THE “immensely destructive” use of social media is among the many aspects highlighted in a latest review of trust and trustworthiness within the Church of England.
In addition to “major and traumatising breaches of trust” which have arisen from racism, sexual abuse, and issues regarding Living in Love and Faith, the review warns that distrust is “pervasive” within the Church. It diagnoses a “viral sense of despondency” amongst clergy, warns of heightened tribalism, and calls for an account of the Church “that’s so compelling as to dispel the implicit overarching narrative of decline”.
The review, Trust and trustworthiness throughout the Church of England (GS Misc. 2354), was begun by the Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, the Rt Revd Martin Seeley, in 2022, in response to issues that emerged during his work on the Transforming Effectiveness programme (News, 16 July 2021). He was asked by the Emerging Church of England Steering Group (a body comprising representatives of the Archbishops’ Council, the Church Commissioners, and the House of Bishops) to explore “how we repair and preserve trust within the Church’s organisation and structures”.
He was supported by a small task group: the Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus on the University of Cambridge, Professor David Ford; the Dean and Professor of Strategy on the University of Bristol Business School, Professor Veronica Hope Hailey; and Gordon Jump, a project manager on the National Church Institutions. A bigger reference group was also gathered.
Over the past two years, Professor Hope Hailey conducted interviews with 20 laity and clergy, who were nominated by “a handful of diocesan bishops”. The focus was on those that “work with varied complexities and challenges within the Church but need to ascertain high-trust working environments”.
The 49-page review concludes that “pervasive yet patchy distrust is manifest in other ways across the Church”, but that distrust is “most profoundly evident” in “the key and traumatising breaches of trust which were of deep concern to the General Synod and lots of inside and outdoors the Church”.
“Racism, sexual abuse and issues regarding Living in Love and Faith all deeply affect the life and witness of the Church,” it says. “The serious breaches of trust and a few of the profoundly inadequate ways they’ve been responded to, when it comes to processes, procedures and decision making, are themselves acute manifestations of a wider culture of distrust.”
It asks: “Why is the Church not, by its very nature, modelling higher behaviour and practice?”
The “harm of social media” was a recurrent theme in conversations and group discussions, the review reports. “While accepting its remarkable value in connecting people and sharing information, the behaviour inside and outdoors the Church of posting comments without regard for those about whom or to whom we’re writing has turn out to be an immensely destructive behaviour in using social media. It is as if we feel we’re in some way protected against the results of verbal unkindness, and even cruelty, simply because we are usually not standing in front of the person about whom we’re writing.”
It continues: “This is way more complex than ‘Please be nicer to 1 one other online’, nevertheless. What some readers receive as hurtful and disparaging, the creator and their allies may imagine to be words spoken with integrity, prophetically difficult a culture they feel called to talk against. This difference of interpretation is painfully complex. We value freedom of speech, and disagreement mustn’t be a matter for censure. . .
“Yet we all know that individuals may be deeply hurt by what they encounter online, and our priority to not cause harm should sit foremost in our mind. Attacks on views we imagine to be incorrect needs to be confined to the opinions expressed and never to the person. And yet in a world where people’s identities are so intertwined with their deeply held views, is such safely targeted critique even possible? We are on very difficult terrain once we embark on such debates online without the face-to-face fullness of in-person discussion, and we must always tread exceedingly fastidiously.”
Social media can also be touched on in a bit on access to information, with the warning that, “through our indiscriminate use of social media we’re at risk of becoming silly in our judgement of where to position our trust.”
The review includes quotes from unnamed interviewees, similar to: “ “It can be an interesting exercise in spiritual direction, wouldn’t it, to say to all of us on social media, to everybody who’s form of a keyboard warrior . . . what if each tweet and each single thing you ever said In your lifetime, was gathered into one piece of paper or document and you’re asked to take a seat down with Christ and skim it.”
The review places its reflections on trust against a wider backdrop of a Church under stress. Ministry within the twenty first century may be “a lonely, unaffirmed, contested and resource-starved experience for a lot of clergy”, it observes. “This sense of declining affirmation from wider society can’t only prompt a viral sense of despondency but in addition an excessively critical and negative evaluation of the institution and its leaders, almost as if a default position of distrust is a security protection for a lot of clergy from the possible disappointment from trusting an excessive amount of. This prompts too many narratives and discourses within the national Church about decline and distrust.”
There are, it says, “high levels of distrust between individuals”, including between parish priests and bishops. “Often that’s because an individual doesn’t feel known or understood by those in senior roles, or those in senior roles have turn out to be perceived as not making decisions which have the nice of others at heart. As resources have been stretched, historic deference — itself in fact problematic, as we all know from serious safeguarding incidents — seems to have given solution to distrust.”
Distrust also exists between peers, it says, including throughout the National Church Institutions and among the many bishops.
While acknowledging failures by the Church’s leadership, the review is critical of an inclination to “other” parts of the Church as a “faceless entity”, noting that “we’re all too aware of conversations where an amorphous group — ‘the diocese’, ‘the bishops’ and even just ‘they’ — are held answerable for the difficulty we’re in.”
It suggests that “mistakes of ability or competence mustn’t be afforded the identical level of attention as breaches of integrity or morality”, and observes that, “when asked about obligations of followers to leaders, whilst a number of clergy spoke about respect, compassion, at all times seeing leaders as human, unless prompted, only a few spoke about forgiveness.”
Another recurrent theme in interviews and conversations was “the expansion of groupings around church tradition, known by some as ‘tribal groups’ . . . where the inner narrative of a gaggle becomes self-reinforcing and more powerful when it comes to shaping identity and a way of security than any overarching narrative in regards to the whole Church of England”.
While acknowledging that “groups like these are certain to exist, for theological and operational reasons”, the review speaks of a must be certain that “identifying with a selected group doesn’t supersede identification with the general mission and purpose of the Church of England, nor negate the potential for people of 1 disposition learning from and valuing people of various dispositions”.
Among the concerns raised are that “ordination training and the several perspectives of theological education institutions bake on this tribal division”. It recommends that “substantial effort” be made to be certain that candidates “have developed a deep understanding and empathy for other traditions, recognising that each one make up the entire that’s the Church of England”.
The diagnosis of a culture of distrust throughout the Church echoes other recent reports. Last 12 months, the report of the governance review spoke of “a culture of mistrust which harms the status and effectiveness of the Church and diminishes its prophetic voice” (News, 7 July 2023).
A wave of anxious, often offended, responses to the consultation on revision to the Mission and Pastoral Measure (News, 2 July 2021) prompted the Church Commissioners to warn that “re-establishing relationships and constructing trust” have to be a priority for those leading reforms under the “Emerging Church” programme (News, 28 January 2022).
The following 12 months, the Chote Review of Strategic Development Funding said that it had served as a “lightning rod” for an absence of trust within the Church (News, 11 March 2022), while the brand new diocesan funds review, published last week, warned that a “lack of transparency and clarity about how resources are held, used and shared” was undermining trust (News, 21 June).
Bishop Seeley and his colleagues warn that serious breaches of trust “will take a long time to heal and deserve considered and reverent repair”, and conclude that “real culture change throughout the organisation requires a shift in everyone’s attitudes and behaviours, which together over time effect the transformation”.
The paper will likely be discussed at next week’s meeting of the General Synod, where members will likely be asked to assist shape its recommendations.
