The news over the week-end that Jean Vanier had ‘manipulative and emotionally abusive sexual relationships with six women in France between 1970 and 2005’ , was a profoundly shocking statement.  I cannot be the only person who from a distance had awarded him the status of a mini- saint.  I began to reflect on the feelings about Vanier that were welling up inside me.  What was it about this news story that made it personal to me?  I thought back to the way I had nearly been drawn into an association with L’Arche some twelve years ago having been much impressed by Vanier and his writings.  The Church Times had asked me to review and summarise a Vanier book for its book study-group page.  Having expressed in print appreciation for Vanier’s ideas. a local L’Arche group invited me to visit their centre to make direct contact with their work.  To my shame at the time I did not go.  For some time, I felt bad about not following through when I written warm words about Vanier and his organisation. 

What was the basis for my enthusiasm for L’Arche and its philosophy?  To put my remarks into context I was beginning my interest in the workings of power dynamics in the Church.  What I saw in Vanier’s work was something extremely relevant to a way of doing Christianity while avoiding any of the power games favoured by narcissists and the self-absorbed.  While narcissists, and many of the rest of us, favour actions and relationships that promote our interests in some way, Vanier was showing us how to serve others with no expectation of any return.  By concentrating on ministering to individuals who lacked power of any kind, Vanier seemed to be pointing the Church to a new path of humility.  Luke’s Gospel has Jesus say (I paraphrase) when you invite someone to a meal, don’t choose the person who will invite you back.  Invite the one who does not have the means of returning the invitation.  In short do good to others when there is nothing in it for you in terms of financial or social advantage.  The work of L’Arche in caring for and serving the mentally handicapped, the disabled, the abjectly poor and the severely traumatised has little to give you back in career terms.  It is hard not to be tempted to do the opposite.   Do good to those who will repay you in a variety of ways.  Be attentive when you receive in return flattery and generous appreciation.  Give time and attention to those who give generously to the restoration funds for your church.  Much of this kind of behaviour is probably normal and to be expected.  But it is when every action towards another person in a church context has this element of calculation about it that it risks becoming something dark.  It is a relatively small step from being ‘nice’ to others to the kind of behaviour we associate with the narcissistic personality disorder.   The narcissist is an expert in manipulating every relationship to their advantage.  Even when they are being charming to others, the charm is being wielded in order to achieve their aim of being gratified at some level in terms of their narcissistic appetite.  In an appalling betrayal of love, every relationship for the narcissist becomes an act of exploitation.   This in some cases will include pursuing sexual favours.  Jean Vanier, in his work of serving the humblest and most disadvantaged in society seemed on the surface to have found a way of completely removing himself from the temptation of narcissistic exploitative behaviour.   Now from the appalling revelations of the week-end, it seems that he did not.  I and many others who had looked to  L’Arche to lead the Church in a revolution in the way it understands power, have been let down grievously.

The new Daily Telegraph revelations about Jonathan Fletcher are relevant to this reflection about Vanier.  We knew that Fletcher had been guilty of unprofessional behaviour in his work of ministry within the REFORM/ReNew networks.  Details have been sparse because his networks, by operating in a very authoritarian manner, have been able to shut down most of the details of this misbehaviour.  I am not sure how to interpret the complete removal of all references to Fletcher’s existence on the Internet.  This wiping of all information about him from the Net and the refusal of those with any kind of oversight over him to speak openly on the topic has put a definite black mark against the entirety of the network and given it, and especially its leadership, a pariah status for a long time to come.  When leaders do not speak, they collude and are thus drawn into the evil of Fletcher’s narcissism and power abuse.

The new information that has come to light in the Daily Telegraph story reports, not on Fletcher’s sexual misbehaviour, but on other more mundane examples of what we would regard as examples of narcissistic power abuse.  Martin Bashir, the author of one of the Telegraph pieces, tells of extremely controlling behaviour by Fletcher at Emmanuel PCC meetings.  He also describes the way Fletcher favouritised certain individuals, no doubt in return for the narcissistic feeding that such favoured ones could offer in return.  There is talk elsewhere of Fletcher accompanying selected members to massage clubs.  The favouritism offered by Fletcher to one individual with a chequered financial past included introducing him to a vulnerable member of the congregation with a large sum to invest.  Bashir acted as a protector for the vulnerable parishioner but, in doing so, he had to stand up to an irate Fletcher.  As retaliation for standing up to him, Fletcher began to smear his reputation.  As we can take the story at face value (assuming it to be thoroughly vetted by libel lawyers at the Telegraph), we build up a picture of a leader who is high up the scale of a narcissistic personality disorder.  Such an individual will manipulate, cajole and threaten to receive whatever others can give them to gratify a variety of personal needs.  Narcissists will always want to be thought as important, entitled and generally to be supreme in every single setting or organisation they take part in.  As I write this, I hear echoes of another prominent narcissist in the White House, whose desire for control over everything makes him a self-proclaimed genius at foreign policy, the law and economics.  Such people are always dangerous.

Once again, we have to emphasise that the failings of individuals in leadership roles can have catastrophic consequences not only for them personally but also for those around them who are followers and admirers.  I was an admirer of Vanier for the way he seemed to offer a new way to understand love and power.  The personality and teaching of Jonathan Fletcher would never have impressed me.  It would quickly have been clear to me that Emmanuel Wimbledon was locked in a thoroughly dangerously harmful power dynamic, destructive both to the leaders and the led.  The narcissistic self-absorbed habits of Fletcher have betrayed hundreds of his former parishioners.  The innocent followers of Vanier have also been betrayed because they invested their idealism, the admiration and trust in a man who is now shown to have had feet of clay.  In Vanier’s case there was less deliberate charismatic trickery (except possibly against the six abused women) and the followers may recover quickly with new leaders.  Some of the followers of Fletcher are apparently still locked in their mental prison of seeing him as inspired by God and to be followed despite the evidence of wrong-doing.  Most individuals, however, seem to have woken up from the hypnotic spell that Fletcher has exercised for over thirty years.  What I find particularly galling is the way that all the leaders of the ReNew constituency continue to remain silent on the topic of Fletcher.  This is a failure of leadership on a massive scale.  Tens of thousands of conservative Christians are at this moment being persuaded that loyalty to a disgraced leader is as important as their loyalty to God.  This is surely a huge failure of Christian leadership by the Vicars and Rectors of the churches that form part of Fletcher’s network. I for one will never set foot in any of their churches until this wrong is put right.

Two Christian leaders, each with enormous responsibility for carrying the hopes, ideals and trust of those who looked up to them, have failed their followers.  There is indeed something innocent about being a follower of this kind.  Indeed, there is something childlike in Jesus’ sense about wanting another human being who is wiser and experienced in life and spiritual wisdom to carry our projections and show us a better way.  We desperately need a new generation of leaders of integrity to come and help show new ways to follow Christ.

Coming from an evangelical background, I have always been familiar with the concept of ‘being a witness’.  It meant witnessing to the gospel, sharing your faith in Jesus.

A few years ago I found myself a witness of a different sort. Soon after my mentor and former vicar Gordon Rideout was arrested on charges of child sexual abuse, I remembered a few things he’d said which at the time had seemed a little odd, but which I hadn’t considered important. This began to weigh on my mind, so I rang the NSPCC helpline which had been set up when his arrest was announced. I was really hoping they’d agree that these comments weren’t significant. Instead, they said they thought the police would be interested – and, with my consent, put me through to one of the officers on the case. That was the start of a 15-month process.

