I still think I am onto something when I say that the best response to safeguarding concerns arises at a communal level. I don't mean that individual responsibility and awareness are not vital; they are. But what is it about the way the lives of congregations work that make churches such frequent contexts for abuse? And how can we look after each other better without denaturing congregational life?
That's actually a very deep question. The following is speculation only:
Firstly, we need to accept that abuse is common. Therefore abuse being common in churches does not necessarily signify anything at all. So that begs the question, is abuse more prevalent in the church than elsewhere? How one would measure that is very complex.
Thus, secondly we need to consider particular factors about churches. In general, churches are places where people go for solace. Churches are a place where emotional and spiritual power dynamics exist. There two things, especially in combination, make for exactly the kind of situation that manipulative abusers can exploit. Which brings me back to the point that having a philosophy of Best Practice for Safeguarding along with training for as many as possible is vital.
Don't misunderstand me, I work in a culture where so many aspects of training are at huge risk of descending into a tick-box exercise.* I understand the problem here but the paradox of abuse seeming to be rare when in fact it is very common means that there is a huge education gap. Even most victims of abuse may think it rare and often don't know about safeguarding.
Speculation only as I have not seen any direct research in this area. I am confident, however, that it is informed speculation.
I totally agree that we need a communal response. Of course we do. However, that is no way diminishes the need for a very directed program of education and training.
AFZ
*Off the top of my head, this is an (incomplete) list of the mandatory online training I have to do annually to do my job:
Conflict Resolution
Safe prescribing
Manual handling
Fire safety
Safeguarding (refresher)
Equality and Diversity
Bullying
Confidentiality
Online safety
You can see how it very quickly becomes a tick-box exercise for the hospital when they have literally thousands of staff who have to do this every year.
Thus, secondly we need to consider particular factors about churches. In general, churches are places where people go for solace. Churches are a place where emotional and spiritual power dynamics exist. There two things, especially in combination, make for exactly the kind of situation that manipulative abusers can exploit.
I agree with this, and would add a third factor. Because of its very nature, church is a place where we instinctively feel like we should be able to trust people, especially people in leadership positions, and where we feel like we should be trusted. It’s both an unrealistic and an understandable expectation.
Thus, secondly we need to consider particular factors about churches. In general, churches are places where people go for solace. Churches are a place where emotional and spiritual power dynamics exist. There two things, especially in combination, make for exactly the kind of situation that manipulative abusers can exploit.
I agree with this, and would add a third factor. Because of its very nature, church is a place where we instinctively feel like we should be able to trust people, especially people in leadership positions, and where we feel like we should be trusted. It’s both an unrealistic and an understandable expectation.
So do I, but such courses in no way prevent abuse occurring. Yes, they attempt to reduce the possibility and to increase awareness, but if a person is intent on abusing they will do so, no matter how many courses the church holds.
Right, but if you raise the likelihood (and, just as importantly, the perception) of detecting an offender this is likely to act as a deterrent. And increased vigilance and awareness reduces the opportunities for offending, because you plan to minimise scenarios where adults are in unobserved 1 on 1 situations with vulnerable people. Nobody claims that we can prevent or detect every instance of abuse. It's about harm reduction - like seatbelts and airbags or lane-keeping features in a car.
My emphasis. That and, having done the training, it may make you more aware of when something is "off" and feel more confident about raising it.
The elephant galloping around the room with the whole "We always managed without these things in the past" argument is that we can see how well that's worked out.
Until it doesn't ...
This is the problem with a lot of H&S rules. Workplace safety rules, as they say, are written in blood. They're all there in an attempt to prevent deaths and serious injuries that have actually happened by doing things "the old way". But most of the risks of death and injury that we're attempting to prevent are relatively low: they're high enough that on a national scale, you notice a problem, but low enough that individuals can do the "dangerous" activities every day of their lives and not have an accident.
So it's easy to understand how people think that there isn't a problem, and that H&S is overblown - it's because people suck at evaluating modest-scale risks.
I still think I am onto something when I say that the best response to safeguarding concerns arises at a communal level. I don't mean that individual responsibility and awareness are not vital; they are. But what is it about the way the lives of congregations work that make churches such frequent contexts for abuse? And how can we look after each other better without denaturing congregational life?
I totally agree that we need a communal response. Of course we do. However, that is no way diminishes the need for a very directed program of education and training.
Why wouldn't programs of education and training be an integral part of a communal response? It also seems unlikely to me that communal responses to safeguarding would develop or be encouraged in the absence of a sense of communal responsibility for safeguarding.
Thus, secondly we need to consider particular factors about churches. In general, churches are places where people go for solace. Churches are a place where emotional and spiritual power dynamics exist. There two things, especially in combination, make for exactly the kind of situation that manipulative abusers can exploit.
I agree with this, and would add a third factor. Because of its very nature, church is a place where we instinctively feel like we should be able to trust people, especially people in leadership positions, and where we feel like we should be trusted. It’s both an unrealistic and an understandable expectation.
My experience of church was that trusting one another is rather more than something that people feel - it's a quality that congregations are encouraged, or even instructed, to cultivate (along with forgiveness). It seems that, while keeping one another safe is a quality that we would naturally expect to find in church communities, keeping one another safe from each other is not.
Another factor that I would consider is accountability, particularly in relation to church leaders. As well as the importance of demonstrating and modelling accountability, this is in the rather more straightforward sense of being actually accountable to the people they lead.
You're still prescribing death by bureaucracy, if only as a side-effect. The operation was a total success - unfortunately, however, the patient died.
Church leaders will only be properly accountable following major cultural change. This will not be achieved by individual online training.
