ViaMedia

Author: Helen King

  • Estates Evangelism: Justice on the Margins

    Fr Alex Frost, Vicar of St Matthews, Burnley and member of General Synod

    At this February General Synod I had hoped to speak in support of Bishop Philip North’s motion on the topic of Estates Evangelism. I didn’t get called to speak, but I didn’t lose heart because everyone who did speak, did so with empathy, kindness and consideration for people living and working on our most troubled estates. I get so much enthusiasm for ministry when I hear people discussing and focussing on a loving gospel response to serve the poor and to call out injustice.

    In 2021 I was part of a religious cost-of-living crisis piece for the BBC News. It was viewed by 12 million people, and led to an outpouring of love and affection which has affected my life and my ministry forever, so it’s no surprise that I supported +Philip’s  motion at Synod because, if we don’t do something now, then when will we?

    There were other matters of justice, particularly racial justice, discussed at this Synod too. The contributors offered heartfelt stories and inspiring words and there was a huge consensus that calling out injustice should be the heart of what we do as a church. Calling out injustice means discussing many emotive topics and I am reminded that injustice comes in many forms, including colour, race, sexual identity, disability and class.

    Returning to Estates Evangelism, St Matthew’s Burnley – where I’m the vicar – serves a number of challenging estates. Through the outstanding support of my colleague and Associate Priest Rev Kat Gregory Witham, we have created a new worshipping community called Fun Church. Fun Church is like Messy Church only the difference is that it does get very very messy, with squabbling, fall-outs, swearing, and tantrums, and that’s just the parents! Rev Kat, with an outstanding team, created this for families, and around 40-50 kids attend on a weekly basis. We heat the huge church, do some crafts, we do some singing and we feed them their tea. We have drop-ins, we offer food support, mental health support, weekends aways, and trips out.

    When I was telling somebody this, they were like ‘Brill, that’s amazing, are you an HTB church or are the Church Army involved?’ To which I replied, ‘Outside of the stipends we get nowt, zilch, zero from the Church of England’. All our funding comes from grants or charities and benefactors and fundraising, but the truth is we get nothing from the central Church. In fact the reality is we have to pay £30,000 a year in parish share for the privilege so we are doing our bit to support the Diocese. That’s not a criticism of the Diocese, but of the paralysis that is passed on by the processes placed upon estate churches that bind us to the national strategy to pay parish share.

    And so I want to add to the amazing voices at Synod, for the many estate churches that get on with doing what they are doing, with the millstone of money and debt preventing them from doing more. I want to speak up for the churches that refer individuals to Christians Against Poverty but are crippled by their own financial woes and yet carry on to a pathway to oblivion. And I want to speak up for clergy making the best of what sometimes can feel like an impossible situation. I also want to raise a cheer for the clergy who literally can’t cope, for the priests and deacons who are hanging on by a thread. For Ministers and Pastors who risk the sustainability of their own respective ministries, who jeopardise their own wellbeing, because of exhaustion, depression, worry and stress. And I want to give a voice for churches that serve in the most challenging places, who give their time in blood, sweat and tears, who are running churches at a loss but somehow keep going, to serve the most vulnerable places in our society. And to speak up for the families I come into contact with, who are literally picking up and eating the crumbs from under the table.

    After the ravages of Covid 19 and after the savage way in which the cost of living crisis has taken away people’s dignity, aspiration and zest for life, I want to ask: if not now, then when, Church of England?

    I truly believe that the growth of the Church of England will not come by producing a definition of fornication, or even by blessing same-sex unions; something, by the way, which I fully support. It won’t come in the calling out the wolves from the sheep. It can and it will come only from serving on the margins, by calling out the injustices of social and financial deprivation, and by walking in the footsteps of Jesus in the darkest of places.

    Growth will come where ministers are not shackled by carrying the weight of so much expectation with so little resource, but are instead enabled to offer more than soup and a sandwich, a prayer and a blessing. It will come if we can offer a radical distribution of the extraordinary and sometime repulsive wealth that is within the Church of England, wealth that will enable churches and church leaders to challenge injustice. The Church of England needs to fight for an end to foodbanks and to stop celebrating soup kitchens as great bastions of pastoral care; instead giving us the tools to stir, not just soup, but hearts and minds. The church should enable us to make a difference, and should hold those in power accountable to make a cultural change to how we serve the poor in mind, body and spirit.

    Churches do make a difference; they offer wonderful Christian witness. But they are so often held back by financial woes and lack of opportunities. I hope and pray that the motion passed at Synod leads to change and makes a difference to how much support is offered to our estates. The motion provides a route map to recovery, a route map to growth: what is important now is we all travel in the same direction.

     

     

     

  • Slouching Towards Synod*

    by Helen King, member of General Synod, editor

    Usually things start to settle down in the week before General Synod meets. The agenda is out, Questions are submitted and the written answers awaited, and people read through the various papers and start to think about whether they have something they’d like to contribute to the debates.

    But, in this particularly troubled Synod, where safeguarding, Living in Love and Faith, and governance are all coming together and overlapping in a disturbing way, nothing feels settled at all. That wasn’t helped this morning by an unexpected letter ‘To all General Synod Members’, from the one remaining LLF Lead Bishop. There is still no sign of anyone having been identified to take over Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley’s role as the ‘inclusive’ Lead Bishop; or perhaps nobody so identified has been willing to take this on.

    In the letter, Bishop Martyn Snow assures us that the list of ‘commitments’ being brought by him to Synod are not really the commitments. They are ‘intended as an illustration of the sort of commitments that might form the basis of an agreement’.

    Yes, the underlining/bold face combination is in the letter.

    We are further asked not to ‘pick apart’ the wording of the commitments, or to discuss whether we agree with the details. It’s not clear what we are allowed to do.

    Is that it? Or are any more documents likely to land between now and Friday?

    In these circumstances, rather than offer any new reflections, Via Media News is instead offering you a reminder of some of the pieces published already here, and which speak into aspects if our current situation. No.10 of the commitments in GS2346 – commitments which are not really commitments – concerns communion: the search for the ‘highest possible degree’ of communion and the idea of ‘degrees of unity’. Is this about impaired communion? Ah, but we are not supposed to ‘pick apart’ the wording.

    So, let’s think about sacraments, and impaired sacraments. On Via Media, back in 2019, we featured a piece on our common baptism, from Bishop David Gillett, picking up cases where a minister had refused to baptise the child of a same-sex couple: ‘Does the Bible really say … that baptism should be withheld from some people?’ David looked at the sorts of “Oh my goodness how do we do this??” practical questions, like how to fill in the register when there are two mothers, or two fathers, and reminding us of Canon B22: No minister shall refuse or, save for the purpose of preparing or instructing the parents or guardians or godparents, delay to baptise any infant within his cure that is brought to the church to be baptized.

    He wrote “Meanwhile we are in the ironic situation where baptism, the foundation sacrament within the Church, is open to all whereas lawfully married same sex couples are barred from both a church marriage and the possibility of ordination.”

    Last year, Fr Thomas Sharp wrote about breaking, or remaining in, communion, when communion “flows from our baptism”. “To declare then that communion is broken is, simply, to make a fundamental statement too about baptism, that the sacrament, too, has in some way been broken.” He concluded, “I am tempted, when I disagree with them and any number of my fellow members of the Church, to declare us ‘out of communion’, to insult and write them off. But then the Spirit’s voice accuses me: ‘How dare you forsake your baptism?’”

    This raises questions around the stated objectives of the Church of England Evangelical Council, as stated in their document ‘Securing evangelical witness’. In the non-geographic dioceses envisaged here, people will be “able to express the view that others in the C of E are preaching a different gospel and are false teachers”; not that we disagree, but that one group of us are false teachers and the others aren’t. One baptism? Apparently not. Sharing communion? It doesn’t sound like it.

    Evidence for that comes from another 2019 piece published here, on ‘impaired communion’, where Dr David Ison challenged the January 2019 Letter from Concerned Anglicans in the Oxford Diocese, which took issue with the Oxford Bishops because they were insisting that all could be baptised and could receive communion: the Concerned wrote ‘in supporting the formulation first produced by the Bishops of Lichfield, [your Ad Clerum] Letter makes specific reference to nobody being excluded or discouraged from receiving the sacraments of baptism or the Lord’s Supper” and argued that what they called ‘such indiscriminate participation’ was actually unbiblical because, the Concerned Anglicans observed, ‘the Apostle Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 11: 27-29 clearly discourages participation in the Lord’s Supper for those who have not examined themselves.’

    So, for some within the wider, and diverse, evangelical constituency, some cannot be baptised, while some cannot accept the invitation to the Lord’s Table if the person presiding there has stated that they will bless people in committed same-sex relationships. This of course already happens – although, I think, less than it did – if the person presiding is female. David responded to all this was that “It’s ironic, and worse, that Paul’s confronting of corporate division and contempt is used by one part of Christ’s body as a stick with which to beat and exclude another part of Christ’s body – when Paul is telling his hearers to take a good look at themselves, not others.” Examining oneself seems rather different from labelling others as automatically excluded.

    And that brings us back to the big question: when Christians in the same Church refuse to take communion from, or with, other Christians in that Church: are they still in the same Church, or is that schism?

     

    *The title of this blog post is of course a reference to Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming. Make of that what you will.

  • Mini-MBA Course for the Talent Pipeline in the Church of England: Safeguarding Strategy

    by Anon.

    Memorandum

    To: Current Participants in the Mini-MBA Talent-Pipeline Learning Community.

    From: The Mini-MBA Leadership Development Module Team, Lambeth Palace.

    Thank you for your emails following the publication of the outline course on Strategy and Marketing. A number of you have asked for “clarification” on the redacted pages on Safeguarding Strategy. As you know, this was done at the insistence of the Secretariat. However, after taking much careful advice and soundings from Lambeth Palace, Church House and the Secretariat, we have reproduced the questions and answers for you below, which should allay any qualms and concerns you might have.

    Please note, there is no definite date for the Safeguarding Strategy Module to be delivered, because its postponement fits within the broader ‘Managing Perpetual Reputational Risk Module’. Assessment for that is ongoing in the Talent-Pipeline Learning Community, and takes place over the course of your entire ministry. You cannot begin the Safeguarding Strategy Module until the Managing Perpetual Reputational Risk Module is completed.

    As you will have retired by then, you do also have the choice of opting out at this point, should you wish to do so. Whilst that means you won’t get your PTO, you might have had enough by then in any case. Many bishops just put their slippers on at this juncture, and never go out again. That avoids potential CDMs later, and if you are not going to church anymore, you don’t even have to reply to the summons. We obviously don’t recommend this course of action, but it is an option that a number have taken up!

    All that said, we have tried to deal with your questions as follows:

    Question One: What is a Safeguarding Complaint?

