I heard the news of the death of Tessa Jowell on the radio on Saturday. Obviously, the event was not unexpected but there is always a sense of loss when a much-respected person in the public eye dies. Among the tributes, I heard one which especially struck me. This was an appreciation to make anyone’s family proud. Tessa Jowell, someone said, was a person who sought out the powerless in society and tried to help them. She also sought out the powerful and encouraged them to help the powerless.
I have been reflecting on these words and asking myself how this might relate to what happens or does not happen in a church context. It might be hoped that anyone who gets caught up in the Christian ‘spirit’ would inevitably develop a sensitivity for the needs of those who are poor or disadvantaged. Those of us who have worked in any way with people in need know that it is seldom straightforward. People do not queue up, as in a soup kitchen, grateful for any scraps of help or attention that are on offer. The idea of what constitutes help will often differ dramatically between the would-be donor and the recipient. Untidy political questions about the distribution of resources in society are never far away. Many individuals in the so-called caring professions must go home each day wondering whether the help that they offered was indeed the best or the most suitable that could be provided. What a client thinks they need is not necessarily in their best long-term interest.
The perennial uncertainty of not knowing precisely how to respond to situations of need will be wearing on the professional (or amateur) helper. Many of the problems of deprivation seem intractable and never go away. What do you do as a teacher if half your class in a primary school turns up in unwashed clothes having eaten nothing for breakfast? How far can you help if a tenant is being exploited by a landlord when there are threats of violence in the air? A clergyman who choses to live in a ‘difficult’ area will know about countless examples of the effects of bad housing, social deprivation and poverty. Presumably the same kinds of problems faced politicians such as Tessa Jowell. She appears to have been one of the politicians who persevered with her efforts to help in situations of individual need. In her case she also used her connections with powerful social figures to bring about political changes which went wider than her local constituents.
The temptation for any carer in a difficult environment is at some point simply to remove oneself from the challenges of poverty and need. One way of doing this is to go off to work in a geographically more congenial environment. The other option open to some is to seek a post in management. In any profession, to be in management implies that one is no longer at the ‘coal-face’. One is now directing others to do the work. In a church context that means ‘preferment’, taking on the role of an Archdeacon, Bishop or an Archbishop. The day-today problems of dealing with the intractable needs of ordinary people are thus magically pushed away. They all become someone else’s immediate responsibility.
If I am right, managers in any organisation are always going to feel a sense of relief at being ‘above’ the old issues that they used to deal with. I would suggest that, as time goes on, their emotional engagement with the actual day to day difficulties of people’s lives becomes weaker. After say, three years, most managers within a professional institution will have successfully cast off the old stressful role of gritty engagement with people’s lives. They have started to live out the new persona; they have become the successful (well-paid) manager. Stresses do not go away but they change in their nature. As far as bishops are concerned, there will be the acquisition of management skills as well as staff to deal with difficult issues. At the same time close contact with ordinary human distress has decreased. Sometimes also the old skills of empathy and Christian love begin to atrophy. No one forgets what it means to be a victim of poverty or abuse, but somehow the full emotional ‘knowing’ is no longer there.
I make these comments as a possible explanation as to why it is that there seems to be such a chasm between the statements* of bishops and archbishops towards survivors of church sexual abuse and the reality on the ground – almost total inertia. Promises of putting the victims at the centre of concern in practice have turned out to be highly expensive consultations which produce almost no change in the way victims are cared for. Compared with the complexities of poverty, the healing of most abuse survivors, while challenging, does follow some fairly well recognised protocols of professional care. Rather than follow these protocols, the actions in fact taken do seem far more to serve the needs and perspective of the management class – the bishops. These actions, such as they are, make little or no sense to those who are the victims of what is, arguably, a severely defective culture.
