Bullying and other abuse within the church

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...

Anthea's Story. Anthea was a Reader in training. For those not familiar with the Church of England, Readers, also called Lay Readers, and nowadays often Licensed Lay Ministers, are, as it says on the tin, lay ministers in the church. The CofE uses "minister" as a general term. (To a Methodist, "minister" means ordained.) The licence allows them to take services and assist with communion. They can't preside at (lead) communion, or pronounce absolution, or do blessings. All ministers have to have working agreements, so what they actually do will vary in practice. Many but not all evangelical clergy may object to women priests, but not have a problem with female Readers. One day, Anthea bumped into someone she knew from her church, who greeted her with, "I'm so sorry you're giving up your training". It was the first Anthea had heard of it. It turned out that her incumbent had announced to the Parochial Church Council the previous night tha...

Introduction I have hesitated a long time over how to frame this. Actually, I have hesitated over how to work blogs at all, and I'm sure I haven't got it yet. But really, I have got to start on something that is very close to my heart. So this is just the introduction. Bullying is very common. We are chimpanzees, basically. Wherever you go, in every human institution, you will find bullying. The only way you/we can put a stop to it is to acknowledge it. Both in general (it happens), and specifically (this is what is happening here/in our organisation). What is depressing, to me anyway, is that churches simply don't take it seriously enough. I have experience of the Church of England, mostly. So I will say that the CofE needs to look at itself nationally, at Diocesan level, and at each individual church within it. It's a tall order. But the organisation that doesn't have both a policy, and methodology laid down, is simply an organisation where bullying is rife. ...