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Tag: transparency

  • The Cost of Calling: Then and Now

    by the Rev’d Chantal Noppen – National Coordinator of the Inclusive Church Network, North-East based Anglican Priest and member of General Synod for Durham Diocese

    Seventeen years ago, a woman priest was told she would receive zero maternity pay because she might “take the money and run.”

    The assumption was clear: motherhood made her suspect. Her vocation was conditional. At no point in her three years of training had anyone from her diocese spoken to her about maternity provision, even though she had given birth to a baby in her second year of training and was pregnant when she was ordained deacon.

    As she began her curacy: “The first thing the Diocesan Secretary told me was that I would receive my full stipend throughout my maternity leave. I was delighted by the simplicity and generosity of this which I felt reflected my own commitment and a relationship of trust between clergy and Diocese. However, the next day he called me back and said he was very sorry but having consulted with other Dioceses we did in fact have a standard maternity policy which had been adopted from ‘standard business practice’.

    “What this meant was that I received no maternity pay at all. The ‘standard policy’ he referred to (but had 24 hours earlier been completely unaware of) meant that as I had been an ’employee’ for less than 12 months at the time of the leave, I was not entitled to any maternity pay. A clause designed to stop people exploiting maternity pay in the business world perhaps – but a slap in the face when you’ve just given your whole life to God and the service of God’s church in ordination. I was not an employee. Did anyone really feel I was going to take the money and run?”

    Because she had been an actual employee while training part-time for ministry, she was fortunate enough to qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay. Those training full-time were not in this position.

    Two years ago, I co-authored an independent audit of diocesan maternity provision across the Church of England. The report documented inconsistency, opacity and, in some cases, failure to implement the national guidance issued four years earlier. Over 100 recommendations were made. Some dioceses have since improved their policies. That is genuinely welcome.

    But the deeper question remains: what does our system reveal about the actual value of women? The woman whose experience opens this story writes “I felt like as a woman my job was to do it all – to prove it could all be done. It never crossed my mind at the time to ask for more help, better provision or new ways of doing things.”

    At General Synod I asked about the financial provision behind our theological commitments. From 2019–2023 the Church Commissioners spent on average £497,000 per year on stipend and working costs for the four Provincial Episcopal Visitors, plus £67,500 annually in housing costs. The same body provides no funding specifically in support of the ministry of ordained women.

    The only national funding stream directed toward women’s development in 2023 was £73,000 from the Women’s Continuing Ministerial Education Trust, administered by the Archbishops’ Council, not the Commissioners, and available to lay, ordained or religious women, in both the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church. This Trust is independent, and the CofE’s direct involvement is purely through some MinDiv support administratively. So we’re actually looking at over £550,000 versus nothing.

    Budgets are theology with spreadsheets.

    For thirty years we have structurally underwritten dissent. We have not structurally underwritten parity. We safeguard the inequitable status quo and struggle to raise up The Other. Justice isn’t cushioned.

    The maternity audit showed similar asymmetry at diocesan level. National guidelines were issued in 2020, yet implementation varies widely. In some dioceses maternity provision is clearly communicated and proactively managed. In others it depends on local interpretation, overstretched individuals or informal knowledge. While I have not done a similar audit on menopause policies and support, I have heard anecdotally that the same is true there. With the added aspect of the menopause being a far more uncomfortable topic to discuss openly, whereas women having babies is a bit more ‘acceptable’ to acknowledge.

    Policies may exist on paper, but the support to implement them and accountability if they are not, is missing. When I transferred part of my maternity leave as shared parental leave to my partner, whose NHS employer processed it smoothly, my diocese nearly failed to implement its own policy. Papers were misfiled. Approval came ten days before the transition was due. This stress was entirely avoidable.

    These are not dramatic scandals. They are accumulations of inequitable cost. They create stress at moments when clergy are already stretched.

    There is also what we do not measure. We lack robust national data on how many women are steered towards self-supporting ministry, house-for-duty posts, or part-time roles that in practice require full-time emotional and pastoral labour. We know this pattern exists. We hear it repeatedly. But without data, the system remains conveniently deniable.

    Part-time pay rarely equates to part-time expectation.

