If you were ever to examine the contents of a formal library in an English stately home, you might find that a high proportion of the volumes are leather-bound collections of sermons by Anglican clergy.  Many of these published works were what we would now call vanity projects.  The cost of printing and publishing was extraordinarily high, and it is hard to imagine that the reading public had an appetite for the 45-minute reflections by learned clerics.  The people who were interested in reading these volumes were perhaps the authors themselves and those in their circle.  I may be wrong in my surmise.  Certainly, few people today have the patience or the stamina to read volumes of sermons of the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  

Since retirement I have become a ‘consumer’ of other people’s sermons.  This experience has made me become a critic of my own offerings in the past.  Discovering the things that you like and dislike in other people’s preaching helps one to become retrospectively much more aware of personal failures in the past.  I want to start with naming two things that I find irritating in the sermons I hear today.  The first is the attempt by a preacher to be clever.  One particular trick that is sometimes played by preachers are the lengthy quotes.  A sermon of ten to twelve minutes can take one or possibly two quotations from a non-biblical source, but when there are seven or eight quotations from learned books or poems, the thread (if there is one!) is destroyed.   All that is left is a preacher trying to be wise, and a congregation which is left confused by the way the argument of the sermon went over their heads.

The second great source of angst for me, at any rate, is the repeated use of biblical words or phrases without saying anything fresh about their meaning.  Sometimes a single word with a strong biblical provenance like love, faith or salvation is repeated over and over again.  Just because certain words are common in Scripture, it does not mean that they have a clear meaning that is current today.   A preacher should pay close attention to the likelihood (even probability) that members of a congregation are carrying a degree of misunderstanding in their interpretation of biblical words and ideas.  Biblical words or phrases have a variety of potential meanings.  A preacher is permitted to suggest that our living in the 21^st century affects the way we use words and it is important to realise that there are indeed areas of potential confusion in the way we use words now which does not help us understand scripture.

After listening to a sermon, I sometimes emerge from listening with one of these two complaints.  The first is that I lost the plot somewhere about a third of the way through because I was trying to see the connection of the quotations mentioned and failing in the effort.  The second complaint is that the preacher has been battering the congregation with his/favourite biblical words and phrases without giving a single new insight as to their meaning.  To be told, for example, that the Christian command to love is central, is hardly edifying.  The nuance of meaning in the word itself is enormous.  In addition to using the word love, we need to engage with all the ways of understanding it in contemporary thought.  What is the status of love in race relations for example? -or immigration? -or same sex partnerships?  Every single biblical word which has currency in ordinary parlance needs to be used with extraordinary care.  The potential for a congregation to lapse into their existing tramlines of thought, when presented with certain words, needs to be constantly challenged.  A listener to our sermon about love, for example, must not be allowed to think only in terms of a Mills and Boon romance.  Words like forgiveness and reconciliation all need to come over in a sermon context as words containing a challenge.  We need to feel that sense of challenge, particularly if the word had that character when they were first used within Scripture or when coming from the mouth of Jesus himself.

In my final Lent as a parish priest in Scotland, I led a group on the meaning of certain common Bible words which were either easily misunderstood or allowed to have meanings that did not do justice to the ones in the Bible itself.  On one evening I spent 35-40 minutes exploring in both testaments the word ‘Word’.   On another evening I gave the same treatment to the word ‘memorial’.  Without getting into the detail of these Lenten sessions, it has to be said that I allowed my commentary study and my linguistic understanding gained from both Hebrew and Greek, to come into play.  Even if my small group might not remember all the detail, the main message was to say ‘never assume that because a word in the Bible sounds like one we use in day-to-day speech, that its meaning is exhausted by  the common use today.  Expect a deeper, even unexpected, meaning in these words’.  Bible study will always go deeper than knowing the surface words of a modern translation.  Perhaps one should also add: ‘Be very wary of a preacher who presumes to understand completely any text in Scripture.  There is always more to be said!’

In writing the above I am not suggesting that deep linguistic analysis should be part of a sermon.  Such exploration may need to be part of organised study groups or even through formal study.  I would, however, want a listener to any of my sermons to have a sense that whatever I say is never the last word.  There is always more to be discovered.  If the presentation can be made sufficiently interesting that that the listener wants to hear more, then so much the better.  Whatever is said in a sermon, I would always aim to ensure that there was always something to be taken away and remembered.  It probably does not matter if the main thread of an argument is forgotten. It is more important if the preacher leaves behind a word, a picture or a story.  The carefully placed anecdote/picture raises a sermon from an easily forgotten sequence of words to something to be mulled over and remembered.  My own preference is for a vividly described visual image.  I probably tend towards the picture or image as this is my preferred way of dealing with abstract ideas.   If, by dwelling on an idea, it presents itself to me in a pictorial form, then I will share that image with a congregation.  If the image is told well, it is likely to be remembered long after the rest of the sermon is forgotten.  Better still, we may find that the remembered image links back to the main topic of the sermon.

The spiritual tradition of Ignatius of Loyola has given to Christian practice a legacy of image making.  The encouragement, in that tradition, to create vivid representations of gospel events within the mind is a style of spirituality that used to be much spoken about.  Having never been on an Ignatian retreat, I am not aware of whether this practice is much in evidence today.  Nevertheless, I am instinctively drawn to this method as it makes the truth of the gospel encounter with Jesus an exercise of the imagination as much as of the mind.  My exposure to the Orthodox traditions of visual encounters with pictures and icons also makes me want to explore the idea of ‘seeing’ the truth rather than understanding it.  In the talk on icons that I used to offer to church groups, I would make great play of the idea in Orthodox spirituality that it is the job of the Christian to contemplate through seeing the mystery of God.  It takes some adjustment to grasp this idea but once it is understood, people are grateful to have this special insight into another Christian culture.  Perhaps in another blog I will say more on this topic.

In our final summary we have moved from the intellectualised habits of understanding to a simpler method which uses the capacity to see or visualise and to enjoy stories as a method of connecting with truth.  If I am in any way correct that this method comes naturally to most human beings, then that should alter the way we engage with and present truth.  It also perhaps indicates that our styles of sermon giving should adjust.  Although I do not preach any more, I would always in theory want to enlist such tools for understanding in every sermon I preached.  Perhaps I am hinting that this method is one worth following for others who exercise this sacred task of preaching.  Everyone can see, or at least visualise in the mind, and everyone can follow a story.  If truth is potentially found in such pictures or stories, then perhaps we should be offering far more of such preaching fare. Congregations may also be learning in this process to receive better something which is edifying, inspiring and life-changing.

A farewell sermon preached in Oxford on May 14th 2022 by

The Very Revd. Professor Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church (2014-2022)

Readings: Psalm 80; 1 Samuel 16: 1-13; Matthew 7: 19-27

Personal Note: Today we begin with an enormous thank you to all those who have, over the past four plus-years have been so kind, caring and supportive towards Emma and me.  We want to thank everyone for coming and being here today, and to thank those who wanted to be amongst us, yet could not be.  In the course of this lengthy ordeal – which at times has felt gruelling – I can only say that we have felt sustained by prayer and love like never before. This care has also been material. We have received several thousand messages, cards and letters of kind support from all over the world, representing not just friendships, but also deep connections with the wider world, universities at home and abroad, and people and places near and far.  There have been phone calls, flowers, meals, many cakes, and reassuring hugs. ‘Thank you’ does not even begin to express our gratitude. It never can.

I want to especially thank – on behalf of us all – our staff at the Deanery: Kim, Tina, Jess, Rachel and Maggie – who will have welcomed you and thousands of others over the past eight years to Christ Church for suppers, receptions, teas, coffees, more coffees, mulled wine…other events, and more coffee. Between them, they have notched up over 65 years of combined service, and we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for all of their unfailingly professional, cheerful, diligent, resilient and caring service. Thank you.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank some others too.  This could be a long list, but let me just thank the Rector of Exeter for his kindness and care in lending in using the Chapel today, and to Andrew the Chaplain, the Choir, and all who have made this possible.  I also want to especially thank Deborah, Alan, Paul, Matt, Karen, Iain, Erica, Tom, Henry, Jonathan, Linda, Suzanne, Martin, Angela, Robin, Elizabeth, Andrew, Catherine, Sarah, Sean, Rosie, Peter, Corinne, Colin, Frances, David, Nigel and many others, who for various reasons, preferred not to be named.  I also especially want to express gratitude for those here today representing an extraordinary network of survivors and victims of abuse within the church, who are exemplars of such care, courage and compassion in the face of their own sufferings and trauma, and yet have continued to model the most extraordinary resilience and hope to so many in their ongoing campaigns for justice and truth to reform a broken church in a needy world.

