Smyth’s Bystanders and Enablers

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When we teach a child about right and wrong, we tend to simplify the lesson.  One action is wrong and to be avoided; the other, the good option, is what we should do.  Some people carry this simple narrative about morality right into adulthood.  The binary world of black-white, right and wrong which sufficed for the child’s understanding of the world, is expected to do service for the adult.  By this time, most of us are immersed in a sea of complexity and ambiguity.  The binary answers are no longer adequate. 

The world, beyond the binary one of childhood, inconveniently, contains many situations possessing a distinct tone of grey.  We are forced constantly to apply our judgement and experience rather than operate according to the rules of a simplistic morality.  Some professions recognise the problem and strain of having to make complex decisions which can have life-changing outcomes.  They try to provide their members with procedures or protocols for every conceivable scenario.  The message is this:  If you follow the correct procedure, the professional standards body will always support you if things go wrong.  This system of relieving professional workers of potential responsibility works well in professions like the army, social work or medicine.  There are, however, other professions which cannot ever operate in this way.  Those who work for the Church, for example, find that they must constantly negotiate in a world of grey realities.  To find their way forward, they have only their judgement and experience.  A typical vicar will have no one to turn to when such difficult decisions must be made.  All the possible choices may sometimes have poor outcomes.  If choices are wrong, he/she will just hope that the results are not so devastating that someone slaps a CDM on them.  Making a difficult decision in a world of grey realities is stressful.  Would it not be wonderful if the right decision was always obvious?  Sadly, we know that we must deal with the least bad option among several alternatives.   

Beyond the world of difficult decision making faced by the clergy, is another world, even further away from the simple reassuring black-white certainties of childhood.  This world we may call the looking-glass world of safeguarding.  It is a looking-glass world because we find that many decisions somehow seem back to front.   For reasons that are hard to understand, the people who should be at the centre of concern and care, the survivors/victims, find themselves sometimes treated as though they are the guilty ones.  They entered the complaints process to find that the safeguarding system has somehow reversed the process to make them the ones under cross-examination.  The ongoing saga of Martyn Percy is a case in point.  As an individual he was subject to an expensive legal process by a group of vindictive colleagues.  Having negotiated that, after being found innocent by a retired judge, he then went on to experience the weight of the Church’s core group process.  Somehow his accusers had manipulated the system so that he was placed in the role of a perpetrator.  Thus, over a period of two years, Martyn had to stand up to two well-funded institutions trying to crush him.  Anyone looking on would quickly conclude that Martyn is the victim in this case.  But the system of core groups and safeguarding as practised by the Church of England has managed to convince itself that Martyn is somehow a perpetrator.  Welcome to the world of Alice Through the Looking-Glass. 

It is very hard indeed to navigate a clear path in the world of upside-down logic and Kafkaesque process that we find in the Church’s safeguarding processes.  I heard (it may be hearsay) that there are over a hundred outstanding cases for the core group process to deliberate on, following Melissa Caslake’s departure.  Somewhere in Church House, someone is sitting with a pile of files, trying to work out how they are going to find dozens of people of goodwill to serve on all these groups.  Are there that many people prepared to give up precious time to work out how to direct justice into this flagging (and failing) structure? 

We are suggesting that the upside-down ‘system’ of church safeguarding can cause havoc for the well-being of essentially good individuals.  Equally, exploitative individuals seem to be able to work the system and escape accountability for decades.  The secret for escaping exposure in church settings is first to be part of powerful networks of support.  These may be churchmanship fellowships, dining clubs or college alumni groups.  If your network includes a bishop, a church legal officer or an Archdeacon, that will be able probably to foul up any legal process that is being mounted against you by the church.  This avoidance process came out at the ICSA hearing when it was shown how Peter Ball used his levers of support to fight off and evade the structures of church justice for two decades.  Had it not been for the determined work of the police force, it is likely that Ball might have retained his reputation intact for the rest of his life.   

One of the important tasks involved in looking at the career of credibly accused but influential individuals, is the recognition of the role of enablers and bystanders.  Not everyone of the ‘supporting cast’ deserves equal blame or guilt. Nevertheless, we must impute some level of guilt on these bystanders.   Those very close to the perpetrator are a dark colour of grey while others, further away from the action, are only mildly touched with the blackness of an evil manipulating abuser. 

Looking at the example of John Smyth’s activities in England and Africa we can see the way evil was spread among his supporters.  The contentious part of the story is the one that Keith Makin is piecing together. Who knew what and when?   This blog does not aim to bring up once again the names of those who were caught up in this narrative.  Clearly there were some who knew enough to have been potentially able to have stopped the abuse but did not.  They carry the most guilt in the story other than what Smyth himself acquired.  Most of these, who are coloured dark grey, are now dead.  Forty years have now passed since the events in the Winchester garden shed. 

A larger group belong to the category of bystanders. This group may have suspected that something was wrong, but they failed to speak of it.  Many of these bystanders were very young at the time and thus susceptible to a culture of hero-worship of their charismatic Iwerne leaders.  Can we really attribute guilt to this group, mesmerised, seduced even, by the charms of the leadership at Iwerne?. 

The novel the Go-Between begins with the memorable sentence: ‘The past is a foreign country’.  Even those of us who were adults 40 years ago can forget how attitudes have subtly changed over the intervening period in the understanding of sexuality.  Few people then discussed the issues around gay sexual activity, and it was certainly not a cause that embroiled large numbers of people.  But there is one document on the topic that was written in 1991 but not published till 2012 called The Osborne Report.  It is salutary to read the report and see in it the attitudes and assumptions of thirty years ago.  We can realise that much has changed. In the report there is an extraordinary section which discusses the way that clergy guilty of paedophilic behaviour should be treated.  The document makes no recommendations for the care of victims.  Worse still is the suggestion that perpetrators might be forcibly moved on to a new post as a way of dealing with their offence.  I mention this passage merely as a way of reminding the reader that attitudes in 1982 to the homoerotic violence practised by Smyth would have been different.   When a church culture tends towards tolerance, we should be aware of that the way that this impacted on the very young people attending Iwerne camps.  They may have failed to understand the significance of what was going on around them.  The guilt of these bystanders, particularly for those who were very young, was at the time, not great. 

Around 2012 there was a minor revolution in attitudes about child sexual abuse when the behaviour of Jimmy Savile became known after his death in 2011. It was a significant wake-up call for all institutions given the responsibility of caring for children.  Sexual abuse of the young was now acknowledged as happening, even though it had been going on in secret for decades.  Perhaps the group that were initially most affected by the Savile revelations were abuse victims themselves.  They suddenly had a voice.  They knew that they would now be listened to and be believed. At the same time, we might have hoped that those uneasy bystanders of Smyth’s crimes might have sought the relief of telling what they knew.   After a further eight years of knowing that it was important to share openly what they knew, the status of these silent bystanders has changed from innocence to serious guilt.  They should have been first in the queue to tell all that they knew of Smyth’s manipulations.  No, this group have largely chosen the path of tribal loyalty to a network of other colluders.  This choice to ignore conscience and accept guilt will seriously impact on their integrity.  No names are mentioned here, but many people in the Church know the identity of these non-cooperating bystanders.   

