The troubled parish of Wymondham Abbey in the Norwich diocese has given rise to two blog pieces on Surviving Church.  Looking at the situation from afar, it is a painful story of what happens when tensions between an incumbent, individuals in the parish and the authorities in a diocese, overflow into the public domain and become a cause of open scandal.  What I write now is a kind of follow-up on the story.   I will assume familiarity with what has gone before. Those who have not read it will find it http://survivingchurch.org/2021/11/15/wymondham-abbey-and-the-bishops-visitation/  and here: http://survivingchurch.org/2022/01/25/wymondham-abbey-stalemate/

On Sunday June 26^th , Catherine Relf-Pennington announced her resignation during a service at the Abbey.  Clearly the war with a considerable number of her parishioners, as well as the Norwich diocesan authorities, must have played a major part in this decision.  The way that these hostilities became what was effectively a slanging match between the Vicar and the Bishop and his staff in the early part of this year, created a point of no return in the relationship between the two.   The open conflict between the two parties must have put considerable, even unbearable, strain on both sides.  If we look at the confrontation from a power dynamic perspective, it is clear that the Vicar was the weaker of the two contesting sides.  The Bishop and the diocesan staff had a great of legal and moral authority on their side.  The power that the Vicar did have was also legal in nature.  She was able to count on ancient rights pertaining to the clergy, which prevent dismissal except in the case of criminal behaviour.  Until a week last Sunday the situation seems to have been a stalemate.  The Bishop no doubt had explored other options to allow him to resolve the situation, but he would have been cautious to do anything that might have been presented as a case of bullying.  Catherine’s supporters would have been quick to protest if any external pressure was used on the Vicar to move from the parish through some form of legal threat.

What seems to have happened in the story to bring about the resignation?  It is likely (here I am guessing) that the diocese and the Bishop, having decided that the best option was to do precisely nothing, have let events take their course.  The factor that probably was decisive in this story was money.  Covid and the fractious atmosphere around the Abbey had reduced services and visitors drastically.  Income from both sources would have been massively depleted with the deficits in the church’s finances ballooning all the time.  Even the decision to withdraw from paying the parish share to the diocese would not have allowed the other routine bills to be paid.  It would appear that one of Catherine’s weaknesses was her inability to foster good working relationships with the Abbey volunteers.  These included the choir and musicians as well as the guides and welcomers to the building.  When visitors started to find the Abbey often locked because there were no volunteers available, this would have sent a poor message to the outside community.  The Abbey’s reserves quickly started to dry up because they were being used on the few paid staff who were desperately trying to do some of the work formerly done by volunteers.   Without knowing all the details, the evidence I have indicates that, as in the Winchester Diocese, the person in charge allowed funds to be totally depleted, eventually causing the whole organisation to struggle to function.  If the wages of employees cannot be found, the Vicar and PCC will be held legally responsible.  In all likelihood there would have been, behind the scenes, this spiral of deeper and deeper indebtedness.  If the tension of a standoff with the diocese was difficult, the additional burden of having to answer to solicitors for unpaid wages would have created an impossible situation for the Vicar and her wardens.

As I wrote in my second piece on Wymondham, my sympathies in this scenario were with the diocesan authorities and the Bishop.  Whether or not the Direction given by Bishop Graham to the Vicar to apologise to offended parishioners was a realistic way of proceeding, this open conflict between Vicar and Diocese was unseemly and a cause of scandal for the church.  The defiant posturing of the Vicar and Churchwardens in response to the Bishop’s Direction seemed to serve no purpose except to massage a bruised ego.  The personality of the Vicar was always an issue in the narrative at Wymondham.  There was always something less than dignified about a clergyperson speaking ill of other clergy with the help of the local press.

The future for Wymondham can only mark an improvement from the immediate past.  Resources of all kinds, financial, pastoral and administrative will be needed to carve out a new future for the parish and town.  Recovery will be long and hard, but the hope is that memories of happier times in the town and Abbey will provoke a response from the congregation and town to make the needed healing possible.  On the face of it, the problems left behind may well make it very difficult for a future incumbent, but someone will come forward to face the challenge of a very important post in the Norwich diocese. Almost certainly the next incumbent will be a priest in charge with a limited tenure.  This will allow flexibility and prevent some of the problems of the past ever being repeated.

What of Catherine herself?  No one expects her to move on to another post.   She will also be damaged by all the confrontations with the Bishop, the archdeacons and many of her own parishioners.  For most of us, disputes with single individuals take a serious toll on us in terms of sleepless nights and general unease.  Having a litany of people wanting you to move on must have caused her to be thoroughly miserable.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, Catherine deserves the opportunity to recover and find peace.  The irony of the situation is that the energy with which she clung to her sense of being in the right and most others in the wrong, is something possibly enhanced by her Christian faith.  How many ‘persecuted’ individuals quote the passage from Matthew where it says ‘Blessed are you when men persecute you and speak all manner of evil against you…’   That passage has unwittingly been used to bolster up many Christian personalities who see life from a somewhat paranoid and narcissistic perspective.  What I believe I see from the outside is not wickedness, but a binary approach to faith and life that is a potential cause for much unhappiness.  Another passage undergirding this approach is the Matthean text that says ‘Whoever is not with me, is against me’.  No one pointed out during my training that Jesus, according to Mark, makes the same statement in a way that turns it upside down, ‘Whoever is not against us is for us’.  The inclusive Marcan version of the saying leads us to a less tidy version of the Christian faith.  The binary Matthean version, though neater, is a way of living the Christian faith with an unfortunate potential for stress and conflict.

What we can wish for Catherine and for her now ex-parishioners is a chance to find shalom and rest.  No one demands that to follow the cause of Christ has to be within an atmosphere of nervous freneticism and conflict.  The passages that I would want all to hear and reflect on are those from John’s gospel which speak of refreshment with food and drink, comfort and plenty.   The symbols of vines, shepherds and places of light should be the images that now flash through our minds.  In other words, the Christian faith, while it has to be lived in the context of a fallen world, promises us fullness and ultimately safety.  I trust that there exist, in the Diocese of Norwich, individuals who can help bring the promise of shalom to all those who are broken and wounded.  For them are offered the words of Jesus when he said, Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Those of us who follow American politics to any degree will have noted the extraordinary testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson to the January 6^th Committee in Washington DC last Tuesday.  What this 25-year-old assistant had to say to the Committee was instantly compelling.  No doubt those who arranged for her to give evidence knew that her grasp of detail, her obvious integrity and her position right at the heart of the action on the fateful day of the attempted coup, would make her a star witness.  What raised her testimony to become decisive and history changing was the assured way that she answered the questions that were put to her.  There was no point where she hesitated about what she had seen.  She had been physically present at some events about which she gave testimony, or she was able to recall precisely what others said they had seen.  To call her a star witness is probably an understatement.  She was a superstar witness in that her testimony cannot easily be destroyed by those who prefer propaganda to replace the recording of historical events. There was nothing for her personally in giving this testimony, except perhaps a place in the American history books

The performance by Cassidy on Tuesday has led me to reflect on what we expect from witnesses either in a legal trial, or from an investigation such as those conducted by the Church of England safeguarding processes.  I will have, at the back of my mind, the Cassidy performance as I try to list some of the qualities that we expect to find from witnesses, whether or not they are under oath in a court of law.  As I write this, I am aware that there are presumably formal guides for barristers and other legal personnel who work within a trial or inquiry setting.  The questions I raise here are strictly from a lay perspective but there is one basic question that we all must ask.  How do we determine that the person speaking to us is telling the truth?

For any person to tell a lie or untruth of any kind, there must be some reason for doing so. The person we are speaking to may have a vested interest in holding on to a false set of facts, because lies appear to be advantageous to them or to an institution like the Church.  ‘Alternative facts’ may help to preserve the reputations of senior leaders in these organisations in the short term.  But over a period the truth has a habit of coming out to heap shame and embarrassment on reputations.  History is harsh to those who have attempted to hang on to power at the expense of integrity and honesty.  Reputations of all, living or dead, do matter.  For the Church, the honesty and holiness of past members is able to feed the integrity of the whole institution long after they have gone.  The opposite is also true.  Immoral behaviour or dishonesty, when it is exposed, even years after the deaths of those guilty, are still able to do damage both individuals and organisations. Telling a lie may appear to provide some advantage for someone but over the long-term it serves little purpose.

Whenever an investigator is searching for the true version of factual events, he/she will be aware of any potential motive for producing a false narrative.  If there appears to be an incentive to lie or cover up facts, the questioner will want to be allowed to ask further questions.  The narrative that is given may of course be the true version but there is nothing wrong in the further questioning as a method of confirming or raising doubts over what has been presented.  The cross-examination of witnesses is an age-old part of the legal process alongside the taking of an oath by witnesses in a court of law.  Everyone, including children, knows that it is quite hard not only to tell a lie, but to sustain that lie when questioned by a skilled investigator.  Lawyers at criminal trials and the police have plenty of experience at sorting out truth from lies.  Sustaining a falsehood when further questions may be asked about the setting or context of that event is quite hard to do.  For a start you need an extremely good memory to ensure that you never swerve from the version of events that you first told.

