Books & Theses
JONATHAN`S BOOK
Further details about the book below on this page.
Originally published by John Hunt Publishing House.
The original version available now to order from Pam Davidson 01322 525678
Smuggling bibles into Eastern Europe
Living with the poor of Calcutta’s slums
Being arrested during Gulf war protests
Developing a quarter million pound church building…
The Reverend Jonathan Blake’s life had already been unusual.
Then in 1994 he launched a form of ministry pioneering in Britain, working as what `The Independent` called the country's first freelance vicar. Ever since that first newspaper interest, his work has featured regularly on television and radio and in the press.
In this book Jonathan rights to warn ordinary people of the dangers which may face them if they become involved in that seemingly beneficial-or at least harmless-institution, their local church. He presents a refreshing and exciting approach to faith, one which is of use to us all.
His writing poses a great challenge to denominational Christianity: stop protecting your organisation, and start practising the love which is at the heart of faith.
This is a book for all who seek a practical faith which relates to the everyday world.
There are five parts to the book
Part one: is a fairly savage critique of the church
Part two: offers a fresh and intriguing approach to the Christian faith.
Part three: is my personal story up until I began my new ministry in 1994.
Part four: describes my new work and ministry from 1994 until the publishing of the book in 1999.
Part five: describes the developments in my ministry and in the founding of SICM, my consecration as a bishop, and the founding of the Open Episcopal Church.
FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T GO TO CHURCH
(Perhaps to be re titled…. FOR GOD'S SAKE THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE GOING TO CHURCH)
PART 1 - DANGER!
GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING
Your local church can be dangerous. In fact many aspects of religion are so hazardous they should carry a Government Health Warning!
People read all about the dangers of cults and feel superior because they believe they wouldn't be so foolish as to become involved in one.
However the quaint parish church at the top of the road or the free church around the corner can be every bit as dangerous. They are able to appear respectable hiding behind history and tradition, when in fact they often operate as cults and can damage those who become involved.
For some reason people are naïve when it comes to matters of faith. Even professional, well educated people appear to crumble when faced with the mysterious power of religion.
The church sometimes uses that power to trap and hurt the lives of ordinary people. These words are written to provide a warning and to offer advice about how people should protect themselves.
BE PREPARED
Reading through these pages will be no easy ride. Part One is a fairly savage critique of the church but Part two offers a fresh and intriguing approach to the Christian faith. Part three is my personal story. Part four describes my 'new' ministry and the extraordinary possibilities it creates. Part five covers the years from 1999 onwards.
I hope my words will inspire and empower those who are not involved in a church while also opening up creative and visionary thinking for church members.
LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER
On T.V. and radio, religion pops up all over the place. Of course it is carefully vetted and so what we see and hear is largely sweet and innocuous. All the more deadly, for it lulls us into a false sense of security.
Our contact with the church starts so innocently. It may be as a youngster at youth club, a couple hoping for marriage, new parents planning a baptism, children joining Sunday School or mourners from a funeral.
Instantly the church has an advantage. It is able to gain access to our life at a moment of vulnerability and personal growth or change. The priest is able to ask searching questions, gain considerable information and choose to use that in whatever way he or she chooses.
Then comes the moment of judgement. Priests are tempted to play God in deciding how they will respond to our situations. If we say the right things and conform to the priest's expectations, it may be that we pass the test, all is well and we go away satisfied customers.
However, there are increasing numbers of very bruised people who even at this stage are rejected. The priest won't marry them because they have been divorced, or they live together, or they already have a baby. The priest won't baptise their baby because they don't attend church or they don't like the idea of attending a six week training course, or they were hoping for the service on a Sunday afternoon and not in the main morning service.
Each priest responds differently because it is left to him or her to decide. They have the power to say yes or no, the power to show mercy or withhold it. As throughout history, those given an absolute power within an institution often end up by abusing it in the name of God.
What you need to understand to stay safe is that there can be a game being played by the priest and by the church in these and other contacts- what we might call the hidden agenda.
THE HIDDEN AGENDA
What is not at first apparent to the newcomer is that behind the façade of kindness and care can lie an aim which the priest or church member can be single minded in trying to achieve.
They want you to become a committed Christian which to their way of thinking means joining their church. They want you on their pews on a Sunday morning. They want your money on the collection plate.
Once you realise this, it is easier to see through and protect yourself from much of what happens in a church. Behind the smiles and laughter, the acts of kindness, the friendly conversations and mugs of coffee, there may well be this one aim buzzing in the air, somehow to catch you.
