Surviving the Jesus Army: Dialogue closed

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Dialogue closed

A few weeks ago I decided that since dialogue needed to be at very least two way, and as the JA had forbidden members, including the JA woman who started it with me, to get involved in the JA Dialogue group on Facebook, it served no purpose....except to testify to the stalemate. But it also signified a continuing involvement on my part, and I have decided that I don't have any interest in the JA now at all. I wrote a goodbye to all its members and closed it.

It is, as those intimate with the details will know, sadly the case that my most virulently nasty opponents have not been the JA at all in recent years, but various parties who took umbrage at my ambivalence about the JA, and who objected to me not supporting their more extreme, sometimes malevolent, positions.

It is only fair to say that the JA is not the same group I left all those years ago, just as I am not the same man. I have recently talked to Trevor Saxby, telling him that I have moved on and really have no animosity towards them now at all. I think that is good.

This blog has served its purpose...I no longer have any issues to work out through writing about the Jesus Army. I think it will be good, maybe even therapeutic (if any therapy at all is still needed), - or in a sense symbolic - to close it down.

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.