Well, this little saga seems to be rumbling on. My friends, Steve Kneale and Stephen Watkinson run a podcast called Building Jerusalem. They recently tackled questions around the Brephos/Keswick Convention dispute.
Brephos have now responded. First, they posted a short podcast encouraging their supporters to go and listen to the podcast. However, they also made clear their own views about the podcast upfront with Dave Brenna talking about “this is what we are up against.” That’s not really setting people up to listen open mindedly.
They then followed up with their own podcast here.
I thought it might be worth picking up on what they are arguing and working through it. I will do this in part 2 of this response. First though, as the podcast goes briefly over the Brephos narrative also adds some comments about dialogue, it maybe worth going over the background a little again.
It is worth noting that this dispute centres on two parachurch organisations. This is important because in fact (and indeed missing from their response), are crucial questions about what The Church, local churches and individual Christians or groups of Christians are responsible for, how those things relate and who is accountable to who.
Now in his short podcast, Dave Brennan says that he has reached out to Steve Kneale to invite him to either come onto Brephos’ podcast or alternatively asking if Steve come host him on Building Jerusalem. Tim Lewis repeats this on the response podcast and then goes on to say that there has been no response from Steve. It is worth making two observations here. First of all, this can give the impression of awkwardness, a refusal to engage but are they certain that Steve has received their request. In comparison, I wrote to CBR UK, Brephos’ parent organisation setting out significant questions, that they needed to answer. I know that they received the questions because I received an acknowledgement email. I also know that they do read my articles on Faithroots because they’ve commented on them. So, I think it is legitimate for me to note that I haven’t yet received a response.
Indeed, in this case, I checked with Steve and as things stand he isn’t able to find any communication from Brephos. They may wish to check their drafts folder!*
However, even if Steve received such an offer, I don’t think there is any obligation on him to engage. You will note that this feels very similar to the initial issue about Brephos’ expectations on Keswick. More of which later However, I note that when I first wrote about the dispute, Andrew Stephenson, CBR UK’s founder/Director wrote a comment to me on my Facebook page saying that he would love to talk more. My response was that I was very happy to engage but a good faith conversation couldn’t go ahead when they were throwing about unfounded accusations and worse still, insinuations about my brothers and sisters in Christ. Rather than taking a step back, Andrew sadly doubled down so I had to conclude that a good faith conversation was not possible. This is crucial, you don’t have friendly, cosy chatsa with those who are attacking you and your brothers and sisters.
Further, I may be being a little bit picky here but when you are the parachurch organisation and you describe a church pastor as “a sort of church leader…” as Stephen Watkinson is described on the podcast, then I think you are getting things a bit upside down. And there again I think is the imbalance of things. Tim Lewis states that whilst they appreciate people engaging with their ministry, they have serious concerns about the podcast. Yet, they seem to miss the point here. Church leaders are expressing serious concerns about how their parachurch organisation operates.
Now, in Tim’s version of what happened at Keswick, the general gist of it seems to be that they chose to put on a public education display in Keswick, that the display was of a living foetus and that it was this that saddened the Convention. A big theme throughout the past few weeks has been “how can you be offended by a picture of a living unborn baby in the womb?” He also states that the Convention asked them in no uncertain terms not to come to Keswick during the Convention and not to put on their display. He also complains that the Convention listened to second hand reports about what they were doing and what had happened, rather than getting their version. He compares this to Acts 19 and suggests that this would be like Christians elsewhere hearing about the riots in Ephesus and condemning Paul based on pagan evidence rather than going to him first. He insists that the Convention do not own the town and so can’t tell people what to do and not do there.
As I said in my original article, on the face of it, if this were the case, it might look as though Brephos have been badly wronged. However, it is worth noting three things here. First, that in Ephesus Paul was specifically there as a missionary/apostle to preach the Gospel and this was what led to controversy. Secondly, in terms of their scenario, the Convention team were not some Christians at a distance but were there, on the ground in the town, already going about their business.
Now, to keep going with their analogy, the Convention team are brothers and sisters in Christ, yet there doesn’t seem too much of an effort to hear their side of the story. Rather, we are told what they did, what their motives were etc without any evidence. This is important because the dispute has been framed as offence at an image and preservation of reputation. Yet, even by Brephos’ own account, when you look further at the detail, this is not the case.
By CBR UK/Brephos’ own account, the back story is that they previously requested to be included in the Convention’s programme, particularly at last year’s convention which focused on what it means to be human. The Convention decded that this was not possible, for whatever reason. So, Brephos went to Keswick specifically because they wanted to engage with Convention attendees. As I’ve explained before, no the Convention don’t own the town. However, once someone is specifically there because of them and seeking to access eople at their event and once that has an impact on their neighbours in the town, then yes, it does become their issue.
Tim goes on to attack the Convention’s record on being pro-life. This includes complaining that they only found one specific lecture on the topic of abortion during the week and it seems that Tim didn’t like one minor side point about counselling approaches in the lecture. Now, the facts of the matter are that the specific talk was not just any old side lecture but the main Keswick Lecture for the week. Primarily the Convention is a Bible teaching week not a conference to focus on topics. They do run seminar programmes and the lecture represents an opportunity to put centre stage focus on one issue. So the Convention didn’t relegate the topic of abortion to some backroom, fringe event. Furthermore, the Convention have covered beginning and end of life ethics in the past. Finally, even if the Convention doesn’tt run seminars or lectures on this or that topic is really beside the point. The Convention has its own remit and does not have to try and cover every issue that Christians might or should care about.