    This is more difficult to answer than you might at first think. For example, a Vicar telling infants at a school assembly that Father Christmas is not real clearly meets the trauma-safeguarding threshold. So would removing soft toys from the creche on the spurious grounds that they were badly manufactured.

    On the other hand, a clergyman caught behind the bushes naked from the waist down probably has prostate issues, and was just relieving themselves. Nobody likes to be caught short. The presence of other men in similar states of undress merely shows how common prostate problems are, and also points to council cuts in shutting down the public toilets.

    The reason the NST does not have a robust or legally compliant definition of safeguarding is rooted in the theological commitment to reflective practice. So much depends on who you are, where you were, and what you have done (NB: Secretariat – please insert “are alleged to” throughout).

    Question Two: If there is a complaint, what happens?

    Much depends on what role you have in the CofE.  The Archbishops’ Council does offer a system of fully comprehensive Legal-Comms insurance, but only to a few. Obviously, if you have ever tweeted in favour of Save the Parish, you can only have yourself to blame. Bishops, on the other hand, are automatically covered.

    Question Three: What Does the NST Do All Day?

    At last, a question about strategy! Well, the NST does NOT investigate complaints. Then again, it will often issue statements that begin, “following a complaint, and an independent investigation by the NST…”. To the uninitiated this looks like a contradiction, but the strategy is to keep these two mutually exclusive statements, ALWAYS, at least two paragraphs apart, and ideally two entirely different Cases apart.

    Thus, you could issue a statement saying “after a thorough/preliminary NST investigation by the NST, XXXXX was given a verbal warning”. But you must separate that statement by at least two paragraphs from the sentence that reads “it was not the role of the NST to investigate these matters…”.

    Both are true. But put together, we do agree they appear to be confusing. Clearly, the NST does not have the expertise, resources, independence or personnel to investigate complaints. Except of course, when it says it has already done so, which is different.

    The NST Director can reassure you that the NST never investigates a case. Then inform you later of the result of the investigation you were just told was not even happening, and so you are now suspended. So much depends on who you are, what you were alleged to have done, and whether you have ever signalled a ‘like’ on Save the Parish tweets.

    Investigations aside, the NST has outsourced most things to the NSG and NSSP, and even to 31:8 and the NSPCC. There was some outsourcing to the ISB too, but that all ended badly when the dreaded “I-word” was used far too much – Independent (see question four).

    It is not tricky to grasp the nuances of this strategy. But to answer your question, nobody is actually working at the NST anymore, and that has been the case for some time. Staffing is done through AI mannequins, programmed and operated by the Secretariat and run out of Lambeth Palace. (So yes, this technically qualifies as an independent and remote ‘hands off’ operation).

    Question Four: When the Church of England Says it has Commissioned or Conducted an “Independent Investigation”, What Does this Mean?

    Another laser-like strategy question – thank you, and well done! We have already covered “investigation”. When a Bishop, Archbishop or member of the Secretariat says “independent”, they mean a third party that they chose, set the terms of reference for and pay – all in order to get full value for money in their commissioning of this work.

    There is obviously no point in having an investigation or even a trial if you don’t already know what the verdict is going to be that you are working towards. (Secretariat: As you know, verdicts are my prerogative, and I am exempt from any such process, just so we are clear).

    If for any reason you think the preferred verdict is likely to be the wrong result, not what you paid for, or likely to be deeply unpopular with a sceptical public, the strategy is to delay publication for a considerable period of time, by which we mean several years. If there are complaints about these delays in publication, there’s no need to worry, as you can commission a separate audit or reviews into why the delays have dragged on and on.

    That in itself buys even more time, and of course has to be fed into the original processes. Hopefully (NB: Secretariat – “normally”?) Synod will have all turned over by then, the entire NST staff changed, a flood will have destroyed all the records in the bishop’s basement, the server melted or been subject to some naughty rival denomination launching a cyber-attack, so the whole thing has to start all over again.

    Question Five: I Might Have Been One of the Clergy Referred to in Question One, Caught Behind the Bushes with Trousers Around My Ankles. My Court Appearance is Next Month. Should I Be Worried?

    (NB: Secretariat – insert “alleged” again, liberally; and redact the name of person, court location and date of appearance, etc). Not really. The legal profession works by establishing Case Law precedent. You may recall some years ago that a Bishop often got lost in places that, on reflection, were he rather less confused and other-worldly, he should probably have avoided on reputational grounds. Public lavatories, bushes in parks, private clubs in Soho and other good places to meet (Ed: seriously?) can sometimes be traps. The bishop was forever getting into unfortunate situations that were “open to misinterpretation”.

    On one occasion, the Bishop got lost in a liturgical procession. (NB: Secretariat – date, festival and church redacted). But the bishop turned up later in the vestry wearing only his dressing gown, as he said he’d got confused about timings and location. But this was easily remedied by the following measures.

    First, the parish did very, very well in the next round of Strategic Development Fund bids, which considering they’d not even made a submission, was an example of truly amazing grace, with everything that had happened in the procession quietly forgotten. So, win-win!

    Second, the Bishop was electronically tagged (voluntarily, and we thank the police for organising this), so that his movements could be GPS tracked by the Legal-Comms Team at Lambeth Palace.

    Third, the device as fitted also gave the wearer a nasty electric shock (like a dog collar – not the clergy type, but the canine ones). So if the bishop were more than 20 feet out of sight range of the hired-hand monitoring his movements, a shrill alarm would sound, and the bishop would experience a mild taser sensation.

    In view of these hi-tech solutions, you should not really be worried at all. Especially as the Lambeth Palace Team (Secretariat: I have deleted “allegedly” here, as that implies some doubt) monitoring your tag on the day in question now shows that you were not even in that park at all, but on retreat several hundred miles away. So this is either a case of mistaken identity or impersonation. You can therefore plead “not guilty” with a clean conscience. (Ed: you mean like the Secretariat, who when they said they weren’t in the meeting or the room, but actually were…I’m confused…?).

    Question Six:  Are You Actually Going to Say Anything About Safeguarding Strategy? Isn’t the Whole Point of this Module to Understand That?

    Finally, we get to the heart of the matter! This is tricky for some of those in the Mini-MBA Talent Pipeline to grasp, but strategy is an art.  You’d think that strategy would flow from the many safeguarding ‘Lessons Learned Reviews’, as they would help shape future policy and practice. But you need to remember the following three things.

    First, very few ‘Lessons Learned Reviews’ are ever completed. Even fewer are published. And those that are must be subjected to full Maxwell-isation so that no person can be identified, unless it is the one we had previously nominated for throwing under the bus.

    Second, remember that zero is a number, and that it is possible, therefore, to talk about “a number of lessons learned”. However, GDPR legislation does not actually require you to specify what the number is. The Chair of the House of Laity was very clear about that at a recent meeting of General Synod. In any case, that number could always increase, so it pays to be circumspect.

    Third, never forget that the context of this module is set within the “Talent Pipeline Learning Community”. This is very important for strategy. You cannot speak of “learned” as though this was done and dusted and in the past tense. We are always “learning” (present and future tense), so it really would be pedagogically nonsensical to talk about “lessons learned (in the past)”, as everything learned has to be un-learned, so we can re-learn.

    Question Seven: I’ve Heard Quite a Few Bishops, the NST, Secretariat and Others Talk About “the Safeguarding Journey we are all on”. But What Does That Mean in Practice?

    We are glad you asked, and we can end this Q&A with a proper old biblical story – the Parable of the Missing Japanese Snow Monkey! As you know, this naughty Snow Monkey went AWOL from Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, near Aviemore, in January. It was on the run for five days, before being finally found in some Highlands back garden eating nuts. Like the lost coin, lost sheep, lost pearl or straying prodigal son, there was much rejoicing at the Monkey being recaptured. (NB: Secretariat – “recovered” or “found” sounds better; this modern parable is not supposed to stress the captive nature of the animal).

    Now throughout the Monkey’s meanderings, nobody was asking if the animal had a destination or end in mind, or was trying to get home (to Japan!). No, this Monkey was on a journey, and the point of the journey was to keep moving, and follow its nose. The excitement, vision and energy comes from not knowing where this will end from one day to the next. Reaching an actual destination is never the point. Because that would mean to have arrived, have finished something, and to be at completion.

    This is not the way of the pilgrim. John Bunyan was right to title his book Pilgrim’s Progress. He didn’t call it Pilgrim’s Arrival, or Pilgrim’s Journey Ends. The clue is in the word ‘progress’ – he keeps going. Like the Snow Monkey.

    You may this this is all a bit fruitless, but then so much strategy is about going back to the beginning, and starting all over again (Ed: You mean like LLF?). The Monkey did not have a wasted journey. And our Safeguarding Journey is never wasted either.

    All that happens is after some while meandering around, we go back home, and begin to reimagine the next Safeguarding Journey we might embark upon. The aim is to keep moving, and not get overly focussed on where we are supposed to be ending up. Look how that tormented Bunyan!

    But it didn’t bother the Monkey one bit, who is glad to be back at the beginning with a banana, and is already planning their next trek. Remember, the Talent Pipeline Learning Community is a non-stop Ferris Wheel. You are not meant to get off.

    Assessment:

    If you are in favour of Save the Parish, you may answer questions 1-3, but should then proceed straight on to question eight.

    1. On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how would you rate the oversight of the Secretariat in national safeguarding?
    2. On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how would you rate the performance of the NST, NSG, NSSP, etc?
    3. On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how confident are you of a bishop evading a safeguarding complaint?
    4. Using fewer than 10 words, but with diagrams allowed, what lessons were learned in the last review you looked at? If none, write ‘zero’ (which is a number, and might be the right answer)?
    5. The Father Ted Christmas Special episode involving the lost clergy in the lingerie section of Dublin’s leading department store was the set text for critical reflection in our previous module. (NB: Secretariat – the Ignatian reflections from some students were illuminating). Mindful of that critical incident, how could Father Ted’s leadership be up-scaled?
    6. Assuming you have understood this Module correctly, as it was intended to be, write down your next ideal job on completion of the Mini-MBA.
    7. What does the Monkey teach us about the value of the Journey (NB: not a question about destinations!).
    8. If you answered with less than ‘five’ in questions 1-3, where do you think you are actually going to end up?

  • Response to the ‘Letter from Seven Bishops’: A Theology of Inclusion

    by Fr Alex Frost, Vicar of St Matthews, Burnley and member of General Synod

    After reading the recent document around the Doctrine of Marriage and today’s sequel by seven Church of England Bishops, I wanted to ask myself: Am I, and others like me, wrong in all this? Have I been hoodwinked by a bunch of liberal-minded weirdoes who have all simultaneously jumped on a bandwagon of inclusion? Have I just been swept along in a sea of rainbow-coloured waters with an ever-increasing empathy towards vegetarians and vegans and people who have partners of the same sex? Has this heterosexual, former new romantic, a man married in a registry office, sexually active with a son before marriage, just bought into the narrative of same sex attraction and inclusion for all? Have I been led astray by a plethora of heretical charlatans acting in the inclusive name of Jesus Christ; have I been secretly deceived by leaders of the wrong pack rather than the shepherds of the sheep?

