“The culture of the Church of England facilitated it becoming a place where abusers could hide.”  This sentence from the IICSA report was quoted many times in the past week and it raises the question in my mind about what precisely this word ‘culture’ means in this context.  My wanting to think about this is also prompted by the use of a phrase by Archbishop Justin when, in 2018, he spoke about the culture of deference in relation to the abuse crisis.  These two uses of the word ‘culture’ have stimulated me into thinking what might be the things about the Church that allow abuse of various kinds to happen.  Other church leaders have spoken of the need for a change of culture to help the Church move forward in the future.  Nobody, as far as I know, has spelt out what exactly these culture changes might involve.  To take a popular definition of culture as being ‘the way we do things round here’, we need to ask these two questions.  What is it about the way we do things in church that makes abuse possible?  I will not be able to exhaustively mention every aspect of the Church’s distinctive culture, but at least provoke some discussion about this important question.  Then we have to ask, how can we try to change the culture of the Church that will help its members protect the vulnerable from abuse?

I want to begin with the use by Archbishop Justin of the term, ‘culture of deference’.  But, rather than exploring what he might have meant by using that term, I want to put forward my own understanding of the expression.  For me, the best way of understanding this word deference is to notice, first of all, how most traditional churches have a well-defined traditional hierarchy within their structures. These hierarchies are marked by titles, special robes and an air of deferential respect for those individuals who have been chosen to be exalted above others. From the outside, a church hierarchy, and the deference that it attracts, appears to be slightly surreal.  It has a touch of the theatrical about it. For those inside the church bubble, it seems all perfectly normal and everyone adapts themselves to living with it.  The negative aspect of hierarchy, as we have discovered this past week, is that institutions with hierarchies will utilise the power possessed by them to protect themselves from attack of any kind.  An individual who harbours nefarious designs on the vulnerable, will have often been able to escape punishment or detection if he/she was sufficiently embedded in and valued by the church structure. 

Different church cultures have differing expressions of hierarchy.  For example, in high church circles bishops and clergy will be looked upon with a certain awe.  They are sometimes venerated with a slight bow by laypeople. When these exalted individuals come into conversation with those ‘below’ them, there can be a consequent social awkwardness which makes communication difficult. Such embarrassment and reticence on the part of many towards their ecclesiastical betters is something that will irritate many bishops and clergy.  Others, on the other hand, may enjoy this access to institutional/hierarchical power and the feeding of narcissistic hungers.  If this sense of superiority results in a lack of real concern for the flock, this will not help when it comes to doing the right thing for abuse survivors.

Within the conservative evangelical/charismatic world, we find similar deference towards leaders, albeit within a different cultural form. In some settings, this looking up to leaders is fostered by keeping the leaders at some distance from the ordinary people in the congregation. This helps to give them a certain mystique.  The public persona is only seen in a controlled and artificial context, such as preaching at a main service.  This may be laid on with the trappings of theatre, using special dramatic lighting effects and accompanied by professional singers. The leader of a mega-church will seldom speak one-to-one with the individuals under his nominal care. It will be one of the numerous staff members that actually deal with the individual when a problem arises. The sheer inaccessibility of many of the important leaders in the evangelical/charismatic world gives them a kind of mythical status. They become objects for projective fantasy. The very fact that they are not known personally to the majority gives them added power with congregation members. Cult leaders have always known the importance of not getting too close to the followers, since by doing so, they might expose their fallible humanity, and in the process destroy the mystique that has been created around them.

Having identified this problem of deference in the church, which is so ubiquitous, and which makes it difficult for many churches to operate as communities of care, we move on to another perennial problem, the culture of niceness. Christian people are routinely expected to be kind and considerate folk, especially to the fellow members of their congregation. The problem for many congregations is a failure to recognise that toxic behaviour can often coexist with a nice pleasant exterior. My interest in the church as a retired clergyman, has for a long time been in exploring the power dynamics which swirl just below the surface in so many congregations. Sometimes it is the clergyman who is exploiting his position of influence to gain personal power; on other occasions it may be a prominent layperson who is creating factions and cliques to gain advantage, materially or socially. Whatever the particular power scenario that may exist within a congregation, it is extraordinarily difficult to sort it out. There are two problems. One is that no one has the authority to come into a congregation and, as we say, knock heads together. The second problem is the way that Christian people are very bad at identifying and naming the toxicity of the power games that may occur within a congregation. They know how to be nice but not how to challenge a difficult individual who is on a personal power trip  This grasping for power may also sometimes involve grooming or sexual abuse. I expect that every reader of this short piece will be able to tell a story of an event where somebody exploited this culture of niceness to obtain for themselves the gratifications of power.

The third cultural factor which afflicts churches of all traditions is a culture of lay passivity. The traditional layout of the church which places the pulpit some 6 feet above the level of the pews is a kind of metaphor for the dynamic of much church life, both the Sunday services and beyond. One individual is set over the majority and the culture of the church has required that sermons be delivered with no response on the part of the people. This tradition is not without its value and I know that it would be extremely hard to change it. It does, however, seem extraordinary that every week an authoritative discourse is delivered without any opportunity for folk to comment or reply. At a time when, in a congregation, there are likely many better educated than their clergy, this tradition seems an anomaly.  Should it still be tolerated in this century?  I do not claim to have ever been in a church which has challenged this tradition.  From the outside it must look very strange. It seems to speak of an unequal access to power, church governance, knowledge and spiritual wisdom. Is this really what we want to convey to the outsider looking in? Come to our church.  You are welcome as long as you cooperate, obey and leave your questioning brain at the door.  Allow yourselves to receive the wisdom that the ordained minister alone can offer you.

Deference, niceness and passivity are cultural features of organisations like the Church that sometimes allow toxic behaviour, including child abuse, to flourish in its dark places. If people are afraid to question, challenge and pursue justice when things go wrong, then there will often be this possibility for dysfunction and power abuse to exist within the whole. If bishops are calling for a culture change to help prevent the abuse of vulnerable, they should help us by spelling out what it is they want us to change. Here I am suggesting three common cultural aspects of our church life which seem to enable toxically disordered behaviour sometimes to emerge.  From the outside they all appear anomalous in the present century.  Perhaps we should all become much more aware of how the Church is increasingly beginning to fail to resonate with the longings, needs and aspirations of ordinary people.  They look for community and find toxic power games.  They seek answers to deeply held questions.   All that they seem to receive is answers to questions they have not asked and no understanding of the meaning of their own questions.  The final failure of the Church is in the stark reality of what has been laid out by IICSA.  We have revealed before us a Church that for decades has failed to protect its most weak and vulnerable.  The last failure comes in the contexts of the others we have named.  There has been a massive failing of communication and connection between the deepest values of the Gospel culture and the people of Britain.  We have a long uphill battle to fight.   We desperately need leadership and prophetic vision to help us see the Christian faith beyond the narrow cultural expression of our Churches.

In many ways the report that came out today contained few surprises. Indeed, it was less radical in its criticisms, even to the point of appearing to provide the Church a much easier ride than they might have expected.   Much of the material was a description of the church structures that have come into being over the decades and even centuries.  The Church of England is extremely difficult to fathom so it was probably necessary to describe its workings in some detail for the reader.   It is impossible, for example, to liken the Church to the army or a large public company. Lines of responsibility do not work in a way that would be understood elsewhere. It is all too easy in such complicated and sometimes unaccountable structures for offenders to be hidden away and, at the same time, for abuse victims to be ignored and disempowered. The reader of the report learned, if he/she did not know already, how much power and influence a bishop possesses within his or her diocese. This has made the task of oversight for safeguarding officials sometimes almost impossible.   One of the main recommendations of the Report is that the role of Safeguarding Officer in each diocese should have independence from the Bishop.  This would enable them to make decisions and choose to pursue cases of abuse in a professional way. 

One issue which is close to my heart as a supporter of survivors, is the pursuit of justice for this group. Many things are destroyed by the experience of abuse, as we have seen in earlier blogs.  Among the things that are often destroyed is a healthy relationship with the Church and a confidence in its officers.  The report refers to several stories by survivors of conversations with Church senior people which were then ‘forgotten’.  The rule that disclosures of abuse must be recorded in writing by the one hearing such allegations has been a requirement for the Church since 1999.  When there has been this kind of neglect and a history of incompetent care for survivors, it becomes difficult to trust these same individuals as well as the institution they represent. They feel totally abandoned in many cases. The report sums up this dilemma when it inserts a passage from a third-party report. ‘The Church of England is yet to regain fully the trust of those who have been abused. It has been slow to find ways to engage effectively with victims and survivors or to learn from their experiences.’ For me, this failure to engage with and care for survivors is one of the most painful aspects of the whole safeguarding failure that has been witnessed over two or three decades. Whatever may be promised in the recent church initiatives for safeguarding, there is still a terrible legacy of a sense of betrayal alongside a feeling that the Church cannot be trusted.

