I’m going to finish off this part of my ‘informal history of Universalism in the UK’ project during Holy Week – because this will concentrate my attention on the final summing up.
Obviously I made some serious points about contemporary Christianity in my last email and I would like to corroborate them (in case you thought my bonnet full of wild bees was getting the better of me – as can happen)
Actually the events of which I spoke of were spaced out fairly evenly over the nineteen nineties and were probably part of millennial expectation fever. As the horror stories began to emerge, since I know quite a lot about religious history I was always mindful of and concerned about the example of the first millennium. This passed without the widely expected Second Coming and the disappointment at frustrated hopes and expectations was one of the main impulses that launched the murderous First Crusade in the Christian West to recapture Jerusalem (with its terrible and indiscriminate slaughter of Muslims, Eastern Christians and Jews).
However, the real millennium – and not the High Tech Horror movie millennium of the ‘Left Behind’ genre – did bear some fruit over here. I’m thinking of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland –achieved not without great pain and sacrifice – but it looks really optimistic (and a lot of positive input came from the humiliated American President Bill Clinton – he may have had an irregular personal life, and was his own worst enemy, but the man was not all bad by a long stretch). One of the key movers in the early Peace Process whose name I mentioned by misspelt in my last post, was that fine man with a twinkle in his eye David Ervine. HE had been a terrorist but had grown tired of killing and was a key conciliatory figure; and was instrumental in taking the risk of making the first gesture for peace when Loyalist/Protestant paramilitaries announced an unconditional ceasefire in 1994. You can find details about him at -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ervine
The research paper – ‘The extent and nature of organised and ritual abuse – research findings’ by Professor J.S. La Fontaine was published by the UK Department of Health in 1994 and printed by HMSO (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office). So I guess the Satanic Abuse scandal must have peaked in about 1993.
Dave Tomlinson – the granddad of the Post-Evangelical Movement in the UK (a bit like the Emergent Church movement in America – but different, and not as grand in scale) published his influential book ‘The Post Evangelical’ in 1995 (I think I went to his pub Church ‘Holy Joes’ in 1997 three times and also participated in another post-evangelical discussion in a South London pub that he chaired a year earlier). Nice guy Dave, with a twinkle in his eye (which, as Drew has reminded us is a desirable characteristic from middle age onwards.
There are two excellent books that sum up and analyse what went wrong in Charismatic Christianity in the UK in the1990s -
The Rise and Fall of the Nine o’Clock Service: A Cult within the Church? by Roland Howard (12 Sep 1996)
Charismania: When Christian Fundamentalism Goes Wrong by Roland Howard (21 Aug 1997)
Roland Howard’s books take a long and serious look at abuses of power within the Charismatic scene in the UK during this period – and they really were rather serious (although it’s hard to say how widespread – but the triumphalism of the Marches for Jesus tended to cover up the excesses for a while – and it is always triumphalism that puts up a propaganda front to disallow self critical reflection).
I see from Amazon that some reviewers of ‘The Rise and Fall’ book are annoyed that Howard concentrates so much on Chris Brain’s sociopathic role in the Nine O’clock service to the detriment of the overall cultural significance of ‘NOS’ (the rather trendy acronym for The Nine O’clock Service) on the Sheffield Club Scene, and on the Emergent Church (to which I can only say , rather patronisingly– ‘bless,’ and doubt that these reviewers were among those who met in dignified and silent mourning).
‘Charismania’ has some disturbing case studies – but the book is not intended to be destructive of the Charismatic movement as a whole. It is simply a prophetic attempt to awaken Charismatic Christians to the dangers of abuse of power – and as such is wholly constructive in intention. The book actually ends with a consideration of the writings of the Christian martyr Dietrich Bonheoffer and his salutary advice that we find God most directly in the current times in powerless vulnerability and the in powerless that we meet in or lives.