    Well, I decided to investigate a little further and started at the Church of England website A place to belong, which opens with an encouraging and opening proclamation: We all want our churches to be places of welcome for all, and indeed we believe that church communities are only whole when they include everyone.

    Knowing that not to be true, after some unpleasant placements as a pre-ordination candidate, I decided to look elsewhere as is my academic freedom to do – and just as was the Bishop of Newcastle’s decision to step back from her role as a LLF Lead Bishop. Of course, all the assumptions and points raised by the seven Bishops come from a place of integrity. I don’t for a minute doubt that they believe that what they write is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I understand that they think the biblical texts are true, the word of God, and that if they are the word of God they are to be unquestioned and to be implemented at all times and in all circumstances. I get it, I get it, I get it!

    But of course, one of the problems our church has is that we don’t all come to faith at the same time, with the same experiences, with the same blind assurance of literal belief in the Bible that the authors of the recent publication share. Many people turn to faith in times of sadness, uncertainty, disappointment, or hardship. I’m not sure how many new followers of Christ become Christians out of untold joy and happiness in their lives. That’s certainly not been my experience in my nearly 9 years as a man in Holy Orders. I also think people in our society are encouraged to challenge, debate, consider different views of opinion. They just will not accept that, to become part of this or that denomination, this faith or that religion you must sign up to a ‘you must believe this, or you can’t come in’ model, unless of course they have been indoctrinated to literal interpretation of what truth is from a very young age. Which raises a question… Is liberal Christian simply a heretical entry into church from the secular world? Or is it a legitimate gift from God, wanting to use the full talents and gifts of academic thinking beyond the traditional and conservative evangelical narrative?

    Where might myself and more conservative thinking theologians share some common ground, then? Maybe in agreeing that many problems in the world are because of people turning away from Christ, or not even knowing Jesus, which is very much the case in many of our secular schools. Maybe we share some common ground in that we both want our relationships to be loving, kind, trustworthy, honest, faithful, and lifelong. Maybe our common ground is that we both love Jesus and his church, and we will do all we can to preserve it and stay together. Maybe our common ground is that we all find it deeply upsetting that now we seem angry and apathetic, like many estranged brothers and sisters and families. Maybe the best theological advice we can give, not only to our Bishops but to one another, is to be kinder, more tolerant and to work towards a ‘settlement’ that recognises difference in the house of God, in the name of God.

    Maybe we have to ‘reset’ to a place of unequivocal agreement, that we love one another and that he loves us. Surely the common ground is that we all know what Jesus’ primary commandment was: to love one another, despite evidence I have witnessed to the contrary. But despite those failings our language should and will reflect that commandment, always, because when it doesn’t it steps out of the minimum entry requirement to follow Jesus. For millions of Christians, the words of the Bible are literal, and for millions of Christians they are not, and so we have a square that will never fit the circle. That should not mean condemnation for fellow Christians but, as in the secular world, I do believe a path forward will only be found in a way of compassion and compromise. Glimpsing eternity through a virgin bride or groom, is quite a scary and un-inclusive thought; quite poetic and romantic, but sadly not realistic. Many people can’t live up to the expectation which some theologians set before them. Gay people, certainly gay Christians, can’t conform to the doctrinal narrative laid down before them and nor should they have to. And nor should they be threatened with the assurance of eternal damnation. Many people have turned away from, or ignored, a journey of faith because it appears cruel, mean-hearted, misogynistic, intimidating. Or, even worse, they have first-hand experiences of those things.

    I don’t ever want Christians who believe something with integrity and assurance to be made to do something or accept something they don’t want to do. But I also don’t want these people to stop others doing something which they want to do, which they want to do with the utmost, honesty integrity and in good faith. If people think my desire to embrace and celebrate same sex relationships and a fully inclusive agenda comes from a place of heresy, or even from the devil, I can’t convince you otherwise and I’m sorry. But I write in Jesus’ name, as a devout Christian, but from a place of difference. A place that witnesses addiction, death, violence, and torment daily, yet a community still loved by Jesus although he is sadly unknown to many of them. Through our outreach we have become a bit of a haven, to the broken, the lonely and the lost. They have been devoured by the wolves and, somehow, they have landed at our door. Their restoration comes through acknowledgment of their experience and struggles, and there is a building of trust. The boundaries many of them hold are in a place far removed from the ideology of biblical narrative that is set in stone as the one they must adhere to. Their starting point for Christian healing and wellbeing comes from a place of acceptance and they can come as they are. Illiterate, ravaged by life, criminals, destitute, and lost.

    It is my view that Christianity will thrive once more in our country when we turn our faces towards the marginalised, by restoring them by a practical theology rather than a doctrinal theology. In restoring others in this way, it is my prayer we may restore ourselves in the process.

     

     

     

     

  • To be Evangelical is to Challenge ‘Orthodoxy’

    by Canon Dr Phil Groves, a parish priest who was a CMS Mission partner in Tanzania and worked at the Anglican Communion Office for 10 years as the Facilitator for the Listening Process in the Anglican Communion and Director of Continuing Indaba. His PhD is on Anglican Missional Ecclesiology. He is dyslexic and is exploring advocacy for neurodiverse people.

     

    ‘Orthodox’[1] has become the chosen title for those seeking to reaffirm that marriage is only between one man and one woman for life. The implication is that those of us who are who are affirming and inclusive are unfaithful to the tradition of the church, to the gospel, and to God.

    Evangelical institutions have often had statements of faith, which traditionally have majored on the scriptures and salvation. Such statements are now seen to be insufficient, with new clauses defining marriage as only between a man and a woman for life being added to defend ‘orthodoxy’.

    I suspect that there are three intended outcomes from inserting and emphasising these new clauses on sexuality. Firstly, it is hoped they will protect institutions from encroachment by those who have a different view. Secondly, to ensure evangelical unity in order to form wider alliances with Anglican provinces and organisations across and outside the Anglican Communion. It also cements the idea that the doctrine of marriage is a first order issue: a salvation issue.

    These clauses – beyond any others – have become the key test of ‘orthodoxy’. Those of us who support equal marriage are being told we are not ‘orthodox’ and we are not evangelicals.

    This trend began at GAFCON in 2008, with The Jerusalem Declaration. The radical proposal at the heart of GAFCON is that Anglicanism should reject its entire history and deny its identity by endorsing a confession in order to secure unity. We have formularies and we are defined by the multitude of prayerbooks, but Anglicans have always resisted all creeds other than the Catholic Creeds.

    The Jerusalem Declaration followed traditional lines for evangelical declarations of faith but included the following statement as a ‘tenet of orthodoxy’:

    We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.

    It is this statement that was recently added to the CEEC’s Basis of Faith. It has seemed to engender a sense of unity across the different evangelical tribes – generally described as open, conservative, and charismatic – but it holds issues for evangelicals that will not be easy to overcome in the long term and redefines evangelicalism in a way that may make it unrecognisable to me.

    A key issue that will continue to blight evangelicalism as it relies on statements of faith is legitimate disagreement. According to the Jerusalem Declaration, there are many things the ‘orthodox’ can disagree about, but deciding the difference between legitimate and illegitimate disagreements is often a political decision rather than a theological one.

    A so called ‘legitimate disagreement’ that has caused problems in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) has been around male ‘headship’. ACNA has sidestepped the issue with accommodation through ‘dual integrities, but some within the movement regard ‘complementarianism’ as an essential, first order, issue. Within GAFCON political expediency has led to the Diocese of Sydney – which once would not compromise on male leadership – forming alliances with the Provinces of Uganda, where women have been ordained since the early 1980s and Kenya and where they have women Bishops. In England one wonders why we needed a Bishop of Maidstone when women bishops are now counted among the ‘orthodox’. For many conservative evangelicals male headship has gone from being a defining issue to one where there can be legitimate disagreement.

    Within the wider GAFCON movement it seems also to be legitimate to disagree on the deep criminalisation of LGBTI+ people. I have no doubt that most CEEC members will agree with Sean Doherty’s condemnation of the anti-gay laws passed in Uganda. Doherty does not mince his words; he says ‘Following the example of Jesus therefore means standing against the criminalisation of sexual sin, rather than supporting it’, which sounds like it is a first order issue with implications for salvation. However, nowhere does he condemn the Church of Uganda which advocated for the law and which rejoiced at its passing. These laws in Uganda and also in Nigeria are horrific and target some of the most the most vulnerable people in the world. The Church of Nigeria is absolutely clear that the very same statement adopted by CEEC from the Jerusalem Declaration demands action to criminalise all LGBTI+ people and their public allies. While CEEC members may interpret the clause differently, they seem to be seeking alliances with the Churches of Nigeria and Uganda despite this difference. The deep criminalisation of LGBTI+ people seems to be a valid area for legitimate disagreement.

    Difference is also tolerated between those who oppose conversion ‘therapies’ and those who argue that they should be defended. The trustees of CPAS responded to Prayers of Love and Faith by endorsing the Evangelical Alliance’s (2012) ‘Affirmations on Sexuality’. This affirmation includes support for conversion therapy and, following widespread concern, the trustees removed it from their website and made clear their opposition to such therapies. Immediately they were criticised by Martin Davie, a theological consultant for CEEC, who defended the right of organisations to offer change counselling. In a previous post on this site I pointed out that the main so-called therapy regularly promoted by such groups is known as ‘reparative therapy’ which relies on unbiblical – indeed, I would say, antibiblical – pseudo-Freudian theories of sexual drive. Such therapies have been abandoned by Freudians because of the damage they cause. The evangelicals who champion reparative therapy are the last ones contending for the Freudian understanding of the root of sexual desire for someone of the same gender. This appears to be another area where difference is legitimate.

    In addition to its Basis of Faith, CPAS has a document page entitled Outworkings of the Faith. Clause 6 uncompromisingly defines marriage as a ‘life-long covenant between one man and one woman’ with a reference to Malachi 2:13-16 which says: ‘The man who hates and divorces his wife, does violence to the one he should protect’. CPAS is at least consistent in placing its condemnation of divorce and remarriage on a par with the condemnation of same-sex unions, but others are not. Unlike CPAS, CEEC regards divorce and remarriage as having precedent in the Scriptures and so remarriage while a former spouse is still living is allowable. Again, an area where disagreement is allowed.

