Looking back over 70+ years of reasonably active church membership, I have been reflecting on one feature which has only come into my conscious focus recently.  The feature that I want to mention is that of being accompanied or mentored by others as I have tried to move along in my Christian pilgrimage.  The idea of mentorship that I have in mind at the moment is probably something broader than that which is generally meant by the term.  I am referring to all the people, (most of them now dead) who have in any way accompanied me and allowed the spiritual self to feel nurtured and encouraged in the attempts to practise Christian discipleship.

The individuals who, in a wide sense, mentored us in our faith will almost certainly include a number of people whom we never personally got to know at all.  Even those with whom we had some kind of relationship may never have had any idea that we looked up to them in this way.  Thus, the mentoring relationships we feel we have had with them may have been totally one sided.  For example, we may have felt a strong identification with an author whose work or writing has made us feel alive in a special way.  The vast majority of the authors that have inspired me are now firmly dead but something of their truth remains alive inside me.  We thus often remain deeply attached to books that contain writing which led to new spiritual insight for us, even if they were penned centuries ago. 

The notion of the Christian journey involving a strong sense of being supported by a ‘cloud of witnesses’ is probably familiar to most of us.  Perhaps, like me, we have not given it much attention.  Mentoring in this broad sense is something that is found in many of the privileged conversations that have been afforded to those of us who are clergy.  We have been mentored during our attendance at the bedside of the dying or in the flash of comprehension in the eyes of a confirmation candidate.  The examples I could give go on but I have probably said enough to evoke the wider meaning I am giving here to this word mentoring.  Whatever word we might choose to convey this idea of outside encouragement in the journey of Christian discipleship, it is clearly important to all of us. 

The task of recognising the fact of being mentored in the way I describe, brings us to another, possibly disturbing, thought and question.  Have I at any time in my life been depended on or looked up to as an exemplar of Christian discipleship and encouragement?  If so, have those who looked up to me been served well, or have they felt let down when they learnt more about me as a person?  Those of us who are clergy or who occupy positions of responsibility cannot help having people looking up to us as some sort of of model for what a Christian should look like.  This is why any scandals by clergy or senior leaders in the Church are so incredibly harmful.  Just as the family life of a clergyman comes under scrutiny by his or her parishioners, so every bishop and others at the higher levels in the church carry an enormous responsibility for modelling what a good Christian life should look like.  As a mentor in the broad way I have suggested, a bishop will be obliged to carry on his or her shoulders the projection of maybe thousands of fellow Christians.  In summary they, the Christians in the pews, want to see examples in their leaders of a good Christian life.   They want to model themselves on their leaders and see a living example of what faith actually involves in practice.

The mentoring relationships which allow Christians to support and encourage one another, do not, as we have suggested, necessarily involve an active relationship between people.  A public profile or even a reputation for godliness may be all that is required for the ‘virtual’ mentoring and sharing of Christian encouragement to begin to take place.  The main quality that I believe one Christian wants to see in another is an utterly reliable integrity. Christians are looking for someone else on whom to model themselves, and will be hoping to find, not holy words coming from the mouth, but a consistency of character that allows them to feel they can completely trust the other person.  The exemplar, the person attracting the projection of others, needs to be, in the modern idiom, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type.  WYSIWYG people are not perfect; they are flawed like everyone else.  But we look to them for consistency and reliability.  We don’t want to discover that there are areas of toxic behaviour just below the surface.  All the relationships we have, in and outside the Church, are based on trust.  It is deeply upsetting and disturbing when an old friend is found to have been stealing money from his company for years to feed a gambling addiction. The effect on families when one of its members has been involved in creating pornography will always be devastating.  Anyone exposed to revelations of this kind, which involve a betrayal of trust, may likely start to feel paranoid and suspicious of everyone around them.  Trust in other people’s integrity, whether in the Church or outside, is a glue that holds families, congregations and institutions together.   When this glue starts to dissolve or fails to work, the future is bleak for these institutions to hold together or even survive.

In recent times, we have lived though some shocking revelations in public life which have undermined our trust in many institutions in this country.  Stability in our political life, our police forces, the educational institutions and our churches has always been part of the background security we have enjoyed.   Relying on these institutions to play their part in providing this overall stability has been crucial to our sense of well-being and safety.  The current undermining of this sense of security because of failings in these same institutions is a serious matter.   In our political life the absence or decay of trust may lead to solutions that are deemed extreme, like fascism or other totalist ideologies.  When such extreme systems appear in any country, it can take decades for the balanced approach to political life to be re-established.

The current danger that I see potentially damaging, even destroying, the fabric of the Church of England is an emergence of cynicism or lack of trust at every level of church life.  If our bishops for any reason are no longer looked up to as exemplars of honest and godly behaviour, this cynicism may quickly spread to every other level of church life.  If the protection of the privileges, power and resources of the institution becomes the highest value for those who control and manage the Church of England, then I can only see a future of decay and weakness ahead.   Those of us who care for the values of integrity, justice and holiness, the WYSIWYG values of total honesty and love, will continue to stand by them.  On our own we can do little to save our political or religious institutions.  But together, with those others who believe in these values contained in absolute integrity, we may be able to do something to help rebuild true communities.   Finding once again our ability to be strengthened and supported by the absolute Christian integrity of others, we may be playing a part to serve our Church and helping it not only to survive but flourish in the future.  

by Gilo

Since her appointment as Lead Safeguarding Bishop in mid-January, Joanne Grenfell has posted on everything on her Twitter account BUT safeguarding. In the four+ months since the Bishop of Stepney has been given this key role, she appears to be missing in action.

Imagine a Lead Bishop for the Environment ignoring harm done to forests, rivers, oceans, biodiversity! It would be strange not to say perverse. As it happens the Bishop for the Environment, Graham Usher, has done about half a dozen social media things in relation to his role during May alone. One particularly striking tweet was of the confirmation card sent to candidates in mid-May with a picture depicting a tree laden with animals in the process of being cut down. This powerful illustration by Nat Morley titled ‘The Tree of Life 6th Mass Extinction’ showed the ‘Environment Bishop’ unafraid of public visibility in his role. Another senior figure, Anne Hollinghurst, acting Bishop of Birmingham, attended Extinction Rebellion’s The Big One protest in Westminster in April.

But in the Church of England’s safeguarding structure we now have a Lead bishop perceived as silent to the harm and re-abuse being done to survivors on an almost daily basis; a bishop who seems to have decided the best course of action with this critical portion of a portfolio is to stay hidden beneath the mantle of the structure and hope the three years passes her by with little to no impact. There’s a rather more sinister possibility: perhaps the bishop has been instructed to follow this course.

What a difference from the part played by Peter Hancock, the last really pastoral bishop in this role. Woefully misguided and misinformed about mandatory reporting as he was, and at times out of his depth – he was nevertheless regarded with affection by many survivors and seen as someone who genuinely cared. He struggled to make a difference. He met with survivors. He went out of his way. It mattered to him that the Church was as dishonest and cruel and complacent as he eventually realized was the case. It was to be his tragedy and ours that weasel ecclesiocrats inside both Church House and Lambeth Palace ran merry rings round him to the point that he became deeply angered and stressed by their machinations. It was widely known that he was livid with Lambeth Palace following Archbishop Welby’s Ch 4 interview. Apparently he had not been informed it was happening, and found himself fielding the anger of Smyth victims at the array of untruths expressed in the course of the interview.

It is also widely known that Jonathan Gibbs experienced moral and emotional exhaustion at the cynicism he found in the culture of the House of Bishops. He was at one time on the verge of quitting the role. I urged him to go (if that was his intention) with a bang and not a whimper. He clung on but seemed to lose any heart in the role and in his last year as Lead bishop resembled a man desperately seeking a demob suit. The sight of him at that shameful Synod last year, sounding like a strangulated Jackanory presenter against the backdrop of brazenly strategic silencing of questions from the platform, was really pitiful. I think by that stage everyone knew he was a spent force who’d lost any power of persuasion that he might at one stage have had. 

It is clear to all watchers that the Lead Bishops have their hands on rubber levers which effect little to no change. The power lies behind them on the platform of the carefully stage-managed theatre of Synod. The real levers are in the hands of those who control Synod, control the NST, control Archbishops Council, control the Comms in Church House, manage the Church’s response to Reviews and Reports, control the long drawn out delay to the Redress Scheme, and ultimately control the presentational mirage of ‘journey of change’ in this broken structure. The real levers are operated by the Nyebots while Lead Bishops must be content to handle rubber levers.

