The title of this blog post is deliberately provocative as it is quite clear that no book of itself can abuse. It is only when it is in the hands of actual human beings that it can sometimes become the tool of abuse. People who, in various situations, have the conscious or unconscious need to inflict harm on others, will seize any tool available. It may be a weapon, the written word, a spoken insult or sadly, in some situations, the Bible itself. Having said this it is also clear that the Bible in other hands can be a tool of healing, comfort, consolation and hope. The difference between these two, the Bible as an abuser or the Bible as a healer, will depend completely on who is holding it at a particular moment.

I am writing in this particular vein because over the past 48 hours I have become aware of the fact that a number of new readers have found their way to our blog. I thought it would be helpful for them to know what this blog is about. I have been writing blog posts for over a year and it does no harm to state again what the underlying principles of this blog are about. I am a retired priest and writer and I have for a number of years focused my reading and pastoral concern on individuals who have found in the church, not good news, but bad news. They have been battered in various ways, emotionally, psychologically and financially and in some extreme cases have been driven to suicide. Fourteen years I published a book on this theme, entitled Ungodly Fear. The correspondence that this book engendered, showed me that the topic of abuse within churches does not go away. In some ways, I seem to have been ahead of the game as the concept of ’emotional abuse’ seems to be coming under the purview of our law makers. The book was the retelling of the stories of a variety of people abused by the church. I tried to show, not only the individual suffering of each individual, but the context of the abuse, the theological ideas that helped to make it possible. Since that time I have garnered material from a variety of sources, psychoanalytical theory, social psychology as well as theology, to illuminate this whole issue and some of this material has appeared in this blog.

In recent weeks I have been an active participant in the blog entitled victimsofmichaelreid.blogspot. This blog is of great value to my studies because it gives a vivid glimpse into the workings of a cult-like church both in the present and the past. I have said enough about the church in the previous post not to need to repeat my comments I made then. But as I know that some readers of that blog have found their way here, I need to make one or two comments directly to them. As past or present members of that church, you are direct participants of an abusive system. This blog cannot, of course, sort out all the emotional and psychological damage of that church, but it can do one thing. It can encourage you to think with greater clarity about what was actually happening at Peniel over the long passage of time.

Before I make further comments about Bishop Reid and his manipulative ways, I want to focus on a key word that is utilised by Bible preachers in many places. It is a word that is ‘biblical’ but is also sometimes a tool of abuse. The word is ‘obedience’. Of course the Bible speaks about obeying the Lord your God but, along the way, obedience towards God is swung to unquestioning obedience of the church leader. In the minds of the congregation to obey God is the same as obeying the leader. That simple confusion leads to in many situations to outright exploitation of individual members of the congregation. That exploitation can be financial, sexual and at the very least emotional. Michael Reid seems to have squeezed the word ‘obedience’ for all he was worth and those who have followed him as leaders at Trinity are not much better. The way they have done it is also to extract favourable quotes from Scripture about leaders, which appear to demand absolute obedience. ‘Touch not the Lord’s anointed’ is one favourite and another is ‘submit to those set over you’ .

My blog posts do not last more than a thousand words, so I must come to a final point. Looking at Trinity from the outside I see a pattern there which is repeated all over the world in strongly authoritarian churches which practise charismatic type worship. I see a gifted individual (here Michael Reid) who has stumbled on the secrets of crowd manipulation. Whether he is sincere in his beliefs I am unable to judge, but what he was able to do is create for himself a large crowd of adoring followers who used to hang on his every word. This is intoxicating and even addictive for him. The bonus was that he became powerful both socially and financially as well. It was probably inevitable that this power expressed itself in taking advantage of the females of the congregation (as one of the perks of power) but everything ultimately became all about the leader and the few others chosen to share in the perks. What did the congregation get out of this? At its simplest level, the congregation picked up some of the reflected glamour of the gifted man of power. He had a certain amount of star-dust to spread around and people felt honoured when he gave them even a small amount of attention. All through the process of Peniel, (I did visit as part of my research for my book in 1998) there was a gradual strengthening of the ties between leader and led which in fact gave very little to the led. The leader ‘takes all’.

I hope the new readers will feel able to stay with us as we continue to uncover the dynamics of abusive churches. I shall be freely commenting here on the continuing developments at Brentwood, particularly as ‘Gail’, the American Bible school student has helped this blog think about the particular issues of that church. From the tone of this blog post, you will be aware that the Bible is not read uncritically, but is allowed to criticise the claims of those who take abusive power over vulnerable people in the name of God.

As my regular readers will know, today, December 6th, was an important day in the history of one abusive church, Trinity, Brentwood. This is the day when Nigel Davies, the courageous editor of a blog seeking an apology for some grotesque wrongs committed by the church under Michael Reid, the former pastor, met the Trustees face to face. He was allowed some forty minutes to speak to them, giving both spoken and written testimonies about various acts of power abuse that took place when Michael Reid was in charge. The main problem for Nigel and his supporters and fellow sufferers has been that, apart from the removal of MR, the entire staff who participated in the financial and emotional abuse have been allowed to remain in post. They have never admitted to anything, apart from some platitudinous expressions of regret.

