by Helen Yaxley

I was recently Googling ‘bullying vicars’ because I felt that was an apt description of what I had been subjected to. In so doing I came across this blog which was extremely enlightening. It was then that I realised that this type of behaviour within the CofE might well be described as not unusual. Nevertheless, it is far from acceptable. I would like to share my experiences of dealing with the Church’s disciplinary processes, following which I was utterly frustrated and didn’t know where else to turn.

My experience is a long and distressing story, not involving any sort of sexual abuse, but with elements which perfectly illustrate the dysfunction of the Church’s hierarchy and inadequacy of its complaints’ procedures. This is a case where a vicar has made written allegations against me, including that I had been cautioned by the police. The allegations, which I knew to be false, were proven to be lies, with evidence gained from the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer and from the police. Gaining the evidence I felt was a totally humiliating procedure; I knew I was not a criminal. And yet, having obtained this proof of lying by a vicar, the Church was unwilling to do anything about it.

I originally approached this vicar by phone, with concerns about the actions of one of his congregation, his organist, which were causing me and my vulnerable elderly parents considerable distress. Neither my parents nor I were in his parish. I had never met him or spoken with him before. He is a vicar in the Ango-Catholic tradition. I had hoped the vicar could help in some way – perhaps through some sort of mediation. Despite not being a member of his parish, I expected that a member of the clergy would be impartial and would respect my confidence.

I could not have made a bigger mistake. As well as breaching my confidence, he was anything but impartial, strongly taking the side of his organist in the second telephone conversation I had with him. He was extremely dictatorial and downright rude and came across as a bully. He then, some time later, misrepresented the conversation in a written statement produced for a Court of Protection bundle, where he made clear that he knew the organist “in a personal way”. The vicar was not present at the court hearing, and there was no determination on his statement, but his personal attack on me in this statement caused me considerable distress, and continued to eat away at me. This character assassination of me had been written by a member of the clergy whom most people would expect to be truthful and caring.

After the court case, I wrote to the vicar, taking issue with his comments (in a civilised manner) and requesting a meeting. He declined. I spoke to a friend who is a vicar and who said that if I had concerns, I should approach the vicar’s Archdeacon. I did this, but the Archdeacon said that without a recording of the phone call, to determine exactly its contents, there was nothing she could do.

This issue continued to prey on my mind, not least that the hostile and bullying manner of this vicar did not accord with Christian principles. As I had never met him, I felt that if I did so it may help to resolve matters. I wrote to the Archbishop of York setting out some of the background and to see if he could facilitate a meeting, given that the Archdeacon seemed powerless.

In this letter I made reference to safeguarding matters concerning the organist in respect of my parents, simply as background information, explaining that this was not regarding abuse of anyone in the Church but that it lay behind the reason for my initially contacting the vicar.

When the Archbishop’s office replied, my request for a meeting was declined but the Archbishop’s Chaplain stated that she had passed safeguarding concerns to the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer. This was not something which I had requested, and surely as a general rule, it should not have been done without my being made aware and without gathering the relevant information. I wrote back immediately urging caution, but it was too late.

After further correspondence with the Archbishop’s office I was advised by the Archbishop’s Chaplain that my only course of action within the Church was to a raise a formal complaint against the vicar under the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM). The highly formal procedure initially involved making an out-of-time application because of the amount of time that had elapsed since my initial contact with the vicar. I made the application, to which the vicar responded. In short, his written response addressed to the judge dealing with my application, was yet another character assassination of me including outrageous allegations. He seemed intent on bullying me into silence and portraying me as a worthless individual who had committed a criminal act.

In this statement the vicar wrote that I had made a safeguarding complaint against his organist (which I had not), I had been reported to the police for doing this, there had been a full investigation and I had been cautioned. He stated that I had been told that should I make any further complaints I would face the possibility of prosecution. I find this totally unbelievable. The implication of the statement is that the vicar believes that if a person makes a safeguarding complaint to a church official, and that complaint is investigated and does not find any wrongdoing, it is therefore a matter to report to the police and worthy of a caution and possible prosecution. I would have thought that a vicar would be conversant with the procedures around safeguarding. Quite clearly, no one would ever make a safeguarding complaint if they thought they may be cautioned and/or prosecuted for doing so. Be aware, I had not raised a complaint. (I approached the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer for clarification after the complaints procedure described below was completed. He made it abundantly clear to me that he had spoken to the vicar following the Archbishop’s Chaplain’s referral regarding the organist, but had not described me as a complainant, contrary to the vicar’s statement.)