I'm sorry to labour the point, but I really do see many things dying of bureaucracy if this possibility isn't taken seriously. One way to stop abuse, I suppose, though it would lead to more people being neglected. The abuse probably happened, in a significant number of cases, when churches had more reach than they do now.
I am not minimising the pain and suffering caused by abuse. Or at least I hope I'm not. But I don't like the odds of churches, on a local, congregational level, surviving the current model of safeguarding.
You're still prescribing death by bureaucracy, if only as a side-effect. The operation was a total success - unfortunately, however, the patient died.
Church leaders will only be properly accountable following major cultural change. This will not be achieved by individual online training.
I'm sorry to labour the point, but I really do see many things dying of bureaucracy if this possibility isn't taken seriously. One way to stop abuse, I suppose, though it would lead to more people being neglected. The abuse probably happened, in a significant number of cases, when churches had more reach than they do now.
I am not minimising the pain and suffering caused by abuse. Or at least I hope I'm not. But I don't like the odds of churches, on a local, congregational level, surviving the current model of safeguarding.
Being rather cynical, I know, but (to mis-quote @ThunderBunk):
... I don't like the odds of churches, on a local, congregational level, surviving...
Safeguarding is not, of course, the only issue here.
You're absolutely right there. It's a model for which there is a need, but no practicable model for realisation. Making hypercorporate processes universal is not such a model, in any sphere.
Originally posted by Thunderbunk: But I don't like the odds of churches, on a local, congregational level, surviving the current model of safeguarding.
As I mentioned much earlier in the thread, in 1989 my husband and I were members of a church whose minister was jailed.
Immediately prior to his arrest, our church was one of the most "successful" in the Church of Scotland. Congregations were large, giving was generous. In 1988, there was a newspaper article in which our church's "success" was lauded. Part of the "success" was based on the fact that the church was, by Scottish standards, huge. It had been built in the C19th as a combined church / soup kitchen and so had two halls, a large kitchen, a flat housing a live-in caretaker etc etc, and so, in addition to the core Sunday worship there was weekly Girl Guides / Boys Brigade / music groups / exercise classes; the place buzzed all week long, and hall hire provided a steady income.
This church was within walking distance of our home, but many people were travelling to attend it; generally people who had started attending when they lived in the city centre in their 20s, and kept attending after they had moved further out into the commuter belt.
Our minister was very popular. And then came the police raid, and his arrest. He was immediately suspended of course, but was adamant that he was innocent and would be back. A large section of the congregation were looking forward to his return. The day before his trial, he changed his plea from "not guilty" to "guilty."
Out church went into a slow death spiral. A few of the "travelling in" families left, whether to start attending their parish church, or no church, I don't know. And then more left, and more. Internal splits and recriminations started. More people left. Giving was falling away. Then we left, so we didn't experience the decline after that. Eventually the congregation had dwindled to a point whereby a neighbouring church was closed, the two congregations merged into "our" church building, and the "new" church was renamed and rebranded for a fresh start. But the decline continued, and ultimately the congregation folded and the church building was sold off.
My experience is that an abuser within the church destroyed a thriving congregation, and also cast a shadow over a much wider area. The case was reported in the press. The wider church was tainted by association. Many parents must have questioned their children's safety within their own churches.
I don't know what the figures were like for church attendance in the city "before" and "after" but I'm pretty sure that there was a drop at that point, a drop from which the city-wide Church of Scotland did not recover.
You're still prescribing death by bureaucracy, if only as a side-effect. The operation was a total success - unfortunately, however, the patient died.
Church leaders will only be properly accountable following major cultural change. This will not be achieved by individual online training.
The accountability of leaders has a lot more to do with mindset (as bishops, and archbishops, like Justin Welby demonstrate).
I'm sorry to labour the point, but I really do see many things dying of bureaucracy if this possibility isn't taken seriously. One way to stop abuse, I suppose, though it would lead to more people being neglected. The abuse probably happened, in a significant number of cases, when churches had more reach than they do now.
I am not minimising the pain and suffering caused by abuse. Or at least I hope I'm not. But I don't like the odds of churches, on a local, congregational level, surviving the current model of safeguarding.
Blaming bureaucracy looks to me like a straw man - the majority of churches, especially denominational churches, have always had bureaucracy. (In addition to its own, every parish in the CofE was tasked with keeping formal parish registers almost 500 years ago.)
As far as survival goes, why should church congregations that do not accept the need for safeguarding survive? Does the benefit of their survival outweigh the harm of avoidable abuse? I think these are unreasonable questions - but in the absence of an alternative model of safeguarding available for churches to adopt, they appear to be related to the question you are asking.
I still think I am onto something when I say that the best response to safeguarding concerns arises at a communal level. I don't mean that individual responsibility and awareness are not vital; they are. But what is it about the way the lives of congregations work that make churches such frequent contexts for abuse? And how can we look after each other better without denaturing congregational life?
The answer to that question starts with church congregations asking themselves difficult, painful, questions about their beliefs and attitudes. My experience is that the majority of congregants are not prepared to ask themselves these questions, let alone answer them.
Yes I agree with what people are saying. Maybe this is another case where death is needed before resurrection to new life can happen. In a different form, potentially - almost necessarily,.it seems to me. It just sucks being required to oversee the death throes.
This thread is all somewhat baffling to me because I had a background check and have to understand the general safety rules to be a Sunday School helper. I found it all very reasonable, mostly painless, and not even very hard. I would even say it was mildly helpful in that it was a reminder that if I'm a few minutes late P may be left alone with children (if J isn't here) and even though I would trust P with my life (and my child) I wouldn't want P to have that risk to herself. So I'm probably a little more timely because of that training.
