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Author: Helen King

  • Surprise, Surprise: More Delay on Living in Love and Faith

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington and forensic psychiatrist

    There is a meme video online, featuring Cilla Black, singing the chorus to her famous ‘Surprise Surprise’. It’s usually in the context of poor customer service, or something else inevitable happening, and out bursts Cilla singing Surprise, Surprise! I wish I wasn’t quite so childish, but when the delay to LLF was announced yesterday, this was the first thing that came to mind. Because if the House of Bishops is one thing, it is predictable – predictably hopeless at doing what General Synod requires of them, again and again, to do. Predictably hopeless at getting on with it.

    Of course, the story behind the delay is a little more complicated than the rather cold press release made out. That press release was a classic of its genre – not a single word there apologising to General Synod members, let alone LGBTQIA people, about the delay. No recognition of how painful this will be. No compassion whatsoever. And, as ever, no context. So perhaps let’s dig into that a bit.

    Firstly, it is abundantly clear that there are forces at play – a blob, if you like – that are determined to slow down and ultimately frustrate any change. This blob is not the central team working on LLF, who are doing their darndest to make stuff happen. The blob isn’t even the official Alliance, who are simply determined to block everything everywhere. The blob is instead silly little bit part players, sitting on papers, stirring the pot, facilitating and fomenting delay. But the House of Bishops is not defenceless and passive in all this – and it is time for them to steel their nerves and force a decision.

    The delaying tactics are now being firmly targeted in the direction of clergy same-sex/gender marriage – the last piece in the jigsaw, and hence the thing to ensure is held up as long as humanly possible. The current clever ruse is endless calls for ‘more theology’. Leaving aside the fact that there is rather a lot of theology already done on this (and bishops might like to remember that this conversation has been had, in many places, including in other Anglican provinces),  and the fact that this is really a matter of policy rather than theology, these calls for more theology are now plainly nothing more than a delaying tactic. I am sick to the back teeth of being in meetings where nice, warm-smiled bishops say, ‘if only we could make a decision, but we need the theology to be done’. Can-kicking of the very best kind.

    There is such a level of dishonesty in all this, and the worrying thing is that – like the emperor’s new clothes – members of the House of Bishops seem utterly unwilling to publicly name it, even though in private no such qualms exist. The goal posts are being endlessly shifted; decision making is being tripped up time after time; intransigence is the name of the game, and each time it feels like we might be getting close to a decision, up pops another ‘reason’ that a decision must be delayed. It’s grotesque. And it’s sheer politics.

    So the reason that a delay in the process has been called is purely and simply because the House is endlessly putting off a decision on same-sex marriage for clergy. The Prayers of Love and Faith are sorted – already commended, in fact, and the ‘request’ not to do them in a ‘standalone service’ is only that, a request (and, of course, a ‘standalone service’ is a made-up nonsense anyway). There is a plan around delegating episcopal ministry – in my view, entirely unnecessary, but it seems this is where the bishops are ending up. But the House knows that this ‘delegated episcopal ministry’ will not get through General Synod unless and until clergy are permitted to enter into same-sex marriages and people in such marriages enabled to enter the vocations process (actually permitted, not some ridiculous ‘in principle’ decision) and the despicable Issues in Human Sexuality is rescinded. It is positive that the House recognises this. The problem is that they need to get on with making a decision – and they seem endlessly unable to do so.

    The thing is, everyone knows that there has actually already been a decision made on this! This is another depressing feature of the LLF process – we are told the sky is green, and despite the evidence to the contrary, everyone seems to nod along. For months we’ve been told that the Pastoral Guidance for clergy entering into same-sex marriage hasn’t been drafted – which is a lie. I know it’s a lie, because I commented on said draft. We are told that it’s just ‘theologians being theologians, and theologians take time’, and this is why papers haven’t been written. It’s simply not true – the truth is that the House, and the attendant blob, keep moving the goal posts.

    Some of you will have received the news with what might best be described as cold, hard, fury. I will admit that this is precisely how I feel. Some of you, however, might meet the news with a shrug of the shoulders, because of course this has happened. I share some of that feeling too. Let’s be honest, it is rather hard to have much faith in the House of Bishops, if any. That is not new.

    What is new, however, is that with this latest delay, the House of Bishops are getting dangerously close to being genuinely faithless. There is only so long that people can hold on to some kind of hope at things getting better, and I fear we are now at breaking point. Synod has spoken, a number of times, and the House has dawdled and engaged in handwringing. Enough is enough.

    What we need now is delivery. We don’t need more prevaricating, we don’t need more meetings, we don’t need more warm smiles, we don’t need more obfuscation, we don’t need more kicking it down the road, we don’t need more anxiety over numbers bleeding into disrespect for the lives and loves of LGBTQIA Christians. We don’t, indeed, need more theology. We need you to get on with it, for the love of God, and for the love of God’s people.

    The House of Bishops first needs to recognise that the way they are engaging in this process is ultimately a question of basic morality, and their approach is immoral. They also need to formally make two decisions – the first being to actively stop any further demand for ‘more theology’ or whatever other delaying tactic is in play, and the second is to corporately rescind the nasty, theologically desperate 2014 statement banning clergy from entering same-sex marriage (which, let’s remember, only a minority even agrees with, and which has essentially zero force beyond ‘good boy’ politics and could be ignored right now if a single diocesan bishop had the nerve), and make the positive statement that same-sex married clergy are a good and holy group of people, able to pastor beautifully and brokenly just like any others, and free them into this ministry. And this needs to be done this year. We all know the most recent piece of ‘theological work’ is nearing completion and a decision can then be made. The bishops need to make a commitment to it and do it.

    It is perfectly possible for there to be a November Synod. It is perfectly possible for them to do this. It would have been perfectly possible, indeed, for them to do this by July – but they baulked.

    Enough of this, now. It is no small wonder that people have lost trust in the bishops and don’t believe a word they say. You can hardly complain people don’t trust you if you endlessly break their trust.

    So, the only path forward is clear. Bishops, commit to a decision on clergy marriage on a specific date the moment the current iteration of ‘theological work’ is done, which we know is soon, and keep to that commitment, come what may. Call a November Synod, and implement that decision then. Put the package to a vote this year. Don’t feed us ‘in principle’ gruel on marriage – the moment this formal decision is made, licences should be restored, ordinands should enter training, and the House should corporately apologise for taking so long to get this done. Legally watertight measures can follow, if necessary, but practical action must be immediate.

    We, LGBTQIA clergy, have played by the rules for quite long enough now. Not a single thing of any substance has been done about the clearly non-canonical behaviours illustrated in the summer. Yet, after years and years of promises, still, capable, holy, decent LGBTQIA people are being barred from ministry and having their licenses smacked away from them because of prevarication and anxiety-laden avoidance. It is dangerously close to feeling more than a little malevolent.

    It’s decision time, folks. Bishops, respectfully, get on with it, now. You really can – but you need to choose to do so. If you don’t, you will turn crisis into catastrophe. And you will only have yourselves to blame.

  • Makin, Continued: Are They Being Investigated, or Not?

    by ‘Graham’

    A point I have tried making many times is that there is a difference between a Church-led, Church-instigated, Church-ruled investigation and disciplinary process and an Independent Review. While they may overlap significantly, and be informed by one another, any independent review is exactly that: independent.

    Police investigation into possible criminal activity around the Post Office scandal, or Grenfell fire, is an entirely different process to the independent inquiries. The latter may make significant findings of fact, and may even apportion blame; however, they have no powers to prosecute and (unless a statutory enquiry) may have no powers to compel the attendance of important witnesses.

    Similarly, the Makin Review had no powers to compel anyone to testify. Keith Makin had no powers to initiate a Clergy Disciplinary Measure (CDM). Historic Reviews have often been ignored (despite earnest statements from the Church on publication) or just dismissed or undermined (the Elliott Review).

    The Church of England meanwhile has a Disciplinary process, currently built around the CDM. Most CDMs are issued without any underlying independent review. However flawed the CDM process actually is, they have to follow basic standards in process (I hear people laughing) and justice. The Tribunal will hear evidence, in layman’s terms “investigate”, before making a judgement. The Church of England will decide that something is serious, worthy of CDM proceedings, and get on with the process, without having to wait (seven years…) for the parallel process of an independent review. If the evidence is clear enough, they can just get on with it.

