One of the insights given to those of us approaching old age is the recognition that the wisdom you have now obtained was not there thirty or forty years before.  As a retired parish priest, I see clearly how some decisions made in the past were not always the best ones.  I am not thinking about things that could have harmed people, but judgements made that may have affected the general progress of a parish.  Back a few decades (I shall not be more specific), I was faced with the arrival of a clergyman (we will call him Peter) in my parish who had taken early retirement on health grounds.  My 2021 self would now ask some very penetrating questions about the nature of the ‘health grounds’.  I should at the very least have made a phone call to an archdeacon to find out a little more.  Probably in this case, I would have picked up the message that there was something to be cautious about.  On the face of it Peter had had a lively ministry, albeit of a charismatic flavour.  This was, however, the only style he seemed to understand, and it was not where any of my then congregation were.  The sermons that Peter preached were volatile and unpredictable.  Displays of emotion in the pulpit about relatives who were not ‘saved’ did not edify but rather embarrass.  The liturgy was also subject to random editing which did not stand up to any kind of theological consistency.  As time went on, he began to show signs of mania which are not the product of a healthy charismatic spirituality.  I have always been tolerant of charismatic styles of prayer and it was probably this tolerance in my younger self that allowed a difficult situation to continue longer than it should have done.  It did eventually resolve itself as Peter found a much more congenial audience for his style of preaching among the network of independent congregations around.  They welcomed a new voice to their services.

My exposure to charismatic forms of preaching/ministry did not start from the experiences I had with Peter.  My pre-Peter experiences had been reasonably extensive, and I certainly feel that I had been able to grasp the importance and appreciation of these styles of spirituality to a ministry of healing.  Healing and the support of healing ministries took up a significant part of my ministry and I served some years as a Bishop’s Adviser.  This role involved me with becoming sensitised to a variety of theological styles when practising this ministry.

It was tempting right back in the 70s when I first encountered charismatic phenomenon and preaching, to think of it in entirely theological terms.  To introduce any kind of psychological insight in assessing it seemed somehow blasphemous.  The Holy Spirit was, to all appearances, operating directly in the lives of Christian individuals and transforming lives and making them holy.  This direct unmediated access to the Holy Spirit was similar to other claims that conservative Christians were making about the text of Scripture.  Anything as pure as the ‘unmediated Word of God’ had to be beyond any kind of human criticism. This uncritical approach to the manifestations of the Spirit was quite simply another form of fundamentalism.  Both the Bible and the Spirit quickly could however, become tools of oppressive power in the wrong hands.  We can see that the entire charismatic movement has been damaged by such claims for the ‘infallibility’ of the Spirit.  Statements like ‘God is speaking to me and revealing his will’ enter into the discourse of the leaders. This kind of grasping of power by Christian leaders, using the tool of text-quoting and appeal to spiritual phenomena, is unlikely to be healthy.  Just because followers long for certainties in the Christian journey does not mean that Christian leaders should spoon feed them  As readers of this blog will know, I have never allowed the mere quotation of a biblical text to resolve a theological issue.  Finding ‘truth’ in the miasma of text-quoting and the multiplicity of theological traditions that we have, is endlessly complex.  Christians may long to possess certainties but there are many reasons to suggest that this is not easily delivered.  The Bible is not, and never has been, an oracle full of proof texts.  Culture and the rules of meaning within language will throw up ambiguity and nuance at every turn.  It is what makes the Bible and the theology it contains an endlessly fascinating study but, for some, this does not provide the certainties for which they crave.

Pentecostal/charismatic-style preaching with its double appeal to unmediated pure reality of God through scripture and experience will have tremendous drawing power because it meets a craving for certainty.  Being entranced by this link to certainty will also mean a strong attachment to the one teaching and preaching in the church.  In what I, and many other Christians, would consider to be a kind of blasphemy, there is a process which transforms an ordinary fallible human being into a super-human oracle of God.  By demonstrating the power of the Spirit and being the only legitimate interpreter of the Word of God, the minister/pastor claims all power to himself.  Someone who believes that he indeed has such extraordinary power may also be on the way to a manic breakdown.  This is what appears to have happened to Peter before his early retirement and his arrival in my parish.

Why do people flock to such congregations where the preacher may sometimes exhibit mania and other disturbing facets of the narcissistic personality that we have talked about on other occasions?  Something I have recently read about the charismatic leader in all walks of life explains this conundrum very elegantly.  One prominent feature of many groups and that includes many charismatic/Pentecostal congregations is the strong sense of us/them.  Belonging to a group that  that many such groups carry as part of their identity.  Part of the church’s corporate memory will then consist of the way that there was once this traumatic separation from another group.  This may have involved a parting of ways from another denomination.  There will thus be a major ‘them’ from the past as well as a number of other thems in the present.  We have contending against us the unsaved, the mockers of the faith and the liberal intellectuals.  It will take a relatively modest level of rhetorical skill for the preacher to incubate successfully that sense of separateness and estrangement felt by a congregation.  People enjoys this feeling of being specially chosen when compared with the ‘other’.  Separateness make them aware of themselves as distinct from their Christian and other neighbours.  It is not hard, as we have seen before, to back up from Scripture this strand of teaching.  By emphasising this line of exposition, the congregation can be persuaded to give up their thinking selves as a way of suppressing any dissonance that they may feel.  That will allow them to fall in with the dominant opinion, that of the leader or preacher.   

The book I am reading explains how the preacher/charismatic leader is subtly encouraging one part of the brain to become dominant.  It is well-known, even in motivation/leadership courses, that people working for a corporation are seldom motivated merely by appealing to the rational part of the brain.  It is the emotional brain, the amygdala, the more instinctive part of the brain, that needs to be activated for real changes in behaviour to take place.  It is this part that is activated when the body senses some danger or something causing fear.  In a congregational setting the ‘enemies’ of faith are named as threats and this will get the amygdala activated.  This will successfully override the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain that uses reason for decision making.  Such group thinking is also common in a political context.  The leader, having roused an audience to fear the other, whether an idea, a group or an individual, can then keep them in a state of expectation and longing to have provided for them the ‘answer’ that will remove the demons out of sight.

My appreciation of charismatic preaching and practice has to be qualified by my dislike, even loathing, of methods of manipulation that involve the subtle use of threats and fearmongering.  The path to a holistic appreciation of the Christian good news should surely involve the reason, the thinking part of the human person.  Can we ever afford to hand over ‘faith’ to the irrational and the primitive functioning of the human brain?  There is a time for the emotions and the feelings to take a prominent place in our religious life.  Supressing reason and discernment is not the way to do this in a healthy way.

Observing how power flows within organisations is a fascinating task.  Traditionally power flows from the top of an institution down to its base.  Those in charge are supposed to administer their power so that the authority and expertise of those in leadership flows smoothly from the top to the bottom.  But the truth is, of course, that power within institutions seldom works like this.  There are countless permutations in the way power operates.  Sometimes those at the bottom of the structure find that they have the greatest power.  The ‘Chiefs’ become the bullied or oppressed at the hands of the ‘Indians’.  In some cases, it is a group in the middle that seize the power to make life uncomfortable for those above and below.  All that can be said as a generalisation, is that the outsider, the independent assessor, must never come with assumptions on the question ‘Who has the power in this organisation?’  Power can be found in the most unexpected places and take a variety of forms.

The classic cases of church abuse that have been examined on this blog have typically involved survivor/victims suffering at the hands of predatory (normally) male clergy.  The power system at work in a church congregation is usually a traditional one, with power flowing down from a single leader to those who accept his/her authority.  For abuse to take place there may be a variety of different powers in evidence.  Sometimes power flows down from an individual to groom not only an individual victim, but, to quote Susie Leafe at General Synod, ‘they groom entire congregations’. This grooming is added to other manifestations of power, that of silencing or the assertion of rank and status over a minor.   The child or vulnerable adult is typically told, in a variety of ways, that their testimony will never be believed over the man of power.  In most cases when the complainant has tried to tell their story, this has been shown to be true.  Up till about ten years ago, a child or adult complaining about abuse in the Church has had relatively little chance of being heard or taken seriously.  In the past the victim of church abuse seemed to stand more chance of justice by going to the police than telling someone in the church.  But, even there, however well the police do their job, the experience of abused individuals within the adversarial system of the courts has often been brutal.  Why would anyone, already fragile, want to go through such an ordeal?

