A thought occurred to me as I was reflecting on the first part of the Peter Ball programme broadcast on Monday night on BBC2.  I was thinking how children learn the difference between right and wrong.  It occurred to me that my generation learnt a great deal about the victory of good over evil by watching endless performances of cowboy films.  In the 50s before televisions were generally available, crowds of children would pour down to their local cinema on Saturday mornings to watch a special programme for them at the price of sixpence.  There would nearly always be at least one Western and so the children would follow some well-worn story line involving ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ on horseback shooting it out at the climax.  I came to realise how important this oft-repeated story line was for a rudimentary moral education for the children of that period.  Knowing that good was going to prevail in every case was a kind of secular ethical conditioning.   Each individual was taught to believe in the ultimate victory of goodness.  That is not a bad moral principle to live by, even if it does not always work out this way.  Britain in the 50s was an optimistic place and it was still possible to believe in such an idea.  Schools, churches and fictional cowboys on horseback all backed up the idea that good guys always win in the end.

When I was watching the Peter Ball programme, I had a horrible sense of turn-around in this old comforting moral universe that I had grown up with.  Suddenly the roles of good and bad were reversed.  The ‘good’ church types, the ones that I had known, in some cases personally, in the Diocese of Gloucester, suddenly appeared weak, deceitful or actually wicked.  By contrast those who opposed them, the police, ruthlessly searching for truth, were the good and upright ones.  My professional and personal instinctive loyalties lay with the Archbishop and other bishops who were defending a villain.  But, by defending and protecting Ball, these same leaders were betraying truth as well as my trust and loyalty towards them.  My old moral universe was being undermined.  The ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’ had somehow swapped sides.  My past loyalty to the system was putting me on the wrong side next to the villains.

A large number of people are, like me, going to feel betrayed in watching the programme.  Speaking as a retired parish priest I can attest to a traditional fund of goodwill towards the church which has existed in the wider British society until very recently.  Clergy, of which I am one, were invited into people’s homes and the other institutions of the parish by people of all faiths or none.  We were thought, for the most part, to represent a wholesome influence and could be trusted to have total integrity in every area of life.  I belong to perhaps the last generation of parish clergy who genuinely believed in the value of door to door visiting.  The practical outcomes for that approach were numerous.  An important ‘dividend’, if I can call it such, was the privilege of taking the funerals of many non-church people and helping to make their passings a community event as well as a family occasion.  Much has happened in the past twenty years to render this approach to parish work obsolete and unworkable.  Safeguarding and health and safety issues have put many blocks to this way of functioning.  Chief among these blocks is the greater suspicion that exists in the wider society.  I have no direct knowledge of the protocols that exist today in parishes.  My impression is that visiting parishioners in their homes has, in many places, become extinct.

The programme about Ball will have increased, for many, the sense that churches and church people are no longer safe or worthy of trust.  In the language of Western movies, the church authorities, from Archbishops downwards, are among the ‘baddies’.   Even when an individual clergyperson earns the respect of a community or a diocese over a period of time, he/she will still be working for an institution that has lost face and trust at an institutional level.  I get the impression that many clergy are feeling the negative results of this institutional suspicion, something that constantly slows or impedes their access to parts of society they want to enter.  Instead of being assumed to be automatically trustworthy, clergy have to earn trust and this takes several years to obtain. 

Over the past months my blog posts have become increasingly gloomy.  The reason for this gloom is that the safeguarding scandals have fundamentally undermined the traditional contract of trust between Church and British society.  Something similar is happening in the States.  When Trump finally leaves office and the rampant criminality of his administration becomes clear, the uneasy agreement between president and his evangelical base will be seen as enormously damaging to their cause.  Evangelicals have ‘married’ corruption and dishonesty in a way that has never happened before in history.  Can they ever recover their integrity and respect in the eyes of American society?  The Church of England has also sold its integrity to the need to defend itself and its officers when they become corrupted or corrupting.  Not only have lies been told, but relevant to this blog, innocent people have been maligned and reputations attacked for the sake of defending the institution.  When is the same institution going to begin to act on behalf of the values that it is commissioned to defend?  I don’t need here to spell out what those gospel values are.  But among them, there are the values of truth, openness, honesty and humility.  The path back to integrity is a path that will include honouring and respecting those who have been wronged by a Church that has shown itself more concerned for its reputation than for its integrity.

Tonight (Tuesday) the sad Ball saga is to continue on BBC2.  Once again, we will be witnessing a battle between power and integrity.  As most of the drama has been rehearsed elsewhere before, we already know the broad plot outlines.  Again and again the Church will be seen to chose its power and privilege over its integrity, leaving its reputation damaged and the suffering of the abuse victims rendered more acute.  If the Church is ever to find its way back to its gospel origins, it is going to have to engage in metanoia.  That will require honesty and realism and such qualities are only found as the consequence of good leadership.  Is that leadership to be found?  That remains to be seen.  At the moment it is not visible. 

The saga of Harvey Weinstein in the States has been an ongoing story in the Press for over two years now.  It has reached some sort of climax with a trial beginning this week and Weinstein facing an indictment of five counts of sexual abuse against two women.  The original accusations against Weinstein in his capacity as a well-known film director marked the beginning of what came to be called the ‘me-too’ movement.   In many walks of life, including the Church, women have at last felt able to step forward and attest how they have been abused sexually by powerful men.  These sexual predators typically seemed to believe that their status and wealth can make any accusations disappear.   Scandals were hidden through a combination of threats, shaming and financial inducements.  In many cases these methods seemed to work.  The problem of sexual harassment in institutions of all kinds has remained a hidden one.  When money was handed out, the lawyers backing the powerful abusers forced the women to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).  In Weinstein’s case, 80 women had come forward originally alleging their stories of being sexually abused by this one individual.   Most of Weinstein’s alleged victims were would-be actors.   Some undoubtedly had believed that if they put up with the abuse at his hands, they would able to progress in the film world.

The criminal trial that has just begun is based on the evidence of just two victims.  The other seventy-eight women in various ways have either withdrawn from their original complaints or have seen them disqualified.  Some have been bought off with cash settlements and NDAs.  Others have been persuaded that the task of going through the court process is too injurious to their mental and physical well-being.  Many have been harassed by private investigators or reporters and their lives have been threatened with ruin by having a connection to such a notorious case.   Two only are left and it indicates that in a case like this, it costs a great deal to be able to stand up for what is right. What we are witnessing is the ability of money and power to make accusations evaporate for the most part.  That there are still two witnesses of Weinstein’s alleged misconduct is remarkable when you take in the methods available to the powerful to intimidate and terrify accusers.