    Advocates for the clauses that rule out support for equal marriage will find clever ways to justify why disagreement over the issues above is legitimate while disagreement over this one issue is not. However, this drive for ‘orthodoxy’ it defines evangelicalism in an exclusive way that I find impossible to relate to. As evangelicalism focuses on guarding the gospel it ceases to be about proclaiming the gospel and challenging ‘orthodoxy’. For me, the power of evangelicalism has been in challenging tradition.

    All my evangelical heroes are marked by being unorthodox and driven to challenge tradition and bring liberation.

    John Wesley, often seen as the first Anglican evangelical, set the example. His early commitment to orthodoxy led him to harsh self-righteousness. Embracing the warming embrace of the Holy Spirit opened his eyes to Romans 8, and he realised he was saved from the law of sin and death. He felt the need to break out of the institutions and, as a consequence, he engaged with the oppressed, supported abolitionism, and championed women preachers. Wesley’s evangelicalism was defined by being unorthodox and liberating.

    His opposition to slavery was taken up by the abolitionists who were regarded as wilful violent perverters of the sacred texts by those who quoted the Bible in support of their profiteering from the horrific abuse of human beings.[2] Even though they were at the heart of the British institution, The Clapham Sect were never accused of being orthodox: they were liberators.

    Josephine Butler took up the cause of emancipation from slavery, this time for women enslaved in prostitution. Her evangelical faith led her to campaign for feminist causes that inspired others to join her campaign for equal suffrage, and for children and adults forced into prostitution.[3] Her catchphrase, ‘God and one woman make a majority’, marks out her opposition to orthodoxy. She may have been on her own in human terms, but if she was on the side of God the orthodox were a minority.  Her ministry was marked by liberation.

    Butler, along with Elizabeth Fry, was a woman who found in her evangelical faith the ability to speak up in a male-dominated world. Another of my heroes is Bishop James Theodore Holly was an African-American man who found the same confidence in the same source to speak in a white-dominated world. In 1874, he became the first Anglican of African descent to be a diocesan Bishop in the Anglican Communion and he attended the 1878 Lambeth Conference. For him, liberation was not a gift of white people, but a right to be claimed by all people. His passion for liberation was backed by a commitment to changing the world, and brining liberation.

    My more recent heroes include John V. Taylor. UK evangelicals know him for his ground-breaking book on the Holy Spirit, The Go-Between God, but as a leader of CMS, Taylor recognised the value and depth of African traditions. He challenged the orthodox understanding that African music and dance were satanic. I witnessed the liberating effect in the 1980s on young leaders such as the future Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, when I was a member of his evangelism team. We travelled around the Diocese of Madi West Nile distributing traditional musical instruments so worship could be enculturated. In 1975, John V. Taylor also anticipated the ecological crisis in his prophetic book Enough is Enough, calling for a radical response to Western greed. He was a visionary prophet and a voice of liberation.

    During my time in Uganda, I met another of my evangelical heroes: Bishop Festo Kivengere. Kivengere was famous for resisting the violent regime of Idi Amin with a message of love. His eloquent preaching put him on a par with Billy Graham and his commitment to justice brought him close to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In the 1950s, Kivengere was brought to Tanganyika by Australian missionaries to work as a school teacher. He found them complacent in the face of racism. On the trains, he and his family travelled third class while the missionaries luxuriated in first class where no black Africans were allowed. His experience of revival made him aware of gender equality. His preaching on gender equality in turn brought him into conflict with orthodox missionaries, who banned him from preaching in their churches. So, like Wesley, he preached in the market place. His theology left an indelible print on the church in Dodoma and around, which is why the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, one of the liveliest evangelical dioceses in the Anglican world, has resisted GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans. As a bishop in the early 1980s he carried through with his commitment to the empowerment of women, defying his synod and the Lambeth Conference by ordaining women to the priesthood because it was clear the Holy Spirit was with them. Kivengere’s story is one of liberation.

    He was not alone. Many of the key players in the East African Revival strove for the empowerment of women. This is true today, and exemplified by the great Ester Mombo. As a theological educator, Mombo has ensured top-class theological education for East Africn women as well as men. This means that across East Africa, and especially in Kenya, there are theologically educated women leaders. GAFCON tried to stop women being elected as bishops in Kenya, but true evangelical courage won out and the glass ceiling has been cracked, if not yet completely broken. This has huge implications in the fight against FGM and gender-based violence. Mombo is a relentless force for liberation.

    I am not suggesting that any of these heroes would have embraced equal marriage, but that as evangelicals they were all driven to challenge ‘orthodoxy’. Their lives and ministries were marked, not by signing declarations of faith, but by bringing liberation despite resistance from those representing ‘orthodox’ readings of the Bible.

    It is no accident that evangelicals have been at the forefront of liberation and created real change if Jesus is their inspiration.

    Jesus was never ‘orthodox’. His ministry was defined by his confrontation with orthodox leaders quoting the Scriptures and standing on tradition. He identified his ministry in releasing captives, bringing sight to the blind, and identification with the oppressed. He shocked the orthodox who expected him to endorse the rich as blessed by God and to engage in theological dialogue with the learned.

    He spoke angrily of the hypocrisy of the orthodox teachers and discussed theology with foreign women that no orthodox rabbi would even talk to informally. He did not observe the rules on ritual cleanliness, mixed with untouchables, and declared that he was free from the rules on the Sabbath.

    John the Baptist was shocked by the unorthodoxy of Jesus so he sought confirmation that Jesus was the chosen one.[4] In response Jesus did not send back a signed commitment to a statement of faith; rather, he responded by testimony to the signs of liberation.

    The evidence of allegiance with God in the world is not confessional orthodoxy – it is that ‘the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor’.

    I cannot see these signs of liberation in the move to tighten up confessional formulations of evangelical institutions. What I see are alliances with those who are driving the deepening criminalisation of LGBTI+ people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. I see limitations being placed on the ministry of women. I see protection being given to those who continue to promote so-called conversion therapy, with all the harm we know such therapies have had.

    I am ceasing to see the evangelical faith that inspired me in churches that have become obsessed with something they see as an ‘issue’ and which I understand as human complexity. For me, this evangelical ‘orthodoxy’ seems to be embracing law as the solution to sin and death.

    If traditional marriage can only be defended by guarding institutions and not by lives and acts of liberation, I fear it may not be of the Holy Spirit.

    Great evangelical leaders have always made stands against orthodoxy. Now is the time to choose the path of liberation.

     

    Notes

    [1] In this essay the words ‘orthodox’ and ‘orthodoxy’ refer to the use within Anglican evangelical statements and do not refer to the Eastern Orthodox Church. For further discussion see Paul Roberts, On the use and abuse of the term ‘orthodox’.

    [2] Richard A Burridge, ‘Being Biblical? Slavery, Sexuality, and the Inclusive Community’, 22nd Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Lecture.

    [3] Helen Mathers, ‘The Evangelical Spirituality of a Victorian Feminist: Josephine Butler, 1828–1906’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 52.2, April 2001, pp. 282 – 312.

    [4] See R.T. France, Matthew – Tyndale NT Commentary (IVP) p.192.

  • Mini-MBA Course for the Talent Pipeline in the Church of England: Revised Strategy Module

    by Anon.

    Now that the dust has settled on the Post Office scandal (Ed, is this right?), many of you in the Talent Pipeline have been asking for course guidance on the lessons learned. As you know, the mini-MBA has been developed by those seeking to develop pools of talent to run the Church of England, and we have drawn from the commercial and public sector to bring you this new module:

    Lessons Learned: Strategy in the Church of England

    Strap-lines 

    How do you know if the strategy for your diocese or cathedral is working? How can you know that your new strap-line is garnering enough traction, and that clergy and congregations are on the same page?

    We know that strap-lines are just catchy slogans meant to give us an effervescent lift. Like a small caffeine hit, every time you hear or read the strap-line, it should make you more alert, give you a bit of a buzz, and help you to stay awake longer. But, like caffeine, don’t overdo it, as it can cause migraines. Limit yourself to no more than three mentions a day, and avoid strap-line use after 6pm, unless you want to lose sleep.

    Most strap-lines don’t make any sense. They don’t have to. That’s the point. They’re meant to be pick-me-ups, not rational statements. Some are oxymorons. “Growing Younger” (Newcastle) is great, because it is impossible and meaningless. “Wider, Younger, Deeper” (Southwell & Nottingham) is rather risky, and may open you up to mischievous Freudian readings. Your clergy will love that, but it is distracting, so you should try and avoid that sort of thing. Usually, a strap-line with something like “transforming” and “growth” will work, because it can’t be measured, so you avoid becoming a hostage to fortune in future.

    Understanding Church Strategy 

    Strategy is like developing ideas and planning, but much, much better. While planning can be tedious and difficult, strategy is constantly rewarding because someone else does the work. This is one of the ways we can talk about collegiate leadership and collective responsibility in the Church. Remember, true leadership is “we”, not “me, me, me”. Everybody gets to own and participate in the strategy once you have set it out for them. Clergy and laity who reject it can be asked to move on.

    For example, if you face a financial crisis or can no longer recruit clergy to your diocese, it would be easy to get bogged down in the details as to why. A more strategic approach is to streamline the issue, and avoid describing it as a problem at all. Start with a catchy slogan or a brief Mission Statement, such as: ”Attract, Train, Retain, Develop”. Remember, “Crisis” means “opportunity” in Chinese. But don’t use the C-word too much, as it may cause people to revisit your strategy. You don’t want that.

    If you still feel there’s something missing, consider adding the word “Inspire”. Note that this word could go anywhere in your assemblage of terms. Like a versatile midfielder in a football team, “inspire” looks great and performs well in any position: ”Attract, Train, Inspire, Retain, Develop.”

    You could represent all of this in a diagram using the words in a circle, linked by arrows. More advanced strategic thinkers can produce different versions of this diagram, headed ‘phase one’, ‘phase two’, etc. But please be careful, as you don’t want to imply there is a timetable. Nominate a hypothetical deadline year (2030?) by which time it will be delivered. By 2025 it will all be forgotten, and you can devise another strategy.

    Think hard about appointing an officer to deliver all this. You may want to consider a Facilitation-Facilitator, a Facilitator-Initiator, or an Enablement-Enabler. These can be attached to any posts concerned with mission, growth and vision, and for helping parishes to downsize and consolidate resources (i.e., “sharing in mission”).

    Does My Diocese or Cathedral Need a Strategy?

    Strategy is how we set the direction of travel. You cannot go forward without a direction of travel. Going forward is the strategist’s key objective. It doesn’t especially matter where you go, as long as you move forwards, not backwards. Even going forwards blindly over a cliff beats going backwards.

    Avoid discussing the actual rate of travel as this could lead to awkward questions about dates and deadlines. Talk instead about pace or, better still, momentum. How do you quantify momentum? You don’t. Remember, this is your strategy, and it is not concerned with measurement.

