Many readers of this blog will be observers of an episode in Kentucky which has been dubbed the Asbury Revival.  Asbury is the home of a small Christian university, and its chapel is the site of a continuous act of worship which has been going on for a fortnight.  People have been travelling from all over the States, and beyond, to attend this service where the claim is that God is working a revival which will spread soon to other places all over the world.  In some ways it resembles the Toronto Blessing.  There are significant differences, the main one being that Asbury has not thrown up yet any named leaders.  Toronto Airport Chapel where the earlier ‘revival’ took place in 1994, was ably led by professional clergy who coordinated the events for several months.

Revivals are complicated things to assess, and part of me was hoping that this Asbury event would quickly fizzle into obscurity before I had to say anything or even think about it.  Then one of the Surviving Church readers sent me an email asking me directly what I thought might be going on.  I answered him fairly quickly but, in the process of doing so, I found my mind generating ideas and thoughts which I find worth sharing with my wider readership.

As long-term readers of this blog will know, I have some personal history of exposure to charismatic events and teaching.  Back in the early 1980s I would say that I identified with aspects of charismatic spirituality.  This fed into several years of an active healing ministry with my wife.  Over a period, I was led to write two books on the topic of healing and address meetings around the country.  Something changed for me in the 1990s when many Christians who openly identified with charismatic styles of theology seemed to insist, increasingly, on a hard-edged style of theology.  I could not follow or identify with this.  I have, from my undergraduate days, found what I describe as the Bible proof text method of doing theology a dishonest and frankly incomprehensible way of discovering the mystery of God.  The opening up that the charismatic styles of prayer had taught me, and which allowed me to share deeper insights, could not be sustained in the presence of Christians whose main concern was to establish whether I was ‘sound’.  By the standards of a card-carrying conservative Christian, I did not pass this test of soundness.

Returning to the phenomenon of Ashbury and the revival that is believed to be taking place, I begin with a number of observations.  The first thing to note is that, in the chapel where the revival is supposed to be happening, there is a dominating preponderance of young people. Of course we would expect this in a university chapel but the bulk of the visitors, of which there are many, are also young. In common with the flag-ship revival churches up and down Britain, we find an apparent resonance between such churches and the emotional and spiritual needs of the young.  The second factual observation I make is the style of music.   I am not sure how to describe the dominating style of music that inevitably appears at a revival event.   Much of what I have listened to on YouTube seems to belong to a slow repetitive style, where there is a strong preference for a minor key.  The distinct reflective mode of this music style helps to further a distinctive mood which seems to enthral the audience.  The appeal does not seem to wane, even over long periods of time.  In my continuing attempt to be as objective as possible, I note that this style of music, culturally speaking, does not fit in with the taste of many older people – the over 35 cohort.  Whatever the spiritual significance of Asbury may prove to be, there is clearly also a strong cultural dimension at work.  If this is a real revival, the cynic might suggest that the Holy Spirit is only interested in working among middle-class Americans of student age.

I have on this blog, in the past, offered my observations on the way that conservative/revivalist Christianity seems normally to be far more accessible to the student-age population than to older Christians.  No doubt someone has done some research on why this should be from the cultural/psychological perspective.  I do not know where such research may be written up, so my remarks here have to be rooted in what I have observed over a lifetime of what goes on in churches of all kinds.  My summary claim, based on my observations of Christian life, is that there is something spiritually genuine at the heart of some so-called revivals, including this one.  Nevertheless, it is not the universal panacea for a declining Church in our culture.  It is unrealistic, indeed impertinent, to expect all Christians across the world to recognise in events like Asbury a full embrace of Christian truth as they have known it. The Christian phenomenon, as it manifests itself across the world, is too varied and too diverse to be wrapped up in one single cultural manifestation.  We would be guilty of cultural and spiritual imperialism to claim such a thing.

I have used the word ‘genuine’ to describe what is going on at Asbury University.  I want to explain how, from my point of view, it contains something to teach all of us.  I have expressed a certain number of qualifying caveats to my welcome of the idea of an Asbury revival, but I want now to consider the potential positives.  I begin with some words of Jesus when he said something to the effect of ‘unless you become as little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven’.  I have, with countless other preachers, struggled with the meaning of these words.  There is probably no single meaning, but Jesus may be recognising something about the way children apprehend reality much more directly than those of mature age.  Christians of student age, the ones now experiencing revival in Kentucky, seem closer to this capacity to experience a primal spiritual awareness than the older among us. To use the analogy of the onion, older people have far more layers to strip away than the young.  I am wondering whether the ability of ‘gospel music’ to promote stillness and spiritual awareness among some of the young is something we need to understand far better.  Might it not be that this style of music is allowing many young people to regress to the ‘childlike’, even naïve, awareness of God by children that Jesus commended?   This is something that the older among us find increasingly difficult to do.

In my days of studying the phenomenon of Christian healing in the 80s and 90s, I was puzzled by the way that, while ‘miracles’ happened from time to time, there was no way that, from the outside, one could predict who was going to receive healing and who not.  What I observed was that prayer for healing was a worthwhile activity which was sometimes answered by transforming events.  Without going into detail, there was one ingredient that could always be found in every healing episode.  Christians call this ingredient faith.  I use this word rather tentatively as it has gathered to itself a number of connotations which I believe are unhelpful.  I, for one, want to link it back to the childlike primal reaching out to the other, in an attitude of hope and expectation.  This is what Jesus seems to have commended.  It is the sentiment that one hopes to be at the heart of the Asbury revival.  Those who experience this link, this momentary reconnection with God, will find something that lasts, maybe even for a lifetime. 

Will the revival last?  My answer is affected by what I see of the history of revivals.  The power of revival events seems to be hard to maintain.   The energy in them seems to dissipate.  Worse still, the spontaneity of revival is so often destroyed because the unholy juggernauts of institutions appear.  These are the ones that try to attach every new spiritual movement to a money-making machine.  Also, the new experience of ‘faith’ discovered by many individuals, is forcibly diverted into another sort of faith.  This is the one that requires those affected to assent to doctrinal formulae which may have little connection to what they have experienced. This unholy process is vividly described in the book by Reuben Alves, Protestantism and Repression. Asbury may well leave something behind, even if not what Christian leaders want to see – full churches and financial strength for the church institutions.  There may be clusters of new spiritual power inside the hearts of men and women around the world.  This comes as the result of having been for a short time in a new active communication with the transcendent power we call God.

  My hopes for Asbury are tempered with a realistic understanding of the human capacity to destroy spiritual energy because of power games, control and money.  Many of my readers will have shared my dismay at the way institutions so often corrupt those who are part of them.  If there is something alive and spiritually genuine about what is being experienced at this small Christian university in Kentucky, we pray that it may survive these dangers of being controlled by people who are concerned only for their own purposes.  We will see over a period of time whether the parts of it that seem to be genuine, are indeed of God.  If they are, we trust that they will be allowed to remain of God.

I think it was Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, who spoke about the mean between extremes.  What he was talking about was the fact that there are many experiences or descriptions which attach to people or things where one of two extremes can dominate. The place somewhere in the middle is probably the best place to be. A sherry can be a very sweet variety or one that that is very dry.  Most people would opt for something in between. Gardeners know that growing vegetables to the largest size possible does not necessarily produce a crop which is particularly palatable.  There is an optimum medium size where flavour is at its best.  The same principle applies when we want to help people be at the most effective when seeking to influence others.  Loud aggressive shouting at one end and passive feeble whining at the other do not deliver the required results.  Most people would opt for a degree of firmness which is neither abject surrender nor overwhelming coercion and aggression.  Somehow, we attempt to arrive at a middle point that allows us to resolve differences in a drama-free way.   As a further example of this moderation principle, we can imagine the reasoning of those who drink alcohol.  Most of them would probably agree that, just because they enjoy drinking, this is not a reason for becoming drunk every time alcohol is freely available. Moderating our behaviour and our beliefs from potentially extreme positions is an expedient path to take in a world where people try to live together amicably.  The ‘mean’, the moderate position, is likely to be a dominant one in most walks of life.  Nevertheless, we still sometimes meet up with the individual who takes a very hard line in a belief system or a behaviour preference.  Most of the time, in practice, we try to avoid anything that others might describe as an extreme.  The middle way is what is acceptable in the majority of situations.

