The Church of England is in a muddle. It has managed to confuse many of its members and, indeed, some of its leaders about its vision for the future. Many people, including myself, have thought that the Church was about to embark on a new initiative to transform, or even replace, the entire parish system. Superficially, this was what two recent initiatives appeared to be saying to the Church. Helpfully, an article in Anglicans Ink has probed below the surface to discover that part of the current muddle is caused by unfortunate timing. Two distinct initiatives have been announced at approximately the same time.  In most people’s minds they have been understood to be the same.  It is small wonder that this has caused confusion.

Few people will have heard of the Church Planting initiative known as Myriad. It is operated by the Gregory Centre for Church Multiplication under its director John McGinley. John McGinley has the title of Development Enabler for the Archbishops College of Evangelists.  It was at a recent conference for Myriad that the famous, even notorious, comment about ‘key limiting factors’ was made in connection with its vision for church planting being undertaken by lay people. To quote: ‘lay-led churches release the church from key limiting factors. When you don’t need a building and a stipend and long costly college-based training for every leader of a church… then actually we can release new people to lead and new churches to form…… in church planting there are no passengers.’

It was this comment from John McGinley that caused a huge storm in the Church of England in the week leading up to General Synod. On this blog I discussed how the vision of 10,000 lay led congregations were going to face obvious problems in providing adequate safeguarding. There were many other objections to the ‘key limiting factors’ idea.  Many certainly resisted the idea that the professional status of the clergy was no longer required.  These arguments and objections have been fully aired elsewhere. To say that people were angry at this Myriad proposal is perhaps an understatement.

Most of us have never heard of the Gregory Centre and we are left wondering about this initiative called Myriad. It transpires that the Gregory Centre is an independent (meaning privately funded) organisation outside the Church of England.  Nevertheless, the Church does own and identify with many of the ideas that are put forward. It was founded and led by the Bishop of Islington, Rick Thorpe, who is the Church of England’s lead for Church Planting. Apparently, at the conference when Myriad was founded, there was an array of speakers and seminar leaders present from the Church of England.  These included the Archbishop of Canterbury and the then Archbishop of York. Leading seminars were the bishops of Lancaster, Horsham, Burnley Kensington and Dunwich. David Male, who is now the Director of Discipleship and Evangelism for the Church of England, based at Lambeth, was also a seminar leader at this conference.

Institutionally and ideologically, it is not surprising that some of the thinking and ideas emerging from the Gregory Centre have had an influence on the General Synod Paper 2223.  This was shared at Synod last weekend, and it outlined the Church’s vision and strategy for the future. But, to repeat, the two papers, Myriad and GS2223, were separately conceived initiatives.   Unfortunately for the Archbishop of York, who delivered the introduction to GS2223, it was hard to get Synod members to react to what he was introducing.  They were responding much of the time to the Myriad proposals which they had encountered for the first time in the Church Times.  The Archbishop’s words were taken up with trying to undo the misunderstandings caused by conflating both papers together. It is unfortunate that the number 10,000 also appeared twice in the GS document.  This made the possibility of confusing the listener highly likely.  The Archbishop was, in fact, speaking about a revitalised parish system within which new and inherited worshipping communities would flourish together. The paper noted that dioceses have already planned for 3500 new worshipping communities across the Church. The paper also looks for up to 3000 new churches across England to provide worshipping hubs for children and young people coming into being. The chief message was that old and new must be allowed to coexist with a degree of flexibility. Church planting initiatives are not prominent in GS2223 but it is easy to see how listeners thought they were listening to identical ideas in both papers.

Two separate presentations about the future of the church and the number 10,000 mentioned in both of them. It is not surprising that many people feel uncertain and unsettled by what the Church appears to have in store for them in the future. Even when it is explained to us that these are separate initiatives, we still have a sense of unease.  The same people seem to appear in both of these attempts to think about the future. Among them is David Male, the full-time paid employee of the Church of England and working from Lambeth. The new Bishop of Lambeth, Emma Ineson was a co-leader of the seminar on church planting when the 10,000 lay led churches idea was presented. What is her current role in the future planning vision for the Church of England?  We don’t know the answer to that question. But we do know that church planting ideas are being floated by the centre.  This will make many parochial clergy feel unsettled and insecure in their existing responsibilities. The question that many of them have is this:  how would they as a congregation cope if a well-funded HTB type church plant suddenly appeared their parish?  Are they supposed to celebrate the fact that a congregation overnight might cease to be financially viable because all the younger people have left to join this new initiative?

Against the background of these unfortunate confusions at the centre over recent initiatives, one dark area in the history of the church is being revisited in a Times story today (Thursday).  Some of the victims of the 9 o’clock Service (NOS) in Sheffield are bringing a claim against the Church for their abuse.  This compensation that has been promised by the Archbishop of Canterbury comes through a national redress scheme.  The Church at the centre is now being reminded, not only of the harm caused by a single maverick leader, but it faces serious questions about the appalling failures of oversight at the time.   Even during the less enlightened days of the 1990s, it was possible to see that the style of leadership exercised by Chris Brain was risky at best and catastrophic at worst. Since those days we have come to understand much more about narcissistic and toxic charismatic leadership styles.  Church leadership, and this is exemplified by Brain, is not always conducted benignly. In blog posts at various times, I have suggested that there is sometimes in churches a circle of narcissistic need between leaders and led which is toxic. To put it at its most simple, there are styles of leadership which allow a leader to be fed and nurtured narcissistically. He (normally a he) sets himself up with a vision, a grandiose plan which excites followers and makes him the centre of attention.  The adulation that is evoked in these followers taps into,and brings them into touch with a different set of needs, needs around being cared for and protected.  That the leader provides, often in a formulaic way. The psychoanalytic textbooks suggest that the narcissistic leader may be suffering from a deficit of parental attention, one to be assuaged by receiving adulation from others.  One can describe this dynamic exchange as the ideal narcissistic circle. The leader pays as much attention to the followers as is needed to keep them on board. Typically the leader will not get close to any but a chosen few. He needs distance or aloofness to give an aura of mystery to his persona. The followers, grateful for scraps of attention, will express their devotion and gratitude even for the smallest attention. It is a dynamic which appears to indicate vitality, enthusiasm and health in a church, but these churches are, in reality, far from flourishing.  Over a period, the narcissistic dynamics end up in breakdown.  The direction they are going in does not, in fact, resolve anything of the needs existing in leaders or led that need healing.  Narcissistic hunger for adulation is insatiable. Dependent people do not resolve their dependency needs when they are not encouraged to grow up.  In general, far too many churches keep their congregations in a permanent state of enforced infantilism.  They can grow up only when they leave.  The Church must recognise that it is often not helping people to find any sort of path to maturity; it is rather, the means to holding people in the place of immaturity.

The Church is in a muddle in more than one direction at present. It has allowed one institution on the fringe of its work to confuse General Synod with its talk of 10,000 lay led communities. It has also opened itself to further misunderstandings by its historic failure to understand the terrifying consequences of the NOS.  We have not learned  in the way that the damage, the fallout from that disaster has never been successfully assimilated in the understanding of the Church. The good ideas that are contained in the Archbishop of York’s vision and strategy paper need to be understood on their own merits and not in the context of a church planting proposal.  We also need to take a further calm look at the discussion on church planting by the Myriad organisation. My only criticism of church planting is not in the idea itself. My criticism is that we are still not good at knowing when it is dangerous to leave new initiatives unsupervised.  We still lack the proper tools of evaluation to know when such ideas are wholesome and when they are dangerous and unsafe.   NOS was a church plant but also without doubt a cult. No cult experts have ever, as far as  I know been brought in to produce a proper ‘lessons learned review’ of this dangerous frontier between church and cult   If we have not learned the lessons of NOS, such things will happen again,   Will we be ready to move forward with a new generation of church planting in the name of the Church, when we seem to have learned so little from what went disastrously wrong a generation ago?

An area of church life that is difficult to discuss without raising passions, is the topic of social class.  For many parish selection committees, there is a real dilemma which the rest of us can only imagine as we are excluded from their deliberations.  To put it at it simplest, what do you do when faced with a candidate that is a social ‘fit’ and another that is more interesting but who would find it harder to resonate with the social and political attitudes of a congregation?  There is no answer to this question, but I raise the dilemma as a background to what else I have to say connected with a safeguarding story in the Church today.

