The take-over of Afghanistan by the Taliban has left us with a whole variety of emotions. We fear for an entire nation thrust into a state of chronic uncertainty.  A group of lawless men, who have been indoctrinated in the most extreme tenets of Islam, have been let loose in a large country to do whatever they wish.  These fighters are the ‘graduates’ of thousands of madrassas, religious schools where the only things taught are the tenets of the Koran.  This enables them to regard anyone who has participated in any aspect of modern culture or systems of government as enemies of their faith.  Potentially, men and boys can be summarily punished or even executed if they may have been contaminated with unislamic ideologies.  The legal system will now be handed over to mullahs and judges who believe that it is their task to purify society according to a fantasy model of Islam which never actually existed. In some way, they believe it is still possible to create an idealised Islamic state which will overtake and replace the westernised mores of the urbanised elite.

The pain that most of us feel is for the half of the Afghan population who are female.  Prospects of secondary education are probably removed at a stroke for a generation of young girls.  Young women will be forced into marriages with Taliban fighters without any choice in the matter.  The word marriage, in many cases, will not describe what is happening.  It is the forcible abduction and rape of the innocent.   There is a swathe of women who have been educated over the past twenty years since the last Taliban period of rule.  They have become competent professionals in a variety of roles, and they now face an uncertain future.  Will they be forced back into the home and rendered invisible and powerless?  Things may not turn out to be as awful as they were under the so-called Islamic state in Iraq, but there will still be a massive amount of suffering.  This will extend to anyone who has an aspiration for human flourishing of a kind that is linked to the ideals of our modern age.

Religiously motivated abuse of women has been common in many cultures across the world.  There is, of course, an extensive literature to help us to understand why women fare badly in some religious settings and the political systems inspired by them.  I make no claim to have mastered this genre of writing and what I say here will be what I have observed over the years in the UK in the way women have been treated by church and society.  Like many people of my generation, I absorbed the idea early on that most women would expect to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, preparing meals and making a home spotless for the male provider of the household.  Some women in the 50s did go out to work of course, but the disparity of wages and opportunities was such that the man’s job always took precedence over the woman’s. 

During my time at university, women were present there but in relatively small numbers.  There was still a generation of women alive who had been successfully entered for degrees in the 1920s but who had been unable to graduate according to the rules that had applied at the time.   The other thing I was well aware of was the way that the Anglican priesthood seemed to be a breeding ground of what we might describe as low-level misogyny.  Some clergy seemed to relish the masculinity of the priesthood in ways that I felt to be unhealthy.  The absence of women in the sanctuary often also gave rise a certain amount of what can only be described as homoerotic gossip.  Although my preferred church background is liberal catholic, the ‘dressing-up’ side of things did not always make me feel comfortable.   It was part of the way of things, but looking back, there was much that probably needed to be challenged as it, directly or indirectly, helped to feed a culture that was certain to humiliate or belittle women.

There is a great deal more to be said about the respective roles of men and women in a religious setting.  My broad take on the issue is that it is all primarily about power.  Culturally and psychologically men have, over the centuries, expected to dominate women, whether in the family, the workplace or the locale of religious activity.   Rationally this desire for control might appear to reflect some aspect of male sexuality.   There is, I believe, a deeper reason for this male struggle for control. Men are subconsciously in fear of women.   They are not frightened of them physically.   Rather the fear is of women’s ability to operate with what we call emotional intelligence.  Women create bonds and friendships with other women with relative ease.  They manage situations of emotional complexity with a deft instinct for finding the right words.  They seem to find it easy to create bonds with children and the young.  In a church pastoral setting they are often likely to have the empathy required to help another individual through a crisis.  In summary, some women manage many of the tasks of priesthood with a skill which not all male priests find easy to show.  That female adaptability to some of the tasks of priesthood does not endear them to male clergy, especially the insecure personalities and those whose sense of masculinity is bound up with the identity of priesthood.

The insecurity of some male clergy in the face of women, whether ordained or lay, reflects the same insecurities that also make some men wife-beaters and misogynists.  Male insecurity is, I believe, at the heart of the issue with the Taliban and the difficulty that every Muslim society has with giving women their proper place.  While there is probably little we can do to change the culture and belief tenets of Muslims, there is one thing we can do in our own settings.  We can challenge misogyny within the structures of the church however it is manifest.   Someone, in response to one of my posts, spoke about the disempowerment in the church felt by female laity.  They were referring to the double impediment of being both a lay person and a woman.  This meant that in relation to church clerical male decision making, they were almost invisible.

I want to finish this post by celebrating a number of women whose voices have played a crucial part in the way the character of this blog has taken shape.  Each of them is active somewhere in the church, trying to change the culture of Christian male dominance.   Among the bravest is the work of Kate Andreyev who has taken on the entire leadership cohort of the Church Society/ReNew complex.  Whatever her precise arguments are with this group, it is worth noting the fact that the power bloc she has taken on, is one that is still openly committed to preserve male privilege for the conservative wing of the Church.  It seems extraordinary in the 21^st century that the Church of England should be tolerating such institutional bias against women’s voices.   Here, however, is one brave articulate woman trying to make her case heard over against this immensely powerful block which does so much to exclude the influence of women.  Is this so different from the work of the Taliban in their cultural subjugation of women? Another woman making waves has been Rachel White.  Her voice, protesting about the protocols to choose those recommended as ordinands, had to be removed, but it continues to be available as a published archived article in the Church Times.  We also have the powerful witness of Fiona Gardner. Her book records meticulous research about the abuse of both sexes, but also reveals the way that, as a lay woman, she was treated almost contemptuously by powerful men in the Church. Then there are the voices of survivor women who have made themselves known to the blog.  Some are anonymous, like Mary, Trish or English Athena.  Others have allowed their names and experiences to be fully visible, like Jane Chevous and Janet Fife.  Janet has contributed by writing posts, which sometimes draw on her experience as a survivor.  Each of these individuals, and many others, has enriched the blog, not least by bringing the women’s perspective on power issues within the Church.

We need to return to the original event that set me off on this reflection -the Taliban threatening the voices and power of women in Afghanistan and elsewhere.  Our response to this horror of female suppression must be a readiness to re-examine our own collusion in religiously inspired misogyny.  We have hinted at the fact the Church of England still allows institutional subjection of women whether in large evangelical networks or Anglo-Catholic conclaves.  While these religious impediments will not be removed quickly from Anglicanism, it behoves the rest of us to challenge these assumptions in whatever way we can.  If we long for the Muslim faith to tolerate the full flourishing of women within their societies, we must, at the same time, put effort into our challenging what many of us see as the residue of religiously inspired misogyny within our own church.   

About 10 years ago, a schoolgirl, Martha Payne from Argyll, caused a sensation by taking pictures of her school meals, and then publishing the photos on the internet. She wanted to show visually how she and friends were being made to eat unappetising food on a daily basis.  When her school tried to stop this attempt to expose the inadequacy of the food, support from the internet exploded, with the press and public opinion very firmly on the girl’s side.  The net result was that the school was forced to improve the quality of the food.

This story, in itself, is not of earth-shattering significance, but it does help to make the point that voices of ordinary, even obscure people, can often be heard in this digital age.  Above all information can be shared across the world extremely quickly. In some ways, this blog Surviving Church is another example of the way that other unimportant voices, both the writers and the commenters, can be shared in the Church, especially the Church of England.  Nobody is obliged to read SC, but it seems that some people in the Church do.  A topical post (often written at breakneck speed!) can reach 2000 individuals.  There is also a solid phalanx of regular readers numbering around 400.  I feel that my readers welcome the information and opinion carried by SC, even though little of it is original or first-hand.  Any added value to the basic facts of a story may be in the fact that I sometimes have a feel for the background context.  Also, I sometimes notice detail in a story that others may have missed.  In any event, support for this writing and commentary work has given me, over the years, an increasing confidence that I have some useful things to say.

