As a Christian pastor who reads and engages widely, I regularly come across what I would call serial fantasists – people who are so good at spinning lies that eventually they get caught in the web of their own deceit and come to believe their own lies. The man who can’t string two words together but believes he has a special ‘anointed preaching’ from God. The woman who can’t sing but was told by a couple of friends that she has the voice of an angel. The numerous ‘apostles’ who want to be my Facebook friends. The American missionaries in whatever European country they are in who write home saying they are bringing the new Reformation. Such delusions and fantasies range from the mildly harmless to the insanely dangerous – such as the well-known prophetess who is selling a book based on the ‘fact’ that aliens planted a device in her uterus in order to harvest her ovaries and have created a human/alien child.
Sadly, the whole question of how we deal with those who provide an invisible set of clothes for the Emperor, which only the enlightened can see, has come to the fore with the tragic death of Professor Jason Arday of Cambridge University. I find the subject of suicide really difficult to write about – for various personal reasons and because over decades of ministry I have had to deal with it many times. Therefore, I had no desire to add to the endless articles that have appeared in both the secular and Christian media about this subject. However, Andy Burnham who rightly described the death as ‘a tragedy on so many levels’, called for a ‘moment of reflection’. I have heeded the call and have spent the last week reading an unhealthy amount of articles and other people’s reflections, so I thought I would write something on what the Church can learn from this.
Lesson one:
We should be really careful about elevating and platforming people (who may often be vulnerable) into positions of power, influence and celebrity on the basis of their extraordinary backstories and cultural identity, rather than their abilities. I have no desire to list again the seemingly endless list of bizarre claims and accomplishments which were either ignored, or paraded, by Mr Arday’s employers and media fans – these are all easily available on the internet - but it beggars belief that so many educated, intelligent people were taken in by them. But this happens in the church as well – where well-meaning Christians desperate for a miracle story have proven to be as gullible as any Cambridge professor. I remember catching one prominent Christian leader hiding a well-known biography on a bookstall at a conference. When I asked her why she was doing it, she said that the subject of the biography was in her congregation and much of it was untrue.
Lesson two:
We should be really careful about using such tragedies to further our own agendas. On the one hand Arday’s death has brought forward the usual charges of racism in the media and elsewhere. On the other it is being used to warn of the dangers of DEI ideology. While it is easy to cite examples of people who are being racist it is also the case that the whole question of race was brought in by Arday himself and those in Cambridge who boasted in their appointment of someone specifically because he was black.
It is beyond disgusting to see various groups exploiting the tragedy of Arday’s death to raise funds for themselves ‘to fight racism’.
Lesson three:
We need to stop romanticising suicide. The vigil around Arday’s death was completely irresponsible. Some people who are suicidal fantasise about how their deaths will propel them into hero status. They may not be valued in life, but they will be made heroes after death. Feeding that fantasy is an appalling way to behave. When I was on a welfare committee in university we never even reported suicidal deaths because of the real danger of copycat incidents, far less glorify them through marches and memorials.
Lesson four:
We should not join in mob pile-ons. As each of Arday’s stories began to unravel and more bizarre ones were revealed, the temptation was to join in the mocking and even the abuse. After all, they were so surreal and funny. But once the facts were out, there was no need to repeat them. Cambridge University and those who elevated Arday deserved all the bad publicity they received. But Arday should have been shown mercy. There is a time to speak and a time to be silent.
Lesson five:
Stop blaming the media for everything. Arday was a media figure. Once his delusions were discovered the media did what they were supposed to do – they reported on them. He was not some private individual going quietly about his own business. He and Cambridge were prepared to threaten the Times Higher Education in order to kill a story about his plagiarism. They backed down. But then other journalists found the story and did what journalists are supposed to do. They published it. In this case the media told the truth that the academy was not prepared to face.
Having said that, there were some areas of the media that were partly responsible for this tragedy, in that they helped build the tower from which Arday fell. The BBC produced over 10 radio programmes on Arday, four news articles and two TV interviews which, without questioning, repeated his claims. Where were BBC Verify when we needed them?!
The Good Law Project, which firstly made the mistake of starting a petition to support Arday – even after his delusions had been exposed - is now taking the opportunity to demand a public inquiry into whether the media contributed to Arday’s death, ironically not asking for a public inquiry into whether those such as the Good Law Project who promoted him for ideological reasons, also contributed to his death.
And please stop the lies about it being ‘right-wing media’ who were responsible for his death. The minute that the likes of The New York Times, the Guardian and the Atlantic started printing the truth about Arday, it was all over for him in terms of his career. I suspect he knew that as well.
Lesson six:
We must realise the difference between individual fantasists and institutional delusions. It is difficult to state the truth to someone who is so self-deceived that to point out their deception runs the risk of self-harm. But that is not the same with institutions. When they are in danger of succumbing to a collective madness it is imperative for those who see it coming to warn them. Urging institutions to face reality is what prophets and sane, loving people do.
Lesson seven:
The church needs always to speak the truth of Christ, not the prejudices of the culture. I was astounded to read one church leader stating that he knew Arday and that, despite all the evidence, Arday was no fraud. Another Christian magazine published an uncritical piece which argued that this was all about racism and putting black success on trial. We were even told that Arday had a Christian faith. At best this is just a pale reflection of the world’s values; at worst an even more cynical exploitation.
Two final reflections:
In a post truth, postmodern society or church, which relies more on emotion rather than reality, it is much easier for a Walter Mitty figure to get his fantasies accepted as reality by a society which just wants them to be true - especially when they fit the cultural narrative of the day. Arday was not the first – nor will he be the last. Samuel Rubenstein tells the story of Marie Sophie Hingst who received a doctorate from Trinity college Dublin and claimed her family were Holocaust survivors, her mother committed suicide, and that she had worked in an Indian slum and then as a sex educator for Syrian refugees, which all sounded wonderful but was ultimately untrue. When Der Spiegel investigated and wrote about it in 2019, she killed herself.
Perhaps the saddest and truest comment I have read on Jason Arday comes from Graeme Wood writing in the Atlantic: “Arday was hired to teach social science. A terminal irony is that his main contribution to that body of knowledge will be as a case study, about a community that elevated a flawed man to a position exalted beyond his ability, without knowing or caring that they were actually offering him as a human sacrifice.”
Never have the words ‘speak the truth in love’ been more apposite.
David Robertson writes on https://substack.com/@theweeflea
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