January/February 2024 are months when a decisive shift may take place in the Church of England.  The shift that is looked for is linked to the promised publication of a report by Professor Alexis Jay on C/E safeguarding.  This report promises to take a hard look at this area of the Church’s life and make some recommendations for the future.  None of us know what those recommendations will consist of, but we hope that they will be marked by the same fearless independence that Jay has shown up till now.  After her lengthy exposure to the internal operations of the Church of England at the highest level during the IICSA hearings, Jay knows how the system works.  It is likely that she realises that allowing the Church to continue to manage its safeguarding responsibilities in the future, without external oversight, will prove to be potentially disastrous.  Her professional background and her understanding of church dynamics in the C/E at General Synod and Archbishops’ Council level, has prompted her to take a strongly independent line right from the beginning of her investigations.  Jay has publicly stated that she will not tolerate any attempted interference which seeks to undermine or compromise the integrity of her investigations.  This strongly independent line taken by Jay is backed up by her decision to see her interviewees only in locations that have no links with church institutions.  

We still do not have the Jay report at the time of writing, but we do have hopes and expectations that it will be a thorough piece of work.  What do we know so far?  It became apparent early on in the process that Jay was not attempting to do a safeguarding survey of every diocese in the C/E.  She decided to focus on six sample dioceses. I played a tiny part in the overall process by encouraging two individuals known to me, and who lived in one of these six named dioceses, to approach her.  Both did so and reported back that they received what they felt to be highly professional and considerate attention.  The fact that Jay was there to record what was truly going on and not defend an institution involved in safeguarding, meant that each felt heard in a way quite different from that received from church authorities.  Good reports of other interviews have also been shared across social media and this gives everyone following this process good reason to believe that the eventual report will reveal truth and objectivity.

In this waiting period for Jay’s report and recommendations for the Church of England, it is natural for some of us to express our hopes and think out loud over what we would like to see.  The main finding that I would like to see as part of the Report is a conclusion that the Church should hand over completely its safeguarding responsibilities to an independent body.  Such a body would have to be financed by the Church of England, but it would be set up in a way that removed all control from bishops, Archbishops’ Council and the Secretariat at Church House.  Dismantling the existing structures that have appeared in the Church since 2015 with a confusing plethora of acronyms, would be a major piece of work.  If anyone were to propose and redesign from scratch a structure for delivering church safeguarding, it would be a very lengthy document.  I have neither the ability nor interest in even outlining such a reconstruction.  What I offer here are some thoughts on the broad areas that need to be covered by a comprehensive safeguarding body, able to do the work that needs to be done.

Long time readers of this blog will know my propensity for attempting to simplify complex problems or ideas by dividing them into three.  Safeguarding in the Church is one such immensely complicated activity, but it does, to my simple mind, allow itself to be divided up into three distinct strands.  The first manifestation of safeguarding is the point at which it touches almost every church member.  Awareness of safeguarding hazards and dangers has successfully been made part of every church activity down to the parish level.  If this process of teaching safeguarding awareness was the sole content of safeguarding activity, then the Church could be considered to have earned a ‘good’ or ‘satisfactory’ in an imaginary tick-box exercise.  But safeguarding is of course much more than this and the Church cannot in any way be said to achieve even ‘satisfactory’ in these other two strands.

If the first strand to be identified comes under the broad description of training, the second tranche of safeguarding activity may be described as legacy issues.  By these two words I am indicating the enormous amount of work that is still outstanding from the past to put right injustice and the appalling cases of neglect by the Church of vulnerable and damaged people over decades.  The skills required to put right legacy issues are, of course, quite different from those used to manage the massive training programme already undertaken by the Church.  We need a small army of legal experts, psychotherapists and financial experts alongside professional abuse-informed investigators to do the work.  It will not be cheap, and I am not going to suggest how many people it will need to do this aspect of safeguarding.  The main observation I make about this work is to say that just because safeguarding training and safeguarding legacy issues possess a word in common, it does not mean that the work and expertise required for these areas of urgent work should be done by the same people.  The compilers of training courses for the Church cannot be expected to have the necessary skills to pick up the wounded from the side of the road and minister to their emotional and physical needs.

The third area of urgently needed work is a requirement for a skilled cohort to attempt the task of rebuilding trust in the Church as a place of safety.  There has to be a huge effort in trying to wipe away the appalling reputationally destructive events of the past twenty+ years.  We might call this the public relations strand.  The Church has been employing reputation managers and experts in public communication for a long time, but it has been largely unsuccessful in convincing a sceptical public that it is doing a good job at maintaining high standards of transparency, justice and integrity.  Indeed, like a political party that has been in power too long, the Church gives the impression of repeatedly being involved in covering up its own version of sleaze.  This is linked to what looks like a complacent entitlement and an inflated sense of its own importance.  Recent comparisons with the Post Office in Britain, and the way the Church has refused to support victims or thoroughly investigate the guilt or innocence of the accused, have left a sour taste in the mouth of many onlookers.  Working for the Post Office proved to be a dangerous and costly choice for many of its employees.  Working for, or in some way supporting, the Church of England appears to be sometimes equally hazardous.  This public relations strand, which compels the Church to put considerable resources into the task of honest reputation repair, is a vital one.  If the Church demonstrates further examples of destroyed trust, then its survival as a public institution will be under serious threat.

So far, I have identified three distinct strands of safeguarding activity which the Church must engage with even if they are hugely costly in terms of finance and effort.  These strands, named as training, legacy issues and reputational repair, demand the skill and effort of highly qualified individuals and institutions.  If the Church tries to take short cuts as, for example, using the services of inexperienced unqualified people, the long-term damage to the Church will be potentially massive.  What I am hoping to see in Professor Jay’s recommendations is a move to greater professionalism as well as greater independence.  One thing I have not attempted to set out here is a new structure for safeguarding within our Church.  That is for others to do, and I would suggest that it needs to look quite different from the haphazardly evolved arrangements we have at present.  The major point I have wanted to make is that the strands of activity that together make up the enterprise we call safeguarding, require an immense variety of skills.  Lawyers are seldom trained in psychotherapy and managers are not known to be especially trauma-aware.  Setting out all the tasks that need to be done and then identifying the skill sets required, will take a great deal of work and time. I am hoping that Professor Jay also will want to say some of these things to the Church.  I am just an observer right on the edge of the safeguarding enterprise.  Those of us on the margins are sometimes entrusted with information and/or insights that may help the Church get things right in the future as it tries to repair and move on from all that has gone so wrong in the past.

The New Year is traditionally a time for a whole plethora of mixed emotions. Some of these emotions relate to the past and may include a sense of regret or disappointment.  There may also be positive feelings of achievement or success in the face of challenge.  The word ‘new’ evokes for us emotions about the future, both good and bad.  The future possesses an ambiguity.  Alongside hope and excitement there is also a sense of dread of the unknown.  We welcome the new but at the same time we cannot avoid, to a degree, fearing it.

As I was thinking about this idea of newness, especially in its positive aspects, I realised that some people cannot see to welcome the future and the newness that comes into their lives.  I am not here thinking of those who face life-limiting events like injury, poverty or illness. There is a further group of people who take limited pleasure in any thought about the newness of the future.  For this cohort, the idea of change or newness is received as potentially undermining their pattern of life. These individuals have adopted a type of rigid thinking in political or religious matters, and this makes anything new at best uncomfortable and at worst a threat.  A sterility of thought has been adopted which prevents this group from being open to any kind of newness entering their minds.  They are paid-up members of the ‘what I always say’ brigade.  They keep company with the millions of MAGA Americans who blindly follow an authoritarian leader into the desert of mindless and intellectually bankrupt mental inactivity.  The word conservative is applied to such people, though we might find this adjective rather weak as a description of individuals who refuse ever to be open to new ideas and ways of understanding.  The reward they receive for this static outlook is a sense of emotional and intellectual security.  The price that must be paid in adopting this stance is the absence of any joy in celebrating newness or the excitement of discovering fresh horizons of thought and insight.  Instead, such people live within the rigid embrace of the past and the value systems that have been handed down to them.  Newness is a contradiction of what they know and believe.  Among religious conservatives there are many who hold that truth is locked up within a single text. The permitted way of reading that text makes no provision or allowance for change. I mentioned, when discussing the defining beliefs of UCCF, how puzzled I was by the attachment to a compulsory statement of beliefs from the 19^th century.  This must be reaffirmed today by current members without deviation or change. I felt in myself a claustrophobia, a drowning sensation, by the idea that such a list could ever form the basis of my faith.  If I was compelled to affirm such a list, would I also have to turn my back on the wondrous complexity and creativity of Christian revelation that has taken place over 2000 years in every part of the globe?  The enforcers of such a document (among them many leaders of the influential con-evo constituency in the Church of England) seem to be insisting on such a stance.   They are saying in effect: ‘Here there is safety but no newness.  You are not permitted to think outside the box of defined statements.  Loyalty, obedience and correct thinking are demanded of you as the price of membership to our club.  Thinking in any other way is strictly forbidden.’