One of the Weinstein accusers was speaking on a New York Times podcast this morning.  Apart from describing the lengthy and confusing process of the case coming to court, there was one particular moment where the moral dilemma facing her was encapsulated in a single recollection.  The victim had prepared a sheet of paper with two columns.  On one side she wrote the words.  Reasons for withdrawal from the case.  She found no difficulty in filling up this column.  There were many good reasons for withdrawal from the struggle.  There was the effect on her career, her family and her physical and mental well-being.  The case, she knew, whatever the outcome, could destroy her life.  She would never be able to escape the attention of the powerful supporters of the film mogul.  Already the original abuse had taken its toll on her health.  She was struggling with post-traumatic stress and all the physical and mental afflictions flowing from that.  Would it not be easier just to accept a financial settlement from her abuser to make everything go away? 

The witness then turned to the second column.  The heading at the top said ‘reasons for carrying on’.  Under this heading she wrote the words – ‘this is the right thing to do’.  Try as she could there was nothing else to add.  She stood to gain nothing financially or in terms of her health and well-being by continuing the fight.  But, although she did not use these words, she could hold on to a precious commodity inside herself, her integrity.

Many of my readers will perhaps have already worked out where this particular blog post is going.  In some ways it is a continuation my last one where I spoke on the courage of survivors.  Like the Weinstein witnesses, Church abuse survivors have very little to gain by fighting the establishment.  The Church of England which selected, trained and employed many of the perpetrators of sexual predation is enormously powerful.  Like Harvey Weinstein it can use the resources of money and legal expertise to batter down the protests of those who have been grievously wronged.  Next week we will, no doubt, hear again how the power of the Church attempted to manipulate even the legal system itself.  Peter Ball escaped justice for twenty years because the powerful in the church ensured that victims of his sexual violence, like Neil Todd, could not be heard.  As I have claimed in an earlier post, both Neil and Guide Nyachuru were literally sacrificed because powerful people refused to stop protecting the evil, using their resources of their influence and power.  On another blog, Thinking Anglicans, the question has been raised once again about the moral guilt of those who financially supported John Smyth in Zimbabwe. This lead directly to the drowning of Guide at a camp run by Smyth.

The church survivor/victims, both the visible and the invisible, are all suffering all the things that the Weinstein survivor wrote on her sheet of paper.  Health, wealth and relationships have all been compromised and blighted and these issues don’t get any easier for them as they get older.  I am privileged to know several of these brave and courageous survivors.  It is because of their persistence that many of the church-wide safeguarding initiatives have come to exist.  As one of them put it to me; ‘the survivors are making the running’.  It is hard to see that anything much would have been done to pursue justice in this area without the clamorous and courageous voices of survivors.   In the same way it took just two victims of Weinstein’s alleged behaviour to enable the court case to happen and put a check on abusive and exploitative behaviour in the American film industry.  Because of the ‘nuisance’ survivors like Gilo, Matt and Graham, the Church of England has in fact become a safer place for children and other vulnerable people.  When the history of the Church is written, the narrator will, no doubt, be puzzled that the authorities of the Church from our generation, from Archbishops downward, have failed to celebrate and honour these heroic survivors and what they have indirectly achieved at enormous personal cost.  As a direct consequence of their suffering, the Church, in another generation, may perhaps be allowed slowly to regain a measure of its integrity.  Because we do not yet celebrate these survivors, we cannot at the present time claim any of their virtue for ourselves.  Tragically too many members of the Church are content to stand aside and watch as the powers that be try to undermine their heroic witness to justice, integrity and truth.   

Writing a blog post fairly regularly means that I get an opportunity to clarify my thinking about the future of the Church.  As a retired member of the clergy, I probably should be doing the opposite – standing well back, stopping my subscription to the Church Times and letting the Church sort itself out without any comment from me.  What, after all, can one person do to influence an institution that I have not been a working part of for almost 20 years?

Surviving Church is a project that has evolved over the six and a half years it has been functioning.  It began by supporting a handful of survivors who had been through negative church experiences as a part of charismatic Christian groups.  The blog set out the material that I was discovering in preparing papers for an organisation I am part of, the International Cultic Studies Association. (ICSA).   Chris Pitt’s story, which we looked in the early days, was not vastly different from the accounts of those who had spent a long time in a cult.  As time went on, I found myself encountering new varieties of survivor, especially sexual and spiritual abuse victims.  Survivors were beginning to find me and my blog posts had then to try to reflect their issues and concerns.  Just as the nature of abuse being looked at was changing, so were the settings in which these abuses were taking place.  I began to understand better the way that some schools, universities and summer camps were facilitating abuses.  Abuse was not just about one person misbehaving but about networks sometimes colluding to misuse power and harm and damage individuals at the behest or control of a leader.  I started to see that abuse in its various forms was like a cancer, which could threaten and undermine the integrity and health of large swathes of the Church.

Since around 2015, at a time when a variety of public institutions began to face up to the issue of abuse, the evident lack of expertise in the Church to deal with the abuse problems has become clear.  The scale of historical incompetence and bungling among Church of England leaders was especially evident at the IICSA hearings in 2018-2019.   Back in 2015 a large 300,000-word report was published about a non-Anglican church in Brentwood, detailing ghastly forms of bullying and abuse against church members.  Using the theoretical resources and insights of the cult study network, ICSA, I offered through this blog extensive commentary on this report.   I even considered making the material the subject for a book.  Somehow that moment passed, particularly as there were other abuse reports clamouring to be read and commented on.  We had the Elliott report and the Gibb report and there were various other indications that the Church of England was beginning to take seriously the need to respond to historic abuse against individuals.  Bishops were constantly heard to say that survivors were at the centre of their concern. The post- Savile era and the way that this scandal had alerted wider public opinion to the dangers of sexual abuse of children, was also putting pressure on senior church leaders in every denomination to listen carefully to what was being told them by their members about sexual abuse.

In the past two or three weeks this blog has seen a crescendo of activity as once again the Fletcher story, first publicised last June, has burst into public awareness.  An additional level of public interest in the overall topic will be sustained over the next week with two hours of television coverage of the Ball episode.    These constant proddings of public attention will not do the Church of England any favours.    What more should we saying about this situation that the entire Church of England faces at the beginning of 2020?  In trying to offer a personal response to this question, I accept the fact that over the time span of the blog’s history,  I have become not just a reporter but an active supporter of the victims of the misuse of power.

The Challenges of 2020

• There still exist a large and unknown number of ‘survivors’, victims of abuse within the churches.  Even if there were only one such person, church authorities have a moral obligation to do all in their power to help them.
• Many of these survivors are invisible.  They have effectively been banished from sight because they cannot live with the shame of their abuse in public view.  Many of them are afflicted by financial hardship because of the abuse in addition to ongoing mental or physical illnesses.  Relationships have often been blighted.  The compassionate reaching out to these individuals is an on-going and probably never-ending task.
• Among the survivors are some brave individuals who have openly challenged the structures of the Church in their search for some recognition of their stories.  This emerging from the shadows to challenge and question the Church does not relieve their pain in any way.  It makes it more acute.  Some, like Matt Ineson and Gilo, have achieved visibility and are known to the media.  From the perspective of the bishops and other officials these survivors are probably regarded as nuisances and time wasters.  From the perspective of the as-yet silent survivors, they are heroes and they speak for many who are unknown.

