Philippa Stroud

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Philippa Stroud was appointed special adviser to Iain Duncan Smith in May 2010 at the Department for Work and Pensions.

Background

This article is part of the Revolving Door project of Spinwatch.

Stroud graduated from Birmingham University with a degree in French before spending a gap year working with recovering drug addicts in Hong Kong, where she met her husband David Stroud.

Stroud stood as a Conservative Party Parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Ladywood in 2005 and for Sutton and Cheam in 2010, but lost in both elections. She was expected to win the Sutton and Cheam seat from Liberal Democrat Paul Burstow, but Burstow held on to win with a majority of 1,608 votes (despite a 1.5% swing from the Liberal Democrats to the Tories). For her campaign in Sutton and Cheam, Stroud received a donation of £2,000 from the multi-millionaire self-labelled member of the "God squad" Michael Farmer.

Stroud's decision to join the Conservatives was due to her "conviction that the values of personal responsibility and compassion sit best within the Conservative tradition". In an interview in 2009, she was asked about the importance of Christians being involved in politics. Stroud responded:

It is massively important because we have a unique understanding of the value of human beings and we know just how important every single person, regardless of background or of what they can contribute to society. We, possibly more than anybody else, have a responsibility to speak up for the vulnerable. It is an idea that is often referred to in politics but not often understood. Christians, I believe, uniquely carry that vision and that is why we must be involved.

Think tank involvement

Centre for Social Justice

In 2004, Stroud co-founded the Centre for Social Justice with Duncan Smith.

Christian Action Research and Education

Philippa Stroud on the CAREconfidential helpline.

Christian Action Research and Education (CARE) is an evangelical organisation which promotes a homophobic and anti-abortionist conservative agenda. In 2005, Stroud was listed as Head of the CAREconfidential helpline, responsible for "Pregnancy crisis, post-abortion counselling". She has also previously worked as a Visiting Lecturer for CARE.

Religious beliefs

Salt, light, and "joyful female submission"

Philippa Stroud is married to David Stroud, a leader in the Newfrontiers Church. He is a signatory to the Westminster Declaration, a statement backed by "socially conservative" Christians which has been criticised by other Christian organisations, such as the think-tank Ekklesia, the Christian Socialist Movement, the Conservative Christian Fellowship and the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum. The Declaration promotes "a particular interpretation of marriage", while also addressing issues such as abortion, euthanasia and the freedoms of Christians.

Philippa Stroud also attends the Newfrontiers Church. Number 7 of the Church's Vision and Values affirms that:

A Church where Biblical family life is highly valued, where husband and wife embrace male servant leadership and joyful female submission, where godly parenting is taught and practised, and where the special value of singleness and its unique opportunities are affirmed.

Jonathan Bartley, co-director of Ekklesia, asks:

Who would voters be electing in Sutton and Cheam - Philippa Stroud or her husband? The question must be asked whether, in the event she was elected to Parliament, she would on any occasion ‘submit’ to her husband's will and vote in a way that he thought was right, even if it contradicted her own position, the promises she had made to voters, or the manifesto on which she was elected?

Views on abortion

Stroud authored a short comment piece for the newsletter of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) (now removed from their website but available cached) in which she writes on the "hope for change", comparing the anti-abortionist movement to that of Nelson Mandela fighting apartheid.

Accusations of homophobia

In May 2010, The Observer published an article with the byline "Conservative high-flyer Philippa Stroud founded a church that tried to 'cure' homosexuals by driving out their 'demons'". In 1989, Stroud founded the King's Arms Project, a church and shelter in Bedford. The authors quoted several individuals who claimed to have been subjected to "treatment" at the Project:

Abi, a teenage girl with transsexual issues, was sent to the church by her parents, who were evangelical Christians. "Convinced I was demonically possessed, my parents made the decision to move to Bedford, because of this woman [Stroud] who had come back from Hong Kong and had the power to set me free," Abi told the Observer.

