In recent public statements, the Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken about the problem of deference.  In complaining about deference, he is, no doubt, referring to the distinctive way that he and other bishops are treated by clergy and people alike.  People at the top of a tree, here the bishops, are looked up to and there may a situation of complete or partial paralysis as the ordinary person feels overawed by being in their presence.  This experience of deference thus leads to a state of inhibition of communication so that the one with power is unlikely to hear the true opinions of those ‘below’.   It is perhaps not the fault of the ones who have the power which causes this kind of inhibition in the other.   All of us recognise this phenomenon.  We enter the presence of someone important and we have a tendency to feel our own unimportance.  Our opinions also feel small and we may well, in our state of littleness, not give a good account of ourselves or our real opinions.

I have been trying to reflect on why the Church has a problem with deference and how the effect of this non-communication is so damaging to the church at large.  Clearly it is important for people of importance to listen to the widest possible range of people when making decisions which may affect the welfare of the same people.  If  people routinely feel overawed into silence or formulaic responses, then something is lost in the process of communication and decision making.

From an historical point of view, deference can be understood as a by-product of the mediaeval feudal patterns of ordering society.   The king occupied that highest position in the land and he could command the loyalty of the nobles below him.  These held land on his behalf.  In turn other ranks found a place in that society, right down to the landless peasants and slaves.  There was no social mobility to speak of in mediaeval society.  The power of custom and tradition kept most people firmly stuck in the rank into which they had been born.  There was however one anomaly in this society, the Church.  By maintaining a respected role within the whole, the Church has schemes of education and social advancement not known elsewhere.  Through cathedral schools, a bright boy could advance up the hierarchy of rank to occupy a place in court or among the great families where education and literacy was valued. 

The exact relationship between church and state in mediaeval society was a subject of contention.  Without getting into deep historical detail, I can mention the work of an 9^th century French bishop, Himcar of Rheims, who had much to do with the compiling of coronation rites for the early French kings.  He established the principle that a bishop was involved in the crowning of the King.  This quasi-sacramental act gave the bishop/pope an arguably higher place in the hierarchy that everyone acquiesced in.  Since that time bishops have inherited an intangible exalted status in the eyes of many people.  The word bishop can for some evoke centuries of influence and power.

Today the bishops carry what is regarded by many of them as the burden of being exalted within a hierarchical system.  Traces of these hierarchical ways of thinking are found in many parts of our society beyond the church.  One place of significance where we find it alive and well is in the English public-school system.  The boys at these schools could be said to be trained to live and breathe the values of mediaeval hierarchy.  The control and command structure find expression within the prefectorial system.  It has also been fed into the church through establishment influences like the Iwerne camps, about which we have heard so much recently.  Our whole society in the UK has in different ways learnt to live within and accept the values of deferential hierarchical society and way of doing things.  Bishops are right there in the middle of it, both as the result of history and to conform with an establishment that has grown up with it and still ‘enforces’ it.

It is hard to know what to recommend to Justin Welby as the antidote to deference.  One thought that comes out of a recent conversation, is to go back to the 7^th century in England when the Roman (hierarchical) traditions defeated the local Celtic traditions at the Synod of Whitby in 664.  What was defeated was not just a different date for Easter but a whole distinct way of doing church.  There is a lot that we do not know about the churches of the Celtic period.  Many of our current ‘rediscoveries’ may be based on complete misunderstandings.  But the one thing we do glimpse is a church that rooted itself in the life and witness of its monastic communities.  Because these communities, especially in Ireland, were opened ended, learning and monastic spirituality flowed out of them and permeated the whole of society.  Celtic ideas are also perhaps responsible for an intuitive connection between creation and faith.  The greater emphasis on community and the holistic vision of living more in harmony with the created order certainly seem values that Justin Welby is sympathetic with.  The community of St Anselm represents a vision for doing church which is quite different from the hierarchical strands of church life that we find elsewhere in the church. 

