One of the notable things about last night’s episode of Panorama about child abuse in the Church of England was the official press statement put out by the Church after the programme.  It recognised that the screening of Panorama might be upsetting for some viewers and helpfully provided a NSPCC helpline for those affected.  We are left wondering why the Church has not accumulated the expertise and wisdom to set up such a temporary hotline for itself.  How is it that if, as is often protested, the needs of survivors are central to their concerns, the necessary skills and experience are not close to hand?  We might have hoped that from across the Church, a half dozen experienced people, with training in counselling and knowledge of safeguarding issues could have been brought together for this purpose. 

The ‘inconvenient truth’ about the Church’s response to safeguarding and child protection was hinted at again and again in the programme.  Without it being spelled out, we got the message that, for the Church hierarchy, victims/survivors of sexual abuse are a difficult problem; they are ‘damaged’ people; they have complicated needs and the Church has many other exciting and more important things to do.  Providing a proper response to survivors would be horrendously expensive, time-consuming and deeply uncomfortable for Church leaders.  The programme, at its conclusion, did not give us a clear answer as to whether anything has fundamentally changed in respect of the treatment of survivors.  The lead Bishop in charge of safeguarding, Peter Hancock, fielded for the home team, representing and speaking for the episcopal leadership and senior lay staff who run the Church of England from Church House. Hancock appeared to give a good account of the way that the Church is now approaching the issue of historic abuse.  ‘It was a mistake’, he admitted, ‘not to put out all the data that we had’.  This comment was in reference to the so-called Past Cases Review (PCR) which began in 2008 when the national Church was attempting to find out the extent of the problem of historic child abuse by church officers.  This comment followed one from Bishop Alan Wilson when he described his shock at finding out how figures of historic abuse cases had been ‘massaged’ downwards to the improbable total of 13.  Alan has become a friend and supporter to many survivors and so his voice provided a refreshing degree of scepticism to the official line being put out by central Church authorities throughout the programme.  The extraordinary understatement of the overall problem by the PCR has led inevitably to widespread scepticism about the Church’s official line ever since. 

The programme spent much of its time focussed on the Diocese of Lincoln.  Officially there were, in 2012, no historic cases needing to be re-examined.  But, a new employee in the diocese had found a list that had been prepared for the Review containing 53 names.  The police were called in. 

Panorama then followed the police account of Operation Redstone under the leadership of Detective Superintendent Mike Hatton.    As well as contacting the survivors of past abuses, the police uncovered evidence that two former bishops of Lincoln had in different ways chosen to overlook or supress evidence of perpetrators.  This enabled them to continue in office so that they could be a risk to other children.  Lincoln Diocese spoke of its regret and the word ‘mistake’ once again appears in the official statements. 

Things, according to Bishop Hancock, are now different.   The response of the church to survivors coming forward is now ‘compassionate, fair, appropriate and swift.’   This narrative of a fresh updated approach to survivors was contradicted by one of their number, Matt Ineson.   ‘The Church does not want to know’ was his reaction and this was true for him and other survivors that he was in touch with.   His experience of disclosing severe sexual abuse by a clergyman in the York diocese goes back seven years to 2012.  Being a clergyman himself, he had followed the formal procedures for making complaints.  He approached and disclosed to a number of senior clergymen, including the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.  Each of his eight submissions to clergy and bishops had been deflected in some way.  In the end he went to the police.  His abuser took his own life before coming to trial.

Bishop Hancock expressed his own regret at the way the Church had treated Matt and said that there was going to be review of his case.  Bishop Alan in a memorable image suggested that the church was like an ‘uptight institution hiding behind the sofa chatting to the lawyers’.  Bishop Hancock’s protestations of openness and a new beginning were also somewhat undermined when, in response to a direct question about the number of extant cases there existed, he refused to give any figures.  This was in contrast to his stated desire for the church to be transparent in all its dealings.  There still seems to be a strong sense of the church holding on to its secrets and privileges over against the clamouring of survivors and the public who want a new openness and a fresh start.

The programme concluded with a number of story-lines unfinished.  There was Matt’s story which still has many unanswered questions to be faced, particularly in respect of his official complaints against named individuals.  These remain unresolved.   There was also mention of a newly uncovered file in the York diocese mentioning a number of abuse cases that have not been examined.  We still were left with the feeling that for whatever reason, the Church remains defensive and highly secretive.  Any control of information, which still appears to be happening, is a power tactic.  If there is still secrecy and an attempt to bury the past, all such attempts to do this will likely fail.  Truth, as I have said before, has a habit of spilling out to the embarrassment of those who want to suppress it.  The secrets that are held in order to protect reputations have the capacity to wreak enormous damage on institutions.  The Church of England has much to lose if it does not get its house in order over safeguarding. 

On Friday last, there was a notable event with the publication of a new book about safeguarding entitled To Heal and not to Harm.  The authors, Alan Wilson and Rosie Harper are both slightly known to me so I was anxious to get hold of a copy.  As the book was not immediately available as a hard copy, I had to order my copy on Kindle.  What I write today is not a full review of the book but a restatement in my own words of what the authors have to say about the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  What they say seems so clearly to set out the problem of safeguarding and a proper response to survivors and how the church seems so often to get things wrong.

