Surviving Church was honoured to be asked to act as one of the platforms through which the letter to the Charity Commission about Church of England safeguarding could be circulated and made public. The topics that we cover on this blog meant that the sentiments expressed in the letter would be of the kind familiar to regular followers. I was also happy to be one of the signatories of the letter.
The letter to the CC would seem to have made some considerable impact since it appeared on Tuesday last. It seems to be saying two fundamental things. It was, first of all, accusing the Church of England and especially the Archbishop’s Council and the National Safeguarding Team of authorising and using legal processes to cope with safeguarding issues in inconsistent and secretive ways – such that do not further the cause of justice. The letter was also suggesting that in the administration of these in-house forms of justice, fundamental ethical and biblical principles were being ignored. Although not mentioned in the text of the letter, it is apparent that the authors were thinking about the passage in Micah 6 about the importance of justice etc. Gilo makes clear this connection of ideas by calling the appeal for additional signatures, the Micah 6:8 initiative.
In the traditional translations of this well-known passage from the prophets, there is a question and then three answers are given. The question ‘What doth the Lord require’ is answered with essentially three commands. They are ‘do justly, ‘love mercy (or kindness)’ and ‘walk humbly’. One summarised version of the letter would say simply that the safeguarding protocols of the Church of England were at present failing to fulfil any of these three principles set down by the prophet Micah.
The CC letter gives a number of examples of where principles of justice have been ignored by those who oversee the rules governing safeguarding in the Church. Some of these principles had been laid out by Lord Carlile in his 2017 report about the Bishop Bell affair. In the current letter there were some more recent quotes from him inserted into the text. Of these I mention two. He sets out the principle that anyone who is being accused of an offence is allowed to know the evidence that is going to be presented so that preparation for a defence is made possible. The second legal principle is to emphasise the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest. Carlile calls this the ‘law of apparent bias’. It is clear that, in the Martyn Percy case, such conflicts were allowed to enter the process. Those in charge of the Percy Core Group acknowledged this by removing two of their members from the team.
The principle of mercy has also been a casualty of the C/E Safeguarding industry. The English word implies consideration and respect for all parties. There are several examples of the opposite being practised, and these would be described as ruthless behaviour. To remove someone from office, without giving them notice of what they are supposed to have done wrong, offends justice but also consideration and mercy. The thought of Lord Carey being rung up by the press one evening to respond to an accusation of failure over his dealings with John Smyth, seems to indicate a remarkable deficit of respect and sensitivity. He has, apparently, still not been told what he was supposed to have done in this regard. The Core Group that made the decision to suspend him from his limited ministry was using its power in a weaponised fashion. Such behaviour is cruel and unworthy of a body claiming superior moral standards, such as the Church.
To ‘walk humbly with God’ again implies a standard of behaviour which is nowhere in view in what we see in the Church of England Core Groups. Humility is a quality that faces up to the possibility that an accusation may be wrong. Instead what we see all too often is a group of people making up their minds, almost before they start, that a particular individual is guilty. Leaking details to the press about supposed guilt, as we saw with Bishop Bell and Archbishop Carey constitutes an arbitrary use of power. Humility, by contrast, encourages, as part of the process to promote justice, listening to criticisms. These may come from experts in child protection and the Law. Most important of all, humility in the biblical sense requires that Core Groups and those who set them up, listen to the survivors of abuse at the hands of an employee of the Church. Humility in short is a quality that is always prepared to learn and to listen. The NST and the Archbishop’s Council have shown very little inclination to do either of these. By contrast they seem to be digging themselves into a deep hole. To extract themselves from this hole, legal, ethical and practical, they need help, such as the Charity Commission may be able to offer them.
For all these and other reasons, a letter to Baroness Stowell and the Charity Commission was written. We have not all given up on the Church of England. We do however see that there is an urgent need for its leadership to be challenged and held to account. We need to know that those who have the power to make decisions need, not only to follow expert and wise advice, but also to follow the biblical principles of justice, mercy and humility. There are many people who find themselves giving up on the church because they fear that their complaints about episodes of power abuse are not being addressed. Because we have a hierarchical church, we have allowed it to become full of people who ‘love to have places of honour at feasts and chief seats in synagogues….’ In extolling rank, we find that the ones without status, those with no wealth or position feel ignored or excluded and thus unwelcome in the Church of God.
Some of us have a vision for the church. It is a vision of a community that is inspired, not by rank, importance and power, but by a solemn desire to honour those who have the least power. In our Church we have a large phalanx of survivors of abuse. The Church has for decades tried to hide their existence by telling them effectively to go away and stop bothering us. Such survivors need to be heard; they need to be honoured and recognised not only for what they have suffered at the hands of the Church but for what for what they can give to the Church through their experiences. Of all the groups in or on the edge of the Church, survivors are the chief experts on justice, mercy and humility. They know about them because they seek them even though have failed to receive them over long periods of time.
To: The Rt Hon Baroness Stowell of Beeston, MBE Chair of the Charity Commission 102 Petty France Westminster London SW1H 9AJ
Tuesday 11 August 2020
Dear Baroness Stowell,
We write as interested parties to ask that the Charity Commission exercise its powers of intervention to address the failures of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England (charity number 1074857) to devise a safe, consistent and fair system of redress to all parties engaged in safeguarding complaints. The structures of the Established Church are complex with responsibilities both devolved and diffuse. In addition to 42 Dioceses operating local jurisdiction, there is a National Safeguarding Team (NST), reporting to the Secretary General (William Nye) through a National Safeguarding Director (Melissa Caslake). Policy is devised and guidelines issued by the House of Bishops; there is a Lead Bishop for Safeguarding (currently the Bishop of Huddersfield, Jonathan Gibbs) working with two assistant Bishops (a relatively new innovation) and with further responsibility undertaken by the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG) chaired by the Lead Bishop with its members appointed by the two Archbishops. In addition, there is a National Safeguarding Panel (NSP), “set up to provide vital reference and scrutiny from a range of voices, including survivors, on the development of policy and guidance” with an independent (external) Chair, Meg Munn. The power to suspend under the Clergy Discipline Measure is reciprocally exercised by the two archbishops in cases involving themselves.
There is now some urgency over addressing the impaired transparency and intermittent accountability of the NST. Within such a complex structure, it is extraordinarily difficult for aggrieved parties to secure redress of individual grievance, for questions to be raised, or for policy and its implementation (or lack thereof) to be challenged. We address our complaint to the Archbishops’ Council as the body with ultimate responsibility, established by the National Institutions Measure 1998. It is accountable to the General Synod but is not subordinate to it. In effect, it acts as the national executive of the Church of England.
We are writing as, despite raising significant questions over policy and practice, there is only a nominal institutional acceptance of the need for reform. True, there is now a process underway for a replacement of the widely discredited Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, and the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) into the Anglican Church is awaited. However, the continuing flow of cases of injustice leads us to seek early intervention from the Charity Commission. We do this with reluctance, having tried and failed to secure redress through multiple complaints across the structure.
The signatories to this letter come from a wide range of backgrounds, and all are people with interest in and experience of the current system, policies, and culture within the Church. They include aggrieved complainants, respondents, lawyers, members of the General Synod, clergy, laity and the contributing authors to the book Letters to a Broken Church (published in July 2019) which collected a range of essays exploring the many ways the current system fails all involved.
Much of the discontent centres upon the secretive world of the National Safeguarding Team (NST) core groups, which act in ways reminiscent of the Star Chamber, synonymous with the selective use of arbitrary unaccountable power, concentrating effective control of process in the hands of a very few, who exercise wide-ranging discretions afforded by guidelines devised by Church House administrators and issued by the House of Bishops. Such discretion includes ignoring those very guidelines. Even then, these guidelines are demonstrably inadequate, and are not applied consistently, fairly, or impartially. Whilst the core groups are not independently advised by lawyers experienced in good safeguarding practice, there is the omnipresence of communications advisors, sometimes more than one. The deepest suspicion of those subjected to this process, and many taking an outside observer’s interest, is that these are bodies that function as quasi-judicial adversarial proceedings without the requisite checks and balances of due process, failing all tests of natural justice, and which prioritise the reputation of the Church above common standards of natural fairness.
