“The culture of the Church of England facilitated it becoming a place where abusers could hide.” This sentence from the IICSA report was quoted many times in the past week and it raises the question in my mind about what precisely this word ‘culture’ means in this context. My wanting to think about this is also prompted by the use of a phrase by Archbishop Justin when, in 2018, he spoke about the culture of deference in relation to the abuse crisis. These two uses of the word ‘culture’ have stimulated me into thinking what might be the things about the Church that allow abuse of various kinds to happen. Other church leaders have spoken of the need for a change of culture to help the Church move forward in the future. Nobody, as far as I know, has spelt out what exactly these culture changes might involve. To take a popular definition of culture as being ‘the way we do things round here’, we need to ask these two questions. What is it about the way we do things in church that makes abuse possible? I will not be able to exhaustively mention every aspect of the Church’s distinctive culture, but at least provoke some discussion about this important question. Then we have to ask, how can we try to change the culture of the Church that will help its members protect the vulnerable from abuse?
I want to begin with the use by Archbishop Justin of the term, ‘culture of deference’. But, rather than exploring what he might have meant by using that term, I want to put forward my own understanding of the expression. For me, the best way of understanding this word deference is to notice, first of all, how most traditional churches have a well-defined traditional hierarchy within their structures. These hierarchies are marked by titles, special robes and an air of deferential respect for those individuals who have been chosen to be exalted above others. From the outside, a church hierarchy, and the deference that it attracts, appears to be slightly surreal. It has a touch of the theatrical about it. For those inside the church bubble, it seems all perfectly normal and everyone adapts themselves to living with it. The negative aspect of hierarchy, as we have discovered this past week, is that institutions with hierarchies will utilise the power possessed by them to protect themselves from attack of any kind. An individual who harbours nefarious designs on the vulnerable, will have often been able to escape punishment or detection if he/she was sufficiently embedded in and valued by the church structure.
Different church cultures have differing expressions of hierarchy. For example, in high church circles bishops and clergy will be looked upon with a certain awe. They are sometimes venerated with a slight bow by laypeople. When these exalted individuals come into conversation with those ‘below’ them, there can be a consequent social awkwardness which makes communication difficult. Such embarrassment and reticence on the part of many towards their ecclesiastical betters is something that will irritate many bishops and clergy. Others, on the other hand, may enjoy this access to institutional/hierarchical power and the feeding of narcissistic hungers. If this sense of superiority results in a lack of real concern for the flock, this will not help when it comes to doing the right thing for abuse survivors.
Within the conservative evangelical/charismatic world, we find similar deference towards leaders, albeit within a different cultural form. In some settings, this looking up to leaders is fostered by keeping the leaders at some distance from the ordinary people in the congregation. This helps to give them a certain mystique. The public persona is only seen in a controlled and artificial context, such as preaching at a main service. This may be laid on with the trappings of theatre, using special dramatic lighting effects and accompanied by professional singers. The leader of a mega-church will seldom speak one-to-one with the individuals under his nominal care. It will be one of the numerous staff members that actually deal with the individual when a problem arises. The sheer inaccessibility of many of the important leaders in the evangelical/charismatic world gives them a kind of mythical status. They become objects for projective fantasy. The very fact that they are not known personally to the majority gives them added power with congregation members. Cult leaders have always known the importance of not getting too close to the followers, since by doing so, they might expose their fallible humanity, and in the process destroy the mystique that has been created around them.
Having identified this problem of deference in the church, which is so ubiquitous, and which makes it difficult for many churches to operate as communities of care, we move on to another perennial problem, the culture of niceness. Christian people are routinely expected to be kind and considerate folk, especially to the fellow members of their congregation. The problem for many congregations is a failure to recognise that toxic behaviour can often coexist with a nice pleasant exterior. My interest in the church as a retired clergyman, has for a long time been in exploring the power dynamics which swirl just below the surface in so many congregations. Sometimes it is the clergyman who is exploiting his position of influence to gain personal power; on other occasions it may be a prominent layperson who is creating factions and cliques to gain advantage, materially or socially. Whatever the particular power scenario that may exist within a congregation, it is extraordinarily difficult to sort it out. There are two problems. One is that no one has the authority to come into a congregation and, as we say, knock heads together. The second problem is the way that Christian people are very bad at identifying and naming the toxicity of the power games that may occur within a congregation. They know how to be nice but not how to challenge a difficult individual who is on a personal power trip This grasping for power may also sometimes involve grooming or sexual abuse. I expect that every reader of this short piece will be able to tell a story of an event where somebody exploited this culture of niceness to obtain for themselves the gratifications of power.
