by Hatty Calbus
In my pieces about the influence of HTB, I looked at its charity, the Revitalise Trust, and the questionability of some of its trustees, then at the safeguarding danger of following the megachurch model. The two issues come together in another member of the leadership body, its Patron Richard Chartres, Bishop of London from 1995 to 2017, who used to attend HTB’s Focus annual summer holiday, with his loud shirts a humorous tradition. For teenagers and vulnerable adults, Chartres’ approach to safeguarding could be much less amusing.
Just before he retired from the biggest diocese in the country in 2017, he complained about the frustrations Church bureaucracy had caused him. https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Bishop-of-London-speaks-of-career-frustrations-ahead-of-retirement This dislike of bureaucracy may partly explain his lack of oversight of Martin Sargeant, whom he appointed as Head of Operations, and who in December 2022 was jailed for five years for defrauding the diocese of £5.2 million over a decade. It was unclear how much of that money had been donated by parishioners. An investigation in 2023 found that Sargeant was seen by other staff to be acting “with the authority of the Bishop.”
Chartres’ dislike of bureaucracy definitely extended to safeguarding procedures for vulnerable adults. For several years the diocesan website included his opinion that the law protecting adults judged to be at risk was “the elaboration of defensive bureaucracy based on a culture of suspicion” and he put “vulnerable adults” in political-correctness-gone-mad quotation marks [I have a printout of the webpage.]. This critique was there at least as late as October 2012. There had been a legal requirement since the 2006 Vulnerable Groups Act to have a policy and procedures for vulnerable adults as well as children. London was the last diocese in the country, Anglican or Catholic, to comply, and by some time, not meeting the requirement till the end of 2012. In 2011, he claimed it was up to individual churches if they wanted to apply the safeguards required by law [in a letter]. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2013/27-september/comment/opinion/the-hidden-scandal-of-adult-abuse
The lack of oversight of Martin Sargeant and dismissal of the need for care to be taken with vulnerable adults came together terribly when a suicide attempt by Fr Alan Griffin was ignored and Sargeant also decided he had used underage rent boys. Fr Griffin converted to Roman Catholicism and these allegations were passed on to the Diocese of Westminster. He killed himself. The coroner, Mary Hassell, reported that the allegations were “supported by no complainant, no witness and no accuser.” She commented on “the breadth of the systemic and individual failings.” https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/23-july/news/uk/church-s-safeguarding-blunders-could-cause-more-deaths-coroner-warns A review in 2022 noted,“It is abundantly clear that [Sargeant] was allowed to function with little accountability or supervision during the tenure of the former Bishop.” It also suggested that he “chose to leave his post when the new Bishop came into post, partly because of her insistence on greater accountability.” According to the Church Times, “The report found that there was insufficient understanding of appropriate practice when it came to handling safeguarding allegations.”
The case of church youth worker and ordinand Timothy Storey in 2016 showed Chartres’ attitude to safeguarding children and teenagers was no better. This was a shocking case, all the more so because rather than historical abuse, it involved a recent predator operating for years when strict child safeguarding should have been assumed, but where there was, in Judge Philip Katz’s words, “wholesale failure.”
Storey was convicted in 2014 of grooming hundreds of children on Facebook, sexual assault, inciting children to engage in sexual activity and making indecent images of children, and jailed for three years. In 2016 he was convicted on three counts of rape and jailed for fifteen years. From 2002-2008, he had not only been able to work as a youth pastor at St Michael’s, Belgravia, but trained other youth pastors in child safeguarding and was put forward for ordination. Complaints only seem to have been recorded in 2008 and 2009, despite how prolific his abuse was in the youth group and at church camps.