Anyone who has followed this blog over the months and years will know that one of the major issues on the part of abuse survivors is their claim that the Church authorities do not want to engage with them.  Instead of being an object for the Church’s care and concern, survivors have often felt themselves to be nuisances and made to feel somehow responsible for the problem that has come into being through the abuse perpetrated against them.  Defensiveness, avoidance, forgetfulness and even outright lying has come to mark many of the reported relationships between those in charge of the Church and the wounded victims of church abuse.  Some of this distancing obviously has to do with legal issues and the matters of criminality that have to go through the courts.  But whatever the official explanation, the Church has a poor record in doing the simple things like answering letters, picking up the phone and maintaining human contact with those who have suffered at the hands of members of the Church. Survivors constantly claim that to receive anything in the way of apologies or compensation from the Church, they have to have an enormous amount of perseverance.

Wilson and Harper’s retelling of the Good Samaritan story early in their book is utterly brilliant for the way that it sets out clearly the way many survivors encounter blockages in their dealings with the Church.  By likening the situation of survivors to the man robbed on the Jericho road, the reader is able to grasp quickly the main issues in the survivors’ difficult dealings with the Church.  Jesus tells the story with a very clear purpose.  He is not interested in the motivation or identity of the robbers.  He did not reflect on the importance of self-defence classes for travellers.  All that he was concerned about was the wounded man lying on the road and the way that those who passed by responded.

Our authors want us to see the man lying in the road as possibly like a victim of church abuse.  Nothing else is mentioned or thought to be of major importance in the story, except responding immediately to the victim.  Responding urgently to a situation of need takes precedence over everything else.  A failure to offer immediate help by the Church, which is what many survivors report, greatly adds to the pain and damage of the original abuse.  We may speculate on the thoughts that went through the minds of the first two on the scene of the attack, the Priest and the Levite.  What they might have been thinking is not far from the possible thoughts of church authorities when faced with survivors.  ‘This is too complicated’ – ‘facing up to this problem may affect the church’s reputation with the general public’ – ‘dealing with the legal issues will be terrifyingly expensive’.  The Bible of course does not tell us the thoughts of the priest and Levite but countless preachers have attempted to fill in this gap in the narrative.  But, whatever the motivation, we are left with the bare fact that two of the three passed by on the other side.  Two of the three were constrained by their involvement with the official religious life of their day, and we suspect from the narrative that issues such as ritual impurity from coming into contact with blood and a potential corpse played a part in their decisions.

The inability of the Church to take a straightforward approach to the needs of survivors has puzzled many people and indeed is one of the constant refrains of the book by our two authors.  The wounded man on the road needed time, care and ongoing support.  Not only did he need these things, but he needed them at once.  There was no time for a committee to meet to decide whether he qualified for a grant from a discretionary fund.  The wounded man needed the donkey transport to the inn on that very day.  If an institution like the Church recognises that such things as abuse can happen, then it needs to have mechanisms to respond and deal with it at once.  Problems do not go away when they are ignored.  They have a habit of coming back to haunt the institution with a greater vehemence because the victims/survivors have found no immediate reply to their pleas for help.

To Heal and not to Harm contains many tough and challenging insights about the danger of the church failing to respond to the needs of past and future survivors.  The retelling of the story of the Good Samaritan to suggest that Jesus cares above all for needy survivors is a stunningly powerful but simple message.  In a week’s time we are to receive the awaited report on the hearings of IICSA from last year.  The goings on in the Diocese of Chichester and in Lambeth Palace itself revealed in those hearings sounded very much like conversation among a convocation of Priests and Levites in Britain.  How best can we hide and protect the church and its interests from the inconvenient truths of past abuses?  We seldom hear the voice or feelings of the Samaritan in what is debated behind closed doors.  Of the Samaritan it is said that when he saw the wounded man, he was ‘moved with compassion’.  Compassion was then translated into instant appropriate action and Jesus spoke of this response by telling the lawyer, ‘Go and do thou likewise.’ Perhaps the Church needs to hear better this urgent command.

As the priest read the prayer of blessing over the elements on Easter morning, he used the memorable words from Prayer E in Common Worship.  Lord … help us to work together for that day when your kingdom comes and justice and mercy will be seen in all the earth.  As he read these words, I realised in a flash that the two words, mercy and justice, were precisely what survivors and victims long for, above all, in their dealing with the Church.  At the same time, those of us who care passionately for them to receive these things, whether we are believing Christians or not, are able to make a small contribution towards the coming of God’s kingdom.

