If you ever see a group of nine-year-old children, especially boys, arguing with one another, you can take a good guess at what the argument is about. The argument will probably be linked to their inbuilt competitiveness. Each child will be laying a claim to some achievement or having the best of something. He has the best trainers/mobile phone/ family car or is the tallest/strongest/best at football in the group. One child in the group may, however, recognise that he has nothing in his life that would count as being the biggest or best, so that when these arguments take place, he holds back. But then one day he comes into the group with his eyes shining. For a moment he is the centre of attention. What has he acquired that makes him suddenly important? He has obtained a piece of secret information. It may be a bit of gossip about a teacher or news that a holiday is going to be announced. For the short moment, while the boy has the secret which no one else possesses, he has the illusion of power. I want in this post to think further about the power of some information. Secret information can be a means of either liberation or alternatively the cause of toxic domination over others. The plot in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest centred around a single piece of information becoming known. The information itself had power to release happiness into the present. It would not be an exaggeration to think of the hidden information about the abandoned baby as being a kind of extra character in the plot, waiting to reveal itself at the right moment.
Information can be said, on occasion, to possess real power and the bearer of that information can also be seen to exercise this power. We have of course observed on this blog numerous other ways of exercising power, and many of them have been described. Today I want to focus on thinking about this way that information, especially when it is secret or restricted, can be a powerful tool of domination, whether in an individual relationship or within an institution. Secrecy is just one more way that human beings can learn to use and control others. While the exercise of legitimate power methods is a necessary part of institutional life, we need, however, to be aware of how any manifestation of power, including secrecy, can become a tool of evil when in the wrong hands.
The power that can accrue to someone having secret information is potentially a power that can cause widespread harm. Secrets often remain hidden for long periods of time but that does not prevent them sometimes wreaking havoc in people’s lives, even while they are still hidden. In my own thinking about secrets in the church, I have come to see that there are two particular ways in which secrets cause damage to individual people. Let us examine each in turn.
The first example of a secret is the knowledge of a hidden shameful event from the past. This knowledge may exist only inside someone’s memory or perhaps is known by another party and is used in some way to control the person involved. The shame experienced may or may not be linked to something that has been done but the victim of the shame still wants the event to be hidden. It may be a family scandal or an experience of abuse. The sufferer dreads it being brought into the open. This control may not rise to the level of actual blackmail but there will be the ever-present thought that this detrimental information might be revealed at any time. That can be a constant blight to a person’s life.
The second kind of secret also concerns a past deed known to a third party. Here the interest is not in harming the person in any way. Rather the opposite. The one with knowledge wants to protect the one who carries guilt from their past activity. Now the effort is to make sure that the event remains hidden so that also it cannot harm the organisation to which the perpetrator and his co-conspirator both belong. Secrets are being kept in order to preserve reputations. No consideration is given either to the demands of morality or keeping people safe. The preservation of the secret has then the unfortunate consequence that the evil can fester and spread. Evil flourishes not only because good men do nothing, but these men actually encourage the evil by tacitly tolerating it and refusing to act against it.
The power of the secret, as we can call it, is not only an action which can be the cause of evil among individuals. It can also permeate the entire culture of an organisation. We know that there is such a thing as confidentiality in the medical world and most people do not want every fact about their lives spread far and wide. But some organisations take the principle of confidentiality and use to become a tool of coercive power. When an organisation chooses to supress information by weeding the files of past embarrassing behaviour by its servants, that is a kind of information holocaust. Of all the images that came out of the first stage of the IICSA hearing, it was the one describing a former dean returning after his retirement to burn files in the Deanery garden, that was most vivid and telling. The Chichester cathedral close had been rife with scandal and safeguarding failures. The power of the secret as a permeating evil spirit could be said to have been haunting the entire cathedral complex.
Secrecy as a form of power still stalks the institutions and bodies of the Church of England. The story of safeguarding is a story of cover-ups, information suppression and an apparent unwillingness by many in authority to show metanoia about all the secrets that have been kept by those in authority in the church. Just to mention the names of Fletcher, Smyth and Ball conjures up images of filing cabinets with hidden secrets and files stuffed with information that should have been handed over decades ago. In one comment to a recent SC blog, it was mentioned that one Giles Rawlinson had kept out of sight in his attic numerous files connected to the Smyth case. At least the police eventually obtained sight of them, unlike the files that were burnt in the Chichester deanery garden. If there is one word to describe the misuse of power by the ReNew constituency, it is this continuing use of secrecy. Unlike other forms of evil, secrecy does not involve action or deliberate choice. It just requires that an institution sits back and does nothing, smug in the complacency of its power. It is that smugness and passivity that is now being challenged and will continue to be challenged. Apart from fending off the questions being asked by survivors, official Inquiries, the police and the general public, the church and the constituent bodies within it now have to negotiate the new threat, the pandemic and its aftermath. If there is one good thing that may come out of the present crisis it is the thought that secrecy and suppressing of information may be less tolerated within our church life as it negotiates its place within the post-pandemic society. Secrecy, as a tool of power, has played a toxic role in the Church of England for too long. It is time for its expulsion from the life of the institution.
