Earlier posts in this series were listed at the head of episode 3, then episode 4 follows, and the most recent past episode 5 is here.
1. ViaMedia.News has this morning published an article by Martyn Percy: The Foundations for Ecclesial Instability: the Rock on the Sands.
2. The Archbishops’ Council has issued invitations to abuse survivors and organisations of survivors to meet online this week with council members. Details are here (PDF format). Some survivors have objected to these meetings on various grounds. See for example this tweet. (alt version in Comments).
3. I discovered that my earlier link to GS Misc 1341 was broken. I have repaired it, but here it is again:
GS Misc 1341 Independent Safeguarding Board: recent developments. This is the official Archbishops’ Council explanation for recent events. The link inside this paper to GS 2215 also appears to be broken at present, so here is a local copy: GS 2215 Safeguarding June 2021. But perhaps more useful now is the original unnumbered paper released on 25 February 2021, written by Malcolm Brown, Independent Safeguarding Structures for the Church of England Proposed Interim Arrangements – 2021 (Phase 1). I would strongly recommend that all General Synod members review this paper before the weekend. Also of interest is the earlier 15 December 2020 press release.
4. Gavin Drake has tabled a following motion for General Synod to consider. The wording of the motion is:
This Synod —
- is dismayed by the recent decision of the Archbishops’ Council to disband the Independent Safeguarding Board and terminate the contracts of its members;
- notes that a Serious Incident Report has been made to the Charity Commission in respect of this governance decision;
- recognises and laments that any working relationship between many survivors and victims with the Archbishops’ Council has been broken;
- in consequence, calls upon the Archbishops’ Council, working with its Audit Committee, to commission an independent inquiry led by a senior lawyer (judge or King’s Counsel) into the safeguarding bodies, functions, policies and practice in and of the Church of England, to report within a maximum period of 12 months, and
- requires that the report of that Inquiry be fully debated by the Synod to enable it to make decisions about future safeguarding in the Church of England.
He has also written a background briefing paper which needs to be read in full by every General Synod member (9 pages).
5. The Church Times has published a report on Gavin Drake’s motion, see Hattie Williams Synod motion seeks debate on ISB affair and inquiry by a senior lawyer.
6. Rosie Dawson has written for The Living Church Synod Members Expect Heated Discussion of Safeguarding.
7. Religion Media Centre has published this by Tim Wyatt: Timeline: how the CofE has tried to stop sex abusers
I love the comparison of the ISB members (Jasvinder and Steve) to the ‘Tank Man of Tiananmen Square’… standing in the way of prevailing power and refusing to get out of the way.
Martyn Percy has written a powerful analysis and indictment of the way our church is being mismanaged and I hope every member of Synod will read it. I find it very telling that Martyn Percy no longer regards himself as a member of the Church of England while remaining a committed Anglican. That is my position as well. I have a couple of thoughts to add to the debate. Not all Anglicans on the British Isles are members of the Church of England. There are three other provinces. In despair at the behaviour of my local clergy and the leadership… Read more »
Likewise I have turned to a different province – the Scottish Episcopal Church. (I do maintain association with one parish church in England on a standalone basis, and two convents, but I no longer feel safe, or safe for my wife, to be associated with the Church of England as an organisation.)
I should hope that this sentiment also funds the concerns of someone named ‘Peter’ here. He wants such an arrangement inside the CofE, representing your own ability to choose as you have done. I am happy to be told why this isn’t a way forward that would come alongside your own choices outwith the CofE.
There has been a momentous decision by the Church of England to destroy its safeguarding structure. It is, in a sense, a single dreadful moment.
Yet it has united the church in the realisation that we are viewed with contempt by our rulers.
I have no idea what the future holds. I hold to the conviction that marriage is between a man and a woman.
For the present I will stand with anybody in the face of the catastrophic leaders who dominate us.
I no longer advocate division between the laity.
I confess I do not entirely follow you. Is the idea that this crisis sufficiently unites all sides against a corrupt hierarchy that it serves as a major re-set, capable of restoring the CofE via a new configuration?
This thread is about the ISB and I think what Peter is saying (please correct me Peter if I am wrong) is that the abuse of power and process over the abolishing of the ISB and firing of its members is so heinous (and indeed dangerous to those survivors who were in the process of engaging) that it has called into question the whole structure of governance in the Church of England, and united ‘liberals’, ‘conservatives’, charismatics, and Christians from multiple traditions in complaint about the behaviour and actions of the Archbishops’ Council. Issues about how to address issues to… Read more »
Susannah, I agree with your every word in regard to the current crisis
Peter
Thank you. Your comment involved discussion of an alternative church in the SEC. My memory was that this was not a choice predicated on the ISB crisis, but on the failure of the CofE to provide marriage for SS couples. Hence my comment.