Let us look at each of these words in turn.  Like most words in the Bible, ‘mercy’ has a variety of meanings.  Anything that is said will not be complete but we can attempt to sketch out the range of meanings.  At its heart the word has the meaning of responding to need.  One side, the side showing mercy, is in the position to provide help.  Mercy is offered in the form of material support, forgiveness or simply acceptance and love.  If we were to describe the main need of an abuse survivor, it would be for another human being to reach out in understanding and care.  Psychological wounds and hurts need soothing and binding up.  In a Christian context, mercy might be what an entire community could be offering.  It might involve offering a place of safety, a sanctuary beyond the hurts of the past abuses.  Also, as any reader of Scripture will be aware, mercy is a quality of God himself.  He reaches out to us and responds to our state of neediness, whatever form this might take.

The second word also sums up a crucial area of need for a survivor.  Justice is not necessarily about punishment and revenge.  Justice is needed so that a victim of wrong can see that the world has a moral centre.   When things go badly wrong, we all need to know that there are people and institutions who really care that there are such things as rules, consequences and recompenses to be paid.  If evil is never confronted and neutralised then it will be allowed to flourish and spread to the detriment of the well-being of all.  The existence of justice and right in society really matter.  The present betrayal of the values of honesty and fair-dealing in Trump’s America is a serious matter.  When one person at the centre sits lightly to the rules of truth and civilised respectful behaviour to others, it affects the whole of society. 

My previous blog post was hinting at the way that justice and mercy are not always found in Church structures in a way that would help survivors.  After the Archbishop’s interview on Channel 4, it was suggested by ‘Graham’ that there were 14 ‘points of dispute’ in the interview in relation to the Smyth affair.  The detail of Graham’s challenge is not here important.  It is also not being suggested that the Archbishop was in any way deliberately lying.  He was, however, as we suggested earlier, identifying with the narrative that is being put out by his advisers.  He is far too busy to check out all these statements for himself, but hopes that the advice he is receiving is accurate and truthful.  In a situation where the truths of the past are contested, we are left with a situation where survivors find very little to comfort or encourage them.  Whatever else, the institution is providing with this kind of narrative of what happened in the past, mercy is notable by its total absence.  Institutional defensiveness, whether justified by the facts or not, does not create a good ambiance for the experiencing of any kind of mercy by survivors.  Survivors look for mercy and justice but what they are offered feels to be a long way from this ideal.  The hard, defensive exterior shown by the Church in this situation has little in common with the hoped-for values of the kingdom articulated by Common Worship.

Working together for the coming of God’s kingdom is something that Christians everywhere pay lip-service to.  It should also be possible for survivors to say to bishops, clergy and church lawyers who face them, that ‘above all we look to you for mercy and justice’.  If you want to show that you share these kingdom values, help us first of all to find a place of safety and support.  Then help us to know that the world and especially the Christian world is a place with a moral core, where rights are wronged and evil is named and dealt with.  We do not recognise that being undermined, receiving threats, put-downs and humiliations are in any way appropriate to our needs as abuse survivors.  Neither does this kind of treatment do justice to the meaning of the kingdom of God for which we all supposed to pray and work towards.  Mercy and justice must be celebrated by Christians in every context.  Above all, we expect to find it in the dealings between church leaders and survivors.  When these values of mercy and justice are not respected, one has to ask whether the core values of Christianity are in operation.

We are left with two simple words that contain within them almost everything that needs to be said about the way the powerful should deal with the weak, the damaged and the exploited.  Clearly what I have said about the needs of survivors could be applied to any group of needy people.  The needs of the world are massive and what the church can do is finite.  Somehow, I feel that the church loses its way when the needs of its own interests take precedence over these dictates of mercy and justice.  In every relationship between the church and individuals and groups who come for help, the question must be asked.  Are the dictates of mercy and justice being given their due place, so as to build the Kingdom of God for which we all long?

A postscript. Lambeth Palace is expected to be holding a meeting organised by the Archbishop’s staff to meet survivors today, the 25th April. The meeting is scheduled for 10 am to last for two hours and is entitled ‘Responding well to Victims of Abuse’. A problem is that one of the supporters of survivors originally invited has been uninvited. He will be turned away if he appears at the gate-house of Lambeth Palace. Whatever else is going on by withdrawing this invitation, this implies at the very least that the organisers appear to be trying to control the outcome of the meeting to suit their own agendas. Holding meetings with a potentially vulnerable group and then banning one of those who speaks for them shows that the two themes I have addressed in this post, mercy and justice, are not top of the Church’s agenda. Is Lambeth Palace showing itself to be a place that works ‘together for that day when your kingdom comes and justice and mercy will be seen in all the earth’?

The Church of England’s General Synod voted on 11 November, 1992 to ordain women to the priesthood. Why were the first women not ordained until March 1994? At 25 years’ distance it might seem that the ordination of the thousand or so female deacons into the priesthood could have proceeded within a few months. With my own silver anniversary on 23 April, I’ve been reflecting back on that process.

In order to get the legislation through Synod without splitting the Church, the House of Bishops made several substantial compromises. One of these was that all the women who believed themselves called to the priesthood, and who had already been through a selection process for ordination, would have to go through selection again. This time it was called a ‘discernment procedure’. In many dioceses ‘discernment’ consisted of little more than a chat with the bishop. I was in Manchester, however, where opposition to women’s ordination was strong. We had a more involved procedure culminating with an interview.

