What has the gospel got to offer victims of abuse? What is ‘good news’ for those whose most urgent problem is not their own sin, but the damage done by someone else’s sin against them? 

A survivor attending a Common Worship Holy Communion service (and many parishes offer nothing else) might well conclude that Christianity cannot help them. The focus is entirely on sin and forgiveness, and the work of Jesus presented almost solely as saving us from our sins. The theme runs through the service from the penitential material at the beginning to the prayers before the distribution of the consecrated elements, and is sometimes repeated in the post-communion collect.

Undoubtedly salvation from sin is a key theme both in the Bible and in Christianity generally. I would argue, however, that to narrow the gospel down just to forgiveness from sin as the Church is currently doing, is to seriously distort it.  I’ll illustrate this by looking at two examples from Common Worship.

The first is the introduction to the confession in Holy Communion Order One: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ to save us from our sins, to be our advocate in heaven, and to bring us to eternal life.

Contrast it with John 3:16, which it quotes: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Verse 17 continues: Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

The original in John offers relief from the fear of death, with the implication of a new quality of life now, and freedom from condemnation ‘to those who believe’. The invitation to confession more specifically names Jesus’ mission as ‘to save us from our sins’, with ‘to bring us to eternal life’ second, and as a delayed prospect. It also introduces the idea of Jesus as our ‘advocate’ – lawyer – in heaven. The whole mood of the passage has changed from freedom and relief, provided for us by God’s overwhelming love, to apprehension of appearing in the dock in a cosmic courtroom with God as Judge – a daunting prospect, even with Christ as our barrister.

Moreover, rather than approaching our advocate directly, we are supposed to rely on an intermediary – the priest – to dispense absolution. The idea of an intermediary other than Christ is foreign to this passage from John, and scarcely present in the New Testament.

Our second example is the options given for prayer before the distribution of Holy Communion. Both distort the lesson to be gained from the tale of the Syrophoenician widow in Mt. 15 and Mk 7. The point of the story is that God’s grace is so abundant that it’s available to all – ‘even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table’. Even Syrophoenician women are ‘worthy’ to eat the crumbs – how much more so the children of the household! And yet, after confession, absolution, sermon, declaring our faith, exchanging the Peace and all – we are supposed to say we are less worthy than dogs. This is hardly Good News, especially for those downtrodden and lacking confidence.

The virtues of Common Worship are that there is supplementary material, and that it allows freedom to borrow from external liturgical sources, especially during the ante-communion.  Few clergy make the most of this freedom, however. The core of the liturgy used in most parishes shows a very limited understanding of the mission of Jesus.  Understandably, then, even regular worshippers can assume that Jesus was born and died solely so that our sins can be forgiven.

Contrast this assumption with Jesus’ own declaration of his mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,   because he has anointed me  to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” Luke 4:18-19

There is nothing in this passage about sin. Jesus speaks here of being sent to the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed; and he speaks not of forgiving them but of healing them and setting them free.

Likewise, the Sermon on the Mount, the core of Jesus’ teaching, begins with words of blessing for the poor (Luke) or poor in spirit (Matthew); the meek; the persecuted; mourners; and the hungry (Luke; Matthew has ‘those who hunger and thirst for righteousness’).  It is clear that Jesus is concerned for those who suffer, whether physically or emotionally, and meeting their needs.

Jesus challenged some people regarding their sin, especially religious leaders. However, he healed and delivered many to whom he does not seem to have mentioned sin. He resisted the others’ attempts to reduce everything to a question of sin and guilt, and frequently criticised religious leaders for laying heavy burdens on ‘ordinary’ people and the poor.

The concept of salvation itself has been narrowed to a focus on the forgiveness of sin. The principal Hebrew term for salvation, (yesa’) means ‘to make room for’ or ‘to bring into a spacious environment’. It connotes freedom from things which restrict or limit. It is the word from which the name ‘Jesus’ is derived.The Greek term sozein originally meant ‘to deliver from danger’ or ‘to make safe’. In both Hebrew and Greek the word used for ‘salvation’ meant safety, deliverance from danger, and freedom from restriction. 

Sin is one of the things which threatens and restricts us, and saving us from sin was certainly part of Jesus’ purpose. But other things also threaten and restrict us, and particularly the survivor of sexual abuse:  fear, shame, despair, self-loathing, poor decision-making. Children and young people who are abused are not given the right conditions for growth, and their development into psychologically healthy adults is restricted. A true sense of self must be given space to develop. For them maturing into Christ will mean not sacrificing self, as much traditional teaching demands, but learning who they are and what they want. Psychological limitations such as the inability to set boundaries, trust one’s own perceptions, or seek to have one’s needs met are properly a part of the work of salvation. As Kathleen Fischer commented, ‘the movement of God in our lives emerges as we come to know our deepest selves’ (Women at the Well:  Feminist Perspectives on Spiritual Direction, p. 114)

We seldom see this wider picture of salvation reflected in our liturgy, which is the ‘shop window’ of our Church and both reflects and moulds our theology and spirituality.  The seasonal material, including collects and Bible readings, does draw on themes such as events in the life of Jesus and the doctrine of the Trinity, but these are still set within a framework which is almost exclusively about the sins and need for forgiveness of the worshipper. 