The attempt to hold conservative Christians inside the ghetto of ‘orthodoxy’ is probably far less successful than the leaders of these groups would like to think.   Policing the thinking of all the members of a congregation is an impossible task.  The current polarisation in the Church of England over attitudes to same-sex relationships would appear to suggest that entire congregations are all in tune with their leaders as to what they think.   That is improbable.   The other factor is that everyone, Christians and non-believers alike who live in our world, are automatically caught up in the wide maelstrom of evolving ideas, fashions and new ways of thinking that are constantly appearing.   In other words, we are all good at adjusting to the new.  In science, industry or human thought, ideas and inventions appear with breath-taking speed. Scientific invention is not an area where I have any speciality, but there is one feature of great inventions and discoveries that I marvel at. This is the fact that in many cases, great ideas seem to occur in more than one place at the same time.  In the case of the telephone, the light bulb and other experimenters with electric power, there seems to have been, almost literally, a race to the patent office.  Something similar seems to have been going on in the 5^th century BC in the Ancient World or 15^th century Italy.  Dozens of artists emerged simultaneously enriching our world enormously.  Discovery feels like an unstoppable process which catches up everyone somewhere in its wake.  Newness and our participation in that newness is part of being human, though there are different expressions of change according to where in the world you live.  We can also see that certain ideas which are commonplace today simply could not have been articulated even ten years earlier. Specialists from every discipline seem to have some part in thinking about or maybe even participating in this process of working out the next new idea.  It may be a genuine discovery, a fashion idea or a new literary trend.  The world of the new is an exciting place to live in.  Among Christians, only members of the Amish community make a serious attempt to resist the new as a way of being faithful to their Christian convictions.  Most of the rest of us are content to play a full part in living in (and enjoying) the modern world which welcomes newness and change.

There is a group of active Christians who are largely ignored by much of the Church so that many people in the pew are not aware of their existence.  The group I am speaking about are the phalanx of researchers and theological professionals.  For a brief time in the past, I was involved in academic research while knowing that I was never aiming to become a lecturer or teacher.  But one thing that my research period gave me was a deep respect for the task of academics in theological faculties around the country, even though their work is ignored and even despised by many in the Church.  

Academic theologians and those who work at the leading-edge of research activity are not asking the rest of us always to agree with or even understand their discoveries and insights. They are simply asking us to accept that in their theological research, new concepts and new insights are always emerging.  This process of seeing newness in theology, as in every other area of knowledge, is a valid one. It is saying that creativity and fresh thinking is part of theology and faith as it is in every other area of human learning.  Attempts by leading evangelical Christians in Britain to draw congregations and individuals into a new conservative grouping which seems to deny newness and change, is an attempt to fly in the face of reality.  Any church or congregation which sets its face against change is likely to be seen as sterile by a new generation.  A reactionary approach to theology in the name of safety and orthodoxy cannot ultimately prevail.  The Church needs to draw on the creative and exciting energy that is found in the thinking of those who embrace the future as well as in the radical changes in society that are constantly being shown us day by day.  Engaging intelligently with the new and the future is part of the task of academic thinkers and ordinary folk alike.  Do Christians really want to be identified with those who try to push back the tide, or can they engage enthusiastically with the new and what lies in the future?

Newness is a category of experience that, however disturbing to those of a conservative temperament, is an inevitable part of the human condition.  At this moment in its history, the Church of England is faced by having to choose between an embrace of the new or the retreat into a stance of rejection.  In writing this I am reminded of a line from a Sidney Carter song ‘it is from the old I travel to the new.’  The so-called liberal Christians are suggesting that there is a theology of newness which presents us with a different approach to truth.  We may not get all the precise definitions that some require.  We find, rather, it must be approached in the way we encounter beauty.  The Christian faith is not, as I have indicated many times, reducible to a formula of words; it is found in a process which involves wonder, awe and a contemplation of a reality which cannot ever be fully expressed in words.  When we arrive at this point of knowing we will be, as the hymn puts it, ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’.

Almost exactly one year ago, Surviving Church carried my blog piece on trauma-informed practice in safeguarding matters. https://survivingchurch.org/2022/12/10/trauma-informed-therapy-some-lessons-for-the-church/   It was a continuation, among other things, of my long-held dissatisfaction over the way that abuse survivors frequently encountered something other than compassionate understanding when seeking to tell their story to authority in the Church. I had noted some time ago that the National Safeguarding Team did not employ a single psychotherapist on its staff.  The dominant NST skill set seemed to lean towards management   I was thus pleased to see that Sarah Wilkinson, in her recent review of church safeguarding protocols, was anxious to emphasise the importance of trauma awareness among those who manage safeguarding at every level.  This is the first sentence of her recommendation on this theme.  ‘Everyone involved in decision making about safeguarding issues at the NCIs, from the Archbishops to case workers and including all members of the Archbishops’ Council, should have mandatory training on trauma-informed handling of complainants, victims and survivors.’ Wilkinson is evidently concerned at the high levels of stress and trauma being carried by survivors.  This is exacerbated by the fact that many of those representing church bodies, who sit on powerful committees and deal with the survivors, has little or no prior understanding of the trauma and experience of being such a survivor. She rightly discerns that when highly vulnerable survivors are brought face to face with people with little empathy or understanding, the level of additional suffering endured will be considerable.

When we look at the Church as a whole, the question that might well be asked by an abuse survivor is whether this institution is ever a safe place to enter.  The answer to this question may depend on our being able to discern where the particular local manifestation of church stands along a spectrum of what we can call abuse sensitivity.  At one end of this spectrum, we find compassion and effective care. Here we encounter a readiness by a church to provide every conceivable form of help to survivors.  There will be included spiritual, emotional and practical support over as long a period as is necessary.  At the other end of our imaginary spectrum, we can envisage a harsh cold and bureaucratic indifference to the survivor.  There would be no understanding of the pain and trauma, and even the existence of damage and vulnerability would be a cause of annoyance to the one trying to deal with the situation.  The judgement about where the current levels of care in the Church are to be found has to be a matter for the discernment of the observer in each situation.  At present, based on my listening to what people are saying, the consensus of opinion seems to find that the typical experience of care by the church is closer to the negative end of the spectrum.  What is experienced is more likely to resemble what is routinely found as a bureaucratic or managerial response to this kind of issue.

Churches generally fall somewhere in-between the two extremes of the abuse response spectrum in the attitude they show to survivors.  An inept or hurtful response to a survivor seeking help may of course be as much to do with ignorance and lack of training as it is an act of deliberate cruelty.  The fact that amateur clumsy responses are retraumatising victims should, nevertheless, be a matter for concern.  To say that so-and-so did not mean to hurt or trigger a painful reaction in an individual, already vulnerable, is not a good look for people who are claiming to preach a message of good news, love and healing to a hurting world.  There is good news in all this, though one has to understand these words in a non-biblical sense.   The good news is that the secular discipline of psychological healing does understand how to respond to trauma and can teach this skill to Christians. At the very least, church leaders and representatives need to learn from these experts how to stop heaping additional hurt on the vulnerable victims of church-based power abuse.   This, in essence, is one important challenge that Wilkinson is presenting to our Church. We ignore it at our peril.

The contemporary discipline, practised by professional carers who are faced with clients afflicted by trauma, is one that offers hope to trauma victims and survivors of every kind.  Various approaches can be found in the therapeutic literature, and I make no claim to any expertise in this area. Wilkinson was clearly, in making her recommendation for trauma-informed training to be provided across the Church, familiar with this material.  What follows here is an overview of what one centre in the States, the Buffalo Centre for Social Research, describes as Trauma-Informed Care (TIC).  Their helpful initial summary definition goes as follows. ‘Trauma-Informed Care calls for a change in organisational culture, where an emphasis is placed on understanding, respecting and appropriately responding to the effects of trauma at all levels.’  The short summary that follows this broad description of TIC, brings to our attention a number of observations about the wide prevalence of trauma in individuals seeking any kind of help.   Because the presence of trauma is so widespread, the ability to respond appropriately has to be built into the culture and practice of all care providers.  Their task is to provide appropriate support from the outset, providing a caring response towards any possible trauma victim.  This support must be shared in such a way that it does not lead to the exacerbation of the existing trauma symptoms.  One helpful question to be asked routinely, and which well articulates the assumptions and culture of TIC, is not ‘what is wrong with this person?’ but ‘what has happened to this person?’  

The Buffalo approach makes a number of other helpful suggestions about the possibility of re-traumatisation.  When an abused person has to experience a trauma over and over again through repeating the details to different agencies, this can be so painful that the survivor may be unwilling to cooperate with otherwise well-intended offers of help.  Sensitivity over such things as the location of an interview with a senior official need to be carefully looked into.  A TIC approach will ‘respond by changing policies, procedures and practices to minimise potential barriers.’  The staff dealing with abused individuals will always be alert to signs of trauma and thus lessen the danger of any re-traumatisation. 

