7th April 2021
The Revd. William Taylor
c/o St Helen’s Church
Bishopsgate
London
Dear William,
I was deeply shocked and saddened by your announcement on Palm Sunday. Your apologies on Easter Sunday, while necessary and in some ways welcome, did not address any of my three concerns.
First, we are greatly privileged in this country to be part of an established, national Church, with all the opportunities and protection that brings: not least representation in parliament and official recognition and status. My family and I lived in a working Vicarage for fourteen years, during which a number of families came to faith simply by knocking at our door.
With that privilege comes responsibility. The Church of England is for all. Not just Christians; not just Evangelicals; certainly not just members of some clique or friends of the Vicar’s. Thus every public service is for all, an advertisement (for good or ill) of what we believe and the love we have been charged with spreading to the world. Every detail of every public Anglican service should therefore be conducted with an eye – and ear and heart – for the person who might just, that one time, wander in from the street to hear what this Christian message is all about. Are we welcoming and friendly? Is it obvious when to stand and sit? Are the hymns easy to sing?
Some years ago I attended St Helen’s Church and was appalled to hear a notice about an event for “inviting our pagan friends”. I put it down to the inexperience of someone making an insufficiently-vetted announcement. You talked much on Palm Sunday of the “leadership culture” at St Helen’s: it now seems evident that this attitude must come from the top. If even I, a life-long Christian and associated with Evangelicalism for most of it, didn’t know the names of these friends you defend from some unheard-of charge and what various acronyms stand for, what is the complete outsider to make of all this jargon?
If I had turned to your church, for that one time in my life, seared with some recent bereavement or smarting from redundancy, depressed because of long lockdown or perhaps full of joy at new freedoms and having heard of Easter and wanting to find out more… and heard either of your messages, I would have fled as fast as I could in search of the nearest mosque or temple or pub able to offer me a more inclusive welcome.
To use your position as priest, on a Sunday morning, from your pulpit, to address what must strike the baffled outsider as some petty, personal, political concern of some closed and private group, is an abuse of that position and privilege which communicates volumes about the concerns of St Helen’s Church in general and its leadership in particular.
And your apology on Easter Day raises more questions than it answers. It is now clear that you made the earlier announcement on Palm Sunday without consulting either your churchwardens or your staff team – even suggesting you may be in the habit of doing this – and inevitably therefore raising doubts about your judgement and accountability. You must be aware that one of the reasons Jonathan Fletcher was able to abuse for so long was because he prided himself on his “benign dictatorship.”
Secondly, I was deeply troubled by your claim that “our safeguarding team here at St Helen’s takes all concerns seriously”. Some years ago a member of your church disclosed to the St Helen’s leadership that she had been abused by someone employed by my elderly father, coming into our home every day as his carer. Not until someone answering the abuser’s description turned up at your church (some two months or so later) did you bother to contact us – for information for your own protection – which is when you revealed this allegation. You thus did nothing to warn us of this risk for several weeks, allowing an abuser to visit someone’s home in which were several young people, at least two of whom were very vulnerable. You were concerned when someone chancing to resemble the abuser happened to visit your church once, in a crowded space and posing almost no threat to anybody; but completely indifferent to a known abuser spending every day in a private home, where the risk to several people was very high.
This is not taking safeguarding seriously.
Grave though these two concerns are, my third causes me far more grief.
You make much of your sympathy for Jonathan Fletcher’s victims, claiming, for instance, that “our concerns are, and have been throughout, first and foremost, for those damaged by Jonathan… And our deepest sympathy is and has been with the victims.”
You and I share an acquaintance. Many years ago you told me that, in your Christian discipleship and development, you owed him a very great deal: I believe he gave time to read the Bible with you, on a weekly basis, at a formative time for your Christian faith. You considered him then a close enough friend to invite, with his wife and young family, to stay at your parents’ home in the West Country. You have several times enjoyed hospitality in his. You have known him for around forty years.
Last September you were formally informed that this longstanding friend of yours had been a victim of multiple physical, sexual and emotional abuses from Jonathan Fletcher for decades, since his early teens; that this had caused him extensive psychiatric injury, loss of income, severe depression and suicidal ideation; that the abuse had been detrimental not only to his career but also to his wife and family. You and your PCC were told this in an official capacity because Jonathan was employed by St Helen’s Church while abusing him.
Three other churches and their Vicars were also given this same information. One church offered the victim and his family unlimited counselling. The Vicar of another responded with shock and sympathy, and reported to the Diocesan officer who also offered support and counselling. The last, the smallest church, was the most impressive by far: the church Safeguarding Officer’s name and contact details can be found with one click on the church’s website, along with the Vicar’s own personal telephone number. As soon as the Vicar received the news he took immediate professional advice to ensure that it was appropriate and acceptable for him to contact the victim; he then expressed deep sorrow and sympathy, not just to the victim himself but to his family, for all the damage done to them over the years; he offered his personal help and support; he thanked the victim for coming forward; and he then wrote by hand to both him and his wife expressing his own great sorrow, recognising the very considerable hurt Jonathan had done to him, his wife and his whole family and reiterating again that he was at their service, both personally and pastorally. This, from a stranger who did not know the victim or anyone in his family.
From St Helen’s Church, that claims to care so much? (Other than the required acknowledgement of receipt, to a third party, “without any admission of liability whatsoever.”)