With this thought about the values of Celtic Christianity (whether or not they are based on fantasy), I would urge the Archbishop to speak far more about these gentler values from the past.  We would ask him to speak to us about the values that emerge out of community life, especially as they are being rediscovered in his own religious community in Lambeth.  To free the church of deference we need to see him challenge more openly the hierarchical structures that permeate the Church in so many ways.  The failure to listen and speak to survivors is an example of old-fashioned hierarchical values that demand control over the structure at every turn.  The other great perceived value of Celtic Christianity is the constant awareness of creation.  Living more in harmony with the seasons, the forces of nature is an effort that demands humility and patience.  Being still before God is a sentiment that captures the mood of the twenty first century far better than the many words that are used weekly in the pulpits of the church.

I am not sure what the slogan of the Church should be to bring us back from the possibility of collapse and irrelevance in the coming decades.  One thing I am certain of is that it will embrace these Celtic values of humility, stillness and new forms of communal living.  As I said in a previous blog, we expect from leaders a vision for the future.  That vision will not be about the management of decline but about new possibilities, hopes and dreams for the future.  The Christian faith has the capacity to cause ‘young men to dream dreams and old men to see visions’.  We need our leaders to show us the way.

Among the many documents attached to the recent IICSA hearings was an email correspondence dating back to 2015 between a survivors’ group and the Archbishop of Canterbury.  I would not have picked up on this exchange but for an alarming article last Friday in the Church of England Newspaper by Sheik Muhammad Al-Husseini.  Al-Husseini has core status in the IICSA hearings and although he is not directly involved in the Anglican side of the hearings, he seems remarkably well-informed about the detail of what is going on in our church.  He has also spoken to several survivors and their lawyers.

The correspondence, to which Al-Husseini refers, mentions that in 2015 one of the things that survivors were complaining about to the Archbishop was the use by some dioceses of a particular company to protect their interests, Luther Pendragon, a specialist in crisis management.  Without knowing anything further about this firm, one is immediately concerned to discover that at least two dioceses are spending considerable sums of money on this kind of advice.  If any institution brings in professional help to protect its interests then it means that this institution has decided that it needs to ‘circle the wagons’ to protect itself against a perceived enemy.  Who is this enemy?  The enemy is evidently none other than the survivors themselves.  These are the same people, whose interests the Archbishop of Canterbury has promised to put right at the centre of the Church’s concerns.

The letter addressed to the Archbishop on the 12 June 2015 claims that ‘scandal management companies like Luther Pendragon Limited  .. are known to have acted to obstruct, apply pressure and threaten survivors, whistleblowers and others who have spoken out about Anglican clergy abuse’.  Even without reading the letter detailing the techniques used by this firm, we seem to be entering a very dark place. A diocese of the Church of England (two are mentioned, London and Winchester) has felt it right to use the services of what can only be described as professional bullies to protect its reputation.  The victims of this bullying are among the most vulnerable group in society – the sexually and spiritually abused.  How can this be ethical, let alone Christian?  One survivor I know was informed that it was normal practice for the Church or its agents to collect personal information about complainants to assist in the potential legal defence processes which might lessen the potential liability of the Church.  A particularly nasty attack that survivors have had to face is the suggestion that, before their abuse, they were in some way already mentally fragile.  Thus, any symptoms of post-traumatic stress they may now be suffering, were already present. 

Al-Husseini’s article also mentions the fact that the Church of England nationally employs one particularly aggressive law firm to protect its interests.  A particular lawyer in this firm has acquired from survivors the nickname the Pitbull on account of her techniques of intimidation and merciless interrogation of survivors.   The article overall gives us some insight into a thoroughly unpleasant culture.  On the outside there are pleasing soft words, tears of remorse and apology.  Inside we find a ruthless machine full of hard-headed professional reputation people aligned to aggressive lawyers desperate to defend, at all costs, the institution.  