In some ways this blog piece follows the pattern of the previous one looking at the Nolan principles.  TIC, it is clear, is also about values and culture rather than institutional competence.  Instead of the seven Nolan principles we have the Five Guiding Principles of TIC.  These are safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment.  In some ways each of the words is self-explanatory.  Most of the values they describe focus on the importance of helping the survivor to feel safe and protected from any further exploitation of their vulnerability. Alongside this provision of safety and protection, there is also a recognition of the need to help the survivor to regain his/her own power and find the resilience to begin the process of healing.  The Church often refers to the ideal of putting the survivor at the centre of the process of safeguarding.  What we often find is an organisation in a state of panic, believing that its primary task is to protect its reputation (and assets) from the legitimate claims of the wounded and damaged.  TIC presents us with another model, one that respects the need and the longing of survivors to heal so that they can continue their lives with new hope for their eventual complete wholeness.

Although I cannot claim to have mastered all the other detail of Sarah Wilkinson’s thorough and detailed review, it was helpful that she chose to shed some light on this major issue concerning trauma in the safeguarding process.  Survivors are never a problem to be managed; rather they are a group of human beings who have emotional and practical needs as the result of abuse/trauma they may have suffered.  Their practical needs may include the recovery of lost income and livelihoods and the availability of professional support from experienced therapists.  Hopefully all these professionals will understand the meaning of trauma-informed help.  If some of this sensitivity were to be a required part of the wider culture of the CofE, as Wilkinson recommends, the Church everywhere would become a more wholesome organisation, built on the gospel principles of compassion and love.

Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership.

The list of words above summarise a report published under the chairmanship of Lord Nolan In 1995.  This document was a statement of the ethical principles and standards which should undergird the conduct of public life in Britain.  The institutions that might adopt these cardinal values include educational establishments, hospitals or departments of government.  Another similar statement of governing principles is published by the Charity Commission to state what should guide the conduct of every organisation regarding itself as a charity.  At a moment, post-Wilkinson, when the Church of England and its structures are being scrutinised in order to discover whether they follow a set of values that are recognisably ethical, it is helpful to revisit these Nolan principles to see whether the Church reaches or even aspires to the standard of ethics that they express.

Institutions of every kind express the aspirations and aims of the organisation in a so-called mission statement; they set out what they think the organisation is for.  They do not routinely give us any insight into the deeper ethical values that are observed (or not) by the respective bodies. A potential conflict between organisational aims and ethical principles is often observable in the world of politics.  It is hard not to be cynical about many of the high-sounding statements of politicians when, often, what one discerns at a deeper level is the pursuit of financial gain and political power.  Far too often in my lifetime a British government has been forced to give way to the opposition party because the sleaze and dishonesty have become just too obvious for the voters to ignore.  It hurts every time a trusted politician is shown to be unable to do what he/she is paid to do – to serve the people of Britain by putting the public interest at the front of their concerns. 

What is wrong with many of our public institutions, of which the Church is one?  In attempting to respond to a common feeling of malaise around institutions, I am going to risk making a generalisation about human nature.  This may seem unfair, but it is rooted in the observations of Lord Acton about power over a century ago.  My claim is that most individuals are honest and upright when working and living in small units, like the family or a small business.  An inherent honesty practised by the individual is, unfortunately, harder to maintain when the same person comes to work for and place his/her loyalty with a larger group.  The focus of loyalty may shift away from the ethics of individuals working in a small unit and change to become a slavish devotion to the large corporate entity they now work for.  This ‘worship’ of the large institution, especially coming from the ones who take responsibility for running it, can have a severely detrimental effect on personal integrity and conscience.  Powerful leaders of many organisations/corporations rarely seem to come through retaining all the old values of individual integrity.  Few people, if any, manage the responsibilities of wielding institutional power without becoming somewhere morally compromised by the process.

Returning to the seven words that summarise Nolan’s desired standards for public life, we might note that many of our institutions, including those which claim the category of religious, seem to work in a Nolan denying manner.  Without naming any particular individuals or occasions, I was shocked to discover, some time ago, that in the world of safeguarding the church institution has recourse, on occasion, to blatant dishonesty.  Whether this is being noted in the current Wilkinson review I make no claim, since the document was not available to me when writing this piece.   What I can say is that in the past, senior church people have been prepared to lie in a public interview or in the context of a legal enquiry.  Sometimes the corruption of truth could possibly be the result of a genuine mistake.  If that were to be the case, we would hope that the false statement would be admitted and corrected as quickly as possible.  When there is no attempt to correct wrong or false information, it remains on the public record.  Its capacity to cause damage to the church institution is there for ever.  A real act of remorse and an open acknowledgement of truth failure might persuade a watching public to feel some sympathy for the one making an error or mistake in falsely representing facts.  But the platitudinous expressions of regret uttered by senior bishops, but probably written by publicity professionals, do not rebuild trust.  It so often seems that the individual speaking the words of regret is using a book full of sanitised words and expressions where all real meaning has been removed.  The church lawyers seem to do one part of the cleaning while the other part is undertaken by communication experts who work closely with them.

The moment that a large organisation allows a single lie to be told by one of its representatives or top leaders and that lie is not later owned up to, any pretence of holding on firmly to the Nolan principles has been abandoned.  Honesty is apparently no longer thought to be worth fighting for and so the integrity of all leaders is automatically called into question. Ordinary members of the church desperately want to believe that behaving honourably on the part of leaders is an important part of their witness to other church members and to the wider public.  It is extremely disheartening to discover that the church establishment has become so careless of upholding the highest standards of honesty and integrity.

Why do people lie or bury the truth on behalf of organisations that they represent or lead?  I asked myself why it could ever be worth lying about something in a church context.  Two immediate reasons for telling such a lie occur to me. One is that the individual has been caught out in some serious failure to act or, worse still, some malfeasance. The lie is a desperate attempt to fend off the guilt.  A second reason for lying is the attempt to defend, not oneself, but the institution to which one belongs, and in which the person repeating a falsehood may hold a position of high responsibility.  If one does hold a status or position of power in any organisation, then one is going to do everything possible to defend it.  One’s own self-esteem and professional identity is at stake and the integrity of the organisation as a whole is needed to retain one’s own personal reputation and standing.

In recent months and years, especially since the IICSA hearings, all the shenanigans at Christ Church, General Synod and the collapse of the ISB, we have devastatingly become inured to the variety of ways in which the church and its officers have not always observed the highest levels of honesty. Because this has been the case, I am hoping the imminent report of Sarah Wilkinson and that of Alexis Jay will insist on proper independence and ethical professionalism for the safeguarding activities of the Church.  It may be that these two investigators will suggest to the church that the Nolan principles would be a good ethical foundation for the Church of England to follow. Surely these two ethical principles, honesty and integrity, can be expected of an organisation that gives a high priority to such values.

Returning to the other five Nolan principles, the one that leaps out for me is openness.  It brings to mind a shameful episode in the sorry tale in the history of CofE safeguarding in 2017.  In that year the Daily Telegraph revealed the existence of a secret document containing legal advice.  This warned bishops not to give any apology to survivors in case that might increase liability for the church.  This information was completely wrong both morally and from a legal perspective.  The Compensation Act of 2006 reiterates older guidance which specifically excluded this legal understanding about apologies.  Extra liability is not triggered by making apologies or offering pastoral support. The unnecessary suffering caused to survivors (and to the bishops themselves) over the years caused by this poor legal advice does not bear thinking about.  This advice over apologies had been marked ‘strictly confidential’ so there had been little opportunity for anyone to know about it, let alone challenge it.  Once again, a Nolan principle, here openness, was denied because of institutional fear and defensiveness. This lack of institutional openness has also been noted in the final Hillsborough report.

We have given space so far to noting how the CofE fails in three of the seven Nolan principles.  A longer post could no doubt find examples of failure in all seven categories.  Here we will pause briefly to consider the important principle of adequate leadership.  All observers of the safeguarding scene have noticed repeatedly how the church safeguarding institutions seem to lack firm guidance and direction.  Bishops seem terrified of being confronted by safeguarding queries.  It appears that what direction there exists in the Church of England on safeguarding is decided, not by bishops, but by lawyers and senior lay bureaucrats.  A close reading of the comments that are made following the Wilkinson Review will probably indicate that compassionate episcopal leadership has been almost completely absent as the church has tried to find ways to help us all move forward to repair and heal the sorry confusion that the CofE currently finds itself in the realm of safeguarding.

Revisiting the Nolan principles in relation to the church has not been a salutary experience for those of us who are members and still want to support the CofE.  It is hard to feel optimistic when we have suggested that in four out seven categories, the church is definitely in the ‘unsatisfactory’ section.  It seems unlikely that the remaining three categories would achieve anything much better.  All the Nolan principles are linked, and failure in one area is likely to result in failure in the others.       

This article was written jointly by some Members of General Synod with legal and regulatory expertise, Victims and Survivors of abuse, and those who have been further abused by the work of the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and the Archbishops’ Council, and its Secretariat.

A review commissioned by the Church, conducted by someone chosen by the Church, with a remit solely defined by the Church, and excluding events critical of the Church, won’t tell anything like the true story.

