One of the hazards of using a computer is that occasionally documents disappear into cyberspace, never to be recovered.  With all the recent excitement of a nomination for the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and the pressing need to say something on the topic for this blog, I put to one side a post I was writing on the Durham University Study of the survivors of Mike Pilavachi.  Then I saw this earlier post disappear in a massive computer failure.  I am now up and running again with a new s/h computer but have had to start completely from scratch with my assessment of this important Durham document.  It is one which I commend to all my readers with some enthusiasm. 

What is the reason for my strong approval of this Durham document written by Nina and Jonas Kurlberg and Mike Higton? I am struck, first of all, by the fact that is a document that turns the normal approach to safeguarding topics completely upside down.  Most documents on abuse and safeguarding in the Church begin with an examination of the issue from the perspective of the institution.  What went wrong and how can we in the church institution do better in the future?  These are the typical questions faced by many reports over the last couple of decades.  This new report, Resetting the balance – Listening to testimonies of harm in the Mike Pilavachi Case, starts in another place, the experience and reflections of survivors of an abusive ministry.  The authors have interviewed a representative cohort of those who were harmed by Pilavachi and we, as readers, are allowed to glimpse the way these victims understood the dynamics and processes of these harmful events.  This story of these events mentions bishops and safeguarding officers, but they are nowhere at the centre of the narrative.  What is at the centre of the text is a vivid account of the experience of victims and their involvement and relationship with the chief actor, Mike Pilavachi.  He was at the centre of the Soul Survivor movement over a significantly long period and much of the harm recounted in this report is as the result of his behaviour and actions.

In reading the report, I am reminded of the numerous books and articles penned by cult survivors.  Cults (and this would apply to many ‘orthodox’ religious groups) seldom sell themselves to the outside public by promoting their teaching in a written form.  Few ever became a Moonie, a Scientologist or even a member of a church plant through picking up literature and deciding that this was the way forward for them. While there may be exceptions to such a generalisation, the groups that proselytise (good and bad) suggest that religious conversion is almost always a social event.  By this I mean to indicate the way that individuals, pre-conversion, may find themselves drawn to associate with a group of apparently congenial people.  This normally begins as a social encounter, an invitation to a meal or a meeting.   Over time those invited may be subjected to some social pressure or what is described in some cases as ‘love-bombing’.  At some point they may find themselves caught up in the ideology of the group, much of which may have been hidden at the start of the association.   Speaking generally, people are converted to cults successfully when one or both of two elements are in evidence.  The first is a quality of community involvement which is unavailable elsewhere.  The would-be convert is offered the chance to belong.  Most of us were afforded the experience of belonging by our families of origin but, by the time we reach student/university age, we are ready for a different kind of belonging.  The offer of belonging that all spiritual groups hold outto their young seekers is often compelling.  A second important ingredient is the presence of a leader who possesses qualities of attractiveness and charisma to the would-be convert. 

The ‘Pilavachi effect’, at the heart of the Durham report, meant that large numbers of young people were drawn into the orbit of Mike Pilavachi.  They had become fascinated by his apparent spiritual giftedness, insight and sheer overwhelming physical presence.  The dynamics that were in operation are well described in the report, and they give us a sense of how the control over individuals by a charismatic figure is experienced.  The report is strongly focussed on Pilavachi’s relationship with individuals who formed part of the close inner circle of devotees.  By being close to the leader, these ‘chosen’ individuals thought themselves to be highly privileged and special.  In fact, they were placing themselves in a place of danger.  Being close to Pilavachi meant that they risked being harmed by his habits of manipulation and fickleness shown to any he was close to.  We are left to speculate on the reasons for the harm that was a feature of so many of Pilavachi’s relationships with his closest followers.  These young people had to endure inconsistent pastoral care, ghosting and sudden inexplicable blanking or withdrawal from relationships built up over a period of time.  One possible explanation for what was cruel behaviour, is to suggest that Pilavachi saw his relationships with his devotees as a means of obtaining some kind of sexualised gratification and power.  To enhance his enjoyment of this kind of power, there had to be a constant supply of new and fresh relationships to be available.  Once a new follower had been found who met his gratification needs at that moment, another existing relationship could be let go or switched off in some way.  There was a significant sexual dimension to some of these close relationships, as suggested by the massages and wrestling with young male followers.  These physical encounters, although highly unconventional and questionable, did not stray into actual criminal behaviour, so they were accepted as an example of an eccentricity – Mike being Mike.  No one was sufficiently clear-eyed as to be able to see the pattern of a cultic system where a leader manipulates, for his own emotional ends, the feelings and affections of numbers of victims.  His personality and giftedness were just too dominating for anyone to understand, let alone challenge.  Years of ‘successful’ work with young people which the wider Church and the honours system wanted to recognise, gave Pilavachi a form of immunity from the demands of proper supervision or oversight.   The Church of England seems to behave like an innocent in refusing to question the skills of those operating with the techniques of charismatic leadership.  It also seems unwilling to accept the way that leaders and congregations can easily be corrupted by the power dynamics in such churches.  There are dozens of examples of these dynamics in operation within the posts of this blog.  The language of psychology and sociology helps us to recognise that styles of leadership are potentially dangerous and toxic.  So much more work needs to be done that our Church can be protected from destructive styles of leadership which are incubated in superficial theology-lite styles of church practice emerging every week right across the country.

The Durham report is an important one to be understood by church leaders across the board.  By reflecting on and learning from the examples of damaging and toxic relationships in a church setting, we may be helped to prevent such styles of ministry ever appearing in the first place.  Some churches, like that of Pilavachi, offer patterns of ministry and pastoral care that are damaging and abusive.  When this is the case, we can usually trace the problem back to the social and psychological needs of the leader.   As with cultic groups, we find gatherings of Christians meeting ostensibly to worship God.  When we go deeper, we find that the congregation is operating to provide for the needs, not of its members, but to serve the emotional and narcissistic appetite of leaders.  Such a dynamic must first be thoroughly understood and then be expelled from the Church, if it is to have a chance to meet the deeper spiritual needs of our nation.

https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/michael-ramsey-centre/research/resetting-the-balance

Damon is an apprentice devil tasked with learning to undermine and weaken the Church of England and wider Anglicanism. Lucius is a senior devil mentoring apprentices, overseeing the work on all denominations. Lucius refers to the Church of England as the ‘English Patient’. Lucius is particularly keen to encourage the Church of England’s peculiar ecclesionomics, bloated ecclesiocracy and unaccountable episcocrats. Lucius draws on C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, published in 1942. These letters are published by Lucius for the benefit of new apprentices. – Lucius. 

Church Reports

Dear Lucius

You may have recently seen the news from Lambeth Palace that there will be more reports coming out on sexuality, safeguarding, female clergy and how to be nice to people who can’t accept women.  I am a bit frustrated that all these reports are delayed. I mean, they take years to come out. And when they do, they say very little, so it doesn’t give us much to work with in exploiting potential weakness and developing our strategies for further subversion.  There is also an annoying tendency for the reports to welcome responses, with similarly long, elastic-like times to make representations and submissions.

What can we do about this tactic of the enemy? The trouble with all their ‘jam tomorrow’ talk is that the punters in the pews – our English Patient – eventually forget what all the fuss and scandal was about in the first place. So, we are being robbed of our opportunity to make mischief. Do you have any thoughts on how to combat this? I worry that all the scandals just get swept under the carpet or forgotten.

It’s surely our job to bring these things into the light (if you know what I mean?!). But our English Patient seems to prefer the darkness to the light, and is very much at home there. Is there anything in The Hades Handbook for Harming Religion that could help me here? I sometimes think that the English Patient has its very own copy and is now implementing selected chapters. Perhaps that’s why I feel so powerless at the moment?

Your Servant, Damon

Dear Damon,

I share your frustration here, but am going to counsel patience once more. Yes, it is true that the Church of England is run by Comms and PR people these days. So, the whole life of the English Patient is geared towards creating a good impression. This means that anything negative that could undermine appearances has to be masked or eliminated. So all the bad news is swept under the carpet.

The Good News (our version) about their bad news is that it is good news for us. By being so besotted with image and brand, they lose all sight of truth and honesty. The church leadership quickly develops forked tongues and adopts a serpentine language that slithers through debates and all manner of difficulties. This gives the speaker a sense of mastery. And as it is initially effective, they are soon fluent in the kind of slippery rhetoric you might expect from some slimy snake-oil salesman.

