By Paul Devonshire
Archbishop Rowan Williams has called for the Church to be an “argumentative democracy”. He sees the need for “an investment in articulate, competent religious communities” (my italics). My experience suggests that the Church of England shows little taste for such thinking, from parish to diocese. My wife, an ex-churchwarden, had been invited by the previous incumbent to be the editor of our church magazine, a role she had fulfilled for over five years. With no prior warning or opportunity to challenge the decision, she was sacked under a confidential item at a PCC meeting. One reason given was that the magazine was being used as a platform for articles by me. These had started with the previous incumbent with no adverse comment that came to the attention of either my wife or myself. When I asked which articles these were, I received no reply. So much for disagreeing well and free speech. I referred the matter to the archdeacon, who declined to be involved, saying the magazine was no concern of his. The incumbent then styled himself “editor-in-chief”. The process of (constructive) dismissal showed scant regard for common decency, and little acknowledgement of my wife’s contribution over many years to the life of the church community.
In the absence of a physical gulag, we were, in essence, sent to Coventry, leaving pastoral care with its ideas of engagement, concern and interest in others somewhat absent. Following centuries of tradition, some incumbents, mirroring their diocesan bishops, still treat their parishes and benefices as a personal bailiwick and members of the congregation passively collude in being infantilised. Half the choir in our local church are refugees from another parish, victims, one might say, of clerical autocracy. It is of note that the Independent Inquiry in Child Sexual Abuse, which focused on our diocese, identified as a contributory factor in the poor handling of allegations of sexual abuse a “culture of clericalism”. When I asked our diocesan bishop whether there would be an opportunity to explore this, I received no reply. When, more recently, I approached our rural dean to have some local discussion on this, I was told, with no reference to the lay chair or any apparent sense of irony, that she could not authorise this without the permission of the bishop. Culture works in both obvious and insidious ways. During my tenure of a voluntary deanery role of ‘ecumenical champion’, I was very aware of the lack of discussion or debate on any subject at our deanery meetings. The format appeared to be one of receiving reports with no opportunity for formulating policy, proposing action or reflecting on how anything implemented had fared.
Failing to stimulate discussion from within on this “culture of clericalism”, I attempted to do so from without. In September 2018, the Chichester Observer published the following letter from myself, which I present in full:
May I through your columns encourage open discussion in the Chichester diocese not least on the subject of justice? After all, as we heard at the royal wedding – “let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream”. Discussion on this and other topics is lacking. What a breath of fresh air has been the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, with churchmen publicly held to account. Let there be more of it! Accountability and openness are accepted means in challenging corruption and incompetence, so why not in the Church? Disquiet has already been expressed in the national press concerning the handling of Bishop Bell’s case, begging the question whether priests have the appropriate skills, knowledge and attitudes to administer justice. My experience of the diocese’s administration of its Complaints Policy and Procedure begs the same question. Although this states many worthy intentions, viz. “to ensure that all complaints are investigated fairly…to resolve complaints and repair relationships wherever possible…to gather information to help us improve what we do and how we do it”, there was little evidence of them in practice when addressing my complaints. These involved the failure to engage in correspondence. Silence is a tool of the totalitarian state. In its avoidance of the truth, it is dishonest. It corrodes trust. It is rude. I discern a sense of entitlement informing such behaviour, echoing the title of Bishop Jones’ Hillsborough report , “The patronising predisposition of unaccountable power“. Unless challenged, such behaviour is perpetuated. Perhaps the recently reported decline in church congregations can be attributed to this mindset rather than any anti-religion attitudes. I trust you will allow Bishop Martin and his colleagues space to reply, setting in train genuine open discussion and a proper sense of engagement with our national church.
When I took advantage a Subject Access Request, I discovered how this had been received within the diocese. In a communication between a media advisor, (described on his website as having “used his skills in many critical and damage limitations areas”), and the diocesan secretary, the former opined “I’m not sure he could be more opinionated and misguided but a shirt (sic) reply correcting him factually from [ ] might be better which, in itself, proves these decisions are not taken by clergy!”. The reply that was prepared read as follows: “Dear Sir, I refer to Paul Devonshire’s letter complaining of a lack of discussion and failure to reply to correspondence on the part of the diocese of Chichester. The diocese would be very happy to permit any of your readers who wish to review the lever arch file full of correspondence and meeting notes with Mr. Devonshire, if he also gives his consent”.
