From time to time I have had cause to return to the case of Jonathan Fletcher. It represents one of the most significant pieces of unfinished safeguarding business within the Church of England. At the time of writing we are waiting for the report which is being compiled by the safeguarding organisation, thirtyone:eight. There was some discussion, a couple of weeks ago, about whether the report was ready and about how much in advance it was being shared privately with Fletcher’s old church Emmanuel Wimbledon. No one, as far as I can see, gave final answers to these questions. We will have to wait and see, but I believe the report to be imminent.
Emmanuel Church Wimbledon, where Fletcher was Vicar for thirty years between 1982 and 2012, realises that there is a great deal of public interest in the reported activities of their former Vicar. This would be true both of his erstwhile parishioners as well as the wider public. In many ways, through the reporting of Gabriella Swerling in the Daily Telegraph, there is a segment of the public that has had more exposure to the story than many senior members of the Church of England. I have also got the impression that senior safeguarding officials in the Church and those in the National Safeguarding Team are showing little interest in the upcoming report. It is perhaps a case of ‘if we ignore this matter, even if the newspapers are reporting it, it will soon go away’. There is also an apparent perception that because Fletcher’s former church operates in a semi-detached relationship with the Church of England, it can be shrugged off as not being of concern to the rest of the Church. Emmanuel is what is known as a Proprietary Chapel and thus, legally speaking, is not fully under the authority of the local Bishop of Southwark. The Bishop still maintains a level of oversight over the parish and has the power, which he has exercised, of granting and withholding licences and PTOs for the parish. Also, the power to ordain Emmanuel clergy still falls to the Diocesan. Two of Fletcher’s ordinands, Rod Thomas and Andy Lines have become Anglican bishops. In the latter case, the consecration was, in the eyes of the C of E, somewhat irregular.
The report that we are waiting for from thirtyone:eight is of significant importance in several ways. The Church of England’s leaders cannot afford to ignore its revelations. One issue is that of Jonathan Fletcher’s past (and continuing?) influence over quite large swathes of church life in England. Considerable numbers of clergy and parishes are in debt to this influence and his exercise of power whether through patronage or in other ways. As the Vicar of Emmanuel and as a leading member of the Church Society/REFORM network within the Church of England, Fletcher had a great deal of influence in that network. Any association with him, a key person in the network, but dogged by accusations of exploitative behaviour, will be remembered and perhaps regretted. Every church where he preached, every conference which he led or spoke at, every vocation he fostered will be impacted by what we expect to be revealed in the report. A sense of shock and even shame will doubtless reach right across the conservative evangelical world over which, for a long time, Fletcher presided like an uncrowned king.
The thirtyone:eight report that is being commissioned by his old Church will no doubt focus on the thirty year period while he was Vicar of Emmanuel. Fletcher’s influence and his story in fact go back much further. As a curate of the Round Church in Cambridge from 72-76, he was a major influence on many Christian young people at Cambridge University and through his attending the Iwerne camps right up to 2016. It is hard to conceive how anyone who mixed in those circles would not have known him. If the thirtyone:eight report concludes that his influence, when at Emmanuel, was at times unhealthy or even toxic, the same risk would have applied to this earlier period. Those who knew Fletcher at Cambridge were, we would suggest, in the same danger as his parishioners in Wimbledon. Among those that came under this influence during the 70s were such names as the young Nicky Gumbel and Justin Welby. Nicky acknowledges the debt he owed to Fletcher for his Christian formation. He said in a forward to a book of Fletcher’s writings published in 2013: ‘He (Fletcher) met me three hours a week for a year. And regularly thereafter until I left university….. He has carried on helping hundreds of people like me find faith….his passionate faith combined with …..natural charm have been used by God’. Such words of enthusiasm for Fletcher might well explain why there is so little interest in his case among our current Church leaders. However the complete career of Fletcher is judged by future historians, it is clear that there are still many in the Church who feel they owe him an enormous amount and are perhaps dreading the thirtyone:eight insights. Meanwhile I have it on good authority that there are no files or any paperwork kept on Fletcher by the NST in Church House. Martyn Percy, by contrast, has suffered the attention of two NST sanctioned core groups. No doubt each core group generated enormous quantities of paper.
