaves correctly according to a written code. The Christian is one who is motivated by human compassion and practical help. In short the Samaritan/ Christian is the one who follows the rules of love. The way that Jesus identifies with the outsider who follows his conscience and his humanity is an important lesson for us today. Our culture loves definitions; it enjoys being able to put people into particular boxes, deciding in a binary way whether they are good or bad, Christian or non-Christian, in-crowd or out-crowd. This creation of tidy boundaries between people seems to be completely subverted by what Jesus is saying. In the parable he shows clearly how the law-abiding Jew, represented by the priest and the Levite failed totally to respond appropriately to the challenge of helping the wounded man. The law forbad any contact with a possible corpse and so the law was the effective barrier preventing effective and human action. In the parable Jesus seems to be telling us that the true law is the law of compassion and love and this takes precedence over everything else.

I was reading a commentary on the activities of Church of England General Synod this week. One well-known conservative Christian was listening to a gay Christian speaking in the so-called ‘shared conversations’. All she could think about was the fact that this Christian man, who was also a priest, should be ‘lovingly’ removed from his position. Her faith, her version of Christianity, could only see as important the rigid application of a law that she had extracted from Scripture. She was blind and deaf, it seems, to the experience of the person standing in front of her. The same motivation, adherence to a law connected with preserving purity, guided the actions of the two men in the parable who passed by on the other side. Legalism in other words was more important than the impulse of love which most of us believe should play a major part in motivating a Christian response to life. Jesus approved of the behaviour of the one who didn’t even claim to be a Christian, the Samaritan. He tells us to go and do likewise.

As a response to the story of the Samaritan let us, rather than drawing barriers about who are ‘true Christians’, celebrate the unconventional and the free spirits who live out an authentic path for their lives. One thing the parable tells us firmly is that none of us has the right to say who is inside or outside the orbit of God’s mercy. It is unhelpful, but also wrong, to declare this or that person to be beyond God’s concern. This kind of categorisation is, I believe, a form of blasphemy. There are many ways of living ‘Christian’ lives. To be a follower of Jesus in terms of acting with love compassion and service is always going to be hard but who is to say that it only happens inside church buildings. We have the challenge to see and work with Christians who, like the Samaritan, are completely beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone and familiar circles.