I am writing this on the eve of my departure for the States for the annual four-day conference of the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). This has now become for me an annual event. Its location switches between Europe and the States. The path that led to my participation in this organisation is a bit complicated, but the short reason for my involvement is that ICSA is the only group that I have discovered that is in the least bit interested in the work I have been trying to do over the years to research power dynamics in churches. Of course, the fundamentalist churches I am especially interested in are not technically ‘cults’ but the patterns of leadership that exist in many conservative congregations have some features in common with cultic groups. One of the things that I value in the conference is the chance to have conversations with individuals who have been through the most extraordinary adventures within these groups. They have finally arrived at a place (the conference) which allows them to review and understand what they have been through. Through workshops and meeting with sympathetic listeners they can continue a journey of recovery that they have begun elsewhere.

Many of the lectures at ICSA are technical and are only really suitable for academics/therapists with quite specialist interests. But I am slowly beginning to penetrate the jargon to make sense of some of it. Each year the organisers have accepted my offering of a paper containing my observations on some facet of this large subject.

One of the sad things about ICSA is that there are so few British people involved in the organisation. Last year when the conference was held in Bordeaux there were barely a dozen of us from the UK. This year there will be still fewer because of the distances involved but it does reflect a low level of academic and professional interest in cultic matters in our country. We have of course enormous UK resources invested in combatting Muslim extremism but these ‘experts’ do not appear to be interested in the international efforts that have been going on at ICSA over the past 20+ years. Part of the problem is a ‘political’ one. The study of harmful religious groups (cults) has been bedevilled by a discussion as to whether the ‘c’ word is ever appropriate. An influential group of academics around the world have wished to preserve what they believe to be neutrality. These high demand groups, they claim, should be described as ‘New Religious Movements’. Such a description will leave aside the question as to whether there is potential harm involved in membership. The ‘neutrality’ on the part of these academics is however sometimes so pronounced that they are described by others as ‘cult apologists’.

The readers of this blog will know that I am quite clear about describing some behaviour by Christians as harmful, whether spiritually or emotionally. I am not here thinking about sexual abuse which is of course clearly criminal as well as immoral. I have criticised, for example, bullying, inappropriate exorcisms and ostracism as deeply damaging to the victims. There is no room for neutrality in these situations. Harm is being done even though the Bible is being used to justify such behaviour. When the Bible is used in this way as a tool of abuse, there is something blasphemous going on. Fortunately, there are many individuals in ICSA who agree with my approach. Bad religion whether in the cults or churches needs to be identified and called out for what it is.

In the six years that I have been attending ICSA conferences, there has been a definite movement towards identifying bad religion in what are outwardly respectable faith organisations hitherto untouched by cultic tendencies. We have not yet started to discuss the Church of England but, it could be argued, our national church is going through a severe crisis not a long way from some of our typical cultic concerns. ICSA has for years been studying the dynamics and psychology of groups and the nature of power. I personally have had a long-term interest in narcissism in churches and their leaders and this has now become a commonplace in discussion. Daniel Shaw, a psychotherapist from New York has coined the expression ‘malignant narcissism’ and this seems to describe quite a lot of what can erupt in churches which have no proper oversight. He is giving a lecture at the conference.

The harm that can take place in a religious setting is not always the result of deliberate evil intent. Much of what was set out in our own IICSA process over the Diocese of Chichester illustrates the way that well-meaning individuals, from archbishops down, had little insight into their own motivation for thinking and acting in the way they did. Still less did they show understanding of the coercive processes that will almost inevitably happen when an individual gets caught up as part of a large organisation. Those who study cults are familiar with the individual as well as the group processes that can so easily end up involving harm to others. For several years now, I have found myself (hypothetically) critiquing church groups like PCCs or Team ministries from a ‘cultic’ perspective. When I do this exercise, what strikes me strongly is the way that all the participants are caught up in internal dynamics from which they cannot escape. They are temporarily locked into a process every bit as controlling as the experience of being involved in a cult. Recent events over safeguarding have made me want to interrogate the processes involved at the meetings of the House of Bishops. If they are, as I suspect, also caught up in processes over which they have no control, then the rest of the church will also be victims of this malfunctioning dynamic. Some bishops are at present being accused of protecting the reputation of the whole church above the welfare of abuse survivors. If this is true to the point where lies have been told and truth supressed, then the whole group, i.e. the entire national Church, is affected and damaged.

I had intended telling the blog about the paper of Joan of Arc that I am presenting to the Conference. Space and time means that I will have to write again from Philadelphia on this topic. I hope the air-conditioning in the hotel is up to the mark as reported temperatures in the city are in the high 30s!

I have just finished reading two books which coincidentally were published recently on a similar topic. Both books, Undivided and Just Love are by women who ‘came out’ as homosexuals in the setting of a strong personal evangelical belief. There are other strands which link the books. Both women were subjected to exorcism. Each of them is a highly educated articulate individual, educated at Oxford and Cambridge respectively. By the world’s standards they have enjoyed success and achieved a great deal within their professional lives. A further theme links these works written by Vicky Beeching and Jayne Ozanne. That is the importance and love of music. As testimonies of two Christian women passing through the trauma of coming out to acknowledge same sex attraction, they are powerful accounts of cultures and theologies clashing. Both were brought up as conservative Christians, Vicky a Pentecostal and Jayne an evangelical Anglican. No reader can finish these works without having their attitudes affected by listening to their stories. Church people, conservative and liberal alike will be helped to understand more deeply the issues that exist on both sides of a deep chasm of misunderstanding.

