Some twenty-five years ago I was asked by a contact to offer spiritual support to a woman who was dying of cancer.  She was, at the beginning, able to travel the ten miles from her home to see me and we probably had around five sessions together before her illness made this impossible.  I recall these meetings as I recently asked myself the question, why I chose the Gospel of St John as a text we could read together, and which would provide ‘homework’ between our meetings.  Just recently, I have begun to recognise better that, although the fourth gospel author is probably not attempting to provide anything like an exact biographical record of his Jesus’ ministry, he does allow the reader to feel that he/she is being brought into intimate contact with the Master.  The other gospels give us some insight into the personality and teaching of Jesus, but John’s aim seems to be to create a spiritual immediacy, a meeting place, between the Lord and those followers who immerse themselves in his words. This immediacy is found especially in and through the ‘I am’ sayings which the evangelist gives us.  These are unique to the fourth gospel.

To remind my readers, much of the text of the fourth gospel outside the Passion Narrative is a series of thematic meditations linked to a series of ‘I am’ sayings.  The events and encounters recorded around each ‘I am’ saying are linked to it as a kind of commentary.  Together they are each designed to reveal a distinct aspect of Jesus’ work and the way he becomes united to his followers in what might be described as a mystical fusion.  All the sequences of teaching and discourse that we find in the first section of the fourth gospel seem to be tied in to one or other of these key ‘I am’ sayings.  The ‘I am’ sayings introduce us to the well-known fourth gospel themes of Jesus as Good Shepherd, Bread of Life, Living Water and True Vine etc.  Thus, when Jesus declares himself to be the Light of the World, the teaching that given in this part of the gospel is completely focussed on exploring this image.  This section contains a discourse about the contrast between darkness and light and also tells at some length the linked story of the healing of a blind man.  Adding into the drama of the story, we hear the formerly blind man making a spirited response when the religious leaders try to make him deny his healing and condemn Jesus as a sinner.  To paraphrase the healed man’s words, ‘I don’t know who is responsible for what has happened, whether God or the one you claim is a sinner. One thing I do know, once I was blind; now I can see’.

 When we become aware of the literary and thematic structure of the fourth gospel, we are forced to note that it is highly improbable, even implausible, that Jesus taught his disciples in such a structured way. Is it really likely that Jesus’ teaching was as tidy and ordered as John’s gospel sets it out for us?  The idea that Jesus, rather than the author of the fourth gospel, divided up his teaching into these tidy and ordered sections is, we would suggest, a nonsense claim.  The gospel author whom we call John, had, as we have suggested, a much more ambitious aim, to introduce his readers to a close relationship with the Risen Lord.  Jesus’ task both as a teacher on earth and as the ever-present divine being who lives within us through the Spirit, will be for the believer the one who leads us to all truth and offers to humankind and the gift of ‘eternal life’.

I imagine that many of my readers have used John’s gospel in the way I am suggesting – as a source of profound material for meditation about the meaning of Jesus as well as a focus for understanding how to enter into an ever-deeper relationship with him.  The fact that the Jesus who is presented to us in the fourth gospel has a different feel about it from the other gospel accounts, does not force us to declare that one or other version of Jesus’ life is somehow more authentic and true.  It is enough that Christians, through the centuries have, successfully felt able to draw out of John’s words a sense of divine encounter.  That is what we today are invited to do and it forms the main intention of the original author.  The variety of proclamations made by Jesus, the ‘I am’ sayings make this process possible.  Inspiration in Scripture seems to work just as well even when no detailed historical claims are made for a particular passage in the gospel text.