I know that a number Charismatic Christians are members of this site – and have been here a lot longer than I have - and peace and blessing to you if you read my stuff. I had some experience of charismatic worship when young – but it wasn’t for me (I think perhaps because I am a rather excitable and noisy person I am naturally drawn to forms of worship that contain lots of peace and quiet to balance me up). I must say that my contact with Charismatic Christianity did no real damage to me – although it was a bit confusing. Also I’ve met, and worked with, lots of lovely Charismatic Christians – full of openness and love. As for my Charismatic students – I had four or five of them over a two year period. They were all female and came from a second generation English Caribbean background. I hope I’ve made it clear that I really liked these girls, and wanted to get the through their exams so that they could follow their vocations/the Lord by entering the caring professions (which all of them intended to do). Obviously I have been alarmed by some of the excesses of the Charismatic movement in the UK that surfaced in the 1990’s. I will add that these excesses invariably seem to have happened in white middle class Charismatic Churches – and I’ve observed elsewhere that I think stuffy white middle class people are particularly vulnerable to going over the top with cathartic emotional release – because they are often rather alienated from their bodies and their emotions to start with though upbringing (I contrast this with something I once read by an American black girl Charismatic to the tune of– ‘ Everything that is in me dances when I praise the Lord with my body, the temple of His spirit!’). Actually the only case of sexual abuse by a Charismatic pastor I have come across personally took place in the context of a white Charismatic Church – and the life of the victim who I knew for a time, had been devastated by this betrayal of trust.
I hope that I am being fairly even handed on this thread when talking about the good and the bad in the Church of England. I could also, I hope, be even handed about the good and the bad in the Quakers who I know well – and hope to do so here one day. (And, of course, abuse of power including sexual abuse goes on in all Churches from time to time – and it is my personal view that the Catholic Church particularly needs to have a long hard look at its celibate priesthood because of all of the temptations this throws up for attracting the wrong sorts of people for the wrong reasons. And the potential for priestly abuse of power that we see tragically detailed in the media at the moment far too often. It is tragic that the current Pope thinks that what is needed is for priests to be more assiduous in mortifying their bodies as a remedy for this. I know kind and good simple Catholics who want their priests to be heroes of purity. But I don’t think we should expect this sort of heroism of our Christian leaders – especially if it lead to the suffering of innocents which it obviously does. I also know free thinking Catholics who want a married priesthood – with celibacy just as an option - and female priests as well as soon as possible. God’s speed to them I say)
We should never identify any visible church - whatever denomination or tendency this is from, with its particular forms of worship and organisation - with the invisible Universal Church. The latter is God’s gracious work in us all – whatever our particular modes of worship and confessional emphases; and God’ work is working towards the Universal Reconciliation of All in Christ. I can only add that if you are a Charismatic and reading this post – please be joyful, and be exuberant before the Lord as a witness to your stuffier and more reserved brothers and sisters; but never emphasise signs and wonders and acts of Power at the expense of the real fruits of the Spirit – Love, Joy, Peace.
A final book that looks at issues raised in this post is
Ungodly Fear: Fundamentalist Christianity and the Abuse of Power by Stephen Parsons (20 Apr 2001)
And at this point I want to turn away from Charismatic Christianity to more general temptations within organised Christianity.
Parsons book is, to my mind, excellent and the best pastoral book written for recovering fundamentalists that I know of. It is about extreme fundamentalism in all of its forms – both charismatic and non-charismatic (and I am aware that charismatic Christianity and fundamentalism are not necessarily linked – although in the UK they often are). All the other books I’ve read on Fundamentalism tend to simply concentrate on the intellectual matter of biblical scholarship to free the mind from the tyranny of manipulative and selective literalism (which only has a very recent history despite its claims to be true Christianity). In my experience this is only part of the battle – and a very small part at that. This book concentrates on the more pressing issue of how to understand the manipulative dynamics of power that are so often part and parcel of fundamentalism. Parsons is a Church of England priest, but his critique of fundamentalism is very much grounded in the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church which he loves (he spent a lot of time in Greece when it was under military dictatorship and likens extreme fundamentalism to his experience of a quasi fascist aberration within Orthodoxy with its own power based Christology that supported the ‘Colonels’ in the 1970’s. He makes some good point about Hell in his book – that Jesus threats of hell or ‘perishing were always aimed at the powerful and never at h vulnerable 9especially not the children; and I think that’s an excellent observation.
