The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the States is, after the Roman Catholics, the largest denominational church in the country.  It claims a membership total of some 14 million members, mainly in the southern states.  By British standards, the prevailing denominational structure is a very loose one. The Convention to which Southern Baptists congregations are affiliated, possesses no hierarchical structure as we would understand it.  The SBC can best be described as a confederation of independent self-governing congregations, united only by their adherence to a common doctrinal statement.  In practical terms this doctrinal unity allows all ministers in the denomination to train in one of the approved centrally funded colleges and also to cooperate in missional efforts overseas.  Real power or authority is located within each local congregation.  Somehow this loose confederation of what we would describe as conservative evangelical congregations has held together for 170 years.  The ‘Southern’ part of its title emerged as the result of 19^th century theological arguments over the position of the church with regard to slavery.  Those in the southern regions of the States decided that they could not retain fellowship with the northerners who had taken up arms to abolish the institution of slavery.

In spite of what we in Britain would consider to be a very loose denominational structure, Southern Baptists have maintained over the decades some aspects of system of a centralised bureaucracy, based at their headquarters in Nashville Tennessee.  SBC congregations send to the centre the dues needed to finance some administration, missions and educational projects.  Representatives of the entire SBC family also gather annually in June for a huge assembly or Convention.  Here doctrinal matters are discussed and voted on by congregational representatives known as messengers. Such a gathering is of course enormously cumbersome as a decision-making body, so it has not been difficult for an Executive Committee (EC) to control the agenda.  It took considerable effort and lobbying for the issue of sexual abuse to become a topic for the Convention but eventually it broke through into the awareness of the entire gathering and an investigation ordered.  It is this investigation by a professional body called Guidepost Solutions that produced a substantial detailed report in May this year.  Although some of the story of cover-up and abuse had been earlier covered by the Press, notably the Houston Chronicle, the tale that is contained in the 288-page report is still shocking.  One commentator described it as apocalyptic.  I have skim read the entire document but much of what I write here, to be truthful, is more indebted to the excellent summary put out by the magazine Christianity Today.

In many ways the most predictable parts of the Guidepost Solutions report are the shocking and disturbing accounts of abuse.  The common theme of powerful men, even a President of the entire organisation, exploiting their power in order to sexually abuse women and children is something that, tragically, we have often met before. It seems that nothing had prepared the SBC for these kinds of revelations.  What is perhaps of more immediate interest to us on this blog is the way that some of the EC, especially its leaders, had known that something was going on. Those in the know had failed to deal with the problem over twenty or more years because of the legal advice they received.  The frequent stories and disclosures of abuse had been received, but the lawyers working for the SBC at the centre warned the leaders against getting involved.  The EC is a group of around 70 that met throughout the year, but it seems that there was an inner clique that exercised the real power in the committee.   It was this small sub-group, headed up by an elected President that bears much responsibility for the cover-ups that took place. 

 The EC, encouraged by the in-house lawyers, was always keen to emphasise that they had no executive power over the SBC congregations.  All the real authority in the SBC structure belonged to the individual congregations. This claim of official powerlessness provided a convenient excuse for doing absolutely nothing when disclosures were received about sexual abuse in Baptist congregations around the country.  Briefed by their lawyers, the EC fended away complaints and disclosures by saying that they had no means to intervene with the affairs of local congregations.  This failure even to make any record even when ministers were sent to prison for abuse offences meant that abusing ministers and lay workers were able to flit from congregation to congregation without anyone in a position of authority keeping an eye on them.  In fact, the SBC did possess a secret list of reports of abuse committed by affiliated ministers and paid officers, but this information was never made available to congregations wanting to appoint a new member of staff.

If there are ‘villains’ to be found in the narrative of the abuses uncovered by Guidepost, they are numbered not only among the actual abusers and those ignored the abuse stories, but among the legal teams who advised the SBC and the EC over 60 years.  One particular firm that was giving obstructive legal advice is named as Guenther, Jordan and Price.  The lawyers in this firm were consistently advising against any action on the part of the EC.  They feared that the EC might become legally liable if it in any way involved itself in any of the affiliated local Baptist congregations.  Even when the incidence of sexual abuses in the SBC were becoming widely known across the nation, the same mantra-like legal advice was being put forward as sound legal counsel.  It took the bravery of individuals like Rachel Delhollander to tell the church and the nation what was going on. http://survivingchurch.org/2018/02/02/the-rachael-delhollander-story-abuse-forgiveness-and-church-exclusion/  She and others had to endure years of vilification, shunning and shame for their valiant attempts to draw the attention of the whole country to the problem.  The culture of the EC was one where any report of abusive behaviour was treated like a threat.  Every episode was seen, not as a cry for help, but as an attack on the institution of the SBC.  Thus, it had to be resisted by all means available.   It was only when a chorus of voices from outside, shared through the internet, eventually became impossible to ignore, that something had to give.

The task of survivors and advocates in trying to bring accountability to the SBC was in many ways harder than for those undertaking the same task in Britain.  Such whistle-blowers were constantly told that they did not understand the legal basis of the SBC or its organisational structure.  Alternatively, they were accused of being out to destroy the denomination.  Two lawyers in particular, Augie Boto and Jim Guenther were successfully peddling this narrative to successive presidents who, with their close circle, heard many abuse stories.  Any intervention on their part would create massive liabilities for the whole denomination.  Like the three wise monkeys, it was better for the presidents and their advisers neither to see, hear or speak anything on the topic of abuse.  Ignoring the pain and harm that came to hundreds of abuse victims at the hands of their predators was considered a price worth paying for the protection of the reputation of this denomination.  Time will tell whether this wickedly inappropriate advice has contributed a single thing of value for the SBC or whether it has fatally undermined the cause of Baptist churches, not only in America but right across the world.

I am sure my readers can think of a number of parallels in the UK.  Legal advice is offered to protect an institution, like the CofE, but it ends up causing serious damage to individuals.  The SBC scandal, if we can call it that, will take several decades to heal, if it ever does.  In Britain too we have seen attempts to resolve issues relating to abuses of power by the use of ecclesiastical legal tools.  These often do little to help individuals.  The use of legal processes in church life may sometimes be necessary, but quite often they increase a sense of stress among all concerned.  Many of us would like to feel that the legal cases that the church gets involved in will become fewer in number.  Sadly, this does not seem to be the case.  The use of legal protocols and processes seem to increase, adding to the sense of fear and fragility among those who work for the Church in a variety of capacities.

In a final addendum, the BBC website reported that the SBC is to face an investigation by the American Department of Justice.  One wonders whether our own Church will face the possibility of a secular judge-led investigation of its internal processes. Currently we are waiting to see if the Charity Commission will recommend any outside intervention in the Church’s affairs.  Certainly, a sense of incoherence in church business over safeguarding and similar activities appears to be getting greater.  Perhaps we are closer to the SBC situation of being investigated by outside authority than we might have thought possible.

I have more than once complained that it is difficult to penetrate the complexity of safeguarding organisations at the national level of the CofE.  Most people become bewildered at the plethora of organisations with the word safeguarding attached to them.  Janet Fife wrote a very helpful glossary on this blog in an attempt to demystify the way things work in the CofE. http://survivingchurch.org/2020/12/15/alphabet-soup-a-glossary-of-safeguarding/  One of the issues that helps to muddle the situation still further is the fact that when survivors are included in a national body working for safeguarding, we cannot know for reasons of confidentiality who these survivors are.  Are we to take on trust that the survivor members of the group are true representatives of this group and that they are in constant touch with others in a similar situation?  There is no way that we can know whether the survivor representatives on the new Redress Scheme Project Board or the National Safeguarding Survivors Group (NSSG) are reaching out to others to gauge their opinions and ideas.  If there is in fact a lively interchange and proper communication between these ‘official’ survivors and others who remain suspicious of these groups, I am ready to be corrected.  All I can say that the survivors I know do not feel safe at present to engage with any of the national Church structures. For a variety of reasons, they stand apart from them.  

One individual who works tirelessly for the cause of survivors at General Synod and in many other ways is the retired lawyer and Synod member Martin Sewell.  He has been an occasional contributor to Surviving Church and has taken a prominent part in supporting the cause of survivors, becoming especially involved in the case of Dean Percy.  As a lawyer, he brings all his analytical skills to the table and helps the rest of us understand the legal complexities of the structures set up by the CofE.  He was one of the authors of the so-called Micah 6:8 letter. http://survivingchurch.org/2020/08/12/letter-to-charity-commissioners-over-concerns-about-church-of-england-safeguarding/  This was addressed to the Charity Commission (CC) and drew their attention to the failings of CofE safeguarding processes.  As far as I can tell, this 2020 letter was never replied to but it was a significant support to survivors in the way it articulated some of their longing for justice and transparency in the safeguarding processes.

