Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.
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In respect for the solemn events of this and next week, Surviving Church is taking a pause. For my readers I offer the exquisite hymn/prayer known as the Russian Kontakion which was used at Philip’s funeral. no doubt at the request of Her Majesty.
Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints: where sorrow and pain are no more; neither sighing but life everlasting. Thou only art immortal, the creator and maker of man: and we are mortal formed from the dust of the earth, and unto earth shall we return: for so thou didst ordain, when thou created me saying: Dust thou art und unto dust shalt thou return. All we go down to the dust; and weeping o’er the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
When we want to describe a group of people who agree with each other, whether it be in a political or religious context, we can use positive or negative words to describe that agreement. Among the positive words are ones like harmony, unanimity, or consensus. The negative words include groupthink or collusion. The word we choose to use in the context of people agreeing with one other indicates what we think about the agreement. Sometimes agreement seems positive while, on other occasions, we suspect some political chicanery. Deep problems are being buried under the surface of pleasing words. But whether seen as negative or positive, getting people to come to any kind of common mind can be extremely arduous work. It can take hours of discussion and some of this may be heated and unpleasant. Sometimes the agreements that are reached come about because one side gives way to exhaustion from the fight. Clearly, even when a common statement has been reached, the agreement that is presented to the world does not necessarily denote underlying peace and unanimity.
When we think about our own lives, we may be able to remember when we first began to have opinions about things. If we had wise parents we would be asked for those opinions, even if the subject matter was relatively trivial. A six-year-old may well be invited by the family to articulate a favourite food or a preference for a holiday destination. Many of these opinions probably reflected the parents’ own choices but the task of listening to the child is an important part of family nurture. True independent thinking has to wait for a later development stage.
If small children find it hard or impossible to have different opinions from their parents and the rest of the family, the same is also true when they join other social groups at school or in other settings. A young child, boy or girl. Is desperate to belong and will go along with the thoughts and behaviour of a group, however perverse, in order to stay within it. The common mind we have with others is likely to be a form of groupthink. Standing completely apart from the actions and opinions of others is very hard to do. We could go so far as to say that for most of our younger years we are ‘groomed’ by our groups and the company we keep to go along with the crowd and that is something that goes on right up into adulthood. Standing up for our unique convictions when everyone around you is thinking and acting in a predictable and identical way, is very hard to do. Most of us, as young people, fail in this testing of our principles except in fairly unusual circumstances.
Once we become fully adult, theoretically we have the opportunity to find out who we truly are and what our personal convictions consist of. Adults are those who are supposed to be fully responsible for their judgements, actions and opinions. We know for ourselves this is not always the case. The tentacles of outside persuasive forces continue to affect us from many directions. There are several possible reasons to make us susceptible to such influences. It may be a loyalty to an institution that holds us back from our desired mature independence. It may also be the legacy of a troubled childhood that keeps part of our functioning immature. There may be a continuing childish desire always to please others, and this may override a more mature way of dealing with people. There are quite simply a host of ways that can undermine straightforward grown-up existence which counts as independent maturity. We all must struggle with these different forces that may affect and weaken the much-desired mature independence to which we aspire. We might even find ourselves accepting the proposition that, for much of the time, our words and actions owe more to others than to our own core self.
When we view the Church and particularly those who work within it as its officers and leaders, there are particular problems to be noted. Reflecting on my own past as a clergyman in the Church of England, I recall one particular tension that always existed. Within the context of pastoral relationships, there is often a tension between the desire to be ‘nice’ and the need to challenge. Although in the CofE the payment of the following month’s salary does not depend on preaching agreeable sermons, there were still pressures that could be brought to bear on me when the content of sermons deviated away from a notion of ‘orthodoxy’ held by prominent supporters. There are also expectations of pastoral care which could run counter to the convictions of the parish priest. Finding the right path between doing what was popular and what was the true conviction of the leader is always difficult to achieve. Fortunate indeed is the priest who finds that his/her personal convictions and those of the chief opinion makers in his/her parish roughly coincide.
The pressures that befall a parish priest are varied and what I say here cannot describe all of them. I am just reflecting on this idea of expectation as it refers to the situation faced by the typical priest. Sometimes the expectations that are placed on him/her are entirely appropriate but sometimes not. Meeting every demand placed on one is likely to be impossible and probably not desirable anyway. However, the majority perform a ‘good-enough’ ministry to allow a reasonably stress-free existence. I sense however, that the question of fulfilling expectations adequately and, at the same time, being reasonably true to one’s core-self becomes a greater problem if the priest is ‘preferred’ to a higher rank – that of bishop or archdeacon. Such senior leaders do not just have to meet the expectation of a finite number of parishioners and church members, they also have to perform correctly within the rules and processes of the wider institution. A bishop is now a representative figure, a spokesman for the whole, and so he/she is far less able to have, or rather express, private opinions if they deviate from an official line. Any public statement to be made has first to be processed by a public relations expert. Also, a bishop is faced with all the serious problems of the diocese and its clergy. He/she has to respond to many situations that no one else wants to deal with. In our many discussions of safeguarding failures, it is clear that amid the palpable failures of those in authority in this area, there are also enormous pressures on bishops caused by trying to meet all the expectations of all the different parties. Bishops probably can never hope to meet all these expectations and at the same be true to their core being. They have to live with the reality that they are bound to be a disappointment to one group or another, even to their own inner aspirations. Anyone with even a small amount of sensitivity will feel the considerable stress of these situations. The higher up the hierarchy the clergy climb, the greater the stress felt by those who want to do and say the right thing but cannot because they are the creatures of the role they occupy.
The individuals who occupy the highest ranks in the Church of England have to live with further complications and these make it difficult for them to be able to experience contentment or job satisfaction. Alongside trying to meet the expectations of those they serve, there is another challenge to their peace of mind. Bishops and clergy all occupy a place which is defined by the law of the land. While parish clergy can refer most of their legal responsibilities to others, bishops have to accept responsibility for some difficult legal decisions. Applying regulations which in some cases have not been formulated well, as in safeguarding, simply adds to their stress. Although some bishops acquire influence and prestige from participating in debates in the House of Lords, we have suggested that the freedom to articulate their true personal feelings and attitudes is severely circumscribed. Bishops seem to have less freedom to speak their truth than the curate just out of college. Representing the whole Church of England and their diocese, they also have to follow the requirements of the lawyers and publicity curators who control and manage things behind the scenes. How can any individual deprived of self-expression ever feel true satisfaction in their role? Just as important is the question – how can a partly silenced leader ever inspire and lead his/her people in a single direction? The job of representing and meeting the expectations of so many, as well as operating within the constraints of a cumbersome and sometimes corrupt institution, must take its toll. This role of leader, defender and mouthpiece of a flawed institution must be an enormous burden. Perhaps the greatest cost to be paid is the experience of being unable to be connected to their deepest truths.
In writing about the power or absence of power given to those highest in the hierarchy of our Church, I am reminded of the confrontation between Jesus and Satan on the mountain of temptation. The CofE has given enormous prestige to a small group of men and women but seems to have made the possibility of finding their real identity and truth more difficult. The ‘kingdoms of the world’ as shown to Jesus perhaps represent all the glamour of high office, but it comes at the cost of being manipulated by many forces outside their control. How many of the house of bishops now realise that the loss of the freedom to find and express their true selves (and thus their ability to act as leaders) is a far greater sacrifice than they had probably ever wanted to make?