In my title for this blog post, I used the heading ‘Advent a season of symbols’.  It seems to be true that the fourth gospel version of Jesus’ life, the one that is least likely to be factually true as history in the account of his ministry, should also be the one able to bring his followers the closest to him.  The ahistorical symbols in the gospel, water, light and darkness, bread etc., are probably not historical memories; they are the means through which we are brought into a place of intimacy with the Risen Master.  In Advent we are also presented with certain powerful visual symbols that, like the fourth gospel, bring Christ close to us.  On one Sunday in Advent we do focus on the ministry of John the Baptist but most of the time, we are immersing ourselves in ahistorical symbols provided by our liturgy in a not dissimilar way to readers of the fourth gospel.  Particularly powerful is the Advent symbol of light breaking into the darkness.  This image or symbol evokes our own experiences of disorientation in a place of darkness before we were rescued by a light-switch or a torch.  The lived experience of being highly vulnerable or frightened of the dark is one that is real to us and it feeds into our ability to imagine and thus encounter the one who, in a spiritual sense, drives away the darkness.

The other powerful symbol explored liturgically and devotionally in Advent is that of longing, waiting and expectation.  We all know what it means to wait for something with passionate intensity.  One place to observe such longing and expectation is the sight of children fingering presents under the Christmas tree.  Another place is the arrival section of a large international airport.  Here people are waiting to be reunited with loved ones after maybe months, even years, of separation.  Is not our Advent observance being fed by some of this passionate intensity, which our imagination can evoke for us in this season of symbols?  To repeat, symbols, such as we find in John’s gospel and the commemoration of Advent are not events or facts. But their status as symbols still allows them play a crucial role in allowing us to experience and connect with the reality of God in Christ reaching out to us . The season of symbols, as I call it, draws our attention, not to historical events in Jesus’ life, but to powerful aspects of what we believe about him.  It also helps us, as Christians claim, to form a personal relationship with him, one that reaches beyond the grave to all eternity.

Writing this Advent reflection has helped me to understand better how this gospel in the New Testament that strays (apart from the Passion narrative) the furthest away from the detailed historical record, is also the one that I turned towards to help someone facing death.  My attachment to the fourth gospel is shared by many of my readers as we seem to be entering the realm of eternity, timelessness and the experience and promise of what we call, however we interpret it, eternal life.

The word apostasy is one of those words that can have a good or bad meaning according to the perspective of the one using the term.  In most cases it implies something that is disapproved of.  It contains the idea of betrayal or the abandonment of a cause or belief system.  In a religious context it suggests that an individual has decided to turn their back on the beliefs and practices that may have belonged to them for a long period, even since childhood.  The word also suggests that a decision has been made which involves much more than a single individual departing from one set of beliefs/values to become attached to another.  Apostasy may involve damage and break-up to social networks. These may have helped to fashion the identity of the one making dramatic changes in their attachments. 

Although apostasy has frequently attracted to itself various negative connotations, it is still possible to see that moving from one political, spiritual or religious identity to another has a potentially positive side.  If religious or political faith is understood to be a stance which involves individual decision, we should be ready to applaud anyone who moves into a place of conviction which may differ radically from the assumptions of the past.  Parents obviously would prefer their children to grow up expressing the values and beliefs of the family unit but, in a setting where self-determination and free choice are taught, the right of an emerging adult to exchange one set of values and beliefs for another should be celebrated.  The book edited by Martyn Percy and Charles Foster, Faiths lost and found, Understanding Apostasy invites us to think seriously and engage with this positive side of the word used within the context of religious belief.   Apostasy, in the world of religious belief, can be seen as potentially marking a valuable expression of human creativity involving both change and growth.

