http://anglican.ink/2019/09/19/letter-from-jonathan-fletcher-to-evangelicals-now/ http://anglican.ink/2019/09/23/time-to-come-clean-response-to-jonathan-fletchers-letter/
This blog piece does not begin with some breakthrough news on the Jonathan Fletcher story. This is a continuation of the narrative that I covered at the end of June and the very beginning of July this year. Indeed, it is the relative absence of news that is perhaps the chief feature of this blog instalment. When a story of such considerable importance goes quiet, one finds oneself asking questions. Over in America, on an Anglican web-site called Anglican Ink, (see above) questions are also being asked. They have recently published two letters connected with the Fletcher affair, links to which can be found above. The first is a letter from Fletcher himself and originally published soon after the main story about him broke at the end of June. This appeared in a magazine called Evangelicals Now. The second letter is an open letter from a group of six individuals and published on the 23rd September by Anglican Ink. Most of the six signatories appear to come from similar evangelical networks as Fletcher himself. In other words, this September open letter can be read as an evangelical critique of Fletcher’s activities and his theology. The title of this second letter, Time to Come Clean, is the same title as Jonathan Fletcher had given to his July letter.
‘Time to come Clean’, the first letter of this title written by Fletcher, is an extraordinary piece of self-justifying fudge. The letter makes no attempt to address the questions that many people might reasonably be asking. Instead of any account of the events that led up to the withdrawal of the Permission to Officiate in the Diocese of Southwark, there is a short reflection on Bible passages, Psalm 38 and a reference to Matthew 18 and 2 Corinthians 2.5-11. Fletcher claims not to know who he has ‘spiritually harmed’. In the answering open letter, the six signatories expose the feebleness of Fletcher’s attempt to find excuses for his behaviour. There is an interesting reflection on how a Christian leader might end up having apparently so little self-insight and functioning conscience. Here I quote from the second open letter. ‘It is a common feature of this kind of abuse that the perpetrators have given into temptation incrementally, and have come slowly to justify their behaviour in their own eyes. The consequence of this is that they find it very hard to repent when confronted.’ Although the letter does not go into detail about the offending behaviour of which Fletcher is accused, it does speak about ‘grooming victims for perverse pleasure’. In this, Fletcher is linked to his erstwhile Iwerne colleague, John Smyth.
The published letter of response to Jonathan Fletcher is a welcome piece of analysis which is well-worth studying. Fletcher has for decades been a giant in the UK conservative evangelical world. He is probably not used to having his biblical exegesis challenged from within the evangelical constituency. Online research indicates that the three years served at the Round Church in Cambridge (73-76) and the thirty years (79-09) at Emmanuel Wimbledon gave him enormous influence over many within Anglican evangelical circles. Both the institutions that Fletcher served are at the heart of the Reform/Church Society network that has propped up the Iwerne Camps as well as contributing to the fragmenting of the Anglican Communion through its support of GAFCON. We also discovered that Fletcher, as a member of the dining club, Nobody’s Friends, was right at the heart of the wider Anglican establishment.
The second open letter from Anglican Ink states that there are ‘more victims of abuse .. struggling to make sense of their experience.’ Obviously, I am not privy to who these individuals are, but the fact that none have entered the public domain does not mean they do not exist. Fletcher’s original letter seems to read like a carefully written piece from someone who knows that a negative story is about to break. There is an apparent attempt to apologise in advance and neutralise pending information, using the rhetoric of Scripture to advance the case. I leave it to my readers to study the use and counter-use of scripture for themselves As I pointed out in my article in Letters to a Broken Church, the Bible is frequently used by abusers to further humiliate victims. As far as I am concerned the use of the Bible here to further Fletcher’s cause and protect the evangelical hierarchy is totally unconvincing. This is the view, also, of the writers of the open letter of response.
The very existence of the original July letter by Fletcher is suggestive of the fact that he knew that there was an ongoing threat to his reputation and the entire conservative evangelical constituency in Britain. If Fletcher was a nobody in the church, then his actions and attempts at self-justification would be relatively unimportant. But two things make Fletcher’s story of far greater importance. The first is the place that Fletcher has occupied in the Anglican evangelical hierarchy in the UK over many years. Although never a member of the episcopate, his position of serving in two of the holy shrines in the Reform/Church Society network, (Round Church Cambridge & Emmanuel South Wimbledon) puts him right at the centre of this part of the church. He is mentioned as mentoring Nicky Gumbel while the the latter was an undergraduate in Cambridge. Justin Welby, who became a Christian in 1975, certainly knew him well at the same time. Fletcher was also well known beyond Christian evangelical circles. The combination of membership of the dining club, Nobody’s Friends together with his family political connections, gave him high social status. It would be hard to find any prominent evangelical who did not know him in some way, or at least had heard him speak. He was/is? among the evangelical elite and a prominent leader of that entire branch of the church. If his actions against young men are shown to be immoral in some way or, worse still, his moral reasoning and conscience are shown to be corrupted, then the contagion of this is going to affect many others.
The second point, still more serious in its implications for the evangelical world, are the indications of a thirty-year cover-up. Complaints have been circulating about Fletcher since 2012 but the stories of spiritual abuse go back much further. Reading between the lines of Andy Lines’ statement which was discussed in a blog here at the end of June, abuse by Fletcher may have been going on over several decades. If things were going wrong for Andy Lines in the 90s through the mentoring offered by Fletcher, why was there apparently no one to supervise his behaviour? Was his place among the royalty of the evangelical Reform/Church Society tribe such that he was unchallengeable? Were those who knew what was going on somehow complicit? Andy Lines might have hoped to have gathered support after his past suffering. In practice, his story has disappeared from public view. After a story of such magnitude, one might have expected to hear some public protestations of support or possibly denunciations of his whistleblowing. What we in fact have is complete and utter silence. The evangelical tribe has been paralysed into silence once again. Such passivity and silence in the presence of evil abuses has been and continues to be corrupting and dangerous to the integrity of the whole church.