Church leaders these days sound like politicians. Too many policies, but very few principles. Too many promises but almost none are delivered. Too many reports, but never any action.  Too many excuses, but never taking any responsibility.

From our point of view, this could hardly be better. The English Patient becomes exhausted with all the verbiage and disenchanted with what the church leaders say. The beauty of this is that we don’t have to do much. If the church leaders can no longer be believed or trusted by their faithful, we can think about retiring somewhere nice in due course.

The folk in the pews now know that bishops don’t speak truthfully. So we can afford to let them carry on brushing scandals under the carpet, delaying their reports, and in general acting against truth and justice wherever possible, because they don’t like how it might make them look.

A church that acts like this is doomed, because honesty is the casualty every time. And we seriously don’t have to do much more here than help and encourage church leaders, with their Comms and PR executives, to carry on with this strategy. They are doing a superlative job in undermining the English Patient. Trust and confidence in the leadership will continue to be eroded whilst appearances and vanity are prioritized over truth and justice. (Not that I want to see the latter triumph – don’t get me wrong!).

It’s just that church leadership tells many white lies daily, and quite a lot of dark grey ones every single week. And increasingly, some whopping big lies are told to justify the unjustifiable, or just to get the church out of another mess it got itself into, and some hypothetical media storm. Paradoxically, the media are so used to the lies the church tells every day that they’ve got bored with the whole charade. This is another victory for us – delivered through yet another own goal scored by the opposition.

Just keep calm and carry on. There is little more damage you can do to the English Patient than it isn’t already doing to itself.

Your Mentor, Lucius.

Trying to write something intelligent about the elevation of Bishop Sarah Mullally to the post of Archbishop of Canterbury is like attempting to stand still on a moving escalator.  The moment that you think you understand what might be happening is also the moment that you realise that the information you had latched on to is now out of date and does not reflect what is currently happening in the Anglican world.  What follows here is not an all-round commentary on the significant news coming out of Lambeth Palace.  It is merely a number of observations that can be made about the constantly changing scene that is appearing before us as we accustom ourselves to the new reality of a female Archbishop.

My regular readers will know that Surviving Church will not be affected by the fact that a woman has been nominated.   Several names of female candidates had been mentioned already, and most people have got used to the idea, indeed probability, that a female candidate would emerge as the one chosen for the post.  We could spend time reflecting on qualities needed for an Anglican leader and whether Mullally has these qualities.  As I do not know the new nominee, I have only the opinion and knowledge of others to make the judgement as to whether she has the requisite gifts of leadership, eloquence, pastoral skill and theological competence.   There are those who have raised queries in each of these areas over her suitability for the new post.  I note these criticisms but do not want to suggest that my opinion has anything to add to the discussion in these areas.

The one area where I may have something to say is in the area of safeguarding.  I am no expert in understanding in detail how safeguarding protocols operate in the Church, but I do bear witness to the agony of survivors as well as the falsely accused when they have fallen foul of the Church’s safeguarding juggernaut.  When things to do with safeguarding do go wrong in the Church of England, the amount of pain and suffering is considerable.  Speaking generally, the Diocese of London has been an arena for a variety of well publicised cases of safeguarding failure, including Father Alan Griffin and Survivor N. The common features of both these stories was a profound lack of pastoral sensitivity as well as the extensive use of reputational management firms and church lawyers in attempts to protect the institution of the Church of England.  Having looked again at the material which has appeared on this blog, which involved suicide and attempted suicide, one has to conclude that the Church is not good at protecting the victims of abuse and false accusation.  The culture of Mullally’s diocese under her watch seems to be strongly and consistently defensive of the privileges of the powerful.  Even if the heavy lifting of protecting the institution was done by firms of lawyers such as Winckworth Sherwood and crisis management firms like Luther Pendragon, there is no sense that any of the Church authorities, from the bishop downwards, were prepared to stick up for victims.  If we were looking for a prophetic voice, one seeking to ‘defend the poor and the fatherless’, in our new Archbishop-designate, we cannot expect to find it in Bishop Mullally.

The mention of church lawyers reminds us of the heavily protectionist culture of Lambeth Palace and Church House over the past few years.  Watching the performance of General Synod in recent years has been like witnessing a boxing match between two very unequal opponents.  Plucky individuals like Martin Sewell produce material and ask questions which are either not answered or drowned in procedural obfuscation.  For those who long to see the Church enter a period of real contrition for the pain of abuse survivors, we look for a prophet.  Somehow the lawyered up central administration of the Church has consistently thwarted this possibility.  The weight of institutional inertia weighs down and defeats any scattered voices of prophetic pleading.

I have no doubt that Sarah Mullally has many good personal qualities and the skills of management which are needed by the Church at this time.  She can only bring the qualities she has to the post, and we should not criticise her for not being something else.  But, from my personal perspective, I regret that the successful candidate lacks the much-needed quality, that of prophetic transparency, which would communicate with a public who long for human authenticity in a religious leader.  The suffocating control of church bureaucrats which create the current church climate will not be challenged in the Mullally regime. These officials have effectively in their choice of candidate decided what qualities the new Archbishop should have.  If the Mullally tenure is less than successful, it is those who chose her who must carry much of the responsibility for this failure.

Looking beyond Mullally’s time as Archbishop, I believe that what will be said is that in 2025 a great opportunity for the Church of England was missed.  The general public had begun to understand clearly that any organisation that obstructs justice and healing for some of its members was in urgent need of revolutionary reform.  Energetic change and honest speaking were required but what was delivered was the kind of safety that left the power brokers of the Church firmly in charge alongside a general culture of churchiness which had little appeal or attraction to the outsider.  In short, we have an Archbishop who is a creature of the system rather than one who will challenge it.  It was always going to be difficult or impossible for any leader to stand sufficiently on the outside of the institution to be able to challenge it, but many of us wanted that effort to be made.  The safeguarding cause may not be the only issue facing the new Archbishop, but it is one that most people understand.  It could have been the issue that allowed the Church to be seen as one that cares, that loves and consistently pursues justice. 

Damon is an apprentice devil tasked with learning to undermine and weaken the Church of England and wider Anglicanism. Lucius is a senior devil mentoring apprentices overseeing the work on all denominations. Lucius refers to the Church of England as the ‘English Patient’. Lucius is particularly keen to encourage the Church of England’s peculiar ecclesionomics, bloated ecclesiocracy and unaccountable episcocrats. Lucius draws on C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, published in 1942. These letters are published by Lucius for the benefit of new apprentices. – Lucius. 

Safeguarding the Church

Dear Lucius

After much success on the safeguarding front, there are signs of a fightback from the ecclesiocrats. They have recently advertised for some new Head Honcho who will apparently take the English Patient a few more steps towards independent scrutiny. We of course already know that this is another PR-trot around the Lambeth Palace paddock, and it will be business as usual, so I am not worried by the disingenuous policy announcements and spin that comes from the Archbishops’ Council. Had we recruited some crack team of double agents, we could have hardly done better.

No, what worries me is the appearance of action on safeguarding, and the possibility of the average worshipper being duped. I find myself in a double-bind here.  It is meant to be us misleading the faithful, not stopping the Church of England hierarchy doing this to their own people.  True, we are about slightly different things here. The hierarchy of the English Patient is trying to present a positive gloss on areas like safeguarding, and create the (false) impression of progress and the appearance of things improving. We know that is a lie, of course. So does the hierarchy of the English Patient.

So you can appreciate my dilemma here. Do I expose the lies? Or do try and come up with other falsities which add to overall strategy of misleading churchgoers? I’d be grateful for some help on this one, because deception is such a delicate art, and to be honest, I find the hierarchy of the Church of England to be really rather good at this game, and that is slightly irksome to say the least. Any advice?

Your Servant, Damon

Dear Damon

I rather agree that this is perplexing, and the issues you describe would usually be tackled in the post-apprentice training.  But as you have the cure of souls for the English Patient in your own right, it only seems proper that I offer some counsel for your edification and encouragement. Happily, a new safeguarding charter by the Church of England was sent to me the other day. It turns out to be a perfect recipe for the further destruction and implosion of congregations.

In fact, it is a veritable gold mine of undeliverable and incoherent policies, and once people try to follow the rubrics, they’ll quickly realize there is little point in going to church at all. So, here are three nuggets from the document.