The record of the past thirty years of Church safeguarding has been at best mediocre and at worst poor.  Today we at least accept the possibility/likelihood that the testimony of someone recalling abuse, even from years before, will probably be conveying the truth.  Just because a Church leader protests innocence, complaints against him always need to be heard and properly investigated.  A typical case will involve a victim who has experienced a stronger person imposing their power against them in a variety of ways.  If we were to draw the dynamics of power in a visual form, we would see a victim at the centre, with various arrows of power coming down on him/her.  One would be described as sexual abuse, another bullying and yet another grooming or silencing.  Combined together, these arrows would have the effect of silencing and totally disempowering the one at the centre.  Not all the arrows originate with the abuser.  Some of them can be traced back to, say, an unsympathetic archdeacon, a lawyer employed by the insurance company or simply a bystander whose instinct is always to take the part of the abuser as a man of the cloth.  However we draw the chart to describe the power flows, the traditional pattern of abuse shows power to flow in one direction, downwards.  This ensures that the victim is thoroughly demoralised.  The combined weight of tradition, status, money and prestige enjoyed by the church and those who worked for it, would win in most situations.

When the vast majority of the abused, in and by the church, remained largely hidden from view, it was right to use the word ‘victim’ as a description.  Anyone who experiences power abuse without being able to access protection or justice of some kind, is not in a good place to heal.  A ‘survivor’ by contrast is among a new generation of those hurt by the Church.  Today the abused are sometimes able, not only to be heard, but also have their pleas for justice and support responded to.  These individuals, some of whom I am privileged to know, are extremely brave and courageous people.  They have succeeded in transforming the diagram which I mentioned in the last paragraph.  The survivor is one who has some hope of finding healing.  He/she has begun to reverse the direction of the arrows that tried to make them silent victims.  By turning the arrows round, the survivor has started to assert power, to challenge and point, not only to their abusers, but also to those whose status and institutional roles worked against the survivor.  Bishops who ‘forget’ disclosures or fail to make any record of meetings with the abused are part of the deeply shocking history of Church abuse and the way that institutional power tried to bury truth.   Survivors have credible stories and because of them, they have power to change the Church.  The old mental diagrams that we created for ourselves to think about the way victims are supposed to behave, no longer work.

So far, I have postulated two mental images expressed as diagrams.  One is the diagram of abuse that creates ‘victims’.  The other is a diagram where these so-called victims are fighting back.  They are telling their story so that the power dynamics are beginning to go into reverse.   The structures and bystanders that enabled the abuse are themselves put under scrutiny and challenged.  The arrows all point upwards in a flow of power that refuses to tolerate the institutional power games being utilised against them.  They are not always successful.  The Church has invested a great deal in preserving its reputation and status within society.  The battle that survivors are having to fight is ongoing.  Nevertheless, the diagram of power flow in the Church will never be the same as it was thirty years ago when the word of Church authorities could not be challenged. 

There are of course other new power dynamics in the Church which run in parallel with the new credence being offered to survivors.  Many clergy today seem to be in a permanent state of tension, thanks to the outworking of the  Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM).  This measure effectively gives any disgruntled or upset parishioner the right to make a complaint against the Vicar or priest.  So far, the Church has not tolerated complaints based on ‘political’ or theological grounds.  Nevertheless, situations of real tension, even hatred can arise when a group of parishioners decide that their priest is not ‘sound’.  The ‘unsound’ Vicar can be pestered to the point of a nervous breakdown by factions using the CDM tool.  I am not suggesting that CDMs are being used to adjudicate in these kinds of disputes.  Bishops are not (yet?) requiring Vicars to move on as the result of parishioners complaining about their ideology/preaching.  But it has become clear that some clergy, who are embroiled in some kind of political spat, are having to be constantly on alert lest some mishap can be inflated and made the centre of a CDM complaint.  The CDM does not have to succeed to keep the clergyperson in a constant state of tension.  They are afraid to upset parishioners, particularly the articulate ones.  These know how to play the system and are not intimidated by the CDM forms they have to fill in.  These can threaten the sleep and general well-being of their clergy. 

In the past the arrows indicating the flow of power in the Church all flowed downwards.  Clerical/episcopal power was unchallenged and few complaints about the misuse of power were ever heard.  Now that the possibility of clerical malfeasance is an acknowledged issue, clergy everywhere have to watch every word, every gesture in case it is misunderstood or misinterpreted.  There are, however, still some parishes and congregations where challenging authority is all but impossible.  These are those, which because of ‘biblical’ principles, the hierarchy do not allow themselves to be challenged.  Such leaders are effectively appointed by God.  Their judgement and opinions share the same infallibility that are afforded to the words of Scripture.

The situation of Martyn Percy at Christ Church presents us with an extremely complicated power diagram.  Although there is an alleged ‘victim’ somewhere on an imagined chart, it is hard to see that she has become in any way at the real centre of this complex power struggle.  What seems to be true is that powerful individuals in the College have been waiting for something to happen which allows them to deploy their expensive team of lawyers to drive him from office.  Martyn is like one of many clergy in the Church of England whose situation has become vulnerable to the activities of ‘enemies’ who want to remove him. The College uses its protocols in their attempt to remove him but they are also marshalling the weapons of the Church of England, the CDM, to help them in their task.  The CDM here, as elsewhere, has become weaponised and thoroughly toxic.  How can it be just for a complainant Canon with a track record of malevolence against the Dean to be allowed to head up a CDM process?  Is the Bishop of Oxford himself unable to see the clear power dynamics of the present situation?  For justice to be done, we need to find for both College and Diocese, people who are truly independent and are prepared to view dispassionately the total dynamic and history of the Percy affair.  The mob violence of a Trump crowd seems to be what we are observing at present.  Calmer heads are needed to prevent massive damage to both personal and institutional reputations.  History will not be kind to either the Diocese of Oxford or Christ Church College if they continue to hurtle down a path of self-destructive harm.

The recent ‘insurrection’ in Washington DC, by supporters of outgoing President Trump, reminded many of us of other events in history involving crowds, like the Storming of the Bastille.  The blog post that follows is on the topic of crowds, but it is not about history.  Rather it attempts to think about the psychological processes that are on display in crowd settings.  Some crowds are better described as mobs when demagogues like Trump seek to incite his followers to commit violent acts in the name of a political cause.

A mob/crowd becomes a coherent entity whenever a large group gathers for some common purpose.  Random collections of people who happen to be together do not constitute a crowd in the sense that I am trying to describe.  The crowd which has some sense of common purpose will also have some rudimentary structure to accomplish its purposes.  It may come into being as the result of a dramatic political event like a revolution.  Alternatively, it may be formed to support a football team, playing a crucial match.  Some crowds are deliberately created by the activities of a demagogic leader like Trump or Mussolini.  In a political setting, a crowd/mob can turn into something really powerful and even frightening.  Governments and people in authority have known over the centuries to fear the mob.  It is not just the fact that a thousand people armed with the simplest of weapons can do a lot of damage to their surroundings; it is also the fact that the sheer energy of a crowd that comes into being, when roused by a leader, can unsettle peaceful cooperation within communities for years.  Thousands of people united into a crowd by a common purpose do and have changed history.  America will never be the same after the events in Washington on the 6^th January 2021.

The study of crowd psychology has always fascinated me.  This is in spite of the fact that nearly all of the dedicated literature on the topic originated abroad and even today I am not aware of a single scholar in the UK who is currently writing on the subject. I may of course simply be out of date but that is what I found when I tried some years ago to do some serious reading on the subject.

What is crowd psychology?  A better place to start is to ask the simple question.  What was my experience the last time I was part of a crowd?  It might have been as an onlooker at a football match.  It might have been as a theatre goer or as an attender at a large Christian charismatic gathering.  It may have been when attending a political gathering of some kind.  Some of us avoid crowds precisely because we dislike what we feel they do to us.  As a broad generalisation we can suggest that in a crowd we feel depersonalised; our being in a crowd changes the nature of our consciousness.  Whatever kind of crowd (or group) we are in, there will be some level of change in the way we experience the outside world.   In many crowd situations, people are aware of a powerful pressure to merge, partly or completely, with the thinking and feeling of the other people in the group.  This would be especially true of a political gathering. (There have also been many studies of the pressures felt by members of juries to conform)  When Trump spoke to crowds of his supporters, he knew exactly when to introduce the uniting chant of ‘lock her up’ or ‘stop the steal’.  It takes quite a determined act of will by individuals in the crowd not to join in such chanting.  How much easier it is to go with the flow and shout with the rest?

The first popular book on the topic of crowd psychology was by a Frenchman, Gustave Le Bon.  He was writing in the 1890s, so his reflections were available to the 20^th century political orators, especially Benito Mussolini and Hitler.  Le Bon’s observations resonated with the time.  Governments everywhere were aware of the raw power of revolutionary movements involving mobs, such as the French Revolution or the other revolutions that disrupted many European countries in 1848.  There was an appetite to understand and thus perhaps control or channel this raw energy which could be such a threat to the established order.

