The Battle Centre documentary was first shown on national TV in 2001. It traces several months in the life of one of the Jesus Army homes in London - Battle Centre.
Four characters feature strongly in the narrative:
Steve, the house Elder.
Billy, described as the house 'father figure'.
Alec, a twenty/thirty(ish) Scottish JA rookie.
Keith, a seventeen-year-old runaway.
I knew Steve from way back when. We called him Steve 'Capable' in those days - 'Capes' for short. Many people had what we called virtue names: especially if you were a Steve, or a Dave, or a John, and needed to be distinguished from all the other Steves and Daves and Johns. I was one John Dilligent - 'Dil' for short (but only to my best mates!!).
Quite a number of people who saw the documentary before I did told me that it hardly portrayed the JA in a very favourable light: not least because Keith, the 17-year-old, is quite literally dumped on the streets and told he can't return to Battle Centre as a resident; Alec gets fed up with the feelings of imprisonment he experiences in the house and leaves; and Billy, who for years has denied his HIV postive status, develops full-blown AIDS and dies.
On the face of it, then, Leo Regan, the investigative film maker, appeared to have done a good job in 'infiltrating' the JA to create another documentary for the 'True Stories' series (and he does indeed deserve tribute for having produced a quite fascinating and incisive film!).
I myself deliberately didn't watch the programme when it first appeared on TV as, having been involved in the production of quite a few programmes about the Jesus Army myself, I had serious doubts about how effective it would be; and I suspected it would trigger off many negative reactions which I would have preferred not to have to deal with at that particular time.
My first viewing of Battle Centre, therefore, was earlier this year. Here are some of my feelings about it.
Even though many negative features were exposed and shrewd observations made, the film gave the viewer plenty of scope to believe that this was all part and parcel of the Jesus Army's radical lifestyle: the unfortunate consequence of their commitment to roll up their sleeves and dirty their hands in service of the many hurting people whom they were trying to help. The hypocritical, dissembling, manipulative aspects of their lifestyle were not really brought to light; I found myself wanting to shout at the TV screen. In truth, those aspects were there for all to see; but I wonder how many people were able to see them?
We were introduced to the Jesus Army with shots of Steve weeping for all those hurting people out there on the streets of London. Genuine tears? Genuine pain? Probably, yes! Geunine, that is, insofar as they represented deeply felt emotion. Forgive me, Steve, but all kinds of people, in all kinds of situations FEEL empathy with the suffering of others. It's not good enough, however, to just FEEL empathy: it's what you do with that emotion, what the practical consequences of it are, that's all important.
"So many hurting people out there"
After some quite probing discussions with several of the Battle Centre members, during which it transpires that Billy is a former homosexual, Leo takes up the story of Keith - an adolescent who, having run away from his foster home, has been 'picked up' by the Jesus Army; presumably during one of the occasions when Jesus Army members go walkabout on the streets of London and invite people back for refreshments on one of their brightly coloured double-decker buses. The important thing to note here is that the Jesus Army came to Keith; Keith didn't go to the Jesus Army.
Jesus Army bus out in the London night
"Bring them to the bus , Lord" intones a Jesus Army zealot.
Keith is taken back to Battle Centre and invited to stay. Only then does the truth about his circumstances and family background come to light. Perhaps a little late, Steve, to be ringing your hands over the fact that you have an under age runaway under your roof?
Keith proves to be quite a handful over the coming days. Even though he is obviously deeply attached to the Battle Centre household, he doesn't show the signs of Christian conversion and commitment that the leaders are looking for. One of the Jesus Army members, Chris, who is described as Keith's 'Shepherd', is instructed to tell Keith that he must leave. "THEY don't think you can stay here any longer," he explains, the pain of having to come out with something which he plainly doesn't agree with being all too obvious.
"You can't stay here with us"
Keith: "So, I'm going to be homeless again?"
Keith is taken out in a car with Billy, the father figure, who tries to help him find a bed for the night in a local hostel.
Unsuccesful, Billy then unceremoniously dumps Keith out of the car and tells him he's on his own and
will need to fend for himself. Reflecting on these events, Steve Capable tries to explain:
"I can't be responsible for everyone I invite into the house for a few days, Leo......But goodness me. There's how many thousands of people out there
out there on the streets? I can't be responsible for them all. Neither must I take the weight of the world on my shoulders
................"
".......it's not MY problem."
Uh, Uh? Am I going a bit cuckoo here or what? Is the same bloke who we saw not so long
ago weeping over all the hurt out there on the streets of London?
Forgive me once again, Steve, if I ask just a few questions.
If you're not going to accept responsibility, what are you doing inviting the likes of Keith
back to your house in the first place? Is it because your heart bleeds for them as we heard you telling us? If so, then why
can't you be responsible for them once they are under your roof? Why do they have to be ditched when they're still so vulnerable?
Why do they have to be ditched when you decide that they don't fit in?
Is it anything to do with the fact that your intention all along was to convert them to your lifestyle?
Nothing wrong with that, as such, so long it's made plain in the first place amd you come clean
about what's really going on...here's a suggestion for what you might like to sayL
"We'd like to invite you back to our house where we will introduce you to what we believe and the
way we live. If you then convert to our faith and lifestyle, you can stay with us. If we ourselves don't
think that you are suitable, then you'll have to leave."
Something along those lines, maybe? Is that the kind of thing you say to the people
whom you boast about 'saving from the streets'? Do you give it to them straight, from the word go? Well, do you?
Please spare me all the sanctimonious cant about
the way you care for the poor and needy if what you really mean is that, in keeping with the
Calvinistic dogma of the Jesus Fellowship, you want to save all those lost people out there in
the Kingdom of the World and bring them into the Kingdom of the Elect, the Kingdom of the
Saved.
Speak it the way it is, then at least I could maybe find it within me to respect you.
The documentary finishes with an eulogy to Billy, who dies from AIDS during filming. A poignant
event saturated with sadness.
Was I the only one who was angry that, for so long, his illness went undiagnosed? That leading
members of Battle Centre had believed this patently-ill, withered man was suffering from depression? Please will
someone explain to me why it was that he was not urged to seek treatment months before he
eventually did?
To my mind, Billy's treatment within Battle Centre was another indictment on the way in which individual dignity and integrity is subordinated to fit in with the Jesus Army's grand spiritual interpretation about the nature of this world and its inhabitants. There is enormous scope for great psychological and emotional damage when individuals derive their identity from their membership of a society that substitutes the way things really are for a vision of what they believe they should be: it exerts extreme pressure on people to deny the truth about themselves and conform to an identity that is fashioned by the society's beliefs - and the more radical those beliefs, the greater the potential for harm.
No doubt the Jesus Army would argue that this is what Christian discipleship is all about: denying your own life to
follow Christ. Personally, I see it as denying your own life to satisfy some quite outrageous expectations
of those whom I regard, at best, as extremely misguided people.
And it is this which lies at the very root of my objection to the Jesus Army!