Last, but not least, the nucleus of the sustaining beloved community has been Emma and our sons, who have had to bear all things, and hope for better.  That they have done this with such fierce, determined and persistent love and care is part of the lightness of being that is sometimes hard to even hold, let alone comprehend. Such care and support bears testimony to some of the deep truths that we hold dear in common: that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome. That love, hope, faith and charity are hard to extinguish, and persist. And in all this, I have been mindful – as has Emma – of our enduring bonds of affection and gratitude with the congregations of the cathedral, colleagues, hundreds of staff and volunteers, students and alumni. You will always be in our prayers, and remembered with abiding gratefulness.

Sermon: Sometimes we choose the readings for a sermon, and sometimes they choose us. St. Matthias is the Apostle who replaced Judas, and was chosen by means of lottery to take the number of disciples back up to twelve.  But before we talk about Matthias, we need a word about the two deaths we remember from Holy Week. Noting that on Good Friday and after the death of Jesus, all the disciples dispersed and ran away, one modern poet, Norma Farber (‘Compassion’) asks where we might find Mary, the mother of Jesus on that day? 

In Mary’s house the mourners gather.

Sorrow pierces them like a nail.

Where’s Mary herself meanwhile?

Gone to comfort Judas’s mother.

As the mystics say, you cannot find Jesus in Heaven on Good Friday because he’s gone looking for Judas in Hell. Jesus won’t go home without him.  So Judas is the permanent-resident elephant in the room for St. Matthias’ Day.  Judas casts a shadow over these readings, and so we cannot ignore him.

Judas is a betrayer. In Dante’s Inferno, Judas occupies a podium finish with Brutus and Cassius in the inner, ninth ring of hell.  These arch-betrayers of classical antiquity represent treachery.  Judas remains a relevant figure today. Everyone will have some taste of treachery; of being the victim of others bearing false witness; of being snared; of being badly let down by someone you had trusted. You have had that experience. You’ve known others who have had that experience. I too have had that experience.

When you think about it, there is quite a bit of gambling going on in the bible.  Pilate offers the crowd baying for blood a 50-50 choice – do you want Jesus, or Barabbas?  Even though it is a 50-50 ‘ask the audience’ eliminator, the odds, we sense, are already firmly stacked against Jesus.  Before he is crucified, Jesus is blindfolded and invited to guess who struck him.  It is a kind of cruel wager, in which all odds are stacked against the victim.  We all know what it is like to see the person who might strike you, but we are left befuddled when it is a shadowy group, committee or process.  At the end of the gospels, the soldiers draw lots for Jesus’ clothes.  So at the foot of the cross, the executioners and guards play dice before God.

But there are other odds too.  What are the odds of a small Jewish sect becoming the world’s largest faith?  No-one took a punt at Ladbrokes on that one in AD33.  What were the odds that a key member of the disciple’s team, and the treasurer no less, would lose his place to an unknown man named Matthias – the disciple chosen to replace Judas, and chosen by lottery.  Two names put before the panel to consider, but only one is chosen emerges as the preferred candidate…

Let’s talk about Matthias. I like the story of Matthias, because it shows, for starters, that the first Christians were actually quite Anglican.  That is to say, they knew the value of being pragmatic, and could put it before principle when needed.  I suppose the better thing to do with Judas’ successor was to go into a lock-down conclave, and emerge only when ready.  But time is short; there is a mission to get on with.  They need a twelfth apostle – preferably before supper and sunset – and so they draw lots.  It’s a gamble.  Yet it seems to pay off.

But there is a deeper theme at work in the manner of Matthias’s selection that is reflected in both the Old and the New Testament readings, and it is this: we are all dispensable. Matthias is Patron Saint of ‘It Doesn’t All Depend on You’.  Judas is airbrushed out of history, and now an unknown runner called Matthias reminds us that God is not lacking on the supply-side for people to work with, provided they are committed to joy, gratitude and true service.  Be that person.

Because God does know a thing or two about the odds of his purpose being worked out.  And I would not bet against the outcome.  God does not ask us to gamble. Merely to remember that there are no reliable odds on how your future will turn out.  But the God of the present – and of the future – will not let you down.  So we do not need to live as others might, because the “citizenship of heaven”, as Paul calls it, will see that we are in the end, held and cherished by a God who will not let us fall. 

I think Matthias might have agreed with Woody Allen: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans”.  Most people know the so-called ‘Serenity Prayer’ – or at least the first part of it.  Very few, however, know that the original was written by Reinhold Niebuhr in the darkest days of the Second World War.  The prayer goes like this: “God, grant me grace to accept with serenity, the things that cannot be changed; courage to change the things which should be changed; and the wisdom to know the difference…” 

But the prayer then continues: “…living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; and taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is.  Not as I would have it, but trusting that you will make all things right, if I but surrender to your will.  So that I may be reasonably happy in this life; and supremely happy with you forever, in the next…”.  Many soldiers were given this prayer as they left America for Europe; or England for Normandy on D-Day. They were clutching it as the gates of their boats opened and they poured onto the beaches. There was nothing more they do about what happened next.

Nothing, except remember that God hears the prayer from the trenches; he hears the prayer of the ones rooting for a successor to Judas.  But God knows life can be fickle, and ever-changing.  Because God has already become one of us.  He has loved us enough to live for us, as one of us, and amongst us.  He has known what it is to have the odds stacked against him.  He has risked that enough to die as one of us – and yet be raised up. 

Jesus Christ is, quite simply, no stranger to our lives.  He was and is with us – this is what ‘Emmanuel’ means.  He loves us where we are, and walks with us every step of the way.  In one of the darker moments over these last few years, and when all had seemed very bleak to me, Emma wrote this poem called ‘Another Economy’, and it rejoices in the good that might be found through and with others in the midst of all the crap (for want of a better turn of phrase).

I have found that there is a different economy

Whose currency is

Love and kindness

Faithfulness and prayer

Generosity and integrity.

When these virtues are practiced

Deposits are made and investments accrued.

So, when the world turns harsh

And desolation beckons, 

I find I am rich.

And I can draw on this wealth

Providing me with

Friendship and kindness

Prayers and blessings

Fortitude and strength.

Anyway, perhaps I should say something about our readings by way of closing.  Our Psalm is unequivocal: God will save and restore, and even though our detractors may scorn us and laugh at us, God will never turn away from you. Never.  I managed a wry smile when 1 Samuel came up – and I didn’t chose the readings today, as I say, they’ve chosen us. We’ve ended with a reading about a small man, and a gospel reading that appeared at our wedding.

But 1 Samuel 16 reminds us that God often begins with the runt of the litter – the littlest and the lesser is where God begins.  It is what Jesus starts his ministry with, time and time again.  God is always looking for the outsider to confound the insider; the least to be the greatest; the gentle to show the strong how to be; the foolish to convert the wise. 

David is picked because he’s no Goliath.  He is a minor character put out to tend flocks and amuses himself by making up the songs and tunes we know as psalms.  God likes to do extraordinary things with the neglected and the rejected.  God chooses the weak and the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and strong.  God grows the fruit of his Spirit within our yielding flesh, hearts and minds.  Growing fruit is slow work.  Cheap, false piety that mimics authentic growth will always be available in plentiful quantities. But discerning disciples are seldom fooled by such offerings. Quality takes time to bud and flower.

Likewise, you can build almost anything, instantly, on sand. But without deep, solid foundations, what is knocked up in the morning is swept away by the evening. Building a solid structure on unforgiving rock, with all the boring into the ground required to establish the foundations, is hard and laborious. But persevere. Slow Church is where we find God slogging away, working with grace, love, goodness, charity, kindness, mercy and endless patience over the decades and centuries.  It takes a long, long time to bring the gospel to any community; or to a country. Only fools think this can be fast.

My vocation to serve Christ and the world as priest, pastor and professor will continue.  But my season for doing so within the Church of England must now end, so that truth can be spoken to power, and prophetic insight not diminished by the gravitational pressure of institutional loyalty.  

In this, I take my cue from Jonah. Do not look back in anger. Look forward only in love, and by education and example, live for others as Christ does, whether you are an insider or an outsider. As that other famous Dean – James Dean – once said ‘only the gentle are truly strong’.