As I have explained in a previous post, the incident that led to today’s meeting was a statement by an American Bible School student who was at the church some 30 years ago. She was treated appallingly by the church, culminating in incident of rape by one of the church members. In her recent statement about the incident which was published on Nigel’s blog, she stressed that the real suffering she had had to deal with was as much the humiliating way the Church had treated over the whole 18 months she was in England, as the event of sexual violence. This testimony for the first time spurred the church into action. They contacted the police and the Charity Commissioners because they realised that a rape allegation could not be buried like the other accusations swirling around the church. The victim of the incident has, as I mentioned before, linked up with our blog and no doubt will be reading this update in addition to Nigel’s account on the other blog.

As soon as I read Nigel’s account on his blog this afternoon, I entered a comment on the fact that the Trustees were forbidden to ask of Nigel any questions. This strikes me as a typical lawyer-inspired gesture of defensiveness. I pointed out in my comment that if the Trustees really wanted to engage with the problems of the past and Nigel’s presentation, they would want to reach out to him as a human being by talking to him, not just treating him as the conveyor of a written testimony. This defensiveness seems to be a ploy to try and objectify the problem and deal with it through quasi-legal means, such as denial and forgetfulness. In other words the Trustees are still behaving like a closed group which has no intention of changing unless it has to. In my comment I expressed the hope that the Charity Commissioners would see the testimonies that Nigel had brought along as they will want to see that some changes are being made in the culture of the church, maybe even proper expressions of regret.

Trinity Church Brentwood seems to have confirmed that it is institutionally incapable of doing the correct thing, unless compelled. I am hoping that ‘Gail’ will read this and realise that she too needs to put pressure on the church to engage with her, not just as the writer of a testimony about a crime, but as a human being who has suffered severely. I would suggest that she demands to speak to them by Skype, but she will only address them to their face if they allow proper interaction with her testimony. If they treat her like they have treated Nigel, by forbidding questions and interaction, then she should refuse to speak with them.

Nigel’s meeting with the Trustees today is the latest stage in an ongoing saga. It is important to our blog because it is a live developing example of the kind of behaviour that I have been trying to study and understand over the past twenty years. One particular change over this time is that the law of the land now seems to recognise the existence of emotional abuse. How that will apply to churches like Trinity remains to be seen. It may be that the Charity Commissioners may intervene a little more quickly when the detect a regime in a church which is obviously not conducive to an individual’s psychological and emotional health. As the law has stood, it is only when behaviour extends to actual violence, sexual or otherwise, that the police and courts will intervene. As readers of this blog will know, there are many, many ways of abusing an individual which do not involve actual violence. Abuse can be devastating in a person’s life, as Chris has testified. If the church of Christ cannot recognise abuse when it happens, it is a strange thing that such an institution can claim to have anything to with the teaching of the Gospels.

My previous blog post opened my awareness to a very crucial insight in understanding the dynamics of abuse in church. I mentioned that Christians were often people who were in touch with the child-like qualities of trust and openness. These same qualities are encouraged by Christian teaching and also necessary for developing the attitudes that undergird spirituality and the capacity to worship. In worship we are encouraged to open ourselves in hope towards an unseen heavenly Father. This ability to worship does seem to tap into abilities that we learnt as children, but it is none the worse for that. The problem comes when this capacity to tap into the ‘inner child’ is exploited in some way by another person. If I speak about naivety among Christians, I am not implying that this quality should be deplored. I hope I am simply describing the way that Christian naivety can lead to a state of dangerous vulnerability. The same child-like trust in a heavenly father can easily be transferred into a trust in a manipulative ‘man of God’.

The accounts of sexual exploitation by clergy of children and adult women almost invariably involve what is known as ‘grooming’. I leave to one side the whole issue of child abuse in the church as it is not a subject on which I feel qualified to speak. But the sexual exploitation of women in the church is something that has crossed my radar and I would even go so far as to say that it is relatively common. It occurs right across the board in the church and can happen quite independently of the theology that is preached in a particular church. The case study that I produced in my book, ‘Ungodly Fear’ did in fact concern a Baptist minister. Talking to or corresponding with a number of women who had been abused by clergy, I got used to the idea that part of the grooming technique by the minister or priest was to suggest that ‘God has brought us together’. Another ‘chat-up’ line appears to be the notion that the woman concerned was learning about ‘God’s love’ through the ‘love’ being shown by the exploiting minister. Many of the women concerned, who were caught up in these abusive relationships, were totally unaware of anything being wrong until the ‘affair’ ended. Then, like survivors from a cult, their eyes were opened to being able to see how much they had been taken advantage of and exploited for totally selfish ends. A particular cruel twist that was a feature of some of my accounts, was that the woman herself was blamed for ‘leading the minister astray’. People in the congregation found it too hard to let go of their fantasy of the perfect man of God who was their leader and guru. One abused woman told me that she was blamed for the minister falling sick with cancer. Ostracism and shunning were the order of the day for this wronged woman.

