It is nearly twenty years since I left my last English parish in Gloucestershire. I am aware that since I ceased to be an English vicar, many things have changed in the typical parish. In the 80s and 90s the ‘secular’ wedding and funeral had barely been invented; the consequence was that I officiated at most of such events in my community. My experience of parish work then was that there were always people to visit in their homes, whether bereavement follow-ups, shut-ins, the sick or baptism families. My visiting was constantly increasing the numbers of people that I knew well within the community. After 16 years in the same place, I had heard the personal life histories of hundreds of individuals and families. At that time, a vicar was expected to know everyone, as well as be seen out and about on foot or on a bicycle within the area. Trying to fulfil the expectation of extensive visiting and visibility was something I carried over from the training in my curacy days back in the early 70s.
The one thing that I could not leave behind when I moved on to pastures new in Scotland was all this detailed information about individuals and families in the parish. It went with me. Having been able to reflect back to a funeral congregation some real personal memory of the deceased, had been an important part of helping a family in their grief. These personal memories could not be transferred to a filing cabinet. No longer could a wedding couple have the added reassurance of one of them having known the vicar since being prepared for confirmation eight years previously. My successors had inevitably to start from scratch. My personal memory bank was not available to my successors. It was particularly sad when an individual descended into dementia or disability and the one in charge of their funeral had never known them as people of vigour and selflessness. It is certainly placing no blame on my successors to say this. It is just the way it was. People and their deeds get forgotten very quickly and that may happen to any of us. A long-serving vicar may be the only person around who knew quite how much Mr so-and-so or Miss Blank achieved in their time, even more sometimes than the families. The vicar often carries in him/herself much of the corporate memory of what that person represented to the community.
This word memory is an important one to think about. We have this expression ‘corporate memory’ to describe how some important memories, good and bad, about individuals or events are sometimes preserved within institutions. When a good corporate memory is preserved, it can provide some kind of lasting memorial to a person. More often such memories are lost. Sometimes there is a change of personnel in an organisation or there may be deliberate policy of repressing the memory because what he/she represented is no longer in fashion. But these corporate memories are important because, even when they become weakened, they contain part of what has created the present. Honouring the people of the past, even in a generalised way, should always be part of the self-understanding of a community or church congregation even when the actual memories have grown dim.
In today’s Church we have one area where memories are still very important, the world of safeguarding. One group carries all the memories of past abuses in the Church going back as far as 60 or 70 years. These are the individuals called survivors/victims. Their memories are detailed, reliable and, unfortunately for them, sometimes vivid to the point of being traumatic. On the other side are the professionals dealing with the safeguarding issue. They might be expected to engage readily with those who carry all this information from the past, because this information is in danger of being forgotten or lost. But the institution they work for, the Church, expects the professionals to regard safeguarding as an issue to be sorted. There is thus this institutional fix-it approach. The professionals use the benefit of their educational background, whether legal, social work or reputational management, as providing skills to solve the ‘problem’. The material they have before them are reviews, reports and legal arguments about liability. The one glaring omission is that, in their heads, these professionals have no direct access to the detailed and vivid memories of the survivors. All too often, they seem to have little interest in acquiring any of that memory by simply listening to the survivors.
A couple of years ago a woman survivor spoke to me about a phone call she had made to a central Church safeguarding point of contact. The complaint this survivor made to me, was that there was first a profound lack of listening skills or understanding of the needs of abused individuals on the part of the person taking the call. This failure was combined with another kind of failure, a complete ignorance of any of the then recently published reports, those connected with Peter Ball and the Elliot report. Here was a representative of the Church paid to speak to survivors who had not been brought up to speed with any of the material which survivors and their supporters thought of as basic background information. Was the fact of this palpable ignorance the result of a rapid turnover of staff, or suggestive of a broader loss of corporate memory that we spoke of above? This failure of corporate memory which seems to affect many of the professionals involved with safeguarding is a serious one. Time and time again in the IICSA process, qualified individuals were shown to be ignorant of factual and historical material or lacking areas of basic understanding of the way things are supposed to work in legal or social work contexts. The latest corporate memory failure is the failure to implement the Carlile recommendations made over the formation of Core Groups. Had the professionals simply forgotten what Lord Carlile had said only three years before? How could the NST not once, but twice, fail to ensure that the survivor/alleged perpetrator was represented in the Group? The second issue is the extraordinary harmful legal advice, given by the Church’s top legal adviser in 2007 and circulating for ten years, that pastoral contact should be shut off from survivors if they made a legal claim. This was a year after the Compensation Act (2006) specifically stated that such expressions of support would not be deemed to affect compensation claims. How much suffering was caused to survivors by this profoundly incompetent piece of legal advice?
