The telling of stories was one way that Jesus used to communicate truths about God and human behaviour.  Preachers in the church know how, when we read and study these stories, they keep on giving.  There is never only a single interpretation to the parables that we find in the gospels.  There are always new facets of meaning and insight to be extracted as we ponder them over a lifetime.  It is also perhaps legitimate to try to imagine the stories as they might be retold today with another teller and another context.  Here is an example of how one well-known parable might be retold to resonate with some of our contemporary issues.

Travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho is a dangerous business.  I never know whom I might meet when I travel that way.  Sometimes people are after my money and possessions and sometimes they simply want to recruit me into one of their gangs so I can work for them and bring others under gang control.  If I were to be young, there is the added danger of being harassed or worse.  The journey along that way always makes travelling very stressful indeed.  I would rather not do it, but my whole livelihood depends on it.

As a frequent traveller I know others who make the journey regularly.  So far, I have managed not to suffer the humiliation of being stripped naked, wounded and left half dead.  I gather from talking to survivors that not all the bandits on the road are true outlaws.  Some are well respected members of the Samaritan community, and they go in for banditry during their spare time.  One or two of these part-time bandits have been brought to justice. The religious ones among them seem to get off and go free.  When the Romans get involved, which is not very often, then justice seems to happen. They are disowned by their community and get sent to prison.  Others, especially the ‘religious’ ones, are let off on some technicality.  I also hear about individuals within the religious hierarchy who refuse to testify against their chums when they are brought to justice.  The higher up the chain of religious importance you are, the more likely it is that you will be let off.

Recently I have heard about a new initiative designed to help travellers on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road.  The organiser is a Gentile, and he has studied abroad in things like law and philosophy.   This fact alone and his independence of the religious establishment gives us travellers confidence.  If it were organised by anyone linked to the important people in the Samaritan hierarchy, none of us would be able to trust it.  This Gentile is a true independent and will not be compromised by any of the strands of loyalty that have linked some of the bandits to the top people in the Samaritan network.  The main part of the new initiative involves organising safe spaces for travellers in danger.  The organisation has been able to recruit Innkeepers along the way to help in the project.  All of them are being thoroughly vetted to make sure that their inns are safe for vulnerable travellers.  They will be trained in first aid and self-defence skills.  All will have emergency funds to tide over any travellers who have had all their money stolen. 

For a time, the scheme has worked well.  The Priests at the top of the Samaritan network are also gradually being forced to own up to their past connections to the bandits.  Many links, that some of those convicted of terrible crimes have had with people of religious importance in Samaria, have been brought to light. All members of the ruling body have been on safeguarding training.   Now they can recognise the way that abuse of power is not only found in armed robbery but also in the way the Priests conduct their business in everyday religious administration.  Also, they have come to understand how money raising is not the same thing as common extortion.  People are everywhere learning to question and hold to account those who have positions of religious importance.

Recently a terrible event occurred on the Jerusalem Jericho Road which reminded us of the old days of banditry when things were really bad.  A traveller was beaten and left for dead on the roadside.  He was not rendered unconscious so he was able to tell us what happened while he was waiting for help.  Two people passed on the other side of the road.  He recognised both of them as being members of the Samaritan religious leadership.  He knew that each had been on several levels of safeguarding training.  This had been arranged by the Priests for everyone working in and around Samaria.  They will know what to do, the traveller thought.  But no, it seems that helping a wounded traveller is too complicated; there are too many forms to fill in and the witness might get something wrong when they try to apply the high priest regulations to the situation.  Worse still, if too many questions are asked, it may turn out that the bandits are themselves Jews in good standing.  Helping to bring a fellow Samaritan to justice would be betrayal.  Passing by on the other side is the best strategy in this situation.

Fortunately, one of my group, the Survivor Supporters Cabal (SSC), was on hand nearby and quickly helped the wounded traveller to a designated inn where he would be safe.  Here he was able to recover his strength and tell his story.  He was able to describe his attackers as well as those who declined to help him.  Both groups were identifiable, but the religious authorities in Samaria refused to get involved.  But even more serious was the response as a result of all the publicity to this new case.  New pressure has been placed on my network in SSC by the religious establishment.  The religious authorities cannot stop the volunteer workers, but they can undermine the livelihoods of those who work in the inn network project.  Overnight the secretary, who makes sure that the safe inns who help travellers are properly supplied with money and first-aid material, was sacked and the financial support for the project withdrawn.  The Priests of Samaria were not prepared to offer any help to a project which showed them up in a bad light.

The result of this latest outrage and the totally inept response to it is twofold.  Lots of people are asking questions and the top religious authorities are starting to look really shamed and embarrassed.  Because the member of SSC and the inn keeper’s (a gentile) help was so vital and effective, the religious authorities now want to try to hit back.   There is a plan to buy up all the inns that are part of the support network and make sure that they are only run by approved Samaritans in good standing. Only the high priests’ regulations are to be followed when it comes to rescuing wounded travellers.  It is obvious that the authorities do not want to do the necessary work of making sure that the road is kept safe and that those who are wounded get appropriate help.  Perhaps it is because the whole structure of the ruling authorities in Samaria has become so tangled and wrapped up in human power games, that the will to do the necessary work of reform is simply not present.

Throughout my time of ministry in the Anglican Church (1970 -2010) I have been aware of the idea of team ministries.  Back in the 70s, the role of a team vicar, working collaboratively with others in a large multi-cantered parish, seemed a considerable improvement on being a lowly assistant curate.  My own second post, after two years back at university, was somewhere between a team vicar position and a curacy.  How the division of labour worked out in practice is not important here, but I was given enough independent responsibility to be able to lead and build up two small congregations on the edge of the main town parish with minimal interference from the centre.  This allowed me to feel that I was on my way towards a post of complete independence as a ‘proper’ vicar.    This ambition was realised when I took over the charge of a cluster of villages in Herefordshire in 1979.

Looking back over my ministry, I think that I can truthfully say that no clergyperson I have met has ever tried to convince me that working in a team of clergy was a desirable long-term career option.  The assumption that was built into our college training in the 60s was that we were all destined to become independent incumbents in charge of a parish.  Some specially gifted individuals might possibly be aiming for an archdeaconry or a post in a cathedral.  The junior team ministry posts that were available might form a staging post in the early part of a clerical career.  The then legal time limit of five years for team vicar posts was an indication that that would be the maximum time to serve in such a role.

Working in a clerical team did have certain things going for it on paper.  There could be the opportunity to specialise in the areas where one felt gifted or had some special skill.  Then there was the assumption of receiving spiritual or practical support from one or more colleagues and being able to say the daily offices with others.  Being part of a staff team would surely overcome any sense of ministerial loneliness that individual clergy might feel. 

The positives that were held out for team working were often outweighed by the drawbacks of this style of operation.  The five-year rule for team vicars (now abolished) meant that there was seldom any proper continuity in clergy teams.  People were always on the move; someone was always on the point of leaving or settling in. The only person in the team with any sort of employment security was the Team Rector.  When one person in the team, the leader, had an employment security denied to the junior members of the team it made for instability.  Such teams operated in a distinctly hierarchical fashion and it is hard to use the word team to describe the power dynamics normally at work. For all practical purposes the so-called team ministries of the past operated as large parishes with a rector exercising considerable power over several curates/team vicars.  It is hard to claim that these junior vicars were not acting and feeling like traditional curates of old.  Most curates/team vicars, if my experience was anything like typical, could not wait to be given their own distinct area of responsibility and become fully fledged freehold incumbents.

I have to confess that I have not been close to any team ministry situation over the past twenty-five years, so it is possible that Church of England team ministries are flourishing in the 2020s.  What I have been sketching out about the clergy applies to the 80s and 90s, but the literature I have encountered on the dynamics of parishes does not suggest that the old team ministry structure is now held up anywhere as a model of good parish functioning.  One major factor, which was true in my generation of clergy was that, speaking generally, the clergy were neither by training nor temperament good team players.  There were a number of reasons for this. The first of these is that, thanks to the vagaries of background and training, each clergyperson emerged from theological college with a distinctive brand of churchmanship.  Alongside the evangelical clergy there were the catholic and liberal wings.  These latter used to be far more dominant in the 70s and 80s.  The broad labels of churchmanship hid beneath them a large number of subcategories of theological preference.  From a practical point of view, it was easier to allow a distinct churchmanship to be worked out in the setting of a single parish by one clergyperson in charge.  The alternative was having a convinced conservative evangelical working alongside an individual taking his/her guidance from a battered copy of the Anglo-Catholic Ritual Notes and this did not make for an easy or harmonious working environment.  Tastes in the styles of music deemed suitable for Sunday worship could also create serious tensions.  But it was not just the variety of theological outlook that made groups of clergy suspicious and slightly tense in each other’s company.  Another real tension in the clergy of the past, and no doubt today, was the awareness of the avenues of promotion.  Many clergy of my acquaintance spent a lot of time trying to move in the right circles where they might be spotted and marked for preferment to a cathedral or even a bishopric.  Ambition in the Church of England was, and no doubt is, a strong factor which spills out to create an atmosphere of tension in clergy gatherings.