Looking beyond SC, we can say that the exchange and sharing of church-based information on the internet may be changing the whole Church in unforeseen ways.  Of course, not every example of comment on Twitter or Facebook is helpful or even wholesome.  But even the existence of trolls and malicious comment has not yet made the internet a place that is so unreliable and dangerous that it should be avoided altogether.  Real information is shared; opinion is expressed and no longer do we have to rely solely on official pronouncements written by those trained in reputation management.  The Winchester affair was instructive in this way.  When the ‘stepping back’ of the bishop was first announced, those of us outside the Diocese had no real means of know what was really going on.  The reputation experts (working for Luther Pendragon?) did their best to downplay the seriousness of the situation.  There were, however, enough individuals writing on blogs such as this one to give the outsider a fairly clear idea of what was in fact going on.  One wonders whether the presence of the internet meant that story played out in a quite different way than if there had been no online circulation of information.  A question to be asked in a Church history exam twenty years hence might be this.  Discuss the impact of the internet on the governance of the Church of England in the first three decades of the twenty first century.

The Christ Church affair has been, all on its own, something of an internet event.  The information recorded on blogs and by press stories of various kinds is now so extensive that a special website has been created to accommodate it all in an accessible way.  The anonymous blogger/compiler calls himself Turbulent Priest https: //www.turbulentpriest.net/ .  The broad impact on the case through the sharing of online information and discussion seems to have been broadly positive for Percy’s cause.  It still remains to be seen which side in the dispute will eventually prevail.  One side, the College hierarchy still has many aces in terms of solid institutional power and vast wealth.  The other side, the cause of the embattled Dean, has had to rely on the support of many individuals without such institutional power.  Many of them have been recruited to his side by all the open and frank discussion of his case through the internet.

A more recent case of publicity helping in a case connected with safeguarding protocol, is that involving the Rev Stephen Kuhrt. On 22 June, Kuhrt was suspended by his diocesan bishop from his job as Vicar of Christ Church Malden.  There was an allegation that he had not followed protocols in a safeguarding event/episode going back to 2007. In this case the PCC came to their Vicar’s defence in a very public way.  They made full use of the internet to publicise the details of his suspension, openly sharing with interested parties a lot of detail about the case.   They suggested that the CDM against their Vicar was a form of retaliation against him.  He had, while raising the issues in the same case, caused embarrassment to the local and the National Safeguarding teams for their own failures. The individual in the case, a member of Kuhrt’s congregation, was prosecuted and convicted for the abuse offence.  The case overall showed Kuhrt’s courage in pursuing the cause of justice and, in spite of his own failures of protocol when dealing with the case, he could be seen to be an impartial champion of safeguarding.  Thanks to the internet, many people came to hear of the details of Kuhrt’s suspension and many rallied round from all over the country to express their support.  The PCC were evidently inviting this support.  The CDM seemed to be dealt with greater speed than usual.  Kuhrt was exonerated on one charge within the CDM. For the less serious aspect of the charge involving a failure to remove names in a written document, he received a formal rebuke.   It seems reasonable to suggest that the popular opinion that has been activated in this case has helped to produce this quick resolution.  Kuhrt has been allowed to return to his post since the end of July and the case against him is now closed.

A third case which has benefited from the extensive publicity given to it, from the point of view of a complainant, is the Matt Ineson review.  I have discussed this case at different times over the years.  There is now, apparently, an impasse over the holding of a review of the case.  As most of us know it involved an abusive priest, Trevor Devamanikkam.  He committed suicide in 2015 just before coming to trial.  The internet and the press have taken up Matt’s case and allowed it to be heard.  The hierarchy of the Church have not been shown up well in their dealings with the whole affair.  Both Archbishops appearing at the IICSA hearings were invited by the questioning barrister to speak to Matt who was present.  Both declined to do so.  These were poignant but also excruciating moments in the hearings.  It may be these two failures of compassion that will be remembered long after the main IICSA recommendations to the Church have faded from our corporate memory.

I suspect that the reader will by now have gathered that I am to conclude that the internet has been a decisive positive factor in the overall cause of safeguarding in the Church.  It has allowed the free flow of both information and comment uncensored by official authority using the power of information control through the power of secrecy.  Unofficial information can of course be tainted with factional thinking or downright falsehood.  It is here that the work of reliable and trusted commentators becomes important.  They are the ones able to cast an informed opinion over the veracity of possibly embarrassing information that reaches the public domain.  We have such writers like Gilo, Andrew Graystone and ‘Archbishop Cranmer’.  Each has earned a reputation for honest comment, even when their words make some in authority suffer with embarrassment and even shame.  Institutions and those leading them are weakened when guilty secrets are exposed to view.  It is, however, hard to suggest that censorship and secrecy are in any way healthier ways forward.  Every time that a scandal is revealed that shows up leaders in a bad light, it can be regarded in one of two ways.  In the first place it can be seen as a threat to the flourishing of the institution and thus to be resisted at all costs.  From the other perspective, the allowing of light to be shed in a hitherto dark place can only be regarded positively.  Antiseptic balm may sting for a while but ultimately it will be seen as part of the process of healing. 

Over the period of time when I have been doing my own commentary work, I have detected a subtle shift in attitudes among those who have authority in the Church.  Comments from bishops hint that the tectonic plates are moving. In some places, this seems to lead towards a greater welcome for those of us who prefer the healing power of truth to the weasel words of reputation management.  The battle to bring consistent justice, light and clarity to the dark places of power abuse and bullying has not yet been achieved, but perhaps we can, with the help of many people of goodwill, see the dawn appearing over the horizon.  This dawn has, I believe, been made possible by the internet and the new reality of large numbers of church people communicating information and opinion freely with one another.  This has given the movement towards openness enormous power, power that would be inconceivable in a pre-internet era.  As the words of Morning Prayer say, ‘the night has passed, and the day lies open before us’.

by Mark Bennet

There is a psychological phenomenon which occurs when a person is under extreme stress – a survival strategy called “splitting” – by which the bad bits of life are separated from the self so they don’t have to be experienced or dealt with. The world also tends to be seen in black and white, without nuance or complexity (I simplify grossly). Thinking about the Church of England as an organisation under stress, there seem to be so many examples of distancing from the bad bits (I will suggest some below), that the organisational defences seem to be set at a high level. One aspect of splitting is that it can occur unconsciously – and I want to suggest that the Church of England has not been wholly conscious of its institutional behaviour. Such situations involving God’s people occur in the Bible, of course, and it is the prophets who both diagnose the true situation and get badly treated for their pains – the black-and white evaluation and distancing strategies apply with some force. In this piece, I am looking at a range of issues through a particular lens, conscious that each example has a great deal more complexity than I am able to discuss. I am also aware that I am skating in general terms over issues which have profound personal consequences for some people.

My first observation of distancing was as a member of the WATCH national committee – so often women were talked of in public as if they were in a different category from other Christians, particularly the so-called “militant women”. I was proud to be a rather modestly militant man, conscious that my existence challenged the categories which dominated the narrative of the debate.

Another place where stress has been great has been in the handling of human sexuality. Here, I look at the collective behaviour of the bishops, who have affirmed what is called “traditional teaching” and yet enacted practices contrary to this – in ordaining gay (and later lesbian clergy) over at least the whole of my adult lifetime. And it is worth noting too that in ordaining lesbian and gay clergy, bishops have made implicit promises to those clergy, which they have often been unable to keep. Our Bishops collectively have neither moved to change their collective practice in line with their teaching, nor taken steps to defend their practice and change their teaching. When we look at the means used to engage with the issues, we find that the conversations have been outsourced to people and groups who have no agency to change the practice, and that debates which might have influenced the teaching have been deferred or controlled.

Particularly egregious has been the treatment of the victims and survivors of the various abuse scandals in the church – here we see black and white evaluation and distancing writ large. Those who have been abused are treated as an unwelcome distraction from core business. Examine, for example, how much resource has been found for the recruitment of safeguarding teams and the roll-out of training on an industrial scale – expensive and complex tasks requiring will and determination to carry through. Compare this with the task of compensating victims and survivors and their families – also a complex and expensive task, where the progress has been distinctly limited.