When two of Storey’s teenage victims reported their rapes to Chartres and Director of Ordinands Jeremy Crossley, Storey was withdrawn from ordination training, but the police were not told, despite “the policy of the Church to inform statutory authorities … that abuse has been alleged, if there is a risk that others may continue to be at risk of abuse and to make sure that past abuse is properly dealt with” (Church of England website). No help was given to the victims, though Chartres told one of them who had written to him that he would pray for her “at the end of the week.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3160116/Bishop-London-s-apology-joke-says-alleged-rape-victim-Oxford-youth-pastor.html But then Storey had been personally sponsored in his application for ordination by Chartres. Judge Katz said his protestations of innocence reeked of “false religiosity,” yet this false religiosity was apparently invisible to one of the most senior churchmen in the country. And the Diocese of London was actually ‘slated’ (the Church Times’ word) by Katz for lying. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/22-april/news/uk/judge-slates-london-diocese-over-storey-case Katz accused the diocese of a “shameful misrepresentation of the truth” when at the end of the trial, a spokesman claimed they had acted appropriately at all times, and implied the police were at fault for not properly pursuing the matter earlier. Katz said the police had “investigated diligently and sensitively — something the diocese had been incapable of.” https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Judge-s-fury-at-Diocese-of-London-after-rape-sentencing
Crossley and Hugh Valentine, who was Bishops’ Adviser in Child Protection and Safeguarding, both protected the abuser. When one of the victims told Crossley about her rape, he said the Church must consider Storey’s “welfare and needs.” https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2016/26-february/news/uk/diocese-admits-safeguarding-failure-over-rapist-ordinand The 2020 IICSA report says Storey was permitted to continue working with children, as he expressed remorse and Crossley assessed him as “basically a good man who could be an effective priest.” Neither was disciplined and Crossley has remained a prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral. It could be inferred that they had acted as helpful fall guys for Chartres, who it might be reasonable to think should have appeared at the trial himself, given his central role. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4238802/Diocese-fire-child-sex-abuse-cover-up.html.
After the trial, the diocese claimed safeguarding had been much better since 2010, yet, to repeat, Chartres’ criticism of safeguarding procedures was still on the website late in 2012 and there was no policy and procedure for vulnerable adults till the end of 2012, so the law was still being broken. And St Michael’s continued to have nothing on its website about safeguarding: no policy, no contact details. When I questioned this, the woman I spoke to there was “shocked and horrified” and was going to pass it straight on. Eighteen months later there was still nothing. It took a couple more years.
None of this puts Justin Welby in a good light either. Large question marks have been placed by John Smyth’s victims and Channel 4 over how much he knew about his abuse, but there should be none over what he knew about Chartres, as Storey’s trials were reported in the press. Yet Welby said nothing. When he told the IICSA inquiry in 2018 that clergy were given training that made it “quite clear” that if a safeguarding issue were not reported it was a disciplinary matter, he omitted to say how recently this had failed to happen in London. Three months after Storey’s second sentencing, Chartres was on the stage at HTB’s 2016 summer holiday being extravagantly feted. Welby, there on the stage with him, described him as “quite simply one of the best, if not the best, bishop that we’ve had in the Church of England since the Reformation.” https://m.youtube.com/watch?sns=em&v=pA9j17re5CE (2 mins 42). This is supposed to square with a Church of England spokesperson’s statement after Smyth’s death in 2018 that “Safeguarding has always been an absolute priority of [Welby’s] ministry.” And then his reported choice to succeed Chartres, fitting his businessification of the Church, was Paula Vennells, whose leadership of the Post Office, similarly to Chartres with Martin Sargeant, featured suicides.
Rather than resigning in disgrace, Richard Chartres retired in 2017 accepting outpourings of praise and the grandeur of a peerage, becoming the Right Reverend and Right Honourable the Lord Chartres GCVO – Baron Chartres, of Wilton in the County of Wiltshire. And none of the above was deemed serious enough to disqualify him from being appointed Patron of Revitalise, the charity to a significant degree determining the Church’s direction. To give him such a prominent role shows a continuing disregard for victims. For all the periodic bouts of handwringing and pious statements, how is anyone to believe that those with most power in the Church of England really care if lives are destroyed by abuse?