An apparent increase of bullying of clergy by their ‘seniors’ may match more serious trends and challenge our thinking. Has our Church wandered from its foundations more than we commonly recognise? Although Jesus said to Peter, ‘I will build my Church….’. our Church seems determined to build itself, applying much effort and finance to do so. We strangely emphasise Church Growth rather than Kingdom Growth, questionable ‘Mission Action Planning’, and latterly the ‘Living in Love and Faith’ process being spread across our denomination.
Consequences of such attitudes proliferate, fostering a straining for success, an unhealthy ‘ambition’, unthinking definitions of ‘success’ and how this may be measured. Then, some leaders seem fond of ‘man-contrived’ diocesan or Lambeth ‘awards’ for ‘success’, maybe named after a Celtic saint from English Church history.
Does a misguided urge for success lie behind our emphasis on ‘Church Leadership’ in recent decades, able to feed man-centred religion—human techniques and a devotion to ‘top-down’ initiatives? We easily forget that Jesus’s human ministry was a public failure to a watching world, and neither did the apostles fare better.
They had no techniques beyond accepting circumstances and human encounters as God-permitted or God-intended. God’s reality was conveyed by their lifestyle and words they were given to use. His presence and fragrant love were palpable. Such occurrences and manifestations, promised by Jesus when He commissioned them, and assuredly valid still. Jesus’s reported prayer for you and me makes it clear, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17.20,21). God does it all. His, the initiative, ours the attentive obedience., Jesus stood among them after his resurrection saying, “Peace be with you.” The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Then Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 19.20-23).
Are we consciously sent today in the Spirit’s power, as Jesus was? Or have we replaced this approach with a jumble of doctrine, liturgy, human ideas and logic, and our idea of ‘good works’; none of which readily connect anyone to the living God? And what are we to make of Matthew 28.19: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’? Doesn’t this make human initiatives central? I would suggest the New Testament accounts indicate that God is always the initiator, opening onlookers’ eyes and minds to the Jesus-like life on display before them in his people. The Church thus has the follow-up role of gathering such people together and forming them as disciples.
Furthermore, instead of depending on our intellects and decision-making in any significant way, Jesus’s High Priestly prayer in John 17 shows he wishes to convey through us the two realities of His glory and His unity (vs.20-24). These features are either palpable or absent. They cannot be contrived. His present reality can only be evinced in his Church by demonstration and display, not through words and wisdom.
Leadership training and emphases may thus be somewhat out of place in Kingdom life. They may be too closely aligned to gaining results by techniques. If an individual is a self-disciplined follower of ‘the Way’, having integrity, self-denial, trust in God to direct his path, ability to ‘read a landscape’ and to relate well with others—and filled with love though the Spirit, that is all that is needed in a leader. Leadership does not need training. Rather, it requires Spirit-led appointment of those God has prepared.
Managerialism is the consequence of those ‘imbalances’ already described—each destructive of godly relationships and feeding subtle appetites for ‘self-promotion’.
Is it not the case that if such themes (success/church growth/leadership etc) are evident, they will conspire to make bullying more and more probable? With mounting pressures to ‘succeed’—for leaders’ own satisfaction, advancement and to ensure financial viability, human ‘initiatives’ will increase steadily, as will pressure on their ‘coal-face’ clergy to demonstrate ‘ministerial effectiveness’—however this may be viewed. Felt pressures will increase, with bullying only a ‘whisker’ away. Leaders will only be likely to spot the dangers and respond well if they have discovered how to walk in the Spirit. Human wisdom and intellect are ineffectual here.
“In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Rom 8.4-8)
This release of a music video written especially for survivors of Church of England abuse is a first in the history of safeguarding. I hope my readers will listen to the song two or three times and recognise that the story of suffering by survivor N is one shared by many others. Martyn Percy has added a commentary and this shows the way that the story of survivor N fits a wider picture of institutional incompetence and cruelty. Ed.
Liam Ó Maonlaí of the Hothouse Flowers, Steve Cooney, Tommy Sands and other international stars of Irish music have released a song to highlight abuse in the Church of England, and the victimisation of complainants.
The group calling itself “Musicians for Justice” includes stars of traditional Irish music, Liam Ó Maonlaí of the Hothouse Flowers, renowned trad guitarist, Steve Cooney, and celebrated international singer-songwriter and peace activist, Tommy Sands, as well as younger talent. The song “Collusion” has also been published on YouTube with film footage from the Diocese of London, Lambeth Palace and Ireland, and can be accessed here, together with the full statement:
Musicians for Justice said, “Up until now, survivors and whistleblowers of abuse within churches and religious institutions have had no anthem, no song to sing, no salving melody for pain and suffering, and so we humbly offer this Irish tribute to them all. You are true saints and true prophets of our age, and you carry the spirit of true faith more Christ-like than the institutions of abuse”.
Musicians for Justice has published a statement describing how their song “Collusion” was inspired by a horrific story broken by the Editor of the Church of England Newspaper about an abuse survivor from Ireland who had filed a legal complaint of clergy abuse with the Bishop of London under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003. http://churchabuse.org/church_of_england_newspaper.pdf
Martyn Percy adds here his own commentary on the story of Survivor N and the way that it dovetails into his own story and the wider story of other survivors who still search for justice.
In September 2020 the Very Rev’d Prof. Martyn Percy, members of General Synod of the Church of England and others requested an independent inquiry into the grossly incompetent and potentially corrupt processing in Church of England Safeguarding. This request was repeated in the autumn of 2021 to the Archbishops’ Council. It was repeated again in March 2022, this time directly to both Archbishops.
The requests were all ignored. This was despite written evidence presented that included conspiracy, shoddy practices, secrecy and deceit, lack of transparency, investigations that deliberately suppressed evidence, and the setting up of biased reviews and investigations purporting to be independent.
In the case of Martyn Percy, he had been subjected to irregular and faked Risk Assessments, breaches of safeguarding protocols, repeated coverups, and a refusal to own up to “project-managed-persecution” run by senior clergy and church lawyers. In March 2022, an extensive dossier of written evidence and a request for an Independent Inquiry was formally tabled to both Archbishops, with the Archbishops’ Council having previously failed to respond to the correspondence and specific concerns expressed.
The request especially petitioned that senior church officers, senior clergy, lawyers and PR agents would be subjects of such an inquiry. This included the Church of England National Safeguarding Team (NST), Diocese and Bishop of Oxford, the Church of England’s lawyers Winckworth Sherwood LLP, the Church-employed reputation management company Luther Pendragon Limited, and those who had been party to the deliberate “weaponization of safeguarding”, with the intention of harming Prof. Percy. This misconduct included overt malfeasance, corruption, gross incompetence and cover-ups in the carriage of safeguarding. The misconduct and corruption also included the operations of the lawyers and reputation management agents for the Church, knowingly manufacturing, curating and amplifying falsified “safeguarding concerns” in order to deliberately cause financial, personal and reputational damage to Prof. Percy.
The lawyers and PR agents lobbied the media to plant damaging stories. The lawyers attempted to interfere with police, Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) and other inquiries they had stoked against Prof. Percy – in so doing potentially attempting to pervert the cause of justice. The same lawyers issued litigious and bullying threats against clergy colleagues supporting Prof. Percy. The same lawyers, who also worked for the Diocese of Oxford, had accepted legal instruction to “act against the Dean (i.e., Martyn Percy)”, even though this was a clear conflict of interest. They denied this.