There were several phone calls with investigating officers of Operation Piper. Then, the week after Easter, a detective drove up from Sussex to interview me. DC Harris is an expert interviewer and a practicing Christian (and had some interesting reflections on the Gospels as eyewitness accounts). The interview lasted four gruelling hours. DC Harris was courteous and sympathetic, but he was going to get every last scrap of information I could give him – and rightly so. It was a bit like having brain surgery.

Gordon was the first person I had told of my childhood abuse, and he followed this up by a series of sessions of ‘pastoral counselling’, in which he had asked me every detail of the abuse. Much of the information I had to give the police concerned what Gordon had said and done in these counselling sessions. Remembering this was doubly traumatic: not only did it mean retelling for a police statement the original abuse; but in doing so I began to realise the extent of Gordon’s betrayal of me and the harm he had done me. And this was a man to whom I owed much of my spiritual formation as an Anglican. It was devastating.

Worse, I faced the prospect of having to repeat all this in court.  I asked for anonymity, but worried how I would explain my absence to my parish. I had taken on a challenging post on the understanding that the diocese would support me, but the reality had been worse than any of us expected, and support less effective than I had hoped. An unexplained absence, possibly at short notice and an inconvenient time in parish life, was an additional complication I could do without.  And if there was a leak about the nature of my evidence – I just couldn’t contemplate that.

I told my churchwardens and archdeacon in confidence that I was a witness in a major child abuse case. To their credit, the news did not leak out. The archdeacon, however, pressed me repeatedly over a period of time as to the nature of my evidence. I told him that as the case was sub judice I couldn’t discuss it, but he made it clear that he was not satisfied.

I contacted the diocesan pastoral adviser, who arranged for a counsellor to support me through the process. This was valuable and I don’t know what I would have done without it. However, I also needed my line managers to take off some of the pressure in the parish, and this didn’t happen.

The months dragged on, with the police coming back to me now and then with further questions. The pressure was enormous. A few weeks before the trial I was told that I would not be required to appear in court, which was a big relief. However, I was advised that this might change so I couldn’t really relax.

Then came the trial itself, and the evidence of the victims. It was appalling.  I had somehow assumed that although Gordon faced 36 counts of child sexual abuse, the assaults had not been very serious. Maybe I was just trying to convince myself. Instead, it emerged that, especially during his time as chaplain at Barnardo’s children’s home, Gordon had behaved with a cruelty bordering on sadism. Moreover, he had told the children that the abuse was part of his ministry. He told one vulnerable young girl that his genitals were ‘the hand of God’. How do you cope with the knowledge that your spiritual mentor has been capable of such a blasphemy?

I began to regret that I had not been asked to testify in court, simply to demonstrate to those brave victims that there were clergy who were on their side against this terrible evil.

And all the time, with reports of the trial on the news daily, I was having to carry out my parish ministry as if nothing were wrong. The day the trial ended, with a guilty verdict, I was en route to a remote holiday without TV, radio, or internet coverage. I spent much of it trying to glean news, without much luck. That had to wait until I got back home, and resumed my parish duties.

The archdeacon made an appointment to visit me; I assumed he wanted to see how I was following the trial. I was worn out, grieving my loss of contact with the Rideout family, and still reeling from the impact of what I had learned about Gordon. I told the archdeacon I was struggling, and felt I needed a 3-day retreat in which I could work through the spiritual issues. He refused, saying he’d had a complaint I wasn’t doing enough work. Three weeks later I had a breakdown.

The prophet Amos has God saying: 

          ‘let justice roll down like waters,

          and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ (v. 24, NRSV).

Last week, in the General Synod debate on the IICSA recommendations, we at long last started to see justice beginning to flow. There was talk of redress for survivors, and a promise that money would be available. The passion for justice shown by many Synod members in that debate refreshed my soul.

If righteousness is going to continue to flow, the Church needs to do more than just make financial reparations – as right and necessary as those are. All senior personnel in the Church need to be much more aware of the enormous burden borne by those involved in abuse cases, and prepared to offer whatever support is needed. My experience was as a witness, and I didn’t even have to appear in court. How much worse must it have been for the survivors, who did appear and were cross-examined? They are heroes.

When we do justice, we do God’s work; justice is God’s business, and should be ours. Justice and redress have been a long time coming for too many of the Church’s victims. Now, at last, may righteousness become a stream which flows through the Church – and keep on flowing..

Last week at Synod the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a Presidential address which made various references to the metaphor of lions.  He mentioned, in particular, a story he had heard on a recent visit to Africa.   This story was about a shepherd boy dealing with the threat of lions.  It made the point that lions are far more dangerous when they are silently stalking.  It is then, not when they are roaring, that they are preparing to pounce on their prey.  His reflection on lion behaviour was linked to the image from I Peter where the lion is the devil/enemy which ‘walks about seeking whom he may devour’.  Archbishop Welby identified many things as the enemy.  He mentioned ‘culture, cruelty and lack of love’.  There was also a mention of the lion ‘biting …. through social media in a way we have never known before’.     It was striking how much of the address came back to this lion image from I Peter. The lion seemed to represent, for Welby, a whole host of things that posed a threat.  Some of these were going to be faced by the gathered bishops at Lambeth.  In Welby’s words, the bishops were going ‘as shepherds to be gathered together from around the world (to) recognise and name the face of the lion in each place.’  The speech went on to speak about shadowy threats in society, ‘scientific change, biotechnology, information technology’ and other forms of new knowledge.  From the choice of the I Peter passage, I began to ask myself whether the Archbishop’s words were tinged with the same fundamental emotion as the shepherd boy referred to in the story, the emotion of fear.

The unspoken subtext of the Archbishop’s speech may be the fact that both Synod and he himself were having to face, at present, a number of threats and events leading to a sense of dread and even powerlessness.  There are in front of him the many unresolved issues of division to be faced at Lambeth 2020, not least over same sex behaviour.  This is quite apart from all the issues around safeguarding which came to a head last week.  To navigate through any of these major topics requires superhuman skill.  To have two or more of them bubbling up at the same time must represent for the Archbishop a burden of enormous personal stress. The subtext of Welby’s speech may have been suggesting to us that he felt himself being stalked by a silent deadly evil force.   The demonic lion of I Peter could well represent the impossible burdens that he feels he is being called to carry now.

I went back to my bible to look up the I Peter passage about the ‘enemy’ oppressing us being like a lion.  I then used a wonderful internet search engine to find out what else the Bible had to say about lions.  In most of the references, lions are thought of terrifying creatures which can only be defeated by people of great strength or cunning (Samson and the young David).  Thus, most of the time, the Bible sees them as creatures which are a real threat to animals or human beings.  Two passages stand out, possibly being written by eye witnesses, showing the sheer destructiveness of lions.  One is the passage from Amos which is ascribed to Yahweh.  Here is described what remains of a sheep after a lion has finished with it.   ‘As a shepherd rescues out of the jaws of a lion two shin bones or the top of an ear’,  Amos 3.12.  More terrifying than this is the behaviour of a lion attacking a human being in Psalm 7.  There here is a disturbing reference to a lion tearing at the throat of its human prey.

Generally speaking, the lion in the Bible is a powerful foe living in remote places, but it represents a constant threat to human beings and their domestic animals.  The ability of Daniel to avoid being destroyed by the lions’ savagery was evidently a sign of extraordinary power, comparable to the avoidance of the heat of the burning fiery furnace.  The power of lions to destroy and terrify was evident and widespread. 