When the thirtyone:eight report on Jonathan Fletcher and the Makin report on Smyth appear next year, I, for one, will be looking for evidence that at least some of the colluders and bystanders have come forward.  Failure to speak and reveal the truth is a failure to acknowledge guilt.   An inability either to admit guilt or to deal with it, is for me first-hand evidence that many who emphasise the preaching of the Gospel have not really understood it at all.  I listen to the first words of Jesus in Mark,  Metanoeite, turn around with your mind, repent.  That repentance is a prerequisite of accessing the Good News or Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

There was an interesting story in the paper today (Sunday) discussing the impact of the programme, The Crown. Apparently there has been a survey of public opinion about attitudes of the British general public towards the Royal Family among those who have seen this series. Although, for the purposes of a good fictional story line, the Crown showed the Royal family sometimes in a poor light, public attitudes towards them have not been changed in a negative direction.  It was thought that the portrayal of an adulterous Prince of Wales might cause damage to his reputation.  In fact, the opposite seems to be true.  Overall, 35% of those watching the series had begun to see the Royal Family in a better light.  Only 5% had allowed the programme to make them think of the family less favourably.  It seems that institutions like the Royals can survive criticism, if those looking on feel that they have been allowed a better view of what is going on behind the curtain.  Many human frailties can be forgiven and tolerated, when the observers feels that he/she is being given something like a frank disclosure.  The Crown may be to a large extent a fictional reconstruction, but it has given the viewer a sense of understanding the human foibles of this privileged group of people.  Most behaviour, short of actual criminality, will be forgiven by most people.  The more we feel we understand, the greater seems our capacity to forgive. 

As I thought about public attitudes towards a major institution in our society, like the Royal Family, I compared it in my mind to another story that appeared in the Church Times on Friday.  This published the results of the MORI Veracity Index for 2020.   This poll asked the man or woman in the street which professional person was most likely to tell the truth.  The rate for those expecting truthfulness from the clergy has apparently fallen to a mere 54%.  This score has fallen by 9 points in the last year alone and by 29 percentage points since 1983.   We can only speculate about the reasons for this spectacular collapse of trust.  It is likely to have had something to do with the endless cycle of scandals over the abuse of children in the past ten years.   But, whatever the reason, the current situation appears to be reaching a point where many clergy will no longer feel comfortable wearing clerical attire in a public place.   That indeed, may already have happened in some places.  If true, it a sad reflection for the Church that attitudes have now become so negative.  Whatever the reason, it is tragic reality that clergy are being placed in a zone of being thought unreliable and possibly untrustworthy. 

These two surveys need to be held alongside one another because there are some further lessons to be extracted.  Two solid British institutions are revealed to be beset by human frailty and failure.  In one case public opinion towards them is in the process of recovery with an increase of affection and esteem.  In the other case, public respect appears to be on the decline.  Why is there this difference?  There is, I believe, a simple explanation.  The attitude of people towards institutions is not especially affected by moral failing unless they belong to the most toxic categories.  What matters is the way those institutions deal with the failings.  Any attempt to hide, to cover-up and to pretend will be seen for what it is – hypocrisy.   Here hypocrisy is pretending to uphold one standard of behaviour while all the time behaving in another.  If the scandal of abuse against children and the vulnerable had really been about a few bad apples, the general public would by now have forgiven the church institution and possibly moved on.  The things that have upset countless people have been the cover-ups, the handwringing and the apparent indifference of people in authority in the Church.   There has been little readiness to show love and compassion for the victims/survivors.  Few people have taken note of the details of the abuses, as do the readers of this blog.  But the public have been left with a sense that there are many tales of unfinished business.  There is always a feeling that many church people have been far too concerned to keep the show on the road than taking radical steps to help and heal the many who have been wounded or broken by this apparent epidemic of abuse.  It is this sense of the Church in disarray, not knowing what to do to protect children that has been so damaging.  Of course, the Church has made enormous progress in this area of safeguarding.  But as the public relations experts fully recognise, it is not what the facts are in a particular situation that count; it is what impression is left after a period of negative publicity.  The overall impression is negative and that is what urgently needs repair.   We want a situation where the clergy can walk the streets everywhere without fear of insult.   

As I was thinking about this apparent decline in the reputation of the Church of England in society, I was drawn to remember the passage in Matthew 23 about religious people and institutions being likened to whited sepulchres. This is a passage describing how, on the outside, everything may seem beautiful, but on the inside, there is filth and decomposing human remains.  It is as though the general public, who used to see only fine beautiful buildings and honourable people, have been afforded a glimpse of something dark and not very wholesome through a crack in the white façade. Something rotten and corrupt is showing through the crack.  

In the comments on Thinking Anglicans about the resignation of Melissa Caslake, there was a quote given.  ‘Half of the leadership of the Church of England knows that it needs to change to survive, but the other half feels that survival depends on preventing change at all costs.’    The evidence suggests that if public perception of the Church is changing as fast as it is, then change becomes a life-death matter for the institution. To use the vivid picture language of Jesus, if the whited sepulchre is cracked open at one end, then all the whitewash will be ignored.  The only thing visible will be the bones. The Royal Family has, metaphorically speaking, been cracked open but survived.  They all seem to be (apart from Prince Andrew) on their way to recovery in people’s estimation. People it seems, can cope with frailty and failure.  But they cannot accept dishonesty and hypocrisy.  

Most of us have experienced the devastating effect of secrets within a family. In the past there were sometimes extra children born to a family after it seemed complete.  Then, years later, it was discovered that the youngest child was in fact the daughter or son of a teenage daughter. No one was prepared to talk about the situation but the damage to the identity of the child born out of wedlock could be enormous. I am sure that most of my readers will recall some secret in their own family which caused damage because of silence. Scandal is thought to be dangerous and damaging. What is far worse is a scandal never admitted. They are like festering wounds.  From a human point of view, people are far readier to cope with lapses in human behaviour than we think.  Obviously, there are, even now, activities which are hard to forgive or let go. I am thinking of such crimes as gross cruelty to a child or abuse of some kind. But most of the scandals that we heard about, which thought to bring disgrace on a family, did not come into this category. Secrets when brought into the light of day normally do not seem so terrifying and will, for most people, incur understanding and forgiveness. 

There is a way forward for the Church.  It needs to decide on a path of openness and genuine remorse for its past failings.  If it takes the other path of commissioning a new coat of whitewash every time there is a scandal, public trust and respect for the Church will continue to decline.  Human beings generally respond well to a narrative which begins: ‘We got it wrong. We made terrible mistakes and we ask for your understanding and forgiveness.’ If the Church over a period of years could become the institution which is prepared, never to cover up but to own up, then perhaps people in our society would learn to trust it more. That terrible loss of trust that has been sustained over the past thirty years might be reversed. I do not see this process beginning easily, unless we have someone of real leadership quality prepared to take such change forward.  We arrive back at a place which we have frequently visited.  We come back to imploring the Church and its leaders to embrace integrity, truth and honesty and put away the falsity of thinking that they can continue to manipulate, through public relations techniques, the reputation of the Church as they have done over the past years. 

   By Janet Fife

Last week our two Archbishops and the lead bishop in safeguarding, Jonathan Gibb, met on Zoom with a group of survivors of church abuse. There were 15 or so survivors and a chaplain, Rosie Harper, who was there to support us. The meeting was organised and chaired by Andrew Graystone, whose idea it was.  The episcopal contingent came in casual open-neck shirts and told us to call them, respectively, Justin, Stephen, and Jonathan. I can’t reveal what anyone said, but it was a useful start to what we hope will be a series of conversations.

That discussion has led me to reflect further on what it means for the Church to help survivors. What kind of assistance do we need? I think many of our bishops want to get this right and don’t know how. Perhaps some are genuinely puzzled that survivors aren’t grateful for what is offered, while survivors complain of being asked to rubber-stamp plans over which we haven’t been consulted.

The BBC TV programme Saving Lives at Sea records real-life rescues carried out by the Coastguard and the RNLI. I’ve been thinking of the way they tackle these rescues, and pondering what it could teach the Church.

First, the rescuers know that every ‘shout’ (as a callout is termed) is different.  So the first thing they do, while dropping everything to answer the call, is to gain as much information as they can about the situation. Is it a swimmer in difficulty? Walkers stranded at the base of a cliff and cut off by a rising tide? A boat in trouble? If the latter, do they have engine power and emergency equipment? And, in every case:  how many people are there? age, condition, experience?

