Restoring Trust -the "Unusual Challenges" facing the Church of England

Next week the General Synod of the Church of England will meet in York for the final Synod of this quinquennium. The majority of those currently serving on General Synod will face re-election in the Autumn, leaving only the diocesan bishops and other ex-officio members to be certain to return in November. Whatever the results of those elections there are some big issues that will need to be addressed if the Church of England is to thrive.

Rather than looking at the detail of the agenda facing this 'last' synod, this blog takes a deep-dive into a document, which lays bare the underlying challenges for the Church of England, now and in the future, and provides the context for all the other debates. It could easily be missed - as Professor Veronica Hope Hailey's paper "Trust and Trustworthiness in the Church of England: Listening and responding to usual and unusual challenges" is hidden away in an Annex to GS2457.

Professor Hope Hailey interviewed sixty seven people connected with the Church of England, amongst them bishops, clergy, laity and those who work for the National Church Institutions. She begins her report by acknowledging the fact that many of the challenges facing the Church of England are very similar to other large, mature institutions; the inevitable major breaches of trust and the accompanying shame and shock; the need for a "radical overhaul" of legacy structures, systems and culture; and the tendency for senior leadership to deny the seriousness of the crises they face. None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the ups and downs of the Church of England over the past ten years.

It is as she moves onto the more "unusual challenges" that things become more interesting and the extent of the task facing the Church of England, in this quinquennium and the next, is spelt out.

1) "The idiosyncratic structures, decision-making systems and leadership roles."

It is not news that the Church of England is both a national institution and a decentralised structure of 42 dioceses and thousands of parishes, each of which acts as an independent charity. Professor Hope Hailey, however, articulates well the problems that arise from this.

First, there is the "sense of power" gained by the "inner circle" who understand "the arcane machinations" of the Church and the "unacceptably slow learning curve" required for anyone joining General Synod. This undermines the effective working of the very processes that could bring about needed change.

Second, there is the "love of autonomy" and "culture of individualism" seen at every level from parish priest to diocesan bishop, which needs to be "vigorously tackled." It breeds unaccountability and a constant clash of cultures between the 'centre', the diocese and the individual parishes, with very little trust being shown.

Third, there is the problem of a "faux democracy". Professor Hope Hailey describes a pattern of decisions being made, "outside the normal operating procedures" and group consultations which are nothing more than, "elaborate forms of window dressing to satiate demand for people to have a voice."

2)  "The lack of accountability, both formally and informally"

This section is very focused on the failure to manage recent safeguarding scandals and is pretty damning. Hope Hailey writes:

"Its own systems and structures work against the Church’s ability to meter justice. It has also failed to explain these complicated structures adequately to others, inside and outside the institution."

And concludes:

"Overall, the failure to adequately hold to account the perpetrators and colluders in any forms of abuse has severely damaged the public trustworthiness of the church as an institution. The impression it gave is of an institution which lacked the ability to act decisively and swiftly against perpetrators, the motivation to be benevolent towards the vulnerable, and the integrity to make the changes necessary to restore faith in its prestigious position as the national established church."

This may only be an 'impression' but without clear accountability structures it will be hard for the Church of England to rebuild trust internally or with wider society.

3) "Those who present as the institution’s “public” leadership are apparently not the ultimate authority."

Hope Hailey points out the problems caused by the ambiguous nature of a bishop or archbishop's authority. She describes the contrast between the authority suggested by their "ceremonial appearances" and the reality of their ability to act, as a "twilight zone". Noting that the "role ambiguity...allows some bishops to turn their dioceses into fiefdoms" and others, "to fail to deploy the power they do have."

4) "The management of critical issues."

All the above make it nigh on impossible to ensure that, "a decision taken at senior level can safely, and effectively, be cascaded and communicated across wider levels of the organization." There are not the structures nor the systems in place to allow this. In addition, is the problem that, "Synod, as the democratic assembly that determines the direction of the Church, is entitled to and does make several simultaneous demands upon the national Church," which Hope Hailey suggests prevents joined up thinking or ability to prioritise.

Hope Hailey does not pull any punches at this point, describing the "powerful and very vocal pressure groups" who see a "cowed and defensive" church as "a good opportunity to press ahead with their own potentially divisive campaigns".

5) "There is little shared sense of purpose beyond being Christian within this loose Anglican federation."

Underlying all these problems is the lack of an agreed reason for the existence of the Church of England in the 21st Century. Put bluntly,"If nobody needs or wants its goods or services then a business or charity or public sector organisation would simply cease to exist."

Professor Hope Hailey is focused on restoring trust in the eyes of wider society, so points out that the Welfare State has taken over the "provision of social care, education and health that historically had been daily local reminders of the benevolence of the institution towards society."

