I’m taking a break for a few days or so from twitter which, apart from Reddit, is the only social media platform I use (the vagaries of my dysphasia mean I struggle to process other forms of social media). But when on there in the last few days, I expressed my exasperation at the attempts on the part of some in the charismatic church to draw a parallel between the Charismatic church and their response to the abuse committed by Mike Pilavachi, through his various ministries run via Soul Survivor, and the way in which the L’Arche community handled the revelations of the appalling abuse committed by Jean Vanier, their founder.
Not all of my expressions of that exasperation were well put, however – and with apologies to Natalie Collins for a rather inept response to her thoughtful engagement, I want to dig into that with a little more clarity, and reflect both the direct teaching Jesus gave to the abused, the abusers, the Church, the ways in which the Church as a whole (and individuals within it) disobey him to whom we are discipled – and in some cases even twist the very direct teachings of Jesus into attacks on those they abuse.
Jesus was always consistent in his message to abusers – in Matthew 5:29 he points to the men who divorce their wives in order to marry other (younger) women. He reminds them that adultery is abusive, and makes it clear that they should act radically to improve their own behaviour and have better self-discipline (that they should “gouge out their eye”). In Matthew 18, he warns against abusing “little ones” (children and the vulnerable), and his message is equally as stark. It is better that you drown than harm them, says Jesus (vs 6), but he goes further, harking back to his earlier message to abusive husbands – if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, he says. (A warning to those who would inflict physical forms of abuse). If your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out – a warning to those who look upon children and the vulnerable with with a consumptive or salacious eye. And this isn’t an exclusive list of the abuses Jesus is concerned with – See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my father in heaven, he says (vs 10). Be warned, then – for every abusive thought and deed against the vulnerable, God will know.
If you choose to do what is wrong, says Jesus, then you are making a choice from a bad place and you must act – you must excise that which is bad within you, and you must do whatever is required to that end. Jesus leaves no room for ambiguity here. Only radical action and self-discipline will suffice.
But then Jesus widens the teaching, for this is not just for the individual – Jesus instructs his Church in the matter. If someone in the Church is sinning (behaving abusively) against their brother or sister, and will not change after they have been spoken to in private (vs 15 &16), then it becomes a matter for the Church to deal with. And if that person who is behaving abusively still will not change, then Jesus instructs the Church to “…treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
In other words, to shun them. To cut them off, like that hand – or gouge them out, like that eye.
We know how shocking this teaching is to the disciples because Peter immediately asks about the frequency of forgiveness in light of it. Jesus does, after all, teach us that forgiveness is so important – and he reassures us that this teaching continues to allow forgiveness to happen as part of an ongoing process (vs 22 “…”I tell you not seven times, but seventy-seven times”) and warns against bearing unforgiveness where one has been forgiven.
Apart from a brief statement on his facebook page that made no real acknowledgement of his decades of grooming children, of psychological, physical and spiritual abuse of young people and the bullying and gaslighting of innumerable colleagues, Mike Pilavachi has shown no real repentance and no willingness to change. He has not and is not ‘cutting off his hand’, or ‘gouging out his eye’.
Similarly, the majority of Charismatic church leaders have been utterly silent about the episode – the Rev Coates soft soaping, ticket selling stint in Premier Christianity notwithstanding. Some have complained that those calling for leaders to speak up in solidarity with victims “have an axe to grind” against Charismatic theology. And whilst there have been those who have individually provided thoughtful, careful, victim-centered responses that reflect Jesus’s love for those who have been hurt – corporately, Charismatic Church leaders have chosen to ignore every human pleading, seemingly more concerned with the reputation of their tradition than with the hurting and the vulnerable, or with obeying Jesus. Some, like JJohn, have shown support to Mike Pilavachi, but had not a single word to say about those he harmed.
They are not, in light of Pilavachi’s lack of repentance, treating him like a ‘pagan or tax collector’.
They also number some of those most resistant to the idea of independent safeguarding in the Church of England. Along with a great many victim-survivors, and those who have advocated and campaigned about this for a very long time indeed, I shake my head in wonder – at the intransigence, and the utter inability to recognise that safeguarding and redemption are not at odds with each other, but are entirely bound together. But why are independent safeguarding procedures in the church so necessary?
If Mike Pilavachi isn’t enough of an example, you need to look at the example of Alan Scott and Jeremy Riddle, not just because these are church “leaders” who deny the authority of any oversight – but because these are church “leaders” who have openly used Matthew 18 to attack victims, or used it to avoid answering accusations from abuse victims..
Strictly speaking, Matthew 18 doesn’t deal with how to treat abusive Church Leaders. But then strictly speaking, “leaders” like Jeremy Riddle and Alan Scott work very hard to ensure that they are not ever accountable to a Church with oversight in the first place. This is another facet of abusers – in whatever role they inhabit, they will always seek to Avoid Accountability because if you’ve found yourself in a situation where abusing your position is providing you with the power you have come to crave, avoiding accountability is necessary to surviving and thriving as an abuser. Whether you are using others to shield yourself and your abuse from view – as Jean Vanier appeared to use L’Arche – or removing your church from the group of church’s that provided oversight, as Alan Scott did, or simply operating outside of a Church’s nominal oversight, by being “unorthodox”, as Mike Pilavachi did, ensuring that accountability doesn’t happen is necessary to success as an abuser.