Then there is the commissioning of “lessons learned” reviews. In liturgy, I often suggest to my colleagues that we don’t just “say” or “read” our liturgical texts – if our liturgy means anything, we are saying or reading the texts for a reason, whether it be praise or confession or prayer or thanksgiving, and we ought to be using active words which signal personal engagement in the purpose of the text. (“Let us confess … “, rather than “let us say … “, for example). When Church bodies commission a lessons learned review, they can very easily subcontract both the review and the learning to the author. In the announcement of a review,  there is often no language which signals personal commitment or engagement. The same is true, of course of the typical legal/PR “non apology” texts which have become too prevalent in recent times. A review, once written, can be put on the shelf with all the other reviews – just like the reports on minority ethnic concerns, whose recommendations, even when accepted, were never followed through. It might not be much, but changing the name of the reports to “Lessons to be learned” reviews, and saying “we are committed to learning the lessons” rather than “we have commissioned a report” would at least signal a greater intention. One reviewer, Ian Elliott, has tried to insist that the lessons are learned, and has experienced the same kind of distancing as others (and as the prophets before him).

The same distancing is seen with abusers too – the tone can change and they can be treated as if they were “never one of us”. The treatment of John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher has this aspect, both within their close community, and also in the wider church, which so easily treats them as a mainly irrelevant part of a marginal group. The adulation given to Peter Ball before his fall, or Chris Brain, is an example of the “white” side of the black/white thinking of an organisation under stress – criticism is unwelcome, discounted, not allowed. “Success” is too necessary for survival for “failure” even to be contemplated.

And this black/white behaviour of the organisation is also seen around the operation of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) – the use of suspension and secrecy has often led those facing investigation under the CDM to feel as if they have been deemed outsiders overnight – and of course, this is the behaviour we might expect from an organisation under the kind of existential threat which seems to be hanging over the Church of England. The feeling of threat, of course, is not new. When I was made Deacon, twenty years ago now, in Ripon Cathedral, the preacher predicted the demise of the CofE within five years and certainly within ten. I am not, in this piece, interested in the particular facts of individual cases, but more in what the collective experience might tell us about the organisation. The sense of threat seems to be driving adaptive behaviours which are contrary to our gospel narrative. The fiction, for example, that suspension is a neutral act, does not bear examination in relation to the lived experience of those who have been suspended, and conveniently ignores the fact that suspension is a public act in the lives of those exercising a public ministry. This fiction distances the decision-makers from the consequence of their decisions.

A very recent example of this kind of behaviour goes under the name “Myriad” – church without the difficult bits – bits like dealing with historic abuse, and allocating resource to victims. Not dealing with “limiting factors” and “passengers”. Without expensive training in the lessons learned in all those reviews. Not wondering how, if success looks so much like Peter Ball or Jonathan Fletcher of Chris Brain, we might avoid the catastrophic failures of those apparent successes – those lessons really do need to be learned. Don’t get me wrong, mission is important to me, and lay led groups and clergy led initiatives are part of our DNA in the parish where I serve (and variously evident in our collective life). But we take our responsibilities as part of a wider church seriously, and often feel them weighing heavily on us – that doesn’t change if we outsource the new initiatives: someone has to discharge the collective responsibility.

The new tagline for the Church of England seems to be “Simpler, humbler, bolder”. There is a danger in that word “Simpler”: given the scope of the challenge we face, it could be an invitation to sideline the complexities – and invitation to further or more aggressive distancing. I hope it refers rather to straightening out the bewildering complexities which contribute to the distancing/splitting behaviours we see so much of – complexities which so very often keep such people as victims, complainants and those complained of at arms length. These behaviours are adopted because they are easier, and apparently more effective than the alternative, which is evidently difficult and expensive and for which there is limited resource. The Jesus I read about in the Bible touched lepers and socialised with sinners in spite of the ritual impurity, stigma and criticism he faced.

“Church without the difficult bits” is an easy prospectus in a complex and challenging world – but that is not what we have been promised. The cross is not a symbol we can split off and ignore: Jesus puts it as a key waymark on the journey to redemption and resurrection, and invites us to live a faith in which the difficult bits are fully integrated. The way we are invited to travel is not straight and wide, but narrow and difficult. We are not invited to split off, ignore and deny the difficult bits, but to confess them and seek forgiveness. We have, and we enact, powerful symbolic language, which presupposes the work of the Holy Spirit, and which we could be using to resist the tendencies I have illustrated. Part of our problem is that, along with other kinds of splitting, it is so easy to separate these institutional and organisational issues from the theological, liturgical, spiritual and symbolic resources which would enable us to address them so much better. As St Paul might have written – and now I will show you a more excellent way …

Mark Bennet is Team Rector of Thatcham in the Diocese of Oxford

A couple or more years ago I was discussing, on this blog, the professional background of those who made up the original National Safeguarding Team (NST) of the Church of England.  This team was put together by the Church in 2015 at some considerable expense and consisted of thirteen and half full-time posts.  The names of everyone working on that team was recorded on the Church’s website.  It was thus possible to see which professional skills were most highly valued by those creating this new church initiative.  I noted when writing my piece that many of those then working for the NST seemed to have a social work background or links with the police.  The professions notably not represented were the legal profession and those connected with one of the disciplines around mental care and therapy.  No doubt, legal opinion could be brought in when required, but the absence of anyone with an awareness of the needs of victims and survivors of trauma was a serious omission.  I commented that this appeared to suggest that, in the minds of those creating this new NST body, management and the protection of the institution seemed to take a higher priority than the care of those damaged by abuse.  In short, the NST appeared to be a body for ‘managing’ the problem of abuse, rather than having proper regard for the victims of such behaviour.  The NST has indeed obtained a reputation among survivors for its clunky and sometimes cruel protocols administered on behalf of the Church.  Abuse had to be rooted out, it was true, but there has often not been any real empathetic engagement with the needs of those who had been damaged along the way.  The frequent cry often heard seemed to be that the protocols operated by the Church were harder to endure than the original abuses suffered.

Since 2015 the old NST has been entirely rebuilt.  Some of this ‘renewal’ of personnel was apparently to do with failures revealed at the hearings of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).  But for whatever reason, the original members of the team under the leadership of Graham Tilby are no longer in post.  A new broom in the person of Melissa Caslake was brought in.  Survivors looked to her with hope since she brought into the Church a new and independent professional perspective which might have been able to cut through some of the old, fusty protocols.  Above all, she was not caught up in a church culture addicted to reputation management and the demands of its communications department.  Melissa was able, in the short time she spent in post, to build up new team almost from scratch. Although she was able to win the confidence of a number of survivors I am in touch with, there were clearly other pressures she had to face that we can only speculate about.  She lasted in post a bare 15 months, before taking up a senior child protection appointment in the state sector.  It is not unreasonable for us to pause a moment to speculate why she was able to give so little time to the role.  It would seem that any vision she may have had for the NST could not be driven forward.  The needs of the church institution, seen through the eyes of William Nye and other senior officials at Church House, perhaps came into conflict with the priorities of an outside professional concerned with the welfare and right-dealing for survivors.  Something had to give and so the new head of the NST felt obliged to move into a new role.  What I say here is speculation as we have no means of knowing exactly what went on behind the scenes

For the rest of this post, I want us to think about the idea of team and what it might imply in the context of the Church pursuing its safeguarding task.  When we talk about teams in ordinary conversation, we are describing a group of people working together.  Between them they possess all the complementary skills needed to complete a particular task.  No single member of the team has all the required skills to do the project alone.  One person, the team leader, may be expected to have an appreciation for all the skills represented in his/her team.  He/she is responsible for deploying the team to work together so that the process of completing the joint task may be smooth and efficient.  The leader will be a particular kind of professional person, the one that can appreciate the skills of others and see how each interlock with others.  My complaint over the apparent failures of the NST so far, in its public performance, is that it has not brought together all the skills necessary to do the complete safeguarding job properly.  In earlier posts, I have discussed the extraordinary absence of anyone from the therapeutic world to feed into team discussions the likely impact on individuals either experiencing accusation or a lifetime of trauma following abuse.  Anyone following the stories of Matt Ineson, Martyn Percy or more recently Alan Griffin, must have asked themselves the simple but obvious question.  Why was no one in the local/national team working with these cases able to anticipate the appalling impact on individuals caught up in them?  When the NST was brought in in March 2020 to look at a spurious accusation over Percy’s alleged failure to act appropriately in a safeguarding matter (a case that was dismissed), no one was on hand to look at the potential impact on the accused.   Did no one in the senior ranks of the London diocese reflect on the appalling stress placed on Fr Griffin by leaving serious accusations on the table without any urgency to resolve the veracity of these accusations?  A single individual, without necessarily high levels of therapeutic training, could have asked the simple question each time, have you thought through what these as-yet unproven accusations are doing to these individuals caught up this process?  No one asked that question in these and many other cases.  The consequence was serious pain and, in one case, tragedy.