    Culture compounds structure. Male clergy often receive visible parish care when they become parents (or just arrive in a parish). Women encounter suspicion about their commitment. During maternity leave, some are strongly discouraged from maintaining friendships within their congregations, creating isolation at precisely the moment community is most needed. Add neurodivergent literalism or rigid interpretations of “boundary,” and what might be intended as good practice becomes damaging exclusion.

    None of this is catastrophic in isolation. Together, it is exhausting. It impacts mental health and well-being, and constantly adds burden and cost to day-to-day existence.

    It would be easy to frame this as resentment. It is not. It is about reciprocity.

    When women were first ordained, significant institutional resource was provided for those who could not accept that development. Generous financial settlements were negotiated. Housing was provided. Pensions protected. Some left for Rome. Some later returned. The Church absorbed that cost and continues to do so.

    Women, meanwhile, continue to have to argue and negotiate for clarity around maternity provision diocese by diocese, to have to justify childcare, part-time ministry, and shared leave. Women have absorbed the cost. We’ve been constantly treated as second rate and have to prove ourselves continually in a way that men are not required to.

    If we believe women are equally called, then structural equity is not an aspirational extra. It is an ecclesiological necessity.

    The 2024 audit prompted some positive changes. Several dioceses revised policies before publication. Others have committed to clearer communication and better provision. Scrutiny can work. Transparency and accountability work.

    But transparency must go further. We need national data on patterns of deployment. We need honest examination of whether women are disproportionately steered into precarious or under-remunerated roles. We need systems that do not rely on personal resilience, goodwill, or quiet endurance.

    Motherhood is not a deviation from priesthood. Shared parenting is not radical. Women’s bodies are not a pastoral inconvenience. Gender is not a spiritual failing.

    The question is no longer whether change is possible. It is whether we have the will to pursue it beyond the minimum required to avoid embarrassment.

    We often speak of mutual flourishing. Mutuality requires reciprocity. Flourishing requires investment.

    If our financial structures still cushion objection more consistently than they sustain embodiment, what does that reveal about whose vocation we are most anxious to protect? Who do we more value?

    That is not a rhetorical question.

     

     

  • 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.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • 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.

     

     

  • 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.

  • Trust and Transparency – it’s Time for Change

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington and a consultant to the LLF Implementation Pastoral Guidance Working Group

    Every so often, it’s no bad thing for institutions to take a step back and ask themselves some searching questions about the state of things. How are we perceived? Where might the obvious and less obvious issues lie? What are we doing well, and what are we doing not so well? To what extent are we achieving what we hope to achieve and where can we do better?

    It feels to me that the Church of England is well overdue this kind of stock take. We seem to be an institution quite heavily invested in (at least what we think are) contemporary theories of management and leadership, yet it seems fascinating that we don’t – at least publicly – invest in the quite simple forms of self-critical review that would really help us in our mission and ministry.

    A particular example of where things quite simply are not going well for us in the Church of England is in the area of transparency. Transparency is absolutely key to effective institutions – and this is ever more the case. It’s a complicated business – we might think that we are being transparent, yet if the perception is that we’re not, then we have a problem. Transparency is linked to so many other things – questions of transparency cast light on how decisions are being made, and who makes them, and also say something about who we are, or who we believe that we are, as a church. An institution that lacks transparency might be superficially strong and ensure power stays in certain hands, but this is no serious way to go about business, and is simply building up trouble for the future. I fear this is the track we are currently on.

    In writing this, I know that there will be people who immediately get defensive and angry that their best intentions are being questioned. There are hundreds of good and serious people in the church – from bishops to church employees – who are doing their best and doing so with integrity. As a church, we have to move away from our current position, where any challenge is taken as a personal attack – and perhaps, too, those of us who do find the church’s lack of transparency increasingly frustrating need to find new ways of addressing our concerns. But what seems clear, from even the briefest of surveys of those who express frustration at the way the church is currently run, is that part of the problem is that there is nowhere to address those concerns – and any concerns that are expressed fall on deaf ears and, frequently, slammed doors. One of the reasons, perhaps, why the sessions of Questions at meetings of General Synod are so fraught is that this can feel like one of the few places where such concerns can be spoken and, sometimes, heard.

    Combined, then, with this lack of transparency, is a sense of almost total, paralysing powerlessness amongst ordinary churchgoers and clergy. It is absolutely the case that many now speak of ‘the church’ as though it is an entity which does things to them, rather than of which they form a part. And who can blame them?