The Archbishops declined to take any action against their lawyers, reputation management agents, senior officers, National Safeguarding Team and senior clergy. Instead, they commissioned the newly-formed Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) to investigate. The ISB had never undertaken any work of this kind. The ISB drew up terms of reference that were biased and badly drafted. They would also only reinvestigate allegations already made against Prof. Percy which had already been previously dismissed. The ISB then declared it would now not be investigating the concerns he had raised. The ISB also confirmed they did not regard Prof. Percy as a victim or as even a complainant.
The Archbishops’ Council and the Bishop of Oxford was confirmed as one of the commissioners of the ISB process. The Bishop’s lawyers are Winckworth Sherwood LLP. Their reputation management agents are Luther Pendragon Limited. The Archbishop of Canterbury also retains Winckworth Sherwood as his legal advisers. So do seven other Church of England Dioceses. Prof. Percy had requested both be investigated.
The ISB was presented to General Synod in February 2022 as a fully independent body. The ISB proceeded to assert the same at the time, and again in July 2022. Yet when it became clear the ISB was malfunctioning, improperly constituted, and otherwise inept, the ISB promptly confirmed that it had no financial, legal or governance existence of its own, let alone any independence, from the Archbishops’ Council., who were funding it and overseeing it.
The Archbishops deny there are any issues with conflicts of interest. The NST, Bishop of Oxford, ISB and the Archbishops’ Council have all refused to disclose their conflict of interest policies or even to confirm if they have one (or not).
Survivors N’s experiences are, sadly, typical of the current leadership of the Church of England. The collusion, coverups, misconduct, incompetence and corruption in safeguarding are well known. The Archbishops do nothing. The Church of England leadership is only concerned with safeguarding its own reputation. There is simply no commitment to any truth, justice, integrity, transparency, accountability, external scrutiny or regulatory intervention. The Independent Safeguarding Board and National Safeguarding Team do not operate policies or Terms of Reference that are compliant with GDPR, Human Rights Act 1998 and Equality Act 2010.
The Archbishops deny that normal data, human or employment rights are being withheld from respondents or complainants in National Safeguarding Team or Independent Safeguarding Board procedures. The entire Safeguarding processes of the Church of England are now an indelible, immoral and festering wound in the heart and soul of the church. Church of England safeguarding processes are inherently unsafe, partial, politicised and weaponised.
Still the Archbishops say and do nothing. That is why we must all protest, and invite everybody to show solidarity with the abused, and stand apart from the Church of England until such time as it submits, completely, to public standards of justice and truth…then repents, apologises and starts full and proper redress for its victims. Until then, the Church of England remains unsafe, and is in unsafe hands.
The Very Revd. Prof. Martyn Percy
Lyrics of the Song
I sing a song of freedom from injustice and from pain
I sing of gentle people daring to complain
I sing about a steeple looking down on London Town
I sing about a Bishop, an advisor to the Crown
And I sing of an abuser, travelling as a priest
With influence and power as a Chaplain to the police
I do not sing for vengeance, I do not sing for gain
I sing that Christianity be Christian once again
Chorus:
If there’s collusion…
Where are we to turn? Where is right or wrong?
If there’s collusion…
When makers of the law are breakers of the law
Until there is no law at all
And I sing about Survivor N, his name I can’t release
Vulnerable and just another victim of the priest
Complaining at the station but they did not lend an ear
And so I sing my song for you that everyone can hear
And when he told his story and that cannot be denied
They hunted every law book, every loophole they could find
“You might be right but have no right to speak out as you please
Speaking truth to power is dangerous journalese!”
Chorus:
Some friends they gathered round him to share their deep concern
In an e-mail to the Bishop that they privately did send
But confidence the Bishop broke and leaked it to the priest
Who used it then to get his victim charged by the police
“Luther Pendragon”, have you heard that name before?
Priceless in defending indefensible behaviour
From the tobacco companies and those of nuclear waste
And now the Church of Jesus Christ pays them for defence
Chorus:
A young man he is dying on the banks of the Lee
As far away from steeples, just as far as he could be
A female jogger found him, she brought him back to life
Such stress upon the vulnerable can lead to suicide
So I sing a song of freedom from injustice and from pain
I sing of gentle people daring to complain
I do not sing for vengeance, I do not sing for gain
Those of us who count ourselves as belonging to an older age-bracket will have grown up without any familiarity with the word ‘binary’. At some point we may have had exposure to the word in a mathematics/computer setting. Not having to deal with these disciplines on a day-to-day basis, most of us lost familiarity with the word until it reappeared in a quite new context some twenty years ago. The current common use of the word is found in the discussion of gender identity. Should we take the either/or, or binary standpoint that is held by many people claiming that gender is clearly to be identified as male and female? Should we alternatively accept that gender is a far more fluid concept that we were traditionally taught to believe, and that our gender/sex exists along a continuum? The debate is not one I want to have today but clearly, were it to be explored at depth, it would draw on a number of academic disciplines – cultural studies, theology, philosophy and psychology. The debate to be had on this sensitive topic cannot ever, surely, be closed down by simply quoting two or three verses from Scripture.
For me, the interesting part of this debate is not about where any of us stand on the transgender issue. Much more interesting is the fact that many people chose to think in binary terms in the first place. Binary thinking in a philosophical context embodies the idea that everything exists as either true or false. It is the world where if A is true then B must be false. Whether it is to do with the education I have received or for some other reason, I know that this way of thinking as a way of resolving many problems is not the least bit appealing for me. Obviously there are examples of contrasts or opposites where two statements cannot be true at the same time. If Bill is absent from a meeting, he cannot be present at the same time. But there are many other examples in ordinary discussion where we find that, between two extreme opposites, there are intermediate stages or grey areas. Human beings are very good at seeing two sides of a discussion and being unable to occupy one consistent position on either. Absolute consistent thinking about all kinds of topics may be less common than we think.
In literature there is a character created by Anthony Trollope called Mr Arabin. He ends up in one of the Barchester novels as the Dean of Barchester. Set against Mr Arabin at one stage is the notorious character called Mr Slope. Mr Slope, the chaplain of the Bishop of Barchester, is a highly ambitious cleric and uses his strong theological opinions to persuade Mrs Proudie, the Bishop’s wife, of his piety and seriousness in his efforts to become Dean. Mr Arabin finds it difficult to have such strong theological convictions and he refuses to play at church politics. The author means the reader to side with Mr Arabin in his steadfast determination to be free of ambition, rancour and defined opinions. He is the classic non-binary Victorian churchman. Trollope seems to prefer this to the partisan churchmanship wrangles of his day. These were not unlike our own.
In psychological discussion it is noted that some people find ambivalence or uncertainty about people or ideas quite hard to deal with. The following account of how people deal with this is found in an article in the Wall Street Journal from early 2021 by a psychologist, Andrew Hartz. According to his account, this ambivalence is a state of mind creating anxiety and this needs urgently to be resolved. One way of resolving the tension created by such internal anxiety is to react with a psychological defence mechanism called ‘splitting’. This, in the short term, resolves the contradictions of the ambivalence by retreating into a binary or simpler way of thinking. The other person is treated or projected upon as though they are perfect and all flaws are ignored. Alternatively, they are regarded as completely evil with no trace of goodness at all. The origins of this way of thinking seem to go back (according to Melanie Klein) to the world of the infant where the mother is experienced as all good or all bad (good breast and bad breast). The healthy response to the mother moves towards to successfully holding these two extremes as reconciled opposites. That stage, recognising good and evil in the same person, requires a certain level of psychological maturity. Up to that point the safe place is to be in one of the extremes which is easier to understand and make sense of. The process of splitting creates its own set of problems. If everyone exists only as a good friend or an enemy, such things as dialogue with opposing opinions and empathy for others are harder to find. In our imaginations other people are sometimes made into an ‘enemy’, possessing hostile intentions towards us. This projected role may or may not exist in realty. When we come to things like race, sexual identity and politics we find many examples of splitting and projection going on. It is quite hard to occupy a middle place in these discussions. The extent of binary thinking (and feeling) in these worlds of debate and discussion means that some people, including myself, hesitate to enter into any of them.
