(Apologies to Alan Bennett)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trying to make sense of what is going on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The present outbreak of covid-19 has been an unremitting tragedy for many families across the world.  But there has been, indirectly, one tiny glimmer of new light for an existing group of sick patients -those suffering with chronic fatigue syndrome or ME.  What has happened is that a significant number of those recovering from the covid virus have fallen prey to symptoms identical to ME sufferers.  This emergence of ME symptoms among this highly studied group of ex-covid patients has helped finally to extinguish the old notion that ME is a psychological complaint, amenable to cognitive therapy.   It is beyond doubt a physical post-viral condition.  It needs, and is now receiving, the attention of serious researchers every bit as much as for any other physical illness.  ME sufferers can no longer be treated as malingerers.  This was sometimes their cruel fate until recently.   The psychological treatments formerly on offer for ME must have felt wildly inappropriate to patients lying exhausted in bed sometimes in extreme pain and with debilitating muscle weakness.

Covid-19 has had this indirect effect of finally establishing beyond doubt that ME is a genuine physical illness and not something conjured up by the mind.  Something similar has also happened in the legal world.  Until recently, violence against women (sometimes men) in the home was recognised to exist and offenders were sent to prison because of it.  But to prove the offence, the violence had to be physical.  There was no understanding in law of other forms of psychological violence behind closed doors.  Bullying, gaslighting, harassment, financial control and humiliation did not constitute offences that could be challenged and punished with the weight of the law.  In short, nothing could be done unless there were broken bones or black eyes.  Once again it was a case of ‘if we can’t see it or define it, it does not exist’.  Finally, in 2015 there was introduced into the law of the land the notion of ‘coercion and control’ to describe cases of psychological violence against a partner in the home.  Suddenly police and lawyers were permitted to punish a behaviour that had always been there, but not hitherto properly named or recognised. 

 For the Church there is a similar reticence over the concept of ‘spiritual abuse’.  Definitions of this idea are being offered by a variety of writers and researchers, but the Church is still reluctant to commit itself to outlawing any of the range of behaviours that would come into this broad category of description.  Physical violence in the church is rare.  The case against John Smyth in England and Zimbabwe was exceptional and extraordinary.  It goes without saying that his behaviour and that of sexual abusers is clearly against the law of the land and will meet the sanctions of imprisonment when proven.  Spiritual abuse is, however, difficult to define.   Also, some Christians find the expression offensive since it might suggest that certain practices extracted from Scripture could be harmful.  But before we get into the question of objections to the idea, we need to look at some up-to-date Church documents where the reticence for the term is revealed.

A recent attempt by the Church of England to describe the range of abuses which it wants to outlaw, is found in a document published in June 2019.  This is the one that provides the guidelines for the Past Cases Review (PCR2) process at present under way.  PCR2 is a massively expensive process which hopes to uncover, by examining all church records, a full picture of the abuses which took place in the past but were never dealt with.  In the Protocol and Practice guidance, the document states These behaviours may include physical, sexual or emotional abuse, neglect, discrimination, theft, fraud and financial exploitation. There is no separate mention of spiritual abuse.  This would lead one to conclude that Church of England is not yet ready to commit itself to any definition of such an idea.  It is thus all too easy for the Church to proceed on the basis that if we have not identified it or named it, then perhaps it does not exist.

It hardly needs saying that if spiritual abuse as a category is left out of the PCR process, one massive area of pain and suffering among victims is going to be ignored.  The scrutineers trawling through hundreds of documents in diocesan and central offices are effectively going to be closing their eyes to a dimension of suffering that, for many, is more significant than the physical or the sexual. 

What is this spiritual abuse which survivors speak about?  There is one recent book by Lisa Oakley and Justin Humphreys which sets out the case for this category of abuse being a reality.  They see it as a genuine and acute cause of suffering even if some involved in professional safeguarding, together with many church leaders, would prefer to proceed as though there were no such thing.   What is this spiritual abuse which the Church of England authorities are reluctant to accept?   Oakley and Humphreys realise that there are problems that make it difficult to offer a watertight definition.  The broad description speaks of an abuse event where manipulation, coercion or control take place within a church/spiritual setting.  In the book by Alan Wilson and Rosie Harper, there is one memorable turn of phrase which captures the way that human and spiritual facets are sometimes combined.  The authors speak of an abusive episode ‘outsourced to God’.  An individual is maybe forced to endure a punishment like enduring ostracism from an entire congregation.  Perhaps a Christian is forced to do something against their will.  Those in charge manage to dress up the unpleasant experience as being an obligation due to God or to the words of Scripture.  What are in fact taking place are, in reality, human power games which have become cloaked with the supposed authority of the divine.  These obtain their capacity to wound and harm individuals precisely because they appeal to deep seated spiritual beliefs and loyalties held by the victim.

A failure to have any secure or even working definition of this area of harm we call spiritual abuse, weakens the PCR process.  The Church has access to a great deal of expertise in this area and this surely is sufficient to produce an interim definition suitable for the ongoing process.  It is perhaps fear of theological conflict with those on the powerful conservative fringes of the Church that has created this reticence.  Many have become accustomed to exercising ‘spiritual authority’ in ways that easily slide over into abusive practice.  These practices would include the physical (biblically ordained!) chastisement of children, dramatic and terrifying exorcisms and so-called conversion therapies practised on members of the gay community.   The wide-spread use of fear techniques in ‘biblical’ preaching to encourage conversion and financial giving is also ethically questionable.   When a Christian meets such ‘coercion and control’ techniques within a church setting, they should question whether they are encountering spiritual abuse rather than the Christian good news.  The use of fear-laden language within church life can quite often be an exercise in bullying abusive power under the guise of bible teaching. 

