Preventing Clergy Bullying (of and by)

Ruth Gledhill’s Times article on the Mark Sharpe case in Worcester has raised fresh allegations about bullying behavour in the Church. I know absolutely nothing except what’s in the papers about its particular details, which need to be worked out and made public by the tribunal. Bullying behaviour goes on, of course, in all working contexts, including the Church — in my experience less so in the Church than in other contexts in which I’ve worked, education and prisons, but any incidence is shameful and wrong.

As a jobbing bishop I've taken a particular interest in the problem, and blogged about it more than once over the past two years. It’s very good to have full and open public discussion. Some of the things that will be said may be offbeam, but many won’t, and the general effect is to raise awarenss of the possibllity of bullying. This, in itself is the best preventative against it.

Whether it’s laypeople bullying clergy or clergy bullying clergy or clergy bullying laypeople, any whiff of bullying needs to be explored and discussed, preferably with area dean or bishop's staff, or someone, fully and accurately as early as possible.

Whoever is allegedly bullying whom, the best response is early awareness. The most problematic cases (of which there is only a very tiny number) are usually situations that have stewed for ages. early investigation shows up anomalies for what they are, and protects everyone. If bullying is not happening, it can be excluded, and if it is, it can be exposed for what it is. Like domestic violence, the key thing is to break the cycle producing it as soon as possible.

The involvement of Rachael Maskell’s union, Unite, has always, in my limited experience of it, been extremely helpful. A good union rep can normalise the whole situation by setting the various anecdotes around it in a broader context, whilst ensuring that their member is well protected. Even more than unions, one organisation has worked long and hard to help in practical as well as awareness-raising ways — the Society of Martha and Mary. Their report Affirmation and Accountability has, since 2002, defined the gold standard to which I have aimed to work on clergy HR. Rachael is absolutely right about the key role of law in protecting laypeople and clergy — sometimes people speak of ecclesiastical law as an anomalous by-product of establishment designed to annoy free spirits. It is actually their baseline protection, and everyone else’s — a key part of the infrastructure.

The successful extension of section 23 rights to all C of E clergy by Common Tenure, a legislative job that began almost 10 years ago and goes live at the beginning of 2011, is absolutely necessary. I have a particular interest, formally, in the implementation group for this change in this diocese, and we all have a part to play. Stories like this demonstrate to any who might have wondered about it, why this piece of work, which has been going on over almost 10 years, is so important to complete effectively. I strongly recommend all clergy to take up the option of common tenure when they’re offered it later this year. Even if they don’t think they need it, the universal takeup of the protection it offers is good for the culture of the whole Church.

When Common Tenure is implemented, this time next year, more legislation could be desirable. I don't think anyone will actually know until the new system has been operating for long enough to assess its impact. In the meanwhile, unions (who have had a battering themselves in the past thirty years) need to work hard to recruit in all sectors, and I support them in doing this.

I’ve worked on this problem with colleagues for years, both as a regular part of my job, and particularly learning about it with Anne Lee, a psychologist from Oxford University. Two particular issues strike me about addressing Bullying:

1. Definitions:
   The term “bullying” itself always needs careful definition according to the context. It's not a simple phenomenon, but there is a big difference between situations where one person perceives it to be going on, and the sort of situation where everybody is alleging it of everyone else.
2. Human nature:
   There is a tremendous variety of person in the Church (as everywhere else): everything from people with personality disorders to serial litigants, with the vast, vast majority well near the centre of the normal scale. Everyone, however, has their own personal needs, personal formation issues, and vulnerabilities. The doctrine of universal original sin is actually a sober fact of life which shows itself particularly in this area — that’s not a reason to ignore it, but to engage with it! A luta continua!
   

This subject does matter. In general, most of the time, the Church is a healing place, but this should be worked for not assumed. It is not always the case, and the best way to make it more so is constant vigilance and public awareness. The Church is a very open organisation — as it should be. Anglicans talk publicly about anything — and this helps with the problem. But the work goes on continuously!

Clergy bullying: Trouble at Mill?

I can’t comment on the Mark Sharpe case, currently in progress, in another diocese, but the Church Times and Thinking Anglicans have commented on harrassment, working conditions and employment rights of the clergy — issues somebody suggested to me the other day are something of my pet subject. The union says:

Should Revd. Sharpe’s case be upheld after any appeal, it will mean that ministers across the UK will be subject to legislation covering: health & safety, the national minimum wage, paid holidays, ‘whistle-blowing’, anti-discrimination, paid holidays, family-friendly flexible working policies, the working time directive, and unlawful deduction of wages

I can understand the union dramatizing, but Philip Petchey’s article in the Ecclesiastical Law Journal 33 (not free online but you can buy it here) gives a much more sober, accurate account of how employment law has viewed ministers of religion since Victorian times and why, as well as where we really are now.

