Anonymous

One of the little known facts about the rise of early Nazism relates to the professions that were most represented in the rank and file of the party and movement.  By several furlongs, the answer is: academics at German universities and colleges. You may think that is shocking enough.  But be prepared for the after-shock: many academics were also members of the clergy. 

Why and how, you may ask, could this be so? After all, the Nuremberg trials revealed horrific war crimes on a scale not witnessed before or since.  Surely to God, intelligent academics and kind clergy could not have been party to this?  But think again.

The conditions for Nazism were economic, social, ethnic and political. The psychological conditions are arguably harder to name: shame, guilt and terror at the humiliations of the Great War and its aftermath. And then the social-self-preservation kicking in, which invested in old myths to justify the flexing of new moral righteousness.  We forget that most card-carrying Nazis were on a moral crusade.  And like all crusaders before them, there were demons to slay, enemies of God to slaughter, and huge investments in scapegoating. The Turks, Infidels, Armenians, Jews, Gays and others – all can testify.

How was such certitude about the Jewish pogrom expressed at Nuremberg, 75 years ago? It depended on who was on the stand. Some were certain that they were right, and happy to meet their fate and suffer the consequences.  Others sought salvation through that oft-repeated trope: “I was only obeying orders”. What Nuremberg showed the world was what Hannah Arendt was later to describe, memorably, as “the banality of evil”.

More on banality in a moment. But before then, try and recall the numerous scenes in the final episodes of The World at War. Or the recent footage that has come to light, of the allied forces liberating the death camps.  The allies often found the camps deserted by the guards, with piles of unburied corpses, ashes, ovens and emaciated people starving to death. How did the allies respond to the sights and traumas that they were witnessing, and that would haunt them for the rest of their lives?

In many cases, they rounded up the local populations near the death camps, and made them walk through, and look at what their compatriots had done.  Where there were no neighbouring death camps, the population were herded into cinemas and made to watch newsreels evidencing the atrocities. Only after sitting through a screening were viewers given their ration tokens, stamped, for bread. If you did not see the death camps, it was hard to come by food.

Most people might assume that faced with the shock, trauma and reality of the death camps, they might, in Old Testament terminology, “rend their hearts and garments”. Some did. But if you watch grainy old film footage of townspeople walking through their local neighbourhood death camp, marshalled by allied troops, you see other reactions too. Some hold their heads high, and look away – a proud, almost haughty posture, as though somehow they have been confronted with “fake news” and odious allied propaganda. Others, stand and stare, and weep in disbelief.

Others walk past slowly, as at a funeral. Some run, fleeing from the very sight (and site). A small few remonstrate with the allied troops at the showcasing of such a grim spectacle.  It was nothing to do with them, after all. The reactions in the German cinemas were the same. Some fled in terror. Some scoffed. Others sat in utter, total shock.  Some went home and took their own lives.  For many years after, the suicide rate amongst German women was the highest in Europe.  There is only so much a witness can take.

The classic study of cognitive dissonance and religion – for that is what we are dealing with here – is Leon Festinger’s 1956 epic, When Prophecy Fails.  Less well-known is Festinger’s distinctive articulation of ‘social comparison theory’.  Namely, the premise that people have an innate drive to accurately evaluate their opinions and abilities, so seek to evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing them with those of others.

This is important in the church – and always has been – as Christian groups like to say what they are most like (comparison), but equally, that they are special, so un-like anything else. This will produce distinctive grammars and cultures.  So, in terms of safeguarding, the Church of England has ‘Core Groups’ – but not like anything else you can find on any other planet. Clergy have ‘annual appraisals’ too; but again, not like anything else you can find on any other planet.  The church runs all kinds of systems that sound as they will be comparable to their secular counterparts. They never are.

Festinger had a distinctive take on cognitive dissonance too, and at its most basic, his hypotheses went something like this.  The existence of dissonance (or inconsistency), being psychologically uncomfortable, will always motivate a person to try to reduce their dissonance and achieve consonance (or consistency).  When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance.

On this basis, flat-earth-fanatics, QAnon followers and believers in the immortality of Elvis will always be with us. Nothing you can say will contradict a truly devoted believer.  Festinger and his colleagues noted that every time you provided reasons to disbelieve, this led to an increased conviction in beliefs.  Such beliefs were always held with deep conviction.  These beliefs produced actions or validated realities that were impossible to undo.  (So, if the Bible suggests the world is 6,000 years old, well, it is: and science, geology and palaeontology can’t undo that ‘fact’, because – and don’t forget – this new-fangled empiricism and knowledge is younger).  All attempts to refute beliefs will only intensify and confirm those beliefs. 

