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Good News maybe, but it didn't last long!
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This post was triggered by an attic clear out. During that clear-out I happened across a 1994 Good News Christian newspaper for Norwich. The headline article was on the conversion of Samantha Fox (See above). Samantha Fox was a popular Sun newspaper Page 3 girl and that seems to be her main claim to fame. However, she eventually turned pop-star. I don't think she was ever a tip-top pop talent, but probably had enough of it to pull off a performance; except, that is, when she co-hosted the Brit pop awards in 1989 with Mick Fleetwood. It was by all accounts a complete disaster and although certainty not her fault, I doubt if poor Samantha had the calibre to retrieve the situation. After the debacle at least one tabloid treated her cruelly; for them she was a slapper who could safely be made fun of. Not surprisingly she subsequently talked about moving to America where she thought her talent would be viewed more positively.
In spite of her treatment as a bimbo by some, she clearly was a thinking person and was looking for meaning and purpose and this may have lead her to Holy Trinity, Brompton's Alpha course. It was 1994, a bad year for evangelical Christianity; the so called "Toronto blessing" was at large and found fertile ground among Christians who were looking for spiritual fireworks to escape from the humdrum run-down cultural rearguard action that had so characterised Western Christianity since the 1960s. It seemed that as long a touted "new move of God" smacked of the supernatural anything would go, no matter how bizarre. As the article above makes clear the Toronto Blessing was identified by spontaneous bouts of laughter, crying, fainting and ecstasies. Rumour had it that barking, roaring and other animal noises were also among the manifestation of the blessing. As I have remarked before the whole phenomenon had suspicious similarities with the dancing mania of the middle ages. The "blessing" also came with a fair measure of spiritual pressure: People who didn't buy it were regarded as resisting the Holy Spirit and in one case even accused of being in danger of committing the unforgivable sin. This sort of intimidating behaviour is a proud conceit often found among super-spiritual Christians who readily equate any disbelief of their words with a disbelief in the Almighty himself.
HTB ran with the "blessing" (for a while) and it seems likely that this is what Samantha must have witnessed. In the light of her later rejection of HTB (and perhaps even Christianity itself) her testimony of Holy Spirit enlightenment in Good News comes as a grating jar; it is evidence that at least some of these testimonies of epiphany, testimonies which can sound so convincing, are little more than the aping of the words of a group think and are as shallow as an evaporated puddle.
HTB ran with the "blessing" (for a while) and it seems likely that this is what Samantha must have witnessed. In the light of her later rejection of HTB (and perhaps even Christianity itself) her testimony of Holy Spirit enlightenment in Good News comes as a grating jar; it is evidence that at least some of these testimonies of epiphany, testimonies which can sound so convincing, are little more than the aping of the words of a group think and are as shallow as an evaporated puddle.
Not long after Samantha must have moved away from HTB circles because around 2000 she came out as a lesbian and was in a relationship with a woman; this would not have sat comfortably with HTB. Her wish to disassociate herself with the HTB experience is expressed in a 2003 article in the Guardian:
'Well, on the Alpha course, you
learn a lot. And what I learned was I've got my own faith.' She laughs her
fizzy laugh and adjusts her two-tone hairdo. 'The people I met there... I felt
more Christian than any of them. To me, it looked like a fashion show. I felt I
didn't need to be there. I felt everyone there was a poseur. All the women were
looking for these rich guys. I wasn't,' she pronounces a little sniffily,
'brought up like that.'
She must have started visiting
Holy Trinity Brompton at the time when she was coming to terms with being gay,
so I ask how she coped with the evangelical hostility to homosexuality.
Actually, she says, Holy Trinity's position struck her as so bananas that her
confidence in her own beliefs, about her faith as well as her sexuality, grew
stronger.
'I think we've come a long way
since the Bible was written. No, Alpha never made me feel bad about my
sexuality, because I believe in love: at the end of the day, I think all God
wants for us is to be happy and love each other. But Alpha was good because it
helped me find myself a bit. It has taken me a while.'
This account is just so utterly at odds with the testimony of her HTB epiphany that I wonder where the truth lies. I wonder if Samantha's reference to "bananas" applies to the weird aspects of the Toronto blessing? In order to uphold their world-view some charismatic evangelicals may attempt to explain away this situation by telling us that perhaps Samantha had a genuine "touch of God" but is currently resisting the Holy Spirit: This is a common explanation among charismatic fundamentalists who, putting their world view first, are sometimes conceited enough claim to have privy to one's inner thought life; so much so that they will boldly offer such condemning judgements.
Another Christian account of Samantha fox's conversion can be found in this 1994 Cross Rhythm web article. Interesting is a comment from a Christian reader in the comment thread of this article. This reads:
Any chance this could be removed after years passing waiting
for confirmation of Faith, fruit. So sad. But please keep praying
In case this Cross Rhythm article should disappear from the web, I have a copy of it here. This tendency to erase inconvenient and perplexing Christian history only serves to feed a confirmation bias. In contrast the Gospels didn't erase Peter's or Judas' failures, as is so often remarked. When the failures and the vexed questions are forgotten, a sanitized plastic version of Christian history emerges and salutary lessons and cautions are lost to posterity.
