There is a story in the Church Times this week which may continue to resonate for some time into the future. Those among my readers who read this paper will already be familiar with the story that I am about to set out. In summary, an anonymous briefing paper was sent out by the international conservative Anglican group known as GAFCON to its members. This brief named certain individuals in England who were following lifestyles in contravention of Lambeth 1.10, the 1998 Conference resolution concerned with homosexuality. The list that was published did not contain any new revelations or ‘outings’ but it was still a discourteous and grubby piece of muckraking. It sounded much like a group of bullies in the playground shouting at other children and drawing attention to known problems affecting their families. These individuals named in the briefing paper were known to be in same-sex relationships but who were still in active ministry. The GAFCON spokesman who published this information thought, no doubt, that combining all the names in a single document would somehow strengthen their position by pressurising the Church of England to take action against practising gays. More important, probably, was the way that naming ‘enemies of truth’ is a good way of increasing morale among its own membership. GAFCON can affirm its identity most clearly when it names and shames those people that are part of alien ‘them’. In spite of everything written about the positive things GAFCON stands for, the organisation seems far more to be understood for the way it creates in its members an energy to hate and condemn those it disapproves of.

The organisation we know as GAFCON emerged into the light of day in 2008 at a conference in Jerusalem. The gathering there was to give a voice to conservative Anglicans who felt that the main conference at Lambeth would not be able to articulate their concerns. The number of British participants was fairly few. The bulk of those present came from the Global South. One particular centre of GAFCON strength is to be found in Australia, especially the diocese of Sydney under its then ultra conservative Archbishop, Peter Jensen. As a theological network we can describe GAFCON as the international face of Reform, which in Britain is the most Calvinist expression of Anglican evangelicalism. The number of British congregations supporting Reform and thus GAFCON is relatively small. However, the ones who do are often extremely wealthy and influential within their own dioceses. Many of the leaders of these congregations have been trained at Oak Hill Theological College. This college is linked with the more powerful institution of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia. One thing that has not been clearly determined is whether the congregations themselves are fully behind all the conservative pronouncements of their leaders who are active in the national body of Reform. I recently had a conversation with someone who lives in Oxford. She made the comment that the laity of two large conservative congregations in that city were not always happy with the pronouncements of their leaders. A focus on Reformation theology and being totally orthodox in matters of theology, is not always something that is particularly attractive to the ordinary lay members. This particular style of conservative theology, in other words, does not get implanted in peoples’ minds as it would in a cult situation. Ordinary people can continue to think for themselves and preserve independent opinions in an otherwise highly authoritarian environment. In a place like Oxford this independence of thought is believed to be still very much alive and intact.

It is the position of this particular blog post that while the charismatic evangelicals represented by the Alpha course and Holy Trinity Brompton have considerable power within British Anglicanism, the same cannot be said for those Conservative Evangelicals in Reform who focus on Puritan and Calvinist orthodoxy. Charisma and the excitements of modern Christian music are far easier to sell than the dry certainties of reformation-style theology. But what the leaders of Reform and GAFCON in Britain lack in numbers, they make up through their effective organisational skills. They are particularly good at representing their views to a press which always finds it easier to report on church divisions than on unity. I would hazard a guess that the total number of Calvinist evangelicals who are theologically literate may add up to the low hundreds. Their claim to speak for the bulk of evangelicals in Britain is a highly contestable one. In the case of this GAFCON briefing paper released in the past weeks, we may see it as crude and unprofessional and likely to decrease respect for their position on the part of many thoughtful Christians. The wider official body of the Church of England, because it has the organisational restraints of a large body, can seldom respond quickly to the kind of provocation contained in this GAFCON paper. So it takes the personal intervention of the Bishop of Salisbury, Nicholas Holtam, to articulate what many people think about this cheap GAFCON attack on the Church of England. Bishop Nicholas has divided his response into four sections. In point one he observes that Jesus never attacked individuals he thought to be in error. This kind of naming of individuals in encourages a climate of fear and opens them up to abuse by others. His second point was to point out the inaccuracies of the statement. The original Lambeth 1.10 resolution called upon the church to minister pastorally and sensitively to all regardless of sexual orientation. By implication this rules out publishing list of supposedly offending individuals. His third point discusses the implications of loving our enemies. To love someone, even those who disagree with us is to look for the best motives in their actions rather than the worst. Finally, he notes that the Lambeth resolution openly acknowledged the fact that it was difficult for the Lambeth bishops to come to a common mind on this matter. It was recognised that much more work needed to be done to discern the mind of Christ in this area of the church’s life. As an aside, Bishop Nicholas pointed to the repeated ways in which members of GAFCON themselves have violated the spirit of the Lambeth resolution. No doubt he was referring to such actions as Anglican leaders in Africa pressing their governments to persecute the gay members of their societies through a change in the law.

Bishop Nicholas’s outspoken intervention against GAFCON is an important one in the ongoing saga of the church seeking truth in the face of bullying and power games. It is still more important in a world increasingly dominated by political and theological extremism. After the election of Donald Trump and the revitalisation of the extreme right in politics and religion, it is important for churches, wherever possible, to articulate a nuanced and moderate presentation of the mystery of God. Although this blog only makes the tiniest of contributions to this cause of moderation, rationality and human kindness, it is still a necessary undertaking. The Bishop’s leadership in pointing out the crudity and sheer bad manners in of the GAFCON position is an encouragement to all of us who reject any attempt to use the Bible as a tool with which to bully others. Moral debate is not solved by crude Bible quoting taken out of context without any attempt to understand the cultural and theological background of the texts. The attempt to control the weak by this kind of crude manipulation must always be resisted in favour of wisdom, truth and insight. We look to a new generation of leaders who understand the true meaning of leadership and that it is never an exercise in control and manipulation. Such leadership will always seek to guide and serve those who want to follow the way and the spirit of Christ.

