A crisis of accountability

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a religious leader steps down.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop of the Church of England and the symbolic head of the Anglican Communion. It has more than 85 million members around the world.

On Tuesday, Archbishop Justin Welby released a letter that begins with these words: “Having sought the gracious permission of His Majesty The King, I have decided to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury.”

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Justin Welby’s decision comes after abuse victims and members of the clergy renewed their demands for his resignation. That pressure intensified last week after the publication of a report outlining an abuse cover-up dating back to the 1970s.

About 130 boys are believed to have been victims.

Joining us now to talk about it is Ian Paul, Associate Minister at St Nic's, Nottingham, England. He’s also a member of the General Synod, and serves on the Archbishop Council for the Church of England.

REICHARD: Ian, good morning.

IAN PAUL: Mary, good to be with you.

REICHARD: For those of us unfamiliar with the abuse allegations, can you give us a little background on it?

PAUL: Yes, I could. And from the top, I ought to say that this was not abuse that happened in the Church of England. The abuse concerned someone called John Smythe, who was a barrister, and during the 1970s and 1980s, he was associated with a camp called Ewan Camps which was quite a small group of very conservative evangelicals, really attracting boys from public schools and wanting to encourage them to be future Christian leaders. But Smythe himself groomed these boys, and particularly in association with a private school in Winchester. And alongside wanting to induct them into Christian leadership, he actually groomed them and beat them quite violently. They were aged 16, 17, 18. They weren't children, they were young men.

Now, the scandal here is to do with Justin Welby. It's not that Justin was part of this or complicit in abuse at all. He did have connections with the camp. He visited the camp himself, although he wasn't aware of abuse at the time. He was warned much later when he was in Paris, when he was working as an oil executive and he attended St. Michael's Church in Paris, and Smythe had visited and he was warned away from Smythe. Somebody said to him that he's not a good character and he should stay clear of him. But in fact, Justin had supported his ministry financially in South Africa.

The people involved in Ewan camp did themselves realize in the 1980s that Smythe had abused people and so they closed down his involvement. But they didn't report it. They covered it up because they thought it would damage the ministry. And Smythe went on to abuse boys in South Africa and in Zimbabwe as he continued his ministry.

REICHARD: So Justin Welby knew of the allegations but did nothing about it. You were one of the clergy to publicly call for Welby to resign? Why after all this time?

PAUL: Yes, well, it wasn't clear whether or not the extent of Justin's knowledge before he was Archbishop. But the report we had last week, which was written by Keith Makin, who is someone with expertise in the questions of abuse and worked in social services, he identified the fact that when Justin had become Archbishop in 2013, he was informed of Smythe's abuse. And Makin said that Justin didn't formally breach any processes, but he did have a personal and a moral responsibility to act on this. And the phrase he used was he “showed a remarkable lack of curiosity” about this. Now this is only one year into Justin's term of office in Canterbury, but the fact that he didn't act on it was significant.

Even though the abuse hadn't happened in the Church of England, it was possible for Justin to have taken action through the Anglican Communion and so that Smythe's activities had stopped then and in fact it only came to light in 2017 when Kathy Newman of Channel 4 News did an investigation and challenged Justin about this. Justin then said he denied he had any knowledge of Smythe before 2013, which turned out not to be true. And he also promised that he would take action, he would meet with the survivors of Smythe's abuse, and he did not do that. And even now he has not done that. He said in his resignation letter he would now meet with them, but this is, you know, seven years further on. And Makin said that this was indicative of a culture in senior leadership in the Church of England who didn't take seriously these reports of historic abuse.

REICHARD: And what were your particular reasons to call for resignation now?

