In the Church Times, dated the 18th March, there is a photo of the Vicars’ Close at Wells Cathedral. It is perhaps a symbol of a settled community dwelling within a place of exceptional beauty and peace. The story line above the picture, however, tells of another reality. It appears that according to a SCIE report (as yet unpublished) there is fear, anxiety and unhappiness stalking through the surroundings of the incomparable beauty of Wells Cathedral. Many of the paid staff and volunteers are infected with a substantial degree of unhappiness.
Like most of my readers, the information I have on the report from Wells is based on a close reading of the story as reported in the Church Times. What I extract from this account may be in part speculation, but it is also based on the surmise that such apparent tension and pain, as reported in the Close, does not arise unless there is a serious breakdown in relationships. In this case we are given one key word – culture. This culture at the heart of the fractured relationships is variously described as one that creates ‘fear’ and ‘feelings of heaviness’. It is also reportedly linked to a ‘power imbalance’ and ‘misuse of power’. In short, someone with power in the cathedral, identified as the Dean, is exercising it inappropriately and this gives rise to what most would describe as bullying behaviour. The use of the word culture also indicates that the bullying is widespread right across the institution. It is certainly something that seems to affect a considerable proportion of those employed or volunteering at Wells Cathedral.
The next question we have to ask is whether the report tells us the actual nature of the bullying. We have over the years, in this blog, met many ways in which those with power, even in churches, bully others. Bullying may be rooted in misogyny, homophobia, racism or any number of power games that people play. Here the situation of bullying is found in a setting where ‘standards that appear unattainable’ are required of employees. We can speculate about what these unattainable standards might involve. What is suggested from the words used is that the bullying is the kind that is meted out by a perfectionist. A child’s description might use the word fussy. The fact that the Dean’s claimed perfectionism causes considerable distress right across the entire workplace hints at the fact that we are not dealing with something trivial. From the outside we can suggest the possibility that the Dean may have some kind of obsessive disorder. There is no hint in the words used that any of the staff are guilty of improper behaviour, such as theft or immorality. Rather, the lapses they are accused of seem to be in the area of such things as tidiness and cleanliness. If fussiness goes beyond a certain point, it becomes a neurosis and is potentially disruptive to everyone. The words ‘walking on eggshells’ appear in the report and they confirm my impression that we are dealing with broken relationships caused by obsessive behaviour of some kind. I have been trying to imagine any other ways that vergers or other cathedral employees might all fail in this area of ‘standards’. There might possibly be one verger with slovenly attention to detail but it cannot be true of all. A verger ensures that the altar cloth is not spattered with candle wax and the purificators are properly starched. If the Dean is indeed one of those people who is over-zealous and neurotic about everything being kept ordered, tidy and clean, we can see how a thoroughly difficult atmosphere could develop over time. The tone of the SCIE report suggests that the victims of the Dean’s verbal lashings and the toxic environment around him are not being pursued for serious failings. In other words, whatever the trigger points for verbal harassments by the Dean against cathedral staff, the report suggests that these attacks were not proportionate or fair.
What I think that this SCIE report is describing, is a scenario where one party with institutional power is holding another group to account for their alleged failings. The real reason for this kind of disproportionate bullying may be one of many. The bully may be him/herself the sufferer of an underlying personality disorder. There may be other unknown factors yet to become clear; the institution itself may have a history of conflict that goes back a long way in time. One thing is really clear. Wells Cathedral needs to have an external intervention. It sounds from the report as though the situation at the Cathedral has congealed into a state of immovable despair and unhappiness. The state of play will not be solved through more authoritarian intervention from those currently in charge. The environment needs to be thoroughly analysed and understood from all points of view and this needs to be done from the outside. There are people around who can do this kind of work but there has to be an initial agreement to submit to, or at least be open to accept this outside advice. The people with power, here the Dean, the Chapter and the administrator, will be required to listen and act on the advice of skilled and trained mediators.