Recently Martin Sewell has written a further letter to the CC.  This time it is not a letter which supporters were invited to sign. https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Sewell-letter-to-Charity-Commission-Earner-5.8.2022-v.2-9.8.2022.pdf  It is a letter of some 13 pages, so it requires to be read more than once to extract its meaning.  In essence it is claiming that the CofE has gone beyond its level of competence in trying to resolve numerous failings in the safeguarding sphere.  Its efforts to set up safe and independent structures to bring support to the survivor community are failing.  There are two key case studies where these failures are explored, the Dean Percy case and the anomalies and problems for the CofE in setting up the so-called Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB).

Sewell does not mince his words in the CC letter.  He looks back over the last few years of safeguarding activity in the Church and finds that word ‘incompetent’ is a good description for what has gone on.  He mentions the Matt Ineson affair and the Makin review on John Smyth, now 800 days late.  More recently we have had the failures revealed in the Fr Griffin case and of course the never-ending Percy scandal.  Martyn Percy has written a detailed complaint to the Archbishops’ Council (AC) about the many legal and moral failures in his case. He still awaits a complete response to the many issues he raised.  What the AC have put in place is a ‘lessons learned’ enquiry from the body set up less that two years ago, the ISB.  This was commissioned before the Chair of the Group, Maggie Atkinson, was required to ‘step back’ from her position at the request of the AC.  Given the fact that Atkinson was the most experienced of the three (part-time) members of the ISB, it is hard to see how they are equipped to tackle the much-needed review of the issues in the Percy affair even if they had their full complement of members.  Having lost their Chair, the ISB will find it difficult to function effectively even with the most straightforward of commissioned tasks.  According to Sewell’s detailed analysis of the problems surrounding the ISB, the needed expertise is simply not there to undertake something as complex as examining the Christ Church affair and the questionable behaviour of certain clergy in the Diocese of Oxford

Apart from the issue of whether it has the competence to do a technically complex task, the ISB is also critiqued by Sewell’s letter for its questionable claims of independence.  For such a group of people to claim to be independent when they have no legal identity apart from the group that brought them into being (the AC), is impossible to do.  As we have discussed on this blog before, independence requires a number of conditions to be in place.  The ISB is appointed and paid for by the AC.  Also, recently, the AC has shown itself to have the power to compel the Chair to ‘step back’.  There appears to be no other body in any way involved in overseeing the ISB’s work. When these questions over legal and independent status were raised by synod members in July, the answers that were given were vague and confusing.  It seemed to Sewell that senior members of the CofE had not thought through or worked out what structures were needed to provide a robust system of independent safeguarding for the Church.  His purpose for writing to the CC was an attempt to again force the CofE to put in place a system that would ensure a level of adequate professional competence in the whole safeguarding enterprise.  Victims and survivors need to know that they will receive a hearing and justice from the Church.  Those accused of abuse would also need to know that they would receive a proper hearing and that their story too would be heard and considered impartially.

Readers of this blog will know many occasions in the history of CofE safeguarding when impartiality has not been preserved.  From the refusal of a serving diocesan bishop to cooperate with the police when trying to protect Peter Ball from prosecution, to the appalling treatment in court of Julie MacFarlane at the trial of her abuser, the Church has often shown a determination to protect itself at all costs.   Many clergy live in dread of the power of the CDM and the fear of being considered dispensable when the reputation of the wider institution is under attack.  We must be grateful when so much effort and money is being spent on institutional self-defence by the church, that we have these few individual legal voices, notably Martin Sewell and David Lamming. They are there in the public arena defending victims and the wrongly accused.  I have no notion how much in total the CofE spends on itself for legal and public relations purposes, but the sums must be counted in the millions.  On this other side, for the defence of the survivors and the wrongly accused, the total sum is infinitesimal in comparison.  Lamming and Sewell are, fortunately for the cause, both now retired and each contributes much of their available time to the task of bringing light, truth and justice into the Church.  It is bizarre that they are opposed by senior members of the CofE when they are working so hard to preserve impartiality, integrity and honesty in the Church.   Surviving Church applauds them and all that they do for justice and for the needs of abuse survivors as well as the falsely accused.              

Over the years of editing Surviving Church, (as followers will have noticed!), I have routinely avoided getting involved in debates about the LGBT issue.  My main reason for side-stepping this issue is simply because it is not an area where I feel I have any expertise or, indeed, anything useful to say.  The only time that this broad topic touches on my real concerns is when I see the raw exercise of power by church people being exercised against minorities.  The sight of an African bishop trying to exorcise the gay activist Richard Kirker at Lambeth 98 is an image that is stored in the memory of many of us.   The recent Lambeth Conference has also shown that at every turn the Communion  is haunted by the infamous vote on a proposal known as Lambeth 1.10 at Lambeth 98.  There is plenty to be found on a variety of websites about the history of this statement and the way that these few words have become what appears to be a defining badge for many in the Global South and how they see the gay issue.  Lambeth 1.10 is claimed by many in the Communion to be the official position of the entire Communion which can never be altered.  Unfortunately, the prominence given to the statement will ensure that the current 2022 Conference may be remembered for little else than the discussions around this infamous proposal.  It is as though a poisonous plant has been inserted into the Lambeth Conference process and no one really knows how to move beyond it.

As I have already indicated, the place where LGBT issues coincide with the main concerns of this blog is when we find bullying, ostracism and discrimination directed at members of these minority groups.  These three words, each describing negative behaviour against such groups, involve abuses of power.  The LGBT community frequently do complain about negative experiences in being part of church congregations.  The fact that such bullying is at the hands of outwardly faithful Christian people has to be a source of concern.  Sometimes a mild generalised disapproval against gay lifestyles and relationships changes into something vitriolic, obsessive, and hateful.   Some preaching seems to make this single cause so prominent that you might get the impression that the definition of ‘orthodox’ Christian behaviour and belief is found in the one who makes the correct condemnatory remarks towards the LGBT community.  In practice, this has had the consequence that many congregations are complete no-go areas for these communities. 

As a reaction to the exclusiveness found in many conservative churches in the CofE and elsewhere, other congregations have pushed against this and are trying to demonstrate a different way, the direction of welcome and inclusivity.  One particular church that followed this inclusive path is the church at St James Didsbury near Manchester where Lizzie Lowe had been a member. http://survivingchurch.org/2018/06/15/lizzie-lowe-a-death-and-a-congregation-transformed/  Lizzie had taken her own life after concluding that her teenage lesbian feelings were unacceptable to God.  This teaching had not been particularly prominent in the St James’ teaching, but somehow a negative message had been picked by the 14-year-old.   Her death was a profound shock to the vicar and his congregation.  They then laboured to explore and put in place a ministry of welcome to people with same sex attraction, like Lizzie, and see what it might look like.

 At a recent conference I attended online, this inclusive welcome theme was further explored.  A network called Open Table has been set up around the country to support church congregations trying to create an environment where members of the LGBT community and other minorities can feel safe.   They will not have to listen to sermons which show an obsessive interest in their private sex lives or seek to ‘convert’ one sexual preference for another.  As I heard this word ‘safe’ it occurred to me that the gay/trans communities are not the only ones to feel unsafe in some of our churches.  The whole safeguarding enterprise is, as readers of this blog will know, bedevilled by situations where abuse survivors can feel decidedly unsafe or under siege.  One reason for a chronic lack of feelings of safety among survivors of abuse, is that their experiences of past betrayal disturb the fantasy of a congregation which believes that Christians should always be trusted without question.  Any infliction of suffering by a Christian on another is a deeply unsettling narrative which many would rather not hear. Christians prefer to push away such stories which may involve facing up to the moral frailty of some Christian leaders.  A safe church is also one which is ready to hear hard truths. We need the places of safety for both groups, minority sexual groups and survivors alike. What might such a safe church in fact look like?

In offering some kind of answer to this question, I am guided in part by descriptive words used by this network Open Table. This organisation, as we noted above, focuses on the need to provide a place of spiritual safety and belonging to minority groups.  Offering a place of safety and an opportunity to belong is something that people of all kinds need in their Christian life.  What would the church look like if this Open Table model really succeeded in making the church a true place of welcome?  The words that sum up the way that Open Table operates are three in number.  They are ‘included’, ‘affirmed’ and ‘empowered’.

