Coercion and gaslighting also need to be addressed

As the Church of England urgently considers, in the light of the Makin report, the changes needed in safeguarding arrangements – so that abuse like that of John Smyth never goes unchecked again, there are other important cultural practices that need to be recognised and addressed.

These are the practices of coercion and gaslighting.

The Bishop of Newcastle courageously has attempted to highlight the first by publishing a letter that was sent to her jointly by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York regarding another safeguarding matter.  This related to the Bishop of Newcastle’s decision to suspend the ministry of John Sentamu, a previous Archbishop of York, following a safeguarding review that concluded he had failed to report a disclosure of a rape of a 16-year-old boy in 1984.

The letter, sent from Lambeth Palace on headed paper with the crests of Canterbury and York on it, signed by both Archbishops in a formal manner and addressed ‘Dear Helen-Ann’ is in itself a message that the Archbishops expected the Bishop of Newcastle to do what her seniors were telling her to do.  Furthermore, the content of the letter contains phrases that are coercive. For example, it talks about finding a path for Sentamu to return to ministry and says ‘we know this is something you want to happen’ at the beginning and towards the end it says ‘to be candid, we would very much like to see a resolution to this situation.’  

Reading the letter, it is clear that, despite the conclusions of the safeguarding review, the Archbishops have no concerns about Sentamu’s ministry from a safeguarding point of view, despite his failure to report such a serious allegation and also despite the arrogant way that Sentamu publicly dismissed the findings of the review.  On the contrary, the letter states that the National Safeguarding Team has ‘recognised that there are no current safeguarding concerns about Sentamu.’ The Archbishops go on to justify Sentamu’s public statement with the Archbishops saying that ‘he was heard in ways he did not intend’ and then suggesting that the Bishop of Newcastle should work with Sentamu to construct a statement that would facilitate his return to ministry.

This sort of letter is a good example of how senior clergy exert pressure on others, or coerce them, to conform to their will.

Secondly, there is a culture of gaslighting people in the Church of England – people who do not conform to the prescribed narrative. For example, as Chair of Women and the Church (WATCH), a national campaign group for equality for women in the Church of England, I and others who simply ask that women and men be treated equally are often treated with contempt and disdain. We are told that we are being unkind because we don’t believe that it’s possible for women to flourish in an environment of institutional discrimination, where we are called to enable the flourishing of those who limit or deny our ministries.

It is true that most women get on with their ministries without making a fuss about the ongoing discrimination, but this is partly because they have no alternative.  First, all clergy are required to sign to accept the discrimination in order to train for ministry and if they want to access more senior posts in the Church. Secondly, as I have already said, if we do speak out, we find ourselves accused of being unkind and are marginalised.

Is it appropriate to call people unkind and effectively cancel them, if they dare to critique what they see as injustice in the institution?  Is that a healthy state of affairs?

The fact is that churches can still advertise specifically for a male vicar and they can still insist on a flying bishop who is a man, if their own bishop is a woman.  If we had a female Archbishop of Canterbury, she would have to accept that some of her colleagues – including some of her bishops - would not recognise her as a priest capable of consecrating the sacrament, let alone a bishop. 

This discrimination facilitates a culture of sexism, which is not only unjust but is fundamentally unsafe. Part of the problem, as identified in section 9 of the Makin report, with what was going on at the John Smyth camps was a patriarchal understanding that women were “lady helpers” – only there to do the cooking, while men were exclusively the leaders. As the report says, the abuse may not have gone unchecked if there had been a parity of male and female leadership in the Church and in those evangelical circles at that time. This so-called theology of men as the leaders, women as the helpers, is still condoned in some of our biggest churches, such as All Souls Langham Place, St Helen’s Bishopsgate, St Ebbe’s in Oxford and St Andrew the Great in Cambridge.

These cultures of coercion and gaslighting really need to be addressed by the Church, not just the technical arrangements of how we do safeguarding whether in-house or independently.

If people are afraid to speak up in all kinds of situations where things do not seem right - without fear of being penalised, we will not have a safe Church.