• Steve Reeves, former ISB member.

For me the most devastating consequence of the brutal abolition of the ISB without warning was yet another breach of trust by the Church of England: but this time it was not re-triggering existing trauma but instead a new and equally if not greater devastating trauma and betrayal.

• Testimony from Victim

We still have to live with the consequences of what happened but we shall never give up trying to expose the Archbishops and their friends reminding all people in the Church of England of the cruelty of their leaders. These people are so quick to pick on the weak and the vulnerable but they can never look at themselves let alone allow others to give an honest appraisal. It’s all to do with power: the Archbishops and their collaborators are so corrupt that they don’t realise the evil they are doing.

• Testimony from Victim

By any standards, the Review conducted by Sarah Wilkinson KC into the ISB scandal should send shockwaves through General Synod. There should be resignations from Archbishops’ Council. There should be calls in Parliament for intervention, and for the Archbishops’ Council to be placed in ‘special measures’, just as one would for a failing Health Authority. The Charity Commission should investigate this scandal – it represents a huge waste of charitable funds.

You have to read Wilkinson’s Review very carefully to understand how much of a shambles the Archbishops’ Council are. But before you do read it, can we remind you that the Archbishops’ Council set the Terms of Reference for the Wilkinson Review. In so doing, the Secretariat made sure that she could not consider any of the following issues:

• The immediate closure of the ISB, with just one hour’s notice, was a grossly irresponsible action in view of the Victims and Survivors who were working with the ISB.
• William Nye refusing to involve and countenance the involvement of an independent mediator between himself and the ISB, or to act on the Dispute Resolution Notice. Mr. Nye was urged to urged to bring in outside mediation, but he refused to do so
• Non-existent arrangements in professional care made for any of the Victims and Survivors under the ISB.
• The Archbishops’ Council and its failure to properly consult.
• Explicit public denials of all the above, also repeatedly made by the Archbishops’ Council.

Ms. Wilkinson was not allowed to look into these matters. Even so, resignations are now needed. The trademark of the Archbishops’ Council and its Secretariat is to manage their affairs with deliberate ambiguity and ambivalence, in order to avoid any accountability. Put bluntly, if there are no minutes of meetings, no notes or records of discussions, no record of votes at Archbishops’ Council, and the Audit Committee is repeatedly told to mind its own business, there can be no trust and confidence in the leadership of the trustees.

Having the Chair of the Audit Committee being part of the decision-making process is a grotesque distortion of what should be an entirely independent process. Yet even the Chair of the Audit Committee does not seem to grasp the way this weakens corporate governance   We need resignations and some restructuring.

We already know that the Communications Department at Lambeth Palace will be briefing the media that “lessons will be learned”, “it was all very difficult”, “we were trying to manage a difficult breakdown in relationships”, and “we did our best, but unfortunately it unravelled, and nobody could see that coming”.

None of this is true. The ISB is a symptom of a colossal failure in governance at the very top of the Church of England, by the Archbishops’ Council and Secretariat. That is why we must now have resignations and a total re-set for the sake of fully proper, authentic transparency and accountability.

Before plunging into the Wilkinson Review, please allow us to guide what careful and savvy readers might be able to spot as they navigate their way through the paragraphs.

Omissions:

1. There was no Risk Assessment undertaken in the setting up of the ISB, and in its work going forward. There was no Risk Assessment undertaken when the Archbishops’ Council decided, at a couple of hours’ notice, to close the ISB.

• It seems that victim-survivors don’t matter to the trustees and Secretariat. They only care about creating the impression of responsibility and professionalism. They demonstrated no care, thought or clue as to the consequences of their actions.

• If this was a Health Authority, the executive would be fired, and the Board resign. If our government had done no risk assessment for migrants, there could be criminal proceedings. But this being the Archbishops’ Council, their only risk is reputational. The vulnerable do not matter.

• Ms. Wilkinson could and should draw our attention to the lack of Conflicts of Interest policies in all Archbishops’ Council and NST work, and the lack of any Register of Interests for trustees and the Secretariat.

• Repeated failures by the Secretariat and Archbishops’ Council to follow GDPR legal requirements, make “reasonable adjustments” for Victims and Survivors under the 2010 Equality Act, or basic employment law.

• The total absence of Nolan Committee principles for public bodies (1995) which set out standards for public life: The principles are Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership. 

• Gross professional incompetence on the part of the NST and Lead Safeguarding Bishops, who cannot follow their own policies, and repeatedly obfuscate scandals and abuse they do not wish to address or be held accountable for.

Wilkinson’s work was not allowed to address these matters. The Archbishops’ Council set her homework, predetermined the method of marking, and the grading of it. You only have to see what Wilkinson was not allowed to assess to appreciate how deeply corrupt the Archbishops’ Council was, and still is.  We must now have some resignations.

Perhaps the elected Members of the Archbishops’ Council from the General Synod could do the decent thing and resign so that they can offer themselves for re-election and be judged by their peers. This would be honourable, but is alas, highly unlikely.

Next Steps:

We undoubtedly need the Archbishops’ Council to be subject to comprehensive external regulation and audit. The amount of charitable funds wasted on this ill-conceived and badly-managed project was predictable, as there is no competent person on the Archbishops’ Council or the Secretariat to set such things up.

The recent hiring of Kevin Crompton (“Commissioner”) and Sir David Behan CBE (“provide independent strategic advice on safeguarding to the Archbishops’ Council”:) have both been undertaken without any consultation with Synod, advertisements for the posts, or any sign of accountability and transparency. No Victim or Survivor can or should trust such appointments. (See https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/1-december/news/uk/lambeth-palace-sets-out-safeguarding-action-plan).

With no Conflicts of Interest policies in place, it would be impossible to know what vested interests might lie at the heart of these appointments. Virtually every Review conducted by the Church of England into safeguarding malpractice lacks any basic standards of transparency, probity, integrity, independence and proper accountability.

No one is ever called to account. We are simply fobbed off with the bland assurance that ‘lessons will be learned’.

Ms. Wilkinson was made well aware of this. But as her Terms of Reference were set by the very body that is so patently culpable of such colossal failures in its governance, it is hardly surprising that her Review is relatively opaque about such details. It would have been helpful if Ms. Wilkinson could have been clearer on a number of ongoing matters:

1. Repeated requests to the Archbishops for an account of why Mr. William Nye may have lied to – or misled – IICSA, and also to General Synod and other bodies on serious safeguarding scandals, are met with silence. Eventually, the Archbishops agree to an “external audit” of why there has been no reply. Nobody asked for this audit.

• What was required was an answer to the clear evidence of lying. But the Archbishops decided to answer a question they were not asked, in order to avoid answering the actual question that does need answering. This might be standard practice for squirming politicians during media interviews, (or latterly the Covid Inquiry) but is this really the standard of integrity and probity we want from our clergy?

• In the Percy ISB Review, Maggie Atkinson’s original Terms of Reference came from the Diocese of Oxford and Lambeth Palace, both of whom use Winckworth Sherwood as their lawyers. These are the same lawyers heavily implicated in “perpetrating the deliberate weaponizing of safeguarding against Dr. Percy”.  Atkinson’s Terms of Reference precluded the lawyers and clergy involved in the weaponisation from any criticism. As does the current proposed Review led by Sir Mark Hedley. Both Archbishops claim such work would be “independent”. Jasvinder Sangheera and Steve Reeves were expressly prohibited from engaging in the Percy ISB Review.

• Bogus Risk Assessments concocted against Dr. Percy, signed off by Diocesan lawyers, senior clergy, the Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor and others, were re-narrated as ‘assessments of risk, which is different from Risk Assessments’. That is despite “Church of England Risk Assessment” heading each of the 19 pages. The Bishop of Oxford defended these documents. If his lawyers and senior clergy are allowed to fabricate Risk Assessments with the clear intention of causing harm to an individual and in order to generate false alarmism, is anyone in the Church of England safe? We think not.

• Jasvinder and Steve worked very, very hard to build trust with victims and survivors.  Due to the vested conflicts of interest, ambiguities and ambivalence that the ISB had been saddled with from the outset, their work took considerable time. However, their fierce independence and obvious integrity won through, and slowly but surely, the antagonism of many victims and survivors was overcome by their professionalism, and by their obvious compassion and care. We have no hesitation in commending them for their resilience, when they faced initial scepticism and hostility from victims and survivors, who could not in conscience place any trust or confidence in the ISB structures established by Archbishops’ Council, and former Chair, Maggie Atkinson.

• For the avoidance of doubt, survivors and victims’ do not blame Steve and Jasvinder for the ISB debacle. The catastrophic failure was entirely the making and responsibility of the Archbishops’ Council, who hoped that by dubbing a body “independent”, members of General Synod and the wider Church of England would be duped into believing that the ISB was genuinely independent. It never was, nor would it ever have allowed to be so. So when Steve and Jasvinder started to show signs of  acting with genuine independence, the Secretariat pulled the plug on the operation with undue haste. The Archbishops’ Council betted on ambiguity and ambivalence being able to conceal all this.

