by Hatty Calbus

The British are known to be mad. But in the maiming of their privileged young, they are criminally insane. So observed Etonian John le Carré. There is finally more awareness of boarding schools’ insane maiming, particularly of now middle aged and elderly men, my focus here. Another Etonian, Alex Renton, reviewing Robert Verkaik’s Posh Boys: How the English Public Schools Ruin Britain refers to “the toxification of British public life by the private school system.” That toxification, particularly by boarding schools, very much affects the Church of England. In his BBC radio series, Nicky Campbell included, among former boarders wielding power, religious leaders. In Sex, Power, Control: Responding to Abuse in the Institutional Church, Fiona Gardner emphasises “the embedded cultural ethos of the public school and boarding school which permeates the church hierarchy.” It is necessary to admit the maiming and find help to heal. Most never try and, therefore, should not be spiritual leaders. I want to show that, among the Church hierarchy, over-representation of untreated boarding school survivors, or untreated boarders – which I’ll abbreviate to UBs – has caused immense harm. I am focusing on men because they continue to do the most damage, although such women, often identifiable by their brittleness, can also devastate in positions of power. The network I wrote about previously, with Iwerne-imbued HTB having connections to four big recent abuse scandals in the Church of England, yet chosen as a standard-bearer, comes almost entirely from this world. It  is not yet clear whether HTB’s Revitalise Trust will continue to play such a central role under Archbishop Sarah Mullally. Even if she reduces it, its effects will not disappear quickly.

Charles Spencer, in his painful memoir, A Very Private School (whose compelling account of his abusive prep school shouldn’t need justification as a resource) asks, “Why were parents blithely sending us away, to live with adults and children who were total strangers, in a clear rejection of family?” Children are meant to live with their parents, not be abandoned by them, yet boarding school means childhood in what former vicar Mark Stibbe called “orphanages for the privileged.” The actor Dominic West said being left as a small child “… had a major effect on me – it was the worst feeling I ever had, very similar to the grief when my parents died. It’s the same thing really; you think you’ve lost your parents.” Psychotherapist Joy Schaverien, identified an ABCD of ‘Boarding School Syndrome’: abandonment, bereavement, captivity and dissociation. Penny Pickles and Helen OdellMiller, in her obituary, elaborated: “‘A’ stood for the abandonment and rupture children felt when they were taken to school and left there with strangers. ‘B’ was for bereavement and the sudden loss of all that was familiar: family surroundings, friends, toys, routine, even food … ‘C’ indicated captivity, the realisation that there was no way out from rigid and often punishing routines, no escape, even though some tried to run away.  This could lead to ‘D’, dissociation and the development of a false self that they felt helped them to be brave and cut them off from their true feelings

Those at less dangerous schools still experienced significant distorting, including when school was safer than home. Schaverien’s colleague Nick Duffell, drawing on neuroscience research, says “the case has been proven that forging early bonds and developing relational abilities foster brain matter development.” So rupturing children’s most crucial relational bonds must mean impairment. Stibbe, whose subsequent relational damage led to the breakup of his marriage and end of his ministry, lists boarders’ deprivations: love, home, safety, childhood, siblings, innocence and freedom. Even the thicker-skinned cannot be unaffected – which those around them tend to know all too well.

Piers Cross, part of a group, including Duffell, who made the documentary Boarding on Insanity was quoted in a Guardian article: “Take David Cameron. He described being sent to boarding school at seven as ‘brutal and bizarre’ and recalled ‘frequent beatings’. He lost a stone in weight during a single term (my italics). Tony Blair tried to run away aged 14, making his way to Newcastle airport in a bid to escape. There are so many of these stories

Spencer says, “I’d regularly consider shooting myself in the foot with one of my father’s shotguns: physical agony seemed preferable to the psychological torture of being sent away to that place again.” However much former pupils might want to minimise it afterwards, these schools inflicted appalling suffering on children.

 As well as the beating and bullying, with constant access to prey, boarding schools have, of course, also been paedophiles’ perfect hunting grounds. Teachers are the obvious perpetrators, but there is the less well-known cycle of older boys abusing younger. Boys not abused themselves saw their peers abused. A further aspect Spencer shows is the meeting of physical and sexual abuse in paedophile sadism – it is obvious where Smyth and Fletcher came from.

Dr Elly Hanson is the clinical psychologist consulted for the Makin Review, which observes, “Of note in Dr Hanson’s analysis is reference to boarding school culture and practices, in which she describes how often very young children are separated from their families for long periods of time and therefore ‘come to lack strong, secure attachments and an understanding of healthy relationships. This can make them more vulnerable’ to exploitation and abuse, ‘especially when perpetrated by someone in the guise of a ‘father figure’. Dr Hanson goes on to explain the vulnerability and needs of those that were targeted by John Smyth ‘… needs are especially acute during adolescence, and become more so when children are placed in boarding school – and furthermore it appears that John [sic] targeted those that he perceived as having deeper unmet needs (in other words particular vulnerabilities)’ . This explanation correlates to the experiences of several victims who described describe vulnerability because of family relationship breakdown and/or boarding school attendance.”

Makin also points out that “the [Iwerne] movement pursued an explicit strategy of trying to convert to it boys that were deemed of high rank (educated at elite private schools, athletic, attractive and so forth), because such individuals were seen as having more potential to influence society (that such an unjust and inequitable society exists was embraced rather than challenged).” These schools perpetuate what Gardner calls  “the complacent culture and tradition of elite masculine power.” Iwerne was born again as the Titus Trust, whose homepage still invites only those from private schools on its holidays. Why, if not to perpetuate that elite power in the Church?

I’ll counter here the defence of UBs who send their own children to boarding schools that they have completely changed. There is still the separation from family and shall note that Dr Hanson writes of pupils’ vulnerability in the present, not just historically. Penelope Brown, in the interviews cited above said, “Generally, the schools are safer than they used to be [a low bar] and the majority of staff are doing their best. But the inconvenient truth that none will confront is this: in the vast majority of cases, children simply aren’t better growing up away from their family. If it’s safe for a child to be at home, that’s where they should be.”

Safeguarding children in private schools has finally caught up with state schools (only fully in 2020), reducing the risk from teachers and removing the impunity abusers enjoyed for so long. But the movement Everyone’s Invited is an online platform where girls, initially primarily from boarding and private schools, shared anonymous testimonies about sexual harassment, assault and rape culture perpetrated at their schools by boys with psyches pornified online. One imagines older boys still abuse younger ones too.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56558487 What makes the experience at boarding schools still so terrible is that, as happened to those old boys who now run – these days not everything, but still an awful lot of it, especially in the Church of England – there is no escape: victims are trapped with their predators in well-appointed prisons.

A significant reason parents still send their children to boarding schools is to ensure they acquire the prestige, social markers and social connections of the British elite.  Some people will think that obviously only an envious Trotskyite would object to this and want to highlight connections between untreated boarding school survivors and indifference to abuse, but the saying “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth” also applies to the Church. Yes, abuse happens in all sorts of spiritual traditions and at different social levels. My point, to repeat, is that the involvement of UBs almost guarantees a terribly inadequate response, which has been evident in the network in which HTB sits, most notably with John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher.

I shall attempt to show first harmful traits of people who have not dealt with their maiming; then, if they have not become perpetrators themselves, how their defences engage when they are confronted with others’ abuse; and finally I shall suggest counter actions.

Just recently I had an email from abroad, wanting to know if I had any comments about what we may call ‘the bishop problem’.  He may have read a piece in The Times and  a blog piece that I wrote in past months pointing out the difficulty that the Church of England seems to be having in finding good candidates for its senior posts.  In fact, the problem is not just about finding suitable candidates but also retaining them after they have been nominated and put in post.  Readers of Surviving Church will be aware of the recent issues that have attached themselves to the nomination of the Bishop of Warwick and the fact that a complaint has caused a delay in Canon Tim Lomax’s consecration.  Then there are three recent cases of diocesan Bishops having to ‘stand back’ or resign.  At present there are more ‘acting’ bishops leading dioceses than has ever been the case before.  The existing meticulous protocols surrounding the appointment of bishops, especially diocesans, mean that the Crown Nominations Committee responsible for this task is forced to work slowly.  This helps to explain why things seem to move at a glacial pace.  This is a source of considerable frustration for those in vacant dioceses who have to face a wait of two or more years for a new episcopal leader to appear.  This slow pace of identifying and appointing good candidates does not fit well with a situation where there are several unexpected departures by senior figures in the church.     

