Most of us have heard of YWAM (Youth with a Mission) and know it to be a large youth centred international organisation devoted to mission and evangelism.  My knowledge of this group did not encourage me to want to look further into its story when I first heard about it a decade ago.  Rumours of mistreatment of volunteer staff members were then circulating.  One particular account did burrow into my memory.  This was the story of a young idealistic volunteer who was working in India, but who became disillusioned with the treatment he was receiving at the hands of YWAM leaders.  The response of the organisation was simply to abandon the volunteer.  He had no money or other means of returning to his home,  which I believe was in Australia.

I would normally hesitate before recounting a story heard a decade ago about an organisation which may be a hostile piece of gossip. I take the risk because although the story I heard may be just that, a rumour, it pales into triviality when set alongside the many other allegations against the group collected by Shanti Das in the Observer last weekend.   The Observer story is in many ways a familiar one, especially for those of us who are familiar with safeguarding stories connected with control in some religious groups.  These seem inevitably to focus on abuse, whether emotional, spiritual or sexual.  The YWAM story appears, from the Observer account, to indicate what we can only describe as cultic exploitation.  The abusers in YWAM, if such they are, seem to be concerned with establishing complete control over their victims.  This enables them to obtain access to a gratification that such control provides.  This pattern is common to the behaviour of cult leaders the world over. 

I retell some of this Observer story of spiritual abuse to show how an ostensibly Christian organisation can put itself in the situation of using cult dynamics, while believing that it is doing God’s work.   There are various danger signs in the Observer description of YWAM that together allow us to refer to it as cultic.  When these danger signs are found in any Christian group, we must be on the alert and aware that we are entering potentially dangerous territory.

The first danger sign is the age issue.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong in recruiting young people from the 18-30 age group to practise Christian evangelism and ministry.   Young people in this age group have not yet settled into family life or careers and so are free to be recruited into a ‘gap-year’ experience as provided by YWAM.   They also possess a great deal of idealism and capacity for self-sacrifice at this stage of their lives.  Youthful health and vitality are also generally more tolerant of the less-than-ideal living conditions that are experienced in poorer parts of the world.   But there is a shadow side to this boundless capacity for self-sacrifice and idealism.  These same qualities, however honourable, make the individual potentially open to abuse and exploitation if there is any rottenness or corruption in the organisation.  In short, where there is human sin there will be a potential for some of those in positions of power to take toxic advantage of those in their charge.  A perennial issue for YWAM, as for any organisation with responsibility for groups of young people being prepared for ministry, is to be alert for this potential for abuse among the trainers.  No amount of high-sounding Christian rhetoric can remove this possible evil, even in organisations dedicated to the highest of values.  Only safeguarding vigilance and a realistic understanding of human nature will make such organisations consistently safe and free from the toxic effects of controlling abuse.

There are two salient factors that have allowed toxic abuse to find a home in YWAM’s method of operation.  One is a practical issue brought about by geography.  If you remove a group of young people to a centre in an alien unfamiliar culture and many miles from home, you inevitably increase a sense of vulnerability and dependency in these individuals.  The greater the vulnerability, the more the dislocated youngster is likely to develop a potentially unhealthy dependence on leaders.  A second method for creating a dependency on an organisation is by insisting on an adherence to an authoritarian understanding of scripture.  In the case of YWAM and numerous similar organisations, the teaching will include a reactionary stance on all things to do with sexuality.  There seems to be an unhealthy focus on compelling YWAM members in group ‘confession’ sessions to open up and admit any deviance from the conservative understanding of sexuality within their personal lives.  It does not take much imagination to see such compulsory ‘confession’ as a weapon of control.  Quite apart from what any of us think about the LGBTQ issue, it cannot be right to use the sexual preferences of an individual as a means of controlling them through the imposition of shame and guilt.  This is what appears to have been a regular pattern in the YWAM group meetings.

The YWAM culture of coercion and control that the Observer article describes is very similar to the dynamics of a cult.  It is one thing to teach and believe a set of attitudes about human sexuality.  It is quite another to impose those beliefs on others using the tools of social shame and the threat of ostracism.  This kind of compulsory groupthink is typical of cults. Whether or not my anecdote about the Australian young man abandoned in India by YWAM is literally true, it represents a sense of dread that a young person might feel when tempted to question those in authority.  To describe YWAM as a cult is simply to indicate that within this group non-conformity is impossible.  Such suppression of identity is, most of us would claim, a denial of an essential human freedom.  The freedom to be a dissident is a fundamental human right.   Maturity is gained through questioning and exploration, not through the surrender of one’s intellect to the dictates of an authoritarian conservative mind-set.

The Observer article is, for a change, not a narrative about sexual abuse and exploitation.  It does, however, lay bare the vulnerability of idealistic young people to harm.  These, in the name of Christian ideals, sacrifice an important stage in their lives to a cultic group.  At best they can extract some positive learning out of their experience, and this may include some insight about the power of groups to take over control of young lives.  At worst, there may be a completely messed up set of values in the head, which puts a permanent block on the ability to understand sexuality and healthy human relationships.  If even half the claims of control in the Observer are true, it represents the imposition of an enormous burden on a substantial cohort of young people at a vulnerable stage in their lives.  If such damage is routinely happening at YWAM, we might ask which other branches of the church are treating young people with the same recklessness and potential damage to their lives.  Abuse is not just about sex and finance.  It is often about damage to trust and the ability to make healthy meaningful relationships with God and with others.  To damage that ability is to create real and lasting harm.

Message for blog post:

Do you have a personal connection to Iwerne camps or have material related to it? I’ve been contacted by someone conducting research in this area and they would be very interested to hear from you. Please get in touch with me directly on parsvic2@gmail.com to learn more.

by Martyn Percy

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/369115/marriages-in-england-and-wales-by-type-of-ceremony/

We, as a nation, have now passed the fifth anniversary of Covid-19. Stay at home. Avoid meeting others. Churches locked. Bishops conducting online services from their kitchens, ritually sanitising their hands (even though nobody was communicated). Dominic Cummings driving to Barnard Castle for some reason or other. Funerals restricted to a handful of mourners. People dying in care homes, with loved ones only able to  press their noses against the window in those final hours. The Prime Minister being admitted to hospital and coming close to death. The daily ritual of banging pots and pans for the NHS, arguably the national secular-sacred faith of the realm.

We all have memories of Covid-19 and the two periods of lockdown, punctuated by “eat out to help out”. But as a recent op-ed in The Economist noted,

“Coronavirus in Britain is a story of individual grief and collective amnesia. The fifth-anniversary commemorations on March 9th, which had been designated a “Day of Reflection” by the government, were dignified but modest. In London relatives of the deceased threw carnations into the Thames, as a piper played a lament. Around them, joggers plodded, tourists gawped and drinkers toasted the first pint of the day in glorious spring sunshine. This is a sentimental country, where Armistice commemorations seem to grow bigger each year and new statues are erected to local heroes. But mention the pandemic, the biggest calamity in living memory, and you will be met by a wince and a change of subject. The memory is less of the neighbourliness and Zoom yoga, more of bitterness and boredom…”

A BBC Survey published on 25 March 2025 estimates that as many as 1:10 may have Long-Covid. That’s around 5.5 million in England alone (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93ker0kevpo). Long-Covid is a new condition which is still being studied. The most common symptoms of Long-Covid include  fatigue, difficulty breathing, problems with concentration and memory, aches and pains.  Other symptoms include disruption to senses (i.e., such as smell, hearing, taste, etc.), chest pains, difficulty sleeping (insomnia), depression and anxiety, feeling sick, loss of appetite and persistent headaches.

Of course, the CofE does not have an illness like this. Not in reality. Here we are speaking only analogically, and in so doing, I draw on David Tracy and his prescient The Analogical Imagination (1981).  Analogically, the CofE is a corporate body with severe malaise, and is experiencing symptoms it cannot make sense of. But what are the underlying causes?

A number of senior clergy have opined that a lot of the struggles the CofE is currently wrestling with have been pinned on to Covid-19. Other senior clergy have expressed scepticism on this, and suspect that Covid-19 has become a distraction for not thinking about the deeper latent problems that were bound to pose issues to the CofE, and eventually become manifest.

I think they are both right. But to understand why the CofE can’t cope with its (corporate, analogical) Long-Covid, one has to look further back.

In their remarkable book Secular Cycles (Princeton UP, 2009) Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov show how societies in Europe evolve and adapt to the bigger underlying cultural, political, demographic templates that shape life, hope, expectations and outcomes. They show, amongst other things, how birth rates, food prices and inflation shape population size. How inflation and stagflation (i.e., the combination of high inflation, stagnant economic growth, and elevated unemployment) impact wages, employment and work. And disease, plague, wars, revolts and natural disasters must also be factored in.

Many historical processes exhibit recurrent patterns of change. Century-long periods of population expansion come before long periods of stagnation and decline; the dynamics of prices mirror population oscillations; and states go through strong expansionist phases followed by periods of state failure, endemic sociopolitical instability, and territorial loss. Turchin and Nefedov explore the dynamics and causal connections between such demographic, economic, and political variables in agrarian societies and offer detailed explanations for these long-term oscillations–what the authors call secular cycles.

Secular Cycles elaborates and expands upon the demographic-structural theory first advanced by Jack Goldstone, which provides an explanation of long-term oscillations. Turchin and Nefedov test that theory’s specific and quantitative predictions by tracing the dynamics of population numbers, prices and real wages, elite numbers and incomes, state finances, and sociopolitical instability. Incorporating theoretical and quantitative history, the book studies societies in Europe during the medieval and early modern periods, and even looks back at the Roman Republic and Empire.