Recently I have been struggling my way through an important book on Christian fundamentalism as it is experienced in Australia. This is for the purposes of a book review. The author, Josie McSkimming, is looking at the stories of 20 individuals who have successfully escaped their membership of a variety of fundamentalist groups in the Sydney area. The book is distinctive for the way that it presents Christian fundamentalism, using fresh categories of analysis and description. This examination of the structures of these Christian groups utilises the terminology and ideas of Michel Foucault. As a philosopher and historian of ideas Foucault is no easy read. What I will be able to share in this blog post will be only the beginning of an impression of his ideas. The reason that I believe him to be of great importance to our blog is that he is deeply interested in the issue of power. His interest in this theme is both historical and contemporary. McSkimming shows how power in its Foucauldian sense is not something as crude as a single individual exercising influence over others. Rather power is something which is dispersed throughout any institution. When we examine the case of a conservative Christian group, we can see how power is not only about authoritarian control but it is also something experienced inside each of the members. The conversion experience which provided the way into the Christian group is not only a matter of a new relationship with God for the individual. It has also transformed the individual self to become part of a new social order. In other words, the converted Christian has allowed him/herself to be part of a social structure which embodies within itself strict rules of discourse and controls over behaviour. Real power exists within these structures of discourse and assumptions. The individual conscience and the decision-making power of the committed member will now be expected to internalise the values and beliefs of the group. The individual is no longer thinking of themselves as ‘I’ but as ‘we’. When this internalisation is working as it should, coercive power on the part of leaders is seldom needed to enforce conformity. Week by week the teaching of the group message will help to reinforce these group values. Also, the internal policeman that every member has appropriated for themselves to guide their beliefs and conduct will also provide a restraint over any fellow members in the event of their going ‘off-message’. To summarise, as a member of such a group you will have taken on a new personality, and this personality is one was created and is now sustained by the systems of group power.

It is interesting to read in McSkimming’s book how the 20 individuals managed to escape from the structure of their conservative groups in Australia. In several cases there was the recognition that they possessed an unacceptable identity, one which could not be articulated within the group – that of the homosexual. The discourse of the group demanded a conformity only to controlled and approved forms of sexuality. Those who knew that they would never be able to fit in with this control found that they were living in a permanent state of dissonance with the group. A nonconformist sexuality in this way allowed them to preserve intact a suppressed area of identity which the group could never possess. This double life or sense of dissonance provided a firm foundation from which to gradually re-assert their pre-group self over the group personality. The path out of the various groups was never straightforward but in each case the individual found some core part of the personality which the group had not destroyed. That provided the means for creating an ideological or emotional resistance to the group system, eventually leading to escape. McSkimming describes in the words of her interviewees the tremendous sense of liberation experienced when the individual finally broke free of the bonds of the old repressive Christian group identity. They recovered the ability to speak of themselves as ‘I’.

Although we have suggested that the power in these conservative Christian groups was exercised without obvious coercion, it is interesting to note how there are still mechanisms of control. One idea from Foucault, relevant to McSkimming’s study, is the idea of pastoral power. In a typical conservative or cultic group, a controlling technique is to insist on obedience and personal submission to leaders. This will involve a form of confession and will ensure that the leader knows the internal workings of the mind of every follower. This will make difficult any kind of disloyal or independent thought. A follower in this sort of relationship will naturally become more fully meshed in the power dynamics of the group. They will never find it easy to reclaim the pre-group personality.

I am still working my way to make sense of these Foucauldian ideas from McSkimming’s book but I have already identified that they are valuable to us for two main reasons. First they provide new insights into the dynamics of conservative/fundamentalist groups. Foucault suggests that power in such groups is dispersed and control is far more subtly organised than many have understood. Secondly we can see that this idea of dispersed power is of importance in any investigation into religious institutions. It would be tidy if all power in a church or cathedral was given to the person/s nominally in charge. In fact, we need to recognise how power exists in many places within any institution. The important thing is to name and identify where power is actually to be found rather than pretending that there are always clear lines of authority at work. Our account of York Minster identified how much power seem to exist among one group, the bell-ringers. Unchallenged, that power had grown over decades to become a destabilising focus within the whole institution. Our analysis of Exeter Cathedral and its problems suggests that a dysfunctional situation had arisen there again because of the way power was being exercised in an untidy unpredictable way. I suggested that the problem was not just one of personalities but the way that the Cathedrals Measure of 1999 had set up structures of power within cathedrals which are unlikely ever to work successfully. Blaming the individuals within institutions when they are struggling to make impossible structures work, is probably never the best solution.

One thing I take from Michel Foucault is that it is important to identify in a dispassionate way how power actually is operating in any institution. The people who work within an institution which has run into problems are not the people to do this work. They are caught up in the subjectivity of the power relationships and they will not ever be able to see exactly what is going on. It takes the outsider, one perhaps familiar with Foucault’s ideas, to analyse, interpret and disentangle the complexities of power relationships. When these are laid bare and exposed to the light of day, it may then be possible to engage everyone concerned in a possible process of recalibration. The problem will always be that power relationships within institutions are normally hidden and often unacknowledged. They are hidden because of human frailty, petty jealousies and competition. When power dynamics are hidden from view they will sometimes undermine and even destroy the individuals caught up in them. In the case of larger institutions, such as cathedrals, we risk the demoralisation and even destruction of highly gifted people. They are trying to work within a system which we suggested is inherently dysfunctional and unable to deal with its issues of power.

This time a week ago I was writing about the alliance between prominent evangelical leaders in America and Donald Trump. I was still hoping, together with most of my readers I suspect, that the Trump victory would not take place and that, even if it did, the evangelical vote would be split. It now appears that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. It seems that I was wrong in supposing that many of them would not want to identify with Trump’s cavalier attitude to morality and especially in his behaviour towards women. Somehow Trump’s overall appeal was greater than any disgust felt by the voters towards his behaviour, his racism and demeaning attitudes against minorities.

What was the secret of Trump’s appeal to this large group of God-fearing citizens in America? In my reading over the past few days I believe that I have found the main trigger which provided much of his support among evangelical as well as among Catholic voters. The key point is to be found his robust comments on the topic of abortion. In what was probably a deliberate exaggeration, he promised to lock up women who had illegal abortions. Even if this promise proves to be an example of Trump rhetoric, like so many of his other comments, it seems to have hit a chord among his supporters. The topic of abortion and gay marriage will always arouse deep passions among those who can be numbered among conservative Christian believers, both Catholic and Protestant.

Why is abortion such a defining issue among so many conservative Christians around the world, but particularly in America? To answer this, we need to go back to a fundamental human reality, the differences and indeed rivalries between men and women. I realise that I am walking in a vulnerable area of discourse where it is dangerous to make sweeping statements or generalisations. I hope that I am not wrong to observe that many men are threatened by the feminine and feminism. Women operate in a different way to men and men find this unsettling. Throughout history and across cultures men have wanted to control women to lessen this sense of not being in charge and in control of what they identify as a threatening other. In one book I read some time ago there was a further idea suggested to account for this inter-sex rivalry. Every man alive has some memory of being under the control of a woman – his mother. This memory of utter powerlessness and vulnerability is an unsettling one but it may offer some explanation of why many men across cultures feel a need to engage in a range of controlling activities over women. Somewhere in the mix is also the way that men want to control female sexuality. One of the most extreme acts of control against a woman, female genital mutilation, seems to be a sign of how men are terrified of something they cannot either understand or share. The fact that women are entrusted with the actual task of mutilating young girls does not remove it from being a patriarchal act, sanctioned by generations of misogynistic attitudes.

