Dear members,
Some of you may be aware that Church Society, along with some of its staff and Council members, has been the subject of some serious allegations made on social media.
The first of these includes some very serious and wide-ranging allegations of bullying and abuse which have been made by one person concerning a number of interactions with different Church Society staff, Council members and others. We have agreed to appoint a suitable external reviewer with respect to these allegations, but the person we had approached is now unable to take this forward, due to their personal circumstances. We are pursuing an alternative reviewer and we hope that the work will be able to begin shortly.
Separately, Church Society has been implicated in allegations of historic and ongoing anti-semitism. The authors of these have been invited to submit a formal complaint to Church Society, along with the evidence for their claims. We are willing to set up a second investigation to consider these allegations, should this be forthcoming.
We wish to assure our members that we will always take complaints made against Church Society, its staff and Council, seriously. Our complaints policy can be found here, along with a form that can be used to make a complaint.
Our goal in these investigations is that the truth shall be made known, that sins shall be repented of, that the wounded shall be consoled, and that we shall learn how to do better in the future.
We ask you all to pray for everyone involved in these processes, and especially for those who are hurting.
Revd Andrew Towner
Chair of Church Society Council
Dr Ros Clarke
Associate Director of Church Society
Fascinating press release.
I am one of the two authors of the Medium post titled “Church Society and Antisemitism: A Failure of Leadership”, published on 12 November 2020, which can be found with a simple Google search. That post includes many factual claims. It falls to Church Society to refute them publicly. It is striking that they have not done so.
Innit.
The above letter/press release was issued without my knowledge or agreement or that of James Mendelsohn and Nick Howard. We only found out about it by accident. This is extremely poor practice by Church Society, especially given that we have tried to engage with its leaders over the issues raised.
In addition, the tone of the letter above dishonestly implies that it is the “serious allegations” that are the real problem rather than the abusive behaviour of its senior leaders. This approach is particularly concerning given that many of the issues I have raised about Church Society have already been demonstrated to be true.
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