Second, while already on their way to the scene of the emergency they are devising a strategy for tackling the problem. On arrival and throughout the rescue, they are constantly re-assessing the situation, and adjusting their plan if need be.

Third, on arrival at the scene they communicate with the casualties, offering reassurance and gaining more information.  They assess the ability of the casualties to assist in their own rescue. If there’s a boat in trouble, for instance, they will rely on its crew’s skill to make fast a rope, steer while being towed, or time the jump from the ailing craft to the lifeboat.

Finally, of course, they get the casualties to a safe harbour, where any further needs can be met or they can go safely on their way.

The RNLI and the Coastguard don’t judge the victims of whatever misfortune has occurred. Over and over we hear them saying:  ‘The sea is unpredictable. It can be dangerous. This could happen to any of us.’

The principles we see operating in Saving Lives at Sea are:

1. respond immediately
2. gain accurate information about the casualties’ situation
3. have a clear strategy, but be prepared to adapt it to the circumstances
4. maintain good communication with the casualties, within the team, and with base
5. don’t blame the victims, but get them to a place where they can carry on with their lives.

The Church of England’s attempts to ‘rescue’ survivors don’t seem to follow this model. The response is painfully slow, an assessment of the individual’s situation inadequate or completely lacking, and communication poor to non-existent. So, metaphorically, a drowning person may be told to swim to the lifeboat, or an experienced skipper’s knowledge of her boat disregarded. No wonder the results aren’t good. The casualties will be no better off – or in the worst cases, dead.

The announcement that the Church of England’s first full-time Director of Safeguarding is leaving after only 18 months in the job has made it more clear than ever that the Church of England’s safeguarding is in dire straits.

I’ve had no dealings with Melissa Caslake myself, but I know she’s held in high regard by survivors, and by Justin Humphreys of the safeguarding charity thirtyone:eight. Ms. Caslake has been reforming the National Safeguarding Team and attempting to bring a more professional approach to the Church’s safeguarding.

According to the Daily Telegraph, which broke the story:

‘A source said: “Half of the leadership of the Church of England knows that it needs to change to survive, but the other half feels that survival depends on preventing change at all costs.” 

“Melissa Caslake is a dedicated and competent safeguarding professional. She was brought in to reform the church’s safeguarding practice. She wouldn’t be leaving unless she felt that task had become impossible. Perhaps she has discovered what many victims know from bitter experience – that the church is simply too complex, too defensive, and too self-absorbed to face up to its own cruelty.”’

A statement from survivors who have worked with her said, in part:

‘We note that she came from a Local Authority context and returns to a similar position where she will have clear unambiguous roles, rules, and structures, none of which currently exist within the Church of England in general and Church House in particular. Until those issues are sorted out the position of Director of Safeguarding is virtually impossible to do with integrity, and we don’t blame Melissa for leaving whilst hers is still intact.’

Ms. Caslake is only the most senior of a number of highly skilled and experienced safeguarding personnel who have taken up posts in the Church, only to leave in despair after finding themselves unable to work to good  professional standards. The old wineskin can’t take the new wine.

Archbishops Justin and Stephen realise that major change is needed and that’s a good start. But changing our whole model of handling safeguarding and relating to survivors will require not only goodwill and fresh thinking on the part of Justin, Stephen, and Jonathan, but also the willing and creative cooperation of their fellow bishops, Archbishops’ Council, General Synod, and the Church’s civil servants. They – we – need firstly the humility to admit that we have failed God and the people we’re called to serve.

There are far too many people at all levels in the Church, lay and ordained, who have forgotten that our core mission is to embody God’s love for the world.   Many of us have become focussed instead on preserving our particular denomination as an institution, with its buildings, traditions, and procedures. Some are focussed on furthering their own tradition or career within the organisation.

It’s natural to love our buildings, traditions, and even our culture. They give us identity and a sense of belonging, and have often been a source of strength and comfort in difficult times. But they mustn’t be allowed to take the place of God, or to become confused with our core mission.  That would be like the RNLI forgetting that its purpose is to save lives at sea.

So, how are we to proceed? If people who know about safeguarding and are good at it can’t work within our systems, we must change our systems. This may mean that Church civil servants who can’t or won’t adapt will have to be moved to jobs where they can’t interfere with safeguarding personnel. It may mean we outsource safeguarding to an independent authority. Either way, there will have to be major changes.

I have two other suggestions. The first is that a Church of England Survivors’ Association be set up. This could provide information and news updates and advise survivors on the Church’s Byzantine procedures. It could also relay survivors’ views to the Church and do so without their names appearing. It might be able to provide the Church with the names of survivors with professional expertise who willing to be consulted. The Church is good at de-skilling people and often assumes survivors have nothing to offer. (A cathedral dean once said to me, ‘That kind of person won’t come here.’ He was wrong.) In fact many survivors are over-achievers and leaders in their field. Crucially, such a survivors’ association would be a body they could choose to join, and hopefully would provide a sense of belonging and of agency.

Secondly, the Church needs to place pastoral care at the heart of its ministry. Ordinands should be selected for pastoral aptitude and trained in pastoral skills. This didn’t happen much in my own day, and it’s worse now. Projects and management have come to dominate over pastoral care, and clergy who are pastoral often feel devalued by their superiors.  Regular readers of Surviving Church will be well aware of clergy who have behaved in a very unpastoral manner and seriously failed their flocks. All clergy and Readers already in post should take a Mental Health First Aid course. This will at least give them a grounding in the most common mental health crises, how to. Identify what is happening,  and where to refer on.

Survivors need our help, and if we don’t work with them we will have failed our calling as a Church.  

I found myself this morning reading material that I had written six months ago about Core Groups and the work of the National Safeguarding Team.  This was a way of trying to grasp some of the implications of the resignation of Melissa Caslake as head of the National Safeguarding Team.  To say that this resignation is likely to cause problems, is an understatement.  Anyone who has followed the work of the NST since its foundation in 2015 will know that it has been beset by problems.  The first NST under the leadership of Graham Tilby, I shall call NST1.   NST1, as I complained in this blog, brought together, to judge from its appointees, social workers and those skilled in managing process.  There was not a single person whose primary qualification was pastoral or psychotherapeutic.  Any survivor/victims who got close the workings of the old NST structure seemed likely to be burnt by the experience.  They found there nothing in the way of understanding and pastoral sensitivity.  Everything I heard about its workings, suggested that NST1 was almost totally geared to the preservation of church reputation and limiting financial liability by the central Church of England. 

The IICSA process took a long look at NST1 and all the other efforts by the Church to manage its safeguarding processes.  For reasons that I am not knowledgeable enough to spell out in detail, the House of Bishops and the other leaders operating out of Church House decided to reform the old NST and appoint a new head.  This followed a brief interim period under Sir Roger Singleton.  Effectively the Team became a new body as, under the leadership of Melissa Caslake, all the old employees of NST1 moved on.  In the 15 months since her appointment the new body that we shall call NST2 has appeared.  To say that this body has had teething problems is probably an understatement.  I do not claim inside knowledge but there were from the start two glaring problems which show no sign of having been resolved.  Let us consider each in turn.

The first problem for Caslake was the massive change of culture that she was entering into.  The Church is not like any other organisation that she would have been used to, like a local authority operating child protection procedures.  The Church before 2015 was, relatively speaking, in the dark ages over safeguarding.  It seemed to be making up many of its rules as it went along.  This provisionality about processes seems to have continued to this day.   This would likely have caused massive frustration for a new head like Caslake, as she tried to stamp the new NST2 with fresh professional standards of behaviour and practice.  It was not just that the Church is not like a local authority in terms of practice.  Caslake would also have had to cope with numerous ‘Spanish customs’.    The structures of power in the Church seem, even at a distance, immensely complex and confusing.  Caslake’s past would not have prepared her for all the political shenanigans operating in Church House and elsewhere.  Can you imagine an exam question for an undergraduate which goes something like this?  At the heart of the Church of England are three centres of power.  Which commands the greatest influence?  The civil servants at Church House, the Archbishops’ Council or General Synod?  The rogue answer might point out that the Communications Department and the firms of Church lawyers and reputation managers were actually the ones in charge!