Secrecy has a cousin; gossip. And they have another close relative; secret gossip! It may be an oxymoron, but let me explain. Something happens, say, an individual who is expected to be ordained, suddenly refuses to go to a selection conference. All unknown to either of the people concerned, this is attributed to a friend who has, allegedly, persuaded them. This is then passed on, over the phone, to anyone who mentions the friend, until loads of people “know”. But this person is never told. The gossip goes on behind their back but kept secret from them. It can go on for years, long past the point where anyone involved has any clear memory of the incident. But no one ever asks how long ago this happened, or whether perhaps the friends have long since sorted it out, or even if it actually happened at all.
Years ago I was asked to tea, along with a couple of others, by the son of a senior churchman and his wife. The host introduced a parlour game which had me totally bewildered. At the end he announced that the whole purpose of the game was to guess its rules. Naturally those already in the know had every chance of winning, and the rest of us none at all. It was hardly the way to make guests feel at ease.
This seems to me a good metaphor for the way the Church of England works. You get nowhere unless you ‘know the rules’ – and no one’s going to tell you what they are. As Rosemary Hartill said, the Church of England is an insider society. But the Gospel and the Kingdom of Heaven are outsider-oriented. Houston, we have a problem.
A book could be written on the unwritten rules in churches. Thank you Janet for a most apt analogy!
I can certainly corroborate her view. Whilst theoretically existing for the benefit of the non member, most churches have types: their own. You will know fairy quickly if you don’t fit in. The rules are unwritten and often unconscious, certainly secret.
As a up-to-date example of the House of Bishops not telling us anything about what goes on at their meetings, we had a Press Release today. ‘The House of Bishops met by Zoom today. The bishops prayed together and continued to discuss all matters relating to the COVID 19 pandemic and how they affect the church.’ Are we to believe that nothing else was discussed, or is it more probable that their communication with the wider world is entirely managed and controlled by a communications person
Stephen,
Many thanks. If I can don my Kremlinologist hat, I think ‘all matters’ and ‘how the affect the church’ is code for money or the lack thereof.
There is a growing consensus that a very large proportion of the national stock of churches will now close permanently, and the sales proceeds will be diverted to making up the yawning gap in the accounts. Since churches will have to be sold at a large discount in current conditions a disproportionate number will have to be shuttered.
Stanley has kindly alerted me to the fact that the Worcester diocese is now asking laity to contribute to the pay and rations of clergy. In my view this should have been done across the whole Church at the very outset of the lockdown; that it is only being done now is a symptom of the Church wanting to conceal the extent of its losses (perhaps for perfectly understandable reasons) until it could hold out no longer.
I suspect that a lot was riding on a short lockdown and a V-shaped recovery. Since neither are now very likely, the authorities are presumably asking themselves some excruciating questions about the future. They will, no doubt, wish to present the public with a fait accompli, because the pastoral implications of mass closures will be somewhat problematic (though that process can be rationalised away on the basis that ‘it was going to happen anyway’).
Moreover, the presumed success of virtual worship will give greater weight to those clergy – often, though not exclusively, evangelical – who believe that buildings are an impediment to mission, and that the maintenance of the existing stock would be an unacceptable tax on success (but also that their pay/rations must prevail over prospective maintenance costs).
Best wishes,
James
The paucity of information, and the inanity of its communication is indeed revealing. “Only communicate the positive” is a dated mantra originating in the 60s or 70s.
Cash flow is a killer in a crisis and I agree with sentiment in this thread that finances are likely in peril. For immediacy, asking for handouts from parishioners is probably a helpful stopgap. People are incredibly generous when they believe in something they’ve long supported, often giving again and again despite personal hardship.
In the medium to long term, cash flow can be improved by closures. But it does take considerable time to realise in cash terms the proceeds of property disposal, never mind ancient ones.
More immediate savings could be made by a recruitment freeze as suggested here.
Those of us here trying to grasp at financial lifeline measures may not quite have the measure of what is happening in a Zoom full of bishops.
