Like all my readers, I was horrified at the news coming out of France last Thursday. Coincidentally I had been recently reading a book about the effect of terrible disasters, like the one in Nice, on the bystanders as well as those who are the actual victims of an atrocity. We do not give a great deal of attention to the ambulance-men, the police and all who support them in a situation of some desperate mind-numbing tragedy. A human being when faced with something on the scale of the events which took place in Nice is pushed to the very limits of what he or she can cope with psychologically. All too often a consequence is breakdown or post-traumatic stress disorder. These bystander victims, the professional helpers together with the actual victims and their families, all of whom have to deal with terrible stress, must number several thousand individuals.

One thing we do know is that it was a single individual who perpetrated this monstrous act of driving a lorry into crowds of people with the intention of killing and maiming as many as possible. It is difficult to find an adjective to describe the depth of depravity that was involved in such an act. I do not propose here trying to enter into the mind of someone capable of such behaviour, but I am aware of one enormous problem that arises for Christian theology. The question is: is it ever possible to forgive an act as horrific as this one? The question is made so much more complicated by asking the further question. Who in this situation anyway has the right to forgive such a perpetrator who has damaged and destroyed the lives of so many? Even if one person could forgive this action, would they have any right to speak on behalf of the other thousands affected by this terrible deed?

The Nice incident helps us once again to recognise the fact that forgiveness is never going to be a straightforward matter. The simplistic rule that says that we must always forgive can be seen not to resolve the complexity and evil of this situation. One person choosing to forgive anyway does not do very much to bring any kind of closure for the majority. Thousands of other people are still left struggling with their terrible memories and their grief and this, at the very least, will continue to have a lasting effect on their lives. If all evil could be restricted to something that concerned a single perpetrator and a single victim, then it might be possible to put into practice the simple gospel challenge, forgive as you are forgiven. Most evil acts against others, in fact, involve far more people than in a one-to-one encounter. Also, organisations, as we have seen recently, are capable of committing evil acts against individuals and groups. In their turn individuals can commit evil against others and this may affect large numbers of people. Whenever even a single person is damaged as a result of another person’s malevolent action, then all the people close to the victim may, to some extent, share in the pain and the damage which is done to that individual. For forgiveness to be fully effective, all victims need their pain recognised and individually dealt with.

Two things follow from this reflection. The first is a warning to each of us when we are tempted to do something harmful to another person. The damage that we do, or try to do, will be potentially be like a wave which moves beyond the single event to affect many others. There may be echoes of the original act of malevolence which are felt years or decades later. It is like throwing a pebble into water; the ripples spread out in every direction and we have no control as to what they affect. The story of Trinity Brentwood, to which I have given a lot of space to on this blog, is also an account of evil rippling outwards from past actions to affect negatively countless individuals. One man, Michael Reid, persuaded a group to give him absolute power in his church in the 1980s. As a consequence of that power exercised in a selfish, self-seeking way, hundreds of people were damaged and their lives radically changed. That damage has affected not only them but also their families, both the immediate family and its extended members. This damage continues right up to the present. Things said and done 20 or 30 years ago are still affecting the present. People still suffer; people still experience their lives as being damaged and incomplete.

One of the most obscene statements to come out of Peniel/Trinity is that the victims should forget what has happened and move on. It is an indication that the remaining members of the church still hold to a cheap forgiveness doctrine, ‘forgive and forget’. It is cheap as well as insulting. It simply does not engage with the full horror of what many people went through under the leadership of abusive leaders. Damage is easy to perpetrate but very hard to put right.

One of the things that I picked up from a network of churches in America, is the idea of ‘safe haven churches’. I am still trying to absorb all the material from that lecture and I shall be sharing further insights that I learnt in future posts. The speaker did emphasise one point about these churches, and this is my second point, that it is vitally important to be able to forgive. Obviously the individuals who had escaped abusive churches might have specific things to forgive but it was also emphasised that forgiveness is a fundamental attitude for a Christian that needs to be constantly flowing even when there is nothing obvious to forgive. In saying this the speaker was in no way underestimating the cost of forgiveness but it still remains as fundamental to Christian faith as love. I shall be speaking further about the path to and cost of forgiveness in a future post when I explain further what is taught by the ‘safe haven churches’. Here I can mention two points, first, the importance of acknowledging and dealing with the experience of anger and rage that exist within abused individuals. The second point is coming, albeit slowly, to an imaginative understanding of the inner experience of the perpetrator. It is at this point that one may find the grace to let go of the wrong and the pain and leave them with God.

Nothing I have said really helps me to come to terms with the monstrous horrors perpetrated in Nice. All kinds of emotions are aroused and all the words that can be used seem hollow against the enormity of what happened to so many. Perhaps all we can do is to keep silent in the face of all the pain. Among our prayers must surely be one that asks God not to allow the events of last Thursday to erupt into a search for vengeance and the projection of evil on to whole groups and members of other nationalities and faiths. That would be catastrophic and lead to an entrenched state of inter-communal hostility that could last for decades.

From following the Trinity Brentwood blog run by Nigel Davies, it appears that Trinity School, formerly Peniel Academy, is closing, at least the senior section of the school. No reasons for this closure have been given but the school has seemingly been operating below the level of viability for some time. It is also suggested that the large building, Brizes Park, where the school is housed, may have to be sold to pay for all the legal claims arising from the abuses of Reid’s era that are continuing to haunt the church.

The actual reasons for the senior school’s closure in one sense are unimportant. What is more interesting is to reflect on why a cultic church like Peniel (now Trinity Church) should ever have gone to the trouble of founding a school in the first place. In fact, the reasons for founding a church school by Michael Reid seem to be clear. The creation of a church which would function as a ‘totalistic’ community required that the leader controlled the inflow of information and influence from outside. If you are going to create a new community bound together by a ‘bible-based’ vision, you have then to stop other views getting into the group. Parents and children had to be repeatedly assured and convinced that the leader, here Reid, was the reliable interpreter and mediator of gospel truth. He could thus be trusted in every area of life because he spoke for God himself. The task of convincing everyone that a leader, such as Reid, is a spokesman for God is made much easier if all information available to the membership is carefully filtered. There has to be one message, one narrative, that is accepted across the board.

