There were two stories that struck me from last Sunday’s BBC Sunday programme. The first, almost inevitable given recent events, was a piece on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s resignation. The programme chose to ask whether there was something specifically about evangelical theology and practice that allowed John Smyth to get away with his abusive behaviour for so long, or something that prevented those in power from asking too many questions. The answer that was given revolved around the place that evangelical practice appears to give to powerful speakers and the awe in which such people (usually men) are held within the tradition, and hence the difficulty of challenging them. There was more about the place of charisms, authority and truth, but I will come back to that later.
The second story was a report of the death of Anthony Campolo, a Baptist minister from the States who was spiritual advisor to Bill Clinton. The person interviewed went on to praise Campolo for his powerful speaking, his ability to move people to action and his closeness to people with power. Nobody at the BBC seems to have seen the irony of placing these two items so close together or suggested that there might have been an interesting discussion in looking at Smyth and Campolo through the same evangelical lens.
I see no difficulties in recognising that evangelical traditions tend to encourage powerful speakers and give such speakers considerable authority and, we might say, licence. This is hard wired into the system and has long been recognised. It has also long been recognised that while most evangelical super-preachers are upright, devout and inspiring people, with a strong message of hope and love, there are those who use, or misuse, the position powerful preaching brings them to abuse others, whether they see what they are doing as abuse or not. The potential for very serious abuse is built into the system with a strong internal motivation and justification for the abuse.
Does this mean, however, that all evangelical preaching and preachers must be treated as suspect until they are proven to be otherwise? I am not sure that is what was being suggested, but that might be a line that follows logically from this kind of analysis and might be ‘safer’ for the church rather than always assuming for the best (unfounded optimism was something that the interviewee did accuse the evangelical tradition, and the Church of England, of encouraging, and something that he found to be particularly problematic).
This is not, however, a new question. Even Paul, in one of his letters, says that it is important to ‘test the spirits’ when individuals claim direct communication, or power, from God. This came to a head in the second century, at a time when the Christian community was made up of many competing forms, when a man called Montanus, in southern Asia Minor, recognised his daughters as prophets and encouraged his followers to base their behaviour on the messages from this prophecy, as a direct command from God.
Many other Christian opposed the Montanists, as they came to be known, and argued against the possibility of new revelation in prophecy, often accusing the Montanists of abuses that would be very familiar in today’s debates. While we do not know the truth of such accusations, it is interesting to note that most scholars take them as the unfounded scandal mongering of the movement’s enemies. Given what we now know we should not perhaps jump to such simple conclusions.
The problem with the Montanist movement, as far as other Christians were concerned, revolved around the question of authority. Who had the right to speak on behalf of God? Revelation, for the opponents, was to be found solely in scripture and could only be given by those who (correctly) interpreted the scripture. For Montanus and his followers, authority lay in the direct and continuing revelation of God through prophecy. It is possible to argue that prophecy can be valid if tested against scripture (a position taken by some charismatics even today) but that still places the final authority on the interpretation of the text. Montanus and his followers lost this battle, and the result was both the emergence and reinforcement, of the authority of bishops, local church leaders, and the decline (even eradication) of the place of women in the emerging church.
Going back to the present, it was interesting to hear the commentator on evangelicalism and abuse suggesting that hierarchy, and the excessive role of bishops, was part of the problem, rather than, as with Montanus’ opponents, part of the solution. This speaker was almost arguing for no point of authority, or, in the case for an independent reviewer of safeguarding, an authority external to the church or the wider Christian community. That is a position that would have been untenable, even unthinkable, to the early church.
I am not sure I have any answers that derive from this analysis, except to highlight the complexity that comes out of trying to define and enact authority within the church. Both the individualistic power of the evangelical preacher, and the collective power of the system as expressed in bishops, archbishops and all the other paraphernalia of the church, are open to abuse, neglect, corruption, and cynical exploitation. Bishops, like charismatic prophets, are only human and, as such, capable of abuse.
No one system, I would suggest, is better or worse than another. It is the people that matter and when one individual (preacher, prophet, bishop, or whoever) is allowed to ‘go it alone’ and is no longer challenged and tested by the community, then trouble will not be very far away. In this case the praising of powerful and inspirational preachers who have influenced presidents and motivated thousands of people to commit to the poor is probably just as problematic as ignoring systematic abuse that is happening in plain sight in the name of God.
Martin Stringer Quartet 