In a letter to a survivor, which I have been shown, a senior safeguarding official promised that a definition of spiritual abuse was under active consideration at the national level.   Can I suggest that as long as there is no working statement about spiritual abuse and a determination to stamp it out, it  will leave the PCR process half-done.  It will also allow the Church of England to keep their eyes averted from the huge range of suffering individuals who have met spiritual abuse in one of its varied expressions.  A failure to identify an evil when it comes before you is a serious matter.  The medical profession was blind to the pain of ME for decades; the legal profession/courts for a long time refused to acknowledge women emotionally battered by their partners who used the tools of psychological torture.  Is the Church going to join in this tradition of wilful blindness by refusing to see the incidence and severity of what we are describing as spiritual abuse? 

Establishment is one of those words that we often use loosely without necessarily thinking much about what it exactly means.  It is a word that occurs in many different contexts of society.  It may be a word describing something about politics, the business world, the legal profession or the Church.  Some of the time the speaker will use the word with a tone of disapproval.  It is normally possible to gauge what the user thinks of the concept by the way the word is spoken.  A lighter tone can suggest approval or, at any rate, acquiescence in all that the word involves.  In a political context establishment values make us think of people whose thinking is on the right in the political spectrum.  In most contexts the word is used to denote a group who stand for precedent and they will value the task of preserving tradition and order.  The analogy of left and right is offered as a useful shorthand for what we are trying to describe in interpreting establishment.   Leftish thinking, in whatever context, will seek to challenge establishment ideas.  From that perspective, establishment values will be thought to be those blocking the way to change and movement within an institution.  Centrist-thinking people (like me!) will see both sides of the argument.  There are times when challenge is needed but other occasions when we should value the order and stability of the past which establishment values represent and preserve.

Notions of left and right, in describing the way institutions operate, are only very rough approximations of the dynamics of organised groups.   But anything that enables us to navigate a path of understanding as to the way an institution like the Church works may be helpful.  Establishment conservatives in the Church will have, in common with other members of institutions, this reverence and respect for tradition and the status-quo.  While it is true that there are many individual members of the Church who fall into this category of wanting at all costs to protect and preserve its values and traditions, there is also a sense in which the institution itself preserves these values.  It is no exaggeration to suggest that any organisation will behave like a living being with a built-in instinct for its self-preservation.   Also as a general rule, we find that the greater responsibility an individual has accepted within an organisation, the more establishment in thinking they become.  They have invested their identities within the institution so that this identity is likely to reflect the values of the whole.  As prominent servants of the Church, bishops and other leaders become, with few exceptions, the guardians of its establishment values and traditions.

To continue our analogy of left and right, we see how the left wing in the Church constitute those who challenge the status-quo whether for practical or theological reasons.  We have no space here to examine those who challenge the Church with radical theological ideas or those who raise the topic of welcoming minorities into the worshipping life of the Church.  Our concern here is the way that the body we call survivors challenges establishment values within the institution.  The nature of the challenge has various elements.  Survivors have some important points to make against those who occupy positions of power or leadership.  The accusations against powerful individuals in the structure disturbs the smooth narrative, or should we call it mythology, which says that only individuals of the highest moral calibre become bishops and priests.  If even a few individual bishops and priests fail in this way, the ‘left-wing’ challengers, here represented by the survivors, want to ask uncomfortable questions of the institution.   Is there something about the culture of the Church that encourages the dysfunctional behaviour among some of it servants?  Why does the Church engage in bullying and lying in order to supress the evidence of evil behaviour?  We saw such things revealed in the IICSA hearings in the Peter Ball section.  No establishment will find such questioning comfortable. It profoundly undermines the sense of what their institution is and how people will come to regard it both in the present and in the future. 

 To make life complicated there is in the Church of England more than one establishment grouping.  Two at least come under the challenge and scrutiny of survivors.   The first establishment finds its centre in the power structures and networks associated with St Helen’s Bishopsgate.  We would claim that this network provided cover for the abuses of John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher. A second establishment power block, not defined by theology, operates out of Church House Westminster and interlocks with the House of Bishops.  Exactly how that network works, with its links with lawyers, publicity machines with access to huge financial assets, is shrouded in mystery.  For decades no one has queried the work of the Church at the centre operating in secrecy and without apparent scrutiny.  The reason for this tolerance of an undemocratic process at the heart of the Church was because it seemed to work smoothly.   Appointments to high office were made without any scandal or suspicion of simony.  The financial decisions that guard the assets of the Church Commissioners seem to operate highly efficiently.  But there should always be room for challenge when it comes to any establishment, especially when they exercise their powers secretly.  We have the expression ‘speaking truth to power’.   Here we are talking about holding power, especially that of establishments, accountable.  Yesterday (Monday) we had the extraordinary news of Bishop Stephen Cottrell openly admitting a serious safeguarding failure of ten years ago.  This new openness is remarkable, especially in view of the history of cover-ups which traditionally exists at the heart of the Church.   We need to see this disclosure followed up by other safeguarding concerns being addressed promptly.  There are a cluster of other pending complaints to be dealt with against other serving bishops on safeguarding issues.  We can hope that this new openness is the start of a new contract between the secretive establishments of the Church and their radical questioners and would-be reformers.    

