Safeguarding and the Archbishop of Canterbury

Madam, — As someone deeply damaged by safeguarding issues, I want to say that yes, the Church needs to grow up, but so do the media. I paid a very heavy price years ago for confronting an abuser in a church and was badly let down by a bishop (now deceased) who failed to act. I still carry the health and financial scars. The current media feeding-frenzy isn’t helping, however. It is too often unbalanced and ill-informed and triggers bad memories without offering constructive ways forward.

Calling for heads to roll may feel satisfying and create headlines but is dangerously undermining for the many clergy and lay people working on the ground to care and protect. We constantly hear demands for the Church to change. There is more to do, but the Church of England has already changed out of all recognition in its treatment of safeguarding. Understanding and rigorous training improve all the time. Clergy are constantly informed, challenged, and supported in growing in understanding and best practice. This is vital, because abuse of any kind is a terrible thing.

Yes, the Church has made many mistakes and cost many people dear — including me — but there can hardly be an organisation that has not been infiltrated by abusers and found it challenging to deal with them. Abusers are by nature manipulative, skilled in deception, and love to establish themselves — like cuckoos — within caring organisations. To make it harder, they are often very gifted individuals with charismatic personalities.

How many of us have struggled to believe that a hard-working teacher, committed youth leader, or famous TV personality could be guilty of hideous abuse of children or adults? How many head teachers or BBC executives have responded too slowly or become entangled in employment legislation? We all live in glass houses here. We are all learning.

Few who cite the Makin report seem to have read it in full or noted the criticisms that it has attracted from secular professionals. It has become a stick with which to attack individuals rather than a tool for national growth. We should have no truck with abusers, but need to ensure that we don’t lose those who may have made errors (as have we all) but can lead desperately needed change.

Within the Church, some appear to be scrambling to position themselves as the supreme champions of safeguarding. In the process, key biblical principles of collaboration, grace, and unity in sharing the Good News of healing and new life are being lost.

As the victim of an abuser, I eventually had to face the fact that I could not move on without being willing to forgive and let go of my anger and frustration. Otherwise, the abuser would go on damaging me till the day I died.

The Church absolutely must not minimise the desperate suffering endured by so many, but we must also remember that it is our job to offer comfort, hope, and the power of God to heal and renew.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

From Miss Vasantha Gnanadoss

Madam, — In the search for a new Archbishop of Canterbury, the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) (News, 20/27 December 2024) will be taking account of the track records of those under consideration. It is important that this includes clergy care and well-being, adherence to dignity-at-work policies, and effective safeguarding procedures.

The CNC should have regard to the Church of England Covenant for the Care and Well-being of Clergy adopted by an Act of Synod in February 2020. This is a document for reflection and action for bishops and the wider Church. The document states that “The General Synod has appointed a small group to encourage and evaluate progress in the field of clergy care and wellbeing across the Church of England.” The group’s evaluation will provide the information needed by the CNC.

With reference to safeguarding, the CNC could check Diocesan websites to assess the state of their safeguarding structures. At least one diocese is seeking to fill four safeguarding vacancies at present.

VASANTHA GNANADOSS
242 Links Road
London SW17 9ER

From the Revd James Dudley-Smith

Madam, — I took a moment in the New Year period to consider what I would pray for and wish to see in the next Archbishop of Canterbury. It is not a full list, of course, nor is it in order of importance, nor is it intended as criticism of anyone. This is how it came out on paper:

Someone who has real experience of parish incumbency.

Someone who knows that the Church of England is its local churches.

Someone who would be happy to discard deferential titles and mitres.

Someone who does the hard work of following due process, or changing it by due process.

Someone who does not try to govern the Church of England.

Someone who has not tried to impose a diocesan strategy.

Someone who will teach the doctrine of Christ as the Church of England has received it.

Someone in whom I can see Jesus.

Someone who is not able to make a text mean the opposite of what it plainly means.

Someone who would be willing to receive the same stipend as the rest of us.

Someone who would pray and work for more followers of Jesus.

Someone who will do much more church than politics.

Someone who is not omnicompetent — and knows it.

Someone who has a track record of kindness to family and colleagues.

I’ll keep praying.

JAMES DUDLEY-SMITH
The Rectory, 41 The Park
Yeovil BA20 1DG

From Mr Gwilym Stone

Madam, — We have to acknowledge, perhaps without any particular regret, that very many people will have set their moral compass for 2025 by a New Year’s Message of inclusion from Paddington Bear during the London Fireworks display rather than any word from the Church of England or the Archbishop of Canterbury.

GWILYM STONE
Tomsk Villa
11 Rollesbrook Gardens
Southampton SO15 5WA

From Mr Godfrey H. Holmes

Madam, — I did not want Archbishop Justin Welby to take his well-earned retirement without some acknowledgement of his kindness towards so many people in distress or pilloried unfairly. I recall, in particular, his willingness to befriend, and to stand by, Andrew Mitchell MP, in 2012 suddenly unseated as Conservative Chief Whip.

