Among the many theological ideas that can be read out of the Bible, there is one that declares that human beings individually are intrinsically evil.  I do not here propose to agree or disagree with the notion that we as humans have ‘no power of ourselves to help ourselves’.   I mention it at this point merely to note that such teaching exists.  In some churches it is not only believed to be the starting place for a theology of salvation, but it seems to provide the single most important area of discourse for sermons.   Such sermons will spend time in contemplating the terrible fate of unrepentant sinners who never turn to God. 

One of the reasons that I, for one, want to sit lightly on some of the classic statements about human evil and sin is because these doctrines do not really engage with the reality of human evil as we experience it in our modern age.  Evil is found in individuals, but it is seen far more often in groups, corporate institutions and mass movements.    Let me explain.  The individual person is limited in the amount of evil that he/she can accomplish unaided.   To become really effective in the evil stakes, you need to cooperate with others.  The most evil people in the world are the ones that can somehow manipulate others to do their evil bidding.  Alternatively, there will be the ones that, with varying degrees of culpability, get caught up in a thoroughly corrupt or toxic movement.  On my own I can spread a lot of unpleasantness around.  But when I get together with others, I can be a super-champion in the tyrant stakes or inciting violence and hatred in all directions.

This observation about human evil, that it is more effective when mixed up with other people’s malevolence, is accompanied by another observation.  Just as certain forms of group activity seem to bring out most effectively the hidden Beelzebub, so time spent alone can help the individual find a personal morality less affected by the ‘passions of sinful men.’  I would hazard the thought that not only do individuals have limited capacity to do a lot of evil on their own, they also are quite good at discovering the good things about themselves when allowed time to be properly alone.  In their alone time, people like you and me will be quite good at having a longing for noble or even heroic actions.  These will allow us to want to leave behind something good on the earth.  Few people want to mess up the activity that most ensures us a lasting legacy, that of parenting.  Parenting is an activity that the majority of us get to experience.  It brings out any number of desirable qualities, patience, the capacity to forgive and all the feelings and actions we associate with the single word – love.  Parenting is not something we do at odd moments.  For it to be effective, it has to be practised continuously over years, even decades.  Those who are not, for whatever reason, human parents still experience the same nurturing instinct which draws something out of ourselves to make most of us decent, even if often flawed individuals.

There is a reason that, although many Christians are prepared to recognise that the greatest evils occur when we get together with others, much Christian teaching remains obsessed with the failings/sin of individual people.  I believe that one reason for this is because many Christians have in modern times become totally obsessed with sex and sexual activity.  The wider public beyond the Church has got used to thinking that the only sin Christians really care about or want to discuss is to do with sex. Sin is seen to be straying from certain narrow rules and decisions about the way we express our sexuality and such decisions are made by each of us individually.  We all recognise that our sexual lives have the potential to provide enormous fulfilment but also massive harm to self and others.  But however terrible the effect of an individual’s sexual sin can be, such as in abuse and rape, the obsession of many Christians is not about this rare possibility, but to object to anything that does not fit a narrow definition of ‘normal’.  In this respect the choices of some Christians to defy the norm is trivial compared with the evils we have hinted at above.  This blog piece cannot set out a complete charter of sexual morality but merely make one simple statement.  The task of Christian sexual ethics is to find a way that links sexual love to love and the values of mutuality, care and respect for others.  Such a morality of sexual behaviour is attainable, but many seem to fail. 

Let us stay for a moment with the hypothesis that on our own, we, and most other people are mostly decent and caring and want the good of those around them.  What causes some people to be sucked into groups or mobs that seem to cause most of the damage and toxicity in society and the world?  I am thinking of any group from a small committee to extremist political groups with fierce tribal or nationalistic aims.  These so easily, in some parts of the world, can cause bloodshed.  St Paul speaks about the principalities and powers. I wonder if he is describing the attractive and seductive option to become merged into a group, large or small.  In this way a person moves away from being a conscience-listening individual to the faux freedom and exhilaration of being part of a ‘mass-mind’.  Making this transition to thinking and acting with the power of the group is still our choice.  Further, the responsibility for deciding to remain there is ours.  My short theory about these powers, those that create the gang, the group or the mob, is that they provide very quickly to each member an experience of feeling instantly powerful.    Power of this kind is not always or even necessarily toxic, but it can quickly become such.  An otherwise well-meaning individual can even be corrupted by being on a committee.  Perhaps such a committee has reached a point where the group they represent can destroy a rival organisation by some underhand method.  Are you as a loyal member of the committee prepared to forget simple ethics for the sake of the organisation?  Do you go along with the use of possible ‘dirty tricks’ which, while not benefiting you personally, will be able to profit your group financially or in terms of power and prestige?

In our political life and even in our Church we know about group power games that are evil.   Personal and corporate morality can often be seen to be going off in two directions.  The morality of each individual member of a group may be of the highest in terms of personal ethics and behaviour.  But, somehow, the situation of membership of some groups, allowing ourselves to be sucked into some less than honest networks, has the effect of creating something evil in our lives.   Within the group context we may find ourselves tolerating dishonesty, lying, cruelty and insensitivity towards other people.  My reader may well be filling in the blank spaces for recent examples of behaviour of this kind. The fact that individual members, such as ourselves, would not behave like this when working alone, does not excuse any of us from the corporate guilt if we are in this situation.  It still belongs to us personally even though the conscience and the guilt has been dulled because the evil is spread over each participant.   

Membership of a gang, mob or powerful committee will normally give to the individual the reward of an intoxicating experience of power.  Whenever we are with others who believe they have the power to change things for good or evil, we will also feel a kind of excitement.  Our psyche is being roused at a deep level; at the same time it feeds the part of us that longs to be important.  Power, the feeling that raises us above a sense of inadequacy, has an addictive intoxicating quality.  People will often sell their integrity and their very soul to possess it.  For this reason, the groups that offer this power, will always have their loyal servants.  The possession of power, even when we dilute it by sharing it with others, is perhaps the greatest motivator for action.  That is perhaps why people will be drawn to the groups that offer it.

The Christian teaching about sin has tended, in modern times, to focus on the individual struggling with sexual temptation.  That picture of the nature of sin has taken our eyes off the more realistic picture of human evil which is found when an individual allows themselves to be drawn into a group for the sole purpose of exercising power – the power to dominate, to bully, to feel important.  When we focus only on individual failings, we miss the terrible principalities and powers, the group allegiances through which people bring much evil, unhappiness and malevolence into the world.

Indifference and callousness towards abuse survivors revealed within the Church of England at the highest level. The truth discovered in SAR (subject access request) material.

A letter from 7 survivors to the Lead Bishops, Director of Safeguarding, and Chair of the National Safeguarding Panel

Dear Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, Bishop Debbie Sellin, Melissa Caslake, Meg Munn

We write to you as survivors, some of whom are members of the Church of England’s Survivors Reference Group – to express considerable concern at the attitudes of Bishop Tim Thornton in an email recently shared with us from SAR material.

The Bishop at Lambeth sits on the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG) and the National Safeguarding Panel (NSP), and is a senior figure inside Lambeth Palace, all of which make him a key player in the church’s pastoral and strategic response to survivors. The attitude displayed here confirms what many survivors have long thought; that the adversarialism towards victims of abuse has not just extended to their litigation and insurance agents, but has its roots in the most senior members of the Church’s structure and indeed, inside the very bodies which make decisions on how survivors are treated.

In our view, Bishop Tim Thornton should be asked to stand down from these boards of governance and undergo further training to help him develop a compassionate understanding of the impact both of abuse and also of re-abuse (by the Church and its agents). It is our understanding that this Bishop is among a number of senior figures on the NSSG with unresolved issues (disclosure denial, dishonesty, silencing of major questions) where serious apologies outstanding to survivors have not yet been made.