Turchin and Nefedov don’t have much to say about Christianity directly, but it is clear that when one analyses the big social-secular-material cycles, churches are compelled to adapt. As they do so, they incur the consequential symptoms that the larger secular cycles produce. In this regard, Turchin and Nefedov follow earlier work by John R. Moorman, Jack Goldstone and Lawrence Stone

For example, Medieval England had around 10,000 parishes serving three million people. The late medieval parish priest was a semi-literate rural worker. In pre-Tudor England hardly any parish had a resident curate, or even necessarily a parish church. But 1540-1560 saw huge declines in ordinations.

Given the turbulence and violence of the Reformation this is hardly a surprise. In Canterbury diocese in 1560, of 270 livings, 107 had no clergy. In Oxford archdeaconry the numbers of clergy fell – from 371 in 1526 to 270 by 1586.

After 1600 the numbers of clergy in the CofE increased rapidly, and by 1640 there were more clergy than livings (so unemployment). By 1688 there were 10,000 clergy. But the rise and fall in numbers does not tell the whole the story. By the end of the Caroline period, a minister had a university degree, strong religious convictions, a comfortable house, and income on a par with doctors or lawyers, often able to afford domestic help. Ordination was for elites.

This trend continued, albeit in slow decline, during the 19^th century, and to some extent the first half of the 20^th century. But the post-war years have seen a much, much steeper decline in the public status and professional identity of clergy. Teachers and nurses will be better-paid, and enjoy stronger employment rights.

Today there are 12,500 parishes in the CofE serving a population of 57 million. Under 700,000 attend its services, amounting to just over 1% of the population. With 36% of attendees over the age of 70, the cliff edge looks very steep, with 200,000 set to be lost to the CofE in the next 15 years. They will not be replaced.

With around 50% currently aged between 18 and 69, and only 18% being 17 or younger, the CofE has largely lost its transmission rights. When empires or societies collapse, there is loss or disruption in transmission. What was previously assumed is forgotten. What was once known is no longer learned.

Between 2009 and 2019 the average weekly church attendance for the Church of England fell by approximately 218,000. Church attendance figures fell even more during 2020 and 2021, although this was due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Check the collection plate, in the meantime.

In 2022, approximately 207,004 marriages took place via a civil ceremony in England and Wales, compared with 41,915 religious ceremonies. Since 1992, there have been more civil ceremonies in every year than religious ones. Naturally, there were far fewer ceremonies taking place in 2020 due to Covid.  Yet there is no national or diocesan mission strategy, nor even a bishop, getting to grips with any of this. By 2030, the average weekly church attendance for the CofE will have collapsed to around 0.5 million – simply not a sustainable economic position.

That the CofE sits on social and cultural templates it cannot control is hardly news. But there are no national or diocesan mission strategies that show any inklings for engaging with the bigger picture. The CofE thinks it is running out of young people (true). So it pours huge amounts of money, resources and anxiety into reversing this, without ever pausing to consider declining birth rates (there are fewer young people), and that as a population the English are getting older and older, with fewer taxpayers and people at work to pay for the long-term care of the elderly. Young people are extremely anxious about this, and the toll on their mental health and morale is enormous.

The CofE is habitually between 25-50 years behind the times on management, communications, leadership, HR and the like. Initiatives on mission, youth, the elderly, reorganisation, finances, governance, employment and engagement are wincingly out of date, even pre-publication. On safeguarding and sexuality the CofE occupies top spot as a national scandal (and were it not, it would be a national joke). Little of the operational and managerial infrastructure is fit for purpose. The CofE is run by (proverbial) generals fighting the wars and opponents of bygone eras, if not centuries.

On pensions, the recent letter from 700 CofE clergy flagging existential anxiety and poverty has been met with indifference by the hierarchy. As indices of trust are measured across professions, the CofE and its leadership have logged the lowest score on record. People outside the CofE do not believe what bishops say. Inside the CofE, it is hardly any better. Its managers and leaders are out of their depth, yet regard themselves as indispensable, despite being clueless. Locally, for parishes, the annual warmth of seasonal spiritual nostalgia has become a threadbare comfort blanket now so fragile it can barely be touched before being carefully stowed away until the next Christmas or Easter comes.

Meanwhile, theological analysis – which could have been be critical, nourishing and prescient in such a crisis – has been stripped out and marginalised, or ostracised by the CofE’s leadership. Whilst insights from secular social sciences were never really engaged with by the CofE leadership. Corporately, the CofE is like the proverbial frog in boiling water. It has no idea how it got into the kettle, let alone why the water is getting warmer. Alpha Courses, Fresh Expressions, mission statements and another diocesan reorganisation have been, predictably, about as effective as a nosegay in the face of a major plague epidemic.

England was hit hard by Covid as was the CofE. There were 120 days of lockdown in the nation – far more than other countries. Yet our mortality rates were amongst the highest in Europe. It is estimated that the backlog for NHS treatment is still running north of 7 million.

Pupil absence rates in schools remain high, and the bill for the bail-out given to employers and employees (one of the most generous, globally) will sit on the national debt for generations to come. The furlough scheme cost the nation £70bn, which is 2.9% of GDP.

On the ground, locally, rates of stress and anxiety amongst clergy continue to climb, and major issues on morale, mental health, expectations on work, finances (personal and ecclesial), public trust, employment rights and pensions remain unaddressed. Such factors are dogged by other persistent scandals in the church. The nation continues to practice slow-but-ever-increasing social-distancing from the CofE, save for a few festive occasions each year.  Nationally, there is no sign of anyone in the CofE leadership grasping these nettles.

As I have recently argued(The Exiled Church: Reckoning with Secular Culture, Canterbury Press), the huge and calamitous adjustments made by the Church of Scotland to its demographic and financial crises could serve as a warning to other denominations on the perils of not thinking ahead. Five years on, Covid has irreversibly transformed the English nation. Which makes it all the more remarkable is that in the CofE, it seems to barely changed or adjusted at all.

So, what about the CofE suffering from a case of corporate Long-Covid? It seems to fit with our collective sense of symptoms. That said, and as Turchin and Nefedov suggest, issues that the English nation (and thus its national church) are wrestling with lie well beyond its control.  It remains to be seen if the CofE leadership can read the signs of the times and interpret them, let alone think creatively about the survival and shape of the church over the next few decades.

If there is to be any hope, there must first of all be some realism about the present and future. But the leadership cannot talk their way out the collective crises afflicting the CofE. So we need a lot more show and a lot less tell. We need the leadership to show visible, serious signs of real change that are intelligent, wise and considered. On that, we continue to hold our breath. I fear we’ll be waiting for some time. 

by Anthony Bash

Forgiveness

Justin Welby was asked in Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on 30 March 2025, ‘Do you forgive John Smyth?’ Welby answered,

‘Yes. I think if he were alive, and I saw him – but it’s not me he abused. He’s abused the victims and survivors. So, whether I forgive or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant.’

Welby is not a victim of the physical abuse perpetrated by John Smyth. Smyth did not beat him when he was a minor with hundreds of strokes and left him scarred and bleeding. In this regard, Welby has nothing to forgive. He is a third party, an outsider, a critic of what happened, but not the subject of Smyth’s brutality.

A church which perpetrates the view that it is possible for people to forgive those who do not wrong them holds an absurd view of forgiveness. What has forgiveness got to do with anyone except those who have been wronged?

In answering ‘Yes’ and then qualifying what he meant by ‘Yes’ and acknowledging his forgiveness was, to a large extent, ‘irrelevant’, Welby discloses the muddle that lies at the heart of his approach to forgiveness – an approach that mirrors the approach of the Church of England generally.

On the one hand, forgiveness is seen as an overarching good, to be offered at all times, in all circumstances, whether sought or not. People think it promotes reconciliation and wellbeing, and that it avoids conflict and division. Without it, so it is said, there can be no peace.

On the other hand, Welby recognises – despite having said he forgave Smyth – that his is not the place to forgive, as he is not a victim of Smyth’s brutality. We go further: it’s not that Welby’s forgiveness is ‘to a large extent, irrelevant’: it is irrelevant.

Welby’s answer wants things both ways. Welby offers something to everyone and thereby satisfies no one. In fact, his answer could offend everyone – either for forgiving when some say he shouldn’t or for saying forgiving is irrelevant when others say it is not. This approach is an example of the besetting Anglican sin of keeping everyone on board and offending no one. The victims of abuse know this ‘have-your-cake-and-eat-it’ approach doesn’t work – as gays and women in the church will also testify.

This is the reply I suggest Welby could have given Laura Kuenssberg in response to her question, ‘Do you forgive John Smyth?’

No, Laura, I do not. Smyth did not abuse me. If Smyth were still alive and I saw him, I would confront him about what he had done, and tell him he needed to surrender to the police to make a full confession. I would also urge him to contact his victims and to put right with them, as best he could, what he had done. He would need to make some sort of reparation in demonstration of a change of heart. Without something like this, he will not have forgiveness from the victims, and there can be no place for him in the life of the church of Christ.

What is lacking in what Welby said is what lies at the heart of forgiveness – remorse, repentance, reparation. Remorse and repentance are the result of a change of moral perspective and precede forgiveness. They demonstrate a commitment both to act differently and to be different in the future. The result is more than words of regret but appropriate reparative action.