This now brings me to an article in the September edition of Premier Christianity magazine about the high profile Christians Joshua Harris and Marty Sampson renouncing their faith. Harris was known among fundamentalist Christians for writing a dreadful book on marriage and sex early on in his Christian career (which he later disowned) and Sampson was a well known song writer and worship leader for the the mega-church chain, Hillsong. The article quotes Sampson as giving the following reasons for rejecting Christianity (Presumably among others). Viz:
Posted by Marion in Birmingham @ 21:58 on Aug 6 2016
In case this Cross Rhythm article should disappear from the web, I have a copy of it here. This tendency to erase inconvenient and perplexing Christian history only serves to feed a confirmation bias. In contrast the Gospels didn't erase Peter's or Judas' failures, as is so often remarked. When the failures and the vexed questions are forgotten, a sanitized plastic version of Christian history emerges and salutary lessons and cautions are lost to posterity.
This now brings me to an article in the September edition of Premier Christianity magazine about the high profile Christians Joshua Harris and Marty Sampson renouncing their faith. Harris was known among fundamentalist Christians for writing a dreadful book on marriage and sex early on in his Christian career (which he later disowned) and Sampson was a well known song writer and worship leader for the the mega-church chain, Hillsong. The article quotes Sampson as giving the following reasons for rejecting Christianity (Presumably among others). Viz:
How many preachers fall? Many. No one talks about it. How many miracles happen? Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send 4 billion people to a place, all coz they don't believe. No one talks about it.
The article then goes on to quote Free Church minister David Robertson who addresses Sampson's complaint in an open letter:
You seem to have been living in some kind of sheltered cocoon. In the Christian circles I inhabit people never stop talking about these things! Was your faith or your church background really so superficial and shallow that these questions were never discussed? Little wonder that your faith collapsed like a house of sand, if it was built on such flimsy foundations and was never tested!
This is in fact an implicit criticism of the Hillsong culture*. But Robertson is right to contrast Sampson's experience with his own and question Sampson's undiscriminating and blanket accusation: For example, Christianity magazine itself is not shy of facing and discussing awkward questions and issues. Also, theologians like Tom Wright and Alistair Mcgrath don't strike me as the sort of guys who wouldn't talk about and face up to theological conundrums. And yet I have to say that there are Christian subcultures out there where confirmation bias is rife and where toy-town and authoritarian doctrines are preached with little or no talk about their difficulties & inconsistencies and where a group think pressures uncritical acceptance. Any attempt at analysis and criticism is looked at askance as the thin end of the Satanic wedge. As Ellie Mumford, an aficionado of the Toronto Blessing, put it "Don't analyse it". This is fideism. Moreover, sometimes diverging interpretations of scripture are rounded on as tantamount to rebellion against God. As might be expected the authoritarian fundamentalist theme park manager Ken Ham yet again provides a fine example of the kind of spiritual pressure one can expect if one doesn't tow the line. He accuses Christians who might be tempted to accept evolution of;
...undermining the biblical doctrine of sin and death being a result of
Adam’s fall. Really, when someone rejects a literal Genesis, it affects the way
they view the rest of the Bible and the Christian message, as can be seen with
this author.....Once
we abandon the Bible as absolute truth, anything goes, and anyone can just make
God and his gospel message in their own image. But that gospel won’t save—only
the biblical gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation ("Progressive Children's book to offer a different picture of creation" 17 Oct 2019)
Once again Ham thrusts his perverse & paranoid thin end of the Satanic wedge logic into the mouths and minds of those he disagrees with and attempts to manipulate them onto a collision course with the Almighty. As one might expect from his inquisitional tactics he all but denies access to Gospel truth to his antagonists.This is the way fundamentalists attempt to forestall critical analysis of their position. (See also here)
So, although David Robertson is right, he is only right for selected Christian subcultures. Elsewhere the kind of toy town plastic theology bolstered by spiritual intimidation and which has deceived Sampson reigns supreme. As for those who are self-critical, analytical, exploratory, tentative, experimental and ask hard questions, they may find themselves being accused of at best resisting the Holy Spirit and at worst of being heretics!
Footnote:
* One of the factors at work here is the almost exclusive premium that is so often placed on purely intuitive engagements with God: Sensings, epiphanies, sublime revelations, touches of God, gnosis etc are regarded as the acme of faith; a more analytical approach is not just a poor relation in this context, but sometimes explicitly put down as mere head knowledge in comparison with the superior "heart knowledge" of the super-spiritual Christian. The trouble is that when people like Sampson come out of their quasi-gnostic stupor they find roaring lions waiting for them, ready to devour their faith. Robertson's criticism is then justified.
Quoted links
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2017/11/confirmation-bias-and-terry-virgos-bad.html
