One of the ways that this blog is maturing is in the way that it is beginning to develop a feeling of ‘we’ about it. One regular contributor spoke of Surviving Church as being for him a virtual church. I am not going to argue for or against this notion but I am certainly pleased when commenters say they feel ‘safe’ in each other’s company. I am always grateful when there is a contribution to what I write in terms of new information or helpful discussion. Today I am particularly grateful to ‘Froghole’ both for having interacted with one of my posts and set me off on a new path of reflection about the Church of England. Froghole gave us the vivid fantasised image of someone important at Church House sitting down with an actuary, in order to make a decision about the way that the Church of England was going to deal with future claims of compensation for past abuses. This process of calculation, he suggested in a memorable phrase, would be based on ‘balance sheet thinking’. The outcome of the calculation in this fantasy exchange produced the conclusion that it was better for the Church’s future survival never to admit liability. Froghole suggested that the ‘ethical and reputational pain’ which the Church would suffer as the result of this calculation would be regarded as worth it for the sake of the future financial viability of the institution.
I want to think through this picture that Froghole has shared with us. The key points in the current survivor/Church fall-out are made easier to grasp by this construction from the imagination. It has the effect of simplifying a quite complex issue into a simple us-them scenario. On the one side we have the as yet uncalculated number of people who have legitimate claims against the church. They need to be heard and receive all the help they require, financial and otherwise, for the abuses they have suffered. On the other side is ‘them’, leaders of a large wealthy institution, the Church. The leaders of the Church evidently believe that they have to do everything possible to protect themselves against these claims. It is a potential nightmare scenario for the Church, especially as it has no way of estimating the potential financial liabilities that may be demanded of it in the future.
Setting out the problem as a confrontation between two sides who have such different perspectives obviously risks becoming a caricature. But there is enough of value in this picture to help us tease out further nuances that are present. Because we are talking about the Church in this scenario, we have to recognise that there will be ethical factors to be taken into account. The most obvious of these is the imperative of the priority of love. This has the practical effect that ‘adversarial’ encounters with claimants should be declared inappropriate and unbecoming. If you claim to love everyone as part of your faith position, it is then not possible to treat them as an enemy. Nor is it right to set up obstructions which prevent a claimant finding the best solutions to resolve pain and promote their healing. We would expect to see dissonance in the body language of someone who is trying to promote love and balance sheet thinking at the same time. That, sadly, is exactly what we did see in the body language of the Archbishop of Canterbury when being interviewed about safeguarding issues. He often appeared conflicted in these encounters. On the one side he showed real and genuine remorse for the sufferings of the abused. At the same appearing unable to say anything practical or pastoral which might have sounded really helpful to survivors. It is as though there was a mysterious powerful force just off camera. This was controlling him and preventing him going further in his expressions of regret and sorrow.
Our commentator, Froghole, has something further to say about the power that exists at the heart of the Church. He suggests that we should not look to Synod to find the source of real power in the Church but to the Bishops and the Commissioners. This group (Diocesan bishops are ex-officio Commissioners) forms an ‘executive’ where most of the real power is invested. This power, Froghole claims, arises from their access to the funds of the Commissioners. Decisions as to the extent of financial support of abuse survivors will be, no doubt, decided by small committees within this group. Within these committees will be mainly the voices of those fully immersed in the ‘balance sheet’ ways of thinking. It is unlikely that the minutes of such meetings will ever be shared with ordinary church people or even the members of Synod.
The public face of the government of the Church of England is General Synod. It is, however, becoming clear, especially over the past few months, that the ‘managers’, members of the powerful ‘executive’, are in charge. At the same time these managers are becoming increasingly out of step with GS members. The points of disagreement seem frequently to be over the same issues that concern this blog – safeguarding and abuse. A recent attempt by the executive to control the interests of members was seen in the way that an amendment by David Lamming and Martin Sewell on safeguarding was peremptorily declared to be out of order. The original content of that proposal is to be found in one of the comments from David on a recent post. The detailed points that are made in this amendment are not important here, but it was the way that a challenge to the centres of power was received. That is telling. As I write I am aware that something is being rescued from the rejected motion and the drama will be played in the course of next week at the full meeting of Synod in London.
