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Surviving Church Conflict

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As this is a purely private investigation by a body outside of the public sector, the M.P. is unlikely to be able to have any significant agency or influence over the case’. Attempts to engage the Audit Committee in a clarifying investigation were resisted by the Archbishops at the last Synod. The Chair of the Audit Committee told Synod that oversight of the ISB was not within her committee’s scope of activity, but we now know that this too was mistaken. A letter from the Audit Committee Chair correcting that error was sent to the Synod Member who raised the question, but the correction has yet to be circulated to all Synod members. I have also asked that in the light of the Soul Survivor Festival scandal, that every Church of England festival in the United Kingdom, every Christian retreat, church away day, have a major safeguarding review to ensure that no other scandals come out of the Church of England. Isn’t your first point answered by the active involvement of the Charity Commission? The issue of an official warning to Christ Church reminding all trustees of their duties and potential personal liability, plus the Commission’s scrutiny of the latest accounts which are to be filed shortly, together with Dominic Grieve’s review, should surely militate against anything similar happening again.

On Friday I discovered that Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves have been obliged to decline engagement with the ISB Review which is being conducted by barrister Sarah Wilkinson. The key issue is depressingly familiar. I once had a rather naughty antique dealer friend (think Lovejoy), who used to defend his wheeler-dealing trading by saying: “ Truth is a precious commodity – we must use it sparingly”. When I read and listen to many of the Replies to our Questions at Synod, I often wonder why those answering us have so much to say yet are so evasive and sparing with the truth. At a time when trust and confidence in the leadership has never been lower, truth and delivery on promises looks so problematic. It will be noted that the bishop admits (i) that the process for appointing Meg Munn had been handled had “not been right”, and (ii) that the issue of her chairing the ISB was “not yet resolved”, adding that she hoped progress could be made on that “in the next week or two.” That was nearly 4 weeks ago now and there has been no announced resolution of the issue, so it appears that Meg is still in post. They join a long list of refuseniks – those no longer willing to play the game of pretending that the Church is fit to direct its own inquiries. Who is in the right, Church House or victims the of the CofE? You decide If you read the terms of the announcement – and we must now be clear that the news management is largely in the hands of the CofE Communications Department – it was all very respectful and amicable; evidently the Chair was leaving partly to spend more time with her family. If you believe this is the top and tail of the story, I have a lovely bridge in New York to sell you – ‘real cheap.”The Dean must be accountable on ecclesiastical matters to the Chapter and not to the governing body of Christ Church; Gordon Brown renounced active control over Church patronage in 2007. That did not affect Christ Church in any meaningful way. However, in 2008 he also renounced active participation in university appointments. Prior to 2008 the patronage/appointments secretary would take soundings, as per the appointment of Christopher Lewis in 2003. Lewis was not well known in Oxford (he had been vice-principal at Cuddesdon in 1981-82, but Cuddesdon has a rather soi-disant relationship with the University, not least in terms of physical distance). He was thought to be ‘suitable’ because of his experience at Canterbury and St Albans, because of his facility as a sportsman and his evident presence and social polish (his father was second sea lord and lord lieutenant of Essex). However, it has to be said that the field was a thin one, and members of the governing body had to cast around for information about him. Recently I was told by two people who understand all the problematic issues surrounding safeguarding in the Church of England that: A second question allows us to kill two birds with one stone. The Christ Church Review was supposed to have been set up with proper consultation with all parties. Archbishop Stephen said this on the record – twice – at the July York Synod. What does consultation amount to in the CofE? Prof. Percy was told what others had already decided, less than 48 hours before the Fait Accompli was announced. That’s it: CofE ’consultation’. Junubin artists have an anti-conflict collective they named “Anataban”, Juba Arabic for “we are tired”. Many of us increasingly pushed away from our church feel the same way.

When you read the answer to the Question, you might like to ask your Diocesan Bishop if s/he is aware of the details and what they are doing to instigate a proper response or investigation. I very specifically do not name anyone. Jane Chevous, a ‘survivor’ member of the NSP, who was also interviewed by Ed Stourton on the ‘Sunday’ programme, said this about Ms Munn’s appointment: ES Let me sort of just cut through that. Do you think people can have confidence in the independence of the Board if she remains as its chair? Kate Wood’s denial that she ever approved these Risk Assessment, and her written request to have her name removed from the bogus documents. (November 2020). The text of the CDM judgment which states, whatever was alleged to have taken place, it was never serious enough to warrant any further proceedings. The police agreed, and declined to arrest or charge at all. (May 2021).What we can do of course is explain in different ways, to others who actually have functioning hearts and souls. It’s important not to overwhelm them, but to continue to provide simple reasoned cross referenced arguments to set out the basis of our experience. In fact that is what I believe is being done here and in other places too. Let’s keep it up. JG So, the Independent Safeguarding Board is in the process of being set up. It’s in phase one and it’s looking forward to the next step, which is to sort of full independence. I absolutely recognise that there have been teething problems in getting that going. Now, we’ve had more conversations this week that have been actually really constructive about how that should look, but it’s not because the Church is resisting independence. It’s about getting the right structures for independence: how it’s funded and what the scope of work is, what reporting looks like, and I think that does need further work, but we are taking some really constructive steps towards that at the moment.