It is to be hoped that this inclusion by IICSA of the 2015 document naming, and hopefully shaming, the underhand methods of Luther Pendragon, shows that the Inquiry is fully aware of hypocritical goings-on in the Church.  A further area of injustice remains to be resolved.  This is the way that the Church has tried, through its professionals, to discredit a highly respected international expert on safeguarding, Ian Elliott.  In 2015 Ian produced a comprehensive report about the treatment of one particular survivor, known to IICSA as A4.  In his report which has not been published in full, Ian criticised the advice given to the Church by lawyers and others to withdraw pastoral and other support from A4.  The Church, after initially enthusiastically receiving the report and promising to implement its findings in full, started to draw back from this support.  We do not know of course what was said behind closed doors at meetings of strategists and advisers but evidently senior people desperately wanted to discredit the report’s recommendations.  Within six to nine months it became just another report to be shelved and forgotten.  By that time the bishop who had been asked by the House of Bishops to oversee its implementation, Sarah Mullally, had been promoted from Crediton to London.  Here her new responsibilities made the task of overseeing the implementation of the Elliott report impossible to fulfil.  The criticism that Elliott had made in his report about the withdrawal of pastoral care for A4 was not picked up by the Church or responded to.  Nevertheless, there were enough denials and rumours around to suggest that this was not a true record of what had happened and this allowed the Church to wriggle out of any obligation to implement any part of the report.  No one in the leadership of the Church attacked Elliott, but neither did they, in the end, do anything to support him or put his recommendations into practice.   

The doubts which had been cast over the Elliott report were finally confronted as the result of detective work presented to the IICSA enquiry.  Documents were uncovered which showed that there was, as he had claimed, written advice in circulation which gave clear advice to dioceses that A4 and other survivors were to be cut off from all communication with the Church if they made civil claims against it.  This included the withdrawal of pastoral support just as Ian Elliott had accurately reported.  This whole story was explored in the BBC Sunday programme on July 21st.

When we take an overall view of the way the Church has been behaving in regard to the survivors of sexual abuse it is hard not to use a series of adjectives which would include the words murky, disreputable and dishonest.  The gall needed to spend the Churches’ money on a company such as Luther Pendragon, which has made its name on defending tobacco companies and the nuclear waste industry, suggests that there are a considerable number of senior clergy who are in danger of losing their moral compass.  Every time a lie is told to a survivor, or a committee listens to ethically doubtful advice from an expensive lawyer, corruption enters in.  Individuals may have arrived at a meeting decent and honourable.  By the end of a meeting when they may have colluded in a blatant piece of expedient management of a survivor, there has been a slippage into colluding with evil activity.  This makes them participants in the evil themselves.

The saga of Jonathan Fletcher rumbles on.  Many people are asking how an individual with a history of doubtful behaviour and no PTO was able to access many pulpits in Britain and abroad over the past 2 ½ years.  Every such invitation involved another person in authority defying the rules of the Church.   Were these invitations made in conscious defiance of church rules or is it a case of information not being shared?  Then there is the deliberate ‘cleansing’ of mentions of Fletcher on various websites.  Who had the authority to perform such an act?  One author of a piece which had mentioned Fletcher in his original piece, only to see the name disappear, protested to me personally about this underhand and unauthorised editing.  The censorship shows every sign of being coordinated.  Thankfully no one has access to my blog posts so that my, no doubt provocative, posts on the topic remain up for anyone to read.

The Church at the institutional level and through its non-official manifestations seems to be going through a crisis of morality.  In spite of thousands of sermons preached each Sunday, the response to abuse survivors is apparently sometimes mired in shady, often shameful activity.  At the heart of this activity, as we have said many times before, is the need to preserve the good name of the structure.  How long will it be before this reputation polishing exercise collapses in total failure and the questionably ethical behaviour of so many church people becomes manifest?  That will be possibly the beginning of the end for our national Church.

