On the face of it the appointment of Sarah Mullally as Bishop of London is excellent news for most of us. She is, first of all, a woman, and this bodes well for the participation of other women in the future within the Church. In second place, from the perspective of this blog, she is someone who has insight into the issues of power abuse in the church. She was asked by Archbishop Welby to oversee the implementation of the Elliott report which came out 18 months ago. The basic thrust of the Elliott report was to push for all Anglican dioceses to adopt a common safeguarding practice. How much has actually been done in fact to change the practice of Anglican Dioceses and their Bishops is unclear. The recent Carlile report does not give us an enormous amount of confidence that Bishops and their advisers always understand problems of implementing good safeguarding practice. Janet Fife’s contribution to the previous blog suggests that there is still considerable ignorance among those appointed to safeguarding posts about the history of abuse issues in the church.

Alongside our congratulations and delight in this appointment there are some concerns. The Diocese of London is well-known as the centre for a variety of fundamentalisms, both the high church and the evangelical varieties. I was remembering last night a joke connected with fundamentalism. The question is asked. What is the difference between terrorist and a fundamentalist? The answer is that a terrorist may be willing to negotiate. Whether I remember the joke accurately or not, this version makes a point quite well. There are in the Church many people for whom changing their minds or their grasp on facts is completely impossible. In some situations when dealing with fundamentalists, there is the sense that one is facing an immovable object and an irresistible force at the same time!

When I was last a vicar in an English parish there was a group in the church who had learnt the faith in such conservative places as St Helens Bishopsgate in London and St Aldate’s in Oxford. The common feature of this group of conservative parishioners was that they never changed their minds about anything. Nor were they prepared to learn anything new, at least not from me, an Oxford educated liberal. Truth for them was fixed and unchangeable, a version of which they had learned decades before. It is a style of Christianity which I found very off-putting. I cannot imagine that, for all their talk of evangelism, they were able to draw any new people into this way of thinking. There was something barren, dry and totally unattractive about this style of message. In some ways the Diocese of London is like my old parish in Gloucestershire. Of course, the scale is massively different. Considerable numbers of Christians in London nevertheless hold conservative views on issues like the ordination of women and sexuality. For many of these Christians the test of one’s orthodoxy and thus salvation is whether you hold correct opinions on these issues

We have pondered many times on this blog about how and why the issues around sexuality have become so important in the minds of many conservative Christians. Such Christians will make life fairly difficult for a bishop who is both liberal and tolerant of the same sex community, even while she does not promote formal marriage for them.

The placing of Bishop Mullally into a profoundly conservative diocese is a high-risk strategy. She may have many qualities both personal and professional. But there is however, no doubt that she will face enormous pressures from a large body of Christians who think that anyone who does not agree with them must be shut out. Has she the stamina to put up with such relentless opposition?

A few years ago there was a television programme about St Paul’s Cathedral when Lucy Winkett was first appointed to be a Canon Residentary. Who can forget the way the television cameras showed us rows and rows of empty seats in the Cathedral which had been reserved for Diocesan clergy? It was said that a full 50 % of the clergy in the Diocese signalled their disapproval by simply not turning up. This kind of intransigence is still alive and well in the diocese as far as I know. Bishop Chartres has preserved a level of peace by refusing to ordain women. He has worked with them but delegated their actual ordination to his suffragan bishops. This was never a satisfactory solution. By not resolving this and other anomalies in the diocese the somewhat provocative appointment of a woman is even more of a shock in this profoundly reactionary institution. It remains to be seen how things will pan out.

Bishop Mullally is only 55 and she may be in post for another 15 years. She needs a great deal of prayer to stand up against strong reactionary forces which seem so thickly concentrated in our nation’s capital. She also needs our prayers to further her work of safeguarding. She is still needed to challenge the power structures Gilo has identified which work against openness and justice. Let us hope that she can hang on in there, buoyed up by the thought that her presence in London is an important symbol for the whole church. As a woman in an institution which has been a bastion for patriarchy and male privilege for so long as well standing up for survivors, she is helping us all. It matters a great deal that Bishop Sarah will have the grace and the strength to persevere and defeat all the obstacles that no doubt will be put in her way.

The Report from Lord Carlile about the George Bell case is due out today. It is expected to say that the process through which George Bell, the distinguished former Bishop of Chichester, was deemed guilty of child abuse was deeply flawed. One does not know whether to be pleased or sad from this outcome. On the plus side it is probable that the reputation of George Bell will be eventually salvaged from this hasty and, by all accounts, incompetent investigation. The George Bell Group has provided a great deal of information in their work of defending Bell. They spoke to witnesses alive at the time and it has been suggested that the main witness, being then a child, could well have been confused as to who her abuser was. There was also the testimony of George Bell’s biographer, Andrew Chandler. He was never consulted but he had definitive evidence to show that George Bell was abroad at the time when one of the episodes of abuse was said to have taken place. The review of all this evidence is for the future. Meanwhile we can celebrate this probability that George Bell’s name will be eventually vindicated. I have a personal memory of the man himself. Contrary to what some reports have indicated, Bell spent the last few months of his life in Canterbury. He had been Dean of Canterbury in the 1930s and he returned there to die. Every day he would walk from his home in in Burgate in Canterbury and we would watch him with his distinctive walk. We knew him, not as a retired Bishop, but as a former Dean.