It is difficult to discern in this interchange any attempt to engage with what I had written, perpetuating the very pattern of behaviour to which I was drawing attention. Instead, I am described as “opinionated and misguided”, employing vilification, demonisation or derogation of the individual – discredit the person and so discredit their ideas. Also employed is impression management by referring to “a lever arch file full of correspondence and meeting notes”, meant no doubt to portray me as a time-wasting troublemaker. I was seeking public debate as part of an “argumentative democracy”, not private conversations.
The role of media advisors and their ilk Is to gain the best outcome for their clients, in their case, the most favourable interpretation of the information in the public domain, whether to enhance reputation or to limit any potential damage. A 17th century diplomat described an ambassador as “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country”, an example of the means justifying the ends. Public relations is a kind of competitive sport – the name of the game is to win, with the all-too-human temptation to cheat. The relationship between the two parties is predicated on the dominance of one party over the other. The goal is not to gain any additional insights by a dialogue between the parties that might reach mutual consensus. There is no sense of exploration into the whys and wherefores, hence the use of avoidance and denial. It is the “culture of clericalism” in which the clergy tell the laity what they should think. There is no two-way street. It is anti-intellectual.
Any moral slippery slope can begin insidiously, starting with pejorative adjectives and adverbs leading to that well-known phrase ‘being economical with the truth’ and on to misinformation and finally outright lying. Advice, from any source including PR specialists, needs moral scrutiny. There is the danger that reputation is placed higher than truth, with the additional risk of the loss of trust. Once compromised, trust is difficult to recover.
If anyone had read that arch file, they would have read that my many proposals were all ignored. These would have included job descriptions for priests, accountability, transparency in decision making, due process and, obviously, debate. When my complaint concerning non-replies to correspondence failed, I was afforded two ‘conversation partners’, the proviso being no discussion of my complaint. Mediation was rejected. The actions of the diocese makes me suspicious that something is being hidden. Surely engaging with people honestly and openly from the start saves time and maintains reputation. The Church of England at all levels could see itself as a space for developing the civic skill of public debating, encouraging those “articulate, competent religious communities” suggested by Rowan Williams? Parishioners could then feel safe to participate more actively rather than voting with their feet.
Paul Devonshire is a layman in the Diocese of Chichester.
Yet another excellent blog highlighting unjust and immoral processes injuring innocent worshippers. Once again silence is weaponised, there is a deliberate culture of not engaging in any meaningful way with a complainant, and the absolute refusal to act within the normal boundaries of justice practised in our country. Defaming and name calling of any one who challenges the church, however politely , on any topic cannot be considered justified. If clergy behave like this it would be going against their professional code of conduct. An invisible “gulag” is erected for those whose opinion does not coincide with the dictats of those in authority. All whilst hypocritically publicly claiming to act fairly in publicised complaints procedures. “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power ” indeed. Just sorry to hear you and your wife were at the receiving end of such disgraceful behaviour. You really have to remind yourselves this is the Church of England not an accountable dictatorship. Sadly, the two descriptions can be used for the same organisation. These people are killing the Church many of us love, and unjustly punishing anyone who says the emperor has no clothes. We try to throw them a blanket to cover up but it seems no use. There is no blanket large enough to cover up their wrongdoing and no amount of money paid to public relations and media advisors will do the job. Sadly they could have found this out for themselves by reading the sacredne scriptures they proclaim. Jesus is the way, the truth , and the light. The Light has already started to illuminate the darkness and the truth can never be hidden, try as much as you like. Just very, very sorry it is the Church which is trying to hide the truth.
Quite so. This is what they do. They blank you. Even if you try to speak to them they will blank you (especially if you are not of importance to them). Often you can see them looking through or over you. You sense that they can hear, but that they are not listening. You might as well not be there. What you, Mr Devonshire and others have experienced could have been out of Kafka’s ‘Trial’. Janet Fife recounted her experiences of Desmond Tutu in her telling ‘Vignette in the Vestry’; what went for her also goes for those layfolk who try to engage with, or obtain redress from, certain of the clergy (fortunately, there are still enough saints).