    Why I this relevant now? Because it appears that the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and the process post-Makin is NOT undertaking its own investigations, but is relying entirely on the findings of Keith Makin. The NST have released an update, dated 16 January, from the Director of the National Safeguarding Team, Alexander Kubeyinje, that states that the process will “not entail a reinvestigation of the issues addressed in the Makin Review”. The panel is “considering reports on criticised individuals in the Makin Review”. The letter continues that “Those who have been criticised in the Makin Report will be written to along with their Diocesan Bishop and Diocesan Safeguarding Officer….and informed of the outcomes of decisions made by the panel” (my italics).

    Nowhere does this process suggest that those criticised will be interviewed by the Panel. Nowhere does it say the allegations made by Keith Makin will, themselves, be tested. Will Keith Makin be asked for all the transcriptions of interviews he undertook? There are people criticised in just a few lines of text in the Review, but where the underlying investigation by Keith Makin will have involved a significant amount of work and investigation. Will Keith Makin himself be part of this process: asked to justify his evidence and assertions? What is the status of testimony given, in confidence, to him? Can he, in law, share that data? Can those interviewed by Keith Makin prevent, in law, their full testimony from being shared? And anyway, was Keith Makin as forensic and thorough as he might have been? It is known that a number of key witnesses were never interviewed, remotely or in person.

    It is inconceivable that the police could or would prosecute anyone involved with the Post Office scandal without their own investigation. They might be able to use testimony from the inquiry, and might be able to access key documents and evidence presented to the inquiry. But the investigation would be theirs, would have to be theirs. And they would have to stress test, and independently verify all evidence, for it to have the slightest chance of standing up in court.

    A further issue is that no one knows what the “threshold” is regarding failure to act on a safeguarding disclosure. Justin Welby said at IICSA that such a failing was not “an acceptable human response, let alone a leadership response”. Yet, someone now accused of failing in 2013 can point to the processes around Archbishop John Sentamu or Steven Croft and ask “will I be treated differently”? What is the test that the Panel of three “independent (sic) experts” will apply? Have those criticised been informed where the line will be drawn, before they are issued with a CDM?

    So, back to my Title question: is the National Safeguarding Team and the Church of England actually doing its own, robust, comprehensive investigations? Are they independently re-interviewing all those criticised? Are they testing the evidence? Are they giving those criticised the right of reply? Apparently not; the original methodology stated that at Stage 3, which is where we are currently, “decisions will be made to determine what action will be taken in respect of individuals, including where appropriate disciplinary action”. And this is followed, not preceded, by Stage 4: “a robust external scrutiny of [the decisions of Stage 3] by an independent barrister”, at which point “the Respondent will have the opportunity to have input into the process”. It also goes without saying that this process could and should have started after February 2017, eight years ago, when the abuse hit the national media.

    The letter from Alexander Kubeyinje describes a process that surely falls outside any normal judicial process. It appears that, without interview, or independent investigation, relying on the work of a third party, the criticised will just get a letter and “be informed of the outcome of decisions against them”.

    Yet again, they are making this up as they go along.

  • Recognising Grooming: Revisiting the David Tudor Case

    by Anon.

    I write as a woman who met David Tudor in the early eighties when he came to our parish as a half-time Curate. The other half of his time was spent as chaplain and teacher of RE to the local CofE /Roman Catholic comprehensive school nearby. The Judgment at his recent Clergy Discipline Measure tribunal made clear that it would not name that parish in order to protect the anonymity of the recent complainants; I shall not do it here. Further, this judgment made it clear that, for the first time and after 40 years, Tudor admitted to abusive behaviour when confronted with a contemporaneous diary kept by one of the complainants.

    In the early days, he had concentrated his attention in the parish on three groups: children, their mothers and the elderly in the congregation. He was, by common consent, stunningly attractive and utterly charming. However, before long our then-incumbent (since deceased) confided that he found Tudor “uncontrollable”.

    From my own viewpoint, Tudor was making great progress with children in the parish, with their parents and with the elderly on whom he lavished time and attention. What I failed to realise at the time that this was a very practised onslaught of grooming of all those groups. Nonetheless, he seemed to sense that attention on me would not be appreciated but I felt, at the time, that I was quite alone in this. I have heard nothing since to make me change that view.

    After only a few months, problems crystallised when Tudor invited a group of the older children to a weekend away without any adult assistance.  I raised this at a PCC meeting in Tudor’s absence and not a single other person showed any concern. The expedition went ahead without my son, then aged 13 or so. The anguish this caused in our family was out of all proportion, as is often the way with young teenagers who have to be with their peer group in all circumstances (more recently captured in the epithet FOMO: fear of missing out).

    By that time, I had insisted on a meeting to discuss the matter with Tudor, but he failed to turn up “owing to an asthma attack”. The irony of taking children away overnight unaccompanied by any other adult when he could have an asthma attack was totally lost on him, as was the suggestion that, should any complaints arise, he would have no adult witness to protect him.

    Years later, our I met our then-incumbent at a Church School function and he told me that Tudor had originally proposed this overnight stay for school pupils but the governors had refused to allow it. Tudor had therefore cancelled the school trip rather than comply and hastily invited young church members instead. If the Governors had concerns about him by that time, they did not share them with our incumbent.

    As a family we were caught out again when Tudor proposed a holiday in Greece, again unaccompanied by other adults. We had already made arrangements to go to Canada where family members had emigrated some twenty years earlier and we had not seen them since. In the circumstances, rather than spell out my misgivings I explained to my son we could not do another holiday in Greece over and above the one in Canada. He took that to mean we could not afford it, which was eminently reasonable, and he came back from a meeting saying that Tudor had offered to tap into “charitable funds” on his behalf. I responded by letter saying how disgusted I was that my over-privileged son had been offered “charitable funds”. I was teaching at that time and I explained that, in my experience, in circumstances where finances were apparently the issue preventing a child from participating, the child was never informed. Negotiations would be between the head of the school and the parents. In the context of a parish church, the incumbent could be asked.

    The plan foundered but I never knew who it was who had seen the light and put a stop to the venture. I never heard of any conversation between the school and the parish church, although that does not mean they did not occur.

    Meanwhile the grooming process continued with apparent success,  even though in those far-off days of innocence I did not quite recognise it for what it was. I had concluded that children were likely to be at risk, but I was not certain whether those children were likely to be male or female. It troubled me greatly but I could not identify anyone with whom I could discuss it; as I saw it, I had no evidence and I certainly had no relationships in the Diocese for consultation and I did not even know an Archdeacon until many years later. Only recently have I discovered that our then-Area Bishop testified in Tudor’s favour at his subsequent trial (see below). I was clearly quite right to perceive myself to be at a loss.

    In 1986 or so, Tudor’s curacy was completed and he became part-time priest-in-charge at a nearby Church; his chaplaincy at the school was extended.

    I was not aware of how he was getting on at all until I heard on the grapevine that he had been convicted of molesting five girls at the school; Tudor was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison, which he served.

    After his release he appealed against the conviction, which was quashed on the grounds of a technicality. This technicality was that complaints against him as a defendant should have been taken one at a time, rather than all at once. It is not difficult to see the problems for a defendant if multiple cases are taken at once but, during the Labour Government of 1997-2010, that provision was changed in the case of trials for sexual offences. That is why it is not uncommon now to hear of sexual offenders convicted on multiple counts. That Government also brought in a provision covering people in a position of “authority /trust” to protect pupils or students who were technically above the age of consent.

    I did not know until recently what Tudor did after that but I now know that he was banned from the priesthood for five years and was then allowed back. I discovered only the other night that Archbishop Carey made that decision and he explained that it was he who decided to insist that Chelmsford Diocese should accept Tudor, which duly happened. Perhaps it was the Archbishop’s legacy which Stephen Cottrell inherited on his appointment to Chelmsford as Diocesan in 2010 rather than that of his immediate predecessor in that role.

    Meanwhile I still knew nothing of Tudor’s whereabouts and was assured by my own Bishop that he was not serving at that time and never would serve as a priest again. Priests have come under Employment Law since 2009 and are entitled to go to an Employment Tribunal, for example, and I guess that this was on his or her mind when the lawyer advised Stephen Cottrell against dismissal when he first encountered this problem. It could have been agreed that the risk was worth taking but, as there had already been archiepiscopal intervention, that would have been difficult.

    The case of the Dean of Manchester (Robert Waddington) emerged in 2013, long after Tudor had been to prison and long after Waddington himself had died. In the ensuing review chaired by Sally Cahill QC, both the then-Archbishop of York and the then-Bishop of Manchester were criticised for not having taken action years earlier. One problem was found to be of mutual deference between all three and it was noted that each was obliged by oath to the other two. This issue might have come into play in the Tudor/Carey/Cottrell situation although they would almost certainly not have recognised it.