A second problem for Caslake has been the difficulty of building up a team with background knowledge of all the cases from the past, combined with appropriate skills.   A full collection of background papers would use up several acres of woodland.  To find people who are even slightly acquainted with all this material is fairly remote.  Working on the NS2 team without such knowledge will need a solid six months of reading files to put right.  The existing experts on all this material are, of course, the survivors.  They have all been living with this material for years.  On a practical level, this fact is why survivors should always be included in future inquiries and investigations.  They have detailed understanding of the history, the psychology and the politics of each of these cases. 

Melissa Caslake’s resignation is a serious blow for the new NST2 which she has helped to build up since her appointment in August of last year.  She has given the impression of being a strong decisive leader.  With her departure, there will be a void and possibly a collapse of morale among those who have been working with her as part of the team.  There are numerous ongoing cases and active core group processes.  It is hard to see how they will be kept going effectively after her departure.  We wish her well, but we can guess from the hints that have been given, that she was trying to do an impossible job.  To say that working for the Church is hard, is a massive understatement.

 I cannot claim that I have seen all the implications of this story.  One thing I discern is that there seems to be a lack of good communication between the bishops and those working in Church House.   The left hand does not seem to know what the right is doing.  One good outcome might be if the Church authorities (whoever they are!) saw this resignation as implying there is an urgent need for safeguarding to be taken right out of Church influence and control.  It needs to be placed firmly into the hands of an independent body.  I suspect that, at the heart of the problem, there are personalities, power struggles and internal church politics which have, between them, made this resignation inevitable.  The fact that there is, at the time of writing, no official press release on the topic suggests that the authorities at Church House were not expecting this blow.  It is still not too late for the Church to go in a new direction in this area of activity.  Meanwhile Surviving Church sends to Melissa very best wishes for the future and, based on what we know or surmise, say simply: ‘We understand’.

I cannot be the only person trying to puzzle a way through the divisions that exist in the Anglican Communion at present.  As I have said several times before, the main topic of the debate, issues around sexuality, is a deeply contentious one, one that I draw back from involvement in.  This is partly because I do not believe that I have anything to add to the passion and complexity of the issues in this debate.  The other more important reason is that I see the fundamental issue as going far deeper than our opinions and beliefs about human sexuality.  In simple terms I see the current divisions within Anglicanism as being closely bound up with the culture wars being fought and paid for by enormously powerful and wealthy conservative forces in the States.  These right-wing interests hope to take control of society on behalf of a religiously infused nationalism in America and across the world.  Liberal thinking in politics or religion is a threat to that bid for power.   

Our Anglican debates are probably a mere side-show within this larger picture, but these lobby groups have stirred up enormous passion in these discussions about sexuality.  Thirty years ago, the LGBT debate was a non-issue.   It certainly was nowhere thought to be a defining measure of who was or who was not a Christian.  One reading of Anglican history suggests that the deliberate ramping up of this issue was orchestrated by a group of well-funded conservative Anglicans.  They met in Kuala Lumpur in February 1997.   They seem to have made a deliberate decision to put the same sex issue to the fore and ensure that it was a key item for discussion at Lambeth 1998.  A hitherto minor point of disagreement was thus weaponised and turned into a means of uniting Anglican conservatives together in their bid to become the dominant faction in the Communion. 

The current thinking by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York seems to be a wish that the different factions in the Anglican Communion and the Church of England might move towards a situation of gracious stalemate.  They seem to be currently saying, ‘we cannot agree on this matter.  At least let us agree to disagree and get on with other more important things like helping the world to avoid destroying itself and enable people to find God, especially the young’.  Most of us would agree with such a sentiment and wonder why, instead of the costly and debilitating effort involved in fighting this culture war, the contenders cannot agree to a truce.  But, as we know, there seems little sign that the successors of those who plotted at Kuala Lumpur are ready to pull back.  The war does not seem destined to stop without one side surrendering and allowing the other to obtain power over the whole.  If the debate is ultimately about power rather than sex, then we cannot expect it to be easily resolved.

As I indicated at the beginning, I do not propose to weigh up the arguments on either side of the divide.  I have clear sympathy for those who wish the Anglican Communion not to be taken over and controlled by the same right-wing ideologies that have been on show in America under Trump.  My concern in this blog is to try to unearth the causes as to why the two sides debating seem to be unable at times even to share a common discourse.   For this we need to go back a stage in terms of human psychology.  Before anyone is able to argue for truth, reality and freedom in a debate, they have a unique personal history and development.  Reason is built on pre-reason.  Before reason and proper functioning rationality emerged in each of us, there were a cluster of child-centred passions, desires, frustrations and the hope for instant gratification.  Out of this chaos of an unformed personality, there eventually appeared the rational person with thought-out convictions. The connection between the rational adult and the irrational feelings of the child may, however, be closer that we might want to admit. 

Every time we utter an opinion which we believe to be a rationally thought out and coherent point of view, we need to ask ourself.  To what extent are we ever truly independent in our ideas?   How far do the things we say and think reflect the jumble of emotions and feelings we have had as well as the people to whom we have been exposed over the decades right back to infancy?

I want to continue our reflection on the way we come to support a well thought-out and rational opinion on difficult issues, like the gay question, by looking at the work of Abraham Maslow.  Maslow explained in an illuminating way how human beings are motivated to behave in certain ways because of a ‘hierarchy of needs’.   These range from the physiological (food, warmth and rest) to social needs and others reflecting the human capacity for self-transcendence.  I want to suggest that strongly held beliefs and opinions reflect and are intertwined with these various needs that inevitably influence day to day human functioning.  Let me explain.

At the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid are some needs that have to be met for our physical survival.  If our parents had not provided for these basic needs, we would have died.  There is then another cluster of needs that provide for our social development.  A child left without interaction, touch and mental stimulus may survive in a physical sense, but, like many Romanian orphans, he/she will be stunted and handicapped, mentally and emotionally.  Beyond touch and proper stimulus is the need for attachment and sense of safety.  Depriving any child of these things will probably create, then and into adulthood, compensatory behaviours.  These represent a desperate need to receive what is their birth-right.  Feeling safe and properly attached to others are among the experiences that everyone needs and deserves, enabling him/her to grow up as a balanced human being.

The need to feel safe is one of the basic requirements for all human beings. Maslow’s theory predicts that every child and every adult will reach out to seek safety when they sense its absence.  When very young we looked to parents to provide for our safety but as we got older, we had increasingly to take responsibility for our own safety needs.  Wise parents are constantly reassuring their offspring that they are safe.  There are rituals for doing this, like night-time ‘tucking children up’.  This can be enormously helpful in learning to deal with childhood fears, like that of darkness. When fears are overcome the child will possess a secure platform from which to explore the world.  As adults, we also find that there is an instinctive mechanism inside us which sets up a certain tension and anxiety whenever we feel unsafe.  We then strain with our whole being to remove that uncertainty and fear.  Prayers and rituals of protection can play a large in the religious observance of many.  

