The Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) of the Church of England was in action this month, examining the past actions of two senior Anglican clergy.  These were the investigations and findings in the cases of Canon Andrew Cornes and Bishop Paul Butler.  In the case of Paul Butler, there has been an admission of misconduct, though we have not so far been provided with the details of the complaint against him.  Without access to new information, my reactions to his case, if any, will have to be held back for a future occasion. The Cornes judgement has been in the public domain for a week or two and was delivered after an examination of an alleged failure on his part back in 1982.  The complaint against him was in relation to a case of serious professional neglect. This involved his failure to take appropriate action after having information disclosed to him about the behaviour of the notorious abuser, John Smyth.  Cornes was then a curate at the important London parish of All Souls Langham Place.  He had always been part of the Iwerne network but was never a major player. In his book on the Iwerne network, Bleeding for Jesus, Andrew Graystone only mentions Cornes once. Nevertheless, in Makin’s account, Cornes’ lapse was found to be a significant one.  Having received this first-hand information about Smyth’s behaviour from one of his victims, Cornes then failed to take any appropriate action.  He believed that the information he had received was being handled by someone else.  We could describe Cornes’ behaviour, at the very least, as neglectful of the responsibility required of a priest to care for a vulnerable person.  In his defence it was argued that modern safeguarding priorities, structures and concerns were not in operation 44 years ago.  For this reason, it was argued, Cornes, in his early 30s, could not have been expected to report to anyone the information shared with him by the Smyth victim.  The disciplinary tribunal considered this defence but concluded that his professional obligation to care for those who revealed such a disclosure, would have required him to act on this information, thus helping to protect other potential victims from harm.  While he may have shared something of what he knew, these efforts were not followed up.  This neglect allowed the abuse to continue.

I do not know Cornes and our paths have never crossed.  I do however feel a connection with him and his story, since he is only a few years younger than me and the reported events took place in 1982, at a time when I was finding my clerical feet as a young incumbent near Hereford.  Cornes’ clerical professional path has followed a very different pattern to mine and his career has been one of some distinction.   I had begun an independent role as an incumbent in 1979.  This followed two curacies in the Canterbury diocese and a self-funded time of research for two years.  Attaining this post of sole responsibility brought me to a place of cherished freedom and independence, with the opportunity to create something new.   Cornes’ professional trajectory went in a very different direction.  Instead of moving from a team situation to one where he had sole charge, Cornes opted, after his first curacy, to serve a nine year second curacy at the high profile conservative evangelical parish of All Souls Langham Place.  This is one of the London parishes which employ numerous curates.  This pattern of employing a dozen or more clergy creates a very different parochial model to the traditional one.  Within this system, ambitious conservative clergy are given the opportunity to polish their theological and preaching credentials so that they come to the notice of the ‘right’ people, those who employ patronage power within the conservative network. The movers and shakers within that world would see you and eventually you would come to occupy one of the ‘plum’ livings around the country that identify with the All Souls/St Ebbes Oxford style of Evangelicalism.  The churches of this ilk, typically in university cities, are deeply involved with the ministry to students.  The Christian Union network looks to this powerful cluster of churches right across the country to cooperate with its efforts of evangelism.  Working with these churches, there is an active pattern of study groups, prayer teams and numerous other activities that make membership a demanding commitment. 

The tribunal declared that Cornes’ failure to report about Smyth’s behaviour made him guilty of a serious lapse of professional behaviour, even judging the episode by the standards of 1982.  This was long before safeguarding was a ‘thing’ in the Church.  I do not intend to repeat all the arguments that led up to this judgement, apart from noting that they seem eminently reasonable.  Having lived through the period of the early 80s as an incumbent I have tried to think what I would have done faced with the same situation as Cornes.  I believe that in 1982, also in my 30s, and three years into my first incumbency I would never have attempted to deal with such a disclosure alone.  I would have consulted the oldest and wisest priest in the Deanery (who was acting as an unofficial mentor) and sought his advice.  I suspect that he would have directed me, or come with me, to the Archdeacon or suffragan bishop.  Cornes’ failure to do something similar was, I believe, the result of his training and early ministry having placed him in what was effectively a cultic institution.  There are many similarities between the Iwerne network and a full-blown cult.  Each followed a tightly defined version of Christian  orthodoxy which was set out by controlling leaders.  Iwerne’s potential for good was deeply compromised by the behaviour of Smyth and both the Fletcher brothers.  Certainly, the combined capacity to mediate harm by the three, John Smyth, Jonathan F. and David F. was massive, even though many still claim to be grateful for their teaching and ministry.  Cornes had been, like many other alumni of Iwerne, faithfully following the teaching of his mentors while aspiring to eventual leadership in the network.  At this early stage of his life, he would still have been integrated into the black/white cultic thinking of Bash and his followers.  Control by mentors to ensure correct thinking and beliefs would have been part of the quasi-cultic experience.  Are any of us surprised that an intelligent young Christian leader, under these influences, would have failed to take an independent stand when receiving a disclosure of abuse by a cult leader of such charisma and charm?   Independence of thought, especially over moral issues, was not going to be well developed in a young Iwerne alumnus such as Cornes, even in his early thirties.  My own experience of meeting members of that conservative culture during that period was to find myself encountering, not an individual personal appropriation of the Christian faith, but meeting the confident and fluent belief system of a ‘sound’ adherent.  In the immortal words of Adrian Plass, the young Cornes would likely still have been still turning to a metaphorical leader to discover what ‘we think’.  He would have found it quite hard to reconcile two dissonant realities.  There was on the one side the heroic gospel preacher (Smyth) whose gifts of oratory had inspired and encouraged young men like him over many summer camps.  Then there were reports of the same admired individual committing barbaric actions against dozens of men and boys.  One way to process such unpalatable information was to minimise and supress it.  That is what Cornes seems to have done.

 The second cultic aspect of Iwerne theology and culture that seems to be relevant in this situation is its tribal nature.  I have written about the collective mindset carried over from the English public school system and which finds a home in the Iwerne camps and in certain parts of the Church.  The values of loyalty to the team and not letting the side down were extremely important in all the schools that recruited for Iwerne.  For Cornes, there was likely a strong loyalty to this tribe he had grown up with through school, university Christian Unions, theological college and the All Souls network.  All these encounters had made him an honoured and important member of the evangelical tribe.  In this early stage of his life, he would, we have suggested, still have been operating according to the simplistic codes of thinking and morality taught by Bash and his successors to countless generations of young men of his background.  There would have been strong resistance to doing anything or thinking anything that might have been considered disloyalty to this tribe. In summary we seem to be describing the behaviour of a young man enmeshed into a state of dependency and immaturity by the Iwerne cult.    No doubt the post-cult mature Andrew Cornes eventually appeared, having escaped from the spiritual constrictions of his youth. I am confident that the theological method of Bash, which was to apply a favourite bible quote to deal with every problem, would eventually have been set aside.  Iwerne had never encouraged theological reflection, but the needs of ministry demanded it.

Andrew Cornes is, some would think unfairly, being held to account for what he did not, and perhaps could not, do 44 years ago.  He was, it seems, faced with a moral dilemma which the received theology of Iwerne was unable to resolve.  The wider intellectual and spiritual resources of the Christian faith, I would argue, had been denied him by his narrow restricted cultic Christian education and so he failed to make the right call.  By allowing John Smyth, David Fletcher and his brother Jonathan to act as mentors, those within the Iwerne experience were hardly likely to promote wholesome moral teaching among their hearers. Is it surprising the moral teaching imbibed by Cornes as a young man, was off-centre, to say the least?   The finding of the tribunal against Cornes may be quite simply a judgement, not against him personally, but against what many would see to be a morally compromised version of Christianity.  Even now Conservative Evangelical teaching is being allowed to have enormous power in our universities and other institutions where young people are being taught the faith.  In some respects, the black-white thinking of conservative theology is not just wrong – it is often actually traumatising and dangerous to those who hear it. 

At the end of this tribunal process we have a wounded elderly priest who has, no doubt, given of himself to the Church faithfully and loyally over many years.  I am certain that, with his evident gifts, he has been a blessing to many.   The conclusion of the Tribunal has not made a finding against his personal morality which, no doubt, is excellent.  What it has done is, indirectly, to expose the spiritual dangers of poor Christian teaching given by men (in the conservative tradition) who are seduced by the gratifications of power and influence over others.  The procession of leading conservative men who have now been revealed as corrupt, abusive and self-serving is alarming to any who want the Church to be a force for good in our society.  Andrew Cornes, is not, and never has been, as far as I know one, of those who directly harms others.  He is, or has been, for the reasons we have started to explore, in some sense, himself a victim or survivor of an abusive cultic manifestation of Christianity.   

by Anon

The Odyssey (2026) is an epic action-adventure movie written and directed by Christopher Nolan adapted from Homer’s ancient Greek poem. If you haven’t seen the film, I recommend it. If you haven’t read the book, I also recommend it. The Odyssey consists of 24 books and was written down during in the 7th century BC, so committed to parchment in the same kind of era as much of the Old Testament. Both The Odyssey and the Old Testament existed in oral form for many centuries before this. Both share chequered histories of contested versions, with the same stories adapted for different contexts and cultures. (See Bruce Louden, Greek Myth and the Bible, 2019).

Nolan’s film is widely regarded as an enormous feat as much as it is entertaining. True, purists snipe that the film is not faithful to Homer’s original and takes liberties. That may be so, but it rather misses the point. These stories were epic sagas that were vehicles for moral instruction, cautionary tales, and freighted with warnings about the dangers of hubris, irony biting back, the inevitability of betrayals, and the virtues of faithfulness, patience and perseverance.