Survivors could be forgiven for thinking the Lead Safeguarding role is now little more than a purgatorial stepping stone to a bigger mitre. Do the three years and field your way through the unethical mess of it all and we’ll give you a diocese. That seems to be the way it works. Anyone remember the anger felt by survivors after the Synod? When a list of failures and major questions about accountability were skipped over and erased by a deeply cynical Archbishops Council. It was to be hoped that the next Lead Bishop would at least start with visible drive and recognition of the anger and hurt expressed by survivors, some resolve to mend bridges and show herself impelled by the call for justice, redress and institutional honesty. 

But so far there has been little sign that this bishop is doing much else than marking time in a thankless role. Meanwhile the situation is worsening. Is worse now than it was during the time of IICSA. The Church of England is fighting fires on all fronts. Church groups across the evangelical world are waking up to the potentially huge scale of ramifications in the Soul Survivor scandal. Publication of the long awaited Makin Review is around the corner later this year and is likely to be as critical of senior figures and their awareness combined with the ability to look the other way, as has been the Devamanikkam Report. There is renewed interest in the media in the Church’s failure to deliver a Redress Scheme and its re-abusive treatment of survivors in the meantime. The Spindler/Reeves Review recently published on House of Survivors site is a coruscating report into the Church’s continuing cruelty in just one case alone. In the coming weeks a fresh complaint concerning dishonesty and corporate corruption inside the heart of the Archbishops Council will land on the desks of both Archbishops. And so it goes on…

Just this morning a Synod Member with many years experience in corporate investigations tells me, “We need a 10,000 watt spotlight on this organisation as I see so many corporate governance failures which I think need a total clean-up. We choose clergy to be shepherds of flocks, not to run billion pound organisations. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when this proves to be beyond their competence. David was great at dealing with Goliath but proved to have many flaws when he became King. One of the issues is whether the problem is the King or the KIng’s advisers.”

I suspect the Lead bishop is overwhelmed by the sheer number of fires in her department, and overwhelmed too by the multitude of conflicts of interest apparent beneath the surface of the Church’s handling of so much of this crisis. But she will need quickly to find her voice and her courage, and show survivors that she has the moral strength to fight the injustice and intransigence of her structures on our behalf. She will need to step out from behind the purple enclosure and look behind her with a critical eye and call out serious wrongdoing within the hierarchy and their structure. Survivors need to see a Lead Bishop with tenacity to match that of survivors. Quiet complicity with institutional complacency, cruelty and corruption is no longer an option. It looks like negligence and begs the question: is the Bishop even trying to do the job?

Gilo

By Martin Sewell

Shortly after joining General Synod in 2015 and following a maiden speech contributing to the debate of the Clergy (Risk Assessment) Regulations 2016, I found myself in the coffee queue alongside Archbishop John Sentamu. I had spoken critically, having contributed to commissioning some hundreds of such assessments, but the archbishop explained to me where I was reading the room wrongly. Essentially, I was seeking to align ecclesiastical legal process with secular safeguarding standards but, he said, “We are building a system suitable for the Church of England”.

Upon hearing of his being “stood back” from ministry following the Humphreys Review of the Devamanikkam case – and especially his “Old School” reaction to it –  I could not but reflect that that project is now truly dead in the water and Sentamu’s assertion that Church Law trumps good (secular) safeguarding practice has delivered the coup de grâce.

The future of Church safeguarding must surely now involve the unequivocal embracing of secular standards of jurisprudence and about time too; ask the many, many abuse survivors who have campaigned for vital reform in the wake of the Matt Ineson case.

That case became, perhaps, the first very public cause célèbre because Matt had the courage and integrity to put his own name into the public domain as he told his harrowing story. When he saw one of the bishops who had wronged him promoted from Sheffield to the important see of Oxford, he protested outside Christ Church Cathedral at the enthronement. It was a low-key protest but it has become hugely symbolic.

He was joined by another hero of the safeguarding resistance, Gilo, as the great and the good largely passed by on the other side of the road and some inside were told that it was a “Families need Fathers” demonstration (so nothing really to do with the Church). One of the few clerics to break ranks, to engage and make the protestors welcome, was the Dean of Christ Church, Dr Martyn Percy. He did not ignore them; he brought them tea and sandwiches and let them use the toilets.

It may not have quite been the door at Wittenberg, but it proved to be an important event in the safeguarding life of the Church of England.

Many years later, Matt Ineson was offered a review of his case – with strings attached.  “Old School” was at it again, reasserting its power over a victim and expecting gratitude. They found him awkwardly ungrateful.

If ‘Old School’ would not approach the matter in a modern collaborative way, consulting himself, Devamanikkam’s relatives, and Bishop Croft on the identity of the reviewer, and the terms of reference, Matt Ineson insisted that he would neither engage with the Review, nor permit his data to be used within it.  ‘Old School’ ploughed on, ensuring from the outset that the Review could only ever assess part of the story.

Matt had told his story powerfully at IICSA – as had Gilo – but  unfortunately the scope of IICSA closed just before the Smyth victims and Dr Percy could have their stories of cover-up and institutional bullying considered in that independent secular sphere, away from the corrupting influences of opacity and unaccountable power. There remains much unfinished business within the pursuit of cultural change.

Yet the Humphreys Review is not without value; it tells part, though far from all of the story, and the Church of England must now consider its response. If this is to be another step on the long slow journey towards integrity, the de facto suspension of the former Archbishop of York from ministry must be followed by the suspension of  the current Bishop of Oxford pending a comprehensive re-examination of  both their places within this story and beyond.

Bishop Croft has the historic misfortune of standing in the eye of a perfect storm of safeguarding scandals which we need to identify and confront. First, however, let us consider where we are in terms of precedent.

When the former Bishop of Lincoln Christopher Lowson was alleged to have responded inadequately to safeguarding matters, the then CofE Director of Safeguarding, Melissa Caslake, successfully established that the infamous ‘one year rule’,  time-limiting complaints, ran from the date of her learning of the alleged infraction. She was accorded the status to act independently in such cases. But if she had it, then so must her successor Alex Kubeyinje: indeed, he must have the duty to act. Bishop Lowson suffered a  lengthy suspension (initially imposed by Archbishop Justin before Caslake’s involvement) while the matter was investigated by Lincolnshire Police, with Welby insisting that the suspension was a neutral act. Those matters (in respect of of which the President of Tribunals later found there was no case to answer ) were not more serious than the multiple unexamined residual allegations against Bishop Steven Croft.

When six allegations of mishandling safeguarding  were brought against Dean Percy (with no actual complainant supporting them) in 2020 he too suffered a lengthy suspension, at the hands of Bishop Croft, before those complaints were found to have no substance. Archbishop Sentamu is complaining: “Those who believe that suspension is a neutral act – its effect on me is more devastating than they will ever remember”. Does anyone recall him lifting his voice when Dr Percy was being repeatedly judicially bullied by College, Cathedral and Diocese?  Me neither…

In June 2020 Bishop Croft revoked former Archbishop George Carey’s Permission to Officiate (PTO) in the church where he worships in retirement. Keith Makin had passed on to the National Safeguarding Team two letters that suggested a report about Smyth’s abuse had been seen by Carey in the early 1980s when he was principal of Trinity College Bristol – prior to becoming the archbishop. Carey denied ever seeing the letters and his PTO was restored by Croft seven months later. Croft was effectively instructed to revoke Carey’s PTO by the NST, but the point is that he was ‘suspended’ pending an investigation into poor complaint handling while Croft, still in active ministry, is not.

What cannot be right is for the Bishop of Oxford to enjoy a more privileged response from the institutions of the Church than Lowson, Carey, Percy, and Sentamu pending the fullest  investigation of the facts about his actions. His handling of both matters must be considered, especially after Archbishops Justin and Stephen have been joined by the independent members of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) in affirming the need for a proper examination of Dean Percy’s allegations of institutional bullying and a toxic culture across the upper echelons of the Church, including Lambeth Palace and Church House. Why the delay there?

There are eight points which readers might find clinch the argument for a swift Croft suspension and a joint Percy/Ineson review.

• Matt Ineson alleges that Bishop Croft gave damagingly inconsistent explanations to BBC Radio about the repeated disclosures made to him. This allegation must be resolved one way or the other.

• When an assessment was required of the risk (if any) that Dean Percy posed to all and sundry within Christ Church Oxford, following the allegation in October 2020, so-called ‘assessments of risks’ were prepared, ostensibly by cathedral staff rather than any of the ten approved assessors listed by the Diocese and ignoring the approved CofE procedures for such assessments. Bishop Croft has consistently refused to condemn such irregularity . He needs to account for effectively endorsing the departure from policy and good practice.

