Note: please see link to sign the petition at the end of this article.
Ann Onymous writes: Our late Queen famously once said ‘recollections may vary’. Ever the diplomat. Our current Archbishop was known to be a huge fan of Her Majesty. In a 2021 BBC Newscast interview when he was asked about the need for an honesty culture—and an honesty culture that comes from the top—he responded:
That is clearly essential—and isn’t it wonderful that we have such an extraordinary example at the top—of the Queen with her complete integrity in every possible way.
Many years after it was promised, the Makin review into the abuses of John Smyth and the resulting cover-up by many in the Church of England has now been published. Reading the detail of the Makin review and its various appendices is horrific. There have been many press reports detailing the scale and nature of the abuse, but the depth of abuse and the following ‘open secret’ that it became still shocks one utterly upon reading it. One victim is quoted as saying:
If Justin Welby or the Church of England had exposed John Smyth’s abuse in 2013 publicly, it would have been a different life or a different end of life for my father.
The connections between Archbishop Welby and John Smyth stretch back to the 1970’s, and there have been reflections on what Welby knew when. Piecing together the snippets and statements from across the report does not make for an entirely congruent picture.
According to Makin’s research, in the summer of 1975 both Justin Welby and John Smyth attended the Summer Iwerne Camp. They did so again the following summer, and the summer after that. The next year, 1978, Justin Welby is lodging with Mark Ruston and Makin details that he was overheard having a “grave” conversation with Ruston, about John Smyth, whilst lodging with him. Justin Welby advised the reviewers that he does not recall this conversation but confirms that he did share accommodation with Mark Ruston during this period. [The ‘Ruston report’ which was written in early 1982 details much of Smyth’s abuse to that date and clearly states that offences had been committed. Makin notes that there was also ‘evidence of what amounts to “victim blaming” in some of the correspondence’.]
Makin observes that Welby attends the Summer Iwerne Camp again, in the summer of 1978, and that by the summer of 1979 he is listed as a speaker at that summer’s camp.
In the Archbishop’s February 2017 interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari (Makin’s Appendix 23) Welby noted that he went off to work in Paris in 1978, ‘was abroad the time that the report was done and had no contact with them at all’. In an interview outside LBC later that same day in 2017 (also Appendix 23), he said he had gone ‘to live in Paris in ‘78 and came back in ‘83 and had no contact with the camps at all’.
Inside LBC, he said he never heard anything at any point about Smyth—he ‘never had the slightest suspicion’. In the interview outside LBC the Archbishop added:
obviously it would have been wonderful to have known and been able to stop it but there wasn’t any sign at all or knowledge, and you—listen—you get used to boys’ schools. I went to an all-boys school, and back in the 70’s people would say watch out for so-and-so. There was never anything like that. There was never anything that raised one’s suspicions.
By the time of the Makin review, recollections have definitely varied.
The Makin review describes how around the Easter of 1981, John Smyth took a group of four of his victims on a skiing trip to France. The group stopped off in Paris on the way. Recalling the visit to the Makin reviewers, the Archbishop said:
While we were in Paris, and this I do remember, John Smyth came through Paris, stayed the night in Paris on his way to Switzerland with a group of Iwerne boys, senior campers, and they came to St Michael’s Church which we attended on a Sunday morning.
Peter Sertin, the Chaplain of the church asked Welby if he used to attend Iwerne and said that Smyth was visiting—so Welby went up to Smyth at the end of the service:
as one does over the coffee, and said ‘Hi John, it’s Justin’, and I can still remember, he was extremely offhand…’.
Not quite ‘no contact with the camps at all’.
But there was more to follow. After the boys had returned home following their time away with Smyth, Sertin confided to Welby that one of the boys had “spoken to him” about Smyth. Makin notes
Peter Sertin warned Justin Welby that John Smyth was not a good man and to “stay away from him”’. In the Archbishop’s own words ‘I saw Peter who was a good friend, the Chaplain and he said, ‘You know that Smyth fellow?’, and I said ‘Yes’, he said ‘He came back through’, I said ‘Oh, really?’ He said ‘Yes. Not a nice man, really not a nice man’.’
Sertin told Welby that ‘one of the boys had a chat with me’. Welby recalled to Makin that
I don’t know who it was and I wouldn’t remember if he’d told me but he wouldn’t have told me, he would have kept it strictly confidential, but he said ‘I wouldn’t have anything to do with him if I were you’, but no more than that.’
To Makin and the reviewers, Welby has commented that this warning was vague and he thought it was based on ‘incompatible personalities’. It doesn’t quite match his 2017 interview stating that
and back in the 70’s people would say watch out for so-and-so. There was never anything like that. There was never anything that raised one’s suspicions.
Makin observes that
Justin Welby had some knowledge of John Smyth, with a concern being expressed about him. He carried this knowledge into later life, when he did become aware of the serious concerns.
Despite Sertin’s warning, Welby and Smyth continued to exchange Christmas cards for several years while the Archbishop was in Paris, and on his return to the UK, including while Smyth was living in Zimbabwe. The Archbishop describes this as ‘usual for the time’. Welby says he recalls ‘making donations’ to Smyth to support his Ministry in Zimbabwe, and that this was
within a “typical and usual pattern” for the time, with gifting to prominent people heading Ministries and the like being common and unremarkable.
Whatever any previous conversations with Sertin or Ruston might have been, by August 2013 the Archbishop was aware of the abuse allegations surrounding Smyth. Justin Welby wrote or stated in an email from that time that he knew John Smyth in the 1970s and stated that the matter is ‘disclosable and must be done by either us or them’, the “them” being the Iwerne/Titus Trust. He was advised by his then chaplain, Jo Bailey Wells that Stephen Conway (at that time Bishop of Ely) considered that the Iwerne/Titus Trust must not be informed at this juncture, because the matter was being investigated by the Police. Makin comments:
Welby is told, therefore, that the matter is being dealt with, the Police have been informed and a letter has been sent to the appropriate Bishop in Cape Town. It is not clear what the reference to the matter being “disclosable” means. If it refers to the need for a disclosure to authorities (the Police) needing to be made, this was not fully followed up.
Jo Bailey Wells subsequently advised Stephen Conway that she would leave it to the diocese to pursue and to take no further action until the Police had provided further advice. But Makin notes that
there is no evidence in the Lambeth Palace records passed to Reviewers to indicate that Jo Bailey Wells followed this up.
There was a large volume of such referrals coming to Lambeth Palace at that time, but Makin observes that this…
referral should have stood out as being remarkable—at least three victims were known of, with a further number (around five or six) having been referenced by a victim. Fundamentally, the diocese was expected to follow safeguarding procedures but there was no oversight from Lambeth Palace, even though they had been alerted. This is all the more surprising, given that Lambeth Palace had been told of, and had acknowledged, that Justin Welby may have a connection with John Smyth.
Makin’s analysis of this 2013 period is pretty damning. He describes ‘a distinct lack of curiosity shown by these senior figures and a tendency towards minimisation of the matter’ as evidenced by the lack of further questioning and follow up, in particular regarding any reassurance that a known abuser was not still actively abusing. Makin concludes:
Smyth could and should have been reported to the police in 2013. This could (and probably would) have led to a full investigation, the uncovering of the truth of the serial nature of the abuses in the UK, involving multiple victims and the possibility of a conviction being brought against him.
In his 2017 LBC interview Welby said that during this period ‘we checked that the police had been informed and they had been’ and when asked what further interest he took responded that ‘well, we keep an eye on it, obviously’. Makin, as detailed above, mentions that there is no evidence from Lambeth Palace to show that Jo Bailey Wells had in fact continued to follow this up. When pushed again in his LBC interview, about what progress was made, he responded that ‘we found out what was going on but as you know John Smyth had moved’ referencing Smyth’s move to South Africa. Ferrari pushes him on calls and conversations with the Bishop of Ely (Stephen Conway) on the matter, but no details are forthcoming, just reference to the national safeguarding team who ‘came on board’ and how he was ‘sure it was being rigorously handled by the Bishop of Ely’.
There is then a gap from 2013–2017 about which Welby expressed concerns to his staff in an email which Makin quotes, writing ‘any ideas for an answer welcome’. He was right to be concerned. Makin’s opinion is that
Welby held a personal and moral responsibility to pursue this further, whatever the policies at play at the time required. He was advised to not pursue this further whilst a police investigation was underway (which it wasn’t) but he should have made further attempts to reassure himself that the matter was being pursued, particularly with regard to the approach to South Africa.
Makin can find no evidence that this happened.
The gap ended with the Channel 4 News investigation presented by Cathy Newman being aired in early 2017. The matter suddenly become far more public, and press interest picked up. Outside that LBC studio in 2017 Welby also made various comments about the victims of abuse. Promises to them. He said that ‘their interests have to come first’, ‘these are the people we care most about’ and ‘they really, really matter’. He said that he regularly met with survivors of abuse and listened to their stories. Victims began to express increasing frustration, not only with the answers given in his interview but that these commitments he had made were not being met. Makin notes ‘as time went on, victims’ frustrations and anger grew as these promises were not kept nor acted upon’.
Seven months after the LBC interview, victims frustrations at what they saw as promises broken were such that they were organising demonstrations at Canterbury Cathedral, with the intention of securing a meeting with Welby. It didn’t help; Makin notes:
No such meeting took place until April 2021, a clear four years after the programme was first aired. Welby advised reviewers that he was consistently following advice from police and safeguarding colleagues.
Makin comments several times through the review on the impact that these promises not being honoured had on victims. Victim accounts have David Porter, Welby’s then Chief of Staff, also promising meetings with the Archbishop, to no avail. Welby had, says Makin ‘made a promise to meet with the victims’ but ‘this did not translate into an actual meeting until four years later’ despite the unprecedented scale of this abuse, nor the abusers connection to Welby.
In the meantime, a degree of damage control had been attempted. When Cathy Newman interviewed Justin in 2019, Welby said that neither John Smyth nor the Iwerne Trust and its camps were ‘Anglican’. This claim has since been withdrawn. Makin notes that interview ‘contained several incorrect assertions by Justin Welby’. Welby tried to say he knew nothing of the open secret, that he had ‘never heard of that, ever at any point’ and that he ‘wasn’t in those (Evangelical) circles’ while Makin asserts that ‘he was, and is, very closely associated with that network’. Newman asked Welby if he wasn’t sufficiently curious—to which he responds ‘curious about what?’. Two years after the 2017 news investigation, the inquiry had not started. Welby attempted to defend this by saying that ‘The Church of England was never directly involved’ and blamed the absence of review on the lack of participation by the ‘key organisations that were at the frontline’. He went on to assure Newman that ‘we were in very rapid contact with them [survivors] through the normal way the church does this. I have not met with them.’ When further pushed on camera about meeting them he said ‘I will certainly…as soon as it can be arranged in the diary…’.
In 2021, two years later, when there finally was a zoom call with a number of victims, Welby made a commitment to ensuring that all the Clergy identified as possibly not acting on information they had, would be investigated by the National Safeguarding Team. One of those on the call held up a list of names, which Welby confirmed would act as the basis for the investigations. But the only investigations carried out by the National Safeguarding Team took place in response to referrals; victims were left feeling yet another promise of Welby’s had been broken.
Welby suggests that he would have been ‘more active’ if he had realised the seriousness of Smyth’s offences in 2013. However, the evidence put forward by Makin ‘suggests enough was known to have raised concerns upon being informed in 2013’ and highlights Welby’s experiences at Iwerne in the 1970s and his being warned off John Smyth in Paris in 1981. Makin is clear that
on the balance of probabilities, it is the opinion of the Reviewers that it was unlikely that Justin Welby would have had no knowledge of the concerns regarding John Smyth in the 1980s in the UK…it is most probable that he would have had at least a level of knowledge that John Smyth was of some concern.
Welby asserts during that 2019 interview that ‘we were in rapid touch with the survivors’. Makin is clear that ‘this is not correct’ citing instead considerable delay in establishing any contacts and in setting up a helpline for victims.
The Makin review was finally published this week, with haste following a leak. Cathy Newman again interviewed the Archbishop for Channel Four. He reiterated again that he ‘heard about this for the first time in July, August, 2013 about four months after I took over and didn’t know anything before then, or I have any suspicions’. Her response? ‘Well, that’s not quite true’.
In this most recent interview he concedes that in that 2013–2017 gap he did not make sure that the Smyth case ‘was pursued as energetically, as remorselessly as it should have been’. He defends his financial support of Smyth in the 70s and 80s saying ‘lots of people funded his mission’. He expresses regret about following the advice he was given to refuse to see victims; ‘I shouldn’t have taken the advice’. But when asked if he will resign, as victims are calling for him to, he says
I’ve taken advice, as recently as this morning from senior colleagues, and no, I’m not going to resign for this. If I’d known before 2013 or had grounds for suspicion, that would be a resigning matter then and now, but I didn’t’
In a written statement from the Archbishop following the publication of the review, he again apologises for not meeting victims for so long; ‘no Archbishop can meet with everyone but I promised to see them and failed until 2020. This was wrong.’ And despite the conversations with the Makin reviewers of the concerns expressed to him in 1981, and the Makin note about the overheard conversation with Ruston, that written statement continues to declare that ‘I had no idea or suspicion of this abuse before 2013’.
In the December 2021 BBC interview this post opened with, the Archbishop was asked about the need for prominent leaders in public life to be ‘straight about things’ (in the context of various COVID rule breaks). His reply included the following:
You just have to acknowledge where things have gone wrong and say ‘yes, that was wrong’. And I noticed the former mayoral candidate immediately stepped down. That seems very honourable. He stepped down from his various posts. That seems to me to be an honourable and proper way of doing it.
If that is the’ honourable and proper way of doing it’ for others, why is that not the honourable and proper route for the Archbishop?
In 2018, in his evidence to IICSA, Welby commented:
Nobody can say it is not my fault. It is so absurd. To say, ‘I have heard about a problem but it was someone else’s job to report it’, that is not an acceptable human response, let alone a leadership response. If you know a child is being abused, not to report it is simply wrong, for every human being.
If it was not acceptable then, can it be acceptable now?
The author of this guest piece wishes to remain anonymous for personal reasons.
Additional Note: Fergus Butler-Gallie posted this letter on Twitter today:
Dear Archbishop Justin,
We pray for you often at my church. I kneel and watch the people I have been called to love and serve form your name with their lips and then send it, wrapped in that very ordinary, parish piety, up to God.
We pray for you because we know what weight you carry in your position. It is not a job I would wish on my worst enemy such is its magnitude in Church and in State. Specifically we pray for you that you might have discernment and wisdom. In light of recent events, it is clear that those prayers have been in vain.
I don’t write in judgement, but as a fellow sinner. As a mere parish priest I make mistakes every day. I am profoundly conscious of the times I get things wrong, when I hurt people by my foolishness or ignorance, and when I let down the people I am called to serve. That weighs heavily on me, not for reasons of social embarrassment, but because I believe, as I am sure you do, that I will one day have to give account of them to Christ himself.
In light of that, I pray another prayer in my church twice a day: the words of your predecessor Thomas Cranmer in the confession at Morning and Evening Prayer. ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done’. In the case of the details now in the public eye, forgiveness requires more than words, it requires sacrificial action that mirrors the Grace you must surely lean upon if you truly do seek forgiveness.
We will continue to pray for you, but I for one will be praying that you will resign. The damage you have done to this church will take a very long time to repair. More importantly, those things you did and failed to do inflicted such damage on people—made in the image of that same God—might never heal. Any healing of individuals or the institution must now be in His hands, not yours. The way you might serve that process best now is to resign.
If you will not go for the love of the institution, if you will not go for the love of its people and priests, if you will not go for the victims, if you will not go for reasons of your own embarrassment or shame, then I pray you; for love of God, and Him alone, go.
Yours faithfully
Fergus Butler Gallie, Vicar of Charlbury with Shorthampton
Petition: The Makin Report into the abuse committed by John Smyth has highlighted serious failures in the culture, structures, and leadership of the Church of England. We are deeply ashamed of these failures, and the way that survivors have been betrayed.
Alongside other concerns, the report highlights the particular responsibility of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for these failures. He ‘held a personal and moral responsibility to pursue this further, whatever the policies at play at the time required’ which he failed to fulfil.
Given his role in allowing abuse to continue, we believe that his continuing as the Archbishop of Canterbury is no longer tenable. We must see change, for the sake of survivors, for the protection of the vulnerable, and for the good of the Church—and we share this determination across our traditions. With sadness we do not think there is any alternative to his immediate resignation if the process of change and healing is to start now.
Revd Dr Ian Paul, member of General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council
Revd Robert Thompson, Vicar of St Mary’s Kilburn & St James’ West Hampstead, member of General Synod.
Revd Marcus Walker, Vicar of Great St Bartholomew, member of General Synod
Buy me a Coffee
I’m musing about what constitutes a resigning matter. The fact that he turned a blind eye to Smyth? Or the fact that he’s now on record as no longer personally believing in the orthodox theology of marriage?
I feel profoundly sorry for Justin: he can’t do right for doing wrong, and some of his most furious critics come from his own evangelical stable. But in a position of major leadership, something has to give. Although I don’t think his resignation will make anything better – and heaven knows who might replace him.
(By the way, the website is not saving my name, email etc: I have to enter the details each time.)
I think both are good cause.
Not sure why your name is not being saved. No-one else has reported this…
Actually, thinking about it, the website has, which is why I don’t need to approve it. The autofill will I think be a function of your computer and browser, not this site.
This article doesn’t seem to be as coherently composed as it would from Andrew Goddard.
But there are one or two comments.
1 The report moves from a finding of the civil standard of proof, ‘balance of probabilities’ that is ‘more likely than not’ to merly ‘probable’.
Weighing these standards together, the credibility of the ABC is laid open. Is he to be believed?
2. Advisors. Who are they?
On whose behalf are they advising the ABC, personally and/or the CoE institution? It is suggested that the CoE itself has been dishonoured.
As such, there seems to be little doubt that the advisors have an incompatible
‘conflict of interest’.
To the odinary member of the public, with the ABC as a titular head of the CoE, what does this say about the CoE, about Christians and Christianity?
Justice delayed is justice denied is a maxim of natural justice in England and Wales.
In the capital, yesterday’s Metro main headline:
CHURCH’S 40-YEAR ABUSER COVER-UP
And the first sentence/para:
”The Church of England covered up sex abuse of at least 130 children and young men by a barrister at Christian summer camps for decades, a report says.”
This obeys the cardinal journalist rules:
(1) Thou shalt make the Church equal the Church of England. Make *that* be the shop window of Christianity, since they are the ones whom we have got where we want them.
(2) Thou shalt be as ambiguous as possible in thy wording, so that the worst construction of thy carefully crafted words is utterly awful whereas their correct construction tones things down appreciably.
(3) Thou shalt make the worst construction look like it was what thou didst mean, so that that is what people will take away from it, while thou canst always technically say that thou wast not being inaccurate.
(4) The worst construction equallest the most sensational. Because that selleth papers.
(5) Thou shalt never mention that this story’s details have essentially been rehashed x number of times before. Don’t even mention that they were rehashed once before. Let’s have the entire sensation all over again.
(6) This will have the effect of people thinking that ”the church” is constantly getting bad headlines, whereas in reality very many of those bad headlines are repeats.
(7) Thou shalt make star names out to be central to the story, however much shoehorning that taketh. That selleth newspapers too.
As to why journalists are so against Christianity it is probably its truth. That is a threat to media social engineering. They have firmly sided with secularism since the social revolution of the 1960s. And earlier, such as when they put out a story that Bev Shea was drunk in the gutter on the premise that ‘she’ was female.