Among other Maslow needs identified in the hierarchy, is belonging.  As with safety, this word points to a major element in religious language and practice.  To belong, to be part of something bigger than ourselves, is what makes the religious quest attractive.  It also resonates with and runs alongside our need to be safe.  People in church environments are taught to seek and receive ‘salvation’.  This is the promise of God-given safety which will carry us through this life and into the stage beyond death.  Identifying the way that the beliefs and convictions that we hold resonate with the needs identified by Maslow is a useful thing to do. Having identified primal and pre-rational facets in our religious observance, it becomes easier to understand how religious arguments do not normally reflect pure logic and reason.  Belonging and being safe are among the primal needs which belong to both our religious and social identities.  They exist long before we articulate religious beliefs or argue doctrinal positions with others

One idea that has come to the fore once again, particularly in view of the impasse between the various factions on the LGBT issue, is the Indaba idea from Africa.  This requires all parties in a disagreement to sit with each other to explore, at a deep level, what is really going on in a debate or conflict.  I am no expert in the Indaba process, but it seems that it could be done in a way that draws on this Maslow insight about primal needs. I have suggested that it is an interweaving of rational and pre-rational processes that together has created our strongly held convictions.  Getting in touch with the primal needs that Maslow identifies in every human being, clearly takes time. We might in the process learn to understand ourselves and others better. Common sense tells us that neglect of social needs in a small child might lead to a fascination with hell, salvation and eternal punishment.  Also, we suspect that an expressed need to dominate and control, which is so pervasive in some areas of church life, may come from a failure to have had other social needs met in an individual’s past.  Clearly the exploration of these layers of need in each of us would require huge amounts of time, combined with trust and a readiness to explore our deeper vulnerabilities.  That would be Indaba++.  But we desperately need new initiatives to replace the non-comprehending failures of communication exemplified in the recent videos from Christian Concern and CEEC.   The Church of England is on a trajectory to fragmentation and even destruction because human beings have hidden behind contradictory and irreconcilable propositions.  There is a crisis, and we need to do something urgently to resolve it.  This will include examining our vulnerabilities and seeing how unmet needs may have created serious blockages in our ability to understand and embrace the reality of another human being and their opinions.    

Many of us in the Church of England have acquired labels, self-designated or otherwise, to describe what is known as our churchmanship.  The labels that are given us, or we give ourselves, are a bit like a foreign language to those not in the know.  Evangelicals especially have many varieties – open, post, conservative and moderate to name but a few.  High Church Anglicans also have an equally bewildering cluster of labels which normally centre around the word catholic.    The best way to penetrate the confusion of these labels is, in most cases, to find out who is the leader or mentor that a particular individual identifies with.  This is a particularly useful method when we try and understand the tribal complexities of the world of Anglican evangelicalism.  These identified leaders of the various evangelical groups will each have a distinct nuanced take on a variety of topics within the parameters of evangelical thinking.  They will have an opinion on the topics of the day, women’s ministry, speaking in tongues, same sex marriage, critical views on the Bible and the question of who outside the group can be associated with.  But the nature of human groups also means that, even when we have identified leaders and those who identify with them, we will find nothing permanent about them.   Loyalties and allegiances will be in a constant state of flux.   Officially all evangelicals are bound by a central statement of faith.  That statement of faith should make them a united and an unchallengeably powerful group in the Church of England.  But the reality is different.  To take one example.   When GAFCON was formed in 2008 to protest the liberal tendencies in the Anglican Communion, many English evangelicals rallied round the so-called Jerusalem Declaration.  The current support for this group has weakened somewhat over the past twelve years.  At present GAFCON UK struggles to pay for a full-time administrator.  The strength of this organisation exists elsewhere – Australia, Africa and the States but not in England.   In the same way we learn from contributors to this blog about the varying fortunes of the Evangelical Group on General Synod (EGGS) group.  Once again, accepting the testimony of our contributors, we learn that this group has lost some of its power by insisting on adhering to a politically hard-line statement of evangelical belief.   

In summary what we are claiming is that the ‘Momentum’ faction among Church of England evangelicals seems less powerful today.  My last blog was on the power of the CEEC to represent and speak for Anglican evangelicals.  It seems that the video The Beautiful Story has exposed several new fissures in the evangelical monolith in Britain.   Not every evangelical wants to have their belief system articulated by others or to be told what they think about every detail of personal sexual morality.  The nuances of personal history and belief are seldom articulated satisfactorily by others.   Not everyone finds it helpful to hang their personal belief statement on a list of propositions prepared by a committee in perhaps another country.    Tribal/party positioning and systems of belief may be becoming less important for the same reasons that churchmanship labels have declined in importance. 

There is one further generalisation about the Church of England connected with churchmanship, which it is important to examine.  It is reported that most Church of England bishops in post are evangelicals.  The truth of this statement could be determined by an examination of each of their personal histories in the Crockford Directory.  I have not done that piece of research, but I make these comments on the assumption that this statement is likely to be true.  Simultaneously we note that the evangelical label seems not to make any but a tiny minority of this group card-carrying activists in the style of Labour’s Momentum.   Few appear to identify with or follow the narrow tribalism of the big ReNew parishes in London and elsewhere.  Few have openly supported the CEEC makers of the video The Beautiful Story.   At best, we can describe this cohort of evangelical bishops in the House of Bishops as being cultural evangelicals.  The evangelical tradition is somewhere in their Christian stories.   Pragmatically, it does not represent everything they are now.  For example, this group of bishops seem to realise that whatever their beliefs are, it is not prudent or helpful to engage in theological controversy with those who do not agree with them.  We are all relieved that it is impossible to take out a CDM simply because one member of the church does not agree with the theology of another member.  If bishops and others were political in this sense, arguing constantly about theological issues, that would be a seriously disruptive and unsettling situation.  In one diocese a bishop, now retired, made a point of appointing only conservative evangelicals of the same tribe as himself.  That left a legacy which is hard to undo and this diocese will be marked (and weakened) by this political intervention for a generation. 

I began by mentioning that churchmanship labels are often self-designated.  I thought it might be useful to take the example of one individual and explain how churchmanship loyalties can start but also change.  This example involves my own story and goes back to the autumn of 1964 when I first arrived as an undergraduate in Oxford.  From the point of view of ecclesiastical choices, Oxford was like a fabulous restaurant offering a myriad of dishes.  It was hard to choose.  On the very first Sunday (after attending college chapel) I had a choice of attending St Aldates, the lively evangelical church in the centre of the city or the cathedral right opposite.  Why was I considering St Aldates?  The reason was that a teacher at the school I had attended in Eastbourne eleven years before (aged 7) was the sister of the Rector, Keith de Berry.  I felt some distant loyalty to an evangelical past which I had met at her school.  But there was another churchmanship loyalty which I also needed to honour.  This was my formation in a cathedral choir school from the age of eight.  This had inculcated a love of polyphonic music to be heard barely two hundred yards away on the other side of the road at Christ Church Cathedral.  A busy road separated these two ecclesiastical worlds.  The story does not resolve itself in a tidy way.  After a few weeks alternating between the two, I found myself at Pusey House, a very high church institution.  I eventually graduated to the role of thurifer.  This allowed me to perfect the skill of generating enormous clouds of incense at High Mass.  I wonder if health and safety rules would now allow so much smoke in church!   

The lesson I took from Oxford was that worship (and churchmanship) cultures come with many different forms.  Although the differences can be described in cultural terms, the important thing is that different groups of people become accustomed to the variety of practices we describe as worship.  Experiencing everything from Christian Union meetings to Orthodox liturgies meant one important thing for me personally.  No one would ever be able to convince me that a single form of worship should take precedence over all others.  Later I spent two years studying for a higher degree in the theology of the Orthodox liturgy.  Although I cannot write about my findings here, I can share a couple of sentences.  The Eastern Orthodox experience of worship is quite distinctive in the way that, unlike the west, it honours imagery and visual experience.  The worshipper ‘sees’ divine reality in the liturgy far more than he/she hears and interprets spoken words, understanding them in a cerebral way.   