The freedom of this blog enables me not to attempt a formal review of these books. I have the option simply to comment on aspects of the women’s stories which strike me most forcibly. In each of the narratives the authors record how much personal suffering was involved in having feelings that they knew were unacceptable to family and church. Vicky eventually publicly acknowledged her homosexuality only in her late 30s. On the way her growing awareness of the nature of her feelings had resulted in depression, loneliness and suicidal episodes. Also, the stress of keeping her sexuality private caused a nervous breakdown and a serious psychosomatic illness. This put her out of circulation for over a year. At this point she was working among Christian congregations in the States as a successful singer/composer. Her contract with the publishing company that was her sponsor required her to uphold Christian standards and this of course precluded any hint of same-sex attraction. Scandal of any kind had to be avoided at all costs on the part of someone who publicly proclaimed her faith in the front of huge crowds. The strain of knowing that her true identity was other than that on public view eventually proved too much. Her public self-identification as gay that burst out was for her a crucial moment in the recovery of her mental and physical well-being.

Jayne’s story also narrates a coming out and this story includes its own periods of darkness, emptiness, loneliness and despair. Being a member of an institutional church, the Church of England, did allow Jayne the possibility of finding some sympathetic individuals to support her. Vicky, on the other hand, having been a life-long member of Pentecostal congregations had virtually no one to turn to when times were hard. Meanwhile Jayne was moving in the highest circles of church life, being a member of the Archbishops Council. This meant that she got to know all the leaders of the Church of England as well as all the prominent evangelical Anglicans. When she finally announced her gay identity, the response to her was typically one of silence. The ambiguity of such silence has troubled her as she did not know how to interpret it. Vicky on the other hand has met (and continues to meet) with raw vitriol and words of hatred.

When Vicky announced her homosexual identity to the world in a newspaper interview back in 2014, I wrote about it on this blog. I had never heard of Vicky until that point, but it was clear that this announcement was of some importance in the world of evangelical and independent churches. Vicky records in her book how almost immediately she was brought face-to-face in a Channel 4 television interview with the notorious Scott Lively, an American homophobic agitator. He had been responsible in part for the anti-homosexual legislation in Uganda. Lively had also written an outrageous book called The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi party. Channel 4 wanted to maximise two contrasting points of view. Lively trotted out the old assertions that the gay identity was a chosen path which could be overcome by prayer and the power of God. Same-sex relationships were like addiction to drink or drugs.

The correspondence and emails that Vicky received after her emergence as gay were of two kinds. The first group thanked her sincerely for enabling them as individuals to acknowledge their own sexual identity while remaining Christian as Vicky was doing. The second group had mined the Old Testament for passages which expressed the way God punished those who worshipped idols or chose a life of sin. Worse still were the conversations she had with Christian friends and former colleagues. Instead of the love, welcome and easy friendship she used to enjoy there was an element of distance and distrust. Religious bookstalls stopped stocking her products and tour promoters no longer invited her to take part in Christian festivals. The world she had occupied professionally and socially for 15 years shut her out and left her out in the cold.

We have discussed before on this blog the way that the gay issue has become such a defining issue among conservative evangelicals. Only in the past few days the GAFCON conference in Jerusalem has divided the Anglican church into those who do and those who do not accept the conservative understanding of gay marriage. Other issues like the ordination of women and the possibility of divorce (clearly forbidden by Jesus!) are fudged or left to one side. The conservative Christian world, (and we are not of course just talking about Anglicans) which sung Vicky’s music until her coming out, now forbid it as though they might be contaminated by singing it. The theological and practical implications of such a mind-set are boggling and too extensive to explore here.

Both Vicky and Jayne address in their writing the theological implications of same-sex attraction. Vicky with an Oxford degree in theology gives the reader a simple but helpful guide to all the relevant texts. She also expounds simply the exegesis that exists to show how many of the proof texts against same-sex attraction are at best ambiguous. From the nature of the ‘sin’ of the men of Sodom to the meaning of Paul’s strange word in the first chapter of Romans, the reader is introduced to the complexity of discovering the biblical message about sexuality. To be able to say, ‘the Bible clearly teaches’, is clearly impossible from both their testimonies. Far more clearly ‘unbiblical’ in nature are the words of hate and threats of violence that both women, particularly Vicky, have endured. In condemning Jane and Vicky, these opponents are functioning apparently without any reference to the Bible’s teaching about love. It is indeed hard to see how the Christian faith can ever be promoted by the encouragement of threats or sheer malign hatred. Such things continue to exist within the orbits of the Christian church. They are a stain on the integrity of the church’s reputation. Perhaps these books which both promote Christian love, albeit of an unconventional kind, will do more to get to the heart of the Christian proclamation which is offered to a sad and sometimes mixed-up world where hate and division are so commonly found.

http://survivingchurch.org/2014/08/19/the-vicky-beeching-affair/ for earlier comments about Vicky’s story.

This morning and throughout today (Friday) the BBC and the Press have focussed on a story about the report by Sir Roger Singleton. This report was a review of the Past Cases Review (PCR) undertaken by the Church of England and published in 2010. The original review was designed to uncover any cases of historic sexual abuse by clergy and other leaders which were in the files kept by dioceses across the Church of England. In the event this highly expensive examination of files only revealed 13 cases of past abuse which merited further investigation. 40,000 files were examined over a two to three year period. The new Singleton review contains a fairly trenchant critique of the 2010 report and shows the considerable weaknesses in the PCR process. First of all there was a lack of consistency in the way information was gathered for the 2010 report. Singleton also identified a tendency to find ways of minimising inconvenient evidence and emphasising the positive whenever possible. Another fact was that only the files of active serving clergy were examined. This left out the retired clergy, of which a large number are still active, and those deceased. In short even if we were to ignore all the shortcomings of method and analysis, the PCR showed an extraordinary lack of interest in those who had been abused or harmed. Everything in the PCR was about identifying potential abusers while ignoring any victims. The enquiry was working with the principle that contacting alleged victims was to be avoided to ‘minimise the distress’ to them.