If an individual in a trial or an inquiry is thought to be relaying a false version of events, the questioner may need to have a working hypothesis as to why and how this could be.  Among the reasons that might come to mind are the presence of shameful episodes in a witness’ life that need to be shut out from memory.   More commonly we might expect to find, behind an individual giving possible false evidence, connections to another person or group.  These external influencing forces may well play a role in encouraging someone to align themselves with as false version of the facts.  The power of a parent to compel a child to follow a particular false account of an event is often decisive.  Thirdly we have, potentially, a wide range of psychological benefits to be obtained by telling a lie.  The self-delusionary aspects of a narcissistic disorder come to mind.  Then there is the avoiding of a raw fear of the truth coming to light and what it might do to the witness and those around him/her.   All these potential causes for telling a lie will normally be grasped and form part of the background awareness of the suitably trained investigator.  In summary, the investigator will look at the relationships, the networks and the ‘political’ factors that surround a witness which may impinge on their ability to tell the plain unadorned truth.  Once again, we are not suggesting that these other factors make lies inevitable.  It is, rather, that lies or false versions of events are less unexpected when there are emotional factors or powerful networks of influence impinging on a witness.  These may alter both the perception and the recalling of events from the past.

To return to the Cassidy Hutchinson testimony, the power of her words was greatly enhanced by the fact she had apparently nothing to gain from telling any version of the events on January 6^th except the true one.  Someone might possibly accuse her of being in league with Trump’s enemies to manipulate the facts, but it would be extremely difficult for anyone to come up with a false version of events which was not contradicted on points of detail by other witness statements.  It is the sheer amount of detail, something Cassidy seemed skilled at recalling, that makes her testimony so important.  People sometimes become confused by details in giving testimony and this is especially true of older people.  While there is always this potential for confusion, It should not be difficult, in practice, for a questioner to tell the difference between the partial memory loss of an older person and the deliberate attempt to cover-up the truth in the interest of relaying a false narrative.

While, as we noted, Cassidy had nothing to gain from giving her account, she had everything to gain by keeping silent.  The political forces in the States have become polarised and potentially violent.  If, as is being claimed in the newspapers today, her testimony forms the obituary to Trump’s political career, then she has good reason to be afraid of the anger of Trump and his supporters.  We all wish her well and hope that her life will eventually be allowed to return to normal.

The power of a witness to make a statement so that justice can be established is a proper part of process in every legal or quasi-legal setting.  We need to find this in the Church’s safeguarding processes.  In every case it is also important for there to be skilful questioning and scrutiny of the one making a testimony.  Problems arise when testimony is lodged, and no proper scrutiny takes place.  So often in church settings no one seems to make it their business to forensically examine whether a testimony is true or even plausible.  The evidence of a complainant is sometimes taken to be the only possible version of truth.  Perhaps what we are witnessing here is the Church trying to work off a compensatory debt to survivors.  For decades, even centuries, the testimony of the weak, the very young and the powerless was ignored.  It was the words of those in power that had weight, and these normally prevailed in church circles as in many others.  When this institutional bias in favour of the powerful finally became exposed, the Church as well as society had a lot of catching up to do.  The pendulum then swung violently in the opposite direction.  Now the witness of the weak and abused has become privileged to the extent that in some cases I hear about, not even common-sense questions are asked of child or vulnerable adult witnesses. Recently Martin Sewell has been asking questions of the controversial Independent Safeguarding Board and the way that, in a recent report, it asserts that ‘complainants can expect to be believed’. Such a statement is ‘extraordinary to find in such a body’. A declaration like this, along with the mantra we heard in the Kenneth case ‘the voice of the child must be heard and believed’, is more appropriate to a counselling service than in a body which is expected to involve itself with issues of justice and truth. A more appropriate statement, the one produced by the Cleveland Report in 1989, is ‘always listen to the complainant and take what they say seriously’. This principle would have been usefully applied in the Kenneth case. Allowing an automatic acceptance of a child’s testimony to pass unquestioned in safeguarding cases, has led to an untidy and inconclusive ending to the affair. The Carl Beech saga is also a warning of what can happen when there is an automatic acceptance of a complainant’s testimony.

Believing a testimony without any scrutiny of its plausibility can lead to thoroughly bad process in church legal protocols.  While we want to move away anything resembling the old aggressive strategies of defence lawyers in rape trials, we do still need independent scrutiny of accusations that are made in church led processes.  It does not take a top QC to establish the plausibility of a witness in a CDM process.  It does take a person who combines some basic legal training, an understanding of independence combined with a basic grasp of human nature.  Such a person, perhaps designated as a plausibility investigator, does not need years of experience to hone their skills.  We need these kinds of independent voices in the church’s legal protocols since, in some cases, compassionate common-sense seems to have left the room.  If the CDM process is not reformed speedily, many young clergy are going to feel thoroughly insecure.   The system in which they work has become untrustworthy.  I am hearing from various directions, not only cases of injustice, but also a sense of deepening insecurity, even fear among clergy, at the way the church’s legal structures are operated. 

Quite frequently in safeguarding contexts we hear the expression ‘vulnerable adults’ or ‘adults at risk’.  Without getting into detailed definitions of what these terms mean, we are referring to a group of people who, for various reasons, are in danger of different types of exploitation.  The expression ‘at risk’ is one that is not usually a self-description.  It is more likely to be used by someone in authority who wants to help and support someone in another group who may be in some sort of danger.  Our perspective on what it means to be at risk or vulnerable, comes normally from someone on the outside looking in.

This current blog post is written from the perspective and experience of an individual who readily accepts that he is part of the ‘at risk’ group. Robert, as we shall call him, knows that a lifetime of mental fragility, caused originally by a brain injury at the age of 11, has placed him with a constant need for help and support.  I am telling something of Robert’s story because it contains his alarming account of an encounter with a Christian congregation.  The attempts by a church to heal Robert of his mental distress have considerably added to his pain.  It is alarming to discover that apparently well-meaning folk are permitted to diagnose brain injury as demonic possession.  Society should surely offer some protection for vulnerable adults like Robert from utterly dangerous practices like these.  For me it is a privilege to be entrusted with Robert’s story. I ask the reader to enter imaginatively into Robert’s account as a way of gaining insight into the experience of the mentally impaired with their vulnerability.  Most of us would recognise the inappropriateness of what Robert had to endure as a recipient of Christian ministry.  That such things go on in in 2022 should be a cause of shame to all of us.  The ‘demonic abuse’ label for the mentally ill may not be mainstream Anglican thinking, but it is probably not hard to find similar combinations of bullying and abusive practices in a CofE context.  I tell Robert’s story as a way of offering a critique of a strand of teaching and theology. It threatens to severely damage members of vulnerable groups in our society and also bring discredit on the entire Church.  Finding one’s voice in any situation of abuse in the Church is hard.  The victims of abuse do not normally have the resources or stamina to fight their way to being heard by people of influence and authority in the Church.  The same predicament is doubly true for the mentally afflicted.  Allowing Robert, who has been through church-induced suffering, to find his voice, is something that Surviving Church is proud to do.

Before we get into Robert’s account, I should mention that I have received the CofE training offered to those who practise deliverance ministries and have acted as a spiritual deliverance adviser for two dioceses.   I am alert to the possible reality of demons, but also I am aware of how they seem more frequently to be created by an overheated and possibly disturbed exercise of the human imagination. 

Robert’s disastrous head injury at the age of 11, caused by a car accident, led to a later diagnosis of bipolar disorder.  This required frequent visits to mental hospitals from the age of 20.  For a time his life was marked by frequent episodes of self-harm, leaving him with scars all over the body.  A salient fact that Robert shared with me, relevant to his being able later to reach out to a retired clergyman, was that in his earlier years he had obtained an A level in religious studies.

In the late autumn of 2021 now aged 44, Robert was introduced by a friend to a Pentecostal Church near his home in the North-East.   After a lifetime of chronic depression and mental illness he was open to the possibility that a church might help in his desperate search for peace of mind.  Robert was sufficiently knowledgeable about the Bible to notice that the local pastor, Bill, was using Scripture arbitrarily as a way of backing up his personal theories.  Two themes seemed to dominate what Bill had to say.  The first was a strong emphasis on Bill’s ‘visions’ and the second was to point out the need to resist the ubiquitous presence of demons.  Unfortunately for Robert, the friend who had introduced him to the church told the pastor that he believed Robert to be possessed by a demon.  In an interesting turn of phrase, the friend described the situation as ‘fertile ground to reap a harvest’.  Bill then proceeded to exorcise Robert.  The deliverance prayer brought in a variety of phrases which must have been confusing to Robert.  The prayer mentioned ‘generational curses’ and ‘soul ties’ as well as ‘unholy oaths’ and witchcraft.  In short, through a fairly short prayer, Robert was being initiated into a paranoid universe.

