My last but one blog post on safeguarding was critiqued on the Thinking Anglicans web-site.  This was on the grounds that my idea of a survivor in a safeguarding context did not include those falsely accused of sexual crimes.  I have no doubt that to be falsely accused of a crime of this kind, that of betraying trust, would be a terrible thing.  There is, however, one main reason why those falsely accused do not get discussed or supported in these blog discussions on safeguarding.  These individuals are, for the most part, completely invisible.  Whereas there are some among the survivor population who are ready to ‘come out’ and face scrutiny by the media, it is hard to imagine that anyone accused of a crime, even unjustly, would want to be questioned about the circumstances.  Whatever else may have happened to allow a false accusation take place, something unwise in a person’s actions may have occurred.  Youth leaders and clergy will now routinely behave in a manner that includes common-sense measures for self-protection.  These might involve leaving doors ajar when speaking alone with a vulnerable person.  The risks of a false accusation against a Christian leader in ministry are always a potential hazard to be faced.

I can think of only two individuals that I know, at a distance, who have been through the Clergy Disciplinary Process (CDM) for sexual abuse against a young person.  In each case they were eventually vindicated.   That should have been the end of the matter, but the toll exacted on them and their families was in each case dire.   Serious life-changing illnesses befell the families concerned.  In the first case it was the accused person who suffered an illness and in the second case it was the wife who fell ill.   No one is ever able to say that there is a definite link between overwhelming stress and illness, but the anecdotal evidence often seems to point this way.  The toll of months being suspended while waiting for a judgement must be appalling.  Yes, I agree with the comment on Thinking Anglicans.  The falsely accused are victims in the safeguarding and CDM processes but it is hard to show sympathy to them if we seldom know who they are.

The fate of those who are sexually abused and those falsely accused of such a crime can be compared.   I would however maintain that those in the second group do normally have a good chance of a full recovery.   The life-long damage borne by the sexually abused is, on the other hand, usually grievous.  I am not going to list the possible symptoms of one who has been through such an experience, as my knowledge of this specialised area of psychology is, to say the least of it, incomplete. I have a little experience of engaging with those on the way out of cults or harmful religious groups who are afflicted with serious Post Traumatic Stress.  To say that sexual abuse will often ruin a life is probably an understatement.  It will often seriously damage both education and emotional development.  Every child that is born has its own potential as they seek to discover their unique capacity for creativity and skills in some area.  An emotional stability born out of early healthy relationships will allow the young adult to become eventually attached to a partner.  The social/religious contract we call marriage spells out the expectation that a couple will remain together for their entire span of their lives. 

Sexual abuse or the distortions of cult experiences will frequently play havoc with a child and young person’s educational and emotional potential.  Normal concentration may be affected especially if, as a result of abuse, addictive patterns of behaviour sometimes emerge.  Alcoholism or drug abuse does not fit well when studying for exams.  Neither are good lasting relationships easily built up in such a setting.  And yet self-medication with drugs, sex or alcohol is all too easy to understand when these substances are being used as a way of trying to escape the trauma of sexual abuse.  The remembered pain must be blotted out in some way.

The survivor of a false accusation may have many issues to overcome but, if they are adult, there will normally be family and friends to help them endure the ordeal.  The passage from adolescence to adulthood will have been crossed and that will have brought with it a certainly emotional stability with which to face the challenge of the false accusation.  The suffering will still, nevertheless, be terrible as the accused risks losing something that is precious to all of us – reputation.  Here the dead are threatened equally with the living unless, as in the case of George Bell, there are individuals concerned to protect a reputation even beyond the grave.  A person’s reputation is not only of concern to them; the shame of a false accusation is something that potentially infects everyone around them as well as their descendants.

The issue of financial compensation for those who have been abused by servants of the church is an uncomfortable topic to raise.  The sums that have been mentioned in the public domain as being paid to survivors are not so large that they would naturally tempt false claims.  The process that has to be gone through before such claims are settled seems fairly intimidating.  In the face of such barriers, can we really see many false claims getting past the process?  Standing up for yourself against an institution as powerful as the church, when making a false claim is, on the face of it, an unlikely scenario.  Many of those who have genuine claims are said to drop out of the process.  Those falsely accused do not seem to have recourse of any kind.  They suffer in silence, facing their pain alone.    Do they not deserve some of the help and support that we seek to be provided for survivors in the past and present?

