There is an important word in the English language which is familiar to anyone who works for an organisation, especially its leaders. The word is morale. An organisation needs to cultivate morale so that the employees and customers feel that things are going well, their work is properly valued and appreciated. It is difficult to describe every aspect of morale, but most people instinctively know what it is and when it is absent. I would be confident that, given the choice, most people would prefer to work for an organisation possessing high levels of morale than one where workers feel unappreciated, even if on a higher salary.
The Church of England into which I was ordained in 1970 was in many ways an institution with good morale. The reason for this state of optimism has many aspects but there was one factor which I want to think about in this piece and that was confidence in the quality of leadership. My own curacy days were difficult, but I still never lost my sense of working for an organisation where even the most junior employees were noticed and valued by bishops. The confidence that bishops were men of integrity and would ultimately sort out problems created an air of stability, one which counteracted the experienced fragility of my own curacy years. Whatever my personal crises I was still part of a just and solid institution called the Church of England.
In thinking about stability, or lack of it in the Church, it occurs to me that there are three important ways that bishops can ensure that it is present. This list of three qualities in episcopal leadership will not be a complete one, but it still represents what I have looked for during my ministry from those who were charged with overseeing my ministry and helping me accomplish my vocation to serve the people of God.
For the sake of clarity, I offer here three words to describe the needed qualities that I believe are essential for all our episcopal leaders and which I believe were more in evidence when I began my ministry 50+ years ago. The words that sum up these qualities are teacher, just and integrity. If a bishop cannot fulfil all that is implied in these three words, the ability of the church to flourish and function well is impaired and the morale of employees and members is weakened.
The role of teacher and preacher in the church is a quality that would have been expected and valued right back to patristic days. We still possess the lengthy sermons of such episcopal luminaries as Augustine and John Chrysostom. Those who listened to these expositions when they were first delivered must have had considerable reserves of mental and physical stamina. Few preachers today emulate their style in an age when sermons seldom extend beyond ten minutes. Nevertheless, congregations still value sermons, and they still look to bishops as being in some sense ‘experts’ at preaching and interpreting the essence of the faith. Theology remains important for the Church, and we expect our leaders to provide good theological leadership on difficult questions. The impression I get is that the theological expertise among the bishops, such as we looked for in an earlier generation, is no longer with us. The clergy who do possess intellectual giftedness are few in number and the majority of them are found in the theological faculties in our universities. If people of theological wisdom and experience are absent in the task of leading the theological debates that are thought important, the arguments that we hear in the public square can be shallow and trite. I find it an interesting point that among the bishops who have earned the title of PhD and are identified as evangelicals, few seem to have chosen the theme of Scripture and its interpretation as their special focus of study. Overall, the role of authoritative teacher and interpreter of the Christian tradition seems no longer to belong to our episcopal leaders. When incisive theological competence is no longer an expectation for our episcopal leaders, a situation of ignorance and confusion can quickly take over, with cliché and banality replacing spiritually and theologically healthy articulations of the faith.
The second quality that we expect to find upheld by our bishops is summed in the word just. By using this single word, I am referring, first, to the whole legal structure that governs the Church and its administration. Rules exist and the bishops must both understand and enforce them. The bishops are also guardians of justice in the church as it touches morality and correct behaviour. Sometimes this involves the pursuit of malefactors so that they are disciplined. Even more important is to ensure that the institution itself is totally free of blame or any hint of corruption. Corruption is difficult to banish from an organisation and it appears in many guises. I would not expect any bishop to completely drive out things like preferential bias to certain groups or theological parties, but I would expect a much higher standard than we have seen in the episcopally-led cover-ups as in the case of John Smyth and Peter Ball. There have been other cases known to me, but not in the public domain, where bishops have failed to act or speak up when shocking abuse cases take place on their watch. It is sad to have to conclude that some of our bishops seem instinctively to prefer the protection of the church institution to the promotion of justice and truth.
Any failure to promote justice by the one in a situation to take action can be described as a serious lapse of human integrity. This third word describes something I have found to be regrettably absent in many of the stories that come my way. Integrity should imply that honesty, straightforward dealing and consistent moral probity is always to be expected from Christians and their leaders. Sadly, that assumption cannot be taken as a given. Too many lies have been told in the course of enquiries or in the course of interviews with newspaper reporters. When anyone encounters even a single false statement coming from a church leader, the effects can be disastrous. Anything that implies the idea that honesty is an optional quality and need not be expected of leaders, will have an enormous demoralising effect on those who work for the organisation. Here we are referring of course to the clergy and ordinary quota-paying church people.