From you, the Rector, a long-standing friend of the victim’s who once recognised the debt you owed him, your wife also knowing his wife well enough to have asked her to speak at St Helen’s?
A resounding nothing. No note. No telephone call. No sympathetic email or letter. No expression of anything at all whatsoever. The sound of a still small silence.
So what exactly do you mean when you say your concern is for the victims, and your sympathy is with them?
What does that mean? If anything?
In deep sorrow,
Anne Atkins
How refreshing to read a ‘real life’ Christian perspective on this dreadful saga. We sadly
expect duplicity nowadays from our politicians but our expectation is still that church leaders will meet the far higher biblical standards.
I disagree. “Judge not lest you be judged.” Oh and a mention of Jesus would have been welcome, never mind forgiveness!!
God alone has the right and will judge all of us, and so Jesus warned his hearers to recognise the danger of looking to the sins of others while neglecting to recognise our own failings. This is about the danger of a wrong individual attitude rather than a morally correct calling out of harmful behaviour and contending for justice on behalf of others in human interaction. Justice can only happen if people are prepared to speak up when they see wrong behaviour.
So if you’re suggesting that it’s right to look the other way and keep silent when Christians display bad attitudes or intentionally abuse other people, I think you’re effectively endorsing the potential corruption of every Christian church or organisation.
Why are you assuming that the author’s statements are “real life”? We have not heard the other side.
T’would be good if we did hear the other side. I’d imagine it’s an answer that the congregation of St Helen’s will eagerly want to hear, and too those involved in the ReNew network. If it is true (and I have no reason to doubt Anne) then I would have thought people would want to seriously reconsider their links with William Taylor.
Its fair enough to have no reason to doubt Anne. I have no reason to doubt any of the people involved. However, I note from her post below that she didn’t give permission for her letter to be published on this site, so the venue may be elsewhere.
I appreciate that the main thrust of Anne Atkins letter comes later. She has a complaint against the leadership of St Helens that they failed to properly safeguard. I expect they will respond in due course, although I do wonder whether this website can be the proper forum for such a response.
I am not sure why she chose to raise other issues earlier on in her letter, particularly her doctrinal differences with the leadership of St Helens. But since she did, I suppose we can comment: No, it isn’t reprehensible for a minister to tell people to “invite our pagan friends to a service”. There is nothing wrong with referring to those who have not committed their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ as “pagans”. Jesus himself makes that clear.
And to say that the Church is “for all, not just Christians”, is only true in one sense – the message that all have sinned and must turn to Christ to be saved or they will suffer hellfire is indeed a message for all.
Dear MichaelA
You seem to have failed to grasp:
1. The purport of my letter.
2. The purpose of the Church of England.
3. The elegant construction of an infinitive in the English language.
And no, this is certainly not the proper forum: nobody asked my permission to post my letter here.
Anne Atkins
🙂
AA
Michael, those of us in the English evangelical world who have come to hear of the Jonathan Fletcher scandal over the last couple of years must all share dismay at the manner in which his former colleagues and friends have mostly kept silent. As usual it is the intent to cover up, or ill-conceived attempts to spin the story, which shed a lot of light on the attitudes which will have contributed to and allowed the alleged wrongdoing to happen in the first place.
If you want to listen to a first hand description of what happened, listen online to the interview between Glen Scrivener and Lee Furney (who was himself a victim of Fletcher’s alleged bullying). Another helpful analysis can be found from Peter Sanlon in an interview called ‘Learning from the Smythe-Fletcher abuse: Mortification of Spin’. If you do an online search you should find both interviews, or you can find them via the Anglican Mainstream website.
Hi Don, I have actually been following the issue for some time now, both directly online and through communications with friends in England.
I see your post as presenting only one side of the story (out of several sides, I might add). I suspect that some of those who seek to throw mud at others for alleged “lack of action” are actually trying to deflect from their own lack of action in the past, or score points on other issues. That’s not directed at Anne Atkins, BTW.
“The Church of England is for all. Not just Christians;”
In one sense, this is true, however not in the sense Anne Atkins appears to mean. The Church is open to all to hear the message of salvation, so that they may turn from their wickedness and live, but it does not promise any salvation to those who refuse to repent of their sins. The Book of Common Prayer which embodies the teachings of the Church make that quite clear.
Anne Atkins has the advantage of writing with considerable authority because for most of her life she has moved in the circles inhabited by the likes of Smyth, Fletcher and Taylor. She has seen at first hand the way in which those brought up on a diet of assumed privilege charm, coerce and to be blunt, bully in order to get into positions of influence. When Anne writes with ‘deepest sorrow’ she actually means it. She has personally come across those who have been wounded by the likes of the men named above and it is heartbreaking. What happened with Taylor’s disgraceful public ‘dissing’ of the members of the Independent Advisory Group was simply one more manifestation of the ‘fear culture’ described throughout the report. There, for all to see, was an abuse and abusive misuse of Scripture from one who would pride himself on being a ‘faithful Bible teacher’. Most folk in the United States will not be familiar with the elitist Establishment which still holds great sway in Britain to the detriment of the Gospel. Sadly there is a darkness which lies at the heart of English Anglican Evangelicalism, and as the light of truth shines into it, more will be exposed. We can only hope and pray it will be met with genuine repentance and change, which must include some of these leaders stepping down from their leadership roles for the sake of God’s people and his glory.
Thank you, Melvin, for explaining the truth of the situation to us. I echo your call for repentance and change, without which an even greater judgment is sure to ensue.