The church’s overarching commitment should therefore not be to forgiveness as an end in itself. Rather, it should be to truth, integrity, and honesty. It should be to do right, to call out what is wrong, to seek justice, and to expose lies, deceit, and cover up. Forgiveness may then result, but not necessarily. The church’s focus is mistakenly on the goal, not on the means.

Personal Responsibility

In the interview, Welby spoke of feeling ‘overwhelmed’ by the number of allegations of abuse the church had received in 2013. He is ‘utterly sorry’ and said he felt ‘a deep sense of personal failure’. Though not said, this failure includes not initiating cultural and structural changes to the church between 2013 and 2024: additional safeguarding officers and a welcome change in culture for preventive safeguarding are not the only answer. Welby’s bland ‘corporate-speak’ reason for resigning – ‘personal responsibility for shortcomings’ – obscures the fact that he failed to provide leadership about an issue that has engulfed the church in shame.

Apart from asking for pity because he had felt so overwhelmed, saying (as if an excuse) ‘I had a difficult upbringing’ (it was Eton College, and then Trinity College, Cambridge), and eventually giving up by resigning, what did Welby personally do to put right his errors when he became aware of them? What model of the gospel did Welby demonstrate by his actions?

What has not happened under Welby’s watch is compensation for victims of historic abuse. There have also not been independent investigations of mishandled cases of historic abuse and cover up. Neither have there been independent investigations of cases where safeguarding has been weaponised to cause harm. Rather, the church remains detached from mechanisms of public accountability and independent scrutiny. The church’s perspective has been to look forward, and not to acknowledge and face past mistakes and their consequences. So, the extent of the unaddressed problems has not been acknowledged, and victims of abuse still have no remedy, reparation, justice, or closure. We asked above, ‘What did Welby personally do to put right his errors when he became aware of them?’ The answer is: Not much.

The example of Graham, one of those abused by Smyth, illustrates the church’s failure to properly address the past. In Kuenssberg’s broadcast, Graham said he had had ‘the most extraordinary, traumatic journey trying to get answers, trying to get any kind of support’ from the church and that his experience of historic abuse by Smyth ‘paled into insignificance’ in comparison with what the church had put him through. Even if there is a degree of hyperbole about what Graham says (and I am not suggesting there is), his statement is an extraordinary indictment of what he says is the greater abuse he experienced perpetrated in the name of the church.

When asked whether he accepts that (in Welby’s words) Welby ‘really is sorry’, Graham said that Welby has not contacted him personally or apologised. He regards Welby as having ‘blanked’ him and the other survivors of Smyth’s abuse, and as refusing to tell the truth. Graham concluded, ‘We’re the victims and we deserve to know what happened. We don’t yet.’

Institutional Responsibility

Without going into much detail in the interview, Welby also said that he accepted ‘institutional responsibility for long-term revelations of cover up and failure over a long period.’ The cover up and failure have many causes. A future Archbishop of Canterbury will need to identify the causes and address them. The causes include the following. There is no legal requirement to report allegations of abuse (‘mandatory reporting’). There is lack of resource to deal adequately with reports of abuse. Investigations into alleged abuse are conducted ‘in house’, by people who may wish to avoid public shame and scandal for the church. The church is not subject to the Nolan Principles setting out professional standards of conduct in public life; neither is it subject to the same statutory framework of regulation and accountability as secular institutions. In short, there is lack of statutory regulation, lack of resource – and perhaps even of resolution – as well as a culture of amateurism at the heart of the church and its institutions. The church is not adequately fitted to safely and responsibly carry out its role in public life. Reform therefore needs to be both statutory and in-house – and urgently.

By walking away, ‘overwhelmed’ by the scale of the problem and having done little to address it when in office, Welby has bequeathed to his successors besetting, unaddressed systemic and structural failure in the church. A new Archbishop will need skill and experience to remedy the failure. A new archbishop will also need conviction that the gospel insists on repentance for sin in the context of truth and justice.

Triple Wounds

The culture of forgiveness that pervades the church, the church’s own failure to respond appropriately to safeguarding allegations, and the church’s lack of moral vigour in its approach to forgiveness are triple wounds for the abused. The abused will, first, carry the wounds of their historic abuse. Second, they will carry wounds from a church that has failed to hear them and to act on what the church has heard. Last, there will be wounds from the church – sometimes even from its national leaders – who forgive abusers when they have no business to do so and do not see the absurdity of what they are doing. The result is that the abused will have to learn to survive the historical abuse they have suffered, the neglect of the church, and the wounds of (perhaps well-meaning but) theologically naïve forgivers.

Anthony Bash is author with Martyn Percy of Forgiveness, Remorse, Reparation: Reckoning with Truthful Apology (Ethics Press,2025).

A few weeks back I wrote about the experience of job interviews in the Church.  This experience, which many of my readers have endured, is not far from our minds as we contemplate the enormously critical interview due to take place for the post of Archbishop of Canterbury, sometime in the summer months.  Two things make this interview stand out.  It takes place against a background of political division and intransigence that did not exist to the same extent when Justin Welby was scrutinised back in 2012.  Another thing is that the new incumbent will be aware that he/she is taking over a role that has demoralised and enfeebled the immediate predecessor.  A further point to be made is that, currently, the financial and spiritual health of the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion could be said to be in a more fragile state than at any time in the past two hundred years.  The conclusion of many people is that the post of Archbishop of Canterbury has now become a thoroughly poisoned chalice in 2025.

In job advertisements for posts in many walks of life, recruiters have often included two useful lists to help a potential candidate decide whether to apply.  In one column there is a list of ‘essential’ qualities needed for the post.  In another list there are qualities mentioned which are ‘desirable’ for the applicant to have, and these go beyond the bare minimum.  The expectation is that, in a situation where two candidates of equal merit present themselves, the applicant with a greater number of desirable qualifications will be preferred.  Whether or not such columns exist for the next occupant of the chair of St Augustine, this does not stop interested parties (that includes some readers of SC!) creating fantasy lists as a way of thinking out loud about the qualities we would like to see in a new archbishop.  This speculation about the essential and desirable qualities for would-be candidates has been encouraged by the open invitation to every member of the Church of England. All are being asked to express their opinions and even suggest names of potential candidates.  It remains to be seen whether such attempts to open up the field to outsider contenders will make any difference to the process which begins in earnest in May of this year.

To return to our essential/desirable fantasy lists, we can start by recognising that there will never really be any widespread consensus as to what should be mentioned in the desirable list.  The thoughts in my mind and in that of somebody else on what is desirable, will, undoubtably, reveal something about the compiler and their own ideas/priorities for the Church.  Such desirable lists would, anyway, contain an impossibly large number of expectations.   The Church, as we all recognise, has so many opinions, manifestations and expressions within it that it would be difficult to find a leader capable of meeting even a small number of these expectations.  If we find it difficult to agree what should be on the desirable list because of the wide-ranging nature of peoples’ hopes, the same should not be true for the contents of an essential list.  If the next Archbishop of Canterbury is in any way to be successful in the role, it will be because he/she has in some way grasped the nettle of what is the essential direction of travel for the Church over the coming century.  What follows is in no way a complete essential list but an invitation to think out loud and share ideas about what is truly important for the future leader in our Church of England.

The rest of this piece will set out my ideas about some of the essential qualities that I believe might be required of an Archbishop of Canterbury today.  Some of them will be similar to the qualities we ask of our parochial clergy, but I do recognise that constant public exposure by a church leader to the press and the public requires a particular, even superhuman, resilience and stamina.  This is similar to that required of our politicians.  Apart from this need to have a enormous capacity for work and the gift of imperviousness to substantial pressures, I centre my remarks on three qualities beginning with the letter ‘I’.   They are integrity, inspirational and indwelling.  Every one of my readers will probably have further essential qualities to add to this list, but I allow myself the excuse that I only have 1500 words for these musings.  On such a big topic it is inevitable that important things will get left out.

I start my essential list with my old favourite – integrity.  The next Archbishop of C needs to be for the church’s sake, and that of society, a WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get – kind of person.  In this epoch of safeguarding anxiety, we also cannot afford to have a candidate with any involvement with past scandal or even having knowledge of such behaviour.   The more general meanings of integrity, involving openness and complete honesty together with a requisite and appropriate response to any wrongdoing, whether by an individual or group, has to be built in and assumed.  But the problem is that there has been so much bad behaviour or tolerance of such things as bullying, secrecy and cover-up, that there can only be a few bishops left of whom it can be said that there are no rumours around their actions and decisions in the past.  We are not here speaking about such things as mood swings or lapses into irritability but of endemic character flaws that would cause a negative response in anyone hearing about them for the first time.  Past attempts to bury scandal, using the tools of secrecy and institutional power, do not compare well with the kind of openness that genuine WYSIWYG integrity implies.  Even in our house of bishops, this genuine openness is not as common as we would like in an institution that claims to embody the wholeness and holiness of its founder.

The word inspiration has a special meaning in a Christian context.  It refers to the possession of the Spirit, ‘the Lord, the giver of life’.  To ask for an inspiring archbishop is to ask for a man or woman who can inspire as they themselves are inspired.  To mediate inspiration, the archbishop should be able to teach and preach in a way that makes a mark on the hearer.  There should be sound theology as well as memorable inspiring imagery.  Something of the excitement of good news should inhabit every public utterance and the impact of the archbishop’s spoken word, whether in a sermon or in the House of Lords, should have the quality of making people want to listen.