The Lord Carlile report will confirm for the Press as well as for its well-wishers that we cannot trust the Church of England to manage this task of child protection without help. In what appears to have been an attempt at transparency and openness, the Church seems to have poured its venom on the wrong man. In contrast to this, the Church has often defended living perpetrators in their attempt to defend the institution. Someone made the calculation (perhaps the Report will make it clear who it was) that if money was paid out to Bell’s alleged victim and an apology made, then the church would enhance its reputation for good practice. In fact, this decision had appalling implications. Not only was it, as we will see today, an appalling abuse of process but also the besmirching of one of the very few 20th-century heroes of the Anglican Church. When an individual, like George Bell attains the status of having their own day in the Church of England calendar, you question their posthumous reputation only with very strong evidence. History does have to rewritten from time to time but one does not destroy an Anglican ‘saint’ without very good cause. Here the evidence of wrong doing was apparently extremely weak.

Gilo’s case against the Archbishops and their advisers will be strengthened by Lord Carlile’s report. It is quite clear that a decision to pay money to the alleged victim of George Bell was a solution thought up by legal minds. An action that speaks about liability and compensation comes out of the world of legal thinking backed up by insurance interests. Clearheaded pastoral care for individuals who may have suffered should surely be a first priority. When the current Bishop of Chichester apologised to the woman victim, ‘Carol’, for what his predecessor had allegedly done, we were supposed to see pastoral sensitivity at work. What we in fact saw was a planned calculated gesture. The cynics among us might suggest this was planned and controlled by mysterious people in the background who were trying to ‘manage’ the public face of the church. These were no doubt the same people that Gilo was up against when his own complaint against the Church was being determined. It would be interesting to know about all the meetings the Bishop of Chichester had with lawyers, insurance companies and his fellow bishops prior to this apology. Whether the Carlile report will unpack the process when it comes out today I have no idea. Clearly things went wrong at many stages.

It is ironic that the one diocese that is to be examined by the Independent Inquiry on Child Abuse is the Diocese of Chichester. The irony lies in the fact that one probably innocent Bishop of Chichester has had to suffer damage to his reputation through a flawed investigation. Other more recent bishops in that diocese have been allowed to abuse children or at any cast a blind eye to such abuse. Chichester is thus already a byword for how the church can get it so wrong in this area of safeguarding. Let us hope and pray that the mistakes and tragedies of that part of the country are not replicated elsewhere. May it provoke a determination in other dioceses throughout the UK to get things right. One day we hope that the young and the weak in our society may always find in our churches a place of safety and care.

In recent weeks we have seen an increased tempo in the press coverage of church abuse stories. As I wrote last week there have been some revelatory scenes at the Independent Inquiry on child sexual abuse. It appears now that even after the Nolan report, which was a response to earlier Catholic sex scandals and came out in 2001, some Roman Catholic bishops and religious orders in Britain have done very little to improve safeguarding within their Communion. It is as though many Catholic clergy are completely unaware of all the scandals that have occurred in America and Ireland. These well publicised stories have done much to diminish the Catholic Church and especially its leadership in these countries. Apart from suffering enormous reputational damage, the Catholic Church in the States has had to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to survivors. This has virtually bankrupted some Catholic dioceses in that country. Equally, similar scandals in Ireland have seriously lessened the influence of the Catholic Church on Irish society. One by-product of this social change is that it is now very hard to persuade young Irish Catholic men to join the priesthood.

Up till this moment, one would have liked to think that the problems of the Church of England are nowhere near equivalent to those experienced by the Catholic Church in Ireland and America. What is being presented to us now, in great part thanks to Gilo, is a glimpse of the lack of readiness on the part of the C of E to face up to its own scandals. In other words, there is no sense that the Church is putting in place the necessary procedures to deal with any fresh allegations of past misdemeanours by its clergy. There has been some decisive action to deal with the criminal perpetrators of child abuse in the church, but this has been more at the instigation of the police and the courts. The impression given to us by Gilo is that the church’s part in the process of dealing with past felonies is to huddle together with lawyers and insurance company representatives and discuss the amount of money that should be paid to victims to avoid legal liability. There is no sense in the correspondence received (or not received!) by survivors that the church understands or grasps the enormous damage and devastation caused to these survivors. Financial settlements may be part of an answer. Far more needed is the offering of healing. This could involve acts of open penitence by leaders, a readiness to go the extra mile in admitting the failures of an institution that has allowed these things to happen. As I said in a published letter to the Church Times two weeks ago, there needs to be a fresh understanding how every example of sexual abuse is made possible by a church culture that for too long has tolerated bullying and power abuse. Also, a conservative theology that makes leaders or a book ‘infallible’ is also one that tolerates destructive power games. These can do so much damage.