My out-of-time application was approved enabling me to pursue my formal complaint against the vicar. The complaint took its course. It was dismissed, both initially by the Archbishop of York, and also on appeal to the responsible judge at Church House in London. However, the vicar’s response of blatant lies to my out-of-time application regarding safeguarding and the police was not considered as part of my complaint, according to the Diocesan Registrar who advises the Archbishop on legal matters. The Diocesan Registrar also made clear that it was not of sufficient substance to be considered under the CDM if it were to be raised subsequently. I was dumbfounded. Lying to a judge by a member of the clergy in a CDM process doesn’t even meet with a rebuke.

I, of course, knew that I had not even been spoken to by the police, let alone given a caution, but was advised by the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer in York to gain proof via Subject Access Requests from the police. I was more than happy to do this despite finding it totally humiliating. After waiting several months, because of police backlogs with Subject Access Requests, I discovered what I already knew – there had been no police investigation, I had not been cautioned nor informed of possible prosecution. I took this proof to the Archdeacon whom I had spoken with before. She listened sympathetically and agreed to put my request for a meeting with the vicar, suggesting it would be useful for a mediator to be present. I was very pleased that she was finally willing to intervene. Meeting the vicar face to face was something which I knew I would find helpful. It might at least have given him the opportunity to explain his motive and furthermore apologise. That, I felt, would have been the least he could do. I wanted him to see me as a human being and not a punchball. The following day I received an e-mail from the Archdeacon who had contacted the vicar and he had declined the meeting. She stated, “He does not feel that the meeting you suggested would be appropriate and so I’m afraid that there is no more that I can do in this situation.” I was amazed – talk about marking own homework! This I cannot imagine being the norm in any other organisation. It appeared again that the Archdeacon was powerless.

My final step was to write again to the Archbishop of York, setting out the evidence gained from the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer and from the police. This was met with a curt reply written by the Archbishop’s Chaplain stating that the Archbishop “could not get involved with or comment on a matter that has been fully considered and properly disposed of in both a CDM and subsequent review carried out by an independent judge”. As stated previously, it had not been dealt with. I felt I was up against further lies from the Church – this time at the highest level. The reply continued, informing me that the Archbishop’s Office would not be entering into further correspondence on the matter. This meant that the lies of the vicar had been compounded by a complete misrepresentation by the Archbishop’s Office regarding what had gone before and a clear attempt to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.

This saga, whilst clearly of a much lesser scale than the abuses recently exposed, still illustrates fault lines in the Church’s processes and hierarchy and in its attitude to safeguarding. In any other walk of life the telling of blatant lies in a written statement would at least attract censure from an appropriate individual in the organisation. In ignoring this behaviour, it is condoned and is a green light for the perpetrator to continue. Furthermore, had my initial contact with the Archdeacon been pursued (how often are telephone calls recorded?), or had the Archbishop acted appropriately when I initially approached him, CDM would have been unnecessary, and I would have been saved several years of heartache.

by Martyn Percy

 preached at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral, Aberdeen

Daniel 12: 1-3; Hebrews 10: 11-14,18; & Mark 12: 34-42

It is something of a heavy irony that Safeguarding Sunday in the Church of England falls in the same week that it was announced that the 105^th Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned over his handling of the abuses perpetrated by John Smyth QC. This is without precedent in the 500 year history of the Church of England.

John Smyth was one of the most prolific sexual abusers in recent Church of England history, yet with substantial evidence of coverups and inaction protecting him at the very highest levels. The report into the abuse was conducted by Keith Makin, and despite being subjected to lengthy delays by lawyers acting for Lambeth Palace, Justin Welby’s position quickly became untenable. The Makin Report was published on November 7^th 2024, providing forensic accounts of the failures and coverups, if not systemic corruption in the culture within the ecclesial hierarchy. Welby resigned on November 12^th.