We would invite the Bishop at Lambeth, and indeed all members of the NSSG, to reflect on the words of Archbishop Welby from last year.

The Church must learn “to put actions behind the words” when supporting survivors of clerical abuse, “because ‘sorry’ is pretty cheap”, the Archbishop of Canterbury said. “When someone is abused . . . it destroys their lives. It always leaves scars and wounds that are so profoundly deep, and I am so very sorry for every occasion that it has happened, and for our failures to deal well with survivors…..We need a specialised system for anything to do with abuse which is much more survivor-centred, much more careful, much less impeded by other things cluttering up the system.” ¹

We are conscious that Ecclesiastical Insurance (EIG) which the Bishop at Lambeth refers to, has done considerable harm to many survivors through ugly and unethical litigation strategies. We invite you as leaders of the Church’s safeguarding boards – to now consider requiring all future settlements by EIG to be monitored by both Church and survivor representatives – so that the Church and its agents can begin to develop a culture of justice, fairness and good ethics in working with survivors of abuse.

We also remind you that at the Safeguarding Summit in York survivors spoke considerable truth to power – and stood as a group to outline just one of the major hindrances to the Church moving forward with survivors. Namely the presence of senior figures in disclosure denial on the NSSG. This has remained unacknowledged and ignored. We ask that you now address this please. And we ask that you address the other main hindrance of lack of redress and an ongoing refusal to rescue lives that have been left broken and wrecked by the systemic re-abuse by this Church.

Best wishes

Tony, Gilo, Paul, Matt, Graham, Janet, Julian

1https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/12-july/news/uk/iicsa-i-am-ashamed-and-horrified-says-welby

Email in 2019 from Bishop Tim Thornton to Bishop Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, and Bishop Peter Hancock, former Lead Bishop.

and accessed as result of a Subject Access Request (SAR)

In a 2017 interview with BBC journalist Donna Birrell about the same case, Bishop Tim Thornton expressed a somewhat different view. In the transcript of that interview also accessed from the Church through SAR, the Bishop at Lambeth seemed to acknowledge the importance of listening to the experience of survivors and that EIG had not always acted in the correct manner.

In his words:

“We have been given evidence that in some cases it wouldn’t appear as if it has been.”

“…it is very impressive and humbling to see the way in which some survivors have continued to ask very hard and difficult questions.”

It would appear that the Bishop at Lambeth’s view has changed since 2017.

We received a reply on 9th July from Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, the Lead Bishop – and are hopeful of a further response.

Two supporting letters have been sent to the Lead Bishops, but we have been requested not to put them into public domain at this time.

This article is offered without much commentary, as we believe none is necessary.

Gilo

Co-Editor, Letters to a Broken Church

By Janet Fife

Recently I wrote about schools of deliverance ministry popular in charismatic
circles during the second half of the 20th century – ministries of which I had
personal experience. More recently another school of inner healing and
deliverance has become popular, and of this I have no direct experience.

Bethel Sozo (so called in the UK to distinguish it from the older Sozo
Ministries International, run by Marion Daniel) comes from Bethel Church in
Redding, California. It was founded by Dawna De Silva, who with her co-
leader Teresa Liebscher writes much of the literature.

One obvious difference between Bethel Sozo (BS) and most earlier schools
of deliverance ministry is its organisation. Previously deliverance was often
offered at a retreat centre such as Ellel; by itinerant missioners like Marion
Daniel or Eric Delve; or in parishes such as St. Aldate’s, Oxford and St.
Michael-le-Belfrey, York. Some clergy, like Michael Green, carried out
deliverance both in their own parish and while travelling. At churches like the
Belfrey a number of people (including myself) were trained in Wimber’s
methods of power healing and deliverance, and both staff and congregation
were strongly encouraged to attend Wimber conferences on his UK visits.
Later in the 1990s Wimber’s organisation began to establish a number of
Vineyard churches in the UK where his methods were used.

BS has no retreat centres or churches of its own, but there are Sozo teams
based in other churches. Most of these belong to networks such as New
Wine and the Vineyard, but a number of others to established denominations
such as the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and the Baptist
Union. A map on the BS UK website will guide you to your nearest ‘Sozo
Church’ or ‘Sozo Resource Church’. The National Facilitator of BS UK is an
LLM (licensed Lay Minister) in Rochester Diocese; she is on the Council of
Reference too. The C of R also includes a London associate vicar and a
(former?) Norfolk churchwarden who volunteers at Holy Trinity Brompton’s
Healing Room. Teresa Liebscher is a Trustee.

Sozo is described as ‘a gentler form of deliverance’ and differs in several
respects from the older methods. Practitioners like Michael and Rosemary
Green, Ellel, and Wimber made a clear distinction between healing and
deliverance ministry. The latter involved routing demons, whether they were
oppressing or possessing a person. Healing, on the other hand, was usually
physical or emotional and did not involve confrontations with evil spirits.
Some practiced ‘healing of the memories’ but again this was usually
differentiated from deliverance. Often ministry to a client would progress to deliverance only after healing had been attempted, or if what were considered
clear signs of demonic presence were detected.

With BS that distinction is blurred. Healing and deliverance are seen as much
the same thing, and when a ‘spirit’ is referred to it’s often unclear whether a
human attitude or supernatural entity is meant. In Sozo: Saved, Healed,
Delivered an ‘orphan spirit’ seems to be considered a demon, but is defined
in the glossary at the end of the book as an established attitude. In the same
book a ‘stronghold’ is variously described as ‘demonic’ and ‘a mindset’.

This vagueness is characteristic of much of the BS I’ve researched. It might
be considered a positive; in classic spirituality the devil is often seen as
working through human weaknesses and temptations. In reading BS
literature I was occasionally reminded of C.S. Lewis’ portrayal of devilish
strategies in Screwtape Proposes a Toast. Unlike Lewis, however, de Silva
and Liebscher seem unable to distinguish between a metaphor and a fact.
When a literal belief that a client is oppressed by demons (and BS considers
that most of us suffer demonic oppression) combines with an unclear
message about whether a particular aspect of the client is demonic or natural,
the resulting confusion could be unhelpful. Is this a habit I need to change,
which requires self-discipline, or was it the influence of an evil spirit I’ve just
been delivered from – in which case I can just relax?

The BS approach is more subtle than that of, for example, Ellel, but they still
see demonic influence as pervasive. They inhabit a universe in which a
demon might appear in the corner of your living room, or repeatedly come to
your bedside to harass you – and in which it’s OK to order the demon to ‘go
bother’ your colleague instead.

This preoccupation – some might call it an obsession – with supernatural
phenomena is typical of Bethel Church. It’s a charismatic megachurch with a
heavy emphasis on miracles, and teaching a version of the prosperity gospel.
Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM) is known for practices such
as ‘grave soaking’ (aka ‘grave sucking’), in which adherents visit the grave of
a holy person or gifted healer to absorb their ‘anointing’. BSSM is a 1-3 year
course, which boasts 13,000 graduates from 100 countries. In 2017 It was
reported to earn about $7 million – a mere 20% of the church’s income. There
is now a branch in London.

When the massive Carr Fire threatened Redding in August 2018, Pastor Bill
Johnson and other Bethel leaders prophesied rain and commanded the wind
to shift. In the event the church campus and most of the town were saved, but
1,564 buildings were destroyed, 121,000 acres burnt, and 6 people killed. 25
of the 800 Bethel staff lost their homes and possessions.

Bethel teaches that people can be raised from the dead. The Dead Raising
Team claim their 60 teams worldwide have resurrected 15 people, according
to a report in Newsweek of 12 Dec. 2019. The DRT has its own Facebook
group, and a website via which you can request their ministry. As the
Newsweek article appeared, the church were praying that a 2 year old girl be
raised from the dead, and ‘declaring life over her’ (Bethel prayers often come
in the form of commands). Only after 6 days did funeral preparations begin.
The child’s parents had believed she would come back to life – their anguish
doesn’t bear thinking of.

