Bullying and other abuse within the church

"What do you want?" is what you get asked in my favourite imaginary conversation! Imaginary because it hasn't happened, and isn't likely to. It happens when, finally, someone who is in a position to take action listens to what I have said, and is sad and sorry and wishes to make amends. Perhaps it's just me, but thoughts like "what about £1million for a start" do cross my mind. How much money would it take for a person to feel that whatever has happened to them over the last 20, 30 or even more years is now OK? I fear the answer is going to be, "actually nothing can do that". But there would, in my imaginary conversation, come a point when you would be rather cutting off your nose to spite your face if you said "no". I mean, a couple of million? That would change things for your family, too. Would you have a right to turn it down on their behalf? Personally, I know I would feel like Pooh-bah. I am being insulted, bought off. I wou

The snappy title is not my own. I have to credit an ordination service that took place some time ago, I think in Malaysia. The ordinands were spoken to about the nature of the role they were about to take on. In light of the discussions in the IICSA hearings, and on other blogs, the role of the clergy seems a good topic to consider. They were given a document, one page, bullet points, not excessively wordy, of all the things that they might think were to be their roles. Teaching, for example, but, all Christians are called to that. Service, but all Christians are called to that. Helping the poor and oppressed, but all Christians are called to that. You're getting the idea. Even "revolution", and all Christians are called to that, too. This is worth thinking about in the sense of considering what all Christians are called to do. We, as Christians, if we are, need to consider very deeply whether we leave others to do these things. Spreading the good news, all Christians

I have been following the proceedings of the child sex abuse inquiry, and the comments upon it. Forgiveness is one of the issues that comes out of it. Another is what will/do people do about the victims? Forgiveness is not a magic spell. Unbelievers often caricature confession as "do something bad, confess it, and then you're free to go and do it again!" Unfortunately, the behaviour of the church seems to support that view. It seems that some offenders were treated as if the fact they had confessed was the end of the matter. No consequences. Not even checking to see whether the offending behaviour had stopped. This speaks of an almost criminal level of naivety. And an almost criminal level of indifference to the suffering of victims, both actual and potential. Indifference is the opposite of love, not hate. We are all called to love. Clergy, I believe, are particularly called to this. They are shipped into a strange place, where they have an unaccountable taste in hymns

A few days ago, Rev. Janet Fife published a reply to the Archbishops' pastoral letter in a blog called "surviving church". http://survivingchurch.org/2018/03/27/janet-fifes-letter-some-reflections/ It received thousands of hits and dozens of replies. This poses the question, "Can we expect that something will come out of it?" I'm not so sure. It is encouraging. Archbishop Sentamu has written to Janet (she is in his Diocese). But he has asked her to keep their conversation confidential. As someone said, "It's our little secret" is not a phrase abuse survivors want to hear. But still, a long overdue contact has now been made. A number of other posters have come on board and told of their experiences. Particularly striking are the number of people who say that not only have they been ignored by the church, but if they attempt to go to some other organisation, any initially helpful contact peters out when the church lawyers get involved. And wh

I'm going to begin Bernadette's story in the middle. I may come back to it. She had a bit of a struggle to be accepted for Reader training. As her Spiritual Director said, there seemed to be a degree of double think about it. She was often used more or less as a Reader. Not taking services, but preaching occasionally. As she herself said, "I'm not sure I should be let loose on the world without any training"! But eventually, she did get started. The incumbent at the time, S, started out making a point of being there when she preached. But never made any comments about how she had done. When she eventually asked following a service, he said he would speak to her about it later. And when she reminded him, he said he didn't want to look back, he wanted to move forward. Bernadette found this quite bewildering. Once she was in training, she did find that she was asked to take services. The guidelines said that she should have a form filled in and sent to the tr

I have asked myself many times how it happens that it is so easy for bullying to happen within a church environment. I'm not a social anthropologist, but I think it's just a matter of statistics that it is common. And then structures that permit it. We are chimpanzees, basically. We are all (?) a bit that way inclined. We push and shove and shout to get our own way. But we are of course, thinking chimpanzees, and for human societies, it shouldn't be as simple as that. But even so, if you give a group of people the opportunity to get what they want by pushing other people around, some of them will take it. Just statistics. Which is why it is so ridiculous for anyone to claim that there is no bullying within their organisation. There will be. There's no point in taking it personally. You can, of course, make it harder for bullies to flourish and bullying to go on unobserved. And unsurprisingly, you can make it easier. I believe that the structure of the Church of Engl