A further observation about establishment behaviour within the Church needs to be drawn out.  Thinking of the clergy, I would not be wrong to suppose that many young clergy begin their careers inspired with a sense of the radical demands of the Christian faith.  In our left-right analogy, they are firmly identified with the left.  Their vocation is an invitation to live a life of service of the Kingdom.   Priorities like evangelism, teaching and the service of one’s fellows after the example of Jesus, are a priority.    As time goes on, the demands of the institution become more pressing, whether their local church or the denomination.  The drag of that institution to make them its creatures becomes irresistible.  They become more and more aware of their role as being subordinate to the institution.  They come to recognise their dependency on it for their livelihood, their status and future.  They become, in other words, more and more like company reps.  They then start to adopt the habits, the mannerisms and the styles of what they think a clergyperson should be.  Another way of saying it is to suggest that the Establishment is rather like a large magnetic force which tries to draw all into its orbit.  After thirty or forty years caught up in its force field, few have that independence of thought and action that may have been there at the beginning. 

It is important to point out that my own personal experience of supporting survivors over quite a number of years has made me firmly, in church political terms, left-wing.  I might easily otherwise have acquiesced in the quiet life of trusting all the decisions of my leaders and ecclesiastical betters, thinking that I can rely on them to uphold and protect the Church’s reputation.  But in the face of lies and cover-ups that are so often part of the experience of abuse survivors, one’s attitude is changed.  Acquiescence and trust has made way for me to want to challenge and confront some of these establishment forces in the Church.  Although my influence is small, the voice I possess is given a little power by the internet, support of vocal survivors and the power of Twitter etc.  Small pebbles thrown into the pond of church politics can sometimes make real ripples and influence opinion.  Many people of influence and power are decent people and if enough can be persuaded to see more clearly the principles and values of decency, fairness and justice, then the conservative power of sometimes dishonest structures can be broken.  Am I wrong to see the honourable open behaviour of Stephen Cottrell as the possible harbinger of a new approach to the past?  Five years ago all seemed to be secrecy and cover-up.  Are we at a springtime of decency, openness and new beginnings, while shaking off some of the power of the establishments?  There is much to do but there seems at present to be an inexorable movement in the right direction. 

It is nearly twenty years since I left my last English parish in Gloucestershire.  I am aware that since I ceased to be an English vicar, many things have changed in the typical parish.  In the 80s and 90s the ‘secular’ wedding and funeral had barely been invented; the consequence was that I officiated at most of such events in my community.  My experience of parish work then was that there were always people to visit in their homes, whether bereavement follow-ups, shut-ins, the sick or baptism families.  My visiting was constantly increasing the numbers of people that I knew well within the community.  After 16 years in the same place, I had heard the personal life histories of hundreds of individuals and families.  At that time, a vicar was expected to know everyone, as well as be seen out and about on foot or on a bicycle within the area.  Trying to fulfil the expectation of extensive visiting and visibility was something I carried over from the training in my curacy days back in the early 70s. 

The one thing that I could not leave behind when I moved on to pastures new in Scotland was all this detailed information about individuals and families in the parish.  It went with me.  Having been able to reflect back to a funeral congregation some real personal memory of the deceased, had been an important part of helping a family in their grief.  These personal memories could not be transferred to a filing cabinet. No longer could a wedding couple have the added reassurance of one of them having known the vicar since being prepared for confirmation eight years previously.  My successors had inevitably to start from scratch.  My personal memory bank was not available to my successors.  It was particularly sad when an individual descended into dementia or disability and the one in charge of their funeral had never known them as people of vigour and selflessness.   It is certainly placing no blame on my successors to say this.  It is just the way it was.  People and their deeds get forgotten very quickly and that may happen to any of us.  A long-serving vicar may be the only person around who knew quite how much Mr so-and-so or Miss Blank achieved in their time, even more sometimes than the families.  The vicar often carries in him/herself much of the corporate memory of what that person represented to the community.

This word memory is an important one to think about.  We have this expression ‘corporate memory’ to describe how some important memories, good and bad, about individuals or events are sometimes preserved within institutions.  When a good corporate memory is preserved, it can provide some kind of lasting memorial to a person.  More often such memories are lost.   Sometimes there is a change of personnel in an organisation or there may be deliberate policy of repressing the memory because what he/she represented is no longer in fashion.  But these corporate memories are important because, even when they become weakened, they contain part of what has created the present.  Honouring the people of the past, even in a generalised way, should always be part of the self-understanding of a community or church congregation even when the actual memories have grown dim.   

