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

It has become difficult to know how to respond to yet more stories of scandal in the Church of England.  My readers will know all about the ‘Liverpool affair’ by the time this blog appears, so I do not need to recount all the allegations and denials that have appeared in the Press and elsewhere over the past couple of days. The blog wants to focus, not on the details of the possible sexual harassments perpetrated by a diocesan bishop, but on some of the ways that stories like this are deeply harmful, even ruinous, for the morale of the national Church, not to mention its reputation. 

At this moment, the allegations of misconduct against Bishop Perumbalath have not been proven, though there is an implied acceptance of some degree of wrongdoing indicated by the fact of the bishop’s resignation announcement.    Even before his position as bishop became impossible to support, in the face of widespread pressure from his senior colleagues in the diocese, it was unfortunate, to say the least, to read the bishop’s name in the same sentences as allegation, police caution and harassment.  The whole sequence of events will need to be thoroughly investigated since the Channel 4 reports raise as many concerns over the Church response to the affair as they do from the allegations by the two women involved.   In short, a resignation should not allow the details of suspected abuses to remain buried.  I am sure I speak for many when I say that the saga raises numerous questions about safeguarding professionalism, appointment processes, people skills and serious failings of management in the wider C/E.  

It is important to note that a diocesan bishop sits over a large organisation, like the Liverpool Diocese, and has a relationship with many people.  This will involve having an enormous amount of trust placed in him/her.  Any deviation from a meticulous observing of the boundaries that properly belong to the ethical ordering of church relationships, will probably be a cause of serious harm.  The higher up the hierarchy that such an abusive event takes place, the greater the harm.  Just as a local parish priest sets an example and the tone for the ordering of good harmonious relationships within his/her parish, so a bishop sets an example for an entire diocese.  It is not unreasonable for clergy to want to project on to the person in charge and see them as a model for their ministry.  At the service of induction to a parish, the bishop formally delegates his/her authority to the new incumbent.  In effect the authority he/she exercises in the parish is episcopal in nature.  Authority is flowing in two directions.  It matters greatly to the authorising bishop that the parish priest is competent and honest, just as it matters to the priest that the bishop is a person of utter integrity.

The ’Liverpool affair’ is a matter of far more importance that just a determination of the motivation of one individual in authority and whether they did or did not stray into abusive behaviour.  It is about the damage to tendons of trust that hold together and connect a fragile human organisation, which is here a diocese of the C/E.  When I was ordained some 54 years ago, I had a sense of committing myself to God while committing myself to a human institution we call Church.  The existence of holier, more intelligent and wiser priests in this body across the country meant that my own limitations were less crucial than if I had been attempting to do the job all on my own.  Of course, the clergy look to the Holy Spirit for guidance and help to do their task of teaching and caring; they also find themselves looking to other clergy to encourage them whether through chance meeting or reading material written in books or on the internet.  Ministry is individual but it is also in an important sense corporate.  We need the clergy we look up to and admire to have the solid reliability that we associate with the word integrity.  It really matters to each of us and our individual ministries when the honesty and just dealing of one of our number is questioned or challenged in some way. 

It matters very much indeed to the clergy and people of the Diocese of Liverpool that the issues concerning their now former bishop are fully investigated and dealt with in the best possible way.  It is also of concern to the rest of us, not only in Liverpool, that the truth of what has happened is known and responded to without some kind of cover-up.  The truth is what enables the people of God to look forward to the future work of the Church in Liverpool and elsewhere.  Part of the future will depend on how well we have faced up to and dealt with the past.  In spite of rules created by the church, that reckon that one year is sufficient time to process an episode of sexual harassment, the reality is that the legacy of abusive behaviour currently weighs heavily on the C/E and the institution can never be whole until it is dealt with.  Many people in the Church would love it if a page could be turned and a new beginning declared.  That might be possible if it were just a matter of dealing with the sin and frailty of human offenders.   The problem, shown in stark outline by the current episode, is that human frailty is not only in the abuse perpetrators but also inside the systems that the Church operates.  There are found to be, on every occasion when a major scandal breaks, archaic processes that are unfit for purpose.  Does anyone really believe today that the requirement to launch a complaint within a year of an alleged offence always serves justice?  The ‘professionals’ in the NST, in the offices of church lawyers overseeing safeguarding and the secret committees choosing bishops, must all allow their judgements to be scrutinised.  When appointments are made to posts where candidates can, if left their own devices, do potentially great harm, this should be a moment for forensic questioning.  Sorting out not only malfeasance by church people, but also checking abuse that is made possible by inadequate processes is a huge task, but it must be undertaken.