Going to a church service, especially for the first time, takes a great deal of social courage, as we all know.  We sense that people will be looking at us, making instant judgements based on our clothing, appearance and our body language.  Will we be included in this group of people that already know each other well, or will we stand around at the end of the service look lost and hoping someone will speak to us?  Inclusion, as we all know, is quite hard work both for the giver and receiver.  It takes social skills, not possessed by all, to be successful.  To be included in a group, which may be quite small, takes determination on the part of a newcomer.  Every congregation has discussed this problem.  Asking questions of the newcomer which are neither superficial nor intrusive requires skill.  The most important qualification for doing this important work of inclusion may be simply the ability to love people.  The love word requires that we do not want to force anyone into a mould which we pre-determine.  A trained church leader should be quietly encouraging those people with the gift of unconditional welcome to practise their gift.

The stage of being ‘affirmed’ is the next stage in coming to the stage where church starts to be a place of safety.  Another word for affirmation is acceptance.  To be accepted Is to be known by a group of people.  They honour us by acknowledging our presence and showing us that they feel safe with us as we are with them.  This place of acceptance is a place that is earned over a period of time.  It is being in a place where trust has been gained and forms the basis for a future relationship with individuals and the whole community.  The gaining of this status of being trusted will hopefully remain in place over years and decades.

The third word ‘empowered’ describes the process whereby we take a distinct role within the community or congregation.  To be empowered is to go from being a trusted individual to being one who takes a responsible or trusted position within the whole.  Who is doing the empowering?  At a human level such apportioning of responsibility comes through a committee or an annual meeting decision.  It is also possible to see the empowering as something happening in a vocational sense.  It is sometimes helpful to see church tasks as involving the gifts of the Spirit.  A Christian is always entitled to seek such spiritual support and guidance for any task which he/she sees as part of their individual Christian pilgrimage.  When the sense of being spiritually empowered is felt, it gives a strong boost to our overall awareness of being in the place that God wants us to be.

It would not be hard to write a description of church life where none of these three experiences are encountered.  There are many churches that exclude, ignore or marginalise.  My readers will no doubt be recalling episodes in their lives that illustrate ways where they have encountered the opposite of the ideal church experience that I have been trying to imagine.  Even when the ideals are actively worked for, the perversity of human nature has a way of changing something that should be positive into something negative. The opening for experiencing ourselves as valued and able to contribute to the whole can be turned upside down by a single individual keen to play power games.  Quite often they have some psychological need to control and dominate.  Then there are the political games over churchmanship or sexuality that pollute the atmosphere all too easily and may make church life seem an endless power struggle.  The hope must always be that there are individuals and congregations that have caught the vision of what are called Open Table churches.  We need places of radical fearless welcome in God’s name. All of us need such places and we need to do all in our power, whether as leaders or ordinary pew members to bring them to pass.  In practice it is quite hard, but the starting place has to be this vision of what is possible.  Church congregations can be places of welcome and joy or they can be places riddled with politics and power games.  Most of us would opt for the first but the sheer contrariness of human nature seems to ensure that we often find ourselves negotiating with the second.  The church then ceases to be an encounter with God but a survival experience of competing power games and factions.  Let us be grateful that we can, whatever our current church situation, at least imagine a church free of such things.  It is our imagination that that may be the seed of a church that is indeed an Open Table, and through it others may come and discover the power of belonging, inclusion, and acceptance.

Among my collection of Bibles which I have acquired over many years, there is one that I do not often use.   By chance I pulled this particular volume off the shelf when I was listening to a lecture on the Bible from youtube.  I then remembered why this copy of the Bible had fallen into disfavour.   The Bible, a RSV, was a version where some passages were printed in a much smaller font than the rest and to read these sections requires one to hunt around for reading glasses.  I then began to consider why some sections of scripture were thought to be worthy of the small print treatment.  It seemed likely that the editor of this edition was trying, maybe, to protect a reader from having to wade through the long boring sections of the Old Testament.  Certainly, one can see good reasons to suggest that a typical reader might not want to be burdened by endless genealogies, the exact dimensions of the Jerusalem Temple and the precise instructions to be observed so that Temple sacrifices might be done properly and correctly.   These sections require some determination to read in full.  The RSV editor perhaps may also be saying that these sections are unsuitable to be read in church. The inevitable question arises for the conscientious student of Scripture: what do we do with these parts the Bible that do not edify or appear to have anything useful to say to a modern Christian?

The repeated refrain which we are hearing at Lambeth 2022 is an appeal to the clear teaching of Scripture from members of conservative groups, such as the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches. The leader of the group, Archbishop Justin Badi of South Sudan simply stated in an interview: “Being a Christian, you go according to what the Bible teaches.” His body claims to represent 75% of all Anglicans and thus their ‘biblical’ perspective on the marriage issue is the one that the entire Anglican Communion, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, who convened the Conference, should give way to.  The problem for those of us who are trying to be good Anglicans, but who read our bibles noting the passages that are in some cases unreadable or even offensive, is that this statement will not do.  If we base all that we think about marriage and sexual behaviour on the many models presented in Scripture, we get a very confusing picture.  Should we aspire to the examples of David or Solomon who seemed to have made little effort to remain faithful to a single partner?  Is not so-called Christian marriage a modern construct rooted in a few carefully selected passages from the Old and New Testaments?  One of the great triumphs of the Reformation was that it offered the possibility of reading the Bible to ordinary people who possessed the ability to read.   They would have been able to study for themselves the entire text. In spite of the ubiquity of copies of the Bible in almost every household, certainly in past generations, the knowledge of what the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, actually says is poor and frequently almost non-existent.   Two sources of bible knowledge remain for those who attend church.  One is a past exposure to books of bible stories for children. These were absorbed in their younger years.  A second source of biblical knowledge may come from listening to a preacher who quotes texts to help undergird the various points of Christian teaching that are being expounded.    Quoting the Bible in this way is of course a legitimate activity.  The problem arises when the preacher goes on to imply that the text from either testament is susceptible to a straightforward and unambiguous interpretation as to what it teaches.   In many cases there may be a lot to be unravelled before we can get to a meaning or interpretation.  Because most people do little in the way of independent reading of Scripture, they are entirely dependent on leaders and preachers to interpret it for them.  This is especially true when it comes to understanding what the Bible has to say about sexual behaviour.  A convenient veil is drawn over the fact that the Bible is full of sexual behaviour that would be totally out of place, if not criminal, in today’s world.  Bigamy and concubinage offend our civil and religious laws today. Many Christians seem able to glide over the things that indicate immoral behaviour as though they were not important.  We seem fixated, as far as the OT is concerned, on the passages where same sex behaviour is mentioned in the book of Leviticus.

One form of sexual misbehaviour which today is universally condemned right across the world is the sexual exploitation of children.  And yet in a ‘small print’ section of Scripture, Numbers 31, instructions are given by Yahweh for the treatment of virgin women and girls after a military victory.  We are left to imagine this treatment of girls, some presumably barely in their teens, who had been captured in war.  All the men who might have protected these unfortunate girls are to be killed alongside older women and presumably their very young children.  It would be extremely hard, if not impossible, for anyone today to find a way of reading such a passage and concluding with the words ‘This is the Word of the Lord’.

Horror passages of grotesque abuses in the exercise of power can be found elsewhere in the Bible.   It is not hard for the cruellest tyrants of history to find biblical examples of such things as genocide, mass slaughter and enslavement in the pages of Scripture. We can imagine how these examples of cruel behaviour were part of the culture known in biblical times.   A certain ruthlessness would have been required to allow the ancient Israelites to continue to exist as a people.  Kill or be killed was no doubt part of the ‘ethics’ of the time. The very continued existence of the people signifies that they were successful in the messy business of survival when so many of their rivals have disappeared into historical oblivion.  We could argue about what laws of ethics might be considered appropriate for a Hebrew leader alive in 1200 BCE.  We might even find some way of excusing this barbaric behaviour on the grounds that it has led to their survival.  Even if we may possibly make some excuses for the utter barbarity of ancient Israelite soldiers, we will never conclude that this is in any way a pointer to what God requires of us today.   In other words, the behaviour apparently commanded by God cannot be taken as an instruction across cultures and time.  In short, the fact that certain behaviour is reportedly approved by God in the text of Scripture does not in any way necessarily justify it for us today.