Why do my reflections and last century memories of the institution of team ministries come to be discussed in 2023?  The reason for this is that two English dioceses, Truro and Leicester, seem in my opinion, to be re-inventing and promoting a brand-new version of the old team ministry model.   This model called Mission Community or something similar, intends over a period to place every clergyperson, stipendiary and non, to work in what looks very much like one of the team ministries of the past.   The main difference today is that these Mission Communities will be responsible for large groupings of 20- 30 existing parishes and perhaps up to 35 church buildings.  The similarity is in the way that all the clergy will be required to work collaboratively.  Most of these Mission Communities will be overseen by an experienced stipendiary leader.  He or she will preside over the other clergy (paid and unpaid) and lay people working in large teams.  The Leicester diocese are bringing in this pattern fairly imminently, and the pattern will evolve over a number of years as the posts of currently serving clergy become vacant.  The very first of these mission communities is to be based the parish of Launde and will be known as the Launde Minster Community.  The Community will eventually be responsible for 35 churches and 24 parishes.

Having only worked with a quite different pattern of parish life, I look at these new patterns of ministry with concern.  The lay people in the pew will no longer have an identified individual clergyperson with whom to bond.  The person taking a service on a particular Sunday will depend on the allocation/rota made in the administrator’s office and overseen by the senior stipendiary provided for the minster group.   It goes without saying that, for lay people, this will be experienced as a backward development.  If each member of the team only appears at one particular church every three months or so, this will make it hard for substantial pastoral bonds ever to be formed between the clergy and individual members of the congregation. 

I have looked at all the financial and practical reasons for the decision of Truro and Leicester dioceses to go down this minster model of management of the clergy and parishes.  This is the only arrangement that is currently affordable with the available financial resources.  My reflection here is not trying to suggest that these practical issues can be ignored, but simply to make the point that this model of working the system is unlikely to be attractive to the clergy for similar reasons to their old lack of enthusiasm for the team ministry concept.  If I am right, older clergy still aspire to being pastorally independent in their working environment.  The thought of being part of a minster group is not professionally attractive.  Many of the stipendiary clergy who have been trained in ways that I am familiar with, will still see home visiting and the pastoral care of individuals to be at the very heart of what they were trained for and want to do on a daily basis.  Organising immensely complicated rotas is an activity and skill set that has very little appeal, even with the help of professional secretarial staff.  Whatever is true about the future of the clerical calling, I cannot see that it has become more attractive or rewarding through these current patterns that are being organised for the future.  There may be some who welcome the brave new world of teams and Minster Communities but clearly there are many, both clerical and lay, who are seriously worried about a failure of morale if this pattern becomes more general.  The old traditional pattern of a vicar labouring within a community so that he/she becomes a fixed feature of community life, will no longer be found.  What seems to be on offer appears to fail everyone, congregation, clergy and the communities themselves.

Nostalgia for a past, where pastoral care rather than management was at the top of a parish priest’s agenda, is probably a futile indulgence.  My understanding of human nature would suggest that there are many who look back to the days before Mission Communities when the emphasis was on parish care, and the non-church goers and their needs were, when possible, treated with equal respect with those who attended services.  The care of the ancient buildings fell on the obligation of every resident in the parish and not to the few who attended.  Somehow quite substantial sums of money flowed from the communities themselves to sustain church buildings.   These were regarded with affection even if the use of them was limited for most to times of national rejoicing or mourning.  Goodwill from the community, both for the institution as well as the building could be counted on in my experience.  Will this survive the depersonalisation of church life that the ‘monster’ parish system may create?

Looking back over 70+ years of reasonably active church membership, I have been reflecting on one feature which has only come into my conscious focus recently.  The feature that I want to mention is that of being accompanied or mentored by others as I have tried to move along in my Christian pilgrimage.  The idea of mentorship that I have in mind at the moment is probably something broader than that which is generally meant by the term.  I am referring to all the people, (most of them now dead) who have in any way accompanied me and allowed the spiritual self to feel nurtured and encouraged in the attempts to practise Christian discipleship.

The individuals who, in a wide sense, mentored us in our faith will almost certainly include a number of people whom we never personally got to know at all.  Even those with whom we had some kind of relationship may never have had any idea that we looked up to them in this way.  Thus, the mentoring relationships we feel we have had with them may have been totally one sided.  For example, we may have felt a strong identification with an author whose work or writing has made us feel alive in a special way.  The vast majority of the authors that have inspired me are now firmly dead but something of their truth remains alive inside me.  We thus often remain deeply attached to books that contain writing which led to new spiritual insight for us, even if they were penned centuries ago. 

The notion of the Christian journey involving a strong sense of being supported by a ‘cloud of witnesses’ is probably familiar to most of us.  Perhaps, like me, we have not given it much attention.  Mentoring in this broad sense is something that is found in many of the privileged conversations that have been afforded to those of us who are clergy.  We have been mentored during our attendance at the bedside of the dying or in the flash of comprehension in the eyes of a confirmation candidate.  The examples I could give go on but I have probably said enough to evoke the wider meaning I am giving here to this word mentoring.  Whatever word we might choose to convey this idea of outside encouragement in the journey of Christian discipleship, it is clearly important to all of us. 

The task of recognising the fact of being mentored in the way I describe, brings us to another, possibly disturbing, thought and question.  Have I at any time in my life been depended on or looked up to as an exemplar of Christian discipleship and encouragement?  If so, have those who looked up to me been served well, or have they felt let down when they learnt more about me as a person?  Those of us who are clergy or who occupy positions of responsibility cannot help having people looking up to us as some sort of of model for what a Christian should look like.  This is why any scandals by clergy or senior leaders in the Church are so incredibly harmful.  Just as the family life of a clergyman comes under scrutiny by his or her parishioners, so every bishop and others at the higher levels in the church carry an enormous responsibility for modelling what a good Christian life should look like.  As a mentor in the broad way I have suggested, a bishop will be obliged to carry on his or her shoulders the projection of maybe thousands of fellow Christians.  In summary they, the Christians in the pews, want to see examples in their leaders of a good Christian life.   They want to model themselves on their leaders and see a living example of what faith actually involves in practice.

The mentoring relationships which allow Christians to support and encourage one another, do not, as we have suggested, necessarily involve an active relationship between people.  A public profile or even a reputation for godliness may be all that is required for the ‘virtual’ mentoring and sharing of Christian encouragement to begin to take place.  The main quality that I believe one Christian wants to see in another is an utterly reliable integrity. Christians are looking for someone else on whom to model themselves, and will be hoping to find, not holy words coming from the mouth, but a consistency of character that allows them to feel they can completely trust the other person.  The exemplar, the person attracting the projection of others, needs to be, in the modern idiom, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type.  WYSIWYG people are not perfect; they are flawed like everyone else.  But we look to them for consistency and reliability.  We don’t want to discover that there are areas of toxic behaviour just below the surface.  All the relationships we have, in and outside the Church, are based on trust.  It is deeply upsetting and disturbing when an old friend is found to have been stealing money from his company for years to feed a gambling addiction. The effect on families when one of its members has been involved in creating pornography will always be devastating.  Anyone exposed to revelations of this kind, which involve a betrayal of trust, may likely start to feel paranoid and suspicious of everyone around them.  Trust in other people’s integrity, whether in the Church or outside, is a glue that holds families, congregations and institutions together.   When this glue starts to dissolve or fails to work, the future is bleak for these institutions to hold together or even survive.

In recent times, we have lived though some shocking revelations in public life which have undermined our trust in many institutions in this country.  Stability in our political life, our police forces, the educational institutions and our churches has always been part of the background security we have enjoyed.   Relying on these institutions to play their part in providing this overall stability has been crucial to our sense of well-being and safety.  The current undermining of this sense of security because of failings in these same institutions is a serious matter.   In our political life the absence or decay of trust may lead to solutions that are deemed extreme, like fascism or other totalist ideologies.  When such extreme systems appear in any country, it can take decades for the balanced approach to political life to be re-established.