• When Dean Percy emerged unscathed from the allegations against him, Bishop Croft did not immediately allow him to return to ministry and refused him a proper leaving Service; now he is under scrutiny, he invites everyone to ‘draw the line’ early and move on. That looks a tad hypocritical, which should not become de rigueur for any bishop let alone a member of the House of Lords.

• Bishop Croft arrived in Oxford whilst under the Ineson CDM investigation. When Cathedral members brought to him evidence that one of his staff might be seriously misrepresenting the character of the final Percy allegation, he took no action and later wrote a ‘fit to receive’ letter, perpetuating the Old School culture of picking and choosing who gets the favours and who gets the hit.

• When such matters were aired publicly in the Archbishop Cranmer blog, questioning the Oxford safeguarding culture, the bishop’s response was to threaten the editor with ruinous defamation proceedings. That is not what openness and integrity looks like.

• In his self-exculpatory letter to 700 Oxford clergy in response to the Humphreys Review, the Bishop ‘victim blames’ Ineson for his being “distracted” by referencing a 10-year-old CDM brought against Matt Ineson after he had disclosed his rape and which Croft himself dismissed. Ineson says this infringes his right to anonymity on that dismissed allegation which he describes as “trumped up” in response to his disclosures.

• Matt Ineson’s complaint extends to the want of care afforded to his mentally ill rapist who committed suicide.

• While the effective suspension of Lord Sentamu is procedurally correct, it is unedifying to see public opprobrium heaped upon ‘the retired black guy’ while the white bishop with far greater responsibility in the matter remains in post.

Bishop Croft has had the Humphreys report for several months to prepare a response; regrets and the Ad Clerum letter are not sufficient for closure on doubts over his episcopal stewardship in these matters. There remains a great deal of unfinished business swept under the carpet at Woodstock Palace / Church House, Oxford / Bishop’s Lodge, Kidlington. It is not unknown for a suspension to free other complainants to come forward.

These are important matters of principle; they are not trivial, vindictive or personal. For too long the critics of the Church have seen cover-up and expediency rule the roost; we may be at the tipping point, but as things stand the essential change cannot be taken for granted especially if laxity, partiality, and expediency are allowed to creep back in.

Sentamu only articulated what many bishops have de facto thought for years, but it is substance not presentation that counts. Croft had primary responsibility for processing the complaint of abuse of a minor and leaving a potential rapist at liberty for a further five years.

Incidentally, one cannot help but notice a public silence on such an important point from Meg Munn, the putative acting chair of the Independent Safeguarding Board since the story broke. This may add to why there is a widespread lack of confidence in that appointment.

The Church is about to face another tsunami of embarrassment over the Soul Survivor allegations. The toxicity of lax process must surely be recognised as having played a part in this fresh scandal, for can it be seriously doubted that had the issues described above been addressed with due regard for transparency and accountability, the attention of the Soul Survivor leadership might have sharpened and victims been emboldened to come forward at an earlier stage?

Of course, suspension and inquiry does not equate to guilt and even adverse findings must result in a proportionate response. Yet if you want to change the Old School culture – you have to change the Old School culture. This can only be done by the Church following its logic over John Sentamu and applying it to Steven Croft without more ado. Good impartial process has to be the order of the day.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that much of what is said about Croft and Sentamu can also be said about Archbishop Justin Welby over similar matters: there is the long-delayed Makin Report. I suspect that after the week he has had, following the Coronation, Archbishop Justin will be seriously considering his own position alongside those of his colleagues.

Some of us have been pointing out that the writing has been on the wall for years.

by Rosie Harper

This is a short reflection about power in the Church from Rosie Harper, a former member of General Synod and Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham.

On Tuesday afternoon I attended the 368th Festival Service of the Clergy Support Trust. It took place at St Paul’s and in a weird way it was done in a mini-me style of the coronation. There was a past PM, the Lord Mayor who processed ‘in State’ whatever that means. It seemed to involve a couple of folk in tights who had to carry very heavy stuff ahead of him. Then there were Sheriffs and Bishops and Aldermen and so on. There were three cathedral choirs and lots of fancy dress. Of course it was rather fabulous. The music was beautiful and they had thought hard about being inclusive.

On the front row in contrast to all the gold and entitled flummery were a handful of ‘ordinary’ people who had been the beneficiaries of the Support Trust’s generosity. Tick!

I was squeezed, rather too literally, between two charming gentlemen who seemed to have strips of dead bear hanging for their shoulders. Probably something to do with Livery Companies.

The man on my left was Mr Geoffrey Tattersall KC known to me as an experienced and kind chair of General Synod debates  Naturally he asked me why I wasn’t doing Synod anymore and I gave my usual reply. I no longer believe in it. I felt played and manipulated by the puppeteers behind the scenes. Ah well, he said, it is what it is.

So despite the wholly good and generous intentions of the Trust the service simply dripped entitlement and hierarchy. It dripped power. It mirrored the service last week at Westminster Abbey and was a very vivid display the Established Church. Boy is it established! The nearer to the front you were the more important you could feel. Someone forgot to read the gospels. So I was feeling distinctly queasy as I made my way home. I was trying to join up the dots. For some reason it seemed that Mike Pilavachi was part of the pattern.

So here’s my question. Is all religion inherently abusive? I have yet to meet organised religion that does not use and abuse power, and the worst version is power which comes via a hotline direct from God. This tends to be embedded in a theology rooted in a scary model of God. A God who is so angry that he takes his (righteous, of course) anger out on his own innocent son. If your theology is abusive your structures will be too. And if your structures are abusive they will attract abusers. We don’t know yet how the Pilavachi story will play out, but Ian Paul shouting at everyone to shut up, and hence fanning the flames, does not bode well.

I wonder why, as a religion, a sect, a denomination begins to organise itself as a result of growth, it always creates power structures? There are other more equal and less controlling ways of being community. But power is seductive and pretends to be a servant for the greater good. The temptations of Christ in the desert nail it. Trade your integrity for power is the siren call. Jesus saw right through it, but organised religion falls for it hook, line and sinker. 

I know, I really do, that there is love and kindness and generosity and life changing support that flows from people of faith and from faith communities. Goodness is there and it is abundant. I am scared though that when I see an institution like the CofE or the Catholic church completely unable to reform, to recognise abusive leaders, to accept any independent scrutiny, to name spiritual abuse and most of all to treat survivors with the respect and value and reparation that they deserve. Is it in the end it’s because it can’t be done? The question is horrible. What if religion is abusive -full stop.

by Anonymous

An occasional series looking at how ordinary words and terms have been redefined in the Church of England (CofE). Others in the series to look out will feature mutual flourishing, vulnerable adult, pastoral care, equality, collegiality, mission, appropriate, growth and accountability. And of course, the term ‘safeguarding’. This week, we take a look at ‘independent’.

Readers of this blog may have a fond recollection of the launch of The Independent newspaper in 1986.  It was memorable for many reasons.  This was the first broadsheet newspaper to be launched in the UK for 112 years.  The founders of the newspaper – dissatisfied with the ding-dong battles between Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch slugging it out in circulation figures, scoops and advertising revenue – sought to establish a newspaper free of mogul-ownership.

One of the more striking features of the newspaper was its marketing, with Paul Arden and Tim Mellors leading the team at Saatchi & Saatchi responsible for creating the advertising campaign. Who can forget the giant billboard posters: “It is. Are you?”. Just four words, and then the title of the newspaper. As zeitgeist captions go, hard to beat.

Yet the Archbishops’ Council have rubber-stamped the appointment of Meg Munn as the new chair of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB). Munn takes up post this month. This comes at a delicate moment in the gestation of the ISB. The two board members, Jasvinder Sanghera MBE and Steve Reeves CBE, have recently issued a number of statements and reports stressing the need for the ISB to become an authentically independent body. You’d think that request for independence would be granted? Think again.

The Archbishops’ Council has responded by imposing Ms. Munn as the new Chair. She already sits on or chairs other CofE safeguarding panels. She is not independent. Moreover, more than fifty survivors have written to the ISB to protest. They do not have confidence or trust in Ms. Munn. The likely incontinence between the NST, NNSP, NSSG and ISB is now a certainty. There is no proper data-related ISA (Information Sharing Agreement) in place. Anything communicated to Ms. Munn in one forum cannot avoid leakage into another.