So, when Brephos take offence at the suggestion that they “piggy backed” Keswick and claim not to understand what the term means, then the direct response is that this is overtly and obviously what they did, by their own testimony. They state that they were specifically there during that week because the Conventioners were their target audience. It is also clear that they did this because they were unable to get a stall in the Earthworks exhibition and they also make it clear that they have a low opinion of other past contributors at the Convention on the subject. So, let’s be clear, they were only there because of the 5000 Christians in the town who were there because of the Convention. Without the Convention, they had no target audience.
Whilst we don’t have specific details from the Convention themselves about their reasons, I think there is enough here to give us a feel for why they might be concerned about Brephos’ approach to engaging with them.
One of the questions I raised with CBR UK centred on the framing of the dispute as offence at a beautiful image of life. My understanding is that CBR UK normally display both an image of living foetus and an aborted foetus. Now, I would not use that approach myself in snap shot open air engagement but I accept that it is their right to follow this approach if they believe it to be effective. However, this still leaved the question unanswered as to why they switched from the two image display to the single image display at Keswick. It begins to look like a form of “bait and switch” tactic. You know full well that you have a reputation for using tactics and that others may be uncomfortable with them. You draw the controversy and thn you point out that you hadn’t actually used those tactics and so you ask “why are people offended at this lovely thing we did.” I say “begins to look like” because this is the appearance given. I could be wrong on this but I do believe that CBR UK/Brephos need to offer a clear explanation. .
So, what we have is situation where Brephos offer a headline interpretation of what happened with insinuations about the Convention’s motives. The result is that they are joined by others in a pile on accusing the Convention of all kinds of sin including cowardice and demanding Keswick’s repentance. This includes an open letter to the Convention as well as various blogs and podcasts. This is reported in the Christian media with an unfavourable spin against Keswick. Yet, even when you dig into their own version of events, the detailed narrative does not support the claims and accusations. On that basis, I would once again urge those wo signed the open letter to the convention to withdraw their signatures.
I think too that what we see here is a narrative about Keswick which is meant to feed into a wider narrative about the Evangelical Church. In the podcast, Tim talks about the EA’s political attitudes survey before the General Election. He is seeking to rebut Steve’s suggestion that we agree that abortion is wrong. He argued that there is no Evangelical consensus because when asked if a manifesto commitment to reduce the abortion limit to less than 24 weeks would make you more or less likely to vote for that party, a small proportion (14%) said it would make them less likely. It is worth noting that those “more or less likely to vote” questions are fraught with difficulties when it comes to interpreting them. We don’t know the reasoning of those answering. We also don’t know much about those who said “less likely”. Agreeing to take part in the EA’s survey does not indicate whether people are mature, well taught Christians, it doesn’t tell us if they are on the fringes, it potentially included the broadest range of those identifying Evangelical. Even still, a significant majority (66%) said that it would make them more likely to vote for a party or candidate. In fact the result of the survey does indicate an Evangelical consensus.
The brosder narrative is of a cowardly, compromised church and so Dave Brennan has also previously attacked Christians, pastors and churches for going along with COVId measures.
I will say more about Brephos’ interaction with the Building Jeruslam podcast in part two, However, I wanted to pick up on three final examples of things that make good faith conversation difficult. Dave and Tim have both focused heavily on ana analogy that Steve Kneale draws between how they operate and his own observations from his Masters’s research on Northern Irish politics during the troubles. Dave and Tim take issue with being compared to the IRA and to Just Stop Oil because they are not terrorists and because they don’t disrupt people’s lives o endanger them. In other words “How can y compare us to the bad guys, we are the good guys.”
Secondly, later in the discussion Tim cites Romans 13 re obeying the authorities but then notes the qualification of obeying God not men where there is a conflict. He gives the example of prayer being outlawed outside abortion clinics. Then says about whether Steve would argue we should comply with that law “I just don’t know.”. Notice moves from seeking to discuss and understand to implied doubt over whether or not Steve would encourage us to obey God and man. He does so by throwing in xn example not mentioned by Steve. Once again, this is not an example of healthy, good faith dialogue.
In fact what he does is he takes something (obedience to authorities) argues that it is more nuanced and complex than sound black DND white applications might suggest. Then he in effect demands a black and white answer on a specific scenario. .
Thirdly, because Keswick and Stephen Kneale (as have I too) have made it clear that their issue is not with the question of right to life, those of us who have responded have focused onlooking at Brephos’ tactics/approach. Yet, this results in the claim that the unborn baby doesn’t get much of a mention. In fact Steve is accused of airbrushing the unborn baby out. This is just emotional manipulation again an attempt to suggest that if you don’t frame things the way we do, don’t use the language we do, don’t follow the tactics we do then you don’t really care..
Well, I think they know full well what the point of the analogy was. It’s a bit disingenuous to suggest you are being called terrorists. Perhaps Steve could have used another example, for example one might think of Neil Kinnock’s conflict with Militant in the 1980s the emergence of Momentum under Jeremy Corbyn or differences over tactics between different Brexit campaigns and for those north of the border between the SNP and Alba. The point is obvious, when you have a faction that see themselves as the purists you risk a situation where they are unable to disagree on tactics or hear criticism of their approach without believing that those disagreeing are the enemy.
Let’s go back again to Dave Brennan’s description of the podcast as an example of the sort os of obstacles that Brephos face. There’s real danger when we begin to see anyone who takes a different approach, anyone who challenges us as an obstacle. There are lessons for local church life there too. It’s not great for relationships and certainly not the basis for good faith conversation.
I would still love for a healthy conversation between those who agree on the value of life made in God’s image but disagree on approaches. In the meantime, I intend to follow up soon with a look at the specific arguments made in the Brephos podcast.
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*I should add, not least to hopefully save Steve from being inundated with further requests for comment that he is only aware of the response because I mentioned it to him.
**As this is a hot topic conversation, I’ve opened up comments.
Faithroots 