Welby’s tenure had failed to create a culture of transparency and accountability in the upper echelons of ecclesial governance. This is the protruding tip of a very large smoldering volcano.  John Smyth QC died in 2018 without ever being brought to justice, and represents “the Church of England’s Jimmy Savile crisis”. Smyth hailed from an impeccable elite public school and upper-class Oxbridge pedigree, and had been a prominent mover and shaker in the conservative evangelical world from the 1970s. That culture had played a large part in forming Justin Welby’s Christian faith, his eventual arch-episcopal governance, and a whole generation of English bishops.

Historians will pick over this ecclesial car-crash in the generations to come. Imperialism and benign superiority is no longer a trusted mode of governance for the vast majority of Anglicans.  Bishops and their senior advisors have no accountability, are aloof and averse to external regulatory oversight. Bishops lecture the rest of the world on democracy and equality, but refuse to be subject to the laws that govern everyone else. Like ancient demi-gods, they invest in omniscient and omnicompetent myth-presumptions, as though by becoming a bishop they acquire sufficient knowledge to lecture the world on anything they hold a view about.

Our times are different. These days, people in the pews expect democratic accountability and transparency. They might consent to being under authority, but only provided it is subject to independent external scrutiny and regulation. Alas, the majority of Anglican bishops would prefer the hot fires of hell to such egalitarian answerability. 

Welby’s resignation might be seen as an updated episode of 1776 And All That: no taxation without representation. Why should any punter in the pew fund governance rooted in autocracy with pretentions towards theocracy? Increasingly, the indications are that they won’t put up with authority they did not elect, yet somehow presumes to rule them – and can even tap them for compliant semi-obligatory financial support.

Welby is arguably a representative harbinger of an ecclesial revolution. It has been coming for some while. As the former Labour Party MP Tony Benn (1925-2014) repeatedly asked of those in authority,

“What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”

If the answer to every one of those questions from the bishops and senior ecclesiocrats is “only God, or maybe the reigning monarch”, then the stage is fully prepped for open revolt by those in the pews.  In many respects, the story of global Anglicanism – not yet 500 years old – is one of Protestant democratic polity vying with regalistic notions of autocracy and theocracy.

The regal model presumes it does not need to give an account of itself or even consult. It just rules and reigns, and when subjected to questions, ignores its people and the media as though they were insolent and unruly serfs. It will spurn democratic accountability and treat congregations as medieval monarchs might once have regarded lowly subjects.

This has not always been an English problem. Let us not forget that Samuel Seabury, the first American Anglican bishop to be consecrated (1784) without the approval of the Church of England, wore a specially made mitre fashioned from beaver-pelt and gold filigree wherever he went, in order to signal his self-proclaimed divine authority over a bemused American citizenry. Seabury believed his cathedral was wherever he happened to be celebrating the eucharist, and he demanded monarchical deference.

Today the church marks Seabury’s consecration. Yet he did not believe the laity should have any say in the governance of the church, and his diocese, Connecticut, did not change that until later in the 20^th century. Seabury’s lofty regal outlook matched his pro-slavery and high Tory leanings.

Yet these views have not prevailed. American Episcopalians are assiduously pro-democratic, and their ecclesial polity is progressively Protestant, albeit with some catholic accents. That spells the end for English Anglican imperialism at home and abroad. Its time is up, and the resignation of the 105^th Archbishop of Canterbury demonstrated that the public have little patience with an institution that does not practice what it preaches. If democracy, equality and accountability is good for the rest of the world, then English Anglicanism will need to model that too. 

Until it does, dismissal by the public and decline will continue. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, bankruptcy happens in two ways: first very slowly, then all of sudden. Leading the Church of England from hereon will be like trying to ascend the proverbial glass cliff.  Falling further and faster is the most likely result. But clinging on for dear life is hardly an option. The only future left for Anglicanism lies at ground level. The leadership needs to climb down, and as fast as possible.

The issue is simple. Any power imbalance always creates the space for power abuse. Bishops and their courtiers, advisors and senior ecclesiocrats expect to rule and reign.  Safeguarding in the Church of England is overseen by mercurial, unaccountable, unlicensed, non-transparent and unregulated officers. Every bishop refuses to level the playing field by balancing power, and becoming subject to independent external professional regulation and oversight. The result is inevitable. Nothing in such a safeguarding system can ever be safe. It is wide open to abuse, incompetence and coverups. All the evidence for that is lengthy and legion. But bishops and their officers will still not cede their power. So they cannot and will not be trusted.

