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.

Clergy Bullying revisited

I fully appreciate why this comment, left yesterday, was anonymous — Many thanks for it. Bullying is a subject to which I've returned again and again because, Christian siblings, there’s a lot of it about. This should not be. We are meant to be a community whose love shows the world the best that life could be. Bullying is a betrayal of all the Church stands for. So who do you tell? A part of me says, “It doesn’t matter, in a way, as long as you tell someone.” Traditional C of E cultures of secrecy and deference will not do. Openness is a Gospel Value — the open proclamation of the truth, the city set on a hill. So is mutual accountability, or submission of our work to each other - a discipline that cuts all ways.

Many (but emphatically not all) accusations of bullying mirror each other. A says B is bullying them. I go to B who then tells me that A is in fact the bully. This calls for definitions and metrics, but don't be put off. What the B word does indicate is a possible abuse of power, that’s all; so ask “what sort of power is being exercised how?” Go on to ask “by what standard can this be measured? human rights? codes of practice? the ordinal?” Don't get angry, don’t turn yourself into a designer victim, just tell someone. This whole thing thrives on fear, deference, and Voodoo. Remember the Wizard of Oz. Then ask “to whom is the perpetrator, as you see it, accountable to, and how?” Armed with that information, go deploy your information strategically.


One thing’s for sure. Doing nothing will make the problem worse, and you will increasingly internalise it until it becomes business as usual. To paraphrase Jesus, Once the light within you becomes darkness, said Jesus, you are well and truly stuffed. And so are all the rest of us.

Forgiveness and Healing

God's word is the hammer that shatters rocks in pieces, even or perhaps especially on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. This Sunday many of my colleagues may have been sucking their pencils and feeling blank, but some of them will preach the sermon of their lives. By “sheer coincidence” the Lectionary serves up readings today about forgiveness. 

Romans 14 is about the handling of profound conscientious difference that produce strong mutual antagonism among Christians— something they experienced in the first century, too:

we will all stand before the judgment seat of God... then, each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean...

This approach has not generally been taken by the top brass of the Anglican Communion in the last ten years. Their occasional eschewings of judgment have ministered grace, but their fondest strategies for dodging the embarrassment of sexuality issues, or devising an ingenious lawyer’s band aid, have simply backfired and compounded the hurt. Go figure. Romans 14 really is the only way. Sooner rather than later, I hope.

And then Matthew 18, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who uncompromisingly told his followers to love their enemies, kicks in, straight to the solar plexus

Peter came and said to him, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

 Jesus goes on to tell the story of the unforgiving servant, that exposes the complete idiocy of our wraths and sorrows. How do we love our enemies, though?

Here in Great Missenden, Rosie the Vicar explored with tremendous clarity what forgiveness is and isn’t. The thief hanging on the cross was unquestionably guilty, and Jesus unquestionably innocent. Their interaction is outrageously simple. 

This made me reflect that if we try to forgive out of our own supposed resources of niceness, we will only compound the anger and hurt. All we can work out of, fruitfully, is our own receiving of forgiveness, love as strong as death, love with open eyes.

Her sermon went on to say true forgiveness is the hardest thing in the world. It is NOT

• Forgetting — it doesn't change the past, or choose to ignore it
• Reconciliation — it takes two to be reconciled, but only one to forgive
• Condoning — it is not about excusing bad behaviour
• Dismissing — saying it doesn’t matter when it does
• Pardoning — which is legal release from the penalty or other legal consequences of having done wrong

It is a personal transaction that releases the one offended against from the offence. That’s all.

She went on to quote the Roman Catholic psychiatrist Dr Jack Dominian, one of the Church’s greatest and wisest teachers about the reality of being human. He was talking here about marriage breakdown:

Forgiveness is not enough. We need to go beyond forgiveness and do as Christ did, who knew what it was to be man. We must try to understand what lies behind the act of aggression. One set of reasons is that the aggressor himself is hurt, insecure, vulnerable, bored, tired, depressed, confused, under stress and is seeking help through aggression. If that is the case, it is not good enough to forgive. We have to do something about remedying the cause of the aggression.

Even more important, the cause may be ourselves. There is nothing more hypocritical in Christian life than to forgive the aggressor with magnanimity when in fact we are responsible for his aggression.

The woman who forgives her husband for having an affair when she denies him love and affection is no saint. The parent who forgives the errant child who is not allowed their independence and is constantly devalued and undermined is no saint. the friend who forgives while driving their companion to distraction is no saint.

She went on to say

You have to be pretty honest with yourself to recognise your own culpability when you have always thought of yourself as the victim — but being able to think in such a way can be the key to unlocking hurts that have rumbled on for years

I wondered, leaving Church, whether the same skill of costly forgiveness that Jesus commanded his followers to exercise an infinite number of times when they fell out, the grace to let go, is not also necessary if we are to be released from idols, especially those we have inherited from the past, and so become what God is calling us to be as we embrace his future.