There will be more than a few people rubbing there hands with glee today as details emerge of an eight year adulterous affair involving a Christian fundamentalist ‘Bishop’ who, it would seem, was fundamentally flawed.

Hardline Christian fundamentalist, Michael Reid, 64, has quit his various roles as church, school and moral leader after it emerged that the outspoken ‘Bishop of England’ has been involved in an adulterous affair with the music director of his church based in Brentwood, England.

Apparently the ‘Bishop’ and married mother-of-two Sheila Graziano, 49, have been ‘making sweet music’ together for some eight years, and news of the affair only came to light when Bishop Reid’s wife of 36 years allegedly caught the couple in the families £600,000 ($1.2m) home.

The hypocrisy of Michael Reid and Sheila Graziano is obvious. In his role as Bishop of England, and leader of the Christian Congress for Traditional Values (CCTV), Reid has been happy to stir anger with provocative comments such as describing gay people as “filthy perverts,” and more recently a billboard that read “Gay Aim: Abolish the family.”

Graziano, serving as music director at the Peniel Church, has clearly shared those views. Back in 2006 she commented on a Daily Mail story about Pope Benedict’s urging Anglicans to oppose any moves to legalise “weak and deviant” unions (gay marriage).

“I believe that the only rightful sexual relationship is between a man and woman in a monogamous marriage. We need more Church leaders who are not afraid to stand up and be a voice for God’s principles.” Wrote Graziano.

This story positively oozes the kind of sleaze and hypocrisy that the media love to run with. The cliche of the Bishop ‘bonking’ the organist is irresistibly juicy ‘news’, and with Reid making a swift escape (with his wife) to Arizona my suspicions are that more lurid and unpleasant sensations surrounding the Bishop may yet come to light.

MEN OF GOD

This is, of course, nothing new. So called ‘men of God’ have been falling from grace for as long as it’s been possible to do so. But there’s an underlying issue here that I find more troubling than tabloid gossip that ordinarily surrounds a revelation like this, and that is the apparent lack of control and accountability these men are subject to. Apart from God in heaven, who do these men answer to? Who advises them and brings them to book should the need arise?

By all accounts Bishop Reid did not take kindly to any sort of criticism, a trait that seems uncomfortably common among Pentecostal church leaders. A quick Google will reveal some truly awful stories about Michael Reid and the way he has dealt with people who have questioned his leadership over the years. But if the congregation aren’t allowed to question the leadership then doesn’t that make the church a cult, or at least so close to a cult as to be indistinguishable?

When the CCTV, headed by ‘Bishop’ Reid, put out their infamous “Gay aim” billboard earlier this year, I checked their website to see who else was in a position of influence within the organisation. Kensington Temple’s, Pastor Colin Dye, was named as ‘co-founder’ of the group so I decided to email the Revd Dye and ask him if perhaps it would be wise to reign in the Bishop who was clearly prone to unpleasant and unnecessarily confrontational outbursts. (You can read that email in the comments here.)

His first response seemed somewhat defensive. However, in a telephone conversation with me this afternoon, Revd Colin Dye was keen to put as much distance between himself and the ‘Bishop’ as possible.

“I’d not heard or participated in the CCTV for quite some time, knew nothing about this poster, and the point is that he [Michael Reid] wouldn’t necessarily go and involve people in the committee meeting and say this is what we want to do and have you got any ideas. He would just sort of act independently on that.” Claimed Pastor Dye.

“I haven’t had a conversation with him in ages, and I had no idea he was putting posters out in the name of CCTV.” He continued.

Dye went on to tell me that he himself resigned from the CCTV this morning on learning the news of Reid’s affair. Even if his words could be viewed with a degree of skepticism given the obvious desire to not be associated with ‘Bishop’ Reid at this time, Dye’s comments do rather suggest that the church, particularly the Pentecostal church, is open to a lot of abuse from rogue leaders.

ACCOUNTABILITY

I’ve personally come across one such abuse. A relatively high profile Pastor of a local church has for years enjoyed an unchallenged place at the top of a church he created. As part of the Elim Pentecostal group, this particular pastor has often times been embroiled in unpleasant dealings with those who have dared question his authority, methods or practices. Like other rogue leaders he surrounds himself with weaker people who are only likely to ‘toe the line’ or face certain replacement just as those who have questioned him in the past have been.

