Main Edition
US
FR
November 13, 2024 - 7:00am
On and on it goes. For 30 years now, Christian churches — like many institutions across the Western world — have been dealing with the consequences of their serial failures regarding abuse of children and young people: the failure to prevent or detect abuse when it was going on, the failure to deal properly with perpetrators or to report criminal acts to the authorities, and the failure to treat victims with appropriate respect and dignity. It can often feel as if there is no end in sight, even with the much-improved safeguarding procedures that are now in place.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is one of the most senior Christian leaders to resign as a result of his role in these failures. The Makin Report into the case of the prolific abuser John Smyth was published last week, and found that Welby, who became aware of Smyth’s abuse in 2013, did not do enough to ensure that he was appropriately investigated before his death in 2018. What’s more, the Archbishop did not follow through with a commitment to meet and work with Smyth’s victims.
Welby is by many accounts a well-meaning and thoughtful man. However, in the current climate, he had little choice but to go. Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. All Christian churches, not just the Church of England, are struggling to re-establish their credibility on the abuse issue after decades of crisis. It is simply not tenable to have as Archbishop of Canterbury a man who has not lived up to the Church’s own expectations for how leaders should respond to abuse.
Cleaning house is far from straightforward, in all fairness. When it comes to dealing with abuse allegations, Christians must balance different imperatives. The understandable desire for a zero-tolerance approach has to be balanced by a commitment to due process — false or mistaken accusations, as in the cases of the Anglican George Bell and the Catholic George Pell, are unusual but far from unknown. More challengingly, the possibility of repentance and forgiveness for offenders cannot be entirely forgotten, even if it is rightly not emphasised over care for victims and the workings of justice. Nevertheless, the clean-up needs to continue. On my own side of the Tiber, Pope Francis has shown some very dubious judgment and poor leadership in dealing with credibly accused or convicted clerical abusers, such as Marko Rupnik, and it is unacceptable.
Many will wonder where the Church of England goes from here. It may be that Welby, by stepping down, has set a precedent for radical accountability and transparency that will, in the long run, work in the Church’s favour. The expectation of clear and decisive action, and attention to important cases, has been laid down for his successors. It may also transpire that some of the anger and dismay created by the Smyth case, and Welby’s role in it, will focus on him as an individual rather than the office, allowing the next archbishop to start with a cleaner slate.
But even if this does happen, the pressing need for consistently effective and compassionate institutional action on abuse will remain — for all Christian churches.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeHe didn’t “step down”. After initially taking advice, he decided he should stay put. It’s only through outside pressure that his moral compass has been pushed back into position. That pressure includes of course, the Unherd article by Giles Fraser, but also from more senior clerics.
The precedent remains to be set: that of acknowledging culpability in the continuance of criminal activity, devastated young lives and the undermining of the very institution the position of leadership is designed to help protect. Go – before you’re pushed.
The abuse scandals in the Churches has been awful, but no one ever looks at the public (US)/state schools. Sexual abuse is rampant there, and massively covered up. It gets far less attention because you can’t sue the Gov’t effectively, so trial lawyers are uninterested in digging, and teachers unions shield the perps. Surveys in the US suggest 10% of public school students are subject to sexual misconduct of one form or another at the hands of teachers and staff by the time they graduate.
Any links to back this up?
https://rems.ed.gov/ASM?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5332880
Here are two.
I took a look at that link, and it says
“Shakeshaft did not limit her review to sexual abuse because, she says, that would exclude other unacceptable adult behaviors”
So, 10% are alleged to have been subject to unacceptable adult behaviours, including sexual abuse, but the author of the research has included non-sexual abuse, and also defined abuse to include verbal and visual abuse, whatever the latter is.
Given how widely drawn the definition of ‘abuse’ is these days, and that the word unacceptable (subjective, author’s opinion) falls notably short of illegal (objective, society’s opinion), I’m not sure how solid your ground is to claim there’s rampant sexual abuse in US public schools.
I took visual abuse to be teachers watching kids in the showers or something – pretty standard in my schooldays but laughable to think that happens in schools today. Is verbal abuse acceptable/legal for a schoolteacher? I would have thought that a teacher verbally abusing a pupil would be at least fired, if not struck off or given some sort of community service.
Fair points though. It isn’t sexual abuse.
I don’t think the word “failures” as used in the first paragraph is really correct. Churches haven’t “failed” to deal with issues such as this, they have “deliberately decided not” to deal with them, to the point of covering the issues up, and actively protecting the perpetrators.
We must all atone for the slavery that we had nothing to do with, but Welby has to be pushed into resigning for his manifest failures in the here and now.
I feel no compulsion “to atone” for slavery. Nothing to do with me.