The Langlois report documents some of the ways in which the information control was kept in place. As far as schooling for the children was concerned, the parents who wanted to join, found that sending their children to Peniel Academy was virtually a compulsory part of their membership. The fees that had to be paid were additional to the tithe of the family’s pre-tax income. Consequently, the financial investment in the church by these families was massive. It seems that the more that was spent, the more the parents found themselves locked into the orbit of cultic control. ‘Encouragement’ of church children to join the Academy was helped by Reid declaring that the local Brentwood schools were infested by satanic influences. It was thus not just a matter of offering a good education in small classes but protecting the souls of church children from hell!

Once in the school it appears, according to the Langlois report, that the children were used by Reid to control the parents. If a parent displeased Reid for any reason the child at the school was to be given a hard time of it by the teachers. A few children, those favoured because their parents were rich and major benefactors of the church, escaped these techniques of harassment. It does seem that the happiness or unhappiness of the children at the school depended on the view of Reid towards the parents. Either way, the school was a major part of the way that Reid was able to wield such enormous power over the church. Also by putting pressure on many of the parents to offer voluntary labour at the school and in the church grounds, he was able to ensure that quite a large proportion of the congregation spent most of their waking hours in and around the church. Many of these parents reported that they were permanently exhausted by all the hours put in at the church and this lack of time meant that family life, time simply being with their children, suffered severely.

My time in Dallas also brought me face to face with this aspect of cult life, the way that family life was undermined even destroyed by the demands of leaders. The demand for total loyalty and obedience on the part of the membership meant that, not only were adults submitting to the demands of leaders on matters of belief, but they were also allowing leaders to dictate to them how to bring up their children. The acronym which is used to describe the children who grow up under the control of a cult is SGA or second generation adults. These are the adults who were born into a group or whose education and upbringing was largely in the hands of a religious/political cult. The individual SGAs I spoke to in Dallas were those who were in recovery but it was apparent that it had been a tough journey. Some had escaped while still in their teens while others had only got out of their respective groups in early adulthood. In the first place they were entering a world which had numerous cultural norms and their lives in the group had not prepared them to cope. I asked one woman SGA which was the issue that she was still working on with her therapist. Her answer was ‘boundaries’. I did not have the opportunity to question what she meant by this exactly but I surmised that she was referring to the fact that her cult had always minimised the importance of privacy and personal space. The group leaders, in their desire for total control of their members, demand that any desire for privacy be broken down through public acts of ‘confession’. In the case of Peniel, there was also the control being exercised by public acts of humiliation from the pulpit directed at individuals. Also being taught from an early age that it is essential to be totally open about your feelings, the young person or child allows the unscrupulous leader to exercise a lot of power over him/her. Such power binds the follower to the group and makes it difficult to discover a proper identity which is distinct from the identities of others. One of the key concepts in cultic studies is the idea of the ‘cult identity’. This is the notion that a ‘successful’ member of an extreme group acquires an identity which is in some way created by the cult. Recovery consists in burrowing back into the personality to discover the true self that has been buried by cultic membership. This can be a long journey.

To return to the affair of Trinity School. It seems to be true that recently the school has not been operating in anything like the same way that it did in Reid’s day. Nevertheless, from the evidence given to John Langlois during his enquiry, the school used to be very much in the business of creating Peniel clones. Many of these alummi of Peniel Academy will be suffering the same psychological scars as the SGAs I met in Dallas. One importance difference will be that in the UK there are virtually no therapists who specialise in the task of helping people to shed a ‘cult identity’ in favour of a normal one. The trauma in these young adults of having had their thinking and feeling dominated by an ugly combination of fear and even terror will have left its mark. To say that there are probably some victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in and around Brentwood is probably an understatement. While the closing of the school is a closing of a stable door long after the horse (Reid) has departed, it had to be done even if the education of some innocent pupils is being regrettably disrupted. It remains to be seen how this part of the Trinity saga is eventually resolved. You can be sure that this blog editor will be watching the situation carefully, even though from afar.

But nevertheless my own view is that marriage in the biblical sense is very clear from the many, many Christians who wrote to me on this subject, in their opinion, can only be between a man and a woman.

These are some careful words uttered by a contender to be the UK Prime Minister, Andrea Leadsom. As a self-identified Christian in the House of Commons, she evidently has received a full post bag of opinions on the subject of gay marriage. If we look carefully at her words, we see that she is able to offer a partial identification with the opinions of the religiously conservative people who have written to her, while being able to avoid going all the way in making this her own opinion. In short she agrees with them up to a point but allows herself the freedom to take a different opinion when it might be politically expedient to do so. One way in which Andrea Leadsom does put herself firmly into the conservative Christian camp and their use of the Bible is through the implied assumption that choosing particular scriptural texts allows one to discover decisive moral teaching, binding on Christians and society in general. The Bible-believing letter writers evidently believe that Scripture is totally unambiguous as to what it says about marriage. It is believed to promote heterosexual marriage to the exclusion of any other pattern of sexual behaviour.

Provoked by this idea that the Bible is very clear in what it says about marriage, I went to my Bible and opened up at Deuteronomy. My Jerusalem Bible conveniently entitles one section of this book: ‘On Marriage’. Here we have a number of laws set out about marriage and how it was to be conducted in ancient Israelite society. From a modern perspective this section, chapters 21 to 22, is a thoroughly misogynist text. Not only does it allow men to marry more than one woman, it also allows a husband to stone a young wife to death if she fails to substantiate her claim to be a virgin. The horror of this act is enhanced by the fact that it is to be accomplished at the door of her father’s house. There is also no suggestion in this section of Deuteronomy that a woman ever has any real choice in the matter of finding a husband. Two scenarios for a man finding a wife are given. Neither speak of love or free choice. The first is a marriage after a woman is taken captive in war and the second is a relationship when a woman is a victim of rape. She is then expected to marry her violator. No doubt marriages were entered into without this background of violence, but the author of Deuteronomy here seems to have no interest in the idea that marriage could be a relationship between equals.

