It has become apparent from a news report in the  Church Times that the Diocese of St Albans are in the process of injecting fresh money and support into the Soul Survivor congregation in Watford, formerly under the leadership of Mike Pilavachi.  The congregation in Watford are being regarded as part of a ‘missional engine’ for work among young people in the Diocese.  What the diocese effectively appears to be saying is this.  Although Pilavachi has been identified as running an exploitative and abusive ministry over a period of 30+ years, it is still possible to sponsor future youth work operating within the same cultural and theological setting that he was using.  At the time of writing, there is some debate as to the extent of the support being offered, but we still seem to be facing an example of ‘bad apple’ thinking.  The diocese and the promoters of this backing appear to believe that, having removed one corrupt individual who has been identified as responsible for exploiting many of the individuals within the institution, what is left in the structure can be assumed to be sound and healthy. 

When the scandal of Pilavachi’s behaviour broke in April 2023, there was an ominous silence in terms of reaction from the church authorities.  There are two possible reasons for this.  The first was a shocked realisation that a large cohort of young Christians had passed through the Soul Survivor camps and thus the malign influence of Pilavachi on the Christian formation of these young people had been substantial.  The second devastating realisation was discovering that virtually nobody in the hierarchy responsible for Pilavachi’s oversight, whether CofE or Vineyard, had ever raised questions about his style and idiosyncratic practice.  His forceful charismatic personality seemed to have silenced or controlled everyone, both those above him in the hierarchical system of the CofE and the unprotected young people who looked up to him as a model of Christian living.  This silence that accompanied the revelation of what had really been happening for so long indicated a failure of understanding of what Soul Survivor stood for.  There was also an unhealthy attachment to the idea that if a ministry appears as successful in terms of numbers attending, it must be receiving the approval of God. 

When the Pilavachi story broke, I penned a piece for SC which was not popular with some of my readers, especially as I compared aspects of the the story with events at Sheffield in 1995 with the 9 o’clock Service.  I also suggested that the charismatic style of worship centred on a powerful celebrity leader was never without risk.  Even if God appeared to be present in the captivating music and the charismatic worship, it was still important that there were people with oversight, whether locally or nationally, prepared to ask hard questions about what was going on.  This was essential even when things seemed to be going well.  Going beyond the character and potential personality flaws of a single individual in charge, other issues needed to be faced.  These often involved an understanding of the wider culture as well as the history of what was taking place.

Throughout my ministry I have always been sympathetic to the ideas and practice of charismatic theology and styles of worship.  I am old enough to remember the generation of British pioneers like John Richards, Michael Harper and John Gunstone.  The charismatic scene is much changed since the 70s and 80s and, to my regret, there are few signs left of the generous, ecumenical and inclusive feel that was often a feature of that early time.  It is probably forgotten by the current heirs of this impulse that much energy for the movement internationally came from the writing and teaching of an Episcopalian priest in America, Dennis Bennett.  His style was, if anything, middle of the road Anglican, but his experiences and life recounted in the book, Nine O’clock in the Morning (1961), were very influential.  The later conservative ‘take-over’ of the charismatic impulse was a disappointment to me.  I had written my first book for SPCK, The Challenge of Christian Healing in 1986 and at first, I was invited to speak to conservative leaning groups about healing and how I had discovered healing within a charismatic setting.  The 90s seemed to reveal the more hard-edged defensiveness to these groups, and an individual, such as I, who would never sign up to theories of Biblical inerrancy or infallibility, became less acceptable.  I was regarded as unsound.

My personal religious journey has combined a liberalism affected by academic study with a sympathy towards the charismatic.  This combination has allowed me to believe that I have something of value to say to the Church on the matter of what is, and what is not acceptable in the area of charismatic practice.  Of the two approaches above that I reject, one is the distant but uncritical admiration of the phenomenon without any real in-depth understanding or experience of what is going on.  Charismatic worship, such as we see in churches following the HTB model, is admired as it successfully draws in the crowds.  If ‘bums’ are on seats, then we must welcome and encourage this style even if it is incomprehensible and offends our taste and maybe our theology.  The other approach involves the arrogant assumptions made by its enthusiastic devotees.  This is to think that there is no other theology or style of worship that is worth considering.  We find ourselves in a ‘might is right’ situation of uncritical admiration. Hybrids like me are excluded.

There is a possible third way of approaching this issue.  This approach would suggest that the recent decision of the Diocese of St Albans to fund and support a revived Soul Survivor structure in Watford carries with it a number of risks and could turn out badly.  This is the middle way approach.  It allows an appreciation of charismatic phenomena while recognising the need for caution.  This evaluation mixes a sympathy for charismatic worship with generous helpings of realism, honesty and truth.  Realism might suggest to such a third way yet dispassionate observer that there are questions still to be asked about Pilavachi’s hold over tens of thousands of young people.  This phenomenon needs to be thoroughly understood and studied, certainly before handing out hundreds of thousands of pounds to promote it.  What do we know, for example, about the thoughts of a young person who was led to faith by a mentor whose behaviour turns out to be exploitative and abusive?  I have not seen any studies of this kind.  What are Christian counsellors who have spoken to the cohort of young Christians feeling betrayed by Pilavachi telling us?  What is the Church doing proactively to prevent another charismatic leader being appointed and creating the same damage among impressionable young minds.  If I were a young Christian whose faith had been formed or created by the style and antics of Mike Pilavachi, I might want to feel that those who had put him in this place of responsibility for my wellbeing, were working hard to explain to me what had gone wrong.  The Soul Survivor movement was a movement heavily indebted to one man, but it emerges out of a religious culture which could be, and was, highjacked to serve the narcissistic needs and purposes of its founder.  Another way of putting this claim is to say that the conservative charismatic culture of Soul Survivor is very easily corrupted to become the tool of a needy individual leader to gratify psychological needs.  The gratification processes that have been identified in Pilavachi’s abusive ministry are not an inevitable part of this culture, but they happen with sufficient regularity for outside overseers to need to be on constant alert for these signs of narcissistic abuse.  Surviving Church has written about the potentially unholy alliance of narcissism and charisma many times over the years.  It was clearly identified in my discussion of Michael Reid, the former head of the Pentecostal Peniel Church in Brentwood.  I have also discussed the academic work of Len Oakes, the Australian writer.   He was, to my knowledge, the first author to link the charismatic cultures of evangelical Christianity with narcissistic disturbance and disorder.  The main finding of Oakes was to point out how the dynamic of large crowd gatherings is a perfect setting for someone who is emotionally needy and who (like Donald Trump) craves the attention and adulation of the crowd.  The enthusiasms exhibited in a large charismatic event may often be the setting for less than healthy emotional dynamics combined with acute psychological neediness.  This is not the same as saying that true charismatic worship and healthy transformation cannot exist.  It is saying that leaders must be acutely sensitised to discerning when the worship event and the music of worship songs is the setting for something phony and lacking in any spiritual depth. 

Those who are providing new support for Soul Survivor in the Anglican diocese of St Albans are, no doubt, anxious not to have a repeat of the Pilavachi affair.  To help these authorities who want to help both the reputation of the Church and the spiritual needs of young people in the area,at the same time avoiding a repeat of the events of the past, I would want them to ask the following questions.  These questions go beyond the therapeutic needs of those actually identified as victims of abuse at the hands of Pilavachi.

1. What evidence is there that the damage caused to many hundreds of young people who looked to Mike Pilvachi as someone to emulate and look up to as a model for the Christian life has been properly understood?  Have the thoughts and feelings of those who have left the orbit of Soul Survivor been examined?
2. This blog piece has criticised the ‘bad apple’ approach to the Pilavachi issue and has suggested that there are and were serious dangers in the assumption that we might call loosely the HTB model of Christian formation is always healthy for young people.  Will the diocese be prepared to consult with sociologists, psychologists and others who possess an approach to the issue of Christian formation of young people outside this HTB/Church plant model?
3.   I have reread the Scolding report which inevitably is mainly concerned with structural issues like failures of accountability and responsibility.  The deeper challenge for the Church of England and the St Albans diocese in particular is also proper assessment of the theological issues involved in the saga. Serious issues of authority and power are to be found in the scandal and are yet to be addressed. Although we live in a Church that has a variety of approaches to formation and discipleship with young and old, it might be claimed that the Soul Survivor/HTB model is too much geared towards an entertainment approach to the faith.  Such an approach may have little to commend itself over a period.  If the church invests considerable sums of money in an approach to youth work yet to prove itself, then we are risk of tie ourselves to a single model of youth ministry which may prove problematic over the decades. 