“We discovered by bitter experience that the Elim organisation has protective mechanisms in place for the leaders (shepherds) but nothing for the sheep. It is assumed that the shepherd must always be right.” One former member told me. They took a complaint about the pastor through Elim channels and were “given the brush-off at this the highest level in Elim.”

With the severity of their accusations about the pastor in mind I asked them why they had chosen to not seek justice through the courts, especially given the apparent presence of a compelling dossier of evidence against him.

“One major problem about bringing the whole unsavory situation into the public arena is that God’s Kingdom would suffer disgrace.” I was told.

While I understand that, I can’t help but feel that such an attitude is merely cowardice disguised as deference to God, and that in choosing to “leave it at the cross” Christians are, in some part at least, responsible for the continued damage that abusive, dishonest and hypocritical leaders will do.

In effect, what I’m saying is that the Christian community as a whole brings itself into disrepute by its willingness to ignore or allow the behavior of rogue leaders to go unchecked and unpunished.

I would suggest that in this recent scandal surrounding ‘Bishop’ Michael Reid, there were no shortage of signs that the man had gone off the rails, or at the very least had stepped outside the bounds of creating a constructive challenge to the public at large.

His hateful tirades set him up for this spectacular fall and while the fingers of blame are pointing squarely in his direction at this time, I feel that the Christian community as a whole should perhaps embark on some self examination of the way in which they let this ‘Bishop’ spin so spectacularly out of control.

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High profile church leader quits after affair
Family Values campaigner resigns after admitting adultery
Moral and family values ‘Bishop’ resigns over affair
Bad ‘Bishop’ resigns from CCTV
Moral ‘Bishop’ resigns after affair is unearthed
Forum discuss the multitude of sins of the ‘Bishop’
Are you offended?
Michael Reid Miseries
Falwell from grace
[Audio] BBC Radio 4 report the Bishop sex scandal story

Happy Eastre everyone! Of course, these days we call it Easter, the Christian holiday that celebrates the curiously ever changing anniversary of when Christ miraculously rose from the dead.

Make no mistake, I love Easter as much as anyone else. We get a 4 day weekend in the UK (the longest holiday of the year) along with chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies, so who couldn’t love that, right?

I don’t really care about the fact that Easter is actually a pagan festival named after the ancient Anglo Saxon Goddess of Spring, and that it was effectively hijacked by ancient Christians who altered to suit their faith. But it’s with that in mind that I think I now understand why it is that Christians seem to have a propensity for copying and ‘Christianizing’ things from popular culture.

Last year I wrote a fairly critical post about the launch of GodTube, the Christian version of popular video sharing site YouTube, and now I think I might have been a little uncharitable in toward ‘Christian culture.’ After all, they can’t help it, being unoriginal would seem to be engrained into the Christian faith as much as the crucifix, or fish stickers for cars!

But one thing I don’t quite understand is why we don’t all eat chocolate Jesus’s, or chocolate crucifixes? Maybe the thought of children gnawing off Jesus’ head is offensive? Sacrilegious perhaps? But back in the day when people were praising the goddess Eostre, wasn’t replacing her with Jesus offensive to the pagans? Whatever happened to the Pagans anyway?

In truth I don’t care that the Christians stole Eastre. It’s a 4 day holiday that involves feasting and chocolate, so for all I care they can steal more festivals. After all, if by doing so we get to have more long weekends then I’m all for it!

Happy Easter everyone!

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Was Jesus a pagan?
Easter is a Pagan holiday
Unoriginal sin
The Pagan origins of Easter
Christians misinterpret resurrection, scholars say

Following on from a post I wrote last week about an ad that was deemed offensive, I’m interested to know what you make of the ad below which was recently run as a mobile billboard in South London by a Christian pressure group that calls itself The Christian Congress for Traditional Values (CCTV).

The ad shows a picture of family consisting of a man, a woman and a young son and daughter next to the statement “GAY AIM: ABOLISH THE FAMILY.” The CCTVs website address is printed beneath the body copy and a banner across the picture of the family identified CCTV and showed the pressure groups logo.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the ad came to the attention of the Advertising Standards Agency which was categorized last week by a Ryanair spokesman as being a “bunch of unelected, self-appointed dimwits [who] are clearly incapable of fairly and impartially ruling on advertising.”

The Agency deemed the CCTV billboard to be an inaccurate representation of the views of gay people and that the ad was likely to cause serious or widespread offence or condone anti-social behaviour. It has since told the CCTV to ensure future campaigns were not presented in a similar way.