PAUL: Now the reason why I suppose I was galvanized with two other members of General Synod to take action is that this indicates the huge gulf between the culture in senior leadership in the church and what's happening on the ground. Some people have said, well, the church building is not a safe place. That's not true at all. You know, on the ground, in local churches, I was preaching last Sunday at a local church, a different church from my own, and talking about, you know, the good news of Jesus and his invitation to repent and to know his forgiveness and his healing. The first thing I saw when I walked into that church was that I saw a sign on the door saying, “we take safeguarding seriously. This is our safeguarding officer. Here's the number. If you have any concerns, please contact them.”

I'm a member of the Archbishop's Council, and you know, we talk endlessly, we spend hours in every meeting talking about safeguarding. We put millions of pounds aside in the budget. And my view was we cannot persuade people we're taking this seriously, we can't act with any credibility as long as Justin was imposed with this report in the public arena.

REICHARD: But Ian to what do you ascribe why it’s taken this long to bring these things to light and do something about it?

PAUL: I think there's a number of factors. One is that the Church of England itself is complex. You know, the different dioceses, the 42 dioceses are 42 independent legal entities. But I also think that the bishops in the church, we suffer from two things: we suffer from a culture of deference. You know, clergy do not want to speak up. And I still think that many senior leaders in the church are anxious about protecting the church's reputation. And they've done that in two ways. One is that they have as happened in the past, they've wanted to brush things aside or think they can deal with them or not confront them. But the other way sometimes, and Justin Welby I think has been guilty of this, is that they want to protect the reputation of the church by doing as much as they can and saying, look what we're doing, look what we're doing.

And in fact, Justin himself has dealt very severely with the previous but one Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, with his former colleague, John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, and with the former Bishop of Lincoln, Christopher Lawson. In each of those cases, he's been very clear that they need to remove their license and terminate their ministry early because of what were actually much more minor breaches of safeguarding. And so Justin himself, he said, you know, I take responsibility. Well, if he takes responsibility, he must resign then. He must carry the count for this. And I'm sorry that it had to take a petition and all this publicity to make it happen. Justin actually saw the Makin report as long ago as June this year. And I think it would be much better if having seen a draft of the report he'd taken action immediately.

REICHARD: Mm-hm. You know, there’s a petition in the book of common prayer seeks God’s forgiveness “for the things done and left undone”…I’m wondering, in Archbishop Welby’s case…what do you make of that statement? Which is more egregious?

PAUL: I think it's very difficult. And again, it's in the context of the fact that so much good is happening on the ground in the church and that this headline is so damaging to the reputation of the gospel and the church. And the only way of resolving these things is to get things right and not to defend, not to defend our reputation, not to defend our ministry, but to actually deal with those things.

I've had people contact me. Someone emailed me and said, you know, I suffered from historic abuse in the 1980s and 90s from someone who was on General Synod. My immediate response was to reply and say, this is where you can get support. We're setting up this scheme, the Archbishop's Council is setting up a redress scheme. Here's the person to contact. And would you like a conversation? This is the only way to respond appropriately, I think, to people who've suffered abuse.

REICHARD: Final question here, Ian. How are you praying—yourself—that God might use this moment to reform His church and His people?

PAUL: One of the things that has been an amazing comfort to me is the testimony from people who have actually found that they've survived abuse and they've recovered because of faith in God. I can't help feeling that it's a process of winnowing as well the institution of the church. And also an opportunity to talk about the possibilities as well. I was on Times Radio the day before yesterday and the woman said, well, you know, this is the end of the church and the Christianity is in decline. And I said, actually the facts on the ground are not the case. In England, the church in England is growing and thriving. There are lots of good local churches.

It is an opportunity to say, this isn't the whole story. It may be the headline in the tabloids, but actually, let's talk about the truth. By God's grace, there are moments, there are opportunities to say, this isn't the whole story. Come, find out for yourself. As Jesus said to the very first disciples, He said to them when they asked Him, He said, come and see for yourself. So there are moments of grace and moments of opportunity.

REICHARD: Ian Paul is an author, professor, and minister within the Church of England. Ian thanks for speaking with us today.

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