The Archbishop of York wrote to a complainant regarding several serious cases of miscarriage and misconduct of process and injustices in safeguarding policy and practice, to which the individual has been repeatedly subjected. The diocese concerned, Lambeth Palace staff and the NST were all culpable of serious errors, misconduct and coverups. Nothing was done. The email from the Archbishop of York is dated 29 March 2022 (with emphasis added in bold):

Dear XXXX

I hope this finds you well, or at least better than you were.

So many letters have been flying around that I have to confess I have possibly read them in the wrong order. However, I do know that is how it seems to you, and I get that.

Neither do I completely understand why referring the serious issues you raise to the Independent Safeguarding Board isn’t the best way of trying to independently understand what has happened and plot a better way forward.

For a long time people have accused the Church of England of marking its own homework. I share that concern. Hence, I have been a champion of independence over scrutiny of safeguarding for many years. Now that this Independent Board exists I believe it presents the best (and maybe the only) way of taking your complaints and concerns seriously, holding the Church of England to account and enabling us, where necessary, to change.

Now I know your concerns are much wider than your own particular case, and of course I am aware of the pain that others have experienced. And as you may or may not recall I have also myself been subject to investigation myself, so I have a very small taste of how this can feel and what it does to you.

You remind me in one of your letters that evil flourishes when good people do nothing. But we are not doing nothing. We are setting up an Independent Board to scrutinise safeguarding in the Church of England and provide a place where grievances, concerns and alleged injustices can be brought.

That may not be enough. But it has barely started, and I believe it needs to be given a chance.

Evil also flourishes when good people stop talking to each other or only communicate with megaphones.

Or where good people who are trying – often under the radar – to bring about change are so stymied and defined by the mistakes of the past that the very real hope that has been worked for a long time is not given an opportunity to work.

I don’t want us to get into that place. And of course I am dismayed  at some of the actions you propose making.  I honestly believe that there is a better way of having your legitimate concerns addressed.

And here I don’t want to put things in writing, not because I fear being quoted – though I note your intention to publish correspondence – but because words on a page don’t have a tone of voice. And I want to communicate to you how dearly I hope to bring change and development to safeguarding, but I also want to say that I truly believe real progress has been made and I see it in the way that we are responding to many survivors at the moment, and I could quote several recent examples where people have thanked me for the care and support they have received. I don’t want this put in jeopardy. I know you don’t either.

So this is where I am now. Archbishop Justin and I are proposing that all your concerns are laid before the Independent Board. That is what it is there for.

Help me understand why this is not an acceptable way forward. Or bear with me, and give this a chance.

With my prayers and very best wishes,

++Stephen

Terms of Reference were duly published by the ISB for independently assessing the grievances in question. However, the Terms of Reference did not engage with the grievances, and specifically excluded them. After objections were raised, both Archbishops reiterated the independence and integrity of the ISB  in a joint letter (June 14^th 2022).

Readers are invited to form their own view as to whether or not the Archbishops regarded the ISB as acting independently and competently in complex safeguarding cases? There is no mention of Phase One or Phase Two.

Dear XXXX

Thank you for your email to both of us.

We realise that we don’t have a common view about what ‘independent’ looks like, but it is difficult to see how the Church could be overseen by any body in this area without contributing to its costs. The ISB is still a new body and it is entirely appropriate that this matter is referred to it.

As you know the ISB has drafted the terms of reference for the work it thinks is appropriate to do and, having discussed the matter on several occasions we really do think we need to afford them the space to do that work. It is a source of continued disappointment to us that you don’t have confidence in this and are unwilling to participate. As we understand it, the invitation to be involved remains open and we hope you realise this.

You seem convinced that the dice are loaded against you before the game has begun. We categorically don’t believe this is the case. As Stephen has consistently repeatedly said whenever you have spoken, we both believe there are important questions to be asked and issues to be addressed. It is our belief that the ISB will do this and we have both worked hard towards its establishment and creation. Moreover, they have indicated that they will be able to report by the autumn this year.

Why not then cooperate with the process, let them make their report, and then see where we are? How could this possibly be worse than the situation we are in at the moment? We have been part of a process that has referred this to the ISB. They have said that they will look at this and report back.