Binary thinking is, sadly, rife in church circles. I am aware of those who read this blog but differ profoundly with my approach to the Bible. Many Christians live in a binary world where there is a simple choice between ‘believing’ the Bible or lapsing into atheism. Having studied the Bible over a lifetime, I happen to believe that such an approach to scripture does serious damage to the test and also dishonours the intelligence of people who might otherwise be attracted to the Christian church. When such people approach the Church for a new understanding of life and profound insights into its meaning and purpose, they find themselves facing stumbling blocks and what are felt to be insults to their intelligence. Are they really required to read the stories of Genesis as historical accounts or maintain a single doctrine of the atonement when the words of the Bible give us several models? Should we not celebrate the way the Bible introduces us to rich varieties of symbol and meaning rather than a single ‘correct’ way of interpreting it?
Apart from religious debates, the world of binary strongly impacts the world of politics. I used to think that everyone believed in the values of democracy. This was before the world of extreme right-wing ideology started to impact the politics of democratic nations. According to some pollical commentators, some ordinary people have been persuaded that their political hero (Trump, Putin or Orban) is so admired and trusted that they do not want untidy institutions such as an opposition to waste time challenging their vision. The political leader is so venerated that they have acquired an almost divine status, rendering an opposition completely unnecessary and redundant. The same right-wing adulatory thinking about leaders also sweeps through many churches. I still remember an earnest Baptist telling me that a biblical discussion group was a contradiction in terms. How was it possible to ‘discuss’ the Bible when God’s will was so clearly set out for all to read? Needless to say, the local leader had been firmly projected upon. He was ready to take on the mantel and responsibility for revealing God’s inerrant Word and in the process be treated as infallible himself.
Clergy of my generation were not trained to occupy a place in a binary defined theological universe. When we see the temperature of the CofE turn more and more in the conservative binary direction, some of us wonder whether we would now commit so readily to an institution which appears, in many places, keen to exclude the non-binary vision. The LGBT debates are only one example where we are presented as involved in some kind of betrayal rather than simply as people who do not agree with the binary arguments about sexual/gender identity. Binary Christianity in this matter knows only one version of truth. Those who do not agree with this binary vision are deemed by some to be worthy of expulsion from the institution.
The recent Lambeth Conference has not yet expelled the so-called liberal wing of Anglicanism. It has, however, become increasingly clear that, in large swathes of the Communion, tolerant attitudes on sexual identity issues and liberal views on Scripture are becoming less and less acceptable. To repeat what I have said on occasions before, the problem is not what I think about the theology of conservative traditions, but it is the problem of their refusing to accept that my theological vision has a right to exist. I feel now that I am a member of a minority political party which for the time being is allowed to exist. In time it may be destroyed or exiled when the binary version of Christianity in charge has the power to get its own way. Something similar is being attempted in American politics. The party of Trump wishes for dominance in the country just as conservative binary Christians seek to exclude liberal views in the churches. Binary Christianity and politics clearly have an appeal to many people. To return to an earlier part of this blog, it may be simply because ambivalence is a hard reality to live with. Certainty is always more popular than uncertainty and security more appealing than risk. Some of us believe that the adventure of ambivalence and uncertainty is a better option than the straitjacket of authoritarianism. This is what we might describe as the modes of thought belonging to the extreme right-wing which has taken up residence in many Christian churches.
The amount of attention given to safeguarding for children and vulnerable adults in churches across the world varies enormously. We should, nevertheless, be able to expect that the abuse of minors and women would be universally recognised as evil, and that all Christian leaders will treat it with the seriousness that it deserves. Sadly, however, we read reports of Christian leaders themselves being involved in cases of abuse and these are distressingly common. In the last blog piece, we encountered another familiar theme – the tendency of many in positions of seniority in churches to put the protection of institutions and financial interests above the pain and damage suffered by abused individuals. The story of the Church’s failure in this area is well documented in Australia, Britain, the States and no doubt, in other nations. What does vary from nation to nation is the speed and effectiveness shown by the secular authorities in their response to the abuse problem. One nation, and I am here thinking of Australia, was ahead of the game in setting up a government Royal Commission to examine the whole issue. We in Britain were two years behind in seeing a government-sponsored body set up to look at the problem of child sexual abuse across the institutions, including the churches. This setting up of IICSA nearly did not happen because of a flagging political will to see the process through. Also, there was the difficulty of finding a suitably qualified person to act as Chair. The IICSA process is now almost complete and the whole conduct of safeguarding in the UK will draw on its truth-finding and recommendations for decades to come.
Across in America there is, as far as I can ascertain, nothing resembling the IICSA process or the Australian Royal Commission. The size of the country and its fragmentation into individual states no doubt makes such a project impossible. Nevertheless, America does have certain organisations equipped with both money and expertise to undertake important work in this area. I am in particular thinking of the work of the powerful and effective organisation known as GRACE. GRACE is a much larger set-up than our nearest UK equivalent, 31:8. Its expertise covers all the areas that the British organisation is involved in, namely responding to and analysing the institutional failings in the area of abuse. There is one major difference between the two organisations apart from size and budget. GRACE is deeply embedded in the legal aspects of safeguarding. It does not just offer consultancy advice to churches faced with abuse allegations. It will, when necessary, involve itself in the pursuit of legal claims against individuals and organisations. GRACE was founded by two individuals in 2004, one of whom is Billy Graham’s grandson and a lawyer, Boz Tchividjian. The acronym GRACE stands for Godly Response to Abuse in a Christian Environment. Boz brought to the organisation all his background of being part of a premier American evangelical family, but he added to this the incisive understanding of a lawyer who possessing a passion for protecting the weak and vulnerable.
The work of GRACE across the churches has had considerable impact on American church life in the twenty or so years of its existence. Several important investigations have enhanced its reputation and demonstrated its skill and effectiveness. Among its early pieces of work was a report which identified terrible abuse of all kinds being inflicted on the children of missionaries, popularly known as MKs or Mission Kids. These children had been taken with their parents to countries overseas to live in boarding schools while the parents were working in remote villages which were unsuitable for children. The GRACE report focussed on one group known as the Twelve Tribes Mission working in Senegal. GRACE located as many of these children as it could and learnt from them the appalling conditions that they had been subjected to. This included sexual and physical abuse. The report published in 2009 was meticulous and highly critical of the Mission. The organisation was severely censured for showing little interest in the interests and safety of these vulnerable American children under their care. The work of GRACE included in this case legal action against the Mission and a number of involved individuals were fired from their posts. Some congregations involved with the Southern Baptist scandal described in the last blog piece, also drew on the forensic wisdom possessed by GRACE in the task of understanding the corruption and failures of the SBC. It should be mentioned that Boz is no longer, since 2021, the executive director of the organisation, but he remains on the advisory panel.