But suppose for a moment we see The Odyssey as a vehicle for ecclesial parables? This is neither strange nor original. In Gods of Management (1978), Charles Handy examined managerial and organisational cultures through four ancient deities: Zeus (dominance and monarchy), Apollo (communication and order), Athena (cooperation and practicality), and Dionysus (creativity and individualism). Handy highlighted the tension between organisational imperatives (Zeus and Apollo) and individual imperatives (Athena and Dionysus), which cannot be fully resolved. He argued that treating people as individuals instead of mere resources is crucial.

In typical parish settings, cultures may reflect Athena and Dionysus, but many Protestant ecclesial hierarchies tend to be influenced by Zeus and Apollo. This situation will lead to growing dissonance. When self-identified leaders and their compliant followers stop engaging, what happens? Bishops and senior pastors may hold their titles but lack true power, acting like modern versions of Zeus or Apollo while increasingly being ignored.

Simon Western, in Leadership: A Critical Text (2018), argues that “leaders are authentically transformational… they increase awareness of what is right, good, important, and beautiful.” Western identified three primary forms of leadership discourse in the twentieth century: Controller, Therapist, and Messiah, with a fourth suggested. Controller discourse focuses on efficiency and social management, rooted in early twentieth-century scientific rationalism. In contrast, Therapist discourse emphasises personal growth and well-being.

The latter part of the 20^th century saw the rise of the fourth type of leadership, namely Heroic-Messiah discourse, which promotes charismatic leadership in uncertain environments. This discourse promised order amid chaos and encouraged transformative change by highlighting heroic actions and visionary outcomes, suggesting that progress is essential to achieving success. Western’s book is a seminal study in leadership and offers a relevant critique for our times.

Similarly, Mateusz Grzesiak’s Leadership and Narcissism in the Organization (2022) reveals the rise of messianic discourse in an age of anxiety as institutions face existential threats. While true messiahs are rare, faux messiahs—who elevate themselves above others—have become increasingly common.

The myths of Narcissus, particularly as told by Ovid, provide insights into institutional behaviour. Both Narcissus and Echo illustrate how organisations can become fixated on appearance, echoing only what they hear, and are ultimately ensnared by self-love and inflated self-regard.

Narcissus is alive and well in the Church of England. Its leaders hear that working in teams, strategy, vision, corporate branding or comms are the way to go. Or that something must be done about climate change, or inequality. The leaders only repeat what they last heard.

That said, we note Richard Sennett’s careful reframing of the myth. He argues that in narcissistic disorder one sinks into oneself. And that without meaningful references and valuing of others, no stable character or self-image is ever formed. Sennett writes that

‘…as a character disorder, narcissism is the very opposite of strong self-love. Self-absorption does not produce gratification [but rather] produces injury [italics mine] to the self; erasing the line between the self and other means that nothing new, nothing “other”, ever enters the self; it is devoured and transformed until one thinks one can see oneself in the other – and then it becomes meaningless… The narcissist is not hungry for experiences, [s/he] is hungry for Experience. Looking always for an expression or reflection of [oneself]…one drowns in the self.’ (The Fall of Public Man, New York: Norton, 1992, pp. 324-25).

Sennett argues that narcissism often hinders goal achievement. In corporate narcissism, as with individuals, there is a tendency to avoid closure on measurable outcomes to escape external judgment that could weaken self-esteem. This avoidance is unintentional; those affected engage in repetitive self-referential patterns that prevent stable character development and lead to self-absorption. While others may remain captivated by what these individuals or organisations might do next, ultimately, nothing changes. (Yes, Fresh Expressions fits the bill).

Translating this into ecclesiology, it seems to be a particularly compelling preliminary diagnosis of the Church of England’s safeguarding debacles. Everything goes round and round and round in circles in a kind of endless death-loop. Nothing changes.  Narcissism craves your admiration and devotion, and commands your deference and fealty. But it never wants judgment or accountability. QED the CofE? (QED is from the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum, which means “that which was to be demonstrated” or “what was to be shown”).

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the endless cycle of ‘lessons learned reviews’ in Church of England safeguarding belongs to this world. Like Groundhog Day (another version of an ancient Greek myth), the Church of England just repeats the past in the hope that it will eventually get it right. The myth of Tantalus is instructive. So Einstein was right. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

There is a heuristic pragmatism at work here, but it could also apply to many contemporary Protestant denominations. The Church of England, to compete with modernity, will adorn itself with trendy, secular rhetoric and processes because it thinks it “must look good”. It rarely thinks past this. Furthermore, it seems destined and bound to deliver precisely nothing.

As Sennett would concur, the narcissism is found in the journey and process that never achieves closure. Diagnosing corporate narcissistic personality disorder in the Church of England in an organisation becomes possible when we understand the origin of Narcissus.

Other myths also illustrate the dangers of hubris. Icarus, who flew too close to the sun against his father’s warnings, fell to his death when his wax wings melted. Similarly, Narcissus, obsessed with his own beauty, rejected those who loved him and ultimately died alone, transforming into a flower. Both stories emphasise how hubris can lead to isolation and ruin. These are ecclesial parables.

James Hopewell, the Anglican contextual theologian (Congregation: Stories and Structures, 1987) writes of the Zeus-myth at work in a specifically church-based context as a case of “an arbitrary and dictatorial rule…punish[ing]those who dared to oppose him…a one-man show who got his way…[by] the acquiescence of corporation-minded members…[and ridiculed opponents]”.

For Hopewell, the myth of Zeus serves that purpose, as it narrates the emergence of a supreme ruler from the Titans (the Elder Gods). Zeus dethrones Chronus (in Roman religion, Saturn), the most important god. Zeus has unequalled powers thereafter, but is not omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent. He can be opposed, deceived and evaded. Zeus nonetheless functions as an arbitrary and dictatorial ruler, and a cypher for the leadership of congregations.

In ecclesial terms, the minister is a ‘one-man show’ with exceptional managerial gifts and can often be a Zeus-like figure. But such leaders also thrive on manipulation and can ridicule opponents with ‘thunderbolts’. Nonetheless, the minister may present as a fine and hospitable pastor, and provided members stay on the right side of this Zeus-like figure, the congregation is likely to be convivial. Hopewell accepts that his characterisation of a church or denomination where Zeus reigns, as

“…not a pretty story, but its very aptness and ugliness might awake its actors both to their plight and to their Christian promise…” (Hopewell, p. 188).

The stories of the gods evolve. Humans can be elevated to godlike status after their deaths, as with Heracles. But in many cases, there is an obvious sense in which one can read the persona and actions of many of the charismatic church leaders featured in this blogsite as befitting a Zeus-like figure. Pilavachi, Brain, Smyth, the Fletchers and others all come to mind. One can compare the eldership gathered around them to other Titans or lesser gods.

What is clear is that the epic accounts of such churches can be more Greek myth and ancient saga than many might suppose.  Furthermore, such ancient narrative plots are easily detectable in other revivalist ministries, with leaders exercising extraordinary powers and holding unmatched authority and powers over their devotees. Indeed, these stories and plots are alive and well in contemporary culture and appear to resonate with everyday life.

Hopewell’s interpretive analysis, rooted in myths, narratives, ethos, and worldview, explored the collective unconscious. The archetypes in shared memory, often repressed, continue to influence congregational life and macro-denominational polity. For example, we can think of Anglican bishops known for their unpredictable bullying. While some might experience the bishop as pastoral and visionary, others can find them to be a trigger of fear.  The bishop can be armed with thunderbolts, and the laity and clergy are unsure of who could be punished next. Some might view the bishop as a storm bringing misery, while others saw the same leader as essential for growth, as though they were like nourishing rain. Regardless, all may live in apprehension of the bishop’s retribution.

Those familiar with Greek myths will recognise Zeus, the god of weather, thunder, and lightning. Zeus could manifest as a ferocious storm to control others. Or he might transform into a swan to seduce Leda, a mortal queen, leading to the birth of influential mythological subordinates. Bishops can wield significant powers but be utterly unpredictable, punishing those who question their authority and rewarding obedience. Colleagues, congregations, and clergy can live in fear of banishment or punishment, unsure of when wrath or favour might come next, or why.

The Odyssey still has a lot to teach the Church of England. But the lessons lie not in heroism or some longed-for homecoming. Rather, we find the lessons in the lack of accountability, hubris and failure of moral leadership, and the absence of transparent governance. Bishops hide behind their clouds in their heavens, dwelling in Olympus. Nobody trusts these gods and demi-gods who lead the Church of England. They are capricious and unaccountable. They seek only obeisance and control. Like the ancient cults that Homer knew, such deities are just feared – or increasingly ignored. The epic saga that is the Church of England will end when this ancient cult is abandoned, and the people turn once again to a true faith rooted in Christ, and grounded in truth, justice, equality and mutual accountability. 

In the past week or so there have been two well-publicised challenges to those who occupy the places of power in the Church of England.  In the first place, the safeguarding organisation INEQE described, with a certain frankness, how their work of review of the Church in its safeguarding work had been impeded and obstructed by individuals at the top level of governance in the Church of England and in certain dioceses.  Those of us with ears to the ground will have some idea as to the identity of these individuals.  There has been a pattern over the past ten years of the Church commissioning reports and recommendations for action in the matter of safeguarding.  A common theme from these reports has been to urge the Church to set up bodies to oversee safeguarding work, which are truly independent of the institutional church structures.  Somehow something happens always to prevent these suggestions ever coming to fruition.  A major initiative, the setting up of the ISB (Independent Safeguarding Board), was closed with a brutal suddenness after operating for just months.  This was a bitter disappointment for the group of survivors who had already started work with this group.  Every time there is a hope for a new initiative to help the cause of survivors and their endless search for healing, something gets in the way.  The reasons given for such obstructions include issues of ecclesiastical law, administrative blockages or theological objections.  For whatever reason, the Church of England at the highest level has appeared to be applying the reverse gear.  Instead of a smooth sense of progress in the carrying out of safeguarding work, there is the loud sound of jarring metal in the workings. 