Being a parent has taught many of us the importance of teaching what moderate behaviour looks like.  For example, we try to teach children the values of sharing, waiting for their turn and generally being considerate to others.  We are also aware of the importance of learning to stick up for oneself in a situation where there is bullying behaviour.   We do not want our children to be manipulated or taken advantage of.  One word that is banded about in this connection is the word self-esteem.  It is a word that implies that the child (or adult) has found the middle way between being crushed by the control of others and the use of excessive verbal or physical force to get one’s own way.  The cultivation of self-esteem is something that continues right the way through life.  What is it exactly?  Most people would agree that to have self-esteem is to be able to apply one’s abilities and gifts in the task of living without crushing others or being dominated by them.  We neither want to be the person who gives way excessively or be seen as the bully who insists that everyone sees the world in one particular way and uses power to achieve this end.

Esteem is one of those somewhat slippery words that is quite hard to define.  It often refers to the respect we feel for a person of integrity and giftedness.  Esteem is something that people give to one another right across the gamut of human relationships.  To have self-esteem is generally a way of describing our internal sense of finding our place within a community and enjoying a realistic sense of belonging.  The one without any self-esteem is the isolated individual, or the pariah who feels adrift within a community.  He/she has no networks of support to help him/her hold on to a secure sense of identity.  

If self-esteem belongs to the one occupying a realistic place on the spectrum of having a balanced place of affirmation within a community, we can sketch out what happens when someone privileged demands that others honour them at every opportunity.  This may be the way that someone who is rich, powerful or entitled believes others should treat them.  They may introduce their approach to others with the words ‘don’t you know who I am?’ In some cases, we are describing someone with strong narcissistic tendencies.  If the individual concerned is the kind that also always insists on the use of titles or some other method of signifying superior status, we may suspect that there may be a problem of esteem deprivation from the past, particularly in childhood.  In short, the adult who lacks self-esteem may be very similar to someone who is seeking to be affirmed and their status acknowledged at every opportunity.  Both are reaching out for something that may not have been provided when they were growing up.

When we enter the world of suspected narcissistic pathology, we find that it is accompanied by what can only be described as addictive elements.  The bullying boss or the controlling fellow worker not only behaves badly towards others in the firm, but we also sense a desperate need in him/her to behave like this.  The ability to make people frightened of you or walk on eggshells around you, seems to be satisfying some pathological need.  Coercion and control are often ways that people operate almost by habit.  This may be a way of self-medicating for a lack of adequate self-esteem which was denied to them in their early years.  Many bullies are unhappy because they never had a place in their neighbourhood or family where they were valued just for being what they are.  Esteem, real esteem, had perhaps been denied them when young, so that they have had to develop new ways of compelling, through acts of aggression, some faux esteem from others.  If they have access to any institutional power, they may use this as a way to keep themselves feeling important.  Because of this, those who are below them in the hierarchy may have to suffer from this bullying/narcissistic behaviour.

It goes without saying that this kind of bullying coercion is not infrequently found in the church.  One might say that because the church operates on a strict hierarchical basis, it will attract candidates for office precisely because self-esteem needs can easily be met by those who become part of this hierarchy.  One of the things that I have found difficult to deal with in my time as a clergyman is the way that the profession of the clergy seems to create, for a significant minority, a mindset that offers its members the same ‘rewards’ as those sought by narcissists.  Among them are status, messianism and grandiosity.  We have all met clergy who seem to bathe in the esteem that comes from having a deferential group around them. This constant need for gratification through their status and importance is also sustained by an unhealthy enjoyment of titles and special clothes.  I have written in the past about this narcissism that is indulged in by some clergy.  Regardless of exactly how the position is used for this kind of gratification, the esteem that clergy enjoy through their status has seldom been a healthy impulse in creating a community that follows the example of Jesus.

The possession of adequate levels of self-esteem is far from being an unworthy aspiration.  We want every human being to know the security that comes from having a realistic knowledge of themselves and a place within a secure community or family.  When individuals stray away from this place of equilibrium in their self-esteem, we find that they may encounter desperation and unhappiness.  Those individuals who are ambitious, wanting to ‘get ahead’ in the levels of esteem they believe they are entitled to, may be working through an esteem deficit and childhood memories of humiliation and shame.  The miasma of power games and competition which we find, even in the church, can sometimes be interpreted as the antics of those who are using church structures in their needy, even addictive, attempt to rise above their own personal past traumas. 

In summary, we find that there are three sources for creating a true lasting self-esteem which we all need for contented living.  We need our own self-esteem to be backed up by our self-knowledge as we described in the previous paragraph.   This is supplemented and affirmed by the acceptance that we receive from others.  They give us esteem insofar as they recognise the true value of what we are now and have been.   Most people are not impressed by anything less than true character showing integrity and truth.   Success in worldly terms is not necessarily a sign that we deserve esteem from our fellows. We have witnessed over the last week a great deal of behaviour which lacks this honesty and integrity.  Senior members of the Church speak in a way that shows that loyalties belong more to a Christian institution than to God in whose name it exists. When this happens, the individual concerned deserves to lose our respect and our esteem.   The final source of our self-esteem is from God himself.  I have not the time here to describe the ways that Christian teaching is sometimes distorted to imply that God does not accept us unconditionally.  If a teaching of human depravity is internalised too far, it can itself cause profound damage to our legitimate attempts to find Christian self-esteem.  That discussion is for another time.  It is sufficient to say that I do not believe that we are required to engage with self-loathing as implied by some classic preaching techniques. The command to love God is balanced by the realisation and recognition that he loves us.  Being loved as we are is a key part of Christian teaching.  It is the foundation of genuine, lasting and true self-esteem.  The power games that we see played out in church and elsewhere by individuals who are addicted to forms of shallow glory and esteem, come to be seen as empty and vain.  When Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in their glory, Jesus was not impressed.  One is tempted to wonder whether our Church, by offering to those in influence superficial esteem alongside power and glory, has led these leaders along a path quite different from the one of humility that Jesus followed.

by K-Anonymous

Editor’s Comment.  On one level this blog contribution is a summary of the Kenneth story to date, but on another level it is asking questions about the slip-shod way that justice in the CofE is administered.  There are three principles of natural justice that are being manifestly denied in this case.   The first is indicated in the title.  There is an assumption of guilt because an accusation has been made.  The second principle of common justice that does not seem to occur to the members of the core group entrusted with this case, is the complete lack of interest in gathering all the factual evidence available.  According to K-Anonymous, the author of the blog, there is vital evidence contained in the choir registers that would indicate when the offences could have taken place.  The third principle that is being denied Kenneth is any possible appeal against the assumptions of the core group.  No appeal system seems to exist against allegations of this kind.  The Kenneth story is important in its own right but it is of wider interest because it reveals a justice system that seems not fit for purpose.  We have currently the ongoing crisis with the Independent Safeguarding Board. This body is unable to function because unseen forces in the Church simply try to airbrush out its very existence as it seeks to exercise its independence.  These matters are serious and undermine the integrity of the justice system within the Church of England at the highest level.

The impediments to resolving the ‘Kenneth’ case

The shame and disgrace of this case is that it has taken place in one of our prestigious Cathedrals and two of the perpetrators are a Dean and a senior Canon Pastor.

This case might have been resolved in September 2020 instead of which it has dragged on for a further two and a half years and still ongoing. The reason for this is that  there is indisputable evidence of conflict of interest. This has led to the deliberate withholding of substantial evidence by the Core Group and the Canon Pastor in particular which might have exonerated Kenneth.

The Canon Pastor openly supported the boy complainant and his mother (who was a significant part of the allegation). In September 2020 a formal complaint was made about this to the Dean but was ignored.

Criticism of Cathedral support for complainant came from an Independent Reviewer  September 2021 who said, ‘full consideration’ was not given to, ‘the case with the appointment of CSO [Cathedral Safeguarding Officer, Canon Pastor] continuing as the support officer for the victim and his mother’.

Lord Carlile spoke about the illegality of Core members having a conflict of interest (Micah 6:8 Initiative, 2020) and so did Dr Godfred Boahen, (‘Declaration of Interest’, 2021). Both of these have featured in our complaints but ignored, not even being acknowledged. The document From Dr Godfred Boahen was approved by the National Safeguarding Steering Group and in this group was the Diocesan Secretary who was also a Core Group member.