The energy of Gilo over the past few weeks, as articulated in his open correspondence with Archbishop Welby, has brought up several important issues. Some of these he shared with our blog several months ago. Gilo has identified, over and over again, the way that safeguarding in the Church of England has been unhelpfully confused with the concerns of lawyers and insurance companies. In other words when a claim of abuse is made, the first response of the Church is to go into a defensive mode. They seem then to have no concern for the welfare of the survivor; they rather worry about a potential financial liability. When a survivor is met by this kind of legally defensive response, they may find themselves totally discouraged. Many of the survivors may be among the least powerful members of our society. They may also be carrying the burden of emotional damage from their abuse. They will simply not have the stamina to endure this kind of adversarial confrontation. Neither should they. Their memories, their account of events may be challenged and disbelieved. Gilo through his articulacy and stamina has rightly challenged the church to see how inappropriate this kind of adversarial approach is to a group of hurting vulnerable people. His vigorous challenge to the Church authorities to improve the process of helping and supporting survivors has been supported by a powerful group of 20 church people and theologians who are concerned with these issues. Each of them in different ways calls on the Archbishop and General Synod to put in place a new system for dealing with the victims of sexual abuse which is open and built on care and respect. All of them agree that the task of dealing with cases of past sexual abuse must be backed up with mandatory reporting to the police. The days of dealing with erring clergy can no longer be left to ‘in-house’ methods of discipline. Mandatory reporting will help create a new climate and culture of integrity and transparency.
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/uploads/Comments%20to%20Welby%27s%20reply.pdf

Last week I published an extract from a legal opinion about compensation and apologies. I am still hoping that this sentence will be relayed to the church leaders who appear to believe that defensive denial is preferable to pastoral care and support. I am hoping that once this piece of legislation is recognised as being of relevance to the whole practice of safeguarding in the church, that it may help to create a new spirit of openness, love and care.

Two survivors known to me personally have recently made formal complaints of sexual abuse against church leaders. It will be interesting to see whether their complaints receive a better hearing because of Gilo’s efforts. I certainly hope so. I finish with some of Gilo’s words. ‘There doesn’t seem any ownership of the crisis … these need the clear call of leadership required to shift the church into structural and cultural change and towards authentic justice.’ Amen to that.

Various commentators in America, both secular and Christian, have noticed that the word ‘evangelical’ has become damaged in recent months. Christians in the UK who still want to use this word as a self-description may need to be aware how many Americans regard this word as, at the very least, suggesting moral insensitivity. The Christian Right which represents the bulk of white evangelicals in the States has become aligned with a number of appallingly behaved individuals in American politics. No longer is a strong moral character demanded of the politicians who represent the conservative evangelical voter. Next week we may be witnessing the election to the Senate of the unrepentant paedophile Roy Moore. To vote for him involves effectively jettisoning ethics, truthfulness and straightforward honesty in favour of crude partisan politics. The Christian Right has apparently narrowed down morality to a couple of issues – the non-availability of abortion and the end of gay-rights. Every other moral principle can seemingly be discarded.

The recent recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel is also part of Trump’s attempt to keep faith with the Christian Right. We have to remind ourselves why this disastrous piece of American foreign policy matters to the hard-Right Christian tribe. It matters because these are the Christians who believe in the imminent Second Coming of Christ. The books they read suggest that the complete occupation of the Holy Land by Jews is part of the end time scenario. In one version of the belief in Christ’s return, the whole world is going to be catapulted into a state of disaster, war and ruin. It is only after this ‘Tribulation’ that Christ can return. A belief that our world is hurtling towards a Biblically ordained destruction helps to explain why many Christians simply do not care about nurturing the environment. There is thus an unholy alliance between right-wing Christian apocalypse thinkers and others who would rape and destroy the world’s resources for economic advantage. It is chilling.

Although I had hoped not to write about President Trump again, I find that it is difficult not to comment on the way that public discourse in America has been cheapened and coarsened in such short time. Even a year ago the evangelical voters who support Trump would not, I believe, have wanted to throw their lot in with an outrageous character such as Roy Moore. Something has drastically shifted in a very short time inside the spirit and conscience of many formerly decent people. What has happened to allow Moore even a small chance of winning? I think that the answer has to lie in the fact that conservative Christians have traditionally been required to think in terms of a strong polarisation between good and bad, truth and falsehood. Because right and truth could supposedly always be found in the Bible, discussion or debate was unnecessary. The conservative voter never learnt about the subtlety of debate. So now he has little ability to discern truth in a maelstrom of falsehoods and declining moral behaviour within political life. Because honest political discourse within the Republican party has been largely destroyed by the falsehoods and immorality at the top, the loyal base is forced to sacrifice moral conscience to continue their old loyalties. The need to defeat their political enemies has become the issue, not personal morality or decency.

I hope that this crude type of evangelical political thinking does not spread to our own country. At present we are fortunate in not having a political party closely aligned to apocalyptic right-wing Christian thinking. Although the gay issue is still important to many individuals, it has not created itself as a dominant idea in a political party. We also do not have to face individuals who want to challenge decades of scientific research in favour of a free for all, anti-ecological, model of economic development. But there are dangers and we need to be on our guard.

In the first place we need to understand and educate our children to see how dangerous polarised binary thinking is. We cannot have proper debates about anything when it is assumed that one side has all the right answers and the other has absolutely nothing to offer. That is the totalitarian pattern. Political decisions have to be made about economics and other issues of government. All of us recognise that because one course of action is being taken, it does not mean that the alternative path is without merit. It should be possible in schools to conduct debates and show this principle at work. For every decision that is made there are others that might have been made. A policy is made after other options have been considered. Few leaders, outside Trump’s America, genuinely believe that anything is black-and-white or that they can have a monopoly of truth.