This letter is prompted by the processes exposed in three current cases. We do not take a view on the individual merits or outcomes of these, but refer to them as typical, representative indicators of the arbitrariness of how the system malfunctions. These case have revealed the following:
1. There is an absence of a properly constituted appeal or review procedure at any stage of the process. No matter how egregious the failures to abide by the Church’s own rules or basic principles of law and good practice may be, there is no remedy.
2 . There is an absence of a comprehensive conflicts of interest policy and, in its absence, an unwillingness to exercise available discretions in the selection guidance and management of the core group membership, so as to ensure a fair and unbiased process throughout their deliberations. A simple illustration suffices. A legal firm may act as advisors to a Diocese which may ultimately play a part in concluding a case, and may simultaneously act for a complainant, but not a respondent. This is currently happening with no institutional awareness of impropriety or willingness to resolve such blatant conflict of interest. The right to a fair trial and preservation of a degree of “equality of arms” are both observed in the breach.
3. When institutional jurisdiction is in question, the Church asserts jurisdiction, but does not explain its reasoning in matters of complex and obscure law. It is unfair to place responsibility for test-case litigation on an individual when the problem lies with the institution. The decision as to who is, and who is not, within the Church’s jurisdiction appears to be arbitrarily and selectively applied without the principles upon why such distinctions are drawn being convincingly advanced for scrutiny.
4. When there have been breaches of the Church’s own rules designed to ensure procedural fairness, there has been secrecy and reluctance to acknowledge error. Thus, in the Dean Percy case, the absence of proper minute-taking has been obfuscated and glossed over. A core group met on 13 March 2020, but no one was designated as a minute-taker. The complainants have received the ex post facto notes created three months later, whereas the Dean is refused even redacted copies. When a replacement Chair of the core group was appointed, she was the undisclosed professional referee for the Investigator.
5. There has been inconsistency and arbitrariness in the way persons were admitted to or excluded from presence or representation at core groups. Thus, three complainant dons from Christ Church, Oxford (none of them primary victims or witnesses of alleged abuse) attended the Dean Percy core group meeting on 13th March, whereas the victim complainant known as “Graham” was neither invited to attend nor attended the core group considering his complaint against the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor was he told it was being convened. This is perceived as selective and privileged access.
6. Having expended charitable monies on independent reports to make recommendations on safeguarding practice, for the benefit and safety of complainants and respondents alike, and having accepted the recommendations thereof, there has been a longstanding failure to make timely changes by the implementation of rule revision, protocol, or any other practical means to put right the historic failures and malpractices which have continued. Thus, all but one of the recommendations of the 2017 Carlile Review into the Bishop George Bell case were accepted, but not implemented; and the process errors are still replicated at this time in current cases. Lord Carlile has recently opined:
“I do not believe that the Church has got to grips with the fundamental principles of adversary justice, one of which is that you must disclose the evidence that you have against someone, and give them an equal opportunity to be heard as those making the accusation.
“And you cannot give them an equal opportunity if there are conflicts of interest involved. Anyone with a conflict of interest must leave the deliberations and take no further part. This is what lawyers understand as the law of apparent bias. It’s not to say that such people are biased: that’s often misunderstood. It is the appearance of bias that matters.
“Having people on a core group with a conflict of interest is simply not sustainable and is, on the face of it, unlawful.
“And to fail to allow the person accused to represent themselves, or be represented, in the full knowledge of the accusation, is not sustainable, and is, on the face of it, unlawful.”
7. There is a regime in which partiality, privilege and reputational management have taken precedence over due process and proper standards appropriate to an adversarial quasi-judicial process. Thus, the 84-year-old Lord Carey had his Permission to Officiate (‘PTO’) summarily revoked in June 2020 within days of historic information arising (relating to events over 30 years ago), and the press notified, whereas the newly chosen Archbishop of York retained anonymity from the outset of process until a benign judgement was announced. We take no position on the justice of the outcome but highlight the contrast which brings the Church and its systems into disrepute though a perception of bias and privilege.
8. When unfairness and breaches of principles of natural justice and human rights legislation have been brought to the attention of those charged with the responsibility to manage fair and proper process, there has been a refusal to set aside bad process and a prioritisation of “saving face” rather than a willingness to rectify error and restore proper process.
Any one of the above reasons is serious to those adversely affected by the Church’s longstanding poor practice in this field. Collectively and cumulatively it is a picture of ongoing injustice. The institutional strategy persistently to ignore or deny the serious character of these deficiencies falls well below what is expected of the Established Church, and the failure of Archbishops’ Council to call those with operational responsibility to account represents an important dereliction of trustee duties.
Many of those affected or potentially affected are significantly conflicted. At the recent ‘virtual’ meeting of the General Synod (on 11 July 2020) we learnt that there are 27 extant NST core groups. We understand that they relate to complaints against senior clergy, namely bishops and cathedral deans. Some, undoubtedly, will relate to currently-serving diocesan bishops. Virtually all the CDM complaints against the episcopacy of which we are aware result in “no further action” in the cases of currently serving bishops. Those no longer in office seem less protected. It is probably fair to say that there is a powerful disincentive to speak publicly for reasons of collegiality and self-interest. Those who manage the processes within the administration defend reputation and the retention of the powers they de facto exercise. Yet, those of us who have campaigned for reform are often privately urged to “keep doing what you are doing”.
These problems need resolving and the ongoing replication of the same errors in current cases lead us to the reluctant conclusion that outside intervention is now needed, and so we come from many perspectives, many experiences, and many parts of the Church to ask that you intervene to mandate the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England to account for its failure to rectify serious errors or manage these processes in the interests of justice towards complainants and respondents alike. The risk of not doing so is that this charity sector as a whole will suffer, and that the egregious failures of safeguarding practice and protocol, with the Archbishops’ Council over the NST, will affect churches and charities across the land, causing further and significant collateral damage.
