Being free NOT to judge; especially not to judge other Christians

What does it feel like to be apostate? Well the most wonderful part of it, ironically, is that I am now free to accept and care about anyone. I don't have to judge people, pigeonhole them, look down on them, want to change them, want to control what they think and exclude them if they won't change. Judging people is a terrible burden, which weighs you down and makes you feel dirty.

Judging other Christians

I think probably for anyone who became a Christian in the JA judging other Christians came quite easily, but I came to the JA as a Christian already, so having to judge other Christians I already knew to be good people was horrible. The JA got much of its distinctiveness from being not only better than the unsaved world but better than all other Christians, who we referred to as "the form without the power", "worldly", backslidden, compromising, nominal, etc. People who had only experienced Christianity in the JA more naturally and comfortably subscribed to the received view that we were in fact the only true Christians.

If we met Christians we would be polite but would probe them to find out if they were the right kind of Christian. If they didn't claim to have had a Damascus road experience, we would assert that they were not Spirit filled, and if God's Spirit was not in them, their conversion was not sure. But even charismatics didn't pass muster with us. What we would say of them between ourselves was considerably less flattering than anything we'd say to their faces. Noel gave us licence to not be up-front with other Christians by saying that the devil used them and that we should not cast pearls before swine, lest they turn and rend us. We felt ourselves to be persecuted by the churches as much as by the world.

The main truth which became clear to all those of us who joined was that anyone who had come into contact with the JA was called to join, including other Christians. And that anyone who did not join was judged by God as refusing His call. Any Christians who had refused the call, therefore, must be under God's judgement.

Baptism

Everyone who joined was baptised, including previously baptised Christians. Noel would invite the latter to accept that their baptisms had perhaps been ones at which God had not been present. Baptism was important because it separated us not only from our worldly sin but also from our powerless pre-JA Christianity. And more importantly, it formed part of the covenant process which joined us irrevocably to the Kingdom of God (not the universal church on Earth, but distinctly the JA/ Jesus Fellowship Church).

If challenged, the JA would grudgingly admit that there must be Christians elsewhere but would argue that if they were blessed at all it was because God was pleased with us. Noel had explained that we were like a cup into which God was pouring his blessings and that it was inevitable that this abundance would overflow...and others would be caught in the shower!

Live with those you disagree with; don't separate off from them

It has stayed with me that the over-riding feeling on leaving was that now I was free to accept everyone as they were. It does have to be said that I felt this even more so when I realised five years later that I wasn't a believer anymore, so this can apply to Christians fairly generally. A Christian at the fellowship I was part of in Bristol after the JA asked of the JA, "Do they believe what we believe?" and that made me instantly ask, "How do you know that I believe what you believe?" and it was then that I realised that as Christians we all worried far too much about categorising people rather than just loving them.

Another turning point was when I was a raving leftie and my step-father was a raving Tory. We would have those flaming arguments where you end up feeling murderous and this pulled me up short. I realised that I loved someone I had diametrically opposed beliefs to....but more importantly that it was possible to live with and love someone I disagreed with...and that this was far more powerful than shunning him, cutting him off etc. Effectively, I was "in community" with people I profoundly disagreed with; entirely the opposite of my Jesus Fellowship experience.

Love people without having to make them acceptable first...and don't discard them if they won't change

And more importantly, I loved my step-father without having to change him. Shouldn't that be what love is? It strikes me that Christians are far more inclined than non-Christians to criticise and judge other people. They are intensely uncomfortable with people they disapprove of and need to change them so that they can accept them. But surely the true test of love is being able to love people without making them acceptable first?

Taken into their confidence - a winning ploy

At a JA BBQ last year a newly joined member told me that what had initially impressed him about the person who had introduced him to Jesus was the way he had "bared his soul to me". The brother had shared some of his vulnerability and asked this new chap's advice.

It struck me that my elder friend (whose own house-church would later join the JA wholesale) told me a similar tale, that when he had met a brother from the JA he had been taken aside and told all about some troubles the brother was having, and that this disclosure had convinced him of their sincerity.