I would like to see the Church of England eventually come out from the protection of its lawyers and insurers and begin to set aside serious sums of money for both victims as well as the falsely accused.  Money can help to repair damaged lives.  From the IICSA hearings we learned that even small sums of money were simply not available for the purpose of providing basic counselling, let alone compensation for abuses suffered.  A few hundred from a Bishop’s discretionary fund is hardly an adequate response to what was revealed of wicked activities by individual perpetrators. 

2018 has been an eventful year in the area of church safeguarding.  If the same momentum is maintained in 2019, who knows what this will bring?  We can hope for certain outcomes.  One is that the flow of transparency and openness will continue but at the same time the Church’s response be a healthy one.  The technique of hiding from public scrutiny uncomfortable realities about abuse will no longer work.  The only realistic path for the Church is to work with the truth rather than trying to pretend it does not exist.  Out of such openness we may hope to provide better healing both for the victims and those falsely accused of such crimes.  A Church which promotes justice of this kind will also be a far healthier place.

This reflection was written five years ago when the blog was being followed by fewer than ten people.  I revisited it and felt it deserved another airing for those who will not have read it before.

At this time of year, we all receive many Christmas cards. The one thing that all Christmas cards have in common is a picture on the front. It may be a nativity scene or some representation of people having a good time. In the past we used to receive many Christmas cards harking back to a lost time in the early 19^th century which the card designer seemed to think represented quintessential Christmas cheer.  For some reason Christmas was thought to involve stage coaches, street scenes and snow. But whatever the picture, the important thing is that each card gives us something to look at, something that in different ways evokes the Christmas event.

I have mentioned in previous blogs my concern and interest for the church in Eastern Europe – the Orthodox Church.  In my early twenties I spent some 10 months in various Orthodox countries, mainly Greece, being exposed to a completely different way of being a Christian.  One important thing that I learnt in those months all those years ago was the language of pictures. By this I do not mean that the Orthodox are only concerned with icons to the exclusion of everything else, but that the whole atmosphere of worship and theology seems to be highly visual.  Seeing a picture or a ritual act rather than listening to words as we do in the West, is a vital component of their religious life. Attendance at worship for a typical member of an Orthodox church will involve the use of the eyes as much as, if not more than, the facility of hearing.  In many Orthodox countries the actual words of the liturgy are largely incomprehensible to the ordinary worshipper. The Russians use a version of old church Slavonic which is quite different from modern Russian. The Greeks also use for worship an archaic form of their language which was understood better in the days of the Byzantine Empire which came to an end in 1453. Obviously, some parts are understood but also much of what is heard remains obscure to the congregation. In the Greek service books, the priest is instructed to say the words of the prayer of consecration in such a way that no one can hear it. 

These comments about Orthodox worship lead me to my main point that Christians in the East do far more in the way of seeing that they do through listening to words and ideas.  We could say in summary that they live in a visual culture rather than one which attempts to put everything into words. These comments about Orthodoxy provide me with an introduction to the thought that Christmas is for most of us a visual event. Its appeal and popularity are in part because the pictures that represent it are attractive to our imaginations.   A preacher at Christmas might possibly talk about the meaning of the Incarnation, but he will also realise that Christmas exists far more as a visual event in people’s minds.   There are many varieties of traditional scene that we can conjure up in our minds to remind us of the events of the birth of Jesus. The traditional Christmas cards reinforce these images.  Some focus on the star shining in the East and showing the way to the stable for the wise men. Another picture which is frequently represented is the singing of the angels to the shepherds on the hills around Bethlehem. Yet another will dwell on the simplicity of the stable with the animals standing around. Some of us will have questions about whether these events actually happened in the way they are depicted on the cards, but equally something powerful is being communicated to us through them.

By emphasising what happens when we look at pictures of Christmas, we have moved away from thinking of Christmas as a doctrine or as a literal historical event, to seeing it as an evocative statement of how we understand God to participate in the world.  In this we are beginning to think and visually evoke the Christian message like Orthodox believers.  What I am indicating here is that a strong emphasis on ‘seeing’ at Christmas is similar to the Orthodox preference for meditation and contemplation of images.   To look at a picture of a star in the sky being followed by three men on camels, will not illuminate us in any finer point of theology. What it might do is to help us to see that following an inner light may help us to discover new meaning and new understanding of what God wants us to be and to do. To pick up a point from my last post, the pictures and images of Christmas, whichever ones we choose, may well touch our hearts and help to create in us once more a new longing for the infinite, the ultimate and the true. We sing carols, we listen to readings and pray, not because we can learn some new information or obtain some new knowledge, but so that something inside us can once again be touched and drawn out of us.  It may be that, in spite of the over-familiarity of the story, our hearts can be renewed to contemplate the reality of God afresh, one who identifies himself with our world.