We face many challenges in our world today: wars, famine, disease and injustice.  Hold fast to God and to one another. Be good. Be humble. God, who is faithful, will not let you fall.  “Do not be afraid” and “do not fear” are phrases most often repeated by Jesus in the gospels – more than seventy times.  Our calling does not seek safety, security or any other benefits.  Our vocation is not to cling to church; but rather to step out in the love revealed in the person of Jesus. 

For me, and you, that is the path that now lies ahead. May God grant us all grace and peace, as we walk with him who is ever-beside and before us. Amen.

The Readings

Psalm 80

¹ Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock!
    You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth
²   before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh.

    Stir up your might, and come to save us!

³ Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

⁴ O Lord God of hosts,
    how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?
⁵ You have fed them with the bread of tears,
    and given them tears to drink in full measure.
⁶ You make us the scorn of our neighbours;
    our enemies laugh among themselves.

⁷ Restore us, O God of hosts;
    let your face shine, that we may be saved.

⁸ You brought a vine out of Egypt;
    you drove out the nations and planted it.
⁹ You cleared the ground for it;
    it took deep root and filled the land.
¹⁰ The mountains were covered with its shade,
    the mighty cedars with its branches;
¹¹ it sent out its branches to the sea,
    and its shoots to the River.
¹² Why then have you broken down its walls,
    so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
¹³ The boar from the forest ravages it,
    and all that move in the field feed on it.

¹⁴ Turn again, O God of hosts;
    look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine,
¹⁵  the stock that your right hand planted.
¹⁶ They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down;
    may they perish at the rebuke of your countenance.
¹⁷ But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand,
    the one whom you made strong for yourself.
¹⁸ Then we will never turn back from you;
    give us life, and we will call on your name.

¹⁹ Restore us, O Lord God of hosts;
    let your face shine, that we may be saved.

1 Samuel 16:1-16

16 The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’ ² Samuel said, ‘How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.’ And the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you, and say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.” ³ Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.’ ⁴ Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, ‘Do you come peaceably?’ ⁵ He said, ‘Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

⁶ When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.’⁷ But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’ ⁸ Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ ⁹ Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ ¹⁰ Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The Lord has not chosen any of these.’ ¹¹ Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.’ ¹² He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.’ ¹³ Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

Matthew 7:19-27

¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. ²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ ²⁴ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. ²⁶ And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. ²⁷ And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

 

When I began the Surviving Church blog in 2013, I thought of it as an attempt to help and support many wounded Christians who, for various reasons, had fallen out of love with the Church.  I was not at the beginning thinking politically in any way.   The ‘victims’ at that time were mainly those who had fallen under the spell of charismatic/narcissistic leaders who were bent on personal enrichment or other forms of gratification.  The motives of these exploitative leaders were simple and could easily apply to anyone who takes a position of institutional power.  Abuse falls into one or more of three categories.  Speaking generally, leaders abuse in order to obtain the gratification that is afforded by money, power or sex.

In my early years of writing, I particularly found myself wanting to help the few who found their way to my blog with some ‘sensible’ teaching on how to read Scripture.  By sensible I was simply trying to share a little of the scholarly approach to the Bible that was part of the way that universities taught it in the 60s.  I had benefitted from eight years full-time theological education in my youth.   Was it not now time to give back a little of the fruits of all that time and reading?   It was clear to me that fundamentalist approaches to the text of the Bible simply caused endless unsolvable problems for a reader.  A little bit of scholarly insight could unlock some of these intractable dilemmas.   As an example, I found myself discussing the story of Noah and the inexplicable (for the conservative reader) shift in recording the numbers of each animal-type which entered the Ark.  Was it two or was it seven? 

As time went on, it became clear that abusive power was being exercised over some individuals in the church not only in the way the Bible was being taught to them.  A misuse of power was being found in churches of all kinds, not just in conservative evangelical churches.  To see how it was gradually dawning on me that that power had far wider toxic tentacles than ‘abusive’ bible teaching, a reader needs to refer to my posts of 2015.   In that year I returned repeatedly to the life and times of Trinity Church Brentwood and its leader Michael Reid.  Another character that also attracted my attention was the bishop of the Diocese of Sabah in Malaysia.  In both situations there were extensive corruptions of power.  An issue in covering these and other abuse stories was that it was becoming increasingly clear that an abusive incident was not necessarily just about individual misbehaviour.   An abusive act committed by one bad apple had the unfortunate tendency to corrupt many of the other apples in the barrel.  To expose or discuss evil in one place was perhaps to shed light on systemic institutional misuses of power.  I was beginning to see the way that an evil act committed by one individual frequently involved other people – whether they were bystanders or superiors.  This ‘political’ dimension in the case was always going to be unpopular when it was revealed.  Writing about the abuse of power that takes place within an institution will often be seen as a subversive threat to the whole institution where it takes place.  One example of the way that evil acts committed by a few became toxic to an entire institution was brought out in the IICSA hearings over the Diocese of Chichester.  The entire diocese was damaged by the activities of an area bishop and a group of sexually abusive clergymen.  The evil was not confined to those people.  A number of officials in the Diocese had their reputations undermined and a former Diocesan Bishop had his memory besmirched by his failure to act honourably and honestly in his dealing with the problem.  Damaged reputations matter to individuals and institutions.  Pointing out the obvious discrepancies in a narrative, which is the kind of thing that bloggers do, can be legally treacherous.  If a blogger suggests that a church leader has behaved less than honourably, the threat of defamation hangs over them.

I have only had four threats of legal action against me and Surviving Church.  Three were in reference to statements made by other people on this blog.  The fact that senior church leaders should employ legal personnel to scrutinise blogs like this one, in case we have allowed something through potentially defamatory is, in some ways, flattering. It is an indirect compliment that senior clergy think that the musings of a retired clergyman in the north of England have some influence.  It also suggests that our House of Bishops believe that the work of safeguarding can be controlled and furthered by the force of legal threats.  A fellow blogger is facing the threat of legal action at present.  In reading his reaction to this threat from a senior member of the Church of England, I realise that I am less robust than he is in facing such challenges.  The merest whisper of legal action has me instantly deleting offending sections or entire blogs. My reasoning tells me that the safeguarding narratives I record on this blog are not really my personal battles.  Others may have better access to information and personal testimony than me, and thus do a better job at promoting the struggle for justice and transparency.   I certainly recognise that I am less resilient in the face of legal threats than the ex-Dean of Christ Church, whose farewell sermon can, I hope, be read here tomorrow immediately after it is delivered.  I hope to include more material on this event when available, even though I will not be present in person.

Legal threats, heavy handed action by church officials towards bloggers all suggest a considerable degree of institutional panic.  One interpretation is that the Church is completely floundering in its response to the numerous crises about safeguarding and bullying on the church’s agenda at present.  The clunky response of threatening bloggers with legal action gives the Church and its bishops a thoroughly bad look especially in times of heavy financial pressure.  It may be gratifying for me to think that someone is actually being paid to read my musings; the same will not be true for the ordinary church member. They will resent the fact that funds are flowing to expensive legal companies to pay for vanity litigation. Does Joe Public actually care what blogger A thinks of Bishop B? Would the Church not look better if it prioritised helping its ordinary clergy pay their fuel bills?

The recent outpourings of Martyn Percy in The Times and elsewhere following his departure from Christ Church and the Church of England, show he feels failed in his search for institutional justice.  He raises a wide range of safeguarding problems in the Church as well as other issues around leadership that currently face the Church of England.  Whether or not we take sides in the dispute between Percy and the College and the Church, it is clear that in having two powerful institutions ranged against him, the reputation of both these bodies has been severely undermined.  Not for the first time is the Church seen to be using its power in a heavy-handed way, The four-year persecution of Percy, while not initiated by the Church, does not seem to have elicited anything in the way of compassionate assistance from the Diocese of Oxford.  Indeed, the opposite appears to be true.  Throughout the process, both Percy and his supporters seem to have attracted the hostility of the diocese.  In this, the bishop and his staff seem to have forgotten large sections of the Scriptures they claim to follow.  Somehow the wider Church (and here we are particularly talking about the Church of England) seems to have lost the ability and knowledge of how to make its clergy and people feel safe.  Safety is something you feel when you are in a place or with a person you can completely trust.  Martyn’s departure from the CofE has indicated that he no longer trusts or feels safe in his old church.  If that sentiment ever becomes widespread in the Church, it could mark the beginning of the end of our national institution, the CofE.  Legal threats by bishops and solicitors writing letters to bloggers may be small things in themselves, but they suggest a leadership culture unable to retain power without creating a miasma of fear.   That is not a Church that I, and I suspect many others, want to be associated with. 

