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The dissenting spirit of England has another willing defender.

Enter Christopher Wickland, former witch, Confessing Anglican Church (CAC) minister, and pastor of the Pentecostal Living Word Church in Hampshire.

Wickland will join forces with the CAC crew at this year’s Make Great Britain Christian Again conference in August.

CAC headliners Bishop Ceirion Dewar, Rev. Canon Brett Murphy, and cancelled theologian Aaron Edwards will also be attending the event.

With 44,000 YouTube subscribers, Wickland has established himself online as the Vexed Vicar.

More than an extension of his story, Chris’ Vexed Vicar social media initiative is an extension of his ministry.

Through the platform, Wickland brings relevant theological content into contact with current political commentary.

From Witchcraft to Christ

Talking about his backstory in an hour-long sit-down with UK apologist Luke Thornton, Wickland said that as a child he had a lot of “paranormal experiences.”

“That’s not normal, and I was living in a world where people don’t have those kinds of experiences.”

Those experiences encouraged a constant quest for meaning, purpose and identity.

“When I got to my teenage years,” he told Thornton, “I got into things like witchcraft, alcohol, Ouija boards, all that kind of stuff because I knew that what I was searching for was spiritual.”

“So, I was looking for all the right things but in all the wrong places.”

“Then one day after doing a witchcraft ritual in the woods, I was coming home, and then I had this encounter with Jesus Christ.”

“Bear in mind,” Wickland clarified, “I’ve had no religious upbringing at all.”

“Suddenly this voice spoke to me as clear as day. And when he spoke to me, I knew he was Jesus Christ.”

“I knew he was God. I knew he was the creator of the universe. And he was talking to me.”

Referring to the witchcraft, Wickland heard Jesus say, “Stop what you’re doing. Come to know me. You can be forgiven for this.”

Wickland dismissed it, saying, “I had a lot of paranormal encounters where I had demonic beings appearing to me and talking to me.”

“So, to have God talk to me in one sense was not that unusual but at the same time it was like, why is God talking to me?”

It was only after he heard God say a third time, “Stop what you’re doing”, that Wickland ditched witchcraft “for a day or two.”

He then recalled being invited to church seven days later by a girl he knew.

“Which is a very brave thing for her to do,” he explained, “because I was known as the dark lord in those days.”

“No one wanted to hang around [me] because it was just like, ‘Dude, that guy…. [there] is something wrong with him. Stay away’.”

So Wickland “went along to church, and at youth group afterwards, saw these Christians sitting around in a room.”

“I sensed this massive force of energy which I now recognise as the person of the Holy Spirit,” he said.

“I could see that they were all connected into the Holy Spirit, but they didn’t even know it. And I’m like, what is this? What’s going on here? I just was really intrigued.”

Consequently, Wickland kept going.

At age 17, he received “the whole gospel message about Jesus dying on the cross for his sins and giving him eternal life. And so then I became a Christian.”

Implying that this was the easy part, Wickland shared that “life did not just become a bed of roses.”

Dark Clouds: The Demonic Struggle

“I had a lot of problems because I’ve been involved with witchcraft. I had a lot of demonic issues. One of the problems I had was this kind of weird depression that would come upon me.”

“One minute,” he said, “I’d be fine. Then bang, next minute this dark cloud would descend upon me, and I just want to take my life.”

“One night, I was probably about 19 at this time. This wave of depression hit me, and I thought, right, that’s it tonight. I’m going to end my life.”

Now 54, Wickland still remembers getting into his old minivan at around 10 pm. Finding a spot at Portsdown Hill in Portsmouth, he drove his car over the edge.

“As the car went off the edge of the road and we started flying through the air, I shut my eyes expecting death and pain.”

Instead, he recalled a “white light flooded the whole car,” adding that “this amazing peace just came over me.”

After blacking out and eventually waking up, Wickland said, “I was upside down in the car. I was completely unharmed. Nothing wrong with me. Not even a scratch, nothing. No whiplash, nothing. So, I got out of the car.”

He remembered being “really angry and annoyed” that he’d ‘failed’.

Then Wickland testified, “The voice of God just spoke to me again, saying, ‘You’re not dying because I’ve got work for you to do.”

Managing to get back to the top of the hill, “this white car just comes up, stops, and there’s a man in there saying, ‘Do you want to lift home?” And I was like, “Yes, please.”

Wickland got into the car. “Then everything became very dreamlike”, he recalled. “I never told him where I lived or anything, but he just drove me straight back to my house and then just drove off.”

Nothing Less Than a ‘Real’ Christianity

Remarking on this being the foundation of his Christian faith, which also dropped some insight into why he’s fighting the good fight now, Wickland asserted, “When you have that as the foundation stone of your Christianity, I can’t settle for mediocre Christianity.”

“I can’t settle for a Christianity that doesn’t have a deeply impactful spiritual dimension. That’s in this world.”

“I mean, Christ is the incarnation of God in our physical realm and so for me, Christianity is very powerful, and it’s very real.”

So is Chris’ walk with Christ.

Brought Back from Death

According to reports, in 2019, he was pronounced dead for 15 minutes after a cardiac arrest.

Wickland was put into an induced coma, with doctors telling his wife, Tracey, they expected him to have brain damage.

Portsmouth News reported on the event, saying Chris had been playing with his kids at a trampoline centre. When he blacked out, staff immediately stepped in to provide first aid.

After being treated by paramedics, who did “chest compressions and shocked me with the defibrillator four times,” Wickland was revived.

Surprised, the ambulance driver told him that “he’d never see anyone return after four shocks.”

After arriving at the hospital, Wickland defied the odds and credited prayer and good health care for his full recovery.

He told Portsmouth reporters, “I’ve seen some cool miracles in my time, but absolutely this is the most miraculous.”

“The stats were all against me. This was incredible.”

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Image via screenshot of YouTube.