Christmas is then, I would claim, a festival of pictures and inward seeing. This is a different kind of understanding and apprehension of reality from what we are used to.  Perhaps in our world so obsessed with words and rational concepts, it is a way of understanding that most of us need to engage with far better. So this Christmas maybe we can learn, not only to listen to the stories, but to see deeper into the pictures and images of the season.  By using our imaginations and our hearts, we may glimpse better the encounter of God with humanity that is at the heart of this festival. We will never fully understand the theology of the Incarnation, but perhaps we may be able to see something more of its meaning through the pictures that are given us this time. The light shines in the darkness. May we be able to come into this light and know something more of God’s radiance.   It is that radiance that we encounter in Jesus as he guides us through our lives.   As his light shines in the darkness, may we learn better to walk in that light.

Dear Meg Munn

I was very grateful to read your ‘first reflections’  https://chairnsp.org/ in your role as Chair of the National Safeguarding Panel.   Like you, I approach this whole area of safeguarding as an outsider, though my status as a retired Anglican clergyman means that my relationship with the Church of England is different from yours.  Outsiders are sometimes in a privileged position to see things that others miss. My only formal contact with the world of organised safeguarding is to have obtained an attendance certificate from attending a morning session for retired clergy like myself here in the Newcastle diocese.  But I have also had my perspective formed by reading some of the massive amounts of material available online, particularly over the past twelve months.  This access to this detailed information has allowed me to function as a commentator.  I fulfil this self-appointed role through the medium of my blog, survivingchurch.org. There has been no shortage of material on which to comment recently.

Allow me to say a little more by way of personal introduction.  I have had an interest in power/abuse topics for some twenty years since researching for a book during the late 90s on the topic.  My perspective on the current sexual abuse issue is to see it primarily as the extreme expression of dysfunctional church dynamics.   To put it another way, I believe that we should see sexual abuse of children and vulnerable people as being at one end of a continuum of power abuse in the Church.  My blog has had as its aim helping people to think about the variety of ways that power can be mishandled and abused in church settings.  Sexual abuse of children is criminal, but there are other ways in which the Church can become a place of harm and danger for its members.

In your reflections, you referred to the various safeguarding organisations and structures you have had dealings with recently.   Some have been created by the Church, such as the National Safeguarding Team in London,and others are on the outside, as with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).  At a point later in your piece you refer to ‘survivor groups’.   I ask myself the question whether you have internalised a picture that there exist two entities in the safeguarding universe,the Church, struggling to make good the mistakes of the past, and its victims.  These two realities need to be reconciled through the safeguarding industry. I wonder whether in our thinking we are creating in our minds a classic ‘us-them’ scenario.

I would like to share with you a different perspective on this issue.  Space does not permit me to give a full account of all the things I have learned in my studies on abuse issues.  Neither can I share here all that I have learnt from church and cult survivors especially over the past five years of my blog.  In summary I would like to suggest that we are dealing with three realities which are present when we think about the overall practice of safeguarding.  The first entity is the organised church body which is active in creating structures to prevent the incidence of sexual abuse. It does this mainly by sensitising everyone in the Church to the dynamics of abuse and the importance of making the church a safe space. The second reality is the existence of survivors/victims. The Church’s record of care and support has been, in many cases, poor but the Church must not be allowed to forget them.   Further to these two, I want to point to a third reality which needs to be named and discussed.  The overall descriptive word for this entity is ‘culture’, a word which sums up the environmental factors which can give birth to the possibility and reality of spiritual abuse as well as the sexual abuse which is sometimes found within it.  I do not believe that sexual abuse or exploitation ever takes place in a vacuum.  There are, in the Church’s life, certain assumptions about theology, power and custom that may help to make possible this spiritual/sexual abuse.  If we want to successfully eliminate the sexual abuse of children and others, we must, when necessary, identify and face down those aspects of church culture that help,even indirectly, to incubate it in different ways.  To give just one example, the Church seems tacitly to encourage a culture of competition among its clergy.  Often clergy seem to care more for their status and power within the organisation than the people in their charge.  The Church also does little to discourage a manipulation of texts from the Bible which puts a minister in a place of real power over a congregation.  In such settings, real spiritual harm can take place.  When undue power and control in a congregation are not just tolerated but normalised, we are on the path to a place of danger.  That danger may include sexual abuse.