It’s been encouraging to hear many witnesses at the ICSA Anglican Hearing call for safeguarding decision-making to be removed from church hierarchy, especially bishops. The main reason given for this was the lack of professional training and experience to make such decisions. This point was perfectly illustrated on Day 3 of the hearing by the Bishop of Chester. He remained unable to accept that someone with 8,000 child pornography images on his computer, 800 of the worst kind, convicted of 17 offences, was never again going to be suitable to have a clerical role. Challenged about his decision, it was painful to see him squirm, either unable to see the errors in his judgement or to take responsibility for them. If I wasn’t more concerned about the children who were abused, tortured and exploited to make those images, I could almost feel sorry for him. I think that denial came from a triggered shame mechanism. He needs to read Brene Brown.

Survivors know all about shame, although ours comes not from our own errors, but from the struggle to make sense of trusted figures treating us so horribly. Parents/vicars/youth workers are always right and good, so it must be me that is bad. I can tell him all about the shame of internalised worthlessness, having spent many nights awake wondering if one of these images on someone’s computer is of my younger self. On second thoughts, I don’t feel sorry for him at all.

A second reason witnesses gave for removing decisions from Bishops was the conflict of interest in their role. I was glad to see this recognised, as it is something I have been banging on about for some time. Bishops are heavily invested in the institution, so the instinct to defend it is strong and of course it is their role to do their best for their diocese. They cannot just be focused on the best interests of the survivor. They also have pastoral responsibility and oversight of their clergy, which places survivors at best third on their list of priorities. That pastoral oversight – which is needed by the clergy and congregation involved in any allegation of abuse, as well as the person being abused – cannot be exercised freely and wholeheartedly if you are also the person being judge and employer.

There is a safeguarding decision that needs to be separated from internal responsibilities and taken by safeguarding experts. There is an HR decision that equally needs to be taken by someone with relevant HR expertise. Is this an issue of competence or character? Is this person still fit to practice? Then there are pastoral needs, of the victim, the congregation, the colleagues and family of the abuser, both during and after the investigation. This is where the pastoral and leadership skills of the bishop should be free to shine, strategically in terms of ensuring there is support for survivors and parishioners, practically in terms of supporting those in ministry and their families.

Even here there is a conflict of interest, one that I believe is shared by Diocesan Safeguarding Advisers. When you have been abused by someone in an institution such as the church, you are understandably wary of any authority figure in that institution. You are aware that, as already mentioned, the authority figures have an agenda based on their institutional responsibilities. The DSA is not just there for you as the victim. They give advice to the Bishop about how the church should respond. They are, usually, on the pay roll of the Diocese. They are part of the investigation and make best interest decisions

I have worked with looked after young people for many years and it is similar to the relationship they have with their social workers. However sympathetic social workers may be, their role includes decision-making  based on the law, the LA budget and what they consider is in your best interests. This may not be what you want to happen. So you don’t always see them as your trusted friend and ally through the care maze.

In the early days of Survivors Voices, our survivor-led support, education and advocacy organisation, I led a couple of workshops for Safeguarding Advisers from church and voluntary organisations to highlight this very issue. They unearthed the tension between supporting survivors and being concerned about the rest of the institution. These conversations were part of the path to the authorised listener role.

Sadly, that has not been enough. Survivors need advocates who can advise them of their rights and guide them through the complicated and painful process of reporting, often simultaneously within church and state procedures. We need help to access trauma-informed therapy and recovery support, not just for a few hours or weeks but often years. We need bishops, clergy and lay workers who are safeguarding savvy, survivor-sensitive and trauma-informed. who listen, listen, listen and work with survivors and families to create safer spaces and good practice together. We need a culture and theology that has the vulnerable child in the centre, not just in a kitsch nativity scene but in the coreopsis our being and practice. We need worship and theology that is sensitive to triggers and the impact of spiritual abuse, that doesn’t re-abuse with shame, forced forgiveness, silence, inappropriate talk of reconciliation, stigmatising mental distress, indifference, resistance to taking responsibility and to change.