After the prayer, two acolytes, who were present started to speak in tongues.   Bill then commanded the demon to name itself, but all Robert could do was to stare blankly at him.  Bill then declared that the demon had left but there were more demons to be cast out.   So the process was repeated week after week, the only difference being that Robert was sometimes responding to the prayers with an emotional outburst of tears.

It seems that Bill was new to performing exorcisms, but the level of drama created by Robert’s tears convinced him and other members of the congregation that this ministry was the new direction for the church.  By word of mouth, people started coming to be exorcised and the acolytes decided that they too had developed the power to remove demons.  Robert’s observation about the whole process was that it was a bit like a mesmerism show.  After a time of chanting Bill would consult a ‘demon manual’ before telling the person in front of him what demons were there.  Apparently one can consult a spirits list helpfully provided by Google.  All the attempts at removing the demons were accompanied by suitable shouting and screaming to fit into the prevailing atmosphere.

Robert’s concern is probably the same as my readers.  Is it ethical to take a group of highly vulnerable people, those with mental problems, the homeless, substance addicted, sexually abused etc and tell them that they have demons in them?  Who would be responsible if a person left such a service and threw themselves under a train?  Robert was also burdened or, should we say, controlled by being told the following.  His brain injury had been healed by prayer and the demons banished.  Nevertheless, the healing was provisional on his continuing to attend the church every week.

Further burdens were placed on Robert by the church.  His demons could have been passed on to previous girlfriends through the act of intercourse.  Also, a rape suffered by a previous girlfriend would have infected her with demons.  Her demons would have mixed with Robert’s demons.  Another abused girl was told that her demons could not depart unless she forgave her abuser.  Another man with mental health problems was told that his family had been cursed by witchcraft a hundred years earlier. 

In the middle of all this madness the two acolytes who had been present at the first exorcism and had decided that this was now their special calling to ‘practise’ exorcism and they wanted to use Robert as a guinea pig.  They admitted that they did not know anything about it but carried on anyway.  In one of these sessions, Robert had a laughing fit which led into a serious episode of self-harm with razor blades.  Up to that point Robert had been free of this form of behaviour for twenty years.

Robert shared with me in his email a series of other themes of Pentecostal teaching that were presented to him.  One of these mentioned the language of demonic strongholds.  Ephesians 6 with its militaristic language was constantly appealed to.  This chapter can be read as an instruction to Christians to see the whole Christian life as an endless battling with demons and Satan.  Much of the new teaching was being reinforced by an institution called the Northern School for Prophetic Ministry.  Here, for £350, members of the church could learn how to prophesy and cast out demons. It seems that Robert became a suitable ‘patient’ to practise on.  No thought seems to have been given to the ethical implications of using him in this way.

Various other bizarre items of teaching on demons and their activity were mentioned.  Many of them have become widespread in the States.  Expressions like ‘demonic portals’ and the Courts of Heaven find their place on videos freely available on Youtube.  My own tolerance for being up to date with this paranoid universe is probably limited, so I won’t weary my reader with sharing any more.  Robert in writing to me was no doubt processing all the dreadful things that had happened to him and said to him.  He was realising that he had found the means to escape from their grasp.  But that was not true for all the others who had fallen into the trap of believing that this church could rescue them from their vulnerabilities.  I finish with a plea from Robert in his own words.  It is a plea to me personally, but I read it as a plea to the wider church from a vulnerable victim who has fallen victim to unethical, possibly illegal, behaviour which somehow claims the name of Christian. The only way that such behaviour can be checked is by other Christians (like us) standing up and saying clearly: Not in our Name.

 I am writing this to you, because I believe what they are doing is morally wrong, in that they have no formal training in counselling. Yet they are telling vulnerable people that they are full of demons and they can cast them out. As I have previously stated they will character assassinate me, saying I’m paranoid, or alcohol-dependent (who isn’t after lock down?). But I give you a litmus test: ask them to swear on a Bible or on Jesus that what I have written is lies.

Few of us have lived through a moment in history that could truly be described as revolutionary.  The historians among us can point to certain pivotal episodes that powerfully changed for ever the experience of whole countries and the individuals within them.  Three political upheavals come to mind which have a clear claim to be called true revolutions.  In each case the populations are still experiencing the effect of what then took place.  These revolutions that come high on the seismic scale are, respectively, the American (1776), the French (1789) and the Russian (1917).  There have of course been numerous other lesser revolutions in Britain and elsewhere, but none come close to these three I have named. In each of them there was radical change – change that happened almost overnight.   

What are the features of a revolutionary event that make it significant and history-changing?  The word implies a turning upside down of the old order.  The old has passed away for ever, never to return. An entire population may be forced to accept a new reality about the way they are governed.  Resources of property and power may be reordered.  Sometimes the rich and powerful are deliberately persecuted, and an entire new class of people is created to manage the new system.  The only time in my life that I have witnessed, at first-hand, events which were thought at the time to be a revolution, are the political upheavals in Greece in 1967-8.  I watched the way that the traditional intelligentsia was shoved into the shadows (or prison) and a new bullying class of bureaucrats elevated to run the government and the police.  In short, officialdom became harsh and coercive.  Fear of strangers became the norm. The person you were speaking to might be an informer reporting to the State.  What I am briefly describing has been the norm for many unfortunate nations, and, tragically, is once again being reasserted in the occupied areas of Ukraine.  The deep irony of so many of these oppressive regimes is that they believe themselves to be pursuing commendable revolutionary aims.  In the case of Russia and the political oppression of parts of Ukraine today, the political justifications (removing Nazis) have turned out to be totally spurious. 

The word revolution is one that can also be applied to an event in any institution where dramatic irreversible changes take place.  Looking back over the past ten years in the CofE I detect three events that are revolutionary in the sense that they were unprecedented and at the same time irreversible.  To describe any event as revolutionary is of course a subjective assessment, but I would suggest that as the result of these three moments something really important has taken place.  The first pivotal moment for the CofE, and indeed for the whole of British society, was the revelation of the horrendous behaviour of Jimmy Savile in 2012.  I do not intend to dwell on this evil individual and his nefarious behaviour, but rather comment briefly on the seismic shift in attitudes which we witnessed throughout every institution.   After Savile, many abused individuals were able to come forward to disclose their stories and know that they would now likely be believed.  Many British institutions have had to face up to the presence of sexually abusive individuals within them.  The way that football, athletics, schools, and prisons were found to be infested with many abuse cases is an issue that we are still dealing with. The CofE, along with many other institutions, has been compelled to allocate considerable sums of money to provide training and expertise for both its employees and its members to deal with this massive problem.  Safeguarding for the vulnerable, however much we may critique its implementation, is something that is here to stay.  From a historical perspective, I see a direct link between Savile’s dreadful behaviour and the setting up of our NST in 2015.

Locating a second revolutionary moment in the CofE takes us away from the world of safeguarding to another theme often considered by this blog, the exercise of power in the Church by bishops.  It could be claimed that in our CofE, the power of the bishop to teach, admonish and discipline has been traditionally unchallenged.  In recent decades we have seen the growing influence of synods, but these have not claimed ownership of all manifestations of traditional episcopal power.  The power available to diocesan bishops remains considerable.  If a bishop decides to use his power arbitrarily, even tyrannically, there is nothing readily available in the system which has the right to challenge it. Only criminal activity or breaches of safeguarding rules are subject to sanctions exercised by other authorities.  Traditionally, the system has worked through the expedient of extremely careful vetting and formation for senior posts in the Church.

 The second revolution in the CofE took place in the Winchester Diocese in 2021 when a group of senior clergy expressed their intention to propose a vote of no confidence in their diocesan, Tim Dakin, at the Synod.  +Tim was not being accused of safeguarding or criminal offences but rather of presiding over a regime of bullying, fear and the destruction of morale in the diocese.  As far as I can tell, such a challenge against a bishop has never before been recorded in the CofE.  The fact that this threat ultimately led to the retirement of +Tim indicates that a powerful precedent has been set.  It is now possible for Synods to challenge the power of bishops when they are believed to be abusing this power.  Diocesan Synods would only ever rarely seek to propose such a vote, but the way that bishops exercise their power in the future must surely subtly change to take account of this event in 2021.  Another such challenge may well resurface at some future point in another diocese.  The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back.