Today we have a situation in which there are eight or nine diocesan episcopal vacancies or announced vacancies.  One other diocese (Salisbury) is awaiting a decision as to whether its bishop is in any way guilty of an unspecified offence. To put replacements in each of these posts is going to absorb an enormous amount of energy and skill on the part of highly qualified but busy people who do the work of scrutiny and nomination. Because many of the same people are involved in the nomination processes across the country, these eight vacancies are going to create considerable strain on the institution of the Church of England.  Even if things go as smoothly as possible, we can expect that the whole process will take two to three years.  To judge from the experience of the recent past, appointments at this level almost inevitably meet obstacles along the way.    In the recent attempt to make an appointment of the Bishop of Durham, a post that traditionally that has attracted candidates of the highest calibre, a preferred candidate withdrew in the middle of the nominating process.  Let us, for a moment, assume that things do go well and that the eight posts are filled from the existing pool of candidates in as little as two years.  Most of the appointments will be made from those who have already cut their teeth as suffragan bishops.  In practice, those who act as suffragans are not always ready for the substantial increase of responsibility that comes with a diocesan post.  They may have seen enough of this level of pressurised operation to know that they do not have the stamina for the endless decision making and committee work that goes with a diocesan episcopal post.  They may also have witnessed from the inside a series of blunders and errors on the part of the previous holder of the role. They know that many of the problems left behind cannot be resolved by a simple exercise of their institutional power.  There are, for example, incidents of serious unprofessional behaviour by clergy which do not go away easily. The power to remove clergy from office is very difficult to implement.   But with our optimal timetable, we are going, for the moment, to assume that the present list of vacancies disappears, and that a new generation of episcopal candidates appears from the ranks of ordinary clergy replace the suffragans who have stepped up to fill the diocesan vacancies.  What can possibly go wrong?  

In Italian there is a word to describe candidates for the Papacy, men who are the right age and possess the right background for consideration to the top job. They are described as papabile.  The word ‘episcabile’ does not exist in any language, but we need such a word to denote individuals who are potentially able to fill the diocesan vacancies and also provide a new generation of suffragan bishops.  For the sake of argument, I am going to assume that there are candidates across the Church able and qualified, now or in the future, to function as senior bishops for the Church of England.  The problem is that these episcabile men and women are relatively few in number.  In the first place there is nothing in the training that clergy currently receive (or have received) that makes them potentially ready to do the job of a bishop at any level.  The training that is provided is for the role of a parish priest.  It is only a small number that enter the select cohort that enables them to reach a place where they can become episcabile.  A few ordinary parish priests bring management or intellectual skills from previous careers that make them potentially able to be on a path to take one of the bishop roles.  But these are few in number since, as we have noted in earlier posts, the skills required are so extensive.  Also, some of those who possess the right qualities to be episcopal candidates will quickly make it clear that they have absolutely no interest in taking on the enormous stresses required of those in episcopal leadership.  My cohort of episcabile clergy instantly shrinks to a very small number.

The next thing which shrinks the cohort still further is the inevitable safeguarding scrutiny.   Today, a problem for clergy right across the board is not only whether they have themselves a clean bill of bill of health over power abuse, safeguarding training and bullying incidents, but whether they may have failed to report such behaviour in others.  Further names disappear from our list because some on it knew of a safeguarding episode and failed to do anything about it.  Some safeguarding lapses are obviously more serious than others.  Speaking generally, it is a matter of record that several senior clergy in the Church of England do seem to have a flawed safeguarding record hanging over them.  Some of the accusations of cover-up or failure to respond must result in considerable strain for those who occupy these places of high office.  Resilience and the possession of a very thick skin to cope with criticism, whether or not justified, is always required of those who have climbed the pole of promotion in our national Church.

Among the many other qualities required of our present and future bishops is a good theological brain.  We find that across the Church there are reasonable number of those who have taken their study beyond the basics, and received doctorates from eminent universities in topics that may be relevant to the task of effective episcopal oversight.  But the current leadership has not so far been known for inspirational leadership in the area of theological teaching.  We may have to wait some time for this situation to change.  It is a long time since the wider church or, indeed, the general public, listened to the theological reflections and insights of senior clergy.  An enormous amount of energy has been expended on the topic of marriage and sexual ethics.  The outsider looking in might conclude that there are no other topics worth discussing in the Church.  Can no one in leadership articulate better how the Church is bearer of ‘Good News’?

My final observation in what is a somewhat gloomy prognosis for the Church of England and its present and future bishops, is to note a serious division that is emerging within parishes across the country.   Once upon a time the task of the Church and the parishes that make up its public face, was easy to identify.  The Church of England had a duty of care potentially to the whole population.  It was the institution which offered to provide spiritual support and reassurance from birth to the grave.  The church building found in every community was a spiritual symbol of this divine concern for all.  Now the focus seems in many places to be about entertainment and providing a model of church life that has appeal to the youthful sector of society.  This section of the church believes that it has found the formula for growing the church.  A combination of gospel songs, attractive young charismatic personalities and a guaranteed creation of intense emotional experience is thought to be the key to the church’s future.  The skills of the past, such as ministry to the sick and dying and engaging with the church’s rich liturgical and theological traditions seem to have gone right out of fashion among many recently ordained clergy.  The point that really concerns me, and many clergy from my generation is that there will shortly arise a generation of clergy and bishops who know nothing of the richness of the past.  The HTB charismatic tradition has an important place within the Anglican fold, but the same tradition can become truly toxic and dangerous the moment it sets itself up as the sole and only valid expression of Christianity for Britain.  Conservative readings of Scripture may have a place in the total scheme of things in our engagement with the Bible.  But they provide a very poor model if they are expected to carry the weight of being the only valid approach to the riches of the Bible.  The bishops of today and tomorrow need to ensure that there is a true mixed economy within our church.  The presumption by the wealthy HTB parishes to dictate to the rest which parts of the Anglican tradition are most highly honoured is ultimately deeply destructive to the whole Church of England.  Let us hope and pray that there are still enough prayerful men and women in the Church of England who have the experience, knowledge and wisdom to fill the vacant sees at Diocesan level (listed below) and the next generations of suffragans to follow. 

• Lincoln: Became vacant on October 1, 2026 (following the retirement of Stephen Conway).
• Manchester: Announcement on March 4, 2026, with the see becoming vacant on August 1, 2027 (following David Walker’s retirement).
• Guildford: Vacant since March 3, 2026 (following the death of Andrew Watson).
• Lichfield: Vacant from September 30, 2026 (following Michael Ipgrave’s retirement).
• Chichester: Vacant from June 1, 2026 (following Martin Warner’s retirement).
• Southwark: Vacant from August 5, 2026 (following Christopher Chessun’s retirement).
• Oxford: Vacant from August 1, 2026 (following Steven Croft’s retirement).
• London: Vacant from January 28, 2026 (following Sarah Mullally’s translation).
• Liverpool: Vacant following the departure of John Perumbalath.

by Anon

Once upon a time, the CofE marked the departure of its clergy and lay staff with a Farewell Service. A homily might be given, and gratitude expressed for all the work a departing staff member had done, the help and support they had provided to others and to the church, and for their tireless, faithful vocation.  Refreshments might follow, perhaps some speeches, and maybe a gift or some flowers.

Even in pared-down dioceses on their uppers, you could at least anticipate a short liturgy with the bishop in the chapel of a diocesan HQ, followed by the small conference sandwich selection from M&S. But I suspect that nothing like this was prepared for Dame Christine Ryan, who suddenly stepped down from her role as the CofE’s Executive Chair of Safeguarding Structures Programme Board (whatever that is) after barely a year in post. (Her appointment was only announced at the end of September 2025).

And so, in the spirit of Private Eye’s fictitious poet-in-residence, E.J. Thribb, here are some lines to mark her departure.

So, Farewell then,

To Dame Christine Ryan

Executive Chair of the Church of England’s

“Safeguarding Structures Programme Board”,

(Whatever that was).

We never found out what it did.

Or was eventually supposed to do.

It must be strange to leave a job

That never really started

And was probably just a sinecure.

Which is why I imagine you left.

Once you discovered

You were just another CofE safeguarding mannequin

Only there for window dressing.

Keith’s mum says

It’s all smoke and mirrors anyway.

And that Mr Nye makes all these jobs up

To keep the Charity Commission distracted

As well as General Synod confused.

And that nothing will ever happen.

Which is why you had to organise your own farewell.

Private Eye recently exposed accountability and transparency failures at the highest levels of Church of England governance (no. 1682, Summer 2026, p. 49). It dubbed William Nye, Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council and General Synod, “Head of Exceptionalism” and named Simon Gallagher, Director of the Central Secretariat, and Alex McGregor, Head of Legal Affairs, as complicit in oversight and management lacking meaningful accountability. Victims of Church of England sexual abuse – and those accused, falsely or otherwise – will testify that decision-makers on truth and justice appear to operate above the law.

This seems like a good moment to remind readers of Surviving Church that it was only in July this year that we noted that the CofE’s favourite publication, Chaff Weekly, had carried a press announcement on 30 September 2025, reporting that  “Dame Christine Ryan [has been] appointed Executive Chair of Safeguarding Structures Programme Board” (whatever that is)….”. We noted that this

“sounds good…But nine months on, the silence is deafening. It remains the case that there is still no body – independent, professional, internal or external – overseeing the CofE where you could complain about their poor or unjust safeguarding procedures and hold bishops and officers accountable for their actions or inaction. The CofE leadership wants to keep it that way.”

