Bullying of and by clergy: a way ahead?

Many thanks to people who have posted stories and comments on clergy bullying. This is no more than an open discussion, not a therapy point, but any posting of information and ideas helps break the culture of silence around the subject. I did promise to say what we were doing in our diocese.

Archdeacon Karen and Poli Shajko, our HR Lead, have been scoping a new policy and procedures in the light of the Dignity at Work national documentation, in collaboration with Anne Lee, an Oxford psychologist who specialises in this area. We are going to recruit two confidential non-hierarchical listeners in each archdeaconry, the Parish Development Advisor (who already works and is known by any clergy) plus one - a mixed gender team with access available from any to all. This includes congregational members who say clergy are bullying them, as well as clergy who say congregational members are bullies. We are working with an independent partnership to develop training both for awareness and implementation of a new dignity at work policy, with documents to go to Bishop's Council, then out. I'm not sure how and when this is published around deaneries, but that's got to happen well — a comms job.

It seems to me, along with some comments earlier this month, that everyone knows what bullying is, and when they feel bullied, but the description needs to be in terms of the behaviour that has to change. If we don't do that the onus stays in the wrong place, and things will never improve. The vast majority of claims I have drilled into dissolve into mutual recrimination. So I have to say that the perception of "bullying" boils down to a symptom of organisational malaise, the abuse of power.

We need procedures in place, as for whistleblowing, available to individuals; but this is not enough.

The key to progress is to have a public framework describing the proper use of power against which all behaviour can be measured.

Such a framework makes any anomaly look like an anomaly, rather than just a random incidence of "shit happens."

One final frontier remains, however. Church culture, deferential, hierarchical and often inclined to hypocrisy, breeds an alignment gap between aspiration and active accountability at the top. The Church is full of good intentions but some bishops, forgive me for saying but it's the truth, fear and loathe that kind of open accountability. Confronted recently with a proposed standard policy on appointments, out poured reasons why this was an impossible bureaucratic imposition to clip their wings. Ironically, much practice is consistent with what was proposed, and the law will probably carry my Lords kicking and screaming where they don't want to go.

Why does it have to be like this? Perhaps the Great Sacred Cow of diocesan exceptionalism belongs to good and decent people who think they are doing their best, so where could the problem be? "parked on the candidate, not them" is the answer. The problem is this: Candidates applying for jobs need to have confidence that their applications will be treated consistently and fairly, and that the rules of the game are being observed by everybody involved - or why should they waste their time offering their work and ministry in the first place? Without some public standard applicants will inevitably suspect stitch-ups all over the place without this elementary accountability — even where they aren't happening! So culture has to change at every level in the organisation, if our practice is to align with our values. The problem is not, of course unique to the Church, but this may be the next area in which us Don Quixotes need to grab Sancho and buckle up.