I think part of the issue in Scotland (and I assume England is the same) is that background checks and training can mount up. E.g. if someone is a schoolteacher and fully checked and trained in that context, they still have to be separately background checked and trained to help with the Sunday School.
I had my first background check to help with my kid's toddler group back in the mid 1990s; I don't know how many background checks I have had over the intervening thirty years - maybe about twenty?
If they're really requiring the altar guild to be background checked and take online safeguarding courses, yeah, I get the complaint -- that isn't required in any of the churches I'm familiar with.
I think part of the issue in Scotland (and I assume England is the same) is that background checks and training can mount up. E.g. if someone is a schoolteacher and fully checked and trained in that context, they still have to be separately background checked and trained to help with the Sunday School.
And I can understand someone complaining about this. The church I worked for accepts the checking and training that people get in appropriate professions. I think they figure the school district has already done the work, so no need to duplicate it.
In Britain it's not a question of "the church ... accepts", we are legally required to be rechecked for each organisation we work or volunteer for, if relevant.
If they're really requiring the altar guild to be background checked and take online safeguarding courses, yeah, I get the complaint -- that isn't required in any of the churches I'm familiar with.
I think part of the issue in Scotland (and I assume England is the same) is that background checks and training can mount up. E.g. if someone is a schoolteacher and fully checked and trained in that context, they still have to be separately background checked and trained to help with the Sunday School.
And I can understand someone complaining about this. The church I worked for accepts the checking and training that people get in appropriate professions. I think they figure the school district has already done the work, so no need to duplicate it.
IIRC, they changed the rules in the UK (?) so if you had been checked in one local authority, that check was valid in the area it covered to solve that problem. Before that it meant you had be checked by each organisation even if they were in same area.
This thread is all somewhat baffling to me because I had a background check and have to understand the general safety rules to be a Sunday School helper. I found it all very reasonable, mostly painless, and not even very hard. I would even say it was mildly helpful in that it was a reminder that if I'm a few minutes late P may be left alone with children (if J isn't here) and even though I would trust P with my life (and my child) I wouldn't want P to have that risk to herself. So I'm probably a little more timely because of that training.
We're not allowed to do Sunday School or the equivalent - on our own. If I'm leading and there's no helper, then we're not going out. (There is an area at the back of the church where we'd go instead).
@Tubbs We aren't either. But the training reminded me that the Sunday School room would count as alone. (I had not thought of it that way previously because it's open to a public hallway etcetera.) I wanted to express that the trainings can be helpful to remind one to apply common sense.
That said I do see that if one had to get rechecked by every organization it would be truly exasperating. I know that my check was faster because I have had the trainings and checks previously.
@Tubbs We aren't either. But the training reminded me that the Sunday School room would count as alone. (I had not thought of it that way previously because it's open to a public hallway etcetera.) I wanted to express that the trainings can be helpful to remind one to apply common sense.
That said I do see that if one had to get rechecked by every organization it would be truly exasperating. I know that my check was faster because I have had the trainings and checks previously.
Rechecked and retrained by every organisation.
(Again, I jump through all the hoops and am in-date), but my church involvement is the only one I do. I’m aware of one person who keeps six of these plates spinning, and others who are definitely exasperated at 3 or 4.
Like I said upthread, if you’re active in your community across multiple organisations safeguarding training could take over your life.
And I can understand someone complaining about this. The church I worked for accepts the checking and training that people get in appropriate professions. I think they figure the school district has already done the work, so no need to duplicate it.
Scouting America has a background check and a set of trainings for youth protection. Church has a background check and an overlapping-but-slightly-different set of trainings for youth protection. Girl Scouts has a third set.
It's not really the background checks that take the time - they add a delay between someone saying they want to volunteer and that person being able to volunteer, but they don't really take time and effort from the volunteer. Having to take 3 or 4 different sets of almost-but-not-quite identical training on an annual basis can certainly feel like an unnecessary burden. I don't know that there's a good solution to that, though: each organization wants to tailor the application of what are the same fundamental principles to its own particular detailed cases.
It would be lovely (but impossible) if we had a central training authority, with basic modules for standard training, and organizations that wanted to add to it could do so without completely reinventing the whole wheel, if you see what I mean. It will never happen, of course.
If they're really requiring the altar guild to be background checked and take online safeguarding courses, yeah, I get the complaint -- that isn't required in any of the churches I'm familiar with.
I think part of the issue in Scotland (and I assume England is the same) is that background checks and training can mount up. E.g. if someone is a schoolteacher and fully checked and trained in that context, they still have to be separately background checked and trained to help with the Sunday School.
And I can understand someone complaining about this. The church I worked for accepts the checking and training that people get in appropriate professions. I think they figure the school district has already done the work, so no need to duplicate it.
IIRC, they changed the rules in the UK (?) so if you had been checked in one local authority, that check was valid in the area it covered to solve that problem. Before that it meant you had be checked by each organisation even if they were in same area.
The logic is/was is that when you get a crb check - if the police are actively investigating you, they may ask the employing agency to stall you but not include that information on the bit of paper they issue to you (which is all you’d be able to show to another agency) in order to avoid prejudicing an ongoing enquiry,
The key part is therefore who holds the info given by the police - at one point I think the Methodists acted as the organisation holding the information for a number of churches.
My 18 year old daughter has started volunteering at our church of St Wherever's play group and did the CofE Basic Awareness. She was a bit bored by the theology intro, but I thought the rest was quite good - various common scenarios and how to handle them (basically report any concerns to the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer and let them decide whether it is safeguarding, whether it needs investigating etc).
I was glad she had some guidance about what to do if she noticed something worrying, just as I sent her on a Basic First Aid course when she started babysitting for some neighbours a couple of years ago. Hopefully she won't need either of them, but plan for the worst and hope for the best.