My elder friend, it then occured to me, had done the same with me. He had told me of some troubles they were having with a sister. This disclosure made me feel intensely uncomfortable. Firstly because it seemed to me that the sister's privacy was being betrayed, but also that it was perverse that it was being betrayed to an outsider. They should be supporting their sister, not bad-mouthing her to me. And I said so.

I wonder if this pattern is typical or just a coincidence? Does the JA make it a policy to win people's trust by letting people into their confidence? It is certainly an effective ploy. It is flattering to be trusted, to be asked advice. And you will more happily show vulnerability to someone who has apparently shown his vulnerability to you.

conditional friendships

I warmed to the JA over the last year or so when my friend David told me that he was happy with just being friends; that he respected the fact that I don't believe and have no intention of ever coming back. I have to admit to a little skepticism, because in our day we were not allowed any non-JA friends and there was an "either for us or against us" attitude to "worldly" people.

I had hoped that this friendship - (David is a mechanic and I like cars, so we can talk about neutral stuff) - was evidence that things have changed in the JA, but recent texts suggest that it is still hard for JA folk to have unconditional friendships. In effect he said that it is difficult for them to be with people who do not want to join them. The unconditionality has become something of a test; a gauge for me of the extent to which things have really changed.

Helping a young chap leave, even though he'd made it clear to them that I'd had no part in persuading him, and even though they'd assured me they didn't hold my part against me, won't have helped. But there seems to have been a definite cooling of the friendship. I think I am being quietly dumped.

Multiply and the New Model Army

I thought about the JA when Bush was giving his infamous Axis of Evil speech. Anyone with half a brain could see that it was a puerile little speech intended for a simple minded audience. When he said something like, "Either you are for us or you are for the terrorists" I thought of Noel, because Noel has an equally simplistic view of the world.

When I went back to Bugbrooke and went to talk to Mick Temperate last year it was quite clear that he thought that my desire to draw a line under the past meant that I wanted to recant my opposition to them. There is no room within their perception of the world for me to seek to be -if not friends, certainly no longer at war with them.

I do not regret blowing the whistle on the JA. It is possible for me to want a ceasefire and yet to think that what I did back then was right. I feel that what Mick went on to say more than vindicated my position.

If the JA have changed for the better - if their webmaster, for instance feels it was inconceivable that they once taught that leavers would be damned, and if they do really have an openness to other Christians, where previously they dismissed all of them as worldly, nominal, backslidden compromisers, surely that is evidence that reflection on the past (following exclusion from the Evangelical Alliance etc) did the community good?

The JA have always, when some allusion has been made to their cultic image in the past, admitted in general terms that mistakes were made. But they are never willing or even able to identify any mistakes specifically. I remember we said it when I was there. It is just a way of brushing aside the past without actually accepting responsibility for it. And that is the trouble: they do not want to be accountable for mistakes (if they can even countenance them ever having really been made), but they do want the past forgotten. They are remodelling themselves.

Where in the past they wanted nothing to do with any Christians outside ZION, now they want to emphasise their evangelicalism and their being rooted in traditional Christianity (citing the Nicene creed etc in Wikipedia, for instance).

It will be interesting to see over time whether Multiply is a genuine sharing of brotherhood with other Christians (whether it serves other church's interests as well as the JA's), or whether it is still just a self-serving relationship, drawing affiliated churches into a the JFC (as it did with my friend David's house church). Or, more cynically, existing for no reason other than to give the impression of respectability and to justify their membership of the EA, which they spin out whenever accused of being a cult (para 3 of Criticism).

Brainwashing is bunk!

An issue which got me into hot water with the anti-cult movement was that of brainwashing and its equally dodgy counter, deprogramming. It is common for ex-cultists to blame their having been caught up in what they dismiss as a cult on something done to them, something which made them believe or commit against their will. Whatever the subtleties of manipulation employed by any group, the idea that anyone can be forced to do anything against their will in this way is complete nonsense.