I knew it was going to be a hostile interview as soon as I walked into the room. The two interviewers (a Manchester archdeacon and a female deacon from another diocese) were sitting with their backs to the light, and far enough apart so that I couldn’t look at both of them at once. As the interview proceeded they alternated questions, so every question came from someone I couldn’t see, and I would have to turn to them to answer it.  Meanwhile the other would be observing me, but I couldn’t see them. It was a set-up calculated to put candidates off their stroke.

I was asked to recount the history of my vocation. My sense of calling dated back to when I was 9 years of age and my family were attending a Baptist church in the USA, so my answer required a little time and explanation. The interviewers listened with apparent attention. Then one of them said, ‘That can’t have happened.’ Incredulous, I asked, ‘Why can’t it have happened?’ ‘Because the Church hadn’t made its mind up then.’ I couldn’t understand how they could assume that God had no foreknowledge of the decision the Church of England would make, and had made no provision for it. I pictured God, on that November afternoon in 1992, being taken unawares and desperately scrabbling around to find some women to call to the priesthood. It was the more ridiculous because at my selection conference in 1983 there had been no pretence that my vocation was to the diaconate rather than the priesthood. So I replied to A and B, ‘Are you telling me God can only do what the Church of England decides to do?’ This did not go down well.

The whole interview was traumatic and for some days afterwards I was shaking and ill. Nor was I alone; women reported coming out of their interview and vomiting, or having repeated nightmares in the days and weeks following.  When we got the letter with our results, a number of women had been turned down on clearly spurious grounds. One mother was told having young children meant she couldn’t function as a priest; the same did not apply to her priest husband. Another, a lecturer at an ecumenical ordination training scheme, was told it didn’t give her a ‘sufficient sacramental base’ for priesthood – despite her also being attached to an Anglican parish. All but one of these had the decision reversed on appeal. Her case was particularly hard. Her interview was interrupted first by the fire alarm and then by a power failure. Before the discernment process began she had been promised an incumbency by her bishop, but now she was told she was unsuitable for the priesthood. The bishop’s reply to protests on her behalf was that to change the decision would ‘discredit the process’. , She was eventually priested after token ‘further training’.

When my report arrived, I found to my relief that I had been recommended for ordination. However, the report was so intensely negative that I didn’t see how they could have reached a positive conclusion. I could not have recommended for the priesthood someone with the qualities they attributed to me. I showed it to my spiritual director, an Anglican nun well versed in the ways of the Church of England. She said, ‘It makes me feel sick.’ She couldn’t understand the ordained female interviewer, whom she knew, taking part in this abusive process.

I was concerned that this very critical and unfair report would remain permanently in my file and affect future job prospects, so I asked the bishop to remove it. He refused. I am grateful to several clergy and lay people who then wrote to the bishop with an alternative – and more positive – view of my personality and abilities. One or two of these at least were retained in my file, as I discovered last year when I sent for it.

This was the background to my ordination as a priest on 23 April 1994. The ordination service was wonderful. It was personally healing and fulfilling, and the love and support shown for us was overwhelming. But we had been made to run the gauntlet to get there – and a senior diocesan figure admitted that the discernment procedure had been made brutal in order to placate our opponents.

Did I approach my ordination with hope? Well, I certainly hoped it wouldn’t be disrupted by protesters, and that I wouldn’t disgrace myself by falling down the precipitous chancel steps. And I hoped that eventually, as more women were ordained and moved into senior positions, the Church would become a juster and kinder institution. But I had seen senior women taking part in a process designed to hurt and demean their clergy sisters, and I had no illusions that simply promoting women would miraculously transform the Church. I had learned that the Church does not advance those who it fears will rock the boat by making a stand on principle. I had seen senior clergy play politics with the vocations of dedicated and godly women. And, not for the first (or last) time, I had seen a bishop refuse to do what he knew to be right, simply to avoid discrediting a Church procedure.

The iron had entered into my soul. I used to think that if we showed we were hardworking, capable, and didn’t make a fuss, the Church would eventually recognise that God had genuinely called us. We could then take an equal place alongside our male colleagues. I no longer believed that. I now recognised that we were dealing with bullies – and bullies must be resisted. Jesus told a story about an unjust judge who had to be inconvenienced before he would give a poor widow justice. When bishops put Church politics before justice and the kingdom of God, sometimes they need to be made uncomfortable until they do what is right.

The word ‘integrity’ is one which has many facets.  It is closely aligned to another word ‘wholeness’.  Both words speak of human flourishing in terms of health, honesty and goodness.  Integrity has a special link with the idea of moral trustworthiness.  A person of integrity is someone who can never betray moral principles in order to preserve their own interests or those of another party, such as an institution.  The great examples of martyrdom in Christian history were individuals who suffered the supreme sacrifice of life itself rather than betray this personal integrity. 

