Over the years I have given a great deal of thought to leadership in the Church.  In the world of business there are individuals who earn a good living in teaching others how to be leaders.  I have not read these books on leadership or attended any of the expensive training courses on offer.  But, like everyone, I long to find a good leader in whatever organisation I belong to.  We, the followers, have a fairly good idea about what we want from our leaders and it is perhaps my prejudices that are on display today as we reflect on the powerful testimony of Matt Ineson who gave evidence to IICSA.

In my mind I identify three characteristics of a good leader.  The first of these is that a leader has a genuine identification with the followers.  Identification needs to work in two directions.  There should be a sense that the leader is one of the group, and, at the same, time the group might feel itself in some way represented by its leader.  In the case of a bishop that would mean that every time the bishop goes to a parish or has any encounter with clergy or people, he/she would be listening carefully to what is being said.  Because of the problem of deference, one issue for a sensitive bishop is that some people he meets do not speak with frankness.  This will require gifts of listening and sensitivity if the barriers that deference has erected are to be overcome.

The situations that Matt Ineson described in his powerful testimony on Wednesday morning at IICSA showed us clearly that this first facet of leadership was not present in his encounters with church leaders.  Every time Matt made a disclosure to a senior member of the clergy, including six bishops, we felt strongly that the bishops concerned were seriously failing in ways that went beyond simply failing to deal with the disclosure.  In each case of disclosure, Matt experienced from the bishops displays of impatience, irritation or detachment.    Each of these reactions was, arguably, betraying a failure of leadership.  Identification with a member of the ‘followership’ should always be part of leadership.  When this fails or deteriorates over time, we can see narcissistic tendencies creeping into the conduct of leaders.  By ‘narcissistic tendencies’ I mean the way that the power of office becomes like an addictive substance.   Instead of a constant recall to the example of the servanthood of Jesus, the senior church leader has been infected or seduced into self-inflation or an expanded ego.  Certainly we would suggest that the leader has already failed seriously in this one key aspect of leadership  – the readiness to identify and genuinely look out for the highest interests of those who accept in him/her the role of leader.  In Christian language the leader is expected to love those who follow.

The second part of leadership is the ability to articulate a vision for the future.  Any leader should have the capacity to inspire the followers with some hope that the future is brighter.  If the leadership is not able to inspire some sense of purpose for the future, why should anyone want to follow such a person?  Any institution worth joining, whether a club, a church or a political party, is making implicit promises to the followers.  Join our group and we will travel together to make the world, the local neighbourhood or people in general better in some way.  Leadership is often there to inspire and give hope that the one up front is able to bring these changes into reality. 

The portrait that Matt painted this morning of bishops playing grubby games with legal processes at the expense of victims, made it difficult to see how these bishops would be capable of articulating an inspiring vision relevant to us.  The Church, as represented by its own leaders, seemed concerned only to protect itself from moral or financial liability.  The fact that Matt has emerged from so much traumatic experience at the hands of the ‘system’ is a miracle in itself.  We must be grateful that he was so clearly able to articulate the experience of a survivor with a clear grasp of both his own story and the processes involved in the tortuous system that he had to negotiate.  His case was helped by the physical presence of his local MP, Tracy Brabin.  She has herself attempted to communicate with Lambeth Palace direct on Matt’s behalf.  It seems that even House of Commons notepaper does not have the power to evoke an answer to her legitimate questions.  The capacity to inspire with a vision of the future, so important in the task of effective leadership, seems to be hard to maintain in the context of the unedifying story of how some bishops in the Church of England collude together and obstruct justice and openness.

The final expectation that followers have of their leaders is that leaders will be able to demonstrate complete integrity and honesty.  I have written on the topic of integrity fairly recently, so I have now little to add to that description.  All of us have inside ourselves a picture of what we can be, inspired by ideals gained from outside as well as from within.  One occasion when integrity becomes severely compromised is when we allow someone else to control us in some way.  The cult narratives that I listened to last week often related how powerful leaders infiltrated the personalities of their followers, so that there was a dramatic inner change.  The attack on integrity of leaders that we seem to be witnessing this week at IICSA is not coming from cult leaders.  It is the pressure of the institution itself.  The Church, its power and reputation in society, has become for some of its leaders so important that they will risk their own personal integrity to defend it.  The tales we heard this morning of dishonesty, lying and power games that some bishops have been exhibiting in Matt’s case, suggest that once again a claim to exercise true leadership in the church is questionable.  If Matt’s claims are not rebutted, and I don’t expect they will be, then they continue to stand.  It is hard to see how resignations will not take place.  The accusations that he makes against the past treatment of survivors are impossible to ignore. 

On Wednesday 10^th July 2019, a number of strong accusations were made against the senior level of the leadership of the Church of England.  Until and unless these claims are shown to be false (which is unlikely) it can be said that the present senior tier is not adequately fulfilling the three aspects of leadership that I have set out.  One wonders how the Church can continue without honesty, transparency and truth being allowed to flourish.  Even if the Archbishops and senior lay staff manage to play down the seriousness of the accusations brought forward by Matt this morning, the cancer of dishonesty will still lie dormant within the institution.  The problem for any institution corrupted in this way is that it subtly lowers the morale of members and impedes the nurturing of a a new generation of leaders.  This is serious and we await to see whether the Church will find a way forward from these severe dents to its reputation and damage to its standing among the general public of England.

My recent trip to Manchester involved four nights in an expensive hotel and one night in a cheap Airbnb.  I had no complaints about the actual Airbnb accommodation, but the journey to reach it involved walking thorough parts of Manchester that I would not normally have chosen to visit.  The negative side of things was street rubbish and a variety of cars that were unlikely to have passed their MOTs.  On the positive side was a vibrant immigrant community who had settled in the area and to all appearances seemed settled and secure.  The predominant group that lived around the area appeared to come from the Horn of Africa; Somalis and Ethiopians.   I sat in a slightly down at heel Ethiopian restaurant which had no other customers except one man who was on the phone for fifteen minutes speaking loudly in a fascinatingly exotic language.  The sheer volume of his voice meant that he appeared totally at home in the restaurant and in the area generally. 

Having come home and reflected on this brief cultural experience, certain thoughts have struck me.  In the first place, immigrants from troubled areas of the globe have come to Britain.  They have created enclaves where they feel safe and are able to continue their cultural identity through their language and other institutions.  Britain is a country that allows them to do this and we can be proud that we live in a tolerant society.  But there is another side to this creation of enclaves in our big cities.  The greater the security that immigrants find in living in these areas, the greater the risk that enclaves become ghettos.

