It is to be hoped that a forthcoming Channel 4 documentary into the life and crimes of John Smyth will explore the elitist conservative evangelical sub-culture he exploited for his serial abuses.
Channel 4 News, in a superb investigation led by Cathy Newman in 2017, broke the story of Smyth’s savage beatings of boys and young men in the garden shed of his Winchester home. Announcing on June 18 the documentary to be produced by Passion Pictures, the broadcaster said:
“The documentary will explore the psychology of a prolific abuser and tell the inside story of John Smyth’s sinister world, through exclusive and intimate testimony from those close to him. It will reveal the devastating impact of Smyth's actions through moving accounts from victims and survivors in the UK and abroad.”
In the 1970s and early 1980s Smyth groomed his victims at the Iwerne evangelical camps aiming at pupils from the ‘top 30’ English boarding schools. Until the inner circle of Church of England clergy behind the cover-up of his abuses expelled him in 1982, he was chairman of the charitable trust that ran the holiday camps held at a boarding school in the Dorset village of Iwerne Minster.
I attended two Iwerne summer camps as a boy from Westminster School in 1979 and 1980. I remember Smyth as the camp ‘adjutant’ who made the announcements about which afternoon activity us ‘campers’ had been allocated to and generally acted as master of ceremonies. I learned that he regarded me as a bad influence on a friend of mine whom he was trying to cultivate, unsuccessfully in that boy’s fortunate case.
As a Cambridge University undergraduate in 1985 I became an ‘officer’ on the camps and continued in that role during my student years. It was a significant voluntary commitment involving, on top of attending camps during vacations, a weekly prayer meeting during the university term and giving talks to Christian Unions at various Iwerne schools.
I now believe the Iwerne work refracted aspects of the culture of English public schools to create a sub-culture of its own, characterised by misogyny, snobbery and bullying. Not everyone who served on the camps bought into that toxic culture. But enough of the senior leadership did to make it the reality that the documentary needs to expose if it is to tell Smyth’s terrible story accurately.
Since leaving C of E ministry in 2019, I have spent many hours as a freelance church journalist wading through the various reports into abuses within the C of E's conservative evangelical constituency, which I had been part of. The experience has been far from a bundle of laughs. But I believe this journalistic work needs to be done for three reasons.
Firstly, there are sincere Christian people who are part of Anglican conservative evangelical churches influenced by the Iwerne sub-culture. They need to be equipped with the news and analysis necessary to help them to change the culture of their churches for the better.
Secondly, the abuses committed by leaders in that sub-culture need to be taken with the utmost seriousness. Their victims must not experience any form of minimisation of their abuse. Some may think stressing support for victims is preaching to the choir. But I still have some contacts in the conservative evangelical world and some of the things I have been hearing are disturbing.
I have heard it said of one abuser: “At least he didn’t penetrate anyone.” It would also seem that some within that sub-culture are feeling sorry for themselves in the wake of the abuses the secular media has exposed in their world. They may pay lip-service to safeguarding and supporting victims but in private they seem to be singing a rather self-pitying tune.
Thirdly, there are unfortunately some power-players and careerists who are in positions of leadership both within the wider C of E and its conservative evangelical constituency. They need to be held to account and light needs to be shone on their tendency to pursue their own interests rather than those of the people they should be serving.
In case anyone thinks I am pitching for business from the Smyth documentary, I am fully persuaded that the narrative about the sub-culture that enabled his abuses should come from his victims, not from me.
The danger of spending as much time as I have covering church abuse stories is cynicism. What saves me from this is reflecting on the character of Jesus Christ as he is presented in the four New Testament Gospels. He did not abuse vulnerable humanity. Just the opposite, he engaged with and helped people from all social backgrounds, he healed them and fed them, and according to orthodox Christian belief, he gave his life to redeem us from our sins.
Which leads me onto my final reflection. I have a philosophical reason for believing the Gospels to be true. I do not believe our fallen human nature is capable of inventing the Jesus that the Gospels proclaim.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