The protest contained in the INEQE report (well publicised in Thinking Anglicans and elsewhere) is supported by a new open letter to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York from a group of 20 interested individuals.  They wish to see action taken over the INEQE complaint.  What is called for is an “independent urgent review” of safeguarding in the Church.  The main signatory of the letter is well-known to everyone who follows this topic of safeguarding in the Church of England, Martin Sewell.  He is a former member of General Synod.   Also a signatory is Jane Chevous, the survivor who has allowed her story to be told not only on her blog but also to the British public through the medium of Women’s Hour. The thrust of this Open Letter is to reiterate the observation of the INEQE report about the individuals who obstruct ‘justice and reform’.  They are described in the Open Letter as a ‘group of influential senior officers at the diocesan level and certain individuals within the national Church’. 

The letter goes on to note that in our society there is an increasing lack of trust in national institutions, illustrated by the Post Office IT scandal, the Hillsborough cover-up and the Infected Blood scandal.  The letter acknowledges that the role of Archbishops in the Church is not to operate like CEOs, with the ability to hire and fire as they wish.  Power and responsibility within the church system operates according to a different model.  It is the fact that there is enormous complexity in the way that power operates within the Church that has allowed a ‘small group of influential senior officers’ to take charge.  It is inconceivable that INEQE did not know the names of those in this ‘group’, just as it not credible to claim that the Archbishops themselves are unaware of who is in fact pulling the levers of power and influence in the Church.  The letter bluntly calls for those officers to be ‘removed from influence as a matter of high priority and urgency.’  It also demands that those removed must not be ‘replaced by like-minded subordinates.’  The letter reminds the Archbishops that the Charity Commissioners are taking an interest in the situation of ‘drift and delay’.  They will not accept further obstructionism on the part of the Church.  The Church seems to be promoting and preserving its vested interests at a far higher level of importance than transparency and justice for the group of survivors.

It remains to be seen whether this letter will achieve any of its aims, or whether it will sink into the abyss where other initiatives, buried by apathy and the inertia of the status quo, lie forgotten.  But one word in the letter is crucial and sums up what is contained in this appeal to the Archbishops.  That word is independent.  There is a call for a wholly independent reviewer, one who might also represent the interests of the Charity Commissioners who are pressing the CofE to get its act together over institutional and safeguarding reform.    The Sewell letter is one more attempt at prodding the Church to do the right thing and coax the institution to move forward, in spite of the impediments of vested interests and monopolies of power at the heart of the national Church.

When we look back at the past ten years of safeguarding reform and progress, we note that the achievements have been mixed at best.  Substantial progress has been made to promote awareness of safeguarding issues at every level of the Church.  A proper reckoning with past failures is, nevertheless, still woefully incomplete.  When looking at the past performance of the Church, we find stalling, the dragging of feet and the preservation of vested interests at all costs.  The culture of safeguarding is at best defensive in many areas.  Yet there is one important spark of light on the horizon which may prove to be of decisive importance in the way the future unfolds.  In the past week Lambeth Palace has announced the appointment of two senior advisers to the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Both appointees are highly qualified and experienced women who bring real knowledge of the non-church world into church structures.  Neither, apparently, has any specialist knowledge in safeguarding but both will have insights into the importance of institutional reputation.  In other words they will be aware of how any appearance of poor decision making or failures of integrity and honesty does a great deal of damage to the Church.  The first of the two new arrivals is Becky Clark and she is to be Archbishop’s Chief of Staff.  The other appointee is Anna Dulic-Sills and she is to be Chief Operating Officer.  Both these women have impressive CVs which indicate a familiarity with the detailed working of large secular institutions.  In Clark’s case, there is previous exposure to the workings of Church House.  The detail that intrigues me is that Clark has spent the past four years in the Falkland Islands working as a senior civil servant.  Having been so recently completely outside the church system, she will, no doubt, have now a totally fresh perspective on the church’s problems.  There will also be a solid feminine perspective on many of the issues that have appeared to get mired in the somewhat public school and upper-middle class hierarchical male culture found in the elites of the Church of England. 

The Martin Sewell letter may yet turn out to be another failed attempt at appealing on behalf of the wounded victims of church wanting to be heard by those with power in the national church.  It may also be a timely message that coincides with the arrival of what may be a completely new culture about to take over at the heart of the Church establishment.  While we must not allow ourselves to deal in stereotypes, there is a strong chance that the new female triumvirate taking over the reins of power will want to address safeguarding issues in a new way.  Typical female qualities of empathy, compassion and patience are much needed at the centre and especially in dealing with decades of hurt and damaged lives.  Instead of the male values of hierarchy, control and coercive power which were forged on the playing fields of Iwerne Minster, we may find a church leadership that is better attuned to the values of care, encouragement and healing.

The Church of England leadership has recently been given two challenges to do something to recover its reputation and integrity in this crucial area of safeguarding.  Both initiatives, the INEQE challenge and the Sewell letter, are declaring unambiguously that the old centres of power within the church are no longer fit for purpose.  Past leaders need to be let go and new styles of leadership be allowed to flourish within a different culture and under new leaders.  Am I too optimistic in seeing such a new start arriving with the new appointees to work closely with our female Archbishop of Canterbury?  Even if these two experienced women have currently little direct experience of safeguarding, they will quickly learn the importance of getting things right in the area.  The most urgent task for our Church of England is to regain the confidence of its members and promote an images of integrity that will regain the respect of the wider British public.    

https://d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/61f2fd86f0ee5/content/pages/documents/26-07-final-report-for-publication.pdf

It has not been easy writing this blog piece as new information keeps appearing.  Thus, the drafts I put together earlier in the week have had to rewritten more than once to keep the piece more or less up to date.  The main focus for this blog is a document published on the Church of England official website,122 pages long, entitled Independent Review of Case TT commissioned by the Interim Commissioner for Independent Case Reviews.  I hope that this short summary of its contents in this post will encourage many of the Surviving Church followers to read it in full.  In summary it contains a frank and detailed critique of the poor treatment of an abuse survivor by individuals and groups acting for the Church of England over several decades. When the document first appeared on July 15^th 2026, the survivor’s name was anonymised but, since publication, other published references to the case have revealed her name.  I understand that this survivor, Jane Chevous, is happy for her name to be used rather than the TT in the Review.  This is in spite of the fact that the Review refers to some quite sensitive information connected with her personal life. 

In urging my readers to persevere with a detailed study of the 31.8. Review of Jane’s struggles to be heard by the Church authorities over several decades, I am hoping that, like me, they will feel themselves also much better informed about the traumatic experience involved in being a survivor.  They will also become more familiar with the protocols and processes employed by members of the National Safeguarding Team and other professionals doing this work. The detail in the Review helps us to understand how complicated is the task that professionals face in delivering safeguarding. From this current Review we gain a level of familiarity with the processes used by these NST officers, caseworkers and core groups. Attempting to deliver safety protocols to the church institution when there are competing interests and priorities in operation at the same time, can result in confusion. Even if the Review does not answer all the safeguarding queries that many of us continue to hold, this is a document full of good sense and clarity. Asking the right questions of safeguarding experts may eventually produce a system which is easy to understand and does not add to the pain of those who are victims/survivors of a dysfunctional institution. The current 31:8 published Review on the story of Jane’s experiences as a victim of both abuse and insensitive management is an important staging post on the way to a renewed system of safeguarding which will promote justice and healing.

In pursuit of a clear understanding of all that has happened to Jane over the last 40+ years, the Reviewer has consulted numerous document and conducted many interviews. From the documents, from emails to SAR requests, we get remarkable insight into the way that safeguarding is done.   No doubt, as the result of this critical glimpse of the operation of core group meetings set up to examine Jane’s story, there will be a call to make changes in safeguarding processes all over the country.  

Jane’s story can be told in a few broad strokes.  Back in 1979 she was working in church youth work and she was involved with two ordained youth leaders who abused her sexually and spiritually over a number of years.  As with many sexual victims, the behaviour of the abusers was not immediately recognised as abusive by the victim.  It was only in 2001 that she made a formal approach to the Diocese of Southwark to report the abuse.  This was resisted and she herself was subject to victim blaming.   She later discovered that her claims of being subject to rape were dismissed in the belief she was a ‘gold-digger’ and also ‘hysterical’.  The two bishops in the diocese and the archdeacon involved with her case seemed to have no interest in establishing the facts, all their sympathy and support being extended to the perpetrators.  Jane, unsurprisingly, was seriously dismayed by this response and she abandoned her membership of the Church and her roles within it.  Her mental health was severely affected, and she made attempts on her life.

The next stage of the narrative begins in 2019 after Jane had heard about the work of IICSA and the setting up of the NST in 2015.  From the beginning, her approach to the NST was affected by a serious misunderstanding about what they were able to provide for her.  In her words, ‘I entered full of hope and optimism in a place of relative healing and left distressed, broken and with no justice, accountability or healing’.  As the 31:8 reviewer has pointed out, the NST had a protocol which was always focussed on the need to manage risk.  If an accusation was made, the priority was not to establish responsibility or accountability, but to take steps to remove the potential risk of future abuses or harm.  The reviewer gives quite a bit of space to this early misunderstanding that arose because of this protocol embedded in the NST that their task was to manage future threats.  It certainty did not meet Jane’s felt need to be believed and to receive some kind of apology for what she had suffered.  For the outside observer trying to understand other cases with similar misunderstandings, it is useful to see this discussed in the Review from both perspectives, that of the survivor and that of the church institution.

The following three years of work by the NST with Jane reveal a number of obstacles identified by the 31:8 reviewer which militated against smooth functioning at the NST.  Jane herself was spending time abroad and the Covid epidemic was raging.  There were also problems and serious mistakes at a practical level with some poor record- keeping.  This was compounded by a number of changes of staff which made continuity hard to maintain.  Long delays in communication with Jane because of these bureaucratic delays made her often feel disconnected from the NST process.        