The Metro is, of course, constantly pushing Woke, and it is monopoly newspapers that have no rival that can do that most effectively.
(7) above applies to Justin Welby. Goodness knows what is the relevance of a single, forgettable, ambiguous remark 43 years ago and 32 years before he was further enlightened. People are trying to make out that this brief passing conversation in all its singularity, forgettability and ambiguity is one of the greatest events imaginable. They know this is nonsense.
From the first line in the Metro, you would think that sex abuse involving 130 boys took place at Christian summer camps (probably in England, since ‘England’ is mentioned). In fact, a lot of the talk is about whether there was any sexual element at all. It is clear that there was on JS’s part (he was an abuse victim, and therefore his healthy manhood and his fixation with boys of the age he was at the time of abuse are two things that coexist), and equally clear that there was none on the boys’ part – but even then what took place is not what you would normally call sexual abuse, more physical punishment. And not at all sadomasochism, however much there was sadism: the punishment was never remotely appreciated however much the purging was. But that sells papers less well. What’s the reality? The 130 range from anyone who was tapped once with a slipper upwards. If they are including SA, then the bar is even lower than that. While for others the bar was absurdly high – but they all get lumped together. Was anyone subject to sex abuse in the UK or Zim or SA at all? At a relatively low level, yes, but only in a minority of the 130 cases unless we count the overall unpleasant/shameless camp ethos. The abuse was largely corporal punishment.
So the accompanying picture chooses itself. The abuser with a cruel face as though set on ‘sexual’ abuse. Welby (who in all that part was one bit part player among many hundreds of others) positioned next to him. Subliminal message.
As for ‘at Christian summer camps’, that has been the general line since 2017, however much one corrects it. They know what they want to think. In the case of Iwerne, there was one known beating at any summer camp, and also one horrific one post-camp on related premises. In the case of Zim, there were many beatings with bats, as was known by families to be the case and as was advertised, but not all the camps were in the summer.
So the ‘sex abuse’ idea and the idea of ‘at Christian summer camps’ – which are the two bits that would most sell papers – are, by complete coincidence I am sure, precisely the two bits where there is very large inaccuracy, as in large discrepancy between what the words conjure up and the reality. Quelle surprise.
The inaction after 2013 and the muddle in correspondence with the police are another matter altogether. The police had so few details that they did not initially proceed. Naturally there may have been issues about whose place it was to tell whom (this not being a 100% Anglican matter) and about consent, and about whether the informant was fully in his right mind, as doubtless he had every right not to be. But it looks like 2013 is where the emphasis should lie. Later interviews were indeed car crashes – but it is hard to think on one’s feet, live. The 3-4 year wait to meet with the injured was also far too long and was perhaps prompted by being shamed by expedition/promptitude in other quarters.
After 2013 the abuse (which could have been avoided had the Church and police acted quicker at this point) was more like ‘abuse’ in inverted commas, since all that can be mentioned is conversations that were felt to be intrusive. In general, the lumping together of UK vicious beatings with Zim largely public corporal punishment with SA probing conversations – all described undescriptively simply as ‘abuse’ – is playing along with the 7 commandments of journalism above, and is not in the interests of precision nor entirely of truth but rather of max sensation. As to the 80s and 90s, how one is supposed to monitor a determined and arrogant individual thousands of miles away I do not know. It was ill thought out, and the thing to do would have been for Africa Enterprise to act decisively in concert with UK sponsors as soon as JS broke away to independence. Even this they did to an extent, but it was perilously hard to orchestrate. A tangled web.
This is a good report (could have done with a bit more proofreading and fact checking), asking a relatively limited question Who Knew What When in a relatively limited (C of E only) context – both of which limits do not offset the fact that the source material was huge and its assembly praiseworthy.
The psychiatric report was also good but so far as I could see it was too much subject to the expectations of the present day as opposed to understanding the mindset of that milieu in the 1970s-80s.
Material that does not focus on that Who Knew What When? question naturally appears within the sources, and I think the letter from Simon Doggart and his friends is very much worth reading to show the lines along which people were actually thinking – nothing to do with later culture and stereotypes.
The report is quite different from the Winchester one and from Graystone’s book and they complement each other well.
It is interesting that the Graystone-led victim-statement notes the absence of reference to Henry Olonga’s book. That was absent from Graystone’s book too, and I had been thinking this was because it had the native Zimbabwean perspective (different from the more monochrome perspective of Graystone’s book in general) that the Zim camps were less abnormal within a Zim public school context than they may have seemed to others looking on from the outside.
‘unpleasant/shameless camp ethos’ – I mean in Zimbabwe. Not in England.
Minimising abuse as ‘abuse’ is one very big red flag.
But along with moaning about having to take safeguarding seriously, it happens all the time in churches and sends a very strong signal to anyone who is currently being abused to not bother with making a complaint.
Increasing vagueness is here being counted as progress. It is always regress. The very reason reports like this are written is to be accurate and precise and improve on broadbrush approaches.
What happened was that John Smyth took upon himself to mentor informally and unasked some young men in SA, and perhaps tried to help them stockcheck their lives, perhaps thereby hoping that they would understand the importance of the matter and that there were people who did care that they did not si,ply drift. In most societies, those of an older generation can give guidance (the guidance that life has equipped them to share) to the younger, whether they are related or not. In JS’s case there is a caveat, that one never knew how pure his motives were, and he may have had self loathing for the aspect of him that contended against his purer motives. My point is only that on this occasion, we have no evidence that he was planning anything beyond mentoring with this age group. Anything like thrashing was well in the past. People just lump everything but everything under the head of Abuse, but that is not clever because it is both unthinking and foreordained – they end up doing no analysis at all and them – get this – thinking their no analysis is preferable to analysis.
If it is abuse you are looking for, then (a) be specific about what it actually is you are talking about, and (b) look at the way he preyed on people’s minds and established lax ethos in earlier parts of his life – and at his disregard for the actual harm inflicted. And at the physical harm itself.
The post-2013 period is not important because of the harm he did to the SA young men (which was not sensationally major – though it revealed some extremely twisted thinking) but for the fact that his prosecution could have taken place re UK crimes had people moved faster from 2013 on. And that is a major point.
Differentiate or fail to understand.
Nah, Smyth was a control freak and a pervert who had access to young men. Some extremely weird aspects of the Christian sub-culture he moved (and thrived) in gave him that access. It’s not about one depraved individual. It’s about dismantling the structures that hand people like Smyth opportunities to abuse others on plate. And for every Smyth there are a dozen others in Christian ‘leadership’ roles who get away with bullying that falls short of physical abuse.
At some level of referral, safeguarding in the CofE should be independent of the CofE.
‘Nah’ (plus unsupported cliched assertions) is, of course, not an argument, and yet tries to be superior to things that are.
LOL
Except the complete lack of empathy for abuse victims is still disconcerting.
Your laughter is trying to divert attention from your lack of argument.
Thank you, Christopher, for your more measured assessment. We live in a very judgemental age, and while it thinks of itself as morally superior, I’m not convinced. The ability to see other people’s flaws and failings with acuity, especially after they have already been exposed, is not a great mark of godliness. ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’
*Likes*
They say that wokeism is the first religion without any forgiveness. Not sure that’s true, but it is certainly not an advance in human development and endeavour, to put it mildly.
What is ‘wokism’? Be specific about what it actually is you are talking about. And who is the “they” in “they say”. Be precise. Vagueness and buzzwords are being counted here as progress and scholarly fact!
Joe; Christopher goes on endlessly about others speaking in general terms, but as you point out here, and as I have tried to point out many times before, his own record in making vague and general statements is quite staggering.
Wokeism can be googled, but generally comprises belief in equality, diversity and inclusion – and ‘being kind’ (kind even to the extent of killing off young babies etc) which is blind to the fact that no equality is shown to females, black people or homosexuals who, en masse, are not allowed to be inferior in even one of the millions of possible measures. So it is essentially the belief that some are more equal, diverse and included than others.
This is not entirely in jest. But google it anyway – it is a recognisable trend if not uniform.
‘They say’ – alas I forget where I heard this saw. But it makes not the slightest difference who it was that said it. It is a thought to ponder.
I must say I wonder about the definition of sexual abuse when to my knowledge (I am willing to be corrected) Smyth never had an erection with anybody he chastised, and never touched anybody’s genitals nor asked that they touch his. Sex is clearly an undercurrent, but sadomasochism and gross misuse of authority, far outside the law, are what Smyth got up to in England, at least. (More so in Africa, it seems.)
The most culpable people are those who allowed Smyth to quietly emigrate to Africa rather than report him to the police – leadership of Iwrene in receipt of the 1982 Rustat report into Smyth. But I presume they are not only all retired from church positions but dead. One was David Fletcher, brother of Jonathan Fletcher.
I mistrust Justin Welby for other reasons, but this does not help.
Exactly. Which is why citing sexual abuse here must be highly nuanced. I think there is a simple explanation. JS was hounded by his own sexual abuse and like most people in that position he was fixated on young men (with all the promise and beauty he had had at that age) that were at or nearest to the age at which this had happened to him. To fail to acknowledge or react to it would have been to say that it did not matter. It mattered intensely, and he compensated for it to the high degree that it did matter.
But when you compensate you ruin others and show complete disdain for their integrity. This he did because the wound was so great. So as ever we blame the sin of Adam which works through the generations. But that does not at all mean that individuals as creatures of choice must not be treated as culpable.
The Makin report says only that Smyth *may* have been abused (on an Isle of Wight pier) as a child, I think? I wouldn’t repeat plausible conjecture as fact.
I don’t agree, Anton. Aside from (1) the Isle of Wight, which itself is not to be downplayed, there is (2) the time he told a boy in Zim how a master pinched him unpleasantly and proceeded to do the same (forbidden touching). Then (3) there is the fact that he grew up not only in Canada, where school beatings persisted especially long, but in the province where they persisted longest. (4) He was from Exclusive Brethren – somewhat cultish – background.
(5) His victims used to wonder at the historical origins of the quirks of his procedure. Clearly they had historical origins.
Christopher, you say that Smyth “was hounded by his own sexual abuse” but you are unable to cite any evidence meeting court standards that he was sexually abused. That is why I think you should not state it as fact. This is my only point.
It’s a sliding scale. If he says a teacher twisted his skin intimately (presumably in thrashing context) then of course he may not be telling the truth; but the culture he grew up in and the person he became (and also his having no reason to lie) argue against that.
Christopher….
If I read you correctly… Isn’t the search for what JS “got out of it” running the danger of gaslighting the wholesale abuse of his victims? The gross abuse is clear.
Every tree might not be “named” but it’s a plain and obvious forest of horror.
Some people have never been on the receiving end of abuse. They are usually the same people who rush to discredit victims and make excuses for any alleged abuse. All red flags. And sadly they thrive in religious communities.
Joe – I am sure they may, but so long as we follow the rule of truth and precision, nothing else comes into play.
Ian – I expect I agree though I did not 100% understand.
Christopher
Plenty else comes into play. It’s just beyond your control.
Joe – No. Anything beyond truth and precision is less than true and less than precise. Why on earth would you want to take a backward step by bringing any of that into play?
It would be difficult to know re arousal if he was clothed at the time. But he clearly experienced pleasure, sexual or otherwise, from his behaviour. Disturbing in either case.
Yes but he was stark naked during many of the beatings he gave, as I recall from previous reports.
Correct – which is one main reason why we classify as ‘sexual’ in his own case and not in the case of those he beat, who were indignant at the very suggestion. Even in his own case, there were 2 strands of motivation interwoven.
Anton
But lots of people knew and did not report him. The journalist Anne Atkins knew at least by 2012 and didnt report him. Had the police investigation started then, he likely would have been alive to stand trial rather than essentially getting away with these horrific crimes his entire life.
I don’t know what she had been told or by whom. If someone comes to you and says he thrashed me and I’m willing to say so in court then you encourage him to go to the police and offer to accompany him. If you overhear a vague rumour sbout John Smyth the thrasher who emigrated 30 years ago then you enquire further. But certainly I’d have been glad to have seen Smyth in court.
Anton
She knew enough to write a column about knowing, but didn’t reveal the name
At the heart of the John Smyth affair is the tragedy for every Christian, or group of Christians, who put huge energy into pursuing their doctrinal purity while failing dismally to apply it as God requires: with honesty, decency, humility and love (eg Micah 6:8). And, speaking as an evangelical, I’m well aware of a strand in that constituency which has an appetite for control over others and is not shy of using linguistic or direct spiritual deception in pursuit of that intention. Whatever our personal traits we should strongly resist such a destructive urge.
If John Smyth truly believed that suffering was something that ‘muscular’ Christians had to experience, he needed only to give those boys every possible encouragement to get on with the daily business of living out their faith in the real world. The Devil would have provided the suffering soon enough – no garden sheds, spades or canes required. Instead he took it on himself to do the Devil’s work for him. One can only speculate what dark impulses led him down the particularly brutal and sordid path he chose.
Ironically, it’s probably their own unwillingness to experience a bit of suffering that caused the leaders associated with the Iwerne camps, and Justin Welby, to fail so completely in dealing with the Smyth issue. That suffering would have been what middle class English gentlemen most fear: the humiliation of losing their public reputations. But it does seem the Rev David Fletcher had the perfect excuse: ‘I thought it would do the work of God immense damage if this were public.’ The spiritual blindness of such a statement boggles the mind.
This is not all Justin Welby’s fault. Whatever our disagreement with him over other issues, he still deserves to be treated fairly – justly – over this. It’s just bad luck that he happened to be connected with Iwerne at the same time as John Smyth. (But it’s very much worse luck for all the victims involved.) We understandably want to see someone getting his just deserts for his central role in the whole ghastly business but the main villain is now dead. I’m still not sure how much of Welby’s apparent failure is due to incompetence, just being too busy, receiving dreadful advice, putting off the evil day, or not caring enough about the victims. But he’s the man at the top. And sometimes the ultimate and honourable roll for a leader is to pay the price for collective failure by resigning. I think that’s what he should do here; he would come up in my estimation if he did so.
Don
If he was head teacher of a school and he, at a minimum, did not report serious abuse of children by a former teacher still working at another school, you’d expect that the board of governors would remove him.
The fact he is totally unrepentant makes it worse.
The fact he also has close ties to other abusers in the CofE makes it worse.
The fact he also publicly lied about the church’s theology of gay people makes it worse.
The fact he also supports “Christians” who want gay people put to death makes it worse.
Surely this now means that safeguarding must be independent and certainly taken away from the episcopy, who cannot be trusted
Abuse of and within system, of and in itself, is not an argument for non use, but for correct use, which may involve change of system and discipline in hierarchical chain.
But who, where to start?
From the top down and/or independent Organisational/Systems/Structure/Management Consultants?
While the author of the report is a former Dicector of Social Services, in general, Social Services Nationally don’t have a particularly good track record when it comes to safeguarding.
It also seems that there are thise in senior positions in thr CoE have ja6d senior management positions outside the church, bringing with them methodologies which ought to be alien in church governance.
It is too easy to give high profile names in the CoE as examples.
Congregations (and ‘brand’ adherents) are complicit in most cases of abuse. They simply don’t want to believe that the “good man” in charge is a total fraud. Abuse is often targeted, so anyone who has only had positive interactions with the alleged abuser will readily believe any (plausible) denials of wrongdoing, lies and smear campaigns aimed at the victim after an allegation has been made.
The pattern is always the same.
Yes, I am sure that pattern exists, but it can also be imposed. There are instances where the person actually is not a total fraud – but would you be best equipped to notice or identify those particular instances? Broad brush rarely corresponds to reality. It is facile. It amounts to saying – we just know that X is a total 100% bad egg, and anyone who says otherwise is complicit. But you have not proven your original point, you have just asserted that you know.
Safeguarding complaints should be taken seriously. Nothing more, nothing less.
If I report a robbery/burglary to the police, I don’t expect to hear undermining comments about how some people report similar crimes to commit insurance fraud. I’m sure that happens but I expect my complaint to be taken seriously. Safeguarding is no different. Except there is a culture within churches to give credence to the kind of invalidating comments/observations you make.
Which is exactly why so many people have their lives ruined by false accusations. The same institutions are between the devil and the deep blue sea: trying to avoid acting on false allegations; simultaneously trying not to trivialise true ones. But they are stymied from the start because they do not know which is which. If they could simply know what was true then things would be fine. They can’t. They get the highest of criticism in both these two scenarii. So it is hard to envisage any way they can avoid criticism. But otherwise intelligent people cannot see that the two (avoid harming the innocent; avoid sparing the guilty – all while you know only some of the facts, and all while much is hearsay) are integrally related and that this creates a bind – damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Could you name some of the ‘many’ who have had their lives ruined by false accusations?
Overend, Lowson, ‘Kenneth’ and so on.
Three.
So not ‘many’.
PCD you are the end. Your request was for ‘some of the many’.
How about we add Bernard Randall, Joshua Sutcliffe, Kristie Higgs and any number of people debarred from work for long periods for doing noting wrong? BR is a C of E case.
Christopher
I’d be careful assuming those people are innocent. At least one has a completely different account of why he was fired than the people who fired him.
It is awful if anyone has been fired because they were falsely accused of abuse. But Welby didn’t cover this up because he thought it not true.
Shouldn’t we add Martyn Percy to the list?
What else will happen if we take appropriately seriously the need to avoid false accusations AND the need to catch the guilty? We will get criticised for being tentative, yet if we are decisive we may be wrong because we will always have imperfect knowledge. It is sometimes one person’s word against another’s. People confuse the issue by claiming they know from the start who is guilty and who is a victim. And all the while there will be massive simultaneous criticism both for not coming down on the guilty and also for making hell the lives of the innocent. This can only come from people who just assume it is perfectly obvious who is innocent and guilty (?!) and who also assume that the world is divided into completely innocent and completely guilty people.
Christopher
The accusations against Smythe are not false.
I agree that if Wrong had heard unsubstantiated rumors about him then it would be wrong to make them public. That’s not what we are talking about here. We are talking about a great many witnesses coming forward and the matter being hushed up instead of acted on
OK, so what do I disagree with there? (Apart from the fact that you lump all accusations into one, rather than realising that each is a different case.)
Pilavachi, Paula Vennels at the post-office… now this scandal.
Nobody takes responsibility anymore do they?
“Lessons will be learned” I’m sure, but I am not sure that the bride of Christ is supposed to be run like a quango or plc.
[I have deleted this comment. Please read the guidelines. We don’t need any more wild vexatious comments in this context.]
Not wild. Sadly, based on experience.
This is precisely what it means but the central issue is wider than just safeguarding. Our church does not do oversight in any meaningful way. All our major (and many minor) institutions are stand-alone charities, whose trustees do not have any obligation to respond to any external comment, criticism or oversight no matter how well intended. We encourage isolated, introspective, defensive thinking. Makin shows this clearly.
We need a root and branch change of our structure and attitudes. We need our institutions, not least of which must be general Synod, to be genuine partners in a balanced approach to our future. We need a strong dose of Christian love, which is so glaringly obviously missing. This needs trust. We need to take GS2354 to heart. We need to use the intended National Church Governance Measure to introduce a robust system of oversight that will bring us together in the management of our church and make the need for Makin a historical exception.
The report makes for sorry reading but gives us the most thorough picture of events to date, although the central story has been in the public domain for some years; I am amazed at the level of documentation still extant.
As to when and what Welby knew, I suspect that we shall never know. Probably the only person who knows is Welby himself and his responses to questions on almost any topic seem to be bland, evasive and unconvincing. But given the Paris incident and his association with Mark Ruston it seems at least possible that he knew more than he is admitting. What is beyond question is that his behaviour post 2014 has been marked by an apparent refusal to face the issues or to engage meaningfully with the victims.