Hatty,
Very helpful reminder of recent ‘history’.
A key thing to remember is that most victims & survivors of historic abuse believe that the Church’s behaviour, in this area, is actually worse now in 2024 (post AC abolishing ISB and doing precisely nothing to replace Jasvinder over the next 13 months) than it ever has been.
We fully accept that improvements have been made in other safeguarding areas but the entire approach of the Response Group appears to be to avoid and delay ALL recommendations of Jay & Wilkinson re historic cases at any cost.
This is not in the least surprising since the Response Group is dominated by the very people whose spectacular failings were so exposed by Sarah Wilkinson in particular, despite the fact that Sarah’s ToR were drafted so tightly in an attempt to minimise the damage she could do.
Indeed so, Simon.
There is one notable omission among the names mentioned in the article. Let’s not forget the key role played by Archdeacon Luke Miller in the Martin Sargeant scandal’s impact on the late Fr Griffin. Still in post, still unsanctioned, still a member of the Archbishops’ Council.
The level of incompetence at senior level would seem astonishing to those unfamiliar with the Church of England. Sadly for many of us, we are all too used to it.
The £5m fraud struck me at the time, because it intersected with my experience with the world of finance and the strange interface with human error and mischief. The diocese was his personal fiefdom. He could do what he liked. Strict financial controls, mandated in many parts of the business world, for example, are pointless if they can simply be overridden by an individual for whom there were no consequences. Sargeant took the fall, but it was on the bishop’s watch.
Businesses have shareholders, and particularly in a publicly listed company with demanding investors, incompetent executives get weeded out quickly. Not so with the Church. There’s pretend accountability with Synod, but we all see how ineffectual this is.
Layer onto this large amounts of institutional narcissism, which produces a unique quality of being indifference to its own mistakes. They basically don’t care if they’re wrong. They think they’re great, they are great. We can see this easily with individuals. Truth/fiction often has no distinction for them. If they’ve said it, it’s right.
When things go wrong, it’s often catastrophic, particularly in this example for Fr Griffin. But the size of the fraud was proportionate with the size of the institutional belligerence.
The HTB axis is now a vast one. The larger its size, wealth and consequent influence, the more it seems to descend further into the same narcissistic mistakes. The pilavachi scandal they seem to be pretending hasn’t happened, and certainly requires no repentant response. But now we hear that Gumbel is backing Russell Brand: surely another prematurely poor judgment. Instead of reading the room, all the cries of sufferers are simply muted out.
The problem with not being able to listen, is that the blunders will just keep on coming.
Yes, Steve, does the Church use an-‘Artificial Intelligence’-of processes and committees on bullying-harassment-abuse? But the AI is really ‘Absence of any Intelligence’ because no amount of formulae or metrics matter if they just conceal various abuses. The £5.2 million missing story caught my eye when it came out, and the story relayed above is shocking. Is Anglicanism defiled by kangaroo court justice, where the rules of evidence are inverted? Are unmissable trails pointing to various abuses covered up, while gossip can see innocent people framed? Was £5.2 million the real figure or in cases like this, or does a large amount of corporate theft remain undetectable in a final and precise way?
In a word, yes.
I’m currently rereading DM Greenwoods satirical crime novels about the C of E. They were written in the 1990s but much of the satire is still spot on. She takes her scalpel especially to the senior clergy. I keep recognising the characters as people I’ve known or worked with.
£5.2 million would be would be what could be proved as attributable to Sargeant’s actions. Having a lax control environment, such as the ability to override anything with a bombastic*/charismatic/overbearing personality (*delete as appropriate) in the most significant diocese in the country, suggests inappropriate use of funds on a much larger/wider scale across the Communion. It was poor parishes losing out.
Nothing would surprise me about the Church of England. Except honesty and transparency.
I wouldn’t have had Chartres down as much of an evangelical, but there he is getting feted on the grand stage of Focus HTB.