The technique of grooming, whether of a child or an adult, taps into the vulnerability of everyone to want to feel safe in a caring parental relationship. As I suggested in my last blog post, everyone is capable of regressing into a parent-child relationship, particularly in situations of stress. Nobody is ever so totally grown-up that they are allowed to be free from wanting on occasion to return to the safety of a father’s (or mother’s) care. The minister or priest easily provides the archetypal caring figure who can fulfil this role. Every minister has to work on developing a sensitivity to ward off this kind of projection or handle it extremely carefully. The psychoanalysts call the process ‘transference’ and it is very powerful. When such transference become sexualised on either side, the potential for disaster is acute. But one principle is clear. In any pastoral role, the minister has complete responsibility for every aspect of the relationship. Excuses that the relationship was in any way mutual seldom survive any degree of scrutiny. The minister carries all the experience and the responsibility to keep the relationship healthy. Any relationship that becomes sexualised after a woman is seeking some sort of parenting, can only be seen as abusive.

It is quite hard to see how clergy of any denomination actually form lasting relationships when they carry the baggage of being an archetypal figure to many who look to them for help. This task of successfully negotiating other people’s projections and being pastorally effective is a fraught one. All too easily clergy fall into the trap that I have outlined in a previous post. Here we arrive at the issue of narcissism and its capacity to cause havoc in pastoral relationships. In summary it can be stated that any minister who brings to his (or her) ministry unresolved hungers for self-esteem and status is likely to be in considerable danger for the kinds of pastoral disasters that we see from time to time. Sexual acting-out is but one possible manifestation of this ‘needy’ behaviour and, as we described before, the origins of this abusive pattern can nearly always be traced back to childhood.

From all this it can be seen that I consider narcissism to be an ever-present danger for ministers and clergy. Whether it is acted out sexually, in a variety of power games or through financial skull-duggery, it is something that should be monitored throughout their ministry. I would welcome mentoring and monitoring for all clergy, but sadly as previous blogs have indicated, the clergy of the Church of England are extremely reluctant to have any of their actions or decisions questioned or scrutinised.

In my last post, I found that, in my enthusiasm for explaining the dynamics of narcissism, I was taking up too many words for me to describe very much about the pain of religious abuse. This post is to take the discussion on a further stage. The easiest way to start to explain a bit more about what people tell me about the experience of abuse in a religious context, is for us to imagine this scenario. The experience I want us to imagine is that of a child who has parents who constantly humiliate her and never let her stand on her own two feet with words of encouragement and support. From a rational point of view, the right decision might be for that child simply to walk away from the source of harm and find another environment in which to which to try and flourish. In practice, as we all know, this is not possible, because children are biologically and psychologically bound to the individuals who brought them into the world. The bonds that hold children to parents are in fact so strong that they continue inside us all even after the parents have died. When Winnicott said that ‘there is no such thing as a baby’, he was talking about these decisive invisible cords that that tie us, willingly or not, to other people. While most of us eventually physically leave our parents to live a different kind of life within marriage, the ‘ghost’ of both parents continues to live inside us as long as we live.

This enmeshment with others, in this case our parents, is a point of vulnerability for every individual. When the process of bonding with parents has, in fact, been ‘good-enough’, it can help direct us to pursue other relationships of a wholesome and sustaining kind throughout our lives. Nevertheless the tie with our parents is rarely completed without leaving some ragged painful edges. A particular period of vulnerability is the young person going off to college or leaving home in their late teens. One part in him revels in the new independence but another part misses the emotional support that home had provided. As many parents know, the entire teenage period can be a fraught rehearsal for this time of independence and the process is seldom experienced without some pain on both sides. A typical young person living away from home for the first time will oscillate between self-congratulation on being ‘grown-up’ and a sense of home-sickness and feeling abandoned.

It is no coincidence that recruitment to cults and extreme religious groups typically takes place among young people in their late teens and early twenties. I am sure that I have drawn attention to the fact that recruitment to these groups may have a lot to do with the way that this age-group is coping with their sense of bereavement and loss at leaving home. The new group offers to them a sense of family, of belonging and above the opportunity of ‘adopting’ a new parent in the person of a religious leader. It is my observation that countless young people are attracted to religious groups because they have the opportunity to be re-parented by an apparently benign father-figure in the form of the religious leader. There is nothing remotely unusual or even unhealthy about this dynamic in itself. The dynamic, however, can become extremely unhealthy if the leader, himself exploits the relationship or simply has no insight into what can go wrong. We all know about the phenomena of ‘groupies’ who surround pop-stars and are frequently exploited by them. Similar dynamics can be observed in many religious groups, particularly where the leader possesses facets of narcissism which I described in the last post. While sexual exploitation of religious followers may be rare, the dangers of linking young adults who are developmentally vulnerable with narcissistically inclined leaders, is a dangerous mix.