    What I never knew until now was the nature of the abuse  and that Tudor was violent as well as abusive – or that there were girls in our congregation who suffered. A friend recently told me that her daughter reported at the time (in the eighties), that a friend of hers was “having an affair” with Tudor and that this friend had not told anyone because she was “frightened”. My friend could not understand the notion of being frightened. Maybe this child was one of the recent complainants who were from the parish.

    In my later life, I was in a position to speak about all this in various central church committees, in particular to use Tudor’s case to illustrate the power of grooming. At the time, I did not know where Tudor was, but then I saw a television programme with quite a long slot given to Canvey Island and its wonderful vicar, and there was he was. I continued to mention the case at national level. I was assured that enquiries would be made, and then that “there was no further problem and previous problems had been dealt with”.

    The only thing I have to add to the wider conversation about this is that the congregation in this case was never mentioned. I think what many of them may have experienced was real heartbreak. The women who have now complained have suffered ever since but they and the other girls at the time must have been distraught. Further, a subsequent incumbent who arrived at the parish about 15 years after these events told me he found the congregation still deeply divided and unhappy over it all. I still thought I was the only person who believed that Tudor was guilty as charged; he was even invited back to take Occasional Offices, although not in the Parish Church.

    In all the conversations about safeguarding I have heard in the interim,  nothing has been mentioned about congregations or about the other youngsters in the friendship groups of any victims. For all these people there will have been a massive betrayal of trust and a challenge to their self-belief. Some may have been groomed and they may never bring themselves to believe ill of the offender. A great friend of mine who was then the age that I am now firmly believed, she said, that those girls were “no better than they should be”. I guess there could be similar reactions in current cases, and such people should be sought out and helped otherwise bitterness and division could well persist as they did in this congregation for a generation or more.

    In the past few weeks, in a conversation with one of those adults groomed in the eighties who now understood Tudor’s admission, they nonetheless seemed to regard the latest revelations with an insouciance which is very difficult to understand. However, grooming needs to be understood if we are to bring closure to everyone who gets caught up in such events and to be sure that the whole parish can get healing.

    The existence of Parish Safeguarding Officers should and often does give people confidence to report; but that depends on parishioners and safeguarding officers themselves recognising grooming for what it is.

     

  • The Church is What We Do Next 

    by Gilo,  co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and co-creator of the House of Survivors website. He is also a hymn writer.

    I recently saw Conclave at my local cinema. If you haven’t read the Robert Harris novel, and don’t want to be handed the crux of the story – avoid looking up any online reviews. They nearly all give spoilers. So I won’t reveal any here, other than one pivotal moment when a cardinal makes a quietly impassioned call to the other cardinals in the midst of heated debate, “The church is not tradition. The church is not the past. The church is what we do next.”

    The church is what we do next. Upon such a fulcrum of gravitas where promise and danger meet in equal portion is where the Church of England now stands. Almost every senior bishop who might be considered for the role of Archbishop of Canterbury is likely to have legacy ghosts trailing in their wake and waiting to haunt them. This is not a political statement, nor particularly an anti-bishop one, but rather a statement of probable fact. If the Church and especially the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) do not exercise rigorous scrutiny in this appointment, you can be sure the media will.

    Any senior bishops being considered for the role will need to have searing honesty with regard to their safeguarding history. Have they blanked survivors or denied disclosures? Have they evaded necessary and crucial questions? Have they deployed the standard institutional responses of silencing and blanking? Have they been party to the burial of things which they know should not have been buried? Have they hidden reviews under lock and key? (I know of at least one current diocesan who has done so in recent years.) Have they rested easy in quiet complicity with any bad cultures of Church House or Lambeth Palace when their position of power and privilege offered opportunity to speak up and act? In truth, the standout voice has been that of the Bishop of Newcastle. She alone has spoken fearless truth to frightened power and has from all reports met with a lack of support. Other bishops, especially senior ones, have lacked even basic courage in comparison.

    This is the reality the Church finds itself in: the CNC may sleepwalk the Church into fresh crisis simply by assuming that senior bishops are transparent in any assertion that all is well with them and that no skeletons will emerge to plunge the Church deeper into damage. Some of them are possibly too hubristic to care much.  Unaccountable power tends to breed a hubristic attitude. Some perhaps imagine that what has been successfully buried in the past will stay buried. It won’t.

    Increasingly my own view is that the next occupant of St Augustine’s Chair might need to be an interim figure. Someone who can hold the Church to its promises and critical decisions throughout this year and during the next few. But not necessarily someone attempting to usher in any ‘Grand Plan’. Lambeth Palace and the Church probably need a rest from any big Welby-esque strategic vision. Maybe five years max in the post. Deep elder wisdom required. Someone who has not necessarily been in much position of power to bury anything. Someone from the edge. Someone with a deep understanding, heart of compassion, and wisdom. Possibly a retiring suffragan. The late great Alan Wilson would have been such a figure. He was unique and I’m not sure we will see his like again. But imagine if he’d been Archbishop leading up to his retirement, with a brief to begin the vital rescue of the Church. With Rosie Harper alongside him as Chaplain and partner in the project of institutional  transformation. He had the chutzpah to speak right over the heads of the agents of resistance and obvious institutional corruption. Crucially, he and Rosie had shared the journey of survivors for a decade or more, and gathered the threads in their groundbreaking To Heal and Not to Hurt. Alan would have stood sentinel to the beginning of root and branch reform and insisted upon a much more honest Church of England built upon the keystones of systemic transparency and truthfulness.

    It’s clear that the CofE will undergo considerable and necessary change over the next decade, with hopefully a return to a much more locally focussed Church and away from the two-tiered Church of struggling parish over against the weight of privileged and unaccountable power. The next Archbishop will need a depth of wisdom that almost none of the current senior bishops seem capable of demonstrating, to guide the start of that process. Crucially, they will need to embody a focus of real energy across CofE on setting the safeguarding and response to survivors on to a genuinely healing and restorative path.

    When Channel 4’s Cathy Newman summed up the John Smyth scandal as showing that ‘the church had neither process nor kindness’, Justin Welby had no option but to agree. The next Archbishop will need to be someone who can insist upon right process matched with great kindness, and who can publicly and decisively call all structures which govern every aspect of the response to survivors to follow that lead. Transparency is the essential cornerstone of such a move. But transparency is destined to fail when touted publicly by Archbishops whilst figures hidden in the corridors of power work to mitigate against it. For transparency to work, for it to bring any possible redemption of the Church’s reputation, everyone needs to face in the same direction and sing from the same hymn sheet. And the act of kindnessing will need to be apparent throughout.

    Realistically, any implementation of structural independence is likely to be complex and require more than a few years to achieve. If this is rushed as a reactive response to the mess the Church is in, will only lead to further meltdown and confusion. So I posit some crucial first steps along the way for a possible interim Archbishop. I imagine an experienced suffragan with the strength of purpose to focus on the following:

    1. Call an EGM of Synod
    2. Support Tanni Grey-Thompson’s Mandatory Reporting bill currently in passage in the House of Lords, and call for that support across the House of Bishops and Synod.
    3. Ensure the Redress Scheme begins this year, is fair and just, and not any kind of rerun of toxic Ecclesiastical Insurance tactics.
    4. Sort out the undeniable mess of Archbishops’ Council and its wholly unaccountable Secretariat. Sackings required, even if key personnel demand immorally high severance packages. The Secretary General is unlikely to leave without a wheelbarrow of cash. So be it. But go he must.
    5. Call all of Church House and NCI staff publicly to transparency. Ditto to all bishops/dioceses. Transparency must be the watchword of the Church going forward.
    6. With this in mind, introduce the Nolan Principles into public life across the Church. Bishops and key staff are public office holders and should be required to commit to principles of accountability and integrity.
    7. Work with key parliamentarians to bring the Church quickly under Freedom of Information regulation.

    In fact, with grit and determination, I think all of these could be achieved in Year 1. Ceasing to be ‘pope’ of the Anglican Communion will free up time and energy, and allow for focus on recovery of the broken Church. If this 7-point plan was achieved, it would be a job well done, and would pave the way to longer-term repair after the turbulence of the last decade. The Church’s only chance of repair will be the measure to which it commits to the repair of those it has harmed and re-harmed.

    If the CNC chooses business as usual and Lambeth Palace ends up with someone who represents the fearful milquetoast culture we’ve seen in the bishops of recent months, then the Church is likely to fold in on itself and travel deeper towards its own shabby diminishing. If, on the other hand, they choose an unexpected and unknown elder of wisdom it may be that the Church will have a much better future after he or she has gone. The reset of the Church of England depends on the initial year or two of the next Archbishop and the vision and determination and public grit they bring to laying the groundwork.