We went on to comment that

“The press releases on the NSP, RSSB, SSPB, SRG – so many new chaff-like bodies and debris have been commissioned – feature lovely, fetching photos of the appointees. Any nervous church and Synod members from the Home Counties are bound to feel comforted by the press releases and the people posing for their pictures. After all, these folk all look so, well, reassuring….”.

Commenting on the Church of England’s report on trust and accountability (‘Trust and Trustworthiness’, July 2027, General Synod Paper 2457: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2026-07/gs-2457-renewing-trust-addressing-the-challenges-of-trustworthiness-in-the-church-of-england-v2.pdf), Archbishop Sarah Mullally said, “if hope is the fruit, trust is the root”. Yet the fruit remains bitter because the governance in Lambeth Palace in safeguarding and so many other areas lacks any meaningful accountability and transparency. Without cultivating them, trust is impossible.

The scale of the problem was recently set out in a letter to the Editor of the Church Times (11th September 2026) from Dr Andrew Graystone, who writes (under the subheading ‘Accountability and Church of England Bishops’):

Madam, — During the House of Lords debate on the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, the Bishop of Manchester, Dr David Walker, told the chamber that “public bodies need scrutiny” (News, 4 September). The Bill, which is sometimes referred to as “the Hillsborough law”, is intended to replace the offence of misconduct in public office with a new “duty of candour” for public authorities. Dr Walker went on to say: “When authority figures are not held properly accountable, and denial and defensiveness are enabled, our communities are further fragmented.”

He is right, of course; and yet denial and defensiveness precisely characterise the experience of so many victims and survivors of abuse in the Church of England. One example is the refusal of the National Safeguarding Team to publish the “independent” review of its handling of the case of the former Bishop of Liverpool Dr John Perumbalath. Another is the complete failure of the Church to hold serving bishops and archbishops accountable for their failings in the case of John Smyth. I could give many more.

The offence of misconduct in public office was always obscure and ill-defined, though it had its uses. It was the offence under which Bishop Peter Ball was convicted after abusing young men for decades. Unfortunately, the new law, as it is currently drafted, will not apply to bishops. So, ironically, the Bill that Dr Walker is championing will have the perverse effect of making it easier for bishops to avoid scrutiny.

Is that really what the Church wants, as it seeks to rebuild on the ruins of public trust and confidence?

Graystone’s perceptive letter recalls decades of police and institutional cover-up over the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, where inadequate crowd control needlessly killed 97 Liverpool fans. He rightly highlights the Church of England’s similar conduct in safeguarding controversies.

Safeguarding serves as ecclesial virtue signalling and reputation management, rarely truth or justice. The continued use of ‘insiders’ for supposedly ‘independent’ reviews of difficult cases reflects corporate nepotism: the church ultimately cares only about itself.

In this culture, trust quickly erodes, prompting church members and clergy to disengage and withdraw. Church of England safeguarding remains unregulated, unlicensed, unaccountable, and largely unprofessional, leaving abuse victims and the falsely accused to navigate labyrinthine processes driven more by PR than truth or justice. Increasingly, many choose to leave instead.

By claiming that “safeguarding in the church is everyone’s responsibility,” the CofE originators of that phrase mean the very opposite: in the Church of England, no person or body ultimately takes responsibility. Which is why Dame Christine and others start looking for the exit door shortly after they arrive.

Next up is the Redress Scheme, where once again the CofE hierarchy has sought to stack the deck with its chosen ‘insiders’ whilst all the while claiming that these appointees are ‘independent’. Nobody believes or trusts any announcement from Lambeth Palace.

And on safeguarding, the CofE hierarchy seems to be spending all its money on window dressing to avoid the day of humiliation when the Charity Commission or Parliament finally imposes independent external regulation. But for victims of abuse and those damaged by the CofE’s corrupted and incompetent safeguarding procedures, that day cannot come soon enough.

Meanwhile, we wish Dame Christine well as she departs.  The CofE press release doesn’t say why she left, or even whether she had somewhere else to go.  We suspect she eventually realised she was wasting her time as another mannequin in the CofE’s safeguarding shop window. We are sorry that there was no Farewell Service of any kind for her, or any event to mark twelve months of, er, frustration at the reigning culture of inaction and inertia in Lambeth Palace.

The growing list of those who have left the Church of England over its safeguarding debacles gets longer and longer with each passing week. Soon there will be nobody left at all, other than a few bishops and a handful of senior Lambeth Palace staff, insisting all is well, and that change is coming “at pace”. Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?

There are some words in the English language that are not very useful unless they are placed in a clear context or have an adjective attached to them.  One of these words is charisma.  This is a word that has currency in a religious setting, but it also belongs in a number of other contexts, including the political and sociological.  In any use of the word there has also to be some indication as to whether the word is signifying something good or something toxic.  The word used on its own carries no value judgment built into its meaning.  We see the negative use of the word as it was applied to the notorious and evil career of Chris Brain.  He was brought to account in the course of the past week at a courthouse in London.  The ministry he engaged in in Sheffield in the 80s and 90s certainly possessed charisma, but the word here does not denote anything good or wholesome.  In fact, the character of the charisma on display was that of ruthless control and exploitation.   It is this negative meaning that we project on to the word as we think of the Brain ministry over seven or eight years in Sheffield. 

Why am I focussing on this single word charisma?  It is because I believe that understanding charisma in its negative manifestation helps us to understand better the horror of the events in Sheffield thirty years ago. It may also help us to build institutional structures that make it difficult or impossible to repeat them.  Before we think further about charisma operating in its negative manifestation, we need to think about its meaning with its neutral connotation.  The word, when stripped of both its negative and positive connotations, is one that is descriptive of a quality of human personality that is able to attract and impress others.  The charismatic personality has considerable relational power.  This power can be said to simultaneously charm, dazzle and intrigue those drawn into its orbit.  The charismatic personality is also one that creates followers and admirers around him (normally a him) even while keeping the bulk of these followers at a safe distance.  Getting close to a charismatic leader is a status achieved only by a few.  The cult leader, who is the typical expression of a negative exploitative form of charisma, will somehow know exactly how to share with followers enough attention to keep them loyal but also subservient.  In many cases, this subservience makes the follower ripe for exploitation.  We can summarise our understanding of the word by noting that charisma implies a form of intense relationship for an acolyte, which is fascinating, mysterious, but also dangerous.  The picture of a moth attracted to a flame is a good analogy.  Getting too close to the charismatic personality may burn or harm some of those who are drawn to it.

The story of Brain’s tenure of the so called Nine O’Clock Service (NOS) in Sheffield has been told sufficiently often not to need repeating here.  Most of what happened in this ministry between 1988 and its collapse in 1995 can be gathered from reading Roland Howard’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Nine O’Clock Service.  This book appeared remarkably quickly after the events it records.  The fact that it has taken a further three decades for the story to come out fully and for justice to be obtained, has allowed the suffering of the victims to be grievously prolonged.  The recent statement from some of Brain’s 19 victims contained these words. “Shame on the Church of England who never came and asked us a single question about what had gone wrong, at the time of disclosure, or for the intervening 30 years. Who sat on the sidelines, smug and self-satisfied while the pews filled? Who ignored the warning signs because it was in their vested interest to do so.? Who failed utterly in their duty of care?”

Two things strike me about these words.  It is clear that the powers that be in the Church of England failed to engage with the massive suffering of the victims because first, it was too costly and complex to deal with.  Too many important people in the Church had colluded with the ‘success’ of NOS, right up to the level of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  The apparent ‘success’ of the experiment was such that no one was prepared later to question a number of anomalies and concerns that were brushed under the diocesan carpet when NOS was given a CofE imprimatur.  The words of the victims speak about a hierarchy who were ‘smug and self-satisfied while the pews filled’.  This is another way of saying that it is OK to cut corners of training and scrutiny as long as the scheme or experiment makes the Church look good.  Filling pews has to take precedence over all else – safety, goodness and truth.

The second thing that should have been clear to Church leaders in the 80s is the risks and dangers of church life when it seems to gather most of its energy from the dynamics of crowd behaviour.  Anyone with the slightest understanding of modern history, and that would have included all the bench of bishops in 1995, would have had cause to feel concern over the phenomenon of crowd dynamics and some of the potential dangers that such large gatherings can cause for church congregations.  The ability of a crowd, a political rally or a football crowd, to destroy rational thinking and decision making must have occurred to our church leaders as they surveyed the revival activity in Brain’s Sheffield church.  Brain’s gatherings would have exhibited many of the danger signals of crowd behaviour that had been exhibited 50+ years before in Rome, Berlin and Nurenberg.  Why does it never occur to church people that mobs, rallies and crowds are given to volatile and irrational behaviour?  When people come into such environments, they can quickly become vulnerable and suggestible.  This suggestibility puts them in a place of danger.   Safeguarding training has been alerting us for decades to the idea of grooming by powerful personalities.  Does no one see clearly that a charismatic environment is also a place which, in the hands of the unscrupulous, can lead to exploitation of various kinds?  Needless to say, there are wholesome charismatic ministries, those which never use the dynamics of the crowd as a tool of exploitation.  But every ministry that we describe as charismatic needs to be closely mentored to ensure that the dynamics of the crowd manipulated by a charismatic leader have not introduced a dangerous toxic harm into our church life.