At present there exists a ravine between two sides where one seems to be frightened of the wisdom, the experience and the memory of the other. On one side there are those who have the memory (individual and corporate) of events, evil actions and decades of suffering. These are the body of articulate but still traumatised survivors. On the other side are the professionals who are trying on behalf of the Church to resolve the massive problems caused by the Church and the outcome of years of incompetent management in this area. The professionals, we would claim, lack proper understanding of the deeper issues of abuse as experienced by the survivors. They also operate with an unhealthy obsession to see their role as being primarily a defensive one. As long as the whole safeguarding industry adopts this defensive posture, the communication, the bridges across the ravine will never be properly built. The Church, as a whole, needs this issue to be solved. Otherwise, it will continue to be a profound wound in the heart of the institution, damaging and weakening us all.
Many thanks for this, Stephen.
One of the things I like to do when visiting a church is to look at the lists of past incumbents. I sometimes read them with caution, as they are not always accurate, but they are an interesting piece of social history. If necessary, I can look at this invaluable resource, which covers most of the post-Reformation era: https://theclergydatabase.org.uk/ to verify the details on the boards. Printed sources also help (e.g., C.H. Fielding’s ‘Records of Rochester’, 1910).
There have been times in the history of the Church when the turnover of clergy was rapid. This was especially true in the later middle ages when livings were often brokered and ‘flipped’ or exchanged with bewildering rapidity. There was a market -almost a stock market – for benefices and advowsons, and the brokers (who were often clergy) did well out of these lucrative transactions. This sometimes explains why so many parishes seem to change priest in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries: it wasn’t always because the priest died from the plague. I mention this because it’s worth remembering the conduct within the Church has been sometimes differently discreditable in past epochs.
It is also quite common to see extraordinarily long incumbencies in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: thirty, forty or more years. Sometimes father succeeds son, with the same family holding the same living for a century or so. Clergy would secure a comfortable living and stay there.
However, more recently, the pattern is of relatively high churn. This is not only because of the creation of multi-parish benefices. There seems to be a tendency for clergy to stay in post for only a short while in any one place. Five or six years seems common. Of course, brief incumbencies have always occurred, but seldom have they seemed so universal. Yes: this means that local knowledge cannot be developed, and what little is gained is readily lost. What explains this pattern: is it disaffection or careerism, or both?
Your comments about the safeguarding authorities are likewise fascinating. I suspect that high levels of churn are inevitable once the staff realise what the pay and rations are likely to be like, and when they start to get a taste for the institutional culture of the Church. Why would they stay? Of course, as far as the Church is concerned, the want of any institutional memory is not altogether inconvenient. Naturally, the convenience to the Church is in inverse proportion to the distress and frustration of the victims, who will find themselves caught in a Kafkaesque doom-loop of ecclesiastical ignorance and obfuscation.
You have touched on a fascinating subject, which I hope will gain wide attention.
On a rather different angle, I haven’t seen many posts on this site from Jane Chevous for a while, though I might have missed some. I recall her writing that she was overseas. I very much hope she is OK.
Best wishes,
James
There was a stage where clergy were taken on for five or seven years on fixed contracts. And it seems to have stuck. The changes I saw when in a parish were all assumed to be for a short time. Mind you, with one guy, it was definitely due to a short attention span. He got fed up after four years if you traced it back!
You are raising a very important issue, Stephen. Thank you. The lack of memory about past people and events can be very serious and lead to, in a worst case scenario, miscarriages of justice and a repetition of past problems. A parish I knew, which was known to have serious problems, had a change of incumbent. The church wardens knew that there were serious issues about which they knew little or nothing and asked the new incumbent to talk to his predecessor. Sadly the new incumbent refused to do this, so did not hear about the clergy sexual abuse, the financial fraud, the domestic violence. The view that an incoming incumbent must have a clean slate on which he/she can write is not only outmoded, but actually dangerous. In this case the diocese knew of the problems, but wrote them off and the incoming incumbent did not want to know or engage with anything. In my view this is at the least negligent and possibly criminally negligent. I understand that in the past clergy expected to have empty filing cabinets on arrival in a new parish which was not only the expectation, but also the intention of the new incumbent in his refusal to hear about the very, very serious problems of the parish. I consider this attitude to be potentially criminally negligent, especially in terms of past clergy abuse. There is a real need in a parish for a historical view of people and events. I hope that theological education teaches ordinands the importance of memory.