Before we try to bury these texts of Deuteronomy concerning marriage as being of no relevance to today, we should recall that key texts against homosexuality are cited from another law book in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Leviticus. It would seem wrong to claim authority for Leviticus on what it says about same sex relationships and then reject offensive passages in other parts of the Old Testament concerning the conduct of family life. How many conservative Christians would suggest that the solution to dealing with a ‘rebellious son’ is to take him to the gate of the city and have the inhabitants stone him to death? Clearly there are no Christians who would now want to follow such instructions over the way they manage their marriages and families.

When we read about King Solomon in 1 Kings 11.3 we discover that he had 300 concubines. It is easy to gloss over the impact of the institution of concubine, but we should realise that a concubine is simply another word for sex slave. The horror of slavery is found throughout the Bible, and Paul no doubt was aware of the implication of telling female slaves to ‘submit’ to their masters. The constant abuse by male masters of their female slaves makes a secure settled and committed gay relationship seem thoroughly innocent by comparison. The treatment of Hagar, Sarah’s slave, after she became pregnant by Abraham was cruel and unjustifiable. The Bible text records Hagar leaving the dysfunctional household on two occasions. The first time was when she ran away of her own accord after being treated badly by Sarah. The second occasion was when she was deliberately expelled from the family unit by Abraham at the request of his wife. To send Hagar and Ishmael off into the desert with some bread and a skin of water was tantamount to wanting her dead. The fact of her survival does not let Sarah off her vindictive and jealous behaviour. Such family dynamics were clearly extremely unhealthy and hardly offer us a biblical model for family life today.

It is obvious that I am bringing out from the text passages which show that family life and marriage in biblical times was quite often far from ideal. Choosing these particular sections to make my point is however no less legitimate than the extraction of passages which support the conservative view that there is within Scripture an ideal structure of marriage between one man and one woman. Once again I want to repudiate the idea that we can gain definitive wisdom about the will of God by choosing any single passage from Scripture to make a point of moral teaching. If we are to use the Bible to find some model or pattern for morality today, we need to have the honesty to say that there is there a variety of practices and understandings of relationships. The Bible does not have a simple formula. From my own perspective the dysfunctions revealed in Deuteronomy and in the book of Genesis, particularly in what they reveal about the mistreatment of women, are all about the abuse of male power. We can go further than that and say that the Bible contains plentiful evidence that men in past generations used their physical and social power to dominate and in many cases abuse women and children. Even if we claim that Jesus saw through this male dominance and reasserted the rights of women and children, we can only do this after acknowledging the horror of much of what went on before.

The trite claims of politicians as well as church leaders who tell us that the Bible teaches this or that must be constantly challenged. I somehow doubt that most of them have ever actually grappled with the text. What is true is that if we treat the Bible as a mine for pre-selected texts, then certain emphases and teachings for moral ideas can be found. A thorough study of Scripture will however reveal both light and darkness, particularly in the part which is known to us as the Old Testament. It is crucial that we read this part of the Bible with a sense of history together with a sensitivity for the social conditions of the period. Even when we read the New Testament we need to be aware of how Paul was himself a product of his age. A study of Scripture, a critical study of Scripture, can reveal to us what we believe to be spiritual insight. This insight has the power to transform the one who reads it. We must, nevertheless, always approach the text with a discerning and critiquing of what we find there. We must constantly be on our guard against becoming victims of a legalistic and fundamentalist mind-set in our approach to these texts. If God is truly to be encountered in the words of Scripture, he will be found in and through this kind of sensitive, discriminating and imaginative engagement with the text of the book we call the Bible.

Today the long awaited Chilcot enquiry was published. Obviously there are very few people who will have yet read the 2.6 million words in this report which covers the events surrounding the British involvement in an invasion of Iraq in 2003. I am dependent on newspaper and internet summaries of what has been written. It might thus seem a little previous to make any comment at this stage about the report. Also my readers might also wonder what possible relevance this report has to the concerns of our blog. What does concern us in this blog is the behaviour by men with power. This report has a great deal to say about how power was used and misused, particularly by our former prime minister Tony Blair. His actions and motivations have all come under intense scrutiny in the enquiry and there is material enough on which to offer some observations of our own

About a year ago I made some comments about an article written by Michael Owen, a prominent and much respected politician who also trained as a medical doctor. He was writing about what he described as ‘hubris syndrome’, an expression that he seemed to have invented himself, to describe the behaviour of powerful politicians when given access to enormous amounts of power. Hubris is a word that denotes a kind of pride which exists alongside the availability of great power. It allows the one so affected to be somehow above a need to be concerned with the dictates of morality and a concern for others. This hubris, as Michael Owen describes it, is not dissimilar to the personality disorder which we have often described, the narcissistic personality disorder or NPD. One of the words that is used to describe both these conditions is the interesting word, ‘messianic’. This is a word which, I would claim, links the behaviour of Tony Blair over Iraq to that of the religious leaders we have identified as abusive.

When we unpack this word ‘messianic’ we can see that it is a word that can raise an individual into a realm of behaviour that is exalted above ordinary people. The Messiah is one who it is believed will come to change the world. He will have, according to his followers, infallible access to truth together with a knowledge of what is right for other people. As a word with religious overtones, it has the implication that whatever is said by a messianic figure will be impossible to contradict or even discuss. Also when anyone is accused of hubris today, there is also this implication that they have raised themselves up through pride and reckless ambition to become a person who cannot be in any way contradicted. Both these words, messianic and hubristic, imply that an individual feels himself to be always right. Their convictions sweep all before them and no one dares stand in their way.

From the little I have read on the Chilcot report, it seems that Tony Blair can indeed be accused of hubristic behaviour and messianic pretensions. He made promises to President Bush and also committed himself to decisions which were not shared with any advisers nor were there prior discussions with others. He had, we would claim, a messianic conviction that the hand of history was on his shoulder. He and he alone had to put his decisions into effect. From the perspective of a religious commentator, such as myself, there was an almost religious fervour in the way he operated in the events of 2002 and 2003. Religious messianic fervour, as we all know, does not make for good and wise political decisions. It is never wise to make decisions without allowing them to be scrutinised by a trusted group of advisers and experts. On the eve of the Iraq war, a group of retired British ambassadors to the Middle East wrote to The Times and cautioned delay before going headlong into war. This was a group of people who between them had an enormous experience of the language, customs and political realities of that part of the world. Such men were surely worth listening to and their advice carefully heeded. The reasons for ignoring them can only be put down to a kind of recklessness and impetuosity that goes with hubris and messianic fanatic fervour.