ON THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
In fact if you analyse what happens in many churches, everything is geared to swelling numbers. Outside the building, bright, often humorous, posters promise a warm welcome to newcomers with bargains thrown in from God, like greater peace and deeper joy. Inside, trained members greet you as warmly as a lost friend and guide you to your seat. If the church is advanced a 'befriender' may come and sit with you. Afterwards coffee and biscuits are supplied, your name and address are taken and you are introduced to other members.
In the weeks that follow the priest may call, church members may visit, flowers might arrive, invitations may be received to parties, coffee mornings or other appropriate groups. If you speak about problems or difficulties there are kind listening ears and helpful hands. Practical and personal care is plentiful.
If you are unaware of what's going on, it can come as a delightful surprise. Perhaps for the first time in ages you feel as though someone cares about you. You feel you belong. As though you've discovered a large family whose arms are open wide for you.
It can melt your heart and erode your carefully placed defences. You begin to assume that these are people you can trust with your life.
GOD IS THE ICING ON THE CAKE
Into this warm and intoxicating experience comes talk of God. The priest and church members suggest that it is all part and parcel of the whole package. Their warmth and care, the sense of family and belonging, comes from God.
What you don't know is that a carefully planned strategy is being followed. Individuals and prayer groups around the church have been fed your name as an item for earnest prayer. Every time you show a greater interest or ask a searching question, news flies through the church and the fire of prayer is stoked up further. They are after your soul.
It is so easy for you to be misled. You believe it is all genuine and you warm to the interest being shown to you. You begin to feel as though you belong, as though you have 'come home'. Into your cold world of struggle and difficulty has come something which speaks of problems solved, pain healed, questions answered. You are promised a pathway to follow with clear signposts- and a new family to travel with you.
You are slowly becoming entranced and the question to which you are being slowly led is 'How do I become a committed Christian?.
IT'S JUST LIKE FALLING IN LOVE
The church member is quick to provide the answer. It can all sound rather romantic. Jesus loves you and he wants you to love him too. He wants to become one with you and you with him. He wants your heart and your soul and your life, nothing less. If you give it to him then he'll move in. He'll set up home inside you. You'll never need to be alone again.
If such an approach has managed to woo you then there is not much hope, for a while at least.
The experience of those who become 'committed Christians' through such a route is very similar to a person falling in love or becoming infatuated. It is likely that they will have passed beyond reason, logic or common sense. Every part of them will have been put into the service of Jesus. Their intellect has been suspended and their emotions are running strong.
Listening to a new convert can be a little embarrassing like listening to a lovestruck teenager. ' I've been saved…..Jesus has found me….he speaks to me every day…...I tell him everything…..his love is so wonderful…..I'd do anything for him……'
Please don't dismiss this as a description of the extreme happening in a cult. I am writing about the ordinary ministry that takes place in many parish and local churches up and down the country. Of course the language and style may be different, but the intention and the hidden agenda are likely to be the same.
EASY PREY
Of course, once people are in love they surrender themselves into the hands of their loved one; for the new convert this means the church. Over the subsequent months
they pour every bit of energy and part of themselves into their new found faith.
During this early period they are susceptible to those around them saying 'God wants you to do this or that'. Slowly their sense of independence and the control they have over their lives are relinquished into the controlling energy of the church community.
Family and friends can only watch and wait and try to protect themselves from the 'whirlpool currents' that would threaten to suck them the same way.
2. WHEN THE HONEYMOON IS OVER
When people fall in love they are often willing to be very flexible about their own identity. They are high on the experience of being close to someone and they want nothing to disturb that intimacy.
However, after a while, as the heady days of early romance spill into the more grounded days of everyday life, so their sense of identity becomes important again. After all, that is who they are, and surely if they are truly loved they will be accepted.
New converts remember the early days when church members visited them and spoke lovingly to them and were willing to welcome them with open arms. Then they spoke of forgiveness, the happiness of belonging to a group of people who didn't judge one another, the joy of belonging.
Now slowly the masks begin to slip and its possible to see the church members for real. Many of them are afraid of life with all its complicated feelings and desires.
Church life offers them an escape. Clear boundaries are provided in terms of how they are expected to behave and what they are expected to believe. They are promised outside help and an entrance to heaven.
SO DON'T DARE ROCK THE BOAT
It works, of course, if no one rocks the boat. Introduce newcomers who question too much or live too differently and they will find themselves rapidly marginalised and unwelcome. Then a slightly chilling truth dawns that there is a price to pay for this so called 'unconditional' love, and that price is conformity.