First, anyone working with children and vulnerable adults has to be checked, processed and regulated.  Helpfully from our point of view, a ‘’vulnerable adult’’ is on the one hand someone unable to look after themselves. But more helpfully, it also includes anyone who seeks support from the church, either temporarily or permanently. So anyone with any needs at all that the church might help with is ‘’potentially vulnerable’’. Which means anyone trying to help or support anyone at all, pastorally, spiritually or otherwise, falls in the category of needing authorization, vetting, approval and regulating.

Second, the new regulations make it clear that anyone who does anything in church that has an interface with anyone else (who, let us not forget, could be ‘’potentially vulnerable’’) means they need regulating too.  Under the old regulations it was just licensed ministers, the choir master, Sunday School leaders and maybe the layperson who preached the odd sermon. Now, the new regulations say that anyone who has contact with a child or ‘’potentially vulnerable adult’’ must be vetted and approved. So that covers anyone involved in visual, verbal or written communication, or exercising any power or influence in church. Basically, that means almost everyone who goes to church.

Third, and you really cannot make up this good news, there is a sort of ‘’get out clause’’. If you are one of the helpers doing the post-church refreshments and someone approached you who was upset, you can only talk to them by making it clear that you cannot help at all, and then you must direct them to the designated person who is vetted and approved.  This is great, because in the meaning of the counsel offered, churchgoers will get into trouble if they attempt to help any child or ‘’potentially vulnerable adult’’ unless they have been licensed to do so, been trained, scrutinized and are now regulated.

All of the above has been passed through the ecclesiastical lawyers – arguably our greatest allies, along with the bishops and ecclesiocrats – and clergy and congregations are threatened with dire legal consequences if they default on the counsel. Naturally, clergy who might feel that they have just become ‘’potentially vulnerable adults’’ after they read the new regulations will be petrified when they learn that they carry all the responsibility for implementing this, but have no power to order around their laity and volunteers.

The conclusion that believers would draw from the document is that they must not get involved in helping others unless they have been vetted and licensed. And if they haven’t got the appropriate training and fulfilled the regulatory requirements, they must decline to help and find somebody who fulfils the criteria the ecclesiocrats have laid out.  Most people reading the document would conclude that church is an unsafe space to be, brimming with serious risks and potential hazards, but that if they were to try and respond to anyone in need, they might expose themselves and the English Patient to further risk. So, it is best to stay at home. If you do happen to go to church, make sure you don’t talk to anyone who needs help of any kind. Anyone, really.

To be honest, Damon, safeguarding is the gift that keeps on giving to us. And here we have not so much struck gold as found the most humungous gold mine that defied my wildest expectations.  Once worshippers realize what these new regulations actually mean, they’ll stop going to church, and tune into Sunday Worship on the BBC, or play some old Harry Secombe religious vinyl records. 

I know it is a bit naughty of me to confess this, but even I had a soft spot for his Welsh baritone voice singing gospel hymns. It’s funny how we learn to admire and respect the opposition after we have been fighting them for so long. And we really thought we could turn Harry Secombe to the Dark Side after some episodes of the Goon Show, but it turns out that he had a stubborn religious streak. Well, I suppose we can’t convert everyone.

Then again, we may not need to. These new safeguarding regulations are an entire pack of nails in the proverbial coffin of the English Patient. It makes the whole business of going to church almost impossible, and subjects every service and church event to a multi-faceted risk-register that must be managed – on pain of death. I find myself almost feeling sorry for churchgoers and clergy. But then I remind myself of our purpose. And then I come to my senses, and realize how blessed we are with such a clueless English Patient.

So, don’t worry about these new initiatives in safeguarding. This is another example of the English Patient pressing the self-destruct button. We hardly need to give them a helping hand at all here, save perhaps to encourage the ecclesiocrats in their bid to take over all responsibility for ministry, monitor the clergy, vet the laity, police the worship and all church events, and otherwise regulate congregations out of existence. And all in the name of safeguarding!

I just think it is wickedly funny how diabolical and dangerous safeguarding in the Church of England has now become. So, let your English Patient continue. This is another episode of ‘’Carry on Regardless’’, with extra farce and slapstick.  To be honest, this is all heading in the right direction from our perspective.

Your Mentor, Lucius

Damon is an apprentice devil tasked with learning to undermine and weaken the Church of England and wider Anglicanism. Lucius is a senior devil mentoring apprentices overseeing the work on all denominations. Lucius refers to the Church of England as the ‘English Patient’. Lucius is particularly keen to encourage the Church of England’s peculiar ecclesionomics, bloated ecclesiocracy and unaccountable episcocrats. Lucius draws on C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, published in 1942. These letters are published by Lucius for the benefit of new apprentices. – Lucius. 

Worship Workshop

Dear Lucius,

As you know, we have had a lot of success over the past fifty years with our long-term strategy of encouraging the churches to thin out the content of hymns, and replacing them with bland modern choruses that largely describe how the worshipper feels about G*d, and they would like G*d to feel about them. These choruses are often sung repetitively, have little core dogma, so from our point of view are very time-consuming and content-lite, which is ideal. The choruses are promoted by the churches under the banner of ‘relevance’’, which is also helpful, as the content increasingly has no relevance to core Christian teaching.

Admittedly we did not devise this strategy. But it is another one of these ‘bold initiatives’ of the church that we have been happy to support, as it has divided congregations whilst also gradually undermining shared Christian teachings and creating a vacuum where personal feelings and individualism can flourish.

Of course, I always worry that our PR team and Spin-Meisters go too far when they suggest novel projects like the Laodiciean Hymnal, with new hymns for the 21^st century changed slightly to get away from the stuffiness of the 19^th century. Some Christians might not notice the likes of ‘Take My Life and Let Me Be’, ‘O God Our Enabler in Ages Past’, and ‘All Hail the Influence of Jesus’ Name’ sneaking under the radar. But we still have some way to go before the likes of  ‘What an Acquaintance We Have in Jesus’, ‘Sit Up, Sit up for Jesus’, ‘Spirit of the Living God, Fall Somewhere Near Me’, and ‘Be Thou My Hobby’ feel normal.

We are also some distance from the kind of rendering of Oh Jesus I have Promised that we committed ourselves to at the last Apprentice Conference. You may remember Diablo proposed some new words before he graduated and went to work on American Methodism:

Oh Jesus I have tentatively committed

To serve thee for an agreed period of time, 

(subject to review)

Be thou ever near me, 

(but not too close, cause I need my space)

My colleague and my friend.

I do actually fear the battle

On grounds of health and safety

I and I will only wander from the pathway occasionally,

For some shopping and a coffee break

For which you can still be my guide.

I think as we agreed at the time, although these words are accurate in terms of where we want believers to land, the hymn doesn’t scan to any of the tunes Christians use. So I have been developing my thinking as part of my portfolio for assessment later this year, and specifically from the module on Worship Disruption, which has been superbly taught. Not only is the history of liturgical and hymnody conflict well presented, we have also been able to liaise with students studying Anti-Pastoral Theology and Deliturgical Studies.

Can I therefore run this by you for informal assessment? It is set to the tune and metre of Michael Saward’s ‘Ch***t Triumphant’ and I have rewritten this for our English Patient as ‘Church Triumphal’. I think this works well, but before I submit for formal assessment I wonder if you could take a look and comment? I’d be most grateful.  Your Servant, Damon

1. Church triumphal, ere’ mansplaining,

Ruling everything!

Just the greatest, Ever English

Hear us as we sing,

We’re the greatest show in town

Such high renown, with eternal fame.

2. Church of England, ever glorious

Super-Duper-Thing!

Best of churches, none our equal

Hear the others whinge!

We’re the greatest show…

3. We’ve got bishops and cathedrals

Lots of pretty bling

None can match us, we’re fantastic

See the others cringe!

We’re the greatest show…

4. We’re not Baptists, nor like Papists

All those others err

We are best and loved by God

His True Church on Earth!

We’re the greatest show…

5. Church Established, Truly Awesome!

Our Leader is the King! 

Nonconformists can’t do ritual

Incense! Censors! Swing! 

We’re the greatest show…

6. Church of England, slightly sexist

Soaring on our wings!

Pompous, classist, condescending 

Loves to do its thing.

We’re the greatest show…

7. Self-regarding, few Remaining

Slightly short of cash

Give us all your hard-won earnings

Help restore our stash.

We’re the greatest show…

8. Hopeless bishops, stuck for ever

Enthroned on High above

Sin and Faults and Hell shall never

Shut their PR up!