While we are waiting for the Fletcher report, we are also awaiting Keith Makin’s conclusions about the behaviour of John Smyth and who may have known about his activities. Smyth and Fletcher operated in different locations, but their stories intersect at significant points. The main common denominator was the Iwerne camps. Both men also shared the ability to avoid the attention of the police and the Church authorities, even though there had been questions about their behaviour for a considerable time. Each of them was successful at charming and manipulating those around them. In Smyth’s case his support network resulted in tens of thousands of pounds being collected to allow him to live abroad until his death. Whatever precisely was the appeal of these two men to keep the Con-Evo constituency silent and compliant, it has certainly been effective until now. When I first started asking questions about Fletcher, I discovered that one or several of his acolytes had systematically gone through the entire Internet removing all mentions of his sermons, talks and other activities. It was as though someone believed that they could make him disappear. Unfortunately for them, written programmes were less easily destroyed, and I gave space on this blog to the notice of a conference on preaching, called and presided over by Fletcher himself, in the early part of 2017. This had attracted over 30 male clergy including 4 bishops. The fact that Fletcher could attract so many to listen to him was remarkable. Especially important was the fact that this meeting took place after Fletcher’s PTO had been removed. Smyth and Fletcher both inspired considerable devotion from their disciples, receiving both loyalty and silence even in the midst of their abusive behaviour. It was a story of strong influence and domination over the young impressionable Christians who looked up to them. One reading of the Smyth/Fletcher story, is that each operated as a father surrogate. They were able to offer emotional support to vulnerable young men who spent so much time at boarding school away from their real fathers. The Public School had deprived them of normal family life. It was also training them in a quasi-cultic culture of silence, domination and unquestioning obedience. Tragically and cruelly the vulnerabilities of these young men were exploited and used to gratify the power needs of these two Christian leaders.
The thirtyone:eight report that we await is one that has been commissioned by Fletcher’s parish and not by the Church of England. We have already had some glimpse of what will be revealed in this report, thanks to the Daily Telegraph attempts to research the story. There is, however, much more detail to be revealed. Whatever the report tells us, it will not be a good outcome either for the Wimbledon parish or the wider Church of England. Up till now Fletcher has had protection from senior members of the Church who belong to the Iwerne network. That protection, reinforced by Fletcher’s membership of the Nobody’s Friends dining club, will not be tolerated by a press who is alert to this story. I can imagine that there may be two separate stories. One will be the retelling of the old stories of abuse, nakedness and ‘forfeits’. The other will be the story of a Church which has known about a serious case of power abuse but has consistently over decades turned away its gaze. Several con-evo institutions, such as Oak Hill theological college and St Ebbe’s Church in Oxford have been happy to benefit from the Fletcher private trust, even after the scandal of his behaviour became public knowledge. The sin of avoiding inconvenient and thoroughly toxic facts is something that has to be laid at the door of both the central Church of England and the Con-Evo network. Perhaps the greater blame attaches to the cluster of leaders and congregations that belong to the so-called ReNew constituency. In any event, both groups, the central Church and the ReNew network, should urgently prepare themselves for the outcry that is likely to be heard with the publication of the thirtyone:eight report. The loudest accusation may well be the cry of hypocrisy. The readers of the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph seem to loath hypocrisy more than almost anything else.
The behaviour of this one man, Jonathan Fletcher, may yet wreak as much damage on the Church of England as the behaviour of Peter Ball. Once again it is not the actual individual abusive activities that cause the greatest disgust; it is the apparent inability of the Church to operate with transparency. Secrets, cover-ups and actual lying all undermine integrity within an institution. It is this repeated failure of integrity that seems to represent the great failure of the Church. Without integrity there is a threat to its ability even to survive to serve another generation.
One issue which should be raised is the influence of Fletcher and the Con-Evo networks in securing senior appointments for their friends, including any number of bishops during the past 20 years, who have not only benefited from undue influence in the appointments procedures, but have had cause to cover up what we now know to be the extensive grooming and abuse networks of Smyth and Fletcher. As an Iwerne “graduate” Welby has kept very quiet since his appointments to Durham and Canterbury.