The photo of the beautiful Vicars’ Close in Wells beneath the article brings out another aspect of this unhappy story. One of the problems which causes much discontent among ordinary parish clergy at present is the way that they are required to live in tied accommodation. This weakens their negotiating stance if ever they have a dispute with their Bishop. The SCIE inspectors picked up this issue in the Wells situation. Many of the cathedral’s employees are required to live in the cathedral accommodation provided. Living in Vicars’ Close brings them close to their place of work and also protects them from the other expensive property options prevalent in a place like Wells. As with clergy, living in tied accommodation carries with it an element of uncertainty, particularly if there is ever a power confrontation with an employer. If an employee is bullied, then there is little possibility of the issue being dealt with fully, as the individual concerned is too scared of losing a home and a livelihood all at once. Tied housing in other words is a mixed blessing when the power dynamics of the employing institution are unhealthy or autocratic.
This piece has been written without knowledge of the full facts. I make no apology for my speculations as they do form a rational assessment and interpretation of the limited information that is given in the CT article. The full SCIE report has not so far been published, so the material we have is incomplete. The 70 employees and 400 volunteers who are affected by the state of tension and unhappiness, because of the bullying behaviour, are nowhere accused of improper or immoral behaviour. If there is no actual wrongdoing apart from not meeting whatever is meant by ‘unattainable standards’, then we are left to conclude that this situation is ripe for successful professional mediation. A mediator should be able to find out what is at the heart of the Dean’s somewhat overbearing behaviour towards the staff. Is his perfectionism reasonable, or should it be tempered to fit in with normally fallible human beings? These are all questions that a good mediator could be asked to tackle with the expectation that harmony, peace and a spirit of cooperation can be restored to Wells Cathedral.
My final comments link to the issue of power in cathedrals. Over the years of writing this blog, I have reflected on dysfunction at various cathedral establishments in Britain. Now that many visitations and reports about cathedrals are published online, we, the onlookers, are given much material to reflect on and interpret. When the Bishop of Exeter wrote his visitation on Exeter Cathedral, I wrote my interpretation on what I thought was really going on. I was pleased to be told that my observations were close to the actual reality by someone close to the action. The power in institutions, whether secular or religious, seems to operate in predictable ways wherever you look. Often, the only people who cannot see the blindingly obvious features of power dynamics are the people who form the cast list of the actors in a power drama. Every institution is faced with failures caused by human frailty. Human nature will often have a tendency to seek advantage and power when there is opportunity to do so. The one institution that should be more resistant to power games of this kind is the Church. We follow a master who said, ‘those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them … but it shall not be so among you’. Somehow this passage, which has Jesus commending to us the role of servant or slave, needs to be heard today as never before. The power exercised by those senior in church circles needs to have such humility built into it. Christians should be at the top of the list of those who recognise and reject tyranny and power abuse wherever it is found.
A predecessor of the current Dean: Christopher Woodforde was Dean of Wells from 1959 to 1962 when he died at the age of 54 on 12 August. Lord David Cecil, in his memoirs, refers to Christopher Woodforde as sardonic, not altogether a popular figure, having an extremely sharp tongue, referring to Woodforde’s time as chaplain of New College Oxford.
There is a particular problem in cathedrals which is made worse by a number of factors including the sheer amount of work to be done in a church which has twice-daily worship and many “special events”, the closed nature of the communities, the fact that cathedral congregations can attract difficult personalities who have left parish churches, and the fact that they are regarded as centres of excellence. Staff can even find themselves in competition with their own past successes. The removal of freehold and new structural changes mean that this situation is getting far worse. The fact that there are fewer jobs available means that unhappy clergy are being left in miserable situations, and it has been made much worse by the new cathedrals measure which gives far too much power to any dean. Far greater attention needs to be paid to training in team-building and group dynamics, and there needs to be somewhere besides the bishop that unhappy canons and cathedral workers can go when they are feeling persecuted.
All of that is sadly true. I suspect that, in some cases at least, the pandemic has been an aggravating factor. Reduced availability of staff and volunteers; government regulations constantly changing with little notice; the sudden need for technical wizardry in streaming services; the ongoing uncertainty: combined with cathedrals’ need for worship to minutely planned some weeks ahead – it’s enough to send a perfectionist into a tailspin. Someone with an ingrained need for control will probably take that out on staff and volunteers, to their cost.