So can we invite you again to reconsider your opposition to cooperating with this process and also, if we may, reconsider the language you use to sometimes besmirch those who are actually trying to help you and move this forward. We are amongst those people and so is Maggie Atkinson. Please think about giving [Maggie] the space and time she needs. If it turns out you’re right, and the whole thing is a sham, and the ISB is in the pockets of those who are against you, then that will become clear. We, however, do not believe it for a moment. And, if we are honest, can’t quite understand why you have reached this conclusion, and wonder whether you have considered how others might interpret this?

With every blessing,

The Most Revd & Rt Hon Justin Welby The Most Revd & Rt Hon Stephen Cottrell Archbishop of Canterbury Archbishop of York

Footnotes: This investigation was subsequently removed from the ISB. Maggie Atkinson was suspended and then dismissed for data breaches. Although William Nye cancelled the investigation, no other process of inquiry is yet in place. The Archbishops’ Council have now sacked the ISB.

The telling of stories was one way that Jesus used to communicate truths about God and human behaviour.  Preachers in the church know how, when we read and study these stories, they keep on giving.  There is never only a single interpretation to the parables that we find in the gospels.  There are always new facets of meaning and insight to be extracted as we ponder them over a lifetime.  It is also perhaps legitimate to try to imagine the stories as they might be retold today with another teller and another context.  Here is an example of how one well-known parable might be retold to resonate with some of our contemporary issues.

Travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho is a dangerous business.  I never know whom I might meet when I travel that way.  Sometimes people are after my money and possessions and sometimes they simply want to recruit me into one of their gangs so I can work for them and bring others under gang control.  If I were to be young, there is the added danger of being harassed or worse.  The journey along that way always makes travelling very stressful indeed.  I would rather not do it, but my whole livelihood depends on it.

As a frequent traveller I know others who make the journey regularly.  So far, I have managed not to suffer the humiliation of being stripped naked, wounded and left half dead.  I gather from talking to survivors that not all the bandits on the road are true outlaws.  Some are well respected members of the Samaritan community, and they go in for banditry during their spare time.  One or two of these part-time bandits have been brought to justice. The religious ones among them seem to get off and go free.  When the Romans get involved, which is not very often, then justice seems to happen. They are disowned by their community and get sent to prison.  Others, especially the ‘religious’ ones, are let off on some technicality.  I also hear about individuals within the religious hierarchy who refuse to testify against their chums when they are brought to justice.  The higher up the chain of religious importance you are, the more likely it is that you will be let off.

Recently I have heard about a new initiative designed to help travellers on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road.  The organiser is a Gentile, and he has studied abroad in things like law and philosophy.   This fact alone and his independence of the religious establishment gives us travellers confidence.  If it were organised by anyone linked to the important people in the Samaritan hierarchy, none of us would be able to trust it.  This Gentile is a true independent and will not be compromised by any of the strands of loyalty that have linked some of the bandits to the top people in the Samaritan network.  The main part of the new initiative involves organising safe spaces for travellers in danger.  The organisation has been able to recruit Innkeepers along the way to help in the project.  All of them are being thoroughly vetted to make sure that their inns are safe for vulnerable travellers.  They will be trained in first aid and self-defence skills.  All will have emergency funds to tide over any travellers who have had all their money stolen. 

For a time, the scheme has worked well.  The Priests at the top of the Samaritan network are also gradually being forced to own up to their past connections to the bandits.  Many links, that some of those convicted of terrible crimes have had with people of religious importance in Samaria, have been brought to light. All members of the ruling body have been on safeguarding training.   Now they can recognise the way that abuse of power is not only found in armed robbery but also in the way the Priests conduct their business in everyday religious administration.  Also, they have come to understand how money raising is not the same thing as common extortion.  People are everywhere learning to question and hold to account those who have positions of religious importance.