It’s been a rapidly evolving field for clergy, like everybody else, but current legislation will mean that, in principle, clergy will soon have terms and conditions that largely reflect the general workplace. It’s important to remember that as well as giving rights, this legislation also lays on clergy newly explicit responsibilities about capability and accountablility which most clergy traditionally discharged in our own, characteristically less explicit and formal, ways.

As a clergyman for the past 29 years, including almost 5 as a bishop, I rather work on the basis that as far as possible, church ministers should have at least as good working rights and responsibilities as everyone else — preferably better.
“As far as possible” because we clergy have extra freedoms, vulnerabilities and burdens that arise from the fact that we ourselves, as well as the church and the public, see our calling as a way of life more than a nine to five job. Some of our best satisfactions, as well as worst frustrations come from this simple fact.

We often work from home in a voluntary organisation within a broader community that can bless or curse us, sometimes both at once. Many expectations are implicit. This doesn’t justify abuse, but it inevitably means a far more complex and subtle working context than simple industrial or commercial workplaces. We do have enormous freedom about our hours and lines of approach to our work, but most of us care very much about our calling and tend to overwork. Most of the difficulties we experience arise from vicious circles driven by dysfunctional relationships, rather than simple operational or logistical failures. The clergy workforce is so radically “flat” and dispersed that we have had to take more responsibility for our own work than in more bureacratically supervised professions. There just isn’t a large HR department, although some would say it’s on its way.

The Union statement helpfully draws attention to 2 other big issues:

Health and Safety is a complex and fast evolving field of its own. In basic ways legislation aready applies, but as with all small (sub 5) workplaces, in patchy and variable ways which have to be constantly reviewed locally. H&S is a complex and rapidly evolving field, some even say industry, of its own. Historically, clergy have often scored very high in job satisfaction surveys, but many of us find the increasing bureaucratization of their working practice in this and other areas a genuine stress inducer.

Minimum Wage, family flexibility and working time — because clergy working time is largely deployed at our own discretion (apart perhaps from Sunday service times), the story here is theoretically perfectly clear. This doesn’t mean things always work out ideally. Clergy are not hourly paid, so I can’t really see paid holidays and unlawful deductions as issues for us.

I am most interested in two other HR issues:

1. Whistle-blowing
   Here practice is variable. The positive is that the strong but minimal legal framework within which the Church operates does confer basic protection all round. Historically, the beneficed majority of clergy have held one of the safest jobs in the country. The force of new legislation will, rightly, extend similar protection to their colleagues. The negative is that subtle implicit workplaces with high community engagement (like the police, health and social services) are the hardest places to identify and correct subtle and coded abuse.
   
2. Anti-Dscrimination
   This touches a murky area of human nature where if we are not intentionally working towards a solution, we are part of the problem. I believe that the best way to secure the end of disability, gender and other forms of discrimination is to grow a positive and itentional diversity policy among ourselves. Awareness is the key, and the only way to make real progress is to follow compliance procedures across the whole range of operations doggedly over many years. I don’t believe this is about being dragged kicking and screaming into compliance by outside law. Rather, Jesus teaches us that God is bringing in a kingdom founded on justice, where every race, people, kindred, contribute their particularity to a glorious whole which we are called to realise insofar as in us lies, now. Therefore a discriminatory church which isn’t trying to do anything about being discriminatory is a lousy church. Therefore, our diocesan committee for racial justice is working out what we call a rigorous diversity agenda for our diocese, based on the Wood-Sheppard principles for race equality...
   

Bully pulpit — On baiting of the Clergy

Much interest in the media about clergy being bullied, stimulated by Rachael Maskell of the trade union Unite. Do vicars get bullied? Undoubtedly Yes.

I have been lucky — very blessed, on the whole — about the people I served during 24 years as an urban and suburban parish priest. They trusted me and supported me, way beyond my deserving or the call of duty; coped with my immaturity and uncertainty, my blundering attempts to understand what the job was about, my occasional depressions, fits and starts. These were the people who comforted me when my father died, and left meals on the doorstep when our children were born. But among them were, I reckon, three Prize Bullies. I felt it was somehow my fault that they were so overbearing. I felt trapped by my role in a place where I could do little or nothing about them.

I don’t buy “Pure Church” fantasy, and I believe that Rachael is drawing attention to a serious issue. Every area of human endeavour can become a toxic working environment, including this one, which has its own particular risk factors.