The misunderstandings that bedevilled the safeguarding process for Jane throughout her interaction with the NST from 2019-2022 should, we might feel, not have been unexpected when they occurred.  The reviewer expresses some surprise that a leaflet to explain the meaning of ‘managing risk’ was not made available.  My own observation is to express surprise that the leaders of the NST had not met a similar situation before like Jane’s.  Her complaint, which any intelligent individual might make, was to question whether it was appropriate to use the word ‘safeguarding’ to describe a process that seemed to have as its main purpose the protection of an institution. This seemed to take precedence over caring for a wronged individual.  If we examine the use of the word ‘risk’ in this NST context, we find that the most important thing being protected is the Church itself.  Legal advice being given to the NST in its early days seemed to have suggested that any admittance of responsibility might involve the Church in huge financial liabilities.  This prevented the NST providing the one thing that might have brought healing and closure for a victim – an apology and some accountability.  That legal advice turned out to be completely wrong and, in an earlier blog, I have quoted the relevant legal evidence to refute the liability argument.  This was provided by a legally trained relative.

The 31:8 Review consists of 122 tightly typed pages and the fact of its appearance at the beginning of the summer holidays and after a meeting of General Synod might seem to be an attempt to condemn it to a quiet burial. Were this very important Review to be forgotten, it would avoid some frankly embarrassing criticism of the Church’s leadership alongside some challenges to the official protocols for safeguarding practice.  I am hoping that many who read this summary will take the trouble to read the full Review.  They will learn a lot about the inner workings of the CofE and the way that it sometimes strays from its claimed high standards.   The Review is extremely critical of the church leaders in the Southwark diocese who, in 2001, received Jane’s complaint and then treated her with such cruelty and disrespect.  The Review records the later efforts by the NST to challenge the earlier behaviour of these church leaders in the 2001/2 period when Jane’s case had been brought to their attention.  The leaders concerned, two bishops and an archdeacon are not named, but are clearly identifiable from the information that is revealed about them.  The negotiations with these leaders were not concluded satisfactorily even though a great deal of effort and time was expended on meetings and contact with them.  Ideally the breakdown in relationships that had occurred in 2001/2002 should have been worked through and somehow resolved.  That never seems to have happened and the 31:8 reviewer accepts that this was the case.  The DSA in Southwark did however accept, after the conclusion of the NFT process and its 8 (!) core group meetings, how deeply traumatising the original abuse had been for Jane and how the processes would have been far less disruptive for Jane if she had been allowed to tell her story on tape to avoid seemingly endless re-questioning and cross-examination.  A further bright spot for Jane came as the result of the current Bishop of Southwark writing to her supportively after the end of the NFT inquiry.  He was able to apologise and express his regret at what she had to endure, both in the early days and after she brought the incidents to the attention of the church authorities.  Above all the Bishop of Southwark expressed his belief in her account.  Seemingly he was unafraid of Jane initiating some massive lawsuit against the Church of England.  The Bishops of Oxford and Dorchester also listened to Jane’s story and apologised for the abuse she had suffered. Both dioceses followed this up by agreeing to make financial provision towards the cost of her counselling.   

There is much else in the Review in terms of good and bad practice to be mulled over, but I have to say that having reached the end with its descriptions of bullying and power abuse throughout the narrative, I am left feeling myself somewhat traumatised.  The assumption that someone making a complaint is automatically a mischief maker and should be frightened off by a solicitor’s letter does not create a trusting mutually supportive Body of Christ in an area.  The lack of any pastoral response or insight among church leaders when Jane’s original complaint was made, meant that the suffering that Jane endured continued for decades.  Jane’s story and the failures in response are important and the Church of England will become a better place if even some of the lessons are learned from her story.

by Stephen Parsons

One of the things that is constantly changing in the world of safeguarding and abuse is the vocabulary used to describe it.  New categories or expressions that are used to describe all the different forms of abuse appear all the time.  The studies and reports of today are resourced by the results of research in varied disciplines and the language they use.  Two examples of this refined language come immediately to mind.  One is the expression ‘coercion and control.’  Whatever the precise history of this expression, it gave to lawmakers in Britain, in 2015, the ability to describe and sanction non-violent forms of control in a domestic situation which was criminal.  It has now become a common expression to describe other examples of pressurised control and is used in contexts beyond the domestic sphere.  The addition of ‘trauma-informed’ into the discourse also allowed all of us who were concerned for the victims of abusive behaviour to understand the ongoing and lasting consequences of spiritual abuse.  Even the word safeguarding itself is of relatively recent origin.  When writing about power and its abuse in the Church during the 90s, I never had cause to use the word. 

With the arrival last year of a new book by Tom Wilson, Safer Faiths, Safer Followers, I am once again reminded how thoroughly out of date my own research has become.  This new book deserves to be widely read by those who want to understand more on the safeguarding theme, not only in Christian contexts, but right across the religious map of Britain.  This post I am writing here is not intended to be a review of Wilson’s book, which I have enjoyed for its many insights.  I am, however, unashamedly wanting to mine a single word from his book which I find to be enormously useful in my understanding of the dynamics of church power abuse.  Power abuse in a religious setting, as we need to remind ourselves, manifests itself in many forms. The single word introduced into Wilson’s discussion, which I find helpful for my own thinking, is ‘agency’.  For Wilson, agency is what is taken from an individual when subject to spiritual or any other kind of abuse.   Losing one’s agency sums up the post-abuse sense of humiliation and demoralisation that typically overcomes the victim of a degrading episode.  That loss of confidence in one’s decision making and one’s ability to be in control of one’s own life is often, as readers of this blog will know, the lasting legacy of abuse of whatever kind.  We see the most obvious, as well as most extreme, example of loss of agency in the experience of enslavement.  Slavery is a situation of total disempowerment where one person is forced to submit to the will of another.  It is not only defined by physical shackles.  The individual becomes a slave psychologically when they learn to accept a situation of their total subjugation to another.  There are many forms of bullying and dominance which try to crush an individual.  Torture, rape and threatening behaviour also, in their different ways, deprive the abused individual of their freedom and their agency.  They have become in effects slaves of another or, maybe, of an abusive institution.

 We have explored very briefly how losing agency is a good description of the situation that many abused individuals find themselves in after an abusive episode has taken place.  Such abuse or coercion that leads to a long-term loss of agency does not have to be violent or sexual.  Wilson’s book explores the case of a teenage boy who came under the influence of an Anglican parish priest, Timothy Davis.  The intensive spiritual mentoring that Davis offered was clearly unhealthy and harmful.  While, in this case, no physical or sexual activity was involved, the relationship was such that the 15-year-old was clearly in complete thrall to the older man.  The language of agency loss was not in fact used to describe this case, but it fits the situation well.  Peter Ball, Mike Pilavachi, John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher could all be said to have held their chosen mentees in a similar state of slave-like dependency.  It is clear that, whatever else may have been going on within these relationships, the victims were all having their self-determination attacked to gratify the psychological needs of their abuser.  The Davis case reached a conclusion in 2018 when he was found to have abused ‘spiritual power’ and authority over the boy and was removed from ministry. 

One thing that is helpful about Wilson’s analysis is the way that, by using the language of ‘agency’, the observer can see clearly how the actual moment of abuse is not necessarily the worst part of the narrative.  At the heart of Wilson’s understanding is the idea of the long-term diminishment that is the likely result of any abuse committed by one individual against another.  The important question that now should be asked in every abuse episode is not just the detail of an act of abuse, but whether it has created trauma and the long-term undermining of the victim’s agency.  Obviously, this notion of impaired or weakened agency will have a whole variety of manifestations and meanings, according to the precise nature of the abuse that has been perpetrated.  For example, the experience of ‘gaslighting’ may well undermine the ability to know one’s mind or make decisions.  This type of behaviour is likely also to have devastating destructive effects on the ability to feel safe.  It will take a careful sensitive approach to reveal this damage to the agency of the individual who has been abused.   Whoever is given the task of uncovering the truth of an abuse event will need wisdom and sensitivity of a high order, together with a questioning that understands the ways that a victim may have had the core of their being undermined.  Damage that leads to a loss of agency is always serious. Having read Wilson’s sensitive exposition of what it means to lose agency through an experience of an abusive event, one longs for this level of awareness to be present in every core-group or safeguarding body so that they are always alert to this experience of loss that is encountered by many victims of power dominance or abuse.  The old Latin tag directed at medical doctors, Primum, non nocere (first, do no harm) should always be applied to those meeting and responding to survivors.   A failure to be alert to loss of agency among abuse survivors puts such survivors at risk of additional suffering.   The evidence points to many occasions where the process of investigation proves to be a additional source of suffering, sometimes far greater than the original wrong.

Our brief discussion about ‘agency’ and the way that it can be damaged or removed by an act of abuse of some kind, leads into another reflection.  Briefly stated, it is this.  If a negative abusive event care can result in loss of agency, how does the Church try to ensure that proper care is in place which will seek to build up the agency that has been lost in the abusive episode and its aftermath.  My response to this is first to look back on my own ministry over many decades and look at what I believe were my aims as a parish priest/pastor.  I would want it to be true that all my pastoral relationships were about supporting and enabling, in Wilson’s language, the agency of everyone for whom I had a pastoral responsibility.  The parish priest has a commission to build up the sick and encourage the broken and the bereaved.  All this, involving frequent visits to the homes of parishioners, could all be described as ‘agency work’ and we must not forget how it is also found in the teaching role of the clergy.  Reaching an ‘aha’ moment with adult confirmation candidates (less easy with teenagers!) was one of the highlight moments of parish ministry.    Helping the bereaved, the sick and the demoralised to recover their hope was always a crucial part of the daily visiting tasks.  By modern standards the strong emphasis on home visits, that was drummed into us curates in the early 70s, might be frowned on in today’s safeguarding culture.   I cannot imagine being a parish priest where visiting was not the core activity.  After retirement I was privileged to act as a ‘bank’ chaplain at a local hospital.  It was good to return, briefly, to role of encouragement and the task of helping patients to recover hope in the face of serious fears and vulnerabilities. 