There is however, another biblical take on the topic of lions that I must confess never to have noticed before.  In a little-known passage right at the end of the book of Genesis the aged Jacob blesses his sons.  When he comes to his son Judah, Jacob likens him to a ‘lion’s whelp’.  He goes on ‘you have returned from the kill, my son’.  Some kind of dominance, represented by a lion’s strength is then ascribed to Judah in the words of the following verse.  ‘The sceptre shall not pass from Judah…’  A clear connection to this Genesis passage seems to be implied in a passage of Revelation 5.5.  Here one of the elders speaking to John declares that ‘the Lion from the Tribe of Judah, the Scion of David has won the right to open the scroll and break its seven seals.’  Without getting into detailed comment about this passage, I note that the Lion from the Tribe of Judah seems to become quickly merged with the image of the Lamb who appears in subsequent verses.  The symbol of power is at the same time the symbol of weakness and sacrifice.  Both the strands of symbolism are summed up in the figure of the risen Christ.  He is the figure of power and at the same time he is the sacrificial lamb.

Following the way the Bible understands lions, the most famous Christian exploration of the lion image is to be found in the Narnia books of C.S. Lewis and the Christ-like figure of Aslan.  I am not familiar with any discussion of how Lewis created his all-important figure of Aslan the Lion, but it seems reasonable to suppose that he may have been inspired this somewhat enigmatic symbolism in the Book of Revelation.  Whatever has been noted by the critics, the figure of Aslan clearly fits the profile of Revelation more than that of 1 Peter.  Aslan is a creature of great moral stature and strength.  Lewis also sees him as the one who makes no resistance when required to surrender himself to his enemies.  In the Synod proceedings last week, it was interesting how Martin Sewell, in his speech about safeguarding, picked up the lion theme through the Aslan story in his remarks about future change.  The fact that Martin likened the whole safeguarding topic to the Narnia story suggests that for him, at any rate, the Synod engagement with this topic has in the past seemed to have something of the nature of conflict about it.  According to this way of understanding, one which I have supported, a powerful ‘establishment’ has been battling for a long time to silence survivors.  The survivors, carrying all the wounds of their abuse, have had to struggle to be heard.  In one case, as Rosie Harper reminded us in the same debate, a survivor has been battling for seven years to receive a hearing.   For that survivor and those like him, the Synod debate represented a battle within a long drawn-out war.  The weapons given to survivors to fight in this war have been few and weak.  But finally, their constant efforts have started to have results, such as we saw last week.  The central government of the Church of England, the ‘establishment’ over which Welby presides, has had to acknowledge this cause as a just one.  Is it not too fanciful to suggest that this is one more strand creating the sense of fear and beleaguerment being felt by the Archbishop and those around him?

The Archbishop painted for us a picture of a scenario where the Church was in conflict with a powerful enemy in the form of many different aspects of modern life.  We surmise that much of the conflict he detected was being personally felt, the cares of Lambeth, safeguarding and a general sense of the way the Church’s reputation is in decline as it enters a new decade.  

This blog reflection ends with a question.  Which image of lions fits in with our understanding of the contemporary state of the Church.  Do we have a sense of siege with enemies like Satanic lions all around?  Do we by contrast believe in a Church that is finally waking up to a new start of honesty and justice?  The lion for this version of the story is Aslan/Christ leading us and the whole Church to a place of wholeness and new beginnings.

The debate at General Synod on Wednesday 12^th February may yet come to be seen as a decisive moment in the history of the Church of England and its task of safeguarding.  In the words of Martin Sewell, a lay member from Rochester, the distant sound of a lion’s roar could be heard and the sound of ice cracking.  Winter was ending and Aslan was about to arrive.

What follows in this blog is not a systematic objective analysis of the Synod proceedings but a subjective editing/selecting of some parts of the speeches that were given.  It is offered not only as an informative snapshot for those who were not there or could not watch it online.  It can also be regarded as an aide-memoire for the future, when checks are being made of whether progress towards helping survivors and victims of abuse is on track.  Everyone contributing to the debate last Wednesday emphasised the importance of action rather just words.  The words in the debate that were uttered by both leaders and ordinary Synod members, all need to be remembered and recorded for posterity.  Above all we need to have a sense of the mood of the debate in the future.  This blog piece will be trying as much as possible to use the words actually spoken by the debate contributors.  But, in making a choice of which words to use or summarise, this blog piece may give a biased account of the proceedings.  I am not sure how this can be easily avoided.  My readers who follow this blog will realise that I will be focusing on a perspective supportive of survivors and their interests.  I am unsure if it is even possible to present this kind of material in a totally objective way.

Four bishops and one archbishop spoke in the debate.  I have made a choice only to record the words of two, Philip North, the Bishop of Burnley, and the new lead bishop for safeguarding, Jonathan Gibbs, Bishop of Huddersfield.  These two bishops have had a personal and public identification with the cause of survivors’ welfare and the whole topic of safeguarding.  They each appear to have earned the trust of the survivor community, even though there is a recognition that there is still an enormous amount more to do.

Philip North spoke memorably on the importance of seeing the church through the eyes of survivors.  He also embarked on a reflection that I have never heard from the mouth of a bishop, a reflection on power in the Church.  He spoke of the personal power exercised by bishops and the power inherent in the institution.  He also mentioned the ‘faux-humility’ exercised by Peter Ball.  He called for power to become transparent and open so that people can see a greater sense of accountability among those who have power.  He also described survivors ‘as prophets calling us to greater gospel faithfulness’. 

Bishop Gibbs of Huddersfield, as the new lead safeguarding bishop, had a major part in rescuing the amendment put forward by three lay synod members, including Martin Sewell and David Lamming.  His words were to be listened to carefully as clearly his influence in the future will be crucial for the future of safeguarding and the welfare and interests of survivors.  He gave us a hint of the negotiations behind the scenes that had gone on to bring the rescued amendment to the floor of Synod.  That there had been ‘constructive conversations’ in the National Safeguarding Steering Group, a possible euphemism for heated debate, seemed clear.  Clearly the conversation had gone the right way as far as survivors are concerned.  As I pointed out in a previous post, words like apology, action and change appear in the proposed amendment.  There was a real sense that Bishop Gibbs has seized the ‘reins of power’ in this committee in a way that his predecessor had not.  One particular word came through, which other speakers picked up.  The word was redress.  The word picked the other new emphasis that was coming through the debate.  Action and change were a necessary follow-up from mere words of apology. 

Bishop Gibbs seemed to have a real grasp of what the church looks like from the perspective of a survivor.  Safeguarding will always, in the future, reflect that perspective.  The perspective of survivors must also be allowed to shape the way we ‘reshape our shared life in the church’.  In a memorable remark, Bishop Gibbs said that ‘too many of us just don’t get it’. 

Bishop Gibbs’ comments about the financial implications of ‘redress’ are an indication that he has had scored some real victories behind the scenes with those who control the purse-strings of the Church.  He spoke about ‘serious money’ being needed.  Working out how this money will be funded will be complicated, but it will be done, ‘shaped by the righteousness and compassion of God’s kingdom’.  He clearly recognised that such planning would be done and the process will ‘not be led by the-short term and short-sighted financial and reputational interests of the Church’.

In his final remarks, Bishop Gibbs referred to the final IICSA report on the Church of England to be issued later this year.  ‘That will not make comfortable reading’, we were told.  The bishop went on: ‘we need to do more than just respond.  We should be concentrating on making the Church of England into what it should be, a beacon of excellence in safeguarding, recognised as a community that excels in promoting the safety and wellbeing of every single human being and one that acts as a voice for the voiceless and a refuge for the vulnerable.  Now is the time for action and for change.’