The reality of religious leaders who behave in a similar way in imposing infallible truths on their followers, is familiar to readers of this blog. Heinz Kohut, the original describer of NPD, uses the word ‘messianic’ in his attempt to denote the nature of the condition. The sufferer of NPD has such a strong sense of his infallibility that he ceases to have any sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of the people around him. He occupies a world which is above that of ordinary people and their opinions have long since ceased to matter. The other salient word in the narcissistic literature is ‘grandiosity’. Once again this is a word that captures well the detachment and remoteness of the person and his thinking when compared with ordinary people below him. Perhaps we all recognise individuals who fill this particular description. The irrational, as we would see it now, behaviour of Tony Blair has all the hallmarks of a rash impetuous religious leader as well as a politician who has lost his grounding. He has ceased to believe in a need to consult and exercise judgement with the help of others.

The Chilcot enquiry was set up with the knowledge of all that took place after the ill-fated invasion. It seems extraordinary in retrospect that preparations for the post-war situation in Iraq were so little thought through. The Iraqi people had been the victims of a cruel repressive regime. Also if we had to invade, much more work should have been done to allow them to feel that we were in their country as liberators and not as a new enemy. The number of convinced supporters of Saddam Hussein probably only numbered a few thousand. It should have been possible to have identified far more of the professional classes and the civil service, not to mention the military, who could have taken over the running of the country. Much ink will be spelt over the days and weeks that are ahead in examining this report. Here we have simply reflected on the way that a single individual, Tony Blair, seems to have taken over some of the worst aspects of a dysfunctional religious leader. May this situation never arise again.

As I write this at 5.00 am American time while waiting to leave the hotel and travel home, I realise that if I leave writing something till later, it may never get written. I am expecting a two day recovery period from jet lag when I reach the UK and that will not be the best time to be putting things on to the blog. So once again I am going to try and assemble a few scattered thoughts from this conference.

One of the things that I have noticed in random conversations with conference participants is the way that much of the ‘cult’ experience seems to centre round ‘bible-based’ groups. In other words, there seems to be a shift from the old style Hindu-based cults to the new evangelical groups which exist in their thousands here in the US. It is not surprising that not a few of these are cash cows and narcissistic vanity trips for their leaders. When I speak to individuals about their journeys, they often start by using that familiar expression ‘bible church’. Having heard from quite different people disturbingly predictable accounts of these groups, I find that my interest is far more in the recovery process that may have been going on for a year, five years or ten years or more. Just as the tools of enslavement in a cultic group seem to be fairly universal, so the recoveries told speak of the unique properties of every individual. In summary cults create clones but recovery allows the blossoming of individual personality.

The seminar on conversion and de-conversion was not as profitable as I had hoped. It was an attempt by the organisation to see whether it could draw together the expertise of the participants to see if a ‘product’ could be identified which could be offered to government agencies in their fight against terrorist extremism. My only contribution was to point out that there was in the Christian tradition such a thing as healthy conversion. It is important to recognise amid all the aberrations of ‘mind-control’ and extreme influence that there is a healthy model of being taken into a more open loving mode of functioning that does not require a surrender of reason to a powerful personality. One thing that did become clear is how difficult governments are finding it to fight terrorism when the mental processes involved in becoming an extremist are so poorly understood. Both the British and American governments have, over the years, operated an extremely tolerant attitude towards religious ideas and they do not know how to cope when that same religion turns toxic and dangerous. When we heard about the ‘Prevent’ strategy in Britain, I wondered how the dominant model that has existed for decades in the UK which describes all religion in sociological detached terms is able to adapt to a new reality.

The shift that I mentioned above that cults are more commonly to be found in ‘bible-based’ environments allows me to feel that I have a place in this assembly. Speaking personally, I find that the dynamics that operate in these groups is far easier to understand than say, ten years ago. Most people I discussed the question of these dynamics seemed to understand about narcissism being involved in the process and everyone seems to have watched a lecture on Youtube by one Daniel Shaw, a New York psychiatrist, on this topic. He has coined the now fashionable expression (in these circles at least) of ‘traumatising narcissist’. This captures the fact that narcissism is normally involved in leader-led dynamics and that it is simultaneously harmful to those caught up in it. This point is not just true for some Christian leaders but for all cultic leaders. A book that I used in writing Ungodly Fear called the Guru Papers was known by two people who were survivors of Indian cults. This book pointed out the further point that all leaders, however apparently holy and detached, still needed to be needed. In other words, no human being can ever escape the dynamics of human attachment. The claims of being able to avoid such attachment are, in other words, false. In short the spiritual claims of all religious leader need to be scrutinised and the cant and hypocrisy of their claims needs to be grounded on a more solid and honest foundation. The narcissistic literature explores well the inner processes that are going on when people gather together to submit to a leader. That statement would probably apply as well to political gatherings as to religious.

Next year we are meeting in Bordeaux which will be a far easier journey for Europeans that this epic journey to Dallas. Still it has been a really worth-while experience as I have been allowed to connect with a group of people who share with my readers an understanding of how religion can go toxic and harm rather than heal people. While the present preoccupation of church leaders in Britain and elsewhere over sexual abuse of children in churches or cults has received attention, the focus here has been mainly on all the other ways that spiritual abuse happens in a church context. In summary, spiritual abuse damages the soul, the individuality and the creativity of the person. It is that that continues to exercise my concern and the focus of this blog. With the encouragement of my readers I shall continue to reflect and write on these issues. Perhaps in a small way we can shift opinion so that every church becomes a place of safety and healing. Let us pray that this may one day be a reality.