Newer entrants to the rank would be wondering how the conclave works. I suspect there are as many secrets within the group as there are without. Certainly it won’t be democratic. 40 or so people in one place won’t be all contributing to a common decision. There will be a covert deferral to a hierarchy which may not be a bishop at all, and probably not in the Zoom.
There will be competition between dioceses, with concealment of (cash flow) “issues” and pecking orders.
Even within the meeting there will be communication management. A newbie might imagine the whole thing is in hand.
Much decision making is obscured by devolvement. As has been discussed, there is little central effective leadership.
In essence the secrecy is thus structural.
That you Steve. You’ve opened my eyes to the likely dynamics of bishops’ meetings. In “conversation” with a colleague yesterday, we reflected on episcopal strategic skills and openness, and he pointed out that bishops have lived their lives away from the real world and had been trained to cultivate an air of “detachment”. That’s why they’re a they are. That’s why they would be amenable to being told what to think and say and do by a strong personality, whether bishop or apparatchik.
Dysfunctional leaders, when they shut everyone out in a cultivated way like you mention Stanley, or the quality selected at recruitment stage, must inevitably miss incoming vital data attempting to help them.
One wonders why any organisation would enjoy dysfunctionality, particularly when its very existence is under threat. But It can be observed at close quarters in other walks of life too. For example partnerships, be they medical, or other businesses, such as accountants, are often full of quirky anomalies. Someone is always benefiting however. Dysfunction serves someone’s pocket usually. Once again the rules are secret.
Power over others surely the answer, at least in part. Do I gather you have a medical background?. I was a Professor of Anatomy for many years. Medical academic politics is as bad as the church but without the hypocrisy. I’d be interested to know more about you – wsmonkhouse @ gmail etc.
Steve,
Your remarks are really useful – thank you. The Church has been way behind the curve in pitching for donations from its putative supporters; comparisons with the RCC are painful, and it should have been so much easier for the Church because in many communities it can appeal to the affection the public have for the buildings (for reasons which I’ve laboured before). However, the authorities have failed to explain what is at stake. I cannot determine whether that is due to incompetence or design.
You mention cashflow, and I have been struggling to think how the Church might tide itself over. For instance, I’ve recently been listening to a conference in memory of Wynne Godley run by the Levy Institute in upstate NY, and one of the academics did a presentation about the crisis in which he noted that firms which did have healthy balance sheets will need to engage in what Hyman Minsky called ‘Ponzi finance’ in the medium term to tide themselves over before a recovery. In other words, they should expand their balance sheets in the hope that a return to business as usual will allow them to reduce a debt overhang. He did not explain how firms might obtain such finance, especially now banks are eyeing their own balance sheets with increasing alarm. We have also seen stories about the absence of herd immunity in France and Germany; and I have yet to see any really heartening information about a vaccine. The probability of a rapid recovery – whether of demand within the wider economy and of church attendance seems relatively unlikely (see here for a perspective on the RCC: https://www.wordonfire.org/covid/).
Another alternative would be for Synod and parliament to pass ‘enabling’ legislation gutting the 2011 measure so that dioceses can close and dispose of buildings quickly without having to approve schemes. However, I have mentioned before, the property market is now highly illiquid, and is likely to become more so as credit becomes increasingly scarce. Sales will therefore be at a severe discount. Mothballing churches is pointless as it will not result in capital being realised.
That basically just leaves an appeal to government (and I note that church leaders have been meeting with ministers today) or to the the public. Government and the public have other concerns at present…
So the Church is snookered. You ask “One wonders why any organisation would enjoy dysfunctionality, particularly when its very existence is under threat.”? I wonder whether the authorities now realise they are hopelessly compromised by a sequence of long-term strategic blunders and realise that ‘dysfunctionality’ is a very convenient way of diffusing the blame which might otherwise be directed at specific individuals. If the issues are, as you identify (rightly) structural, then no one is actually to blame and reputations will remain (sort of) intact. It’s the same with abuse: “we’re not bad people; we’re just institutionally hopeless”.
Your “diffusion of blame” description I’m sure is right.
Regarding cash flow I’m not sure how far church payrolls have been buffered by the government furlough scheme.
Talk of balance sheet augmentation and “ponzi” finance draws out another problem for them. Businesses have been fiddling their accounts for years. The tricks are legion. Church accounts too have made use of “discretion” in the way figures are presented. For example, a set of accounts I was casually reviewing a year or two back had revalued their property (upwards). This had the effect of increasing assets and reserves. All good so far as it goes and allowed just about. However you can only get this benefit the once. Next year you have to find another way to show an improved position. Revaluation reserves are not distributable unless you sell the property. We’re back to the property downturn again.