The response of those in positions of power throughout this whole sorry saga has been marked by secrecy, cover-up and minimising of the severity of the abuse (to refer to it as ‘corporal punishment’ is to miss the fact that this was physical assault resulting in actual bodily harm). No doubt they thought that they were acting in the best interests of Iwerne and conservative evangelical Christianity as they understood it. One of the ironies of the whole business is that the damage to these causes has been much greater than if they had been open at the outset.
There are, I suspect, lessons to be learned other than those which Makin draws out and which lie beyond his remit. He highlights deference as one of the main contributing factors. The whole Iwerne philosophy from Bash onwards was based on targeting those who might progress to positions of influence which inevitably led to a culture of deference. It is, in my view, a philosophy which is not only pragmatically flawed but the antithesis of the practice and teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Paul – ‘But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…’ When the church has hitched its wagon to the horses of privilege, secular power or celebrity status the outcomes have rarely been beneficial.
And there is another irony. I knew several of those named by Makin. I worked with a number in various capacities. They were in many ways good and godly men (I use the term advisedly) who achieved much for the Kingdom of God. For this mercy and grace of God we can be grateful, reminding ourselves that God can use even the most flawed. But this cannot be allowed to negate or minimise the great evil that was done by covering up the actions of Smyth or by colluding in his despatch to Zimbabwe.
Should Welby go? Probably. Not as an outcome of the Smyth affair alone, but because he seems incapable of providing clear and transparent leadership which engages seriously with Scripture.
Thanks—very helpful.
Does the article above mention that Makin, reports that in the ‘balance of probabilities’ ( a civil law standard of proof, that is ‘ more likely than not Welby knew what was happening). I stand to be corrected.
Juries weigh evidence, witness testimonies, statemements, to determine whether they are credible, to be believed and weight to be attached to them.
Makin, it seems, has done so.
I agree that the damage to Iwerne was greater this wy round, but I do not know whether the damage to the young men’s lives was greater. It would have been horrific either way, but if the beans had been spilt at the start, the fact that they came from top families whose fame the tabloids would have exploited would have meant that they could not have conducted their lives and careers in the 80s-90s-00s as smoothly as in fact they did. They would have been half ruined at the start, and this saga if any reminds us that the earlier the damage is done the more pernicious.
Strange then that the victims (from top families, whatever they may be) are outraged that the matters were swept under the ecclesial carpet.
And, perhaps, they might have avoided a suicide attempt, breakdowns, divorce, and loss of faith.
Whether or not the damage to young men’s lives was greater or less is impossible to determine. My guess is that it would have varied from individual to individual – but most of the evidence available suggests that many would have preferred that action had been taken. I find it exceedingly difficult to see how a legitimate argument against disclosure might be made on the basis that it could cause further damage to the victims. No doubt it would have added further pain and trauma but it might also have have opened the way for appropriate support at an earlier point.
Furthermore, had the appropriate action been taken in 1981-2 it would, at the very least, have prevented the ongoing abuse in Zimbabwe and Guide Nyachuru might – we cannot, of course, be certain for the details are obscure – still be alive.
From the few victim testimonies I have seen, it did indeed impact their careers and some of them took their own lives.
I want to correct this, because its a deeply serious issue. I don’t know that any of the victims took their own lives, but there were several attempts.
Great example of gravitating towards the stereotyped narrative and away from the evidence.
Christopher
Well the victim interviewed by ch4 says his friend tried to kill himself three times, twice as a child, because of the abuse. Is eye witness testimony not evidence? Why do you keep trying to minimize this awful abuse?
“Why do you keep trying to minimize this awful abuse?”
Peter this is a question that several have asked Christopher but he just gets angry and accuses me of blackening his name and ignores the question, saying the word abuse is being misused.
Better luck getting an answer!
I think we call all easily infer why
Peter, on that point the eyewitnesses were again accurate. They were accurate on most things, being eyewitnesses. One boy still at school did have that dreadful experience, and what I said was that a smaller minority of victims were children, most being young adults at the time of their experiences. And all who began as children (16-17 if you call that a child) continued into young adulthood. The boy at school whom you mentioned was not, as I recall, beaten, but distressed by the counselling he received.
So where is it that I am disagreeing with the eyewitnesses?
Joe, your comment is highly unpleasant, and considering that I naturally agree with eyewitnesses at all points concerning events if not analysis, your idea that somehow I disagree about which things were bad looks hard for you to substantiate. Could you give detail please, rather than making putdown remarks which you cannot back up.
Andrew, I did not say that. Yet another misunderstanding. I said something different: namely, that the word abuse is intrinsically vague and people interested in accuracy would probably expand on it rather than leaving it in all its vagueness. And everyone should be interested in accuracy. We would never prefer those who were not.The second thing I said was that some things called abuse were correedctly so called because the images conjured up by the word were accurate, whereas in other cases the images naturally conjured p by that word did not fit the case. So I differentiated between cases where the word was appropriate (albeit unhelpfully vague) and those where it was not.
You, somehow, mangle that to say that I said that the word was appropriate in no cases at all.
Christopher
How can my comment be personally received as unpleasant when it is so vague and lacking in detail?
Because it is insinuating first, othering second, and doing both while mentioning nothing at all of substance (third).
Christopher
I don’t understand why you appear to be claiming to know better than the victims about what happened? Did you know John Smythe?
I don’t know better than eyewitnesses, I know less well. Please name any points where you think I said I knew better (which I don’t). Can you name them?
“The whole Iwerne philosophy from Bash onwards was based on targeting those who might progress to positions of influence which inevitably led to a culture of deference. It is, in my view, a philosophy which is not only pragmatically flawed but the antithesis of the practice and teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Paul – ‘But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…’ When the church has hitched its wagon to the horses of privilege, secular power or celebrity status the outcomes have rarely been beneficial.”
Nailed it 100%
And every single response to this that in any way attempts to protect the stability or reputation of the institution, just feeds into that.
And then, Peter, you wonder why the Iwerne camps by their own testimony the greatest formative influence on both John Stott and Michael Green. And on a host of those who have quietly done good grounded in their daily quiet time. The pygmies who stand in judgment on them today have – not by coincidence – far inferior track records.
The ends justify the means? A few bad apples mustn’t spoil the barrel after all… A small price to pay for the benefits of John Stott and Michael Green.
However “great” those men were, they were leaders in the church during a period of rapid decline and we know that two of the major reasons people leave the church for good are church leaders covering up abuse and corruption amongst church leadership. The whole purpose of these camps was corruption.
That was a short-circuited reply to get back to the topic you wanted to talk about all along. Strong character and leadership and teaching are as strong as they are, and if the only criticism you can level is that exemplary people lived at the same time as non exemplary people (as though they were guilty of the non exemplary people’s existence by proxy…) then things are getting a bit desperate.
Christopher
I’m saying that its hard to make an “ends justify the means” argument when the “ends” is entirely negative! Iwerne hasn’t led to a larger church or a more influential church.
Yes it has. It was the most central body in the leadership of the boom times of the 1950s and the 1980s. And the late 1960s after the 1966 Graham mission too.
All these periods are correlated with Graham missions. And which organisation had Billy Graham’s main contacts?
Can you name another sector that has caused more growth? Or nearly as much?
Your inaccuracy is puzzling.
Not my point at all. My point is that you need a 180 degree rethink if you think that any institution that is supposedly uniformly as Peter Ould portrays it could possibly even be a positive influence at all in the formation of strong Christian leaders, let alone their greatest influence bar none. It just means that the theory is wrong, probably because it is operating at a crazily generalised level, short on specifics.
Christopher
If they’d produced someone who had reversed decline in the church then I’d agree with you that Iwerne may have a positive side. From my position it was just a cynical attempt to influence wealthy and powerful young men in order to gain societal power – nothing about Jesus at all and nothing about caring for the young men either. They were just useful tools.
So you are expecting a single person to reverse a trend in an 8bn person world?
John Stott’s overseas influence meant that he helped proliferate Christians and the Christian faith. Michael Green won many for Christ and thus increased the number of Christians.
It is neither of their faults that othefs were simultaneously working to reduce the number of Christians.
Not in the world, no, just England and not necessarily one man (no women allowed at Iwerne!). But you are arguing that the ends justify the means. With no disrespect, I dont think that is a Christian way of thinking and its clearly not applicable here since Iwerne has led to a diminished church with a terrible reputation
Peter, you write
‘No women allowed at Iwerne’.
I was there in 1986. There were (newly) females and males together on the camps, and have been ever since. That was a generation ago.
I was at the 1982 Christmas Iwerne conference. Again, female schoolchildren and male ones side by side.
The level of inaccuracy is the main feature of this discussion.
However, the lack of females alongside the males in earlier years than that was clearly a serious matter? And you will be making representations about the complete lack of schoolboys at the parallel Motcombe camps for girls, no doubt. The fact that camps could be allowed to run that did not allow the boys to attend alongside the girls needs thorough investigation and censure?
What do you think, Peter?
No surprise to find Christopher Shell being an apologist for Iwerne and the associated abuse but I’m very surprised that Ian isn’t distancing himself from that.
One of the problems with these calls for Welby to resign is that they are coming from two very different directions and I’m not sure that conflating them is helpful.
Yes, that is a very important point. It’s a bit like when the conservative evangelical constituency and the Anglo Catholic constituency were opposing the ordination of women. Both for entirely different reasons.
Is there not a common purpose, if not common grounds?
What is the common purpose, best interests, to be served in the matter?
Where do they converge?
And as such, there is a confluence of conclusion rather than a conflation.
Geoff
There is no convergence between sexual and physical abuse and faithful gay relationships. None.
Penelope,
Are you misreading where the covergence is: it is at the point of safeguarding in stand alone particular matter.
Thank you for your reply at 10.41pm, with a simple and clear answer to a simple and clear question.
Is it not possible that (as you put it) the directions may be different but that they are agreed on the issue? Your view could conclude that no two different groups /individuals can actually agree on anything.
I’d think horror at this abuse crosses all boundaries… or should.
Indeed Ian, it should. But to somehow jump on the bandwagon of wanting Justin to resign because you think he is wrong about same sex marriage is confusing the matter. This horrendous abuse issue has nothing to do with any of the different approaches to same sex relationships.
But note how commenters here bring up the latter when supposedly discussing the former.
Harping on about conservatives is your own distraction and divergence.
It is the cumulative weight of this and Welby’s handling of ssm/b, as detailed in the many articles by Andrew Goddard that asks the questions of trust and integrity required in leadership, more especially in Christian leadership.
In the light of Makin, Welby has a ‘conflict of interest’ in his personal capacity and his role as titular head of the CoE.
In the legal profession where ther is a conflict of interest between the lawyer and client, the lawyer is to put the clients bests interests first, even to the lawyer’s personal detriment, which may include withdrawing, standing down.
Youre right his view on same-sex sexual relationships now is irrelevant to this issue. Many would argue he should resign over how he has handled that whole issue, but that is separate from whether he should resign over the Smyth affair.
Andrew… I’ve struggled with this, partly that I used to know him in his curacy/incumbency days and liked him. Clearly able and intelligent. For his own sake I didn’t want him to be the ABofC… it was a poisened chalice even then.
It would be true to say that I am disappointed with his evolved SSM views but calling for his resignation is a massive CofE thing. On balance I think he needs to go.
But, it’s a big “but” … Others also should be resigning or disciplined…. if they don’t /aren’t should he stay? I’m not a believer in tossing a single innocent head over the wall to keep the city safe… However, with sadness, I think he should go. It won’t solve every CofE problem as he isn’t the cause of “everything wrong” but he surely bears heavy leadership responsibility for this safeguarding process disaster.
In other realms we would expect a leader to stand down, taking responsibility and putting the mission of gospel first. I think if we were outside the church looking in it would be obvious and expected.
I still fear for the future of the CofE… there’s nothing that gives us a divine right to survive. Denomination is transient. It’s not by exact overlap, the eternal Church of God.
I still fear for the future of the CofE… there’s nothing that gives us a divine right to survive. Denomination is transient. It’s not by exact overlap, the eternal Church of God.
Amen
Ian (Hobbs): thanks for your helpful reply.
The first thing is to separate any idea that Justin needs to go because of his support for same sex relationships. That debate is irrelevant here.
The second thing to note is that I think the whole Iwerne project is twisted and seriously opposed to Christianity. Anyone who supports what it stood for needs to question their suitability for leadership. And so poor Justin is under question because of that.
His record on safeguarding is flawed and the Makin report makes that clear.
So for these reasons I think he should stand down.
I agree with your observations about the CofE.
No-one is ‘conflating’ anything.
Justin’s role here completely undermines claims to take safeguarding seriously.
Other bishops have been dealt with more harshly—and parish clergy certainly would be.
Why should Justin be exempt?
“No-one is ‘conflating’ anything.”
They most certainly are. A number of comments here do so and in other places those who want him to resign because they don’t like his recent interview are using this report as a reason that he should resign.
OK,
On this matter alone, should he resign?
Other people having other reasons is not ‘conflation’. The three of us, from very different perspectives, agree on this one issue.
It is very convenient for conservatives who have been calling for Welby’s resignation because of his gradual and partial acceptance of some gay relationships, that he may now be coerced into resigning because of his disastrous record on safeguarding.
Meanwhile, some conservatives are still failing to recognise abuse. So not very different, morally, from Welby.
Exactly what Penny says.
Fallacies gallor, from PCD and Andrew Godsall. True to form.
Again with no answer to the question, on this matter alone, should he stand down for the good of the CoE.
No answer, is also a true to form answer.
Geoff
No fallacies Geoff.
Just the plain unvarnished truth.
Welby should resign because of his disastrous record on safeguarding.
He should not resign because he has grudgingly tolerated some same-sex relationships.
Andrew Godsall
Personally I think both are resigning matters! They are separate issues, but there is a root cause which is a failure to require bishops to follow the same personal standards as are expected from the people in the pew.
Andrew, I have no pathological need to distance myself from every single comment here that I find offensive o r wrong. If I did, I would get nothing else done.
Hello Ian. If I remember rightly, you and I were ordained together in Salisbury Cathedral back in the day. I’ve often read your blog, always enjoyed it and usually agreed with you. This is the first time I’ve added a comment though. Like some of the commenters above, I just feel a bit uncomfortable that (regarding the Welby resignation petition) you’ve made common cause with two other influential leaders, each with a different agenda, each with a separate reason for wanting the Archbishop gone. If and when he does resign/retire, will you, Robert and Marcus be equally united in your preference for his successor? Of course not. It just seems a bit – I don’t know – opportunistic? Machiavellian? Traits which you’ve rightly called out in others.
Just an observation from the sidelines, with warm wishes and appreciation of your faithful contending for the Gospel.
Richard, thanks for commenting! And welcome!
There is nothing Machiavellian about making common cause on an important issue with people whom you would otherwise disagree with. It is part of my commitment to honesty and transparency to be friends (on social media and in life) with people who are very different from me, and with whom I have serious disagreements. I don’t know of any other way of preventing living in a bubble of self-affirming opinion.
And it was essential that the petition was sponsored by the three of us from very different backgrounds. That was evidence that this was no witch-hunt, no conspiracy, and was not a proxy for other issues. This was about safeguarding, and safeguarding alone.
No, because anyone who reads the detail of what I am actually saying is one step ahead of your apparently binary stance which seems to hold that anyone who does not repeat the approved narrative MUST ipso facto believe the very opposite, with no 3rd or 333rd alternative.
Andrew, if you are going to say anyone is being an apologist for abuse, then please give chapter and verse if we are to believe in your integrity.
the word ‘abuse’ conjures up ideas (physical or sexual) which are nothing to do with the conversations he had with young men in SA.
And secondly SA in the 2010s is nothing to do with Iwerne.
These are the two points you would need to address, or else withdraw the slander.
So your characterisation is of high inaccuracy, and therefore slanderous. In addition it is a stereotype, i.e. evinces little evidence of alert analysis. I am not surprised. But you are quite happy to operate at a very vague level and still base slander on the flimsy basis of your vagueness.
What are the bad things I am allegedly supporting? (!) Name them.
Christopher: just read and try to understand the points that Ian Hobbs and Joe S and Penny were making to you yesterday. They could not be clearer nor more precise.
You (or indeed they) could be more precise by naming even one bad thing I am in favour of. Name it, please, if it exists. Imprecision and vagueness will tell its own story.
Christopher. If you can’t be bothered to read and reflect on what is being said in those posts they made yesterday, then I’m afraid I can’t help you.
So, readers, the number of wrong things which I have commended that AG can name is zero.
This zero, which he seems to be affirming, does not stop him making scurrilous accusations.
Blacken people’s name first; find whether they did anything later.
As a scholar, I’m sure you know the difference between ‘can’ and ‘does’.
You wouldn’t want to mislead readers. Would you?
Christopher let me name two.
1. You are in favour of and an apologist for Iwerne. See John Grayston’s 100% precise analysis of it above.
2. In the words of Ian Hobbs, again in this thread, “isn’t the search for what JS “got out of it” running the danger of gaslighting the wholesale abuse of his victims? The gross abuse is clear.” Gaslighting is what you appear, in your first and subsequent posts, to want to engage in.
But you have not named one wrong thing that I commend. For the 3rd time, can you do so?
(‘Iwerne’ is not a thing; it is millions of separate actions and thousands of separate people over 90 years, ranging from excellent to dreadful.)
I have.
And Iwerne is very much a thing. As I say, John Grayston spells out what thing it was.
So you cannot give even one example of something bad that I commend, though are quite happy to try to blacken people’s names. All you need to do is name one event. There have been millions of events, so it is easy enough. What are you waiting for?
You say that millions of events and thousands of people over a period of 90 years are all the same as each other and all of the same moral value. The formation of John Stott and David Sheppard was equally bad to the single thrashing John Smyth gave on site, then. No differentiation whatever.
Yes, Andrew. We are all to accept that that colossal unthinking generalisation is superior to differentiated nuance.
Oh well if Iwerne is “millions” of things, then I must have named millions of things that you commend.
If you really can’t reflect on what Ian Hobbs has said, which I have simply repeated word for word, and you can’t reflect on what Joe S also indicates, and you can’t reflect on what Penny has indicated many times about your attitude towards this abuse, then as I say, I can’t help you.
I asked for one event – not difficult.
‘Iwerne’ can scarcely qualify. I commend the good and not the bad, as ever. You however treat them all as the same. Good, bad, no difference.
One bad event that I supposedly commend? What is it? We are waiting.
Still waiting. What’s the matter?
Should Justin Welby reign. But he won’t because too often people will not be held accountable for their actions and they will not take responsibility for their action. You just make an empty statement about being sorry and keep doing what you are doing.
Yes he should resign, be held accountable and take responsibility. As a former business executive he knows you will be held accountable. Anyone in his position would be long gone.
First, he has lost the respect of many who he leads, as well as the leaders in the Anglican Communion and the general public. A leader must have respect, particularly in a church.
Second, the lack of growth in the CofE. While some of this is due to outside factors, there are many congregations in England thriving, both in the CofE and other denomination. Yet he does not seem to recognize this and follows his own course. It appears that he believes growth will come through mimicing the secular world not through the Angican Formularies. As it appears that many of the bishops are Welbyites sharing his views they too must go if the CofE is to survive and grow.
Unlikely l know, but if Justin Welby was going to step down l imagine he would do so this week as to not detract from the Remembrance Day events.