Our readings this morning have a rich theme. They lectionary always does. Roughly, they connect through fecundity (the Parable – or Sign – of the Fig Tree), the importance of sacrifice, and the need for perseverance. The readings remind us that judgment always comes, and truth will always out. The systems of governance, even in the church, that think they have a God-given right to endure, will perish.

Institutions like the Church of England use inaction and inertia as a weapon to silence others. I don’t think we know, yet, if Justin Welby’s resignation has any point to it.  But I want to leave you this morning with a poem sent to me this week, which has nothing to do with recent events. It is called ‘The Laugh’ by Chris Goan, and it is full of hope. A hope, I think, for a better world; and far, far better way of being church.

When you feel despair at the state of the world,

Do something small.

Ignore those voices without or deep within

Calling you fool for refusing tyrannical logic

Imposed by cynical wisdom

Then do it anyway.

When you feel broken by all the cruelty the world contains,

Reach out, remembering that humanity

Can only be collectively encountered.

Allow empathy to be an umbilical conduit

For a nutrient called kindness.

What else are we for?

When overwhelmed by the size of the mountain,

Walk slower, saving breath for conversation.

For miles pass fast in company, then as words fade

Listen for the fat laugh

Deep down in the belly

Of all that is still becoming.

Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, good things are born in the darkness. It is there that God laughs deeply. The resurrection is a laugh freed forever; and this crisis in the Church of England, never before seen in its 500-year history, might be an opportunity for a completely new beginning.

In the meantime, we remain at the mercy of episcopal hubris. But more importantly, we are at the mercy and judgment seat of God. As the gospel has it, “heaven and earth will pass away”, as will the church and its governance. Only God’s word is eternal. Nobody knows the day or the hour of judgment. But this week, it does feel like that end-time for the church has come much closer. These are but birth pangs; the beginning of some new creation. Thanks be to God.

At the heart of the Makin report released last Wednesday is an account of the behaviour and beliefs of one seriously damaged and dangerous individual, John Smyth.  I do not propose to say much about him here, as his activities, if not his thinking, are well documented in Makin and other accounts.  Andrew Graystone has already prepared us with his book, Bleeding for Jesus, for much of the factual material contained in Makin’s long report about the crimes of John Smyth.  What remains to be considered first of all is the behaviour of individuals, many now deceased, who responded to discovering the facts of the abuse that occurred in Winchester and elsewhere between 1979 and 1982.

A large section of the Makin account, as it recounts these events from the last century, concerns the actions and decisions of a group of prominent C/E evangelicals after the news first broke in March 1982.   It was in this month that Mark Ruston, a Cambridge incumbent, put together a report which was then circulated to nine other clergy, all trustees of the organisation running the Iwerne camps.  At that point Ruston had identified most, but not all, of the Smyth victims.  Meetings were called by these trustees as they struggled to get a grip on the situation.  From the records that Makin has gathered, there seems to have been very little concern for or interest in the welfare of Smyth’s victims. The chief anxiety appears to have been the damage the scandal might do to the reputation of the Iwerne camps.  Smyth had been a prominent leader for many years.  Mark Rushton and David Fletcher emerged as the de-facto leaders of managers of the crisis.  It was they, among others, who confronted Smyth and convinced him, with some difficulty, to sign undertakings to abandon his ‘ministry’ to boys and young men.  In the event the attempts to restrain Smyth were unsuccessful and he went on to run camps in Africa, supported by his English supporters who were still in thrall to his charismatic charm and evident gifts of public speaking.  It was to be another thirty years before information about his abusive behaviour became general knowledge.  The story of Smyth’s avoidance or exposure to justice is carefully chronicled in Makin’s report. 

Those who have the stamina to read the entire Makin report will recognise the importance of the year 1982 in the narrative.  This was the year when the abuses in England were stopped, and the small group of well-connected Anglican clergy, deeply solicitous for the reputation of the Iwerne camps, tried to decide what to do with the information in their possession.  The moral and ethical obligation to take some decisive action by the trustees who received the report is clear to us, as we examine the events from the perspective of 2024.  The trustees should have immediately referred all the information in their possession to the police and sought the advice of senior professionals in the psychological and law enforcement world, to help them both understand and act constructively with the information in their possession.  That they did not, at least initially, raises concerns in two areas.  One is that the silence and secrecy that they sought to impose on the Smyth case would go on to be a major cause of harm to Smyth’s existing victims.  It is as if the Iwerne effort was so important that nothing should or could be done to help those injured and protect other potential victims in the future.  The culture of Iwerne, or whatever was being protected through the secrecy, was itself a hard heartless enterprise.  In failing to support the Smyth victims, past and future, the Iwerne impulse was showing itself to be, despite its high-sounding language of conversion and love, to be a cruel monster, completely devoid of real compassion and healing. 