In today’s Church we have one area where memories are still very important, the world of safeguarding.  One group carries all the memories of past abuses in the Church going back as far as 60 or 70 years.  These are the individuals called survivors/victims.  Their memories are detailed, reliable and, unfortunately for them, sometimes vivid to the point of being traumatic.  On the other side are the professionals dealing with the safeguarding issue.  They might be expected to engage readily with those who carry all this information from the past, because this information is in danger of being forgotten or lost.  But the institution they work for, the Church, expects the professionals to regard safeguarding as an issue to be sorted.  There is thus this institutional fix-it approach.   The professionals use the benefit of their educational background, whether legal, social work or reputational management, as providing skills to solve the ‘problem’.  The material they have before them are reviews, reports and legal arguments about liability.  The one glaring omission is that, in their heads, these professionals have no direct access to the detailed and vivid memories of the survivors.  All too often, they seem to have little interest in acquiring any of that memory by simply listening to the survivors.

A couple of years ago a woman survivor spoke to me about a phone call she had made to a central Church safeguarding point of contact.  The complaint this survivor made to me, was that there was first a profound lack of listening skills or understanding of the needs of abused individuals on the part of the person taking the call.  This failure was combined with another kind of failure, a complete ignorance of any of the then recently published reports, those connected with Peter Ball and the Elliot report.   Here was a representative of the Church paid to speak to survivors who had not been brought up to speed with any of the material which survivors and their supporters thought of as basic background information.  Was the fact of this palpable ignorance the result of a rapid turnover of staff, or suggestive of a broader loss of corporate memory that we spoke of above?  This failure of corporate memory which seems to affect many of the professionals involved with safeguarding is a serious one.  Time and time again in the IICSA process, qualified individuals were shown to be ignorant of factual and historical material or lacking areas of basic understanding of the way things are supposed to work in legal or social work contexts.  The latest corporate memory failure is the failure to implement the Carlile recommendations made over the formation of Core Groups.  Had the professionals simply forgotten what Lord Carlile had said only three years before?  How could the NST not once, but twice, fail to ensure that the survivor/alleged perpetrator was represented in the Group?  The second issue is the extraordinary harmful legal advice, given by the Church’s top legal adviser in 2007 and circulating for ten years, that pastoral contact should be shut off from survivors if they made a legal claim.  This was a year after the Compensation Act (2006) specifically stated that such expressions of support would not be deemed to affect compensation claims.  How much suffering was caused to survivors by this profoundly incompetent piece of legal advice?

At present there exists a ravine between two sides where one seems to be frightened of the wisdom, the experience and the memory of the other.  On one side there are those who have the memory (individual and corporate) of events, evil actions and decades of suffering.  These are the body of articulate but still traumatised survivors.  On the other side are the professionals who are trying on behalf of the Church to resolve the massive problems caused by the Church and the outcome of years of incompetent management in this area. The professionals, we would claim, lack proper understanding of the deeper issues of abuse as experienced by the survivors.   They also operate with an unhealthy obsession to see their role as being primarily a defensive one.  As long as the whole safeguarding industry adopts this defensive posture, the communication, the bridges across the ravine will never be properly built.  The Church, as a whole, needs this issue to be solved.  Otherwise, it will continue to be a profound wound in the heart of the institution, damaging and weakening us all.

  

Commentators on religious affairs are giving a lot of thought as to the ways that churches will be having to change after covid-19.  Here is not the place to rehearse all these potential disruptions but to bring to attention another major historical shift, one that is soon likely to affect many Christians groups in the USA.   In January 2021, after what is expected to be a massive defeat of Donald Trump in the November elections, a new US President is due to take over at the White House.  Assuming that the prediction of a Democratic landslide defeat is correct (by no means certain), the subsequent political upheavals will change the whole atmosphere of American life in numerous positive ways.  We trust that there will be a collective sigh of relief as people welcome back a period of honesty, truth telling and an end to the criminal self-serving behaviour in the White House. The task of being the new 2021 leader of the free world in a post-covid, economically battered country, will be indeed an enormous responsibility.  The task that is laid on this new American president’s shoulders will be every bit as demanding as that given to Franklin D Roosevelt when he came to power in 1933.  He had to sort out the appalling aftermath of the stock market bloodbath of 1929 and the depression that followed it.  The decisions of a new president of the United States will be of importance to all of us as economics and the effects of the virus are international in their scope.  

The one social entity in the States that has supported President Trump fairly consistently over the four years of his presidency, are the group described as ‘white evangelicals’.   This expression does not really correspond to any group that we have in the UK.  The commentators in the States who try and convey the significance of the term, sometimes describe them as people whose self-definition is contained as knowing who they are not.  White evangelicals will typically be working class and have cultural and political assumptions about the superiority of the white race over Latinos and blacks.  Those of them who attend churches will naturally gravitate towards congregations that are, by UK standards, extremely conservative/fundamentalist in style.  The word ‘fundamentalist’ does not have the same negative connotation in the States as it does here.  There are many Americans who regard themselves as ‘belonging’ to such churches, even if they do not physically attend them.  Extremely conservative religious beliefs, with shades of racist and ultra-right political assumptions, are those that are paraded when these ‘religious’ Trump supporting Americans need an identifying label to give themselves a secure sense of who they are. 