I would suggest that considerable resources need to be placed in making sure that the Church begins to understand far better the dynamics of dysfunctional power that commonly exist within it.  I have written a lot on this blog about the Church and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  I would suggest that many of the power issues that ultimately result in sexual abuse can be linked to narcissistic disorders of various kinds.  But that is a huge subject which cannot be opened up here.

Meg, you mention in your piece that a number of your assumptions have been challenged.  Can I challenge at least one of those revealed in what you have written?  You speak about survivor groups.  This understanding of the way survivors normally operate is open to question.  There are of course some survivors who ‘go public’ but it is at great cost. Due to the trauma they have suffered, most survivors I know (not all Anglican) are not linked to any others.  I am in the privileged position of hearing from survivors who contact me privately with an account of their experiences.  They are mostly isolated in their pain.  There must be hundreds of others out there who have been loaded down with the shame of their experiences and who do not reach out to anyone.  Even though these individuals are invisible, they are there waiting for the Church to reach out to them.  They will never respond to the cruelty of being subjected to legal or psychiatric examination as part of some compensation deal.  The issue of survivors reporting that the treatment by the Church post-abuse is worse than the original episode, is something that urgently needs addressing.

If Meg, you find this Open Letter, I hope you find something in it helpful for your work.  My main advice to you is to allow all your assumptions to be challenged not once or twice, but many times.  Safeguarding and doing the right thing for survivors and the Church is a massive project.  You need help in this and that help is to be found in many places.

Stephen Parsons

 In the past week my attention has been drawn to a useful essay https://www.academia.edu/37932680/The_Lawful_Argument_for_the_Disestablishment_of_the_Church_of_England on the topic of disestablishment of the Church of England. The author, Richard Conway, a lawyer, is suggesting that the current safeguarding crisis in the Church of England is so serious that it brings into question the arrangements by which the Church is established and allowed to enjoy much legal independence.  In short, the Church needs to lose some of these legal privileges to allow outside bodies to oversee its safeguarding.  For me, the interest of the paper is not this issue of disestablishment.  It is the way that Conway sets out clearly the overall state of play over safeguarding in the Church, including a brief summary of Gilo’s story and the Elliot report that followed it.  A second point, of even greater value for me, is the fascinating section on the culture of the Church.  Although Conway is addressing problems in the Church of England, his comments could equally be said to apply to the Catholic Church, particularly after the IICSA hearing on Thursday 13 December.  The culture of protecting the institution,doubting and challenging the evidence of survivors and generally impeding the pursuit of justice, is an issue for both the major churches in this country.  But, returning to the Church of England and Conway’s paper, the claim is made strongly that the Church of England, based on its past record, is incapable of managing safeguarding on its own without outside help.

 I want to look at some of the observations that Conway makes with regard to the Church of England culture.  These overlap with themes that this blog has tried to explore in the past.  We have frequently mentioned the instinctive desire to protect the institution against perceived attacks from the outside. This may take the form of covering up incidences of abuse, not recognising them for what they are and failing to report them to the secular authorities.   Some church members will typically question the credibility of survivors and victims as well ‘degradate these individuals in favour of the alleged abusers’.

What Conway adds to the discussion beyond these observations,is an attempt to explain this defensive stance in psychological/sociological terms. The paper refers to an article published in 2017 in ‘Child Abuse Review’.  This supports the hypothesis that church people have typically a tendency to be sceptical in the face of the claims of survivors.  The paper then intriguingly goes on to speak of a ‘narcissistic identification’ with the church and speaks about‘selves, merged to the religious institution’. 

Speaking of ‘narcissistic identification’ may make the paper a little technical for the general reader. Here, however, what is being explained is of great importance on the theme of abuse in churches, so I thought it would be worth trying to unpack this language to see what is being said about why church people are not good at treating survivors well.  From bishops downwards, many church people still find it hard to welcome survivors and listen to them with the dignity and respect they deserve.   

