Miriam Cates

Exorcism is not a word used by mainstream churches.

Church language is extremely context specific and open to misunderstanding. It's a culture.

Prayer ministry is supposed to be supervised and people should have training, precisely to avoid misunderstanding and hurt.

People may use phrases like 'to be delivered from a spirit of fear' which really only means 'help them to suffer less anxiety'.

It doesn't involve holding someone down while you sprinkle holy oil and water around casting out demons.

It's easily misrepresented though.

Note- I'm not saying that no one in any church has ever prayed abusively. It happens. But it's called spiritual abuse and is a safeguarding issue that we are all supposed to recognise and report.

Exorcism is something that churches should be very cautious about. It is controversial within many denominations, and some practices of exorcism appear to me to be unjustifiable.

You are right that exorcism isn’t therapy. The term “conversion therapy” is in itself rather dodgy; the extremes when violence is used are definitely poorly described as “therapy”. Talking therapies are fine in my opinion when they are exploratory, and not fine when they are coercive, at which point they cease to be therapeutic. The dividing line between exploration and coercion perhaps depends on the history and mental state of the person seeing the therapist - what may be OK to say to one resilient person may be abusive to another traumatised person.

There is a grey area in which people may be seen by some as coercive or exerting undue pressure, but they are not being violent. The better churches recognise this, and when praying aloud for people they are led by the person who has asked for prayer, so avoid telling that person how to behave. It is quite possible that St Thomas Philadelphia had members who did not understand or did not follow this principle fully, but at what point is it reasonable to call this “conversion therapy”?

Would it be “conversion therapy” to pray for someone to be set free from a porn addiction, or a compulsive fetish? Not in my opinion, unless undue pressure was put on the person to conform to other people’s moral viewpoint. Would it be “conversion therapy” if someone confessed to voyeurism, and wanted to be free from that compulsion, and church members prayed for them?

Would it be “conversion therapy” if I were to tell my son that I disagree with his worldview and consider his behaviour to be disrespectful to women? Would it be “conversion therapy” if my son put pressure on me to conform to his transgender worldview?

There is a disturbing self-righteousness these days, both in some church circles and in some “progressive” circles, which demonises other worldviews and equates the expression of a moral standpoint with bigotry. Politicians need to be very careful about the reach of the law into grey areas.

Are you saying Miriam Cates is responsible for historic abuse?
Do you have evidence she is a safeguarding risk?

'guilt by association' is a logical fallacy.

Exorcism isn’t therapy. Bit weird to conflate the two.

14 years of a Tory government, no threat to abortion, but another 5 years and abortion would be under threat...

Clutching at straws there.

The timing is now because the official report has just been published. The original story was broken by a local Sheffield website 2 years ago.

Yes, they 're in danger of losing their seats because they're Tories. The Labour 'pro-life' MPs aren't

The bbc don’t report the news. Or at least they are extremely selective about what they report and how.

Oh the irony.

Miriam cates is great. She has made it clear why she supports a conversion ban and that she doesn’t support gay conversion therapy in any form.

This is just more biased nonsense from the BBC. They would never report this in the case of a Muslim MP who had been a trustee of a mosque with dodgy associations. They are no longer fit for purpose

She's also not really GC. She's a strong believer in traditional gender roles (just not for her - she can do what she wants).

I'm not surprised, I've tried to raise Cates and her dangerous attitude to abortion on here before but apparently she can do no wrong.

This.

Just listened to the headlines on Today on catch-up. It was very prominent. The BBC is probably positioning this as pushback against Jane and all the other unfavourable coverage of Labour’s policies.
It’s all they’ve got.