We believe that one of the best ways we can help individuals and communities to respond well to abuse is through creative projects. This creates space for a conversation between those with lived experience and others in their communities. Imagination is one of the most powerful resources God gives us to foster a more empathetic understanding of the needs of survivors and what helpful responses might look and sound like as we journey forwards together. Apologies for the length of the following which is offered (I hope) as providing a clearer picture of the position of the Diocese of Oxford and the Bishop in relation to the future respective positions of the Dean and Bishop. These were the Diocese’s proposed responses (subject to approval by the Oxford Diocesan Synod) in November 2022 to the governance review, emphasising the Dean’s Cathedral role being independent of the Governing Body, unlike as at present: You will not gather it from the General Synod agenda but a lot is happening. Let me update you in brief starting with the Q&As. Two merit your special attention. A related question: who approached the five suffragan bishops who failed to be elected in 2021 to ask/persuade them ‘graciously’ to step aside? Was that William Nye or, if not him, who? The enquiry into the Christ Church statutes and systems of governance by Dominic Grieve KC has begun. No doubt the difficult underlying issue of whether the Dean of Christ Church should always be an ordained Anglican priest will, at some point, be faced. Canon Foot appears to see herself as an interim holder of the post, pending any possible major changes to the constitution of the College that may be recommended by the different enquiries. At this moment it does make sense to appoint an available in-house candidate who meets the current requirements. I have no doubt that Canon Foot will have made some careful assessment of the existing and potential problems of the College/Cathedral. The challenges are enormous. She will be carrying the additional burden of having been identified firmly with one group of members of the Governing Body and it remains to be seen if she can ever fulfil the role of being a unifying figure.

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The circumstances in which Joanne Grenfell became a member of the House of Bishops are, I suspect, not well-known, and are not without controversy. These, then, are the facts concerning Bishop Joanne’s election to the HoB: Isn’t the problem that the C of E feels it can ‘mark its own homework’ and doesn’t really like the idea of any truly independent scrutiny? I see the ISB as the secondary issue here, but what has so far been revealed about it rather supports the point. The reader who can identify with the stories of ‘apostasy’ told by those who travelled the path of hard and demanding study, will know that one of the features of this approach to faith is the sheer untidiness, even messiness, that they find in ‘liberal’ statements of belief. Many Christians are unwilling to exchange the certainties of conservative teaching for the ‘uncertainty’ path where questions are not always answered. Clinching an argument by a neat quote from scripture would be an approach that most of our authors, recalling their journeys through change, would reject. Freedom of thought for them is a highly valued commodity. These two approaches to faith, loosely described as conservative and liberal, account for the chasm that we find today among Christians. Some are content with the place of settled unchanging opinions where difficult problems are brushed aside. Others are prepared for the challenges of ambiguity and uncertainty, recognising that the world of questioning and challenging assumptions is rarely tidy. We do not, this side of the grave, arrive at the kind of secure safety that many people think is claimed by the Christian faith. The perspective of Percy and Foster’s book is that the Church and its members should always be on a journey of learning. The feature of this kind of journey is one that requires the humility to say that it will never have all the answers to human problems. Statements which emerge from popular Christian teaching, which begin with the words ‘the Bible is clear’, are frankly dishonest and this dishonesty is damaging to the point of being destructive. The destination that our ten contributors have found is one, not described as presenting certainty, but as a place of personal integrity and honesty. That does not make the individual journeys described as necessarily right for anyone else. What is right for us as the readers of the book is that we should consider the place of spiritual pilgrimage and change in our Christian calling. This book Faiths Lost and Found gives us some idea of what each of our personal journeys might look like.

Of course the Church of England is entrenched in the Establishment. Society as a whole will take a long time to extricate itself from an archaic heritage it largely still sees as good. That said the tide is coming in, and with tsunami size waves like with the latest Soul Survivor crisis, the speed of decline is hastening. What little hope there was for the ISB has effectively been extinguished and emphatically stamped on by this appointment. What a tragic waste of time and effort, to say nothing of the huge sums of charitable money poured into this – and all to create the illusion of independent oversight that IICSA had demanded of the CofE, but which Mr. Nye had absolutely no intention of allowing. The ISB has become an ignominious initiative to be associated with: something pretending to be independent, but is not and was never going to be. The sooner all such appointments in the safeguarding circus of the Church are removed from the hands of Nye the better. This latter day Richelieu of the Church of England whose unaccountable court supercedes that of the gelded king in Lambeth Palace, continues to deepen the disrepute in which the Church finds itself. Chief amongst these complainants is that of Gilo. His complaint is that the Secretary General permitted a prior complaint against him to be dismissed, upon the basis that he was not present at a significant meeting which was the subject of serious and controversial inquiry at IICSA. However, it is now confirmed that he was present, via a Subject Access Request answered by other parties present at the meeting. Gilo’s solicitor – the IICSA survivor advocate Richard Scorer – has written comprehensively seeking answers to questions five times without response. The original complaint letter can be read here https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/elliot-review-redux/ Given the funding arrangements of the ISB, some might wonder if it was always the case that ‘independence’ was difficult or impossible to realise, and that the ‘I’ was included in the title chiefly for PR purposes?

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The only way I can rationalise the behaviour of the AC is that it’s a deliberate provocation to attempt to force Jasvinder & Steve to resign in protest, so that the current partial neutering of the ISB that the AC has achieved will then be converted into a complete destruction of any effective ISB. But at least we now know that ISB was and is wholly and closely controlled in terms of ambit and resource by Archbishops Council. Two very serious questions flow from this?

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