Why do I take the side of the survivors, both the ‘nuisance’ ones and the silent ones?  One answer to this question, beyond the desire for justice, is that I see that the Church of England (and the other churches no doubt) has a problem with power and its management.  The cases of abuse, as exemplified by the stories of Peter Ball and Jonathan Fletcher, are not merely, or even mainly, about sex, but the outworking of long-term dysfunctions of power-structures.  These have privileged certain groups at the expense of others.    Sorting out the crisis of past abuse cases is also about sorting out historically embedded biases against women, the poor, children and other people from different minority backgrounds.  I do not presume to be able to suggest easy answers to any of these problems.  What I do know is that there is an immediate issue which is to do right by survivors.  Every day the Church expends its energy in fighting or ignoring survivors and denying them a proper voice, it depletes itself in the eyes of British society and a fair-minded public.  The Church of England, in other words, is rapidly losing its credibility over this one issue.  Am I only one who feels a severe mismatch between New Year messages about communication from our Church leaders and serious deficits of communication between the Church and the suffering survivors?  We need action.  We need a new attempt and a new energy to ‘act justly… and walk humbly before your God’.  Words and promises are no longer sufficient.

The healing of the needs of abuse survivors will only happen when the Church takes a completely fresh look at its understanding of power.  It needs to hear again what Jesus himself had to say about power.  Those passages that speak about service, the disowning of privilege and elitism are freely accessible to the reader.  Both those on the outside and those within might value the sight of the Church going into the desert with Jesus and relearning the true nature of power for our new decade.

In writing my reaction to the Daily Telegraph story on December 27th, there was one point where I got things completely wrong.  I speculated that communications experts at the top of the Church of England and the ReNew network would be working hard over the week-end after Christmas to respond to the reporting of Gabriella Swerling and her team.   Nothing has, in fact, appeared, as far as I can determine, from either source.  Instead of the great publicity crisis there has been a Great Silence.  No one in the Church of England has said a thing, either through an official statement or through one of the safeguarding organisations that look after this side of the Church’s life.  Jonathan Fletcher’s former church, Emmanuel Church Wimbledon (ECW), no doubt feel that their backs are covered by the earlier announcement of a Review under the leadership of Justin Humphreys and his organisation 31.8.

The absence of comment to the vivid Telegraph reporting cries out for some interpretation.   What is going on when a major national newspaper describes a scandal in the Church of England but this story is met with blanket silence?  Do they really think that the general public is going to ignore the account and move on?  It is here that I, as an independent commentator, can make a confident prediction.  The general public are not about to move on.  Those who know about it are appalled at the story and they are expecting decisive action from the leadership of the Church of England.  They want the Church to indicate that past behaviour, such as the Telegraph reported, can never happen again.  Without such statements and a determination to take action, the public is going to believe that the Church is losing (has lost?) the will to remove the appalling blight of bullying, sexual harassment and power games from within its midst.  In other words, the person in the street will conclude that the Church has become institutionally abusive.  Because of that it will be a place to be avoided at all costs.

These are strong words and I cannot, in this short piece, attempt to suggest all that the things that should be done to drag the Church back from becoming irredeemably tainted with this label of being institutionally abusive.  In any secular organisation, if a scandal of this size broke, there would be sackings and resignations.  Responsibility for failure would have to be apportioned and acknowledged.  It is only when this kind of cathartic cleansing has taken place, that the public can allow that organisation another chance to show itself as redeemable.  Such resignations do not happen in the Church, but there is still the need for the outside observer to have grounds for believing that there are changes, real changes, in the pipeline.

How has the Church arrived at a place when it cannot say or do anything significant to respond to a scandal of this size?  One could make the argument that the Church publicity machine was taking a break after Christmas and that key personnel were scattered to various parts of the world on holiday.  That may be in part a reason for the silence, but another reason may be that the Church authorities that operate out of Lambeth Palace and Church House are completely cut off from knowing anything about what goes on in Emmanuel Wimbledon and the other ReNew congregations.  Jonathan Fletcher, in other words, is a maverick clergyman over whom the Church has had no control or oversight for nearly 40 years.

Back last year, Justin Welby made the extraordinary claim in a television interview that John Smyth, the notorious figure involved with Iwerne camps and harsh physical beatings of young men, was not Anglican.  Whether or not he believed this statement, which was patently untrue, is probably beside the point.  What Welby’s statement said to me was that the official Anglican publicity machine was seeking to limit the impact of the Smyth scandal by seeking to separate the Church from any association with him or the Iwerne camps.  In one sense the publicity machine was correct.  Iwerne camps (later called Titus) had been held for 60 or 70 years completely outside Anglican episcopal control.  They operated like an independent franchise and were answerable only to their own trustees.  When the scandal of Smyth’s misbehaviour did break in 1982 and a report was prepared, there was no attempt to circulate that report beyond a small powerful clique within the organisation.  No bishop or archdeacon was ever given sight of it.  In this way, Iwerne trustees linked to REFORM and the Church Society were acting as totally independent of the central Church of England structures.  At some point the Church has tacitly surrendered overseeing of part of its structure to the group of leaders and congregations we now know as the ReNew constituency.  These were being given the right to behave exactly as they wished, free from episcopal control.

The Emmanuel Wimbledon scandal has revealed something l which dwarfs  the misbehaviour of a single individual.  It has shown up how an episcopally ordered Church has allowed the relinquishment of oversight of a sizeable part of its own structure.  This in turn has allowed corrupt individuals to exercise power without any checks on their behaviour.  In my judgement the Great Silence is taking place because the central church authorities have no understanding (or interest) in this part of the Church.  How can the central part of the Church promise to do anything to stop future scandals if hitherto it has had no input of any kind?   The only response, one we are seeing, is startled impotent silence.  The structural independence and power of ECW and the ReNew group has come to be revealed with startling clarity.  Whatever Justin Welby’s past relationship with many of the leaders inside the Fletcher circle, and we suspect they are extensive, his role as Archbishop gives him absolutely no power to wrest back any of the control these groups have acquired.  Looking back over the past twenty years, I suspect that a battle to assert control over the Con-Evo (now ReNew) group was fought and lost the time of the Jeffery John debacle in 2004.  Archbishop Rowan tried and failed to appoint Jeffery John as Bishop of Reading.  One suspects that the negotiations which went on behind the scenes may have resulted in even more power flowing to the Con-Evo group in which Fletcher was prominent.  The situation of the dying days of 2019 has revealed clearly that the authority of the Church does not operate in every part of its structure.  In a scandal involving the effectively independent branch represented by ReNew, the central body has nothing to say.  They have been banished from any involvement with ReNew and its power and money for nearly twenty years and probably much longer.     