Le Bon was, according to his critics, not an original thinker but a populariser.   We in Britain can forgive him this, since, in translation, his book, The Crowd, was the very first attempt to get the English reader to think about the topic of crowds, using the available tools of psychology.  He began with the basic observation that a crowd is, psychologically, a different reality from an accidentally gathered group of people.  A crowd in this understanding can always be said to have a common purpose.  It is this common purpose which has brought it to occupy the same physical space at the same time.  The one who participates in the collective mind or common passion/cause of a crowd will very quickly discover that the dominant thought of the group is one that quickly and easily comes to fill the individual’s consciousness.  In this way the crowd makes the group into a single being or subject.  In Le Bon’s words, we discover ‘the law of the mental unity of crowds’.

From these observations we can repeat the idea that individual thinking, feeling and acting work differently according to whether we are in a crowd or alone.  When we are in a crowd, our experiencing and feeling seem to draw on a primal, even primitive level of functioning.  This is one that all human beings share in common.  The more individual creative and intelligent parts of human functioning, those that we each build up over a lifetime, seem to drop away.  Instead of intelligent processing of information, Le Bon noticed the way that the individual in the crowd operates out of the more primitive and instinctive parts of the psyche.  There is a failure to consult intellect or reason and this results in the crowd/mob’s tendency to embrace extremes of political/religious thinking. Such extremes are articulated in the political ideologies on the ultra-right or left. Religious extremism can also be rooted in the same primitive and sub-rational roots.  The crowd is not the context for weighing up and considering dispassionately competing views and opinions. It will prefer members to use the simplified slogans and propaganda ideas given to it by the leaders. Among the many changes that can take place in a crowd is the ability for the individual to feel enormously powerful.  There is a sense of being able to tap into the power of the group so that some feel invincible and thus indestructible.  There is also a susceptibility to what Le Bon calls contagion.  In other words, a idea suggested by the leader through the tools of propaganda can come very quickly to occupy and even take over the awareness of every single member of the crowd.  This capacity for identical feelings and sensations to spread rapidly across crowds, helps us to have an appreciation for the dynamics of crowds in other contexts.  Some of us have experienced some similar dynamics in Christian charismatic settings.

In short, the immersion of the individual in a crowd/mob can have the effect that he/she is persuaded to behave in a way that may be quite contrary to their non-crowd behaviour.  Usually individual behaviour is something which is rooted in reason and personal morality.  In the crowd there is a kind of hypnotic fusion with others in the group and this may result in behaviour quite out of character and contrary to the normal system of personal values.  This hypnotic and primal group way of thinking or not thinking can sometimes result in impulsive risk taking and a failure to look after one’s best interests.  Sometimes this impulsive risk taking is interpreted as human courage.   But simultaneously a capacity for sacrificial self-giving is sometimes accompanied by a new potential for ferocity, hatred and violence.  This is never seen in the person’s normal life.  Another way of putting it is to suggest that in a crowd, the individual slips down the ladder of civilisation.  Acts of apparent heroism appear alongside those of hatred and brutality. 

The dying days of Trump’s presidency, especially the events of January 2021, have given us some insight into the primal and toxic behaviour of crowds.  Ironically, many who are part of the Trump mass cult see themselves as Christian, being normally moral and selfless human beings working for a higher cause.  The reality for them in a crowd seems quite different.  Thanks to crowd studies initiated by Le Bon over a hundred years ago, we can see taking place an eruption of primitive impulses into American society.  Some of these have been activated in a physical crowd setting while the same primitive passions may have been caused by the virtual crowd settings created through the internet.  Many of these will take a generation or more to heal.  The ability of politicians (and churchmen) to understand better these dynamics, will perhaps protect all of us from the malign effects of crowd/mob thinking and behaviour in the years to come.  Sadly, I do not detect that there is much understanding in our national or church life for these insights or even a desire to make this exploration.   Failing to understand crowds and crowd behaviour will make us potentially far more vulnerable to their disastrous and damaging impact.

By Martin Sewell

Followers of the prolonged saga of the Dean of Christ Church Oxford, Martyn Percy, will know that one of the prime movers of the failed processes to date has been Senior Censor, Professor Geraldine Johnson. She is an historian with particular interest in the history of art, and although her specialism appears to be in earlier periods, she must surely be familiar with Rene Magritte’s famous and subversive work “This is not a pipe” which appears above. It challenges us to question what we are looking at, and to think clearly about what we are discussing. A surreal work of art is a good starting point as we try and make sense of what is currently going on at the college where Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland in which words mean what the speaker wants them to mean and where, today  “safeguarding” and “vulnerability” become vehicles to an end.       

I an a retired  solicitor, and a former member Law Society Children’s Panel. https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/career-advice/individual-accreditations/children-law-accreditation.  There are currently 2128 members, and the Government figures tell us that between June and September 2020 alone, they conducted cases for 7910 children. The Church does not choose to engage one of them to advise in this complex specialist area. 

I may be forgiven for suggesting that such lawyers are a principal repository of experience and expertise when it comes to understanding safeguarding and risk assessment. Their daily work exposes them to what “dangerous” looks like,; they understand that not every person bringing a complaint is bona fide, that not every concern is serious per se, or justifies disproportionate reaction. Above all, they are governed by the principles of the Human Rights Act, specific rules and codes of conduct. All members are required to meet the selection criteria, to undergo annual training, and to be subject to strict rules for the management of cases. Importantly, they routinely argue cases for all participants within the process. On the same morning one might be representing an infant, a mother with learning difficulties, a “Gillick competent” young person, or an alleged abuser. That range ensures perspective.

The Church employs nobody from this panel, neither does Winckworth Sherwood, the solicitors who advise the Church, the Diocese of Oxford, Christ Church College, and Lambeth Palace. This is perhaps a good place to start an appraisal of the divergence between Dean Percy’s persecution and standard safeguarding practice. 

I often received instructions in such cases at short notice. I might return from a morning in Court to receive a brief from my PA on a new case urgently starting that afternoon. Already she would have undertaken a conflict-of-interest check for me. It was utterly routine. Even with care, things slip through the net; mothers change their names; they cohabit with another client’s ex-husband. If a colleague draws attention to a potential conflict you walk away for a very practical reason for if an undeclared conflict arises at the hearing, the slipshod lawyer may face a wasted costs order of many thousands of pounds. None of this good practice is observed by the Church or the lawyers in the Percy case. Our core groups are routinely riddled with conflicts of interests. Nobody is sanctioned for this neglect of good practice.

At first hearing in the secular world, it was commonplace for lawyers to confer to determine what was a proportionate response to the allegations. We were routinely mindful of the right to family life. Sometimes interim restrictions were justified, but they were constructed by people who were serious about real risks, and not to accommodate grotesque imaginings.  Not so in the Church. Dean Percy a man pf previous unblemished character has, inter alia, been put under a restriction not to meet with his 27 year-old son or to have coffee with a friend unless supervised. There is not a scintilla of evidence that either is a vulnerable person in need of safeguarding, or that such a restriction is proportionate or relevant to the allegations in the pending case. Such lack of analysis speaks of either malice or lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of those imposing such requirements: wherein lies the “risk” presented by the Dean who, let it be noted, should enjoy both a presumption of innocence and a full recognition of a blameless safeguarding practice to date? This cannot, of course, be said about certain dons who have a track record of false accusation. For clarity, I have never seen such disproportionate restrictions advanced, let alone upheld in a case of safeguarding within the Courts where such work is done properly. 

Sometimes cases were resolved, but the birth of a further child triggered a fresh evaluation. In those cases it was routine to re-appoint the original Children’s Guardian and lawyer to look at the new matter, informed by what went before. It saves time and repetition. Contrast this with how Winckworth Sherwood and their clients approached the fresh Percy allegation. In the preceding case in which he had been comprehensively exonerated, Dean Percy had taken the point of principle that a retired police inspector who was a former work colleague of the Core Group Chair, should not be appointed to investigate his case (see conflict of interest above). 

With the new matter arriving, normal good practice would have been to reappoint the same investigator – the one that the NST and Winckworth Sherwood had eagerly advanced as competent and of integrity – but they did not; their original choice had failed them, he had not produced the goods and had to go. This is what happens when the same people are acting as lawyers to the accusers and the tribunal, and so, a former Lambeth Palace safeguarding advisor ( also a former Police Officer) was instructed without consultation and ignoring legitimate objection.

Readers of this blog will have read about, and heard directly from, the latest NST approved Investigator, Kate Wood. I have not read, and do not refer to, any matter of substance from her report but ought to flag up the stages by which a safeguarding risk is assessed. First, one has to ascertain that the person against whom there is an alleged safeguarding infraction, is indeed a “vulnerable person” under the 2014 Care Act and the 2003 Clergy Discipline Measure. If they are not, the matter may still need investigating but not within the emotionally charged sphere of “safeguarding.” “Vulnerability” needs to be a contained concept for those needing truly special regard. If everyone is “vulnerable” (even for a moment) then functionally nobody is. The concept is supposed to give privileged protection to certain people for good reason. If everyone has a privilege it is not a privilege.