The third revolution that has taken place in recent weeks is the extraordinary sight of a bishop seeking to control criticism of his actions by resorting to legal processes and the threat of a defamation suit.  Such an action has never, as far as I can gather, happened before in the Church.  I am course referring to the recent story of a CofE bishop publicly trying to shut down critical comments made on the Archbishop Cranmer blog.  The basic issue here is not who is right in the interpretation of the events under dispute.  The question that has to be faced is whether a bishop or, indeed, the wider CofE, stands to gain anything from an extraordinary and clunky demonstration of episcopal power.  Threatening anyone with legal action, before other methods of conciliation have been explored fully, does not make good publicity for the Church. Indeed, even the threat of such action may change the way that bishops are regarded in the future.  The public will be aware that such legal action costs money and institutions which spend money in this way rapidly undermine a willingness to provide voluntary donations in the future.  The law is a clumsy way of settling disputes at the best of times.  When legal processes are used by an organisation which purports to believe in reconciliation, love and goodwill, something looks out of kilter.  A bishop is known as the chief pastor in his/her diocese and any recourse to legal threats seems to be a denial of all the values implicit in a pastoral relationship.   My instinct tells me that this precedent of invoking the law to intimidate someone who is raising their voice to challenge power will not end well.  It will have a variety of unforeseen and possibly damaging consequences both locally and nationally.  I doubt if the bishop, using the sledgehammer of legal methods, has thought all these through. The political climate of the Anglican Church is already fractious over matters of sexuality and doctrine.   Opening fresh ‘fronts’ with critics in new areas is wasteful of energy and much needed resources.  The Diocesan Synod in this case will be concerned to see any of their charitable funds expended in this way.  There will, rightly, be calls for mediation and dialogue rather than the use of the blunt methods of a legal process.  The story, whatever its outcome, will be long remembered and the reputation of all bishops diminished in the eyes of many people.  The ordinary churchgoing population of the diocese will also have less incentive to attend, let alone give generously to their local churches. 

Three events or episodes- each may be seen as revolutionary in their implications for the life and functioning of the CofE.   Each episode was an unprecedented moment which has perhaps changed the history of the CofE for all time.   First, we are all living in a post-Savile world.  That horrendous episode forced everyone including members of churches to take the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable more seriously than before.  The enforced retirement of the Bishop of Winchester has changed the idea that bishops in the CofE are beyond criticism or accountability.  In the same way the use of legal threats against an individual for exploring what happened in a notorious episode of power abuse within the church, suggests that the role of bishop currently needs re-examination and re-discovery if the idea of episcopal oversight is to remain a viable and helpful one for the Church of the future.

Writing a recent blog, I found myself reflecting how we sometimes make decisions and take actions based on firm convictions that exist inside us. On other occasions we find ourselves thinking and behaving in ways that more reflect the values and attitudes of the people around us.  We could categorise these two modes as, respectively, individual and tribal behaviour.  At my boarding school in my teens, we were all required to join the Combined Cadet Force (CCF).  Most of us accepted this as part of the price of living in a post-war world where there was a vague possibility of a foreign army invading Britain.  Only one boy argued his way out of this obligation on the grounds of a convinced pacifism.  I was impressed with the fact that he argued his case in front of the headmaster and successfully convinced him of his personal convictions.  The idea of having a conviction which went right against the assumption of the crowd was then something new to me.  It was and is so much easier to go along with whatever everyone else is thinking or doing.  The voice of the crowd, or the tribe, is a powerful force and few of us will resist it unless there are exceptional circumstances.  The crowd mind is also a place of apparent strength.   To embrace it in religion or politics is also to feel safe and protected from the isolation and the sense of weakness that can come as the result of going it alone.

The ability to preserve a unique personality and individuality in the face of the tribal forces around is a huge challenge, especially for the young.  We are constantly being pulled in several directions simultaneously.  A lot of the energy we feel is coming from the groups around us, urging us to fit in.  In addition, another part of us is fully aware that we are unique.  We do have our own convictions as well as a functioning conscience.  Thus, we have an individual contribution to make either to the family or to the wider society.  Nevertheless, the constant pull towards conformity and practising other forms of group behaviour persists.  It is a balancing act and probably few of us get it right much of the time. Perhaps the most important task is for us to recognise that there is a struggle to be had in working out who we are individually and the temptation to go along with the easier option of tribal behaviour. Having some awareness of this struggle will perhaps prevent us ever going too far down the path of mindless conformity.  The place of balance is one which is worth searching for even if we do not always find it.

We often, in talking about balance between extremes, refer to the idea of a continuum.  This word evokes the picture of a measuring rod with people choosing which place to occupy along its length.  Some will cluster at one end, others in the middle, while others will find themselves at the far end.  Two examples of continuums will be familiar to all my readers.  The first is to be found in politics, where the language of left, right and centre is firmly embedded into our discourse.  We are also aware of the way that a quasi-political language exists to describe church practices.  We speak about extremes of conservative evangelical belief or high church practice as though people occupy a place somewhere on this scale.  Most politically active adults find themselves remaining fairly securely identified at one point on the political continuum and this may not change over a lifetime.  Others consciously move up or down this scale, reflecting changing convictions or different life experiences.  In a church context we might say of an individual who moves from a conservative stance to an open evangelical position that he/she has moved towards the centre.

Returning to the contrast we began with, the distinction between tribal and individual conscience-driven behaviour, I have come to see that both ways of functioning exist along continuums.  It is never a case that one sort of behaviour is right and the other wrong, it is always a question of balance.  To take the, person who acts out of his/her conviction or sense of independence, there is the distinct possibility that their individuality has been taken to an extreme.  We have a word to describe the extreme of individuality, and the word is narcissism.  When somebody acts out a personalised agenda with absolutely no sense of what others are thinking, that is not likely to result in acceptable behaviour.  The descriptions of narcissism, which include the ideas of entitlement, grandiosity and failure of empathy, all point to a crass insensitive individuality which is not acceptable.  In other words, the fact that an individual is not looking to the tribe for cues on how to behave does not make them an example of heroic and commendable independence.   Their behaviour can be harmful and destructive to others. 

If narcissistic individuality is at one end an extreme of poor behaviour, we can imagine that we might find at the other end an isolated sad individual who has withdrawn into a place of complete non-engagement with others.   This place of non-engagement is not to be judged on moral grounds, as the cause of such a stance may have much more to do with upbringing and poor nurture.   We mention it because, describing in brief these two ends of the individual continuum, we can be more aware of a central balanced point which is the optimum place to be.  I leave it to my readers to imagine what the ‘mean between extremes’, as Aristotle might have put it, looks like.  If we know we have to avoid the crass exploitative manipulations of the narcissist and the sad place occupied by the isolated individual, most of us will have some sense what the optimum place of individual functioning will look like.

The second continuum, where we need to find a place of balance, is the one where we recognise that our human functioning requires us to fit in with the tribe or crowd.  We recognise how this external force is exerting pressure on us.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  What is bad potentially is when we cannot ever see that this force is working on us.   At that moment we are a part of a tribe.  We need, for example, to have some understanding that the socialist ideas that we expound are linked to the social circles we move in.  To claim that our political convictions are uniquely worked out by our intellect and individual conscience is probably dishonest.  This is not wicked in any way, but it marks a failure of insight which may make us less empathetic to the position of others.  It would be unrealistic to suggest that what other people think or say has no bearing on our actions and thoughts.  Again, it is a question of balance.  The continuum for this crowd behaviour will have, as one extreme, the place where the individual is completely dominated by the group – the ‘we think’ brigade.  Nothing original is permitted inside our heads and every stance we take has to be in accordance with what the leader or group have decreed.  We see this type of behaviour in cults but also, sadly, in churches.  Some churches are quite good at destroying the individuality of their members to create a uniformity which is destructive of a balanced humanity.  I am not clear what the opposite extreme of this continuum looks like, but it might belong to the person who believes that they can live without community but in a proud self-sufficiency.  However we describe the two ends of the community/tribal spectrum, we know that there is a place of balance in the continuum where such things as mutuality, love and interdependence can flourish.  We need other people and other people need us.   Getting that particular balance right takes skill and experiment.  To use another word that has cropped up recently in these blogs, we need to be oscillating along the spectrum to find the right place to allow both our individual thinking and our social existence to flourish.

This reflection has attempted to explore something of the dilemmas of being human.  The word that we keep coming back to is the word balance.  Being human and Christian, we need to find a balance in our lives.  We need to avoid the extremes of self-inflation/narcissism and over exposure to the dehumanising of crowd/tribal behaviour.  Those who lead us will accomplish their responsibilities so much better if they are aware of these dynamics which seek to trap us in human conceit and self-inflation or, alternatively, destructive self-deprecation. 

