by Anonymous

Ed. This is a third contribution from a well informed anonymous writer who wrote two earlier articles on the topic of Safeguarding in the Church of England.

I had better come clean at the start. I woke up the other day to find that I was part of Liz Truss’ Anti-Growth Coalition. Or rather, I am part of the one that the Archbishops often refer to.  In the CofE, you cannot move for chiding, chivvying or church conferences dedicated to growth, growth, growth. Apparently, Truss is “getting Britain moving”. That is odd, because where I live, nobody is standing still at the moment. We all have jump around on the spot just to keep warm.  Meanwhile, Welby’s chums are “unleashing the laity (etc)”, because as you may recall, the CofE is being held back by its own clergy and needs to be “freed from [such] limiting factors”.

I am against growth for the sake of growth. I protest when Conservative Evangelical churches and HTB plants get all the money and grants for becoming “resource churches” or “missional hubs”. That means all the other churches just pay much more for getting far less. I think lots of these new church ‘start-ups’ cost a lot to set-up, and pay nothing back.  Most of Welby’s experiments have been expensive foibles that we’ve all been forced to fund. But now he’s spent all the money, he’s even taken on £500m of fresh debt in the form of a “growth bond”, which we’ll all have to pay back sometime in the future. Kwasi Kwarteng went to Eton too, you know. Personally, I’d rather see our cash go into much needed repairs and maintenance for churches, vicarages, and perhaps a decent holiday for the clergy. But I am part of that Anti-Growth Coalition. And I have come to realise that the CofE is being run by the Conservative Party at prayer.

The question is, what kind of Conservatives are todays Bishops and Archbishops? Socially, politically and theologically they are conservative, for sure. Gender and sexuality remain difficult issues for any Bishop to speak out on.  They stick to safer terrain: climate change, Ukraine and the other matters that don’t require episcopal attention. It is sad, if not tragic, that at precisely the moment when we might need radical and brave Bishops to speak, we have a bench that is permanently ‘on mute’ until the Comms-Team tells them what to say. 

OK, the Bishops are conservatives with a small ‘c’, but in terms of conduct, this is very much like the current Conservative government under Johnson or Truss. We estimate that over 40 Bishops have CDMs against them at the moment. But like Partygate, the rules they helped make don’t apply to them. They just carry on.  Yet the rules do apply to rest of the clergy, who have to step aside from ministry with the presumption of being guilty-until-proven-innocent. Even if found innocent, your Bishop might decide that you no longer enjoy their favour or confidence. A kind of ‘one-strike and you’re out’ approach.

Other similarities come to mind. General Synod will be briefed about new national CofE initiatives through the media, just like party MPs. The inner-cabinet running everything for the CofE may not bother to consult with the majority of Bishops about policy changes, new initiatives or major expenditure. There is no democracy or accountability, and anybody breaking ranks is swiftly disciplined. Nobody knows when the House of Bishops acquired a system of Party Whips, but nobody is allowed to be “off message”.  General Synod, and most Bishops running their own Diocesan Synods, have far more in common with a Party Conference run by Truss or Johnson. Even fringe events are checked out for potential dissent.  If all else fails, there are still three ways to deal with dissenters from the Handbook of Political Arm Twisting. First, promote the dissenter – so they have to behave. Second, sack and banish them, and remove the whip. Third, smear them, so they have to resign.

So, I choked when I saw that the CofE – Truss-like – was now publishing something called ‘Promoting A Safer Church’.  This was the CofE’s take on over 800 recommendations made in Past Cases Review 2 (PCR2).  When you read PCR2, you have to ask who in the CofE hierarchy pared the 800 down to a couple of dozen, editing them into a very weak set of national recommendations, and by what authority they did this? Somebody pasteurised, skimmed, filtered and strained these 800 recommendations. Who did this, and why?

Bishop Gibbs was on hand to trot out that we are all on some kind of “change-journey”. So like Truss “getting Britain moving”. It is good to know that Gibbs is finally cranking up the safeguarding engine. We have no indications on speed, direction or destination. Gibbs also noted the CofE is “putting in place scrutiny of diocesan safeguarding operations”.  That will be surprising news to many Dioceses. But as Gibbs is a Welbyite speaking to the media, there was no need to check whether anybody was ever consulted. That’s government for you.

Meanwhile, the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) is apparently ready to roll out their website. But it has no independent Information Sharing Agreement logged with the Information Commissioner’s Office, so is not GDPR-compliant. Yes, a small detail, but it does mean that the ISB cannot handle data securely or independently.  Gibbs told General Synod the ISB was completely independent of the Archbishops’ Council.  The ISB says it isn’t, and has no legal personality or any kind of independent financial identity outside the Archbishops’ Council. Amazingly, the National Safeguarding Panel and the National Safeguarding Steering Group, both chaired by Meg Munn, claim that the ISB is not a governance issue for them.  So that’s OK then.