The final I word, ‘indwelling’, is not one that immediately releases its meaning without some word of explanation.  I want an archbishop to have some of the quality of relating to others which make all their encounters with people special, so that something important is given and shared.  This is a gift that I realise few people possess with any degree of completeness, so we can think of this as an aspirational quality to be aimed at, though seldom realised. I have yet to come up with another English word which captures what I mean by indwelling.  Such a word would need to encompass elements of true altruistic love, empathy and human sharing.  We all recognise this special empathetic quality of relating, when someone of complete integrity looks at us in the eye and gives/shares something of themselves.  It is not an act of dominance or control but simply a momentary indwelling and this is experienced as a kind of blessing.  An archbishop will meet thousands of individuals in the course of his/her work without the slightest chance of remembering names or anything else about them.  But a lot can be given and received in the five second handshake; relationships can begin, and human barriers can start to dissolve, whether those of race, language or culture.  The capacity of an archbishop to indwell another person will allow him/her to perform the vital task of building up the institution and helping the entire Anglican structure to find its way back to being the ‘Body of Christ’ in the true biblical sense.

The final question remains.  Does a qualified person with these three ‘essential’ qualities exist?  Part of me is gloomy in offering an answer to this.  But, if there can be found an individual who possesses these three ‘I’ qualities, then there is hope.  If on the other hand, serious compromises have to be made over the integrity, inspiration and indwelling/empathy of an otherwise promising candidate, then the further decline of our national church may be rapid.

The Episcopal Review of Winchester Cathedral was completed recently and a summary published on-line.  The presenting crisis was the departure last year of Andy Lumsden, the Director of Music, after more than 20 years in post.  The Review tells us very little about the events, disagreements and failures in communication that led up to the event, but clearly there has been, and, no doubt, still is, a great deal of unhappiness among staff and stakeholders in the management and running of Winchester Cathedral.   The Bishop, Philip Mountstephen, identifies ‘declining performance, unsatisfactory relationships and failings in leadership and management’ at the Cathedral, justifying both the current Review and the recommendations that flow out of it.    

The published summary of the Episcopal Review is only ten pages long and the reader is given little detail which would account, for example, for the Dean bringing forward her announced retirement from May 2025 to this month.  It is not profitable to speculate on these matters, and I have no access to any source of inside information.  What is hinted at in the Review, as the central concern, is the issue of music and the part that it plays in 21^st century cathedral worship.  While there are bound to be precise details about the management failings as well as the behaviour of individuals within the Cathedral community, the summary Review does not name names or apportion blame to anyone.  We are left to speculate on what might be the broad issues prompting the Review.  My own assumption is, from the evidence of the summary, that the context of the Review is a number of serious disagreements about the place of music among those involved in its provision.  A telling sentence appears on page 7, suggesting serious non-communication and diverging understandings of the role of music in the life of the Cathedral.  ‘It was felt that Chapter simply did not understand the musical side of the Cathedral’.  Such non-communication and misunderstanding are probably found in other centres of musical excellence in Britain today.  How do these centres best fit in with the rapidly changing face (and decline) of church life in this country?  The cathedral music tradition is for many still a compelling reason for attaching themselves to churches which maintain an active choral tradition, but which is so radically different from what is commonly termed ‘Christian music’.

Seventy years ago, I was a member of the cathedral choir in Canterbury.  The experience opened me up to appreciate a particular style of church music which has since become familiar to quite large numbers of people. At that time, the 50s, cathedral-type music was known only to those who attended cathedrals or one of a limited number of Oxford/Cambridge chapels and other foundations where choral traditions had been maintained.  Little of this genre of music was filtering through to the general public in Britain. The BBC radio programme with a reputation for the high brow, the Third Programme, seemed to show little interest in this rich vein of sacred choral music, whether in 16^th /17^th century polyphonic manifestations or later styles.  Two further reasons for the non-circulation of cathedral music were current.  The first was that LP records were extremely expensive.  If there were recordings of church music, they would have been priced at 35 shillings each, a sum equivalent to over £30 today.  The second fact was that there was simply no exposure to this style of music except among the vanishingly small number of active church musicians.  The only church music familiar to the general public were hymns and the yearly broadcast of the King’s Cambridge carols.  One piece of church music did penetrate into popular consciousness when the boy chorister, Ernest Lough, sung Mendelsohn’s ‘O for the wings of a dove’ in the mid-30s and the record was widely acclaimed.  The arrival of Radio 3 in around 1964 had the welcome effect that more music of every kind, including church music, was aired, no doubt creating a new ‘fan-base’ for what had been an extremely niche cultural taste.

Today we can note two major changes in the church music scene. One is that the music found formerly only in cathedrals and a cluster of Oxbridge chapels has spread out widely from this narrow base.  Both in terms of the number of musicians performing such music and those hearing it, there has been enormous growth and appreciation of this particular style.  Secondly there has been growth in the music available to be sung.  Some of this is as the result of new compositions by young composers who are fascinated by the ancient tradition that binds music and worship together.  There has also been a large amount of serious academic scholarship, bringing to light forgotten or neglected masterpieces of the past, particularly from the age of Elizabeth I when English music of all kinds excelled.

The rise in popularity in church music which I have witnessed in my lifetime has not been without its problems.  Winchester is one of the top cathedral choirs in the country.  Such a description comes with its own challenges.  What makes a choir good?  Is it that the style and quality of music inspires a quality of worship that is special and could act as an incentive to other churches aspiring to high standards, but lacking the endowments to meet the costs involved?  Having a ‘good’ choir could be a judgement based purely on technical and aesthetic factors.  It need have nothing to do with God or the reality of worship.  Finding out where is the meaning of excellence in terms of the choir achievements, is likely to be a constant cause of tension between clergy and the musicians who work for the institution.

A second point of tension, that will apply to every choral foundation in the country, is the rise of ‘popular’ Christian music.  For the majority of Christians, Christian music is found in what is known as worship songs.  Without expressing a value judgement on this style of Christian music, one has to say that such music emerges from a very different culture from the one in which cathedral musicians operate.  Church leaders working in cathedrals are acutely aware of the incompatible demands of the aficionados of choral mattins and those who prefer Graham Kendrick and Hillsong.  In a small way, I faced this tension in my parish and resolved it by allowing, as far as possible, both styles or cultures to co-exist.  The church choir and the music group appeared at different services and a kind of peace prevailed.  Whether the current tensions at Winchester have anything to do with these divergent styles or cultures of church music I have no inside knowledge, but the existence of such contrasting styles remains a very large elephant in the room called Christian worship.  It cannot be expelled easily.   In a centre like Winchester Cathedral where traditional cathedral music has reigned for literally centuries, it is hard to imagine that worship songs ever get an easy welcome, if at all.  But, if this is the only genre of Christian music known by a segment of the congregation, then it will be hard for the leaders to ignore it without causing upset and unhappiness.

In this piece I am suggesting that church music of all kinds is likely to draw into itself many of the other divisions and unspoken conflicts that already exist in the church.  Deep irreconcilable differences exist over the LGBT issue, climate change as well as theological attitudes to Scripture.  It is possible to distinguish a ‘liberal’ approach from a ‘conservative’ one, and, maybe, the two sides can have a discussion with a measure of civility.  When it comes to divisions over what church music is the preferred option, there are sometimes even deeper underlying issues, matters of taste, culture and social class.  These are difficult to address without sounding elitist.  I am well aware that my wanting to listen to Tallis’ Lamentations as part of my observance of Holy Week will not be understood by many sincere Christian people.  A greater number might fill a cathedral nave to listen to the Matthew Passion in Holy Week, but we are still facing the fact of widely divergent tastes in music among Christian people.  Somewhere in the unhappiness that has arisen in Winchester are, I believe, these cultural and aesthetic issues that arise when two incompatible musical styles are brought in close juxtaposition and found to be totally alien to each other.  Resolution of such cultural divergences will require a wisdom far greater than anything I see on offer in the Church today.

In writing this piece I am prepared to accept that the issues addressed by the Review and the resignation of the musical Director may have absolutely nothing to do with the clash of discordant musical cultures that we see in the wider church.  If I am wrong, this does not render all my comments of no value.  The tension between popular and classical church music is a live issue in many places and, sometimes, it can be said to exist as open warfare.   It is one of the ironies of today that one area of growth in church life at present is in an appreciation for the meditative, even contemplative style of BCP choral evensong.  It is for others to explain the appeal of the Psalms sung to Anglican chant, which also allows a renewed appreciation of the English language as spoken five centuries ago.  In a century’s time, it will become obvious which style has stood the test of time.  I suspect we all have our preferred guess.

The recent announcement that ten members of the clergy in the C/E are facing a disciplinary process, arising out of the Keith Makin report, was not an unexpected item of news.   The Makin report had named dozens of clergy said to have known of Smyth’s criminal activities, but these ten ‘represent those whose actions have been deemed to meet the threshold for instituting disciplinary proceedings’.  In other words, these ten clergypersons are to be subject to the scrutiny of the NST and under the terms of the CDM accept whatever penalties that the CDM process decides.