The Liverpool affair will probably be lost to the memories of the vast majority of those who are currently shocked and dismayed by what it suggests about the C/E.   For those who do remember anything of the allegations in ten years’ time, the memory will be as much about the confused and muddled response to the allegations, with its constant appeal to process than the actual details of the claimed assaults.   The response to every scandal is an appeal to ‘learn lessons’.  If we were really learning lessons, somehow one feels that the response to the Liverpool affair would have been far better than it is so far.  Is there even a small hope that things will be better this time?

Most members of the clergy living in Britain are familiar with the experience of being interviewed.  Posts are, these days, advertised in the Church Times and would-be incumbents and other more senior posts face a grilling from a group of individuals to establish whether they are the right person for the role.  The interview process now replaces, for the most part, the older method of an anonymous committee of two or three individuals meeting informally to decide who should be appointed for a post, regardless of whether they were looking for a change.  Sometimes the ‘committee’ appears to have been a single individual.  Normally a male, this individual felt he had the combination of experience, good judgment and maybe, a little guidance from the Holy Spirit to make the appointment on his own.  A combination of patronage, secrecy and networking seemed to carry along the appointment process.  Who can now say whether it was a successful system with all its evident potential for corrupt favouritism? 

In my years as an incumbent, I too applied for posts via the Church Times.  The number of times that I was called for interview but failed to get the advertised post does not need to be revealed.  I can admit the fact that I was offered a vacant post after interview on three occasions.  Twice, over a twenty-year period, I accepted the offer.  On the third occasion I realised, for practical and family reasons, that the offered post was an impossible undertaking and so withdrew.  There were other posts that revealed themselves as being unsuitable for a variety of reasons.   The interview process often revealed appalling impediments attached to an advertised post.  The result was that I received the ‘unsuccessful’ letter with a certain relief.  Dioceses then seemed reluctant to spend money on vicarages.  My first vicarage (obtained without an interview!) was heated by paraffin heaters because the diocese was convinced that an incumbent on £3k would not be able to afford to keep a central heating system running.  Today those same paraffin heaters would be condemned on health and safety grounds, particularly in a home occupied by very small children.

Returning to the interview experience, I believe that most people would concur with the notion that the appointments system works reasonably well when all posts are advertised and interviews take place.    The advantage of the interview process is to provide a check on any strong bias felt by an individual member of the panel towards the candidates.  A young mother on the panel may have a strong preference for a man or woman with youngish children.  This strong preference needs to be balanced by a need for appropriate experience of a parish, particularly one comparable to the advertised post.  A chair person will guide the committee into understanding the choices on offer.  He/she will understand that there will be a need for compromise somewhere.  You cannot realistically expect any candidate to have every qualification that the selecting committee have asked for.

The task of an interviewing committee to choose the right person for a post will require old-fashioned human wisdom, especially in its chair person. This is the kind that is obtained by living life with a good dose of curiosity and common sense.  Wisdom of this kind can rise above the short-term politics of the parish and its vested interests.  It manages to gather a variety of threads and see what might work in terms of character and personality as they face up to the challenges of the post on offer.  Wisdom of this type is far more than a box-ticking exercise. It is always needed when evaluating an individual and requires a particular kind of maturity. The ability to discern the right candidates for important posts is an important, even vital, skill and we should expect it in those we appoint to the most senior posts in the Church.  

In recent weeks, as we have been absorbing the implications of the public failings of both Archbishops in England, many of us have been struck by one thing that is, on reflection, totally unexpected..  Whatever may have been the wrong decisions taken by these two men in their response to and management of scandal, one other failing binds them together.  Each of them is guilty of being hoodwinked by powerful charismatic (in its secular sense) personalities and promoting or favouring individuals in roles where they were able to be a serious threat and danger to others.  In the case of Welby, one can, for the moment, try to overlook his failure to understand the deviance of John Smyth, but the same is not true of his dealings with Mike Pilavachi and the Soul Survivor organisation.  Clearly Welby believed he had enough information on Pilavachi to award him a Lambeth award.  Superficially Soul Survivor was a success story, but a man or woman with the kind of wisdom mentioned above, would have asked searching questions about this ministry.  Welby had been associated with the evangelical charismatic scene for over thirty years.  He must, on at least some occasions, encountered or heard about its excesses.  The rise and fall of the Nine O’Clock Service in Sheffield, another toxic movement in the 90s attractive to young people, must have been noted by him.    Although expounding a different theological vision, NOS functioned with similar crowd dynamics.  It is hard to believe that Welby never had a conversation about NOS in the years that followed its collapse.  Naive is not a strong enough word for his apparent failure to evaluate and have a ‘lessons learned’ opinion about what had happened there and notice striking parallels with the later Soul Survivor phenomenon.  If we can expect a degree of wisdom on the part of every chair of an appointment committee in a parish church up and down the country, surely, we can expect it of an archbishop, even when blinded by the ‘success’ of a Pilavachi or the business ‘skills’ of one Paula Vennells. 

