The November 2024 issue of the Journal of Anglican Studies is now available online. It contains nine items related to abuse and the failures of safeguarding within the church. Each article is available as a separate PDF file. Most, though not all, of the articles deal specifically with the Church of England. The “Afterword” contains a comprehensive critique of the current English situation.
Editorial by Martyn Percy and Rosie Harper
Rt Revd Dr Alan Thomas Lawrence Wilson
This edition of the Journal is dedicated to Alan Wilson. A separate article discusses his experience of the extent of abuse within the church and his commitment to reforming the institution’s response. This passion was developed in the context of a far broader array of interests and expertise.
Alan’s heart was drawn to matters of justice and equality beyond the everyday work of an Area Bishop, which he did with a substantial pastoral heart and exacting attention to detail. He saw it as an imperative of both his faith and shared humanity. His spirituality was adventurous and exploratory, with roots in the Benedictine tradition. This led him to value simplicity and humility. It also meant that belief became real when it was embodied. Sitting on the sidelines was not for him..
Mark Williams and Hans Zollner
Glimpses of Hope: Reflections on Journeying with Survivors of Clergy Sexual Abuse
Gerald West
Tamar Summons the Church to Account: Resisting Patriarchal (and Ecclesial) Impunity in 2 Samuel 13:21
Martyn Percy
Speaking Truth to Power Structures: Integrity and Identity in Ecclesiology
Josephine Anne Stein
‘There Isn’t One!’ Church of England Safeguarding Policy
Fergus J. King, Alexandra Banks, Alfred Sebahene, Nant Hnin Hnin Aye, Maimbo W.F. Mndolwa, Albert Chama
Towards a Safe Church: More Than a Lambeth Call
Clive Stephen Billenness, Rosie Harper, Martin Sewell
The Post Office at Prayer? Auditing Risk and Practice: A Safeguarding Appraisal
Editorial by Martyn Percy
Afterword: Safeguarding – The Future of Risk and Responsibility
Josephine Stein states: As one highly experienced safeguarding professional in England put it, lengthy documents attempting to impose detailed procedures covering all eventualities are ‘overly complex and completely useless’. This is what we have been discussing in another thread, where I and others have been reviewing safeguarding documents. It’s interesting – within the TA comments there seem to be two different responses regarding the poor quality and voluminous nature of the documents: Defeated. It’s the CoE, what more do you expect? Defensive. I can’t see any problem, it seems clear to me. In both cases, it exposes the systemic failure… Read more »
In the IICSA hearings as a lawyer representing victims and survivors I made the point that CofE safeguarding documents desperately need to be (a) clear about who is supposed to do what and when (b) directive (i.e. you ‘must’ do X, not you ‘should’). That was in 2018 – here we are, 6 years on and seemingly little or nothing has changed. Anyone might think the purpose of these documents is to give the appearance of activity rather than to achieve anything substantive.
I see this as symptoms of an underlying problem. I have hardly started to read all these articles, but it does seem some are grappling the problem(s) with both hands.
I said, in the previous thread, that the short snippet you quoted was as clear as I thought it could be, in view of the vast range of situations the guidance has to cover.
I suppose the alternative would be to draft separate policies for parishes, schools, holiday clubs, retreat houses, cathedrals, chaplaincies of all kinds, spiritual direction, and children and vulnerable adults.
But my comment that the snippet seemed ‘clear enough’ should not be taken to apply to the whole policy.
I just used it as an example of possible responses. I know I can be pedantic, it comes from my scientific training, but the relevant statement is not clear. Apart from the confusion between a normal person and a relevant person, and how a normal person should involve the PSO, we have the logic: A or B and C or D. Does this mean (A or B) and (C or D) or A or (B and C) or D. or (A or B or both) and (C or D or both) i know I am being legalistic and pedantic, it’s… Read more »
As a trained editor, I can be pedantic too!
The first option above might be better put as A or B, and C or D. However, modern usage is to use as few commas as possible (sometimes, in my view, at the expense of clarity).
Your third option would punctuated: A, or B and C, or D.
That is, of course, if those who wrote the policy used the correct punctuation to express what they meant to say. Which, I admit, is not always the case.
I think we are unanimous agreement!
Good to know you no longer think I’m ‘wrong’ and ‘have failed’!
I’m not a Hegelian, and do not think that disputes necessarily lead to resolution, but I do welcome robust challenge, and will also dish it out! The aim is to affirm. as Deleuze said: It is of the essence of affirmation to be in itself multiple and to affirm difference. As for the negative, this is only the shadow cast upon the affirmations produced by a problem: negation appears alongside affirmation like a powerless double, albeit one which testifies to the existence of another power, that of the effective and persistent problem. I remember working with Norwegian colleagues once, nice… Read more »
Well there’s a big difference between disagreeing and being rude. And you can criticise someone’s ideas without criticising them personally, or assuming you know their motives when you know nothing about them.
You must know this:
https://golocalise.com/blog/interpreting-the-truth-behind-british-niceties/
Having been brought up in the USA, I’m not often accused of being too prim and polite to say what I really mean! I’m more often accused of being too outspoken.
