CHRIS BRAIN, THE NINE O’CLOCK SERVICE (NOS) – THE CHURCH’S WEASAL WORDS AND CHRISTIAN ADULT COMPLICITY
Chris Brain has been convicted.
The Bishop of Sheffield has described what happened as “…an appalling abuse of power and leadership that should never have occurred. Where concerns were raised in the past and were not acted upon properly, that was a failing of the Church. For those institutional failures I offer an unreserved apology.”
I am disillusioned with such words, so easily spoken and with so little meaning, as I am with the entire judicial process. Why was there just one person on trial?
My birth family were very involved in St Thomas’ Crookes, and with Chris Brain’s Nine O’Clock Service (NOS).
At the time I was a priest in the Church of England, serving in a parish in the south, and brought my Youth Club to one of the NOS services.
My mother, a committed member of St Thomas’s, could not stand Chris Brain, nor NOS, and opined often about her misgivings about what he was doing. She was fiercely critical of family and church members who supported NOS.
However, what was absolutely clear, was that a whole community of adults were supporting Chris Brain and NOS and all it stood for and were aware of much of the outlandish, weird and extreme behaviour that was taking place at the heart of it.
I remember one adult talking confidently and clearly about how they were exploring a new understanding of relationships and intimacy and that adults could explore being physically and emotionally close with people other than their partners.
This was a corporate endeavour, a team effort, a collaboration between free thinking adults making choices to be involved in an experimental religious community, breaking new ground. It was an explosion of life, creativity, innovation and new ideas flooding the church in a tidal wave of ingenuity and enthusiasm.
The Church, the diocese, the bishop, the priests loved it, lapped it all up and Brain was fast tracked into the priesthood.
Yet, nearly 40 years later, Brain alone faced charges. Where were the other complicit adults, the leaders of the NOS community, the leaders of the church, the deanery, the diocese, and those whose support and loyalty made it all possible. Why did Brain stand there alone?
The reality is that a group of Christian adults, have spent four decades covering their backs, sweeping all their complicities under the carpet and carrying on as normal, and only when they lost the power to keep doing that, do we have these insincere and empty words of apology and promises of change. Such words are cheap.
Brain has been convicted. But why have the other colluding adults not been charged? Let them feel shame and face recrimination. Time and again, we read about all those who aided and abetted an abuser, and they slink off into the shadows scot-free and each time we allow that to happen, society is no safer, words of apology offered are just hollow sound bites and we are no nearer protecting the innocent from abusers.
posted by Bishop Jonathan Blake | 1:31 PM
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