    For example, you can announce your intention to create five hundred new Intentional Discipleship Communities over the next five years. Nobody actually knows what this means, and it could cover anything from a new church on a housing estate to four people meeting for coffee at Costa each Wednesday to discuss last week’s sermon. These all count in the figures.

    What are the Best Strategic Words for Me to Use?

    There are certain words that every aspiring strategist needs to know. These are some of the most important.

    • Delivery – in daily life, a delivery is something that arrives, like a parcel from Amazon meant for your neighbour. Or a letter from the Post Office, eventually. Or, some deliverables from a Lessons Learned Safeguarding Review (i.e., timing and content unspecified). But in strategy, delivery is an end in itself. You need to be focused on or committed to that delivery. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by specifics, such as “what is in the box, or in this report, or did I get what I asked for?”. Deliverables arrive. The joy of them is that nobody really knows what’s about to arrive, or when. God is a God of surprises. People must be expectant, otherwise nothing will happen. Like waiting for Santa.
    • Integration – this is the ultimate goal of strategy. Integration solves all known problems, particularly strategic ones. All great integrated strategies start with joined-up thinking. Make sure you emphasise that your thinking is joined-up, as it implies all previous thinking was OK, but not part of a strategic plan. If you have no thoughts of your own that are worth sharing, then claim to be linking-up other people’s ideas. This ticks the box for Enabling and Facilitating – also good words to use. Consider appointing a Facilitator-Enabler for this, and create a new group to review progress and to monitor deliverables. Then create a group to review the review group. That is how momentum is maintained.
    • Safeguarding Strategy – if thinking about a Safeguarding Strategy, then

    [NB: this entire section has been redacted in full by the Archbishops’ Council and Secretary General – please scroll down to Transformation.]

     

    • Transformation –for when mere change just won’t cut it. Nobody ever mastered strategy by worrying about incremental change or orderly progress. You can’t achieve transformation without vision. The great visionaries of the past all dared to dream. There are many recent Vision Statements to draw upon from in the Church of England, and they’re beacons for us all. (Ed. Do you mean these reports and strategy documents are all on the bonfire?)
    • Ambition – a tricky word for those in the Church of England’s Talent Pipeline and studying on the mini-MBA course (you may prefer ‘vocation’?). Either way, start by setting this out in the broadest terms imaginable. Don’t set limits or impose constraints. These can be added in much, much later, in the Operational Phase. Your job is to make the asks, not provide the answers. If you have appointed a Facilitator-Enabler, as suggested, then you are no longer providing answers or results in any case. Your role is to ask the questions and review progress.
    • Digital and Social Media – a vital ingredient of all strategy. There is virtually nothing that social media and digital solutions cannot enable. You can reach limitless numbers of people without spending too much time and money, except of course on more IT and Comms staff in Diocesan HQ. Your strategy will not be complete without a short paragraph acknowledging the transformative power of digital and social media. Again, use broad strokes. Your role is to embrace this world, not explain how it might be effective.
    • Leadership – no strategy can succeed without it. Setting out the strategy is the ultimate expression of leadership. In the unlikely event that your strategy fails, point to the absence of leadership in laity and clergy. Remember that rather like strap-lines, it will repay you handsomely to use a self-contradicting phrase that encapsulates your leadership style. A favourite is ‘Servant-Leader’, as it is easy to pose for photos doing servant-like things (e.g., put your back into planting a commemorative tree, or hold tea towel for a few minutes the next time you are at a parish lunch). But obviously, you are still The Leader, and you have no accountability to your colleagues. They have no employment rights. And the laity and the clergy won’t be allowed to scrutinise or appraise you. The good thing about strategy in the Church of England is that it is not a democracy, and they can’t get rid of your governance and leadership if they don’t agree with it. In some respects, setting strategy, goals and vision in the Church is more like being the sole ruler of a one party state. Enjoy.

    How Can I Operationalise My Strategy?

    Hand the PowerPoint assignment to someone subordinate and ask them to make it happen. Don’t try to tell them how. That’s their job. You’re strategic. Invite someone who works for you to follow up much later with “detailed operational guidance”. Ask them to link it to your strategy, wherever possible.

    If the programme fails, it’s because people didn’t understand the strategy, lacked the management skill to operationalise it, chose not to buy into it, clung to vested interests or failed to read the guidance over the bank holiday. Often, it’s a combination of the above. Or the laity and clergy are to blame, as they failed to keep pace, or preferred to continue without your vision. Either way, it’s not your problem.

    How Will I Know if My Strategy is Working?

    The success of every strategy is judged by history. The wise strategist will put as much distance as possible between themselves and history to give their strategy a fighting chance.

    Never promise that your strategy will bear fruit while you’re in a position to be accountable. Make sure the planning horizons of your strategy (if any) are slightly longer than the life expectancy of your current role. Set your heart on a bigger, better diocese or cathedral in the future, and work backwards from that point. If you are only a Suffragan or Area Bishop, it is usually a good idea to volunteer to lead and implement the strategy. When it is not working, it is easier for the Diocesan Bishop to move you on, meaning they can start again from scratch with a new vision, and blame the fact that you were called to a new role on the implementation failure.

    Can You Ever Have Too Much Strategy?

    If you need to ask this, you should not be in the Talent Pipeline. Non-strategists concentrate on the failures of the past and try and avoid repeating mistakes. These people are egg-head analysts, and are not persuaded by vision.

    Strategy depends on endless repetition. Consider what state the Church of England would be in were it not for your endless reforms and transforming vision. The true strategist constantly builds on their own success, as defined by themselves. Remember, your role is to go forwards, not backwards, and not to get distracted by the direction of travel. The point of going forward is to keep moving. The destination is open-ended.

    Assessment:

    The course is assessed by your response in the boxes below. Please note, we do not accept essays, attachments, citations or any secondary analysis drawn from academic literature or case studies you may deem relevant.

    Write your proposed Strap-line [3 words, max].

     

     

    Set out your strategic goals, and the resources to achieve these ends [20 words, max.].

     

     

    Describe your distinctive leadership contribution and style as related to your vocation and formation as part of the whole Baptised People of God [10 words, max.].

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Marriage, but not LLF

    by Revd Canon Mark Bennet, Team Rector in the Thatcham Team and member of General Synod

    We are hearing much about marriage as the Living in Love and Faith process continues. But there is another aspect of marriage – this time, opposite-sex marriage – where I believe the Church of England should do much better.

    In a previous article on Via Media, published in 2022, Revd Sorrel Shamel-Wood told the story of her ordination as priest being deferred because she had recently got married. The ‘problem’ was that, even though her new husband was a priest, he had been divorced and his former wife was still alive. Sorrel had been ordained deacon already, with no impediment, and had she deferred her marriage she could have been ordained priest and been married later with no consequence. But, by marrying before ordination, she found herself caught up in the arcane and poorly known provisions of Canon C4. The directions given by the Archbishops under the Canon had not been significantly changed for many years, and specified that it would normally be necessary to wait at least three years after a relevant marriage before a candidate could be ordained.  By the time of Sorrel’s case it was generally understood that this three year period was a fixed requirement. In fact the Archbishops always retained a discretion, which they were eventually able to use, though Sorrel’s ordination was still delayed.

    But why should Canon C4 be there in the first place? Sorrel’s story is not the only example of this Canon failing the Church of England and making it look rather ridiculous. But, because the provisions touch on deeply personal matters, these stories are not well known. Many candidates have been advised to defer marriage until after ordination to avoid the complications of the Canon. An organisation which claims to value marriage encouraging ordination candidates to delay their marriages? Does that make any sense?

    And here is another fact that should be more widely known: over 30 years, one in six ordinations has – like Sorrel’s – required the intervention of the Archbishops under the Canon – one in six – and that is quite apart from those who have actually taken the advice offered to them to defer their marriage. That is some 2,500 faculties issued in 30 years – an average of over 80 each year. Yet when Amending Canon 9 was passed by General Synod in 1991 such exceptions were expected to be rare.

    Most members of the Church of England, even of the General Synod will likely be totally unaware of the practical ramifications. Here as in so much of church practice, processes have varied in different Dioceses – some candidates have been required to attend a panel interview on the subject of their marital history. Clergy who have remarried after divorcing abusive spouses have been told that the former spouse will have to be contacted, even if this might be a safeguarding issue for the candidate or their children. Many candidates find the process intrusive.

    My conclusion is simple: Canon C4 needs to be amended, and I have a private member’s motion listed for debate in General Synod in February which seeks to achieve that. Rather than deciding so many cases are ‘exceptional’, we need to get to the root cause of the problem: the Canon itself.

    The debates leading up to the passing of Amending Canon 9 were tense and highly charged – including allegations that the doctrine of marriage was being changed, and legal action to try to get the amendments declared ultra vires. What was at stake? Those affected were both those like Sorrel – marrying a person who had a former spouse still living – and those who were themselves divorced with their spouse still living, and who had remarried.

    In contrast to former marriages, however, other relationships are not subject to the same scrutiny. This means, for example, that a brief and unwise youthful marriage when the candidate was not yet even a Christian is regarded with more seriousness than a long-term relationship into which children may have been born and which has now come to an end. In former times such a relationship would likely have been solemnized as a marriage, but times have changed. Focusing on remarriage can distort the pastoral understanding of a candidate’s history.

    I would like to encourage General Synod members to find out about how the Canon has operated locally, and to support my motion – and if you are not a member of General Synod, please encourage your reps to understand the issues and to offer their support. I have heard many personal stories which, because they are personal, I am not at liberty to share, and I’ll also have limited time to speak and need to deal with technical matters too. It would be good if other Synod members could come prepared to tell stories they know and have permission to share (there are clearly lots of them).

    These technical provisions buried in the detail of the Canons are not the subject of wide knowledge or popular debate, but when they affect so many lives and vocations it is incumbent on us to get them right. it is the human cost which is the real failing of Canon C4.

    This is my motion, currently scheduled for debate on the afternoon of Tuesday 27th February:

    Revd Mark Bennet (Oxford) to move:

    ‘That this Synod request that the Archbishops’ Council introduce the necessary legislation to remove the canonical impediment to ordination in respect of a person who has remarried and, the other party to that marriage being alive, has a former spouse still living; or who is married to a person who has been previously married and whose former spouse is still living.’

     

     

     

     

  • More than Theology? How Beliefs About Women’s Ordination are Socially Rooted

    by Dr Alex Fry, Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Health and Illness at Bournemouth University and author of Gender Inequality in the Ordained Ministry of the Church of England: Examining Conservative Male Clergy Responses to Women Priests and Bishops*

    Part I: Why bother with the social sciences?