Professor Seitz, my decision to withdraw from the Church of England was predicated by safety. There is a wider governance crisis that simply sexuality. That’s why Peter and I, with respectful but different views on sexuality, both regard the Church of England as unsafe.
Forgive me. I recall your being furious enough at the (bizarre) cordoning off of blessings from marriage (as if this would please either side) that you announced your departure into the SEC.
This ISB debacle comes many months later.
Well, we shall see if the ISB thing is a broom that sweeps all other umbrage clean.
New leaders are needed.
Ukraine will have no peace till Putin is gone.
A cruel and ugly comparison – but entirely fitting for the Church of England. Itself a cruel and ugly entity.
Agreed. I also regard the C of E as unsafe, and now regard myself as a Piskie.
David, thank you so much for your comments. It means a lot. I have found moving to Wales to be a total breath of fresh air and continue to feel thoroughly Anglican. Newport is a special city with a special history, and many contemporary challenges which we try to lean into and it is so wonderful that you are able to join us online.
If the Church of England is a despotic plutocracy, could not parishes reduce or stop giving their diocesan quota?
You’ve hit the nail on the head Trevor.
All this talk of saving the parish should translate into action. PCCs have this power to make a real immediate difference. Those awful parishes in the City of London and Jesmond have stopped their giving, but liberals go on supporting dysfunctional bloated Diocesan bureaucracies.
Every PCC member who sits quietly while the treasurer explains the quota, (or parish share) is complicite.
Withholding quota/share would only cause harm. The bulk of parish share goes to paying for parish clergy. If your beef over safeguarding is with the Archbishops’ Council and central structures, then you are hitting your diocese rather than the Council or NCIs when you withhold funding. The incidences of large evangelical parishes withholding quota are currently very few and given a lot of press coverage which overemphasises the position. In my own diocese, most parishes do not give enough to cover the cost of the parochial ministry they receive, of those who do pay more many are larger urban evangelical… Read more »
Finally ++Canterbury has put in an appearance… This morning, on Radio 4, he said ‘we cannot defend the reputation of the institution at the cost to the victims.’ Part of me wants to be really appallingly rude and say ‘no ……., Sherlock’ (supply your own preferred word for my omission. But I’ll be more measured. Nice words, Your Grace. Do you actually mean the same thing by them as the rest of us mean? The evidence so far suggests that’s highly unlikely, and I’m wondering if it’s a cynical PR ploy to try to defuse and diffuse the anger that… Read more »
When did he say this, please?
He wasn’t speaking directly about the ISB scandal. It was on this programme: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001nfzm, broadcast this morning. The exchange is at 6:39 in. I’m assuming it was pre recorded, but how long ago, who knows?
Re-listening, I didn’t get the quote absolutely right in my first posting. His actual words are worse. He said:
‘We cannot seek to preserve the existence of the institution at the cost of the abused.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001nfzm? at 6.40
Simon, Justin is interviewing a different person each week. This is the 5th week he’s been doing it – on this occasion interviewing Gabriel Byrne. People can listen to it here. (You have to sign in to a BBC account.)
The Archbishop has form on this . See the Guardian article 15th October 2017 after he met Gilo to apologise for not replying to 17 letters and later blamed the size of Gilo’s settlement on the insurers ‘horse trading’ -which he said had to stop? The insurers refuted this stating this was standard business practice and the Church of England was free to make additional payments if it so wished.
Thanks Susanna. I find this all fascinating, though utterly inappropriate for one in senior leadership. What I find fascinating is to try to understand what on earth is going on in the mind of someone whose espoused beliefs and principles clash so forcefully with their operative beliefs and principles, as expressed through their actions. Does he say such things as a cynical ploy to try to curry favour with those he is talking to, and not actually believe the things he says? Does he say them as a planned PR tactic to get people off his back and/or try to… Read more »
I have also wondered if we’re ever going to hear from the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding. My assumption has been that she’s busy drafting her platitudes for broadcast at a later date.
