Does ‘Bleeding for Jesus’ help resolve abuse issues?

Nov 8, 2021 by

by Ian Paul, Psephizo:

Many people have told me that Bleeding for Jesus by Andrew Graystone is ‘essential reading’, and I take this recommendation seriously for three reasons. First, I have known Andrew for some years, and engaged him to teach media and communications skills at the theological college where I taught. Secondly, as an evangelical of many years, I need to listen carefully to any well-founded critique of evangelical theology and practice. Thirdly, abuse and safeguarding is a critical issue for the church, and this book is an important exploration of one particular and poignant case.

Graystone’s book is a detailed account of the abuses perpetrated by John Smyth, who started life as a high-flying lawyer, working in prominent cases in the 1970s alongside the likes of Mary Whitehouse, but who then became heavily involved in the work of Iwerne Camps. These conservative evangelical vacation camps in Iwerne Minster, Dorset, were found by Eric ‘Bash’ Nash after the Second World War, and targeted boys from public schools with the aim of converting future leaders of the nation to Christian faith.

The ethos of the camps would be seen by many as disciplined to the point of being authoritarian, and Graystone puts forward the case that they were rooted in an unhealthy emotional, psychological, and spiritual outlook. Within this authoritarian context, and with the lack of concern for transparency and accountable (something that marked all organisations until very recently), the camps offered a context for Smyth to indulge his physical abuse of boys in his charge, which involved both emotional coercive control as well as physical beatings—though no sexual activity.

Graystone has put his investigative and communication skills to work, and has produced an exhaustive and harrowing account of the abuse perpetrated by Smyth, who died in 2018 before he could be held to account for his abuse in England and—even more tragically—in Zimbabwe, where one 16-year-old, Guide Nyachuru, died in mysterious circumstances on one of Smyth’s camps. The accounts of Smyth’s abuse of various individuals is relentless and forensic in its detail, and a picture emerges of a man who was pathologically obsessed with control and discipline.

Read here

Please right-click links to open in a new window.

Related Posts

Tags

Share This