The bulk of Percy’s and Foster’s text is given over to a fascinating series of ten autobiographical accounts, which involve dramatic change in a religious context.  Most, but not all, involve individuals finding their way from what we might consider rigid belief setting to something more moderate.  One charts the journey of a gay man, Tom Bohache, from a disapproving traditional Christianity to ‘queer authenticity’.  Elsewhere in the book, we read of the journey of Charles Foster from the conservative evangelicalism of the ‘Bash’ camps to the world of HTB before ending up within Eastern Orthodoxy.  In each story we are invited to share the contributors’ experience of struggle to find their truth and personal reality.  Each of the ten accounts is thus the story of a personal pilgrimage, and they earn the admiration of the reader.  While we might not make precisely the same decisions as these pilgrims on their personal quests, their stories are told in a way that invites our respect for their courage and patient determination.  A particular focus of interest for me was the retrospective and detailed description of conservative Christian cultures that we normally see only from the outside.  The book describes in various accounts the ethos and culture of Iwerne camps, Vineyard churches and a university Christian Union.  These retrospective accounts are interesting and informative.  They are set out, not with polemical intent, but with a genuine desire to make sense of something that had, for a time, absorbed and fed our pilgrim travellers.  Eventually, many of these have been transcended but the parting of the ways is never described in a hostile manner.  To put it another way, the reader is invited to visit several Christian cultures which provided, for a time, spiritual sustenance for the writers before being found to be thin gruel.  There is, in the entire book, a notable gentleness and freedom from any rancour towards those who differ from the writers.  At the same time there is a recognition that the older teachings now no longer meet spiritual needs.  The beliefs of others, while not now shared, can still be treated with respect even admiration.  Perhaps this respectful approach to difference is needed today in the Church as never before.

One of the issues faced by every ‘apostate’ is that of enforced social upheaval.  I was moved by the account of the young Janet Fife (contributor to this blog) being utterly alone on the day of her confirmation.  The normal social affirmation of parents and godparents was, for her, completely absent.  The path of a Christian who wishes to forge their own way towards their reality can be painfully lonely.  It takes a particular kind of stamina to place one’s sense of authenticity and truth ahead of the need to fit in and belong to family or tribe. One of the things I take from the book is an enormous respect for the bravery of these spiritual ‘apostates’, even though the solutions they choose do not necessarily conform to anything I personally would want to commend.  In writing this, I am reminded of the old liberal principle which states something along the lines of: ‘I disagree with you profoundly, but I defend to the last your right to express your opinion.’

The choice of the word apostasy in the title is deliberate and it forces us to consider how we (and the ten story tellers in the book) cope with access to new challenging information that is not catered for in an existing faith paradigm from the past. The typical story told by several of the contributor authors is the way that access to books and education had affected them profoundly.  It opened their minds to the possibility of change and a way out of the narrow sectarian views which had dominated their thinking, sometimes over decades.  Several of our authors discovered a new breadth in their spiritual outlook through access to post-graduate university studies.  Accessing a privileged academic route is, of course, one path out of narrow perspectives, but sadly, such study is available to only a tiny minority.  It is, in fact, hard to imagine any research student in theology (or any subject) not being decisively changed by seminars, exchange of academic papers and attendance at learned specialised conferences.  This academic way of doing theology, one which constantly asks questions and lives with uncertainty, is, sadly becoming vanishingly uncommon in today’s Church.  If ever the culture of free inquiry, which is embedded into the university research process, is outlawed from the wider Church, journeys of the kind and recorded in some of the stories in this book will be impossible.  Some of the journeys of creative discovery as recorded in this volume would never have been able to start, let alone arrive successfully at a new destination.

The reader who can identify with the stories of ‘apostasy’ told by those who travelled the path of hard and demanding study, will know that one of the features of this approach to faith is the sheer untidiness, even messiness, that they find in ‘liberal’ statements of belief.  Many Christians are unwilling to exchange the certainties of conservative teaching for the ‘uncertainty’ path where questions are not always answered.  Clinching an argument by a neat quote from scripture would be an approach that most of our authors, recalling their journeys through change, would reject.   Freedom of thought for them is a highly valued commodity.  These two approaches to faith, loosely described as conservative and liberal, account for the chasm that we find today among Christians.    Some are content with the place of settled unchanging opinions where difficult problems are brushed aside.  Others are prepared for the challenges of ambiguity and uncertainty, recognising that the world of questioning and challenging assumptions is rarely tidy.    We do not, this side of the grave, arrive at the kind of secure safety that many people think is claimed by the Christian faith.  The perspective of Percy and Foster’s book is that the Church and its members should always be on a journey of learning.  The feature of this kind of journey is one that requires the humility to say that it will never have all the answers to human problems.  Statements which emerge from popular Christian teaching, which begin with the words ‘the Bible is clear’, are frankly dishonest and this dishonesty is damaging to the point of being destructive.  The destination that our ten contributors have found is one, not described as presenting certainty, but as a place of personal integrity and honesty.  That does not make the individual journeys described as necessarily right for anyone else.  What is right for us as the readers of the book is that we should consider the place of spiritual pilgrimage and change in our Christian calling.  This book Faiths Lost and Found gives us some idea of what each of our personal journeys might look like.