This word mistrust is perhaps a good one to summarise this bitter legacy from the past.  It has done so much damage to the Church itself and to the continued well-being of the survivor population. Even if the IICSA report helps to create a new realism about safeguarding matters right across the board, this legacy issue of mistrust is one to be confronted and dealt with. It is not just the survivors who are looking out for a successful conclusion to the injustices of the past, the wider public has also felt betrayed by the Church’s failures to be a safe home for children and the vulnerable.   All realise how important it is to rebuild communication between the Church, those who have become its victims and those who look on.

This task of rebuilding trust with survivors and the watching public will be a very difficult one.  The situation that exists at present can be described fairly simply.  Institutional power wielded by bishops and others, aided by the services of expensive lawyers, communications experts and reputation managers has, for a long time, managed to keep victims and survivors largely invisible.  The emergence of some of this reality through the IICSA hearings has revealed all the ‘dirty tricks’ that have been played against this group of survivor/victims.  It has caused bitterness, frustration and a sense of continuing victimhood among many. Their situation was hidden from sight so that the Church was able to preserve intact its façade of decency and honesty.  Now that the IICSA report has cracked that façade, we have to set out how the building could be shored up and made a suitable structure for the future, where all may be welcomed and all may perhaps find healing.

The task of mediation has become a professional discipline, with its own principles and philosophy.  Individuals can be trained to be professional mediators.  In years gone by I attended several courses run by the Bridge Builders organisation and I know they still do important work in this whole area of reconciliation.  From the days I spent on the course some twenty years ago, I remember one particular principle.  The task of the mediator is, first of all, to enable proper communication between two parties.  In other words, each must listen to the other as a prerequisite of a possible reconciliation and restoration of trust.  If Bridge Builders were to be given a role in rebuilding the broken sense of trust between survivors and the hierarchy of the church, they would set up a meeting which banned lawyers and advisors on both sides, and allow the victims/survivors to speak and be heard by the senior representatives of the organisation that is felt to have betrayed them. In return the survivors would listen in silence to the words which reveal what bishops and other leaders had been feeling over the years.  Perhaps abuse issues were a triggering point in their own story.   Even bishops may have had to face up to power/abuse episodes in their lives.  Perhaps the institutional neglect of survivors had been exacerbated by personal experiences of the past.  None of that would resolve things on its own but at least the meeting would be between human beings in encounter.  This would be far from survivors and sufferers falling under an implacable institutional juggernaut.

Listening to and honouring survivors by the hierarchy would be the first step along a road towards the rebuilding of trust in the Church.  To repeat, it is not just the breakdown of trust between survivors and bishops that has taken place in this abuse crisis, it is a break-down of trust between the general public and the church in general that has occurred.  If the public witnesses something new taking place in the interaction between the leaders and the abused, then the same public will begin to understand the meaning of reconciliation. Surely this is a concept that is both Christian and relevant to society at large? If all Christians, especially leaders, can live out this reconciliation in the days, months and years ahead so that people can see it, surely this is a fantastic witness to the power of the good news to transform and make whole people’s lives and relationships.  Out of the darkness of abuse and brokenness, something good can come if we allow it to. 

by Gilo

By no means a comprehensive list. Just a brief visit across a number of things we may probably see further comment upon after the Inquiry makes its final Anglican report.

Mandatory Reporting

It’s possible that any expecting to see the much needed recommendation for Mandatory Reporting as part of the statutory framework – will be disappointed. It is long overdue. The argument is won. And this presents an ideal moment as the Church has come round to acceptance of MR after a rather circuitous route of yes we do, no we don’t. Many of us suspect the Inquiry want to hold on to this as a ‘big ticket’ recommendation for the final report at the end of 2021. Why wait until then? Current policies across many institutions in regulated activities have been called “bags of bits” by Mandate Now; labyrinthine policy jungles which would become largely redundant with MR. Culture change will happen in a single weekend with its eventual introduction. But I think we have to wait until the Inquiry gets the last train home.

Independence

The Archbishops Council statement was notably vague on this. That the Church is keen to put this theme out just before the final Anglican report suggests that the Inquiry will call serious question to the Church’s fitness for self-governance. There is an overwhelming need for the National Safeguarding Team to be given independent oversight, well away from the control of Archbishops’ Council secretariat. The current NST is almost an entirely new team, but part of the difficulty facing Melissa Caslake and her newbies is picking their way through the considerable wreckage of the previous era which has left many survivors deeply suspicious of the NST. Many disaster sites might have been avoided, or reached quicker resolution, if the NST hadn’t been shaped by the culture of Church House, its comms and lawyers and managers, and at times, the Church’s own dodgy reputation launderers. The Christ Church core group debacle would in all likelihood have been avoided. I am told the probable outcome of this independence will be the formation of a new NCI (National Church Institution) – called Safeguarding – with independent members alongside Church appointees in an oversight committee to beef up scrutiny. We will have to wait and see how and when this happens.

Archbishops and Bishops

Many of us expect to see Archbishop Justin Welby and former Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, criticised. Both their hearings were embarrassing. When each had an opportunity to apologise to a survivor sat directly behind them, they failed to do so despite being invited by the Inquiry. Those watching sensed that the Inquiry took a dim view. The wider existential crisis of the bishops – how many senior figures and their dioceses have responded, or failed to respond – is likely to come under heavy fire. The walls of silence to major questions that so many of us have experienced as a pattern across the bishops is something we hope the Inquiry will highlight. I know that Bishop Jonathan Gibbs is keen to see more vigorous accountability injected into the structure. At present it is at best variable, at worst: absent. Some bishops are thrown under the bus. Others get away with run-for-the-hills behaviour and hope the fallout from their denial and distancing will not follow them. The National Safeguarding Steering Group, the church’s current overarching board of governance, to many of us seems to resemble a shielding for senior figures who should be facing critical questions. It includes bishops who have managed to hide within the structure behind dysfunctional processes and a culture of protection.

Ecclesiastical Insurance

Many of us expect to see the church’s insurer take a substantial hit following the recall to IICSA when Ecclesiastical Insurance tried to pull the wool over a government inquiry. It’s worth pointing out that Carl Beech is serving 18 years in prison for perverting the course of justice and lying under oath to the police. But Ecclesiastical, a big corporate, have managed so far to get away with apparent dissembling in front of a government inquiry – under oath! It’s also notable that their lawyer, top QC Rory Phillips, had only one client at the Inquiry and a very small handful of statements to be across. What a mess he made. I don’t think anyone assumes he knew his client was being dishonest. But to be candid, he could have done an hour’s easy homework – and realised he was representing a client who was being considerably less than ‘sufficiently full and frank’ in their testimony. It took the Inquiry less than 45 mins to devastate their testimony on three significant counts. Now, much more is emerging about malevolent psychiatric reports used against survivors, ‘genetic predisposition’ defences, desk-topping, and other strategies deployed by EIG and their lawyer – much of this reflecting dubious ethics. But I doubt these will be visited in the report as some of these have only recently started to emerge, despite being brought to the attention of senior church figures over the years. But I would expect to see the Church criticised for its duplicity in some aspects of its relationship to the insurer. It has sought to protect a corrupted nexus, from whom it derives substantial income through the owner of the insurer, AllChurches Trust. It has been, as one cleric put it, “a very English form of corruption”.

Interim Support Scheme

This is not part of the Inquiry. But it’s definitely worth comment – as the Church announced this flagship scheme last week perhaps as an attempt to plea-bargain with the Inquiry, and certainly to address widespread concern at the lack of compassion towards survivors. My understanding is that this scheme will help up to ten people initially (to help create the structure) and then quickly scale up. Quickly being the operative word. If it fails to do this, or rows back on its promises, and becomes another smoke and mirror delaying tactic – then it will raise much more ire. The proof will be in the extent to which it is prepared to rescue economies of those left in wreckage as result of reporting and re-abuse. And not just the initial ten or so. But fifty, then a hundred, and so on. This is not the redress scheme and should not be confused with it. It is the interim support prior to redress. My understanding is that there is no figure attached to this scheme – instead the lead bishops have argued for an open credit line – which I think is the right approach. The final redress scheme will cost a great deal more. The figure that has been talked about in the longer term has been £200million. But many of us think this will not be sufficient.

