Evangelical life stories that prove inspiring
SOULINFORMATION.ORG has fabulous resources about evangelical abuse in the Church of England and a massive trail of damaged or broken lives.
The website carries video resources -including a longer interactive debate entitled “The Ravi Scandal: Diane Langberg, Glen Scrivener & Steve Baughman on victims, accountability & power”. Ravi Zacharias worked alongside prominent Church of England evangelicals. But after his death an inquiry revealed a huge range of difficulties (sexual and/or financial) so Church of England evangelicals now have good reason to try erasing the name of Ravi Zacharias.
“The problem with pedestals” is a 3-4 minute subsection towards the end of the film, and it asks highly penetrating questions which will be deeply disturbing for evangelical bishops in the Church of England.
Why does the Church pathetically fail to challenge narcissistic male bullies in leadership positions?
Why does “the evangelical village” conceal clear evidence of bullying and abuse? Did evangelicals tolerate bullying by celebrity leaders who filled up pews and brought in money? Did business sometimes matter more than people in the final analysis?
The woefully poor state of adult and child safeguarding in the Anglican Church was exposed in 2022 reports on decades of atrocious abuse cover-up. A growing number of convinced Christians now seem less committed to supporting the institutional Church. Exploitation, bullying, harassment and sexual abuse have driven countless members from the Anglican Church. High profile sexual abuse scandals have attracted a lot of media attention, but has a lot of lower grade (or more mundane) ill-treatment of Church members been largely ignored?
I was ordained in 2017, but I now favour an informal midweek prayer and dinner meeting to the ritualistic rigmarole offered up in parish churches on Sundays. Will a phoenix arise from the ashes, though, as Anglican buildings (rectories and churches) are sold off, and clergy are pensioned off or chose alternative careers?
The life story of Jacob DeShazer (1912-2008) offers us hope. Deshazer was an American airman (an atheist) captured and ill-treated by the Japanese during the Second World War. He came to faith in solitary confinement after reading these words from a Bible: “If you declare with your mouth - Jesus is Lord - and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” DeShazer later returned to Japan, after the war, as a missionary. His testimony was read by Mitsuo Fuchida, lead pilot in the Pearl Harbour attack, who responded to the gospel message.
A more streamlined Church (with fewer tinselly vestments or Bo-Peep stick croziers) might help English citizens to focus on the simple message which drew Mitsuo Fuchida and Jacob DeShazer to share a platform together as evangelists in Japan: a most unlikely pairing.
James Hardy, by email