The Great Silence, as far as the central Church of England communications department is concerned,  is because they have had no input into that part of the church for a long time.  The Great Silence from the ReNew/Con Evo constituency can be explained because that is how they always operate.  The Smyth scandal and now the Fletcher scandal are both notable for the way that they have involved long term secrecy.  Individuals, including many survivors, have been threatened, cajoled or shamed into silence so that the secret scandals would not come out.  Thanks to the Telegraph, those days are over.  The Church both at the centre and at its ReNew fringes have now to deal with the new realities.  The challenge for everyone is to discover ways to convince the fair-minded outsider that our national Church is not institutionally abusive.  That is a hard task but we must make a start now.

It is very hard for a non-Christian to know what Christians really believe.   The problem for anyone outside the Church is to know where to listen.    The ones that shout the loudest tend to be from conservative groups.  It is there that you may hear anti-gay rhetoric, support for a variety of Right wing causes and sometimes the most extraordinary rejection of many of the achievements of two hundred years of scientific research.  There are, in fact, many other Christians who do not think at all like this.  Such Christians do not go in for loud protestations.  They are probably far more numerous than the conservatives who have the loudest voices but these latter will always appeal to journalists who want quick sound-bites.  Because this voice is prominent, the Christian witness to society is thought to be politically and socially far from main-stream.

It is no secret that Surviving Church comes from a Christian stable that is liberal, inclusive and open to the findings of scientific research.  The word ‘open’ is important in this context because, unlike conservative Christian opinion, there are many issues on which my opinions are in the process of formation.  I also find myself on the side of the ‘situational ethicists’, those who believe that we work from individual situations rather than inflexible principles garnered from a particular reading of Scripture.  My understanding of the Bible is also a work in progress.  I keep finding new insights as I read it.  Even if the Bible has not changed, I, as the reader and the world I live in, most definitely have done.  Without all the changes that are going on, my study of Scripture might become, over the decades. rather dull.  It is these changes and our attempts to apply the Bible to them that keeps bible study fresh and exciting.  If there really was only one way, for example, to explain the death of Christ, might not people have become bored in hearing it explained to them over and over again?

My area of strong disagreement with conservatives is not that they preach and teach a set of ideas that I don’t agree with.  The problem for me is that they insist that their ideas are mandatory and exclusive.  The preacher is telling his flock in so many words ‘unless you believe this particular formulation of Christian doctrine, you cannot belong to this church or expect to receive salvation when you die’.  Liberals, like myself, find the element of threat in this style of preaching quite alarming.  It allows absolutely no scope for disagreement or doubt.  The doctrines are presented in a take it or leave it way.  The liberal approach to doctrine is not to say that this doctrine is what we teach and you must follow it to belong to our tribe.  No, we explore the words of Scripture as well as the insights of literature and the imagination as all being tools through which to explore the reality of God.  Our formulae and our words will always have the air of provisionality about them.  The attempt to find Christian truth is always going to be described as a ‘work in progress’.

The idea that even the words of Scripture do not give us certainties is very threatening to many conservative Christians.  They believe that their membership of the Church entitles them to be confident and certain in their formulae of truth.  The response to this dilemma can be framed through a question.  Does your understanding of being a Christian give scope for growth, change and transformation right through life?  Was it, alternatively, something that was handed out complete and final on the day of your conversion?  The idea that everything is given to us in terms of ‘salvation truth’ all at once leaves me with a sense of claustrophobia.  I am condemned to go through the rest of my life repeating the same formulae connected with my salvation without any ‘deviation or hesitation’. The possibility or expectation that I might have a personal insight to add to the way that Christian truth is articulated, is taken away at a stroke.  The only authorities are the precise words of Scripture and a few venerated teachers honoured by the particular tribe that I belong to.

To me, conservative Christianity fails one major test.  It does not fail on the grounds that it teaches conservative doctrine, even though in this doctrine there are ideas that that I personally find uncongenial.  Doctrine and differing interpretations of Scripture will always be areas for disagreement among Christians.  There is no Church that has got everything perfect in this area.  The problem for me is that to be a member of a conservative group seems often to close down the possibility for an individual to flourish as a full human being.  Common-sense and basic psychology tells me that, as a Christian leader, I should never require that an individual close down in any area of potential growth.  Rigorous, inflexible and fear-laden teachings about God can often stymie and blunt people, both in their spirituality and creativity.  Creativity involves the ability to take risks and learn from mistakes.  Spirituality, as it has been practised by every tradition of Christianity for 2000 years, has plunged deep into the resources of human culture, art and music.  When these infinite possibilities for growth and change are in any way fenced off or restricted, something human dies.  As a parent and a grand-parent I rejoice to see a child grow in every area of life and in every sense of the word.  Sometimes they make wrong turns in the growing process but the child learns through those mistakes.   In time they come to find a unique identity that God has prepared for each one. 

I had in this blog wanted to share with my reader details of some fascinating new brain research, drawn to my attention, which explores how conservative Christians (and Trump supporters!) can become hard-wired to accept uncritically whatever teaching or information is shared with them, even when it is implausible.  Education is supposed to create a healthy scepticism and questioning.  Particular kinds of religious/political conditioning from early childhood -the promotion of ‘facts’ over creativity and mystery – makes a brain to have little resistance to various kinds of indoctrinating processes.  It is, it is true, much easier for a majority to believe uncritically whatever is being taught them.  Challenging teachers or propaganda is hard work.  But without the ability to question and scrutinise, the potential for life as a full human being and as a Christian threatens to be extremely flat and one dimensional.   The only people who gain from this situation are the ‘leaders’.  They achieve power, status and sometimes wealth from shepherding large numbers of compliant obedient followers.

The question that has to be asked of me as a Christian is not what do you believe?  The more important question is this.  Does what you believe enrich your life, enable you to flourish as a human being and bring you into touch with a God who gives you hope, love and joy?   That is the question and I suspect that the answer is not provided by words but by whether something radiates from one’s expression and demeanour.  To use Christian language, is there ‘Christ in you, the hope of a glory to come?’

The days after Christmas are treated by most clergy as an opportunity to relax a little.  Although I have not been caught up in the endless round of services like the active clergy, I did try and get ahead of myself by writing a couple of articles for the blog in good time so that I could try and forget it over the festival time.  But the circumstances have changed things.  Two events have happened over the holiday period that have thrust clerical abuse back into our attention in a forceful way.

The first event was the publication of David Greenwood’s chronicle of the Peter Ball affair in a privately published book, Basically Innocent.  This appeared a day or two before Christmas.  It contains a factual and yet horrifying account of Ball’s abuses and the subsequent establishment cover-up of his behaviour.   Then on the 27^th/28th came the extensive further Telegraph coverage of the Jonathan Fletcher affair.  The newspaper and the journalist Gabriella Swerling have evidently been working hard on the story since they published their first exposé about Fletcher back in June.  What they have produced is fascinating, not merely for the details of alleged abuses, but for the way that the paper has made many connections between individuals and institutions. 