I’ve noted 2 occasions where clergy pensioners have been paid late. This is gross incompetence, and don’t blame the payroll clerk. Managing cash flow, is finance 101.
It’s also possible that they are running out of cash, which is a level of concern a whole lot higher.
The problem for our Archbishops (or Bishops) is how items can easily end up in Private Eye, and then The Spectator magazine or a BBC TV documentary.
Whatever anyone else cares to say or think, I feel the buck must stop with our Anglican Archbishops. Crass failure to protect adults or children reaps problems.
The Irish Anglican Church has massive problems being hidden in Down and Dromore Diocese. Two out of five students in my 2015-2016 year group felt bullied and harassed.
Both left the Diocese after being commissioned following a 2 year training programme. A professor and schoolmistress had good reason to feel defiled. Both left the local Diocese.
An ex-student (from another year) is in a film by Olive Tree Media posted 30 Jan 2022: ‘Karl Faase interviews Joe Turner for Jesus the Game Changer Season 2’.
But the former student has now vanished into thin air. And was Saint Brendan’s parish Facebook site also suddenly deleted without explanation?
What about a barrister or judge led inquiry into multiple problems in Down and Dromore Diocese? The Canon W G Neely abuse cover up is yet another catastrophe.
Will it take child abuse, rape, intern abuse, suicide or other horrors, before Archbishop John McDowell finally wakes up to the Down and Dromore Diocese abuse horrors?
Archbishop John McDowell, why no independent inquiry? Is it cowardice and a fear of what is going to be found, if a barrister or judge examines ill-treatment on an epic scale?
That is tragic and scandalous. I’m so sorry.
‘Letters to a Broken Church’ was a great comfort. Countless adults are ill-treated within Anglicanism, and then maybe think they are just victims of random injustice: an odd throw of the dice or a strange spin on the roulette wheel.
It seems a safe assumption that where a particular body, be it the PO, the CofE or any other organisation is both its own police, judge, jury and executioner, then the risk of that privilege being grossly abused is increasingly higher. You may remember ‘crown Immunity’, or something similar, which led to a number of unsafe hospital scandals, and subsequently the NHS losing that privilege?
Add to that the other problem which Hattie has mentioned – our human adulation for ‘larger than life’ personalities – and the personality cults which revolve around them, deterring critical appraisal, and concern over their behaviour, and we have all the ingredients for a very messy scandal or several. The church dares to condemn the Freemasons for secrecy and corruption, claiming to have the power to transform society while doing exactly the same – didn’t someone once mention planks and motes?
The great irony, remembering the Jimmy Owens musical, “If My People”, is that the organised charismatic movement back in the mists of time and its innocent youth , put a very great emphasis on Christian integrity, humility and honesty. Now, it seems, in their own vested self interest, they’re no different to anybody else – building an empire of words, not of deeds ……. They used to talk a lot about God’s coming judgement on our corrupt society, too. Do they still?
Ichabod. Mene, mene, tekel parsa……….
Yes! ‘Tertius’ in Romans 16 has his name spread over space and time: across the globe and in 20 centuries. But earlier in the chapter, before mentioning his own name, Tertius records the following words of Paul: ‘By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people.’ Corrupt and self-serving deceivers are not a new problem in the Church.
Curious, too, how Church inquiry reports can be utterly vast documents, yet the true tale could be captured by half a paragraph done by a skilled tabloid editor. The official Fletcher report (and Sheffield exorcism report) read as quite banal, yet the central and highly emotive crux is papered over (or wrapped in cotton wool) in each case.
Lawyers have an even greater gift for precise word use than tabloid editors. One of the greatest paradoxes, possibly, is how our Bishops and Archbishops do not involve senior lawyers far more deeply in public inquiries. The answer post-Harold Shipman was a massive reform of the coroner service.
Centralised, objective, written death reporting, and the removal of the friendly old UK system where a local solicitor sometimes did the death reporting as an extra add on. The case for independent experts covering adult and child ill-treatment allegations is overwhelmingly established.