“Once again it is not the actual individual abusive activities that cause the greatest disgust; it is the apparent inability of the Church to operate with transparency. Secrets, cover-ups and actual lying all undermine integrity within an institution. It is this repeated failure of integrity that seems to represent the great failure of the Church.” That’s EXACTLY right. The lack of integrity and the lying and the inability to take action on abuse is completely heartbreaking
I think one of the sad things is that not only did Jonathan allegedly do these things, it was such a shock that someone who was so involved and influential with young people, and such a respected leader would do it.
It really rocked my trust when I heard about it/him. I’m not surprised the church has responded as it has. It is sad that the establishment can’t deal with these matters without loads of barriers. I also find it odd that the articles all talk about Jonathan at Iwerne. He was for several years a CYFA camp leader in the 80’s and if memory serves me right he was at St Helens BishopsGate. He mentored so many church leaders. It is a very sad episode for everyone involved and those who knew him and looked up to him as a church leader.
Yes, indeed: very, very sad. It sounds as if you have been involved on the inside of Iwerne Trust/Titus Trust activities at some point, as I was; I hope you had a chance to talk to the team investigating Titus in the Bash/Fletcher days; I didn’t, out of a still-strong sense of loyalty – and in the girls’ work I heard of no physical abuse, only kindness. What did happen is that we were firmly and lovingly urged, and put under pressure to, make a decision at eg 15 to wholly dedicate our lives, present and future, to Jesus. This involved immediate entire changes to social and cultural lives, plans for university, jobs, marriage, with the height to be aimed at as a teacher of RE at a girls’ boarding school – boys at Iwerne, too, unless they were to be ordained.
Gillian, I would guess that your grasp of the Iwerne ethos is one of the best. I remain convinced of how very good much of it was and has been; and secondly of how *some* (only some) of what is now accounted bad is misunderstood because of the old-fashioned and now unfamiliar culture. Whereas some of what was clearly genuinely bad was not mainstream (Smyth’s activities were semi-hidden, and were condemned by the leadership in general as soon as they were known about). There is always a fine line in these ‘pressure’ situations. Urging people of the seriousness of something in love would probably now be misunderstood as undue control. It is a bit like people now shrink in horror from the idea of boarding schools – but somehow failed to do so at the time. In each case it seems to me that part of the problem is an inability to think oneself into a different culture.
“The sex abuse that was perpetrated upon me by Peter Ball pales into insignificance when compared to the entirely cruel and sadistic treatment that has been meted out to me by officials, both lay and ordained. I know from the testimony of other people who have got in touch with me over the last five or 10 years that what I have experienced is not dissimilar to the experience of so many others and I use these words cruel and sadistic because I think that is how they behave. It is an ecclesiastical protection racket and [the attitude is that] anyone who seeks to in any way threaten the reputation of the church as an institution has to be destroyed”
~ Revd Graham Sawyer – IICSA Inquiry – July 2018
Re the gaining of appointments:
1. Yes, the process by which the existing conservative-evangelical posts were filled will have been manned by a relatively close circle.
2. The establishment overtones need examining from one direction: conservative-evangelicals have not only been non-establishment but very disproportionately non-establishment for some time. Such that special petitions had to be made for them to be represented by even one minor bishop out of over a hundred, and some have not wished to grant them even that, despite ‘the math’. This reminds me of those who call GB a patriarchy (father-ocracy) and then have to explain why for over a decade it has been by law non-essential for a child even to ‘have’ a father (unlike a mother) – whatever that is supposed to mean.
3. Re getting a leg up, let us not forget that generally conservative evangelicals are actually at the very other end of the scale, being the constituency *most* likely to prefer local pastoring to the grander episcopacy.
4. However, also the constituency who has done growing (and/or large) congregations best (together with the charismatics), which is something good not something to make them targets for criticism.
5. Also the uninterest or disinterest in promotion does bespeak a certain integrity and proper priorities.
People might say ‘A Iwerne man became Archbishop’ – but no, not without having first relinquished that Iwerne profile through a. charismatic links, b. taking transient cultural features more seriously than they, c. being at a place where playing ‘Imagine’ (the theme song of a type of culture) from the Liverpool Cathedral bells was felt a good idea, which I guess no Iwerne man would think it to be.
