NEW WINE has apologised to an assistant curate who encountered racism, homophobia, and conversion therapy while participating in an internship at one in all its churches in 2013 and 2014.
In an announcement last week, New Wine said that the church where the Revd Dr Augustine Tanner-Ihm had spent a “Discipleship Year” placement had “conducted its own investigation and made a full apology to him”.
It also made its own apology: “We are deeply sorry for what he experienced during that point, for the failures in our systems, governance and culture that allowed it to occur, and for the ways through which we didn’t respond adequately to his disclosure within the years that followed. New Wine also acknowledge that a part of what Augustine experienced was shaped by unconscious bias and racial prejudice.”
The statement said that it had didn’t conduct a “sufficiently robust vetting process” of the church involved, and that each the complaints system and its response to Dr Tanner-Ihm’s disclosures over nearly a decade had been “inadequate. We didn’t listen well, and we didn’t act.”
In the wake of an independent lessons-learned review, New Wine had, the statement said, made “substantial changes over the past two years”, including strengthening safeguarding policies and processes, improving procedures for choosing Discipleship Year placement churches, and enhancing practices for safer recruitment into leadership roles.
“We are deeply grateful to Augustine for his courage in bringing this matter to us,” it said. “His voice has been instrumental in driving significant change inside New Wine.”
Dr Tanner-Ihm, who’s American, took part within the Discipleship Year on the age of 23, having accomplished a Master’s degree in Chicago. He was placed at Frontline Church, an independent Evangelical church in Wavertree, Liverpool.
He told the Church Times on Tuesday that he had come out as “same-sex attracted” earlier in 2013, and had been told by the church that they ran a gaggle for individuals with such “struggles”. Having initially been allocated to a houseshare with other men, he was placed with a family, which, he said, was “not probably the most inclusive”.
Once per week, he was expected to attend a “LIFE Ministry” (Living in Freedom Eternally) group — a ministry established in New York by Ron and Joanne Highley to “set people free from homosexuality through the reality and power of God and His Son, Jesus Christ”. It was a “horrible experience”, he said.
At the time, he held to the theology of the Living Out movement, which seeks to encourage “those that experience same-sex attraction [to] flourish through faithfulness to biblical teaching on sexuality and identity”. But this was thought to be “too liberal” by Frontline, which advocated a more “Pentecostal” theology of looking for healing, he said.
In 2024, he told the Liverpool Echo: “There were whispers, after which there was shouting. They had their warm hands on you attempting to get the spirits out of you and so that you can be healed. It was very intense.” This was not a “one-off” occurrence, he said this week.
From 2015 until recently, he had talked to people in New Wine about his experiences, all of whom had ignored or dismissed him, he said. After using social media to attract attention to his concerns, it had taken almost two years to secure an apology.
“I’m not one in all those people who find themselves in search of trouble,” he said. “My churchmanship continues to be Charismatic Evangelical, although, unfortunately, due to my sexuality, I haven’t been in a position to lead churches like that.” He was conscious of the “repercussions” of speaking out, fearing that “it’s going to be harder to get a job.”
In 2017, Dr Tanner-Ihm began training for ministry at Cranmer Hall, Durham. In 2020, the then Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, apologised to him after he was rejected for a title post within the diocese. The rejection letter had said that “the demographic of the parish is monochrome white working class, where you would possibly feel uncomfortable” (News, 26 June 2020).
He is currently serving his title at St James and Emmanuel Church, Didsbury, and as lead minister at St Nicholas’s, Kingsway, but is contemplating leaving Church of England ministry next January.
His experiences within the Church had been “traumatic”, he said. “I still love the Church. . . But for me, I would like a season of healing.” The story of Zacchaeus had been vital to him, he said, due to its emphasis on restitution.
“I don’t hate New Wine,” he said. “I feel, overall, New Wine does really great things to assist equip Christians to exit and share the excellent news of Jesus Christ with people. . . I just think that historically that they had some really bad leadership.”
Last yr, he addressed the Labour Party Conference on the subject of conversion therapy. “I really have the desire to make a society that’s safer for all people,” he said.
