by Stephen Parsons

One of the things that is constantly changing in the world of safeguarding and abuse is the vocabulary used to describe it.  New categories or expressions that are used to describe all the different forms of abuse appear all the time.  The studies and reports of today are resourced by the results of research in varied disciplines and the language they use.  Two examples of this refined language come immediately to mind.  One is the expression ‘coercion and control.’  Whatever the precise history of this expression, it gave to lawmakers in Britain, in 2015, the ability to describe and sanction non-violent forms of control in a domestic situation which was criminal.  It has now become a common expression to describe other examples of pressurised control and is used in contexts beyond the domestic sphere.  The addition of ‘trauma-informed’ into the discourse also allowed all of us who were concerned for the victims of abusive behaviour to understand the ongoing and lasting consequences of spiritual abuse.  Even the word safeguarding itself is of relatively recent origin.  When writing about power and its abuse in the Church during the 90s, I never had cause to use the word. 

With the arrival last year of a new book by Tom Wilson, Safer Faiths, Safer Followers, I am once again reminded how thoroughly out of date my own research has become.  This new book deserves to be widely read by those who want to understand more on the safeguarding theme, not only in Christian contexts, but right across the religious map of Britain.  This post I am writing here is not intended to be a review of Wilson’s book, which I have enjoyed for its many insights.  I am, however, unashamedly wanting to mine a single word from his book which I find to be enormously useful in my understanding of the dynamics of church power abuse.  Power abuse in a religious setting, as we need to remind ourselves, manifests itself in many forms. The single word introduced into Wilson’s discussion, which I find helpful for my own thinking, is ‘agency’.  For Wilson, agency is what is taken from an individual when subject to spiritual or any other kind of abuse.   Losing one’s agency sums up the post-abuse sense of humiliation and demoralisation that typically overcomes the victim of a degrading episode.  That loss of confidence in one’s decision making and one’s ability to be in control of one’s own life is often, as readers of this blog will know, the lasting legacy of abuse of whatever kind.  We see the most obvious, as well as most extreme, example of loss of agency in the experience of enslavement.  Slavery is a situation of total disempowerment where one person is forced to submit to the will of another.  It is not only defined by physical shackles.  The individual becomes a slave psychologically when they learn to accept a situation of their total subjugation to another.  There are many forms of bullying and dominance which try to crush an individual.  Torture, rape and threatening behaviour also, in their different ways, deprive the abused individual of their freedom and their agency.  They have become in effects slaves of another or, maybe, of an abusive institution.

 We have explored very briefly how losing agency is a good description of the situation that many abused individuals find themselves in after an abusive episode has taken place.  Such abuse or coercion that leads to a long-term loss of agency does not have to be violent or sexual.  Wilson’s book explores the case of a teenage boy who came under the influence of an Anglican parish priest, Timothy Davis.  The intensive spiritual mentoring that Davis offered was clearly unhealthy and harmful.  While, in this case, no physical or sexual activity was involved, the relationship was such that the 15-year-old was clearly in complete thrall to the older man.  The language of agency loss was not in fact used to describe this case, but it fits the situation well.  Peter Ball, Mike Pilavachi, John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher could all be said to have held their chosen mentees in a similar state of slave-like dependency.  It is clear that, whatever else may have been going on within these relationships, the victims were all having their self-determination attacked to gratify the psychological needs of their abuser.  The Davis case reached a conclusion in 2018 when he was found to have abused ‘spiritual power’ and authority over the boy and was removed from ministry. 