In my own mind, thanks to Froghole, I have begun to think of the management of the Church of England as being a bit like an enormous juggernaut of power, similar to a political system in the former East Germany or Soviet Russia. Each authoritarian political system has its own public elected body or parliament. They pass laws but real power lies elsewhere out of sight. In the case of the Church of England, power seems to lie not with Synod but with its executive, the Commissioners or the committees that do its day to day work. In recent history, the juggernauts of power represented by Apartheid or the Eastern European regimes were replaced, not because of direct confrontation but through subtle pressure over a period of time. The final victory came about because the powerful side glimpsed how, in the long term, it has to give way to justice and ethical behaviour. It will always be wrong to oppress and pile on suffering on those who are already in pain, as is happening with survivors. The challengers to the ‘balance sheet rulers’ of the Church of England are the survivors, their supporters and the weight of moral opinion in society at large. The pressure is continuous and continuing. At some point in the not too distant future it will occur to institutional leaders that, although they still have structural and institutional power, they do not have moral power. Without the latter they must know that their stance towards survivors cannot be sustained in the long term. It was the moral authority of Nelson Mandela that destroyed Apartheid. There is no obvious single Mandela figure to defeat the balance sheet thinking of our church leadership. There are however a number of us who claim that it is right to continue to struggle on behalf of many who have endured decades of pain, made worse by the indifference of a Church that still seems so often not to understand.
Spot on again, Stephen.
Thank you so much for this! I was intending to go to some parishes on the Hereford/Salop/Radnorshire borders today, but the storm and a family illness has confined me to barracks (absent two local services).
Synod, and its precursors, the Assembly and the revived convocations grew out of the need to reduce parliamentary control over the management of the Church. The Commissioners (and their precursors, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the Bounty) grew out of the need to remove the ‘old corruption’ and the gross inequalities in clerical incomes. During the mid-twentieth century it was realised that gradually declining returns on assets and the increasing calcification of Church parties (as the Oxford Movement worked its way into the marrow of Church government) necessitated coherent national structures; this was all of a piece with the wider vogue for ‘planning’ and reconstruction in the wake of the War. Fisher and his acolytes (notably Haigh, Eve, Mortimer, etc.) created the Church Commissioners and laid the path for Synod whilst also overhauling canon law. Partisanship would be accommodated by Synod, but disciplined; local autonomy would be preserved, but overlain with a central bureaucracy.
The main change since then has been the progressive attenuation and collapse of the parish system. Local autonomy cannot be realistically preserved in the face of demographic decline, because it needs finance. The creation of a central bureaucracy did not generate economies of scale; indeed, it increased costs, because it superimposed a layer of administration on top of existing diocesan administrations.
I have written before about the relative decline in clerical incomes. Clergy are also an ‘interest’; their aspirations have somehow to be funded. For a generation the Commissioners financed the widening gap between clerical needs and the traditional sources of income, which were either being closed off by the government or which had lost their efficacy. By the mid-1980s the gap could no longer be bridged except via speculation. The ensuing crash compelled the Commissioners to force a quiescent Synod to require the dioceses (i.e., the parishes) to shoulder the burden previously borne by the Commissioners. Tragically, this occurred at a critical demographic inflection point as the liberalisation of Sunday trading in 1993 led young families to desert their churches in favour of other activities (the timetabling of church services was not adjusted accordingly). Capital hitherto retained within parishes was leached to the Commissioners, implicitly and regressively, via the parish share (i.e., the pension fund). The burden has weighed on a declining demographic.
Why do I keep harping on about this? It is because the 22-year long holiday the Commissioners have enjoyed re pension accruals has had a radical impact upon the balance of power in the Church.
Contd…
Contd…
The Commissioners had 2.4bn in 1997 (when Synod passed the Pensions Measure); they now have >8.3bn. A large part of that growth is a function of the implicit subsidy of the parish share.