    The Christian tradition has an extensive history of seeking wisdom wherever it may be found. Before science as we now know it emerged, natural philosophy was the attempt to understand the natural world. This was a task regularly taken up by Church leaders and theologians, underpinned by the conviction that the world was God’s and could tell us about Him. In fact, this is something Paul indicates in Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…” (NIV). True enough, Paul writes immediately after that sin has darkened the minds of humans so that they reject God’s revelation in creation. However, for the Christian this is surely not true. They recognise that the world is created by God. Whilst that does not mean that they are sinless, they cannot be entirely blind to God’s revelation in creation if they believe, along with the Psalmist, that it reflects His glory (Psalm 19:1).

    As historians will tell you, confidence that we can discover God in His world has, since the Reformation, led to the development of modern scientific inquiry. And this theological enterprise was the catalyst for many of our now taken-for-granted scientific discoveries. Believing that the world was created and explorable led to discoveries of order and rules within it. We call these regularities. This seems pre-empted in Genesis 1; God creates an orderly world, separating day and night as well as sky and sea. Commanding Adam to name the different animals in creation invites humanity to recognise and work with this order. Adam could categorise the different species because God created them with patterns that enabled Adam to distinguish between, say, a cow and a sheep.

    The biblical vision of creation sees the entire created world as very good (Genesis 1:31). Hence all of creation, not merely human souls, is redeemed by God (Romans 8:22). In other words, Christians are not at liberty to fall into the trap of dualism, separating the created, ordered world from the spiritual reality of God. Such dualism is more Platonic or Aristotelian than Judaeo-Christian.

    But what does any of this have to do with what Christians believe about women’s role in the Church? Well, human beings are a part of that creation, created with regularities. As with the rest of the created world, how humans think and behave – and why – is something that can be studied. So we can inquire where our beliefs about women’s ordination – a hotly contested and divisive topic – come from. How are they affected by our wider environment?

    Recognising regularities and patterns does not mean reducing human beings to mere processes. Being made in the image of God includes a level of consciousness and free will which means that our thoughts and actions are not predetermined by the world around us. Rather, we are influenced by it. Nor should the establishment of regularities be used disingenuously, as a vehicle of oppression. This has happened historically when there has been a naivety about the social, cultural and political forces that influence scientific inquiry, leading to its distortion and misuse. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are, regrettably, clear windows into the implications of such distortion of the intellect. The Holocaust, slavery, and the subjugation of women as legal property are just three painful examples, believed at the time to be rooted in a natural order. Sometimes the Church has been caught up in these kinds of evils; there are hard lessons to be learnt if such sins are to be resisted in the future.

    Academia is not perfect, because humans are not. There must be room left for evidence-based doubt and the humility to re-think previous conclusions when new data requires it. This is a prerequisite of any advancement in knowledge. Equally, healthy scepticism mustn’t give way to corrosive cynicism. The erosion of trust with society’s institutions (albeit sometimes understandably) can fuel conspiracy theories where the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bathwater. Rationality demands that we follow the evidence, however inconvenient or contrary to our presumptions.

    Social science in academia is a very broad area that consists of many evidence-based disciplines. There has been a heightened awareness of some of its branches with the public conversation often turning to disagreements over ‘identity politics’. Owing to the soundbite culture of much of our media, social scientific theories and concepts are often inadequately articulated and badly understood outside academia. There are many attacks on straw men as a result.

    My own research on clergy attitudes to women spans sociology, social psychology and historical analysis. In what follows, I will unpack the theories and concepts I drew on from these disciplines and explain the light they shed on clergymen’s attitudes towards women’s ordination in the Church of England. Much of my argument rests on demonstrating how the attitudes of clergymen reflect regularities (or patterns) in human behaviour that we know a lot about because they have been evidenced and re-evidenced time and again. My participants’ characteristics, behaviours and thinking reflect several regularities that have been identified across decades and continents. Because these clergymen mirror with great consistency what we already know about human beings, studying these affinities allows me to speak meaningfully about the social causes of clergy gender attitudes.

    Part II: What are clergymen’s attitudes towards women?

    My recent book, Gender Inequality in the Ordained Ministry of the Church of England, explores the social origins of attitudes towards women’s ordination held by theologically conservative male clergy. By ‘attitudes’ I mean beliefs, emotions and behaviours towards something, in this case women priests and bishops. By ‘theologically conservative’ I mean clergymen in the evangelical and traditional Anglo-Catholic wings of the Church. My analysis also involved looking at participants’ broader gender attitudes to contextualise their theology on women’s ordination in light of their attitudes towards women more generally. I spoke with 13 Anglo-Catholics, 14 charismatic evangelicals and 14 conservative evangelicals. Participants were initially sought via their involvement with tradition-specific networks, including Forward in Faith (traditional Anglo-Catholic), New Wine (charismatic evangelical) and Reform (conservative evangelical), but I also interviewed those recommended to me by participants as being in their tradition-specific network of clergy.

    All interviews took place with clergy serving in one specific diocese, chosen as a microcosm of the Church of England, including urban, suburban and rural areas, and large numbers of parishes reflecting each of the Church’s traditions (including those not explored in the book). I also kept interviewing clergy until I was getting the same answers from interview to interview within each tradition (otherwise known as data saturation). This is unsurprising given that clergy within each tradition tended to have similar educational backgrounds, went to the same theological colleges, and move in the same social and professional networks. One would anticipate a significant degree of similarity within a given network on a subject that has received much discussion and rehearsal of theology.

    The microcosmic nature of the diocese and the data saturation are additional factors that allow me to make representative claims about clergymen from these traditions beyond the diocese in question. However, there are caveats, such as cases where the sharper, more reactionary elements of participants’ gender attitudes are curtailed, for example in dioceses where conservative traditions have a stronger presence. In other words, my findings are likely to be generally true across the Church of England but not necessarily in every minute way.

    Of course, attitudes towards women’s ordination differed by tradition and, to a more limited extent, within each tradition. Overall, traditional Anglo-Catholics resisted the move because: the efficacy of women’s sacramental ministry was in question; the Roman Catholic Church is yet to ordain women; and the apostolic tradition has (supposedly) always been male. These clergymen are typically comfortable with women deacons but reject the validity of women priests and bishops. Conservative evangelicals have no issue with ordaining women per se but do not believe they should lead or teach men in church contexts, on the basis of passages like 1 Timothy 2: 11-15. Charismatic evangelicals, by way of contrast, tend not to oppose women’s ordination to any part of the Church’s ordained ministry, seeing evidence of women leading God’s people in the Bible as well as contextual factors explaining away any apparent gender conservatism in the New Testament.

    Those amongst the traditional Anglo-Catholic and conservative evangelicals who rejected the validity of women’s ordination as priests and their consecration as bishops regularly evidenced prejudicial attitudes. Here, I am using a well-tested psychological definition of prejudice rather than assuming that a conservative theology must, by definition, always be sexist.

    This definition of prejudice begins with Gordon Allport’s work in The Nature of Prejudice from the 1950s (with roots going back to the 1930s). Over the decades it has been tested and refined with a collection of newer research celebrating its success. In essence, prejudice (or sexism when it is gender-related) has three components: rejection of and hostility towards others from ‘outgroups’; faulty generalisations (or caricatures) about these outgroups; and rejection of evidence that would undermine these faulty generalisations.

    Since the 1990s a body of research has shown that this is only half the picture when it comes to women. The type of prejudice identified by Allport and verified by many others is a form of hostile sexism, but there is another type called ‘benevolent sexism’ (I prefer ‘indirect sexism’). Such sexism can appear positive on the surface but actually undermines conceptions of women’s competence (e.g., the belief that all women need a man’s protection as the allegedly weaker sex). Hostile sexism is present amongst traditional Anglo-Catholics and both forms of sexism amongst conservative evangelicals. Charismatic evangelicals often evidenced some elements of hostile sexism, but their attitudes fall short of meeting the full psychological definition.

    In essence, my participants’ gender attitudes result from what I term intersecting social strata. This is the simple idea that a series of social factors converge to shape gender attitudes. What do these intersecting social strata look like for theologically conservative clergymen?

    The term self-esteem gets used a lot in pop psychology, and we tend to assume we know what it is but can struggle to define it. Self-esteem is a sociometer; it helps us to understand the extent to which we feel valued. We all pursue self-esteem in various ways, sometimes healthily, sometimes not. Research shows that, when our self-esteem becomes threatened – when the sources of our positive evaluations are in question – we can react negatively towards the group perceived to be threatening our self-esteem.

    The sources of our self-esteem are rooted in the social groups we most identify with. For my participants this was other male clergy in their particular Anglican tradition. Groups united by a shared identity also tend to seek reasons for bolstering the status of that group in the pursuit of self-esteem. This is especially true with groups of higher social status. This regularly leads to forms of discrimination towards and undue generalisations about those who do not share this identity. As I’ve already pointed out, faulty generalisations form prejudice.

    Those I interviewed were typically: from middle-class families; well-educated at school level (e.g., possessing a private education); attended Russell Group universities, particularly Oxbridge (including prior to ordination training); white; and, of course, male. Whilst a small minority did not fit this description in its entirety, the groups as units clearly do. The dominant characteristics impact the group culture as one would expect. Crucially, group norms are adopted by those within it. This means that the values, expectations etc of that group are ‘owned’ by its individual members. In fact, the eminent historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued that male clergy reaction against increasing gender equality stems from the reduced hegemony that they have traditionally enjoyed or would expect to enjoy by virtue of belonging to a group endowed with the power of leadership.

    I argue that the source of threatened self-esteem for conservative evangelicals and traditional Anglo-Catholics is the advent of women priests and bishops. Significant amounts of data show the roots of sexism – chiefly stereotyping – lie in self-esteem threats to one’s social group and, in these groups, there is the desire to maintain high levels of self-esteem via group belonging, with women – especially clergywomen – as the object of prejudice in this case. Most of those interviewed had also opted into networks established to oppose the ordination of women as priests, making it the cornerstone of their social group.

    This alone goes a long way in explaining the origins of participants’ sexism, but other factors bolster it. One is the regularity and quality of contact with clergywomen. Limited contact with outgroups serves to reinforce prejudice because the stereotypes about them remain largely unchallenged. Research shows that, for contact to reduce prejudice, it must be willing and ongoing, with in and outgroups having equal status, and being supported in their contact by relevant authorities. The two groups must have some co-operative dependency upon each other and must seek common goals. Such contact rarely occurred amongst the Anglo-Catholics and conservative evangelicals I interviewed.

    Another factor is one’s gender schemata. These are mental frameworks that many of us develop in childhood to interpret any information we receive about gender throughout our lives, often leading us to neglect information that doesn’t correspond to the assumptions we pick up early in life. The conservative evangelicals interviewed possessed sex-typed schemata; these are more traditional and stereotypical beliefs about men and women. The traditional Anglo-Catholics did not provide much evidence of their schemata. This can be explained by the fact that heterosexuals are more likely to have such schemata and around half of the Anglo-Catholics I interviewed were gay.

