In the past few days, I have been having a Twitter conversation with Gilo and a few others about the forthcoming hearings of IICSA which begin tomorrow (Monday). This is the Independent Inquiry into the Anglican Church and its failures over child protection, particularly in the Diocese of Chichester. The Bishop with oversight of Safeguarding for the Church, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, has already indicated in Synod that he believes the next two years will be a fairly torrid time for the Church of England. This is because he anticipates how many historic failures in this area will become public knowledge, some for the first time. Two things in summary have to be faced by the Church. The first is the fact that some of its employees have been complicit in acts of child sexual abuse. The second is the way that church authorities, including bishops, have floundered in their attempts to deal with this issue. Incidents of criminal activity have been in some cases hushed up in a desperate attempt to avoid scandal. On some occasions the perpetrators were quietly disciplined and their offence buried in filing cabinets in diocesan offices. On other occasions victims were listened to but subsequently all the records of the conversations disappeared. In short, children suffered but the Church seemed unwilling to face up to the horror of what was happening. From the point of view of some victims, justice was for decades denied, apparently to preserve the reputation of the national Church.
My own published study of power abuse which is now nearly 20 years old never touched on the topic of harmful behaviour towards children. Such activity would obviously be criminal and I was not in the business of researching illegal behaviour. The stories that I did in fact record were in some cases just as bad in different ways. Exploitation of vulnerable people, whether sexually, emotionally or spiritually is always a serious matter. I only recorded one criminal act, a rape, but this had already been investigated by the police. No prosecution had followed. What my studies did sensitise me to is the way that it was extremely easy for the power exercised by church leaders and ministers to do serious harm. Many people who find their way to church are on a journey from vulnerability but hoping to find healing. A narcissistic church pastor or leader may well exercise his power in inappropriate ways. It is this imbalance and subsequent abuse of power which was a constant theme in my book.
My current conversation with Gilo touches on the power that Anglican bishops possess to sort out or aggravate the abuse cases that come to their attention. I have never interviewed a bishop on this topic. I did however receive letters from women when my book was published who had approached Anglican bishops to complain about clergy who had had ‘affairs’ with them. Several of them expressed their frustration at the way the bishop concerned refused to engage with the priest who had crossed professional boundaries. My impression is that some bishops were unwilling to get too involved in such cases, if no open scandal had emerged. I wonder whether these conversations with a bishop were ever recorded and put into a file. The existence of or not of good records of clergy malfeasance may well be revealed by the Independent Inquiry in the coming weeks.
My response to a comment by Gilo was that an Anglican bishop would probably be the person in the Church most likely to identify with and protect the institution. Although I did not say this I am wondering whether the powers that be choose bishops by seeking out those clergy who are by nature and temperament most institution friendly. Another way of putting this would be to ask whether many bishops carry a ‘gene’ that tends to put loyalty to the institution first. The general public is likely to notice if it is shown that bishops and authority figures in the Church have behaved less than honourably in order to preserve a status-quo of privilege and power. That is evidently how the Catholic Church has behaved and clearly it has rebounded badly on them. The charge that the institution and its reputation has been placed above of the needs and rights of suffering individuals is a serious one. A similar crisis is overtaking overseas charities and we see what has happened to their standing in a very short space of time. Almost overnight they have slipped badly in the public’s estimation. Until a few days ago they were the honourable providers of food and medical care to the world’s poor. Today in many eyes they have become exploitative post-colonialists who prey on the vulnerable women and children they are supposed to be helping. Gilo and others have done much to warn the church of the way that its reputation will be severely affected if they adopt the damage limitation policy that appears to be the advice coming from insurers. The Church has a great deal of work to do to show that it is genuinely on the side of justice, truth and love.
As we noted in the comment by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, things are going to be extremely difficult for the Church of England in the near future. Institutional attitudes that have been taken for granted for decades are going to examined and criticised by many people. The court of public opinion is unlikely to be impressed by what will be revealed. What might come out of this situation which is positive? My hope is that the bishops as well as the wider Church may learn something new about power. I am hoping that the power and influence that the Church still exercises will be seen to be able to respond far better to vulnerability than in the past. I am here not just thinking of survivors but every manifestation of wounded humanity. I look for a power in the Church that that can respond to brokenness in all its forms. Every Christian is somewhere on a journey from weakness to strength. Sometimes the weakness is connected with pain, grief or suffering. At other times the journey is from sin to forgiveness. Every minister should be alongside Christian followers on these journeys. The Church is or should be a place of healing. Everything the Church does should be about wholeness and its implementation in some form. Were that vision to be alive in every congregation, then every citizen looking in from the outside would be able to see, not scandal, introversion and privilege but service and support for all. We would be able to recapture William Temple’s vision of the Church as organised primarily for those who are not its members. Also, we would be closer to rediscovering what Jesus meant when he said ‘I am among you as your servant’. ‘Whoever would be the greatest among you must be the servant of all.’