Christopher, I think your comment / analysis is spot-on. Whatever one thinks of Justin Welby, he has long disassociated himself with conservative-evangelicalism. I suspect the leadership of ReNew are more likely to view him as traitor than friend, and I am sure he would have been far from their first choice for episcopal appointment. Indeed, as you imply, local leadership is far more important than bishops, in those circles.
Separately, as Stephen touches on, Nicky Gumbel clearly did hold Fletcher in high regard. That said, this is another individual who is a long way from conservative-evangelicalism, who moves in completely different circles and would see himself as far more aligned to (often North American) evangelical-charasmatic church leaders. I suspect Gumbel is not really giving this a second thought. Unlike Welby, he is simply a regular parish incumbent and does not need to comment on broader Church of England matters.
It would be a very unusual person who could ‘not give a second thought’ to ongoing serious scandals involving people they had once been friendly with, even if the contact has been lost. This is especially true when they had known well both perpetrators and victims. And the Church of England is still a small enough world that they’d likely to come across these old friends now and again.
My guess is that they are aware of the impending 31:8 report and giving it more than a passing thought from time to time.
The ‘friendships’ don’t depend on similar theological backgrounds. I remember when Jonathan Fletcher came to speak at an event in Norwich. He remarked that he was off to have tea with the bishop (or suchlike). I remember being perplexed that he would be having tea with a liberal Catholic. But they were both nobody’s friends.
By suchlike, I meant tea or suchlike, not the bishop or suchlike, it was definitely Graham James.
I suspect that on the whole evangelical leaders like Hugh Palmer, Vaughan Roberts, William Taylor, Robin Weekes and Fletcher himself are all waiting to see ‘how much is revealed’ by the report rather than making any public statements in advance. There’s always the risk they might reveal something that wasn’t going to be revealed.
It will also be interesting to see how ‘horrified’ by the report they will all suddenly be, having failed to make much of a stand so far.
I’m horrified to hear that Johnny Juckes and Vaughan Roberts have continued to take money from the Fletcher trust, I think that speaks volumes.
I am interested to read that Church Society has called in a reviewer to look into a case in which several of its leading figures were implicated – viz the bullying of a clergyman and his wife in Derby Diocese. The case has been referred to earlier on this website. (The identity of the couple concerned is fairly widely known – but since you have not given their names Stephen neither will I.) I feel that along with the Jonathan Fletcher and John Smyth cases the issue I am referring to is a prime illustration of the toxic attitudes towards gender throughout the conservative evangelical constituency. In the course of my working life there have been two notable occasions when I feel that my unwillingness to accept conservative evangelical assumptions about my role as a married woman and clergy wife has resulted in abusive behaviour on behalf of the individuals and organisations concerned. I will never forget being told by a senior staff member of one organisation when I was protesting its systematic discrimination against married women (‘we believe in Christian marriage’.) The clear implication of the remark was that if you don’t think as we do (and I certainly didn’t) then you and your marriage is ‘not Christian.’ Today I would laugh it off – back then I felt much more vulnerable. However the reason for writing about the experience in this context is that when a few years ago I challenged the organisation re the way it had earlier treated me, part of their response was to quote the Five Guiding Principles at me. On reflection I don’t think they do – or at least ought to – apply in such contexts. As I understand it the Five Guiding Principles apply specifically to the question of women in ordained leadership roles. They do not, or at least they ought not, to apply in situations relating to the comparative roles of men and women in marriage. I am increasingly feeling that the conservative evangelical attitude to gender roles is so evil and toxic that it needs to be called out and for example it to be made clear throughout the constituency that eg assumptions and expectations about the roles of ‘wives’ of male clergy are not acceptable and are probably illegal. Having been myself on a couple of occasions on the receiving end of covert attempts to ‘interview’ me when my husband was applying for church related roles I feel this strongly. I think it is partly these kind of attitudes that have played into the situation in Derby Diocese – and of which a number of leading figures in Church Society appear to have been implicated, and in my view probably guilty of contravening national sex discrimination legislation.