The stories about Ball and Fletcher have proved to be as much about institutional behaviour and misbehaviour as that of individuals.  Each man offended in the context of having a senior institutional role.  In neither case did the institutions involved seems capable of checking the behaviour of their senior representatives.  Nor did they show much remorse after the nefarious deeds had been exposed. These institutional failures will probably be what is remembered by history.   Individuals have been seriously harmed, not only by the actions of evil men, but by the subsequent failure of institutions that should have protected them and helped them to heal.

Returning to David Greenwood’s chronicle, I found it quite difficult reading the accounts of naked showers and sexual activity interspersed with spiritual ritual.  But the exact details of Ball’s criminal offending are possibly the least important part of the narrative.  What the reader may find even tougher to take on board are the deceitful tricks used by Ball’s allies to harass and undermine those who accused him of wrongdoing.  The then Bishop of Chichester, Dr Eric Kemp, oversaw a policy of non-cooperation and obstruction of the police in their legitimate enquiries.  Questions of truth and falsehood and good and bad seemed not to play any part in his calculations.  All that seemed to matter was a determination to protect ‘one of us’, Peter Ball, together with the good name of the institution that he had done so much to dishonour.  Obstructing the pursuit of justice by a considerable number of distinguished Ball supporters is a key part of the Greenwood account.

Basically Innocent still has the power to shock even though most of the information contained in it is already in the public domain.  The recent Telegraph story on Jonathan Fletcher, however, contains fresh information.  The newspaper has succeeded in talking to five victims of Fletcher and these have painted a consistent pattern of spiritually exploitative manipulative behaviour that seemed designed merely to satisfy the narcissistic and sexual needs of the abuser.  But, once again the story is remarkable, not just for these actions but for the way that countless other people have been involved as bystanders or protectors.  Back in October I wrote a blog piece http://survivingchurch.org/2019/10/03/the-jonathan-fletcher-story-continues/ on Fletcher commenting on the fact that no fresh news since the Telegraph stories of June had emerged into the public domain on the scandal.  That said to me that large numbers of people in the Iwerne/ReNew/Church Society group had been ordered to keep quiet on the topic.  Since that time the silence has begun to crack open and Fletcher’s old church, Emmanuel South Wimbledon, has agreed to commission a Review under the supervision of Justin Humphries and his independent organisation Thirtyone:eight.  That has now begun and there has been a call for victims to come forward to tell what they know.

There are a number of parallels between the Fletcher scandal and the Ball affair.  The Telegraph story suggested a possible link through membership of the same exclusive dining club, Nobody’s Friends.  While Fletcher was undoubtably a member, I do not believe anyone has claimed the same for Ball.  What is true is that powerful well-connected people linked to the two men have used their social power to defend and attempt to vindicate them.  The 2000 letters sent to Lambeth Palace in support of Ball were in some cases written by people who believed genuinely in his innocence.  Other individuals probably suspected that something was awry in his behaviour but in their minds the good name of the Church took precedence over the questions of right and wrong.  In the Fletcher affair something rather more blatant was going on.  As far as I can determine, almost everybody in the ReNew/REFORM/Iwerne network knew Fletcher and this is particularly true of the leaders in that group.  The leaders cannot have been ignorant of Fletcher’s style of ministry and his reputation for spiritually abusive behaviour. If they were surprised at the revelations and the 2017 withdrawal of his Permission to Officiate, why has there been no protestation to this effect?   It was also extraordinary that an individual with a very high profile should suddenly almost disappear from any mention on the net.  Someone with the authority to do so must have spent hours searching for online references to Fletcher and removing them one by one.   That piece of work has now been rendered void by the Telegraph reporting.  The publicity machines at both Church House and wherever the centre of ReNew is to be found will be working very hard this week-end to try and undo the enormous damage to the reputation of the Church that has been incurred by the Telegraph stories. 

I want to finish by briefly exploring a moral dilemma.  In Christian teaching an individual can commit a wrong action but there is always the possibility of receiving forgiveness after true repentance.   That is in essence what we understand from the New Testament.  A different situation arises to this when we encounter a bystander knowing about and to some extent covering up someone else’s evil activity.  When I know about the harmful behaviour of another person, how can I put things right?   The simple appeal to repentance does not seem to work.  I cannot repent of some else’s behaviour.  How can I do anything to put right the evil being done by a member of my own church tribe?  To separate myself from that action completely, I would need to abandon all that connects me with the network.  That is a difficult if not impossible task.  Members of the ReNew network who knew that Fletcher’s behaviour was spiritually and psychologically harmful were to a greater or lesser extent colluding in evil.  The bystander is always a sharer of guilt, particularly if harm is in any way intensified because of the inactivity.  Looking at the stories of Fletcher and John Smyth before him, the entire ReNew network leadership group seems to have been caught up in a kind of corporate guilt.  It is hard to claim that any of them are completely free from Fletcher’s wrongdoing.  They knew something and they simply did little or nothing with what they knew to protect the vulnerable.  The typical motivation for this kind of behaviour seems to be one of idolisation of a charismatic leader and the protection and defence of their tribe against other types of Christian who are regarded as threats to their vision of the faith.   How will the leadership of ReNew deal with the institutional guilt that is now seen to be pervasive within their constituency? The world is watching the conservative network of ReNew to see how it deals with this appalling legacy.  At the same time, it is looking to the wider Church of England to act positively and decisively in this matter but also over the disastrous legacy of Peter Ball and of those who enabled and protected him over decades.

The Christmas edition of the Church Times contained advertisements for no fewer than four suffragan bishops (Horsham, Lewes, Stafford and Sherwood).  In the past such advertisements were unheard of.  The idea of putting yourself forward for high office would have seemed like an act of hubris and that would immediately disqualify any applicant.  It was also believed that somewhere in the bowels of Lambeth Palace there were lists of likely clergy, suitable for preferment.  These had already been groomed for high office and were quietly waiting to be called.  Such candidates had probably attended one of the Windsor courses and an appointments secretary had been making discrete inquiries as to their suitability for promotion to episcopal purple.

The Church Times advertisements suggest that something may be changing within the system of appointments.  I may be wrong and the secret Lambeth list may still be alive and well.  But why advertise when the pool of all the good and suitable people is well known to those who are in charge?

I have, in what follows, a series of observations on this topic of appointments to high office in the Church of England.  This blog post consists of some speculative ideas about bishops based on observation of the Church of England over a fair number of years.  These observations do not of course have the same validity as properly conducted research.  I hope my reader will receive these speculations in the same spirit as they are shared. They may well be describing a problem that does not in fact exist.  But if there really is a problem of a shortage of suitable candidates for the post of bishop, we need to be aware of this and consider what the reasons for this might be.  I want to put forward two main ideas.  One is that the pool of qualified people from which to choose bishops has indeed shrunk.  The second possible factor is that the job of bishop is now far less attractive and rewarding than it used to be. 