To be fair to Welby, how many of us can remember individual conversations (brief or otherwise) we had 40 years ago? I also think some of this reflects to some extent the sort of societal view at the time, that hitting kids for disciplinary reasons was perfectly fine, both by parents and others in authority such as school teachers (I can remember in my high school a number of boys being publicly caned in front of the whole school at assembly for bad behaviour). But the fact that some even then believed Smyth’s behaviour was extreme and disturbing reflects its seriousness and lasting effect on those boys, now men. It was strange, extreme and totally unacceptable. There is little doubt Smyth gained pleasure, sexual or otherwise, from abusing them.
What I find odd about Welby’s mindset is that he seems to depend on ‘advisers’ to decide whether or not he should now resign over the whole affair. I can understand getting others’ opinions, but it’s as if he has outsourced that decision.
I can remember many precise conversations I had from that long ago. It all depends on what it is about. If it were about someone whose ministry I had agreed to support financially tell me that they were an abuser, I think I would remember!
I think that the Paris conversation[s] would have been 1981, and the support of Zambesi ministries would have been circa 1990 perhaps. So the chronology was the other way round.
If there were two donations in total, it may not have reached the level of being an ongoing commitment.
He may have thought (if he thought anything at all) that the work c1990 (halfway round the world) was worth supporting, and that the past does not determine the present any more than vice versa. In the latter he would have been correct. If he had analysed it he might have thought, How good that someone who was previously frowned on is now doing something so worthwhile.
But no-one had given him clear information about why he should be frowned on anyway. He migh have understood Sertin to be saying that JS was a rum cove, or gave him personally the creeps.
So, a danger of hanging too much on a conversation that was (a) long ago albeit remembered to an extent only, (b) brief, (c) enigmatic and unclear.
Peter,
Could it be suggested, that if what was happening was within the bounds of male public schools of that era, such as Eton, Welby would likely have less remembrance, but if it were outside those bounds it is something which would stick, would be recalled.
I don’t know whether Makin has considered that in drawing a conclusion on the balance of probalities
I’m not sure that reading sexual gratification or motives into all is particularly relevant especially when explicit evidence from forensic interviews of that time is not there.
Geoff
He was beating little boys severely.
He had a special hut built for the purpose.
I think it’s pretty obvious he wasn’t doing this for their spiritual benefit.
Petr, you are a scandalmongering exaggerating tabloid artist. No ‘little boys’ were beaten in the shed, apart from JS’s son. But you are drawn inexorably towards a more salacious falsehood and away from the truth.
Christopher
So you’re saying that the victims are lying? They’ve given detailed testimony on this. Why do you have better knowledge of the situation than the people who were his victims?
Peter, you constantly rank around the bottom of the table in your understanding. It is very difficult to find any of your comments, even though they are short, that are not misunderstandings.
I have not disagreed with anything the witnesses said. What on earth are you referring to? I will repeat. JS’s son is the only person in that category. To my knowledge, no-one under 16 was otherwise beaten in the shed (quite unlike Zimbabwe) and most were adults who had left school, so your reference to little boys is, again to repeat, some kind of inexorable gravitation towards stereotyped sensationalist falsehood.
Which points am I disagreeing with the witnesses on? Please explain.
Christopher
The survivor who was interviewed on the news (not sure if it was ch4 or BBC) said that his friend tried to kill himself (at least) three times. And this survivor claimed to have been beaten in the shed.
Yes. On both points that is correct. What is it that I am disagreeing with?
Christopher
You claimed that Smythes son was the only child beaten in the shed. That claim is directly contrary to the survivors testimony
The Peter Jeremy memorial misunderstanding:
This time the misunderstanding is addressed by clarifying that JS son was only young boy known to have been beaten in the shed. Smyth’s core group suffered some beatings aged 16-17, before attaining the age of majority. And a greater number afterwards.
You changed the phrase ‘young boy’ to ‘child’. Unfortunately I noticed you doing so.
This always seems to have begun in environments where teenagers were deprived of daily contact with their parents. Boarding schools, Iwerne camps, African children resident in Smyth’s house having been promised a better life, etc. Parents in normal daily contact would sense a change in their children and ask them what had happened that day, and not stop asking till they got an answer that made sense. Then some of them would have confronted Smyth. Then it would probably have gone public. All those years ago…
PC1
I dont think the problem is really that he has different recollections of his involvement with Smythe depending on the day. I think the big problem is that he took little interest in abuse, told the media he would meet with victims and then didnt and most importantly that he didnt report what he knew to the police.
In the full Cathy Newman interview Welby promises to meet (again) with Smyth’s victims asap. If he can’t find a spot in his diary before Christmas, he should resign.
Joe S
At this point I wouldnt want to meet him if I was a victim – it’s not like hes actually going to be any help
I would. Just to deliver some very choice words and colourful language in person.
Penelope,
Are you misreading where the covergence is: it is at the point of safeguarding in stand alone particular matter.
Thank you for your reply at 10.41pm, with a simple and clear answer to a simple and clear question.
I don’t think so. Perhaps I misunderstood.
I simply think there is no correlation between very poor safeguarding and tolerance of some gay relationships.
You may think Welby is guilty of one or both. But they should not be conflated
PCD,
I think there is some convergence – a tendency to ignore the behavior of “sound” people, while cracking the whip at the hoi poloi
I thought Welby should resign long before the present scandals. Here are some of the lowlights.
* His self-appointed apology on behalf of the British Empire in Amritsar was probably the start.
* Then he joined in the reputational assassination of Bishop George Bell, and even when Bell was vindicated by the campaigns of Peter Hitchens and others, Welby claimed Bell was still “under a significant cloud”. It took him years to retract, which he did so most unwillingly.
* He suspended the Bishop of Lincoln for an unconscionably long time (2 years?) over some ‘safeguarding issue’ and left Canon Paul Overend (acquitted after a monstrous trial that nearly drove him and his wife to suicide) in limbo until his retirement. These experiences destroy people’s remaining years.
* In hyper-overcorrective zeal he suspended George Carey’s PTO because Smyth enrolled as a part-time student at Trinity and Carey had no idea who he was. And yet he cannot apply the same lesson to himself, who knew infinitely more than Carey.
* He contrived to have the Rev Paula Vennells ex-CBE of the Post Office appointed as Bishop of London.
* He (along with Cottrell) illegally forced the closure of churches during covid, forbidding clergy even from entering them – while many thousands died alone and without proper funerals.
* He knowingly appointed two partnered gay persons as suffragan bishops.
* He drove the LLF/PLF business, alienating the vast majority of the world’s Anglicans and splitting the Church of England.
* He announced that he and other bishops no longer believed in the Christian Church’s doctrine that sex belonged only within marriage.
* He permitted the Smyth inquiry only in 2017 after pressure from Cathy Newman and Channel 4 and let it drag out for years. What kind of Christian leadership is that?
And perhaps most illustrative of his psyche:
* He published the results of a DNA test, showing that his mother – still alive when he took this test! – had conceived him through an affair, and when his mother was dying, he had to be forced by his angry son to go in and speak with her. And yet she still left him millions in her will …
All these acts of shockingly bad judgment and hypocrisy occurred before his terrible failures of inaction and procrastination over John Smyth were revealed.
I hadn’t realised that about his mother not knowing he had published the test. That is extraordinary. Is that in the public sphere?
Welby took the test in 2016 when a study by The Telegraph suggested he was the son of Sir Anthony Montague Brown. His mother died as Lady Williams in July 2023, having married a Labour peer and banker. Such is the world of England’s ruling class.
Now Welby has discovered that one of his long-distant biological ancestors through Sir Anthony was a slave trader and is apologising for this.
It is a strange take on morality to feel guilt over what one’s ancestors may have done 10 or 12 generations ago but to take no responsibility for one’s own actions. I am inclined to give him a pass on the sins of his ancestors, but if he still feels guilty about this, he can hand over as reparations the £2,426,242.97 he inherited from his mum’s estate (28.54 times his annual salary of £85,000).
I meant to include this link:
https://livingchurch.org/news/news-anglican-communion/abp-welbys-consequential-mother-dies-at-93/
Ian
To be fair it sounded as though the Telegraph would have published the story had he not done so
James
Anglican teaching permits partnered gay people to become priests and bishops so long as they arent having sex. That has been the official stance of the communion since the 1990s.
It’s homophobia, not church teaching that has generally prevented (m)any gay people becoming bishops and gay priests struggling to find appointments
Why would it matter if it were something called ‘Anglican teaching’ if it were not Jesus’s teaching? Is the person we worship called Big Anglican?
Christopher because the bishops are chosen by the Church of England? It’s not against CofE teaching to have gay bishops (or the RCC for that matter). You can disagree with their theology, but the inconsistency is in teaching that gay people are to be accepted as equals as long as they dont have sex, but then prohibit gay people from senior positions.
Perhaps if we had less fear and secrecy around sex by church of england leaders they would have a less bizarre attitude towards sexual crimes.
There is no such public topic as sex for Christians, since it does not exist outside marriage and within marriage is strictly private anyway. So how can it ever be spoken of except in generalised treatments? Speaking of the holy trivially and publicly is brash and uncouth.
Excellent Christopher. Well done.
I look forward to you never mention sex again. Especially it’s trivial details.
It has, as mentioned, to be spoken of in generalised treatments, and it is the havoc of the sexual revolution that makes that necessary.
How typical to blame those working against the sexual revolution for what the sexual revolution caused.
Christopher
It’s undoubted in my mind that the culture of not talking about sex has made it harder for priests to report abuse and has made it deliberately impossible for victims to come forward, because what they have to say is forbidden
But the present culture is and has been for 60 years the exact opposite, so how can there be fear of that ever happening?
Christopher
It’s only in the latter half of my life that it’s become more socially acceptable to talk about sex in secular society and it’s still an uncomfortable topic in the CofE. I’m not sure where you get the idea that the CofE has been happy to talk about sex for the last 60 years!
If you adopt the sexual revolution then sex will cause havoc and the havoc will occasion comment (and problem pages galore).
The sensible people who remain are generally Christians, and are of the correct opinion that you don’t do anything so stupid as adopting the sexual revolution in the first place, just like you don’t play Russian roulette or dice with the lives of precious souls.
And if you don’t adopt it, and want for others’ sakes that they will not adopt it (all of which is a no brainer) then you are in the scenario where it is not being talked of, nor needing to be, among those who retain the sensible perspective. That is what I meant. Those who are not sensible create havoc and obviously havoc occasions comment.
Christopher
Was John Smythe a product of the “sexual revolution”?
How do survivors report abuse if people in the church are not allowed to even talk about sex?
Was JS a product of the SR? No, his formation was earlier (though there may have been negative formative events). He was therefore like all of Iwerne, and good people in general, horrified by the debasing of the mainstream, leading to the tarnishing of precious souls, after the Roy Jenkins measures and the silencing of the Lord Chamberlain.
Because of the mainstream UK debasing of the holy, JS was faced with a situation where even the most likely leaders of the future were hampered by being confronted with unhelpful material while they were growing up. This worked against their full flowering, so how could even they become leaders? In the Gay News trial (have you ever read that ‘poem’?), for example, he was doing his best to reverse that tide. He took sin seriously, and believed in accountability. That generation of Iwerne men and the earlier generation believed in trying to deal with besetting sins one by one, and Mark Ashton for example wrote on this, on overcoming pride I believe. Naturally therefore there was a belief in accountability (how are you getting on? confess to one another?). And accountability (possibly in the shape of taking catechetical courses, Bible courses…) is precisely the thing that makes the difference between a thriving church and a laissez-faire one. For Iwerne types accountability made sense, but making it be fun also made more sense than making it not be. Fun was something JS’s operations were the antithesis of. Though see Ruston’s hand written note in Makin on topic of excitement, which I am struggling to interpret. (The alternative to taking personal sins seriously and to accountability – before God, primarily, though it helps to have buddies and indeed mentors – is to just go on sinning and not improve nor take it seriously. That path is recommended?) And of course how does a product of an earlier generation react to the 1960s cultural change? It is a large thing to have to process. But if you are trying to mould character (your own or others’), as you should, don’t do it in the 1970s. environment.
Your second question I have already addressed. The SR proliferated the need to talk about sex because it proliferated sexual deviance and its fallout. Which we still see right across every single problem page. Problem pages are a shop window for what the SR did and does, and what every half-sensible person could easily see it would do.
Peter Jermey: if you think two people who are lovers sexually attracted to each other are going to share a home without ending up in bed together, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
The “No Sex, We’re British (Clergy)” farce has amused the world for years. The Reverend Richard Coles (to give him his full BBC honorific) made it clear after his resignation that he and his civil partner had been lying about their sex life all the time they shared a vicarage. And no one was surprised.
At its highest level the Church of England officially colluded with hypocrisy, and Justin Welby has advanced this hypocrisy by appointing partnered homosexual bishops and deans, including the Dean of Canterbury.
Our Lord calls his Church to a higher way.
I think you’ll find that the media describing Richard as The Reverend are quite correct. Just as the BBC and C4 are when they describe Ian as The Reverend Doctor.
It was The Capitalised Articular Pomposity on the title credits I was drawing attention to.
I don’t think they ever referred to “The Reverend Doctor Ian Paisley”. Maybe if he had done Strictly Come Dancing ….
Anyway, it is fun watching the BBC deal with abuse and cover-ups, a subject on which they have considerable expertise. Perhaps Huw could come out of retirement to do a special.
It’s usually the individual who requires the Capitalised Articular Pomposity. If anyone has got Reverend or Doctor on their Tesco clubcard, run a mile.
Ian’s strapline on TV is always The Rev Dr. As it should be. Well, The Revd Dr would be better.
Incidentally, the reason Richard wanted the BBC to forefront his priesthood was to remind viewers that Christians, and indeed priests, are normal.
The reaction to watch out for is when titles are omitted in a context other than a work related conference where the titles are relevant. I’ve known a few vicars who rage when the full title is missing and it is never a good sign.
James
Id argue that this is part of the discrimination against gay people and homophobia in the church.
We will assume all straight people are obeying church teaching on sex and assume all gay people are not. You see how unfair that is?
Its also saying that if you are gay then you must also be alone your whole life because if you have a relationship it will be assumed you are having sex. Not everyone in a relationship is having sex, even amongst straight people. In fact its a joke as old as time that the sex stops when the marriage begins
I have several friends in celibate gay relationships. I believe them.
I am afraid having seen the interview the only alternative is for Welby to resign and be replaced with someone from the Catholic wing of the C of E who does care about Parish ministry and the Institution of our established church and ensuring it learns the lessons of this report. I would personally back the Bishop of London or Newcastle either of whom would do an excellent job and also be the first female Archbishop
15If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’d 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
We seem to have jumped straight to v17
Has there been a direct personal sin against ‘you’?
Scripture is replete, is it not, with leadership being publically lambasted? False shepherds and more
? Even when there is no direct one to one access?
Is there not a public accountability to the church at large?
Not sure about this. I have personally challenged both archbishops many times in private.
FWIW, another example of apallingly misleading reporting on the BBC website.
What is that?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yx90q0v31o.
Implies that the abuse took place at Iwerne camps and that all cases of abuse (130) took place within the CofE. And that’s just at a very quick read.
Giles Fraser never misses an opportunity to publicise himself, even in matters that have nothing to do with him.
But it is far worse, John – since this story has been around for nearly 8 years.
AND everyone is still taking that kind of inaccuracy at face value – presumably because the wildly inaccurate version is the version that they (and all sensationalisers) prefer.
DESPITE all the corrections that are always wearyingly issued.
AND the actual total of known beatings at Iwerne is 1, together with an appalling one approx one day after the final camp.
There are three main inaccuracies:
(1) the location of the UK beatings
(2) the lumping together of different sorts of things under the single heading ‘abuse’ which immediately calls to mind physical / sexual abuse which fits some cases and not others.
(3) The idea that Justin Welby was centrally involved earlier on – which would sell papers better.
(4) The idea that ‘the Church’ equals the Church of England.
These precise types of inaccuracies have all been common editorial policy for half a century.
The BBC just says the ‘story’ that fits their tabloid anti Church sensationalising stereotype. See my initial comment on this thread (about Metro) for analysis of how this works.
To be fair after Savile, Hall, Harris and Edwards the BBC criticising the C of E for previous safeguarding failures is rather the pot calling the kettle black
(5) Exaggerating the age issue. Present BBC report about Bp of Newcastle: ‘boys and young men’ in the UK (actually the vast majority at the time of beating but not of first contact were young men; and the issue of consent, even in Mark Ruston’s contemporary report utter consent, is not even mentioned). ‘Young male children’ in Zim (which they clarify as 13-17, which is as old as a child can be, and is precisely the same age wrongly called ‘young adults’ in bookshops). Just like these media reports always say ‘pae*******a’ when they mean pederasty or ephebophilia.
Christopher
He abused children. Why are you defending him?
Where did I once defend anything bad he did? Please name just one instance, Peter.
Are we to suppose you cannot distinguish between:
(a) defending bad things;
(b) making less accurate statements more accurate?
But the two are not even close to each other. What on earth are you talking about?
Just one example, please.
Christopher
Well for a start you are trying to claim he somehow isnt a pedophile because 13 isnt a child???!!!!
When did I say that? 13 is legally a child, surely? He fitted that description, though many who are given that description by the lip-licking scandalmongering media do not fit it.
You claim that most of his victims were adults. I have not seen any reporting that suggests any of his victims were adults and then suggest that teenagers are called young adults by publishers. That’s surely just because they can read at an adult level, not that it’s less of a crime to sexually assault them??!!
I most certainly do not claim that most of his victims were adults. Where did I say that? What I said was that the vast majority of UK beatings were endured by adults, as indeed they were. But what have I to do with it? It would be just as true whether I said it or not.
Christopher
Thats not been in any of the reporting I have read. All I have seen is that he beat children, not adults.
Read Andrew Graystone, Bleeding for Jesus. It has a lot of errors some of which I list on amazon, butread it anyway. The UK saw the beating of young adults, but there was a small handful of those whose beatings began earlier (16-17). For a long while it was a case of beating 3-4 individuals, and the main escalation happened in 1981, i.e. for the last year of the process.
Zimbabwe was quite different, as the boys were younger teenagers and their beatings were mostly public and advertised as part of the camp ethos.
I am amazed that you are surprised that newspapers sensationalise things. Where have you been if you believe everything you read?
Christopher
I have not read that book, but you seem to be claiming more knowledge than the author of even that book?
All the sources I have seen suggest about 130 children were victims
If all the sources you have read say such untruths, then go to people who know more. I expect this is why newspapers spread their exaggerations and spin, because they know people will swallow it. Who is pulling (infernally) their strings?
There was negative behaviour by Smyth in 3 countries. In the UK this was towards young men. A smaller percentage of the young men, however, were badly treated by him as older secondary-school pupils as well (or even in one+ case exclusively). In Zim it was towards young men, but mostly secondary pupils. In SA it was towards a few young men.
Have you not read about the RC sufferings being classified wholesale as pa********a when they were largely ephebophilia? It is the same taboidesque pattern.
“There was negative behaviour by Smyth”
Christopher once again you seek to minimise the atrocious abuse by calling it ‘negative behaviour’. Negative behaviour is smoking behind the bike shed. Negative behaviour is failing to pay your bills on time. Smyth’s behaviours weren’t simply negative. They were abusive. And under the auspices of Christian behaviour.
And still you don’t answer the question put to you: how do you know better than the author of the book? Your vague generalisations – once again dressed up to look impressive – tell us nothing.
How do I know better than the author of the book? You are taken in by the publisher’s imprint. Multiple mistakes have been spotted by many, but not usually on central matters. It was written in a hurry.