Keith Makin’s report on John Smyth which we hope to be reading next Easter will be probing into another massive 40-year conspiracy of silence. Contemporary documents published online mean that we are now far more aware of the details of John Smyth’s abuses here and abroad. The weapons of loyalty to the tribe and mafia-type silence nevertheless protected him for well over three decades. As a result, there was no repentance, no justice and no reconciliation. If the same dynamics of cover-up are still in operation, the ones that hid other past crimes (eg Fletcher’s) in the church, the future possibility of integrity in the church looks bleak. We know that a number of present leaders of our church knew Fletcher, were under his influence and even followed him as their guru. Will they tell us what they knew, or is the cancer of Fletcher’s apparent toxic influence going to fester within the Church for ever? Without transparency, without confession and truth-telling, there can be no realistic hope for a healthy church in the future. An example of promoting the culture of open honesty has to start at the top so that true metanoia for these massive institutional failures can be acknowledged by every part of the body.
Thanks for a thoughtful piece. A couple of things of relevance 1. I would not say JF is/was a giant or well known in the conventional sense of conservative evangelicalism i.e. not a prominent, well known preacher or author amongst the rank and file. Rather it seems that there are people who have influence among other leaders quietly. In that respect the story has not exploded in the same way that the Hybels one has. For many it will be just another iffy vicar somewhere. 2. With the Smyth case last year, many were quick to close down theological reflection. This was defensive as there were some less concerned about victims and more concerned to use it for their own theological agenda and try to link the abuse with things like Penal Substitution. So people comcentrated on refuting that showing rightly that reformed teaching on the atonement challenges rather than supports spiritual abuse. However, what some of us from within reformed/CE context have been arguing is that your theology is not less than your doctrinal statements but certainly is more than. Therefore we need to ask questions about the culture as well and how it is shaped. Ray Ortlund has talked helpfully about Gospel/Grace culture as well as doctrine. The impression I get is that there is a culture shaped by public school culture and that culture makes it difficult to see how seriously malign behaviours are.
This question of how influential JF is in the evangelical world seems to have have various answers. There is a Iwerne/public school/establishment strand where he seems to have had considerable importance. That strand may well have been invisible to other conservatives who did not mix in these circles. The great Cover-Up of abuses (Smyth/Fletcher etc), if I can describe it as such, seems to have taken place within these networks. From my perspective, never having belonged to any part of the evangelical tribe, I find this institutional behaviour both interesting and highly damaging at the same time. The full nature of the scandals and the cover-ups is not yet clear. Whether Keith Makin will make any headway in this area is not clear. I am not holding my breath.
Oh dear!
Luke 12 verses 1 to 3 come to my mind. The words ‘there is nothing covered up that will not be disclosed’ are preceded by a comment ‘beware the yeast of the Pharisees’. Yeast may act imperceptibly slowly, if you stare at your loaf, but it has a big effect over time. Interesting to compare that thought to the idea of ‘incremental temptation’ in the quote from the second letter, above.
We must all be on our guard from gradual slippage in standards, it seems.
I hope lessons will be learned from all this. If God can bring a wonderful outcome from something as hideous as the cross, then perhaps even this unhappy mess can somehow be a source for good in the end.
“There was a scientist who decided he was going to do a study to see what made people drunk. So he mixed up some rye and ginger ale, and then he mixed up rum and ginger ale, and mixed up some scotch and ginger ale, and each one made people drunk. So [the scientist] said, “Must be the ginger ale!” Sometimes we’re just looking at the wrong set of factors and drawing the wrong set of conclusions.” Carl Atwood.
I left Atwood’s joke a little bare but to pin down my intention it was to say that people from entirely different theological backgrounds can mess up and drawing conclusions from their theology is facile. It’s part of the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy, X follows Y therefore X is to blame. If we really want to get to the bottom of things it lies with universal human falleness, or as Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof, “As the Good Book says, Heal us O Lord and we shall be healed, in other words send us the cure, we’ve got the sickness already”
Thanks Stephen. I used to wonder why no one ever stopped the abuse I was subjected to. Now I know the answer is, they never do.
Regrettably, silence and coverup as responses to allegations of misconduct are regrettably alive and well throughout the Anglican Communion. We talk a good game, but the reality is that this is simply a case of whitewashing a reeking tomb.
But what does someone do with information? Who can someone take it to in the church where it is listened to safely and properly acted on. Not knowing that, not feeling safe enough or trusting anyone with influence to act properly on what is said is an abuse in itself.
You should be able to tell a Bishop. But you get your statements turned aside. Very skilfully. And you leave wondering what happened.