My thoughts on balance within our lives, finding altruistic love for others rather than selfish exploitative behaviour, are naturally inspired by Christian ideals.  Fitting together these ideas about the place of balance and seeing how they are exemplified in the teaching of Jesus is still a work in progress.  Meanwhile I sense that we can see Jesus as one who well understood the competing pressures of individuality and belonging to groups. Sometimes that tension which he faced led to family fallings-out.  What was going on in Jesus’ mind when he uttered those memorable words in front of his mother and family?  ‘Who is my mother and who are my brothers?’ This same Jesus showed an acute sense of family when he uttered the words from the cross ‘Behold thy mother’ to the beloved disciple.  Jesus lived the same tension of living out a unique vocation with balancing a human need to belong.  All of us have in different ways to resolve this tension of individuality and belonging.  It is something that comes with fact of being human.  Awareness of the problem is a first step in finding a way forward that does justice to our well-being and flourishing as Christian men and women,

Up till now I have avoided writing anything about the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) in this blog.  I still have personal contacts with that Church having worked as a Rector in a congregation (charge) on the edge of Edinburgh for 7½ years.   In many ways these were the happiest years of my ministry. Having returned to England in retirement, I have wanted to retain the fantasy that things such as bullying and safeguarding problems did not happen in Scotland.  When a problem arose last year in the diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney, linked to possible power abuse, I hoped in vain that the issue would quickly go away.  I was keen to believe that the saga could be resolved in a way that would not disturb my idealised memories of the SEC.

On Saturday last, the 11th of June, the Scottish edition of The Times carried a story which brought up-to-date news of the ongoing saga of Bishop Anne Dyer, the SEC Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney. In summary, the diocese of Aberdeen has been troubled for some time by stories of alleged bullying and abuses of power by the bishop. Bishop Dyer, who had been Warden of Cranmer Hall Durham, was appointed Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney in 2018. The appointment had been complicated by the fact that the normal protocols for choosing a bishop by election had failed to produce an agreed candidate.  In such a situation the choice is left to the College of seven Scottish bishops. Up to this point no woman had ever been selected for the office of Bishop in the SEC and there were among the clergy of the diocese a number who objected to such an appointment. The problems that have arisen subsequently are apparently nothing to do with the gender of the bishop but with her management style. Scottish Episcopal dioceses are, by English standards, extremely small (Aberdeen has 48 churches and around 25 clergy).  Clergy and bishops meet up far more often would be the case in England. If there are any personal difficulties or clashes, they will become disruptive very quickly.

The immediate cause of a dysfunction in the diocese related to the state of disrepair at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Aberdeen. Without going into overmuch detail, the bishop decided that she would nominate another church in Aberdeen to be a pro-Cathedral, pending some long-term resolution of what should happen to the cathedral building. The whole question of how to merge clergy and congregations seems to have been poorly handled.  Great resentment was generated among various stakeholders, including the musicians at both churches. Bishop Dyer’s people skills seem not to have been of the highest and the whole confrontation became serious and very public.  One respected senior clergyman in the diocese had his licence removed by the bishop. When this crisis spilled over into the wider church, the College of Bishops asked Professor Iain Torrance to conduct an enquiry and make recommendations as to what should be done. Iain Torrance is a highly respected figure in church and Scottish circles and has acted as Moderator of the Church of Scotland.  The report, published in a digest form, seems thorough and professional. One comparison we might make with similar reports in England is that the whole exercise was completed in a few months and the SEC received Torrance’s services without charge.  In summary, Torrance concluded that the evidence pointed to the conclusion that Bishop Dyer should be urged to stand down because her position as bishop was ‘irrecoverable’. 

The College of Bishops now found itself in a dilemma. Should they accept this report and encourage Bishop Dyer to retire or should they ignore the report and seek some other way forward?   It seems that the bishops have placed the Torrance report into a pending file.  Earlier this year, the College asked a group of three mediators to try and solve the breakdown of communication between Bishop Dyer and some members of her diocese. Meanwhile the Bishop seems to be working, but the Torrance report hanging over her must lessen her authority.  The College of Bishops are in a difficult situation. If the mediation effort that they have set up fails, what other options of resolving this problem are left to them?  As in England, bishops are authorities to themselves and there is no other legal authority able to force Bishop Dyer to retire.  We need also to remember that it was difficult to find a suitable candidate for bishop last time.  Next time, after these ‘local difficulties’, it will be still harder to find an acceptable candidate. The College of Bishops relate to one another as equals.  No individual possesses the authority to tell one of their number what to do. Bishop Mark Strange of Moray, Ross and Caithness is the current Primus. His status is that of first among equals, primus inter pares. He does not have the role or authority of an Archbishop

The new information published by the Saturday Times adds another dimension to the story and puts further pressure on Bishop Dyer, and indeed on the College of Bishops. The reported story relates how a lawyer called Peter Murray working in a legal firm called Ledingham Chalmers, took on work for the bishop and the diocese.  The story reminds us of the way that sometimes bishops in England, under some sort of pressure or challenges to their authority resort to expensive legal options. The diocese of Aberdeen is, of course, tiny by English standards. Also with each charge responsible for paying and housing its clergy, the sums for which the diocese is responsible are probably small.  Without having any figures in front of me, I am guessing that the annual total budget for a diocese in Scotland would seldom exceed £250k.  In the years before Bishop Dyer’s appointment in 2018 in, the diocese typically spent £3k a year in legal fees. The Times story centres around the fact that, since Bishop Dyer’s appointment, the diocese of Aberdeen has spent £120k on lawyers at Ledingham Chalmers. Peter Murray, the lawyer named as receiving this largesse, is also a trustee of the diocese and a personal friend and supporter of Bishop.  It would appear reasonable to suppose that the vast increase of expenditure was directly connected to the litigious environment that Bishop Dyer’s management style has created.  There seem to have been no checks and balances to challenge the way that this money was being expended.  Readers of this blog will be familiar with the theme of charitable money being spent to preserve and protect the personal/professional interests of individual bishops and their circle.

In retelling this story about the SEC and the way that, once again, charitable money ends up in the pockets of well to do lawyers protecting institutional interests and reputations, one has a sense of sadness. Lawyers do have a part to play in church management and administration, but one weeps for any situation where churches or dioceses are paying out large sums to legal personnel who fail to observe the highest standards of ethical behaviour.  The problems in Aberdeen have now been compounded to a point where it is hard to see how this particular story will have a happy ending.  The College of Bishops have placed their trust in a mediation process which will now be more difficult to resolve in the light of these new revelations of financial mismanagement. The Scottish equivalent of the Charity Commission will no doubt be involved, and an investigation ordered.  Once again, we will have the unedifying spectacle of a report which will show how the charitable contributions of the faithful have been allowed to pass into the hands of lawyers without any obvious benefit for the public good.

I write this blog post with a sense of sadness and disappointment. Whenever a scandal, sexual or financial, breaks there is always a weakening of trust in the institution involved.  The Church of England has seen a steady loosening of trust towards its leaders over recent years. When trust is weakened in this way, the strength and integrity of the whole institution is lessened.  I wish I could see a positive outcome for the present SEC crisis. What we really require is some strong inspirational and  decisive leadership. This is also required for the Church of England.  It is currently hard to see where this will come from. It certainly is not much in evidence at the present time.

One of the features of the Christ Church Saga is that there is now far too much information for anyone but the most assiduous individual to process. There are literally thousands of online pages of facts, speculation, claim and counterclaim. Most people will end up with only a subjective impression of what has been going on in the College and Cathedral over the past four years. Even if they arrive at a conclusion about what they believe to be the truth, few would be able to marshal all the necessary facts that would allow them to argue confidently either for or against the Dean.    Ordering all the information in a way that will convince a third party of the stance we are taking is probably not possible for most of us.   Having said all that, I am and always have been a supporter of Dean Percy. This is a position I arrived at based on a knowledge of his character over some thirty years, but also backed up through my, no doubt incomplete, study of the available online information.  I know that by saying that I have to be extremely careful in how I present my supporting material.  First, I know that writing on the topic can bring threats of legal action by the teams of lawyers actively protecting the College and the Diocese of Oxford.  Secondly there is the question that I have already alluded to.  I recognise that a supportive position requires a fluency in all the facts surrounding the case and this I cannot claim to have.  Out of my study of all the massive amounts of material available, I find myself left with three outstanding questions.  If I were to be able to find the full answer to these questions, I believe I would be a long way towards having an insight into what is, for me, the most interesting part of the Percy saga – the motives and feelings of those who persecuted him over four years. Reducing the whole Percygate saga into a reflection on the motives of certain individuals caught up in a nightmarish event, is not meant to be an accusatory rant.  The story, however, lends itself to such speculation and questions.  Perhaps the best we can do is to arrive at a place of puzzlement over the behaviour of otherwise highly intelligent human beings.  I hope that, by pondering the questions I pose, my reader can perhaps be helped to have a new, more manageable, grasp of important parts of the story.  Asking pertinent questions, even when we cannot provide complete answers, is surely a valid way to penetrate deeper into the truth of what has been going on in Oxford over the past few years.