Imagine the effect of this skewed emphasis on those who come to church hurting physically and emotionally, frightened, with no sense of self respect, and never having had a chance to discover who they really are. They are faced almost immediately with a prayer saying God knows all our secrets, and are then required to search their own hearts and minds for the things they have done wrong. For an individual in such a condition the confession can be a further abasement. Imagine if, instead, they were greeted with:  ‘Jesus said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…to let the oppressed go free…’, and the rest of the liturgy took its theme from that. It would be liberating not only for sexual abuse survivors, but for many others:  the poor, the depressed, the sick, and those struggling with all kinds of problems. 

This article is an excerpt from the chapter of the same title in Letters to a Broken Church.

After church on Sunday I took part in two conversations over coffee which indirectly touched on the church abuse issue.  Neither mentioned in any way spiritual/sexual abuse, but each of them reminded me how much and for how long a single abusive act may affect a victim.  The first conversation in many ways was a repeat of others I have had before.  It was the story of a woman, now a widow in her late 80s, who had married a soldier returning from service in the Second World War.  As was typical for men of that generation, war experiences were not ever shared with the family.  A blanking out of terrible memories was the norm.  The effective sealing off and repression of all the bad experiences meant that the wife, and later the family, had no understanding what the father had been through.  Our understanding of psychology today suggests that this kind of repression of memories takes a toll on the body in a variety of ways.  It requires considerable energy to keep such memories under wraps and stop them erupting into consciousness.  The widow seemed aware of the way that suppression had affected her husband’s happiness and indeed the health of their relationship.  This was of course only hinted at but the conversation was a testament to the way that a war which ended 74 years ago still casts a shadow over the happiness of people living today.

The second conversation was with a young man whose parents-in-law live in Belfast.  I asked him if he was familiar with some recent research that has traced the long-term psychological effects of the Troubles to affect people, particularly children.  The dynamics of past violence have so impacted themselves on some individuals that their relationships years later are affected and damaged.  The continuous stress of living in areas afflicted by violence has made its mark on these Belfast residents so that in some cases families still bear serious psychological scars.  The violence of the past has effectively damaged a later generation.  Many current victims had not even been born at the time when the Troubles took place.

In reflecting on these two short conversations, I became aware of the way that our Church is also living in a post-trauma situation.  The particular experiences of trauma I am thinking about are the recent revelations of violence, sexual abuse and bullying in the church.  Although such abusive episodes in the Church have been going on unseen over decades, recent reviews, reports and enquiries have made us far more aware of them than ever before.  One positive aspect of living in this century is that we are possibly better equipped to help people recover with the tools of psychotherapy and other psychological methods.  We recognise more easily the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and there are now some effective ways on offer for tackling its baneful effects.  Some of the church abuse sufferers do emerge from their victim status to become stronger, regarding themselves as survivors of trauma.  Sadly, away from the therapeutic interventions, church authority, in its dealings with survivors, is often experienced as inept or even malevolent.  Among the worse examples I have heard of are meetings with church lawyers who insist that some bad experience in childhood had somehow predisposed a victim to an abusive encounter.  Obviously, there are going to be a variety of outcomes in the stories of abuse that we hear, but one thing is normally true; the effect of an experience of abuse will be long-lasting and will often affect the families of the victim.  Here we have a situation where it is not the sins of the fathers being visited on the next generation, but abusive actions against individuals in one generation being carried over to damage partners and the children as yet unborn.

Many people are reportedly tired of hearing about abuse cases from the past.  The attitude that is around and repeated by many people is that all these cases happened a long time ago and we should all be over it by now.  It is true that the practical efforts that have gone into safeguarding are impressive.  Children and vulnerable adults are probably safer now than they ever have been.  But that is not the only problem.  There is always the legacy of the past that continues to haunt the present Church.  As long as survivors/victims continue to feel ignored and side-lined by the Church, the poison of the past will continue to wreak enormous damage to the Church’s current health and thus its future flourishing. 

What is a healing way of dealing with the past? The two words that represent a modern approach to the issue are Truth and Reconciliation.  Both these words involve an enormous cost to those taking part.  But, without that cost being met there seems little real hope for the Church’s future.  A future that is dominated by the opposite, embodying secrecy, lies and reputation management, is a future built on sand.  The more that the issue of past abuses is obscured by such secrecy and denials, the greater the sense of scandal and betrayal is when truth comes tumbling out.  As a commentator on the abuse scene, I sense a reluctance by the leaders at the very top of our Church to face up openly to the past unless enormous pressure is applied.  The Anglican Communion is meeting some significant challenges over sexuality and teaching which are being confronted at Lambeth 2020.  These challenges, however, seem to pale into insignificance when laid alongside these other issues of past abuses that have been revealed by IICSA and all the other reviews and reports.   There is also the issue of trust within the Church.   When bishops are accused of lying to preserve personal and institutional reputations, something disastrous is taking place.  The next ten years could see the role of bishop completely undermined to the point that no one wants to take on the job.  At present there are vacant parishes up and down the country but I can see a situation where there will be vacant sees.  Priests of integrity will not allow themselves to be sucked into such a potentially toxic role.