In Shifting Atmospheres Dawna De Silva writes of her neighbours’ lawns
being dead after a 3-year drought, and of ‘declaring life into the
neighbourhood…this lawn will be watered.’ She takes credit for her
neighbour ‘lavishly’ watering his lawn the same evening, and for ‘the spiritual
atmosphere of dryness’ shifting. She doesn’t consider the environmental
impact of using scarce water supplies on suburban lawns.

The teachings of De Silva and Liebscher reflect those of Bethel Redding: that
because of Jesus’ victory on the cross we have a right to health and
prosperity. All we have to do is ‘live in the victory’ and banish those spirits that prevent us from doing so. The question is: do our clergy and bishops
realise what they are harbouring in some of our churches? And, in view of
Bethel’s expansionist plans and increasing popularity, are they prepared for more churches to become ‘Sozo churches’.

On the Radio 4 Sunday programme broadcast yesterday, there was an interesting exchange on the topic of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM).  In recent weeks and months, this issue has never been far away from a mention on this blog as the CDM is constantly being discussed in the Church press.  During July, two important developments took place connected with the Measure.  In the first place, the House of Bishops, meeting on the 8^th July, declared themselves committed unanimously to ‘working towards replacing the Measure and to making interim procedural changes to ensure the current system is more workable until new legislation is enforced’.

The second CDM news to appear this month is the publishing of an extensive piece of research overseen by Dr Sarah Horsman of the Sheldon Trust based near Exeter.   The Sheldon Trust is a charity working with clergy who have been involved in disciplinary situations where they are going through times of stress and breakdown.  The Trust had commissioned its own research on the actual working of the CDM in the Church and the experience of clergy facing its procedures.  The survey approached every English clergyman (I believe), working or retired and sought their views of the Measure.  I received the questionnaire but did not return it, having left my English parish three years before the CDM came into force in 2006.  The Sheldon survey received a high rate of return (about 33%) and the details of 291 clergy facing 351 CDMs were available for study.  A significant amount of extra comment from those surveyed was generated.  In all, 306 people contributed 270,000 words about their experience of the Measure.  It is important to note that the CDM was only connected in 25% of cases with safeguarding allegations.  One example highlighted in the Church Times concerned a clergyman who had missed taking a funeral due to illness.  That possible scenario is one that haunts the imaginations of most clergy.  A good proportion (66%) of the cases came back with a not guilty verdict but damage had been done to those accused, particularly by the length of time that the process had taken.  A third of cases had taken more than six months to resolve.  The actual interview can heard through this link. https://www.sheldonhub.org/usercontent/sitecontentuploads/260/BE714015EBC9A10A6EE9FB071D395502/sunday%20extract.mp3

The Radio 4 interview invited Dr Sarah Horsman and Bishop Tim Thornton to react to both these recent developments in the reform and replacement of CDM.  Much of Dr Horsman’s contribution was concerned with her report from Sheldon and the meticulous analysis of the survey data by the two academics from Aston University. The most striking and memorable part of the report were not the opinions (mostly negative) of the CDM process but the accounts of the appalling stress involved in having any part in it.  No fewer than 40% of those clergy investigated had contemplated suicide and the incidence of Post-Traumatic stress was high.  Three individuals had actually attempted suicide.  High on the agenda was the failure of the Church to provide adequate support, either legal, pastoral or financial.  Suspension from duty, particularly among those found not-guilty had been a heavy burden to carry.  Clearly the process had destroyed, for many, the feeling that they would ever be able to trust the senior members of the clergy who had set the CDM process in motion.  The six page summary can be found here. https://www.sheldon.uk.com/UserContent/doc/1588/emerging%20research%20findings%20on%20cdm.pdf

Dr Sarah Horsman’s testimony over the fate of accused clergy was fairly harrowing in its impact.  Any clergyman listening would instinctively have empathised with the accounts of appalling threats to clergy when career, housing, family relationships and sanity itself are placed in jeopardy.  The Radio 4 interviewer was also clearly shocked by Dr Horsman’s descriptions.  He seemed to be inviting Tim Thornton, the Bishop at Lambeth to share in the sense of outrage at the sheer weight and volume of pain and suffering we had heard from Dr Horsman.  What might the interviewer and a fair minded listener have expected from a senior official who was presiding over a system appearing to be in total meltdown and described as a ‘mess’?.  Bishop Thornton admitted that things were not working well and that the Church was moving towards replacement of CDM.  Somehow one wanted to hear much more than that.  We all, including the interviewer, wanted to hear some words of real compassion and empathy.  Bishop Thornton was prepared to concede that some individual cases had been conducted badly but he was not prepared to concede that the structure itself was, and had been for some time, in a state of near collapse.  It also did not appear to worry the Bishop that the CDM process was also doing a great deal to undermine good relationships between bishops and their clergy.   A question that was not asked was why the Measure had been allowed to carry on so long when there were so obviously numerous examples of failures of process over its 14 year history.

There were two other jarring notes in the Bishop Thornton interview.  In the first place he referred to Dr Horsman as Sarah.  That might have been more appropriate if they had been discussing together and a degree of informality established.  The interviews were both recorded independently.  In view of the fact that Dr Horsman is a respected academic who is speaking prophetically to the Church, the use of the Christian name by the Bishop came over as somewhat condescending and belittling.  In this situation the Bishop should have regarded himself as being the one having something to learn.  In the second place when talking about the development of a replacement to the CDM, Bishop Thornton referred to a mysterious ‘we’ who were going to do the work and bring forward the new proposals.  In the view of the shameful mess that CDM is in at present, it would be reassuring to think that Bishop Thornton and those who work with him at Lambeth Palace and Church House had begun to move away from the assumption that all the skills necessary for reform were to be found in-house.  Is one really expected to have confidence in the message ‘Trust me, I am a bishop’.  Are the skills of ‘we’ sufficient, when the old model is failing so lamentably?   I am sure that the independent body or individual who has provided the money for the Sheldon research is hoping some of the wisdom expressed in those 306 witness statements would find their way into the new fit for purpose CDM.

In recent weeks, this blog has found itself highly critical of these two areas of Church legislation, the interrelated processes around Core Groups and CDM.  Many of the problems around these two pieces of legislative writing seem to result from the fierce desire of the Church to retain total control of the processes.  One problem with the Church having so much control of these legal structures  is that the system easily becomes riven with conflicts of interest.  There are relatively few lawyers competent to work in Church legal cases, so the ones that exist will be constantly encountering each other, being consulted over the same cases.  Scrutiny from an ombudsman, working independently, is something that might have alleviated many of the CDM and Core Group problems that we have seen recently.  The Church needs to have a discipline process for the clergy, but we need some radical new thinking to get this right for the future.  Bishop Thornton has indicated that the House of Bishops is ready to discard the current CDM .  Let us hope for the sake of the whole Church that they get this right.  The precedents that have been set suggest that there is still too much secrecy in the system.  This is alongside a fierce clinging on to power and privilege by a small group within our national Church.  This lack of openness and desire for control and power by a few do not suggest that this process will be straightforward.  General Synod needs to be ready to scrutinise and question future legislation carefully.  The Sheldon Trust has shown us how refreshing it is when an independent body shines a light of constructive criticism on a sclerotic structure that seems to describe our national church at present.  

In my last piece I spoke about conflicts of interest (COIs) occurring in the situation of Core Groups.  Somebody very helpfully pinned up on Thinking Anglicans a government definition of what a conflict of interest involves in the world of business.  It is worth quoting in full. 

A conflict of interest occurs when a board member has multiple interests which may influence the way in which they act or vote on  a board. The specific risk inherent in conflicts of interest is that the professional judgement or actions of a board member in relation to the company they represent are influenced by a secondary interest, such as a personal financial interest, the financial interests of family and friends, or the desire for personal advancement. As with all risks, there are ways of mitigating the risk. 