A clergyman unknown to me, had successfully served in an urban parish, having taken his considerable academic and training talents into a post where they were appreciated.  Eventually he was offered a new post.   The new congregation he was to serve were, however, among the social elite of the county.  Their politics were on the far right and considerable but subtle pressure was put on the priest to conform, at least outwardly.  At first he resisted, but gradually he found it easier to conform to the politics and conservative Christian outlook of the congregation’s older more established members.  His original mild leftie political stance softened so that it gradually started to embrace the right-wing attitudes of the congregation.  Changing his philosophical attitudes was one thing but the congregation expected him to support their campaigns for the legality of fox hunting and their resistance to low-cost housing in the area.  This changing of our priest’s political outlook might still not have been too serious, but my friend, watching his career, felt he was seeing something more serious, the corruption of his core personality.

Somewhere, In changing parishes and adopting an overall right-wing approach to life and society, our priest also acquired a new bullying hectoring style of personality.  He had always had the intellectual strength and power to get the better verbally of anyone who opposed him.  The only thing was that, in the urban parish, it had seemed inappropriate and wrong to turn on anyone with both barrels.  In his new wealthy environment, he found himself involved in more and more situations of conflict and these he fought with intellectual and political skill.  At one level my friend was noticing that the priest had become a bully and those who were not among the parish elite, were beginning to be afraid of him.   Some of the causes he fought were to do with the parish.  Others were local causes.   All the battles he was fighting brought him notoriety, press attention and co-enthusiasts, but few friends.   What my friend was noticing was a flexing of intellectual and personal power by the priest, but a decline in the levels of compassion and empathy that had been apparent before.  His intellect and his fierce verbal power were now to be avoided at all costs.  Professional standards were not being broken by his outspokenness in fighting his political and personal battles.  But, overall, he was causing damage to himself and to the reputation of the Church.

Somehow, I found myself indirectly caught up in the drama.  My link was to one of the priest’s victims.  He reached out to me after being in a difficult experience of bullying at the priest’s hands.  For a very brief moment, I considered reaching out to speak to the priest, but I quickly changed my mind.  First, I was not part of the dispute and that any word from me would, in all likelihood, make things worse.  Second, I recognised that the exercise of raw primal power that seemed now to be in evidence, would possibly have a bad unsettling effect on me.  Anger expressed against another individual, even a party not involved in a dispute, is never neutral in tone.  It can feel like a physical assault.  It is one part of the armoury used by the powerful against the weak.  How many abused victims of sexual violence have also suffered in their exposure to the primal verbal power of the bully?  This sort of power exercise is never encountered as dialogue.  It always feels like a frontal assault because the person with the damaging bullying personality appears to have lost the art of soft conciliatory words.

What I was learning from this experience, here heavily anonymised, is that those guilty of one kind of power abuse are likely also skilled at a whole range of other interpersonal power techniques, These, in various ways, in varying degrees, can hold victims in a state of abject fear.  If we take the range of abuse survivors, those whose representatives we meet on this blog, we are talking about tens of thousands of individuals.  Most, however, remain invisible.  They seldom get to see their cause aired by assessors or panels, because they believe their cases will be considered trivial when compared with the serious abuse cases.  These more subtle forms of abuse normally come to light because victims experience them alongside the serious forms of behaviours that require proper scrutiny.  Abuse survivors will also have experienced many other forms of abuse, including anger, shunning and shaming.  Their abuser will likely have honed their power skills in several directions.  Most victims of multiple power assaults, including, I suspect, myself in such a situation, will not hang around to wait for the open resolution of the wrong committed against them.  They will retreat into a safe space to lick their wounds and do everything possible to avoid further pain.  The survivors we know about, among them contributors to this blog, are among the brave souls who refuse to take the ‘easy’ path.  They stand up to be counted and take the cause of justice into the public arena.  This is by no means an easy place to occupy as institutional opponents can still aim a multitude of power weapons against them.  Abuse is, as we are constantly repeating, a multi-dimensional reality.   Those who perpetrate it are proficient at using a variety of weapons against those who challenge their power.

Since starting this blog almost eight years ago, I have probably managed to upset a few individuals along the way.  This upset has only resulted in one actual legal threat of slander.  A slight rewriting resolved the issue.   I have thus not had to suffer the sense of powerlessness or shock that follows the experience of being under a power attack arising out of the anger or aggression of another person.  But I realised, in my recent discussion about the clergyman moving to a new position that I, like most others, have little protection to fend off the consequences of serious verbal abuse.    Being shouted at, trolled or generally verbally abused is a deeply unsettling experience, even if you are innocent and the attacks are entirely misplaced or misdirected.

As a final thought on this subject of bullying or verbal abuse, I also came to one further insight.  Fending off such attacks can be achieved with the help of friends, supporters and maybe, in some cases, a friendly lawyer, but the experience is never pleasant.  When I encounter, even in my imagination, primal anger in another person I am facing up to something deeply disturbing.   Sometimes I even feel it is energised by something evil in a theological sense.  I do not claim to be able to justify such a claim, but I just get the impression that our exercise of power, both good and bad, has always a spiritual agenda or dimension.  People are built up or sometimes harmed spiritually and in other ways by the way we use our verbal power.   To misquote the passage from Exodus when Moses encountered God in the Burning Bush.  ‘When you use words with others, take off your shoes for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’

 Desmond Tutu : If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. 

I hope that most of my readers can hold to the belief that, even when they do not agree with my ideas and perspectives, I always attempt to be fair-minded.  This expression means that I try to look at the perspective of anyone who takes an opposing point of view to mine.  There are, of course, some situations and causes about which I cannot even pretend to be even-handed.   I mention, for example, the political and religious utterances of ex-President Trump.  My words on that subject will, no doubt, drip with strongly disapproving comment, alongside a bafflement that so many Americans are caught up in a cult around this man.  Somehow, they have allowed themselves to see Trump, even now, as some kind of answer to their country’s problems.

There is another topical issue in the Church where I find it impossible, even in my imagination, to be sympathetic to one side of an argument. The topic I am thinking of is the cruel persecution of Martyn Percy.  I have for a long time been supportive of Percy at Christ Church. I must admit that part of my bias in favour of his cause, has been based on ties of old friendship which go back some thirty years.  Over the past couple of years, when his story has been a topic for consideration by this blog, I have been wondering if anyone will come along with tangible evidence of serious misconduct.  Is there some hidden story that would justify the extraordinary harassment he has had to endure?  There have been hints and rumours put about by his opponents that he is some kind of sex pest.  Others suggest that there is a further narrative that has not yet been revealed.   I am reminded, in these hints, of the defenders of Trump who keep promising to deliver decisive evidence that the American 2020 election was rigged.  The protestations of Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and others never translate into hard evidence.  We are left to conclude that all such protestations are rhetorical devices.  The evidence never exists in reality but the effect of uttering such claims is sufficient to sow uncertainty in the minds of hearers.  We can suggest that something similar is happening when members of the Cathedral congregation are assured of the wickedness of their Dean, even though the evidence and nature of his felonies are never shared or revealed.

As part of my concern for this case, I have scrutinised the Internet looking for any people outside the Christ Church network who have been convinced of Percy’s guilt.  Is there, in other words, anyone in Oxford who, having heard the claims of the Sub-Dean, the Chaplain, Canon Graham Ward and other Ch Ch malcontents, genuinely believes these suggestions of serious misconduct to be true?  Does anyone really believe that the strictures of the inhibition which severely checks Percy’s movements around the college are a necessary safeguarding tool?  Even those individuals who dislike Percy because of his past stand in the Philip North/Sheffield affair, do not claim that what he did or did not do then justifies the present bullying and institutional violence.  

When a well-informed but anonymous voice appeared in my blog comments section, appearing to support the opponents of Percy, I took an immediate interest, thinking that these arguments might take the discussion to a new level.  An initial problem for my task of editing, was the absence of a name and a strongly abrasive tone taken against other commentators. These comments also suggested a high degree of access to inside College information.  I suggested to the anonymous person that aggressive comments could only be tolerated, if they were accompanied with a name.  The individual withdrew speedily, and so I knew that the comments and arguments were not sufficiently rooted in an unbiassed attempt to establish truth, to stand this kind of exposure.  The individual turned out to be a close personal friend of one of the key Christ Church plotters. Thus the suggestion that the contributions were neutral were shown to be false. 