There is no doubt that Iwerne was at the heart of the evangelical establishment, and the period from 1968 – 1978 (others might bracket the period differently) was probably its high water mark. The leading public schools had sent boys for some time. Some of their chaplains regularly attended the camps. The beacon evangelical churches, inter alia St Helen’s Bishopsgate, All Souls Langham Place, St Ebbe’s Oxford and the Round Church Cambridge, were typically those attended by Iwerne Officers while either still at university or as ordinands at Ridley or Wycliffe. Everybody knew everybody else and all knew who were in the club, and who were not. The test was ‘were they sound?’ Iwerne Campers like me (you became a Senior Camper if you continued to attend having left school) who would not make it into the club (‘unsound’ then, more so now!) were sometimes invited to help lead one of the prep school camps. But the idea of letting me lose giving a Talk to Iwerne boys was anathema. Which is somewhat strange, as I found faith through the camps and certainly had no difficulty with the language of ‘conversion’ and ‘personal relationship with Jesus’. Years later I was on a Council with David Fletcher and it was my task to assist with the appointment of a new chairman. All members of the Council were eligible to throw their hats into the ring. All he wanted to know about the person (a bishop) who it seemed was the preferred candidate (and about whom he knew little) was ‘is he a converted man?’ That was the sole measure or test of soundness, and it seemed suitability for office. Tough if you are one of many in those days who probably regarded themselves as a cradle Christian. Back to Iwerne, the leading lights in my years (1969 – 1972), under the leadership of David Fletcher (‘Bash’ was still there, coming down from his room mid morning and giving the very occasional Talk), included John Smyth (slightly older), Jonathan Fletcher, Peter Lee (later +Christ the King, Johannesburg), Mark Ashton (RIP), Colin Fletcher (+Dorchester), Andrew Dalton (RIP), Richard Kennedy (later Headmaster, Highgate School), Bruce Gillingham, Richard Coombes, Peter Southwell, Andrew Cornes, Hugh Palmer, and I think Chris Turner. Largely marked out by a particularly muscular evangelical spirituality and not a whiff of charismatics (now that would have been unsound!). By any measure, their leadership in the Church has been significant, but of course from their own stable. And so it was that I went to Birmingham University, a hugely levelling experience, flirted with the CU (David Watson led a mission in 1974), and thence to London to work, whereupon I got back in touch with the St Helen’s Bishopsgate tribe, Jonathan Fletcher being curate at the time. I had a good job in the City, had found a flat, but not a church where I felt comfortable. However, the occasional Tuesday lunchtime service at St Helen’s (Dick Lucas in the pulpit), led to the possibility of joining the Sunday evening…
… congregation. Jonathan Fletcher had spotted me (from Iwerne). I was invited (in about 1975) to supper at his home in Ellington Street in Islington (‘Bank of Dad’ or perhaps it belonged to SHB). I have the clearest possible recollection of the event but have only reflected on it more recently. It was not a newcomers’ supper, which might have been more usual. I was the only guest. The conversation was genial and largely forgettable. Jonathan used to express righteous indignation at the fact that junior partners at lawyers Denton Hall (his father’s old firm) ‘made £30,000 [£190,000 today] per annum, and felt they were both entitled to it and needed the money.’ But what was I doing there? He didn’t really know me, and was of course just extending Christian hospitality. The cooking was schoolboy variety! I now realise that I was being sized up for membership of ‘the club’. He wanted to know more about me. I sent a nice note (being well trained) and don’t believe we have ever met or spoken since.
Thanks Antony. I enjoyed reading your piece, which struck several chords with me. I became an officer at the junior camps at Swanage from 74 – 78, which I regarded as excellent then, and still do now. So efficiently run, for one thing. Great fun, and helpful talks. I did not interpret this posting as meaning there was no room in the club for me: I took it as a belief by others older and wiser than me that this would be the best place for me to serve.
I suppose the forming of clubs is a natural part of human nature. I don’t see harm in it. The word clique is less attractive, as it smacks of exclusivity. ‘Sect’ similarly repels. I am reminded of Paul’s counsel against divisions in 1 Corinthians one.
So when is a club good, and when is it unhelpful? Not always easy to be sure.
Personally, I understand the question “is he converted?” to mean, does he now put Christ first in his life? Saul needed to be brought up short so that he could follow the Lord (Acts 9). The classic conversion. Cradle Christians (a new idea for me) need to make the faith their own. Whether abruptly or gradually, how we arrive at commitment to Jesus does not matter to my mind. The important thing is that we get there.
The deepest division that I am conscious of is between liberals, high church, and evangelicals. It is easy to be suspicious of one another. I wonder if it comes down to personality and inclination. Really it’s a question of motive – what are we trying to do? Honour the Lord, hopefully!
Thank you Anthony and David for your first hand accounts of Iwerne. It have never been easy for an outsider like me to find out what went on in those distant days among a group that would have regarded me as totally unsound. The part of Anthony’s narrative that I find most revealing is the invitation in 1975. If Anthony was being sounded out for membership of the ‘club’, that implies that Jonathan possessed considerable powers of patronage within the network. Patronage is a very important manifestation of power and, added to charisma and social power which JF already wielded, this made him a key player in the evangelical world 45 years ago. No wonder the rest of the church looks on him with awe and fascination
David, loved your last para! I found myself saying the other day that we should be opening a soup kitchen, not buying “stuff”. The prompt being a new set of vestments. It was, I should say, a safe place for different opinions. One person supplied the word “baubles”! Others laughed and said, Bring it on! We ARE all different. No one got upset. I was touched they accepted my outspokeness.
One memory I have as a senior camper was the need to butter 185 slices of bread for the day’s sandwiches!
Yes, and they say (the stereotypers) that all the menial work was done by the ladies. It certainly was not. Senior campers who did such work (plus washing up, sweeping etc.) were part of the set-up since at least the 1950s.
I think the importance of JF to the evangelical world is extremely overstated. JF might be part of the conservative evangelical elite, but as for the rest of the evangelical world in the CofE, he is an irrelevant figure. The two prominent evangelical tribes in the CofE are not conservative – they are charismatic, which would be an anathema to JF – and are New Wine and the HTB Network. Neither, in the last 25 years, would have allowed JF anywhere near the microphone. JF is part of a niche and moribund sect in the CofE, that perhaps influences UCCF and Word Alive, but that is about it. Even if he did mentor Nicky Gumbel 40 years ago, their theologies would have been so divergent even by the 1980s when John Wimber came to the UK that I doubt they could have co-existed in any kind of mentoring relationship – so, I am not really sure what the mention of his name is meant to provoke. How ever convenient it may be, I would urge you not to tar the whole of the evangelical wing of the CofE with the same brush – it simply could not be further from the truth.
JF and Nicky Gumbel have done pulpit swaps in the not too distant past.