Actually, there is another issue, which Hattie raised by mentioning Mike Palivatchi, HTB and Richard Chartres amongst others ,which has occurred to me.
Someone on Thinking Anglicans was concerned that a local offshoot of HTB were using a course book which Palivatchi had co-written and expressing doubts as to whether they should do continue to do so.
Now, this brings up the issue of ‘cancel culture’. One example was the vandal who attacked a statue at Broadcasting House, because it employs Gill’s Sans Serif lettering – and Gill, we now know, abused his daughter. Similarly, Richard Wagner’s wonderful music is tainted in some minds because of its abuse by the Nazis – similarly with the swatika symbol. We probably all know of similar examples.
So does a serious fall from grace like Palivatchi’s or George Carey’s invalidate all the good they did with their lives? I read several of Carey’s books and benefitted from them; doubtless other people will say the same about Palivatchi. Hymn writers from the 17th and 18th century, whose works are still used and appreciated, often had links with slavery, or other then acceptable things which we detest.
Modern society is, to say the least, cruelly unforgiving in its attitudes towards what are seen as ‘moral failures’ of previous generations. Is the church able to escape this and take a more balanced view, or are we more likely (ie with the removal of monuments etc) to simply ape the world’s trends? What do you think?
What ‘serious fall from grace’ of George Carey’s are you referring to? If his safeguarding failure re Peter Ball – made when there was widespread ignorance about sexual abuse – I don’t think that equates at all with the abuse allegedly perpetrated by Pilavachi, or perpetrators like Gill.
As for Pilavachi’s course material, how would a person bullied or abused by him (allegedly) feel when handed the book and expected to use it? Do you think they would be able to continue with the course, and find it a constructive experience?
Yes, indeed, should there always be a distinction between-“a dropped catch”- as opposed to a careless or intentional drinking session in the cricket pavilion when a player is meant to be fielding in a match for their team? Is it ‘wilful vs non-wilful sin’? “Intent” possibly comes into play a lot when we look at Anglican abuse cover ups…..
Thanks, Janet
I was thinking of the series of issues which led to Mr Welby revoking his PTO – which did culminate with the Ball case, but there were other, lesser issues with Rowan Williams – speaking here from memory. He came to mind as another well respected cleric who got mired in troubles – and whose writings I still respect.
Your point about P’s victims is really what the original commentator was raising, only he wasn’t quite so forthright in saying it. And this is where I feel we’re somewhere between the Scilla and the Charybidis. As Steve Lewis points out below, his influence was – and presumably still is – widespread. Other people, such as Maurice Cuerello, and Kenneth Copeland come into the same category. (OK – I personally don’t like either of them, but I know people who do.)
Noone would now seriously consider using the Christian morality books written by the late Jimmy Saville, yet at the time they were quite well regarded. Some folks dislike’Amazing Grace’ and other Newton hymns, due to his slaving associations – so do we abandon singing them? Like the folks ‘under Milk Wood’, most of us are neither wholly bad or wholly good; Mr P must have said some good things in his books etc for HTB to still be happy using him. And this, very simply, is the nub of the issue. – I’m raising a rhetorical, but ultimately very practical question to see how others feel.
I’m not aware of any other issues which led to George Carey’s PTO being revoked.
Newton was a slave trader for a while, but repented and used his inside knowledge of the slave trade to become an effective campaigner against it. I’m not sure why that would deter anyone from singing his hymns – unless of course they were pro-slavery.
I agree of course that these are complex issues. None of us is without blame. All sorts of factors come into play when deciding each case. But I do think that victims, where there are any, ought to have a voice in deciding. This is especially true when an issue is still current, as with Pilavachi, Fletcher, etc, and when the Church has been complicit in a cover up.
There were, apparently, issues between him and Rowan Williams, which I can’t really comment on. The big one was the Ball case. Now to me, for a retired archbishop to have their PTO revoked, as also did John Sentamu, does seem a very serious issue. But that’s just how I think about it.