The most recent story to cause church morale to plummet is the nomination of a new Bishop of Wolverhampton, Bishop Wambunya. It transpires that this bishop, who has been working in the Diocese of Oxford as an assistant bishop and an incumbent, was party to a service in Berlin to ordain a bishop in a free church outside the orbit of the Anglican Communion. A video exists of this bishop designate of Wolverhampton wearing episcopal robes and using the words of the Common Worship to ordain the candidate, Wamare Juma, as bishop. I need not spend any time explaining how this action was highly irregular. The problem is here not one of misbehaviour, as it was probably caused by an ignorance of the strict rules and protocols of the C/E. To have any bishop operating outside the norms of church order will, naturally, undermine the morale of the clergy and people who believe that working within the rules of canon law and Catholic order is important. All, not unreasonably, expect the bishop to observe the same rule book. Was there no one in the appointment process able to establish that the bishop-designate understood the protocols of working as a bishop in England? To call his action lawless is not an exaggeration. It might have been done in a spirit of innocent naivety, but the result of this action will be deeply harmful in a number of ways. If a bishop breaks canon law, why should the clergy who owe him canonical obedience do anything to follow the same rules?
Lawlessness, lack of trust in the probity and integrity of the leadership and an inability to look up to leaders for guidance and inspiration – all these will take their toll on an institution like the Church. To return to the word with which we began, the morale of many is damaged, and it is not easy to see how it can be repaired. The succession of church leaders, including several bishops, who were told about safeguarding failures in the activities of such men as Peter Ball and John Smyth but did nothing, are guilty in at least two ways. They are guilty of an original act of cowardice, but they are also guilty, in their lack of courage, of contributing to a destruction of trust and even affection that used to be felt by many in this country for the C/E. If the numbers of those seeking to become ordained fall in number, can we really be surprised? Instead of seeing hope, confidence and joy expressed in the Church, far too many are going to see only sleaze, power abuse and self-aggrandisement by its leaders. We need a new spirit of penitence and perhaps the place where it should begin to be articulated is in the English House of Bishops.
Stephen, can you explain what you mean by ‘Catholic order’? Since the C of E is both Protestant and Catholic, it puzzles me that people never seem to refer to ‘Protestant order’. It occurs to me that perhaps I’m misunderstanding the meaning of the term
I am referring to such things as the threefold ministry, authorisation of the sacraments to those ordained and other external rules in terms of buildings etc inherited from our catholic past which give the C/E a recognisable shape and order. The C/E tries to lay down certain ‘rules’ in terms of the external patterns of activity/worship to allow members the opportunity to find a home anywhere in the C/E. That is the theory at any rate. Theological coherence is we know impossible to expect to find but C/E churches do have some structural rules in common.
Thanks, Stephen, that’s helpful. I wonder then what Protestant order is, following the Book of Common Prayer? Perhaps being anti-papist; not believing in transubstantiation, or reserving the sacrament; and holding that only only what can be read in the Bible or deduced from it is necessary to salvation? I wonder why we don’t hear calls to adhere to Protestant principles?
I wonder if the answer to your question is the (perhaps assumed) character of the Church of England as Catholic in ‘order’, but Protestant in ‘doctrine’. Whilst this is an obvious oversimplification, I think it does provide a way of understanding the way that the Church of England frequently holds together its claim to be Catholic and Reformed. (There are, however, churches that strain to exist within the bounds of Catholic order, and others that find Reformed doctrine something hard to the palette!)
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.
I grew up in a context where anti-discrimination rules were of paramount importance. Newly appointed workers (especially those from overseas or outside of our region) were often both mystified and impressed by a local reverence for laws on fairness in workplace appointments or promotions.
I was thrilled to be selected for a ministry training course with my local diocese. I already had done several years of advanced theological study, and had little difficulty meeting the required standards on academic or practical procedures. But subsequent events caused me to leave the local diocese in disgust at how the violent psychological abuse of students was covered up.
A fellow student asked me to direct him to the local New Wine office one winter evening. I waited with a female friend of the student’s outside the local New Wine office. It felt like an eternity in the car on a chilly evening. The student eventually emerged in tears and ran up an alleyway.
He came (crying) to the car. He sobbed for hours in my living room. His mental state resembled that of assassination attempt survivors I had seen. He shook and he wept, and for a long time he struggled to speak. Eventually he began to speak coherently. He claimed the New Wine tutor had used foul language [“Any of us might fancy a change of XXXXXXX”] and that he felt unfairly accused of adultery with his female friend. She had been helping him do coursework, and was a teaching colleague of his wife’s.
The student eventually recovered sufficiently to drive home. He phoned me several days later and was thankful for the support I had offered him and his female friend. The lady had looked close to tears in my living room, and I had reacted very quickly on the fateful evening to try and reduce distress. The student warned me how his New Wine accuser (on the previous evening) had boasted how much they hated me, and planned to prevent me from ever receiving any future placements following ministry training course completion. This sounded( if true!)like a gross breach of confidentiality.
My partner is a university professor, and was very alarmed at the student’s mental state on the evening in question. She questioned if it was wise to be involved with a Church group or diocese where savage bullying was so clearly a massive problem. We later discovered, much to our own cost, a great deal more about the savage bullying problem concealed in the local New Wine group (possibly aided and abetted by complacent Archbishops, Bishops or Archdeacons or other clergy).
Several weeks later I was called to a meeting without any advance agenda. The same New Wine worker almost reduced me to tears. During a long and unpleasant meeting they accused me of ‘living in sin’ and told me my presence would ‘defile a pulpit’. It felt as if the New Wine tutor clearly wanted to see me evicted from the ministry training course (even after completing all the assignments and exercises and paying course fees).