So who is running safeguarding in the CofE? But before I answer that, let me point out some of the issues that now bedevil safeguarding in the CofE. First, it is plain common sense (and obvious legally) that in terms of safeguarding, the category ‘vulnerable’ refers either to a child, or to an adult who is known to require protection, and for whom safeguarding measures are already in place. Labelling any other adult as ‘vulnerable’ only after an event would render all adults as potentially vulnerable, with safeguarding then simultaneously becoming everything and nothing.  Yet hundreds of clergy have been hammered by a retrospective and invidious Catch-22 scenario, in which the last visit they made, a sermon they preached or conversation they had is now treated as a “safeguarding matter…because someone has complained”.

Second, whilst I think churches should not be treated differently to other bodies, there is such a thing as proportionality. Many, many church events never have employees or licensed persons present, and so there are no contractual arrangements in place. A church outing to a zoo is an entirely voluntary day trip. It is not like a school trip. If all our church events now need a safeguarding risk assessment, here are some events we currently don’t risk assess: funerals, weddings, baptisms, parish lunches, visiting old people’s homes, coffee mornings, home groups, and more besides. Would we risk assess our home group leader inviting their group to a lunch, or out for tea on a National Trust daytrip? Who would that safeguard? Church is an inherently multi-generational gathering, and it is voluntary, not compulsory. By all means prosecute people who exploit children and vulnerable adults in civil and criminal proceedings.  But nobody can make the context of church “safe”, let alone promote a “safer church” for everyone.

Third, I predict that there will be no safeguarding in 10-15 years. It is a voracious industry-concept, and the churches will not be able to afford it. With fewer paid clergy in the future, reliance defaults to the laity. Bluntly, they won’t do it. It’s time consuming and fraught with huge risk and responsibility – yet no reward. It has no job satisfaction such as maintaining buildings, visiting or hospitality. The laity will just refuse to manage this.  It will eventually dawn on the CofE that:

A: Most denominations outside the British Isles don’t do safeguarding or anything like this. Common sense with due regard to civil and criminal law suffices for everyone else.

B: There is nothing at all to show for safeguarding – teaching, preaching, pastoral care usually produce gratitude and growth – whereas safeguarding literally produces nothing.

C: The actual people being safeguarded are mostly children – with very, very few exceptions. Most children grow up. They seldom record debts of gratitude for their crèche or nursery school.

Social Exchange Theorists would take a cold sober look at this and begin scripting the last rites. Safeguarding is what sociologists call a high-investment-low-reward activity. They would also concur that it is high-risk-low-yield.  Mostly, what we want from our churches is low-investments with high-rewards. You turn up to church, hear a great homily, and experience fabulous liturgy, numinous worship. There is no price on this.

Safeguarding is the opposite: huge outlays of time, energy and work (labour), and literally nothing to show for it at the end (no measurable result), other than a meaningless slogan that has no quantifiable outcome. “Promoting a Safer Church” is akin to “getting Britain moving”. As churches have found to their cost, you can plan as much as you like, but you are still stuck with no power or predictive skills to prevent anyone who exploits your trust. Yet you are left with total responsibility for anything that goes wrong. The answer simply cannot be to adopt the premise that we trust no-one. But that is the ultimate trajectory of safeguarding. No-one is safe. Everyone is potentially vulnerable. Nobody can be trusted. In Welby-World we all need to be risk-assessed, policed, checked and re-checked. If you don’t agree, you can leave. Or you’ll be dismissed.

None of this undermines the fundamental  imperative for redress, justice, truth, repentance and integrity, and the urgent need for victims to be fully compensated. That really is a proper task. Safeguarding culture is of its time and has a limited shelf-life. Yet more worryingly, it belongs to a certain kind of hysteria that stems from ‘moral panic’. That is another concept from sociology, that helps to explain how “safeguarding the American way of life” in the 1950s meant every single town searched harder for the Communists, left-handed folk, homosexuals, student radicals and other (so-called) deviants that apparently threatened to undermine the very fabric of American society by brainwashing the unsuspecting into changing their political beliefs or identity.

Child sexual abuse was hidden in our churches for many years. Churches colluded in cover ups, and still do so. But a culture of predictive correction can swing the other way, with the unwary and accused quickly caught in a drama-trap akin to Kafka or Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. McCarthyism found very few reds under the beds of ordinary Americans. Believe me, they looked hard, and frequently in places that had no registered democrat voters, socialist-sympathisers, or any other people to be suspicious of.

Cynics might say that ‘Promoting a Safer Church’ – uncannily reminiscent of  “safeguarding the American way of life” in the 1950s – is just another example of our cultural captivity. Of the church being a slave to contemporary culture. That is probably true, but it comes at a price. We need to remember, and as Jean La Fontaine’s anthropological study discovered, when push came to shove, there were no cases of satanic ritual abuse in places as far apart as Shetland and Nottingham (see: Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England, 1998). Yet a plausibility structure and a culture of ‘moral panic’ had prevailed, and put the innocent through hell. We also forget that it really rather suited the Conservative government of the 1980’s and early 1990’s to support that kind of moral panic and fear. In the same way, only an innocent would see no evidence of intentional political guile in ‘Promoting a Safer Church’.