There is a word in the New Testament which is often translated ‘perfect’ but has a meaning close to our idea of integrity.  ‘Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect’.  I have always mentally translated the Greek word ‘teleios’ as relating to our notion of integrity and wholeness.  ‘Be people of integrity’ certainly seems to do justice to the Greek word.  If we are in any doubt as to what the word means, we need look no further than the example of Jesus himself.  I am not due to preach this Passiontide but no doubt if I were, I would want to explore how the life and death of Jesus are an outworking of both the meaning and practical implications of ‘integrity’.  Jesus was a man of whom it could always be said that his yes meant yes and his no meant no.  For the eyes of faith, the Crucifixion itself is a supreme proclamation of integrity.  It is one which can be pondered and internalised by the followers of the crucified one.

There is one particular genre of literature much preoccupied with the idea of integrity.  This literature is known as Greek tragedy.  In a series of surviving plays acted in the open theatres of ancient Greece, two authors, Euripides and Sophocles, struggled with the big questions around human integrity when brought up against the demands of law and custom.   The heroes of these gripping dramas typically found themselves in situations where there was no happy ending or correct choice to be made.   In what seems like endless monologues, the hero bewails the fate that awaits him/her because she has to follow through with what choice, honour and integrity demand.  Execution, suicide or self-mutilation seem to mark the conclusion in all these plays.  The audience of these dramas was invited to identify with the dilemmas of life as presented by the dramatist.  How does one preserve one’s integrity in the face of conflicting values?   Society on the one side may tell us one thing while personal conscience may dictate something quite different.

In a small way I see the Church of England being caught up in a drama not dissimilar to a Greek tragedy.  The central actors are the bishops of the Church of England, especially the Archbishop of Canterbury himself.  The Archbishop was interviewed by Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News last week.  The topics ranged from Brexit to the stalled inquiry of John Smyth’s abuses.  A man of deep integrity was revealed.  Archbishop Welby had obviously been affected by the suffering of those who had been the victims of Smyth.  But there was another side revealed in the interview.  In answering the questions about Smyth, there was a rehearsed almost formulaic quality about the answers.  Someone, surely not the Archbishop himself, had created a narrative of distancing Smyth from the Church of England.  The fact that Smyth on his African ministry had identified with non-Anglican churches was somehow extrapolated back to his time in England.  Smyth was never a true Anglican. Surely the Archbishop or his advisers knew that Smyth had been a Reader in the Church.  I have never heard of anyone calling themselves a Reader who was not a baptised, confirmed member of the Church in good standing.  A second myth about Smyth was trotted out.  This time it concerned the organisations associated with him and thus indirectly overseeing all his activities while he was in England.  Like Smyth himself these organisations were distanced from the Church of England and presented as outside church control.  In my perusal of the documents connected to the Iwerne/Titus Trustees I have never seen a single name who was not a licensed officer or member of the national church.  The network that binds together Iwerne/Titus alumni has always been 100% Church of England.   The Archbishop knows this well. Separation in a legal sense may be claimed but there is no clear moral case for seeing the Church of England as standing apart from the activities of Smyth.  Also, those who, with arguably greater guilt, covered up Smyth’s activities for 30+ years were all individually card-carrying members of the Church of England.

The judgement that is being made of our Archbishop in this blog is that he is indeed a man of integrity in a Christian sense.  He genuinely feels the pain of those who have suffered and seems to want to do the right thing to relieve that suffering.  But there is a real sense in which his integrity is being severely compromised by outside loyalties to mysterious forces who are setting the wider agenda and who care little for these needs.  Unlike the main characters in a Greek tragedy, the Archbishop does not have to suffer pain in order to keep his integrity.  By repeating the establishment line, he manages to avoid experiencing the real costs of his position of sincerity.  He manages to live simultaneously in two places.  He identifies with survivors/victims while remaining loyal to those who shut them out for being too disruptive to the status-quo.  The same thing seems to be happening over the arrangements for Lambeth 2020.  The protestations of pain that he has had to suffer (by banning same-sex spouses) in order to serve the greatest good may be true, but one still hears the voice of establishment creatures who are manipulating the narrative behind the scenes in order to pacify the forces unleashed by the American Right.

The current events in the Church of England thus have some of the elements of a Greek tragedy.  But one element that is missing is the readiness of the central characters to sacrifice themselves to show their utter dedication to their principles.  As we approach the Cross, we see the central actor of the drama ready to give everything to proclaim his integrity and his complete faith in God.  Integrity, Christian integrity is sometimes to be found in our church.  Here in the Lambeth discussions and the Smyth inquiry interview on Channel 4, that quality is being compromised because the chief players are allowing themselves to be part of a hidden institutionally directed narrative.  These dark controlling forces that seem to have coached Welby in his carefully articulated but unconvincing answers last week have no names.  Whoever they are, they appear to be completely dedicated to the preservation of the institution, even if some people (the survivors) are hurt or destroyed in the process.  The conservative values of institutions like the C/E, the preservation of the status quo at any cost, have little time for the values of Christian integrity or any values for that matter.  As a result, we see the way that leaders are required to undermine or even destroy their reputations for posterity.  The Church will always honour the memory of people of integrity and honour.  It will be less impressed by those who followed the way of toeing the party line, even when they knew that line to be false and dishonest.