The lesson of Chris Brain is larger than a single serious lapse of professional ministerial conduct by a leader.  The lesson that was not learnt in the 90s is that any preacher, whose ministry can be described a ‘charismatic’, will always need careful monitoring to protect them from the vulnerabilities of this role and the dangerous dynamics that seem to emerge in so many settings of this kind. Nobody blew a whistle on Mike Pilavachi even though the Brain episode must have alerted many responsible church leaders to the possibility that the charisma he possessed was being used for his gratification.   When abusive behaviour is revealed as having taken place at major hubs of church life in Britain (St Ebbes Oxford) over long periods of time, one sadly contemplates how poison has been absorbed not only by victims, but also by those who stood by and said nothing.  Every flawed ministry has allowed poison to flow through the veins of the Church of England.   Allowing a few leaders, like Brain, to go to prison will not solve anything until we insist on proper oversight for all who exercise spiritual authority.  We desperately need men and women with spotless integrity to lead our church.  The recent cases of bishops ‘standing back’ has left us all wondering where the next generation of trustworthy leaders is going to come from. 

I have spoken about the different contexts in which charisma is exercised within the church.  I should conclude this piece by pointing us to the charismatic power that we ascribe to the ‘Lord the giver of life’.   The charismatic gift that is the most needed today by the church is not the gift of tongues or the gift of administration.  It is the gift of leadership that should have exercised discernment, wisdom and integrity, one that would have been able to spot the terrible damaging failure in the ministries of Brain, Pilavachi etc.   Our bishops who are to be chosen in the next few months need to have the spiritual gift of integrity for themselves and for those they oversee.  Perhaps the next ten twenty years will rebuild some of the institutional trust that has been tragically lost recently.  A slogan that was around in the 80s needs to be asked again.  ‘Is your Church worth joining?’.  Much depends on the answer we can honestly give.

One of the responsibilities that I accepted in my early days as an incumbent in the 80s was the role of a diocesan ecumenical officer.   I would not claim that I was overburdened by this task.  There were a number of invitations from deanery synods to be responded to.  At the time, the person taking the ecumenical role was expected to guide clergy and lay people towards an understanding of ecumenical documents like Baptism Eucharist and Ministry and the ARCIC reports.   All these discussions were encouraging us to believe that there was a real possibility of Christian unity in our lifetimes. 

At some point after 1990, the impetus towards church unity lost its energy and momentum so that today, any interest in reconciling theological differences between the denominations seems hardly to exist. 2026 sees many of the old divisions as intractable as ever.  Alongside the differences noted in the past, there are new divisions which exist.  These are in a completely different place from those we struggled with in the 80s.  The possibility of bringing unity to the Churches seems as far away as ever.  However, there are cracks and fissures that now appear to separate Christian bodies in 2026 that were not typically found in old theological debates or disagreements on how to interpret classical doctrines.  The current differences that are found are often those that exist within denominations.  These are the contrasting styles of culture or worship style.   Two neighbouring CofE churches might each officially claim to belong to the national church, but the differences between them are now so marked that members of the first church find it hard or impossible to worship in the second.  One church has opted for what they believe to be a ‘seeker-friendly’ approach to worship with long periods of time given to singing and attractive worship songs.  The other church may have clung to a traditional formula of hymns and Anglican liturgy.  This way of maintaining the words and familiar music from early childhood is to communicate and maintain a sense of the timelessness and beauty of God.  It is difficult to see how these different approaches can ever be reconciled as they are so radically divergent from each other. 

A recent book by John Leach, Anglicans Who Don’t Like Liturgy, gives us an enormously helpful insight into understanding this new pattern of church division.  What we find today is that, while many churches have not totally abandoned their search for Christian unity, they have become so far wedded to their particular cultures of worship that they have little incentive to look elsewhere.  Leach’s research seems to confirm the existence of real division among Christians in their radically different choices of worship style.  Many Anglican Christians, through being attracted to the vigour and exuberance of charismatic networks, have been swept up into this new style of worship.  This style originates from the work of John Wimber in the 80s and his workshops in London and Sheffield.  Leach’s study focusses on two current strands, that of Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) and the network known as New Wine.   Some have characterised this music style as ‘soft rock’.  Culturally, aesthetically and theologically we can say that this style is a long way from traditional Anglican liturgical styles of worship. Not only do we have diverging styles and cultures for worship, we find, according to Leach, a conscious and deliberate intention by some advocates of the new charismatic styles to reject the liturgical traditions of the Anglican past. We can describe many such Anglican congregations today as ‘non-liturgical’ or even ‘ex-liturgical’.

Leach’s study looks at three worship styles within Anglicanism that are current today.  Two of them come from the ‘modern’ worship song tradition and are demonstrated within New Wine circles and the HTB network.  The third strand is the classical Anglican pattern of worship.  Worship in this pattern may involve a highly trained choir, as in our Anglican cathedrals, but the main feature of liturgy is the careful use of liturgical texts which have been composed with enormous care by generations of skilled liturgists.  Although Leach himself places himself within the charismatic culture, it is clear that he has enormous sympathy for the tradition within Anglicanism that is responsible for current texts and liturgies.   His aim, revealed right at the end of the book, is to see if there is any way that the positive features of the liturgical traditions can be woven into the energy and vibrancy of charismatic worship.  For that ever to be a reality, there would have to be a far greater knowledge of the opposite traditions of the Church of England than there is at present.  It would not be wrong to suggest that currently little such mutual comprehension exists.

To return to Leach’s detailed study of the worship song style of New Wine churches and the HTB network, I learnt many intriguing details.   One difference that he was able to note in listening to hundreds of songs used in these two distinct strands of charismatic-style worship, was that HTB is prone to a constant revising of the musical repertoire.  In other words, it appears that the organisers of music at HTB invest a huge amount of time (and money) in listening to and presenting songs that have only just been released.  New Wine churches on the other hand tend to use older musical material suitable for the purposes of evangelism.  All these churches in the charismatic tradition regarded singing as the most important ingredient of the service.  In Leach’s words, ‘Worship, understood as extended periods of singing, has the function of taking worshippers on a journey towards a moment, or a state, intimacy with God through the Holy Spirit.’   It is in reflecting on this sentence that we begin to recognise how charismatic worship is in contrast with more traditional understandings of worship through the use of liturgy. 

I want at this point to stand aside from Leach’s discussion about the relative merits and appeal of the non-liturgical charismatic traditions, especially for young people, and attempt in my own words and from my experience to make a case for Anglican liturgy.   When I attend a traditional Anglican service, I do not expect necessarily to have an ‘experience’ of God, whether or not it is described as a moment of intimacy.  The purpose of liturgy is to allow me to be part of a pattern of prayer that is far larger than my individual  prayer.  Church worship uses traditional words and phrases which have a force and familiarity given them through their repetition.  When I am using ‘common prayer’ I am drawn into a dimension that unites me with my fellow worshippers.  I am also united with Christians the world over who are praying at the same moment.  My sense of connection also extends across time.  Anglican liturgy draws us into an activity that has been going over many centuries, and, in the service, we are also given a sense of connection with a glorious past.  Time and space are eclipsed and for a moment we may have a powerful sense of how all things, including ourselves, are connected in God.

Leach’s book is one that is worth studying for its positive appraisal of the meaning of worship, whether in the charismatic or liturgical style.  The new ecumenism of worship, if such a thing were to exist, would require us to move forward in seeking to teach Christians to value the worship experiences of others.  At present, if we examine the contrasting styles of charismatic worship alongside liturgical, we will probably have no difficulty in understanding the reasons for wanting to reject it – the one we do not use.  Of course, liturgical patterns are rejected because they can become dry and over-formal to the point of meaninglessness.  Equally, charismatic music can be criticised for descending into a cultivation of feelings which are self-indulgent to the point of selfishness. What Leach has done in his writing is to demonstrate clearly that instead of choosing one approach or the other, we can move towards this new ecumenism of worship.  At present in the Church of England, we are divided because of our preferences in the area of music and worship.  Perhaps with some proper study and intelligent appreciation of all these traditions we can learn to respect the styles of other people and move towards an ecumenical reconciliation that seemed to become too difficult for the generation that came before us.    