There is one further category of professional insight that is needed in many safeguarding cases.  As a background comment before we consider this, we might note that the Church of England has seriously undermined its reputation in the eyes of the wider public over the past few years.   The reader of the Daily Mail will probably be aware of two things about the Church.  One is that there are numerous survivors of sexual and other forms of church abuse who are still searching for justice.  A second point is that there is an awareness that the Church has seemed to place its reputation and financial assets above the need for care and justice.  Over the past twelve to eighteen months, with the talk by central Church authorities of compensatory schemes (which Gilo has so ably unpacked for us a week ago), the powers that be at the heart of the Church are finally showing signs of understanding the crisis of reputation. They are now responding to this widespread antipathy towards the institution.  Something is moving at the centre, but we are still left with the cumbersome, in some cases, the heartless and cruel structures of the Clergy Disciplinary Measure.  What can the Church do further to reclaim its reputation and claw back a little of the goodwill that has vanished over past months and years in Britain and elsewhere in the world?

The answer that I am sketching here is not a DIY for reputation recovery.  It is simply a plea for a new uncovering of areas of expertise and insight which are desperately needed in the NST and indeed, in the whole Church.  The expertise I am talking about comes somewhere in what we can broadly call institutional dynamics or organisational psychology.  It is an area of discourse that crosses various disciplinary boundaries.  It takes in social psychology, psychoanalytical theory and sociology.   It can perhaps answer questions like the ones which puzzle many of us.  Why do individuals change when they join institutions like the Church?  What happens to individual conscience, capacity for empathy and integrity when people become part of large groups?  Why do organisations sometimes seem to sit so lightly on old-fashioned morality, even when they claim the Christian label?   We are describing serious institutional failures that befall large organisations and the Church is no exception to these processes.  Many people accept these manifestations of institutional behaviour without realising that, as with most things, there are those who study these things.  Institutional dynamics, the negative kind, are severely damaging the Church at present.   We need in Church House, the NST and the House of Bishops people who really understand these processes and the dynamics of what is happening.  These same forces are undermining the Church and its institutional reputation.  If the Church of England were a public company with profit margins to maintain, it would have done the necessary tasks of analysis a long time ago.  Poor ethical behaviour, such as we often see in church institutions, needs to be tackled head-on.  Such behaviour threatens the purpose and the future of the whole organisation.

So, in conclusion, the Church needs these three things in facing the cataclysmic safeguarding crisis that is threatening to destroy the residual influence that it still has in the UK.  It needs first to understand how to set up structures that provide justice and meaningful levels of restorative compensation.  This it is beginning to do.  In the second place there needs to be grafted both into the committee structure and widely available afterwards, people who understand the deep needs of the emotionally abused and traumatised.  Thirdly, and this is not something I can do more than sketch out, it needs to have experts who can help the Church see the way that institutions often seem to function harmfully and have a corrupting power over many of their leading members.  The Church so often, in pursuit of its corporate and institutional goals, seems to retreat from its ideals of love, compassion and kingdom values.  No one will want to join a Church if it is perceived only to be protecting the power and privilege of its leaders.   Hypocrisy, in the shape of bishops and clergy who may smile but are compliant with acts of cruelty, is a very poor look.

Thirty or forty years ago there was a question posed for church congregations trying to take their evangelistic responsibilities seriously.  It was: Is your Church worth joining?  The topical question for Christians in these abuse aware days, from archbishops downwards is this:  Is your Church a safe place to join?

by Dr Rachel White

Following representations from an Anglican bishop, I have decided to withdraw the article about lessons learned. I may well return to a consideration of the issues posed by this account, because clearly there are lessons to be learned by me in this case about the issue of power in the church. While I have no reason to doubt the the story revealed by this blog post, Surviving Church cannot withstand legal challenges. I am leaving intact the comments posted for this post as they help to convey the flavour of the original article. Stephen Parsons Editor

There are some words in the English language which do not have definite defined meanings. We normally tend to assume that when we use a word it will have the same meaning for everyone else who uses it. In many cases this is not true. People use words and give them nuances of meaning which may vary to fit in with their own life experiences.  The only words that are consistently interpreted in the same way are those that operate within the discourse of logic or in scientific and technical descriptions.

One word that we use frequently, but needs constantly to be defined according to its context, is the word morale.  It is a word that can be used to convey the mood, positive or negative, in an organisation.  To say that there is low morale in an army unit, a firm or a church congregation is to hint at any number of a cluster of negative factors that can befall an organisation and affect its functioning.  Anyone in charge of such a group will need to take quick action.  Otherwise, the work of this organisation can become increasingly enfeebled. A general going into battle knows that it is important for his men to have good morale and feel positively about the support network that they depend on.  They also need to understand the cause for which they are fighting.  Small things in an army will make an enormous difference.  A plentiful supply of hot sweet tea was essential to the fighting spirit of the troops in WWII.  This and an occasional glimpse of their commanders and generals.  It allowed the soldiers to realise that senior officers and generals were not just names and remote figures away from the action.  Tea and rousing pep-talks were the sort of things that made a big difference to the general feeling we describe as morale.  Good morale is an essential part of organisational effectiveness and will be a priority of any good leadership.

It is not just in the fighting forces that we need to find good morale so that difficult tasks can be done well.  Rather, good morale is something we need to find in a factory, a school and in the various structures of the Church.  It is hard to describe precisely what we are talking about in each of these settings.  It is probably easier to describe morale by noticing what happens when it is absent.  We know from experience the lassitude and the low energy levels that are felt when morale is missing in a congregation, a diocese or a school.  We can clearly see this is opposite to good morale.  It is all that is summed up in the word, demoralisation.  When morale is high, people’s body language clearly demonstrates the sense of hope, excitement and a feeling of direction that has flooded into their institution.  People are being led somewhere and they have a renewed sense of energy and purpose.  We need to think further and ask ourselves what good or, alternatively, absent morale in a church might feel like.

Morale, or the lack of it, is both a corporate and individual experience.  In the Church many clergy suffer individually from a problem of low morale. One cause of low morale may arise from the sheer difficulty of doing a particular job well. The parish may be too large, with occasional offices taking up 80% of the priest’s time. It may be that you have inherited a historic division within the parish between individuals and families, stretching back decades.  A common problem today is also the lack of volunteers to allow the structural aspects of the parish to function well. These are the kinds of problems that are difficult to resolve, whether by an incumbent, or anyone else who might come in from outside in an attempt to help. A bishop or an archdeacon might have little help to offer in mediating in ancient disputes or finding someone to act as church treasurer.

Although outside support may have little to offer in resolving some local problems within a parish, the support of senior staff in the diocese can do a great deal to help raise morale among the parish clergy. In the past, when I was parish priest, I normally only saw the bishop when he came to do a confirmation.  The words of the Institution service which speak of the sharing of ministry between bishop and incumbent had little practical meaning.    There was little sign of episcopal interest in anything that I got up to. In later years, from around 1995, there was an annual appraisal with a member of the diocesan senior staff, but I only remember two or three such meetings. Would a detailed knowledge of my parish have made any difference? It is hard to answer that question as it was never on offer. I can see that if there had been any serious problems, it would have been useful to have had a pastorally sensitive figure with experience who knew overall what was going on.  The real problem was one I raised in my last blog post -the fear of having a negative issue being recorded in the clergy ‘blue file’.  A pastor, not an assessor was what might have been required at various stages in my ministry. Because it was never on offer, I cannot ever have been said to have missed it.  I believe it would have done something to lift the spirits if there had really been someone of experience, compassion, and concern, potentially interested in the detail of my parochial successes and failures.