It is not enough to assert that that a person being notionally protected is “vulnerable”. There are supposed to be rules, definitions, and predictable criteria. In law, a word does not mean “what I choose it to mean” and it is legitimate to ask – and share- why a person falls into an asserted legal category You cannot just speculate that a notionally vulnerable person might be upset by certain behaviour. One needs chapter and verse; it is the sine qua non of the process. Further, an independent tribunal  needs to make an early clear finding of fact that specific events occurred which only then trigger a proper safeguarding risk assessment by a suitably qualified person. The first question at that stage would be, “What is the risk that something similar might recur?”  One then separately asks: ” Might something more serious arise?”  One would also consider whether some intervention might manage or mitigate the risk. These are importantly distinct questions, and each will require careful evaluation with the appropriate reasoning clearly set out for the conclusion either way. I offer a neutral example. 

If I close the door of a small room as I leave it, that may prove very alarming if I leave behind a person with claustrophobia. How one deals with my having done so would necessarily require ascertaining if I, or anyone else, had been told of the claustrophobic propensity. It could be a very spiteful act, or it could simply be an inadvertence. Whether I pose a generalised risk of every possibility that a fevered imagination might extrapolate from that event, might require a proper risk assessment, and here we enter the world of experts of which the Church of England has demonstrated scant knowledge experience or competence.

The legal profession has devised clear protocols for the use and management of experts and their evidence. See 

http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/family/practice_directions/pd_part_25a  These rules underwrite sound process By following these, the specialist safeguarding lawyers deal with dozens of cases every day and here in a nutshell is how it is done. Whilst the judges retain overall responsibility, they delegate much to the children’s lawyer who has carriage of these arrangements. Thus, advocates arrive at the first hearing with the names and availability of their preferred experts. All the lawyers settle into the robing room and discussions begin. Usually a consensus emerges, the fact that the judge is readily on hand to resolve disputes ensures it rarely comes to that. The wording of questions can be finessed – usually by the children’s lawyer. Care is taken over the qualification of the expert. A paediatrician might know a great deal about a child’s injury, but if the timing of a broken bone is a crucial issue, they will defer to a consultant radiologist, so a specialist will be engaged. I was one of those lawyers managing the process in a routine way.

There is no such thing as “an expert in what is going to happen in the future”. If you ask an expert for a prediction of future risk you know that you will be told “The best predictor of the future is the past,” so a full history is prepared. Making a prediction is at best an educated guess by a highly specialised expert. There are some specialist social workers with academic research to their name who might be trusted with such a task, but generally a court would expect to hear from a consultant forensic psychologist or psychiatrist.  The Church does not do this. They appoint a generic investigator they hope has some expertise, then leave it all to them. There is no discussion as in the Courts.

Drawing an instruction letter for a Court is always a joint exercise by the lawyers for two simple reasons. First, the purpose is to obtain a full and rounded opinion, with all relevant questions considered. Second, the expert is like the proverbial computer; “rubbish in – rubbish out”. If the instructions are weak, you will only end up with an application for a second opinion on which to challenge the first. As in all its cases, the Church, the Diocese, the College and the malcontents have not sought to prioritise a fair process by permitting meaningful respondent input to the choice of expert or instruction letter. The HRA “right to a fair trial” is not respected; you can speculate whether this is as a result of incompetence or something else, it matters not to the respondent. 

In 2017 the Clergy Risk Assessment Rules were debated by General Synod. It is not a lengthy debate (!!) but well worth reading by anyone trying to understand how we came to be burdened with slapdash legislation  The three Synod members with recent professional experience in these matters, I, and barristers Carl Fender and David Lamming, all urged Synod not to rush an approval of the scheme until the accompanying guidelines were produced for scrutiny.. We were not heeded.

The debate can be read here beginning at page 199. https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/General%20Synod%20-%20February%202017%20w.%20index.pdf

Carl Fender pointed out the risk that “where the person does not have legal representation to input into the instruction letter it “can easily lead to bias in the report that is received, …. the letter of instruction can often be critical in terms of the answers that you get.”  David Lamming wanted us to see the whole scheme before rushing it through. I addressed varying concerns including the right to a fair trial. Andrew Gray identified the absence of an appeal process and asked, “Why is it that an appeal is considered to be logistically problematic?” The Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, added “In my experience, I have yet to read a risk assessment that does not at best conclude that a person is a “low risk”. I can only say that makes all of us low risk, but at the end of it, someone, where there is no evidence to suggest they have done anything wrong at all, still has an assessment that says they are a low risk… I think that is fundamentally wrong and we need to be looking at this a little bit further to ensure justice is done to all parties, including the accused.”

 Ignoring these interventions, the General Synod negligently set the scene for the shabby charade which we are being served up by the NST, Christ Church College, the Diocese and Winckworth Sherwood. 

In summary, we have dreadfully conflicted lawyers instructing an “expert”, whose CV and sphere of expertise has not been shared for scrutiny. The resulting report, lacking any mechanism for quality control, is sent to those who have a well-evidenced track record of bringing false allegations against the Dean. Two of them will be “judges in their own cause”, deciding if their own case that- that  the Dean is a risk-  is justified. That would not have taken them long. These two members of the Cathedral Chapter have no qualification assistance to evaluate this assessment, but nevertheless felt able to assert that the Dean presents a “medium to high” safeguarding risk. 

Now please pause and remind yourself of two things. The “expert” on whose judgement they appear to rely is a former police inspector. She, too, has none of the qualifications that we were expecting when we passed the risk assessment regulations. No court would commission a conclusive risk assessment from her. That is bad enough, but at least Ms Wood accepts her limitations. Although she apparently purports to offer an unqualified view on the Dean as a “medium to high risk” everyone involved appears to be themselves “at risk” of overlooking her important – and fair recommendation which I have been given and reproduce here. It is a simple procedural point.

“Conclusion 11:

From the Terms of Reference S.5.i  Advise on whether a further safeguarding risk assessment should be undertaken as a result of this allegation or any other information that comes to light in the course of the investigation

This report is not an assessment of risk. In my opinion safeguarding policies should be followed in managing this allegation, and an Independent Risk Assessment should be undertaken as a result of this allegation.” [Emphasis added]

So, as the various and confusing procedures lumber on, the College and Cathedral surely now need to accept that even with all the breaches of ordinary good practice, all the ignoring of Human Rights principles, and failures to observe well established sound secular practice and natural justice, they have before them a document well short of what they hoped. The world knows they have behaved dreadfully, and now it knows that their current home-made risk assessment stands on nothing of substance. It is the product of flawed process, and inadequate expertise, highly seasoned with pre-existing prejudice and self-interest.

Their approach to justice is surreal; this is Christ Church performing “Malice in Wonderland.”  Perhaps Professor Johnson might offer her colleagues a helpful lecture on surreal jurisprudence entitled “ This is not a Pipe, This is not a Risk Assessment. This is not a fair process”  

By Janet Fife

Flo is a creature of habit. Every day of the week she visits a different friend for a cuppa and a chat. Rain, shine, frost, snow – still she turns up. Covid made no difference either. Tier, 1, Tier 3, lockdown; she kept her round of visits.  Christmas Eve she felt off colour, had a cough. But she always went to her daughter and family on Christmas Day, so what difference would a cold make? Despite the objection of her son-in-law, an ambulance driver, she spent Christmas Day with the family. Boxing Day she tested positive for Covid-19. Now she has an uncertain prognosis and her whole family are in isolation, waiting to see if they too will become ill.

I think my former colleague and adopted ‘brother’ Stephen Callis might have suspected Flo of having what he called a ‘Crystalline Personality’. Stephen was a man of many parts:  Baptist minister, chaplain to the psychiatric services, experienced  therapist, professional supervisor to medics and pastors, contemplative, eccentric, and (latterly) Anglican priest. I learned so much from him. Sadly, I can’t ask Stephen what he would have made of Flo, or indeed of the pandemic. He died two years ago on New Year’s Eve.

As far as I recall, his theory of the Crystalline Personality went something like this. Most people are more or less like trees.  They bend with the wind, and if the prevailing winds are strong enough will lean with it. They adapt their growth to the conditions:  light and shade, rain and drought. If blocked in one direction, they’ll grow in another. They may drop branches here and there; the result might not be attractive or graceful – but they endure.

Others are like crystals. Whatever the variations in conditions, they remain the same. Gales may batter them, floods rise around them, but there’s no detectable difference in them. They don’t adapt to new circumstances, or to new information. They may appear strong, since they won’t be affected or deflected. They won’t change their views in the light of new data.  They can’t compromise or see another’s point of view – to do either would threaten their very being.

Readers will recognise the Crystallines from politics, where they espouse the same views and tactics they held dear 40 or 50 years ago. They are not uncommon, of course, in churches.  There has been no development in their beliefs and preferred worship style since they were a boat boy (if they are Anglo Catholic) or their conversion (if evangelical). They will resist changing anything and be threatened by attempts to do so. Being attracted by certainty, they can especially be found at the extreme wings. They are ‘keepers of the tradition’, proud of ‘proclaiming the faith once delivered to the saints’. They will ignore evidence that methods of Bible interpretation, or the Church’s teaching on baptism, marriage, and homosexuality, have differed from age to age and from place to place.