According to a recent video on Youtube, the white evangelical ‘tribe’ is one that has given its soul to the cause of President Trump. The minister speaking on this video to make this comment, described this relationship between Trump and this large tribe of white evangelicals, as a kind of Faustian pact.  On the one side the group have given, through their leaders, a kind of sanctification or blessing on the reign of Donald Trump.  In return he has promised to give them access to the White House and some influence in shaping some of the priorities of government.  The most important goal for these evangelical leaders and their followers is the chance to see favoured candidates nominated for the Supreme Court. These appointments have a long-term effect on the whole of society, since the appointees serve for the whole of their lives.  In the Supreme Court some of the most significant struggles for the soul of America are being fought.  Much is said about culture wars in the States and the battles over abortion and the status of same-sex relationships.  These battles are of vital importance to conservative Christians in the struggles against ‘liberal-humanism’.   So far President Trump has successfully placed two new conservative judges in the Court.   In theory this should have quickly led to the repeal of laws not favoured by the conservative religious Right.  This expected outcome has yet to materialise as the appointed judges have not voted entirely as expected.  This part of the story must be put to one side for another time. 

So far, the exchange of favours negotiated between Trump and his white evangelical supporters has worked mainly in Trump’s favour.  They remain a solid block of voting support which does not shift, whatever examples of incompetence or scandal are revealed.  But many of the more aware of the Christian leaders among the white evangelical tribe have started to notice the considerable cost involved.  It is an assault on their Christian value systems to support a thrice married racist who shows little loyalty, even to those who support him.  There is also a recognition that the unwritten agreement that exists currently could be overturned at a moment’s notice, once the individual or group no longer serves Trump’s purposes.  The lying and hypocrisy that emerge from the White House have also not impressed the young people within the tribe, and there has been a noticeable collapse of support for conservative churches from this cohort.      

The commentator on the Youtube video gave me two particularly fresh insights into the culture of white evangelicals in the States.  The first insight concerned the drifting apart that is taking place between some leaders and their flocks.  Leaders of evangelical congregations, like himself, were starting to have active doubts about the wisdom of supporting Trump.  He said that the problem was that their congregations would never support them if they tried to suggest that Trump was in any way flawed.  So, it was fear that kept leaders on board within the Trump camp.  The alternative was to be voted out of their posts.  Power in many independent congregations does not belong to the nominated leader.   

A second point that was mentioned in the video also related to fear.  The interviewee commentator mentioned attending conferences where they were taught to ‘encourage’ generous giving.  The professional trainers in this area had a simple message.  This was to tell the ministers that the more the congregations were frightened and angry, the more money they would donate to the church.  To summarise, the message was ‘give us more fear and more anger’.   

It is hard to know exactly how the cohort of white evangelicals in the States will respond if their ‘hero’ is defeated in November.  There is something very volatile about this group and one can see that some members of this Christian tribe could easily be provoked to violence if their leaders were to suggest such an action.  But whatever else is true, a culture of fear, potential violence, anger and extremist thinking is never going to be a healthy mix.  As we have already suggested, it is not a version of Christianity likely to go down well with the more liberal young.  It will also have even less pulling power, if the figurehead of the movement is thoroughly defeated in November and required publicly to face up to his numerous crimes. 

How will evangelicals in this country fare in this potential cataclysm to the brand name that may happen in the States in the autumn?  As we have already suggested, there are significant differences in the meaning of the term in the two countries.  But for all the differences, the two groups still share a descriptive name.  For that reason alone, evangelicals here should be concerned about the events taking place in the States.  The damage on American society caused by Trump and his supporters is so massive that there may be a huge political and theological backlash against those groups who have supported him.  The term evangelical may become a toxic description for decades to come across the world.  If evangelicals here or anywhere in the world want to avoid that guilt by association that is inevitably on its way, they need to start to plan now.  They have to examine the word and allow it to be defined in ways that have not been corrupted and made unclean by association with the criminal reign of Donald J Trump. 

The recent news about the suspension of a Permission to Officiate for Lord Carey is less than 24 hours old.  As yet, the facts about the case are slim but there is still enough material in the public domain to hazard some guesses as to what might be going on.  We can build our attempted reconstruction on other information that has been in the public domain for some time.

The new evidence that has emerged, making the suspension of Lord Carey necessary, has appeared in the process of the Makin review on the case of John Smyth.  This evidence suggests a serious safeguarding failing on the part of Carey over his dealings with the case in the past.   In the course of few short days, this new material has been reported to the National Safeguarding Team and, through a freshly constituted Core Group, a demand for Carey’s PTO to be removed has been made.  The speed of the process and the manner of bringing it rapidly into the public domain, reminds us of the Martyn Percy case.  The media are informed as the same time as the ‘accused’.  This feels heavy-handed.  A fair-minded person might question whether this ‘blitzkrieg’ approach to church discipline can ever be justified.  Could not some notice be given to the target of a enquiry when information is about to be shared with the media?  Carey, a man in his mid-80s, has had to concoct a statement for the Press with no notice or chance to examine or even know what he is accused of doing.  Unlike his accusers, he has no communications department to help him.