It is a curious turn in logic to do what the PCR has done which is to describe a problem of abuse by only listing a handful of suspected felons. A common-sense approach to the problem would start at the other end. Criminal activity is most obviously best described by interviewing its victims. In the event no attempt was made to speak to any of them or even allow them a voice. In some topsy-turvy way of approaching the problem, the victims were thought to have nothing to offer to the review process. The investigators preferred to deal with the information obtainable from the files. If you were a victim of an abusing clergyman who was retired or dead, the church appeared to have even less interest in your case. Even the victims of serving clergy went in many cases unheard. One of the complaints against currently serving bishops is that a suspected abuser was not inhibited in any way from active ministry for several years. On the day when his trial was to begin he took the drastic action of taking his own life.

In summary the PCR process of 2010 seems to have failed. It failed to identify more than a handful of perpetrators by the inadequate techniques that it used; it also failed the victims by shutting them out of the whole process. They had neither a voice nor any access to help that the Church might reasonably have put in place to meets their many needs.

It is suggested that the now discredited PCR process cost the church some £2 million. In the light of Roger Singleton’s critique, we can mourn the loss of such a large sum. How could things have gone so wrong? Why was the church prepared to spend so much to achieve so little. The reason for spending so much on what now appears to be a negative outcome seems to have been the vanity of institutional thinking. This will always wish to protect reputation above all else. The announcement that only 13 cases had been extracted from the files seemed, at the time, to be a triumph to boost the reputation of the Church. ‘We have a clean bill of health’ was the overall message. The fact that victims were unheard was an inconvenient and tiresome irritant to this basic narrative.

Since that date these victims have not gone away. Many of them have conveniently for the Church stayed in the shadows, unheard and unseen. A few, working courageously and largely single-handedly have attracted attention from the Press and other supporters. Their courage and persistence has been enormous. But for people like Gilo and Matt Ineson, the church as a whole might have bought into the myth that there were only a few ‘bad apples’ left to be dealt with. The IICSA process also has forced the Church of England to see that the voices of victims telling their stories is just as important as investigators poring over files looking for evidence of past crimes.

I have not attempted to give a full account of Roger Singleton’s report. It could be summarised like this. He is telling the church that an appallingly expensive attempted whitewash of the church’s reputation has been shown largely to be a sham and a failure. General Synod, meeting next month, must decide where to take the next stage of Safeguarding. Whitewash, cover-up even outright lying will no longer do. The Synod must oversee not only good practice but also justice for the hundreds of survivors of church abuse. The precise numbers of these are at present unknown but the church has not, until recently, made any real attempt to find out who and where they are. Even if there are only a few they want and need to be heard. None of them should ever be regarded as nuisances or inconvenient. By helping them the church can redeem itself by showing that it is a compassionate body, concerned with justice and healing.

While few clergy are trained psychotherapists, they pick up a great deal of wisdom as part of their job. They get, for example, to understand how to deal with bereaved people, the things to look for that take place as part of the normal grieving process. They become familiar with many of life’s vicissitudes. They learn when silence is better than platitude and when words might be helpful. I like to think that I can now deal better with a range of pastoral situations than when I begun fresh out of college nearly fifty years ago.

The situation in facing an individual who has been sexually abused in a church setting is going to be a challenge for even the most skilled of pastoral carers. This blog cannot, of course, offer advice in this area, not least through my lack of direct experience. Although I have met (mostly online) some dozens of people who have been abused in this way, I do not claim any special expertise in this area. Listening, however, to some of the stories, I do begin to understand some of the catastrophic mistakes that are, even now, made by well-meaning clergy and ministers. The biggest mistake is to introduce the idea of Christian forgiveness early on this process of responding to an individual’s story. The only person who stands to benefit by such an act of forgiveness early on is the listener. She or he cannot bear to hear the grimy details of the abuse, particularly when it demonstrates the utter hypocrisy of a man of God taking advantage of a vulnerable person. If the victim can be persuaded to forgive then the story is effectively shut down. The victim is then supposed to indulge in a generous outpouring of Christian love towards the perpetrator so that the one being counselled can ‘move on’ and heal.

The kind of pastoral concern that is more about taking care of the listener than the victim obviously won’t do. Anyone with an ounce of experience will know that there will be in abuse cases several layers of issues to deal with. These will include guilt, induced shame and a sense of powerlessness. ‘Christian’ forgiveness can so often prevent one part of the process of healing which is, arguably, essential to any healthy recovery. The stage I am referring to is a sense of anger towards the abuser. Pastoral care will often include allowing an individual to feel visceral rage towards the person who abused or humiliated the victim in the past. It is uncomfortable having to witness this anger. But we know that it is a common stage on the journey to come to terms with the abuse event. The victim is perfectly entitled to be angry and when it is felt, it needs to be articulated. The expressed anger is part of the way that many victims begin to reclaim the power that was so cruelly taken from them. As victims, the abused were put into a situation where they were dominated and controlled. The angry victim is now the one who wants to cry out their pain, their grief and their lost innocence. But, in and through that anger, the victim is reclaiming a voice, a right to be heard and the power that belongs to every human being.

The question arises as to whether the anger of victims or survivors should be expressed outside the setting of psychotherapy and pastoral care. From the point of view of the institution where the abuse took place, such anger expressed openly is embarrassing and inconvenient. No institution wants to be reminded of the past failings of some of its representatives. How convenient it would be if the past could be left in the past so that no one in the present had to think about it or respond to it. But few institutions outside a dictatorship can ever suppress the past and the anger that simmers because of injustice and outright evil. The attempts to hide the pain of the past is likely to be met by failure. As the saying goes ‘truth will out’.