I am grateful to Tom Wilson for introducing me to the notion of ‘agency’ in the middle of his discussion of the contrasting and often destructive and damaging forms of ministry conducted by Jonathan Fletcher, Peter Ball and others.  I have in this post attempted to turn around the word to look at its meaning when used in a positive perspective. By thinking of parish ministry as the task of recovering and restoring agency in every member, we find that we are thinking of ministry in a quite distinct way.  This is a style of ministry that actively promotes agency, hope and spiritual growth without any of the shadows of authoritarianism and control so often found in churches today.  Many of us are deeply uncomfortable at the adulation given to the larger-than-life charismatic personalities on the stage who are, for logistical reasons, unable to get to know their ‘sheep’.  This kind of ministry is strong on entertainment but sits lightly on the importance of increased agency and spiritual maturity.  The question for ministry now becomes: ‘Is the congregation individually and corporately able to increase its agency?’   Answering this question successfully will require us to have a fuller understanding of what it might mean to have agency in the Christian life.  Wilson’s book tackles the important question of how agency is taken away by various examples of manipulation, bullying and other forms of spiritual abuse.  So far the full description of what it means to have full agency and be supported in obtaining it has not been mapped out.  Perhaps this short piece may help us to start thinking afresh, not about abusive ministry, but about supporting parishioners to live out the Christian life with greater abundance and agency.

by Anon

If you follow football, you’ll know that when a team fails to perform, they often dismiss the manager. In the 21^st century, Watford has changed its managers 24 times. Other clubs with significant managerial turnover include Chelsea and Nottingham Forest. Leeds United, Sunderland, and Crystal Palace have all experienced 20 or more permanent managerial changes since 2000. In contrast, Arsenal and Manchester City have had the fewest managerial changes.

Of course, leading a denomination is nothing like managing a football club. Yet there are some striking parallels. Supporters have expectations. Season ticket holders – or the regulars and frequent attendees – will know that the fanbase is wider than those just turning up every week in the cold for a couple of hours. Football, like religion, is an all-consuming affair. There is morale to consider. And performance on and off the field. The parallels are plain to see.

At its most basic level, psychologically, supporting an underperforming team can be a miserable and frustrating experience. Everyone on the terraces – or in the pews, for that matter – will have an opinion on who to select and play, tactics, and management. They can all do a better job than the manager.

Of course, denominations tend not to sack their managers (or “let them go”) unless they have no choice. Welby went. In Wales, Archbishop Andrew John (Anglican) and the national team parted company. In Scotland, Archbishop Keith O’Brien (Roman Catholic) also resigned. Performances and perceptions do matter.

Sarah Mullally has been managing the Church of England side for several months. So, it’s still early in her tenure. There are the coaching grounds in Canterbury, but the main stadium is at Lambeth Palace. This is a national team with a respected global pedigree and international following. Appointed in October 2025, Mullally took up the reins in March 2026. She’s the first female appointee to take the role. Like all new managers, many were ready to believe that this time it would be different (even if they could remember thinking that last time).

After all, it would be fair to say that the last half-century has been a ropey affair for managing the Church of England team. When the England football team won the World Cup in 1966, Michael Ramsey was Archbishop of Canterbury. Coggan and Runcie followed. In the run-up to the millennium, it was the turn of Carey, who was replaced by Williams, before being succeeded by Welby. And now Mullally. Modern Archbishops tend to average a ten-year stint.

Like her immediate predecessors, Mullally’s brief will have been to turn around the fortunes of a national denomination that is haemorrhaging support, experiencing a marked decline in prestige, unable to recover its international marque, and struggling with morale, results and overall performance. The terraces (or the proverbial pews) have levels of expectation and hope. They always do.

But the modern era for this game is tempered with realism, and the statistics are brutal. Only one in five of the population opted for a Church of England funeral in 2024; 80% chose an alternative. The figure for weddings is rapidly collapsing to one in ten of the population, with 90% choosing not to involve the Church of England.  In 2024, infant baptisms conducted by the Church of England accounted for 5% of newborns. National figures for confirmations were 22,000 in 2010, but by 2024, that figure had halved to 11,000. By any yardstick, those numbers are grim.

As a supporter or pundit following a football team, you can see how the team and the manager are performing from the statistics. The numbers don’t lie. They tell a story. Points accrued, goals scored, possession percentages, and the like all point to results. You can tell the fans as much as you like that your team played a great match and deserved something from the game, but were just unlucky this week. Or that things will be turned around next season. So, you must have the time to rebuild the squad, and the fans will just need to be patient.

The trouble is, for the Church of England, the fans have had this message from the Board of Directors for the best part of half a century. New managers come and go. Players, likewise. But the team continues to slide in national standing, and the decline internationally is even more marked and alarming. Here, parallels between the national church and the governance of England as a nation are striking. There have been seven Prime Ministers in the last ten years (Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer and Burnham). Perhaps running the country might be compared to the difficulty of managing Chelsea, Watford, or Nottingham Forest? Yet with expectations running way too high (and some might say unrealistic given the global context), mediocrity and mere survival are not tolerated.

According to one recent commentator (Claire Berlinski, ‘Changing the Undertaker Won’t Halt the Decline’, The Cosmopolitan Globalist, June 24, 2026), “Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer – each in a different way was consumed by the same unresolved event…the country keeps changing the undertaker and wondering why the corpse remains dead.” The same could certainly be said of Scotland’s football efforts at the 2026 World Cup campaign. But a change of managers won’t help, as Tom English noted (c.f., ‘Scotland’s ill-fated World Cup story finally at a sorry end’, 28 June 2006: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c5yzdwz890go). There were multiple layers to Scotland’s failure. As might be said of Church of England bishops too, Scotland’s team was “a squad full of endeavour…but the collective is decidedly average at best”.

And it’s hard to argue with those numbers. In the FIFA world rankings, Scotland sit at 42, so it would be a stretch to suddenly break into the top 30 at the group stages of the World Cup. England sit in fourth place in the FIFA world rankings, which suggests a spot in the semi-finals but not beyond. That is where it ended for England. They did great, for sure, finishing third, and the nation can be proud. They really can. But what is it about the hubris of a nation that presumes it deserves to do better?  The fans may well be full of passion and optimism. But that doesn’t increase the chances of outperforming the ranking. Many views from the pews would concur. Likewise, from the voters. The football team, the country and its national church are stories of struggle (or perhaps slow decline?). We need to engage with and accept that reality, not keep denying it, pretending we can somehow cheat it.

A selection of the more memorable books from the 20^th and 21^st centuries, all suggest a catalogue of collapse – an English empire descending into decay:  Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh, 1928), The Strange Death of Liberal England (George Dangerfield, 1935), The Collapse of British Power (Correlli Barnett, 1972), Farewell the Trumpets (Jan Morris 1980), Britain in Decline (Andrew Gamble, 1994), The Abolition of Britain (Peter Hitchens, 1999), The Strange Death of English Conservatism (Sam Tanenhaus 2005), The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (Piers Brendon, 2008), English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (Martin Wiener, 2011), and Can We (Britain) Be Great Again? (Jeremy Hunt, 2025). These are mere samples. But no country produces a Library of Lament such as this unless despair afflicts the national psyche.

Why is England in decline? While this situation partly stems from the loss of its empire, the deeper issue lies in the nation’s inability to develop a suitable post-imperial governing identity. The country has clung to the habits, symbols, and structures of a former world power, even as its economy shrinks and industrial regions decay. This has led to a political landscape that confuses sovereignty with productivity and values nostalgia over strategic vision.

But the decline began even before the empire began to fade. England, as the first industrial nation, initially benefited from advantages that later became rigidities, such as outdated factories, management practices, class structures, educational biases, financial habits, and a political elite focused more on imperial administration than on industrial modernisation.

In the 1960s and 1970s, political theorist Tom Nairn and historian Perry Anderson formulated their theory of English decline. They argued that early English capitalist success allowed outdated institutions and class structures to endure, in contrast to continental European countries such as Germany, which modernised through efficient administrative tiers and effective education systems. For England, the triumphs of the past become the blight of the present. The grip of nostalgia on the psyche of its national church is also part of this problematic ecology.

The English are still chewing on the thick curdled whey of Empire Glory Days. That makes realities hard to stomach, and sober realism is an even harder sell. The Church of England’s national demise, to say nothing of the global Anglican Communion’s rapid dissolution and increasingly fractious divisions, is fully part of this story too. It is also hard to manage a team that doesn’t really want to be managed.

As with politics and football, so with the Church of England? In which case, Mullally is a symptom of our times, and no cause of malaise. There was a time when new leadership in the Church of England represented genuine change. So mere managerial competence will not be enough, and besides, the Church of England is already weary – some may even say cynical and suspicious – of bold new visions.

The 21^st century has seen far too much promised (mostly about growth), and far too little delivered. As with the country, the national church needs the leadership to provide a cohesive spiritual, theological, emotional, and moral account of the institution that is honest and truthful too. That is simply lacking. So, there is no credible visualisation for better days ahead.

As politicians will confirm, technocratic improvements often falter when public frustration is high. Church of England clergy and laity are disenchanted and demoralised by the clear signs of decline in the quality of episcopal oversight and support they currently receive.  Anger over the deterioration in the standard of spiritual and pastoral care at the hands of senior staff they encounter is further fuelled by bloated diocesan staffing levels and burdensome, intrusive bureaucratic processes. Clergy and laity feel that their hard work no longer matters and that their endeavours don’t even guarantee that their future ministry will be valued. They suspect, with good reason, that their leaders lack a credible plan for recovery, or possibly even for survival.