Thank you Anon for taking this thought about memory in a completely different direction. I had not thought of lack of memory being in fact potentially dangerous. I have heard of cases where vicars are parachuted into situations without being warned of major issues that they are supposed to deal with, such a major factional fight. I am not sure how you can deal with the lack of records when there is a change-over. So much of what one would like to leave behind is impressionistic rather than factual. That itself is a problem. Now that you have brought memory into the safeguarding realm rather than just being the pastorally useful category, somebody somewhere should think about what one should leave behind in the filing cabinet without getting sued for slander! Another job for a group of Archdeacons!
My understanding is that it is the role of the DSA and parish safeguarding officer to inform the incoming incumebent of any problems. In reality this is likely to be biased against a survivor and with many already experiencing bullying and being ostracised by congreagations, unwilling to hear any bad of their leader, this can make the situation worse. It is not only core groups that have no survivor representation it is these type of ‘hand overs’. With new GDPR practices this should have improved but I don’t beleive it has.
I insisted on meeting with the new incumbent of my parish after my abuser left to share my memories with him. I met him with the DSA, who was their to support the incumbent, my therapist and someone from the NST , the meeting was the most horrendous meeting I have ever attended, the incumbent shouted at me and told me he didn’t want to hear. The DSA sat there and literally said nothing as I regressed in floods of tears. The incumbent threatened my therapist with disciplinary action for taking part in such a meeting.
Sharing memories has to be constructive, it cannot be re-abusive. The church is a complete disgarce in allowing survivors a safe voice.
That’s appalling, Trish. I’m so sorry.
That’s awful. You’d think the DSA would intervene in some way.
The DSA said she had a word with the incumbent after the meeting but when she wrote up the notes for the meeting it was as though we had not been at the same meeting. I had to fight really hard to get what actually happened recorded fairly accurately. As the notes were recorded only days after the meeting her first attempt was not memory failure it was literally rewriting what happened. When survivors do subject access requests ( now GDPR requests) they often find notes of meetings that they have never seen let alone agreed but these notes are allowed to form part of the official records.
The incumbent that shouted at me will not have been seen as abusive, he will not have been disciplined, unacceptable behaviour often goes completely unchallenged yet the one and only time I completely lost it verbally with someone I was threatened with legal action. It’s a total farce and this wasn’t years ago it was in 2017. It is a wound that doesn’t heal because the church won’t address it, it’s a forgotten piece of dirt under their enormous carpet!
Trish:
I am appalled at to read of your experiences. I wonder whether the rules should be changed so that at every meeting of this type the victim must be attended by a ‘next friend’ (preferably someone with a legal background), and that the minutes can only be deemed as valid if sanctioned by both parties (including the next friend). It’s obvious that you have been subjected to some duplicitous railroading.
As to the insolent incumbent, s/he is a disgrace to the profession. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that not only are a significant proportion of the clergy not particularly nice people (some being actively nasty), but they ought never to have been admitted to orders. I am sure that they are themselves subject to stress, but there is no excuse for the sort of behaviour directed at you. This, amongst other reasons, is why my attitude to the profession is highly ambivalent.
Judging by some of your recent posts, it seems you are not getting anywhere at the moment. However, I very much hope that you get some form of resolution quickly, though I suspect it will not be as adequate as you deserve it to be.
Trish, let me echo Froghole’s remarks. 1976-2006 I taught anatomy in medical schools and was a church organist. I was ordained to stipendiary ministry in 2006 and retired in late 2019. In my experience, clergy are no better than anyone else, and sometimes as you have witnessed, they are worse. In my 13 year ministry I saw in the clergy laziness, unproductive hyperactivity in order to feel wanted, back-biting and stabbing, and the inability to maintain a confidence. Of course there is a very great deal of self-sacrificial service, some of which imperils the health of near-sainted clerics, but as with much experience it’s the trauma that sticks (for which there are anatomical and evolutionary reasons). Worst of all in my experience was the culture of faux niceness, and the behaviour of insecure and careerist clergy – those who are constantly looking over your shoulder when talking to you (rarely listening) to see if there’s anyone more important they need to slither to. In my last job a colleague and I who arrived more or less at the same time were patronised in chapter meetings because we were the newest arrivals, the rest of them having been there since the pliocene epoch. Such playground games are water off this duck’s back, but for you and those who suffer like you to have been so treated is appalling. In academic life, petty minded self-seeking power games are common (as we see now) but what makes the church worse is that bad behaviour is overlaid by the assumed superiority of “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like other men” and women – for they are by no means exempt. And I’m not disease free either.