Lord Carey has ‘no memory’ of having known Smyth at any point.  There is, however, reported to be a cross fertilisation between the two men in Bristol in the early 80s.  Smyth was apparently an independent part-time student at Trinity College when Carey was Principal.  Given the fact that at the time Trinity was attended by a number of former Iwerne campers, Smyth would have been known to them.  No doubt he would have been the object of some discussion and gossip over his sudden departure from the Iwerne scene.  It would be strange if none of this got back to the Principal.   Smyth would have spent his time at the college attending the occasional lecture and presumably was in touch with at least one of the staff to supervise and support whatever studies he was engaged in.  In time, the precise nature of Smyth’s attendance at Trinity will emerge and we will have a better understanding of the nature of the link between Carey and Smyth at that point. It is known that Iwerne Trust and David Fletcher took active steps to warn organisations about Smyth. The Stileman Report says: ‘John Smyth tried to join a number of organisations (eg The Stewards Trust and the Above Bar Church Church in Southampton) but DCMF and others warned them off.’ It would seem likely that Trinity was also given some kind of warning. We are led to conclude that Carey is likely, one way or another, to have known something about Smyth’s past and his reputation as a Christian leader.  We can however believe that the Ruston report about Smyth’s Winchester activities was still then kept under wraps and only known to individuals high up in the Iwerne network.  Carey never became involved in that network or befriended its leaders.

In 1983 Smyth was a highly socially confident individual with all the trappings of his class background and position. He was a professional man of the world, possessed wealth and knew a massive number of people in the world of socially aspiring evangelicals.  These were precisely the things that Carey did not have.   If the safeguarding failure that Carey is charged with took place while he was at Bristol, then we can see how that Carey could easily have been manipulated by Smyth.  Something could have leaked out about the Ruston report (1982) which would have required Carey to take immediate action as the head of his college.  One scenario would be that Smyth had a meeting with Carey where some accusation was made.  Smyth could then have proceeded to name-drop some of the powerful figures in the con-evo world that Carey looked up to and were actively shielding Smyth.   We are here admittedly in the realm of pure speculation, but this is one possible scenario that makes sense of the limited information we have at present.

A safeguarding failure by Carey could also have taken place in Lambeth Palace and would have followed a similar pattern.  Carey was still extremely susceptible to being ‘played’ by others more powerful than himself.  We here allow our speculation to closely follow fact here, because the IICSA evidence shows in detail how this happened in the case of Peter Ball.  Carey allowed his judgement to be manipulated by Peter Ball and his brother in a private meeting without witnesses.  They seem to have used techniques of persuasion that had, no doubt, been used on many others as Ball rose up the church hierarchy.  The dysfunctional world of Lambeth Palace at that time has also been shown up by the IICSA hearings, and it is true to say that Carey was failed by the lack of effective staff around him.  Bad safeguarding decisions that were made at Lambeth in the 90s seem partly to be a personal failure of Carey himself, but they also flow from his inability to find staff who would challenge poor decisions.  It is one thing to be guilty of making such decisions; it is another not to be be able to recognise that this is happening over a period of time.   

In this hastily written piece about George Carey’s loss of his PTO, we speculate that this event follows the emergence of new paperwork from either Trinity College Bristol or Lambeth Palace.     One of the things that we hope Makin’s enquiry is uncovering is just how many other distinguished church people had information about Smyth but chose to keep quiet.  Is the NST process going to be deployed against everyone who could have acted to protect the innocent from Smyth’s predation in Africa, or is the NST going to focus on elderly retired prelates or church leaders who are out of favour?  We certainly hope to see impartial justice principles at work in this whole process.  So far we have yet to see fairness and justice being afforded the highest place.

The reader of my blog posts has probably been exposed to more detail of the Martyn Percy affair than they may wish to have.  Gilo made some very perceptive comments in his piece last week but there is still, even at the cost of some repetition more to be said.  What we know and have been told in the public domain tells us a lot about the topic of bullying, harassment and outright unpleasantness that sometimes takes place, not only in an Oxford college, but within the Church itself. 

What can I say by way of comment over this conflict?  It is quite clear that Martyn has in the past upset the equilibrium and status quo in two powerful institutions.  In the first case, at Christ Church Oxford, a group of senior members have complained about him in his role of Head of House or Dean on two separate occasions.  We, as outsiders observers, have no detailed understanding of the first allegations made against him.   All we do know with some certainty is that a Tribunal was convened under the chairmanship of a retired judge, Sir Andrew Smith.  This found him innocent of the accusations made against him – all twenty-seven charges were dismissed.  Our sympathy for Martyn’s cause is aroused by the fact that he had to endure two years of pressure and stress.  We feel for anyone who, in the course of allegations against them, is suspended from his work and made the object of a campaign of vilification and slander.  Moreover, who was denied the opportunity of even having a preliminary investigation before the Tribunal against him was convened. 

This Tribunal involved the spending of huge resources of charitable money, thought to be over £2 million. Martyn’s own legal costs have been huge.  When the Tribunal verdict was announced, we hoped that the problem would go away.  We might also have hoped that the original accusers might express a little remorse for having spent so much charitable money to further their cause.  But no, the current situation is that the same accusers among the governing body have re-emerged to continue the campaign against the Dean.  This time they are using a quite different set of accusations and a different method of harassing and undermining Martyn.  Having exhausted the procedures afforded to them by the college statutes, the complainants have moved on to attack him using the tools of the quasi-legal structures of the Church of England.

Those of us who support Martyn and his principled stand over a variety of topics in current church debates, are aware that he has made enemies.  As an avowed progressive, he is not easily going to fit in with the prevailing opinions of a largely conservative bench of bishops.  The one particular issue over the past five years that has rattled many cages is the George Bell affair.  Martyn has prominently identified himself with those who regard the posthumous trashing of Bishop Bell’s reputation as contrary to the laws of justice and historical truth.  Many of us, with Martyn, regarded the alacrity with which Church leaders assigned guilt to Bell as being an attempt to show a decisiveness while many other more recent safeguarding allegations were being mishandled.  

