Lucy Sixsmith on When the Music Fades: Power, surrender and the Soul Survivor generation

About this episode

Dr Lucy Sixsmith discusses her book on the Soul Survivor generation and the implications of spiritual abuse within the movement.

On the podcast this week, Dr Lucy Sixsmith is interviewed about her new book, When the Music Fades: Power, surrender and the Soul Survivor generation. In the book, she reflects on growing up as part of the Soul Survivor generation, including attending its festivals, and she grapples with the big questions that she and others have been left with in the wake of revelations about its founder, Mike Pilavachi. In September 2023, an investigation by the Church of England’s safeguarding team concluded that Mr Pilavachi had exercised an abuse of power and spiritual abuse (News, 7 September 2023). The following year, a review by Fiona Scolding KC concluded that the abuse of power had been enabled by a wholesale failure of organisational culture at Soul Survivor (News, 4 October 2024). The book goes beyond Soul Survivor to the wider culture of Charismatic Evangelicalism in Britain in the 1990s and 2000s. One of the books aims, she says, was to try to evoke this environment, “to put out into the world: this is what it was like, this is what a lot of us who are now 30- or 40-somethings experienced as teenagers.” An extract from the book is published in this week’s edition of the Church…

People in this episode

Host: Madeleine Davies

Guest: Dr Lucy Sixsmith

Topics covered

• Soul Survivor generation
• spiritual abuse
• Charismatic Evangelicalism
• organizational culture
• personal reflection
• youth experiences

Keywords

• Soul Survivor
• spiritual abuse
• Dr Lucy Sixsmith
• Charismatic Evangelicalism
• Mike Pilavachi
• Church of England
• youth culture
• organizational failure

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Church of England, Soul Survivor, Canterbury Press, Church Times

Books & works: When the Music Fades: Power, surrender and the Soul Survivor generation

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