By a PCC Member

In the light of Alice Thomson’s recent article in The Times on 8^th September 2026 (‘God help vicars while Mullally’s in charge’ – see: https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/god-help-vicars-mullallys-charge-lmrgw7tkh), Surviving Church shares one typical account of a clergyperson currently being abused by the processes and hierarchy of the Church of England.  It is no wonder that the numbers coming forward for ordained ministry continue to collapse.

Shortly, very shortly, before Christmas 2024, our suffragan bishop came to our two morning parish services to make an announcement that shocked us – our much-loved, highly gifted, incredibly hard-working Incumbent, Fr Mark, was suspended with immediate effect, supposedly as a ‘neutral act’, and he was to have no contact with us. There was, of course, no information about the reason, but safeguarding was explicitly mentioned. To some in the church and to many in the wider community, this meant only one thing, and sure enough, rumours quickly began to circulate.

Yet when the suspension was renewed six months later for a second time, the reference to safeguarding was quietly dropped with no explanation – nor apology. How can a Christian organisation behave like this? This situation has now dragged on into a third calendar year – a parish robbed of its priest’s ministry, but more seriously, a wonderful priest’s vocation and reputation trashed. For what reason? And to what end?

I feel not just deeply frustrated but also extremely angry. Letters to the diocesan bishop receive platitudinous replies referring to ‘policies’, ‘process’, and ‘procedure’. Is this how we build the kingdom?

My interpretation of the situation? Fr Mark is outside of the mould and as such anyone in authority who felt insecure could view him as a threat – but to the extent of wanting to destroy his ministry? Maybe.

After the suffragan bishop’s announcement at that first morning service, I went forward to say a few words to encourage the congregation to stand firm in their faith and their commitment to church life, and I prayed for our church – and for Fr Mark and his wife. After the service, the suffragan bishop rebuked me for praying for our priest – and not the ‘victims’. Really? It was already decided by the hierarchy that there were not just ‘complainants’, but ‘victims’.

I was banned by the bishop from speaking at the second service. It was deeply distressing. But my distress is as nothing compared to Fr Mark’s. There was even a subsequent attempt by the same suffragan bishop to use threats of total isolation to secure Fr Mark’s immediate resignation. No wonder his health has been so severely affected.

What breaks my heart most of all is watching the deliberate, slow-motion destruction of this priest and his family. Suspension in the Church of England is routinely called a ‘neutral act’, but in reality, it operates as a form of administrative solitary confinement. For nearly two years, they have been left in a cruel administrative vacuum.

The constant threat of total isolation, mounting financial anxieties, and the sheer hostility of being cut off from the community they served so faithfully has caused severe, clinically documented harm. To see a brilliant, compassionate priest and his wife forced to endure this level of continuous psychological and physical strain—while the diocese simply looks the other way—is completely unconscionable. If this is how a Diocesan Bishop ‘pastorally cares’ for his clergy, then the word ‘pastoral’ has lost all meaning.

Sadly, our local lay leadership and PCC have chosen to act at the direction of the diocese and refuse to have any meaningful contact or communication with Fr Mark. A good number of church members have felt compelled to take this line too, whereas others have felt utterly confused. I – and there are others too – have refused to outsource my conscience to the diocese. I have maintained my pastoral relationship with our priest, which has resulted in some pretty nasty things being said and written to me.

I find myself in the painful position of trying to continue to serve the Lord in the parish in which I was baptised and confirmed (and now serve on the PCC) while supporting our priest as I did before he was suspended. There are those, horrified at the way Fr Mark has been treated at every level, who have left the church entirely, including some who were on journeys into faith supported by him. Tragic. Local leaders want us to believe all is well and the parish is flourishing, but the tensions and divisions are evident to anyone who looks below the surface. One church member will no longer even exchange the peace with me.

As someone who takes safeguarding deeply seriously, I have been appalled by how the word ‘safeguarding’ was weaponised in all this. To announce it publicly from the pulpit, allow toxic rumours to spread across the parish and wider community, and then quietly drop the safeguarding label months later without a single word of public retraction or apology is a horrific failure of institutional governance. It harms genuine safeguarding. It manipulates congregational trust. It uses the language of ‘protection’ to execute administrative destruction. True safeguarding protects the vulnerable and seeks truth; it does not inflict unassessed clinical harm on an unrepresented priest and his family.

Fr Mark worked hard to build excellent relationships with the wider community. His suspension has badly affected these relationships, with secular neighbours bemused that the Church could treat one of its own ministers this way. Sadly, secular bodies involved with this case have proved far more sympathetic and supportive to him than the hierarchies of the Church. Where is justice? Where are Gospel values?

Fr Mark has repeatedly made pleas for this matter to be settled by independent mediation or statutory conciliation – only to meet constant, cold rejection from diocesan leaders and their commercial solicitors.

To those leading reviews into institutional culture: I ask you to look past the defensive legalistic jargon of ‘policies and procedures’ and see the human ruin left in the wake of these disciplinary processes. Every single offer of conciliation has been met with a corporate refusal, demonstrating a preference for total destruction over Christian reconciliation. If the Church of England continues to treat its finest ministers like this, it will not just lose its clergy—it will forfeit its very soul.

I feel angry, frustrated, and distressed. It looks as if the situation may well drag on to a third Christmas – and beyond. No wonder there are more resignations by priests than retirements, no wonder there are so few vocations – who in their right mind would offer themselves to be treated like this?

My inspiration to keep going in faith and service comes from Fr Mark, who constantly reminds us: ‘The Lord is more’.

A clergyman, whom I much respected but who is now sadly no longer with us, told me that he had a way of demonstrating that the Bible should never be treated as a textbook containing divinely given and inerrant facts all the way through.   To show this clearly, he would, with a study group, take the first nine chapters of Genesis and analyse them at depth.  A detailed scrutiny of these early Genesis chapters would quickly make any open-minded reader aware of an extensive list of anomalies that appear in the text.  These anomalies are there for all to see but are frequently missed by many readers who want to extract carefully selected sections but not attempt to place them in any sort of context.  Far too many have also adopted the habit of glossing over difficult sections of Scripture which do not easily support the assumption, widely presented in conservative churches, that we have a Bible totally devoid of error.  The questions that arise from taking seriously every verse of Genesis 1-9 are not only the sophisticated ones that can only be answered by a knowledge of Hebrew or years of university study.  No, the difficulties in the text which need some sort of explanation are often simple ones, as, for example, why do we have two versions of the story of Noah.  Why is there, in the text, an abrupt change of name to describe God?  Even in the first few verses of Genesis, there is one major anomaly which gets overlooked by most Christian readers.  I was reminded of this clear problem as it was read in church the other Sunday as part of the creation season.  Our common sense might well ask the question why the light, that God gives to the universe on the first day of creation, is apparently distinct from the light given by the sun and the moon to give light ‘upon the earth’.  These appear only on the fourth day.  A further question that arises for the conscientious reader of the first two chapters is the fact that the Bible contains two distinct creation accounts.  Human beings are created first in the second account in chapter two, while in the version in chapter one we have the creation of humanity right at the end of the creation process on the sixth day.

It would be easy, but perhaps not very profitable, for me to point out to my readers many other passages, even in these early passages of Genesis, that can present real problems to a reader who wants to study and understand the text as we have it in one or other of the many English translations.  Some of the explanations for the anomalies are highly technical while others are very simple.  When God is referred to as Yahweh or the Lord God (Genesis 2) this is material taken from a Hebrew source that used this name, Yahweh, to denote their God.  The sections of Genesis that speak of ’God’ (Genesis 1) are from another earlier tradition that used the name, Elohim, to refer to the supreme deity.  This describing of God using two quite different Hebrew words allows us to conclude that there is more than one source for the Hebrew versions of the creation story.  Needless to say, there is a lot more to say about these two traditions and the way they each understand the character of the divine.  These discussions are contained within countless studies, books, articles and research written by scholars over many decades of detailed study.  Few others will have the time or inclination even to begin to penetrate this material.  The theological training that is provided for clergy of the main denominations in the West should at least have given the clergy an awareness of this literature.  My experience of lay people in the pews over the years of my ministry has found that many are delighted to learn a little of the methods and findings of biblical scholarship.  Many of them are intrigued to learn about Hebrew words that are difficult to translate because their meaning has somehow been lost over the centuries.  They also warm to explanations of historical events which are illuminated by up to date archaeological or historical research.  Many, if not most, lay people are ready to move from the coercive preaching of the past that says, ‘this is what the Bible says’, and ‘this is how you must understand and follow the meaning that I, the preacher, give to it’.   In the Bible there is ambiguity and uncertainty even, but this makes it exciting and intriguing to study and discuss.