We will need to see what the SCIE report says. A number of deans are martinets: even the sainted George Bell was wont to examine the underside of carpets in Canterbury cathedral to see if they had been dusted properly. Many deans are also frustrated bishops: they will have wanted to exercise their perceived talents on a wider stage than is afforded them by a mere cathedral; this, then, may explain why so many of them are so anxious to press their imprint upon the cathedral and/or close for the benefit of posterity, or to maintain rigorously high standards.
Then there is a vast weight of snobbery attached to cathedrals and which can sometimes afflict capitular clergy.
The reforms effected in 1999 by the Howe report were supposed to have dispensed with many of these problems. The chapter at Wells has five clergy and three laypersons, whom I would have thought could act as a break upon any clerical issues.
Elspeth Howe had to tread a fine line: to increase clerical accountability without compromising clerical supremacy. However, the litany of problems which have arisen at Exeter, Peterborough, York, Guildford, Lincoln, etc. (as well as Oxford and Llandaff, which are outwith the Measures) suggests that there is something intrinsically flawed with the present finance and management of cathedrals.
I have two main issues with cathedrals: (i) they are cossetted financially relative to parish churches (this is a legacy of their being asset stripped by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners after 1840, but parish churches were asset stripped in 1976, so why the differential treatment?); and (ii) they have reserves of clerical manpower which have not been reduced in proportion to the reduction in parochial provision.
Lady Howe did not perhaps go far enough: what is now needed is to bring cathedrals under professional lay management, and to reduce clerical control to liturgy only. That, in turn, would release capitular clergy for parochial ministry. How would that work?
The chapter of a cathedral of the old foundation like Wells has five clerical members (old foundations had a dean, sub-dean, precentor, chancellor and treasurer, but Wells is now slightly different) and a number of prebendaries. I would put the cathedral under a lay council with only one clerical representative: the dean. The dean would be the only permanently resident cleric. The other four capitular clergy would hold neighbouring benefices (why shouldn’t one of them be incumbent of St Cuthbert’s, akin to the arrangement in place at St John’s Peterborough?), and would take turns in ‘residence’.
Two houses would be available for the clergy: the deanery (I appreciate the old deanery has recently been sold) and a hostel for clergy in residence. Each period of residence would be short (a week, say), and at Wells the other four capitular clergy could share much of their turns with prebendaries from around the diocese (Wells used to have 50 prebends!).
I agree with much of this.
However, I don’t think cathedral clergy holding neighbouring benefices would work, for several reasons.
First, most benefices nowadays are already seriously understaffed – where would a vicar find time to spend one week a month in residence at the cathedral? What would happen to the parish’s Sunday and midweek services, funerals, pastoral visiting, etc, while they were away? Would any vicarage family be expected to shift lock, stock, and barrel (and any pets) to the cathedral hostel for one week a month, or would they be separated from the clergy member?
Secondly, cathedrals generally have a multiplicity of services for which clergy, choir, choirmaster, organist, sidespeople, vergers, PA/tech personnel need to be coordinated. This is specialist work and requires a consistent approach. There needs to be a precentor on site for at least part of every week to oversee it.
Thirdly, most cathedrals have their own congregations and some cathedrals have parishes. Congregation and parish need looking after, as do Sunday school, Bible study groups, youth activities and so on. Some of this work can be done by volunteers, but again volunteers need consistency in who they report to. A situation where they answer to a different canon every week is going to be ineffective and stressful.
Fourthly, cathedrals have a ministry to the whole city and diocese in which they are situated, as well as to tourists and other visitors. The Dean might well take this as his or her own brief, but it will involve attendance at a number of events and meetings away from the cathedral, as well as hosting them at the cathedral.
There have been problems at cathedrals since Trollope’s time – in fact, as far back as ‘St’ Wilfrid – and I don’t think there’s any easy answer.
Many thanks, and customarily excellent food for thought. To run through your list:
#1 I was thinking of the sub-dean, precentor, archdeacon and pastor PLUS all the prebendaries taking turns. Therefore, it might be a couple of separate weeks a year: a busman’s holiday, therefore. I am not certain that this would be excessively disruptive to family life, although I might be wrong.
#2 I agree that there needs to be a priest with some degree on musical skill on hand. Perhaps that should be the dean. However, I have attended services at some cathedrals where the V&R was sung by one of the lay clerks, leaving any clergy present just to read the lessons and prayers.