    Any of the obvious diocesans – York, London, Oxford and others – will in various ways represent a Church of broken promises, complicity with cruel structures and reliance upon reputation management. If the CNC looks to them, the Church will rue the day. The current grim state of affairs will deepen. Let us hope the CNC (which has awkward ghosts of its own which need to be sorted) will find the boldness to choose with extraordinary care. “The Church is what we do next.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion

    by Canon Dr Phil Groves, a parish priest in the Wychert Vale Benefice. His PhD is on Anglican Missional Ecclesiology and he was the Facilitator for the Listening Process in the Anglican Communion and Director of Continuing Indaba

    At midnight tonight Justin Welby will have left his role and the search for new Archbishop of Canterbury will soon be underway in earnest.

    This time there will be five representatives from the Anglican Communion on the CNC. They have probably already been selected but, rather like a football pundit on the eve of a big game, I want to offer some speculation.

    It is widely assumed that the Anglican Communion representatives will massively skew the process towards a conservative outcome. In particular, I have heard it said on numerous occasions that they will block any possibility of a woman in Lambeth Palace.

    Call me mad, but I don’t think it is inevitable – in fact it could be quite the opposite.

    At this point it is quite unpredictable who will make the list, but we have a list of names. They will all have participated as members at the Anglican Consultative Council.

    If you are not familiar with the Anglican Communion the process will make your head spin, and even for me who has attended four ACCs, two Lambeth Conferences, and three Primates’ Meetings it is not completely clear.

    As I understand it, Primates from each of the five regions of the Communion – Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Oceania – will have searched through the list of present and recent ACC members to find people to nominate. Immediately this is a bit complex, because these regions do not precisely reflect the existing boundaries, so I expect Jerusalem and the Middle East to be in Asia and potentially East Asia to be part of Oceania.

    I could be wrong – if you know any information I don’t, please put it in the comments.

    By now the names may have been presented to a group from the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to select the five members. From the nominees, the Standing Committee will select at least one Primate, one priest or deacon (who could be a bishop), and one member of the laity. At least two will be male, and two female. A majority should be people of global-majority heritage. Not only that, there should be a youth representative and an indigenous person.

    Is your head spinning? It should be.

    Quite a lot of power is being placed in the hands of the group choosing the representatives. We do not have a clear indication of who is on that group, but it will be impossible for them not to have their bias; we all have bias. However, they have to follow the rules.

    Those rules seem to limit the choice of Primate to one who is a member of the ACC. Until recently, the constitution of the ACC was designed to preclude primates from being members, but there are currently two Primates who attend the ACC as members, the Archbishops of Jerusalem and Tanzania. If they limit themselves to those two, then either the Africa or the Asia and the Middle East place is taken.

    By coincidence, both Archbishop Naoum and Archbishop Mndolwa studied theology in Grahamstown, South Africa and Virginia in the US. These are more liberal institutions than some of the others attended by other eligible primates; neither are linked to conservative groups and both have links with TEC. I have deep respect for both Archbishops: they are people of integrity and wisdom. I suspect that Archbishop Naoum would be a good fit, but as he is Archbishop of Jerusalem and, as I shall explain, there are very good reasons to fill the Asia and Middle East slot with the ‘youth’ representative, it might be that the slot for Primates is taken by Archbishop Mndolwa.

    However, there is another option. Since ACC 14, the Primates’ Standing Committee has attended ACC meetings. As recently as ACC 16 they were only observers, but more recently they have been incorporated as members. I am unclear as to whether this has actually been discussed by the ACC and if the constitution has been amended, but it seems to be de facto in place. This means they could opt for one of the Primates on Standing Committee.

    If that is the case then there will be a focus on the one representative from Africa. The perception is that an African would be ‘conservative’ but such labels can be misleading. An African delegate will not be an advocate of equal marriage, that is certain, but they are likely to be from a province that has maintained its links with TEC and they are unlikely to object to a woman as Archbishop of Canterbury. One reason for this is that the requirement for nominations from those who have recently participated as members of the ACC means the GAFCON provinces of Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda are all ruled out. They have not sent delegations to the ACC for years.

    It is possible that a representative could come from the more progressive provinces such as Southern Africa, but even if they are from the evangelical heartlands of Kenya or South Sudan, they would be unlikely to block a woman Archbishop of Canterbury. For example, Archbishop Ole Sapit – the Primate of Kenya – has consecrated women as bishops. He might be a strong candidate from the Primates’ Standing Committee. Alternatively, South Sudan has taken a lead in the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans but their episcopal delegate to ACC is Bishop Elizabeth Awut, one of many impressive African women on the Council.

    African Anglicanism is not the conservative homogeny that it is portrayed as being. In most places it is a force for the empowerment of women. In the UK some may still think of the Mothers’ Union as an aging organisation concerned with sewing and jam making, but its African membership makes it the biggest member organisation in the world. It is a vibrant and powerful voice for women across Africa and has taken feminist stands on gender-based violence, education for girls, and female genital mutilation. If they choose a woman, there is a good chance she will have a similar feminist agenda.

    While there is so much choice available to the Standing Committee from Africa that it is hard to know who might be chosen, they are likely to celebrate a woman as Archbishop of Canterbury.

    Next, we turn to ‘Europe’, which in this context means Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. I think it is unlikely that any of the Primates would want to be in a position of choosing the archbishop of their neighbouring province, so it is likely that they will seek a recent or present ACC delegate. Probably the most qualified is Canon Alistair Dinnie who has just stepped down from the Standing Committee. He was the first gay man to be married in the SEC and so his selection might bring on scrutiny that he would find intrusive. But there is a good chance that the representative could come from a church which is comfortable blessing gay unions, or even marrying gay people, and which would also be delighted with a woman as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

    As I hinted earlier, Asia could provide the Youth Representative. Aishi Drong is the official lay representative from Bangladesh, but she is also a youth representative and a member of the Standing Committee. She ticks so many boxes it makes the matrix possible. I suspect they would need a very good reason not to pick her.

    Even if she is not the youth representative, the young person will come from the Anglican Youth Network. All the members of that network are more likely to be energised by Greta Thunberg than to have heard of Mary Whitehouse. The Anglican Youth Network is marked out by a commitment to the environment and to the empowerment of women and girls. I can’t see any youth representative opposing a woman in Canterbury.

    It would be a shock to me if the representative from the Americas was not progressive. The Primate of Brazil – Archbishop Marinez Bassotto – might be a candidate and she delights in being in a church which has full equal marriage. Another great candidate would be Ranjit Matthews, the clergy representative of TEC, who is very well respected across the Communion. There are many people to choose from, but whoever is chosen is likely to be progressive.

    What may cause a problem for the Standing Committee is that there does not appear to be an indigenous person among the ACC members from the provinces of the Americas. That means they will need to look to Oceania to offer an indigenous person. However, this will present a problem. The Anglican Indigenous Network limits its membership to those who are minorities in their historic lands.

    The Network has always been one of the most dynamic of Networks in the Communion. Anglican institutions in some parts of the world were violent oppressors of indigenous peoples, especially in places such as Canada and Australia. However, in recent years the Anglican Church has become a beacon of hope with indigenous leadership and successful campaigns for indigenous rights. The Anglican Indigenous Network is an amazing resource for reconciliation and restoration. However, and here again please correct me if I am wrong in the comments, I can’t spot an ‘indigenous’ person who has been a full delegate to either ACC 16 or 17.

    The closest is possibly the Polynesian Fe’iloakitau Kaho Tevi who represents the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. He is an environmental activist and he is likely to want an Archbishop who pays attention to the climate crisis. He is not going to be a conservative voice on the committee.

    The Indigenous Network is not conventionally conservative. The members have been engaged in a conversation on gender and sexuality in their own way and have refused to be drawn into the polarised conflicts. They have many important women among them and again would likely celebrate a woman Archbishop.

    The brief given to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion thus offers a bias that could result in a delegation more progressive than those from the Diocese of Canterbury or the Church of England.

    While this article is complete speculation, I can’t find any reason to believe that the Anglican Communion members of CNC will block a woman for Canterbury.

    The project will work if the Anglican Communion delegation prioritise finding a fantastic leader for the Church of England. If they work to their best they can offer deep insight to help the whole team discern the kind of leader we need. If they do that, they will have someone who contributes to the Anglican Communion without trying to solve its problems.

    If they focus on getting a global leader they will fail to deliver a good leader for us in the Church of England and they will have an impaired Archbishop of Canterbury.

    This is all speculation – let’s see what is announced.