The so-called liberals, especially those who have studied the text of Scripture at some depth, will be aware of these horror passages but still be able to speak of the Bible as a whole as revealing the word of God.  The difference between conservatives and liberals in this context is that a liberal has a well-developed sense of historical context.  A ‘rogue’ passage such as Numbers 31 is not to be for the liberal reader an infallible revelation of the will of God.  Rather, we read it for what it is, the account of a tribal nation very slowly moving out of barbarity towards a semblance of humanity and just behaviour.  We are also not tied, for the same reason, to Jewish dietary laws or sacrificial practices.  When the Bible is read by liberals with careful attention to context, historical setting and a sense of theological development, there is never the same concern to swear any allegiance to these difficult texts and treat them as infallible.  The ethical insights of the 21^st century are, we believe, examples of God speaking to us today.  Many conservative Christians are caught up with the idea that Scripture is the only medium through which God can speak to us.  I recently listened to Archbishop Foley Beach, the presiding bishop over the network of Anglican churches known as GAFCON.  He used the well-worn phrases when speaking about Scripture.  ‘The Bible clearly states’ ‘God speaks to us in the words of Scripture’.  These claims were being made in the context of the gay marriage debate.    Has the Archbishop actually read the whole Bible?  I can understand that a faithful member of a conservative congregation would only know the passages filtered to them through the leaders.  The leaders themselves have no such excuse.  They know or should know these horror passages, and these must surely still have the power to shock or stop all in their tracks whatever their theological background. 

Lambeth 2022 is likely, on present showing, to be an unsuccessful attempt to bring together two tribes of Christians.  The issue is, as many have pointed out, not the gay issue or the nature of marriage.  The issue is about the nature of Scripture and the authority it has for us.  Is our relationship with Scripture to be like a relationship with another person where the mutual discovery takes place over a number of years and is never complete?  Alternatively, are we, like the conservative groups, going to retain the fantasy that we possess an infallible document, the meaning of which has already been fixed for all time?  A quote from Scripture is thought to be definitive, unable to be interrogated or questioned.  God does indeed speak to us through the medium of Scripture but the task of revealing that truth takes much effort and time.  Even when we think we have the answer, that answer may not be fixed for ever.  It is like a journey of discovery.  The Bible is, as is true of the Christian life as a whole, a source of endless discovery, endless newness.  We need often to ponder the meaning of Jesus’ words: ‘Behold I make all things new’. 

Highly recommended viewing! Hope you can make it work. It is a three minute clip.

by Fiona Gardner

‘It is a helpful resource, which will be added to, but also a challenge to us all @churchofengland to continue to do better.’

So writes Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York on the House of Survivors website. I couldn’t agree more … but after all this time it isn’t only a challenge but also an imperative ‘to do better’, because Stephen Cottrell is talking about a deeply embedded culture of institutional betrayal, a betrayal that compounds the original abuse and trauma. What both House of Survivors and Surviving Church do is highlight example after example of this. Over the years the institutional church has tended to emphasise individual situations, as if they were isolated incidents from which particular lessons can be learned. What gathering all the data together shows is that the problem is systemic, and the institutional betrayal partly occurs because reputation is valued over the well-being of the members, and issues of power and control dominate.

Institutional betrayal as a concept has been around for a while, and is the term used when an institution causes harm to an individual who trusts and has been encouraged to depend upon that institution. Betrayals are violations of trust and dependency perpetrated by the institution. There’s another interesting concept about the ‘organisation-in-the-mind’ – in this context this is about the idea of church, how we think and imagine the church, so it becomes a bit of constructed social reality – this is not to do with the buildings, or services, or activities. The church-in-the-mind will clearly differ: for example, the church is a sacred and safe place full of people who are kind and compassionate, and I will be welcomed. Or, the church is a place of judgement and bigotry where I won’t fit in. Generally, though, assumptions of trust, safety and dependency are implicitly encouraged by the whole church culture and by the hierarchy.

Therefore, for the survivor of clergy abuse there is a double betrayal by the institution: the first is the original criminal abusive act from someone in a position of trust; the second is the inadequate and re-traumatising response by the member of the church hierarchy who has heard the disclosure. This is secondary victimization. The painful part is that when someone reaches out for help after abuse, they are already placing a great deal of trust in the system as they risk disbelief, blame and refusals of help. To report the abuse brings the conflict of potentially losing the sense of belonging within church community, but to not report risks the abuse continuing and a denial of the traumatic reality.

The concept of institutional betrayal arises from betrayal trauma theory, that traumas perpetrated within a previously trusted and dependent relationship are remembered and processed differently to other traumas. Research shows that the impact of institutional betrayal includes further psychological distress, anxiety, dissociation, etc. If re-traumatisation occurs through institutional betrayal the original trauma is compounded, and so once again the victim’s mind is overwhelmed with more than it can make sense of and manage. The organization that encouraged trust and dependency is revealed to be careless, unconcerned or more actively destructive. Betrayal blindness may sometimes be displayed by all involved in order to preserve relationships, institutions, and social systems upon which they depend. In other words, institutional betrayal may be minimised not only by the church hierarchy (for example saying – that was then and now it is different, or we must continue to do better), but also sometimes by the victim who defends against the reality by remaining hopeful that their needs may still be recognised and met.

Whilst it may appear that an experience of institutional betrayal is less visible, it is not less injurious than the original abuse. It’s all about the social dimension of trauma, independent of the individual’s reaction to the event, and the way events are processed and remembered is related to the degree to which the traumatic event represents a betrayal by a trusted, needed other, and this is whether it is an individual or institution – or as in many situations both. Institutional betrayal by the church on top of an original abusive act is a kind of breakdown of the organisation-in-the-mind. It is a massive attack on an established way of going about one’s life, of established beliefs about the predictability of the world, of established mental structures.

Institutional betrayal can happen through acts of commission in which the institution takes action that harms its members, for example by actively protecting an abuser. It can also betray through acts of omission, in which the organization fails to take actions that could protect members, for example taking no appropriate action and ignoring guidelines.

Here’s an example of institutional betrayal that includes both commission and omission:

On May 20 2022, a letter was published in The Church Times by “Graham” about the Church of England’s continued and chronic lack of response to the serious abuse carried out by the late John Smyth QC. Thanks to Andrew Graystone’s research, we know that the lengthy suppression of information and accountability is complex. The abuse was known about since 1982, the perpetrator protected, and victims unheard and denied justice (acts of commission). As Stephen wrote on this website in March 16, 2020:

Many individuals were part of the story, not just as bystanders, but sometimes as active colluders. … There were many high up in the network who knew what was going on. The failure of a single one to come forward, suggests that the word conspiracy is an accurate one to describe this corporate behaviour. 

In May 20 2021, nine years after being told of the abuse, the Archbishop of Canterbury met with some of the victims, and promised investigations would take place into those who colluded with the cover-up. In his letter “Graham”, a year later, writes:

As a victim, I regard the archbishop’s words as appearing to be just hot air: promises unfulfilled. Has he “kept in touch” with these investigations, as he claimed he did in 2013? Or has he just assumed that someone else is dealing with it, which he described at IICSA as “not an acceptable human response, let alone a leadership response”.

Justin Welby responded in The Church Times on the June 10 2022 stating, that delays to both the Church-led and independent investigations were unintentional and being followed up (acts of omission).

Here are the usual dynamics of deception that appear to have underpinned the way that the institutional church has systemically betrayed survivors and their supporters. As with “Graham”, many of the abused remain victims (in his case ten years after he publicly disclosed), victims not only of the original crime, but also victims of emotional and spiritual abuse from the church’s inadequate and neglectful response: victims also of institutional betrayal. 

The sheer neglect and lack of validation shown by this example mirrors the deep lack of validation by the perpetrator, and clearly compounds the damage. Justin Welby illustrates a process of cognitive re-framing to turn the destructive non-responding into somehow being morally acceptable by employing the defensive manoeuvres that it was ‘unintentional’ – what does that mean? Perhaps he is displacing and projecting the responsibility onto someone else, or another part of the system. Similar to the behaviour of some perpetrators the methods involving such acts of omission usually include obfuscation, rationalisation and denial. It also suggests an element of sadism, where the aim is (no matter how many years it takes) perversely to oppose and thwart and to obstruct. The above example, as with other betrayals, is undeniably to halt the course of events, to favour inertia – and, as in abuse to rub out and negate the wishes of the other person.  