Since the Commissioners have the lion’s share of the capital held by the Church (I mean the relatively liquid capital), they now have immense power.
As has been noted, Synod – as the ‘legislature’ does not control supply to the ‘executive’ and, moreover, the ‘executive’ has financial autonomy. Yes, that is compromised to some extent (of the 8.3bn, something short of 2bn is ring-fenced for pre-1998 pension accruals; there was a deficit in the fund which may now have been eliminated). Essentially, neither Synod not anyone else can exert control over the Commissioners/bishops.
The diocesan bishops are ex officio Commissioners. Despite this they can, with the assistance of their DACs, DFBs and the Pastoral Division, shutter churches within their care that can no longer meet their parish share subventions (I appreciate the parish share is ‘voluntary’ to a degree, but a certain amount of suasion is exerted over incumbents and parish officers).
As financial means decline at a local level, there is therefore an increasing tension between the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery’ as their respective interests diverge (or are no longer in symbiosis). An example of this is the fact that the Commissioners can now play ‘lady bountiful’ by disbursing 100m to parishes who bid for funding projects that tickle the Commissioners’ fancy (naturally, the weakest parishes will not have the resources to bid). However, this is money that has – in effect – been expropriated from the parishes via the parish share.
These same tensions have been played out with tragic consequences in the abuse fiasco. The Commissioners and their unwitting hirelings on the bench have been deaf to the numerous entreaties of victims and their supporters. The Commissioners believe, with some legal justification, that they are a trust for active and retired stipendiary clergy and NO ONE ELSE; that there is a risk that the rest of the Church will become extinct; that they must have a sufficiency to maintain their clerical beneficiaries irrespective of what happens to the rest of the Church; the bishops, as legal trustees, have to support this, even though they are conflicted in their less legally coherent pastoral responsibilities to their parishes and victims.
In short, the Commissioners have captured the wider Church. However, it will take a brave person to challenge the Commissioners. Remember the adages: ‘A man will believe anything if his salary depends upon it’ (Upton Sinclair) and ‘Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned’ (Milton Friedman).
Many thanks, once again, to Mr Parsons for touching on these topics. As I see it the appalling treatment of victims has its root in the structures of the modern Church, at least to some significant extent.
Froghole, should you decide a Cathedral might suit you one Sunday, do say hello.
How to “persuade” a reluctant parish to pay: I have seen several situations where a parish has simply not paid. The incumbent simply said he had better things to spend his money on! In one case, the parish built a parish centre. I have also seen a not well off parish apparently punished by leaving an 18 month vacancy when they defaulted. They were being asked, in the “quota” days, for 105% of their income! I think, as with many things, it depends on whether you’re in favour or not!
The conflict between both sides is often readily seen at the start of a survivors journey. A survivor may meet with someone who is essentially pastoral, DSA, Authorized Listener etc and leave the meeting feeling positive only to find that a few weeks later any decisions that were taken at the meeting have now been squashed. That is because the pastoral person always has a line manager that is a balance sheet person. Often the balance sheet person has a background in industry and has no sense of people, let alone survivor, engagement. Promises are often made over and over again and reneged on time and time again leaving the survivor emotionally exhausted and highly vulnerable. Often many opportunities to resolve issues quickly are missed because of this tussle of power in which, as Froghole says, the balance sheet person will always win.
It is interesting that the new lead Bishop of safeguarding is a suffragan Bishop who will have pledged Canonical Obedience to his Bishop, in this case Nick Baines, how does that work if the complaint is about Baines! (Sorry that’s a bit off topic just a personal scream of frustration before I bloody well explode)
If talk of “balance sheets” and “accounts” in general sends you to sleep, make no mistake this is of critical importance. Please bear with us in “following the money.”
Froghole mentioned the term “contingent liability” in an earlier post. In brief, this is something you might owe. Actuaries and lawyers and accountants will right now be trying to estimate what the abuse claims could amount to.
As a small but rising number of claims across the world are being settled, the ability to value future claims improves with experience. As the ability to value and estimate contingent liabilities improves, so does the likelihood of recognition in the accounts.