I am one of those people in the church who unashamedly sees the problem of sexual abuse in the church from the point of view of victims/survivors. These survivors have had their lives damaged or even destroyed by systems of abusive power which had incubated a sense of entitlement among abusing clergy over decades. It is never just about sexual deviance on the part of individuals. Sexual abuse emerges out of attitudes of privilege, elitism, patronage and power-seeking. While we can expect to find institutional power games in every area of society, somehow, we might have hoped that they would be absent from the place where the teachings of Jesus are supposedly honoured.
To return to Tessa Jowell. She seems to have been a woman who moved in places of privilege but never lost touch with her readiness to serve and identify with human beings in need. Our bishops also move in places of privilege but, unlike Tessa, in many cases they appear to have lost touch with individuals in distress. Here of course we are speaking of the survivors of abuse. This apparent failure of episcopal empathy may well prove to do more damage to the health of the Church of England than any other single lapse in its recent history.
*Statements and responses from bishops followed (among others) the Elliot Report, the Butler Schloss enquiry, the Sally Cahill enquiry and Moira Gibb’s report on Peter Ball. No doubt similar expressions of good intentions will follow IICSA in due course.
Thank you, Stephen. Well said.
Thank you Stephen. The only bishop I can see in the current College of Bishops who has given his voice and shown authentic understanding is Alan Wilson. Other current bishops seem capable of at best distancing – at worst dishonesty and denial – and even in some senior figures a disturbing emotional delinquency. I’ve seen that close up and personal. The culture is broken across the top of the church.
I agree with Linda Woodhead’s argument that almost a new theology is required to change the culture across the senior layer. Nothing will change this culture without a change of heart and a redirection towards compassion and justice. That isn’t likely to happen at present with many of the senior figures. MACSAS is aware that up to a third of diocesan bishops have responded dishonourably to survivors. This includes such things as silencing, distancing, fog and blank, discrediting, gaslighting. Many survivors have been familiar with these responses from diocesan bishops and their senior consigliere. Indeed, at present there are five bishops under police investigation by South Yorkshire police – including Archbishop Sentamu – all for failure to respond to just one survivor. The only way I can understand how the church gets away with its omertà on such an acute crisis as this – is that the percentage of people who care is so tiny. The CofE is now a special interest of probably less than 2% of the population. Church House and Lambeth Palace can shrug shoulders and get their strategariat to get them out of a fix through careful PR and then wait til a story dies down. That’s how the game is played out. Bishops are theology-poor but very well media-resourced. Diocese of London for example probably pays more each year on its Luther Pendragon contract than it does on safeguarding and its response to survivors.
Will it change anytime soon. No. I’ve been through two mediations with two bishops. And they turned out to be little more than expensive conversations which have achieved little. There is very little intention in this senior layer to really address the way they squeeze survivors through a toxic mirage. Look at Bishop Mullally’s promise two years ago on the Elliott Review recommendations. Two years down the line we see a waste of a powerful and promising mandate from an archbishop. And the recommendations have been re-drawn by powerful men who really run this whole setup. And Bishop Thornton was able to say in mediation that “we are under no obligation to carry out the recommendations of any independent review”. Or look at the NSSG and NST, a racket if ever there was one in the Church. It is essentially bishops protecting bishops.
Like others I have become jaded. They will only change when the crisis is so acute that they are forced into change. Until then the bishops will continue to maintain a public image. Not until survivors see the church buckle beneath the weight of all this, will survivors begin to heal – and we won’t see that for a long time. The investment is all in protection of bishops and management of the crisis. This will be a long cycle – look at the RC church to see how it works. CofE won’t be any different. The next Archbishop will be picking up the moral bill for the failure of this present one. It will take probably ten years for the CofE to really address the suffering and pain and damage.
Good points. My experience suggests that the church avoids appointing those with real management skills, training and experience. Perhaps especially women. The supervisory classes, archdeacons, bishops and possibly rural deans, often really haven’t a clue. They should have empathy with their clergy and Readers. They certainly seem to lose any they used to have after a while. And they remind me of an area manager I used to have who said of another supervisor, ” she thinks management is about wearing a suit and standing in the middle of the floor shouting orders”! Remind you of any clergy you know?
