Spiritual abuse musings

Thinking my blogging was over for the day, I am inspired by debate, and am looking at the awesome ‘Battered Sheep Ministries website again.
Basically thinking in terms of what Elle and I commented on healthy churches on my recent ‘Anything and Everything’ post.

http://www.batteredsheep.com/checklist.htmlhttp://www.batteredsheep.com/checklist.html

I will proceed with a variety of quotes about Church and cult behaviour. This is very refreshing stuff, it helps to restore me, thanks Ginger, for inspiring me.

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.”
[Ezekiel 34:1-6, NIV]

 This passage below is tough!

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law [literally, scribes] and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.”
[Matthew 23:1-3, NIV]

“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?”
[Matthew 23:16-17, NIV]

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”
[Matthew 23:23-24, NIV]

Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.”
[Luke 22:25, NIV]

 I have had all my dirty laundry hung out by the church, whether the dirt is imagined or real, and although I have confessed my sins in penitence and faith, I remain condemned.

“… at any future date, the overseer may drag out this dirty laundry to discredit the disciple or make him feel guilty. That happened to me when I was trying to explain my position. My overseer blurted out, ‘I hate to bring this up, but …’ And this was done in a room full of people. My immediate reaction was to curl up and shut up. I had nothing on her but she had a lot on me.”
[Churches That Abuse, by Ronald M. Enroth, pp. 106-107.]

As we have seen, all of this authoritarian and elitist projection of power through intimidation and manipulation inevitably leads to very tragic consequences. And these consequences go even beyond what I have just described. Jesus foretold the consequences in the Pharisees’ case as follows (verse 34):

“Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.”
[Matthew 23:34, NIV]

I cannot imagine Jesus telling us to falsley empower ourselves by throwing our hands out and saying ‘fire on you’, I cannot imagine Him understanding people lying on the floor whimpering ‘Daddy God’, nor can I see Him encouraging children to be used in the laying on of hands, or the use of ‘sobbing music’ or sexed-up talk about us being the Bride’ to get people in a hysterical mood, these do not seem like frivolities Jesus would have time for when He came to save us.

 

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.”
[Matthew 23:13, NIV]

http://www.batteredsheep.com/church-speak.html

Excellent paragraph below!  So many times in Jersey ‘words’ were given to me, and usually I laughed, because they were given as part of the show.

Words of Wisdom and Words of Knowledge can come from God through spiritually sensitive people today. However, these words do not supersede the authoritative weight of the Apostles. The only real way to be sure that a word from the Lord is for you, is if it’s the Word of the Lord, that is, Scripture. And yes, even in this, Scripture is not to be used to manipulate people.

Transferred from the other blog – a brief chronology part 1 and 2 The other blog was known as ‘My Terrible experience of the Diocese of Winchester’ it contained 21 posts, most of which are on this blog, and is now offline, replaced by this one

Ok, lets see if I myself can drag myself out of the stupor and blank memory caused by trauma and do you a very brief chronology:

• Aged 19, my counsellor, who was also a vicar, was crossing boundaries and intervening in my relationships at college, she also arranged a dud work placement for me that could not possibly succeed, she then took me home to her family as I reminded her of the stepdaughter she had had to give up when she had to choose between the step-daughter and her violent tempered husband.
• I was abused by her husband aged 19 and 20.
• I became part of her church and community, she was no longer my counsellor but was in charge of my life and told people her view of me, which enraged me as it was inaccurate and unhelpful.
• There were no queries about safeguarding, the safeguarding director of the Winchester Diocese was not alerted, even when I lived with this vicar and her husband and was abused sexually and verbally by the husband and abused by the Vicar manipulating my life because I was the image of the step-daughter she had had to abandon, who was herself very emotionally damaged by her father’s violent temper.
• I continued for many years to be part of the church community and had stable, long-term friends and put in hundreds of hours of voluntary work for the church and community – but Jane Fisher had no interest in this side of my story, nor did the Jersey clergy in the recent smear campaign against me.
• After being placed in a sheltered house by the Vicar, I started to grow up and gain confidence, despite the sheltered house being an unstable setup, with a recent suicide that went undiscovered until the body started to smell, and one agency support worker who was only there part time. i did not benefit from the ‘sheltered’ environment but I did gain from being at a distance from the vicar and her husband, and when he continued advances I reported him to her.
• At first the Vicar said she believed me because her step-daughter, his daughter, had also made allegations, and that he had become impotent after she (the Vicar) refused him sex due to his tantrums, she confronted him and they had one of their (fairly regular) blazing rows, they had a period of not speaking to each other (also fairly frequent), and she got another church member who was a Freeemason in the same lodge as her husband to speak to him, while she spoke to another woman.
• When the Vicar and her husband had marital problems, which was all the time, the Vicar said she would never speak to Wolvsley about it because they were cold and they were snobbish and she wouldn’t get any help from them, she said that instead she spoke to Bishop Trevor (Wilmott) who was the then Bishop of Basingstoke, the Vicar and Bishop Trevor had a warm friendship and it was rumoured, even by the Vicar, that he fancied her. the Vicar was sad that he was going to move away.
• So before I ever made contact with the Diocese of Winchester, I had been given the impression of them by the Vicar and her husband that they were cold and uncaring and snobbish, this was reinforced several times as my years in the Diocese of Winchester continued.