Thank you for this deeply perceptive post. At a time when I am still recovering from the response I received after many months of formally challenging the charitable organization the church commissioned to independently audit safeguarding in each diocese and which the organization undertook without any survivor collaboration, in spite of this being one of their core values as stated to the charity commission, your blog is a reminder that all charities, including the church, need to act with transparency and for the protection of the vulnerable not the institution. Justice is, I always feel, doing a matter of what is right and not what is easy.
Thank you Trish for your comment. I hope you have good support to pursue your challenge. It takes stamina to take on a large organisation like the C of E. It is the courage of survivors like Gilo that has changed the playing field. MACSAS is another good resource that understands these issues and would support survivors. They are growing in number and being heard. For the church there is real fear that the publicity afforded to known survivors like Gilo will bring out many more survivors. We are on the brink of a #me too event, I fear.
A powerful last paragraph, Stephen, a clarion call. Thank you. A Bishop’s gene? I wonder if it is not mainly just that protecting the institution from which a Bishop draws their power is in their own best interests? But I also think it’s sometimes simple snobbery. I’m sure that powerful people find it hard to believe that a low status person can possibly be telling the truth if they accuse a high status person. I’d like to think that this investigation will do something. Let us pray so.
Thank you Stephen, that’s a vision worth responding to.
As for the “bishops’ gene”, I have long observed that people who rock the boat don’t get promoted. Others have noticed that too. It’s very like the ‘Yes Prime Minister’ episode where Jim has to appoint a bishop – it’s all wheels within wheels and ‘is he one of us?’ Let’s hope that will change when IICSA has done with us.
I did see the episode of Yes Prime Minister. It was making a serious point, I am sure based on reality. Every bishop is potentially an temporary aristocrat with a possible seat in the House of Lords. They have to pass a secret social test, no doubt.
I used to know a clergyman who worked in a very expensive part of the Cotswolds. He described being invited to dinner to be looked over to see if he was sufficiently ‘up-market’ to join the dinner circuit. He used the expression PLU, people like us. Although he did in fact have an aristocratic background, he was determined not to be in thrall to this group. Having some of our bishops in the Lords means that they are people of power, privilege and social status. None of these are particularly relevant for providing justice and compassion for victims and survivors. I repeat a point I made in an earlier post, that women are likely to be better at this task. I wonder if the complete muddle that the church has made in this area would exist now if we had had women bishops for longer than three years.
I’d like to think that women are usually better at standing up for justice and compassion, but I haven’t found that always to be the case. Too often women have had to operate like men in order to get very far in the Church – and the same standards apply about not rocking the boat. When the ‘discernment procedure’ to decide whether female deacons were fit to be ordained priest took place in 1993/94, some senior women colluded with men to make the process very difficult for the women candidates, and even to refuse some. This was especially true in Manchester Diocese where the discernment procedure was downright abusive, and it was openly admitted that this was to gratify the opponents of women priests. That story, and others, needs to be told some day.
The Anglican system tends to be self-sustaining, where those (mostly men) appointing candidates to posts look for others like themselves, and leadership qualities aren’t recognised in those who are different. When I went to St. Michael-le-Belfrey as a curate, I wasn’t appointed an elder for the first year or two. How can an ordained person not be a church elder, when lay men are?
I was once interviewed for the post of woman tutor at a theological college – they had to have a woman priest on staff in order to accept women students. It was an awful interview, and I came away saying, ‘They didn’t want a woman, they wanted a man in a skirt.’ The male staff wanted a clone of themselves. I didn’t get the job of course. Many women priests of my generation have had that kind of experience over and over – and sometimes it’s been other women who have exerted the pressure to be more ‘establishment’. Sadly, the Queen Bee Syndrome does sometimes operate.
Hopefully the IICSA hearings will result in a major cultural shift. We’re in dire need of it.
Spot on Janet. Sometimes the phenomenon of “women have to be better to get anywhere” works, too. So let’s hope that the women who are better than the men do their stuff before it all evens out. But I have mostly found that other women aren’t any help at all.