The dry cleaner in my Jewish neighbourhood looked first at the stoles I had laid on the counter, then at my clerical collar. Then he said thoughtfully, ‘When I was training, my boss told me always to clean the rabbi’s prayer shawl free of charge. So I think I ought to clean your robes free of charge too.’  And he did, for all the 8 years I lived there.

When I hear of Jews being targeted for hate crimes, I think of that generous dry cleaner and so many others like him – Jewish neighbours, shopkeepers, doctors, artists, rabbis I have known. Then there are the Jews whose talents have enriched my life, from Barbra Streisand to Yehudi Menuhin, How could anyone hate them just for being Jewish?

When I read of Muslims being shot while they prayed, I remembered all the gentle and hospitable Muslims I’ve known: the meals cooked for me by Iranian friends; the wise and kindly Pakistani student adviser; the competent Arab surgeon.

I’m lucky. My father worked with missionary organisations and I grew up knowing people of a wide range of nationalities, cultures and skin tones. It never occurred to me those things might be sources of distrust or dislike. When it came to different shades of Christianity, however – that was another matter. In our Chicago suburb Catholics did not mix with Protestants. We had separate schools, and I don’t remember our ever talking with our Catholic neighbours. My father was a conservative evangelical and distrusted those with more ’liberal’ or catholic views.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis quotes historian Simon Schama as saying, ’there are now two kinds of people in the world:  those who are happy to live and engage with people who are not like themselves, and those who are not.’

What drives those who hate others just for being different? A psychologist would be better able to answer that question. In brief, however, there are several possibilities.

Some are crippled by a sense of inadequacy, and shore up their own ego by considering others inferior to them. ‘I may not be a hunk, an athlete or a brainbox, but at least I’m a member of the master race.’

Others cannot face the dark side of their own natures – the negative qualities and weaknesses we all have – and project them onto a whole race or group of others. ‘It’s not me who’s greedy or immoral or fanatical, it’s people who belong to that other religion.’

There are those who are guilty but cannot (or will not) deal with that guilt, so focus on the supposed guilt of others. I have known two clergymen who preached fiery sermons calling others to repent, but who turned out to be living double lives. One was a paedophile; the other, a married man, was eventually outed after advertising for sex. He had been enjoying casual liaisons for 25 years, despite challenging other clergy who had affairs.There are many such examples among clergy, politicians and others. It’s not only the guilty who behave in this way; shame and anger can be directed outwards in similar fashion. Before I had come to terms with my abuse I was pretty good at preaching hellfire and damnation. I wince to think of it now.

There are people who find the world complex and frightening – as indeed it is – and find it easier to focus the fear on others rather than come to terms with living in uncertainty. Jews – or Muslims, feminists, LGBT people, Brexiteers or Remainers – are responsible for all the ills that beset us. Eliminate them, and there will be nothing left to fear.

These are just some of the mechanisms by which people come to see a group of people as ‘the enemy’. In reality there may be a mixture of these, and perhaps more, conscious and subconscious motivations at work when we find ourselves fearing and disliking other people. We all suffer from one or more of them to some degree. In addition, we absorb attitudes and prejudices from those around us; in churches these are often propped up with a ‘theological’ or ‘biblical’ justification.

The trouble is that when we class any group or type of people as ‘the problem’ or ‘the enemy’, we can justify treating them badly. In extremes, this can result in physically harming or even killing them, as we saw with the recent tragic massacre in Christchurch. Most people guilty of prejudice don’t go to those extremes, thank God. But bias can prevent us from hearing each other and result in discrimination and injustice.  On some Christian social media sites remarks such as the following are sadly common:  ‘”Openly gay pastor” translates to “rebellious lost sinner who doesn’t know the Bible”.’  For ‘openly gay pastor’ you could substitute ‘woman pastor’, ‘person who doesn’t oppose abortion’, or several other categories. Some Christians would exclude anyone who doesn’t believe and live exactly as they do.

We cannot do much about others’ prejudices, but how do we deal with our own? My negativity about Roman Catholics was banished when I moved next door to a very friendly Catholic family.  One evening, over a bottle of wine, we discussed the differences between Catholic and (evangelical) Anglican theology. I found that often when we used different language we meant the same thing; and when we used the same words we meant something different. Eventually Terry commented, ‘The trouble with you Protestants is that you’ve thrown the Mother out with the bathwater.’ I saw he was right – and during our long friendship I developed a reverence for Our Lady.

I might not have been so open to that conversation, without a realisation which had come to me a few years earlier. I had been taught that no one could be converted to Christ without first realising the extent of their sin (hence the evangelical tendency to ‘name and shame’ sins).  But I was working on a sermon one day when it struck me, out of the blue, that it was not my job to convince people of their sin:  that is the work of the Holy Spirit. My work is to proclaim and to live, as far as I can, the love of God and the forgiveness we find in Christ.