I have had to remove a comment which referred to a report about a named individual from a third party. Direct encounters with a named individual and a report of same is OK but we have to be careful in reporting what other people have said about someone.
When you appoint a senior area manager (bishop) to run a chunk of your fiefdom, it’s vital to choose someone who will be devoted to preserving the Institution (CofE). Soft skills an optional extra.
It is no surprise then, when the Institution is under attack, that its managers rally to its defence. Generally that’s who they are.
We are shocked by this. Outraged. Perhaps we need to move on from outrage to action. Leave. Go into politics. Be a better politician like Tessa. Continue the exposure. Mobilise more support for survivors (not just an email containing web addresses). Do something different.
I’d be surprised if individual responses would be very effective. A three stranded chord etc…
Excellent post Stephen, thank you so much, just what I needed as the black fog of depression leaves me staring at the kitchen wall again!
It is true of most managers in any profession that they become distanced both from the gritty realities and also from their former selves but it is only the church that gives these managers an automatic right to a seat in the House of Lords. Giving these managers this privilege, even when modern society is mostly secular and multi-faith can only play into their sense of entitlement and power.
The emotional energy it takes to tackle these ‘managers’ is phenomenal and at huge personal cost and is ultimately often soul destroying.
Not all bishops sit in the Lords, only the most senior ones. But they know they might be there some day. I was looking at a report of one speaking in a debate the other day and thinking, Why are they wearing robes in the Lords? Other Lords don’t wear their robes to attend. Surely a suit (or a dress) and a clerical collar would be enough.
And we ought to give up some of our places to representatives of other religions.
“The emotional energy it takes to tackle these ‘managers’ is phenomenal and at huge personal cost and is ultimately often soul destroying.”
Those words mirror my experience. The dishonesty of bishops destroys any trust. Why are they such a brazenly dishonest culture?
Gilo, I am sad that you feel so down. Regardless of the dishonesty of Bishops, your twitter page helps me through a lot, even though I don’t tweet, and your persistence in holding the church to account for implementing recommendations from the Elliott report has been important in my own case.
Forums such as this one and yours are incredibly important to me and I suspect many others. We are not responsible for how anyone else acts all we can do is be responsible for our own actions.
Stephen, disappointed to see you equate management with walking away from the coal face and failing to care. It’s simply not true. Daily I see senior people in the CofE working incredibly hard and caring deeply. Their roles are different to parish ministry, but no less essential, and often closest to the brokenness.
So why are some survivors so dissatisfied? Perhaps it’s time to consider tactics and stop demonising people. Change does not come about from shouting, endless jibes, calls on people to resign their posts, and never turning down the volume. Successful change happens when you get alongside people, allow differences of opinion and are vocal in support of changes made for the better (however small they may be).
Not convinced? Read aloud just one of the comments on this post. Mafioso language, a desire to see the Church ‘buckle’ before healing can happen, inaccurate statements about Police ‘investigation’….
The experience of some isn’t necessarily the experience of all. It’s time to allow some different voices to come through in this debate and start collaborating outside the echo chamber.
I hope you’ll see fit to publish this, necessarily anonymous, comment as a way to kickstart a better conversation.
Another way, many of us vocal survivors have spent decades working from the inside, being as non-confrontational as we could be. And all that time they/we have been stone-walled, disparaged, ignored, blamed, and further damaged. It’s not at all surprising that anger is boiling over. No one commenting on this blog has used ‘mafioso language’, despite being on the receiving end of some brutally unChristian treatment from he Church. Nor was Gilo’s statement about police investigation of 5 bishops inaccurate. That is a fact, and has been reported by the BBC and the Times. The Archbishop of Canterbury has himself said that abuse within the Church, and the Church’s mishandling of it, can destroy the Church. We don’t want that to happen – but it might well happen if there isn’t massive change, and soon.