The current danger that I see potentially damaging, even destroying, the fabric of the Church of England is an emergence of cynicism or lack of trust at every level of church life.  If our bishops for any reason are no longer looked up to as exemplars of honest and godly behaviour, this cynicism may quickly spread to every other level of church life.  If the protection of the privileges, power and resources of the institution becomes the highest value for those who control and manage the Church of England, then I can only see a future of decay and weakness ahead.   Those of us who care for the values of integrity, justice and holiness, the WYSIWYG values of total honesty and love, will continue to stand by them.  On our own we can do little to save our political or religious institutions.  But together, with those others who believe in these values contained in absolute integrity, we may be able to do something to help rebuild true communities.   Finding once again our ability to be strengthened and supported by the absolute Christian integrity of others, we may be playing a part to serve our Church and helping it not only to survive but flourish in the future.  

by Gilo

Since her appointment as Lead Safeguarding Bishop in mid-January, Joanne Grenfell has posted on everything on her Twitter account BUT safeguarding. In the four+ months since the Bishop of Stepney has been given this key role, she appears to be missing in action.

Imagine a Lead Bishop for the Environment ignoring harm done to forests, rivers, oceans, biodiversity! It would be strange not to say perverse. As it happens the Bishop for the Environment, Graham Usher, has done about half a dozen social media things in relation to his role during May alone. One particularly striking tweet was of the confirmation card sent to candidates in mid-May with a picture depicting a tree laden with animals in the process of being cut down. This powerful illustration by Nat Morley titled ‘The Tree of Life 6th Mass Extinction’ showed the ‘Environment Bishop’ unafraid of public visibility in his role. Another senior figure, Anne Hollinghurst, acting Bishop of Birmingham, attended Extinction Rebellion’s The Big One protest in Westminster in April.

But in the Church of England’s safeguarding structure we now have a Lead bishop perceived as silent to the harm and re-abuse being done to survivors on an almost daily basis; a bishop who seems to have decided the best course of action with this critical portion of a portfolio is to stay hidden beneath the mantle of the structure and hope the three years passes her by with little to no impact. There’s a rather more sinister possibility: perhaps the bishop has been instructed to follow this course.

What a difference from the part played by Peter Hancock, the last really pastoral bishop in this role. Woefully misguided and misinformed about mandatory reporting as he was, and at times out of his depth – he was nevertheless regarded with affection by many survivors and seen as someone who genuinely cared. He struggled to make a difference. He met with survivors. He went out of his way. It mattered to him that the Church was as dishonest and cruel and complacent as he eventually realized was the case. It was to be his tragedy and ours that weasel ecclesiocrats inside both Church House and Lambeth Palace ran merry rings round him to the point that he became deeply angered and stressed by their machinations. It was widely known that he was livid with Lambeth Palace following Archbishop Welby’s Ch 4 interview. Apparently he had not been informed it was happening, and found himself fielding the anger of Smyth victims at the array of untruths expressed in the course of the interview.

It is also widely known that Jonathan Gibbs experienced moral and emotional exhaustion at the cynicism he found in the culture of the House of Bishops. He was at one time on the verge of quitting the role. I urged him to go (if that was his intention) with a bang and not a whimper. He clung on but seemed to lose any heart in the role and in his last year as Lead bishop resembled a man desperately seeking a demob suit. The sight of him at that shameful Synod last year, sounding like a strangulated Jackanory presenter against the backdrop of brazenly strategic silencing of questions from the platform, was really pitiful. I think by that stage everyone knew he was a spent force who’d lost any power of persuasion that he might at one stage have had. 

It is clear to all watchers that the Lead Bishops have their hands on rubber levers which effect little to no change. The power lies behind them on the platform of the carefully stage-managed theatre of Synod. The real levers are in the hands of those who control Synod, control the NST, control Archbishops Council, control the Comms in Church House, manage the Church’s response to Reviews and Reports, control the long drawn out delay to the Redress Scheme, and ultimately control the presentational mirage of ‘journey of change’ in this broken structure. The real levers are operated by the Nyebots while Lead Bishops must be content to handle rubber levers.

Survivors could be forgiven for thinking the Lead Safeguarding role is now little more than a purgatorial stepping stone to a bigger mitre. Do the three years and field your way through the unethical mess of it all and we’ll give you a diocese. That seems to be the way it works. Anyone remember the anger felt by survivors after the Synod? When a list of failures and major questions about accountability were skipped over and erased by a deeply cynical Archbishops Council. It was to be hoped that the next Lead Bishop would at least start with visible drive and recognition of the anger and hurt expressed by survivors, some resolve to mend bridges and show herself impelled by the call for justice, redress and institutional honesty. 

But so far there has been little sign that this bishop is doing much else than marking time in a thankless role. Meanwhile the situation is worsening. Is worse now than it was during the time of IICSA. The Church of England is fighting fires on all fronts. Church groups across the evangelical world are waking up to the potentially huge scale of ramifications in the Soul Survivor scandal. Publication of the long awaited Makin Review is around the corner later this year and is likely to be as critical of senior figures and their awareness combined with the ability to look the other way, as has been the Devamanikkam Report. There is renewed interest in the media in the Church’s failure to deliver a Redress Scheme and its re-abusive treatment of survivors in the meantime. The Spindler/Reeves Review recently published on House of Survivors site is a coruscating report into the Church’s continuing cruelty in just one case alone. In the coming weeks a fresh complaint concerning dishonesty and corporate corruption inside the heart of the Archbishops Council will land on the desks of both Archbishops. And so it goes on…

Just this morning a Synod Member with many years experience in corporate investigations tells me, “We need a 10,000 watt spotlight on this organisation as I see so many corporate governance failures which I think need a total clean-up. We choose clergy to be shepherds of flocks, not to run billion pound organisations. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when this proves to be beyond their competence. David was great at dealing with Goliath but proved to have many flaws when he became King. One of the issues is whether the problem is the King or the KIng’s advisers.”

I suspect the Lead bishop is overwhelmed by the sheer number of fires in her department, and overwhelmed too by the multitude of conflicts of interest apparent beneath the surface of the Church’s handling of so much of this crisis. But she will need quickly to find her voice and her courage, and show survivors that she has the moral strength to fight the injustice and intransigence of her structures on our behalf. She will need to step out from behind the purple enclosure and look behind her with a critical eye and call out serious wrongdoing within the hierarchy and their structure. Survivors need to see a Lead Bishop with tenacity to match that of survivors. Quiet complicity with institutional complacency, cruelty and corruption is no longer an option. It looks like negligence and begs the question: is the Bishop even trying to do the job?

Gilo

By Martin Sewell

Shortly after joining General Synod in 2015 and following a maiden speech contributing to the debate of the Clergy (Risk Assessment) Regulations 2016, I found myself in the coffee queue alongside Archbishop John Sentamu. I had spoken critically, having contributed to commissioning some hundreds of such assessments, but the archbishop explained to me where I was reading the room wrongly. Essentially, I was seeking to align ecclesiastical legal process with secular safeguarding standards but, he said, “We are building a system suitable for the Church of England”.

Upon hearing of his being “stood back” from ministry following the Humphreys Review of the Devamanikkam case – and especially his “Old School” reaction to it –  I could not but reflect that that project is now truly dead in the water and Sentamu’s assertion that Church Law trumps good (secular) safeguarding practice has delivered the coup de grâce.

The future of Church safeguarding must surely now involve the unequivocal embracing of secular standards of jurisprudence and about time too; ask the many, many abuse survivors who have campaigned for vital reform in the wake of the Matt Ineson case.

That case became, perhaps, the first very public cause célèbre because Matt had the courage and integrity to put his own name into the public domain as he told his harrowing story. When he saw one of the bishops who had wronged him promoted from Sheffield to the important see of Oxford, he protested outside Christ Church Cathedral at the enthronement. It was a low-key protest but it has become hugely symbolic.

He was joined by another hero of the safeguarding resistance, Gilo, as the great and the good largely passed by on the other side of the road and some inside were told that it was a “Families need Fathers” demonstration (so nothing really to do with the Church). One of the few clerics to break ranks, to engage and make the protestors welcome, was the Dean of Christ Church, Dr Martyn Percy. He did not ignore them; he brought them tea and sandwiches and let them use the toilets.

It may not have quite been the door at Wittenberg, but it proved to be an important event in the safeguarding life of the Church of England.

Many years later, Matt Ineson was offered a review of his case – with strings attached.  “Old School” was at it again, reasserting its power over a victim and expecting gratitude. They found him awkwardly ungrateful.