    Many years ago, well before I was ordained, one of the little games I liked to play was to try to get to the bottom of who, precisely, was issuing statements as ‘the Church of England’. ‘The Church of England said X’ was a common refrain, and one that was as meaningless then as it is now. It was surprisingly difficult to find out the answer on occasion – it still is. Yet how, and why, has this situation been allowed to continue?

    I’m not a fool – I understand that there is the need for occasional careful comms management, and that there is a complexity to some decision-making which can pass a mere curate like me by. Yet our lack of transparency is not an occasional concern – it’s our regular modus operandi. Decisions made and communicated by ‘the church’ are more often than not mired in some kind of mystery – and with little opportunity for constructive feedback or comment. There seems to be an almost iron-willed refusal to let the light into these decision-making processes, and whilst there are always leaks about what is ‘really going on’, this is quite simply an inadequate way of running any institution – and certainly one that is built on the foundation stone of truth. We need only look to the last few weeks to get a glimpse of this reality. And the institution’s far-too-frequent use of silence is deafening – and dangerous – as is the refusal to put our hands up when we get things wrong.

    The thing is, until we admit that there is a problem, nothing is going to change. I know that it’s frustrating for senior people to hear irrelevant nobodies like me carping on about the problems in the system, but just on occasion, it might be worth listening to us – and I’m not alone. It’s without doubt that the Anglican Twittersphere is – just on occasion – a hellhole, but might we not start to ask questions about why that is? Institutions in which people feel empowered do not have senior leaders taking to social media to raise concerns. There is a genuine problem, here, and it’s time people who can started to do something about it.

    As a church, we need to commit ourselves to undertaking a serious spiritual health check. For all the warm words, our church culture is still one of deference – albeit not necessarily one in which that deference is traditionally oriented. We are expected to have decisions made about us without us, and not to complain about them. We are expected to wait for statements about issues of genuine concern – sometimes for months – and then be grateful for the scraps that are issued. We are expected to simply accept new and bewildering funding formulas rather than play any serious part in their design. We are expected to trust and respect an institution – but those two things are, quite properly, earned.

    Of course, this will all likely be dismissed as the complaints of an awkward nobody. Yet I truly believe that if we don’t do this, then the current period of bloodletting in the church is not going to simply fade away – although the church might. The risk, of course, is that the more transparent we are, the clearer it will become that our structures are not fit for purpose, that our accountability leaves a lot to be desired, that our laity and parish clergy – far from being empowered – are frequently left raging against a machine that doesn’t appear to either hear or care about them. But that is a risk worth taking, because most of us who are frustrated by how things are want the church to be better, not destroyed.

    It takes courage to name a problem if you’re in charge – much easier to buy into the Emperor’s new clothes. If we are truly committed to being a safe and healthy church, it’s time to drop the comfort of denial and get on with building something better.

  • Time for the Church to Take Transparency Seriously

    Dr Sharon Jagger is a researcher and lecturer in Religion at York St. John University

    As a feminist researcher, I have spent several years exploring the experiences of women priests in the Church of England. It has been my privilege to talk in depth with 27 ordained women, at different stages of their careers and from different traditions in the Church. Through their experiences I have learned a great deal about women’s relationship not just with the priesthood but also with the institution of the Church.

    Perhaps you feel that this topic is over, and that – given the Church’s need to provide serious responses to institutional racism and calls for equality and inclusion for LGBTQ+ people – we should just move on. The Church of England settled on a structural compromise allowing two positions to be supported: we are ordaining increasing numbers of women, and at the same time structurally accommodating those who oppose women in the priesthood. This may seem like a contradiction, but after 30 years the worms are safely in their cans.

    But my research shows that women priests still face significant challenges and barriers in the Church because of their gender. The structural arrangements put in place in 1992 were flagged at the early stages of their implementation as unsatisfactory and discriminatory (see Monica Furlong’s edited book, Act of Synod, Act of Folly). The structure that limits women’s ordained ministry in the Church was agreed to be open ended and even permanent, but it by no means provides a resolution. The debate is merely in stasis.