The word ghetto has a negative connotation.  It is partly because governments in the past have forced identifiable groups to live in particular areas or ghettos as a tool of control over them.  There is no suggestion that our government has ever thought in this way about immigrant communities but clearly there are problems for society if concentrations of particular ethnic backgrounds are always confined to certain areas.  The very freedom to celebrate their past culture becomes a kind of bondage to their heritage.  Strong adherence to tradition lessens the chance that many of these immigrants will ever move on to become part of a wider society.  The enclave has become a ghetto and this in turn has become a sort of prison.  My fellow customer in the restaurant would never have found it easy in another establishment to use his phone in the way he was doing.  Strongly rooted to his language and culture, he was likely always to want to remain in the locality and not face the wider world.

As I was reflecting on my experiences in Manchester it occurred to me that the Church has a parallel problem.  We create enclaves for people to feel comfortable with particular expressions of God-talk.  They belong in that enclave and, as long as they remain there, they feel safe.  The question for the Church is whether the belonging/sharing/community has created something resembling a ghetto.   Are we so wrapped up in our versions of truth and reality that we find it difficult to move to engage with what other people, indeed other Christians, are saying?  The answer to this question has to be yes.  So much of the language we use in Church situations is totally incomprehensible to other people.  Many churches are founded on the teaching of a particular preacher and the congregation are in a state of thrall to his personality.  The greater the attraction to what Pastor So and So or Father X is saying, the more disconnected these Christians are becoming, not only with the rest of society, but also with other Christians.

The key word in this discussion about enclaves and ghettos. is the word safety.  People want desperately to feel safe.  The problem is that the desire for safety overrides other more important values that Christianity is presenting to us.  Our desire for safety, which is another word for salvation, has to be balanced with the sayings of Jesus about losing life in order to find it.  In short Jesus does not want us to spend our whole lives chasing the parts of belief that enable us to feel comfortable and safe.  He would rather we left this desire to feel safe behind and begin to explore newness.  Newness will always involve some discomfort whether in terms of mental challenge or meeting the demands of the future.  Such exploration will prefer the path of leaving Ur of the Chaldees and travelling to an unknown country that God will show us.

In the last blog post, I asked the question ‘Is your church safe?’  The question I ask today is whether your church is a ghetto.  We have by implication spelt out the ways that some churches might be restrictive and even creating bondage.  They are the ones that deal in certainties.  But the certainties are handed out sometimes in the context of a quite sinister level of human control.  Powerful preachers persuade their congregations that if they remain loyal to the message (the preacher’s message), they are assured of salvation/safety in this life and in the next.  When we analyse the power dynamics of some of these churches, we find coercive/controlling techniques that UK law has identified as happening in abusive domestic relationships.  Such relationships, ones that use fear tactics and mental manipulation, are now against the law.  Are we wrong to suppose that similar techniques are any the less ethical when used in a church context?    Church leaders who promise to their flock safety in return for following the narrow doctrinal line taught by their group, do the congregation a massive disfavour.  They trap them for ever in a ghetto.  That ghetto is one of limited understanding of the breadth of the Christian faith. It also makes it impossible to make the short journey out of the enclave to see a broader, wider and deeper world outside.

Having seen an immigrant enclave in Manchester over the week-end, I have also glimpsed this other ghetto which exists in parts of the Christian church.  Christian leaders, (I take as an example Jonathan Fletcher) attract to themselves enormous personal followings through powerful preaching backed up by a variety of personal gifts of persuasion.  As you can tell, I am enormously suspicious of internationally famous ministries of this kind.  When the power and influence of any Christian leader goes beyond a certain point, it needs to be subject to strong external scrutiny and oversight.  The one who has many followers to mentor needs to be mentored by and answerable to others.  Unsupervised leaders are a danger to themselves and those who follow them.  These are the ministries that can lead followers into the place of bondage, dependence and control.  Just as it is the situation of many immigrants that many remain effectively imprisoned in their ethnic areas, so it is the fate of many Christians that they remain restricted in understanding by ghetto-type models of Christian ministry.  They can never travel beyond the boundaries set by the message of their favoured teacher.  Speaking generally, it is a sorry place ever to believe that any single Christian teacher has the entire richness of the Christian tradition to convey to others.  To pretend that this is in fact the case is also a kind of blasphemy.  The fullness of Christ is always bigger than any of us can grasp or understand.  To return to the words of Jesus, ‘Behold I make all things new’.   Newness will always imply that there is something fresh to be revealed.  The most inspired or gifted preacher, like the rest of us, must be alert and humbly to wait on what God still has to teach us.

For the past few days I have been observing blog silence.  This has been for two reasons.  The first is that I have been attending a conference (of which more below).  The second reason is that my computer power cord failed and I was unable to type anything or get easy access to any files.  The notes I am writing now may not be completed before I get home tomorrow (Sunday).

Although all the excitements of General Synod and IICSA are going on as I write this, I have been concentrating on the annual conference of the International Cultic Studies Association where I am due to give a paper later this morning.  This organisation is important to me because up till now it has been the only one that seemed to be interested in the issues of power abuse in religious organisations.  There has not been until very recently anyone in the UK who was writing about these topics.  So ICSA, as it is called, has been prepared to talk about these issues and listen to my presentations of ostracism, narcissism and other psychological reflections as they apply to the church.  One of the major features of this annual conference has been the opportunity to speak to researchers from all over the world as they ponder the issues of coercion as they impact on religious organisations, fringe and mainstream alike.  The delegates of this conference are unusual in the they are not your straightforward therapeutic crowd.  Almost everyone is a survivor.  Most people have passed through a time of trauma that has harmed them in some way.  Their group, whether an evangelical group or a more outlandish cultic variety has caused the individual to suffer but the conference allows them to reflect intellectually (and perhaps therapeutically) about the meaning of this episode in their lives.

One consequence of being part of this gathering for the past eight years is that I have learned to think about the needs of survivors of abuse from the perspective of such survivors.   Most papers bring into the arena this powerful dimension.  The individual who is presenting on a new way of categorising the task of recovery is also the person who has pulled themselves out of the terrible aftermath of cult or religious group exposure.  For me it is the only possible way of thinking about the needs of survivors.  This is the ICSA approach that is part of the DNA of the organisation and it is an approach that I heartily endorse to the Church of England as it struggles with its abuse crisis.  In short you cannot serve the needs of survivors without seeing the problem from their point of view right at the beginning.