What happens after?

Will the Church go back to sleep after the Inquiry? My sense is that the current lead bishops are keen to use this opportunity to bring about as much culture change as they can and I think they recognise that this is required across the top of their Church. My own view is that a Truth & Reconciliation initiative may be needed, in which bishops end the long procession of crafted apology statements, and apologise for real. But that has to go hand in hand with real justice and genuine repair of lives.

Last week the Church of England published two documents which, between them, revealed much of its current thinking over safeguarding.  I penned a rapid reaction to these documents over the weekend, trying very hard to be positive over the obvious efforts that are currently being made by senior officers in the Church to make things better.  Since writing those comments, I have had a chance to reflect further about the Archbishops’ Council statement and the job specification for a new senior post for a Development Manager (Redress Scheme).  These later reflections have picked up on the reactions by some of the online networks of survivors.   I do not share the outright cynicism of some, but I have become increasingly aware of some of the practicalities of the proposed changes.  The Church wants to show to its members and to the wider public a more generous open attitude, a stance of caring compassionate empathy towards survivors.  To say that this shift is going to be difficult is, to put it mildly, a massive understatement.

As I suggested in my last piece, there is a great deal to be discovered about current attitudes in Church House through a careful reading of the job description for the new senior post.  Everything that appears must have passed through the scrutiny of many readers. It thus represents the attitudes and opinions of many senior figures in the Church or at least has their blessing and approval.  We can, I believe, read this job description as a genuine statement of intent to create good practice in the future by the Church of England.

The response to survivors by providing financial relief, is currently provided from one of three sources.  The Church Commissioners, the insurers and the dioceses are all mentioned as potential sources of financial payments. In the case of the Commissioners, I read of one recent case where money was found to help a survivor going through a serious crisis.  The cases involving the Commissioners are probably exceptional. Most of the money that gets awarded to those who have suffered abuse, comes from the church insurers.  In practice we are speaking about Ecclesiastical Insurance Group (EIG).  For this insurance compensation to be paid out, there is in operation a legal process worked out and negotiated by lawyers on both sides. This avoids the expense of a full court hearing.   The dioceses seldom seem to have any money to provide for survivors and when money is paid out, the sums received have typically been paltry.  They rarely exceed £500 for counselling or some other immediate need.  Dioceses, as far as I know, do not ever appear to budget for the needs of survivors.  Even if one or two dioceses have given money to survivors, that again would be a highly exceptional event. 

The current scheme of financial redress via the EIG has been described vividly by Gilo and others.  To be fair to the insurers, they see themselves as doing a job and, as far as possible, they have an obligation to protect their financial interests by paying only what is legally required of them.  The payouts to victims accord with protocols which EIG and the rest of the insurance industry adhere to.  EIG will pay out in accordance with the terms of the policy held by the stakeholder, the parish or diocese.  Successful claims follow the production of incontrovertible evidence of abuse.  The abused will normally have provided this through pointing to a criminal conviction by a perpetrator, or linking a claim to an open confession in front of witnesses.  Even then, to judge from the experience of some, the actual sum of money handed over is still subject to reduction, if lawyers acting for the insurer can argue that the some of the mental damage caused by the abuse was already present.  It is here that poor ethical practice can enter into the dealings of insurance companies and lawyers.   If such a situation does arise, it should be recognized that the client, here the Church of England, should accept responsibility for ensuring that ethical practice is always upheld.  Julie Macfarlane described her experience of standing up against lawyers employed by the Church as ‘brutal’.  It felt to her as though the Church itself had withdrawn from the field and was letting someone else do what amounts to dirty work on its behalf.  Those among the survivor population who do make it to the other side and receive pay-outs from the insurers do not receive life-changing amounts of cash.  The Church does appear finally to recognise this.   The word ‘redress’ which they are now using is a stronger word than compensation or negotiated settlements.  Sums of £30,000 hardly compensate for ruined lives, the loss of profession, housing and the chance of a secure retirement.

Escaping from the insurance/lawyer led culture of financial compensation will not be easy for the Church.  Additionally the introduction, as the job description puts it, of ‘a form of solace designed to provide a degree of comfort to the victim for his or her injury and to make some attempt to put right the wrong that he or she has suffered’ will need a massive shift in culture.  It is not just the introduction of a new way of doing things that will tax the future manager of the Church’s redress scheme.  It is the sheer number of unknown victims that may emerge as the result of this new initiative.  Initially the idea is to have a pilot scheme, funded by the Commissioners, to provide support for a small number of known survivors.  There could then also be hundreds of individuals, as yet unidentified, out there who need to be helped.  When the scheme has bedded down, there is the potential pastoral care of these individuals.  Where are all these caring people going to come from?  Many are looking for precisely ‘a degree of comfort’ but have not so far found it in the Church.  Does the Church then look outside its boundaries to find people who can offer ‘comfort’?  These helpers, whether or not professional, will need a measure of skill to do this kind of work.  Also, there will need to be some sort of safeguarding process to weed out the wrong kind of ‘helper’.  The list of things to be done before a pilot scheme can be extended more generally to the wider public is likely to be extremely complicated.  A final point to be made is the way that any mention of money being handed out by the Church to sufferers could have a terrible corrupting effect on motives and behaviour.  The lawyers who assist survivors at present are among the most ethically principled I know.  What will happen if floodgates of financial redress are opened too wide?  Will we get phone calls from computer voices asking us if we have ever been abused by clergy or the church?  The Church may need to employ an army of new people to protect itself as well as administer this new compassionate approach.

Further ideas occur to me.  Each of the 42 Church of England dioceses have DSAs (Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser).   Some of these individuals are very good and their responses to survivors have been of the highest quality.  Others have been less successful according to the reports that reach me.  But good or less good, these DSAs would be more effective if they also could administer a modest budget for survivors so that words of sympathy could be backed up by instant help in the form of funds for specified purposes.  There is something crazy about a survivor having to curtail a course of therapy simply because they cannot afford it.  A initial £10,000 p.a discretionary fund for each DSA would make an enormous difference to many suffering individuals who are waiting for the full unrolling of a national redress scheme. 

My final concluding comments inject a note of pessimism to this Redress project.  The old pattern of controlling redress by making survivors pass through a very tight scrutiny process organised by lawyers and insurers had one advantage for the Church.  It cut down those who were eligible for redress to a bare minimum.  The fact that it was conducted, at times with a callous cruelty, meant that only a few came through the process to receive any money.  A new scheme which apparently looks to the Church Commissioners rather than the insurers to fund it, is going to be enormously expensive.  Taking away some of the scrutiny, to let many more through the process, is going to create a situation which makes it impossible to anticipate its eventual size.  The people who contact me through the blog with some story of abuse, are numerous.  Much of the behaviour they record is not technically criminal, but it still deserves apology from the institutional Church.  Is the Church going to be better at this aspect of redress?  Some of the highest officers of our national Church have found this part of the redress process harder than anything.  We only have to remember the excruciating scenes at the IICSA hearing when our Church leaders seemed unable to offer any kind of apology to Matt Ineson.  This single memory makes me ask whether the Church is indeed ready for this new initiative.  Perhaps after all the Church is still window dressing as a way of protecting itself from the scrutiny of IICSA.

https://www.churchofengland.org/safeguarding/overview/news-and-views/unanimous-support-archbishops-council-safeguarding-proposals

https://pathways.churchofengland.org/job/pathways/1989/development-manager-redress-scheme

This past week, two important documents have been published by the Church of England.  Both seem to suggest that decisive moves are now being made for the future of church safeguarding practice.  The first document is a press release at the conclusion of the Archbishops’ Council which met on Wednesday 23^rd September.  This appeared the day after.  The second is linked to the first; it is a job description for a senior post in Church House to help put the safeguarding proposals of the Council into effect.  The new post is to be responsible for creating and overseeing a new Redress Scheme for survivors which is now being proposed by the Church.   The Archbishops and their Council are, in short, actively seeking new ways of supporting and responding to abuse survivors.