The Choral Registers

The case in point turns on the choir attendance registers which are not rotas, as the Core Group tries to maintain, but legal documents which are kept in the Cathedral library and should be available for scrutiny by any official body.  These are the records which determine the pay for each singer.

The boy complainant could not give any specific dates of incidents. Although a specific date of December 1st 2019 was given to LADO, Kenneth could prove beyond doubt he was not in the city that day.

The boy however did give three different spans of time which changed according to the person he was speaking to: the police, LADO or the Cathedral Safeguarding Officers. Kenneth realised in the widest time frame the boy gave that for many of the weeks he himself was abroad. He researched those weeks when he was back in the country and found that in those weeks the boy choristers had sung only three times.  He made a chart of those dates along with the chaperones on duty on each of those occasions. This was never followed through and the chaperones were never interviewed.

In September 2020 Kenneth asked the Canon Pastor, as the person responsible for the registers, if he could have the information as to whether or not he and the boy were together in the vestry at the same time on those three dates. If there was even only one date when they were not together it would throw doubt on the boy’s entire story because his only consistency of story has been, ‘three separate incidents’. If on one date they were not together then it begs the question of ,’when did the third incident take place?’ When could it possibly have taken place?

The Canon Pastor adamantly refused to give this information saying, “I’m afraid, though, that your request to in effect gather evidence is not something that sits comfortably within my pastoral role’. (September 29 2020).  At the time she was openly  pastorally supporting the boy and his mother which is recorded in a Core Group meeting found in a Subject Access Request document from Kenneth’s data base, held by the Diocese.  A formal complaint was made to the Dean about this conflict of interest but was ignored. The Canon Pastor continued in her refusal to give the information from the registers throughout  seven  complaints in fourteen months.

After not commenting on and ignoring all requests for the information in the registers, eighteen months later, in a meeting with Kenneth, the Canon Pastor said she felt it would still conflict with her role as Canon Pastor.(January 12th 2022)

 Latterly though, the Dean has taken part. At a risk assessment meeting on December 15th 2021, the Dean said, for the first time, that it was the Core Group who had refused access to the registers.  This had never been said before by him even though we had sent him our first formal complaint about her conflict of interest in 2020.

Subsequently he had been included in our complaints about the choral registers always naming the Canon Pastor; he never acknowledged these complaints. He involved himself again because on February 5th 2023, he told Kenneth that as the boy complainant could not give precise dates the charts were invalid. He had completely misunderstood the way in which the dates had been determined.

It would seem that the allegation could have been built on a tissue of lies but only looking in the registers would ascertain that. The Canon Pastor is refusing to do this because of her close relationship with the boy and his mother (facebook friends; I have the photo shots of some of these).

After  27 months has she really not been tempted to look in the registers? If the boy and Kenneth had been in the vestry together on those three dates surely this information could have been used to incriminate Kenneth?  They have tried other untruthful means to do this. If they were not together on any or all of those days the Canon Pastor must be held responsible for having allowed this case to drag on for almost three years without an investigation and based on deliberate and malicious fabrications.

In any case as the Canon Pastor had a conflict of interest in the case, this refusal was illegal because she had a vested interest in not revealing the information possibly of protecting the boy. Or now, after so long, herself?

Kenneth’s progress

in the meantime what has become of Kenneth? These last three years as you would expect have taken their toll. Perhaps if the information from the choral registers could have been given in September 2020 he might have been spared these years of suffering. If any of you have any questions you wish to ask me I can reply to them through the blog. Better still, if anyone knows anyway we can override the decision made by the Canon Pastor and gain access to the information, even at this late stage it would do Kenneth the world of good.

From  November 2022 to January 2023 he went to visit his brother who lives in the Far East. He travelled there in a wheelchair, and was looked after by airport staff.  I was shocked on his return to learn from his brother how he had noticed a serious deterioration in Kenneth’s health. So much worse than we had seen him in June. Kenneth does have chronic health issues of diabetes and what has been diagnosed as an ‘essential tremor’. The tremor especially was much worse.

His brother wrote to me:

The past 2 months spent with Kenneth have given me much concern for his health physical and mental. The events of the last few years have clearly taken their toll.

During a period of  illness from a stomach upset he had no recollection of what medication he had taken or should be taking and he was totally disorientated & just lay in bed in a darkened room. He was very unstable on his feet suffering a quite serious fall on his first night. We, my wife and son, were alarmed at how bad his tremors have become, at time making eating  & most other activities impossible.

I confess much  of what I saw during Kenneth’s stay left me concerned for his wellbeing. Other friends who remembered Kenneth from previous visits expressed  ‘surprise ‘ at his current state.

February 2023

You will be pleased to learn that Kenneth is now somewhat improved; his friends have rallied round him and he even goes swimming regularly.

Whilst the debates over sexuality gathered most of the headlines during last week’s General Synod, useful information has nevertheless been  forthcoming for those of us concerned about Safeguarding; “Let those who have ears to hear, hear” is a good text for the attentive, so here are my principle takeaways.

• The Archbishops and Church House did not dare to have an open debate about why the project known as the “ Independent Safeguarding Board” is in such deep trouble. 

• Bishop Pete Broadbent was absolutely right when he warned that 

“The platform tactic (from those leading debates and carrying forward the business of Synod) has been to attempt to keep questions about the Church’s safeguarding practice, past and present, off the floor of Synod. Attempts to inquisite the shortcomings of the National Safeguarding Team, the past failures of Bishops and the various ‘lessons learned reviews’ (from which we never seem to learn very much) have been seen off and resisted, leaving victims, survivors and those campaigning on their behalf with the sense that justice will never be done or seen to be done.” 

•   The ISB has itself identified to Archbishops’ Council serious problems concerning its creation and functionality, which include the following direct quotes from its website

• Church inaction in one area  “severely hampers the ISB’s ability to provide oversight and scrutiny …”

• “the Church of England has co-created a delivery vehicle that frustrates the ISB’s ability to assure a critical safeguarding service.

​​• The current position of the ISB in the Church’s infrastructure is     unsustainable” 

• The ISB does not consider that it is sufficiently independent from those it is responsible for scrutinising

• Half the membership of the Audit Committee of the Archbishops’ Council has raised concerns about the creation and functionality of the ISB, yet those concerns have been rebuffed.

• Nobody knows the composition of the delegation which spoke to the Charity Commission on behalf of Archbishops’ Council after governance failures were reported by a wide range of interested parties. 

• The New Director of Safeguarding needs all the support he can get.

The implications of these observations are important and profound; they go to the very heart of good governance of the Church of England and the continuing problems must once again be reported to the Charity Commission. This is not just about safeguarding it is about proper governance.

The ISB was the principal response of the CofE to IICSA and already it has failed in its present incarnation. That statement is not even controversial if you talk to members of Archbishops’ Council, or of the ISB. It needs reformation and everyone- not least the Church victims – knows this to be true. The $64 question is “when and by whom”.

Church House obstructed the attempts to place this in the agenda last week; we simply wanted to note the concerns of the Survivors and the ISB, place the matter on the agenda for July and ask the Audit Committee to look into why things went wrong.

Be very very clear, it was the latter proposition that spooked the Establishment at Church House and Lambeth Palace.

For all its rhetoric about transparency and accountability the CofE leadership resists the application of the Nolan principles for good conduct in public life at a visceral level. It will accept any amount of public embarrassment rather than submit to proper scrutiny into how it manages matters such as Safeguarding. 

The reason is simple; to undertake Safeguarding to the well established standards of the secular world,  you have to confront the unaccountable discretionary powers of the 42 Bishops each of whom acts with the autonomy of a medieval Prince Bishop. You simply cannot reconcile good Human Rights compliant safeguarding, with a structure still significantly operating within a 12th century mindset.

Synod has just voted through the necessary legislation to make Safeguarding “Advisers” in Dioceses into “Officers” who are independent of their Bishops. But they now report not to an independent oversight body, like perhaps the Independent Safeguarding Board, but instead to the Archbishops’ creation – the National Safeguarding Team. In the 1971 words of The Who, is this a case of “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” ?

When I began challenging Church thinking on Safeguarding in 2015 I made clear that the mantra “ Trust me -I’m a bishop” will not wash in the modern world. I was taken aside by a senior Bishop who patiently explained that I was trying to make them conform to the standards of the secular Safeguarding world, whereas “ We are building a system suitable for the Church of England”.