What else have I been learning?  For one thing we have been celebrating in a small way the fact that recently in Britain, the law has given us the use of powerful words to articulate experiences which abuse survivors have known about but not been able to use.  The passing of the law of domestic violence which recognises ‘coercion and control’ in 2015 allows future legislators potentially to outlaw some of the techniques of cults against their members.  Terrorism and human trafficking are both urgent social problems which involve mind manipulation of various kinds.  The expression ‘brain washing’ has had hitherto no traction in law cases, but the law has to allow some mental process of coercion to be defined to account for the dramatic episodes that have concentrated the minds of politicians.  The words we use are important but surely society is moving towards the cult scholars in recognising that there is a real problem to be addressed.  Brain washing may not be the right word but some new definitions need to be found to account for real problems that have arisen. One change that I have noticed in the organisation since I joined in 2012 is the way that Christian conservative groups have come into greater prominence.  We are not of course declaring that all such groups do harm but clearly there are some that do, using all the techniques of control that we associated with the cults.  The questions that have to be asked about cultic Christian groups is not whether they believe this doctrine or that one.  The question has to be whether their leadership structure is manipulative and harmful.  Is your church safe could be a good question to ask of every church?  Danger, power abuse and manipulation of various kinds lurk in congregations of all kinds up and down the country.  In the shorter blog than usual, I can leave you with the question.  It is certainly one that will lie at the heart of the topics raised by Surviving Church and its discussions.  It seems that in 2019 there are more people pursuing this goal, this question, in a variety of contexts.  I am proud to be alongside them.

The Jonathan Fletcher blog post that I penned at speed last week seems to have been read on both sides of the Atlantic.  For whatever reason, it was apparently appreciated.  It has encouraged me to reflect further on the significance on these recent events which took place in and around Emmanuel Church Wimbledon.  The centre of the story is, I would maintain, not what happened between ‘consenting adults’, but the way that relationships within the evangelical world seem to be changing as the result of the news of the withdrawal of Jonathan’s PTO by the Diocese of Southwark at the beginning of 2017.   The website, Anglicans.Ink, has shared with us other insights which show the story to be both complex and significant.

In my last post I mentioned the Commissioning Service of Andy Lines as a GAFCON bishop in Emmanuel Wimbledon in September 2018.  I had heard that Jonathan Fletcher had played a major part in the service.  An online account of the service written by Chris Sugden failed to mention Jonathan’s name at all, which slightly confused me.  According to Chris who has been in touch with me, Jonathan was mentioned and this removal of his name was not done at Chris’ instigation. I then wondered whether this tactful censorship had anything to do with the fact that at the time of the service, September 2018, Jonathan’s PTO had been withdrawn and that he should not have had anything to do with leading a service in Emmanuel or anywhere.  It also implied by implication that the news of the PTO withdrawal had not been shared with anybody within the ordinary congregation.  The Vicar and members of the PCC must have known but chose not to share it.

The implications of this suppression of this important fact casts a pall over the entire service.  The Anglicans.Ink group call it a service based on a lie.  Certainly, we can question whether a new initiative taken by GAFCON or AMiE should be set up with a deliberate act of deceit built into it.  The consecration of a breakaway bishop in the States is one thing, but at least all the details of Andy’s consecration, those who took part and those who sent messages of support is on record.    Illegalities apart, the Anglican Communion has learned to put up with such irregular events for fear of alienating groups on the edge of the Church who still want to think of themselves as Anglican.  Messages of goodwill were sent to the consecration service by two serving C/E bishops, the Bishop of Blackburn and the Bishop of Lancaster.

The Commissioning service held at Emmanuel Wimbledon last September has a darker hue.  The information about who attended was censored and we now discover that the figure who had mentored the new episcopal candidate is accused of his spiritual manipulation.  This is sufficient to take away any sense of joy or newness from the occasion.  There are bound to be recriminations in future years about the integrity of this service, one which had lies and dishonesty overshadowing it.  Now that Andy has effectively challenged his mentor, Jonathan Fletcher, if not by name, relationships in the world of REFORM and conservative evangelicalism are going to be fraught for years to come.

What do we know about the institutional strand of evangelicalism to which Jonathan Fletcher belongs?  I have already described, in my last blog, the existence of a group of upper middle-class evangelicals who are linked to one another by the networks of the Iwerne camps, Christian Unions at major public schools and certain wealthy Calvinist congregations in and around London.  People like myself would find the insistence on a single theory of the atonement and a literal reading of the scriptural text fairly suffocating, but this network succeeds in propagating itself fairly well.  Internationally REFORM finds a great deal in common with the theology of the ultra-Right in the States.  One figure in this group that is worth noting is John McArthur.  He has had an enormous influence over other conservatives like REFORM on this extreme edge of the Protestant world.  A recent internet trawl found MacArthur arguing against Christians being involved in social justice!

Needless to say the overall UK evangelical constituency is far larger than just REFORM.  Within the large tent which calls itself evangelical, we find softer, less legalistic approaches to theology and church life.  One ‘softening’ influence has been the charismatic movement.  Since the 1970s many evangelicals have learnt to focus on a more experiential kind of evangelicalism.  On the outside, these charismatic evangelicals have identical belief systems to those of REFORM with its heavy legalistic preaching.  Inwardly these charismatic Christians gather in their networks of New Wine and Spring Harvest and find support from each other though common spiritual experiences.  This preference for experience in their worship rather than hard propositional text sharing gives their churches a completely different atmosphere.   Although it is not admitted much in the UK, quite a strong fault line exists between charismatic Christians and those who operate in the REFORM networks.  American conservatives will know which side of the divide they belong to, partly because of the series of books written by John McArthur.  He has written trenchantly about the heresies of charismatic Christians, denying them the right to claim orthodox Christian belief.  The fault line between these two is less obvious in the UK but it exists.

The GAFCON project that came to this country from the States was an attempt to draw ‘orthodox’ Anglicans together.  Those who set up the structure honestly believed that there were many members of the Church of England right across the board who would wish to identify with a project to reclaim orthodoxy.  In fact, GAFCON has really only appealed to those at the extremes.  Some charismatic evangelicals have identified with GAFCON but by no means all.  REFORM members on the other hand have always thought of themselves the only true Anglicans for a generation or more.  Thus, they align themselves totally with the approach of Archbishop Foley Beach to become part of the group.  GAFCON has preserved just enough credibility with the wider Anglican church not to be expelled completely.  The links are tenuous in some places, but it knows that the word Anglican gives it some ‘street cred’.  It cannot afford to abandon the Anglican ship altogether.  The position of Bishop Andy Lines in this desperately untidy cacophony of Anglican groups is, at the very least, messy.  The untidiness is partly because Anglicanism as a whole has a problem of identity.  It is also made worse because of the unclear relationships within the evangelical world.  In Britain, evangelicals make a show of unity even when, as in the States, they are deeply divided over issues like tongues, creationism and the position of women in the church.  Andy Lines, though reared in the REFORM traditions of Emmanuel Wimbledon, seems also to have absorbed some of the wider culture of the charismatically inclined evangelicals.   Indeed, he would have to be acceptable to such ‘softer’ evangelicals if he was able to serve them as a bishop.  This wider sympathy in the context of an open split with his erstwhile mentor Jonathan Fletcher is likely to put strains on the artificial unity between the wealthy REFORM members of Wimbledon and the more working-class charismatics in the provinces.  I would hazard a guess that Andy’s withdrawal from ministry may have something to do with trying hold together two warring factions of the evangelical movement in England.  It is an impossible and altogether unrewarding task.