In recent years we have found a further reason to wish to wean individuals off an over-literal understanding of Scripture.   Maintaining that there is only one meaning to a verse or chapter means that there will be situations when individual clergy or preachers will claim the authority of the bible to pursue an agenda of their own making.  Thus, they will quote passages from Scripture to subordinate women or persecute homosexuals.  They will also, by never addressing the issue, give the impression that they do not think that there is anything repulsive about genocide, the mass killing of enemies and the rape of the opponents’ womenfolk.  A detailed reading of the Hebrew Bible can also be used to justify a range of other outrageous behaviours with the justification that it is ‘biblical’.  A recent book by Adrian Thatcher explores the theme of an abusive theology and how it is to be found in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.   A theological scholar like him cannot simply pretend that such difficult passages do not exist.  Thatcher’s book, Ending Abusive Theologies, is an attempt to understand what is being said about a God who appears, on occasion, to behave in a fickle, arbitrary and even immoral way.   The task is urgent because, to take but one notorious example, the abusive career of John Smyth was made possible by Smyth’s own distorted understanding of the place of pain and suffering as being part of the Christian route to holiness.  His understanding of the atonement as being a literal event involving divine anger against a child, created a  toxic, even dangerous, form of teaching.  The psychological domination he exerted over his victims was made possible by using the methods of biblical interpretation that he had learnt from those who taught him within the conservative evangelical traditions of the Church of England. 

This incontrovertible fact is that Smyth used Scripture, or his fundamentalist version of Scriptural interpretation, to achieve his dominance over his victims and justify his depraved actions.  This is a point that has never been fully owned up to by the Church.  The question that arises was whether this teaching was ever a legitimate reading of Scripture or whether Smyth was simply misusing the Bible text for his own deviant purposes.  Thatcher’s book takes the straightforward meaning of the biblical text and its insights seriously, so that he can see that actions of God directed at humankind and recorded in the Bible are, in fact, sometimes abusive, violent and cruel.  If we regard the avoidance of harm to individuals as being a core universal principle of ethical behaviour, it can be shown that this standard is not always maintained in the recorded actions of the God of the Bible.  Violence and abusive acts are found throughout Scripture, and some of these are ascribed to God or those claiming to follow him.  Also, rape culture or gender-based violence is commonly encountered in the Old Testament.  It is not surprising if women may find themselves feeing unsafe in a culture that at times appears to glorify misogyny and male dominance.

It is of course possible to want to read Scripture in a way that ignores the toxic and repudiates the violence conducted in God’s name, but this cannot always happen because, as Thatcher puts it, there is ‘excessive veneration of the biblical text in the churches’.  Such veneration makes it difficult for those conservatives wedded to this idea of inerrancy ever to contemplate the notion that some passages, which speak of God commanding abhorrent actions, might in fact be wrong or misguided.  The passage in Isaiah which speaks about the thoughts of God being ‘not your thoughts’ is one that sometimes allows or excuses blatantly cruel and malicious actions perpetrated by human beings because they are believed to represent the inscrutable will of God.  At this very moment the people of the West Bank are being persecuted, harassed and killed because this territory in Scripture was given by God to the Jewish nation.  Morality and the actual welfare of human beings is thus made subservient to the words ascribed to God, a God who appears in some settings and contexts to have abandoned the principles of justice and goodness.

The notion of ‘bad theology’ is one that will be disturbing and shocking to those who follow the principle of sola scriptura.  How can we in any way loosen our complete dependency on Scripture?  How else would we know what to believe or how to follow God’s will?   But, as Thatcher points out, the real core of the Christian biblical revelation is found, not in verbal statements, but in the person of Jesus.  He sums up this point when he says: ‘the self-communication of God is personal not propositional, a human being, not a book.’   The meat of his book is to explore afresh the insights of Scripture on this theme, to find a post-abusive theology and a post-abusive reading of Scripture while introducing the reader to some contemporary modern writers.  This basic Christian message is that, in Jesus, the creator God has chosen to make himself known and accessible to his creation.  Summarising this rich material is impossible without doing it an injustice, but I do commend the book to my readers.   They can then follow for themselves Thatcher’s fascinating journey of discovery to find again a God of love.  My purpose for writing an appreciation of this book is because it is the best I have encountered for helping us, the readers, to negotiate the conundrum of having a book possessing toxic content, which also points us to a God who invites to know him and be joined with him for all eternity.  To be a Christian believer does not make it inevitable that we must become biblical literalists.   I hope that some of my readers will buy the book to follow Thatcher’s remarkable exploration to see afresh what Christians understand when they say that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’.

Ending Abusive Theologies.  Beginning Again with Love, Adrian Thatcher, SCM Press 2026

 by Donald Payne 

My mother has always enjoyed having a hard copy of the Daily Telegraph newspaper delivered to her home. When visiting her from overseas in December 2019, I picked up the paper one morning to see a front-page article detailing allegations of inappropriate behaviour by the prominent Evangelical church leader, Jonathan Fletcher. While I was vaguely aware of Jonathan Fletcher, what captured my attention was a photograph of another man who seemed more familiar. This photo of John Smyth spoke to the memory of someone I had not thought about for many years.

I attended my first Iwerne camp, aged 15, in the summer of 1981. One of my closest friends from school was going and had invited me. I was interested in the church, having recently been confirmed as an Anglican, as was the conventional thing to do at the boarding school I went to. When offered the chance to spend ten days away from home during the summer holidays, with the promise of sport every day and an opportunity to learn more about Christianity, I was curious and willing.

The camp was fun. I played a lot of football and cricket, everyone was friendly and I enjoyed the bible teachings. As was standard practice towards the end of the camp, I accepted Jesus as my saviour and was born again. I don’t remember meeting Jonathan Fletcher. I do remember his brother, David, and did not warm to him. Over the last few days of the camp, my group was introduced to another man, who was spoken about with a combination of reverence and awe. This was John Smyth – charming, charismatic, warm and hugely likable. Someone who immediately made you feel special. He gave a talk one evening. While I do not recall the details, I do remember that it was captivating. When the camp was over, we took a minibus from Iwerne to a meeting point, where our parents were to pick us up. For some reason, our particular group took a detour to John Smyth’s house, before heading back to our own homes. At the time it felt like something of a reward. I enjoyed the warmth and hospitality, and the smug feeling that our group had been chosen for an opportunity that was not afforded to everybody. We were special.

The following summer I attended Iwerne again. I had encouraged another of my close friends to attend. Two things stand out about this second visit. One was that the novelty and the excitement that I had experienced the year before began to diminish. In the year between the camps, I had spent time exploring more about Christianity with one of my school chaplains. To my initial dismay, he did not share my obvious excitement surrounding the Iwerne experience. He introduced me to a number of Christian authors, two of whom, the Anglican priest, Martin Israel, and the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, quickly became my favourites. Looking back, it is no surprise that my attempt to celebrate my enthusiasm for these two particular writers did not go down as well as I expected with the Iwerne leaders.

The other striking memory from that second camp was the absence of John Smyth. We were told that he was very ill and therefore unable to attend that summer. We expressed our concern and sent our love and best wishes to his family. Undoubtedly, we would have prayed for him. As before, the camp was fun. It was summer, we were outdoors and there was a lot of sport. There was little further discussion about John Smyth.

A year later, in the summer of 1983, having done my ‘A’ levels, I was back at Iwerne again. I am not quite sure why I went for a third time. It might have been a way of using up time during a long summer holiday. Having been away at boarding school since the age of seven, I had no close friends who lived near me, so the prospect of two weeks away with people that I still got on with continued to hold some attraction. I had deepened my exploration of Martin Israel and Thomas Merton and had begun to experiment with mantra meditation as a form of prayer (popularised by John Main). However, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the views and practices of other Christian writers had no place within the particular form of theology promoted at Iwerne. During that third camp, my assigned mentor initiated a stern conversation with me about the heretical views that I was always keen to discuss. ‘It makes me question,’ he asked, ‘whether you really have been born again’. The atmosphere of warmth and friendship that I had experienced during my first camp had now noticeably cooled.

Fast forward to that December morning in my mother’s kitchen, seeing John Smyth‘s photograph in the paper. On reading the article, a multitude of memories began to resurface. I then embarked on an exhaustive and obsessive troll through the internet, discovering details of a Channel 4 documentary, the Rushton report, Bleeding for Jesus, Surviving Church and much more. I experienced surprise, disbelief and anger. And yet, I was not surprised. This felt familiar, recognisable. It was also accompanied by a huge sense of relief.