Abuse claims are already a contingent liability. Accounting rules require this to be included as a note to the accounts or actually included in the balance sheet (reducing it) should certain threshold tests be met. Disclosure and/or accrual is a double hazard for trustees/directors.
Auditors get nervous about contingent liabilities. They have to express an opinion on the valuations used. The bigger the fund audited, the bigger the auditor, the bigger the reputation to be lost if the opinion turns out to be wrong. There is thus pressure on outside auditors to look into this very carefully.
Just to clarify, the impairments to the balance sheet start to take effect long before anyone has admitted or paid anything.
We need to start looking for contingent liabilities in accounts and start asking questions about them. Particularly when they are not there yet. Because at the moment these huge potential liabilities are not really showing anywhere. When they do, the balance sheet pressure will start to change management behaviours.
In the meantime, start to look out for attempts to wriggle out of responsibility for past abuses. For example one Trust/Company closing down and another starting. There are plenty of tricks in the book to hide uncomfortable numbers.
I am most grateful for some of the observations made here (particular thanks to Mr Lewis for his very lucid summary).
Mr Parsons’ reference to the pre-1989 system in central and eastern Europe is especially apt. Essentially, the Soviet system was all about the creation of an ersatz democracy, in which there were a number of deliberative bodies attended by party members which had no meaningful power because, ultimately, they had no control over supply and the Leninist philosophy decreed that the CCCP/Politburo was the leading element of the leading force within the polity. So too with the Church of England; the concept of episcopacy has no real meaning if it is genuinely accountable and if bishops and officials can be hired and fired by a deliberative body to which they are responsible, and which is itself genuinely democratic. Thus bishops ’emerge’ from the CAC in much the same way that full or candidate members of the politburo emerged from the mass of central committee members. Similarly deanery, diocesan and general synods are like the provincial/oblast, SSR and Union soviets of yore; representative of only certain members of the party; essentially placemen, and in no sense democratic. Anglican ‘representatives’ are therefore the favoured vanguard of a small cadre within the declining remnant of the believing public, much as the nomenclatura were the ‘vanguard of the proletariat’.
I feel we must challenge the legitimacy of the Commissioners’ asset base. I think that the average Anglican must realise that the 8.3bn (admittedly modest by the standards of Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, etc.) is based on a species of expropriation foisted upon the parishes by legislative fiat – by Synod, which is, as mentioned, a phoney legislature.
Essentially, I want to see the Church preserved in ‘every community’, but that means disestablishment and the government confiscating churches; confiscating 6bn of the Commissioners’ capital to support the maintenance of the buildings (i.e., return the money from whence it has been drawn); giving the Church a free right of use to the buildings; abolishing the administrative functions of the dioceses and drawing them and their assets up to the Commissioners. The state then has the economies of scale to procure discounted materials/resources to maintain the buildings for public benefit worship; the Commissioners have the economies of scale to manage the Church properly AND accountably to a meaningfully powerful Synod; the bishops lose their administrative power and become pure pastors; clergy and laity are liberated from worrying about buildings and can concentrate on mission; party parishes can no longer bully the bench.
Above all, the Commissioners are made meaningfully answerable to the GS, so that they can no longer cower behind the bench, whilst the bench can no longer brandish its ‘jazz hands’ and point the finger at some flimsy legal or fiduciary excuse for doing nothing for victims.
