Historically the Church of England is no stranger to crises: murdered Archbishops, defrocked Vicars, theological divisions. But the crisis that has swept down upon us with the publication of the Makin Report is right up there amongst the worst of them, fully deserving of that overused word ‘unprecedented.’
The report is one of the grimmest documents I have ever read. I suspect all those who have gone through it in detail will have endured sleepless nights, not just at the appalling horror of the abuse but at the combination of plot and inaction that led to decades of cover-up. What the survivors must have endured over the years and be enduring right now is unimaginable.
But just as grim as the content of the report are the recommendations – grim because they contain nothing new. Countless reports have told us that we need to listen to survivors, to report abuse at once, to have greater independence in safeguarding, to be alert to grooming behaviour and so on. And yet we have failed to respond. It is no surprise that in the midst of the horror, the Archbishop accepted he needed to take responsibility and resign. It was an honourable step to take.
But the issue we now need to face is that even such a high profile and symbolic resignation doesn’t solve the problem. On its own, it neither makes us a safer church nor addresses the structural issues that lie at the heart of the crisis. So what next? Let me suggest three dangers we face, three priorities and then one overriding joy.
Danger one. A culture of blame and fear. The ‘heads must roll’ feeding frenzy that we have seen unfold is understandable. The identification and expulsion of a scapegoat is a great way to evade self-examination. But good safeguarding requires a culture of openness and trust, not one of guilt and recrimination. I have been shocked in recent days by the levels of fear amongst colleagues who are anxious that, if they have made any mistake in process, they too will be forced to resign. Of course, those who have actively connived to conceal criminal behaviour must be held responsible. But a culture of blame fosters cover-up. The Just Culture of the airline industry (‘Ask why, not who’) has a great deal to teach us here. We need the transparency that enables people to speak out, not the fear that silences them.
Danger two. The weaponising of theology. The theological truce that lies at the very heart of the Anglican Settlement of the sixteenth century has always been a fragile one, and it was already under intense pressure with the LLF process. Smyth abused theology on an obscene scale. The image of a sound-proofed shed containing nothing but a leather-bound Bible and dressings for the wounds of those he abused is sickening. But we need to be clear that this was an abuse of theology (one reason why it is critical that we retain the category of spiritual abuse in our safeguarding policies). To weaponize this crisis for a wider-scale assault on one theological position or another will not make us a safer church. It will simply increase division and make reform harder.
Danger three. Growing disunity. It is not revealing any secrets to say that both Synod and the College of Bishops are divided on the issue of LLF, a division that is in danger of becoming chronic and entrenched. A crisis such as the current one could lead in one of two directions. Either, against a backdrop of mutual recrimination, we could splinter even more and so make decision making and reform effectively impossible. Or we could see the need to unite in order to build a renewed and healthy church.
The only way to achieve this is closer attention to the quality of our relationships and a deeper commitment to mutual prayer, modelled by Synod and the House of Bishops.
So those are the dangers. But what comes next is all the more important.
Priority 1. Independence in safeguarding. We need a strong, properly funded, self-governing body to scrutinise standards in safeguarding. Such a body must not involve ‘franchising out’ our responsibility for safeguarding which, critically, lies with everyone. Safeguarding professionals must remain rooted in Dioceses. But an external scrutiny body is critical and needed urgently. And one task for that body will be to receive complaints, because something that survivors have made clear to me is the re-traumatising impact of having to bring their complaints to the very body that abused them.
Priority 2. Resetting the relationship between the national and the local. As Andrew Graystone has pointed out, there seem to be two churches working in parallel. On the one hand there is the local church where the safeguarding culture has been transformed in recent years (as demonstrated by the thorough audits currently being conducted by INEQE) and where generous service and joyful worship are being offered to the people of the nation. And on the other there is this behemoth that we have created called the ‘national church’ – an expression that should be consigned to the dustbin as there is no such thing as the ‘national church’. There areonly 42 independent dioceses and some National Church Institutions.
All too often, crises in the national church have resulted in ever greater demands being made on the local. The whole relationship now needs resetting with a strategic emphasis being placed on renewing parish life as the heart of the Church’s mission. I hope that a new Archbishop has the courage to decentralise on a big scale.
Priority 3. Supporting the new Archbishop. There was characteristically incisive wisdom from the Bishop of Gloucester when she said that candidates to be next Archbishop “need their heads reading.”
Over the years, the job has become simply impossible. The ever-growing demands and expectations combined with the ambiguity surrounding the actual governance powers that go with the role make it undoable, even without relentless media and social media scrutiny. Before we throw the next Archbishop under a bus, immense thought needs to be given to the expectations we place on the role and the support and staffing structures we wrap around it. And what this requires above all is a more united House of Bishops.
But after so much talk of crisis, let’s end with a joy. Because whilst the Lord has made us stewards of his Church and we must tend it with care it is His, not ours.
The task of responding to crisis, repenting of failure and restoring trust with survivors feels completely overwhelming. But let’s not forget, it is when we feel at our weakest that we rely on the Lord’s strength. That does not mean we relinquish our responsibility (and every single member of the Church of England carries some responsibility for digging ourselves out this hole). Rather it means that we find in Him the gifts we need and the solutions we never thought possible.
Maybe this moment of crisis can be the moment when we learn afresh to rely on the Christ who is the Head of his Church. Maybe in this dark moment, Jesus is shaking his church awake.
+Philip Blackburn