My impression was of wanton attempts being made (over a long time period during the interview) to get me to cry. The New Wine worker told me I needed to get married (or immediately leave my home) if I was to be eligible for commissioning and ministry placements. They seemed very keen for me not to get commissioned, and to leave the course immediately.
My partner and I have a longstanding celibate relationship, on account of her health issues. She was very hurt by the suggestion of sexual immorality, and also the attempt to coerce us into getting married. She declined to get married, and was also alarmed when I had to agree to move out of our home (as a condition of getting commissioned). My partner felt there was very limited value agreeing to any deal with thugs who were grossly treacherous and cruel. She is a professor with a Cambridge PhD and decades of eduction sector experience.
Fortunately, by the grace of God, a very senior cleric got wind of the bullying and harassment. They advised me to insist on getting commissioned, but to then immediately leave the local diocese to avoid further risk of more harm or bullying. They advised me how what was happening was utterly inconsistent with anti-discrimination law (as applied rigorously locally). They also felt it was grossly inconsistent with Church rules. They questioned if a celibate person should ever complete a vocational course successfully, and then be placed under coercion to get married as a condition of gaining ministry experience.
The four victims here were utterly stunned. I reported concern to an Archbishop. It was passed to a Bishop. The Bishop passed my complaint to a New Wine leader. The New Wine leader fixed an ‘informal’ meeting. It felt like kangaroo court justice from start to finish. The New Wine leader looked confidently clueless in my estimation, and unable to fairly address reasonable questions raised.
The Archbishop, Bishop, New Wine leader appeared to have scant regard (?no regard at all really?) for national law. There was contempt for the plain protection terms of Lambeth 1:10. There was wanton disregard for biblical principles of natural justice and letting the witness evidence of 2-3 settle matters. Confidentiality also appeared to have been breached.
I have been approached by other people who believe there is a local diocesan crisis with yet more hidden child abuse, rape, bullying, harassment or exploitation. One informant advises me of a hidden suicide allegation (which a formal and independent inquiry might potentially find easily). But are the ears of our senior clergy or New Wine leaders stopped, and deaf to the screams of multiple victims?
Emerging media or inquiry reports (on Pilavachi, Fletcher, Smyth, Hindley or others) scream out how woefully poor protection of adults and children is decimating the Anglican communion.
You reap what you sow Bishops and Archbishops, and a lot of us have had enough of your BS and nonsense. A mark of this is that people like me cannot be silenced, at least not so easily as they once were.
Odd how evangelical Bishops threaten schism on Lambeth 1:10 adherence, yet some of the same group show those same rules contempt themselves. Odd how they so confidently disregard national anti-discrimination law. Odd how they blasphemously disregard biblical principles of natural justice. Growth-noise-numbers…..sounds like the ‘Spirit of Mike Pilavachi’ at work.
‘Kangaroo court charismatic leaders’-your time is up! Clay-footed leadership incompetence has been uncovered on an epic scale, and things must change, to prevent your dioceses from being rebranded ‘down and out’
I don’t of course know the personal circumstances you are speaking about Stephen during your curacy and I am glad that you found your bishop helpful and supportive. My own experience of 50-30 years or so ago – not as clergy myself but as the wife of an Anglican priest is rather different. My perception is that a generation or two ago bishops (and other church leaders) felt that they had the ‘right’ to instruct clergy how to organise their marriage. As part of that the clear expectation was that the wife (and of course it was ‘wife’ in those days) would know their place, see their primary role as ‘clergy wife’, sacrifice their own professional ambitions and be humble, subservient and meek. All the things that I am not. Of course it differed from bishop to bishop, and I have some good stories to tell as well, but there was one particular bishop who treated my husband unfairly and abominably – largely I am sure because I challenged him over examples of deeply sexist treatment that I had been on the receiving end of as a clergy wife. The bishop concerned – who I am sure would justify his views and attitudes on ‘evangelical’ grounds – was in my view a vicious, abusive and evil bully. He regarded my husband and me as not modelling the kind of clergy marriage that his blinkered fundamentalist views considered the norm. Frankly I wish that I had at the time raised the equivalent of what is now a CDM against him, but in those days that wasn’t the kind of thing you did to bishops. It is too late now to do so of course, but I do feel that the appalling way that the Church of England treated many clergy wives over many years is a further scar on the history of the Church of England in the 20th century. It is a pretty big can of worms that I am sure the powers that be would like to keep the lid on, but at times the treatment of that clergy wives and the attempts to control clergy marriages by the church hierarchy crossed over the line into abuse and does need to be acknowledged, repented for, and where appropriate, amends made. Some time Stephen I do think that a posting by you exploring the damaging way the Church treated wives of clergy would be useful. It has I think, largely changed now (in part this was due to the ordination of women, as it then got recognised that you could not treat husbands of female clergy in the discriminatory ways wives of clergy had been treated up till then). its traces though do still linger – in some fringes of the Church of England.
Lay people couldn’t give two hoots about the Bishop of Wolverhampton. They just want a warm community that reflects the love of Jesus. Brits are experts at setting up systems of arcane rules and tut-tutting over those who don’t seem to be implementing them in the preferred manner.