What I am describing is the apparent beginning of a split among some of the evangelicals who attach themselves to the Anglican communion because of the revelation of old scandals.  The opening up of an old example of abuse centred on Emmanuel and Jonathan Fletcher may have the effect of opening up another ancient sore, the Iwerne scandal.  The time has surely come for the evangelical world to face up to long supressed scandals which have done so much harm to the inner integrity of the evangelical world and, by association,  the entire Anglican Communion.  Signs of light and clarity breaking into places which have been shrouded with secrecy, gives one hope that truth is about to prevail.  As someone wrote recently on Twitter.  ‘The ice is cracking in Narnia’.

The Internet is a great provider of information.  Of course, there are to be found in it lies, rumours and falsehoods.  We trust, however, that a reasonably discerning person can detect ‘fake news’ and not fall into the trap of repeating unsubstantiated information.  But there is another sort of truth that can be found from scrutinising the net.  An individual can pick up information from a variety of separate sources but be able to suggest how these fragments of information are connected. None of the fragments of information I tell below stand as complete stories.  However, when they are linked together, they seem to tell a complete story, one that does little credit to the Church of England or its breakaway sections represented by GAFCON and AMiE.

The first section is a statement by Bishop Andy Lines, the clergyman appointed by the breakaway Anglican American group ACNA to act as a missionary bishop for Europe.  He is also closely linked to AMiE the group that brings together parishes that have opted out of the Anglican Communion.  He recently announced to this group that he was withdrawing from active ministry for a few months, having been a victim of ‘spiritual manipulation’.   This highly unusual and unexpected announcement has obviously led to speculation.  Who was doing the abusing?  Who, in short, had the authority over this powerful figure in the Anglican breakaway world to be able to be able to create what appears to be a major crisis for a respected figure?  The only clue we get is from the description of the abuser.   Andy speaks of a ‘betrayal of trust by a mentor’.  No names are given but looking at Andy’s formation and links over many years with Emmanuel Church Wimbledon, we have to suggest that the Vicar, Jonathan Fletcher, a close friend and teacher, fills the description.  It was also Jonathan that was present at some kind of ceremony of commissioning Andy in Emmanuel following a consecration service in the States. Jonathan had been Vicar of Emmanuel Church for 30 years. He was thus a major figure in Andy’s life and in conservative Anglicanism generally.  Everyone in that world seems to know him or comes in some way into his orbit of his influence.  This Wimbledon church seems to be a kind of central hub for the entire conservative evangelical network within Anglicanism.  It is still a centre of great importance, along with such centres as St Helen’s Bishopsgate and St Ebbes in Oxford.

A second story that has broken in the past few days also concerns Jonathan Fletcher.  He was named by the Daily Telegraph in a story that has all the signs of having been pored over extensively by lawyers.  The story revealed that in 2017 the Diocese of Southwark had removed the Permission to Officiate from Jonathan on the grounds of unspecified abuse against vulnerable adults.  The Telegraph story provoked a reply on the website of Emmanuel to apologise and offer help to anyone who had been affected by the story.  Clearly, although the offences may have fallen short of being criminal, there was in the minds of members of his own church a case to answer. It is worth pointing out that although the church and other senior leaders have known about the allegations for two years, it is only now that they are offering support to those who may have been affected.

A third story or anecdote, no doubt provoked by the Telegraph story, was the publication of a photo showing a programme from one of the Iwerne public school summer camps dating back to 1982.  This showed John Smyth as a speaker on the same day as Jonathan Fletcher.  These two men obviously knew each other well.  Clearly also the networks of people who supported the Iwerne camps and their work were well known in Emmanuel circles.  It is hard or impossible to imagine that Jonathan Fletcher was left in the dark about John Smyth’s crimes and the reasons for his sudden departure for Africa.  This Iwerne/Emmanuel nexus would have had enormous power and influence.  We should not underestimate how much power seems to have accrued personally to Jonathan Fletcher as the man in charge of Emmanuel and a key player in Iwerne circles.  Any suggestion of wrongdoing by this superstar of the evangelical universe is highly embarrassing, not to say highly destructive, to the wider evangelical world.  Jonathan’s power reached out not only to those who were personally caught up by his charisma but he had institutional power, wielded through his participation in committees and other structures of influence.    John Smyth’s crimes have already cast one heavy pall over the legacy of Iwerne and the hundreds who passed their formative years within its orbit.  Silence on the part of those who knew about Smyth’s crimes has made the eventual effect of discovery far more serious and painful.  A similar silence protecting Jonathan over the same period of years has also been allowed to exist.   Whatever Jonathan is or is not guilty of, the silence maintained by many who knew allegations against him has made a bad situation far worse.

A final fragment of this complex story is the suggestion online that Jonathan Fletcher has been a member since 1983 of the exclusive dining club, Nobody’s Friends.  This club which emerged into public awareness during the IICSA hearings in March last year has a membership group of 60, all elected by the club itself.  Each of the members is chosen from either the church, politics or one of the other distinguished professions.  Jonathan’s place among this elite group is no doubt in part the result of being born into a family of eminent politicians, his father having served a member of Harold Wilson’s cabinet.  But apart from this family background, someone in the church must have seen him to be an important up and coming church person.  Thus, in his 40s, he was honoured to sit among Deans, Bishops, and the like, not to mention the crème de la crème of the political establishment.  Perhaps as importantly there was another group represented in the club, public-school headmasters, the supporters of Iwerne camps.

Mention of this dining club, Nobody’s Friends, links us back to the establishment network that played an important part in the Peter Ball story.  We catch a glimpse of a well-connected group of people who were able to pull many strings, partly because of whom they knew.  Jonathan Fletcher was right there in the middle of it all.  In other words, like Peter Ball, he knew and was known by enormous numbers of movers and shakers in British society.  Also, as with Peter Ball, if the accusations of ‘spiritual manipulation’ are true, then many people would have been affected.  Peter Ball’s world was the high church networks so well represented in the Chichester diocese.  Jonathan Fletcher’s world is the evangelical nexus represented by the conservative parishes of REFORM. Here we find considerable wealth, privilege and power.  Jonathan’s potential capacity to do good and provide a positive influence was enormous.  Equally his ability to create harm was extensive.  The story, as we have it, is in fragments but we are hinting that the joined-up version we have now points sadly to the latter scenario.  As with Peter Ball’s story, the discrediting of an admired hero in an institution goes far further than simply among those who knew the hero directly.  It spreads out to many others who expected the highest standards of their leaders. 