I mention this anecdote to indicate that genuine neutrality in the Percy affair is probably impossible to find.   The reason for this is perhaps to be found in the quote from Desmond Tutu at the start.  On the one side there are a group of malcontent dons who have persuaded themselves of a series of claims about their Dean which seem to have absolutely no basis in fact.  Obviously, we have to suggest reasons for such loathing.   Here we must rely on surmise and speculation. The real reasons lie somewhere in the murky hinterland when professional jealousies, snobbery and sheer academic vindictiveness take root and flourish.   Were I to interview one known enemy of the Dean, the one who leaked appalling salacious material about him to the Daily Mail, I would find myself dealing with a mind that seems to be sick, obsessed and packed tight with resentment.  The story that was then told has never been confirmed and certainly the account was never followed up anywhere by other evidence or testimony.   It all seemed to start and finish inside the pornographic imagination of one solitary individual.  He was bent on the purpose of removing the Dean, even if it meant lying with all the resources of his imagination.

The stance I have been taking in the Percy affair has been fully, I believe, vindicated by the writing and legal brilliance of Martin Sewell.  He has been setting out clearly the legal aspects of the Percy’s case over on Archbishop Cranmer’s blog.  https://archbishopcranmer.com/institutional-bullying-in-the-church-of-england/  He presents in a forensic way an outline of all the evidence that has been mounted against Percy over several years.  One by one, we see how the legal arguments of his persecutors were demolished by senior independent legal examiners who came to adjudicate on the various claims against Percy.  Every time an individual with the status of a High Court judge examined the evidence, the case against Percy evaporated.  Please read this decisive document.  I defy anyone who reads Sewell’s article as a neutral person to remain in any doubt that that Percy is an innocent party and deserving of support from his colleagues and overseers.  The essay is especially critical of the Bishop of Oxford.  He had every opportunity to establish what was going on at the beginning of the process.  He chose rather to align himself with the accusers that we may describe as a mob.  These are they who seek to undermine the Dean by every means possible.  If any of my readers believes themselves to be among the likely extinct band of neutral observers of the case, please write to me and explain how they remain unconvinced by Sewell’s arguments.

I am writing this piece in the shadow of a forthcoming General Synod.  Martin Sewell is a well-known defender of the victims of power games of all kinds in the Church, from the falsely accused to victims of sexual violence.  His essay is compelling and powerful.  Please, Synod members, if any of you read this, listen to him if he has the chance to speak, and remember that the failure of justice in the Church is like a cancer that will possibly destroy the whole institution if it is not checked and brought under control.  If Martyn Percy is defeated by the malicious lying behaviour on the part of some senior clergy and dons, what hope have the rest of us of presenting ourselves to the world as people of integrity and honesty?  

Over the past few days there has been a flurry of discussion and debate about one of the proposals in a Vision and Strategy document to be discussed at General Synod next week-end.  One of the ideas to come forward is the idea that the Church should release the local leadership of the Church into the hands of lay people and thus bring into being some 10,000 new churches. These would meet in homes, halls, schools or wherever it was locally convenient. The implication is that trained clergy and expensive buildings are no longer fit for purpose in the task of presenting the gospel to the people of this country.  We are reminded of the expanding church in Africa, which less and less looks to clergy and buildings for its life and vitality. As one of the expensively trained clergy, I am expected to feel great indignation about this proposal. Is it meant to undermine the value of five years study and training?  This particular debate has been aired on other blogs, so I will hold back my feelings on this aspect of the discussion.

My primary concern at the possible arrival of 10,000 informal lay led congregations is not apparently the one felt by most of my fellow clergy.  Rather I am appalled at the implications in quite a different area, the area of safeguarding. How is the Church of England ever to guarantee the safety of people gathering to worship and to learn under the direction and guidance of untrained individuals?  These will be people who may have nothing more than a cursory examination of their suitability by someone outside. I have, in this blog, often expressed concern at the problem of keeping people safe. When I speak about that, I am thinking of the dangers of potentially toxic power structures that can develop in small groups over a period of time. If these groups or congregations are not supervised, the dangers to the individuals within them is considerable.

Many congregations envisaged in the Vision and Strategy document will be between 30 and 50 in number. Such a group would engender in the members, no doubt, a strong sense of belonging. I can imagine that to be a member of such a group at its beginning would be an exhilarating experience, and there will be a sense of being pioneers, re-envisioning and remaking the Church for the future. Problems arise when such groups have been in existence for some time. New dynamics then come into play after the honeymoon period.   It is these that I want to hint at in my personal critique of the 10,000 new churches idea.

A few months ago, I presented some of the ideas of Wilfred Bion regarding the dynamics of groups. He was basing his observations on work that was done with groups of shellshocked soldiers in the Second World War. His way of helping them was to get them to cooperate with one another to accomplish tasks in groups, normally between 12 and 20. He noticed, over a period of time, that there were certain patterns of behaviour in the group process.  These occurred in every case. Within the group there was always a tendency to cast around to find a leader so that everybody else could sit back and let things happen. Bion called this dynamic a dependency basic assumption. A second basic assumption that constantly appeared, was seen in the way that the group was always on the lookout to identify some other group to oppose, attack or be against.   When we describe these inevitable basic assumptions operating in groups of all sizes, we are not describing some kind of moral failing at work. What we are describing are unconscious but very powerful group dynamics which erupt into the open and interfere with the possibility of doing constructive group work.  These destructive processes can only be neutralised when they are interpreted – i.e. identified and named by a wise leader.

Alongside these unconscious processes, which seem to occur in almost every group setting, are the dynamics of narcissistic behaviour. Because every group of any size demands to be led, it is likely that in some cases there will be some leaders who emerge who use their position for the gratification of narcissistic needs.  This is already true of some clergy.  Putting it another way, leadership roles will always attract individuals who enjoy a position of power and self-inflation.  Power will then be exercised regardless of whether it serves the benefit of the group or not. I have had cause to draw the attention of my readers many times to this unhealthy dynamic.  It is a constant danger in church settings at many levels.  It is not just the clergy who are guilty of such behaviour; any official who takes some kind of control in a church structure may use it to feed a deep need for self-importance.

When we look at the many skills required of a professionally trained clergy, we might hope to find an ability to identify and challenge examples of Bion’s basic assumptions at work in their congregations.  It will be the task of a professional leader, constantly to remind people that maturity can only be found in taking responsibilities for learning, growing and questioning. It will also be a clergy role to challenge the flock over their tendency to have an inherent dislike of outsiders or those who are different. Far too many churches or groups seem to get much of their energy, not from what they do or believe, but from what they do not do.  These negative power dynamics of hating enemies, when not checked, can cause havoc in communities and congregations. The professionalism of the clergy can, we hope, keep these dangerous power dynamics in check.

Professional leadership is so much more than expertise in biblical exegesis and some understanding of church history. My fear is that small groups without access to experience and training in their leaders, may breed various forms of irrationality.  In some cases, this situation will be downright dangerous. Can we really afford to set up thousands of new congregations with no ability to check whether the dynamics are actually safe for those who are part of them?

I want to finish my piece by reminding the reader of a particular case study that preoccupied this blog in 2015. In that year a detailed report appeared describing the testimony of dozens of former members of the church known as Peniel in Brentwood Essex. I refer any who are interested in this story to go back to the blog posts for the end of 2015. Like many independent charismatic churches, Peniel began as a house group with around eight people. Over a period of around three years, the group grew into a full-size congregation. Two things happened in that time, making the place thoroughly toxic both for leader and led. What seems to have happened is that those who were part of the original founding group became inextricably bound up with the unhealthy narcissistic needs of its leader, Michael Reid. On his part he was able to give them a sense of self-worth by convincing them that they were pioneers in a special work of God. Meanwhile his own sense of self-esteem was being ramped up by adulation, the huge salary that he paid himself and the real estate empire that was gradually emerging. His behaviour, as recounted to the investigator, John Langlois, was appalling.  It did not happen overnight, but by the time that church had become a full-blown cult, everyone had forgotten what a church was for. All they knew was the present reality of Peniel.  This was to be bound to a tyrannical terrifying individual in the person of Reid.  This was the price of their ‘salvation’.  His ultimate interest was in feeding his insatiable need for power, wealth and even sexual gratification.

Few of the 10,000 new churches proposed will become mini Peniels. Some, sadly, will. There is at present just too little understanding of the dynamics of narcissistic process in the churches at present to give one confidence that untrained leaders will rise to that task of discernment and ensuring safety for all.  If the leadership of local churches ceases to be a professional responsibility, the dangers of relapsing into crude primitive power games is considerable. Who will be able to provide the safeguarding protection that is needed to allow these groups to work safely? It simply does not exist at present.   The Church might easily become a place where people come to see themselves in considerable danger.  The Church of England cannot afford, after all its earlier safeguarding catastrophes, to take such an enormous risk with its members and its reputation.