I am much obliged to Dr Percy for his reflections on Turchin and their applicability to the Church (or other command-and-control institutions). In effect what Turchin has done is to synthesise certain well-known threads (such as Nikolai Kondratiev’s concept of super-cycles, Mancur Olson’s notion of elite capture, Joseph Tainter’s warnings about the perils of excessive complexity, the large body of work on the impact of class warfare on the foundations of the Roman state, the industry which has grown out of Thomas Piketty, etc.). One book which made a considerable impression on me recently was this: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976788. OPEC1 (1973) was… Read more »
I am grateful to Froghole for these observations. The analogy of a declining Communist State seems to be the best fit for what we are observing. The ingredients are strikingly similar: 1. The State is collapsing from within – poor structures, nepotistic governance (e.g., no conflicts of interest policies, etc), lack of resources, over-taxed ecclesial proletariat (i.e., laity) expected to do too much, and over-worked clergy…yet central bureaucracy grows and grows. 2. The State as first among equals within a global alliance fails and influence wains – Hard power vanishes, and soft power can be declined. Provinces abroad determine their own… Read more »
Many thanks indeed for this fascinating analysis (and apologies for typos in my earlier, hurriedly written, post). I should add – and I appreciate that you might well take issue with this – that I am in favour of a greater degree of centralisation, partly to save capital and partly to drive improved accountability. As a confederation of mostly small trusts inefficiency is baked into the system. As costs increase, the burden upon parishes is increasingly insupportable, and many PCC members either want to walk away or suffer from poor morale. Recruiting parish officers has been a major problem for… Read more »
You may have seen that the Oxford motion on Net Zero references central buying and commissioning power – the genesis of that was an amendment I moved in the Oxford Diocesan Synod. The Net Zero ambition will never be met without working at scale and pace, and the network of small trusts to which you refer is pretty much designed to do the opposite.
‘…there could be an unseemly scramble for what remains of the spoils.’ I believe it’s already started… eg St Helen’s Bishopsgate’s ‘new Deanery chapter for the City of London’
Froghole, we are on the same page here. I was a critic of The Turnbull Report from 1995 (Working as One Body), which readers will recall streamlined, centralised and regionalised power all at the same time. The trajectory of that report would have seen the CofE emerge with perhaps 8-10) strong regional hubs (e.g., NW, NE, Yorks, E/W Midlands, SW, etc), which could have been well-staffed and well-resourced. True, it would have pushed dioceses into being episcopally-led districts, in effect. At the time, I argued against this on the basis that such homogenization would be inimical to local particularity and… Read more »
Thank you so much for this! I sense that the basic problem with parochial ministry is that it is capital intensive: deep investments have to be made in human capital (via training) and the associated ‘plant and machinery’ (churches, parsonages). As time passes, the costs tend to increase in lockstep with prices. Unless income keeps ahead of the curve, the result is furniture burning. Once the limits of furniture burning are reached the need to rationalise costs becomes imperative. The Church was able to keep ahead of the curve of rising costs until the 1870s because the years of ‘high… Read more »
Thanks, Froghole. I agree that the relation between capital and labour lies, in part, at the very heart of this. Parish ministry is inherently cost-intensive, and bound to be be local. Like a small farm, growth is largely capped by the size and other factors. Costs borne by each farm don’t necessarily better aggregate out through increasing size or merging with other farms. There are examples of mega-farms that can mass produce crops. But most land and many kinds of crop are simply not suitable for mass production. Furthermore, many consumers will decline mass produced output. For every one who… Read more »
All I would say is that the history of mergers in the corporate sector – to move away from agriculture – is also worth heeding. Mergers rather than reducing costs and increasing efficiency have tended, paradoxically, to increase the former and diminish the latter.
To some extent, yes. However, when Alfred Chandler famously compared the development of industry in Germany, the UK and the US (‘Scale and Scope: the Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism’ (1990)) he noted that the progressive failure of British industry from the third quarter of the 19th century was due to the fact that many British manufacturing firms (often family owned) were insufficiently large relative to the competition in the US, Germany and Japan, where much larger enterprises drove economies of scale and permitted both high wages and high profit margins. In Britain higher margins came from low wages, low investment… Read more »
Yes, and many thanks again! The argument I have been making is based on insurance principles. Collective insurance is always cheaper than self-insurance; the bigger the risk pool, the lower the aggregate premium (compare the allocation of the ‘national dividend’ to healthcare in the US with the UK or, within the UK, the amounts people pay for healthcare relative to social care). Yet, PCCs effectively self-insure for maintenance costs resulting in a much higher aggregate spend. By transferring the buildings to, say, a national agency funded by the partial disendowment of the Commissioners the overall spend on labour and materials… Read more »
I hope you and Martyn continue your discussion here so that we can all benefit from your wisdom.
