The Makin report into abuse by John Smyth, barrister and Church lay reader, was leaked and landed a week ahead of its scheduled date, but still more than four years behind the original timetable.
Much of the content is familiar to anyone who read Andrew Graystone’s 2021 book Bleeding for Jesus.
Justin Welby had been at the same Iwerne Trust Christian camps for boys as Smyth, sometimes at the same time, and seems to have heard rumours well before 2013, when he became officially aware of the abuse. His response was to announce that he had taken advice, and would not resign as archbishop of Canterbury; then, less than a week later, he did.
Now what? As the process for finding a new archbishop begins, it is not clear who really runs the Church of England – is it the archbishops, the Archbishops’ Council, the bishops more widely, General Synod, or the secretary general of both General Synod and the Church of England, William Nye?
In the rush to discuss the succession, we must not forget the Makin report. When I started to read it, I had to take pauses because the information on John Smyth’s pattern of abuse is so upsetting. So are the intricacies of the complex cover-up performed by those in Smyth’s circle who knew all about it but put the reputation of their part of the church above the damage to individuals.
I was particularly struck by a report of those who knew what was going on, and were trying to contain it, holding a meeting in a layby so they would not be seen together.
For many people in the church, the details of gradual grooming of boys and young men leading up to horrific, sadistic abuse have come as a surprise. Many church members not personally affected by abuse have not read the transcripts of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) and prefer to look the other way when such abuse features in the news.
It’s difficult to face the fact that those who call themselves Christian can abuse, and it’s hard to believe anyone thought that silence was the right response. Those in the church hierarchy also preferred to believe it was all somehow under control – when it clearly was not.
So who knew what, when, and what did they do with that information? While a 1982 report into Smyth by Rev Mark Ruston was shared very selectively, awareness that Smyth “was not a good man” or advice on the lines of “I wouldn’t have anything to do with him if I were you” spread outside that inner circle.
The response was to raise money to export the “problem” – Smyth – to Africa, a move which Smyth cynically presented as a new opportunity sent by God.
The Makin report notes that Justin Welby was one of those who contributed. In Africa, inevitably, Smyth went on promoting his sick theology, in which he was the agent of God and being beaten by him was the route to holiness.
More boys suffered; one, Guide Nyachuru, died, and his funeral was taken by Smyth, who then used his influence to avoid the charge of culpable homicide.
This hideous abuse is by no means the only example of the Church of England damaging young people. One of the current “bold outcomes” named in the Church’s Vision & Strategy for the 2020s is “Doubling the number of children and young active disciples in the Church of England by 2030”.
Smyth’s self-promotion as a leader of the young, setting himself up as a substitute father, recalls other scandals which built on an appeal to young people: the Nine O’Clock Service, Bishop Peter Ball’s “Year for Christ” scheme, Gerald Coates’s Pioneer Trust and, most recently, Soul Survivor.
If the youth numbers are good, leaders can be fast-tracked to ordination and, as priests, become even harder to challenge.
And there is a further, sinister, aspect to all this. Some knew even more than Welby, but did even less; named in the report, they remain in influential positions in the church. Those who initially covered up Smyth’s abuse were trying to protect what they called “the work”; training future leaders for the church within their particular theology, known as conservative evangelicalism.
This operates with a very literal interpretation of the Bible, including complementarianism, in which women should be under the “headship” of a man.
Rejecting what is “feminine” or “vulnerable”, Smyth and his allies promoted “muscular Christianity”. He twisted this theology further, to reject bodies and focus on punishment as redemption.
Currently, through the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) and a larger grouping calling themselves The Alliance, conservative evangelicals oppose any same-sex relationships, as Smyth himself did.
The Alliance recently claimed that their churches contain the majority of all under-18s in the Church of England.
One of the groups in the Alliance network, Living Out, has just released the Kaleidoscope course aimed at 11- to 18-year-olds, which tells them they will go to hell if they are gay. This is presented as the “loving” thing to do for young people, giving a chilling slant to the CEEC’s official safeguarding policy which talks about creating a “loving environment”.
In parishes around our country, all of this seems a long way from the normal life of services, coffee mornings, food banks and community action, with a safeguarding officer trained in what to report and to whom.
While parochial church council members grumble about safeguarding training, they are often grateful to understand the bigger picture of deference and the abuse of power.
Parishes work with what they’ve got, and that includes people with different ideas about God, different ways of reading the Bible and different sexualities. This is what it should be like: a broad church working together to serve God through our fellow human beings.