Back in 2020, I took an interest in the case of George Carey and the way that Makin chose to publicise, mid-enquiry, some apparent misdemeanour on his part.  This was followed by an immediate withdrawal of Carey’s PTO by the Bishop of Oxford.  Many people were puzzled that Carey’s apparent failing was seen to be so serious that, of all the failures being uncovered by Makin, this one alone required immediate action.  The removal of Carey’s PTO was reversed some months later, but much damage had been done to Carey’s peace of mind and reputation.  My blog piece, that I wrote at the time, focussed on whether Smyth’s brief and tenuous attachment to Trinity College Bristol, where Carey was principal, might have been so transitory that his presence was barely noticed.  An exploitation of Trinity’s name to help Smyth in his plan to flee Britain for Africa, where no scandal had yet attached to his name, might offer a plausible interpretation of the facts as we then knew them.  According to this interpretation, Smyth had registered as a student, but he was just exploiting a non-residential status at the college as a way of enhancing his CV.  Even a fleeting attachment to Trinity College might impress theological institutions abroad, especially in places where the British system was not well understood.  A non-residential student in a British college might be regarded as having a status that was not merited. No special reason exists for Carey to have heard of this very part-time student before his arrival.  Carey simply did not move in the prestigious evangelical circles occupied by Smyth and his former admirers that had worshipped him summer after summer at Iwerne.  The Bash ‘project’ and its focus on evangelising the public-school elite was not something that had any interest for Carey.  He would have found the focus on evangelising the privileged classes as something alien, even objectionable.  If this very part-time student, Smyth, was, as we suspect, keeping his attendance down to the absolute minimum, there is no reason for Carey to have got to know him or have had reason to consult the files about him. The politics of the evangelical world at the time seem to have been well outside Carey’s concerns.

This month I have had passed on to me Carey’s own autobiographical account of the background to the disciplinary process being currently undertaken against him by the NST.  This also sets out material from the work of the earlier 2020 core group.  Reading this narrative with the permission of the author, I am, I believe, able to see more of the dynamics of the 2020 core group and the way it became convinced of the guilt of an individual based on what appear to be hunches rather than actual evidence.  Stripped down to the bare bones, Carey was deemed guilty of having seen the original 1982 Ruston report on Smyth and having done nothing with the information.  The surmise that he had seen the report was based on two passing references in letters sent by David McInnes to David Fletcher. In the second of these two letters, David MacInnes was wanting to trace a number of ‘memos’ describing Smyth’s crimes.  He mentioned that a minister called David Jackman had a copy ‘and so had George Carey’.  It is this single unsubstantiated and uncorroborated claim that Carey had the document, and he had not reacted by going straight to the police, that is, both then and now, at the heart of the CDM accusation.

Carey’s account of his own self-examination about whether he might have had a lapse of memory, after seeing such an explosive document as the Ruston report, is at the centre of this new autobiographical fragment.  Carey rejects the idea that he could have read it, and then immediately put it out of his mind.  Such a notion, he concludes, is impossible.  Quoting Andrew Graystone, who knows more about the Smyth story than anyone else alive, he explains that the memo ‘is so shocking that I can assure that if you had been presented with Mark Ruston’s 1982 report you would remember it for the rest of your life.’ 

When my blog piece about Carey and his possible guilt over Smyth came out in 2020, a contributor to the comments section, called David Pennant, came up with a further valuable piece of information.  He wrote: I was a full-time ordinand at Trinity College Bristol from 1981 to 1984, and then stayed on researching there from 84 – 86. I went into the college only once a week in the latter period, but in the early period I was there five days a week. We lived a mile away in our own home. This blog is the first time that I have discovered that John Smyth had any connection with the college. Had I known at the time, I would have searched him out and welcomed him, remembering him from Iwerne days. So, I am certain that I never heard anything about his presence. I also only discovered the allegations against him from this blog in recent years. 

Reflecting on David’s testimony, we can make one or two observations.  If a Iwerne alumnus had been present at Trinity, it is inconceivable that John Smyth would have managed to be so utterly invisible unless he had arranged to make his attendance deliberately so.  Also, the evidence and testimony of the one member of staff who would have dealt with an external student, as Smyth must have been, Peter Wiliams, was never followed up by the core group.  This might have shown Carey was never party to any information about Smyth and his fleeting attachment to Trinity Bristol in those far-off days.  Here the Church of England core group system shows itself unwilling to pursue facts as far as they lead.  Certainly, there is plenty of ‘reasonable doubt’ to query the group-think conclusion held by the core group.  They decided that George Carey knew all about John Smyth and his crimes but chose to supress this knowledge in order to have a quiet life.

I do not know George Carey personally, though we met at a Hereford diocesan conference in around 1991 when he was Bishop of Bath and Wells.  The story that I have discerned now and in 2020 when trying, on this blog, to make sense of his narrative, is capable of more interpretations than just those given by the NST and the original core group.  Once again, we seem to be encountering a clear interest in the rights and privileges of institutions and how these take precedence over a concern for justice for the individual.  Having been permitted to glimpse the ‘evidence’ brought forward as a way of pinning guilt on Carey, I have very little confidence that church justice is or was being served.  We can say that whenever there is evidence that facts are not pursued in a thorough professional manner, any accusations made against an individual lack integrity and even credibility.  Common-sense questions also arise about the possible reasons for only one example of malfeasance, Carey’s, being acted upon prior to the excruciatingly delayed publication of the Makin report.  What made Carey’s ‘misdeeds’ so much worse than those of others? One word used by both Carey and Julie McFarlane to describe the operation of church justice, whether in the role of the accused or the accusing, is ‘brutal’.  There is a brutality about a process which seeks to attack and sometimes destroy those it disapproves of.  One thing I can hope for is that the exoneration of George Carey will eventually be complete.  Based on the evidence that I have seen, I hope that his friends in the legal world will be able to show up clearly the pettiness, vindictiveness and injustice which the Church of England has allowed to become part of its life.  That may lead to the eventual complete dismantling and rebuilding of the structures around safeguarding so that justice, honesty and harmony may be restored to this area of church life.

There is an advantage in having absolutely no inside information with regard to a puzzling church news story that has appeared over the past couple of weeks.  My ignorance allows me to think out loud as to what might be going on behind the curtain of secrecy in the appointment process for the next Bishop of Durham.  We have been told that the nominee for this prestigious post has withdrawn his/her name from the appointment process.   Speculation immediately arises, not only about the name of the individual concerned, but the possible reasons for any reasonably qualified individual not allowing him/herself to be suggested for the fourth most senior post in the Church of England.  Having no sources of information, I can join my readers in speculating that this piece of news may possibly denote a situation of crisis at the top, and it may have considerable implications for the future of the Church of England.  

Why is the withdrawal of one possible contender for the see of Durham a matter of potentially upmost seriousness?  Before we can attempt to answer that question, we should note that the task of finding someone to head up an organisation in any walk of life is seldom a straightforward task.  A selection committee may have to work extremely hard, only to find that none of the possible candidates are suitable for the post.  How many appointment committees end up appointing the least objectionable candidate rather than the best candidate, simply because they know an appointment has to be made?  In the case of parish appointments, there are some posts where no applications are being received.  Interregna stretch on over the years and the only thing that changes is that the band of retired clergy ‘helping out’ get older and frailer.  The House for Duty option is becoming increasingly less attractive as the costs of heating a rural vicarage become unaffordable on a pension.  When an appointment is eventually made, problems do not necessarily go away.  The appointment committee may have to witness how the lack of experience they had noted in a candidate at the interview stage, turns into a parochial nightmare which nothing except a future retirement will be able to resolve.

The candidates for posts of bishop do not arrive for selection without their own personal histories.  These may have attracted a share of controversy and challenge.  The episcopal candidates may well be men and women of real ability and skill, but the situations they potentially face are still highly stressful.  One contemporary challenge is summed up in the two words ‘social media’.  This pair of words sums up a whole host of hazards for a bishop in the Church of England.  The uncomfortable reality of occupying a prominent role in an organisation, under constant media scrutiny, include being discussed and criticised on Facebook or X without having a realistic opportunity to reply.  Even if the discussion about you is relatively friendly, the sheer fact of constant exposure to the public must be a constant strain.  

Two suggestions to explain why the nominee for the Bishop of Durham is withdrawing from the process have been made.   One is somewhat mischievous and needs no further discussion.  The candidate is thought to be angling for the other current vacancy, that of the throne of Canterbury.  The more likely explanation is that the role of Diocesan bishop has become increasingly unattractive over the years and that qualified candidates simply do not want the sheer stress of occupying the role.  At any one time, there are only a finite number of candidates capable of filling the post of a diocesan bishop.  Is the person that might be qualified free to be considered?  The window of time that exists for such a major move to be made may be fairly narrow.   Also, as with parishes, dioceses come with plusses and minuses, many to do with finance.   A number of the 42 English dioceses are believed to have financial black holes which could make a vacant diocese an uncomfortable post to preside over.  To have to worry about parishes in your diocese being unable or unwilling to pay the parish share is a considerable burden.    The fact of a serious deficit is only part of the problem.  It is the fact that the necessary response to deficits, closing or amalgamating parishes, potentially makes the incoming bishop part of a ‘them’ trying to ‘destroy’ the parish system.  The situation in Truro and Leicester, where creation of massive teams and groupings of parishes is well under way, is not thought to be a happy one.