The clergy and laity need a leadership that can hear, articulate and understand their concerns and unhappiness. But instead of articulating their discontent, the Church of England’s hierarchy merely seems content to manage it.

The Church of England will not be saved by more strategies. Or worse, glossing over the ingrained depression and disenchantment with more PR. For Mullally, presenting herself as a competent Archbishop could be dangerously misleading, as it suggests that effective administration can resolve much deeper structural problems. When it doesn’t, one risks being seen as disingenuous.

Church leaders need to educate the clergy, laity, and the wider public about what truly matters in mission and ministry. But Mullally is not a teacher, so that aspect of leadership (the need to inspire through rich public theology and spiritual wisdom) is essentially out of range. Mullally may say many of the right things. But whether she can or will deliver is questionable.

For example, she recently called for clergy to be treated with more care and respect, mindful of the overwhelming evidence we have for the stress and mental health issues that clergy regularly report in surveys. Mullally seems to be (wilfully?) indifferent to the notion that the primary cause of the harm clergy experience is the diocesan hierarchy and structures of the very institution she represents. Yet Mullally addresses the abuse and harm clergy are reporting as though it were perpetrated by some vague third party. But the Memo from the employees and volunteers to HQ could hardly be plainer: “you are the problem”.

As the recent report from Veronica Hope Hailey confirms, there is ‘pervasive distrust’ in the Church of England’s leadership which can only be restored through accountability. That must begin from the top, with the Church of England’s leadership becoming accountable and transparent for their actions. Without this, they will not be trusted by clergy and laity, and nor will they deserve to be. (https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/gs-2354-trust-and-trustworthiness-within-the-church-of-england-a-preliminary-report.pdf) 

There are no quick fixes for these troubles. History teaches that we must live through long social and cultural cycles that we can neither control nor evade. Part of the cost and vocation of leadership is to make the burden of such times more bearable for everyone else, if we can. Changing Prime Ministers, Archbishops, or football team managers is unlikely to transform the ultimate destiny of a country, church, or soccer squad, magically turning them into winners overnight.

Football-wise, these decades have been tough to endure. Disenchantment still reigns. As for overseeing the Church of England, scaling back ever-increasing layers of managerialism will now be very welcome. If trust is to return, clergy and laity want leadership that is pastoral, compassionate, honest, accountable, humble, transparent, spiritually wise, and theologically rich. History will be the ultimate judge of how the Church of England was managed in our time.

by Kieran Fitzsimons

Editorial Introduction Over the past twenty years or so we have become increasingly aware of the part played by human sexuality in our understanding of the dynamics of church life. In this piece by Kieran we are invited to think about music within the life of the Church and the way it too affects all of us at a primal level. Recognising this power of music in church settings is the key to understanding and, when necessary, neutralising some of the destructive passions aroused by differing musical styles (and different styles of singing and playing). In this way music can be released to play its part in enriching the act of worship and bringing us closer to the divine.

1. I’m a retired school music teacher and cathedral musician.  For 20 years I’ve been using recent study and research into how music affects people – such work has profound implications for music in education and in the Church.  I’ve also been struck by what Stephen Parsons and Fiona Gardner (among others) have written recently about issues of power and control in the Church, manifest in horrible sexual deviancy.

2. I believe that there are connections here, because unhealthy appetites for power and control are seen in music too – I’ll outline two real examples.  Also there’s the same tendency towards institutional ‘cover-up’ and what I call ‘polishing the outside of the vessel’ (Matt 23) when wrong is done in either context – Safeguarding or music.

3. I’ve known many churches where clergy (‘high’ and ‘low’ alike) wanted to control music and musicians in what Fiona calls ‘asymmetrical’ relationships.  One ‘high’ vicar got through six organists in ten years and tried to ‘micro-manage’ a professional musician by very detailed instructions on how to use the organ.  She complained to the bishop, who supported her and told the vicar to stop it.  He didn’t.  Other organists got the same detailed instructions but now marked ‘confidential’.

4. Another vicar, very ‘low’ (his ‘Con Evo’ church was growing in numbers, especially attracting students), also got through organists – I was ‘organist 3 of 4’ in six years.  He turned against each one, and his curate (who did appreciate music) said on record that he’d had to ‘intercede’ for each – there was false accusation.  We might say ‘faults on both sides’, but remarkably the young man before me was both a good musician and a sincere ‘Con Evo’ – pew bible open during readings in the service, and so on.  Even that didn’t satisfy the vicar.  He used the pejorative term ‘emotional’ about anyone whose views didn’t suit him but always sang very loudly – the way people do at football matches.  I felt sure that this showed an emotional need, but I didn’t know what it was.

5. We need to ask how and why such things happen, irrespective of ‘high’, ‘low’, or any other Church identity.  Music (like sex) has primal influence.  Our understanding of this, and of people’s musical development, is transformed by new methods for detecting the response to music of very young babies.  An unborn baby’s hearing is fully developed by about half-way through gestation, so when Mum plays her choice of music, the baby hears it too.  Newborn babies respond more to that music than to other sounds.  Such insights are not new; wise people (especially mothers) have known them intuitively for perhaps thousands of years.  Now science backs them up.

6. Babies are more sensitive to melodic patterns than to pitch itself.  If a familiar ‘tune’ is played, moved up or down by a few semitones, the baby is comfortable; but if the set of intervals itself is changed there can be a strong reaction.  Composers handling their melodic material know many techniques (e.g. repetition, sequence, and development) which help to make a piece of music effective; now we can start to see how and why.

7. Some non-Western cultures or societies show much more awareness than ours of ordinary people’s musical potential.  In the early 1950s, American researchers (John Messenger et al.) spent time with the Anang Ibibo tribe in Nigeria and were amazed.  All the tribespeople, including small children, knew a huge range of traditional songs and dance routines.  The researchers couldn’t discuss ‘non-musical’ (or ‘tone-deaf’) people, because the Anang language had no equivalent concept – I hope it still hasn’t.

8. That American research was published in 1958, but I only read about it 50 years later in a new book, Psychology for Musicians (Lehmann, Sloboda, and Woody, 2007).  Perhaps it was neglected because at first there wasn’t ‘hard science’ to back it up – now there is.  I’ve seen it cited in other places since.  It may be worth mentioning that John Sloboda is an emeritus professor at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and was previously Professor of Psychology at Keele University – an unusual ‘trajectory’.  He has contributed to ‘the literature’ on Church music.

9. Rev. John L Bell, of the Iona Community, writes about ‘vocal disenfranchisement’ (The Singing Thing, 2 volumes, 2000 and 2007).  I believe him that this is a largely European – and especially British – problem.  As many as one in four British adults believe that they can’t sing, always because they were told this early in life by someone whose opinion they trusted. 

10. All of the above strongly suggests that if our development (emotional, sexual, or musical) hasn’t been healthy in early life, seemingly irrational adult behaviour may result – in the examples I’ve given, a ‘high’ vicar defying his own bishop, and a ‘low’ one turning against a sincere Evangelical musician.  The second, as I found out later (too late), had been brought up in a strict religious sect, in whose services women had to sit apart from men.  Perhaps not surprisingly, both vicars (‘high’ and ‘low’) had a restrictive view of what females could do in the Church.

11. These examples may show resentment – what Stephen calls envy leading to ‘festering jealousy’.  It might become disguised, even hidden beneath consciousness.  Of course, such insight is from recent study, and may be news to many church officials – especially the older and more influential ones.  It wasn’t in their own study or training.

12. I’m keen to try and spread more modern awareness, and to contribute to better understanding of how Church music affects us all – in whatever kind of church.  That would also mean challenging the false conflation of good music with ‘privilege’ – and the myth of ‘non-musical’ people.  I don’t think that such a challenge would be ‘dumbing down’.  I respect capable, sincere cathedral music colleagues, but my experience in schools is that ordinary children can be drawn up to high expectations.  This is also possible with adults – though in a way ‘the younger the better’.

13. If readers are interested, I can present some ‘Case Studies’ more fully.  During a bit of university research in late 2001 I consulted Robin Rees, whose 1991 PhD and 1993 book Weary And Ill at Ease had included three such studies of churches with problems and conflict about music.  Robin concluded each ‘case’ with questions which an individual reader, or a group, might consider and discuss – something which we could potentially do via the ‘blog’, helped by the scientifically-informed understanding now available to us.  Knowing the ‘how and why’ of unwelcome past issues may help us to improve on them.

Kieran Fitzsimons

by Anon

“He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”  (Luke 3:16, 17)

As it happens, I am writing this reflection on the feast day of John the Baptist. In the northern hemisphere, this is also the longest day of the year – after which, the days grow shorter. So, it seems appropriate to write about one of John the Baptist’s most memorable phrases (above), also repeated in Matthew (3:12).

Readers will doubtless know that winnowing is the process of separating chaff from grain and removing pests from stored cereal, usually following threshing. This involves throwing the mixture into the air, allowing the wind to blow away the lighter chaff while the heavier grains fall back down to the ground, where they are gathered. Techniques for winnowing can include using a fan, fork, basket, or shovel on harvested grain. The chaff scatters to the wind.

True, John the Baptist would not have known about the modern usage of the word chaff, but he would have easily understood it. Chaff is material used in military operations as an active decoy. Chaff, originally known as Düppel, is a radar countermeasure that disperses thin strips of aluminium or plastic to create metallic clouds. These clouds confuse radar systems by appearing as separate targets. Modern military forces use chaff to mislead active radar-homing missiles. Aircraft and warships are equipped with chaff-dispensing systems for self-defence.