Failing to pick up on the weaknesses or incompetence of another person can have serious, even devastating, consequences for other ordinary members of a church organisation.   A similar failure of discernment is found in our other Archbishop, Stephen Cottrell.  Apart from serious questions about the inadequacy of his actions with regard to David Tudor, the disgraced priest in the Chelmsford Diocese, there is the breath-taking fact, revealed by the BBC, that Cottrell, when Bishop of Chelmsford, described Tudor as a ‘Rolls Royce priest’. This was said when he knew about the court cases involving Tudor and all the other information accessible to him in the personnel files.   The comment clearly shows Cottrell to have been in a measure of awe of Tudor’s strong personality.  At this point I am reminded of the story of the choosing and anointing of David by the prophet Samuel.  The comment is made that Yahweh does not look at the outward attractiveness and strength of the individual but at the heart.  Surely our Archbishops should be skilled and adept at looking at the ‘heart’ of candidates for promotion or preferment.  If they lack this skill themselves, do not they have access to professional help in this area, because of their exalted roles in the church?   We expect wisdom in committees choosing a parish priest; how much more do we expect it from those at the top of our church hierarchy?

This blog post has not meant to be in any way an attack on the character of archbishops, past or present.  It is rather a plea for a better understanding of the science of how to pick people for preferment in the Church.  We need high degrees of skill in this area from the people who have the ability to rise above the expedient, the popular or the political.  The values we long for in the Church of England in this uncertain period of its history are, to repeat, wisdom and profound integrity.   Archbishops and, indeed, all Christians should be people of discernment and good judgement and know how to recognise it in others.  If poor judgement in the issue of recruitment is exercised at the highest levels in the Church, it is going to be repeated at all the lower levels.  When square pegs are regularly put into round holes, the morale of the whole institution quickly suffers and goes into a spiral of decline.  For this reason alone, if for no other, we must insist that enormous care is taken in the system of appointments for church posts.  A church dignitary making an error of judgment over a management matter is one thing, and it probably can be, with effort, reversed.  A senior person consistently failing to exercise the highest levels of judgement and discernment with appointments will damage and even destroy the fabric of an entire institution.   The failure of judgement that existed with George Carey (and other bishops) and the NOS experiment, together with a similar naivety prevailing between Welby and Soul Survivor, has been a serious cancer for the Church of England.  The failure to manage the Tudor affair on the part of Cottrell is also an indication of an institutional malaise in the church.  If the top people cannot spot and weed out the seriously corrupt in the system, how can ordinary Christians put their trust in, let alone work for the structure?  

 The message from this rather sad post is a simple one.  It calls on church people to come forward and make sure that the people of the highest calibre and integrity occupy the top positions in the Church.  Among the priorities in this ability requirement list, is the need for inner goodness, complete honesty and trustworthiness.  The Church of the future is not impressed with the institutional defensiveness of church leaders of the past.  We have the opportunity to put things right but that chance may not for ever be available to us when the next safeguarding earthquake hits the Church of England.

