From My Bookshelf
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3
Ken Gardiner, The Reluctant Exorcist, Eastbourne, Kingsway Publications, 2002. ISBN 1 84291 074 4.
Availability:
I wrote this review in 2003. Early this year, 2005, I was very sorry to hear that Kingsway had deleted the title from their list, and removed copies from warehousing. Believing that a book of this quality, on such an important subject, must remain on sale, I arranged for copies to be available via Twin Books, to which purchasers are directed. I realise that the endorsement of the book, below, now has a commercial advantage to Twin Books.
John Thomas
I wouldn't mind guessing that this is one of the best short accounts of the experience and advice of an Anglican exorcist that has ever been published. It forms part of Kingsway's "Ministry Guides" series, and as such its purpose and aim is constantly to advise, something which the text never loses sight of. So often, the advice is to act very cautiously - since this is a book that exudes measure, caution, and the need to proceed with authority, and humility. Humility is everywhere in the book, since Gardiner states, in many instances, that he simply does not know the reason for an event, admissions of ignorance that are probably not found in all areas of deliverance ministry. It is most usual in the Church of England for exorcists to come from the "Higher" parts of the church - as in the case of the celebrated Dom Robert Petitpierre, whom Gardiner speaks of, and has been advised by - but here we have someone with an Evangelical (and, he says, Charismatic) background, who is now retired, but was for long official exorcist in the Diocese of Rochester (Church of England dioceses have such people, one or perhaps more, all bound - as Gardiner suggests - by the Bishop's Instructions, and authorised accordingly).
For long the Church of England was hampered by the refusal of some of its members - clergy, that is, and some not junior - to acknowledge the existence and influence of the spiritual realm, people who hid behind a mask of materialism which they probably called "critical", "modernist" or "liberal". Such denials of the truth of the New Testament were "reasoned" away by appeals to the non-factual nature of Scripture and (more importantly) by a totally-gullible acceptance of materialistic modern "knowledge", and ignorance as to its value-bias. Today, such views are heard of less, as the operation of spiritual evil is of much greater intensity and effect, and thus better known and less-deniable. Now, we have moved to the reasonable position of acknowledging the existence of such forces (and the extreme danger of involvement with them, ie. occultism), while cautioning the need never to get such powers and their effects out of proportion. There used to be a kind of Christian - clergyman, perhaps, or theologian - who tried to claim that "belief in devils" was just an "easy way out", a removing of the blame from oneself, or the human race; as usual with such arguments, I believe that the opposite is actually the case, and that the refusal to acknowledge the reality of the "principalities and powers" that St. Paul writes of, is itself the easy way out in that it insulates the person holding such a view from any need to make real commitment to the world-view (and values) which faith in Jesus requires; it is a kind of anti-supernatural demythologisation which enables a foot - at least one - to be kept in the materialist world, in which easy acceptance can be courted. Theological "liberals" above all crave acceptance from the world we live in, and hence conform to its ways; the faith Jesus calls us to involves rejection of the world, and this will inevitably mean rejection by the world.
Gardiner addresses some of these issues in his Chapters 3 ("Deliverance From What?") and 4 ("Who or What Are Demons?"). Another area which is becoming crucial in deliverance ministry (and which seems slowly to be improving) is the relationship ministers have with medical/psychiatric professionals. He argues - as people with experience in this area generally do - for the difference between (and reality of) mental disorder and demonic possession, and tells of a few heartening instances where deliverance ministry and medical profession can work together (I have personally heard of others), though there are still too many of the latter who are bound by the materialist world-view prevalent in those areas.
Reading Gardiner's text, it is easy to know that here is a man utterly filled with faith in Jesus Christ, who trusts not in his own knowledge, experience, or techniques (great though these are), but only in the one name by which evil powers are flouted and ejected, and will finally be destroyed. May the influence of this book, and all its advice and experience, be immense.