Recently a terrible event occurred on the Jerusalem Jericho Road which reminded us of the old days of banditry when things were really bad.  A traveller was beaten and left for dead on the roadside.  He was not rendered unconscious so he was able to tell us what happened while he was waiting for help.  Two people passed on the other side of the road.  He recognised both of them as being members of the Samaritan religious leadership.  He knew that each had been on several levels of safeguarding training.  This had been arranged by the Priests for everyone working in and around Samaria.  They will know what to do, the traveller thought.  But no, it seems that helping a wounded traveller is too complicated; there are too many forms to fill in and the witness might get something wrong when they try to apply the high priest regulations to the situation.  Worse still, if too many questions are asked, it may turn out that the bandits are themselves Jews in good standing.  Helping to bring a fellow Samaritan to justice would be betrayal.  Passing by on the other side is the best strategy in this situation.

Fortunately, one of my group, the Survivor Supporters Cabal (SSC), was on hand nearby and quickly helped the wounded traveller to a designated inn where he would be safe.  Here he was able to recover his strength and tell his story.  He was able to describe his attackers as well as those who declined to help him.  Both groups were identifiable, but the religious authorities in Samaria refused to get involved.  But even more serious was the response as a result of all the publicity to this new case.  New pressure has been placed on my network in SSC by the religious establishment.  The religious authorities cannot stop the volunteer workers, but they can undermine the livelihoods of those who work in the inn network project.  Overnight the secretary, who makes sure that the safe inns who help travellers are properly supplied with money and first-aid material, was sacked and the financial support for the project withdrawn.  The Priests of Samaria were not prepared to offer any help to a project which showed them up in a bad light.

The result of this latest outrage and the totally inept response to it is twofold.  Lots of people are asking questions and the top religious authorities are starting to look really shamed and embarrassed.  Because the member of SSC and the inn keeper’s (a gentile) help was so vital and effective, the religious authorities now want to try to hit back.   There is a plan to buy up all the inns that are part of the support network and make sure that they are only run by approved Samaritans in good standing. Only the high priests’ regulations are to be followed when it comes to rescuing wounded travellers.  It is obvious that the authorities do not want to do the necessary work of making sure that the road is kept safe and that those who are wounded get appropriate help.  Perhaps it is because the whole structure of the ruling authorities in Samaria has become so tangled and wrapped up in human power games, that the will to do the necessary work of reform is simply not present.

Throughout my time of ministry in the Anglican Church (1970 -2010) I have been aware of the idea of team ministries.  Back in the 70s, the role of a team vicar, working collaboratively with others in a large multi-cantered parish, seemed a considerable improvement on being a lowly assistant curate.  My own second post, after two years back at university, was somewhere between a team vicar position and a curacy.  How the division of labour worked out in practice is not important here, but I was given enough independent responsibility to be able to lead and build up two small congregations on the edge of the main town parish with minimal interference from the centre.  This allowed me to feel that I was on my way towards a post of complete independence as a ‘proper’ vicar.    This ambition was realised when I took over the charge of a cluster of villages in Herefordshire in 1979.

Looking back over my ministry, I think that I can truthfully say that no clergyperson I have met has ever tried to convince me that working in a team of clergy was a desirable long-term career option.  The assumption that was built into our college training in the 60s was that we were all destined to become independent incumbents in charge of a parish.  Some specially gifted individuals might possibly be aiming for an archdeaconry or a post in a cathedral.  The junior team ministry posts that were available might form a staging post in the early part of a clerical career.  The then legal time limit of five years for team vicar posts was an indication that that would be the maximum time to serve in such a role.

Working in a clerical team did have certain things going for it on paper.  There could be the opportunity to specialise in the areas where one felt gifted or had some special skill.  Then there was the assumption of receiving spiritual or practical support from one or more colleagues and being able to say the daily offices with others.  Being part of a staff team would surely overcome any sense of ministerial loneliness that individual clergy might feel. 

The positives that were held out for team working were often outweighed by the drawbacks of this style of operation.  The five-year rule for team vicars (now abolished) meant that there was seldom any proper continuity in clergy teams.  People were always on the move; someone was always on the point of leaving or settling in. The only person in the team with any sort of employment security was the Team Rector.  When one person in the team, the leader, had an employment security denied to the junior members of the team it made for instability.  Such teams operated in a distinctly hierarchical fashion and it is hard to use the word team to describe the power dynamics normally at work. For all practical purposes the so-called team ministries of the past operated as large parishes with a rector exercising considerable power over several curates/team vicars.  It is hard to claim that these junior vicars were not acting and feeling like traditional curates of old.  Most curates/team vicars, if my experience was anything like typical, could not wait to be given their own distinct area of responsibility and become fully fledged freehold incumbents.