One of the perennial questions in all the discussions about safeguarding, in whatever context, is how to establish exactly who are the ‘vulnerable adults’ to be protected from harm. No one argues against the idea that all children under 18 should be always regarded as vulnerable.  Children need constant protection from any adults who might wish them harm of some kind.   However, the creation of a fixed boundary between those under and those over 18 will often feel arbitrary and unsatisfactory.  Men and women do not suddenly acquire wisdom and the ability to protect themselves after reaching a particular birthday.  Thus, we have, in law and in the regulations that apply to social care, further attempts to describe the idea of vulnerability as it might apply to adults who have passed their 18^th birthday.   Without repeating these definitions, a vulnerable adult is any individual who is considered in need of an appropriate level of social or legal protection because of some mental or physical affliction.  In many cases the existence of vulnerability is clear to the observer.  The legal system does not pursue a case against someone who is deemed ‘unfit to plead’.  Social workers become involved with other manifestations of vulnerability in parents, where their children are clearly uncared for, physically or mentally.   Formal definitions of who is considered a vulnerable adult can easily be found through a google search.  These definitions are going to be similar whether we encounter them in a social work context or in the setting of a church.  Such definitions are fairly limited; some examples of what we might think should be regarded as coming into this category from a common-sense perspective are excluded.  Is the adult brought up in extreme poverty and only able to survive through shop lifting to be judged in precisely the same way as someone who commits the same crime in a position of affluence?  Vulnerability can be experienced in a whole host of contexts and the official definitions can only capture part of the reality.  Every adult may also enter an experience of vulnerability at some stage in their lives. It is not a question of a fixed character trait; it may be one of situation and circumstance.  An obvious and clear example I can mention is to say that any individual who suffers bereavement and the loss of a partner should be considered vulnerable.  There are other displays of mental affliction, like severe depression, which affect judgement and decision making.  Whatever definitions are offered us in official government documents and the safeguarding literature, vulnerability is probably a characteristic of every human being at some point in their lives. Instead of attempting to define the meaning of vulnerability, perhaps we should show the qualities of an individual who has been taught how to flourish and be able, as the Prayer Book puts it in prayer for the Sovereign, ‘to have a right judgment in all things’.  I would like to see a list of definitions as to what to look for in the fully functioning human being who has achieved the stage of not in any way deserving the description of ‘vulnerable’.  These definitions would probably only apply to a relatively small group.

I have recently come across a collection of online videos produced by a filmmaker Sam Howson who has had years of experience in the evangelical/charismatic world. He recognises and discusses the dilemmas faced by this culture and he says some interesting things about the ministry of Mike Pilavachi.   Among the useful insights shared by Howson is summed up in a two-word heading – Adult Grooming.  Grooming, the gradual building up of a trusting but potentially exploitable bonding by one who is powerful with another who is less powerful, is a well-understood dynamic in abusive relationships.  Most people can see that the victim of such a relationship is clearly ‘vulnerable’, and Howson shows how the victims of grooming come from right across the age spectrum.  In short, anyone can be made vulnerable when leaders, skilled in the art of grooming, direct these abilities on to another human being.    

So far, we have identified three groups of people with different relationships to vulnerability.  The first group are those that society and the caring professions identify as lacking agency and are in some way in need of care and protection.  This group would include the sick, the frail and all children under 18, Then there is another group which consists of people who are the self-sufficient types.  This group manage their lives with strength and confidence and make a point of refusing to admit any degree of vulnerability in their lives.  This relatively small group are typically found among the leaders in an organisation like the Church.  They have been conditioned by their social and educational background to believe that any sign of vulnerability is also sign of weakness and thus incompatible with the status of a leader.  They thus put themselves above the experience of vulnerable individuals and simultaneously resist experiencing any identification with them.  Is this disavowal of the survivor’s experience in church context on the part of leaders, and so frequently complained about by them, part of the psychological profile of the church leaders who deal insensitively with survivors?  Is this another aspect of the narcissism that we have claimed is so rampant among the ‘ruling elite’ who manage our church but seem so disconnected from the pain and grief of those who have suffered abuse at the hands of church servants.

The third category of the ‘vulnerable’ are the bulk of church members.  They are not formally vulnerable or among the abused or damaged in some way; rather they recognise that they are, together with the vast majority, susceptible in some situations to bullying, controlling techniques like grooming or other forms of abuse.  They are vulnerable in the sense that they have no built-in methods of complete protection from such behaviour.  They may have some self-protection techniques, such as a degree of institutional status.  This may not prove to be sufficient to see off the groomer, the manipulator or the bully.  The victim will not aways have the right words or support to help them emerge unscathed from someone else’s bad behaviour.   The group of ‘vulnerable’ adults that Howson is especially referring to in his videos are young people who have been manipulated by well-established group techniques of crowd control.  There are also widely used methods of using music to render individuals open to particular mood states.  Those of us outside this culture of charismatic ‘worship’ have surely good reason to ask about this style of music.  Is this music directing a highly susceptible (vulnerable) congregation to find God or is it somehow cementing the control of a leader over a large group of young people? In criticising a figure like Mike Pilavachi, one would welcome far more informed discussion about the part music plays in creating a vulnerability to different forms of manipulation.   If there is a form of control being exercised at such events as Soul Survivor; is it not about time that some expressions of worship were examined and understood as grooming and thus a safeguarding matter?

