And what happened to Michael Guglielmucci?

I was going to try and update on him, too. But then I realised that MadPriest got there first and there's a good discussion going. Like MadPriest, all of Guglielmucci's protestations that he's a helpless victim of his own mentalness has seriously eroded my sympathy...

What happened to Todd Bentley?

Despite my reprehensible lack of blogging over the past week, I've still sustained upwards of fifteen visitors each day who have found me by googling to try and find out what happened to Todd Bentley. I'm still wondering, too. And it may well be no bad thing that there's barely any news. Todd has had his public vilification and I'd rather he now spent some time with God and his family to reflect on the mess he's made of it all. There's just this piece, for which Todd's wife Shonnah seemingly declined to be interviewed yet denies knowledge of where her husband even is. Horrible. How does she explain that to the kids? If it's true that Todd's just sodded off, is he ever planning to come back to sort out custody or access arrangements?

Despite all this, there have been some interesting commentaries around the blogosphere.

Lakeland Closure. A bit late perhaps has some very calm and thoughtful points to make. And Rupert's Lakeland and Toronto Part 1 and Part 2 does a subtle not-throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater job.

I'm still worrying, though, about his kids...

wondering what Michael Guglielmucci and Todd Bentley are saying to the Church

Oh dear. First Todd Bentley, now Michael Guglielmucci. It hasn't been a good month for the Church, and especially not its charismatic bits.

Briefly put, Michael Guglielmucci is an Australian youth pastor from Adelaide, so tragically stricken by the effects of terminal cancer that he needed an oxygen tube to manage on stage. The disturbing bit of that being that his cancer was something he'd entirely made up, fabricated and faked, and had sung and preached about to thousands of people. Like he's doing below.


The full story is throughout the Australian press.

And Guglielmucci has now been speaking to the media about why he did it. His claim is that he's 'addicted to porn' and needed, essentially, a credible-sounding illness to distract himself from it and cover it up from others. He claims that his obsession with porn is so strong that he has been losing his hair and throwing up every evening, and that he therefore needed a socially-acceptable explanation for these symptoms.

But losing one's hair and constantly vomiting are not symptoms of over-involvement with porn. Instead, they are fairly common and widespread reactions to stress. So why, given that Guglielmucci's "symptoms" arose through the horrendous pressure of being both a minister of Christ to young people and a man struggling with a life-consuming obsession, why could he have not admitted all this to those he chose in his church and/or family and asked for help and support and prayer?

I would like to hope that such help, support and prayer would have been readily and discreetly forthcoming. Yet the Church, as a whole, does not have a good track record of dealing maturely or compassionately with people's sexual difficulties. The Church is still saturated by a such a simplistic dualism in which people are morally responsible for what goes wrong with their minds but powerless over what happens with their bodies, and assumes that body and mind can clearly be delineated from one another. So by presenting himself with a form of cancer known as having no environmental causes rather than an ambiguous and somewhat amorphous sexual and/or obsession-type problem, Guglielmucci became a victim of a disease, a hero and a role model rather than the pervert he may have been regarded as. I'm not excusing Guglielmucci's behaviour, and I'm not suggesting that deceiving people by fabricating cancer is ever remotely acceptable. But I think that the Church, by expecting so much and so intensely of its leaders, whilst often offering disproportionately little to support them, must bear the blame for pushing some of its leaders past what they can cope with...

why I can't join the condemnation of Todd Bentley

Todd Bentley. I've been watching him and the Lakeland Revival on the GOD Channel and YouTube for a few months now. Headbutting the groins of cancer sufferers for whom you're praying whilst shouing "wham-bam!" isn't my understanding of how God generally works (see clip below) but it held my fascination in wondering what it was about him that drew people to his ministry, godly or otherwise. I think it was all his talk of the transsexual angel named Emma which endeared me to him. As one also prone to conversing with supernatural apparitions with a questionable connection to reality, I felt some kinship with a 32 year old man still so firmly and childishly attached to his imaginary friend.

During the past week, it has emerged that Todd Bentley has been having an unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff, and hadn't been honest about it. The Christian press, and the charismatics in particular, are extremely angry and are using the revelation as evidence that Bentley was, all along, an unsavoury character, a snake-oiled charlatan and a possible agent of Satan.

All I can feel, though, is really, really sorry for Todd Bentley*. I'm not condoning his sexual misdeeds, nor suggesting that his offbeat antics have been innocuous or harmless to those his ministy has confused and hurt. I think it's entirely necessary that Bentley steps down from his position, I would hope to see a public repentance appear on YouTube soon and I would be very annoyed to see him back on stage any time soon. But haven't we all of us, under the pressure of overwork, stress or heightened emotion, committed acts that were shockingly immoral, destructive, thoughtless, dishonest, abusive or stupid?

Despite all that has happened, I cannot believe that there was nothing of God in Todd Bentley's ministry. And so, I find it oddly reassuring that God is willing and able to use someone as odd and misguided and sinful as the rest of us...



But what do others out there think?

*Of course, I really feel sorry for his wife Shonnah and their kids, too.

... and every man's death diminishes me - part 2

Another brutal, premature, unnecessary, senseless death of someone at Place of Former Employment. It's going to be reported in the media, so I can't say more (and, if, commenting, you do know more, please, don't) but any and all prayers for families and friends would be much welcomed.

How many women do you know that have been beaten up by Christian ministers?

