A new era - one of openness about a cultic past

With Noel's passing has come what appears to be a greater curiosity on the part of members about the fellowship's cultic past. Most current members....including any long term members who joined after the late 1980s... will often have difficulty recognising my description of the church and are therefore understandably irritated by my "propaganda", but several people have now talked to me (both on forums and in private) about the period before they were members and there appears to be an increasing readiness to believe that the fellowship has what one of them calls "dirty secrets".

There is some disagreement about whether bringing the secrets out into the light of day would be healthy. Clearly I think it would, and indeed I have said that without that openness, the church can't genuinely be said to have moved on, especially since the very leader(s) taking over control of the church were the very ones who advocated and enforced the now discredited policies.

What is very clear to me is that around the time of the expulsion from the Evangelical Alliance the elders realised a need to tone down and modify a lot of policies and quietly bury some other more controversial ones, especially as rehabilitation would require the cultivation of powerful friends, who might be a lot less friendly if they realised what had really been going on at Bugbrooke.

Until then their membership of the EA had been largely cosmetic. It gave them some kind of respectability at a time when there was widespread concern in the churches in the UK about their cultic practices. They could say, we are not a cult but a member of the largest body of Evangelicals in the country. The very fact that they were not in good fellowship with any of these churches gave the EA convenient grounds for dismissing the JA, rather than investigating the nastier controversies at a time when the JA refused to meet to discuss them with John Everett, myself and members of the council.

If new friends were to be cultivated, no longer would people who left be said to be damned, no longer would the JA call themselves the Kingdom of God or other Christians "worldly", no longer would children be rodded or Christmas banned, now children would receive presents and be allowed toys; rather than being shunned, members seeking to leave would be encouraged into looser styles of membership, etc

And if anyone who had been victims o fthe JA's dirty secrets spoke of them again, they would simply be denied and the suggestion would be that critics had simply made these things up out of a hatred for what Jesus was trying to accomplish.



But just a few days ago I urged someone who has been in fellowship for 21 years to just go and ask someone who had been around a lot longer whether children in the past had been punished with rods, and to his credit he admitted that he had lived obliviously in a "happy bubble" all these years. Now he is determined to ask questions. A number of people who have known the church a long time are asking serious questions and I have been asked what form of apology would satisfy me.

Noel's death brings an end of an era and with it the possibility of asking previously unconscienable questions. And there is the slightest chance that good, keen young Christians who love the JA they know will not be happy to live with dirty secrets that their elders and parents were prepared to bury. I dearly hope that they will believe, as I do, that a church can only really move on if it has been honest and open about its past.

censoring any suggestion that Noel was controlling

click image to make it legible

Simon Hall, (admin at the JA's Facebook page) misses the irony of today's activity. Having just pointed out that he was deleting any reference to Noel and having deleted a posting in which I pointed out that Noel had been regarded as infallible and that questioning him was said to be "not in the spirit", he went on to laugh at my suggestion that their lives are controlled.

Ironically, he left a posting in which I said that allowing anyone to post anything, in contrast to Brian's nasty little anti-JA forum, where he bans anyone who disgrees with him, was a good thing.

A completely bizarre consequence of Noel Stanton's death is that some are expressing a sense of desperation at the loss of his benign protection from extreme elders. One man tells me he has been in the JA for years and is gay. He feels that his sexuality is an abomination and appears not to hold it against the church that when he came out, his elder banned him from meetings. He believes that Noel could not only have helped him with his "problem", as the elders clearly can't, but would protect him from their harsh treatment. He believes that his only hope died with Noel.

This phenomenon is not new to me, of course. I remember getting a heavying from all the elders of my household (because I had caused a terrific scandal when a sister and I fell in love and had discussed our feelings) and then talking in terms of "splitting" (leaving the church) and getting a phonecall from Noel in which he asked if the elders had been too heavy, and in which he seemed to imply that he would get them to back off. Yet, it was quite clear from the content of the heavying that the elders were acting on instructions from Noel, who apart from anything else, set the tone and content of everything that went on. In those days the Elders met with Noel every Monday, then passed the latest edicts down that Tuesday at Agapé.