The second reality, shown in the frantic efforts to protect the Iwerne brand, was the lasting disregard by these clergy to bring in real effective expertise to resolve the issues caused by Smyth’s barbarity.  It needed resources of all kinds, far beyond what was available to a small group of clergy intent of preserving reputations, both corporate and individual.  Someone might possibly have said, ‘we need help.  This is too big to handle without the skills and expertise of a phalanx of professional disciplines’.  The reasons for failing to do this are again clear.   Secrecy and the preservation of the Iwerne name were paramount.  The culture of secrecy itself became a source of evil which was to do so much to damage individuals until today.

In the course of 1982, the offending behaviour by Smyth in England was brought to a halt, but one thing is clear in that none of the figures who exercised some authority in the situation and which enabled them to extract promises from Smyth not to misbehave, seems to have really got the measure of how serious and delinquent his actions had been.   The leaders who confronted Smyth did manage, in part, to stand up to the manipulative behaviour which had allowed him to rise so quickly in the Iwerne hierarchy, but they still believed (naively) that they had the true measure of his personality and behaviour.  In other words, they trusted their own innate skills as pastors and managers to penetrate his defensive/manipulative strategies which were employed to protect him from the accusers’ threats.  One hope by the leaders, that they could lead Smyth to a place of genuine remorse and repentance, turned out to be empty and of no value.  Dozens of children in Africa were to suffer (and one die) as the result of Christian leaders having an inflated assessment of their pastoral skills.

We come here to a failing in Christian ministry which is probably all too common.  This is the fault of believing that ordination has granted one the gift of inspired judgement in pastoral situations when, in fact, they need human judgement which is properly informed by professional (secular) skill.   Many clergy are unwilling to admit that a pastoral situation is beyond their level of competence.  In these situations, it should be possible to seek the support of consultant or experienced mentor.  I have always believed that an extra beatitude is required to add to the others.  It goes something along the lines ‘Blessed are those who know their limitations.’ Preachers/pastors who work within the culture of conservative evangelicalism, where the infallibility of the biblical text is claimed, are particularly vulnerable to the grandiose claims and hubris which allows them to ‘know’ the truth in a complex pastoral scenario such, as the Smyth saga.  Is this what we are witnessing in and around Cambridge in 1982 and later in Lambeth Palace after 2013?  One thing that is absent from the Makin report during this early 1982 period is any indication that an external professional assessment was sought to gauge Smyth’s potential for reoffending.  Nor were the psychological needs of those who had been abused looked at or considered.  Instead, the untrained amateur pastoral assumptions of the clergy, who had taken charge in managing the situation, were allowed to reign.  The results of letting this inadequate pastoral wisdom dominate the care of victims were to have baneful consequences both for the existing Smyth victims and for those who were to follow them in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Clerical naivety, compounded by a refusal to access relevant professional competence, seems to sum up one way of understanding how things went so badly wrong in putting right the evils of Smyth’s actions.  If I am right to see these failings of professionalism as being at the heart of the saga, then the case for compulsory referral or mandatory reporting seems incontestable.  Naivety and the inability to make sound judgement was just not present at the early part of our story, and the same cluelessness seems to cling to many of the actors right through till today.  The decisions and the non-decisions that have taken place at Lambeth Palace are also part of the story.   The failings of church leaders in knowing what advice to take or whom to follow are not minor failings; they can be enormously harmful and wound the Church of God in ways that cannot be measured.

While writing the above, I have become aware of the increasing crescendo of voices calling for the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury over the Smyth affair.  My attitude to this question has not been suddenly formed but goes back to the interview in 2019 with Kathy Newman. On that occasion Welby said several things which were clearly untrue, including the claim that he ceased to have contact with the Iwerne camps after graduation and starting work for an oil company in 1977.  It is clear that he remained in touch with the camps and he and Smyth appear on the same programme in 1979. Telling even a single lie to impress an invisible audience is corrosive of trust, even with one on the other side of a television screen.  The recent article by ‘Graham’ in Via Media finally pushed me to the point where I cannot see him as a spiritual leader.  If he does not any longer have moral or spiritual authority, then there is, in my estimation, only one choice open to him -that of resignation. 

