I am sure that most of my readers will have watched detective dramas on television where, during the investigation of a murder, a large chart is placed on the wall at the police station.  On this chart will be affixed pictures of all the possible suspects.  Without such a helpful visual aid, it is all too easy for the viewer to get the characters and their position within the fictional investigation hopelessly muddled up in the mind.   Most of us find such charts helpful in making sense of all the information that the fictional police and detectives are busily amassing in the drama. 

Another common convention, when drawing these fictional charts, is to create connecting lines between the suspects.  These lines show the way the suspects are linked in some way to each other and, sometimes, to the same businesses or institutions.  Every character has their own identifiable network.  Each works and lives within a context and this can be visually expressed through the use of these lines.  Quite often there is a moment in the drama where the chief detective is shown staring at the chart trying to see if there are any more connections that have been overlooked.  The detective will also be looking for such things as anomalies or patterns on the chart to enable him or her to crack open the case so that the guilty one can be revealed. 

This image of a chart, with pictures of suspects together with their connections, came to my mind as we heard the latest news about Jonathan Fletcher.  His story is well known and most of what we know about his malfeasance has been set out in Andrew Graystone’s excellent second edition account of the Iwerne saga, Bleeding for Jesus.  This blog assumes some knowledge of the story down to the very recent ‘examination of the facts’ hearing, at the Crown Court at Kingston upon Thames.  At this hearing Fletcher (JF) was found to have committed the sexual abuse and assault offences of which he was accused, even though he was judged as ‘not fit to plead’. The judge was obliged to ‘impose an absolute discharge’.

The important part of this JF story, I believe, is not to be found in these somewhat squalid episodes revealed inside a Surrey court, but in the way he was a key figure in the entire conservative evangelical world in the Church of England.  Although JF served most of his ministry at a single church, Emmanuel Wimbledon, he was probably more influential within this evangelical network than any other single individual.  He was the one who, for at least three decades, seems to have occupied a quasi-episcopal role within this powerful church network.  No one knew the individuals within that spider’s web better than him, and he appears also to have had enormous power within those circles to exercise a dominating patronage role.  Thus, he was able to place his own favoured candidates in the top jobs of the uber-wealthy parishes within the network.  Although that personal power, because of his old-age and pervading scandal, has now faded, most of the leading parishes within this wealthy network are still run by individuals who obtained their positions through knowing him and obtaining his approval.  These are the parishes that are able, because their immense wealth, to employ, in some cases, 15 or more curates and their loyalty to the wider church structures is, at best, luke-warm.  The whole conservative evangelical world in the Church of England was for decades substantially managed and controlled by JF.  No one could further their career within that world without JF’s personal approval.  In the light of all that has been revealed since 2019 when his past criminal behaviour was brought into the light of day, it is hard not to see him as a kind of mafia boss within this section of the Church.  In the current court case, JF is deemed to be suffering from dementia and unfit to answer charges of assault and sexual abuse.  Whatever further details of this story emerge, it is hard to see how the damage done by this individual will be allowed to dissipate for decades to come.  

In reflecting on the life and influence of JF and the way that he seems to have acted like a spider at the heart of the large interconnecting web, we need to think further about the lines that hold this structure together.  Going back to our imagined chart on the police station wall, it is these lines, these connections, that JF did so much to create and sustain, that help us to understand the dynamics of the con evo world.  These lines operated like a circulatory system within the human body with the flow of blood being coordinated and controlled to a large extent by JF.  The style of relationships that we observe in the con evo world, many reflecting unhealthy power and dependency dynamics, still exist.  To understand these processes, we need to go back one further stage, to the influence of Iwerne and the English public-school. We need to look at the part played by this powerful institution in English society on the Church.