In general, there are 1000s of aspects of any one book. Suppose you have two people who have studied something a lot. By the law of averages, each of these will know more than the other about 1000s of things connected with that topic.
You are treating ‘know better’ as though ther were only ONE thing to know. This is one of the standard misconceptions one frequently comes across.
The short answer is that I sent a 100-page list of corrections both to the author and to many other parties. No-one has corrected any of my corrections. I can also send it to you if you wish, and then you could see if you yourself were able to correct any.
Negative is a range of numbers ranging from minus one to minus infinity. To say that the emphasis is on the minus infinity end of the spectrum, or on the minus one end, is pure invention. The emphasis is on the negative range taken as a whole.
“There was negative behaviour by Smyth in 3 countries. In the UK this was towards young men. A smaller percentage of the young men, however, were badly treated by him as older secondary-school pupils as well (or even in one+ case exclusively). In Zim it was towards young men, but mostly secondary pupils. In SA it was towards a few young men“
Every aspect of this paragraph seeks to minimise the atrocity. You don’t once use the word abuse.
Instead you speak of ‘negative behaviour’, and ‘badly treated’, ‘mostly secondary pupils’, ‘a few young men’.
Several of us in this thread have pointed out your minimising the atrocity. Every time you brush it off.
A significant part of the recommendations in Makin is about increasing our emotional intelligence. As has been pointed out to you before Christopher, you don’t actually seem to have any. No wonder you keep saying no one has pointed out any error to you: you are emotionally unable to understand what you are doing. And that’s very sad. For you and the victims whose abuse you seek to minimise.
As to pointing out to the author of the book 100 corrections. You can point out several hundreds. Only if the author publishes a second edition with every one of your corrections included and offers you an acknowledgment might we conclude that you know better.
And still you don’t actually tell us how you do know. Did you re interview all the victims?
My corrections were not 100 in number but 100 pages worth.
You are speaking as though the only type of correction there is is correction to someone’s testimony. But there are many types; and also the author having not been present was not in a position to testify. The only time I would correct a witness’s testimony would be internal contradiction.
Best thing is to begin with my correction list on Amazon and take it from there. To my shame (…) I then had to correct my own list with four ‘corrections of corrections’ which you can also see on Amazon.
You have a very odd attitude if you are opposed to accuracy. What other good things are you opposed to, and what other bad things are you in favour of? I have only one aim: accuracy and precision. What *sort* of person is opposed to that? Minimising, like maximising, is what advocates and ideologues do (dishonest people). It is not to your credit that you simply assume, illogically, that everyone is dishonest in that way.
Christopher this is disturbing. Very disturbing.
You are claiming you were there and Andrew Graystone wasn’t so you know better. You were there and saw these things and did nothing about it?
And have you cross examined Andrew about his inaccuracies? Has he incorporated your corrections?
Please stop being so vague.
A lot of the discussion is about ‘Did Welby know?’ and ‘How long did he know?’
All such discussion should be immediately disqualified unless it is clarified *what* is understood to have been known.
Disqualified why? Because the incorrect idea is that hearing a little is the same as knowing everything.
He went from a time (1981) when he had heard little and knew nothing – to a time (2013) when he knew somewhat more and did too little – to a time (2017) when he knew substantially more and again delayed too much. The focus on pre 2013 looks to me misguided.
What he knew – that there were multiple people making credible accusations of criminal abuse by this man against them when they were children.
Do you mean in 1981, 2013, or 2017? The only people alleging things in 1981 were adults, and they were certainly not very multiple in this incident.
2013
I caught the back end of a BBC r 4 World at One news report on this.
The Bishop of Newcastle was speaking, saying ABC should resign. The news reported ended with the official response being that he’d not be doing so.
Is it to be presumed that she had taken this up directly with him before speaking on national radio?
I am in the process of reading the whole report and the appendices. It is horrific. I have to say that I was a senior camper at Irene in 1975 and 1976, and so would have overlapped with Justin Welby, though I don’t believe we were known to each other. I hated Iwerne; I thought it was creepy, despite the enthusiasm of friends. I never met John Smyth, but I did know both David and Jonathan Fletcher slightly. I thought both John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher slightly scary, and David Fletcher oleaginous. I started making excuses not to go to Iwerne things. David Fletcher came to find me in Oxford to put some pressure on. He told me how many people were praying for me and were concerned about my spiritual state (not half so many as have been since!). That was the end of Iwerne, as far as I was concerned. I went to a preaching conference run by Jonathan Fletcher in about 1993 in Northampton. I had heard first-hand reports in the early 1980s of his holidays with groups of young men in County Cork where they spent a lot of time naked. I was assured this was nothing sexual: I was totally unconvinced.
I am a signatory to the petition to Justin Welby asking for his resignation. I don’t blame him at all for not knowing or suspecting anything in the 1970s. It seems possible that he was receiving warnings about Smyth by the end of the decade. Whether these contained enough information to say that he really know what was going on I rather doubt. However, it is his actions since 2013 that are of most concern. He should have acted much more decisively. That and his lamentable failure to do as he said he would for victims mean that I think he simply must resign, and soon. I don’t think he can stay on until he announces a retirement in some months’ time.
However, I want to flag up two other things that are of concern to me:
1. I would like to know what kind of legal and insurance advice is being given to the Archbishop, and by whom. Lawyers fight for their clients to protect their interests, and quite correctly – so are they being asked to advise the Archbishop about whether or not he should feel obliged to resign? And insurers are always concerned to limit liability. Is advice from lawyers and also from the church’s insurers behind the way he has treated the victims?
2. While the focus is on Justin Welby, he is far from the only person who should be held accountable. To give just one example, I find the way George Carey, college principal at Trinity Bristol when John Smyth was there, claims not to have known who was in his student body to be ridiculous. The report makes clear that Carey’s responses to questions are incredible. What he learnt over the next twenty years would only have added to what he knew then., He seems to have been terminally incurious, or perhaps he was just too busy protecting Peter Ball? I cannot think it is appropriate for him to hold a PTO any more.
I don’t think that’s fair about George Carey and Trinity. I knew the place well and I can say that besides the many ordinands there in Carey’s day (I think it was the largest theological college at the time), there were numerous private students, part-time and full-time, because colleges were in the business of getting as many fee-paying students as possible. Even students joked that he was ‘Come one, come all-George’. And Smyth was enrolled only as a part-time private student, not an ordinand.
The complaint I heard about Carey was that he was semi-detached and never there – he was frequently absent at General Synod or at meetings of FOAG or immersed in fundraising for the new building. Students knew that Carey was ambitious for the purple and one predicted to me that Carey would one day be Archbishop of Canterbury – which happened sooner than anybody suspected. (But the same could be said for Justin Welby. John Pritchard, however, knew Welby was tipped for Canterbury and told Bishops in New Zealand that this would happen.)
Carey didn’t really know the ordinands, let alone the part-time private students.
George Carey’s big mission at Trinity was to try to make charismatic evangelical students into Catholic-lite clerics who didn’t mind dressing up in vestments or crossing themselves so that they could be placed in any parish in England, evangelical or catholic, and this was touted as his great achievement: ‘Our students can be placed anywhere in England!’ was his boast, and that’s a great advertisement for anyone aiming for Canterbury.
He certainly lionised Peter Ball and held up as the example for the Church of England to follow: am Anglo-Catholic rock star to the young! Or so George believed.
I’m sure he had no idea that John Smyth was even on the books.
I think Justin Welby must be forced to leave, but then I thought that a decade ago. There’s simply no appetite for holding bishops and archbishops to account for their behavior… but what I dont understand is why there’s very little interest in the various people who lied (?) to him about the police already having been informed.
It’s very reminiscent of me to the Brian Houston case where a senior church figure found out about another church leaders abuse of children and engaged in a cover up rather than tell the police. Lots of “it wasnt my job to tell the police”, a failure to understand the seriousness of the crimes and there being zero accountability.
It also strikes me that of the four big name abusers in the CofE, Welby had close ties with at least two and probably three of them and also ties with Paula Vennells. Is this just that people who exploited the system by their nature were seeking a relationship with the naive man at the top or is it that Welby has more serious lack of judgment?
I do wonder if Welby has some sort of condition that makes it hard for him to emotionally connect with others? This is yet another instance where he’s shown a basic lack of compassion.
More like – we believe in forgiveness, and in restoration for all involved, which is the Christian way of looking at things.
Not in storing up juicy gossip which never exhausts its juice however many decades later it is relished. (And of course classifying certain people – not ourselves, of course – as unforgivable.) Which of those two patterns corresponds to Christianity.
There is forgiveness and there is continuing in leadership after a failing. That is the pattern we often see in megachurch leaders in the US – just because you are forgiven doesn’t mean you should be restored to the position before the failing that required forgiveness:
https://mereorthodoxy.com/there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-i
(John Profumo modelled this perfectly – its a shame our culture doesn’t behave this way anymore)
Christopher
So do you forgive me for being gay and married or does this forgiveness and restoration only apply to people who abuse children?
It doesn’t apply to either (in the sense of being effective) unless there is repentance involved.
If you are expecting to be forgiven by everyone with cheap forgiveness and then to continue doing exactly what you want, then there is only one category that that reminds me of. Schoolchildren.
Forgiveness is always the end in view. If it were not, one would be supporting the continuation of sin.
That is how it works.
Christopher
Neither John Smythe or Justin Welby has repented. John Smythe has now lost the opportunity to do so.
It’s not up to you to forgive either Smyth or Welby.
You’re right there.
Agree Peter – its made me recall the Houston situation where the attempt to protect the reputation of the institution made things so much worse. In the case of Hillsong the structures of the organisation meant that the founder/leader had too much control and there were not enough people with oversight or the power to challenge him. Houston should never have had to deal with his fathers abuse, and someone with authority should have stepped in and told him that. I had hoped that the CofE structure would prevent something like that happening, but its very concerning that it hasn’t. Like I said earlier Pilavachi, Vennells, Ball and now this….
Paula Vennells struck me as incompetent rather than malicious – a Dunning-Kruger case of overconfidence in her own abilities to the point of disaster, although the subsequent avoiding taking responsibility and avoiding investigation was where it got very dark.
Paul
Yes and in both these cases it seems to be the case that the leaders involved didnt really recognize the seriousness of the crimes, which seems really bizarre to me, given millions look to them as moral leaders.
Would a vote if no confidence in JW by the Canterbury Diocesan Synod help move things along a bit?
Ian
I have just watched your interview with Cathy Newman on C4 News and wanted to say that I agreed with your every word. I think you are right that local churches are (mostly) beacons of light. I was glad to hear you say that Welby should not be a scapegoat and that others must take responsibility for their failings. I will now sign the petition.
Here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F77NNirPjFI
Yes, responsibility goes well beyond the Archbishop. He has now acted and taken responsibility for the errors he made. But what about the more culpable failings within the Iwerne/Titus Trust circles going back to at least 1982? The culture of cover up to protect Smyth and the reputation of Iwerne was appalling and needs public acknowledgement by those individuals still alive. There also needs to be rigorous analysis of how the theological approach at Iwerne/Titus Trust and the culture within the organisation should be reformed.
“I should have acted. I made mistakes. I take responsibility. But I am not going to resign.” The only way to reconcile those statements is that Welby has unilaterally decided that his mistakes are insufficiently serious to be a resigning matter.
Here is a statement by several persons who were beaten by Smyth:
https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Statement-in-response-to-Makin-Review.pdf
It states that the publication of Makin’s report “had to be brought forward” by six days. Can anybody say why?
Smyth and Welby is the main frontpage story in many of today’s newspapers, coupling it to suggestions that Welby should resign. Wow. Personally I am more appalled by George Carey’s wanton blindness to Peter Ball’s disgusting behaviour, but an archbishop has to be able to act as a figurehead in the world. Were Welby to be called on at short notice to play his part in a royal funeral service, or wedding, or coronation, could he plausibly do so now?
Behind all this – both the Archbishop’s failure and incompetence and his refusal to resign – lies the culture of deference.
Lay people defer to clergy.
Clergy have to promise on ordination that they will ‘accept and minister the discipline of this Church, and respect authority duly exercised within it’.
But clergy are also afraid to speak out not just because they’ll destroy all prospect of preferment, but because they won’t be able to get a Bishop’s reference to enable them to move on at all – an unacknowledged culture of vindictiveness.
Bishops hire staff who close rank to protect the bishop within dioceses – and bishops collectively close rank to protect each other (and make sure their meetings are in secret).
When Justin goes – as he must – whoever comes next must end the episcopal culture of secrecy. All meetings of the House of Bishops should be open to the public.
And the antiquated system of episcopal patronage has to go. Otherwise nothing will change.
When I was appointed by the Prime Minster as non-executive chairman of a health authority in the UK it was made clear to me if anything significant went wrong in the authority — even if I had not been party to it, or even had knowledge of it — I would be expected, as titular head of the organisation, to publicly apologise and resign with immediate effect — so as help demonstrate to the local population that the health authority took the matter seriously.
Colin
Yes and that’s how most other companies and institutions operate now. The person in charge takes personal responsibility for failures.
I remember in a previous job the CEO was unceremoniously removed. We were never officially told the reason, but it eventually came out that it was financial mismanagement by *someone else* that he hadn’t noticed.
Yet Justin Welby refuses to resign over a serious failure of his own making
ABC has no resigned. Glad he’s done the right thing.
Colin H, Peter J. Yes and yes.
What this demonstrates to me is the CoE is sytemically-structurallly- governance-broken. Not git for purpose.
It goes beyond a mere personal decision of an incumbent and first and foremost, who’s best interests is he serving.
The position of advisors, who they are and the factors taken into account is an elephant in the room.
Are they personal, of the incumbents choice, or some in the structure, or the ABC’s chaplain?
Just who are they serving.
The idea of a ‘critical friend’ for those in leadership may be helpful.
Yet, scripture,Wisdom literature, records the wisdom of seeking the counsel of many, when in leadership to arrive at a descision.
ABC resignation will not fix a broken ‘cystern’ that won’t hold water!
BTW in the NHS, CEO and Directorships were regarded as some of the shortest career moves anyone could make and indemity insurance for termination of office advised to be taken out.
Mind you, CEO’s termination of employment is often contended by the incumbent
A last point. Is there any room left for a Gracious stepping down, face saving?
Can someone explain the process by which a new ABC is chosen? Is it transparent or not?
Who makes the final decision?
Just checked news, Chris.
He has ‘now’ resigned. Not that comments don’t have any typos.
Yes sorry meant now. Problems on typing too fast on phone.
Now he’s gone, I don’t have the slightest interest in raking over the many failings of Justin Welby. The future should be our concern now, and unless a completely new atmosphere and processes of honesty and openness immediately sweep through the Church of England – starting and continuing with the inner hierarchy – the present disastrous state of the church will very soon become terminal. What confidence do we have that more than a tiny fraction of the current hierarchy (including the church’s own ‘deep state’) has a firm grasp of this?
Honesty (or should I say dishonesty?) has been the defining issue underlying our Western descent into political, social and financial chaos over the last 4 or 5 years. The Church of England has played its part with that here in the UK. Whether it’s the representative justice of voting systems, health and healthcare, supporting of reckless war-making, environmental insanity, financial corruption, or the most basic rights to freedom of speech and access to information, dishonesty has been intentional, blatant and deeply destructive of human flourishing. The trust, confidence and hope for the future of ordinary people have been badly undermined – some would say purposely so.
We Christians must never forget that dishonesty is the hallmark of the Devil and his work. At such a time, God’s people should have been, as prophets were in earlier times, at the forefront of warning both leaders and the general population of what will happen if there is not repentance in general and a return of obedience to the Lord God in particular.
As far as the Church of England is concerned (at least on the public stage), where have these prophets been? Far from being prepared to accept the opprobrium which comes from pointing out unwelcome facts, the C of E as a national church, under its current leadership, has been either cheerleading for or silent about the ideological underpinning and abusive policies of our national and global hierarchies: deceiving the people and making their lives and future prospects ever more subservient to a globalist cabal of atheistic sociopaths – haters of humanity and dismissive of the universal image of God present in every tiny baby who’s miracle of independent life outside the womb begins.
I have real concerns about good people who still want some kind of formally recognised place (‘third province’) within a church which is now so confused by or complicit with these things. They need to seize this pivotal moment and demand (no more pleading) a radical repentance and reformation of the church which, if not rapidly begun, will leave no choice apart from their early departure.
I hear what you are saying, Don, but the appointments commission needs to be very careful not to appoint another Welby.
I’ve heard Welby described as “too posh to care”, which I dont think is particularly truthful, but I don’t think it would hurt to appoint someone who has never been in the old boys club.
I’ve never met Justin Welby, but all of the people who have seem to be either really impressed by him or astonished and horrified at his lack of humanity. I think the church could do with someone who doesn’t impress the “right” people, but actually cares about ordinary people.
Well said, Geoff. The story of the West these past few years (since before Covid but that hypercharged the trend) has been the concerted move by globalists to deepen control over citizens’ lives through censorship, taxation, uncontrolled immigration and coercive legislation – all for “the greater good”, of course, to save the planet etc – and the Church of England under Welby has been a willing acolyte desperate for approval. More corruption to emerge, I fear.
I mean Don, not Geoff.
Has an Archbishop of Canterbury ever been forced to resign? I can’t think of this ever happening.
Stigand, who was Cantuar in 1066?
Anton,
To be fair to Stigand, it was actually Harold who failed in the safeguarding process then.
When will Stephen Cottrell resign from York for his disgraceful part in facilitating the transgender “charity” ‘Mermaids’ spreading their disgusting ideas in Church of England primary schools in Chelmsford diocese – and then telling vicar John Parker “You can leave the Church of England if you don’t like it” – which Cottrell then denied saying it.
As I pointed out to you on Thinking Anglicans (but G-d knows if my remark will be published), it’s not just conservative Christians who are censured like Parker. I tried in vain to advertise an gender critical get together for gay and lesbian Christians but the diocesan channels refused because ‘your group’s explicit exclusion of trans people and opposition to trans self-understanding would bring you into that category” (of being too controversial). No LGB allowed to meet without the rest of the acronym in the diocese of Southwark.
I lnow nothing of the appointments process, but the BBC has reported that the world wide Anglican Communion may have an input, (or even be the constituency from which the appointment may come) seemingly unaware of
the divisions Welby and Cottrell have engendered and facillitated.
Having seen only part of Cotterrell’s response to the resignation, on TV he seemed to be somewhat drained of authority.
There were shockingly tone deaf interviews from the ABY and Bishop of Dover on Ch4 after Welbys resignation. There still seems a corporate refusal to acknowledge that Welby and others did not report what they knew to police, helped Smythe evade justice and did not provide any support at all to the survivors. Both seemed more concerned for Welbys well being than the children who were abused and beaten
There are very few professions where such behavior would be tolerated. Why is the senior church leadership so amoral and out of touch?
I don’t think Rose was at all concerned about Welby. Her fear is that his scapegoating may hide all the toxic issues which lead both to abuse and to its being covered up. Cathy Newman seemed to misunderstand her. I think because Rose was being rather oblique.
Speaking as an evangelical, Penelope, I think the particular subgroup involved cannot avoid some very searching questions about how they allowed an upper middle class English sense of entitlement and natural authority to become entwined with and seriously pervert the Christian gospel. In presuming it was their duty to train up the next carefully picked generation in the same vein they obviously compounded something that was already a serious problem in their own thinking. Such attitudes as humility, the essential business of serving others (which obviously applies to all of us), empathy and compassion, openness to God using unexpected people, seem to have been lost. Personal discipline has its place but it was clearly allowed to become an obsession with disastrous consequences.