That turned out well didn’t it? 

During the Monday evening Question and Answer session a low key drama played out, the implications of which will have been missed by many members. You have to know how to “read the game” here.

A member asked if the Audit Committee had been asked to audit the creation of the Independent Safeguarding Board. This in itself should have caused a ripple of excitement. Every year, Synod nods through the routine report of the Audit Committee but it never contains anything headline-grabbing. Not that is, until now.

Now, it is being asked – and is also itself asking – to become involved in one of the major issues for the Church. Perhaps this is not so unusual given the millions of pounds being spent on inquiries and paid out to victims of wrongdoing by the Church as well as the reputational harm the constant scandals are doing to it. Safeguarding is an important matter. If the ISB is in crisis so soon, why is this? What went wrong? Who should we trust to put it right? 

The Audit Committee is a watchdog for Synod and has a supervisory role in anticipating and troubleshooting problems. In a different agenda item, one member of the Audit Committee described auditors as “always being able to find the cloud behind the silver lining”.

The question was answered by Maureen Cole who is not only the Chair of the Audit Committee but sits on the Archbishops’ Council. Curiously, neither the written answers provided nor she personally identified herself as having this dual role. She was put up to answer and repeated the mantra that the ISB is independent and not the Audit Committee business – but wait…. Why was she answering for the Archbishop’s Council if she is the Chair of the watchdog? “ A wo/man cannot serve two masters”. If Hogwarts had taught Harry Potter auditing skills alongside potions, advocating for the people you are supposed to be auditing would be one of the Unforgivable Curses.

She was then challenged by members of her owncommittee and was obliged to acknowledge that half of the committee had asked to look into the ISB creation and that the Archbishops’ Council – on whose behalf she was answering – had rejected such an inquiry.  And so we are back to a common theme in these matters – that of conflict of interest and lack of proper independence.

Further, as indicated from the quotations above, the independence of the ISB from the Archbishops’ Council was called into question by the ISB members themselves. It is a mess and needs looking into but there is reluctance to do so  by “ the powers that be”. It is a different problem to that identified by Bp Pete Broadbent but closely related.

Why does this matter?

Put simply, if the design of the ISB Constitution is flawed we need to understand why; nobody would ask that a replacement Grenfell Tower be designed and built by the same architects and construction company unless there had been a proper – and timely – inquiry into why the design failed in the first place.And the original architects and builders would not be trusted to report on what went wrong. The same applies to the ISB. I do not blame its members for the problems they report. Indeed, I praise them for acknowledging the weaknesses they have identifiedand clearly want to address.

I go further; I ask was the failure to give proper independence a matter of incompetence or symptomatic of a fundamental reluctance in Church House to relinquish power?

In another debate the Revd Andrew Dotchin spoke of the need to be trusting if projects are to take off under their own steam. “ If you give” he advised “ let go”.

That is a well formulated proposition and one I borrow in this context. Did the ISB fail because Lambeth Palace and Church House feared to surrender control over Safeguarding to a fully independent, autonomous body?

I suspect that this is the answer, but a proper investigation by the Audit Committee would help clarify this. Unfortunately the Archbishops’ obstruction means that the matter cannot be debated properly until July, and if Synod wants to review and oversee the new iteration of the ISB, that simply cannot happen until February 2024 . I suspect that by then another “ Bishops’ fix” will have been implemented and proper oversight circumvented again.  This is not just poor governance, it is flawed governance.

I wonder what IICSA, the Charity Commission and possibly even Parliament, who are now taking a close interest in the Church’s affairs because of LLF, will have to say about this.

When after more than two centuries as a leading merchant bank, Barings Bank collapsed in 1995, it was due to the misconduct of a single employee. The subsequent inquiry concluded that Barings was bankrupted due to an absence of effective controls and inadequate auditing. The ISB must not become the next Barings, and all praise to the three members of the Audit Committee who are apparently trying to prevent this. One hopes that the other two, independent members of the Audit Committee will join them to form a united front against the stone wall of the Archbishops Council.

There is however, some good news. The new NST Director Alex Kubeyinje began his first speech to Synod with an apology for the furore that had greeted his references to NST staff being threatened. If the giving of that early sincere apology heralds a change of culture at Church House then it is is to be doubly welcomed. He appears to be a quiet thoughtful man, not given to rhetorical flourishes. That too is to be welcomed. But most welcome of all is the fact that coming from the secular Safeguarding world I knew, I am confident that he knows how to do things properly. 

Whether he will be able to successfully challenge the existing Establishment mindset and culture remains to be seen. He will need all the help he can get including that of Survivors, whose contribution to the debate the Archbishops sadly preferred Synod not to hear about.

by Simon Richiardi

Editorial Comment.

Last week the Church gave to the world the impression that there is only one subject of interest for them to think about and debate – sex and marriage. Surviving Church has taken the view that this topic has received more discussion than it probably deserves. Those who oppose the proposal that same-sex couples should be allowed to receive the Church’s blessing belong to many conservative churches both within and outside the Anglican family of churches. Chief among the arguments opposing these same-sex blessings is the notion that there is a clear ‘biblical’ idea of marriage between one man and one woman. That claim seems doubtful, particularly if we study the Old Testament with its apparent acceptance of concubinage and polygamy. The following contribution from Simon Richiardi helps us to understand the culture of some conservative Christians and the way they view marriage. There is much in the narrative about control. There is a strong adherence to the idea that anything that deviates from a strictly controlled conservative perspective must be resisted. It is also a case study of how carefully selected biblical passages about marriage, to put it mildly, do not always smoothly translate into good practice. Indeed, ‘biblical teaching’ in the hands of an authoritarian pastor may turn out to be the cause of toxic harm. There is much worthy of comment in this piece but I will leave it to my readers to draw from the text what thy feel is salient to the current debates in the wider Church. The account, no doubt, would read very differently if written from the perspective of a woman.

We were the marriage church.  Not the church to get married in; it was much better than that.  We were the church that did marriage.  And although no-one ever said it, the word “properly” floated ghost-like in the air over conversations about marriage.  We did marriage properly. 

           The teaching was this, essentially: Christians shouldn’t date; they should marry.  No dating.  Just seek God’s will and he will give you a verse or two indicating who your intended is and  – boom – instant …. What?  Holiness?  Being better than other churches?

To give some context, I was a studying at a university in the UK about 20 years ago, and in the Christian Union and attached churches I first came to know Reformed Theology and practice.  Phrases like “sound doctrine”, “the flesh” and the debate between Arminianism and Calvinism became part of my mental world. I heard it said that studying liberal theology leaves a scar on the psyche of a Christian; these days I feel the same about Reformed Theology.

           I was suffering from mental health problems but being part of an Evangelical world then did not encourage me to seek help outside of that, if, indeed, it was even granted that mental illness existed at all.  And if it was conceded that something like these existed, then the answer was, of course, found in Christian books and teachings and not the suspicious philosophies and practices of psychology or counselling.  SO, naturally I looked for answers in house as it were.

           I came under the influence of an American Pastor (and he was a pastor with a big ‘P’) who led a small, independent Baptist church.  He was a charismatic figure, and his life story was dramatic, full of drugs and drama before he became a Christian.  As someone who was very unsure of himself,  I was drawn to his loud, dramatic style of preaching, alongside the sense of self-assuredness and certainty in his belief in God.  Eventually, we became friends and I would say that he “led me to the Lord”, as the saying goes.

           But during my second or third year, a particular teaching slowly sneaked its way onto the agenda.  Softened up by exposure to American books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye, the church became obsessed – and I think obsessed is an accurate word – with the notion of how Christians get married.  Dating was portrayed as not quite trusting God for your future spouse.  The real people of faith prayed, and when God told the man to ask for a woman’s hand in marriage then they could do so.  Or they could ask the pastor to approach the woman for them.

           As a very anxious and shy individual, I was anxious about approaching a woman for a date.  Well, this just took all that away!  Just get God to do it for you and forego all the relational learning and maturing one gets from just being with people.  A cliché I often hear in church at the moment is about “the messiness of life”, and it’s a cliché I agree with.  Life is messy, and what we were being taught was an attempt to deny this.