Andrew Graystone in Falling Among Thieves notes that the centripetal power of orthodoxy has meant that whatever is done to address issues of abuse in the church has been done without changing anything substantive in its culture, practice, or theology. Consequently, much is done, but little changes – lofty statements are made, but to no effect. This is because change can only emerge when the current situation is honestly faced. Abusive cycles of institutional betrayal are hard to break, and to do so requires motivation and energy. To not do so is to embrace apathy and group laziness as an avoidance of acknowledging self-deception and the reality. The institutional church is still stuck in a collusive refusal to know or to pursue and examine the truth that certain destructive traits have dominated actions. Inept and inhumane responses damage, and those who are damaged have seriously suffered, but the damage has also been to the system. Betrayal – a central theme in the Passion narrative, and now a central theme in the institutional response to abuse gets re-enacted systemically again and again. The hope then lies in organizational redemption which demands authenticity, humility to take on constructive criticism, and astute integrity with soul-searching at the very top of the church hierarchy. Organizational redemption corrects the past wrongs of institutional betrayal, a debt is repaid, and hope restored.

When we use the word cost, we naturally first think of sums of money, great or small.  But the word cost is much more frequently used in contexts that have nothing to do with tangible wealth.  It is about some kind of depletion of resources, whether it happens to an individual or organisation.  ‘It cost him his reputation’, we might say.  We may also refer to the costs of a dispute which involve the loss of health for an individual.  Alternatively, we may be referring to the damage to the reputation of an institution. All these negative outcomes can be described as costs which have nothing to with monetary wealth.

In the last blog post written by ‘Jonathan’ I wanted to provide, as part of the blog, something of my own commentary about the NDA placed in front of him as part of the way of settling his dispute with the diocese. My thoughts were not able to be confined to a short paragraph, so I decided to write another blog on the topic of an NDA.  My personal reflections here try to go further than just Jonathan’s individual case.  I can see that, from my perspective, the costs of such a procedure fall on individuals and institutions beyond those immediately involved.  It is these wider costs that I want to examine in this blog piece. 

Returning to Jonathan’s story for a moment, we can see how the pressure on him to sign a confidentiality agreement was a pivotal moment in the story.   After a great deal of soul-searching, Jonathan decided that he could not in conscience sign it.  He appears, in spite of this refusal, to have received some kind of cash settlement for what he had been through at the hands of his training incumbent and other failures in the way the diocese handled the complaint. The things that were not attempted were a proper independent examination of the facts and a mediation effort between the two parties.  We suspect that such procedures, needed to create a just resolution of the whole episode, were deemed far too time-consuming and embarrassing for the powers that be in the diocese.  The nasty things that were revealed through the whistleblowing by Jonathan were best left in the cupboard and not disturbed.  The preservation of the status-quo was considered to be a far more desirable outcome than a fearless search for justice and resolution of the problem.

So far, we have begun to identify a number of costs incurred in the unresolved story of Jonathan’s ordeal.  Superficially the payment he received, whatever it was, represented one cost. It was an arbitrary monetary sum, designed in some way to mitigate the pain that Jonathan had suffered.  In passing we note how very hard it is to put a monetary figure on such things as the pain of being humiliated by an employer, followed by the loss of employment, home and mental well-being.  These other obvious costs were those paid by Jonathan himself.   We have mentioned the loss of a vocation and livelihood.  There were also the considerable cost of having his sense of self and dignity undermined.  The NDA process, as we have already indicated, has little interest in justice and healing for a damaged individual.  It is an institutional response to a organisational failure.  By trying to bury the whole episode in the NDA/cash settlement process, the diocese was denying Jonathan the opportunity to find any sort of completion or healing.  He was left with a sense of failure without any opportunity to regain his sense of self-worth and pride.  By denying him the opportunity to defend his behaviour by looking at all the facts in an impartial way, the diocese forced him to pay the price of living with a sense of failure and unfinished business.

What other costs are incurred in the execution of an NDA process?  If Jonathan had to endure both internal and external pain alongside the attempted imposition of the NDA, the stress on the institution imposing the NDA is likely also to be damaging.  When any institution wants to avoid embarrassment and then finds itself using secretive NDA systems of justice as a way to protect its reputation, will not that process always be morally corrosive? Maintaining open justice within an institution is indeed costly but compulsory secrecy is also likely, in a completely different way, to involve cost.  When an organisation insists on high levels of secrecy, it has to involve quite a number of people.  These individuals will have various levels of involvement.  Some will be directly involved in the questionable morality involved in the NDA process; others, less directly involved, will still be morally contaminated simply by knowing about it.  Secrecy as an alternative to open systems of management is never a good substitute.  If the public discovers that a hitherto trusted institution like the Church has deliberately hidden information or bypassed the cause of truth in some way, the consequences can be telling.  Politicians may lie with bravado, but their parties are normally punished later at the ballot box.  Church leaders may not be subject to a similar popular mandate every few years, but the mood of a watching public can be equally cynical and ready to withdraw support and respect.  The existence of something like an NDA anywhere in an organisational system screams out loudly the message, we have something to hide.  That fact is likely to contribute to a further corrosion of trust in the institution that used to be taken for granted.

In short, institutions are almost inevitably damaged when NDAs are used.  This damage is created right across the board, both to those who impose the NDA and those who are its objects. Over the years, few details of NDA cases reach the public domain as the signature of the complainant has shut down sharing of information beyond the barest outline.  From the information and rumour that does leak out where the church is concerned, it seems that the typical pattern is for the leaders to subcontract the whole process to compliant firms of lawyers who work closely with public relations advisers.  It might be hoped that the morality of lawyers acting on behalf of the Church would inevitably be of a high ethical standard but this, in some notorious cases, appears not to be true.  Lawyers are, on some occasions, even instructed to act against an individual with the sole purpose of demoralising and frightening them.  It is clear that the secular legal system and the church’s own legal protocols can be, and are sometimes, ‘weaponised’ against individuals.  Instructions are given to harass those who fight back against the will of the powerful figures within the institution. When an NDA is involved, it suggests that the institution feels it has something to lose, not the individual under attack.  ‘Buying’ secrecy in this way seems almost inevitably to demean and corrupt those who actually write the threatening letters and those who commissioned them to do so.   At its simplest level the NDA is a weapon of power used by the powerful to intimidate and threaten the weak. 

In summary, an NDA causes damage to three parties, the individual having to agree to it, the institution insisting on it and the people who administer the process.  If we can speak about an institution having a conscience, then this is a case where the organisation and those who set up the NDA should all have a sense of the thorough seediness of being involved in such an activity.  If the lawyer or the church official is totally upright before this procedure was begun, we would hope to see some level of dissonance or disturbance within his/her conscience by being part of such a process.  In this situation we can say that one of the costs of the NDA is that a church official or lawyer has been corrupted by having to go along with this doubtfully ethical procedure.  It is hard to see that anyone anywhere near the process can remain morally unscathed. How are the principles of openness and justice ever served by this process?

 The NDA agreement that exists between the diocese or the CofE as a whole and the individual should be completed through the signing of a form and the handing over of cash.   The situation is now resolved -or is it?  There are, common sense tells us, many other pieces of unfinished business which represent additional costs.  These are likely to appear only in the future.  Money, as in abuse cases, seldom provides healing to the one who sought justice but failed to find it.  The legacy of health issues may linger for survivors over decades and perhaps never be resolved even after counselling.  The unhealed wound, represented by the victim of an unresolved case of injustice, may suffer from PTSD.  As Paul observed, if one part of the body suffers, all suffer.   I see NDAs being like plasters which cover a wound but do not allow it to heal.  A wound needs sun and fresh air to be fully healed.  As the editor of this blog, I am increasingly aware of the breakdown of trust that exists when, for example, agreement cannot be found between a vicar and members of a parish.  Not many of these cases result in NDAs, thankfully, but a failure of reconciliation when things go wrong at the local level, is a serious impediment to the work of the church.  The Percy case will long be studied as a massive failure to provide open systems of justice.  How did we ever allow a system of church justice to be in operation that allowed a dispute between bishop and dean to be so visible?   That case and the unwillingness of the central body to find out all the underhand aspects of the four year saga has on its own done damage to the spiritual and institutional health of the entire Church of England.

by ‘Jonathan’

I was ordained in the summer of 2018 to begin a four year curacy in a diocese in the south west of Britain. This is a time of on the job training for new clergy to prepare them to take on a parish of their own at the end. A portfolio of evidence is compiled and sent off for assessment. A satisfactory portfolio is required to continue in ministry and apply for another role.