It took about half an hour, and is valid for three years, which doesn't seem like excessive bureaucracy to me. Of course, it helps that she is (too!) comfortable with on-line material, but even my mother (mid-80s) would have been able to manage the IT aspects without any difficulty, so I am not convinced that there are legions of elderly volunteers who can't handle the IT.
It's a shocking tale and I'm used to seeing very shocking tales where people affected by stalking were let down very badly -but what genuinely astounded me was this
In fact, it was the beginning of a devastating campaign of stalking and harassment. And when Jay complained, the highest authority in the Church in Leicester - a top contender to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury - said he didn't believe him. Instead, he accused Jay of witchcraft
He was called into a meeting with the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow - who's seen as a favourite to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England.
...
"I go in and the bishop sits down with this thick folder on his knee. And he begins to question me about my complaint. He actually states that 'It's he said, she said'."
The bishop said he didn't believe that Venessa had been responsible for the harassment. And he wouldn't uphold Jay's complaint against her.
Then he made an extraordinary accusation about Jay.
"Somebody had given a statement that I had been seen in the church, in the darkness, with a candle – and they thought I was conducting a seance. For clarity, I was praying with a candle in the dark, because that's a thing that Christians do," says Jay.
It got worse.
Bishop Snow accused him of practising witchcraft - both because of the "seance" and the fact Jay happened to have a close friend who was a tarot card reader
It's hard for me to comment on this without getting Hellish - I research on the historical witch- hunt and - just wow!
This guy is a Bishop and was apparently in the running for Canterbury and when someone went to him because they were being stalked - a very serious and damaging situation- he made a witchcraft
accusation?
How on earth was someone who believes in witchcraft - to the point of making these bizarre accusations against someone - allowed into a position of power in an established church and to deal with sensitive matters like safeguarding?
Is this sort of belief common in C of E clergy? Maybe there's more of it than I realise.
Safeguarding policies are a great thing but if a church has senior people running around accusing people of witchcraft I don't see how they can be safe for anyone?
Hopefully this Bishop will be sacked?
Personally I wouldn't attend a church or ever entrust a child or young person to a church where this sort of belief was prevalent among clergy. It would be a total red flag to me that I'm dealing with someone whose judgement I cant trust. (I'd also expect it come with a big dose of other harmful reactionary beliefs - and as a woman I definitely would expect sexism and myths about abuse to be among them)
Am I out of touch? Have I just been lucky that I haven't encountered it? Or is it - hopefully - rare?
I know it must exist in a lot of churches but I'm just shocked to see someone in such a responsible position in the Church of England come out with this. Can better informed people contextualise it more for me?
The whole thing is awful though and Jay Hulme and others were very very badly let down.
Yes, but theologically speaking the CofE has posts that are based on the idea people can be possessed by demons - a belief in witchcraft is not such a reach.
I can see the potential argument for harm reduction to stop those who see demon possession around every corner and to stop people going to worse churches with incredibly dodgy practices ( of which there are a lot) - but here we really do seem to have someone who certainly looks to me like he might 'see witchcraft round every corner' in a senior leadership position causing harm with it in a serious safeguarding matter.
I'd be here all day if I even started to list the harms that come from witchcraft belief which issues into directly accusing other people.
It should be immediately disqualifying for anyone dealing with abuse or harassment cases. People who believe this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed anywhere near abuse cases.
If the C of E is going to have clergy who believe this kind of thing then those clergy shouldn't ever be in charge of safeguarding. It needs an independent body for people to go to where they can be sure at a bare minimum that if they disclose abuse they don't get met with a witchcraft accusation.
What kind of churchmanship does +Snow hold? Certainly in my time amongst con-evo Anglicans - I was about to make a reference to Reform (not that one....or the other one....) but figured it would be way too confusing nowadays - belief in witchcraft wasn't uncommon at all, but in a more theoretical way. They would be more likely to suspect someone with candles in a dark church of flirting with [insert anti-Catholic slur here] than witchcraft, but I also lived in Sussex which is a real hotbed of Catholic/Protestant sectarianism (for English people at least) and general weirdness within churches.
I am not personally very acquainted with the charismatic evo end of the CoE....I've heard some concerning stuff but given the circles I'm in it tended to be about sexuality and gender (and even that was very much NOT involving senior clergy), never heard anything about witchcraft coming up. That's something I would really associate with non-Anglican charismatic churches.
I don't know Jay personally but we unsurprisingly have a lot of mutual friends, and he comes across as a very gentle soul - I can imagine how very distressing this would have been for him.
Maybe if you light a candle to pray in a darkened church and they call it [insert anti-Catholic slur here] they're conservative and if they're charismatic, they think it's witchcraft?
Not being entirely serious there, but oddly a facet of the Scottish witch hunt is healers using Latin/ metrical Catholic prayers and charms and Presbyteries trying to work out whether they think it's 'superstition' (meaning rejected Catholic worship practices) or witchcraft or both. Sounds like things haven't moved on as much as I'd have hoped.
Yes Jay comes across as a lovely lovely person who's been through the mill and been horribly affected by this - both police and Bishop letting him down, though the police eventually got their act together.
I'm not commenting on this case at all in what follows--but believing in witchcraft should not be an automatic disqualifier for service or leadership across the board. Let me explain.
First, it's possible to believe that some people PRACTICE witchcraft (because they do, in some contexts!) without believing that what they do has real effects. I'm thinking here of certain non-Western cultures. I haven't run across it in Vietnamese culture per se, but I have run across certain closely allied beliefs and behaviors (though none of it would ever take place in a church!). And I could imagine situations in which it would be legitimate to inquire whether someone is involved in that stuff.
