I’ve spent the last 24 hours, less sleeping time, reading and responding to people’s comments on various Facebook groups, about the Channel 4 News report yesterday evening revealing that the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Revd John Perumbalath, had been accused of sexually harassing another bishop and of sexually assaulting another woman when he was bishop of Bradwell in the Diocese of Chelmsford when Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, was bishop of Chelmsford. The Archbishop of York had been accused of covering the assaults up. I’ve decided to combine some of the reactions and my thoughts into a blog, my perspective and analysis being somewhat at odds with most people.
I had long conversation with John Perumbalath at General Synod several years ago and found him to be a compassionate man fully committed to LGBTQIA+ equality. I was delighted when he was selected to be Bishop of Liverpool despite thinking, after my conversation with him, that he didn’t really understand the failings of the culture of the Church in which he is a bishop. But it has become apparent that almost none of the bishops (and Archbishop) understand the failings of the contemporary culture of the Church of England. Nor do the majority of people I talk with understand what I see as the systemic failings of today’s Church. I perceive the culture of the Church to be corrupted by inadequate theology, vision, spirituality, teaching, practice, liturgy, Christian formation, governance and leadership, let alone its scandalous failures to deal with abuse and safeguarding and human sexuality and gender adequately or competently.
A Church in deep crisis
The Church is in a far deeper state of crisis than it understands. It is simply not aware of the need, as I see it., for a radical transformation of the culture of the Church of England, the faith in God it professes, the belief in Jesus as the Son of God it claims to uphold and its roots in the three-legged stool Anglican orthodoxy of scripture, tradition and reason. The Church has a very inadequate awareness of how the Holy Spirit is present in creation, in the Church and in the cosmos, a universal spiritual energy seamlessly infused in creation, in life on earth and in the life of every human being.
On Channel 4 News Robert Thompson and Andrew Graystone in recorded interviews gave robust accounts of the seriousness of the accusations against the bishop of Liverpool and of the apparent coverup, yet again, by the institution under the Archbishop of York. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, bishop of Dover, was interviewed live and wriggled around the questions she was asked, insisting all the time that the Church had followed due process. Finally Charlie Bell was interviewed live, stating that we have been in crisis for some time, a crisis of abuse and failure to deal with abuse.
Let me continue by reflecting on Charlie’s comments posted 24 hours later. Tonight, he wrote, I just feel a sense of sadness and shame. When will this end? How will it end? Why are we not learning anything? It is abundantly clear our processes aren’t working, our structures broken, our culture sick, and our leadership tainted. It’s time to get it all out there. No more hiding, no more hoping it will go away. Air the dirty laundry. Admit the mistakes. It is time for the Church of England to embrace radical honesty and perhaps then people might believe we have nothing more to hide.
How to achieve Radical Honesty and Transformation?
Charlie correctly identifies part of the problem – the Church has to embrace radical honesty. But in my understanding there is a much deeper systemic problem in the Church of England today. A radical transformation of the culture of the Church of England has become necessary as I indicated earlier. The theology, vision, spirituality, teaching, practice, liturgy, Christian formation, governance and leadership of the contemporary Church are all inadequate.
Every morning, as I’ve recently written, I spend 90 minutes in reflection and deep silence and presence. Often in that time ideas come to me. If I were confident about the source of my ideas, I might say they come from God, revelations via the Holy Spirit, but that would be to claim an unjustified authority for them. They are ideas that make sense to me. Questions arise – how is the transformation that I believe to be essential for the Church of England going to be achieved? It’s a question that arises in response to many of the comments posted on Facebook.
Is transformation impossible?
Maybe the task of transformation is impossible. Maybe the lack of awareness of how dramatically bad things are and of the extreme transformation that is needed is an indication that the body of the Church is not open to the spiritual energies that are lacking today, resulting in a decline in integrity and a loss of Christian basics. We are consumed by division and endless arguments about authority, scripture, gender, sexuality, and what you can and can’t do with bits of your body, primarily with your penis (for those who have one). The blogs I am posting at the moment are my attempt to describe some of the elements of transformation I think are necessary before we have any hope of coming to a common mind about the LLF process and equal marriage.
The majority of people are focused on specific matters and details in their comments. To give just one example, the one-year limit is a serious matter that needs urgent attention. For some years, people of wisdom, integrity and authority have been writing and campaigning about the shockingly abusive events and the disgraceful failures of the safeguarding system and procedures and the incompetence of the House of Bishops, the Archbishops and the National Safeguarding Team. Excellent books describing and analysing abuse and safeguarding have been published. But no one has yet worked out what levers there are to pull that will effectively change any part of this appalling dynamic.
And this evening I'm writing and posting a spur-of-the-moment blog, interrupting the series of blogs I’m writing, arguing that nothing is going to change, despite the serious nature of the failures, because something is far, far more seriously wrong with the basic fabric of the Church - what it claims to believe about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Bible - the fundamentals of our faith. Thanks in part to global conservative movements, we are stuck in fruitless conversations, meetings and processes, LLF being the chief distraction to which many friends and fellow activists are committed, attempting to resolve what people, and gay men in particular, are allowed to do with our bodies, and whether, specifically, gay men and women can marry.
But events, new eruptions of scandal and shock, a new delay to the LLF timetable,. repeatedly distract us. My analysis and my outline for change and transformation is too difficult, too radical, too challenging for people to think about and engage with. Time, thought, reflection and process are required and I understand that the time for movement may not come until after I'm dead. The Church of England is desperate to survive, throwing money, resources, time and attention at what look to me like increasingly futile, superficial initiatives.
It requires a Movement
One friend commented that “Seeking first God's kingdom and God's righteousness/justice” is what we need to do. It’s a familiar phrase, of course, but not the one that comes first to my mind. That's because I'm not sure we have agreement in today's Church about what the content of God's kingdom, justice and righteousness is. That's where the thinking and digging and conversation has to start. It has to become a movement, and there's no sign at all at the moment of any such movement under way in the Church of England.