In the messy world of church politics, where the motives for actions on a committee may be more to do with advancing a personal or ‘party’ interest than with money, we need to think about these ‘secondary interests’ and what they might consist of.   What are the things in church life that people value highly which might make them act or vote in such a way to further secondary interests? 

Almost every example I can think of which involves a hidden motive for such behaviour involves a manifestation of power of some kind.  Let us look at a number of potential examples.  They vary in levels of seriousness. 

• An advocate of a theological position is rejected because one or more members of the committee want to see a favoured party position strengthened.  Affirming the power of being in the winning ‘party’ or tribe.  
• A member of a committee votes for the candidate who attended the same college as they did.  An example of favouritism and indirectly promoting your own brand of training. 
• A committee member will allow personal and historic animosities to affect their assessment of an individual for a post.  Exercising power over a disliked individual 
• The bias caused by a preference for PLU (people like us).  Closet racism or misogyny 

• One party in the group has professional links or obligations to another party not in the room.  As an example, a member of a law firm or reputation management company may continue to want to curry favour with an existing client like the Church of England, regardless of the topic under discussion.   
• Fear that something shameful from the past may be revealed if particular course of action is taken. 
• Decisions taken help to supress secrets that are kept for reputational or financial reasons. 

If you gather a committee or group of church people together for any decision-making process, there will almost invariably be somewhere a link or personal connections that join them together.  You need in this situation to import outsiders to question the process from a truly independent standpoint.  I very seldom meet a Church of England clergyperson who does not know at least one person that I have known or worked with.  Total independence in terms of knowing nothing about an individual prior to a meeting to make a judgement about them is probably impossible.  Some conflicts of interest or secondary interests need not be a problem if they are out in the open and not hidden away.  How do we avoid this issue becoming a real problem especially when we are dealing with decisions which potentially affect a person’s life, health and well-being? 

The first thing that needs to happen is that the Chair of an interview committee, Core Group or a similar body possesses a clear understanding of all the issues around COIs.  There is a professional judgement to be made about the point at which a past link or personal contact becomes a COI which would require an individual to withdraw from membership.  In practice, in a properly run process, this should seldom be necessary.  What does not inspire confidence is when, as with the Percy case, there appeared to be no awareness of several obvious conflicts right at the beginning of the process.  Any naivety over such COIs does not encourage confidence that any part of the process is going to be sound or even legal.  Recusal or removal, when required, should normally happen long before the main process gets under way.   The grey areas of slight acquaintance or interest should be declared at the beginning so that all the other members are aware of them.  One would like to think that the Church, of all places, was cultivating a culture of openness.   It is a serious matter when undisclosed or hitherto ignored information subsequently becomes available.  Having to remove members from a group suggests, at the very least, some incompetence on the part of the conveners.  Deciding when such conflicts amount to sufficient procedural irregularity as to invalidate decisions requires honesty, courage and integrity.  If in doubt, start again.  This would seem the safest approach to most people. 

I believe it was the Bishop of London who recently referred to the definition of culture as ‘the way we do things round here’.  The current culture of the Church of England apparently does not seem to appreciate the importance of insisting on uncovering COIs in its efforts to promote fairness and justice.  Whenever COIs exist within an institution unacknowledged, then the institution can quickly become corrupt and untrustworthy.   The recent removal of two complainant dons from the Dean Percy Core Group may sound like a minor adjustment in the enactment of the Church’s disciplinary process.  In fact, it is telling us far more than this.  It is declaring that every single individual involved in initiating the Core Group process – the NST and the officials in Church House – were apparently blind to a simple requirement that fairness in such a group was essential to their proper (and legal) functioning.   The inability to recognise one COI allows me to suggest that the conveners were also blind to a second more fateful COI.   Here we are following the insights of Martin Sewell who has laid out the case for seeing the Core Group attack on Dean Percy as a struggle by a Church establishment faction to destroy a challenger to their power.    Dean Percy, in short, represents a threat to vested interests at the heart of the Church of England.  I leave my readers to consult the article for themselves. https://archbishopcranmer.com/martyn-percy-cultural-mindset-establishment-privilege/    While I cannot summarise the complex issues to which Martin draws attention, I can say that any just struggle against unaccountable factions of power has my attention.  When the forces of oppression and power are exercised by Church leaders in the name of church discipline, that becomes a matter of the gravest concern. 

Conflicts of Interest are an inevitable part of any functioning institution.  To repeat the point, it is not their existence that is the problem.  It is their deliberate suppression in the hope that people will not notice, so that decisions of integrity are prevented.  The Martyn Percy case has become a test case for the Church.  Will it continue down the path of dishonest dealing by using the power of undeclared interests, lawyers and money to enforce its will?   Safeguarding protocols and confusions over their proper enforcement may be the issue being looked at currently.  If there are serious doubts and questions about the ability of the Church to get things right in this area, what about other areas of its life that we know nothing of?    The Church powers that be have not earned our trust for fair dealing in this area.    Without earning the trust of their members on this matter, how can they expect to be given the benefit of the doubt in other areas of the Church’s life?  

In an earlier blog I spoke about the loss of memory that can befall an organisation where there is a rapid turnover of staff.  Traditions and important memories of the past could be wiped out for all practical purposes if the new people were coming into post knew nothing of what used to go on.  The ability to be ‘in the know’ about the past used to be a position of considerable power.  Today, however, the internet makes it far less easy to bury old information.  The power of knowing much of what was said or written is given to anyone who has determination to seek it out.  Reviews, lessons learned reports and old committee meeting minutes can be scrutinised by anyone with the determination and the time. 

We have, on this blog, recently given a great deal of space to a discussion of Church Core Groups.  Some may be weary of this topic.  Nevertheless, this blog is primarily about the way power is exercised in the Church.  These Core Groups are vivid expressions of this Church power.  The coercion and pressure that may be felt by those who are the target of such a group is considerable.  Also, a Core Group can, when mismanaged or bungled, do extensive damage to the reputation of the Church at large.   Current interest in Church Core Groups has been caused by the wide publicity given to the one investigating Dean Percy at Christ Church.  Quite a lot has already been said about the conduct of this Group, but I need to revisit it once again since it interacts with another once widely reported Core Group, the one dealing with the case of Bishop George Bell.  This was convened six years ago in 2014, but its findings and procedures were critiqued extensively in an independent Review by Lord Alex Carlile. 

This Carlile Review was published in December 2017 and made several recommendations for the future conduct of such Groups.  On Friday 17^th July we read that there appears to have been an effort, according to the Church Times, belatedly to apply one of the stipulations of Carlile’s recommendations. This was to outlaw conflicts of interest in such a Group.  On this occasion the NST has addressed one glaring example of such a conflict in the Percy Core Group and decreed a change in the composition of the members.  Two of the Group members, who are publicly identified as complainants against the Dean, have ‘been removed’.  With them present, it must have been impossible for the Group to act in an unbiased fashion.   It was as though two members of the prosecution team were also serving on the jury.

Many of those serving the current Oxford Core Group are probably unaware of what was said by Carlile, but there are those still working for the Church at a senior level, who cannot be ignorant of what was in the 2017 Review.  Alongside his extensive criticisms of the Bell Core Group, Carlile had a clear vision for such groups in the future and the way they should be managed.    The criticisms made by his Review were harsh.  The Review stated that the Church of England had established a ‘Core Group which failed to follow a process which was fair and equitable to both sides’.  The muddles and confusions that marked the Bell Core Group process had led to a serious situation.  It raised (and raises) questions about the competence of the Church of England’s structures and their capacity for integrity and fair dealing.  The current Percy Core Group threatens to be another serious disaster for the Church even with the recent changes.  Would a more detailed appreciation of Carlile’s suggestions have helped to avoid another crisis and even an utter discrediting of the entire Core Group process?  