If you have been abused by your biological father and by your male priest, it is hard to see the communion offered to you in the hands of another male father figure, as the restorative succour of Christ, not another penetration by your abuser, a bribe to stay silent, a tainted gift. We need new survivor-informed and survivor-led worship and liturgies, safe spaces that explore a gentler theology, bring compassion, justice and shalom to the heart of our relationship with God.

If the church really cared about survivors, these are the kinds of support it would be providing. If the church really cared about survivors, we would be talking about justice and survivor theology and preventing spiritual abuse, about healing retreats and trauma-informed ministry and therapy services and restitution and reconciliation (as a broken church, NOT survivor-abuser), not policies and procedures and lawyers and insurers. If the church really cared about survivors there would be outpourings of sorrow and apology and compassion, from sharing the agony of abuse like Christ hanging with us on the cross, the place of love and anger and accompanying.

I believe there are many Christians, like me, that do really care and are passionate and committed to change things. As more survivors speak out, the path of change is clear. So why do we survivors still cry out, how long?  The enquiry talked a lot about deference, but I think it needed to focus on resistance. Why do the leadership resist and why do the rest of us not rise up in revolt? Abuse is not about a few hundred thousand survivors, who they secretly wish would shut up and go away, a distraction from the church’s mission. Abuse is about our fundamental relationship with each other, about war and poverty and gender-based violence, climate change and pollution, our abuse of the earth and all living creatures. Until we all stop resisting our collective responsibility for ending global abuse, no safeguarding project or policy change will be enough. This is the real mission of the church.

Jane Chevous, Co-founder of Survivors Voices, www.survivorsvoices.org

There can be few people in Britain who have not heard of Doreen Lawrence.  With her husband Neville and the help of the Press, Doreen elevated the terrible episode of her son Stephen’s murder into a national scandal.  Between the murder in 1993 and the setting up of the Macpherson enquiry in 1999, Doreen and her husband worked with dignity and energy to demonstrate that her son’s death was not just another tragic incident which could be quickly forgotten, but a racist act of deliberate murder.  At the heart of the subsequent enquiry set up in 1999 was not the murder alone but the extraordinary inertia of the police in responding and gathering evidence.  The suspects were fairly easy to identify but there were delays and many failures in their pursuing the case.  The Lawrence parents found themselves fighting for justice, battling against a huge institution which was both incompetent and almost openly hostile to them and their case.

The Macpherson report which coined the memorable phrase ‘institutional racism’, taught the British public about what happens when an evil is allowed to infect an entire institution.  Within the Metropolitan Police force, there were few officers from ethnic minorities.  Those who did join had found the atmosphere so toxic that most resigned within a short time.  There was thus a dominant white majority in the force so that lazy stereotyping and acts of prejudice against ethnic minorities had become entrenched.  To misquote a modern American slogan, black lives did not matter on the streets of London in the days before Macpherson.  The assumption that Stephen Lawrence was just another violent incident which needed little effort on the part of the police proved to be a miscalculation.  Doreen and Neville Lawrence began energetically to campaign on the part of their son.  The campaign grew so loud that British society was unable to ignore their voices.  The Macpherson report, when it appeared, was the platform for a new transformation of the old culture.  It reached out not just to the police themselves, but to the whole of society.