I know various left-of-centre people – very anti-slavery – for whom Newton’s trade as a slave captain is quite a stumbling block, and they’ve been vocally scathing about it to me. This is the whole problem of unforgiveness and past church or national history – some grudges can last a very long time, and not everybody believes the idea of repentance cancelling out our sins.
As for your final comment, I’m in total agreement. The Church’s behaviour is attrocious, and their mistreatment of victims is a scandal and an offence. I recall a female curate, a personal friend saying, after a particularly bad case of abuse, that she didn’t expect to get justice from either the PCC or the diocese. (It turned into another ‘promote and post’ solution.) And, with modern multi-media storage of information, it does become a very practical problem. How do we handle it?
Pilavachi was ubiquitous across the more Charismatic end of Christianity, either up front in meetings, or in the supply chain of church leaders emerging from his extensive programs. Whatever we think of him, it will be impossible to delete his presence for tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands.
This for me raises important questions about the material and methodology we us in church settings. If Pilavachi was happy manipulating people in the service of the gospel, which he publicly proclaimed that he was, should we be?
This is why I’m asking. Manipulation can be quite open in various ways – on display, that is, to people who stand outside the immediate circle, and it can easily become the lever for worse abuses within the ring.
The practical issue is that the material is still out there, on church and private bookshelves, or hidden in people’s memories, possibly not even linked with the originator, and able to resurface. Once an idea has entered the public consciousness, it is impossible to eradicate it.
And, assuming that the offender wasn’t wholly bad, what do we do about their other legacy material? Maybe my examples could have been better, but they were the only ones that came to mind!
I have plenty of books by people who have been discredited in one way or another, or no longer hold much sway with me. I try not to quote from them. I rarely throw a book out. Not so long ago I purchased a book from a discredited leader, or citing his teachings at any rate, because his former church had deleted all his online sermons from their website and, I gather, had tried to prevent access to his books. Reading it, it was possible to see the abuse in action, disguised as eccentricity.
I’m training myself to be less naive and more vigilant about the abusive techniques these men get up to.
Bill Hybels’s teaching had a profound influence on me 20 odd years ago, and I’ve had to look hard at my own approach to leadership and church growth, for example, having heard how he mistreated women behind the scenes. I no longer accept every premise of his undoubtedly gifted teaching like I used to. I’m careful with any principles he taught that I may hold onto.
On the one hand we aren’t Donatists. On the other; it’s becomes problematic when the continued use of a particular set of material/book etc benefits a perpetrator in some way.
There’s also a line between personal use and official use, which may convey with it a form of endorsement.
I’ve had a few days of inexpressible blessing. Be sure I was on my knees in thanks to God. But I’ve also stood alongside people, the same age or younger and, without any false humility, were better than me and dropped down dead or expired suffering from cancer, their families still broken years later.
I’ve also had almost unbearable suffering myself, tested beyond my endurance, despite what the glibly quoted text “says”. Others here have had worse. I therefore don’t trust a “sales speak” Christianity anymore.
People want to know what God will do for them. Young people in particular will commit themselves wholeheartedly to what appears to be a worthy cause. To exploit this with un-boundaried internship schemes is wrong. “Give a year to God” opportunities are often chances for unscrupulous men to get close, too close mentally and physically to young people, whom we really should have protected, but let’s face it, we often offload our children for a breather.
“Product-based” spiritual away weeks with persuasive speakers (most of whom know each other and pop up at each other’s gigs) where we get our annual fix and justify it by saying ‘But God did so much there’, need a reckoning. Yes there’s much good perhaps, but I don’t believe God can possibly be commoditised and packaged in this way. Would you be, if you were God? No, this is largely us doing it; doing exactly what we want. When it pales a bit, we drift away and try the next place down the road, where they’ve got a better experience.