The Archbishops’ Council don’t care a jot about any of this, because when you dominate an institution and its culture, words mean what you say they mean.  Take a word like ‘independent’. It means ‘free from outside control; not depending on another’s authority’ (e.g., “the study is totally independent of central government”). But this is not the definition applied by the Archbishops and most bishops. In their case, ‘independent’ means “it wasn’t me that did or decided this: it was s/he, her/him, they/them…but they came to the same conclusion as me, and honestly I did not influence their decision…and they are not me, so they are independent”. In other words, ‘independent’, in episcopal hands, means a separate person agreeing with a decision the bishop has already made.

In case you doubt this Orwellian, Kafkaesque and Lewis Carroll Dictionary World, you may need to remind yourself that the CofE has no written conflict of interest policy. That is partly because “thoughts and prayers for you at this difficult time”, “we have offered pastoral care” and “it was a difficult decision, but I can’t comment further or give my reasons” are what are usually substituted for truth and justice in the CofE. Time and time again.

The last thing your average bishop wants is any independent scrutiny, external accountability or regulation. God forbid! The CofE is a large unregulated body, and in a literal sense, a law unto itself. Employment law, gender, discrimination, pay and conditions – all testify to a culture that works with its own standards (which would be unlawful outside the CofE) Having its own system of ecclesiastical law means it can (almost) get away with murder.

Well, certainly a few suicides – which in any secular body or organisation would prompt a public inquiry, much soul-searching and several sackings – but barely causes a ripple in the CofE. So, after the tragic gas-lighting of Fr. Alan Griffin and which led to his suicide, the senior diocesan officials carry on regardless, safe in the knowledge that any ‘lessons learned review’ will have terms of reference set by the accused, and be conducted by those whose main concern is to protect the reputation and optics of those who might be criticised.  This is a serious pathology within an institution, this is an advanced case of Truth Decay.

Of course, it is true that a term like ‘independent’ can be used in a rather pliable way. My local coffee shop is ‘independent’, by which it means it is not a branch of Costa, Starbucks and the like. But my local independent coffee shop has three branches. Next door to the independent coffee shop is the independent bakery – it has seven outlets.  OK, it is not exactly Greggs, I grant you. But if the bakery had 40-plus outlets, is this now an ‘independent chain’? The term ‘independent’ is a commercially-positioned identity. It connotes local, and not being owned by some faceless foreign conglomerate. It may even mean it makes its own pastries rather than buying them in bulk. Fair enough.

But when the CofE uses the term ‘independent’ in safeguarding, what does it mean?  Is it “free from outside control and not depending on another’s authority”, or the more commercially local definition?  No. Plainly, it is a PR term, and absolutely nothing remotely proximate to genuine independence.

Thus, the Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor (DSA) in your diocese will sometimes be referred to as independent. But they are paid by the Diocese, accountable to the Diocesan Board of Finance, work in Diocesan HQ, and ultimately be accountable to your bishop. (So, good luck with your complaint to the DSA about your bishop’s recent handling of X or Y…how is that investigation progressing? Seems a bit slow…and s/he’s not “stepped back from ministry” as required of all other clergy, pending outcomes…hmm, strange that, strange…).

Last year I wrote to both Archbishops to complain about the fact that the (then) Chair of the ISB, Maggie Atkinson, was not acting independently, and instead seemed to be conducting her work in a manner that was partial and protectionist of existing power interests, including church lawyers, senior officials and PR agents. The Archbishops waived away these objections in their first sentence: “we obviously have a different definition of what ‘independent’ means”.

They went on to explain that the way they used the term had to be qualified, and to factor in that as the Archbishops’ Council were paying for the ISB, yes, of course, to some extent they were inevitably controlling it, and had authority over it. But the ISB was still ‘independent’, they maintained – in a way that one might argue the Isle of White is unattached to England. Or I am independent from my partner.

Or the Basingstoke branch of Costa is from the ones in Basildon, Bicester and Barnet. I mean, those Costa branches are not physically joined together, are they? They have different staff, variable turnovers of income, dissimilar customer profiles – so in a sense they are independent of each other, aren’t they?

Put like this, then pretty well everything in the CofE is independent of everything else in the CofE, and that is also sort of true, isn’t it? Parishes are independent of each other. Clergy too. Dioceses, when it comes to questions of maternity leave, housing allowances, moving expenses, employment…well, yes, they’re all independent of their neighbouring dioceses. You see, having your own definition of words really can work awfully well in certain kinds of cultures and kleptocracies (i.e., 1984, Handmaid’s Tale, etc).

So, when the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding asserted at General Synod that the ISB was ‘independent’ he was not lying. He was just using the word in a rather unconventional way that is different to the rest of the population.

When IICSA demanded independent oversight of safeguarding in the CofE, it was of course left to the Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council, Mr. William Nye, to properly interpret and translate the term ‘independent’ into a concept that those inside the CofE could work with. Because if ‘independent’ was used and deployed in the conventional sense in the CofE, then bishops would lose power and authority in safeguarding, and be open to challenge. IICSA surely didn’t mean that to happen, did they?

So here are three clusters of questions to ponder the next time you hear your bishop, DSA or some senior official in the CofE say there has been an “independent investigation” into some safeguarding matter or other. Just ask yourself the obvious questions, and put yourself in the position of being on the receiving end of the implementation. Ask yourself if you are comfortable with the standard of truth and justice operating.  Or, feel rather betrayed?

The Set-up:

Who made the complaint? What do you know about the accusation? Were there other charges, victims or complaints? Who set the terms of reference for the investigation? Who paid for these to be set? Did you have any input into this set up, either as a victim, witness or as accused? Is there anyone involved at this stage who has a conflict of interest? How would you even know, or challenge this?

The Execution:

Is the legal firm advising on the investigation process the same one that the Diocese and the Bishop have? Do you have any legal representation, or even legal rights? Is the investigator regulated or accountable, and if so, how and to whom?  What evidence is going to be considered? How was the scope of investigation communicated to you?

The Outcome:

When a decision is made, what rights do you have as a victim or as the accused? If you discover that there have been false witnesses, or that evidence has been redacted, supressed or co-ordinated, can you do anything? Is your Bishop in this acting as your pastor, prosecutor, judge, jury, employer – all of these, or maybe none of them? Can you trust this system in which there appears to be no accountability?

In conclusion, it is these sorts of questions the independently-minded Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves were beginning to grapple with. Whatever the shortcomings of the nascent ISB – largely attributable to the abysmal resourcing and obstruction from its parent body the Archbishops’ Council – Sanghera and Reeves at least understand independence, and also what a problem conflicts of interest are for the destruction of trust and confidence.

This explains the imposition of Ms. Munn as the new chair. She is in post to remind the rest of the CofE that ‘independent’ is a meaningless term in a church run by autocratic and unaccountable leadership. If Ms. Munn had any decency, integrity and probity, she’d refuse to take on the role. Those who have imposed her are banking on her toughing it out.  That, at a stroke, renders the concept of independence void, and simply leads to a total incontinence with the data and lives of victims, survivors and complainants already abused through CofE safeguarding.

As a postscript, we note that The Independent was eventually bought by Tony O’Reilly’s Independent News and Media Group, before being sold to the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev in 2010. Lebedev, like Putin, is a former KGB officer. Lebedev also owns a newspaper with Mikhail Gorbachev. In 2017, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel bought a large stake in The Independent.

In theory, The Independent could run a critical story on Lebedev, Gorbachev or Abuljadayel.  But it doesn’t seem likely, does it? You might then ask yourself if it is not a little impertinent, and indeed slightly misleading, to be the owner of a newspaper called The Independent?

We are back deep into CofE safeguarding terrain here. ‘Independent’ is a commercial and marketing-PR term as much as it is a legal one. The Archbishops’ Council hope you will believe they are using the term as a legal or regulatory word. In truth, they are selling you a huge con: it is only their marketing-PR term.

As I say, once you realise that the DSA works for your bishop, it isn’t going to be easy to raise your concerns about episcopal safeguarding conduct. The ISB might have been a useful avenue that opened up an alternative route. Ms. Munn’s appointment puts a huge roadblock firmly in the way. The advertising campaign for The Independent once teased “it is, are you?”. The CofE, with Munn’s appointment, shows that it has its own secret advertising campaign well underway. But there are no teases here. “Independent Safeguarding? Certainly not! Why in God’s name would we?”.