This is the Nicky Gumbel who cavorts with Roman Catholics and US mega-church pastors, invites the Holy Spirit to come in services, and pioneered a course that is an anathema to JF and friends (so much so, that they needed to write a “sounder” one). It doesn’t seem likely that JF would have allowed NG anywhere near his flock.
Well, as he’s that ecumenical, he might. Combined with friendship considerations.
I can see Nicky Gumbel wanting a preaching invitation at Emmanuel Wimbledon and as the quid pro quo JF (when he had his PTO) would have had to come to HTB, but as they have eleven Sunday services across five locations, visiting preachers do not get much oxygen! It is entirely possible that his visit would have attracted zero attention, save perhaps for a sermon remaining listed online.
It is hard to know what the significance would be. It is not exactly ‘hold the front page’ stuff (man invites old friend and mentor to preach in the period before allegations emerge??!) – y’ don’t say, folks) more like vultures searching desperately for one last bit of meat. Not the spirit of the New Testament.
Christopher, if you read the above posts in sequence you can see the point about the pulpit swap was made in reply to a post saying that HTB would not ‘in the last 25 years, have allowed JF anywhere near the microphone’. (JF being Jonathan Fletcher, not me.)
I can’t comment on whether or not Jonathan Fletcher and Nicky Gumbel are still in touch. I have no idea. However, it’s perfectly possible to be influenced by someone and to move on from that influence; just as it’s perfectly possible for someone to be very influential without being well known.
When I was a curate at St. Michael-le-Belfrey I doubt if anyone there had heard of Iwerne, but David Watson had been a Iwerne man. Iwerne teaching and culture still had a profound effect on him even after he became part of the renewal movement, and Watson formed the culture of the Belfrey. So the old-timers at St. Mike’s, and to an extent even newcomers like me, were part of Iwerne’s sphere of influence. I can see the same dynamic happening with other churches and movements whose leaders were Iwerne men and Fletcher disciples.
I agree with all that. My point was that I do not agree with raking over remains for one last gruesome ‘titbit’ any more than most people admire that in the tabloid press.
We do need to know what happened. And in the absence of a full independent enquiry, with all parties co-operating fully, there is bound to be conjecture and people will contribute what they know. Where there has been serious misbehaviour and abuse, contributing information is a valuable public service. I was brought up to believe that it’s every citizen’s duty – but then I didn’t go to public school.
‘but then I didn’t go to public school’???
I have never agreed with the ban on snitching. It goes against the Christian truth/lies thing.
And I have certainly never agreed with treating different groups of people differently, whether public/non-public school or any other groups.
No – my point is a different one. Gossip is fun. If it can somehow be justified, that is a dream scenario. Guilt-free indulgence. After all, if one has info, one can easily send it privately to the relevant bodies. But that option is less fun. However, it is very regular that those doing the gossiping are less well acquainted with accurate facts. Nor do they in every respect wish to be better acquainted with the facts, by definition – since they are quite happily excluding those (clued up people) behind whose backs they are talking and about whom they are talking, who can better apprise them of the facts. The point is not always to get at the truth: sometimes it is, at other times the fun of the chat is an end in itself.
Then there is the issue of families. even if the gossip being done is accurate (it rarely is fully accurate) loved ones are affected, and exposure in the media is almost unbearably painful. It leads some people to suicide. The main reason that some things are minimised at the time is because people know how awful the media are, like a dog with a bone. They want every bit or meat bit by bit and never let things drop. By this process they can shut down organisations that are 99% good. (Iwerne in the time of David Watson and for the next 20 eyars was 100% good as far as anyone knows.) In fact, the central media figure in the Smyth case, Cathy Newman, has been rightly criticised for her role in the Twickenham clinic Dispatches. And the mosque Dispatches. And the Jordan Peterson interview.
I was and am notorious for not being in cliques – which certainly put one in a minority in public school and elsewhere.
Christopher, I did not mean to offend you. I have found the abhorrence of ‘snitching’ equally alive among gang members on tough council estates as it is among public school alumni. It’s one of teethings that rather baffles me about aspects of English culture.
I think the labelling of (usually informed) contributions on this site unfair, however. Most people here have a genuine desire to understand what has gone wrong and why, and to let in a bit of light and disinfectant (as another commenter has put it).
You are right that comment in cases like these is difficult for both the subject and the family. I know that well enough, being both clergy and clergy daughter. But public ministry carries with it a certain obligation to transparency; and a pulpit swap is certainly public enough.
I note too that silence serves predators but harms their victims. I have a friend who is a Iwerne victim and omertà about the behaviour of Smyth and Fletcher is not in his interest.
Finally, Iwerne was never ‘100% good’, any more than any human organisation is or can be. Its formation of so many Christian leaders had its downsides as well as its upsides. The same can be said of InterVarsity, on whose staff my father worked for many years, or the Church of England. But we want them to be as good as they can be be, and for that to happen there must be truth and openness.
Yes – of course ‘100% good’ does not exist. Not even remotely. I rank Iwerne towards the top of the organisations I have known, and stand in awe of the way they took the responsibility to look after so many boys and latterly girls in not always perfectly safe activities. I would never have dared.
It is as you say accurate that Iwerne teaching and culture permeated the roots of many of our most successful churches. People didn’t have to attend them in the first place – so they must have sensed something especially good. John Stott was a Iwerne man and great strategist, and by instituiting and convening the Eclectics (Anglican Evangelical clergy group) he made a movement with a vision people wanted to own – people who in many cases had formed firm and wonderful friendships already, mostly through Iwerne. In his own lifetime the Evangelicals grew from a despised minority to the most dynamic and happening group that had the largest churches, perhaps the largest overall contingent.
Supposing Iwerne teaching be found at the root of these churches, that is teaching that is considerably more familiar with the Bible than is averagely the case among C of E clergy. So all to the good. As to culture – I am sure there could be a narrowness – but how much exclusivity can we really speak of when the churches in question were/are that large? To be large is generally to be pretty diverse. Not just large but growing on an upward spiral – the York St Cuthbert’s / St Michael’s being a classic example.
