by Anthony Bash

Forgiveness

Justin Welby was asked in Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on 30 March 2025, ‘Do you forgive John Smyth?’ Welby answered,

‘Yes. I think if he were alive, and I saw him – but it’s not me he abused. He’s abused the victims and survivors. So, whether I forgive or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant.’

Welby is not a victim of the physical abuse perpetrated by John Smyth. Smyth did not beat him when he was a minor with hundreds of strokes and left him scarred and bleeding. In this regard, Welby has nothing to forgive. He is a third party, an outsider, a critic of what happened, but not the subject of Smyth’s brutality.

A church which perpetrates the view that it is possible for people to forgive those who do not wrong them holds an absurd view of forgiveness. What has forgiveness got to do with anyone except those who have been wronged?

In answering ‘Yes’ and then qualifying what he meant by ‘Yes’ and acknowledging his forgiveness was, to a large extent, ‘irrelevant’, Welby discloses the muddle that lies at the heart of his approach to forgiveness – an approach that mirrors the approach of the Church of England generally.

On the one hand, forgiveness is seen as an overarching good, to be offered at all times, in all circumstances, whether sought or not. People think it promotes reconciliation and wellbeing, and that it avoids conflict and division. Without it, so it is said, there can be no peace.

On the other hand, Welby recognises – despite having said he forgave Smyth – that his is not the place to forgive, as he is not a victim of Smyth’s brutality. We go further: it’s not that Welby’s forgiveness is ‘to a large extent, irrelevant’: it is irrelevant.

Welby’s answer wants things both ways. Welby offers something to everyone and thereby satisfies no one. In fact, his answer could offend everyone – either for forgiving when some say he shouldn’t or for saying forgiving is irrelevant when others say it is not. This approach is an example of the besetting Anglican sin of keeping everyone on board and offending no one. The victims of abuse know this ‘have-your-cake-and-eat-it’ approach doesn’t work – as gays and women in the church will also testify.

This is the reply I suggest Welby could have given Laura Kuenssberg in response to her question, ‘Do you forgive John Smyth?’

No, Laura, I do not. Smyth did not abuse me. If Smyth were still alive and I saw him, I would confront him about what he had done, and tell him he needed to surrender to the police to make a full confession. I would also urge him to contact his victims and to put right with them, as best he could, what he had done. He would need to make some sort of reparation in demonstration of a change of heart. Without something like this, he will not have forgiveness from the victims, and there can be no place for him in the life of the church of Christ.

What is lacking in what Welby said is what lies at the heart of forgiveness – remorse, repentance, reparation. Remorse and repentance are the result of a change of moral perspective and precede forgiveness. They demonstrate a commitment both to act differently and to be different in the future. The result is more than words of regret but appropriate reparative action.

The church’s overarching commitment should therefore not be to forgiveness as an end in itself. Rather, it should be to truth, integrity, and honesty. It should be to do right, to call out what is wrong, to seek justice, and to expose lies, deceit, and cover up. Forgiveness may then result, but not necessarily. The church’s focus is mistakenly on the goal, not on the means.

Personal Responsibility

In the interview, Welby spoke of feeling ‘overwhelmed’ by the number of allegations of abuse the church had received in 2013. He is ‘utterly sorry’ and said he felt ‘a deep sense of personal failure’. Though not said, this failure includes not initiating cultural and structural changes to the church between 2013 and 2024: additional safeguarding officers and a welcome change in culture for preventive safeguarding are not the only answer. Welby’s bland ‘corporate-speak’ reason for resigning – ‘personal responsibility for shortcomings’ – obscures the fact that he failed to provide leadership about an issue that has engulfed the church in shame.

Apart from asking for pity because he had felt so overwhelmed, saying (as if an excuse) ‘I had a difficult upbringing’ (it was Eton College, and then Trinity College, Cambridge), and eventually giving up by resigning, what did Welby personally do to put right his errors when he became aware of them? What model of the gospel did Welby demonstrate by his actions?

What has not happened under Welby’s watch is compensation for victims of historic abuse. There have also not been independent investigations of mishandled cases of historic abuse and cover up. Neither have there been independent investigations of cases where safeguarding has been weaponised to cause harm. Rather, the church remains detached from mechanisms of public accountability and independent scrutiny. The church’s perspective has been to look forward, and not to acknowledge and face past mistakes and their consequences. So, the extent of the unaddressed problems has not been acknowledged, and victims of abuse still have no remedy, reparation, justice, or closure. We asked above, ‘What did Welby personally do to put right his errors when he became aware of them?’ The answer is: Not much.

The example of Graham, one of those abused by Smyth, illustrates the church’s failure to properly address the past. In Kuenssberg’s broadcast, Graham said he had had ‘the most extraordinary, traumatic journey trying to get answers, trying to get any kind of support’ from the church and that his experience of historic abuse by Smyth ‘paled into insignificance’ in comparison with what the church had put him through. Even if there is a degree of hyperbole about what Graham says (and I am not suggesting there is), his statement is an extraordinary indictment of what he says is the greater abuse he experienced perpetrated in the name of the church.

When asked whether he accepts that (in Welby’s words) Welby ‘really is sorry’, Graham said that Welby has not contacted him personally or apologised. He regards Welby as having ‘blanked’ him and the other survivors of Smyth’s abuse, and as refusing to tell the truth. Graham concluded, ‘We’re the victims and we deserve to know what happened. We don’t yet.’

Institutional Responsibility

Without going into much detail in the interview, Welby also said that he accepted ‘institutional responsibility for long-term revelations of cover up and failure over a long period.’ The cover up and failure have many causes. A future Archbishop of Canterbury will need to identify the causes and address them. The causes include the following. There is no legal requirement to report allegations of abuse (‘mandatory reporting’). There is lack of resource to deal adequately with reports of abuse. Investigations into alleged abuse are conducted ‘in house’, by people who may wish to avoid public shame and scandal for the church. The church is not subject to the Nolan Principles setting out professional standards of conduct in public life; neither is it subject to the same statutory framework of regulation and accountability as secular institutions. In short, there is lack of statutory regulation, lack of resource – and perhaps even of resolution – as well as a culture of amateurism at the heart of the church and its institutions. The church is not adequately fitted to safely and responsibly carry out its role in public life. Reform therefore needs to be both statutory and in-house – and urgently.

By walking away, ‘overwhelmed’ by the scale of the problem and having done little to address it when in office, Welby has bequeathed to his successors besetting, unaddressed systemic and structural failure in the church. A new Archbishop will need skill and experience to remedy the failure. A new archbishop will also need conviction that the gospel insists on repentance for sin in the context of truth and justice.

Triple Wounds

The culture of forgiveness that pervades the church, the church’s own failure to respond appropriately to safeguarding allegations, and the church’s lack of moral vigour in its approach to forgiveness are triple wounds for the abused. The abused will, first, carry the wounds of their historic abuse. Second, they will carry wounds from a church that has failed to hear them and to act on what the church has heard. Last, there will be wounds from the church – sometimes even from its national leaders – who forgive abusers when they have no business to do so and do not see the absurdity of what they are doing. The result is that the abused will have to learn to survive the historical abuse they have suffered, the neglect of the church, and the wounds of (perhaps well-meaning but) theologically naïve forgivers.

Anthony Bash is author with Martyn Percy of Forgiveness, Remorse, Reparation: Reckoning with Truthful Apology (Ethics Press,2025).