I have many times referred to the desire among conservative Christians to find complete reliability in their interaction with Holy Scripture.  Through the medium of preaching, the ‘clear teaching’ of God can be shared among the faithful as they gather for worship in churches around the world. There is, however, only one actual place where God’s teaching seems to be totally transparent and clear. That is inside the mind of the authoritative preacher. Within the preacher’s brain, all the difficulties in the text seem to be resolved and tidied up.  Outside the preacher’s head, there is another world.  This is the place where conscientious students of Scripture struggle with the challenge of detailed examination of the Bible.  In this world there are many difficulties and problems to be wrestled with and clear answers are not always to be found.  I am not now going to say more on the numerous problems that arise when a preacher claims perfect consistency and reliability for the Bible.   My purpose in this blog piece is to introduce a fresh concept which I have just encountered. This concept can, I believe, help us to have a realistic and more profound appreciation of Holy Scripture. The idea I want to share is what I call reverse translation.  In simple terms we are attempting to read  the Bible as far as we can by understanding the thought forms and words of those who authored Scripture.  Through this exercise we may find we have greater awareness of some of the critical issues around the study of Scripture.  We can also find through it a sense of hope and a strengthening for our faith, as we get a little closer to those who wrote the Bible.

I want, first, to emphasise a preoccupation of mine about the importance of words and their correct interpretation in any serious study of the Bible.  It is sometimes important to spend a fair amount of time on a key word to extract its full meaning.  Those of us who have knowledge of a foreign language know how difficult it can be to find the exact equivalent in English for a foreign word.  This also may be true when we speak the same language as the other person.  Their cultural background may be different from our own and they can use words in a different way from us.  The same problem exists in a pronounced way when we try to understand texts that were written two thousand or more years ago. I am not going to claim that every Christian needs to learn Greek and Hebrew. But I would suggest that all those who teach from a pulpit need to have some awareness of these languages and the way they function.  Quite often the pronouncement that Scripture is clear and straightforward is not what any of the commentaries are claiming.  A little humility needs to be exercised as well as self-knowledge if Scripture is not to be used a means of self-aggrandisement.  Another trap that some preachers fall into is to weaponize Scripture.  What is delivered from the pulpit is not an exposition of God’s will, but a parade of their human prejudice, wrapped up in carefully chosen words taken from Scripture.  The words are frequently wrenched from their context and because of this they lose much of their original meaning.

In common with many theological students of my generation, I had to have a reasonable grounding in New Testament Greek. I did also take some instruction in Hebrew but gave that up before the end of my undergraduate studies. I make no claims of expertise here, but I am aware of the many problems that face us if we always claim to have a totally reliable translation of an Old or New Testament passage. The more one is exposed to these original languages, the greater is a reluctance to use words like infallible to describe Scripture. I remember a day in my Hebrew class when the teacher admitted that the translation of one particular Hebrew word was a matter of guesswork. Somewhere in the distant past, the understanding of the meaning of this word, even among Jewish scholars, had been lost.

The problems of engaging with ancient texts is not a way of saying that we must learn these languages for ourselves. What we can do is to be aware that there are many scriptural words in English which have a quite different feel when we engage in a reverse translation.  While most English translations of biblical words and ideas may be fairly accurate, this does not mean that we should be unaware or uninterested in the wider context or framework of understanding that was in operation for the original writer.  It is sometimes helpful to consult a variety of English translations.  This will help us to see that the work of translation is sometimes a matter of conveying the sense of an entire passage rather than just the meaning of individual words. To focus on individual words in Scripture can, however, be helpful.  As I have said in earlier blogs, Hebrew words often contain a range of meanings rather than a single English equivalent. The simplest best-known example of this is in the word commonly used greeting word in modern Hebrew – Shalom. The word can convey a whole range of positive experiences that we wish for the one whom we are greeting. It contains the idea of peace, prosperity, reconciliation and wholeness. Even from this single example, it is clear that the Hebrew language treats words in a somewhat different way to English. Words are used not so much as a way of defining meaning, but rather as a way of clustering together and evoking meanings.

In the small ecumenical study group that I belong to, we have decided, at my suggestion, to look at the Lord’s Prayer and try to do a reverse translation to the version given in the Aramaic New Testament, known as the Peshitta. This version will be very close to the actual words that Jesus himself used. Aramaic was his likely first language and was used by him for teaching. Nobody is expecting to become knowledgeable in this language but the wrestling with individual words and using the insights of commentators and what they can tell us about their meaning, will help us to hear something new in the prayer.  In short, reverse translation may be a means of obtaining a new appreciation of the way that familiar words can be appropriated and understood in a completely fresh manner.

What might this exercise in glimpsing the words and meanings of an ancient biblical worldview achieve?  Looking at the Aramaic words which, like Hebrew, evoke meaning and experience, will make us all, hopefully, a little more reluctant to claim that we have the meaning of any text completely sorted.  Allowing ourselves to be exposed to the thinking and feeling of a completely different culture is itself a lesson in a new and fresh way of humbly apprehending truth. We have already suggested that English does not have a single word to translate shalom. Similarly, the Lord’s Prayer, when encountered through the words used by the Aramaic New Testament is going to have a different feeling about it. To repeat, words in Hebrew evoke meaning. It is therefore wrong to suggest that in this exercise of reverse translation we will arrive at the kinds of defined meanings that would justify the adjectives infallible or inerrant. Reverse translation takes us further away from such ideas.   Theories of Scripture being without error have an 18^th century flavour.  They certainly have little to do with the thought world of the Bible.

I was speaking to someone who said that he had been recently released from what he described as the fundamentalist horror of his upbringing. He realised now that truth was not something that was handed to him from an authoritative controlling preacher but was result of personal discovery and growth. He knew that, now he had abandoned the same reliable but narrow teaching of his conservative evangelical background, his understandings would be untidy.  Although his past beliefs had offered him safety, they came with the intolerable additional burden of constant fear.  Somehow uncertainty was a price worth paying for the complete release from this fear that had haunted him since childhood. In short, he recognised that the God, now revealing himself to him as compassion and love, was not the same one who had terrified him most of his life.  I encouraged him in the thought that while we cannot expect to have all the answers in this lifetime, there are always enough hints of truth and goodness around us to guide us into a place of shalom in all of its manifestations.

Surviving Church has now been going for almost 10 years and I am contemplating soon laying down my pen, so to speak and to focus on other things. The world of church politics is not a place where I feel comfortable and I have probably said most of what I can usefully say about abuse, safeguarding, church bullying and narcissism among church leaders. Even if the number of posts I put up here becomes fewer, I will still be available for email correspondence with those who wish to engage with me on the issues which have preoccupied me for almost 30 years. One of the welcome by-products of writing this blog has been the communication with a variety of strangers. They have shared experience and queries and I have tried to answer these to the best of my ability. I am very happy to continue such communication as long as it is required.

There is a book by the American political commentator, George Lakoff, which much appealed to me when I read it some eight years ago.  It had the intriguing title Don’t Think of an Elephant.  The point of the title is that when you tell someone that they are not permitted to think about a thing or a topic, that forbidden object will automatically immediately come into your mind.  No one can avoid thinking about a topic once it has been brought to one’s attention.  Human nature and the thinking processes cannot be manipulated in this way to accommodate the requirements of authority, however much they might like it.

In the aftermath of the news that Mike Pilavachi, the founder of Soul Survivor, is stepping back from ministry while an investigation is held into safeguarding concerns, we are told ‘not (to) speculate or discuss this more widely, including on social media, while the process runs its course’.  This statement is put out on behalf of the trustees of Soul Survivor, the Diocese of St Albans and the NST.   Clearly someone believes that any reflection on the implications of sentences containing together the words, safeguarding, Pilavachi and stepping back, can be supressed as though they had never been said.  The elephant has now been named and it is inevitable that people will want to react to the little that has so far been shared in the public domain.  A responsible blogger, as I hope I am, is not going to claim to have new information on the matter based on rumour or speculation.  However, there is already enough information in the public domain to see, even in the bare outlines of the story, a matter of significant public interest.  It is also of massive concern to the Anglican circles of charismatic evangelicals where Pilavachi has held a position of some importance.

Soul Survivor, the organisation over which Pilavachi has presided and guided over three decades, has seen around 35,000 young people in Britain pass through its camps.  The stepping back of its founder will inevitably cause consternation to these young people who will have regarded their camp leader with enormous respect, if not veneration.  The dynamic of charismatic Christianity very much draws on a process involving hero-worship or projection.   Having had no personal knowledge of the Soul Survivor organisation before this past week, I can make no further observations as to the inner workings of this, on the surface, highly successful and powerful organisation for the evangelisation of young people in Britain.