The resources of the Church should be poured into ensuring that parishes can be safe places and centres where there can be true healing of past hurts.  The healing model from the past, which practised laying on of hands for physical illness, could be changed to place an emphasis on the overcoming of stress and unresolved trauma that many people carry from the past.  The Church might become a place where people can talk openly about brokenness, whatever its origin, that they carry from past trauma and relationships.  The survivor of church sexual abuse, of bullying or any other kind of trauma could also find there a proper welcome and the chance of healing.  Even though the severity of what survivors have suffered at the hands of the church may have been exceptionally hard to bear, their experience is alongside the pain experienced by others.  Facing the truth about our individual brokenness can help all of us to move to the second part of the equation – reconciliation.  Reconciliation in every sense is perhaps another word for divine healing.  It brings back together what has been broken.  We all need this divine healing work accomplished in us, whether we are Archbishop or humblest member of a congregation.  Perhaps the abuse crisis can have one positive outcome, which is to teach all of that we are all not only sinners but we all share to some degree the brokenness of abuse survivors.  Like them we all have need for both truth and reconciliation.

It was announced on 12 Aug 2018 by the Church of England that there would be a review into the case of John Smyth. A year later in August 2019 the National Safeguarding Team commissioned Keith Makin to undertake this review into the Church’s handling of the conduct of Smyth.  The review is set to be completed within nine months.  The long-awaited announcement was welcome news to all those who seek clarification of the long-running saga of John Smyth, Iwerne Holidays, Titus Trust, Winchester College and the Scripture Union.  This NST announcement was, however, almost immediately undermined by the announcement that one party, the Titus Trust, would not cooperate with the review for legal considerations.  Then the Scripture Union made a similar non-cooperation statement without giving out its reasons.  Winchester College announced that it would, ‘subject to the matter of any live litigation’, cooperate with the review.

The original August 14^th Press Release from the Church emphasises the major role expected of the three organisations mentioned above to the Smyth review process.  With the blanking of the review by two of the three participants, one might have hoped for a further Press Release to indicate how the review was proposing to overcome these obstacles being put in its path.  Nothing has been announced and so we are led to conclude that the review will soldier on without the backing of some of the main institutional players in the Smyth affair.  One way to go forward might be to approach the individual members of the Trustees of the Titus Trust.  Some of them are licensed Anglican clergy and so they are under episcopal authority.  Even if the corporate body refuses to cooperate, individual trustees can surely be required to respond to legitimate questions from an official C/E review.  This of course assumes that Keith Makin has the full backing of bishops and other authorities in the church for his work.  The names that come up from an internet search are Simon Austen, the current chair and Richard Dryer, Adrian May and Phil Parker.  These are all clergy in the Church of England and so should be amenable to an episcopal requirement to provide what information they have.

A second suggestion would be to approach the known victims of John Smyth.  Some I know are willing to be approached if this is done with proper safeguards.  Back in May in a Church Times report, Andrew Graystone identified 26 individual Smyth victims in the UK, two of whom have reportedly died.  Some of these survivors are active online so it is possible to gauge from their tweets an impression of what this particular group think so far about progress in the review.  The answer to a question about the progress of the review up till now is that there has been, as far as they are concerned, complete and utter silence from the reviewer.  

This brings us on to ask about the qualifications of the reviewer, Keith Makin.  He was chosen by the NST for his 30 years of management in the social care field.  He has already led on a number of serious case reviews.  He is clearly a professional in this line of expertise but there is no indication of any background in the church.  This would have given some insight into the tortuous political and theological aspects of the case.  Anyone who has followed the Smyth case at any depth will know that it has become, over the passage of thirty years or more, enmeshed in the politics of a large segment of powerful Anglican evangelicals.  Those of us who are watching this case realise that even with a great deal of background reading it is sometimes hard to disentangle all the subtle nuances of theology in this case.  Also, the response of the Church to Smyth and its institutional failures in the years that followed were in part because of theological politics.  It would be unfair to expect anyone from Makin’s background to be able to unravel all this complexity.