Second, I wouldn't altogether rule out the possibility of said practices being harmful. We had two families come to us of their own accord asking for exorcism, as they believed evil spirits were harassing them. When we asked to hear more about the situation, both families disclosed that they were heavily into fortune telling etc. as a way of making money in the community. They were not surprised to hear that we thought there was likely to be a direct relationship between what they were doing and the harassment they reported. What they wanted from us (and from Jesus) was to drive away the evil spirits but leave them free to go on with the fortune telling (and in case you're wondering, these were fairly well-off people, both in finances and in community standing). We told them that to the best of our knowledge, it was not possible to do what they were asking. They would have to choose. And they did. In the end both families chose to continue fortune telling and try other methods to get rid of the harassment. At least one decided to move house in the hopes of not being followed.
I don't blame anybody who thinks that I'm crazy for believing that there are spiritual realities beyond simply "God up there" and "me down here," and that some of those realities might be dangerous to mess around with. Disbelief in such things is par for the course in most modern Western cultures. And certainly I don't think I have the right to make decisions for other people, in this area included. They are adults and responsible for their own choices.
But again, leaving this particular case completely out of my post--I wouldn't condemn any leader out of hand simply for believing that such things can exist. I would look rather at what they chose to do based on that belief and/or experience--whether they were acting appropriately by means of their fellow human beings.
There was a Church of Scotland minister in Aberdeen in the 1990s who carried out exorcisms. I'm a bit vague about the details but I was under the impression that there were three in Scotland- one for the east coast, one for the west coast, and this one who covered everywhere north of Perth. I heard him talking about it, and I was under the impression that there had to be some point of contact for people who were worried, and he was it. There was another minister in Aberdeen at the same time who carried out animal blessings, and I thought they were on a par, in terms of having a niche role in addition to their normal parish minister duties.
I would be surprised if he believed in witchcraft.
Maybe if you light a candle to pray in a darkened church and they call it [insert anti-Catholic slur here] they're conservative and if they're charismatic, they think it's witchcraft?
Not being entirely serious there, but oddly a facet of the Scottish witch hunt is healers using Latin/ metrical Catholic prayers and charms and Presbyteries trying to work out whether they think it's 'superstition' (meaning rejected Catholic worship practices) or witchcraft or both. Sounds like things haven't moved on as much as I'd have hoped.
Yes Jay comes across as a lovely lovely person who's been through the mill and been horribly affected by this - both police and Bishop letting him down, though the police eventually got their act together.
I think it's more that what's referred to as con-evo aka the more Reformed end of the CoE tends to balk at supernatural stuff generally. They may believe that witchcraft exists as a thing, but would (ime) be more inclined to see it as equivalent to praying to the Tooth Fairy rather than a route to demonic possession. Ie, it's bad primarily because it's fruitlessly chasing something other than (their concept of) Christianity. Still sinful, but not because they think it does anything.
+Martyn is an evangelical from the homophobic side. Whether he's deemed conservative or charismatic I couldn't say.
The day after my spouse died peacefully at the rectory here a Charismatic bishop 'from the homophobic' side arrived uninvited to pray away the 'malign spirits.'
+Martyn is an evangelical from the homophobic side. Whether he's deemed conservative or charismatic I couldn't say.
The day after my spouse died peacefully at the rectory here a Charismatic bishop 'from the homophobic' side arrived uninvited to pray away the 'malign spirits.'
It occurs to me that by him turning and walking out the door the prayer would have been answered.
I'm sorry you had to deal with that on top of your grief.
We've got hundreds of years of evidence as to what witchcraft belief and accusations lead to - torture, murder, lynchings, beatings, slander, psychological abuse and harm, scapegoating and demonisation.
People can believe in demonic possession without making witchcraft accusations. They are not the same thing - though they can overlap, with possessed people making dangerous and even fatal witchcraft accusations. I don't recommend believing in it - from studying it historically it tends to involve people having severe dissociative episodes. It does respond to ritual and religious remedies which can act as a kind of counselling and therapy. So you can argue for exorcists/ fasting and prayer type methods as harm reduction but it remains a highly dangerous belief system ripe with potential for abuse - certainly in its Christian form.
If someone believes seriously in this stuff then I personally do not want that belief anywhere near processes handling sexual abuse or harassment such as stalking. Maybe someone could personally swear they believe in it but wouldn't let it influence them into making witchcraft accusations to other human beings but the overall evidence that ties this to patterns of religious abuse is too strong for me.
If someone can't approach these matters without making or believing witchcraft accusations then they shouldn't be anywhere near them.
About 50,000 innocent people were murdered by church and state across Europe, usually after torture, thanks to people believing this stuff and taking the Bible literally on it. Those people were innocent Christians who were slandered by other Christians who thought normal rules of humane treatment and evidence didn't apply if you thought someone was a witch.
And there's the danger - it's all too easily used by the powerful to demonise vulnerable people whose word isn't taken when they deny it, and then compassion and sense go out the window.
And another archbishop bites the dust, following the publication of summaries of a safeguarding review. From the BBC:
27 June 2025
The Archbishop of Wales has announced his retirement from the role with immediate effect.
In a statement issued on Friday evening, Andrew John confirmed he would also be retiring as Bishop of Bangor on 31 August.
His sudden retirement follows a turbulent period for his Bangor diocese, after the publication of the summaries of two reports into failures last month.
The summaries mentioned "a culture in which sexual boundaries seemed blurred" and excessive alcohol consumption as well as governance and safeguarding weaknesses at Bangor Cathedral.
There is no suggestion the archbishop has behaved inappropriately.