The expression ‘narcissistic identification’ takes us back to a branch of psychoanalytical theory which came into being through the writings of one Heinz Kohut in the 70s in the States.  I have tried to wade through his dense prose,but the outlines of his theory are reasonably clear.   Every human being has to construct a sense of self in childhood.   This is accomplished through a gradual process of separation from parents.  The close psychological merger with the protecting figures of infancy gives way to independence and autonomy.  This is the process of establishing a secure self which has the ability to cope with the normal stresses of life and relationships.  Unfortunately, the path towards securing a solid sense of self is sometimes met with set-backs, maybe caused by parental neglect or trauma.  In the place of a secure self, the child and later adult has a weakened identity.   They are, according to the classic Kohutian model, ‘narcissistically wounded’,though the levels of its severity will vary enormously.  Their recourse is to seek ‘self-objects’, entities(people or things) with which they can merge to relieve the emptiness that exists inside them.  The need to ‘feed’ their emptiness by a variety of strategies, will sometimes involve controlling groups of other people. Narcissistic behaviour will normally be a trait of cult leaders who are manipulating their followers in ways that that meet their emotional neediness of the leader.  Narcissistic neediness may also be found among the followers of a religious/political leader.  He/she provides a powerful but flawed role model with which to identify, again fulfilling the role of a ‘self-object’.  The dynamics of many churches, particularly those of a charismatic style, can be interpreted by recourse to this narcissistic model. 

When Conway speaks about a ‘narcissistic identification’ on the part of church members, he appears to be saying that the church institution has become a ‘self-object’, a part of the ‘self ’of its members so that one can speak of a narcissistic merger with it.  To put it another way, the sense of self/identity has become bound up seamlessly with their membership of the church. There is probably nothing surprising or unusual in this, except when it becomes an impediment to clear vision and the just treatment of abuse survivors.

Richard Conway is familiar with Gilo’s story and he knows the extraordinary way that several bishops completely failed to ‘recollect’ the moment they were told about Gilo’s encounters with his abuser.  The same institutional narcissism seems to beat work as when people within congregations cannot bear to hear any ill of people who have become part of their identity in a narcissistic way.  To attack my hero, the one on whom I have identified some key parts of my identity, is to attack me.

The explanation of the way that narcissistic processes are at work in the failure of some congregations and church leaders to support victims and believe their stories is an important insight in our attempt to understand the Church’s failures in this area.  It will always be dangerous to internalise the idea that the individual is below the organisation.   Not only does the notion fail justice, as we have seen happen in both Catholic and Anglican churches, but it also destroys and undermines integrity and honesty, both corporate and individual.

Since I was a theological student I have never been attracted to the theology of John Calvin, the 16^th century Swiss Reformer.  What little I knew about him and the Puritanism that he inspired, seemed always to put a damper on Christian  joy and freedom.  In recent weeks, in my attempts to understand the American Right and the onward march of conservative Christian ideas under Trump, I have been forced to consider the man and his doctrines as a way of getting a handle on an approach to the Christian faith for which I have had little appetite. The book that I have recently read, Blueprint for Theocracy by James C Sanford, makes it clear that ignoring Calvin is no longer an option if anyone wants to comprehend the mind-set of conservative Christians and the so-called Christian Right.

The first foundational idea of Calvin and his followers is the idea that God is all-powerful and has control over every part of his creation including humankind.  Out of this grasp of the sovereignty of God comes a strong sense that he is all-knowing.  In particular, he knows the future of every individual.  Predestination, the doctrine that gives all, Calvinists and non-Calvinists alike, cause to shudder, is a logical working out of this idea of God’s supreme sovereignty.  This states that God has already decided on those that he has determined to save and those he will condemn.

Calvinism as a system was not adopted without resistance in Protestant Europe.   Among the conflicts that raged in the 16^th-17^th centuries was the debate with Arminius over the problem of what we call free-will.  This debate was well aired at the Synod of Dort in 1618-1619.  Calvinism was also later refined in the so-called Westminster Confession in 1646.  Both these councils, written at times of civil conflict, were to stress the harsher and more rigorous aspects of Calvin’s thought. 

