by Rosie Harper
This is a short reflection about power in the Church from Rosie Harper, a former member of General Synod and Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham.
On Tuesday afternoon I attended the 368th Festival Service of the Clergy Support Trust. It took place at St Paul’s and in a weird way it was done in a mini-me style of the coronation. There was a past PM, the Lord Mayor who processed ‘in State’ whatever that means. It seemed to involve a couple of folk in tights who had to carry very heavy stuff ahead of him. Then there were Sheriffs and Bishops and Aldermen and so on. There were three cathedral choirs and lots of fancy dress. Of course it was rather fabulous. The music was beautiful and they had thought hard about being inclusive.
On the front row in contrast to all the gold and entitled flummery were a handful of ‘ordinary’ people who had been the beneficiaries of the Support Trust’s generosity. Tick!
I was squeezed, rather too literally, between two charming gentlemen who seemed to have strips of dead bear hanging for their shoulders. Probably something to do with Livery Companies.
The man on my left was Mr Geoffrey Tattersall KC known to me as an experienced and kind chair of General Synod debates Naturally he asked me why I wasn’t doing Synod anymore and I gave my usual reply. I no longer believe in it. I felt played and manipulated by the puppeteers behind the scenes. Ah well, he said, it is what it is.
So despite the wholly good and generous intentions of the Trust the service simply dripped entitlement and hierarchy. It dripped power. It mirrored the service last week at Westminster Abbey and was a very vivid display the Established Church. Boy is it established! The nearer to the front you were the more important you could feel. Someone forgot to read the gospels. So I was feeling distinctly queasy as I made my way home. I was trying to join up the dots. For some reason it seemed that Mike Pilavachi was part of the pattern.
So here’s my question. Is all religion inherently abusive? I have yet to meet organised religion that does not use and abuse power, and the worst version is power which comes via a hotline direct from God. This tends to be embedded in a theology rooted in a scary model of God. A God who is so angry that he takes his (righteous, of course) anger out on his own innocent son. If your theology is abusive your structures will be too. And if your structures are abusive they will attract abusers. We don’t know yet how the Pilavachi story will play out, but Ian Paul shouting at everyone to shut up, and hence fanning the flames, does not bode well.
I wonder why, as a religion, a sect, a denomination begins to organise itself as a result of growth, it always creates power structures? There are other more equal and less controlling ways of being community. But power is seductive and pretends to be a servant for the greater good. The temptations of Christ in the desert nail it. Trade your integrity for power is the siren call. Jesus saw right through it, but organised religion falls for it hook, line and sinker.
I know, I really do, that there is love and kindness and generosity and life changing support that flows from people of faith and from faith communities. Goodness is there and it is abundant. I am scared though that when I see an institution like the CofE or the Catholic church completely unable to reform, to recognise abusive leaders, to accept any independent scrutiny, to name spiritual abuse and most of all to treat survivors with the respect and value and reparation that they deserve. Is it in the end it’s because it can’t be done? The question is horrible. What if religion is abusive -full stop.
NB system claimed there was an error so am resending
Rosie,
Many thanks for your important and thought-provoking article.
I don’t claim to address the breadth of the points you make, but C of E Safeguarding is clearly an important ‘test case’ of your wider concerns.
My personal view has always been that there is a direct continuum between the likes of Peter Ball, Chris Brain/NOS, John Smyth, David Fletcher, Iain Broomfield, Jonathan Fletcher, Mike Pilavachi etc (and that is just the tip of the iceberg in the public domain) in that each time the Church leadership tolerates/overlooks/enables/encourages just one of these, it encourages/enables the next one and all that follow.
The role and involvement of so many senior bishops in the TD/MI case should worry GS/AC witless. Instead these bodies look on with benign disinterest and do nothing effective.
In fact they actually make things worse by actively proposing Meg Munn’s conflict of interest and disabling the ISB.
However despite being ignored (and lied to) by the C of E leadership, as a Whistleblower and survivor of Church-related abuse, for over 6 years, I have not yet given up.
Make no mistake the treatment of survivors and whistleblowers by the NST and Church leadership is actively worse in 2023 than at a stage since 2015, and probably since 1992.