Next month a few survivors of church sexual abuse will be demonstrating outside General Synod in York. They will represent other survivors who are not present. Some of these latter will be reliving their anger and pain at home. Others will still be at the pre-anger stage of shame, guilt and self-blame. We have no means of knowing how many victims exist but we know, from the convictions in British courts, that there are still numerous others who are invisible. These hidden victims are out there, and our hearts go out to them.

To members of General Synod who meet a survivor at Synod or elsewhere, I would ask this. The survivor you are encountering is one of those who may be angry. But this anger is both justified and healthy. It is necessary for this anger to exist for at least two reasons. First it activates in the individual the necessary energy to reach out for help which is necessary for his/her individual healing. The second reason that this anger is healthy is because it is helping to move the institution, here the Church of England, to rectify past failures. The anger is also part of the energy that may make the Church a safer place in the future. Welcome the anger; embrace the anger because in some way this anger is a reflection of God’s anger towards individuals and churches that have tolerated the terrible evil of sexual abuse against the innocent.

I shall not be present outside Synod next month. I shall be at a conference in the States. But even though separated by 3,000 miles I shall be hoping and praying that the Synod embraces and welcomes in some way the energy of survivors who ultimately seeking for what every Christian should welcome. They are asking for justice, accountability and honesty especially among those who lead in the institution. Without that openness the institution must surely crack and splinter under the strain of suppressing the wrong and the anger that has existed for decades within it.

Many of the readers of SurvivingChurch will know of the story of Lizzie Lowe. This 14-year-old devout Christian teenager committed suicide over three years ago in Manchester. At her inquest it transpired that she was suffering from a deep conflict over her sexual identity. She believed that she was a lesbian but could not square this with her faith or share it with her parents. They were also devout Christians. What followed was a profound soul-searching by the congregation of St James Didsbury where she was a member. With the help of the organisation OneBodyOneFaith, the church has released a video in two parts for general release. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G51jf2sGts8&t=5s This tells Lizzie’s story and the outcome after her death. The well-known Scottish hymn writer and lecturer, John Bell, was also caught up in the story. He interviews the Vicar Nick Bundock about the events of Lizzie’s death. Nick then in the second video interviews John himself about his story of coming out as gay after he listened to a broadcast by Nick on Lizzie’s tragic death.

This blog post is not going to tackle the vexed question about the incompatibility of the gay identity and conservative Christian teaching. No doubt Lizzie had picked up negative comments from somewhere in her church about the evils of a gay life-style. But according to Nick, the Vicar, the subject had been rarely raised within the congregation. He, like possibly a majority of Anglican clergy, preferred not to raise the issue on the grounds that it was too divisive. Thus, there was almost an environment of secrecy around the topic and on the issues of sexuality in general. Lizzie’s death forced the church to confront these attitudes very forcibly.

The three years since Lizzie’s death and the inquest that followed it have resulted in an enormous amount of soul-searching by the entire congregation. This is spoken about in the first of the two videos which I hope my readers will watch. The end result of this process was that the Vicar and his congregation decided they needed to make the church a place of welcome for sexual minorities and others who, in various ways, found themselves effectively excluded by other churches. The fact that they were becoming a church which sought to include everyone meant that some members felt they had no option but to leave. The old boundaries of certainty were being, in their eyes, eroded. Nick spoke of the way that although some had left, others had arrived no doubt attracted this policy of inclusion. The congregation officially adopted the statement of Inclusive Church which seeks to welcome all. These newcomers numbered not only members of the LGBT community but also individuals with learning difficulties and members of racial minorities. Lizzie’s death had caused a revolution in attitudes as well as a transformation in the entire congregation. We can compare this with the revolution that I recently wrote about at the Kentucky Baptist Church of Immanuel.

The story of the legacy of Lizzie’s tragic death does not end there since the church’s decision to be inclusive has attracted the attention of other congregations across the UK and abroad. The point which I feel needs flagging up and is of relevance to our own concerns is the issue of secrecy. These are the aspects of church life that are never discussed because there is a conspiracy of silence around them. Sexuality is certainly one area and few people will find it comfortable to discuss their sexuality even when, by doing so, they can help others face up to this area of identity in themselves. Embarrassment and awkwardness will be quite difficult to manage. Mainstream denominational churches have little appetite for provoking such discomfort among their members. But there is another area of vulnerability which, alongside sexuality, is of concern to every single person but is seldom discussed or opened up. This is the topic of power and especially the dynamics of power within a congregation. Because everyone is in some way caught up in the power dynamics of a congregation it is almost impossible to discuss it with objectivity. As with a discussion on sexuality, power is a threatening topic and thus has to be avoided at all costs. Few people have the energy to challenge abuses of power even when they are a major cause of unhappiness in a congregation. Secrets sometimes have to be confronted and dealt with.

Nick Bundock spoke about the opening-up and the new freedom to discuss sensitive issues that was taking place since they had become an inclusive church. They were now free to welcome not just minority groups but also minority opinions. They had in other words shifted from being a church that pretended to hold a single perspective on teaching and moral guidance to a church which embraced diversity and openness. From the perspective of this blog it would mean that they could enter the still more vulnerable area of understanding power in the congregation – the way it is used and the way that it is experienced.

The tragic death of a teenage girl who, because of secrecy and misunderstanding believed she was in some way damned, may have helped to begin a small revolution in many churches. It is not just that the vitriolic homophobic rhetoric across many conservative churches may be blunted by Lizzie’s story, but also that some churches will follow Nick Bundock’s church and create for themselves a new openness, inclusivity and a readiness to talk about hitherto closed topics. Those who approach such churches will discover that there is in these churches a ministry of welcome that is one of good news. The good news is that God accepts and welcomes all humanity. He does not reject people because they are different or do not fit the stereotype of respectability. Our good news is that all are welcome to be part of the feast of the kingdom of God. Joining in that feast we find that we are growing in love, tolerance and openness.