I have to confess that I have not been close to any team ministry situation over the past twenty-five years, so it is possible that Church of England team ministries are flourishing in the 2020s.  What I have been sketching out about the clergy applies to the 80s and 90s, but the literature I have encountered on the dynamics of parishes does not suggest that the old team ministry structure is now held up anywhere as a model of good parish functioning.  One major factor, which was true in my generation of clergy was that, speaking generally, the clergy were neither by training nor temperament good team players.  There were a number of reasons for this. The first of these is that, thanks to the vagaries of background and training, each clergyperson emerged from theological college with a distinctive brand of churchmanship.  Alongside the evangelical clergy there were the catholic and liberal wings.  These latter used to be far more dominant in the 70s and 80s.  The broad labels of churchmanship hid beneath them a large number of subcategories of theological preference.  From a practical point of view, it was easier to allow a distinct churchmanship to be worked out in the setting of a single parish by one clergyperson in charge.  The alternative was having a convinced conservative evangelical working alongside an individual taking his/her guidance from a battered copy of the Anglo-Catholic Ritual Notes and this did not make for an easy or harmonious working environment.  Tastes in the styles of music deemed suitable for Sunday worship could also create serious tensions.  But it was not just the variety of theological outlook that made groups of clergy suspicious and slightly tense in each other’s company.  Another real tension in the clergy of the past, and no doubt today, was the awareness of the avenues of promotion.  Many clergy of my acquaintance spent a lot of time trying to move in the right circles where they might be spotted and marked for preferment to a cathedral or even a bishopric.  Ambition in the Church of England was, and no doubt is, a strong factor which spills out to create an atmosphere of tension in clergy gatherings.

Why do my reflections and last century memories of the institution of team ministries come to be discussed in 2023?  The reason for this is that two English dioceses, Truro and Leicester, seem in my opinion, to be re-inventing and promoting a brand-new version of the old team ministry model.   This model called Mission Community or something similar, intends over a period to place every clergyperson, stipendiary and non, to work in what looks very much like one of the team ministries of the past.   The main difference today is that these Mission Communities will be responsible for large groupings of 20- 30 existing parishes and perhaps up to 35 church buildings.  The similarity is in the way that all the clergy will be required to work collaboratively.  Most of these Mission Communities will be overseen by an experienced stipendiary leader.  He or she will preside over the other clergy (paid and unpaid) and lay people working in large teams.  The Leicester diocese are bringing in this pattern fairly imminently, and the pattern will evolve over a number of years as the posts of currently serving clergy become vacant.  The very first of these mission communities is to be based the parish of Launde and will be known as the Launde Minster Community.  The Community will eventually be responsible for 35 churches and 24 parishes.

Having only worked with a quite different pattern of parish life, I look at these new patterns of ministry with concern.  The lay people in the pew will no longer have an identified individual clergyperson with whom to bond.  The person taking a service on a particular Sunday will depend on the allocation/rota made in the administrator’s office and overseen by the senior stipendiary provided for the minster group.   It goes without saying that, for lay people, this will be experienced as a backward development.  If each member of the team only appears at one particular church every three months or so, this will make it hard for substantial pastoral bonds ever to be formed between the clergy and individual members of the congregation. 

I have looked at all the financial and practical reasons for the decision of Truro and Leicester dioceses to go down this minster model of management of the clergy and parishes.  This is the only arrangement that is currently affordable with the available financial resources.  My reflection here is not trying to suggest that these practical issues can be ignored, but simply to make the point that this model of working the system is unlikely to be attractive to the clergy for similar reasons to their old lack of enthusiasm for the team ministry concept.  If I am right, older clergy still aspire to being pastorally independent in their working environment.  The thought of being part of a minster group is not professionally attractive.  Many of the stipendiary clergy who have been trained in ways that I am familiar with, will still see home visiting and the pastoral care of individuals to be at the very heart of what they were trained for and want to do on a daily basis.  Organising immensely complicated rotas is an activity and skill set that has very little appeal, even with the help of professional secretarial staff.  Whatever is true about the future of the clerical calling, I cannot see that it has become more attractive or rewarding through these current patterns that are being organised for the future.  There may be some who welcome the brave new world of teams and Minster Communities but clearly there are many, both clerical and lay, who are seriously worried about a failure of morale if this pattern becomes more general.  The old traditional pattern of a vicar labouring within a community so that he/she becomes a fixed feature of community life, will no longer be found.  What seems to be on offer appears to fail everyone, congregation, clergy and the communities themselves.