Yours sincerely, David Lamming Member of General Synod; Barrister (retired) Martin Sewell Member of General Synod; Child Protection Solicitor (retired) Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE, QC Lord Lexden His Honour Alan Pardoe QC Sir Jonathan Phillips KCB Prof Sir Iain Torrance President Emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary KCVO, Kt Prof Nigel Biggar Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford Prof Linda Woodhead Lancaster University; contributor to ‘Letters to a Broken Church’ Revd Jonathan Aitken David Pearson Founder of thirtyone:eight – Christian Safeguarding Charity Mike Hames Former Detective Superintendent and Head of the Paedophile Unit at Scotland Yard Gilo Co-editor of ‘Letters to a Broken Church’ ; IICSA core participant; ‘victim of the NST’ Christina Rees CBE Contributor to ‘Letters to a Broken Church’; member of General Synod 1990-2015; founding member of the Archbishops’ Council Andrew Carey ‘Victim of the NST’ Dr Ruth Hildebrandt Historian and freelance writer Grayson David Mason Former Assistant Diocesan Secretary, Lincoln and Governance and Administration Manager, Chichester Lizzie Taylor Prof John Charmley Pro Vice-Chancellor Academic Strategy & Research, St Mary’s University Revd Simon Talbott Member of General Synod ‘A Survivor’ Survivor of sexual assaults by the Revd Meirion Griffiths Richard Scorer Head of Abuse Law, Slater & Gordon, solicitors; contributor to ‘Letters to a Broken Church’ Revd Valerie Plumb Member of General Synod Rt Revd Alan Wilson Bishop of Buckingham; contributor to ‘Letters to a Broken Church’ Graham Sawyer ‘Victim of Peter Ball, the NST and the Church Establishment’ Revd Stephen Heard Simon Barrow Director of ‘Ekklesia’ Revd Stephen Trott Member of General Synod Revd Paul Benfield Member of General Synod; synodal secretary of the Convocation of York Margery Roberts Secretary of the Society of the Faith Revd Canon Angela Tilby Canon Emeritus of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford Julian Whiting ‘Victim of the NST’ Simon Sarmiento Editor, ‘Thinking Anglicans’ blog Rev. Janet Fife, survivor of Rev. X and the NST’. ‘Graham’ Iwerne Trust/John Smyth survivor; ‘victim of the NST’ Andrew Chandler Professor of Modern History at Chichester University; Biographer of Bishop George Bell. Revd Canon Rosie Harper Member of General Synod; contributor to ‘Letters to a Broken Church’; Co-author of ‘To Heal not to Hurt’ Dr Janet Lord Bishop Whitsey and NST survivor; contributor to ‘Letters to a Broken Church’ Rev. Mark Carey, respondent, and victim of the NST’. Revd Dr WS Monkhouse Revd Matt Ineson Victim of the Revd Trevor Devamanikkam, CofE bishops and the NST Revd Nathan Ward Revd Stephen Parsons Editor, ‘Surviving Church’ blog Kathryn Tucker Member of General Synod IICSA core participant Victim of Bishop Peter Ball and the NST ‘AN 87’ Tina Ney Member of General Synod Andy Morse Victim of Iwerne Trust/John Smyth QC Revd Peter Ould Dr Josephine Anne Stein Contributor to ‘Letters to a Broken Church’ Dr Tom Keighley, Clergy victim of the NST PhD, FRCN April Alexander Member of General Synod Dr Adrian Hilton Chairman of the Academic Council, the Margaret Thatcher Centre Jane Chevous Survivor of clergy abuse by two bishops; founder of ‘Survivors Voices’ – survivor-led peer support Dr Gavin Ashenden Former chaplain to HM The Queen; now supporting victims of abuse and maladministration Very Revd Michael Sadgrove Dean Emeritus of Durham Cathedral Philip French Member of General Synod Kate Andreyev Clergy wife Revd Andrew Foreshaw-Cain Chaplain, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford Revd Dr Carrie Pemberton Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Life,-Ford Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology David Greenwood Head of Child Abuse Compensation Team, Switalskis Solicitors Janet Garnon-Williams CPS prosecutor (retired) Richard Symonds The Bell Society Revd Canon Dr Robin Gibbons Ecumenical Canon, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford Sue Atkinson Writer; survivor; member of ‘Survivors’ Voice’ Rt Revd David Atkinson Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Southwark; supporter of ‘Survivors’ Voice’ John Tasker Lay Worker in the Church of England Dr Peter Owen Member of the Church of England A Survivor ‘A survivor of Diocese of Chichester abuse
Every year there is a small miracle that takes place in every cathedral across the land. Perhaps the word miracle is a little strong, but the event is still remarkable and deserves to be noted and commemorated. At the end of the school summer term, the most experienced four or five boys/girls who have led the treble or top line in the choir leave for new schools or because their voices change. At one stroke up to a third of the senior children in the choir, those with the most experience of solo work and leading all the other children, disappear. What happens then is that a new more junior group emerges to take their place. The ‘miracle’ is in the fact that within a few weeks these younger members of the choir have overcome their lack of experience and their habit of depending on the more senior children, to fill the shoes of those who used to be at the top of the choir. They invariably, as we say,’ rise to the occasion.’ Certainly, by Christmas the choir is back to strength and to the standard it had achieved under its old leaders.
It remains to be seen whether the cathedral choirs of Britain will be able to rise to recover quickly after the considerable blow to their functioning caused by the corona-virus. No doubt cathedrals all over the country are dealing with this crisis in different ways. Perhaps the recovery time will be a bit prolonged but we can still trust that the younger choir children will still find their place of responsibility within their choirs in spite of the disrupting pause they have experienced. Right across society, in institutions of all kinds, the juniors and underlings are all the time learning to adapt and respond to the new demands and responsibilities that come with time. Most people seem to be able to meet the challenge of promotion. The Church is no exception to this process, one which places the young and inexperienced in new places where they are expected to become mature and confident. Callow young curates with little confidence turn into competent vicars over a period of time. Some vicars manage a further transition to become archdeacons, deans or even bishops. The potential for these higher promotions is not of course given to everyone. The Church has found ways to spot and nurture the talent required for such posts so that the Church can provide for itself individuals who can lead and inspire within the institution those set below them.
Unfortunately, the theory, that competent inspirers and managers for the Church can always be found by promoting the underlings, does not always work in practice. While most probationers become competent choristers in choirs, the same is not necessarily true within the Church. There are potential pitfalls in the assumption that this will happen smoothly, particularly as in the Church at any rate, the choice of candidates is shrinking in number. Also, to take another example, if a particular member of the clergy has a severe personality disorder which no one has picked up during his/her training, the individual will not function well where they are and certainly never be able to fulfil a new wider role satisfactorily. He/she may receive promotion as a way of moving them out of a situation where they have created a great deal of unhappiness. In popular parlance this is known as throwing a dead cat over the wall. There are numerous examples of bishops writing letters of recommendation to other bishops so as to be relieved of a problem clergyman. It is here that we need to bring in the idea of the ‘Peter Principle’.
For those who do not know of the Peter Principle, it is an idea familiar in business settings. It states that everyone rises to the level of their incompetence. Another way of saying this is to point out the way that those who fulfil a role within an organisation satisfactorily will be eligible for promotion until they arrive at a rank where they are out of their depth and cannot perform competently. The organisation will thus theoretically be brought to a virtual standstill because everyone has been overpromoted and cannot do the tasks that are required of them. People will mutter Peter Principle whenever they observe individuals who flounder with their job descriptions. While it is sometimes said in a jokey fashion, there is potentially a serious case of unhappiness when you see someone who was an excellent assistant struggling to manage a department without any gift or calling to organise other people’s work.
How does the Peter Principle apply to the Church? The vast majority of clergy never achieve or seek any sort of formal promotion. Most achieve a level of competence necessary to do the job of parish priest adequately. Chief of these tasks are the ability to preach, teach and to care. What normally happens is that they manage the bulk of the expectations made of them but then they find certain areas where they are indeed incompetent. The real problem arises when they have no insight into their inability to do certain things. For example, the politics of church life, locally and nationally can be hard to negotiate. Conflict resolution skills and psychological insight are needed in many places but few clergy are equipped in these areas. Another area of incompetency is in the theological arena. A strong evangelical or Anglo-Catholic training may have prepared well someone for churches of those traditions but elsewhere adherence to one of these traditions may be experienced as something harsh and inflexible. The ‘incompetence’ here is seen in the inability to have the flexibility to understand how different traditions work for people. Clergy may also find themselves incompetent in dealing with attack. A determinedly difficult parishioner, now armed with the possibility of making a CDM against a member of the clergy they dislike, can cause sleepless nights and even a breakdown in their victim.
A vicar who shows competence and comes through the stresses of the post reasonably intact, may be offered promotion. Promotion to a residentary canonry or an archdeacon’s role may be considered an honour. In practice these posts may not be all that rosy and the candidate may simply be having to go through the experience of finding news areas of incompetency in a fresh context. There are just so many variables in these posts. Clergy training cannot be expected to prepare the individual for some of the contradictory and conflicting expectations involved in these more exalted roles. Negotiating the petty jealousies of a cathedral close, for example, is reputedly appallingly difficult. To take other examples. An archdeacon is required to act in some quasi-legal ways for the Church. They are also the ones that gives to parishes the news that a vicarage is to be sold off or a parish church closed. Most archdeacons have served as parish priests, so they are sensitive to the real pain of parishioners. It cannot be easy having to represent the institution when you are required to act against the perceived interests of a group of lay people. These are the ones who have given so much to their churches locally.
It is when we get to the top of the ‘food-chain’, the House of Bishops, we really begin to discover how difficult it is to remain competent. A bishop may have been chosen, for example, for his/her proven competence as a parish priest of a large London Church. Does this really prepare him/her for the tasks of managing/defending/serving an institution, possibly creaking with unresolved power issues going back decades? The CDM discussions have drawn attention to the contradictory expectations laid on a bishop to be both a pastor and a prosecutor to the same person. The IICSA hearings gave us some insight into the way that decisions were taken at Lambeth during George Carey’s time. One thing we learned was that the officers in Lambeth seemed to be reluctant ever to draw in expertise from outside. A small group of top advisers felt that they could advise the Archbishop to make crucial decisions about Peter Ball. Is this reluctance to consult outside the small group of advisers still the current philosophy? Lambeth/Church House seems to be in desperate need of sound legal advice to find its way through the current quagmire of core groups and suspensions of senior figures that are filling its in-tray. Real questions are being asked connected with the competence of the Church at the national level to conduct its own affairs unaided.