The first 18 months of my curacy were very challenging, I was very unhappy and felt something was up but couldn’t figure out why. The confidence and competence I had had prior to ordination seemed to have vanished. At around the 18 month mark some comments from the vicar training me rang major alarm bells. After doing some research it dawned on me why I had been struggling so much. This vicar was emotionally and spiritually abusive using gaslighting and other bullying tactics to manipulate and control me. It also became apparent that I was not the first to have had such an experience with this individual.

The diocese were reluctant to move me, or even talk to me about the matter, ignoring me for several months. I couldn’t take the abuse any longer and was signed off by my GP. At this point they finally agreed to move me, on the basis that ‘no one was at fault’. I was grateful to be moved to a different context with a wonderful priest who treated me with respect, didn’t try to force me into her own mould, or cross boundaries in regards to my marriage and family. This contrast made even clearer how bad the previous vicar had been. My conscience compelled me to raise this as I feared others could be put in the same situation as I had been. I was additionally concerned that my abuser was on the Senior Leadership and Development Program and may take on a senior position in the Church of England in the future.

It took months to feel like I was taken seriously. The complaints process was incredibly slow, and the bias evident. Every component of my complaint, and the 200 pages of evidence, was completely dismissed. Indeed, my abuser seemed to have successfully turned the tables so that I came out of the process as the one at fault. This experience was traumatic and required trauma therapy to begin to recover from. As I tried to make sense of the outcome I requested the evidence he had supplied to counter my complaint. An Archdeacon made a horrendous blunder in mistakenly sending me statements from individuals who had explicitly forbidden him from sharing them with me. This was exposed completely accidently by myself when I contacted these individuals to defend my wife and autistic son who had been unfairly attacked in their statements, chiefly by my abuser’s wife. 

The NDA

I had submitted my portfolio of evidence in the September of 2021, by the January I had heard nothing and was beginning to become concerned. I chased this and was eventually invited to a meeting on Valentines day of 2022 to discuss the ‘timeline’.

This turned out not to be the case when it was dropped on me in that meeting that I would not be signed off from my curacy. My portfolio had been returned and had passed, but for reasons relating to my complaint and defending my family they were not going to sign me off. I had no future in the CofE and had to step back from my job immediately. I had been given up to a year’s extension due to ill health and shared parental leave in my first context. However, it was deemed that even with a year’s extension there was no way to remedy the situation, it was a done deal. This decision was made by one individual who had very little contact with me and even confirmed to me ‘What I wrote/said was my judgement, and I did not involve anyone else in making that judgement”.  This all seemed immensely unfair and a very poor process. I was asked to step back from everything I was doing from that meeting and go on what was essentially gardening leave.

Once this had been presented to me, I was told they were going to offer a ‘package to help me out’. Some coaching and counselling could be provided as well as lost earnings as a lump sum. Myself, my wife and my three children would need to leave the house within 2 months. It turned out, not be a package to help me out, but a settlement agreement with non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses. I felt incredibly misled, I was equally puzzled as Justin Welby had said the previous year that NDAs should not be used in the CofE. From conversations had since, it seems NDAs are still standard practice in the CofE and I fear Welby’s words were nothing more than virtue signalling.

I was incredibly grateful for union support and a rep negotiated the deal for me to try and arrange a better deal that would actually enable us to leave the house and move on. My rep got covid and missed a deadline which forced the sponsoring Bishop to send me a letter confirming what I was entitled to, without settling, and they still wanted to settle. It turned out I was entitled to everything in the initial settlement agreement regardless of settling. I was disgusted that the church was willing to act in a such a way. It became clear that this deal was about one thing. Buying my silence.

I ummed and aahed for several months, I feared I would have no choice but to sign to be able to afford to move on, but every time I got close to signing my mental health would plummet. I struggled with suicidal thoughts enormously during this period. Words from a documentary exposing a megachurch resonated hugely with my experience: “What I have consistently heard from abuse survivors from faith communities is the following: the abuse that was perpetrated against me by the perpetrator was traumatic, and is going to take me a lifetime to process and to heal from. What was worse that than that, was the response of the very community that I thought was going to be my greatest advocate, but they turned their back on me. That, I don’t know if I will ever heal from.” Boz Tchivijian, Attorney Advocate for abuse survivors. 

I later discovered I was able to request financial support from another organisation setup for survivors of church related abuse. I should have been referred to this, as well as various other forms of support, the moment I made allegations. Unsurprisingly the diocese failed to do this. Eventually, despite being pressured, I chose not to sign. I couldn’t go through with, which is why I’m free to tell my story here.

I contacted Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to see if he would follow through on his words regarding NDAs. I got a response from a safeguarding officer telling me to go elsewhere and this statement regarding NDAs

“In relation to the issue of the Non-Disclosure Agreement, you raise an extremely important and valid point. The Archbishop is himself opposed to NDAs, which prohibit people from making proper complaints against an organisation or indeed appear to prohibit appropriate whistle blowing.  The Archbishop is aware that on some occasions in reaching a settlement with an employee then there is a need for a confidentiality clause to be part of that agreement.”

It seems the Archbishop overstated his point in public. But as the email made clear he’s not going to follow through.

I’m absolutely disgusted by what I’ve seen. I can’t believe an organisation claiming to be a church can treat people in such a way and act in such an unethical way. I am grateful to be able to walk away and cut all ties with the Church of England and my home diocese. It is not something I want to be a part of. I hope NDAfree and others can work to put an end to these horrendous practices that can be so damaging to survivors like myself.

by Martyn Percy

Fourth in a series of Reflections

In Kazuo Ishoguro’s 1989 novel The Remains of the Day, we are introduced to Stevens, a butler who dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington at his stately home near Oxford, England. Told in the first person, the novel is set In 1956, when Stevens takes a road trip to visit a former colleague. As he travels he reminisces about events at Darlington Hall in the1920s and 1930s.

We learn that Stevens was in love with Miss Kenton (the housekeeper) at Darlington Hall, Lord Darlington’s estate. Stevens and Miss Kenton failed to admit their true feelings for each other. Their conversations as, recollected by Stevens show a professional friendship, and which at times came close to blossoming into romance. At the same time emotional reserve and professional resolve mean it is a line neither dared to cross. Stevens remained distant and never yielded, even when Miss Kenton tried to draw closer to him. As the book progresses, we also learn that Lord Darlington was a Nazi sympathizer.

When they finally meet again, many years later, Kenton has married and expecting a grandchild. Stevens later muses over his lost opportunities with Kenton. But he also comes to review and regret his decades of selfless service to Lord Darlington, whom he reflects may not have actually been worthy of his unquestioning fealty. Ishoguro’s novel offers us soft yet brutal exposure to the worldview of Stevens and those he serves.

Stevens champions dignity, emotional restraint, and the special qualities that make English butlers the best. ‘Continentals’ are dismissed for their emotional incontinence, and Celts for the fiery tempers. The English, on the other hand, are reserved, restrained and appropriately reverential n a kind of slow parody, Stevens’ elderly father – also a former butler dedicated to a life of service – is dying upstairs. Messages are sent to his son that his father is dying. But the reply is telling: “I’m afraid we’re extremely busy now…but we can talk again in the morning”.

As the death of his father is imminent, the strain begins to show on Stevens. But he carries on, regardless. As Salman Rushdie remarked “[Stevens is] destroyed by the ideas upon which he had built his life”. Much like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, we have a story that is also a critique of class, deference and emotional constipation. Stevens is a character who believes the best way to control the external chaos is by making dignity and emotional restraint internally sacrosanct. So much so, that the irrational-sacredness invested in by Stevens is believed to deliver him both safety and reward. It does neither.

There is also a sense in which Ishoguro’s novel is an exploration of the unwritten constitutions in work, society, families and other groups that are held to be sacrosanct. To question these codes is to trespass; to break the club rules is to sin; to mock the conventions is to violate the group and all it holds sacred.

‘Respair’ is an old word that one hardly ever uses these days. The opposite of ‘despair’, ‘to respair’ is to have fresh hope, and to move beyond the gloom of desolation and despondency and have faith in the future. Despair is to see no light at the end of the tunnel. Or, if you do happen to glimpse a twinkling light in the distance, it is the proverbial train hurtling towards you – so time to run and hide. Yet there is hope.

Hope may be the most important virtue humanity possesses. It believes in better, so does not despair of the present (though some exasperation is normal and perfectly permissible!). Hope can maintain relationships in rocky times. It raises our children and educates them. Hope does not give up. It wants the best for others. It is deeply rooted in God’s grace and goodness. It is turned towards a greater light and the promise of our best for all individuals, communities and countries being realised. And their best for you. It yearns, as we all do, for justice, integrity, peace, truth and kindness to flourish.