A solution for the crisis in the Winchester diocese seems no nearer. We heard yesterday that the stepping back by +Dakin would continue until the end of August so that ‘facilitated conversations’ might continue.  We can gather one single certain fact from this statement, namely that +Dakin is not about to resign or retire in the near future.  As there seems to be no mechanism for compelling a bishop’s resignation or early retirement in the Church of England, we must assume that, so far, +Dakin is not submitting to any pressure to resign that may have been applied.  The very careful choice of words in Bishop Sellin’s statement hints that very senior figures in the Church have been wrestling with the problem, but so far, they have not come up with any solution. Are we witnessing the proverbial irresistible force meeting an immovable object?  If such a reality were to exist, we know that there would be a stalemate where nothing moved at all.  Nevertheless, there needs to be a resolution of the present crisis for the sake of the Diocese of Winchester, the wider Church and the Bishop himself.

What might be going on?  The official line seems to be saying that the process is complicated, and the various stakeholders need extra time to sort out all the issues.  We will, of course, never be told what the facilitated conversations are about, but I have here identified three major areas of concern for the Diocese and the wider Church that need to be resolved if the Diocese is ever to return to normal functioning.  My personal conclusion is that the explosion at Winchester, now out in the public domain, is of such magnitude that it will never be possible for +Dakin to return to his post.  The present pause is, I would guess, a proverbial kicking the can down the road rather the prelude to a new chapter in the life of the Diocese.  Even if we know nothing about the content of the conversations, we have witnessed enough material being shared in public to know where the problems are.  In this Internet age, it is not possible to hide away in secret when so many people are watching, with large numbers having a personal stake in the outcome.

One of the sad secrets that has come out into the open during the period of the Bishop’s initial ‘stepping back’, is the revelation of just how much suffering has been endured by individuals.  Some of these relate to confrontations and alleged bullying by +Dakin but others are to do with loss of posts caused by the various imposed structural changes in the Diocese.   It is not too strong to talk about widespread trauma which may take years to heal.  When trauma takes place with many individuals in an institution, it is also possible to speak of corporate trauma.  Although I am not on the spot, I get the impression that what has been revealed over the past six weeks has shown us a wounded and demoralised collection of people who need a lot of healing.  How this might be offered on a corporate level is open for discussion.  What is clear from common-sense psychology is that the process can only really start when the focus of the pain has removed himself from the scene.   Stories of clergy and their wives ‘spouses’ ‘or husbands’ collapsing in tears through the stress and threats caused by the +Dakin reign, cannot be ignored.   The six weeks of the interim episcopacy have unleashed a number of such stories into the public domain, and no doubt there are others which have been internally shared among the clergy and people of the Diocese. One individual story of pain is suffered alone and in silence, but when it is seen to be alongside other similar accounts, that one story gathers power and strength.  People are forced to take notice. It is hard, indeed impossible to put this particular genie of widespread trauma back into the bottle.

The second area of difficulty for +Dakin making a smooth return, is the Diocese’s financial black hole.  This has not gone away. During +Dakin’s time as bishop, there have been extensive and expensive changes in the training programs run by the Diocese and new educational structures created. As we noted above, individuals have been made redundant and this is always an expensive process. The question of whether all the new structures that have been created for ministerial education are suitable and affordable is one headache to be faced by a future bishop, whether now or in the future. If +Dakin does return, I am sure that one of the conditions will be that he will release all control of diocesan funds into other hands.  Difficult decisions will have to be made about what the diocese can actually afford.  A slimmed down diocesan structure may not meet with the Bishop’s approval so it is probably best that he is no longer there, potentially to interfere with the necessary pragmatism of financial decision making. 

I spoke in my last piece about the interpersonal style of the Bishop.  There was the suggestion that many individuals find him difficult to deal with on a personal level. We would, I think, be right in suggesting from the accounts, that many people were in fear of his forceful and somewhat overbearing style.  Gentle persuasion and soft words do not seem to be part of his style. When somebody described Winchester as the diocese of North Korea, I assume that they were referring to this style of management, one which stated the task to be done with no time for discussion.  I can accept that the facilitated conversations could tackle this personal style and make improvements.  The abrasiveness that is reported could well be softened and ameliorated through professional intervention.  It might be possible for someone like a retired bishop, acting as a mentor, to bring about such a change.  That is perhaps what the Church of England may attempt to put in place.  Such a suggestion as a way of softening +Dakin’s style would be improvement but, for the reasons I have set out in this blog, it still would not be sufficient to return him to post.  The problems still remain.

The final issue which militates against any smooth return to ministry by +Dakin is to do with the area of his self-insight and intellectual flexibility. Over the weeks, there has been some detailed scrutiny of +Dakin and his theological background.  Although we cannot expect all our diocesan bishops to be profound theologians, there are some glaring gaps in Dakin’s theological formation.  His written output seems to focus on the single area of mission studies.   One would like to see in his writings some evidence of an exposure to the wider theological traditions of Anglicanism and its links with historical Catholicism.  The conservative evangelical world in which +Dakin was formed is not known for its sympathy or even tolerance of other traditions. Most evangelicals occupying senior positions in the Church have, in practice, moved on from the hard-edged position of traditional conservative thinking.   They learn to appreciate, if not embrace, the broader ideas of Anglicanism. Ideas of infallibility and dogmatic certainty normally become less evident through the process of growing older. This does not seem to have happened with +Dakin.   Indeed, some of the abrasiveness of his ideas and manner seems to be the result of a style of conservative Christianity, one that has never been allowed to soften in the light of life and all its experiences.

The problem of finding a solution to the +Dakin conundrum has been deferred but has not gone away.  I have tried very hard to imagine a scenario where +Dakin could return and pick up his diocesan ministry.  I have imagined the resources of Bridge Builders, the mediation organisation, being applied to the situation.  I have imagined a wise retired bishop being wheeled on to act as mentor and guide.   Somehow the problems I have outlined, the trauma to be healed, the finances to be restored and the personality to be tamed, all combine to suggest that any return will be harmful to +Dakin himself, the Diocese of Winchester and the entire Church of England.  I make no claim that my analysis is the correct one, but the world of the Internet has provided us with sufficient information to allow one blogger to offer what is, I believe, an informed opinion.  That is what Surviving Church can do, offer opinions.  I hope and pray that a good solution is to be found in the current tragedy that we are witnessing in the Diocese of Winchester.

Today, Saturday 26^th June, is proving to be a crunch day in the ongoing saga of Dakingate.  The Daily Mail has today taken its readers back to the facts of the breakdown between Bishop Tim Dakin and some of the clergy and people of the Winchester diocese.  We are reminded that one quarter of the diocesan Synod stand by their intention of passing a vote of no confidence in the bishop.  He has, according to reports, demoralised many clergy and squandered money on an epic scale.  Unusually for a diocesan bishop, +Dakin had himself appointed Chair of the Diocesan Board of Finance and this fact has contributed to the dire straits in the current financial situation.  Much of the debilitating expenditure has been brought about by payments to departing clergy and others as part of confidentiality agreements.  The account now being put out is that, effectively, unhappy ex-employees had their silence bought by what were, in all but name, Non-Disclosure Agreements.

At the same time as the release of the Mail story is a detailed account by Gavin Ashenden on his personal blog.  His access to detail, notably around the events that took place in Africa in the early 90s, is very well informed.   I had heard, for example, that young Dakin had been turned down by the Church of England Bishops’ selection conference.  Ashenden has obtained inside knowledge of this, and he reports the detail that Dakin was referred to the so-called Aston scheme.  This was a method of deferring ordination on the grounds that a candidate was not ready and needed a period to be observed and supervised within a parish.  Among many new details, another remarkable disclosure in the well-researched Ashenden piece, is a description of the way that the young Dakin was supported all the way along his way to becoming a bishop.  He had the benefit of the patronage of well-connected friends, especially Lady Brentford. She had served in the role of Second Church Estates Commissioner as well as that of President of the Church Mission Society.  She was also a neighbour and friend of Archbishop Carey.  The adage that it is not what you know but who you know, seems to fit well in this context.