Looking at the 74 pages of the Carlile Review, we find that, at its heart, there is a story of a woman given the name of ‘Carol’.  She claimed to have been sexually abused, when she was a child in the early 50s, by the internationally known Bishop of Chichester, George Bell.  This had been disclosed to a subsequent Bishop, Eric Kemp in 1995.  Nothing came of the complaint and in 2012, Carol, by now a pensioner, wrote again to Lambeth Palace about the matter.  She no doubt believed that her story might receive more attention after the Jimmy Savile scandal broke.  After a series of consultations, a Core Group to look at the complaint was convened in 2014.  This would review Carol’s claim and make some recommendations about possible compensation. 

Carlile’s critical Review was especially exercised by the fact that the Group appeared very ready to assume Carol’s testimony as factual.  There seemed no appetite for subjecting it to any proper scrutiny or query.  Even accepting the fact that Carol may have been sexually abused by someone, there were other possible interpretations, such as mistaken identity of the abuser or memory lapses.  This led to the main criticism of the process by Carlile that even handedness had been absent in what was a quasi-legal process.  Carlile repeated this point several times in the review in different ways.  In his words: ‘I have concluded that the Church of England failed to institute or follow a procedure which respected the rights of both sides.’  In effect the Group treated the reputation of Bishop Bell as of no real importance.  Although Bell died 62 years ago, there are remaining relatives and many others who remember him. 

 In a small way I have a personal interest in Bishop Bell. The last six months of his life were spent in Canterbury and I, as a twelve-year-old have some personal memories of him.  There will also still be others who were teenagers in the Diocese of Chichester and were confirmed by him.  His good name does matter to many people.  The issue of Bell’s possible guilt is discussed in the Review, but it was not in Carlile’s brief to decide on the matter.  But we can read into the text a certain sympathy for Bell’s cause when Carlile speaks of a ‘rush to judgement’ on the part of the Core Group members.  He also discussed the way that, once the belief in Carol and her claim that her abuser was Bishop Bell became fixed in the minds of the Core Group members, no attempt was made to seek out corroborative evidence to back up or challenge Carol’s recollections.  Bell had a living biographer, Andrew Chandler and there was also alive in his 90s a former chaplain of Bell’s who had been resident in Bell’s Palace at the relevant time.  No attempt to speak to either man was made.  Carlile was himself able to speak to the 92-year-old chaplain, Canon Carey, about his recollections of the period as well as the buildings where the abuses were supposed to have taken place.   

The Carlile review of 2017 is, in summary, a telling critique of the Church of England and a guide telling us how not to run a Core Group.  Carlile described the Bell Group as a ‘confused and unstructured process’.  Clearly there was a lot of work needing to be done if the Church was planning to continue to serve the cause of justice and historical transparency, using this process.    

At one point in the report, Carlile uses a small word which I find significant.  The word is ‘oversteered’.  Perhaps that was what had distorted the whole 2014/5 Bell Core Group process.  In a vehicle, a small oversteer can cause a fatal crash.  In the case of Bell’s Core Group, oversteer in the process of interpreting evidence caused irreparable harm to the reputation of a past hero of the Church.  Why did such oversteer happen?  We need to recall that 2015 while the group was doing its work, the newspapers were full of the Bishop Ball affair.  Is it too fanciful to suggest that image advisers employed by the Church were anxious to write a narrative about the Church, showing it to be considerate for the interests of an elderly lady who had been abused and was seeking justice? 

Can we detect in any way that the Core Group was being ‘managed’ to satisfy the needs of the Church communications department and its desire for good PR?  Were the Archbishop and Bishop of Chichester making statements suggested to them by their highly remunerated reputation managers?  If Carlile’s critical Review is pointing us in this direction, then it follows that similar pressures will also be at work in the 2020 Percy Group.  Are Core Groups, in other words, subject to being managed to suit the purposes of the reputation launderers working for the Church? In the comments I made about Bishop Jonathan’s responses to questions at the recent Synod, I suggested that the management of safeguarding issues was being handed over to a team of lawyers.  Such lawyers would be the ones seeking to defend the Church and protect its good name.  Now, after reading the Carlile report again, I am left wondering whether it is in fact the power of reputation managers and communication departments that we see operating behind the scenes and making the decisions for our Church.  If that is the case, then our Church will not be taking too seriously the cause of transparency, justice and truth.  These and other Christian values like honesty and right dealing may only ever be paraded in public when they can serve the purposes of good PR!  

This rereading of the Carlile report and the way that it revealed rampant ‘unconscious bias’, to quote from Martin Sewell’s question at last Synod, allows us to point once again to our ongoing concerns over the Percy Core Group. Conflicts of interest still abound there. Quite apart from the inappropriate placing of two complainants in the Group, there are the collusions we have pointed to before between firms of lawyers, reputation managers and those at Christ Church who have manipulated the Church and the NST to operate in their interests. If the incompetence of the Bell Core Group was a scandal, the sheer apparent malevolence at work in this present Percy Group is one which is driving out all pretensions to ethical behaviour and Christian values. We seem to be witnessing evil and corruption on a grand scale. Will the Church at the national level be able to rescue this situation and allow it to come through this appalling crisis?

By Janet Fife

Prof. Ralph Hanna once entered a Caifornia classroom, dumped his rucksack on the desk, and, eyeing his students, said in a rich Texas drawl:  ‘Latin ees not daid. They jest changed its name to perteck its reputation.’ I’m tempted to say the same of medieval exorcism rituals:  they haven’t died out,  they’ve just changed their name to deliverance ministry.

That would not be fair, however. Deliverance ministry is more subtle and, in my view, perhaps even more dangerous than exorcism. Proponents of exorcism hold that a person can be possessed and controlled by one or more demons. Usually this would be seen as a fairly rare, though serious, occurrence. Many practitioners of deliverance ministry, on the other hand, inhabit a world infested with demons. They believe that even devout and faithful Christians are routinely troubled by these malign spirits. Everything from paisley pattern to Body Shop products has been described as ‘demonic’, with advice that Christians should avoid them.  People may become ‘demonised’ by being the victim of an assault, touching a dead body, or having ancestors who were Freemasons, alcoholics, or went to seances.

This is a world view dominated by fear.  ‘The Enemy’ (as they call Satan) and his minions are everywhere, they are powerful, and if we are not constantly on the alert they will get us.

         Mommy told me something a little kid should know,

         It’s all about the devil and I’ve learned to hate him so.

         She said he causes trouble when you let him in the room,

         He will never ever leave you if your heart is full of gloom….

                            (‘Let the Sunshine In,’ by Stuart Hamlen)

I heard one woman lament that her church’s round-the-clock prayer scheme had no one to cover the 3-4 pm slot, so that children coming out of school would be ‘unprotected’. It’s exhausting to have to foresee every danger in order to be able to pray about it. And it stems ultimately from a failure to trust God.

Full disclosure:  in my charismatic days I both participated in and was the subject of deliverance ministry (not always willingly, I may add). I stayed at Ellel Grange twice soon after it opened in the late 1980s; Ellel has since become notorious for its focus on the demonic. During my second curacy, in a large charismatic church, I was trained in John Wimber’s methods of power healing and deliverance. And I have had encounters with various leaders practicing this ministry, including Michael and Rosemary Green.

The demonologies taught by some feature hierarchies of evil spirits with different realms of responsibility. The demon or demons to be confronted are identified by the symptoms and history of the patient.  As just one example, Ellel identify ‘how the spirit of Jezebel operates through ungodly control’.  There may be talk of ‘generational spirits’ or curses. Repeated or chronic illnesses are commonly identified as the work of a ‘spirit of infirmity’.  In one such case I knew, a young woman with ailments moving round her body was thought to be possessed by a spirit of infirmity and prayed for accordingly, without effect. but was eventually diagnosed with an auto immune disease.