The third cultural factor which afflicts churches of all traditions is a culture of lay passivity. The traditional layout of the church which places the pulpit some 6 feet above the level of the pews is a kind of metaphor for the dynamic of much church life, both the Sunday services and beyond. One individual is set over the majority and the culture of the church has required that sermons be delivered with no response on the part of the people. This tradition is not without its value and I know that it would be extremely hard to change it. It does, however, seem extraordinary that every week an authoritative discourse is delivered without any opportunity for folk to comment or reply. At a time when, in a congregation, there are likely many better educated than their clergy, this tradition seems an anomaly. Should it still be tolerated in this century? I do not claim to have ever been in a church which has challenged this tradition. From the outside it must look very strange. It seems to speak of an unequal access to power, church governance, knowledge and spiritual wisdom. Is this really what we want to convey to the outsider looking in? Come to our church. You are welcome as long as you cooperate, obey and leave your questioning brain at the door. Allow yourselves to receive the wisdom that the ordained minister alone can offer you.
Deference, niceness and passivity are cultural features of organisations like the Church that sometimes allow toxic behaviour, including child abuse, to flourish in its dark places. If people are afraid to question, challenge and pursue justice when things go wrong, then there will often be this possibility for dysfunction and power abuse to exist within the whole. If bishops are calling for a culture change to help prevent the abuse of vulnerable, they should help us by spelling out what it is they want us to change. Here I am suggesting three common cultural aspects of our church life which seem to enable toxically disordered behaviour sometimes to emerge. From the outside they all appear anomalous in the present century. Perhaps we should all become much more aware of how the Church is increasingly beginning to fail to resonate with the longings, needs and aspirations of ordinary people. They look for community and find toxic power games. They seek answers to deeply held questions. All that they seem to receive is answers to questions they have not asked and no understanding of the meaning of their own questions. The final failure of the Church is in the stark reality of what has been laid out by IICSA. We have revealed before us a Church that for decades has failed to protect its most weak and vulnerable. The last failure comes in the contexts of the others we have named. There has been a massive failing of communication and connection between the deepest values of the Gospel culture and the people of Britain. We have a long uphill battle to fight. We desperately need leadership and prophetic vision to help us see the Christian faith beyond the narrow cultural expression of our Churches.
Really well argued, Stephen. Just to say, lay preachers do exist. And in the churches I belonged to, people would discuss your sermon over coffee. And you’re right about “nice”. I never pointed out to my clergy that people discussed mine, but not theirs! Theirs really weren’t very good! Where I am now, most of us are tackled afterwards. But no coffee at present.
I suspect that there are a great many reasons why people aspire to leadership positions in churches, but I have concluded that for a significant proportion of candidates who enter ministry in the Church of England there are some problematic factors at stake:
(i) it affords the candidate an opportunity to exercise ‘leadership’ and, therefore, ‘power’ which would not be possible in other careers, where it would be precluded by the mediocrity of that candidate;
(ii) it gives the candidate access to, and stake in, a certain cultural ‘posterity’, which gives that candidate a position in society which his/her background or talents would not otherwise have made possible – the cultural posterity being that of a genteel and erudite profession which still colours public perceptions of the clergy, even if the profession is now neither genteel nor especially erudite;
(iii) it affords the candidate a degree of professional security (housing, pension, etc.) that would not otherwise have been available had the candidate worked in most other careers; and
(iv) the lack of fixed hours or active supervision by management is a gift to the idle or asocial (sometimes also the anti-social) candidate, whilst it also permits those who care to broadcast their industry to do so, even if much of that labour is often devoted to the superfluous administration and committeework which has contaminated the contemporary Church.