Firstly others have suffered far worse, for much much longer. Regardless of my own case, I believe I would be letting them down (which is frankly much more important) if I gave up now.
And amidst all the gloom, there are flashes of light,
Around 2015? when IICSA was getting underway I thought the C of E face two principal safeguarding challenges:
1. (The really hard one) persuading/cajoling/encouraging 30k? Churchwardens (many of whom might be retired) and numerous others to go on safeguarding training, and then to take that trading seriously and to live it out.
2, (surely the really easy one) The leadership, the episcopate, GS, the AC to provide leadership drive direction and genuine repentance and change on safeguarding.
How wrong I was. The ‘troops’ have often been magnificent (using trading materials no doubt produced centrally to give credit where it is due), whereas 95% of the problems have been with the ‘leadership’.
Ironically I was talking to a full time safeguarding professional yesterday who also helps the Church at a ‘local level’. She is full of praise for the Church’s introductory safeguarding material and for courses she is aware of, but in despair over the behaviour of the Church’s national leadership on safeguarding.
Never has ‘lions led by donkeys’ been more apt.
TBC
Cont’d
The great thing about the current Church leadership is that we/they/it will all be scattered like grass soon enough (in a historic sense).
So the real question is how will the next generation of Church leaders view Safeguarding? And this is where I remain (naively?) optimistic, because, in contrast:
I believer they ‘get it’,
I believer they are not ‘in hock to the past’
I believe they understand that the hero-worship of individual leaders is not just deeply unbiblical, it’s actively dangerous (not least to those individual leaders and their families).
But then what do I know, I was so wrong in 2015.
And I really fear the current trend where so many ordinands are not continuing with their ministry.
However despite my long term optimism, none of this is of much comfort to the thousands who suffer today.
We grieve for the failings of our Church over the last 40+ years.
We grieve for Neil Todd and for all who have been driven to attempt suicide by the Church’s Safeguarding failings over generations.
We grieve for all those who have been abused by false teaching and false teachers.
And we grieve that the Church we love has been, and is today, so complicit with so much false teaching and so many false teachers, that it has not just harboured them but frequently glorified them.
We pray for all those who have had the courage to come forward and perhaps even more for those that, for absolutely understandable reasons, have not.
Purely personally I hope that the Makin review will reveal the practices and the people that have been hiding in plain sight for more than 40 years and which the Church has been too frightened/intimidated/polite to confront.
Abuse will be with us always.
How the Church responds to abuse CAN be changed (if 20 AC members and 500 GS members get off their backsides and actually collectively DID something).
In Feb 2018 they all had ‘we asked for bread and you gave us stones’ and did nothing.
How long O Lord can these people continue to walk by on the other side?
Thank you both, Rosie and ‘Adrian’, for your trenchant observations.
You are spot on, ‘Adrian’, about the leadership problem in the Church, when it _should_ be a matter of following the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. I would add to your list the ‘ecclesiocrats’, particularly those in Church House Westminster and its bodies, but also in dioceses. They are the ones who withhold information (on safeguarding budgets, for example), control recruitment, run reputational management operations, instruct lawyers and consultants, draw up agendas, terms of reference and reports, manipulate General Synod and carry out much of the institutional re-abuse. To whom are the ecclesiocrats accountable?
While the introductory safeguarding training material is well produced, overall, training consists of just two basic elements:
(1) This is what abuse consists of and its consequences, and what to look out for; and
(2) Report any concerns to the relevant Church authority (usually the Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor) and let them ‘take care of’ the ‘problem’. And you’ve explained how the authorities then go about the drawn-out process of avoiding investigation and holding anyone to account while re-traumatising the survivor, apparently aiming to prevent any kind of liability.
Safeguarding training has grown into a sizeable industry, with clergy (and others) required to undergo training over and over again, with an emphasis on policies and procedures that have no real value for any of those affected by abuse. Most of this information could be made available online to be consulted when necessary.