Mark Williams and Hans Zollner’s ‘Glimpses of Hope’ is one of the most helpful articles I’ve read about the experiences of survivors. Gerald Wests’s ‘Tamar Summons the Church to Account’ ought to be required reading for all bishops (as should participation in the Contextual Bible Study outlined). The part silence plays in abuse is all-pervading. I was reminded of a time when I preached on Mark13 and quoted the South African Government’s own statistics on violence against women which I had also checked against several social science articles. A bishop took me aside and said he thought I ought not… Read more »
Janet, I think you are right about the excellent Tamar article. Firstly it reinforces Phillip Groves’ comments from a few days ago about how African biblical studies challenging gendered abuse of women is resourcing those of us in the rest of the world. But as for the story of the rape of Tamar, I wonder if that story fits inside a wider narrative about David and Bathsheba. The Bible tells us how David, from the elevated position of his palace roof, caught sight of the beautiful Bathsheba bathing inside the privacy of her own house. He sent for her, and… Read more »
That is to interpret the story with the focus on David. From Tamar’s viewpoint she is silenced, abused, silenced again, abandoned and has her voice and her place in her community taken from her. I was very struck that the ‘islands of isolation’ which survivors may inhabit, described so well by Mark Williams and Hans Zellner in their article, are also an accurate description of Tamar’s experience. When we overlay this with the way church culture and the lectionary conspire to ensure this story is so little read that many Christians don’t even know it exists, we see what the… Read more »
Given this comment and what you note in your initial comment, the example of a bishop’s complaint about your use of stats in a sermon, you may be interested in the last 10 to fifteen minutes of this video featuring Gerald West at Trinity Church, NY. I jotted down some of the things he talks about beginning at about the one hour and 23 minutes mark and pulling together the concept of contextual bible study …that church and public models of leadership are not facilitative, that scholars like himself need to be willing to learn ‘from below’, that we must… Read more »
Thank you. Most interesting & much food for thought. While safeguarding and governance processes are very important and need a complete overhaul to create systems that will not allow room for grooming, I remain convinced that the root of both the abuse itself and the tendency to silence and cover-up lies in theology – how beliefs are taught and (often) imposed, the content of some theology and the way power is exercised through blinkered leadership of certain types.
That’s an interesting point Janet. I was making the argument that not just Tamar but Bathsheba had been badly treated by the church in these stories, which I think is a valid point , but I did it in a way that focussed mostly on David’s story. I’ll have to reflect on that. Thanks.
It is interesting that many of the Bishops who were a part of the Lambeth conference experience of this approach, which is mentioned in the powerful Gerald West article, still remained silent or continued their collusion with power abuse and support for the abuser. Also, you now have the collusion of women Bishops who remain silent, toe the party line, and silence those women/men who are speaking out. Tamar’s voice speaks as does the silent woman with no name who is gang raped and murdered, known only as the Levites concubine, and the desecration of her body – Judges 19… Read more »
Good observation. It’s also interesting to consider that the issues may also apply to texts that we all know and read often. In the video I linked in my previous comment Gerald West is leading folks in a contextual bible study first of Mark 12:41-44, the poor widow and the temple treasury, and then the texts on either side. What occurs to one via West’s method is that the widow is poor because she is a woman and has been exploited. The rich who make a show of their giving may well have been among the beneficiaries of such exploitation.… Read more »
I agree. The Canaanite woman who petitions for her daughter and fights back when pushed back for being an outsider, the woman who touches the hem of the robe who has been excluded from community for years because she is unclean, can all have their narrative and lives tidied up and issues of exclusion, being foreign/immigrant, being ‘unclean’ because – fill in the gap – become about different things which are more comfortable in nice, tidy bible studies/churches. Anything to do with bodies and women’s bodies in particular cause a massive headache. The voices of the women are not just… Read more »
Along those lines there is an interesting consideration in West’s article with regard to The Prayer of Humble Access, the section captioned, The Inscribing of Tamar, beginning with the fourth para. and following in that section: “Our consensus was that what was generally understood as a prayer of exclusion was based on a biblical text about radical inclusion.” I was taken with the perspective on that prayer outlined in that section of the article. I think, to your point, the conventional use of that prayer ‘as is’ Sunday after Sunday, has reinforced a conventional piety that may be at odds… Read more »
I agree. It’s a very good article and very challenging to many things assumed or inherited from previous liturgical reforms. Inclusion has many facets and is so easily written over, spoken over if no thought is actually given to what we are doing and saying and the context we are moving within.
When Common Worship first came out, I commented to the Chair of our Diocesan Liturgy Committee that the new lectionary omitted e.g. the rapes of Dinah and Tamar. ‘We don’t want to hear about THAT in church!’ he replied. But if we don’t hear about it in church, we leave people thinking that the Church, and God, have nothing to say to those who are raped and abused. And those who are abused in any way – financially, sexually, psychologically, structurally – should be the Church’s first concern.
My impression is that Jesus preferred the company of those who were ‘broken’ rather than the hard of heart. He stated as such in the beatitudes.
Exactly.
I like this from the afterword: Ultimately, safeguarding in the Church of England is not some detached or semi-detached structural or governance problem. It is a microcosm of a systemic issue baked into the polity and hierarchy of the Church of England. The leadership lacks the professional expertise required in most of the fields in which it operates, with very few exceptions. Across education, training, financial accountability and transparency, governance, personnel management, scrutiny, human resources, employment law, equality legislation, data compliance and other legal obligations, and more besides, the Church of England’s leadership and management will consistently fall well below… Read more »