Surviving the Jesus Army: Evidence of how dramatically people's minds in the JA can be changed

Tuesday, 21 July 2009

Evidence of how dramatically people's minds in the JA can be changed

Nb. The above images are in chronological order but the postings on them stack upwards (see the timings). They have been selected as examples of the positive dialogue which was ended so suddenly by the JA. Click on each to read it easily

An angry assault from Sarah Hughes today, the young woman in the fellowship whose idea it was to set up a dialogue page on Facebook when Claire Hall closed down a very positive dialogue that she, Ali and I had been having, made me feel that I should publish the starkly contrasting posts.

Ali. you will recall, said he had been in a happy bubble all his membership, unaware of how the church had beaten kids in the past and after a while decided that he would challenge the church about this and other practices. Sarah, who had been beaten herself said we needed to find the people who had been hurt by the JA and bring healing.

It was an extraordinary chain of events.

Ali went off feeling he had been commissioned by God to root out abuses and Sarah continued talking about starting the Dialogue which is in the process of dying a death, not least of all because Sarah suddenly changed her mind once the thing was up and running, citing the neglect of her mothering duties.

Both of them are now, by contrast with our correspondences, postings and texts, virulently against my efforts. It just goes to show how hard it is for individuals in the JA, however strong their independently formulated ideas and convictions, to do their own thing, and how easily they can be swayed back to the party line.

A meeting with the Prophet.

Talking to Noel Stanton and Mick Temperate again more than vindicated all our whistle blowing activities. This was a life affirming experience. We had always hoped that we'd had an impact, but we could not have anticipated quite how massive an impact it had been. Their candour on this point was illuminating.

The most important outcome, was an acknowledgement made by Mick "Temperate" Haines that throughout our campaign we had not been untruthful, only "unhelpful". Given their legal threats in the 1980s, this was quite a revelation. I'd always been scrupulous about only telling the truth, but I'd never dreamed that anyone in the JA would ever admit this.

Who are the JA anyway?

In this blog I make frequent reference to the JA (Jesus Army) despite the fact that when I was a member the JA didn't actually exist yet. I left the New Creation Christian Community (a commune), which formed part of the JFC (Jesus Fellowship Church), then regarded by many as a cult, in 1984 after 3 years there. When I was there, we were known as the Jesus People (or in Christian circles as Bugbrooke). The JA came into being in 1987.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Army
I co-wrote the Wikipedia article with a "neutral" editor, Rumiton and with the JA's Representative, John Campbell. I wrote as Bristol Sycamore. Here you can read the some of the negotiations. There are 2 archives as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jesus_Army

However, I eventually stopped contributing a couple of months ago when the JA team stopped consulting and started comprehensively sanitising the wikipedia article. It now reads very much like an advert for the JA.....and cannot be considered neutral in any sense at all.