"She wanted me to know all my thinking was wrong, I was wrong and the so-called demons inside me were wrong. The session ended with her and others praying over me, calling out the demons. She really believed things like homosexuality, transsexualism and addiction could be fixed just by prayer, all in the name of Jesus.

"T" said he moved to Bedford because he believed the church could help him stop having homosexual thoughts. "I was trying to convince myself that a change was possible but, at the same time, a part of me didn't believe it was possible," he said. "The church's approach was not that it was sinful to be homosexual but that it was sinful to act on it. The aim is to get a person to a position where they don't have these sinful emotions and thoughts."

"T" said it was only after he "took a break" from the church that his depression lifted. "It was the church's attitude towards my sexuality that was the issue," he recalled.

"My impression is that she genuinely cares about people," he said of Stroud. "Her personal beliefs may get in the way sometimes, but she is a positive person."

Also quoted was Angela Paterson, an administrator at the Bedford church, who said: "With hindsight, the thing that freaks me out was everybody praying that a demon would be cast out of me because I was gay. Anything – drugs, alcohol or homosexuality, they thought you had a demon in you."

God's Heart for the Poor

The article in The Observer asserted that "Stroud wrote a book, God's Heart for the Poor, in which she explains how to deal with people showing signs of "demonic activity"". Although Stroud appears to be credited as co-author of 'God's Heart for the Poor' (1999) by online bookshops, the other listed author, Christine Leonard, describes the book as a "ghosted biography/how to for Philippa Stroud".

Interestingly, the article Stroud contributed to Pro-Life Times in 2001 describes Stroud as "co-author of God's Heart for the Poor".

Stroud's response

The Observer subsequently received a complaint from Stroud, summarised by the newspaper as follows:

Since publication, we have received a legal complaint from Philippa Stroud. She disputes the testimonies contained in the article and states that she has helped individuals of all sexual orientations to deal with a multitude of problems such as drug addiction, self-harming, alcoholism, eating disorders, and sexual abuse through prayer as well as offering practical help and advice. She also says that she has never founded a church, let alone a church that tried to 'cure' homosexuals. She has never prayed or advised any person to change his or her sexuality and has never countenanced any person for whom she has had responsibility attempting to question any person's sexual orientation or to re-orient them. In addition, the reference to demonic activity in her book "God's help for the poor' does not relate to sexual orientation but to those who have been involved in occult practices, including violence and sexual abuse. She adds that the New Frontiers Church network is based in the UK and has over 600 branches worldwide of which 220 are in the UK and no more than 30 are in the USA. It is not part of the US Evangelical Movement.

In her statement, Stroud said:

I make no apology for being a committed Christian. However it is categorically untrue that I believe homosexuality to be an illness and I am deeply offended that The Observer has suggested otherwise... The idea that I am prejudiced against gay people is both false and insulting.

When the online magazine PinkNews.co.uk emphasised to Stroud's spokesperson that The Observer's prime claim was not that she believed homosexuality to be an illness, but rather that it seemed she believed homosexuality could be overcome through prayer and the removal of "demons", a spokeperson responded that: "We will not be adding to or subtracting to [sic] the statement."

Pink News journalist Jessica Green reports that John Rubinstein, of law firm Rubinstein Phillips, is representing Stroud. The firm contacted a number of media outlets following the accusations to remind them of their responsibilities under Section 106 of the Representation of the Peoples' Act, which states that it is illegal to publish a false statement of fact relating to character or conduct, unless it can be demonstrated that there were reasonable grounds to believe the statement to be true. While Stroud's response asserted that she was not homophobic, nor believed homosexuality to be an illness, John Rubinstein declined to comment on whether Stroud believes that homosexuality is caused by demonic possession, or that she was part of an organisation which followed this doctrine.

Conservative leader and Prime Minister David Cameron defended Stroud, stating on the BBC's Asian Network that "She believes in gay equality" and has made "a very clear statement to say she was completely misreported".

Contact, Resources, Notes

Resources

• Jamie Doward, Cal Flynn and Richard Rogers, Rising Tory star Philippa Stroud ran prayer sessions to 'cure' gay people, The Observer, 2 May 2010.