Hi Clare – It’s inevitable that the law in a secular country will have different norms and presuppositions to Christian ones, as you will agree. That does not mean that the attitudes you encountered are or are not typically or normatively Christian, but it does mean that (a) we should not be surprised when church ways of doing things are different from societal norms – that is to be expected, and (b) it is questionable whether we ought to be using the law in a given secular country at a given time as some sort of yardstick for what is acceptable.
Christopher, I think you have just demonstrated part of the problem we are talking about.
There is nothing Christian about the attitudes Clare has sadly encountered or the treatment she has met with. She is right that, at the most conservative end of the evangelical spectrum, misogyny runs deep. A well-known female evangelical theologian once told me that she had been accosted at a conference by a senior evangelical who ranted at her, using such foul language that she was deeply shocked. HIs hatred of women was such that it overcame his usual aversion to obscenity and profanity.
As for secular vs. Christian norms, of course you are right that we don’t live in a theocracy, and there are things the law allows me to do which as a Christian I feel I should not do. However, equal roles for women and men has good precedent in scripture; and Jesus himself taught us the Golden Rule: treat others as you want to be treated yourself. There are not gender – or age – exceptions to that.
That misunderstands my point, as will be seen by rereading: for I had already said ‘This does not mean that the attitudes that you encountered are or are not typically or normatively Christian’. So let’s suppose for the sake of argument that what was encountered from ‘Christians’ was unChristian behaviour or attitudes. The presupposition that the law (let alone in a secular society) would necessarily be well-founded would still be a faulty presupposition. Which was my only point.
Though it seems a trivial point, it is however part of a wider issue that is very important: is it not the case that the C of E denomination is bowing the knee by unaccountably and unprecedentedly accepting the higher authority of avowedly secular organisations (rather than merely independent ones like IICSA)? – such as Stonewall and Mermaids. This would be a valid question even if the intellectual and apolitical credentials of these latter were more impressive than in fact they are.
‘Equal roles’ is an unclear phrase. Identical? Equal in value? Value how determined or measured? In a 1300page document many things have precedent, but which pattern emerges most clearly?
Hatred/misogyny is alleged rather than provided evidence for – which is a dangerous thing to do. People might have intellectual arguments for XYZ, or alternatively think that they have; but things that are rational are precisely not emotional. And if the presupposition is pan-emotional (everything is emotional at root) that could perhaps say more about what is normal to oneself and one’s circle (I am trying to diagnose a coherent explanation for where such a presupposition would come from, and I may be wrong) – no evidence has been provided for it, and alarm bells always ring when attempts are made to read the minds and motives of others, a very hard thing to do accurately.
My point would be that if one has been the recipient of those attitudes – as I have been on a couple of occasions (in fact more frequently – but there were at least two that significantly impacted on my life and that of my husband) one is – I believe – entitled to use the yardstick of or tools offered by secular society to stop comments and behaviour that feel destructive and abusive to the recipient. It becomes a very dangerous get out clause if religious groups can start to use their faith to justify dealing with people less equitably than the present norms of secular society. It is going down a slippery slope which some of the high profile recent abusers certainly made use of.. It is perhaps a particular hazard for Christianity vis-a-vis other religions because the theme of ‘take up your cross’ is so powerfully written into our religious narrative. It becomes all too easy for ‘Christians’ to inflict injustice on others weaker and more vulnerable than themselves by suggesting that it is religiously sanctioned.
Good points, I think.
And/or that the victim should turn the other cheek.
It’s one thing to take up your own cross – and you’re right that the saying is too often abused. It’s quite another thing to I inflict a cross on someone else.
As for turning the other cheek (Athena’s comment below), that’s widely misunderstood. Roman soldiers were permitted to strike a civilian once, but not twice. So if a soldier hit you on one cheek and you turn the other one to him, you were reminding him that his power was limited. It wa sa gesture of defiance. Or so I’ve read.
That maybe true. But most authority figures in the church are interested in the total passivity of victims kind of interpretation. As in “You must learn to forgive”.
Which is. really unhelpful and damaging thing to say to a survivor of abuse, or a victim of any serious crime.
It would be most natural to read in the context of other Sermon on the Mount and Rom 12 things – not rendering evil for evil but overcoming evil with good or with non-violence.
Two coats instead of one is close in context, so it is unlikely that two coats instead of one is making a completely different point from turn the other cheek.