Faiths Lost and Found Understanding Apostasy is published by DLT 2023 ISBN 978-1-915412-32-4 £16.99 

I cannot be the only retired clergyman who listens to one sermon while mentally writing the outline of a quite different one.  Last Sunday the cathedral I attend commemorated All Saints, and the preacher shared with us some well-chosen insights from the gospel reading of Matthew’s Beatitudes.  Meanwhile, I was pondering the other quite different reading set for the day, a passage from Revelation 7.  In this reading we hear of a vision of heavenly worship and the involvement of a ‘great multitude which no one could count’.  A link with the All Saints festival is established through the fact that the elder, interpreting the scene, declares that this huge throng of people are those who have passed through trials of persecution, ‘the great ordeal’ as it is described.  These martyrs have now reached the place of their reward.    They now enjoy the bliss of being in the presence of God for ever.

As I thought about this vision, it struck me that there was something more going on in this passage than a New Testament attempt to evoke the reality of heaven.  It is probably not a useful exercise to ask how the author ‘saw’ something so obviously beyond human conceptualisation.  The passage as we have it is evocative of the visionary language of Ezekiel and Isaiah.  Even though the visionary language may be borrowed, there is still a strong sense of the author communicating his own sense of the glory and wonder of the divine presence and inviting the reader to share his experience.  We are drawn from the mundane to consider the eternity of God, before whose presence we all hope one day to enjoy being.

The striking series of words which captured my imagination in the vision were these.  ‘As I looked, there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages….they worship him day and night within his temple.’  Apart from appreciating this passage as one trying to communicate the reality of God’s presence, I found myself struck by the universality communicated in the vision.  The vision symbolically saw the entirety of humankind brought together.  Christian saints were to be found in every nation and tribe and language, not just the groups we belong to or approve of. 

Those of us who went to Sunday School in the 50s and 60s probably sang the chorus, ‘Jesus died for all the children….. red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight’. No doubt this hymn has gone firmly out of fashion, along with many other choruses from that period.  Nevertheless, it was trying to teach children the lesson that Christian discipleship belongs potentially to humanity in its entirety.  The modern word to capture this insight is inclusivity.  If there were to be a modern version of the vision of John, he might have said something along these lines.  I saw a great throng from every class, colour, sexual minority, and ethic/religious group.  People were caught up in the worship of God on the throne because of their membership of humanity and through their attempts to feel after God and find him.

At a time when the tendency among many Christian people is to withdraw off into their small like-minded groups which are described as ‘orthodox’ or pure, I am suggesting that these few verses from Revelation give us a different picture.  Inclusive Christians and Inclusive Evangelicals are far closer to the spirit of the author of Revelation who ‘saw’ something far more glorious than our current narrow tribalisms.  This is doing so much to destroy the Church with all the power of hate and division.

A further point from the Revelation vision is that it was beyond the scope of human measuring capability to count those worshipping God.  This detail implies that God is simply not interested in counting numbers or setting up boundaries between the saved and the unsaved.  Such boundaries seem to serve the purpose of boosting the insecure and convincing them that they have some kind of prestige in commanding the greatest numbers.

