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Tag: Archbishops’ Council

  • A Tale of Two Reports

    by Revd Canon Neil Patterson, Vice-Dean of Bristol Cathedral and Chair of Together for the Church of England

    A little while ago I heard for the first time of the 1995 Board for Social Responsibility report Something to Celebrate: Valuing Relationships in Church and Society. The person to whom I was speaking recalled this as being published at about the time when they were ordained, and as a good thing in its reflection on marriage and relationships, and they wondered what had happened to it. Immediately piqued and slightly unsettled to realise that this report existed, I set about investigating. It was easy enough to obtain a second-hand copy, but also very interesting to discover how it was received by General Synod, and to recognise the remarkable parallel, but different outcome, to the 2023 Archbishops’ Commission report Love Matters. 30 years have seen a sea-change in attitude that is much wider than the over-publicised divisions about homosexuality, and I offer this account as a relief to those of us weary of acting as the proxy for all Church debate around relationships and marriage.

    You see, Something to Celebrate has an awful lot in common with Love Matters, although the more recent report curiously never mentions the former. Both explore the current nature of family life at length, drawing on a wide range of research to recognise the varied shape of families in England today. Both reports commend the quality of relationships rather than their specific form, and recognise that children can be raised well and successfully in different sorts of households. Both commend an open welcome by churches, and various aspects of state support for family life (speaking into rather different times for that). Critically for their reception, both reports deliberately shy away from particularly commending (heterosexual) marriage as the basis for family life. Both reports are long and thorough, and I commend reading them in full (Love Matters is here)

    In public reception, though, the reports fared very differently. The publication of Something to Celebrate in June 1995 was greeted by newspaper headlines with variants of ‘Church backs living in sin’ and, by the time it came to be debated at Synod in November, there was clearly a substantial head of opposition, signalled also by the last-minute resignation of Alan Storkey from the Working Party after they declined to accept his more conservative minority report for inclusion. The Bishop of Liverpool therefore introduced the debate with a good degree of caution. I am not sure if this was normal Synod practice for the time, but the debate was structured as a single block of speeches, at the end of which both a motion to Take Note of the report, and a Motion of clauses, with proposed amendments which had been introduced earlier in the debate, were all voted on.

    The tone was set decisively by George Carey as Archbishop, who thanked those who had worked on the report, but made it clear, to widely-reported applause, that he disagreed on the central point that there could be any equivalence between cohabitation and marriage. Other speakers – including, strikingly, Jeffrey John – criticised what they felt to be the weak theology of the report, but some defended it, including Jim Thompson as Bishop of Bath & Wells. The result was, very unusually, a strong division on the Take Note question, which went to a vote by Houses that registered the significant opposition (23-4; 164-60; 122-104) especially in the Laity.

    The four-part motion offered already included a first clause to ‘strongly affirm…that marriage provides the proper context for sexual relationships and the bringing up of children,’ along with commendation of the report and its specific recommendations. This was presumably because there was already recognition of the need to adopt a more conservative position, and motions to remove this clause failed. An amendment by Pete Broadbent to include reference to the 1958 Lambeth Conference resolutions on marriage and family life passed, meaning that the final motion, passed 428-15, was clearly something of a repudiation of the liberal position expressed in Something to Celebrate. With customary lack of haste, the House of Bishops subsequently published in 1999 Marriage: A Teaching Document which represented something of an official crystallisation of that decision.

    By contrast, Love Matters came out in an age when very little that the Church of England says attracts media attention. The chairs of the Commission, Professor Janet Walker and Bishop Paul Butler, plugged it by an article in the Church Times which drew a single hostile letter for the lack of focus on marriage, and a few disappointed conservative blogs flagged up the same point. But, perhaps deliberately, it did not garner much comment alongside the LLF hullabaloo, in spite of the obvious relevance of a report calling for the Church to value families in all their diversity. As Love Matters was not a Synod paper, it did not come for Take Note, but was presented by a motion for debate in February 2024, commending it across the Church, encouraging the Archbishop’s Council to make practical proposals, and Government also to act. Against these, a single amendment affirming the value of “marriage, especially when loving” was offered by Julie Maxwell.