In the States the attempt to deny women abortions under any circumstances seems to have little to do with an abhorrence of child murder. To deny abortion seems to have far more to do with controlling women and denying them choices. This political mindset that attacks abortion seems content to condone the state execution of criminals and the waging of war. If we accept that the anti-abortion position is less a moral position than one among a whole cluster of attitudes designed to put women in a subordinate place, the power of the moral argument changes quite radically. One does not have to be a supporter of abortion to find some of the underlying objections from ‘Christian’ sources to be rooted in some obnoxious and foul smelling prejudice.

The rhetoric against abortion and indeed gay marriage is right at the heart of a right wing Trumpian appeal to men, particularly the economically disadvantaged. More generally there is a call for a return to and a nostalgia for the 1950s. At that time men alone provided for their families leaving their women and children at home. Being the breadwinners the men accepted complete financial responsibility and at the same time control of their families. The man’s status as head of the family was assured and his self-esteem was secure. Since the 1950s there have been profound social revolutions. Employment has become far less secure; women have been going out to work for decades, in some cases earning more than the men. This loss of status for many working class white men has been a profound trauma and anybody or anything that can restore this lost status will be welcomed by this large group among the American population.

Many evangelical churches also offer to their supporters the possibility of living in a world which promises certainties and access to self-esteem. The certainties on offer may not be economic in nature but they are alluring nonetheless. The male married man is encouraged to think of himself as the divinely anointed head of the family and this authority is backed up by frequent sermons on how important it is for the wife and children to be his subordinates. It is indeed a sin for anyone or anything to act against this divinely appointed system. A belief in this divinely ordained structure for human families is at the heart of why most conservative Christians oppose both abortion and gay marriage with such energy. Both these practices undermine the solid rock of biblical-ordained patriarchal marriage. This has and always will be a key aspect of the teaching of most conservative churches. Without it the interconnection between bible truths and practical Christian living is challenged. The ability of churches to operate as havens of reassurance and safety amid rapid social change, particularly for men, is undermined. For some reason that is not clear to me, it is not only men that find this traditional teaching attractive but also quite a few women. Not being a woman I do not understand why all women are not at least in part feminists. Clearly many are not and somehow some find comfort and affirmation in being subordinate and obedient to male husbands and male pastors.

Donald Trump in 2016 appealed to a large swathe of the American population to vote for him and this included the vast majority of white evangelical Christians. He was offering them what I believe was a fantasy – namely that with him they could return to a safer more secure world. This fantasy world of certainties is similar to the one that is successfully promised in many churches. The message is: ‘come here and you will be able to find the answers to all life’s stresses and problems; decisions about life and its meaning will be made on your behalf by others wiser than yourself. Trust the Bible to have all the answers. You will be guided by experts and interpreters of the same Bible who will be your teachers and mentors. With them you will be able successfully to negotiate life without the stress of not knowing the answers.’ Sadly, as this blog is often reminding its readers, this promise is illusory. What is in fact happens to the followers in such churches is a massive extinction of human freedom. In the place of true human flourishing is found a mindless obedience and conformity to systems of power and repression. It remains to be seen whether the millions of people who have surrendered to these kinds of blandishments, as promised by countless churches and by Donald Trump, will eventually wake up. When they wake up they may see what has been done to them through the skilful use of lies, propaganda and rhetoric. Let us hope so.

Robert Skynner is an individual that I do not know personally. However I have been viewing his series of videos on Youtube about church abuse for some time. He lives in the south west of England and has been posting videos on this and other topics. The ones that are of interest to our blog are particularly those connected with his involvement with some of the independent Pentecostal churches in his home area. His perspective is sharpened by the fact that he has a degree in theology from a Scottish university and this enables him to comment from a position of theological insight. His purpose in producing these videos is to show up the hypocrisy and some extraordinary theological teachings in this cluster of churches. The hypocrisy that he identifies is in the fact that certain church leaders admit to sexual misbehaviour of various kinds including addiction to pornography, adultery and the protection of a convicted paedophile. While he has not been sued for slander, because the facts of the claims are not contested, this attempt to publicise these facts has got him into trouble with the police. He is due to appear in court on November 18 charged with harassment without violence.

I shall not of course give any more detail about the individuals whom Robert is accused of harassing. Nevertheless, his involvement with and insight into these churches is extremely interesting from the point of view of this blog. The critiques that he makes of these congregations and their leaders come under two headings. In the first place he is extremely critical of some of the theology taught by the leaders. In addition he has a great deal of inside information about the sexual shenanigans which seem to be out of control among some of the leadership in these churches. Because of their heresy and immorality, these churches are, he believes, fatally undermined in their witness to Christian values.

It would of course be wrong of me to suggest that the situation that Robert has identified in these particular congregations is in any way general across the country. One has, however, to ask how often does someone with Robert’s insights actually get involved in such independent unsupervised congregations? To put the question another way, how many congregations with crassly narcissistic leaders who specialise in accumulating money as well as seducing female members of the congregation are called to account? These are not the sort of places where people with education, let alone degrees in theology attend. We may imagine that there are areas in Britain other than the one in the South West, where scenarios, such as those Robert describes, take place. These do not normally reach the public domain because the people who continue to attend either do not have the stamina or the education to stand up to such tyrannical and hypocritical behaviour. The individuals who might have stood up to such abuse have long since walked away. But, by doing so, they have left the evils of abuse to ferment and grow.

Robert’s dedication to exposing the inner corruption of one particular group of churches would probably need to be described as obsessive. But, in using this word, I am not meaning in any way to be critical of him. Struggling against any kind of tyranny is hard and normally unrewarding. You will be vilified, attacked and shunned in ways that you never thought possible at the hands of so called Christians. Just as John Langlois’ report about Peniel opened the lid on decades of cruel and tyrannical behaviour on the part of Michael Reid so Robert Skynner has also opened up something which might so easily have remained buried for ever. We need to applaud him for the obsessiveness with which he has undertaken this important work. Another individual, whose name I will not give, suffered a nervous breakdown in her attempts to support Robert in this work.