I have always held that I am personally responsible for joining the JA and equally responsible for having left. Nobody forced me to join the JA; I was eager to join. Nobody stopped me leaving, though I had to summon up lots of courage and conviction to challenge the assertion of the elders that I would backslide into apostasy and that without God's covering, I might more easily get cancer etc. Yes, there was a hell of a lot of pressure and mental coercion, but at the end of the day, my leaving was still a personal decision.


In the early days of campaigning, I was invited, with another ex-JA, to join a Cult-awareness group; we were among their few token ex-"cultists". Many in this group were very much in favour of deprogramming, a concept premised on the notion that "brainwashing" is real. Since brainwashing was held to be an involuntary mind-altering process, deprogramming sought to reverse the process using similar methods - breaking down brainwashing's structure by imprisonment, sleep and food deprivation, intellectual haranguing and challenging etc.

I felt that my ex-JA friend was being dishonest in claiming that we had been brainwashed, and said so. I told the gathered meeting that what they had to come to terms with was that, yes, their kids HAD chosen to join their respective groups, however inconceivable it might be to them as parents to believe that their kids had rejected their parents' morals etc. I expressed the opinion that deprogramming, because it was based on a false premise, would be counter-productive and might be damaging to its victims. I was no more popular with ex-cultists than I was with the JFC, and in fact it does have to be said that I had some of my most cultic experiences amongst those who supposedly opposed cultism.

I chose to join the JA and so did everyone else. I was not brainwashed. Or, if I was, I did it to myself. I remember long walks where I argued, almost schizophrenically, with myself, trying to reason myself around from my own way of seeing things to the way that fellow JFC people saw things. Why? Because thinking differently from the group was torture. When I joined them I desperately wanted to believe what they believed, so began the tortuous process of converting myself. I am responsible for that; nobody made me.

Jesus Cult logo

John Campbell has launched a challenge (on Wikipedia) to my copyright of the Jesus Cult logo on the grounds that it infringes copyright owned by the JFC.

The logo was used on a pamphlet about the JFC and parodied their badge. Legal advice was taken at the time (1985), when we were advised that as the badge was clearly a parody of the original it "constituted an original work".

I have responded by pointing out that the JFC made no legal challenge in 1985 and that the logo has been in the public domain and unchallenged for 22 years.

I regard the current challenge as nothing more than a desperate attempt to suppress something which makes it clear that they have long been regarded as a cult.

Wikipedia - someone please re-write the crit section

Would someone please re-write the section on Wikipedia which has to do with Criticism of the JA. I don't know who first started this section but it has had a frustrating history, with numerous efforts deleted by John Campbell and others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Army

He is challenging my right to edit it on the grounds of conflict of interest, which I think is fair comment. (I think his right to edit the JA article should also be challenged on the grounds of COI too, as he is their PR man, but ho hum).

As I think it is important that at least something appears in this section which has some punch and as JC will almost certainly get mine deleted, I would be delighted if someone would take up the challenge and rewrite it.

Here is what I wrote [revised Nov 07] (wrapped around what little was there, as editors should endeavour not to delete others work) - sorry about the formatting (no paragraphs):