    The debate on the amendment was not extensive, but it was clear that Dr Maxwell represented the viewpoint held by Archbishop Carey and the strong majority of Synod in 1995, that any report about family life needed to uphold the place of marriage. The Bishop of Durham was happy to accept her amendment, and she was supported by Christopher Townsend, but opposed by Jo Winn-Smith, who argued that it was unavoidably discriminatory. The amendment was pushed to a vote by Houses by the Bishop of Manchester, and fell in all three (8-8-1; 61-81-5; 74-84-8). The debate ran overnight, and in the morning a full commendation of the report by Archbishop Justin was followed by further conservative speeches from members including Matt Beer and Prudence Dailey, concerned by the lack of clarity on marriage. The final vote was therefore also taken to Houses, but passed strongly in all three (23-0-0: 97-30-19; 97-38-12).

    As noted above, it took the House of Bishops four years (fast work by their standards?) to produce Marriage: A Teaching Document in response to the Synod debate on Something to Celebrate. My suggestion is that the very different debate and outcome on Love Matters is an invitation to them to revisit their predecessors’ work of a generation ago, and to consider presenting a theology of human relationships which responds more imaginatively to the great diversity of family situations where love is found in England today, and which abandons the cult of an unreal idea of marriage that has dominated for too long.

  • 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.

     

     

  • Beyond Jay: Here’s What the Response Group and Synod Need to Do for a Safer Church

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

    Three diocesan bishops seek my take, with varying degrees of regularity, on developments in the Church of England’s safeguarding and response to survivors. I’m careful to point out that any views I express are mine, mine alone, and do not represent those of any organisation or group. I neither seek nor receive any funds in the process. So the thinking expressed here is not the only viewpoint, nor necessarily the right one (if such exists). It is simply mine, in a field which is likely to be contentious in the forthcoming Synod.

    The three bishops have each asked what I think of the Jay report. In my view the Jay is undeliverable and, even if it were, would it necessarily result in something better than the current mess? Professor Alexis Jay has done the reverse of what she did in IICSA. The IICSA recommendations were limp and didn’t go far enough. Now she’s gone too far, and by proposing Org A she’s given CofE a possible excuse to slow down the crucial Org B. She is a political naïf, and in my view the recommendations in the Jay report arose perhaps as a form of psychological penance for not being ambitious enough in IICSA. I think this report will set the Church back, not move it forward. If you follow its course logically, then other institutions may seek Org A structures in the name of ‘independence’ and we’d end up with a multitude of safeguarding bodies creating further confusion. I think no amount of Org A, and no amount of expenditure on Org A (which would put current CofE safeguarding expenditure into deep shade) can stand in place of properly designed mandatory reporting in the statutory framework. This is the key. The best course of action the Church could be taking is banging loudly on Home Office doors to argue a case for an end to the ‘potemkin village’ Whitehall is wanting to create and instead to introduce effective mandatory reporting. Whitehall wants mandatory reporting in name only, in a watered-down version of the IICSA recommendation which was already itself a watery version.

    The Church has undoubtedly arrived at a car crash moment. Where does responsibility for this lie? Failed leadership. Synod must remind itself that failure at the heart of the axis of power, represented by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in conjunction with the Secretary-General, has brought the Church to such a desperate situation. Had they resolved their differences with the ISB in a transparent and safe way there would have been no need for the Jay report.

    Let’s turn to the much-needed Org B, which is where I believe focus must be directed. Org B, as an essential body for scrutiny and oversight and the all-important handling of complaints is urgently needed, and is long overdue. The Church must give such a body effective powers if it is to avoid creating another toothless tiger (NSP anyone?). At present I believe the power to place a diocese into special measures lies within the gift of the Archbishop. This happened memorably to Chichester Diocese under Rowan Williams. This is the kind of bite Org B requires. Not the set of rubber dentures which Archbishops’ Council and their NCIs will be looking to manufacture.

