By Kate

As editor of the blog, Surviving Church, I hear a number of stories from readers about their own experiences of power abuse in the context of a Church.  The story that follows is illustrative of bullying and power abuse within one particular culture, the ReNew constituency.  Effective means of resolving injustices in that culture seem here to be lacking.  It should be of concern to the entire Church of England leadership that episcopal oversight for the conservative wing in this case appears to be failing, causing considerable suffering to the writer and her family. From the outside we seem to be observing the operation of a tight inward-looking and unaccountable clique.

Discussion with ministers and experts in abuse have helped me see that over the past 3 years I and my husband have been the victims of harassment and bullying. The bullying began with a group of disgruntled parishioners and expanded to become a prolonged experience of bullying at the hands of the conservative evangelical constituency we have been a part of since the 1980’s. My husband was on Iwerne in the 80s, and I attended in early 2000s.

Though it is very painful to continue to write and think and pray about our experience of bullying – we have done little else recently – I believe light must be shone on the terribly damaging abuses that leaders in the ReNew constituency have engaged in, and sought to hush up. We have tried many avenues of making the situation good, but have been either rebuffed, or challenged to submit to processes which experts warn us would be traumatising. All that is left now is to share something of our story in the hope that others may be alert to the dangers of bullying in our church culture, and perhaps, that those who have acted shamefully will pause and seek the help they need.

The bullying we experienced forced my husband out of his job as a parish minister, and inflicted serious health and stress upon our family. The diocese got involved with a case of bullying from disgruntled parishioners towards us, and mishandled our situation in serious ways. They misdiagnosed it as a relational dispute and later circulated false information. Eventually they rescinded false statements they had made.

Bishop Rod Thomas is looked to by our constituency as one of our key leaders. It is now clear that he himself behaved in a terrible way towards us, with little respect for normal expectations of a Church of England bishop. Rod’s pastoral advisor – Rev David Banting – reassured one of the people bullying us out of our job, that the diocese would remove us soon. This caused further stress.

A good deal of the subsequent bullying from other ReNew leaders was aimed at covering up how much harm he had caused, and the degree to which he was influenced by Jonathan Fletcher and colluded with Church Society, to bully and silence us.

While we were away on holiday the Archdeacon called a PCC meeting, which we agreed to him holding in our absence. He told us he would do this to explain to people that they should be reasonable in how they treated their minister. He organised a further PCC meeting, and invited Bishop Rod to that. The first we knew of this was from Jonathan Fletcher’s sister (then a PCC member). Rod stayed over with Jonathan’s sister when he attended that PCC meeting. It was only later we realised that Jonathan’s sister was one of the group in the church seeking to bully us into leaving the parish. For many years Rod has been a member of Jonathan’s ‘preaching group’ – we see now he was far from independent from Jonathan’s influence.

Eventually we discovered that Bishop Rod misinformed the diocese about our situation. That led the diocese to recording false claims on my husband’s file. This made it impossible for new jobs to be secured. When we discovered this and spoke to the diocese, we were able to challenge Rod’s false accusations. It took time but we got the false statements removed. We realised that in effect Bishop Rod had sided with the group of bullies in the parish. His concern appeared to be keeping on good terms with them so that he could maintain influence in the church, after my husband was forced out. 

We were traumatised by Bishop Rod’s bullying and deceptive behaviour. We felt we should talk with him about it – but that did not lead to anything fruitful. We tried raising it with Rev. Simon Austen – a member of Rod’s advisory group – but he was busy managing the John Smyth abuse case, as chairman of Titus Trust. We tried raising it with Church Society. They are a patron of our parish and Rod is their president. Council members were unclear who to talk to – we tried numbers of them. That led to conversations where they berated us for taking up their time, used scripture to silence us, and passed us round one another. Even though Lee Gatiss is a safeguarding officer, when we managed to get him to talk on the phone, he was threatening, aggressive, and told us off for delaying his dinner.

William Taylor phoned and warned us that he and the constituency may not help us at all. He told me that Jonathan Fletcher had holidayed with him and they had discussed our situation. William wanted to check that we would not take formal action against Rod for his behaviour. Jonathan Fletcher is a powerful influence in our constituency. In letters and phone calls, Jonathan intimated that we were to blame, for what independent observers could see was harassment and bullying. 

I talked with Rev Dick Farr. He is chair of Church Society patronage board and the ReNew planning group. I had two telephone conversations with Dick. He said he wanted to speak to my husband, not me. When I asked why, he explained, ‘Because I’m a complementarian.’ He raised his voice, kept talking over me, and minimised the abuse we suffered. He was sarcastic and eventually slammed the phone down. 

We tried discussing the problems Bishop Rod had caused, with the above and others – including Rev Mark Burkill and Rev Paul Darlington. They tried to not let us know, but it became clear that while we were raising concerns about Bishop Rod, they were all meeting with Bishop Rod to discuss how to handle the situation. We eventually found out that five people met with Rod: Dick Farr, William Taylor, Paul Darlington, Lee Gatiss, and Mark Burkill. They knew this was wrong as they were very reluctant to let us know. It is a well worn principle that when cases of abuse are raised about a minister or bishop, those who would seek to bring righteousness out of the situation should not go and meet with the accused, and agree a managed way forward.

Rev Dick Farr was one of the most aggressive and unkind of the Church Society leaders we tried to get help from. So when we found he had been invited to speak at the Derby Bible Conference, which we would have attended, we raised the story of our abuse and his behaviour, with the (mostly Independent) church ministers, organising it. We shared the details of our story in the hope that they could seek an appropriate forum for us to discuss with Dick Farr how to rectify our experiences of bullying. Their rebuff was: 

‘Thank you for raising your concerns with regards to the invitation by Derby Bible Week to Dick Farr to speak in April 2020, and for sending through all the supporting information.

After very careful, and prayerful, consideration at our committee meeting this morning, we have decided to stand by our invitation to Dick to speak at our event.

Whilst we realise that this is not the decision you were looking for, this decision was not taken lightly and was the unanimous view of our committee.

This decision is not subject to appeal and we feel that it would not be profitable to enter into any further discussion on the matter.

Wishing you God’s richest blessing.’

Our experiences show how conservative leaders collude to protect a favoured leader such as Bishop Rod Thomas, and put the wishes of patrons such as Jonathan Fletcher before righteousness. Change is needed in the culture. No one of the leaders who bullied us can take full responsibility for the bullying – it has been a pattern of group think and mobbing. That does not mean that individuals should not take steps to reflect, and pursue change. We hope change will come. If not, we pray our story can help others struggling with the kind of abuse we experienced.

A fuller account of our story is given in the letter we wrote to the Derby Bible Conference: