‘Iwerne taught me how to fear God. It took years to learn how to love him’

Iwerne shaped me in ways I’m still unravelling. Though I never met John Smyth QC, I was immersed in the same theological architecture—one that sanctified silence and wrapped shame in the certainty of divine judgement.

For those unfamiliar: the Iwerne network centred around elite evangelical holiday camps founded in the 1930s, designed to shape Christian leaders from Britain’s top private schools. While aiming to instil faith and discipline, these camps later became notorious for their links to spiritual and physical abuse. Smyth is now recognised as the CofE’s most prolific serial abuser. But long before any of those revelations surfaced, a deeply coercive culture had already taken root.

While not every Iwerne camp was abusive, the culture as a whole created conditions where toxic theology could thrive unchecked. Many, I imagine, emerged unscathed. But many—like me—emerged carrying physical and psychological wounds.

At age 17, I was told that men who have sex with men are no different from men who have sex with animals. That kind of rhetoric doesn’t just shame—it silences. We were taught that gay people go to hell. Women were barred from leading worship in front of men.

The culture was not merely conservative—it was coercive. And it was embedded in Britain’s most elite schools, where boys were sent to learn that being gay meant damnation and that a girl’s place was in the kitchen, not at the altar-table.

This wasn’t fringe theology. It was mainstream evangelicalism, dressed in prestige and reinforced by silence. Iwerne taught me how to fear God. It took years to learn how to love him.

The Dissonance of Faith

Before Iwerne, I had experienced a broader church. Westminster Abbey had shown me a vision of Anglicanism that embraced diversity of thought and treated LGBT clergy with dignity. The contrast was jarring. At Stowe, the chaplaincy was run by conservative evangelicals who taught hardline penal substitution and dismissed other traditions as heretical. Their interpretation of scripture was presented not as one view, but as the only view.

The cognitive dissonance was unbearable. And when I was selected for Anglican ordination training, I was actively discouraged from speaking about Iwerne by the Diocesan Director of Ordinands. This article is the first time I’ve named it publicly.

The shame I was made to feel—the sense of being dirty, unworthy—has never fully left me. It still mars my mind.

From Shame to Grace

Healing began when I encountered the work of Joanna Collicutt, who encouraged us to evoke the name “Abba”—the word Jesus used to speak of God with intimacy and tenderness. It helped me move away from the image of an Angry Sky Daddy and toward a God of accompaniment.

Years later, Jesuit formation deepened that shift. Grace became not a weed killer to poison the bad, but a force that perfects nature and grows us up in Jesus. Matteo Ricci’s theology taught me that “encounters need not merely touch—they can transfigure.”

In my book, The Gold Standard, I write: “The theology of penal substitution, when weaponised, taught that suffering was salvific, that obedience was redemptive, and that silence was holy.” That theology shaped a generation of leaders. But it also left many of us fractured, unseen, and afraid to speak.

What Needs to Change

The Church must do more than revise safeguarding policies. It must interrogate the culture that allowed abuse to flourish.

That means asking hard questions about theologies that reward obedience and punish difference. About leadership models that prize polish over presence. About language that shames rather than dignifies.

Many evangelical leaders may not shift their doctrine on sexuality or gender roles. But they can—and must—change the way they speak about LGBT people. They can choose dignity over dogma. They can create spaces where difference is not feared but welcomed. Parents and educators must remember that the Body of Christ is already richly diverse. If our theology cannot dignify the lives of LGBT people and women, we must ask whether it reflects the compassion of Christ or the constraints of culture.

We must listen to the movement of the Holy Spirit—and feel institutional guilt that the work of empowering the marginalised is being done more by the prevailing spirit of the age than by the Church. We were once at the vanguard: freeing slaves, campaigning for workers’ rights. Now, tragically, we see scripture weaponised by some to oppress the very people it was meant to liberate.

Headmasters must be vigilant about the chaplains they employ. A big smile and nice hair do not guarantee a kind heart or theology that dignifies the human person. The biblical laments, especially Psalm 22 and Habakkuk, challenge any rigid portrayal of God. They present a divine presence that contends with pain, waits in uncertainty, and mourns alongside us. If a Chaplain cannot handle this, a Headmaster should not be employing them. 

Kintsugi Grace

The cover of The Gold Standard features a kintsugi pot—an ancient Japanese art form in which broken ceramics are repaired with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The cracks are not hidden. They are illuminated. The object becomes more beautiful not despite its damage, but because of it.

In many ways, that pot is me.

Jesus embodied quiet brilliance: born in mystery, raised in obscurity, and executed as a criminal. Yet through him, we live a resurrection life—free from guilt and shame, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Abba’s life-giving Spirit is a gift.

I believe leadership must be rooted in presence, not polish. In accompaniment, not authority. And in grace that dignifies, not doctrine that divides.

The Church has an opportunity to lead differently. To form leaders who are emotionally intelligent, spiritually grounded, and culturally aware. Leaders who know that healing begins not with silence, but with voice.

To any young person who feels unseen in their church: through baptism, you are just as much a part of the Church as your minister, your priest, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. And as Jesus said, “It would be better for someone to tie a millstone around their neck and throw themselves into the sea than to harm one of these little ones.” (Luke 17:2) Churches must audit not just safeguarding policies, but the theological assumptions embedded in their preaching and pastoral care.

The Gold Standard by James Gordon Reid Haveloch-Jones is available now