I am so sorry, Amos, that is an awful thing to happen to you.
As someone with bipolar disorder, I am naturally wary of discussions of demonic possession as many people don’t understand psychosis.
Thanks for the links on Ronald Hutton’s lecture. I recently read a discussion by an early modern mad doctor (contemporary title) suggesting that women accused of witchcraft were really experiencing the menopause impacting on their mental health. I might write my early modern history dissertation on this perspective, if I can find enough material.
They would be more likely to suspect someone with candles in a dark church of flirting with [insert anti-Catholic slur here] than witchcraft, but I also lived in Sussex which is a real hotbed of Catholic/Protestant sectarianism (for English people at least) and general weirdness within churches.
To be fair, there are some of those people who wouldn't see a strong distinction between Catholicism and witchcraft.
Comments
That's actually a very deep question. The following is speculation only:
Firstly, we need to accept that abuse is common. Therefore abuse being common in churches does not necessarily signify anything at all. So that begs the question, is abuse more prevalent in the church than elsewhere? How one would measure that is very complex.
Thus, secondly we need to consider particular factors about churches. In general, churches are places where people go for solace. Churches are a place where emotional and spiritual power dynamics exist. There two things, especially in combination, make for exactly the kind of situation that manipulative abusers can exploit. Which brings me back to the point that having a philosophy of Best Practice for Safeguarding along with training for as many as possible is vital.
Don't misunderstand me, I work in a culture where so many aspects of training are at huge risk of descending into a tick-box exercise.* I understand the problem here but the paradox of abuse seeming to be rare when in fact it is very common means that there is a huge education gap. Even most victims of abuse may think it rare and often don't know about safeguarding.
Speculation only as I have not seen any direct research in this area. I am confident, however, that it is informed speculation.
I totally agree that we need a communal response. Of course we do. However, that is no way diminishes the need for a very directed program of education and training.
AFZ
*Off the top of my head, this is an (incomplete) list of the mandatory online training I have to do annually to do my job:
- Conflict Resolution
- Safe prescribing
- Manual handling
- Fire safety
- Safeguarding (refresher)
- Equality and Diversity
- Bullying
- Confidentiality
- Online safety
You can see how it very quickly becomes a tick-box exercise for the hospital when they have literally thousands of staff who have to do this every year.Yep. 100% agree.
My emphasis. That and, having done the training, it may make you more aware of when something is "off" and feel more confident about raising it.
This is the problem with a lot of H&S rules. Workplace safety rules, as they say, are written in blood. They're all there in an attempt to prevent deaths and serious injuries that have actually happened by doing things "the old way". But most of the risks of death and injury that we're attempting to prevent are relatively low: they're high enough that on a national scale, you notice a problem, but low enough that individuals can do the "dangerous" activities every day of their lives and not have an accident.
So it's easy to understand how people think that there isn't a problem, and that H&S is overblown - it's because people suck at evaluating modest-scale risks.
My experience of church was that trusting one another is rather more than something that people feel - it's a quality that congregations are encouraged, or even instructed, to cultivate (along with forgiveness). It seems that, while keeping one another safe is a quality that we would naturally expect to find in church communities, keeping one another safe from each other is not.
Another factor that I would consider is accountability, particularly in relation to church leaders. As well as the importance of demonstrating and modelling accountability, this is in the rather more straightforward sense of being actually accountable to the people they lead.
Church leaders will only be properly accountable following major cultural change. This will not be achieved by individual online training.
I'm sorry to labour the point, but I really do see many things dying of bureaucracy if this possibility isn't taken seriously. One way to stop abuse, I suppose, though it would lead to more people being neglected. The abuse probably happened, in a significant number of cases, when churches had more reach than they do now.
I am not minimising the pain and suffering caused by abuse. Or at least I hope I'm not. But I don't like the odds of churches, on a local, congregational level, surviving the current model of safeguarding.
Being rather cynical, I know, but (to mis-quote @ThunderBunk):
... I don't like the odds of churches, on a local, congregational level, surviving...
Safeguarding is not, of course, the only issue here.
But I don't like the odds of churches, on a local, congregational level, surviving the current model of safeguarding.
As I mentioned much earlier in the thread, in 1989 my husband and I were members of a church whose minister was jailed.
Immediately prior to his arrest, our church was one of the most "successful" in the Church of Scotland. Congregations were large, giving was generous. In 1988, there was a newspaper article in which our church's "success" was lauded. Part of the "success" was based on the fact that the church was, by Scottish standards, huge. It had been built in the C19th as a combined church / soup kitchen and so had two halls, a large kitchen, a flat housing a live-in caretaker etc etc, and so, in addition to the core Sunday worship there was weekly Girl Guides / Boys Brigade / music groups / exercise classes; the place buzzed all week long, and hall hire provided a steady income.
This church was within walking distance of our home, but many people were travelling to attend it; generally people who had started attending when they lived in the city centre in their 20s, and kept attending after they had moved further out into the commuter belt.
Our minister was very popular. And then came the police raid, and his arrest. He was immediately suspended of course, but was adamant that he was innocent and would be back. A large section of the congregation were looking forward to his return. The day before his trial, he changed his plea from "not guilty" to "guilty."
Out church went into a slow death spiral. A few of the "travelling in" families left, whether to start attending their parish church, or no church, I don't know. And then more left, and more. Internal splits and recriminations started. More people left. Giving was falling away. Then we left, so we didn't experience the decline after that. Eventually the congregation had dwindled to a point whereby a neighbouring church was closed, the two congregations merged into "our" church building, and the "new" church was renamed and rebranded for a fresh start. But the decline continued, and ultimately the congregation folded and the church building was sold off.
