At the height of its influence in 1991, when the Nine O’Clock Service had its American premiere on Halloween weekend in San Francisco, it was known for taking a postmodernist approach to liturgy. Now, it is better known for its founder’s postmodernist understanding of sexual experimentation, and its leader faces 34 charges of sexual crimes.
Former members are talking with church leaders about their painful experiences with the community. For women, this included expectations of varying levels of sexual intimacy with Christopher Brain, who resigned his ministry as a Church of England priest in 1995.
“We can confirm a group of survivors of the appalling conduct at the Nine O’Clock Service in the Diocese of Sheffield, which originally surfaced in the 1990s, have contacted the Church of England. Their concerns and harrowing testimonies are being taken very seriously. Support is being offered and the church is working closely with the statutory authorities.”
Brain faces 33 charges of indecent assault and one charge of rape. Those charges apply to Brain’s relationship with 11 women who joined the community between 1981 and 1995.
Brain, 66, now works in a consultancy in Manchester. Most mass media reports have mistakenly referred to Brain as an “evangelical priest.” Through most of the Nine O’Clock Service’s history, it conducted a thorough deconstruction of the Holy Eucharist, the doctrines of Anglicanism, and sexual ethics.
In a 1995 documentary by the BBC, Brain referred to breaking ties with what he considered a fundamentalist understanding of Christianity, especially once the community began holding its services in the Ponds Forge sports arena rather than its original base at St. Thomas Church Crookes, Sheffield.
In 1994, when the Nine O’Clock Service met in the crypt of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Brain and the prepared liturgy referred repeatedly to a lifeforce.
“As Christ is behind the creative explosion started at the Big Bang, and is the lifeforce of nature’s continuing rebirth on its journey to fulfillment, we break the bread of the universe and drink the blood of the cosmos, a microcosm of the vast macrocosm,” Brain wrote in an essay for Treasures in the Field, a book about worldwide Anglicanism’s efforts during the Decade of Evangelism. Accordingly, Brain alternated between calling the elements “the body and blood of Christ” and “the life of the universe.”
Brain and his team came to America at the invitation of Matthew Fox, a Dominican priest who was in frequent conflict with the Vatican because of his emphases on panentheism and his attacks on Augustine’s teachings on original sin. Fox was expelled from the order when he refused orders to move from Oakland to Chicago.
Fox said that Bishop William Swing extended a hand of hospitality and welcome, and when the Nine O’Clock Service met in Grace Cathedral, Fox was completing his studies toward becoming an Episcopal priest. Fox continued offering a variation on the Nine O’Clock Service, which he called the Cosmic Mass.
Bishop Swing attended the service in 1991 and expressed his approval. At a news conference, Swing described the service as “the church singing a new song.”
“We kicked the Canaanites out of the Middle East, and they were a fertility cult, people of the earth. The worst thing you can call someone today is a pantheist,” he said.
Unlike the Nine O’Clock Service, Fox’s Cosmic Mass has been a liturgical experiment but not an attempt at intentional Christian community, and no accusations of abuse have been made against it.
In a documentary by the BBC in 1995, Brain acknowledged sexual involvement with some of the women of the community, and described himself as repentant. He resigned from the priesthood just before the documentary appeared.
Douglas LeBlanc is an Associate Editor and writes about Christianity and culture. He and his wife, Monica, attend St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Henrico, Virginia.