This short critique of the decision by the Church of England to invest considerable sums of money in a system of youth ministry, yet to face detailed professional and spiritual scrutiny, seems ill-advised.  To repeat, this is not a blanket criticism of the theology and worship inspired by the charismatic impulse operating in some the ‘successful ‘churches’ in Britain.  Rather it is plea that we should all have a far better understanding of the wider context of this ministry and why it has sometimes gone seriously wrong, damaging unknown numbers of our young people within the Church of England.

by Anon

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This is the tenth time I’ve written to you at the start of a new year as your bishop. As you know, I don’t usually send Christmas cards (I’m far too busy at that time of year), as most clergy are. And I don’t read the cards I get sent either, so this is just a gentle reminder to you all not to bother sending me a note enclosing a schedule of all your various Christmas services and other activities. I don’t read them. I already know you are all quite preoccupied at this time of year. That is why I leave you completely alone during Advent and Christmas.

But now that we have entered 2026, I cannot help but reflect on the fact that, every year I’ve written to you, one thing remains constant: change! Yes, change. The sheer pace of it takes us by surprise all the time, and with it come challenges, the highs and lows of ministry, and just trying to keep up. Change is here to stay, as they say. How true that is.

Take AI. A year ago, I had little idea of how it would revolutionise our Diocese. But it has. The executive planners at Diocesan HQ set a target last year of writing at least four email messages a day to all of you – the clergy, lay workers, special ministers without portfolio, church wardens and others. These were timed for breakfast, lunch, teatime, and after dinner, and all with helpful advice, reminders, prompts, prods, resource updates, Instagram news, Tweets, forms to fill in, questionnaires, surveys and other forms of social media engagement.

Some of you were unresponsive to our messages. And after four months, we did a little bit of research, and it seemed that some of you had issues with your spam or junk folders. But I am glad that the Archdeacons put you right on that. It is important that we keep in touch with you all the time (except when we choose not to), keep tabs on you (the devil makes work for idle hands!), and maintain constant digital communication with you.

Our goal this year is to reach you every hour of each and every day with a new message or communication from the diocese, sharing our vision, goals, needs, updates, demands and successes.  What is really remarkable about all this is that AI is helping us generate these communications. We have seen a positive response to the AI Chatbots assisting the Bishops’ Chaplains and Archdeacons, and this is an excellent example of how technology and ordinary ministry come together as one. 

Yes, we have had some teething troubles. Not all of your pastoral problems were well-handled by the recently commissioned and licensed AI Pastoral Chatbots, but please be patient, as this technology has to learn on the job and must evolve.

It is therefore very important that you don’t abuse, tease or bait the Pastoral AI Chatbots we’ve installed. You might inadvertently train the Chatbots to give completely insensitive and incorrect advice in response to innocent and genuine pastoral queries.

For example, we’ve already had instances of incorrect automated advice being given on same-sex weddings that were non-compliant with the advice the House of Bishops may or may not have communicated last week/month. (Although I know we are all finding it hard to keep up with what the latest line to tow actually is). As a result of mistreating the AI Pastoral Chatbots, two unfortunate episodes involving the unexplained deaths and unplanned funerals for members of the Senior Leadership Team left many of you confused, as nobody had actually died. The Liturgy AI Chatbot had to be reprogrammed after a Wicca Ceremony involving a Dame Mary Berry recipe for seasonal muffins went viral.

The AI-generated clip of me ignoring the clergy and going on holiday all the time (these are pilgrimages, incidentally) was False News, as was the deep-fake clip of me angrily banging my crozier on my desk and demanding a 30% rise in giving from parishes to re-equip Diocesan HQ with handsome new office furniture and a bespoke barista café. (NB: I wouldn’t complain if this were true, and if you ever had time to visit our Diocesan HQ, neither would you!).

The AI-generated bar graphs and charts, claiming to be from the Diocesan Finance Office, and that y/our clergy numbers were also going to be cut by 20%, weren’t very helpful either. These were drafts. We have not finalised those numbers yet, and this is an example of AI forming an alliance with a damaging and demoralising culture of leaks, run by Gloomsters and Doomsters plotting against the leadership in the shadows. That might be normal for political parties, but it has no place here in our Diocese.  So, AI can sometimes be unhelpful to our mission when abused.

But as you know, we are using AI to help parishes understand that the church is growing, not shrinking. That is not Fake News. That explains we can look at shaving even more of our clergy numbers this year, because there will be more people in church who could or really should be busy with ministering.

Some of you have written in quite personally to ask if your role in ministry is safe in these challenging times. Nothing pains me more than having to write to you all at 4am in the morning to alert you to the hard road and difficult decisions that lie ahead, and how much it costs me, personally, to be the one making those calls. I know it is hard for you to wake up to that kind of news. But just imagine how demanding it is to be writing to you all in the small hours, knowing that nobody will be able to respond with an immediate note of acknowledgement and support.

As you know, one of the costs of ministry is risk, and it pains me more than anyone else when we had to let (valuable?) frontline clergy go last year so we could shore up the hard-pressed administrators and executives at our Diocesan HQ. I am pleased to say that their visionary plans for expansion and growth continue apace, and thanks are really due to you all for the sacrifices you make at the parish level so that the Diocesan infrastructure can continue to expand.

People these days say there are no good news stories about growth. But that is so untrue. Our Diocesan HQ is living proof that if you talk enough about growth and invest in it, the growth will happen. We have doubled the number of executives and Associate Archdeacons over the last three years, and (praise the Lord!), with your support, those numbers are set to rise again this year.

I know that some of you see this next year as another descent into our Diocesan ‘polycrisis’. But I like to call this ‘polyopportunity’, or ‘polyops’ for short. As we explore new ways of funding traditional ministry by cutting away at the tired, existing forms of support that were holding everyone back, we can now see that less does indeed mean more. That is one of the rich ironies of ministry today.

As we reduce Diocesan support – but not our communications or control – clergy face new challenges in raising awareness over the pressing need to fund their local ministries. This has got to be good news for the church.  A strong Diocesan HQ, coupled to clergy learning to “live off the land” and not relying on handouts and support from the Diocese. That can only make the clergy stronger – and leaner (not bad for a New Years’ resolution, eh?).

Our clergy conference happens later this year. It will be fun to be together again. Please remember that you are expected to invest your own time in this (i.e., holiday allowance); you must be self-funded (i.e., show your commitment); and attendance is mandatory.  But do remember this is fun!

The inter-deanery cage fighting competition was a big hit last time, and some of you were able to channel your frustrations, exasperation and passion for ministry in ways that released a lot of pent-up energy. I know that some of you witnessing this event felt you were put in a position of discomfort, and three of you had to go to A&E and now wear neck braces. But there is no substitute for harnessing the raw power and even aggressive energy we need for everyday ministry.

As in previous years, it will simply be impossible to meet with many of you in person for almost any reason. Fewer confirmations and spending a lot of time with all my senior staff working on strategy and comms means there is not much opportunity to get on the road these days and spend time in the parishes with the frontline clergy. There are only so many hours in the day to work with, and I have to prioritise my diary.

Added to which, Diocesan HQ is very time-consuming, and one of the reasons we send you so many emails and other digital media communications is to remind you that we do think about the clergy, even though we rarely get to meet you. Should we happen to meet, please make sure you are wearing your diocesan lanyard with your name and parish clearly displayed.

In the meantime, if you have any issues you think need attention, or pastoral emergencies, please follow the guidelines link on the diocesan website, and remember to speak clearly in response to the Chatbot questions and dialogue buttons so your query can be appropriately directed (and hopefully resolved). I am pleased to report that, following a grant from the Church Commissioners, we are also hiring a new team of social media influencers to smooth the implementation of these welcome changes.

We are living through unprecedented times that require unprecedented levels of time, energy, commitment and sacrifice from you. Being a Bishop is something I remain fully committed to. And I can honestly say that I am as pleased and proud to be your Bishop as you are to be my clergy. This comes with my prayers and good wishes to you all for this new year, as we step into the future, where we’ll all encounter lots of new ‘polyops’. Just remember, change is here to stay!

Your Bishop, ChatGPT

AI Side Bar: Good stress on change. Would you like me to create a slide deck from the middle paragraphs for PCC presentations, and some bar graphs and diagrams for the upcoming Diocesan Synod? What about a dashboard?

Spellcheck – completed.