  • Justice and Moving On

    by ‘Graham’

    I am told, time and time again, that, twelve years after I first came forward, the Makin Review is published, and I must “move on”. Put this all behind me, start a new life. It’s 2025, move on.

    And my reply has always been: when victims have the truth, and justice. But what does justice look like? Have we received the truth? What does closure look like?

    I have always said that I do not want to be part of a witch hunt. This whole damned saga has ruined my life. All I want is honesty, humble, human honesty. I have said that this might have worked out so differently. If Justin had, in 2017, said “I am sorry, I messed up. I thought someone else was dealing with it. Are you alright? Is there anything I can do? I am in my car, ready to drive to see you, as I want to look you in the eyes and apologise. I want to give you my full, frank, comprehensive account of what I knew and when, what I did and when, to the absolute best that my memory allows. I will give you whatever time you need. I am ordering a full investigation today. What do you need? I am sorry, I am so, so sorry”.

    Then I would have forgiven him immediately.

    Instead, I had, in December, a bizarre meeting with an empty shell of a man. There was no human connection. The most extraordinary thing is that, in a two-hour meeting, Justin did not use my name once. And at the end (I admit, late for another meeting), he just walked out. No handshake. No looking me in the eyes, clasping my hands. No final apology. So, for me, no closure. What a missed opportunity. For him, not me.

    And, the truth? One thing that did come out of the meeting is an undertaking from Justin to provide a written account of what he knew, what he did. For seven years, victims have called for such an account: a statement, an “affidavit”, an account that clarifies, and answers our questions. I hope we do, eventually, receive this. Because victims do NOT believe we have yet received the truth. The Makin Review is very vague on what actually happened in 2013. The central task of Makin was to assess “how the CofE responded to a disclosure of abuse”. Yet, we do not know. We know it fizzled out. We know that everyone thought someone else was dealing with it, but we do NOT have the personal accounts of those involved. They may have given their testimony to Makin, but are victims entitled to the same? Should it be victims who have the right to quiz these Bishops, these senior clergy on what went wrong?

    A list of questions has been sent to Bishop Stephen Conway (such as “how many times did you write to Cape Town?” “How many times did you call them?” “How many times did you chase Lambeth and Justin to intervene on your behalf?”). And he has steadfastly refused to answer. Victims just do not have his account of what he did or did not do, and what went wrong. Do victims deserve to hear this? It is not in the Makin Review (why not?). And the same testimony from Jo Bailey Wells, Nigel Stock, Paul Butler, Elizabeth Hall, Thabo Makgoba, Garth Counsell, etc? Until victims can feel they have the full picture, the absolute full picture, we cannot have closure. And victims do not feel that a five-year Review has delivered a comprehensive picture. That is another story…

    I herein challenge Bishop Stephen Conway to write a full, no-holds-barred, searingly-honest account of the period 2013-16 and present it to victims. To answer our questions, on what went wrong. Bottom line: John Smyth was not stopped in 2013. Ergo, something went wrong. Yet no one failed?

    Then, justice. Do I believe people should hang? Of course not. John Smyth was our abuser. The host of people who failed to stop him fall somewhere on a spectrum of fault, but they were not our abusers. A number of people are “stepped back”. Note to self: what is the difference between stepping back, suspension, and removal of Permission to Officiate? But we are now almost two months since publication of the Makin Review and not a single CDM has been issued. The National Safeguarding Team – well, actually, not the NST, they do not have capacity, so they have farmed this out to a panel of unnamed lawyers – are supposedly investigating all those named in the Makin Review. But, two months later, silence. Makin was referring names up to NST from 2019, under Clause 3.1.6 of his Terms of Reference, so the failures of these people have been known about for years (leaving aside the book Bleeding for Jesus, and multiple media broadcasts). NST read the Makin Review in draft in March 2024. Yet, ten months later (or almost eight years since the original Channel 4 broadcast) no one bar the Archbishop has been “held to account”. Those “stepped back” are in limbo, and victims depressingly assume their investigations will all lead to naught.

    Personally, and I cannot talk for all victims, all I want is the truth, and humble, contrite apology. Why has Bishop Stephen Conway not written to me, personally, to apologise? Through an intermediary, or directly? Why has he not written to the victim who attempted suicide on Christmas Day 2013, unaware that 13 Bishops and Archbishops now knew about John Smyth? Would he meet me, face to face, humbly answer all the questions I have, look in my eyes and apologise?

    And where, two months after publication, is there any statement on following up Makin’s recommendations? Where is the called-for independent body that will make sure his conclusions are implemented? What is the action or actions that make victims, the Church of England, and the wider world, believe that lessons have been learned? That change will start? That a million pound Review, delayed for years, has actually achieved anything? Was it actually worth it?

    So, victims have no closure. We do not yet have the truth. We do not yet have personal apology. We do not yet have justice. We do not feel that anything has changed.

    So, I cannot yet move on.

     

  • Halcyon Daze? Nostalgia in the Memory of the Church

    by Martyn Percy, Professor of Religion and Culture at the University of St. Joseph in Macao and Provost-Theologian at Ming Hua College, Hong Kong and Research Professor of Theology at Institut für Christkatholische Theologie, University of Bern, Switzerland. His The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England is just published by Hurst.

    Once upon a time, nostalgia was not just a longing for the past, but a potentially fatal disease. First used as a medical term in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the context of Swiss soldiers and mercenaries, it referred to (nostos is the Greek for homecoming, and algos is a word for pain). Or rather, a sickness for order and things being put back where they once were or belonged. Nostalgia, in this sense, is not a benign sentiment, but an anxiety caused by displacement and dislocation. However, nostalgia is also a dangerous emotion that can lead to self-imprisonment through false memory.

    For those who speak nostalgically of the Church of England and wider Anglican Communion, the debt to the nostalgia narrated by the British Empire and the unity provided by the service of imperialism are obvious. Even recently, Bishops could be heard to speak with wistful admiration of a denomination stretching from Malagasy to Mongolia, from Sweden to South Africa, from India to Tasmania, and from the United Kingdom across the whole of the Americas. The London office for the Anglican Communion also invests in this narrative. Such nostalgia paints a rose-tinted picture of global coverage, as though the extent of the Church of England were akin to every community having a local post office.

    The reality is quite different. Coverage across the Anglican Communion is patchy, and it is increasingly difficult to understand how, in terms of compatibility, coherence, and commonality, the various components constituting this church can claim the label ‘Communion’. Even if the term is used, many who use such language no longer mean the same thing. Furthermore, others regard the term as problematic – either a dangerous fiction or a disingenuous description. ‘Anglicanism’, it seems, is increasingly a term of ascription that is contested and divisive.

    Nostalgia is a vehicle that tries to carry a community through the uneasy conditions of modern and contemporary life and the politics of fear and anxiety. However, it is unlikely to be able to carry any meaningful freight going forward.  The challenges of the present now require a large dose of realism. Otherwise, fantasies and wishful thinking will be mistaken for vision.

    Is there any way past this nostalgic pathology under which the Church of England labours? The only way through this is likely to be rooted in harsh realities. Across the global Anglican Communion, the days when directives from the Church of England freighted authority and power are long gone.

    We live in a post-colonial age. Honesty and clarity about the past can only help. Otherwise, amnesia and myth-making memory will reign unchecked. The roots of the Anglican Communion and the Commonwealth arise from the British Empire, which was driven by trade, consumerism, military action, conquest and imperial expansionism.  This was primarily an English project in which the Church of England served as a legitimating spiritual arm for an empire, capitalising on the territorial expansion, giving it an aura of global territorial catholicity.

    Yet, at present, the Church of England is run by a tiny elite operating a model of leadership that is a hybrid of monarchy and autocracy. Any democratic accountability is strongly resisted and, as clergy and laity repeatedly find, the will of the people barely counts for anything. Like grumbling serfs, however, congregations are nonetheless expected to fund a hierarchy that is aloof, never liable or culpable, and operating as a law unto itself

    With the appointment of a new Second Estates Commissioner there may be an opportunity for a significant change – one that will snap the Church of England out of its self-induced coma. Marsha de Cordova (MP for Battersea) was the confirmed choice. It took almost 100 days for the government to find an appointee, the longest time lag since 1832.

    Perhaps the lengthy lacuna of 2024 reflects the ambiguous nature of the role. In the past, the Second Estates Commissioner has functioned as an apologist for the Church of England when faced with questions and scrutiny from Parliament. But the present demands a different approach, namely making the Church of England accountable to parliament, church members, taxpayers and voters.

    Marsha de Cordova attends a church run by the Holy Trinity Brompton network, which has recently taken the lead in secessionism over the Church of England’s slow, gradual embrace of equal marriage. Yet Marsha has previously served in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions) (Disabled People). She also served on the Work and Pensions Select Committee and the Petitions Committee.