In recent weeks we have been made horribly aware of one of the major divisions among the human tribes that exist in our world. The present conflict in Gaza began as a hideous outburst of racial and tribal hatred.  This had been nurtured to its present explosive state by decades of injustice and division. If one had thought that a situation of uneasy peace between Jew and Arab in any way existed over the past decades, the sheer brutality of the past days has shown how little progress has been made in the task of reconciliation. Similar festering hatreds continue to exist in countries such as India and the United States. The word tribe refers to many types of difference that exist between groups of human beings. The problem with any type of tribal behaviour is that people will always cling to their group as  a way of feeling safe in the face of the unknown and feared.

The recent divisions within the Church over the issue of same-sex marriage have erupted recently with extraordinary ferocity. We are now in the crazy situation of being expected to define our loyalties in the Church according to what we think about same-sex relationships.  While there have, in the past, always been differences within the Church of England in terms of belief and practice, there has never before been a single issue which threatens to sunder the Church apart. Most of us thought that this issue would never become a first order matter so that Christians would feel it necessary to shatter centuries of common life simply to go off to belong to a completely independent entity.  Is it not a poor basis for schism to found a new entity which is based on the intensity of one tribe’s intense homophobia?

Returning to the book of Revelation, it would seem that the writer had a powerful vision of how human beings, normally divided through race, tribe, language and political/sexual identity, somehow could be joined up together to form a huge united group.  They fulfilled this calling to be united in and dedicated to the everlasting worship of God. Some might question whether a state of everlasting worship is something they want to be involved with.  We might find it hard to imagine how an endless contemplation of the divine would be something to aspire to.  In answer to this conundrum, we can mention the words of Augustine who no doubt also struggled with the limit of human imagination and longing, ‘Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you’. 

The Revelation passage is a strong indicator that all the things that divide us in our membership of humanity are of limited significance when set alongside the dazzling reality of God’s presence. If that is true on the far side of the grave, then we need here to renounce our tendency to hunker down behind our variety of tribal loyalties.  We should be learning to see that all the differences that we cultivate in life to make us feel superior to others are of no lasting importance or value.  The revelation that came to John was of a sea of humanity all united in the single activity of worshipping God, and this showed him clearly how humanity can be one.  To do justice to this powerful transcendent vision, we need to be able, at the very least, to resist the temptation to look at people who are not like us and think of them as somehow inferior.   Above all, we must be able to renounce the common phobias inside us that we have about other people. There is something pretty shameful about looking down on someone. Of all the sins of which we are guilty, possibly the most prevalent is this act of shunning another for being different from us. It is probably necessary to be alert to the possible malevolence of other people which may affect our human flourishing but there is never room for pushing another away on the grounds that they are different from us.

The vision of Revelation and the sight of a vast multitude worshipping God has entered into the Christian imagination in many ways.  What we have begun to glimpse in this piece is that God’s welcome to ‘every tribe and nation’ speaks of a hugely and overwhelming inclusivity.  This is something we seem to be so bad at realising in our church life.  There is, in God’s kingdom, no room for phobia, prejudice or shutting out of any kind.  All are called to the worship of God and, as far as possible our acceptance and service of those human beings we encounter in our daily life.

by Susan Hunt (aka K-Anonymous)

For those of you who have been following the story of ‘Kenneth’, an individual caught up in the tentacles of the justice system of the Church of England, this is a sixth instalment of what we might call the Kenneth Saga. The reason for there being this sixth episode is that, while very little for Kenneth has changed, we need to record how the system for establishing justice in church disciplinary cases is deeply flawed and does not serve the cause of truth or integrity.  It seems there can be no appeal against the assumption of guilt for an innocent man.  Thus, justice for Kenneth cannot be delivered in this case nor is it ever likely to be.

If there had ever been a proper system for establishing guilt, or not, in a case like Kenneth’s or a properly independent person or organisation to appeal to, then we could have taken our case there in the search for justice.  As one of the previous blogs has pointed out, an assumption of guilt seems to be a principle of C/E justice that is in operation in cases like this. The arrival of Professor Alexis Jay and her willingness to take an interest in the detail of Kenneth’s case has, however, given me a measure of hope. I was privileged to have been interviewed by her and have some hope for future cases, even if her recommendations may be too late for Kenneth to experience any personal vindication.