           But marriage was spoken about all the time.  When would you get married?  Is marriage on your mind?  Sitting under all this was the slightly icky – messy – fact of sexual desire.  The word “marriage” was if not a synonym for “sex”, then inextricably bound up with it.  For some reason, we needed to police this aspect of humanity quite stringently.

           What happened was very simple: over the next couple of years, people got married. They got on the conveyor belt and  – bam! – instant conjugal happiness.  But this wasn’t enough, just for us to enjoy the people getting married in our church.  Other Christians needed to know about this.  They needed to know about it even if they didn’t want to.   They didn’t know what they needed.  The teaching needed to “get out there”.

           A booklet was written detailing the stories of three couples who got married via this teaching.  It was called, in the most passive-aggressive misquoting of Scripture ever, “A more Excellent Way.”  One of the men involved was even trying to expand it into a book.  When the pastor was invited to speak somewhere, he took the booklet with him.  We had a product and it had to be exported.

           And it’s about here that my personal story intersects with all of this.  I had stayed on at university to study an MA in Creative Writing.   During my MA I think I fell in love with a woman at the church – or was very attracted to her.  Of course, I did nothing other than pray.  And I feel the emphasis on marriage was a problem to someone who was struggling to find their way in life.  Despite the MA – which I struggled through, I felt very directionless in life and my confidence was very low.  To then dwell on a romance sanctioned by God was to some degree a way of escaping the pressure of life decisions I felt unequal to the task of making.  I didn’t talk about it with anyone because I felt they wouldn’t understand my lack of confidence; I felt ashamed.  I needed proper psychotherapeutic help of some sort, but this tended to be viewed under the sniffy term “fleshly”. 

           I want to be clear: I wasn’t pointed to this person by anyone; I was drawn to her.  Perhaps under different circumstances we could have tried to build a life together.  But what circumstance we were in!  Take the following as an example:

 Always an aggressive speaker (I remember him banging the glass of drinking water he had on the table at the front of the church in frustration at people not changing the way he expected them to), it took a new turn.  At least twice in the sermon he said this to the church: “People think I shout too much, that I’m too intense.  But I was in my car before church one evening, and I was praying.  I said, ‘God, they don’t want me.  They think I shout too much.’  And God said, ‘Well, you tell ‘em from me’.”

           At the time I was troubled by this; it felt dangerous, but I brushed aside my intuitions because “He knew what he was doing; he was the Pastor.”  Now I can see it for what it is, even though my stomach still clenches in anxiety that it might just be God speaking, and that is using the position of power afforded him to intimidate the congregation into compliance.  It is an example of coercive control rather than, as I believed then, God communicating himself to us.

           That is the most brutal example, the only one when a part of me began to question the Pastor’s example.  But what it shows had always been there, was always in the water, had already been working its effect on me.

           Despite the fact that there was a great deal of talk of God’s grace, the power games which were being played out told a different story about who God is and how to relate to him.  He was a God to be feared, to be intimidated by. 

           But this is the sort of event which I look back at now and wonder how I could have been taken in.  I still, 20 years later, think “how did I allow myself to be so manipulated?”

           It was in this environment that I asked a woman to marry me.  I was unsure about doing this, and I made the mistake of confiding in a friend at the church.  His advice was, “If it’s wrong, then God will providentially stop it from happening.”  I was manipulated into getting engaged when I was very unsure about doing it.

           I won’t dwell on the story as it is too painful, but I experienced a loss of control, a loss of authority in my life which is almost too unbearable to recount.  I spoke to my parents who recognised symptoms of anxiety and depression.  They in their turn contact the Pastor in the hope that he would convince me to see a doctor.  They didn’t realise that he would do no such thing. 

           The church believed in Victory!  Bright, shining, grandiose, heavily booted Victory, which trounced all opposition.  I was fed the theology of my Triumphant Identity in Christ, but it is very hard to accept that when one’s autonomy has been so compromised.  And now it seems that the Pastor was not interested in my well-being or well-being of my fiancée; what they wanted was a result!  Me healed via his ministry and then married.  Victory.

           Victory or Control?  There was no patience, no interaction with anyone which did not end with “well, are you going to obey God?”  This was a church where the Pastor had once preached “ When God says, ’Jump’, we say, ‘How High?’”  That’s how obedience was taught to us.  And Pressure was the great teacher.  When the world pressured us, then God grew us.  When my depression didn’t get better, when I didn’t want to marry this woman, then I was disobedient.  I was in rebellion.  I “made Jesus, the Messiah, a liar.”

           The last time I was in that church I had broken off the engagement.  I also took communion, and the Pastor intimated to me, in front of other people, that I shouldn’t have taken communion because I was walking in known disobedience to God.  There was a hint of a warning there.

           I left the church after that night and returned to live with my parents, something which leaves me with a feeling of failure.  It has taken me nearly 20 years to process this experience, years to begin to see it as a period when I was emotionally abused and manipulated in an atmosphere very similar to a cult.  Sadly, much of the processing has taken place in secular environments because churches, no matter how well-intentioned, give very little space for someone to talk about these experiences. 

At the beginning of this week, we looked forward to seeing some challenges at General Synod to the protocols around the Church of England’s safeguarding work.  Any such challenge was effectively blocked by a refusal to allow a following motion from Synod member, Martin Sewell. The details of this were ably set out by David Lamming in the previous blog.  This, among other things, questioned the absence of any mention of the Independent Safeguarding Board in the Synod papers.   Today, the hour given over at Synod to a consideration of safeguarding was a low-key affair.  The departing bishop with special responsibility for safeguarding, Jonathan Gibbs, said all the right things but there was little spark in what was said by him or in the presentation by the Director of the NST, Alexander Kubeyinje.  The challenge to the authority of Synod caused by the side-lining of an independent oversight body, the ISB, might well have raised the temperature of the debate.  In the event the Synod seemed exhausted from the earlier discussions on Living with Love and Faith.  Although the ISB was airbrushed out of the debate, the importance of a third-party independent scrutiny of the Church’s work in the area of safeguarding remains as vital as ever.  What follows are some thoughts on this theme. These were written by me last weekend before the debate.  The Church authorities may have marginalised the ISB for the time being, but the issue of independent oversight remains important.  If there are problems (as identified below) with the ISB as presently constituted, the way forward is to engage with the issues rather than airbrush them out of existence, as the Church seems intent on doing.

 The Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) came into being just over 12 months ago.  It was an initiative of the Archbishops’ Council (AC) of the Church of England, and it was conceived as a new body able to provide independent scrutiny of the various safeguarding bodies in the Church.   Since its founding the group has lurched from crisis to crisis.  It is hard to see that, in its present configuration, it will be able to survive and serve the Church in the future.  In this piece I cannot attempt to address all the issues that have emerged about the ISB in recent days and weeks.    Somewhat provocatively, any mention of the ISB has been expunged from the official safeguarding papers being distributed to Synod members.  What follows here may be regarded as some background information for anyone trying to follow the recent complicated politics of safeguarding.  Interest in the topic is widespread and we owe it to the overall subject to express our concern and interest for the issue.

This blog, for the sake of simplicity, is going only to discuss three points which pertain to the current ISB saga.  The storyline related to this organisation has become convoluted. Something of this complexity is reflected in the fact that the Church Times in its current edition (February 3^rd), gives space for three separate stories about the ISB.  I do not propose to go into each of these threads.  My method for presenting something of this continuing ISB saga, as well as presenting a personal slant on what is going on, is through asking questions.   In this attempt to ask questions, I hope I can give a fair-minded approach to some of the current problems facing the ISB and its relationship with the wider Church.

The first basic question which is fundamental to any understanding of the difficulties at Synod and the reports in the Church Times is this.  What is the ISB for?    A part of the answer is that the ISB was set up by the AC to provide ‘professional supervision to (but not line management of) the Director of the National Safeguarding Team (NST)’. This supervision is combined with the task of ‘receiving and responding to complaints about the NST’s handling of cases.’  There are another 14 items in the ISB’s terms of reference which appeared when the group first came into being.  One might expect that an effective response, even merely for the delivery of the two tasks mentioned, would involve the gathering of quite a substantial team of professional individuals.  Although there are plans for expansion, the ISB currently consists of, up till now, 3 part time employees with secretarial support.  As most people are aware, one of the three, the Chair Maggie Atkinson, has been required to ‘step back’ over a data breach allegation.  A complaint about this has been upheld by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).  So far no one has found a way of making a decision as to whether the suspension is permanent or not.  The other two members of the ISB bravely soldier on.  