Rosie Harper spoke a little later.  She asked the perennial questions which are on the lips of every survivor.  ‘What has really changed?  Can the bishops be held accountable for implementing their promises?’  The patronising answer she had received was ‘along the lines of trust me I’m a bishop’.  There had been changes but what had not changed was the way ‘survivors feel about the church response’.  In Rosie’s words, survivors ‘are still waiting for genuine Christian and human interaction’.  They know ……’that they are still spoken about as difficult or persistent and vexatious or tricky or damaged and they wait.  They wait for apologies. They wait for fair and just restitution, they wait for proper pastoral care’.  This theme of waiting underlies much of what Rosie went on to say.  She spoke of a Iwerne survivor who had been waiting seven years for some kind of response from the Church. She concluded her remarks with a plea to the House of Bishops to put the Archbishop’s promise to put survivors ‘at the centre of what we do’ and make it a reality.  She looked for accountability in those who have responsibility for putting things right.  There needs to be ‘consequences for failure in this area.’  

Some powerful words from Martin Sewell followed.  He was a co-author of the amendment, which was now before Synod in its revised form.  In Martin’s words: ‘Last week Bp Jonathan acted decisively encouraging his colleagues in accepting that the initial motion (before the amendment was added) was in no way good enough; it was not a proper response to the Peter Ball story.   Anger and frustration is widespread not only among survivors but in the church itself.’  Martin went on to speak about the word ‘redress’. ‘For victims it means hope.  It means binding up the wounds of victims beyond what the lawyers advise.  It means actively nurturing victims back to as much wholeness as possible in a host of ways, even if they (the survivors) never can forgive us.  Christ requires nothing less; ask the Good Samaritan for details.  Don’t ask the Levites and don’t ask the reputation management consultants.’  He continued: ‘Don’t let any of us professing Christians here dare to think about letting them down again.  Bp Jonathan told us yesterday at the safeguarding fringe meeting that he has talked to his colleagues and he has assured that they know that restorative justice will be costly.  To their great credit they have accepted that this is the right thing to do’.  Martin’s final words covered the theme of love in action, linking them to Archbishop Justin’s words on the topic.  Such love is costly in every sense of the word.   In an allusion to the mythical kingdom of Narnia, Martin ended with these words: ‘My friends the ice is cracking, come with us on this journey of penitence and hope.’

The presentation of Susie Leaf indicated a degree of personal experience of a bullying abusive scenario, not fully spelt out.  Evidently the memory of these experiences had been in part triggered by the publicity over Jonathan Fletcher last year.  Her response to her own and other people’s experience of bullying and abuse was to encourage listening to victims, speak up as much as one can and prevent secrecy.  She stressed the importance of all Christians in taking responsibility to remove this evil.  Susie kept the attention of her listeners and every word seemed to echo deep personal connection, both with an experience of abuse and with those she was in touch with among survivors/victims.

Julie Conalty, an Archdeacon in the Rochester diocese, gave us the sense of someone firmly connected to the topic of safeguarding.  She was also in touch with both the survivors and the efforts to help them.  She had realised that rather than bemoaning the issues of support and settlements to survivors, it was up to her to take action and use her position within the structure to help to make changes.  She was in the position to ask awkward questions both of church lawyers and insurance companies.  If such individuals were not delivering ethical behaviour in their dealing with survivors, then it was up to the Church to consider changing and moving their custom elsewhere.   The Church was committed to ‘do justly and act mercifully’ and it was always right to ask awkward questions of others when these principles are being betrayed.  Her final words were as follows.  ‘Survivors are watching and wanting to help us but we must not hold out hope and disappoint them we must go back to our dioceses and do something’.

Peter Adams signalled how he welcomed the motion and the amendment.  He gave us the story of Robert who had been abused as a cathedral chorister sixty years ago.  Peter’s encounters with other abuse victims had given a clear sense of what was involved in a lifelong impact exposure to trauma and PTSD.   Such trauma affects people in different ways.  Some get to live a relatively normal life. For others, ‘the depression in dark times comes upon them unexpectedly.  Too often, others find it hard to keep down a job decades after their abuse. Almost all tell of how life gets harder and even more so when they are not believed again and again.’ Paul concluded with these words: ‘ ‘We need to learn from our survivors suffering from trauma and PTSD.  Those who have been deeply wounded need appropriate redress.  Child sexual abuse can have a trauma that impacts individuals for the rest of their lives. Nothing we will do will change that but today we can lay a foundation for a response to make that journey easier.’

Debbie Buggs drew the attention of Synod to a poster which was being hung from the gallery but invisible to those of us watching at home.  It stated simply the contrast between the cost of £23.5 million which had been spent on the new library at Lambeth Palace and the allocation of £0 to the cause of supporting survivors.

John Spence, a senior member of Archbishop’s Council, left us with a few words suggesting that real change is on its way.  ’Let us be very clear, this is not about affordability; this is about justice. Justice cannot have a value according to the finances of this or that.  Whatever we are told is required by those responsible is required for redress, those funds will be found.’

In my last post, I suggested that the way power operates in the Church of England has some similarities to a system of government in an Eastern European communist regime.  Two centres of power seem to exist.  One is equivalent to a central politburo, a hidden cabal of power answerable only to itself.  The other is a parliament-type structure which is the public face of power.  Here the power that it possesses is at best merely advisory.  We should be careful not to press this analogy too far, but there has recently been some evidence of conflict between a powerful central Church executive and members of Synod. This has been over a proposed amendment to a proposal in General Synod connected with a safeguarding debate due to take place tomorrow morning (Wednesday 12th).

Let us retrace our steps so we can understand better this power conflict as it is currently being played out.  As things stand currently, there does seem to be a state of calm and unanimity between both sides.  In preparation for the current Synod meeting in Westminster, a proposal about safeguarding was sent out to members in preparation for the debate due to take place tomorrow morning (Wednesday).  The paper, officially entitled GS 2158, contains the official Church response to the recommendations of IICSA. IICSA had made five recommendations as part of its reports to the Church.  The Archbishops’ Council, having studied these reports, is signifiying its intention to pursue these recommendations in full.  Although GS 2158 is an important document, it does not really engage with some of the issues that survivors and their supporters are looking for from Synod.  Several proposed amendments to GS 2158 were lodged by a group of Synod members with managers of Synod and these were also placed on this blog by David Lamming on February 5^th .  It was an attempt by the authors to move the debate on from the rather dry committeesque language of the original AC proposal to something that contained a real sense of emotional engagement with the topic and the survivors themselves.  Among its ideas, it wanted the notion of lament to be expressed.  It also suggested that the Church’s response might mirror the response of the Blackburn diocese to the IICSA findings.  This Blackburn document, examined on this blog last year, had genuinely tried to give a real sense of the need to honour survivors and respond to them appropriately.  The Lamming et al. amendment also called for concrete proposals to help survivors, while allowing Synod the power of oversight for ensuring that the task of care actually took place.