It is unfortunate that twice in one week we are reflecting on the influence of single individuals on vast numbers of other Christians in our church.  Any attempt to deny the influence of these two prominent Christians on others would be a distortion of history and would also dishonour the pain of betrayal that abused victims may often feel.  If Jonathan Fletcher is indeed shown to be guilty of spiritual manipulation, then we can be sure that the number of his victims is large.  Also, whenever a sense of betrayal is found within an institution, it has a tendency to infect the whole.  The healthy mutual interdependence that would have operated so well in evangelical fellowships would be weakened if a miasma of suspicion and fear starts to flow through these networks.  That situation is indeed what we seem to be beginning to witness.  Failures of trust have no good endings.  In the same way we need rebuilding of integrity and openness and an end to the networks of secrecy and privilege which flow through this story.  It is a story of four fragments but when drawn together it becomes a story of power abuse, dishonesty and harm.  Directly or indirectly this story affects us all.

Like many people, I heard the announcement of Peter Ball’s death on Sunday evening on the radio.  My first thought was to realise how this news would stir up pain for the dozens of survivors of his abuse just as John Smyth’s death did last year.   My initial reaction was to say to myself, I have nothing further to say about Peter Ball. I commented on my blog every day last July during the IICSA hearings when for five days the focus was on his offending and the way the wider Church dealt with it.  The Peter Ball event is, however, bigger than the man himself.  It continues to represent a crisis for the whole Church which needs to be faced and dealt with if it is not to undermine the institution that Ball was supposed to serve.

History may or may not confirm my opinion that Peter Ball single-handedly did more damage to the Church of England than any other individual before him.  This claim may seem to be exaggerated.  I would support it by pointing out how the Ball offences were not just those he committed against the unfortunate young men who came under his influence in the 70s and 80s.  The harm that Ball did caught up countless others, the individuals who saw him as a man of God and someone representing a true spiritual life.  Everyone who modelled their idea of God on him and his life of holiness has had to suffer the appalling let-down of realising that much, if not all, of this outward show was a charade, an act designed to draw in individuals, often then to be manipulated and used.

The 21^st century has given us the expression ‘gaslighting’.  It is based on the story line of a film where the man of the family attempted to drive his wife mad by manipulating reality in subtle ways around her so that she could not be certain what was real.  Items of furniture are moved, lights left on, so that the target of gaslighting starts to have no confidence that her memory and mental functioning is operating properly.  The fixed points in our lives around which we build our sense of coherence and certainty suddenly become fluid.  Many people regard the social/ political situation in the States as an example of mass gaslighting.  The extensive lying by the President makes many people uncertain about what is true and real.  It will take time for American society to recover from the subversive attacks on truth by President Trump.

One way of reading the Peter Ball story is to suggest that a large segment of the church and the upper echelons of British society were the objects of a kind of gaslighting by the Bishop.   For many years he was set on a programme of manipulating the church and parts of establishment society to advance his social and other ambitions.  Ball was a man possessed with numerous gifts.  As an ex public-school boy educated at Cambridge, he understood well the class system and seems to have had no difficulty obtaining wealthy and influential friends.  But he possessed a particular gift which capped all the other advantages of class and education.  He possessed the gift or quality we call charisma.  Charisma is remarkably tricky to define.  At one level we experience it when certain individuals enter a room and somehow fill it with their presence.  The Conservative party is at present being seduced by the extensive charisma of Boris Johnson in his attempt to become Prime Minister.  Charisma is normally accompanied by charm, which, as the word suggests, has an almost magical quality.  A person with charm and charisma like that possessed by Ball will nearly always get their own way because the other person will feel swamped and overwhelmed.  The sheer power of the charismatic personality is disorienting and it is the mental confusion created that links charisma to the gaslighting process.  How do you stand up to someone who simply oozes charisma backed up by other forms of social influence?  Most people surrender to this kind of charm without fully realising that they have been manipulated and coerced into thinking and doing what the charmer requires.

The story after the 1993 Caution of Ball is, in part, the story of the way that he used gaslighting techniques to confuse and manipulate large numbers of people from the Prince of Wales down.  Most were taken in by his narratives that he was not a serious threat, or that he always had the interests of young people at heart.  The IICSA hearing heard how Ball persuaded public school headmasters to allow him to perform confirmation services even after warnings were being issued.  The boys at these schools were bowled over by the displays of charisma from Ball, as were their masters.  The sheer crowd pulling power that he could demonstrate never seems to have dimmed.  But we know that there was something artificial going which ultimately can be seen as highly damaging to the Church.

Charisma, as shown by numerous studies, often keeps close company with the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  This short piece cannot go on to say definitively that Ball suffered from this syndrome.  What I can say, relevant to this attempt to understand the appalling damage that Ball did to his church, is that the kind of charismatic power that Ball exercised over others is often a cover for vulnerability.  Studies show that the flamboyance of narcissistic types is often found with a core of loneliness, pain and unhealed damage from childhood.  This may be the pattern we see in Ball.  The sheer charismatic energy that he exhibited, enthralling so many, was perhaps the sweet coating over a manipulative and empty interior.

Whatever the truths about Ball’s behaviour and his apparent ability to manipulate so many in and outside the church, certain uncomfortable facts remain.  First of all, Ball maintained his influence over many people for a long time so that they could not let go of their devotion to his ‘persecuted man of God’ persona until the trial in 2015.  The 2000 letters written to Lambeth by the great and the good in Ball’s support after his Caution also speaks of massive personal charismatic power.  How the writers of these letters have come to terms with Ball’s imprisonment and now death is of course unknown.  One can only speculate that, for some, if not the majority, faith in God and the Church has taken a considerable knock.  Most of us are buoyed in our own faith and encouraged by the faith of others that we admire.  The second uncomfortable fact is the apparent complete lack of remorse on the part of Ball for his crimes.  No attempts at reconciliation with victims appear to have taken place.  Did his faith and theology somehow justify his actions in his own mind?  We will now never know.  We are left with the damage caused not only to the victims of his attacks but also to the many individuals who wanted, even needed, him to be a model of holiness that their Christian journey required.  The numbers of this latter group must run into the thousands.  There will be many unhappy people today who are feeling the stab of a sense of being deeply betrayed by a man of outward holiness.  This quality was the outside husk of an inner devious exploitation.   That betrayal by Ball of those who looked up him is the most damaging part of his legacy.  The Church must own up to this damage and do something about it if it is to go forward with integrity.

The question of who is and who is not a member of the Church of England/Anglican has always been difficult to determine.  Church law has encouraged a fairly lax understanding of membership.  Anyone who resides in a parish in England has an entitlement to vote for the churchwardens of their local parish church.  Common-sense tells us that this ability in law to vote for the churchwardens at the Annual Parish meeting does not make someone a member of the Church of England.  Nevertheless, the Church, being established by law, has always been hesitant to declare anyone who breathes as totally beyond its boundaries.  Even those who do nothing and are not baptised seem to have certain rights and privileges within the body.

