Adrian Thatcher has written a book that redraws fundamentals of Christian theologies, beliefs and practice, fundamentals of Christian orthodoxy and tradition that have been used to deny, over the centuries and into the present century, equality in the kingdom of God to various categories of people: women, black, brown, LGBTQIA+, other faiths, divorced, the sexually active outside marriage, the solo sexually active, and the myriad other ways in which people default from God’s long accepted norms of acceptability.
Adrian has done something even more dramatic. He has redrawn our map of God. All my life I have lived with a divided self: the self that was very successfully taught to feel guilty if I didn’t believe in God, and my intuitive self that didn’t believe in the official version of God according to the creeds, traditions and orthodoxies of the Church. Adrian’s is the first book I’ve read that has successfully validated my personal, redrawn map of God – at least, he’s almost achieved this.
I’m going to try and outline the most significant elements of the position Adrian sets out. It’s a dense, complex, daring book and there’s no satisfactory alternative to you buying and reading it for yourself, but in case you don’t, here’s my selective reading of the key moves Adrian makes. (Adrian volunteered himself as a mostly confidential theological consultant to Changing Attitude when I was Director. He was indeed consulted from time to time and became thereby part of “the family”).
1 The Wisdom of Unbelief
In the first chapter, The Wisdom of Unbelief, Adrian refers to Grace Davie’s 1994 book Religion in Britain since 1945, subtitled ‘believing without belonging’, a phrase that was widely adopted to name those who abandoned regular attendance at church while still claiming to be Christian or, at least, to have a belief in ‘something’. Adrian argues that there is much about ‘orthodoxy’ that more or less deserves to be shunned by those who abandoned the church.
There are additional reasons why people have abandoned the church, including “the culture wars of the Church of England and its dithering, pusillanimous and shameful handling of crisis after crisis involving the abuse of women and children’ (and, I have to add, LGBTQIA+ people).
Behind these crises lies ‘an abusive theology, an abusive relationship with the Bible, and an abusive God’. The failure of the churches to deal with abuse has become a key problem in Christianity and rethinking “God” is now the greatest of all theological tasks.
2 An Abusive Theology: A Case Study
The second chapter sets out to show how abusive theology manifested itself in the beliefs and practices of the evangelical Christian Iwerne holiday camps, analysing the Makin Review set up to investigate the horrific abuse of boys and young men. The terms of reference of the Makin Review excluded any examination of the theology of John Smyth, perpetrator of the physical and emotional abuse, or of the evangelical networks that supported him. Adrian says “the inattention to theology in the review has serious consequences”. The theological void is the missing link, the elephant in the sanctuary, the truth too dangerous to be examined. The abusive theology thus concealed is in reality so pervasive that it is barely noticed. Adrian asks:
“where is the line between acceptable evangelical theology and exploitative evangelical theology? How would we know when we had crossed it? Who decides? And since John Smyth clearly stepped over the line, where, at what points along the line did he traverse it?”
Smyth’s conservative evangelical theology is not orthodox but an ideologically held belief. Elly Hanson, a consultant to the Makin review provided a definition of an ideologically held belief. It is one ‘followed at the expense of a core care and regard for every human being’ (in contrast to the non-ideologically held evangelical beliefs still widely held elsewhere in the Church of England). In an appendix, Hanson shows how the Bible is used by conservatives as a set of proof-texts for endorsing abusive behaviour, including a ‘focus on personal sinfulness, producing a default sense of guilt, defectiveness, submission and indebtedness to God’.
An abusive theology or theologies are operating in the Church of England that lend legitimation to abusive beliefs and behaviours. It is an ideological version of theology that hurts people and justifies itself by claiming subservience to the higher authority of God’s will.
3 Abusive Theologies: Challenges of Recognition
Identifying and unmasking abusive theologies is not easy since it requires challenging assumptions in the theology itself. The rest of Adrian’s book is devoted to explaining and developing four challenges of recognition, offering a different way of thinking and speaking about God.