An Internet search on Keith Makin shows that he is no longer active in any of the five directorships that he used to hold.  His main role now is to head up his own consultancy firm in Northumberland.  His commission to conduct the review began on 19^th August.  By now we might have hoped for some visible signs of movement, especially if the review is to be completed in nine months.  The original Press Release about his appointment did not spell out in any detail how the review is to be conducted, but we might have hoped that Keith would by now have set up a dedicated web-site for the purpose of reaching out to survivors and anyone else who has information on Smyth.  If the review is to be strong in ways that use Keith’s areas of expertise, then, surely, he will be anxious to learn as much as possible from those who knew Smyth and suffered at his hands.  I strongly sense a feeling of frustration coming from Smyth survivors that I am in touch with that they have not heard anything about the gathering of factual evidence.  Although the review that eventually appears may not have any theological insight, this fact can be overlooked if it is professional, business-like and concerned to present all the facts of the case.

The silence that seems to pervade the Makin review process so far is also apparent in the information on Jonathan Fletcher.  The Daily Telegraph report which appeared at the end of June opened a flurry of interest, particularly as it linked up to the Smyth scandal.  Smyth and Fletcher knew each other and were part of the same networks of well-connected evangelicals in Church Society/Reform/Iwerne circles.  It can also be suggested that the people who knew about the nefarious activities of both men were from the same circles.  In short, there seems to have been a cover-up by well-connected and apparently honourable Christian individuals over a long period of time.  In the period that has passed since June, there have been no new disclosures against Fletcher.  The opposite seems to have happened.  Old loyalties to conservative Christian networks, Christian Unions and Iwerne camps seem to have held firm that no new disclosures have been revealed.  Loyalty to the evangelical tribe has taken precedence over a higher loyalty to the values of truth and justice.  Silence on the topic has been almost total.

Having written two pieces on the Jonathan Fletcher on my blog, I have been interested to see that my essays still attract a reasonable amount of attention.  Most of my other blog essays are forgotten in a couple of weeks, but the two Fletcher articles have ridden high on a Google search and still attract around twenty hits every day.  One of the reasons for this is that there seems to have been an attempt to remove Jonathan Fletcher’s name from all mention elsewhere on the Net.  Sermons given by him have mysteriously disappeared.  Mention of his presence and participation in the Commissioning of Andy Lines at Wimbledon was erased and the author who had written the piece, Chris Sugden, had not been consulted.  The effort of this cleansing of the Net points to a considerable effort and measure of support in the face of evidence of immoral behaviour by Fletcher.  All this suggests that Jonathan Fletcher still carries a great deal of support.  The tribal attachments in this branch of the Church are alive and well but these loyalties also have the detrimental effect of corrupting those who hold to them.

Over the next months Keith Makin has the unenviable task of making some sense of the failures of the Church with regard to John Smyth and his felonies.  We trust that his way of working will soon become clear.  His review is important to the Smyth survivors, the Church as a whole and all who want to see good practice prevail in the institution.  One area that he is unlikely to penetrate is the culture of secrecy, dishonesty and corruption that made Smyth’s (and Fletcher’s) behaviour happen in the first place.  It is that poison that is the cause of so much harm to the Church of England both now and in the future.

At Amritsar, Justin Welby prostrated himself in apology for the massacre a century ago. Why did he refuse a simple verbal apology to Matthew Ineson when invited to do so by counsel at IICSA? The Church of England had no responsibility for Amritsar, and the Queen made apology there years ago. But Matthew Ineson was raped by an Anglican priest and the Church’s handling of his case has been ‘shabby and shambolic’, as the Archbishop of York admitted at the same hearing. Matthew has not had an apology from anyone in the Church. Why does the Archbishop of Canterbury feel able to apologise for events over which he has no responsibility, but refuse to apologise for events which are part of his remit?

I have long been baffled that our bishops and archbishops continue their mismanagement of the abuse crisis facing the Church.  All bishops are intelligent and highly educated; most of them are good, well-intentioned people.  Why are they still colluding with a system which is known to be failing victims? Long ago it became clear that the tactics employed by the Church and its insurer are costing them dear in terms of reputation and trust, and are contrary to the gospel they claim to serve.

The archbishops refused to allow General Synod to discuss the Blackburn Letter; a refusal they ought to have known would inflame the situation. A number of bishops have mishandled abuse cases and got away with it. The Archbishop of Canterbury has denied that a prominent abuser was Anglican, though he knew the man, a lay reader. The Eliot Review was consistently trashed, and there was no apology to Ian Eliot when the review’s accuracy was proven. Bishops who are dead or retired (or about to retire) are ‘thrown under a bus’, while favoured bishops who have ignored disclosures of abuse are let off. How much is incompetence, and how much is corruption? It’s not easy to tell. But it’s long been obvious that these tactics are only making matters worse, and could even destroy the Church.

One reason for this strange obtuseness may be the uniformity of the House of Bishops. Until recently there were no women, and they are still heavily outnumbered. Ethnic minority bishops are also scarce, as are those from working class backgrounds. There are few, if any, theologians or academics, and pastors are in very short supply. The emphasis is on managers. There is nothing wrong with managers, of course, and we need them among our bishops, but it’s unhealthy for any decision-making group to so lack diversity.