His degree in theology from a Scottish university has meant that Robert is far more sensitised to aberrations within Pentecostal teaching than I am. He is also aware of a variety of maverick understandings of the doctrine of the Trinity and he himself was a member of a movement called Oneness Pentecostalism for a short time. His YouTube videos spend quite a lot of time critiquing various heretical ideas which he has identified in this group of churches. It is not for me here to go into this aspect in any detail. I mention it to make the point that members of any church which is independent will have to tolerate whatever comes from the pulpit. No one will normally have the background knowledge or courage to challenge anything that is said. I did however notice one item in a doctrinal statement from one of the churches. This spoke of an understanding of the Trinity as being in accordance with Holy Scripture. My own theological understanding immediately wanted to protest that there is in fact no clear doctrine of the Trinity in Holy Scripture. It is a teaching which was gradually worked out over a period of several hundred years in the Early Church. The idea that a fully formed Trinitarian doctrine is found in Scripture is based on a very weak grasp of the Christian tradition.

How did Robert get involved in this network of churches? He tells his story in brief. He had a conversion experience and joined a group of Christians doing street evangelism in city streets some eight years ago. He stayed with them only a matter of months before he found himself completely out of sympathy, both for their strange methods of doing theology and also for the rampant immorality that he found in the group. A particular complaint he has for one of the congregations was the way that a convicted paedophile was allowed to have access to children. The leaders accepted the testimony of the paedophile that he had been converted and was no longer a risk to children. Such naïveté is dangerous and possibly criminal. The individual concerned has now been sentenced to a second period in prison for a repeat offence.

Why do I give Robert Skynner a blog post all on his own? It is because, in spite of his possibly unwise and obsessive behaviour, we have a light shone by into one dark place within the church. The stand that he has taken has demanded levels of courage and perseverance. The price that he is now paying for standing up against hypocrisy and, as he sees it, heresy is a high one. The charge against him, harassment without violence, will probably not lead to a jail sentence but it is still hard to see how he can come out of this situation without suffering a good deal. So far in my writing on abusive church practice, I have not had to engage with any active opposition. Even the writing of my book, Ungodly Fear, did not produce the levels of opposition that I expected. Examples of Christian abuse that I encountered were geographically a long way away from where I lived. I encountered the pain of other people but did not have to experience it at first hand. Robert Skynner has entered the lions’ den of local Christian abuse and hypocrisy. For that he is paying a heavy price.

It is probably impertinent for a British person to be writing any comments about the 2016 American presidential election. But the result, the election of a new American president next Tuesday, does affect all of us wherever we live in the world. From the point of view of this blog we have a special concern for the way that American political thinking from the Right is enmeshed with some of the most reactionary and conservative theological ideas. This gives us reason to be alarmed. A quick review of some Christian websites, however, has given me some cause for hope whatever the outcome next week. Even if Donald Trump is elected as president, it seems to be true that conservative evangelical opinion is in the process of fragmenting over this election. If conservative opinion, whether political or religious, begins to lose its unanimity it becomes far less dangerous to the rest of us than if it remained a totally united front. We should nevertheless all be acutely aware of the constant danger of a juggernaut of right wing political and religious power sweeping all before it in America and then in the rest of the world. As for Trump himself, one conservative supporter has been talking about him as a ‘baby Christian’ who wants to receive forgiveness for his past mistakes. Others have noted that his life is no example of godly living. Cynically one would expect the less savoury parts of his personality to become, in the event of his election, even more apparent. His narcissism, his brashness and his total lack of relevant experience are likely to come into full view in the months following his election. Most of us in the UK who take any interest in these matters will be supporting the flawed but experienced candidate- Hillary Clinton.

One old saying claims that you can tell a person’s character by the company he keeps. A bit of delving on the Internet reveals that there are a variety of evangelical leaders who are prepared to swallow any squeamishness they might feel and support their candidate Trump. Looking at the list of eminent evangelicals who have become identified with Trump’s cause, I find only a few names that I recognise. One name that does come up is the veteran evangelical leader, James Dobson. For over 25 years Dobson was the leader of a Christian ministry called Focus on the Family. This offered advice to parents on how to bring up their children. An early book entitled Dare to Discipline used to sit on my shelves. It was notable for the way that parents were encouraged to use a stick (paddle) to impart godly discipline and follow the teaching of the book of Proverbs. This tradition of using violence as part of the way of bringing up children goes right back to the days of the Puritan Fathers. It is a theme common in Calvinist Protestant thought in America. Also, with his interest in the family Dobson is strongly pro-life. Among the few promises made by Trump which touch on areas of belief, there has been a strong endorsement of the anti-abortion cause. One of the decisive ways through which a president can most affect the values of the nation is in his right to nominate candidates for the Supreme Court. The judges who constitute this Court have the last word on whether abortion and gay marriage are possible in American society.

A second name that is familiar to followers of the American scene is Gerry Falwell Jnr. He is the oldest son of the founder of the Moral Majority, also Gerry Falwell. Falwell Jnr is the President of Liberty University, the largest Christian university in the world. He is closely identified with the Southern Baptist network and is not afraid to become involved in political issues like his father before him. While many evangelical leaders supported Ted Cruz when he was still a Republican candidate, Falwell has consistently supported Trump since 2012. Among his right-wing conservative views, Falwell is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment which sets out the right to bear arms. He also, bizarrely for a Christian university, allows his students to carry arms on campus. The support for Trump by Falwell is also linked up strongly with his economic opposition to many of Obama’s fiscal policies.

The third name, that of Paula White, will not be known to most UK readers. But her name is well known in the world of religious broadcasting in the States. She is associated and works with many of the big names of the charismatic world, including Benny Hinn. Like most of these charismatic leaders involved in broadcasting, her message is strongly ‘prosperity gospel’. It seems that she was the one who organised a meeting in September between Trump and various other tele-evangelists within her network. She also held a meeting at Trump Tower last year when she cited Isaiah 54, praying that ‘any tongue that rises against Trump will be condemned’. She also told a 10,000 strong rally in Florida that Trump ‘needs to be our next president’.

The final couple that need to be mentioned among Trump supporters, are Kenneth and Gloria Copeland from Texas. Like Paula White this couple are fabulously wealthy prosperity preachers. As with many of their ilk they were targeted by a Senate investigation in 2007. This raised many questions about the tax-free status of their and other similar ministries. Although the Copelands initially supported Ted Cruz, they appear to have thrown their weight behind Trump in more recent months. In a meeting in September the Copelands prayed with Trump that ‘God would give him wisdom according to James I and that God would reveal himself’. This was not, officially speaking, an endorsement of Trump though it is hard to read it any other way.