One of the most important things that I learned when I was a student of the Bible was an understanding of the nature of prophecy. The classical prophets, those who form a large section of our Old Testament, were never in the business of acting as soothsayers and telling people what was going to happen in the distant future. There may have been a few individuals, as referred to in the book of Deuteronomy 13, who were thought to behave in this way. It is also a profound misunderstanding of the Book of Daniel to place him alongside the main canonical prophets. The Hebrew compilers of the Jewish Canon never made this error. The main canonical prophets like Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel were concerned to be talking about and interpreting the present. Above all, they had something to say about what they believed God had to say about this present and what was going to happen in the immediate future. In short, the prophets were the proclaimers of God’s will and judgement on the current behaviour of the nations. Most of the time these were facing the consequences of disobedience and failure. Even the chosen people were guilty, and there were to be disastrous consequences- death, destruction and other terrifying outcomes.

The second major idea in helping me to understand the prophetic tradition was to see the way that the prophets stood outside the institutional expressions of the Israelite religious/political system. From the time of David to the Exile, the Court and the Temple were key in maintaining the stability of the Israelite identity. Together these institutions would have claimed to protect and preserve all that was important about the worship and teaching of Yahweh. The prophets, by contrast, stood outside this system. Their vocation was to be outsiders, to challenge and defy the comfortable institutions of kingship and Temple worship. A conflict between the priest/ritual and the prophet is most clearly seen in the book of Amos. Amos sizes up the way that ritual worship and wealth coupled with immorality have corrupted the social and religious integrity of the northern kingdom of Israel. The whole book is gloomy and sets God’s judgement firmly in opposition to a failing establishment. The prophet again and again expresses the loathing of God for sin as well as the empty worship and sacrifices of Israel. ‘When you present your sacrifices and offerings I will not accept them… I cannot endure the music of your lutes’.

Amos sees that a terrible fate is coming to Israel. He declares: ‘I saw the Lord standing by the altar and he said: strike the capitals so that the whole porch is shaken; I will smash them all into pieces’. These prophecies of Amos were not given without those he was attacking making a response. Amos records one particular showdown when a member of the priestly establishment, Amaziah, confronts him. Amaziah tells him in no uncertain terms to go away back to Judah. In response Amos tells him that the forthcoming disaster will strike Amaziah and his whole family. More importantly Amos denies that he is ‘a prophet or the son of a prophet’. No doubt he is comparing himself with the official prophets attached to the official sanctuaries. Amos, the outsider, is free to speak and prophesy as God has told him to do.

The classical prophets in the Old Testament can be understood better when we become aware of these tensions between the vested interests of Temple and Court and the more charismatic independent traditions of prophecy. The institution reacts to this challenge just as we would expect; it tells the prophets to go away and not disturb the status quo or the vested interests of those in power.

If we try to compare the situation of the classical OT prophets and today, we might ask whether any parallels could exist. The Church of today does have strong features of being a reactionary self-protecting institution and many times it has been accused of behaving defensively to preserve itself. Among the ‘prophetic’ attacks that the Church has had to face is the challenge of its wealth. Has the Church held its wealth in the best possible way? Could it be accused of creating wealth, prestige and status rather than other imperatives such as serving the poor? There is no right or wrong answer to these questions, but we would be right to suggest that those who challenge the church in this area are engaged in an activity we could rightly describe as prophetic. Prophets are there to challenge and make institutions constantly appraise their deepest values.

Prophets like Amos are also found among those who speak to the Church from the perspective of survivors of abuse, sexual or otherwise. If these survivors are pushed away as being uncomfortable or embarrassing, we could well be reminded of the stand-to between Amaziah and Amos. ‘Never prophesy at Bethel, for this is the king’s sanctuary, a royal palace’ were the words of Amaziah. The same kind of uncomfortable prophesying might well be heard now in the Church. Any Church, much like ancient Israel, would probably want to preserve the status quo and all the power involved in the institution. Survivors are saying to the vested interests like the prophets of old. ‘We want openness, transparency and an end to secrecy. We also need resources to help us to recover from our pain. Through our understanding of God’s will, we believe that such things are just, loving and equitable. The needs of the wounded, the afflicted and destitute are a first call on the Church which believes in the compassion and love of God for all’. These could be considered to be words of prophecy to the Church just as the words of Amos were to the religious authorities of his day. In Amos’ words may ‘justice roll on like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’.

A few months ago, I covered the story of Rachael Denhollander who had been the victim of sexual abuse in the States. She along with many other victims was given the opportunity to speak at the trial of Larry Nassar, her abuser, about her experiences. Nassar had been found guilty of over a hundred attacks on the athletes he had trained. Rachael’s statement was especially powerful. She spoke of justice and forgiveness in the context of her strong Christian faith. The additional fact in her story was that her own church had attacked her on the grounds that she had begun speaking about the problem of abuse in a group of evangelical churches in association with her own. She mentioned that this advocacy had forced her to leave her church because they could not tolerate criticism of other churches with whom they enjoyed cordial relationships.

Rachael’s church was never publicly identified but it has now named itself. It has also declared to the world that Rachael’s stand has resulted in a period of soul-searching and transformation for the whole congregation. The church is Immanuel Baptist Church in Louisville, KY. What they have produced is, arguably, a template for any church which finds itself on the wrong side of history in respect of abuse cases. Immanuel realised, after its time of looking at itself that it did indeed have ‘a sin to confess’. They had failed to support Rachel adequately in the lead up to the trial of Nassar and when she questioned the invitations to Sovereign Grace Ministries to preach in Immanuel. She had pointed out that there were serious concerns about abuse and safeguarding at SGM and that it was inappropriate to carry on as though nothing was going on. As the result of the apology, Immanuel Baptist Church and the Denhollanders are now reconciled.