We then heard, in the middle of last week, that the members’ amendment to GS 2158 had been overruled.  For a day or so it looked as if Synod was to be in direct conflict with Synod business managers for reasons that were not immediately evident.  Then last Friday it was announced that the new lead Bishop for Safeguarding, Jonathan Gibbs, had ‘rescued’ the Lamming proposal and had succeeded in getting a version of it on the agenda for the debate that is to happen tomorrow on Wednesday.  Jonathan Gibbs, Bishop of Huddersfield, is a fresh face in the Safeguarding world.  Although he is not a Diocesan bishop, he is, by all accounts, someone whose loyalty is above all to issues of justice alongside the pastoral and practical care of survivors.  He is also, as the lead safeguarding bishop, the chair of the National Safeguarding Steering Group. The amendment goes as follows: The Bishop of Huddersfield to move the following amendment– ……..(b) welcome the statement in paragraph 4.1 of the response that the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG) “remains committed to ensuring that words of apology are followed by concrete actions”; (c) urge the NSSG to bring forward proposals to give effect to that commitment that follow a more fully survivor-centred approach to safeguarding, including arrangements for redress for survivors; (d) request that the NSSG keep the Synod updated on the development and implementation of responses to recommendations relating to the Church of England that are made by the Inquiry, including by submitting a report for debate by the Synod not later than July 2021.”.’

Although the original Lamming amendment has been substantially shortened, there are in this proposal some decisive changes of mood to be discerned.  The NSSG as a body, hitherto beyond the direct control of Synod, is now being made accountable to them in this proposal.  It will be hard for the NSSG to be able to ignore Synod when it has been ‘requested’ both to adopt a survivor-centred approach and also keep the Synod updated on the progress of the ‘concrete actions’ that are expected.

To use the analogy of the previous blog post, the parliament of the communist country is flexing its muscles and demanding power back from the old guard in the central politburo.  To use another analogy, the ice is breaking and the thaw, long awaited for by survivors, has begun.  That Jonathan Gibbs’ proposal has reached the agenda at all does suggest a hidden palace revolution.  The NSSG represents the establishment in the Church with only senior church leaders and legal representatives as members.  There are no survivors present.  Now that this group is being required to put survivors at the centre, it is hard to see that they can stop the atmosphere changing decisively.  The establishment point of view, which could be summed up briefly by uttering the mantra ‘preserve the assets and the institutional reputation above everything else’, has to change.  If Bishop Jonathan Gibbs is successful, a revolution at the centre to serve survivors far better, has begun.

Tomorrow, General Synod is likely to pass an amendment containing the following words.  Each of them will be sweet to the ears of survivors.  Apology, concrete actions, a more fully survivor-centred approach to safeguarding, redress for survivors, request that the NSSG keep the Synod updated, implementation of a report for debate.

I hope that some of those who read this will be able to watch the streamed debate from Synod on Wednesday 12^th February.  By any measure it will be one of the most important in the hitherto tortuous history of safeguarding practice in the Church of England to date.

One of the ways that this blog is maturing is in the way that it is beginning to develop a feeling of ‘we’ about it.  One regular contributor spoke of Surviving Church as being for him a virtual church.  I am not going to argue for or against this notion but I am certainly pleased when commenters say they feel ‘safe’ in each other’s company.  I am always grateful when there is a contribution to what I write in terms of new information or helpful discussion.  Today I am particularly grateful to ‘Froghole’ both for having interacted with one of my posts and set me off on a new path of reflection about the Church of England.  Froghole gave us the vivid fantasised image of someone important at Church House sitting down with an actuary, in order to make a decision about the way that the Church of England was going to deal with future claims of compensation for past abuses.  This process of calculation, he suggested in a memorable phrase, would be based on ‘balance sheet thinking’.  The outcome of the calculation in this fantasy exchange produced the conclusion that it was better for the Church’s future survival never to admit liability.   Froghole suggested that the ‘ethical and reputational pain’ which the Church would suffer as the result of this calculation would be regarded as worth it for the sake of the future financial viability of the institution.

I want to think through this picture that Froghole has shared with us.  The key points in the current survivor/Church fall-out are made easier to grasp by this construction from the imagination.  It has the effect of simplifying a quite complex issue into a simple us-them scenario.  On the one side we have the as yet uncalculated number of people who have legitimate claims against the church.  They need to be heard and receive all the help they require, financial and otherwise, for the abuses they have suffered.  On the other side is ‘them’, leaders of a large wealthy institution, the Church.  The leaders of the Church evidently believe that they have to do everything possible to protect themselves against these claims.  It is a potential nightmare scenario for the Church, especially as it has no way of estimating the potential financial liabilities that may be demanded of it in the future.

Setting out the problem as a confrontation between two sides who have such different perspectives obviously risks becoming a caricature.  But there is enough of value in this picture to help us tease out further nuances that are present.  Because we are talking about the Church in this scenario, we have to recognise that there will be ethical factors to be taken into account.  The most obvious of these is the imperative of the priority of love.  This has the practical effect that ‘adversarial’ encounters with claimants should be declared inappropriate and unbecoming.  If you claim to love everyone as part of your faith position, it is then not possible to treat them as an enemy.  Nor is it right to set up obstructions which prevent a claimant finding the best solutions to resolve pain and promote their healing.  We would expect to see dissonance in the body language of someone who is trying to promote love and balance sheet thinking at the same time.  That, sadly, is exactly what we did see in the body language of the Archbishop of Canterbury when being interviewed about safeguarding issues.  He often appeared conflicted in these encounters.  On the one side he showed real and genuine remorse for the sufferings of the abused.   At the same appearing unable to say anything practical or pastoral which might have sounded really helpful to survivors.  It is as though there was a mysterious powerful force just off camera.  This was controlling him and preventing him going further in his expressions of regret and sorrow.

Our commentator, Froghole, has something further to say about the power that exists at the heart of the Church.  He suggests that we should not look to Synod to find the source of real power in the Church but to the Bishops and the Commissioners.  This group (Diocesan bishops are ex-officio Commissioners) forms an ‘executive’ where most of the real power is invested.  This power, Froghole claims, arises from their access to the funds of the Commissioners.  Decisions as to the extent of financial support of abuse survivors will be, no doubt, decided by small committees within this group.  Within these committees will be mainly the voices of those fully immersed in the ‘balance sheet’ ways of thinking.  It is unlikely that the minutes of such meetings will ever be shared with ordinary church people or even the members of Synod.

The public face of the government of the Church of England is General Synod.  It is, however, becoming clear, especially over the past few months, that the ‘managers’, members of the powerful ‘executive’, are in charge.  At the same time these managers are becoming increasingly out of step with GS members.  The points of disagreement seem frequently to be over the same issues that concern this blog – safeguarding and abuse.  A recent attempt by the executive to control the interests of members was seen in the way that an amendment by David Lamming and Martin Sewell on safeguarding was peremptorily declared to be out of order.  The original content of that proposal is to be found in one of the comments from David on a recent post.  The detailed points that are made in this amendment are not important here, but it was the way that a challenge to the centres of power was received.  That is telling.  As I write I am aware that something is being rescued from the rejected motion and the drama will be played in the course of next week at the full meeting of Synod in London.

In my own mind, thanks to Froghole, I have begun to think of the management of the Church of England as being a bit like an enormous juggernaut of power, similar to a political system in the former East Germany or Soviet Russia.  Each authoritarian political system has its own public elected body or parliament.  They pass laws but real power lies elsewhere out of sight.  In the case of the Church of England, power seems to lie not with Synod but with its executive, the Commissioners or the committees that do its day to day work.  In recent history, the juggernauts of power represented by Apartheid or the Eastern European regimes were replaced, not because of direct confrontation but through subtle pressure over a period of time.  The final victory came about because the powerful side glimpsed how, in the long term, it has to give way to justice and ethical behaviour.  It will always be wrong to oppress and pile on suffering on those who are already in pain, as is happening with survivors.  The challengers to the ‘balance sheet rulers’ of the Church of England are the survivors, their supporters and the weight of moral opinion in society at large.  The pressure is continuous and continuing.  At some point in the not too distant future it will occur to institutional leaders that, although they still have structural and institutional power, they do not have moral power.  Without the latter they must know that their stance towards survivors cannot be sustained in the long term.  It was the moral authority of Nelson Mandela that destroyed Apartheid.  There is no obvious single Mandela figure to defeat the balance sheet thinking of our church leadership.   There are however a number of us who claim that it is right to continue to struggle on behalf of many who have endured decades of pain, made worse by the indifference of a Church that still seems so often not to understand.