The first challenge is for Christians to recognise that there is violence in the Bible from beginning to end. We have (probably) never come to terms with this violence in our churches and traditions. The pages of Scripture testify to harm done on a massive scale, much of it instituted by God.
The second challenge is the recognition that several Christian doctrines have perpetuated and continue to perpetuate violence.
The third challenge, especially for theologians, is the recognition of diverse understandings of God that appear in our Scriptures. The God of the Hebrew Bible is loving and just but also abusive and violent.
The fourth challenge is the recognition that our reading of the Bible has been unduly influenced by habits that do not let us come to terms with the violence we find in it.
Adrian writes about four key elements of abusive culture and theology in the Bible: the Bible and rape culture; the Bible and omission and evasion; the Bible and ‘divine command ethics’; the Bible and the ‘sola scriptura’ principle.
The Bible is a patriarchal document used to promote a system that subordinates women. It is an androcentric document putting the male at the centre and envisioning a male God as the ultimate authority.
The Living in Love and Faith project is a good example of the intrigue of evasion in its treatment of biblical sexual abuse when a vocal rejection of toxic texts and the abusive theologies to which they give rise was required.
Divine command ethics identify a common set of assumption: that Christian ethics is best characterised by obedience; that God will what is best for what God has made; that God shows us what God wills.
Taking the Bible as the sole authority in Christian ethics causes harm linked with the determination to interpret the Bible literally, ignoring the fruits of biblical criticism. This is Bible abuse.
4 Christian Doctrine: Good theology and Bad Theology
Bad, toxic, abusive theologies play a part in the decline of the churches in the West and the North. People have come to think of some of the consequences of Christian doctrine as immoral – a poison – or simply irrelevant.
Good theology must relate to human flourishing. It must allow for self-reflection; be open to hearing about the beliefs of others; promote freedom when it comes to an individual choosing their own theology; pursue justice and desire equality.
Adrian reviews a number of poisonous doctrines: about the human body; sin; providence; the elect or God’s chosen people; exclusivism; atonement. Pretending to offer life, abusive theologies beat people up. They are based on violence, and violence is what they produce.
5 Abusive Theologies of Sex and Gender
Adrian examines the effect of abusive theologies as they impact the lives of desiring human bodies. In the environment of everyday sexism in Scripture, tradition, liturgy and preaching: ‘Women are at risk of distorted spiritual formation through their routine participation in the ritual life of a faith community whose central doctrines or teachings incorporate interpretations that express spiritually demeaning views of women’ (quoting Theresa W. Tobin in Religious Faith in the Unjust Meantime: The Spiritual Violence of Clergy Sexual Abuse, an article in the Feminist Philosophy Quarterly).
The chapter contains sections on: Sex outside marriage; Cohabitation; Solitary sex and masturbation; Marriage without change; Complementarity; Gender ideology.
Part II The Abusive God
There are six chapters in part II.
6 The God of the Hebrew Bible: The Problem and the Evidence
7 The Abusive God and the Consequences for Belief
8 Endless Excuses
9 The Violent God: An Embodied Giant
10 Violence in the New Testament
11 Divine Child Abuse?
I’m going to post this brief introduction to Part I of Adrian’s book now and post a second usog analysing Part II on Friday. I need time to process my own awareness of the effect Ending Abusive Theologies has had and is having on me. In addition, I have my own book to write and other contemporary issues that need attention. I encourage you to buy and read the book for yourselves. It’s the most significant and comprehensive contribution to theology to have been published this century, and it deals with the open question I’ve raised in recent blogs – is there a difference between healthy and unhealthy Christian theology, teachings, practice, worship and life (I absolutely believe there is) and if so, how do we assess and name the differences?
Please share this blog on your own Facebook page or timeline. My thanks to Jeremy Timm for the photo (and several others I use from time to time!).
Changing Attitude and Unadulterated Love
Donations to develop my work through Changing Attitude and Unadulterated Love, no matter how small, will make a significant difference for me.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/colin-coward-mbe-changing-attitude-and-unadulterated-love