Rector’s Reflections
Friday 14th February 2025
Is there a Safeguarding Crisis in the Church of England?
In our series of reflections to date, we have seen that while it is agreed that there certainly are failings in regard to safeguarding practice within the Church of England, there is no agreement as to whether these failings amount to a “Crisis”. Some would say that they definitely do amount to a Crisis, whereas others would say that Safeguarding within the Church of England as a whole is actually pretty robust, and that it is unreasonable to expect the Church to be absolutely perfect. The key thing is to ask: does the Church of England take Safeguarding seriously, and where mistakes happen, does it try to learn from them? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding “yes”.
However, there remain significant issues in the background which need to be addressed. In yesterday’s reflections, I drew attention to presence of significant imbalances of power within the Church. Church systems are not currently sufficiently effective at managing these imbalances of power. Furthermore, on occasion there are instances where the imbalance of power is compounded by an atmosphere of fear, which makes it very difficult to challenge the leader or to hold them to account.
There are two further issues to which I wish to draw attention. The first is the problem of those individuals, both clergy and laity, who are basically bullies. It is never easy to stand up to a bully, and it usually requires much courage to do so. It is doubly hard when the bully holds an office within the church : for example, they may the Incumbent of the parish, a Churchwarden or a member of the PCC. It is trebly hard when the individual is more than ready to go on the attack, and launch formal or informal proceedings against anyone who challenges their behaviour.
Mercifully, bullies are rarely found among office holders in the Church. Over the last twenty years, I would say that I have only come across and had to deal with three of them: one of whom was a priest, and incumbent of a parish; one of whom was a churchwarden; and one of whom was an ordinary member of the PCC. During this time I have engaged with 100s of clergy, churchwardens and PCC members, so as a percentage, the number of bullies who hold office in the Church is tiny. But they do exist. They make life incredibly difficult for everyone else, and they can and do destroy the mission and ministry of the Church.
The Church authorities are usually aware of these bullies and the trouble they cause, certainly if they are clergy or churchwardens. But generally hardly anything is done by the Church authorities to challenge or manage bullying behaviour. Doubtless the Church authorities would say that their hands are tied, and there is nothing they can do about it, other than pray that the person in question moves on before there’s an absolute crisis, and something has to be done. Sometimes the authorities might suggest bringing in some third party expert in peace and reconciliation, and this can be helpful – but not all bullies are willing or able to make the necessary changes to their behaviour. If a bully refuses to accept that they are bully, this softly, softly approach is unlikely to be effective. But it is doubtless better than nothing.
The third issue is the prevalence of fear in a Safeguarding system based on rules. The Diocese is scared that they will get sued, and that their insurance won’t cover them unless they can show that they have followed all the rules. The rules get more and more involved in order to allay the Diocese’s fears. This in turn makes it harder and harder for small parishes to comply with every single rule – they simply don’t have the time, energy or volunteers to ensure that every box is ticked. So some boxes aren’t ticked. No parish or priest is likely to be able to get it 100 per cent right. So if something happens and correct procedure hasn’t been followed, what happens next? Do you phone up the Diocese and confess your failing? This is very risky, because the Diocese is always 100 per cent perfect and never admits to making a mistake. You know that if you admit to making a mistake, the Diocese might well come down on you like a ton of bricks, even if (perhaps especially if) the Diocese itself is to blame, at least in part, for the failing in good safeguarding practice. We need to move away from this culture of fear, into a culture of mutual trust and openness. All of us – even the Diocese- makes mistakes, and unless we are open about this, we cannot learn and improve our collective practice.
So by way of conclusion, I would say that it is my personal opinion that there is indeed a Safeguarding Crisis in the Church of England. Not because of the failings which make the headlines, but because of the serious issues which are there in the background. There needs to be a better way of manging power imbalances in the Church. There needs to be a more effective way of challenging bullying behaviour. And the culture of fear needs to be replaced by a culture of mutual trust and openness.
Is this too much to ask for? I hope not. Unless we address these background issues, we will not significantly improve our safeguarding practice, and the vulnerable will continue to suffer.