According to Matthew Syed, writing in the The Times on 2 September, ‘Homogenous groups don’t just underperform, they do so in predictable ways. When you are surrounded by similar people you are not just likely to share each other’s blind spots, but to reinforce them.’ In his new book, Rebel Ideas:  The Power of Diverse Thinking, he develops this theme. He cites research showing that diverse groups perform better than groups made up of friends. The groups of cronies were more confident their decisions were right, but in fact were more often wrong. Syed also quotes Anthony Crewe and Ivor King, writing on the poll tax fiasco:

‘More than two decades later the whole episode still evokes wonder and astonishment…Its perpetrators walked into clearly visible traps with their eyes open, but they saw nothing. They blundered on, impervious to warnings. In the end their failure was abject and total.’

Those who devised the poll tax came from privileged backgrounds. When it was pointed out that people would struggle to pay the tax Nicholas Ridley, who was responsible for implementing it, replied:  ‘Well, they could always sell a picture.’

Ridley’s equivalent in the House of Bishops is the prelate who, when faced with complaints from abuse victims, protested that he knew hundreds of ‘happy survivors’.

There are a few outliers among the diocesan bishops, but their effectiveness in mitigating the bishops’ collective blindness is limited by their small numbers. We are social creatures, and the pressure to conform to the norms of those around us is enormous. It’s easy, too for the majority to ignore the lone voice expressing a different point of view – as those of us who were among the first women to be ordained know all too well. The collegiality of the House of Bishops is another factor. The stultifying effect of collegiality was seen when 19 retired bishops criticised their successors’ document Marriage and Same Sex Relationships (https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/17-february/news/uk/retired-bishops-take-their-successors-to-task-over-sexuality-report). Now they were retired, they said, they could express their views in a way they’d been unable to do before.

I see this human tendency to conform, to take the easy way, to want to be in the ‘inner ring’, as part of the world’s ‘slavery to corruption (or decay)’ which St. Paul talks about in Romans 8. We, the children of God, are meant to be free from this slavery to corruption – but our freedom is usually only partial. We must work at it, and that work begins with identifying where we are still enslaved by a worldly point of view.

So how could our bishops and archbishops be more free of the slavery of corruption? By the time they become bishops they will have absorbed a lot of secular management theory, and identified themselves with the existing goals of a very establishment-oriented institution. I suggest, therefore, that they appoint a group of observers to the House of Bishops. These observers could speak but not vote; they could have a similar role to that of Fool in a medieval king’s court. Each would serve a term of no more than three to years, to avoid their ‘going native’. I’d suggest the Bishops’ Fools should include:  a couple of parish treasurers (preferably form poor churches); several people of colour; a handful of survivors of church abuse; a few people on benefits; two or three partnered LGBTI people; a few theologians; and a non-churchgoer or two. Readers will be able to suggest others who should be included. Their function will be to tell the bishops, bluntly, what they think of the prelates’ attitudes, plans, and decisions. The bishops won’t do this of course – but if they did, it might help counter the rot which has set in.

There are many people in Britain who are dismayed at the events taking place in the political arena.  At the heart of everything that is taking place is an overconfident but, apparently for many, inspiring leader in the person of Boris Johnson.  This blog is not going to be a critique of all that has happened since Boris became Prime Minister, as others are doing that pretty adequately in the Press.  I personally came to a realisation that I would never be able to regard him as an effective leader when he started becoming friendly with Donald Trump.  Evidently, he believed that a personal relationship with Trump would be a way to ease the problems of Brexit.  New trade deals with the States would be our economic salvation in the post Brexit world.  There were two problems with this idea, both of which will probably prove fatal to Boris’ calculations.  The first is that Trump himself is in an incredibly vulnerable situation as President.  As the law-suits pile up against him, it is by no means certain that he will be able to run for President in 2020, let alone win the contest.  The historian in Boris must have realised that it is foolhardy to rely on such a volatile and unreliable partner.  We are seeing almost daily how some of Trump’s allies (e.g. John Bolton) become enemies, sometimes in the space of hours.  Politically speaking how can anyone do business with such a fickle flaky partner?  The second more serious issue concerns Trump’s ethical record.  As someone who seems to have little interest in telling the truth, Trump is hardly an obvious person to do business with.  His capacity to lie must surely make it extremely difficult to pin him down in any future negotiation.  While Trump may see Boris as a trusted ally in terms of his political style and outlook, how will this ever assist our Prime Minister if he is attached to a man who is not only a stranger to truth and honesty but actually seems unable to recognise them?  The extent of the corruption that permeates Trump’s political record is so great that anyone who comes anywhere near him seems liable to be contaminated by its contagion.  Boris’ attempts to make such an individual into a political ally may prove fatal to his own long-term future in politics.