Therefore twisting Jesus very clear message of freedom to the abused – and equally clear message to the abuser, if they want the same freedom – must itself be subverted once it is inevitably invoked. Perhaps to some it would seem astonishing that the wife of a man accused of abuse, and an account representing Alan Scott, also accused of years of abuse, would feel so comfortable turning Jesus’s words of liberation for the abused, against the abused, so freely on social media. To others of us, however, it is less astonishing than it is entirely predictable.
Jesus says to the abused: I believe you; you did nothing wrong – you are not to blame. Come. Rest.
Jesus says to the abuser: You have done wrong – change your ways. It is on you. Come. Work hard.
To the abuser who is not prepared to acknowledge their guilt, that message is death, not life. It is life, but they have to be prepared to accept their guilt, and take full responsibility for their choices.
For abusers in the Church, Jesus offers no escape; he never says to them, in any way, “but don’t worry guys, I’m going to sacrifice my life so that you don’t have to answer for your sin”. In Jesus’s teaching, guilt is fully located in the abuser, and in Jesus’s analogies it is the flesh of the abuser which is cut off, or sacrificed because of their sin – not that of Jesus. This is not a sin that can be pinned to a cross in some wordy-but-meaningless confession. Jesus will not accept their sin on his being.
In a culture where there is a great deal of money to be made for the successful, for the entrepreneurial, for the charismatic/Charismatic, for the evangelical Christian “leader”; where disability is a thing to be cured not accommodated, let alone seen in leadership (ironic, when so much of the New Testament was written by an epileptic); where you still can’t be a woman without being a sin by default, whatever your state of coverage, and whose leadership is still more likely to be defined by that (either because it’s directed towards other women generally, or because it’s concerned with women generally); where to be LGBTQ is to be debated, “prayed away”, patted on the head with “love the sinner not the sin”; where race and racism collide with terrifying frequency and antisemitism is shockingly rife across all traditions – and see how fast the room clears whenever someone dares to remind anyone that Jesus was an Arab Jew – in such a culture it is easy for the eloquent grifter and the abuser to thrive.
Strictly speaking, Matthew 18 doesn’t deal with abusers of the type that are Mike Pilavachi, Alan Scott and Jeremy Riddle, because the teaching that Jesus gives us about the “wolves in sheep’s clothing” – the false prophets – is found in Matthew 7, and his instruction to the Church is again equally stark, and clear: cut them off. They bear false witness and bad fruit.
The problem is that the Church continually fail to recognise the “bad fruit” that these false prophets produce – Mike Pilavachi, Alan Scott, Jeremy Riddle, Mark Driscoll et al – because they become so enthralled with the numbers of bums on seats: which isn’t the “fruit” they bear. The work of the Holy Spirit cannot be ascribed to the hand of man. The “bad fruit” these false prophets bear is the pain, suffering, hurt, humiliation and shame that they inflict on their victims, and it is immensely frustrating that the Church still needs to be told, repeatedly, that it is ignoring this evidence continually.
Safeguarding and redemption, within the context of a society that treats people as things to consume, is and must be bound together; and in ensuring it is independent, it is the Church obeying Jesus’s own teaching of doing whatever is required in the face of the abuser; of cutting off it’s own hand in order that abusers cannot thrive; of cutting off the abuser directly – it is the shepherd, protecting the flock from the “ravening wolves”.
L’Arche responded to the reports of Jean Vanier’s abuse, after his death, by ordering a full, top down inquiry into the whole community and organisation, with its priority being Vanier’s victims and the disabled members of the community. By doing so, it exposed how Vanier used L’Arche to cover his own abusive behaviour – a revelation that caused great, and lasting, pain and harm in and of itself. If the Charismatic Church had the stomach to order an investigation into itself over Mike Pilavachi’s ministry, (it has not) it would still be difficult to draw a parallel, because “community” is itself a word that get’s located, and re-located, depending on which leader you follow. And when will it do something about it’s ableism, which is systemic, and abusive, in and of itself?
When you proclaim you are proudly “counter cultural” whilst being part of a Church that is hyper-consumerist, inexorably tied to increasingly right wing political parties, and all whilst appealing to the working class with the wicked, false “prosperity” gospel, which proliferates in one form or another across more than just Charismatic and Evangelical circles; when you have stood to one side in silence as Christian Nationalism and Christofascism have raised their ugly heads once more; when you disobey the one to whom you are discipled, whose name you carry, so that not even a victim of abuse can be safe in his house, you cannot then claim parallel with those who do obey, and who do care about the little ones and the vulnerable.
Your lip service, I assure you, does not count.
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