The dynamic that holds a young person in thrall to a religious group, whether a church or a cult, will not normally create emotional distress as long as the young person remains in the group. The biggest danger is that, while they are in the group, the process of emotional development involved in growing up is put on hold. By reverting to the safety of the family unit through the group, the typical cult member will not be working through the emotional task of separating from their family of origin which is part of the preparation for adult independence. Most however eventually emerge from the group and continue with the task of growing up. The worst that can be said of such individuals is that their process of maturity was delayed. Thus they survive unscathed and take their place as mature adults after their period of emotionally ‘treading water’ within some group or other.

A minority of young people are deeply damaged by their passage through a religious group. Some never emerge properly. Their need for attachment has become permanently focused on the leader or guru and his teaching, so that they cannot imagine life without this prop. At an emotional level they have remained a child, totally dependent on the ‘parent’. When this happens, the process of disentangling from these kinds of bonds is never achieved without enormous amounts of pain and emotional distress. The group has created in the follower a dependency on itself every bit as lethal as an addiction to hard drugs. The literature on drugs offers an explanation of the way that dependency is never just physical but it extends to the brain so that addiction is psychological, emotional and mental.

The ‘survivors’ of cultic groups are sometimes deeply distressed damaged people. Their desire to trust others and to attach themselves to an ideal has been ruthlessly taken advantage of or exploited in some way. It would not be untrue to see that religion generally appeals to the child part of our personalities. We could never understand Jesus’ words about faith and trust unless we had learnt these qualities as children. But it is these same ‘child-like’ qualities that are also the key to our vulnerability and open us up to be being exploited in a variety of ways. Those who do in fact exploit this child part of their followers are power abusers of the worst kind. They should remember the words of Jesus about taking advantage of children and the way that millstones were used to place such abusers into the depths of the sea.

It was last summer that I noticed something about my participation in courses and conferences for those abused by faulty religion. It was the fact that, unlike almost all my fellow attendees, I have never had to endure the experience of being abused and humiliated by religious leaders. That seemed to be the experience of everyone else, and it was particularly striking last summer in Washington DC. Participation in the conference almost seemed to require a story of pain, heartbreak and long slow recovery from an abusive situation in the past. Attendance at the conference was indeed, for many, part of this long process of returning to psychological health. Having pointed out this fact that, apart from facing parishioners who believed that they had all the answers to what they thought was wrong with my church, I am largely free of the pain that Chris and many others refer to in their experience of church. Any reader who wants to know more about why I choose to involve myself in this whole area, should consult the pages at the beginning of this blog. They may get some idea how I came to be in this place of wanting to help those who suffer pain because of religious abuse.

There is an argument for believing that I could be more effective in assisting others, who have gone through times of cultic or religious abuse, if I had suffered something similar. But there is also a strong case for saying that my freedom from this particular kind of emotional pain allows me to be clear eyed about the problem. As the followers of my posts will witness, I do understand a bit about the dynamics of religious groups which gives me some insights into these problems. Sufferers of religious or cultic abuse sometimes prefer to hear, not ‘I feel your pain’, but a more detached analysis of how person A. manipulated and plotted to take over a group in order to extract emotional and financial benefit for himself. (It is normally a him!) This objective comprehension of the dynamics of abuse will help some to rise up, even if only temporarily, above the emotional pain and take back a certain level of control. They now understand better why they feel in the way they do. It is my claim that new insight into a problem of a painful nature in your past will normally assist you to deal with it better. Sometimes it even helps to see the perpetrator of some evil against you as themselves a victim. What they did still hurts terribly years later but the insight that can be gained as to why they found it ‘necessary’ to damage others, will ease a little of the emotional pain felt now.

Blog followers will know that I am following closely the events taking place in Brentwood where an abusive church is being pressured to face up to its past. The former leader, Michael Reid, who was sacked (at massive expense) by the Trustees in 2008, continues to haunt the church, partly because no one wants to look back at the appalling history of his abuse. Ostensibly he was removed for an illicit sexual liaison with a church member but there is much more abuse hidden in the church’s history. My interest in the church is partly because I visited it during my research into abusive churches in the 1990s, but also the blog, that is run by one Nigel Davies, continues to throw up fascinating material both from current as well as former members. In my retirement, I cannot access case studies as rich as this for my interest in religious abuse, so this blog and its evolving story grips my attention. I find myself able from time to time able to offer comments and interpretation on-line. One thing that intrigues me, in particular, is that, to all appearances, Michael Reid seems to fulfil all the criteria for being a prototypical narcissistic charismatic leader. Lest this sound as though I am trying to level at Michael Reid an insult of maximum impact, let me say at once that this description from psychoanalytic language is as much about the damage probably done to him at an early age. In other words although the description of ‘narcissist’ sounds like an accusation, it is also a description of someone who may have had much evil visited on them first. Further the fact that a particular narcissist has been allowed to wreak horrendous damage on others, is a criticism of the culture that tolerates this kind of grandiose behaviour, as though it were acceptable. Churches, especially in the States, seem to love the larger-than life personalities that emerge within the charismatic evangelical world, but these places, where these personalities are allowed to lead and run amok, are ones best shut down. So to repeat, the prototypical narcissist like Michael Reid is often a victim of faulty rearing, so that, in adulthood, such an individual has a massive ‘deficit’ of self-esteem. He works hard to experience the self-esteem once denied to him as a child and consequently other people are ruthlessly manipulated to achieve an emotional ‘high’ which may fill a yawning emptiness within him. The literature suggests that, along the way, the narcissist has become less than empathetic to the needs of other people, because his need to be constantly affirmed is massive. Other people are ruthlessly exploited as the targets of his power games. The narcissist may dominate them or demand their slavish adoration, and these behaviours are both stock in trade for the narcissist. It is in noticing this dynamic that can offer an insight into the dysfunction and problems that pervade so many cult-like churches.