Prevention of abuse? This depends not upon controls, threats and procedures, but on understanding why abuse takes place and how to respond to potentially abusive situations _before_ the abuse takes place. Some of this can be very simple. For example, abuse can be prevented by spotting those vulnerable to abuse (say the lonely, elderly parishioner) and having cups of tea with them. Nothing like kindness and friendship for dispelling vulnerability. And the attention of clued-in archdeacons can provide both support and inhibitions to those at risk of abusing others.
An inordinate amount of time and money is devoted to safeguarding training. What does this cost? What, nobody knows?
Apparently around 18 million people watched the main event. Which means around 50 million in the U.K. didn’t. My maths may be a little shaky. Of course ceremony is a valuable export and I wouldn’t begrudge the expenditure for at least that reason.
For me the show was too high definition. I would have preferred grainy black and white from a distance. In contrast tv viewers could see everything, warts and all, apart from the screened-off anointing which was the only mystery left.
Such clarity made it hard to forget the misdeeds of senior clergy present and their predecessors or others they represent. I felt better once we were outside. The incredible military uniforms and precision spoke of actual substance in service of our nation, because we know they actually do serve. They do so with great discipline which is how they turn out so well. Anyone who serves, however lowly, gets a tick in my book, irrespective of their finery or lack of it.
Some are drawn to grand garments and headgear. I could take pride in not really being one of them, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. All genres have regalia and ritual. Smoke machines take the place of incense. Doc Martens become de rigeur. The spontaneous songs are pre-planned on the agenda. Raising hands replaces raising bibles or candelabra. There is value in uniforms of course.
All communities have hierarchy. Ancient ones more so. A hundred sheep need a shepherd, true. Whether you really need to aggregate hundreds of shepherds into various grades and ranks of importance with funny hats for the top 2 or 42, I’m not really sure. If the elite were giving valuable supervision and training insights to their junior charges there may be some value in the structure. But in other walks of life such seniority and related rewards comes with accountability, such that when they fail they are fired. Only when this doesn’t occur does corruption truly flourish.
It would be wrong to equate fine robes with disgrace, but an understandable and perhaps forgivable short cut to the many who have been badly let down. Certainly, for me at least, a snazzy outfit means nothing if the person has no substance. It might take a lot of years of demonstrating such things. Perhaps not quite 70 years, for I doubt I have that much left anyway. Generally most of us are prepared to give the benefit of the doubt long before this. It is our propensity as sheep to go along with what our very very reverend and arch reverend shepherds do that’s really behind the problems of our religion. Perhaps it’s intrinsic to sheep. But it it is a rare shepherd who is prepared to admit their role in compounding the elevation rather than refusing it.
I – ambivalent about monarchy as I am – did not watch the coronation, although I saw a couple of clips. It could never equal 1902, 1911, 1937 or 1953 (when much higher standards were expected on the part of the then archbishops and earls marshal). However, the whole thing seemed massively out of kilter with the present state of the nation, and the various concessions to contemporary culture did not have the effect of making it more ‘relevant’ so much as more tawdry. If you are going to have a coronation, then do it ‘properly’ or not at all.
A coronation is a very blatant display of class power. The nonsense about ‘allegiance’ reflects the fact that it developed in order to sacralise the feudal act of homage. The king, God’s temporal vicar on earth, pays homage to his Maker; the bishops and nobles pay homage in exchange for the validation of their estates. This was the essence of the feudal system: the king owns everything, and his tenants in chief (the bishops and barons were tenants in chief) would receive title in exchange for homage and service. Likewise, via subinfeudation, lower orders would have to pay homage and provide service in order to validate the title to their land. That, in short, is what the coronation is all about: sacralised monarchy to provide legitimacy as part of a contractual exchange of land in consideration for promises to serve and allegiance.