The doctrine of the all-seeing sovereignty of God, as set out by Calvin, is one that is, arguably, deeply claustrophobic for those who try to live by it.  The notion that a judgmental God governs every event of our life and is in control of every detail, is likely to place a Christian in a permanent state of anxiety and tension.  Predestination is also a harsh doctrine and even Calvin admitted this.  His response was to quote the passage in Romans 9 where the clay is denied any right to interrogate the potter. 

Calvinism is, to summarise, a system which emphasises the will of God above the exercise of human reason.  Questioning God is not permitted because mere creatures cannot expect explanations from their creator.  Unaided human reason can never be allowed to query this supreme principle.

It does not take much imagination to see how the doctrine of God’s sovereign will being the dominating truth fits well with conservative understandings of the supremacy of Scripture.  All ideas about infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible and its central authoritative place in Christian teaching sit alongside Calvin’s emphasis on the idea of the supreme sovereignty of God.  Just as the faithful cannot argue with the purposes of the Creator, neither can there be discussion or disagreement with the ‘plain’ words of Scripture which reveal God’s will.  The power of human reason is in any case compromised by the fact that human beings are, for Calvin, corrupted by the depravity of original sin.  Here he was following the teaching of Augustine.  Scholastic theology taught by the mediaeval Catholic thinkers had softened this doctrine so that the schoolmen allowed human reason to have some autonomous power in the scheme of things.  Eastern Orthodox thinking also never allowed the human capacity for sin to wipe away the potential for the exercise of reason and the possibility of ‘divinisation’ or transformation by God in this life.

Calvin faced a problem in his teaching of the utter corruption of human nature.  How was anyone ever to know anything about God in the first place if human nature was so depraved?  He introduced into his thinking the notion of a universal ‘awareness of the divine’.  Some, those who count themselves Christian, respond to this impulse.   Others ignore it to their destruction.  This binary distinction between the followers of God and the ‘God-haters’ is based on a passage in the first chapter of Romans (18-25).   It further creates the mind-set that those who respond to God are in one camp while everyone else is somehow an enemy of faith.

The way that Calvin’s binary thinking has been embraced by huge numbers of Christians today has, I feel, done enormous harm to the Christian Church.  Calvinists and those who come after them, have got used to thinking that the only way to respond to those who do not share their belief is to convert them, thus bringing the ‘other’ into the circle of their belief system.  ‘Preaching the gospel’ will always be understood to be like snatching burning twigs from a fire which would otherwise destroy them.  There is no sense that God is already at work in the world or among people who think in different ways.  An obsession with sin and destruction meant that Calvin and his followers had (have) little appreciation for the world of the arts and secular learning generally.  The 16^th-17^th century wholesale destruction of paintings, books and statues in Britain was inspired by such Puritan/Calvinist ideas.  The mediaeval church buildings in England survived for the most part; in Scotland, by contrast, the old worship buildings were, for the most part, deliberately destroyed in the frenzy of a more thorough-going Calvinist Reformation.  In the whole of Scotland only one small section of stained glass from before 1500 survives to this day.

Calvin, to his credit, did seek to apply what he believed about God to the world of civil affairs.  He gave 20 years of his life trying to work out the principles of ‘theocracy’ in the city of Geneva.  For Calvin, God was concerned for the detail of civil government and the administration of justice.   By modern standards Calvin’s theocracy was, however, experienced by minorities as a tyranny.  Any independent thinking, including the development of the scientific method, always has a difficult time in such theocratic settings. Linking ‘truth’ only to propositions found in Scripture made it difficult for the scientific method to evolve.  The contemporary hostility to Darwin and the study of Climate Change among conservative Christians in the States can be traced back to the religious hostility to secular knowledge encouraged by Calvin. 

The values of contemporary Christian liberals, which include tolerance, freedom and the ability to live with difference, are principles that are sadly opposed by the elaborate systems of Christian thinking based on Calvin and his ideas.  Those of us who value the principles of this liberal way need to be better informed about his system of thinking.  We also need to be ready to resist it when it tries to shut down our desire to think about Christianity and share its insights from quite different perspectives.

The impact of the interview of Jo Kind by Cathy Newman on Channel 4 last night (Wednesday) will continue to reverberate for some time to come. The details of how Jo was abused in the late 80s and early 90s, when an employee of Tom Walker and St John’s Harborne may, in the end, turn out to be the least important part of the story. Arguably the most compelling detail of the saga was the belief by some senior individuals within the Diocese of Birmingham that Jo should be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before viewing the independent report about her own case. Her current work with survivors of church related abuse suggested to her that such NDAs were routine across the country in such situations.