I understand that bishops are human beings and have loved ones who will see another side and want to defend them. In the heat of argument it’s easy to forget that it’s not just the target of our criticism who might get hurt. I have known one or two bishops who have genuinely cared and tried their best. Tragically, for survivors and for the Church, they do seem very much in the minority nowadays. Anyone who followed the IICSA hearings at all closely will have been struck by how poor was the quality of some of our senior people who gave evidence there.
We have two more sets of IICSA hearings into the C of E to come. In early 2019 they will look at the Church of England’s handling of abuse allegations in general. I don’t think we’r egging to come out of that at all well.
Dear AnotherWay,
I am breaking my rule of not responding to anonymous posts.
Your post betrays a lack of any appreciation of what it means to be physically or sexually abused. If you reflect on the case of the Rochdale schoolgirls, you may begin to have a better understanding of the impact of abuse, and of the failure of institutions to deal adequately with victims who disclose. The question “why are some survivors so dissatisfied?” comes painfully close to saying “Why do rape victims make such a fuss?”
There is no earthly reason why we should expect victims of abuse in the church to care about the institution, or to collaborate in trying to help it reform. That would be like asking the Rochdale girls to help reform Rochdale Social Services. The fact that any abuse victims try to help the church respond better should be a cause for humility and gratitude. The fact that some use “tactics” you don’t like is their choice. It may reflect that the channels you would find more acceptable are either irrelevant or not open to them.
There may be some senior church leaders who are “hard working and care deeply.” That doesn’t absolve them from behaviour that is often callous and self-serving: failure to respond to letters, bargaining over inadequate compensation, agreements that are made but never delivered. The sad fact is that the institution of the church makes good leaders act in cruel and heartless ways.
You say that “successful change happens when you get alongside people.” You need to spell out what on earth that means. How should victims “get alongside” bishops who won’t meet with them, or an NST that seems to treat them as cases to solve rather than individuals to care for. As far as I can see – and I’ve seen a lot – there hasn’t been any meaningful attempt at all on the part of senior church leaders to get alongside victims. Quite the reverse. Surely the theological truth is that successful change starts with repentance. We have yet to see any widespread expression of repentance on the part of senior leaders, or any willingness to pay a cost for their failings and the failings of the church.
Finally, I would want to say that your anonymity is a symptom of the problem victims face. If we’ve learnt anything about abuse over the last few years, it is that the climate of nods and winks, secrecy, and fixing things up in private, is precisely the environment in which abuse thrives. Church leaders working things out behind closed doors is the problem; it cannot also be the solution. The bishops have yet to face the fact that they are neither qualified nor equipped to fix the church’s problems in this area. By definition, many have risen to the top through abusive cultures. They are unable to recognise their own privilege and unwilling to admit their own victimhood. They are horses trying to muck out their own stable. Until the bishops admit their inadequacy in this area and call upon victims and independent experts to advise, all they will succeed in doing is spreading the muck around.
Well said Janet. If you’ve believed the church would come right and do the right thing for twenty years, and they still haven’t, you do start to think they’ve no intention. That’s not irrational. And I have loved ones, too. They have been affected by what was done to me. I have been robbed of twenty years of my life, and had its course irreparably changed. I’m cross. Wouldn’t you be, another way? I tried asking people for help. They didn’t.
