When I was at school studying Greek at A level, I was required to read some of the literature collectively known as Greek tragedy.  While our sixth form class was not expected to read all of the plays in our two years of study, we were confronted with enough of the genre to be exposed to a new range of human emotions.  The plays of Euripides and Sophocles were initiating us into things like betrayal, despair, utter abandonment and suicide.  I remember the moment when the form master presented us with a new word, catharsis.  No one had ever heard of it, but he explained to us that the word summed up all that was being experienced by watching one of the incredibly sombre plays by one of the master tragedians.  Catharsis was a kind of cleansing the emotions.  You felt strong emotion in the process of an identification with the main characters of the play.  At the same time there was a strong sense of pity for their fate. There were no happy endings on offer. In other words, going to the theatre was meant to be a kind of emotional work-out for every member of the audience.  Although the audience emerged from the play feeling somewhat exhausted from the emotional battering, at least there was no lasting harm because it was, after all, a play. The emotional battering that exhausts survivors, victims and to a lesser extent their supporters, is, alas, no fiction. The depths of loss, tragedy and despair is a daily reality that inserts itself into their daily lives.

One saying which I picked up from those days in the classical sixth was the tag ‘those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad’.  There is in the saying an uncomfortable link with the tragedy of suicide and what leads people to make such a dreadful decision.   Suicide is not a comfortable subject to speak or write about and this post is only tangentially about taking one’s own life.  What I am concerned with here are the situations of despair and emptiness that occur in people’s lives and are sometimes the precursor to a consideration of suicide. The thought comes to an individual that the act of removing oneself from this life is somehow a solution to all their problems.  Often these are to do with the emotions which overwhelm them, feelings of shame, guilt and despair. 

Two things have brought me to this reflection about despair and the way that some people have to endure incredibly bleak experiences in life, often through no fault of their own.   The first thing that has happened is that I have been looking up my reading of seven years ago on shunning and ostracism.  Then there are recent events in Lincoln and Oxford of shunning practice. Shunning or ostracism is a very powerful tool of control by authoritarian or cultic groups.  Once the group has successfully incorporated a new member and given them a firm sense of belonging in the group, any threat to remove the benefits of that belonging at a stroke is a strong deterrent factor to prevent any rocking of the boat.  Ostracism is the unspoken threat that applies to everyone.  When applied, it is saying to someone that you do not belong here any longer.  It also goes further than that, in telling the would-be leaver that they no longer even exist.  It is as though the place they had occupied has been expunged from existence and memory.  This message is a brutal one to hear, especially if the group has formed the sum total of the individual’s social and religious life.  The more enmeshed an individual is in a group, the greater the impact of being excluded.  It is not difficult to see that this kind of cruel exclusion is a prelude to a sense of darkness and even despair.

Many Christians base a large part of their social life on the things they do in and around church.  Their best friendships are linked with the church community and spiritually and socially their sense of self-worth is bound up with what happens with their local Christian membership.   Clergy are not immune from these kinds of bonds of spiritual and social depth.  A clergyman may have devoted his entire life to the congregation and any sudden rift from that congregation will have potentially devastating results.  Anyone who, in a church context, wishes to exercise power for whatever reason, knows how dedicated members are vulnerable to the threat of having all their experience of self-esteem removed at a stroke.  The shunner or the one who has the power to push an individual into the outer darkness of spiritual and social isolation, has real effective power over the life and well-being of another.  

In the Church of England, shunning and ostracism are practised but, for the most part, we do not see them administered by individuals.  Shunning is normally an institutional activity when it occurs.  The Church of England has one particular legal structure with the power to shun and exclude individuals.  We call them core-groups.  Not every core group will exercise its power to shun or suspend members of the Church, but they have this power to do so as part of the CDM process.  Sometimes we see the cruelty of this action towards its victims when shunning is employed with what feels like ruthless efficiency.   The Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral has just been exonerated after 789 days suspension.  He has been declared not guilty of the offence and the charges against him have been dropped by Church and state.  Nothing has been said about the terrible state of purgatory he and his wife have endured.  All the social and spiritual bonds with people in Lincoln had been ripped apart for two long years.  Suicide was one option considered by Overend and his wife and the mental scars will live with them for ever.  Dean Percy has also been driven to a mental breakdown through the treatment he has suffered.  Treatment of this kind can never be shown to serve the cause of justice.

Ostracism or shunning is a form of punishment that is cruel, inhuman and can be designated as a form of psychological torture.  To consider shunning as a necessary or reasonable part of any disciplinary process, especially when it is allowed to drag out for months and years, is perverse.  The Church of England has published its own list of the extensive range of behaviours that we can call abuse.  https://www.churchofengland.org/media/11803 Under psychological abuse the church document mentions a whole series of behaviours, some of  which the Overends and the Percys would recognise as having been used against them by their persecutors as part of a shunning process    Blaming • Controlling • Pressurising and coercion • Intimidation and causing fear • Ignoring the person • Not giving the person a chance to express their views • Lack of love or affection • Making someone feel worthless • Lack of privacy or choice • Causing/forcing isolation / withdrawal from family/friends and support networks.  The CDM process is supposed to offer support to an accused individual but, in practice, the Church closes down totally in the face of any accusations against an individual.  Even if they are guilty of some misdemeanour, does it serve any therapeutic purpose or the cause of justice to put an individual in such a terrible place?  The practisers of shunning probably give very little thought as to whether therapeutic purposes are ever served through this activity.  All they are interested in is to shut out the dissident, the awkward voice so that the power of leaders could be preserved in peace.  But, the forceful sundering of an individual from his/her place of belonging is something that is unimaginably cruel.   Not to recognise just how devastatingly cruel shunning behaviour is, betrays a complete absence of imagination.

In one part of its operations, the Church is helping its members to become more aware of abuse as a way, presumably, of outlawing such behaviour.  At the same time the Church in other parts of its operations is doing the complete opposite.  Its disciplinary processes are using precisely the same abuse techniques against individual members even before they have been found guilty of any offence. Surely I am not the only person to notice the absurdity of the situation?  The Church condemns abuse of all kinds, but it preserves the right, when it suits, to abuse its own members, using some of the same psychological tools.  At least three of these practices are linked to shunning.   Whatever is the precise end in sight for the church institution, the Overends, the Percys and others have all experienced the cruel effects of shunning.  I mention three elements of shunning that are identified by the Church as constituting abuse.  Making someone feel worthless – lack of love or affection – Causing/forcing isolation/withdrawal from family/friends and support networks.  It is about time that Church is called out for using these same techniques of cruel abuse against its members, the ones it wishes to oppose.  It is what we see currently in Oxford and recently in Lincoln.  Justice has a place in every institution and there will always be a need to hold people to account.  Can it, however, ever be right to use shunning/abuse on individuals?    I dare say that the Overends and the Percys would have plenty to say on the topic of a chronic failure of the Church’s justice system.  The time for reform is now – not five years down the line when more lives will have been destroyed in the name of a justice being administered by a group of managerial unimaginative Church functionaries.