When is the Roman Empire going “to atone” for slavery? We’ve been waiting for the best part of 2,000 years!
The only way for the church to show repentance and convince others they’ve changed or acknowledge their wrong, and for the sake of the church and it’s future, is to begin again. That means to start at the bottom, for every man and woman to go out into the streets and serve the people: the sick, the poor, the elderly and do it on their hands and knees with real conviction, to literally wash the feet of the needy.
Good luck with that!
Right. So they’ve pretty much blown it.
Harder than that they would need to also call the English nation to repentance.
But people, the English included, more often prefer to be flattered than confronted by their shortcomings.
The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?
Welby publicly attacked every aspect of his church’s tradition and doctrine. He thought its centuries-old depictions of God were too white. He thought its parishoners were all racist. He decided to ban its ministers from entering their churches during COVID. He denied the Anglican doctrine of marriage. He thought it right that the slavery sins of some great great great great great grandfathers be visited upon the distant cousins of their children today. On and on went his criticisms and upending of biblical teaching.
There was not one aspect of the church he would defend to save its reputation. With one exception: a paedophile. How odd that a man so at ease with criticising his church and its members, so confident to judge others on radio and television, could not muster the same zeal to see a monstrous man brought to justice. But then again, all Welby has done is yet again invite criticism of his church. He’s undermined the church one last time.
They say the purpose of an organisation is what it does, not what it claims to do. If that’s true of leaders, then the Old Etonian has served his purpose: he’s decimated the flock, ruptured the Anglican Communion overseas, and shredded its reputation at home. Mission accomplished.
Well said.
It’s like he has been an agent of Satan, who is also able to quote the Scriptures.
Every aspect of the church’s tradition and doctrine? That seems like the weird kind of overstatement that sadly have become far to common n the digital age. I have never seen Welby deny the incarnation, the resurrection, the ascension, the miracle of tongues at Pentecost, the walking on water, the turning water into wine, the virgin birth and the return of Christ in glory to judge the living and the dead. Shouldn’t he at least have attacked some of those in order to attack every doctrine and tradition of the Church?
What is it they say about good intentions and the road to hell?
In fairness, he probably thinks he means well with his guidance on affirming primary age children’s gender identity and so on. But this episode has revealed both his personal moral bankruptcy and that of the institution he heads up.
This is a textbook case of the best definition of “virtue signalling” I’ve ever seen: doing bad behind the façade of being good.
A man with immense institutional power who lectures us on our moral responsibility for historical events we were no part of, but refuses to act on the evil happening right under his nose is more than just a common or garden hypocrite.
The hazard of ‘virtue signalling’ was explicitly warned of – two thousand years ago!
Matthew Chapter 7: Verses 3-5
King James Version
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
Of course, it’s much easier to he a cosplay Christian.
Yes, it’s amazing how much bad ideology we would be saved from if people took the words of Christ seriously. Not the purpose of the words of course, but a side effect very useful to ensure a cohesive society unburdened by meaningless mimetic BS.
Jesus was especially hard on hypocrites.
Right, the man is evil.
‘Many will wonder where the Church of England goes from here‘.
Ask 100 people in the street and most will likely ask why the Church of England goes on at all.
‘Cleaning house is far from straightforward‘. Indeed, as Jesus of Nazareth said in one of His parables, the house can be swept and garnished, but if something good doesn’t live there, something far worse than the original disorder will take up residence.
Some are very clear what form the cleaning of the C of E should take. There must be a reformation! As though this hasn’t already largely been completed. The liberals think about gay sex and the progressives seek diversity.
It’s the Christian believers who are mis-subcategorised as evangelicals ‘who have a demon’, a psychologist declares. Much in the same way that Jesus of Nazareth was described by some contemporaries. But at the same time, didn’t Jesus cast out demons?
The Christian believers mis-subcategorised as evangelicals (would the ‘problematic’ Apostle Paul have endorsed this factionalism of the flesh?) are those least likely to become suggestible. They will not easily become like a jelly poured into a mould. Not easily turn from a block into a fish or a flower, or whatever else is the shape of the environment – the mould – such as a rainbow.
For the evangelicals, gay marriage is a stumbling block and priestesses of the Church are a folly. But the Christian – the person who has a trusted Christ – preaches Christ and Him crucified.
The liberals and progressives would be happier in the United Reformed Church. Evangelicals have other, better places to be. The CoE has outlived its usefulness. No longer serves a ffunction.Obsolete.
The CoE is no longer much of a church, more of a quaint pressure group. It has been systematically hollowed out and degraded in theological terms. It is out there at the forefront of every passing fad and every fashionable cause. And in the process of having shed whatever credibility it once enjoyed cannot now withstand the harsh glare of public scrutiny. Welby failed. As for the future, think of the CoE as the membership of Amnesty International at prayer.