The Friday press release contained an assurance by the Church of England to put right two issues from the past.  One was to make sure that new financial and practical support is made available to abuse survivors.  The second was to ensure that this task of providing survivor support and care would be independent and be free of the control of the central Church.   The document also recognised that, in the words of the Archbishops, the Church ‘has failed survivors’.  But now ‘decisions being made feel like a turning point ……..today our words of sorrow are matched by actions that we believe will lead to real change.’  What is now being proposed is a pilot scheme, working with survivors to see what are the best ways of helping them and finding out for the future what are the best of delivering redress.

These two documents have appeared at a critical moment in the history of the Church.   Looking back to February, we witnessed a great flurry of activity at General Synod with several members urging the Church to make a new start in the area of safeguarding.  A powerful speech was delivered by the new safeguarding bishop, Jonathan Gibbs.  This was backed up by important speeches from Julie Conalty and John Spence.  All the speeches on safeguarding indicated that there was unhappiness about the Church’s record in the past, and that there was a need for a shake-up at every level.  The speeches now have had the desired effect and the present documents are an indication that much work has been going on behind the scenes.  There is no appetite for going back to the old pattern of effectively ‘contracting out’ the care and overall response to survivors.   

The second event that looms over the Church is the awaited report by IICSA on the Church’s record on safeguarding.  This is due to be published on the 6^th October.  It is likely that the Church will receive substantial criticism from the Inquiry report.  Clearly the Church needed to show that it was now recognising this record of failure over safeguarding.   It needed to have in place some positive recommendations for future action in this whole area.

The scheme to which the Archbishops’ Council press release refers to, is called the ‘interim pilot support scheme’.  This recognises that the consequences of abuse on an individual can be severe, to the point where a survivor ‘is known to be in seriously distressed circumstances’.  The Church also ‘has a heightened responsibility because of the way the survivor was responded to following disclosure’.   This is, no doubt, referring to the stories of survivors being thrust into having to engage in a hostile litigation process to gain any kind of hearing by the Church.  That process is itself abusive with survivors having to endure intrusive lines of questioning by lawyers employed by the insurance companies who seek to minimise payment of liability.  In short, the Church finally gets the point that a survivor deserves something better than being thrust into the position of being a litigant.  The wounds caused by such a process are every bit as bad as the original experience of abuse.

The advertisement for a Development Manager (Redress Scheme) which, in fact, appeared the day before the Archbishops’ Council, shows that all the details of the new scheme had been worked out before Wednesday.  The advertisement gives us a sense of how seriously the National Safeguarding Team and the lead Bishops are taking this project.  This new initiative and the details of the post to put it into practice, have required many hours of discussion and work.  The level of pay, almost £70,000 pa., suggests that they are looking for a senior experienced person who understands management, redress schemes and hopefully the byzantine structures of the Church of England.  We learn along the way, from the advertisement, how the Church has operated hitherto in this area of redress.  The advertisement acknowledges that there has been ‘some provision for redress for survivors of Church abuse as part of the civil litigation process with such payments usually made by insurers, but in some circumstances the Church Commissioners.’ It is only in ‘some cases’ that there have been ‘other forms of compensatory response … funding for therapy, counselling and offers of apology’.  It is clear that the person who wrote the advertisement realised that the existing provision for survivors has been at best a post-code lottery.  Something better than legally negotiated settlements is needed by survivors of church abuse.  The sums involved will probably have to be fairly substantial.

The appointed person is to oversee the development and delivery of a national scheme of redress.  There would be a new structure to offer financial compensation which would be ‘a form of solace designed to provide some degree of comfort to the victim for his or her injury and to make an attempt to put right the wrong that he or she has suffered.’  There would thus not be a ‘one size fits all’.  A welcome clause that appears, declares the importance of ‘’involving victims and survivors of abuse in both the design and the ongoing governance of the redress scheme.’ 

This advertisement is to be welcomed, not only for the prospect of having a competent person responsible for redress issues in the NST, but also what it reveals about the writers of this advertisement who are currently in charge of safeguarding.  Everything about this advertisement proclaims loudly that the old days of secrecy and outsourcing of abuse cases to lawyers and insurers are over.  The outrageous practice of church lawyers/insurers asking a psychiatrist to write reports on a victim without ever meeting them, will not in future be tolerated.  The Church, we trust, is taking back control from secret unaccountable committees and entering a new age of transparency and justice. Everyone recognises that the implementation of a good redress scheme will take some time to deliver, but the old days of winter in Narnia seem to be over.  The thaw has come.  Under the leadership of Melissa Carslake, Jonathan Gibbs and the other safeguarding bishops, we can look forward to real changes that will help the entire Church of England become a healthier and more just institution.  Then it will be ready to face the world with a clear conscience to replace the shame heaped on it from all the abuse stories over the past twenty to thirty years.  There is much to be done, but the voices of survivors have been and are finally being heard and we rejoice in that new reality.

During the past few days, we have heard of the death, at the age of 92, of Robert Graetz.  Most of us (myself included) had never heard of Graetz until this notice of his death.  His obituary, as recorded in The Times is, however, an inspiration to many of us, especially those of us seeking fresh models of Christian ministry for today.   He followed a particularly courageous and costly path of discipleship.  Through his ministry, he also helped to change the course of history in the United States.  What he did and what he stood for stands out as a beacon of light.  It shines in a dark world of terrible racial division and hatred that is still a threat to societies everywhere, and is found even inside our churches.

Graetz was a young white Lutheran minister who was sent to serve a black congregation in deeply segregated Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.  The time and the place of this appointment suggest that Graetz was stepping into in a very difficult situation, especially for a first charge.  Unlike other white Protestant denominations, Lutheranism had never been wedded to the racist narrative of some other Christian groups in the southern United States. The history of American Christianity and the way that Protestants in the South provided ideological support for the Confederate cause during the American Civil War, is a complicated one.  Suffice it to say that some Christian denominations claimed to find scriptural justification for the institution of slavery.  It is an area on which I have no specialist knowledge, so I have to pass over the topic with some generalities.  As I understand it, some Christians in the 19^th century also colluded with a mythical narrative which saw the European white races as being a people chosen by God to inhabit the new promised land of America.  All the other races, native Americans, blacks and other non-whites were deemed to be second class, and some were fit only for slavery.  I leave it to others to unpack this complex history of the ideas that have spawned notions of white supremacy.  It does seem clear that part of this story has its roots in a distorted theological/biblical vision. The leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, although they were not party to this white supremacy mythology, would still have preferred to send a black minister to Montgomery, but none was available.  So Graetz entered an arena, every bit as dangerous to life and limb as those faced by the early Christian martyrs on their way to execution. The main difference was the fact that those who were to oppose him in his work with Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and other early heroes of black resistance, were in many cases self-designated Christians.

In 1955 the separation of the races in the southern States of the USA was virtually total.  Restaurants, parks and transport were all segregated.   Graetz was a front line witness to the now widely commemorated act of defiance by Rosa Parks, a member of his congregation, who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger.  For this she was arrested, but the leaders of the black community began immediately to organise a boycott of the transport system.  This lasted 381 days until the Supreme Court stated that segregated transport was unlawful.  The boycott was organised by a new organisation, known as the Montgomery Improvement Association, run by another young minister, Martin Luther King.   Graetz was a fellow organiser and on King’s committee.  Graetz’s own car was put into extensive service, ferrying numerous black passengers as a taxi/bus service.   This boycott was the pivotal moment in the national civil rights movement for the whole country.

Three days after Rosa Parks was arrested, Graetz stood up in his church pulpit and urged his congregation to join in the protest.  As well as driving his neighbours around in his own car, he organised a car pool to help strengthen the protest.  He also wrote to all his fellow white Christian ministers, urging them to show ‘Christian love’ by supporting the protest.  None dared.

Being the only white person openly supporting the bus boycott, Graetz attracted attention.   He appeared in newspaper photos next to King.  White people who supported blacks were considered ‘worse than the black person’.  His ‘taxi service’ attracted the attention of the police and he was arrested on one occasion.  More serious still were rocks and bomb attacks against his house, not to mention numerous acts of vandalism against his property.  All these events were going on against the background of Ku Klux Klan activity.   Convictions for the Klan crimes were hard to achieve.  White juries were reluctant to find accused white people guilty, especially when they were accused of damage to black property.  On the same night that saw a serious bomb attack on Graetz’s home, the home of another prominent boycott leader, Ralph Abernathy and four black churches were also attacked.