But let us be honest about it. You are not dealing so much with a group of believers; instead, you are dealing with a bureaucratic organisation that happens to comprise people of faith. The faith is malleable and capable of varying degrees of interpretation; bureaucratic advancement and control is often rather more clear-cut; as such the faith will almost always take a back seat to bureaucratic imperatives. The clergy are the instruments of this bureaucracy. You should, much of the time, expect to receive treatment from them that is akin to that which you should expect from any corporate or government agency, where the officials will generally give preference to their own interests before those of their clients or customers. Of course, this clericalist attitude is, perforce, hypocritical, in view of the purported mission of the Church but it is also inevitable. One of the problems with improving clerical standards in the nineteenth century is that it raised public expectations of the clergy from what was often rock bottom; it is arguably the case that expectations frequently remain rather too high, despite the slump in the reputation of the clerical profession.
Moreover, bureaucrats have to weigh the interests which antagonise them, and it is possible that in Mr Devonshire’s case those interests which objected to his contributions weighed more heavily on the scales or calculus of bureaucratic self-interest and opportunism (and in terms of parish politics) than his own contributions to his church community. That may be sad; it might even be disgraceful, but I am certain that the clergy in question will have rationalised the problem he has posed to them, and will sleep soundly in their respective beds.
Until the Church gives preference to the dissemination of the faith and ceases to be a spiritual front for its core bureaucratic, financial and legal objectives, this sort of thing will keep happening. Disestablish and disendow now!!!
The seventeenth century ambassador of Venice to which Mr Devonshire refers was Sir Henry Wotton of Boughton Malherbe in Kent. He became provost of Eton in 1624 and was soon ordained deacon. He got into a great deal of trouble with James I & VI for making that jocular remark.
If the CoE’s experience is anything like my experience in the Episcopal Church, anyone who questions authority will face retaliation. Church officials will be okay with that, even in the face of facially illegal behavior. And the church will make itself seem foolish and ugly, as it did when the Episcopal church labelled my blog “threatening and harassing,” and an act of “domestic terrorism.” Oh, and my former rector, Bob Malm, goes around telling folks that I am mentally ill.
And then the hierarchy wonders why the church is collapsing.
Much food for thought here: https://www.winchestercollege.org/assets/files/uploads/john-smyth-review-winchester-college-jan-2022-final.pdf
To be compared with the glacial pace of the Makins report, although I appreciate that Makins’ remit is somewhat wider.
It seems obvious that Richard Stagg and Tim Hands were determined not to let anything fester.
I’ve finished running through it. It is extremely well made (as, no doubt, the Makins report will be too).
John Thorn came to my school twice to give talks – one of them, if I recall, was about Jane Austen’s use of irony. He struck me as being a very donnish and urbane man, although by that time retired from Winchester. It seems that he was running a very different ship to that of, say, Anthony Chenevix-Trench (a notorious beater) and the forbidding Michael McCrum at Eton. What Thorn presumably wanted was to expand on Winchester’s reputation as a place in which liberal intellectual virtues could flourish. This must explain his relative laxity and his ambivalence about the Christian Forum. In addition, he was headmaster at a transitional point: many of the then parents would have been on the side of Mrs Whitehouse, whose agent Smyth was (although a good many would also have been opposed); he therefore had to handle the Christian Forum with kid gloves, ere he be the victim of multiple brickbats. Perhaps the greater concern for him was the manner in which the Christian Forum was proving to be a divisive influence within the school, often in opposition to the chaplaincy, or at least part of it.
Thorn had also inherited the Arnoldian tradition, in which the application of physical sanctions was decentralised and outsourced to older boys, and was often applied Quixotically (Kenneth Clark recalled that on his first day at Winchester, in 1918, he was ordered to ‘sport an arse’ for a beating simply for being new). Further, the headmaster was not a dictator, but more of a primus inter pares. So there are ‘reasons’ why Thorn acted as he did, I would guess.