Howson’s reference to ‘grooming adults’ seems to be saying, as I have been, that control in a negative sense is a risk for far more people than just for those who are officially labelled as vulnerable.  Most people are vulnerable at some point in their lives.  This potentiality for being vulnerable goes up exponentially when they enter a crowd situation, skilfully manipulated by a toxic narcissistic leader. We need to understand these dynamics far better that we do as they flow through ordinary and charismatic churches alike.  Ordinary Christians are convinced, often after minimal reflection, that the music and charged atmosphere in a church gathering is inevitably the work of God.  There is no questioning or doubting. The lack of any scrutiny as to what is going on, makes these congregations vulnerable in a dangerous sense. Without scrutiny many Christians of the student generation become susceptible to grooming.  They are thus ripe for emotional, financial or even sexual abuse.  The tools of discernment are currently needed more than ever before.  Unless the Pilavachis, Fletchers and Balls are called out and named before they wreak havoc, ordinary Christians will continue to be in danger and the church is everywhere weakened and discredited with the wider public. Each church scandal that appears in the pages of the Daily Telegraph inevitably weakens the church’s witness, and the power to transform society retreats further from the realms of possibility.

To conclude.   Sam Howson is helping us to see more clearly that grooming and other forms of manipulation are a potential threat to large numbers of ordinary church members. While most church congregations are led by individuals of the highest integrity and skill, the recent decades have revealed examples of the dangerous havoc wreaked on ordinary congregations by leaders interested in wielding power.  Their victims would never normally have been considered vulnerable, but opportunistic leaders have made them so.  We note that the particular group most in danger of becoming vulnerable to malign activity of maverick leaders are the student population that are drawn to crowded ‘successful’ churches in the university cities of Britain.  Historically speaking, this group seems to have suffered the most from predatory power-hungry leaders. The protection of this cohort from such exploitation, before it happens, should be the priority of older church leaders who have acquired wisdom and maturity through having moved in many settings and have learnt to identify the wholesome from what may be toxic and abusive.

by Stephen Parsons

One of the battles that parents fight is in persuading their child to apologise to another child.   Billy hits his playmate Joe in a fit of irritation or pique, and clearly, Joe needs to hear Billy apologise if relations are to be restored.  There may be more at stake than just harmony between these two boys.  The two sets of parents have an agreement about babysitting each other’s children, and they cannot abandon this arrangement without affecting adult work schedules and the after-school pick-up rota.  Saying sorry with sincerity and feeling has become a matter of urgency and importance, if a carefully constructed edifice of childcare is not to be impacted, and even collapse, because two small boys have fallen out and refuse to play together in peace.

At this stage in his life, Billy has learnt how to say sorry in a way that does not signify any real content.  There is a particular sing-song intonation which says, ‘I am saying the words, but I don’t really mean them’.   The parent recognises this fake intonation and gets the child to repeat the words of apology until they sound more or less authentic.  It is a contest of wills but the parent battles on because he/she knows the issues that are at stake apart from babysitting rotas.  Authentic apologies do count for something.  Without them relationships are damaged and may be broken irrevocably.

The sing-song way of saying sorry, which is the offending child’s first attempt to respond to the adult’s demand for an apology, has its correspondence in adult life.  Adults do not use sing-song ways of communicating non-authenticity.  They have other verbal techniques.  Certain formulae, used in apologies, sound correct and sincere, but are, in fact, meaningless and shallow.  Expressions like ‘I regret any pain you may have felt, but it was caused inadvertently’ are the stock in trade for insincere apologies and professional speech writers alike.  Such expressions sound good but fail because, although they may appear heart-felt, they lack the quality of real remorse and sincerity which needs to be present in any proper apology.  In writing this piece, I am reflecting on the ideas and thoughts of ‘Graham’ who has written a piece for Via Media https://viamedia.news/2025/01/01/justice-and-moving-on/ on the giving and receiving of apology.    Graham is a Smyth survivor and disclosed to a number of bishops including ++Justin in 2013 about the abuse.  What he describes is his need for real understanding and human compassion from those who received the information about what he had had to endure.  What he in fact received were the sounds of drawbridges being pulled up and the castle (the Church of England) going into full defence mode.  The casualties of this process are sincerity, honesty, transparency and truth.  Many people (including myself) have pointed out the catastrophe that has transformed the national Church into a body that seems only to understand how to make insincere and shallow apologies.  The wider public has learnt, from experiences like that of being a parent, how to recognise when apologies are fake and insincere.  Listening to the crafted statements from one of the ‘reputation management’ firms, it is not difficult to spot if we have the genuine article among the fake, formulaic and ultimately meaningless statements of apology.  Just as parents recognise the insincere apologies sometimes uttered by their own children, ordinary people are very good at recognising the difference between genuine apologies and the fake formulaic versions.