    It would be hard to find any MP who could, in conscience, act as a parliamentary apologist for the Church of England in the 21st century, with its position being so clearly anomalous and democratically indefensible. With clergy having few employment rights, and LGBTQ+ clergy still discriminated against, it is hard to imagine the Church of England hanging on to its powers and privileges in the next ten years.

    Most citizens expect equality and accountability from their institutions as a prerequisite for trust. Moreover, serious questions must be asked as the number of paid-up members of the church has effectively fallen off the cliff edge—and there is no sign that this decline is temporary. These questions relate to the fitness and role of an established church in one nation, yet within a devolved union of three nations (and Northern Ireland).

    Meanwhile, there are hardly any – indeed, no – examples of the much-vaunted new models of the church making a net contribution to their diocese for the investments they have received.  It is impossible to find one of these new strategic initiatives of the Archbishops’ Council paying its way. Ordinary parishes are funding a fetishised experimentalism that is not subject to any scrutiny, fiscal accountability or even much in the way of legally authorised protocols.

    Meanwhile, stipendiary clergy numbers are set to fall to around 5,000 by 2034. January 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of Reform and Renewal, the much-vaunted strategy document of the Archbishops’ Council. In 2014, General Synod and the Church of England were promised more clergy, more churches, growth and a major turnaround in fortunes. Not one target has been met. In fact, the decline has accelerated.

    If the Archbishops’ Council were a company’s board of directors, the shareholders would have passed several votes of no confidence by now. Indeed, were this a school, it would be in special measures. But the Archbishops’ Council has no accountability. A recent public survey shows that public confidence in ordained ministry has collapsed in just a few decades, as its senior leadership are no longer believed or trusted inside the church, let alone outside. The recent report commissioned by the Archbishops’ Council on the very subject of trust and trustworthiness ran out of time in debate, but not without members of General Synod expressing their lack of trust in the same report’s origins, methodology and political aspirations. That’s right, nobody trusted a report from the bishops that was all about trust.

    Some churches are now breaking away and conducting their own bespoke versions of licensing and ordination. This has been slowly gestating since the 1992 Act of Synod, which sought to appease those aggrieved at the decision to ordain women to the priesthood. Long before Burger King adopted their most famous slogan – “have it your way” – the Church of England turned its reliable set menu into a proverbial buffet car. Take it or leave it, the customer is king.

    The new Estates Commissioner will only be able to be a credible respondent for the Church of England in parliament when it can be demonstrated that bishops are to be held accountable to ordinary secular employment laws and legal provisions on gender, sexuality, data protection, and safeguarding. At present, this is an established church lecturing the world on human rights yet having secured legal opt-out provisions under the Human Rights Act (1997).  This is unconscionable.

    The current situation of weak autocracy is arguably the worst of all worlds. As there are no operational conflicts of interest policy or register of interests amongst the highest echelons of the Church of England’s leadership, concealment of malice, malpractice and incompetence is relatively straightforward. Those who try to speak out will quickly be frozen out – the church created its own ‘cancel culture’ centuries ago. This is an organisation that really knows how to bully its people. It can be brutal.

    The Archbishops’ Council secretariat recently replied to a question put to the previous Second Estates Commissioner, Andrew Selous MP, in December 2023.  In the response from Lambeth Palace, the Church of England’s most senior officer explained there are no plans for independent external review or performance management of the Church of England’s treatment of victims.

    Furthermore, the Secretary General added, supporting victims of abuse in the longer term should be a burden carried by the taxpayer. The invoice for abuses perpetrated by the Church of England should be forwarded to HM Treasury. Ironically, the same body that gives millions of pounds back to the church through Gift Aid.

    Such hubris is breathtaking.  Yet the ruling culture of bishops, courtiers, Synod lawyers, and ecclesiocrats remains unaccountable, mercurial and aloof. Nothing of this can be defended in any democratic parliament in the 21st century. Reform cannot come quickly enough.

     

     

  • Lives Worth Living? Principle and Practice in the Assisted Dying Debate

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington and forensic psychiatrist

    I will admit to being quite surprised that the Assisted Dying Bill passed its second reading.

    Of course, much of that surprise can be put down to the ever-shrinking social media bubbles we all inhabit – mine, for example, seemed full of MPs saying that whilst they might support the principle, they couldn’t support the Bill as it stands. Yet parliament has spoken, and whilst there is still a long way for this Bill to go, it should make us at least recognise that we are in a new place culturally when it comes to matters of life and medicine. It looks, at the very least, like it is now a case of when and not if, when it comes to assisted dying.

    Plenty of ink has been spilt on this debate, with some of the arguments being put forward more charitable than others. There has seemed, at times, to be a wilful refusal to hear – and rather to simply dismiss – the concerns raised by large numbers of disabled people, and in addition the voting figures (and associated speeches) from UKME MPs might also get us thinking. The professionally religious have, in the main, been opposed (with some notable exceptions), but there is interestingly no neat left-right distinction in this debate. The religious opposition has not always erred on the side of kindness, and yet perhaps this is best interpreted as a sign of how concerned many religious people are about the threat this Bill poses to something so central to how many people of faith understand human life to be. It is worth our all remembering that very few people – if any – are coming at this issue with bad intentions, even if their failure to see the consequences (from whichever direction) of their opinions is frustrating!

    It’s not an original thought, but it is worth repeating that there are already grey areas in this debate that we have all learned to tolerate. Whilst the so-called doctrine of double effect – where a death-inducing dose of medication can be given if the intention is to relieve pain not induce death – really doesn’t have much (if any) actual use in contemporary medical practice (because the reality is that such high dosing is vanishingly rarely, if ever, required), nonetheless we know that patients can quite competently refuse treatment if they have decided that enough is enough. Similarly, we don’t simply go ahead and invasively treat patients when the treatment appears futile or actively harmful – there are decisions to be made on the what, where, when, and how in contemporary medical practice that cannot fit into simplistic binary choices. Yet what is being proposed here really is something new, in my mind, because – I think – it changes what it means to be a doctor, and hence what it means to have a doctor. It changes what choices doctors can legitimately be involved in – and what associated actions they can take.

    I think that’s the angle that I’m approaching this debate from, although I am aware that not only am I a psychiatrist – and hence someone who deals in matters of capacity, competence, suicidal thinking, life and death on a fairly regular basis – I’m also a priest. There have been rather silly suggestions that those with faith cannot objectively talk about this stuff – silly because the truth is that none of us, with or without faith, can talk objectively. We’re all caught up in our different (and sometimes internally contradictory) worldviews, and so whatever we have to say about this is going to impact us differently. What I would like to do, though, is offer some reflections on how this whole debate hit me as a practitioner of medicine – one with faith, sure, but primarily one thinking through how my medical life might change in this new cultural landscape.

    The first thing is how many MPs of various stripes, including some of those who were vocally opposed to the Bill, stated that they didn’t like this Bill but that they did agree ‘in principle’ (often in the stated context of poor palliative care provision). I’m not totally convinced that in matters of assisted dying, it’s quite so easy to separate principle and practice (as many disabled campaigners have made clear in their contributions to the debate), but putting that aside for a moment, it’s evident that more people are now willing to say that they think that there is a genuine choice possible between death and life. This is new, and significant, if it is indeed true (that is, unless the ‘agree in principle but not practice’ argument was simply being used because it was easier than to be seen to disagree in principle too). Assisted dying is, in the main, seen as a liberal, progressive cause – an assertion not without possible challenge, but an assertion that seems to have taken on a widely accepted status. Those arguing against assisted dying are doing so on the back foot.

    Which makes me wonder what precisely the principle is that MPs (and the wider public) agree with. One of the difficulties with all this is the strange bedfellows each of us might find ourselves with, where the thing we agree or disagree on is not actually the same in substance even if it is in effect. Definitions throughout this debate have been shaky and unclear – we might think of the word ‘intolerable’, for example, of which more below – and so the grounds on which we agree or disagree can themselves feel shaky and unclear too. The Church of England has felt a little limited in what it has had to offer on all this – something I found when writing a book on despair and dying – which means that much of the official public output, such as it is, has felt rather last minute, unprepared, and shallow. In the church, we’ve forgotten that a vast number of people don’t speak our language, and our words have lost shared meaning.

    Which brings me back to how words in general have lost that shared meaning in society. We have heard a lot about ‘intolerable’ pain during debates, but what exactly does that mean? When life is ‘not worth living’, again, what does that mean? Just as importantly, who makes the decisions about what those words mean, and against what are these meanings measured? As a medic, I feel uncomfortable with saying that some pain is inevitably intolerable, but who am I to determine what that means?