• The governance of the Church of England is in deep crisis. Yet it is in denial about that. All the major National Church Institutions, the Archbishops’ Council and many Dioceses are a nest of conflicted and vested interests, but with no policies or oversight to manage them. The Secretariat at Lambeth Palace acts more like a medieval monarchical court than a function for serving trustees. Nationally, the Church of England is clueless about legal process in safeguarding, HR and financial control. They make it up as they go along. The Church of England desperately needs external regulation, and all safeguarding matters – policy, practice, regulation and appeal – must now be handed over to an entirely independent body that can call the Church of England and its powers to account.

One   Victim/Survivor sums it up:

The Archbishops and their allies having given us this new body, supposedly independent and supposedly a vehicle of truth and reconciliation, we first had to deal with the serial mishandling of our data by the first Chair of the ISB, Maggie Atkinson. Despite this, the two remaining functioning members (Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves) worked hard to establish trust with us all and owing to their professionalism and probity they succeeded in their mission.

Then, without any warning whatsoever, we learnt from the media that they had been dismissed. At this time there were twelve people who had complaints being investigated by the ISB: some of that number were so distraught at the news of what the Archbishops and their Council had done that waves of suicidal ideation enveloped us. All of us however were devastated by the callous, contemptuous cruelty of these people.

The recent appointment of Ineqe to review Lambeth Palace and diocesan safeguarding, apparently by the Archbishops’ Council is another example of the Archbishops arranging to have their safe and compliant practices audited by a body that can be relied upon to tell the rest of the world that all is well. The previous reviewers were far too critical and independent. Ineqe work closely with Winkworth Sherwood, and have a poor record on data and disability compliance, currently subject to complaints laid before the Charity Commission and Information Commissioner’s Office.

We already know that the Redress Scheme will keep being delayed and delayed, whittled down, and then blame and costs shifted onto parishes and dioceses. This will be the strategy of the Archbishops’ Council. Their number one priority is to avoid reputational damage.  All the Archbishops and Secretariat want to do is avoid liability, responsibility and accountability.

The Archbishops’ Council and its Secretariat are deeply corrupt. For Victims and Survivors, justice delayed is justice denied. As long as the Archbishops’ Council and its Secretariat continue to operate like this, above and beyond any external scrutiny, their delays and corruption will continue in perpetuity. There will be no justice for victims whilst these people continue to hold power and responsibility in safeguarding.

For these reasons, and many others, we now need some resignations. We are well past another “lessons learned review” whitewash. The Archbishops’ Council has shown itself to be utterly incompetent, unprofessional, and incapable of sorting out conflicts of interest.  Its only response to its total incapacity is endless cover-ups and comms-led spin.  We do not use ‘corrupt’ lightly of Archbishops’ Council.  But it is entirely proper to do so.

Safeguarding is unsafe in the hands of the Archbishops’ Council and NST.  They perpetrate abuse. The setting up of the ISB was done deploying duplicity and deceit, with General Synod, its Audit Committee and Victim-Survivors deliberately misled as to its nature and remit by the Archbishops’ Council. Yet again, Archbishops’ Council have perpetrated further abuses.

The Church  now needs to be relieved of all responsibility for safeguarding, and of policy and practice. We need fully independent regulation, outside the control of the Archbishops’ Council, bishops or National Church Institutions. Only then can trust and confidence be eventually rebuilt. Until then, nothing that the Archbishops’ Council says or does is worthy of trust.

by Martin Sewell

Following the peremptory sacking of the independent members of the Independent Safeguarding Board of the Church of England, in June of this year, and the furore that followed, both amongst the Survivor community and members of the General Synod, an independent investigation was set up, with a senior barrister, Sarah Wilkinson working on an intensive basis to deliver an overview of the situation.

In contrast with other reviews commissioned by the Church of England Ms. Wilkinson has worked hard to deliver the required report on time, and duly delivered it on Friday last. It is not only in this regard that we see what can be achieved: survivors who have engaged with her have uniformly testified to her professionalism, empathy, and kindness, which they report contrast unfavourably with members of the church when interacting with them.

We do not know precisely what the review will be saying, but we hope that Professor Jay and her team are equally impressed with what can be achieved when  highly  competent outsiders get to grips with the problems of church safeguarding.

There will doubtless be debate and perhaps controversy about what conclusions are reached but this has more to do with matters outside of Ms. Wilkinson’s control than complaints about her methodology.

The Church is giving itself 11 days to digest and prepare a response to what may well be a Report with significant consequences. This in itself tells us something about how the church approaches these matters.

IICSA heard and upheld historic complaints that the church prioritised its own reputation over justice, mercy and the needs of those whom it has wronged. We are still in that same situation. It is partly for this reason that I write in advance of the publication because we need to put certain observations into the public domain so that significant commentary can begin, sooner rather than later, on matters that already arise from the way in which the church has structured the review. This is no criticism of the reviewer.

The government recently legislated to outlaw and criminalise abuse within domestic relationships. There is ample testimony to the emotional damage that can be occasioned to vulnerable spouses and partners at the hands of those of a controlling personality. People invest in a relationship and the more they do so, the more vulnerable they become to abuse when the other party prioritises their needs within the relationship.

When complaints are brought to the church, those making such representations are often those same people who most trusted the institution. They may be parishioners, children in church schools or associated organisations; sometimes they are members of staff or priests, and even those in senior positions and significant relationships with the institution can find themselves harmed and abused within the complaint process.

The initial grievance is compounded and exacerbated by the toxic church culture of control. One sees this even in the case of the Wilkinson review.

All the former members of the ISB had and have legitimate important interests. In having their conduct considered within such a review, it is not simply about knowing what happened in the past. It may have a significant ongoing impact on their future professional reputations. As far as I can ascertain, all those to whom we entrusted the ISB project have been anxious to be judged on a level playing field. I have heard nothing to suggest that each and everyone of them is concerned that the review shall report on” the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.

I suspect none of them ( and few of us ) will claim never to make mistakes; the ISB members may have been subject to unreasonable expectation, ambiguity in the definition of their roles, and the intense pressure that goes with working in such a difficult field. These were, and are, people of substance and stature; the least that the church ought properly to have afforded them is a scrupulously fair process. Yes, even in advance of the report we know that this did not happen. I will elaborate and re-emphasise that the reviewer can and will only work within the parameters permitted her under the terms of the review. In the old expression of computer programmers” Rubbish in – Rubbish out”.

Now, there will not be much rubbish sifted by Ms Wilkinson; there is a very significant written audit trail to be followed, but any review can only be as good as its terms of reference. Both at the outset and following receipt of the review, Church House and its Secretariat have unquestionably formulated the scope of the document, furthermore it will craft the initial presentation.

I have previously referenced in blog posts that the church has been very keen on those most affected having a fair degree of import into secular Inquiries. Those into the Hillsborough disaster and the Countess of Chester Hospital (Lucy Letby) both saw senior bishops asserting the importance of listening to those most affected within the commissioning process.

What is sauce for the secular goose is surely sauce for the ecclesiastical gander.

Let us not forget that Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves have both been honoured by the Crown for their outstanding contributions to safeguarding. It was accordingly by no means unreasonable that before they put their professional reputations and future work prospects into a process that could, potentially, be ruinous, these two servants of survivors should have confidence in the review process. There is a shocking contrast here.

It would be very easy to see these, and indeed the reputations of Meg Munn and Maggie Atkinson adversely affected by the review outcome. In contrast the one thing that we know from every other review case is that the church is institutionally obstructive towards holding its own leadership to account. I include within that cohort senior bishops, members of Archbishops’ Council, and the Secretariat. The latter is of course, significantly involved in the scoping of the review and it’s presentation.

Thus it has been that, unable to secure assurances that Ms Wilkinson would be permitted, under her terms of reference, to go and report upon whatsoever she felt appropriate within this sorry history, the two sacked members of the ISB decided that they could not engage with the review as Ms Wilkinson and many others would have wished them to do.

There is much of the case which can be carefully reconstructed by Ms Wilkinson because so much  is already in the public domain, not least in the Synod statements which I and many Synod colleagues insisted they should be entitled to give. That was a creditable revolt against the management of the Synod processes by the powers that be, which initially denied them that voice. Let us hope this does not escape Ms Wilkinson’s careful eye; I do not discount that possibility.

The Church should not have  constrained the Review in this way. Everything that might have been relevant should have been placed within her purview. It is not what the people in the wider Church and indeed beyond wanted.  I do not suggest that the Review will be without importance significance or consequences but any good outcome will be in spite of its management not because of it and that is tragic.

Will we have got to the bottom of how we got into this unholy mess? Will anyone resign? These are matters we will need to consider as we read what is likely to be a very detailed and lengthy document published just as the Christmas season arrives with all its distractions. The Church insiders are already working on their responses. The people in the pews ( who actually paid for it) will have to wait a few more days.