Teaching which simply replicates what we know and are comfortable with, perpetuating the status quo, perhaps needs to be shelved? Ministry which ignores suffering, or even causes it cannot be honest, especially if those so harmed are placed at the back of the auditorium or kicked outside.
I agree. Thanks for this excellent description of that used-car-salesman type of Christianity.
We need a deep faith and collaboration with all of humanity to face what’s coming towards us with climate change
I used to know someone, a professional evangelist for Scripture Union, who had been a sewing machine salesman before that. He said the two jobs were very similar, as both needed the absolute certainty that your product was the best on the market if you were to succeed.
The problem comes when we transfer the methods of the secular market into the world of faith!
A friend once told me: ‘you’ll not be any good at sales, as you’re not a very good liar’. But of course we all buy stuff we want/need, and someone who can genuinely facilitate this process, will do well at “sales”. For me, John Davies is right about the need to believe what we’re promoting is the best. I’ve worked in sales (although it was not called this).
The problem for me became when I started having doubts about the process I was “selling” in a church setting. When you begin to see people you care about getting harmed, or have suffered first hand by some clumsy methodologies of ministry, the cognitive dissonance is just too strong. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe the gospel wholeheartedly, but now I challenge what we were doing in the HTB/ised, Pilavachi-ed world.
Good to hear from you #churchtoo, and I believe you’re right about this massively important subject, which could take up several whole blogs of space. On the one hand it’s dismissed because “we have the right to do whatever we like with God’s world which He gave us to enjoy”, or on the other hand “we are driving our multiple electric cars to fill up our re-use cereal containers at Waitrose, do we’re doing all we need to do.” Good luck with getting much more traction from church people on this. They simply switch off.
Thank you, Steve. Good to chat with you again.
My friend was actually a very good ‘salesman’ for the faith, who helped me a lot when we worked on a mid-week children’s club. Its taken me a very long time to reach the same level of assurance and trust that he had – but that’s a different story.
I’ve said before, and will say it again – more loudly – I value the chances I have, here and on TA, to chat with people from other points of view and backgrounds – it widens my understanding and can only be beneficial.
There’s a very good new piece on ViaMedia today, from a black vicar. He’s descended from plantation slaves, and he’s really taking the CEEC to task over words and attitudes he finds within their ‘third province’ declaration. What grabbed my attention was that the issues he raises would simply never have occured to me – nor, I suspect, to the CEEC!
As Father Brown famously said, it isn’t enough to read YOUR Bible. You have to read other people’s too.
(Or walk a mile in another man’s shoes….)
The statue at broadcasting House was not vandalised because it used a font designed by Eric Gill, but because it was carved by Gill and features a naked boy being controlled by a mature adult male.
Anabaptist or Benedictine spirituality possibly has a focus on actions rather than words. That’s maybe where the New and Old Testament direct us. The ‘growth and numbers’ game, pursued at the expense of integrity, is a fast road to hell.
Throw money into that mix and hell’s door is wide open. Are there massive problems with the Church and charity sector? In terms of leadership roles, the most fundamentalist pursuers of holiness have sometimes been the wildest people abusers.
Hiding sleaze inevitably stores up future problems, seen or unseen. What about the Canon W G Neely scandal? 1970’s era abuse has hit the Irish Anglican Church hard within the last couple of years.
Bishop David McClay has been heavily into New Wine, with an emphasis on holy living or committed discipleship, yet even now Bishop David McClay shamefully cannot bring himself to name Canon W G Neely.
Why is the All-Ireland Primate, John McDowell, not ordering a formal inquiry into savage abuse hidden in Down and Dromore Diocese?
What are you so afraid of “Primate”, and why the “monkeying”?
Are you scared of child abuse, rape, savage intern ill-treatment, suicide or various other horrors being uncovered?
Do Anglican Church leaders show a wanton contempt at times for their own policies? An online 31 Mar 2023 Church of England statement is on ‘Deliverance Ministry’ makes interesting reading.