Another day of conversation and sitting on conference chairs listening to various presentations. Two of the speakers that I mentioned yesterday gave a further presentation on the topic of forgiveness and how it is handled in their work with former members of cultic groups. There was an emphasis on recognising how hard it is to forgive. The action is nevertheless still essential if a victim is not to remain in the continuing grip of all that has been laid upon him by an abusing perpetrator. Another panel I attended looked at the effect of cultic ideas on children. There were four words mentioned that summed up the effect of certain extreme groups and their capacity to harm the healthy growth of a child. The words that sum up childhood emotional abuse are these – spurning, terrorising, isolating and exploiting. Abusive religious leaders are very good at using fear as a weapon through which to control their members and such fear is especially effective when used against children. One participant spoke of a dysfunctional childhood which was the result of her mother taking on a range of wacky ideas from a Pentecostal group. Another spoke of her work in educating churches to be safe places for children. Once again safety was not just about freedom from sexual exploitation but it covered the right not to be emotionally abused and generally mistreated by adults. Fed by some strange religious ideas these abusing adults misguidedly think that they have the best interests of children at heart.

In the afternoon I gave my paper which I think was well received. It was an exploration of how a heretical group in Roman Africa called the Donatists became, in certain areas, a death cult. They came into direct conflict with the Roman state who wished to enforce church unity. Their courage was inspired by a belief that martyrs would always obtain a place in heaven if they had died fighting for their faith. This fanatical wing of the Donatists, called the Circumcellions, did not care how death was achieved to achieve this martyrdom. There was thus for a time a culture of suicide which obviously was extremely disturbing to all who witnessed it. Another speaker on the panel spoke in brief about a number of cultlike groups across the ages. He mentioned a group who came into being in 1651 after the English civil war. The last member of this group, the Muggletonians, died only in 1979. We also had a presentation about cultic aspects that were present in Nazi ideology.

Following my panel I went to chair a presentation about a group in Austria called the Friedrichshof commune. The speaker, an Englishman now working in Holland, had been a member for nine years. He had witnessed the way in which the group was transformed from a radical left-wing group into something which was cultic and severely damaging to all those who were members. The level of damage particularly became apparent when these members had to try and live in ordinary society when the whole group was dissolved. The theme of recovery was something I took up in several conversations that I had during the course of the day. More than 90% of the conference participants have been members of extreme groups of one kind or another and so there is a common journey of recovery that is being made by most of the people here. I have found the information that I have obtained about this recovery process far more interesting than details of life in one or other of the various cults. There are many predictable similarities about cult life for those who have experienced it, whether political or religious. The path to health and recovery is however endlessly varied. In one of the presentations it was mentioned that while a member of a cult was still within the group, he was unable to dream. Following his departure, he found that dreams returned. I am still trying to work out the significance of this information but it does indicate that cult membership effects the personality at a very deep level.

On a very mundane level I am learning how to avoid ordering meals that are simply too much for one person to eat. The restaurants seem to pile up food and then provide polystyrene containers for the customer to take much of it away. Today the temperature is expected to reach 100° in the shade. Within the hotel the air-conditioning is so very effective that I have to go outside from time to time to warm up!

Today I am attending a seminar on conversion and deconversion. Because this is an invitation only session, I am hoping that the other participants will have some expertise in this area. It remains to be seen whether my interests will allow me to make a contribution to the discussion or whether I should be there simply to listen and learn. More of that tomorrow, if the frenetic pace of the conference allows me the time to write another blog post. Meanwhile I hope I have encouraged a number of people to join our blog. I hope that they will find the material here and in the future helpful in their particular quests and journeys of discovery.

I am writing this from the conference of the International Cultic Studies Association in Dallas in Texas. The physical effort of flying from Britain is not a small thing to undertake. The biggest challenge that I face is the one made to my sleeping patterns. It is quite hard to adjust to a six hour time difference in a relatively short space of time. I did build in a two day acclimatisation period in the city which was spent visiting a series of magnificent (air-conditioned) museums and galleries. I am in spite of my constant sleepiness glad to be here at this conference. It is a grand opportunity to engage with the topic of abusive religious practice with a large number of people from all over the world. The fact that I have been to the conference three times before, in Europe and in the States, also means that many of the participants are known to me and I am no longer a stranger in the assembly.

Yesterday was an introductory preconference day. There was a long session when individuals shared their research interests in the topic. It is quite clear that there are seemingly dozens of ways of studying cults and extreme religion religious groups. It would of course be impossible to master all of these topics and this fact means that the academics within the various disciplines find it hard sometimes to communicate with one another. How does the sociologist with an interest in cults speak to the expert on psychological ideas? This will be a theme to which I will return no doubt.

I want to share in this blog some of the thoughts of a speaker from America who has been instrumental in creating a network of safe churches. The word ‘safe’ does not appear in the title of the churches but it is constantly emphasised as a way of encouraging people to attend, particularly after they have had a bruising period as a member of another abusive and exploitative church. I found myself reflecting on all the ways that churches can become unsafe. These are places where not only are individuals abused in various ways, but they are also places where the process of learning about the Christian faith is far from straightforward. A church is ‘unsafe’ when for example the individual member is discouraged from asking any questions. Questions are considered to be threatening by the leaders. Thus a culture of passive obedience to the minister’s words is encouraged. Abuse in this context is not only something that comes about from a direct experience of such things as anger and bullying, but is also the maintaining of a structure which holds the congregation in a state of immature dependency. The speaker seemed to recognise these and many other scenarios as being part of kind of church that he wanted to avoid by creating a proper alternative.

The safe church is a place where the members can find a relaxed atmosphere. It is also a place where leaders do not cling on to their power; rather it is shared in some kind of rota system. Another feature of a safe church is the constant exploration of forgiveness. Many of the members, coming out of abusive churches, are having to work out the deeper meaning of forgiveness and how it applies to them as individuals. It is recognised that forgiveness is never a quick fix but it takes time and often requires help. A recognition of the importance of working through the process of forgiveness is something that is recognised clearly by those in leadership. A safe church will also be a place which allows as much space as people need for their own growth and recovery. There will also be relaxed expectations about membership. It is recognised that some people will move in and out of membership and there is no attempt to tie people down to a formal belonging when they are not ready. So many churches need to boost the numbers of their membership to impress denominational leaders and, of course, getting people to commit financially.

In conversations with participants, I discovered that the UK is up to speed in one particular area. The new law about coercion and control which came into operation last December is something that various people believe to be of great potential consequence in the matter of dealing with abusive churches. One particular paper to be given today is exploring the link between domestic abuse which does not use physical violence and the coercion used in many churches. It may be only a matter of time before the new legislation is used successfully in a cult/religious group context. Just as the expression ‘safe church’ is one that suggests all kinds of possibilities and priorities in a church’s life, so the two words, coercion and control, suggest that the law is beginning to grapple with the concerns of this blog.