I want to reproduce the final paragraph in the Statement for my readers as it would appear to be a model for any church which is seeking to make a new start from a position of denial, cover-up and the avoidance of truth. The paragraph is entitled The Gift of Reproof.

During a long, hard pastors’ meeting in which we were beginning to see some of our faults, one of our pastors said, “We have been given a gift.” After months of reflection, we believe this statement more than ever. Being made to see our blind spots has been a gift to us. In the last few months, God has increased our sensitivity to the concerns of the abused. He has called us to look at our own shortcomings as pastors. He has allowed us to seek and receive forgiveness from those we have failed. He has motivated us to ensure that Immanuel Baptist Church is a place where the abused are cared for and abusers are vigilantly protected against. He has renewed our sense of the importance of being held accountable to one another, to our congregation, and to the watching world. We pray that God would continue to write these lessons deeply on our hearts so that the gospel can continue to be clearly proclaimed in and through our lives.

There are several striking sections in this statement. First, we have the insight that reproof can in fact be a gift. Someone outside the closed circle which had created a pattern of groupthink, enabled them to see ‘blind spots’. The blind spot here was an inability to understand the needs and perspectives of the abused. The ability to identify and overcome these ‘blind spots’ is regarded as a gift. Because of overcoming them the congregation can see that the church can and should be ‘a place where the abused are cared for and the abusers are vigilantly protected against.’ There is also a new awareness that the church has task of being accountable both to the congregation and to the ‘watching world’.

The leaders of Immanuel Baptist Church have, in a single paragraph, come up with a set of insights about abuse which could yet provide a pattern for churches all over the world. Those who tell of abuse from the past are not the enemy. There may be speaking on behalf of God, reproving the church for its blindness, insensitivity and above all its instinct to protect the institution at all costs. The struggle that is going on in the Church of England over safeguarding issues seems very much like a battle which is being fought on these grounds. On the one side there are those who are offering the ‘gift of reproof’, the survivors and those who support them. They have been supported by the writers of numerous reports on the inadequacy of past responses. On the other side are those who have a professional concern to defend the institution and its reputation at all costs. Which side will win? We have no means of knowing. The church in Washington surrendered after five months of intense agonising and self-examination. The Church of England can delay for a long time the realisation that it has lost its way in this matter of dealing with past abuse cases. Alternatively, it can make peace with those who ‘reprove’ it. Financially that path of transparency might be expensive, but it would be the only path of true integrity and honour. The ‘watching world’ understands this clearly.

In the post of today I referred to a recent review put out by the Truro Diocese referring to a convicted paedophile who has been convicted and sent to prison. Gilo has kindly submitted further information on the background to this case which fills out the information in the last paragraph of my blog post. Some of the points that Gilo raises are quite detailed but the reader will be able to discern the point that I have made in my piece that the powers that be do not oversee safeguarding with a degree of professionalism which would help us trust their competence in this area. Gilo writes:

There are many holes in this review from Truro Diocese. I will pick out a few.

Omission of any mention of the CofE 2007-09 Past Case Review (PCR) is notable. And it’s worth having a little background on that for your readers. The PCR looked at 40,747 files dating back more than 30 years. It’s scope lasted two years and the concluding 2010 report identified only 13 cases needing formal action. Bishop Anthony Priddis, chair of the Church’s Central Safeguarding and Liaison Group which effectively led the PCR across all dioceses confidently said at the time “As a result of this Review, we are now able to say that nobody representing the Church in a formal capacity has allegations on file that have not been thoroughly re-examined in the light of current best practice, and any appropriate action taken”

The Dowling Review in fact mentions the PCR without even realising it – when it cites Bishop Bill Ind’s recollection that an audit of files had taken place in 2008 by Martin Follett, Diocesan Registrar at the time. But the reviewer, Dr Andy Thompson, seems unaware of the PCR. It’s odd that the “fat file” wasn’t unearthed, but took another 4 years to come to light. I’m told by a reliable source that the “unusual place” the file was found, was no more unusual than the back of a filing cabinet in the Bishop’s residence/office.

Why has Dr Andy Thompson left out any mention of Truro diocesan failure to carry out the PCR properly? Probably because he has no awareness of the history, little understanding of context, and has been given a carefully restricted remit.

Incidentally, when the PCR report came out in 2010, members of MACSAS approached the Church and asked whether the 13 outstanding cases included 22+ they were aware of in one diocese alone! The PCR was an expensive paper-clip hunt, and MACSAS told the Church that information on file was scant as much history and disclosure of abuse was simply never filed – or when it was – was often later destroyed. But it’s strange that Truro did not find such a significant paper-clip. Perhaps the Diocesan Communications Officer and Bishop’s Research Officer at the time made sure it was ignored. That was Dowling himself.

But there is another much more glaring omission. There is no mention of any survivors. They are invisible. Presumably they experienced the cover-ups and failure of appropriate response. Some may have tried to raise awareness as they watched Dowling rise up the diocesan ladder. But their experience and any insights on how the diocese responded to them – is totally absent. This omission is disturbing. It suggests a remit very purposefully constructed to withhold information whilst giving out carefully selected information. I imagine Dr Thompson cannot be blamed. But perhaps he should have asked Nigel Druce of the Diocesan Safeguarding Panel why such a wafer-thin remit. Why are the primary voices, the voices of survivors, not being invited to offer any insights to this diocese? Dr Andy Thompson is a leading lay figure in the diocese and on the Bishop’s Council in the diocese. I can’t help thinking a more independent and experienced reviewer would have spotted this obvious hole immediately.