If ‘Old School’ would not approach the matter in a modern collaborative way, consulting himself, Devamanikkam’s relatives, and Bishop Croft on the identity of the reviewer, and the terms of reference, Matt Ineson insisted that he would neither engage with the Review, nor permit his data to be used within it.  ‘Old School’ ploughed on, ensuring from the outset that the Review could only ever assess part of the story.

Matt had told his story powerfully at IICSA – as had Gilo – but  unfortunately the scope of IICSA closed just before the Smyth victims and Dr Percy could have their stories of cover-up and institutional bullying considered in that independent secular sphere, away from the corrupting influences of opacity and unaccountable power. There remains much unfinished business within the pursuit of cultural change.

Yet the Humphreys Review is not without value; it tells part, though far from all of the story, and the Church of England must now consider its response. If this is to be another step on the long slow journey towards integrity, the de facto suspension of the former Archbishop of York from ministry must be followed by the suspension of  the current Bishop of Oxford pending a comprehensive re-examination of  both their places within this story and beyond.

Bishop Croft has the historic misfortune of standing in the eye of a perfect storm of safeguarding scandals which we need to identify and confront. First, however, let us consider where we are in terms of precedent.

When the former Bishop of Lincoln Christopher Lowson was alleged to have responded inadequately to safeguarding matters, the then CofE Director of Safeguarding, Melissa Caslake, successfully established that the infamous ‘one year rule’,  time-limiting complaints, ran from the date of her learning of the alleged infraction. She was accorded the status to act independently in such cases. But if she had it, then so must her successor Alex Kubeyinje: indeed, he must have the duty to act. Bishop Lowson suffered a  lengthy suspension (initially imposed by Archbishop Justin before Caslake’s involvement) while the matter was investigated by Lincolnshire Police, with Welby insisting that the suspension was a neutral act. Those matters (in respect of of which the President of Tribunals later found there was no case to answer ) were not more serious than the multiple unexamined residual allegations against Bishop Steven Croft.

When six allegations of mishandling safeguarding  were brought against Dean Percy (with no actual complainant supporting them) in 2020 he too suffered a lengthy suspension, at the hands of Bishop Croft, before those complaints were found to have no substance. Archbishop Sentamu is complaining: “Those who believe that suspension is a neutral act – its effect on me is more devastating than they will ever remember”. Does anyone recall him lifting his voice when Dr Percy was being repeatedly judicially bullied by College, Cathedral and Diocese?  Me neither…

In June 2020 Bishop Croft revoked former Archbishop George Carey’s Permission to Officiate (PTO) in the church where he worships in retirement. Keith Makin had passed on to the National Safeguarding Team two letters that suggested a report about Smyth’s abuse had been seen by Carey in the early 1980s when he was principal of Trinity College Bristol – prior to becoming the archbishop. Carey denied ever seeing the letters and his PTO was restored by Croft seven months later. Croft was effectively instructed to revoke Carey’s PTO by the NST, but the point is that he was ‘suspended’ pending an investigation into poor complaint handling while Croft, still in active ministry, is not.

What cannot be right is for the Bishop of Oxford to enjoy a more privileged response from the institutions of the Church than Lowson, Carey, Percy, and Sentamu pending the fullest  investigation of the facts about his actions. His handling of both matters must be considered, especially after Archbishops Justin and Stephen have been joined by the independent members of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) in affirming the need for a proper examination of Dean Percy’s allegations of institutional bullying and a toxic culture across the upper echelons of the Church, including Lambeth Palace and Church House. Why the delay there?

There are eight points which readers might find clinch the argument for a swift Croft suspension and a joint Percy/Ineson review.

• Matt Ineson alleges that Bishop Croft gave damagingly inconsistent explanations to BBC Radio about the repeated disclosures made to him. This allegation must be resolved one way or the other.

• When an assessment was required of the risk (if any) that Dean Percy posed to all and sundry within Christ Church Oxford, following the allegation in October 2020, so-called ‘assessments of risks’ were prepared, ostensibly by cathedral staff rather than any of the ten approved assessors listed by the Diocese and ignoring the approved CofE procedures for such assessments. Bishop Croft has consistently refused to condemn such irregularity . He needs to account for effectively endorsing the departure from policy and good practice.

• When Dean Percy emerged unscathed from the allegations against him, Bishop Croft did not immediately allow him to return to ministry and refused him a proper leaving Service; now he is under scrutiny, he invites everyone to ‘draw the line’ early and move on. That looks a tad hypocritical, which should not become de rigueur for any bishop let alone a member of the House of Lords.

• Bishop Croft arrived in Oxford whilst under the Ineson CDM investigation. When Cathedral members brought to him evidence that one of his staff might be seriously misrepresenting the character of the final Percy allegation, he took no action and later wrote a ‘fit to receive’ letter, perpetuating the Old School culture of picking and choosing who gets the favours and who gets the hit.

• When such matters were aired publicly in the Archbishop Cranmer blog, questioning the Oxford safeguarding culture, the bishop’s response was to threaten the editor with ruinous defamation proceedings. That is not what openness and integrity looks like.

• In his self-exculpatory letter to 700 Oxford clergy in response to the Humphreys Review, the Bishop ‘victim blames’ Ineson for his being “distracted” by referencing a 10-year-old CDM brought against Matt Ineson after he had disclosed his rape and which Croft himself dismissed. Ineson says this infringes his right to anonymity on that dismissed allegation which he describes as “trumped up” in response to his disclosures.

• Matt Ineson’s complaint extends to the want of care afforded to his mentally ill rapist who committed suicide.

• While the effective suspension of Lord Sentamu is procedurally correct, it is unedifying to see public opprobrium heaped upon ‘the retired black guy’ while the white bishop with far greater responsibility in the matter remains in post.

Bishop Croft has had the Humphreys report for several months to prepare a response; regrets and the Ad Clerum letter are not sufficient for closure on doubts over his episcopal stewardship in these matters. There remains a great deal of unfinished business swept under the carpet at Woodstock Palace / Church House, Oxford / Bishop’s Lodge, Kidlington. It is not unknown for a suspension to free other complainants to come forward.

These are important matters of principle; they are not trivial, vindictive or personal. For too long the critics of the Church have seen cover-up and expediency rule the roost; we may be at the tipping point, but as things stand the essential change cannot be taken for granted especially if laxity, partiality, and expediency are allowed to creep back in.

Sentamu only articulated what many bishops have de facto thought for years, but it is substance not presentation that counts. Croft had primary responsibility for processing the complaint of abuse of a minor and leaving a potential rapist at liberty for a further five years.

Incidentally, one cannot help but notice a public silence on such an important point from Meg Munn, the putative acting chair of the Independent Safeguarding Board since the story broke. This may add to why there is a widespread lack of confidence in that appointment.

The Church is about to face another tsunami of embarrassment over the Soul Survivor allegations. The toxicity of lax process must surely be recognised as having played a part in this fresh scandal, for can it be seriously doubted that had the issues described above been addressed with due regard for transparency and accountability, the attention of the Soul Survivor leadership might have sharpened and victims been emboldened to come forward at an earlier stage?

Of course, suspension and inquiry does not equate to guilt and even adverse findings must result in a proportionate response. Yet if you want to change the Old School culture – you have to change the Old School culture. This can only be done by the Church following its logic over John Sentamu and applying it to Steven Croft without more ado. Good impartial process has to be the order of the day.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that much of what is said about Croft and Sentamu can also be said about Archbishop Justin Welby over similar matters: there is the long-delayed Makin Report. I suspect that after the week he has had, following the Coronation, Archbishop Justin will be seriously considering his own position alongside those of his colleagues.

Some of us have been pointing out that the writing has been on the wall for years.

by Rosie Harper

This is a short reflection about power in the Church from Rosie Harper, a former member of General Synod and Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham.

On Tuesday afternoon I attended the 368th Festival Service of the Clergy Support Trust. It took place at St Paul’s and in a weird way it was done in a mini-me style of the coronation. There was a past PM, the Lord Mayor who processed ‘in State’ whatever that means. It seemed to involve a couple of folk in tights who had to carry very heavy stuff ahead of him. Then there were Sheriffs and Bishops and Aldermen and so on. There were three cathedral choirs and lots of fancy dress. Of course it was rather fabulous. The music was beautiful and they had thought hard about being inclusive.

On the front row in contrast to all the gold and entitled flummery were a handful of ‘ordinary’ people who had been the beneficiaries of the Support Trust’s generosity. Tick!

I was squeezed, rather too literally, between two charming gentlemen who seemed to have strips of dead bear hanging for their shoulders. Probably something to do with Livery Companies.