This question, what is the ISB for, carries with it a second subsidiary question.  Does the group, (even with a promised input of new staff), realistically stand a chance of fulfilling these 16 terms of reference?  There are some basic problems.  Nothing I say here is any personal criticism of the actual individuals who work for the ISB.  They have been recruited from a pool of highly experienced individuals who presumably understand, among other things, management theory and the inner workings of organisations.  All three have also been chosen from outside church circles.  This is to enable them to achieve the necessary level of independence of church politics. There is of course one key problem in appointing people who have no background knowledge of the structure they are being asked to support.  They naturally find it extremely hard to understand the mind-set of those they are overseeing.  In this blog we have had cause to question the background knowledge of those who work for the NST.  It is never just a matter of absorbing new information; there needs to be an immersion into a new professional culture which may be initially alien to the newcomer.  The ISB member, Jasvinda Sanghera, who comes with significant background in the needs of survivors, has gleaned her expertise, I understand, from working with victims of domestic violence.  There may well be overlaps with survivors of spiritual and sexual abuse in a Christian context, but there are also massive differences.  Those of us who have been involved in the discussion about safeguarding for a moderate length of time, are constantly concerned at the way professionals in safeguarding roles have huge gaps in what we refer to as the ‘corporate memory’ around the topic.   When it was suggested recently that the remaining two members of the ISB undertake the writing of a report on the Martyn Percy saga, those of us who have seen even a little of the enormous quantity of material that pertains to this case, immediately wondered how many man-hours would be required just to arrive the starting block to undertake such an enquiry.  Apart from the mass of factual material to be mastered, there is the cultural background of church and college to be comprehended.  It seemed wise for the Archbishop’s Council to withdraw the ISB from this massive undertaking, even though the ISB itself has expressed its displeasure at this decision.  It will continue to be a challenge for the AC to find the expertise and the understanding of university/church protocol to undertake this task.  One fears that such an enquiry may find itself in the same position as the Makin enquiry – over-time and overstretched.

The third question we have to ask of the ISB is the one concerning its own internal relationships.  There has been in the publicly shared publications by the ISB a suggestion of internal friction within the membership.  One has the gospel passage about Beelzebub in mind, where Jesus said ‘Can a kingdom divided against itself stand?’.  It is hard, if not impossible, for a small part time group to involve itself in overseeing a large institution like the NST and its dozens of employees when it has the distraction of division in its ranks and run-ins with the ICO.  Such institutional malfunctions are serious and cannot be glided over without questions being asked.  The third question for the ISB is simply this.  Given the fact that there are reported divisions in the ISB, and your chair has been found to have failed to keep data safe, is it realistic to expect survivors and the public at large to have, in the near future, confidence in your ability to get important work done?

The ISB has been functioning for a year and it has been noted by Martin Sewell and others that, in the papers about safeguarding for this week’s Synod, even a mere mention of the ISB is nowhere to be found.  This is possibly an attempt by the AC to bury an expensive project under the carpet with the hope that no one will notice.  We might have some understanding for those who thought up the birthing of the ISB as a way of regaining the respect of society after the severe mauling of the CofE by the officers of the Independent Inquiry over Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).  Somewhere along the line, this project of the AC has failed to deliver what was hoped for.  The need for a completely independent body to oversee safeguarding in the CofE is still required, but the ISB has, arguably, not turned out to be the correct tool.  It is not the competence of the individual members of the ISB that I am raising here.  The fault seems to lie further back.  It falls on those who had an idea of what was needed, but set it up prematurely.   The IICSA challenge to the CofE to provide independent oversight of its own protocols for safeguarding remains.  Can the Church show itself able to administer a system of safeguarding without outside supervision?   The muddles and missteps that may be revealed at Synod this coming week perhaps indicate that the Church is indeed unable to manage in this area of creating a safe environment which enables those who have been damaged by its own employees to find a way to move forward and maybe even to flourish and grow.

By David Lamming (General Synod member 2015-2021)

A few days ago on this blog, Synod member Martin Sewell posed the question, “General Synod and Safeguarding Issues: Will the problems be faced? (24 January 2023).  One of the major problems concerns the rôle and functioning of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB).  Related to this is the fact that the Board’s chair, Professor Maggie Atkinson, remains ‘stepped aside’ following the upholding by the ICO of complaints of data protection breaches.  Recently, also, the ISB has been told by the Archbishops’ Council that it is no longer to carry out a ‘lessons learned’ review into aspects of the long-running saga at Christ Church, Oxford.

On its website the ISB state: “We exist to ensure the Church of England delivers its safeguarding responsibilities  We also provide independent oversight of the National Safeguarding Team (NST).”  This function of the ISB was recognised in a paper, GS 2263, presented to Synod at York in July 2022, which stated (at paragraph 19): “The ISB liaises with, and oversees the quality of the work of the NST.” Especially given the ISB’s difficulties, not least of which is that of its supposed independence, one might have expected that the ‘Safeguarding’ item on Synod’s agenda on Thursday would include a report from the ISB.

Only seven months ago in York, Synod passed a motion, in terms proposed by the lead bishop on safeguarding, Dr Jonathan Gibbs, that included a request by Synod for “regular updates on progress at each group of sessions, especially concerning the strengthening of independent accountability and oversight of the Church’s safeguarding work at all levels.” (Emphasis added.)  However, there is not even a mention of the ISB in either of the two published briefing papers for Synod, GS 2293 (‘Update from the National Safeguarding Team’ and GS Misc 1335 (‘Update from the National Director of Safeguarding’), both referred to in Martin’s blog.  Moreover, the two active members of the ISB, Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves, in a statement posted on the ISB website on 2 February, revealed that they had wished to be able to update Synod but were rebuffed: “Despite attempts to secure an opportunity to update Synod in person, no time was made available.” https://independent-safeguarding.org/general-synod-2023/ They added, “We do not believe that the importance of ISB work is consistent with a ‘fringe’ activity“—which suggests that a fringe meeting had been offered to them as an alternative.

Jasvinder and Steve go on in their report to identify a number of issues regarding the ISB’s rôle and work, in particular the vexed question of its supposed independence – one of the issues mentioned in Martin’s ‘further motion’ referred to below.  They say:

“The current position of the ISB in the Church’s infrastructure is unsustainable. The Archbishop’s Council trustees provide the funding for the Board’s operations and acts as the employer of its staff, subject to task management by the ISB itself… In its first year, the ISB has experienced multiple instances in which its independence and freedom to operate has been hampered. The ISB does not consider that it is sufficiently independent from those it is responsible for scrutinising. The independent minds of board members need to be supported by an independent body, the operation of which cannot be frustrated by the Church.”

The safeguarding item on the Synod agenda comprises a presentation, with Q&A, followed by a motion (to be proposed by Dr Gibbs) to ‘take note’ of the NST report GS 2293.  Under Synod standing orders, such a motion cannot be amended but, if it is first carried, a ‘further motion’ can be moved under SO 105(6).  This provides, so far as material:

“… any member of the Synod may, after giving due notice, move a further motion arising out of the report which— (a) expresses approval or disapproval of the report in whole or part, or (b) is otherwise relevant to and within the scope of its subject matter.”

In the absence of a specific report or agenda item and as reported in the Church Times last Friday, Martin Sewell tabled such a motion. (“Motion will question ISB’s absence from Synod agenda” Church Times, 3 February 2023, page 6. The full terms of the motion were set out in a comment that I posted on Martin’s blog.)  However, after the paper went to press last Wednesday, Martin was informed by the Acting Clerk to the Synod that his motion (which had been duly seconded) had been ruled out of order by the ‘Chair of the debate’ after receiving legal advice, on the basis that the report to which it is a following motion is a report of the NST and the ISB is a creature of the Archbishops’ Council, not the NST.  The full reasoning, after, citing the terms of SO 105(6) was:

“A motion which says, “The report should have covered subject X”, when subject X is outside the scope of the report, cannot qualify for this purpose; to hold otherwise would be to negate requirement (b).  And [the Chair] does not consider that the matters you wish to raise with regard to the ISB are “relevant to and within the scope of its subject matter”.  The scope and subject matter of the report are to “provide updates to the General Synod of the following workstreams of the National Safeguarding Team”.  The workstreams are then listed.  The ISB is not a workstream for which the NST is responsible.  It is the responsibility of the Archbishops’ Council, with the ISB accounting directly to the Council for its performance, rather than through the NST.  The proposed following motion, being concerned with the ISB, is therefore not a further motion within SO 105(6).”