Every time a person of dishonesty or corruption takes over in an organisation, it will affect every corner of that institution.  History will probably declare that the heroes of Boris’ time in office are those who refused to go along with his proguing of Parliament, including my local MP, Rory Stewart.  Integrity will always resist being sucked into a situation of compromise and collusion.  That seems to be the fate of most of the Tory MPs who have allowed their better selves to be seduced by the prospects of power and influence in the future under the leader Boris Johnson.

Looking at the Church of England at present it is unclear whether or not a similar struggle for the hearts and minds of the senior levels of leadership is currently taking place.  Over the past twelve months the most appalling revelations about the behaviour of clergy abusers have been revealed.  We have also heard of the participation of lawyers and management reputation companies in protecting the image of the Church.  In some cases, bishops themselves have actively resisted the attempts of survivors to be heard.  None of us knows exactly what conversations take place at the twice-yearly meetings of the House of Bishops.  We can, however, assume that the issue of managing the reputation of the Church has been discussed.  From the outside perspective, it would seem that the ethical and Christian approach requires a complete opening up and confession of the many failings of the past.  I am sure that some bishops would support this kind of honest way of dealing with the past.  It would of course prove incredibly expensive both in financial terms and in the human cost involved in resourcing the acts of reparation.  The other side of the argument would be the one that seems to prevail at present.  This approach to the problem is all about minimising responsibility, pushing away survivors as much as possible and generally living in a state of denial about how appalling the scandal has become. 

In any kind of management structure, including the Church, we have the term, corporate responsibility.  This states that the decision of a committee, from the Tory Cabinet to a village PCC, is binding on all members.  This will require that any members who strongly disagree with the corporate decision keep their mouths firmly closed and not reveal what has happened to the outside world.  This principle works reasonably well in the corporate world but it breaks down when there are strong ethical issues under discussion.  Boris chose to sack Tory party members who resisted on ethical grounds to his actions.  The corporate responsibility model blew up in his face because the pressure on his opponents’ consciences became too great.  Something similar may well happen in the Church of England.  It is hard to imagine that there are no rebels among the 42 Diocesan bishops. Some may well want to protest at the corporate responsibility model that forces them to keep quiet when, arguably, ethically dubious decisions are being taken on their behalf.  To take one small example of an unethical and un-Christian event taking place in the past few months.  At the IICSA hearing, Justin Welby was invited by a lawyer to apologise to Matthew Ineson, sitting behind him, for his treatment by the Church.  The Archbishop failed to respond.  Clearly there were other unseen forces in the room which were controlling his conduct.  Whether they were management advisers, publicity folk or lawyers, the Archbishop was being controlled and prevented from performing a simple ethical response to Matt. 

For the Church of England to have a chance of regaining its reputation for honest integrity it has to emerge out of the grip of the unseen forces that seem to bind it at present.  The honest and ethical ones among our leaders must be allowed to speak openly about the appalling events of the past.  The Reviews of particular episodes of abuse must be allowed to proceed without any hindrances and follow the principles set out so memorably by Kate Blackwell QC on the Sunday programme.   But I want to end up on a positive note.  There is a new broom that has recently arrived in the Safeguarding world in the person of Melissa Carslake.  Her position and seniority as new Director of Safeguarding gives her the chance to change things radically at the centre.  It will still be a tough task for her.  If I am right to see the Archbishop’s performance at IICSA being manipulated by hidden forces, Melissa will, no doubt, have to battle these very same forces in order to prevail and bring back honesty and integrity to the Church of England.  It ought to be abundantly clear which path will promote the Church’s long-term health, but hitherto many of our Church leaders have failed to recognise this.  Once again, we pray for truth and light.

Send out thy light and thy truth that they may lead me: and bring me unto thy holy hill and to thy dwelling.  Ps. 43: 3

At the time of writing we are in the middle of a profound political crisis.  While I am not going to get involved in the well-rehearsed arguments about Brexit, there are certain aspects of the debate that indirectly touch on the Anglican Church and its present travails.  Michael Sadgrove, a fellow blogger and former Dean of Durham, asked a question on Twitter when it was reported that Boris Johnson was going to remove the whip from the 21 dissenting Conservative MPs.  Michael asked if a leader of an organisation, such as, in his case the Archbishop of Canterbury, could remove a faithful member of the Church for not agreeing with the ideas coming from the leadership.  This rhetorical question was posed to show the absurdity of the situation where disagreements in the Conservative Party are leading to bully-boy tactics in our political life.  I happen to live in the constituency of one of those so affected, Rory Stewart. His status has rapidly changed from being a Conservative leadership contender to someone cast out to become a non-person in a political sense.

In this situation I find myself thinking about this status of being someone’s enemy.  There are clearly many ways of talking about other people as enemies but they have a theme in common.  A person or people who can be described as belonging to the category of enemy are understood in some way to be a threat.  In the situation of war, these threats are real and tangible.  German soldiers might well have invaded our country in the last war and threatened the lives and property of every inhabitant.  We are right to feel that, when individuals or nations threaten to fire nuclear weapons at us, we need to protect ourselves against such dangers.  Enemies come also in many other guises.   Anyone who wants to rob us or hurt us in some way can be said to have made themselves our enemy as long as they continue with their intentions.  Even if we wish to show compassion or Christian love towards them, we still have to protect ourselves with common-sense measures.  Trying to love the stranger does not stop us locking our front doors at night or making sure our children are kept safe.  There is a need to balance the possibility of loving the stranger and being prudent in how we conduct our business with the world at large.