    Most parishes support women’s ordained ministry, but some remain unable to accept women priests or bishops, and are led by male clergy who believe the priesthood is a male role. The Church has formal arrangements that allow such parishes, for theological reasons, to request oversight from gender traditional bishops and make a case for male-only priestly ministry (these arrangements were updated in 2014 when women were able to become bishops). After consultation, Parochial Church Councils (PCCs) may vote on a resolution like: ‘This PCC requests, on grounds of theological conviction, that arrangements be made for it in accordance with the House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests’. The number of parishes with such resolutions currently stands at 590 (figures are for 2021), a steady increase on previous years.

    These arrangements may be well-known to some but they are not well understood across the Church. My research also suggests there is a ‘quietness’ around the continuing division on women in the priesthood – a silence partly guided by the notions of ‘good disagreement’ and ‘mutual flourishing’. Whilst I argue there is a need for the Church to re-consider its arrangements because of the harm done to women in the priesthood, a more specific and urgent problem has developed.

    A recent Twitter thread has highlighted – not for the first time – the ongoing concern over lack of transparency in parishes that have voted for the above resolution. This conversation caught my interest because it chimes with stories ordained women shared with me in my research. The Twitter post argues that a significant number of churchgoers are unaware of their own church’s position regarding women’s priestly ministry, since it is not always made public on websites and through other communications. Newcomers may not be made aware of the views held by the leadership, and how that affects practices in their church. Indeed, they may not even realise that divisions in the Church regarding women’s ordination still remain.

    My research confirms there is often a lack of transparency. One ordained woman told me a painful story about her journey to priesthood that stalled late in the process when she learned that the vicar of the church where she worshipped was a member of Forward in Faith (an umbrella organisation that opposes women’s priesthood), and would not support her vocation. Despite this knowledge being crucial for her formation and the discernment and selection process, as she pursued her call to the ministry there was never any explicit explanation given by her vicar of his theological objections to women’s ordination. This silence meant she had to start the process again, after joining a different church which wholeheartedly supported the ordination of women. Such practices do not conform with the Church’s 2014 commitment, that ‘the Church of England is now fully committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender.’ (Guiding Principle 1)

    To complicate and expand this further, even ordained women do not always know where male colleagues stand. Another woman priest I interviewed describes one clergy colleague who does not accept the priesthood of women as ‘wonderful’ and ‘supportive’, but that ‘you would know nothing of the position he takes from anything he says or does.’

    This avoidance of openly discussing theological views and policies on women’s ministry may be a lingering legacy of the division women’s ordination caused in 1992, when the Synod finally voted in its favour by the tiniest of margins in the House of Laity. An Anglo-Catholic woman priest, another interviewee in my research, believes there remains unresolved division that still causes anxiety, resulting in withdrawal and reluctance to continue the debate on both sides. She says:

    People tend to be quite quiet about it because the experience of women’s ordination was quite traumatic, whichever side you were on . . . only talking about things obliquely . . . rather than open debate. Or you know only after the third gin and tonic . . . It’s both a curse and a blessing.

    The quietness is a blessing because it allows women clergy to get on with their ministry without being the perpetual focus of disagreement. But it is a curse because the current arrangements become crystallised without proper scrutiny, discrimination is hidden, and women may feel unsure of their status in parts of the Church. Not knowing whether a church or its leadership oppose women’s ordination is disempowering. It restricts agency and it disrupts an individual’s ability to choose an appropriate worship environment. I speak from experience: it is a shock to learn by chance that the church leader expected to have a hand in your human flourishing believes your gender determines what you can and cannot do and makes decisions accordingly. Lack of transparency is fundamentally unethical.

    The Twitter thread goes on to suggest some solutions: Parishes that vote for the above resolution should publish their position clearly and visibly on their websites, and the Church should publish its own easily accessible national list. Some of this information is available in various places on the internet. Forward in Faith, for example, provides a list of parishes it supports in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. But one must know where to look and be aware that even though there is little open debate, there are places in the Church where women’s ordination is not accepted.

    Theological beliefs that exclude women from leadership and ordained ministry profoundly affect women’s material, emotional, relational, psychological and spiritual experiences of church life. Transparency is the very least the Church should require where beliefs about gender, and policies and practices that flow from these beliefs, curtail women’s futures and their flourishing.

     

     

     

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