Grammarly: Do you want me to improve this? Here are some ideas for your letter. Add impact? Make it persuasive? Make it more assertive? Make it more ‘on brand’? Shorten it? Simplify it? Report any offensive feedback? What do you want me to do?

by Robert Thompson

Remain here with me. Watch and pray. Matthew 26:38

Safeguarding failures in the Church of England are often discussed in procedural terms: governance, independence, lines of accountability, and the adequacy of review processes. These questions matter, and they deserve serious attention. But they do not, on their own, explain why safeguarding crises continue to recur, even after repeated assurances that “lessons have been learned.”

What is increasingly clear is that the problem is not only structural. It is theological.

The theologian Marika Rose has argued that Christian theology is marked by a persistent desire for innocence: a wish to present the Church as fundamentally good, morally coherent, and well-intentioned, even when confronted with evidence of harm. In her work A Theology of Failure: Žižek Against Christian Innocence, Rose suggests that theology repeatedly seeks to protect itself from failure, rather than allowing failure to speak truthfully.

This insight has particular resonance for Anglican safeguarding culture.

The Church of England often responds to safeguarding breakdowns by emphasising process: the independence of reviews, the robustness of structures, the good faith of those involved. These claims are not necessarily false. But they function theologically. They reassure the institution that, whatever has gone wrong, its moral core remains intact.

For survivors, this reassurance often lands very differently.

The insistence on institutional good intentions can feel like a refusal to remain with the depth of harm that has occurred. Anger and grief are treated as threats to stability. Calls for accountability are experienced as challenges to ecclesial unity. The result is a culture in which safeguarding is endlessly reformed but rarely re-imagined.

Rose’s theology helps name what is happening here. Failure is treated as an interruption to the Church’s life, something to be resolved so that normal service can resume. But a theology of failure insists that breakdown is not merely accidental. It reveals something true about how power, authority, and self-understanding operate within Christian institutions.

This matters because Anglican ecclesiology is often tempted to resolve safeguarding tension by appeal to balance: pastoral care on the one hand, institutional continuity on the other; accountability tempered by grace; truth held alongside unity. These instincts are deeply Anglican, and often admirable. But they can also function as mechanisms of avoidance, softening the force of failure before it has been properly faced.

The cross challenges this instinct. At the heart of Christian faith is not balance, but exposure. Authority collapses. Innocence is stripped away. Religious power is revealed as capable of grave harm. Any safeguarding theology that rushes too quickly to reconciliation or restoration risks bypassing the truth that the cross discloses.

This is where Anglican debates about safeguarding independence often falter. Independence is treated as a technical solution, rather than as a moral and theological demand. Reviews are expected to restore trust, rather than to tell the truth, whatever the cost. When independence becomes a means of institutional reassurance rather than institutional vulnerability, it reproduces the very dynamics it claims to address.

A theology of failure suggests a different posture. It does not deny the importance of structure, policy, or leadership. But it insists that the Church must relinquish the desire to appear innocent. It must accept that some failures permanently wound the institution, and that trust cannot be managed back into existence.

For bishops and senior leaders, this is an uncomfortable position. They are tasked with holding the Church together, maintaining public witness, and preventing collapse. But when stability is prioritised over truth, the Church risks repeating the conditions under which harm occurred.

Safeguarding reform that is not accompanied by theological honesty will remain fragile. Procedures may improve. Language may change. But survivors will continue to sense when the institution is more concerned with its own coherence than with their reality.

The Church of England does not need to become flawless in order to safeguard well. It needs to become truthful. That truthfulness will not always look like success. It may look like loss of confidence, loss of authority, and loss of control.

A theology of failure does not offer a programme for renewal. It offers a discipline of staying with what has gone wrong, without rushing to redeem the institution’s image. In the long run, that discipline may be the only ground on which genuine safeguarding culture can grow.

The gospel already gives us a language for this moment. In Gethsemane, Jesus does not ask his disciples to act, resolve, or redeem. He asks them to remain: “Stay here with me. Watch and pray.” Their failure is not cruelty but flight — an inability to remain present to fear, grief, and impending loss.

Safeguarding cultures fail in much the same way. The rush to process, closure, and reassurance often masks a deeper refusal to stay awake to what has been revealed. A theology of failure is, at heart, a Gethsemane theology: a discipline of presence that resists sleep, refuses innocence, and remains with truth long enough for something other than self-protection to emerge.

Until the Church learns to remain with failure without rushing to redeem itself, safeguarding reform will remain fragile and the gospel’s judgement will remain quietly in place: then he came and found them sleeping (Matthew 26:40).

by Stephen Parsons

Looking back over my time as an incumbent within the Church of England, I realise that one of the most difficult tasks I faced was promoting a style of music and worship that people coming from a variety of church backgrounds would find acceptable.  There appeared to be, in my second parish where I served 16 years, no overarching local parish tradition stretching back decades.  Everyone seemed to have arrived at our church from somewhere else. Their worship and music preferences were based on the way things had been done in their old church.  These preferences might reflect a memory of a much-loved Father X.  He was the main influence who did things properly when they were young adults.  Others had memories of lively London churches where the sermons had lasted thirty minutes or more and everyone was expected to follow the preacher as he flipped from one biblical passage to another with great speed.  We, like most churches at the time, followed a middle of the road approach, with the hope that every member of the congregation would somehow fit in with what was on offer without too much struggle.

In this difficult process of finding a middle way in worship, I was helped in 1995 by the publication by Kevin Mayhew of Hymns Old and New, Anglican Edition.  This hymn book made a genuine and, for a short time, successful attempt to weld together in one book all the different strands of hymnody used then by Anglicans.  Thus, we had all the old favourites which older members had been singing for a lifetime, combined with newer gospel songs and Taize chants.  For Anglo-Catholics there were some loved hymns like Sweet Sacrament Divine.  It was indeed a comprehensive attempt to allow everyone literally to ‘sing from the same hymn-sheet’.  The illusion of a successful uniting of everyone in singing from one book did not, sad to say, last very long.  New gospel songs were being written and were in demand by evangelical members of the congregation. Because they were too new to be in the hymn book, any use of this kind of music involved printing the words on sheets of paper or having them projected on to screens.  We were having, of course, to fill in forms from the copyright organisation, CCLI.   This method of keeping bang up to date with some of the music that was appearing all the time was made possible by a small but enthusiastic music group.

My final parish in Scotland did not have any relationship with this contemporary strand of gospel music and so I personally have little understanding of this style of Christian worship.  In the 23 years since leaving the earlier parish which had explored this music, at least some of the time, I have been aware of a variety of current styles that have appeared and sometimes disappeared during this period.  John Wimber made quite an impression on me in 1992 when I attended a conference using his so-called Vineyard style of music.  There have been in later years other genres, among them Hillsong and Bethel, injecting their distinct contributions of musical style into many congregations.  My reader might wonder why I have introduced this topic of gospel music, while admitting almost total ignorance of what it is.  I do, in fact, from the little I do know, recognise that these types of music may, for some, inject something valuable into a contemporary search for God.  Nevertheless, my wider experience of worship and study of the Christian tradition over several decades suggests certain important caveats.

 In years gone by there was always an understanding that the ultra-Anglo-Catholic styles of worship involved an audience in some kind of ‘show’, one which is not all that far from the experience provided by a theatrical entertainment   A catholic mass, whether or not held in an Anglican setting, has typically sought to engage a range of senses, including sight and smell.  Such an engagement with the senses is, of course, quite different from the experience of listening to the melodies of a worship-band, but both involve an aesthetic (enjoyable) engagement of some kind.  Art in the broadest sense, whether visual or auditory, has this capacity of pointing an individual to God while transcending the intellect.  This non-rational dimension (as opposed to irrational) needs to be valued in our understanding of how we approach the divine.  The problem arises when we value one and downgrade another. Many Christians become so accustomed to one form of aesthetic experience that they are dismissive of any other attempt to articulate any other cultural expression of the divine.  In short, they want their hymnbook to leave out all the hymns and songs that do not pass their test of being sufficiently on trend or in accordance with contemporary taste, however this is judged.

A second issue I have with gospel music is the way that it is inherently fickle.  Today’s trending band which produces an acclaimed Christian song, which is sung in evangelical churches all over the world may be forgotten tomorrow.  Fashion seems to be a phenomenon of the Christian music industry, and this might explain why the vast majority of Gospel music songs have only a short shelf life.  I understand that much of the substantial output from Hillsong music has already disappeared after the discovery of financial and sexual scandal in the sprawling empire created by its Australian founder, Brian Houston.  Having never listened to this genre of music, I cannot comment whether these extinctions are justified from an artistic/theological perspective.  But purely from this inability to survive and become part of the classical repertoire of mainstream Christian worship needs, allows one to suspect that much of the so-called modern Christian music scene will never become part of the classical Christian repertoire in the way that much hymnody has, in some cases, survived for centuries.