This blog cannot really add any new facts when another blogger, like Ashenden, is so well-resourced with information.  What my reflection here can do is to reframe the present crisis, looking at it in a somewhat different way.  One of the reasons for my taking such an interest in the Dakin story is because it is fundamentally a story about power.   In the first place we note the patronage that allowed Dakin to obtain a place of enormous influence in the Church of England.  The mechanics of his ascension through the ranks of promotion has now been largely explained by Ashenden’s account.  It is not a wholly honourable story.  The episode of the Dakins, father and son, manipulating things in Kenya with local bishops in the early 90s, no doubt aided by Dakin access to foreign donors, does not edify.  Taken together these facts, if true, show us a somewhat seamy side of the work of the Anglican Communion some thirty years ago.

If it was largely the power of patronage that brought +Dakin to his present role, there is another expression of power at work in the story.  This is the misuse of authority that is at the heart of the threatened vote of no confidence by Winchester Diocesan Synod.  The loss of funds by profligate use of the Diocese’ s money is one thing, but the degree of distress caused by bullying behaviour on the part of a bishop is another.  It is this bullying abuse that is at the heart or centre of the story.  To put it another way, the story of Dakingate is a story of power abuse apparently dispersed right across a diocese, impacting individuals, parishes and corporate bodies alike. One person’s misuse of power is another’s pain.  Here, because the power wielded is considerable, the extent and intensity of the pain is all the greater. 

Looking back at my own ministry and the theological and pastoral priorities that I followed, I know that they would not be a good fit in the current Winchester set-up.  One freedom I enjoyed throughout my ministry was the ability to lead a ‘middle of the road’ congregation.  This theological centre was the place that most clergy then occupied.  Most congregations were sufficiently confident in representing Anglican breadth to be able to make space and welcome Christians of both catholic and evangelical backgrounds.  There was no sense of living in a binary universe, where the world was divided into the certainties of Christian ‘truth’ and the ‘false’ teaching of liberals and atheists.

The Winchester diocese, under its strongly evangelical bishop, seems to have found a way of making life difficult for the middle of the road clergy and parishes.  Those parishes which, like mine in the Gloucester diocese, had found it possible to welcome all shades of churchmanship, would find the language of welcome and inclusivity no longer the dominant discourse.  Such liberal parishes would, I imagine, feel rather uncomfortable with mission action plans and slogans like ‘living the mission of Jesus.’  I am still trying to puzzle out what the slogan means.  If parishes in the Winchester which carry the inclusive liberal label do not find favour with their bishop, that must create an uncomfortable situation, and one not easily resolved.  

The second area of tension in the Winchester diocese has been the financial challenge.  The bishop has apparently undertaken some expensive ventures apart from the programme of redundancies.  Setting up an in-house training scheme for new clergy is not a cheap venture.  Whatever extra money has been spent, it will always create problems for parishes struggling with their own financial needs.  The diocese is said to be bankrupt, and the clergy will be under pressure to find new sources of income.  Such new demands for funds will alienate many congregations.  A typical response from the leaders of a ‘mission-centred’ diocese like Winchester, when faced with a financial shortfall, is to declare that the solution is more people in the pews.  The wise parish priest knows that this emphasis of ‘mission’ has to be undertaken with sensitivity and tact and avoid alienating existing congregations.  It is they, the existing members, not wished-for enthusiastic newcomers, who provide the financial ballast for most congregations.   A diocese, run with the help of slogans of doubtful meaning, is not a place which will naturally command the loyalty of church people whose attendance and giving has supported the church over generations.

The interpersonal skills of +Dakin have been called into question.  I can make no comment on this, except to suggest that if he attempts to return to his post without any apparent softening of attitude, that would indicate in him an extraordinary level of insensitivity. To be told, as I am sure he has been, that his management style is a cause of suffering for many individuals, should make him stop short and seek help.  Insensitivity is a possible pointer to sociopathy and if that is the case, then +Dakin presents a safeguarding risk to his whole diocese.  How the Church nationally and locally deals with that risk is yet to be determined.  The solution to this dilemma, whatever it turns out to be, will be a marker for the future.  One thing that the Church has to rediscover is how to deal with power.  It is no longer enough to assume that institutional and personal power is always used responsibly and wisely. Power often corrupts.  We have seen here in numerous blog pieces that, on occasion, church teachings, bible quotations as well as personality flaws can cause individuals to misuse and exploit power.  Understanding how power works in institutions like the Church is desperately important.    If we understand power better, then we can devise systems that prevent it ever becoming a problem, either for the one who has it or for the one who is the target of that power.   To call Dakingate a crisis is no exaggeration.  If the Church cannot deal with the power problem here, appropriately and wisely, then the long-term damage will be devastating.  People will conclude that the Church of England is no longer a safe place.  People who become members will be thought to be at severe risk of harm.

The Surviving Church blog has attempted to offer both summary and comment on many of the reports that have appeared on the topic of power abuse in the Church of England.  At times this has proved a near-impossible task.  In March, with the release of the thirtyone:eight report on Jonathan Fletcher, another report of equal interest and importance was largely overlooked by SC.  This was the redacted independent Review produced for the Scripture Union (SU) by Gill Camina, an independent safeguarding consultant.  She was commissioned to examine the response of the SU to the John Smyth affair.  On Monday 21^st June, a new statement from the SU has been released which seeks to criticise the Camina Review.  Superficially it seems to give a reader the impression that much of the commissioned Review has been discredited.   But, even if we are to agree with every counterclaim by the SU about the original Review, we can still find a great deal of real value and insight in the original research and questioning undertaken by Camina.  While it is impossible here to respond to all the detailed points raised by SU’s ‘counter-attack’, we are still left with a great deal of valuable material from the original report which SU is not trying to discredit.  The main points of the Review still need to be responded to.  These challenge the culture and integrity within parts of the administration of both organisations, the Scripture Union and the sponsors of Smyth, the Iwerne Trust, now known as the Titus Trust.  The Camina Review, even in its redacted form, also gives us a great deal of valuable insight into the history of both groups and their ways of working.  The Review sheds light on the way that two charities set about the task of responding to the grim episode of the Smyth abuse which affected so many, directly and indirectly.

In summary, the Camina Review, in a redacted form, reveals first of all how the knowledge of John Smyth’s nefarious activities between 1979-82 was not shared with individuals within the SU network.  It first became known among senior Iwerne leaders after the Ruston Report was prepared in early 1982.   The SU might have expected to receive information at that time as the SU was the main parent body of the Iwerne Camps, though the Iwerne Trust provided salaries for some Camp Officers.  This lack of communication between Iwerne officers and the SU Trustees body was a serious matter.  Technically and legally, all the Iwerne Camps were held under the auspices of the SU.  There was meant to be a relationship of oversight of the Iwerne Trust by the SU, but in practice this was not followed since the then Iwerne Trust had for some time effectively broken away from the parent body.

How did the SU and Iwerne ever come into an association? The original link was through the founder of the Iwerne camps, E J. H.Nash, who had been employed by the SU to run camps back in the 30s.  Under him the Iwerne project grew substantially, and, in the process, it became self-financing with its own accounts and trustees.  The relationship with the SU continued, not least for administrative reasons. In legal terminology, the SU was an ‘incorporated body’ which for many years the Iwerne Trust was not.  Legally this meant that the SU had the necessary administrative structures to employ individuals.  The situation for many years was that the leaders of Iwerne Camps were the employees of SU, while being firmly being loyal to an independent organisation, the Iwerne Trust.  The SU trustees at times had expressed unhappiness with this arm’s length relationship but it suited the Iwerne Trust.  Also, the SU officers seem to have found it difficult to stand up to ‘the highly educated and powerfully confident Iwerne staff’.  This was in spite of the fact that Iwerne had developed its own ethos, somewhat different from that of the SU.   To summarise, Iwerne was using the SU link as a flag of convenience.

In spite of the firm and jealous independence of Iwerne from the SU, there were overlaps, with the same individuals belonging to both organisations. This became a greater problem the closer to the present we reach. John Smyth himself was a trustee of SU from 1971 to 1979 but this had not apparently, even in retrospect, created a safeguarding risk.  When the scandal around Smyth broke in 1982 and a report made (the Ruston report), only a heavily redacted version was shared with the General Director of the SU.   From the testimony gathered by Camina, there is evidence that there ‘was not full and open disclosure of the facts’.  While the General Director SU was not comfortable with the situation, no real effort was made to find out the full details from the Iwerne Trust.  The other SU trustees were told nothing. 

Meanwhile the Camina Review reminds the reader of other horrific aspects of Smyth’s abuse which have not yet been fully explored.  There was among the other Iwerne leaders a tendency ‘to minimise the severity and scale of the abuse and (they) have still found it possible to justify failures to report and to protect.’  Further, ‘Victim blaming by those linked with the case, in the face of widespread rumours, is widely evidenced in recordings and documents shared with the Reviewer’.  Translating these alarming sentences into simple English, we hear the claim that Smyth was allowed to create as well be part of an overall environment at Iwerne which was toxic and harmful.  