    And no veto by an Archbishop. It may well be that one of the places needing such Special Measures might be the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, alongside London Diocese which would seem a prime candidate for emergency action. London is not alone in being crashy, but it’s up there amongst the worst. We only need one diocese placed publicly into Special Measures and any other dioceses currently lagging behind in handling of cases or responses to survivors will tighten up their bootlaces in a weekend. The routine blanking and obfuscation that still persists in some quarters will quickly end.

    And above all it must end within the NST.

    Whatever shape the Archbishops’ Council eventually decides to give to a new shiny ‘independent’ model, the NST must be removed from the grip of the Secretariat. Its days as an arm of the legals and comms of Church House must end. If it is to have a positive future, it must be repurposed, retrained and given a new vision of itself, with independent management which involves survivors, with all our experience and narrative wisdom. The NST leadership must face their own cognitive dissonance squarely and courageously, and recognise that its deployment by Church House in various aspects of reputation management has been disgraceful and dishonest.

    Whatever happens, ‘Delay’ is likely to be the watchword. Delay by design, but also through incompetence and systemic dysfunctionality. One thing is for definite: the CofE must never again allow one individual to hold as much unaccountable power as is currently compressed into the office of the Secretary-General. He has presided over a rotten borough in the NCIs and puppet-stringed the NST to such an extent that it has become almost impossible for survivors to have much trust in the thing. But the problem is not William Nye alone; it’s the inherited system of which he is a part, albeit a big part. We must factor in too, the lack of leadership by the Archbishops, the Lead Safeguarding Bishop and the NST.

    The House of Bishops is an enfeebled house with a poor grasp of these things. What we’ve seen across the past decade is fewer than a handful of bishops speaking out. Alan ‘Elbows’ Wilson knew that any time the media approached bishops on matters ‘survivor related’’, the traffic would immediately be centrally controlled through Church House comms. He ignored this, and spoke directly to journalists without approval from the centralized machinery of the Secretariat. He was past playing safe games with the structure and was happy to be out on the edge speaking truth to its power. He doubtless took many a kicking but it never seemed to upset him. Julie Conalty has been a courageous voice too, often a lone voice highlighting particular aspects of corruption. But I suspect she’s marginalized by a structure which expects all bishops to stay blandly ‘on message’. She needs a few diocesans to step up and publicly support her when she dares to challenge the status quo.

    Bishops must stop being cowed, stop colluding with toxic culture. They must learn to get over their fear of receiving ‘heavy shepherding’ from one or other of the Archbishops when they speak out of turn. If an Archbishop arrives on your door to bully you into submission to the rules of purple enclosure – then stand up to him. If you stick your head above the parapet, you will be marginalised. Learn to embrace this. The likelihood is that this or that particular bit of funding for your diocese will be squeezed. It’s been indicated to me that this is quietly how the culture of collegiate control operates. So the purple enclosure stays on message and lets any missives be handed out by a Lead Bishop who to all intents and purposes seems mostly missing in action as far as survivors are concerned. When a bishop dares to go off-piste and makes an authentic comment, they experience the polite scowl of the institution. But if enough speak out, especially from the top of the Lead trio, then the toxic culture might begin to change.

    Successive lead bishops have discovered they have nothing but rubber levers to work with! The real levers, those of power and any real change, are held by Archbishops’ Council which in turn is heavily controlled by a shadowy Secretariat. The wheels turn slowly because everything is hardwired to move slowly. Just as the structure is hardwired to protect hierarchy and itself. One of the bishops who listens to me recently asked me what I consider to be the three main obstacles to progress. In my view, these are:

    (1) centralised and dysfunctional power which rules an unchecked empire with disastrous consequences. Look at the handling of the ISB members and the way they were closed down at an hour’s notice.

    (2) siloed mindset of the bishops who occupy a ‘me and my diocese’ headspace. There is little public collegiate expression of responsibility and far too much collegiate fear.

    (3) the transparency gap. Too much of the structure is wedded to reputation management and used to hiding stuff. The institution has failed to grasp that transparency is the best route to salvaging reputation.