The attitude of the evangelical cabal is rather less excusable. Their primary interest was in a cover-up one the extent of Smyth’s depredations (such as 14,000 strokes being applied to 8 boys: p. 51) became evident (see p. 67).
There is a very useful discussion after p. 138 of Smyth’s modus operandi. However, for me the clues to his behaviour are found on p. 13 (that he was born in Canada) and p. 14 (“My name is Smyth. Nothing common like Smith”). He was educated at Strathcona in Calgary, and then went to Trinity Hall. It seems to be – again, this is conjecture – that he was desperately aggrieved not to have gone to a posh school in the UK. That he was an appalling snob. That he wanted to inveigle himself into the school, and exert great power over it by: (i) exploiting the vulnerability of homesick and confused adolescents; and (ii) making the Christian Forum a form of fifth column. In doing so he would make himself ‘of’ the school, to compensate for never having been sent to it as a pupil. He could then expiate the ‘pain’ of having been sent to an overseas (though actually very good) school and of being colonial/provincial. Yet this became an emotional runaway train, in which not only he crashed, but also the others whose lives he had wrecked. A dreadful man.
I really ought to read it in its entirety before commenting, but you make a number of points which I have been hammering away for several years here and on ‘Thinking Anglicans’ about the significance of Smyth’s non-English public school background (and even the family’s expulsion from the Plymouth Brethren in Canada) and the fact that he was always an ‘outsider’ who infiltrated Winchester College.
I think the most telling evidence of Smyth’s character which I have seen (and I saw him in action as a junior counsel in the Winchester County Court years earlier) is the video of his interview on South African national television (in 2014 as I recall), full of aplomb and accorded great respect by the interviewer, Smyth giving his views on the shortcomings, as he saw them, of the advocacy in the trial of Oscar Pistorius. This was after the 2013 disclosures to the Bishop of Ely and others, and literally decades after John Thorn had publicly announced the fact of Smyth’s abuse in his autobiography. Smyth’s abuse of boys both in England and in Zimbabwe was already known in Africa, and had been for some considerable time. Despite that, here he was on national television being feted as a legal expert and, indeed, it has to be said that his performance and views on advocacy were pretty impressive.
His was a supreme ‘double act’.
I was under the impression that corporal punishment administered by older boy prefects at Winchester had been abolished long ago by Alwyn Williams, then Headmaster and subsequently Bishop of Durham and Winchester successively (in the latter capacity he confirmed my late wife), but I need to do further reading. A member of my family who recently joined Winchester College in the sixth form flourished there, and went on to get a very respectable degree (including theology) at Durham. I have personally known two masters (now deceased) who were there during the ‘Smyth years’, but with no involvement in these matters, and consider both to have been exceptional persons and good Christians.
Many thanks. The question is whether he let his shadow life overwhelm his public one. I recall one remark being made in the report that he was spending so much time around the school people wondered how he managed to do his legal work. It’s as if he was trying to make himself a sort of shadow Wykehamist or ersatz master.
Much was made of his being given silk very young. I suspect that this was so because it was, to some extent, ‘political’: Quintin Hailsham let him have silk not so much because he was a star-at-the-bar (others of his generation were very much more eminent as lawyers) but because of his intimate association with the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, which was very much flavour of the month with Mrs Thatcher (although the influence of the NVLA receded very rapidly thereafter). In this instance, being made a recorder (by Elwyn Jones in 1978) and being given silk were his passports to prestige, and to abuse. Although the days of appointing political hacks to positions in the High Court and county court were past by 1979, the award of silk was still on occasion relatively political, and a barrister MP, even if of only modest attainments, could still apply for silk, almost for the asking. Hailsham was susceptible to preferring people further to political pressure, or to reward those known to him personally (the preferment of the late and unlamented Jeremiah Harman, scion of an eminent City family and son of Hailsham’s old friend, Charlie, to the Chancery Division being a case in point).
The report also makes frequent mention of John Eddison (1916-2011) who used to come to my junior school quite frequently in order to promote the cause of Christianity. He lived at Crowborough and my then school was near Oxted (the headmaster was a close friend of Peter Ball). Eddison roved around the region in this manner on behalf of the Scripture Union, a greater weighting being placed upon fee paying schools than others. In this sense, it seems that a very large proportion of the mission effort of the SU was directed on class lines. At my school SU was very strong under an elderly teacher who was a former missionary, and then deflated rapidly following his retirement in 1984; by the time I left it was moribund.