Thank you for your understanding comments it does help to know that other people think the behaviour was unacceptable. I am still not sure what I did to upset the incumbent so much but I agree proper support people who can also act as witness to proceedings is important.
Just to throw something else into the mix, if what is left behind is not written down, some poor souls can find that when a difficult incumbent leaves, the problems don’t leave with them. And I have known a situation where what was said by the Archdeacon to an incoming incumbent about the three churches in the parish was almost completely wrong! The church with all the life was reckoned to be a dead and alive hole! The most needy and dependent church was reckoned to be wonderfully mature, and the church plant which was moribund and dying was apparently, so he was told, growing!
I have now finished Carey’s memoir. And he skipped through what we were interested in at great speed. So nothing about Smyth or related topics, not a sausage. I’ve now found, in my tidying the bookcases project, Stanley Hauerwas! Hannah’s Child. I fear it won’t be going out, but Carey has.
His autobiography was written in 2004. The news about John Smyth ‘broke’ as far as the public is concerned with the TV documentary in 2017. It would have been unlikely in the extreme for the Archbishop to mention Smyth in his autobiography if he had known ‘something’. If their paths had crossed at Bristol (which is not established), why should he mention that fact? He had a lot on his plate throughout his term of office. It seems far more plausible that he had no cause at all to mention Smyth. We can’t, and should not, speculate, and will have to wait and see what emerges from the Church’s intervention.
No, I wasn’t expecting anything. But actually there wasn’t much about that period in his life at all. Which was mildly surprising. Don’t worry, I wasn’t jumping to any conclusions.
It seems to me that churches – or should that be the people in churches – have long memories, even when they shouldn’t. The memory of past arguments (and I’m not thinking of safeguarding issues here) can persist and affect decisions decades later/
To take two examples from my experience in Baptist church. The first took place c.1990 when it was suggested that a particular person be brought onto the Diaconate (basically equivalent to the PCC in Anglican churches). Most people, including folk who had known him for years, thought this was a fine idea. However someone else, who had disapproved of something he’d said or done in around 1955, started muttering that he wasn’t suitable for the position. Of course that person never actually said what the candidate’s “misdemeanour” had been, but I’m pretty sure that it was some personal disagreement rather than anything criminal. Anyway the said gentleman was duly elected and served for some years before moving away, he has now been dead for many years.
The other instance occurred in a church which decided it wanted to do a “Child-Friendly” evaluation. A good idea, you’d have thought; and my wife and another person set to with vigour. However, as they asked necessary and pertinent questions, they found themselves meeting resistance, which puzzled them. A little bit later, a senior lay leader told them to be careful, as they were “treading on eggshells”. The problem was, they had no idea why! Eventually we discovered that, some 20 or more years previously, there had been a major row in the church which had begun with the appointment of a youth worker who had wanted the church to become a place whose culture would be more appropriate for them; it had then exposed fault-lines in both theology and worship styles and positions rapidly became entrenched. The minister found this very difficult to deal with and was force to “take sides” with one faction. Relations broke down, a lot of people left the church and the Minister was badly damaged. Eventually the cracks were papered over but it became clear that feelings still ran high over two decades later! I have to say that this was a church with a history of tensions as I once discovered a newspaper cutting about the Induction of a new minister whose predecessor had obviously had a stormy ride – that was in, I think, the 1890s!
So there is a balance to be struck here. The collective memory which Stephen mentions is precious and must be nurtured. However there is another kind of collective memory which should be expunged from a congregation as it hinders it from going forward. As Christians we are, I think you’ll agree, told to “forgive and forget” – but some of us do love dragging up past problems which should be left dead and buried!
Yes, but! I’m playing devil’s advocate here, because I do agree. One church was in an Urban Priority Area. A lot of the old stagers in the congregation were very reluctant to help. It turned out that there had been an earlier effort to improve the area, about twenty years previously, when these people had been in enthusiastic middle age. They had seen things like money raised for new furniture in the community centre, but the furniture had ended up in people’s living rooms. Many of the activists were the same people. So the church folk were simply not prepared to go through it all again.
How sad, and how hard to convince people – especially ones who are probably tired by age – of the value of having a second go.