My concern in asking questions about Percygate is not to uncover new facts but to understand a little better the dynamics of the affair and how it was set in motion.  There are episodes within the saga that cry out for explanations at a number of levels.  Much of the time we do not have answers to these questions.  We have only our surmise and speculation. The asking of questions is still a useful thing to do as it helps us to understand better.  This first question I have centres around the original confrontation between the Dean and members of his Governing Body (GB) when a group led by the Christ Church Censors sought to remove him from his post for “immoral, scandalous or disgraceful conduct”.  In 2019, in the course of this dispute, the accusation was taken to a formal Tribunal.  Here a retired judge, Sir Andrew Smith, presided and heard 27 charges. . The hearing took place over 11 days in June and July 2019.  When the judgment was given in August, it resulted in a near total vindication of the Dean.  All the charges against him were overturned. My first question concerns the circulation of this Smith report.  All the members of the GB were technically party to the prosecution of the Dean, but the group of Censors and ex-Censors, overseeing this prosecution, decided that the report should not be read in its entirety by all the members.  The redacted version that they were allowed to read omitted mention of the misbehaviour of certain individuals and also left out an appendix 5.  Here Sir Andrew had spelt out the details of unpleasant, even vitriolic, e-mail exchanges between certain members of the GB about the Dean.  Members of the GB were explicitly forbidden to read the full unredacted version later forwarded to them by Jonathan Aitken.  They were instructed to return their copies unopened and unread. My first question is simply this. What were the grounds which led the committee of Censors and ex-Censors to believe that it was right or just to make this demand of the GB? In issuing such a prohibition, the Censors seemed to be treating the wider GB as children, children who could not be entrusted with sensitive information. Whatever the detailed answer to my question might be, it is clear that the Censors and ex-Censors, the dominant clique in the GB, wanted to ensure that they were in control of the flow of information within the College. This single episode in the whole saga reveals an aspect within the story that puts these Censors in an unfavourable light. Whenever important information is denied to those who have a legal right to see it, we are likely to suggest that there is here little regard for justice, transparency and proper process.  Evidently power games are being played out rather than the neutral pursuit of justice.

The next question I have to ask comes from a later stage in the whole process. It is at the point after the accusation of improper behaviour has been made against the Dean in October 2020 over what is commonly summarised as ‘Hairgate’.  The allegation against the Dean was responded to by both the Church and the College authorities. Because of the accusation, the Dean was required immediately again to cease his duties in the cathedral and College.  The Church process required the taking out of a CDM against the Dean.  As part of the procedure, an independent reviewer, Kate Wood, was brought in to make a factual report and also recommendations to the Bishop and the NST.  My second question does not focus on any of the interviews with the complainant or the Dean but on one particular aspect of the CDM process. A CDM requires that a risk assessment be drawn up.   This will set out the conditions under which an accused person should be managed, pending some kind of hearing.  Somebody – it has never been established who – produced a most extraordinary document which was meant to set out the risks posed by the Dean. The document has the hall marks of being an inhouse piece of work.  In this risk assessment, the writer appeared to believe that the Dean was a danger, even a potential sex predator, to every individual working in in the College. Overnight he was prevented from having any contact with a single person in the College on the grounds that he was a danger to them. My second question is not about the authorship of this extraordinary document. My question is simply this.  Who within Christ Church, the diocese of Oxford, the Bishop’s staff and the safeguarding team actually believed in the contents of this document and that it in any way reflected reality? It appears that this risk assessment was ‘approved’ by the entire diocesan staff, in spite of its murky origins.  It is hard to see how anyone close to Christ Church or the Diocese had any reason to suppose from the available information that the Dean was a danger to anyone. It has been pointed out that the Bishop had the authority to seek help in drawing up a risk assessment which would be uncontaminated by either the politics of the Cathedral or Christ Church.   Instead, the Bishop stood by this homemade document of doubtful provenance.   I am told that there are ten qualified people in the Oxford area able to do this work of risk assessment. As we all know, the subsequent judgment by Dame Sarah Asplin declared that the alleged offence, if it took place, was not overtly sexual and did not merit a Tribunal process.  Dean Percy had never had other accusations made against him of sexual misbehaviour. We are left unable to explain how a group of Church officials suddenly became caught up in an extraordinary group fantasy.  This postulated that there was among them a sexual predator of such rapacity that everyone in the College and Cathedral needed protection from him. The results of this calumny have been seriously harmful and far-reaching to the morale of the Cathedral and the whole diocese.

The final question is about the future. When, at some time in the future, the full story of the Great Persecution is told and the details of the motivations and the skulduggery uncovered, we might hope for the wounds to begin to heal.  In the meantime, we await the arrival of the forces of reason and justice, perhaps mediated by the Charity Commission.  Their verdict would do much to tidy up the terrible legacy of this affair.  One thing is certain is that the reputation of individuals in Christ Church and the Church of England has been badly damaged.  It is also apparent that some individuals have allegedly behaved in a truly wicked fashion, leading to a major scandal which will take decades to heal. My final question is this.   Is the Church of England prepared to use its considerable powers under the Clergy Disciplinary Measure to sanction and discipline its clerical members if they are shown to have been involved in gross misbehaviour towards the Dean?  Spite, malevolence, and jealousy all seem to play a part in the saga, alongside a kind of group insanity.  The Church has a duty, if it finds this kind of irrational bullying, to show its displeasure and demand sanctions from those found to be guilty. Some are also calling for an Archepiscopal Visitation to the whole Diocese of Oxford, like the one carried out for Chichester in 2011. The nature of the alleged misbehaviours may be different, but their effect, in terms of weakening the reputation of the entire Church of England, is comparable. If the Church at the highest level ignores what has happened in Oxford, that will be one more nail in the coffin for the reputation of the Church in the wider society.

For further fresh insights into the affair, please consult the Nineveh Website. https://nineveh.live/?page_id=75

        by Janet Fife

I arrived at my office in the church to find a cartoon taped to my door. It depicted a smoking church, with shaken and singed members of the congregation departing. One of them says to the minister on his way out, ‘Nice to hear a good old-fashioned sermon again, Rev.’  Someone had pencilled in underneath, ‘We’ll have the fire extinguishers ready!’ I can’t remember what text I’d been assigned to preach on that Sunday – I was still a curate – but clearly I’d gained a reputation for preaching some pretty judgmental sermons.

That was part of the tradition I’d grown up in, where preachers ‘dangled sinners over hell’, like the 18th C preacher Jonathan Edwards, or ‘challenged’ their hearers ‘to within an inch of their lives’. It was all done in love, of course:  people had to be ‘convicted of their sin’ before they would turn to God. So in all earnestness I would declare that ‘God is not impressed’ by this or that aspect of human behaviour.  I knew very definitely what was right and would please God, and what was wrong and would make God angry. Certainty is so reassuring.

It was at some point after that cartoon was left on my door that I sat in that same office preparing a sermon.  And an inner voice said to me, very clearly, ‘It isn’t your job to convince people that they’re sinners. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit.’ (See John 16:8.) I saw then that my role was not to convince (‘convict’, in evangelical parlance) people that they were sinners, but to attend to those who were already worried about their sin.  To those people I might minister forgiveness, healing, restoration. Or, as often happened, I might reassure them that they had done nothing wrong. I recall one woman, who came to see me who was tormented by guilt and could find no peace. Her offence? On her first ever visit to church she had taken communion, not knowing she ought to have been confirmed before taking part.

Many of us will, at one time or another, have taken part in a social media conversation among Christians where some of the participants refuse to accept that there is more than one valid point of view on a contentious topic. Not content with merely stating their own views, they imply that anyone holding a different opinion is wilfully disobedient to God. ‘The Bible clearly says, x, y, or z, and everyone who wants to obey God agrees with me.’ There is no recognition that faithful Christians might differ as to the interpretation of the Bible or the will of God; no nuance. If others in the discussion quote Bible verses that appear to contradict their stance, they ignore them or explain them away. If opposing arguments are backed up by citing Bible scholars, those authorities are dismissed as unsound or second rate. Nothing can shake their apparently impenetrable assurance that there is only one version of the truth, and it is theirs.

This is not a new phenomenon. St. Paul, writing to the Romans, said: ‘Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarrelling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them.  Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.’ (Rom. 14:1-4 NIV).

The question of whether or not to eat meat may not sound too serious to us, but to first-century Christians living in Gentile cities it posed a serious dilemma. Much of the meat sold in the market came from animals which had been sacrificed in a pagan temple. Therefore, the meat on a Christian’s plate might well have been sacrificed to an idol. To some, knowing the idols had no real existence, this didn’t pose much of an issue. Others felt strongly that it was a risk no Christian should take.  This might be that they believed the idols had demonic power, or because the believers had converted from the other religion and were afraid of being lured into slipping back, or for some other reason. For whatever reason, they contended that true Christians ought to make their devotion to Christ alone clear by abstaining from meat. Real Christians were veggies.