Government PR regularly uses chaff (i.e., releasing a critical report on a ‘bad news day’ where it will hopefully get buried by other, more grave headlines). Likewise, the Church of England (CofE) frequently deploys chaff in its safeguarding efforts. The sheer scale of CofE safeguarding disinformation and puffery points to very deliberate PR strategies that pump chaff out into the public sphere at every opportunity.  It is there to confuse, distract and evade any detection of the real problems. The CofE’s safeguarding work is mostly chaff, not wheat.

What does the CofE’s safeguarding work hope to evade by these endless clouds of chaff? In a word, exposure. The fear is of being targeted by any authority that might threaten independent external scrutiny. Accountability must be avoided at all costs. So, chaff clouds are the order of the day. As many as possible. God forbid that Parliament or the Charity Commission might shine a spotlight on the incompetence, vested interests and corruption that drives CofE safeguarding. Preserve us, Lord, from the secular courts finally taking up a case from a survivor or victim that investigates CofE processes. For we know, Lord, that we have no processes that are fit for purpose. Not one.

So, concealing chaff clouds are the answer. Decoys and distractions can mask the dithering and facile pretence of running systems that could never otherwise be trusted or command confidence. Chaff helps the CofE to evade detection. General Synod should be the Threshing Floor for seeing through all this, sifting, discerning, weighing, and judging. But if you take a look at the Agenda for York’s General Synod in July, you’ll see that chaff is everywhere. You can’t move for the stuff.

Yet members of the General Synod are benumbed and utterly somnolent. The powers-that-be running the agenda from the podium learned long ago how to euthanise Synod members and meetings. It’s all status theatre, replete with wigs, gowns, and the pretence of debate and democracy led from the front. Anyone with an ounce of common sense, a prophetic cell in their body, or a conscience knows Synod is a waste of time. There’s no accountability and zero transparency. Watch, and you’ll see consecutive days comprising choking clouds of chaff.

But these days, CofE safeguarding has evolved into a publication: Chaff Weekly. This is no surprise, as one must remember that the Archbishop of York inadvertently let the cat out of the bag at a General Synod gathering only a few years ago, when he told the assembly that the purpose of all their effort and expenditure was “to safeguard the church”. A slip of the tongue, for sure, but a truism if ever there was one. The CofE’s leadership in safeguarding is engaged in a reputational endeavour. All other statements and claims made by CofE safeguarding – “we are listening to survivors; victims are at the front and centre of our concerns; we’re improving our processes; there will be a lessons learned review; blah, blah, blah, etc” – are subordinate to the Archbishops’ very telling, inadvertent admission.

The goal of CofE safeguarding is the preservation of its reputation and the avoidance of ceding accountability and transparency to any independent external body. That ‘safeguarding journey’ needs a lot of chaff, as the major task is to avoid embarrassing detections. This requires clouds of chaff to be released on a regular basis.

Just take a look at some recent chaff. In May, “the House [of Bishops] discussed the start of work on a review of the definition of safeguarding, to examine whether the Church’s structures and processes are established in a way that can best ensure everyone it comes into contact with is kept safe from harm.” (Minutes of the House of Bishops Meeting, York, 21 May 2026). So, another review is in the offing, which can presumably review the previous reviews, and probably suggest another working party to look into the next steps…which can then be subject to another review.

On June 11^th, 2026 (Saint Barnabas Day is celebrated – ironically, Patron Saint of Encouragement), the NST launched another consultation on safeguarding. How many consultations does the CofE need? There is no finite number. Lord, may the heavens rain with downpours of endless chaff upon your church. (see: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/12-june/news/uk/church-of-england-s-definition-of-safeguarding-could-be-broadened)

Much of this chaff is proactive and designed to conceal the deeper problems. During the John Smyth (Makin Report), David Tudor, Mike Pilavachi, Jonathan and David Fletcher debacles, and with the reprise of the Chris Brain scandal, CofE safeguarding chaff clouds have had to thicken and rain much more frequently. Otherwise, scrutiny might detect the difficult things hiding in plain sight (I Cor. 4:5).

So, rooting through recent copies of the CofE’s safeguarding Chaff Weekly we can see that the CofE appointed Sir Stuart Carlton as the new Chair of the Redress Scheme Steering Board (27 February 2026). Sounds good? Yet the Redress Scheme is meant to be completely independent of the CofE. But no matter. Anyway, we’ve not heard a pipsqueak from Sir Stuart since this announcement.

Likewise, Nazir Afzal, appointed as the new CofE chair of the National Safeguarding Panel (11 September 2024). Sounds good? But nothing is really known of Mr. Afzal’s role, his current whereabouts, or how this appointment fits into another one of the CofE’s Safeguarding Reviews of Reviews (a free monthly supplement with Chaff Weekly).

On 30 September 2025, Chaff Weekly reported that “Dame Christine Ryan [has been] appointed Executive Chair of Safeguarding Structures Programme Board” (whatever that is). Sounds good? But nine months on, the silence is deafening. It remains the case that there is still no body – independent, professional, internal or external – overseeing the CofE where you could complain about their poor or unjust safeguarding procedures and hold bishops and officers accountable for their actions or inaction. The CofE leadership wants to keep it that way.

My older back copies of Chaff Weekly report that Lesley Ann Ryder has been appointed as the independent co-chair for the Safeguarding Response Group (April 2024). Sounds good? But don’t be doing too much digging. The CofE’s chatty chaff press release trills that Ms. Ryder is “an experienced CEO who has worked in national and local government and the health and charity sectors…[and] has been appointed the independent co-chair of the Response Group looking at two important reports on independence and safeguarding in the Church of England.”

But a quick check of her 16 appointments at Companies House doesn’t readily align with the claims in her LinkedIn profile. Apart from the two family-owned companies (Anume and C2S Management), Ryder’s average tenure for any directorship was 12.3 months. Around 50% of her business experience was in the lottery and gambling industry, and in commercial trading to raise money for hospices. (NB: Barbara Kahan was listed as the other Director for Ryder’s Anume. Born in 1931, Kahan was listed by Companies House as holding 2,277 other directorships and credited with having started more than 25,000 businesses. So, sounds good?). Ryder holds no qualifications in safeguarding, social work or social policy, nor does she cite any relevant safeguarding expertise.

Ryder lists Cambridge University as her alma mater, but has no degree from there, though she did attend a course in learning to speak French at the Department of Continuing Education (2008), and claimed to be “invited onto a postgraduate certificate course”, but no indication that she did so.  But we’ve heard nothing from her since the April 2024 Chaff Weekly fanfare.

The press releases on the NSP, RSSB, SSPB, SRG – so many new chaff-like bodies and debris have been commissioned – feature lovely, fetching photos of the appointees. Any nervous church and Synod members from the Home Counties are bound to feel comforted by the press releases and the people posing for their pictures. After all, these folk all look so, well, reassuring.

By now, you should have twigged that Chaff Weekly is one of the country’s leading newspapers for making new announcements, in order to conceal the fact that nothing is actually happening. Nor is it going to happen. That is the point. Chaff Weekly publishes chaff. And chaff, by definition, is expendable rubbish designed to fake movements and camouflage any real intentions.

Anyway, you can make your own chaff. How about designating 2027 as the Safeguarding Investigations into Lessons Learned Year – SILLY 2027, for short? What about a new consultation looking into Renewing Integral Safeguarding Knowledge – RISK, for short? There is bound to be somebody willing to chair this work, and the press release and flattering portrait will be a cinch for the chaff merchants. Everything can be put on hold until the group reports back to Synod (later). The trick is to look busy, whilst doing nothing.

The use of the CofE’s “favourite go-to-survivors” is also part of the chaff cloud (or smokescreen?). Despite this very, very small select group not enjoying the trust or confidence of the very much bigger and broader range of victims and survivors, the CofE likes to keep things tight and “in the family”.

One of the ‘chosen’ claims to have fronted participation and lived experience in a 40+ year career in education, social care, and children’s rights across the voluntary, statutory, and faith sectors. But a quick check of their profile shows this 40+-year career somehow began whilst they were still in school. It just doesn’t stack up. Nor does the claim to have got a distinction in a three-year taught university degree course in under two years. But never mind. This individual – a CofE favourite appointee – just sits on every safeguarding panel going.

Then there are our regular columnists for Chaff Weekly. There is the Robert and Joanne column – taking it in turns to be the ‘Lead Safeguarding Bishop’. Again, this sounds good? Until you realise neither possesses any qualification in social work nor is a member of any relevant recognised professional body.

Another columnist is Alexander Kubeyinje, National Director of Safeguarding. Chaff Weekly sometimes interviews him too. In the Strategic Review of Safeguarding (2025) – again, sounds good? – he tells us how great everything is and how well it is all going. Thank goodness for such high standards of independent reporting. The CofE’s safeguarding chaff must always sound professional. Chaff Weekly will deliver that message in spades. The lack of accountability and transparency is imperative.

When John the Baptist spoke of wheat and chaff, his listeners would have instantly understood that the chaff symbolised oppressive systems that must be discarded. That, to separate the wheat from the chaff, was a call to dismantle unjust structures and empower the oppressed. Seeing the chaff for what it represents presses the church to prophetically identify and eliminate its own harmful and abusive practices. And that if there is to be any radical hope, separating the chaff from the grain will be transformative, and permit a just and truthful church to emerge from the ashes of the old, flawed systems.

The CofE safeguarding leadership wants no such thing. They merely seek more subscribers to Chaff Weekly. Perhaps you might be tempted? But as the Gospel of Matthew (3:12) reminds us, “His (Jesus’) winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor, and gather the wheat into the barn; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire”. We already know how this will end. Sounds good to me.

I was speaking to a fellow retired clergyman some time ago about the safeguarding culture that appears everywhere in church life today.  He responded by telling me about an offer made to him by an insurance company over safeguarding.  This company offered to provide access to legal protection if ever he was subject to an accusation of abuse from the past.  Because the amount required for this cover was a modest sum, he decided to sign up, even though he knew that there were no genuine stories about him to be told.  The possibility of a false accusation remained a real, but thankfully improbable, threat.