Like everyone else I have only had sight of the SCIE report for the past couple of days. In the middle of moving house, it has only been possible to scan briefly the 140 pages of text which contain an independent survey the Church of England and its management of safeguarding issues. Clearly, I need more time to read the recommendations in detail. What the document gives is a survey of the safeguarding achievements of the 42 dioceses in the Church of England.  In addition, and perhaps from our perspective more importantly, there is an attempt to record the experience of 50+ survivors and their experiences of dealing with the Church.  As we might expect, the picture is mixed but the reviewer notes some improvements in the past four years or so. Because I cannot claim to have read the full report, I want to focus my comments on a crucial sentence which has been highlighted by several other commentators. It concerns our two archbishops. The sentence which is a quote from a survivor, reads ‘the current two archbishops and the previous two archbishops of Canterbury have all failed to be open about major safeguarding failures’.

In many ways this sentence and particularly the word ‘open’ sums up many of the problems about safeguarding that are reported over and over again by survivors. The kind of comments that I have heard suggest that survivors of abuse feel that they are, in bringing complaints, pitted against what feels like a closed system. In my reflections I want to consider a wider question.  Why does an institution, here represented by two archbishops, find it so hard to be open in this issue of responding to failures?

Each of us is born into an intimate community we call the family. Later on, we may become part of other communities.  Some of us join the church and this extends our experience of community.  At its best it links us to God and other Christians, potentially from every part of the world. Community is a word which implies that we know people personally. We are bound to them in relationships of love and respect and this leads on to the possibility of being able to trust them.  We often speak about ‘Christian community’ and there is a special word from the New Testament to describe this reality.  This is the word koinonia, often translated as communion or fellowship. The word contains the double idea that our Christian relationships reach out simultaneously to our fellow Christians and to the divine. The Orthodox theologian John Zizoulas described the Eucharist as the central activity of the church because it enacts communion for Christians with God and with each other in a tangible way. This quality of relating beyond ourselves in and through the Eucharist is a central part of our Christian identity. The church of course exists not only in its local manifestation, however important this might be. It has an organisational aspect.  A denominational structure, such as the Church of England, allows hundreds of local communities to be bonded together for support, learning and oversight. Organisation implies rules, discipline and defined common aims.  Bishops and archbishops are part of what enables the church organisation to operate through their overseeing role.

The word ‘institution’, often used in describing the Anglican church, brings in another dimension to our church organisation. An organisation is an institution when it has a formal aspect.  This will be seen in things like constitutions, traditions and links with the past.  We could say that an institution is an organisation with extras.  These bind it in distinctive ways to the wider society.  Sometimes being an institution has advantages.  It is suggestive of stability and permanence which people want and respect.   But these same qualities also put brakes on flexibility and make change a very cumbersome slow process.  An organisation without a history or traditions can fairly easily reinvent itself. The institution, on the other hand, may take decades to enact change because there is so much to be disentangled every time it wants changes to take place. As an aside this may be what is making the Brexit process so slow.  Britain has acquired so many extra hidden links through its membership of the European Community that it is never going to be easy to cut these links and pretend they never existed.

Among my interests is to try to work out how institutions like the Church affect and change the people who belong to them. I am especially interested in looking at those who have to be in charge of the institution, one which is deeply rooted in the past and hard to change. Because of the power of what we might call institutional inertia, we must expect that most of those who take responsibility for an institution like the Church of England have to submit to this slow pedantic way of operating.  Leadership of a slow ship like the Church of England is possibly an impossible task.  The obstructions put in the way of a new broom may be impossible to overcome.  Inertia, tradition, a preoccupation with buildings and survival will normally prove more powerful than any individuals put in charge.  The fate of most church leaders is to become a slave of the institution rather than its inspirer. I wonder how many of those chosen to be bishops in the Church of England realise at the beginning how difficult it will to make a real difference within the institution of which they are nominally leaders.

It is in the context of institutional powerlessness and bondage to unseen forces that I read the critical comments by SCIE towards archbishops past and present.  Openness about the needs of survivors/victims is a task not straightforward for a cumbersome institution dedicated to the demands of survival and continuity.  The aspect of the church than can respond to these needs is the church operating at the level of community or communion.  It is there that issues of brokenness, pain and forgiveness can be addressed.  Even though the public sees many failures at the national level, the local church, handling the demand for true wholeness, has still much to offer.   

Every report that is published on the topic of safeguarding seems to produce a call for mandatory reporting to an outside body in cases of abuse.  Bishops and archbishops do need to release their control over cases of abuse.  This is not only because they lack the competence and necessary skills to deal with them, but as the SCIE survivor observed, they are too encumbered with the institutional bondage of their positions.  Are they able to be the right people to say and do the right thing when confronted with individuals who call out for healing and justice?