Too many clergy are therefore afflicted by complexes of one kind or other. The wide prevalence of control freakery indicates a desire to wield power. However, the local and unsupervised nature of the work can give those who do have dark desires the time and space to indulge them.
This country has had protracted periods of strident, and often violent, anti-clericalism, sometimes well before the Reformation. The medieval peasant often had as little time for being bossed around by the village priest (who would invariably have risen from the ranks of the peasantry) as many of us do today. The period of ‘classical Anglicanism’ (say, 1600 to 1850) was one in which the clergy were either notably erudite or socially ‘superior’; in other words, there was some justification for their apartness. This no longer holds true.
Indeed, I have increasingly come to wonder why we need to have clergy. I can scarcely think of any I would instinctively turn to in need. Of the thousands of sermons I have heard, I recall not a whit. The spiritual sustenance I have received from them is practically nil.
Perhaps I am, once again, being very unfair. There are, of course, some superb clergy; it’s just that I haven’t encountered that many of them.
So, yes, the culture facilitated the abuse: écrasez l’infâme!
I have been surprised and dismayed by the largely mute reaction of the Church to the IICSA report. It was essential that the Church revive its credibility via a vigorous response. This has been wanting, and I fear I am approaching the…
exit.
Well, my Bishop and the Cathedral have posted responses including apologies on line. It’s made me think that hereabouts at least, people are taking it to heart.
That’s good to hear
Brilliant, Froghole. Most insightful. Thanks.
Several things.
I was ordained to stipendiary ministry at the age of 56 after 30 years as a medical academic. I was never institutionalised in either career, being more concerned with students and parishioners than with hierarchies and institutions. I’m glad to say I therefore earned the opprobrium of some colleagues. As an assistant DDO I saw to my horror the speed with which some young people fell into the traps of clericalism, revelling in the deference afforded them. I fear Froghole is right, and it was the case that those that seemed to enjoy most the trappings of the church were those I would avoid at all costs.
It would be a step forward if we could do away with Rev, Ven, Very Rev, Rt Rev, Most Rev, Your Grace. I tried with some success to encourage students (and later parishioners) to call me by my first name rather than Professor, which was, I told them, a job description.
Finally, I’ve been studying the Shipman affair. There is much in common. Deference to doctors, the professional omertà of medics, a refusal of the public to think badly of a doctor, the reluctance of investigative bodies to take suspicions seriously … and more. There’s the Bristol heart surgery scandal, and more recently a breast surgeon who seemed to take pleasure in performing unnecessary mastectomies. And don’t get me started on the corruption and hypocrisy of research and academia.
It’s not just the church, but the church claims to know a better way. It very well might. One day. please God, it might find it.
Many thanks to English Athena and Stanley for their comments. I apologise for my dyspeptic screed yesterday. I should add that I am not necessarily anti-clerical: there are some clergy whom I think are superlative. However, I have encountered too many clergy over the course of my life who exhibit some or all of the pathologies described by Stephen and Stanley, and I fear that there is both a structural and a systemic tendency for the Church to attract the wrong sort of people into its ordained ministry. This is one of the additional reasons why I think that the Church cannot be trusted with its own safeguarding. The Church often congratulates itself about the rigour of its discernment process; yet it seems to me that people who tick all the right boxes in that process are too often utterly unsuited to ordained ministry, and can sometimes be really rather unpleasant individuals. I have seen a number of instances where parishes have been wrecked by flawed clergy or have survived in spite of their clergy.
Now I note English Athena’s remarks about her own diocese on the borders. However, I also noted Andrew Greystone’s remarks on the Religion Media Centre virtual press conference earlier this week, that there had been no collective apology by the dioceses, and that he was concerned that a significant proportion of the dioceses had not got the message; he also cited a particularly distressing case which he had dealt with that very morning in which an archdeacon had shown gross insensitivity towards a victim.
Justin Welby’s apology has come in for sharp criticism, but I was rather more disappointed by the C4 interview this week with David Walker, who appeared defensive (his Twitter feed described the report as ‘pretty shameful’, which is something of an understatement). Now I may be wrong, but bishop Walker (a veteran of the mathematical tripos) seems to me to have been much the most important point person between the bench on the one hand and the full time commissioners and their professional advisers on the other. He has in the past declared that the Commissioners have been disbursing the maximum possible to the rest of the Church without compromising the future of the fund.