One thing that is helpful about Wilson’s analysis is the way that, by using the language of ‘agency’, the observer can see clearly how the actual moment of abuse is not necessarily the worst part of the narrative.  At the heart of Wilson’s understanding is the idea of the long-term diminishment that is the likely result of any abuse committed by one individual against another.  The important question that now should be asked in every abuse episode is not just the detail of an act of abuse, but whether it has created trauma and the long-term undermining of the victim’s agency.  Obviously, this notion of impaired or weakened agency will have a whole variety of manifestations and meanings, according to the precise nature of the abuse that has been perpetrated.  For example, the experience of ‘gaslighting’ may well undermine the ability to know one’s mind or make decisions.  This type of behaviour is likely also to have devastating destructive effects on the ability to feel safe.  It will take a careful sensitive approach to reveal this damage to the agency of the individual who has been abused.   Whoever is given the task of uncovering the truth of an abuse event will need wisdom and sensitivity of a high order, together with a questioning that understands the ways that a victim may have had the core of their being undermined.  Damage that leads to a loss of agency is always serious. Having read Wilson’s sensitive exposition of what it means to lose agency through an experience of an abusive event, one longs for this level of awareness to be present in every core-group or safeguarding body so that they are always alert to this experience of loss that is encountered by many victims of power dominance or abuse.  The old Latin tag directed at medical doctors, Primum, non nocere (first, do no harm) should always be applied to those meeting and responding to survivors.   A failure to be alert to loss of agency among abuse survivors puts such survivors at risk of additional suffering.   The evidence points to many occasions where the process of investigation proves to be a additional source of suffering, sometimes far greater than the original wrong.

Our brief discussion about ‘agency’ and the way that it can be damaged or removed by an act of abuse of some kind, leads into another reflection.  Briefly stated, it is this.  If a negative abusive event care can result in loss of agency, how does the Church try to ensure that proper care is in place which will seek to build up the agency that has been lost in the abusive episode and its aftermath.  My response to this is first to look back on my own ministry over many decades and look at what I believe were my aims as a parish priest/pastor.  I would want it to be true that all my pastoral relationships were about supporting and enabling, in Wilson’s language, the agency of everyone for whom I had a pastoral responsibility.  The parish priest has a commission to build up the sick and encourage the broken and the bereaved.  All this, involving frequent visits to the homes of parishioners, could all be described as ‘agency work’ and we must not forget how it is also found in the teaching role of the clergy.  Reaching an ‘aha’ moment with adult confirmation candidates (less easy with teenagers!) was one of the highlight moments of parish ministry.    Helping the bereaved, the sick and the demoralised to recover their hope was always a crucial part of the daily visiting tasks.  By modern standards the strong emphasis on home visits, that was drummed into us curates in the early 70s, might be frowned on in today’s safeguarding culture.   I cannot imagine being a parish priest where visiting was not the core activity.  After retirement I was privileged to act as a ‘bank’ chaplain at a local hospital.  It was good to return, briefly, to role of encouragement and the task of helping patients to recover hope in the face of serious fears and vulnerabilities. 

I am grateful to Tom Wilson for introducing me to the notion of ‘agency’ in the middle of his discussion of the contrasting and often destructive and damaging forms of ministry conducted by Jonathan Fletcher, Peter Ball and others.  I have in this post attempted to turn around the word to look at its meaning when used in a positive perspective. By thinking of parish ministry as the task of recovering and restoring agency in every member, we find that we are thinking of ministry in a quite distinct way.  This is a style of ministry that actively promotes agency, hope and spiritual growth without any of the shadows of authoritarianism and control so often found in churches today.  Many of us are deeply uncomfortable at the adulation given to the larger-than-life charismatic personalities on the stage who are, for logistical reasons, unable to get to know their ‘sheep’.  This kind of ministry is strong on entertainment but sits lightly on the importance of increased agency and spiritual maturity.  The question for ministry now becomes: ‘Is the congregation individually and corporately able to increase its agency?’   Answering this question successfully will require us to have a fuller understanding of what it might mean to have agency in the Christian life.  Wilson’s book tackles the important question of how agency is taken away by various examples of manipulation, bullying and other forms of spiritual abuse.  So far the full description of what it means to have full agency and be supported in obtaining it has not been mapped out.  Perhaps this short piece may help us to start thinking afresh, not about abusive ministry, but about supporting parishioners to live out the Christian life with greater abundance and agency.