I am guessing that this may be the final instalment in this short blog series about the church destroying families. If you have missed the first two and would like to read them, please click either here for Part One and/or here for Part Two.

So, I broke off at the point at which, under the heavy-handed guidance of the church leaders, my wife and our two youngest children returned to England, leaving our two oldest children and me temporarily homeless on the streets of Berlin.

When we managed to move back into our old apartment, we had no furniture. The churches who had promised to support our older children for three more months stopped their support without warning. So I had to take out a loan and work the night shift in a gas station in order to provide us at least with the basics you require in a family home. I remember that the early weeks together were a real challenge, not only because my oldest son and daughter were trying to come to terms with the sudden implosion of our family but also because they had made some very unpleasant experiences during the few weeks when they were living on the street. For me, too, I missed our two younger children so badly and wanted desperately to see them.

At this point, looking back, the behaviour of the church leaders becomes more and more absurd, and I still do not fully understand why I went along with all their destructive, controlling and even illegal nonsense.

The church leaders forbad me to have any contact with our younger children. They reasoned that the church was there to protect them and my wife from the pernicious, rebellious behaviour of our two older children and me. Were they to be kept away from us, they may well remain Christians. When I pushed and pushed to see them, however, the church leaders after four months agreed to let me see them, on two conditions. First, I had to agree to meet with the leaders in order to undergo a debrief and disciplinary measures, and  secondly, I had to agree that another couple from the church would accompany my wife and younger children when I met them in England since the leaders were fearful that I would try to abduct them and get them swiftly on a plane back to Berlin.

This fear was explicitly communicated to our younger boys, and especially the youngest expressed his concern that I might kidnap him while we were playing at a farm play park together in Sussex. It was such an emotional time. Our older two children, who had flown with me to England, were so damaged that they could not deal with the situation. Meanwhile, our middle son expressed already a wish to return to Germany, to go back to his Berlin school and to rebuild our family again. In his new school near Hastings, he was constantly bullied for being a Nazi (just because he had arrived as a new boy from Germany) and the school had a policy of teaching three classes together in one large room, which meant that there were at least 45 pupils in one class.

After a very tearful good-bye, our oldest son, our daughter and I flew back to Berlin and we tried to rebuild our lives, now at least with the occasional phone call to England in order to keep up a degree of contact with my wife and the younger boys. For the next few months, it was clear that our youngest son was traumatised and unable to understand why he was being separated from his father and siblings, and our middle son, who still desperately wanted to get back to Berlin, was never given any pastoral care by any member of the church.

Then, after just a few months, my wife called me from England and announced, to my amazement, that she was leaving the church and returning to Berlin with the younger boys. I will never forget the date or the moment as I watched my tears of joy discolour the sofa. Our oldest son and daughter were also very surprised, but we prepared for the return of my wife and younger boys and festooned the apartment with banners and balloons.

My wife’s decision to return to Berlin was regarded as a further act of rebellion by the church leaders and it cost her her friends as well as her church membership. She too, like our oldest two children, had now also rebelled and that would be the end of the road as a Christian woman in that church. A church for which she had given up her life, her family and personal career. To this day, the only people who are still in contact with her are either other rebels who have left the church and joined a new congregation or those whose lives who also been shipwrecked by this church.

It is now four years since all this happened. I believe that all six of us are so grateful and relieved that we have managed to escape the imprisonment of this sect. At first, I never believed that I would lose my faith through all that happened, but in time, I did. When you are trapped in a sect, you really do believe all kinds of abject nonsense and so I am also truly glad that I do not believe in God any longer. Ditching my belief in God has been the most liberating experience of my life.

As we as a family have continued to re-build our lives, there continues to be no contact from either the church in Hastings or the church in Berlin.

Of course I know that the church in itself does not destroy families. It’s just that a blog article needs a catchy headline. What can destroy families is delusional religious beliefs, combined with the social structure of a sect, combined with individuals in a church, who, when all the given external circumstances and internal character weaknesses collide in the wrong way, create the destruction of a family. It’s rather like a chemical reaction: if all of the conditions are right, an explosion will happen.

All as I can say is that I have experienced so much more grace, forgiveness, enlightenment and genuine friendship outside of the church than within it. And as I have written several times before, if my writing this blog can help any others to steer clear of religion and/or to escape a sect, then I will have achieved my aim.

1. When was the last time you saw a blind person see again, a lame person able to walk, a dead person raised to life?
2. Why does a loving God allow young children to die in appalling suffering in Yemen or from Ebola in Congo?
3. Whatever happened to God’s promises about a revival of the Christian faith in which millions of people turn to Christ?
4. Do you really believe that God sends believing Muslims, Hindus and people of all other faiths to eternal hell?
5. Are you still struggling with the same sins that you were struggling with ten years ago?
6. Is any part of you being repressed by your faith in God, especially your sexuality?
7. How do you really react, deeply and honestly, to the quotation at the bottom of this page? Your reaction will tell you all that you need to know.