The word incompetence, when brought into the Peter Principle, is being used in a fairly light-hearted way. To be incompetent is not necessarily a serious matter. It only becomes such when an institution has no means of correcting the terrible mistakes that incompetent individuals are liable to make. Incompetence whether caused by ignorance, conceit or malevolence, is a particularly important matter when the individual refuses to admit to it and own up to it. The Church of England needs help at the highest level but seems reluctant to ask for it.
In Part 1 I discussed a few of the concerns I have about Bethel Sozo (BS) and its parent church, Bethel Redding (BR). Since then I have discovered that BR’s influence is even more pervasive than I had thought: there are churches not listed as ‘Sozo churches’ which nevertheless have links to BR and run ‘Healing Rooms’ based on BR thinking. And, according to the BS UK website, ‘Bethel Sozo is being offered in hundreds of churches across the UK from almost every denomination & stream. They have opted to offer this ministry within their own church community. Accordingly, they do not appear on the Bethel Sozo UK website.’
Are these churches with BR links aware that 3 of the church’s senior leaders are vocal Trump supporters? That serious questions have been asked about the church’s finances? That it has been accused of promoting conversion therapy for LGBT people? That its theology is not orthodox?
Let’s take a look at Bethel Sozo. In this blog there is not space for a thorough treatment of what is a complex and often ambiguous system, but I want to point out a few areas of concern.
When you book a Sozo you’ll be issued with paperwork, including an indemnity release (aka liability release) form and a forgiveness sheet. But if Sozo is as gentle as they claim, why do they need clients to affirm that they will ‘release Bethel Sozo Ministry…from any harm or perceived harm resulting from my voluntarily receiving of [sic] free prayer’?
The 2-page forgiveness form advises clients not to proceed with a Sozo unless they are willing to forgive everyone who has wronged them, as ‘forgiveness is vital to deliverance and freedom’. While this is true, forgiving deep traumas such as abuse is best seen as part of the lengthy process of healing, not as a prerequisite to it. Here the pressure is piled on in a way calculated to hinder healing rather than facilitate it: ‘Unforgiveness…Binds you in a prison of torment’ and ‘allows the enemy [Satan] to have access to you.’
The Sozo session will last anything from 90 min – 3 hours. The client will find herself with the Sozoer (their term), a notetaker who will remain silent, and possibly a third, and will be asked to close her eyes for part of the session. Outnumbered, and with closed eyes while being observed by the Sozo team, the client is put at an immediate disadvantage. Yet despite this power imbalance, the liability disclaimer states: ‘I understand that…I am under no obligation to accept or reject any of the advice or help that I might receive from the team members.’
The aim of BS is to ‘build strong connections’ with each member of the Trinity. Four ‘Tools’ are used in basic Sozo (there are also advanced Tools and Sozo for children, couples, finances, sexual abuse survivors, and education). There are problems with all the Tools, but there isn’t space in this blog to discuss them. I’ll focus on the Father Ladder. In BS theory, each member of the Trinity corresponds to a part of a human being with its particular needs and fears; which in turn corresponds to a role in the nuclear family. The chart below is reproduced from Sozo: Saved, Healed, Delivered (SSHD):
The separation of soul and spirit is simplistic and doesn’t do justice to biblical concepts; the family roles are stereotyped. The division between members of the Trinity is pursued to the extent that they will ask the same question of all three Persons, expecting different answers. This is a version of the Modalist heresy. Yet these concepts are at the heart of what BS believe and what they do.
The Sozoer typically begins by asking the Sozoee (their term) why they have come. Using this information, the issue is linked with a Person of the Trinity and a family member.; or they may detect a poor relationship with a member of the Trinity and deduce the source of the problem from that. An example given is of a woman who felt ‘Father God’ was cold and distant. The Sozoer’s immediate response:
‘Repeat after me: ‘I forgive my earthly father for being distant, for not wanting to be near me, and for not creating a space for me to feel safe or accepted. I renounce the lie that Father God does not want me close and does not have a safe place for me.’
The book gives many such examples where the Sozoer dictates a prayer to a Sozoee without first confirming their assumption of the family member’s failings (and in some cases, crimes) is correct, or asking the client if they are willing to pray as directed. The interview may continue with further dictated prayers of repentance, renunciation, and forgiveness, or demonic influence may be detected and banished. The liability waiver begins to make sense.
At some point in the session the Sozoer will ask the client to close their eyes and think of ‘Father God’, Jesus, or ‘Holy Spirit’. This may happen at the beginning or further into the session; with only one of the Trinity or with all three – but, crucially, only one at a time. The question follows: ‘What do you feel, hear or see?’ Depending on the response, the Sozoer is ‘able to discern which lies hinder that person’s connection to the Lord’. The pattern of forgiving and renouncing is followed each time, to ‘remove each negative presence’.
BS, and its parent church BR, teach that when a person is in a good relationship with Father God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit, and not ‘partnering’ with wrong spirits, their other problems are resolved and their needs met. Sometimes this belief is implicit rather than explicit, but it lies behind many of the examples given in SSHD and on the BR website. Thus, the struggling single mother who has been taken through repentance, forgiveness, and deliverance is now free to ask for help, with the implication her financial worries will be solved.
No doubt many of those offering BS ministry will have a sincere desire to help; and some Sozoees will feel they have been helped. In some cases renouncing unhealthy attitudes and behaviours and forgiving others will have been what they needed. Others will be disappointed and disillusioned when expected improvements do not occur. Significantly, a Shabar ministry has now been established for those who ‘have been unable to hold on to’ their healing through Sozo. I fear some will find that the power imbalances, assumptions made, unfulfilled expectations, and distorted theology of Bethel Sozo will have only damaged them.
Among the many theological ideas that can be read out of the Bible, there is one that declares that human beings individually are intrinsically evil. I do not here propose to agree or disagree with the notion that we as humans have ‘no power of ourselves to help ourselves’. I mention it at this point merely to note that such teaching exists. In some churches it is not only believed to be the starting place for a theology of salvation, but it seems to provide the single most important area of discourse for sermons. Such sermons will spend time in contemplating the terrible fate of unrepentant sinners who never turn to God.
One of the reasons that I, for one, want to sit lightly on some of the classic statements about human evil and sin is because these doctrines do not really engage with the reality of human evil as we experience it in our modern age. Evil is found in individuals, but it is seen far more often in groups, corporate institutions and mass movements. Let me explain. The individual person is limited in the amount of evil that he/she can accomplish unaided. To become really effective in the evil stakes, you need to cooperate with others. The most evil people in the world are the ones that can somehow manipulate others to do their evil bidding. Alternatively, there will be the ones that, with varying degrees of culpability, get caught up in a thoroughly corrupt or toxic movement. On my own I can spread a lot of unpleasantness around. But when I get together with others, I can be a super-champion in the tyrant stakes or inciting violence and hatred in all directions.
This observation about human evil, that it is more effective when mixed up with other people’s malevolence, is accompanied by another observation. Just as certain forms of group activity seem to bring out most effectively the hidden Beelzebub, so time spent alone can help the individual find a personal morality less affected by the ‘passions of sinful men.’ I would hazard the thought that not only do individuals have limited capacity to do a lot of evil on their own, they also are quite good at discovering the good things about themselves when allowed time to be properly alone. In their alone time, people like you and me will be quite good at having a longing for noble or even heroic actions. These will allow us to want to leave behind something good on the earth. Few people want to mess up the activity that most ensures us a lasting legacy, that of parenting. Parenting is an activity that the majority of us get to experience. It brings out any number of desirable qualities, patience, the capacity to forgive and all the feelings and actions we associate with the single word – love. Parenting is not something we do at odd moments. For it to be effective, it has to be practised continuously over years, even decades. Those who are not, for whatever reason, human parents still experience the same nurturing instinct which draws something out of ourselves to make most of us decent, even if often flawed individuals.