The man on my left was Mr Geoffrey Tattersall KC known to me as an experienced and kind chair of General Synod debates  Naturally he asked me why I wasn’t doing Synod anymore and I gave my usual reply. I no longer believe in it. I felt played and manipulated by the puppeteers behind the scenes. Ah well, he said, it is what it is.

So despite the wholly good and generous intentions of the Trust the service simply dripped entitlement and hierarchy. It dripped power. It mirrored the service last week at Westminster Abbey and was a very vivid display the Established Church. Boy is it established! The nearer to the front you were the more important you could feel. Someone forgot to read the gospels. So I was feeling distinctly queasy as I made my way home. I was trying to join up the dots. For some reason it seemed that Mike Pilavachi was part of the pattern.

So here’s my question. Is all religion inherently abusive? I have yet to meet organised religion that does not use and abuse power, and the worst version is power which comes via a hotline direct from God. This tends to be embedded in a theology rooted in a scary model of God. A God who is so angry that he takes his (righteous, of course) anger out on his own innocent son. If your theology is abusive your structures will be too. And if your structures are abusive they will attract abusers. We don’t know yet how the Pilavachi story will play out, but Ian Paul shouting at everyone to shut up, and hence fanning the flames, does not bode well.

I wonder why, as a religion, a sect, a denomination begins to organise itself as a result of growth, it always creates power structures? There are other more equal and less controlling ways of being community. But power is seductive and pretends to be a servant for the greater good. The temptations of Christ in the desert nail it. Trade your integrity for power is the siren call. Jesus saw right through it, but organised religion falls for it hook, line and sinker. 

I know, I really do, that there is love and kindness and generosity and life changing support that flows from people of faith and from faith communities. Goodness is there and it is abundant. I am scared though that when I see an institution like the CofE or the Catholic church completely unable to reform, to recognise abusive leaders, to accept any independent scrutiny, to name spiritual abuse and most of all to treat survivors with the respect and value and reparation that they deserve. Is it in the end it’s because it can’t be done? The question is horrible. What if religion is abusive -full stop.

by Anonymous

An occasional series looking at how ordinary words and terms have been redefined in the Church of England (CofE). Others in the series to look out will feature mutual flourishing, vulnerable adult, pastoral care, equality, collegiality, mission, appropriate, growth and accountability. And of course, the term ‘safeguarding’. This week, we take a look at ‘independent’.

Readers of this blog may have a fond recollection of the launch of The Independent newspaper in 1986.  It was memorable for many reasons.  This was the first broadsheet newspaper to be launched in the UK for 112 years.  The founders of the newspaper – dissatisfied with the ding-dong battles between Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch slugging it out in circulation figures, scoops and advertising revenue – sought to establish a newspaper free of mogul-ownership.

One of the more striking features of the newspaper was its marketing, with Paul Arden and Tim Mellors leading the team at Saatchi & Saatchi responsible for creating the advertising campaign. Who can forget the giant billboard posters: “It is. Are you?”. Just four words, and then the title of the newspaper. As zeitgeist captions go, hard to beat.

Yet the Archbishops’ Council have rubber-stamped the appointment of Meg Munn as the new chair of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB). Munn takes up post this month. This comes at a delicate moment in the gestation of the ISB. The two board members, Jasvinder Sanghera MBE and Steve Reeves CBE, have recently issued a number of statements and reports stressing the need for the ISB to become an authentically independent body. You’d think that request for independence would be granted? Think again.

The Archbishops’ Council has responded by imposing Ms. Munn as the new Chair. She already sits on or chairs other CofE safeguarding panels. She is not independent. Moreover, more than fifty survivors have written to the ISB to protest. They do not have confidence or trust in Ms. Munn. The likely incontinence between the NST, NNSP, NSSG and ISB is now a certainty. There is no proper data-related ISA (Information Sharing Agreement) in place. Anything communicated to Ms. Munn in one forum cannot avoid leakage into another.

The Archbishops’ Council don’t care a jot about any of this, because when you dominate an institution and its culture, words mean what you say they mean.  Take a word like ‘independent’. It means ‘free from outside control; not depending on another’s authority’ (e.g., “the study is totally independent of central government”). But this is not the definition applied by the Archbishops and most bishops. In their case, ‘independent’ means “it wasn’t me that did or decided this: it was s/he, her/him, they/them…but they came to the same conclusion as me, and honestly I did not influence their decision…and they are not me, so they are independent”. In other words, ‘independent’, in episcopal hands, means a separate person agreeing with a decision the bishop has already made.

In case you doubt this Orwellian, Kafkaesque and Lewis Carroll Dictionary World, you may need to remind yourself that the CofE has no written conflict of interest policy. That is partly because “thoughts and prayers for you at this difficult time”, “we have offered pastoral care” and “it was a difficult decision, but I can’t comment further or give my reasons” are what are usually substituted for truth and justice in the CofE. Time and time again.

The last thing your average bishop wants is any independent scrutiny, external accountability or regulation. God forbid! The CofE is a large unregulated body, and in a literal sense, a law unto itself. Employment law, gender, discrimination, pay and conditions – all testify to a culture that works with its own standards (which would be unlawful outside the CofE) Having its own system of ecclesiastical law means it can (almost) get away with murder.

Well, certainly a few suicides – which in any secular body or organisation would prompt a public inquiry, much soul-searching and several sackings – but barely causes a ripple in the CofE. So, after the tragic gas-lighting of Fr. Alan Griffin and which led to his suicide, the senior diocesan officials carry on regardless, safe in the knowledge that any ‘lessons learned review’ will have terms of reference set by the accused, and be conducted by those whose main concern is to protect the reputation and optics of those who might be criticised.  This is a serious pathology within an institution, this is an advanced case of Truth Decay.

Of course, it is true that a term like ‘independent’ can be used in a rather pliable way. My local coffee shop is ‘independent’, by which it means it is not a branch of Costa, Starbucks and the like. But my local independent coffee shop has three branches. Next door to the independent coffee shop is the independent bakery – it has seven outlets.  OK, it is not exactly Greggs, I grant you. But if the bakery had 40-plus outlets, is this now an ‘independent chain’? The term ‘independent’ is a commercially-positioned identity. It connotes local, and not being owned by some faceless foreign conglomerate. It may even mean it makes its own pastries rather than buying them in bulk. Fair enough.

But when the CofE uses the term ‘independent’ in safeguarding, what does it mean?  Is it “free from outside control and not depending on another’s authority”, or the more commercially local definition?  No. Plainly, it is a PR term, and absolutely nothing remotely proximate to genuine independence.

Thus, the Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor (DSA) in your diocese will sometimes be referred to as independent. But they are paid by the Diocese, accountable to the Diocesan Board of Finance, work in Diocesan HQ, and ultimately be accountable to your bishop. (So, good luck with your complaint to the DSA about your bishop’s recent handling of X or Y…how is that investigation progressing? Seems a bit slow…and s/he’s not “stepped back from ministry” as required of all other clergy, pending outcomes…hmm, strange that, strange…).

Last year I wrote to both Archbishops to complain about the fact that the (then) Chair of the ISB, Maggie Atkinson, was not acting independently, and instead seemed to be conducting her work in a manner that was partial and protectionist of existing power interests, including church lawyers, senior officials and PR agents. The Archbishops waived away these objections in their first sentence: “we obviously have a different definition of what ‘independent’ means”.

They went on to explain that the way they used the term had to be qualified, and to factor in that as the Archbishops’ Council were paying for the ISB, yes, of course, to some extent they were inevitably controlling it, and had authority over it. But the ISB was still ‘independent’, they maintained – in a way that one might argue the Isle of White is unattached to England. Or I am independent from my partner.

Or the Basingstoke branch of Costa is from the ones in Basildon, Bicester and Barnet. I mean, those Costa branches are not physically joined together, are they? They have different staff, variable turnovers of income, dissimilar customer profiles – so in a sense they are independent of each other, aren’t they?

Put like this, then pretty well everything in the CofE is independent of everything else in the CofE, and that is also sort of true, isn’t it? Parishes are independent of each other. Clergy too. Dioceses, when it comes to questions of maternity leave, housing allowances, moving expenses, employment…well, yes, they’re all independent of their neighbouring dioceses. You see, having your own definition of words really can work awfully well in certain kinds of cultures and kleptocracies (i.e., 1984, Handmaid’s Tale, etc).

So, when the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding asserted at General Synod that the ISB was ‘independent’ he was not lying. He was just using the word in a rather unconventional way that is different to the rest of the population.