One might have thought that an item of business headed in the Synod agenda as simply ‘Safeguarding’ (see GS 2283, page 13) would enable a motion to be tabled concerning the very body set up to oversee the safeguarding functions of the NST.  But no, it is clear that those running the Synod do not wish to see the problems of the ISB aired in Synod and subject to debate by Synod members, notwithstanding the motion agreed in July 2022. A revised motion, quoting Synod’s resolution last July and thereby seeking to overcome the objection, was tabled by Martin but also rejected on Friday on the same grounds.

The effect of the Chair’s ruling is that neither Martin’s original motion nor his revised motion will appear on a Notice Paper for the information of Synod members when they arrive in Church House on Monday, as he requested.  But it is questionable whether this is lawful and whether the Chair—at this stage, simply the member of the panel of chairs designated to chair the safeguarding items of business on 9 February—has the power before Synod meets to make such a ruling. Martin raised this issue with the Acting Clerk to the Synod in an e-mail on Friday as follows:

“I note that you refer me to SO 15(2) concerning the powers and duties of the Chair.  However, that SO is one of a group of standing orders headed ‘General Procedures at a Group of Sessions’ (emphasis added) and I cannot see in it or elsewhere in the SOs any provision enabling someone who has merely been designated to be the Chair of a particular session to make a ruling in advance of the session.  By contrast, in respect of rulings on questions, there is provision, but when the Synod is not in session, the person to make the ruling is the Chair of the Business Committee: see SO 113(5).

It seems to me, therefore, that the ruling Andrew Nunn has made, apparently on legal advice, is ultra vires and void. If I am wrong about this, please let me know and direct me to the provision in the SOs relied upon.”

As I write this on Sunday evening, an answer is awaited.

What next?  Synod members may well share the view that the issues surrounding the ISB are both urgent and important.   SO 4(3) of the Synod’s standing orders empowers the Joint Presidents of the Synod (i.e. Archbishops Justin and Stephen) to “direct the addition to the agenda at any time of such urgent or other specially important business… as seems to them desirable.”  This power was exercised in 2016 to add to the Synod agenda a motion enabling a debate about the outcome of the Brexit referendum, and again in 2017, following the General Election of that year—neither of which matters, unlike the supervision of C of E safeguarding, directly concerned the Synod.

Recently, in an article published in the January 2023 issue of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal, Bishop Pete Broadbent, a member of the Synod for some 36 years prior to his retirement as Bishop of Willesden in 2021, wrote this:

“The platform tactic (from those leading debates and carrying forward the business of Synod) has been to attempt to keep questions about the Church’s safeguarding practice, past and present, off the floor of Synod. Attempts to inquisite [sic] the shortcomings of the National Safeguarding Team, the past failures of Bishops and the various ‘lessons learned reviews’ (from which we never seem to learn very much) have been seen off and resisted, leaving victims, survivors and those campaigning on their behalf with the sense that justice will never be done or seen to be done.” (Pete Broadbent: Reflections on the Workings of General Synod, (2023) 25 Ecc LJ 19-31 at page 25.)

Is it too much to hope that our two archbishops will heed these words and use their power under SO4(3) to ensure that Synod is enabled this week to discuss the very issue it requested to be updated about just seven months ago?

 

From time to time we hear about people working in various institutions, like the police or the Civil Service, who call out some murky or corrupt behaviour within their organisation. We call this action whistleblowing.  It may be that someone brings to light financial irregularities or an intolerable level of oppressive hatred towards minorities.  Such behaviour may involve misogyny or homophobia and this behaviour has become impossible for the bystander to tolerate.  The whistle-blower is the one who speaks out. In most cases we hear about, we discover that the costs to the individual speaking out in this way have been considerable.  Whether it is the blowback from colleagues, whose bad behaviour is exposed, or a heavy institutional response from the top of the organisation, the whistle-blower usually has to pay a heavy price and put up with the stress that comes as the result of his/her whistleblowing activity.  In summary we would suggest that whistleblowing is a hazardous, even heroic, undertaking.

When we take a look at organisations in general, I think it would be true to state that whistleblowing is rare.  The reasons for this are worth thinking about.  It is far from clear that fear of persecution from colleagues is the main factor in repressing whistleblowing.  A more straightforward explanation that inhibits the normal member of an institution ‘spilling the beans’, is simple loyalty to the group.  This would be the normal dominating thought of most people in, say, a firm or factory.  The rule of not ratting on your workmates or colleagues is normally going to create a far stronger inhibition than ideas of morality or a loyalty to a higher good.

The bonds that tie individuals to an organisation are, of course, not just considerations of simple loyalty to the group.  We can imagine a variety of scenarios where circumstances or events create an unquestioned bond to a group which is hard to challenge.  As an extreme example, we have all watched films where the gang leader ties the gang member into the group by forcing him or her to commit a crime.  Once the new gang member has robbed a bank or shot someone, it is hard for them to have any way back from their new status as gang member.  A blackmail situation has been activated.  No one says it out loud, but the threat is always there.  If we get arrested and go to prison, then so do you.   It is hard to see any obvious way out of this conundrum.

From the extremes of a blackmail scenario in a criminal gang, one can imagine many other lesser ways that tie the individual to the group so that whistleblowing becomes unthinkable.  The idea of loyalty sounds like an honourable value, but in many situations, it simply means that the individual has become acculturated to a particular way of doing things.  We recognise that such group acculturation often does not have honourable outcomes.  A group of men might bond together with a common interest in macho activity.  This might include the domination of, or even cruelty, to the women in their lives.  Other movements or groups may indulge in wild conspiracy theories or normalise phobic behaviour towards minorities.  I find it hard to understand how groups of Christians can sometimes act with so much hatred towards those they do not like, such as gays or liberals, unless there are social benefits attaching them to this kind of group loyalty.  Feeling good because your group hates the despised ‘other’ seems a remarkable inversion of Christian values.  But it seems to exist in church settings just the same, seemingly impossible to challenge.

Before we return to a consideration of the whistleblowing phenomenon, it is important to linger for a moment on the account of group behaviour in a church context told by Yvonne and David Shemmings in their reflection on the child-abuse saga in the Diocese of Chichester. https://houseofsurvivors.org/shared-files/1186/?Shemmings_Report_ib4lHC8.pdf  One suggestion that the Shemmings investigated was whether the abuse was organised.  The evidence that was uncovered did not lead them to suggest a conspiracy of abuse.  Rather they found such abuse was to some extent normalised in certain clergy networks so that offending clergy knew others who were, if not active abusers, able to look the other way if any evidence of such behaviour came their way.  In this we are naming another group phenomenon which militates against whistleblowing, the almost sacred devotion to the preservation of secrets.  Supressing information by insisting that others keep secrets is a very powerful dynamic within groups.  Having a secret, knowing something that others do not know, allows an individual to feel endowed with a sense of power and privilege.  One surmises that the popularity of Masonic groups is partly to do with the promise of secrets that will only be divulged to a privileged few.  Cultic groups like Scientology also peddle in secrets about the origin of the universe.  The power of Scientology has lessened considerably since much of this ‘secret’ hidden knowledge has been leaked out to all and sundry.  More powerful than the meaning of masonic symbols and myths and theories about the beginning of the universe, are the human secrets that actually exist in groups like churches.  Sometimes these secrets include hidden episodes of shame which relate to important leaders.  Such leaders are controlled by the fact that, at any moment, documents or oral testimonies could be released which would destroy their reputation and authority.  Where does real institutional power lie in such a complicated situation? The real power in the group probably belongs to the one who possesses the shameful secret, as long as no one has any past secret to reveal about them.  Organisations which alternatively reveal and hide such secrets for political reasons are toxic environments to work in but they are found within the Church as in other organisations. One would prefer the attempt to blow fresh air into an institution through whistleblowing to the rancid air of power games and nervous stress that permeate so many organisations, including our own.