 A brief Chronology part 2:

• The Vicar at first said that she believed me about her husband and that her step-daughter had said the same thing about him and that she thought he had got frustrated about her refusing sex because of his tantrums, she also said that this made him impotent.
• But then she changed her tune and kept saying it was ‘six of one and half-a-dozen of the other/ that I was equally to blame or that I was wholly to blame due to being a flirt.
• This caused a permenant rift, because I continued to feel very hurt by this for the rest of the time I knew the Vicar, though we remained friends. 
• The Vicar did not report the matter to the Bishop or safeguarding director. Instead, she told me that if I reported him to anyone it would be my word against his, and she wouldn’t answer when I asked her where she would be in things if I did report him.
• Later that same year she got her husband to give me lifts to church-twinning events, despite what had happened. He did start to be flirtatious again, but didn’t go very far.
• I think it is important to say at this point that I was now damaged by the Damaged by abuse and lack of safeguarding in the Diocese of Winchester on top of the background that I had come from. 
• The Vicar used to go to relate because of her marital problems, she tried to get her husband to go with her, but he refused, this was previous to me being around.
• The Vicar’s parents lived with her, they said it was to ‘look after her’ because they said her husband didn’t look after her. There were often big arguments involving the whole family. while I was around, these arguments involved the Vicar helping me, me being blamed for the abuse, and how alike I was to the Vicar’s step-daughter and what her husband did to the step/daughter, the rows did not help me to recover from my childhood as it was the same sort of thing, and it left me disillusioned about the church of england and Christianity.
• I got confirmation of the Vicar and her husband’s complaints about Wolvsley when I was snubbed by the Bishop’s wife after previously being spoken to by her. I continued to be told about how cold Wolvsley could be and how they had snubbed the benefice administrator from the Vicar’s benefice.
• I didn’t blame them for snubbing him shortly after that, when he ran off with a girl from Old Alresford Place, the headquarters of the Diocese of Winchester, further dissilusioning me as he and her were both employees of the Diocese, and the Diocese is supposedly about Christianity, but the benefice administrator ran off with this other employee, leaving his wife alone and dying of cancer. This was within my first few years in the Diocese of Winchester but it took me a long time, ten years of incidents like this, to realise that the church of england do not have, promote or care about morals. I had come to the Diocese believing that sex outside of marriage was wrong, as well as having a number of other ethical beliefs, which the church of england did not uphold.
• The Vicar, for some reason, presumably, but not necessarily because I told her about her husband abusing me, told me very personal things about her own sex life, and further disillusioned me.
• The things the Vicar told me included how her husband had become impotent when she refused him sex, how she and other students at college had put a copy of ‘the joy of sex’ in the College Dean’s letter tray/pigeonhole/similar and his wife had not been amused, she also told me that she had allowed herself to be picked up for sex by a married man and spent the night at his house and his wife had been angry in the morning, she also told me that she had masturbated a man from a breakdown company when she was alone in the woods with him and her broken down car while her husband had gone to get help. Telling me these things continued my disillusionment with the church of England as I could not work out how people in positions in the church and who called themselves Christians could do things like this. This also upset my own confused boundaries and I did not know what was right to talk about and what was not, as, at this time, I was still outgrowing my terrible upbringing and trying to learn where I stood as a young adult. But who has been slandered as trouble in the church? These people in positions in the church who have behaved badly? or me? me.
• I was very swiftly baptised and confirmed into the church of england, too quickly, and given no real understanding of the church, it’s calender or what confirmation meant. The people present at my baptism included the Vicar, her husband and two people who later supported the Vicar and her husband when I returned from Jersey, even though I had told them about the abuse and they had never reported it to the Diocese. My Baptism was a rush job a week before confirmation, and I wasn’t ready, nor was it a real baptism in my understanding, having been brought up to believe that Baptism was immersion, and this baptism done so quickly that I understood nothing, it was not about me but about the Vicar’s agenda and a production line confirmation. I later re-baptised myself in the sea, unwittingly upsetting a few people in church?
• Aged 20 I moved to a town away from Winchester, where I was working by then, I made the move quite suddenly and startled the Vicar, I was then living and working independently and to celebrate, I took the Vicar and her husband out for a meal, it was only at a cheap cafe and we had a laugh about it, but I had told them it was to try and express my gratitude to the Vicar for looking after me, because despite the problems, she was my friend and I loved her.

