John Smyth was a Canadian-born British barrister, actively involved with children in the Anglican Communion through several different ministries. He was the chairman of the Iwerne Trust, which ran the Iwerne camps, where he had access and opportunity to abuse hundreds of children and young men. His abuse was not only sexual but physical, performing sadistic beatings on schoolboys and young men attending these camps, as well as attendees at other Christian groups dedicated to the discipleship of young men. This abuse occurred in England but continued in Africa, when Smyth moved to Zimbabwe in the early 80s and continued to run children’s camps. He moved to South Africa in 2001.
Independent investigations revealed that Smyth inflicted sexual, emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse on at least 100 people. The greatest display of hypocrisy within the Church that Smyth participated in was his role as a lawyer representing morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, prosecuting those accused of blasphemy and immorality. While living in South Africa, he ran the Justice Alliance of South Africa, an organization dedicated to upholding high moral standards in society. He also unsuccessfully opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage in South Africa, claiming that such activity would result in “violence to mind and spirit”. The irony of all this can’t be overstated.
Smyth died before he could be brought to trial.
This past year, the independent review called the Makin Report was commissioned by the Church of England and published this last week, revealing the details on what church authorities knew about the abuse and how they intentionally covered it up or ignored it. Smyth moved to different locations and was allowed to take up posts where he had close contact with young men, even though church leaders knew what was going on. One of those leaders was Archbishop Justin Welby who, in 2013, was informed of Smyth’s abuse but took no action against him. His level of culpability remains to be seen, but he resigned today as Archbishop of Canterbury in a shocking statement.
Though he claimed to take responsibility, much of the statement reads as if he was not so culpable, with hardly an apology but with a pledge to continue entrusting the Church and himself to Jesus Christ. It makes one wonder why this hadn’t happened sooner, when he continued to harbor and abet leaders who destroyed the fabric of Christian morality in the very Christian Church itself. The Smyth case was one horrific example of a leadership style that buries rather than resurrects; hides rather than clarifies; and, frankly, misrepresents rather than speaks the whole truth. This moral failure with regards to Anglicans in England and Africa completely compromises all his leadership and previous pledges from the Canterbury communion towards the majority of the Global South.
Again, the way Abp. Welby dealt with these allegations shows not just an issue with a particular scandal but a recurring practice of burying hard truth and hoping it will go away. It never goes away; truth always comes back to haunt you. That’s the case with the Makin Review and that’s the case with the “Living in Love and Faith” prayers for the blessing of same sex unions in the Church of England– a debacle throughout, in which Welby tried to play both sides and cover up the painful truth that there is no compromise. It’s this desire to stay neutral that, in the end, isn’t neutrality at all. He did nothing when he heard about what Smyth was doing, just like he did nothing to bring discipline to wayward churches and leaders in the Anglican Communion.
The larger debate on human sexuality within the Church of England and increasingly elsewhere in the Anglican Communion is certainly not a case of individual abuse. But with regards to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s “spiritual leadership” of the Anglican Communion, it is spiritual abuse at a corporate level that is damaging countless souls under his care; he has refused to deal with it. In his statement today, he wrote, “It is my duty to honour my Constitutional and church responsibilities, so exact timings will be decided once a review of necessary obligations has been completed.” But where was his duty to honor and defend the Faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3), including the Church’s unbroken biblical teaching on marriage, not only as a bishop but as an archbishop and the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion? So now he resigns for this particular scandal, at this time, in the Church of England—but without regard for the myriad of spiritual scandals he oversaw over his tenure in the See of Canterbury?
Welby’s leaving leaves a lot of questions for the future of the Anglican Communion.
What kind of successor will take his place, and will he or she continue the fracturing or help bring unity based on biblical truth and faithfulness to the unbroken teaching of the Church?
How does this affect Gafcon and the Global South? Does his resignation really matter to them? And what does the See of Canterbury mean for the identity of global Anglicanism, when its highest leader utterly compromised his spiritual and temporal leadership of the Mother Church by aiding and abetting the worst serial abuser in the history of the Anglican Church?
Is this the final nail in the coffin of Canterbury’s post-colonial domination of the Communion?
Isn’t now the time, at this moment, for the Global South and GAFCON to rally the rest of the Communion around repentance? What better moment to proclaim Christ faithfully to the nations and draw other national and regional Anglican churches into the covenantal structures of the Cairo Covenant, ratified in June in Egypt, to carry on the Anglican Communion under biblically-faithful commitments?
Archbishop Welby’s resignation has been a long time coming. What a sad and tragic end to what had been a much hoped for beginning of a return to biblical-faithfulness in the Mother Church. Please pray for the victims of this horrific abuse, and for Anglicans to walk everywhere in the light (I John 1:7-9) as we move forward.