The exact place of Robert Graetz in the overall story of civil rights in America is not one for me to write.  Indeed, my writing about this particular individual is purely as a way of inviting my reader to think about Christian ministry taking place in a setting of extreme physical danger.  One is forced to ask questions for which there are probably no answers.  Should one ever go through such things with your own family being put at risk?  The story of Martin Luther King is fairly well known and Graetz appears to have stood alongside him as a fellow minister.  No doubt their friendship was able to do something to strengthen King’s resolve for what he had to do and to endure.  But what comes over from Graetz’s story is the determination by a Christian minister to put the service of the people in his charge as a priority over every else, even his personal safety.  In the rhetoric of many Protestant ministers there is a constant repetition of the desire to present the Gospel to ‘lost’ and fallen individuals.  No greater need exists for humankind than to hear, to respond and be saved.  Graetz had a different vision of ministry.  He believed in the preaching of the gospel as a way to give new hope for this life both to individuals and entire communities.  The Church and the Good News were about a better life for his listeners.  They were being encouraged to work for this themselves in all their efforts to promote justice, equality and the overcoming of the abject poverty that in particular afflicted the black community.  That makes him a hero of Christian ministry in my eyes, even though I have only ‘met’ him in the last couple of days through his obituary.

The idea that the Gospel or ‘Good News’ is about allowing the teaching of Jesus to change people so that they become instruments of society transformation is not in any way a new idea.   In Matthew’s gospel this view of the meaning of the Good News is found in the judgement scene in chapter 25.  The judgement that is made is not whether we have believed the right things, but whether we have been inspired by the Good News to do the right things, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the prisoners etc.  The version of the Good News that tacitly supports white supremacy ideas is one that preaches a sanctified self-care at the expense of any necessary awareness, let alone service, of others.  If the social activism of people like Robert Graetz is considered to be ‘liberal’ theology, then so be it.  I would prefer to identify and be inspired by such a ministry which faced up to physical danger, calumny and hatred, to allow justice and love to win through.   That is the legacy of Graetz.  He showed a Jesus-like integrity of service that cared nothing for self, for power or material advantage.  The love of God was a compelling reality in his life.  With it he was able to stand firm and, in spite of his fears, make a distinct contribution to civil rights in America.  He also serves as a model of integrity which Christian ministers can identify with everywhere.

On Sunday, the preacher at my village church started with a question.  ‘What makes you angry?’  She was seeing a link between two of the readings for the day, the story of a disgruntled angry Jonah and equally upset workmen in the vineyard story.  Those who ‘had borne the heat of the day’ were receiving the same pay as those who had only worked one hour.  The problem for me, when a preacher starts with a provocative question, is that it may set me off on a line of thought which stops me giving proper attention to the rest of the sermon.  This happened on Sunday.

What makes me angry?   One of the main things that upsets me is the injustice that I see when powerful people abuse their power to the detriment of others, especially the weak.  In the context of this blog site, I also realise that it is the anger I feel on behalf of the abused that fuels me with the energy to go on writing about this topic.  Anger of this kind has the power to do positive things, even bringing about change.  I hope the anger can be, in a small way compared to the anger felt by Jesus when he chased the money-changers out of the Temple.   He also showed real anger against the Scribes and Pharisees at various other points in the gospel narrative, especially Matthew 23.  So, Jesus seems to approve of anger that results in the furthering of the cause of justice, goodness and transparency.  The Psalmist said ‘Be angry but sin not’ and this reminds us that the motives for feeling anger must always be open to being questioned.  We have to ask, for example, whether the anger we may feel is an example of selfish petulance.  There will always be a need, in other words, to challenge our motives every time we feel anger being stirred up inside us.  Is this really righteous anger or possibly something selfish and dark?

The blog gives me opportunities to think out loud about the misuse of power in the Church, whether it is the power exercised by an individual or that of the wider organisation.  What is going on when an individual plays power games and abuses another person is somewhat different from the processes involved when an institution misbehaves.  Those in charge of an organisation can abuse, not only by direct activity but also through neglect.  If, for example, the institution does not follow up complaints against its own employees who are accused of abuse, it is itself contributing to an intensification of a victim’s experience of abuse.  Of course, there can be false accusations from which the institution needs protection.   More often, though, what we are witnessing is the natural tendency of an institution to act in a way that preserves its interests, whether reputational or financial.

The focus of this blog, when I began writing in 2013, was to stand up for individuals who were at the wrong end of power games played by the church, particularly cult-like charismatic groups.  I was combining a long-held interest in charismatic Christianity with observing how their behaviour could sometimes harm people. In 2010 I joined the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA ) and am a member to this day.  There are a huge variety of cults in our modern societies, not all of them obviously religious.  Perhaps the majority operate with some kind of spiritual agenda, whether New Age, Buddhist or Christian in origin.  Most of those who study them are ex-members themselves.  They know all the tricks that had been played on them to bring them, at one point in their lives, into a state of mental and emotional submission to a leader.  At the ICSA (cult studies) conferences I am meeting a variety of people who are in the process of escaping one or other of these groups.  While they were now no longer inside the culture that had caused them so much harm, there was still a continuing process to be gone through of escaping the mental tramlines that the cults had placed inside their heads.  Serious damage had been done and even when they were working, possibly as full-time psychotherapists, to help other cult survivors, they were still fighting their own internal battles.  The wrong kind of religion can, we can summarise, be bad for your happiness, your finances as well as your health.

My time in ICSA (cult studies), mainly by attending their conferences and preparing beforehand to give a paper, has helped me to become more and more sensitised to the possibility of the real damage that can be caused by religion.  I have to emphasise that it is seldom the doctrines or belief systems that cause the damage.  It is the use made of those beliefs by a controlling leader.  The long process of recovery from cultic bondage is one of relearning how to feel, how to think independently and generally escape all the destructive patterns of dependence that have been inculcated by a leader.  Most survivors of the cults preserve mental fragility years after their exit from a high-control group.  The tentacles that controlled them for so long were far more than deviant doctrines.  They were a whole nexus of social, psychological and theological strands woven together.  Those who have successfully helped individuals ‘escape’ from cultic bondage do not start with the theological/religious belief systems.   It is probably as futile to discuss such systems of belief with a exiting member, as having a conversation with someone whose only language is Finnish.  Mutual understanding is impossible.

Having said that beliefs on their own do not cause actual harm, I have to admit that this statement needs qualification.  When I wrote my piece for the volume of essays edited by Janet Fife and Gilo, Letters to a Broken Church, I looked at some biblical passages that bolstered clerical/leadership authority in potentially harmful ways.  People are harmed when Christian communities turn against them for no other ‘wrong’ than disagreeing with a pastor’s desire to use power inappropriately.  In administering such ostracism, a leader may be quoting scripture to back up his harmful consolidation of power.  His power is enhanced by his weaponization of the scriptural text.  Other examples are the use of scripture to foster fear of demons or hell and that will cause damage.  A theology or style of reading scripture that causes obvious harm to people, physically, emotionally or spiritually will always need to be challenged.  To repeat, it is not the actual texts that are being questioned, it is the way that they are being used to do damage to others that is under scrutiny. 

One of the extraordinary developments in the long unhappy saga of the institutional church and its neglect of survivors is in the way that simple morality and conscience has often seemed to be absent.  When bishops and church officials are found to be colluding with others to supress truth and transparency, that is of serious concern for the whole church.  The fact that institutions will have a natural tendency to protect themselves is a neutral observation.  It becomes a problem when the leaders of that organisation resort to underhand methods to promote that defensiveness.  It would seem that, in Gilo’s recent revelations, lawyers, medical experts and insurance personnel have conspired together to deploy highly questionable strategies in abuse cases – on the edge of what most people would consider ethical. This has been to the severe detriment of survivors’ well-being.  The effects have had serious and lasting consequences.  Julie Macfarlane’s book is soon to appear telling the story of tussle with the legal/insurance cabal employed by the Church which did so much in its attempt to destroy her and her case.  Fortunately for the abused, some survivors, Macfarlane, Gilo, Tony and Julian among them, have, at great cost to themselves, stood up to the bullying juggernaut represented by the insurance faction/legal teams/reputation managers arrayed against them.  There are signs at last that somewhere in the system individuals are beginning to show signs of shame that may lead, we hope, to real changes in the end.  Then we have the IICSA (sexual abuse inquiry) report, due at the beginning of October.  This may help to reinforce the message of needed new beginnings that is so sorely needed.

