Surviving the Church: Restoring Hope to Your Faith

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Further, the general statement about the purpose of bullying that follows I think covers many of the perplexed questions in Surviving Church. What better place to wield authority and power whilst being able to say “I am weak” with conviction! I am convinced that most power abusers are compensating for real weakness, for dysfunctional family settings, and unhappy childhoods. Thankfully, not everyone with such a history becomes a bully. Revd Hayns may be one of those subject to investigation by a full and proper Christ Church Review: it is not nice, especially when one emerges the other end with the allegations unsustained, but nevertheless harmed.

We have already, in this blog post, identified one major problem for Canon Foot as the new Dean. Any belief that her predecessor deserved the three-year period of persecution that he suffered, even though Judge Andrew Smith found him innocent of all 27 charges brought against him, will make it hard to lead the College into a new stage in its history. Still less will she be seen as a figure of reconciliation. It is hard to see how she will manage to dissipate the toxicity of the past. The atmosphere at Christ Church will likely remain poisonous for some time to come and people will continue to choke on the fumes of the hatreds that were stirred up only a short time ago. It is almost appropriate to speak of a need for spiritual deliverance.

I also think that this needs to be done sooner rather than later, whilst the political reverberations of IICSA continue to resound in Westminster and Whitehall. In year or two’s time the policymaking caravan might well have moved on, and IICSA will have joined the mountain of other largely forgotten government reports. It was announced in another blog that Michael Reid, the former head of Peniel Church in Brentwood, died on Friday 13 th January 2023. Those who have followed this blog for a long time will be familiar with the name. My interest in this larger-than-life charismatic leader formed an important focus for this blog over a period in around 2015. I should like to respond to those who have suggested involving ” a few well chosen M.P.s” From personal experience this would be an excellent idea but definitely ‘well chosen’, involving people who understand the situation. The project was the brainchild of Sarah Troughton and David Creese, both survivors of faith-based abuse, who worked closely with the Diocese of Newcastle’s Safeguarding Advisor Carol Butler to develop the content.

The question is limited to the passing of a key document; there has been an attempt to outplace responsibility to a Reviewer who has refused that responsibility. I stress the need for compassion towards those embroiled in Safeguarding complexities and controversies, nevertheless there are equally important issues of integrity of process, institutional probity, moral cowardice and a failure of Governance.I have asked for a major investigation like the police are doing and every Diocese and Parish Safeguarding Advisors in the Church of England are re-vetted, and, incompetent Diocese and Parish safeguarding advisors are removed from being able to practice.

Also, unlike the 1980s and 1990s (at least until 1997) it now has very few friends indeed in positions of meaningful influence within the state. The default position of most senior officials and politicians is now complete neutrality in religious matters, which often conceals the atheistic or agnostic reality (for example, there are now 110 members of the parliamentary humanist group). The Church has effectively been evicted from the counsels of the state, and it leaders are not taken very seriously. Campaigners would do well to note that the Church is, at best, barely tolerated in government circles, and is more generally treated with disguised contempt. It would likely lose all of its privileges if only politicians could summon up the effort or knew what to do about the buildings. One of the reasons for that contempt is that its ‘establishment’ complicates the efforts of the state to appear neutral in its engagement with all faith communities. Almost the last card the Church can play are the provisions within the Human Rights Act 1998 which protect faith groups, and in this way they can use a statute intended to be ‘progressive’ (at least by Charter 88 and the Blair government) for defensive and reactionary ends. All who have engaged with the Jay Review report a uniformly good impression of the competence, professionalism and kindness toward them in addition to a grasp of the issues partly born out of Professor Jay’s experience at IICSA. Towards the end of the 90s, having witnessed other similar disasters in the church and seeing how little the church authorities really seemed to understand the dynamics of what was happening, particularly in the world of charismatic Christianity, I decided to do my own research. This research on fundamentalist charisma resulted in a book which appeared in 2000, Ungodly Fear, Fundamentalist Christianity and the Abuse of Power. The book for the most part tells stories of abuse but these stories are interspersed with commentary and an attempt to put the stories into historical context. While writing the book I obviously felt drawn to offer some psychological insight and I found myself offering a few pointers from my reading of Melanie Klein. Because psychology had never been my subject of study, this dimension of the study was not prominent in the book. I was far more interest in the history of charisma and the theological challenges that it presented. Introducing Ms Atkinson to General Synod in February 2022 the Lead Safeguarding Bishop Jonathan Gibbs hailed the ISB as “ fully independent “ – a sentiment the new Chair echoed, Some members of General Synod were already slightly sceptical and were seeking clarificationsThe survey is not about asking questions relating to victims and survivors’ past or present experiences of abuse, harm or neglect but to understand better how victims and survivors would like to be involved in developing the framework, in what ways and what formats. Its purpose is to listen to victims and survivors, including those who have not engaged with the Church previously, about how they would like to be involved in developing and implementing this framework and enable victims and survivors of any form of abuse to engage in different workstreams in the Church, including its response to victims and survivors of abuse. It’s so important to register history, remember it and hopefully learn from it and not fall for a person like Reid. Yet remarkably these situations have a nasty habit of recurring.