# 3 Some cathedrals used to have parishes which have vanished: Holy Trinity Ely (which used the nave, and then the Lady Chapel), St Peter Subdeanery Chichester (which also used the nave before the construction of a separate church across the road, now a bar). However, I appreciate that you are referring to the ‘new’ parish church cathedrals, but in my view most of them ought to be abolished (or reduced to pro-cathedral status) as part of a wider rationalisation of dioceses. The congregation would get a measure of consistency because the dean would always be there. There will be many churches with larger congregations than most cathedrals who will only have one priest providing consistent pastoral provision.
#4 Many of the civic/corporate meetings to which you refer could be handled by lay officials.
The general point I am making is that too often cathedrals are disassociated/remote from their own dioceses, whereas they ought to be much more involved with them. Having prebendaries/honorary canons take turns brings the diocese into the cathedral more than before, and having the senior clergy hold parochial cures also takes the cathedral out into the diocese.
The 1999 Measure broke the dam. If cathedrals are now largely run by laity, why not take it to its logical conclusion and have laity run them tout court (absent liturgy)? Some capitular clergy are funded by the Commissioners, and if they held parochial cures, it would lessen the burden on DBFs and parish share. It sticks in the craw to know that parochial provision is being (and has been) savaged, whilst cathedral provision appears to remain inviolate, and the numbers of capitular clergy are not far off the totals stipulated under the 1840 Act, or even exceed the 1840 numbers, given the new cathedrals established since then.
What I am suggesting is that the ‘outward and visible’ is maintained to a significant extent, but that more is done to reduce the ‘them and us’ differences between cathedrals and parish churches. I suspect that some of the issues that have arisen at cathedrals are due to certain capitular clergy having a certain sense of position, or of entitlement. Given that, in my experience, capitular clergy are not always the best clergy, that ‘difference’ has to stop.
I had referred to Elspeth Howe, but by some uncanny happenstance, her passing has just been announced: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2022/03/23/lady-howe-idlicote-progressive-campaigner-dubbed-powerful-woman/
Idlicote, incidentally, is a tiny and wholly unspoilt parish in south Warwickshire. It not only boasted the Howes (after their move from Bletchingley after Geoffrey Howe stood down from East Surrey for the 1992 election), but also the Owens (Sir John Owen was a puisne justice in the QBD and dean of the Arches). I have wondered to what extent Lady Howe and Sir John exchanged notes during the Howe Commission and the preparation of the 1999 Measure.
These painful eruptions on the public face of the Church of England remind me of an attack of shingles. The dis-ease cannot be cured by just considering it a skin condition. It is caused by a virus lurking deep in the tissues as everyone knows. It’s an underlying and unwelcome resident.
You can move people around, tweak the odd job description, blame the usual suspects, but the patient is in poor condition. I also agree with much that has been said above. It does seem to me that the Wells establishment system, as has been described, is being maintained (with difficulty) just because it’s there. Surely this is an anachronism? And a costly one, particularly with a very tetchy chief. I wonder what the best treatment would be.
“There have been problems at cathedrals since Trollope’s time” – both Anthony and Trollope!
I meant Joanna!!!
I did think the Cathedrals measure cut the Dean’s power, partly by changing the phrase “Dean and chapter” to “Chapter”. And Cathedral clergy do work in between Sundays! Three services a day and four on Sunday. Plus all the extras, plus pastoral care and visiting. One Dean and two canons in most. And as Janet says, the time taken in organisation.
Far from cutting the Dean’s powers, the Cathedrals Measure 2021 greatly extended them with a specific executive role distinguishable from his/ her former status of ‘first among equals’ in the Chapter – of which he/ she continues to be the chief member.
Sorry about the length of this, but it is useful to know the details. These are the chief specific powers assigned to the Dean under the Cathedrals Measure 2021:
12 The Dean
(1) The dean of a cathedral continues to be its principal dignitary, next after the bishop.