The method of assessing and evaluating the Bell evidence was the infamous core group, the same tool that is now being deployed against Martyn himself.  It would not be hard to suggest, to use Gilo’s expression, that, in both case, the core group has been ‘weaponised’ against the subject of the investigation.  This is especially true when the person at the heart of the enquiry has no representation to speak on their behalf.  Again, in both Bell’s case and Martyn’s, similar church establishment mechanisms can be seen at work.  The NST have put Martyn “on trial” without conducting even the most minimal inquiry or interview with him.  The core group contained people who were prosecuting him for their own ends, and were heavily invested in pre-judging the outcome of any investigation.  This is identical to what the Dean had to endure at Christ Church from 2018.

As with Christ Church, so with the NST.  The Dean is forced to pay for his own defence to protect his reputation and integrity.  It was noticeable that the Anglican hierarchy were largely mute when the original Christ Church accusations were aired.  There was a sense that, while support was being expressed by hundreds of individuals across the country and £100,000 raised for legal costs, official support from the Anglican hierarchy was largely absent.

The appeal to the Church of England and its National Safeguarding Team by complaining Christ Church dons to examine accusations against the Dean of Christ Church, has already been explored in Gilo’s piece.  The mention by Gilo of the ‘right part’ of the NST hints at private conversations and plotting at the highest levels of the Church of England taking place with the complainants at Christ Church.  I understand that as far as the lawyers acting for Martyn are concerned, the NST has absolutely no jurisdiction in Martyn’s case.  Martyn is not an employee of the Church of England; he is not being accused of being a danger to children or vulnerable adults.  We also note the “vulnerable adult” terminology used by the NST.  The correct term is “adults-at-risk”, which is defined and deployed in higher education, local government and the NHS.  The NST are out of touch.  The safeguarding issues that are the focus of the enquiry had already been dealt with properly by Martyn, according to University and college protocols. 

Once again, a core group is being used to achieve a particular end.   What we see in the process seems to run counter to natural justice and fairness.  It also seems to take no notice of Lord Carlile’s remarks and the recommendations that were made by him in 2017.  We refer particularly to those that laid out how all interested parties should be represented. These were accepted in total by the Church of England and now they are ignored in what has become a notorious case, ensuring that the whole world is watching (and judging!) the Church of England as it stumbles ahead with a faulty grasp of proper procedures in this complex case.

If Martyn can stand up to the pressure currently being put on him, it could help expose the evident power abuses and appalling misuses of procedure which seem to be operating in the NST.  If the NST were to see sense and pull out of its involvement in the Christ Church debacle, this would have a desirable outcome.  it would allow the NST to be regarded as a properly accountable organisation. No longer would the considerable power of this body be used against individuals without clear and consistent protocols in the way that it operates.  Someone made the decision to allow the NST to enter the treacherous waters of internal Oxford collegiate politics. 

Who was it and what are the systems in place to query and even put a block on such a risky, even impetuous, decision? If, as is likely, the NST comes out of this disastrous intervention with egg on its face, who is going to take responsibility for this financial and ethical car-crash? In many ways this whole episode goes far beyond what Martyn may or may not have done to upset members of his college.  The issue has become one of the church using its legal structures in ways that deny compassion, natural justice and the basic qualities of care.  Once again the Church of England seems incapable of handling its power without hurting and damaging people.  Legalism, the power of money and privilege seem to be prominent.    If the general public sees some of this behaviour and is unimpressed, can we really blame them? 

Another question that is being asked by many of us is this.  If Martyn Percy deserved investigation over safeguarding issues with apparently such flimsy evidence being offered, then why not are other more pressing cases given attention?  There are several outstanding CDM claims against serving bishops which lie on file.  Presumably these can now be activated by victims and complainants? There is the case of Jonathan Fletcher which seems to be ignored by central church authorities, even though it reached front-page headlines of the Daily Telegraph.  If the allegations against Fletcher are even half-true, he still poses a safeguarding threat which should be a priority for the NST.  To focus on Martyn, who poses no such threat, and ignore Fletcher can only be described as a deeply political choice. 

Unless someone explains the real basis for NST involvement in the Christ Church factional disputes, Martyn’s supporters will conclude that the NST has become a political tool at the service of certain unaccountable factions within the Church of England.  If that surmise is correct, one would hope that the General Synod would wake up to this fact and vote the NST out of existence.  We cannot afford to have a rogue structure within the Church which operates with so much secrecy, factionalism and sometimes overt bullying.  Whoever authorised the unleashing of the NST on Martyn Percy has been responsible for taking an enormous gamble with the Church’s assets and reputation.  They have gambled on an outcome which, even if successful at one level, does no credit to the Church.  If the anonymous power brokers are, however, unsuccessful in what they are doing in Oxford, this may have the effect of destroying the NST structure altogether and their future ability to exercise power through it.

I do not know whether anyone reads the books by Adrian Plass anymore.  They are full of trenchant and perceptive comments about the church culture Plass was part of in the 80s.  There is one memorable passage in his Sacred Diary when he is speaking about the experience of being in a Bible study in his conservative charismatic church.  He describes how the passage for the week was read, and then all eyes were then turned to the leader, ’to find out what we think’.  Clearly there was an experience of bonding and merger in relation to worship.  That somehow was expected to be transferred into the way that individual thinking by members of the congregation was practised. 