Two sides of the Church of England, panic recruiting, lack of accountability

A deeply cynical post, written for the likes of Peter Ould who would attack an abuse victim because he is defensive of a warped church system (and he is a bit vouyeristic as well, by all accounts, hence being an ordained priest who writes on the internet about sex and interferes in abuse cases and slates the victim for what he has heard about them, without ever having met them, he represents the Church of England badly, or well, depending on how you look at it).

The Church of England divides into two, and both sides seem to be losing direction.

I know correct terminology but I can describe what I have seen of the two sides of the church.

The Church of England Side one:

Side one is undoubtedly the original Church of England. You see it in Cathedrals and old village and High Churches. If you watch the Vicar of Dibley, then David Houghton is a perfect example of this side of the Church of England. Holding positions in Church because he is wealthy and has status, rather than because he is ethical or a mature Christian. It is almost ‘expected’ for the local ‘aristocracy’ to hold positions in this side of the church, and I have witnessed that firsthand in my life, working for the big country house when I was younger, my employer wasn’t ethical, she allowed drug use in her house and on her estate, and other things, but because she was the aristocrat with the range rover and labradors, she was the churchwarden for the local church congregation of 12 or so people.

I would say, that this side of the Church of England is still the prevailing side. But I remain without understanding as to why exactly these people are in the positions, isn’t it at odds with their life and attitude?

So, in the structure of this side of Church, the leadership is a clique of rather well-to-do people and there is a Vicar or Rector wedged somewhat uncomfortably in the middle, and they can wedge in three or so ways, passive -they let the clique lead and they follow, dominant – they control the way the church is run and don’t like being questioned -this doesn’t work so well these days because everyone has a car and everyone can choose another church, and the third option is for the priest to be one of the clique, despite the Diocese of Winchester now desperately trying to recruit everything that looks vaguely human, a lot of priests are still from stable or well-to-do backgrounds and can be as removed from the normal world as the cliques who run the churches are.

So who goes to side one of the church of England? Mainly wealthy older people, disabled and disadvantaged people tend to stick out like a sore thumb, and their offers to help in church tend to be knocked on the head by the cliques and politics that run the church, and who are behaving at odds with Christianity despite holding their positions.

This side of the Church of England belongs in the dark ages, and such discrimination as you meet in these churches would not be allowed in any workplace or anywhere outside the church, and any other organization that was so exclusive would be slated to the world for it, but the Church of England is kind of separate from the real world, exclusive, and they daily glorify themselves on twitter despite the glaring mess they are in, and you have to wonder, how do they explain this self-glorification in the context of Christianity, it isn’t Christianity, did Jesus advertise himself thus? A Christian Church should be modest, and while the Church of England refuse to be accountable for their faults and prejudice, they love to show off what they think is good about themselves.

Anyway, back to basics, the Old Church of England is exclusive, old, dry, about money in the coffers and their version of helping the poor is putting some of their wealth in envelops for appeals and patting themselves on the back.