Christians in many places are unfortunately encouraged to think in this highly polarised manner. They are led to believe that there are always biblical answers to complex problems. That is how the Christian faith and indeed the Bible is being presented to them. They are being failed both spiritually and intellectually. One has to say to such people as they consider truth in both politics and religion: ‘Look at the world and realise that there are precious few black and white issues in either politics or religion. The world is full of ambiguity and uncertainty. Decisions may be required from politicians and leaders of all kinds, but these will often be hard to arrive at. Even when they are made, such decisions are not infallible. A decision, the best possible we hope, is the result of an exercise of judgement and wisdom; it does not arise from some pre-existing infallible knowledge.’

Many evangelicals in America seem to be heading to a dark place. Because their teachers have been encouraging them to think in a binary way for a long time, we have this current tragic support of immoral deplorable political candidates without conscience or a proper grasp of truth. Truth, honesty and integrity seem to have slipped out of the qualities looked for in political representatives. Thus, these qualities even seem to be despised. Teaching black-and-white thinking, failing to encourage informed debate among their congregations – all this has resulted in the current moral and intellectual bankruptcy that we see today among so many American evangelicals. We never expected this to happen quite so quickly.

Recent church abuse cases have often ended up involving both lawyers and insurance companies. When such a legal process begins, communication between a victim and the church institution that harmed them has normally ceased. This is because of the common understanding that any apology or expression of regret by a church body is tantamount to an admission of liability. Thus, a victim such as Gilo, whose abuse was a matter of historical record, faced blanking and unanswered letters the moment that he sought legal redress for his abuse. An institution like the church is surely one where we would hope to be able to see an equal concern for justice and love in operation. From recent cases, not just Gilo’s, the legal response has been to shut down and try to shut out a victim who seeks a remedy from the courts.

According to an article written by legal expert, Professor Dominic Regan in the New Law Journal, this assumption that an apology to a victim is equivalent to an admission of liability is completely wrong. His actual word is ‘tosh’. There is a passage in what is known as a Compensation Act of 2006 which makes the following statement: An apology, an offer of treatment or other redress shall not of itself amount to an admission of negligence or breach of statutory duty. These few words are, according to the article, a restatement of existing law. But for people like Gilo and others who have experienced abuse from the Church, they are of enormous importance. Many people would have their sufferings considerably relieved if only the offending body felt itself at the start able to express regret, sorrow or apology. In the case of the Church, such an expression of regret might include the offering of pastoral care. There is a famous case of two children who died while on holiday in Greece by carbon monoxide poisoning. The company involved, ‘for legal reasons’, refused to apologise thus making the acute suffering of the parents far worse. Similar situations occur in medical negligence cases. A victim of a medical accident, by being shut off or treated as an enemy throughout the legal process suffers as much because of this blanking as from the original event. What the law is saying very clearly is that this kind of treatment is not justified by what the law in fact states.

It is hard to imagine how much extra suffering is endured because many institutions seem to be incapable ‘for legal reasons’ to say sorry. I mentioned last week the example of the social worker battling with the authorities of the Benedictine order. These men were presumably acting under the legal advice that to offer regret or apology to a victim was tantamount to laying themselves open to compensation claims. This misreading of the law enhanced the suffering of many survivors and all this additional stress is little short of scandalous. One wants the Compensation Act 2006 to be compulsory reading for every legal advisor acting for the Church in abuse cases. If ‘sorry’ is allowed to happen right at the beginning of the process of seeking justice, then some of the cases might never need to come to court. The Church as a body should be the one institution wanting to demonstrate a passion for truth, justice and love. It should never have to supress its expression of love because of the say-so of lawyers who, in this case, are not up to date with what the Law actually states.

In the article that I am quoting, Dominic Regan mentions a claimant who suffered a near fatal industrial injury in 2001. It resulted in post-traumatic stress disorder and this was by far the worst part of the injury. The initial absence of an apology from his employer made him angry and stressed with the consequence of poor relationships with his family as well as a drink problem. It took a court case for an apology to be forthcoming. Meanwhile the victim of the accident had died without ever hearing the apology. The small word ‘sorry’ would have made a tremendous difference for this particular individual. No doubt many church cases might have better and healthier outcomes if the institutions involved could feel able to apologise and do what they can to help without the fear of presumed liability.

It is a matter of deep regret that the bulk of the lawyers who represent churches are simply ignorant of this particular piece of law. I am thinking of the lawyers representing Trinity Church Brentwood. They repeatedly shut out victims and made it impossible for the church to make more than feeble statements of apology. We have course no means of knowing in this case what the church really thought about abused former members. Other churches are in the business of robust apology and self-examination. Gilo, whose case against the Church has been mentioned several times in different posts, seems to have met plenty of lawyers and insurance companies who seemed interested only in limiting liability for their clients. I would love to know whether Safeguarding Officers and Bishops up and down the country are aware that it is okay to say sorry. It will not make legal problems further down the line.