I began this reflection with the word anger.  I was talking about the anger I feel for the appalling things I have reported on in this blog.  A few are to do with individuals seeking gratification for sexual urges.  More shocking are parts of entire constituencies doing underhand things, whether they are called the Church of England, Lambeth Palace or the ReNew/Titus network.  Each, in different ways, is involved in ducking and diving to avoid owning up to massive failures of care, love and common decency in regard to abuse survivors.  Many of these have written to me to confirm that the institutional failures towards them are far more hurtful and harmful.  Their stories have made me angry and I hope that my reader can share some of that with me.

My recent exposure once again to the ongoing saga of Jonathan Fletcher and his culture, has prompted me to dredge up from my memory encounters with university Christian Unions in the long distant past.  I became an undergraduate in 1964, an aeon ago, and I can still remember my reflection on a few CU talks that I attended.  I glimpsed a world where it was claimed that all intellectual questioning could be instantly sorted and resolved.  I was being invited to a new social world where everyone was apparently kind, generous and loving to each other.  What could there be not to like?   But at the same time, I was picking up another message.  There was an element of fear and threat. Not only in the doctrine presented, but there was a threat of being excluded from one’s eternal destiny if one failed to conform fully to the belief system on offer.  I still wonder from time to time how these techniques of preaching that use fear to sell their message, have so much popularity.

One word that that I picked up from my brief flirtation with Christian Unions all those years ago, was the word ‘sound’.  Being sound in CU terminology then seemed to mean being thoroughly embedded in their culture and having the right opinions.  In this way, you became eligible for holding office in the CU hierarchy.  In practice it also meant signing a list of Christian beliefs which included acceptance of the inerrant word of God in Scripture.   It occurred to me that individuals might want to wobble in their strict loyalty to this list of statements.  But those who had crossed the bridge to being regarded as sound, managed to hang on without showing any hesitancies.  Conversations with such people about the Bible were always completely unproductive.  But, in my current thinking about this word sound in relation to my questioning of the ReNew networks of power, it occurs to me that the word has no meaning taken in isolation.  Being sound in this CU sense only makes sense when you are part of a group.  It is a designation awarded to you by another person of established influence within your group.  Anyone who is regarded as sound is also deemed to have a secure relationship with God.  The stakes remain high.  Subsequent wrong beliefs about the Bible or other topics like the gay issue, would affect your soundness and your salvation status. It will thus never be possible for many conservative Christians to shift in their opinions or even think about an issue on which their group has a settled opinion.

Who are the people who provide the rock-solid authority to declare someone or something sound within the conservative community?  Clearly it must be the leaders.  But who polices the leaders and their opinions?   Has it never happened that a leader studying the text of Genesis has met a problem with the two contrasting creation stories or the two versions of the Noah narrative?  Of course, there are going to be those who ‘wobble’ in the way they understand the text of Scripture.  But they do not reveal any of these issues to those under them.  The official line remains that to be a Christian, one has to toe every official line on everything – the Bible, the gay issue and a host of other official doctrines.  Anything else would undermine Christians in the pew and cause ‘shipwreck’ to their faith and prospects of salvation.  In short, the conservative Christian world cannot and does not tolerate deviation, discussion or difference in its ranks.

The preservers of ‘sound’ beliefs within the CU/ReNew networks in Britain are, as we have suggested, powerful people within that context.  Not only do they teach the people in their churches, but they also decide what they are to believe and what is forbidden.    They have the ultimate power to declare that an individual is no longer a part of the correct orthodox Christian group represented by ReNew and its associated organisations and congregations.  Who are these leaders who have reached the apex where no one will ever question their soundness and their right to teach the ‘correct’ Christian faith?  In the past, it seems that many people within the conservative networks looked to figures like Dick Lucas, John Stott and Mark Ruston to provide for them an impeccable point of reference for individual orthodoxy.  In short, the culture of conservative evangelicalism required everyone to be in some direct or indirect relationship with a leader who was acclaimed by the entire network as having a quasi- apostolic authority.   Jonathan Fletcher seems also to have fulfilled this role for many of the current leaders, including Bishop Rod Thomas.  Fletcher’s participation at Iwerne camps and also his time in Cambridge and London, gave him influence over swathes of people, within and beyond the evangelical constituency.  This might explain how he was so successful in escaping challenge for his behaviour for so long. But it also explains why his fall from grace is causing so many problems for the ReNew constituency currently.  Others have quickly stepped into leadership roles since his retirement and especially since his outing for immoral behaviour.   These new leaders, who are now vicars and rectors of the big ReNew parishes, have considerable authority, but none of them yet seem to possess the power and god-like stature of Fletcher, or Stott and Lucas before him.  Individuals like Vaughan Roberts and William Taylor, who both signed the document in June 2019 accepting the guilt of Jonathan Fletcher and enforcing restraint over his actions, show that they have real power.  This power, exercised in a variety of ways within the network, is far greater than anything exercised by a bishop in the Church of England.  No bishop has the right to discipline a clergyman for having ‘incorrect’ views on scripture or sexual morality.  In contrast the clergy who hold office in parishes where the power of ReNew patronage operates, are vulnerable to the direct and indirect control of these leaders. They are able to help people into jobs – or exclude them from the social world they once inhabited. I cannot claim to understand all the ins and outs of the dynamics of the constituency represented by ReNew, but there does still seem to be a culture of fear afflicting some of those who live and work within this arena of control.  Those whose careers and vocations depend on the goodwill of ReNew leaders have every reason to be extremely nervous of losing their status of being considered sound.  Losing the support of their leaders is a serious matter.  What is there to be frightened of more than having your orthodoxy/soundness questioned?  That could lead directly to the destruction of career, livelihood and even salvation itself.

On 14^th September this year, ReNew held a virtual conference for members of its constituency.  The address of the chairman, William Taylor was then immediately published online.  I watched with fascination as Taylor in this speech outlined his vision for the ReNew constituency in the years ahead.  He recounted how the various organisations allied to ReNew had come together since 2013 to fulfil a vision for establishing ‘clear biblical ministry in local churches across the land’.  If I shared the assumptions of Taylor about what the expression ‘gospel ministry’ actually meant, no doubt I could have rejoiced in the vision of ReNew to revitalise churches in every part of the country.  But having watched over a lifetime the way that churches of this tradition squelch questioning and sometimes, because of dysfunctional power dynamics, tolerate power abuse of various kinds, I was less enthusiastic about this vision.  Power abuse of course can happen in churches of any tradition but the new revelations about abuse, in some churches that identify with ReNew, show that some abuses have been allowed to fester for a very long time.  When a group of churches manages to hide notable abusers (Smyth & Fletcher) for up to 40 years, questions have to be asked of the morality and conscience of leaders who seem to have been in the know.  How can leaders who hide evil in dark places be trusted to be the arbiter of who is or is not in the protected sanctuary of being ‘sound’? If evidence ever emerges that a trusted leader has deliberately hidden evidence of evil, their ongoing position as a leader should be questioned. At last year’s Evangelical Missionary Alliance meeting, Vaughan Roberts said that ‘lessons will need to be learned’. The assumption seems to be that Taylor and Roberts might make minor adjustments to their outlooks – but nothing so serious would be revealed that could lead to them standing down from leadership.

Taylor’s speech could have been regarded as a grand Christian vision by a conservative Christian for the future.  Somehow, I glimpsed something else, a process of Christians claiming power for themselves, indulging in aggrandisement and even the extension of personal fiefdoms. Taylor boasted of how other ReNew leaders had elected him to be their leader. I wondered was it really surprising that the local leaders he had appointed had in return agreed he should be their leader? I wondered at his being oblivious to the obvious lack of integrity in that process – and felt more aware of how leaders could turn a blind eye to concerns over Smyth and Fletcher. The world of ReNew seemed to be offered as the only valid expression of Christianity in Britain.  Every other congregation, every denomination was, by implication, deemed to be in a place of darkness.  Can this really be the vision of Christianity we are all expected to embrace?  Are we expected to follow leaders who are also conspicuously blind to the moral failings of their mentors?  There are still many questions that surround this group of evangelical Anglicans within the ReNew network.  We do not ask perfection from them, but we do ask, as Taylor mentioned himself in his speech, the qualities of ‘transparency, humility and integrity’, qualities that are not obvious in this speech of the leader of this group.

by Gilo

The Elliott review (2016) might have been a turning point for the Church of England in its approach to safeguarding. A professional expert was looking at Church of England’s practice and giving it crystal clear advice about how to conduct safeguarding matters. Instead, as Gilo explains, it was mangled almost beyond recognition by those who saw it as a threat to the status-quo. What was put into practice was almost unrecognisable from the original recommendations. (Ed)

This essay gathers together further comments on the story that appeared in the Church Times last week on the strategic response by Archbishops’ Council to several Elliott review recommendations. A discovery that, following the letter to the Charity Commission signed by over 600, provides further evidence for the need for Archbishops’ Council to be reviewed by an external body.