Advocates of deliverance ministry can rightly claim that it is ‘biblical’, and Jesus is recorded as carrying out several exorcisms. There is no biblical justification, however, for many of the theories about ranks and classes of demons. Such a study is inherently unhealthy. The gospels and Acts do not show exorcism to be more than an occasional feature of the ministry of Jesus and the apostles, but Ellel and others assume deliverance to be a part of the Christian life.  If it were expected to be a normal part of the ongoing ministry of the Church we would expect to find instructions to that effect in the epistles. We do not.

To some all this will be foreign and bizarre:  how can people living in the 21st century not only believe this stuff, but act on it? To others, including intelligent and educated people, the world of angels and demons is not only scriptural, but it makes sense of the world as they experience it. It may be a straw to clutch for the desperate, or offer an illusion of hope to those whose problems seem to have no solution.

It was my disillusionment with these approaches to healing ministry, and concern at some of the things I had taken part in and witnessed, which led me to research an MPhil on ‘Charismatic Healing Ministries and the Sexual Abuse Survivor’. I concluded that to a survivor, inner healing and deliverance ministries pose a serious risk of causing further damage.

This blog doesn’t offer scope for discussing all my reasons for that conclusion, but one of my most serious concerns is the use and abuse of power.  There is inherent power imbalance in this kind of ministry. The person to be prayed for will be outnumbered, and usually those doing the praying will be ‘taking authority’ over whatever conditions or spirits they feel are afflicting the candidate. It’s very seldom that the pray-ers will have even the most basic knowledge of psychology and serious mistakes can be made.  And it’s extremely difficult for those being prayed for to challenge the ‘diagnosis’ of those ministering, if they feel misjudged or concerned about the course the ministry session is taking.

Moreover, deliverance ministry attracts those who already have an unhealthy attitude to power.  Here is an opportunity to ask questions about intimate aspects of people’s lives; to make pronouncements over them; to ‘exercise authority over’ demonic realms. It can be a real ego trip. At the last session of an Ellel course on deliverance, the leader commanded all the evil spirits in the room to ‘manifest themselves’ (a term frequently used). I will never forget the utter bedlam that ensued, as 60 or 70 people moaned, howled, and wailed. Instead of quieting things down, the leader walked among the crowd praying with people individually while the rest continued in their noisy distress. After some minutes I caught a glimpse of his face – he was enjoying it. I never went back.

(Apologies to Alan Bennett)

An offering to Surviving Church from an anonymous contributor who speaks of the Kafkaesque experience of being at the wrong end of a Church of England Core Group

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

‘First They Came’ is the oft-quoted and adapted poetic form of the post-war confession in 1946, from the German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller. His confession was about the cowardice of intellectuals, Christians and most clergy for saying nothing in the face of injustice, even when it was right in front of them, in plain sight.  They all chose to look away. This included, and by his own admission, Niemöller himself.  Niemöller’s prose raises two questions for us today. First, who are they? Second, who are we? In what I describe below I seek to address that question.  I write anonymously, but I do so autobiographically, with some details changed.

——————————————————————————————————-

They wrote to tell me that they had formed a Core Group. It was all about me, apparently, and my ‘practices’. Not now, of course.  But something done or not done in the past.  The person writing told me that they couldn’t say anymore at this stage. They had decided I would have to be investigated. They couldn’t tell me what it was about in detail. I would understand that they had to maintain their confidentiality.

They told me to step back from a number of duties, voluntarily.  Or I would be punished with some suspension. They told me this was non-negotiable, but they were just asking. Nicely. But that if I didn’t comply, there would be trouble.

They told me they would allocate me some support. They had selected someone for me. I was in too much shock to take notice. This person, they said, would help me. With what, I asked? At this stage, they said, they could not say anything further. But they had allocated me some support. Did they know anything, I asked? No, they said.  The support person was picked for me, but remains outside the ‘process’.

Then they sent a letter. There would be a statement on the website and an agreed announcement about the process I ‘had agreed to enter into’. But I protested, I hadn’t ‘agreed’ to anything. I’d been given no choice: forced. They replied I did have a choice. Comply, or lose your job, they said. I asked who wrote the statement?  They said the Core Group had ‘agreed it’, and that there was nothing I could do about it. 

The letter, they said, would be helpful. It wasn’t. It outlined some specimen ‘accusations’ against me, and told me this meant I would be categorised as a ‘risk’ for the time being. But I was not to worry. Being suspended was a purely ‘neutral act’ – it did not imply any guilt on my part. This was merely a ‘routine’ process, so I should not be concerned about my reputation. They told me I could not talk to anyone about what was happening. That I had to keep this confidential. That I was not allowed to say anything about this to anyone.

I asked if I could have an advocate – some legal advice, perhaps?  They said that would not be necessary. They said I was not ‘on trial’ in this process. Although, they did add that if the ‘investigation’ concluded that I was a ‘risk’, then I could lose my role, home and livelihood. I asked if I would have input into that decision?  They said that would be a matter for the Core Group. They added that I could take my own legal advice – if I wanted.  But at my expense, of course.

I asked, who was on the Core Group? They could not say at this stage: it was confidential. I asked how the Core Group was formed? They could not say, as it was confidential to the Core Group. I asked if it was free from conflicts of interest, bias, or people using it for vindictive purposes, or making vexatious and ruinous allegations? They said the Core Group managed these things, and there was a process. I asked if I could see a transcript or details of what I was accused of? They said that was confidential to the Core Group.  I asked if there was a process of appeal, or perhaps a complaint process? They told me they would think about that.

I asked what would happen if they got things wrong? They seemed puzzled by this question.  The process was agreed. The Core Group had met. Accusations and allegations had been made. There would have to be an investigation. Surely, they said, I could see they had to continue with their process until it was completed?

I told them that some people committed suicide when faced with the shaming of such allegations and accusations. Many people who did not take their own lives became depressed instead, and signed off sick.  Or just resigned. Or both.  It could take years to recover from the trauma of being falsely accused.  Reputations might never be restored.  They said nothing. So I asked again. They still did not answer. I asked again. They reminded me that they had allocated me a support person. If I did not want the one they allocated, I could choose my own.  That was it, they said.

I told them that this could be financially ruinous for me. They said, ‘the process must come first. We cannot run this around concerns for you, your wellbeing, welfare reputation or your family. Victims must come first!’. I said that there weren’t any victims. No-one had complained. That this was all made up, and just malicious. 

They just said that everybody had to be treated the same, and there could be no special pleading.  I had to be investigated in the same way as anyone else who ‘potentially posed a risk’.  Could I not see that this was ‘fair’?

I protested. Fair on who, or what, I asked?  Do I have to prove my innocence, lest I be presumed guilty?  Are we not all ‘potential risks’?  I could not see any fairness in their process. I could see no transparency, accountability or truthfulness.  I could not see any evidence of concern for me, due process, or for the interests of the victims or survivors of abuse. They said that the church had to ‘look like it was doing the right thing’. It can’t be seen to be letting some people off lightly.

So I gave them a list of people who they had already let off lightly. Or in some cases, had decided to not investigate at all. These people were all known abusers. They had caused untold damage to dozens, even hundreds of people. Over many decades.  People had known about their abuse for years. But nothing had been done to them, or to the people who knew about it. So I asked, why was I being singled out?

They did not answer. They said that each Core Group came to its own conclusions. That they could not comment on individual cases. That if no investigation of a known abuser had taken place, there must have been good reasons in the process for this to have been decided at the time. The fact that these people were eventually found to be abusers, and had now been named was, of course, ‘regrettable’.

I asked if there was ever any apology for the victims in these cases? They said that if they had decided not to investigate such people then, they could not possibly be held responsible for the actions of abusers now, or for what they had done to their victims. They said that was ‘obvious’.