The very first words that God utters in the scriptures (Genesis) link to some of the very last words (Revelation):
God said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1: 3, RNJB).
[The Eternal City] “…has no need of sun or moon to give it light, for the Glory of God its light…the nations will walk in its light… (the city) gates will never be closed…and there will be no more night; they will not need lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will be their light…” (Revelation 21 & 22, RNJB)

It is into the darkness and the formless chaos that God first speaks – and light appears. Light is the first thing in these opening verses of the scriptures that God declares to be “good”. In a world where much tragedy brings darkness, and where much sin lingers in the shadows, we need to be reminded that the light God speaks into existence is “good”. It is that constant reminder, in our everyday lives, of the utter goodness, provision and love of God’s creative work. In a world where even now, and in so many places, darkness overwhelms households, communities, nations and lives, we yearn for the coming of light. Beyond the global challenges, our own lives also cry out for light – those places and circumstances in our lives where darkness has overshadowed us, and light seems far, far way. An end to restrictions, impositions, isolation and marginalisation. An end to loneliness and suffering. An end to abuse and the shame and pain it brings. An end to wars, to injustice, to suffering, to poverty, to hunger. An end to darkness.

John’s gospel starts with the eternal story of God breaking in, with light, to our world and our lives. John reminds us – with words that need to constantly ring from our hearts and our lips in faith and protest – that though our world is wounded, God has spoken:

“Light shines in darkness, and darkness could not overpower it” (John 1: 5, RNJB)

That word “overpower” is rendered differently in other translations of John’s Prologue. Older versions have “comprehend” or “overwhelm”. The sense of the Greek, however, is that the darkness cannot “grasp” the light. It just doesn’t understand it. In modern idiom, it doesn’t “get it”. The darkness of evil, iniquity and wickedness cannot understand light.

Our politicians, and sometimes even church leaders, when they speak in half-truths, they know they speak in half-lies. Misleading, covering up, refusing transparency and humane accountability, sweeping things under the carpet: these are all the works of darkness. But God lifts the lid and speaks the light into these dark places and the nooks and crannies that cringe from exposure. Because God is the source of all light and life, the darkness will not overpower us. John tells us that in the birth of Jesus, God has entered into creation afresh – respair – to bring light and life to all. As John puts it: “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.” (John 1: 9, RNJB).

As we look across God’s creation, our task is to affirm with God all that is good. Wherever darkness threatens to overpower, whether in the lives of others, or in our own lives, let us remember that God has spoken the very first words in creation: “Let there be light…and God saw it was good.” God’s reign of light, love, grace, justice and mercy cannot be overcome by the darkness.

Hope from beyond, sent to the present, is what the gospel asks us to reckon with. Hope consists of God’s jump-start-leads sent from the future through time and space, wired right into our present pains, panics, pandemics and predicaments. The hope is this: that the love of God will return to govern us all. God’s reign of love is to come. In the meantime we are meant to engage in the preparations for this and undertake the work of God. How can the light of Christ illuminate this present darkness? How can the manifest love of God in Jesus overcome the shadowlands?

Perhaps we could all urge the Archbishops’ Council and General Synod to take notice of God’s motions?

The Very Revd Professor Martyn Percy is a Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford. He writes in a personal capacity.

by Martyn Percy

Third in a series of four reflections

The famous psychologist Jonathan Haidt once said that to understand the governing narratives of our time, we needed to “follow the sacredness… find out what people believe to be sacred, and when [you find that, and the people gathered], there you find rampant irrationality”.

Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality [RSI] is also the acronym for Repetitive Strain Injury. They have some similarities, the most obvious of which is that they are painful and exhausting. Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality is everywhere, or so it seems. It describes the current state of abortion debates. Both sides are vehemently pro-life. Gun control in the USA is another. Both sides believe gun purchase and ownership should be controlled, but have very different ideas
about who should have a gun, when, where and why.

In our own country, Brexit delivered in spades on Rampant-Sacred- Irrationality.  Did our best interests as nation lie in one version of freedom and identity (that was anti-EU) or the other version that was pro-EU. People who have family – or who had been friends for decades – have split irrevocably on the pivot of Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality. Like some ancient or modern civil war, we find kith, kin, neighbours and friends creating dividing lines that separate those who adhere to their sacred (that cannot be questioned or debated), and those that challenge it, who must be repelled at all costs. Debates on gender, sexuality, transgender, ethnicity and religion also pivot on Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality. If my experience and identity is my right to
own, and cannot be questioned, then it becomes sacred. To challenge it, or seek compromise, will be interpreted as a violation. Suddenly, and somehow in contemporary culture, we have reached a point where everyone has a sacred right to be entirely believed.

Many also think that the right to be believed includes the right to be right. That can be irrespective of the reasoning, facts and hard data. Our brains are fully part of our bodies, and when our thoughts are challenged or perhaps attacked, the mind responds in the same way that the body does to an assault. Our minds close down to protect us from the blows. The mind forms a steel-like cordon around our thoughts, and then thinks about how to respond by going on the attack. Much of this cognition is self-justifying, rather like the reasoning for a just war might run. Thus, our inner voice might say “well he said that, and he would think that, wouldn’t he…? Because he’s against me on this matter, so that point was designed to upset me and torment me on that other front”. If your mind decides your thoughts and beliefs are being attacked, it is more likely you will close down than open up. Such attacks and assaults are more likely to harden resistance, close down debate, and create a toxic culture of right versus wrong,
true versus false, and leads us to go hunting for what is wrong and false about the other person.

The rational response to alien ideas is to either try and understand them, or admit we don’t, and shrug them off. But our minds defend us, and all too often, alien ideas are treated as threats to our existential reality. In much the way that our bodies might respond to any perceived threat. Here, we see that even a person with just different views to us can be perceived as an antagonist. In part, this explains why can feel so aggressive towards people we disagree with. Truth-decay in leadership starts when those in authority start to talk about ‘alternative facts’, or simply dismiss science, hard evidence and solid data.

We are used to hearing our politicians try this, and it has steadily eroded our trust and confidence in them. We no longer believe what they say, even when they tells they are right. The culture of spin, dissembling and briefing has eroded moral, social and political capital to a huge degree.

That our church leaders now do the same is not only sad and shocking, but also distressing because it will produce the same culture of mistrust. Yet we now encounter, consistently, bad lessons learned from politicians and PR gurus, put on the lips of what were presumably once upon a time, good bishops and decent people who had a sense of truth and justice rather than brand-loyalty. But nowadays, it is all about maintaining some fiction of perfectionism. My friend and colleague Professor Nigel Biggar think quite differently about faith and politics. One of us would be characterised as more right-wing and conservative. The other, left-wing and liberal. Leaving aside that neither of us trust these labels or categories, it would not take much to flush out our differences. (Although far more unites us than would divide).

But how are churches – and the Church of England, especially – to resolve persistent divisions within a culture soaked and saturated with its own Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality? There are lessons to be learned from the past. The American Civil War (1861-1865) pitched the southern Confederate states against the northern Union states. The practice of slavery in the United States was one of the key political issues of the 19th century, and it a primary cause of
the Civil War. For Anglicans – Episcopalians in the USA – the division was painful. The
economy of the southern states depended to a large extent on slavery. The
northern economy did not. Episcopalians split down the middle on this, albeit
only for the duration of the war. But the legacy continues to this day. Incidentally, all denominations split like this during the Civil War, and many in the American churches, including Quakers in the southern states, were more persuaded by the economic arguments for slavery than those for emancipation.

Many in the Church of England also supported the separatist Confederates. We perhaps forget too easily that even after slavery was abolished in Great Britain, many individuals and companies continued to invest in such labour overseas. Churches and mission societies did too. Slaves were economic units for investment and the means of production.

The Church of England unable to come to terms with the current issues posed by Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality. It screams that church should be “safe”, and that there is no greater priority for its function and service than safeguarding. It then proceeds to make a shambolic job of delivering on this. But you cannot challenge that, as the tropes are bound up with Rampant-Sacred-irrationality.

There is a reason that no Bishop can speak sensibly, rationally or intelligently on the subject. Enquirers are either fed meaningless pastoral guff, or gloopy committee-speak. But everyone knows that safeguarding in the church of England lacks any brain, soul, heart or humanity. As a concept, it is a zombie that devours complainants, respondents, victims and the accused. It feeds off the flesh of the church. There is no accountability. The church enshrines the rights of those who oppose equality on gender and sexuality. The separatists are protected – including their own Bishops – because it is held that their beliefs and right to self-determine their identity cannot be questioned. Rather like the Confederates ordaining their own Bishop to care for the pastoral needs of slave owners, it is hard to challenge the tension between personal legitimacy and corporate agreement. At the end of the American Civil War, the Episcopalian Church was reunited, and meekly but fully accepted that Confederate Bishop as an equal.