Some twenty-five years ago I was asked by a contact to offer spiritual support to a woman who was dying of cancer.  She was, at the beginning, able to travel the ten miles from her home to see me and we probably had around five sessions together before her illness made this impossible.  I recall these meetings as I recently asked myself the question, why I chose the Gospel of St John as a text we could read together, and which would provide ‘homework’ between our meetings.  Just recently, I have begun to recognise better that, although the fourth gospel author is probably not attempting to provide anything like an exact biographical record of his Jesus’ ministry, he does allow the reader to feel that he/she is being brought into intimate contact with the Master.  The other gospels give us some insight into the personality and teaching of Jesus, but John’s aim seems to be to create a spiritual immediacy, a meeting place, between the Lord and those followers who immerse themselves in his words. This immediacy is found especially in and through the ‘I am’ sayings which the evangelist gives us.  These are unique to the fourth gospel.

To remind my readers, much of the text of the fourth gospel outside the Passion Narrative is a series of thematic meditations linked to a series of ‘I am’ sayings.  The events and encounters recorded around each ‘I am’ saying are linked to it as a kind of commentary.  Together they are each designed to reveal a distinct aspect of Jesus’ work and the way he becomes united to his followers in what might be described as a mystical fusion.  All the sequences of teaching and discourse that we find in the first section of the fourth gospel seem to be tied in to one or other of these key ‘I am’ sayings.  The ‘I am’ sayings introduce us to the well-known fourth gospel themes of Jesus as Good Shepherd, Bread of Life, Living Water and True Vine etc.  Thus, when Jesus declares himself to be the Light of the World, the teaching that given in this part of the gospel is completely focussed on exploring this image.  This section contains a discourse about the contrast between darkness and light and also tells at some length the linked story of the healing of a blind man.  Adding into the drama of the story, we hear the formerly blind man making a spirited response when the religious leaders try to make him deny his healing and condemn Jesus as a sinner.  To paraphrase the healed man’s words, ‘I don’t know who is responsible for what has happened, whether God or the one you claim is a sinner. One thing I do know, once I was blind; now I can see’.

 When we become aware of the literary and thematic structure of the fourth gospel, we are forced to note that it is highly improbable, even implausible, that Jesus taught his disciples in such a structured way. Is it really likely that Jesus’ teaching was as tidy and ordered as John’s gospel sets it out for us?  The idea that Jesus, rather than the author of the fourth gospel, divided up his teaching into these tidy and ordered sections is, we would suggest, a nonsense claim.  The gospel author whom we call John, had, as we have suggested, a much more ambitious aim, to introduce his readers to a close relationship with the Risen Lord.  Jesus’ task both as a teacher on earth and as the ever-present divine being who lives within us through the Spirit, will be for the believer the one who leads us to all truth and offers to humankind and the gift of ‘eternal life’.

I imagine that many of my readers have used John’s gospel in the way I am suggesting – as a source of profound material for meditation about the meaning of Jesus as well as a focus for understanding how to enter into an ever-deeper relationship with him.  The fact that the Jesus who is presented to us in the fourth gospel has a different feel about it from the other gospel accounts, does not force us to declare that one or other version of Jesus’ life is somehow more authentic and true.  It is enough that Christians, through the centuries have, successfully felt able to draw out of John’s words a sense of divine encounter.  That is what we today are invited to do and it forms the main intention of the original author.  The variety of proclamations made by Jesus, the ‘I am’ sayings make this process possible.  Inspiration in Scripture seems to work just as well even when no detailed historical claims are made for a particular passage in the gospel text.

In my title for this blog post, I used the heading ‘Advent a season of symbols’.  It seems to be true that the fourth gospel version of Jesus’ life, the one that is least likely to be factually true as history in the account of his ministry, should also be the one able to bring his followers the closest to him.  The ahistorical symbols in the gospel, water, light and darkness, bread etc., are probably not historical memories; they are the means through which we are brought into a place of intimacy with the Risen Master.  In Advent we are also presented with certain powerful visual symbols that, like the fourth gospel, bring Christ close to us.  On one Sunday in Advent we do focus on the ministry of John the Baptist but most of the time, we are immersing ourselves in ahistorical symbols provided by our liturgy in a not dissimilar way to readers of the fourth gospel.  Particularly powerful is the Advent symbol of light breaking into the darkness.  This image or symbol evokes our own experiences of disorientation in a place of darkness before we were rescued by a light-switch or a torch.  The lived experience of being highly vulnerable or frightened of the dark is one that is real to us and it feeds into our ability to imagine and thus encounter the one who, in a spiritual sense, drives away the darkness.

The other powerful symbol explored liturgically and devotionally in Advent is that of longing, waiting and expectation.  We all know what it means to wait for something with passionate intensity.  One place to observe such longing and expectation is the sight of children fingering presents under the Christmas tree.  Another place is the arrival section of a large international airport.  Here people are waiting to be reunited with loved ones after maybe months, even years, of separation.  Is not our Advent observance being fed by some of this passionate intensity, which our imagination can evoke for us in this season of symbols?  To repeat, symbols, such as we find in John’s gospel and the commemoration of Advent are not events or facts. But their status as symbols still allows them play a crucial role in allowing us to experience and connect with the reality of God in Christ reaching out to us . The season of symbols, as I call it, draws our attention, not to historical events in Jesus’ life, but to powerful aspects of what we believe about him.  It also helps us, as Christians claim, to form a personal relationship with him, one that reaches beyond the grave to all eternity.

Writing this Advent reflection has helped me to understand better how this gospel in the New Testament that strays (apart from the Passion narrative) the furthest away from the detailed historical record, is also the one that I turned towards to help someone facing death.  My attachment to the fourth gospel is shared by many of my readers as we seem to be entering the realm of eternity, timelessness and the experience and promise of what we call, however we interpret it, eternal life.

The word apostasy is one of those words that can have a good or bad meaning according to the perspective of the one using the term.  In most cases it implies something that is disapproved of.  It contains the idea of betrayal or the abandonment of a cause or belief system.  In a religious context it suggests that an individual has decided to turn their back on the beliefs and practices that may have belonged to them for a long period, even since childhood.  The word also suggests that a decision has been made which involves much more than a single individual departing from one set of beliefs/values to become attached to another.  Apostasy may involve damage and break-up to social networks. These may have helped to fashion the identity of the one making dramatic changes in their attachments. 

Although apostasy has frequently attracted to itself various negative connotations, it is still possible to see that moving from one political, spiritual or religious identity to another has a potentially positive side.  If religious or political faith is understood to be a stance which involves individual decision, we should be ready to applaud anyone who moves into a place of conviction which may differ radically from the assumptions of the past.  Parents obviously would prefer their children to grow up expressing the values and beliefs of the family unit but, in a setting where self-determination and free choice are taught, the right of an emerging adult to exchange one set of values and beliefs for another should be celebrated.  The book edited by Martyn Percy and Charles Foster, Faiths lost and found, Understanding Apostasy invites us to think seriously and engage with this positive side of the word used within the context of religious belief.   Apostasy, in the world of religious belief, can be seen as potentially marking a valuable expression of human creativity involving both change and growth.

The bulk of Percy’s and Foster’s text is given over to a fascinating series of ten autobiographical accounts, which involve dramatic change in a religious context.  Most, but not all, involve individuals finding their way from what we might consider rigid belief setting to something more moderate.  One charts the journey of a gay man, Tom Bohache, from a disapproving traditional Christianity to ‘queer authenticity’.  Elsewhere in the book, we read of the journey of Charles Foster from the conservative evangelicalism of the ‘Bash’ camps to the world of HTB before ending up within Eastern Orthodoxy.  In each story we are invited to share the contributors’ experience of struggle to find their truth and personal reality.  Each of the ten accounts is thus the story of a personal pilgrimage, and they earn the admiration of the reader.  While we might not make precisely the same decisions as these pilgrims on their personal quests, their stories are told in a way that invites our respect for their courage and patient determination.  A particular focus of interest for me was the retrospective and detailed description of conservative Christian cultures that we normally see only from the outside.  The book describes in various accounts the ethos and culture of Iwerne camps, Vineyard churches and a university Christian Union.  These retrospective accounts are interesting and informative.  They are set out, not with polemical intent, but with a genuine desire to make sense of something that had, for a time, absorbed and fed our pilgrim travellers.  Eventually, many of these have been transcended but the parting of the ways is never described in a hostile manner.  To put it another way, the reader is invited to visit several Christian cultures which provided, for a time, spiritual sustenance for the writers before being found to be thin gruel.  There is, in the entire book, a notable gentleness and freedom from any rancour towards those who differ from the writers.  At the same time there is a recognition that the older teachings now no longer meet spiritual needs.  The beliefs of others, while not now shared, can still be treated with respect even admiration.  Perhaps this respectful approach to difference is needed today in the Church as never before.

One of the issues faced by every ‘apostate’ is that of enforced social upheaval.  I was moved by the account of the young Janet Fife (contributor to this blog) being utterly alone on the day of her confirmation.  The normal social affirmation of parents and godparents was, for her, completely absent.  The path of a Christian who wishes to forge their own way towards their reality can be painfully lonely.  It takes a particular kind of stamina to place one’s sense of authenticity and truth ahead of the need to fit in and belong to family or tribe. One of the things I take from the book is an enormous respect for the bravery of these spiritual ‘apostates’, even though the solutions they choose do not necessarily conform to anything I personally would want to commend.  In writing this, I am reminded of the old liberal principle which states something along the lines of: ‘I disagree with you profoundly, but I defend to the last your right to express your opinion.’