During  the 90s, the Iwerne Trust formally changed its status to become a fully independent body, henceforth known as the Titus Trust.  In 2014, the SU were informed, finally, by Titus of non-recent abuse disclosures.  This information was shared with all the SU trustees.  It became apparent that although SU had not run the camps, there had still been an historic failure of oversight of the Iwerne Trust and its camps.  It was not as if SU had no understanding or experience of running activities for young people and the need for good protocols for their protection and welfare.  SU always had had the power to terminate their relationship with Iwerne, especially when it had been clear that Iwerne was being tardy in responding to requests for information. There was a sense throughout the period before 2014 that neither organisation saw the welfare of Iwerne young people as the focus of their concern.   The focus was on the reputation and flourishing of the organisations themselves.

In 2014, when information began to flow from the Iwerne camps to the SU and to the statutory bodies, including the police, Camina judged the initial actions of the SU to be timely and appropriate.    She was less impressed with what took place after that date.  The June 21^st SU response document contains a number of counterclaims that strongly contest Camina’s accounts of what went on at this time.  The claimed errors are seen to be detrimental to the work of Titus and James Stileman, its operations director at the time. It is quite difficult to make real sense of what is being discussed.  What does come over from Camina’s Review is severe, and so far uncontested, criticism for the then National Director of SU for a number of serious failings.  These are to do with weak professional behaviour, poor communication and record keeping.   Part of the problem is that this Director, an enthusiastic ex-Iwerne camper, was apparently more concerned in preserving the reputation of his former institution, the Iwerne network.  This seemed of greater importance than the reputation of the organisation he now worked for in the present, i.e. the SU.  In the early stages there were, on his part, some extraordinary lapses of ‘curiosity’ or apparent interest in finding out what were the real facts over Smyth’s misbehaviour.  The simple interpretation of what was going on through these lapses of communication, was that the Director simply did not want to know or hear anything that might impugn the integrity of Iwerne.  Not to see or hear anything, gave the Director the excuse that he needed for sharing only limited information with the Trustees of SU.  By keeping them in the dark he was seeking to control the narrative and protect Titus.  Titus had dirty secrets and the SU Director’s job seems to been to sanitise those secrets as far as possible by keeping them away from the SU Trustees.  One particular and extraordinary failing took place after the Smyth television programme in February 2017.  The Director told his Trustees that he had immediately forwarded information about another victim to the police.  The Reviewer tried to get details of this, but the police had no record of any report nor was any information to be found in the SU archives.  The Reviewer was also constantly finding examples of individuals ‘assuming’ that verbal assurances of documents being handed on were correct.  There was an assumption of good faith but little in the way of checking as to whether paperwork and reports reached their destinations.     The current June 21^st SU response document responding critically to the Camina Review, makes no mention of these serious criticisms of its then General Director.  The quibbling about who released which report to whom pales into relative insignificance when stood alongside the failures of ‘curiosity’ and high-grade professional bungling of the SU General Director.  There is no doubt that he alone could have done much to bring Smyth to justice earlier if he had shown a little more professional integrity in his role. 

Titus Trust and the SU both come in for serious criticisms from Camina.  If the outsider can summarise those criticisms which apply to both sides, it is that each seemed, overall, to place the needs of their respective organisation above the needs of the individuals wounded by Smyth.  The June 21st response to the Review by the current SU trustees focusses on apparent inaccuracies in the report over relatively minor details.  The most striking feature of the 4 page response is its failure to engage with the chief criticisms that are stated or implied in the Review.  These centre on the fact that individuals and institutions hid information and failed to show compassion for victims (here and in Africa).  This is still a major finding of this whole Review.  One commentator has claimed that the response by the SU to the Camina Review has somehow vindicated the SU from all the accusations in the Review.  All that the comments from the June 21^st response document succeed in doing is, from my perspective, to throw sand in the eyes of the reader.  The original Camina Review is a powerful and courageous attempt to hold two organisations to account.  An individual who writes such conclusions in a Report is likely to see their work criticised and challenged.  This is what seems to have happened.  It does not, however, devalue the overall thrust of the Review.   I hope that the Review will be read by those who wish to understand more about the institutional aspects of the Smyth scandal.   The original Review may have had flaws and even inaccuracies, but overall I am impressed. It is a worthy addition to the library of documents written by genuine independent researchers into the murky world of individual and institutional abuse within the Church.  

The original Executive Summary  https://content.scriptureunion.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-03/Executive_Summary_of_SU_John_Smyth_Independent_Case_Review_March_2021.pdf

Scripture Union’s Response on June 21^st 2021 https://content.scriptureunion.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-06/Statement_21-06-21_0.pdf

One of the strange phenomena coming out of the United States is what is known as vaccine refusal among conservative Christians. In a recent survey, a full 26% declared that they will not in any circumstances receive vaccination against Covid.  Another 28% are hesitant. These figures exist in spite of the fact that many conservative Christian leaders, including hard-core evangelical Trump loyalists like Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham, have received the jab and encourage their followers to follow suit.  Other evangelical leaders are more reluctant to encourage their congregations to take the jab as they fear that such an expressed preference would suggest to their congregations that they are going liberal in some way. The figures indicate a further problem, namely divisions within congregations and families. There are many cases of younger Christians refusing to let their children visit their unvaccinated grandparents. This has not only caused tension and upset in families, but planned weddings and other family gatherings have been thrown into uncertainty by these inter-family disputes.

It would be wrong to suggest that anti-vaxxers are all conservative Christians, but some certainly are. It is hard for us in the UK to understand why this issue should have become politicised or to understand why there should be any link between the act of refusing vaccination and conservative Christian beliefs. Some Christians may perhaps feel that to receive vaccination is to stop depending on the protection of God against Covid infection.  Clearly there is more to it than this.  Evidently, among many conservative Christians, there is a widespread problem of suspicion directed against all authority figures, especially the national government. Conspiracy theories will also always be popular among groups which feel they are in some way persecuted and the object of attack from those who disagree with them.

There is, however, one fascinating additional theory about the mentality of conservative Christian groups opposing vaccination.  This appears in an online article in a magazine called Religion Dispatches. The article starts with the observation that Christians from the ultra-right-wing world of conservative Christianity hold a number of beliefs, Christian and political, with no sense of ever being in the wrong.  When an individual has such a strong sense of the truth of all their beliefs, it is but a small step to always seeing the world as if from a heavily defended bunker.  The attitude that says ‘whoever is not with us is against us’, is very common among conservative Christians.  It is a small step from aggressively defending an ‘infallible’ and non-negotiable point of view to becoming routinely paranoid in every dealing with the outside world beyond the group. There are a number of passages in the New Testament which seem to glorify the experience of a Christian when meeting persecution of any kind. ‘Blessed are you when men reproach you and persecute you’.   It is, of course, debatable whether these words of Jesus should be held to apply to Christians who are making what appears to be a political stand over vaccination, but one thing is clearly true.  Conservative Christians seem to need to have enemies, and indeed they become energised in the process of identifying and defending themselves against them.  In the ongoing Oxford saga of a group of clergy and dons trying to rid themselves of their Dean, the attempt is made to identify opponents, at the same time shutting out what they are saying. In practice, any attempt to close down dissident voices makes those voices still louder. Also the credibility of anyone demonstrating paranoid behaviour is inevitably lessened in the eyes of those who look on.

In the political realm, the ability to identify and name enemies, whether they be immigrants, Jews or people of a different colour, has always served authoritarian leaders well.  Many dictators have gone further. Declaring war on named enemies is a way of hanging on to political power.   Everyone has to rally round to fight off this ‘enemy’ in the name of the quasi-religion, known as patriotism. 

Conservative Christianity, in its links with ultra-right-wing political ideologies, has often been successful at identifying and obtaining benefit and prestige by being good at ‘enemy-naming’.   In the political sphere, we have, arguably, been caught in a similar dynamic by having Brexit presented to us as some kind of liberation movement. Many people seem to have voted to leave the EU based on what they were against. This same dynamic of teaching congregations which groups and individuals that ‘we are against’ still goes on.  In a recent blog post, I drew attention to the way that the churchwardens at St Helen’s Bishopsgate have named individuals as being opponents for daring to suggest that their Rector might have done more to protect the church from the predations of Smyth and Fletcher.  Quite often a church is drawing considerable amounts of energy from the intensity of its hatred for those who disagree with its leaders and its overall theological position.