I was born in 1953, and in my lifetime the defining issues of ‘soundness’ for evangelicals have included the following:  not wearing make-up (for women); not having long hair or beards (for men); not dancing, drinking, smoking, playing cards, listening to rock music, or seeing films; the right beliefs about the Second Coming of Christ, the Tribulation, Rapture, and Millennium; predestination vs. free will; the authority and infallibility of Scripture; eschewing vestments, candles and incense in church; wearing a cross rather than a crucifix; opposing the ordination of women; and believing homosexuality to be sinful.

Some of these are still contentious issues, but the heat went out of others long ago. And while British evangelicals have never been much exercised over dispensationalism and the details of the Rapture, their American equivalents never had a problem with cosmetics. My mother, speaking to a church ladies’ group in the Chicago suburbs in the 1960s, recounted how shocked British evangelicals had been when the Billy Graham team arrived in England in 1956, and the wives were wearing make-up. Unfortunately, it turned out there were several of those same wives in her audience, and they were affronted. That was the last time my mother ever spoke in public.

Anglo-Catholics will have their own shibboleths, as will traditionalists. Observing Ascension Day on a Sunday; the position a priest takes when celebrating; whether ‘virtual’ Communion is valid: almost anything can be loaded with immense and eternal significance. I have known charismatics maintain that everything from paisley fabrics to Body Shop products are demonic and must be eschewed by truly devoted Christians.

Which all reminds me of the therapists’ axiom:  ‘The presenting problem is never the real problem.’ The real issue is not eating meat, the infallibility of Scripture, or LGBT people. The real issue is a deep, unspoken fear that God cannot possibly love us enough to accept us despite all our sins and mistakes. It’s a dread of what happens when we die. It’s a (probably unacknowledged) rage that has to find an  acceptable outlet when Christians are expected to instantly forgive and forget even the most terrible wrongs committed against them. Or it’s the preacher’s own guilt projected onto others, as with my abusive father or my colleague Geoff, who was outed by the News of the World as ‘the dirty dean of Salford’ after advertising ‘Happily married man seeks sex with no strings attached’.

It took me years, even after I stopped preaching judgment on people, to realise that the eagerness to do so sprang from my buried anger at my father and other abusers. I had grown up among evangelicals who believed that the ‘abundant life’ Christ brought meant we should always be smiling and full of joy. And two vicars had counselled me that I must forgive my father for the abuse; one even told me that if I was still angry after a single session of prayer I must be ‘demonised’. So what acceptable outlet could I find for my rage, other than to condemn those who could safely be regarded as sinners? One of my greatest regrets, looking back over my life, is the people I damaged by doing so.

I wonder if Paul had similar regrets. At any rate he, the ‘Pharisee of the ‘Pharisees’, the absolute stickler for the letter of the Jewish law, writes to the Romans that it is the punctilious Christians who have the weaker faith. This is of course the opposite  of what I was brought up to believe. It seems also to be the reverse of what many contemporary conservative evangelicals still believe.  The CEEC (Church of England Evangelical Council) has this week issued a video which includes the following statements:

‘If you and I disagree about what the Bible says is good, and what can receive the affirmation of God…we have a fundamental problem.’

‘We can’t agree to disagree on these foundational issues of sexuality and Christian living because Jesus says they’re issues of eternal significance.’

‘This particular issue goes to the heart of what we believe, not particularly because of what people do in their bedrooms, but because of what it says about God.’

The video is, as you will have guessed, about whether the Church of England should be accepting of same sex relationships: but over the years and the centuries the same things might have been said about many another issue which is now not an issue. The speakers will all have been absolutely sincere in their belief that LGBT+ is the most important and defining topic for the Church of our day, but it’s not clear to many of us that they are right. If Jesus said anything at all about homosexuality the gospel writers didn’t record it; and how can affirming gay Christians say anything bad about God?

However, I don’t intend to get into a discussion here about homosexuality; my theme is our tendency to judge each other about decisions which are really between the individual believer and God. We rightly condemn those activities which harm others:  slavery, theft, adultery, violence, sexual abuse, slander, and so on. We are right, too, to be truthful about corruption and injustice where we find it. But I now believe that we should be very slow to call sinful those activities that don’t harm anyone else. We don’t know what God is doing in someone else’s life, but we do know that it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to nudge them if what they are doing is displeasing to God. I end by parapharasing Paul’s wise advice to the Romans:

‘The one who is liberal must not treat with contempt the one who is conservative, and the one who is conservative must not judge the liberal, for God has accepted them.  Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.’

The forthcoming Jubilee has allowed the older ones among us to dredge our memories to recall where we were when the news of the death of King George was announced to the nation.  I was in my two-form rural primary school in Kent.  One of the children from the class above came into our form room to announce the news. The broadcast of Music with Movement for schools had been interrupted to share the news with the public. I do not remember any strong signs of emotion being displayed.  More shocking was the announcement of the assassination of President Kennedy eleven years later.  The violent death of prominent people was not something that we were used to at the time or expected. 

Reading accounts of past events that we were part of, in some sense, is a fascinating exercise.  One thing that is of interest to me is to reflect and discover how long it took for any sense of party politics to enter my thinking and my imagination.  As a student in the mid-60s there was a great deal of political activity going on around me, but I did little to get involved.   Everything seemed to be pointing the way to a political revolution that many believed to be imminent.  The Vietnam war was polarising the young people of my age in the States. The short but bloody 1968 confrontation between the Russian tanks and the crowds of Prague was heroic, inspiring and tragic all at the same time.  The student uprising of the same year in Paris galvanised many young people into political awareness and activism.  I was one of those who, until the end of my time as an undergraduate, was a complete political innocent.  It took a prolonged stay in Greece under the Colonels to awaken any political fire inside me.  My exposure there to a cruel fascism introduced me to the emotion of political passion.  For the first time I began to be able to imagine something of the zealotry of young people around the world, who at that time were prepared to risk their lives to change a political system.  

Politics is not only about a dominant group which makes the rules that govern a country.   Alongside the ideology of a ruling party in government we have other levels of political activity, as, for example, the belief systems of institutions.  In the late sixties, speaking in a very generalised way, it could be said that the universities and churches were predominately in a left-wing mode.  For me, a participation in this ideological social movement was experienced by my attendance at a huge student conference in Manchester in 1969.  This conference was entitled Third World First.   The very definite left-wing bias of some of the speakers was apparent in their use of incomprehensible Marxist jargon.  These were hard to listen to or understand. There was enough, however, to latch on to elsewhere to make it worthwhile.  We had the inspiring words of Archbishop Helder Camara of Recife in Brazil.  He helped to convince his audience that the future that beckoned us had a distinctively socialist feel.

Beyond the world of politics and universities there was yet another ‘lefty’ revolution going on, this time in the theology of the churches.   In a revealing chapter in her recent book with Nicholas Peter Harvey, Unknowing God, Linda Woodhead speaks of the communitarian strand of modern philosophy and theology.  This was flourishing in the sixties and, according to Woodhead, was typically expounded by the influential philosopher John MacMurray. This writer had a great influence on my own thinking from the time I read one of his books in 1964. The theme of much of MacMurray’s writing is a simple one. He articulates the idea that each of us only finds ourselves in our relationships with other people. In other words, community is the primary reality, and it takes precedence over our individuality. In this mode of thinking we find several other theologies which emphasise the communal and which were very popular and influential in this period.  Among them we have feminist theology and liberation theology.  Both are examples of Christians attempting to explore theology as it touches groups.  At the time, like many others, I found such ideas enormously attractive.  They also fitted with another strand of theology which I was learning from my study of Orthodoxy.  The theme that I was noting is summed up in the word Sobornost. This is one of those words that is best not translated.  It is a Russian word which is itself a translation of the Greek word koinonia.  That word has the idea of human community and participation in the divine.  At theological college I was attracted to the ideas of John Zizoulas who wrote a work on the eucharist. He claimed that the church finds its true identity as it gathers to celebrate this rite of communion with God which also binds together its members.

Looking back, I can see how thoroughly immersed I was in the communitarian ideas that were current in the sixties.  Woodhead’s short essay has allowed me to recognise how much I was feeding on the prevailing fashions of the time. There is nothing shameful about this attraction, but the dangers of going too far down this path can be faced afresh as we look back.  Woodhead’s writing is able to point out, from a contemporary perspective, the drawbacks of taking on too much of this mode of thought.  One of the interesting expressions of this thinking was the wide embrace across the Western world of a belief in communes.  Many, if not most of these experiments, ended in tears as the idealism which started them could not overcome the many practical issues that this kind of community living involves.  I have also listened to endless accounts of the ‘cults’ where idealism was betrayed so that a community became a focus of pure exploitative power. One student at my theological college went off to live in a commune immediately after ordination. This was supposed to be a great new idea in politics and in the church. Too much idealism does not solve problems like responsibility for cleaning and washing up. The Christian commune at Blackheath survived only a couple of years.