My point is this: the tricks have already been played. On a bigger scale, the massaging of messaging around the profligate pension scheme will come back to haunt them. None of these schemes help the immediate need for cash. Although not many people will be thinking about balance sheets and accounts just now, we should prepare to see delays in routine financial reporting. If you can’t fix the mess you’re in, put off to the last possible minute the time you have to show the world.
Many thanks, Steve!
Yes – it seems that ‘financial engineering’ has been a common feature of ‘late stage’ capitalism for several decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd_21jmDlPQ (Jack Lemmon to Jack Gilford: “we invented a new kind of arithmetic last year”; 1973, the end of the long boom).
Or, as Warren Buffett has put it, famously, “it’s only when the tide goes out that you see whose been swimming naked”. Also: https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1260995742602125313
It’s not just the Church: even after the longest (though slowest) recovery almost ever over the last decade it’s amazing how many firms posting ‘record profits’ of late had such precarious balance sheets they were tapping the state within days of the lockdown being enforced. As usual, the profits are privatised, whilst the losses are nationalised.
James
Thanks , Froghole, for the mention. If what you predict is indeed the case, and it is shockingly plausible, then the politburo has to come clean to its remaining supporters, surely, PDQ. The church should immediately freeze recruitment to stipendiary ministry (it is to my mind criminal that it has not done so already), close most of its seminaries, and switch to online learning for any SSMs that it recruits (though I suspect they will largely dry up soon). I hear on the grapevine that Worcester has also been in difficulties regarding ordinand training. How the CoE justifies keeping the proceeds of the sale of church buildings I do not know, given that as you, Froghole, have pointed out, the vast majority were funded by taxation and tithing so are public property. It will be interesting. According to the Catholic Herald, the Vatican is worried too.
Hi Stanley. If they’re public, then the public should pay to maintain them. At present, I think churches belong to the incumbent.
Yes EA, but in trust for the community as I understand it. Anyway, the point is that they do not belong to the Commissioners. I’m not going to say more on the ownership issue – I know little and it is legally complex. It’ll likely come down to. a choice between pay and pensions, or buildings. I can’t see the politburo voting to cut p and p. They might have to, though.
I’d like us not to have the buildings, beautiful as they are. They are not practical. But getting there will be bumpy!
English Athena: Many thanks. Legally the position is not quite as clear as it might be (or might once have been): https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2005/4-november/news/uk/church-ownership-stays-uncertain
In any event, it is probably fair to say that the ‘Church’ owns it in some way or other and the legislation gives it the right to dispose of it (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukcm/2011/3/part/6/crossheading/pastoral-church-buildings-disposal-schemes/enacted).
I think that the point Stanley is making is an ethical one: until 1868 everything west of the chancel was financed by a tax on all ratepayers in the parish, irrespective of whether they were churchgoers or not (this was why it was scrapped by the Gladstone ministry, as it infuriated the Liberals’ dissenting base). The chancel was funded by the rector; insofar as farmers (whether freehold or tenants) paid tithe in kind or, after 1836, tithe rentcharge, the payments were made to the rector. Thus tithe was, to some extent, a form of indirect support for the upkeep of the chancel since at least some of the proceeds of tithe would be recycled for the purpose of maintaining the chancel. Of course most of the tithe income was retained by the rector for his own use. When the rector was absent (as an impropriator, whether clerical, corporate or lay), and there was a vicar instead, the ‘greater tithe’ income from corn often went far afield. As I have mentioned previously, tithe rentcharge continued until 1936, and then in a shadowy sense (from a redemption fund) until 1977.
Therefore, older churches have, to a significant extent been funded by past taxation. So when ‘the Church’ sells them it is appropriating (some might say stealing, albeit by legislative fiat) something which has been funded by past taxation, as well as much voluntary giving. That seems fundamentally illegitimate and immoral to me, especially if: (i) the sales proceeds are diverted by the DBF from the community whose church has been sold; and (ii) the purchaser of the ‘privatised’ stock then spends a bit of money and resells the building for a far higher amount than the Church received for it (examples are too legion to mention).
Nice point. But currently, the congregation maintains it, and if it is open, basically you maintain a grade I listed building on behalf of everyone who cares to visit. The congregation keeps it clean, raises funds for a toilet, and keeps it for for the locals to use for the occasional offices. It really isn’t all one sided. If it’s passed on to the government to keep as a monument, it would cost the taxpayer a pretty penny! But if you could sell it, you could build a modern, green building of the right size, or as a multi-purpose building for the benefit of the whole area. Shop, post office, hall, whatever.