I have on this blog written about the way that the bogeymen for conservatives change over the decades. In times past, the enemies of true Christians were the proponents of contraception. They then became the supporters of abortion reform. More recently conservative Christians have settled on ‘hating’ supporters of the gay/trans-phobic cause. An opposition to vaccination appears, in America at any rate, to be merely the most recent in a series of issues which conservative Christians are expected to oppose.  The very fact of opposing something seems to create energy and strong feelings among those who do it.  Superficially this energy seems to be spiritual in nature, somehow revealing a fervour of commitment.  In reality, when it is examined, it is nothing of the sort.  It is the effervescence of the excited crowd which has the lasting power and solidity of candy floss. 

As I reflected on this opposition mentality among conservative Christians, I began to wonder whether it is the experience of opposing something that appeals to this group, rather than the cause which is being opposed. If their perceived enemies, the amorphous group they sometimes describe as liberals, support a moral or political point of view, then that same position needs to be opposed.  Clear lines of demarcation need to be maintained with those who are ‘not us’.  What we are seeing here is what I would suggest is a kind of persecution addiction, one which enables a strong sense of identity. The bunker mentality seems to energise and strengthen those who hold to it. It is as though the words of Jesus have been changed to the following. ‘By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you oppose all the things that your enemies approve of.’

All those who have read the Stella Gibbons’ novel, Cold Comfort Farm, will remember the vivid description of a religious group called the Quivering Brethren. At all the services held by this group, the preacher would work on the members to bring them to a pitch of quivering fear.  This was done by his vivid descriptions of the burnings and the pains of Hell. The preacher concerned was one of the extraordinary characters who lived at the farm at the centre of the story.  Flora, the heroine of the novel, arranged for him to buy a van and go round the country preaching his message of Hell.  ‘I will tell them about burning in Hell’ the preacher declared, as he had discovered that fear worked as a way of filling the building.  There was a sense in which this experience of fear was, paradoxically, quite enjoyable. This account of the Quivering Brethren is completely fictional. One does, nevertheless, wonder sometimes whether many church leaders like to keep their congregations in a place of uncertainty, with the occasional mention of Hell to spice up what might otherwise be a rather dull observance of Christian faith. The additional belief that your church and its leaders are being ‘persecuted’ because you are against something that everyone else accepts (like vaccination), gives a certain frisson and flavour to your church life. I am reminded of the church door which had the words inscribed over them. ‘Be of good cheer I have overcome the world’.  A church member who read those words would be encouraged to believe that he or she was always stronger, wiser and more competent than those outside.  The very fact of taking a different side from everyone else on vaccination may be one way of maintaining a smug enjoyable feeling of superiority over the opinions of the mass of the population.

Most of my readers will agree with me that it is unacceptable to declare as enemies those who work hard to help humanity. There is no possible reason for opposing vaccination unless evidence appears that seems to indicate a health risk. To be against it because it is the position of people you do not like, is an act of irrationality.   Thankfully this position is not common in this country.  There are, as we have indicated, other widely held beliefs which are opposed because they suggest, for some Christians, a failure of faith, or because liberals support them. In America we are told of a widespread antipathy against scientific thinking because it is thought to be ‘against’ the world view of Scripture.   This kind of thinking is typically found in the textbooks of those who use ‘Christian’ material to home-school their children.  Swathes of young people are being taught to think, or not to think, because of dogmatic beliefs extracted from religious texts.  Most of us accept that while there are differences of opinion in science and other areas of knowledge, little can be achieved by closing a debate down.  It is always worth having a debate as long as both sides will be heard fairly and openly. The only reason for avoiding such a debate is when the circumstances suggest I will not be heard because I come from a different place in my presuppositions. Sadly, there are many debates which are non-debates precisely for this reason. One party uses social or political power to shut down what the other group are saying.  In some cases it is the liberal establishment closing things down; in other cases, it is the conservative authoritarian approach that refuses to allow proper discussion. As a thinking Christian I need to be on the alert for both forms of intellectual tyranny. Sadly, we live in a world where this kind of fascistic thinking is not unusual.

When I was at school studying Greek at A level, I was required to read some of the literature collectively known as Greek tragedy.  While our sixth form class was not expected to read all of the plays in our two years of study, we were confronted with enough of the genre to be exposed to a new range of human emotions.  The plays of Euripides and Sophocles were initiating us into things like betrayal, despair, utter abandonment and suicide.  I remember the moment when the form master presented us with a new word, catharsis.  No one had ever heard of it, but he explained to us that the word summed up all that was being experienced by watching one of the incredibly sombre plays by one of the master tragedians.  Catharsis was a kind of cleansing the emotions.  You felt strong emotion in the process of an identification with the main characters of the play.  At the same time there was a strong sense of pity for their fate. There were no happy endings on offer. In other words, going to the theatre was meant to be a kind of emotional work-out for every member of the audience.  Although the audience emerged from the play feeling somewhat exhausted from the emotional battering, at least there was no lasting harm because it was, after all, a play. The emotional battering that exhausts survivors, victims and to a lesser extent their supporters, is, alas, no fiction. The depths of loss, tragedy and despair is a daily reality that inserts itself into their daily lives.

One saying which I picked up from those days in the classical sixth was the tag ‘those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad’.  There is in the saying an uncomfortable link with the tragedy of suicide and what leads people to make such a dreadful decision.   Suicide is not a comfortable subject to speak or write about and this post is only tangentially about taking one’s own life.  What I am concerned with here are the situations of despair and emptiness that occur in people’s lives and are sometimes the precursor to a consideration of suicide. The thought comes to an individual that the act of removing oneself from this life is somehow a solution to all their problems.  Often these are to do with the emotions which overwhelm them, feelings of shame, guilt and despair. 

Two things have brought me to this reflection about despair and the way that some people have to endure incredibly bleak experiences in life, often through no fault of their own.   The first thing that has happened is that I have been looking up my reading of seven years ago on shunning and ostracism.  Then there are recent events in Lincoln and Oxford of shunning practice. Shunning or ostracism is a very powerful tool of control by authoritarian or cultic groups.  Once the group has successfully incorporated a new member and given them a firm sense of belonging in the group, any threat to remove the benefits of that belonging at a stroke is a strong deterrent factor to prevent any rocking of the boat.  Ostracism is the unspoken threat that applies to everyone.  When applied, it is saying to someone that you do not belong here any longer.  It also goes further than that, in telling the would-be leaver that they no longer even exist.  It is as though the place they had occupied has been expunged from existence and memory.  This message is a brutal one to hear, especially if the group has formed the sum total of the individual’s social and religious life.  The more enmeshed an individual is in a group, the greater the impact of being excluded.  It is not difficult to see that this kind of cruel exclusion is a prelude to a sense of darkness and even despair.

Many Christians base a large part of their social life on the things they do in and around church.  Their best friendships are linked with the church community and spiritually and socially their sense of self-worth is bound up with what happens with their local Christian membership.   Clergy are not immune from these kinds of bonds of spiritual and social depth.  A clergyman may have devoted his entire life to the congregation and any sudden rift from that congregation will have potentially devastating results.  Anyone who, in a church context, wishes to exercise power for whatever reason, knows how dedicated members are vulnerable to the threat of having all their experience of self-esteem removed at a stroke.  The shunner or the one who has the power to push an individual into the outer darkness of spiritual and social isolation, has real effective power over the life and well-being of another.  

In the Church of England, shunning and ostracism are practised but, for the most part, we do not see them administered by individuals.  Shunning is normally an institutional activity when it occurs.  The Church of England has one particular legal structure with the power to shun and exclude individuals.  We call them core-groups.  Not every core group will exercise its power to shun or suspend members of the Church, but they have this power to do so as part of the CDM process.  Sometimes we see the cruelty of this action towards its victims when shunning is employed with what feels like ruthless efficiency.   The Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral has just been exonerated after 789 days suspension.  He has been declared not guilty of the offence and the charges against him have been dropped by Church and state.  Nothing has been said about the terrible state of purgatory he and his wife have endured.  All the social and spiritual bonds with people in Lincoln had been ripped apart for two long years.  Suicide was one option considered by Overend and his wife and the mental scars will live with them for ever.  Dean Percy has also been driven to a mental breakdown through the treatment he has suffered.  Treatment of this kind can never be shown to serve the cause of justice.