  The conclusion I want to offer my reader is that churchmanship is always going to vary across the church-going population.  It is never a question of establishing right and wrong in this area.  Differing theological ideas may be often far closer to each other than the rules of logic might suggest.  Worship, whether through silence, raucous singing or the still perfection of a Palestrina mass, will communicate God to different people.  It will also be wrong to suggest to another Christian that his/her experience of worship is wrong in some way.  It is also wrong automatically ever to assume that what someone else believes is wrong.   There may be times when I need to question this idea, but I have a sense, honed by my rich exposure to the variety of religious expression in Oxford all those years ago, that our approach to another person’s experience of God must normally be one of humble awe.   

When we talk about church politics, we are aware that there are many differences between what happens in our national parliament and in the Church of England General Synod.  But there are nevertheless some similarities to be noted.  It is possible to identify some who debate from a recognisably left-wing position as well as some who argue from what we would describe as the right.   While many, if not the majority, of Synod members may have no sense of owning political allegiances in what they have to bring to debates, there are a significant number who do.  Speaking very generally and, most likely, inaccurately, those on the left stand for a libertarian approach to Church affairs.  They are likely to be focussing on issues such climate change, social justice and a more liberal attitude to sexual matters.  By contrast, the right-wing group in Synod will have a more authoritarian approach to such things as doctrine together with an emphasis on personal morality, especially in the area of sexual ethics.  A further distinct feature of the right wing in a church context is something that it shares with authoritarian movements right across the spectrum.  It has the belief that it owns the truth.  As the possessor of the final truth, based on its ‘sound’ interpretation of Scripture, it convinces itself that it should be allowed to be the leader of the whole institution.  To do this it is not beyond using various dominating methods, involving the use of fear tactics.

The issue of the moment for the whole Church of England is the publication of the lengthy document Living in Love and Faith (LLF) The document only appeared a few days ago and the hope is that it will enable the whole Church of England to begin to understand better the issues around marriage and same sex relationships.  In this way they will find a way to grow together in learning to live with others who have quite different views on this topic.  My interest here is not in the topic of the debate or indeed the content of the 480-page document.  My concern is for the way that representatives of one politically right-wing group in the Church, known as the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC), have rapidly responded to LLF.  Their response takes the form of a professionally produced video entitled The Beautiful Story.  The images in the video show that it was shot in high summer.  In other words, the video can be understood to be a pre-prepared political statement, presenting the views held by those on the right on the issues raised by LLF.

What are we to conclude about the release of this video in terms of political process?  Let us imagine a parallel in the political life of the country.  Suppose a Labour government is in charge and they have poured massive resources into preparing a bill that will transform the welfare state and make life easier for the unemployed.  After three years work, with consultations across many other institutions including universities and welfare groups of all kinds, the Bill is published for discussion.  Within a week, the Conservative opposition publish their response.  Their document has no point of contact with the Labour one because, at best, it has worked on the principle that it could guess what was going to be in the Labour Bill.  The parliamentary debate that follows would be like two men shouting at each other in a dark room.  There is no possibility of discussion, debate or even communication.  How can the CEEC pre-prepared video engage with a major document like LLF when it was written and filmed so long before its publication?  Was there any possibility or even desire to communicate or debate the issue properly?

The arrival of the video, The Beautiful Story, even putting to one side whether we identify with its content, is a clear undermining of the quasi-parliamentary system of working for the Church.  The Church of England believes in listening, debating and considering an issue prayerfully before choices and decisions are made.  The tone of the video could be summarised as saying this.  We (the CEEC) are the only group to read the Bible correctly and we already know the mind of Christ on the topics concerned with sexuality.  All further discussion is thus futile.   The rest of you must surrender to our interpretation. Otherwise, we may take away our support for the Church.   Politically speaking, this mindset is close to a dictatorship complete with the use of fear and threat.  Among the comments made in the video, some were distinctly patronising and even offensive.  How can a leading evangelical scholar presume to declare what liberal scholars believe about Christ’s attitude to the gay question?  We heard more than once that the Bible is ‘abundantly clear’ on the topic.  No, the Bible is not abundantly clear on this or any number of other issues to do with personal morality.  Jesus spoke far more decisively on the divorce question than he ever did about other matters to do with sex. Conservative Anglicans have been very tight-lipped about enforcing discipline in this area.

If we look at The Beautiful Story through the eyes of a secular political process, it feels like a piece of propaganda from an extreme faction on the right which would like to have total domination over the whole institution.  The video smacks of hubris by its implied assumption that the whole LLF process is a waste of time.   Those of us who study the power dynamics of the way that this conservative group within the C of E works, have some insight about who in fact makes the political choices in CEEC.  It appears not to be either of the two bishops who have speaking parts in the video.

All in all, the power of this conservative faction is being weakened by this expensive piece of propaganda.  It probably represents a serious political miscalculation for the CEEC.  In the past the teachings of this group did not really impinge on the rest of the Church.  Their opinions on the gay issue were known but not widely discussed.  The only group who could be relied upon to make the case for the reactionary right-wing point of view, were people in the media.  They would wheel on a conservative spokesperson who would give the party line with a predictable soundbite.  People outside conservative circles did not seem to take these views very seriously.  But now, by publishing this video which clearly identifies a range of individuals alongside their attitudes and assumptions, they are likely to create a far stronger political push-back on the part of those who do not think as they do.  Did a diocesan bishop really threaten to leave the Church of England if he and his CEEC group fail to get their own way.  Many people, who do not at present see the Church in political categories, may come to have a new insight on the way that power is being deployed.  Because of the language of threat and contempt for the bulk of their fellow church members that is revealed in the video, ordinary church people may realise that they need to be better defended from these anti-democratic ideologies represented by the Church’s own right wing.

There is little in the video that convinces me that it is about truth and integrity.  What I see is a lot about politics and power.  The conclusion I draw from the new video is that the Church’s right-wing faction have become so confident of their power to dominate that they no longer care if they alienate others in the Church.  That is a political miscalculation that they may come to regret.

By Gilo

Berrymans Lace Mawer (BLM) is a major law firm with tentacles in all corners of the defence of institutions in abuse cases. They are currently positioning themselves through a series of webinars to bid for widespread legal management of redress schemes. One of their partners is already involved in the Irish Redress Scheme.

I am the sole solicitor to the Irish Redress Board where to date, I have overseen the completion of 16,650 applications and redress of £953million being paid out.   https://www.blmlaw.com/people/sharon-moohan

Although the fee structure for such a contract will be commercially sensitive and closely guarded secret, a simple guesstimate might still be done. A conservative £2000 fee for processing each application would give BLM over £33m. A perhaps more realistic £4000 per application would give BLM £66.6m. Does BLM receive a reverse percentage, or perhaps a bonus for maintenance of sufficient numbers below agreed bands of redress? We don’t know. And probably never will. But these contracts will be very substantial. And BLM is already familiar to many institutions who have relied upon them for aggressive defence against claims. They are well placed to mop up this business in coming years.

Just to be blunt about what’s happening here – this would be the Church’s lawyers, who have cost many survivors our repair and caused much re-abuse with unethical tactics, now positioning themselves to pick up the very lucrative business of redress management. Nice work if you can get it. But perhaps BLM should not be surprised to know that survivors are urging the Church to go elsewhere for legal advice. Too many survivors have bitter experience of the ruthless opportunism and cruelty of Paula Jefferson’s strategies to watch in silence as BLM benefits from the management of the Church’s redress scheme.

The Church needs to signal a clear shift away from the cosy affiliations with lawyers and insurers who have done massive harm, both to survivors and to the reputation of the Church. A sea change is required. As a senior Church figure at the February Synod said:

…Because surely within our dioceses we have the capacity to go further than a ‘full and final settlement’. Surely we have the capacity to do justly, to act mercifully, and even to be generous. Surely we have the capacity to question our insurers about their practices and indeed our lawyers. It occurred to me that actually we can change insurers if we don’t think their methods are ethical. I change my electricity supplier. I am hoping that when I go back to my diocese some of my colleagues, and I’m sure they will, will be asking me some very difficult questions in diocesan synod.