This blog post is not going to discuss the details of Jo’s abuse or the process that led up to the report by an independent reviewer about the way her case was dealt with. Clearly the senior staff, including the Bishop, have come out of the affair rather poorly. Channel 4 has seen a copy of the Review and, in a redacted version, it is available from the Diocesan Secretary in Birmingham. All we have at present on the diocesan website are the recommendations by the reviewer and the ‘Lessons Learnt Review Statement’. Here we find no mention of the NDA even though it is the part of the story that has been repeatedly mentioned by the Press, and radio this morning, as a key feature in the whole episode.

The NDA that Jo was asked to sign, was, as we have mentioned, a condition for her being given access to the official independent report on her case. Two Archbishops, Rowan Williams in 2011 and Justin Welby in 2018 have decried their use in any situation where the Church is responding to abuse survivors. I want, in this post, to reflect on the morality of NDAs and suggest they are an affront to openness as well as compromising the pursuit of justice. They can be compared with burdening a child with a family secret which then has to be carried for decades. Not telling this secret is hard and it is frequently corrosive on family relationships. The adults who signed the Official Secrets Act in the war went to their graves without ever being able to share with others what they had done to help their country. ‘Non-disclosure’ and secrets are at the very least costly and unhealthy for those who possess them.

Keeping secrets for others is difficult and hard to do. Supressing the details of what you have experienced in the way of abuse is even more demanding. We all know from our understanding of the process of recovery, from any kind of abuse, that an important task for the victim is to be able to recall and share the memories. This needs to be done in an environment that is safe. I can hardly imagine how hard it must be to have a memory of abuse that will always be unsafe to share. The NDA, once it has been internalised, acts as kind of filter to memory. Even to recall that memory is perceived as dangerous to your well-being. You cannot let it out or communicate it to anyone else. To put it another way, non-disclosure changes a traumatic memory into a kind of mental poison that permanently threatens psychological well-being.

What I am trying to do in reflecting on NDAs is to suggest that anyone who is ever required to sign one in a church context should shrink with total horror even when they are mentioned. Any moral standpoint, Christian or not, can see that to supress in any way memories of abuse, offends justice and ordinary morality. Putting an individual in a place where past hurts can never be shared or healed is to compound the original crime. The humanity and dignity of the victim are under attack for the second time.

On various occasions I have repeated the claim of victims and survivors that the treatment by the Church after their original abuse was far worse than the original incident. Even the suggestion that any survivor should in any way bury the memory of a past trauma through signing an NDA is shocking and needs to be resisted. In the ‘Lesson Learnt Statement’ put out by the Diocese of Birmingham, the NDA is nowhere mentioned. Perhaps we can surmise that whoever asked Jo to sign such a document was working outside the discussions of the diocesan senior staff. Are we right once again to see the footprint of an insurance company? Does an NDA serve the interests of a body who presumably was responsible for settling the civil claim against the Church?

In conclusion we would claim that the use of NDAs by the Church is an offence to decency and morality. It also subtly undermines the pursuit of healing following an abusive event. For the Church to do something that impedes healing is a kind of blasphemy to the shalom that is right at the heart of what Jesus came to share. It is hard to see how the Church should ever use such offensive legal mechanisms again in its dealings with victims/survivors. One wonders how it was ever possible for these agreements to be wheeled out in a church context. In the place of legal pressurising techniques, perhaps the Church should start to show proper shame and remorse that these methods were even thought of.

In the past week I have come across two pieces of writing which have helped me to understand the poor state of ecumenism in the Church today. Before I describe these documents, I want to explain a little of my own personal background within the so-called Ecumenical Movement of the past. As a student I was fortunate to spend four months in Geneva at the Ecumenical Institute studying with other students from all over the world. This gave me an appreciation of the sheer variety of theological expression that exists in different parts of the world.

Some fifteen years later in the 80s I was asked to take on the role of an ecumenical officer in the Diocese of Hereford alongside my parochial responsibilities. This involved helping in the support of initiatives for ecumenical activity in the area and getting to know those involved. In addition, I was required to be up to speed with various ecumenical documents that were being produced at the time. In some ways the period was an ecumenical golden age. Everyone was encouraged by the publication of the ARCIC statements and the so-called Lima documents. We looked forward to the future with great optimism. We believed that unity was not just something that people wanted but also something that could possibly be soon within the grasp of the whole Church.