This sounds intuitively right, Stephen, thank you. For those of you who were kind enough to offer your support to me in my situation, I now eventually, after many weeks, have a reply from the Bishop. It is legalistic to the point of being inhuman. It makes no reference to the Bishop’s and other senior clerics’ total failure to attempt any kind of reconciliation or healing. It makes no apology for weeks of cruel silence and it fails to thank me for many years of unpaid service as Reader, now brought to a brutal halt. But its main point, to me very clearly written by a lawyer, is that despite my three and a half pages of A4 detail to back up my complaints about a senior cleric, the issues will NOT even be investigated due the Bishop says, to insufficient objective fact. I laughed out loud when I read that comment. The response seems to be within the very weak wording, (but I would say most definitely not the spirit) of the Clergy Discipline Measure. And to respond to ‘Another way’ I would say that until you have been on the receiving end of such appalling treatment (which would have been dealt with far more sensitively by many commercial companies) I would say this: How do you “get alongside people and allow differences of opinion” if your Bishop won’t even meet you, and resorts to total rejection of your complaints in such a brutal and final way? What is it that causes people called to the priesthood to become so desensitized? Becoming remote in their ivory towers (including the House of Lords) must surely be one contributory factor?
So sorry. I’m sure we are all praying for you. It won’t be easy, but don’t let them spoil the rest of your life. They’ll have to face God eventually. Even those who clearly have no fear of judgement.
I’m sorry, but not surprised. I have had a similar experience.
I hope you had plenty of support.
Anonymous, I am sorry to hear this, however you are still entitled to pastoral care and an opportunity to tell your story. You can ask your Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser to speak to an Authorized Listener. There are a lot of pit falls with this because they are in no sense independent or able to have direct input in your case but they can advocate for you with the DSA. The fact that your complaint won’t go anywhere under CDM is I am afraid, ‘join the club’ but if the situation still upsets you fight for a response that is respectful of both you and all the time you have given to the church.
Wherever you have an organization that has the cancer of unknowing in its ranks, you will always find a stilted language of limited definition!
Even the word, “Suffering,” is spoken at a great distance from the sting in the tail of realities grip. This is a totally unacceptable state of affairs.
Having worked on the lowest level of ‘Care’ for 39 years, I can tell you that promotions to a place of power, (i.e., Senior carer or assistant manager) have always led to disempowerment and fear in the workplace and, that resulted in a lack of care.
I recall one manager telling me that the training course she went on instructed them to, ‘keep the staff in a state of tension, you get more out of them that way!’
My experience tells me that some of the worst enemies’ of the human race are in positions of power in Residential nursing care and other areas.
I insist on being believed, I worked under an absolute Career psychopath for 14 long years, it challenged my faith in indescribable ways.
Some of my work colleagues coined that phrase, “Career Psychopath” and I agree with that description. Ambition, personal agendas, old boy networks inveigle their way in and corrupt, and let me tell you they corrupt absolutely!
This distancing of hierarchies has reached epidemic proportions.
This whole area has never been faced head on; the mechanics to protect those in a position of power are vast. Tessa was a pure soul in world of theatre and actors; we need thousands more like her. Sadly, no one is listening.
Sorry, ‘ I don’t think we’r egging to come out of that at all well’ should have been ‘I don’t think we’re going to come out of that at all well’.
Whoever invented these software programmes which keep changing text in silly ways must have a good laugh…
Well, I suppose if we can laugh at autocorrect, it helps. My tablet has just upgraded and it’s behaving like a cross between newly washed hair and a supermarket trolley!
Anotherway, I’ll give you a specific example. I spent about a year trying to have a conversation with the person who was to take over the parish where I served. They kept saying they would meet. They told my husband we would meet. They never did. I didn’t sulk in my tent, I spoke to the rural Dean and the warden of Readers. Both were sympathetic, both offered to build a bridge by talking to the incumbent elect. Nothing happened. The new person filled in the DBS forms and the requests for relicensing for three others, but never contacted me. So I lost my licence! I was told by a third party I needed to talk to this individual. Sure, but how? I eventually found out that the rural dean, and an NSM licensed to the parish, and at least one other cleric had extracted promises from them to contact me, but they still didn’t. What happened? No one asked me if they had. No one checked they had done as they said. I was without a licence for three years. No one did anything.
Now then anotherway, what precisely should I have done?