He wrote this in a comment on TA (21 May 2017): “The best advice says that we are at the top end of what we can afford to disburse, and have already added money to allow a smooth transition to the new funding streams without dioceses losing major proportions of support in short periods of time.” (https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/7566-2/)
So my anxiety is that when Jonathan Gibbs states (on the RMC call) that the Church would provide whatever credit line may be necessary to assist survivors (though he was a little evasive about what amounts that might entail) it doesn’t quite square with the past statements by bishop Walker about the financial capabilities of the Commissioners and the difficult interview earlier this week.
Don’t apologise, Froghole. I’m sure I’m not the only one who values your analyses enormously. It’s important that we all feel strongly about this. For one thing, other people’s passions can inspire folk into action. In the next few days I intend to compose an essay for the Bishop’s delectation and delight, which I will attach to an email. My intention is to make it roughly sermon length. We are already on terms, so I hope he will receive it with sympathy and understanding. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to raise the subject with him. I’m not particularly wanting to talk about what happened to me specifically, but to use my own experience to outline how common the abuse of power is. And what I regard as the church’s great institutional sin of the caste system. I also want to point him at this blog. I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t hopeful. So please pray for my endeavours.
Many thanks, English Athena! I will certainly do so, and hope that all goes well with your endeavours and remonstrance. I am most grateful for all of the remarks you make on this site – not only in terms of your own insights, but for the generous encouragement that you give to others.
As I may have mentioned before, I invariably see little distinction between the contributions of readers and those of ordained clergy. Indeed, I have often heard better preaching from readers than from clergy who have been through three years of residential training. Readers and, for that matter, youth workers, pastoral assistants and other people working on a voluntary basis can often be marginalised or treated as ‘the help’, which is something which I find inherently problematic.
You’re very kind. Thank you.
Athena, you have my prayers in this and I hope it goes very well. Can you share the essay/sermon with the rest of us?
I completely agree with you about abuse of power being very common in the C of E. It’s so common, in fact, that it’s part of the culture and often viewed as a leadership quality. They almost seem to select bullies for promotion. They’ve got to stop that.
It might be too particular. And it will certainly be too long! But I’ll happily send it to you.
Froghole: “The Church often congratulates itself about the rigour of its discernment process”. Hollow laughter. Tales I could tell. This is perhaps not the place for further elucidation except to say that the temptation to recommend “people like us” was fully indulged. The most impressive candidate I dealt with was a woman in her 50s who’d left school at 14, no more exams, divorced, years of faithful service, bright, compassionate, intellectually supple and resilient, and a strong regional accent. Turned down by BAP. I urged the bishop to set aside the (non)recommendation. He did. She is doing wonderful work in her home communities.
When I did my selector training (which, incidentally, was led by Margaret Sentamu), I was dismayed that it was so skewed towards middle class applicants. I pointed this out in a couple of instances, which I don’t think made me popular.
My own family were working class but bright and able, and at the time I was vicar in a tough Manchester overspill parish. I had previously been based in a deprived Salford parish when a university chaplain, and as Cathedral Chaplain in Bradford the inner city parish was my responsibility.
Incidentally, I’ve found that asking questions and making comments during a sermon are more part of working class culture than is common in middle class parishes. In my Macclesfield parish people did it quite often, and it’s one of the things I enjoyed about working there.
Thank you for the article and subsequent comments.
Two hours after the release of the report, I was part of a deanery chapter meeting where no one mentioned IICSA. I asked a question at the very end and was faced with a computer screen full of clergy with nothing to say. In the end one colleague offered a comment.
My bishop has been very busy sending out Ad Clerums during the pandemic, but nothing has arrived in my inbox since Tuesday.
A look on the front page of the Church of England website reveals pictures of poppies for Remembrance and the words Comfort and Joy re Christmas, but no mention of what’s been in the news this week.
In my Diocese the regular e-news sheet sent out this week included a piece on Safe Spaces, but without reference to IICSA.