False accusations of abuse sadly are not unknown, even in the church.  We can remind ourselves of the unsubstantiated rumours and gossip that attached themselves to Father Griffin, which lead to him taking his own life.  The accusations against Bishop Perham did an enormous amount of damage to him personally, his family and the whole of his diocese.  His untimely death from cancer following his exoneration may or may not be an indicator of the nature of the stress he had been under.  Chronic illness does often seem to go hand in hand with the trauma experienced through abuse.  So, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether the same illness inducing factors are at work from the stress of being accused falsely. Such an accusation places one in a no-man’s land of forced inactivity for months and years.  How do bishops and clergy required to step back from their duties spend their time?  They are required effectively to disappear, but this is quite hard to do when you have been used to a degree of public exposure through your relationships, writing and preaching.

Those who have studied the issue of false accusations against clergy and Christian leaders mention the statistic that around 5% of these accusations are false.  I do not know how this figure was arrived at, but this percentage is sufficient to make it important for those charged with examining abuse cases always to face the possibility that with accusations of abuse, there may sometimes be falsity and malice present in the accusation.  The case against John Brassington seemed to achieve its apparent credibility, not from a careful examination of all available evidence, but from a number of prejudices and assumptions that reportedly existed in the minds of members of a core group gathered to deal with the case.  Now that most of those originally in this group have moved on in their careers, John will probably never see justice or vindication.   Although the substance of the story remains in the voluminous paperwork collected by John’s friends and supporters, it will probably be of interest only to a historian who, in the future, wants to understand how the Church did its work of operating its own version of a justice system.

In this blog I want us to set out some of possible reasons for someone to bring a false accusation against a Christian leader, to accuse them of assault or bullying.  While I have the Brassington and Griffin cases at the back of my mind, my observations here are also based on a number of other episodes beyond these two cases alone.   If future core groups are to handle these kinds of accusations against individuals, they need to have some insight into the dynamics of a false accusation., even though they are rare events.  I am going to suggest that there are, in most cases of false accusation, some common themes.  It is to these that we now turn our attention.  My aim here is not to go further in discussing actual historical cases, but to indicate some of the distinct dynamics potentially present in the false accusation cases that I have encountered.

Why would anyone seek to accuse another person falsely of a serious offence, thereby breaking one of the Ten Commandments about bearing false witness?  Most people have encountered this ‘false witness’ offence at some point during their lives.  In the process of administering justice, courts take very seriously the possibility of perjury and lies.  For the proper administration of justice, a court expects to hear ‘nothing but the truth’ in the testimonies given in evidence.  False accusation and false testimony are also taken very seriously by Scripture.  If an individual chooses to break this commandment we need to reflect on possible reasons. 

In the Litany of the Book of Common Prayer, God is asked to deliver us from numerous evils that may assault us at the hands of others. The quartet of ‘envy, hatred, and malice and all uncharitableness’ is included.   My spell-check does not like the final word, but I think we can read the word as a synonym for the other sentiments mentioned, malice and hatred.  Before we come back to the idea of false accusation being an outworking of malice and hatred, I want us to think about ‘envy’.  The word envy is often replaced by the idea of jealousy and this is a distinct form of malevolence.  Such a feeling is going to be common in any environment, particularly one which tolerates or encourages competition.  To be jealous of another person is to resent the fact that they have achieved a skill or power that the jealous person thinks desirable.  Any institution (think Church or public school) that is organised by a system of promotion and reward will likely be place of festering jealousy.  Some will benefit in a race for promotion and status while others languish at the bottom of the pile.  This distinct version of hatred and malice felt by one party against another may in some cases lead to violence.  If jealousy or envy can provoke violence, how much more can we expect to see on occasion false accusation used as a weapon against the individual who is seen to have achieved success in one of life’s races?  The race that has been won, whether for money, power or status, may have cost a great deal in terms of expended energy, but the culture of competing to win always makes such a struggle appear worthwhile.  The atmosphere of permanent and intense competition creates, on occasion, a situation of passionate jealousy, and this is something we have all witnessed. False accusations may well appear in this kind of setting, drawing on the considerable energy evoked by the feelings of passionate jealousy.  The question in a core-group setting should always consider whether envy and jealousy might possibly be a factor in an accusation.  Ever since the struggle between Cain and Abel it has been a factor that infects relationships, even those of the closest.

Jealousy and malice may exist in a situation where there is a history of competition between individuals and needs always to be considered.  There is also a further type of false accusation which needs to be assessed. We have all been part of human families as children and we can remember well how we and our siblings sometimes sought to be the centre of attention in the family group. The announcement that ‘my brother hit me’ is one way for a younger child to seek the help of adults and be the focus of attention for a few minutes.  Such a situation normally resolves itself, but the complaining child has learnt that such a complaint or accusation provides them with a momentary access to real power.  In schools the world over teachers are today wary of the child in a class making accusations against other children.  More serious are the accusations made against a teacher.  Procedures are instantly activated and there may have to be an immediate ‘stepping back’ by the teacher concerned.   Most of us hear only part of the story but it seems clear in many of the stories I have heard, that becoming important and listened to, may be a motivation for a young person to make an accusation against an adult.   Such a potential motivation has to be (or should be) examined to assess whether the accusation is real or stems from a desire to be right at the centre of a serious drama.

The possibility of false assumptions, rumour-mongering or simple malice will always be scenarios that have to be considered when cases of alleged abuse are being considered.  Careers and relationships can be destroyed on the basis of an accusation made.  Those who have to make decisions on these matters for the Church need always to have a clear understanding of the dynamics of prejudice, malice or scapegoating that may exist in schools, churches and other similar organisations.  The procedures to avoid such possibilities may normally be robust but, if ever the system gets it wrong and listens to the false accusation, the knock-on effect can last for decades.  Institutions are seriously weakened by even a single mistake and the assumption that truth and justice are always a priority can be destroyed in the minds of a watching public.  We know that malefactors can be accepted for decades without challenge in some parts of the church.  It seems that the same system that failed to spot them to protect their victims is sometimes unable to discern the innocent who are accused of the most appalling crimes.  The great loser in all this is the Church itself.  Confidence in its integrity remains as a vital part of its ability to survive and serve another generation.

By Carolina Frank

There is something undeniably calming about being around hopeful people. You feel it almost instantly. The room feels lighter, conversations feel gentler, and even difficult situations seem a little less intimidating. It is not because hopeful people live easier lives or pretend pain does not exist. Usually, it is quite the opposite. They have simply learnt that fear does not deserve to lead them.

Hope carries a certain atmosphere with it. It softens panic. It steadies emotions. It reminds you that not every storm is permanent. That is why people who genuinely trust God often feel so comforting to be around. Their peace is not manufactured; it comes from somewhere deeper. When Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow” in The Gospel of Matthew 6:34, He was not offering a flimsy motivational quote or casual life advice. He was giving an instruction rooted in trust. A call to lean closer to Him instead of spiralling further into fear. Because worry and responsibility are not the same thing.

Worry Feels Active, But It Solves Very Little

Worry often disguises itself as care. It convinces you that if you think about something long enough, obsess over every possible outcome, or carry the burden constantly in your mind, then somehow you are protecting what matters to you.

But worry rarely produces peace or clarity. Most of the time, it simply drains you. Jesus knew this when He asked, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” in The Gospel of Matthew 6:27. There is a difference between taking responsibility and surrendering yourself to anxiety. Responsibility says, “I will do what I can.” Worry says, “It all depends on me.” And faith interrupts that lie. Faith reminds you that God is already present in tomorrow before you even arrive there.

Hopeful People Carry Peace Into Difficult Situations

One of the most attractive things about hopeful people is not that they are always joyful. It is that they remain anchored when life becomes uncertain. When challenging situations arise, they still feel disappointment, grief, stress, and frustration, but they are not consumed by it. Their steadiness comes from knowing they do not have to hold the entire world together themselves. That kind of surrender changes a person. It makes them softer instead of hardened. More patient. More reassuring to be around. Their presence begins to reflect the peace they continually return to.

You see this beautifully in The Epistle to the Philippians 4:6-7: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” And then comes the promise: “The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Not peace because circumstances are perfect. Peace because God remains trustworthy within imperfect circumstances.

So How Do You Actually Stop Worrying?

The truth is, most of us do not stop worrying all at once. Trust is built daily, often quietly, through repeated surrender. Sometimes faith looks deeply spiritual. Other times it looks incredibly practical. It looks like opening your Bible when your thoughts are loud and reminding yourself what is true. It looks like listening to a sermon that recentres your mind on God instead of fear. It looks like church conversations, Bible studies, mentorships, or even a text from someone who reminds you to keep going.

Faith also grows through remembrance. That is why little reminders matter more than people think. A cross necklace. A verse stamped on a piece of jewellery. Even worship music in the car can pull your mind back towards Him in the middle of an anxious day. Not because the objects themselves hold power, but because they redirect your attention. And where your attention goes, your heart often follows.

Surrender Is Not Weakness

Many people resist surrender because they associate it with losing control. But biblical surrender is not passive resignation. It is trust. It is saying, “God, I will do my part, but I refuse to carry what only You were meant to hold.” That kind of faith does not always happen overnight. Often it is built in ordinary moments, through small daily decisions to return to Him again and again. The Book of Proverbs 3:5-6 says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is simply stop trying to predict and control everything. Faith is a privilege, but it does require surrender. Not surrender to chaos, but surrender to the One who already sees the full picture. The One who knows what He is doing even when you do not.

 And perhaps that is why hopeful people feel so refreshing to be around. They remind you that peace is still possible. That fear is not the strongest force in the room. And that when your life is rooted in God, you do not have to carry tomorrow before it arrives.