In a recent article, Nick Tall https://viamedia.news/2024/10/26/smoke-and-mirrors-and-the-alliance/does a brilliant job of questioning the claims of the pan-evangelical organisation called the Alliance to represent the convictions of 42% of the Church of England.  It is this statistic that implies that, because conservative Christians are the largest bloc in the Church, the rest of the C/E should recognise this dominance in various practical ways.  Tall queries the way this 42% figure is arrived at, and here my blog post demonstrates how I join him in his scepticism.   Were it to be indeed true that 42% of practising C/E Christians were convinced by the Alliance set of statements about gay marriage, then the future of the C/E might well be on a one-way journey to becoming a sectarian rump with minimal influence on British society.   The future of the C/E would be a very different one from what has been assumed to be true of our national Church over the past 400 years. No longer would it be the communion welcoming a variety of opinions about the nature of God and the Scriptures that reveal him.  Rather it would be openly advocating a movement to a monochrome understanding of Scripture and theology where disagreement was not tolerated or acceptable.   The precise differences between LGTB supporters and opponents is not being examined in the piece; rather what is questioned is whether there is any reliable evidence to suggest that the Alliance claim about 42% of C/E members is correct.  Would a detailed poll really reveal such a high figure on board in this conservative attempt to define the C/E in his way?  I do not propose to repeat all Tall’s points or rehearse any of the arguments for including or excluding the LGBT community. What I do wish to do is to agree with Tall that a church leader cannot be said to know and reliably represent the opinions and attitudes of his/her flock.  It reminds me of the doubtful claim, made once by George Carey in another discussion, that he both led and represented all 80 million Anglicans in the world. If any Christian leader, minister or Anglican vicar ever truly represented the thinking and beliefs of every member of his congregation or parish, then I would suggest that he/she is not leading a congregation, but a full-blown cult.  To suggest that attending a particular church is the same thing as following every aspect of a leader’s teaching, is probably not a safe assumption.  Something approximating a conformity to the ‘what we believe’ statements on church websites might possibly be found in some large city centre churches.  People in some cases are known to travel quite considerable distances to attend the church which meets their ‘needs’.  At a guess I would suggest that even here the choices of which church to attend is not primarily caused by enthusiasm for a doctrinal statement.  Choosing a church to belong to involves such things as music preferences, the quality of fellowship and the general culture found in a congregation.  Few of the students, joining new congregations in university cities this term, are going to put ‘orthodox’ teaching at the top of the list of the reasons for opting for congregation X.  They are more likely to ‘assent’ to conservative teaching rather than having a worked-out position that joins with the leadership in rejecting the claims of the gay community and their desire to belong.

The basic premise that what a leader says about the attitude of his/her congregation is accurate, needs, as Tall points out, to be questioned.   Some years ago, the Bishop of Oxford sent out a statement on the LGBT issue to his diocese which was, in effect, a plea for greater tolerance and understanding on the topic.  His words, though eirenic, quickly gathered a storm of protest from many conservative Christian voices.  There were supposedly 100 clergy signing the letter of protest to their Bishop from within his diocese.  Conveniently for a commentator like me, the protestors published names of all who had signed.  This enabled a breakdown which showed that a considerable number of the clergy who signed had no actual Christian community to oversee.  They were clergy who had CEO-type responsibilities for a cluster of Christian organisations, some partly or wholly funded from abroad.  There were of course a number of notable conservative parishes in the Oxford diocese with large staff numbers.  Many, but by no means all, of these ordained staff members signed up to the letter of protest to Bishop Steven.  This level of only partial support suggested that some key conservative parishes were not of one mind.  Some signed, but other clerical members of staff had not.  This hinted at the fact that unanimity was not even found among the clergy.  We would expect such differences of opinion among the lay members as well.