Come ‘the revolution’ what is the potential for parishes to finance their incumbents directly? Is it administratively possible?
Please note that the deadline for requesting attendance by individual survivors is 12 noon today, July 3rd (an email requesting zoom link has to be sent by then) for the meeting at 5pm today (July 3rd). For the representatives of survivors groups, the deadline for the email request is 3pm today (July 3rd), for the meeting for representatives being held tomorrow (4th) at 3pm. The email address for requesting to attend is: engage.safeguarding@churchofengland.org The same address can be used to submit your views by email if you do not wish to attend. The two representatives of the Archbishops’ Council at… Read more »
If they are listening, but not answering questions, then presumably these meetings are to take some of the heat off officials answering questions at Synod.
Those who are closer to the problem have a decision to make. FWIW, at this point I for one would simply refuse to engage.
Sometimes the loudest message of all is a boycott.
I wouldn’t presume to tell any survivor what they should do. If, however, any survivor asked me for advice, like you, Jeremy, I would advise them to not engage with a meeting where they can be identified or are contributing from their own experience. This is because the Ven Luke Miller, one of the AC Members involved has a track record of inappropriate and damaging handling of sensitive information, which contributed to the death of a priest, as I have identified in another thread. If I represented a survivor group, I may be more inclined to engage, as Archdeacon Miller… Read more »
This isn’t any type of meeting I recognise from years of working with people …Maybe it should be called a ‘post stable door meeting?’ Looking at the balance of power in the situation , the AC has summarily taken the decision to abolish the ISB as it was ‘not independent enough’ and because in its view working relationships with Jasvinder and Steve had broken down. The council does not appear to have consulted any victims and survivors before doing this and pressed on with its chosen precipitate timescale despite warnings that to do so in this manner could be damaging… Read more »
I agree that there’s a danger that questions may be curtailed in General Synod, with the excuse that “we have already listened to survivors on these matters for an hour, a few days ago…” The counter-argument, I suppose, is that questions do need to be asked, and for many survivors they are unable to own their own voice in Synod. If they ask questions today, and they go unanswered, then that silence itself may speak volumes and indicate an obstructive Council evading accountability. Mostly the meeting is so they can say that they’ve held a meeting… whereas they could easily… Read more »
This is just a cynical stunt so ‘they’ can claim that they are listening. I so hope that synod can hold the top table to account but I just think that the desperation to ‘protect the reputation of the organisation’ and to control the narrative is going to make that so difficult. The ‘leaders’ just have to manage those few days in York and then everyone will go home allowing that criticism to fall on deaf ears or be ignored. None of these folk seem to be in anyway mindfull that sometime they will have to account for their actions… Read more »
Archdeacon Luke Miller is now apparently unable to attend as he is required to attend to another matter in London Diocese.
Diplomatic ‘flu?
Also, this is one of the great debacles of the recent history of the Church of England. Is it seriously the case that there is something so important within the diocese that it prevents his attendance or which cannot be deferred until after Synod rises? Has another massive fraud been discovered?
At least in parliament the speaker can compel a member of the government to attend and face the music, or else be at risk of contempt of parliament.
Also bear in mind that for a good number of survivors they may have chosen not to participate when they were told Luke was attending as they did not feel confident/safe engaging with him. As the announcement of his non-attendance was only sent out to the 13 people actually signed up to attend three hours before the meeting (after the deadline for signups), that left no time or opportunity for anyone else to decide to attend after all.
Of course, circumstances do happen, so do bereavements, so grace requires awareness of unforeseen urgent pastoral reasons.
Luke Miller is not attending the meeting. The only member of the Archbishops’ Council confirmed as coming is Kate Wharton.
I am planning to attend today’s 5pm meeting with Ab Council. This is how I filled in the form. My first question is somewhat moot, as Arcdeacon Luke Miller is apparently detained by other matters. But it is extraordinary that Ab Council and the NST Director considered this appropriate. I hope to focus on my second question… if allowed to ask it. The meeting is likely to very heavily managed and one imagines that difficult questions will not be answered: 3. If you have any comments or thoughts about the Independent Safeguarding Board or more widely about the independent oversight… Read more »
Thanks for telling me, Gilo. Call me a cynic if you like, but I’m afraid I let out an involuntary guffaw when I read about his sudden indisposition. I shall now go and make a good act of contrition – how could I think it could be anything other than a genuinely more important matter that has prevented his attendance? Answers on a postcard, as they say…!