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/11-september/news/uk/elliott-condemns-pr-response-to-his-safeguarding-review

Phil Johnson (Chair of MACSAS) commenting:

‘If this indeed is the Church’s interpretation of the recommendation from the Elliott Review then it would appear that it has been subject to an auto-translation into Mandarin and then back again several times. It is noteworthy that in the ‘dialogue’, the voices missing are the survivors themselves or anyone advocating for them.’

To better understand his comment, here’s that section of the review recommendations..

The Role of Advisors

i. All advice received by agents employed by the Church, should be referenced against the stated policies of the Church before it is followed. Emphasis should be placed on ensuring that financial considerations are not given a priority that conflicts with the pastoral aims of the Church when engaging with survivors of abuse.

ii. The Church should seek to create written down guidance with regard to how it will respond to claims for compensation from survivors. This guidance should be shared with survivors from an early juncture in the process. Every effort should be made to avoid an adversarial approach, placing emphasis on the provision of financial compensation as an aid to healing and closure for the survivor.

Now look at how the Role of Advisors section was ‘translated’ by Archbishops Council in a document called Draft Plan for Implementation of Recommendations.

The Role of Advisors

NST and the Archbishops Council are in dialogue with EIG to highlight the experiences of survivors. On August 9^th, there was a meeting of 4 people from EIG and members of the archbishop’s council, including the legal team, Comms and safeguarding team to look at a more joined up approach in relation to press/media on stories.

Richard Scorer comments:

‘The church’s response to abuse should be based on objective and fair minded analysis of the evidence and provision of proper pastoral support for those affected. It should not be driven by “reputation management”. It is now beyond doubt that the investigation of safeguarding complaints against clergy and church officials needs to be done by an independent, external body – as long as the church continues to mark its own homework, there will be the suspicion that the church’s response is being driven by reputational protection and internal political score settling as opposed to proper principles of safeguarding. The current arrangements are untenable and reform is urgently needed.

Justin Humphreys (CEO thirtyone:eight) writes:

‘I share your concern regarding the apparent abandonment of the full recommendations contained within the review. I also share your concern relating to the lack of progress being made with requests made by Ian Elliott following public comments from EIG with an apparent desire to discredit the substance and evidence underpinning his recommendations. As I recall, the initial action plan was published by the Church of England and then an update was published about a year later. From that date onward, I am not aware of any further publication, update of dialogue with regard to the implementation of the action plan. I have certainly not been invited to be a part of any such discussions. I am not aware of what action has been taken to meet this recommendation or where it may be referenced within current policy, procedure or guidance within the Church of England. If I were to be charitable on this matter, I would say that perhaps it has inadvertently become buried in the sheer volume of other matters being considered. Even if that were the case, this is a critical matter that deserves a clear and unequivocal response as it sits at the heart of the response received by many survivors, which as we know is too often not what it should be. What has always been required with such a clear set of recommendations is a determined and unswerving degree of attention. It is for the Church of England to demonstrate their commitment in this regard.’

Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Co-Author of To Heal and Not to Hurt: A fresh approach to safeguarding in the Church:

‘This makes heartbreaking reading. It shows clearly that, despite a series of earnest and often tear-stained assurances that the Church of England would now put survivors first, the truth is the opposite. The management of its reputation is still the primary concern. There are undoubtedly many good and compassionate individuals trying to make a difference, but it seems that as an institution the Church of England is incapable of real change.’

Gilo, Co-Editor of Letters to a Broken Church and subject of the Elliott review.

It is remarkable that following a complaint to Archbishops’ Council, none of the departments involved (legal, comms, NST, Ab Council senior management) had any further record or recollection of this meeting. So the complaint could not be carried forward and was dismissed. Ecclesiastical Insurance were able to provide me with their notes from that meeting – in which it clearly states that one point in the discussion was “reputational risk to both the Church and Ecclesiastical.” Quite why members of the NST were involved in discussing reputational risk to the Church’s insurer – is unclear.

It is also surprising that this document and its divergence from the clarity and spirit of the recommendations did not emerge at IICSA. I imagine Archbishops Council and Church House lawyers were not keen to draw any attention to it.

The Bishop of London, mandated by Archbishop Welby to champion the review, in her IICSA statement said that she did not see it as “part of my role to seek to address, or change, the relationship between EIG and the Church”. Instead, she relied on assurance from EIG’s “Guiding Principles” document that there was no conflict of interest between the two in their handling of survivors. Sadly, any attempt on my part to seek the Bishop to address the repeated public dissembling by EIG around the Review (later highlighted at a recall to the Inquiry) was met with a brick wall of silence. There was simply no interest or engagement in questions about the insurer’s dishonest treatment of the Review. It became clear that the Bishop of London was operating from instructions from higher-ups to play such questions down.

The Bishop might have been a rallying point for change, real change. But it has been up to the persistence and tenacity of survivors like Tony, Julian and myself (and our allies who recognise injustice and unethical practice) to bring the highly questionable processes of Ecclesiastical and their lawyer Paula Jefferson of Berrymans, Lace and Mawer into daylight. More is emerging in coming months. We have had to do much work, and continue to do so, to bring the Church to recognition of its own duplicity. One of the things emerging is the ‘genetic predisposition’ argument deployed against survivors in a highly adversarial process … as in “your client was already genetically predisposed to stress disorder and depression”. This, when it has been used, appears to have been on the basis of extremely flimsy evidence from an expert who is not a geneticist, has had no access to genetic material, and no access to family medical notes. A handful of senior bishops have been aware of this since 2017 (I was present when they were told). I understand other senior bishops, including former lead bishops, have been aware since 2011. Archbishop Welby was personally told of this particular argument deployed by Paula Jefferson and her medical experts early in his days at Lambeth Palace. But it has been up to survivors to bring this into daylight across a decade. This has been the pattern: survivors have to do all the driving. We believe this argument has been deployed as a strategy across many spheres, not just within Church of England cases.

Two intriguing things I have recently heard. Archbishop Welby is apparently extremely angry – ‘fuming’ was the word used – at the way in which EIG and Paula Jefferson have responded to situations – angry at the continuing reputational damage these agents of the Church are bringing their client. It’s unlikely he will confirm this. But it’s not good enough. He and his Church have been quietly complicit with much unethical process despite being challenged over many years. The Church at senior level has turned a blind eye when it suited them, and watched survivors do all the work. To express anger when there has been so much duplicity is somewhat meaningless.

I have also heard on good authority that one senior bishop who sits in the House of Lords now believes that a Truth and Reconciliation process is necessary. I don’t know exactly what he envisages, we’ve not spoken recently, but I will ask him. If his idea encompasses all of the episcopacy, then I agree. The Church’s senior layer has to come to a painful and honest reckoning with itself – with real apologies for real failures and real instances of dishonesty, and not some flimsy sound-bite apology crafted by Comms. There needs to be authentic and public recognition by the bishops that in so many situations they have put reputation and protection of structure above the needs of survivors – and used “no recollections” and similar denials, much distancing and duplicity, gaslighting of survivors, as an automatic response. There must come a time when they finally put their hands up to much shabby and dishonourable behaviour.

All these things must be faced squarely and real amends made. I cannot see this happening without a genuine T&R process which encompasses all of the bishops, including Archbishop Welby who has significantly enabled this broken culture. And the current lead bishops must recognise that safeguarding and the management of reviews, and response to survivors, must now be removed from the control of Archbishops’ Council. It is unfit. Its culture has already done too much damage to both survivors and to the Church.

As readers of my blog, will know, I have taken a special interest in the case of Jonathan Fletcher, the former Vicar of Emmanuel Wimbledon.  His importance as a mentor and guru to an entire generation of Christian evangelical leaders cannot be overstated.  My interest in him has been primarily in understanding this influence and how his ‘fall’ has impacted on the evangelical constituency.  I have never concerned myself in learning the detail of the bizarre tales of massages and ‘forfeits’ with young men.  These have been rehearsed on the pages of parts of the British national press and form the background of an ongoing review by thirtyone:eight.  Rather I have been interested to observe the sustained attempts at cover-up and secrecy by many within his constituency in the Anglican Church.  This has been sustained for decades and is normally a matter of keeping completely silent.   Fletcher’s story has also been linked with that of John Smyth, whose behaviour has also been extensively discussed.  Their two stories overlap at several points, but I do not intend to discuss the latter character as it is now under scrutiny by Keith Makin’s enquiry.