What is, in effect, a completely passive membership of the Church of England has for centuries been the norm for a large segment of the population.  The only way that has been open to individuals to opt out of this membership was to declare openly that they belong to a dissenting group and then pointedly avoid attending the parish church.  To be such an open ‘dissenter’ used to incur civil penalties, like exclusion from university.  No doubt the authorities had other ways of discriminating against these non-conforming families.  I am not enough of a historian to be able to list these penalties or know how they worked in practice.  But, everyone else in society was deemed to be a ‘conformer’ and automatically Church of England.  Regardless of how often or whether people attended church, everyone could enjoy a number of privileges, including the right to be married in church and be buried in the local churchyard.  Actual attendance at church could be erratic, occasional or non-existent.  Who knows how many fell below the Prayer Book minimum attendance rules of Easter communion and two other occasions?

The issue of who is and who is not an Anglican has become an topic of discussion recently with the case of John Smyth.  Smyth, the notorious abuser and for a long time chair of the Iwerne trustees, spent the end of his life as a member of non-Anglican churches in South Africa.  On the basis of this period of non-Anglican participation, the Archbishop of Canterbury has placed the ‘not-Anglican’ label on Smyth, apparently for the whole of his life.  It is hard to make this claim when during his time living in Winchester, Smyth was a Reader at Christ Church Winchester.  It seems fairly clear that, assuming this claim is correct, he would have had at some point to provide evidence of his Church of England baptism and confirmation before being admitted to Reader status.  What happened after he left the UK in disgrace does not change his Church of England membership while he lived in this country, committing his crimes.  I am reminded of the career of Michael Harper who resigned as a curate of All Soul’s Langham Place to promote the charismatic movement in the 60s.  After retirement he then became a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  Does the fact that Michael made such a radical switch from conservative Protestantism to Orthodoxy in any way invalidate his time at All Souls and his ministry there?  No one would claim that he was Orthodox all the way through and that his evangelical Anglican past was in some way rendered invalid by a later change of allegiance.  The evident Anglicanism of John Smyth is in no way changed by what he did at the end of his life.  We suspect that, in any case, a change in denominational allegiance for Smyth would have been prompted by a desire to opt out of Anglican networks.  It would have been easier for him to be spotted as an Anglican and thus prevented from exercising any kind of ministry.

The non-Anglican label has also been applied to the organisations that Smyth was associated with in England.  The Iwerne Trust (now known as Titus Trustees) which runs the Christian summer camps from which all of Smyth’s victims came, was at the heart of a large informal network of well-connected and often wealthy Anglican Christians, most of whom live in the south of England.  The same network exists today with a close association with the REFORM network.  REFORM exists as pressure group within the Church of England, promoting a number of conservative Christian causes.  It is active on General Synod promoting the anti-LGTB cause and supporting clergy and parishes that follow its conservative line.

The argument of the Archbishop and his advisers is to claim that the Church of England has no responsibility for Smyth and his victims because the Iwerne trustees were independent of the Church of England and not under its control.  This is a patently absurd argument.  Is the same argument to be applied to all the other independent organisations that work in and around the Church, including REFORM?  The Iwerne trustees and the Titus group that followed it are stuffed full of ordained clergy who all hold licenses or PTOs from their bishops.  A license to officiate involves an oath of obedience to the bishop ‘in all things lawful’.  Does not the obedience promised ensure that every activity undertaken by an ordained priest is potentially subject to the scrutiny of a bishop?  Just because the Titus Trust is not a legal entity controlled by the central Church does not stop individual ordained trustees being subject to episcopal authority.  It is time for the Archbishop of Canterbury and his advisers to stop hiding behind the ‘not-Anglican’ argument and ask the ordained trustees who hid Smyth’s crimes for over thirty years to give an account of themselves.  The Archbishop and the members of the House of Bishops do have real power in this situation.  They can order an inquiry and require any clergy trustees with information about Smyth’s crimes to disclose them.  The sanction of removing permissions to officiate or licences is available to enforce non-compliance.  Those of us who have looked at Smyth’s crimes have been sickened at the detail.  The accusation that there are clergy who in different ways are hiding these crimes by not sharing information is one that needs to be answered.

The reluctance of the Church of England at the highest level to take an active role in seeking resolution to the criminal activities of John Smyth is a running sore that will not go away.  The motivations of the well-connected church people who provided the large sums of money necessary to spirit Smyth out of Britain to Africa also need to be explained.  If the Church will not do it itself, then a ‘Smyth Inquiry’ should be handed over to an independent group.  Once again, we have to point out that deflection and avoidance never serve the Church well.  At the time when the public of Britain are beginning to conclude that the vested interests of church bodies take precedence to openness and integrity, we need bold actions by senior church figures.  In this area courage is required.  Such courage can be seen to be the mark of true leadership.

A document which I hope will always be referred to as the Blackburn Letter appeared yesterday June 17^th 2019.  It is written by the senior staff of the Blackburn Diocese and is addressed to their licensed staff, clergy and Readers, and safeguarding officers.  In essence, it is commending study of the recent IICSA report on the Diocese of Chichester and the Peter Ball case.  Those of us who have been cheering on the case of safeguarding for some time cannot but feel that this is progress.  The Letter may claim historic importance because it shows that in one diocese of the Church of England a group of senior church people really seem to understand all the dimensions of safeguarding in the Church.  They understand it in a way that goes far beyond the box-ticking reputational management process which is what safeguarding comes to be in many places.

Why am I personally moved by this letter?  For a start, the Blackburn senior staff want those who study the IICSA report to notice before anything else the suffering that has been caused by sexual abuse to real victims.  Many people, including myself, have always pleaded that safeguarding should start at this end – the needs of survivors.  Sexual abuse, however many years ago it took place is a ‘human catastrophe’ for those caught up in it as victims as well as causing ‘lifelong impact’.  How right that the Blackburn Letter begins with words from Psalm 51.  ‘Have mercy on us O God, for we have sinned’.  The letter makes no apology for putting the human suffering endured by survivors right at the beginning.  The traditional preoccupation of the Church, reputation management, only gets a mention in para 5.  It is mentioned, but only as a way of explaining that it has been a factor in not dealing well with allegations from the past.   When protecting the good name of the institution has taken precedence, the suffering of survivors has been made far worse. 

Moving on from what appear to be genuine expressions of sorrow and contrition on behalf of the whole Church, the letter begins to explore what can be done in the future.  The congregations are to be places where ‘children and vulnerable adults can be entirely safe’ but also where ‘the voices of those who have difficult things to say or disclosures to make are heard and acted on.’  The second part of this wish is far harder to deliver.  Many survivors report that the reason the Church has found it so hard to deal with their needs is because the recounting of their past experience of suffering causes so much discomfort in the hearer.  None of us find it easy to listen to stories of abuse, particularly when the abuser was a trusted figure, like a priest or a bishop.  Taking on board the idea that a member of the home team is an abuser is deeply unsettling.  It is far easier to shut down the discordant thought and that is what many people will do in practice.