Many thanks. My plan was that the state would take the buildings and the bulk of the Commissioners assets (which have, in effect, been expropriated from the parishes via the parish share system since 1998 as the Commissioners have been given a 22 year long holiday on pension accruals as a function of that system).
So what you are saying is that the congregation would keep the sales proceeds and invest those proceeds in the construction of a new building. A Grade I or II* unit in the home counties might sell for, say, 700k prior to the crisis (a generous estimate; many Grade II* or II units retail for 500k or less); elsewhere the valuations will be far lower. To construct a new church to the spec you suggest would probably cost at least the same; also in most instances you would have to purchase new land to do so, meaning that the aggregate spend would be significantly in excess of the sales proceeds. Moreover, at current valuations and given the urgency of the cashflow problem confronting the Church the sales proceeds are liable to be significantly lower than the pre-crisis valuations I have noted; even if the cost of labour and materials have slumped the probability of the cost exceeding the available capital following a disposal is still very high. You mention the inclusion of other facilities: if most communities already have village halls (>80% of parish councils already have such units): why would cash-strapped local authorities assist the Church in the construction of facilities which will compete with those local authorities for income?
Moreover the greater part (if not all) the sales proceeds do not remain with the shuttered parish; they are expropriated by DBFs for use elsewhere: specifically on clergy pay, rations and pensions. If a church building, which might have been used for many hundreds of years and has great meaning to the community is sold for, say 300k, that will cover one stipendiary for a bit less than six years.
The question is therefore whether and why we need >7k stipendiaries and why we have a non-contributory final salary indexed linked pension scheme, which simply act as an even greater drains than the buildings. The buildings have, by and large, been self-supporting; the clergy, who were previously funded by tithe and glebe, have lost or burnt through their means of support and are now threatening the buildings.
However, the politics of this is that the agents control the assets at the expense of the principals. It is, of course, Bad Form to put things this way, but it is the political reality. The state, as you suggest, is now in no position to assume the liability (though actually at the moment state liabilities are still well short of 1945). So what will likely happen is that the agents (i.e., clergy) will appropriate the heavily discounted sales proceeds to secure their own economic futures. The footprint will be collateral damage and the future will have to take care of itself.
Ooh, details! 😂. I was thinking in terms of a very small building in many cases. And assuming a minster model with fewer stipendiary clergy. And managed by dioceses, or even nationally. You know, proper planning. Such things were never heard of! You and me, James, together, we can do it! Seriously, I wish the church listened to its prophets. Ideas and dreams are needed now.
Apologies, EA. It’s just that I suspect we will be presented with a pastoral and financial fait accompli which will inevitably be inequitable to some extent, and will be a function of desperation rather than reason. The reputational consequences to the Church may prove significant, and largely adverse.
Of course the model of minster mission has had intermittent vogues over the last 15 years, and I appreciate that it ante-dates the parish which, in large part, becomes the characteristic unit of Christian mission from only the tenth century: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Pastoral_Care_Before_the_Parish.html?id=EZPYAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y
Small buildings may be plausible, but the probability of their yielding income in preference to other local facilities is relatively slight. The historic buildings can yield income because of their peculiar atavistic properties; this has only been explored, and sporadically, in recent years. Now stipendiaries have burnt through the bases of their prosperity, the authorities need to have a good cold look at the likely future sources of their sustenace.
If the one thing that makes the Church distinct from its competitors and other forms of ‘entertainment’ (i.e., the old buildings) are to be sloughed off, what is it that the clergy can offer that other denominations cannot? What distinctive is there left? What would stop the Church disappearing from most of the country in the manner of most of the nonconformist denominations?
Or is it that the buildings keep the institution bound together, albeit by dint of a shared resentment at their cost? If we get rid of that built burden and the legal structures associated with it, what is there left to stop the progressive disaggregation of the Church into its constituent sects?
Also, in an earlier message I suggested that impropriators could be clerical; that is not correct – they were, as a rule, lay. Apologies for that.
Best wishes,
James
I was kidding, not to worry. I really believe people like you and me should be involved in the conversation, but we are unlikely to be. Which if I read your drift correctly, is sort of what we all mean. The Bishops should not hug this crisis which involves us all to themselves.
Many thanks, English Athena!
Yes – I am wholly in agreement with you. I (and others) have a strong suspicion that the bishops, being harried by partisan interests and advised by their officials (themselves worried about their pay and benefits), are going to prepare something akin to a coup against ‘weak’ parishes. The crisis, they reason, will justify the result.
Yet this is a matter for public debate. After all, the Church is the Church *of England*.
Best wishes,
James