UNITED KINGDOM
Christian Today
David Robertson 06 February 2017
I have a confession to make. I was not abused. This may come as a shock to those who think that being brought up in a Christian home, attending Sunday school and being sent on Christian summer camps made me a prime target. Despite the fact that as a child, teenager and adult I have attended many Christian summer camp with Scripture Union, the Free Church, Highlands and Islands Postal Sunday School and the Boys Brigade, I never came across any such abuse, nor have I ever heard of any.
This may be surprising to those whose knowledge of such camps is limited to such as some that appeared this weekend. For once the sensationalist headlines did justice to the sickening story contained in the body of the report and in the investigative reports that have been broadcast by Channel 4 News.
John Smyth has been accused of sadistically beating boys. Smyth was a leader of what were called the “Bash” camps run by the Iwerne trust. There is no suggestion the abuse took place at the camps themselves.
The details of the story are horrendous.But it gets worse, as Ruth Gledhill explains in this most helpful article on Christian Today. The Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson, has made some extraordinary allegations. To him this is not about one man physically abusing a number of boys under his care. This is about a whole theology – the kind of evangelical theology espoused by EJ Nash, who set up the Bash camps, and taught by people like John Stott, Dick Lucas and others who were influenced by them. According to the bishop, “These camps had extraordinary influence. The theology that these people bring to the table very often has an element of violence and nastiness in it.”
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