    But what about theological hermeneutics? There are multiple ways of approaching biblical texts and, even if we don’t realise it, we all make hermeneutical choices when interpreting the Bible. The conservative evangelicals interviewed were influenced by US evangelical writings, especially by Wayne Grudem and John Piper. This led to a hermeneutic that was neither entirely plain meaning (sometimes thought of as literalistic) nor entirely contextualised in light of the Bible’s historical and cultural contexts. This makes it much easier to read passages like 1 Timothy 2 and conclude that women should not lead men in the Church. Such hermeneutics are favourable to conservative evangelicals, aiding their pursuit of self-esteem and being congruent with their existing gender schemata. Similarly, Church tradition is handled selectively by the traditional Anglo-Catholics who tended to ignore insights from biblical scholarship and Church history indicating the presence of female apostles.

    It should be noted that such processes are subconscious and so awareness of these factors influencing participants’ gender attitudes are unrecognised by them. Of course, by bringing them to light there is the possibility that this could change. Also worth bearing in mind is that reduced contact between these clergymen and women priests and bishops can be unhelpfully encouraged by those whose theology leads to rejecting them precisely because of their theology, making them retreat into the networks that reinforce their gender attitudes.

    That leaves us with the charismatic evangelicals. Why have they not evidenced the full criteria for sexism? This can be explained via three means. First, their own gender schemata are androgynous, meaning that their assumptions about what it is to be a man or a woman are more flexible than traditional and stereotypical. Second, the quality of contact they have with clergywomen reflects the types of contact that undermine prejudice, noted above. Third, their gender attitudes can be explained by the fact that their particular Anglican tradition has an extended history of female leadership, even before the ordination of women, meaning that the presence of women priests and bishops was not a threat to their social group. They thus also feel more comfortable with hermeneutics that would allow for the conclusion that women may be ordained as priests and bishops.

    Naturally, there are more theological questions to be asked and answered in light of all of this information and I cannot unpack them all here. Nevertheless, these will receive attention in a follow-up book I am writing for a specifically Christian audience, with the aim of helping church leaders and interested lay people reflect on all of this theologically and in practical ways.

     

    *The e-book can be bought with 45% off with the discount code ADJF45, currently available until April 2024. The paperback is due for release in 2025.

  • The Magic Money Tree for Work with Children and Young People: Good News?

    by Pete Ward, Professor of Practical Theology at Durham University

    In the last few years, the Church of England has developed a Vision Strategy for ministry and mission in the Church. Work among children and young people forms a major element in this strategy, and the announced aim to grow a younger Church includes the ambition to train 30,000 youth ministers in the next ten years. Of these, it is anticipated that 10% will be employed either part-time or full-time. To achieve this aim, tens of millions have been set aside and the first grants to pilot training projects have already been allocated.

    This is extraordinarily good news for those of us who have been working in this sector for the last 40 years. Yet the fact that this is happening should make us pause and think. This investment in youth ministry is not because of our amazing success record. Rather, the Church has been panicked into spending its historic resources because we have an ever-decreasing number of children and young people. Anecdotally, Churches who want to hire a full-time or part-time youth minister find recruitment extremely difficult because there are currently very few trained youth ministers out there. Hence the Church of England’s decision to develop a strategy to turn things around by training a whole new cohort of youth ministers, both voluntary and paid.

    I want to raise one simple question: what is the theological underpinning for what is now proposed? I think a significant part of the calling of the International Association for the Study of Youth Ministry is to reflect deeply on the experience of the Church and on the lives of young people, both those in the Church and those outside. Reflection, if it is to be worth anything, needs to be costly and to dig deep. It needs to ask awkward questions and we need to be honest with ourselves and with others. In particular, how have we got things wrong? Why have we not made the impact that previous funding hoped for?

    It is perfectly possible that, even where we have done things that have been filled with the work of God, such activities have also been the cause of our present problems. Even as we have seen amazing youth ministry stuff happen, we have also been causing our own downfall.

    In 2002 I wrote a book called Liquid Church (Paternoster Press). My central argument was that all denominations seem to see Church as a meeting; a gathering of people in the same room (sometimes, now, an online room), to do the same things. How might Christians instead engage with the spiritual life and practices that are outside the Church and see these as a missiological starting point for ministry? In my earlier book, Youthwork and the Mission of God (1997), I suggested that there were two approaches to youth ministry: one based on gathering young Christians and Church kids into groups that would be attractional, the other based on a more missional, relationship-based ministry that starts anywhere that young people are naturally present.

    In Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (1989), the missiologist Lamin Sanneh distinguished complementary ways of doing mission: through diffusion and by means of translation. Translation sees the Church expressing itself in context, in the vernacular, and taking new forms. But diffusion, drawing on what feels familiar, assumes that Church as we know it is the right response, and in the Church of England it was this option that was seen as more attractive and more effective. Church Planting, investing millions of pounds in developing ‘Resource Churches’ on the model of HTB, is essentially a form of diffusion.

    The ‘Church Youth Group’ model draws on gathering a group of young people who are already connected to the Church with the expectation that they will draw in others. While there has been a growth in schools-based ministry and school chaplaincy, here again the base line of the work remains the Church Youth Group.

    But sticking with the Youth Group model meant the writing was on the wall. Young people are like butterflies. They are with us for a while but soon they move on because they grow up. This makes youth ministry a rather unstable environment; something that is a huge success at one point can, in a relatively short time, struggle to keep the doors open. The logic of the Church Youth Groups rests on a steady flow of young people coming primarily from Christian parents. Many of those in our youth groups do not go on to be adult members of the congregation. That means fewer young adults in the Church, and in turn it means fewer children and young people who might in turn form the basis of future youth groups.

    In the late 1990’s and into the 2000s, the language changed, but little else. While ‘relational youth ministry’ became the ‘in’ way of talking and everyone started to find ways to connect with schools or other places young people were to be found, this was used as an add-on to Church groups. The focus inevitably remained on Christian young people and those with whom they socialised.

    And it was worship that became the main event; the assumption was that we meet God through sung worship. Recent revelations at Soul Survivor, Hillsong and elsewhere have led many of us, not just in the youth ministry academic community, to start asking questions about these developments: how do we understand what has happened? The worship revolution powerfully reinforced the idea that a meeting in a large auditorium was the basis for mission, to the extent that this has now become the assumed theology of most youth ministry people in the UK.  In previous generations, groups were smaller, meeting in someone’s home; the main event was Bible study and prayer, perhaps with a few songs to get us all feeling good. The large worship event told us instead that, if we really wanted to meet God, we did it by singing these songs. If we were to doubt the power of worship, all we had to do was look around us at the way God was moving so amazingly in and through these kinds of events. There are now several generations of young Christian leaders who cannot imagine any other way of meeting God than through worship songs.

    The use of the word ‘Church’ to describe missional work among young people also brought problems. The Church of England reacted to missional innovation by developing a culture of surveillance. Check lists were constructed and dioceses were surveyed to decide when an activity was a Church and when it was not a Church. Church leaders began to develop a scepticism of certain kinds of missional project if they did not conform to what was expected of a ‘Church’. These developments together have meant that forms of missional and contextual ministry were often sidelined.

    And then there are the questions around training and employing youth ministers. As various dedicated courses and schemes have closed down, youth ministry training risks becoming too generic, without enough connection between those who are innovating on the ground and those who are being trained. Practitioners need to support, and learn from, each other. The Church has also failed to offer the kind of terms and conditions of employment that can sustain a career. Low pay (and the sense that clergy will always carry more status in the organisation) eroded the confidence of those we had trained and, after one or two jobs, most moved on.

    I do not believe that the prevailing pattern of youth ministry based on Church groups and worship events will deliver what is required. It may continue to give energy and life to some, but it is a model that has diminishing returns built into it. My own Diocese of Durham is a warning. If you have no children and young people already linked to the Church and your congregations are aging and declining, then a method that starts by gathering Christian young people is pointless. The larger worship events that we have seen – quite apart from concerns around abuse, money, and power – while they offer life to many, ultimately only serve to cover over the true extent of the problem.

    Our dominant existing model of Church Youth Groups and Worship Events makes too many assumptions about how young people meet with God, and shapes what that encounter should look like. Our practice carries a theology and speaks of what we understand God to be and how God might work. Contextualisation puts these assumed theological certainties into the mixer. Adopting a missional approach to youth ministry is effectively the pursuit of a new understanding of how God might be at work and indeed what the social, ethical, and personal implications of meeting God in new ways might be.

    The Church of England, as well as having large amounts of money to throw at these problems, has another very significant asset in its network of Church Schools. Several within the central organisation of the Church have started to grasp that, while Churches may have very few if any young people, there are thousands coming every day to the schools that are linked to the Church. This is clearly a wonderful situation and working out how to responsibly, and ethically, share faith and grow disciples, in and through the connection between Churches and Schools, represents the most exciting of prospects.

    But here too the model of what ‘Church’ is can be a danger. My own experience has been that many young people are open to experiencing faith and exploring spirituality but what they are less willing to do is join a Church. Where this problem has been overcome, reaching out to young people involves a significant reorientation of congregational life. In other words, contextualisation becomes a key factor in reshaping not simply faith among young people but also the wider life of the congregation. Where the Church is able and willing to change, I think there is hope.

    So there is a risk that this last hurrah for youth ministry may be a lost cause unless we are willing to spend some time reflecting upon the problems and shortcomings of everything that has been done to develop youth ministry in this country. I argue for more missional and contextual approaches to work with young people to be developed.

     

  • Safeguarding: When Good Reviews Go Bad

    by Andrew Graystone, who uncovered the abuses by John Smyth in a series of reports on Channel 4 News in February 2017; he continues to advocate for victims of church abuse, and speaks regularly with survivors of John Smyth.

    There have now been seven public reviews of the activities of John Smyth – or eight if you count my own book, Bleeding for Jesus. The first was Operation Cubic, which was conducted by Hampshire Police, and ended with a referral to the CPS. Then, after the revelations were made public, the Scripture Union commissioned a review into its own involvement. A review was conducted for Winchester College, where Smyth groomed many of his victims. The Titus Trust has held two reviews – one into Smyth’s abuses and a second, by the safeguarding agency ThirtyOne:Eight to conduct a review of its internal culture. The Advance network of independent churches carried out its own investigation, which focussed particularly on the involvement of its former leader PJ Smyth, who is John Smyth’s son. And finally, we await the arrival of the Makin Review, which was commissioned by the Church of England.

    As someone who has reluctantly become something of an expert on John Smyth’s abusive career, I have participated in all of these reviews. Aside from taking a huge amount of time, this has given me some insight into how such reviews are conducted, and what makes them effective or ineffective.