The role of a bishop seems sometimes like that of an unpopular manager closing down local branches of a national company.  Closing anything down is never popular and it will, perhaps inevitably, create considerable personal stress for the would-be office holder.  A recent, but even greater, source of stress has been laid on the entire episcopal body through the advent of safeguarding.  If there is a diocese which has an exemplary record in this area, we will probably never hear about it.   If bishops and safeguarding officers are playing their part in preventing harm happening to vulnerable individuals, that is as it should be.  Sadly, we only hear about failures and neglect.  No kudos or congratulations is given to a bishop who gives a great deal of energy and effort to getting safeguarding right. It is a tails you lose and heads no one will ever know.  Safeguarding is an arena of deep unhappiness for victims and survivors but often also for those who oversee its implementation.  The Church of England had an opportunity to let go of this area of enormous stress in the February Synod.  But, by retaining final control of safeguarding in-house, the C/E has built into the role of its officeholders, everyone from bishops to churchwardens, a responsibility which can be thoroughly toxic.  By its nature it seldom seems to be able to promote joy or creative change in those who administer it.

In 2025 we contemplate an institution, the Church of England, which, for many, has become a place of stress and unhappiness.   In the past it was easy to glimpse a certain glamour in the prestige and power of those who presided over this venerable organisation as bishops.  Some of those who exercised that power in British society are remembered for fulfilling a role as the moral conscience of the nation.  It is hard for bishops today to achieve such a profile when the discussions that are heard by the public, seem to be self-absorbed and even trivial.   

In asking the question again as to why a nominee for a prestigious bishopric should withdraw his or her candidacy, we might answer with one word – morale.  The individual so nominated may simply see in front of him/her endless insoluble issues of finance, management and personnel.  The would-be bishop does not feel capable of dealing with them all without ending up as a severe casualty of depression and stress.  At the heart of a bishop’s calling is the pastoral support and care of the clergy in his diocese.  These other essential priorities – management, finance and safeguarding – get in the way of this vital task.  If he/she is prevented from caring for the clergy, then the heart of the episcopal task is being laid to one side.  It is small wonder that more clergy are more likely to seek the opposite to preferment, preferring a post which allows them to do the ordinary priestly tasks of teaching, pastoral care and providing first class inspiring worship.  The old-fashioned activity of parish and hospital visiting was right at the top of the ‘things-to-do-list’ during my training years in the 70s.  I accept that parish priorities have had to change with the times over the past 30 years, but I cannot see that a regime which seems to attract to itself endless form filling and team meetings, allows the human vocational aspect of priesthood to flourish.

The simple question why the nominee to the bishopric of Durham withdrew, may have a simple answer.  The person so nominated recognised that the job was now one that has developed and turned into a monster that is impossible to control.    Questions abound over the mental health of archbishops and bishops alike are already being asked elsewhere.  Parish priests have their own sets of problems which challenge mental and physical stamina.  We cannot discuss that issue of parishes today, but it seems clear that the lot of the parish priest is more difficult to manage than in the past.  If I am right, then the claim will be reflected in the declining number offering themselves for full time ministry.  When these numbers recover that may be an indicator that morale is returning to the Church of England.

The major debate at General Synod last week on safeguarding ended for many of us in a disappointing place.  Synod decided that the Church of England itself should have another chance to get things right with safeguarding.  What came out of the debate was held up to be a compromise between the so-called option 3 and option 4.  The latter was an attempt to place the whole safeguarding work of the Church outside the  structures and control of the C/E.  This was the path preferred by most survivors and those who support them. This was a perspective seen to be increasingly needed over the many years of mistakes, incompetence and even corruption on the part of the church authorities, in their dealings with survivors and their pain.  An amendment, argued powerfully by Bishop Philip North, neutralised this path to full independence.  Instead of utilising the high levels of secular professional safeguarding expertise right across the country, Synod, in the end, decided to keep much of the status quo by trusting many of the in-house structures.  This decision ran counter to the recommendation of Alexis Jay.  She had been given the task of researching the issue and making her findings known to Synod.

In this blog I do not propose to argue the detail of the safeguarding debate at Synod in February 2025 beyond this bare outline.  For me, what is important is to reflect on how the debate about independence can be seen, at its heart, to be a theological debate about the way the Church understands its access to divine truth.  Some Christians teach and preach the notion that truth is something that can be claimed and made known, if only we listen diligently to the inspired words of Scripture and the teaching contained in two thousand years of tradition.   The idea that an outside agency in the form of an independent safeguarding body should help make decisions about this part of its life, seems to challenge the idea that the Holy Spirit is leading us into all truth.  Turning to secular professionalism, as a way forward in the management of our safeguarding crisis, challenges, even contradicts, for some, deeply held assumptions about Christian ideas of truth.  And it is these assumptions that are implicit in a debate on safeguarding independence that I want us to look at.

Over my lifetime I have been a strong upholder of the idea that we are permitted to know Christian truth and to share it with others.  My theological studies at university taught me that this was , however, not a straightforward task.  For example, the use of ‘clincher texts’ was never for me the way to go in establishing truth statements.  The Bible had to be used in a far more nuanced way than this.  Exposure to ancient languages opened up even more clearly the insight that language often lacks precise unchangeable definitions.   A single word in English can shift in some way in the meaning we give to it over a period of time.  The Christian life could never have a ‘once for all’ meaning; changing and maturing in how we understand truth, is a feature of our Christian pilgrimage.

One thing I have learnt over the years is to observe how Christians deal with uncertainty.  Some are deeply fearful when they find they do not know something to do with faith and truth.  Because the churches they attend use the currency of certainty and truth the whole time, they assume that they are expected to have their faith sorted out and are thus always able to give a good account of what they are required to believe.  Others, the fortunate ones in my opinion, are not so threatened by their awareness of uncertainty.  They know something about God and Jesus and find something compellingly attractive about the Bible.  The darker aspects of faith, those that suggest that they may end up in a place of utter despair and pain if they make a less than a total heartfelt commitment to this God, have never been shared with them.  Thus, they are not tempted to see their faith as a cause of gloom or depression through an exposure to a ‘turn or burn’ theology.  Rather the Christian faith has been shared with them as an invitation to construct meaning and hope and to make sense of all that is good and beautiful about life.  There are, of course, difficult paths to walk and tragedies to face, but that part of life is counteracted by a deep sense of a constant presence as expressed in Psalm 23, ‘for thou art with me, thy rod and staff, they comfort me’.

In debating whether we should allow safeguarding to be undertaken inhouse or seconded to a body outside the control of the leaders and structures of the church, I sense somewhere a discussion similar to the one outlined above.  On the one side we have those who see their faith defined by their leaders and teachers.  Teachings which centre on assurance and certainty will always have strong appeal to those who are fearful of embracing anything that speaks of uncertainty.  Styles of faith which look to others for constant reassurance are found in conservative churches of all kinds.  The longing that leaders will always produce safe and reliable answers to faith questions is likely to translate into an expectation that these same leaders will be expected to be right on every topic.  If a bishop or leader indicates that he/she teaches the truth in one area of life, he/she can be relied upon to get things right (e.g safeguarding) in other areas. 

The Christian who is unafraid of uncertainty will also be unafraid of experts whose skill-set has relevant things to say to areas of life outside the domain of theology.  Safeguarding is one of the areas of professional expertise where secular experts clearly have a great deal to teach Christians.   A list of relevant disciplines that touch on the area of safeguarding, (law, psychology and sociology to name a few) makes it likely that there will not be many fully trained within these varied disciplines of knowledge among the church people who want to claim safeguarding expertise.   The upholders of option 4 seem to be those synod members who recognise two things simultaneously.  The first is that the universally bungled management of safeguarding in the C/E over the past ten years or so has been, in part, caused by church having assumed some kind of infallible knowledge in this area.  This fact then requires the second stage – the release of control of this part of church activity to those who have relevant experience and skills.  An individual Christian or Synod member may believe that the Bible ‘teaches everything necessary for salvation’ or that the Church possesses the ‘faith once and for all delivered to the Saints’ so that nothing can ever be added.  This may have the effect of making them unwilling ever to tolerate the idea that a non-believer may, in many areas of knowledge and activity, know best.  I am one of those Christians who welcomes, with an enormous gratitude, the insights of those who share their expertise and experience on areas of knowledge that Christians cannot claim privileged insight.  We need such expertise and, with it, we enrich whatever theological insight we may possess studying these topics.

Resisting option 4, which pleaded for the insights and expertise of secular authorities to be given to the Church. seems to favour a defensive and fearful approach to safeguarding.    The welcoming of true independence is a approach that also welcomes a fearless, open approach to faith which is hope-suffused and open to joy.   Wanting safeguarding in any way to be kept in-house is also similar to an approach that seems to thrive on fear and suspicion of the wider world. Further, many Christians seem to have been tainted by the shadow of abuse whether as perpetrator, victim or bystander.   For them, there is always going to be some sense of unprocessed guilt and shame, especially if these negative emotions are frequently mentioned in the circles they moved in.  Abuse, whether sexual or some other kind, is deeply contaminating and traumatising and it is not surprising that many who have encountered it want to shut it out of awareness as much as possible.  Rejecting option 4 ss one way of burying deep pain and distress.

The Church of England in February 2025 is still haunted by the ghosts of past shame.  It has shown that it is not yet ready to welcome the cleansing insights of secular knowledge which can do much to purge the institution and make it the honest and healing body that the general public wants to see.   Post Makin and post Jay we need to see a new longing  from all, the bishops to the folk in the pew, to work for and welcome utter honesty and humility.  If independence and option 4 are the ultimate destination for the C/E, may they come quickly.