One of the features of the safeguarding world in the CofE is that when we look for the church lawyers involved in abuse cases, we find many of them firmly lined up on the side of the institution. Survivors do not find legal assistance from the firms of lawyers who specialise in church law. The legal assistance they do receive comes from a number of specialist ‘secular’ lawyers. These are the ones who negotiate with the CofE’s insurer for compensation claims. I have good reports of their understanding and compassion towards survivors. There is also a third strand of legal activity in this area which my readers will be familiar with. This is found in the work of two doggedly independent retired lawyers, David Lamming and Martin Sewell. They are a source of much appreciated help and advice for survivors. The moral support they offer victims and survivors caught up in the Kafkaesque structures of church law is incalculable. Alongside this important task of supporting victims and survivors in their gruelling confrontations with the church authorities, these two also are constantly questioning and attempting to interpret for Synod members the application of church law to safeguarding. David is no longer on General Synod but still works tirelessly for survivors. One suspects that the Archbishops’ Council would prefer ordinary members of Synod to leave all legal matters to their ‘experts’. The notion that the legal opinions of senior church lawyers close to Church House and Lambeth Palace can be thought to be beyond the need for scrutiny and close examination by ordinary Synod members and clergy has proved to be a dangerous assumption. Anyone with the slightest sense of what is legally appropriate will have been alarmed by the conflicts of interest apparent in the Percy affair. One does not need to be a legal expert to realise that an ‘independent’ core group should not have known opponents of the one accused allowed to sit in judgment. With 60% of the current Synod unfamiliar with the history of the tangled legal trails around safeguarding over the past ten years, the legal memory and skill of the remaining independent lawyer on Synod, Martin Sewell, is needed more than ever.
This piece is meant to encourage the reader who is interested in holding the Church to account in its legal and moral failings over safeguarding, to have a look at the work of GRACE in America. We already possess high professionalism and insight in the organisation 31: 8. This needs to be combined with the probing questioning of GRACE or lawyers like Sewell and Lamming. In other words, we need the independent and informed work of both these independent entities, legal and professional, working together. Perhaps the Charity Commission will respond to Sewell’s recent challenging letter about incompetence and failure in the CofE and Archbishops Council with a similar suggestion. Might we dream that the Charity Commission demands that the CofE submits itself to a professionally competent body, outside its control, to offer advice and support in all matters to do with safeguarding? Independent is a word that perhaps needs to be avoided, as it has been thoroughly misapplied in recent months. The ombudsman role that is needed will need to be ‘third party’. They could do worse than consulting the directors and staff of the GRACE organisation in the States as well as talk to the two real ‘experts’ in this area that we have in Britain. Between them, they seem to be doing much that we need in our present safeguarding crisis in the Church of England.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the States is, after the Roman Catholics, the largest denominational church in the country. It claims a membership total of some 14 million members, mainly in the southern states. By British standards, the prevailing denominational structure is a very loose one. The Convention to which Southern Baptists congregations are affiliated, possesses no hierarchical structure as we would understand it. The SBC can best be described as a confederation of independent self-governing congregations, united only by their adherence to a common doctrinal statement. In practical terms this doctrinal unity allows all ministers in the denomination to train in one of the approved centrally funded colleges and also to cooperate in missional efforts overseas. Real power or authority is located within each local congregation. Somehow this loose confederation of what we would describe as conservative evangelical congregations has held together for 170 years. The ‘Southern’ part of its title emerged as the result of 19th century theological arguments over the position of the church with regard to slavery. Those in the southern regions of the States decided that they could not retain fellowship with the northerners who had taken up arms to abolish the institution of slavery.
In spite of what we in Britain would consider to be a very loose denominational structure, Southern Baptists have maintained over the decades some aspects of system of a centralised bureaucracy, based at their headquarters in Nashville Tennessee. SBC congregations send to the centre the dues needed to finance some administration, missions and educational projects. Representatives of the entire SBC family also gather annually in June for a huge assembly or Convention. Here doctrinal matters are discussed and voted on by congregational representatives known as messengers. Such a gathering is of course enormously cumbersome as a decision-making body, so it has not been difficult for an Executive Committee (EC) to control the agenda. It took considerable effort and lobbying for the issue of sexual abuse to become a topic for the Convention but eventually it broke through into the awareness of the entire gathering and an investigation ordered. It is this investigation by a professional body called Guidepost Solutions that produced a substantial detailed report in May this year. Although some of the story of cover-up and abuse had been earlier covered by the Press, notably the Houston Chronicle, the tale that is contained in the 288-page report is still shocking. One commentator described it as apocalyptic. I have skim read the entire document but much of what I write here, to be truthful, is more indebted to the excellent summary put out by the magazine Christianity Today.
In many ways the most predictable parts of the Guidepost Solutions report are the shocking and disturbing accounts of abuse. The common theme of powerful men, even a President of the entire organisation, exploiting their power in order to sexually abuse women and children is something that, tragically, we have often met before. It seems that nothing had prepared the SBC for these kinds of revelations. What is perhaps of more immediate interest to us on this blog is the way that some of the EC, especially its leaders, had known that something was going on. Those in the know had failed to deal with the problem over twenty or more years because of the legal advice they received. The frequent stories and disclosures of abuse had been received, but the lawyers working for the SBC at the centre warned the leaders against getting involved. The EC is a group of around 70 that met throughout the year, but it seems that there was an inner clique that exercised the real power in the committee. It was this small sub-group, headed up by an elected President that bears much responsibility for the cover-ups that took place.
The EC, encouraged by the in-house lawyers, was always keen to emphasise that they had no executive power over the SBC congregations. All the real authority in the SBC structure belonged to the individual congregations. This claim of official powerlessness provided a convenient excuse for doing absolutely nothing when disclosures were received about sexual abuse in Baptist congregations around the country. Briefed by their lawyers, the EC fended away complaints and disclosures by saying that they had no means to intervene with the affairs of local congregations. This failure even to make any record even when ministers were sent to prison for abuse offences meant that abusing ministers and lay workers were able to flit from congregation to congregation without anyone in a position of authority keeping an eye on them. In fact, the SBC did possess a secret list of reports of abuse committed by affiliated ministers and paid officers, but this information was never made available to congregations wanting to appoint a new member of staff.
If there are ‘villains’ to be found in the narrative of the abuses uncovered by Guidepost, they are numbered not only among the actual abusers and those ignored the abuse stories, but among the legal teams who advised the SBC and the EC over 60 years. One particular firm that was giving obstructive legal advice is named as Guenther, Jordan and Price. The lawyers in this firm were consistently advising against any action on the part of the EC. They feared that the EC might become legally liable if it in any way involved itself in any of the affiliated local Baptist congregations. Even when the incidence of sexual abuses in the SBC were becoming widely known across the nation, the same mantra-like legal advice was being put forward as sound legal counsel. It took the bravery of individuals like Rachel Delhollander to tell the church and the nation what was going on. http://survivingchurch.org/2018/02/02/the-rachael-delhollander-story-abuse-forgiveness-and-church-exclusion/ She and others had to endure years of vilification, shunning and shame for their valiant attempts to draw the attention of the whole country to the problem. The culture of the EC was one where any report of abusive behaviour was treated like a threat. Every episode was seen, not as a cry for help, but as an attack on the institution of the SBC. Thus, it had to be resisted by all means available. It was only when a chorus of voices from outside, shared through the internet, eventually became impossible to ignore, that something had to give.