In the Iwerne case I’m prepared to hope that their way of ‘picking winners for God’ from a narrow group of privileged boys was well meant (perhaps because it was of its time?) but I think it was as far from anything you could justify from scripture as it’s possible to imagine. Of course it’s more than ironic that such an error could arise within the evangelical world but that’s what has happened and we (evangelicals) have a serious lesson to learn here.
Thank you Don for your open and frank assessment of what Iwerne was, and your willingness to reflect on the irony.
Yes, there’s been a deafening silence from the Iwerne/Titus Trust organisation. The 2021 review they commissioned raised some very serious questions and made major recommendations. The Makin Report includes some important questions about their theological approach and culture, but no public response as far as I know. The Archbishop was at fault but the culture of privilege and cover up at Iwerne was in my view far more serious.
The interview with the Bishop of Dover was appalling. Gaslighting the actual issue and playing crude politics with the infantile interpretation of the bible guff.
Haven’t seen it, but did the Bishop of Dover speak like someone in authority, or did it come across as illustrating. this is what someone in authority in the CoE speaks like?
She was dreadful – complete distortion of the facts. Welby appointed her, so there is obviously some projection and evasion going on.
People in Canterbury diocese say she is both incompetent and a bully.
The Cathedral lost £3 million because of covid.
Parishes are broke.
Attendance has crashed.
But she clings on for her salary and nice house.
Because they are church liberals.
You cant just label someone a liberal because they acted badly
That’s not what I did. Liberals essentially lie when they take their vows of ordination, and we can consequently expect them to be amoral.
The use of blanket terms such as ‘liberal’ doesn’t take us anywhere. It’s imprecise and has a huge range of meanings.. BTW when I was in Cambridge in the 1980s ‘liberal’ was a quick way to disparage anyone who was not in agreement with the very specific views of the Iwerne group. Label something or someone as ‘liberal’ and you knew they were wrong.
It has different meanings on either side of the Atlantic in relation to culture, but ‘liberal theology’ is well defined enough not to need explanation – and is something I consider pernicious.
I suggest that it’s no more precise than the term ‘evangelical’ which as we know can include a huge range of views, some of them contradictory. It’s also a moving target: what is ‘liberal’ varies from age to age, from country to country and from group to group. Not much use in analysing anything, but much loved of the media.
Are you competing with Christopher for the most egregious and inaccurate generalisation?
The basis of today’s so-called ‘liberal theology’ is that the Bible is inaccurate and cannot be trusted. This view is based on the ‘higher criticism’ which grew in 18th century Germany as a technique in the analysis of ancient texts. But it runs beyond the valuable task of teasing out the motivations of the men who wrote the Bible. The liberal claim is that the Bible does not present what actually happened, and that the account has changed in a large-scale version of ‘Chinese whispers.’ That is how the Greek myths arose around a core of historical events such as the Trojan War, for instance.
David Jenkins, a bishop of Durham in the 1980s, was a typical church liberal. He questioned both the resurrection and the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. In his autobiography he grumbled about evangelicals who insisted he must believe either that the Bible is accurate or that it is a pack of pious lies. In a sequence of Chinese whispers nobody is deliberately lying, but Jenkins’ intent to exonerate the people whom he believes were involved in creating the scriptures in this way is irrelevant, because the end result is what matters. One liberal notion is that the Law of Moses was finalised at around the time that the Jews were exiled to Babylon – many centuries after Moses, and after prophets complained that it was being broken.
Some liberals even say that the prophecies were written after the events they foretold; the Book of Daniel is a standard target. Liberals claim that this way of writing is a literary convention rather than deceit, but would any faithful Israelite put words in God’s mouth retrospectively? Evangelicals who explore the biblical account find it trustworthy, whereas liberals bring a different set of assumptions to the Bible. One of their assumptions is scepticism of the supernatural. Because the Bible is packed with supernatural events, liberals cannot be faithful to it, although they never admit this.
One aim of liberals is to reconstruct, from the biblical accounts, what they believe actually happened. The project of dissecting the texts in order to work out how they supposedly emerged is an intellectual challenge, and liberals have long dominated academic theology in universities and in many theological colleges. They ignore the fact that God wrote the Bible to give answers, not ask questions; and give answers for all, not just scholars. They neglect the fact that a holy God is not going to suffer having lies put in his scriptures in his name. Liberal theology has had disastrous effects on Christian faith. In the decline of liberal churches today, we see God pruning the unfruitful branches.
Liberals, like evangelicals, believe that the Bible is a narrative for Christians to live by, but unlike evangelicals they believe that this narrative is not true. Liberal theology is hypocritical, because liberals speak differently amongst themselves from when they speak in public. Publicly they affirm the gospel, but when they say they believe it, they don’t mean what evangelicals mean. Amongst each other, liberals use language that questions countless events in the scriptures, including the miracles and even the virgin birth and Resurrection of Christ – anything supernatural. This is syncretism that blends Christianity with secular humanism. The liberal view is a form of secret knowledge for insiders, or gnosticism (although liberal gnosticism is anti-supernatural, in contrast to the gnosticism that the early church faced in the Greek world). Knowingly to speak the Creed while using its words to mean one thing amongst other liberals but something else to the rest of the world is to be a liar. Doubtless Satan regards liberal theologians as ‘useful idiots’ (in a phrase commonly attributed to Lenin). Certainly they use the same expression that Satan did in Genesis 3:1 – “Did God really say…?” Liberal bishops and clergy take a salary from churches for providing oversight even while they sow doubt. They are parasites on the body of Christ, traitors to Him and backstabbers of His Bride. Liberals should heed the warning by James (3:1) that teachers will be judged to a higher standard. They should heed the sharpness with which Jesus spoke against hypocrisy.
Here are some statistics from the Mind of Anglicans survey made by the organisation Christian Research in 2002. Just 51% of some 1800 respondents to a questionnaire sent to 4000 Anglican parish clergy “believed without question” that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, 56% his uniqueness, 66% his resurrection, 77% the Trinity and 77% his atoning death. Those are core Christian beliefs. The apostle Paul said that if Christ was not resurrected then Christian faith is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). All scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16).
When you use the word ‘liberal’ I think you mean scholar.
Most reputable HB scholars do not believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch and date it (as an edited narrative) quite late. Similarly Daniel was written long after the events it purports to describe.
This doesn’t make scholars ‘liberals’, it means that they are good historians, linguists, and anthropologists.
Scribes put words in God’s mouth in every scriptural text. And did so wittingly. Which is why the Bible isn’t univocal and why it portrays so many various images of God. Scripture isn’t even monotheistic until very late.
Sure, some texts changed because of scribal error, difficulties of translation, or uncertainty about which is the ‘correct’ version: the Septuagint or the later Masoretic text. But many differences in the narratives are deliberate scribal choices – our version is better than yours. The miracle is that so many contradictions survive!
And, it isn’t Satan in Genesis. It’s a serpent. Nowhere in scripture is the serpent ever identified as Satan. The serpent was right. God was wrong. Ignore the Bible’s plain meaning at your peril.
I am not sure how relevant this comment is but I am concerned that there is a failure to understand what is at stake here.
Let us spell it out – every faction of the Church, of Christians inside the Church of England and out, is equally capable of falling into grave sin. Of cowardice and of looking the other way. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US. Nothing makes us immune to it – not believing the Bible to be the literal word of God, or believing it is a product of the cultures that produced it – or somewhere in between. Believing in an inclusive church or a church that follows tradition or a spirit filled church – none of this makes us immune from sin, and none of it makes us free from people who will take advantage of the vulnerabilities of others. The issue at hand as I see it is will we recognise this and have a situation where people can come forward with concerns and not have them dismissed? Or will we continue to be an unsafe place for a world that needs us to be different?
I commend to Penelope the 2015 essay “Who Wrote Daniel?” by the Liverpool University scholar Paul Lawrence, in Bible And Sword magazine, vol.28 pp4-11, and his short book “The Books of Moses Revisited”. They will put her right. Of course nobody disputes that Moses’ death scene in Deuteronomy was written by another, not long after.
To say that ‘reputable’ scholars disagree is empty rhetoric.
What *exactly* do you consider that the serpent was right and God wrong about, Penelope?
Bible and Spade, though the article does not appear to be on the web. I agree that treating Daniel as a late text (N. T Wright does) is problematic and unnecessary.
‘Nowhere in scripture is the serpent ever identified as Satan.’
Rev 12:9 and 20:2 seem clear enough.
As regards Genesis, surely marrying Gen 1-2 with the cosmology and anthropology advanced by academia is a liberal position? This too is problematic and unnecessary, yet the position of most evangelicals, including present company.
Of course you commend it because it ‘fits’ your ideology.
It does not fit with the research of most mainstream scholars.
God really said that they if they ate of the fruit of that tree on that day they would surely die.
The serpent said ‘Did God really say’?
He did.
And He was wrong.
They did not die ‘on that day’s.
Steven
Those references are to Rahab or Leviathan in prophetic texts (the twisting serpent). From competing creation accounts, but not the serpent of Genesis. Who is just a snake.
Penelope
In saying that the serpent was wrong, you are also therefore saying that God was wrong/did not mean what he said (Gen 2:17). I would have thought that the sense was clear enough: the moment you eat of the tree, you will have forfeited the chance to live forever and will ultimately die. That is not clear from Gen 2:17 itself (i.e. your construction is a possibility), but it becomes the required sense when one reads a few paragraphs further and finds that Adam must indeed die (Gen 3:19, 22). Though he may have gone ahead with the more merciful interpretation of what he meant, God did not go back on his word. Either way, the serpent was not wrong and Eve was deceived. If you think the serpent was wrong, then, putting yourself in Eve’s position, you too would have been deceived.
To say that Rev 12 is referring to Leviathan in Isa 27:1 to the exclusion of Gen 2 is mere assertion. You cannot know that. In all probability the Canaanite myth to which Isaiah alludes got its imagery from the primeval creation story. The serpent was the enemy of God in both cases, and Isa 27:1, like Gen 3:15, prophesies that he will be defeated. If one adopted your logic, one might simply counter that the Isaiah verse does not mention Satan at all and therefore Rev 12 cannot be referring to it.
In discussing these texts, I am of course taking the view that they record what God/the serpent/Isaiah really said, i.e. they are not myths and the question of veracity is not irrelevant.
Steven
I said that the serpent was right and that God was wrong. In this particular narrative. God said Adam and Eve would die on that day. They didn’t.
There is no evidence in the narrative that Adam and Eve had access to eternal life which they forfeited; that is reading meaning into the text which isn’t there.
The twisting serpent of Isaiah et seqq derive from creation myths other than the two Genesis accounts. Myths which are in many ways closer to the chaos origin accounts of their Western Asian neighbours. They survive in Isaiah, I think in Job, and on the Psalms.
The serpent in Genesis 2 is just a snake. With legs.
Nobody disputes that the end of Deut is not by Moses, but not everyone agrees it was written ‘not long after’ his death.
Penelope
YOM can mean ‘era’ not just 24 hours as it must in Job.
If God was wrong, do you think he was wrong to get crucified?
Welby to be fair to him did report Smyth to police in 2013 but it was not followed up by them fully until 2017. Having said that I think the Bishop of Newcastle would be an excellent choice as next Archbishop having taken the lead on safeguarding in the Church or if not her another capable woman like the Bishop of Chelmsford
GOd forbid that it should be a man. Even if a man were the best candidate.
Christopher/T1
His replacement can’t be a woman. I don’t hold any hope that they will pick someone honest either
Wrong, ideally to restore confidence in the church it will be a woman. For starters there are no instances of sex abuse made against women bishops or priests in the C of E I can recall
Who could have the slightest confidence in an organisation that failed to pick the best person regardless of gender?
T1
A female bishop is one of the bishops that the victims have asked to resign over this.
I dont see how a woman can ever become ABC because then the church of England cannot pretend to fully support both views of women in leadership and the ABC cannot be first among equals in a communion where most of the other national churches wouldnt recognize her ministry even as a curate of a small parish.
T1
No he didn’t. That’s a major reason why he’s been forced to resign.
The police were notified in 2013 even if it was not followed up strongly enough by Welby
Were they? The bishops say that they told one another that it had been reported, but if they did then why didnt the police do anything about it?
Is it of significance that some news outlets are referring to the ABC as Mr. Welby? Any authority has immediately gone.
Does he remain in the CoE as a Bishop or other official capacity?
Will he have a PTO?
It is grim. There is no triumphalism to be had, only on – our – knees lamentations and repentance.
PTO always used to mean ‘please turn over’ the page onto a new leaf…
Certainly no triumphalism is to be had, but some of us may feel a little schadenfreude. regarding the last 24 hours only.
The Bishop of Dover was utterly appalling on Channel 4 News.
She said all this happened because of “biblical literalism”.
Total nonsense. Whatever Smyth’s religious views, the failure to report and act on his crimes was Welby’s and those of his inner circle who knew.
This is Gas Mark 5 gaslighting by Rose.
(Ramblin’ Rose was appointed by Welby as his DEI appointment and has gone on to alienate half the parishes in the Incredible Shrinking Diocese of Canterbury. She has tried four times to become a diocesan bishop but her reputation as a woke bully who hates evangelicals and conservatives has gone before her. She no doubt fears who will become her boss now her benefactor is gone. She needs to resign now.)
Gas mark 8, I mean.
Oh, I thought you were being mindful of the excessive use of fossil fuels
Yes, that is the one great sin the Church of England is agreed on.
So what exactly would ‘metaphorical interpretation’ look like?
Would it look like words having no meaning?
I wonder whether all other writings will now be taken only metaphorically? Or is there discrimination in that regard?
Is there no diversity of genre in the Bible writings?
Who decides which metaphor is correct? Will there be automatic universal agreement about that? For every different passage of scripture? Especially if the presiding metaphor is dictated by a non biblical scholar?
And, not content with not being a Bible scholar, she is trying to usurp those that are.
A typical example of the dishonest practice of seizing the lowest point as an opportunity to introduce one’s preferred agenda, even though that agenda is irrelevant to the case.
Christopher, please read something (anything!?) on how language ‘works’! That may help you not make silly statements about it.
‘Metaphorical’ / ‘words having no meaning’. What??
‘All writings taken metaphorically’. Huh??
‘diversity of genre’. Yet you argue pedantically about the known and understood ‘news headline’ genre.
‘which metaphor is _correct_’ (my emphasis) Eh??
…
You regularly bring linguistics to bear on topics where all the main discussion does not involve linguistics. It is one of those many wider considerations that are always present, but you emphasise it because it is your thing not because it is more relevant than sociobiology or anthropology or sociology or semiotics or hermeneutics.
Discussion of any topic would never remotely get under way if people were forced to cover such prolegomena first.
Though it might help if you knew what a metaphor is.
What do I think it is?
Yes, indeed, Penny.
I’m at an absolute loss, Christopher, to know what you think your 9.45am comment is about if you arn’t saying something about ‘language’. Since you USE the following expressions what do YOU think you are talking about?
‘metaphorical’, ‘interpretation’, ‘words’, ‘no meaning’, ‘writings’, ‘taken’, ‘only metaphorically’, ‘genre’, ‘metaphor’, ‘correct’, ‘automatic universal agreement’, ‘presiding metaphor’.
James
From what little I know of her she actually seems to me to be very conservative.
You know very little of her.
She isn’t. That’s a fact.
But it shouldn’t make a difference to her response or how it’s heard by others.
Sadly she made that difference all by herself. Less said would have been more.
She was rather good. Pointing out that scapegoating Welby is not going to solve an institutional and theological problem.
And insulting her is just cheap misogyny. The level of debate on here just gets more and more trashy.
Yes… Pointing out that it ran beyond Welby was right… Missing that would be wrong. But popping in that ridiculous bit about bible interpretation wasn’t good, was unnecessary and a deflection.
The Bishop of Birkenhead, Julie, on the other hand was good and on target with no other agenda. One could fairly describe her as a progressive I think but, on this, without bias.
It’s not misogyny here… I thought one was good and the other not.
Fair point. I think +Dover is right on poor exegesis though.
A Breaking of the Ranks;
A Precedent Set.
The Bp of Leicester+ Bp Newcastle were appointed (by Canterbury and York?) to lead the implentation of ss prayers.
Theological advisor(s) then appointed, which resulted in Bp Newcastle withdrawing (apparently with a grievance.?)
Bp Newcastle broke ranks calling for the resignation of Canterbury and now seems to be publicly persuing a grievance against York.
LEGAL ADVICE – Breaking Ranks.
Is not the time now right to break ranks and publish legal advice both formal and informal that was extant and available at the time and subsequently of the Bp London’s response to Synod on the question of legal advice over ssm and ssb?
Or is that too much a call for further transparency or is it too ‘literal’ for any literacy to be engaged?
Geoff, i can’t help thinking that any turn to the right by the church is simply in line with the zeitgeist. America lurches to a more theocratic position. We follow suit. Liberalism may well be dead. It may take democracy to the grave with it. Christians should be wary of any sea change. If it does change, and surely it will, we should keep our eyes open and not go with the flow.
Revelation shows us the Beast destroys the woman on its back. I take this to mean every now and then the Beast gets tired of the culture it supports, destroys it and sets up a new wonder of modern thinking for the world to follow.
If America does indeed throw off Liberalism and replace it with Theocratic Authority this will happen: This blog will be a forum where Christians debate theology but instead of the liberals acting as the foil, instead, the New Right Thinking Muscular Political Christian will be the frequent visitor.
You mean where genuine free speech wil be restored and specious leftist woke categories like hate speech will no longer be criminalised?
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/11/trump-will-dismantle-the-censorship-cartel-just-as-australia-tries-to-set-one-up/
Not even Trump proposed scrapping same sex marriage.
The war he was elected to fight was mainly on illegal immigration and too many imports to the US, hence the huge tariffs he is proposing.
At most he and the GOP returned abortion to the states but that hardly means socially conservative theocracy
T1
Trump hasn’t directly proposed scrapping same sex marriage, but he appointed 3 Supreme Court Justices who want to and 2 Vice Presidents who want to (Vance directly campaigned on this 2 years ago in his race to become a Senator) and Trump leads a party that is still generally pushing to criminalize it.
I think it’s about 50/50 if the Supreme Court hears a case on overturning Obergefell (ssm) in the manner of Roe (abortion) in the next 4 years. I’m certain that if they do then Trump will support the case for overturning it.
Let Him who has not sinned cast the first stone
Amen, Cathy. How many of us would stand up to the level of public scrutiny and the nasty, personal criticism the Archbishop has been subjected to as well as he did? It happened to++Rowan too. We have to be more restrained lest we find that the church is unleadable.
Tim
I’m sorry but I have no sympathy for him at all. Like the abusers he (unwittingly?) protected, his only punishment is a comfortable retirement. The survivors have a lifetime of pain.
I guess, like most people, I cannot comprehend his apparent lack of interest in the case, especially given he had ties with Smythe going back decades – did he not think “I might know some of his victims?”
Thanks, Peter, I take the point and agree that the victims of Smyth should always have been the top priority, and that the Archbishop failed them and is right to resign.
I think he should have resigned…. which he did. Others should follow.
But to think his only punishment is a “comfortable retirement” doesn’t indicate much human understanding in itself. And, you may have heard, that God loves all us sinners.. Including the ABofC.
Ian
To my mind he’s shown zero compassion or repentance. He only went because others forced him to. Maybe you see a kind old man who made a mistake and is agonizing over it, but that’s not what I saw in the interview he gave. He was bullish and rude to Cathy Newman. If it were not for Cathy Newman and her colleagues, these crimes would not have seen the light of day because Welby and his fellow bishops had made an excellent job of making it all go away
I wouldn’t disagree with you there.