Contemporary gospel music and bands seem to be an essential part of the activity known as Church planting.  Typically, a large successful congregation which models itself on the style and theology of Holy Trinity Brompton, will hive off fifty or so of its members to go off to another geographical area and start a new worshipping congregation.  Such church plants are not always successful, but the reasons for their success or failure are not the focus of our concern at this point.  What is of interest is that in every example of a church plant I am aware of, a band able to play gospel music is an essential ingredient for the plant.  The calculation is that new members, particularly the young, will only be attracted to the new congregation if they can identify with the style of worship music on offer.   It is no coincidence that if a church plant is successful, and some are, the culture and atmosphere of the congregation will be markedly different from traditional Anglican worship.  The output of gospel songs that is inevitably a feature of these new congregations may indeed attract a new clientele but there is little to hold older members of the Church who have known from childhood a totally different style and culture of Christian worship.

If, as we suggest, the Church of the future is going to be marked by strong cultural and theological divergence, this future is also a place where we may find ourselves in mourning for the days of the single ‘hymn book’.  The culture chasm of the present, that is clearly visible in the radically diverse variety of music and song, will eventually become an unbridgeable gulf between two non- comprehending and mutually alien styles of worship.  I recently heard of a parish priest not far from here who had never engaged with the 1662 BCP or attended or led a traditional Evensong.  This was not just a regrettable absence from the worship pattern of a single modestly sized parish in a rural location, but a lacuna to be found within certain parts of an entire theological training tradition.  Liturgy as a distinct discipline within the study of theology for those preparing for ordination seems, in this case, to have been entirely dropped for this group of recently ordained clergy.  Another casualty seems to be the study of Church history, particularly the period from AD 100 -1500.  When the planting of new congregations is left to individuals who have little or no understanding of the past where the rich springs of Christian worship are to be found, we quickly find we have a denomination that is unable to communicate with itself. 

To sum up my reflection on Christian music and the current style of worship songs that are strongly promoted in the congregations representing the ‘church plant generation’, we have a problem.  The problem is not whether the music and lyrics of these songs are good or bad; that is an aesthetic and theological question.  The problem arises from having two mutually uncomprehending styles of worship in the same Church.  I personally value the hymn book tradition and the choral foundations that are maintained in our Anglican cathedrals.  I do not expect everyone to share my appreciation of these traditions, but I ask that both sides of our current cultural chasm, especially the leaders, make some real attempt to understand what else is going on in the Church through the medium of music and well-ordered liturgy.  That might enrich our understanding of God as we engage with the rich traditions that have sustained Christian worship for two thousand years.

By Anonymous

Editor: This is an account of an individual who, in the setting of a university Christian Union, encountered terrible spiritual abuse leading to serious trauma.  I do not intend here to draw out all the lessons to be learned in this story but the depth of cruelty exhibited in the mentoring by a female Christian leader is breath-taking.  To call such conservative teaching biblically faithful is a dishonouring of the Christian message.  Is it necessary to impose such grotesque suffering on an individual in the name of Christian Orthodoxy? Spiritual torture is strong language, but for this description of Anon’s experience it seems fully justified. 

This story begins in 2001 when I began medical school training to become a doctor.  From that year until 2023 I believed that the emotional and spiritual torture I was enduring was part of the cost of being a Christian trying to follow Jesus.  In summary I have now come to understand that my entire adult life has been destroyed by abuse within the part of the church that describes itself as conservative evangelical.

Looking back to the beginning of my medical training I can remember vividly the welcome given me by Christians as a young vulnerable woman of 19.  I was then desperately missing the close-knit rural community which was my home and my boyfriend of some years. The relationship we enjoyed was deep and committed and it was maintained during the first university years in spite of the inconveniences of distance and train travel.

My initial relationship with the Christian Union was unexceptionable and the group I mixed with were inclusive and non-judgmental, though I was aware from early on that something stricter reserved for those who made more spiritual commitment. For the first two years I was on the fringe but in my third year started to attend events more regularly. I was drawn by the clarity, certainty and earnestness of the Bible studies and gospel presentations.  Two of my best friends had committed to a large student C of E Church and I followed their lead.

I started to realise that my relationship was not approved of – it was sexual and he wasn’t a Christian. These issues around sex were a major focus of teaching among students at the time with the “Pure” course being promoted heavily by UCCF. The CU in my city had also split over doctrinal issues and only students from the four most Conservative Churches were attending. The inference was that if you could not sign the UCCF doctrinal basis of belief you were not a true Christian. Churches that did not teach these doctrines were considered not biblical and not true to Jesus.

I found myself in an irreconcilable bind.  On the one hand I believed Jesus had died for me and wanted to follow him. But I also loved my boyfriend of five years and we were totally committed to each other. He didn’t want to pursue a faith but was supportive of me doing that.

I felt under pressure to stop the sexual side of our relationship, and he still stood by me.

I was invited to join a six-week course with a group of girls from the Church, looking specifically at what the Bible had to say to female students. This was led by a full-time female staff member of the Church and a medical student, also female, who had taken a year out to work for the Church.

The course started with broad messages of forgiveness and acceptance through Christ. As the weeks went on the applications became more focused on analysing our thoughts and behaviours looking for areas where we weren’t living with Jesus as Lord. The last session wasn’t on university premises but at the home of the main leader. She delivered a blistering case for how having a non-Christian boyfriend was not consistent with a wholehearted commitment for Jesus. She said that marrying a non-Christian was unthinkable.

Hearing this caused me to break down in tears at the impossibility this presented.  The younger leader put her arm around me. The older leader looked disdainful, angry and pleased. Following the course, I tried to put this out of my mind and continued in my relationship with my boyfriend. I wanted to pursue my faith but in a way that was faithful and loving to my boyfriend.

Sometime later, I had the offer of a one-to-one Bible Study was made through the Church and I signed up. My friend had had two very good experiences of this with older women in the Church. Either of whom I now think would have been much better equipped to mentor me.

However, I was allocated (and I wonder if this was intentional to my circumstances) to the woman who had led the course which had caused my upset.

To start with, I was wowed by the way she explained Mark’s gospel and Jesus seemed to walk out of the pages. Jesus’ deity, authority and the stark call to follow him wholeheartedly, or not at all, seemed impossible to deny or resist.

This mentor also encouraged me to attempt to present my own evangelistic talks for her to critique. I tried to decline saying that I didn’t think I would ever do that in real life. She was stern and overrode me. Said it was important to “train for the harder thing”. She gave me clear pointers from the passage for the first talk and was full of praise for what I produced and my “gifts” and intelligence. The next session was a different matter. She did not guide me on what my main point should be that time. She slated me for my misinterpretation of the passage. I felt humiliated.

In our sessions, we would often talk about my boyfriend and his family.  I hoped that, as she realised the depth and quality of the relationship, she would see that the hard line, “you must not have a non-Christian boyfriend” didn’t apply in my situation. However, when we came to talk about it several months in, she indicated firmly that her view had not changed at all.  She added that none of the vicars at the Church would marry us as it would be against their conscience.

She took me on a tour of the Bible pointing out many passages that forbade a Christian to marry a non-Christian. She was persuasive, convinced and zealous on the issue.

I felt utterly trapped with no right course of action ahead of me. Both my boyfriend and my parents thought this teaching was bizarre and wrong, but their opinion was dismissed by my mentor because they were not Christians. The same thing was said about the opinion of believers from other denominations.  It was decried on the basis of it not being biblical and coming from a lack of submission to the authority of Scripture.

My boyfriend went on a Christianity Explored course and started to attend Church. He even made a profession of faith and begged me to marry him. I desperately wanted to but had been made to feel that to do so without certainty he was a Christian was unwise. My mentor advised me that if I couldn’t marry him then I should end the relationship to reduce the damage to each other and so my boyfriend had more chance of meeting someone else.

I was beside myself.

I went on my elective placement in West Africa for six weeks. As soon as I got back I went to see my boyfriend. I was delighted and relieved to be reunited with him. It had been very difficult to communicate while I was abroad. We did not talk about matters of faith until later in the day.      But, when we did, he told me that he hadn’t been to church while I was away. He wanted us to stay together but he couldn’t pretend that he could live the conservative evangelical lifestyle.

