The Archbishop of Canterbury resigned over failures in the Church of England’s safeguarding, following the appalling revelations about the abuse committed by John Smyth, who was part of the Iwerne Camps—evangelical Christian holiday camps aimed at pupils from elite British boarding schools.
When Smyth was at the height of committing his terrible abuse in England in the late 1970s, I was a member of one of the 30 school Christian Unions handpicked by the Iwerne Trust to produce the future evangelical Christian leaders of the Church and the nation. Among the speakers were the reverends David and Jonathan Fletcher, John Eddison, Mark Ruston and Eric Nash (known as “Bash”)—the founder of the Iwerne Camps. We met in the sitting room of a housemaster who —for reasons I don't know—had been given a particularly homophobic nickname. He may simply have been a gay man—something at the time especially stigmatised in a largely male boarding school. When he died he left money to be divided between the school and the Iwerne Trust.
I was encouraged by teachers and speakers to go to the Iwerne Camps but demurred because the only girls who went were the attendees’ female relatives, who were there to cook for the boys. It didn’t seem right to me.
Reading the Makin Report into the Church of England’s handling of John Smyth was horrifying for its accounts of the abuse. But also horrifying personally because central figures in the cover-up were those same leaders my peers and I had heard from at school and knew we must respect. Mark Ruston led my confirmation retreat, and now I was reading that he was the author of a 1982 report on Smyth’s abuse and didn’t tell the police. David Fletcher and John Eddison were two of the seven original recipients of the Ruston Report, who subsequently negotiated with Smyth on stepping back from the camps and decided to conceal his criminal behaviour. Jonathan Fletcher, a member of the exclusive private dining club Nobody’s Friends, had his Permission to Officiate removed in 2017 by the Bishop of Southwark and has since been the subject of an extensive report by the independent Christian safeguarding charity thirtyone:eight. He is now facing criminal charges on eight counts of indecent assault and one of grievous bodily harm, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Much of the public-school evangelical ascendancy, and the “muscular Christianity” described in Makin’s report, is very familiar. As are the names of many other clergy mentioned. I feel I narrowly escaped. And now the archbishop has paid the price for his part in failing to protect those who did not escape.
It is notable though, that among the most vociferous in demanding that Justin Welby resign were groups that had been calling for months for him to go on theological grounds. This is almost entirely to do with his attempts to steer the Church of England through some kind of accommodation on same-sex relationships. One of these groups, the Church Society, published a profoundly passive-aggressive open letter the day before his resignation making clear its opposition to his continuing ministry on grounds of both alleged safeguarding failures and his theology on sexual relations and marriage. Well, whatever the right thing was for Justin Welby to have done in respect of the Makin Report, this coalition has its scalp now.
This highly organised grouping is, ironically, from a not dissimilar conservative evangelical theological background to that of Smyth and the Iwerne Trust. Its members deny that their views are homophobic. Instead, they assert that the only possible reading of scripture is that same-sex marriage, relationships and sexual activity are sinful. Some of them also hold that it is impossible for a woman to exercise oversight and leadership (including being the vicar) in a church. They have been prominent in recent elections to positions of influence in the church, including both national and local groups responsible for making nominations to the King for the appointment of diocesan bishops. In the 2021 elections to General Synod their briefing note to candidates advised that their statements “should be winsome and focused on the ‘middle ground’ voters”, that organised election teams “will be in a position to ensure that clergy and lay electors across the diocese who are orthodox evangelicals will know that they need to vote for you” and that their statements and hustings should not focus on “same-sex relationships/marriage, transgender, etc, women priests/bishops or abuse within the Church”. The same document specifically anticipates that electors might ask questions at hustings about historic abuse, including that of John Smyth.
It is widely held that conservatives have already blocked the appointment of two diocesan bishops, in Carlisle and Ely, because the candidates were insufficiently orthodox for enough members of the selection committee, which requires a two-thirds majority for a nominee to be chosen. In the case of Ely, half of the General Synod representatives on the nominations committee were conservative despite the diocese not having a particular tradition of being so. Those dioceses now have to wait more than a year for their turn to come around again in the selection process. The same group is perfectly capable, and has the power, to do the same thing repeatedly until they get their candidate selected.
So, I think Justin Welby’s resignation leaves the Church more uncertain than otherwise. It is logical to assume that this organised coalition will be mustering their tactics to have a conservative appointed to the See of Canterbury. Indeed, I suspect they've been doing it for months. They are likely to be supported in this by at least some conservative international members of the appointing committee, the Crown Nominations Commission, who, for the first time, have seats on that committee.
Without diminishing the seriousness of the Makin Report, it was undoubtedly a convenient hook upon which to hang Welby out to dry, and it has achieved the wider end of displacing him from the See of Canterbury. This will in turn displace him from being chair of the House of Bishops, joint chair of both General Synod (the Church’s parliament) and the Archbishops’ Council (the closest thing the Church has to an executive). General Synod is where the Prayers of Love and Faith—the not-a-marriage prayers given for same sex relationships—will or will not be finally authorised for use in standalone situations similar to weddings. At present, unlike wedding services, they must only be used as part of a regular Sunday-style service and not on their own. This must surely be something the archbishop hoped would have changed under his leadership before his original intended retirement date just over a year from now.
It's ironic that in his appalling abuse of young men, Smyth's behaviour may also have solidified his party’s hold on the theology of the Church of England for a decade or more.
