There was an interesting article in The Observer today, following an eventful couple of weeks in the Church of England. As many of you will be aware, Justin Welby has been forced to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury, as he tried to cover up the horrific abuse of young men by John Smyth. It went on for many years, as Smyth was associated with some highly prestigious youth camps for private schoolboys. This gave him access to vulnerable teenagers, who he would groom and then beat viciously, justifying it with some seriously dodgy theological views about redemption through punishment. Thanks at least in part to Welby’s actions, Smyth’s offences were covered up for decades and he was allowed to quietly slope off to Africa, where he continued to offend, and a boy died at one of his camps. He died in 2017 without ever facing justice.

The article contains links to reports on several other scandals, including The Nine O’Clock Service, Soul Survivor, and the one that has most affected me, Gerald Coates and Pioneer. It’s also worth mentioning that I was also a member of Emmanuel Wimbledon for ten years, and not long after I left, long-term vicar Jonathan Fletcher was revealed to have been highly abusive to a number of trainees and curates over the years. He’s going on trial next year for grievous bodily harm, and sexual assault. I have no doubt whatsoever that many more scandals will emerge, as people get brave enough to report them. I came forward in response to Pioneer’s independent enquiry last year, but the agency that carried out the investigation and wrote the report left out everything that I contributed, so I’ve had to approach Pioneer, and the church I was placed in for my year out, and complain directly to them. It’s been a very difficult experience, and I’m not particularly hopeful I’ll get justice for what happened to me.

The article also mentions Bishop Peter Ball, who served a jail sentence for also abusing young men. I’d not heard of him before, and did a bit of searching to see if I could find out about his beliefs, but struggled to find anything. Otherwise, though, I’d like to point out that all of the other individuals and organisations here have a couple of things in common: first, they’re all evangelicals, and second, they’re all at the most uncompromising end of that subsection of belief, being extremely vocal in their attacks on more liberal forms of Christian belief, as well as Anglo-Catholic traditions within the Church of England, and Roman Catholicism. They all tend to hold very conservative social views as well, often being opposed to women in leadership, and being very strict on their rules around sex, especially gay sex (which is extremely ironic and hypocritical, given what they’ve all been up to).

I first became a Christian in a Baptist church that was proudly evangelical in its outlook and belief. I was taught things I have serious problems with now from an ethical point of view, particularly about gender roles, sexuality, what makes a “real Christian” and what we should be doing to try and convert people. I was also told that not everyone who calls themselves a Christian is actually a “proper” one, or actually saved. Evangelicals are very hot on deciding who is in and who is out, and some of them hold very strong beliefs on this. To put it very crudely, evangelicals think their theological shit smells nicer than everyone else’s, and anyone who doesn’t believe and behave as they do, isn’t truly saved. It has a tendency to lead to very uncompromising attitudes and behaviour, and very authoritarian leadership. That first church I went to was full of love and kindness, and I never saw anything particularly awful going on there, but that wasn’t to be my experience later on. Looking back, I’m now convinced that evangelical theology, especially when it gets charismatic as well, is inherently and endemically abusive, and it’s almost impossible to prevent people in contact with it from being harmed.

Evangelicals spend much of their time lambasting other Christians for not being holy enough, not doing enough to save the lost, perverting the preaching of Jesus, being selective with their beliefs, and a whole heap of other things. Evangelicals hate liberals, and blame them for all of the ills of the modern church, and the fading influence of Christianity in modern life. The thing is, I don’t actually see any liberal Christians beating the crap out of young men. I don’t see any liberal Christians using “words of knowledge” and “prophecy” to groom young men and get cheap thrills out of getting them to talk about how often they masturbate. I don’t see any liberal Christians telling teenagers they’ll go to hell if they’re gay, and then acting surprised when they commit suicide. I don’t see any liberal Christians deliberately building a cult following among vulnerable young women, and then having sex with them.

Do you see what I’m saying here? If you ignore Catholicism for now and look at the scandals that have rocked the Protestant church in recent years, both here in the UK and abroad (Hillsong immediately springs to mind), they’re all evangelicals who are proud of how uncompromising they are. They all have friends in high places that have kept people quiet and stopped any serious efforts to investigate or discipline anyone (because these “unpleasant” occurrences would “bring the Gospel into disrepute”). The Church of England is already riven with division and rancour over all sorts of things – now it turns out the powerful and influential evangelicals have all dished out all sorts of harm and hurt, and have got away with it for decades. It’s absolutely scandalous.

I feel for all the Anglican victims of abuse, and I’m glad they’re finally getting heard and things are actually happening to resolve the problems. Sadly, though, the organisation that abused me, Pioneer, is tiny, and was always run as pretty much a personal fiefdom of Gerald Coates, who manipulated lots of people and things to his personal advantage. They’ve never really done accountability, and they show no particular signs of contrition or change now – if getting justice out of a massive organisation like the CofE feels hard, getting it out of a small organisation feels almost impossible. Everything is taking ages, and they’re determined to cover everything up and blame other people (like Gerald Coates himself, who is now conveniently very dead).

I don’t know what’s going to happen, either to me, other survivors, the institutions and individuals abusing others, or the church as a whole, but I do know that when I get through the enquiry into the abuse I’ve personally suffered, I’m going to stand up for those who have been through the same things. Evangelicalism absolutely stinks of abusive practices, and many people have been harmed and hurt by it without even realising what has happened. It has to stop, and there has to be justice for those affected. I’ll fight for that until my dying breath.