Religion, likewise, is an expression of power. Constantine’s conversion transformed Christianity into an agent of civil power, but also the class power of the state and its senatorial and equestrian agents. The lavish grants of land made to the Church bound it to those class structures, and this persisted even after recurrent acts of disendowment. The Church became inured to the notion that it was the adjunct to class power, even after it lost many of its assets. Indeed, the reproaches given by the Church to those in power have been convenient to the latter, as they have encouraged the powerful to make concessions (often token concessions) to the middle class and poor in order to forestall revolution. The widespread adoption by clerics of ‘guild socialism’ and ‘Christian socialism’ in the second half of the 19th century (or the programme of Leo XIII) was all about increasing collaboration between classes in order to preserve the hierarchical class structures in which the Church was so deeply embedded. The great enemy of the Church has not often been the lower classes as the radical middle classes (the leading Bolsheviks often emanated from the middle class or downwardly mobile gentry); thus the Church has made common cause with upper and lower classes in order to frustrate the secularist objectives of middle class radicals (except in those places where the middle class functioned as a subservient emanation of the upper class).
Therefore, the ‘abuse’ which Ms Harper identifies is not a design flaw but an inherent feature of the Christian religion.
The short answer to this is “no”. The slightly longer answer is to observe the inherent fallacy. It is claimed that some thing X can be interpreted as some other thing Y at some point in time T. The deductions are then made that X is indeed that other thing Y; that it is nothing other than Y; that the identity of X and Y is true at all previous and subsequent times; and that the identity of X and Y was consciously designed and intended. All four deductions are illegitimate in general.
I’ve been banging on about the caste system’s being the church’s huge abiding sin for many years. Any organisation which has a caste system is inherently abusive. And that includes the church. And, of course, it shouldn’t be organised into strata at all!
To the dictators in empires of codependency in religions and other walks, God is a useful fiction with replete logical implications too often airbrushed out (Karel Lambert and Alexius Meinong cited logical aspects). This world is the sort of place where the innocent are made – by the guilty – to suffer injustice – literally carrying their sins. (Actual goats in customs thousands of years before any Hebrews, may be succoured by Nature, develop their instincts, etc.) Not only did Jesus inbreathe, but at Ascension He sent Holy Spirit to bestow (unvetoed) and this gives us our springboard to intercede for good providence for all in this contingent universe.
As for fashionably wielded “worm theology”, we who perhaps mostly “had a thing going” with God since our infancy need to wear the “sinner’s prayer” cap lightly. We are now seeing industrialised industrialisation in religion (Roland Barthes traced a simpler version to the counter reformation); manufactured sensation and induced mannerisms. The hierarchy need to slow down!
As to argumentative theology: in his 1973 book Analogy, Humphrey Palmer having found literalism, nonsensicalism, fideism, fundamentalism and mysticalism not up to the task demanded of them, proposes nondescriptivism which (in the same way as according to Paul L Holmer, Kierkegaard did) discerns intention as separate from explaining-by-describing; allowing the meanings of Scripture to come looking for us without nerve-frazzling. Am including blog readers in the strings of Glory Be’s I send up.
Following the publication of the Devamanikkam Review and Archbishop Sentamu’s statement refusing to accept the criticism made of him, he has been asked to step back from ministry as honorary assistant bishop in Newcastle Diocese. This reflects credit on the Bishop of Newcastle and on Archbishop Cottrell, who approved the move. Details can be found on the website of Newcastle Diocese.
It will be interesting to see if the Bishop of Oxford, who was also criticised in the review, is also asked to step back from ministry for a while.
Yes, I noticed. I wonder how Matthew Inison is feeling?
The difficulty is in suspending a Bishop. In law, does the ABC have the authority to suspend a Diocesan? It is relatively easy to suspend/remove PTO for a retired Bishop, as with Sentamu and Carey (in comment below). But can this be done for the Bishop of Oxford? I’m asking because I don’t know.
I would like to think it would be straightforward, but it’s the CofE so I doubt it.
In 2019 the Archbishop of Canterbury suspended the Bishop of Lincoln, Christopher Lowson, over safeguarding concerns. The police were involved in that case, however, and even so some questioned whether Archbishop Welby had exceeded his powers. Bp Lowson was eventually reinstated, but only after a considerable period of time.
There is therefore a precedent for the archbishop to suspend a serving diocesan. An even trickier question is whether Archbishop Welby will be suspended (by whom?) or ‘step aside’, should the Makin Review find that he failed to deal properly with allegations of abuse by John Smyth. Archbishops need to be as accountable as junior clergy are.