The choice of the word apostasy in the title is deliberate and it forces us to consider how we (and the ten story tellers in the book) cope with access to new challenging information that is not catered for in an existing faith paradigm from the past. The typical story told by several of the contributor authors is the way that access to books and education had affected them profoundly.  It opened their minds to the possibility of change and a way out of the narrow sectarian views which had dominated their thinking, sometimes over decades.  Several of our authors discovered a new breadth in their spiritual outlook through access to post-graduate university studies.  Accessing a privileged academic route is, of course, one path out of narrow perspectives, but sadly, such study is available to only a tiny minority.  It is, in fact, hard to imagine any research student in theology (or any subject) not being decisively changed by seminars, exchange of academic papers and attendance at learned specialised conferences.  This academic way of doing theology, one which constantly asks questions and lives with uncertainty, is, sadly becoming vanishingly uncommon in today’s Church.  If ever the culture of free inquiry, which is embedded into the university research process, is outlawed from the wider Church, journeys of the kind and recorded in some of the stories in this book will be impossible.  Some of the journeys of creative discovery as recorded in this volume would never have been able to start, let alone arrive successfully at a new destination.

The reader who can identify with the stories of ‘apostasy’ told by those who travelled the path of hard and demanding study, will know that one of the features of this approach to faith is the sheer untidiness, even messiness, that they find in ‘liberal’ statements of belief.  Many Christians are unwilling to exchange the certainties of conservative teaching for the ‘uncertainty’ path where questions are not always answered.  Clinching an argument by a neat quote from scripture would be an approach that most of our authors, recalling their journeys through change, would reject.   Freedom of thought for them is a highly valued commodity.  These two approaches to faith, loosely described as conservative and liberal, account for the chasm that we find today among Christians.    Some are content with the place of settled unchanging opinions where difficult problems are brushed aside.  Others are prepared for the challenges of ambiguity and uncertainty, recognising that the world of questioning and challenging assumptions is rarely tidy.    We do not, this side of the grave, arrive at the kind of secure safety that many people think is claimed by the Christian faith.  The perspective of Percy and Foster’s book is that the Church and its members should always be on a journey of learning.  The feature of this kind of journey is one that requires the humility to say that it will never have all the answers to human problems.  Statements which emerge from popular Christian teaching, which begin with the words ‘the Bible is clear’, are frankly dishonest and this dishonesty is damaging to the point of being destructive.  The destination that our ten contributors have found is one, not described as presenting certainty, but as a place of personal integrity and honesty.  That does not make the individual journeys described as necessarily right for anyone else.  What is right for us as the readers of the book is that we should consider the place of spiritual pilgrimage and change in our Christian calling.  This book Faiths Lost and Found gives us some idea of what each of our personal journeys might look like.

Faiths Lost and Found Understanding Apostasy is published by DLT 2023 ISBN 978-1-915412-32-4 £16.99 

I cannot be the only retired clergyman who listens to one sermon while mentally writing the outline of a quite different one.  Last Sunday the cathedral I attend commemorated All Saints, and the preacher shared with us some well-chosen insights from the gospel reading of Matthew’s Beatitudes.  Meanwhile, I was pondering the other quite different reading set for the day, a passage from Revelation 7.  In this reading we hear of a vision of heavenly worship and the involvement of a ‘great multitude which no one could count’.  A link with the All Saints festival is established through the fact that the elder, interpreting the scene, declares that this huge throng of people are those who have passed through trials of persecution, ‘the great ordeal’ as it is described.  These martyrs have now reached the place of their reward.    They now enjoy the bliss of being in the presence of God for ever.

As I thought about this vision, it struck me that there was something more going on in this passage than a New Testament attempt to evoke the reality of heaven.  It is probably not a useful exercise to ask how the author ‘saw’ something so obviously beyond human conceptualisation.  The passage as we have it is evocative of the visionary language of Ezekiel and Isaiah.  Even though the visionary language may be borrowed, there is still a strong sense of the author communicating his own sense of the glory and wonder of the divine presence and inviting the reader to share his experience.  We are drawn from the mundane to consider the eternity of God, before whose presence we all hope one day to enjoy being.

The striking series of words which captured my imagination in the vision were these.  ‘As I looked, there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages….they worship him day and night within his temple.’  Apart from appreciating this passage as one trying to communicate the reality of God’s presence, I found myself struck by the universality communicated in the vision.  The vision symbolically saw the entirety of humankind brought together.  Christian saints were to be found in every nation and tribe and language, not just the groups we belong to or approve of. 

Those of us who went to Sunday School in the 50s and 60s probably sang the chorus, ‘Jesus died for all the children….. red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight’. No doubt this hymn has gone firmly out of fashion, along with many other choruses from that period.  Nevertheless, it was trying to teach children the lesson that Christian discipleship belongs potentially to humanity in its entirety.  The modern word to capture this insight is inclusivity.  If there were to be a modern version of the vision of John, he might have said something along these lines.  I saw a great throng from every class, colour, sexual minority, and ethic/religious group.  People were caught up in the worship of God on the throne because of their membership of humanity and through their attempts to feel after God and find him.

At a time when the tendency among many Christian people is to withdraw off into their small like-minded groups which are described as ‘orthodox’ or pure, I am suggesting that these few verses from Revelation give us a different picture.  Inclusive Christians and Inclusive Evangelicals are far closer to the spirit of the author of Revelation who ‘saw’ something far more glorious than our current narrow tribalisms.  This is doing so much to destroy the Church with all the power of hate and division.

A further point from the Revelation vision is that it was beyond the scope of human measuring capability to count those worshipping God.  This detail implies that God is simply not interested in counting numbers or setting up boundaries between the saved and the unsaved.  Such boundaries seem to serve the purpose of boosting the insecure and convincing them that they have some kind of prestige in commanding the greatest numbers.

In recent weeks we have been made horribly aware of one of the major divisions among the human tribes that exist in our world. The present conflict in Gaza began as a hideous outburst of racial and tribal hatred.  This had been nurtured to its present explosive state by decades of injustice and division. If one had thought that a situation of uneasy peace between Jew and Arab in any way existed over the past decades, the sheer brutality of the past days has shown how little progress has been made in the task of reconciliation. Similar festering hatreds continue to exist in countries such as India and the United States. The word tribe refers to many types of difference that exist between groups of human beings. The problem with any type of tribal behaviour is that people will always cling to their group as  a way of feeling safe in the face of the unknown and feared.

The recent divisions within the Church over the issue of same-sex marriage have erupted recently with extraordinary ferocity. We are now in the crazy situation of being expected to define our loyalties in the Church according to what we think about same-sex relationships.  While there have, in the past, always been differences within the Church of England in terms of belief and practice, there has never before been a single issue which threatens to sunder the Church apart. Most of us thought that this issue would never become a first order matter so that Christians would feel it necessary to shatter centuries of common life simply to go off to belong to a completely independent entity.  Is it not a poor basis for schism to found a new entity which is based on the intensity of one tribe’s intense homophobia?

Returning to the book of Revelation, it would seem that the writer had a powerful vision of how human beings, normally divided through race, tribe, language and political/sexual identity, somehow could be joined up together to form a huge united group.  They fulfilled this calling to be united in and dedicated to the everlasting worship of God. Some might question whether a state of everlasting worship is something they want to be involved with.  We might find it hard to imagine how an endless contemplation of the divine would be something to aspire to.  In answer to this conundrum, we can mention the words of Augustine who no doubt also struggled with the limit of human imagination and longing, ‘Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you’. 

The Revelation passage is a strong indicator that all the things that divide us in our membership of humanity are of limited significance when set alongside the dazzling reality of God’s presence. If that is true on the far side of the grave, then we need here to renounce our tendency to hunker down behind our variety of tribal loyalties.  We should be learning to see that all the differences that we cultivate in life to make us feel superior to others are of no lasting importance or value.  The revelation that came to John was of a sea of humanity all united in the single activity of worshipping God, and this showed him clearly how humanity can be one.  To do justice to this powerful transcendent vision, we need to be able, at the very least, to resist the temptation to look at people who are not like us and think of them as somehow inferior.   Above all, we must be able to renounce the common phobias inside us that we have about other people. There is something pretty shameful about looking down on someone. Of all the sins of which we are guilty, possibly the most prevalent is this act of shunning another for being different from us. It is probably necessary to be alert to the possible malevolence of other people which may affect our human flourishing but there is never room for pushing another away on the grounds that they are different from us.