Last Sunday, Easter 4, with Christians all over the world, I listened to readings in church connected with the theme of God and Jesus as the shepherd.  At least one of the many paraphrases of Psalm 23 will have been sung, as we all focused our minds on this well-known and well-loved symbol of our relationship with the Divine.  Thinking about the powerful image of the shepherd, I was reminded of the influence of one book about John’s gospel that I read and studied as a student many years ago.  It was titled The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel by C H Dodd.   One part of the book explained the structure of St John’s gospel and showed how the archetypal ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus gave the book its distinctive shape.  This structure might easily be missed if one was concerned only to find, in the gospel, historical facts about the life of Jesus.   The symbols in the gospel associated with Jesus, the vine, light of the world, the bread of life etc, create a kind of skeleton which holds the bulk of John’s gospel together.  Each one of the ‘I am’ Jesus symbols is a prelude to a number of linked teachings or miracles connected with the theme.  For example, Jesus’ miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is told in the context of declaring himself to be the ‘bread of life’.  In the same way, the announcement that Jesus is the light of the world takes place in the same section as one where he heals a blind man.  Thus we arrive at the idea that the author of the gospel was deliberately organising his material to fit into a literary and theological structure of his own devising.  This is a notion that might upset a conservative reader.  Many Christian readers cannot accept that truth can ever be expressed in anything other than one involving tight historical accuracy.  This is, for them, the most important manifestation of truth.  Clearly John himself had a different understanding of truth, one that was not the same as knowing or recording the exact chronology of Jesus’ life.   It is worth noting in passing that the story of the casting out of the moneychangers from the Temple in the fourth gospel takes place at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, while in the other gospels it takes place very close to the time of his Passion.  Are we to conclude that Jesus performed this act twice or should we stick to the common sense answer that John changed the chronology for reasons of his own?

Most scholars work with the assumption that John’s gospel is, apart from the Passion narrative, far more a theological reflection than an attempt to write detailed history.  The book, is, in summary, about the truth and meaning of Jesus, together with an invitation to respond to him.  When we encounter the word ‘believe’, as we do in the archetypal passage of John 3.16, we note that it carries with it a strong sense of trust and relationship rather merely accepting a factual reality.  Jesus is throughout the gospel inviting the reader to embark on a relationship with him.  The main point that I take away from Dodd’s great work is the idea that each of the ‘I am’ statements in the gospel was a kind of portal into the meaning of Jesus for a follower.  Focusing with the imagination on the idea of Jesus as, variously, shepherd, bread or light of the world is a way of internalising an image of him and allowing us to penetrate into the deepest reality of who he is.  There is, importantly, no single correct way to understand Jesus as the Shepherd or any of the other Johannine symbols.  Each image or symbol evoked in our imaginations by the ‘I am’ symbols functions like an object of beauty.  There is never a single correct way to approach beauty.  Nor is there a right way to appreciate the signs or symbols in John’s gospel.  Somehow, in spite of this constantly evolving, even shifting meaning, we  find that with Christians through the ages, these symbols help us to come closer to God revealing himself in Jesus.  The preacher is also never in the situation of having to preach the same sermon about any of these Johannine images or symbols.  By their nature they keep giving us new insights and new levels of meaning.  A painting will also often reveal new facets of beauty every time we see it, as long we look at it with focused attention.

Many Christians live in a world where they believe it essential to have correct theological definitions.   Words like unsound or heretic are banded around for those who do not adopt the dominant discourse in certain religious settings.  I am one those Christians who fights shy of this world of correct belief with ‘orthodoxy’ being defined in a narrow way.  I find the Gospel of John a place of refuge because it allows me to see how to practise a faith in an environment of symbols and mystery.  Truth in John’s gospel is not defined, but it is evoked in the mind and the imagination of the believer.  Two readers of St John’s gospel may think quite different thoughts, but they are united in the fact that they are drawn towards Jesus as the Word of God who speaks to them across culture and definition.  I sometimes fantasise that Christianity might become more inclusive if we asked people who come to church, not whether they can recite the Apostles’ Creed, but whether they can relate to the symbols of encounter with Jesus that we find in the fourth gospel.  In other words, do you meet Jesus as one who comes to you as shepherd, light, sustaining food, vine, giver of resurrection etc.?  It is hard to imagine any encounter with Christ that does not draw on at least one of these symbols.  Being a Christian is, in some way, accepting the invitation to be part of a great movement towards God as he reaches out to us in Christ.  Somewhere in responding to that invitation we find ourselves wanting to use the language of one or more of the ‘I am’ symbols of the fourth gospel.

To repeat a point that stuck me strongly while listening to last Sunday’s readings.  There is no limit to the words that can be said about the idea of Jesus as our shepherd.  There is also no correct way to interpret any of the other Johannine images or symbols.  Each Christian will relate to the words in his/her own way.  One million Christians will also have processed these ‘I am’ symbols in the fourth gospel in a million ways.  It is the task of the Christian leader/teacher to encourage this task of imaginative exploration of the reality of God reaching out to us in Christ. I can think of no better way of starting this process than through the in-depth exploration of these symbols.  However tidy it might be to have everyone having identical experiences of the encounter with Christ, let us rejoice that we have a book in the Bible that offers us words which act as powerful revealing symbols, opening up our access to spiritual reality.  Each symbol seems to give us permission to explore and experience an encounter with Christ, but each in our own way.  Such a freedom to think, experience and explore truth is not always on offer in our churches.    Far too many complain that they are only allowed to experience the mystery of a divine encounter in a manner controlled and approved of by a Christian leader.  Perhaps St John’s gospel is a permanent reminder that there are dynamic flexible ways of being a Christian so that each relates to these symbols in their own time and in their own way.  St John’s gospel appears to be permitting us to know and rejoice in the freedom that God wants us all to have. 

From time to time I spot an expression on the Internet or Twitter which I immediately want to share. When I read the acronym PTCIS which stands for Post Traumatic Church Induced Stress, I knew I wanted to share it with my readers.  Obviously it is not a recognised description of a category of mental distress, but it certainly describes the situation faced by many followers of this blog.  Quite a number of individuals from around the world reach out to me as they recognise in this blog a place where their distress will at least receive a hearing.  The sufferers of PTCIS are not necessarily those who have been bullied or abused by someone more powerful.  The sufferers may be those who carry a false accusation around their neck and find that the church justice system gives them no opportunity to clear their name.  Accusations against one’s integrity are left there for ever, so that permanent stress and fear becomes part of their way of life.

My sense of the stress involved in PTCIS is probably distorted by the position of being the editor of a blog focused on church abuse.  In other words, I hear more of peoples’ bad experiences of abuse and the stress taking place in a church context than is normal.  But the fact that it exists at all is a terrible blot on our church life.  The inventor of PTCIS helpfully added a cartoon to illustrate what was meant by the term.  He suggested that one of the problems was that certain church cultures create stress for individuals by the expedient of changing church vocabulary in the way that is illustrated above.

This post is thus building on the brilliant cartoon from the Naked Pastor which I have included above.  In thinking about the seven categories that he sets out, I want to look at three examples that are vividly illustrative of what he is trying to demonstrate through the cartoon. Providing examples of what is involved in all seven would take up too much space.  There is also the perennial issue of using confidential material without the possibility of identification.  So I am going to illustrate only three of the seven practices that are routinely sanitised by ‘holy’ descriptions.  To avoid the danger of revealing private information, I am going to use the well-documented story of John Smyth and his abusive regime, written up by Andrew Graystone in the book Bleeding For Jesus.

The seven techniques of abusive coercion were probably all used by Smyth against his victims.  They are also, no doubt, common in other church settings. Each of these techniques has, as the cartoon demonstrates, a respectable face but also one that is less salubrious.  I am giving examples of the way that three of them work from the Smyth narrative.  Before that, I note that many young Christians are actively mentored by someone older.  That older person may possess considerable influence over the mentee.  Mentoring of course sounds innocent and even helpful.  In many contexts it remains that.  An experienced clergyperson might be asked to meet with a young curate at the beginning of his/her ministry to provide the opportunity to talk through the issues that can arise.  I have often wondered why such a system is not used more extensively in the Church of England, particularly as a way of using the extensive practical experience of older retired clergy.  The mentoring offered by Smyth was not benevolent.  It was the abusive kind.  The vulnerability in each of Smyth’s victims seems to have been what drew one to the other.   One obvious vulnerability was one known to many male attendees of an English public school.  This involved a fractured relationship with the birth families because of the boarding system, starting at the age of eight. In short, many of Smyth’s victims were emotionally estranged from their families.  They needed a relationship with an older mentoring male who could be used as a father substitute.  Having such a father figure was important to most, if not all of Smyth’s victims.  Smyth was happy to oblige to be the substitute parent.  This, of course, gave him the ability to exercise tight parental control over his protegees.  In turn it was to lead in many cases to an opportunity to physically abuse them in the garden shed at his home in Winchester.