Having a crystalline personality is not a matter of age; there are young Crystallines and aged Sylvans, or tree people.  As a child and young woman I had some crystalline aspects of my own personality. I recall the feeling of being under threat when some of my ideas, theology, and practices were challenged. I can remember the exact spot – at my desk in St. Cuthbert’s, York – where I was sitting when I suddenly realised that I became dogmatic about something shortly before changing my mind. As novelist D.E. Stevenson observed, ’Being honest with oneself is often a startling experience.’

Ever since, I’ve tried to be careful to examine my thinking and motives when I feel a fit of dogmatism coming on. I have not always succeeded, but if I were not at least making the attempt I would not have been able to work in churches of a tradition different from my own background.

Though it’s a long time ago now, I remember feeling frustrated that the Bible did not contain a simple and clear set of instructions for how we should all live, rather than a collection of stories, poetry and letters that need to be interpreted and applied. Like most conservative evangelicals, I was taught the Reformation principle that the ‘plain’ understanding of the text is the correct one; and that one Bible passage interprets another. Fortunately I was  also taught to emulate the Beroean Jews, who were ‘more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so’ (Acts 17:10-11).  The truly Crystalline personality will find it extremely difficult to copy the Beroeans, because to do so requires an open mind; and their minds are closed. A new way of thinking, or changing standards of what is acceptable, threaten their entire being and identity. It’s an uncomfortable place to be.

They can be difficult for others to work with, too – especially those of us at the forefront of advances regarding women’s ordination, attitudes to same-sex love, and ideas about gender. We find ourselves bewildered when this issue or that, which had previously been regarded as secondary to the Gospel, suddenly becomes a test of orthodoxy. But the Crystalline genuinely believes that the whole basis of The Faith is under threat. Sylvans will be wrong-footed when a change in the flower rota provokes a long-running feud, or the youth group’s wish to introduce a worship song occasions the Choir’s Last Stand. There is no sense of proportion in a crystal:  pressure at any point is a threat to the integrity of the whole.

Needless to say, times of change and uncertainty are especially trying for Crystallines. The Covid pandemic has placed them under enormous strain, as we saw in Flo’s example. The greater the pressure to adapt her routine, the stronger her insistence in carrying on just as usual. It’s rather like the dinner party scene in Carry On Up the Khyber, where the orchestra plays on and the dinner party continues, even as the building is rocked by shellfire and chunks of the ceiling crash into the Windsor soup.

I’m not diminishing the terrible hardships being experienced by those who are losing their livelihoods or their loved ones, working under intolerable conditions, or who cannot endure the isolation. These are genuine evils. But the fury of the opposition, by some, into adaptations such as wearing masks or streaming church services online does have a crystalline flavour to it.

Is there any possibility that those with a Crystalline Personality can change? Stephen Callis thought that there was. If the pressure of circumstances becomes unbearable, or the dissonance between belief and experience too harsh, the crystal may shatter. There is a crisis:  the person may become ill physically or mentally, or both. They may question everything they’ve ever believed, and their whole way of life.  In Stephen’s view a positive outcome might be a breakdown which enables the personality to be rebuilt in a more integrated way. He had observed this to happen in some cases.

We don’t know enough about St. Paul’s early life to be sure, but I suspect he may have been a Crystalline Personality. He was rigid in his adherence to the Jewish Law and in enforcing it on others. The new teaching introduced by Jesus and his followers drove him to such a fury that he became their chief persecutor. Not content with trying to eradicate Jesus’ followers from Jerusalem, he intended to drive them out of Damascus as well.

Paul’s encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road was the cataclysmic event that shattered the rigid crystal of his personality. Thereafter he was remarkable for his adaptability. Having decided what were the first priorities of the Gospel and what was his mission, he adjusted his tactics to suit the local culture in each place he visited:

‘For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.’ (1 Cor. 9:20, NRSV).

Naturally he is often misunderstood by those to whom such flexibility is anathema. What Paul advises for a particular group of people in a specific set of circumstances in a 1st century Roman colony becomes binding on all people for all time. It’s often possible, and an interesting exercise, to work out what principle Paul had in mind when making specific recommendations.  For all the controversies over some of Paul’s teaching, his formulations of the Christian faith still resonate down the ages and inspire people today. The man who was a brittle crystal became a mighty and fruitful tree.

When reading the material about the Martyn Percy case, it struck me forcibly that not only were individuals at Christ Church organising attempts to get rid of him; he was also facing institutional attack.  I have identified five groups or institutions which are, in different ways, contributing to the assaults on the Dean.  They are first, Christ Church College and the Church of England, operating through its quasi-legal structures of the Core Group and Clergy Discipline Measure.   In addition to these, we have the reputation management company working with Christ Church and the central Church.  This firm has attempted to control the narrative of the story with carefully designed briefings and press releases.  Next in line we find the legal firms which act for the Church in several of its many manifestations.  One particular powerful and wealthy firm of ecclesiastical lawyers is found in every part of this dispute and seems to be facing a number of conflicts of interest.  The Dean’s cause has not been helped by the sheer ubiquity and spread of this firm’s power.  As we will see it is hard to face up to sustained attack from lawyers propped up by access to almost unlimited quantities of cash.   Christ Church is extremely rich, even by Oxford standards, and has already, according to press estimates spent in excess of three million pounds on its campaign.  Most of this money has been spent on legal fees and expenses. Finally, we find another shadowy institution in the form of the dining club known as Nobody’s Friends.   Several of the senior church lawyers and churchmen who are working against Martyn are long-term members of this Lambeth dining club.  It has become increasingly clear over the last few years how much institutional and patronage power this club possesses.  It certainly helped Peter Ball escape justice for two decades.

The most important, and certainly most powerful and wealthy of these institutions, are the Church’s legal agents.    One firm at the heart of the Percy case, acts in legal matters for no less than nine CofE dioceses, including the Diocese of Oxford. It also works for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and for the Anglican Consultative Council.  That is, by any standards, a hugely enriching portfolio of interests for one law firm to hold.  Key to this influence is the firm acting for the Archbishop of Canterbury.  The firm thus has power in General Synod affairs and most of the core activities of the Archbishops’ Council, including the NST.  This power of this one firm over church affairs is such that, if it were a private company operating in the commercial sphere, there would likely be challenges to it, on the grounds that it has a controlling monopoly.  Certainly, this firm wields more power in the Church of England than any other single institution.   Those who have access to the centre of this firm, through friendships or professional relationships with its members, are also able to exercise considerable power and influence in the Church of England. 

As it was put to me recently, this legal firm is ‘constantly in the background or in the driving seat of all CDMs and the NST processes in the Southern Province.’  A high proportion of the limited cohort of lawyers who specialise in church affairs, work for this one firm. They will usually be involved, directly or indirectly, with every legal case that involves the Church.  It was pointed out to me recently that it seems impossible to get a C of E Core-Group without someone with links to this premier law firm being present, and, quite likely, controlling things. In the Dean Percy case, we discover this single firm providing legal advice to both the complainants, Christ Church and the Church of England acting through the NST.  It is hardly a scenario that suggests impartial justice and transparency.  This is what most look to find in the Church of England.  What an outside observer in fact sees in the Percy case, is a somewhat grubby collusion between two institutions, each with their own agendas.  A faction of dons at Christ Church clearly has the aim of removing the Dean with the lawyers there to help it achieve its objective.  In their first attempt to rid themselves of the Dean, the process was checked by the findings of the retired Judge and independent adjudicator, Andrew Smith.  Later, in their second attempt, the NST, also working with the identical law firm to Christ Church, launched its second assault against Dean Percy, using the Core Group process.   Later it became clear that the Christ Church faction was controlling or ‘playing’ the Church’s own legal tools for its own purposes.  The Church initially failed to spot the trick that was being played.  The law firm was, meanwhile, aiding and helping to facilitate all these processes and there was no obvious reference either to fairness or natural justice.  Both parties, the College faction and the NST, were pursuing their own purposes, while being apparently aided and abetted by this law firm.  The partners of the firm, in their charging rates, were drawing into their coffers considerable sums of charitable wealth from both Church and College.

The setting up of a weaponised Core Group against the Dean earlier this year (the second persecution) can be interpreted as an act of harassment and aggression against Dean Percy.  But, whoever in the firm was advising the College at the time, does not seem to have spotted the obvious conflict of interest in the make-up of the Group.  It should have been clear even to a non-lawyer that allowing two complainants to join as members of the Core Group was contrary to natural justice.  This deployment of this Core Group against Dean Percy eventually collapsed in September 2020, but not before a great deal of money had been spent by the College and the central Church authorities.   Simultaneously large sums of money were handed over by Christ Church to their reputation management company.