BLM are playing both ends of a circus in a compelling story of hypocrisy. The company has more brass than a colliery band to place itself at the forefront of discussion on redress considering the practices it hoped no-one would notice. Genetic predisposition arguments, use of desk-topping, consent arguments, ugly references to a survivor as ‘hassle value and some risk around publicity’ are just some of the things survivors have managed to bring into daylight so far. Their webinar series represents a bid to claw back credibility in the face of the extensive reputational damage that BLM has brought to a major client. This client must presumably wish that BLM had acted with much greater decency and integrity. The deployment of unethical strategies may end up costing the Church on the way to half a £billion!

An email was recently sent out to participants indicating that the webinars have now been postponed to the New Year. The message also seemed to indicate that BLM might be poised to mop up the Scottish Redress Scheme. Or might have already landed this. How many other schemes will they seek to run? Those of us who have alerted the Church to the unethical situation – are keen that survivors elsewhere realise what is going on. This law firm are the same people who harmed many of us through derisory and harshly contested settlements. If you’re in doubt here are a few articles in which BLM have worked closely in tandem with Ecclesiastical Insurance (there is barely an operational rizla paper between them).

https://www.postonline.co.uk/claims/4602976/ecclesiastical-faces-fresh-allegations-of-unethical-treatment-as-case-of-suicide-watch-claimant-comes-to-light

https://www.postonline.co.uk/claims/7652861/briefing-ecclesiasticals-child-abuse-claims-shame-ceo-hews-admission-too-little-too-late

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/9-october/features/features/the-moment-my-heart-stopped-fainting

https://www.postonline.co.uk/claims/7681106/former-broadmoor-psychiatrist-faces-investigation-for-role-in-ecclesiastical-abuse-claims

BLM have done enough lasting harm and cannot be trusted. They, and the agents they choose to help them (one of whom is currently being investigated by the General Medical Council) have no real concern for the life-long impact of abuse, no understanding of the limp through life that so many survivors have endured. Nor have they sought to gain understanding. Paula Jefferson the head of their abuse department, who has led many settlements, has ignored complaints or batted them away like unwanted flies. We gather that the Archbishop of Canterbury has ‘fumed’ when he has heard about some of the responses from Paula Jefferson and her senior partners to survivors. To be fair though, the Archbishop has known for a long time and pretended that their unethical strategies weren’t his concern or that he could do little about it. But he seems to have woken up on these things recently.

Redress Schemes should be survivor-centric, involving the participation and experience of survivor groups, and not as lip-service PR but in very real ways with survivors on redress panels. Crucially, these schemes should signal a clear move away from the toxic and cynical processes of the past which were rife with  dishonesty, callousness, and ‘horse trade’ games. For these reasons, survivors from the Church of England context have already expressed to the Lead Bishops that any involvement of Paula Jefferson or her partners in BLM in the CofE redress scheme would be highly inappropriate and unethical.  

The best way for Berrymans Lace Mawer and Ecclesiastical Insurance to pay their substantial moral debt would be to contribute significantly into the Church of England’s redress fund. And issue statements of apology for the re-abusive harm they have caused so many. Survivors are calling for these corporate agents of the Church to be brought to considerably greater moral account by their client, than the Church has been prepared to do so far. The Church is picking up a colossal bill in lieu of BLM’s inability to read the signs over a long period of time. The Church has a moral responsibility to all survivors to ensue that the responses of institutions begin to be patterned in a new way – one that leads to healing and putting right the institutional evils of the past. It should lead the way in addressing BLM’s practices as clearly unacceptable.

We hope survivors from other institutions will read this, recognise the chicanery that has been pitted against them, and take questions up with the institutions they are calling upon for justice. Please share this widely.

Anyone who has read any of the church documents about safeguarding, will know the expression ‘vulnerable adult’. This term has been defined on various occasions.  There is a long list of statements which interpret this expression.  In summary it applies to any adult who is open to exploitation by another individual because of some impediment in their social, emotional or physical functioning.  The term has been rightly critiqued, not because such vulnerability does not exist, but because some of what is meant by the word could be said to apply to every human being on the planet.   Everybody is vulnerable at some point in their lives and it is also a mistake to believe, as the expression implies, that vulnerability is a good word to describe a permanent handicap of some kind.   Many of us move in and out of situations of vulnerability.  It is for this reason, no doubt, that the secular use of this expression has given way to a more accurate expression, ‘adults at risk’.  The Care Act of 2014 successfully describes the need to protect at risk adults in society without ever using the word vulnerable.  Indeed, it is pity that the Church has not yet caught up with this wording in the Care Act by also abandoning the expression altogether.  The word fails in several important respects and it is these failures that I want to explore in this post.    

In the first place the word vulnerable means literally capable of being wounded. Whatever other definitions we then choose to add on to the word, vulnerability is a category potentially applying to every human being.  Everyone is vulnerable in the same way, just as everyone must eventually face up to his/her own death.  We all experience aggressive, coercive or bullying behaviour by others from time to time. We could also add numerous other experiences which we would describe as involving other people attempting to take advantage of us. While we may not be vulnerable in the ‘at risk’ sense, we are certainly vulnerable in our capacity to be hurt and damaged by the malevolence of other people. 

There are good reasons, good Christian reasons, for seeking to rescue this word from the negative connotations that that it has acquired in safeguarding documents and the pre-2014 social work uses of the word.  One of the defining features of our humanity is our capacity to feel.  You cannot stop feeling things, good and bad, unless you close all the senses and become a kind of robot.  Robots do not feel nor are they exposed to sensations of malevolence directed at them from outside.  Feelings of any kind will involve accepting our vulnerability. Such feelings are not always the highway to fulfilment and contentment. Sometimes this capacity to experience feeling involves negative sensations such as shame, grief, fear or disappointment. All these feelings are unpleasant, but we would never want to deny our capacity to feel them and thus avoid experiencing any kind of emotional pain.  The negative feelings we have are balanced by our ability to feel joy, creativity, satisfaction at a job well done and delight at the presence and company of other human beings. Our ability to experience the negative is for the most part more than balanced up by our ability to feel what is good and glorious about life. 

The experience, that, for most of us, anchors our individual lives, is the experience of love/commitment to another person. But, even within the most successful relationships there are times of misunderstandings and hurt. Nevertheless, few people who have been with a partner or spouse for a long period of time would want to declare that the memories of togetherness and mutual joy are in any way negated by the times of hurt that may have occurred.  Both the joys and the hurts are born out of our human capacity to be vulnerable to another.  In short, we need to celebrate the fact that we are vulnerable beings who are open both to joy and pain. This word vulnerable could also be translated as openness.  Such openness to another is a key facet of our humanity.  Surely, we are right to reclaim the word vulnerable to help us describe this possibility of reaching the fulfilment commended by both Scripture and human tradition – the experience of human partnership in marriage. 

This blog post is then all about reclaiming the word vulnerable and seeing it as something glorious and distinctly human. Vulnerability, in short, is the capacity to share one’s humanity in acts of generosity and love, even while knowing that such openness makes it possible to be open to the possibility of hurt.  When we use the expression vulnerable adult in an association with weakness, incompetence or failure of some kind, it will be unable to serve its more elevated purpose of pointing to our highest potentialities as human beings.  It is important to challenge that old, I would say obsolete, use whenever we can. 

