17th November 2024
Let's Talk About Safeguarding
This Sunday is designated as Safeguarding Sunday in the Church of England, and, this year, comes in the aftermath of the harrowing Makin report into the abuse committed over many years by John Smyth in the context of church and the total inadequacy of the Church's response to that abuse and to the past and ongoing suffering of his victims. Following several days of speculation in the national news, as I write, the Archbishop of Canterbury has just tendered his resignation over his handling of the issue.
This is not the first time that the institutional Church has been found to be at best lacking, at worst deliberately obfuscating, when clear harm has been done. Victims and survivors complain that they are not listened to, that when they talk to the appropriate people about abuse they have suffered, nothing is done, and that the Church's response to their abuse, far from being healing, effectively re-traumatises them. We know that all abuse, in whatever context it is perpetrated, has serious and long-term consequences for people's physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. Surely the Church can and must do better!
One of the factors which has been shown to perpetuate abuse is a culture of silence and secrecy. A culture of silence is a defended culture where powerful, often unaccountable, voices decide who will be heard and who will not. Those who speak against the prevailing culture are ostracised, marginalised, made to feel as if they are a lone voice in the wilderness. A consistent recommendation of the many, many reports into church-based abuse is to change a defended culture of silence and secrecy into an undefended culture where quiet voices are heard and authority is accountable and open to question.
And so "Let's talk about it!" is a good tag line for this year's Safeguarding Sunday. Let's be a church who reject surface uniformity where conflicts and dissensions are buried and who are prepared to do the hard work of listening and talking and continuing to listen and talk, even when the contents of that conversation are painful and hard to hear. Let's be a church where people who think differently are not just tolerated but welcomed. Let's be a church where we rejoice in rather than chafe at our structures of accountability, because those boundaries enable us to live together safely. Let's be a church where we raise problems as they arise rather than sweep them under the carpet.
On this Safeguarding Sunday, I would like to thank our Safeguarding Team at HTSJ, Ruth, Pete and Sue, for their thoughtful, careful work. And to remind us, as I know Ruth would if she were writing this, that all of us are responsible for safeguarding.
If you have been affected by any of the issues in the Makin report, support is available. There are links to organisations who can help on our Safeguarding page, or please do contact me or speak to one of our Safeguarding team.