A further insight in the letter, which is music to my ears, is the recognition that clericalism, deference and abuse of power lie behind the ‘cover-up’ and the silencing of the ‘voices of the vulnerable’.  Clergy and other leaders have power within the relationships they possess and there needs to be ‘deeper awareness’ of that power.  This theme of ministerial power and its potential for harm is the topic that I have chosen to reflect on in the forthcoming volume of essays Letters to a Broken Church. There is so much more to be said on this topic.

I want to make two further observations about the letter.  One is that the letter appears to have been written at a visceral level.  In short, the emotions of sorrow and repentance are allowed to rise to the surface and be dominant themes in what is communicated.  Somehow the letter, assisted by a quotation from Andrew Graystone’s essay of a week ago, manages to avoid completely the somewhat petulant tone of so many expressions of ‘regret’ and ‘apology’ that we associate with official statements.  Are we correct in seeing in this letter the beginning of something new, a combination of deep sorrow and genuine feeling for the needs of survivors and those wronged by the Church?    Such sentiments, if they are followed through, will begin to meet the needs of survivors.  It may be the beginning of the ‘change of culture’ that has been looked for by so many.  It is also the first sign that some senior clergy individually and corporately are beginning to ‘get it’.

My final observation is a somewhat irreverent one but it needs to be made.  Is it a coincidence that this remarkable statement of unanimity and contrition about safeguarding emerges from a diocese that is far away from London?  The Diocese of Blackburn may be articulating a somewhat prophetic position precisely because it feels itself geographically and in other ways remote from the centres of Anglican influence represented by Church House and Lambeth Palace respectively.  The prospect of an entire diocese studying the articulate comments and criticisms of the Independent Inquiry must be causing considerable discomfort among those who try hard to control the narrative and set the agenda for the Church of England.  The forthcoming debates at York General Synod may or may not get to the heart of the issue as the Blackburn Letter seems to have done.  Whatever is said at York, the effect of the process of study in the Blackburn diocese will have implications which will reverberate long into the future.  It will be increasingly hard to claim that no one understands the issues.  The consequences of this serious reflective study on safeguarding and the needs of survivors will be hard to limit only to one circumscribed geographical area represented by the Diocese of Blackburn.

Right at the heart of this blog’s concern and many other places is the desire that the suffering of abuse survivors should be understood, responded to and healed.  Up till now the Church has often insisted of responding through damage limitation and avoidance.  The Blackburn response is suggesting that these methods are no longer viable.  Perhaps the Blackburn Letter is the beginning of a new phase in the history of the Church of England.  One day it may be said that that on the 17^th June 2019 the Church of England, represented by the Diocese of Blackburn, began to move from denial and avoidance of the issue of abuse victims to a stance resembling healing, humility and new beginnings.

There is one group in society whose job it is to know how to use language with a precision and care for detail that few of the rest of us can match.  This group is the legal profession.  Every word and phrase produced professionally for a legal document or a court presentation has to matter.  There is no room for any vagueness of expression.  This is part of the training that lawyers receive.  Everyday conversations that ordinary people like us hold may make use of all kinds of language tropes, figures of speech, metaphor and irony.  Legal terminology will always shun these, preferring definitions to a more open-ended language.  This is probably why legal language and theology do not make a particularly good mix.  Church people are typically steeped in biblical imagery and theological propositions which do not achieve the level of precision that lawyers need.  Also, when it comes to the law itself, Church people are not very comfortable at having to obey rules that may appear to restrict their activities.  Why does law ever need to be applied to church life? 

.Few people are aware of the amount of Church law that has been compiled over the centuries to deal with the complicated status of the Church of England within British society.  But that theme is not one I want to touch on today. There is however one area of church religious practice which has to take the law seriously.  Because the sexual abuse of minors has been a crime for at least 150 years, the law of the land and the courts are necessarily involved when reports of such offences within the Church are revealed.  If the police decide to prosecute then court proceedings take place.  These ensure the gathering of evidence from victims, while listening to the defence of the alleged perpetrators so that due legal process is followed.  Alongside secular law, there may be also Church legal processes to be followed.  These operate according to somewhat different rules so that criminal investigations and church tribunals have to be held in different times and places, each following their own internal rules.   One particular discussion that is now exercising lawyers, politicians and senior church leaders is whether or not churches (and other similar organisations) should be ‘required’ by the law of the land to report all cases of sexual abuse against the young or whether this is just a recommended practice.  No such requirement exists at present to make it compulsory or mandatory for church leaders and personnel to report sexual abuse crimes. The argument about whether the law should be changed effectively hangs on these two words – ‘must’ and ‘should’.  Many people both in and outside the church are pressing for compulsory reporting of offences to a body outside the church.   Others want to give the final decision as to whether to report abuse to the church authorities.  At present, information on abuse cases is normally but not routinely handed on to the authorities.  Many lay people might think the debate between ‘must’ and ‘should’ is fairly arcane but it can be shown that there is actually a great deal at stake.   The vital issue here being addressed is this.  Are children better protected when church employees are legally required to report cases of actual and suspected abuse or can the Church manage this area of its life better without outside help?

Legal compulsion to act in a particular way may seem unduly harsh on an organisation that is largely staffed by volunteers.  The real argument for discretionary as opposed to compulsory reporting is, I believe, pressed by those who fear the loss of power and control within the organisation.  At present, bishops in the Church of England employ and oversee the work of Diocesan Safeguarding Advisers (DSAs).  By all accounts the effectiveness of these DSAs varies across the country.  One suspects that some of the differences can be accounted for in part, not only by their professional competence, but by the degree of interference by bishops.  Bishop A might well want to be open about cases of past abuse in his diocese, while Bishop B, with a deeply protective instinct for the reputation of his/her diocese, might want to keep all safeguarding information completely under his/her control.  A law requiring DSAs to report every case of abuse to an outside authority would remove at a stroke the variability of actual practice over the delivery of abuse protection.  That must surely be progress.

The Church has not been very good at speaking clearly on the topic of mandatory reporting (MR).  As things stand at present there is no MR in cases of child abuse.  Those who do report, as victims or witnesses, are often treated like whistleblowers in the NHS – in other words badly.  So many cases of appalling neglect in the NHS have only been revealed by the bravery of individuals who stood out against the system on behalf of patients.  Whistleblowers are only so described in a system when reporting is not obligatory but a matter of conscience.  When it is made compulsory to report, it no longer takes courage to do so.  What had been an individual act of bravery now becomes a routine duty required by law. The entire culture changes when MR becomes the new accepted norm; now the expectation is that abuse will be routinely exposed when it occurs.  The institutional culture is no longer creates principled heroes but a healthy environment where good practice is always expected by everyone within the organisation.  To take one example of a new culture created by a change in the law, we no longer chafe at having to wear seat belts for journeys by car.  It has become a routine action which no one comments on anymore.