We’re the greatest show…

9. Hearts and voices ever-whingeing 

Through the aeons long

All is lost through steady phasing –

Still, we’re never wrong!

We’re the greatest show in town

Such high renown, with eternal fame.

Dear Damon

Your new hymn perfectly captures the essence – indeed, the very worshipping heart – of your English Patient. The patient is in love with themselves, and like Narcissus, just besotted with how they look to others and how they appear to themselves. So, well done on putting into a hymn such ignoble truths!  I can see that this portfolio of yours is going to be a rich and rewarding read. Naturally, I can’t see the English Patients ever singing your revised hymn collectively and out loud. But under their breath, smugly, they’ll be humming it all the time.

What I think you could usefully develop in your portfolio a little bit more is to explore how and why all the best ideas to undermine the church actually come from within the church itself. We really don’t need to do a lot, other than encourage every manoeuvre that the English Patient makes.

Perhaps your portfolio might want to reflect on this a little bit more? I mean, we obviously teach Anti-Pastoral Theology as an art.  But if you take a look at how an ordinary diocesan HQ works these days, the theory, art and practice are all areas we could hardly improve on.

Also, our Anti-Pastoral Theology is an optional module. But your English Patient has made this a compulsory subject and one that is permanently assessed, and inflicts all manner of box-ticking pointless bureaucratic nonsense on churches, and frightful organisational migraines on ordinary clergy and congregations. Hell would be sheer hell if it was run like that! Honestly, if we were devising a strategy from scratch to demoralise churches, I have to say the hierarchy of the English Patient beat us to it long ago, and we could hardly better their results.

I think the ‘Lessons Learned’ (pun intended) review of our module and your portfolio for assessment is already clear. Less is more? Your English Patient is the architect and expert of their own implosion. All you need do is encourage them to keep digging. As you can surely see, the holes just get deeper. Anyway, many thanks for the new hymn, which I will cheerfully hum in my lunchbreak.

Your Mentor, Lucius.

In the last week or two, we have seen a group of survivors of sexual abuse bonding together so that their joint protest can be heard.  The group in question has absolutely to do with the Church of England.  Indeed, it has nothing to do any church; it is rather a cohort of women victims of Jeffrey Epstein, those who have been abused or trafficked by him.  They are, metaphorically speaking. shouting from the rooftops.  These women realise that speaking their truth to a society, dominated by a rich and powerful elite, is an uphill task.  Their cause and their longing to be heard must be spoken out in the open air to those who are prepared to listen.  So, this group of survivors have been to Capitol Hill in Washington to tell their story to a society which has, up till now, always silenced them.   Communicating these cries of the weak and vulnerable has been hard in a society which is now under the authority of a President who cares little for truth or the rule of law.  Trump’s indifference to the needs of abused or downtrodden victims of any kind is notorious; his example has been followed by many others who do little to show compassion for ‘the least of these my brethren’.

Before I suggest some uncomfortable parallels with our own situation in Britain, I need to summarise the story that has created headlines in the States and will be familiar to the many readers of SC.  The women on Capitol Hill form part of a cohort of survivors/victims who have been both ignored and marginalised after being abused, many in their mid-teens.  Their exploiters were men, wealthy and well-connected men, many of whom control the organs of political and legal power right across American society.  What chance did such women have of being heard when they realised what had been done to them?  They had been promised money and careers as models.  The actual reality saw them picked up and then discarded the moment their usefulness as sexual play objects for the rich ceased.  Many of them are now adrift in a society where the compassion or support to help them rebuild their lives has always been in short supply.

I have called this blog reflection the ‘triple whammy’ of abuse.  What do I mean by this?  I am describing the way in which the abuse of children and young people involves three distinct stages or levels, making it far more heinous than an assault perpetrated against an adult.  Any sexual assault against a child will always be massively damaging.  Recovery from that abuse event requires the support of a highly specialised therapist and cannot be completed in a short series of sessions.  There seem to be at least two stages of recovery that have to be gone through.  My description of this process to be undertaken by the abused will of necessity contain generalities as I have no training or expertise in this area.   A first stage of recovery does, nevertheless, seem to require a victim to be able to face up to the original assault whether it was a single event or repeated many times.  It takes a very special skill and patience on the part of a therapist to bring to the surface such an event that may have taken place thirty, forty or fifty years before.  Having excavated, as it were, that terrible episode, the therapist has a second task.  This is the attempt to untangle and repair any distortions in the personality that have been caused by the assault or abuse.  The victim of abuse may typically have had to battle to preserve a capacity for trust, so that the ability to form normal relationships later in life is maintained. It is for this reason that sexual abuse is sometimes described as soul murder.  The selfishness of the abuser has been the possible cause of the death of part of the personality of a young person.   Seeing a young person as a delicate precious entity that calls out for protection and cherishing to promote growth and flourishing, should be built into the instinctual sensitivity of every human being.  To allow abuse to children, at a time in their lives when they can neither understand what is happening nor defend themselves and their emerging personalities, is a deeply serious affair.

There is a third part of the ‘triple whammy’ which we have only briefly touched on.  The victim/survivor seeks not only therapy and healing as part of the process of recovery.  He/she also may seek justice and accountability.  In the case of the Capitol Hill women, there is the profound symbolism of raised voices close to the centre of the American government and the justice system.  In a sentence, the survivors/victims of the appalling abuse inflicted on them by Jeffrey Epstein and his wealthy friends want to see that the ruling authorities are on their side and justice be administered.  They want to believe that all the material which has been gathered by the Department of Justice, the so-called Epstein files, will be shared with them and the public in general.  This information will shed light on those who knew about the scandal of their abuse as well as the activities of those who were the actual perpetrators of the terrible evils.  Why, for example, have the recordings of abuse in Epstein’s homes and recovered in the FBI raids, never been shared or made public?  Are the interests of the powerful abusers thought to take priority over the hundreds of victims who were taken to these homes?  These survivors have now found each other, and their combined voices create an instrument of real power, able to stand up against the institutional cruelty and inertia of powerful institutions who are concerned only for their wealth and their reputations.  The victims of Epstein and Maxwell who have suffered the abuse of trafficking and sexual exploitation have never had the chance to receive justice.  Together it just may be possible, even in a country now ruled by the forces of the authoritarian Right, that public opinion may demand the purging of such dreadful evils.  It is this fight, waged by the aggrieved victims against powerfully embedded systems of power, that is this third difficult stage of the struggle that many survivors are making.  The plea of the Epstein survivors is also a plea that every American citizen is or should be caught up in the same search for the path back to integrity and truth.  The current political climate has allowed many American citizens to collude with shameful and corrupting ideologies which will weigh them and their society down for many decades to come.

American society needs to wake up to the fact that the voting choices of tens of millions of its populace have created a situation of toleration for, even promotion of, misogyny, racism, greed and the constant oppression of the poor to allow the rich to become even richer.   Voting for candidates who bury truth in the cause of increasing the power and privilege of the rich is in essence a surrender to a corporate evil of massive proportions.  We do not know whether the infection of the evil, which tolerates the oppression and exploitation of the weak and vulnerable, has become so endemic that it can never be eradicated from American society.  The restoration of respect and honour for the stranger and the poor is far from the concerns of those currently in power and those who support them.  The voices of the abused women calling out on Capitol Hill are a challenge to these profoundly evil attitudes which bury and distort anything resembling a Christian morality.  The Bible that is claimed to be at the heart of American Christian values speaks extensively of justice and compassion for the poor and oppressed.  Perhaps one day the Christian instincts of the American people may return to these values and be able once more to hear those in need.

My readers will not be surprised to learn that the voices on Capitol Hill in Washington DC are a reminder for me of another struggle much closer to home.   Like the Epstein victims the survivors of sexual abuse in Christian churches also cry out to be heard by their fellow Christians and by society at large.  Also, like the Epstein abused women of the States, they also face enormous obstacles on the path to healing and justice.  The members of both groups have been the recipients of repeated blows to their bodies, minds and souls.  Indifference and acquiescence in a system that accepts without question the interests of powerful institutions is widespread.  These attitudes often re-victimise and threaten damaged and abused members of our Church.  Like the women on Capitol Hill, the survivors of church abuse face the ‘triple whammy’ of sexual abuse.  It is for the rest of us to understand and, where possible, to alleviate their pain.  We long for them to recover the shalom with which they were born.  Those of us who claim membership of Christ’s church are entrusted with the task of doing all in our power to create around us, with others, a place of safety as well as healing for all who have been wounded through the sin of others. 

