The Church of England is facing its biggest crisis in modern times, and there is no clear pathway to recovery….reports Asian Lite News
As the faithful give thanks to God in England’s 16,500 parish churches on Sunday, beneath the comforting ritual of prayers and hymns will run a strong undercurrent of shame, anger, sadness and dread.
The Church of England is facing its biggest crisis in modern times, and there is no clear pathway to recovery. The archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to resign, other senior figures are facing calls to quit and the church is reeling from its shameful failures over a prolific and sadistic child abuser.
A 253-page report detailing the appalling brutality of the late barrister John Smyth, repeated cover-ups and omissions by church figures, and the lifelong trauma suffered by victims has triggered an “existential crisis” for the C of E, according to Linda Woodhead, professor of moral and social theology at King’s College London. “It’s been a very, very long time coming, like lots of crises, but this is a critical moment.”
“It’s seismic,” said Tim Wyatt, who writes The Critical Friend, a weekly newsletter about the Church of England. “It’s unprecedented for an archbishop to resign over a crisis of their own making. It’s causing massive ructions up and down the institution. Now the sword is hanging over other senior leaders and bishops. Welby’s resignation could be the first stone rippling out to a much bigger crisis within the church.”
The context to the report on Smyth was, he said, “more than 10 years of damning investigations into C of E abuse failures. Bishops, clergy and senior lay volunteers have been exposed as abusers, and church figures knew about the abuse in some instances and failed to stop it or report it to the police.”
He added: “So there’s been a simmering anger among churchgoers and survivors of abuse that no one has been held accountable. What’s happening now is a culmination of many years of resentment building up, and finally it’s erupted.
“We’re now hearing talk of sweeping the stables clean and starting afresh. The sense you get from many in the church is a feeling that the whole hierarchy, not just the man at the top, is complicit and tainted.”
The shock waves being felt through the C of E have some parallels with those that engulfed the Roman Catholic church after the Boston Globe 2002 exposé of widespread child sexual abuse by priests and its cover-up. The reverberations were felt around the world as the Catholic church’s dark secrets were forced into the light, and its authority was severely damaged.
In the C of E, since Welby became archbishop of Canterbury almost 12 years ago, report after report has detailed sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse stretching back half a century or more. Welby has made repeated apologies for the church’s failures, and under his watch millions of pounds have been pumped into improving safeguarding.
“Parishes are doing a much better job on safeguarding,” said Woodhead. “It’s a different church at the grassroots level. Lots of parishes are doing wonderful work with great local lay leadership and some very good clergy. They don’t get much support or money from the national church.”
Wyatt said: “Some people talk about there being two churches of England – the local parish, increasingly run by volunteers, and the professional elite at Church House [the C of E’s headquarters] or Lambeth Palace [the office of the archbishop of Canterbury].
“But we shouldn’t fall into the idea that mistakes are only made by those at the top of the tree. A lot of the errors made in the Smyth case were made by local people who found out about Smyth’s abuse and looked the other way – and carried on their ascent through the hierarchy.”
The repercussions of the Smyth scandal and other abuse cases will inevitably be at the top of the new archbishop’s in-tray. Building confidence in the C of E’s safeguarding processes and the way it treats abuse survivors will be of the greatest urgency, but it will not be the only issue that needs attention.
The next archbishop will also inherit the thorny and unresolved question of how far the C of E goes in its approach to LGBTQ+ equality. The issue has highlighted stark differences between conservatives and progressives, not just in the C of E but in the 85 million-strong Anglican Communion.
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