The task of survivors and advocates in trying to bring accountability to the SBC was in many ways harder than for those undertaking the same task in Britain. Such whistle-blowers were constantly told that they did not understand the legal basis of the SBC or its organisational structure. Alternatively, they were accused of being out to destroy the denomination. Two lawyers in particular, Augie Boto and Jim Guenther were successfully peddling this narrative to successive presidents who, with their close circle, heard many abuse stories. Any intervention on their part would create massive liabilities for the whole denomination. Like the three wise monkeys, it was better for the presidents and their advisers neither to see, hear or speak anything on the topic of abuse. Ignoring the pain and harm that came to hundreds of abuse victims at the hands of their predators was considered a price worth paying for the protection of the reputation of this denomination. Time will tell whether this wickedly inappropriate advice has contributed a single thing of value for the SBC or whether it has fatally undermined the cause of Baptist churches, not only in America but right across the world.
I am sure my readers can think of a number of parallels in the UK. Legal advice is offered to protect an institution, like the CofE, but it ends up causing serious damage to individuals. The SBC scandal, if we can call it that, will take several decades to heal, if it ever does. In Britain too we have seen attempts to resolve issues relating to abuses of power by the use of ecclesiastical legal tools. These often do little to help individuals. The use of legal processes in church life may sometimes be necessary, but quite often they increase a sense of stress among all concerned. Many of us would like to feel that the legal cases that the church gets involved in will become fewer in number. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. The use of legal protocols and processes seem to increase, adding to the sense of fear and fragility among those who work for the Church in a variety of capacities.
In a final addendum, the BBC website reported that the SBC is to face an investigation by the American Department of Justice. One wonders whether our own Church will face the possibility of a secular judge-led investigation of its internal processes. Currently we are waiting to see if the Charity Commission will recommend any outside intervention in the Church’s affairs. Certainly, a sense of incoherence in church business over safeguarding and similar activities appears to be getting greater. Perhaps we are closer to the SBC situation of being investigated by outside authority than we might have thought possible.
I have more than once complained that it is difficult to penetrate the complexity of safeguarding organisations at the national level of the CofE. Most people become bewildered at the plethora of organisations with the word safeguarding attached to them. Janet Fife wrote a very helpful glossary on this blog in an attempt to demystify the way things work in the CofE. http://survivingchurch.org/2020/12/15/alphabet-soup-a-glossary-of-safeguarding/ One of the issues that helps to muddle the situation still further is the fact that when survivors are included in a national body working for safeguarding, we cannot know for reasons of confidentiality who these survivors are. Are we to take on trust that the survivor members of the group are true representatives of this group and that they are in constant touch with others in a similar situation? There is no way that we can know whether the survivor representatives on the new Redress Scheme Project Board or the National Safeguarding Survivors Group (NSSG) are reaching out to others to gauge their opinions and ideas. If there is in fact a lively interchange and proper communication between these ‘official’ survivors and others who remain suspicious of these groups, I am ready to be corrected. All I can say that the survivors I know do not feel safe at present to engage with any of the national Church structures. For a variety of reasons, they stand apart from them.
One individual who works tirelessly for the cause of survivors at General Synod and in many other ways is the retired lawyer and Synod member Martin Sewell. He has been an occasional contributor to Surviving Church and has taken a prominent part in supporting the cause of survivors, becoming especially involved in the case of Dean Percy. As a lawyer, he brings all his analytical skills to the table and helps the rest of us understand the legal complexities of the structures set up by the CofE. He was one of the authors of the so-called Micah 6:8 letter. http://survivingchurch.org/2020/08/12/letter-to-charity-commissioners-over-concerns-about-church-of-england-safeguarding/ This was addressed to the Charity Commission (CC) and drew their attention to the failings of CofE safeguarding processes. As far as I can tell, this 2020 letter was never replied to but it was a significant support to survivors in the way it articulated some of their longing for justice and transparency in the safeguarding processes.
Recently Martin Sewell has written a further letter to the CC. This time it is not a letter which supporters were invited to sign. https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Sewell-letter-to-Charity-Commission-Earner-5.8.2022-v.2-9.8.2022.pdf It is a letter of some 13 pages, so it requires to be read more than once to extract its meaning. In essence it is claiming that the CofE has gone beyond its level of competence in trying to resolve numerous failings in the safeguarding sphere. Its efforts to set up safe and independent structures to bring support to the survivor community are failing. There are two key case studies where these failures are explored, the Dean Percy case and the anomalies and problems for the CofE in setting up the so-called Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB).
Sewell does not mince his words in the CC letter. He looks back over the last few years of safeguarding activity in the Church and finds that word ‘incompetent’ is a good description for what has gone on. He mentions the Matt Ineson affair and the Makin review on John Smyth, now 800 days late. More recently we have had the failures revealed in the Fr Griffin case and of course the never-ending Percy scandal. Martyn Percy has written a detailed complaint to the Archbishops’ Council (AC) about the many legal and moral failures in his case. He still awaits a complete response to the many issues he raised. What the AC have put in place is a ‘lessons learned’ enquiry from the body set up less that two years ago, the ISB. This was commissioned before the Chair of the Group, Maggie Atkinson, was required to ‘step back’ from her position at the request of the AC. Given the fact that Atkinson was the most experienced of the three (part-time) members of the ISB, it is hard to see how they are equipped to tackle the much-needed review of the issues in the Percy affair even if they had their full complement of members. Having lost their Chair, the ISB will find it difficult to function effectively even with the most straightforward of commissioned tasks. According to Sewell’s detailed analysis of the problems surrounding the ISB, the needed expertise is simply not there to undertake something as complex as examining the Christ Church affair and the questionable behaviour of certain clergy in the Diocese of Oxford
Apart from the issue of whether it has the competence to do a technically complex task, the ISB is also critiqued by Sewell’s letter for its questionable claims of independence. For such a group of people to claim to be independent when they have no legal identity apart from the group that brought them into being (the AC), is impossible to do. As we have discussed on this blog before, independence requires a number of conditions to be in place. The ISB is appointed and paid for by the AC. Also, recently, the AC has shown itself to have the power to compel the Chair to ‘step back’. There appears to be no other body in any way involved in overseeing the ISB’s work. When these questions over legal and independent status were raised by synod members in July, the answers that were given were vague and confusing. It seemed to Sewell that senior members of the CofE had not thought through or worked out what structures were needed to provide a robust system of independent safeguarding for the Church. His purpose for writing to the CC was an attempt to again force the CofE to put in place a system that would ensure a level of adequate professional competence in the whole safeguarding enterprise. Victims and survivors need to know that they will receive a hearing and justice from the Church. Those accused of abuse would also need to know that they would receive a proper hearing and that their story too would be heard and considered impartially.
Readers of this blog will know many occasions in the history of CofE safeguarding when impartiality has not been preserved. From the refusal of a serving diocesan bishop to cooperate with the police when trying to protect Peter Ball from prosecution, to the appalling treatment in court of Julie MacFarlane at the trial of her abuser, the Church has often shown a determination to protect itself at all costs. Many clergy live in dread of the power of the CDM and the fear of being considered dispensable when the reputation of the wider institution is under attack. We must be grateful when so much effort and money is being spent on institutional self-defence by the church, that we have these few individual legal voices, notably Martin Sewell and David Lamming. They are there in the public arena defending victims and the wrongly accused. I have no notion how much in total the CofE spends on itself for legal and public relations purposes, but the sums must be counted in the millions. On this other side, for the defence of the survivors and the wrongly accused, the total sum is infinitesimal in comparison. Lamming and Sewell are, fortunately for the cause, both now retired and each contributes much of their available time to the task of bringing light, truth and justice into the Church. It is bizarre that they are opposed by senior members of the CofE when they are working so hard to preserve impartiality, integrity and honesty in the Church. Surviving Church applauds them and all that they do for justice and for the needs of abuse survivors as well as the falsely accused.