Today I am giving my historical paper on the way a particular heretical group in the fourth century, the Donatists, became cultic in their outlook. I had meant to give a summary of my talk in this blog earlier, but other topics pushed it to one side. The conference begins in earnest today and no doubt by this time tomorrow I will have possibly more to report. I look forward at this point to all that I will hear today but I also am longing for the restoration of regular sleeping patterns. This will probably not happen until after I returned to England to my own bed next week! Such is the price to be paid for crossing the Atlantic to attend a four-day conference!

Like many people I was disappointed at the result of the UK referendum. I had wanted the UK to remain part of a Europe which over the decades was part of a world I felt I belonged to. The arguments against staying in the EU became increasingly, to my mind, shrill. The most absurd one was the claim that £100 million a week would be released for the National Health Service, once we stopped paying anything into the EU budget. Spending public money is a political decision taken after a great deal of careful thought. No one today has the right to make promises of behalf of politicians of the future how the national budget is to be allocated.

I am anxious not to allow this blog to become a political rant. But there are issues that I see as pertinent to our blog’s concerns in what happened on the 23rd June. Many commentators have noted that the vote to leave the EU had to do with, in part, a protest vote on the part of people who have been left behind by the forces of globalism – the unemployed, the disabled and those who fall outside the orbit of what many would describe as ‘successful’ lives in the eyes of others. Chris is often reminding us of this so-called ‘underclass’. One description of this group would be to refer to the fact that many in this category feel they have no real stake in the world of property ownership and accumulated wealth. This is counted of great importance to the capitalist value system of the West. Because this section of the population contributes less to the pot of material wealth that makes our capitalist system work, they are often side-lined or ignored by politicians. Traditionally the least wealthy and exploited sections of society have been supporters of the UK Labour party. This link has often been taken for granted by Labour politicians. They like their Tory opponents have also been sucked into the need to grapple with the existence of the wealth creating capitalist system and making it work successfully. Thus large numbers of people in our country have been left outside the political system and their voices have had little possibility of being heard by those in power.

The Referendum question was whether we as a nation want to stay in or leave the European community. The question was heard in a whole variety of different ways by different groups of people. Some judged the question on entirely rational grounds as an argument about whether the nation would prosper more within Europe or not. Others including the group I have described above saw the vote as an opportunity to express their displeasure at a system supported by politicians of every type and which seemed to have little to offer to them. For many people low wages, poverty of housing and ill-health caused by stress have been a constant reality. This struggle against poverty is unrelenting and draining. At the same time the sight of politicians and celebrities effortlessly, or so it seems, increasing their wealth and ability to spend enormous sums creates a deep visceral anger in those who have little or nothing.

In the Britain of my youth there was a real feeling that, although some people were rich, most people, middle and working class, were part of the same society. Nobody earned vast sums of money and GPs, to take one example, were paid modestly. The years after the end of the Second War were a time when it could be said that we were all in it together. It may not have been completely true but there was a far greater sense of social solidarity rooted in the common memory of together getting through the hardships of war. The real change seems to have taken place after around 1970. That was when the wages of an elite group, from bankers to industrial chiefs, started to take off. This is the thesis of a book that I read a year ago which suggested that an unequal society creates enormous unhappiness and stress to everyone. Once the pay of a few becomes disproportionate to what the bulk of working people earn, there is a reaction. The people at the bottom of the pile finding it difficult to articulate their sense of social exclusion in words, nevertheless have strong feelings of rage, resentment and bitterness towards anyone or anything they can blame for their struggling state. The 1% group, those who earn vast sums of money and have done well out of a massive increase of wealth are clearly in favour of a system which the European experiment favours. These are going to be the first targets of resentment on the part of the less well-off. Another target of dislike will be any immigrants who, correctly or not, are perceived as taking British jobs and pushing down wages. These two perceptions on the part of large numbers of our citizens will, if we had really thought about it, have made Brexit a highly likely outcome. The poor and the disadvantaged have for some time turned into the disenfranchised because their voice is no longer heard by politicians. This unheard sector of our population had wanted desperately to be listened to and heard by society as a whole and the only way they felt their feelings of anger at the system could be heard was to vote against the EU. No one was able to explain to them that their lives had in any way been improved because of it over the past twenty or thirty years.

Chris my blog partner has a lot to say on the topic of the Church also failing to listen to the poor in our society. The few churches that do appear to appeal to the disenfranchised are churches that offer, as I would put it, candy floss religion which does little to improve the lot of the poor or that of their communities. What is needed of course is a new political deal that seeks to improve housing, health and education. The church, if it were properly listening to the poorest, would be saying that to government on behalf of these communities. Instead of this the Church of England is fighting internal battles over the status of ‘gay marriage’. At this point we find ourselves talking about the complete opposite of what we normally address, the abuse of power in the church; we are talking about the empowerment of people with the help of churches who want to better the lives of those in their communities. We have spoken a lot about abuses of power in the Church, institutional and individual, and the ways that are needed to counter that abuse. But as I reflect on the aftermath of the Referendum of 2016, I see an even more reliable way to counter the misuse of power in the church. It is for the church to prioritise the idea of service and empowerment and put it at the heart of ministry. It is important to talk about power abuse to show that we understand it as a problem but then we need to go on to say how ministers of all the churches above all be taught to empower others. This, I believe, is the heart of ministry. If this empowerment, political, spiritual, social and personal, started to be a reality as well as a priority in churches up and down the land and people could see it, then power abuse would indeed wither on the vine. Jesus spoke about being among his followers as one who serves. May this be a reality for all in positions of leadership in the church. To misquote John’s epistle. There is no room for abuse in true service and empowerment. Perfect service and empowerment casts out abuse.

One point to come out of Joe’s moving letter to the House of Bishops is the issue of the way that an insurance company had the power to dictate how victims of abuse are treated. It is quite clear from Bishop Sarah’s presentation to the House of Bishops that there has been, until now, a policy of defensive blanking towards victims of abuse the moment legal proceedings are initiated. To put it another way, when an individual seeks to obtain legal redress from the church, the shutters come down and the victim is effectively shunned by the very people s/he had once looked to as protectors and sources of strength. The victim now becomes abused twice – the first time by an abuser and now by the grotesque shunning by leaders of the institution.