When IICSA demanded independent oversight of safeguarding in the CofE, it was of course left to the Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council, Mr. William Nye, to properly interpret and translate the term ‘independent’ into a concept that those inside the CofE could work with. Because if ‘independent’ was used and deployed in the conventional sense in the CofE, then bishops would lose power and authority in safeguarding, and be open to challenge. IICSA surely didn’t mean that to happen, did they?

So here are three clusters of questions to ponder the next time you hear your bishop, DSA or some senior official in the CofE say there has been an “independent investigation” into some safeguarding matter or other. Just ask yourself the obvious questions, and put yourself in the position of being on the receiving end of the implementation. Ask yourself if you are comfortable with the standard of truth and justice operating.  Or, feel rather betrayed?

The Set-up:

Who made the complaint? What do you know about the accusation? Were there other charges, victims or complaints? Who set the terms of reference for the investigation? Who paid for these to be set? Did you have any input into this set up, either as a victim, witness or as accused? Is there anyone involved at this stage who has a conflict of interest? How would you even know, or challenge this?

The Execution:

Is the legal firm advising on the investigation process the same one that the Diocese and the Bishop have? Do you have any legal representation, or even legal rights? Is the investigator regulated or accountable, and if so, how and to whom?  What evidence is going to be considered? How was the scope of investigation communicated to you?

The Outcome:

When a decision is made, what rights do you have as a victim or as the accused? If you discover that there have been false witnesses, or that evidence has been redacted, supressed or co-ordinated, can you do anything? Is your Bishop in this acting as your pastor, prosecutor, judge, jury, employer – all of these, or maybe none of them? Can you trust this system in which there appears to be no accountability?

In conclusion, it is these sorts of questions the independently-minded Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves were beginning to grapple with. Whatever the shortcomings of the nascent ISB – largely attributable to the abysmal resourcing and obstruction from its parent body the Archbishops’ Council – Sanghera and Reeves at least understand independence, and also what a problem conflicts of interest are for the destruction of trust and confidence.

This explains the imposition of Ms. Munn as the new chair. She is in post to remind the rest of the CofE that ‘independent’ is a meaningless term in a church run by autocratic and unaccountable leadership. If Ms. Munn had any decency, integrity and probity, she’d refuse to take on the role. Those who have imposed her are banking on her toughing it out.  That, at a stroke, renders the concept of independence void, and simply leads to a total incontinence with the data and lives of victims, survivors and complainants already abused through CofE safeguarding.

As a postscript, we note that The Independent was eventually bought by Tony O’Reilly’s Independent News and Media Group, before being sold to the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev in 2010. Lebedev, like Putin, is a former KGB officer. Lebedev also owns a newspaper with Mikhail Gorbachev. In 2017, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel bought a large stake in The Independent.

In theory, The Independent could run a critical story on Lebedev, Gorbachev or Abuljadayel.  But it doesn’t seem likely, does it? You might then ask yourself if it is not a little impertinent, and indeed slightly misleading, to be the owner of a newspaper called The Independent?

We are back deep into CofE safeguarding terrain here. ‘Independent’ is a commercial and marketing-PR term as much as it is a legal one. The Archbishops’ Council hope you will believe they are using the term as a legal or regulatory word. In truth, they are selling you a huge con: it is only their marketing-PR term.

As I say, once you realise that the DSA works for your bishop, it isn’t going to be easy to raise your concerns about episcopal safeguarding conduct. The ISB might have been a useful avenue that opened up an alternative route. Ms. Munn’s appointment puts a huge roadblock firmly in the way. The advertising campaign for The Independent once teased “it is, are you?”. The CofE, with Munn’s appointment, shows that it has its own secret advertising campaign well underway. But there are no teases here. “Independent Safeguarding? Certainly not! Why in God’s name would we?”.

I have many times referred to the desire among conservative Christians to find complete reliability in their interaction with Holy Scripture.  Through the medium of preaching, the ‘clear teaching’ of God can be shared among the faithful as they gather for worship in churches around the world. There is, however, only one actual place where God’s teaching seems to be totally transparent and clear. That is inside the mind of the authoritative preacher. Within the preacher’s brain, all the difficulties in the text seem to be resolved and tidied up.  Outside the preacher’s head, there is another world.  This is the place where conscientious students of Scripture struggle with the challenge of detailed examination of the Bible.  In this world there are many difficulties and problems to be wrestled with and clear answers are not always to be found.  I am not now going to say more on the numerous problems that arise when a preacher claims perfect consistency and reliability for the Bible.   My purpose in this blog piece is to introduce a fresh concept which I have just encountered. This concept can, I believe, help us to have a realistic and more profound appreciation of Holy Scripture. The idea I want to share is what I call reverse translation.  In simple terms we are attempting to read  the Bible as far as we can by understanding the thought forms and words of those who authored Scripture.  Through this exercise we may find we have greater awareness of some of the critical issues around the study of Scripture.  We can also find through it a sense of hope and a strengthening for our faith, as we get a little closer to those who wrote the Bible.

I want, first, to emphasise a preoccupation of mine about the importance of words and their correct interpretation in any serious study of the Bible.  It is sometimes important to spend a fair amount of time on a key word to extract its full meaning.  Those of us who have knowledge of a foreign language know how difficult it can be to find the exact equivalent in English for a foreign word.  This also may be true when we speak the same language as the other person.  Their cultural background may be different from our own and they can use words in a different way from us.  The same problem exists in a pronounced way when we try to understand texts that were written two thousand or more years ago. I am not going to claim that every Christian needs to learn Greek and Hebrew. But I would suggest that all those who teach from a pulpit need to have some awareness of these languages and the way they function.  Quite often the pronouncement that Scripture is clear and straightforward is not what any of the commentaries are claiming.  A little humility needs to be exercised as well as self-knowledge if Scripture is not to be used a means of self-aggrandisement.  Another trap that some preachers fall into is to weaponize Scripture.  What is delivered from the pulpit is not an exposition of God’s will, but a parade of their human prejudice, wrapped up in carefully chosen words taken from Scripture.  The words are frequently wrenched from their context and because of this they lose much of their original meaning.

In common with many theological students of my generation, I had to have a reasonable grounding in New Testament Greek. I did also take some instruction in Hebrew but gave that up before the end of my undergraduate studies. I make no claims of expertise here, but I am aware of the many problems that face us if we always claim to have a totally reliable translation of an Old or New Testament passage. The more one is exposed to these original languages, the greater is a reluctance to use words like infallible to describe Scripture. I remember a day in my Hebrew class when the teacher admitted that the translation of one particular Hebrew word was a matter of guesswork. Somewhere in the distant past, the understanding of the meaning of this word, even among Jewish scholars, had been lost.

The problems of engaging with ancient texts is not a way of saying that we must learn these languages for ourselves. What we can do is to be aware that there are many scriptural words in English which have a quite different feel when we engage in a reverse translation.  While most English translations of biblical words and ideas may be fairly accurate, this does not mean that we should be unaware or uninterested in the wider context or framework of understanding that was in operation for the original writer.  It is sometimes helpful to consult a variety of English translations.  This will help us to see that the work of translation is sometimes a matter of conveying the sense of an entire passage rather than just the meaning of individual words. To focus on individual words in Scripture can, however, be helpful.  As I have said in earlier blogs, Hebrew words often contain a range of meanings rather than a single English equivalent. The simplest best-known example of this is in the word commonly used greeting word in modern Hebrew – Shalom. The word can convey a whole range of positive experiences that we wish for the one whom we are greeting. It contains the idea of peace, prosperity, reconciliation and wholeness. Even from this single example, it is clear that the Hebrew language treats words in a somewhat different way to English. Words are used not so much as a way of defining meaning, but rather as a way of clustering together and evoking meanings.

In the small ecumenical study group that I belong to, we have decided, at my suggestion, to look at the Lord’s Prayer and try to do a reverse translation to the version given in the Aramaic New Testament, known as the Peshitta. This version will be very close to the actual words that Jesus himself used. Aramaic was his likely first language and was used by him for teaching. Nobody is expecting to become knowledgeable in this language but the wrestling with individual words and using the insights of commentators and what they can tell us about their meaning, will help us to hear something new in the prayer.  In short, reverse translation may be a means of obtaining a new appreciation of the way that familiar words can be appropriated and understood in a completely fresh manner.