The pain of becoming subject to a malign narcissist can be terrible and life-long. The two aspects of the relationship that I have mentioned, demanding from people slavish adoration or subjecting them to abject humiliation, are both incredibly damaging. I realise from my word count that I need to bring this post to a close for now and leave further comments on the subject of the pain of victims for another time. But today I ask my reader to consider the damage that religious leaders can and do create in their followers. There is of course more to be said and I will return to the topic of the pain of abuse in another blog.

The twenty fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was also the anniversary of the collapse of the most extraordinary social and political experiment that the world has ever seen. Marxism/Leninism in and around the Soviet Union was an ideology that believed it had all the answers to the economic and political problems of society. At the same time it put out the idea that it was possible to create a new type of humanity, Soviet man. This great ‘Idea’ that the ultimate victory of socialism was assured and that, whatever the set-backs, nothing could defeat its ultimate victory, was all embracing. In theory it inspired and filled the imaginations of every citizen in the Soviet empire. That it collapsed both as an economic idea and a social movement is a fact of history. It had been sustained through the lies, self-deceit and propaganda of the system. Millions of actual human beings died of starvation because the authorities wanted to promote false statistics of grain production in the Ukraine in the 1930s. Because much of the pretend grain did not exist, people starved. The great ‘Idea’ was in fact a fantasy but it achieved through the propaganda machine a period of apparent success. Meanwhile it never resolved the actual problems of motivating people and allowing them to breathe the fresh air of human individuality and desire for freedom.

The 40 year experiment in changing human nature was only possible because the Soviet authorities seized all the tools of communication within Russia and its satellite states. Having shut off every alternative voice by creating a totally closed society, they were then able, in the words of Solzhenitsyn, ‘to elevate the primitive refusal to compromise into a theoretical principal and regard it as the pinnacle of orthodoxy’. In other words the political elite ‘knew’ what was true, and discussion and debate were to be ruthlessly suppressed. Even before the Revolution of 1917, Lenin had written that his aim in polemics was not to refute but to destroy his opponent. This paranoid ruthless streak which is part of the ‘Idea’ has a kind of fundamentalistic quality not dissimilar to the totalitarian thinkers of the American Right of today. The power of Soviet leaders was rooted in something that rendered it beyond even the possibility of dissent or debate.

Totalitarian ideologies and political systems exist because there is always a part of human nature that wants a strong individual to make decisions on its behalf. The political success of Putin in Russia is of surprise to us in the West because we cannot imagine how anyone would want to follow a totalitarian leader who uses the lies and the old propaganda tools of the old Soviet empire. Otherwise intelligent people can also be duped in believing this take on history and society. As a 12 year old I listened as the ‘Red’ Dean of Canterbury spoke about his visit to Russia for the 40th anniversary of the Revolution in 1957. Thankfully we were also being exposed to another version of contemporary history, so there was little chance of the corruption of young minds. Social justice was an honourable aim for any society but this high ideal blinded many to the truth of what was actually going on in Soviet society. Nevertheless the admirers of the Soviet system in their blindness to actual facts, were in the words of one commentator, ‘traitors to the human mind, to thought itself’.

What point do I want to make about totalitarianism and the church? First I want to acknowledge that similar patterns of coercive and ‘infallible’ thinking have existed throughout the history of the church. I need just to mention the shame of the period of the Inquisition and the cruelties of the Reformation on both sides. But having admitted to the way that Christians have behaved in the past, it is deeply shameful that totalistic systems of thought still exist in the Church today. It is one thing to take sides in a religious war back in the 16th century and kill others in the name of God, but quite another to support an ideology today which cannot tolerate dissent or disagreement. Christians, thankfully, do not kill each other but the language of contempt and vilification of their ideological opponents is fairly vicious at times. Any system that cannot tolerate debate or discussion is in danger, like the ‘Idea’ of Marxist/Leninism, of becoming a system that destroys and tramples human beings under foot. The stand that this blog is taking, is saying is simply this. When a belief system cannot defend itself by reasoned argument and politeness, it is in danger of becoming totalitarian. Such a system must be resisted because, otherwise, it will go on to destroy people, if not physically, at least emotionally and spiritually. Sadly we meet today many such systems within the Christian church itself.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called on Anglicans to ‘disagree well’ in the debates that divide Anglicans. However a recent survey indicates that so far from disagreeing well, the majority of male Anglican evangelical clergy believe that separation is a better option than tolerating disagreements in the Communion. They would also prefer that agreement would somehow be insisted on by a central authority. Their support for such a (papal?) pronouncement would, of course, depend on it conforming to their pre-existing convictions.