The recent events in Parliament suggest that there are a variety of situations when other people are declared to be enemies which have little to do with threats to anyone’s physical safety.  Ken Clarke and Rory Stewart are not a threat to the Tories.  The attempt to make them enemies of the party has to be something that emerges out of the thinking and imaginations of the mind of the Prime Minister and his closest allies.  It is quite easy with Boris Johnson to believe that certain individuals are hostile when this perception is merely what is going on inside our heads.   It is not difficult to provoke in individuals like ourselves feelings of jealousy and envy so that we think of them as a threat to us.  Another way that we may feel under attack by an enemy is if our self-esteem is in some way challenged.  The narcissist, about whom I have written many times on this blog, is likely very thin-skinned and vulnerable to seeing enmity in those who disagree with him.  Anybody, even bishops or senior politicians, whose sense of self-importance is challenged, is vulnerable to the perception that they are surrounded by threatening enemies.  The only threats that are being made are ones that are perhaps needed – challenges to pomposity and the sense of entitlement.    The enemy here may be simply the person who is telling us the truth.  As T.S. Elliot said, humankind cannot bear much reality.

A serious case of ‘enemy-making’ appears to be taking place in the Church.  Survivors of abuse within the Church frequently complain that there is one thing that causes them more pain than anything else.  That is the experience of being made an enemy by officials and leaders in the Church.  Survivors are those who already suffer the vulnerability created by the original abuse.  It is then a massive blow to find that they then carry the projection of being ‘enemy’ on the part of powerful people in the Church.  The labelling of survivors as enemies and threats to the Church is something not anchored in reality.   It seems only to exist in the minds and imaginations of those who believe they are somehow defending the reputation of the Church from harm.   The irony of these defensive measures against survivors is that they are making the reputation of the Church sink further in the eyes of outsiders. That is what seems to happen time after time.  Instead of encountering welcoming support and professional help from the Church where they were first harmed, survivors are often pushed aside to face broken lives alone.  Many of them feel it is just not worth fighting battles for justice when there are so many powerful people and institutions set against them.  If we were to use military language, we might describe poorly armed clusters of soldiers/survivors coming up against a blitzkrieg of overwhelming power.

My readers will have read the contributions of Gilo over the past two weeks.  I obviously know Gilo a bit though we have only ever spoken on the phone.  For every Gilo I know there are others with similar stories but who simply lack the stamina to stand and fight for justice.  The effort is simply too draining on their energy and their family lives.  This is why Gilo’s testimony is so important. He has survived, along with Matt Ineson and Phil Johnson, the most appalling pressures.  He has refused to be silenced and collude with the Church trying to present itself favourably to the world in this area of safeguarding.  The Church wants to show that it is always motivated by not only the highest standards of ethical behaviour but also the spirit of Christ in its dealings with those it has wronged.  The truth seems to be different.  I have, for example, pointed out the fact that out of the national church budget of several million for safeguarding, nothing goes into a pot marked Care of Survivors.  No specialist in mediation or reconciliation has been appointed to any of these national bodies.  All the energy and the effort seem to be expended on protecting the structures.  The idealism with which some of the new staff on these bodies begin their work seems quickly to be drained out of them.  Every time a new appointment is made, among survivors there is a hope that things may get better.  So far, at any rate, the hopes have been dashed as each fresh face among national safeguarding staff appears inexorably sucked into the quick-sand of institutional indifference and inertia which Gilo has described.   If the Church is ever to recover from the deep wounds of the abuse crisis, it needs to devote considerable resources to escaping the destructive mind-set of treating Gilo and many other victims as enemies of the Church.  They are not.   These survivors do need to be extended the courtesy of being listened to and their offers of help better received.  The Church has a wound which will never heal until it is properly treated.  The treatment for this particular kind of wound requires surgery.  Such surgery will include welcoming the testimony and ideas of the survivor community instead of so often treating them as the enemy.  If this treatment is not applied it will remain a festering sore in the whole Church body for decades to come.

A year ago at General Synod the Church trumpeted an Ombuds scheme in response to survivors’ request for an effective complaints procedure. I sat with others in the public gallery when this announcement was greeted with applause from Synod members. But following that Synod, the NST (National Safeguarding Team) have used the term “persistent and vexatious” to describe any survivors they wish to exclude from this scheme. Ironically, they also expected any survivors would need to be ‘persistent’ as the ombuds they envisaged was to be port of last call and only accessible once every other hoop of possible complaint had been jumped through. Talk about creating vexation!