What my correspondent fails too see, perhaps because in grief we tend to canonise the recently-departed, is that if he was banned from meetings for being openly gay, the elder took his lead from Noel. Noel liked to play good cop to the elders' bad cops, but at the end of the day he was the law-maker.

Jesus Army homophobia has its origins in Noel Stanton's own attitude towards human sexuality and his uncompromising attitude towards what he regarded as sexual sin, straight or gay...which led to an over-emphasis on celibacy, even for married couples (who were urged to have sex for procreation only...avoiding any sex which was inspired by "lust"). At a recent meeting, a friend who was present tells me, a man "confessed" to having been gay and claimed to have been "healed" of it by God, and this profession was met with rapturous approval.

The JA are very keen to appear inclusive but the only gays who are really tolerated are those who have sought to bury their sexuality in baptism and step out of the waters cleansed, to live lives as celibates. Homosexuals are only really accepted if they see what they are as abhorrent to God.

I feel desperately sorry for homosexuals in the JA who in order to be considered acceptable stay in the closet in a state of self-loathing or come out of it and then seek to be healed of what my correspondent calls "his problem". But the ironic tragedy is that this abominable situation was of Noel Stanton's making; he would not have been this man's salvation but is responsible for the fact that he sees himself as unclean.

Now that Noel is dead, this man is distraught that he will not be there to save him, either from his problem or from an over-zealous eldership. The eldership, meanwhile, are just being true to their deceased founder's vision of the Kingdom of God.

A loss second only to the death of Jesus

Noel Stanton died yesterday.

I have been trying to think how I feel about it because I know that I will be asked, and honestly I can't say I feel anything much at all. Noel doesn't feel like more than an acquaintance I knew a very long time ago.

However, in stark contrast, a JA member who has been in the fellowship for about fifteen years and who has been writing to me for a couple of months told me last night that Noel's loss to humanity is second only to Jesus.

If you mean "spiritual" abuse (whatever that is meant to be), say so. Calling it just "abuse" seems deliberately misleading

I have always believed, as a critic of the Jesus Army, that if I was to have an impact on JA members they had to be able to recognise the truth in things that I said, even if they might never be able to admit it either to themselves or to me. Recognising the truth would make it possible for them to consider the points I raised, which I felt arose from those mutually accepted facts.

To do that I have attempted over the years not to use vocabulary which puts a negative spin on things that happened in the JA. For instance, I never use the word brainwash or ever claim to have been forced to do anything against my will. I try to avoid casting in a negative light anything which I would, at the time, have accepted as reasonable. Maybe I am lucky in that the objections I have to the fellowship are to things which I militated against as a member; I am fortunate that I did not suffer as badly as some others. I never experienced anything which I did not think was well intentioned, if misguided.

Some however claim to have been abused in the JA, and from what I do know of the JA, I have no doubt that they have indeed been very badly treated, but have taken issue recently with the use of the word abuse, particularly when it has been made clear that they were not harmed physically or sexually. This is an issue which has exercised me recently, as I have been involved in a very public spat with someone who speaks freely of having been abused as a child (pre-JA) and of having subsequently been abused in the JA, though I know from private correspondence that whatever she experienced in the JA was not sexual in nature.

I take issue with people using words like "abuse" when criticising the JA (especially when in the same posts they refer to sexual abuse in her past) because the casual and unqualified use of the word seems calculated to smear the JA, as readers will be left with the impression that child abuse etc is what is implied. What makes me most angry about this is that such people know that readers will automatically assume that they are referring to sexual or physical abuse and they deliberately leave it vague so that the JA will suffer the greatest measure of suspicion as a result.

It is disingenuous of them to say that all abuse is abuse (as if a harsh word is as severe as rape) and that they are not explicitly saying that the abuse is sexual. It is downright misleading if they later concede that the abuse was "spiritual", given that it is on a secular forum and that most people do not recognise the existence of spiritual abuse anyway.....let alone automatically infer it. If they mean bullying, maybe that is the word they should use and not abuse at all.

One has attempted to say that I am in some way defending the abuse which she says goes on in the JA or that I am accusing her of lying. This reminds me of the time that I did indeed defend Noel Stanton from the allegation that he protected paedophiles; that too was an allegation designed to cause the JA maximum damage without being founded on any evidence at all, and that too led to me being accused of defending "abuse" in the JA. It is the kind of unsophisticated sophistry you tend to get from the shrill people on some forums.