The events revealed at the IICSA enquiry in the past two weeks have also been about the culture of a large organisation, here the Church of England.  There are some uncomfortable links with the Lawrence story.  On the one side there is a large organisation which has seen uncovered many disturbing events related to sexual abuse; on the other there are a small group of campaigners who are determined to reveal truths that the institution would rather remain hidden.  The parallels are not exact.  The Inquiry has already begun and no one is suggesting that Teresa May set up the entire IICSA process as the result of campaigning individuals.  Its scope goes far wider than just the Churches.  Campaigners have, nevertheless, played a vital part in the process, just as the Lawrences did twenty-five years ago.  Last week the witnesses known as A4 and Matt Ineson both stood up and gave powerful witness to the Inquiry.  They were not there by some random choice.  It was because each of them has contributed enormously to the work of illumination that has taken place in the past four years since the process began.  Their evidence spoke not just of the original abuse that each had received, but they described vividly the obstruction, blanking and ignoring by the institution that has gone on over the time since they disclosed.  A4 and Matt could claim to be like the Lawrences in their fight for justice.  They have been opposed, not by an inert police force, ripe for radical reform, but a quite different kind of organisation, the Church of England.

British society indirectly colluded in the original attempts to silence the Lawrences by not supporting their campaign efforts.  Eventually the tide turned. Doreen was honoured and taken into the heart of the establishment.  First, she took a prominent place in the Olympic procession in London in 2012 before being invited to sit in the House of Lords in 2013.  Meanwhile the Church of England has not begun to see A4 and Matt Ineson as anything other than the enemy.  But, like the Lawrences, they are not in fact the enemy.  They and the other survivors are part of the solution.  The post IICSA Church of England will not remained unchanged.  When it starts to effect a change of culture, it has to realise that this will involve real painful transformation.  Those who have acted as the voices of conscience, A4 and Matt included, have to be listened to and their advice heard.

Is there an equivalent to the House of Lords in the Church of England?  Probably not, but if there is a place of honour to be had, then A4 and Matt deserve to be placed there.  They have helped to exposed the murky and sometimes immoral behaviour within a large institution just as the Lawrences did.  Instead of being angry, the Church of England should be grateful to them and honour them.  It can never be right to resist exposure of evil.  The longer this is done, the worse the illness and threat to the integrity of the entire institution.   For the church to recover drastic steps are needed.  I am not in position to recommend changes of leadership as Macpherson did, but I can suggest that Matt, A4 and other survivors are given paid consultant status so that the Church can listen to what they have to say about the changes that need to be made.  Whatever else should happen to the church post-IICSA, I ask, even plead, that the time of fighting survivors has to end.  Their tenacity, courage and insight of these survivors is exactly the energy the Church needs to harness for its journey into the future.  Declaring a truce during a war may seem like an act of weakness.  In this case it is an act of strategic necessity for the Church.  IICSA has inflicted severe damage to the Church in ways that have not yet become apparent.    The truce with survivors is one part of a strategy which will embrace the values of openness, honesty and true understanding.  The alternative scenario of resistance and defiance has been seen not to work.  We need new ways forward and the embracing of survivors has to be part of that process.  Baroness Lawrence is an example of how we should treat the campaigner and the disturber of vested interests.  Can the Church of England afford to do less for the campaigners and victims of its past abusive cultures?

One of the pieces of advice that is offered to every research student or author of a learned tome is ‘check your footnotes’.  It is so easy when inspecting a nearly completed manuscript to allow the eyes to pass over a reference at the bottom of the page and assume it is correct.  Sometimes it is not, and there are then serious consequences to the integrity of the whole document.  This week we have seen both our Archbishops being let down in the equivalent of a footnote checking exercise.   Both Archbishops or their advisers, in different ways at some point, had not checked their footnotes.  The consequences of getting something wrong have been, over a period, very serious.  At least the IICSA process and the detailed questioning of the lawyers has allowed truth to be revealed.