Some years ago, I wrote a blog post on the topic of power and patronage as they apply to church and society.  This theme was on my mind because I was then preparing to give a talk on Joan of Arc and asking some questions about the enthusiasm she was able to inspire and share among her followers.  One point that had to be made was that Joan was only able to do what she did, and gain an army to pursue her vision, because a member of the French nobility was prepared to back her.  Without this aristocratic patronage, her cause would never have got under way.  Joan was considered low-born, and she needed the affirmation of someone born to power and authority to set her up in her brief but unexpectedly dramatic successes on the battlefield against the English occupiers. 

Patronage is an interesting word.  It describes the dynamic in the way a rich powerful individual can share some of that power, with a chosen few, in a social rank below them. Unless an individual were born into the very highest rank of a society, he/she would have to wait on others, considered their social superiors, to notice them and help them to achieve a better status or rank than the one they presently enjoyed. The patronage to be handed out by the high-born was very real and potentially life-changing for the recipient.  A great deal of effort went into trying to access it by trying to be agreeable to, as well as noticed by, those who possess it.   From a percentage perspective, only a few would be successful in gaining the attention and favour they sought.  The agony and possibly life-changing ecstasy of a successful pursuit of ecclesiastical patronage by poor clergy is a constant sub-plot in both Jane Austen’s and Anthony Trollope’s 19^th century novels.  Even today it can be said to exist in the C/E, but the financial dimension that used to mesmerise the ‘lower’ clergy is less important than it once was.

The recent discussion of abuse allegations against the late David Fletcher on Channel 4 News, has reminded me of the considerable importance that patronage plays in the Church of England, even now.   It would be hard to find another individual in the con-evo network who seems to have once had as much ‘patronage power’ as the Honourable David Clare Molyneux Fletcher. Apart from his role as organiser of the Iwerne Camps for a dozen years after 1965, he seems, in his heyday, to have known absolutely everyone in the con-evo world within the C/E.  David Fletcher would have had an immense amount of personal information about dozens of potential applicants for ecclesiastical preferment within the con-evo network. To obtain preferment to any leadership role in one of these wealthy con-evo parishes in England, a young man would typically have attended the right school, the right theological college and volunteered for service in the summer camps at Iwerne.  As the full-time leader of these Iwerne camps for 12 years, David possessed an unrivalled acquaintance of everyone in the con-evo world for over thirty years and, according to Makin, also got to know early on more about the criminal activities of John Smyth than anyone else. As the one entrusted with furthering the vision of E J Nash (Bash) to convert the elite of Britain, he had the task of spotting and encouraging future leaders who would be able to take the ‘work’ forward.  David seems to have taken very seriously this selection and mentoring of those who were deemed suitable for leadership roles in the part of the C/E that shared this theological vision of Bash. After 12 years in this role as the Iwerne leader, David would have known about the details of the personal lives of every single young man passing through the camp system.  With this extensive personal knowledge about so many, David (and his influential brother Jonathan) would, at the very least, always been consulted to offer an opinion on which candidates deserved promotion.  While we obviously cannot claim to understand how the system of patronage worked in detail, it is clear from a study of Crockford that few outsiders were ever able to penetrate the charmed circle of those who ‘belonged’ to the ex-public school elite inner Iwerne ring.  The system of patronage seems to have operated from the day the young man was invited to a summer camp at Iwerne.  Those who chose to be ordained had then to compete to be placed in one of the prestigious evangelical parishes as curates.  Young Iwerne graduates often stayed as assistant curates within one of these parishes for up to 15 years, waiting for the patronage system to pick them to be a Vicar of an internationally known con-evo parish and thus one of the evangelical celebrities.  The main con-evo parishes in England have an extraordinary number of curates, some up to 14.  An ordinary parish in the C/E is lucky to have a full-time incumbent, while wealthy parishes in the Iwerne con-evo network operate in a quite different way.  While most clergy might expect, over a professional career, to serve in parishes which practise a variety of styles of worship, those privileged by having access to con-evo patronage seem to glide from one prestigious and well-endowed post to another.  David Fletcher himself moved to take up the prestigious incumbency of St Ebbes in Oxford after Iwerne and here he remained till retirement.  These two posts had put him right at the centre of the non-charismatic evangelical universe in the C/E.  In these posts he would have had an encyclopaedic knowledge of dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals passing through the con-evo system.  If we liken the con-evo world to a spider’s web of camps, conferences, colleges and parishes, it is hard to see how David Fletcher was ever anywhere but at the very centre, able to operate patronage power very extensively.  I have no reason to suppose that he did not do this and that the con-evo world will still bear the hallmarks of his influence even though he is no longer alive.    

So far, I have tried (probably unsuccessfully) to be neutral in my description of the exercise of patronage within the con-evo bubble within the C/E.  I do have serious concerns about the way that a clique of socially powerful privileged churchmen who have never served in any but the wealthy conservative parishes in our large cities can understand the problems of the wider church.  In itself, patronage can be a neutral exercise of power.  It may even be justified on ethical grounds.  The problem arises when the one with patronage power is discovered to be corrupt or self-serving.  The United States is going through a period of serious trauma as its President exercises his power in an arbitrary way with little attention to the welfare of real people.  David Fletcher’s (and his brother Jonathan’s) exercise of patronage might qualify as ethical if it could be argued that both were exercising it in an utterly disinterested fashion.   The problem that arises is that both brothers are now credibly accused of wrongdoing in the area of sexual activity.   The detail of their alleged misdemeanours is unimportant here.    What is important is that serious ethical lapses are being associated with two formerly important evangelical leaders.  Between them, the Fletcher brothers had been instrumental in helping to create and sustain the incredibly powerful con-evo faction which, even now, seeks to control the future direction of the Church of England.  The ethical question which we have here to wrestle with is whether the good someone achieves is ever cancelled by their secret sin.  Do we feel that what David (and Jonathan) left behind damages their legacy to the Church in terms of conversions, the fostering of vocations to ministry and their teaching skills? I know that some will want to overlook the current serious allegations against David on the grounds that he was a key figure in their own formation towards a Christian identity.  I am not sure we can. There must be literally hundreds who fall into this category of being indebted to one or both of the Fletcher brothers for their spiritual formation.   Can we ignore revelations about their personal lives?   Speaking for myself, I would feel utterly betrayed if any of my personal ‘gurus’ or mentors turned out to have credible accusations against them of sexual sin.  Sexual sin inevitably involves betrayal, whether of a partner or a vulnerable victim.  Everyone whom I have followed as a mentor or teacher (mostly now dead) received my trust and confidence.  If any of them, even now, turned out to have done something which cynically betrayed such trust, I would feel deeply betrayed and would want to question everything else I had once valued about the relationship.

There is now a crisis in the Church which we hesitate to name.  The crisis is created by the fact that, one after another, many of our leaders are currently being shown to have feet of clay.  Some seem to have deplorable secrets from the past.  Others seem incapable of sticking to the truth while others seem to be missing a proper understanding of what it means to love and respect another human being, particularly in a state of need or distress.  We desperately need leaders of unimpeachable integrity to look up to and admire.  We talk about children finding role models.  If they find them, whether among footballers or television personalities, we want these models to be consistently reliable, stable and predictable in the way they behave.  It is a serious matter if a role model and dispenser of patronage power, like David Fletcher, turns out to have betrayed the trust of so many.  Pretending that this event has not happened, and that there is no case for institutional and personal self-examination, is dishonest and damaging to the ideals of the con-evo movement.  Silence can never be the response.      

Martin Sewell & Stephen Trott

Martin writes: Members of the General Synod are not the only legislators taking an interest in the issue of Church of England Safeguarding Reform together with the issues of bad governance that inevitably lie cheek by jowl with it

Bad governance, bad safeguarding practice, and a patrician culture of omertà amongst the leadership was bound to result in a collapse of trust in the Established Church once the scandal got out, and so it has proved. The long delayed Makin Review, has proved only  the slow burning fuse and once published, a chain reaction of anger began.

Investigative reporter Cathy Newman had know about the story for a long time but need the full facts before providing the oxygen of publicity necessary for the explosion of anger to begin; the Church of England has behaved precisely like the “Post Office at Prayer” for a decade and Cathy Newman’s journalism has provided the counterpart narrative to the docs drama “ Mr Bates vs the Post Office”

On the last edition of the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme the Conservative Parliamentary lead for Safeguarding, Ms Alicia Kearns  called for a Royal Commission into the safeguarding scandals and this follows a significant number of Members of Parliament expressing anger towards the Church leadership during the January session questions to the new Second Estates Commissioner Marsha de Cordova who was necessarily diplomatic but plainly sympathetic to their concerns.

Ms Kearns, the MP for Rutland and Stamford, had plainly been well briefed and as I listened, I recognised the cogent arguments of a one time Synod colleague and safeguarding stalwart Revd Stephen Trott and so it transpired.

Stephen Trott “ knows his stuff”. He had been  a member of the 2003 Revision Committee of the 2003 CDM Measure and had identified that the Bishops had conveniently contrived to exclude themselves from its jurisdiction. One suspects the the although that commission was corrected, Revd Trott  began to realise the nature of the problem from that experience.

 He plainly understands his subject; he was a member of General Synod 1995-2021, where he has served on the Legal Advisory Commission, and the Legislative Committee.

The current crisis has provided him with the opportunity to adjust and share his paper, which he did via Ms Kearns whom he he had encountered in the course of his Ministry.

This has since been shared with other MPs of all parties,  and, just as we found with the Post Office, they are coming together on a cross party basis to address historic wrongs. Whether it is about empathy for the victims or antipathy to the privileged position of the Established Church matters little. As Alan Bennet once wrote “ the sky is black with chickens coming home to roost”

Readers can read the short paper here. In many ways what happens in the chaos of the February Synod is not the most significant aspect of the next few days; what will count is what Parliament and the media make of what they see.