Whether the church is an old fashioned church or modern, it has a culture of its own. Woe betide the person who questions or threatens it. It might as well be the Masonic Lodge or the Golf Club. What you have is a group of people sharing a common interest. In itself that is quite innocent, but what makes it potentially sinister is that the church club consists of people who claim they speak for God.
If you contradict them or present an alternative point of view they bring in their weoponry, the heavy guns which appear impressive but on closer inspection may not be quite as significant.
First they quote the Bible. Many of them don't really understand it themselves, but as the old adage says a little knowledge is more dangerous than none at all. Then they lay claim to what they say 'God has told them' that morning in their prayers, which usually is, coincidentally, a reinforcement of their own views and opinions.
Newcomers don't really stand a chance. They are slowly led into submission and begin to learn the strange language of certain religious people. Instead of saying 'I think' they begin to say, 'The Lord says…; instead of 'I've decided to' they say 'God wants me to..'; instead of 'I don't agree with that' they say, 'Its not the Lord's will'.
It becomes apparent to those able to hold on to their identity and their intellect that this is a form of brain washing and mind control.
THE LADYBIRD GOSPEL
What may also begin to stick in the throat is the simplistic and offensive way that the Christian faith may be being taught and required to be believed.
At colleges and schools, in pubs and clubs, people today have a sensible and quite pragmatic approach to the old Bible stories. Adam and Eve are given their rightful place as fictional characters in a legendary play about our beginnings. The tale of the virgin birth, whatever took place, is seen as possibly a religious way of putting a spotlight on Jesus; the resurrection, whatever took place, as a poetic symbol of that evolutionary spirit that will not be crushed, of a love and hope that can face and survive anything and everything.
Such an understanding frees up the Bible to be of use in today's world. Some of its stories become fun; they make sense and preserve insights. The message at the heart of them is known and lived out in people's lives every single moment across the world.
However, in many churches there is no such freedom to offer a flexibility over interpretation. The priest and the people expect you to accept it all as fact, truth, actual happenings.
The child centred approach taken in Sunday School is often continued in the regular sermon slot. Educational wisdom that children move from a rigid view of truth to a more abstract one as they grow up appears lost on these churches. It's as though the priest required his congregation to believe that the Father Christmas story was true and rejected them if they didn't.
The newcomer who questions a literal interpretation in such a church may be tolerated for a while but soon the body language of those who once smiled at them gives a different message.
PETTY POLITICS
Perhaps you have managed to cope with the dogma and conform to the lifestyle and are growing a part of the church community. Prepare for a possible rude awakening! The church, like all communities, is a minefield of politics and protected interests. If you stray into someone else's territory, then problems could well arise.
I remember once inviting a new comer to do the flowers in our prayer chapel at harvest time. This had been the domain of two 'old timers' before, one of whom went storming round the church holding the festival to ransom by her outburst. From that day on she cold shouldered the newcomer, who felt violated and confused.
However it doesn't just end in flowers. Every job in the church is 'possessed' by someone and woe betide anyone else who interferes. Often the same people have held their role for years and they seem to acquire a status from it, perhaps unavailable in their ordinary lives, which instead of using kindly they use to the detriment of others.
THE PRIEST, MINISTER OR CHURCH LEADER
If it's not the people who cause you difficulty it may well be the minister.
I have met many ministers. Some of them I would regard as safe human beings. Many I wouldn't trust with my life or soul. The problem lies not with their own inadequacies but with their resistance to own them and understand their lives and beliefs in relation to other forms of knowledge. Their involvement in and use of religion is often a means of easing their own pain and insecurity. They lack personal insight and so are clumsy in their understanding of others.
I remember vividly being shown how to conduct a wedding rehearsal. The bride asked is she could wear her veil down for the first part of the service. The priest was adamant in his refusal which reduced the bride to tears. He then threw down his book and stormed off to the choir stalls where he sat in silence, until the bride was forced to accept his decision. When I protested I was told to be silent as he was the voice of God in the parish and what he said must be obeyed. No one dared resist him not even the bishop.
I hear a continual stream of similar horror stories: the vicar who wouldn't marry a dying man to the woman with whom he had lived for ten years because 18 years before she had been divorced; the vicar who wouldn't baptise a baby because the parents were unmarried; the vicar who would not speak with those of other faiths because as far as he was concerned they were from the devil; the vicar who turned away a dying man from his door because it was too late for him to be disturbed. I could go on.