It would be right to say that having read this article by lawyer for others in his profession, I am left feeling angry. I am angry that something of such fundamental importance to the conduct of abuse cases in the Church seems to have been overlooked for so long. How many people who are the victims of church abuse have also been left uncared for and outside the orbit of pastoral care because of this legal ignorance? In this case the Law is providing a way that encourages and makes possible compassion, open communication and forgiveness- all Christian virtues. So this blog piece is saying in summary: it is okay to love, show compassion as well as apologise to someone who has been wronged without being accused of accepting legal liability. The Law in short allows us to be compassionate human beings trying to deal with a situation of suffering and pain.

One of the events going on at present, relevant to our blog, is the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). This commission set up by the UK government has faced numerous teething problems, including the resignation of two chairmen. Finally, we have reached the stage where witnesses are being heard and this public process began this past week. In the Inquiry there are to be several sections. The Anglican diocese of Chichester is to be investigated as well as scandals connected with children’s homes. To help those of us who are interested in the process, the entire public hearing is being streamed on the Internet with a five minute delay. This afternoon I spent an hour ‘eaves-dropping’ on this incredibly important Inquiry.

Today I listened to the evidence of a senior social worker who had been trying to work with the authorities of the Benedictine Order and others from outside who were concerned for sexually abused victims at their schools such as Ampleforth. This social worker explained to the hearing the complexities of dealing with an organisation so different from what is normally found in society. The Benedictine Order and the Abbot of Ampleforth Community have internal rules and lines of responsibility not easily understood by those outside. Above all the Benedictine structure instinctively resists any outside questioning and challenge. The witness today mentioned various problems he had encountered in around 2003/2004. In the first place he commented on the way that the institution he was facing seemed to be incapable of working proactively for child protection. The existence of probable abusers in the school had been known by four successive abbots but little had been done to protect children. One brother who was sent to prison in 2006 had been seeing a psychiatrist for decades. A poignant moment when the social worker read from an official statement put out by the Order. This declared that the first responsibility of the Abbot was towards the monks of the community. This appeared to supersede any responsibility for child protection.

The social worker’s evidence was describing a secretive and protective institution. Crimes were being committed and for a long time no one had the will or the courage to do anything about it. It will not be unexpected if we hear similar things about the culture of the troubled Anglican Diocese of Chichester. A culture which places great value in keeping secrets so as to protect the wider institution is dangerous. When institutions behave like this, vulnerable children may suffer and are damaged for life.

A further comment made by the social worker concerns the role of solicitors. It was noted that some of the responses by the Community were filtered through solicitors and other legal advisers. It did not give the social worker the sense that everyone was working for the same end – the safety of children. He realised that an institution which is governed by special rules and hierarchical structures will always want to protect itself against scrutiny and outside examination. It is to be hoped that the publicity that is being given to the Inquiry will help all the churches to have a better understanding of where their first responsibilities lie. Society already understands that the protection of children takes priority over every other institutional or financial interest.

In this blog we have spoken a great deal about belonging to a coercive group. I am reflecting on the way that any group which demands our allegiance for whatever reason will easily corrupt our thinking. There is something that happens to us and the functioning of our consciences when we shift between being ‘I and me’ to being ‘we and us’. Something changes. We start to think about the other people who make up the ‘we’. It is natural for us to be protective of them. When a institutional protectiveness has been going on for centuries, as in a religious community, it is likely that the individual conscience and morality is strongly affected. The strongest desire will be to protect to protect the community. That desire will be stronger that the promptings of conscience. Community, in short, may be stronger than individual goodness and conscience.

The Inquiry about child abuse in children’s homes and churches, Anglican and Catholic alike, will have to face this untidy overlap between a loyalty to an institution and the working of individual conscience. It is always a useful task for each of us to look at the way that our consciences are affected by the groups we join and the loyalties we possess. There is bound to be a tension in this double belonging – our conscience and our tribe. But as these child abuse revelations become more and more widely known through the Press, it will be important for Christians in particular to reflect on the human choices that have been made. Some thought they were doing the right thing in favouring the group. Membership of a church has made us naturally group people. But hopefully we never arrive at a place which covers up or fosters the evils of others. Nevertheless, we need to reflect on the way that otherwise good people have chosen to behave this way.

I will of course be returning to the IICSA hearings and to report some more of what they reveal. Little of the information will be brand new but the emotions of those involved, as they are streamed into a home, are a revelation in themselves. We need to ponder on the fact that it has taken a secular organisation to bring to account the Churches for their toleration of the abuse of children. This is a cause of shame but also source of hope that the future of nurturing the young may be done with the greater determination and love. Let us pray that love will overcome the evils of the past.

I have been reflecting on the way that power is exercised in society, but above all in the church. I want to share with my readers a classification of power loosely based on Max Weber’s ideas. This may help us to think more clearly about what power is and how it manifests itself in institutions and relationships. The sociologist Max Weber spoke about the power given to an individual to exercise on behalf of an institution. That kind of power was authoritative power. There is also another kind of power which he described as charismatic. This is a power that an individual may exert because he has a vision he wants to share. In and through his words there is shared what we would describe as inspiration or a new sense of direction. This resonates with a longing that people have. A third form of power is what is known as social power. This is the power given to an individual because of wealth, expertise, education or the kind of self-confidence that goes with a solid upbringing.