Preparing for services this Sunday I would have appreciated the offer of some prayers or resources to bring these issues before God.
This weekend I am writing to all my parishioners to encourage them to be attentive to this very shameful episode in our Church’s history, and not to fall into the silence which has perpetuated the problems over so many years.
Indeed, we need a change of culture, but from where I sit, the immediate signs are not at all encouraging. I am part of the culture too and need to work on this myself, but will I find colleagues who understand what needs to be done?
This is a subject we must continue to talk about.
Thank you! Don’t give up. Don’t lose heart.
The day after the IICSA Report was released, St. Paul’s Cathedral tweeted a photo of the interior with the caption ‘Open as normal’. I tweeted a reply that in the immediate aftermath of the report, ‘Business as Usual’ is exactly the wrong message to give. I got no response.
The silence of so many senior church officers, and the awful Ch. 4 interview given by the Bishop of Manchester on Tuesday, don’t encourage me to think the Church is really ready to make the sweeping cultural changes which are necessary.
Thank you, Kalvar, for being ready to be the difference.
Hello, I have just returned from a communion service. The vicar, preaching on today’s reading about the invitation to the wedding banquet warned parishioners not to take all the parable, and indeed all that Jesus said seriously. He then declared that God doesn’t care whether we are good or bad and that “bad” people will enter the kingdom of heaven. This vicar knows I am a victim of abuse and that he too had played a part in helping the church to cover up. Needless to say he too did not mention the damning report. Agree wholeheartedly with Stephen and all the comments. Am eagerly awaiting to hear this vicar’s preaching on the narrow way and the good shepherd. I don’t think I will be taking it to heart.
Hello Mary, sorry you received that. I preached on the Exodus passage today – the Golden Calf one – which also has an enraged God. How we deal with this today often fails to do justice to the holiness of God. In our current climate we always tend to hear about the love of God and it can become rather sugary and schmaltzy, quite unlike Jonathan Edwards in the 18thCentury who had people hanging on the ends of the pews as he preached about ‘sinners in the hands of an angry God’.
We might not want to go as far as that but are we missing something? It was C S Lewis who said that ‘anger is the fluid love bleeds’. I remember when preaching on Hosea some years ago comparing the reaction of two women who were in the news at the time and asking which one demonstrated a true reaction to loyalty, love and commitment despised after infidelity. The one was Nancy Dell’Olio, the mistress of Sven-Goran Erickson the England Soccer Manager. When asked of how she dealt with his cheating she said, “Physical infidelity is not the end of the world … men don’t need to be emotionally involved to have an affair”, in other words don’t make a big show of it, let life go on. The other was Hilary Clinton. In speaking on her husband’s behaviour she said, “I wanted to wring Bill’s neck. I could hardly speak to him and when I did it was a tirade. I read. I walked on the beach. He slept downstairs. I slept upstairs”. Yes, rage is in there. We all knew which was the genuine expression of the true heart of a cheated woman and it was not the easy-ozy acceptance. We know which partnership remained and which long since disappeared.
Further on my sermon that the wrath of God is real, I didn’t realise yesterday was the anniversary of the Clinton’s marriage. Nancy Dell’Olio’s schmaltz has long since evaporated.
The groom still cleans up pretty well, too. Love you, Bill.
Tweet
Bill Clinton
@BillClinton
· 17h
October 11th was a beautiful day 45 years ago. Still is. The bride was beautiful too. And still is. Happy Anniversary, Hillary. I love you.
Well, we had a sermon on the IICSA report! Being there for people. Everyone’s included, including prisoners (It’s prison Sunday) Caring about people, not the institution. Showing God’s love. The online content was recorded on Monday, and he reworked it all! The new wording will probably be up later on tomorrow.
It’s up. The original sermon is on the recorded service. The new one is on Hereford Cathedral website. Click menu, then services and sermons come up. I can’t do links on the tablet, sorry.
Can I recommend this article? I found it really helpful.
https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2020/10/09/how-to-be-an-angry-christian-according-to-thomas-aquinas/
It’s comforting to read all the comments here, with righteous anger and some glimmers of hope. This week has been so hard. You might say the response is underwhelming.