Fifty years ago there were plenty of clergy in the Church to go round and even the tiniest of parishes would have numerous applicants when they became vacant.  I once heard a story from a priest, who later became an Archdeacon, who wanted to apply for a small parish in the Hereford diocese around 1962.  He never had a response to his letter and later he heard that there had been over 200 applications for the post.  The system of funding in the past meant that most clergy were trained residentially with the cost met by the Local Education Authority.  Because far more clergy started the training process in their twenties, there were many who were unmarried before training.  This meant that clergy training could be, for some, a more leisurely affair, with candidates often finding time to pursue special interests within the theological sphere.  I have referred, on this blog, to my own travels as a theological student in both Switzerland and Greece.    

After the boom years of the 50s and 60s the Church of England scored an own goal in its recruitment of ordinands.  The selection process began to discriminate in favour of older candidates, those with ‘life experience’.  The thinking behind this may have been sound but it deprived the church of many of its youthful candidates.  Many of those who were entering training were also likely to be married with children.  There was no incentive to lengthen the training beyond the absolute minimum.  At the same time, the Local Authorities started to drop their grants and this placed the financial burden for ordinands’ families on the Church itself.  Standards of training have been protected over the years but fewer ordinands have able to pursue the higher level of theological training that being a bishop might require.  It is always helpful for a bishop to have insight and expertise, not only in his own theological background tradition but also in the traditions of others who are Anglican in a different way.  That would be a theological task and it is hard to do this when money and time within the training process are in short supply.  There is also nothing in the current theological training process that would prepare a candidate to become a bishop.  Those who aspire to the distinct episcopal role should ideally be able to receive considerable support in terms of in-service training.  Perhaps there are some who are deemed episcopal material by putting over a display of solid competence and suitability for the role.  But, for whatever reason, the pool of theologically/administratively suitable candidates is likely to have shrunk considerably over the years. 

Moving from the thought that there are now fewer suitable candidates for the role of bishop, there is the other factor – a willingness to do the job.  Looking at the posts in the Church Times this week, I have come up with three possible reasons why there might now be an unwillingness to take on the role.  No doubt there could be others.

The first reason for being hesitant about becoming a bishop in the Church of England is the way that you are immediately thrust into being to all appearances a creature of a large institutional structure in a way that was not true before.  Many Vicars enjoy a large degree of freedom and independence.  If things are going well and the people follow your lead, it is a rewarding role.  As a bishop, particularly a Suffragan, your scope for free action seems often more limited.  You have a defined role within the structure and everything you say or do is subordinate to that role.  You become a company representative rather than a free agent.

The second reason for potential difficulties with the role of bishop is in managing the network of new relationships you find yourself in.  Within church life, it seems extremely common for individuals to have volatile interactions with those placed over them or alongside them.  Sometimes there are complete break-downs of communication which are never resolved until one party either leaves or dies.  This will be an especially serious matter if it happens among the hierarchy of the Church. Failures of communication can have the effect of paralysing the work of a Cathedral or even a diocese.  For every Lincoln Cathedral scenario in the 90s there must be other equally painful break-downs of relationship within the hierarchy of the Church.  To suggest that Christian leaders set an example of peaceful cooperation with one another is probably unrealistic to say the least.  What is true, as we have discovered in our examination of power struggles among senior churchmen and churchwomen, is that complex institutional structures like cathedrals or dioceses can often be unrewarding places to work.  The potential risk of division and conflict is high.  Where there is such conflict, the cost to be borne by those who work there is high in terms of compromised health and happiness.  

The third area of real anxiety is what I call the filing cabinet of past horrors.  The safeguarding issues of the past decade have begun to take the lid off secrets that apparently seem to lurk inside every diocesan office and bishop’s palace.  The Archbishop of York designate will have heard about files that disappeared in the ‘flood’ of 2015.  He may choose to leave such files buried or to seek them out.  Safeguarding is the single word that has done much to take the shine off every bishop’s role since around 2015.  Computers and filing cabinets containing information that most normal people would simply not want to face must now haunt every bishop in the Church.  What was formerly someone else’s responsibility now is suddenly yours.  Within these files are pressing pastoral issues, financial demands and the simple requirement to do the right thing at the level of humanity.  The latest revelations of the past week connected with ‘Safe Spaces’ and the apparent wastage of considerable sums of money designated for survivors, is yet another issue to keep some bishops awake at night.  What normal person would want to get involved with such responsibilities, ones that touch the happiness and well-being of real people including themselves?

The advertising of four bishop’s posts at once may have a perfectly innocent explanation but it may represent a shift in the Church for the reasons I have been exploring.  The great illness of society from which the Church is not exempt, is stress.  Stress of relationships and dealing with issues of the past safeguarding horrors are clearly among the possible reasons for the Church of England to have to search beyond the lists of safe candidates who have been groomed for preferment over the decades.

The announcement that Stephen Cottrell is to be the next Archbishop of York has been met with almost universal acclamation.  Here is an emotionally literate bishop with a passion for mission and a good brain.  What could there be not to be liked?  Then we have the almost immediate reaction to his appointment coming from a conservative group known as Christian Concern and its spokesman, Andrea Minichiello Williams.  She protests at the appointment because the Bishop, in his current post as Bishop of Chelmsford, had been drawn into the case of a transgender child at a church school.  The attempts to support the child, who may possibly undergo treatment for a sex reassignment, led to the local Vicar, John Parker, resigning his post as a school governor and as Incumbent.  It was claimed that the Diocese and Bishop Cottrell had previously told this Vicar that his ‘biblical views on sexuality were not welcome in the Church of England and that he could leave’.   This account of what passed between Bishop and the Vicar is a matter of dispute.   On the face of it, the use of such words by a bishop does seem somewhat unlikely. 

As I began to think my way through this very untidy situation, I asked myself what would have been my own reaction as a Vicar.  I realised, somewhat thankfully, that a situation like this had never come near to my attention.  The open discussion of transgender issue seems to be a new moral topic for the church to face.  I then thought back 50 years to ethics lectures at college and the way we were introduced to various theories of ethical reasoning.  The subject was never one of my strongest areas of study and, in the General Ordination Exam, I only received a bare pass.  My understanding of ethics has of course grown since then.  One of the main insights that I have since acquired is the realisation that ethical dilemmas seldom, if ever, result in a clear-cut resolution.  Over my years of ‘doing’ ethics in the parish, the best I have been able to achieve is to have accompanied someone else as they attempted to work through and resolve an ethical dilemma.  It was never a matter of applying the ‘the clear teaching of Scripture’.   At best it was looking at numerous potential outcomes and trying to discern what was the most loving and productive way forward.  Ethical reasoning for me and, I suspect, for most clergy is almost never a matter of straight application of texts or long established norms.  If it were, I imagine that the life of clergy (and social workers) would be so much easier.