My experience is that an abuser within the church destroyed a thriving congregation, and also cast a shadow over a much wider area. The case was reported in the press. The wider church was tainted by association. Many parents must have questioned their children's safety within their own churches.
I don't know what the figures were like for church attendance in the city "before" and "after" but I'm pretty sure that there was a drop at that point, a drop from which the city-wide Church of Scotland did not recover.
We need safeguarding.
Blaming bureaucracy looks to me like a straw man - the majority of churches, especially denominational churches, have always had bureaucracy. (In addition to its own, every parish in the CofE was tasked with keeping formal parish registers almost 500 years ago.)
As far as survival goes, why should church congregations that do not accept the need for safeguarding survive? Does the benefit of their survival outweigh the harm of avoidable abuse? I think these are unreasonable questions - but in the absence of an alternative model of safeguarding available for churches to adopt, they appear to be related to the question you are asking.
The answer to that question starts with church congregations asking themselves difficult, painful, questions about their beliefs and attitudes. My experience is that the majority of congregants are not prepared to ask themselves these questions, let alone answer them.
I know. An entire church community brought down by the actions of one person in authority.
I had my first background check to help with my kid's toddler group back in the mid 1990s; I don't know how many background checks I have had over the intervening thirty years - maybe about twenty?
And I can understand someone complaining about this. The church I worked for accepts the checking and training that people get in appropriate professions. I think they figure the school district has already done the work, so no need to duplicate it.
IIRC, they changed the rules in the UK (?) so if you had been checked in one local authority, that check was valid in the area it covered to solve that problem. Before that it meant you had be checked by each organisation even if they were in same area.
We're not allowed to do Sunday School or the equivalent - on our own. If I'm leading and there's no helper, then we're not going out. (There is an area at the back of the church where we'd go instead).
That said I do see that if one had to get rechecked by every organization it would be truly exasperating. I know that my check was faster because I have had the trainings and checks previously.
Rechecked and retrained by every organisation.
(Again, I jump through all the hoops and am in-date), but my church involvement is the only one I do. I’m aware of one person who keeps six of these plates spinning, and others who are definitely exasperated at 3 or 4.
Like I said upthread, if you’re active in your community across multiple organisations safeguarding training could take over your life.
Scouting America has a background check and a set of trainings for youth protection. Church has a background check and an overlapping-but-slightly-different set of trainings for youth protection. Girl Scouts has a third set.
It's not really the background checks that take the time - they add a delay between someone saying they want to volunteer and that person being able to volunteer, but they don't really take time and effort from the volunteer. Having to take 3 or 4 different sets of almost-but-not-quite identical training on an annual basis can certainly feel like an unnecessary burden. I don't know that there's a good solution to that, though: each organization wants to tailor the application of what are the same fundamental principles to its own particular detailed cases.
The logic is/was is that when you get a crb check - if the police are actively investigating you, they may ask the employing agency to stall you but not include that information on the bit of paper they issue to you (which is all you’d be able to show to another agency) in order to avoid prejudicing an ongoing enquiry,
The key part is therefore who holds the info given by the police - at one point I think the Methodists acted as the organisation holding the information for a number of churches.
I am not sure this is still the case.
My 18 year old daughter has started volunteering at our church of St Wherever's play group and did the CofE Basic Awareness. She was a bit bored by the theology intro, but I thought the rest was quite good - various common scenarios and how to handle them (basically report any concerns to the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer and let them decide whether it is safeguarding, whether it needs investigating etc).
I was glad she had some guidance about what to do if she noticed something worrying, just as I sent her on a Basic First Aid course when she started babysitting for some neighbours a couple of years ago. Hopefully she won't need either of them, but plan for the worst and hope for the best.
It took about half an hour, and is valid for three years, which doesn't seem like excessive bureaucracy to me. Of course, it helps that she is (too!) comfortable with on-line material, but even my mother (mid-80s) would have been able to manage the IT aspects without any difficulty, so I am not convinced that there are legions of elderly volunteers who can't handle the IT.
A preacher asked me out. When I turned her down, the stalking began
It's a shocking tale and I'm used to seeing very shocking tales where people affected by stalking were let down very badly -but what genuinely astounded me was this
It's hard for me to comment on this without getting Hellish - I research on the historical witch- hunt and - just wow!
This guy is a Bishop and was apparently in the running for Canterbury and when someone went to him because they were being stalked - a very serious and damaging situation- he made a witchcraft
accusation?
How on earth was someone who believes in witchcraft - to the point of making these bizarre accusations against someone - allowed into a position of power in an established church and to deal with sensitive matters like safeguarding?
Is this sort of belief common in C of E clergy? Maybe there's more of it than I realise.
Safeguarding policies are a great thing but if a church has senior people running around accusing people of witchcraft I don't see how they can be safe for anyone?
Hopefully this Bishop will be sacked?
Personally I wouldn't attend a church or ever entrust a child or young person to a church where this sort of belief was prevalent among clergy. It would be a total red flag to me that I'm dealing with someone whose judgement I cant trust. (I'd also expect it come with a big dose of other harmful reactionary beliefs - and as a woman I definitely would expect sexism and myths about abuse to be among them)
Am I out of touch? Have I just been lucky that I haven't encountered it? Or is it - hopefully - rare?
I know it must exist in a lot of churches but I'm just shocked to see someone in such a responsible position in the Church of England come out with this. Can better informed people contextualise it more for me?
The whole thing is awful though and Jay Hulme and others were very very badly let down.
Link
The purpose of which is to stop those who see demonic possession round every corner causing harm.
I'd be here all day if I even started to list the harms that come from witchcraft belief which issues into directly accusing other people.