The vision of Revelation and the sight of a vast multitude worshipping God has entered into the Christian imagination in many ways.  What we have begun to glimpse in this piece is that God’s welcome to ‘every tribe and nation’ speaks of a hugely and overwhelming inclusivity.  This is something we seem to be so bad at realising in our church life.  There is, in God’s kingdom, no room for phobia, prejudice or shutting out of any kind.  All are called to the worship of God and, as far as possible our acceptance and service of those human beings we encounter in our daily life.

by Susan Hunt (aka K-Anonymous)

For those of you who have been following the story of ‘Kenneth’, an individual caught up in the tentacles of the justice system of the Church of England, this is a sixth instalment of what we might call the Kenneth Saga. The reason for there being this sixth episode is that, while very little for Kenneth has changed, we need to record how the system for establishing justice in church disciplinary cases is deeply flawed and does not serve the cause of truth or integrity.  It seems there can be no appeal against the assumption of guilt for an innocent man.  Thus, justice for Kenneth cannot be delivered in this case nor is it ever likely to be.

If there had ever been a proper system for establishing guilt, or not, in a case like Kenneth’s or a properly independent person or organisation to appeal to, then we could have taken our case there in the search for justice.  As one of the previous blogs has pointed out, an assumption of guilt seems to be a principle of C/E justice that is in operation in cases like this. The arrival of Professor Alexis Jay and her willingness to take an interest in the detail of Kenneth’s case has, however, given me a measure of hope. I was privileged to have been interviewed by her and have some hope for future cases, even if her recommendations may be too late for Kenneth to experience any personal vindication.

Posting this blog is so that the truth can be known. Kenneth has suffered a great deal from carrying the burden of false accusation, but he is keen for his story to be widely circulated.  It mirrors the story of other people in a similar situation within the C/ E.

In earlier blog posts we set out the outline of the gross injustice that has taken place in one of our prestigious cathedrals. The core group that was set up to examine the case included the Canon Pastor (CP), the safeguarding officer for the cathedral. Its proceedings were also followed by the Dean.  Although the latter was not a core group member, he attended some of the meetings and his contributions were minuted. In recent months the whole process has come to involve the diocesan bishop and the registrar.  All took the side of the CP even though she displayed bias and showed a marked unwillingness to uncover the facts of the case.  If there had been a measure of impartiality and a readiness to question assumptions, this might have delivered justice for Kenneth. 

Background to the Clergy Discipline Measure

For the purpose of understanding this blog post I need to refer you to the importance of the choral register. This is a significant legal document and central to this case. The details of this can be found in the previous blog about Kenneth: https://survivingchurch.org/2023/02/17/innocent-until-proved-guilty-except-in-the-church-of-england/

The information in the register contains the record of three dates when offences could theoretically have taken place.  The boy was unable to recall precise dates for the alleged offences but only a time span of several months.  The core group never established which dates were possible occasions for Kenneth and the boy to have been in the cathedral at the same time. The choir register, by revealing which Sundays the boy was present, should then have been compared with Kenneth’s documented trips overseas. In September 2020, Kenneth made a request to the CP for that information to be revealed but she refused. There was then an exchange of emails on the subject where she took sole responsibility for this refusal.

Another facet of the story was the evidence of friendly exchanges between the boy complainant, his mother and the CP on facebook.  This evidence of a conflict of interest was never acknowledged in the minutes of the Core Group.  As I understand it, the core group personnel should never include individuals who have personal links with one or other of the parties in an abuse case.

In October 2020 I wrote on Kenneth’s behalf a formal complaint to the Dean and Chapter about both these matters. The response from the Dean was to say he was ‘sorry’ that Kenneth and I felt disappointed in his CP. Over the intervening years there have been further complaints about both of these issues but without any response.  Without any documented investigation or evidence, Kenneth is still designated as a ‘high risk’ sexual predator.

In early April 2023 I filed a CDM against the CP. The allegations that I wanted considered mainly centred around: a) conflict of interest caused by the friendship with the boy complainant and b) the withholding of evidence (the choir register). To substantiate these allegations further, I presented eleven pieces of evidence which were detailed documents.  Many of them came from Kenneth’s Subject Access Request information.

The Canon Pastor denied everything.

1. The CP claimed that she had no special pastoral care for the boy complainant, as that was provided by another safeguarding officer (although that had never been said before). YET! One of the evidences were two forms with the minutes of a core group meeting.  Here it was stated that no-one (including the CP) had any personal knowledge of the complainant or respondent. This CP had known both well for eight years as had the core group member providing pastoral care.

•  The CP claimed that it was not she who had refused the information from the register but a previous Canon Precentor who had since left the Cathedral. The matter, she said, had been referred to the Dean’s Leadership Team.  They concurred with the advice not to give Kenneth the information in the register. None of this had ever been said before, not even in October 2020 when the complaint about the CP’s refusal to give access to the register was sent to the Dean himself.  The only corroborating evidence to back up these claims was the verbal affirmation of the Dean and Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser.  Both backed the CP even in the absence of any recorded factual information of any sort.  No information was obtained from the departed Canon Precentor. 

The Judgement of the Bishop

Earlier this year, the Bishop met with Kenneth, my husband and myself for more than two hours to discuss the case. The lack of documented evidence on the part of the CP contrasted strongly with the detailed documentary evidence I provided which he saw for himself.

This meeting gave Kenneth great hope that at last someone with authority in the diocese was listening and was sympathetic to his situation.  Finally, there was hope for justice. Alas, this hope was short lived. Some time afterwards the Bishop met with the CP and the Dean, when he agreed to support them.  Nevertheless, in his judgement letter to us, he recognised the lack of documented evidence from either of them. In the same letter the Bishop made five glaring errors of fact and chronology.  This was in spite of that they were clearly set out in the evidence that I presented as part of the CDM submission.

We appealed to the President of Tribunals and the case was dealt with by a Chancellor.  She upheld the Bishop’s decision despite his serious mistakes. However, the Chancellor herself had made six questionable statements.  She seemed to have relied on the report of the Diocesan Registrar who had herself made eleven inaccurate statements.  Qne of these was that twice she referred to Kenneth as being a ‘choir member’ which he was not! – a misleading statement implying Kenneth had access to the choristers.

During the time the CDM was being considered and investigated, it was announced that the CP was being promoted to a senior post in another diocese.  The post included the responsibility of being in charge of Safeguarding!!  It required the cooperation and manoeuvring of two bishops to manage this appointment.  I can be forgiven for feeling cynical about the level of respect for safeguarding among our bishops. To appoint a senior member of staff to a post of importance, while a safeguarding accusation is still pending, suggests a cynical approach to the whole matter. It is scandalous the way this Diocese has acted, and its safeguarding measures are shown as not fit for purpose. Also, the shoddy way in which the CDM was handled reflects the same attitude as shown in the way that the choral register matter was responded to.

There never has been any reason given for the refusal to give access to the register. Both the Diocesan Registrar and Chancellor could see no reason why there should be this refusal. The only conclusion is that there were dates when the boy and Kenneth were not together. This would make the allegations by the boy impossible (who often changed his story and yet was always ‘believed’). The evidence from the register could have proved decisive one way or the other in the case but no one at the cathedral showed interest in exposing the vital piece of potential evidence. The whole allegation has been based on over three years of questionable and perverse manipulation of the truth,  If there had been an independent organisation using methods similar to the ones being used currently by Professor Jay, the truth would have been exposed in October 2020

There are further recent injustices to Kenneth

At the meeting we had with the Bishop, he told us that bishops cannot intervene with core groups. In his letter of judgement, he said that when the CDM was concluded, he would write to the Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser expressing his hope that a resolution might be found. He corresponded with us and said that he did write to her.  I have heard nothing further since October 2^nd when he told us he was waiting for her to contact him. The DSA notoriously shows no respect for those in authority who might have had legitimate interest in such a case.  The police, LADO, independent investigator, solicitor have all been involved but have not found anything to justify her concern.  She seems just to want to maintain her position, held since May 2021, that ‘the case is closed’. Presumably there is now no hope of any resolution while she remains in post.

The current impasse still leaves Kenneth with the restrictions imposed on him in April 2022 when he returned to the Cathedral. These include not having his liturgical roles restored and having to ask permission to go to any other church in the UK.

By contrast, a year ago, there joined the cathedral congregation an academic clergyman who had admitted to inappropriate sexual behaviour with young men for many years in a notorious abuse case.  This man says prayers, reads and preaches in another church in this diocese without any agreement in place. It would seem that the difference in the freedom between him and Kenneth is because he has admitted to crimes, while Kenneth has not. C/E safeguarding does not have any way of resolving a case when the accused refuses to admit to sins which he knows he has not committed!

Kenneth is much to be respected for his refusal to sign an untrue document just to end his situation; this has taken courage and I am proud to be his friend.

Finally, justice for Kenneth will be problematic in the future because of a constant change of staff in this Diocese. In three years, seven senior clergy and core group members have left. There are still three senior posts not permanently filled. That has left a gap in the corporate memory of Kenneth’s case.  New people will only be able to understand the case from the surviving members.  Can they be relied upon to remember only the truth?  From the history of the case, we cannot be sure that what new members will be told will be even approximate to the truth. 

It is like a perpetuum mobile, round and round and on and on with no end.