Meanwhile, fortunately, someone in authority in the C of E eventually saw that this weaponised Core-Group process was an unjust and inequitable action and the case against Martyn was dismissed in September.   Some of the Core Group members were, as we noted, sacked along the way.  As complainants they could not possibly provide an independent perspective in the current confrontation with the Dean. 

Another institution which needs to be mentioned once again is the elite Dining Club that meets on three occasions a year at Lambeth Palace, Nobody’s Friends.  Although there is a certain amount of reticence surrounding its activities, the identity of the majority of the members is known to those who take an interest in the Club.  The friendships and networks formed there seem likely to act as a kind of social glue, similar to the ‘old school tie’.   Several of the people involved in the Dean’s persecution are members, including senior church lawyers and some of the senior ranks of the Church.  Membership of this elite group seems to assist its members in maintaining their privileged positions in society and retain influence in the Church and elsewhere.  It was friendship with a NF member that helped to keep Peter Ball out of prison for twenty years (attested at the IICSA hearings).  It has also apparently allowed Jonathan Fletcher (a senior member) to avoid any scrutiny by the national safeguarding officers of the Church. 

The NST, as we know, is a key- player in the Percy affair.  With the departure of Melissa Caslake who seems to have provided some firm independent leadership, the premier law firm’s activity within the NST will, no doubt come to more to the fore.  A compromised NST (in its increased reliance on church lawyers) will not make things easy for the Dean as he faces the brand new CDM launched in November   As the law firm is already contracted to Christ Church, it will have a hand in attacking Dean Percy from two directions. 

The lawyers have also attacked the Dean by leaking stories to the press and briefing reporters on behalf of their clients.  In these activities they are subtly undermining and even destroying the fabric of the national church. Will justice and honour ever be served in this process?  Because of his sometimes outspoken theological views, Dean Percy has made enemies with certain factions within the Church of England.  But, how can justice ever be served when he is being hemmed in by the legal arms of both institutions, no doubt working together?  

Finally, we come to the current CDM.  This is where we started: current affairs.  The CDM was filed against the Dean in early November by Graham Ward and processed by the Bishop of Oxford the very same day.  Thereafter, it took a mere nine days, for the reports and the summons to come back to the Dean, requesting him to respond.  This period of time included two weekends.  The extraordinary speed of the process in this case is a cause for concern, as the average time for processing a CDM is estimated to be around sixty days – or something else was going on? Either way, nine Diocesan Synods, and surely General Synod, really ought to be asking some searching and pertinent questions about legal processes in the Church.  And about the conflicts of interest and power games that exist in these current affairs.

The Martyn Percy affair, however it ends up, will be dissected and argued over for years to come.  There are no winners in the case.   A College has been prepared to risk its institutional reputation and that of some of its senior members in a matter that surely could have been sorted in some other way.  On the other side we have an individual who has had to stand up to legal and institutional bullying of the most serious kind.  It has left him shattered and broken.   This blog post has touched on the bare outlines of the saga, one which has created appalling destruction, not only to the Dean and his College.  It has caused damage to the long-term reputation of the Bishop and Diocese of Oxford, who have mostly opted to be silent.  The ripples of the affair have reached further to undermine confidence in the leadership of the Church at the very highest level. 

It has proved difficult to understand all the goings on at Christ Church Oxford and the trials of its Dean, Martyn Percy.   I hesitate to write more on the topic, but the subject clearly falls within the scope of this blog.  Abuse of power within a Church context is what Surviving Church is concerned about, so we need to examine some of the new information that is emerging from Christ Church and attempt to master some of the detail.   One of the features of the affair is that, as with the case of the Midlands parish I wrote about earlier last month, we need, for proper understanding, to look beyond the people at the centre.  The question of whether the Dean did or did not do a particular action is not the focus of this article.  What is important is the way that people within large institutions have reacted and behaved, both individually and corporately.  We need also to debate and decide whether these responses are reasonable and proportionate. 

After reading a lot of material on the subject (including the report of Andrew Smith’s tribunal) I realise that I cannot present the material within the normal length of one blog post.  I have therefore decided to divide the material I have into two halves.  The first half will be addressing the activities of two of the individuals in the narrative.  In each case there are queries as to whether they have maintained necessary standards of ethical and just behaviour. Recent happenings concerning the Dean at Christ Church can only be understood in the context of the attempt by a small group of dons to remove him.  The Dean has been vindicated on two separate occasions.  Charges against him have been examined and after a lengthy Tribunal under a senior High Court judge, the Dean was fully exonerated.  Some of the evidence provided by witnesses before the Tribunal was been shown to be false or misleading.  In spite of these two public vindication of the Dean,(including the Core Group case in September last group) this small group of dons have continued in their efforts to oust him.. The recent third attack began only in October 2020.

I have taken the view that the huge activity and expenditure by Christ Church and the Church of England have gone way beyond a reasonable level.  One thing is clear.  A College has allowed itself to engage in the deliberate (project-managed) persecution of its head.  The use of this word persecution is deliberate.  How else can one describe three separate attempts to remove the head of an Oxford College by a group of disaffected senior members?  The College deserves a break from the destructive publicity and eye-watering expenditure that has taken place for over two years. 

A detailed reading of the Smith Tribunal report is not a light task.  The disputes of 2017/2018 centred mainly on the question of pay and how remuneration should be calculated.  One striking part of the report is the sheer number of accusations brought against the Dean.  One by one Judge Smith rejected each of them suggesting the Prosecutor’s interpretation of the Dean’s actions or decisions did not carry the suggested implications of bad faith or malfeasance.  The Bishop of Oxford was also brought into the affair when he was briefed by one of the accusers who suggested that the Dean was involved in manipulating the College Salaries Board.  The sheer energy expended by these senior members of the College in bringing all these charges as a way of removing the Dean suggest a degree of organised and determined malevolence.

Prof. Graham Ward was a complainant for the first attack on the Dean.   After these complaints were all thrown out by the Smith Tribunal, Professor Ward went on to have himself appointed to the Core Group set up by the NST in March 2020 to examine some alleged safeguarding concerns relating to the Dean.  When it became obvious that his presence on the Core Group was totally inappropriate, he and another of the complainants (the Senior Censor, Prof. Geraldine Johnson) were removed from the Group.  For most people, this failure to notice that Ward’s presence on the Core Group was a clear impediment to the quest for truth and justice, would have resulted in deep embarrassment, even shame.

And now, Ward is taking a prominent role in the latest attempt to oust the Dean.  He is named as the complainant on the CDM taken out as part of the current enquiry.  This is the latest round of the Great Persecution, as we can call it.  Two efforts to remove the Dean sponsored by Ward have so far failed. We might have expected that he might retreat back into the shadows, out of public view.  No, the public and personal animosity towards Martyn Percy appears deep.  It goes to the point where Ward is prepared to risk his personal and professional reputation. 

Ward seems to be pursuing a vendetta.  Could it by any chance have anything to do with the fact that he was also on the short list for the job of Dean back in 2014?  Is the display of vindictiveness a mark of professional jealousy? Whatever the actual reality, the appearance in this case is what counts.  Ward’s behaviour over the Percy affair has the appearance of being neither honourable nor in pursuit of justice.

We need to return to the situation that pertains to Christ Church now.  Back in October of this year, an investigation was commissioned by the College against the Dean to ‘establish the facts and circumstances of an alleged sexual act against an adult woman.  The allegation was presented to the police as a potential ‘sexual assault’, and to the NST and the Charity Commission as ‘safeguarding’.

In a process that has not been explained, Kate Wood, a safeguarding professional, was appointed to undertake the enquiry. Obviously one would expect any such investigation to be completely objective and even-handed to search out the truth. Several queries about the investigation have arisen to make us ponder if this exercise reached the necessary standard of objectivity and comprehensiveness that is required. It should be obvious that such an investigation needs to be thorough and impartial,   It should also be free from conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest.

One extraordinary fact about the appointment is that the College has apparently successfully recruited a professional safeguarding expert who asserts she knew nothing prior about Martyn Percy and the political events at Christ Church since 2018.  Given the amount of coverage afforded to the Percy case over three years, this appointment is a major achievement. One might have expected an investigator to do some homework before agreeing to the assignment. A casual search on Google would have identified previous spats, including some major concerns about safeguarding.  In the earlier version of this blog  I expressed the fact that my ‘credulity was stretched’ over this assertion, but we have to take Wood’s claim at face value.

  Another claim that concerned me (and that worry was also articulated in the first draft), was the assertion that Ms Wood had never met before or during her investigations either Professor Ward or Professor Foot (another key player in the Smith Tribunal proceedings).  Documents for the Wood investigation specifically mention Prof Foot as someone to be interviewed, as she had contact with the alleged ‘victim’.  Professor Foot is the Chapter Treasurer so presumably must have agreed Ms Wood’s fee with her?  Professor Ward himself claims to have been, with the Sub-Dean, the commissioner for Ms Wood’s report.  Prof Ward is also the Cathedral Safeguarding Lead, so it would be a curious omission for Ms Wood to claim that she had never heard of or spoken to Ward. 