An open letter to all members of the Church of England General Synod, from victims and survivors of abuse in the Church of England

At your meeting next week, you will once again debate safeguarding in the Church of England. In February 2018 and February 2019, we sent you booklets called We asked for bread, but you gave us stones. In them, we spoke to you about the experience that victims of abuse face in dealing with your church. We also spoke to you in our book Letters to a Broken Church. We haven’t produced a booklet this year, because we have nothing new to add. For all the TV documentaries and shocking headlines, all the money wasted on undelivered schemes, and all the synod motions, not to mention the handwringing of archbishops, almost nothing has changed during this synod for victims of church abuse. The church still treats us as if we are a problem to be fixed. The restorative approach suggested by last year’s helpful ‘Ad Clerum’ from Blackburn Diocese (which you were prevented from discussing last time you met) is nowhere to be seen.

The motion that you will be asked to approve at this synod simply says that you will endorse the Archbishops’ Council’s response to the five recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Our response is – is that all? IICSA has been a traumatic and costly experience for many of us. The minimum we would expect is that you will accept its recommendations wholeheartedly and without hesitation. And we expect and demand that you accept whatever further recommendations come from IICSA in the report they will publish this Summer. Shame alone ought to be enough for you to do that.

We believe that you should go much further.

We hear repeatedly that the church is spending more and more money on safeguarding. Of course, we agree that preventative safeguarding should be given a high priority. But you also need to give attention to what happens when safeguarding has failed. You need to know that as far as we can see, the church has made no progress at all in caring for victims and survivors of clergy and church-related abuse. The much-vaunted “Safe Spaces” initiative has swallowed hundreds of thousands of pounds, and five years on nothing has been delivered. Without the dogged and costly work that survivors do in caring for each other, there would be even greater tragedies to report.

Synod members, please don’t issue another apology. Please don’t tell us how important it is to “listen to survivors.” Please don’t set up another half-baked inquiry or a working group. Your apologies are hollow, and your promises are empty because nothing changes. Please don’t leave this to the House of Bishops either. We don’t trust them. Too often our experience is that a small group of men at the heart of the church deploy their power, with the help of the church’s lawyers and insurers, to cover up wrong-doing and avoid caring for victims. We find ourselves constantly re-abused by the church’s responses to us.

We need you to acknowledge that you do not have the competence or the right to clear up your own mess. We need independent people we can go to to report abuse and find support; people who are not part of the church, and don’t wear the same uniform that our abusers wore. We need you to use your power as a synod to establish a properly funded scheme for support, compensation and redress for victims of church abuse. This is not
because we want your money. It is because being abused in church (or anywhere else) not only steals the victim’s dignity and self-respect. It also robs them of their livelihood, their security, their future, their health. More than half of all victims of abuse suffer long-term illness. We need you to pay for counselling; we need you to help us with living costs; we need you to fill in the gaps in our pensions. These are debts you as a church have incurred. Why should we routinely have to go cap in hand to bishops for help, only to be told you have no money and no resources? Why should we have to worry about housing costs, while our abusers live securely in vicarages and palaces? Why should so many of us find ourselves worse off as a direct result of disclosing our abuse to the church? A properly-funded redress scheme will cost many millions of pounds. But please don’t say that you have no money. It hasn’t escaped our attention that before they have attended to the needs of victims, the Church Commissioners have found £21million for a new library at Lambeth Palace.

If there is any good news, it is that an increasing number of General Synod Members in all three Houses know that radical change is necessary. Perhaps the best thing you could do for us is to set a clear and purposeful direction of travel for the next Safeguarding Bishop, and for members of the Synod to be elected later this year. The motion before you is anodyne, but the amendments we have seen seem to have some teeth. Perhaps, if enacted, they could lay the groundwork for progress. We urge you to adopt these amendments and begin the task of reconciliation with those who have been wronged.

Signed by victims of abuse by

Rt Revd Peter Ball

Rt Revd Victor Whitsey

Rt Revd Michael Fisher

The Venerable Tom Walker

The Very Revd (action ongoing)

Revd Roy Cotton

Revd Colin Pritchard

Revd Chancellor Garth Moore

Revd Jonathan Fletcher

Revd Trevor Devamannikam

John Smyth QC

Revd ** (name withheld at victim’s request)

Many of us have been following the Senate ‘trial’ of Donald Trump over in the States.  The word trial here deserves the use of inverted commas since, as many commentators have pointed out, the process we have been watching fails to qualify as a proper trial.  In thinking about what would constitute a real trial, my mind went back to the Prayer Book translation of Psalm 12.  There we have the image that God’s word is like ‘silver which from the earth is tried and purified seven times in the fire’.  The ancient peoples long ago had discovered by experiment that precious metals have a different boiling point from the other minerals with which they are sometimes combined in a natural state.  To get silver back to a pure metal, you would have to heat it up to its boiling point several times so that the impurities can be removed.  Eventually the mineral left behind will be the highly prized metal in its pure state.

From the rough description we have in Psalm 12 of the process of purifying silver, we can see that a ‘trial’ is no gentle process.  ‘Trying’ silver was laborious, complicated and probably dangerous for the craftsmen who did it.  When the word ‘try’ comes to be applied to a legal process, we need to have in mind this meaning of the word in the context of smelting.  Trying an accused person who has potentially committed a crime has to be rigorous.  When there is no detailed questioning, consultation of documents or hearing the testimony of witnesses, it is hard to see that a trial in any meaningful sense has taken place.  When these common-sense procedures are omitted, the word trial is hardly appropriate to describe what has happened.  ‘Trial’ in its biblical sense was a tough searing process.  Silver does not become pure merely by washing it in a stream.

Moving on from the legal shenanigans of American politics to issues nearer home, we seem sometimes to have problems of finding honesty and truth within the administration of the Church of England.  The complaint of numerous survivors against the Church of England is that many of the processes they have to face are neither truthful nor honest.  First of all, survivors constantly complain of the adversarial process that treats them as an enemy to be defeated even when the facts of their abuse are uncontested.  It would be fair to expect that the party who had been wronged, in this case the abuse victim, would be allowed to act as prosecutor against the authorities whose blindness and naivety may have contributed to the abuse.  This of course does not happen and further, the survivor very quickly may find him/herself playing the role of an offender on trial.  Instead of the Church supporting them because of their ordeal, victims of abuse routinely find themselves at the wrong end of hostile questions from church lawyers.   The interview with Professor Julie Macfarlane on a recent Radio 4 Sunday programme, following her powerful testimony to the IICSA hearings, gave us the word ‘brutal’ to describe this process.  As a legal expert herself, she found it difficult to endure the attempts to break her down rather than believe her clear testimony of abuse.  Today Tuesday 4^th, we are hearing further revelations about the way that the Church’s insurer, the EIG, has used ethically questionable tactics of legal process in order to cap their financial liabilities. There was, in one case, a reliance on psychiatric ‘expert opinion’ which was admitted to the process even when a survivor, known as Tony, had not met the ‘expert’.  Julie also described her experience of the way that the Church authorities distance themselves from the process even when the clear facts of abuse had become accepted by all.  To quote the interview: They (the Church) were completely at arms’ length at the criminal trial.  I think that that is wrong.  ……Here everybody knows that these things happened, I think that the Church should have been proactive in making a supportive statement towards the two complainants – myself and the other complainant.  My experience over the years of talking to the Church about this issue is that they talk out of both sides of their mouths.  In public they talk about their deep sorrow and remorse.  In reality, in civil cases they are playing the most aggressive litigation game imaginable. …..They are vigorously resisting the truth of what happened.  If the Church really meant what it says about being sorrowful about the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands worldwide victims of clerical abuse, they would be finding a way to encourage people to come forward.