The morale of the parish clergy, I believe, would be boosted if there were effective oversight which did not come with any threat of disciplinary action built in. In my 40 years of parish ministry, I only remember one meeting with a bishop which had solely pastoral content. The occasion was when I was planning to move on from my second curacy to return to university to do two years theological research. It was an important moment for me to see that the bishop fully understood my reasons for pursuing this idea. I needed to know that the system would not reject me in the future for having the temerity to become a full-time student again.

I mention my own personal experience (or lack thereof) of encounter with bishops as a way of suggesting that it is important for working clergy to feel that someone knows something of what is going on in their lives. It does not have to be any detailed knowledge. This pastoral oversight might be hoped for by everyone working in parishes, but it is especially true for the stipendiary staff who may have no other source of professional backing.  It may of course exist in the current Church, but such help was not available twenty+ years ago. If and when things go wrong in a parish, it is of enormous help if the person you speak to knows something of the context of each ministry. It matters to feel that the ministry of each parish is something that the bishop shares with the parish priest.  I forget the exact words that occur in the Institution service, but they go something along the lines of ‘take this ministry which is mine and yours’. If that sharing of ministry is slightly a reality, then each parish priest will have a solid sense of being supported.  That will be the cause of a real boost to his or her morale.

The current events within the London diocese, relating to the Griffin affair, must be doing a great deal to undermine the morale of the diocesan clergy.  From the fragments of information that have been revealed, it is evident that when senior staff met, they did not always take care to ensure that only factual information about the clergy was shared.  Gossip and rumours about clergy were apparently given space at some of these meetings.  Even if nothing was done with such information, allowing gossip ever to enter written records is hardly indicative of a caring, supportive relationship between senior staff and parish clergy.  Clearly there are bound to be unique stresses and strains within the London diocese, not least because of the polarity of the church traditions represented there.  The contrasting theological perspectives in one fairly compact diocese must create its own set of problems. Institutional morale must be hard to maintain in these circumstances.  The coroner’s report by Mary Hassall was pointing to serious problems in the provision of pastoral care for the clergy.  Any such deficit of care and sloppiness in the keeping of records will severely dent morale and will take time and effort to repair.  Trust has been damaged and this needs to be a major issue of concern for the senior staff in the diocese of London and beyond.

The analogy of making sure that an army going into battle have good morale, is a good one to describe what is needed for all ‘front-line’ clergy working in the parishes.   Feeling known as well as actively supported by their officers and generals is of vital importance both for soldiers and clergy to enable them to function well.  In addition, they need to feel that the actual situations they face daily are really understood.  Also, when statements from on high are uttered which do not connect to experience, that will likely undermine the sense of belonging to the institution.  Trust, listening, active support and proper communication are all part of the process that is needed to bind clergy and bishops to one another and to the institution they serve.  When these are in evidence, morale will be high and the task of extending the Kingdom will be furthered and enhanced.

By Fiona Gardner

There is a new and fascinating biography out about Bishop Stephen Neill (1900-1984). ‘A Worldly Christian’ is a meticulously researched and referenced book by Dyron B. Daughrity, Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, published this year by Lutterworth Press.

Daughrity describes Neill’s life as ‘a tumultuous one’; both his parents were missionaries and following his father’s ordination the large family moved frequently. Despite an unstable and nomadic childhood – the children were looked after ‘by a series of nannies and governesses’– Neill’s upbringing was ‘thoroughly evangelical: family prayers, Bible memorisation and recitation, unwavering faithfulness in attending church services.’ Eventually settled in Dean Close, an evangelical boarding school in Cheltenham, Neill found this ‘a consistent place to call home’ noting in his own autobiography his approval of the use of the cane which ‘certainly did me no harm’, a practice that Neill later adopted in his adult ministry. Clearly academically brilliant both at boarding school and then at Cambridge where he won numerous academic awards, Neill studied and ‘may have taken early refuge in a kind of lonely stoicism. Religion, as well as nature and circumstance, may have conspired to mold him this way … Perhaps a less austere religion would have given the church a servant less deeply damaged.’

For despite all the academic success Neill was troubled by long periods of mental and physical ill health – with insomnia, depression and temper outbursts plus exhaustion – he himself acknowledged: ‘My fierce temper, the outward expression of so many inward frustrations’. The issue of his repressed sexuality is discussed in the autobiography. Neill had a negative attitude towards women involved professionally in Christian work, and was fond of being with young men, but wrote that both homosexuality and masturbation ‘falls below the level of genuinely human activity’. His biographer comments, ‘the possibility that he was a closeted gay man should not be ruled out.’

Leaving an academic career Neill became a missionary in South India and spent over twenty years there eventually becoming Bishop of the Tinnevelly diocese in 1939. He moved into ecumenism in Geneva working for the World Council of Churches, later taking on a professorship in Hamburg, and then working in Nairobi. His last years were spent in Oxford. He wrote 65 books and numerous articles many of which are still enthusiastically read and cited, and he achieved international fame and esteem lecturing and evangelising around the world; and the book details all these successes.

Previous biographies have either chosen to not know about, ignored, or glossed over Neill’s destructive side, and it is to Daughrity’s credit that this is openly acknowledged and discussed. Neill was unable to be candid about certain chapters in his life; even when confronted with his abusive behaviour he interpreted the situation differently –placing the blame on events and refusing to accept any wrongdoing.

From his earliest years in India, Neill used the cane and later a knotted rope as a form of discipline: ‘he utilised it throughout his life when he thought someone needed to be corrected.’ He was seen as both devoted to ‘the betterment of the diocese’ and as ‘overly autocratic’. One priest ordained by Neill showed deep ambivalence, commenting on Neill’s generosity and concern with the poor, yet, ‘He was very strict in many ways. He was a disciplinarian, an autocrat, imperialistic. Highly intelligent, he used to think very little of other people’. At a time of the movement for Indian Nationalism, and the struggle for independence the known incidents that led to Neill’s resignation carry the added horror of the weight of colonial rule. Neill was later described as ‘a famous colonial missionary’, but in Africa in the early 1970s was judged as displaying ‘racism and arrogance’, with ‘a bullyish etiquette’ insensitive to the African way of doing things and ‘exploitative to the people around him.’

His modus operandi remained the same in all the documented and known incidents of abuse included in the biography, where young men would be asked to report their good and bad actions. Neill would ask if they were prepared for punishment, and once they agreed would take them into a room and beat them on their bare buttocks.

‘When they cried, Neill stopped. Neill did this all throughout his ministry, even as Bishop. Advice was given to him by his supervisors and friends, but he continued to do it. Neill would often beat young people, mainly teenagers. Normally he would beat people aged 10-25 years. Older ones who were close to him were also beaten… Many advised him to stop, but he could just not stop’.

The situation that forced Neill to resign the bishopric involved a local school teacher whose village then complained to the diocese with a number of influential figures supporting the movement to get rid of Neill. Charges of violent assault would have been brought against Neill in the Episcopal Court ‘citing a number of instances of violent assault of clergy, laymen and teachers’, so he was forced to resign despite a powerful campaign to keep him as Bishop.

Neill returned to England and in his own autobiography did not give the real reason for leaving India. He worked for a short time in the faculty of divinity in Cambridge. While researching the biography, Daughrity was contacted by the painter Patrick Hamilton who recounted Neill’s punishment for his personal failings. Hamilton wrote, ‘Certain things [Neill] did have affected my whole life and now, at the age of 83, I still find him lurking in the dark places of my mind. I believe I am the one who reported what was happening and was probably responsible for his immediate removal from Trinity in about 1947.’ A further incident was fully documented dating from Neill’s time in Nairobi in the early 1970s and finally reported to Anglican Church authorities in July 2020. The account includes the victim’s suspicion that although remaining fully clothed, Neill found the experience arousing. Importantly this victim was able to confront Neill some years later when he threatened to repeat the beating, and able to tell Neill, ‘how inappropriate it was to spank a grown man. Neill was flummoxed.’ Neill regularly visited and stayed at Yale University in the US. In 1979 an eyewitness account reported the spanking of two or three young men following a small group discussion of the Christian tradition of ‘beating the body’ as a spiritual discipline. The witness to the scene reported: ‘he combined a biblical teaching with a practice that gave him pleasure.’ One of the men reported the incident, and Neill was told not to have private meetings with students. Another documented abusive incident took place shortly before Neill died whilst a senior scholar at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. The victim was helping Neill preparing a book for publication when Neill asked the person to sit on his lap, and then discussed the need for punishment and began slapping them on the buttocks. Needless to say, this person avoided Neill as much as possible after the incident.  