1. Pretty much all other professionals live far away from their work these days. Not vicars. Everybody knows where to find them.
2. Most Vicars are at heart altruistic, caring people, and this brings its own vulnerabilities. People have a tremendous longing to believe all is well in Church, sometimes in the face of what they know to be the truth. There are even people who behave in Church much worse than they would in daily work, where some of their antics would simply not be tolerated. Vicars, who often believe sincerely in going the second mile go to tremendous lengths to believe the best of people, some of whom may not have their best interests at heart. Vicars sometimes feel that if everybody is not happy it’s their fault.
3. For many vicars, their life is their work. Drawing boundaries between the two doesn’t always come easily to them, and in many instances wouldn't be appropriate. Anyway their job is also tied to their home. If they have to be off work, they can’t get away from it in the way that they could from a conventional workplace.
   
4. Being a Vicar means radical availability to all comers, and can involve unanticipated bouts of harrowing work — children’s funerals, personal disputes and tragedies. When our Occupational health physicians ask if someone can be given light duties in the post room, as it were, the honest answer is probably not, because there isn't really a vicar job that can be guaranteed not to involve unexpected painful encounter with people in need.
5. At one time Casualty departments and underground stations didn’t need to be festooned with notices warning the punters off punching the staff. In earlier and kinder times people were more deferential, and this relieved some strain on clergy to establish themselves as leaders. Large numbers of able and articulate people enrich the life of the church, but when things go wrong can make clergy feel desperately anxious and exposed, not always intentionally.

Sadly, like the question, the answer isn’t always as simple as might appear. Incumbent and Complainants sometimes say mirror image things about each other. The fact each says the other is bullying them doesn’t mean bullying isn't going on, but it’s an indication of the complexity of the problem. Both might be right — Clergy may be bullies as well as bullied. Indeed school experience indicates that people do to others what they feel is being done to them. We have to be very suspicious of simple “bloody fool” explanations and seek the truth all round carefully, steadily and openly.

How could things improve?

1. Anyone who believes a member of the clergy may either be being bullied or, indeed, be bullying, owes it to themselves and everyone else, including the perpetrator, to draw hard evidence to someone’s attention — bishop, archdeacon, area dean. Ditto gender or racial discrimination. Of course they will have at some stage to give evidence for what they are alleging in a form that can be communicated to the other person involved. I once was bombarded (bullied?) by over 100 emails from an angry person who wanted to complain about a vicar but refused to be accountable by providing evidence in writing I could lay before them at the preliminary stage. Clergy have a right to protection from malicious gossip. I did not give in on this point and would not. Measured natural justice all round is the only conceivable way to protect the human beings involved when feelings are running high.
   
2. This is a desperately unfashionable thing to say, but law and due process, sometimes an ass, no doubt, are there to protect everyone from abuse. Ditto working guidelines for clergy. We all, of course, want to live in a low deference informal society. The flip side of this desire is that anger will often out in intimidating and radically disrespectful ways. The advent of emails speeds the process up, discourages reflection, spreads pain and gossip round networks instantaneously, and enables people to say, for good or ill, things they would never dream of saying face to face.
   
3. Irresponsibility about hitting the send button sometimes spills over into letter-writing, and I receive letters that are Anonymous or from “a concerned parishioner.” The best way I can help these people is by giving them the opportunity to write a letter to which they could put their name. That means popping their letters straight into the shredder, where they could themselves have popped them the night before, if only they had had their wits about them. After many years of hearing confessions, the contents of their letters are in one ear and out the other, and I look forward to hearing from them in a less shameful way that shows higher character and accountability.
   
4. One simple fact is that clergy work in a much more open unsupervised environment than pretty much any other occupational group. On a good day, that gives us enormous historic independence, discretion and liberty about how we work, compared to others. On a bad day it can create an isolated, toxic working environment. In most contexts, most of the time, there is a strong community of loyalty and support for working clergy. We need to think through better ways of helping when that community is divided or non-existent. The involvement of a union is usually a good and positive thing if it brings any church based dispute within the ambit of good working practice in other areas of life. The Church of England is moving towards Common Tenure, for which legislation has gone through and should be implemented by 2010. Bishops and senior staff are receiving active HR training to help this happen well. CT will give licensed clergy access to tribunals and better HR support. With it, however, comes more responsibility about capability. Like everyone else, probably, I'd love to preserve the best of the historic freedom of the clergy, whilst attaching to it the best protection and support from more closely supervised working environments. This is going to be quite a difficult thing to achieve, though, especially in a workforce as “flat” as that of the Church of England.
5. Most people are better learners than they think. I am often deeply impressed by their grace and ability to reinvent themselves if they don’t feel trapped where they are, or in other contexts that suit them and their gifts better. The Bloody Fool theory is almost always wrong. We need to invest significantly in training and independent career counseling for clergy. In this diocese we have also developed the Developing Servant Leaders programme for all clergy to help them develop positive skills and attitudes that may help. We also have a network of work consultants, and are experimenting with developments in the role of area dean in places, to have more time to support colleagues. I also take professional HR advice in a variety of situations. All these things are moves in a good direction, but I would say we’ve a way to go yet...