It is important to unpack what is being said on both sides in this debate. The Archbishop with his elegant phrase, ‘disagree well’, captures a gracious ability to live with people who do not agree with you or who use a different set of concepts and language to talk about God or moral issues. The ability to allow for a different narrative about such things alongside your own, is not difficult for the inclusive Christian. They will have a strong awareness that their own position is never the last word. The liberal inclusive thinker will also recognise, as this blog has emphasised many times, that words themselves are sometimes unhelpful in the task of describing truth.

The contrasting position, which has been revealed in a recent Yougov poll organised by the Westminster Faith Debates, reveals that two thirds (68%) of male evangelical clergy have no sympathy with the idea that the Anglican Church as a whole should embrace diverse ideas. A smaller number (61%) of evangelical women clergy would also take this line. For both groups, the idea of propositional truth trumps any idea of the possibility of ‘disagreeing well’ with those who do not follow the ‘correct’ line, whether it be on moral issues or on doctrine. From this perspective, truth, as presented in doctrinal statements or in the words of Scripture, cannot be changed or compromised. God’s will has been revealed in words and any attempt to change these words and propositions will be firmly resisted.

Overall the Yougov poll shows that most clergy approached support Archbishop Welby with his call for the church to ‘disagree well.’ 75% would back this appeal. But the problem of a fixed determined intransigence among a certain proportion of the clergy seems to be not easily resolved. As I have said recently on this blog, the reason for this failure to agree or to tolerate difference is unlikely to be completely theological but rather to tap into other aspects of personality and psychology. This blog continues to explore what these non-theological factors might be. But whether this intransigence comes from an individual psychology or a tribal mentality, it continues to be an institutional nightmare for our leaders in the church. The days of absolute episcopal power seem to be over as lay people, who pay for the church, begin to flex their institutional muscles. These same lay people will listen, not to a remote bishop, but to the clergyman at hand. If he defies the local bishop, then they will support him, when necessary, by withholding the Parish Share. A financial famine is the one thing that could cause the whole Anglican structure to collapse. It appears to be quite close in certain Dioceses in the North of England and in the Diocese of Truro.

The ability to ‘disagree well’ is something that I, as the editor of this blog, can firmly endorse. The problem is, however, not what I, as an individual, think but whether the church as a whole allows its intransigent minority to become more and more dominant. This year, according to the poll, those who cannot and will not shift from a fixed position numbers 25%. In five years time, what will that total be? This blog has its aim the desire to suggest that the tsunami of conservative thinking in the church should be challenged and if possible checked. Resisting intransigent thinking, even in a very tiny way, is a worthy activity, not only because it stands up for truth of a generous and inclusive kind, but also because truth of this type is less likely to cause pain and suffering to those who encounter it. Truth and compassion are two very good reasons for welcoming the Archbishop’s call on all of us to ‘disagree well’.

The Anglican Church has recently been completing the crossing of the final hurdles before women in England are permitted to become bishops in England. A female bishop could be in post as soon as next year. But in noting the historic events taking place at General Synod today (Monday), I am immediately led back to some reading I did some weeks ago about the depths of misogyny that is practised by most religions not least Christianity.

At the time when women were first ordained in the Church of England in the early 90s, I was asked to speak to a group of sixth formers in a girl’s private school on the issue. At that time the prominent opponents of female ordination were the Anglo-Catholic party in the Anglican Church and I spoke about their reasons for opposing it. I thought I was being perceptive in focusing on the issues around impurity and the uncleanness of women to perform sacred acts, like celebrating the eucharist, while ritually unclean. This sense of the unclean is what also lies behind the so-called ‘churching of women’. In the past women who had had children could only re-enter society after they had been to church to be ‘churched’ or purified. It was quite clear that the origins of this ceremony reached back to the Old Testament, and the ideas there and taboos surrounding the uncleanness of women after they had had a child. These visceral feelings about the nature of women’s bodies and its functions were presented alongside the rather tired arguments about how Jesus only chose men as his disciples. More recently I have discerned still deeper levels of hatred against women which lies behind the opposition to women priests and, by extension, to the notion of women bishops.

One strand of opposition to the ministry of women as priests and bishops is held by conservative evangelicals. This resistance is not universal among evangelicals but is expressed forcibly a strand of evangelical theology represented in the UK by a group called Reform. The Diocese of Sydney in Australia is a whole diocese that has set itself apart from the mainstream of Anglican church life by declaring that it will not ordain women to the priesthood nor receive the ministry of women ordained elsewhere to practise as a priest. A woman bishop from New Zealand was only allowed to preach in the Sydney diocese by being robed as a deacon. This solid opposition to the ministry of women priests is something that needs to be explored. What possible reasons are there that lie behind this implacable opposition to the idea of women exercising a priestly ministry?

