A DEBATE on the problem of mistrust in the Church of England was dominated by the issues which are causing divisions, most notably the Prayers of Love and Faith.
The Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, the Rt Revd Martin Seeley, introduced the report, and also his colleague, Professor Veronica Hope Hailey, the Dean of the Business School at the University of Bristol, who has previously researched trustworthiness in a C of E diocese and worked with businesses on the question of trust. She had interviewed a range of clergy on this.
Research had shown that higher levels of trust in organisations promoted better flourishing and well-being. Trust was a gift from a trustor to a trustee, and was inevitably uncertain and vulnerable, she said.
What builds high trust? Trustworthy behaviours at every level of systems and decision-making, Professor Hope Hailey said. Ability, benevolence, integrity, and predictability were core to establishing and building up trust.
It had become obvious in her interviews that major breaches of trust around racism and abuse in the Church had made some people despondent. Others complained about how these issues had been managed by the institution, one describing this as “the cover-up of the cover-up”.
Loyalty to a church tradition or tribe was felt to be more important to some than loyalty to the main institution. Younger clergy sometimes felt afraid to speak out and contradict their tribe’s leadership on critical issues.
Social media was also exacerbating the “toxicity” already present in the internal discourse of the Church, Professor Hope Hailey said. Furthermore, a culture of fragmentation and animosity had “infiltrated” the Church, others had said.
Bishops were seen as too remote, and were said to be elevated in an “almost messianic manner”, despite being revealed regularly as human and flawed. Decisions were also believed to be managed from above, and not genuinely open, which also diminished trust.
“The crisis of trust is also about the failure of the C of E to carve out a distinctive new role in 21st-century society,” she said. But something more authentic was emerging, even if painfully.
Creating high trust in the Church would require more time together and creating “safe spaces for discussion” — something that had been a key part of the lengthy debates over the ordination of women in the C of E, she said.
Professor Hope Hailey said that a final way of hurdling growing mistrust in the Church would be respecting those who had different views, and sharing a common loyalty and obligation to the institution, nevertheless.
Joyce Hill (Leeds) said that the report felt overly “clerical”, without enough attention paid to the laity. If more work was done, could due weight be given to those who make up the majority of the Church, she asked.
The Revd Christopher Blunt (Chester) said that the report did not mention justification or forgiveness from sin when it considered trust in Jesus.
Sam Atkins/Church TimesProfessor Veronica Hope Hailey
Dr Simon Eyre (Chichester) reiterated that not enough attention had been paid to the laity in the study, and questioned whether the sample size was large enough.
Professor Hope Hailey said that lay people had been included, but agreed that more could be done on this. The sample size was small, but it was appropriate for this kind of pilot qualitative study, she argued. She wanted the Synod to give guidance on which areas it wanted to be explored in greater depth, with bigger samples.
Bishop Seeley clarified that those interviewed were not just “a bunch of my mates” but a group suggested by other bishops, most of whom he had never met before. Issues of forgiveness did not emerge through the interviews, he said, but this was only noticed late in the day, and there remained work to be done in further exploring this.
The Revd Dr Ian Paul (Southwell & Nottingham) said that trust in the House of Bishops was low, and asked when the House would address mistrust on its agenda.
The Archdeacon of Liverpool, the Ven. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes (Liverpool), asked whether there was any metric used to measure the level of trust in an organisation, and, if so, how the C of E scored in comparison to other institutions.
Dr Janette Allotey (Chester) asked whether an independent qualitative researcher could be hired to ensure a lack of bias in sampling.
Alison Coulter (Winchester) said that accountability was necessary for trust, but that accountability was often unclear in the Church. Could this be explored in the next phase of research?
Bishop Seeley said that the House did need to pursue this question of trust soon, but that, first, the trust group should come up with some practical proposals which could be considered by the bishops. He said that Professor Hope Hailey was entirely independent of the Church.
Professor Hope Hailey said that it was increasingly routine for organisations to measure trust in themselves, mostly through an employee attitude survey. In her earlier diocesan research, clergy had used the four aspects of trustworthiness to ask their congregations how they measured up. It would be possible to create a survey on the same material to draw up qualitative data in the C of E.