Also of concern – and here I am only considering potential conflicts of interest- is Wood’s work on the very recent Whitsey inquiry together with Elizabeth Pollard (aka Polly) of the NST.  Wood and Polly are colleagues, and Polly is a friend of the Senior Censor at Christ Church.  It is possible that the two women have no knowledge of each other, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that there might have been some overlap. 

In responding to my queries about Ms Wood’s objectivity and independence, she wrote to me as follows.

  Prior to being commissioned for the investigation, I had never heard of MP, (Martyn Percy) I had no knowledge of previous allegations, and no knowledge of his commentary on other national cases. I ‘met’ him for the first time when I interviewed him on Zoom regarding this case.

I have never met Sarah Foot and did not interview her. 

I was not commissioned by Graham Ward. I have never met him apart from him being at the Zoom meeting where I presented facts from my investigation.

I do not have any direct professional relationship with Elizabeth Pollard. Our paths have crossed on a couple of occasions. I believe she came to the NST many years after I had left Lambeth Palace   

Graham Ward and the Sub-Dean signed off on risk assessments regarding the Dean, and these are counter-signed by Wood.  They identify the Dean as being a ‘high’ or a ‘medium’ safeguarding risk in potentially perpetrating further ‘sexual harassment or sexual assaults, on staff, students or minors.  It would be odd if Wood had not discussed these documents with those members of Chapter.

The old adage that he ‘who pays the piper, calls the tune’ is of importance in this Christ Church narrative.  No one is suggesting that because Kate Wood is being paid by Christ Church, she is incapable of doing an independent inquiry.  It would, however, have been preferable if Christ Church had chosen an individual unknown to anyone in and around the C of E or the College.  But any slight previous association with any of the institutions involved (or the appearance of one (following Nolan principles) will have the effect of possibly tipping the balance away from a just and equitable process for the Dean.  Total Impartiality must be seen to operate in such an enquiry, if it is to be truly just. 

So far, we have raised queries about three key individuals (Ward, Foot and Wood) in the Percy affair where there may be grounds for suggesting that further scrutiny needs to be given to the question of their impartiality.  We could go on to raise questions about the role of the Bishop of Oxford in this affair.  It has been suggested that he has not shown the expected support for his Dean or even the impartiality that is needed in such circumstances.

  Overall, the treatment of Martyn Percy by Church and College has left the observer feeling considerable disquiet about the whole process.  The question as to whether Kate Wood has retained professional impartiality has been aired.  However we read the evidence, something, for this commentator, does not add up.  If there has been bias or any suppression of information as a route to debarring someone from ministry, that is an extremely serious matter.  Having now read the Wood report I cannot say that I am any more confident that the whole truth has been revealed and that justice for the Dean will be found through the present process.

The post relating to Christ Church Oxford has been temporarily taken down. I have received various comments including some Kate Wood.

I am carefully checking the piece in the light of these comments and will publish a revised version in due course.

In March 2017 at a retreat centre near Rye in Sussex, an invitation-only conference took place at which thirty six individuals were present.  They were linked to one another through the fact all were men, all ordained and each had some connection with Jonathan Fletcher, the retired Vicar of Emmanuel Wimbledon. Invitations had been sent out in May 2016 for this gathering, and those invited appeared to be the personal selection of Fletcher.  The conference had happened before but there are no details available of where it had been or who had attended.   For this 2017 gathering, sixty were invited and of those, 60% accepted and were present at the Oast Houses Retreat Centre in March.  From an examination of the first list of invitees, we discover that we have an almost complete Who’s Who of the REFORM/ReNew network in England.   In short, there is, from looking at the thirty six names that did attend in March, a fair representation of the entire UK con-evo network.  Jonathan Fletcher was clearly the one in charge of all the proceedings at the conference.

In writing this post, I would ask the reader to be aware of the significance of the date March 2017.  Two things had happened earlier that year, both of which were to impact significantly on the con-evo world of REFORM/ReNew.   At the beginning of 2017, the authorities of the Diocese of Southwark withdrew permission to officiate (PTO) from Jonathan Fletcher.  He was at that point still a powerful figure right across the Anglican evangelical world.  I can be excused in this post for not setting out again the reasons for this ban.  They have already been shared in the public domain. But the fact of an inhibition on Fletcher’s ministry was important because of his powerful and influential hold over so many clergy and institutions at the time.  He had for decades enjoyed real power. This he possessed through patronage, wealth, social charisma and a huge range of contacts.  In particular, there was an entire generation of evangelical clergy, now in their 50s, who looked to him as their mentor.  When the sudden fall came, it would have dismayed some of those close to him.  But the effect on his ongoing ministry seems, in practice, to have been minimal.  Many clergy and congregations seem not to have been told what had happened.  If they did know, many simply ignored the fact that Fletcher was now non-grata with the wider church.  Invitations continued to flow in and Fletcher, now officially retired, was able apparently to enjoy continuing to minister as he wished. He gave talks in 2017 at a Retreat run by St Andrews the Great Cambridge and a series of talks at St Michael Chester Sq.  His public ministry was finally only brought to a halt when he was ‘outed’ by stories in the Daily Telegraph in June and December 2019.

The second important event of February 2017 was the Channel 4 programme about John Smyth.  This event must have been a talking point among the attendees of the gathering as many present were the generation to have known him from attendance at the Iwerne camps as schoolboys or students.  The impact of the exposure of Smyth was undoubtedly significant on the conference.  Did those present argue for disclosure of what they knew or a cover-up?  I think we can take a guess.

This conference held in March 2017 had no overriding theme.  It was described as a meeting of ‘Jonathan Fletcher’s Group’.  These were the individuals, in other words, who had chosen to be present in order to interact with Fletcher.  With the help of Crockford online, which lists the training and careers of all the UK Anglican clergy, I was able to examine the profiles of all those present.  This allowed me to work out how 36 careers had, at some point, interacted with the powerful figure of Fletcher.  For over half the attendees, he was the one they looked up to at Iwerne camps; for others he was the one who had fostered a vocation into Christian ministry.  Every one of them in some way had a significant attachment to Fletcher which made them keen to be at this conference.  The age profile of those present was similar, and all had embarked on the path towards ordination at some point in the 70s and 80s.  Each had attended one of the main residential evangelical theological colleges in England.  Especially popular were Wycliffe Hall in Oxford and Ridley Hall in Cambridge.  What I appeared to be witnessing in this conference was a gathering of some of those who had fallen under Fletcher’s spell.  They were coming together to pay their homage to their mentor and patron.  Their ministries were in part inspired by the influence of Fletcher’s personal charisma.  There was, of course, a further loyalty, one to the theology, traditions and tribalism of the REFORM/Church Society networks. This they shared with their mentor.

Does the fact that there was this apparent private gathering of Anglican clergy to meet their highly respected, even if officially discredited, guru, really matter?   After all, these clergy might claim that they did not know anything about the Southwark ban.  That argument might work for many of those present, but for the fact that, in the room, there were three serving bishops.  One was Julian Henderson, the Bishop of Blackburn (coincidentally nominated by Fletcher for membership of Nobody’s Friends in 2016).  His recent comments on the CEEC video have been the cause of controversy.  The others were the Bishop of Plymouth, Nick McKinnel and the flying Bishop of Maidstone, Rod Thomas.  Another clergyman, Andy Lines, soon to be consecrated bishop by the American ACNA network, attended.  Of the rest there were some well-known names from the evangelical world.  The age-range of those attending was, as we have indicated, relatively narrow.  We may suggest that the loyalties reflected in the group date from the time when Fletcher had his maximum influence in the Church -the mid-70s up to the end of the 80s.  His hold over the evangelical world has still been strong since the 90s, but a new generation of leaders has begun to replace him.

A day visitor to the 2017 conference was the legendary Dick Lucas.  He had presided as Vicar over St Helen’s Bishopsgate for a generation.  Now in his 90s, Dick’s presence there helped, no doubt, to give the conference a sense of continuity with the past and possibly helping to bolster Fletcher’s own, now declining, influence in the REFORM world. 