The stories illustrate personality types that are threatened and insecure and that are uncompassionate in the application of their views. What is frightening is that these are the very people to whom others may go in their most vulnerable states. At times of tragedy or personal difficulty people turn to a priest for help. If that priest is like the ones described above they are making a perilous choice.
One couple told me that they attended their parish church for the first time only to hear the vicar at the start of the service, in his notices, ask everyone to sign the petition at the back of church to try and stop a celebration of gay sexuality taking place in the cathedral. Assumptions such as these and a disregard for the views of others can cause great offence.
3. BEHIND THE MASKS
One of the most disturbing discoveries awaiting the newcomer is to find that while on the one hand there is the pretence of 'saintliness', not surprisingly, life inside the church is the same as life outside, the only difference being the hypocrisy.
During my time working within the established church I met churchgoers who had had multiple affairs, married men living double lives with homosexual lovers or clubbing it in Soho, women whose affairs led them to have abortions, policemen who had deliberately lied in court to frame the innocent in order to gain promotion, people stealing from the church in order to support secret addictions. Then there were the irritable, the greedy, the boring, the stuffed shirts, the artificial, the gossip merchants, the rude and the insensitive. Alongside them of course were also the kind, gentle and well balanced people who all together made up a mixed bag of ordinary life.
Of course the same applied to the clergy, who did all the same sort of things as everyone else. There was little difference, how could there have been? I knew or had heard about priests who had slept with their parishioners of both sexes, taken drugs, stolen from the collection plate, visited prostitutes, been addicts of one form or another, had abused children in their parish; others were arrogant, opinionated, ambitious, power hungry or 'holier than thou'. Alongside them there were others who were warm, considerate, genuine and showed great understanding and care.
My purpose in writing all of this is not to be sensationalist or destructive, only truthful; not judgemental only descriptive. The ordinary, sensible person in the street knows that everyone faces the same struggles, and is not surprised when people run into problems. The Christian community is meant to be on hand to help and support us through our times of brokenness and difficulty.
Nor is there surprise that objectionable people as well as pleasant ones call themselves Christians. After all, we meet a mixed bunch in our ordinary lives so why not in the church?
However, what alarms newcomers is that church people play by different rules. At church, the order of the day is to pretend that those attending, and their priests, are in some way 'different', the good ones, filled with the Holy Spirit, becoming holier by the day, setting an example to the world, shining as lights to those around them.
In order to maintain this pretence, great pressure is exerted within the church to be dishonest. The rule is: Keep your real problems to yourself. Keep who you are, what you feel, what you believe, to yourself if it in any way differs from the norm. If someone's unpleasantness is obvious to all but can be overlooked, as in rudeness or arrogance, everyone else has to pretend it doesn't exist.
Some of the situations I've referred to above are in themselves not surprising. If you are well versed in life you should rarely be shocked at what people tell you about their lives. However, what the newcomer will continue to find hard to reconcile is that the people I've mentioned above, priests or church members, chose to hide their own wounded personalities from everyone else. No one in the church knew what they got up to alone.
Perhaps that was excusable in the interests of their privacy and if they desired some space to struggle with and overcome their problems. What made it inexcusable was the sight and sound of these same people judging and condemning others with similar or other difficulties. No doubt this was another symptom of their paranoia about being discovered themselves. If they made enough fuss about someone else the spotlight would be away from them.
Beware then! In entering a church community, you enter a group of people who may well be playing many invisible games. You would be mistaken to think this is just a warm, welcoming environment in which you can find acceptance, resources for your conflicts and healing. Rather predatory energies may be abroad in others, that may take advantage of any honesty and vulnerability on your part to increase their own sense of goodness and prestige.
THE GREAT COVER UP
Bishops and priests reading these pages will be nodding to themselves with a wry smile. They know about many of the messes, potential scandals and crises which litter the church, but their job is often to deny that they exist. As in any big company, they don't like bad press.
The troubleshooting approach goes something like this. First rule: Keep it private. The bishop or priest doesn't want to know. The second rule involves damage limitation: If it becomes known try and cover it up or squeeze the issue back in its box. The third rule involves crisis management: If it's all out, wash your hands of all responsibility, knowledge or involvement and scapegoat the individuals as much as possible.