    As a psychiatrist, too, I wonder about exactly what doctors are being asked to make a judgement on. Historically – in medicine and in law – we haven’t really accepted the idea that living vs dying is a legitimate choice for an individual to make for themselves. The Mental Health Act, and various other bits of medical legislation, make that clear – and our practice mirrors that. Meeting someone who is suicidal in clinic or in an emergency situation, I would inevitably err on the side of caution and see this risk as something that is at least an indicator that a deprivation of liberty is appropriate. Yet whilst it is only in very particular circumstances, this proposed Bill changes that, in a way that fundamentally changes the way doctors and patients interact. For all the talk on the content of the Bill, its safeguards and so on, this aspect seems not to have featured nearly enough.

    Yet that also makes me wonder something else about this Bill specifically, which is whether it actually addresses the question its proponents state it aims to. For all the talk of slippery slopes, this Bill claims to only address those with a likely six-month time limit – ignoring, for a moment, the imprecise nature of any such prediction. In my experience, anecdotal though it is, I have infrequently met people with such a limited lime left on this Earth wishing for less – most, in fact, have wanted more. I can think of situations where ‘intolerable’ might make most sense to me – locked-in syndrome, for example, or degenerative diseases, which might be someone else’s tolerable but might be my intolerable – yet these are not included in this legislation. In other words, the arguments around assisted dying might be more palatable when addressing people in the last six months of life, but are they actually practical or necessary in this group of people? If the answer is, in fact, no, then that opens up a lot more questions.

    This debate is not going to go away, and nor is it going to become much easier or clearer. Those of us who have serious and deep concerns about what this does to medical care – where on the one hand I am expected to see all suicidal thinking as suggestive of disorder, whilst on the other hand can now determine someone to be entirely of sound mind despite this thinking – have a duty to engage carefully and thoughtfully with the debate as it progresses, whilst drawing attention to the realities that underpin it. For all the talk of this being one of parliament’s finer hours, I am not convinced – by the principle, or the practical workings out.

     

     

  • Safeguarding and Patriarchy in the Church of England

    by Revd Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    The 253-page Makin report on the Church of England’s handling of the John Smyth abuse case – that has brought about the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury – has been pored over by many people in recent days. But one part that has so far been overlooked is the section that links the abuse with patriarchy.

    In 9.1.9-10 the report describes the patriarchal culture of the camps at which the abuse took place and how this was conducive to that abuse. Makin says that the camps were entirely run by men and a victim states: ‘…it was an incredibly sexist set up, a group of people called lady helpers, many of whom were either wives of the leaders or female undergraduates. These lady helpers were kept out of sight, out of mind, they’d be doing the cooking in the kitchen…’

    The report goes on to say that clinical psychologist, Dr Elly Hanson, also explores how this patriarchal approach… ‘was a conducive cultural and organisational factor,’ describing the impact in relation to this case as follows:

    “Misogyny and patriarchy: men are seen as in authority over women… men are granted more power than women and treated as having more wisdom and insight. As a result, John’s behaviour and justifications may have been given more legitimacy; his focus on young men was not questioned; and potentially valuable perspectives from women were absent.”

    The Church of England still uses its exemptions under The Equality Act 2010 to discriminate against women on the grounds of their sex. For example, it is still permissible for churches to ask only male candidates to apply for a post as a vicar. It is permissible for such churches to limit women’s ministry and prohibit them from preaching to, or teaching, men. It is permissible for such churches to say that they cannot accept oversight of a female Bishop but need to be overseen by a male Bishop such as a ‘flying bishop’ like the Bishop of Ebbsfleet. There are many such churches in London and big university cities and they include All Souls Langham Place, St Helen’s Bishopsgate, St Andrew the Great in Cambridge and St Ebbe’s in Oxford.

    The flip side of this permission is alarming: no one can be considered for training as a priest in the Church if they want women and men to be treated equally and do not accept the institutional discrimination that has been in place for thirty years, ever since women were first ‘permitted’ to be priests. And those who critique this discrimination find it very hard, if not impossible, to progress to senior posts in the Church. Ironically, the arrangements are referred to as ‘mutual flourishing’ which is shorthand for the expectation that both women and those who don’t fully accept women’s ministry can flourish.

    This ongoing discrimination is an injustice to women who, both ordained and lay, work hard throughout the country serving their churches and communities and who deserve to be treated equally with their male colleagues.

    And it is also unsafe.

    A culture which is essentially an old boys’ club is a fertile environment not only for abuse but also for its cover up, as we have seen in the Church regarding the Smyth case. Furthermore, it is an environment in which one entitled group is facilitated in exerting coercive control over another group.

    The Bishop of Newcastle has shown great integrity and courage in upholding safeguarding standards in the Church, not only by calling on the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign but also by publishing a letter she received from him and the Archbishop of York recently, which was patronising and coercive in trying to get her to adopt a certain position on another safeguarding issue relating to John Sentamu.

    Women are called to show ‘gracious restraint’ in the Church and to accept that some of their colleagues have the right to limit their ministry. This practice is essentially coercive, requiring women to accept a diminished status without complaint and gaslighting them, if they resist, by calling them unkind and saying that they are marginalising others.

    Although, as a result of the Makin report, there is an immediate need to arrange for independent safeguarding in the Church, safety will not be fully addressed without changing the culture that has been an old boys’ club for far too long. One helpful step would be to put an end to institutional discrimination by sex. If the Church won’t do this itself then maybe Parliament should consider removing its exemptions under The Equality Act – so that it would be illegal for the Church to continue discriminating.

    And, hopefully, it could then authentically become the spiritual voice for the nation – both safeguarding the vulnerable and treating all people equally.

     

     

  • Iwerne: The Anglican Trojan Horse

    by Canon Jeremy Pemberton, a retired priest living in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. Formerly in parochial ministry for twenty-six years, he was an Honorary Canon of Boga and Ely Cathedrals. Latterly, he was a senior chaplain for the NHS. He is presently undertaking doctoral research into the ecclesiology of the decline of the Church of England

    Delayed by years until it seemed it would never arrive, I think few of us reckoned with the seismic impact of the Makin report. There, behind the piety, and yet somehow magnified by it, was the horror of the sadism and cruelty of Smyth’s abusing in England; there, in a tale that is still yet to be told in full, was the more explicitly sexual exploitation of boys in Zimbabwe, and his shadowy career in South Africa. One hundred and thirty victims at least; several deaths; many lives forever altered, spoiled, and tainted; and an abused family who could never get away from this narcissistic tyrant.

    There has been a good deal of discussion of the extent to which Smyth was a Church of England abuser. His background was Plymouth Brethren, and when the family were expelled from that setting, they moved to another very conservative evangelical context. But John Smyth found a new spiritual home and purpose when he was recruited by Eric “Bash” Nash to help run the camps at Iwerne Minster from 1962 onwards. These camps were notionally under the aegis of Scripture Union, a non-denominational evangelical body, but they were effectively Bash’s own fiefdom. Nash was an ascetical, driven man whose unrelenting focus on his mission attracted enthusiastic followers from the top tier of boys’ public schools. His most famous disciple was John Stott, a Rugby pupil.

    Nash, a Church of England clergyman, had graduated to youth work and his famous ‘Bash Camps’ after two curacies. These took place at Clayesmore School in Dorset, in the village of Iwerne Minster, hence their later title, ‘Iwerne’. Nash’s mission was clear and simple, to take over the Church of England for Jesus, and through it the nation, providing it with the best leadership he could, Christian boys from elite public schools. His recipe was an imperialist hangover: but for them to be their best they needed to be Christians after his kind. And ‘his kind’ was simple, direct, and entirely Jesus-focused. Theology was a dirty word to Bash; ABC was all you needed – in his words, Admit your need; Believe that Christ died for your sins; Come to him as your Lord and Saviour.

    The camps were also defined by some other noticeable characteristics: they were single sex (though there was a girls’ Iwerne, Bash had no interest in it – or girls at all for that matter) and sex was something to be strongly discouraged. Nash himself was a confirmed bachelor, and never displayed any interest in that kind of thing. He thought marriage was a regrettable weakness, and homosexuality abhorrent. The whole structure of the work created a semi-secret world; Iwerne provided spiritual support and pastoral mentoring for boys who were, after all, away from home a lot of the time. Intense ‘personal work’, as it was called, consisted of regular meetings for Bible reading and prayer and self-examination, supported by much letter writing. It was easy to start to depend on these people who seemed to care so much. In between the running of house parties or camps at Christmas and Easter as well as in the summer, much of Bash’s life was on the road, visiting his boys at their schools.