One other point. The report was commissioned by the warden and fellows, acting in conjunction with the headmaster (who was once my housemaster). Dr Hands is a formidable operator who has a sort of sixth sense for reputational risk (amongst his many other talents), and the manner in which this report was set up, the issues which it has covered (i.e., the TOR) and the relative dispatch with which it has been delivered, bear some of his characteristic hallmarks. I am not suggesting he interfered in any way with its composition (he would be far too wise to do so), but he knows what is at stake, and that this is a boil which needed rapid lancing. If only some of the Church authorities were as sensible.
Many thanks for providing that link. In some ways more helpful and appalling than Graystone. It’s interesting to see the different factions of evangelicalism at odds. Woolmer, as a ‘liberal’ or ‘open’ evo, coming out of it with some credit, as objecting to the underhandedness, secrecy, and cliquiness of the Iwerneites. The Iwerneites happy to cash in on the evangelistic success of the relatively ‘woolly’ Keith de Berry. And for me, an increasing feeling of remorse at having been taken in by the Iwerne brand of religion, and of gratitude that I was not a Wykehamist and that I was dropped by Iwerne as (I presume) poor material!
Just a brief comment on the Winchester report, which I have “skimmed” very quickly.
The “sound/unsound” categorisation by Evangelicals was, I think, pretty widespread in the early 1970s. It was partly used as a defence mechanism against what at the time seemed to be the unstoppable rise of theological liberalism in many circles (think “Honest to God”, “Sea of Faith” and perhaps “Liberation Theology”). The dichotomy was certainly well-established within my university Christian Union at Southampton – not to my knowledge influenced by Iwerne in any direct way. Certainly I was criticised for attending the Anglican Society (“AngSoc”) services as the Chaplains were regarded as very “unsound”. We had a little ditty, to the tune of “I’m H.A.P.P.Y which went, “I’m S.O.U.N.D, I.m S.O U.N.D; I know i am, I’m sure I am: I’m IVF, you see!” (For reference, IVF was the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, later renamed the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowsahip). In fact there was a sector of the Christian Union which had a lot of input from the Leeds-based National Young Life Campaign, a very different beast from Iwerne but one in which “soundness” was absolutely crucial!
The sound / unsound dichotomy was very clearly followed in CICCU (Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union) in the mid sixties. Relationships with college chapels varied but in general they were not encouraged. Attendance at specific local churches was encouraged instead, such as Mark Ruston’s Round Church, St Paul’s, Hills Road with the ultra Reformed Herbie Carson. Zion Baptist was sound as was Panton Street Gospel Hall.
The menu of preachers for the Saturday Evening meeting and the Sunday evening Evangelistic service was quite limited – Dick Lucas, John Stott, JCB Collins, David Watson and David MacIness, inter alios (always men)!
There was a Iwerne influence, which seemed to be nothing more than men who had known each other pre-Cambridge by attending Bash camps, certainly not the influence that it seemed to have 10 or so years later . I was invited to a meeting addressed by ‘Bash’; I found him aloof and uninspiring, and really wondered what people saw in him. Perhaps a sign of my already incipient unsoundness!
‘Soundness’ wasn’t/isn’t exclusive to College CU’s; it’s quite often heard in a variety of churches, both low Anglican and Free Church, particularly when assessing a ministerial candidate’s suitability. “Is he sound?” can mean a lot of things, from “Is he charismatic?” to ‘Will he rock the boat too much?” And, in the kind of churches referred to, it can be a very menacing death knell for anyone who may just, perish the thought, want change.
People with fragile egos, or a strong sense of entitlement, can react defensively to even the mildest challenge. I recall Bp Roy Williamson accusing me of having made a couple of ‘threatening’ comments; one was at our ordination rehearsal when I pointed out that the name given on my licence was incorrect. I was taken aback: clearly a legal document has to be correct, and I didn’t think my correction was tactless.