The second part of Smyth’s ‘ministry’ to his devotees was in his playing the role of religious instructor or teacher.  The Iwerne camps were always a preserve of what we might describe as a highly fundamentalist version of Christian theology and teaching.  The Bible was regarded as the sole resource for all Christian teaching and living.  As with much conservative Christian teaching of this kind, underneath this understanding of the Bible was a pre-existing structure or system of theology which dictated how the Bible should be interpreted.  Iwerne theology was not read out of the Bible or the formulations of the early Christian centuries, but straight out of a rigid Protestantism and the 16^th century writings of John Calvin and his followers. The inability of Calvinism and its successors to tolerate much in the way of theological debate meant that it was always a ‘take it or leave it’ approach to faith.  Some aspects of Calvinism and ‘Iwernism’ should be open to objection and debate.  The fact that there has always been an absence of healthy questioning in the camps leads to a form of cult-type faith, one which often involves actual harm.

‘Mentoring’ and ‘Instruction’ can create a dynamic of power which could be and was extremely harmful to those submitting to it.  Apart from coming under a dynamic of control which was exploiting their vulnerability, Smyth’s victims were further softened up for abuse by the selective use of Scripture.  Andrew Graystone identifies two particular quotations from the Bible which were firmly drummed into the young Smyth acolytes.  One was from 1 Samuel 7.14 where the fatherhood of God is linked to the possibility of violent beatings.  From the New Testament a passage from Hebrews 12. 5-12 suggested the same idea.  Students of the Bible in the conservative wings of the church will also know about other mentions of fathers beating their children in Proverbs.  I will leave to one side the various passages that speak of followers identifying with the pain of Jesus on the cross in order to be his true disciples.

Smyth’s final practice, which shows him to be an expert in the art of PTCIS (even before it was invented!), was in the way that his teaching led his followers believing that pain was needed to make them holy and closer to Christ.  The reasoning goes along the lines that, if Jesus suffered as the result of our sin, we too may need to suffer to draw us closer to him.  The beatings in the garden shed began as a way of offering the young a means of atoning for their own failings.  It will be for others to determine how Smyth had such a complete lack of self-insight so as not to question his own behaviour in taking on this role.  The narrative that Graystone presents suggests that this infliction of pain became obsessional and addictive as time went on. Officially the victims of Smyth were being beaten to pay for their failings as if this was a normative godly discipline.  The maintenance of some discipline sounds to be a worthy aim in a church.  The examples in the Smyth story indicate that some administration of discipline in a church can have a deeply sinister and dark dimension.   Is the administration of discipline in a church setting sometimes a cover for abusive practice as the cartoon suggests?

Describing a well-established Christian practice with a pious sounding name may take away a desire to question and scrutinise what is going on.  Evil practices toward individuals are done in the name of Christianity.  Dubious claims that they are are ‘biblical’ are often heard.  Did you know that children are still beaten in the name of Christian discipline, even in the 21^st century?  Survivors of PTCIS still come to our churches seeking understanding and support to recover from the wounds that have been administered and which have led to trauma.  Can we offer them the experience of healing to replace the trauma that the Church has inflicted on them?

I have been thinking about the topic of music and worship for some time. In particular, I have been bothered by the fact that music in the Church is an area of division for many Christians. Musical style in congregations vary enormously, and those who advocate one style are often ignorant or even contemptuous of the musical offerings found in another church down the road. There are a number of sensitive issues of culture, musical taste and theology in these divisions. I am not aware of anyone discussing the damage caused by these gulfs in musical traditions. There is a need for serious writing on this topic as musical traditions play a major part in Christian worship and life . Music has to be considered a theological issue since it plays such an important part for so many in their Christian pilgrimage or journey to religious maturity. Something so important for Christian experience and growth should not be left to one side as ‘a matter of taste’ or something optional for those who like that kind of thing. What I want to do is to write a kind of introductory piece to this conundrum connected with the place of music in Church life. It will not answer all the problems. Rather it may help us to approach the subject with fresh eyes and see the discussion as important for the Church as a whole.

 There is, I believe, a ready acceptance of the fact that some form of music is normally to be expected at most acts of Christian worship. The question then arises: what sort of music?  Are we expecting to hear the music of Hillsong or Bach in our churches and cathedrals?  What kind of hymns do we sing?  Should we personally choose a church that offers the kind of music that we can appreciate, and should we avoid those churches that are jarring to us in the music they chose? The answers to these and many other questions on the musical offerings we find in our local church settings, depend in part on such things as local resources.  Also, the music we hear and sing has to accommodate itself to that mysterious entity summed up in the catch-all words ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’.  Each of us also knows that, while music in church can help to weld a congregation together, for other individuals the same music can be a serious stumbling block in finding peace or any kind of inspiration. 

Up and down the country there are churches that invest considerable resources in the music they provide for their congregations.   In some, the offering is what we can call cathedral-style music.  This is found not only in actual cathedrals but in the increasing number of parish churches that aspire to near cathedral standards of musical offering.  Each sung service is, from one point of view, an aesthetic event.  This musical offering has some of the features of a performance, like that found in a concert hall.  The presentation of such music requires dedication and commitment by all concerned.   Where such musical traditions have been preserved in Anglican worship, there has been considerable investment of money and time over a long period.  All too easily a musical tradition of this kind can be destroyed overnight by a Vicar or a PCC who decide that such an ‘elitist culture’ is unsuitable for their congregation.  There may even be a conviction that the music of Byrd, Tallis and Bach is somehow spiritually harmful to those who attend.

In contrast, another church, particularly one in the cultural orbit of Holy Trinity Brompton or Spring Harvest, may invest considerable resources in a music band and provide music suitable to a more contemporary style and tradition.  The vast range of ‘gospel music’ is not a type that I have experienced or studied.  It is, however, hard to avoid the offerings of Graham Kendrick in ordinary parish churches.  A few gospel songs make it into our hymn books, but I have never attempted to keep up with this huge repertoire beyond the few classics of this genre.  I was reading somewhere recently that 1.5 million worshippers around the world are currently listening to or singing the music from Hillsong in Australia.  I note in passing that singing music from this source has now become a more contentious act, since it is apparent that the royalties obtained by using this music flow back to Australia, enriching the entitled leaders of this church network.  Hillsong is, nevertheless, still one of the musical gospel traditions that has, in some places, superseded the music provided by organ, hymn book and traditional church music.

The content of the blog could effectively end here, with a concluding remark that church music has to be a matter of individual and congregational musical preference.  If you like the English Hymnal you need to search for a church that uses it, and the same can be said about Mission Praise.  In fact, the discussion needs to go further than appealing to individual and group musical preferences.  Music is an important part of human life and we need to be aware of how it can affect us at quite a deep level.  It has the capacity to create emotions and moods and these, as we are all aware, can range from the wholesome to the potentially harmful.

The first observation I must make is reasonably uncontroversial.  Music has a power to give pleasure and it does this by evoking pleasurable emotions.   Recently, thanks to Netflix, my wife and I have developed a taste for foreign language films.  This is not a prelude to learning Korean, Spanish or Turkish but we find the emotional tone of foreign films is quite different from those made in America or Britain.  All these foreign films use subtitles.  When music is played as part of the background, the subtitles indicate which human emotion is supposed to be evoked at that moment.   So, after the word music, there appears a single word to indicate the mood that is being expressed.  Words like romantic, suspenseful, mysterious or tense are used.  The editor of the sub-titles wants to help a deaf viewer to know what mood is being evoked, at that part of the film, by the background music.  The adjective used to describe the music mood also hints at what is coming next in the drama.  Helping to create mood is also what is going on when music is used in church.  Thus we have, for example, cheerful music and sombre poignant music when this is needed.  This is as true for the Tudor composers of English church music as it is for the output of modern praise bands. The sombre music of Bach’s Matthew Passion is for me an important part of the observance of Holy Week and carols perform a comparable role in the Christmas season.