Although I cannot say very much about Pilavachi and his style of operation, there are some interesting parallels that can be made with another Anglican youth ministry which appeared at the same time in the 90s: the Nine O’Clock Service in Sheffield.  The parallels are not perfect, and I do not want to suggest that the leader of NOS, Chris Brain and his known abusive behaviour towards women, is being echoed in the current Soul Survivor inquiries.  The true parallels seem to occur in two main ways.  First, both these networks have had a focus on ministering to young people.  Secondly, because of the considerable level of success in each case, the organisations operated by Brain and Pilavachi have been able to negotiate a considerable degree of independence from traditional Anglican structures, while remaining part of the whole.  It is this semi-detached relationship with the CofE that I want to reflect on as it appears in each organisation.  The wider Church seemed to gain a great deal from this oversight, but it also puts itself in a position of peril if things were to go wrong.

It is one of the contemporary claims of the 21^st century CofE to have a variety of structures within the whole.  These have a flexibility and are able to adapt to a variety of ecclesial situations.  Alongside the traditional parish structure, which relates a parish to others in a deanery and is answerable to an archdeacon and a bishop, there are a variety of other ways of doing ‘church’ under the Anglican umbrella.  Many Anglican Christians in Britain belong nominally to a diocese, but they have structures of oversight which are little to do with traditional deaneries and dioceses.  These churches, often with a distinctive conservative evangelical flavour, are far more likely to relate only to other like-minded congregations within their own particular network.  The networks have names like AMiE, GAFCON, ReNew or New Wine.  Some owe their identity to an association with a particular prominent mother church like Holy Trinity Brompton.   The mother church may be the one that planted their congregation sometime in the past.  Thus, we have a considerable percentage of churches that exist in a variety of independent ecclesiastical bubbles.  The clergy, who serve one or other of these network congregations, will often move only to other congregations which are part of their group.  Many clergy who serve within these networks will have begun their ministries in the ‘mother ship’ which has in a quasi-episcopal role over these satellite congregations.  It is notable how some key mega-churches have up to a dozen curates.  These junior clergy are all waiting for the opportunity to serve in a congregation within their own network.  Such appointments are made not by bishops, as far as one can gather, but by patrons and others powerful positions in the network.  One of the claims made about Jonathan Fletcher is that he possessed the patronage power equivalent to several bishops.  He had the undisputed power to place favoured junior clergy in the parishes that once looked to him as their unofficial leader.  It would be true to say that the occupants of many key evangelical parishes today owe their position originally to the patronage and support of Fletcher in his exercising considerable power within the broad evangelical network.

Soul Survivor began as a group receiving support from its founding congregation of St Andrew’s Chorley Wood.  Here Mike Pilavachi worked as a youth leader.  This church came to prominence in the 80s and 90s under the somewhat eccentric leadership of Bishop David Pytches.  It was one of the first networks to promote what we can describe as charismatic evangelical worship.  In this it was indebted to a number of transatlantic contacts.   St Andrews was deeply involved in promoting the Kansas City Prophets and later the Toronto Blessing in 1994.  There is not the space to recount the story of Pilavachi’s initiative but, suffice to say, his organisation has been, in the three decades of its existence, a massive influence on Anglican youth work and latterly on helping churches to exercise leadership.  While we are unable to shed any further light on what may be being discussed as part of the current investigation process, we can comment that any ministries focussing on work with youth are always extremely vulnerable to safeguarding problems.

We have already mentioned the rise and fall of the Nine O’Clock Service which appeared at the same time as Soul Survivor.  In each case the organisation negotiated for itself a considerable degree of independence from CofE structures.  Both NOS and Soul Survivor, in not dissimilar ways, have been known for the large numbers of young people at their services.  The readiness by the diocesan authorities to allow a semi-independent group to have control over finances (and safeguarding) was bound to be a risky matter.  In the case of NOS, Brain was allowed total control of the group, while at the same time accepting the nominal control and oversight of the Diocese of Sheffield through being ordained as a priest.   There seems to have been an implicit hope that Brain’s success in attracting large numbers of young people would somehow rub off on to the wider Anglican structures.   When things were running well, everybody wanted to be part of the action, from the Archbishop of Canterbury (George Carey) downwards.   Being identified with such avant-garde thinking in theology and liturgy, made the CofE appear to be up to date and in touch with popular culture. Brain had appeared to be discovering a new way of attracting young people to a modern expression of church through his grasp of technical wizardry and grand theatrical effects.  Theologically speaking, he owed inspiration to ideas propounded in the States by Matthew Fox and his Creation Spirituality.

In the case of Soul Survivor, the powerful personality of Pilavachi also seems to have established a leading role in his organisation.   In the annual youth camps which were held every year up to 2019, Pilavachi appears to have been a crucial presence.  Also, he exercised a quasi-episcopal role in drawing together a cluster of affiliated parishes and congregations (not all Anglican) to be part of a Soul Survivor network.  The temporary relinquishing of the leadership role by Pilavachi may create serious problems for the successful functioning of this network.  The sheer force of a charismatic personality like Pilavachi’s is always important in holding together such a network. This need for such leadership cannot be underestimated.  Only time will tell how the network will manage to hold together if the stepping back is anything more than extremely short-lived.  

My brief mention of the role of a charismatic leader in holding together a group, large or small, is one that is familiar to students of cults.  I have written myself about this dynamic as it is a familiar theme of cult studies and social theory.  At its simplest form, there is a common tendency among most human beings to search for, in situations of stress, another on whom to project their longing to feel safe. Young adults, the 18-35 group, are especially vulnerable to this dynamic.  There is an argument for claiming that everyone who ministers pastorally to young people in the churches, is ministering to a vulnerable segment of the population.   As such there should be a special training for anyone engaging with this cohort in the name of the church to understand, at a considerable level of professionalism and expertise, the potential hazards of what could go wrong.

There is of course much more to be said on the dynamics of groups involving young people.  One thing that became abundantly clear after the NOS debacle was the sense of the Anglican authorities being totally out of their depth in dealing with the matter after the whole thing blew up.  In view of the importance and wide-reaching influence of Soul Survivor, it is to be hoped that whatever may need to be done to recover the situation with the organisation, it will be done with wisdom and proper expertise.  The ability to influence large numbers of young people and speak to their spiritual needs is a great privilege but also carries great risks.  The topic is too important for all of us to allow anyone to shut down our discussion of what needs to be done in the future.

There is one word which opens up for us some important aspects of the Holy Week drama.  The word is betrayal. In our liturgical commemoration of the Passion drama, we are, early on, witnesses of the betrayal by Judas.  Then there is the somewhat different manifestation of betrayal by Peter during the trial of Jesus. In reminding my readers of these particular moments of betrayal in the Passion narrative, I am not intending to launch into a full Holy Week meditation.  Rather I want us to reflect on the meaning of the word betrayal and the way that it touches us in our personal and social lives.

In considering these two betrayals mentioned in the Holy Week narrative, we can see that there is more than one way of approaching the word. First there is betrayal as an objective fact. Jesus is delivered into the hands of the authorities by the actions of Judas, a member of his group and then later disowned by another disciple, Peter. Then there is the subjective side to this act of betrayal.  We have to imagine all the feelings that would have been aroused in Jesus because of the actions of both Peter and Judas. The objective betrayals were accompanied by the shattering awareness for Jesus that profound prior relationships were being attacked and, in one case, destroyed. Further emotions are recorded in the account of Peter’s betrayal. There was, for Peter, the emotion of anger in the denials.  Later there were profound tears of contrition and regret. Before we leave the words recorded in Scripture about betrayal, I want to remind my reader of the psalmist (Psalm 55) who also experienced the deep pain of betrayal by a close friend. He expresses the thought that if it had been an open enemy who had betrayed him, ‘then I could have borne it’.  The fact that it was a friend made the betrayal doubly painful and unbearable.  Most of us can probably remember occasions where similar things have happened to us.  I can remember an incident from the time I first went to public school at the age of 14. It was quite a culture shock to go from a school with 60 boys to one with 350.  On the very first day I struck up a friendship with a boy from another house who sat immediately behind me in the class I was in. It was a relief to know that there was a potential ally literally watching my back, and this helped me to cope with the sheer strangeness of everything around me. Imagine my shock and disappointment when the same boy, for reasons that remain obscure to me, shortly afterwards decided to stick a pin through the canvas webbing of the chair I was sitting on. It was not the pain that I felt most of all. It was a sense of betrayal that a potential friendship had been so suddenly destroyed. All of us have probably known this experience of trusting an individual, only to have our trust in that person wiped out by some act of betrayal. All of us want to believe that those close to us are incapable of such acts. Most of the time, thankfully, we are right.  Then, once in a while we are completely dumbfounded by an action taken against us by someone we thought we knew well.  This revealed a hidden malevolence which we did not understand and probably had never seen before

My involvement in listening to stories of abusive behaviour in church contexts has made me aware of the way that otherwise loving people even in churches can turn out to have a dark side.  In the one place where we believe sound caring relationships are promoted and valued, it is shocking to discover acts of betrayal which merit the description of abusive or exploitative.  As we are never tired of saying in this blog, acts of betrayal are not just found in the original abusive episode; they are also frequently in the way the survivor, seeking help, is treated by church people in authority. Betrayal is thus experienced by the abused person in a double act of violence. Through abuse, a youth leader might destroy our sense of safety and well-being in a church, but then the same thing happens when we, the abused, reach out for help from another respected leader. Even if these leaders are held up by others as totally trustworthy with high reputations, the experience in fact we have gained is one of double betrayal.