A guttural sound of pain came from out of my chest. I felt that I had no choice but to end our relationship, that it was what Jesus required of me. But nothing in me wanted to do it.

We said an agonized goodbye and I was utterly distraught. We had been together for nearly seven years. I had never known adult life without him. I went back to university in a dreadful state. My mentor met with me but was harsh. She said that my pain was the consequence of sex outside of marriage. She suggested I ask the Holy Spirit to show me more of my sin.

That night I prayed and came to think that I was so selfish I hadn’t wanted my boyfriend to become a Christian. That I had selfishly wanted the relationship to meet my own needs but that I hadn’t put God or him first. A couple in the Church noticed my distress and tried to support me, though they still kept to the party line that I couldn’t marry him. I had done the right thing.

I went to speak to a Church staff member who was known to offer grief counselling.  He was also desperately cruel, told me to put my grief in a box, stop wallowing and that I was going around trying to find people to tell me what I wanted to hear. Chillingly, he also said if I continued in that way, I was in danger of never getting over my boyfriend.

The couple continued to support me but stopped me from phoning my boyfriend or from contacting him when I went home for Christmas. They primed me not to listen to my parents who were begging me to reconsider and worried I was in a cult. The couple said they couldn’t understand as they weren’t Christians.  Over this time, the husband gradually groomed me into a sexual relationship with himself. He told me it was good for me to realise I could fall in love and have sex with someone else.

He knew that I was suicidal and hearing voices. He and his wife set themselves up as the only people who could support me through my trial.

The earlier coercive control by the Church leaders and the couple rendered me additionally vulnerable to the sexual abuse from a predator.

Eventually I escaped them and tried to build a life. I had convinced myself that I had followed the only biblical course of action, that I could not have married my boyfriend. Though I never understood why God would put me through all of that.

I became a GP, married a Christian, had three children. I thought I was perfectly happy.

Then my ex-boyfriend’s Dad died. My life imploded, I was hit with a wave of dreadful realisation that what I had believed to be conviction by the Holy Spirit 18 years previously had in fact been coercion.

This triggered an unravelling in my life akin to coming out as gay. I realised that I had suppressed an exclusive lifelong love for my ex-boyfriend because of the pressure from my Church community. That suppression was only ever going to be temporary and time had run out.

I have had extensive counselling and fantastic support from friends (mostly outside the Church) and family. I believe the best outcome from here is for me to get through each day as best I can for the sake of my children.  I fight for admission of wrongdoing and apology from those involved but (apart from one person who has apologised repeatedly and supported me hugely) this has not been given.

To return to my title, what about the women?

Attempts were and have been made to achieve justice in some form for John Smyth’s and Jonathan Fletcher’s male victims during the lifetime of the abusers.

David Fletcher’s female victims were not acknowledged until after his death.

Does the Church find it even easier to discredit, blame and discard the testimony of women abused while under their “care”?

Does this make it unsafe for women to disclose until much later in life?

Carrying the shame and blame that belongs to their abusers for them.  Potentially twenty years longer than their male counterparts?

This misogyny provides a greater protection for those who abuse women. They may never have to face up to the consequences of their actions in their life.

I believe research is being carried out into what happens to women when they speak out about their abuse in faith settings.

My experience suggests this is greatly needed.

The psychological, spiritual and relational scars I bear are lifelong and debilitating.

Not all abuse is visible – or provable.

Not all torture involves physical injury.

Coercive control in a spiritual setting removes meaningful choice and invalidates consent as much for women as for men.

The effects wreak havoc and destruction at the deepest level of your being, regardless.

 

In the Channel 4 programme, See No Evil, we revisited the horrific activities of John Smyth and some of the pain experienced by the victims of his sadistic cruelty.  The bulk of the facts in this story have already been laid out for us in Andrew Graystone’s excellent account, Bleeding for Jesus.  While we learnt little new information about what went on in the shed in a Winchester garden, there were aspects of the story which were fresh to us in the new programme.  For me, and no doubt for many of my readers, there was a welcome attempt in the programme to understand the part played by John Smyth’s wife, Anne, in the saga.  It is clear from witnesses that she was close to the shameful events that took place in England and Africa, but always seemed to be in the background, unable to do or say anything decisive to ward off the cruel and criminal activities of her husband. 

In the Channel 4 retelling of the story, we watched once more the confrontation scene in Bristol when Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News ambushed John Smyth and challenged him to defend himself from the accusations of abusing young men through his regime of beatings.  This now familiar episode which has been played every time the Smyth story has been told, also contained images of Anne a few steps behind him.  It probably did not strike me the first time I watched the drama, but eventually I cottoned on to the fact that Anne’s expression on her face was wildly out of kilter with what might have been expected in this situation.  When a wife sees her husband accused of a terrible crime, the expected response might be an angry rebuttal.  Alternatively, there might be a concerned look of fear or shame etched on to the face.  Anne’s face showed neither emotion.  Instead, what we witnessed might be described as a embarrassed grin.  This was suggestive of a total detachment from the dramatic and life-changing events taking place on this Bristol street.   The half-smiling face that Anne was presenting to us revealed absolutely nothing of her actual feelings at that moment.  This apparent lack of engagement with the Bristol drama suggested that Anne had indeed already found a way to cope as another ‘survivor’ of Smyth’s crimes.  In the later interview with two of her children, which was part of the second instalment of Channel 4’s programme, she confessed to her children how she had shut down part of herself in order not to allow herself to react or get drawn into the dramas around her.  I leave it to others to decide as to whether this kind of repression is any defence which might lessen her guilt and responsibility.  Guilty or not, it may be right for us to suggest that Anne’s responsibility in Smyth’s crimes can be compared to a situation where cultic dynamics are at work.  One of the situations that presented Americans with a far-reaching moral debate in the 70s was the case of Patty Hearst.  Patty was kidnapped by the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army.  Somehow her captors succeeded in persuading this wealthy heiress to become part of the organisation and Patty was recruited to take part in a bank robbery where she was clearly seen to be using a rifle to threaten bank employees.  We can think of this turn-around as a kind of inverted conversion experience.  Such conversions are frequently discussed and analysed in the cult literature.    The human brain certainly seems capable of making a 180-degree change when certain forms of persuasion techniques are applied.  This can be observed within the context of political settings as well as religious contexts.  Was Anne Smyth the object of a cultic conversion in the context a cult-like environment which John Smyth had created within his own home?

To continue my speculation on the baffling key role that Anne Smyth seems to have played in Smyth/Winchester crimes, I believe that we should see her personality formation as belonging to two distinct phases.  The first of these phases would have been as a child in what was likely to have been a conventional conservative Christian family.  For many such families, making a good marriage was counted more important than having a successful career.  While we do not have access to the detail of Anne’s early family life, it is not unreasonable to suggest that her upbringing was preparing her to conform to biblical ideas of what a good Christian wife should be.   There are various key passages in Scripture which describe the ideals to which a good Christian girl should aspire.  Words like obedience and subservience to parents and to a future husband would have formed a prominent part in the culture.  There has been much discussion over recent decades over the meaning of complementarian to describe the relation of the sexes, but in the typical evangelical interpretation of this word there always seems to be a surrender of initiative and power to the men in the relationship.  No doubt Anne was reared to accept these ideas of female subordination as a given.   The Iwerne culture, which has been examined on many occasions in this blog, forbade the women, who were recruited to do the chores in the camps, to interact with the men.  It was probably thought to be a way of training these young women to look up to the menfolk.  They were, biblically speaking, thought to be in command and, in the context of marriage, these men would always to have the last word.   Anne may have been one of these ‘bunnies’ but, even if not, the model of subservient womanhood so valued by evangelical leaders from their reading of scripture, would have been practised in the Smyth household.

Alongside this biblical model of how to be a woman as promoted by mainstream evangelical culture, there seems to have been a darker dimension of dominance, subordination and control alive and at work in the Smyth household.  The very fact that there were happening in the garden of the family home secret episodes involving trauma, pain and the shedding of human blood was extraordinary.  The dynamics of the Smyth family have the hallmarks of a small cult.  The typical pattern of a cult will include a strong centre of control, normally a male, who carries all authority over the women and children under him.  These dominant male figures in a cultic situation typically suffer from a narcissistic personality disorder.  This is a personality type that thrives on constantly occupying the central dominant role in a group.  His (typically male) position flourishes in having others under him, preserving a stance of constant obedience and subordination.  John Smyth was known for his volcanic temper which no doubt had the effect of preserving his position in the family by means of exercising a fear-engendering control.  Fear of John was spoken of by one of the Smyth daughters and we may reasonably conjecture that the dynamic of fear was firmly embedded in the husband wife system of relating.