Nostalgia for a past, where pastoral care rather than management was at the top of a parish priest’s agenda, is probably a futile indulgence.  My understanding of human nature would suggest that there are many who look back to the days before Mission Communities when the emphasis was on parish care, and the non-church goers and their needs were, when possible, treated with equal respect with those who attended services.  The care of the ancient buildings fell on the obligation of every resident in the parish and not to the few who attended.  Somehow quite substantial sums of money flowed from the communities themselves to sustain church buildings.   These were regarded with affection even if the use of them was limited for most to times of national rejoicing or mourning.  Goodwill from the community, both for the institution as well as the building could be counted on in my experience.  Will this survive the depersonalisation of church life that the ‘monster’ parish system may create?

Looking back over 70+ years of reasonably active church membership, I have been reflecting on one feature which has only come into my conscious focus recently.  The feature that I want to mention is that of being accompanied or mentored by others as I have tried to move along in my Christian pilgrimage.  The idea of mentorship that I have in mind at the moment is probably something broader than that which is generally meant by the term.  I am referring to all the people, (most of them now dead) who have in any way accompanied me and allowed the spiritual self to feel nurtured and encouraged in the attempts to practise Christian discipleship.

The individuals who, in a wide sense, mentored us in our faith will almost certainly include a number of people whom we never personally got to know at all.  Even those with whom we had some kind of relationship may never have had any idea that we looked up to them in this way.  Thus, the mentoring relationships we feel we have had with them may have been totally one sided.  For example, we may have felt a strong identification with an author whose work or writing has made us feel alive in a special way.  The vast majority of the authors that have inspired me are now firmly dead but something of their truth remains alive inside me.  We thus often remain deeply attached to books that contain writing which led to new spiritual insight for us, even if they were penned centuries ago. 

The notion of the Christian journey involving a strong sense of being supported by a ‘cloud of witnesses’ is probably familiar to most of us.  Perhaps, like me, we have not given it much attention.  Mentoring in this broad sense is something that is found in many of the privileged conversations that have been afforded to those of us who are clergy.  We have been mentored during our attendance at the bedside of the dying or in the flash of comprehension in the eyes of a confirmation candidate.  The examples I could give go on but I have probably said enough to evoke the wider meaning I am giving here to this word mentoring.  Whatever word we might choose to convey this idea of outside encouragement in the journey of Christian discipleship, it is clearly important to all of us. 

The task of recognising the fact of being mentored in the way I describe, brings us to another, possibly disturbing, thought and question.  Have I at any time in my life been depended on or looked up to as an exemplar of Christian discipleship and encouragement?  If so, have those who looked up to me been served well, or have they felt let down when they learnt more about me as a person?  Those of us who are clergy or who occupy positions of responsibility cannot help having people looking up to us as some sort of of model for what a Christian should look like.  This is why any scandals by clergy or senior leaders in the Church are so incredibly harmful.  Just as the family life of a clergyman comes under scrutiny by his or her parishioners, so every bishop and others at the higher levels in the church carry an enormous responsibility for modelling what a good Christian life should look like.  As a mentor in the broad way I have suggested, a bishop will be obliged to carry on his or her shoulders the projection of maybe thousands of fellow Christians.  In summary they, the Christians in the pews, want to see examples in their leaders of a good Christian life.   They want to model themselves on their leaders and see a living example of what faith actually involves in practice.