There is a reason that, although many Christians are prepared to recognise that the greatest evils occur when we get together with others, much Christian teaching remains obsessed with the failings/sin of individual people. I believe that one reason for this is because many Christians have in modern times become totally obsessed with sex and sexual activity. The wider public beyond the Church has got used to thinking that the only sin Christians really care about or want to discuss is to do with sex. Sin is seen to be straying from certain narrow rules and decisions about the way we express our sexuality and such decisions are made by each of us individually. We all recognise that our sexual lives have the potential to provide enormous fulfilment but also massive harm to self and others. But however terrible the effect of an individual’s sexual sin can be, such as in abuse and rape, the obsession of many Christians is not about this rare possibility, but to object to anything that does not fit a narrow definition of ‘normal’. In this respect the choices of some Christians to defy the norm is trivial compared with the evils we have hinted at above. This blog piece cannot set out a complete charter of sexual morality but merely make one simple statement. The task of Christian sexual ethics is to find a way that links sexual love to love and the values of mutuality, care and respect for others. Such a morality of sexual behaviour is attainable, but many seem to fail.
Let us stay for a moment with the hypothesis that on our own, we, and most other people are mostly decent and caring and want the good of those around them. What causes some people to be sucked into groups or mobs that seem to cause most of the damage and toxicity in society and the world? I am thinking of any group from a small committee to extremist political groups with fierce tribal or nationalistic aims. These so easily, in some parts of the world, can cause bloodshed. St Paul speaks about the principalities and powers. I wonder if he is describing the attractive and seductive option to become merged into a group, large or small. In this way a person moves away from being a conscience-listening individual to the faux freedom and exhilaration of being part of a ‘mass-mind’. Making this transition to thinking and acting with the power of the group is still our choice. Further, the responsibility for deciding to remain there is ours. My short theory about these powers, those that create the gang, the group or the mob, is that they provide very quickly to each member an experience of feeling instantly powerful. Power of this kind is not always or even necessarily toxic, but it can quickly become such. An otherwise well-meaning individual can even be corrupted by being on a committee. Perhaps such a committee has reached a point where the group they represent can destroy a rival organisation by some underhand method. Are you as a loyal member of the committee prepared to forget simple ethics for the sake of the organisation? Do you go along with the use of possible ‘dirty tricks’ which, while not benefiting you personally, will be able to profit your group financially or in terms of power and prestige?
In our political life and even in our Church we know about group power games that are evil. Personal and corporate morality can often be seen to be going off in two directions. The morality of each individual member of a group may be of the highest in terms of personal ethics and behaviour. But, somehow, the situation of membership of some groups, allowing ourselves to be sucked into some less than honest networks, has the effect of creating something evil in our lives. Within the group context we may find ourselves tolerating dishonesty, lying, cruelty and insensitivity towards other people. My reader may well be filling in the blank spaces for recent examples of behaviour of this kind. The fact that individual members, such as ourselves, would not behave like this when working alone, does not excuse any of us from the corporate guilt if we are in this situation. It still belongs to us personally even though the conscience and the guilt has been dulled because the evil is spread over each participant.
Membership of a gang, mob or powerful committee will normally give to the individual the reward of an intoxicating experience of power. Whenever we are with others who believe they have the power to change things for good or evil, we will also feel a kind of excitement. Our psyche is being roused at a deep level; at the same time it feeds the part of us that longs to be important. Power, the feeling that raises us above a sense of inadequacy, has an addictive intoxicating quality. People will often sell their integrity and their very soul to possess it. For this reason, the groups that offer this power, will always have their loyal servants. The possession of power, even when we dilute it by sharing it with others, is perhaps the greatest motivator for action. That is perhaps why people will be drawn to the groups that offer it.
The Christian teaching about sin has tended, in modern times, to focus on the individual struggling with sexual temptation. That picture of the nature of sin has taken our eyes off the more realistic picture of human evil which is found when an individual allows themselves to be drawn into a group for the sole purpose of exercising power – the power to dominate, to bully, to feel important. When we focus only on individual failings, we miss the terrible principalities and powers, the group allegiances through which people bring much evil, unhappiness and malevolence into the world.
Indifference and callousness towards abuse survivors revealed within the Church of England at the highest level. The truth discovered in SAR (subject access request)material.
A letter from 7 survivors to the Lead Bishops, Director of Safeguarding, and Chair of the National Safeguarding Panel
Dear Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, Bishop Debbie Sellin, Melissa Caslake, Meg Munn
We write to you as survivors, some of whom are members of the Church of England’s Survivors Reference Group – to express considerable concern at the attitudes of Bishop Tim Thornton in an email recently shared with us from SAR material.
The Bishop at Lambeth sits on the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG) and the National Safeguarding Panel (NSP), and is a senior figure inside Lambeth Palace, all of which make him a key player in the church’s pastoral and strategic response to survivors. The attitude displayed here confirms what many survivors have long thought; that the adversarialism towards victims of abuse has not just extended to their litigation and insurance agents, but has its roots in the most senior members of the Church’s structure and indeed, inside the very bodies which make decisions on how survivors are treated.
In our view, Bishop Tim Thornton should be asked to stand down from these boards of governance and undergo further training to help him develop a compassionate understanding of the impact both of abuse and also of re-abuse (by the Church and its agents). It is our understanding that this Bishop is among a number of senior figures on the NSSG with unresolved issues (disclosure denial, dishonesty, silencing of major questions) where serious apologies outstanding to survivors have not yet been made.
We would invite the Bishop at Lambeth, and indeed all members of the NSSG, to reflect on the words of Archbishop Welby from last year.
The Church must learn “to put actions behind the words” when supporting survivors of clerical abuse, “because ‘sorry’ is pretty cheap”, the Archbishop of Canterbury said. “When someone is abused . . . it destroys their lives. It always leaves scars and wounds that are so profoundly deep, and I am so very sorry for every occasion that it has happened, and for our failures to deal well with survivors…..We need a specialised system for anything to do with abuse which is much more survivor-centred, much more careful, much less impeded by other things cluttering up the system.” 1
We are conscious that Ecclesiastical Insurance (EIG) which the Bishop at Lambeth refers to, has done considerable harm to many survivors through ugly and unethical litigation strategies. We invite you as leaders of the Church’s safeguarding boards – to now consider requiring all future settlements by EIG to be monitored by both Church and survivor representatives – so that the Church and its agents can begin to develop a culture of justice, fairness and good ethics in working with survivors of abuse.
We also remind you that at the Safeguarding Summit in York survivors spoke considerable truth to power – and stood as a group to outline just one of the major hindrances to the Church moving forward with survivors. Namely the presence of senior figures in disclosure denial on the NSSG. This has remained unacknowledged and ignored. We ask that you now address this please. And we ask that you address the other main hindrance of lack of redress and an ongoing refusal to rescue lives that have been left broken and wrecked by the systemic re-abuse by this Church.
Email in 2019 from Bishop Tim Thornton to Bishop Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, and Bishop Peter Hancock, former Lead Bishop.
and accessed as result of a Subject Access Request (SAR)
In a 2017 interview with BBC journalist Donna Birrell about the same case, Bishop Tim Thornton expressed a somewhat different view. In the transcript of that interview also accessed from the Church through SAR, the Bishop at Lambeth seemed to acknowledge the importance of listening to the experience of survivors and that EIG had not always acted in the correct manner.
In his words:
“We have been given evidence that in some cases it wouldn’t appear as if it has been.”
“…it is very impressive and humbling to see the way in which some survivors have continued to ask very hard and difficult questions.”
It would appear that the Bishop at Lambeth’s view has changed since 2017.
We received a reply on 9th July from Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, the Lead Bishop – and are hopeful of a further response.
Two supporting letters have been sent to the Lead Bishops, but we have been requested not to put them into public domain at this time.
This article is offered without much commentary, as we believe none is necessary.
Recently I wrote about schools of deliverance ministry popular in charismatic circles during the second half of the 20th century – ministries of which I had personal experience. More recently another school of inner healing and deliverance has become popular, and of this I have no direct experience.
Bethel Sozo (so called in the UK to distinguish it from the older Sozo Ministries International, run by Marion Daniel) comes from Bethel Church in Redding, California. It was founded by Dawna De Silva, who with her co- leader Teresa Liebscher writes much of the literature.