John damaged and destroyed the lives of many during his lifetime.  There were in England and Africa at least 100 victims of his sadistic behaviour wrapped up in a faux Christian rhetoric.   The family should be included in this total for reasons that were made abundantly clear in the second Channel 4 programme.  One of the appalling lessons of the Smyth story is that John may have failed to realise even with the wisdom of old age that he was behaving in a way that completely denied the central tenets of the faith.  The corrupt theology that he lived by caused terrible damage to everyone that he came into touch with.  He seems to have genuinely believed that he was practising a way of life that promoted human flourishing, through adherence to certain passages of sacred Scripture.  As we all know, he will be remembered as the most prolific abuser that the Church has ever known.  The unnamed ‘spear carriers’ in John’s story, those who taught him his cultic version of the faith or those later who did nothing to challenge his behaviour, have also played a part in the story.  Other unknown individuals played a part in Anne’s story by having taught her a version of the faith which encouraged her to acquiesce in a position of meek female subjection to the dominance exercised by John in the home.   However we look at it, there is a disturbing and unsettling coda to the terrible pain that existed and emerged from the Smyth family.  Can we really slip away from the story by claiming that the Smyths failed to live up to the clear moral imperatives of the Christian faith?  Should we not begin to recognise that the most dreadful psychologically disturbed individuals can, if not challenged, justify cruel destructive behaviour with the words of Scripture.  Perhaps we need to be far more careful before we decide that we know what the Bible truly teaches. 

by an anonymous member of the Church of England

Rural ministry in the Church of England is a world apart from the busy city churches of provincial towns and the lively modern leaning evangelical congregations found in conurbations.   If you’ve never worshipped in a small rural parish, imagine belonging to a small residents’ association where everyone is terribly polite whilst expressing very strong opinions, everything smells slightly damp and dusty, and the person in charge has indefinite job security, absolute authority, and may lack any of the practical or spiritual skills normally associated with being a vicar.

Picture one typical rural benefice.   The priest-in-charge arrived three years ago from a nearby parish, where, it now transpires, her ministry had evolved spectacularly badly.  The lay interview panel were not made aware of her past failures.  Had they been, they would have been alert to the danger, I am sure, of appointing her to a benefice so similar to the one in which she had failed so publicly.  That posting ended with both the incumbent and the parishioners begging the bishop for her to be moved elsewhere, which was done under cover of COVID.  The more cynical felt she might have been drawn to parish ministry because of the provision of a house and an ‘easier’ life. 

Parishioners in this benefice thought they had chosen a new vicar to engage with parishioners, cherish their elderly, and shepherd their community with gentle wisdom, much as the previous incumbent had done most successfully.  Unfortunately, what they got (promoted by the area bishop behind the scenes), was an entirely unsuitable incumbent.    She is devoid of social skills or empathy and is painfully shy.  This manifests itself as unfriendliness and a passive aggressive approach to interaction with lay people, alongside a particular hatred for some individuals, whom she perceives as a threat.  She seems lazy and unwilling to carry out her duties, whether administrative, pastoral or spiritual.   She finds it hard to project herself in the services so that worship is generally irredeemably dreary.    

Realising the problems, five out of seven churches’ wardens asked their Archdeacon to intercede and to devise ways in which they could help the incumbent.   The wardens described to the Archdeacon the incumbent’s various failings: the poor quality of the services, the fact that the previous vicar had managed to take a huge number of services and she managed less than half that number, her continuous grumbling about the number of funerals which occur (not unsurprisingly in a rural community popular with retirees), her lack of interest in meeting her parishioners and her complete failure to provide any pastoral care.  When challenged on this point she complained ‘what about pastoral care for me?!’   

The Archdeacon confessed that he did recognise the resurgence of difficulties as in her previous post.  He spent the remainder of the meeting explaining that he did not actually employ the priest and he was not, therefore, her line manager.   He therefore could not help, beyond talking to her.    The Archdeacon conceded that the priest was probably out of her depth but reassured the wardens that she was unlikely to last more than a year or two and would retire.   This, he seemed to think, was a solution. 

Soon the incumbent became aware of the increasing noise of criticism and her behaviour became aggressive and vindictive, directed against various lay members of the churches, whom she cast as ‘troublemakers’.   She cancelled all further benefice meetings for churchwardens, a ‘divide and conquer’ policy, thus depriving them and their congregations of a voice.

The cold war then instigated by the priest in charge with one of the smaller parishes in the benefice is remarkable. Members of the lay community thus sought help from the area bishop.

The priest removed any responsibility for funerals, weddings and baptisms from that parish’s churchwardens.  She asked in writing that one particular warden communicate with her only through a third party, a retired clergyman.   Services taken by the priest in this parish are miserable and her attitude to the congregation is unfriendly and cold.   There is no ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ to the wardens, or ‘thank you’, no friendly engagement with the congregation and the services are lacklustre.  She brings with her to every service a ‘chaperone’, who is robed and skulks around the altar with no discernible purpose, except presumably, to protect the incumbent against attack! Frankly, the congregation dreads these encounters, and it has shrunken from ten to six people.   A congregation of this size cannot afford to lose anyone.

The service rota for these Christmas weeks sadly included no services for this particular victimised parish – nothing between mid-November and mid-January.    Villagers are left disappointed and bewildered that their church will be ‘dark’ over Christmas.

The incumbent also requires a chaperone (a retired clergyman) to attend PCC meetings, which, the latter noted, were most friendly, cheerful and constructive events!

There has been some good news.   This benefice is much blessed with a supply of popular retired clergy who are willing and able to join the life of the seven parishes and lend a hand with services.   But unfortunately, the present incumbent feels threatened by these thoroughly professional and experienced clergy, perhaps thinking that they will expose her shortcomings.   The retired clergy have no such intentions and simply want to help spiritually and practically in villages which are now their forever homes.   To this end the incumbent has banned them from taking services in the troublesome parish and has removed them from the service rota.  They have been warned not to attend any church-related events in that village or even social occasions unrelated to the church.    Those retired clergy feel they must comply, through a mistaken belief (I think) that the priest could remove Permission to Officiate, were they to break these rules.  Surely not?  

These are small acts of administrative vengeance wielded with a bureaucratic sledgehammer to destructive effect. Combine this with a diocesan hierarchy reluctant to confront conflict or take responsibility, and the result is inevitable: a priest who behaves like a minor autocrat, and parishes left waving for help.  One might think this would concern the diocesan authorities.

Rural life, with its particular rhythms, expectations, and social glue, is often misunderstood by diocesan officials and possibly they are not interested and simply regard rural parishes as sources of money, for which they ask continually.  These seven parishes struggle to pay their parish shares because of dwindling numbers. 

Rural ministry throughout England is in dire straits.  A dwindling number of clergy (and a dwindling number of congregants) means that parishes are bolted together into larger and larger, and more unwieldy, benefices.  The benefice described here has seven parishes but twelve and fourteen are not unknown.   The job of incumbent is thus almost impossible.   But some priests do a grand job, nonetheless.   They get congregations onside so that they will share the burdens and support their priest in practical ways.   Such priests get to know every family and build social contacts that go both ways and provide help and support for all parties when needed.    Congregants are often elderly and successful clergy understand that funerals are pastoral events, not inconvenient blockages in the clerical diary.  Support of bereaved families is also essential and ongoing, but if a priest builds connections in each village this will happen naturally with the help and support of residents.

To make matters worse, bishops and archdeacons seem overstretched, spiritually lacking, and keen to avoid dealing with parish disputes. So poor leadership goes unchallenged, on the wobbly premise that church law states that diocese do not ‘employ’ their parish priests and so nothing can be done.

Unfortunately, this priest in charge has decided, having alienated all those who might help her, to isolate herself within a tight group of four friends, who will ‘defend her’ against all criticism and opposition. Sadly, two of these are themselves churchwardens and are thus not representing the views of the two congregations which they lead.

The parishes endure because they know the church is bigger than one priest.

They endure because Christmas comes whether clergy approve or not.

They endure because there will always be someone willing to stand up, light a candle, and declare that the story of Christ’s birth is not affected by diocesan ham-fistedness and incompetence.

And most of all, they endure because humour is the final defence of the Anglican soul. When faced with ecclesiastical incompetence, they do not riot. They do not revolt.
They make tea.  They swap stories.  They pray that one day they will find a priest they trust. And so these little parishes soldier on, powered mostly by cake, stubbornness and resilience.