The first of the two failures to ‘check footnotes’ which has had serious consequences for Matt Ineson and his disclosure to the Archbishop of York was the latter’s assumption that the disclosure was being dealt with by the Bishop of Sheffield.  The basis for this belief was the knowledge that the then Bishop of Sheffield, Steven Croft, had also received a disclosure from Matt.  Each bishop failed to take any action to inhibit Matt’s abuser, Trevor Devamanikam.  The effect of the failure of both bishops was to leave the accused clergyman unchallenged for five years.  The consequence of this neglect of duty by both bishops was indeed deeply serious.  It is a cause of regret to the integrity of the senior levels of our Anglican leadership that no apology for this failure was forthcoming from the Archbishop of York.  Surely, he could have admitted to a regret that not checking his assumptions about who was dealing with criminal behaviour by a clergyman was so serious.  In fact, an expression of more than regret was required.  Here we had a criminal act not being investigated properly, all because a senior figure in the Church failed to pick up the telephone or instruct one of his staff to do so.  A cynic might offer an alternative explanation which is to suggest that the Archbishop was doing everything in his power to bury bad news which might impugn the reputation of the wider church.

The IICSA hearings uncovered a second ‘footnote’ failure, this time on the part of Justin Welby.  The issue concerned a detail about whether or not a letter of apology had been sent to Matt.  The Archbishop, no doubt briefed by one of his staff, confidently asserted that such a letter had been sent in July 2017 a month after Devamanikam took his own life.  Matt, who had given evidence the previous day, denied that he had ever received such a letter and he also produced evidence, via a email from the NST that was written ten months later which stated that no apology had been issued. The Archbishop also went on to say that he has issued a personal apology to Matt in November 2016. Certainly, Matt’s lawyer who has present at the meeting had no recollection of such an apology and there is no mention of it in the minutes taken by the NST.  At this stage, seven months before the charging of Devamanikam, there was no reason for such an apology to be given. One wonders what is the status of the copied letter that the archbishop produced to the Inquiry?  Was it a knowing fake or was one of his staff desperately trying to make a bad situation a little less awful?  From Welby’s point of view, we have to ask, putting the best possible gloss on the episode, why he seemed to be so lacking in curiosity about exactly what had happened.  Once again, we can be grateful to the IICSA process for eventually uncovering the true facts, or at least casting strong doubts over the ‘official’ testimony.

Clearly, we see flaws in the ability of Lambeth staff to produce reliable information for their boss to disseminate to the media.  Welby cheerfully told the world in a television interview that John Smyth was ‘not Anglican’ on the basis that he attended a non-Anglican church at the end of his life.  This particular inconvenient truth has been proved.  The records of the Diocese confirm his status as a Reader in the Church.  That fact is to be included in the ‘lessons learned’ inquiry on Smyth that we are assured is to take place soon.

In every walk of life, the readiness to be on top of detail is an important part of leadership and responsibility.  Leaders, even those who have a multitude of staff working for them, are not exempt from this requirement.  Checking facts and paying attention to the detail of information is particularly important when the welfare and happiness of individuals is involved.  As I wrote in my previous piece about the quality of leaders, leaders need to be involved with those they lead.  Obviously, there will be limits on what bishops can know personally, but they can use their sources of information to make sure everyone is caught up in some sort of knowledge and caring network.  As a parish priest I found that a Good Neighbour Scheme allowed me to be in touch with far more people than I knew personally.  At a time when the majority of funerals were still done by the parish priest, I found I always had some direct personal information about everyone for whom I officiated.  Checking up by using available sources of information is part of the process of attending to detail.  Even when I do not know something or someone, it is normally possible to find someone who does.

The truths about Matt’s ‘shabby and shambolic’ treatment by the church after his original assault thirty + years ago will probably never be completely known.  What we have seen is at best incompetent treatment but at worst dangerously cruel.  The failure to check up on the details by not just one but two Archbishops is bound to undermine our confidence that the Church is at present in safe hands.  For there to be a successful change of perception in the area of competence we need to see some radical movement in terms of action and gestures of reconciliation towards survivors.  Rather than failing to apologise to a known victim of abuse, the Church needs to create systems of management and oversight that inspire confidence.  Confidence and trust have been badly eroded in the Church of England over the past two weeks.  Effort, imagination and attention to detail need to be in evidence among all who accept the responsibility of high office in our Church.

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.