Human emotions play a vital part in religious experience and insight.  Through them we can be led to a glimpse of a deeper sacred reality.  At the same time, we are aware that the same emotions could simply be the stimulation of pleasure centres in our brain.  When a worshipper is caught up with the words and music of a Tudor motet or the strong emotional resonance of a Hillsong piece, who can definitively say what is going on?   Is the worshipper being let into a religious experience or not?  There is, as one would expect, no easy answer to this question.  One thing that can be said fairly safely is that feelings of a religious kind are not inevitably religious in substance.  It is thus dangerous for a religious leader ever to claim that religious emotions are inevitably given by God.   Religious feelings may indeed give us access to the divine.  Alternatively, they can, as we suggested above, merely be the activation of pleasure centres in the brain. 

What will help distinguish between the real thing, music leading us to an apprehension of God, and mere aesthetic appreciation?  The answer has to lie in discovering whether the music and the religious feelings they evoke are changing us over a period of time in some tangible way. Is our spirituality and apprehension of the divine taking us beyond ephemeral sensation?  It is a question that has to be asked in Anglican cathedrals and in large crowd events where the music is loud and catchy.   Both kinds of music, that of ‘high culture’ and popular worship songs can help Christians in the path to genuine transforming religious insight and growth.  Equally, both may be mere entertainment and stimulation of the brain. 

In this piece I must confess a certain bias against the output of praise bands.  My theological and musical instincts tell me that a constant musical diet of the offerings such as are heard at Spring Harvest, or some other charismatic festival, might be leading listeners to a form of faux religious experience.  This is not an inevitable outcome, but I see two particular hazards making this possibility a prevalent possibility.  In the first place much religious music of the gospel variety is taught initially at mass events.  Large gatherings or religious festivals are notorious for emotionally ‘softening up’ the participants and making them susceptible to feelings that belong to the crowd rather than being their own.  The second danger of this kind of music is that much modern gospel music is attached to ‘heroes’ of the genre, like Graham Kenrick and the music composers responsible for the massive Hillsong output.  The institutional power of Brian Houston, the recently disgraced Hillsong leader, could be said to have been sustained by the musical offerings of this international franchise.  Once a charismatic church is identified with the ministry of a figure who is only glimpsed in a highly choreographed role on a stage, it is all too easy to draw the attention of the congregation to the glamour of the man (normally men) at the front.  Projection or hero-worship is not a healthy dynamic for any church.

My self-allocated number of words has now been breached but I hope very soon to return to this discussion in a future blog.  For me it is also a real problem that the Church, even the CofE, is divided over the issue of music.  We somehow resist discussing the topic for fear that issues of culture, class and snobbery may be raised.  Such topics are hard to deal with easily, so we retreat into our musical ghettoes just as we hunker down in our theological bunkers.  This blog is a small offering to contribute to a debate on which we all have feelings and insights.  Perhaps I am hoping to start a conversation. I know it is a topic on which everyone in any church has an opinion.  

In the safeguarding world, certain words get used over and over again.  One of these words is independence. Independence is something that is required particularly when institutions and their members are challenged for poor behaviour.  Someone from outside the organisation under scrutiny is needed to determine the guilt of otherwise of those caught up in a particular incident.  Possibly the institution as a whole has been corrupted by guilt.  There is a general common-sense assumption that only an outside body, one that does not contain members who owe loyalty of any kind to the organisation under scrutiny, can expect to get close to the truth.  The independent group is in a good position to be able to apportion, when needed, blame and responsibility. 

A good example of independence uncovering truth in the recent history of this country is found in the Independent Inquiry of Child Sexual Abuse, referred to as IICSA. This came into being because the British Government wanted to reveal the existence and extent of child sexual abuse in some of our national institutions.  The organisation to do this work needed to be, as the first letter of the acronym IICSA suggests, independent.  Its hearings were completed in 2021 but its final findings have yet to be published.  As readers of this blog will know, a considerable amount of time was given to the role and failings of the churches in this area.  The Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church in England were both put under scrutiny. Both can be said to be still processing a seemingly endless series of poorly handled cases which IICSA examined in detail.  IICSA represents a positive example of what can happen when an outside body is able to scrutinise the inner workings of an institution without fear or favour.    Organisations find it difficult, without independent help, properly to assess whether they are applying their own protocols and regulations to effectively protect the vulnerable. 

Institutions like the churches can and do look to independent bodies to scrutinise their work in safeguarding and other matters of governance.  The chief guarantee that such organisations are doing a good job in this area is found by looking to see, over a period, whether that body continues to maintain its reputation for integrity and competence.  In Britain one organisation that has good reputation with the churches and survivors alike is the consultancy group called 31:8.  It has recently produced reports on the Jonathan Fletcher affair and the Sheffield group, known as Crowded House.  Both of these 31:8 reports were examined on this blog.  It can be justly claimed that 31:8 has proved itself to be an independent group of the highest calibre.  Not only are the opinions expressed measured and careful, but the depth of relevant specialist knowledge to provide the tools of analysis in each situation is remarkable. 

The possibility of sound independence being maintained in safeguarding matters is provided by these two reports.  No doubt there are others. One has less confidence in a process when a church, or indeed, any organisation, takes control over an ‘independent’ inquiry to examine something that has gone wrong internally.  How can one guarantee that a report will be truly independent when the body commissioning it is paying for it?  Does calling something independent necessarily make it so?  Is it ever possible for independence to be fully preserved when the personnel and the money for the independent committee, come from the same place? When reputable independent reports are presented to the church, like the Elliot report examining the case of ‘Joe’, there also seems to be a tendency to bury the challenges contained in them and hope that people will quickly forget what was said. The new initiative, House of Survivors, will make, as Fiona Gardner puts it, this ‘collective amnesia’ in the Church harder to maintain. 

In the safeguarding echelons of the Church of England we have an organisation called the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB).  Two problems exist for this group.  One is that it is entirely funded by the Church of England.   That fact alone makes it hard to trust it completely since the paymaster can always subtly compromise the work of an organisation that it is paying for.  The ISB has also not been around long enough for it to have gained a reputation for rugged independence.  There is yet another problem facing the ISB.  The Chairman of the Board, Maggie Atkinson, is only able to give a small amount of time to the role.  It is hard to see that anyone not full-time in such a role will ever obtain the ‘narrative-wisdom’ that is needed really to understand the range of historical and other material that exists.  If the Church of England wishes the independent voice to be really heard, then it must invest much more by appointing a high-flyer, as Maggie Atkinson undoubtedly is, to give expertise, resources and adequate time to accomplish this role.

Before we offer further thoughts on what might be the way forward for building into the Church’s structures something that is truly independent, I want to give some thought to the word itself. I always find it helpful to examine individual words and see whether there are nuances of meaning can be extracted that I and others may have missed.  The word independent has two parts.  The second part of the word, ‘dependent’ is formed from the Latin word to hang.  The simplest example of this would be in the word pendant.  From the idea of simply hanging, we come to the idea of one thing firmly attached to another, like a child holding on the mother in the process of feeding.  As the Psalmist puts it, as a child, he ‘hanged yet upon my mother’s breasts’ in order to survive.  This picture of the child at the breast is the ultimate symbol of what we mean by the word ‘dependent’.  There are obviously numerous other examples we can think of to denote dependency within the context of human relationships.  Beyond that context, we can think of a factory manufacturing a product which needs raw materials to do its work.  It thus depends on an uninterrupted supply of these materials.  We can all think of numerous other examples of this kind of dependency.  But here our main interest in the word is in the way that every human being is caught up in relationships that involve dependency, at least some of the time.  This is a rich area of discussion and discovery.  Sometimes dependency is life-giving and appropriate.  At the same we know how dependency can sometimes be emotionally crushing and destructive.  An entire blog post could easily be spent on this discussion. Here I want us to think of dependency as simply being the situation when individuals look to others to provide for their survival/physical/emotional needs. 

The addition of the prefix ‘in’ to the word indicates that an individual is attempting to operate alone without any of this dependency.   Independence as a word is applied to the young adult leaving home and a country shaking off colonial rule.  If we are right to note the emotional, relational aspect of the word dependent, we may be correct in suspecting that many examples of ‘independent’ may also have a strong emotional flavour.  There is this hint of proud maturity in the one using the word.  We, the independent ones, no longer look to mother in order to survive and flourish.  