Over the years of editing Surviving Church, (as followers will have noticed!), I have routinely avoided getting involved in debates about the LGBT issue. My main reason for side-stepping this issue is simply because it is not an area where I feel I have any expertise or, indeed, anything useful to say. The only time that this broad topic touches on my real concerns is when I see the raw exercise of power by church people being exercised against minorities. The sight of an African bishop trying to exorcise the gay activist Richard Kirker at Lambeth 98 is an image that is stored in the memory of many of us. The recent Lambeth Conference has also shown that at every turn the Communion is haunted by the infamous vote on a proposal known as Lambeth 1.10 at Lambeth 98. There is plenty to be found on a variety of websites about the history of this statement and the way that these few words have become what appears to be a defining badge for many in the Global South and how they see the gay issue. Lambeth 1.10 is claimed by many in the Communion to be the official position of the entire Communion which can never be altered. Unfortunately, the prominence given to the statement will ensure that the current 2022 Conference may be remembered for little else than the discussions around this infamous proposal. It is as though a poisonous plant has been inserted into the Lambeth Conference process and no one really knows how to move beyond it.
As I have already indicated, the place where LGBT issues coincide with the main concerns of this blog is when we find bullying, ostracism and discrimination directed at members of these minority groups. These three words, each describing negative behaviour against such groups, involve abuses of power. The LGBT community frequently do complain about negative experiences in being part of church congregations. The fact that such bullying is at the hands of outwardly faithful Christian people has to be a source of concern. Sometimes a mild generalised disapproval against gay lifestyles and relationships changes into something vitriolic, obsessive, and hateful. Some preaching seems to make this single cause so prominent that you might get the impression that the definition of ‘orthodox’ Christian behaviour and belief is found in the one who makes the correct condemnatory remarks towards the LGBT community. In practice, this has had the consequence that many congregations are complete no-go areas for these communities.
As a reaction to the exclusiveness found in many conservative churches in the CofE and elsewhere, other congregations have pushed against this and are trying to demonstrate a different way, the direction of welcome and inclusivity. One particular church that followed this inclusive path is the church at St James Didsbury near Manchester where Lizzie Lowe had been a member. http://survivingchurch.org/2018/06/15/lizzie-lowe-a-death-and-a-congregation-transformed/ Lizzie had taken her own life after concluding that her teenage lesbian feelings were unacceptable to God. This teaching had not been particularly prominent in the St James’ teaching, but somehow a negative message had been picked by the 14-year-old. Her death was a profound shock to the vicar and his congregation. They then laboured to explore and put in place a ministry of welcome to people with same sex attraction, like Lizzie, and see what it might look like.
At a recent conference I attended online, this inclusive welcome theme was further explored. A network called Open Table has been set up around the country to support church congregations trying to create an environment where members of the LGBT community and other minorities can feel safe. They will not have to listen to sermons which show an obsessive interest in their private sex lives or seek to ‘convert’ one sexual preference for another. As I heard this word ‘safe’ it occurred to me that the gay/trans communities are not the only ones to feel unsafe in some of our churches. The whole safeguarding enterprise is, as readers of this blog will know, bedevilled by situations where abuse survivors can feel decidedly unsafe or under siege. One reason for a chronic lack of feelings of safety among survivors of abuse, is that their experiences of past betrayal disturb the fantasy of a congregation which believes that Christians should always be trusted without question. Any infliction of suffering by a Christian on another is a deeply unsettling narrative which many would rather not hear. Christians prefer to push away such stories which may involve facing up to the moral frailty of some Christian leaders. A safe church is also one which is ready to hear hard truths. We need the places of safety for both groups, minority sexual groups and survivors alike. What might such a safe church in fact look like?
In offering some kind of answer to this question, I am guided in part by descriptive words used by this network Open Table. This organisation, as we noted above, focuses on the need to provide a place of spiritual safety and belonging to minority groups. Offering a place of safety and an opportunity to belong is something that people of all kinds need in their Christian life. What would the church look like if this Open Table model really succeeded in making the church a true place of welcome? The words that sum up the way that Open Table operates are three in number. They are ‘included’, ‘affirmed’ and ‘empowered’.
Going to a church service, especially for the first time, takes a great deal of social courage, as we all know. We sense that people will be looking at us, making instant judgements based on our clothing, appearance and our body language. Will we be included in this group of people that already know each other well, or will we stand around at the end of the service look lost and hoping someone will speak to us? Inclusion, as we all know, is quite hard work both for the giver and receiver. It takes social skills, not possessed by all, to be successful. To be included in a group, which may be quite small, takes determination on the part of a newcomer. Every congregation has discussed this problem. Asking questions of the newcomer which are neither superficial nor intrusive requires skill. The most important qualification for doing this important work of inclusion may be simply the ability to love people. The love word requires that we do not want to force anyone into a mould which we pre-determine. A trained church leader should be quietly encouraging those people with the gift of unconditional welcome to practise their gift.
The stage of being ‘affirmed’ is the next stage in coming to the stage where church starts to be a place of safety. Another word for affirmation is acceptance. To be accepted Is to be known by a group of people. They honour us by acknowledging our presence and showing us that they feel safe with us as we are with them. This place of acceptance is a place that is earned over a period of time. It is being in a place where trust has been gained and forms the basis for a future relationship with individuals and the whole community. The gaining of this status of being trusted will hopefully remain in place over years and decades.
The third word ‘empowered’ describes the process whereby we take a distinct role within the community or congregation. To be empowered is to go from being a trusted individual to being one who takes a responsible or trusted position within the whole. Who is doing the empowering? At a human level such apportioning of responsibility comes through a committee or an annual meeting decision. It is also possible to see the empowering as something happening in a vocational sense. It is sometimes helpful to see church tasks as involving the gifts of the Spirit. A Christian is always entitled to seek such spiritual support and guidance for any task which he/she sees as part of their individual Christian pilgrimage. When the sense of being spiritually empowered is felt, it gives a strong boost to our overall awareness of being in the place that God wants us to be.
It would not be hard to write a description of church life where none of these three experiences are encountered. There are many churches that exclude, ignore or marginalise. My readers will no doubt be recalling episodes in their lives that illustrate ways where they have encountered the opposite of the ideal church experience that I have been trying to imagine. Even when the ideals are actively worked for, the perversity of human nature has a way of changing something that should be positive into something negative. The opening for experiencing ourselves as valued and able to contribute to the whole can be turned upside down by a single individual keen to play power games. Quite often they have some psychological need to control and dominate. Then there are the political games over churchmanship or sexuality that pollute the atmosphere all too easily and may make church life seem an endless power struggle. The hope must always be that there are individuals and congregations that have caught the vision of what are called Open Table churches. We need places of radical fearless welcome in God’s name. All of us need such places and we need to do all in our power, whether as leaders or ordinary pew members to bring them to pass. In practice it is quite hard, but the starting place has to be this vision of what is possible. Church congregations can be places of welcome and joy or they can be places riddled with politics and power games. Most of us would opt for the first but the sheer contrariness of human nature seems to ensure that we often find ourselves negotiating with the second. The church then ceases to be an encounter with God but a survival experience of competing power games and factions. Let us be grateful that we can, whatever our current church situation, at least imagine a church free of such things. It is our imagination that that may be the seed of a church that is indeed an Open Table, and through it others may come and discover the power of belonging, inclusion, and acceptance.