Think about this for a minute. Without the vexed and persistent pursuit of truth by Phil Johnson across decades – Chichester would not have come to light. Without his persistence it’s possible there would have been no IICSA. Without the vexed and frustrated persistence of many survivors so many of the Church’s failures and cover-ups might never have emerged. Without the persistence of a handful of Smyth survivors, the enormity of that story would never have come to daylight and the dozens (hundreds?) who hid it away would be hiding it still. And without the ongoing persistence of survivors there would be little discernible change in the Church’s response to victims. Persistence has been necessary and is required today and into tomorrow. Without it, the senior layer of the Church of England will easily revert to type – as expressed by the closing statements of survivors’ representatives at the Inquiry. Persistence is needed in the face of continuing inertia and dishonesty.

That this legalistic phrase is used still by the NST and those who manage them suggests the extent to which the structure is led by the interests of the legal team in Church House. It also displays an undercurrent of malevolence towards survivors and shows how unsuited the NST is to any pastoral understanding of this crisis as a whole. It is simply not fit for purpose as currently constituted. It seems clear to many of us that for the NST to stand any chance of salvage, the thing needs to be prised away from control by a shadowy éminence grise, the Secretary General of Synod, and away from the mindset of Church House. Re-abusive harm to survivors coupled with reputational damage to the Church will continue while the NST is allowed to run as an unchecked and unaccountable demesne. Too many survivors have experienced dishonesty from this all-powerful empire. One referred to its culture in terms of ‘enduring cruelty’. I suspect that anyone coming into that culture, however independent, is likely to be assimilated into its self-protecting hive. It needs root and branch surgery.

The lead Bishop and others have lacked the courage to tell Synod the reason why the ombuds has been quietly shelved. A church unable to take ownership of things that need to be acknowledged transparently, especially when a mirage has been presented to Synod, is one that needs to conquer its own moral cowardice. The desire to hide ugly things in a drawer lest they emerge is a sign of a fearful culture still in those running this Church or with responsibility for its various component parts. A Church is not a secular organisation and should be holding itself to a higher standard.

Likewise, the mendacity of EIO (Ecclesiastical Insurance Office) which was finally laid bare in a robust and forensic hearing in the final Anglican hearing at IICSA – was mendacity maintained with the tacit support of William Nye and senior NST management. Both Ian Elliott and myself tried many times to get the NST to address the repeated public falsehoods made by the insurer. They refused. Ian Elliott tried for over a year before he finally gave up. He wrote to the Lead Bishop after his requests were ignored by Church House but received no acknowledgement. I met with the Lead Bishop and Bishop Mullally 18 months ago in a failed attempt to get them to address this too. Despite thorough vindication at the Inquiry there has been no whisper of apology or explanation from anyone, including the Bishop mandated to champion the Elliott Review who seemed content to watch it being devalued by the lies of an insurer. When Counsel to the Inquiry asked three times in a row, “Was your answer sufficiently full and frank?” with increasing emphasis on each word – it was clear to anyone watching the hearing that the weaselry of Ecclesiastical had been fully laid bare in front of a government inquiry. Further evidence has since gone to the Inquiry from another survivor demonstrating further the extent of their slipperyness under oath to the Inquiry. Any differentiation they attempted to make at IICSA between ‘contact’ and ‘pastoral support’ has been found to be meaningless in their own documentation! ^{1 2} Ecclesiastical has a considerable task to recover its ethical heart. They know it. And so do their charitable owner AllChurches Trust, who astonishingly in late July tweeted the word ‘Shameful’ when it was posted by Janet Fife in reference to Ecclesiastical’s unethical litigation strategies!

It’s also clear that the NSSG (National Safeguarding Steering Group) needs to find the moral integrity to address its own dysfunctional structure. It is not appropriate that two bishops who have walked away from disclosures in denial or “no recollection” and who have failed to address this in any meaningful way other than continued denial – sit on any national panel which makes decisions about the response to survivors. It is unethical. And wouldn’t happen in a county council. Several of us have tried repeatedly to address this. It has been blanked.

As I said in the previous essay, a church which cleaves to the disposition of ‘say nothing unless asked’ or ‘blank any question we don’t want to address’ remains an unhealthy culture. This pattern has led to the ongoing existential crisis of the bishops and senior management of the Church. The time for keeping secrets, whether in a Lambeth Palace eliterie or the corridors of a corrupted Church House, should be over. The Church should no longer create any further cognitive dissonance for its employees by expecting them to play along with senior level dishonesty. Bishops should look at the collective mendacity and cowardice in their senior layer, own it, and deal with it properly. And repent.

1https://www.postonline.co.uk/claims/4276536/revealed-leaked-emails-show-ecclesiastical-staff-using-callous-language-over-child-abuse-claims

2https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/26-july/news/uk/ecclesiastical-planned-to-persuade-bishop-to-take-a-less-active-role-in-claimant-s-pastoral-care