One of the major issues in the safeguarding world is that the one searching for justice following abuse is still likely to be caught up in a maelstrom of emotions about what happened.  He/she wants or needs a number of maybe conflicting things.  The survivor above all wants to be heard.  The need for compassion and independence on the part of the one listening is also of crucial importance to the survivor.  Any sense that this independence is compromised in any way will damage the potential for healing in the relationship.  I want to articulate in bullet points what true independence might look like from the perspective of a survivor.

• Independence requires that a listener, who is interacting with a survivor, can remain free of all outside agendas.  Even if the listener is a member of a church that is somewhere involved in the case, for the purposes of the conversation, that fact should be placed to one side.  The listening should be done by someone with no other concern except to hear and learn from the experience of another human being.   The humanity of the listener is here the main requirement needed to be a listener and the survivor needs to feel that humanity.
• Every listener to survivors’ stories should have the skills of imagination to anticipate the survivors’ needs.  Outbursts of anger, grief and shame may all enter into the interaction, but the independent listener should have the professional and personal skill to be able to handle these and not allow them to label any survivor as ‘difficult’.  Those with the right skills should be able to gain the trust and respect of both sides, the church and the survivor, without compromising the need to be independent.
• The independent helper will be able to marshal not only considerable pastoral skill and expertise, but also have a proper immersion in the literature of abuse.  Because safeguarding is a new profession, those entering it inevitably come from backgrounds which routinely have little insight into the history of the church and the variety of cases it has been involved in.  Recently I have heard of highly paid safeguarding individuals who are not familiar with the IICSA material, let alone the dozens of individual reports and accounts that have appeared even in the past ten+ years. This process of familiarisation should be alleviated by a familiarity with material presented by the House of Survivors website
• Independence requires that, when necessary, the investigator should be able to offer a challenging critique of those who are abusing or have abused power.  Confidence in the Church of England’s own ISB has been lessened because only once have we heard a challenging remark coming from its chair, Maggie Atkinson, about CofE structures. That was at the February 2022 General Synod.  This comment, apparently aimed at the NST, was later, apparently, modified by her in a subsequent clarification.  Exactly what was happening in this exchange is unclear, but the confusion has not created confidence in the true independence of the ISB.  One suggestion that I have heard, is that the ISB is laying the groundwork for another organisation in the future able to provide independent scrutiny over the CofE.  Survivors and those that support them want to see real evidence that the meaning of independence is understood within the Church of England and among its leaders.  The evidence for that has yet to be revealed.

by Anonymous

This is the fourth episode in the Kenneth Saga. For those meeting with it for the first time there are other blogs on this site:  the first one, published December 13th 2021  written by Stephen Parsons and the second one January 7th 2022 and the third February 11th 2022 written by me.

For those following this tale of bullying and victimisation by a safeguarding core group, you may be wondering what has been happening since the last meeting I mentioned on February 2nd 2022. This was to discuss a negotiated safeguarding agreement between Kenneth and the Core Group. In the event, all Kenneth’s attempts to insert appropriate conditions to fit the actual circumstances of the case were deleted. What was left was an model agreement that might be used to monitor a convicted sex offender after release from prison for serious offences. Needless to say Kenneth was not prepared to sign such a document.

UPDATE

1. Serious Time Delays and excuses:

i) A Subject Access Request was made for all information on Kenneth’s case from October 2020- February 2022. Kenneth wanted to see the minutes of meetings, the emails and other information – of all information from the meetings and emails about Kenneth. instead of being delivered March 14th as legally required for these things, it came April 21st with many paragraphs substantially redacted. The excuses for these delays were ‘the level of work’

ii) Safeguarding Agreement with two representatives of the core group, one being the Assistant Safeguarding Adviser. Kenneth wrote on March 30th to the ASA asking the reason he had not heard anything about the safeguarding agreement since the meeting of February 2nd. Her reply  was:  ‘I am seeking further advice in regard to this matter.  I have also been attending training, and as you are aware I work part time. I shall be in touch with you as soon as I am able’. On April 7th Kenneth rang her to ask if she had sent him an email. She had not, (surprised?) but went on to say a Senior Member of the Clergy (SMC) who had been involved with the Core Group but who was not a member, would be in touch.

The Meeting between a Senior Member of the Clergy (SMC) and Kenneth The SMC visited Kenneth at home the following Friday (Good Friday) to discuss his return to the church. Apparently he had been intending to contact Kenneth for some time! At the beginning of the meeting the SMC told Kenneth that he would be informing the  Assistant Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser of the meeting. As usual, with meetings with Kenneth, no notes were taken.

His views on the Safeguarding Core Group The SMC began by telling Kenneth the Safeguarding  Core Group were stuck and could not move on this issue. He thought the whole process had been dreadful and he was very sorry Kenneth had been through such suffering. He did not see how the Core Group could now come to an agreement. He could not defend the Core Group: that’s the way they are; reacting against past experiences of children not being believed. This represents a significant change in his thinking. This strong reaction had  led to carrying safeguarding procedures to unlawful extremes as was clearly pointed out in The Micah 6:8 Initiative (http://chng.it/HLF4dhVd6Q). This  had been sent to  him and other senior clergy in the diocese but never responded to.

Wrong Procedures The SMC said he had made protests about what was wrong with the procedures not providing justice; to seek clarification on this point  he was going to contact the National Safeguarding Team. Even during this meeting, the SMC showed how he did not have the full authority to make or override Core Group decisions. This was in spite of his seniority in the diocese and the fact Bishop of the Diocese knew about Kenneth’s situation.

How Kenneth might return The SMC said he was anxious for Kenneth to return to the church.  Kenneth understood, (remember nothing was written down) that the  Safeguarding Agreement discussed at the meetings on January 26th and February 2nd 2022 was now unnecessary. Some precedent existed for this (although no details were given to Kenneth). He said the Bishop had asked if it was safe for Kenneth to return and the SMC said  it was.  Sadly though, we find that  Kenneth’s acceptance into the church  is not unconditional by any means.

Details of conditions for Kenneth’s return At the meeting with the SMC on Good Friday Kenneth understood:

There is still the a continuing influence of the boy and his mother. They are to be told that Kenneth has gone back. In order to avoid any ‘unwanted encounters’, if the boy and mother are to be in church, then the Director of Music would know that and report to the SMC so Kenneth would be told not to attend. Thus, Kenneth cannot go to any service if the boy and his mother are there. It was not suggested that the boy should not go if Kenneth was there. There is still the attitude that the boy must be be believed without any  investigation.

2. Kenneth  can only go to services but may sit where he wishes.  He has always enjoyed going to concerts in the church and wants to do so again but that is still being denied him.  

Easter Sunday Return On Easter Sunday the SMC met Kenneth before the service and walked hand in hand with him  into the church to a side chapel.  Eight of Kenneth’s friends were waiting for him at the entrance to the church and informally followed behind. Other friends joined us during the short service we held there. We all exchanged the peace and then the SMC went to robe for the service.

The procession of choir and clergy came in. At this Easter Service the Bishop was present and came in last. He  left the procession to come to Kenneth (whom he knew and recognised and was sitting on the end of a row, central aisle), clasped his hand and said, ‘It’s good to see you, Kenneth; welcome back”. I was sitting next to Kenneth who then shook uncontrollably, but a friend and I held him until he was calmer. After the service the bishop came to the area where we were and spoke to Kenneth in a general conversational way.

The response by the congregation was overwhelming; many of them were not expecting him to be there. Many, many were the hugs of love he was given and over and over again I heard, ‘Welcome home’, ‘We have missed you”, “It has been too long”, “We are glad to see you”. They came to where he was sitting and sought him out there, ignoring refreshments being served at the back of the church.  After more than two years of having these people torn away from him so abruptly, he felt his Church family was with him again. His joy was palpable.

Editor’s comment

The story reads as though it ends with a happy conclusion. It is clear that the Bishop of the Diocese and the Senior Member of the Clergy were fully briefed on all the details of Kenneth’s situation and both appeared to believe, by their words and gestures, that, at the very least, the whole case should end. But not even a bishop in his diocese has the power to reverse the activities of a Safeguarding Core Group. The obvious way forward in a secular context would be to send the case back for some sort of re-examination. But the problem is that the evidence to suggest offending behaviour had never been properly examined in the first place. The whole case had rested on the principle that ‘the child must be believed’ even though, in this case, there were serious discrepancies and contradictions in his evidence. The fear of ‘retraumatising’ the child had prevented any attempt to interrogate the evidence by consulting other witnesses. The date and place for the alleged offence have never been securely established. Kenneth’s re-acceptance by the congregation and the senior clerics of the diocese seems not to be able to override his official guilt. The conclusion of an outsider looking in must conclude that the whole creaky structure set to manage a situation like Kenneth’s is abusive and not fit for purpose. Whatever system is being used in this case is contrary to normal principles of truth and justice and it abuses the accused who has no chance to defend himself.