I asked them why they put out a media statement about me, but not about others who were being ‘investigated’?  That was a Core Group decision, they told me. So I asked who made decisions about who was to be named and shamed, and who was to be shielded from any exposure to the media? There was no answer.

I asked again. They told me these decisions were made on a case-by-case basis. They ‘reassured’ me that there was no hidden ‘agenda’ against me. Everything that was done, is being done, and will be done to you, is done for the sake of the victims and survivors, who ‘must come first’, they said.

I said, ‘it looks like you are just protecting your own reputation here…I mean, you throw a few people to the wolves to make it look like you have got robust structures, but you just operate secretly and with no sense of accountability or justice…’. Again, they did not answer me.

So I went to the bible, and I read them these words from Nicodemus in the Gospel of John (7: 51): “Does our law seriously judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out the facts, and discover what they are doing?”  I said that word “seriously” like John McEnroe did – a kind of shouted, sarcastic, sulky squeal.

They didn’t like this. I knew that, because by now I had figured out that anything they didn’t like, or any question they didn’t want to answer, meant that they just kept silent.  They did not need to speak to me, or answer me. They are not answerable to anyone. They are unaccountable.

They could do what they liked with me and to me. The process allowed them to suspend me; to recommend my removal; to name and shame me; to draw on evidence against me, but refuse to hear evidence or testimony for me. They could go after anyone they liked. No-one was above them.

I asked, ‘seriously…how is any justice served by this?’.  They just told me that they operated with their own processes. They were not like healthcare, government, social care or other bodies. So, they did not need to follow the good practices of other organisations and institutions, because they were not like them. They did not need to operate justly or fairly, because they self-audited, judged themselves, and worked with their own standards and protocols. This all worked well for them, they said.

I asked them about all the illness and trauma they were causing me. I mentioned the sleepless nights, the stress to my family, the medication, the financial costs and the reputational damage they were inflicting. They said ‘we can see that this must be a difficult time for you’. But they said nothing more. And they did nothing more. They carried on with their process.

I no longer know what they are doing. I know nothing about the new Core Group they set up to investigate me. I don’t know who they are.  I don’t know if they are doing this to me deliberately to cause me harm, or because they are incompetent, and too proud to admit their failings.  But I do know that I no longer trust them. I do know that I no longer believe them. I do know that none of their statements can be taken at face value anymore. I do know that they are bungling – but also dangerous.  I do know that when your church hierarchy can’t be trusted any longer, something deeply corrupt has taken root in that body. 

As I reflect, I wonder how we ever arrived at this sorry state of affairs. When you can’t believe and trust your bishops and other high-ranking officials in the church, because they cannot demonstrate truthfulness, transparency and fairness, what is left for us?  Just questions, I think. And a group of people – I have only referred to them as ‘they’ – who don’t answer to anyone, or think they need to answer anything. 

That question comes round again: “Does our law seriously judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out the facts, and discover what they are doing?”  Poor Nicodemus.  He never got an answer from the Pharisees and Sadducees. Nor would Nicodemus get one from our church today.  Authorities know how to keep silences – that is their main mode of violence.

They had pursued others before me; but I said nothing. I assumed the authorities knew what they were doing then; that they must be right. In getting rid of these others, it showed they must have done something wrong to deserve such treatment.  But then they came for me.

They may come for you too. Who are they? Who are we?  I am not longer very sure.  But please remember this: I have warned you.

Back in February I was paying close attention to the speeches at General Synod  which were given on the topic of safeguarding.  In particular, I was listening to the speech given by Bishop Jonathan Gibbs of Huddersfield, the new lead bishop for safeguarding in the Church of England.  In what I wrote on this blog, I said that his influence was ‘crucial for the future of safeguarding and the welfare and interests of survivors’. I expressed a great deal of hope for this influence as he was expressing, in his speech, the firm expectation that, in the future, the perspective of survivors would be allowed to affect the way we ‘reshape our shared life in the church.’  He went on, ‘too many of us don’t get it.’  This speech with its references to redress, apology, action and change, seemed to be the mark of someone ready to speak the language of survivors.  How would we want to describe this language that survivors want to hear?  We would suggest that what survivors want to hear is language informed by pastoral instinct, care and compassion.   They do not want to hear the language of an institution in defensive mode where the protection of reputation and assets is placed on a pedestal above everything else.

We now fast forward to the General Synod that is taking place tomorrow.  Like all other assemblies the coronavirus has made it into a virtual event.  I have not read all the papers but I am naturally interested to see if there is follow-up to the positive approach to safeguarding that came from Church officials in the February session.  How is it being handled at this Synod?   There are 13 questions on safeguarding matters which have been published, and the responses to these and numerous others questions have put out in advance on the internet.  The responses to these questions is a major point of interest for Synod members.  The answers which respond to safeguarding enquiries are all presented as coming from the lead Bishop, Jonathan Gibbs. 

Before I go on to examine one of the questions in more detail, I should make a general observation about all these safeguarding responses.  In February we heard from a fired-up Bishop Jonathan, who appeared passionate about his new responsibility for safeguarding.  In July this same man puts his name to 13 responses to questions on the topic.  It has to be said these answers to these questions sound like extracts from a dry legal text-book.  Of course, some of the required answers did touch on questions of legal protocol and definition, but not all.  The style of all of these responses is such that I would be very surprised if any of these answers were actually put together by Bishop Jonathan himself.  Every single one appears to have been composed by an anonymous lawyer and Bishop Jonathan is simply the spokesman who delivers these ‘official’ answers.  The human being that spoke with such passion back in February has somehow disappeared.  In his place is a legal functionary who is anonymous and speaks in the way that will best preserve and defend  the Church of England. 

As I have suggested, many of the 13 questions from Synod members did require a legal-type answer.  Safeguarding is, after all, often a matter of putting into practice the correct procedures, particularly as laid down by the House of Bishops in their 2017 guidelines.  But amid the more formal questions of protocol. I detected a googly.  Martin Sewell, a lay member from Rochester, asked a question which was bound to catch my attention as it related to the Martyn Percy affair, something the Church of England may regret becoming involved in.  Sewell’s question, no 27 is as follows.  ‘The Church has embraced the concept of “unconscious bias”.  Will the Secretary General and the NSSP urgently review the composition of the Martyn Percy Core Group and confirm to General Synod members within a month, that having considered the importance of fair and proper process, they can assure us that the Core Group was free from unconscious bias, and the Core Group decisions were untainted by it?’  The questioner knew that the placing of any group of individuals, well known to each other, with others who have been actively  working to remove the Christi Church Dean for over two years , was operating with a built-in bias right from the start. Someone has likened this action as being like allowing members of the prosecution team to join the jury.  Bias within the group was far from ‘unconscious’.  It has made any objective pursuit of justice for Dean Percy by this group virtually impossible.   Bishop Jonathan or the lawyer speaking through him, chose to ignore the evident gross anomalies of the situation, and declared the following in smooth lawyer-speak.  ‘We are not able to respond to specific ongoing cases but as a general rule we would accept that as far as is reasonably possible in the circumstances of each case , a core group’s work should be free from bias ………’

The answer ascribed to Bishop Jonathan is almost certainly not the answer of the man who had spoken so passionately about safeguarding in February.  The question was one about reflection regarding the issue of unconscious bias, one that is much talked about in this epoch of ‘black lives matter’.  The question was not an easy one to answer and it demanded the exercise of the imagination by whoever tried to respond to it.  The Secretary General and the National Safeguarding Steering Panel were being asked to reflect on what they thought might have been going on within the Core Group for Dean Percy.   The answer that came back had not even allowed the question to be fielded on to William Nye and the NSSP.  It was batted away by a legal functionary working in Church House without apparently any serious attempt to engage with the deeper issues implied in the question.

