Next Sunday, with a degree of irony, is Safeguarding Sunday in the Church of England.
And priests across the land are probably wondering what to say to their flock. I would be. It is not a good moment for the church; though who knows? Maybe it is.
The Archbishop has this week belatedly resigned over a safeguarding scandal; but the visceral anger reverberating through the church suggests he will not be the last Episcopal fall guy.
And it’s hard to know with stories like this which of these are worse: the crime itself, the cover-up that follows or the hand-wringing apologies that follow the cover-up being exposed… from people who weren’t apologising last week.
So, the priest is in a tricky situation with regard to Sunday’s sermon. What to say? What is there to say? Apart from muttering corporate platitudes about the need for more accountability…
Though there can only be one text for Safeguarding Sunday. Matthew 18.6, in which Jesus speaks frankly about the abuse of the young.
‘If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.’
Well, no one can say he’s dodging the safeguarding issue.
The criminal at the heart of this story is John Smyth who died in 2018; but only after decades of abuse of boys and young men. A leader in the Iwerne Christian camps, and later at Winchester College, he derived sexual excitement from an atonement theology which beat the sin out of young converts with a cane, leaving them physically bloodied and emotionally traumatised.
Their bodies won’t forget: the body keeps the score.
This is not a new story. Smyth’s behaviour was known about in the evangelical community in the 1980’s; and it was leading figures in this wing of the church who initiated the cover-up which enabled the abuse to continue.
They did it, apparently, to ‘honour the name of Jesus’, which is strange, given our reading for Safeguard Sunday. They must know a different Jesus from the one who appears in the gospels.
(I suspect the message-merchants of hard-line evangelicalism left Jesus behind a while ago. But that isn’t for now.)
Whatever, there was no honour here – just the powerful trying to protect their brand, and willing to sacrifice the victims for the good of the cause.
In the end, with the light of truth becoming troublesome in the UK, it was decided to pack the abuser off to Zimbabwe. Who can imagine why this was thought to be a good idea? The removal of the Bloody Cane Man, a known threat to the young, to a place of less accountability?
By this time, senior figures in the Church of England were aware and the story morphed from an evangelical cover-up into a Church of England cover-up, overseen by enablers and colluders who did the minimum…or nothing.
So, Mr Whippy was sent to Africa, not as a missionary; but as an abuser of the young and the vulnerable.
And maybe – who knows? – the reasoning ran thus: ‘We are all made in the image of God, of course we are, as revealed in scripture, the very word of God – but maybe the black boys are less newsworthy; maybe Jesus is slightly more honoured if they are abused instead of the increasingly vociferous white boys here in the UK.’
Who can say? But unsurprisingly, he continued his abuse in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
And now? With the Makin report – a brilliantly thorough (if criminally delayed) piece of work – both crime and cover-up are finally exposed. Everyone is onto it, Channel 4, the newspapers – and church rats scuttle from the burning building.
Everyone is suddenly appalled and disgusted by Smyth’s behaviour. It is show-time for the Uriah Heap apologies; for unctuous identification with the victims… from the same people who last week gave them no thought at all.
What a difference a report makes.
As Bishop Uriah might have said today: ‘The victims are in my prayers daily. It is truly disgusting behaviour. And I did write a letter to someone about it a few years ago. They just didn’t reply. So what could I do?’
The apology of the avoidant is not an edifying experience.
As a story, it has just grown and grown, as lies tend to. It is the first time an archbishop has resigned; but deep dis-ease continues.
And it is the poor parish priest, doing their very best where they are, who must stand up among their people and speak of all this on Sunday… Safeguarding Sunday.
Each will find their own way into this age-old story of the powerful savagely protecting their territory. (See ‘The Post Office/Horizon scandal) They will probably draw on the voices of the victims; listen better to the vulnerable – those who do not hold the levers of power.
Perhaps even sense again the vulnerable and precarious love of God, which knows nothing of control, punishment or lies.
And somehow, and it’s a miracle, the priest will find hope and heroes in this wreckage; perhaps healing. We all need that.
As the gospel Jesus said, ‘The truth will set you free’. And this is so.
But the question this week is: who wants the truth? Hopefully the next Archbishop of Canterbury. It would be a start…
On Safeguarding Sunday we pledge to keep safe, and guard well.