The two main strands of conservative evangelical opinion, the Calvinist and the Charismatic/Pentecostal are thus represented among those who support Donald Trump for president. It would have been possible, no doubt, to have found other names within these cultures who take another point of view. But it is clear from this rapid survey that some Christians appear to believe that God has given the American Republican party a divine blessing. This is in no way affected by the moral or intellectual suitability of the candidate put forward. The prosperity preachers we have mentioned will, no doubt, have their own particular reasons for supporting the Republican party. There are, in all likelihood, some networks and cosy relationships which allow their wealthy ministries to escape being exposed to detailed scrutiny. For both groups of conservative opinion, the theological issue that seems to dominate their thinking right across the world has nothing to do with the nature of God. It concerns sexuality and family life. Many of us would see this obsession with sex as being much more to do with maintaining male social power than any theological principle. Trump does not appear to have anything to say of theological significance to the voter but he still manages to obtain the support of millions of conservative Christian voters. All he has to do is to hint that he shares the desire of many Americans to retain the social status-quo of the male dominated family.

All of us await the results on Tuesday with trepidation. The one sliver of good news is, as I mentioned at the beginning, that conservative opinion may fragment further if Trump is elected. The sheer inability of many Christians to stomach such an unlikely candidate as representing their Christian values, may mean that in the medium to long term the conservative Christian Right may be weakened. Surely there must be many good Christian people in America who are saying something along these lines. ‘If my Christianity requires my support for such an improbably inexperienced and flawed candidate, then there is something amiss with the system of political life in America as well as those Christian leaders who want to tell me how to vote!.’

I thought it would be a good idea to revisit this whole theme of exclusion and shunning by churches. A reason for writing this present blog post and giving this topic some further discussion is that my previous contribution on this subject is reported to be the first discussion that appears in a Google search combining the words ‘church ’ and ‘shunning’. This fact both surprised and alarmed me. Is this blog really a key source of information and discussion that wants to take seriously the topic of shunning as it is practised in churches?

Another interesting fact that has been shared with me is that shunning, when looked at from the perspective of the church leader who practises it, is simply described as church discipline. Just as some church leaders parade their authority and power to their followers by endlessly quoting a few scriptural passages, so I discovered that church discipline is a process exercised in accordance with Matthew 18.15-18. In this passage, we read of the way in which an erring brother is to be corrected and if necessary excluded because of his obstinate state of sin. The passage is not without its problems from a critical point of view. Tax gatherers, who are mentioned in the passage as being somehow beyond the pale, are, in other parts of the Gospels, often the object of Jesus’s special concern. Also, we have a parable teaching the unlimited forgiveness of God coming immediately after this legalistic section.

This juxtaposition of an apparent command to discipline an erring disciple alongside a parable about unlimited forgiveness is no coincidence as far as I can see. The author of Matthew’s gospel surely means us to understand ‘church discipline’ in the context of God’s generous love and forgiveness. The practitioners of this harsh process of shunning and exclusion today seldom give any hint that they have attempted to put any forgiveness into practice. They do not appear to have even noticed that Matthew 18 overall is far more about generosity and unlimited forgiveness than a brutal exercise of coercive power. The word ‘brutal’ is probably the best word to sum up the effect of excluding and expelling a church member from their social, spiritual and emotional home to which they may have belonged for many years. The cruel and barbaric practice of ‘dis-fellowshipping’ or ‘disconnection’ is likely to have such a profound effect on its victims that they are never heard because the ‘treatment’ has left them mute and powerless. We also wonder how the enlisting of an entire congregation to enforce this exclusion of the ‘guilty’ person is going to do anything to promote the Christian virtues of love, generosity and forgiveness. In short such drastic cruel and inhumane treatment of another person by a Christian leader has very little to do with Matthew 18 or anything recognisably Christian.

There are three further observations about power that I want to make when looking at the process of shunning by a church leader of an individual. First of all, we have noted the incredibly cruel use of power by depriving a person of access to old social and spiritual networks. In addition to this the individual is being effectively told that without the ‘covering’ of the pastor, this ex-member is cut off from the promise of salvation. In short they are being condemned to damnation and eternal punishment. The second aspect of the power abuse which is present in every act of shunning, is the way that the entire congregation is brought into the process. Each member of the congregation is, in effect, ordered to withdraw their affection from the targeted person whether they wish to or not. Another way of putting this is to say that the pastor has ordered them to hate a named individual who may or may not be guilty of a serious offence. The examples that have come to us from the detailed report about Peniel, Brentwood certainly suggest that many shunned people were guilty only of questioning the leadership or refusing to obey some arbitrary command. In other words the Peniel story suggests that shunning or exclusion is used as a weapon of control by leaders who desire total domination of their congregations.

The third part of any act of shunning is the effect on the targeted individual. In many or even most cases the targeted person will feel the weight of shame so severely that they will be unable to be able to hold their head up or face their persecutors. Shame and the weight of a condemnation to a social death is a very heavy burden for anyone to bear. Very often a church, particularly under an oppressive leader, will have no process for launching any kind of appeal against the punishment that has been meted out. As we have seen often in this blog, the situation in many independent fellowships is that the minister or pastor is answerable to no one except God. Since he believes that God gives him direct guidance, he will be unable to contemplate any reconsideration of a judgement that he has made. The power imbalance that exists between the victim of shunning and the leader makes any comeback by that victim almost impossible. In most cases they are psychologically and socially destroyed.

The communication with me about the subject of shunning has allowed me a measure of encouragement for the work of the blog. The fact that my earlier article on shunning in the church appears right at the top of a Google search has allowed me to believe that I must continue to write on these topics in spite of minimal support or interest in these areas of church life. Many Christians appear to be blind and deaf to the suffering of countless people who have become the victims of narcissistic tyranny by some Church leaders. As long as this blindness continues the blog will remain important. There has to be one small corner of the internet where these important issues are talked about and exposed. To misquote the old saying, Evil flourishes where no one wants to admit it exists. Anyone who reads, comments and thinks about these issues will do a little to help the process of bringing light into dark places.

One of the wonders of the world-wide web is that anyone can sit in on discussions that are going on elsewhere in the world. Because of the nature of this blog’s interest, I am always alert to fashionable ideas that emerge in the conservative/charismatic scene in the States. One particular Christian movement in the US, one that is unlikely to find much support among UK evangelicals, seeks to put Christian principles right at the heart of the political system. Here we simply do not have the critical mass of conservative Christians (at least not yet) who would be able to set up a substantial lobby to infiltrate mainstream political thinking. It is therefore fascinating to watch the alliances that are being attempted by the American Christian Right with political figures in the Republican party. I have read some extraordinary justifications of Donald Trump by Christian leaders. As Trump is not particularly noted for his open support of Christian belief and values, one must suppose that those Christians who support him have calculated that a President Trump will protect their social and financial interests better than a President Clinton.

