As a Methodist, I've been watching the recent crises in the Church of England from the sidelines. To be brutally honest, a lot of it has been cringeworthy as the archbishop
seems to open his mouth only to change feet! And whilst I've never been a fan of Justin Welby, a certain part of me feels sorry for a person who is quite clearly out of his depth.
What does concern me is the scapegoating that’s going on. René Girard’s groundbreaking work revealed in a fresh way the age-old mechanism that underpins human community, namely the desire to find someone to bear the responsibility of our collective failures. The myth is that, in banishing the scapegoat, somehow we purge the community’s guilt and shame.
I’m reminded of the way that the Metropolitan Police’s first openly-LGBTQ+ and female Commissioner was made dismissed and made responsible for a culture of bullying, homophobia and misogyny. Surely, I wasn’t the only one to see the irony?!
This is not to suggest that leaders shouldn’t be held accountable for what goes on in their organisations and for their own failures. But I don’t honestly think that many believe that a new Archbishop of Canterbury (or Met Commissioner for that matter) will miraculously deal with the systemic problems that have come to light.
To return to the example of Cressida Dick for a moment: she was held accountable for what went on in local police stations in London amongst serving. Yet, not once did I hear of any District Superintendents or Chief Inspectors being disciplines, even though they are responsible for what goes on, on the ground. I’m sure that some were outraged when the wrongdoing was uncovered but I reckon many were not at all surprised.
Likewise with other organisations like the C of E – there are many layers of leadership between the local parish and Lambeth Palace and responsibility for knowing what’s going on and calling out bad behaviour rests on more than one pair of shoulders. However, in organisations that rely on scapegoating to maintain cohesion, there is simply no incentive for whistleblowers to speak out or for leaders to step up. In all likelihood, the one who dares to put their head above the parapet will quickly become a target (see how the Bishop of Newcastle has been vilified). Hierarchical systems allow nearly everyone to believe that there is someone above them to whom they can pass the buck!
John Smyth got away with the abuse of dozens of young men for decades because:
a) he was posh (and therefore very well connected);
b) he relied on the institutional homophobia of the church to silence his victims and prevent them from speaking out;
c) in relocating to Africa, he counted on those who suspected him back in Britain of being less concerned about the potential further abuse of black people.
Like most abusers, he did a risk assessment of the likelihood of being caught and was careful to analyse the power dynamics at play. That’s why he singled out the vulnerable and less powerful, knowing that they would find it difficult to report what had happened and, even if they did, would find it harder to be believed.
At the heart of all this is a group of survivors who placed their trust in the church and had their bodies violates and their lives seriously damaged. They are but a fraction of those who have experienced all kinds of bullying, aggression, discrimination, exclusion and abuse at the hands of people they should have been able to trust. It is their pain and their bravery and determination to seek justice that we should keep front and centre through all of this turmoil.
Because of a (mistaken) belief in the need to protect institutional reputation, too many victims, past and present have been treated as an embarrassment by churches. They are a constant reminder of our collective failures and so are hidden from view. But are they not the living wounds of Christ, the marks of the nails and thorns and spear that were visible in the resurrected body of Jesus? Those wounds are the signs of a God who suffered abuse and injustice, though innocent, and who suffers still in solidarity with all who have been abused.
The survivor’s difficult vocation is to hold before us constantly, both our need of repentance and our responsibility to change. For this we need the transforming power of God to deal with our failures and to empower us to work for justice, love and reconciliation. Meditating on the wounds of Christ reminds us how much damage and pain our failures have caused, a reality we need to grasp if we are to truly comprehend the overflowing love that has been lavished upon us.
The trouble is our structures and organisational cultures get in the way. The policies and procedures of Safeguarding have not delivered the kinds of culture change that was expected and have instead become necessary evils to be endured. In some ways, they have created a false sense of security for those who believe that completed paperwork provides a guarantee of safety. What, I think, we fail to realise is that the reason we need to go through repeated cycles of safeguarding training is exactly because so little of it has become embedded in our thinking and therefore our practice.
The greatest impediment to Safeguarding is the culture of secrecy that infects most large organisations. In the Church, we have even developed doctrine to shore up the practice of institutional secrecy. Despite being an organisation founded by one who claimed that ‘the truth shall set you free’, churches of all hews have come to fear the damage that transparency could bring. We have taken terms such as ‘pastoral confidentiality’ and ‘the seal of the confessional’ as licence to keep all sorts of things hidden away and, despite decades of revelations about horrendous abuse perpetrated under our noses, our default position remains non-disclosure.
There are, of course, good reasons why not everything should be made public, but that should be the exception and not the rule. One test of whether to apply pastoral confidentiality might be to ask the question:
Does confidentiality protect the least powerful in this situation?
If the answer is ‘yes’, then there might be a reason to hold back some information. But too often, in a misguided attempt to protect the vulnerable, blanket confidentiality has ended up also protecting the most powerful and therefore, revictimizing the victimised.
Transparency in organisations demands leadership that is honest, accountable and has integrity. If we want better leaders, then we need to dump the culture of scapegoating and embrace openness.
St Paul wrote that ‘we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.’ (2 Cor 4:10). Sadly, it has taken revelations of great suffering to call the Church to account. I pray, therefore, that some good might come from this unspeakable evil and that the continuing witness of survivors in our churches and beyond may reveal to us the path to life.
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