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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.