Such happenings bring the initial 'honeymoon' period for the newcomer to an abrupt end. They see once loved, cherished and doted members of Christ's community ostracised. Talk of forgiveness, turning the other cheek, love, healing, reconciliation, seeking out the lost, reaching out to the broken, accepting and caring for one another and not throwing the first stone is heard no more.
In fact the most bizarre thing is the deafening silence which surrounds these situation- backed up by censure should a word be breathed on the subject. It is as though the make up artists are busy at their work covering the blemishes, burying the heartaches of true life deep down. As long as the mask is preserved all is well and tears mustn't make the mascara run!
AND WHAT IF IT'S YOU.
You may be astonished watching this happen to someone else, but what if it is happening to you?
Perhaps you'd had contact with the church because your father had died. Following the funeral the church had done its best to 'convert' you, showing you all sorts of attention. Lonely and hurting you were an open door and welcomed the offers of love and care and the warm and accepting community of the church appeared an inviting and cosy place to belong.
Perhaps you'd enjoyed the friendship and the laughter of the other church members after the services, had been invited to their homes for meals and on outings. Perhaps the sermons and prayers which described the beauty of being a part of God and one another filled the cruel gap of losing a parent.
Perhaps, having grown confident in the community, it felt quite appropriate and an act of trust and faith to tell the churchwarden or the priest that you were gay and that you were going to bring your gay partner along on Sunday to worship. Perhaps then it was you who was exposed to the prejudice and rejection of a community too threatened by life to be able to see you, love you or accept you anymore. Suddenly you had become expendable.
WHAT DID THEY SAY?
Sometimes there are moments of insight when someone in the church gives the game away. Inside my bag of throw away lines that I've collected from churchgoers over the years is this choice selection:
'WE JUST HAD SEX WHEN WE WANTED CHILDREN. THAT'S WHAT IT'S FOR, ISN'T IT?'
'YOU'RE BAD IF YOU WORK ON A SUNDAY'
'GIVING TO THE POOR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GOD. IT'S THE COMMUNISTS THAT STARTED ALL OF THAT.'
'WE DON'T WANT A PERSON LIKE THAT IN CHURCH, THEY'RE PROBABLY ON DRUGS'.
'I DIDN'T COME TO CHURCH TO HEAR ABOUT MISSIONARIES BEING KILLED'
'I NEVER COME TO A BAPTISM SERVICE- THERE ARE TOO MANY STRANGERS THERE.'
If you go to church, sitting next to you might be someone who is racist or hung up about gays. Someone who expects you to believe the Bible literally or who thinks Hindus are devil worshippers. That may not affect you, but it would if you happened to have been born in Africa, if your wife is a Hindu or if you didn't happen to believe Adam and Eve were historical people. And its worse if those people around you start to dress up their viewpoint in religious terms, claiming that the Bible backs them up and that God condemns homosexuality and all other faiths and that 'if you are a committed Christian, a born again believer, if you really know Jesus, you would understand.'
PUT YOUR TOE IN FIRST
Of course every church is different in that each priest and each catchment area produces a different feel, as well as each church having a particular historical tradition. If you are clued up and know what to look for and what questions to ask you can assess the potential damage factor of being involved.
Yet I remain amazed at people's innocence. They attend one service and come away saying, 'Oh the vicar was so lovely and friendly and there were guitars,' or some such superficial assessment of the place and the people. What I always want to ask is ' But what about their beliefs? Are they hardliners, fundamentalists, do their beliefs exclude and hurt people? What makes them tick?
THE TICK FACTOR
While it can be confusing trying to interpret religious language it can also be enlightening. A person's beliefs are a window through which one can look at their heart and soul. Ask them to speak about their faith and very soon a picture can form as to what you can expect from them, how they might react in various situations and most important of all whether they pose a threat to you or not.
At times people will speak about ideals which in reality they can't live up to or practise, but again the discerning listener remains aware of the credibility factor. Those who have the neatest, clearest, simplest and most precise manner of believing are usually those with the most to hide and the most to be feared., the trouble is they are also the most convincing.
So make good use of those toes. Ask away, question everyone extensively, listen avidly and be cautious at first in giving anything of yourself. Investigate anyone who poses a potential threat: If they turn out to be safe all to the good. However if dangers lurk by every pew or chair you can withdraw while still intact.
ON BALANCE
You may be the sort of person who will fit in well and enjoy the pattern of parish life, or you may be one of the few that strike gold and find a genuinely accepting and nourishing community.
However you may instead find, churches harbouring some paranoid individuals with narrow minds and dangerous prejudices in whose company you could perish.
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