I have tried to stay positively focused on the glimmers of light, but today just feel wrung out and battle weary. Nothing that has been said will change my situation. There’s still such a long way to go.
Don’t I remember reading somewhere, call no one Father or Lord? Could it have been in the gospels?
Tee hee!
That’s right David and neither do we see any Priests being established in the New Testament.
Living stones…the priesthood of all believers
Perhaps we need to stop talking about priesthood and start talking about ministry? And stop seeing clergy as being set apart in any different way to the rest of us.
When I worked as a DYO, and when I taught at the Centre for Youth Ministry, this was something we debated all the time. Many youth workers felt called to be youth ministers, it was a vocation, part of who they are not just what they do. It included leading worship, a life of prayer & services, pastoral care, teaching (all of which we taught them)…many of us felt it would have been quite appropriate for us to preside at a youth communion service or baptise or marry or bury the young people we ministered with.
In my village church, the most pastoral person is an elder whose loving heart encompasses everyone in the village, who cares for all, lifts everyone’s spirits, she makes your day better with just a chat and a smile- far more than any licensed minister I’ve ever met…
If we recognise ministry as the priesthood of all believers, with an equality of vocation, then we can better recognise & support all vocations, reduce deference and clericalism, increase teamwork, stop burning clergy out…. and h
The Church does need leadership but the leadership in the New Testament was not through priests. The door of Priesthood closed with Jesus who was the final and complete “Offerer” to God. Thereafter people could claim His Offering for themselves without a required intermediary and thus the “priesthood of all believers”.
However pastoral leadership or shepherds for the flock were required and the New Testament speaks of them and their required qualities, they were called episcopus or presbuteros, the priesthood word was never again invoked.
Fascinating that this discussion should have come up now, 24 hours after the launch of Clifford Hill’s book Beyond the Pandemic : Is there a word from the Lord? Compelling reading. Chapter ten is The Word of the Lord to his church. See the link https://prophecytoday.uk/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1999:new-book-beyond-the-pandemic&Itemid=189
At the recent meeting of the Inter Faith Network for the UK, the Anglican bishop who chairs it, Bishop Jonathan Clark, Bishop of Croydon, dismissed as “irrelevant” and “not germaine to the meeting” questions my colleagues raised about sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults within the CofE and other faith institutions.
The IICSA Report is clearly just another one of those damning secular inquiries to be weathered, as millennial old faith institutions can.
Thank you for asking the question though Satish, as a survivor in this Bishop’s area of the diocese his response has been noted and will be pulled out at an appropriate time. Without comms writing their every response some of these Bishops struggle to give the tear stained nonsense they are supposed to and just speak as they act.
Stephen’s article and much of what followed directly from it , here, has been most helpful. I am increasingly convinced that vulnerability is an (the?) essential counter to narcissism. It would reflect God and challenge the endemic institutional corruption in the Church.
Formation of clergy has to start with the necessary self-knowledge and discernment. Otherwise, all is built on sand.
Welcome Lister to this blog. We have a common friend in the late Bob Jeffery who occasionally used to leave comments on this blog. Your point about vulnerability is well made. The Church puts vulnerable adults in a category ripe for for pity rather than celebration. Perhaps I will write a piece seeking to reclaim the word from those who wish to downgrade something indeed precious. Perhaps you could attempt this?
Thanks for the reminder if that connection, Stephen. I’d love to have heard Bob on the subject of the Church in 2020!
I have wondered whether to write something on the matters prompting my point about vulnerability but that point is only the tip of an iceberg.
The larger question of cultural narcissism is what drew my attention. Abuse seems an inevitable consequence of it, as also of clericalism and hierarchicalism which I suppose are subsets.
Hello Lister and thank you for your point about vulnerability.
Very much agree and used to debate this in leadership teaching in youth ministry, looking at the writing of people like Henri Nouwen & Vanessa Herrick.
One problem is that vulnerable is seen as = weakness and deficiency (or mental ‘disorder’ – a term I hate!), rather than, as I believe, a sign of great awareness, courage and strength. Links with much of Brenee Brown’s work, but I don’t know anyone in church world writing about it now?
How do we create a culture where vulnerability is valued and desirable?