I’m not sure what powers are currently being exercised by the Bishop of Sheffield, and the following relates solely to the suspension of the former Bishop of Lincoln which was purportedly under the CDM 2003.
The ‘some’ who questioned the Archbishop’s suspension of the Bishop of Lincoln based their contention on a strict interpretation (i.e., following the rules of statutory interpretation, and the CDM has statutory status and force) that the Archbishop had to be ‘satisfied’ that the grounds for suspension had been met and suspension was not some purely unilateral personal decision on his part. At the time it was questioned whether that threshold had been met.
But the answer to Alwyn Hall is yes, the Archbishop does have that power under Section 37 of the CDM 2003, so long as “he is satisfied on the basis of information provided by a local authority or the police, that the bishop … presents a significant risk of harm”.
I don’t think it is now a matter of dispute, on the known facts, that the Bishop of Lincoln never presented ‘a significant risk of harm’, so the suspension remains highly questionable unless the Archbishop had a reasonable belief amounting to being ‘satisfied’ of that based on external evidence.
Thanks for clarifying that, Rowland.
However, the current Bishop of Sheffield, Pete Wilcox, has so far as I know not been criticised for safeguarding failures. It’s his predecessor, Steven Croft (now Bishop of Oxford) who was criticised in the Devamanikkam Review. Croft removed Archbishop Carey’s PTO merely on the suspicion that he might have seen a rather vague memo about Smyth in 1982/83, on the grounds that Carey therefore presented a safeguarding risk. Judging by the review’s criticism of Croft’s handling of Matt Ineson’s disclosures, and Croft’s subsequent statement, he too presents a safeguarding risk and should ‘step back’ from ministry.
I agree: what’s sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Sentamu and Croft should also give active consideration to taking leaves of absence from parliament until this business is resolved. Their legitimacy as members of the lords depends in large measure on their moral authority, and that legitimacy is not looking too good.
As to Lowson, the question has to be asked whether the metropolitical right to suspend on the grounds of a safeguarding issue (and for such an extensive period of time on grounds which did not appear to warrant the protracted suspension) was itself problematic. I have been led to wonder from anecdotal discussions during my extensive travels around Lincoln diocese (attendance at all but c. 40 of those churches where worship remains available) whether the safeguarding issues surrounding Lowson were a convenient pretext for removing a bishop who was widely supposed to be unsatisfactory in other ways, and yet who could not be removed on administrative or other grounds (bishops cannot be sacked for not making the grade).
An interesting, but now academic, question whether the Archbishop possessed (and exercised) some executive power apart from section 37 of the CDM 2003. Some sought to argue this at the time. But if such a power existed, why necessary to have section 37 with its legislative force? I found the argument unconvincing both for that reason and the fact that the Archbishop quoted some of section 37 verbatim in his announcement of the suspension.
I’m sure that most readers, and commentators, would have been ignorant of the background which you mention: local knowledge can add considerably to understanding how events have unravelled.
Yes, the Archbishop does have jurisdiction to suspend a bishop under Section 37 of the CDM 2003, but you are right to distinguish suspension from removal of PTO.
The power to suspend under Section 37 properly has a high threshold: the Archbishop must be satisfied “on the basis of information provided by a local authority or the police, that the bishop …. presents a significant risk of harm”. Furthermore, before invoking suspension the ‘ordinary’ preliminary stages of a CDM under Section 12 (1) must be completed. It’s not an instant unilateral decision by the Archbishop. It was the apparent lack of this mandatory procedure being followed which caused people to question the suspension of the former Bishop of Lincoln, as mentioned by Janet.
In the present case, the Bishop of Sheffield must be exercising a different power.
How is the Bishop of Sheffield concerned with this case?
Some IT problems at my end earlier today. Two comments didn’t appear; the second shorter one was a second ‘stab’ to replace the first, and in turn didn’t appear, but has done so now.
Sorry, the Bishop of Sheffield was a ‘senior moment’. I meant, of course, the Bishop of Newcastle and the ‘suspension’ (in whatever form) she has imposed on Archbishop Sentamu.
Has she not simply removed his PTO? Or am I being dense?