In the New Testament the word vulnerable is never used.  Nevertheless, there is one point when Jesus appears to be talking about something very similar to our notion of vulnerability – in the Beatitudes.  There are a variety of possibilities of meaning for these eight declarations by Jesus and in many ways the measure of uncertainty about exactly what Jesus meant adds to their interest and value.  Here I shall restrict myself to commenting on the first two, both of which seem to have something to say about vulnerability.   In the first beatitude Jesus speaks about the poor in spirit.  Preachers often declare that the explanation they offer is close to the original meaning.  I would rather say that none of us can know definitively what Jesus really meant by this term.   I for one have always found the paraphrase in the New English Bible helpful. ‘Blessed are they who know their need of God’.  This communicates the idea of openness and vulnerability towards God so that we can come to him with right attitude for receiving what he has to give us. To accept that we are needy in a spiritual sense is one step along the road towards finding mercy, peace and forgiveness.   The poor in spirit could well be translated or paraphrased as Blessed are the vulnerable, if we take the NEB translation seriously.    

The second beatitude is also one where Jesus appears to be commending a group who are often thought to be weak or vulnerable, those who are in a state of grief.  The natural meaning of those who ‘mourn’ is to point to those who have lost a loved one.  Christian spirituality, however, knows other forms of grieving, including the mourning over evil and the pain of the world.  Grief could also be a reaction to the existence of sin, our own or that of others.   However we chose to interpret these first two beatitudes, we find ourselves exploring a range of spiritual/psychological states which belong to our topic of vulnerability.  The lack of one single interpretation for either of these two beatitudes allows us to range over a consideration of many different ideas.  Also, we find at different moments in our lives a meaning which fits more closely to our situation.  For example, the older we get, and encounter loss of loved ones, we need to hear this beatitude as a word of comfort for that grief.  When we are younger our grieving tears might be more appropriately shed for the appalling suffering revealed in the world’s continuing story of pain and poverty.  Grieving is appropriate as a response to pain of a variety of kinds.  I used to sum up my teaching on this beatitude by saying that Jesus commends in us a capacity for tears.  ‘Heaviness may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning’ as the Psalmist said.   Mourning and joy are commended by Jesus to be the two balancing aspects of Christian experience.  Vulnerability and joy are also to be balanced in the normal Christian life.  In short, while no one wants to be in the place of vulnerability and mourning all the time, they do belong to the Christian life and indeed are part of the journey of joy and grief that is set before us in our journey of Christian discipleship from birth to the grave 

Today, two documents have appeared in connection with the formal complaint made about the Archbishop of Canterbury by the complainant known as Graham. One is a press release from Lambeth Palace giving notice of the dismissal of the complaint https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/news/update-safeguarding-complaint-against-archbishop-canterbury and the other is a press release from the complainant. https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pressrelease.pdf The background to this complaint was described in my last blog post connected with John Smyth. I mentioned the way that the Archbishop of Canterbury had become aware of serious accusations made against the former chairman of the Titus Trustees in 2013. This was a year after one of his victims, Graham, had made a disclosure to a senior clergyman in Cambridge involved with the Titus Trust. We have already made reference to the fact that Archbishop Welby knew John Smyth personally.  He has admitted visiting his house on one occasion. It has never been claimed that they were close friends, but Welby’s own conversion and background within the Christian faith owed much to the evangelical Christian networks in Cambridge in the 1970s.  Here Smyth also had many links. The network that is now known as ReNew was very strong in Cambridge. Mark Ruston and Jonathan Fletcher both exercised an influential ministry among undergraduates in that city through the Round Church. Many of the officers who worked at the Iwerne camps were undergraduates in Cambridge at that time, including the young Justin Welby and Nicky Gumbel. Networking is something that the REFORM/ReNew network have always done very successfully. The conservative evangelical world which originally nurtured Welby always strongly sustained a sense of camaraderie.  Archbishop Welby, although later broadening out in his churchmanship sympathies, did not appear to lose these connections and friendships with those in the world of conservative Anglicanism.

The 2013 complaint about John Smyth should have been a alarm call for Archbishop Welby. As I indicated in a previous blog on this topic, he certainly knew many people in Smyth’s network to ring up and ask what the story  was all about. I mentioned before an extraordinary lack of curiosity on Welby’s part. Do we perhaps detect an attitude of fear and the desire not to know what was being revealed?  Anyone who lived, as Welby did, on the periphery of the world of Jonathan Fletcher and John Smyth must have had some inkling that they were personalities which were at the very least controversial and possibly dangerous. While we can take Welby’s claim that he did not know John Smyth well, we would have expected that, as a newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, he would have wanted to investigate how far the scandal might go.  One of the principles of safeguarding, and well established as good practice by 2013, is to establish whether an individual poses any kind of risk. Although Smyth was a long way away in South Africa, he was still a potential risk in safeguarding terms. What did Welby do? He asked the Bishop of Ely to look into the matter.  A letter was written in 2013 by the Bishop of Ely to the Bishop of Table Bay outlining the risks posed by Smyth.    No reply was ever received. No follow-up was made, either by Welby or the Bishop of Ely. Neither was there another letter written, as far as we know. On a television programme in 2019, Welby claimed to have sent another letter at the same time to the Archbishop of Cape Town. In spite of enquiries, no copy of this later letter has ever been produced to confirm this claim. Smyth was active in legal circles in South Africa to within months of his death in 2018, and there was no attempt by him to hide from either the Church or the civil authorities in South Africa.

The complainant, Graham, has two major issues with the core group who examined his complaint against Archbishop Welby. In the first place he, as the complainant, was never formally interviewed to establish the facts from his perspective.  Both as a survivor and a safeguarding complainant he felt that he should have been properly heard.  It was as though the core group had no interest in establishing facts. In the second place it was stated today in the Lambeth statement that the complaint was simply about safeguarding practice.  From Graham’s perspective, the complaint was much wider than this. Archbishop Welby was in a position to stop John Smyth from having access to young people at any point between first hearing the about his misbehaviour in 2013 right down to the moment when the whole story came fully into the public domain in February 2017. Graham was also critical of the way that the chief of staff at Lambeth Palace, David Porter, approached him directly in an apparent attempt to interfere with the complaint process. This approach appeared to have the authority of the chairman of the Welby Core Group., Zena Marshall.  She is also the Deputy Director of the National Safeguarding Team. Graham has made this effort to subvert the process the topic of a further complaint.

As an outsider, I write my commentary based on the written documents before me.  I do not have the face to face interviews with the parties concerned.   With the evidence before me, I confess feeling considerable unease about what I see. Even when stripping out all the details of who knew what and when they knew it, something deeply dysfunctional is being revealed in these two documents. In 2013 (or possibly a year earlier) a huge destructive scandal came to the attention of the most senior leaders of the Church of England. This was not just about a vicar at the other end of the country committing some criminal offence. This was a complaint about an individual who was (or had been) influential and widely known to considerable numbers of clergy in the Church of England. Worse than Smyth’s original offences, which have never been contested, was the fact that these crimes were covered up for 30 years. A young man in Zimbabwe died at one of Smyth’s camps and there were some attempted suicides as well as many ruined lives.  It is hard to understand how a person with enormous influence in the Church, as Welby had, did not see this as a matter of extreme priority and deal with it decisively. For a core group later to say that there had been no safeguarding concerns about his actions in 2013 and later seems rather feeble. This weak lack of response suggests that there may have been, as with recent scandals in the Catholic Church, a desire to bury wrongdoing in the hope that it would just go away. I, for one, am deeply disappointed in the way that these documents reveal a lack of transparency, candour and honesty in facing up to the appalling abuse legacies of the past. There are, I believe, at least 22 victims of John Smyth who will all be re-abused by reading these documents and the institutional failures they will see in them.   Graham’s complaint against the processes set up by the NST has not been to all appearances properly answered. For all of these survivors this day, 12 November 2020, will be a day which they will remember forever as a moment when the Church of England has failed them once again.  It did this by not providing anything in the way of justice or a proper path to healing.