Of course I do not support abuse of any kind. And I am not actually defending the JA, as such. I am defending a principle. Describing bullying of adults as being on a par with the abuse of children is foolish and appears to degrade the seriousness of child abuse. Further, misleading language makes it hard to reach people we want to help in the JA.

As I am a member of a profession which has to deal not only with children suffering from real abuse, but also with children and their parents who use the paranoia around abuse to make malicious allegations against teachers, TAs, social workers etc in order to punish them for doing their jobs, I take this kind of thing very seriously. You almost never hear of conscientious children making malicious allegations of abuse; it will almost always be disruptive kids who can't get their own way, who strike back by accusing adults in school of something - because they want to hurt them. This has devastating consequences for these dedicated professionals, many of whose careers are permanently ruined, even the lucky few who are eventually exonerated. So, when I see people using words like abuse, people who know that readers will assume that sexual abuse is implied and readers who have probably never even heard of "spiritual" abuse, it makes my blood boil.

If genuine abuse takes place in the JA, social services and the police need to be brought in immediately. Anyone who talks of abuse in the JA but who has not alerted the authorities must be assumed to be muck-raking in order to cause maximum damage.

Anyone who says they are accusing the JA of abuse in order to help the victims of abuse is just not being honest. The way to stop abuse if you know it is going on is to call in the authorties and really get something done, especially post Baby P, when child services etc will be falling over backwards to be seen to be doing everything possible to protect children.

If however, you are not talking about child sexual abuse, it is morally reprehensible not to make that perfectly clear. Almost nobody has ever heard of spititual abuse, whatever the heck that is, but if that is what this person means, that is what she should say....and as nobody knows what it is, she should spell it out....not leave it entirely vague.

Language is powerful stuff. It must be handled carefully.

Why? Because if we want the members of the JA reading it to feel that someone is arguing their corner (with the possibility that people will be emboldened to leave) they have to be able to recognise what we say as representative. I am pretty confident that most would say that they are having a rough time of it, prehaps even a truly horrendous time, but very much doubt that they will think, "I am being abused".

If you can do no more good, go flying!

Clearly the JA will not answer for the past, not publically anyway. But as those who remember the past carefully avoid the public spotlight and are defended by people who weren't even around back then, and who have had the past carefully guarded even from them, perhaps nobody should be susprised.

And if those zealots defending the JA don't know of its past offenses and are genuinely indignant about the criticisms they are defending their church from, does that not perhaps suggest that the church has changed? I'd like to think so.

I think that my unfortunate recent experience of the JA was down to the house elder, who had joined his house church to the JA, being so determined to be a hardliner in order to impress the centralist elders; hard-liners of the original, unreformed JA. His need to be seen to be the big man cost the JA's new reputation. But it can perhaps be seen as exceptional behaviour?

It would always cause me concern that new elders recognise the hard-line centralists as the people to impress and that the leaders who date back to the JA's more cultic days are still in charge...principally Noel Stanton and Mick "Temperate" Haines(Noel's Timothy).....but right now I don't feel there is a lot of point being a critic.

In the past I always saw to it that what I wrote could be recognised as the truth by ordinary members, who would be challenged to think, "Yes, I see where Peter Eveleigh is coming from. I don't agree, but I need to think about how to answer that criticism, because if I can't, maybe he has a point."

But when current JA's first response to anything I say is one of disbelief and is coupled to a sense that I must be lying out of some sense of bitterness which has lasted twenty-plus years, I have no chance of being a force for good. The remodelling of the JA has clearly been very effective but with the pre-reform elders still in charge, I am afraid that some way down the line the young or new members will discover that actually the warnings I have been given were justified. Fortunately for them, there are lots of support groups, etc, and though they won't see it now, having forums like the Sheffield one will give them a way of making contacts. And if that is all that so-called "discussion" forum has become, well that is not such a bad thing.

So, for now anyway, I am going flying.

In a nutshell, what admissions from the JA would satisfy me?

Circa's comment that there would never be any terms which would satisfy me made me wonder what three admissions would make me willing to let go. I think in essence, these three would do it:

1.