The mentoring relationships which allow Christians to support and encourage one another, do not, as we have suggested, necessarily involve an active relationship between people.  A public profile or even a reputation for godliness may be all that is required for the ‘virtual’ mentoring and sharing of Christian encouragement to begin to take place.  The main quality that I believe one Christian wants to see in another is an utterly reliable integrity. Christians are looking for someone else on whom to model themselves, and will be hoping to find, not holy words coming from the mouth, but a consistency of character that allows them to feel they can completely trust the other person.  The exemplar, the person attracting the projection of others, needs to be, in the modern idiom, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type.  WYSIWYG people are not perfect; they are flawed like everyone else.  But we look to them for consistency and reliability.  We don’t want to discover that there are areas of toxic behaviour just below the surface.  All the relationships we have, in and outside the Church, are based on trust.  It is deeply upsetting and disturbing when an old friend is found to have been stealing money from his company for years to feed a gambling addiction. The effect on families when one of its members has been involved in creating pornography will always be devastating.  Anyone exposed to revelations of this kind, which involve a betrayal of trust, may likely start to feel paranoid and suspicious of everyone around them.  Trust in other people’s integrity, whether in the Church or outside, is a glue that holds families, congregations and institutions together.   When this glue starts to dissolve or fails to work, the future is bleak for these institutions to hold together or even survive.

In recent times, we have lived though some shocking revelations in public life which have undermined our trust in many institutions in this country.  Stability in our political life, our police forces, the educational institutions and our churches has always been part of the background security we have enjoyed.   Relying on these institutions to play their part in providing this overall stability has been crucial to our sense of well-being and safety.  The current undermining of this sense of security because of failings in these same institutions is a serious matter.   In our political life the absence or decay of trust may lead to solutions that are deemed extreme, like fascism or other totalist ideologies.  When such extreme systems appear in any country, it can take decades for the balanced approach to political life to be re-established.

The current danger that I see potentially damaging, even destroying, the fabric of the Church of England is an emergence of cynicism or lack of trust at every level of church life.  If our bishops for any reason are no longer looked up to as exemplars of honest and godly behaviour, this cynicism may quickly spread to every other level of church life.  If the protection of the privileges, power and resources of the institution becomes the highest value for those who control and manage the Church of England, then I can only see a future of decay and weakness ahead.   Those of us who care for the values of integrity, justice and holiness, the WYSIWYG values of total honesty and love, will continue to stand by them.  On our own we can do little to save our political or religious institutions.  But together, with those others who believe in these values contained in absolute integrity, we may be able to do something to help rebuild true communities.   Finding once again our ability to be strengthened and supported by the absolute Christian integrity of others, we may be playing a part to serve our Church and helping it not only to survive but flourish in the future.  

by Gilo

Since her appointment as Lead Safeguarding Bishop in mid-January, Joanne Grenfell has posted on everything on her Twitter account BUT safeguarding. In the four+ months since the Bishop of Stepney has been given this key role, she appears to be missing in action.

Imagine a Lead Bishop for the Environment ignoring harm done to forests, rivers, oceans, biodiversity! It would be strange not to say perverse. As it happens the Bishop for the Environment, Graham Usher, has done about half a dozen social media things in relation to his role during May alone. One particularly striking tweet was of the confirmation card sent to candidates in mid-May with a picture depicting a tree laden with animals in the process of being cut down. This powerful illustration by Nat Morley titled ‘The Tree of Life 6th Mass Extinction’ showed the ‘Environment Bishop’ unafraid of public visibility in his role. Another senior figure, Anne Hollinghurst, acting Bishop of Birmingham, attended Extinction Rebellion’s The Big One protest in Westminster in April.

But in the Church of England’s safeguarding structure we now have a Lead bishop perceived as silent to the harm and re-abuse being done to survivors on an almost daily basis; a bishop who seems to have decided the best course of action with this critical portion of a portfolio is to stay hidden beneath the mantle of the structure and hope the three years passes her by with little to no impact. There’s a rather more sinister possibility: perhaps the bishop has been instructed to follow this course.