Woodhead’s article is of great value as it sets out the danger of a church life and a theology that draws deeply from this communal vision.  She also recognises that the opposite to it, what she calls atomised existence, is conducive to loneliness and isolation.  Any excess of community is often going to be claustrophobic and dangerous.  Community of the wrong kind can involve the loosening of barriers that mark out where we end and another begins.   This can be exhilarating but we all need appropriate boundaries to defend and protect us from exploitation, bullying and abuse of various kinds. Finding the right balance between atomised existence and an over-intimate association with others is difficult. The article dramatically points to the way that sexual abuse is a forcible wrecking of the needed boundaries that should exist between us and others.  We desperately need them for our psychological and emotional well-being.

We all face the problem of finding out who we truly are. Over the 10 years when I have been involved in cult survivor circles, I have seen how easily people can become sucked into extremes of community living. They give so much of themselves to the cult, its leader and the ideals of the group, that it is extremely hard later to escape and find their true self once more. I wonder sometimes whether church groups understand the dangers of what appear to be cult-like practices in their communities. We recently mentioned the dynamics of the John Smyth ‘cult’.  He completely undermined the self-determination and identity of his young victims. For many of them the task of reconstructing the self is still proceeding some 40 years later. Peter Ball did something similar to his victims.  It took exceptional courage for survivors in both cases to step forward and make a complaint. Simultaneously we need to remember that not by any stretch of the imagination is everything about religious community bad.  The danger here is when such communities allow their members to step over a line into a form of undifferentiated merging with others.  We need to spend more time addressing this tension in church life and how we need to preserve a healthy place which balances our need both for community and individuality. The same balance is needed in our political life.  Fortunately, we have the resources of Scripture to help us to find who we truly are in Christ.  We never need to be enslaved in the ideology and control of another person.

Over my lifetime I have seen in politics and religion the oscillations between promoting strong independent individualism and the insistence on new forms of tight community. On this blog we have noted the tension between placing ourselves under a strong charismatic leader or seeking to go it alone.  It is indeed hard to find exactly the right place to be along this spectrum.  The place of true balance in our religious and our political life is, nevertheless, worth searching for.   The two extremes of total independence and a merged personality have to be wrong, both from the theological and the psychological perspective. The important thing for a Christian is to understand the seductive nature of both these positions so that they can avoid embracing either of them. We are not meant either to be a strong superman/woman, owing nothing to anyone or, on the other hand, a porous personality able to be swayed and manipulated by everyone in sight. I believe that the resources of Scripture combined with an intelligent reading of the psychological literature can help us to know what is, for each of us, healthy territory to occupy. My short reflection here on this post has perhaps made us aware of a map that needs to be drawn by each of us.  That map may help us to live in the right place, a place that is simultaneously open to God, to other people and to our true selves.

One of the things we learn very early on in life is that if you are going to have an argument with someone, it is a good idea to agree on what you mean by the words you use.  Numerous discussions over the years have proved to be a waste of time when you discover that your starting point or the words you were using were being defined in quite different ways by the person you were talking to.

In recent safeguarding news stories in the press and elsewhere we have also been encountering situations when two sides use words which have quite different meanings from one another.   Martyn Percy has been reminding us, in his recent article on the Modern Church site, how words are indeed slippery things.  In the novel, 1984, published in 1949, one of the themes is the way that language becomes a tool of oppression by the ruling clique.  Hitherto wholesome words, like freedom and truth, have their meanings totally subverted so that no one quite knows what they really mean anymore.  All that can be said with certainty is that in a 1984 context, words are defined to fit in with what those in authority have decreed.

One word that has been giving problems in recent years, particularly in a safeguarding context, is the word independent.  I spent time trying to define in an earlier blog what this word might actually mean.  In a church/safeguarding setting there does seem to be a particular problem in knowing how we should understand the word.  The Church of England authorities appear to believe, for example, that the word can legitimately apply to a group of people working at Church House and paid for with central church funds.  To believe that any group working with such constraints can be properly independent in a meaningful sense, is to enter a 1984, Alice in Wonderland fantasy.   Here words mean anything that the speaker decides they mean. The word independent has now been so overused that perhaps it needs to be avoided as much as possible.

Is there another word that might replace independent, now that it has had its meaning undermined?  The last time the word was used appropriately was when the Government set up the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).  Since then, there have been so many times where the word has not been used accurately and credibly that the very mention of the word sets off alarm bells. Independent, in other words, has lost much of its meaning and needs replacing.

In the middle of wondering how the Church could recover the idea of independence in the way that it allows others to scrutinise its work, I encountered the 300-page report written for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the States.  According to the New York Times on May 22^nd the report, compiled by Guidepost Solutions, recorded how nearly 400 individuals employed within the SBC have been convicted of sex crimes since 1998.  This scandal broke first of all in 2019 through the diligence of two newspapers, the San Antonio Express and the Houston Chronicle.  A major theme in the revelations was the criminal inertia of those at the top of the denomination.  The official line taken by the denominational leaders was that their power to intervene was severely restricted by the fact that Southern Baptist congregations were separate entities.  They were thus independent of the denominational structures.  According to this latest report, this did not stop the denomination holding 700 records of the malfeasance among its clergy members, while doing nothing to warn congregations of the dangers posed by these individuals. Offenders could thus flit from church to church and be free to offend again.  Meanwhile, congregations who were tolerant of women’s ministry or gay marriage were disciplined or even disfellowshipped from the SBC.

Even after the newspaper revelations of 2019, it has proved extraordinarily difficult to get the SBC leadership to come clean about its failings, both locally and nationally.   Typical responses have been that the revelations are the work of the devil trying to destroy God’s work.  One particular prominent campaigner, Beth Moore, who went public with her outspoken comment on the SBC leaders’ failings, saw them as being in the context of ‘the sexism and misogyny that is rampant in segments of the denomination.  She also attacked the opposition towards the group responsible for the current report.  ‘If you still refuse to believe facts stacked Himalayan high before your eyes and insist the independent group hired to conduct the investigation is part of a (liberal!) human conspiracy or demonic attack, you’re not just deceived.  You are part of the deception.’

The SBC has been profoundly affected by the report and its findings.  Readers can access the material for themselves and read whatever other follow-ups appear after the publication of this report.  The telling point I take from this report is that it was undertaken by a group that was truly independent.  As such, the report was not afraid to challenge the institution to the point where it was accused of severely wounding the entire denomination.   One piece in Christianity Today calls the report ‘the Southern Baptist Apocalypse’.  The other turn of phrase that most struck me in the same article in CT is the expression ‘third party’ referring to the way that the report was written by an outside group.  This set me to wondering whether we could challenge the Church of England to say, when they wish to use the word independent, whether they really mean ‘third-party’.  By using this latter expression, they would be making it absolutely clear that the individuals making a report or assessing material were working from a position of impartiality and objectivity   The expression ‘third-party’ is far less capable of being manipulated than the word independent.  I am going to avoid using the word again unless the person I am communicating with is using it as a synonym of ‘third-party’.

In-house reports or internal investigations within the Church can never be independent in the strict meaning of the word.  The issue I want to present here to members of the Church of England is not to go on arguing about the meaning of independent.  That is probably a futile discussion.  They have allowed the word to appear in the context of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB).  Quite clearly that entity is not qualified to use the adjective as a self-description.  I do however want to see third-party investigations take place in many sectors of the Church where safeguarding failures have been identified. This is a job for the outsider, the third-party investigator.  The one obvious institution that still has the power to investigate the Church’s safeguarding failings with third-party objectivity is the Charity Commission.  They possess the objectivity and the power to challenge the extraordinary way that, even when the Church produces a self-critical report, no one in its ranks ever receives sanctioning or suspension.

In a recent tweet, Andrew Graystone reveals that six Church of England bishops, currently serving, knew about the Smyth scandal before it became public knowledge.  An independent review, evaluating this claim, might conclude that there was no case to answer as the knowledge of these activities took place a long time ago.  A third-party review might take, in all probability, a much harder line over such a revelation.  It might suggest that any institution that tolerated such laxity over matters of truth is in serious danger of moral collapse through its own lack of integrity.  To combat this, there needs to be a public display of brokenness, transparency and contrition.  Looking at the problem as objectively as possible, we might want to take the independent line or the third-party line.  I know which position I would favour. The harder line is, I believe, the way forward, not just for the flourishing, but even for the survival of the Church of England.