Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, has taken personal responsibility for the criticisms made in the Makin Review (paras 16.14 and 16.15 for example) by resigning. Other key people have been held responsible and named in the Review and they have also been urged to resign.
But a mistake is being made in focusing on the calls for resignation of those individuals named in the Makin Review deemed to be responsible for not addressing abuse in the Smyth case. The primary focus is rightly on the victims and survivors of Smyth’s abuse. The secondary focus is on those criticised and blamed for their failure to deal responsibly and effectively with the reports of abuse.
But there is a further dimension that I believe is fundamentally important and must be addressed.
So far as I can tell as a retired priest, the safeguarding policies developed by the National Safeguarding Board are, at parish and cathedral level in the Church of England, being taken seriously and implemented reasonably (but not entirely) effectively.
In the cases of abuse that have been reported in the public domain: Chris Brain (Nine O’clock Service), Victor Whitsey (Bishop of Chester), Bishop Peter Ball, John Smyth (Iwerne Camps), Jonathan Fletcher (Emmanuel Wimbledon), Mike Pilavachi (Soul Survivor) and others, the abuse to which victims were subjected, the primary focus, was multiplied by attempts to hide the abuse from public exposure. The motive for doing this was threefold - to protect the reputation of the abuser; to protect the reputation of those with knowledge of the abuse; and to protect the reputation of the Church of England and the Christian faith it represents. Conservative evangelicals in particular and Anglo-Catholics in the case of Peter Ball believe that the protection of the status of individual abusers and the protection of the reputation of the Church is far more important and urgent than the need to expose abuse and deal with offenders.
Will the outcome of the Makin Review and the recommendations made ensure that abuse is never covered up again?
No, because the Archbishops, the Archbishops’ Council, the House of Bishops and the establishment culture of the Church of England as detailed in my previous blog have refused repeatedly to implement the recommendation made by Professor Alexis Jay that safeguarding should be overseen by a fully independent body.
Independent Safeguarding
Safeguarding must be controlled independently because:
the National Safeguarding Team is dangerously not competent;
the Archbishops’ Council manipulates standing orders to prevent proper debates on safeguarding;
the Archbishops and virtually all the bishops consistently oppose any independent professional external scrutiny and regulation of safeguarding practices.
Homosexuality
There are abusive cultures within the Church of England, hiding in plain sight, working tirelessly to protect their self-interests. These abusive cultures are represented by a number of conservative evangelical bodies and actions: the Church of England Evangelical Council; the Alliance; Living Out; the services held at St Helen’s Bishopsgate and All Souls’ Langham Place.
Homosexuality is the issue motivating these organisations and movements. They are organised to protect those who, on “Biblical” grounds, object to the acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people in the Church of England and oppose equality in ministry and relationships, a core goal for Changing Attitude and other progressive movements.
One result of the beliefs of conservative, Biblically fundamental organisations is that individuals who are closeted homosexuals or homosexuals in denial of their homosexuality can develop a sado-masochistic pathology related to the penal substitutionary atonement theology of conservative evangelicalism. At the extreme, they become violently physically and emotionally abusive towards children and young men in particular as described in the Makin Review.
Responsibility for this twisted logic lies with those who adhere to a Biblical fundamentalism and literalism that prioritises the authority of the seven so-called “clobber” passages that according to them condemns homosexual practice as sinful and contrary to the Word and the intention of God in creation.
The Third Dimension - Which God?
There is a third, crucial element that needs to be addressed following the Makin Review, an element of the cover up that isn’t being acknowledged, let alone dealt with by the hierarchy or the wider Church. The third element is “the God problem” and it is also hidden in plain sight. God is referenced all the time – of course God is – and almost always referenced as He – of course. But God isn’t an entity, a being, isn’t gendered, doesn’t have a sexuality or a human form. Yet day by day and week by week out in the majority of parishes congregations are worshipping and praying to such a God and asking to be forgiven by this God.
The existential question of the God problem – what is God “like”? – was brought into the public domain sixty years ago by the publication of Honest to God in 1963; and although the question is rarely addressed now, it most certainly has not gone away. It’s the question hiding behind conservative evangelical homophobia and mostly ignored by those of us campaigning for a fully inclusive, LGBTQIA+ affirming Church.
What kind of God do we believe in?
What kind of ideas about God and images or metaphors for God do people carry today?
In September 2023 I met with four friends, male and female, straight, gay and trans, in a garden in north London for a conversation about the God we did and didn’t believe in. It was a rare opportunity for me and, I suspect, for all of us. It’s a question that needs to be asked and thought through and argued about now if the crisis we have arrived at in the Church is to have any hope of resolution. Do we believe in an abusive, unhealthy, prejudiced God, a God who underpins homophobia and transphobia and misogyny and the abuse of LGBTQIA+ people and women and people of colour - or do we believe in an unconditionally loving, healthy, radically inclusive God? The Archbishops placed that idea on the table – a radical new Christian inclusion – but despite being asked several times by Changing Attitude to expand on their idea, they never answered the question. Gradually, the vision has been set aside and forgotten.
Prejudice has a hold on the Church and abuse exists because the Church is afraid of distinguishing between those bishops, priests, readers and lay people who are untouched by the safeguarding system because the Church protects their faith in a God who is intrinsically abusive. This God legitimises abuse through the distortion of and selection of texts from the Bible that are used and abused by people who are ignorant of contemporary Biblical knowledge and exegesis and think themselves free to formulate a God of divine prejudice.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is also, therefore, responsible for the failure to pursue the essential conversation about God on which the vision of a “radical new Christian inclusion” is based. Also responsible are the House and College of Bishops, the Archbishops’ Council, and every pro-full inclusion and anti-full inclusion organisation and group. All of us collude in the silence, ignoring the question, because we find it too difficult to talk about openly, honestly and truthfully.
Working towards an open conversation
Every ‘progressive’ group within the Church of England needs to discover a unity of purpose and capacity to work together if the conversation about God is to happen; Together, WATCH, OBOF, Equal, Changing Attitude England, Accepting Evangelicals, Open Table Network, Inclusive Church, Modern Church, SCM, Progressive Christianity Network, Sea of Faith, and others not represented here. Without this conversation, conflict will continue and Living in Love and Faith will absorb our time and energy, exhausting us and resolving nothing.
This blog could end here; but I’m tempted to add the voice of Diarmaid MacCulloch before I finish, historian though he is and not (primarily at least) a theologian. I finished reading Lower than the Angels on Thursday. In the penultimate chapter Diarmaid comments that:
“In the now ubiquitous para-world of social media and virtual ‘influencing’, this variety of impressionable young man may be co-opted into toxic misogyny, with homophobia as a side-dish. It is not surprising that male homosexuality should be a major threat to insecure male egos.” (p.477)
And at the beginning of the final, brief chapter, A Story Without an Ending, he writes:
“Christianity continues to be the chameleon faith it always has been, like all successful world religions: remarkable in its ability to take root in new situations and reinvent itself for new times. An aspect of that . . . is the capacity of theologians and clergy to retrofit theology onto new realities. That is not necessarily an unhealthy process, as long as it does not pretend that the result has always been there, pristine and unchallengeable in authority.” (p.490)
It's time for the God conversation.