Some people manage to combine all three forms of power in themselves. Usually only one of these types of power is dominant at one moment. These three manifestations of power have one thing in common. Each of them can be used well or badly. They can coerce, control and generally take advantage of another person. In some cases, they may involve actual violence. Such violent exercise of power is unlikely to happen in the church unless a slow process of grooming and seduction has been gone through. In the church, just as anywhere else, power given to individuals can sometimes be used to abuse and exploit another person. But equally and hopefully each of the forms of power we have identified can be used to strengthen and empower another person.

The problem for all of us is that it is not easy to be analytical in the situation where power is being (ab)used. Our attention is drawn to the results of that power, particularly when someone is hurt. We naturally focus on the abuse rather than looking at all the factors and dynamics at play in the situation. When, however, we can see what is going on as a whole, we can hopefully help both sides of a negative power encounter take a new perspective. With the help of this new perspective, some of the pain and humiliation of the abuse can be alleviated. To take one example which Chris would identify with. An illiterate person in a congregation is made to feel bad some way by someone who is trying to be well-meaning. There is harm caused but this is because the person exercising social power lacks insight as to how this power is experienced by another person. Even in the worst cases of sexual abuse and cruelty there may be things to be discovered about the perpetrator and their abusing power which need to be understood even if not excused. People who criminally abuse power in some way are nearly always themselves victims of an abuse crime in years gone by.

The dynamic of charismatic power in Weber’s sense, is the most interesting. In its church manifestation we see that many people will feel very privileged to be close to a person who is thought to have a special charismatic gift or blessing. But relating to a charismatic guru is a bond which may in turn totally disempower an individual. They have entered a situation which can be only described as dangerous. The relationship may start reasonably well by providing hope and an initial experience of empowerment. The danger is that further down the line there is a likely outcome of dependence and an exploitation by the leader of the vulnerabilities of a follower. The reason for this sad outcome is, first of all, that the charismatic figure at the centre is a human being. He (normally a he) enjoys his status as the centre of attention and is not necessarily concerned for the vulnerable needy people who are attracted to him. They serve their purpose by feeding his narcissistic cravings. This kind of relationship is never going to be healthy. It will, as we say, probably end in tears.

Every time that power is exercised in a church setting, we have to recognise that there are two sides to the encounter. If we are pursuing our analytical quest, we will be asking what is happening to both sides of the encounter. Sometimes the encounter is good and healthy for both sides. On other occasions we may detect that the interaction is being exploited by the one with power to bolster up the self and in order to gratify other deep emotional needs. Everyone who uses power of any kind in a church needs to examine how it is undertaken. We may discover, not just occasional lapses, but a whole pattern of entrenched behaviour which is regularly causing harm. As I write this I am thinking about senior individuals within the church who because of their position never need to have their use of authority questioned or challenged. Little by little, the lack of such criticism, internal or external, has made them habitual bullies and creators of havoc and misery for the institution they serve.

I am reminded of the passage where Jesus speaks about power. ‘Kings and governors make them feel the weight of their authority, but it shall not be so with you.’ Jesus commended the way of service and perhaps this word ‘serve’ is the single most important idea to be inserted into our discussion of power. The first thing I am asking for is a greater sensitivity and awareness in the church about how power works. Having gained a greater understanding of what is going on, both inside the one who administers power and the one who receives it, then we need to try to insert this word ‘service’. Because there is up till now so little clear thinking in the church about power and the way it operates, we continue to suffer from its abuse in so many situations and contexts. Child abuse, spiritual abuse and all kinds of bullying and exploitation are made worse through our lack of awareness about the way power operates in institutions of all kinds including our own. We need to understand power and how it can be turned on its head when we internalise Jesus’ command to serve.

I have been reflecting on the way that people are caught up with the actions as well as the opinions of the people around them. It is so easy in our desire to fit in to find ourselves thinking and feeling in an identical or similar way to the group of which we are part. This desire to conform is at variance with the self-image that many people have of themselves. They would like to think that they are sufficiently educated to think for themselves and not have their opinions formed by people around them. The evidence suggests the opposite. There are various experiments performed by social psychologists which suggests that even when the evidence of the eyes says something different, we often prefer the comfort of siding with the dominant opinion.

Agreeing with our tribe or the people around us is probably a form of survival instinct. If one is part of the thinking and feeling of a large group, then there is safety in these numbers. To be a dissident is a dangerous path to follow. Even if it may not cause us to lose our life, it will often be a source of danger, discomfort and dissonance. How much easier to merge into the opinion of the mass?

This tendency for people to identify with the ‘tribe’ rather than their individual convictions has implications for our political as well as our church lives. A political leader may win a following by expressing a point of view which appeals to base instincts like hatred or scapegoating others. Hatred is a very good example of ‘tribal’ mass thinking. Blaming the world’s woes on the Jewish people, as Hitler did, may do absolutely nothing to forward the interests of those who respond to such a message. It is crude populism which bypasses rational processes and wins the approval of the crowd. Rhetoric works because it activates this crowd thinking, or non-thinking, and gives the individual member a sense of his or her power. The political life of both the United States and Britain is at present unhealthy. Leaders in both countries are appealing to base motives in the electorate. These arguably are a long way from their self-interest. It is particularly striking how the poorest people in the States appear to have voted for a party that is working hard only for those who are the wealthiest in society.