 Church membership does indeed flourish when it successfully gives to people a sense of belonging and a place within the group.  Nevertheless, such belonging does not have to involve everyone thinking the same ‘correct’ thoughts as in Plass’ church.  Churches, both locally and nationally, can be said to be ‘bodies’ of which we are part.  When churches get this right, we find that members all receive a level of spiritual and emotional integration with others, which is life enhancing. The metaphor of the Church as the Body of Christ is also one that is richly evocative and potentially the subject of numerous sermons.   I introduce this idea of belonging and the metaphor of the body as a prelude to pointing out how, in some circumstances, this kind of experience can and does go wrong.   As an idea it needs to be approached with a certain caution.  In the first place when we join a group, we must become aware of the way that this membership will impact on what we think and say.  There is of course nothing wrong in being part of a group consensus.  Nevertheless, I would suggest that it is always important to be alert to the possibility that opinions are being formed by something we call ‘groupthink’.  This expression, which has been extensively studied over the past 60 years in social psychology circles, is a way of saying that when a group of people have identical ideas, there may be an unconscious merging process taking place.  This will often be unhealthy. In some contexts, such as in the military, it can be a potential cause of disaster.  To prevent such a potential catastrophe happening in this kind of situation the outsider, the dissenting opinion, must be given a voice and honoured for expressing it.

The Christian tradition has had a lot to say about outsiders and Jesus himself is described as the one who ‘went outside the gate’ to bring alienated sinful humanity back into the presence of God.  We also are encouraged to go to him ‘outside the camp, bearing the stigma that he bore’.   In life and death Jesus identified with outsiders, the sinners and riff-raff of his day.  But there is an earlier outsider in scripture that I want to focus on in this piece.   Janet Fife mentioned the OT prophets in a blog comment a few days ago.  The outsider prophet that especially comes to mind is the figure of Amos.  He is the classic dissenter and he stood outside social and religious norms simultaneously.  ‘I am no prophet nor a prophet’s son’.  His outside status was also confirmed by the fact he was a foreigner, (a Judaean in Israelite territory) and he was called to the menial task of a shepherd and ‘dresser of sycamore trees’.  Amos’ prophecies, directed against the northern kingdom of Israel and uttered around 720s BC, were devastating.  He saw little that would be left after a terrible destructive military incursion.  The details of Amos’ prophecies are not important here, but simply the fact that they exist.  Here we have a solitary figure, an outsider, a foreigner and an unqualified person speaking truth to an entire nation about what God had determined.  That nation did not listen and it was destroyed.

I do not think that we currently have a single Amos speaking to the Church of today.   We may, however, have the voice of Amos fragmented across the witness of many dissenting outsiders who have something to say to the church.   Institutions, whether entire countries or church bodies must learn to hear the prophetic voices spoken to them through the mouths of these outsiders.  Why might the outsider, the dissenting voice, have something important to say which is not being expressed within the group?  I am far from claiming that the outsider is always right or that institutions cannot speak truth to themselves.  What I am suggesting is that the ‘groupthink’ principle warns us that no institution can afford to shut out the outside and independent voice.  That opinion or insight is not to be blocked off.  Indeed, anyone who expresses an opinion which is not reflective of a group norm is at least likely to be worth listening to. 

In this reflection I cannot help but think that, in the world of safeguarding, the prophets are easy to identify.  These outsiders, the ones who see things clearly by being free of the encumbrance of institutional interests and values, are the group we collectively call survivors.  Survivors speak truth to power.  They have passed through the crucible of abuse.  Whether or not they remain loyal to the institution that was involved in their abuse, they still have valuable insights and a critical understanding of it.   Janet pointed out that the other outsiders will include such groups as the BAME and the LGBT communities.  They also will see things differently because of their long experience of exclusion. 

In the post-Covid days that lie ahead of us, church leaders are going to have to do, among other things, an enormous amount of listening to ensure that their institution will still be fit for purpose in the future.  Whether in the realm of safeguarding, which is at the heart of this blog’s concerns, or addressing some other focus, we can hope that the church will be able to hear what is being said by others who may not be members.  The word of the outsider, the critic even, may be the word of God to this generation of church leaders and our own House of Bishops.  Survivors of abuse, possessing an enormous wealth of experience and understanding of what is involved in this area, have a vast quantity of useful things to say about the right way forward.  They should not be consulted as a kind of public relations exercise, but all their words should be carefully listened and pondered in case, like Amos, they are speaking the prophetic words and will of God.   Ignoring their witness would be both foolish as well as expensive for the church.

The prophet, the outsider, is one who utters the words of God to the institution, even though that word may be uncomfortable or even disturbing.  To compare the state of the Kingdom of Israel in 720 BC and the Church of England in 2020 may seem a little far fetched.  But, in both situations, there are real serious threats which are sufficiently serious for me to suggest that such parallels do exist.  Church leaders today must listen, not only to its internal groupthink, but also to its minorities, the survivors, the BAME community and others who seem to have received the Good News, but struggle to be heard by the  rest of the church. It is both hearing and responding to the prophetic word of God that that the church may find a new impetus and power to take it into the future.