Changing Attitude England has been receiving reports from a number of members in the Diocese of London about the intense range of feelings being experienced by clergy in the diocese including grief, anger, confusion, fear, abandonment and hurt in relation to the failure of the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, to respond appropriately to the publication of the Coroner’s report following the death by suicide of Fr Alan Griffin.
A report in this week’s issue of Private Eye says “…Private Eye learns that a majority of clergy in the Two Cities area of London Diocese … held a closed meeting on 14 September at which feelings ran high. Many were friends and former colleagues of Fr Griffin. Some spoke of ‘rage, indignation, bewilderment, frustration and sorrow’ at the failure of the senior diocesan staff to care for them in the face of allegations made against them.” The Church Times reports the Rector of Marylebone, the Revd Dr Stephen Evans, as saying that “feelings are running extremely high in the Two Cities – and beyond – and people - not only but Churchwardens and life-long faithful churchgoers too, are experiencing a wide range of shifting emotions.”
Private Eye confirms reports that CA England has heard of clergy in the Two Cities “quietly planning legal action against their own diocese” while others, “encouraged by the threatened vote of no confidence that led to the defenestration of the Bishop of Winchester… are now proposing a similar vote against the Bishop of London.”
The Church Times reports that it has seen minutes of a meeting of the Two Cities Greater Chapter recording that the response of the diocesan leadership to the death of Fr Griffin is considered “wanting in several significant respects”, with a feeling that Bishop Mullally had “demonstrated insufficient pastoral care for her clergy”, especially among those named in what has become known as the “brain-dump” report.
The ‘Brain Dump’
The report of the Coroner, Mary Hassell, into Fr Alan Griffin’s death included the names of forty two other members of the clergy listed together with Fr Griffin, in the report produced by Martin Sargeant, the retiring head of operations in the Diocese of London upon his retirement.
When the Bishop of London was asked about the clergy named in the brain-dump report, she said: “We have to recognise that the coroner put that in the public domain, and I am sorry for the hurt that that has caused.” Bishop Sarah noted that, had the Coroner not made her report public, the brain dump and the names of the clergy would never have come to light. This sounds to some as if the bishop was attempting to blame the coroner for the disclosure of information she would rather had been kept hidden. It is reported that “the diocese” had apparently urged the coroner not to include in her report “any concerns that may be taken as a criticism of clerics or staff for not filtering or verifying allegations”. Changing Attitude England identifies that the provenance of the request not to include such concerns in the report needs clarification. Who urged the Coroner? Who can speak for the ‘diocese’ and after that decision making processes? Was this Bishop Sarah’s request, or that of the College of Bishops after they had met, or was it simply a request by whoever was put in charge of dealing with the Coroner? This needs public clarification.
Whoever made the request, the coroner ignored the plea. Surely the forty two clergy persons named were entitled to know what had been recorded about them behind their backs. The Bishop of London should have apologised not for the ‘hurt caused’ but for the secret recording of the information in the first place, much of which it appears was based solely on unfounded rumour.
The Revd Charles Clapham, a priest in London Diocese, comments that “keeping a permanent record of information about individuals which has not been assessed for accuracy in a ‘brain dump’ of rumour, innuendo or gossip was a breach of GDPR and all those involved in this case should have known this. If there were genuine safeguarding concerns these should have been reported by the head of operations through the proper procedures immediately this information was known to him, not when he came to retire.”
Savi Hensman, a lay person in London diocese, noted that Bishop Sarah’s words “are hardly reassuring, especially the claim that those things in the ‘brain dump’ that ‘weren’t proven or were wrong, they were given no standing anywhere’. It might appear that the bishop does not understand the difference between good safeguarding practice – which might include consulting a specialist promptly on concerns which might well turn out to be unfounded – and gathering scraps of gossip and innuendo over many years, along with what might be evidence requiring investigation, then using this material unfiltered in potentially destructive ways.”
An abusive, unsafe culture
Many clergy in the diocese of London are feeling very angry, especially those named in the ‘brain dump’ report and LGBTIQ+ clergy. They are furious with the Bishop of London and other senior members of staff because of their abject failure to understand the negative impact they are having. The effect of secrecy and collusion is affecting LGBTIQ+ people in particular.
The homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic culture is perpetrated by the influence of conservative Catholics and Evangelicals in the diocese and in particular Evangelical churches wielding money and power, both Holy Trinity Brompton and HTB plants with their lack of transparency and duplicity on the issue as well as to St Helen’s Bishopsgate and their offspring. Abusive activities of clergy in these churches is protected by the secrecy imposed under the Clergy Discipline Measure which is also used, secretly, to suppress whistle-blowers. There is an absence of integrity and transparency which undermines people’s ministry and confidence and makes life in general intolerable.
London is not the only diocese from which Changing Attitude England is receiving reports of clergy and lay despair and anger at the failure of the Church of England bishops and leaders to act with integrity and courage in the context of the Living in Love and Faith process. LGBTIQ+ people are experiencing increasing levels of abuse and prejudice in society. The LLF book and process asks the Church to respect and fully include those whose biblical teaching underpins homophobic and transphobic attitudes.
In the recently published Bleeding for Jesus Andrew Graystone describes the cult of the Iwerne Camps, the involvement of John Smyth QC who abused more than a hundred young men and boys, who was protected by a network of powerful men in the Church who chose to protect his and their and the Church’s reputation rather than protect those whom Smyth was abusing. In the introduction Graystone describes the culture of the Church of England in the 1970s and 1980s which resulted in many of the young men who had been abused at the Iwerne camps going on to prominent roles in the Church of England, forming an elite gentlemen’s club at the heart of the church. “This informal association of is made up of a raft of current British church leaders who are the most tenacious in their resistance to reform in the church, the most defiant of the full inclusion of women in leadership, the most vocal in their condemnation of homosexual inclusion.”
Graystone says “Smyth’s activities emerged in a context that was underpinned by theology and protected by culture that was entirely dependent on distorted notions of God, of spiritual ambition, and what it meant to be saved. The people on whom Smyth modelled himself, and the institutions that enable his abuse, cannot be irrelevant to the abuse itself. If Christians and Christian institutions refuse to examine themselves in the face of gross failure by their members, they will continue to foster and facilitate abuse, sometimes on the grand scale exemplified by Smyth, but far more often in the day-to-day life of the Christian community.”
How, asks Andrew Graystone, could “an organisation of individuals prepared to commit their entire lives unconditionally to Jesus create a culture that has become so toxic? The answers are a rich mixture of power and human weakness, nurtured by a distinctive theology of shame and redemption that continues to run like a deep fault line through the Church of England.”
Within the Diocese of London and within the culture and leadership and institutions of the Church of England in general, the toxic theology and abusive activities of Smyth and others continue to infect the life of the Church.
Healthy and Unhealthy
The Diocese of London is not alone. We are all implicated in the systemic abuse of people within the Church of England because we, the Church, have become infected to a greater or lesser degree by our inability to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy ideas about God, healthy and unhealthy theologies, healthy and unhealthy readings of the Bible, healthy and unhealthy practices and teachings.
The Living in Love and Faith book, material and process is being infected both by the unhealthy culture visible in the Church of England today and by the many who were influenced by the physical and sexual corruption manifest in the Iwerne Camps in the past. The teachings exemplified by clergy today in churches where the “distorted notions of God, of spiritual ambition and what it meant to be saved” described by Andrew Graystone still dominate. The LLF process is attempting to reconcile churches practising this unhealthy, abusive, corrupt Christianity with the many who are trying to model God’s unconditional love in living into a radical new Christian inclusion. The LLF aim cannot be achieved until we learn to be conscious of and distinguish between the healthy and the unhealthy.
I still have difficulty distinguishing within myself the ideas that result from corrupt versions of Christianity from the healthier versions that inspired me in the 1960s, a flourishing that inspired me to give myself to a life of ministry in the Church, first as a parish priest and then as an activist and campaigner.
All of us in the Church of England are to some degree infected by the teachings and practices which became commonplace and normalised in the structure of the Church in parallel with the “new reformation” that inspired so many others from the 1960s onwards. This infection underpins the systemic abuse, misogyny, racial discrimination, homophobia and transphobia that infects the Church today. People in the Diocese of London are discovering how deeply and mostly unconsciously this unhealthy culture dominates life in the diocese. Every other diocese is to some degree infected in the same way. The Church will not begin to overcome the effects of this unhealthy, abusive culture until it is able to examine with clarity exactly what is healthy and unhealthy in today’s Christian teaching and practice. The inherited unhealthy culture continues to infect today’s Church.