There is a wonderful, if somewhat heavy, book called ‘Everything was Forever Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation’, by Alexei Yurchak (2005), which I have (but not, alas, to hand). I do, however, have access to a precis he wrote in 2003 (in ‘Comparative Studies in Society and History’ v. 45, no. 3), which includes the following observations which, I would suggest, have their parallel in the Church of England and some of the recent pronouncements of the bench:
‘According to Fyodor Burlatskii, a speech-writer in Krushchev’s, and later Brezhnev’s Central Committees, “the main problem for the new leaders, such as Andropov, Ponamaryov and other Central Committee Secretaries, became to avoid committing a political mistake by saying or writing something that could be considered inappropriate and was likely to raise an objection and irritation [among others in the leadership]” (author’s interview). Everyone in the leadership, including the General Secretary, now felt continual nervousness about their discourse. Burlatskii remembers: “When Khrushchev made a speech he always read it from the written text. Only occasionally he would say: “And now allow me to diverge from the text” (a teper’pozvol’te mne otoiti ot teksta). He would start speaking in the working class language that he learned during the Party discussions of the early 1930s. . . . However, he well realized that this was a divergence from the norm and tried not to overuse it…. As for Brezhnev, he never diverged. He was afraid to step outside the limits of the accepted norm, to not repeat the precise Party language” (author’s interview).
A joke from the 1960s illustrates this progressive discomfort. The General Secretary Brezhnev, surrounded by the members of the CC, is shown around a Soviet art exhibition. After the tour, the CC members cautiously gather around Brezhnev to hear what he thinks. Brezhnev waits for a minute, then declares: “Very interesting. But let us hear what they think.”
Although some Sovietologists have asserted that the USSR imploded because of massive malinvestment after 1970, one of the primary causes of its collapse must have been the growing dissonance between the nomemclatura (the ‘New Class’ identified by Milovan Djilas in 1957) and the rest of the population: a significant problem for a system whose raison d’etre was economic equality. Similarly, Mr Parsons notes of the Church authorities ‘although they still have structural and institutional power, they do not have moral power’; this, I would suggest, is an existential problem for an institution whose raison d’etre is the propagation of Christian morality.
If any ideological state or religious institution finds itself structurally incapable of advancing the precepts for which it has been founded in the first place, it cannot survive, even if it has the financial means to help it limp along for a few decades, and most especially if its core support is in…
demographic run-off.
In Luke 14:33 Jesus said, “so also any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”
When I came across this verse some years ago, I felt dismayed and thought, can this man actually be followed?
I have never heard a talk on this – have you? Nor spoken on it. Does it come in the lectionary, I wonder? Do we all turn a blind eye?
The command is a long way from balance sheet thinking.
Luke 14:25-33 is the reading for Proper 18 in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary. That will be the Sunday between 4 and 10 September. Jesus is saying those who follow him must give up not only their possessions, but also their home and family.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever preached on this – I usually took a holiday in September – but I take it as an example of Jesus’ use of Jewish hyperbole. In Jewish speech, as in American, exaggeration is often used to engage people’s attention and make a point. This can cause problems to English people who more traditionally use understatement – though that is changing.
There’s a legend that Origen took literally Jesus statement about cutting off an offending member, and emasculated himself.
What Jesus seems to be saying is not that everyone who wants to follow him must immediately, and permanently, leave their home and family and give away everything they own – but that we have to face the fact that at some point one or more of these may be required of us. Where Christians are persecuted, it may cost them everything they have.
And even for those not persecuted, following Jesus must take priority over everything else. That may mean leaving your home to take the gospel to strangers, or inviting strangers into your home. It may mean giving possessions to someone who needs them more than you do. It probably does mean putting money in the collection, and buying something for the food bank every time you go shopping.
Thanks Janet. Very helpful. Appreciated.
Point taken about the use of exaggeration in that culture. Another example is the call to pluck your eye out rather than sin with it.
Following Jesus is full of challenge.
All very interesting indeed and thank you.
Here in Exeter we are repeatedly told that the “share” is very largely (only) to pay for the priests. We are regularly told that priests will not be replaced if there is a default!
” a not well off parish apparently punished by leaving an 18 month vacancy when they defaulted.” the word “punished” is most appropriate in context but not the sort of behaviour one expects from a supposedly missionary organisation.
My take of the problem?
“Often the balance sheet person . . . . has no sense of people,” The person that behaves thus has fallen under the spell of managerial-ism and has NO idea about LEADERSHIP which requires a range of competencies firstly an ability to make (strategic) plans that are likely to work; but, most importantly a deep regard for the needs of the “team”.
Oh and a Thank You to Janet (echoing that of David)