It is hard not to see a parallel between the Church of England and their legal representatives and the Republican party in the States. Both use the law and their wealth to manipulate the processes of the legal system.  The importance of establishing actual truth does not appear to be important for either of these entities.  We might expect a political party to play games with the legal system but not the Church.  Protestations of ‘sorrow and remorse’ should and can be followed up but there is little sign of this in practice.  All that matters, all that the Church seems to care about, aided and abetted by lawyers and insurers, is that the narrow financial and reputational interests of the institution are preserved. It is very hard for individuals to fight against such a well-funded institution which can, through its wealth, block the pursuit of real justice.  Even when sums of money are handed to survivors who have made complaints against the Church, the sums involved are relatively small.  No individual can ever afford the costs of a full-blown trial.  The Church, represented by its lawyers, will always fend off such attempts to find full justice.  A full-blown trial, complete with a jury will never happen.  The Church is constantly focussed, like Trump, in never letting the truth come out fully and completely.

In spite of the enormous power that the Church (and the Republican party) has with which to fend off proper scrutiny and trial of its actions in the past, there is another institution in society which does a good job of holding it (them) to account.  I am of course referring to the Press and the makers of television programmes.  There is little the Church can do to stop exposes of incompetent and sometimes criminal behaviour which flood into the living rooms of the nation.  Because these programmes and newspaper stories are meticulously researched, they never seem to fall foul of the legal system.  They offer encouragement to abused individuals who have had their voices shut down by non-disclosure agreements and the active hostility of Church leaders.  Those of us who are still part of the Church are constantly puzzled and dismayed by the way our Churches leaders find it so difficult to reach out proactively to survivors.  Cups of tea and the time given to listening would seem a cheap way of starting the process of healing.  Employing expensive lawyers to fight every settlement claim in an environment of conflict and confrontation does not in any way promote gospel values of reconciliation and peace.   

Two years ago, I attended the General Synod in London as an observer/protester.  Two years on I sense that there is now a greater body of opinion within that Synod itself to do the ‘right thing’ with survivors rather just defend the assets and reputation of the institution. Members of Synod are lobbying fellow members.  The effect of letters to the Church Times, active lobbying and critical broadcasts has meant that the church authorities cannot so easily hide behind legal processes and unfulfilled promises.  Each time a review is announced, there will be an army of tweeters and others to check up on progress and ask awkward questions about the process.   The next two weeks will be interesting.  Will the Synod sense of fair play and justice be sufficiently to ride over all the legal defensiveness of the Church authorities?  Will the voices of survivors be properly heard?  In America, there has been a similar process in the political system, but we can hope that this desire for change and escape from the past will happen through the democratic process of an election.  The process of the Church revealing and facing up to the appalling past events of sexual abuse cannot happen in the same way.  But we can still hope that the trial, the purification and the cleansing of these two institutions is close.  Although there are many problems for the Church of the future, we can still have confidence that it is able to go through the equivalent of a seven-fold purification and come out the other end, honest and still empowered and led by the Spirit of God.

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I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest: for it is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in safety. Psalm 4

These words from Psalm 4, familiar to many of us from their use in the Office of Compline, were swirling around my head in a period of wakefulness the other night.  I found myself drawn to thinking about the final word in the passage, safety.  This particular word is popping all the time in Christian discourse in one of its various forms.  Indeed, one of its cognates, salvation, could be said to sum up one of the most important theological ideas for Christianity.   But the word in Ps 4 took me to a different place and reminded me of a recent discussion on the blog post written by Andrew Lightbown.   He was describing his search to find a church for his gay disabled daughter to attend over Christmas in her area.  Her request had included the condition that it had to be a church where ‘I feel safe’.  We can use our imaginations to fill in the features that she feared finding in a random church where her lifestyle might be scrutinised and found wanting.  Indeed, one of those who were consulted in the quest, replied that they would have an easier task In listing the ‘unsafe’ churches in the area.  Andrew’s enquiries for his daughter were, in fact, successful and the story has a happy ending.  The daughter and her partner were welcomed, people spoke to them including the Vicar.  They glimpsed a pattern of inclusion and welcome that they had possibly come to believe had disappeared from churches everywhere. For an hour or so they were able to return to a place that linked God to their longing for inclusion and safety.

The other closely aligned word ‘salvation’ is one that has, as we have indicated, enormous biblical and theological weight.  I started to ask myself whether this related word, safety, should be given comparable status and importance.  Surely to be safe in church is as important as being saved.  We are not of course just talking about safety meaning freedom from harm, whatever form this harm might take.  The safety that we trust was experienced by the two women on Christmas night was one with a positive spiritual dimension.  Their experience of safety was to be connected to God without feeling in any way judged or condemned.  The Church is called to be safe in both these ways.  If God is indeed a being who accepts, forgives and loves us, that is an ultimate experience of being safe.  We are certainly not at the same time being promised a free pass in terms of the standards of goodness he expects of us.  Nevertheless, he invites to make this journey towards him without fear.  To speak of God as a ‘safe’ God gives us the right never to feel manipulated by messages of terror coming from a pulpit.   A safe God is not one who controls followers with messages of terror and fear.   Rather we are invited to ‘enter his courts’ and there find meaning, refreshment and peace.

A further aspect in this focus on safety in a church, is in the way that this gift of being included teaches us something of our responsibilities and challenges for us as Christians.  To put the issue at its simplest, if God accepts and includes us, we are to do the same for others.  Looking around a typical congregation on a Sunday morning, we can react in a number of ways. One is to look for people like ourselves to talk to.  The other approach is to realise that the people who are most unlike us are the people we should be reaching out to.  After all, if we celebrate and worship a God who has reached out to us, should we not be returning the compliment, so to speak?  God has offered us a place of safety and inclusion and we are being invited to offer the same to others.