It is reading the arguments put forward by the representatives of the Diocese of Sydney over a number of decades that allows us to get the flavour of the argument put up by this strand of conservative evangelicalism. Elsewhere in the Anglican world, the arguments against the ordination of women is not allowed to be the dominant voice in the discussion. It could almost be said that the case against women’s ordination is a lost cause among evangelicals, even though there remain strongholds of resistance in every Anglican country. In every presentation of the evangelical case against women being ordained, we hear the argument about ‘headship’. From a number of texts, mainly in Paul but also from Genesis, the argument was put forward that God’s will, as revealed in Holy Scripture was against the ordination of women. Headship in both church and family belongs to men. This is a fundamental truth revealed by God. In a revealing interview given by Peter Jensen when newly appointed a Archbishop of Sydney in 2002, he indicated that he would be more concerned about a Rector who supported the ordination of women than he would about one who questioned the nature of the resurrection. Whatever Peter Jensen meant to say in this comment, it is clear that his version of Protestant Christianity puts the opposition to women’s ordination very high up on the agenda of the important marks of a ‘true believer’.

What does this inordinate opposition to the ordination of women actually say to us? We had cause in a previous blog to claim that the opposition to gay marriage had more to do with politics and psychology than with theology. The opposition to women having authority of any kind over men could also be seen as a political struggle tinged with deep psychological roots. What do we have here? What I believe we find in this theological position is nothing less than a theologically flavoured misogyny. Hatred of women by men can come from many sources, but it is a truism that that throughout history men have found it necessary to dominate and control women. The feminist literature has explored the extent and breadth of this warfare against the female sex. In summary the female voice has been suppressed or ignored, her sexuality tightly controlled and her rights to dispose of her property as she thinks fit severely limited. It is clear that men traditionally have found the ways of the feminine deeply unsettling and their need to control what they cannot understand has been overwhelming. The traditional patriarchal societies of the past evoke a strong affection from evangelical thinkers. They appear, through rose-tinted spectacles, to be havens of order and godliness where women knew their place in society under the total dominance of men. It is perhaps no coincidence that that two consecutive principals of Moore College in Sydney, from where the anti-women theology receives so much support, were both experts in Reformation history. The period of the Reformation, to judge from comments of Luther, Calvin and John Knox, was a period that allowed women little power or influence. They too seized on stories of the failings of Eve and God’s will for the headship of man from Paul with great alacrity.

The ordination of women as priests and now as bishops may create problems for the Anglican church as it loses its relationships with the Catholic church and the Orthodox. It does however represent a victory over a rather seedy piece of theologising that passes for biblical theology. We in the Anglican church have not been taken in by this attempt to pass off misogyny as good or even adequate theological reasoning. The misogyny of certain Christian groups has caused untold suffering to many, and its final defeat in our church is a cause for celebration and thankfulness.

The final denouement at Trinity is yet to take place but the sense of drama and activity at the church continues apace. Since the revelation of the historical allegation of rape which was reported on this blog, the church has put out a number of statements. One contained the closest thing to an apology that the church has ever published but there was little sense of the incongruity of the words after six years of secrecy, forgetfulness and a seeming total unwillingness to unpack the events of the past. The latest attempt to stave off the wall of criticisms and recollections of the appalling events of the Reid era was the request to send in messages of support for the leader Peter Linnecar. The invitation was extended only to current members, with the implication that comments of former members would be ignored. In the event the church published results of the opinions of members and ex-members alike. It showed predictably that Peter L still has a lot of support from his congregation, many of whom are related to him by blood or through inter-marriage. The statements were slightly tempered by the suggestion that the church trustees was minded to appoint a new assistant pastor from outside the church. Such a person, it was suggested, might help the church to deal with the past. The tone of the messages suggest that the trustees may be being pulled in two directions. One group actually wants to deal with the past while another is in strong defensive mode with and for their pastor. A future of honesty and openness for the latter group is just too much to face.

Meanwhile the blog continues to recount some pretty awful stories by ex-members. None of them cross that line into illegality but they make painful reading all the same. A fourteen year old was expelled from the school with no notice after some apparently harmless behaviour and it was suggested that this action was taken by Peter Linnecar as a way of getting back at the parents who were challenging the church in some way. Another ex-pupil recalled being humiliated and lambasted for his ‘sins’ in front of the whole school assembly. What made his account poignant was his thought that this was a Christian thing to do in making his humiliation so public. Clearly there are numerous other stories that do not make the blog but there seems general agreement that the school was the scene for some foul power games against the parent of the children there. Humiliate the children so that parents fall into line.

