Socrates or Buddha?become like bad parents. They don’t trust enough to let be. It
also posits a theory as to why that happens: the parent/church
is unable to be a good-enough parent/church because it is too
anxious about itself. It’s unsure of its own secure base, probably
as a result of feeling threatened by the secular world. And so it
plays out that insecurity on those who look to it for security,
the game becoming more destructive with those who are most
vulnerable – children, gays, divorcées, women.
The result in the child – and by extension the individual who
has fallen out with their community of faith – is anxiety. At
fi rst, this may well be repressed, in a doomed attempt to main-
tain an attachment with the institution. But eventually the
resentment that builds up becomes uncontainable, whence the
anger. This is often shown in essentially adolescent behaviour.
For myself, I can remember this phase quite vividly. When I was
still a priest, the church newspaper I read arrived on a Friday
and I would rush to the doormat to open it, searching for stories
that fed my discontent – news of a bishop who’d uttered illib-
eral views, or a vote that had rejected progressive reforms. It was
a kind of self-harming, and a symptom of an inability to take
responsibility for myself, also called growing up. For a while, it
was compulsive.
Bowlby describes such activities as ‘aberrant forms of care-
eliciting behaviour’. I turned to the paper ostensibly seeking
comfort, but simultaneously seeking to have my fears confi rmed.
What this also means is that it is the person who has turned
their back on the church who is most likely to become the most
vociferous campaigner against the church: it is as if they want
to destroy the parent that has rejected them, a rage that is con-
sciously expressed as disgust at Christian values. The individual
who is merely indifferent to the church, who has never had a
parent-like relationship with it, is hardly likely to fi nd the energy
required to write the books, issue the press releases, march on
the streets, maintain the websites. It’s a vicious circle, as well as
frequently being vicious in tone. But alongside the hurt, there’s
a more subtle feeling too: a sense of loss.