Meanwhile, today’s ecclesial culture is being worked over and water-boarded by re-branding the identity of the churches, whose sole purpose has now been reduced to a safety-first machine geared for growth, growth, growth. Take a look at your Diocesan HQ the next time you visit.  It will be open-plan, replete with board rooms and breakout spaces, like some churchy version of Ricky Gervais’ The Office (2001-2002). Episodes in our ecclesiastical adaptation can stick closely to the original, and cover mergers, annual appraisals, company awaydays, growth targets and the like.  (I wish I could say I have never met a version of Bishop David Brent, but in truth, every Diocese has at least one Bishop Brent).

Alas, I do not think this ‘safeguarding culture’ is quite the unfortunate accident it can masquerade as. Like McCarthyism’s campaign against Communism and all-things-deviant, safeguarding is a serious tool of political oppression, and an instrument for intimidation. It stems from a bullying culture that can be quite sadistic. It uses punishment, terrorising and harshness to keep order. It factors in its own randomness. Now anyone could be found wanting. This reflects the elite public school ethos we have seen in our political leaders, and it’s now baked hard into the CofE. Most bishops behave like compliant-cruel prefects.

Most of our Bishops are no longer allowed to care, and have more in common with the brutal chums of Flashman in Tom Brown’s Schooldays [1857]. It is a measure of our bullying culture in the CofE that a Bishop known to be an uncompromising bully effectively destroyed a diocese, but still got ten years’ tenure in post. Elsewhere, a bishop silences critics through ‘lawfare’, destroying colleagues who speak out, and using his comms-team, senior staff and lawyers like some kind of regional mobster with muscle. Critical clergy, or those daring to openly complain of his bullying, will get the threat of a CDM by return. This will destroy the church. But the fish rots slowly from the head.

This bullying culture stems from a school-based context rooted in elitism, class and entitlement.  This culture flows from the God of Wrath that was drummed into heads at summer camps like Iwerne.  God is some Big Headmaster who dwells on high, ruling distantly and possibly benevolently, provided you keep your head down and do exactly as you’re told. Dissidents and troublemakers will be made an example of, and publicly shamed. Bullying is tolerated, even though the edicts against it will pinned-up every week on the school noticeboard and be re-issued at assembly.  The tasks that keep the pupils in order are often repetitive, numbing and pointless. Punishments can be random and cruel. But if you dare to question the system, you are in line for a suspension. 

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of all this is that it you can see it so clearly. Tens of millions of pounds are being wasted every year on ‘Promoting a Safer Church’.  Yet few victims of abuse are ever helped. The keyword is ‘promoting’. This is an exercise in the dark arts of spin and PR. But the money spent on this “change-journey” could be given to victims of actual abuse who are not being compensated.  We know that the CofE entirely lacks a leadership with wisdom, courage and compassion. Yet the ‘safeguarding culture’ grows evermore obese with each passing month.

Herewith a fine example.  The Makin Review that deals with Smyth’s abuse, so touches on what the odd Archbishop and a few Bishops may or may not have known, said and done to stop this.  The Review is around 850 days late. Mr. Makin was only given two days per week in the published Terms of Reference to get to the bottom of this barrel. He started in 2019, but is known to have increased his time commitment to three or four days per week. The combined cost of him and his associates is estimated at around £1400 per day, plus VAT.  Add in transcription costs, lawyers fees and the like, and the costs might rise to £2500 per day. The total cost of this Review is coming in at somewhere between £1.25 to £1.5 million.

The punchline in this is Makin has yet to interview Channel 4’s Cathy Newman, and most of the investigative team who broke the story of John Smyth’s abuse. It is also believed that in the three-plus years of the Makin Review, the relevant Archbishop and Bishops have yet to be seen. As Churchill might have said, never in the field of ecclesial conflict has so much money been spent on defending the few – yet at the expense of the many.  The many victims of Smyth won’t get a fraction of what the Makin Review costs.  And there is, as yet, nothing to show for this. Where successive Conservative governments have gone with whitewash and exonerating ‘independent internal tribunals’, the CofE has followed with their ‘lessons learned reviews’.

One primary function safeguarding is maintain the position of those in power, so Makin’s Review will never see the light of day if it so much as dares to criticise an Archbishop or Bishop. The Comms-Team will never let that be published. The other primary function of safeguarding is perpetrating processes and perpetual terrorisation to keep the clergy in their place.  But as their numbers thin-out, age, and many just leave, it is only the laity that remain.  Yet the laity don’t have to do as they are told. The laity don’t have to put up with uncaring prefects or headmasters who preside over this toxic version of Erving Goffman’s total institution, or Michael Foucault’s carceral system and panopticon. The laity can vote with their feet and don’t have to submit their CV’s into some safeguarding portal just to help out the Vicar with home visits, or serve on another rota.

I predict the laity will vote with their feet. By the time we get 2050, you will have to look up the term “safeguarding” in a dictionary. People will scratch their heads and ask “what, who and why?”. In the meantime, we are set to be run ragged by this Conservative Party at prayer.