In fairness to the bishops of the Church of England, there seems to have been no personal and individual policy agenda at work. The pastoral shunning of victims was a policy apparently enforced on behalf of the insurance companies and their lawyers. All the bishops of the Church of England seem to have accepted it as agreed practice. The procedure was laid down, no doubt, as a way of protecting the insurance companies from making expensive payouts. These payouts may in fact eventually cost the Church of England millions of pounds as the horrors of the past are slowly brought to light. The survivors so affected have in many cases had their lives severely damaged. Every parish in the land may suffer as a result as they have to begin to make new payments to protect themselves from future claims of this kind. This will no doubt have some impact on the work of the church at every level as money is diverted from other projects to pay for the extra premiums.

The Elliott Review has recommended that the situation of the past, when insurance companies and their lawyers dictated the response of church leaders towards survivors, must come to an end. The previous approach, the blanking of survivors like Joe, was bankrupt both morally and practically. We await to see how a new pastorally sensitive policy emerges from the old, arguably inhuman, practice of the bishops. The fact that Joe himself is now linked to our blog will, no doubt, result in further information on this process being provided here in the future.

Alongside the Elliott review is currently another abuse episode within the church, the response to which also does little credit to the Church of England or to its House of Bishops. A woman, now in her 70s, claims to have been abused by the eminent former Bishop of Chichester, George Bell. This claim is quite different from the one investigated by the Elliott Review in that there are good grounds for questioning the detailed facts of the claim. I have recently been directed to a website which has been set up by a group of eminent churchmen who are concerned to protect the reputation of Bishop Bell. They believe that the recent payout of £35,000 to the woman together with an apology from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Chichester was done with unseemly haste. I have looked at the evidence put on the website. This suggests that while the woman indeed suffered abuse at the hands of a churchman, there is possibly or probably a case of mistaken identity. The enquiry that led to the apology and payout also failed to consult a number of potential witnesses. A key person who is familiar with Bishop Bell’s papers held in Lambeth Palace Library and the author of a recently published biography, Andrew Chandler, was not approached. Also not spoken to is a surviving domestic chaplain who lived at the Palace at Chichester during the time of the alleged abuse. The apology seems to be based on a police statement that the Bishop would have been questioned, if he was still alive, about these allegations. Since he died some 58 years ago this is of course not possible, but the failure to speak to the few people who can remember the personnel and the geography of Chichester at that time, seems to be a lamentable failure. I was also struck by the fact that the Bishop of Chichester went public with the apology without having consulted with the Dean of the Cathedral. Common sense would have suggested that the Dean would have been a key person to have on board if such an apology was going to be made.

The reader of this blog will have to satisfy themselves whether or not the evidence against George Bell is based on firm evidence or not. I would however suggest that way the church has responded with such alacrity to the allegation of abuse seems to be evidence of a moral panic rather than a careful thoughtful response to a serious allegation. The admission of abuse by the Bishop of Chichester on behalf of a distinguished predecessor, while leaving so many questions unanswered and unresolved, would appear to have come about for reasons quite distinct from a new culture of openness on the part of the Church. Cynically I suspect we again see the hand of the Church’s insurers at work. It is obviously simpler to admit to a case of historic abuse and deal with the whole issue with a modest payout rather than go through an expensive process of enquiry. The House of Bishops, wrongly I believe, may have thought that an admission of guilt in this case would show the Church in a good light. What has been shown, in contrast, is that the Church and its House of Bishops may be having policy and decisions made for them by a group of anonymous individuals within the insurance fraternity. These policy decisions once again have little interest in historical truth or the pastoral care of abused individuals. Whatever the final truth about these allegations connected to Bishop George Bell, it is clear that a thorough process of uncovering the truth of these allegation has not been put into place.

Bishop Mullally will be insisting that allegations of abuse against members of the Church are responded to in the future with proper process as well as compassion and care for the victims. It would seem also that the House needs to be held accountable when cases of past abuse are admitted a little too quickly in a situation where the interests of insurance companies can be protected by, say a non-disclosure agreement. It remains to be seen whether the House of Bishops can claw back moral authority from their lawyers and the colluding insurance companies. No doubt if the Church and the bishops who lead it start to do the right thing in facing up to the appalling legacy of abuse cases within the institution, there will be a massive financial penalty to face in the future. But it is clear that moral integrity and pastoral sensitivity are hallmarks of a Church which is seeking to live by the example of Jesus. The blanking and ostracism of victims like Joe must never be allowed to happen again. Morality must always trump expediency.

Reading this third and final contribution from Christine, I feel truly that I am glimpsing the future. Looking at this piece from a UK perspective, there are several things that I would point out to the reader that would be very welcome if they existed in this country. First of all, I am looking at a process for dealing with power and sexual abuse which is open and transparent. Secondly we read below of psychologists offering their services and helping everyone involved to understand the dynamics of bullying and abuse. Thirdly we have a system that recognizes that all of us are ‘vulnerable’ adults in the sense we are susceptible to being bullied and abused.

In the blog post that will be posted on Tuesday, we will hear something written by ‘Joe’, the teenager who was sexually abused 40 years ago and has been seeking support from the church ever since. None of the things we find being implemented in Australia were much in evidence in the Church of England before the Elliot Report was published in March of this year. The forthright intervention of Bishop Sarah may, we hope, change things. We would certainly that Christine’s Australian material would be of assistance to Sarah in her work.

In summary Christine’s contributions have given us a perspective on the topic of church abuse that is an enormous encouragement to those of us who are concerned about this topic and who do not live in Australia. It allows us to believe that someone somewhere is thinking clearly and rationally about the issue of abuse in churches without defensiveness and self-interest confusing the situation. The two enemies of clear thinking and action that I identify as operating in the UK are an instinctive defensive protectionism towards the institution and the demands of insurance companies. Instead of compassionate outreach towards victims and survivors, we meet defensiveness, blocking and ‘forgetfulness’. All of these responses are as abusive as any actual abusive act connected with sex or bullying. Knowing that systems are in place on the other side of the world to help survivors will help us to demand that such things are put in place in the UK (and the States)

PART 3
Parish Level – ‘ground-upwards’

In Parts 1 and 2 I outlined briefly some events that led to the removal of a priest who had been accused of bullying. The overwhelming intervention by laity and priests together has to stand as a major victory. At that time, 2009 and shortly after, laws were enacted that endorsed a person’s right to live and work without the fear of harassment and bullying. Organisationally, this is ‘top down’ dynamics at work, where higher up the chain, interventions are put in place that help and enable those at ground level.