Accountability was a core part of trust, and was often manifested by leaders’ being held to account by bodies such as the Synod. The fact that the Synod existed, and yet mistrust persisted, meant that it would be profitable to explore this question further. Nothing could be 100-per-cent transparent at all times, for everyone, which was why trust was required, she said.
Bishop Seeley said that he had found the work difficult from the outset, as it revealed widespread concerns about breaches of trust across the Church.
“It has been difficult for me as a bishop to read the interviews,” he said. It had challenged his own behaviour, uses of power, and shortcomings in diocesan leadership, he said.
To have faith in Jesus was to trust him, Bishop Seeley continued, who then called them to love each other, which was a sign of his trust in them. This was the “golden thread” that ran through the research. The “patchy but pervasive mistrust and suspicion across the Church” had contributed to issues around abuse, safeguarding, and Living in Love and Faith (LLF), he said.
Untrustworthy behaviour fed distrust; there had to be more collegiality and mutual accountability, perhaps in making deanery chapters safer spaces in which to be honest. “How can we rebuild trust to be able to work together for the sake of the gospel?” he concluded.
Peter Adams (St Albans) said that the agenda for the Synod bore witness to the “haemorrhaging of trust” in the Church. He believed that the restoration of trust in any community was costly and time-consuming. “We have got to commit 120 per cent to the task,” he said. A process of truth and reconciliation might help the C of E to re-establish trust.
Rebecca Hunt (Portsmouth) said that it was “regrettable” that the document spoke of different theological traditions in the Church, given that the canons and formularies were clear. She said that she had lost trust in the Church, thanks to a “lack of transparency” in the Living in Love and Faith journey, and accused the bishops of pursuing a “dishonest and unacceptable” strategy to implement stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples.
Ruth Abernethy (Channel Islands) intervened on a point of order to suggest that Ms Hunt’s speech was not on the topic of the debate. This was dismissed.
Ms Hunt continued to say that trust could not be restored without retaining the doctrine on marriage, or a two-thirds majority vote to change teaching.
Robert Hammond (Chelmsford) said that he welcomed the report, and paid tribute to the work of Professor Hope Hailey. The report, he said, contained theological and academic rigour, and he hoped the Synod would take the work forward.
On Zoom, the Revd Lindsay Llewellyn-MacDuff (Rochester) picked out a line in the report which says that “the primary disposition of the Christian leader . . . is to be one of service.” There was a danger, she suggested, of this attitude’s “contributing to a culture of stress and burnout in our Church”, and the way that it played out could end up disempowering leaders, particularly women leaders.
Bishop Seeley said that the Church needed change which could not be easily implemented by another report or simple reforms. “It’s going to require some real intent,” he said.
The Synod took note of the report.
Prudence Dailey (Oxford) then moved a further motion, which welcomed the acknowledgement of a breakdown of trust, but said that the report dwelt only on the symptoms of broken trust rather than the causes. Her motion requested that the working group explore the underlying reasons behind breakdowns of trust between parishes and clergy, between clergy and bishops, and those caused by the national Church’s handling of the Covid pandemic. She quoted one of the LLF pastoral principles of “paying attention to power”, and said that it was important to identify specific actions which had caused a breakdown of trust.
In response, Bishop Seeley said that he was “ambivalent” and “agnostic” about Ms Dailey’s motion, and that investigations into failures of trust were already happening. He ultimately decided to support the amendment.
Amanda Robbie (Lichfield) supported the motion, and suggested that the impact of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) had been overlooked in the report. Could the bishops reflect on how to apologise for the CDM?
Gabriel Chiu (Liverpool) backed the motion, referring to Acts 4, in which believers shared all that they owned together because they trusted each other. But this was shredded by the dishonesty and lack of faith of Ananias and Sapphira in the following chapter. There would be similar “false faith” in the Church, he warned, things which would be fatal to the institution. He urged people on the working groups to show the Church where its false faith lay.
The debate was then adjourned as it had run out of time, and the next morning Mr Hammond, who chairs the Business Committee, said that, because this was a following motion, it could not be rescheduled for this group of sessions, but would be considered for further debate in February 2025.