My attempts to understand Fletcher and his circle, and the way they interact with the wider evangelical scene in Britain, has been made difficult in various ways.  One problem has been in the fact that many online references to Fletcher were removed from the internet during the course of 2019.  His online sermons disappeared and other references to his presence at conferences and meetings have also been purged.  This apparent attempt to prevent the investigation of Fletcher by removing public evidence about him has stimulated the opposite effect in me.  If you deny someone information, you just encourage them to look harder to find it.  It is there to be found by the person with determination.  An interview with Richard Coekin, a former curate who used to be attached to Emmanuel Wimbledon and was a close confederate of Fletcher is still available on a Youtube video.  This video piece, made in 2019, is especially precious because it contains eight minutes of Coekin’s attempt to explain the Fletcher story to an audience of Sydney Anglicans.  This attempt to interpret the saga by an individual who knew him very well and was formally listed as Fletcher’s curate for 18 years is possibly the only material of its kind.

Richard Coekin is an important figure among evangelicals in Britain.  Unlike other senior Anglican evangelicals, he does not appear to have passed through the Iwerne route to leadership which has been the trajectory for, among others, the Fletcher brothers, William Taylor, Vaughan Roberts and Hugh Palmer.   Coekin’s present role is to oversee the Co-Mission network of churches in Britain and he is also leader of Dundonald, a church plant founded from Fletcher’s church, Emmanuel Wimbledon. As a board member of AMiE, Coekin helps oversee Anglican churches planted outside the Church of England, but under William Taylor’s ReNew banner. Coekin’s network of churches sit lightly on denominational labels.  Some are Anglican, while others regard themselves as independent.  Coekin himself, although he ministers across denominational boundaries has retained the designation of being an Anglican.  He retains a PTO from the Bishop of Southwark and from 1995-2013 served as a curate to Fletcher in Wimbledon, presumably with a full license.  His main focus at that time was his church plant ministry but we have every reason to suppose his association with Fletcher was very close. He was a fellow member of the pressure group, Reform Southwark, and as well as a fellow council member of the national Reform organisation.

Anyone watching this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hv9WR-w95g&t=1914s would easily be charmed by Coekin’s self-presentation and his friendly demeanour.  I can imagine that he is a powerful and effective leader as well as a compelling evangelist.   No doubt the leaders of the churches in his network benefit greatly from his experience and gifts of leadership.  But there were clues in the interview which hinted at some less than wholesome aspects of ministry.  Certain things were also revealed through what was not said, as we shall see below.  It is this probing behind the rhetoric that is important if we are to gain clues about the conservative Christian world that both Coekin and Fletcher inhabit.

The first 30 minutes of the Youtube interview tell us all about the issues of church life that Coekin was facing as a leader both of a congregation and a network of congregations.  It was only in the last nine minutes that the interviewer turned to the topic of Jonathan Fletcher, a subject about which he, like many Sydney Anglicans, was finding perplexing.  The answer that came from Coekin at no point revealed that Fletcher had been a previous co-worker with him.  This somewhat detached way of speaking about Fletcher seemed to imply that Coekin wanted to preserve some distance from him, so as not to have to interpret the events that had emerged from the Press and elsewhere.  The language he used was formal.  While admitting there had been naked massages and inappropriate behaviour with young men, nothing of this behaviour seemingly had anything to do with the church circles that he moved in.    The misbehaviour had taken place in the past and there was now need for repentance and a caring for the victims. Coekin said he did not know if there were ‘any more skeletons in the closet.’ Were people to know how close he was to Emmanuel and Fletcher that claim to ignorance might appear less credible. For example, one minister I spoke to says that Coekin told him that he was offered (and declined) a massage from Fletcher. Did he not think there was something amiss with that in the context of church ministry?

Coekin’s responses to the questions about Fletcher were curiously flat and unconvincing.  The life seemed to go out of his voice compared with the vivacity of the first part of the interview.  Everything that was admitted sounded like something from the Church of England publicity machine.  There was seemingly some acceptance that victims found the beatings helpful – but then dismay. The reasons for that dismay are unclear. There was, I noticed, also no depth of pastoral insight or real understanding of the potential disastrous effect on victims.  While words of deep regret towards victims were uttered, they felt formulaic and seemed to lack a sense of pastoral empathy.  One particular moment of shock was when Coekin interjected the fact that there had been no underage young men being abused by Fletcher.  This implied that Coekin believed that, theoretically, Fletcher could have been involved in nude massages and beatings which involved consent and were thus somehow less of a problem.  Coekin moved on from these activities to what he called “the real problem” rather than yet another serious problem. 

The problem as he presented it was subjectively whether victims “felt” manipulated. Quite apart from the apparent homoerotic nature of Fletcher’s activities, which are the target of strong condemnation by the entire conservative evangelical constituency, there is the power differential issue.  Coekin partially acknowledged the power issue, but repeatedly minimised it by highlighting possible lack of consent and feeling manipulated as being the “real problem.”’ One would like him to have utterly condemned all activities initiated by a man of enormous status towards those who were impressionable and immature.  Even to bring up the age of consent suggests he is not able to discern and recognise abuse of power or serious safeguarding breaches.

What did I learn from this interview about Jonathan Fletcher?  My perception is that those who knew him, like Coekin, seem to be still at least partly under his thrall.  While they have been forced to accept the facts of the case, they seem unable to process these facts and the implications of what a moral failure by a prominent leader will have on the credibility of the whole conservative evangelical movement in Britain.  The way that Coekin changed in the interview from being a passionate advocate of his evangelism/leadership role to the formulaic responses, when talking about Fletcher, was striking.   Somehow Fletcher’s influence seems to have flattened part of the moral and psychological sensitivity of an experienced Christian like Coekin.   Having spoken passionately of the importance of preserving the biblical view of marriage, Coekin then appeared to be partly blind to the effect of the behaviour of a leader who clearly is a long way from upholding such values. It is worrying for the ReNew constituency that the interviewer, Dominic Steele, was unable to challenge Coekin’s blindspots, and yet he is due to speak at the upcoming ReNew conference on 14^th September. This hardly gives confidence that the ReNew constituency are able to embrace the changes necessary to enable them to act as Jesus would towards victims and church.

From this video I gained a greater insight into a Christian culture that says one thing, but then is blind to the same thing happening in its back yard.   The Iwerne/con-evo/conservative Christian culture from which Coekin and Fletcher come from also seems to have remarkably little insight into the nature of power.  As I have said elsewhere there is always going to be a problem around power for any group who presents as if they have been entrusted with infallible teaching or access to final truth.  When there is a Christian culture that admits no doubts, there will be also be a hesitancy or reluctance to question or challenge leaders who are straying morally.  The same would apply when they are playing one or other of the great variety of power games that are possible within an institution like the Church.  My theory about Jonathan Fletcher is that he acquired too much power in the course of his ministry so that no one was prepared to challenge him.  Class and the ability to influence people’s careers was part of that. His being beyond contradiction did enormous damage both to individuals and to his wider circles.  Even now his power and influence in those circles is such that few have come forward to openly challenge his interpretation of his abuse.  Fletcher wrote in his defence that his activities were all ‘consensual.’ Despite his protestations, and impressive man that he is in many ways, Richard Coekin spoke publicly not to stand with victims and show support for them, but rather in a way that perpetuated Fletcher’s own view of abuse in a church leadership context. Victims have seen precious little in the way of constituency leaders publicly advocating for them in the last year, only vacuous posturing. What meaningful public comment has there been, except that we are on the victims’ side and that we should avoid gossip? (As Robin Weekes prayed at last year’s ReNew Conference) Irrespective of his warning against hasty conclusions, he seems to apologetically assume that Fletcher was a great leader with flaws, rather as opposed to wondering if he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Sadly, rather than taking the vaunted “opportunity to draw back” and critique what’s unbiblical regarding the class issues and unbiblical hierarchy coming out the power base of Titus Trust camps, one Fletcher victim complains that the constituency leaders have doubled down and marginalised any dissenting voices.