One of the issues that the 31:8 review about Emmanuel church Wimbledon struggled with was trying to make sense of the two sides of the Vicar, Jonathan Fletcher (JF). He was the possessor of ‘positive characteristics and (was) highly regarded’.  At the same time he ‘could nonetheless display entirely inappropriate, abusive and harmful behaviour which render (him) unfit for office.’   It is clear from the review that JF was found to be charismatic, charming and an inspiring teacher of Scripture. He presented to many grateful acolytes, both this charm and his apparent deep pastoral concern for them.  At the same time there was a darker, exploitative and sinister side to his personality. Some experienced bullying and others were victims of entirely inappropriate behaviour, both sexual and psychological. The review tries to grapple with this double-sided reality.  One heading in the review articulates the paradox with the words ‘the myth of homogeneity.  I had to pause to work out what the review author meant by these words.  He/she was pointing to the phenomenon that individuals, particularly Christians, have a tendency to lump individuals into an ‘all-good’ or ‘all-bad’ category.   Such lazy thinking does not allow for the possibility that any individual may combine good and bad in the same personality. The 31:8 review is challenging us, in using this expression the myth of homogeneity, to see that theories of all-goodness or all badness in an individual are unsafe, even dangerous, notions to entertain.  The charm of the charismatic figure must never allow us to leave anyone with a free pass to be unsupervised and unchallenged for the way they interact with others. Everyone is potentially capable of exploitative evil.  To put it another way, everyone is capable of betraying their good persona and surrendering to a dark, even evil, expression of themselves.  There must always be structures in place which inhibit and stand against any inappropriate crossing of boundaries. This is where so much abuse and exploitation is to be found.  On a positive note, this checking of boundaries in people’s behaviour may have the desired effect of driving away bad behaviour.  We need a dominance of goodness and total integrity in an institution to allow people to trust and feel safe again.  The opposite sense, fear and constant suspicion, is a high price to pay because some church leaders are too lazy or unwilling to do the necessary work of effective safeguarding for all members of a Church.

The myth of homogeneity is a useful expression to have in our minds as we try to understand why there are currently so many problems in the safeguarding world of the Church of England. Just because someone has passed through various hoops to become a Christian leader and a person commanding trust, it does not mean that they should ever be left unsupervised or beyond challenge in the realm of human relationships and the oversight of justice. A person may reach the status of being a spiritual director of some renown, but a potential for something to go wrong still remains. I am constantly disappointed in the way that I hear of otherwise honourable people in the church behaving, not necessarily abusively, but in ways that are a betrayal of the roles they hold as guardians of justice and integrity in the church. Because Christians talk about holiness, it is often assumed that all members of the Church are incapable of dishonest or dishonourable behaviour.  As far as church leaders are concerned, we all too often see protection of the institution being put well above the need for personal integrity. Homogeneity in individuals is indeed a myth.  Outward charm is not infrequently combined with self-seeking and actual malfeasance. Eventually some objective scrutiny from outside bodies, even that provided by a secular state, may be needed.  It will perhaps be the necessary price we have to pay to get things properly safe and fit for purpose in the task of the Church to protect the vulnerable.

Our theme of betrayal began when we considered particular episodes among the events of Holy Week.  From there we moved on to consider our own experience of being let down by others, and, maybe, the times we have been guilty of failing in this way.  It may be part of our Holy Week meditation to reflect on the ways that we have been guilty of betrayal whether of Jesus or other people. As we contemplate our own collusion in the guilt of actual betrayal, we are perhaps better able to see that our good intentions can be interlaced with evil and exploitative motivation. Even if evil is not the central reality in the core of our being, we still need to be working all the time at expelling selfishness as much as we can. The first stage of expending evil is to recognise that it exists. Perhaps this Holy Week we can continue the task of greater  self-knowledge so that we can individually and corporately become the instruments of God’s active love and goodness in the world.

by Martin Sewell

On Thursday morning the Church of England announced that the Chair of the so called “Independent’ Safeguarding Board, Maggie Atkinson had resigned.

 https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/5-august/news/uk/independent-safeguarding-chair-steps-back-after-second-data-breach

This latest act in the tragi-comedy which is the ISB, came at the end of a lengthy period of the Chair being “stood back” – in truth suspended by the Church – but even from that time, the Archbishops’ Council was still maintaining the fiction that it was not controlling the very body whose role was in part to hold its parent body to account. The announcement of both the “standing back”, and the resignation were published on the CofE website; this is not insignificant; a truly independent body would have been reporting its own comings and goings.

If you read the terms of the announcement – and we must now be clear that the news management is largely in the hands of the CofE Communications Department – it was all very respectful and amicable; evidently the Chair was leaving partly to spend more time with her family. If you believe this is the top and tail of the story, I have a lovely bridge in New York to sell you – ‘real cheap.”

Ms Atkinson’s resignation comes at the conclusion of a process of contractually “enforced conciliation” – an oxymoron – which was never likely to have a happy outcome after eight months of estrangement seasoned with findings of adverse data mishandling by the Chair.  Survivors were reporting a loss of confidence in her, and one can hardly be surprised that the Survivor Advocate Jasvinder Sanghera took their concerns very seriously. Without survivor confidence the ISB is incapable of functioning properly.

As I ponder the facts and watch the consequences unfold over the next few weeks I am put in mind of the late political interviewer Robin Day who explained late in his career that he usually began an interview with one simple question in his mind.  “Why is this bastard lying to me”?

Perhaps we are obliged to proceed with a little more Synodical decorum, but the sentiment is worth holding onto, as we doubtless hear developments, speculations, explanations and press statements assuring us that this time it will all be different.

Introducing Ms Atkinson to General Synod in February 2022 the Lead Safeguarding Bishop Jonathan Gibbs hailed the ISB as “ fully independent “ – a sentiment the new Chair echoed, Some members of General Synod were already slightly sceptical and were seeking clarifications

Modest attempts were made to encourage the development of key performance indicators and to endow the fledgling body with executive powers to hold bishops to account , but these attempts were swiftly closed down by a wrecking procedural motion; the writing was beginning to appear on the wall. The message was “Some are more committed to independence transparency and accountability than others.”

It has taken a lot of persistent questioning by interested parties to winkle out the truth about the constitutional position of the ISB. It is now conceded that the ISB is not an independent body in law. – indeed , when sued in Court by Dr Martyn Percy,  a defence to this effect was filed in these plain terms! 

What is not widely known is that not only has the then Chair fallen foul of the Office Information Commissioner for data breaches,  but the advertisement for a Business Development Manager for the ISB was referred to the Advertising Standards Authority, which ruled that it was misleading! The position was advertised by the CofE – so how was the position or the purported body “Independent “? The CofE was ruled to have advertised misleadingly to applicants about the role and function of the body to be served.  Tragi-comedy had descended into farce. Luckily the successful candidate was not actually misled: he moved across from being Business Manager to the NST, so that’s alright then

But at least we now know that  ISB was and is wholly and closely controlled in terms of ambit and resource by Archbishops Council. Two very serious questions flow from this?

When the ISB Chair and Lead Bishop were insisting the ISB was “fully independent” they may well have been speaking in good faith, but did nobody know this was false or erroneous? Perhaps one can accept that a bona fide error was made but this raises the equally concerning issue of lack of competence. Which is it? 

Attempts to engage the Audit Committee in a clarifying investigation were resisted by the Archbishops at the last Synod. The Chair of the Audit Committee told Synod that oversight of the ISB was not within her committee’s scope of activity, but we now know that this too was mistaken. A letter from the Audit Committee Chair correcting that error was sent to the Synod Member who raised the question, but the correction has yet to be circulated to all Synod members.

So now we know that the Audit Committee can look into these matters and it needs to do so as a matter of urgency.