What might this exercise in glimpsing the words and meanings of an ancient biblical worldview achieve?  Looking at the Aramaic words which, like Hebrew, evoke meaning and experience, will make us all, hopefully, a little more reluctant to claim that we have the meaning of any text completely sorted.  Allowing ourselves to be exposed to the thinking and feeling of a completely different culture is itself a lesson in a new and fresh way of humbly apprehending truth. We have already suggested that English does not have a single word to translate shalom. Similarly, the Lord’s Prayer, when encountered through the words used by the Aramaic New Testament is going to have a different feeling about it. To repeat, words in Hebrew evoke meaning. It is therefore wrong to suggest that in this exercise of reverse translation we will arrive at the kinds of defined meanings that would justify the adjectives infallible or inerrant. Reverse translation takes us further away from such ideas.   Theories of Scripture being without error have an 18^th century flavour.  They certainly have little to do with the thought world of the Bible.

I was speaking to someone who said that he had been recently released from what he described as the fundamentalist horror of his upbringing. He realised now that truth was not something that was handed to him from an authoritative controlling preacher but was result of personal discovery and growth. He knew that, now he had abandoned the same reliable but narrow teaching of his conservative evangelical background, his understandings would be untidy.  Although his past beliefs had offered him safety, they came with the intolerable additional burden of constant fear.  Somehow uncertainty was a price worth paying for the complete release from this fear that had haunted him since childhood. In short, he recognised that the God, now revealing himself to him as compassion and love, was not the same one who had terrified him most of his life.  I encouraged him in the thought that while we cannot expect to have all the answers in this lifetime, there are always enough hints of truth and goodness around us to guide us into a place of shalom in all of its manifestations.

Surviving Church has now been going for almost 10 years and I am contemplating soon laying down my pen, so to speak and to focus on other things. The world of church politics is not a place where I feel comfortable and I have probably said most of what I can usefully say about abuse, safeguarding, church bullying and narcissism among church leaders. Even if the number of posts I put up here becomes fewer, I will still be available for email correspondence with those who wish to engage with me on the issues which have preoccupied me for almost 30 years. One of the welcome by-products of writing this blog has been the communication with a variety of strangers. They have shared experience and queries and I have tried to answer these to the best of my ability. I am very happy to continue such communication as long as it is required.

There is a book by the American political commentator, George Lakoff, which much appealed to me when I read it some eight years ago.  It had the intriguing title Don’t Think of an Elephant.  The point of the title is that when you tell someone that they are not permitted to think about a thing or a topic, that forbidden object will automatically immediately come into your mind.  No one can avoid thinking about a topic once it has been brought to one’s attention.  Human nature and the thinking processes cannot be manipulated in this way to accommodate the requirements of authority, however much they might like it.

In the aftermath of the news that Mike Pilavachi, the founder of Soul Survivor, is stepping back from ministry while an investigation is held into safeguarding concerns, we are told ‘not (to) speculate or discuss this more widely, including on social media, while the process runs its course’.  This statement is put out on behalf of the trustees of Soul Survivor, the Diocese of St Albans and the NST.   Clearly someone believes that any reflection on the implications of sentences containing together the words, safeguarding, Pilavachi and stepping back, can be supressed as though they had never been said.  The elephant has now been named and it is inevitable that people will want to react to the little that has so far been shared in the public domain.  A responsible blogger, as I hope I am, is not going to claim to have new information on the matter based on rumour or speculation.  However, there is already enough information in the public domain to see, even in the bare outlines of the story, a matter of significant public interest.  It is also of massive concern to the Anglican circles of charismatic evangelicals where Pilavachi has held a position of some importance.

Soul Survivor, the organisation over which Pilavachi has presided and guided over three decades, has seen around 35,000 young people in Britain pass through its camps.  The stepping back of its founder will inevitably cause consternation to these young people who will have regarded their camp leader with enormous respect, if not veneration.  The dynamic of charismatic Christianity very much draws on a process involving hero-worship or projection.   Having had no personal knowledge of the Soul Survivor organisation before this past week, I can make no further observations as to the inner workings of this, on the surface, highly successful and powerful organisation for the evangelisation of young people in Britain.

Although I cannot say very much about Pilavachi and his style of operation, there are some interesting parallels that can be made with another Anglican youth ministry which appeared at the same time in the 90s: the Nine O’Clock Service in Sheffield.  The parallels are not perfect, and I do not want to suggest that the leader of NOS, Chris Brain and his known abusive behaviour towards women, is being echoed in the current Soul Survivor inquiries.  The true parallels seem to occur in two main ways.  First, both these networks have had a focus on ministering to young people.  Secondly, because of the considerable level of success in each case, the organisations operated by Brain and Pilavachi have been able to negotiate a considerable degree of independence from traditional Anglican structures, while remaining part of the whole.  It is this semi-detached relationship with the CofE that I want to reflect on as it appears in each organisation.  The wider Church seemed to gain a great deal from this oversight, but it also puts itself in a position of peril if things were to go wrong.

It is one of the contemporary claims of the 21^st century CofE to have a variety of structures within the whole.  These have a flexibility and are able to adapt to a variety of ecclesial situations.  Alongside the traditional parish structure, which relates a parish to others in a deanery and is answerable to an archdeacon and a bishop, there are a variety of other ways of doing ‘church’ under the Anglican umbrella.  Many Anglican Christians in Britain belong nominally to a diocese, but they have structures of oversight which are little to do with traditional deaneries and dioceses.  These churches, often with a distinctive conservative evangelical flavour, are far more likely to relate only to other like-minded congregations within their own particular network.  The networks have names like AMiE, GAFCON, ReNew or New Wine.  Some owe their identity to an association with a particular prominent mother church like Holy Trinity Brompton.   The mother church may be the one that planted their congregation sometime in the past.  Thus, we have a considerable percentage of churches that exist in a variety of independent ecclesiastical bubbles.  The clergy, who serve one or other of these network congregations, will often move only to other congregations which are part of their group.  Many clergy who serve within these networks will have begun their ministries in the ‘mother ship’ which has in a quasi-episcopal role over these satellite congregations.  It is notable how some key mega-churches have up to a dozen curates.  These junior clergy are all waiting for the opportunity to serve in a congregation within their own network.  Such appointments are made not by bishops, as far as one can gather, but by patrons and others powerful positions in the network.  One of the claims made about Jonathan Fletcher is that he possessed the patronage power equivalent to several bishops.  He had the undisputed power to place favoured junior clergy in the parishes that once looked to him as their unofficial leader.  It would be true to say that the occupants of many key evangelical parishes today owe their position originally to the patronage and support of Fletcher in his exercising considerable power within the broad evangelical network.

Soul Survivor began as a group receiving support from its founding congregation of St Andrew’s Chorley Wood.  Here Mike Pilavachi worked as a youth leader.  This church came to prominence in the 80s and 90s under the somewhat eccentric leadership of Bishop David Pytches.  It was one of the first networks to promote what we can describe as charismatic evangelical worship.  In this it was indebted to a number of transatlantic contacts.   St Andrews was deeply involved in promoting the Kansas City Prophets and later the Toronto Blessing in 1994.  There is not the space to recount the story of Pilavachi’s initiative but, suffice to say, his organisation has been, in the three decades of its existence, a massive influence on Anglican youth work and latterly on helping churches to exercise leadership.  While we are unable to shed any further light on what may be being discussed as part of the current investigation process, we can comment that any ministries focussing on work with youth are always extremely vulnerable to safeguarding problems.

We have already mentioned the rise and fall of the Nine O’Clock Service which appeared at the same time as Soul Survivor.  In each case the organisation negotiated for itself a considerable degree of independence from CofE structures.  Both NOS and Soul Survivor, in not dissimilar ways, have been known for the large numbers of young people at their services.  The readiness by the diocesan authorities to allow a semi-independent group to have control over finances (and safeguarding) was bound to be a risky matter.  In the case of NOS, Brain was allowed total control of the group, while at the same time accepting the nominal control and oversight of the Diocese of Sheffield through being ordained as a priest.   There seems to have been an implicit hope that Brain’s success in attracting large numbers of young people would somehow rub off on to the wider Anglican structures.   When things were running well, everybody wanted to be part of the action, from the Archbishop of Canterbury (George Carey) downwards.   Being identified with such avant-garde thinking in theology and liturgy, made the CofE appear to be up to date and in touch with popular culture. Brain had appeared to be discovering a new way of attracting young people to a modern expression of church through his grasp of technical wizardry and grand theatrical effects.  Theologically speaking, he owed inspiration to ideas propounded in the States by Matthew Fox and his Creation Spirituality.