Ostracism or shunning is a form of punishment that is cruel, inhuman and can be designated as a form of psychological torture.  To consider shunning as a necessary or reasonable part of any disciplinary process, especially when it is allowed to drag out for months and years, is perverse.  The Church of England has published its own list of the extensive range of behaviours that we can call abuse.  https://www.churchofengland.org/media/11803 Under psychological abuse the church document mentions a whole series of behaviours, some of  which the Overends and the Percys would recognise as having been used against them by their persecutors as part of a shunning process    Blaming • Controlling • Pressurising and coercion • Intimidation and causing fear • Ignoring the person • Not giving the person a chance to express their views • Lack of love or affection • Making someone feel worthless • Lack of privacy or choice • Causing/forcing isolation / withdrawal from family/friends and support networks.  The CDM process is supposed to offer support to an accused individual but, in practice, the Church closes down totally in the face of any accusations against an individual.  Even if they are guilty of some misdemeanour, does it serve any therapeutic purpose or the cause of justice to put an individual in such a terrible place?  The practisers of shunning probably give very little thought as to whether therapeutic purposes are ever served through this activity.  All they are interested in is to shut out the dissident, the awkward voice so that the power of leaders could be preserved in peace.  But, the forceful sundering of an individual from his/her place of belonging is something that is unimaginably cruel.   Not to recognise just how devastatingly cruel shunning behaviour is, betrays a complete absence of imagination.

In one part of its operations, the Church is helping its members to become more aware of abuse as a way, presumably, of outlawing such behaviour.  At the same time the Church in other parts of its operations is doing the complete opposite.  Its disciplinary processes are using precisely the same abuse techniques against individual members even before they have been found guilty of any offence. Surely I am not the only person to notice the absurdity of the situation?  The Church condemns abuse of all kinds, but it preserves the right, when it suits, to abuse its own members, using some of the same psychological tools.  At least three of these practices are linked to shunning.   Whatever is the precise end in sight for the church institution, the Overends, the Percys and others have all experienced the cruel effects of shunning.  I mention three elements of shunning that are identified by the Church as constituting abuse.  Making someone feel worthless – lack of love or affection – Causing/forcing isolation/withdrawal from family/friends and support networks.  It is about time that Church is called out for using these same techniques of cruel abuse against its members, the ones it wishes to oppose.  It is what we see currently in Oxford and recently in Lincoln.  Justice has a place in every institution and there will always be a need to hold people to account.  Can it, however, ever be right to use shunning/abuse on individuals?    I dare say that the Overends and the Percys would have plenty to say on the topic of a chronic failure of the Church’s justice system.  The time for reform is now – not five years down the line when more lives will have been destroyed in the name of a justice being administered by a group of managerial unimaginative Church functionaries.

‘Nothing justifies violence or coercion. Christian relationships are to be marked by love, gentleness and respect.’  These are words uttered by the new Archbishop of Sydney in Australia, Kanishka Raffel, but they could be spoken by a Christian leader anywhere in the world.  I begin this blog post with something completely unremarkable and obvious for a Christian.  It is, however, quite hard to find to find these qualities in some sections of the Church.  To illustrate my point, that violence stalks the Church in some places, I draw attention to some recent episodes that haunt our imaginations (or at least they do mine).

The first episode is the fear-laden culture that thirtyone-eight claimed to have found in its investigation of Jonathan Fletcher.  This fear that the report drew attention to, was the generalised atmosphere that pervaded the entire constituency where Fletcher held influence.  This inhibited people coming forward to say what they knew.  I have it on good authority that something similar has been found in the John Smyth enquiry.  Few of the witnesses have come forward with any degree of enthusiasm, even though they might have seen evil or worse still, suffered grievously at the hands of Smyth.  It seems that a fear of what might happen if they came forward, was the overriding concern that still motivates their actions.  This appears far stronger than any desire for truth and justice. 

We need to pause here while we ponder the link between violence and fear.  The word violence implies the potential threat, not only of having to endure physical mistreatment. There may also be the threat of receiving other debilitating experiences like shame, the destruction of self-esteem and total demoralisation.  The sharp word, the put-down phrase and the outburst of anger are all potentially tools of violence, effective in different ways of controlling people and ensuring their silence. In a way I feel no anger for anyone, as in the Fletcher enquiry, who fails to come forward after being subjugated by such non-physical violence.  It is also possible to be motivated by fear without realising that this fear exists.  It is a fear that may have become normative in the environment you inhabit.  It is only when you are asked questions about what you know that a sense of irrational fear and protectiveness towards your abusive mentors might kick in.  It might also dawn upon you at the same time, that what you had always thought of as respect and reverence, was in fact simply fear.  The Fletcher/Smyth culture seems to have been full of violence in this sense.  Many people who held these two characters in awe were also afraid of them.  The followers lived with a kind of dread about what one of those two, or their supporters, might do.  For a long period, there was this threat of violence which could undermine the safety and well-being of any who had the temerity to challenge such leaders or even their memory.    

When we extend the meaning of this word violence to include all these forms of threat and coercion, we can claim to see this widely in operation in the Oxford Percy case.  When words like troll are used against supporters of Percy, the visible hand of stronger threatening and bullying behaviour is not far away.  Who would ever have thought that anyone would find it necessary to block the gentle Angela Tilby for saying what everyone else is thinking about the car crash at Christ Church? The case against Percy seems entirely in the hands of individuals who have some interest in removing him from his post. Everyone else is appalled at the public display of injustice and violence against the Dean. I am still looking to find a single individual, without any personal stake in the confused nexus of cathedral and college, who supports the brutal campaign against Percy.  In all the months of persecution, no one has come up with a solid accusation of moral failing, apart from the hair-touching allegation.  The pattern for every other case of sexual abuse offender I have ever looked at, is that a perpetrator is almost never a one-off offender.  There is a pattern of misbehaviour over months and years.  No such pattern has emerged for Percy, and he is certainly not, as one of his accusers has suggested, a second Peter Ball. 

Actions of actual violence towards the Dean can be seen in the absurd over the top inhibitions placed on him by unnamed lawyers.  As Gilo has said these restrictions might be considered suitable for a notorious sex-offender like Worboys were he ever to be let out on bail.  Applied to the Dean they are acts of violence, even torture.  I have been reading up my notes for a lecture on shunning to be given, by me, to at an online conference in Chester in September.  The literature on the topic suggests that the instigators aim to deprive an individual of normal human contact.  This is a form of torture contributing, as in Percy’s case, to breakdown.  In some cases, this kind of cruel inhumane treatment leads to suicide.  The failure of Church leaders, the NST and the Diocese of Oxford to identify, or even notice, the utter barbarity that has been going on at Christ Church for over two years is extraordinary.  Is there some corporate madness going on at Christ Church that has infected so many other clergy and church leaders to collude with utterly ruthless and cruel behaviour?  From the outside these acts of violence are completely incomprehensible.  No justifying explanation has been offered at any point to indicate what might really be going on.  We on the outside are left to suspect that somewhere the Dean has threatened powerful vested interests.  It will probably have something to do with endowments or professional jealousies.  Dean Percy is the sort of person to question and challenge the status quo and the sense of entitlement that powerful people hold tightly to themselves.  The longer the dispute goes on, the more one is suspicious of the motives of those who have put so much effort to get rid of him.

The words violence and torture are not words that we ever expect to use in the context of church life.  But once we decouple their association with waterboarding and the rack, we see that they are proper words to use for any action which is designed solely to engender fear.  Many Christians in fact live within environments where fear is a dominant fact of life.  It may be found among followers of abusive charismatic leaders; it may be experienced by hard-pressed parish priests where the parish is failing to fit in with the vision of the diocese. Because of this, combined with financial shortfall, there is threat of redundancy, a scenario apparently encountered in the Diocese of Winchester.  Continuing fear may exist among the victims of a sexual abuser, or those who are accused, often unjustly, of being an abuser.  Fear, threat and coercion are sadly used as deliberate weapons to undermine and destroy others.  Somehow the Church has failed to notice how much that this is going on today.

The Archbishop of Sydney will not see this post, but if he were to see it, I would plead with him to understand how much violence and torture already exists in our churches.  It may not be the physical kind, but it appears as a violence engendering fear and utter demoralisation.  It is just as deadly to whomever has to face and endure it.  Perhaps one of the tasks of this blog is to help a few people to become more actively sensitised to the existence of the church violence that affects so many people.  Some are the victims of exploitative behaviour by abusers.  Others are the victims of persecution by institutions.  All are victims of the abuse of power.  Each one is precious in the sight of God and need his protection as well as ours as far as we can give it.