<
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jul/24/jesus-army-fellowship-cult-noel-stanton>
"Until she was six, Philippa Barnes was surrounded by things that were hers.
She had a favourite pair of red-and-white-striped dungarees and a long garden
with a strawberry patch. She had a close-knit family: a mum, dad, two brothers
and a sister, and grandparents who lived near the family home in Surrey. When
her mum made lemon meringue pie, she would pass the curd pan out of the window
to where Philippa was playing so she could lick it clean.
One day, when Philippa was about two years old, a couple stopped by the
family’s church. They, along with their three sons, were on their way to join
the Jesus Fellowship, a Christian community in Northamptonshire led by Noel
Stanton, a charismatic, white-haired pastor. Their enthusiasm was infectious,
and Philippa’s family started visiting the fellowship a few times a year.
At first, Philippa and her siblings loved these trips. Photos from that time of
Cornhill Manor, one of the fellowship’s properties, show high windows looking
out over green fields, airy communal kitchens, and a grand ballroom with a
sprung dancefloor, where members of the community slept on mattresses. It was a
far cry from Woking, where the family lived opposite a noisy train line.
Although Philippa had to spend long religious meetings under her parents’
chairs, shushed and desperately bored, the rest of the weekend could be spent
playing outside.
When Philippa was five, on one of these weekends with the fellowship, something
shifted. One evening, she and her two-year-old brother, as the two youngest
siblings, were put to bed with a baby monitor while her parents went to a
prayer meeting downstairs. “The message was, ‘We can hear you, but we don’t
want to hear you,’” Philippa recalled. She had never before been afraid to
disturb her parents, but when her brother started having diarrhoea and then
both siblings began to vomit, she had to call for them. “My parents came, and
my dad wasn’t too pleased,” she said. “Looking back, I can see they didn’t want
to be embarrassed by being disturbed – they were newbies to the community.” But
the lesson stuck: this new church was more important than she was."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