Back in March an interview was given by Meg Munn, the new director of the National Safeguarding Panel on the Sunday Programme.  She began the interview by appearing to claim that mandatory reporting was already in place in the Church of England.  The interviewer, Edward Stourton, and the informed listener knew that this is not actually true.  Was this inaccuracy the result of sloppy thinking or was it a deliberate attempt to confuse the listener?  Later on in the interview, when pressed, Meg seemed to concede that reporting was still discretionary and that there was not yet any provision in law to require that all cases of abuse be reported to a local authority adviser.  The confusions shown in the interview rings alarm bells for some listeners, whether those in the Church or among the wider public.  For many people the difference between ‘should’ and ‘must’ might seem tiny.  In practice, as we have shown, there are huge differences of culture involved.  Far too many cases of abuse have been exacerbated by the attempt by bishops and others who want to protect the Church from independent scrutiny and ignore survivors and their stories.  The eventual resolution of this debate when we hope new law will be created, is something that does matter a great deal.  If safeguarding professionals and those who oversee them can take the view that they are entitled, when they see fit, to bury information or suspicions of abuse, that is often precisely what they will do.  When such action or inaction becomes answerable potentially in a court of law, this should change things for the better so that survivors and victims may benefit.

The organisation Mandate Now, which campaigns for MR, has made accessible some research from Australia where MR has been compulsory in many states for a number of years.  This research shows that many of the fears articulated in this country against MR are unfounded.  There is no incidence of accidental prosecution because of making a misjudgement about a case of abuse.  After a rise of reporting when such schemes come into force, there is then a levelling off and in fact cases go down as the seriousness of the offences permeates through the entire institution.  It is my perception that the only plausible reason for arguing against MR is an attempt by the Church to avoid surrendering institutional power.  The Church of England, as revealed by the IICSA hearings, has shown itself unworthy to be trusted in this area.  The credibility that it may have possessed until 10 years ago has been damaged, possibly beyond repair.  If it is ever to recover that credibility it must eat the humble pie of allowing its safeguarding practice to be scrutinised and scrutinised thoroughly by an independent body for an indefinite period.  The level of trust it has with the survivors I know is close to zero.  It will take a full generation of ‘acting justly and walking wisely before your God’ before this trust can be restored.

I am still a supporter of OXFAM – just.  The recent stories of scandal and mismanagement might have persuaded me to withdraw my modest contribution to their funds but I am still hanging on.  What has happened is that I have made a personal reappraisal of why I give at all to relief organisations in the first place. 

Thirty years ago, I heard about a school contemporary who went to Ethiopia to help with the humanitarian disaster in that country when millions were caught up in the famine.  His time there scarred him seriously and he returned to Britain a broken man.  The talk then was of a nervous break-down.  Now we might well describe his plight as Post Traumatic Stress.  My link with him was only indirect so I never heard how the story developed.  Even if he made a full recovery from his ordeal, my hearing a bit of his story taught me one thing about myself; helping the starving and the destitute in poor parts of the world was not my personal vocation.  Admitting that to myself allows me to understand how important it is to give so that others, more robust than I, can do this work.  So, it is not just that I, like most people in our society, realise with the mind that the problems of starvation, poverty and refugees are overwhelming in the world today.   People like us need to own this reality personally and try to do something about it.  If we cannot work ourselves to relieve these needs then we need to enable others to do this work.  That requires our money as well as our imaginative concern.  Even if we describe this giving as conscience money for not doing anything practical ourselves, it probably does not matter.  The important thing is that we care and we give.

OXFAM have, this week, been given a dramatic and severe telling off by the Charity Commission.  A story of sexual sleaze in Haiti and later cover-up was discovered with people high-up in the organisation putting reputation above people.  Some words from the report and quoted by the Times in its leader: ‘No charity is more important than the people it serves or the mission it serves.’  This is followed by comments from the Times leader writer.  ‘The Commission concluded that OXFAM’s priority had been to protect its reputation and its relationship with its donors rather than protect those it was supposed to be helping’. 

Am I the only one to note the telling parallel with the Church of England?  Both organisations are being accused of sexual abuse in the past with attempts by current leaders to cover-up in order to protect reputations.  The situation in OXFAM is potentially dire.  Reputational damage could destroy the organisation completely.  If donors and the government withdraw their support, the organisation may go into a spiral of decline.  The more it has to cut back on its work, the more would-be donors may look elsewhere to place their money.  The next few weeks may be crucial in deciding whether OXFAM has a future or not.  In spite of everything OXFAM will, I think, survive.   It has been functioning far longer than most other aid organisations, having been founded during the war to help feed Greek children starving as the result of the German occupation of their country.  By chance in the 1960s I met one of the founders, Dick Milford, and no doubt this personal contact with one of the original OXFAM group has helped to cement my long-term loyalty to the organisation.

The Church of England is of course far bigger than OXFAM, both in terms of its assets and the numbers of people involved in its work.  But like OXFAM, it faces an issue of trust with its supporting base.  The Charity Commission was not talking about the Church when it spoke about a charitable institution making it’s ‘priority … to protect its reputation… rather than protect those it was supposed to be helping’ but the description fits very well.  OXFAM will recover if it can regain the early vision of its founders, to feed the starving and the destitute in the world as well as providing the tools for self-sufficiency.  The Church of England, insofar as the Commission’s description of OXFAM applies to it as well, has a similar uphill task to restate its vision of itself.  Time and time again the IICSA process has revealed occasions where the Church acted, not for the benefit of those it had hurt, but to protect its reputation.   It is interesting to reflect on the fact that Jesus did not anywhere urge the disciples to become expert on public relations/reputation.  He realised that if they did what was required of them, then that would be a sufficient indication to the world that they were his disciples and thus servants of God himself.  ‘By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.’

The care of the Church for survivors is not just a matter of justice.  It may be a matter, long-term, for the Church’s very survival.  Caring for and helping those who have been damaged is part of the core reason for its existence.  If ever protecting reputation is put above that, it is hard to see anything but shrinkage within the institution alongside a steady decline in its integrity.  A generation of young people are growing up who look at institutions and are quick to spot hypocrisy and loss of nerve.  If a Church talks about justice, reconciliation and care and then fails to deliver on these with a vulnerable group of its own members, the young are going to depart in droves.  OXFAM is facing its own crisis, having been charged with exploiting some of those that it was supposed to be helping.   All the photos of boxes of aid are going to look different when it is realised that the organisation have been employing individuals who appear more interested in having a good time than in serving the poorest on earth.   Now that significant numbers of clergy and bishops have also been revealed to be exploiters of the weak, the Church also has to work hard to show that any impression of widespread corruption is a false one.   To change the impression being given, one that breeds cynicism and distrust, the Church must labour hard to overcome any bad publicity.  The present generation of bishops and leaders must stand up and demonstrate that they care, they serve and they are ready to stamp out the abuses of power that are currently so damaging to the Church and to its reputation with the people of this country.