War and Defeat - The Jesus Army and Fellowship revisited

I would like to offer reassurance to anyone who is thinking of reading my book that it has been written truthfully and honestly… and hopefully with a good measure of light-hearted humour; as, for example, when I talk about how my very good friend, Graeme Bird (Merciful), couldn't but help himself teasing Noel from time to time...

Graeme and Nick travelled down with me in the car to Gatwick, and we were all in good spirits despite the imminence of the farewells that needed to be made. Graeme, who'd brought his guitar with him, took up the refrain of "I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane" as he strummed away in the back of the car. He'd always been a joker! It was Graeme who'd walked into the farmhouse one day and found Noel sitting at a table with cheque books and financial documents spread out in front of him. 'Aha,' he said cheekily. 'The king was in his counting house, counting out his money.' Noel looked up without smiling: he didn't appreciate that kind of humour. But Graeme never had been one who was noted for deferential diffidence.

Ultimately, of course, I have persistently striven to expose what I believed to be what are now being acknowledged as the "systemic failures" of the JFC, and my efforts to do so are the essential theme permeating "War and Defeat". Yet I haven't shied away from acknowledging the many happy times which I, and many others, enjoyed together whilst we were members...

Weeks turned into months turned into years. It would be a misrepresentation of the truth to deny that I enjoyed many happy days cradled in the bosom of a Community which I believed to be wonderful; to be Zion itself. I formed many valued, enriching friendships, the like of which I'd never known before. And life as a Community member wasn't all unmitigated intensity and self-denial. There were occasions of great laughter and merriment, times of great camaraderie, times of great poignancy, and times which I shall return to again and again with melancholic fondness as I daydream about the past.

And…

Working on jobs around the farm with brothers who'd become such wonderful friends was often joyful: the anecdotes about happy times would be legion. And I did sometimes wonder if perhaps it wasn't heaven itself when I'd roped up my last trailer load of straw bales for the day, the brothers who'd been helping me had clambered onto the top of the loaded stack, and I got behind the wheel of the tractor to set off, contented, back through the beautiful Northamptonshire lanes towards the glowing colours of the setting sun: back to New Creation Farm to discharge our cargo, to maybe sit around and sing songs of Zion together, to laugh, joke and go off to bed tired but happy. And then, after the refreshment of sleep, we were ready to spend another day out in the harvest fields and the sunshine. No wonder one of the Community brothers wrote down his feelings in a song which began:
Happy the days in Zion's fields
Enclosed away from Babel's strife;
Beneath the Father's open sky
We feel the Spirit's fertile life.

It gave me great pleasure writing the many passages such as these ones, but I had to contend with anger, bewilderment, shame, and great sorrow as I wrote about the harrowing aspects of what the JFC/JA became under Noel Stanton's autocratic leadership: the roddings; the misery of many sisters; deceptive practices such as "synagogue evangelism"; covert brainwashing - even if unintended; bullying; enforced precepts; pressure to conform; control; celibacy; coercion; fornication for procreation only… the list is a long one. The following extract relates to rodding...

The elder's eight-year-old son had misbehaved at the communal dinner table and was taken away from it to be disciplined. I don't know what he'd done, but the look on his face was one of unmistakable fear. I have always believed that what followed was the consequence of the elder in question wishing to show off his disciplinarian prowess. Even if I'm wrong (which I may well be), I remain no less censorious of his behaviour. Rather than taking his son well away, to the family's private rooms for example, he chose to punish him within an adjacent room to the one where we were all having our meal. The sound of birch against flesh, together with that of the child's screams, was clearly audible to all of us. At least six strokes of the rod were given. It was deeply humiliating for the boy and it turned my stomach.

Those who experienced the Jesus Fellowship Church in the new millennium purely through membership of, or association with, the Jesus Army/modern Jesus Army may recoil in disbelief at much of what I've written. Surely this couldn't be the Fellowship that they knew! I have done my best, therefore, to penetrate the razzmatazz of the Jesus Army jubilation and street theatrics to show how the "white-hot core" of the church, the New Creation Christian Community, retained all the dangerous and oppressive characteristics which would ultimately lead to a culture of abuse.

The "defeat" aspect of the book relates as much to my own as to the Jesus Army's. In places, I have bared my soul and written about harrowing episodes in my life I would much rather not had to. Insofar as it relates to my ongoing "war" with the Fellowship, however, it would have been dishonest not to address my own very real problems and failings.

My strongest language is reserved, unsurprisingly, for Noel Stanton. Even as late as 2015, I was shocked to find out that allegations concerning his history of abuse were all too real. Prior to then, I had defended him against charges of - for example - actual sexual impropriety, whatever else I may have said about him...

So what went wrong? How did the dream of Zion fade? I hope that by the end of my story such questions will have been largely answered. For the present, however, I need to touch on one part of the explanation which will come to some as a shock - as it did to me - and which some will refuse to countenance. Testimony has emerged in recent years - from people whom I personally trust - revealing that, during the early seventies, Noel had apparently begun grooming certain young men within the flock to become recipients of his homosexual attention. This testimony came as a bombshell to those of us who, all along, had given Noel the benefit of the doubt when it came to rumours concerning his sexual proclivities. It was even more of a personal shock when I became privy to credible allegations which suggest that a vulnerable young brother was subjected by Noel to an incident of attempted rape. Unless, therefore, both my readers and I are willing to accept this aspect of Noel's character - a fundamental aspect of who he was and what motivated him all along - then the Bugbrooke story to follow will suffer from the dishonesty and dissimulation which has been a feature of so many others.

Even if you find the book challenging in places, I have tried my hardest to write it in such a way that most will - I hope - enjoy reading it