Part 3 now outlines what can happen at ground level that can influence the upper echelons of church organisations. As Laws and Protocols are now in place, what has been happening?

Interpretation of Laws has varied across Australia but a search of the different Diocesan sites reveals similar responses. Interestingly, in one of the states, one of the grass roots moves came from psychologists who offered to help the victims of church sexual abuse. I have not verified this but it seems that the Diocese accepted this help which has become integrated into a Committee that investigates complaints. This, to my mind, is vital. While an intelligent Director of Professional Standards can go a long way to understanding the psychological attributes of a bully, the professional psychologist is in the best position to make a diagnosis and do a risk assessment.

What of victims’ responses to the aforementioned changes? A key factor in the sexual abuse cases that has affected satisfaction is whether the best interests of the victims were prioritised. Other factors for victims include:

• their understanding of the process for responding to reports of abuse
• their expectations of what can be achieved through the response
• the nature, timeliness and consistency of the response
• their treatment by the person who handled the response (such as whether they were believed and offered support) and that person’s position of authority in the institution. p171
https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/about-us/our-reports/interim-report-volume-1-final-020714_lr_web

While these points are made in the context of child sexual abuse there is no reason to think that they would not apply in the adult abuse context too. One complainant used the Faithfulness in Service Handbook as the template for their complaint.

In one Diocese an adult abuse victim has praised the system, saying:

1. On first contact the Australian Anglican Diocese responded within a day, with the Director of Professional Standards taking the lead.
2. A telephone conversation confirmed that they were believed and would be taken seriously.
3. The Director of Professional Standards sent the victim two attachments , Faithfulness in Service http://www.perth.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Faithfulness-in-Service-Perth.pdf and Policy Guidelines No.55 Complaints and Grievance Policy . https://www.perth.anglican.org/download/policies/Policy-55-Complaints-Procedure.pdf
4. This
1. Set a preamble about how we relate to one another in a Godly way.
2. Provided a process for the effective management and resolution of concerns, disagreements, complaints or grievances that arise
3. Advised how to make a complaint about the conduct or the decision-making process
4. Outlined the process and timeframes
5. Assured victims of a timely response.
6. Stated that the “process is based on the principles of natural justice including the rights of the complainant to:

i. Be heard,
ii. Have the complaint treated seriously and investigated and considered by unbiased parties,
iii. Be informed of the process for managing the complaint, and
iv. Be informed of the outcome and the reasons for that outcome.
The respondent has the right to:
i. Be informed of the details of the complaint,
ii. Be informed of the process for managing the complaint,
iii. Have the complaint investigated and considered by unbiased parties,
iv. Be able to respond fully to the complaint,
v. Have the response considered seriously, and
vi. Be informed of the outcome and the reasons for that outcome.
5. The Director of Professional Standards informed the victim that the bishop had been informed of a previous communication (as agreed) and asked permission of the victim to forward further information.
6. Offered counselling.
7. Arranged meeting. Mediation had been considered but it was felt that events had overtaken everyone to the point that mediation was probably out of the question.
8. The meeting was professionally-run and allowed time for the different aspects of the complaint to be aired.
9. This was followed up with information as to how the case was to be resolved.

This was a highly professional response where the victim felt themselves to be part of the ongoing process; not a person to whom things were being done, and things that were out of their control.

I have searched some UK Diocesan sites for similar protocols to the Australian one that I mentioned. At first glance the UK ones seem to be less robust than those of the Australian counterparts. In one Diocese, seemingly, the term ‘vulnerable adults’ is used because it comes straight out of Government handbooks. Whereas what I am observing is not in that category. Research demonstrates that we are all vulnerable where it comes to targeting by bullies. Indeed, it may be the more talented and useful members of the congregation that are targeted. In a study into workplace bullying:

WBI research findings from our year 2000 study and conversations with thousands of targets have confirmed that targets appear to be the veteran and most skilled person in the workgroup.
Targets are independent. They refuse to be subservient. Bullies seek to enslave targets. When targets take steps to preserve their dignity, their right to be treated with respect, bullies escalate their campaigns of hatred and intimidation to wrest control of the target’s work from the target.
Targets are more technically skilled than their bullies. They are the “go-to” veteran workers to whom new employees turn for guidance. Insecure bosses and co-workers can’t stand to share credit for the recognition of talent. Bully bosses steal credit from skilled targets.
Targets are better liked, they have more social skills, and quite likely possess greater emotional intelligence. They have empathy (even for their bullies). Colleagues, customers, and management (with exception to the bullies and their sponsors) appreciate the warmth that the targets bring to the workplace.
Targets are ethical and honest. Some targets are whistleblowers who expose fraudulent practices. Every whistleblower is bullied. Targets are not schemers or slimy con artists. They tend to be guileless. The most easily exploited targets are people with personalities founded on a prosocial orientation — a desire to help, heal, teach, develop, nurture others.
Targets are non-confrontive. They do not respond to aggression with aggression. (They are thus morally superior.) But the price paid for apparent submissiveness is that the bully can act with impunity (as long as the employer also does nothing). http://www.workplacebullying.org/individuals/problem/who-gets-targeted/

We are keen to get church authorities to demonstrate understanding of ‘vulnerability’ as applying to almost everyone. Stereotyping of victims must cease. Anyone who says, as we are bound to say, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God is vulnerable in a meaningful sense.

I hope that this ‘ground-upwards’ outline of church responses to bullying has not only cheered those who have been subjected to such abuse, but also given them hope; I also ask that such information is disseminated to churches so that their understanding of this subject is broadened and that Protocols like Policy Guidelines No.55 Complaints and Grievance Policy are put to use globally.