One of the expressions that I and other commentators in the safeguarding world use constantly is the expression ‘narrative wisdom’. This expression means simply a familiarity with the documents, speeches, reports and literature of safeguarding over the past 10 or so years. There is a lot of material.  It is a matter of frustration that people who are appointed to senior positions in the Church’s ever expanding safeguarding industry often appear not to know much about the history of the whole enterprise. It is hard for those of us who are reasonably familiar with this material to have a conversation with someone professionally involved in this area but who is simply ignorant of all that has gone before.  How can anyone work in this field who does not know the reasons for all the unhappiness of survivors?  The performance of the Church in this activity has been described by one of its own leaders on some occasions as ‘shambolic’. One would like to see as a requirement that all employees and church officers, who have responsibilities in safeguarding, should read the key documents associated with safeguarding that have appeared over the past ten years or more.  The survivors that they meet will certainly know them and be able to quote from them.  Without a sense of the history, the current generation of leaders in safeguarding are in danger of repeating all the mistakes of the past.  As the saying goes “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

The new website, House of Survivors, launched on Friday, and which has been produced by Gilo and Tony is to be an important resource for ensuring that the history of the Church’s response to survivors is never airbrushed out of existence.  It is also designed to help survivors navigate the tortuous structures of the Church of England and help them make claims for support.  From my perspective, its major value is that it prevents the past simply being forgotten or subject to an institutional amnesia.  Here in one place we find the text of speeches made to General Synod since 2014 relevant to safeguarding. We also have links to the issues raised in various notable cases such as the one examined by the safeguarding expert, Ian Elliot.  The material on the website is obviously incomplete but there are enough examples of institutional ‘cock-ups’ to show the high degree of failure in official church bodies over the years. In re-reading some of this material, one is reminded of the high levels of professionalism and integrity that the secular safeguarding bodies display.  In contrast the church’s own efforts to do the right thing seem sometimes to be less than robust.

One of the interests of the two survivors, and which shows up clearly on this site, is the part played by lawyers and insurance companies.  Much safeguarding work in the past was, at enormous expense, outsourced to these firms by the Church of England.  Survivors’ own investigative work, assisted by an award-winning journalist in the insurance world, revealed shabby and dishonest practice which harmed survivors.  The failure of ethical behaviour in some of these insurance dealings was sufficient to attract the attention of the Independent Inquiry for Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).  Two insurance company senior executives were required to attend for a second cross-examination because Ecclesiastical’s original evidence was inconsistent.  The details of this and many other incidents of unethical behaviour by these agents of the Church are recorded on the site. There are echoes of acute discomfort about all this in a powerful speech preserved by the site in the Synod speech of Julie Conalty, now Bishop of Birkenhead.

One section in the blog to interest me are the records of demonstrations made by interested parties on behalf of aggrieved survivors.  I attended one such demonstration in February 2018 outside Church House during a meeting of Synod.   It is from that date, that my deep concern for church safeguarding became firmly established.  Another important demonstration took place when the Bishop of Oxford was enthroned in 2015 with survivors protesting outside the cathedral. The fact of this protest may have been forgotten by people in the diocese of Oxford. 

The House of Survivors is an important addition to the many resources that have become available to the Church of England in its effort to clean up its patchy record on safeguarding and responding to the needs of abuse survivors. My main interest in the site is to have so many documents and speeches connected with the past gathered together in one place.  No doubt the editors will increase these as time goes on.  Meanwhile we read documents such as the Micah letter and the Bread not Stones and many letters of truth spoken to power.  Even among enthusiasts for the cause of safeguarding in the church, such crucial moments can be quickly forgotten.  Thanks to this site, House of Survivors, corporate amnesia in those who manage the response to survivors on behalf of the Church will no longer be an acceptable excuse.

The compilers of this new website are obviously highly critical of a managerial and corporate mindset which puts the interests of an organisation above the needs and requirements of individuals within it. One summary of what survivors are trying to achieve is to make sure that the testimony and story of individuals is never allowed to be buried in files or under piles of paperwork. There is, of course, material which refers to the institutional processes of the Church of England. One speech at General Synod was especially important to indicate something of sea-change in attitudes among those who run the Church of England.  The speech by John Spence indicated a change of direction from the traditional dependence on lawyers and insurance companies, which had allowed them to dominate and control the proceedings. A real attempt was going to be made by the authorities in the Church to introduce proper redress for abuses suffered by survivors.  This would be in accordance with the principles of justice and compassion. Questions remain a year or two later whether these fine words, uttered by the church through Spence, are really going to be honoured.  But the fact remains that we do have his recorded testimony to refer back to. So many of the promises made by the church to survivors and others have routinely become lost in an institutional amnesia.  This is so common within the church structures.

In commending this new website to everyone in the Church of England I am especially applauding its ability to restore narrative memory to the church on safeguarding matters.  This is the most important part of its purpose from my perspective.  The website of course is recognising other interests and needs of survivors, both in terms of understanding better what has happened to them and what they can do to find healing.  This historical material still remains, for me, of the upmost importance for helpers and survivors. One can imagine a survivor visiting a bishop or a senior church official and saying to them in so many words: ‘have you read the section which contains speeches by senior Synod members on the topic of redress?’. Having instant access to all this important material means that the authorities can never say that something was never said or meant something different.  Anyone with access to a smart phone can lay before a figure in authority all that has been said and how the church appears to be currently trying to move forward in safeguarding matters. The ability to hold senior church figures to keep promises and undertakings over safeguarding is something that this website can do a great deal to assist.  Such a resource is something we can all applaud and celebrate.

The recent history of response to victims and survivors in the Church of England, its successes and failures, is encapsulated on this website.  Of course the material is incomplete, but we can imagine that it will be treated as a work in progress. And I gather that the website will gradually include more links to reviews. One thoughtful feature of the site is that the reader is given the option of making a speedy exit if something triggering is encountered. One hopes that this will not be used often, as the whole is carefully written for the benefit and wellbeing of survivors. It is meant to be a place that survivors will find supportive as well as informative.  It certainly feels to be that way.

http://houseofsurvivors.org

by Martin Sewell

There was a time in the Church of England when Safeguarding was barely recognised as a problem. Whatever one thinks about the  current state of affairs in terms of efficiency, structure, focus or delivery, there can be little doubt that it is now a high priority area of concern with a substantial allocated budget to match. Every Parish and Diocese will have its officers and regular reports, and no PCC meeting or Synod meeting will pass without some reference being made to it.

An Independent Safeguarding Board is being established under a conscientious Chair: there is continuing controversy over its scope resourcing, powers and speed of delivery, but at the very least, one must acknowledge that there is a recognition of the need for continuing this as a “work in progress”.

But what of bullying in the Church – are we as clear cut in our thinking about this? Is there a difference between “strong leadership” and bullying? Do we have clear and robust policies impartially enforced against choir master and clergy alike? What can you do if the bullying is by one’s colleagues, the Bishop or the Diocesan staff – how easy is it in practice to secure redress in that instance?

Towards the end of the last General Synod quinquennial ( group of sessions) with one eye on the gathering storm at Christ Church Oxford, and the tragic death of Fr Alan Griffin, some of us made tentative enquiries about the place of bullying within our Guidelines for Clergy Conduct, only to learn that the  section referencing institutional bullying had been drafted  with a mindset directed towards the context of care homes rather than a deep sickness within the wider church or Diocesan culture. Bringing a Clergy Discipline complaint against a bullying culture is a task too far for most defeated and depressed clergy, a task akin to nailing jelly to a wall as matters stand. It is tough to prove, and it is frankly abuse stacked upon abuse to tell a clergy person to gird up their loins for another few round against an institution where it is virtually impossible to succeed against an abusive or neglectful bishop.

The Editor has received a challenge from a solicitor about the accuracy of some of the comments in the rest of the article. It seems prudent as Surviving Church does not carry insurance for this kind of challenge, to withdraw the contentious section. I had not spotted any offending material in the article but this severe pruning of the piece seems the safest thing to do. We hope that this withdrawal of Martin’s material may be a temporary action but I await clarification and advice from legal experts. The issues in the original article have not gone away! Watch this space.