One obvious difference between Bethel Sozo (BS) and most earlier schools of deliverance ministry is its organisation. Previously deliverance was often offered at a retreat centre such as Ellel; by itinerant missioners like Marion Daniel or Eric Delve; or in parishes such as St. Aldate’s, Oxford and St. Michael-le-Belfrey, York. Some clergy, like Michael Green, carried out deliverance both in their own parish and while travelling. At churches like the Belfrey a number of people (including myself) were trained in Wimber’s methods of power healing and deliverance, and both staff and congregation were strongly encouraged to attend Wimber conferences on his UK visits. Later in the 1990s Wimber’s organisation began to establish a number of Vineyard churches in the UK where his methods were used.
BS has no retreat centres or churches of its own, but there are Sozo teams based in other churches. Most of these belong to networks such as New Wine and the Vineyard, but a number of others to established denominations such as the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and the Baptist Union. A map on the BS UK website will guide you to your nearest ‘Sozo Church’ or ‘Sozo Resource Church’. The National Facilitator of BS UK is an LLM (licensed Lay Minister) in Rochester Diocese; she is on the Council of Reference too. The C of R also includes a London associate vicar and a (former?) Norfolk churchwarden who volunteers at Holy Trinity Brompton’s Healing Room. Teresa Liebscher is a Trustee.
Sozo is described as ‘a gentler form of deliverance’ and differs in several respects from the older methods. Practitioners like Michael and Rosemary Green, Ellel, and Wimber made a clear distinction between healing and deliverance ministry. The latter involved routing demons, whether they were oppressing or possessing a person. Healing, on the other hand, was usually physical or emotional and did not involve confrontations with evil spirits. Some practiced ‘healing of the memories’ but again this was usually differentiated from deliverance. Often ministry to a client would progress to deliverance only after healing had been attempted, or if what were considered clear signs of demonic presence were detected.
With BS that distinction is blurred. Healing and deliverance are seen as much the same thing, and when a ‘spirit’ is referred to it’s often unclear whether a human attitude or supernatural entity is meant. In Sozo: Saved, Healed, Delivered an ‘orphan spirit’ seems to be considered a demon, but is defined in the glossary at the end of the book as an established attitude. In the same book a ‘stronghold’ is variously described as ‘demonic’ and ‘a mindset’.
This vagueness is characteristic of much of the BS I’ve researched. It might be considered a positive; in classic spirituality the devil is often seen as working through human weaknesses and temptations. In reading BS literature I was occasionally reminded of C.S. Lewis’ portrayal of devilish strategies in Screwtape Proposes a Toast. Unlike Lewis, however, de Silva and Liebscher seem unable to distinguish between a metaphor and a fact. When a literal belief that a client is oppressed by demons (and BS considers that most of us suffer demonic oppression) combines with an unclear message about whether a particular aspect of the client is demonic or natural, the resulting confusion could be unhelpful. Is this a habit I need to change, which requires self-discipline, or was it the influence of an evil spirit I’ve just been delivered from – in which case I can just relax?
The BS approach is more subtle than that of, for example, Ellel, but they still see demonic influence as pervasive. They inhabit a universe in which a demon might appear in the corner of your living room, or repeatedly come to your bedside to harass you – and in which it’s OK to order the demon to ‘go bother’ your colleague instead.
This preoccupation – some might call it an obsession – with supernatural phenomena is typical of Bethel Church. It’s a charismatic megachurch with a heavy emphasis on miracles, and teaching a version of the prosperity gospel. Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM) is known for practices such as ‘grave soaking’ (aka ‘grave sucking’), in which adherents visit the grave of a holy person or gifted healer to absorb their ‘anointing’. BSSM is a 1-3 year course, which boasts 13,000 graduates from 100 countries. In 2017 It was reported to earn about $7 million – a mere 20% of the church’s income. There is now a branch in London.
When the massive Carr Fire threatened Redding in August 2018, Pastor Bill Johnson and other Bethel leaders prophesied rain and commanded the wind to shift. In the event the church campus and most of the town were saved, but 1,564 buildings were destroyed, 121,000 acres burnt, and 6 people killed. 25 of the 800 Bethel staff lost their homes and possessions.
Bethel teaches that people can be raised from the dead. The Dead Raising Team claim their 60 teams worldwide have resurrected 15 people, according to a report in Newsweek of 12 Dec. 2019. The DRT has its own Facebook group, and a website via which you can request their ministry. As the Newsweek article appeared, the church were praying that a 2 year old girl be raised from the dead, and ‘declaring life over her’ (Bethel prayers often come in the form of commands). Only after 6 days did funeral preparations begin. The child’s parents had believed she would come back to life – their anguish doesn’t bear thinking of.
In Shifting Atmospheres Dawna De Silva writes of her neighbours’ lawns being dead after a 3-year drought, and of ‘declaring life into the neighbourhood…this lawn will be watered.’ She takes credit for her neighbour ‘lavishly’ watering his lawn the same evening, and for ‘the spiritual atmosphere of dryness’ shifting. She doesn’t consider the environmental impact of using scarce water supplies on suburban lawns.
The teachings of De Silva and Liebscher reflect those of Bethel Redding: that because of Jesus’ victory on the cross we have a right to health and prosperity. All we have to do is ‘live in the victory’ and banish those spirits that prevent us from doing so. The question is: do our clergy and bishops realise what they are harbouring in some of our churches? And, in view of Bethel’s expansionist plans and increasing popularity, are they prepared for more churches to become ‘Sozo churches’.
On the Radio 4 Sunday programme broadcast yesterday, there was an interesting exchange on the topic of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM). In recent weeks and months, this issue has never been far away from a mention on this blog as the CDM is constantly being discussed in the Church press. During July, two important developments took place connected with the Measure. In the first place, the House of Bishops, meeting on the 8th July, declared themselves committed unanimously to ‘working towards replacing the Measure and to making interim procedural changes to ensure the current system is more workable until new legislation is enforced’.
The second CDM news to appear this month is the publishing of an extensive piece of research overseen by Dr Sarah Horsman of the Sheldon Trust based near Exeter. The Sheldon Trust is a charity working with clergy who have been involved in disciplinary situations where they are going through times of stress and breakdown. The Trust had commissioned its own research on the actual working of the CDM in the Church and the experience of clergy facing its procedures. The survey approached every English clergyman (I believe), working or retired and sought their views of the Measure. I received the questionnaire but did not return it, having left my English parish three years before the CDM came into force in 2006. The Sheldon survey received a high rate of return (about 33%) and the details of 291 clergy facing 351 CDMs were available for study. A significant amount of extra comment from those surveyed was generated. In all, 306 people contributed 270,000 words about their experience of the Measure. It is important to note that the CDM was only connected in 25% of cases with safeguarding allegations. One example highlighted in the Church Times concerned a clergyman who had missed taking a funeral due to illness. That possible scenario is one that haunts the imaginations of most clergy. A good proportion (66%) of the cases came back with a not guilty verdict but damage had been done to those accused, particularly by the length of time that the process had taken. A third of cases had taken more than six months to resolve. The actual interview can heard through this link. https://www.sheldonhub.org/usercontent/sitecontentuploads/260/BE714015EBC9A10A6EE9FB071D395502/sunday%20extract.mp3
The Radio 4 interview invited Dr Sarah Horsman and Bishop Tim Thornton to react to both these recent developments in the reform and replacement of CDM. Much of Dr Horsman’s contribution was concerned with her report from Sheldon and the meticulous analysis of the survey data by the two academics from Aston University. The most striking and memorable part of the report were not the opinions (mostly negative) of the CDM process but the accounts of the appalling stress involved in having any part in it. No fewer than 40% of those clergy investigated had contemplated suicide and the incidence of Post-Traumatic stress was high. Three individuals had actually attempted suicide. High on the agenda was the failure of the Church to provide adequate support, either legal, pastoral or financial. Suspension from duty, particularly among those found not-guilty had been a heavy burden to carry. Clearly the process had destroyed, for many, the feeling that they would ever be able to trust the senior members of the clergy who had set the CDM process in motion. The six page summary can be found here. https://www.sheldon.uk.com/UserContent/doc/1588/emerging%20research%20findings%20on%20cdm.pdf
Dr Sarah Horsman’s testimony over the fate of accused clergy was fairly harrowing in its impact. Any clergyman listening would instinctively have empathised with the accounts of appalling threats to clergy when career, housing, family relationships and sanity itself are placed in jeopardy. The Radio 4 interviewer was also clearly shocked by Dr Horsman’s descriptions. He seemed to be inviting Tim Thornton, the Bishop at Lambeth to share in the sense of outrage at the sheer weight and volume of pain and suffering we had heard from Dr Horsman. What might the interviewer and a fair minded listener have expected from a senior official who was presiding over a system appearing to be in total meltdown and described as a ‘mess’?. Bishop Thornton admitted that things were not working well and that the Church was moving towards replacement of CDM. Somehow one wanted to hear much more than that. We all, including the interviewer, wanted to hear some words of real compassion and empathy. Bishop Thornton was prepared to concede that some individual cases had been conducted badly but he was not prepared to concede that the structure itself was, and had been for some time, in a state of near collapse. It also did not appear to worry the Bishop that the CDM process was also doing a great deal to undermine good relationships between bishops and their clergy. A question that was not asked was why the Measure had been allowed to carry on so long when there were so obviously numerous examples of failures of process over its 14 year history.