The latest piece of drama is that Peter and Carolyn Linnecar have flown to the States. It is suggested that they have gone off to consult George Kovoor, now in America. George was formerly Principal of Trinity College Bristol and was reputed to have helped the congregation recover from the Michael Reid era. One blog comment however has suggested that he failed lamentably to challenge the church when particular allegations of misconduct were raised two years ago. George was handed an open letter asking him to question Peter and other officials, when he came to preach, about an extensive correspondence sent to the church over misconduct at the school. There was a suggestion that the entire batch of letters was shredded. His demeanour on that occasion suggested that his task was not to challenge anything in any way but simply to enjoy the church’s lavish hospitality. While George may have helped the church pick itself up after the departure of Michael Reid, there is absolutely no evidence that he has ever challenged it in the six years since then. For a man of wide experience of ministry, it is curious not to see evidence that he has offered any guidance or advice of a constructive kind since then.

Peter and Carolyn return from the States today (Friday) and there is some expectation, once again, that important announcements will take place this w/e. Will Peter continue as chief pastor or will he succumb to the pressure of the continuing revelation of the appalling events of the past? Meanwhile Nigel Davies, the blogmaster, has been invited to a meeting with the Trinity trustees at 7.30 am on Saturday December 6th for 30 minutes. No doubt that will be an important and interesting encounter. We wait to see.

The intense hostility of conservative churches within the Anglican Communion over the issue of gays has been alluded to several times on this blog. As I explained in the previous post, it would be hard to claim that the divisions are purely matters of theology. The battles within Anglicanism are also a direct out-working of other wider struggles that are taking place across the world, most notably the push by the political right in America to obtain power and influence over their opponents. Where there is politics in America, there is nearly always someone who is motivated enough and wealthy enough to throw a great deal of money to support the chosen cause. The struggles to promote the cause of the extreme conservative right against the liberal mainstream within denominational Christianity in America have drawn considerable sums of money from right wing foundations in the States. There are in fact five secular organisations which ‘throw’ money at any situation which might promote the ultra-conservative position. There is also a notorious individual called Howard Ahmanson, a follower of Rushdooney, who supports with his interest and money the Anglican conservative cause which has as its target, the ‘gay lobby’ within the church. The money flowing from all these sources has allowed a small of activists to mount campaigns of considerable strength against the Episcopalian Church in the States, particularly after the consecration of Gene Robinson, the gay bishop in 2003. These funds support right-wing lobbying groups such as the so-called American Anglican Council and the Institute on Religion and Democracy. American money also reaches conservative groups in the UK, in particular Anglican Mainstream.

We cannot on this blog uncover all the strands of activity that have been unravelled by careful investigators over the years. But enough material has been gathered to indicate their methods and allow their opponents to cry ‘foul’ at some of their machinations. In this post I want to focus on the activities of lobbyists at one particular meeting, a gathering of Anglican Primates at Dromantine in Northern Ireland in 2005. The meeting was supposed to be a private gathering of bishops under the chairmanship of Archbishop Rowan Williams. In fact it was the interference of those outside the gathering that dominated the proceedings of the conference. One the issues to be discussed at this meeting was how the Anglican Church as a whole was going to react to the American Episcopalian Church after Bishop Robinson’s appointment. Was the Episcopalian Church to be removed from the Anglican Communion? Some of those present, the Archbishops of Uganda, Kenya and the Southern Cone were closely working with the organisations in the States who were lobbying hard for this outcome. The situation of the meeting began to descend into farce as the Primates in the meeting were being in part coordinated by activists who were staying nearby. Notes were being passed to conservative sympathetic Primates as to what they should say and how they should vote. Expensive dinners were organised (and paid for) by the American lobbyists and it appeared that everything said at the meeting was reported to these same activists. It was even claimed that Archbishop Akinola was having material drafted for him to say and even the final communiqué was altered by the lobbyists on the outside. The discussion on this final text went on into the late evening, after Archbishop Akinola staunchly defended this lobbyist text.

The highly respected Archbishop Robert Eames who had been brought in by Archbishop Rowan to assist with the process of holding the Anglican communion together declared that he was ‘quite certain’ that African bishops were being offered money to cut their ties with the Episcopal Church. Archbishop Akinola challenged Eames to produce evidence but the claim was supported from other sources. The provincial secretary to the Uganda Archbishop confirmed that US conservatives contributed towards the salaries of provincial staff from 1998. Archbishop Akinola hinted strongly in a sermon to his fellow African Anglicans that the resources of the conservative Anglican Communion Network were only available to those who had cut themselves off from ECUSA, the mainstream American Anglican body.

Enough has been said to give the flavour of the way things were operating in the years that led up to the founding of GAFCON in 2008. The claim of this blog once again is to say that the so-called divisions in the Anglican church have much more to do with politics and psychology than to theology. Of course the Bible is quoted and used but one suspects that political agendas are at the foundation of many of the disputes that take place among the churches. I for one would feel greatly cheated if my church started to pursue right wing political objectives but wrapped them up in the language of piety and holiness. That is, in fact, precisely what seems to be happening right across the world in conservative congregations. We have to face up to the fact that the rich can choose to use their money to obtain power and influence in church and society as they wish. What they can do, they often will do. The church, as with other institutions need to guard against this invasion of political manipulation by the wealthy. The cause of honesty, truth and integrity needs to be defended against those who would destroy it in the name of what we would identify as an abusive manipulative form of Christianity.