For anyone who has ever studied ancient history, the religious world of the Greeks and the Romans is an enigma. Greek and Roman myth is all about the gods being capricious, spiteful, and downright cruel – and often for mere sport. Think of the worst kind of bullying at school, and map it on to some kind of spiritual cosmos. 

Never challenge the powers of the gods. Give them your total respect. Because if  you so much as look at them in a funny way, your life might be cursed and ruined.

The ancient gods were worshipped out of fear and admiration. People had their favourite gods in much the way that they love celebrities today.  Nobody expects an ancient god or a modern celebrity to be a flawless being. They just dole out favours. And the followership can be as fickle as the object of adoration on any pedestal

I am writing this on the day that Lord Peter Mandleson has been sacked as His Majesty’s Ambassador to Washington DC. It appears that the due diligence in his appointment was not as thorough as it might have been, and that Mandelson had continued to support the convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein long after was deemed to be moral or wise. Leaving aside the Icarus myth that seems to be super-glued to Mandelson’s CV, we are left with the usual questions over the probity and integrity of individuals in government.

But they are not gods. You can get rid of them. They may be tragic heroes in myths; or may prevail in some epic saga. But gods, they are not.  It is different in the Church of England (CofE). The leaders have no accountability, yet demand your fealty.

Stephen Parsons’ Surviving Church website often deals with leaders who have feet of clay, cult-like churches, cultures of obeisance and abuse, and terrifying stories of torment and anguish. So it will not surprise readers when I say that the hierarchy of the Church of England (CofE) act just like capricious Greek and Roman gods.

The gods of safeguarding are particularly fickle, vindictive and cruel, and if this were an ancient religion, they’d be venerated (or feared) for their evasiveness, spin and ambivalent relationship with truth. They would not be trusted, and could never be loved. But they demand that we take their word at face value.

Question their statements, and they’ll shun you. Persist with your questions, and they will go after you. The CofE’s Cult of Safeguarding, with its Guardian Bishops, NST, Officers, Acolyte Committees and devotees is a nasty, capricious vindictive affair. But if you don’t appease the Cult, woe betide you.

Many readers of this blog have followed the debacle with Kennedys LLP, the law firm instructed and contracted by the Archbishops’ Council to deliver a Redress Scheme to victims/survivors of abuse.  The Germanic word ‘gift’ is a well-known example of a linguistic paradox, like ‘false friend’. A ‘gift’ can be both a blessing and a curse.

The Redress Scheme fits the bill precisely. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Because it will not be what it seems.  And so it has turned out. Kennedys appear to have been involved in previous litigation against – yes, against – victims and survivors likely to be eligible for the Redress Scheme.  Did the CofE know this? Some of those pushing for Kennedys to run the non-independent scheme are likely to have known that, which raises questions as to why Kennedys were awarded the contract.

Mandelson, of course, was sacked for failing due diligence. But now we know Kennedys have acted against victims/survivors of church abuse, will the CofE act? Not likely. ‘Alea iacta est’ (the die is cast) with the CofE’s repeated re-abuse of the word ‘independent’.  The gods of CofE safeguarding have their own definition of that word. It means ‘at arms-length’; some third-party conduit.

We know this because the CofE Redress Scheme Working Group is no longer operating, yet Kennedys Law LLP still require instruction and payment from their client in order to carry out their work, task and role. The client is most likely the Archbishops’ Council, which de facto means it will be William Nye as the Secretary to that body.  If it were claimed General Synod is the client, William Nye is also the Secretary to that body. Many victims and survivors of abuse would not choose to place any matter of safeguarding redress in Mr. Nye’s hands. Ever. They do not trust him, and do not regard him as a person of honesty, probity or integrity. But he’s a god in the ancient Greek sense. You don’t cross him.

If Mr. Nye has now become, effectively by default, the senior party instructing Kennedys, that is a matter of grave concern to victims/survivors . It plainly casts considerable doubt on the possibility of this process being an ‘independent’ means of arbitrating and determining redress, as the CofE has wished to claim.

The CofE announced that it £150 million had been set aside for the Redress Scheme(https://www.churchofengland.org/media/press-releases/general-synod-approves-redress-scheme-survivors-church-related-abuse). However, we do not know how much of that £150 million will be claimed by Kennedys as part of their administration and legal fees. We do know, for a fact, that Kennedys indicated that the total amount was inadequate for the work envisaged. We also know that this was raised as an issue with the Archbishops’ Council. The gods waived this away.

Plainly, a major risk is that in the running of the Redress Scheme, the biggest beneficiary will be (drum roll)…Kennedys. For those who followed The Great British Post Office Scandal, one will recall that the first cases settled in 2017 amounted to £58 million. However, the claimants only received £12 million of that, with £46 million going to the lawyers in costs and legal fees.

In other words, victims of the Post Office injustices received just 21.4% of the amount awarded. Since there are several hundred victims of the CofE’s abuses, there is a significant risk that of the £150 million allocated, perhaps only 20% of that sum will be available to compensate survivors and those abused. [See the relevant article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal].

Without sight of the Terms of Reference under which Kennedys were appointed, clarity on who is now instructing them, and how compensation is to be apportioned from the £150 million, victims/survivors are at serious risk of (perhaps) having their cases heard; securing judgment in their favour; yet winning very, very little by way of redress/compensation.  Just whatever is left after Kennedys have claimed their fees and expenses. 

As the legislation to approve the Redress Scheme must go to Parliament, victims/survivors will be aware that another risk is that those who drafted the legislation – lawyers and legal officers working in Lambeth Palace and Church House Westminster – all reported directly to (drum roll)…William Nye. 

If the legislation is to be approved by Parliament, then victims/survivors and MPs ought to have complete and unambiguous reassurance that no senior staff from the CofE will be involved in the interpretation of the legislation. Otherwise, that could be construed as an extremely serious conflict of interest.

It could effectively lead to a situation whereby the legislation approved by Parliament will be drafted by the very body that is responsible for the abuse of the victims. To put this in simple terms, imagine a scenario in which lawyers for the Post Office and Paula Vennels set out the terms for drafting the binding legislation and the total amount for compensating their victims. Just imagine.

Given the CofE’s repeated claim that Kennedys are delivering the Redress Scheme as an (allegedly) “independent body” victims/survivors, are now placed in an impossible position. Confidentiality with the NST, Archbishops’ Council and CofE has been wholly breached. But Kennedys, are now blocking communications with victims/survivors who question this. We also have strong reasons to believe that some victims of abuse have previously encountered Kennedys acting against them.

This suggests that impartiality has already been undermined in the Redress Scheme, if not fatally compromised. Correspondingly, full transparency is now essential. But these gods do not like to be questioned.  In the CofE Cult of Safeguarding, with its Guardian Bishops, NST, Officers, Acolytes and devotees, all questions will be ignored, dissenters shunned, and complainants subjected to intense cruelty.

Remember when the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) was deemed by the Archbishops’ Council to be “too independent…and too survivor-focussed”, the ISB was sacked. Can the Archbishops’ Council sack Kennedys  for the same reasons? Of course they can. So, will they sack Kennedys for the data-breach, or if it is found that they have previously acted against church victims/survivors? Probably not.

In all of this, the NST, desperate to keep control of their Cult and to appease their gods, will offer the usual crocodile tears and concern. The NST will never accept that they are a major cause and source of trauma for victims/survivors. Yet it would be astonishing if they didn’t know that. After all, it has been said often enough and repeatedly so by victims/survivors. 

Meanwhile, the NST is offering (independent) “help and support” from somebody indirectly in their employ.  Naturally, it must be somebody that the NST approves of and can rely upon for their purposes. The Cult will only use its own Guardians and High Priests that it can control. The NST will not pay contributions towards the ongoing therapy costs that victims/survivors might have already established outside the control of the Cult. The person chosen by the NST to deliver “help and support” is not regulated by an external professional body. So if that person fails any victim/survivor, there is nobody to complain to except (drum roll)…the Cult.

Does the person proposed by the NST have her own indemnity liability insurance in the event of causing further harm to a victim/survivor, or is the Archbishops’ Council covering this? The NST won’t say. The Cult has no need to answer such questions. Does the NST’s nominee have a relevant degree or accredited professional qualification in safeguarding or therapy? Perhaps an academic award such as a Masters or PgDip? How and by whom is their much-vaunted “experience” evaluated – and what are their qualifications and accreditation for doing so?  The NST won’t say. The Cult has no need to answer such questions.