In the past, local Northamptonshire newspapers and the late Archdeacon of Northampton, Bazil Marsh, among others ([2]) have accused the group of being a sect ([3]) or religious cult ([4]) but members of the group have denied this ([5], [6]). They state that the Jesus Fellowship is a member of the Evangelical Alliance ([7])
In 1985/6 an intercessory prayer group known as Prayerforce was formed by a former member of the Jesus Fellowship, Peter Eveleigh[8], with the intention of praying for change in the Jesus Fellowship. Together with another Christian and fellow ex-member he published a pamphlet under the auspices of Prayerforce, which highlighted their concerns about, among other things, the fellowship's exclusivity and isolationism, a matter which they then raised with the Evangelical Alliance (an umbrella group representing one million evangelical Christians in the UK). They were concerned that the Jesus Fellowship was benefiting from the respectability afforded by EA membership, while continuing to eschew contact with all other Christians of whom they were scathingly critical, referring to them as "the form without the power". They were concerned that undue pressure was placed on members to become life-long celibates and that the degree to which members were required to submit to Elders was unhealthy. They also highlighted the then prevalent teaching that leaving the fellowship must result in backsliding and apostasy, making some afraid to leave for fear that they would lose their salvation([9])([10]).
The EA invited the pamphlet's authors to meet with representatives of the JFC to discuss their concerns, but the latter refused to attend and subsequently the fellowship was asked to resign its membership. The JFC issued a threat of legal action against Eveleigh but after he stood his ground no further action was taken ([11]; indeed a further edition of the pamphlet had wide circulation. Subsequently efforts were made by the JFC to cultivate external contacts through the formation of Multiply Christian Network ([12]) with a view to re-joining the EA, which they did in 2000.
According to local and national newspaper articles from the 1980s and 1990s, members of the Jesus Army communal houses were encouraged to withdraw from the world and cut off their ties with outsiders[13][14], except for the purpose of evangelising. It was also stated in newspaper articles that it was a policy of the group that community members must gain the permission of the group's "elders" before they got married[15] citing the claims in the Prayerforce pamphlet[16].
Concern was also raised about the Jesus Fellowship's corporal punishment practices, involving the use of a rod for juniors and a wooden spoon on infants, which Noel Stanton defended on an Anglia TV documentary in June 1989([17]). Parents who objected to being required to use "the rod", which they described as being casually visible over the doorways of households, complained of the pressure applied to them to do so; and one child, now grown up, has expressed the humiliation of being beaten with a spoon, rather than being conventionally smacked.[18]. A member of the Jesus Army, who had a criminal record for rape and indecent assault, was convicted in 2004 for repeatedly beating two children on the hands and soles of feet with a weapon made from three bamboo canes tied together.[19]. The man's lawyer said that the defendant believed the boy "was going to the devil". The judge said, "You have a total lack of remorse and would do the same again.'
Several members (of a community in which celibacy is required of all single members, and which requires strict sexual segregation and tolerates no flirting) have been convicted, over the years, of indecency, indecent assault, one of incest and two of making indecent photographs[20][21] and the court was told in one case of child abuse which had spanned three years at a JA commune[22]. One member was also convicted of rape[23].
Throughout the history of the Jesus Fellowship, there have been a number of deaths of community members, fellowship members, associates of the group and visitors to the community, which have resulted in concerns being raised by parents of members about the circumstances in which they died[24]; and in at least one case the coroner returned an open verdict.[25] However statistically you would find the percentage of such events no higher than in any cross section of the general public over a number of years, though perhaps not in the average church.
As Professor Jeffrey K Hadden commented: "The Jesus Fellowship did not escape the muckraking of the tabloids." [26]
One of the houses was featured more recently in a Channel 4 television documentary, "Battlecentre", in 2001 (Production summary, Guardian Unlimited Reader Reviews, BBC interview with producer).

Wikipedia - the JA Point of View

The thing with encyclopedias, or so we are accustomed to expect, is that they are written by disinterested parties whose only motivation is to distill the facts into an easily understood and accessible document. There is some considerable debate about the issue of points of view and bias when encyclopedia entries can be written by just anybody. So it was wise of the Jesus Army's PR man, John Campbell to write their own entry himself and subsequently to edit out anything which might put them in a bad light.

John Cambell (and other members of the fellowship) keep a close eye on the entry and edit it, applying Wikipedia's rules about evidence and citation scrupulously, forcing critics to provide back-up for any contentious claims. However, the concessions Campbell allows his critics are disingenuous, leaving the impression that credible opposition has been minimal, that at worst all the church has ever suffered has been a little inevitable "muck-raking" by the tabloid press. No mention is made of concerns expressed by a judge, a coroner, MPs, a House of Commons Select Committee, by the EA, Baptist Union, FAIR, CIC, the Christian media, numerous TV programmes including Newsnight, etc.