It is not of course just voting habits that are subject to the influence of others. We also subconsciously are affected by the standards of behaviour we see in the society around us. If the general atmosphere of civility and courtesy is good, then that will help to raise the standards within the entire population. If, on the other hand, there is a deterioration of morality and honesty at the top, that too will percolate down to affect everyone within society. The problem that is affecting the United States at present is that from President Trump down there seems to be an increasing disrespect for truth, honesty and showing tolerance to other ethnic groups. A single insulting tweet by the president can set up a ripple within the whole of American society. Other people feel that they can behave in a similar way. Coarseness as demonstrated by presidents can contaminate and cheapen the life of an entire society.

This readiness of large groups of people to think and feel in an identical way may also seem to be something positive. Certainly, it is commended in Scripture and in many situations the team can achieve things far beyond the capability of individuals. But we have to be prepared to face the problem of how we deal with the dissident. The liberals among us believe that an individual who thinks differently should always be afforded an honourable place within the tribe. The conservative, because they see only untidiness and divisiveness in such a thinker, will want to expel this nonconformist. I would have much more sympathy for the conservative position and even quote the Bible to support their instinct but for one fact. This fact is that the professed unity they think they have in their conservative orthodox congregations does not exist. Large groups of people do not ever in fact think and feel exactly alike. The only reason for them to appear to do so is to allow a fantasy of ‘biblical’ unity to exist. This is what the leaders want. So, the members all play at the game of pretending to be uniformly orthodox to preserve the fantasy in the mind of the leader.

The dissident, the nonconformist, has an important role to play in any church congregation. He or she can be the one that challenges the falsity of pretend identical thinking which has been set up as an orthodox ideal. A Christian leader who presides over a congregation where identical beliefs are claimed is extremely powerful. He is certainly more outwardly ‘successful’ in some circles than the one who oversees a group of people with a healthy range of ideas and experiences. This less powerful leader has of course to work much harder to hold things together. He or she may well suffer from misunderstanding and attack for providing a home for untidy believing. While the powerful leader may seem to have greater control and prestige, all this is likely achieved only in the absence of genuine honesty. The ‘weaker’ leader presides in a culture of openness and discovery. The other oversees in an atmosphere of control and even fear. I know which church I would prefer to be part of. Untidiness reflects the muddle and chaos of everyday human life. ‘Orthodoxy’ in its protestant expression needs regimentation and firm control.

One of the new challenges for voters in America is to know what to think about a politician who has abused sexually in the past. The numbers of these appear to be increasing. Christian politicians also who have become heroes to their ultra-right constituency for solidly opposing gay marriage, abortion and other offences against family values seem to be as guilty as the rest. One reaction to this dilemma has become increasingly popular. This is to declare that the moral failings of a politician are of no importance as long as they support God’s work. When the supporter is talking about God’s work in this context, it nearly always has to do with issues of sexuality. If the politician says the right things about sex, then he can be voted for whatever seedy activities lie in his past. The political agenda of the Christian Right has little interest in such things as justice, racism and support for the poor. The God of the alt-right and Donald Trump has little in common with the God of the Bible; the alt-right God is one who looks after the successful and the rich.

This topic of leadership and past evil actions is also something to be negotiated in church circles. I have been recently reading a biography of Frank Houston. He is the father of Brian Houston of Hillsong fame in Australia. The Frank Houston story is written by his wife and like many Pentecostal/charismatic biographies it is full of stories of wonder, spontaneous insights and healings. I read this biography against the background of knowing that Frank would be eventually outed as a paedophile with acknowledged offences against young men and boys. Obviously, there was no mention of any such failing in his hagiography. We are given the impression that God was working through him and in him at every point in his ministry. When he approached somebody with a problem, God would often speak to him directly and give him the solution to whatever was the issue.

Alongside the story of the elder Houston, I have been re-reading the accounts of the many people who suffered at the hands of Michael Reid at Peniel. In contrast to these accounts of his staggering abuse of power, I have also been watching the videos on You Tube which talk about the divinely authorised ministry of this ‘man of God’. Once again there are stories of healings, wonderful events and acts of great power. Reid himself often used to say to people that these same happenings were an indication that God himself had handed over authority for him to rule the church as he saw fit.

Two apparently divinely blessed ministries and two examples of criminal abuses of power. How does one make sense of such a contrast and remain a Christian? Are we to say that God used these two leaders in spite of their flawed personalities? Would that not lead us to be saying that we can ignore the evil on account to the blessings that flowed apparently from these ministries? This would seem to be the argument which is being used currently in the States by conservative pastors when offering their support to the notorious Ray Moore. It is an argument that does not convince me. I am still left looking for another way of dealing with this conundrum.