It would be a terrible ignominy — and injustice — if this longstanding, indeed distinguished, Archbishop of Canterbury were to be defined solely by the circumstances surrounding his exit.

GODFREY H. HOLMES
St Elphin, 12 North Promenade
Withernsea HU19 2DP

Proposed description of the Anglican Communion

From Canon Ian M. Ellis

Madam, — You report (News, 3 January) that, last month, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order published its proposals for structural reform of the Anglican Communion and that, under the proposals, the agreed description of the Anglican Communion would be revised to describe the constituent Churches as having a “historic connection” with the see of Canterbury rather than being “in communion” with it.

Perhaps, however, those concerned might consider that all Christian denominations have a historic connection with Canterbury, not least Methodists. Then again, if one goes back far enough, all Churches come to the same historic connection in the New Testament itself.

This idea of a “historic connection” idea is hardly the answer to the Anglican Communion’s self-definition dilemma.

The fact is, surely, that the various concepts of ecclesiastical communion betray an overly juridical approach to church relations. Am I in communion with you? Are you in communion with me? These are no longer really credible questions for Christian people to ask one another.

The truth is that there is only one communion and fellowship, and it embraces Christian believers of every tradition.

Perhaps a new name for the Anglican Communion might be more appropriate than a new definition. Suggestions on a postcard?

IAN M. ELLIS
19 Drumnacanvy Lodge
Portadown, Co. Armagh
BT63 5XY

Make-your-mind-up time for the Lords Spiritual

From Dr Jonathan Chaplin

Madam, — Canon Neil Patterson is surely right that reform is needed to the Lords Spiritual (Comment, 3 January). He does not, however, address whether the system is justifiable at all. The granting of automatic seats in the UK’s second legislative chamber to 26 senior clerics of a small and diminishing English denomination in which barely two per cent of English citizens regularly participate poses a glaring question of constitutional equity which the Church’s leadership steadfastly refuses to confront.

The Church’s leadership has frequently been able to present reasons that it should retain this or other privileges of establishment, but rarely any for relinquishing them. One might have thought that the latter sprang more easily from the pages of scripture than the former.

The Lords Spiritual are supposed to think independently, but there appears to be a three-line whip operative in their defences of the system: “we have been invited by Parliament to serve in this capacity and will continue to do so until it decides it no longer needs our service.” Such complacent pragmatism will not do. The Church must finally make up its own mind whether, and how, it can justify theologically the enjoyment of this and other significant constitutional privileges — and, if not, summon the courage to initiate their abolition.

Its current passive stance only leaves it vulnerable to rising tides of hostile public and political opinion — on safeguarding, same-sex marriage, and more — which may, indeed, soon lead to the bishops’ departure from the Lords, but in public disgrace rather than with the dignity of their own theological and missional motivation.

JONATHAN CHAPLIN
19 Coles Lane, Oakington
Cambridge CB24 3AF

Underestimated vigour of Continental Christianity

From Mr Jonathan Luxmoore

Madam, — Canon Angela Tilby (Comment, 3 January), like A. N. Wilson, is far too pessimistic about the Christian faith’s prospects across Europe. We should be wary of extrapolating British experiences on to the rest of the continent, where conditions are often quite different. But we should also avoid the defeatism summed up in such questions as “whether Christianity itself has a future”.

I recently attended a typical parish church in Poland — the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in Glubczyce, a southern town of 13,000 — which has seating for more than 1000 and is packed at each of its six Sunday masses. Poland may have been particularly fortunate in managing to combine a vibrant Christian culture with Western-style secularisation. But scenes of mass devotion are far from unusual in much of Eastern Europe, as well as in Germany and Greece, where religious education remains compulsory, and in Italy, Spain, and other countries where Christian Churches staunchly defend their public profile and position.

Society may be outwardly non-religious; but it is far from being a “hostile environment”, while attitudes to Christianity are much more nuanced than mere participation figures would suggest. People, in all their multicultural complexity, are generally interested in what committed Christians have to say — if only their Churches could find ways of promoting the faith imaginatively and confidently.

Where numbers are indeed falling, the proper response isn’t to wring our hands and philosophise, but to get out there and draw people back. How best to do so should be the real question for 2025.

JONATHAN LUXMOORE
33A West Street
Chipping Norton OX7 5EU

From the Revd Richard Adams

Madam, — Although she doesn’t explicitly say so, I suspect that Canon Angela Tilby is equating Christianity in the UK with Anglicanism and other legacy Churches. There is a great deal of Christianity out there on the increase, but in the newer movements and networks rather than traditional churches.

RICHARD ADAMS
Tros y Mor, Llangoed
Beaumaris
Anglesey LL58 8SB