Reiteration of the demand for a full Bangor inquiry

From the Revd Dr John Prysor-Jones, the Very Revd Professor Gordon McPhate, and 18 others

Madam, — You will recall that two of us wrote an open letter to you (30 May 2025). A full year after publication, no substantive response has been received to our call for a formal inquiry.

In the letter, there was a deliberate challenge to the silence hanging over the events recorded in the diocese and cathedral of Bangor. The letter called for “a formal inquiry into the diocese of Bangor and its cathedral since 2011, [to] be led by an external person of proven ability to find the truth, with a theological and pastoral background, assisted by advisers in organisational management, canon law, civil law, and criminal law.” The inquiry should also investigate the use of non-disclosure agreements.

The motivation in seeking this inquiry was to give voice to a range of individuals who feel that they have suffered psychological and physical harm, moral injury, and spiritual abuse in the Church in Wales. Spiritual abuse is partially defined in the Church in Wales Safeguarding Awareness training (drawing on Dr Lisa Oakley) as: “A form of emotional and psychological abuse characterised by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour in a religious context. Spiritual abuse can have a deeply damaging impact on those who experience it.”

Since then, many individuals have refused to let the matter rest and support this letter, including the 20 signatories below. At least a further ten people also support the letter, but, fearing reprisal, have chosen not to have their names published, a reflection of the culture of intimidation which they perceive to exist within the Church in Wales.

We are asserting that an investigation is required to test the evidence and thereby clear the air. It is equally important for the Bishops, as chief pastors, to understand the extent of these pastoral failures and the depth of psychological trauma, to the detriment of mental, physical, and spiritual health.

For others, moral injury has compounded this harm: deeply held beliefs about right and wrong have been violated. This has left people wrestling with anger, guilt, disillusionment, and betrayal, affecting their faith and where they now feel able to worship.

Paid staff, regular worshippers, volunteers, servers, children, young people, and clergy have all been affected. The depth of the harm is evident in the fact that some young people raised in this community now say that they want nothing more to do with the Church.

We are aware that the stories of some of these harmed individuals are well known to certain serving, as well as retired, bishops. They and others need to know that they are being listened to and taken seriously. Their experiences can help to shape the Church’s response.

Failure to act on knowledge of harm risks complicity in the very harm that has been done. It deepens the trauma of survivors, entrenches moral injury, erodes trust among members, and undermines moral credibility in the wider world.

We, victims and exiles from Bangor diocese and Cathedral, are forced to renew the call for an inquiry, and to conclude (1) that this suffering is not fully understood, and that (2) the priority may have been to preserve reputations and personal loyalties, in the hope that the matter might simply fade away. Until such an inquiry takes place, the Church in Wales, once experienced as a place of safety, cannot be seen as a safe place.

The recently published governance review of the diocese of Bangor (News, 6 March) further contributes to our unease that there may be matters left unresolved. While it provides analysis of leadership, financial decision-making processes, and significant governance failures, identifying areas of responsibility, it was not within its remit to hold individuals to account.

An inquiry must have a clear and specific remit, powers to access all relevant documentation, to invite those who wish to be heard, to determine who should be called to give evidence, to make findings of fact, and to make recommendations. Its process and conclusions should be published in full.

The biblical requirement is “to act justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6.8). Justice is not optional, but an obligation placed on God’s people.

Attempts to secure peace without justice are illusory: “They dress my people’s wound, but only skin-deep, saying, ‘All is well.’ ‘All is well.’ All well? Nothing is well!” (Jeremiah 6.14).

We call upon the Bishops to respond to this letter in a timely and public manner.

JOHN PRYSOR-JONES, GORDON MCPHATE, LESLIE FRANCIS, DYFED ROBERTS, SUSAN JONES, PHILIP BARRATT, SARA ELIN ROBERTS, TIMOTHY PETTS, JONATHAN MATSON, SIMON TAYLOR, BETH TAYLOR, CLAIRE PARKER, REBECCA WALKER, DAVID PORTER, DANIEL BEZKOROWAJNYJ, NICOLAS NEWBLE, OWAIN PARRY, TIM ILLIFFE, MARY ILLIFFE, OWAIN MORGAN DAVID PRICE

Addresses supplied

Net Zero: are parishes just the low-hanging fruit?

From Sally Wainman

Madam, — In a couple of decades, there is a good chance that the Church of England will once again be “apologising” — and this time to the small parish churches that have been hounded, harassed, and criticised because they wanted to replace a gas boiler with another one, to provide warmth for their parishioners.

The national 2050 Net Zero goal has already started to crumble, round the edges and rightly so, because Net Zero is unrealistic, unaffordable, and totally impractical: the National Grid simply does not and would not have the capacity to cope with the extra demand. Therefore, the Church’s disastrous 2020 decision to accelerate its Net Zero route from 2050 to 2035 makes no sense on any parameter. It doesn’t give ancient churches time to adapt; and it doesn’t acknowledge that a parish church is not just a carbon blot on the landscape, but a valuable contributor to the social, historic, and communal life around it.

