After the shock announcement of Justin Welby on Tuesday that he is to resign, following his handling of allegations of abuse by the prolific abuser John Smyth, the hunt begins for the next Archbishop Canterbury, Primate of All England and head of the Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Justin announced on Tuesday that he would step down in due course, after the damning 251-page Makin review published last week found a “distinct lack of curiosity” into allegations around John Smyth QC among senior church leaders including Welby, “and a tendency towards minimisation of the matter”. Accounts the report carefully pieced together “conclude that Smyth had subjected” around 115 boys and young men in the UK and southern Africa “to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks” over around 40 years.
Yet the task is a daunting one. So split is the Church of England over issues of sexuality, and specifically gay unions, that this issue is believed to be behind the failure to agree nominations for a number of episcopal roles. And so angry are the various factions over Welby’s attempts to reach out to both sides that both liberal and conservative clerics were involved in calling for him to go.
Both liberal and conservative clerics were involved in calling for him to go
Because Welby came from the Evangelical wing of the Church, one might now expect an archbishop from the liberal wing. And yet if liberals hope for a leader who would conduct and promote gay blessings, or even usher in a liturgy for gay marriage, the Evangelicals, especially the conservative ones, who are traditionally enthusiastic funders of the Church’s mission, would likely break away as they have threatened to. And such a move would have knock-on effects on the more conservative and already fragile Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Welby brought admirable qualities to the seat of Canterbury. He stood in a marked contrast to his charming, if somewhat other-worldly, polymath of a predecessor, Rowan Williams. Here was plain-speaking man who came from the world of business. When he was installed in 2013, this was a breath of fresh air: the world was still reeling from the global financial crisis and struggling to find the words to challenge the money men who had plunged so many people into poverty without being held accountable for it. Welby spoke the language of finance confidently and could cut through their jargon to raise basic questions of right and wrong. This ability led to his being invited, while Bishop of Durham, on to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
What kind of Church uses NDAs?
His openness was also commendable. First he spoke of his and his wife’s devastation at the death of their first child Johanna in a car crash in infancy. Then he opened up out his difficult childhood and his struggles with depression. Commendably he coped publicly with the revelation that the man who raised him had not been his biological father. In these ways he has not been a distant figure but one who was prepared to make himself vulnerable, perhaps to show the depth of his faith in, and need for, God.
He was happy to go against the flow of public opinion, first welcoming a Muslim Syrian family to Lambeth Palace at the height of the refugee crisis, and more recently attacking the Conservative Government’s its plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda. In calling the plan “the opposite of the nature of God” in his Easter 2022 sermon, he restored dignity to the idea of godliness and, by implication, shame to ungodliness.
Yet his clear thinking and clear speaking did not seem to be reflected seen in the wider leadership of the church. He said he was “horrified” to learn from a television documentary that non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) were being used to silence people raising complaints of racism within the Church, and would write to bishops to tell them to stop. Had he not known what his bishops were up to? And what kind of Church uses NDAs?
Welby’s resignation alone cannot dismantle the culture and structures that enabled the cover-up
Welby forged a refreshing friendship with Pope Francis, which was most clearly seen on their joint visit to South Sudan in 2023. Yet he and his fellow bishops could have learnt more from their Catholic counterparts, given the scandals from the other side of the Tiber: namely that silence is seen as complicity; and that abuse – or failing to prevent it – puts public opinion squarely on the side of the victims; and victims should be met and taken very seriously. No matter that some Catholic bishops’ responses have been far worse, in some cases knowingly moving abusive priests to a new parish where they continue to abuse, and even committing the abuse themselves in the cases of the late Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien and the now-laicised former Cardinal-Archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick.
With Welby the bar has been raised. Even though he commendably increased the number of safeguarding experts at Lambeth Palace, being insufficiently curious and failing to follow up with police became a resigning offence. His resignation announcement includes the line: “When I was informed [about the allegations against Smyth] in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow.” Should leaders of institutions be scratching their heads over which issues they have been insufficiently curious about?
The report also faults him and his team for “a distinct defensiveness” in response to a BBC news item about Smyth. This was not the time for defensiveness, but for humble and swift action.
Silence is seen as complicity, and abuse – or failing to prevent it – puts public opinion squarely on the side of the victims
The Archbishop of Canterbury is not a pope, but a first among equals, with little authority to boss bishops around. And yet in this age that demands clear lines of accountability for failings, he said he had to “bear personal and institutional responsibility” over abuse committed by a man who was not ordained, at camps run not by a Church of England body but by an independent charity. Smyth wielded huge influence over young men who were part of the CofE, and many of those whom the Makin review says knew about the allegations were Church of England clergy. The structures along which power flows in the Church of England are labyrinthine yet there is an acute need for them to be clearer. The report stresses that other people knew a lot more about Smyth’s abuse than Welby, and his resignation alone cannot dismantle the culture and structures that enabled the cover-up. The stepping back of Hampshire vicar Revd Sue Colman from her ministerial duties, and her husband, from his volunteering, whom the report said “had significant knowledge” of Smyth’s abuse, is a welcome first move.
The day after Welby’s appointment was announced in 2012, the BBC lost its director-general George Entwistle over the ongoing fall-out of the broadcaster’s handling of the scandal around the high-profile serial child abuser Jimmy Savile. Entwistle, facing MPs on the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, was criticised for “an amazing lack of curiosity” – that word again. He admitted that the way that the past “culture and practices of the BBC seems to allow Jimmy Savile to do what he did, will raise questions of trust for us and reputation for us, adding it is “a gravely serious matter and one cannot look back at it with anything other than horror”. His words could have echoed this week around the walls of Lambeth Palace, and it is to be regretted that they didn’t sooner. But how tragic that such costly scandals – unquantifiably costly to the victims first, and only second to the institutions through their own poor judgment – have happened again.
I wish Archbishop Justin well in his retirement, which will begin a few months sooner than he expected. The circumstances surrounding his resignation reflect as poorly on the clerics who covered up as they have on him. Denial in the Church will not bring Smyth’s victims healing.
Historically the Church has been likened to a ship, carrying the faithful through the storms of life. The battle for the helm needs to be calmed quickly if the Church is to keep itself afloat and repair any credibility as a moral guide through the issues of our day, most urgently the assisted dying vote.
Photo: Archbishop Welby. Credit: World Council of Churches.
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