The Church of England’s treatment of former school chaplain, Rev Dr Bernard Randall, deserves to be described as evil.
The Christian Legal Centre is rightly calling for Dr Randall to be restored to ministry after statutory authorities found that he didn’t pose a safeguarding risk.
But the Church of England must have backed him in 2019 over the sermon that led to him losing his job at Trent College, an independent school in Nottinghamshire with a protracted Anglican tradition.
Incredibly, the varsity referred Dr Randall to the federal government’s anti-terrorism programme, Prevent, for preaching a sermon to students during which he said they didn’t must agree with LGBT ideology.
Prevent, in addition to the local authority designated officer on safeguarding (LADO), the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA), and the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), all decided there was no need for motion against him. The Church, nevertheless, has left him and not using a bishop’s licence to minister since he was made redundant by the varsity in 2020.
On July 27, The Mail on Sunday reported on Dr Randall’s continuing exclusion from C of E ministry after the controversy over his sermon: “After falling right into a bitter dispute with the varsity’s bosses, he was sacked, then reinstated, only to be made redundant during Covid.
“Despite being cleared of wrongdoing, Dr Randall, who’s married with a daughter, was unable to get one other job within the Church.
“The Right Reverend Libby Lane, the Bishop of Derby – the Church’s first female bishop – refused to grant him a licence or permission to officiate because her safeguarding team decided he could pose a risk of harm to children. It raised concerns about how Dr Randall ‘would speak to and support someone who got here to him in the event that they were fighting their sexuality’.”
The paper reported on a gathering Dr Randall had in June with church officials in his local Diocese of Derby in an try and get his licence back. He met with CofE safeguarding adviser Lee Elliot and the Bishop of Repton, Malcolm Macnaughton.
The paper reported: “Bishop Malcolm read an announcement which claimed the chaplain remained a risk based on what he might say in future sermons. Mr Elliott referred to Dr Randall’s Christian beliefs as ‘your views’.
“Dr Randall responded by saying that his sermon reflected official CofE doctrine, not personal opinion. Mr Elliot went on to say that saying ‘things which can be controversial … could significantly result in harm’, before abruptly ending the meeting.”
How can anyone who has read even one among the New Testament Gospels suggest that followers of Jesus Christ mustn’t say “controversial” things? Matthew’s Gospel describes Jesus getting embroiled in controversy as soon as he was born. Matthew chapter two describes how the Holy Family needed to flee from Israel to Egypt since the Roman puppet King of Judea, Herod ‘the Great’ (c.72-c.4 BC), desired to have the infant Jesus killed. Herod, becoming increasingly paranoid as he aged, was convinced that public opinion might consider Jesus to be the rightful Jewish Messiah because Bethlehem, the Judean town where Jesus was born, had Messianic associations.
Matthew’s Gospel later describes the adult Jesus causing controversy with religious leaders in Galilee for going to a celebration with “sinners” (Matthew 9v10-11). Towards its end, Matthew’s Gospel records Jesus delivering a sermon during which he described the religious leaders in Jerusalem in these “controversial” terms:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the surface but on the within are filled with dead men’s bones and every part unclean. In the identical way, on the surface you appear to people as righteous but on the within you might be filled with hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthews 23v27-28 – New International Version).
Apart from one missing word, nobody has thus far described the C of E’s treatment of Bernard Randall more accurately than the chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, Andrea Williams. Calling for his reinstatement to ministry, she said:
“Rev Dr Bernard Randall has been cleared by every statutory safeguarding authority, yet the Church of England continues to treat him as a risk without presenting any evidence or allegations.
“This is a transparent abuse of process and a violation of his rights under each ecclesiastical and civil law. The Church must now act to correct this injustice and restore his ministry.”
The missing word is evil because that’s the precise term to explain the C of E’s weaponisation of safeguarding to exclude a minister who upholds Christ’s teaching on the exclusively heterosexual nature of marriage as Almighty God created it.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