This also explains how, when people were escaping from the inferno of David Koresh’s compound outside Waco in Texas, they didn’t thank their rescuers who were paramedics, police and other emergency services pulling them out of the burning fires. No. Those being rescued quoted scriptures, especially Revelation. Those rescued were already interpreting their furnace and the deaths as a scriptural fulfilment. Their time was at hand.

But let us return to our German audiences in 1945.  By making populations and communities see and be forced to bear witness to what had been done in their name, what did the allies hope to achieve? Cynics may say, it was vengeful: passing on the trauma the liberating soldiers had endured to the people who had been sitting with this right under their noses for several years. I am not sure, however, that this is fair.  Nuremberg was, after all, about education. It was an extended enterprise in accountability, responsibility and justice.  It was a way of holding a mirror to the world, and to all of us, and saying: look.

The banality of evil is commonplace.  ‘Banal’ means ‘common’, ‘ordinary’ and ‘shared’. Arendt’s phrase gets right under the skin of what communities, societies, groups and churches find to be so utterly normal they cannot see its actual evil.  Racism, sexism, abuse of all kinds: these are part of the ecology of churches. We have just got so used to this stuff. We no longer notice it.

But it shocks others. And when they see it, they are furious. Their anger can be uncontrollable. You can understand perhaps, just a little, why allied soldiers, when they found camp guards hiding amongst the concentration camps, mercy was in short supply. The murderous rage that the liberators felt might be in all of us, somewhere.

This is where I struggle with the Church of England, NST and safeguarding. I see only captives and the oppressed. I see no sign of any liberators.  I cannot name a Diocesan Bishop who has, so far, acted with moral courage, or acted with any moral agency to call out the abuses.  I see only process: just our numbed mitred-ones, “only obeying orders”.  The banality of evil is contagious. And compulsory.

The Catholic theologian Clemens Sedmak says that one of the primary tasks of theology is to see it as an invitation: to wake up – to be mindful and attentive.  Black Lives Matter has a slogan: “if you are not angry, you are not paying attention”. Quite.  This is what the allies did with cinemas and walkabouts in 1945.  It was a powerful poke: wake up – just look at what has happened! Yet some still could not see, and would refuse to learn.

If I am right about the moral purpose of the allies in 1945, and Black Lives Matters now, then the obvious thing to say about the primary task of theological education is that it is not – and never was – first and foremost about pumping out information and dogma. No. It is about arousing curiosity.  If the theologian cannot ask ‘why is it like this?’, or ‘does it have to be that?’ and ‘could it not be better?’, then Jesus was wasting his time with parables and miracles.

Curiosity leads us to searching; to self-search; to probe; to wrestle; to change; to repent; to risk; to love; to sacrifice; to empower others; to be responsible; to see, judge and act; to be accountable to one another; to become like Jesus.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any of this in the Church of England’s approach to safeguarding. Ever.

Instead, I see and hear leaders saying: “this is just the way it is at the moment”; “we are on a learning curve”; “we are on a journey”; “we are doing our best” and “we’ve come a long way”. But the best the NST does is not good enough. In fact, their best is harmful.  I say this is after reading the recent 20-page page paper ‘Independent Safeguarding Structures for the Church of England’.  A careful scan of the proposals from the NST for an Independent Safeguarding Board left me weary and demoralised. But also deeply disturbed.

Why? Well, the rhetoric is lame, and the entire document seems to contort itself around process, but one which lacks any real bite.  Let me explain.  Herewith the Missing Words Round – a pub quiz interlude in this short essay.  Which of these words is missing from the report? Could it be justice, pain, betrayal, anger, injustice, resolution, compensation, closure, healing, repentance, atonement, sacrifice, forgiveness (yours, mine, anyone else’s), pastoral, care, kindness, suffering and compassion? Or could it be shame, stigma and guilt? Or perhaps God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Yes, they are all missing words. All of them. Not one mention for any of them in 20 pages.

Amazing. Yet someone has written a theology of safeguarding for this report, but managed to miss out all of these (key?) words. How is this done? By whom? For whom? Imposing comprehensive solutions stems from superiority. It will not realize the need for collective learning via intended authentic social intercourse and deep listening. This must be rooted in ecologies of equality, with attendant humility, compassion and empathetic bridging.

Those in power must begin by setting aside their power, and repent of seeking control in the lives of others. We can only be moral by working together in a spirit of genuine reciprocity. An over-confidence in the ability of one group to initiate good for another always carries risk. Namely, to deny that other capacity – the one that causes unintended harm.