    I want to end on a positive note, because the picture is not all gloom. Some dioceses have made huge strides. I’ve been supporting one survivor in recent weeks. We sent an initial letter of disclosure to the relevant diocese, and I advised that we should hopefully expect a response within 48 hrs. The reply came within 15 mins! And was hugely positive. Not only did the diocese agree to therapy costs immediately but they are also meeting us in the home geography of the survivor’s town rather than expecting us to make the journey cross-country. The bishop also sent a positive response as soon as he could. I believe dioceses must continue to retain responsibility for the deliverance of good safeguarding and positive response to survivors. And dioceses that are operating out of a handbook that should have been jettisoned a decade ago should be placed into the equivalent of an ambulance that Org B will need to have on standby for just such an eventuality.

     

     

  • 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?

  • The Foundations for Ecclesial Instability: the Rock on the Sands

    by Martyn Percy, a Fellow of King’s College London and Harris Manchester College, Oxford 

    What is the connection between an obscure piece of research commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1990s and the current crisis in the Church of England? The research, mostly conducted by academics with particular involvement from the George Mason University Centre for Global Policy, grew out of earlier research conducted by Ted Gurr at the University of Maryland via the ‘State Failure Task Force’ under the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), later led by Monty Marshall. Gurr and Marshall identified the common ‘problem set’ of issues that were the grounds – shaky or quicksand – that gave rise to instability.  Today, this research finds its practical outcome in the PITF – the Political Instability Task Force.

    Instability is hardly a new problem for churches. Persecution, doctrinal disputes, scandals and heresies have all resulted in some shaking of the foundations.  Moreover, the New Testament itself, and the teachings of Jesus, are often consumed with questions of stability. Jesus’ parable of the houses built on rock or sand, or the more agricultural motifs centred on deep-rooted plants, fruitfulness and growth come to mind. In one sense, the entire basis of Christian faith rests on the paradox of forfeiting security and stability for a life of instability and uncertainty…in order to gain safekeeping. After all, what else is a vocation other than living out risk with no guarantees or assurances.

    That said, we do make these choices for God as individuals. But I may only say ‘yes’ to God as myself. I cannot commit another person to my ‘yes’, however much I hope and pray that they may share the same affirmation. But what happens when, instead of us choosing instability and learning to live with it, this interloper arrives uninvited, and is communal and countrywide? My personal negotiation with instability is one thing. Social and political instability, however, is of a different order. When the foundations of societies are shaking, how do we know if this is an episodic quake that will pass, or something more damaging that will reduce even the strongest foundations to rubble and dust?

    The PITF drew on over a hundred global instability ‘problem cases’ from 1955-2011. The researchers identified several categories of state failure:

    1. Revolutionary and Ethnic wars (emerging from civil strife).
    2. Genocides and Politicides (often rooted in perceived inequalities).
    3. Adverse Regime changes (arising from or leading to civil war).

    The PITF were interested in the common denominators and the cultural, social, climatic and political factors that gave rise to instability which tipped into revolt, revolution and/or violence. Why do regimes suddenly topple, and governments that were elected get swept away like political debris? Readers will have their own view as to whether there is sufficient civil strife in society at the moment to trigger some sort of revolution. I doubt it, though the risks are markedly higher than at the end of the 20th-century, and the current grammar of dissent and protest is perhaps comparable to what was witnessed in the 1960s.

    How might a ‘Polity Instability Task Force’ assess the wobbling churches of late modernity?  For sure, money, sex and power – that unholiest of trinities – afflicts all mainstream denominations. Consider the history, data and the internecine ecclesial wars, and try and name any exceptions. There are internal wranglings and unease over lack of money and its unequal distribution, the method of ‘taxing’ congregations, and how the revenues are spent; over same-sex relations, scandals on clergy and sexual abuse, divorce and remarriage, and gender; and balancing democracy, leadership, management and compliance.