Safety is a very good word to summarise both what we have to receive in church as well as what we have potentially to give.  But this single word can be unpacked still further. I have not begun to explore, for example, the gift of safety which is offered to those who are embarking on their final journey from life to death.  Much could be said about the ministry to the dying, the words of commendation into the arms of a generous and loving God.  But there is more to be said about this language of safety.  We have to note that the way it contrasts sharply with the language of exclusion that we hear so frequently in our churches.  When a pronouncement appears such as we have recently heard from the English bishops on the topic of marriage, our hearts sink.  In one stroke the intimate relationships of countless faithful Christians are declared immoral and against God’s law.  At the very least, swathes of Christians cease to feel safe.   The language and message of generous inclusion which we believe is part of a Gospel church is left behind.   Whenever we hear the language of exclusion, we are back to a style of church life that deals in the currency of fear, control and coercion.  How can such language ever be considered good news? It has the harsh heritage of the Puritan Reformation within its thinking.  These 16^th century Fathers dwelt in certainties, the need to exclude the ungodly and promote the ‘righteous’, very narrowly defined, on their way to salvation and heaven.  To me this language is ugly.   It runs counter to the generosity of God that I and many others identify as being his will and embodied in the proclamation of Jesus.   I personally have a bad relationship with this word ‘salvation’ because of the way it so often evokes the language of coercion and implied threat.  It often seems to be also linked with an unhealthy interest in other people’s sex lives.  I dread the general atmosphere of righteous disapproval that is spread around while it is being used.  Salvation, as an idea embedded in people’s consciousness, seems to do little to inspire anyone towards a path of joy, generosity and inclusiveness.  It in fact seems frequently to drive them inwards towards individualism and introversion.  One book I know describes an obsession with the state of one’s soul as an ‘evangelical anorexia nervosa’.  Of course, we need the word salvation and the teaching and doctrine that it contains.  What we do not need is the way that it has, in so many places, become identified with fear, authoritarian teaching and blind obedience.  When the word safety is used within such a culture, it also takes on a different meaning from the one we have suggested above.  It comes to be linked with the idea that one’s eternal fate is tied up with holding on to the prescribed rules of one particular church or its leader.  To be safe in this setting is to obey.  There is little trace of a truth that sets one free.  The breadth, the height and depth of faith seems to be restricted here to what one minister has to say to his congregation. There is no room here for exploration, adventure or questioning in this dull world of grey orthodox conformity.  

Currently the Church of England is entering a period of profound crisis.  The House of Bishops has chosen, no doubt in order to meet the demands of a conservative group of Anglican Bishops from Africa prior to Lambeth 2020, to issue a pastoral statement on marriage.  This is not the place to comment critically on the content of this document which sets out the ‘orthodox’ position on marriage.  Others have done so, including a number of the individual bishops themselves.   What can be commented on here is the style of communication.  The teaching document style, setting out a prescriptive text with undertakings to ‘discipline’ those in disagreement, echoes the old fear-laden dogmatic teaching of the Puritans.  ‘Unless you believe/do this, you are damned’.  While the bishops themselves would probably want to distance themselves from understanding their teaching in this way, we can point out there is in the document no invitation to debate, to learn or to live with the insights of others within their words.  In trying to appease the concerns of those who are boycotting Lambeth, the bishops in England have copied their language style – the Gafconesque adherence to the old in/out language of salvation.  At some point, in the not too distant future, the Church is going to have to make a choice.  Will it continue to travel along this path of ‘salvation’, the binary world of damned/saved thinking?  Will it rather embrace the path that proclaims safety and a welcoming, generous God who reaches out to hold us in spite of all our choices and failings?

One summer Sunday afternoon in 1988, I was in the provost’s vestry of Bradford Cathedral, assisting the Bishop of Bradford to robe. I often did this, since as the junior member of clergy I was the bishop’s chaplain when he visited the cathedral. What was out of the ordinary that day was the group of people gathered there. Along with the bishop, Roy Williamson, and the Provost, Brandon Jackson, were David Penman, Archbishop of Melbourne (Australia); and Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town (South Africa). The latter two were in England for the Lambeth Conference. Archbishop Tutu was scheduled to preach at the cathedral evensong before we all went on to a mass rally at Valley Parade football ground, where Archbishop Tutu would be speaking again.

This group of powerful men began discussing the vexed question of women’s ordination.  South Africa and Australia had ordained their first women deacons in 1985; England in 1987. None yet ordained women as priests. The great men were discussing if and when women should be admitted to the priesthood.  I listened meekly until Desmond Tutu concluded, ‘There’s no hurry.’  I spoke on impulse:  ’Time passes slowly when you’re being oppressed, doesn’t it, Archbishop?’ There was a short silence. Without replying, the men turned to other topics.

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa eventually ordained women as priests in 1992, as did the Anglican Church of Australia. The Church of England followed in 1994.

I have recounted that incident in the provost’s vestry to very few people. To tell the truth, I was embarrassed at the part I had played in it; I felt that I had been impertinent to speak out as I did. After all I was a very junior member of clergy and these men were all very senior.

A few months ago, however, I did relate it to Christina Rees CBE, a founding member of the Archbishops’ Council and formerly Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church) and a member of the General Synod for 25 years. Christina had a very different take on it. It was extraordinary, she pointed out, that a group of men should discuss women’s ordination while totally ignoring the ordained (and robed) woman who was with them. Even Desmond Tutu, a noted civil rights activist, had not thought to recognise my presence or ask for my views. I was not acknowledged even when I spoke.

The idea of deference to rank was so deeply ingrained in the Church that even a good man Like Tutu could discuss women’s ordination in front of an ordained woman while completely ignoring her. They certainly did not think they had anything to gain by hearing my perspective on the matter. The arrogance of this ought to be breathtaking, yet it betrays something of the culture of the Church.

In my first year of training at Wycliffe there were only 5 of us women, and 95 men. My fellow trainee Lynda Rose recounted an incident which occurred during a mission she was on in the spring of 1985. One of the local people enquired of the tutor leading the group whether the Wycliffe women then training to be deacons had aspirations to the priesthood. No, he replied immediately, they hadn’t. Lynda promptly responded that actually all 5 of us felt we were called to be priests. When the incident was discussed later the tutor’s reaction was, ‘Don’t discuss women’s ordination, it’s a minefield!’ None of the teaching staff had asked the women students regarding our vocations; they simply assumed that we didn’t want to be priests. And the lesson the tutor had taken from this was not, ‘I shouldn’t assume I know what people think before I’ve asked them,’ or even, ‘Next time I’m asked for someone’s views, I’ll let them speak for themselves.’ Instead he had labelled the whole topic as dangerous and to be avoided. Women are tricky, let’s not discuss them!

In my files I have an order paper from a long-ago General Synod, which was due to discuss the report ‘Making Women Visible’. The debate was listed instead as ‘Making Women Invisible’ – a typo which was perhaps a more honest reflection of the Church of England’s intentions.

My recent reflections have not concerned merely the behaviour of the prelates in the provost’s vestry, however. In 1988 I was already a feminist and I later became an activist, but for more than 30 years I had never questioned my feeling that I should not have spoken out. In fact, my shame at having done so had kept me silent all that time. I have come to see that that too is extraordinary. I come from a nonconformist and independent-minded background and had had none of the awe  of the hierarchy with which many Anglicans are brought up; yet in barely a year I had internalised the view that women and junior clergy should be invisible and inaudible. No doubt my critics will say I was never very good at being silent, but the fact remains that for the whole of my ministry I felt uneasy and even guilty whenever I spoke out. And I was all too aware of the disapproval of my seniors when I did so.

IICSA identified deference as one of the reasons why abuse could so tragically flourish in our Church. It is so much a part our Church’s culture – and that of the Anglican Communion as a whole – that usually we don’t even think to question it. But it corrodes our sense of common humanity and impedes justice; what in biblical terms is called ‘righteousness’.

Deference to Peter Ball’s rank as bishop, his class and social standing, along with his immense personal magnetism, hindered many from discerning his narcissism or believing the allegations against him. Ball was a bishop and a bishop would not do such evil things. Deference means that college tutors don’t have to value their ordinands’ experience outside the Church. Deference means that bishops can pronounce on all sorts of matters of which they have no real experience, while ignoring the perspective of those who do. Deference prevents Church leaders from accepting what survivors of Church abuse have to offer.

Let’s put an end to deference. It’s destructive.