The previous bishop of the diocese, Tim Thornton now Bishop at Lambeth, gets a mention in the telephone interviews, but any further involvement ends. Incidentally his chaplain cited in the review, was one of the diocesan figures I spoke with about my case. His response was priceless. A very sarcastic and mocking: “What did you expect me to do – go bang on the door of Lambeth Palace for you!” before putting the phone down. He was on the Safeguarding Advisory Panel at the time. That should indicate the culture of delinquency, deference and dysfunctionality present within some of these diocesan structures. It should also indicate the need for an independent structure – which we heard again and again expressed by many voices during the IICSA hearings.

Returning to this review, in short the remit seems entirely self-referential from a diocese that looks as if it’s protecting more than is revealed. The former Bishop of Truro and the acting Bishop of Truro (Bishops Tim Thornton and Chris Goldsmith) ought to be asking serious questions of the way this process was initiated and led. And I hope General Synod will be asking critical questions of the hierarchy and the broken culture it has so often engendered in July’s meeting in York.

Gilo

The question, ‘what is safeguarding within the Church?’ should involve a relatively simple response. After all, safeguarding for a variety of institutions has been going on for a considerable period. To find our answer we can examine the delivery of safeguarding which has now been honed by increasing levels of expertise over 20+ years. Then there is the word itself. It implies the task of keeping others safe. The hazard that was identified in the Church and elsewhere was the sexual exploitation of the vulnerable. Children and vulnerable adults needed protecting from sexual predation by others, especially those in positions of authority. Thus, everyone in the church needed to be sensitised to the possibility of such a crime taking place. ‘Together’, the slogan might run, ‘we can make sexual abuse in the Church disappear’.

So far, I have said nothing controversial. Problems begin to appear when we examine the actual minutiae of safeguarding practice. The question arises. Who are the people to make the vulnerable safe? Up till now the background discipline of most professional safeguarding officers (SOs) seems to be Social Work. That would involve a training well equipped to look at complex situations and offer judgments about what is going on. Assessing character and making assessments of risk has always been part of a social worker’s daily routine. Such a background covers many of the required skills for safeguarding including the training of others. But there are additional issues. People at risk may need legal protection and so SOs require some legal knowledge comparable to police officers. The assistant SO in my own diocese has a background in police work.

The potential skills that might be needed for SOs go further. Safeguarding work operates within the context of institutions. Do the SOs need some expertise in social psychology? Are they able to analyse the convoluted power structures that seem to lie behind many examples of abusive behaviour in church communities? Perpetrators also may have complex personality disorders. Do the SOs need to understand these and, more important, identify them before abuse actually happens? Then there are all the reports that have been written since the turn of the century cataloguing failures and weakness in safeguarding practice. Has the SO taken the trouble to read all of these to note the recommendations for the future? What about the needs of those who have been already abused? Are these needs part of the responsibility of the SOs? Should they be concerned whether such identified survivors are being cared adequately by the institution that abused them? Does their job description and the resources provided for the post allow them to hand on such victims/survivors to others for care? When the needs are not psychological but practical – housing, finance etc., are there accessible bodies to assist and deal with this side of things?

The questions I have asked would seem to suggest that safeguarding is now a huge and complex issue. In trying to answer my series of hypothetical questions about the skills required for SOs, the reader can see that it is not practicable to expect any individual, even at a national level, to be trained in so many disciplines. This is not a criticism of the individual integrity and ability of SOs. No one can operate to fulfil all the potentials demands of this job as it has evolved over the past twenty years. SOs did not exist until the 90s and they were then created to respond to a crisis within the church. It might be claimed that at the beginning of safeguarding, it was a job that involved few specialist skills beyond keeping a good filing system. Now the profession has become almost impossible to do unless, as sometimes happens, the job is tightly defined. The inability or unwillingness of SOs to offer support to survivors of abuse in many dioceses may simply be because they have neither the skills, time or practical resources to do it. If the SOs and the bishops who employ them try to keep all safeguarding activity within the diocesan structures, it is likely that some potential aspects of safeguarding will simply not happen.

One solution to the massive complexity and multi-disciplinary nature of safeguarding is simply to recognise that it cannot be delivered in all its aspects unless parts of it are outsourced to other organisations. Such an idea has been resisted and the Anglican House of Bishops seem unwilling to let go of any of their control over the process. This desire to keep everything ‘in-house’ was seen in the proceedings of the IICSA hearings. Bishops and other church authorities were clearly and painfully out of their depth in the way they had failed to manage safeguarding even over the past twenty years. When files go missing (or get flooded/burnt!), important information is not shared and unprofessional rivalries are allowed to interfere with the process of safeguarding, it is clear that something needs to change. No doubt the Independent Inquiry will have their thoughts on precisely what these changes should be. Clearly the present structures are not fit for purpose.

In July in York there is to be a debate on safeguarding in the Church of England. A major change that is needed is a clear recognition that the task of safeguarding overall is arguably too big for existing church structures to deal with. Some parts of it have been going well – the delivery of training to ordinary church members to be aware of the issue and how some members are vulnerable to abuse. Other parts of the safeguarding package are simply not working. SOs seem to be unable in most cases, mainly because they lack the resources, to help the victims of past abuse. To remind the reader of an earlier blog piece, the task of caring for past survivors should be made into an entirely separate effort – the ESTA initiative. The other main area that should be hived off from the bishops is their control of what happens to allegations of abuse. It is no longer appropriate to even pretend that Church possesses the necessary expertise to determine guilt or innocence in the case of abuse allegations.