(1) Yes, I suppose so. As publicly announced, Archbishop Sentamu is required “to step back from active ministry until both the findings and his response can be explored further”. It doesn’t specifically mention PTO. One assumes that the Archbishop was told in more precise and legally binding language.
(2) Surely not!
*giggle* Curtsey!
Rowland, I’ve only become aware of your comments on this thread from reading a cross-reference to them on today’s post by Martin Sewell calling for the suspension of the Bishop of Oxford, Steven Croft.
You rightly say that the 2019 suspension of Christopher Lowson (then Bishop of Lincoln) by Archbishop Welby, pursuant to section 37(1)(e) of the CDM 2003 (as amended), was “highly questionable”. I made a similar point in a detailed article “LEGAL ISSUES ARISING FROM THE SUSPENSION BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, ON 16 MAY 2019, OF THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN, THE RT REVD CHRISTOPER LOWSON” dated 24 May 2019 and available to download from the Thinking Anglicans website (see my comment on Martin’s article for the reference to the link.) I won’t repeat my arguments here, save to say that having regard to the requirement for a paragraph (e) suspension that the archbishop must be ‘satisfied’ that the bishop ‘presents a significant risk of harm’ – i.e. currently presents such a risk – it cannot properly be claimed (as Welby did in 2019) that the suspension is ‘a neutral act.’
However, I need to correct you on one point. You say, “Furthermore, before invoking suspension the ‘ordinary’ preliminary stages of a CDM under Section 12 (1) must be completed. It’s not an instant unilateral decision by the Archbishop.” This requirement only applies where the suspension is pursuant to section 37(1)(a) – following a complaint in writing under section 10(1) of the Measure. It does not apply where the suspension is under any of the other paragraphs of section 37(1), including s.37(1)(e).
The irony in the Lowson case is that while the President of Tribunals, Dame Sarah Asplin, dismissed Christopher Lowson’s appeal against the s.37(1)(e) suspension, 18 months later she found that he had no case to answer the same allegations when they were the basis of a CDM complaint by the then Director of National Safeguarding, Melissa Caslake, made after the Lincolnshire police dropped their investigation. (The President’s two decisions have not, so far as I am aware, been published, but for the sake of transparency of process and consistency in decision-making – especially when they consider issues of law – plainly they should be as a matter of course.)
David: In fact you and I discussed this precise point about Bishop Lowson’s suspension four years ago to the day! See ‘Thinking Anglicans’ 16 May 2019 – which I had not forgotten!
I agree about section 12(1). I don’t think it’s a point to interest many readers.
Thank you for reminding me of our exchanges on TA four years ago. It’s interesting re-reading them now in the light of subsequent events and the precedent set by Archbishop Welby for the suspension of a bishop.
Bishop Croft suspended the PTO for Lord Carey in 2020 on the grounds that Carey might have possibly have become aware of Smyth’s misdeeds when Smyth was briefly a student at Trinity Bristol while Carey was Principal and so there was the suspicion of Carey having failed to act correctly on a safeguarding issue in the 1980s. Bishop Croft now admits that he did indeed fail to act correctly on a safeguarding issue in the 2010s. If mere suspicion of failure was enough to make it unsafe for Carey to officiate in the Diocese, how can it be safe for Croft lead the diocese after an admitted failure?
I went to the Clergy Support Trust service at St Paul’s- and was delighted to have an approximation of the Coronation available to me – a Brixton pleb!
I agree with Rosie’s point about harsh Calvinist doctrine lending itself to justifying abusive power projection by priests and church leaders – but so too does a dripping with guilt Anglo Catholic theology. I was given a Catholic Truth Society 3p “Penny Catechism” by an Anglican priest who got me to serve mass with him alone but the “Four sins crying to heaven for vengeance” didn’t deter him from wanting “relief” in the middle of the night.
I have subsequently discovered I am bipolar, possibly “on the spectrum”. Maybe some of these priests are in a similar position psychologically and simply can’t control their social and sex drives?