This side of the Church of England is not a good place for vulnerable people, because these wealthy older people tend to not know or understand disability or vulnerability or the difference between different health conditions, especially not non-physical ones, and they tend to still use words like ‘mental retardation’, I have heard autism repeatedly described this way by these old people, and I have been described this way, in my hearing, because some of them think my condition means I cannot hear or understand them.

So with a total lack of understanding of disability on the part of the majority in these churches, and with vulnerable people being a distinct minority and misunderstood, and with the Church constantly recruiting and employing people from the older and wealthier majority, because there would be outcry and shunning otherwise, the vulnerable can be abused. 

And in a number of cases, including a mentions in Police Inspector Harry Keeble’s books on child protection, abusers go into the church because church people are more trusting and abuse is easy.
I would like to add to that, in my experience, the Church of England refuse to, or cannot, remove abusers from church positions, even if those people are not cleared by the police, and in both abuse cases, my abusers have remained respected church figures while I have been destroyed, which glaringly pronounces the church as a safe haven for abusers.

Finally, on the subject of Side one, the Old Church of England, as I have explained before, the churches are run by these wealthy older people, mainly old ladies who have always been provided for, and aristocratic gentlemen, and not only do they not understand the vulnerable, but they have blind faith in the Church of England Hierachy, the Bishops in their palaces and those high up, who also live very comfortable lives.

So when I told an old wealthy Church lady that the former Archbishop had repeatedly turned a blind eye on me and other abuse victims, and had left me to be destroyed, she was outraged, for the Archbishop, she kept repeating to me, trying to force me to accept it ‘Archbishop Rowan Williams is a Very Godly Man’, and she kept repeating this mantra at me, over and over, trying to drown me out, but had no answer to the simple question ‘why did this supposedly Godly man fail so many vulnerable people who appealed to him? why did he ignore them?’ This was beyond her scope, because she was old, well off, and knew nothing of abuse and didn’t want to, therefore me and what had happened to me was an affront to her ‘Very Godly Man’ image of the former archbishop.
That is Side One, the Old Church of England.

Side Two of the Church of England:

This is not a more caring or inclusive side, it can certainly give that image, as well as an image of being ‘modern’ and ‘not like the old people’ but is it better?

The ‘New Version’ of the Church of England, ‘Side Two’, is the extreme Evangelical side, it is usually characterized by young male preachers, who are all charismatic and wear tight teeshirts and play guitars, well that is a stereotype but it is a good one. The congregation is quite happy to have plastic chairs and stand up a lot, it is all noise and light and sound, it is a bit like a rock concert on a Sunday, and everyone has to join in, and smile. They usually have to have a big 18-30s group and everything has to be ‘young’ and ‘trendy’ and the young people are all professionals with all the latest stuff and gossip.
A different type of club than side 1. and they want to take over from side one and banish it as being in the dark ages. But this side is more of a club than a church, a fun young people’s rock club, socials and things are very important, it all fits round work and they are all professionals, it is a desparate attempt by the Church of England to stay alive as their side one congregations are dying out.
But you don’t see the side one and side two congregations together, so who is right and who is  wrong?

Ethics and knowledge in the Church of England:

Basically none are necessary.
The problem with both sides in the Church of England is that neither seem to have much by way of ethics, and neither are really inclusive of the minorities.

My initiation into the Church of England did not involve teaching me the ethics or structure of the Church of England, in fact nothing was taught to the group of us that were confirmed, and I learned nothing new about Christianity before I was confirmed, I was rushed through Baptism a week before being confirmed, with no preparation or teaching about what baptism involved, it was a last minute idea to get me confirmed, my concerns about Baptism were not allayed and I was under pressure to be Baptised, I was Baptised alone in a church with my abuser and two other rich old people who damaged me present. A week later, none the wiser, I was confirmed.

After Baptism and confirmation I attended Bible study and house group and was surprised and frustrated to find that neither of these things were named correctly, in both cases, it was a social group where people gossiped, whined, ranted and gave their opinion of the world, very little of the Bible was taken in, and basically Church of England people do not appear to learn the Bible, I have found over the years and even in the last few years, in a discussion, if we have to look up Bible passages, I find them or explain them and all these old Church people from Side 1 ask me if I went to Bible College or something! No, I was simply taught to read and understand the Bible properly, what on earth are you lot doing each week?!
I have to be cynical and consider that side 1’s way of life doesn’t represent the Bible too well, so they don’t want to get too close to the Bible. But then, who am I to judge them? 🙂

The Diocese of Winchester.