Among my collection of Bibles which I have acquired over many years, there is one that I do not often use. By chance I pulled this particular volume off the shelf when I was listening to a lecture on the Bible from youtube. I then remembered why this copy of the Bible had fallen into disfavour. The Bible, a RSV, was a version where some passages were printed in a much smaller font than the rest and to read these sections requires one to hunt around for reading glasses. I then began to consider why some sections of scripture were thought to be worthy of the small print treatment. It seemed likely that the editor of this edition was trying, maybe, to protect a reader from having to wade through the long boring sections of the Old Testament. Certainly, one can see good reasons to suggest that a typical reader might not want to be burdened by endless genealogies, the exact dimensions of the Jerusalem Temple and the precise instructions to be observed so that Temple sacrifices might be done properly and correctly. These sections require some determination to read in full. The RSV editor perhaps may also be saying that these sections are unsuitable to be read in church. The inevitable question arises for the conscientious student of Scripture: what do we do with these parts the Bible that do not edify or appear to have anything useful to say to a modern Christian?
The repeated refrain which we are hearing at Lambeth 2022 is an appeal to the clear teaching of Scripture from members of conservative groups, such as the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches. The leader of the group, Archbishop Justin Badi of South Sudan simply stated in an interview: “Being a Christian, you go according to what the Bible teaches.” His body claims to represent 75% of all Anglicans and thus their ‘biblical’ perspective on the marriage issue is the one that the entire Anglican Communion, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, who convened the Conference, should give way to. The problem for those of us who are trying to be good Anglicans, but who read our bibles noting the passages that are in some cases unreadable or even offensive, is that this statement will not do. If we base all that we think about marriage and sexual behaviour on the many models presented in Scripture, we get a very confusing picture. Should we aspire to the examples of David or Solomon who seemed to have made little effort to remain faithful to a single partner? Is not so-called Christian marriage a modern construct rooted in a few carefully selected passages from the Old and New Testaments? One of the great triumphs of the Reformation was that it offered the possibility of reading the Bible to ordinary people who possessed the ability to read. They would have been able to study for themselves the entire text. In spite of the ubiquity of copies of the Bible in almost every household, certainly in past generations, the knowledge of what the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, actually says is poor and frequently almost non-existent. Two sources of bible knowledge remain for those who attend church. One is a past exposure to books of bible stories for children. These were absorbed in their younger years. A second source of biblical knowledge may come from listening to a preacher who quotes texts to help undergird the various points of Christian teaching that are being expounded. Quoting the Bible in this way is of course a legitimate activity. The problem arises when the preacher goes on to imply that the text from either testament is susceptible to a straightforward and unambiguous interpretation as to what it teaches. In many cases there may be a lot to be unravelled before we can get to a meaning or interpretation. Because most people do little in the way of independent reading of Scripture, they are entirely dependent on leaders and preachers to interpret it for them. This is especially true when it comes to understanding what the Bible has to say about sexual behaviour. A convenient veil is drawn over the fact that the Bible is full of sexual behaviour that would be totally out of place, if not criminal, in today’s world. Bigamy and concubinage offend our civil and religious laws today. Many Christians seem able to glide over the things that indicate immoral behaviour as though they were not important. We seem fixated, as far as the OT is concerned, on the passages where same sex behaviour is mentioned in the book of Leviticus.
One form of sexual misbehaviour which today is universally condemned right across the world is the sexual exploitation of children. And yet in a ‘small print’ section of Scripture, Numbers 31, instructions are given by Yahweh for the treatment of virgin women and girls after a military victory. We are left to imagine this treatment of girls, some presumably barely in their teens, who had been captured in war. All the men who might have protected these unfortunate girls are to be killed alongside older women and presumably their very young children. It would be extremely hard, if not impossible, for anyone today to find a way of reading such a passage and concluding with the words ‘This is the Word of the Lord’.
Horror passages of grotesque abuses in the exercise of power can be found elsewhere in the Bible. It is not hard for the cruellest tyrants of history to find biblical examples of such things as genocide, mass slaughter and enslavement in the pages of Scripture. We can imagine how these examples of cruel behaviour were part of the culture known in biblical times. A certain ruthlessness would have been required to allow the ancient Israelites to continue to exist as a people. Kill or be killed was no doubt part of the ‘ethics’ of the time. The very continued existence of the people signifies that they were successful in the messy business of survival when so many of their rivals have disappeared into historical oblivion. We could argue about what laws of ethics might be considered appropriate for a Hebrew leader alive in 1200 BCE. We might even find some way of excusing this barbaric behaviour on the grounds that it has led to their survival. Even if we may possibly make some excuses for the utter barbarity of ancient Israelite soldiers, we will never conclude that this is in any way a pointer to what God requires of us today. In other words, the behaviour apparently commanded by God cannot be taken as an instruction across cultures and time. In short, the fact that certain behaviour is reportedly approved by God in the text of Scripture does not in any way necessarily justify it for us today.
The so-called liberals, especially those who have studied the text of Scripture at some depth, will be aware of these horror passages but still be able to speak of the Bible as a whole as revealing the word of God. The difference between conservatives and liberals in this context is that a liberal has a well-developed sense of historical context. A ‘rogue’ passage such as Numbers 31 is not to be for the liberal reader an infallible revelation of the will of God. Rather, we read it for what it is, the account of a tribal nation very slowly moving out of barbarity towards a semblance of humanity and just behaviour. We are also not tied, for the same reason, to Jewish dietary laws or sacrificial practices. When the Bible is read by liberals with careful attention to context, historical setting and a sense of theological development, there is never the same concern to swear any allegiance to these difficult texts and treat them as infallible. The ethical insights of the 21st century are, we believe, examples of God speaking to us today. Many conservative Christians are caught up with the idea that Scripture is the only medium through which God can speak to us. I recently listened to Archbishop Foley Beach, the presiding bishop over the network of Anglican churches known as GAFCON. He used the well-worn phrases when speaking about Scripture. ‘The Bible clearly states’ ‘God speaks to us in the words of Scripture’. These claims were being made in the context of the gay marriage debate. Has the Archbishop actually read the whole Bible? I can understand that a faithful member of a conservative congregation would only know the passages filtered to them through the leaders. The leaders themselves have no such excuse. They know or should know these horror passages, and these must surely still have the power to shock or stop all in their tracks whatever their theological background.
Lambeth 2022 is likely, on present showing, to be an unsuccessful attempt to bring together two tribes of Christians. The issue is, as many have pointed out, not the gay issue or the nature of marriage. The issue is about the nature of Scripture and the authority it has for us. Is our relationship with Scripture to be like a relationship with another person where the mutual discovery takes place over a number of years and is never complete? Alternatively, are we, like the conservative groups, going to retain the fantasy that we possess an infallible document, the meaning of which has already been fixed for all time? A quote from Scripture is thought to be definitive, unable to be interrogated or questioned. God does indeed speak to us through the medium of Scripture but the task of revealing that truth takes much effort and time. Even when we think we have the answer, that answer may not be fixed for ever. It is like a journey of discovery. The Bible is, as is true of the Christian life as a whole, a source of endless discovery, endless newness. We need often to ponder the meaning of Jesus’ words: ‘Behold I make all things new’.
Highly recommended viewing! Hope you can make it work. It is a three minute clip.