I do not claim to be able to answer this question to my own satisfaction. But I would start by saying that it may be necessary to look afresh at the phenomena of Charismatic and Pentecostal renewal. Should we not be far more analytical about what is going on in these Spirit-filled events? Should we not find some new ways of characterising what some people wish to call Acts of God? Might they not be simply examples of crowd hysteria? The church seems to be in danger of wanting to see these moments of crowd excitement as being crucial to its future. Crowd froth and superficial emotion do not seem to be good foundations for a solid expression of church life. Frank Houston and Michael Reid, as well as many others, discovered that they were able to manipulate crowds and pack church buildings. Simultaneously they were learning techniques which would in another context be described as paranormal or psychic. My own understanding of the strange phenomena which take place when there is endless loud rhythmic music is fairly mundane. It is not difficult for leaders and led to enter trance states where strange things can happen. I personally try to keep abreast of what might be happening in these scenarios but I detect little or no interest elsewhere to have a discussion able to critique these large congregations. The powers that be applaud full churches and the sound of joyful exuberance in a church building. Nobody wants to ask any further questions.

Frank Houston and Michael Reid, now both disgraced in the eyes of their respective churches, flourished because what they did and what they said came apparently from God and thus was beyond contradiction. Evil was permitted to flourish because nobody at the time dared to ask any questions. ‘Success’ trumped all other criteria including truth. Thus, many suffered because the church was so bad at scrutinising what was done in its name. In this way evil was allowed to coexist with apparently successful ministries. If this same mistake continues to be made in future, then it will progressively undermine the integrity of many of our churches in a serious way. American politics has been weakened for ever because an increasing number of people refuse to question the immoral antics of those who stand in the places of power. Let us pray that this will not happen in the churches of our nation.

One of the more horrifying examples of American evangelical culture has, thankfully, not yet reached our shores. I am referring to habit of some evangelical parents to release their daughters for marriage in their mid-teens to a groom who may be twice their age. This apparently is one of the ideas put out by Christian lecturers on the home-schooling network in the southern states of the USA. This institutionalised child abuse is part of the background which we need to understand when hearing about the accusations being made against the Senate nominee, Judge Roy Moore. He is accused by three women of molestation when they were underage. Many Republicans both Christian and not, are horrified at these allegations and want him removed from the ballot paper. Others, who are accustomed to the existence of very early marriage by girls of godly evangelical families, see nothing unusual in his behaviour. This is the way that things are done in the American Christian bible-believing South. The argument goes that if a girl is chosen young, she will be amenable to being more easily trained up to be a good obedient Christian wife. She will other words fulfil her task of complete subservience and conformity and this is in accordance to an ideal of Christian womanhood.

This blog post is in many ways an overlap and continuation with the last one. But the topic raised helps us further to emphasise the appalling mindset which some biblical Christians absorb as part of their formation. Most of my readers will have already anticipated my objections to this way of thinking. In the name of Christianity half of humanity is considered somehow more godlike if the maturing process is terminated halfway through the teens. They are not expected to develop any further. Things like skills, interests, academic training and maturity of character are all supressed. All that they are good for is to bear children, worship a man and try to please him in every way possible.

I have been trying to imagine how these ‘godly’ marriages develop over the years. In the first place the wife, totally dedicated to the needs of her husband, will have a very limited understanding of her own needs and desires. She will not, for example, have developed any outside interests beyond that of caring for the home. Her children will grow up without experiencing much from her in the area of life experience. Even when the children leave home the mother may still be in her forties and the marriage could then settle into a state of extreme apathy. What will such a couple find to talk about? I would expect that in some cases a wife trapped in such a situation would try to escape such a marriage. The obscenity of the original marriage arrangement was so appalling that it is hard not to applaud a woman who chooses to walk away. A woman trapped in this kind of patriarchal relationship is like a member of a cult, unable to think or feel for herself. The cultic mind-set that has been absorbed over the years may in fact make a breaking away very hard to achieve.

A further reason for encouraging these very young women to marry is that they fulfil another ideal of evangelical thinking – that of sexual purity. It is difficult to know what is the ideal in a Christian context for sexual behaviour before marriage, but enslavement to an older man at the age of 15 or 16 cannot be a proper answer. Whatever we think about sex before marriage the case for equality between men and women must be made loudly and vocally. The institutions in the church which seem to encourage a state of inequality must be scrutinised and exposed for their hidden misogyny. As a long-time supporter of the ordination of women I am becoming increasingly impatient at the way that such misogyny is being buried under apparently sophisticated theological argument. One hopes that the court of public opinion will eventually completely outlaw areas of inequality that still exist in parts of the church. While we do not tolerate Alabama Christian traditions towards women, we still have our own cultural battles to fight against forces which discriminate against women in the church.

Child marriages for religious reasons do not exist in this country, but we must continue to resist the kind of thinking that makes such an institution possible. In the meantime, let us hope that the liberal backlash in the States against Judge Moore continues. These ugly forms of child abuse supported by fundamentalist readings of Scripture must be defeated. Women of every age and background deserve better. Nothing in the words of Jesus supports the idea of women being subordinate to men. The enforced subservience of women over the centuries seems to have been a way to flatter men and help them to retain their sense of importance and power. Let us strive to preserve equality and mutuality between the sexes. This will require us to challenge the misogyny of past centuries especially in societies and places where it has become deeply entrenched.