The difference that exists between me and conservative evangelical ethicists, like Andrea Williams, is to be found in this divergence in the way we do our moral reasoning.  I am acutely aware of the way that all moral decisions take place within a setting or a context.   Unalterable principles like the indissolubility of marriage or the fixity of gender identity are fine when printed in text books.  Somehow the moment these unbreakable principles leave the text book (or the pages of Scripture), they become extremely difficult to apply.  There are just so many variables in every situation to be taken account of.  Ethical reasoning takes enormous wisdom and insight together with compassion for real people and their situations.  The last thing that someone wants to hear is an inflexible declaration of moral certainty.  There are few people or situations that welcome the approach that says: ‘This is what you must do, it is God’s will and there is no room for disagreement or even discussion.’

The fact that ‘clear biblical teaching’ is so difficult to apply in practice has led me to ask where it is able to be enforced consistently.  The answer has to be that the only people who can readily hear uncompromising inflexible moral teaching are those who are already part of the same tribe as the moral enforcer.  Conservative groups, in other words, can enforce their uncompromising teaching on those who have surrendered decision making on all things religious to the leaders.  While there may well be many other Christians outside these conservative groups who have accepted the principle that to be Christian is to ‘hate gays’, it is likely that the great majority of such people have never knowingly met a homosexual or got close to them at any rate.  Their principled stand has come about, not through wrestling with the moral issue but adopting a particular tribal label which has given them a sense of belonging.  In a dramatic reversal of the words of scripture, it could be claimed that for many, Christians are known for the fact that they hate or distance themselves from the right groups of people.

All in all, I find myself having to declare that I sense a sizeable chasm between the position I hold and that of Andrea Williams.  If biblical principles really could be applied seamlessly to complex moral problems, then this would be very convenient.   It would save a lot of time because it would sidestep all the complex and nuanced moral reasoning that seems to belong to every ethical problem.  When we deal with actual breathing transgender or same-sex attracted people, we find that is that there are a myriad of details of fact and science to be faced before ethical reasoning can even begin.  The science part is also important since questions of normal and abnormal cannot just be left to our feelings about such matters.  My reluctance ever to use words like deviant or abnormal comes from a variety of reasons.   While not claiming to be in any sense an expert in ethics or moral philosophy, something seems very wrong when opinions are offered by Andrea Williams and John Parker which use bible texts as tools to undermine the reflections of scientists and philosophers alike.  Quoting scripture as a way of cutting through incredibly complex scientific/moral issues does not appear to lead to any of the insights we need to hear in the 21^st century.  The victims of bullying, who already suffer because of their possibly unconventional life-styles, deserve something far more generous from Christians.  Jesus after all was one who went out of his way to reach the outcasts and the sinners.  Should hatred be what his followers are heard to say?

For many Christians, the attempt to root all Christian ethical behaviour in relevant scriptural verses may seem a commendable enterprise.  But for others, particularly those who live life-styles that challenge the norm, these same verses from the Bible add to the burdens that they already have to carry.  Should Christians ever read the Bible and use select passages from it in a way that harasses and bullies people.  Battering people with texts is not a helpful approach; indeed it is completely contrary to the spirit of acceptance and love shown by Jesus.  Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop designate, is to be commended because his attitude and approach allows people of all situations not only to exist but to flourish in the church.  This flourishing is what he believes to be God’s will.  This blog readily accepts that disagreements about ethical issues among Christians are going to be inevitable.  Such disagreements might even be welcome if they force everyone to think deeply and reason carefully about matters of faith and belief.  They become problematic when they lead disputants into words of bitter hatred and contempt for one another.  The spiteful homophobic letters sent to Richard Coles on the death of his partner David have cast shame on the whole body of Christians.  They contain what one tweeter described as ‘diseased theology’, a theology that easily infects others.  Can ethical convictions ever justify such terrible sentiments towards another Christian believer?  We end by quoting the paraphrase from St John’s gospel, the passage that simply says ‘by this shall all know that you are my disciples if you have love one for another’.

Among the variety of unhelpful things that children of my generation were told by well-meaning adults was one very harmful rhyme: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me’.  There is of course a certain level of truth in this rhyme but equally, the downplaying of the power of words to hurt and harm was undoubtedly crass and insensitive to say the least.  Many children have come to believe that there is something wrong with them when they experience acute pain because of words directed maliciously against them.  Some of this shame and pain is carried into their adult experience.  I do not need to spell all the different permutations of bullying and slander that can do so much to make life a misery for anyone so targeted.

Most of us recognise that words have the ability to be extremely powerful things.  The right word can do an enormous amount to cheer a depressed spirit just as the thoughtless word can put someone down.  All of us look back to our failures to use words as well as we could.  Perhaps our early efforts to use words better might have been helped by not having had to encounter at an early age the dreadful rhyme I mentioned above. 

If we want support for the idea that words should be treated with extreme care and respect, we need go no further than considering how words are understood in Scripture.  One year in Lent, while still in my parish, I gave a whole evening presentation about the word ‘word’ as it is used in the Bible.  I began my piece by pointing out that the Hebrew word ‘dabar’ contains far more than the act of speaking as we understand it.  To understand this Hebrew word we have to add to the idea of speech the notion of ‘creative power’.   Although the Genesis account describes creation as the result of speech, it only when we get to the Psalms that we begin to get a real feel for what the Hebrew writers think about the power of words.   This is of course especially true when referring to what proceeds from the mouth of God.  ‘By the word (dabar) of the Lord were the heavens made’.  ‘The Lord spake and it was done, he commanded and they were created.’  Another very vivid picture is given us as we read the following passage from Isaiah 55.11.   ‘The word will not return to me empty until it has accomplished all that I have commanded it to do.’  It is easy to miss the full impact of such passages until we have absorbed the Hebrew perspective on words and their potential.  Words are in this setting are instruments of real and lasting power.  When God speaks things happen.   Sometimes human individuals, like prophets, are given God’s words to speak.  Once again there will be an understanding of how much there is active power in operation.  Even when mere human beings like ourselves use words, this Hebrew understanding of their potential to exercise real power is never far away.  

It is against this background of understanding a little of Old Testament assumptions about the meaning of ‘word’ that we can understand better the first verses of St John’s gospel which are always read at Christmas.   The reader at the Nine Lessons and Carols often introduces this reading with the words ‘St John reveals the mystery of the Incarnation’.   I am not sure how many people in fact get the point of the reading with its evocation of the creation story and its distinctive understanding of the meaning of ‘word’.  To talk about the primordial reality as a word seems an odd thing to say on the face of it.  But little by little we come to understand that what is being shared is the breath-taking claim that an eternal God is communicating with and reaching out to his creation through his word.  Word is not speech in a human sense; rather it is an extraordinary moving out from the divine mystery to touch and communicate with the world through the life, speech and actions of Jesus.   The word, the self-expression of the inner being of God, became flesh and dwelt among us.