I have continued to follow the story although, more than forty years on, the world now makes more sense to me without God. I maintain a soft spot for Thomas Merton and have, more recently, immersed myself in the music and musings of Nick Cave. And yet I remain fascinated by this episode in my life. The trick that David Fletcher and his colleagues managed to play on us for so long was to target a group of vulnerable, impressionable young men, who had spent many years spent living in total institutions, away from family and all things familiar. The Iwerne hierarchy sold us a vision and a solution to our anxieties. They offered us meaning and, providing we embraced the whole package, a wonderful, liberating experience. Wonderful, that is, until we began to ask questions, to display curiosity and to wonder aloud about the occasional inconsistency in the teaching; until we began to express doubt. Initially, doubt was praised and encouraged. In the Iwerne playbook, transient doubt was a necessary part of the process towards faith. However, doubt that persisted was evidence of a fault – not in the teaching but in the boy. The kindness and encouragement that was experienced in abundance early on continued to be on offer, providing we accepted the message wholeheartedly. But if not, the mood began to change. There could be no discussion about the authenticity and validity of the message; no question that the teaching might not hold up to analysis. This was biblical teaching and the bible is God’s word. For those sinners who, like me, expressed ongoing curiosity and doubt, the fault was ours. At that point, the warmth and fellowship disappeared and was replaced, abruptly, with cold, callous rejection. That camp in 1983 was my last.

This cruel version of the Christian message allows flawed men to flourish. It provides a perfect environment for a charming, charismatic, monstrous man, one who makes you feel special, to hide in plain sight. I am intrigued by the knowledge that there are people, with whom I grew up and knew well in my adolescence, who continue to follow these teachings. There are others who do not just follow the teachings but have made them the source of their livelihood. And it is not just within the Evangelical world that such cruelty lurks. I think of Bishop Peter Ball, who attended services in the chapel at my school, preaching on Sundays and officiating at confirmation. A man who was held up to us as an example of kindness, humility and obedience. There but for the grace of God, go I.

by Janet Fife

Have you ever been told by a Christian leader that all your problems –
depression, mental illness, addiction – were due to your own sin? Have you
ever told a pastor of your abusive childhood or marriage, only to be told you
need to repent? Have you gone to a vicar for counselling, only to have a
Bible passage read to you, and informed that the solution is for you to put
those verses into practice in your own life? If so, chances are your leader has
been influenced by Jay E. Adams and what he termed nouthetic counselling
(from the Greek noutheteo, to admonish).

Adams (30 January, 1929 – 14 November 2020) was an American Reformed
theologian and pastor. His PhD was in effective communication and
preaching and he taught homiletics (the study of preaching) part-time at the
reputable conservative Westminster Theological Seminary. Eventually,
however, he was asked to teach pastoral counselling – although he seems to
have had little or no background in psychology or psychiatry. Adams was a
biblical theologian, so he developed his own method of counselling based on
expounding the Bible: if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a
nail. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, ‘Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and
like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?’ (Jer .23:29). When the Bible is
used as a hammer on the vulnerable, the results can be further damage.
Adams was convinced that secular psychology and psychiatry undermined
Christianity. In 1970 Adams’ book Competent to Counsel was published, in
which he propounded a counselling method based on confrontation and
rebuke employing Bible passages. The book became enduringly popular and
has been used in theological training; generations of clergy and church
leaders have based their pastoral practice on it. Dozens of other books
followed, but Competent to Counsel is the one for which Adams is best
known. It might be thought that a book published in 1970 would be no
longer relevant, but Adams also founded the National Association of
Nouthetic Counselors (now the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors),
which still trains pastors in Adams’ techniques. It is a global operation,
based on the convictions that ‘God’s Word is sufficient, and that all believers
can be equipped to counsel one another’ (https://biblicalcounseling.com/).
There are a further three organisations based on the same theories and
practice. They offer certification in biblical counselling, but these counsellors
need not have any clinical training or awareness at all. They are not licensed
or certified to offer any kind of psychotherapy, and are not qualified to
diagnose or treat mental illness or trauma.

Adams questioned the very concept of mental illness; alcoholism,
depression, neurosis, psychosis, and homosexuality were all classed as sin.
The people he met in psychiatric hospitals ‘were there because of their
unforgiven and unaltered sinful behavior’. For him the purpose of counselling
was not to help the counsellee attain self-realisation, but to change their
personality. This was achieved by confronting the person with their sin: ‘the
more directive I became…the more people were helped. Spelling out and
getting commitments to biblical patterns of behavior after an
acknowledgement of and repentance for sin seemed to bring relief and
results.’

Larry Crabb, another proponent of ‘biblical counselling’, wrote in the
foreword to a book for sexual abuse survivors that a biblical approach to
counselling
‘must insist that our sinfulness, not how we’ve been sinned against,
is our biggest problem; that forgiveness, not wholeness, is our
greatest need; that repentance, not insight, is the dynamic in all real
change.’

As a sexual abuse survivor I’ve been on the receiving end of this approach
and it definitely did not bring either relief or results. In fact, it increased my
sense of unworthiness and shame and of my distance from God and other
people. Worse, it left me vulnerable to exploitation and abuse from others,
since it was hard to believe I deserved any better.

Rosemary Green, wife of the late Anglican evangelist Michael Green, was a
proponent of what she called ‘prayer counselling’ – nouthetic counselling
combined with ‘inner healing’ and deliverance ministry. In her 1991 book
God’s Catalyst Green describes her technique:
‘It is sometimes good to ask [the client] whether he knows any part
of Scripture he thinks is relevant. More often you will choose it, find
it while he is still talking, and pass the Bible to him…Then ask him
to read it aloud…One day [a client] read aloud some verses I
suggested from Hebrews chapter 12, then promptly slammed the
Bible shut. I asked her to open it again. She refused. I told her that
if she was not willing to see what God might be wanting to say to
her, there was nothing I could do to help her. I then left the room,
telling her she could find me in the kitchen if she wanted.’
The Greens spent years teaching this technique to ordinands and clergy in
the UK and Canada.

What exactly is wrong with this counselling approach?
Firstly, it assumes that the same answer will solve all human problems:
repent of your sin. This is like an A&E doctor treating every patient, no matter
what their injury or illness, by telling them their diet is to blame and ordering
them to change it, without offering further treatment. Or a police detective
telling every crime victim their driving is at fault. Most of us could improve
our diet and most have committed a traffic violation at some time, but that is
not necessarily at the root of our present dilemma. Many charismatic
practitioners, such as Green, will also assume that if the client doesn’t
respond ‘well’, in the counsellor’s terms, they must need deliverance
ministry. This shows a remarkable ignorance of psychological processes,
and is potentially dangerous in the case of people who are traumatised or
mentally unstable.

Second, biblical counselling is wrong because it fails pay attention to the
person who is seeking help. A pastor who has made up his/her mind at the
outset that the root problem must be sin isn’t listening. A counsellor who
riffles through the Bible while their client is still speaking isn’t listening.
Worse, they are making it very clear they aren’t listening. And it is the
listening itself which is healing. When we engage in deep listening to another
person we are making space for them – and that space is where God works
and they can begin to become whole. It is not for nothing that the name
Jesus can be translated ‘the one who makes space for’. Abuse of all kinds
overrides our personal boundaries and stunts the growth of our psyche.
Growth can only be resumed when those boundaries are restored and
maintained, and the person is free to explore who they really are when they
are not being limited or dictated to. A counsellor who imposes their own
choice of scripture on the counsellee, together with its interpretation and
application, is merely compounding the harm done by previous abuses.
Third, biblical counselling removes agency from the client and locates all the
power with the counsellor. I suspect this is a large part of the appeal for
many practitioners; it makes the pastor feel powerful and avoids the
vulnerability of opening up to someone else’s pain and sitting with them in
the darkness. It’s much easier to riffle through your Bible looking for a
favourite passage of your own, than to set your own agenda aside and really
hear someone else’s dilemma or anguish. Listening may raise questions that
challenge the counsellor’s own faith, and it will certainly entail sharing the
burden of the one who has come to us. But sharing each other’s burdens is
exactly what we are called to do: and in doing it we are not only lightening
the burden for them; we are opening ourselves to having our spiritual
horizons widened.

Those who have had their agency curtailed by upbringing, circumstances,
social frameworks, or the actions of others need to have that agency
restored if they are to experience full liberation in Christ. It is the counsellor’s
task to respect the client’s autonomy and dignity and give them real choices,
not to force on them a point of view, a presupposition of sin, or a given Bible
interpretation.

Fourth, ‘biblical’ counselling is not really biblical at all. It is certainly not the
pattern I see in Jesus’ dealings with those who came to him for help or
healing. The most obvious feature of those encounters is that Jesus did not
have one technique which he applied to everyone: each person was an
individual who received individual treatment. Notably, he seldom spoke to
those in need about their sin – he saved that for the wealthy, the powerful,
and those who were confident of their own righteousness. When the
disciples asked about a blind man, ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind?,’ Jesus replied, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned;
he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him’ (Jn 9:2-3).
Jesus often healed people without mentioning sin or repentance at all;
sometimes he simply told people their sins were forgiven without either he or
they needing to voice what those sins were. Sometimes he asked people
what they wanted of him, or whether they wanted to be healed. Sometimes
he challenged people in order to bring out their faith. But he did not say, ‘You
must admit to your sins before I will heal you.’ He explicitly refused to
condemn the woman caught in adultery, though the gospels do not record
any expression of penitence on her part. I doubt if he would have been so
popular down at the tavern with tax collectors and sinners, if he had insisted
on pressing all those outcasts to admit to their sins.

