During Holy Week I have been reading Sex, Power, Control: Responding to Abuse in the Institutional Church by Fiona Gardner. I am learning valuable and significant lessons from Fiona’s book, lessons about how the institutional Church behaves at the level of Archbishops and bishops and, significantly for the Living in Love and Faith process and LGBTIQ+ people, within the House of Bishops. Her book also has valuable lessons for me as someone involved in the Changing Attitude England Campaign to challenge the bishops, the people who are ultimately solely responsible for the LLF process and its outcome.
I had begun to draft this blog in advance of Jayne Ozanne’s dramatic ViaMedia article published on Wednesday 31 March. “Why don’t you just leave the Church of England?” is a question she is repeatedly asked by her non-church LGBT friends and allies after the repeated mistakes, mis-appointments, misguided decisions and misunderstandings in relation to sexuality and gender identity matters. It’s the question she asks herself constantly.
Sex, Power, Control contains answers to Jayne’s question. The answer is in the title – why do people stay when the Church of England bishops are addicted to a culture that suppresses sex, truth and love through embedded systems of power and control. Why do so many tolerate a Church and a process – the LLF process – that is not going to address LGBTIQ+ expectations?
People assume that the Living in Love and Faith process is some kind of open, democratic, genuine conversation in which listening and consultation is taking place that will eventually lead to the radical inclusion named by the Archbishops in 2017. It won’t. The House of Bishops is in control of the process and will remain in control of the outcome, avoiding anything radical.
Fiona was once a safeguarding advisor for the diocese of Bath and Wells and writes from this perspective about abuse in the Church and the way the institutional Church has responded to abuse. By “the institutional church” she means “the national and diocesan organisation of the Church of England, where hierarchy, structure, systems and factions take precedence over relationship.” This complexity is “multiplied by its antiquity, linkages with state and society, diocesan and parish system, connection to other churches in the Communion, and scale. . . . It’s a recipe for paranoia, paralysis and multiplying complexity”, she says (quoting Andrew Brown and Linda Woodhead, That Was the Church that Was). In the institutional church the psychodynamics present involve an abuse of power and an abuse of trust.
I realise that her analysis of how the institutional power structures in the Church that have so protected the institution and it’s senior leaders at huge cost to those who have been abused are working in exactly the same way in relation to over three decades of failure to deal directly with the presence, experience and expectations of LGBTIQ+ people. The House of Bishops’ LLF process is designed to achieve exactly the same outcome – minimum cost to themselves, minimum cost to groups opposed to LGBTIQ+ equality and maximum cost to be paid by us.
In relation to child abuse Fiona notes “the closed-system hierarchical thinking, which accompanies a closing of ranks and the protection of the institution.” She describes the ineptitude, the lack of urgency and the poor levels of empathy shown by the institutional church, the lack of awareness of unconscious, as well as conscious, psychological processes. Exactly the same attitudes drive the LLF process.
The institution of the Church of England has remarkably well-developed systemic defence mechanisms, ways in which an individual or an organisation avoids or resists having to think about something that causes anxiety. These might include denial or repression but, usually, projection, which involves unconsciously pushing onto others one’s own unacceptable thoughts, motives or feelings. This can also take place at a collective level against groups or types of people that threaten the organisation’s well-being.
Those many who have been abused in the Church are the victims of clergy and bishops who operate within these mostly unconscious but deeply embedded defence mechanisms. They are at work everywhere in the Church, and clearly at work in attitudes to gender, race, and sexuality. We LGBTIQ+ people may notice the effects but we rarely notice the defensive thinking and strategies that underpin attitudes towards our demands for equality. We are all up against what Fiona describes as “a deeply embedded structure of power and control in the institutional church.”
“The organisation of the Church is more or less a closed hierarchical grouping, which by its explicit and implicit structures nurtures a culture of almost unchallengeable authority. The explicit structure is characterised by a division into the central ‘subjects’ - archbishops, bishops, archdeacons and clergy and the ‘others’ whom one would call ‘objects’. The Archbishops and the House of Bishops are super-subjects, says Fiona, with a skilfully developed mechanism that maintains total ultimate control. Total ultimate control is what the House of Bishops ultimately maintain over LLF.
How the Church Has Responded to abuse and LGBTIQ+ expectations
The secrecy and deception that managed responses to abuse in the Church functions discretely within the church hierarchy. With reports of abuse there was a sense that the hierarchy was closing around one another to minimise the damage this might cause to individual, episcopal and diocesan reputations. This same, discrete managing of LLF will result in the House of Bishops bringing proposals to Synod in November 2022 designed primarily to protect themselves, the institution, and those networks and groups vociferously opposed to the full inclusion of LGBTIQ+ people.
Fiona was left with the feeling that her presence as a diocesan safeguarding advisor was not welcome. From this she understood the power of the hierarchy was and is bolstered by control and by connections within the church establishment. We LGBTIQ+ people are ultimately not welcome either because we pose a threat to the comfort and security of bishops, and most especially the lesbian, gay and bisexual bishops who rely on the whole mechanism to protect them from personal realities they are unable to face and be open about.
This results in huge levels of personal anxiety in bishops to which I can bear witness. As Fiona notes, anxiety-provoking institutional dilemmas give rise to defensive projective processes. There is nothing more anxiety-provoking for the bishops at the moment than confronting sexuality, theirs and others’.
The difficulty this presents for the LLF process as well as for systemic abuse in the Church is that finding out the truth “might expose shadow aspects of the institution and uncover deeper malaise.” Fiona says that one way of managing and avoiding this discovery is repeatedly to reframe the presenting problem by commissioning reports, inquiries and reviews. This is exactly what has been going on in the Church of England at least since 1987 and the General Synod debate about the Higton motion, whose original motion was neutered by the House of Bishops tabling an amendment. LLF is the latest in a long line of processes and reports and Changing Attitude England is determined that it should be the last.
The steering group for Changing Attitude England believes we must reclaim our narrative for the full equality of LGBTIQ+ people in ministry and relationships, taking back the narrative from the Bishops, clear that we are not objects to be analysed but people with explicit demands and expectations. We will spell out for the bishops and the Next Steps process exactly what equality means for us, saying explicitly what we want and do not want when bishops present LLF to Synod. LLF is a distraction - the now is the time for radical challenge.
To campaign with us, please join the Changing Attitude England Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/788874575387173
Gardner, F. 2022. Sex, Power, Control: Responding to Abuse in the Institutional Church. Cambridge, The Lutterworth Press