Whilst Neill did consult a psychiatrist about depression, he was unable to seek treatment for his beating fetish or what his niece referred to as his ‘sado-masochism’; nor were these incidents seen as criminal – so he was never prosecuted. His status and reputation were such that whilst many senior church authorities knew about his actions including Archbishop Donald Coggan, Neill was never held to account. Indeed, when Richard Holloway disclosed the abuse in a book review of an earlier biography in 1991, Holloway was castigated by many for not focusing on Neill’s ‘fruitful life and ministry’ and ‘the brilliance of the man’. Inevitably though more victims of his perverse behaviour came forward in the 1990s as a result of the publicity. The account from the victim who disclosed in 2020 suggests that currently there is ‘a growing file on Stephen Neill’.

So, what to make of yet another sad account of abusive practices in high places? Canon Eric James who in his role as Chaplain of Trinity College, Cambridge, ‘came to know the tragic truth’ of Neill’s compulsive abusive behaviour called in 1991 for ‘psychosexual understanding’ and for members of the Church to ‘examine the psychosexual basis of much that passes for theological conviction.’ Thirty years later as the abusive so-called ‘spiritual practices’ of Peter Ball, John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher are reluctantly dragged into the light we might wish for the same thing. It’s not just about understanding though, it is also about confronting and properly bringing to account all abuse, and offering realistic support and help to victims. There is a need for understanding how emotional deprivation and illiteracy may re-emerge in abusive behaviour and linked to these, why senior clerics find it hard to face up to the need for professional psychiatric or psychotherapeutic help. Why is mental health and sexual well-being never taken as seriously as reputation and status?

by Gilo

Some reflections by Gilo, co-editor of Letters to a Broken Church, which will be sent to both Archbishops for the members of Archbishops Council and also to the Church Commissioners.

Both the Interim Support Scheme (up and running) and the eventual Redress Scheme were agreed unanimously by Archbishops’ Council in Sept 2020. But it seems now that the Redress Scheme might not begin for at least another year. The delay is not as might be imagined entirely the work of Secretary General William Nye and his lawyers in the demesne of the Secretariat. It’s also, from what one can gather, the Church Commissioners closely guarding their assets and saying the funds are not for this purpose.

It is somewhat ironic that the two Archbishops both nominally sit as trustees of the Church Commissioners alongside four other bishops, two of whom are on the National Safeguarding Steering Group. But at least this gives survivors and our allies some room for moral leverage. Archbishop Welby is unlikely to welcome being held hostage by his machinery – on the one hand presented as supporting the call for the Redress Scheme and restorative justice, whilst at the same time having to contend with the powerful engine of the machine blocking it. That’s not a good look.

At the current moment the Interim Support Scheme (ISS) is funded by  Archbishops Council. I believe there are currently about 35 survivors being supported. The current monthly expenditure is likely to be in region of £60k plus additional capital expenditure. And there are perhaps over 10 current applications in process. Maybe closer to twenty. It’s hard to know when the Scheme might reach its first 100 applicants. Perhaps within the next four to six months. And the Scheme is likely to grow exponentially. It’s not clear how dioceses are making the information and access readily available to those in need. I hope none are blocking access to this vital service. Credit to the lead bishop, Jonathan Gibbs, for driving these schemes into existence. Constrained by structure and culture that desperately needs reform – he seems nevertheless determined to see restorative justice begin to take shape.

But the Interim Scheme is not the Redress Scheme. It’s important to maintain a clear distinction. It can be seen as the beginning of restorative justice as its focus is on rescuing people from further economic damage. But there is a way to go before the Redress Scheme begins. It should be seen as the sticking plaster, holding people towards the time when the Redress Scheme is ready. Civil claims will continue throughout all of this period. It’s important that they do. The Church’s insurer Ecclesiastical, who have played many unethical games, should not be let off the hook due to the Interim Support Scheme, and anyway the compensation paid by Ecclesiastical (derisory as it often is) should not prevent survivors from seeking support from the ISS where necessary.

I imagine the ISS Panel must find themselves treading an awkward line between the needs of survivors… and the all-seeing Nye and his lawyers. This cannot be easy. They can only make recommendations. We can only hope that few of those recommendations are being turned down. I believe the Panel and its secretary Tim Bonnett are doing the best they can to make sure people receive the support necessary at this stage. And I know the scheme has so far already saved lives. I suspect the Panel is having to push against the increasing limitations Mr Nye would seek to impose. It is disturbing that so much power lies within the hands of one figure who frankly needs to repent the reputational management circus he and Church House carried out in their handling of the Elliott Review. But that is for another day.

When the Interim Scheme started Church House lawyers sought to impose draconian and ugly Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) upon survivors involved in the scheme. But when a group of us told the Archbishops about this direct – they acted fast to get them removed.  Archbishop Welby was visibly angry – angry enough to get it actioned it within 48 hrs. We learnt several important things from this. The Archbishop hasn’t much of a clue what the operations of Church House legal department consist of, and how out of touch they might be with the Church’s thinking. But when the right hand knows what the left hand is up to – action can in fact be surprisingly rapid. When the Archbishops are motivated and working together – they can make stuff happen with astonishing urgency. Apologies were duly sent to those who had received these NDAs, and they were hurriedly removed presumably to a backdrop of red faces in Church House

At the current moment Archbishops Council is probably needing to budget £1m this year for the ISS. Easily within the capacity of their purse. It’s probable that they have set aside £5m for the scheme over the next few years. But the main holdings are under the keys of the Church Commissioners who have control over £9billion plus. They made a return of £500m this past year alone.

The Church are needing to find in the region of £1billion for the eventual Redress Scheme and if the Church Commissioners are dragging their heels, then it will not be surprising if daylight visits them and their blocking. The institutional hypocrisy is likely to be exposed. Both Archbishops and 4 other bishops sit on the CC trustees. Not a great look if they are publicly calling for the Redress Scheme while a corner of their own structure that has all the power and control is blocking it. It would look even odder if any of these bishops had major unaddressed scandals in their dioceses, that they and their diocesan structures had  done everything to push away.

The Church is likely to play out its ‘game of parts’ and pretend that pieces of the institution are separate from one another. It’s been doing this throughout decades of scandal – acting as forty+ autonomous structures when it suits, and then at other times, presenting itself as one identifiable body, the Church of England. However it plays it out, eventually the embarrassment catches up and does more damage.

So someone had better warn the Archbishops that this embarrassment could be better avoided. They closed down the NDAs on the ISS when we told them about this ugliness. So presumably they can action this and kick the Commissioners into touch, admittedly with some difficulty. But nevertheless it can be done. Especially now that we finally have two Archbishops who seem genuinely to like each other, work together well, and are keen that the new paradigm of culture change and restorative justice finally happens.

If there is a big internal passing the buck quarrel going on between the Commissioners and Archbishops Council – they might need to be honest and own this problem transparently. And allow any ensuing embarrassment to unblock the blockage. Embarrassment is usually the one thing this rickety structure responds to, and it would be far healthier at this stage if it were self-administered embarrassment.

Perhaps what may be required to help this move along might be a workshop with members of CC and Archbishops Council. A joint meeting of both members with a group of survivors at a two-day conference somewhere. With a commitment to learn direct about cost of impact in real lives. This was something two of us (Phil Johnson and I) led in a diocese in recent weeks – and it would be good to see this pattern recreated elsewhere with more stories, both men and womens’ represented. It is hugely costly work emotionally but it is not until the significant power brokers hear it for themselves and in the presence of notable allies within the structure, will they get it.

And if the two highest bodies of the Church refuse – then ask for reasons for the reluctance to be on the record so the Church can see that these bodies might be more intent on playing for PR than authentic commitment to real change and genuine justice.