Contrast-‘Gay man recalls ‘terrifying’ exorcism in church basement: ‘I had to cancel my agreement with Satan’ Feb 04 2022 Written by Lily Wakefield-on Pink News’- with the Banardo’s independent investigation into the incident. The horror of what is reported cannot remotely be reconciled with the Deliverance ministry guidelines.
What UK and Irish Anglicanism desperately needs, is an exorcism of clerical bullies and the Bishops or Archbishops who cover up savage abuse of innocent people. Ordinary Church members framed, and charismatic abusers protected, is what emerges all over the place.
‘ Do Anglican Church leaders show a wanton contempt at times for their own policies?’
Yes I think they do.
The structure of the Church isn’t like a typical organisation with stakeholder accountability or management hierarchy in a conventional sense. It’s diffuse. Each clergy person above curate seems to be quasi autonomous or very autonomous. There’s a system of influence, but the actual structure is dissipated across thousands of individual charities. There’s a rule book in theory, and I’ve worked with many good people on parochial church councils who love to do things by this book, but in reality almost anything goes, and very little can be done about it. For example, I knew of a church plant where the entire interior was substantially reordered without a Faculty. Some people were upset, but the pews had gone and the carpeted-over chancel remained. It was funded by a wealthy donor who coincidentally needed a large open venue for his wedding. In this, and many other cases, money talks.
The system for discipline, the Church Disciplinary Measures, resembles something out of the Middle Ages, being arbitrary, randomly punitive or excepting, full of conflicts of interest (despite this being the 21st century) and invariably cruel to one party or another.
Bishops have importance but seemingly little authority when something needs to be changed.
In the sense that they haven’t changed this hopeless system, Anglican leaders are guilty of a huge dereliction of moral and spiritual duty. However there is no mechanism for change, except the decline in attendance and income forcing successive closures. But there’s a long way to go, and considerable reserves, so we can’t expect any acceleration in change anytime soon.
Consider how the Church of Ireland CEO has failed to address Church member and child ill-treatment in the Down and Dromore Diocese. What other CEO would expect to get away with this?
Why has Archbishop John McDowell (All-Ireland Anglican Primate) failed to formally name the late Canon W G Neely as an abuser, in spite of Belfast media reporting a Dec 2023 compensation settlement? The local Diocese have also failed to name Canon W G Neely.
There are other glaring crises with Belfast’s Down and Dromore Diocese leadership. Savage ill-treatment drove two out of five students in my trainee year to leave the Diocese. Education professionals (a professor and senior teacher) left the Diocese in disgust at the failure to address atrocious mistreatment of students.
One victim was witnessed in a state of acute mental collapse after meeting a tutor. Both students complained that they were unfairly accused of sexual misconduct in locker room type language. There is also very clear concern about breach of confidentiality. There has been contempt for anti-discrimination law and Church rules, plus blasphemous disregard for biblical standards of natural justice.
Charismatic-evangelical leaders love spouting on about success and growth. But when things go wrong they often hide shameful litanies of savage ill-treatment. Consider this online YouTube film-‘Karl Faase interviews Joe Turner for Jesus the Game Changer Season 2’-by Olive Tree Media. Yet has Joe Turner (another former Belfast New Wine course student) now mysteriously disappeared from Down and Dromore Diocese?
Does Bishop David McClay have the blood, sweat or tears of innocent people on his hands? What will have to happen before Archbishop John McDowell finally fixes up a much needed formal and independent inquiry, into David McClay’s leadership incompetence and/or satanic immorality?
Imagine a bullying scandal where a bishop ignores evidence of student trauma witnessed by a senior education professional and a senior NHS professional. How many people have to be ill-treated before a glaring Anglican Church crisis is recognised?
Will it take exposure of rape, child abuse, intern ill-treatment, bullying, harassment or a suicide, before Archbishop McDowell wakes up to an abuse crisis? Has Archbishop McDowell, All-Ireland Primate, averted his gaze from multiple concealed tragedies in the Down and Dromore Diocese? Stop monkeying Primate!