In a strange way, this incumbent has achieved something extraordinary. By neglecting her work and her parishes, by waging bureaucratic and administrative war on her wardens, by exercising authority with a supreme lack of grace, she has inadvertently reminded us that the church is not run from the bishop’s palace, the deanery, and nor from the vicarage.

It is run—quietly, stubbornly, lovingly—from the pews.   And the parish(es) will always outlast the priest.

It is difficult to see what, if anything, of the problems in rural ministry, the difficulties of multi-parish benefices and the vetting of ordinands will be effectively dealt with.   Some more practical, real solutions would be useful with a manual on how to apply them.   Rural churches are in dire straits.   The Church of England needs to grasp the nettle.

The opinion piece ‘Church of England Must Rapidly Accelerate Safeguarding Reforms’ by Anon 17 November 2025 https://survivingchurch.org/2025/11/17/church-of-england-must-rapidly-accelerate-safeguarding-reforms/#comment-26329 highlights the problems in the Church of England’s safeguarding when it comes to those accused of safeguarding concerns including abuse. Reading about the harm that bishops (and archbishops and other safeguarding officers) can do to accused clergy is shocking. However, Anon fails to prioritise those who have been abused by Church of England clergy (and other church officers) and this is a significant omission which skews the priorities of safeguarding.

The Charity Commission’s statement https://www.gov.uk/government/news/church-of-england-charity-must-rapidly-accelerate-safeguarding-reforms urges the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England to do better and speed up the process of establishing good safeguarding practice. The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England’s reply https://www.churchofengland.org/media/press-releases/archbishops-council-response-charity-commission-case-review is unhelpfully defensive and only serves to minimise reputational damage, thus failing to prioritise those abused by clergy and completely ignoring the needs of clergy accused of safeguarding concerns by bishops.

The Church of England has a terrible record of abuse to children, young people, vulnerable adults and those who trusted clergy as safe people. Abuse can be physical, sexual, spiritual, psychological, emotional, financial, be neglectful or include maltreatment as listed in the draft Abuse Redress Measure https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/50136/documents/270512/default/  There is now not only acknowledgement of the abuse by clergy, but there is also the offer of financial compensation https://www.churchofengland.org/safeguarding/redress-scheme for those who have experienced clergy abuse. The Church of England is to be commended for recognising that abuse has been taking place and for planning financial redress.

To be clear to readers, this author is someone who has experienced abuse by Church of England clergy, and has also been referred to as a victim, a survivor, and a victim-survivor of Church of England clergy abuse. This author is not a member of the Church of England clergy and has never been investigated by the Church of England safeguarding team.

Abuse hurts. Abuse has long term harmful health impacts and can negatively alter the lives of those who have experienced it. Abuse by Church of England clergy hurts in additional ways affecting trust, belonging, faith and spiritual identity. It is hurtful that Anon challenges the lived experiences of those who survive Church of England clergy abuse by focussing only on clergy accused of safeguarding concerns including abuse, seemingly ignoring those abused by clergy. It is also hurtful to see the word ‘victims’ used by Anon in a vague catch-all way to indicate, perhaps, although this is also not clear, both ‘victims of abuse’ and ‘victims who continue to suffer’ without it being clear if this refers to those who have experienced clergy abuse or clergy accused of abuse, thus failing to distinguish who is a victim of what and by whom.

Clarity is important. It is wrong to assume that those abused by clergy as well as clergy accused of abuse by Church of England bishops can both belong on the same safeguarding failure continuum. Those who have been abused by clergy, clergy who abuse, and clergy accused of safeguarding concerns are not all ‘victims together’ in some confused sentiment of grievance against the Church of England. Anon writes of ‘unspecified, vague or false allegations of ‘safe-guarding concerns’ but does not acknowledge that such allegations can originate from those abused by clergy, or that the accused clergy could include those who have indeed carried out abuse. There is no admission by Anon that those speaking up about abuse might do so honestly, exposing a truth of harmful experiences that are difficult to report. As someone who has experienced clergy abuse, it hurts to be sidelined by opinion pieces which prioritise clergy on the receiving end of the Church of England’s flawed safeguarding policies and practices when discussing the Charity Commission’s statement and the Archbishops Council’s response.

There is no doubt that for any clergy to be accused of safeguarding concerns including abuse can cause many problems. It is to be acknowledged that for the church to undertake safeguarding in a way which leaves accused clergy spiritually, psychologically, emotionally or financially damaged, neglected or maltreated is very bad practice. Anon is right to say the Church of England’s safeguarding practice is ‘in a frightful state’. But without first getting safeguarding right for those abused by clergy as the Church of England’s priority, clergy accused of safeguarding concerns including abuse will never be treated with fairness or given the support they need. And opinion pieces which present the Church of England’s safeguarding as having ‘all the safety and robustness of medieval witch trials’ risk enabling clergy who abuse because they too can claim they have been unfairly treated when they should be held to account.

So please, Anon, get this the right way round! Demand that the Church of England first improves safeguarding for those who have experienced clergy abuse, then hold abusive clergy to account but bishops must do this in a way that is fair and also supportive of clergy who abuse to help protect against additional harms. Prioritise those who have been abused because their world has shifted to become unsafe by Church of England clergy who should have been trustworthy. This is the most urgent safeguarding issue – that the Church of England’s safeguarding fails to protect those abused by clergy and fails to hold to account clergy who abuse. Putting those abused by clergy first is vital if the Church of England’s safeguarding is to ever improve. Only then can there be any hope of fairness in the management of clergy accused of abuse or safeguarding concerns.

Name and details withheld

by Stephen Parsons

One of the incontestable facts about the Church of England is that parishes designated as conservative evangelical seem to have few problems in raising money.  Other mainstream parishes around them are likely envious as they see large sums of money flowing into these churches.  Expensive sound systems and huge reordering projects costing millions seem never to be a problem for these conservative congregations.  Meanwhile the ordinary non-conservative parish next door struggles to pay the Parish Share and keep their plant in good order.  For the first church, money appears easily; for the other it involves a hard and time-consuming struggle.  What is the reason for this disparity?  The answer is probably to be found in a single word – tithing.

The practice of tithing is held up to be a biblical practice with the authority of passages from Numbers and Leviticus.  In a typical passage, like Numbers 18.21-24, it is a compulsory obligation to maintain the work of the Levites from the resources made available from tithe giving.  This giving of the tenth or a tithe has been maintained as a model or principle on Jews and Christians ever since.  In a typical conservative congregation, all the passages about tithing will be familiar. In many other authoritarian religious groups, whether or not part of the Christian tradition, it is applied as a matter of course.  Full membership of that organisation will be withheld unless it can be shown that the member is giving a full tenth of their income.

It is my understanding that the income needed to own property in London, or one of the prosperous areas of the southeast of Britain, is well in excess of £80,000.  Any church catering to this section of the population and has successfully persuaded them to give a tithe of their income, will be enormously wealthy.  We see evidence of this kind of wealth when we see congregations in London employing and housing up to 14 clergy alongside support staff of various kinds.  Tithing, when it is followed through and literally practised, allows many conservative parishes to be both wealthy and exercise considerable power within their dioceses and networks.  The power that comes with such institutional wealth is not always used well.  Sometimes money is withheld from central church funds as a way of trying to manipulate bishops to follow a particular line of teaching favoured by the conservative group.  If we think of the various sections of the Church of England as resembling political parties, we can see clearly how the uber-wealthy right wing conservative section of the Church has the loudest voice in many of the debates over sexuality and other issues, where Christian beliefs and politics coincide.

