WHEN does religious fervour tip over into madness? In Stuart Flinders’s study of a Victorian cult on the fringes of the Established Church, the tension between insanity and zeal hangs over every chapter. As The Times asked in 1860, were the worshippers who gathered at “The Abode of Love” being led by “a religious enthusiast, a lunatic or an adventurer”?
We read about court cases where young women who joined the congregation were denounced as hysterical by their bewildered families, and detained in asylums. And the priests at the heart of the cult, James Henry Prince and John Smyth-Pigott, were accused of being “blasphemous buffoons” and suffering from “Messianic delusion”. We are left wondering how Christ might be received if the Second Coming truly did happen in Somerset or the London suburbs.
A Very British Cult tells the story of two charismatic spiritual leaders who used their claims to be “the Holy Ghost personified”, or, indeed, “the Son of Man himself”, to groom and fleece their followers. Their devotees, who became known as “Agapemonites”, handed over their worldly goods in anticipation of the End Times. These offerings paid for a comfortable country house, where the congregation waited to be “translated”. On the surface, with its servants, stables, and croquet lawns, “The Abode of Love” looked like a genteel hotel. It was, however, both a cloister and a fortress. Journalists who tried to report on claims of sexual and financial improprieties within its walls found that the residents were forbidden to talk about their experiences.
As a result, Flinders’s narrative is mostly drawn from legal complaints against the group, or lurid speculation in the contemporary press. Still, some things are clear. Women who joined the group were deliberately isolated from their friends. If they tried to return home, they were told that they were “full of the devil” and shunned by the community. At least one follower, Mary Maber, took her own life after leaving all her property to the Clapton “Messiah”. It is also beyond question that both Prince and Smyth-Pigott abused the women in their flock. They took “spiritual brides”, and Smyth-Pigott declared: “We are all one here and follow the desires of the flesh.”
This exploitation of vulnerable people by church leaders inevitably raises worrying parallels with more recent scandals within the Church. Flinders does not, however, interrogate the reasons that this abuse was possible; nor does he fully address how survivors lived with the consequences of “Beloved’s” actions. He gestures towards other newly formed faith groups — the Salvation Army, Theosophists, and Mormons — without offering an argument about why, as he says, “many believed the end of the world was really nigh”.
This is a tightly focused historical study of a disturbing sect. Perhaps it would be useful, sometimes, to see the bigger picture, too.
Dr Suzanne Fagence Cooper is a cultural historian with an interest in Victorian and 20th-century Britain.
A Very British Cult: Rogue priests and the abode of love
Stuart Flinders
Icon Books £20
(978-1-83773-147-3)
Church Times Bookshop £18