In the past the Jesus Fellowhip taught openly and without shame, self-conciousness or embarrassment that they were the Kingdom of God on Earth and called themselves Zion. They regarded all other christian churches as worldly, compromising, backslidden, uncommitted etc. They believed that such Christians lived under grace alone and that the only excuse such people had for not being in Zion (in the JFC) too was the fact that they had not met the JFC. They believed that any person who met the JFC but did not join it, must be judged by God as disobeying the call to covenant community.

2

Any person who left the JFC was said to be en-route for apostasy, that leaving the fellowship was not merely leaving one church with the possibility of going to another, but was actually an act of rebellion against God and that such people must be judged by God accordingly; judged for breaking their life-long covenants. Noel taught unselfconsciously about people who left committing the sin against the Holy Spirit, with the danger that in the moment of rebellion that person risked God not only never being able to forgive them (the sinner having committed the unforgivable sin), but actually actively hardening their hearts against Him, himself. People who left, even if they claimed to be leaving with their faith intact, were encouraged to believe that they would forever live as spiritual orphans who would never find their spiritual homes. Some of us were even told that if we became sick, we would not recover because we would not have the covering of God.

3

People like me who spoke out about the JFC had some really horrible lies made up about us in order to blacken our reputations among people who might otherwise believe us. One sympathetic member of the press (now a very highly admired author and correspondent for the New Statesman, The Observer etc) rang me after doing a piece on the JA to advise me that they had suggested to him that I had been forced to leave the fellowship for trying to have sex with under-age members!

That was probably their worst mistake in dealing with me, for far from making me afraid to speak out, it made me more certain than before what sort of people I was dealing with; and more sure of just how spooked they must be by my efforts. Noel rang my minister and told him I was mentally unstable and unreliable. As I have said before, a sister was contacted this year and told that every churchman in her town would be contacted and told she was a treacherous jezebel. We are always painted as bitter misfits who never fitted in, who were always trouble-makers etc, even though two fellow critics in the 1980s had been elders and had lived in fellowship for many years.So, there you go. In essence, I would be satisfied if there was an admission that in the past the JA regarded itself as the Kingdom of God, that people feared losing their salvations if they left and that those of us who spoke out were blackened with the sorts of lies that could easily have destroyed weaker people.

Perhaps the scale of the things that trouble me most about the JA will help put in perspective just why leaving the fellowship had such a life-affecting impact on me, and why it is hard for me to let go.

Solo!

Today I flew solo.

:)

Secondary Sources found to support claims about cult lists

See wiki for the new section on the finding of two secondary sources which confirm the existence of CIC and FAIR, in the former of which John Campbell is actually quoted as denying what the CIC are saying. The latter (about FAIR) is a book which I think John has successfully cited himself (certainly the author is), so he won't want to discredit this one. And since the tone of the quote from Chryssides is pro-JA, John will have trouble arguing that it is a bit of anti-cult polemic.

Many thanks to Mike Aldrich.

You judge for yourself - are the JA "mainstream"?

Following pressure from me to include an edit on the wikipedia article about the JA that acknowledged that the JA is regarded by some as a cult, John replaced one I had put about the CIC, setting that allegation against an academic article that gives the impression that at the same time, others regard them now as mainstream.

John wrote:
"Despite the entry of the Jesus Army into the charismatic mainstream[18], the church continued to attract a range of views[19] and anti-cult groups like the Cult Information Centre, FAIR and Reachout Trust still included the Jesus Army on their lists.[citation needed]"

But having put it, in order to nullify my claim about the cult organisations, he is using wiki rules to push for the complete removal of the allegation from the article. I am pretty sure the paragraph will disappear any minute now.

We discussed this here. On the issue of the "citation needed" to back the allegation about the JA's cultism, here is what was said.

My feeling, as you can see from the discussion, is that wikipedia rules are being used to suppress the truth, rather than to document it. I am not sure I agree with John Campbell's interpretation of rules of evidence, but he is clearly not going to let this go, and anything I add to the article will just be "reverted" anyway. It is John's full time job responding to people like me. I don't have the time or inclination to fight this endlessly.

By leaving these links here I want to leave it to you, the reader, to decide whether the JA are just grasping at whatever straw will allow them to suppress the fact that they are regarded by a lot of people as a cult and are not, as they would have us believe, now just part of the Christian mainstream.