Cathy Newman was indeed caring. But look at my 2017 comments for a fuller picture. Her behaviour re her mosque tweet and especially her Abortion Dispatches programme was in the first instance jumping to conclusions (the conclusions that suited her) and in the second extremely unpleasant.
Her intellectual failings (relative only) are memorialised for all time by her Jordan Petersen interview.
Throughout the JW interview, she was trying to press at the idea that he was not telling the whole truth. One would need to have a lot more rounded knowledge in order to pursue this line (her knowledge of the case is good, but stymied by cliches) and she was impugning his integrity. Often he would explain to her what was in his own brain, which obviously he knew a lot better than her, not that you would know it from her approach. She had a hermeneutic of suspicion, a bit like the Harry Potter journalist Rita Skeeter. One felt that she would always be more satisfied if the more salacious and anti-church conclusion were come to, rather than the one that comported with the facts. And that is exactly why journalists are the least trusted profession.
Christopher
She was pointing out that Welby lied.
As a good journalist would.
Wrong, because for the nth time you are conflating. Is it mischievous of me to see that as a tactic? Do honest people employ tactics?
There were discrepancies in his post 2017 interviews, as tabulated. That does of course happen when one is forced to talk off the cuff. How do we know how much of the discrepancy came from taking off the cuff and how much from less than 100% truthfulness? One should be careful here, because some people really are quite concerned to be truthful, and truthfulness (e.g. in interviews) was revealed to he a topic he had thought quite a lot about.
Saying ‘he lied’ means nothing because he spoke on many topics. Did he lie about them all?? What do you mean, precisely? She was pressing him on the utterly insignificant tiny 1981 conversation, and Makin’s analysis of it (a conclusion where no ‘working’ was really shown, and which would not therefore stand up in a court of law). Several have wanted him to say he lied about having known so little pre 2013. But that is just because they prefer the sensational to the boring. Not because they have the slightest evidence. Such a perspective is immediately disqualified.
Christopher
He was the Archbishop of Canterbury talking in a formal pre-arranged interview about child abuse he ignored at the hands of an associate of his. He was not talking “off the cuff”.
I think *if* we are very generous to Welby we can say that he knew nothing before 2013, but by 2013 he did indeed know.
Even when Newman called him up on minimizing his knowledge of Smyth prior to that, he didn’t seem *to me* to be speaking with much consistency with recorded facts. Now that’s totally understandable if Newman had doorstepped him and he wasn’t thinking straight, but this was an interview that he was given plenty of time to prepare for. Either he didn’t prepare, which seems unlikely, or he was still trying to get away with dishonesty about his relationship with Smyth.
It’s still this old awful attitude that somehow it preserves the church’s reputation if they hide nasty secrets away.
This verse was spoken in context of an adulteress whose husband had not been consulted and in a land in which the occupying Romans demanded a say in capital cases. God did demand capital punishment for some things in Mosaic law, and God and his son are not divided. This verse can’t just be sprayed around.
I agree we mustn’t ‘spray around’ biblical texts, but a degree of self-awareness and humility never goes amiss, which I think was probably Cathy’s point so that we avoid too much finger pointing. There are times when critical comments here can sound like nasty and personal attacks that do not serve any of us well.
It is out of context in respect to the ‘adulteress’ – she knowingly committed a sin and was facing the repercussions dictated under mosaic law before Jesus intervened. +Justin broke neither church laws by allowing the matter to be dealt with by the appropriate church body and police, nor moral laws by participating in or covering up such abuse. He made a mistake in not doing due diligence by personally following up to make sure these authorities were undertaking the ‘duty’ assigned to them.
It is not out of context in terms of the crowds eagerness to punish the woman aka the current mud-slinging at +Justin. People seem very eager to point the finger for any mistake in our current climate often at people whose culpability regarding the often awful happening is at the most minimal – this climate appears to be growing regardless of said finger pointers political or theological viewpoint.
It is in this matter Ian that I was disappointed in your publishing of the article you allowed. I have valued your articles and appreciated the insight you offer over the years. However, speculation formed through paste and cut words that have been said during interviews & assumptions made about what people ‘surely must have known’ and weak logic such as having met a former acquaintance thirty years previously at a church service constitutes having kept in touch; well God forbid anyone points that same finger at me.
Whatever Welby knew before 2013, he knew about Smyth after 2023. And even more after 2017. He promised to meet survivors. He promised action. Nothing happened and Smyth died unpunished.
He is not the only guilty party. The ABY is apparently appalled by the revelations in Makin. Where has he been these last 10 years? Why didn’t he read ‘Bleeding for Jesus’?
Many are culpable. As is the institution which shelters predators and traumatised survivors.
2023 should of course be 2013.
Aside from the generically mentioned information that +Justin checked in 2013 that the issue had been reported to police and social services and given John Smyth was not a clergyman or currently a part of the UK church thought appropriate action would be taken… I do not know why after more was revealed in 2017 that the COF safeguarding section didn’t commission the Makin report until 2019 or why it took so long to meet with victims (aside from +Justin being advised by police not to do so). I do not know why the delays happened, I do not know if +Justin read Bleeding for Jesus or not and if he was as appalled by that as he was the report.
Certainly what a group of churchmen and perhaps churchwomen knew about layman John Smyth in the 1980’s and failed to report in order to guard the reputation of their own ministries and the christian church is hard to fathom.
My attempt is to challenge the temptation to hold +Justin responsible for Smyth going unpunished… who knows, Would I have thought referring something to police was the necessary thing done if I was in his position in 2013? If Smyth had lived longer and was taken to court would we think differently? Is the plural ‘we’ of media and the general public truly concerned with the issue at hand or do we just want someone in particular to take the fall for the horrors that have been committed? Because if we do, Jesus already did that.
There is little doubt many cases of abuse have come to light in recent years and a much needed overhaul of safeguarding and processes and safe disclosure is a work in progress in churches and all organisation around the world. I understand over the last decade or so the COE safeguarding team has gone from basically no-one to forty people. Here abuse of a sexual nature of intern/law students by senior lawyers in law firms has also been prominent. In NZ we have also recently have gone through a Royal Commission into Abuse in Care with harrowing stories.
This is my last post on this as I don’t have anything more constructive to add. May the God of grace guide us into all wisdom and discernment as we follow him.
Cathy
I think a lot of people are like me and do not understand Welbys apparent disinterest in the case.
When the Mike Pilivachi case broke I was very interested and remain interested because I went to his camps and listened to his teaching. Welby had a much closer relationship to Smyth and yet took no interest in it after allegedly being told it had been reported to the police (by unnamed staff member).
He did have a moral duty to follow up why there had been no movement in the case. He did have a moral duty to provide support for the victims. He did have a moral duty not to rely on the technicality that the camps were not official church of England camps. He did have a moral duty to tell the truth when interviewed.
And if he’s not up to these things then why did he accept the job of Archbishop? Why should we accept behavior from very senior church leaders that wouldn’t be acceptable from a primary school caretaker?
Amen, Cathy. How many of us would stand up to the level of public scrutiny and the nasty, personal criticism the Archbishop has been subjected to as well as he did? It happened to++Rowan too. We have to be more restrained lest we find that the church is unleadable.
Reading the comments from Christopher Shell are absolutely highly concerning. Rev Ian I would consider that his appalling attitude and protection of Iwerne and its reputation gives rise to immediate concern. If root and branch reform is to happen a massive cultural change needs to take place. These comments from Christopher Shell would really affect survivors reading them.
Freedom of speech is vital and as an example of the horrendous culture of Iwerne Christopher Shell seems an exemplar of all that is exposed by Makin.
If he holds any position within the Church these comments are of extreme safeguarding concern.
Perhaps a judicious edit of his comments might avoid retraumatisation and maintain a trauma informed best practise.
Better to let him speak and condemn himself. This whole thread has been illuminating and I have found myself in agreement with many that I had previously not seen eye to eye with and have been shocked by some with whom I share some views.
This is true. But the point about survivors being re-traumatised is pertinent.
Victims say that any mention of the case is traumatic and ignoring or minimising the abuse is highly traumatic and re- abusing.
Some commenters do condemn themselves, but they should not be allowed to do so at the expense of victims.
Enough of the McCarthyism already.
Thousands of young people went to Iwerne camps and suffered no harm whatsoever.
Just as many thousands of young people went to Soul Survivor to their own great benefit, having no involvement at all with Pilavachi.
And many thousands of young people attended a high school where I once taught where a senior teacher was imprisoned for an affair with a student, and they suffered no harm either.
You don’t burn down a house because there is rot in one corner. Although that is what mobs do.
For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
Thanks, James. I thought of writing something similar earlier. I think that I overlapped with Welby at university, and I became a junior leader at the ‘second division’ camps for the lesser private schools (I had entered mine by the government direct grant system, not privilege and money.) I had a number of good friends who went to Iwerne camps. Our experience was generally a deepening of our faith, and meeting Jesus, certainly not training for the old boy network and power. Of course what the youngsters did after school and university is another matter, but why conflate a really nasty safeguarding failure with class warfare?
It does seem though that most of the sex abuse cases in the C of E seem to have come from the extremes. Anglo Catholics who oppose women priests such as Peter Ball or ultra evangelicals like Smyth or Pilavachi.
Middle of the road Anglicans are largely free of it
And free of sin -self -awarenes?
I think that’s an unsustainable position…. unless you have access to data that even the CofE doesn’t seem to hold.
And which “camp” do you think Victor Whitsey was in?
Suggesting that any of the spectrum is absolutely squeaky clean is dangerous… Blinkered and unhelpful.
Though even regardless of spectrum and yes no camp within the C of E was entirely immune from sexual abusers within their ranks, one thing we can say is none of the abusers were female priests or Bishops. Or at least none that I am aware of.
That makes the case for a woman Archbishop of Canterbury for the first time if the C of E as established church wants to really be seen by the media and public to have turned the page
James
I was a young person who went to Soul Survivor 3/4 times and the purity teaching that they pushed on us was indeed very damaging.
If Mike P and others (?) had been living what they were teaching then I’d argue the teaching would have been more practical, less shaming. I can tell you that at least half the women I know who were teens and young adults in that culture carry a deep sense of shame/fear around relationships. And of course he was teaching that gay kids had to be single (like him), but what he wasn’t saying was that he had a steady stream of attractive young men to wrestle with.
From my perspective MP has damaged an entire generation of British Christians, but that’s of course nothing to the abuse he handed out to his interns and worship leaders
The “purity teaching” you refer to would be identical to what kids going to Catholic schools are taught. You probably think that “very damaging”. Afraid I can’t help you with your anti-Catholicism.
Yep, purity teaching from whichever camp is damaging.
James
No, it’s not the same as RCC teaching.
To give you an example, a female friend of mine was told she should try to marry a man that she wasn’t attracted to so that “lust didnt enter their marriage”. I dont know if that was from Soul Survivor (I suspect not), but it is the sort of extreme sentiment of late 90s/early00s youth outreach.
Peter,
I went to an RC high school. I taught RE in a Catholic school. I think I know RC doctrine pretty well.
I don’t know where your anecdote is from.
Well, Jesus taught about purity and regarded it as a good thing, as did all the biblical authorities, all the apostles and all the saints. So in your world, Penny, all of them are bad things.
Can you see what you are saying? 180 degrees different from Christianity.
James
I’m saying that the teaching was more extreme than no sex before you’re married
An entire generation? Agenda-driven nonsense! I never heard of him until recently and nor did most Anglicans.
Anton
Were you an evangelical Christian between say 1995 and 2010 and aged 15-25? If not then it’s understandable that you hadn’t heard of Soul Survivor
It’s not so much that they suffered no harm as that they gained great good.
Smyth had to operate outside the system, because it was so antithetical to him, and never encroached on the central operations to the extent that he was in plain sight to all. In 1981 he came closest to that, and the vast majority would have had no idea about anything amiss even then. Pre-Smyth, Iwerne was a great organisation, the main contributor leadership wise to the boom Christian years of the 1950s, later 1960s, and 1980s. It produced all the great university mission leaders of the 1970s. Etc etc.
Smyth did not disrupt its operations, but he disrupted an appreciable number of lives. Post-Smyth, it continued to be a great organisation for the young.
And in fact Andrew Atherstone cites 1977 as te peak attendance year, which was under JS’s chairmanship of the Trust, and the culmination of growth under that chairmanship. But in the next years was a comparative decline, though still very high numbers. These were the years when Smyth really went wrong and became preoccupied, possibly overcome by hubris having become a QC (doubtless, as Froghole says, through Mrs Whitehouse’s influence on Mrs Thatcher) and before that, in precisely 1977, won a blasphemy trial (for the anti blasphemy side!) for the first time in living memory.
Hi Richie
I have said several times to several contributors – Name even one thing that is bad that I have affirmed. So far, every contributor has not been able to do that, suggesting that the evidence is elusive. Can you please do so. Thank you.
Most of the time what I do is correct facts, which I (and most people) think is a good rather than bad thing. Inaccuracy in public life is always frowned on a lot. When one constituency thinks they are getting the upper hand, at that juncture they become overconfident and play fast and loose with the facts (insofar as they know the facts, which of course each of us does only to an extent, and to different extents).
So if all I am doing is correcting facts (which is surely a positively good thing to do), are you, Richie, on the side of facts being stated more accurately or on the side of facts being stated less accurately?
If the former, then please say which of my facts are not accurate. Can you imagine what it is like to move vagueness in the direction of clarity and half truth in the direction of more truth and to be ill regarded for doing that good thing? It is a small matter, but it is not on the side of justice is it. Unless of course you can indeed (unlike other contributors) mention inaccuracies I have said.
I have come across this narrative before. There are many survivors/victims, including those who have suffered horrendously and also including some who were thrashed once or twice, and have (not always welcome) joint-celebrity on that basis. Now survivors are saying they (rather than justice) can dictate who loses their jobs, and that in fact they and the approved narrative (which I am sure is largely accurate, but sometimes not, and sometimes exaggerated) cannot be contradicted. But evidence not preference is king. On survivingchurch I am often not allowed to comment because even though I fill in a great deal of accurate background information, facts are not where it is at for the survivors who dictate what can and cannot be printed.
Things minimised by the approved narrative:
-The Church is not equal to the Church of England.
-John Smyth was interdenominational. So he was sometimes at Anglican, sometimes not. He held Anglican office, and that was probably his main denomination over the years. He sat lightly to denominations.
-Justin Welby began with half a full time safeguarder and made there be 40 in that department.
-His intray would always be full on entering office but…
-…after Savile his intray on safeguarding was clearly the fullest such an intray would ever be.
-The wheels of motion grind slowly in the C of E and those structures were not set up by JW (who I agree should have resigned).
-Iwerne camps were interdenominational. C of E takes responsibility out of kindness, and have done more than SU, not entirely for illogical reasons. They were majority Anglican by a clear margin.
-But the Anglicans in question are those who demote anglicanism below evangelicalism anyway. Not mainstream Anglican (though in my view better thought out).
-No-one tries to correct the newspapers who imply and often state that massive numbers were beaten on camp.
-No-one tries to correct the bias on ‘boys’ as opposed to ‘young men’, when it comes to the UK. Are we with tabloid salaciousness or against it?
-There is a large difference between what was suffered in UK, in Zim, and in SA. Both in kind and in degree, and also in degree of secrecy. These all get lumped together as ‘abuse’, and people reading take the worst Winchester scenario as typical.
-There is also a large difference between Smyth’s UK atrocities in 1981 and other years. But newspapers maximise the idea/implication that many were being beaten over much time.
-What is to be criticised about pre-Smyth Iwerne?
-How could John Stott and Michael Green have the ministries they did and always view this as the best and most notable part of their formation?
-Iwerne products include quite a large number of people of notably good character.
Those who have been hurt, tragically, often try to hurt so as to express the size and importance of their own hurt. Those who have early suffered appalling circumstances or bad luck that has been crucial in the shape of their life and formation have been knocked out of shape, and that will ‘come out’ in some shape or form in their subsequent life and actions.
Hi Chris,
Rev Ian’s blog is known for its robust debate.
My issue is that it is unlikely though not impossible that given Rev Ian’s latest interviews more exposure of his site and the comments thread could lead to one of the 100s of victim survivors (note it is hard to gauge how many unknown victims in the UK Zimbabwe and South Africa are unaccounted for ).
For them to read your comments would be traumatizing. I also note that you have been a frequent commenter on Ian’s site at least since 2016 and have been highly defensive of Iwernes culture and of course for many its culture was positive in the context.
I have a feeling that this Smyth situation is deeply triggering for you on different levels and is actually a form of what is called vicarious trauma.
I am sure that if you have direct contact with survivors of Smyths abuse you would do everything you could to help their journey of healing.
Media tsunamis are always stressful, and this one is a very difficult time for not only Smyth survivors but survivors of church and institutional abuse worldwide.
Thanks for your response .
The idea that reading blog comments is traumatising is drivel. They might trigger you if you were, sadly, already traumatised. That is not the same thing and such persons are best off avoiding robust debate
Christ, what an appalling response!
Survivors find any reference to their abuse re-traumatising, whether it is a TV report, a newspaper article or a blog or online publication.
Do you know nothing about trauma?
Do you really think some of the cruel comments on here constitute robust debate?
For God’s sake read some trauma theology before revealing more of your cruel ignorance.
Anton
So cold, so callous. There’s nothing in the New Testament that resembles this.
Penelope
How dare you suppose I am ignorant of these matters.
Thanks. You are incorrect on one central point. You will observe that I generally clean up inaccuracies, and in fact that is the main thing I do whatever the topic. On Smyth there are an unusual number of widespread inaccuracies, probably because the media’s desired narrative is tantalisingly within reach when it comes to this story, so people just jettison accuracy and go with the salacious and anti-church version.
Do you honestly think scholars are selfishly motivated by their psychology and autobiography? Put yourself in their shoes and that is an affront to the scholarly integrity which means everything to them. And is also contradicted by the evidence for precision-centredness above all. Thousands of people are, but the common denominator you will see in my approach to any topic is that truth matters and I treat truth and precision as being the same thing. Thanks.
NO sure if this is the real Christopher Shell or a masterful parody?
Address the point, Joe, don’t sidestep it. The fake CS must have got hold of my email address somehow, then.
I am the son of a woman who had a personality disorder (narcissism). I wish I could find a church where there aren’t people like her. But sadly evangelicalism is riddled with them – all abusive, all manipulative, all full of lies, all lacking in empathy.
I believe in Christ but holy f*cking cr@p I no longer want anything to do with them – that is people like you.
It is always the way. I find it particularly with ‘abortion’ supporters, that they cannot resist letting people see what is in their inside (for they also have no boundaries) by swearing. To which I always say, it was already apparent that there was something wrong in your inside if you could not sense the value of children; and you are just proving the theory by your awe-lacking language. This is just an example, and I don’t know whether you are of their number. That is just the arena in which I most experience this.
I note further that you, like others, when asked what it is that I am saying that is inaccurate, and what it is that I am approving that is bad, fall silent.
Surely it is quite extraordinary to have such an extreme reaction to my precision-driven posts when you are silent on both those two central points. Where does the extremity come from?
You still admire Iwerne, an ethos which fostered sexism, classism, homophobia entwined with homoeroticism, and simplistic muscular Christianity.
An ethos which enabled men like Fletcher and Smyth, and which failed to report their abuses when they learned of them. An ethos which enabled abusers to continue when they could have been stopped and held accountable.