I think it is also from Parsons that I gleaned an observation that I made on the Original Sin Thread that the picture of God found in strong ECT traditions – a God who is uncontrollably powerful but who we have to trust as being ‘just’ despite our intuition that he acts without justice in damming so many and saving so few – has its roots in extreme puritan child rearing practices. There is a terrible tradition within extreme Puritanism and other authoritarian forms of Christianity of beating children severely and even savagely from a tender age, not because they have done anything wrong but simply to thrash the original sin out of them. And children subjected to this abuse will have a real existential experience of being powerless and vulnerable and subjected to abuse from a source that is overwhelmingly powerful but that is also the source of their security – that is their Parent.
A friend of mine tells me that she once went to a youth meeting at her Conservative Evangelical Church here in the UK in the early 1970s. The vicar had just purchased a tape of David Wilkerson – of ‘The Cross and the Switchblade’ fame – giving an address. David Wilkerson was a bit of a cult hero at the time an d his story of evangelising New York Gangs was the sort of fantasy that all young evangelicals over here wanted to place themselves in. Such was the fame and the esteem of Pastor Wilkerson that the vicar hadn’t even bothered to listen to the tape before playing it. He simply thought it would ‘go down well with the young people’. Anyway Wilkerson began speaking with ‘I beat my children, yes I beat my children - even sometimes when they’ve done nothing wrong. And I beat my children because I love them’ – and his voice apparently sounded really creepy. There was a lot of nervous throat clearing in the Church Hall and the vicar looked very embarrassed (and was probably worried about angry parents if this got out).
I understand that Wilkerson did go on to have big problems in his marriage – for which I wish him well if he is still alive. I don’t remember much in detail about ‘The Cross and the Switch Blade’ – but I think its miracles and wonders were probably over egged. However, I do remember one piece of very unhelpful advice he gave in it when holding up a group of young women of radiant faith who ‘just wanted to burn themselves for the Lord’ as an example for us to imitate. I also remember reading a book by Ken Leech- an Anglican priest who was vicar of St Anne’s in London’s seedy area of Soho at this time. Leech complained that all of the patient work he had been doing during the week with drug addicts, pimps and prostitutes was often undone by young Evangelicals descending upon Soho in the weekend brandishing their copies of the ‘Cross and the Switch blade’, getting up people’s noses, and then returning home to the leafy suburbs after their bit of excitement.
And I also do remember, in this connection, that in the late 1990’s there was a media story about a couple of American Fundamentalists who planned to tour the UK to give lecture on beating children – the woman in the duo thought that it was even correct and godly to chastise babies by hitting them with a large plastic spoon. I mentioned this to a friend of mine who is a Christian counsellor and an Anglican – just because I was perplexed; but she immediately got on to her networks of protest and it seems that after protests fomr her lot and others the couple were refused entry to the UK (so that’s a good turn I did once without even knowing what the outcome would be – so never be afraid to mentions things that disturb you to your mates if you feel that your faith is being dishonoured, especially if they have influence; who knows my friends ability to rally significant numbers of protestors to swell the ranks may have had an effect).
The whole tradition of child abuse in Christianity is a disgrace– and I do want to distinguish this very clearly from begin strict with kids from time to time to give them appropriate protective guidelines. Certainly the stuff I’ve uncovered about Calvin’s Geneva when researching this thread is horrifying – and I understand it even sent shock waves through Elizabethan England and was never part of Lutheranism, for example( one of the most moving things I’ve ever read is Luther’s tender lament for his little daughter who died young). The beheading of a child for striking its parents in a temper tantrum, the condemning of naughty children to death and then the reprieving them only after the hangman’s noose had been placed around their necks – all of this is depravity. I guess some may feel consoled that these stories don’t entail sexual abuse, but just extreme emotional and physical abuse (that’s small comfort and special pleading in my view). And, who is to say that those perpetrating these atrocities no children did not get a sexual thrill from them? The sex drive is perfectly innocent and good but like the rest of our humanity it is corrupted by the rivalrous drive for power – and power and the abuse of power is the root of the issue. ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.
Sober blessings
Dick