    It is worth remembering that one reason why there were so many reviews into the one narrative is that the key agencies at the centre of the case refused to work together on a single inquiry.

    Speaking to Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News in April 2019, Archbishop Justin Welby explained that only a joint inquiry would be effective. “Unless you can get everyone in, you’re never going to get anywhere near the truth.” Nevertheless, having failed to persuade everyone to participate, the Church of England eventually commissioned its own review. That review – scheduled to last nine months – has now lasted five years, and there is still no date for its publication.

    It is worth rehearsing the gloomy history of delay and obfuscation in this inquiry.  The Church of England’s intention to hold an inquiry was first announced by the then Bishop for Safeguarding, Peter Hancock, on the morning after Smyth died in August 2018. By then Smyth’s abuse had already been in the public domain for almost 18 months. Justin Welby had been aware of it for over five years (discounting earlier knowledge, which he first denied, but now admits.) The first formal complaint had been made to the Church of England six years earlier. And of course many key figures in the church, some of them at the highest level, had carried the knowledge for a staggering thirty-five years.

    Even so, the inquiry was not formally launched for a further twelve months. It was scheduled to last nine months, meaning that it would be published in May 2020. Since then there have been no less than six announcements that the inquiry was going to be late. In every case, survivors were promised that it was imminent. In January 2022, survivors and General Synod were told that the first drafts would be presented in April 2022. They weren’t. Then General Synod members were told that it would be published in the Autumn of 2022. Of course it wasn’t. The National Safeguarding Team has stopped making announcements about the timetable.

    There are two important questions. Firstly, what has caused the seemingly endless delay?  Secondly, why does this matter?

    Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, the second of three “Lead Bishops” to preside over the review so far, told Synod that “There have been significant delays due to COVID and the exceptionally high volume of information.” Blaming the pandemic is convenient, but disingenuous. The review was already well behind schedule before lockdown was imposed. In any case, very little of the work has been done face to face. Blaming the unexpected amount of evidence is a nonsense too. What on earth was the church expecting? They knew when they started that there were over 100 victims, four decades of history, and scores of witnesses to hear from. If they were taken by surprise by the “high volume of information” it can only be because they weren’t paying attention to what the victims and others had been telling them.

    The core problems that have caused the delay are quite different. They are:

    1) An insufficiently experienced reviewer. Perhaps Keith Makin will yet turn out to have been an inspired choice for this important role. We have not been told by what process he was given the job. He had never previously conducted a review on anything like this scale. He had held senior social work management posts, and had been an Independent Scrutineer for local authorities, but he had little forensic experience, and nothing that would seem to prepare him for such a complex case. He also had little experience of the church’s structures and processes.

    2) Lack of resources. The church decided that the task of reviewing a case lasting over forty years with more than a hundred victims could be handled by one part-time reviewer contracted for just two days a week, with a part-time assistant. This is far less resource than you would expect in comparable reviews. Of course it is not Mr Makin’s fault that he was given such inadequate resources for such a huge task. The church either didn’t recognise the scale of the review it was launching, or simply didn’t care. For example, the review was launched without the necessary GDPR arrangements in place. It was seven months out of a scheduled nine before interviews could be recorded and transcribed. Staggeringly, the necessary privacy notice was not issued until a full year later. On the same day that the Smyth Review was announced, the church announced another review, this time into the child rapist Revd Trevor Devamanikkam. That case – though no less serious – had just one perpetrator and one known victim. Yet it was set up with the same timetable and resources. Perhaps the church was simply not thinking clearly about what it was doing. Or perhaps the prime motivation for launching these reviews was just to be able to send out a press release saying that it was doing something.

    3) Lack of purpose, drive and consistency in the commissioning body. The church still appears to have little idea about how reviews work. They don’t seem to be able to distinguish between a review, an inquiry and an investigation. To this day it remains unclear who wants the Makin Review, why they want it and why it needs to be done in a timely way. As usual, nobody even knows what will happen to the report. Will it be read by bishops? Debated at Synod? Or just sit online somewhere for a few weeks before it is lost?

    4) Lack of oversight. Best practice for a review like this is to appoint an independent accountability body, separate from the reviewer and the commissioning body, whose task is to monitor the progress and scope of the review. That body might include interested parties, including representative survivors. When Thirty-One:Eight reviewed the abuses of Smyth’s fellow-abuser Revd Jonathan Fletcher, just such a body was appointed. They were able to provide assurance about the independence and thoroughness of the review, and also added their own statement to be read alongside it. Makin has not had this advantage. He has had no one asking him what is going on (with the exception of dogged Smyth survivors who take it upon themselves to do so informally). He has had no one asking him awkward questions about such crucial areas as record-keeping, confidentiality, resources or timescale. And when (or if) the review is published, there will be no one independent to give it an imprimatur. It will be, effectively, an undefended reviewer saying ‘This is how I see things.’ I fear that the lack of an independent scrutiny body is going to be particularly awkward over the next few months, if those who find themselves criticised by Mr Makin decide to cut up rough.

    So there are several reasons why this review has struggled from the start, and why it is so shockingly delayed. But why the rush anyway? Conducting reviews is a lucrative business. The author of an earlier church review reported privately but proudly that he had bought a London flat with the proceeds. In 2019 the NST themselves inadvertently leaked Mr Makin’s day rate – at that stage, it was £650 per day. The Church of England has been extremely chary about revealing the overall cost of the Makin Review. Bishop Jonathan Gibbs was asked about this directly twice in General Synod questions in November 2022. He would only say “There is always a financial cost associated with any Independent Review, however this must be balanced with establishing the truth and listening to the voices of victims and survivors.” Synod members might feel they have a right to greater clarity.

    Why does all of this matter? Well, first, because the delay makes the review weaker. In the time between the disclosure of Smyth’s abuse twelve years ago in 2012 and the publication of the inquiry (2024? 2025?), some key figures have conveniently died. They include Smyth himself, who consequently managed to escape justice from the church, as well as the criminal courts. Revd David Fletcher, who probably did more than anyone else to enable Smyth’s career of abuse, has also died. Others have retired, or will do so before publication, placing them beyond the effective reach of the church’s disciplinary measures.

    In the course of writing my book, I approached a number of senior clergy who were implicated in the failure to stop Smyth’s abuse. In several cases they said they weren’t willing to speak to me until the Makin review was complete. That was now several years ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury gave assurances that if any currently serving church officers were found to have failed in their safeguarding duties, they would be investigated and disciplined whilst the review was in progress. To my knowledge only two very junior clergy have been sanctioned, and one of those was long retired. My book, published in October 2022, identified nine currently serving bishops who appeared to have failed in their safeguarding duties. They include Archbishop Justin Welby. Have any of them been disciplined?

    The delay also matters because there are two over-riding reasons to hold such an inquiry. The first is to restore confidence in the church. The hope is that the inquiry will draw a line under a terrible episode. Ideally it would show that the church did not make any mistakes in its handling of disclosures of abuse, but that’s unlikely to be the case. The alternative is that the inquiry should demonstrate that, even though the church made mistakes, it will not do so again. Lessons have been learned; processes have been changed; staff have been retrained or removed.  This is the basis on which trust can be rebuilt. But for that trust to be rebuilt, the process of the review must itself be sound. If there is any suspicion, justified or not, that the church has not been fully transparent, then the measure of trust will decline instead of increasing. If there is any hint that the church has tried to avoid, delay or manipulate the publication, it will do itself more harm than good. As things stand, those suspicions are hard to avoid.

    In this case, the process of the review has served to diminish, not enhance, trust in the church’s safeguarding practices. The review itself has been marked by delay, mismanagement, amateurism, poor communications and obfuscation. These are the same characteristics that allow abusers like Smyth to operate. However good the text of the Makin review is, if and when it is eventually published, no one who has watched the national church’s handling of the process will be able to say with confidence “This could never happen again.”

    The second reason to hold such an inquiry is for the sake of the victims. It is a vital part of the church acknowledging that it made mistakes. Only when the church recognises this publicly is it possible for victims to begin to rebuild their lives, and even in some cases to forgive. If the church, by its acts or by its omissions, allows victims to imagine that it might still be hiding facts, or avoiding facing up to the truth, then instead of healing, victims are re-abused by the process.

    For what it’s worth, I think publication of the Makin Review into John Smyth is still a long way off. Even if the first draft of the text is complete, there is a long way to go before publication. Parts of it have been seen by a number of Smyth’s victims, but it has not yet begun the lengthy representation process known as ‘Maxwellisation’. In other words, anyone who is referred to critically in the text will have a right to read it, and respond to what they perceive as factual errors. This isn’t going to be quick. There are likely to be many people on the wrong end of Mr Makin’s pen. Many of them will call in lawyers. Those who are unfamiliar with the process of reviews may not realise that before a text is published there can be endless legal battles over what it can or can’t say. The church is almost continually waging these battles with reviewers. Given that one of the individuals criticised for his failures over Smyth is almost certainly going to be Archbishop Welby, I would be surprised if the report is published before his retirement is announced.

    When it is published, what can we expect? Will anyone take responsibility for the largest abuse scandal in the Church of England for a century by offering their resignation? I doubt it. Will there be sanctions for those who enabled Smyth to abuse, or failed to act on what they knew? There’s no precedent for that. Will the report be debated by General Synod? I don’t suppose so. What then? I imagine there will be the usual apology from Lambeth Palace, posted on a website somewhere. Such apologies are now so familiar that I could have a good stab at drafting it for them. Then it will be business as usual for the church. If there is another John Smyth out there, and to my certain knowledge there is, he will surely breathe a sigh of relief.

    The scope of the Makin Review was always limited. For instance, it doesn’t look into Smyth’s time in Africa, where most of his abusing occurred. Nor will it look at the influence of the Iwerne network in the Church of England, nor the theological drivers that motivated the cover-up of his abuse over three decades.

    We are on to our third Lead Bishop and our fifth Director of Safeguarding since the review was announced. Synod and Archbishops’ Council are hopelessly distracted. In the absence of an independent supervisory group there is little support or accountability for Mr Makin, and little pressure to get his work over the line. What if he has found himself out of his depth in the scale, detail and politics of the process? In the meantime, he is earning handsomely from the delay – although that hasn’t prevented him from taking another role as Independent Scrutineer for the London Borough of Croydon. Perhaps most significantly, a significant number of senior church leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, have good reason to want the review to continue indefinitely.

    Perhaps there is another way forward. The Church could acknowledge that the Makin process has broken down. Given that there have been seven reviews and a book, a barrister could be appointed with two months to produce a digest of what is known so far.  There would be unanswered questions, but they could be identified as such. Without such a breakthrough, my own growing expectation is that the review will never be published.