An uncritical accommodation of Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality culture risks undermining the rule of law. Smokers may well be distressed that cigarette consumption in public has effectively been outlawed. Yet the re-introduction of smoking zones in restaurants or pubs, or for that matter, in cinemas or on public transport, is not fair to the rest of population.

Neither is sexism or homophobia fair. Sometimes, decisions are made for the common good that must overrule individual or collective appeals to personal claims on rights. We all have to breathe the same air, and share the same living space. But the Church of England still has a soft spot for affirming
discrimination in a variety of forms, and it makes provisions for those who want to perpetrate these on grounds of tradition. But like smoking, we might discover that this results in the death of us all, not just the smokers.

by Martyn Percy

Second in a series of four reflections

It is hard to imagine the Church of England hanging on to its powers and privileges in the next 50 years. Especially since the majority of citizens expect equality and accountability from their institutions as any prerequisite for trust. Moreover, as the numbers of paid-up members of the Church of England has already effectively fallen of the cliff-edge – and there is no sign that this decline is temporary or seasonal – serious questions have to be asked.  These relate to the fitness and role of an established church in one nation, yet within a devolved union of three nations, and Northern Ireland.

The present state of the Church of England would pose an enormous challenge for the very best estate agent to elicit serious interest. True, the CofE is not for sale. But it is constantly on the lookout for long-term and loyal tenants who will take care of the storefront as though they were the owners. Upkeep, appearance, productivity, regional-brand-compliance and purpose are devolved to the local occupiers, who mostly do an extremely good job on very tight budgets.

For all their labour, laity and clergy will receive little thanks from their somewhat distant landlords, who are only interested in the productivity and turnover. And compliance too, unless diversification delivers growth.  We now have a situation in which the Church of England’s senior leadership are re-mortgaging the church on a regular basis.

In this, they are banking on the past and borrowing from the future to try and resolve the present issues.  As many will know with their own homes, it is risky – and only makes sense if the value of your property goes up.  But as the social, moral, spiritual and intellectual capital of the Church of England is all in negative equity, there may be a default at any point.

A senior colleague and friend from a Diocese in the Church of England, and one that enjoys a very fine and lengthy coastline, was surprised to come back from a short sabbatical and be met by the recently appointed Leader of the Enabling Team, charged with delivering and rolling out the maps and charts for a new Mission Action Plan for the Diocese. 

Naturally, my friend had to be paid a visit by the Leader of the Enabling Team promoting the fizzy new Mission Action Plan, so everyone was “fully on board”. My friend studied the maps carefully, which showed where the new congregations were to be “planted”, and how the “old parishes” were to be “consolidated and merged” into new “Missional Minster Areas”. 

Somehow, all of this was meant to be met with breathless excitement.  Who could not be excited at such good news?  For example, the rural deaneries were to be replaced with “active-out-facing resource hubs geared for equipping disciples and enabling transformation”.  (Who in God’s name writes this stuff?). This would all be done and dusted by 2035.  There was a new catchy strapline for the Diocese too, and a specially written prayer for this bold endeavour. 

But my critical colleague asked if the authors had seen the BBC Weather App of late, and looked at the predicted 2035 climate change map for their region?  Of course this future-map had not figured in missional groupthink. 

“Well”, said my colleague, “that map shows half the diocese under water, so most of these new congregations will be submerged.  Worse still, our rural economy, tourism, fishing, shipping and port industries, and many of our current transport infrastructures will be decimated. Did the group think about what kind of world we might be living in by 2035?” Answer came there none.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently announced a Bond of £500 million, secured against the future Church of England.  Bonds are traditionally secured on assets, and the money has to be repaid – eventually.  Of course, £500 million in 50 years’ time won’t feel as much as it does now. And perhaps the gamble was worth it – money in the short-term, to see if the future in the long-term can be secured.  That will depend on clergy and laity pursuing the goals and vision set by Bishops and the Archbishops.

So far, there is no sign that these goals and visions are consensual, corporately owned, or collectively assented to.  Most vision-talk by the hierarchy is met with polite indifference, or just ignored. There is no leverage to compel followers of Jesus to pay obeisance to the latest episcopal strategy. Thank God for that.

Yet re-mortgaging the Church of England is going to be a risky business.  Local branches may want to start asking some quite basic questions.  Who really owns this business? Who does it serve, and for what purposes?  Who are these people in regional and national Headquarters, telling us how to run things locally, and cutting our support whilst increasing their own?

As the term zugwang denotes (in chess), every move the church makes is wrong and only makes your position worse.  Yet the player at the board cannot sit there and do nothing, as that will forfeit the actual match. The famous psychologist Jonathan Haidt once said that to understand the governing narratives of our time, we needed to:

“follow the sacredness… find out what people believe to be sacred, and when [you find that, and the people gathered], there you find rampant irrationality”.

Yet faced with difficult choices and competing convictions, most of our church leaders set aside law and wisdom, in order to accommodate all ardent opinions and belief claims.  The embrace what I call Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality, which defies reason and facts.  In the Bible there is a famous story about King Solomon (I Kings 3: 16-28), who ruled between two women both claiming to be the mother of a baby. The two mothers lived in the same house, where each mother cared for an infant son.

One of the babies died, and both women claimed the remaining baby as her own. Both were mothers. Both faced grief and loss.  Both represent a form of Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality.  Solomon’s ultimate justice was an archetypal example of an impartial judge displaying wisdom in a ruling.

Fast-forward to today’s Church of England, and imagine the same story.  But in our modern rendering, Bishop Solomon has left the temple, having finally entered into a co-parenting arrangement with the women, both fighting over the one child. Why? Because Bishop Solomon’s Rampant-Sacred-Irrationality is that you cannot upset either mother, and so both deserve something.  What was he supposed to do with a bereaved woman, and another one hysterical? Compromise was his solution. But not truth and justice.

In a telling article by Bailey Lemon (‘Why this Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture’, Medium Magazine, 16 February 2020), she examines the inherent contradictions present in a culture that speaks about being progressive, when in fact it is aggressive, oppressive and repressive:

They talk about listening, being humble, questioning one’s preconceived notions about other people and hearing their lived experiences…and yet ignore the lived experiences of those who don’t speak or think properly in the view of university-educated social justice warriors, regardless of how much worse off they really are. That is not to say that we should accept bigotry in any form — far from it. But I would go as far as saying that the politically correct mafia on the left perpetuates a form of bigotry on its own because it alienates and “otherizes” those who do not share their ways of thinking and speaking about the world.

Bailey is talking about the Radical Left, but her analysis comfortably translates to the current culture of the Church of England in many Dioceses, and most certainly from the Archbishops. Bailey continues:

I’m tired of the cliques, the hierarchies, the policing of others, and the power imbalances that exist between people who claim to be friends and comrades. I am exhausted and saddened by the fact that any type of disagreement or difference of opinion in an activist circle will lead to a fight, which sometimes includes abandonment of certain people, deeming them “unsafe” as well as public shaming and slander. It is disgusting that we claim to be building a new world, a new society, a better way of dealing with social problems — but if a person makes a mistake, says and/or does something wrong, they are not even given a chance to explain their side of what happened because the process of conflict resolution is in itself driven by ideology rather than a willingness to understand facts. Actually, in today’s activist circles one is lucky to be given any sort of due process at all, while everyone is put under social pressure to believe everything they are told regardless of what actually occurred in a given situation. This is not freedom. This is not social justice. There is nothing “progressive” or “radical” about it, unless you are referring to fascism.

Again, the resonances with the current Church of England culture hardly need spelling out.  Yet a culture where there is no accountability, transparency or scrutiny of Bishops creates a seed-bed for inequality and injustice.  Bishops seem content to let this continue, and none call it out. 

Do they apologise for their mistakes in the here and now? No. But they will sincerely and sanctimoniously say sorry for sins committed centuries ago, but not by them. Do they acknowledge that the institution they want to see supported is broken, frail and far from perfect? No. They tell us instead that progress is being made, we are all on a journey, and that things are much better than they were ten years ago, or since they came into office. Do they provide convincing evidence for this? No. But you are still meant to trust them. Should you? Let us leave that question open.