Why would any victim/survivor ever want to avail themselves of another of the NST’s unqualified, unlicensed and wholly unregulated staff? Especially as the CofE’s Cult of Safeguarding operations are unquestionably a major cause of the harm and the trauma that victims/survivors experience?

Can the NST not see how inappropriate and abusive it is to compound their damage by offering to make it right? Is the position of the CofE that the best people to help survivors/victims are their actual abusers? Is this “safeguarding”?

There are no answers to any of this, because the CofE hierarchy with its Safeguarding Cult all acts “as though they were gods”. That’s why the major common denominator for victims/survivors is this: they’ve all left the CofE. This Cult is abusive, and its gods are capricious and cruel. Escape is the only safe option.

We have finally reached the end of another stage in the long-running saga of the Sheffield Nine O’Clock Service and its one-time leader, Chris Brain.  A jury in a London trial has found Brain guilty on 17 counts of sexual assault and sentencing is due at some point in the near future.  This story in one way is very old news.  The older among us have known most of the details of Brain’s offences for 30 years.   The newspapers gave extensive coverage to the scandal when it broke in 1995, and Roland Howard wrote a competent account of the story in his book The Rise and Fall of the Nine O’Clock Service A cult within the church (1996).  I do not intend in this blog to go over the details of this material which has been rehearsed again in the trial.  My task is somewhat different.  I want to remind my readers that there is another story to be told.  The Nine O’Clock Service (NOS) is an important story in any history of church work among young people in the 20^th century.  However much we want to focus on the scandalous aspects, or criticise it and its theological and practical outworkings, it did, in its day, attract a significant level of support from the wider church and its leaders.  The ‘rise and fall’ of NOS, in short, remains a notable event in the history of Church of England youth work.  The problem was, as the Soul Survivor drama also clearly demonstrates, that few people are ever willing to critique ‘success’ or ask uncomfortable questions.  Still less has there been any real understanding of the toxic dynamics that are so often a feature of large crowd events.  Even now there is remarkable little insight into the vulnerability of the young to large group dynamics which can overwhelm them, both spiritually and emotionally.

  My interest in writing about Brain now is not to comment or add anything new to the material presented in the NOS court case about his criminal behaviour towards young women.   My purpose is to recall another aspect of the Brain story, one that does not seem to have attracted much discussion.   This is the way that the NOS innovative worship style for young people had then many imitations right across England.  To say that NOS was influential is not in any way arguing for the quality and soundness of what Brain was doing in Sheffield.  But it is true to say that in youthwork circles there was a feeling that something new and exciting was going on.  Up to the moment of its collapse, NOS was also being regarded with approval by church leaders from different theological traditions.  Certainly, I cannot recall anyone speaking out against the rave services, planetary masses and the highly idiosyncratic teaching.   At the time I was open to the teaching of Matthew Fox, an American Dominican, who provided some theological mentorship for Brain and the distinctive themes of his teaching.  Like many of the fashionable ideas current in the 80s, Fox’s ideas on Creation Spiritualty have receded in their influence but, no doubt, they will be dusted down and ‘discovered’ again at some point in future.  A greater influence on me at the time were the writings of Lesslie Newbigin.  In his book, The Other Side of 1984, Newbigin, like Matthew Fox, had attempted to challenge the dominating ideas of the 18^th century Enlightenment about the nature of truth and reality.  The Enlightenment had given the facts revealed by science a privileged and esteemed place within Western thinking and culture.  This approach needed to be challenged and certainly not assumed to be the only manifestation of truth.  Interestingly, John Wimber was saying some similar things to his audiences and the resulting discussions helped to give rise to some interesting theological discussions in parts of the Church.

The second influence from NOS, one which affected me only indirectly, was the way that church youth work all over the country seemed to want to copy some of the practical aspects of the NOS worship experiments.  Youth workers from many churches travelled to Sheffield to attend the highly innovative forms of worship and seek to copy ideas for their own ministries.  Brain seems to have been able to recruit some highly gifted people to help him create dramatic expressions of worship, using light and sound to foster a highly charged atmosphere for his services.  I never became familiar with the detail of these styles of worship, and certainly nothing changed at the level of our Sunday worship where I was serving.  But the NOS influence was strong at the Diocesan level of youth work.   The youth worker for the Gloucester Diocese had embraced the NOS vision with a degree of enthusiasm which now seems, in retrospect, to have been almost idolatrous.  Once bitten by the NOS bug, the youth worker seemed unable to focus on any other type of youth work in our diocese.  His whole energy seemed directed towards organising NOS look-alike services around the larger churches of the diocese.   There were, I believe, some older church people who wanted to identify with this new energy for youth work and so the worker was able to raise the necessary money to buy lights, sound systems, smoke machines and other equipment for these services.  The fact that my parish was right on the edge of the diocese, meant that my young people were unable to attend unless they had very obliging parents.  I also had queries and concerns of my own which made me less than 100% enthusiastic for these new forms of worship.

What were my worries about the stories of NOS inspired worship that came back to me as a parish priest?  In the first place there was an uncomfortable level of control (manipulation?) of feelings and mood at play.  If an idea is powerfully shared through the forceful use of symbols, it may have the effect of taking over the feelings and driving out any rational process.  In other words, the worship was, for me, a bit too physical and overwhelming; there was no opportunity to reflect.  It seemed to be a matter of surrendering to these powerfully induced emotions.  Teenagers are not a group easily able to work out how best to resist uncomfortable attacks on their rationality, especially when these assaults are made with the help of sound, light and imagery. 

The second and perhaps more serious problem that I felt at the time, but probably never gave expression to, is what we would refer to now as safeguarding concerns.  If you are skilled at creating highly emotionally charged atmospheres in a nightclub style environment, then it is not hard to see how such a setting can be exploited.  When I heard that at our local Gloucester NOS services, routine hugging was included in the expression of love and mutual acceptance, I began to wonder whether such episodes might soon get out of hand.  Intimacy, embrace and love may all be words that potentially fit into a Christian setting, but they may also be words used by a predator who is able to exploit the fact that personal boundaries may be routinely undermined in the new styles of worship.

The end of NOS in Sheffield was sudden and dramatic.  The NOS events that I was observing with concern locally in the Diocese of Gloucester probably did not, in fact, get out of hand because our local NOS-inspired events also stopped when the Sheffield ministry of NOS came to a sudden end in July 1995.  Brain’s dominance over the project had been total and so, with his sudden resignation, everything connected with the NOS effort all over the country stopped overnight.  All that was left behind was a sense of shock, trauma, disillusionment and, no doubt, a sense of betrayal.  It would probably be difficult now to discover how far the NOS influence had spread around the country and whether the effect on my diocese was typical of other areas.   Almost instantly after Brain left, the diocesan Youth Officer in Gloucester resigned, and all his future local planned services were cancelled.  I have never seen any discussion on the impact that NOS’s experiments had on church youth work, not only in Sheffield but around the country.  A ‘learning lessons’ was probably just too difficult a task.  It was also realised, probably, with some embarrassment no doubt, that the oversight of Brain by senior church figures had simply not been undertaken with any degree of thoroughness.  No one among the senior clergy in Sheffield, who had offered an extensive welcome to the NOS experiment, resigned or even showed a real desire to understand what had gone wrong.  For me there was a realisation that senior clergy in the Church of England also had very little understanding of what I was beginning to see as the central problem at NOS – the issue of power.  Throughout the project, there seems to have been an inability to understand, let alone deal with, the power dynamics at NOS.   Accountability and democratic decision making were nowhere to be found and no one senior in the hierarchy was prepared to challenge the dynamics of the group as long as the project appeared to be successful. 1995 and the aftershocks of the NOS experiment also marked the beginning of my own interest in power abuse in the Church.  Much of the focus of my more recent writing, in the blog Surviving Church and my book Ungodly Fear, looks back to this theme of power and its abuse and this had been vividly displayed in Sheffield.  The aftershocks of NOS still reverberate.   A continuing failure to fully understand how power operates within its structures contributes to a serious weakening of the Church and its capacity to influence British society over recent decades.  

by Jonathan

I hope readers will have a look at Jonathan’s original article which vividly describes the vulnerability and powerlessness of a junior member of the clergy when things go wrong. This blog is a follow-up to the original story, one and describes the continuing effect of an NDA issued by the Church. This, he believes, acted as a way of trying to extinguish a significant section of his life. What has come over in both articles is the impossibility of receiving a proper hearing if those set over you have come to a determination of your guilt, incompetence or whatever puts you on the edge of the institution. Jonathan, Anne-Marie Ghosh, Fr Griffin and John Brassington have all experienced with many others having to face the debilitating power of a strong institution determined to protect itself and its reputation.