It would be an interesting exercise to compile a list of words and phrases used by professional writers of official statements of apology.   Many such statements will include words like regret, unintentional and words implying that a decision was taken with good intentions but later proved to be wrong.  Two things will normally be absent from such statements.  One is any sense of real human feeling at the way things have been disastrous and catastrophic for the victims and survivors.  The imagined manual for official writers of apologies does not provide for such levels of empathy.  The expressions of regret provided for in our mythical manual can never plumb the depths of human feeling that survivors look for from those who are supposed to be offering words of comfort and support that a victim might find helpful. 

The second thing that never appears in our statement of healing words from leaders and people of power is an understanding of the ‘institutional alienation’ experienced by the survivors.  The survivor has detected, in their experience of abuse, not only a clear breach of ethical behaviour on the part of an individual, but also a sluggish even obstructionist response by an entire institution.  The Church so often seems to retreat into a lock-down mode when one of their servants is accused.  It is extraordinary that, even after ten years of active and supposedly professional guidance of safeguarding by bodies like the NST, people still find the ‘system’ impossible to negotiate without an incredible amount of perseverance.  As we enter the New Year of 2025, it should be possible for our church leaders to provide a far more survivor-friendly environment for those seeking justice and who have already suffered.  Those servants of the church who are being accused of such things as bullying and other forms of abuse, particularly when they belong to the upper ranks of the clergy, are seemingly able to call on the services of highly skilled (and expensive) lawyers.  The lay person who has experienced serious bullying at the hands of a vindictive church leader normally has no support in trying to be heard.  The more a church leader rises through the ranks, the greater the level of institutional protection is available.  The recent resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury appears to contradict my words about institutional protection, but no doubt there are other unseen factors in the story which made this particular event inevitable.

‘Graham’, in his moving piece in Via Media, to which we have already referred,has drawn our attention to the failures of the system to provide the words or the actions that might have helped him to find a greater measure of healing over the past ten+ years.  He speaks for all survivors in his plea for words to be shared that truly convey empathy and feeling.  Individuals in positions of authority are representative of a broader constituency; their words count and, if they communicate genuine remorse and sorrow, these may be instruments of healing.  Healing is also enabled when the ‘mighty … are put down from their seat’.  In other words, when important leaders express their sorrow in humble, everyday terms that ordinary people understand, something shifts in the dynamics of the whole process.  The section in Graham’s piece that describes looking into the eyes of those who seek reconciliation is powerful.  It chimes well with what I have said in my last blog post about the quality of reconciliation that can be achieved through a common experience of tears.  Sharing together the same human emotions of joy as well as sorrow is among the ways that we learn to be reconciled with other human beings.  These emotions are expressed in words but also in our body language.  Graham’s reflection about the connection that can be established by human beings simply looking at one another in a kind of visual embrace is powerful.  Reading his words takes us into a world where words are transcended, and primacy is given to what is real in terms of human relationships and spiritual truth.

2025 will be a challenging one for our Church of England.  The might of the institution is being challenged and the status quo of power and privilege it retains can no longer be taken as the final word.  Perhaps with the current awareness of the need to take the abused and damaged section of our Church far more seriously, we are glimpsing a Magnificat Church, one where the ‘humble and meek’ are ‘exalted’, taken seriously and even to be put in charge.  What we are also learning in the current leadership crisis is that institutions need to be held properly accountable and be flexible so that they earn the respect of those they claim to represent and serve.  The right of the Church to hold a place of honour in a society, where it no longer commands universal respect, needs to be challenged and questioned.  Above all, we want those outside the Church to look in and see only honesty and truth.  Our next Archbishop has the urgent task to call us all back to these basics.  Let us hope he/she has the insight, the vision and the wisdom to be able to do it.