It should be immediately disqualifying for anyone dealing with abuse or harassment cases. People who believe this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed anywhere near abuse cases.
If the C of E is going to have clergy who believe this kind of thing then those clergy shouldn't ever be in charge of safeguarding. It needs an independent body for people to go to where they can be sure at a bare minimum that if they disclose abuse they don't get met with a witchcraft accusation.
I am not personally very acquainted with the charismatic evo end of the CoE....I've heard some concerning stuff but given the circles I'm in it tended to be about sexuality and gender (and even that was very much NOT involving senior clergy), never heard anything about witchcraft coming up. That's something I would really associate with non-Anglican charismatic churches.
I don't know Jay personally but we unsurprisingly have a lot of mutual friends, and he comes across as a very gentle soul - I can imagine how very distressing this would have been for him.
Not being entirely serious there, but oddly a facet of the Scottish witch hunt is healers using Latin/ metrical Catholic prayers and charms and Presbyteries trying to work out whether they think it's 'superstition' (meaning rejected Catholic worship practices) or witchcraft or both. Sounds like things haven't moved on as much as I'd have hoped.
Yes Jay comes across as a lovely lovely person who's been through the mill and been horribly affected by this - both police and Bishop letting him down, though the police eventually got their act together.
First, it's possible to believe that some people PRACTICE witchcraft (because they do, in some contexts!) without believing that what they do has real effects. I'm thinking here of certain non-Western cultures. I haven't run across it in Vietnamese culture per se, but I have run across certain closely allied beliefs and behaviors (though none of it would ever take place in a church!). And I could imagine situations in which it would be legitimate to inquire whether someone is involved in that stuff.
Second, I wouldn't altogether rule out the possibility of said practices being harmful. We had two families come to us of their own accord asking for exorcism, as they believed evil spirits were harassing them. When we asked to hear more about the situation, both families disclosed that they were heavily into fortune telling etc. as a way of making money in the community. They were not surprised to hear that we thought there was likely to be a direct relationship between what they were doing and the harassment they reported. What they wanted from us (and from Jesus) was to drive away the evil spirits but leave them free to go on with the fortune telling (and in case you're wondering, these were fairly well-off people, both in finances and in community standing). We told them that to the best of our knowledge, it was not possible to do what they were asking. They would have to choose. And they did. In the end both families chose to continue fortune telling and try other methods to get rid of the harassment. At least one decided to move house in the hopes of not being followed.
I don't blame anybody who thinks that I'm crazy for believing that there are spiritual realities beyond simply "God up there" and "me down here," and that some of those realities might be dangerous to mess around with. Disbelief in such things is par for the course in most modern Western cultures. And certainly I don't think I have the right to make decisions for other people, in this area included. They are adults and responsible for their own choices.
But again, leaving this particular case completely out of my post--I wouldn't condemn any leader out of hand simply for believing that such things can exist. I would look rather at what they chose to do based on that belief and/or experience--whether they were acting appropriately by means of their fellow human beings.
I would be surprised if he believed in witchcraft.
I think it's more that what's referred to as con-evo aka the more Reformed end of the CoE tends to balk at supernatural stuff generally. They may believe that witchcraft exists as a thing, but would (ime) be more inclined to see it as equivalent to praying to the Tooth Fairy rather than a route to demonic possession. Ie, it's bad primarily because it's fruitlessly chasing something other than (their concept of) Christianity. Still sinful, but not because they think it does anything.
The day after my spouse died peacefully at the rectory here a Charismatic bishop 'from the homophobic' side arrived uninvited to pray away the 'malign spirits.'
It occurs to me that by him turning and walking out the door the prayer would have been answered.
I'm sorry you had to deal with that on top of your grief.
People can believe in demonic possession without making witchcraft accusations. They are not the same thing - though they can overlap, with possessed people making dangerous and even fatal witchcraft accusations. I don't recommend believing in it - from studying it historically it tends to involve people having severe dissociative episodes. It does respond to ritual and religious remedies which can act as a kind of counselling and therapy. So you can argue for exorcists/ fasting and prayer type methods as harm reduction but it remains a highly dangerous belief system ripe with potential for abuse - certainly in its Christian form.
If someone believes seriously in this stuff then I personally do not want that belief anywhere near processes handling sexual abuse or harassment such as stalking. Maybe someone could personally swear they believe in it but wouldn't let it influence them into making witchcraft accusations to other human beings but the overall evidence that ties this to patterns of religious abuse is too strong for me.
If someone can't approach these matters without making or believing witchcraft accusations then they shouldn't be anywhere near them.
About 50,000 innocent people were murdered by church and state across Europe, usually after torture, thanks to people believing this stuff and taking the Bible literally on it. Those people were innocent Christians who were slandered by other Christians who thought normal rules of humane treatment and evidence didn't apply if you thought someone was a witch.
And there's the danger - it's all too easily used by the powerful to demonise vulnerable people whose word isn't taken when they deny it, and then compassion and sense go out the window.
I found this lecture on witch-hunting very interesting
[/tangent]
Non YouTube link with text here
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/witches-europe
And direct link to PDF download of text for those who want it
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/sites/default/files/transcript/2024-06-05-1800_Hutton-T.pdf
As someone with bipolar disorder, I am naturally wary of discussions of demonic possession as many people don’t understand psychosis.
Thanks for the links on Ronald Hutton’s lecture. I recently read a discussion by an early modern mad doctor (contemporary title) suggesting that women accused of witchcraft were really experiencing the menopause impacting on their mental health. I might write my early modern history dissertation on this perspective, if I can find enough material.
To be fair, there are some of those people who wouldn't see a strong distinction between Catholicism and witchcraft.