Now the chances of such a workshop happening may seem as likely as Secretary General Nye turning up for work in a sombrero and calling for the introduction of continental shifts in Church House. But he knows they are badly on the back foot. They all know it. The structure is desperate to claw back moral ground. Their expensive reputation launderers and crisis managers (chiefly ‘Loofah’ Pendragon in London) have failed to scrub clean the stain of much corruption as well as multiple ongoing failures. The Church of England’s scar tissue will not begin to heal until a theological and cultural shift towards genuine and full ownership and repentance takes shape. This involves amongst many other things, a letting go of the harmful detergent offered by the likes of Pendragon which has often done more damage. The only workable medicine for the Church’s many self-inflicted wounds is the medicine of transparency – a willingness to be more transparent than transparent. Some senior figures have already made the clear shift into this new paradigm. Others have not.

There is a gulf between what bishops  officially say the Church is doing, and the backroom machinations of its power brokers and managers. It is this gulf that the lead bishops and Archbishops will need to bridge. And the best way forward might be to speak openly and transparently about the delay, who or what is causing it, and how they intend to shift this. As Martin Sewell writes on the latest Archbishop Cranmer blog:

“Question-and-Answer sessions at General Synod are frequently treated as a cat-and-mouse game by Church House, with the avoidance of giving a straight answer to an inconvenient question the preferred default option.”

There was a comment on the last blog post about what can happen when ordinary clergy ask difficult questions at a Diocesan Synod.   The particular Synod questioner, writing on this blog as ‘Margaret’, was describing the way that senior staff felt ‘uncomfortable’ because their decisions were being challenged.  This has caused me to reflect about the costs involved in speaking truth to power.  The writer then told us how her questions had led to a later awkward meeting with the Diocesan bishop.  At this meeting she was asked/told not to query such things as diocesan expenditure.  Arising out of this meeting, was the realisation that she was being cast in the role of ‘troublemaker’ by all the members of the Bishop’s senior staff.  Various hoped-for opportunities for ministerial development had then been closed to her.  Other training options and the possibility of a new post had also evaporated.  To describe the situation from another point of view, the power of patronage that had helped her up to a certain point was now being withdrawn.  When I use this word patronage in this context, I am not talking about those with the gift of presentation to a parish, I am referring more generally to those who have power within any hierarchical system to advance or hinder an individual’s career. Cutting off Margaret’s opportunities for extending her ministry was, to put it bluntly, the price that she had to pay for speaking her truth and prophesying to the system.  Those with the power, here the power of patronage, were wielding it to protect their power and their ‘right’ not to be made to feel uncomfortable in their administration of the Diocese.  

We have, of course, in Margaret’s account, only one side of the story.  I am, nevertheless, inclined to take her version seriously, especially as she mentions the earlier hints that she had been a valued member of the Diocese and once could look forward to new opportunities, even preferment.  We can imagine that, before her name became synonymous with ‘awkward’ and ‘nuisance’, the senior staff would normally have thought of her role in the Diocese with approval.  But now that she had upset the system by challenging power, her reputation had been allowed to plummet.  The issue for senior staff seemed to be, not whether she was right or wrong in her questioning. The issue was her audacity in questioning the senior office holders holding power.  It is hard to see that once the groupthink of the senior staff had come to their conclusion about Margaret’s behaviour, that there were any obvious ways to recover their favour.  Her final word on this dynamic was this: ‘Those of us who could be a voice of change, are being excluded by those who hold power’.

To be thought ill of by a single individual is not pleasant at the best of times.  When one’s reputation is trashed by a group, that is extremely difficult and hard to deal with.  We can imagine a situation where the reputation of one person is quickly decided upon within a group/committee, perhaps because of the bias and known dislike felt by one or two members.  This tendency for a group to listen to and base its opinion on unverified gossip, is what seems to have happened in the case of Father Philip Griffin.   This case will be remembered for a long time in the Church in England. It appears to be a classic example of what can happen when no individual in a working group wants to challenge the groupthink about an individual in a committee type setting.  In the Griffin case, group processes allowed a tragedy – a suicide- to take place.    It was not only the failures of protocol that here are shocking;  there is also a miasma of incompetence and prejudice all around the event.  Gossip and reputation shredding against those who did not meet with the approval of those in power in the Diocese of London, seem to be rampant in London safeguarding circles and no doubt elsewhere.   It never seemed to occur to those in charge how important it is always to disentangle innuendo from properly attested factual material.  Groupthink is a dangerous power dynamic at the best of times.  When it is weaponised and applied against individuals who are out of favour for any reason, it can be extremely dangerous and a likely cause of injustice or worse.  

Many people have been wondering over the past few months how the Church of England can carry on with so many crises and challenges to its integrity. There is surely a limit to the number of times it is realistic to say that ‘lessons will be learned’.  Some of the crises are indeed financial and practical – how do we pay the bills and find a way to keep churches open?  The greater crisis is the moral one. Does the Church speak to the nation of honesty, integrity and straightforward dealing? Alternatively, what are people seeing, when they look on? Is it just a relatively small privileged group clutching onto status and the remains of past historical glory? The report of the coroner in the Griffin case, Mary Hassall, contained one further shocking detail. It is one that reveals attitudes in the Church, which claim, as of right, privilege and status within society. The coroner was asked to avoid criticising clergy and other officials by name. This action suggested an institution in full panic mode. The Church seemed to be asking the coroner to cooperate in its projection of a manicured self-promotion. ‘We cannot let our shabby behaviour be seen by the wider public. Our reputation must at all costs be preserved even if we have presided over a terrible safeguarding failure’. The coroner also referred to 42 other clergy who have acquired tarnished reputations over the past twenty years.  We have at present no means of knowing whether any accusations against these clergy are based on solid evidence or are rooted in a mixture of gossip and innuendo. There must be an extraordinarily low level of morale in the Diocese of London at this moment. This probing of a senior management structure that tolerates sloppy oversight over its clergy and its own structures does not suggest a good setting in which to work.  The implications of this story will run and run. One thing that is quite clear is that the case for independent scrutiny of church structures in London is clearly strong.  Any independent person coming into committee settings where gossip and intrigue was shared, would surely blow a professional whistle to halt such nonsense. The question that has always to be asked is, what is the evidence? Who has made a complaint? When did the accusation first appear and who knew about it? The coroner has rightly criticised a complete failure to disentangle innuendo and gossip from properly established facts. As a final twist to the appalling suffering of Father Griffin, is the fact that the investigations against him, even if not part of a formal CDM process, here as elsewhere, were allowed to drag on interminably because no one seemed willing to make decisive decisions.

Returning to Margaret’s account discussed above, I found myself asking the question which might have occurred to my readers.  What would I do in her situation?  Would I ever challenge a diocese and its structures if I felt money was being misused or some personnel decisions were being made which appeared to be wrong? The answer is that I probably would never have done such things. I would probably be doing what most clergy do in such a situation.  That is to keep noses clean and continue their ministry without the risk of being considered a troublemaker. In other words, my critical faculties, when sitting on church committees, might have been subdued if I felt the powers of patronage present. I am sure that there are many in the Church who think like this: any thing not to damage one’s career and one’s peace of mind. In short, integrity and the exercise of the prophetic role will normally take second place to a quiet and safe life.

One of the interesting things about my retirement from full-time ministry has been the discovery of things to say about the Church.  These while still in active ministry, would never have been explored..  In reading Margaret’s account, I realise how much of what I have to say here is made possible by being in a situation of retirement.  I have reached the time of life, where from the perspective of Diocesan structures, I am completely invisible.  For reasons that I do not understand, my PTO application to replace the previous one, which expired in April 2019, has been lost in the system.  It is probably a combination of Covid, paperwork confusions and possibly administrative incompetence that has meant that I am still waiting. One good thing that has come out of this fallow time from normal retirement ministry, is the freedom to focus on the ‘different’ ministry that has come through writing this blog. I seem to be in touch with dozens of people up and down the country who are involved with (or victims of) safeguarding issues.  If my name were ever to come up at a local Bishop’s staff meeting, there would be a complete blank on all the faces present. I am unknown to all of them. While this invisibility would have mattered a great deal when I was at the height of my active ministry, it seems to be less important as I get older.  It certainly means that I have less to fear from the dreaded threat to the mental well-being of all clergy, called the CDM.