I’m reminded of the one-day trip taken to Afghanistan (no overnight stay) in 2018 by Boris Johnson, while he was Foreign Secretary, on the day of the government’s key vote on Heathrow expansion. According to an FOIA request, the trip cost taxpayers £19,366: the price of flights and visas for the three members of staff who accompanied Johnson. TA readers may recall that Johnson thereby avoided having to vote for the expansion, having earlier promised to lie down in front of the bulldozers to prevent a third runway being built at the airport, close to his Uxbridge constituency in west… Read more »
I’m pleased he did ‘withdraw’, though the ridiculous charade of something more important in his Diocese to deal with once again proved the point many of us are making time and time again. Just be honest. How hard would it have been to write that whilst the Archdeacon continued to enjoy the full confidence of the AC, comment from survivors and other interested parties suggests that his participation in the meeting would not be helpful, so he will now not be present? No doubt some of us (me included) would have made comment about him having anybody’s confidence, and not… Read more »
For me this is the most important paragraph in Gavin Drake’s excellent briefing document is this: “vi. A “child-unfriendly” approach if a child or young person makes an approach for help, advice or redress, and an escalation of that young person’s enquiry into formal and complex complaints processes, when practice should have seen off the difficulty at the point where help was sought.” This raises raises the fundamental question of what is safeguarding for? It may sound obvious but it isn’t. I fear the primary function of safeguarding in the Church of England is to protect the Church from reputational… Read more »
Might I suggest that someone who knows how to do it puts some effort into securing publication of the serious incident report?
Can anyone open the tweet that Simon has provided in no 2 (above)?
No. It just comes back with a fault message.
Try this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0AvjfKXwAEOKN-?format=jpg&name=large
Original was here
https://twitter.com/seaofcomplicity/status/1675391350403915777?s=20
Very well put, Gilo. I doubt it will elicit any response whatsoever, the Rear-Guard/Follower Bishop (I can’t refer to her as leading anything at all, given the evidence we have) will remain absent and silent, and the National Director will wait to be directed by Mr Nye.
But it is on the record. Hopefully, ‘the record’ will become admissible evidence once of these days in an external investigation of one kind or another. Those of us who have any faith in God left can pray, the rest of us can hope.
An excellent motion by the indefatigable Mr Drake, which regrettably misses only the censure of those responsible for the dismissal of the ISB. Many of us will recall the dismal moment in February 2022 when Mr Drake’s previous attempt at seeking better safeguarding procedures and accountability was torpedoed by a wrecking procedural motion (demonstrating, in my view, Synod at its very worst). I can only assume that the 12 month time limit is to prevent a repeat of what has happened to other reports (such as the ludicrously delayed Makin review).
I recall one of our fellow contributors on here recommending on another thread that members of General Synod would do well to grasp the most tedious nettle known to humankind (they didn’t express it quite like that!) and become fully conversant with the minutiae of the procedural workings of Synod, so they can initiate counter moves at every possible turn. Your mention of the disgraceful wrecking motion, Froghole, reminded me both of that and of an example of the value of such things. I recall being present, very many years ago, at the Annual Convention of the Trades Union to… Read more »
I gather the Rear-Guard/Follower Bishop for Safeguarding has finally broken her silence, in the Church Times. Was it worth waiting for, and were her comments Earth-shatteringly perceptive, passionate about caring for survivors or prophetic about how things are? Erm….no! Her comments are pitiful. Same old, same old. Defence of the AC, we had to, etc etc etc etc… Just another example of ‘if we say it enough it will become the truth’. Seems my new title for her role is more accurate than it might have been. Now we can contrast that lack of care with recent actions of the… Read more »
Is linked in episode 7
So now we know, if there was ever any doubt, why +Grenfell was chosen, in preference to + Conalty, to be Lead Bishop for Safeguarding. She will follow the party line, as dictated by the Archbishops and ‘the whitewash guy’, even if doing so requires throwing vulnerable survivors under the bus. +Conalty, on the other hand, told it like it is and will presumably now be silenced as a punishment. And the admission in the answers to questions at GS, that no bishops were consulted before the AC decision to fire the ISB members, says it all. Why would they… Read more »