What a difference from the part played by Peter Hancock, the last really pastoral bishop in this role. Woefully misguided and misinformed about mandatory reporting as he was, and at times out of his depth – he was nevertheless regarded with affection by many survivors and seen as someone who genuinely cared. He struggled to make a difference. He met with survivors. He went out of his way. It mattered to him that the Church was as dishonest and cruel and complacent as he eventually realized was the case. It was to be his tragedy and ours that weasel ecclesiocrats inside both Church House and Lambeth Palace ran merry rings round him to the point that he became deeply angered and stressed by their machinations. It was widely known that he was livid with Lambeth Palace following Archbishop Welby’s Ch 4 interview. Apparently he had not been informed it was happening, and found himself fielding the anger of Smyth victims at the array of untruths expressed in the course of the interview.

It is also widely known that Jonathan Gibbs experienced moral and emotional exhaustion at the cynicism he found in the culture of the House of Bishops. He was at one time on the verge of quitting the role. I urged him to go (if that was his intention) with a bang and not a whimper. He clung on but seemed to lose any heart in the role and in his last year as Lead bishop resembled a man desperately seeking a demob suit. The sight of him at that shameful Synod last year, sounding like a strangulated Jackanory presenter against the backdrop of brazenly strategic silencing of questions from the platform, was really pitiful. I think by that stage everyone knew he was a spent force who’d lost any power of persuasion that he might at one stage have had. 

It is clear to all watchers that the Lead Bishops have their hands on rubber levers which effect little to no change. The power lies behind them on the platform of the carefully stage-managed theatre of Synod. The real levers are in the hands of those who control Synod, control the NST, control Archbishops Council, control the Comms in Church House, manage the Church’s response to Reviews and Reports, control the long drawn out delay to the Redress Scheme, and ultimately control the presentational mirage of ‘journey of change’ in this broken structure. The real levers are operated by the Nyebots while Lead Bishops must be content to handle rubber levers.

Survivors could be forgiven for thinking the Lead Safeguarding role is now little more than a purgatorial stepping stone to a bigger mitre. Do the three years and field your way through the unethical mess of it all and we’ll give you a diocese. That seems to be the way it works. Anyone remember the anger felt by survivors after the Synod? When a list of failures and major questions about accountability were skipped over and erased by a deeply cynical Archbishops Council. It was to be hoped that the next Lead Bishop would at least start with visible drive and recognition of the anger and hurt expressed by survivors, some resolve to mend bridges and show herself impelled by the call for justice, redress and institutional honesty. 

But so far there has been little sign that this bishop is doing much else than marking time in a thankless role. Meanwhile the situation is worsening. Is worse now than it was during the time of IICSA. The Church of England is fighting fires on all fronts. Church groups across the evangelical world are waking up to the potentially huge scale of ramifications in the Soul Survivor scandal. Publication of the long awaited Makin Review is around the corner later this year and is likely to be as critical of senior figures and their awareness combined with the ability to look the other way, as has been the Devamanikkam Report. There is renewed interest in the media in the Church’s failure to deliver a Redress Scheme and its re-abusive treatment of survivors in the meantime. The Spindler/Reeves Review recently published on House of Survivors site is a coruscating report into the Church’s continuing cruelty in just one case alone. In the coming weeks a fresh complaint concerning dishonesty and corporate corruption inside the heart of the Archbishops Council will land on the desks of both Archbishops. And so it goes on…

Just this morning a Synod Member with many years experience in corporate investigations tells me, “We need a 10,000 watt spotlight on this organisation as I see so many corporate governance failures which I think need a total clean-up. We choose clergy to be shepherds of flocks, not to run billion pound organisations. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when this proves to be beyond their competence. David was great at dealing with Goliath but proved to have many flaws when he became King. One of the issues is whether the problem is the King or the KIng’s advisers.”

I suspect the Lead bishop is overwhelmed by the sheer number of fires in her department, and overwhelmed too by the multitude of conflicts of interest apparent beneath the surface of the Church’s handling of so much of this crisis. But she will need quickly to find her voice and her courage, and show survivors that she has the moral strength to fight the injustice and intransigence of her structures on our behalf. She will need to step out from behind the purple enclosure and look behind her with a critical eye and call out serious wrongdoing within the hierarchy and their structure. Survivors need to see a Lead Bishop with tenacity to match that of survivors. Quiet complicity with institutional complacency, cruelty and corruption is no longer an option. It looks like negligence and begs the question: is the Bishop even trying to do the job?

Gilo