That is extremism. A clear apologia for an institution which enabled and fomented abuse.
It’s a bit like saying ‘Do you admire the culture of Arabia?’. It never seems to occur to people that what is being examined is both large, extended through time, and multi dimensional at any one time.
It is the lowest level, from an intellectual point of views. It is basically giving a tick or a cross to some vast entity as though that entity were a single thing that was undifferentiated.
I by understanding merely the basic truth that generalisation is possible re large entities win this one by default. In the country of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
Iwerne was through the ages a fascinating phenomenon, worth much study, and Joseph Diwakar is finally to give it its due. Patterns were observable. There was a much higher instance than elsewhere of absolutely admirable people. There were also some coddled types, and one would often wonder why these two would coexist. What’s the common denominator? I thought – both come from close homes, but some from good upbringings and some from over-indulgent. There were high standards of appeaance, which is a telling barometer. There was no pluralism that thought all ideas however incoherent should receive equal hearing – some things were thought to be more or less self evident (again: that’s right). As in close and well ordered cultures, people were more similar to one another than elsewhere. As Bash said – they may often be of the same type – but what a good type it is. (And what an unthought-through idea it is that diversity per se, other than biodiversity, is somehow good rather than neutral.) Iwerne’s end in view was to some extent to produce what to the Billy Bunter fan would be understood as Bob Cherrys, healthy and ruddy cheeked natural unspoilt boys who liked the outdoor life and were good prefect material. Like Jesus’s centurion what it was both to be in authority and to be under authority. The antiauthoritarianism of the 1960s is of course the same thing as self-centredness.
‘generalisation is not possible’ not ‘generalisationis possible’
Apples and oranges Christopher.
Iwerne was not a pluriform culture like ‘Arabia’.
It was, as I said, an organisation ordered on classism, sexism and simplistic hermeneutics.
I am sure there were admirable people and ‘good types’ there (the latter term just drips with sexist snobbery), but they existed out with the ethos, which was risible, secular snobbery trying to get a toehold in church preferment.
Two main errors here. First, you never went there and are thinking you know more than people who did (of who those many who are supportive of the culture are far too dignified to indulge in chatter – as you will have noticed by their silence and preoccupation with higher things. I am probably the one exception, being someone who only rarely went there.)
Second error – you are doing the totally illogical and sensationalist thing of equating 90 years with the worst moment not even of itself but only of someone (handpicked from among thousands of others) connected with it. Tabloidy.
People who know one thing only classify something as a monoculture. If you knew just two things you would classify ‘duoculture’. There are plenty who know many things whom you are, oddly, trying to teach on the basis of your single-dimensional (unfortunately, parroted) perspective that knows no other. Just like with any topic, the more dimensions someone knows and can see, the more we listen to them.
I never went to Nazi Germany, but somehow I know that it was evil.
And before you have conniptions, I’m not saying Iwerne was evil. It’s an analogy. You know, a bit like a metaphor.
You don’t need to have been there to know that it’s very raison d’etre was classism, snobbery, and misogyny. One reason I know that is, because if I had been there, I would have been doing the washing up!
People are often silent about their culture either because they take it for granted or because they are ashamed of it. Neither attitude proves that the culture was good. Any organisation which was founded to groom boys from the best public schools in simplistic evangelistic exegesis, homoeroticism and contempt for or ignorance of women is rotten and corrupt even if it hadn’t produced a Smyth and a Fletcher.
Founded in order to groom boys in homoeroticism?????
Your task is simple. There is much documentation on the early years of Iwerne. All you need to do is find one piece of data that is within one million miles of this debased post sexual revolution trivialised sex-crazed analysis.
If you had been there you would have been doing the washing up?
Let’s count the flaws in that:
(1) I actually was there, and I actually was doing the washing up. I even remember the name of the brand new washing up machine. Hoby.
(2) If you had been there, you could have been different ages. For example you could have been an undergraduate. If you were, you would have been listening to the talks and doing the activities just like the boys.
(3) But in earlier years you would have been in the girls’ camp not the boys’. I am sure you will make representations about the scandal that no boys were allowed anywhere near the girls’ camp. Why were the boys excluded from the girls’ camp? Pure inequality?
(4) The drudgery – see (1) – was to a large extent done by the Senior Campers, i.e. university student lads.
(5) This is a point I have repeated on previous occasions. But it has fallen on deaf ears.
(6) Why? Because of what value is a reality when you have a good oft-repeated predictable stereotype?
One of the problems of discourse over the last few years is that it has become more adverserial, more confrontational, more emotive, and less reasoned. Some have argued that this reflects broader changes in society. I have always valued this blog for reasoned and generous debate even when there are profound differences. I hope that never changes.
Yes, John, you are right. One of the sad impacts of Justin’s leadership has been to deep and provoke more of this, arising from his fondness for dramatic, hyperbolic, but unfounded claims, like ‘the church is institutionally racist’
Don’t some of you have a job which needs to be done? Or, at least, don;t take yourselves so seriously, take the victims seriously.
I shared a bed with Justin.
We both were teachers at the same school in Kenya – Kiburu Secondary School.
I was a year after him, but it was the same bed.
I was ‘converted’ by Jonathan Fletcher at Cambridge. looking back, his charm and eloquence were a bit creepy. I think some of my fellow college christian union mates were also a bit wary. Nobody can be that perfect. I regularly attended the Round Church.
Haven;t met too many saints, but none in the church hierarchy. One saint was a doctor 100 miles outside of Mombasa, he did 3 surgeries before breakfast every day and then drove 50 miles in the evening to conduct comuunion services.
Another was an ex Harrow man I knew at Cambridge, very strongly in the evangelical tradition, he spent all his career at liverpool running a mission and parish church. He was bishop material if he had wanted.
Was at school (Marlborough) with two future bishops, both decent blokes, one of them burst into tears when he failed a tackle and our house lost the house rugby game. The other I used to run cross country with, he was good, nearly got into the Cambridge team.
Most abuse happens within a family home.
I have absolute contempt for the actions of Smyth, and almost as much contempt for those who knew the full and covered it up. Smyth’s wife doesn;t come out of it well. Headmaster of Winchester is also appalling.
It is all examples of cultish behaviour within closed groups. Are you ‘sound’?
Most abuse may well happen within a family home but it is emphatically NOT married dads who generally do it. It is stepfathers, live in boyfriends, uncles.
Please join the opposition to the sexual revolution without which those live in boyfriends would not exist to anything like the extent they do, and without which stepfathers would be fewer. If you support the SR you automatically facilitate what follows at the hands of the live in boyfriends etc ..
When you mention the point about the family home, always please mention the point about the married dads. Otherwise people will think you are saying what you are not. And they will think things are true which are not. Thanks.
Reading:
Robert Whelan, Broken Homes and Battered Children.
Oh not another one!
Gosh Christopher where do you stop?! Now attacking step parents – what on earth went wrong with you to make you so bitter?
Readers will be interested to find whether this 2-3 line comment of Peter J also contains his customary error, customary even within that short space.
Yes it does. He seems to think that I (a random unrelated person) am responsible for the statistics on which people in a home are responsible for harming children.
What will I be responsible for next? The fall of man? THe failure of the sun to shine? Leeds’s relegation from the Premiership?
What will I be responsible for next?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The world does not revolve around you. As much as you would like to believe it does, it doesn’t.
Which was entirely my point. 100%. You didn’t read the exchange.
You need to get on to Peter J for thinking for some unknown reason that I am personally y responsible for the statistics on harm in the home, when of course each statistic is by definition a different person.
i don;t think you are responding to my message.
Go get a job.
A helpful contribution is to be found here:
https://www.anglicanfutures.org/post/after-welby-what-next-for-makin
Here are a couple of points from the blog:
1. “While it is vital that all church leaders take responsibility to “identify such false and dangerous theologies and to make sure that they are not allowed to develop,” (21.1) theological point-scoring does not help keep the church safe. It has been disappointing to see some ignore Makin’s findings that Smyth “mis-used the writings and views of various conservative theologians” (21.1) and claim, for example, that it was his belief in penal substitutionary atonement that led to the beatings.”
2. “Makin expresses concern that the current Church of England recruitment process, “does not include a requirement to disclose knowledge of abuse to others by others, or to disclose knowledge or awareness of individuals that pose a risk to children or adults. For those that had knowledge of the abuse by John Smyth, had this form included such requirements, it may have provided an opportunity for them to disclose the abuse, enabling it to come to light much sooner.” (22.1.5)
The introduction of such a declaration, to be completed regularly by clergy, is Makin’s eighteenth recommendation.”
3. “A declaration of the type Makin describes could be part of the answer to these evangelical networks of unaccountable power. Imagine the impact it could have if every church, theological college, publishing house and network called for such a declaration to be completed, along with the need to disclose who they have told about the abuse, before anyone takes a job, joins a trustee board, signs a publishing deal or takes to a stage or pulpit.
Imagine what could happen if everyone who read this blog signed the thirty-one eight pledge and sought to live it out in their context.”
To emphasise, the whole blog piece is the context for the abstracted quotes. They should not be read in isolation as organisational culture is at the root.
The imbroglio gets worse, this time with Welby and Cottrell trying to pressure the Bishop of Newcastle over Sentamu and the suspension of his PTO and his aristocratic dismissal of safeguard rules: https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/lord-sentamu-and-the-bishop-of-newcastle/#comments
While I don’t read that site, although not expressly stated. I was aware of Bp Newcastle and her altercation with York and is what I had in mind with my comment @ 9:16 am today.
I think many will be happy with the end of the poor elements of JW’s tenure.
Please, how could the church go within a million miles of Stonewall? It is just like you unveil your new guru and it is a gentleman in a red coat. A fox. A wolf.
Still less Mermaids?
Being woker depending on how woke the year was. So, be especially woke in 2018 and so on. Fall for BLM in 2020. Be trend-y. Of which blowing with the wind James has something to say.
Not a squeak on abortion. Utterly incredible.
Showing independence of mind, but at other times being hemmed in by the narrative as framed by the media.
The facile summary of the ‘new’ (O brave new) completely unfootnoted stance (based on title not thought or deference to reams of scholarship) on marriage and on sex outside marriage and on sex between the same gender.
All these aspects thank God so much we are rid of them. Let that be permanent. It was like a bad dream. But I do believe that most people find it hard to escape from the structures, norms and thought patterns of their day. Maybe the powers that be wanted a diplomat who would accept the way that THEY had framed issues in the first place, and would imagine that good sense lay at the midpoint between the two alternatives that THEY had deliberately selected and presented.
For a rather less general and buzz word analysis of what went wrong see Martyn Percy
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/religion/church-of-england/68523/welby-is-gonebut-trust-in-the-church-is-broken-beyond-repair
Christopher, your post at 3.08 yesterday,
“There was negative behaviour by Smyth in 3 countries. In the UK this was towards young men. A smaller percentage of the young men, however, were badly treated by him as older secondary-school pupils as well (or even in one+ case exclusively). In Zim it was towards young men, but mostly secondary pupils. In SA it was towards a few young men“
Every aspect of this paragraph seeks to minimise the atrocity. You don’t once use the word abuse.
Instead you speak of ‘negative behaviour’, and ‘badly treated’, ‘mostly secondary pupils’, ‘a few young men’.
Several of us in this thread have pointed out your minimising the atrocity. Every time you brush it off.
A significant part of the recommendations in Makin is about increasing our emotional intelligence. As has been pointed out to you before Christopher, you don’t actually seem to have any. No wonder you keep saying no one has pointed out any error to you: you are emotionally unable to understand what you are doing. And that’s very sad. For you and the victims whose abuse you seek to minimise.
As to pointing out to the author of the book 100 corrections. You can point out several hundreds. Only if the author publishes a second edition with every one of your corrections included and offers you an acknowledgment might we conclude that you know better.
And still you don’t actually tell us how you do know. Did you re interview all the victims? Did you cross examine Andrew?
Many of us have found your attitude here quite breathtakingly arrogant. There is no other word for it.
Who is ‘us’, and why are you including some in it and not others?
You already knew that I have said many times why I do not include the word ‘abuse’: its vagueness and its lumping together of things that (like everything else in life) are more accurately expressed through detail and differentiation. Returning to accuracy when so much *maximisation has taken place (giving the impression that the horrific worst cases were typical; that 130 suffered as the worst-afflicted suffered; that UK victims were young boys; that the group of victims is a uniform group, rather than some being vociferous and others silent) that it is the fault of the maximisers if anyone simply returns to the preciser nuanced detail of the way things were, ranging from appalling to milder.
As I have said up the page, if you have such accuracy, then you must have been there and witnessed all of the horror and yet did nothing about it.
Your arrogance is breathtaking.
Well, we have 100 pages of corrections (or, to start with, about 50 on Amazon).
Together with which you have already read and ignored what I said about corrections being of many types, not just including corrections of testimony. In my case, not including the latter at all, of course.
So, shoot. Find on Amazon even one correction of testimony I have given that is not merely an indication of internal contradiction. Or else withdraw your latest in an unending sequence of charges, highly-enthusiastically made before you have even begun to look at the data (correction list) in question.
Christopher please stop avoiding the questions put to you and using ridiculous expressions like ‘shoot’. This isn’t an american sitcom.
Let me spell the questions out. Your avoidance of them will be telling.
1. Did you cross examine Andrew Graystone about your supposed corrections.
2. Did you interview any victims and have opportunity to cross examine them to establish the nature of any internal contradiction?
3. Has the author accepted any of your 100 pages of corrections?
4. Has a second edition of the book been published incorporating any of your corrections?
5. Did you personally see any of the abuse noted by Andrew Graystone in the book?
As to whose testimony I would trust – Andrew over you any day and twice on sundays. Because he exhibits that which is missing in your analysis – emotional intelligence.
I look forward to your specific answers. Please, no more general waffle.
Not only have you minimized the suffering of boys and young men, you continue as an apologist for the Iwerne ethos. As someone else has pointed out, some victims may well find this blog and I am utterly horrified that they will be re-traumatised by such casual cruelty.
You even attack Graystone’s book for errors. Presumably, like his misnaming the then Bishop if Plymouth as the Bishop of Portsmouth. I am sure that such an egregious mistake entirely undermines all his careful forensic work and his interviews with survivors.
I assume that your eagerness to minimise the abuse carried out be Smyth and others is due to your unwavering support for the Iwerne ethos.
An institution created for boys from what you describe as ‘top’ families (families whose wealth and privilege is often due to plunder and/or fornication), being groomed to be leaders in the Establishment – Church and State. Fed a diet of simplistic theology and exegesis, bodily shame, and fear of women, it is no wonder many men are still traumatised by this experience, even if they never met Smyth. Being beaten for having thoughts about masturbation and then frolicking naked with their leader must have been confusing to say the least.
Grooming young men with a potent mixture of toxic theology and shame whilst encouraging their sense of privilege and entitlement is cultish behaviour. Indeed, Iwerne was a cult, a secular cult predicated on snobbery, elitism and the notion of a ruling class.
Like other cults hiding behind the skirts of Christianity it has nothing of the gospel. Whilst people continue to defend it and to minimise or cover up abuse, the CoE will rot from the inside.
The resignation of one Archbishop will not heal that rot.
‘Not only have you minimized the suffering of boys and young men, you continue as an apologist for the Iwerne ethos.’
I cannot see Christopher doing that anywhere.
What he has done is point out the errors of fact in many people’s comments. That is not ‘minimising’.
Ian
I am rather shocked that you defend Christopher. As someone alse commented, his breezy dismissal of abuse and defence of Iwerne may well traumatise survivors who happen upon these comments.
It is quite clear from his comments here (and on this blog from 2017) that Christopher has defended Iwerne as an institution for boys from top families and has insisted, falsely, that the parents of these boys who were abused by Smyth, did not want to go to the police.
He has minimised the abuse Smyth’s victims suffered by pedantic and largely illusory distinctions between the young men in England and the boys in Zimbabwe and South Africa. He has even claimed that the abuse in Africa was OK because the parents wanted their children punished. His ‘corrections’ of Graystone and the media reports are trivial in the extreme and do not change the narrative of abuse and cover up.
Christopher admits that he admires the Iwerne ethos, he is not dissembling. Others should be allowed to say that they find it toxic and unchristian. If you cannot see that Christopher’s apologias are part of the rot which brought about Welby’s downfall, I am sorry. And sorrier still since the Alliance which organised that petition crossed ‘tribes’.
Ian, I too am surprised by your defence of Christopher here. To rename what Makin was clear about, namely abuse, as negative behaviour is clearly minimising.
Quite astonishing
By your own definition, ‘negative behaviour’ is a more vague description than ‘abuse’ (you stated earlier that ‘negative’ could be anything from -1 to – infinity, it is difficult to get more vague than that). John Smyth’s behaviour was clearly abusive: coercive, controlling and physical (causing actual bodily harm), with sexual elements to his behaviour. It was not ‘corporal punishment’ – a victim testified that they knew they would get beaten whatever happened: if they ‘confessed’ a particular sin to JS they would get violently beaten for it; and if they said they had not engaged in this sin, they would get violently beaten for ‘pride’. It is very clear that JS’s behaviour was to serve himself and not those under his ‘care’.
Maybe ‘torture’ is a better word than ‘abuse’ or ‘negative behaviour’? For that is what it was, in some cases.
The other cultural and psychological aspects of the environment are more difficult to quantify. Back then, boys public school and Cambridge was very devoid of opportunities for romantic relationships with women, and this, combined with turbulent hormones, can lead to much confusion. This was not necessarily helped by guilt over masturbation, fuelled by ‘little talks’ (which I never had). This confusion could lead to difficulties in first relationships, which some of my friends had, and guilt over quite normal activities which most people growing up experience.
I am reminded of Kenyatta’s book (which had terrible things to say about FGM). Kikuyus had a policy of sending boys and girls, pre menstrual, away for some time for frolicking and getting to know each other, but no penetrative sex (as if!). Not a bad way to deal with teenagers! I think this was prior to a manhood/womanhood ceremony.
You can argue about which approach is best, but let us at least acknowledge the repressive approach has downsides.
I am also reminded of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot,and the admonition to the prince ‘women are made of flesh and blood’. That would be news to most Cambridge young men of my era.
Ian,
I know you have other and more important things to do, but in the interest of the usefulness of this blog (which I know is read in the USA, Australia and NZ), I ask you to clamp down on the abuse of the comments section, which is becoming unreadable for most visitors to this blog.
Personal attacks on commentators add nothing to the debate.
One contributor at least will no longer interact with me (because I don’t give my full name) and I am very grateful for this self-denying ordinance. I have repeatedly asked another to ignore me but so far this request has been refused. I am still hopeful.
I am interested in objective debate, not psychological speculations about motives.
I don’t know where you are seeing personal attacks. Perhaps you are confusing criticism of the toxic Iwerne ethos with a personal personal attack.
Like you, I think Ian should discourage some comments (though how he would have time). But the comments he should remove are those which trivialise abuse and which may re-traumatise survivors reading this blog and its comments. Such attitudes undoubtedly undo the good this blog and Ian may do and have done in this case.
James, I have tried to several times. I ask people to follow the guidelines.
The reality is that 99% of people who read the articles never get to the comments.
As someone who used to work for the Diocese of Exeter may I note that one of the most prolific contributors on this subject continues to defend Iwerne and air views that were he in this diocese he would have been reported, regarded as a safeguarding risk and would certainly have had a ‘desist’ letter from the Registrar. I do not expect him to understand this. But I do expect a moderator to.
I have closed comments on this article as, sadly, and not for the first time, comments have descended into unhelpful spats between a small group of people.