As you might expect the CCTV, which is run by a Bishop Michael Reid, felt the ad was entirely reasonable and the potential for the ad to cause offence was “minimal” because the aim to redefine the concept of the family was “so widely and openly acknowledged” by the homosexual community. Citing a 1971 Gay Liberation Front manifesto as an example supporting its position the organisation claimed the campaigners who “sought same-sex marriage did not do so simply to achieve the same domestic situation that was available to heterosexuals, but also because they aimed to redefine and abolish the traditional family.”

BISHOP OF WHAT?

After watching the organisations leader and spokesman, Bishop Michael Reid, on a couple of videos posted on the CCTV website, I became curious as to what denomination had ordained him and made him a Bishop. After spending a few fruitless minutes trying to find this information I decided instead to simply call the Bishops office and ask a member of his staff.

However, despite being placed on hold several times while various staffers were asked the question, nobody at Bishop Michael Reid Ministries was able to tell me by whom he had been ordained. In the end I was asked why I wanted the information and eventually told instead to refer to him as Doctor Michael Reid as he has a doctorate from Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, USA.

In the case of the Ryanair ad controversy I could have believed the airline was behind the brouhaha that surrounded the newspaper ad. Could it possible that as a Christian pressure group the CCTV might have used similar cunning? Somehow I doubt it. But as one Christian group rallies hatred toward the gay community another will march in the forthcoming Mardi Gras parade in Sydney Australia to apologise for the church’s hostility toward gay and lesbian people. Jerry Falwell would be turning in his grave!

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The Christian Congress for Traditional Values
Bishop Michael Reid Ministries
Bishop Michael Reid’s church
‘Family values’ poster ruled offensive
ASA rule against anti-gay ad
Midlands Bible College blog post about Bishop Ried
Something’s not quite right in Brentwood
The oracle of Essex
[Video] BBC TV News report

“A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to their faith before they explore it, as opposed to a curious person who explores first and then considers whether of not they want to accept the ramifications.” - Seth Godin.

The above video reminded me of a Christian friend of mine who once described themselves as a ‘fundamentalist.’ They meant it not in the negative way we’ve come to interpret the word, but in a more literal sense of being a believer in the fundamental principle set forth by the Bible. However, like any fundamentalist, they were deeply suspicious of other interpretations or expressions of faith, especially it would seem, those who also called themselves ‘Christian.’ It’s attitudes like this that have repelled me from religion and driven me from wanting to spend even a moment in a church surrounded by people who might also be as openly closed minded.

I’m puzzled how anyone who believes in (any) God could be so narrow minded given that believing in the existence of something you cannot see or interact with physically is by it’s very nature an open minded thing to do. It seems to me that while mankind strives to find meaning and purpose on a spiritual level, religion strives to entangle those who are curious enough to seek.

I’m curious, but I don’t need an answer as much as I need the curiosity that drives me to question. This, it would seem, puts me at odds with religion.

Religion is methodology with a brand name. It’s politics of the heavens, where rules control the curious and answers control the questions. Just as there are numerous distractions to prevent us from seeking a spiritual experience, so to are there distractions within that experience itself.

My fundamentalist friend had honorable intentions; to seek the purity of God without the distractions of debate. But I think perhaps the fundamentalists, be them Muslim, Christian or whatever, have missed the point. They’ve become spiritual prefects entangled in the traps and traditions of method and ceremony when surely it’s not the rules that are important, but the search itself?

I’m still curious, and if God is out there, then I sincerely hope he’s not a religious man.

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In God’s house
Seth Godin’s blog
Seth Godin on sliced bread and stuff

Among the many things that churchy folk do that perplex me is the habit they all seem to have of capitalizing the words ‘him’ or ‘he’ when they refer to God.

Last year I got into a digital fender bender with a student from Patrick Henry College over the fact they had deleted a comment I left on their blog because I hadn’t capitalized the word god, or God if you will.

It seemed like a draconian step to take over what was simply a typo, but the student insisted that my comment had to be removed because by not capitalizing his name I had dishonored the almighty.

Well, fair enough. I can understand capitalizing God, Jesus, Allah, Krishna, Devudu, Shang Ti or any of his other names for that matter. That, after all, would be grammatically correct. But what then is the reasoning behind the rather bizarre practice of capitalizing the H when using the words ‘him’ or he’ in relation to God? Perhaps those churchy folk among you could shed some light on this for me.