Since 1987, when I left Hereford, I have been aware how the enthusiasms of that period seem to have totally evaporated. There are probably various ways to account for this, but I want to offer some of my own understanding on this issue. Ecumenism as an idea ceases to capture the imagination of 21st century Christians because the attitudes that allowed it then to flourish are far harder to find. Ecumenism can thrive when there is a sense on the part of all Christians that their denominational allegiances are to some extent dictated by history. Anglican dogmatic formularies, like the 39 Articles, belong to a moment of history. That does not make them null and void, but we must take care if they are to be used in any way to define a contemporary Anglican identity. Much of the denominational identity of other Christian bodies is also rooted in the past. When Christians come together for ecumenical discussion there can be a mutual readiness to explore these past histories and see the strengths and weaknesses that have been handed down. Ecumenical conversation was often an exercise in mutual humility as past misunderstandings could be explored and understood with fresh eyes. Ecumenical discussion in short could be creative and transformative for all concerned. There is so much to learn, not least new insights from one’s own tradition.

The state of ecumenism today has changed radically because, arguably, fewer Christians have a sense of being rooted in a distinct historical context, one that gives shape to their current Christian identity. Anglicans of my generation have a far stronger sense of the past and the way that this past has affected the way we do theology in the present. The conservative evangelical way to do theology is to suggest it is in some way timeless, divorced from culture and the limitations of language. The Bible is treated as though it is a divine document from outside time. It is thus impervious to any criticism. Denominational Protestant Christianity (Methodists, Presbyterians etc) with its strong sense of the past and the way that history has shaped its contemporary expression is seen by these conservatives as an enemy. The only Christianity that is valid for conservative Protestants is one that is built on biblical truth as they understand it. There is no space for the kind of humble mutual searching that used to be part of ecumenical discussion.

To say that ‘biblical’ conservative Christianity is arrogant and insensitive to the way that other Christians think is probably an understatement. The expression of Christianity that I am talking about, typically emanates from the United States and is keen to shut down all expressions of the Christian faith except its own. This past week I have stumbled across a reference to a publication put out by a little-known conservative organisation in America called the Institute on Religion and Democracy. This group is one that wishes to oppose all forms of denominational Christianity on the grounds that historical denominations do not conform to the narrow conservative perspective of ‘Bible Christians’. The technique it uses is to encourage and resource ‘renewal groups’ within mainstream denominations, such as Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal. Under the banner of restoring ‘theological integrity’ to these churches, it provides advice on how to ferment dissension within these denominations. It speaks about energising traditionalists and opposing and ‘discrediting the Religious Left’. This Institute is thus working hard to reverse all the efforts of a hundred years of ecumenical work in the West. In short it wants to destroy those Christian groups which have histories, theologies and traditions which conservative Christians do not share.

The second piece I have read in the past week was a short letter in the Church Times about the work of St Helen’s Bishopsgate. We have already spoken of this congregation as a major centre for the conservative group REFORM. The letter was written by a senior Anglican priest working in the City of London. It tells us that St Helen’s does not allow its clergy or laity to pray with other Anglicans in the deanery. Nor are they to take part in any activities that imply partnership in the gospel. Canon Joyce, the author of the letter, expressed amazement that a church with such attitudes should be designated as a ‘resource church’ for the Church of England.

Those of us who remember the days when ecumenism seemed to be flourishing both nationally and internationally must be, like me, filled with foreboding at these indications of a profoundly anti-ecumenical spirit in the church. We are not just talking about destructive behaviour by non-Anglican pressure groups. We are also encountering toxic relationships being encouraged by wealthy and powerful congregations ostensibly within the Anglican fold. This blog has always had as its aim to highlight abusive power relationships within the church. Today we are identifying the way that the Church is being openly undermined by powerful groups from the far right in politics and theology. Ultimately the interests of right-wing groups seek to destroy and undermine anything that stands in their way. As I indicated in my piece on theocracy, there is no room for discussion, consensus or disagreement in the world of right-wing Christianity. We in our turn need to stand up against all these attempts to destroy and undermine inclusivity, tolerance, and kindness in our churches. We need our Christian faith to stand up for old fashioned ideas of diversity and the dignity of difference so that a variety of Christian experiences can live alongside one another for the mutual enrichment of all.