What are the issues implied by this question?  Surviving Church has also asked the same question in a different way.  How can a Church core group function properly when it contains openly hostile individuals to Dean Percy?  Bishop Jonathan must be completely aware of all the ambiguities of process and law that still bedevil the Percy Core Group and its proper functioning.  The formal answer that is published as a response to Martin Sewell’s question shows no  trace of uncertainty or ambiguity.  The answer neither answers the question nor does it hint at the struggling humanity of the bishop who spoke to Synod so movingly and passionately about the issue of safeguarding in February   Rather we seem, in this answer, to have the words of a legally trained functionary with no pastoral awareness of the issues at stake.  That does not reflect the reality of Bishop Jonathan.  This formal answer seems neither to engage properly with the question nor offer an answer that could be said to be of any obvious value.

I have no means of knowing exactly how questions at Synod are dealt with and responded to.  If my speculation is even partly right, that a Bishop’s reply has been drafted by a lawyer and we are witnessing a terrifying vision.  The Church of England is led, not by bishops or archbishops but civil servants and lawyers who are hidden away in Church House.  The task of General Synod is surely to demand to see the ‘real’ Bishop Jonathan, not the one who is not permitted to answer for himself questions put to him by members of Synod.  In the case of Martin Sewell’s question, the individuals addressed were not reached.  Bishop Jonathan/anonymous Church lawyer deflected the question before it reached its destination.  Is that really how we want the Church to be organised?   Is there an English word to denote an organisation run by lawyers?  Perhaps that is indeed what we now have in England!

Trying to make sense of what is going on

A casual reader could be forgiven for being totally confused and beginning to lose the plot over Christ Church Oxford and the travails of its Dean.  What started as a falling-out between a group of disgruntled dons and the head of their Oxford college, has grown into something far more substantial.  This blog piece is an attempt by an outsider to look at the substantial amount of new available information and try to make some sense of the facts that we are being given.  It may also help my readers to have this more recent material presented in a summarised, bite-sized version.  Some of the material is complex so setting out succinctly and, I hope, accurately, some of what is now in the public domain, may be helpful to a reader.   As we shall see, the complete story has yet to be told.

Back in 2018 a group of Christ Church dons made a complaint against Martyn Percy, their Dean and Head of College, accusing him of immoral conduct.  This complaint was made following the procedures available to them by the College statutes.  After a massively expensive enquiry, a retired judge, Sir Andrew Smith, threw out all twenty-seven charges and the Dean was re-instated.  The college appears to have spent over £2 million of their charitable funds in bringing their complaints forward and Dean Percy was forced also to employ legal support costing him £400,000.

Earlier this year the same group of complainants approached the Church of England’s National Safeguarding Team to bring a further complaint against the Dean connected with safeguarding issues.  This complaint procedure is on-going.  Once again Dean Percy is forced to employ legal help as the NST have, in response, set up a quasi-legal Core Group to investigate the complaint.  This is where the situation becomes complex and the subject of procedural and legal arguments. 

• A major issue yet to be resolved in the case is this.  Dean Percy wears two hats in his unusual double role.  On the one hand, he is a Dean of a Cathedral where Church safeguarding rules could come into operation if required.  On the other side he is the head of a college at a university which has its own set of protocols and guidelines.  A similar situation would exist for a school, prison or hospital chaplain.  While they are working in their respective work environments, chaplains have to work according to rules set by the institution that employs them.  In cases of safeguarding, Church and State have differing standards and regulations.  The Church has rules which talk about ‘vulnerable adults’.  All other non-church organisations, including universities, adhere to regulations which speak of a category referred to as ‘adults at risk’.  The precise definitions of these two expressions do not concern us at this point, but suffice to say, they are not the same.  It is hard to see how Dean Percy could be expected to operate according to two distinct sets of guidelines simultaneously.  It is clear anyway that all the safeguarding complaints are to do with episodes of college life, i.e. in areas of his responsibility where the Church has no obvious role or access.

• The case seems to be full of potential conflicts of interest which make it almost impossible for the Core Group to work with an adequate level of independence.  There are just too many personal ties that exist between the Dean’s accusers and the publicity companies and legal firms who have now become involved in the case.  We obviously do not have all the facts of who knows whom, but there is a miasma of suspicion about the process which makes it hard to see how there will ever be a calm dispassionate examination of the facts. The two non-church organisations prominent in the case each have a lot of history and involvement with both Christ Church and the Church of England central structures.   One is the public relations firm, Luther Pendragon.  They have already been working for the complainant dons in their earlier case against their Dean in 2018.  They also do work for the Church of England and several of the dioceses.  Alongside Luther Pendragon is Winckworth Sherwood, a firm of top end London lawyers.  They are extensively involved with church work at the national level and also with the Provincial Registrar and the diocese of Oxford.   WS, as we shall now call them, used to be run by the Rev John Rees, who now works for the national Church at a senior level.  The letter sent to Martyn telling him that he faced investigation by the NST was written in the name of Melissa Caslake, the director, but it appears to have been drafted by another senior lawyer with connections with WS, Alex McGregor.  He is a priest lawyer who used to be chancellor for the Diocese of Oxford.  The WS Oxford office was also drawn in to issue the letter from the Bishop of Oxford to George Carey, removing his PTO. 

• Given the close personal and professional ties that can be seen to bind all the individuals within these firms with the national church and with members of Christ Church, we would have expected to see a number of recusals from the Core Group. It is surely impossible for members of such a small network to regard themselves as independent in regard to this investigation.  In actual fact, 13 out 14 members of the Percy Core Group are believed to have personal or professional links with WS.  Two of Dean Percy’s accusers sit on the group while no one represents the interests of the Dean himself.  Further, Alex McGregor, the member of the Church’s legal team and who reputedly drafted the letter to Martyn, is an alumnus of Christ Church.  He can be expected to have continuing social and other contact with some of the dons involved in the case. 

• The minutes of the Christ Church Core Group, which met on March 13th 2020, have not yet been released.  The various conflicts of interest that would appear to be in operation, in bringing together such a group, need to be fully explored.  The group that is claiming to seek justice for the Dean needs to explain how they feel able to do this with any degree of integrity while these apparent conflicts of interest are neither acknowledged nor examined.  There is also something less than healthy when committee proceedings are apparently wrapped up in secrecy.  The Carlile report, which scrutinised the processes in the case around Bishop Bell, called for all such Church core groups to carry representation of the interests of the complainants and the accused.  That, clearly, is not happening in this case.  The impression is being given that the whole process is an expensive and dishonourable exercise in trying to wear down the Dean by litigious-type activities.  To their shame, the Church of England has allowed itself to become party to a what appears to be a thoroughly shameful process.  The NST has been manipulated to become part of something so toxic that it may itself be destroyed by this involvement.

• The reputations of two organisations are being severely damaged by this episode.  Christ Church dons have already seen twenty-seven accusations against the Dean rejected by a retired judge.  The repeat of the attacks on the Dean with a completely new set of accusations, while using another legal structure, seems foolish and even reckless.  The reputation of the Christ Church college has been muddied and brought low by this case.  At the same time the status of the Church of England is taking an equally heavy battering.   The Church, with the connivance of its top legal officers has allowed a church legal process to be used in a dispute within a wealthy Oxford college.  It is surprising that the advice of the Church’s own publicity machine and its reputation managers was not there to check this appalling waste of human and financial resources.  At a time of financial anxiety for the parishes and cathedrals of England, congregations are witnessing the expenditure of tens (even hundreds) of thousands of pounds of church money on this case.  This is money that properly belongs to the Church.  Quite apart from the evident flakiness of the case, the Church of England has allowed one of its structures to be used, abused and, arguably, totally discredited in pursuing a case which appears ultimately to be beyond its remit.  Let us hope that General Synod at its meeting in two weeks time will be able to do something to reverse this terrible train crash.