As I mentioned in the previous piece in connection with Bishop Rod, there was something jarring and probably highly irregular about the direct consultations between a serving Bishop and a discredited clergyman.  Now that I discover that there was this further meeting attended by two other serving bishops, I am still more alarmed.  What should happen when a PTO is withdrawn for safeguarding reasons?  Although one would not expect a notice in the London Gazette to announce such a change of status, the whole point of taking away a PTO is to make the church safer. Are we to believe that bishops are ever kept in the dark over these matters?  If none of them knew, then the safeguarding system is dysfunctional to the point of being useless.  If they did know, that suggests a gung-ho attitude to safeguarding which makes each of the three a safeguarding risk.  Clergy and bishops have been suspended from duty for such failures.  Was their loyalty and desire to pay ‘homage’ to Fletcher greater than their desire to keep the church safe and protect the vulnerable?  I am not going to describe the activities attributed to Fletcher, but, suffice to say, he was and is considered to be a serious safeguarding risk.  We can allow, in the absence of other evidence, the ignorance of ordinary parish priests towards Fletcher’s behaviour.  But something is going very wrong if serving bishops are kept out of the loop (or deliberately exclude themselves) in such a serious affair. 

The very fact of a conference in 2017 presided over by Jonathan Fletcher in the presence of three serving C of E bishops makes a nonsense of the safeguarding protocols of the Church of England.  Bishop Rod Thomas, who was officially overseeing Fletcher, seems to have had no authority in the situation.  From what we can surmise he was behaving like a member of a Fletcher cult.  I use that word carefully, but it is the only word that allows me to describe the way that Fletcher kept people like +Rod in thrall to him over several decades.  From his days in Cambridge in the mid-70s to his thirty-year tenure at Emmanuel Wimbledon, Fletcher’s influence has been very strong in the Church.  With the investigation to be published by thirtyone:eight next year, we hope to understand more of the healthiness or otherwise of that ministry.  In the meantime, this blog will be questioning why the Church has seemed unable (unwilling?) to maintain any authority over a maverick and possibly dangerous ministry. 

A week or two back I wrote about the Dean of Christ Church, Martyn Percy, having to face concerted attacks from various directions.  In his case it was a cabal of dons seeking to remove him. They sought first to avail themselves of the statutes of the college to achieve their aims. When this did not work, the same group found that could attack their Dean by using the core group process administered by the C of E’s National Safeguarding Team.   Both of these attacks have failed, but there has followed yet another safeguarding allegation.  This is to be investigated by an independent safeguarding consultant.  As the college is apparently paying for this investigation, it is difficult to know whether independence can be completely preserved.  When it comes to deciding on the cause of justice, it is hard to see that an individual will ever find it easy to win, when a determined well-funded institutional opponent has decided to attack you.

In another part of the country a different but comparable confrontation between institutions and individuals is being played out.  A year ago, we carried an account written by a clergy wife, Kate, whose husband was being pressured to give up his job as a Vicar in a midlands diocese.   The original issue which according to the local Archdeacon ‘lacked specificity’ was raised formally to the level of a complaint under the Clergy Discipline Measure in November of 2017.  Whatever the precise complaints were, the CDM that addressed the parishioners’ complaints was investigated and dismissed in May 2018.

Kate and Mike’s story tells us something about the way that a relatively minor issue, which could probably have been resolved through the use of professional mediation, was allowed to escalate to involve numbers of people.  It also illustrates, as does the Percy case, serious dysfunctions of process and power that can take place within the church.  The ‘non-specific’ grumbling, starting in March 2017, took on a life of its own and escalated in several directions.   First the Vicar found the stress of the grumbling, which quickly turned into bullying, difficult to manage.  It reached the point where he had to take leave from parish duties.  In the second place the authorities in the local diocese and the patrons of the living became involved in overlapping ways.  This helped to keep the episode alive so that it continues to be a situation without any obvious resolution in sight.  The main players in the oversight of the parish, apart from the local diocese, are the patrons, the trustees of the Church Society (CS).  This group is responsible for the patronage of a cluster of parishes up and down the country who support the conservative evangelical branch of the Church.  These parishes are likely to hold a traditional conservative view of Scripture and take a hard-line view on the issues around human sexuality.  Many of these parishes also refuse the ministry of women as clergy.  Now that some dioceses have a female bishop, a conservative parish would look to Rod Thomas, the ‘flying’ bishop who oversees and supports parishes with a tradition of male-only headship.

Having two distinct, possibly competing, centres of oversight for this parish has made a solution to the problem far more complicated.  When it was clear that there was something to be addressed in the parish, the Archdeacon arranged in March 2017 to meet complainants and the Vicar. A meeting with PCC was later arranged for May when the Vicar’s family were away. It would appear that, quite early on in this process, the Archdeacon had decided to support the perspective of the complainants against the Vicar. One would have hoped that a degree of professional neutrality might have been observed, and that situations of this kind would seek the services of a professional mediator. What happened next was another second meeting of the PCC, timed to take place when Mike was away, and of which he was not informed. For this second meeting +Rod was invited to be present.   At this second meeting the partiality of the Archdeacon slipped and he began to hint how the PCC might ‘persuade’ the Vicar to move on.  This overt siding with the disgruntled group of parishioners which had obtained a strong voice on the PCC was maintained simultaneously with an attitude of friendly support to Mike and Kate.

Kate’s account of the events of 2017-2018 have been informed through her obtaining copies of emails and other forms of communication that were exchanged between +Rod, the Diocese and various senior members of the CS.  These members of the conservative evangelical establishment had an interest in the affair, having a stake through the power of the CS patronage.  These emails etc were provided after she made a subject access request in recent months.

From the point of view of process, we see another topsy-turvy situation developing.  In the first place, in noting how the Archdeacon behaved, we suspect that he wanted to take charge and possibly reclaim from the CS an influence over the parish on behalf of the diocese.  By inviting +Rod and keeping him in the communication loop, he was giving him a sense of importance. +Rod’s influence in this parish, in spite of his power of oversight, does not seem to have been very strong. He does not have the authority of a typical diocesan bishop and In many ways is more circumscribed than a parish priest.  Everything done in a parish under his oversight, has to pass through the local diocesan bishop first.  That is where the final power lies. In the second place, and this becomes clear in Kate’s examination of the requested emails etc, +Rod seemed very anxious to know the opinions and advice of senior churchmen in the CS constituency.  The tone of these emails, some of which I have seen, suggests that +Rod felt in no way a free agent to make decisions about what could happen in Mike’s congregation.  Thus the Archdeacon was effectively inviting, not one individual into the discussion, but the entire CS leadership cohort.  +Rod was in practice merely a spokesman for that group. Their advice would naturally be focusing, not specially on Mike and Kate’s welfare, but on maintaining their patronage power in this particular outpost of the CS empire.    

A further twist comes into this story.  +Rod is, as is widely known, an alumnus of Emmanuel Wimbledon, and received his call to priesthood while still a member of that congregation.  This brings him under the ongoing influence of his former mentor and Vicar, Jonathan Fletcher. The released correspondence makes it clear that Fletcher was party to the consultation process.  He also knew Mike and Kate personally through the Iwerne camps network.  By the time the emails and communications between +Rod, Jonathan Fletcher and other CS officials were flying around in mid 2017, Fletcher was already non-grata in the Church of England, having lost his PTO in February 2017.  William Taylor, the unofficial leader of the whole CS/REFORM/ReNew network claims only to have known about this in the early part of 2019.  We have to take this claim as factual, though it does stretch credulity.  But it is not credible that +Rod had not heard about the investigation of his mentor Fletcher and the removal of his PTO by the Southwark diocese at the time when it happened.  It means in effect that a bishop of the Church of England was seeking advice from a discredited clergyman as well as a parachurch organisation operating on the boundaries of the Church.  +Rod was, by the tone of the emails, at every point anxious to keep in favour with William Taylor and these other leaders in the closed world of the conservative network of the Church of England. 

Mike the Vicar and his wife Kate have had to face the juggernaut of two separate institutions trying to undermine them and remove them from their calling, their home and their livelihood.  To remind the reader, the original complaint by a parishioner against Mike through a CDM, whatever its precise nature, was eventually dismissed.  What we have left is a cluster of confused power dynamics.  This was brought about, first by an Archdeacon who was less than thorough in dealing with a pastoral rift between a Vicar and some of his flock.  Further, we catch a glimpse of some of the internal power politics of the conservative faction within the Church of England.  +Rod, who, as bishop. is nominally in charge, finds himself permanently beholden to two strongly inhibiting centres of power.   First, he has to work with the diocesan structures of the Church of England which limit severely what he can do.  He also is required to conform to the highly centralised and controlling power of the leaders of the conservative wing of the Church.  Lacking any real power, one is tempted to ask what a ‘flying’ bishop can ever hope to achieve?

 This sad episode affecting Mike and Kate and their family raises the corner of a curtain.  We see behind it displays of power struggles in the Church, and especially as they touch the world of conservative evangelicals in the Church of England.  The ongoing story of Mike and Kate is, in the end, a footnote to a much larger narrative.  But, by following their story, we are given hints at understanding this wider picture. Perhaps those of us who are not part of the conservative wing of the Church, need to wake up to understand what is really going on. We all need to have a clearer understanding of the nature of the struggle for power and influence in the Church of England which goes on behind closed doors.