Safeguarding failure by the National Institutions of the Church of England

Proposal for the establishment of a Royal Commission
to reform the governance of the Church of England

1 Safeguarding failures in the Church of England

There have been many and widely publicised safeguarding failures by the authorities of the Church of England, at diocesan and at national level, with many survivors whose experience and needs have not been addressed, who have been denied due process, acknowledgement, justice and compensation for their situation.

It has taken some twenty years for dioceses to develop safeguarding programmes and training for the clergy, mostly acting in isolation from each other to devise systems for teaching safeguarding and for implementing it at a diocesan level. Many safeguarding officers are former members of the police with specific training in disclosure and barring, and in management of CSA cases. The situation at diocesan level is significantly improved, with case reviews of all clergy undertaken to ensure that those with safeguarding issues are identified and managed. The lack of a national syllabus, training programme or qualifications remains however a gap in the implementation of safeguarding nationally, not least because clergy move from diocese to diocese, or are asked to officiate in other dioceses.

At national level the Archbishops’ Council, created in 1998 as a top tier for the constitution of the Church of England above the General Synod, has failed quickly enough to develop national policy, or to respond to survivors, or to hand over national safeguarding to a body independent of the Church of England. In recent years there has been an evolving series of safeguarding authorities created by the Council, but all have proved ineffective to deal with the situation, as old and new cases of abuse of children and vulnerable adults have emerged and have been largely ignored. Its current proposals for “independent” safeguarding do not offer genuine independence.

The Clergy Discipline Measure of 2003 imposes a limit of twelve months for complaints to be made against members of the clergy. An exception to this can be made by the President of the Tribunals, but this discretion has not always been exercised as it should be. Many historic cases have come to light, some dating back decades, some more recent, but complainants have been denied justice. It is the nature of safeguarding that survivors frequently do not come forward until many years after they have suffered abuse.

Many of these survivors have been asking their bishops for support, to intervene, or even to reply to letters which have been ignored in some cases for more than a decade. Many bishops, including Justin Welby, have declined to meet with survivors.

The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, published in 2022, examined in detail the issue of safeguarding in the Church of England and other churches. The report called for the creation of a fully independent body to oversee safeguarding practices within religious organizations. The inquiry highlighted systemic failures in the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, including prioritizing the reputation of the church over the welfare of children. It found evidence of poor responses to allegations, insufficient support for survivors, and inconsistent safeguarding practices.

The Archbishops and their Council have consistently sought to avoid the transfer of oversight of safeguarding to an fully independent body by means of creating its own solutions to deal with these matters, but this has not produced a viable alternative to an independent body.

Redress has been promised to survivors, but it is endlessly delayed, and the amounts of compensation wholly unsatisfactory in the light of the suffering which survivors have undergone. Most have not received anything, and many continue to be ignored by their bishops and by the Council.

The John Smyth Review, published as the Makin Report in November 2024, after some six years of delays, finally exposed the existence of the widest and longest running system of abuse in the Church of England, dating back at least to the 1970s and involving several hundred victims in England and in South Africa and Zimbabwe, at the hands of John Smyth QC, an Evangelical barrister supported by a network connected to the Iwerne Trust.

One of those who worked for the Trust at its camps was Justin Welby, who claims not to have been aware of the abuse taking place as a young man, and consistently refused to engage with survivors of the abuse carried out by Smyth.

The Makin Report shows that from 2013 onwards Welby must have been aware of the allegations being made, but neither he nor his staff and other bishops made a concerted effort to close down Smyth’s activities, by now residing in South Africa in order to avoid scrutiny in the UK. Smyth was enabled to continue multiple abuses until his death in 2018, before he could be extradited back to the UK to face questioning. His victims in the UK have in many cases been denied any meeting with either Archbishop Welby or with other officers of the Archbishops’ Council, until very recently.

2 Unaccountability of bishops and archbishops and of the Archbishops’ Council

At the root of the problem is the obsolete constitution of the Church of England and the almost complete absence of accountability for its leaders or its National Institutions, especially the Archbishops’ Council, created by Archbishop George Carey in 1998 as a superstructure to the General Synod. Although the Church of England remains part of the law of England, access to redress is largely limited to expensive attempts at judicial review. There is no body to supervise the Church or to reform it. It is exempt from Freedom of Information legislation. The House of Bishops meets in private and does not publish full minutes of its proceedings.

The office of a bishop or archbishop is largely as it was left by Henry VIII, some of whose legislation in several areas remains active on the statute book, such as the Appointment of Bishops Act of 1533. Today, however, the Crown plays no role in supervising the bishops. The office of prime minister has absorbed the powers and most of the prerogatives of the Crown including hose relating to the Established Church. Prime ministers appointed the bishops and archbishops until this role was handed over by Gordon Brown to the Church itself in 2007. The House of Bishops has as a consequence become a self-replicating body, with most new appointments coming from a pool of candidates chosen and promoted by the Archbishops.

In 1919 Parliament created the first devolved government – the Church Assembly, known since 1970 as the General Synod of the Church of England. Apart from the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament, which scrutinises church legislation known as Measures, the General Synod is not governed by or practically accountable to Parliament. Questions are asked by MPs which are answered by the Second Church Estates Commissioner, who relies on staff at Church House to provide research and answers. There is no mechanism by which MPs can act in response.

The problem was compounded in 1998 with the National Institutions Measure, which created the Archbishops’ Council as a new top tier of church government, as a corporate body in its own right, removing from the General Synod its vital role of self-government, and placing uncertain powers in the hands of a partly elected, partly appointed Council controlled by the Archbishops. Its functions include the management of Synodical government, whose agenda it controls, and it has taken increasing powers for itself by means of a series of Measures and Statutory Instruments. It is currently proposing the formation of a new system of governance in which power passes into the hands of a new body over which the Archbishops will have even more influence and control. There is no meaningful accountability to Parliament, or in practice to the General Synod, which is historically and legally the devolved governing body of the Church of England.

Doubts were raised in 1998 as to the purpose and role of the new Archbishops’ Council. It is because of the confusion of roles between the Council and the Synod and the assumption of power by the Council that the failure of the Church of England’s leaders to address safeguarding effectively has taken place, continuing to sideline Professor Jay’s recommendation of a completely independent safeguarding body, and perpetually postponing any real redress or even acknowledgement for survivors. The absence of accountability is the striking root cause of the national safeguarding failure, and of other significant issues as well.

Although Parliament could in principle exercise its sovereignty over the Church, by repealing the 1919 legislation, or that of 1969 which created General Synod, convention ensures that it will not do so. Again, the European Convention on Human Rights now protects religious bodies from intervention by the State of the kind which might have occurred before 1919. It would not be appropriate for what is now a secular Parliament directly to supervise the Church of England, although the Church remains Established in law as the national church and in possession of the historic endowments and property which it received on trust at the Reformation.

3 Reforming the current governance of the Church of England

The situation in the Church of England with regard to safeguarding, and to the rights of all its members nationwide who look to General Synod as its governing body, is now intolerable, and a means must be found to ensure transparency, genuine and effective accountability, and respect for the rights of church members which are being diminished by the acquisition of absolute power by those at the centre. There is one mechanism which can be deployed, however. As the Established Church, its canon law explicitly acknowledges that it remains subject to the Royal Supremacy.

Canon A7 Of the Royal Supremacy

We acknowledge that the King’s excellent Majesty, acting according to the laws of the realm, is the highest power under God in this kingdom, and has supreme authority over all persons in all cause, as well ecclesiastical as civil.

It is well within the bounds of constitutional propriety for a Royal Commission to be set up to inquire into the abuses of power in the Church of England, its failure to respond to the gravest safeguarding issues and to the recommendations made by IICSA, and the almost complete lack of
accountability either by its bishops in the exercise of their office, or by the National Institutions of the Church, especially the Archbishops’ Council.

There is precedent for setting up such a Royal Commission. From 1904-1906 a Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline heard evidence from many witnesses, and in its Report recommended modernisation of the restrictive laws controlling public worship. This ultimately led to the devolution by Parliament to the Church Assembly of powers of self-government in 1919 via the
Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, while retaining the right to examine and to reject any Measure passed by the Church Assembly, or later the General Synod, which would negatively affect the constitutional rights of all the King’s subjects.

A new Royal Commission would be able to take evidence, examine the ways in which the present arrangements are failing, and propose legislative change by Act of Parliament, in order to bring the current governance of the Church into line with the best practice of the 21st century, for the sake of all church members and of all citizens of this country.

Safeguarding is the presenting issue. It will not be resolved, as other issues will not be resolved, while the Church’s authorities remain unaccountable to anyone. Bishops must be made into constitutional rather than absolute monarchs, and elected publicly, not in secret. Control and government of the national institutions must be returned to the General Synod itself, whose Houses of Clergy and Laity are elected to represent the parishes and people who maintain the Church’s presence for the benefit of everyone in England. We have been here before.

The creation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1836 was designed to deliver extensive reform to a Church which had become fossilised and subject to many abuses. The Established Church of today urgently needs full accountability, transparency, and reform of its outdated government and appointments. The means to this end is the continuing authority of the Crown, in history, in its functions, and in canon law, to appointing a Royal Commission on Church Governance to deliver the radical changes which are needed.

Stephen Trott