Three years ago I wrote a blog post sharing my experience of an NDA in the Church of England (https://survivingchurch.org/2022/07/22/my-experience-with-an-nda-in-the-church-of-england/) This shared something of the experience, still fresh in my memory, and the events as they happened.

It has now been three years since then and a lot has happened. I have spent the majority of that time in therapy working through the experience itself alongside all that it unearthed, exposed and irritated. I have also rebuilt a new life for my family separate to the CofE. Amidst all of this I have spent a substantial amount of time reflecting and soul searching to try and make sense of this experience and what it has taught me. Attempts to understand what happened, and how I can close this chapter and walk boldly into my future.

A term I heard thrown around a lot in the CofE is that of ‘lessons learnt’, a term I have come to despise! The way I have heard it used amounts to something to the effect of:

‘Something uncomfortable and/or embarrassing has occurred that we don’t want to admit to, or properly and robustly address, so instead we’ll reframe it as an opportunity for learning by producing a document outlining what we might do differently in the future to avoid taking any real accountability for the harm done or actually remedy it in anyway.’

So with that in mind, I want to take this phrase – that rubs me up the wrong way – and use in a more genuine way to share some of the lessons I have indeed learned from going through, processing and recovering from this ordeal.

1. It’s not really about me

As I’ve done the hard work in therapy and been empowered with tools and understanding in post cult counselling, it’s become increasingly apparent that my experience has so little to do with me. Or, to put it another way, all that happened to me wasn’t personal. If you said this to me at the time I would have scoffed and laughed you out the room! It felt immensely personal and even targeted! While the effects and impact were deeply personal and far reaching, I can now see how I was simply incidental to the deeper systemic dysfunction within the CofE. I see how various actors were simply following their programming and conditioning to ‘protect’ the institution, safeguarding reputation and those with power.

This doesn’t make it ok, but it does re-frame it for me. It feels different to see that the problem is not me, but the ugly beast that is the structures and hierarchy of the CofE following their core values. It makes it easier to walk away and cut all ties having seen the ugly face that had been kept hidden from me until that moment. But for me one of the core causes of this dysfunction is…

• The unaccountable power of Bishops

Three years on this is one of the core issues I see in regard to the great harm caused by the CofE. My experience made this unaccountable power very tangible. This can sometimes feel like a secret hidden in plain sight. How many roles and processes contain ‘bishop’s advisor(y)’ in the title? This is strictly correct. A bishop has the executive power to do whatever they want without having to justify their decision to anyone else. All anyone else can do is advise!

The ordination selection process is a good case study. The Bishop’s advisory panel is just that, advisory. The panel can only make a recommendation that the Bishop can chose to accept or ignore. Same is true during theological training. Taking it a step further, a Bishop can forego any of this and ordain someone, bypassing selection and training completely. There was an example of this in my previous diocese, which was often the talk of clergy gossip. Bishops wield a scary amount of power over people’s lives and futures and this is painfully apparent during selection, training and curacy.

This became poignant for me, when the Bishop ignored the recommendation that I had passed my curacy assessment and instead chose not to sign me off. This makes it very hard, if not impossible,  for me to get another post in the CofE. He didn’t have to justify this to anyone else or provide much of a case. It was done behind closed doors without standardised processes, accountability or proper process of appeal.

This level of unaccountable power wouldn’t be acceptable in any other workplace or organisation, why is it acceptable in the Church of England? 

How do they get away with it and keep it on the down low? Well…

3. The use of settlement agreements to silence and cover up

In the past three years I have signed a settlement agreement and an NDA in the corporate setting. However, they were very different to the one the CofE offered me.

The NDA related to sensitive business information that needed to be kept confidential during an investigation. I was required to sign the NDA in order to continue to handle this sensitive information in my day-to-day job. It made no claim to anything that had happened to me or was my own personal information. This is how NDAs should be used. To protect data belonging to a business, not to cover up wrongdoing. Changes in law should better enforce this going forward preventing unethical use of NDAs to cover up and protect failure and shortcomings of those in power.

My CofE issued NDA made everything I had done in my 4 years of curacy confidential including material of my own creation. It prevented me speaking of what had happened to me first hand and hence sharing my story. In essence, it tried to take ownership of my lived experience and buy it from me. They tried to take from me that which is rightfully mine having lived and breathed it in painful Technicolor. They wanted to condemn me to living the rest of my life bound to lie about a significant period of my life. It was this dehumanizing aspect that pushed me into the realm of suicidal ideation as I contemplated signing the NDA. This was the chief reason I didn’t sign it. It felt like giving them parts of myself they had no right to claim. 

I have also since been offered a settlement agreement when being made redundant in a corporate setting. What was most striking was that this agreement protected both me and my former employer from negative comments. In contrast my CofE issued settlement agreement protected anyone I had ever had any dealings within my curacy from negative comment regardless of its factuality and offered me zero protection in return. As above, they were silencing me, taking my story, my lived experience from me. For what? The initial offer was less than my stipend till the end of my license. I gained more money by not signing and seeing out my license.

In hindsight the CofE settlement agreement was a significant power move trying to own me, my work and experience even after I had been evicted from ministry. It was so all encompassing to take four years of my life from me in a controlling and dehumanizing way. I am not the first, I will not be the last. This is their standard operating procedure for handling inconvenient truths and whistle blowers.

4. What I wish someone had told me before making a complaint

I look back and realise how naive I was going into the complaints process. Though really this was all symptomatic of the belief that I could trust the hierarchy to act with decency, fairness and integrity. In many ways I look back and see that as the main mistake I made in everything.

When I was contemplating raising a formal grievance against my first training incumbent, my new training incumbent was very encouraging and supportive. However, in hindsight – given what I’ve learned since – I wish someone had said something more like this:

‘I’m so sorry to hear you’ve been treated so poorly, I believe you and you deserve so much better. It’s not fair and it’s not right but please know that unless you have significant amounts of clear, explicit evidence of the abusive behaviour its very hard to adequately prove in an investigation. Given the power dynamics in play, it will just end up a case of your word against his and he has power and diocese favour on his side which will all work against you. If they can, they will side with him.’

In so many ways the number one thing I wanted was to be believed and validated in how harmful the experience had been. That’s what I hoped for from a grievance process, but in hindsight I see my folly. Working through my need for validation has been a key part of my therapeutic work and being able to offer that to myself empowering and healing.

From where I stand today, I think there are two options for dealing with a bullying superior in the church or work.

1. Set out to gather conclusive evidence of this behaviour sufficient for a grievance process. This requires staying in the situation and possibly even deliberately provoking the abusive behaviour in order for it to be observed by others or recorded in some way. This can take an enormous emotional toll.
2. Get out of that situation one way or another, remove yourself from the abuse and work on your own healing and recovery away from the abuser.

Justice is a wonderful ideal, but bullying is complex and nuanced with a lot of subjectivity. Is it defined by intention or impact? Of course, some behaviours are clearly and objectively inappropriate, but much manipulative and bullying behaviour is subtle and cumulative. Proving it to a third party, especially one not well versed in coercive control and manipulation, can be near impossible. It is harder still when they have conflicts of interest and other biases that means they don’t want it be true…

When I found myself working for a bully once more in the corporate workplace, I handled things differently having learned the hard way before. Of course, in a conventional job your housing and career are not tied in the same way, it’s easier to leave a job knowing you can stay in your house and simply move to a new organisation – The cost is less. But it explains the culture of fear I so often encountered amongst other clergy. 

5. From Victim to Survivor

These terms are used somewhat interchangeably, and I’ve had time to think about what they mean specifically for me.

From my vantage point ‘Victim’ is a noun, something I am. Survivor relates to a verb, describing something I’ve done: survived. I have moved from being identified with ‘victim’ as my identity and something that imprisons me, to shedding that identity and instead being a ‘survivor’ describing the active work of healing and re-building.

I remain anonymous as ‘Jonathan’ not because I fear the CofE and am not willing to put my name to this, but instead because I have survived and I don’t want to be forever linked to, and defined, by how they treated me. I have built a new life free of them and I want to keep it that way. I survived the hell they put through me, allowing it to be a crucible of deep and lasting, if painful, healing and formation. It has not broken me, in some ways it has been the making of me, not that I don’t carry the scars, and they don’t twinge from time to time.