The apparent life-changing, career-changing effect of speaking prophetic truth to power that Margaret suffered in her diocese can be undertaken with a greater freedom by those of us who have, because of our retirement status, no current stake in the system. We have this freedom to say things that others cannot say because they are under the potentially arbitrary exercise of church power used against them.  It is important for others of us to use the power of the pen and the net to defend and support powerless victims of power abuse.  I salute the courage and bravery of dozens of individuals who suffer under the exercise of arbitrary power.  The freedom that my retirement status gives me means that I will always (strength permitting) be able and ready to fight on behalf of those who are bullied, exploited or treated badly by those with power in the Church.

Now is probably not the time to hold a lessons-learned enquiry into the Winchester affair. Clearly the retirement of Bishop Dakin in February 2022 is the outcome of detailed and painful negotiations, involving many stakeholders. It can hardly be said to be tidy for any of the parties.  +Dakin will leave behind various strands of his episcopal mission initiatives, for the time being, still intact.  It is, however, hard to see how these will flourish without the input of his leadership.  He has not, to judge from his published video statement, so far come to terms with the wreckage caused by his time in office.  He wants to depart with his head held high and so we are regaled with his version of what he has achieved in ten years as bishop.  Allowing him to save face in this way was, we suspect, the only way to way to achieve his cooperation.  The departure is going to be a very costly one for the Church nationally and locally.

The main question that occurs to many of us immediately is to ask: who will now want to be Bishop of Winchester and fill these particular shoes? Who will have the stamina to provide for the necessary pastoral healing for many traumatised clergy and laity who are being left behind in the diocese? Who will also have the decisive management skills to recover the financial equilibrium which the diocese needs to move into the future? Who will want the responsibility of deciding on redundancies that may now be necessary?  +Dakin appears to have created a number of new structures to further his priorities for mission.  These may no longer be required now.   We are asking a great deal of any likely successor.  Do all these qualities exist in a single person at present available?  In the secular world, one can imagine that in this situation an expensive team of consultants would be sent in to sort out the mess and then produce reports to set out possible ways forward.  That is not the way the Church normally works.  It is probably going to fall to a single episcopal figure, temporary or permanent, to gather up all the threads of the painful past and take the Diocese into the future.  Candidates without the qualities of the Archangel Gabriel need not apply!

At present there are, or are about to be, seven vacancies for diocesan bishops in England. This represents one sixth of the total of the House of Bishops.  This number of simultaneous vacancies is probably unprecedented at one moment of time.  In this blog post, I want to reflect on what we expect of our bishops in the Church of England. The first thing I need to mention is that the church does not provide any systematic training for the post. Some senior clergy are provided with elements of an MBA course but most of the episcopal skills are learned on the job.  Most bishops that are chosen probably have one or two qualities identified as making them ‘episcopabile’.  It is then hoped that, with support, other necessary skills will be picked up along the way.  The real problem for many bishops is that when they realise that they lack areas of skill needed for the episcopal task, their lives may acquire serious levels of stress.  They recognise that they cannot live up to the expectations put on them by others. 

Speaking very broadly, there are three main areas of responsibility for an Anglican Diocesan bishop.  Excellence in, or at least competence, is needed in all three if they are to achieve ‘success’ or job satisfaction.  The first gift is possibly the most commonly held by bishops, and it draws naturally on their years as parish priests. That is the pastoral gift and the skills acquired through developing its use. Congregations and clergy love it when a bishop takes the trouble to remember names and details of the personal life of the one being addressed. They also like a good listener, someone who seems to understand the various problems of church life. The pastor Bishop is going to be the one who, after his departure, is remembered with affection and gratitude.

The second area of competence much needed in a bishop is theological skills. We expect our bishops to be well educated and able to preach and teach well in a way that inspires.  In the ancient Church, the role of the bishop to be arbiter of doctrinal orthodoxy was considered important.  Today, we might require a bishop to rule on the limits of what is and what is not acceptable doctrine.  This episcopal role in speaking with authority on doctrinal matters is important, but seldom exercised.  Any reluctance by bishops to give theologically informed statements is a great loss in our present church climate.  In the absence of robust theological leadership from members of the House of Bishops, we look to other spokespeople to comment on the issues of the day with a theological perspective.  These theological articulations are not always successful but at least there are contemporary voices in the public square prepared to think theologically, even it is not often our church leaders.  One of the problems in the Winchester diocese is that there seemed to be, on the part of the Bishop, little experience or understanding of the broader traditions of Anglicanism.  A good grasp of church history and a firm respect for all the traditions of Anglicanism should also be something we can expect of all our bishops.  Any sense of having your version of Anglicanism devalued by a diocesan bishop will be a cause of stress and make for a difficult environment for the clergy to work in.

The third area of excellence required of every bishop is possibly the most difficult. It is the ability to manage, organise and supervise other people who themselves are doing a whole variety of complicated management tasks within a diocese. To take one area, the safeguarding arena, we find a maze of potential traps into which anyone in charge can easily fall. Safeguarding misjudgements and failures on the part of bishops are, it seems, extremely common. In some cases, we suspect that there has been a failure to be concerned with detail.  Another common failing is to allow the needs of the diocese or the safeguarding unit to take precedence over the individual.  Sometimes there is a failure to follow up what is going on, making the unwise assumption that everyone is on top of their tasks.  The Church has an extra problem in that it has tendency to hold on to employees well past their ‘sell-by date’ and is slow to move them on when they are clearly not performing.  There is a particular problem in redeploying the clergy themselves.  Bishops must find it stressful to know that clergyperson X is incompetent and even causing harm, but there is little that can be done practically. One of the major headaches of a future Bishop of Winchester is to know what to do with all the relatively new appointees of +Dakin. One of his controversial decisions was to take in-house responsibility for the training of ordinands. Apart from being an enormously expensive decision, this now leaves a cluster of, no doubt, well-qualified staff who may not be required in a streamlined future diocesan structure.  The mission ideas of +Dakin are also unlikely to coincide with the priorities of a future bishop.  Their value to the Diocese is questionable, particularly now that the programme leadership is being withdrawn through the resignation of the Bishop.

I do not think it is unfair to suggest that none of the bishops in the Church of England are completely competent in each of these three areas, managerial, pastoral and theological. In the secular world, as a matter of course, one would set up an academy to train candidates to achieve excellence or improvement in all these required skills. Such an academy for bishops does not, of course, exist and the lack of such an institution means that all the 42 diocesan bishops struggle on, trying to do their job in spite of serious gaps in the skills they need.  This sense of struggle, alongside actual incompetence, comes over in the one area of bishop’s work that I do hear a lot about: safeguarding.  To say that some dioceses are unable to deliver a professional and competent service in the area of safeguarding is an understatement.   In some places there seems to be near chaos.  This dysfunction is probably not always the bishop’s direct fault, but bishops still find that any blame which is embedded in the processes eventually ends up on their desk.  A recent story of poor and sloppy safeguarding practice resulted in a coroner, investigating the death of a priest Alan Griffin, writing a critical letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London.  This was an excoriating criticism of internal Anglican processes. Such cases will certainly add massively to episcopal stress. Many bishops might wish that the role was purely pastoral: the role they remember as parish priests. In practice their dealings with individuals, clergy and lay, are wrapped up with many other factors, involving legal, managerial and safeguarding issues.  Many bishops, I suspect, go to sleep at night without a sense of having been able to do anything really well. There are just too many pieces of unfinished business in their work with people and structures.  These lead to no tidy or complete outcomes.

A couple of years ago, three advertisements for suffragan bishops appeared at the same time in the Church Times. I then asked the question here on this blog, whoever would want to be a bishop? The same question has to be asked again, now that there are seven diocesan vacancies in the House of Bishops. All the compensatory perks of being a bishop – extra pay, secretarial backup, enhanced housing and increased social status – seem to pale into insignificance when laid alongside the appalling stress of the new responsibilities.  Little preparation exists within the current clerical training process.  Some people, no doubt, should be bishops.  These may be the same people who have a realistic understanding of themselves.  They may realise that their qualities and qualifications do not add up to being sufficient to ward off all the appalling potential stresses of high office. As Groucho Marx once said,  ‘i don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member’. It may be that the only people who are suitable for such high office, are those who are strongly resistant to achieving it. The ones who seek or allow themselves to be promoted to what is essentially such an impossible job are those who have, perhaps, already shown themselves disqualified from being considered.