My understanding from having read the discussion tab on the JA's Wikipedia entry is that several claims about their history of being regarded as a cult and the very great deal of concern felt by many about their activities have been removed on the grounds that this is mere opinion, despite there being considerable evidence for this. You have to wonder if it is worth amassing the evidence if it is only going to get wiped the following morning.

Campbell has also removed from the external links list any which were to anybody too obviously critical of the Jesus Army. It will be interesting to see how long my own link survives. Amusingly, there is a short bit at the bottom of the discussion page suggesting that blogs should be deleted from the entry on the grounds that they push a "Point of View"; while, by implication, the Jesus Army's own entry itself is neutral! I have put my POV across in a blog because I am not terribly IT savvy and I find it easy to use. But if the JA block my "blog" I shall just have to learn to use another format.

But fundamentally, should it be acceptible for any organisation with a strong Public Relations remit to control the supposedly neutral medium which it uses to sell its point of view, to the exclusion of other points of view? Should it be allowed to present its point of view as fact and delete any counter-claims or alternative positions on the grounds that they are just contentious opinion? Isn't all writing socially constructed, at the end of the day?

It strikes me that Cambell's insistence on proof and his dismissal of opinion is disingenuous, as the JA are not required to prove, for instance, that what they claim to believe is the same as what is actively taught; their claims are documented, the latter is not; but it is the latter which is, among many other things, cause for so much concern. Furthermore, their inclusion of a pdf link documenting their beliefs would ordinarily be disallowed by Wikipedia as "self-serving". And their only included source is a book which they published themselves!

God's hand in a backslider's apostasy

Some Christians might argue that my life is evidence of what Noel warned us against when he preached at Nene in 1983 that anyone who broke covenant with the community would inevitably backslide into apostasy. Then, as now, I was very proud, and when I left the community, I was utterly determined that whatever I was told, I would keep my faith; but I lost it all the same in the same year that I decided to let the campaign to expose the JA drop. That coincidence has only just occurred to me, funnily enough, and I don't know if it has any significance at all.

I remember the story that Noel told back then. He was a terrific story teller. Its powerful message was certaily not lost on me. He was a voracious reader and told us that he had just been moved by an account he had read about a man who, at the turn of the century was known for taking his family to chapel every single Sunday, without fail, but did not go into the chapel himself, though he was there at the door to collect the family when their services were over.

(You will have to forgive this brief paraphrase. I am rubbish at telling stories)

The Pastor of the church had observed this pattern for some considerable time and was puzzled by it. Eventually the Pastor approched the man and asked why he was so determined to see that his family were always in church but he did not seem to share their conviction. The man (let's call him Paul) answered him by taking the Pastor to the top of a hill, where he said, "This is the very spot where I denied the Lord and now I am paying the price for my disobedience."

Paul explained that twenty years before God had called him to serve Him, but he had wanted to do his own thing: get into drinking, build a self-serving business, become rich, womanise - to lead a "worldly life". The Holy Spirit had layed it on Paul's heart that this was his moment of truth, that in this instant (an instant that Noel told us we might not even recognise if it happened to us) he must choose to follow God, or deny the Holy Spirit.

Paul hadn't understood then, as he did now, that in that instant he had set in motion a course of consequences which could never be undone. For, it would not be the devil who would harden Paul's heart against God, but God himself. Paul told the pastor that God had seared his conscience, not because He wanted to, but in fulfilment of his part of the covenant. Paul backslid not because he chose to but because he chose not to follow God's calling. Paul backslid not only because God withdrew His covering but because God had an active part in making Paul's apostasy complete.

Years later Paul, a broken man, returned to the hilltop and begged God's forgiveness, but God would not hear him. He did not blame God for this; he knew that God was being true to his promise to fulfill his own covenat and let Paul deny His Holy Spirit. Every Sunday for years, he said, he had taken his family to church and while they had been about their devotions, he had been on this hilltop spot begging God to let him come back under His covering, but a just God would not hear him. "I am determined that my family will not make my mistake but will live lives in the fear of God".