On the other point, I don’t see a lot of difference between the tabloid lust for spice / blood and what one sometimes sees in such forums as this, and that similarity should worry us. I’m not sure that point has been satisfactorily faced, nor the point about inaccuracy in speculation being highly likely, nor the point about it being perfectly possible to communicate fears and information in private, nor the point about media exposure being painful to children and relatives including elderly ones who deserve much better.
My experience of public school is that it can make you or break you.
The now not-so-private antics of Fletcher and Smyth, take me straight back to the brutal classroom of my childhood.
From the Anglican priest teacher who liked to look inside our shorts, the fondling in the guise of light hearted forfeits, to the savage beatings. I’ve seen viscous assaults that in today’s money would lead straight to gaol without passing “go”. “Discipline” it was called. I still have flashbacks.
To discover such things still go on decades later appalls me. Maybe some people do consider this data to be “gossip” or “titbits”, I don’t know, I’m certainly not one of them. I find the characterisation to be disingenuous, shallow, lazy at best.
There were many very good things about St. Mike’s, but it was also (as one knowledgable observer put it) a ‘bastion of male chauvinist piggery’. I was not the only women to find it a very difficult place to be in leadership. So much so that two of the elders actually pulled the collar out of my clerical shirt.
Large churches are diverse up to point, but they still have a distinct culture and ethos of their own. And as we know from the Letters to the 7 Churches in Revelation, big isn’t necessarily good.
Of course – I am treating numbers not as faceless anonymous digits but as human individuals – more human individuals than otherwise have been drawn to churches with Iwerne leadership.
The larger their number, the more impossible and inaccurate generalisation becomes.
Nevertheless, each church has its own culture and ethos. And, looking at the websites of a number of churches led by Iwerne men, I notice that even in 2019, the leadership teams are preponderantly male. Where there are women on the team they are usually pastoral, women’s, or children’s workers. Not a lot of Deborahs, Huldahs or Priscillas among them.
I understand that you had a good experience of Iwerne and are grateful for it. That is understandable and commendable. What I have not seen in any of your remarks is concern for the victims of Smyth and Fletcher, or condemnation of the latter’s offending behaviour. Instead there has been only criticism, in quite strong terms, of people like Cathy Newman who have attempted to bring these matters to light and assist victims. Can you not see how this only reinforces the negative impression of Iwerne that some of us have received?
What we are not seeing, from anyone involved with Iwerne, is ‘We condemn wholeheartedly the abuse that has occurred and wish to say it does not reflect the values of our organisation. We have pledged ourselves to ensure the truth is uncovered, and we will pay the counselling and any legal fees of the victims.’
Spot on Janet
Yes, indeed.
I agree, though Iwerne did similar 37 years ago (which was the relevant time) and also 7 years ago.
One cannot be for or against an individual e.g. Cathy Newman. Why is it not possible for her both to do good things (exposing Smyth – however much she may want to bring down evangelicalism per se to a degree) and bad things (pursuing a poor extra-clinic counsellor demanding her salary figures – probably less than one percent of her own!! – while also misquoting the science on breast cancer; lumping together social with foetal-abnormality ‘abortions’ as though they were remotely the same; misjudging what was happening to her at a mosque and jumping to conclusions; saying repeatedly to Jordan Peterson ‘So what you’re saying is…’ and being wrong every time, as well as snookered – without following through the implications for her worldview).
Concern for the victims and opposition to past wrongs is common territory, on which we are all obviously agreed, so no need for debate on it. The whole point of nuance is that positions are not binary e.g. so-called right wing and so-called left wing. Quite the contrary – there are trillions of possible configurations.
I have another memory, of staying behind on the last day of camp to help clean up. A tremendous effort was made by a sizeable team of helpers, and by the time the school was handed back to the head – I remember a procession through the passages – everything shone and sparkled. The atmosphere while doing the sweeping and polishing was one of great fun.
This story seems relevant now that we have come to a time of cleansing in the moral and spiritual sphere. Stark appraisal of the facts, profound and full apology where relevant, and plenty of antiseptic and elbow grease are the order of the day.
I grew up in, and spent decades in the conservative evangelical tradition. To be fair at times it does church very well. For example, its outreach is often consistent and good, and its productions are competent and well planned.
Children and young people cannot know all there is to know about God and Kingdom, so they rely on their elders for information, for doctrine.
Older people, tired with the weariness of parenthood and the daily grind, often subcontract their thinking to the same eldership. “Unthinking Anglicans”, you might call them.
The conservative evangelical senior eldership bears little resemblance or correlation with the official Anglican hierarchy. It’s a small group of “sound” intellectual and highly influential men. And their word goes. It certainly is rarely challenged.
JF was certainly part of this elite. Being a closet or unofficial grouping, it’s much harder for those examining it to tie it down, and much easier for the group’s p.r. Dept. to distance itself, its doctrine, and its behaviour from a member caught doing stuff people condemn: “he was never anyone significant”. “What sermons?”
The abuse, in my opinion, is far wider than the episodes of trauma administered in secret to those young men, very serious as those abuses were.
The big abuse is the corruption of thinking to all those followers. It’s a true abuse of power to have all that influence and yet be unaccountable for so long. To make blanket doctrinal pronouncements that blight whole swathes of peoples who don’t quite fit, will I’m sure one day be determined as true wickedness.
The “Evangelical Book of Answers” is not the only bible that leads to cultic error. I can’t speak for the liberal tradition, but the Charismatic Movement contains a number of walled off, self referential communities as mentioned above, where leaders are too revered, until it is too late.