    The original State Failure Task Force was alive to the social, political and cultural conditions that precipitated regime changes. In ecclesiology, the equations are no less complex, but they are slower to resolve. One might say that the major regime changes in ecclesiology are the East-West Schism and the Reformation. But in truth, smaller versions of these global ruptures occur in every generation, some resulting in permanent rifts and then further extended fragmentation.

    However, the cultural ground in which the foundations of mainline denominations sit is no longer stable. The emergence of meritocracy, less deference, mass mobilisation, greater individualism and consumerism in expressions and preferences all conspire to render this ground unstable and shifting. Mapped on to a global scale, sexuality, power and money quickly become enmeshed in North-South, First-World/Developing-World rivalries, with ethnicity and the legacy of empire and exploitation fuelling the complexity. Peter Turchin’s fine End Times (Allen Lane, 2023), explains how regimes rise and fall, and what it is about forms of control and the exercise of power that makes some types of governance especially susceptible to implosion or overthrow. Putin’s foray into Ukraine throws some light on how political disintegration gains traction when power is challenged, and elites lose their authority under the weight of their failures and ensuing disenchantment.

    It is Turchin who also coined the term cliodynamics – Clio being the muse of history in Greek mythology, and dynamics simply the study how and why change takes place over periods of time. Using mathematical models, a cliodynamic approach can predict expansion and retraction in economies, state collapse or implosion, social discontent and even civil wars. While not a perfect science, it can explain how and why institutions and societies disintegrate.

    So, what would cliodynamics and an ecclesial Polity Instability Task Force make of the Church of England at this moment? Several observations are apparent, and will create the conditions for instability:

    1. Major shifts away from more open electoral systems to ones that are more closed, authoritarian and managed systems of control produce boredom and detachment, festering resentment, and may result in speculative conspiracy theories (e.g., we know where all the money goes…).
    2. Elitism, whether it is quasi-monarchical or some ontologised managerialism, will result in a larger critical mass resenting the hierarchies and its powers of rule and decision-making. A lack of accountability, transparency, integrity and humility will also produce calls for regime-change.
    3. Loss or rapid erosion of devolved local powers, assertions of control (e.g., adopt the strategic vision) and penalties for daring to dissent will create a groundswell for secession, in which the exercise of despotic power will only produce tensions between central control mechanisms and those meant to comply.
    4. The collapse of the central governance, unable to manage external complexities and challenges, and unable to fund, manage and resource internal systems of order and control, will tend to question the capacity of the ruling elite to hold authority, power and any ability to govern.

    You might like to ponder how this all fits together with the Church of England and its leadership, and the grass roots. Here the Save the Parish movement is both a symptom and cause of widespread ecclesial dis-ease with the current regime. It has quickly won widespread support, largely due to growing fears over plutocratic-despotic episcopal leadership.

    A plutocracy is a society ruled and controlled by a handful of people who hold great wealth and income. The term combines Greek ploutos (wealth) and kratos (power).  Plutocracy is not a political philosophy so much as the name for a malaise, with the term first coined in English in the 1630s – times of Laudian and Stuart periods of governance, a decade before our own Civil War. The unaccountable and divine right to govern was the issue at stake, over and against the calls for proper democratic structures and political accountability.

    The term plutocracy is normally used critically and pejoratively to warn against an adverse and undesirable social context. Plutocracies are regimes distracted by their own fears and vanities, and quickly lose sight of social responsibility and the causes of poverty and inequality.

    Furthermore, whether left-wing or right-wing, plutocracies can ferment class division and conflict, and encourage individualistic wealth accumulation through competition for resources, replacing subsidised costs that were hitherto allocated on a needs-must basis into an economy of competitive bidding between those who are struggling. Plutocracies can go further, and insist that bids for essential subsidies and funding support now conform to the objectives, vision and goals of the regime and its elites.

    Now, nobody is suggesting for a moment that Bishops or Diocesan Secretaries have great personal wealth through their ecclesiastical preferment. The modern ecclesial plutocracy is more subtle. Diocesan HQ’s, Finance Committees, the Church Commissioners and the National Church Institutions have become the new quasi-baronial powers, whilst the ordinary person in the pew and the local parishes have seen their tax demands (i.e., parish share contributions) grow, whilst accountability and transparency over expenditure has declined.