    Questioning at Iwerne was discouraged, as was thinking; faith, discipline, overcoming temptation and sharing the message with others became the prime areas for activity, all washed down with lots of games and sport to tire everyone out.

    So there you have it: a simplistic faith, keeping its believers infantilised and unquestioning; a culture that separates itself from the world, for those who believe and turn to Christ are saved, and those who have not yet or who don’t are damned; intense relationships with mentors and colleagues, and close relationships with others discouraged; a shame culture – for the mentors wanted to impress upon you the importance of repentance for your many failings, and what teenager does not fail many times and in many ways? If you had the temerity to think you were not doing too badly then it might be suggested that you were caught in the sin of pride – it was hard to avoid feeling guilty. All of this was, as with lots of youth organisations, wrapped up in Iwerne’s own language and customs, not easily accessible to the uninitiated. If, at this point, you are thinking it sounds rather cult-like, I would not blame you.

    In the hands of Eric Nash, who, by all accounts was a modest and genuinely humble man, the camps flourished and raised up leaders for the evangelical wing of the Church of England. I have suggested that the camps and camp culture was cult-like. But what came next was much worse.

    When Nash grew old, he passed on the running of the camps to The Revd The Hon. David Fletcher, son of a Labour peer and one of ‘his’ boys. By then Nash had already introduced Smyth, who went to a minor public school (and felt acutely let down by his father that he had not gone to one of the best) into the leadership of the camps. Smyth’s own church at the time was for many years an Anglican one, and he trained as a Reader and sought ordination. The cover provided by Iwerne’s culture gave Smyth his opening. Within the oddness of Iwerne, the charismatic Smyth created a complete and effective ‘cult within a cult’ in which he was free to abuse egregiously. He was a slippery character to be sure: as the report says, a narcissist, entitled, grandiose, lacking empathy, someone who took pleasure in inflicting pain, and a man with a strong sex drive which, unnervingly for a homophobe, directed itself in part to teenage boys and young men. When challenged he would strike back, and hard, and if that failed, he was always ready to turn himself into the victim.

    Iwerne managed to nurture not one, but two very questionable leaders in that generation; Smyth, whose activities while ‘hiding in plain sight’ have been compared to those of Jimmy Savile, and David Fletcher’s younger brother Jonathan, who will come to trial for alleged sexual offences next summer. Smyth and Fletcher J. did not like each other; yet so strong is the bond inside the little society of Iwerne, that when Smyth’s world within a world was falling apart, and the news of his crimes was leaking out, Jonathan Fletcher can be found, according to Makin’s report, defending him and trying to hush things up.

    In the period 1980-2010 Iwerne, while seeming to continue as normal, was living through two major changes, one external and one internal. First, in the Church of England, the church of which most Iwerne participants were a part, the increasing dominance of evangelicals meant that men from that tribe, including those raised inside Iwerne, were ordained, and, by sheer force of numbers, started to be appointed to senior positions. In a way, this was the vindication of Eric Nash’s strategy. The fly in the ointment was that men who reached those positions were obliged by the demands of the church as a whole to grow beyond the childish and unnuanced theology of Iwerne, which made them suspect for those who kept alive the flame of Bash’s ‘ABC’. This meant that the church had leaders, or certainly some, who had not truly been raised in the historic Church of England but through a parallel closed society, and who did not instinctively understand or value Anglican theology, liturgy, history, or pastoral theology. When you are taught that Christianity is at heart all about the saved and the lost, and that you have the insight to distinguish between them here and now, then the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, the polity of being a national church, and the practice of parochial and pastoral ministry in all its complexity, subtlety, and opportunity is rather lost on you.

    The second sequence of events, invisible to most in this period, concerned the huge threat posed by Smyth. When his appalling crimes started to become known in 1982, those clergy to whom these things were reported kept the whole business to themselves. When Mark Ruston, the vicar of the Round Church in Cambridge, and a greatly respected preacher and leader, wrote his first report that year and began to circulate it to some chosen colleagues, he was clear that he understood the law to have been broken by what Smyth had done, and cited the Offences against the Person Act of 1861 section 47: assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Rather than report this to the police, these men managed this privately for one overwhelming reason – protecting the reputation of the camps. The correspondence between them is littered with concern above all for what any scandal, should Smyth’s activities get out, might do to ‘Gospel work’. Their job, as they saw it, was reputation management, not justice. They were also deeply concerned for John and Anne Smyth and wanted to help them. And the victims of his crimes? There is, in the reports from that time and in the letters between the leaders, more than a whiff of victim blaming. Smyth, of course, encouraged this by saying that all the complaints from the boys and young men were exaggerated. The victims who started to speak were not really listened to and believed – not, that is, until one attempted to take his own life because he could not face another beating. But their needs were never prioritised. Camp, and ‘the work’, had to be protected at all costs.

    Even when Smyth had been forced to resign from camp, his friends and erstwhile colleagues from the Iwerne network clustered round to help him relocate and start a new life. Coded warnings were sent ahead, but he made it to Zimbabwe and then South Africa and was supported financially by UK and other sources in what Makin calls a ‘lavish lifestyle’ from then until he died in 2018.

    The ‘management’ of Smyth and his criminal activity was complex and multi-layered, but as it began to break down, information leaked out to Church of England clergy beyond the Iwerne network, and even bishops. Yet, somehow, even with victims starting to come forward, no one really grasped the enormity of the crimes before them and acted with the perseverance needed to stop him. Not until after 2010 are proper reports laid before the police and, even after that, poor co-ordination between county police forces and the church meant that Smyth remained at large.

    One of the trustees of the Titus Trust, which ran the Iwerne camps after 1997, acknowledged, in her submission to Makin, that she had failed to report abuse because “of a misplaced loyalty to the Iwerne regime”. That is the point: loyalty to the Iwerne regime. Loyalty to that above all else; loyalty to Iwerne above the demands of justice, charity, love, or truth. Loyalty to that regime, even, ironically, above doing what Jesus would have done.

    That regime, built as it had been on its thin gruel of a theological basis, its snobbery and elitism, and its neglect of the richness of the tradition of the Church of England, had the temerity to market its camps as giving a chance for boys to find out about “The Christian Faith”.  The ocean depths of the faith; of prayer, of thought, of service, of social engagement – none of that was offered. Just a simple ‘gospel’ message, disembodied and uninculturated, and a lot of unpleasant manipulation of vulnerable young men masquerading as pastoral care until they were entangled in Iwerne’s clutches.

    I went to Iwerne to help for two summer camps in the mid 1970s. I was twenty years old and at university. I didn’t like it; it seemed childish and creepy at the same time. Personal pressure was put on me by David Fletcher to keep coming, and that solidified my decision to having nothing more to do with it. When I was there, I saw and heard nothing amiss, and I had no personal contact with either John Smyth or Jonathan Fletcher. But I think my instincts to steer well clear were well advised.

    Theology that makes shame one of its core virtues is no Christian theology at all. The bodily and sexual dishonesty of Iwerne was almost limitless. Bodies were there to be taxed and driven in endless sport, and the world of feeling was to be avoided – it was as if bodily existence itself was an inconvenient accident. The tenderness of the incarnation was trodden underfoot by the transactionality of a two-dimensional salvation. One of the summers I went to Iwerne my visit followed some days of singing at Salisbury cathedral. It felt like taking myself away from the beauty of holiness and into a wasteland. I was told off for singing and told off for talking to the girls in the kitchen – but then, Iwerne was weird about sex. I recall being told, in a talk on sex to senior campers, that what you were looking for in a wife was someone who would be “an angel in the kitchen and a devil in bed.” I thought it was messed up misogyny then, and still do now.

    Overly negative about masturbation, fretful about any engagement between the sexes, terrified of real women, utterly neurotic about homosexual attractions and love, Iwerne’s sickness was played out in the distorted libidos and anxiety-laden fumblings of its devotees. The fear of sinning loomed over bodies in general, and participants in the camp in particular. Iwerne’s legacy of fear, homophobia, and inconsistency still fuels the culture war around Living in Love and Faith.

    At its worst, Iwerne was a haven for a vile abuser and criminal. That its alumni, products of a para-church organisation with questionable theology and loyalty to the Anglican tradition, have risen so high in the life of our church, either as leaders or prominent parochial ministers, is our tragedy. It will be our folly if we don’t see what has been done, and fight to recover the breadth of the Church of England, and its traditions, and its social and cultural engagement, so that, even if much diminished, we can again be a church for the nation, and not an incomprehensible and morally suspect oddity.