Much information about the influence of the Iwerne camps on the con evo section of the C of E has been brought to light.  We now understand better how the culture and ethos of the English public-school find their expression in sectors of other institutions, not just the C of E. There is a lot of valuable material in Graystone’s book on this topic.  Some of these values derived from this source were undoubtedly good.  Boys were introduced to the idea of self-sacrifice and perseverance in the face of adversity, and this may have done much, in the past, to help build up the morale of a nation facing conflict, whether in the task of empire building or fighting world wars.  A single word comes into my mind to describe this self-sacrificial aspect of public-school formation and that word is ‘chap’.  In the vocabulary of 60+ years ago, and maybe now, a chap was someone who played hard and worked hard for the team.  He was reliable and honest, especially in the context of supporting others who were like him in background.   The word chap attracted to itself various adjectives.  ‘Good chap’ was an important accolade, or the word decent was frequently used. 

Some of the metaphorical blood that flowed into the character of Iwerne campers and protegees of JF could be seen to possess positive and commendable qualities.  But the public-school system bred other darker values which have been now recognised as toxic and harmful.  My observations here come from my own stint at a similar school, but it was not one to attract the attention of Nash’s Iwerne project.  We were however imbibing some of the same arguably toxic values that were found alongside the positive qualities in the public school system.  The first thing I should mention was a constant undercurrent of violence that existed.  I am not describing physical bullying, though this existed.  I am describing an environment which sometimes allowed for an unexpected crisis of violence or cruelty to erupt, so that one could never be totally relaxed in front of senior boys or masters.  Christian teaching did exist in the school, but it was not a type that encouraged individual spiritual flourishing or exploration.  Words like duty, loyalty and obedience seemed to typify what was taught about morality.   These were all corporate values and the loyalty that was demanded in the school was always to further corporate well-being, whether it was the values of the sports team, the house or the school itself.

Corporate morality is not of itself a bad thing.  What was unattractive and more serious was the effect of a fiercely hierarchical pattern of authority that existed within my school.   Boys fought tooth and nail to obtain the status of prefect or get chosen for the school (or house) teams.  Because there was so much in the way of competitive behaviour, there was also a lot of energy expended in striving to obtain status in some sphere.  The hierarchical environment also bred a particular kind of corrosive snobbery.  One did not associate with younger or less successful boys.  Friendships were often political. Who you were seen speaking to might enhance or undermine your status in the school.  It need hardly be said that values that might help build up the support of real community were not valued.  Any admission of vulnerability or indeed wanting to help the weak or disadvantaged also had little place within the system.

I realise as I write these words that they may only be the memories of a previous generation of public-school pupils and that things may today be quite different.  But I recognise that many of the current generation of clergy and bishops who have imbibed some of the values of public-schools and Iwerne may be unwittingly mediating these same values into the blood stream of parts of the church. JW is a product of this value system and a promoter.  He would have known well the competitiveness, ruthlessness and cruelty inherent in the public-school regime.  As one of the socially well-connected alumni who negotiated the system successfully, he would not have had any cause to criticise it.  So, in his long career of intense mentoring and influencing of younger clergy, he would been sharing these public-school values that seem to invert the values of the Magnificat.  Iwerne never seemed to be about exalting ’the humble and meek’ and there was never any talk of putting down ‘the mighty from their seat.’  

 Public schools in England traditionally stood for a distinctive elitist culture rooted in such things as fierce loyalties, entitlement and the worship of power as embodied in the successful sports hero.  The same values that emerge from these practices would spill over into the later lives of those who experienced them.  The professional networks they joined, including the CofE, continued to embody these values.    JF seems to have been a key player in creating and sustaining a group with the CofE strongly practising the toxic values of privilege and entitlement.  I am pleased to be able to say that not every conservative churchman aspired to these values and theology.  A group of churchmen of this theological persuasion represented by the late Melvin Tinker, seem to have stood apart from these elitist values that flow along the veins of what we might describe as the public-school mafia found among the heirs and successors of Jonathan Fletcher.  If the majority group among these conservatives is to have a future in the wider church, it may need to start by questioning and purging itself of the toxic legacy and poisonous contamination of some aspects of the public-school influence in the CofE.