As a footnote I have read through quickly the recent review concerning the convicted paedophile, Jeremy Dowling, in the Diocese of Truro. This was commissioned by the Diocese. Two things struck me forcibly. First the questioning of bishops seems to have been very selective and partial. Not only were some former bishops not questioned about what they knew, but the answers that were obtained from others suggested that the questioner was very deferential in speaking to them. A forensic inquiry would have pressed questions much harder than was apparently done. Also, all potential witnesses should have been pursued. The second point concerned a ‘fat file’ about Dowling which various bishops claim never to have examined. Why was the file not found by the investigators who supposedly did the Case Study Review of past cases in 2010? The Church spent millions in an effort to unearth such material. Both these questions suggest organisational unprofessionalism at the very least. A lack of episcopal curiosity also seems to have been prevalent in the Diocese of Truro.

When I was a small child, there was a recognition that, as part of growing up, we had to catch certain illnesses to become immune to them. I am of course speaking about chickenpox, measles and mumps among others. There was another illness, not uncommon among children, which had a terrifying reputation. This was far more serious; it was polio. Even as a young child I heard about children in hospitals encased in an iron lung to assist their breathing. Their lungs had ceased to work because of paralysis. Eventually the Salk vaccine for polio came in and children all over the country were given it on a lump of sugar. To organise such an immunisation process for every child in the country must have taken a lot of effort. It was apparently successful as, after around 1957, few further cases of polio were reported in the UK.

I begin with this anecdote as a way of drawing out a contrast that I see in the world of church safeguarding. The highly organised structure of trained people who make it their business to defend children and vulnerable people from potential dangers within the Church is like the Ministry of Health organising an immunisation programme. Everyone, from the Archbishops down to a member of a church council, has been required to attend a safeguarding event as well as undergo a criminal record check. This process, like the polio vaccination effort of the 50s, has required a massive amount of organisation and time. It would be good to say that these safeguarding efforts by the church will be as effective as the campaign against polio. It would be marvellous if reported cases of sexual abuse reduced to zero. The word safeguarding is one that implies protection and vigilance against possible dangers. It requires everyone to be on their guard against inappropriate behaviour, especially around relationships with children.

The IICSA hearing about the diocese of Chichester revealed that the process of safeguarding has become almost a mini-industry. I have not studied the official guidelines for good practice, but I understand that they run to several hundred pages. To add to the complexity, each diocese is responsible for the details of its own safeguarding policy. Although Church House employs 13 f/t members of staff in this area, the National Safeguarding Team does not seem to have authority over the protocol of each diocese. We might hope that out of the IICSA process some centralisation of practice as well as simplification might result.

My anecdote about polio and the task of immunisation also carried a reference to those who were tragically afflicted by the disease. They were not all placed in an iron lung but some ‘escaped’ only with a degree of paralysis to the limbs. The extreme cases died or were rendered cripples for life. These breathing machines saved lives, but an experience of being inside one for even a week must have traumatised the patients severely. By the end of the 50s no one was talking about children in hospital inside iron lungs. For whatever reason they simply were not around anymore and thus not needing to be spoken about.

If we compare the process of safeguarding with the polio immunisation programme, we need also to ask how the abuse survivors fare. From the evidence of IICSA and other communication I have had from victims via the blog, it seems to be true that many victims feel like the children inside machines designed to help them breathe. They have been shut away and ignored. All the money and the magnificent organisational abilities of the church have gone to protect as-yet uninfected (unabused) children. The survivor community often feels like the children hidden away in hospitals. They are ignored so that they can be forgotten. Safeguarding officials in trying to stamp out the virus of sexual abuse in the church, are not interested or even able to help them. The focus is on the ‘well’, not the victims of abuse.

In this blog I want to distinguish between the activity of safeguarding, the setting up of structures to protect and defend vulnerable people, and the task of caring for survivors. The church for all its detailed attention to safeguarding structures for the protection of the vulnerable, does not seem to care or give much attention in responding to victims and survivors in an effective way. This apparent indifference that survivors have encountered from safeguarding officers, nationally and locally, is said to be so hurtful that it is experienced as a kind of secondary abuse.

If we identify the safeguarding process as being like setting up a huge immunisation programme which is distinct from the task of nursing the existing victims of polio, we may be able to suggest what is missing in the church’s current response. The unfortunate victims of polio needed care in the same way as the abuse survivors need care. I have struggled to find a single word to describe the nature of the care needed by abuse survivors. Two words have been suggested to me -thriving and flourishing again. Taking the first of these words I have made it part of an acronym ESTA- Enabling Survivors to Thrive Again. I understand that this acronym is also a word in Spanish – you are. ESTA is what is needed for survivors, in the same way as unmolested children and vulnerable adults need protection through safeguarding. Let us abandon the pretence that caring for the abused plays any part in the safeguarding role. No one, nationally or locally, seems to have achieved this double role within the safeguarding community. Care of survivors should be put into the hands of a completely new body. Just as we did not expect civil servants to care for children in iron lungs, so we should not expect safeguarding experts to have much to offer the needs of abuse victims.

In this blog I am calling for ESTA groups which should be commissioned to work independently of existing safeguarding teams. They would support abuse victims who request their help. The advantage of my acronym is it indicates that survivors would not be passive consumers of help. The word ‘enable’ points to the way that the relationship of the helper to the survivor is one of cooperation and support. Survivors need many things. But it is not the task of the helper to tell them what they need. Many things should be on offer -therapy, residential care, legal support and emotional backing. Above all the survivor needs to feel heard by the institution which has abused him or her. We are not just talking about the original abuse but also the subsequent institutional abuse which has been so often reported by survivors. Unanswered letters, blanking by senior officials and a sense of being ignored by the system have been deeply traumatising to those experiencing them. By removing responsibility for helping survivors from safeguarding teams, we would hope to restore the human touch which has somewhere been lost in the process. What I have written remains an aspiration rather than a detailed proposal. But it might help someone reading it to wake to the realisation that the present structures of safeguarding are sometimes deeply damaging to those who in vain look to them for help and support.