Also it doesn’t specify a soldier, so it could be anyone.
And fourthly letting someone strike you on both cheeks is not an obvious way of emphasising what power they *don’t* have over you.
That misunderstands my point, as will be seen by rereading: for I had already said ‘This does not mean that the attitudes that you encountered are or are not typically or normatively Christian’. So let’s suppose for the sake of argument that what was encountered from ‘Christians’ was unChristian behaviour or attitudes. The presupposition that the law (let alone in a secular society) would necessarily be well-founded would still be a faulty presupposition. Which was my only point.
Though it seems a trivial point, it is however part of a wider issue that is very important: is it not the case that the C of E denomination is bowing the knee by unaccountably and unprecedentedly accepting the higher authority of avowedly secular organisations (rather than merely independent ones like IICSA)? – such as Stonewall and Mermaids. This would be a valid question even if the intellectual and apolitical credentials of these latter were more impressive than in fact they are.
‘Equal roles’ is an unclear phrase. Identical? Equal in value? Value how determined or measured? In a 1300page document many things have precedent, but which pattern emerges most clearly?
Hatred/misogyny is alleged rather than provided evidence for – which is a dangerous thing to do. People might have intellectual arguments for XYZ, or alternatively think that they have; but things that are rational are precisely not emotional. And if the presupposition is pan-emotional (everything is emotional at root) that could perhaps say more about what is normal to oneself and one’s circle (I am trying to diagnose a coherent explanation for where such a presupposition would come from, and I may be wrong) – no evidence has been provided for it, and alarm bells always ring when attempts are made to read the minds and motives of others, a very hard thing to do accurately.
Clare, I remember your husband from the late 1980’s. A remarkable and quite holy man who stood somewhere outside of the structures of the Church and didn’t seem to pay them too much mind. He reminds me of another Alan, friend to many survivors, Alan Wilson, who possibly fills the country’s quotient of one per country of ‘really good bishops’. Looking back I think if your Alan had been made a bishop maybe the two of them would have been partners in such goodness and decency, witnesses to the truth. They would have taken on the heavies of the House of Bishops and Lambeth Palace together.
Please give him my best wishes – he probably won’t remember me? Life turned out rather oddly. I think I did have an impact on the Church but perhaps not in the way that might have been predicted. Along with others, I fought the corruption and delinquency of a Church that could not deal with its own coverup, its own blanking or its own lack of compassion. I took on rotten bishops and a rotten institution.
And together, some of us even published a book about that rottenness.
Letters to a Broken Church.
And we are still even now facing down more of that corruption, the conflict-of-interest issues, the disregard of ethical standards, the fraudulent activities. Sadly I have seen too much of the Church’s institutionally dysfunctional culture and cannot go to a church these days unless it be in silence – in which case I like the architecture and the sense of stillness.
Thank you for your lovely and kind words Gilo. I will share them with Alan
There is an update on the Fletcher Review:
https://thirtyoneeight.org/news-and-events/news/news-2021/ew-review/
https://anglican.ink/2021/02/16/jonathan-fletcher-out-as-trustee-of-the-fc-trust/ Further information about the Fletcher affair from the Anglican Ink web-site
How tragic to be a covertly homosexual leader of a church with a USP of strident opposition to homosexual relationships. It would be great if this episode prompted some honest reflection about the church’s attitude rather than just blaming and crowing.
As John Smyth is mentioned above, it is worth pointing out here that the Church of England has announced that publication of Keith Makin’s report will be further delayed: “To ensure the review is as comprehensive as possible and that the large volume of information submitted can be fully studied, it is now likely that the completion of the report will be mid-summer 2021 at the earliest. Following that, there will be a need to ensure that the report is legally sound and that people who may be directly referenced will have had the opportunity to comment on those references.”
It’s a pity they didn’t inform Smyth survivors before they announced the delay publicly. The Church is still treating survivors like nonentities.
Just in case anyone hasn’t seen it this is the link to the paper that will be discussed at informal Synod tomorrow regarding independent oversight. Hmmm…!
https://www.churchofengland.org/safeguarding/safeguarding-news-and-releases/proposals-nst-independent-oversight-published
(Sorry, rudely interrupting the blog)