Indeed. Where it is possible for abuse of power to happen, someone will take the opportunity. That someone might be a serial bully rather than a serial child abuser. But if we can create a church where abuse is hard, and easily reported, SO much better for all concerned.
I first read the story about Jonathan Fletcher in the “Telegraph”. Hardly a tabloid in the traditional sense?
Who is to decide what we should see, how much and when?
Well, I am not so sure.
It used to be said 30 years ago that p3 of the Telegraph with its graphic detail in lurid cases was ‘the real p3’.
It is also the only newspaper whose readership much inhabits the relevant circles.
You have a brighter view of human nature than I if you think it is not mostly about money and ratings and retaining/getting readers.
All the newspapers, not just the tabloids, are subject to the dishonesty and unedifying circularity of having to abide by editorial policy. ‘Leader’ columns either reflect what they think their readers already think or propagandise. Even the Mail agony aunt presents the sexual-revolution culture as pretty much all there is (which is very far from true) – the other papers more so. All the main international cultures (apart from secularism, for which no-one voted) are sex within marriage cultures, but every UK paper views that as eccentric. Journalists are a world apart, but by behaving as though of course everyone is like them they seek to make the world to be like them.
I know loads of evangelicals very well up on the Bible, and loads of middle of the roaders and Anglo Catholics, too. But the newer evangelical anti women brigade in my experience are often a bit thick and badly educated in my experience. Sweeping statement! Just the ones I’ve met perhaps. But really Chris, if, and I say if, Iwerne became soiled by sado masochist practices, that really is a problem. Many didn’t get involved, fine. Some good teaching, great. Beatings and sex abuse, no. I wouldn’t let a teenager of mine go somewhere I knew did sado masochism because I also knew there were some good lectures!!!
Many didn’t get involved?
The way you phrase it it was always a feature of Iwerne, but an optional one!
The truth is quite different. It was never knowingly a feature of Iwerne, but in a 4 year period (out of about 87 years – what about the other 83?) some participants made it a secret minority feature.
I clearly remember discussing Iwerne with a friend of mine in the Hall at Repton one lunch time. He said that beating used to go on at Iwerne, – it must have been in about 1958 as a judgement based on the table at which we were sitting. Was this an exception or is the estimation of four years not quite correct ? There was, of course, a Iwerne phalanx at Repton but that is another story. Those of us who were not enamoured called it ockie ockie – a corruption of OICCU I believe.
That is an interesting new sideline. We need to be accurate in what we say. Of course in those days it’s possible that it was so much part of the public school culture that no-one would have batted an eyelid. When the Smyth story broke, Michael Green made the point that the sadism of Smyth could not have been further removed from the Iwerne that made his generation, and certainly the wholesomeness and character up till 1977 (and generally thereafter) was remarkable. We note from Andrew Atherstone’s book that 1977 was a peak/record year yet numbers dropped by 100 from 1978 (which was exactly when, unbeknownst to all but a few, the Smyth beatings began). That is how he phrases it, but he may be speaking in general terms. That would certainly be a very precipitate and sudden drop.
My supervisor from 25 years ago, has just been sent to prison for fraud. I read this in the local paper (online, so I can’t be sure if it’s a tabloid or not). I checked the source using Google and found the report matched closely a statement from the Metropolitan Police.
I had worked with this person in a firm of Christian chartered accountants in 1994. She’d obviously moved jobs since then.
In the last 7 years she stole £140,000 in her trusted position as Company Accountant at an engineering business. I was staggered when I read these reports, not believing at first. I further checked the source and found a report in the “Daily Mail”, a (in)famous tabloid. Was their report accurate? Yes. They did add the adjective “lavish” to the description of the champagne lunches she enjoyed on the proceeds of her crime, but other than that the report was sound.
You see you have to distinguish fact from opinion. This wasn’t a leader. It was news. I’m no defender of journalism, but these days they have to be careful what they publish for fear of expensive litigation. And rightly so.
So is that the end of the matter? For most people yes of course, but not for people involved in her timeline, like other employers in the intervening 18 years for example, or did she start her life of thieving in 2011 and was entirely honest before that? I suggest that is a very naive view. And how about the Christian firm I worked for, where she was in charge of audits?
There are more questions than answers here, and turning our faces away from news reports we are uncomfortable with, is hardly a mature approach.
The families of perpetrators are in a hugely painful position. Include in that close friends and many followers. Truly they are victims too.
Often they have to leave the church where the spouse/parent etc was leading and are left bereft, devastated without the community they trusted as well as having to deal with the actual allegations.
So should we just ignore the misdeeds and pretend they never happened? Cover it up again?
In my opinion it would be better to drain the abscess AND nurture the patient(s). Get the truth out and deal with its ramifications. At the same time rebuild a community of people who care for each other. I believe there maybe one or two around.
Amen.
Janet, removing an item of your clothing is surely common assault. That is truly shocking.
Yes, it was way out of order. I (untypically) burst into tears and they were mortified. It was meant to be a ‘joke’, but they had been going on at me for some time about wearing my dog collar, and they had no problem with my male colleagues wearing theirs.
Ugly. I’m sorry Janet, sometimes I’m ashamed of the behaviour of us men.
Not all men are like that, fortunately. But at St. Mike’s for my first year or so there, I was also in the anomalous position of being ordained, but not an elder.
Replying to Christopher’s comment of yesterday teatime (the reply button below it is missing).
Of course it’s possible for Cathy Newman to do both good and bad things – but I note that in two different posts you have appeared to try to discredit her. Just as you have accused others commenting on Iwerne, Smyth and Fletcher of gossip; not having the facts; not wanting to know the facts; and having similar to a ‘tabloid lust for spice and blood.’
You say in your comment of yesterday evening that, ‘Concern for the victims and opposition to past wrongs is common territory, on which we are all obviously agreed, so no need for debate on it. ‘ But we have not seen in any of your posts that concern for victims and opposition to the wrong that was done for them. Perhaps you do assume that we understand you feel those things, but it would have been good to se an expression of it.