Looking behind these alliances that are being made between religion and politics in the States, I detect one distinct ideology at work. This is the belief in a politically ultra-conservative system known as Dominionism. I posted a Blog on this topic some time back and gave a little time to exploring the ideas of one Rousas Rushdoony. He proposed that the words of Scripture provide all that is needed for organising a society based on God’s laws rather the laws of politics. In its extreme form Dominionism will allow homosexuals to be executed and all women silenced and firmly banished to the domestic sphere. Dominionism is, in short, a coded way of calling for theocracy. In this system divinely appointed godly men, armed with the text of Scripture, will make a far better job of government than through the democratic system. Godly tyranny or autocracy is a quick way of describing what many conservative American Christian thinkers wish to introduce in their country. Elections and democratic accountability are not thought to be part of God’s plan for the world. Such ideas have considerable prominence in the States but it needs to said, they do not appear anywhere on the political horizon in either the UK or Europe.

When writing the piece about Peter Wagner, I encountered what may be the latest incarnation of Dominionism, Seven Mountains teaching. This view of the potential role of Christianity in American society came about as the result of a vision given to three Christian leaders in 1975. These leaders were Loren Cunningham, Bill Bright and Francis Schaeffer. Others have taken up the teaching in the following 40 years, notably the preacher father of Ted Cruz, Rafael Cruz and a prolific Christian author, Lance Wallnau. In summary, the Seven Mountains represent the high places of influence that exist in every culture, the control of which sets the tone for the whole of society. These mountains at present are occupied by Satan but Christians need to regain ownership of them so that God can be seen to be in charge across the whole nation. The mountains that need to be conquered are politics, religion, education, arts and culture, business, media and family. It does not take a great of imagination to see what this reclaiming culture on behalf of a biblically revealed conservative God might involve. The media would suddenly begin to present an ultra-right perspective; education would drop all mention of evolution and theatre plays would all have only wholesome ‘Christian’ themes. Family life would only exist within specified boundaries. The legal system would naturally lock up all gays and public debate on almost any subject would be severely controlled in a kind of Orwellian manner.

The extent of the influence of Seven Mountains thinking on evangelical and charismatic thought in the States is hard to determine precisely. But the fact that it is espoused by someone who came close to carrying the Republican nomination for President gives us pause for thought. As I have introduced my readers to the thinking of Peter Wagner, I should also mention that he was a strong supporter of this ideology.

In introducing this somewhat bizarre set of ideas to the blog, I want to make two observations. In the first place, I want to note that the ideas came out of the thinking (imaginations?) of three men. It was then assumed by them that this political message was a direct revelation of God’s will. With all the talk in their discussion about the way that most of society is presided over by Satan, how do these leaders know that God is speaking here? Watching a clip of Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth with a Mission, speaking about how Seven Mountains teachings were revealed to him, I sensed a fanatical fervour in his words. This vision had become for him an unchallengeable and infallible teaching on a par with Scripture. This messianic sense of personal infallibility seems common in the charismatic world. An idea comes to a leader and suddenly it is a required part of the belief system for all the followers of that leader. This is the same dynamic that seems to have been at work with the followers of Peter Wagner. The New Apostolic Reformation, which involves God’s direct authority being entrusted to certain individuals, never seems to be challenged by any followers. Rather new ideas are simply swallowed as though they are inevitably to be regarded as God’s direct revelation for our times. From where I come from these assumptions, which I suggest are clear manifestations of narcissistic grandiosity, have always to be scrutinised with theological and psychological vigour. Seven Mountain teachings may seem to be at one level harmless eccentricity, but when they reach so close to the centre of political power, as in the States, they become a source of real danger for the well-being of societies right across the globe.

The second observation that I make is to note the appearance once again of dualism or binary thinking. By binary thinking I am referring to the way that for some thinkers every issue is presented as either good and true or bad and false. Nothing is ever allowed to be uncertain; paradox is not tolerated in this simplistic way of thinking. We would, I think, be correct in supposing that such dualism is an appropriate way of thinking suitable for a child at primary school level. Beyond the age of twelve, we might hope that every child is beginning to tolerate the idea that not every problem has a clear-cut answer. There are indeed vast areas of uncertainty in every discipline which is why an open society values highly the principle of debate. Unchanging truths, particularly in such subjects as history, politics or economics, are seldom easy to pin down. Only in mathematics and some branches of science does a fixed form of truth seem to exist. If we are committed to the idea that complex problems can always be reduced to a single correct answer, then we are doing violence to the accumulated wisdom of centuries of human study and learning. I for one do not wish to return to a society ruled by authoritarian binary thinkers.

Seven Mountains teaching, were it to be implemented, would take society back several hundred years. However imperfect our institutions, let us celebrate the fact that these institutions do evolve in accordance with the values of openness, questioning as well as uncertainty. While society does not claim to be perfect, it can change and develop and accommodate itself to contemporary thinking and new ideas. Whenever unchallengeable ‘revelations’ are given the status of ultimate truth in society, there will be fossilisation, stagnation and deep frustration. I know what kind of society I would prefer to live in.

Peter Wagner, a key figure among charismatic Christian leaders world-wide, died on October 21st. The fact that many people in the UK may have never heard of him, let alone read one of his many books, does not take anything away from the fact of his enormous importance in the charismatic as well as the wider evangelical scene. In this short piece, I am concerned neither to write a hagiography nor a critique of his thinking. Others will, no doubt, be doing both these things at some point in the future. What I wish to do is to point out how the ideas coming from one man can achieve huge influence over the way that many ordinary Christians think. At this point I think I can safely say that his legacy in the charismatic world is a mixed one. He was a man of many ideas. Whether all these ideas deserved to achieve so much influence in Christian charismatic thinking is a debatable point.

In his early days Wagner served as a missionary in Bolivia under the auspices of the South American Mission and the Andes Evangelical Mission. From 1971 up to his formal retirement in 2001 he was Professor of Church Growth at the Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Missions in the States. After retirement he found himself an unofficial leader in what is now known as the New Apostolic Reformation. This is a movement that has a very powerful influence among many charismatic Christians in every part of the world. Many charismatic Christians follow the ideas of this network even they may not be aware of this title. Still less will they know of the way that NAR has become politically well organised and highly influential over the past 15 or so years.