Posting this blog is so that the truth can be known. Kenneth has suffered a great deal from carrying the burden of false accusation, but he is keen for his story to be widely circulated.  It mirrors the story of other people in a similar situation within the C/ E.

In earlier blog posts we set out the outline of the gross injustice that has taken place in one of our prestigious cathedrals. The core group that was set up to examine the case included the Canon Pastor (CP), the safeguarding officer for the cathedral. Its proceedings were also followed by the Dean.  Although the latter was not a core group member, he attended some of the meetings and his contributions were minuted. In recent months the whole process has come to involve the diocesan bishop and the registrar.  All took the side of the CP even though she displayed bias and showed a marked unwillingness to uncover the facts of the case.  If there had been a measure of impartiality and a readiness to question assumptions, this might have delivered justice for Kenneth. 

Background to the Clergy Discipline Measure

For the purpose of understanding this blog post I need to refer you to the importance of the choral register. This is a significant legal document and central to this case. The details of this can be found in the previous blog about Kenneth: https://survivingchurch.org/2023/02/17/innocent-until-proved-guilty-except-in-the-church-of-england/

The information in the register contains the record of three dates when offences could theoretically have taken place.  The boy was unable to recall precise dates for the alleged offences but only a time span of several months.  The core group never established which dates were possible occasions for Kenneth and the boy to have been in the cathedral at the same time. The choir register, by revealing which Sundays the boy was present, should then have been compared with Kenneth’s documented trips overseas. In September 2020, Kenneth made a request to the CP for that information to be revealed but she refused. There was then an exchange of emails on the subject where she took sole responsibility for this refusal.

Another facet of the story was the evidence of friendly exchanges between the boy complainant, his mother and the CP on facebook.  This evidence of a conflict of interest was never acknowledged in the minutes of the Core Group.  As I understand it, the core group personnel should never include individuals who have personal links with one or other of the parties in an abuse case.

In October 2020 I wrote on Kenneth’s behalf a formal complaint to the Dean and Chapter about both these matters. The response from the Dean was to say he was ‘sorry’ that Kenneth and I felt disappointed in his CP. Over the intervening years there have been further complaints about both of these issues but without any response.  Without any documented investigation or evidence, Kenneth is still designated as a ‘high risk’ sexual predator.

In early April 2023 I filed a CDM against the CP. The allegations that I wanted considered mainly centred around: a) conflict of interest caused by the friendship with the boy complainant and b) the withholding of evidence (the choir register). To substantiate these allegations further, I presented eleven pieces of evidence which were detailed documents.  Many of them came from Kenneth’s Subject Access Request information.

The Canon Pastor denied everything.

1. The CP claimed that she had no special pastoral care for the boy complainant, as that was provided by another safeguarding officer (although that had never been said before). YET! One of the evidences were two forms with the minutes of a core group meeting.  Here it was stated that no-one (including the CP) had any personal knowledge of the complainant or respondent. This CP had known both well for eight years as had the core group member providing pastoral care.

•  The CP claimed that it was not she who had refused the information from the register but a previous Canon Precentor who had since left the Cathedral. The matter, she said, had been referred to the Dean’s Leadership Team.  They concurred with the advice not to give Kenneth the information in the register. None of this had ever been said before, not even in October 2020 when the complaint about the CP’s refusal to give access to the register was sent to the Dean himself.  The only corroborating evidence to back up these claims was the verbal affirmation of the Dean and Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser.  Both backed the CP even in the absence of any recorded factual information of any sort.  No information was obtained from the departed Canon Precentor. 

The Judgement of the Bishop

Earlier this year, the Bishop met with Kenneth, my husband and myself for more than two hours to discuss the case. The lack of documented evidence on the part of the CP contrasted strongly with the detailed documentary evidence I provided which he saw for himself.

