Authority and Abuse

Recent abuse scandals both in the Church of England and in other church contexts have been hard to read about. It should go without saying that bullying leadership shouldn't have a place in the church - yet many will know that it's pretty rampant. Chris Green has written thoughtfully on why that might be.

It got me wondering about something. In many of the current cases there seems to have been something about authority and its abuse. And that's in some ways a surprising thing to me in the 21st Century in the UK.

By and large what we have been seeing in the UK has been a breakdown in authority. It's probably across the board. There is discussion about attitudes to police and teachers. We no longer talk about the old professions with respect. The educated and knowledgeable are doubted and undermined.

It's probably fair to say that many pastors and ministers would have an experience similar to mine. Where once the vicar might have been someone to look up to, to listen to and to respect, they are by and large ignored, marginalised and mocked - even in ther own churches. I have relatively recently seen it, where someone who, as far as I can see, is a competent, godly and hard-working minister has faced the snide comments, the undermining public comments and attitudes and so on. Interestingly, into the current situation Steve Kneale has written briefly and thoughtfully about that kind of experience.

Now if that's right, you might expect that it is less easy to be an abusive leader of a church. Almost by definition your congregation have a cultural bent to not take you very seriously, even to oppose you. Perhaps, in other ways, that opens the door to abusers. They are able to argue that "strong leadership" is necessary and maybe they are able to set up an "us" against the world dynamic. Perhaps calls for the need for loyalty and counter-cultural Christian community are more persuasive. I don't know, I'm no psychologist!

However, what it makes me think is that maybe we are ending up with an unhealthy polarisation on authority. On the one side, there are shepherds who are bullied by their sheep and on the other sheep who are bullied by their shepherds. Both are, of course, wrong (see e.g. Ezk. 34, Mark 10:42-45; 1 Pet. 5:1-4;  Heb. 13:17). I'm sure there are so many churches which are much healthier than this, but I'm struck that for a number of years I heard much more about the ministers who were bullied, health broken and pushed out. Now we're hearing more about the bully-boy shepherds.

I don't have obvious solutions. There are, of course, questions about our views of church government, questions about our implementation and the inevitable realities of the sinfulness of our human hearts. As an Anglican, I would want to see both a healthy return to biblical and not pragmatic nor sub-biblical understandings of the role of deacons, presbyters and bishops (amongst others!) - and by biblical I would mean a more full-orbed biblical and systematic theological understanding of the church and it's leaders. We also have a pretty extensive history and tradition to help us reflect (on both the good and the bad!). I think it would be good for us.

I suspect there needs to be more effort on applying that theology too. Not just in a token way, but in a real way.

I'm sure that's not enough. Nor would it prevent future problems. But perhaps it would be a start.