When we return to our consideration of whistleblowing, we might want to express our surprise that it ever happens.  The whistle-blower has not only to face social ostracism and even violence from those guilty of bad behaviour.  He/she has also to overcome the extensive social inhibitors that operate when we are part of any group.  Nobody wants to ‘shop mates’.  We have to conclude that,. when whistleblowing does happen, there need to be some highly principled and brave individuals at the heart of it.  As a general rule we might want to suggest that such people are more likely to be worthy of our admiration than the opposite.  Of course, there may be unworthy reasons for whistleblowing, but I also want to suggest that the person who breaks through all the social inhibitors to stand up and declare the truth is a brave unusual person. 

In our survey of discussing why whistleblowing is a rare phenomenon in society and its organisations, we have noted that the reasons for this rarity have much to do with the nature of groups and organisations and the way they normalise and control our behaviour.  Some of this institutional control is honourable but much is not.  The dynamics of groups can make for a sense of stability but often that stability is very fragile because of the misdeeds and secrecy that can often be hidden within these groups.  Currently the Church itself is going through a number of crises, as its ability to be open and honest with its members is being challenged.  When an institution shows itself unable to be open and honest and selective over the information it shares, an atmosphere of mistrust is created.  Those who challenge the narrative that the Church is ‘on a journey’ to deliver the highest standards of safeguarding to survivors, find that they, along with whistle-blowers everywhere, suffer the sanctions I have described. The Church has considerable institutional power to hit out at such critics which include those who are already victims of church-based trauma.  The sight of a religious-based organisation playing dirty tricks, involving the heavy use of institutional and legal power, is not very edifying.  As I have suggested before, the reverberations of these battles can never achieve what is desired, the protection of the power and assets of the organisation.   What they do achieve is an atmosphere of unease, and a weakening of loyalty on the part of ordinary members towards the leadership. 

The next meeting of General Synod is likely to show up the cracks that exist between the official narrative of unity and competence in the church and the real situation of muddle and intrigue that seems to exist at the centre.  I have nothing useful to add to the gay marriage debate, but feel that an equal amount of time should been given to looking at the present state of safeguarding.  There is, it can be confidently asserted, a great deal of unhappiness in the Church over safeguarding.  The problems do not seem to relate to the training that is being widely shared across the Church but in the reluctance of the Church authorities to speak frankly of what has gone wrong in the past. Coverups, silence and persecution of whistle-blowers creates a toxic environment in which few can flourish or grow.  Whistleblowing is a messy inefficient way of sharing truth, but it is an improvement on all the secrecy that seems to exist at the heart of our national Church. The hints that we are given suggest that maintaining the status-quo in the CofE safeguarding narrative is not only almost impossible for those in charge, but a cause of unbearable stress.  Stress creates burn-out and we have seen a suggestion of this in the rapid turnover of those heading up the NST since its start in 2015.  The forthcoming Synod safeguarding debate on February 9^th will be instructive.  Will the message be ‘business as usual’ or will there be a hint of changes, the kind that whistle-blowers seek to introduce to their organisations everywhere.

by Martin Sewell

When the General Synod of the Church of England meets next week in London, all the attention will be on the well publicised issue of same sex marriage. This is not unreasonable, but it also means that another of the major issues undermining the Church in the eyes of the public, has been pushed way down the agenda. The continuing  issue of the Church’s poor response to survivors and victims is important and it deserves no less publicity.

Unlike so much that goes on at Synod, this is a scandal which is entirely self made and capable of ready resolution, if only there was the desire, drive, commitment, and competence to do so.

Importantly there is significant grass roots unity on these matters across all the traditions; there is no theology in favour of abuse and bullying, and there are people of principle across the traditions who set aside other differences and keep banging their heads against the institutional brick wall whilst the leadership chant their mantra “ we are on a journey”.

Synod members cannot fix climate change, they are gridlocked over gay marriage and most of the general public are not paying attention anyway; the public does know however, that the Church has a well documented history of letting survivors down very badly – often for decades. A bold initiative in this area would demonstrate that we “practise what we preach”. We are still waiting for it.

In February 2023,  Safeguarding has been relegated to the “ graveyard slot” on Thursday afternoon when some folks will be getting ready to catch trains to Truro or Carlisle. It is hardly worth staying for. All members will be offered is a “ presentation with questions” – one question permitted each. That is no basis upon which to hold power to account and that is entirely why General Synod has found itself managed into impotence by the House of Bishops and Church House.

This time however, a group of survivors have prepared their own briefing which is being offered to the Synod members – 60% of whom are new and vulnerable to the kind of blandishments which have stonewalled survivors for years.

This briefing can be read here at https://houseofsurvivors.org/shared-files/1822/?SYNOD-SAFEGUARDING-BRIEFING-FINAL.pdf

Its clarity and focus contrasts significantly with the official report to Synod GS2293 https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/GS%202293%20Safeguarding.pdf which is reeks of management-speak and is almost unreadable which cynics might think is not accidental.

There is a  clearer second report GS1335 https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/GS%20Misc%201335%20NST%20update.pdf one passage of which  does deserve particular attention. In it, the newly appointed Director of the National Safeguarding Team Alexander Kubeyinje raises the important issue of the abuse that his team members are occasionally subjected to.

I have met Alex on one occasion. I found him a good attentive listener and I wish him well in his role. It helps enormously that he has been recruited from the same secular safeguarding culture in which I practiced as a lawyer and so we are very much “on the same page in terms of how things are best done. We can get down to business without  the preliminary of “comparing notes”.

I am therefore very happy to highlight and endorse his plea for his staff to be respectfully treated and to unequivocally to condemn any improper behaviour. He writes

3.1.  I have been taken aback with the amount of abuse, bullying and harassment that colleagues receive and threat to life on occasions. This has predominately been from a small number of survivors , advocates and others who have concerns with regards to safeguarding across the wider church community . The NST are at the forefront of this abuse which has a detrimental impact on them and their families. I have not witnessed or been informed of any bullying or harassment within the NCI’s .

3.2.  All of them come to work to do a good job, but this is often received with abuse and harassment. However, there is not always a sense of how staff can be protected from such horrific abuse and bullying.

3.3.  As a Church we do have a duty of care to them. There are both legal and moral obligations to protect staff from this. As a result of this, staff will often shut down and not want to engage with the people who are abusing staff which in turn has a detrimental effect on all involved. It must be noted this behaviour is across the NCI’s and is directed from the wider church community to every level of the organisation.

Nobody and nothing should detract from that message, but I think it is proper to make a simple reference to the 1987 Cleveland Report which is one of the foundational documents of the secular safeguarding culture from which both Alex and I come.

Chapter 13.18 of that report addressed a similar issue in respect of parents whose children were at risk of removal by social workers – sometimes a necessary but always an acutely stressful time for all involved. Baroness Elizabeth Butler Sloss wrote

“Families who are in crisis have a heightened emotional response. Anger aggressive destructive behaviour and the possibility of violent impulsive reactions may need to be faced.  The social worker needs to maintain an open structured relationship with the family whatever the social workers personal feelings, it is important to avoid a judgemental or accusatory attitude towards a parent who is a possible perpetrator; the risk of suicide amongst perpetrators who are able to acknowledge their abusive behaviour to themselves or others must be recognised….. Social workers must develop the skill of respecting and supporting the persons without endorsing or colluding with their acknowledged or suspected patterns of behaviour”.

That which is true of stressed perpetrators is no less true of the Church’s innocent victims who routinely find their lives in tatters, in chronic and acute need and running up against  what they perceive to be an unsympathetic bureaucratic structure. When you have walked a few paces in their shoes, being passed from pillar to post around a variety of Church layers at Diocesan and National level with everyone passing the buck and nobody holding ultimate responsibility,  you may not condone –  but you understand why people end up raging against the machine.

Alex is right in bringing this to our attention, but how quickly we are able to solve this particular problem will surely depend on how quickly and effectively we grasp the handful of nettles which make up so many aspects of the Church’s current safeguarding dysfunctionality.

We know we have to put proper structures in place  for the benefit of our victims: we know that doing so can only be for the benefit of the Church’s reputation. Alex, inadvertently but entirely properly and relevantly,  offers a third reason to make our structures and systems as smooth  accessible transparent and effective as possible  – we owe it to our staff who bear the brunt of the frustration caused by the ineffectuality of the current Church  leadership