Athena, that’s appalling. I’m so sorry. What a deceitful and underhanded way for the new incumbent to behave.
Was it a gender thing, do you think?
Probably a brain thing. (Sound of my own trumpet!) I’m cleverer than they are! But you’re always guessing.
Trish, thank you for the advice. I’m not exactly full of trust for the official Diocesan officers, several of whom have been involved in this situation, including the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer and all have behaved badly. I can’t imagine any way of achieving closure by using their structures. One of my complaints to the Bishop was that the senior cleric involved had mishandled a safeguarding issue. Needless to say, there was no mention of that complaint at all in the Bishop’s letter. My experience of safeguarding training in our Diocese is that it’s nothing whatsoever to do with trying to prevent problems from happening – it’s simply so that when bad things happen, they can point to the training and say ‘We did everything that we should have done’.
Like putting up a sign saying “uneven paving” in order to limit your liability , instead of mending it!
Anonymous, completely understand your reluctance regarding Diocesan officers. If you have raised a concern about how a safeguarding situation has been handled you have technically ‘whistleblown’ and that is governed by the Public Disclosure Act, but as an unpaid Reader you would not be covered by any protective measures, however this does not mean that the Bishop or the DSA can ignore your concerns. They can say they won’t investigate but they need to put it in writing to you, so that if the person fails again, with serious consequences, they cannot say they knew nothing about it. If the DSA is a registered social worker they will be accredited under the HCPC so if you have raised concerns with them and they have done nothing you can take your concern to the HCPC. You can get the DSA’s registration number from the website. I think I am right in saying that DSA’s can now act autonomously so what the Bishop says shouldn’t matter (as if!). The trouble is taking things outside is almost as hard as leaving it ‘in house’ because no one really cares and it is very tiring. However you have clearly had both the courage and the integrity to raise a concern and the church needs to start respecting that and not just writing ridiculous policies on providing a safe church whilst doing the opposite.
Perhaps it’s significant that the DSA is not registered?
I wonder how long I leave it before I conclude ‘anotherway’ has no intention of replying? By the patronising tone, ‘I’m disappointed in you, Stephen’; and obviously the people who complain are too stupid to have thought of speaking to an archdeacon or a warden of Readers; I’m guessing it’s someone who thinks it’s ok to speak to adults as if they were children. Bishop?
The autocorrect just corrected archdeacon to first, aggression, then Armageddon! 😂
Autocorrect has a wisdom of its own!
This particular post has had 748 viewings by separate individuals so far. Actual page views is double that. It would be interesting to know whether the popularity of this page is a reflection of a renewed sympathy for survivors or outrage at anyone daring to suggest that bishops are sometimes not up to the job of caring for people. Janet has written on another blog her support for Vivien Faull, Bp of Bristol designate. Let us hope that her strength of character – this blog wrote support for her confrontation with ringers- will stand up to the conformity and weak institutional response to past abuse cases that has been blindingly clear to all of us at IICSA.
It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that whilst all these events are taking place and Bishops are acting this way, the C of E is dying on its feet. Many of those complaining and who have been removed, are the very people who are needed, if the Insitution is to survive another generation. Do the Bishops know how much damage they’re doing to the cause they’re desperate to defend, by mishandling all these cases? Do they realise how many are alienated by the organisation’s maifest lack of empathy and jusice towards survivors? Do they know how hypocritical they sound to the outide world?
My own experience with the American Episcopal church makes clear that, while many clergy have fine personal morals, the church as an organization is utterly incapable of dealing appropriately with abuse of any sort. And Stephen is quite right—bishops sit in splendid isolation, decreeing compassion and social justice, all the while never actually having to personally deal with these issues. So when someone comes along and says, “I have an issue, would you help me with it?,” they have little to no concept of how to proceed.
And by the way, a meaningful pastoral response to any sort of abuse is almost entirely absent in the American church. “He’s stopped his bad behavior, why can’t you move on?,” seems to the modus operandi.