Noel's meaning was clear to me. I might never know the time when God put me on the spot but if I grieved him, He would, himself, harden my heart, not out of any sense of malice but simply because He is a just God ("not a woolly, wishy-washy, namby-pamby God").

Leave the JA and you are leaving God

I am not one for regrets. I have almost too few to mention but one bugged me throughout the 1980s, which was that I hadn't been able to get across through the media my main concern about the Jesus Fellowship: the fact that members were taught that if they left they would be damned. It just wasn't sexy enough for a secular audience, which lapped up stories about banned relationships, banned TV, arranged marriages, children beaten with rods, babies smacked with wooden spoons, celibacy, etc etc. Certainly, these had been concerns of ours but they were not the be all and end all.

I rang Mick (Temperate) Haines in the late 1980s in an attempt to explain this, to make him understand that my concern had not been put across clearly enough, even by the Christian media. I think he imagined I regretted talking to the media at all and was apologising, but this was not the case. I just regretted not being able to control the stories the media told....and as my main audience was the JA themselves, I attempted to make Mick understand that their lost salvation doctrine was wrong and kept people in membership under duress.

I talked to David (my local JA House Elder friend) about this last year and though he is keen to emphasise that things have changed and that lost salvation is not taught at the JA, if it ever was, he does concede that whoever leaves the JA must backslide, since he cannot conceive of any situation in which God would call anyone away from them. I asked where they would stand on someone's belief that he was being called to missionary work abroad, perhaps, or to join another church, and there was simply is no room within his perception of the JA covenant to accommodate such a notion. Essentially, he says, God just wouldn't. The call to covenant in the JA is irrevocable.

I suppose that whatever the JA now teach about the loss of salvation, there is still no room in their understanding of Jesus fellowship membership for a breaking of the covenant made at their baptisms. This understanding is rooted in the fellowship's historical concept of being THE church. In my time it was explicit that all other churches were nominal; that we were the church that God was blessing, the late 20th century continuation of the work done by the Salvation Army, who had lost their edge, being now the "form without the power". Within our concept of church, there was nowhere else to go, nowhere that would not be a compromise, the beginnings of backsliding. Leaving the JA was then to leave God.

I wrote a posting for the JA's own forum about this but their moderator, Tschaka Roussell intercepted it and wouldn't let it through, insisting that it was a perversion of Christian belief and simply never would have been taught at Bugbrooke. To his credit Tschaka (a very sincere and earnest young man) later emailed to say that a senior elder who has been in the fellowship since before my time, [name removed], had told him that lost salvation for those who broke covenant was spoken of far more freely in earlier times. Nb. I have received an email from Tschaka asking me to check our correspondence for the name of the senior elder he had said confirmed this. It seems I misremembered it. I will amend this in due course. I apologise for any offense caused. (11 Oct. 07)

After I left, a fellow ex-member referred, tongue-in-cheek, to "Bug-speak" (Bugbroooke's own Newspeak, as in Orwell's 1984) as being a means by which the truth could be disguised from non-members. It wasn't a term which had ever been used, but I knew what he meant right away. At that time the JA was not in good fellowship with other Christians and had to try less hard than it does today to present its sense of being THE church in a good light. Noel Stanton actively taught us not to cast pearls before swine, effectively using the Bible to sanction lies or sleights of hand if they protected the church from unpalatable truths being seen by either unbelievers or nominal Christians (Christians from other churches).

Nowadays, the JA's PR activities are considerably more sophisticated. In contrast to the 1980s, when their exclusion from the Evangelical Alliance came about precisely because they were careless of the views of other churches, their image now among other evangelicals is of paramount importance to them. To eschew claims that they are a cult they emphasise their Christian orthodoxy, playing down theological distinctness. Teaching of lost salvation for leavers is no longer made explicit, but implicit in the suggestion that God would never call away from the JA anyone called into covenant with them, is the implication that nobody can ever leave and remain under grace. The differences are subtle, but ultimately the pressures on members to stay must be similar; and this was precisely the sort of danger of JA membership which John Everett and I had campaigned to expose.