All this comes with a warning.
On the face of this it looks like a consoling victory for the victims and, at one remove, the common congregation. But looked at another way it is quite plausibly another battle won by the permanent bureaucracy over the executive.
As much as Welby has been reduced, so has the office of Archbishop in all this.
Unless those unnamed ‘advisers’ who surrounded Welby and made possible the process of managerialist detachment within the church of England – the Bushey’s and the Greens of the See of Canterbury, who misled a Prince of the Church – are purged this could quite conceivably lead us only further into the mire.
The English used to have a very good nose for where power really lay in Church and State and were glad to se the Great Officers of State wield power in the common weal effectively.
The great Archbishop Stephen Langton was loved because he was a counterweight both, at different times, to an overmighty crown and to an overmighty church. Through his excercise of power as Archbishop of Canterbury the English people compelled a king to grant Magna Charta and a Pope to confirm it. He brought the King to Runnymede and kept the Papal Legate at Calais.
The executive in our own day must re-learn how to function as a bridle on the presumptions of the scribal conclave. It is the only historically proven solvent to the coagulating oligarchy which is once again strangling our public institutions.
What the English church needs is a Godly man on Augustines throne who knows how to wield power effectively. To speak as Christ spake in Matthew 23. It will be a pyhrric victory and another step in the road to Gehenna if after all this the chief outcome is that the office of Archbishop of Canterbury is made beholden.
“What the English church needs is a Godly man on Augustines throne who knows how to wield power effectively“. Where on earth are they going to find one of those?
At five past six yesterday evening, the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to keep the bishops in the House of Lords, with no one who had been elected as a Labour MP voting in favour of removal, and with 342 people in receipt of the Labour Whip voting for the status quo, along with seven who had either been suspended from that Whip or resigned it. But David Davis and Jim Allister were on the other side.
Making us all proud to be British, the Daily Mail is blaming Meghan Markle for Justin Welby. But assuming that he was not given a life peerage, then either his successor must be an opponent of assisted suicide, or Lord Carey, of the Peter Ball scandal, must resign. The House of Commons has just voted explicitly and overwhelmingly to keep Lords Spiritual. The manner of filling those apparently permanent seats in Parliament now needs to be revisited. The arrangements that have obtained since Gordon Brown was Prime Minister will not do.
They should have been kicked out of the Lords decades ago.
These bishops are the same people that pretend all faiths are equally valid and yet cling on to their special privileges (plus expenses) for being in the House of Lords. Some people – and religious leaders – are more equal than others …
Britain has never been an egalitarian society. Our political system presumes and requires the existence of a hereditary ruling class. We kicked out the Duke of St Albans and the Earl Ferrers in the name of abolishing hereditary privilege and and what do we get next? Jerusalem? Well no, we get Baroness Warsi, Lord Mandelson, and the like. The same but worse.
If the Lords spiritual were expelled tomorrow they would not be replaced by tribunes of the people but by an even more opaque and unaccountable permanent lobby.
The system must be made to work. It can’t be wished away.
“Welby is by many accounts a well-meaning and thoughtful man.” Oh, really? He pushed gender ideology, including the awful, vicious idea of “the trans child”, into Church of England schools. What could be worse? There is a connection between gender wokery, as Welby championed it, and pedophilic abuse. Welby should not just resign. He should be brought to court for the consequences of his actions and inactions.
If their rate of decline is any indication this is the last generation to sustain the CoE anyway.
You are being too kind to Pope Francis. You might want to ask to have a conversation with Damian Thompson about the extent to which Francis has been and still is involved in much worse than Welby has been accused of both before and after his elevation to the papacy.
But he’s a Catholic, so much less is expected of him.
Will Justin Welby’s exit restore the Church’s credibility?
Does anyone actually care?
Does anyone contend the answer is anything other than “no”? The Church is fatally holed below the waterline.
Welby is a scapegoat. The crowds cheer for his head while those actually responsible walk free. Performative justice is no justice at all.
Justice must be done somewhere and with somebody. Otherwise, settle for moral relativity and have a good time, y’all.
We can hardly be surprised. The Chuch’s leaders have been promoting a group famous for their paedophilia for years so they are not likely to be the sort to actually try to stop it!
Christian priests are “a group famous for their paedophilia”, and that’s the group Christian bishops are promoted from.
Goodness, I haven’t noticed Popes stepping down even though the Roman Catholic Church has had massive problems of child abuse. But I’m not sorry to see Welby go because he was ultra-woke which was infuriating.
The pope before last resigned.