    In short, demands by the centre for more money paired with less democratic accountability will eventually produce movements like Save the Parish. The elites demanding more and more while giving less and less are perceived to be bureaucratic plutocrats, spending money (not their own, but rather that of the people, laity and churches) on speculative projects and visions rather than supporting local clergy and ministry in parishes.

    The recent debacle over the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) has, for many churchgoers, and quite a number of onlookers, become an indicative sign of a leadership that is plutocratic, despotic and certainly elitist. Indeed, as a model of quasi-monarchical episcopacy, it has been high-handed and anti-democratic. Hiring and firing staff at will; asserting the independence of the ISB some days when it suits the regime to say so, yet on other days treating ISB staff as a subordinate body of subjects with few rights. It suggests a capricious use of power and authority.

    However, since the ISB ‘experiment’ cost Archbishops’ Council at least £500,000, Save the Parish would presumably like us all to know that this money could have been better spent. Or at least this expenditure could and should have been debated. Yet that could only have been achieved through greater democratic accountability, proper scrutiny and auditing, deliberation and examination.

    The Archbishops’ Council does not want that level of transparency. Whoever was in control of ‘Operation ISB’ no longer thought that independent oversight of safeguarding was in their interests or suited other objectives, so they shut it down. Charles I was against fiscal transparency and democratic scrutiny too, and the rest, as they say, was (tragic) history.

    Here we run into the opacity of those who control the money and the power, and are skilled in using the antediluvian structures which provide the reasoning for not being transparent and accountable (i.e., “it is too complex to explain…”; “we’ll need to think about that and then get back to you at our next meeting within the cycle…”; and “that probably needs to be looked at by a different committee…”). We’ve all been on the receiving end of such tropes. Some of us are also fluent in the language.

    The ecclesial scenario sketched above entirely corresponds to the findings of the PITF for the CIA in the 1990s. The Church of England, or rather its leadership, is on the brink. It has been whittling away at the democratic instruments such as General Synod for some time, turning what should be a proper auditorium for debate and deliberation into a theatrical spectacle more akin to party political bread and circus.

    Yet quite suddenly, serious and searching questions over the meaning and interpretation of the word ‘independent’ in safeguarding governance have now called into question the entire direction, structure and running of an ecclesial regime.  The stance of the two ISB board members was simple. They stood up for genuine independence, and advocated for victims of abuse – so they lost their jobs.

    Rather like the solitary ‘Tank Man of Tiananmen Square’ (June 5th 1989) they simply stood in the way of the prevailing power and would not be moved. Yes, they still lost – swept away by the force, assertion and power of a regime in control. But this time we have all been able to witness this action against them, and come to realise it was an action against us all. We have observed a brave act of defiance and the morally-principled and rightful exercise of disobedience. The regime expressed its regret, but has not apologised – indeed told us their actions were necessary and beneficial for our progress. But such assurances from the regime no longer carry weight or conviction; nor do they sound authentic.

    Like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, ecclesial communications and assertions no longer correspond to reality. Serious disenchantment has set in. Real questions are being asked. As with any regime, it finds itself on the brink when its citizens have to choose between unwavering loyalty and compliance – or the dangerous acts of dissent that might be involved in expressing a free mind that seeks better alternatives.

    At the moment, the regime remains in power, controlling the money, media and message. But something stronger than sullen resentment has been born out of this ongoing safeguarding omnishambles. Some now sense a change of mood and some real determination that there must be serious reform and wholesale revolution. True, it will take a lot to raise General Synod from its habitual torpor. And the agenda for the gathering and the set-piece speeches still evidence a politburo in full control of the party conference and the messaging to wider membership. Yet the ennui it breeds is undeniable.

    The Polity Instability Task Force are examining a growing corpus of evidence. There are some significant signs indicating winds of change. The Spirit blows where it wills.