I had a period in the Unitarian Church 1988-2003 and it is apparent that even if you find a church which is guaranteed non-ideological people will still find reasons to split, sack minsters or move to another church. My local Unitarian church was wrecked by the attentions of a nationally notorious paedophile in 1989 and still hasn’t recovered because the strong minister brought in to resolve the situation designated an unsuitable successor, who is now incumbent. I see the Unitarians have a National safeguarding officer so maybe what happened to our local church in 1989 would not happen again – but the historic damage has been done.
I am wondering whether the Church of England has a handle on all this yet. I was stunned to see Dr Sentamu asked to step back, this following on from Dr Carey in 2017 – though the cases are different. Maybe the Power Structures we set up in church and state now serve to ensure we can metaphorically decapitate figureheads who have failed – thinking not only clerics but prime ministers and MPs?
Meanwhile congregations are unbriefed on abuse, expecting the safeguarding people to sort it out – and the cases keep popping up from time to time since our culture is “not to interfere”.
David, thanks for sharing what you did. It took courage.
Sometimes I suspect the people can’t quite believe what has happened to them, or in front of them. It can take many years to come to terms with it. But leaders are responsible whether they like it or not and need to exercise similar courage to take action to right wrongs. Few seem to think it’s anything to do with them.
I learned to drive in Brixton. It was a challenging initiation!
In cases where a metropolitan has to recuse against the future possibility of the case being appealed to him, it is his moral duty to identify a colleague who will knowingly assure the complainant that the designated authority is meanwhile dealing with the complaint properly. Abp Sentamu didn’t think of this but should have. Impartiality needs to be more obvious all along.
Dear Rosie thank you so very much for this article. I too am dismayed not just by the sheer number of serious abuses from a number of male leaders coming to light – but by the church’s deep lack of empathy and compassion for its victims, and it’s inability to be accountable
Is religion inherently abusive?
A friend said to me that it’s the abuse of power in hierarchical systems that’s at the route of how we are harmed
So how do we practice our faith in a gentle, inclusive and truly egalitarian way, that centres the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalised?
Is the question on my heart
“Is religion inherently abusive?” asks #churchtoo. Any religion that evangelises, or attempts to convert, is abusive. Its aim is to persuade the “audience” to adopt the ways of thinking and seeing of the evangelist. When does this become abuse? Quite soon – mentoring, praying over, persuading, directing …
Mocking people asking genuine questions around serious matters of abuse is not an appropriate response.
The title post has the question: is religion inherently abusive, and my response is to that question.
Surviving Church used to be a place where survivors of church abuse could interact with each other, and hold each other’s contributions with respect, making observations without mockery or shut down.
I would really like to see that ethos return
I am entirely serious. I deplore heavy handed evangelism. We should lay the table and let people come and taste the meat. Love bade me welcome ….
I don’t think Stanley was mocking you at all. He genuinely believes what he said in his reply to you. I wouldn’t take it as far as that, myself, but it isn’t always easy to know the point at which healthy influence becomes unhealthy manipulation.
Thank you, Janet. I would go further. I think the way we brainwash children to accept Sunday school lap is deplorable. Abuse. How is that any different in essence from what goes on in North Korea?
Pap not lap
It’s very different – we don’t execute people for not believing what they were taught in Sunday School.
Having said that, one of my lasting regrets regarding my ministry is that, in all age services, I didn’t tackle critical questions about Old Testament narratives. I think that may have been a disservice to older children and adults, but there was never any threat to people who didn’t believe. And in ordinary services I had a policy of preaching on the most difficult of the set readings. I even did series on ‘The Banned Bible’ – problematic passages which are left out of the lectionary.
Well of course I was exaggerating to make the point. It’s a whole new discussion, not for this thread. The similarities in the birth narratives of JC and the Kims are striking, both drawing from universal folk myths I guess I’d better shut up. Horses in today’s CoE are easy frightened.
Thank you Janet for your peace-making comment. Christianity is full of boundaries where something good begins to become something bad once you cross an invisible boundary. The use of the Bible is an example. When does inspirational guidance become coercive bashing of someone you don’t agree with? The answer to this question is hard to determine. Surviving Church perhaps takes the view that the frontier area should be as large as possible and not make any dividing line too well defined.