She leaves it to an unnamed bishop to describe the, perhaps more important internal crisis facing the Church of England, which goes to he heart of what "being Christian" means:

"In fact, we might have some really very fundamentally different views about what the thing is that you know. Maybe it's the local community that's there to serve the local village and that's really what we're there to be in, in continuity with what the Church of England has been doing for 400 years. Or it might be we're a mission organisation there to save souls now. I mean that will take it in a completely different direction. And we won't agree on that. So, I wonder if that's something at the heart of this thing that we don't actually know what the Church of England is."

Hope Hailey notes that, "In the absence of a national narrative that is acceptable across parishes and dioceses, people have found a substitute form of certainty in the creation of what internally are frequently called “tribes"".

6) "A blame culture"

These tribes then blame one another for the problems facing the church or as Hope Hailey puts it, "In the interviews it was always someone else’s fault."

She explains, "It’s also symptomatic of a “learned helplessness” – if one personally can’t influence the change necessary from one’s position in the hierarchy (whether vicar, diocesan secretary, bishop or lay chair or anyone), then blaming someone else and disassociating from the bigger institution can become a form of protection."

7) The level of abuse on social media and from within the Church itself.

No examples are given by Hope Hailey of what is meant by abuse in this context but she speaks of those at the centre being stopped from speaking out, "for fear of a torrent of anonymous and named abuse from those on the more extreme sides of the debate."

Her greatest concern is that society will not be able to trust an "organisation where no one can stop their own representatives from behaving in an undisciplined and unchristian way in their own public fora."

8) The level of naivete and innocence

While it may be that those who take on positions of leadership in the Church of England are those who want to see the good in others, Professor Hope Hailey suggests another reason for the unusal levels of naivete. She quotes, management thinker, Margaret Heffernan, who says: “When we are too tired to do the heavier lifting of examining new or contradictory information, so we fall back on our biases, the opinions and the people we already trust.”

In the Church of England this goes beyond individual relationships to the culture itself, as one bishop, speaking about recent abuse cases, told Hope Hailey, “We chose not to notice and we chose a culture that let people be sole workers and therefore quite free to perpetrate without being noticed.... But we also have a culture failure in terms of the cover up of that abuse when it has finally come to light. And even the cover up of the cover up, which is a whole other level beyond that, which is absolutely a system failure"

9) The weaponisation of trust and distrust

With many becoming disillusioned by the central bodies of the Church of England, and an "escalation of internal feuding", tribalism is in the ascendency. Hope Hailey writes of "high trust in some leaders and stoking high distrust in others" being generated by "amplifying the differences between the two camps". Thus, "trust and distrust was often determined in the Church along ideological lines rather than by discerning whether a person is trustworthy based on their ability, benevolence, integrity and predictability."

This 'us' and 'them' mentality has, of course, been identified as one of the causes of low levels of reporting of abuse in church settings.

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The unusual aspects of the culture of the Church of England are not all negative. Professor Hailey Hope also encountered unusual levels of commitment, pastoral care and spoken desire for change

10) More positively - high levels of commitment

Professor Hope Hailey writes, "I have engaged in the interviewing of thousands of people through my career, around the world, but the clerics (in particular) have a sense of commitment and vocation that most public, private or third sector organisations would value beyond measure. Whatever their personal beliefs, however great their sadness, anger, dismay, frustration and anxiety, none wanted to abandon the Church."

11) More positively - the willingness of many, volunteer and clerical, to deliver magnificent Christian acts of pastoral care at a local level despite everything, including in chaplaincy settings

Hope Hailey praises those who "return to focusing on the broken and vulnerable in society," with examples of local and ecumenical partnerships that help rebuild trust in their vicinity. Archdeacons and chaplains are singled out as those who serve others, whatever their doctrinal differences. She acknowledges that those serving in the military are operating outside the traditional structures of the Church of England and are therefore, "part of a bigger entity which they value. They felt a duty to the institution they join, to the legacy they inherit and expected to show respect."

12) More positively - people across many levels in the national church are calling for reform, particularly around the issue of accountability.

Here the report returns to where it began - trust can not be developed without accountability. She quotes several individuals, each of whom suggest different ways to improve accountability in the Church and in the end Hope Hailey recommends, "Whether accountability is tackled through the formation of professional associations or the introduction of contracts of employment, it is the key issue for the Church to tackle and should not be a protracted debate."

And finally:

The report concludes on something of a cliff-hanger:

"Often inertia is a major barrier to change but no one I interviewed thinks the status quo is sustainable. Whether they can find internal agreement on a way forward sufficient to restore public trust I do not know."

This may be honest, but it is far from reassuring. At the moment it seems that even the report itself is causing controversy. The Rt Revd Debbie Sellin, Chair of the Trust and Trustworthiness Task Group, suggests that it calls for “broad, deep, and sustained cultural change”, while the Revd Marcus Walker, a member of General Synod is not alone in saying the report, "would do more to shatter trust within the church than almost anything else in the last five years".

It would be ironic, but in line with the report's findings, if the only place "internal agreement" can be found is that the report should be ignored.

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