One of Smyth’s victims who has reported the abuse asked me to say the following:
‘When I came forward Iwerne and Titus flatly refused any counselling help. What little help I did get was paid for privately.
I am not aware of anyone at Iwerne or Titus offering counselling help in 2012-17 period, or since the story came out. ‘
Iwerne and Titus Trust really need to do more – much more. As James said in his epistle, knowing the gospel is no use unless you go away and put it into practice.
To discredit? No. The only points I have made against her are of the more unanswerable and undisputed variety. If you think there are factual errors in what I write, take me up on them and we can investigate. Or if I am wrong in seeing a link to typical patterns of gossip and/or tabloid procedure then point out how.
I have written on the Smyth story in various places, and many times made the obvious point about the victims and the badness of the perpetrator’s actions – insofare as something obvious needs to be said. It was 2.5 years ago and I must have have stopped reiterating, I guess. It is obvious that no-one would wish anything like that, quite the reverse.
I think it would certainly serve C Newman’s purposes to have evangelical renegades and/or victims onside – however, it is scarcely surprising that they want to be onside if they lacked the milk of human kindness in their former treatment.
Her conduct of the Twickenham Dispatches programme deserves strong condemnation for the reasons said.
I was trying to work out from the original reports about the counselling. One early TV report said counselling was offered (but when? 1982 or 2012-3?) by 2 originally anonymous donors including D Fletcher head of Iwerne, who also said (reasonably) that the 2 priorities in 1982 were that J Smyth be stopped and the men he beat be taken care of, which certainly happened in some ways, as I witnessed at the time unwittingly and without being able to interpret it. Counselling (repeated sessions) did certainly take place 2012-3 for one. This is stated also on the Smyth timeline website.
Iwerne/Titus site has (not unnaturally) made clear their rejection of and distress at what happened all those years ago.
For 2012-13 read 2013-14-; for insofare read insofar.
If you were not trying to discredit Cathy Newman, why bring up criticisms of other programmes? Do you know any of the information presented in the programme on Smyth to be false? My sources say it was accurate.
I am told also that when counselling was requested by a victim, the Titus Trust flatly refused to provide it. In the end 2 trustees (whose names I have been given) did personally fund 10 sessions of counselling for this survivor, but TT made it very clear it was nothing to do with them.
TT cannot have made that clear, because ‘TT’ by definition includes trustees of TT, who provided (opposite of withheld) funding for counselling 003.
I am very much trying to discredit what she did on one other programme in particular (Twickenham Dispatches), while being unimpressed with her performance on 2 others. There was never any question of inaccuracy on the Smyth programme, not that I heard of. She may perhaps (like many from her background) have in her sights something vaguely understood and vaguely termed fundamentalism which she is trying to oppose. That would be a common denominator of 3 to 4 of the programmes in question, including the Smyth one. But trying to discredit ‘fundamentalism’ did not lead her to inaccuracy in the case of Smyth.
I quote this survivor’s statement:
‘I have endless letters from Titus saying it was nothing to do with them, and flatly refusing help. Out of compassion ( or a cynical attempt to keep it away from Titus) I was offered 10 sessions paid for privately by two Titus Trustees. The letters make it quite clear that this was a private initiative by the Trustees, and NOT from Titus itself.’
The two who offered to pay were acting in their personal capacity, and not on behalf of Titus Trust.
That is as clear as mud. What is this entity you call ‘Titus’? It is hard to see how it can be, as an entity, separate from 2 of its own trustees.
It is quite true that Smyth was nothing to do with Titus, but that is only because Titus was a rebranding and was not all that different from Iwerne as was, and anyway Iwerne continues as a brand to this day.
As the survivor intimates, what happened was in order that no-one could say that ‘Titus’ had paid for the sessions. But the existence of Titus is only virtual and conceptual (and therefore amounts to little) if it is not to any extent embodied in its own leading members.
However – these requests for counselling came over 30 years after the events, and it was good of the funders to fund. Care was already offered 30 years earlier.
Titus Trust.
Are you a member of a PCC? If so, you are a trustee of your parish church. But if you decide to give money to a mission society, or the National Trust or any other charity, that does not mean your parish church has made the donation. You’ve done it from your own personal funds, in your personal capacity, and not as a trustee. In the same way, it was made very clear that the counselling was funded personally by two people who happened to be trustees of Titus Trust, out of their own pockets, and was nothing to do with the Trust. In this instance the individuals and Titus Trust are functioning as separate legal entities.
You are right that some care was offered 30 years earlier, but only in the most general terms, and it was not followed up. Th effects and ramifications of abuse are such that it can take many years for a victim to get to a place where they are able to work on it with a counsellor. That is what happened in this case.
Yes, things can surface only gradually, being too large not to be repressed. A person’s state can get worse not better.
How then are you defining ‘Titus Trust’?
(1) It is a body led by people substantially not involved at the relevant time, so how are they culpable? but that would not stop people holding them culpable and so destroying their reputation and stopping them helping the large number of people they were helping. Boo to that. What other alternative is there?
(2) However, insofar as its leadership *were* involved at the relevant time, they *did* help, and substantially.
So little was all this anything to do with Titus Trust as it existed all those years later (because of the substantial change of personnel) that the Company Secretary actually had to have the information retrieved and corroborated. He had neither the paperwork nor the personal knowledge to do either of these things himself. Was an *organisation* to be held accountable for that? No – organisations are not agents. Persons are agents. In this instance, neither organisation (as it now was) nor individual could rightly have been held accountable.