Offhand, I can think of seven women (and one man, too) I know who have experienced both physical and sexual violence at the hands of ordained and respected ministers of Christ. And given that one in four women* will at some point suffer some form of domestic abuse and given that research demonstrates that religious affiliation or stature does nothing to mitigate against the chances of a man becoming an abuser**, and given that the social pressure not to disclose abuse within churches is far greater than the taboo against speaking about domestic violence in general society, I probably know very many more than seven. I have to assume, too, that there will be many women (and some men) reading this, too, with their own personal stories to tell...

And yet, Bishop Catherine Roskam has caused outrage and offence by her assertion that some of the bishops at the Lambeth conference beat their wives. Three most ostrich-like quotes from bishops interviewed appeared in The Times yesterday

The Archbishop of York [John Sentanu] said: "I have never beaten my wife ... I hope Bishop Catherine has got statistics and figures, because if not she is in danger of causing an unnecessary rumpus."

Bishop Nathaniel Nakwatumbah of Namibia said: "I do not beat my wife. That is ridiculous. There are such great people gathering here in ecclesial spirit. It is inconceivable that a bishop would beat his wife."

Bishop David James, of Bradford, said: "I do not beat my wife who I love very much and who is a tremendous support to me. Of the bishops I have met from around the world, which is quite a number, I have no reason to suspect that any of them do.

However, there was one less definite comment

Bishop Zache Duracin of Haiti said: "I do not know any bishops who beat their wives. But she may be aware of some."

So could one of the journalists covering Lambeth please, please track down and ask Mme Duracin how much she knows?

And so if /when anyone does ask Mme Duracin, or any other of the 600+ wives at Lambeth, if they themselves or anyone else they knew there was being beaten, what would happen?


*according to Womens Aid
** This statement appeared in a manual on domestic violence that I was asked to read in a job I had several years ago. I can't find a source for this - can anyone else?

The SPCK/SSG bullying saga continues

From Sam, from Elizaphanian

Great admiration for him...

More SPCK bullying...

This is from MadPriest and I think self-explanatory.

It just appalls me that Christians think they can get away with treating one another like this...

VERY IMPORTANT DAVE WALKER UPDATE

Those who are not up to speed on this matter of blogger welfare should read the following post first:

THE GREAT SPCK SCANDAL
BLOGGERS STICK IT TO THE MAN

It is absolutely certain that Mark Brewer is now threatening other bloggers. Without prejudice legal advice indicates that he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Also he is sending the threats out personally and not via a solicitor.

However, I think it is time for PLAN B.

This is Mark Brewer's email address:

Brewer@bplaw.com

I would like friends of Dave Walker, and those interested in stopping bloggers from being bullied by people with money, to cut and paste this post onto their own blogs,

AND/OR

send an email to Mark Brewer with nothing more than the campaign words:

I AM ALSO DAVE WALKER

And if you're a little scared by all this just remember a very good man died because SPCK failed after it had been taken over by Mark Brewer's business venture.

Posted by MadPriest at 4:56 PM 12 comments

"... and every man's death diminshes me"

A mum in her mid-thirties, four children, lived across the street from me, next door to where I work, dead.

Cause of death, factors that should never, never kill. A community that should never have been this way.

Prayers, please.

a triumph of experience over hope? a conversation with a child far, far too young for the conversation we were having.

A conversation, too, that made me very sad for the girl with whom I had it...

HER: My Mummy says you're having a wedding.

ME: Yes. Do you want to come and bring her to the wedding?

HER: I don't like weddings.

ME: Why not?

HER: (Pauses, pouting) Well you'll have to have babies really quickly...

ME: (Cringing slightly) Er, we'll see what happens.

HER: ... 'cos you got to have babies before you split up. Once you're split up you can't have babies any more 'cos you're calling each other bad words and shouting.

ME: We're not planning to split up.

HER: Really? You're never going to split up?

ME: I don't know. But we're going to try really, really hard not to split up.

HER: (Eyes widening) So you might never ever ever split up?

ME: I hope we'll never ever ever ever ever split up.

HER: But (starts chewing a strand of hair) I didn't know you could hope about that.

Triduum, 2008

Cooking a buffet of dishes from Fiance's Country of Origin and amazing a housefull of guests at his with the authenticity of my cooking. Neglecting to tell any of them that we'd merely googled the recipes on broadband and purchased the ingredients from a local Tesco. Offering several of them a lift home "on the way back to mine" and then driving back to his for the night. I hate my own dishonesty.

call yourself a Christian?

I woke up this morning to various graphic descriptions of the Eldoret church massacre in Eastern Kenya. I was there, briefly, in the mid 90s, and my memory of Eldoret was of utter PraisetheLordsville, with every other building a place of Christian worship. I visited Rwanda soon afterwards, soon enough still after the genocide that, when I visited one of the churches in which hundreds there were massacred, they were still sorting the dismembered body parts into neat rows... as though neat rows of dismembered body parts would somehow make up for what they'd done. And I felt this morning as I felt in Rwanda back then: how can people who call themselves Christians and claim a personal relationship with Christ perpetrate such evil?

And then, later on in the morning, I utterly blew up at three of my very closest friends. Certainly, I didn't take pangas to their skulls or burn their babies alive, but I did most definitely say things they found very hurtful that will change our friendships forever and I cannot pretend otherwise. And I call myself a Christian, too.

Theologically, intellectually, I struggle with the concept of Original Sin as a premise on which to base the Christian message. Intuitively, though, instinctively, I can feel such evil inside of me...