In the case of Soul Survivor, the powerful personality of Pilavachi also seems to have established a leading role in his organisation.   In the annual youth camps which were held every year up to 2019, Pilavachi appears to have been a crucial presence.  Also, he exercised a quasi-episcopal role in drawing together a cluster of affiliated parishes and congregations (not all Anglican) to be part of a Soul Survivor network.  The temporary relinquishing of the leadership role by Pilavachi may create serious problems for the successful functioning of this network.  The sheer force of a charismatic personality like Pilavachi’s is always important in holding together such a network. This need for such leadership cannot be underestimated.  Only time will tell how the network will manage to hold together if the stepping back is anything more than extremely short-lived.  

My brief mention of the role of a charismatic leader in holding together a group, large or small, is one that is familiar to students of cults.  I have written myself about this dynamic as it is a familiar theme of cult studies and social theory.  At its simplest form, there is a common tendency among most human beings to search for, in situations of stress, another on whom to project their longing to feel safe. Young adults, the 18-35 group, are especially vulnerable to this dynamic.  There is an argument for claiming that everyone who ministers pastorally to young people in the churches, is ministering to a vulnerable segment of the population.   As such there should be a special training for anyone engaging with this cohort in the name of the church to understand, at a considerable level of professionalism and expertise, the potential hazards of what could go wrong.

There is of course much more to be said on the dynamics of groups involving young people.  One thing that became abundantly clear after the NOS debacle was the sense of the Anglican authorities being totally out of their depth in dealing with the matter after the whole thing blew up.  In view of the importance and wide-reaching influence of Soul Survivor, it is to be hoped that whatever may need to be done to recover the situation with the organisation, it will be done with wisdom and proper expertise.  The ability to influence large numbers of young people and speak to their spiritual needs is a great privilege but also carries great risks.  The topic is too important for all of us to allow anyone to shut down our discussion of what needs to be done in the future.

There is one word which opens up for us some important aspects of the Holy Week drama.  The word is betrayal. In our liturgical commemoration of the Passion drama, we are, early on, witnesses of the betrayal by Judas.  Then there is the somewhat different manifestation of betrayal by Peter during the trial of Jesus. In reminding my readers of these particular moments of betrayal in the Passion narrative, I am not intending to launch into a full Holy Week meditation.  Rather I want us to reflect on the meaning of the word betrayal and the way that it touches us in our personal and social lives.

In considering these two betrayals mentioned in the Holy Week narrative, we can see that there is more than one way of approaching the word. First there is betrayal as an objective fact. Jesus is delivered into the hands of the authorities by the actions of Judas, a member of his group and then later disowned by another disciple, Peter. Then there is the subjective side to this act of betrayal.  We have to imagine all the feelings that would have been aroused in Jesus because of the actions of both Peter and Judas. The objective betrayals were accompanied by the shattering awareness for Jesus that profound prior relationships were being attacked and, in one case, destroyed. Further emotions are recorded in the account of Peter’s betrayal. There was, for Peter, the emotion of anger in the denials.  Later there were profound tears of contrition and regret. Before we leave the words recorded in Scripture about betrayal, I want to remind my reader of the psalmist (Psalm 55) who also experienced the deep pain of betrayal by a close friend. He expresses the thought that if it had been an open enemy who had betrayed him, ‘then I could have borne it’.  The fact that it was a friend made the betrayal doubly painful and unbearable.  Most of us can probably remember occasions where similar things have happened to us.  I can remember an incident from the time I first went to public school at the age of 14. It was quite a culture shock to go from a school with 60 boys to one with 350.  On the very first day I struck up a friendship with a boy from another house who sat immediately behind me in the class I was in. It was a relief to know that there was a potential ally literally watching my back, and this helped me to cope with the sheer strangeness of everything around me. Imagine my shock and disappointment when the same boy, for reasons that remain obscure to me, shortly afterwards decided to stick a pin through the canvas webbing of the chair I was sitting on. It was not the pain that I felt most of all. It was a sense of betrayal that a potential friendship had been so suddenly destroyed. All of us have probably known this experience of trusting an individual, only to have our trust in that person wiped out by some act of betrayal. All of us want to believe that those close to us are incapable of such acts. Most of the time, thankfully, we are right.  Then, once in a while we are completely dumbfounded by an action taken against us by someone we thought we knew well.  This revealed a hidden malevolence which we did not understand and probably had never seen before

My involvement in listening to stories of abusive behaviour in church contexts has made me aware of the way that otherwise loving people even in churches can turn out to have a dark side.  In the one place where we believe sound caring relationships are promoted and valued, it is shocking to discover acts of betrayal which merit the description of abusive or exploitative.  As we are never tired of saying in this blog, acts of betrayal are not just found in the original abusive episode; they are also frequently in the way the survivor, seeking help, is treated by church people in authority. Betrayal is thus experienced by the abused person in a double act of violence. Through abuse, a youth leader might destroy our sense of safety and well-being in a church, but then the same thing happens when we, the abused, reach out for help from another respected leader. Even if these leaders are held up by others as totally trustworthy with high reputations, the experience in fact we have gained is one of double betrayal.

One of the issues that the 31:8 review about Emmanuel church Wimbledon struggled with was trying to make sense of the two sides of the Vicar, Jonathan Fletcher (JF). He was the possessor of ‘positive characteristics and (was) highly regarded’.  At the same time he ‘could nonetheless display entirely inappropriate, abusive and harmful behaviour which render (him) unfit for office.’   It is clear from the review that JF was found to be charismatic, charming and an inspiring teacher of Scripture. He presented to many grateful acolytes, both this charm and his apparent deep pastoral concern for them.  At the same time there was a darker, exploitative and sinister side to his personality. Some experienced bullying and others were victims of entirely inappropriate behaviour, both sexual and psychological. The review tries to grapple with this double-sided reality.  One heading in the review articulates the paradox with the words ‘the myth of homogeneity.  I had to pause to work out what the review author meant by these words.  He/she was pointing to the phenomenon that individuals, particularly Christians, have a tendency to lump individuals into an ‘all-good’ or ‘all-bad’ category.   Such lazy thinking does not allow for the possibility that any individual may combine good and bad in the same personality. The 31:8 review is challenging us, in using this expression the myth of homogeneity, to see that theories of all-goodness or all badness in an individual are unsafe, even dangerous, notions to entertain.  The charm of the charismatic figure must never allow us to leave anyone with a free pass to be unsupervised and unchallenged for the way they interact with others. Everyone is potentially capable of exploitative evil.  To put it another way, everyone is capable of betraying their good persona and surrendering to a dark, even evil, expression of themselves.  There must always be structures in place which inhibit and stand against any inappropriate crossing of boundaries. This is where so much abuse and exploitation is to be found.  On a positive note, this checking of boundaries in people’s behaviour may have the desired effect of driving away bad behaviour.  We need a dominance of goodness and total integrity in an institution to allow people to trust and feel safe again.  The opposite sense, fear and constant suspicion, is a high price to pay because some church leaders are too lazy or unwilling to do the necessary work of effective safeguarding for all members of a Church.

The myth of homogeneity is a useful expression to have in our minds as we try to understand why there are currently so many problems in the safeguarding world of the Church of England. Just because someone has passed through various hoops to become a Christian leader and a person commanding trust, it does not mean that they should ever be left unsupervised or beyond challenge in the realm of human relationships and the oversight of justice. A person may reach the status of being a spiritual director of some renown, but a potential for something to go wrong still remains. I am constantly disappointed in the way that I hear of otherwise honourable people in the church behaving, not necessarily abusively, but in ways that are a betrayal of the roles they hold as guardians of justice and integrity in the church. Because Christians talk about holiness, it is often assumed that all members of the Church are incapable of dishonest or dishonourable behaviour.  As far as church leaders are concerned, we all too often see protection of the institution being put well above the need for personal integrity. Homogeneity in individuals is indeed a myth.  Outward charm is not infrequently combined with self-seeking and actual malfeasance. Eventually some objective scrutiny from outside bodies, even that provided by a secular state, may be needed.  It will perhaps be the necessary price we have to pay to get things properly safe and fit for purpose in the task of the Church to protect the vulnerable.

Our theme of betrayal began when we considered particular episodes among the events of Holy Week.  From there we moved on to consider our own experience of being let down by others, and, maybe, the times we have been guilty of failing in this way.  It may be part of our Holy Week meditation to reflect on the ways that we have been guilty of betrayal whether of Jesus or other people. As we contemplate our own collusion in the guilt of actual betrayal, we are perhaps better able to see that our good intentions can be interlaced with evil and exploitative motivation. Even if evil is not the central reality in the core of our being, we still need to be working all the time at expelling selfishness as much as we can. The first stage of expending evil is to recognise that it exists. Perhaps this Holy Week we can continue the task of greater  self-knowledge so that we can individually and corporately become the instruments of God’s active love and goodness in the world.