To compound that, the Company Secretary was initially willing to finance counselling. Had any of us been in that position, we would have had the same attitude from a Christian and kind heart – further calculation later would have led to a different solution: that the counselling should continue but because of the deviousness that one could predict others would be likely to display, that counselling should not be offered in the name of TT since then it would seem to be admitting direct culpability. As to culpability, it is worth considering how shocked and uninformed the Iwerne leadership clearly were about Smyth on the good evidence of the Ruston report. People always want scapegoats, don’t they.
As ever, in the background is the unnuanced and half informed press, who would think nothing of destroying so much good and continuingly good work on the pretext that X’s predecessors (not X themselves) had (shock – horror) actually been around when Y was happening. Is that the best option? It is actually the worst. Why are the press and their tendencies never mentioned in the discussion?
Above I have said 003 when I meant 004 – apologies for that.
Corporate responsibility. It does exist. In effect “Titus” is an entity.
Legally yes. I have always thought that to be an undoubted legal fiction. It can’t ever be remotely true to say ‘Holy Trinity Brompton thinks XYZ’, for example. Because the entity mentioned is both (a) too large and (b) too diverse; and (c) no-one has ever done the research in order to make the assertion.
The law itself, which is increasingly reluctant to mirror reality, can be thought of at times as a parallel fictive universe, even a convenient or self-serving parallel fictive universe. It states a lot of things like that which cannot be true.
I did a bit of investigation to this end. The DPP adjudged something not to be in the public interest. ‘They’ freely admitted that not a single member of the public had been asked about whether this conclusion was accurate or not. I then asked how many people had been involved in making that judgment. They would not answer me.
All sorts of organisations are actually one bloke or woman (in terms of their pronouncements) or a handful (in terms of their discussions). Speaking as an organisation is one way of making yourself sound important, but of course it was you that made up the name anyway. I think people have found that practically it is a way of getting yourself taken more seriously. When campaigning and leafleting people frequently ask me ‘Whom do you represent?’ – the thought that one might be capable of independent thought and/or of standing up against injustice does not occur to them. I answer generally something like ‘All concerned people’.
I certainly didn’t make up the term “corporate responsibility” !
You certainly didn’t. A phrase’s mere existence is no guarantee either of its coherence or of its integrity.
It is quite a thing to discredit an entire person. The Twickenham DIspatches was to her discredit very much so, and targeting ‘fundamentalism’ (ill thought out word) is a common thread of her work including in the Smyth case – however, in the Smyth case it did not lead her to inaccuracy.
We absolutely need to ‘[rake] over remains for one last gruesome ‘titbit’’, if the quest for truth demands that. When Smyth was publicly unmasked (Cathy Newman did a great and fearless job), I had rather hoped that his evil and sadistic beatings were limited to his home in Winchester. Bad enough, but not at Iwerne. There now seems to be some evidence that some abuse did occur at Iwerne. Added to which, the staggering cover-up and ‘flight into Zimbabwe’ arranged by influential and monied friends led to much more abuse there, including a case of culpable homicide on Smyth’s watch at Ruzawi School (where incidentally I had spent my gap year). We now have the JF allegations (analogous perhaps, but it would seem more of the spiritual abuse kind than criminal offences against the person). Although we don’t know, and we need to know. There will still be victims around who haven’t felt able to disclose. We owe it to all survivors of abuse to act on all disclosures with expedition, something the Church has failed lamentably to do. Of course Iwerne did a lot of good for the Church, but we have now moved, belatedly, into a zero tolerance environment. I estimate that more than 50 people knew about Smyth quite quickly after he left the country. By the time I found out (still in somewhat hushed tones and with no detail) in the late 1990s (more than 15 years later) very many more would have known. The conservative evangelical establishment (of which I remained on the fringe) was privy to wicked acts, and did absolutely nothing. As for JF, it is too early to know how many have been affected by his ‘deviant ministry’.
I’m quite sure they thought they were doing something, namely damage limitation (the basic original idea was that JS be stopped). Damage limitation (as opposed to damage magnification – which the media would certainly have stoked up as is their wont) might have seemed by definition to be a good thing.
Some later funded him, believing him to have good intentions and plans – that has nothing to do with whether the entire evangelical establishment (!!), if such a thing exists, knew or (would have) approved.
There is a danger of giving the impression that the people who had known him in UK knew, later, the bad side of what he was doing in Zimbabwe. I expect that is mostly not the case. It is highly unfortunate that people probably thought he was being packed off out of harm’s way without considering the possibilities of what he might do next. Anyone thousands of miles away will not be uppermost in one’s thoughts.
Agreed – on much of what you say.
On the titbit thing – best to leave investigation to those who know most; there are innocent relatives whom idle speculation can harm.
The culture of raking over happenings of a generation ago was not something people mostly thought in terms of till after Savile.
There are reasons why people look at what happened in the past. Sometimes it’s to help victims by putting things right. Sometimes it’s to increase understanding so you don’t repeat the same mistakes. And of course, you may have crimes that need to be investigated. Everything is in the past as soon as it’s happened. But the consequences often stretch well into the future. Embezzlement can be put right by not leaving victim penniless, but giving them their money back. Sacking someone or not promoting them can be corrected. Abuse changes things, people and people’s lives. Finding out what happened means you can change it again, for the good this time.
Exactly!
That’s right. That sort of practical investigation with amelioration in mind is always good.
So why label it raking over?
I don’t. The subsection that has amelioration in mind is more than raking over. Subsections that are more about prurience than about amelioration I would label mere raking over or stoking up fire.
Sigh. Chris, searching the past can simply be investigation that reveals something that may look like prurience. It’s not ok simply because you think it’s useful, nor not ok because you think it isn’t. It needs to be open to any discovery, however surprising or unwelcome.
But that would be to say that people’s motives are always good – which is both inaccurate and totalitarian. Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not.
Motives for what? Telling the truth as you find it?
That’s exactly the point. Under your scenario, that is 100% of the time what people are doing. In the real world, the percentage is not anything like 100%.