This meeting gave Kenneth great hope that at last someone with authority in the diocese was listening and was sympathetic to his situation.  Finally, there was hope for justice. Alas, this hope was short lived. Some time afterwards the Bishop met with the CP and the Dean, when he agreed to support them.  Nevertheless, in his judgement letter to us, he recognised the lack of documented evidence from either of them. In the same letter the Bishop made five glaring errors of fact and chronology.  This was in spite of that they were clearly set out in the evidence that I presented as part of the CDM submission.

We appealed to the President of Tribunals and the case was dealt with by a Chancellor.  She upheld the Bishop’s decision despite his serious mistakes. However, the Chancellor herself had made six questionable statements.  She seemed to have relied on the report of the Diocesan Registrar who had herself made eleven inaccurate statements.  Qne of these was that twice she referred to Kenneth as being a ‘choir member’ which he was not! – a misleading statement implying Kenneth had access to the choristers.

During the time the CDM was being considered and investigated, it was announced that the CP was being promoted to a senior post in another diocese.  The post included the responsibility of being in charge of Safeguarding!!  It required the cooperation and manoeuvring of two bishops to manage this appointment.  I can be forgiven for feeling cynical about the level of respect for safeguarding among our bishops. To appoint a senior member of staff to a post of importance, while a safeguarding accusation is still pending, suggests a cynical approach to the whole matter. It is scandalous the way this Diocese has acted, and its safeguarding measures are shown as not fit for purpose. Also, the shoddy way in which the CDM was handled reflects the same attitude as shown in the way that the choral register matter was responded to.

There never has been any reason given for the refusal to give access to the register. Both the Diocesan Registrar and Chancellor could see no reason why there should be this refusal. The only conclusion is that there were dates when the boy and Kenneth were not together. This would make the allegations by the boy impossible (who often changed his story and yet was always ‘believed’). The evidence from the register could have proved decisive one way or the other in the case but no one at the cathedral showed interest in exposing the vital piece of potential evidence. The whole allegation has been based on over three years of questionable and perverse manipulation of the truth,  If there had been an independent organisation using methods similar to the ones being used currently by Professor Jay, the truth would have been exposed in October 2020

There are further recent injustices to Kenneth

At the meeting we had with the Bishop, he told us that bishops cannot intervene with core groups. In his letter of judgement, he said that when the CDM was concluded, he would write to the Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser expressing his hope that a resolution might be found. He corresponded with us and said that he did write to her.  I have heard nothing further since October 2^nd when he told us he was waiting for her to contact him. The DSA notoriously shows no respect for those in authority who might have had legitimate interest in such a case.  The police, LADO, independent investigator, solicitor have all been involved but have not found anything to justify her concern.  She seems just to want to maintain her position, held since May 2021, that ‘the case is closed’. Presumably there is now no hope of any resolution while she remains in post.

The current impasse still leaves Kenneth with the restrictions imposed on him in April 2022 when he returned to the Cathedral. These include not having his liturgical roles restored and having to ask permission to go to any other church in the UK.

By contrast, a year ago, there joined the cathedral congregation an academic clergyman who had admitted to inappropriate sexual behaviour with young men for many years in a notorious abuse case.  This man says prayers, reads and preaches in another church in this diocese without any agreement in place. It would seem that the difference in the freedom between him and Kenneth is because he has admitted to crimes, while Kenneth has not. C/E safeguarding does not have any way of resolving a case when the accused refuses to admit to sins which he knows he has not committed!

Kenneth is much to be respected for his refusal to sign an untrue document just to end his situation; this has taken courage and I am proud to be his friend.

Finally, justice for Kenneth will be problematic in the future because of a constant change of staff in this Diocese. In three years, seven senior clergy and core group members have left. There are still three senior posts not permanently filled. That has left a gap in the corporate memory of Kenneth’s case.  New people will only be able to understand the case from the surviving members.  Can they be relied upon to remember only the truth?  From the history of the case, we cannot be sure that what new members will be told will be even approximate to the truth. 

It is like a perpetuum mobile, round and round and on and on with no end.