6. There is hope on the other side

When I was ‘in ministry’ in the CofE that was a strong stigma attached to those who had ‘left ministry’. It wasn’t seem as a reasonable choice someone might make but was associated with moral failing, not being able to hack it, or losing their faith. In the moment, it felt like I lost everything. It felt like there was no hope or future beyond ordained ministry in the CofE. I had been told that was my purpose, and calling and vocation after all! Some of those around me also acted like this was a death blow with comments like ‘did he hear God wrong?’. I’ve reclaimed my vocation from them, it never belonged to anyone but me. Equally I no longer feel the need to equate it a particular job, role or function.

I’ve since met people within the CofE who wish they could leave but don’t feel able to, or fear there is nothing good on the other side. I want to say that in my experience, this is simply not true. I have built a good life for my family, even a better life than we had in ministry. We own our own home, live the life we want to, without the higher-ups breathing down our necks. I am healthier and happier than I ever have been. Ordained ministry doesn’t have to be for life, it’s ok to leave, to walk away to do something different. That’s not failure. In fact, It’s the mark of something operating as a cult when leaving has so much stigma.

I have also finally taken the step to utilise the clergy disabilities act to cut the final tie to the CofE. This changes my status in law to no longer be a priest of the Church of England with all the limitations that come with that for my new life.

I have survived, I am free I am living my life and there is hope and life and joy on the other side. 

“We wish to close this determination by expressing concern about the route by which this matter came to be before this tribunal. False allegations, rumours and assumptions have been blindly accepted to create a situation where significant harm has been caused. Insufficient time has been taken to question motivations and perspectives, and questions which should have been asked have not been asked until too late. There are two instances which stand out sharply in this case.

“First was the decision of the diocese to move the respondent’s abusive husband into a vacant vicarage within the parish in which she was working.

“Second is the worrying acceptance without question (my emphasis) of that husband’s allegations of an affair between the respondent and Mr Slate….

“We trust lessons will be learned and that the support that the respondent should have received from the Diocese of Coventry will now be provided to her in order to support her flourishing in her future ministry.”

Extracts from the published Determination of a Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the Diocese of Coventry, dated 22 July 2025[1], following the recent trial of a complaint made under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 (‘the CDM’).

The words above in italics and in the blog heading form part of a Church tribunal assessment, responding to a case based on a CDM complaint against a female priest in the Diocese of Coventry.   The case against the Reverend Anne-Marie Ghosh[2] for alleged conduct unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in Holy Orders” was rejected.  In delivering their judgment, the tribunal articulated firmly their criticism of the process that had led to the bringing of the formal complaint against the priest.

The story attracts attention, not only because of the vivid, even colourful, detail contained in the account set out in the Church Times, August 8th, page 3: ‘Clergy reproved over case’.  It is also a clear example of how poor and bungling process can upend a diocesan attempt to manage a case of clergy discipline.  Whatever went wrong in the Diocese of Coventry, whether it was faulty groupthink, unprofessional decision-making or misogynistic attitudes, there is clearly a considerable task to be undertaken to rebuild local trust in the way church discipline is administered.  The case often mentioned by Surviving Church, that of ‘Kenneth’, is another example where allegations have been accepted without question and where considerable pain has been caused to an individual. 

In this blog post we have been permitted to refer to Kenneth by his real name which is John Brasssington.  His case involves an accusation of the abuse of a child which he has consistently denied over five years.   There are, of course, important differences between the two cases.   In John’s case, the alleged offence involves causing harm to a child; in the other the alleged offence is that of engaging in adulterous behaviour. 

Two other features draw the two stories together.  Both of the cases belong to the Coventry Diocese, and both involve systems where individuals have proceeded with allegations based on faulty assumptions.  John has never been permitted to challenge the assumption of the core group in his diocese that he is guilty.  In the CDM case there was, fortunately for Ms Ghosh, an independent tribunal able to see through the accusations brought against her.  No such tribunal exists to examine the accusations against John, so he still lives with the cloud of being considered ‘high-risk’ and unable to play a full part in his church.   

Before we suggest further links between the Ghosh case and the Brassington case, we need to spend a little time noting some of the other details of the current story which have allowed the most appalling suffering to be experienced by the Coventry priest.  The acting archdeacon who brought the CDM complaint would seem to have been too ready to accept the allegations of guilt made by two men in the account, the ex-husband and the training incumbent.  This latter individual had a duty of care and nurture towards his curate, especially in the first two years of ministry when she was having to deal with a failing marriage.  The thought that a vicar, one presumably vetted before being given this delicate task of helping a novice priest, should behave with such apparent malevolence is a cause of dismay.  This apparent antagonism shown towards the curate on the part of the vicar suggests that he is unfit to exercise the ministry of training/supervision for a fellow priest ever again.[3]  No doubt the stories of late-night vigils outside the curate’s home trying to find direct evidence of ‘unbecoming conduct’ will have circulated among his congregation.  Such behaviour will, no doubt, have undermined the relationship of respect that normally binds priest and people together. 

One thing that is worth pointing out is the different treatment afforded to church members depending on whether they are lay or clerical.  One speculates that John might have received a proper hearing if his case had gone down a tribunal route equivalent to that under the CDM.  Such a tribunal would, hopefully, have been alert and able to see through the assumptions and faulty reasoning on display in his diocese.  The safeguarding process in the Church does not seem to know what to do with a layman who stubbornly refuses over half a decade to admit guilt for an offence that he maintains never occurred.  Over five or six years, John, supported by his friends has had to stand up to a long and debilitating demonstration of raw institutional power.

The final chapters in both the Ghosh story and that of John Brassington have yet to be written.  As regards the Ghosh case, the new Bishop of Coventry, the Rt Revd Sophie Jelly, has the difficult and challenging task of picking up a demoralised and institutionally battered priest and seeing what the future holds.  One hopes that the diocese has resources, both financial and pastoral, to deal with this situation so that Ms Ghosh can make a new start in ministry where she is surrounded by people of understanding and compassion.  As far as the Brassington case is concerned, is it too much to hope that a certain humility might yet prevail among the diocesan safeguarding authorities which will allow them to remove his ‘high risk’ status and allow him again to play a full part in church life?  Several attempts have been made to close his case down, but the attention of outside bodies, including now his MP, have kept his case alive and attracting support.  No doubt, the new Bishop will be wanting a fresh start in managing discipline matters so that her diocese can move forward in this area without unresolved past cases continuing to remind people of serious failings in this area. 

Public exposure of unprofessional behaviour by clergy and poor judgement shown by professional committees do not inspire confidence in any institution.  Is it just possible that the salacious detail of the Ghosh saga might create a new appetite for the Church in the Coventry diocese and throughout England to get things right at last in the way discipline cases are handled?  The criticisms of the Coventry handling of a falsely accused priest will not vanish quickly from peoples’ memories.  The Ghosh case and the comparable Brassington case are too serious to be forgotten.  There is, of course, the hopeful possibility that instead of cover-up, denial, and silence, the Church in Coventry and elsewhere may move forward in a way that chimes in with the zeitgeist of the moment, one which is desperately seeking transparency, honesty, and integrity.  The correct way forward will require decisive leadership, perhaps to be provided by a new Archbishop. Is it too much to hope that the cancer of weakened reputation and collapse of trust in the Church will be decisively checked by a new leader?  He or she will have to opportunity to offer spiritual and moral leadership to the nation.  It may be that in the middle of all the political and moral chaos in the country and the world, these values of clarity, honesty, and integrity may be rediscovered.  The Church may indeed rediscover its role of providing inspiration and moral guidance for our nation.

[1] The full Determination can be downloaded from the Church of England website: determination-the-revd-anne-marie-marsh-22-july-2025_0.pdf

[2] In the tribunal’s Determination the respondent priest is referred to by her married name, Anne-Marie Marsh.  The Church Times report states that she has reverted to her maiden name.

[3] The tribunal said this about his evidence at paragraph 12: “We found the evidence of Mr Gold to be troubling. It was quite apparent that he was trying to minimise the length and extent of the difficulties in his relationship with the respondent. He demonstrated a worrying willingness to believe the worst of the respondent. We were concerned that he had clearly been told about Mr Marsh’s abusive relationship with the respondent and yet he still accepted without question the allegations made against her by her husband without speaking to her about them.”

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