‘We could hear the screams’: Inside the Jesus Army
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A small Christian commune that aspired to create heaven on Earth grew to become a cult in which sexual and physical abuse was perpetuated in plain sight.
The Jesus Army church recruited thousands of people to live in close-knit, puritanical communities in Northamptonshire, London and the Midlands.
One of the UK’s most abusive cults, it is now the subject of a new BBC documentary and podcast.
They trace the story from its hippy origins as the Jesus Fellowship, through the high-profile launch of the Jesus Army in the late 1980s, to its shocking collapse in the 2000s when the truth about life inside the church started to emerge.
Two survivors have been sharing their experiences.
“I always had these yearnings for a lifestyle that was different to the materialistic lifestyle,” he explains.
“This feeling that striving for wealth didn’t equate to happiness, and I didn’t feel attached to material property in the way that a lot of my friends seemed to be.”
In 1976, aged 18, John was told that in the village of Bugbrooke, near Northampton, a Christian preacher called Noel Stanton had created a “communal lifestyle” that had attracted hundreds of young people.
After saving some money, John travelled from his home in Kent to experience it for himself and soon saw the attraction.
“I remember a guy called Andy out in the garden. He was doing some weeding and I remember him singing away to himself while he was doing it.
“And so that was the first thing that really struck me, just how happy everybody looked. I could feel myself melting.”
For that life, though, sacrifices needed to be made because “any kind of entertainment was wrong,” John says.
“So no more cinema, no more television. And from now on, I would have to stop listening to any music.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2je7l06mgo.