The appointment  of Ms Atkinson’s temporary replacement brings additional important issues to light .The former MP Meg Munn  who is taking over, currently numbers amongst her career portfolio of offices, that of member of the National Safeguarding Steering Group  and Chair of the National Safeguarding Panel. Whether she and /or either of those bodies played any part in the original conceptualisation of the ISB or the current shenanigans is unclear. So much is and will remain unclear; General Synod has not been allowed to debate these problems and may not be in July.

One might have assumed that the interim role would have fallen to the Survivor Advocate who has been the de facto voice of the body, since Ms Atkinson has been “stepped back”. However, Jasvinder Sanghera appears to have been nudged aside, with Ms Munn imposed upon her and her colleague Steve Reeves without any notice, still less consultation, neither were survivors consulted.

One might be critical of the slow pace of change, and even perhaps of the naivety of the ISB members; sometimes they appeared to be talking a better game than they delivered within the complex and tangled institution that is the CofE.

What cannot be denied however is that Ms Sanghera and Mr Reeves have brought bona fides to their task and devoted a lot of time to talking to Survivors, gaining their confidence. The effects of the imposition of the Archbishops’ Council ‘s choice of Chair  into this difficult situation without any consultation with the very group that has been abused and ignored by the Church for far too long, is yet another example of the arrogance of power that taints so much that the Church does in this area.

Already some survivors have told me that they have notified Ms Sanghera that they do not consent to their data being shared with Ms Munn. This hoists the Archbishops’ Council with its own petard. If the ISB is not a body in law, and if Ms Munn joins the other two members with self-employed contractor status only, in the absence of data sharing consents from each survivor individually, Ms Munn cannot be admitted to the very data she should have, in order to perform the tasks required. She cannot be passported into the office if the ISB has no formal identity, though she can, of course chair meetings.  Having said that, those meetings have all the makings of being tense affairs given the circumstances and suspicions described above.

Of course, the cynic might think that this is intended to provoke a crisis and/or resignations leaving the field free for a second go at creating an ISB Mark II

This brings us back to our old friends “Transparency and Accountability”. Leaving aside how Ms Munn got to this position, how can she be contracted in one capacity to chair the National Safeguarding Panel – (which surely have some directive roles) whilst simultaneously chairing the very body that will evaluate the complaints from those suffering the allegedly unsound fruits of her labours elsewhere in the building?. Yet again one is driven to the conclusion that the Church of England cannot see a conflict of interest it does not like.

Worse still, if you were a new survivor thinking of bringing your issues to this organisation when others have testified to IICSA that the wished they had never done so, would you seriously entrust your safety and wellbeing to an organisation in this degree of disarray? I would not.

I was about ten years old when my father bought the autobiographical book by C.S.Lewis, Surprised by Joy.  I remember this book appearing. My father, an Anglican parish priest, did not buy many books in the 50s, so this purchase was a significant event.  I was attracted to looking at the book for two reasons.  First of all I was intrigued by the title. I wondered what surprise and joy had to do with each other. Secondly, it was written by the same author who was responsible for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  My godfather, the proprietor of the Church Times, had sent me a copy of this latter book (alas no longer in my possession!) for Christmas 1950.  It was, I believe, a review copy.  The newspaper had received it, but it had not been sent out to any of their contributors.  The text of the book had initially stretched my reading ability but, by 1955, I would have been a fully paid-up member of the Friends of Narnia, if such an organisation had existed.  The Narnia books fed the imagination of many children such as myself, and a passionate immersion in the world of witches, talking beavers and fauns was an important part of my emotional and religious formation. 

At the age of ten my quick survey of the new book that my father had bought, told me that this was not written for Narnia addicts.   But the thing that did remain in my memory was, as I have indicated, the title.  Over the years it has been helpful to ponder these words and try to make sense of them within my own experience. The two key words are not naturally linked together, but they are brought together by Lewis into a kind of partnership.  My child brain recognised an element of paradox even though it was obviously beyond my ability to articulate anything like that at that time.  It took years of maturing reflection to begin to make sense of these words.

The word surprise contains within it a suggestion of something that is new or unexpected.   Lewis was presumably telling his audience that his discovery of Christianity was sudden and unlooked for.  I have no ability to unlock this particular puzzle of what the author actually meant by using the words in his title, as the copy my father had has long since vanished and I have not read it subsequently.  My focus is, not on what Lewis himself might have meant, but how the actual words of his carefully chosen title impacted on a young Christian trying to make sense of faith.

One of the challenges for a child growing up in the Christian faith is to find sufficient space for the individual variation of spiritual awareness.  From around the age of seven at a very religious boarding school, I became aware of the fact that Christian adults were very anxious that children should practise a correct version of the faith.  I was learning from my headmaster and his wife a type of Christianity that worked within strictly controlled parameters.  My exposure to this narrow didactic evangelical teaching only lasted for two school terms and in the autumn term of 1953, I exchanged the world of Scripture Union and frequent extempore prayer for the quite different environment of a cathedral choir school.  One illustrative model to describe the change is the contrast between a fast-flowing narrow stream to being carried along by a slow-moving river.  There was at the choir school a far greater breadth in the way the Christian faith was taught and received.  The access to church music and magnificent medieval architecture created a form of learning, which was less instruction than an inculcation into a broad culture stretching back through the centuries.  The constant access to beauty in music and architecture spoke to layers of our being in ways that went beyond words.  In short, we were learning to practise faith in a context that took seriously every part of our being.   The Christian faith was for most of us a language, an experience that reached into mind, emotion, heart and soul.

Thanks to this privileged Christian formation I received, one which focused on a breadth of understanding and human flourishing rather than to narrow definitions of truth, I found later that I had the intellectual and spiritual tools to resist the authoritarian fundamentalisms which are offered to young people.  I was always aware that Christian truth was able to cross numerous boundaries of culture, language and ethnicity that exist across the world.  Any attempt to define Christian experience in terms of a single culture seemed an insult to the sheer exuberant variety of human cultures that have appeared over the centuries and across the world.  To take one topical example, is it likely or probable that one manifestation of human relationships be privileged above all others?  Is it realistic to believe that the last word on human patterns of living and relationships has been said?  To return to our C.S.Lewis book title, where is the surprise in this kind of faith?   Another word which suggests surprise is the word newness.  I have had cause more than once in my blog reflections to refer to the words ascribed to the risen Christ, ‘Behold I make all things new’.  Newness suggests the unexpected and the unforeseen.  It certainly keeps us on our toes when we believe that the newness of God may break into our lives at any moment.     

The early Fathers of the Church, notably Gregory of Nyssa, were very struck by the passage from Exodus where Moses held communion with God in a cloud.  The cloud was for these writers a highly suggestive analogy to describe the fact that God has no shape or form.  To have any communication with God, one has to use the language of mystery and unknowability.  In one passage an evocative description of the divine mystery was held to be like travelling from ‘glory to glory’.   This is a way of saying that the Christian journey is to be understood as an endless movement into the depths of God’s being.  Words like unknowability, depth and inexpressibility all litter the language of mystical discourse.   Our C.S.Lewis word, surprise, fits well into this type of discourse and way of speaking.  It also seems very far from some forms of conservative Christian discourse which put a high (too high?) premium on exact orthodox definitions of the language that are required to be used to convey our understanding of God.

The second main word in C.S.Lewis’s book title, joy, is another word that lends itself to reflection.  Among the many things that can be said about joy is that it describes the feeling when something or someone is received after a long period of waiting.  Joy is felt by parents when they hold a loved infant for the first time.  Joy is felt when people are reunited after a long time apart.  There is also the biblical hint that joy is at the heart of whatever precisely is encountered when we die.  The master who left his servants in charge when going abroad in Matthew 25, tells them to use his money well.  Those who succeed in the set task are invited to ‘enter into the joy of thy lord’.  The forms of joy that are available to us on this earth are suggestive of the fact that the values contained in them, such as reconciliation, peace and beauty, find their fulfilment in the world beyond.  In short, the word joy sums up the Christian hope of what ‘God has prepared for those who love him.’   What we can see here does not compare with the splendour of what is to come, but it contains a sufficient hint to allow us to live with great hope and anticipation.

There are not many book titles I know that hint at an understanding of the Christian faith so thoroughly attractive as this.  Having at an early age brought these two words together in my understanding, I was never tempted by other versions of faith which, even as a child, I recognised as involving a measure of coercion and fear.  The C.S.Lewis version of the Christian faith was always pointing me to a God I could believe in, a God who draws us to himself.  The God I believe in is one to whom we say, in the words of St Augustine, ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.’