It reflects a dangerous assumption on the part of those in power: that only their injection of goodness and morality can reform society and liberate others. Countless impositions of initiatives on racism and sexism suffer from this. And now safeguarding. Lies are more common in silences than words, says Adrienne Rich. Authentic listening has to be the starting point for the NST and the Church of England. But you can be sure they will not want to hear what we have to say.

In decades to come, just as people have studied the cognitive dissonance of those on trial at Nuremberg (remember, “I was only obeying orders”), I think, anthropologists will study this small tribal cult that revolves around process, but strangely has none. The god of the NST is process, and its high priests control its’ meaning. Alas, this is only a local tribal deity, and in terms of Festinger’s notion of social comparison, it bears no relation to any other ideas of process in rest of the known world. Contact the relevant tribal elders for more information: the silent ones in the pointy hats, holding the magic staffs. They will explain why process is their god.  But it is all a mystery you see; the unseen and ultimately unknowable – such is process god.

Pope Francis has a nice line on the purpose of the church. He says it is a ‘field hospital’, not a custom house or some bureaucratic tax-revenue centre.  What does he mean by this?  That the church is here to mend and heal.  Not take and tax. The church is for reconciliation, compassion and empathy.  The church is an ITU – yes, an Intensive Care Union.  We are here to bind up the broken-hearted, to set captives free, and to deliver people from the powers of darkness, their afflictions and the stigmas and demonization, and all that oppresses them.

I have spent years now listening to those abused: the sexually abused, and the falsely accused.  And yet as I read ‘Independent Safeguarding Structures for the Church of England’, and what do I find? No heart or soul. The language of dull, dead process. It is a form of anaesthetic for the pain that the abused still bear.  You will recall Marx’s aphorism: religion is an opiate for the people.  It relieves their pain, but does nothing to alleviate the causes of their suffering and misery.

The trouble is, there is no other care or cure for the victim or patient of abuse from the NST. Now, “a patient of abuse” works pretty well as a term for our purposes here. We wait in hope. But in vain. The NST is, meanwhile, the weirdest field hospital. It bears no social comparison to any other healing institution. 

All that ever happens is this. On the ward rounds you are assessed, and promised prompt treatment.  But nothing else happens.  Your pain increases, and your anxiety too.  You feel forgotten.  So, you scream loudly, for a very long time.  Oddly, this makes the medics run away.  Eventually, they promise to operate.  But only if you calm down.  Nothing happens when you do.  So you keep screaming, and eventually the noise for everyone is so unbearable, they take you for surgery.

But then it is strange, for they ever do is gas you: they sedate you. You wake up, and they ask if you are feeling better? You say you do not. So they say they might need to repeat this procedure several times. It never works. So they discharge you, and explain your pain is all in your head. This is now your fault.

You are referred to Out-Patients in future, which alas is only open on alternate rainy days in any month beginning with an ‘R’. In the meantime, new patients arrive at the field hospital. The sedatives are in plentiful supply. Or you can just read the latest policy documents. They have the same effect.  The opiate of religion is a way of avoiding the causes of pain and disease. It ignores the poverty and social causes of the disorders and inequalities in society.

Seventy-five years ago, some people were traumatised by what the allies showed them. Some looked, and turned away. Those on trial were just running a process, and had the right moral reasons for doing so – or so they thought.  The banality of the evil was that no-one running the processes or obeying the orders exercised any moral courage or leadership.  And so the pogrom continued.  Because the cognitive dissonance was always in place.

Theology is an invitation to wake up. Abused lives matter too.  If you are not angry, indeed boiling with righteous rage and faithful fury with the proposals in the latest ‘Independent Safeguarding Structures for the Church of England’ document, then you are clearly not paying attention.  Actually, you are not awake. What would it take, I wonder, to get our church leaders to sit up, take notice, and begin a journey of real com-passion with us?  Those not just abused or falsely accused; but also those abused each and every day by the devoted disciples who belong to the tribal cult that worships this little god of process? 

The banality of evil is not waking up to the pain of your neighbour, and not being able to hear the cries and screams of the victims.  That was the education project we now refer to as Nuremberg. I long for the day when we can lead our bishops past the heaps and piles of atrocities that they have ignored for so many long, long years. 

But I know already what will happen. Some will stand and weep with shame. Some will look away, and claim no responsibility. Others will say they never knew anything about this. A few will flee with in the face of the trauma of what they have just seen and witnessed. Yet none, not one, will take responsibility. Because, as you know, the mitred-ones were just following a process; just taking orders; just a cog in the machine.  Such is the banality of evil.