The Diocese of Winchester is an interesting mess of side one and two. According to a Vicar, Bishop Scott-Joynt wanted to wipe side one out and have only side two, and that appears to be correct, having read his not-so circulated instructions about shaming people who didn’t want to see the pews in church ripped out, they were to be ‘instructed to move on’ I gather.
I think he was defeating himself, it is the wealthy side one who are blindly paying to keep the corporation alive.

Jane Fisher is also a side two, a slapdash evilangelical, who preferred smartass textbook answers about abusers just being Christians who got things wrong, and making everything into incorrect theology rather than actually engaging with the abuse and my situation, a way of describing her and other side two’s way of answering things is ‘misplaced-wisdom-because-it-is-not-wisdom-but-that-person-is-wise-and-Christian-in-their-own-eyes-so-they-want-to-misquote-the-Bible-and-theology’ and that description is very much the atmosphere and ethic of the Church of England Side Two.

In the Villages of the Diocese, Side One thrives, or doesn’t, as the old wealthy villagers die off, and parishes and benefices merge, so that one priest has many many miles to cover in order to look after his parishes or benefice, and although this is not always sustainable or fair, it does happen, and it means that parishioners miss out. I have seen this firsthand, with one village complaining they never saw their rector, but their rector had five villages and every inch of land between those villages, miles apart, to cover, and yes, people missed out, it is not sustainable but it happens.

So what is the solution, move in ‘Team rectors’ and rip out pews, make the ‘Side two’ way prevail so that all the wealthy young commuters in the villages can fit church round their other commitments? Maybe, but where is God in all this? When pews are ripped out and older people start to feel unwelcome and are displaced after years, is that any better than the old and wealthy leading the Church?

This debate could go on forever and go off at many tangents but in half and hour I am back on the streets with no food or hot drinks, so it can’t.

So, the Diocese of Winchester, side one dying, side two wrecking, no safeguarding officer preventing abuse, no inclusion of vulnerable people in either side, because we are simply not of use to either side.
What did the safeguarding officer do about me being abused? Make sure I was included and safe anywhere? make sure my abusers were supervised? No, because my abusers were older, influential, well-off, had positions and connections, so I was banished, maligned by the safeguarding queen and the abuse was covered up, while my abusers were protected.

Anyone can join the Church of England, there is no need for proper teaching and preparation to join, there is no explanation, you do not learn anything unless you as an individual decide to study the Bible or theology, there is no clear guidance or ethics, ie, you are not taught about what might be right and wrong sexually or integrity-wise, you are just kind of left to do your own thing, there is no collective ethic and no accountability to God or to others is taught, it is a church for the self-indulgent and it is a Church for froth and excuses and it is ideal for the well to do, because they can profess Christianity without any accountability.

And one of the reasons I was delighted to join the Catholic Church is that there is an intensive teaching period for those who wish to join, you do have to understand what you are joining and why, you do have to commit to a relationship with God, you do learn accountability and integrity, and as I have said in my open letter to the Jersey Deanery, that first lesson of accountability helped me profoundly, because it released me from the condemnation of the Diocese of Winchester.
The Catholic Church does teach ethics, it does teach that sex outside of marriage is wrong, in contrast to the Church of England  being fearful of upsetting anyone or losing any side twos, so they daren’t have ethic like that, so they ‘let it all hang out’ really, while the Catholics are bold, the Catholics are also still one universal church rather than having the division of sides one and two, and mass is always well attended.
The Catholic Church have many ethics, including ‘do not gossip, it is a sin’, while the Church of England thrives on gossip, and when confronted they attack the confronter, as I know from experience.

Priests. A ploy of the CofE is to go on about Catholics only having male priests, but the Church of England are so desparate that they are pretty much recruiting anyone, many unsuitable and not commited or ethical, notably young women fresh out of college, too young to have the wisdom that Pastoring requires, but the Church/Diocese of Winchester dress this up as ‘being modern’ and ‘look at us! Aren’t we inclusive!’ No, a lot of makeup and high heels is not a great way of representing God, because we have to decrease in order to increase.

So where is God in all this? This is the Church of England, God doesn’t have to be in it.