The 42% claim by the so-called Alliance against the attempts of the Archbishops and the House of Bishops, to press for a more tolerant approach to the gay issue, is beginning to look unsustainable.  No proper research exists to sustain a claim of such widespread support.   Even if our imaginary 18-year-old attending a large conservative church assents to the traditional conservative line, it is likely that there will be a level of dissonance somewhere in their mind.  Most 18-year-olds are tolerant by nature and the most likely reaction is to maintain a silence and agnosticism on this issue.  Why should we, or the leaders of a student congregation, expect every young person in the building to have worked out what they think and believe anyway?  Only a group which practises some kind of mental manipulation technique would be successful in policing the thinking of congregants.  Such intrusive methods would naturally arouse considerable resistance on the part of most thinking people.  I mentioned the activity of cultic groups above.  They have a variety of techniques to use to compel conformity of thinking and many of these could be considered unethical and highly controlling.  In practice, few churches in the C/E would ever resort to cultic methods of thought control.  From my membership of the organisation ICSA (International Cultic Studies Association) I am familiar with the methods employed by cultic groups to ensure ‘correct’ thinking.  These might include chanting, sleep deprivation and deliberate withholding of adequate nutrition.  I suspect that outside such groups, identical thinking in a group is an extremely improbable achievement. Most people of my acquaintance want the freedom to think through an issue in their own time and in their own way.  To be able to say at any moment that one’s opinion is fixed and incapable of moving in any way is probably never a realistic position.  My task as a parish priest was not to enforce ‘orthodoxy’ on a particular topic but encourage members of the congregation to engage with truth with all the resources that mind and heart gives to us to relate to it.  Our relationship with truth is not like having in our possession a fixed unchangeable entity, but rather the ability to explore an object of beauty.  This kind of relationship is one which draws out from us capacities to admire, wonder and be, as the hymn puts it, ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’.  

As I pondered, in my own case, how different my relationship with truth is from the unchanging grasp of ‘belief’ that seems to be the required standard of ‘orthodox’ congregations, my mind went back to the puzzling history of two parish congregations in the Oxford diocese. I knew something about each of them in the last century.  In 2018 the incumbents of these two congregations had been among those who signed the letter to the Bishop of Oxford, criticising him for his inclusive view on the LGBT question as it was being debated back then.  These two parishes stood out for me because I knew a little about their respective backgrounds, going right back to the late 80s.  The first parish in 2018 had a Vicar who had been a graduate of the Iwerne camps, and thus was deeply immersed in the ‘Bash’ project to convert the upper-middle classes to Christianity.  He was also a part of the inner circle of Jonathan Fletcher.  I knew less about the second Vicar, but he seemed to come from the same Iwerne public school drawer and was fully at home with the social mores of this part of the Cotswolds.  Both these two Vicars with their public school/Iwerne/Bash credentials had, at some point, been parachuted into these wealthy conclaves which, to my certain knowledge had not been remotely evangelical before their arrival.  

My personal links with the first parish go back to the late 60s when I got to know the man who eventually ended up as its incumbent. We were both on a four-month study course for ordinands and the recently ordained in Switzerland.  My contact with him weakened over the years and I was sorry to see that he died only two or three years after retirement.   I had a great deal of respect for this vicar.  For me he represented the essence of compassionate Anglicanism.  He spent over twenty years in the same parish and theologically he was liberal and inclusive to the core.  It was strange that after he retired, it was thought desirable to appoint someone from such a radically contrasting churchmanship.  Even if this process was conducted with proper safeguards, I cannot believe that every member of that congregation became a fully ‘converted’ supporter of the con-evo attitude towards the LGBT community and their exclusion from the church.  Parish 2 also seems to have attempted a complete assimilation into the con-evo brand.  I had known it in the 90s, practising a ‘broad-church’ ministry with a strong emphasis on pastoral care to all in the community.  This community emphasis appears to have gone, though a surpliced choir has managed to retain a place at one choral mattins a month,

The issue about these two parishes is not whether they are doing a good job or not under their current incumbents.  The question is whether parishes like these with a solid liberal past and who experience a ‘take-over’ by a con-evo incumbent, ever truly succeed in making all parishioners think in an identical way, as the Alliance 42% letter assumes.  From my experience of human nature and my direct knowledge of these two formerly liberal parishes, I suspect that these assumptions are misleading at best and fraudulent at worst.  The Archbishops and House of Bishops should not be manipulated by these blatantly false, or at any rate, questionable statistics!