When Jesus spoke of his purpose on earth he didn’t speak solely in terms of
forgiveness of sin. His mission statement in Lk 4:16-21 does not refer to sin
at all:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
Significantly, the Hebrew and Greek words translated ‘salvation’ denote
safety, deliverance from danger, and freedom from restriction. Sin is only one
of the things that restrict us. Fear, shame, despair, self-loathing, poor
decision-making, and the actions of others hamper us; these and
psychological limitations such as the inability to set boundaries or trust one’s
own perceptions are properly a part of the work of salvation. They are
therefore the proper work of all pastors – including those not ordained. It’s no
accident that Christian movements of spiritual renewal have so often resulted
in action to right wrongs and further the well-being of others. From ancient
Rome to early medieval Britain, Christians bought slaves in order to set them
free. In the 18th and 19th centuries Christians in Britain and the USA
campaigned against the slave trade; in the 20th and 21st centuries
Christians have worked for racial integration and ecumenical harmony.
Victorian Christians worked for better conditions in factories, the end of child
labour, and prison reform. The list is endless: as sadly is also the list of those
claiming to follow Christ who have worked against all these endeavours to
set people free.

Many of these people mean well, but they have oversimplified the gospel
message. They believe that the main – or even the only – thing that
Christianity has to offer is the forgiveness of sins, and (often) that forgiveness
can only be obtained after a suitable period in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus
did preach the need for repentance (in Greek metanoia). But metanoia means
a change of direction, not necessarily a guilt trip. For the vulnerable and
downtrodden; for those who believe they are unloveable, worthless, or bad,
metanoia involves an acknowledgment that they are made in the image of
God, and there is much in them that is good. For those who are comfortable,
metanoia means bettering the conditions of those in need, and sitting with
the pain of those in darkness. Repentance means curbing our urge to offer
quick and easy solutions, saying there is peace where there is no peace.

For some reason, the fictional character of Violet Elizabeth Bott has inserted herself into my mind when I was considering the state of power dynamics within some parishes in Britain.  For those who have not been reared on the antics of the William books by Richmal Crompton, from the 40s and 50s, Violet was a subsidiary character who was kept firmly on the outside of the boy-only group of William Brown and his friends.  Although Violet was usually excluded from the male activities of the boy gang, she did possess one weapon which allowed her a small part in some of the escapades.  She had a mantra which she was able to use every time she sought inclusion into the male world.  She threatened the boys with the memorable words ‘I will scream and scream till I am sick. I can.’  The threat of being forced to listen to her screams produced a small amount of compromise on the part of the boys, but I cannot remember how this worked in practice as I no longer have any of these books.  No doubt an adult reading Violet’s words might well comment that this was the action of a woman without power trying to take power for herself when being denied any part in the world dominated by the boys. 

From thinking about Violet, I went on to recognise that there is another example of powerlessness using screaming in order to get noticed.  The classic supermarket tantrum is an experience that most parents have had to negotiate when their child is around 3 years of age and is wheeled round the local Sainsburys.  Watching his or her mother removing highly coloured packets and place them in a trolley is an action that looks rather fun, especially when the child sees that there are also aisles full of sweets and biscuits.    The classic supermarket tantrum begins when the child is wheeled quickly past the biscuit aisle without stopping and the small person makes their protest.  The battle that begins at this point is not only between the child and his/her mother, but it also rages inside the mother’s head.  Should she turn back and include the desired item, thus pacifying the child?  Alternatively, should she explain to the child how there are limits to the objects taken that form part of the weekly shop?

Supermarket tantrums and Violet’s attempted manipulations are both examples of attempts to exercise control by the use of emotion.  Sometimes the emotion is gentle or understated, like a smile aimed at persuading someone to agree with us in a meeting.  On other occasions the emotion demonstrated is disturbing or excessive, as in an outburst of anger or tears.   But, in each case, there is a fundamental common factor.   The expression of emotion is intended to make another person act in a particular way.  A smile may be a means of persuading us that being part of a majority view is much more comfortable than being on the outside.  Taking the opposite point of view to a leader who is skilled at emotional manipulation is, by contrast, highly awkward and uncomfortable.  Making a principled stand against a proposal in a meeting is far more difficult to follow through when we are expecting that the proposer will display a strong emotional reaction.  The sheer power of that reaction can be deeply traumatising as well as creating an atmosphere of real fear. Violet’s screams or the toddler’s meltdown in the supermarket are small fry compared with a key committee member not getting his/her own way.  Sometimes merely the threat of an emotional outburst is able to bring a disagreeing party to heel.  Even those not party to the divided decision can feel deeply shocked and wounded by the outburst.

There is nothing unusual in seeing strong emotions erupt in organisational life.  In most cases tempers and passions subside and peace is found through some sort of compromise.  The problem arises when an individual, possibly a leader or someone else in some sort of authority, becomes adept at the skills needed to manipulate and control a meeting or an entire organisation through the skilful use of what we are describing as ‘tantrum power’.  On the surface everything seems smooth but there is in the dynamic of the meeting a subtle threat that if things do not go in a certain way, there will be an emotional outburst of some kind.  Everyone wants to avoid a distressing ‘scene’ which is why tantrum power is so effective in an organisation.  It may be the Vicar who tells his PCC that no one is allowed to follow any path but the one he/she suggests.  To challenge his/her power will unleash anger on a massive scale.  Power, in other words, is being exercised by emotional blackmail and the threat of violent, even terrifying, volcanic eruptions.  If the congregation gets used to submitting to the threat of violent or frightening outbursts on the part of the one in charge, there will always be a miasma of genuine fear in that congregation.  This will stifle growth and real flourishing.  When the dynamic of surrender to the one who exercises tantrum power becomes stabilised, and an authoritarian peace is allowed to prevail in that congregation, things may appear to be peaceful and calm.  It may be difficult for an archdeacon or a bishop to get the measure of the true dynamics of that particular church as free exchange of opinion and the possibility of new ideas being explored have ceased to take place.  Everyone has got used to the faux stability of a church that follows a volatile narcissist in charge who cannot tolerate anyone else having ideas or opinions.

Over the years I have become privy to unfortunate dynamics in a number of parishes and congregations.  Many of them are victims of what I have described as tantrum power, the threat of unleashing fear-inducing outbursts by someone in the church.  It is of course not only vicars who exercise such power.  Prominent laypeople can hold entire congregations under their control by the same implied threat of violent outbursts of destructive anger.  Organists can be the centre of tantrum power, as can a churchwarden or Reader.  In a recent case of an unhappy congregation who were subject to the authoritarian whims of a Vicar and churchwarden, the fear miasma spread beyond the church itself.  Attempts by the local archdeacon to get the measure of the congregational unhappiness were stalled by the ability of the church leaders to intimidate these visiting senior clergy, by making it clear that those officially holding oversight had no power to change the dynamic of their church.  The semi-autonomous role of a Vicar has, in the last resort, a great deal of power to intimidate archdeacons and even bishops who try to intervene in parish disputes.  Many simply give up the struggle.  Tantrum power seems to win the day, and congregations are left to their long-lasting disruption and unhappiness.  The lay people in this case had researched the possibility of bringing in the police to intervene but having a fierce temper and the ability to spread slander is not against the law of the country.

Tantrum power, or emotional manipulation within a church congregation is a real cause of unhappiness in many places.  It also exists within families, committees and organisations of every kind.  Quite often it exists as a threat rather than as an actuality.  It is however something that needs to be identified and named so that it can be dealt with.  My experience of the Church of England suggests that far too many individuals live in a situation of genuine fear of emotional outbursts from some of the individuals they work with.  Unlike the business world where relationships are defined and there is normally a clear code of behaviour being enforced by HR officials, the Church has less ability to ensure that members behave in a consistently correct manner.  Without an enforceable code of conduct which can be policed, there are many situations in church life where things can go badly wrong.  At present, access to a just hearing when something goes badly awry, is a hit and miss affair and depends almost entirely on the diocese you happen to find yourself in.  Some dioceses have excellent fearless archdeacons and employ professional safeguarding personnel who take a pride in delivering a first-class service.  Other dioceses have safeguarding officials who need to be important and enjoy the trappings of authority and power.  Those who cross their path may be further humiliated and pushed down, finding their dignity battered and almost destroyed.

Safeguarding in the Church should be about making sure that power at every level is used responsibly and aimed at creating healthy flourishing spiritual institutions.  Protecting the weak and the vulnerable is only one part of the work.  A further task is to understand and critique the power structures of the church.  The power I have been discussing in this blog is different from most of the other forms which are built into the structure of the institution.  I have invited my reader to be alert to invisible power that exists in emotional manipulation, what I call tantrum power.  Tantrum power has the potential for harm in the Church as much as many other forms.  Its very invisibility makes it perhaps the most dangerous.