There were two other jarring notes in the Bishop Thornton interview. In the first place he referred to Dr Horsman as Sarah. That might have been more appropriate if they had been discussing together and a degree of informality established. The interviews were both recorded independently. In view of the fact that Dr Horsman is a respected academic who is speaking prophetically to the Church, the use of the Christian name by the Bishop came over as somewhat condescending and belittling. In this situation the Bishop should have regarded himself as being the one having something to learn. In the second place when talking about the development of a replacement to the CDM, Bishop Thornton referred to a mysterious ‘we’ who were going to do the work and bring forward the new proposals. In the view of the shameful mess that CDM is in at present, it would be reassuring to think that Bishop Thornton and those who work with him at Lambeth Palace and Church House had begun to move away from the assumption that all the skills necessary for reform were to be found in-house. Is one really expected to have confidence in the message ‘Trust me, I am a bishop’. Are the skills of ‘we’ sufficient, when the old model is failing so lamentably? I am sure that the independent body or individual who has provided the money for the Sheldon research is hoping some of the wisdom expressed in those 306 witness statements would find their way into the new fit for purpose CDM.
In recent weeks, this blog has found itself highly critical of these two areas of Church legislation, the interrelated processes around Core Groups and CDM. Many of the problems around these two pieces of legislative writing seem to result from the fierce desire of the Church to retain total control of the processes. One problem with the Church having so much control of these legal structures is that the system easily becomes riven with conflicts of interest. There are relatively few lawyers competent to work in Church legal cases, so the ones that exist will be constantly encountering each other, being consulted over the same cases. Scrutiny from an ombudsman, working independently, is something that might have alleviated many of the CDM and Core Group problems that we have seen recently. The Church needs to have a discipline process for the clergy, but we need some radical new thinking to get this right for the future. Bishop Thornton has indicated that the House of Bishops is ready to discard the current CDM . Let us hope for the sake of the whole Church that they get this right. The precedents that have been set suggest that there is still too much secrecy in the system. This is alongside a fierce clinging on to power and privilege by a small group within our national Church. This lack of openness and desire for control and power by a few do not suggest that this process will be straightforward. General Synod needs to be ready to scrutinise and question future legislation carefully. The Sheldon Trust has shown us how refreshing it is when an independent body shines a light of constructive criticism on a sclerotic structure that seems to describe our national church at present.
In my last piece I spoke about conflicts of interest (COIs) occurring in the situation of Core Groups. Somebody very helpfully pinned up on Thinking Anglicans a government definition of what a conflict of interest involves in the world of business. It is worth quoting in full.
A conflict of interest occurs when a board member has multiple interests which may influence the way in which they act or vote on a board. The specific risk inherent in conflicts of interest is that the professional judgement or actions of a board member in relation to the company they represent are influenced by a secondary interest, such as a personal financial interest, the financial interests of family and friends, or the desire for personal advancement. As with all risks, there are ways of mitigating the risk.
In the messy world of church politics, where the motives for actions on a committee may be more to do with advancing a personal or ‘party’ interest than with money, we need to think about these ‘secondary interests’ and what they might consist of. What are the things in church life that people value highly which might make them act or vote in such a way to further secondary interests?
Almost every example I can think of which involves a hidden motive for such behaviour involves a manifestation of power of some kind. Let us look at a number of potential examples. They vary in levels of seriousness.
An advocate of a theological position is rejected because one or more members of the committee want to see a favoured party position strengthened. Affirming the power of being in the winning ‘party’ or tribe.
A member of a committee votes for the candidate who attended the same college as they did. An example of favouritism and indirectly promoting your own brand of training.
A committee member will allow personal and historic animosities to affect their assessment of an individual for a post. Exercising power over a disliked individual
The bias caused by a preference for PLU (people like us). Closet racism or misogyny
One party in the group has professional links or obligations to another party not in the room. As an example, a member of a law firm or reputation management company may continue to want to curry favour with an existing client like the Church of England, regardless of the topic under discussion.
Fear that something shameful from the past may be revealed if particular course of action is taken.
Decisions taken help to supress secrets that are kept for reputational or financial reasons.
If you gather a committee or group of church people together for any decision-making process, there will almost invariably be somewhere a link or personal connections that join them together. You need in this situation to import outsiders to question the process from a truly independent standpoint. I very seldom meet a Church of England clergyperson who does not know at least one person that I have known or worked with. Total independence in terms of knowing nothing about an individual prior to a meeting to make a judgement about them is probably impossible. Some conflicts of interest or secondary interests need not be a problem if they are out in the open and not hidden away. How do we avoid this issue becoming a real problem especially when we are dealing with decisions which potentially affect a person’s life, health and well-being?
The first thing that needs to happen is that the Chair of an interview committee, Core Group or a similar body possesses a clear understanding of all the issues around COIs. There is a professional judgement to be made about the point at which a past link or personal contact becomes a COI which would require an individual to withdraw from membership. In practice, in a properly run process, this should seldom be necessary. What does not inspire confidence is when, as with the Percy case, there appeared to be no awareness of several obvious conflicts right at the beginning of the process. Any naivety over such COIs does not encourage confidence that any part of the process is going to be sound or even legal. Recusal or removal, when required, should normally happen long before the main process gets under way. The grey areas of slight acquaintance or interest should be declared at the beginning so that all the other members are aware of them. One would like to think that the Church, of all places, was cultivating a culture of openness. It is a serious matter when undisclosed or hitherto ignored information subsequently becomes available. Having to remove members from a group suggests, at the very least, some incompetence on the part of the conveners. Deciding when such conflicts amount to sufficient procedural irregularity as to invalidate decisions requires honesty, courage and integrity. If in doubt, start again. This would seem the safest approach to most people.
I believe it was the Bishop of London who recently referred to the definition of culture as ‘the way we do things round here’. The current culture of the Church of England apparently does not seem to appreciate the importance of insisting on uncovering COIs in its efforts to promote fairness and justice. Whenever COIs exist within an institution unacknowledged, then the institution can quickly become corrupt and untrustworthy. The recent removal of two complainant dons from the Dean Percy Core Group may sound like a minor adjustment in the enactment of the Church’s disciplinary process. In fact, it is telling us far more than this. It is declaring that every single individual involved in initiating the Core Group process – the NST and the officials in Church House – were apparently blind to a simple requirement that fairness in such a group was essential to their proper (and legal) functioning. The inability to recognise one COI allows me to suggest that the conveners were also blind to a second more fateful COI. Here we are following the insights of Martin Sewell who has laid out the case for seeing the Core Group attack on Dean Percy as a struggle by a Church establishment faction to destroy a challenger to their power. Dean Percy, in short, represents a threat to vested interests at the heart of the Church of England. I leave my readers to consult the article for themselves. https://archbishopcranmer.com/martyn-percy-cultural-mindset-establishment-privilege/ While I cannot summarise the complex issues to which Martin draws attention, I can say that any just struggle against unaccountable factions of power has my attention. When the forces of oppression and power are exercised by Church leaders in the name of church discipline, that becomes a matter of the gravest concern.