In this reflection, I am hoping to encourage a reader to learn to use and respect words better.  They are potentially, as we have said, agents of real power.  They can hurt but they can also build up and encourage.  When we use words flippantly, as we often do, we tell ourselves that we are speaking in jest.  This jesting may be, if we are self-critical, an attempt to trivialise words and treat them as cheap.  I would like to think that Christians never think of words as having little value.  So much can be achieved or possibly undermined by the way we use words. We have a biblical duty to think of them as infinitely precious, to be used as far as possible for good.  I am always convicted by the passage of the Epistle of James about the importance of ‘bridling the tongue’.  While I stand accused at a being a failure in this area, I find I can be helped by making a connection with all that the Old Testament says about the Word of God.  If God creates, communicates and reaches out with his Word, does he not call us to do the same?  Our words do not of course function like the Divine Word but they do potentially have some things in common.  The words we utter are capable of becoming a focus of transforming power.  When used properly they can create, encourage and build up others.  When they succeed in doing this, they distantly evoke the divine action of creation itself.  What greater challenge or calling could we have than this? 

Most of us why try to practise the Christian faith are aware of forces within us that pull in opposite directions.  We could liken our Christian experience to being a bit like the ‘push me pull you’ animal in the Dr Doolittle stories.  One such pressure is a strong attraction to the past while simultaneously knowing that we have to engage with the present and the future.  Some traditions and denominations make it a mark of their identity to refuse to engage with the present.  Examples come to mind of the strong supporters of the Latin Mass or the preacher who insists on tackling themes and debates that have not made a lot of sense since the 16^th century.  The present/past tension is played out weekly in the mundane job of choosing hymns.   Everyone who is responsible for this task knows the problem of keeping a balance between old and the new.   The normal compromise, which is to choose music from every style, may cover up the cracks of this tension, but it does not really solve the dilemma of a church, one that is required to look simultaneously to the present, past and future.

Another ‘push me pull you’ factor for the conscientious Christian is the tension between reassurance and challenge.  Both the experience of feeling ‘safe’ within the Church and the opposite feeling of being challenged to take risks for God can be read out of Scripture.   The Bible contains many verses which speak of refuge and safety.  God is the one who feeds the hungry, comforts the sad and binds up the broken.  The gospels also contain those memorable words of Jesus. ‘Come unto me all you that are heavy laden and I will give you rest.’

Many Christians would like to remain at the comfort end of things and receive only these messages of reassurance.  Sermons which emphasise constantly the message of salvation, both as a present reality and a future promise, will always be popular.  The idea of being safe evokes many things but it may also carry an echo of being rescued by a parent from a situation of perceived danger.  The experience of being gathered up into a parent’s arms and removed from something frightening is probably a common memory imprinted on most of us.  The idea of being kept safe and the teaching about salvation will, no doubt, evoke such primal memories of rescue and safety.  One might go further and say that without such memories, the language of ‘being saved’ would have little meaning at an emotional level.

The challenge part of the Christian faith taps into a different stage of our growing up.  It evokes the time in our lives when we were convinced that we were sufficiently mature to go out on our own.  We no longer needed to be taken everywhere by a parent.  We were able to negotiate the dangers of the street and other children by ourselves without parental help.  The transition from being kept safe to taking risks is particularly associated with the teenage years.  The wisdom of parenthood is knowing the right moment to allow the child to tackle each set of new challenges alone.  Even when the parent gets it right it is likely that there will still have been disagreement and conflict with the child.  It is hard to imagine that there will ever be complete unanimity between parent and child on this issue.  Somehow or other the growing child enters the adventure of doing things on their own, taking risks in the journey of life.  This sense of adventure, the overcoming of barriers of fear and uncertainty is an important stage.  The memory of it enables us to take seriously the challenges that are implicit in the Christian faith.

I recall the sermons I have preached on the words of Jesus ‘Launch out into the deep and there cast your nets’. This passage can be read as a straight invitation to move forward from the nursery slopes of being ‘safe’ to a discovery that the Christian faith is also all about adventure.    Then there is the passage which speaks about meeting Christ in the hungry, the imprisoned, the naked and the thirsty.  These passages remind us that the challenge of faith is not only about reassurance and comfort, it is about accepting risk, danger, newness and challenge.  The ‘safe’ part of the faith draws on memories of infancy; the challenge part of faith draws on the memories of the teenage years and later.

These push me pull you aspects of Christianity need to be held in tension and reconciled, both within the individual Christian and in a congregation.  A church which preaches only one part of this equation is always going to be lop-sided.  This would also be true of an adult whose preparation for adulthood had consisted only of the memories of being kept safe by parents.  Hopefully, the creative tension of wanting to go it alone and the arguments with parents about the implications of this, are also part of what we take into adulthood.  Being adult is about the acceptance and resolution of conflict as much as it is about learning to be loved and nurtured.   

Lop-sided and unbalanced is an accusation that can be made of many churches that emphasise ‘salvation’ above any other teaching.  Such a church will not be wrong in one sense.  What they teach is clearly biblical.  But there is still error present because a needed balance to this approach is not being presented alongside this classic teaching.   We all need to hear the side of Christianity which challenges religious complacency.  One area of complacency, which we refer to constantly on this blog, is indifference to suffering and abuse experienced in the Church itself.  Large parts of the church are very successful at shutting out the stories of those who have suffered in this way.  Different sets of priorities are put forward so that the uncomfortable parts of Christian responsibility do not have to be faced.  There is probably no church that succeeds in finding exactly the level of balance that I believe the Christian faith calls for.  I offer this notion of balance, not because I think I have found it, but because I believe we should all be striving to reach it both within our personal Christian journey and in the lives of our congregations.

Many liberal Christian bodies are under attack from conservative groups because they do not teach the ‘truth’ according to their accusers.  The implication of this challenge from conservatives who question the ‘orthodoxy’ of others, is that it is possible to encapsulate ‘truth’ in a series of precise verbal formulae.  These seem very much to focus on the notion of salvation.  Anyone failing the test of repeating the correct words is deemed to be ‘unsound’ or worse, destined for hell.  My response to this kind of attack is to ask a quite different question.   Does the accusing Church as well as the Church under attack preserve balance, a balance here between ‘salvation’ and service of others?  Are the Christians in your Church taught, as a matter of high priority, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit prisoners?  Are these actions, commanded by Christ himself, just as important as believing a list of statements prepared by a small group. Those who decide on what is orthodox belief may simply be a cluster of leaders who happen to be in charge at a particular moment in history. The idea that their version and articulation of saving truth has to be considered universal in scope, applying to every culture and language for ever, seems impertinent to say the least. We need to rediscover within all the churches generous engagement with those who differ from us as well those whose position represents a balancing up of the beliefs we hold with great conviction. Truth is seldom an ‘either-or’ scenario. It is is most likely to be found as a ‘both-and’ and requires from us the gift of generosity and fresh imagination to embrace it in this form.