The crippling effects of a faculty (2022 legislation) automatically create delays in the replacement process and increase the chances of a second freezing winter, when there was boiler failure the previous one.

Last week’s letters cited the fact that emissions from Church-owned land were exempt from the Net Zero targets, despite “landholdings generating more emissions than all church buildings put together”; but parish churches are low-hanging fruit, aren’t they? How easy it is to target PCCs who are already fighting an uphill battle to keep their church open.

When the General Synod meets in July, I hope that it will seriously debate this persecution and lift some of the demands currently imposed. The UK’s contribution to emissions is one per cent, the Church of England’s 0.05 per cent? If you want social justice “globally”, start at home.

SALLY WAINMAN
Ipswich

False binary of mission and pastoral ministry

From the Revd Julie Bacon

Madam, — One of my favourite jokes is “False binaries: yes or no?” It seems to me that in her column (Comment, 22 May), Canon Angela Tilby draws a false binary between mission and pastoral ministry. Each is necessary, and one is related to the other. Without mission, there is no pastoral ministry. Neither is exercised in isolation from culture and context.

Before they can be pastored, people have to recognise themselves as something other than consumers: as disciples of Jesus who are loved by and precious to God. Chaplaincy has a part to play in helping people to recognise this. But, if the Church of England is to be more than the nation’s chaplain, it needs bishops and priests with what Walter Brueggemann called “prophetic imagination”, who can help people to imagine a future radically other than what this world offers them.

Mission is about far more than “numbers, money, or, even, bums on seats”. As Darrell Guder puts it, ‘Mission is the result of God’s initiative, rooted in God’s purposes to restore and heal creation.” God’s people are invited to locate themselves and participate in mission, discovering (or maybe rediscovering) whose they are, through diligent, attentive, loving pastoring, so that in turn they can be sent into the world for which Christ died and in which Christ rose again.

JULIE BACON
Associate Archdeacon — Transition Enabler, diocese of Sheffield
Whiston, South Yorkshire

Philosophical background to intentionality talk

From the Revd Professor John Bowker

Madam, — The Revd Stephen Collier asks why more and more Christians are obsessed with the word “intentional” (Letter, 29 May). I hope that it is because the word Intentionalität was the word with which Edmund Husserl unlocked the entire transformation of European philosophy. By that word ,Husserl explored the nature, not just of individual, but also of shared and collective consciousness: how do we make the worlds we live in?

Intentionality is a discovery about the nature of consciousness and about how we enact our intentions to do something about anything. We are right to monitor how and why we, or others, put our intentions into effect, not least in controversial matters.

JOHN BOWKER
Cambridge

‘Cosy’ crime writing may have truth in it, too

From the Revd David Chance

Madam, — I was intrigued to read Jayne Manfredi’s article, “Why is ‘cosy crime’ so popular?” (Analysis, 29 May). My father, John Newton Chance, was a crime writer all his working life, except during his wartime service in the RAF. Before the war, Dad wrote detective fiction that was compared with that of Dorothy Sayers. After the war, he based his stories on several detective characters in the genre of Christie’s “Poirot”. He then moved to telling real-life stories from his family or overheard from his daily visits to his favourite pubs. I sometimes featured.

At the age of eight, my parents and I lived on Exmoor, and the waters of the Lynmouth Flood came into our tiny cottage on the night of 15 August 1952. I stood at the top of the stairs as the water came up step by step and burst into tears, crying, “God promised this would never happen again.” My parents came to my deaconing, in 1970, and afterwards, at the sherry party with Michael Ramsey, Dad said: “I never thought you would have come to this, my boy, after your faith had been so challenged in the flood.”

When I was a curate in Croydon, he used lots of material from the life of an impoverished young priest. My wife got on well with my father, and they talked about plots, of which he said there were only seven, but he never divulged what they were. His was not “cosy” crime writing, but crime fiction using real-life experiences and scenes that ordinary folk were often caught up in. Perhaps an element of truth creeps into many a “cosy” crime story, and that’s what makes them popular.

DAVID CHANCE
Barnstaple

Lusting after angels

From the Revd David Runcorn

Madam, — The Revd Paul Burr (Letter, 29 May) is correct when he points out that the meaning of porneia is not limited to prostitution. But he is incorrect to say, “Jude 7 includes homosexuality.” It does not — though it has been too often translated that way. The context makes very that clear the lust after “strange flesh” by some in Sodom is the desire for angels. This frequent mistranslation continues to dishonour and damage faithful lives and loves today.

DAVID RUNCORN
Stratford upon Avon

Extension into galaxies

From Mr Andrew Robinson

Madam, — As respects the Revd Professor Andrew Davison’s useful “Time and space to contemplate” (Feature, 15 May), a simple summary might be the quote “The Andromeda galaxy is bigger than I am, but I know it exists and it doesn’t know I do.” Indeed, it might even be, by some, considered perhaps a bit large for communion-extension ministry.

ANDREW ROBINSON
Truro

The editor reserves the right to edit letters