Among the new emphases that have emerged within the charismatic movement over the past few decades, Wagner seems to played a leading part in promoting and articulating many of them. In his early days at Fuller Wagner helped to promote the notion of Church Growth. I remember the first time I heard about this as a technique for increasing church membership in the 1980s. It followed the ideas of one Donald McGavran who had also taught at Fuller after a lifetime of missionary work. McGavran co-authored a book with Wagner back in 1970 which sought to promote the idea that mission was most successful when the target of missionary work was not the individual but the group or the tribe. People find it easier to accept the Christian message when it is integrated into their pre-existing cultural and social context. Translated into a Western context, it is noted how people will always find it easier to join a church when there are others just like themselves already there. Students will relate easily to other students, retired people to other retireds, and particular nationalities will more easily gravitate to people like themselves.

Church Growth principles are still taught in missionary studies but in the 70s and 80s Wagner began to develop his ideas in new directions beyond the original McGavran model. One of the most significant decisions of his career was to promote the ideas and teaching of John Wimber. In the late 70s Wimber came to teach at Fuller a course entitled ‘ Signs, Wonders and Church Growth’. This teaching eventually had a decisive impact and influence on the charismatic movement across the world. Among other things it opened people up to an awareness of evil and demonic influences at work and these needed to be countered during the process of evangelism. Also in Wimber’s teaching there was a strong emphasis on spiritual healing. Wagner identified himself totally with these new experiential teachings collectively described as signs and wonders. He was happy to describe the movements taking place around him at Fuller as being signs of a Third Wave of the Holy Spirit. Having been to a Wimber Conference in 1992 at Holy Trinity, Brompton, I am not one of those who is totally negative about Wimber’s ministry. However, I do feel much more analytical work needs to be done on his ministry and the theological and practical legacy of this teaching. Wagner’s support and endorsement of Wimber is not, for the moment, something that automatically invites criticism. However, the next stages of Wagner’s enthusiasms do give rise to some real concerns on my part.

By the year 2000 two new theological emphases had become apparent in Wagner’s thinking. Each of these were also to have far-reaching implications for the world-wide charismatic movement. The first of these seems to have begun at a Symposium in 1996 at Fuller entitled, The Post-Denominational Church. The thinking behind this title was that the New Testament church possessed no denominations. In their place there were certain offices, as taught by Ephesians 2.20, of Apostles and Prophets. Wagner was so confident about this pattern of church government that he was able to declare a little later that a second apostolic age had begun in the year 2001. We may make an observation about this confident declaration. There is here, not just a sharing of a fresh insight about biblical teaching, but a statement that Wagner believed himself to be at the epicentre of a new movement in the world-wide church. He then became involved in a confident naming of other leaders who would with him fulfil this role of Apostle. The task of these Apostles was to oversee churches and their ministries right across the world. Through these Apostles, God was going to ‘bring spiritual government to the pastors … so that the pastors can do the job that God has given them in a much more effective way.’

The second part of the new movement that Wagner was strongly identified with was what was known as spiritual mapping. I have already discussed this in a previous blog. It basically consisted of a strong sense that any missionary work would involve spiritual conflict with demons and territorial spirits. This was in part a continuation of the themes of healing taught by John Wimber that the pursuit of wholeness would often involve some form of exorcism. Space prevents me going further into this theme.

What are we to make of the legacy of Peter Wagner? He was obviously a man of enormous creativity and insight. His ideas are sometimes eccentric but always of great interest. The way that these same ideas have become uncritically adopted by so many in the charismatic world is however something that does create problems from our perspective. The concept of the Apostle as being a God-appointed role is itself a dangerous teaching. It reminds us of the ides of theocracy which seems to be the fantasy of a variety of religious leaders, both Christian and Muslim. Who oversees the overseers? In theory it is God. Peter Wagner’s legacy has not helped the wider Church give any satisfactory answer to the very basic questions about authority and where it is to be found. Simply to allow himself to become an Apostle, answerable only to God, does not resolve the wider issues. History may concur with us in concluding that top-heavy religious authority, such as that invested in Apostles, will always create enormous problems for the church. In fairness to Peter Wagner and his memory, perhaps we should not find him personally responsible for the problems of power and how it is administered in the church. In all probability, we should critique the universal longing of Christians of every tradition to search for a guru. Whether Anglo-Catholic or conservative, far too many Christians long for someone to tell them what to think and what to do. Wagner may be just one more person who found himself fulfilling the role of the guru that so many people are desperately searching for. Perhaps the culture of 21st charismatic teaching created Peter Wagner rather than the other way round.

The reports from York about a falling out between the Dean and Chapter and the Cathedral bell-ringers makes good copy for newspapers. At first glance it appears to be a power struggle between a group of clergy fired-up with management ideas and a fiercely independent body of volunteers. The sympathy of a reader is initially drawn to the bell-ringers and their attempts to resist interference in their affairs. It would be easy for this blog to conclude that once again church leadership had got it wrong and were unable to treat fairly those who gave of their time to serve the church in one of its many activities. We now face the prospect of York Minster having no bells over Christmas and the New Year. What greater public statement of a breakdown in communication could there be than this?

The Guardian newspaper has gone much more deeply into the story than other news outlets. It appears that, from the statement of the Archbishop of York, there is a safeguarding issue at stake. This is a coded way of saying that one of the bell-ringers is a person thought to be a source of risk to others, especially the young people among the band of enthusiasts. The Guardian names the particular individual as one David Potter. It appears that he had been released from a teaching job in 2000 and investigated by the police as recently as last year. So far he has avoided prosecution. The newspaper also reveals that David Potter is linked to a solid phalanx of other bell-ringers who are extended members of his family. It is this tribal solidarity that has created an impossible situation and apparently made such extreme action on the part of the Dean and Chapter necessary.

The issue of what to do when an individual is suspected of, but not convicted for, criminal behaviour within a congregation is frankly a nightmare for any clergyman or minister. There are many examples of bad behaviour that do not qualify for police activity or formal action. A child may complain of an adult who is behaving in a ‘creepy’ manner but who has not crossed any barrier into actual sexual assault. But something needs to be done and, if it is not, then the problem may fester for years or even decades. The Guardian story seemed to be implying that there were indeed solid grounds for suspicion against the individual, even though he had not been charged. The statement of the Archbishop records that advice had been taken from safeguarding experts locally and nationally to help them decide what to do in this case. As every clergyman in the country with bells in the tower knows, bell-ringers can be a quite separate group and sometimes they have few links with the actual congregation in the church where they ring. Issues like separate bank accounts and a self-perpetuating hierarchy are allowed to continue, effectively placing them outside any control of a Church Council. Any interference by Vicars or Deans in what is seen to be their independent affairs will be resisted with energy and passion.