Last week on Wednesday a fascinating article appeared in the Guardian.  https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/27/are-sexual-abuse-victims-being-diagnosed-with-a-mental-disorder-they-dont-have?CMP=twt_gu  I am not a regular reader of the Guardian but the topic, referenced by someone on Twitter, attracted my attention.  It was talking about what is now known as Complex PSTD and setting out the way that this disorder is found among survivors of any severe trauma.  A few weeks ago, I made reference to a book by Gordon Turnbull entitled Trauma.  This set out his pioneering work in challenging the psychiatric profession to take seriously the study of trauma and the therapies that are able to relieve it.  From his experience of being the psychiatrist who headed up the care of those who were first on the scene after Lockerbie, Turnbull has gained an international reputation in describing and treating this disorder.  As I mentioned in my short review, the main message from the book is that traumatic stress of every kind is not the cause of mental illness.  When the body has to deal with trauma, whether the result of single event or over a period of time, there will be expected and predictable symptoms.  These need to be approached quite differently from established mental disorders.

The Guardian article picks up this same narrative, the one which Turnbull wanted to communicate for the whole of his professional life.  When stress and trauma create a recognisable psychological reaction for which there are recognised therapeutic responses, a patient is being given a hopeful prognosis.  Any diagnosis which carries the implication that the sufferer of trauma is in some way mentally ill is far more alarming.  The Guardian article explores the way in which abuse survivors are sometimes labelled with the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  The implications of such a diagnosis can be dire.  Treatment options are very limited but worse still there is the suggestion that the mental health of the abused may have been fragile before the abuse took place.  The BPD diagnosis simultaneously labels them as chronically mentally ill but also untreatable.

It might seem impertinent to write about a dispute that is taking place among professionals where I have no expertise.  But it is clear to me that the issue is not just a matter of professional judgement.  If an expert gives what is effectively a diagnosis which carries with it a ‘life-sentence’, then he/she should at least allow some kind of second opinion.  If the authority of the expert prevents anyone, least of all the patient, challenging this drastic diagnosis, there seems to be a denial of the laws of natural justice.  To give prominence to one particular diagnosis over another, one that is equally credible and respectable within the profession is a political decision.  The author of the Guardian article, Alexandra Shimo, quotes Gillian Proctor from the University of Leeds who says ‘the borderline diagnosis for sexual abuse survivors is nonsense and misleading because it suggests that the problem is within the personality of the survivor rather than a result of what has happened to them’. 

A series of case-studies are given in the article which my readers are invited to consult.  They illustrate the point well as to how devastating the BPD diagnosis can be.  The abused find that they are carrying the extra burden and stigma of being considered mentally ill.   Such a diagnosis robs them of power and agency.  They are the object to whom things are done.  Their illness deprives them of any decision about what should happen next.  Of course, there may be aspects of the personality which have been damaged by the encounter with abuse.  Symptoms like depression and dissociation may well be found but these symptoms are not indicative, according to Gordon Turnbull of actual mental illness.

One facet of being labelled with the BPD diagnosis is its implications in the legal sphere.  One abuse survivor in Canada found herself undermined and humiliated by a defence lawyer because of this BPD diagnosis.  Stigma is a good word that is used to describe what happens to many abuse survivors when they receive the BPD label.  They feel themselves somehow marked out by the label and unable to access proper help or understanding from other professionals.  These therapists know the textbook definitions of this illness and that sufferers of this condition are a tough proposition and may be impossible to heal. 

In 2018 Complex PTSD finally achieved some recognition in the NHS but many therapists and practitioners still find it controversial and hesitate to diagnose it.  Meanwhile we end up with a situation where some people are deemed to be mentally ill because they have been damaged through an act of abuse.  Of course, professional people must be allowed to diagnose patients as they see fit, but the rest of us must also be able to point out the immense importance of getting things right for a sufferer.  Although my personal inclination is to side with Gordon Turnbull is claiming that PTSD is a description of the body responding to stress rather than a mental illness, the opposite point of view has to be heard.  The issue becomes more complicated when other things are added to the equation.  How do claims for legal injury work out when the professionals disagree?  Is it not a temptation for a lawyer seeking to limit legal damages to suggest that the victim was already a sufferer of mental distress before the incident of abuse? 

The claim that church abuse victims come up against a variety of obstructing institutional blockages is often heard. The church is sometimes seen to be deploying delaying tactics – ‘forgetfulness’ on the part of those in authority and various legal ploys.  The legal system is sometimes felt to be on the side of the abuser as well.  Now in addition, the Guardian article points to this further problem of the political divisions within the mental health profession that can also militate against abuse survivors.  What we would hope for is that the individual whose abuse is established beyond reasonable doubt would be automatically protected from further harm.  The opposite seems to happen.  Instead finding instant support and comfort, the survivor is made to jump through a series of difficult hoops, each of which requires considerable stamina.  Those who do follow through the difficult path and arrive at an apology or legal compensation may not feel as though they have won.   All that they have achieved is what feels like a grudging acceptance of the wrongs that have been to them.  Many others who have potential claims must feel deterred by the sheer difficulty of breaking through the many hindrances that are put before them to delay their pursuit of justice.  The absence of any sign of generosity on the part of those in positions of church responsibility continues to rankle among the survivors who speak to me.