My reader will not be surprised to learn that I believe that there are other problems to be faced over tithing apart from using parish wealth to promote church political agendas.  My comments on the potential dangers of being part of a tithing congregation are based, not on an individual Church of England parish but on the experience of those whose lives were seriously damaged by their membership of Peniel Church Brentwood.  This congregation, now Trinity Church, is an independent Pentecostal church formerly under Bishop Michael Reid.  Reid, as my long-term readers will know, presided over this cult-like church which attempted to provide for every social and spiritual need among its members.  The more involved that the members became in the life of the church, the more their own power for making decisions over things like jobs, careers, relationships and social life came under the scrutiny and control of the church and its leaders.  As contact with non-member family lessened, so a dependence on the leadership and its approval for all their life decisions increased.  Peniel was clearly at the extreme end of a spectrum of cult-like controlling congregations, but the financial aspects of its life seem to be similar to any church insisting that it has the authority to decide on the level of church giving from its members.  There are two major questions that should be asked by anyone who becomes convinced of the necessity for tithe giving.  In the Old Testament passages that support the idea of the tithe, the tenth, was clearly money that supported the work of the priests and the maintenance of worship conducted in the temple or elsewhere.  The influence of the Temple officials extended to cover a legal system and the areas of administration of society now the responsibility of a civil service. The claim that the money was ‘giving to God’ could be justified since everyone would have accepted the understanding that the whole of society belonged to God.  Such a claim would not work today.  The resources need to keep our schools, police forces and hospitals are paid for by the taxes we pay.  Few people apart from the wealthy can realistically pay a tithe out of the money that remains.  Money of course is needed but the teaching that Numbers provides literal guidance over what should be paid is a position that needs to be debated.  Meanwhile we note that the money that pours into conservative parishes is not just paying the salaries and housing of numerous curates, it is, as we have suggested, also buying power and ‘political’ influence in a church where power is about control of the entire institution.  The genius of the traditional Church of England has always valued the simultaneous coexistence of different styles of worship and even theologies so that everyone may find a spiritual home.  The contemporary scene is one where the theology in operation within the powerful conservative congregations is oppositional.  There is only room here for a single theological narrative, the one favoured by the leader. The internal logic of having a theology that is inerrant demands that you seek to dominate and even destroy whoever does not agree with you.  The language of conflict and raw power is in practice muted in theological discussions, but one still senses in conversations with conservatives how little understanding they have of those who do not understand or concur with the idea that ‘Scripture clearly teaches’.  The politicisation of church life, which is in process today, gives us a painful conflict between those who continue to search for and explore truth and those believe they already have it.    Members of churches which believe they possess the truth are giving large sums of money, not to God but to enable an unholy conflict aimed at undermining and discrediting those who continue to search and ask questions of their faith.

A second question to be asked of those who give a tithe of their income is whether it is being given freely and with joy.  Without knowing, of course, the precise message that accompanies the call for a tithe in conservative churches, one suspects that there is often a hidden element of compulsion about the appeal.  At Peniel the compulsion was open and blatant.  If you don’t give what we determine is your due, then you cannot claim membership of this congregation.   Another way of saying the same thing is to say ‘unless you give a tithe, you do not belong’.  Belonging involves the fulfilment of a powerful area of human need.  Not to belong is to feel the chill air of loneliness and rejection.  In a Christian context the failure to belong evokes another deeper anxiety, the loss of salvation and a rejection from the hope of heaven.  Thus, the giving of a tithe is not being on a path to the joy of spontaneous giving.   Rather, it is a way of avoiding the burden of fear, one that has been placed on one’s back by a manipulative leadership.  This leadership may well be interested also in using the tithe from their members to increase their prestige and power.  In independent churches like Peniel the tithe allowed for for the boosting of the financial status of leaders to an extraordinary degree.  In the case of Michael Reid and his successor, Peter Linnecar, this involved enormous salaries of £70k+ being received by these leaders.  Another financial ‘scam’ that allowed leaders to benefit from the wealth of other tithing churches within their network, was to invite their leaders to preach and then, after accommodating them in luxury hotels, reward them with an enormous love offering.  This invitation would naturally be reciprocated and Peniel’s leaders would jet across the world to preach and receive the same lavish hospitality.   Looking at the practice of giving and receiving business class preaching invitations, one sees something close to a simple racket.   Whether the multimillion tithe giving congregations in the Church of England ever practise the same system of sponsoring each other’s leaders is not something I can know.  Certainly, extravagant pulpit swaps are a feature of church life in the States, and it must be tempting for aspiring leaders in the conservative circles in this country to be on the look-out for such opportunities.

Tithing one’s income to give generously to the local church would appear a way to stave off the ever-present threat of insolvency and debt in many congregations.  But, as we have claimed, the successful imposition of such an incredibly high standard is likely to be combined with a darker narrative.  Within the world of tithing congregations, there is likely to be manipulation, stress and straightforward fear.  I find that even the use of the word brings into my mind controlling and coercive relationships in which emotional blackmail is widely practised.   I end with my two questions.  Where does the money really go?  Is this high standard of giving really being achieved without the benefit of manipulative methods, such as bullying, indirect threats and the imposition of fear? The Lord loves a cheerful giver.  I am not sure he wants anyone who has been bludgeoned into parting with more that can be afforded. 

by Martin Sewell

Trust is a most precious commodity in all walks of life, public private and personal. Readers of the Surviving Church blog will be painfully aware from the stories and opinions shared and discussed in this corner of the internet,  how frequently matters of concern are rooted in such breaches, trust is plainly one of our most core values.

It is universal, and even transcends species. Many of us build bonds with our pets; guide dog owners place their very lives in the hands of their trusted companions  and even wild ferocious animals occasionally enter into trust relationships with humans. When we see this we marvel at how trust overcomes justifiable suspicion and fear.

Trust permeates most of our human activities; the cheer leading young girl at the top of a human pyramid and the army private each  places their trust in others, even putting their lives and well-being  at risk. We expect it to be present in commercial relationships, friendships, families and social activities. We routinely trust our medical professionals, our transport providers our gas fitters and a multitude of others with whom we interact. It is the bedrock of civilised societies.

Those of us brought up in the immediate post war years recall those times with a fondness which later generations may find hard to comprehend. As children we would leave home for hours with our parents having little knowledge of where we were or what we were up to. My own father spoke of walking 2 miles unaccompanied to school in East London during the 1920s. This was not neglect but societal trust; there was an expectation of safety and an implied confidence in other adults to help if the infant needed help. If in doubt one was told to “ask a policeman”.

Such a cohesive trusting society was built in part by a community unified by a common faith and shared language but it was also shaped through the lens of two devastating world wars which, for all their destructive horror,  had engendered a sense of unity and collective national identification and purpose. Servicemen in peril could not afford to be choosey about who afforded them help support or rescue and one was grateful for every part of the mechanism that was capable of prolonging life and returning one home.

We need to remind ourselves that Europe was delivered from the Nazi threat by a segregated army; nevertheless, young white soldiers from Mississippi or Alabama might not share facilities back home with their black black comrades, but when either did their duty and came to the others’ rescue there was a trust discharged and a shared  sense of gratitude and success.

It was the same General Dwight Eisenhower who refused the distraction of desegregating an army in wartime, who as President sent the 101st Airborne to enforce school integration if Little Rock in 1954. Passing through the testing fire – “adversity survived” – brought people together. Those of us who lived in the trust society that continued for many years remember and should commend its virtues.

In sad contrast, we are currently in a very untrusting phase of our national life. There are greats tension across many parts of our modern society because trust has been degraded and betrayed; examples are to0 numerous to list but within the Establishment, the institutions of Monarchy, Church, Parliament, BBC etc there has been a massive undermining of trust within a relatively short period of time.

In part this is attributable to the speed of modern communication which facilitates disclosure, but we appear to be seeing a destruction of public trust at a faster rate than ever before. There have always been failures, but the pig headed refusal to respond adequately in many parts of the privileged culture has been thoroughly unhelpful.

There is another important strand within the problem; the cultural growth of atomised individualism. The philosophy of post-modernism has undermined confidence in our nation, culture and society; this was philosophically deliberate. Simultaneously migration has brought in communities that still operate largely on culturally cohesive principles. If “we Brits” ( whosoever we define that term ) have ceased to have trust in our own institutions and with one another, can anyone be surprised that there is a lack of trust of other communities, whether well integrated or not?

This is a big can of worms, the resolution of which is beyond the scope of one blog post.

It is also way beyond the  Church of England, which is but one small part of a wider set of Christian and other faith communities, here and abroad. Unfortunately I do not expect its House of Bishops or General Synod to remain free from the kind performative pronouncements beyond their remit or expertise.

I hope the CofE becomes justifiably modest in what it thinks it can contribute to this debate on the Crisis of Trust in our national life.

There is good precedent for urging such an narrow focus.

It is all very well to point out  to the specks in the eyes of other people but when it comes to the issue of trust, the Established Church has multiple beams in its own eye as this blog and its knowledgeable commentariat has well documented.

Speaking personally, and having seen Church of England governance at close quarters over several years at Synod, I am convinced that the this corner of the Establishment has much to be modest about. Drawing from that experience of close observation, my three pieces of advice to Church leaders are succinct.

1. If you want to be taken seriously on the national stage, put your own house rapidly in order,  with radical secular truthfulness as your core value. Bluntly – trust the Nolan Principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership over partisan theological exegesis.

2) If you want to be trusted – be trustworthy.

3) Be the Humble Church.

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