I am capable of believing a story of a hard-hearted Dean being dictatorial against a hard-working group of volunteers, but in this York example, this does not appear to be anything close to the full story. But, coming out of this whole incident, we have an example of the way that power operates untidily in a large institution like York Minster. The Cathedrals Measure 1999 would probably work far better if all the workers were paid employees. The situation of a large institution with numerous volunteers is a far more complicated situation. It demands very high levels of people skills. A Vicar or a Dean has to spend quite a bit of time adjudicating between individuals who have fallen out in one of the tasks that are done within a church. A row over something like a flower rota is an event that will occur with regularity in a church setting. Some divisions are resolved quickly; others take much longer to sort out. It is seldom a matter of good management but rather great patience and people-skills are required to keep any institution running smoothly, whether large or small.

The situation at York seems here to be one of the Dean taking decisive action in a situation which required it. Because of the tribal power and solidarity possessed by the bell-ringing group, that decision was openly challenged, the media involved and a public situation of scandal allowed to emerge. That of course is a pity and it makes the church seem hard-hearted and authoritarian. One good thing that may come out of this situation at York is a better recognition of how power operates in a church setting. Authority and power have to be exercised with vigour on rare occasions and everybody who works in that institution should be able to recognise that sometimes this is in fact a necessity. In this situation at York, institutional power came into conflict with a localised tribal power, that of the bell-ringing group. The need for the Minster to preserve the highest standards of safeguarding meant that the Dean and Chapter backed by the Archbishop had to overrule the independence of the bell-ringers. Many of the ringers would think that sacking them all and changing the locks was an overreaction. They may have claimed to be surprised at the actions taken. It would in fact be surprising if the facts of the investigation of Mr Potter by the police were not known to all the other adult bell-ringers. We await to see how this story unfolds, but meanwhile I feel that the authority of the Dean has been unfairly undermined by the media. Safeguarding and protecting the young on church premises must take precedence over the tribal solidarity of a group of volunteers, however dedicated. It is to be hoped that the deeper issues in the story uncovered by the Guardian will become far more understood by the people of York. In this way the work of the church may be allowed to continue free from the taint of accusations of power abuse.

The Times this morning Saturday 22nd has a fuller account of this saga which seems to concur with this assessment. The issue remains whether or not the bell-ringers are really supporting safeguarding priorities or defensively protecting their own membership.

I was recently reading a book which pointed out something which I have long been aware of. The book was talking about the much quoted principle in certain circles that a Christian must always be ready to give an account of what he or she believes. The author pointed out how difficult in practice it is to have a rounded articulated faith to be drawn on for the purpose of witnessing to others. The only way that it is possible to put forward a coherent set of beliefs is when you have appropriated a stock system of doctrine from the community you belong to. To put it another way, much so-called Christian witnessing has the hall-mark of repeating a formula which has been rote-learned from elsewhere. In this way it is a product, not of the individual mind, but rather of a community. Having heard such rote-learned statements of belief many times, I note that the intellect of the individual repeating these beliefs seems to have been often bypassed. Also, in their anxiety to repeat the correct belief statements, the individual within this culture feels they cannot deviate from the set pattern of the words. Some of these witnessing statements cry out to be interpreted, for example the ones concerning Jesus’ death on the cross. One statement of belief which has to be signed up by members of university Christian Unions states thus:
Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.
I personally have a problem with exactly what this statement is supposed to mean and I find it difficult to suppose that those who sign up to it are, in most cases, doing more than give their assent to it as part of the price of belonging. Assenting to something is quite distinct from believing it. To believe something is fully to engage mind and intellect in the process of understanding before possessing it as your own. In view of the complex nature of the above statement, it is surprising that it is not the topic of much explanation and interpretation in Christian Union circles. Something as important as this statement, which is hard to understand, should, surely, provoke lively discussion and debate. As far as I know the statement is normally just accepted as part of the price of membership and little more is said.

Statements of belief thus frequently tell us far more about the groups that people belong to than individual convictions. Actual convictions about what is real and what is not real in Christian truth claims have to be worked out by each person. While we cannot generalise, it would surely be true to say that the real beliefs of most Christian people, i.e. what they have worked out for themselves, are extremely untidy. Even when we admit that the vast majority of Christians from every background see their belief as a project in construction rather than a finished building, there still exists something we call personal faith. When I speak here of faith, I am not of course speaking of beliefs but something as simple as an act of trust in God. This may have no words. An individual may reach out to God, sometimes in joy, sometimes in despair. This reaching out will normally little by way of intellectual content. Yet this action is what Jesus commended and calls faith. When he himself called out to God from the cross with the words, ‘My God my God why have you forsaken me’, he was not making an articulate confession of belief. He was simply reaching out to his father from a place of utter desolation.

Reaching out to God in this way, which we describe as an act of faith, is likely to have little in the way of words. Many people who reach out to God with this kind of faith may have very contact with a formal belief system and certainly most would not be able to articulate what they believe. And yet the Bible has plenty of space for such people, the inarticulate, the despairing and those at the end of hope. There is one particular psalm in the Bible, Psalm 88, which expresses a despairing longing for and a crying out to God and where there is apparently no response from him. In a Christian world which wants to promote confident smiling Christians, secure in their knowledge of salvation and in what they believe, such despair and inarticulate groaning will have little place. The psalmist shows signs of complete despair without any confidence that God is going to answer him but his prayer is not written out of Scripture. We can say that the Bible wants us to recognise that the voice of utter despair is a voice which needs to be heard. No happy ending concludes the psalm. The writer is left totally isolated in his despair.

Psalm 88 suggests to us that we have to take seriously the existence of apparent spiritual failure. But we still recognise it as a psalm of faith. The bleakness of the psalm, sometimes referred to as a Psalm of Lament, is a sober reminder that the Christian faith is or should be relevant not just to happy successful people, but to people in every stage and experience of life. The psalmist certainly had not got things sorted, as we would say, and probably he would not have made a good ‘witness’ or been able to articulate a convincing confession of belief.

If we want to see how different faith is from belief, we only have to read these words of Psalm 88. All that the psalmist knew was that God had plunged him into the lowest abyss. Even a belief that God would eventually come to his rescue was denied him. Every vestige of a belief system seems to have been taken away. And yet, in spite of feeling that God was not on his side in any way, having become like a man beyond help, he still reaches out to God daily in an act of imploring faith. We can imagine that this psalmist would not be a comfortable person to have sitting in the pews of any of our churches. Some Christians might try to provide him with comforting scriptural texts but these, no doubt, would be rejected with a great deal of passion. Our psalmist was a broken man who probably had little worked out in terms of what he really believed. But we commend him for his faith and trust that continued, even if there was apparently absolutely nothing to give him comfort or hope.