(2) The dean, in that capacity, must govern and direct on behalf of the Chapter the life and work of the cathedral; and in performing that duty the dean must in particular—
(a) ensure that Divine Service is duly performed in the cathedral;
(b) ensure that the constitution and statutes are faithfully observed;
(c) oversee the work undertaken by the clergy and staff of the cathedral in relation to the cathedral;
(d) maintain good order and proper reverence in the cathedral;
(e) secure the pastoral care of all members of the cathedral community;
(f) provide leadership on matters relating to the safeguarding of any children or vulnerable adults who work, volunteer or worship in the cathedral or who visit the cathedral (with “child” and “vulnerable adult” each having the meaning given in section 39(1));
(g) take all decisions necessary to deal with an emergency affecting the cathedral, pending consideration of the matter by the Chapter.
(3) None of the following may be done without the consent of the dean—
(a) an alteration of the ordering of services in the cathedral;
(b) the settlement of the Chapter’s budget;
(c) the implementation of a decision taken by the Chapter in the dean’s absence.
As a post script comment, and a purely hypothetical one, it will be seen that provisions 2 (f) and (g) would apply to the situation which confronted Martyn Percy when the initial safeguarding issue arose at Christ Church, Oxford. The Cathedrals Measure 2021 expressly does not apply to Christ Church.
An obsession with the minutiae of ritual and cleanliness procedures is facilitated by a vast historical physical infrastructure of many exquisite (according to taste) cathedrals and thousands of ancient church buildings. I’ve been reflecting on this and wondering about other denominations.
Do the Baptists have an equivalent? Or what about the international mega church Hillsong, in its current turmoil? Is there an equivalent edifice in these other Churches seemingly without historical physical infrastructure? I’m not really interested in buildings per se, because I don’t believe the church was ever meant to be about this.
With or without archaic assets, most Churches end up with embedded rituals especially around hierarchy and the almost god-like leaders who are served with obsessive zeal despite considerable evidence of their humanity. Perhaps these Other Churches aren’t too different from the troubles at Cathedral Close.
I have a sense that clergy, including myself, when tired, disillusioned, or ill at ease tend towards one, maybe two of the following roles.
1) The curator – where we find solace in keeping the tradition (whichever one) in good order
2) The teacher where we take refuge in promoting what we know (and others need to know) in an authoritarian take-no-questions way
3) The tour-guide whose task is to keep the customer happy
4) the social-worker / doctor whose task is to make things better, to solve the problems others bring, whether the individual or the group.
The first two take refuge in a claimed authority, the latter two find meaning in their success or not in either keeping people happy or solving their problems.
The first two clearly abuse power to impose a way of doing things that they can cope with; the fourth probably abuses power in order to feel good, while the third appears less abusive but is probably as exhausting or more so than the fourth.
The first two can defend a drop in numbers by claiming a rightness in what they do, the latter two find a drop in numbers to be their own failing so try even harder, either to produce more attractive entertainment to bring (back) the punters, or to seek ever new groups they can feel good about helping.
All four have good qualities if in proportion. Worship should be “done” well, litourgia is the work of the people, we are called to teach and preach the gospel, there should be a joy in church and caring for others well is at the heart of pastoring. Evangelicals probably are more likely to suffer from the second, and maybe traditionalists and cathedral leaders from the first.
There may be a fifth rarer group, possibly the innovator or radical, motivated as a disrupter, measuring success in the breaking of new ground, regardless of whatever, whoever else is broken in the process.
Others will probably offer a better model, but I see myself in some of these and sense some colleagues are more driven by others. They become more apparent when we face tiredness or opposition
Thanks for this Peter and I found this model useful. I had the dubious advantage of experiencing the 5th category, the disruptor. He had a team remove all the chairs while the congregation were standing singing so that we weren’t able to remain in our familiar and relatively safe/comfortable spots. One chair was left in place for an elderly friend who couldn’t stand in the worship. The overall experience was probably forgotten quickly by many, but not her, nor those suffering from extreme anxiety. This was typical of “radical” ideas he had. Many left never to return, some never to return to church at all.
I guess behind it all is amnesia for the two great commandments: no particular evidence of time spent with God, and an indifference to His people. I think you’re right about these traits occurring when tired or under opposition. It seems to me too, that people going into the ministry imagine it to be a lot easier than it is. In larger churches some don’t realise that the success they assume they are part of belongs to the gifts, ability and humanity of others, and when exposed by themselves in ineffective leadership, had previously been riding on those very coattails, unwittingly. That must be unnerving although requires plenty of self awareness to recognise. Unsurprisingly this is usually lacking too.