Conflicts of Interest are an inevitable part of any functioning institution. To repeat the point, it is not their existence that is the problem. It is their deliberate suppression in the hope that people will not notice, so that decisions of integrity are prevented. The Martyn Percy case has become a test case for the Church. Will it continue down the path of dishonest dealing by using the power of undeclared interests, lawyers and money to enforce its will? Safeguarding protocols and confusions over their proper enforcement may be the issue being looked at currently. If there are serious doubts and questions about the ability of the Church to get things right in this area, what about other areas of its life that we know nothing of? The Church powers that be have not earned our trust for fair dealing in this area. Without earning the trust of their members on this matter, how can they expect to be given the benefit of the doubt in other areas of the Church’s life?
In an earlier blog I spoke about the loss of memory that can befall an organisation where there is a rapid turnover of staff. Traditions and important memories of the past could be wiped out for all practical purposes if the new people were coming into post knew nothing of what used to go on. The ability to be ‘in the know’ about the past used to be a position of considerable power. Today, however, the internet makes it far less easy to bury old information. The power of knowing much of what was said or written is given to anyone who has determination to seek it out. Reviews, lessons learned reports and old committee meeting minutes can be scrutinised by anyone with the determination and the time.
We have, on this blog, recently given a great deal of space to a discussion of Church Core Groups. Some may be weary of this topic. Nevertheless, this blog is primarily about the way power is exercised in the Church. These Core Groups are vivid expressions of this Church power. The coercion and pressure that may be felt by those who are the target of such a group is considerable. Also, a Core Group can, when mismanaged or bungled, do extensive damage to the reputation of the Church at large. Current interest in Church Core Groups has been caused by the wide publicity given to the one investigating Dean Percy at Christ Church. Quite a lot has already been said about the conduct of this Group, but I need to revisit it once again since it interacts with another once widely reported Core Group, the one dealing with the case of Bishop George Bell. This was convened six years ago in 2014, but its findings and procedures were critiqued extensively in an independent Review by Lord Alex Carlile.
This Carlile Review was published in December 2017 and made several recommendations for the future conduct of such Groups. On Friday 17th July we read that there appears to have been an effort, according to the Church Times, belatedly to apply one of the stipulations of Carlile’s recommendations. This was to outlaw conflicts of interest in such a Group. On this occasion the NST has addressed one glaring example of such a conflict in the Percy Core Group and decreed a change in the composition of the members. Two of the Group members, who are publicly identified as complainants against the Dean, have ‘been removed’. With them present, it must have been impossible for the Group to act in an unbiased fashion. It was as though two members of the prosecution team were also serving on the jury.
Many of those serving the current Oxford Core Group are probably unaware of what was said by Carlile, but there are those still working for the Church at a senior level, who cannot be ignorant of what was in the 2017 Review. Alongside his extensive criticisms of the Bell Core Group, Carlile had a clear vision for such groups in the future and the way they should be managed. The criticisms made by his Review were harsh. The Review stated that the Church of England had established a ‘Core Group which failed to follow a process which was fair and equitable to both sides’. The muddles and confusions that marked the Bell Core Group process had led to a serious situation. It raised (and raises) questions about the competence of the Church of England’s structures and their capacity for integrity and fair dealing. The current Percy Core Group threatens to be another serious disaster for the Church even with the recent changes. Would a more detailed appreciation of Carlile’s suggestions have helped to avoid another crisis and even an utter discrediting of the entire Core Group process?
Looking at the 74 pages of the Carlile Review, we find that, at its heart, there is a story of a woman given the name of ‘Carol’. She claimed to have been sexually abused, when she was a child in the early 50s, by the internationally known Bishop of Chichester, George Bell. This had been disclosed to a subsequent Bishop, Eric Kemp in 1995. Nothing came of the complaint and in 2012, Carol, by now a pensioner, wrote again to Lambeth Palace about the matter. She no doubt believed that her story might receive more attention after the Jimmy Savile scandal broke. After a series of consultations, a Core Group to look at the complaint was convened in 2014. This would review Carol’s claim and make some recommendations about possible compensation.
Carlile’s critical Review was especially exercised by the fact that the Group appeared very ready to assume Carol’s testimony as factual. There seemed no appetite for subjecting it to any proper scrutiny or query. Even accepting the fact that Carol may have been sexually abused by someone, there were other possible interpretations, such as mistaken identity of the abuser or memory lapses. This led to the main criticism of the process by Carlile that even handedness had been absent in what was a quasi-legal process. Carlile repeated this point several times in the review in different ways. In his words: ‘I have concluded that the Church of England failed to institute or follow a procedure which respected the rights of both sides.’ In effect the Group treated the reputation of Bishop Bell as of no real importance. Although Bell died 62 years ago, there are remaining relatives and many others who remember him.
In a small way I have a personal interest in Bishop Bell. The last six months of his life were spent in Canterbury and I, as a twelve-year-old have some personal memories of him. There will also still be others who were teenagers in the Diocese of Chichester and were confirmed by him. His good name does matter to many people. The issue of Bell’s possible guilt is discussed in the Review, but it was not in Carlile’s brief to decide on the matter. But we can read into the text a certain sympathy for Bell’s cause when Carlile speaks of a ‘rush to judgement’ on the part of the Core Group members. He also discussed the way that, once the belief in Carol and her claim that her abuser was Bishop Bell became fixed in the minds of the Core Group members, no attempt was made to seek out corroborative evidence to back up or challenge Carol’s recollections. Bell had a living biographer, Andrew Chandler and there was also alive in his 90s a former chaplain of Bell’s who had been resident in Bell’s Palace at the relevant time. No attempt to speak to either man was made. Carlile was himself able to speak to the 92-year-old chaplain, Canon Carey, about his recollections of the period as well as the buildings where the abuses were supposed to have taken place.
The Carlile review of 2017 is, in summary, a telling critique of the Church of England and a guide telling us how not to run a Core Group. Carlile described the Bell Group as a ‘confused and unstructured process’. Clearly there was a lot of work needing to be done if the Church was planning to continue to serve the cause of justice and historical transparency, using this process.
At one point in the report, Carlile uses a small word which I find significant. The word is ‘oversteered’. Perhaps that was what had distorted the whole 2014/5 Bell Core Group process. In a vehicle, a small oversteer can cause a fatal crash. In the case of Bell’s Core Group, oversteer in the process of interpreting evidence caused irreparable harm to the reputation of a past hero of the Church. Why did such oversteer happen? We need to recall that 2015 while the group was doing its work, the newspapers were full of the Bishop Ball affair. Is it too fanciful to suggest that image advisers employed by the Church were anxious to write a narrative about the Church, showing it to be considerate for the interests of an elderly lady who had been abused and was seeking justice?
Can we detect in any way that the Core Group was being ‘managed’ to satisfy the needs of the Church communications department and its desire for good PR? Were the Archbishop and Bishop of Chichester making statements suggested to them by their highly remunerated reputation managers? If Carlile’s critical Review is pointing us in this direction, then it follows that similar pressures will also be at work in the 2020 Percy Group. Are Core Groups, in other words, subject to being managed to suit the purposes of the reputation launderers working for the Church? In the comments I made about Bishop Jonathan’s responses to questions at the recent Synod, I suggested that the management of safeguarding issues was being handed over to a team of lawyers. Such lawyers would be the ones seeking to defend the Church and protect its good name. Now, after reading the Carlile report again, I am left wondering whether it is in fact the power of reputation managers and communication departments that we see operating behind the scenes and making the decisions for our Church. If that is the case, then our Church will not be taking too seriously the cause of transparency, justice and truth. These and other Christian values like honesty and right dealing may only ever be paraded in public when they can serve the purposes of good PR!
This rereading of the Carlile report and the way that it revealed rampant ‘unconscious bias’, to quote from Martin Sewell’s question at last Synod, allows us to point once again to our ongoing concerns over the Percy Core Group. Conflicts of interest still abound there. Quite apart from the inappropriate placing of two complainants in the Group, there are the collusions we have pointed to before between firms of lawyers, reputation managers and those at Christ Church who have manipulated the Church and the NST to operate in their interests. If the incompetence of the Bell Core Group was a scandal, the sheer apparent malevolence at work in this present Percy Group is one which is driving out all pretensions to ethical behaviour and Christian values. We seem to be witnessing evil and corruption on a grand scale. Will the Church at the national level be able to rescue this situation and allow it to come through this appalling crisis?
