“The fight for trust is the battle that defines our age.” So said Sir Keir Starmer to his supporters moments after Rishi Sunak conceded defeat.
This was not news to those that attend or follow General Synod. It was once that you simply would hear a number of mutterings of dissent within the corridors, but more currently members have articulated their concerns publicly in questions and speeches. That the variety of written questions submitted by members has greater than doubled over the past five years is a tangible manifestation of those decreasing levels of trust.
In 2023, the Rt Hon Sir David Lidington, Chair of the Project Board examining the governance of the Church of England, told General Synod, “Let me be frank, having never previously been involved in Church governance, I actually have been personally shocked by the depth of resentment and mistrust that pervades relationships between different organisations, traditions and folks throughout the Church family. Governance reform is not going to by itself deliver the cultural change needed, but it could actually help. Without governance reform, I think it is going to be very hard to beat mistrust.”
He pointed to the 2022 Governance Review Group’s Report which he said set out “a confusing lack of clarity over who was liable for decisions … pervading all the pieces, an absence of transparency with a plethora of committees, subcommittees, commissions and boards, a bureaucratic tangle during which it was almost not possible to take even urgent decisions clearly and quickly, or to carry decision-takers to account”.
The day after Keir Starmer took office, the Church of England’s General Synod listened to a presentation from Professor Veronica Hope Hailey, Dean of the University of Bristol Business School. She is a co-author of the recent report, “Trust and Trustworthiness within the Church of England”.
Professor Hope Hailey offered 4 criteria by which individuals judge the trustworthiness of leaders: ability, benevolence, integrity and predictability. Of the 4, a breach of ability or competence is the simplest to repair, because nobody expects anyone to be perfect. However, when there’s doubt about whether those asking you to trust them have your best interests at heart or share your values or when they provide conflicting messages, trust quickly vanishes.
The 2024 report found, “Pervasive yet patchy distrust is manifest in alternative ways across the Church,” and that “the foremost and traumatising breaches of trust which have been of deep concern to the General Synod and lots of, inside and outdoors the Church, have brought profound and sustained breakdowns of trust into the lifetime of the Church”. The report lists “racism, sexual abuse and issues regarding Living in Love and Faith as amongst the problems that deeply affect the lifetime of the church”. To which might be added the choice by the Church of England to shut churches throughout the Covid lockdown, somewhat than campaign to have them designated as an ‘essential service’.
A survey carried out by the Catholic Union found that 62 percent of individuals said that their physical or mental health had been affected by church closures and that 90 per cent consider church buildings shouldn’t have been closed. The clergy felt isolated during Covid. They felt helpless as they sought to look after their dispersed, and increasingly depressed flocks, with none assistance from ‘the centre’. They were left confused by the insinuation that the Church prioritised the physical needs of parishioners over their spiritual health.
When the Church of England carried out a survey about Covid in 2021, people weren’t given a possibility to say whether or not they thought the choice to shut the churches had been right or fallacious. Instead, the wisdom of those that made the choice was taken without any consideration and so they placed the responsibility on the parishes to resolve the issue that had been created. The key takeaway being,”This is now a critical time for churches to have interaction with the individuals who have drifted away during lockdown”. This caused many to query the competence and benevolence of those on the ‘centre’.
The local Parochial Church Council (PCC) can see the empty pews and are doing their best. They may see the roof that needs repairing and the demands from the diocese to extend their parish share, reach Net Zero targets and enter into discussions with the neighbouring churches about sharing a vicar. All too often it seems the issues are created by those with the facility after which those on the bottom are expected to clear up the mess. Is it any wonder that trust levels are falling and that the Save the Parish campaign is gaining influence amongst the grassroots?
And then there are the ‘big issues’ of safeguarding and the fiasco surrounding the Living in Love and Faith process.
Last July, General Synod watched on as a presentation from the Archbishops’ Council concerning the sacking of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) descended into chaos. Standing orders, of the procedural type, were traded in an try to hear from those that had lost their jobs. When Mr Reeves, a former member of the ISB was finally in a position to speak, he said that one in all the challenges of working with the Church had been language. The Church had a special understanding of the word “independence”: “They mean semi-detached.” When they discuss “trust”, “they mean obedience,” he said, and once they discuss “communication”, “they mean loyalty.”
Similarly, the ‘Questions’ were much more heated than usual, with various people enquiring whether the choice of the Archbishops’ Council to sack the ISB had been unanimous or not. While the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested it may not have been, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, stated otherwise.
Twelve months later and the Archbishop of York had cause to make what he described as a “a small correction to the record”. It turned out that the vote had not been unanimous in any respect, with 4 voting against the choice and 4 abstaining. “I spoke incorrectly,” he told General Synod, “and since it has been identified to me, I desired to take this chance to apologise.”
It seems extraordinary that a matter of ‘fact’, which could easily have been checked immediately against the minutes, has taken twelve months to be ‘corrected’. In that point General Synod has met twice and the Archbishops’ Council has met on quite a few occasions. Whether it was an absence of competence, benevolence or integrity – there isn’t any doubt that an organisation will find it hard to regain trust when the recollection of their senior leaders about essential matters is so unpredictable.
In February 2023 the Archbishop of York told the world, “It has been an extended road to get us up to now. For the primary time, the Church of England will publicly, unreservedly and joyfully welcome same-sex couples in church.”
Eighteen months later and standalone services have yet to be commended. There have been wranglings over doctrine, legal advice and transparency. Frustration has been voiced concerning the House of Bishops’ continual flip-flopping but in the long run it comes all the way down to trust. What the Bishop of Bath and Wells described as “a gloss that I just don’t think will do”, lay member of Synod, Aneal Appadoo, said more plainly, “I for one feel I actually have been tricked.”
The ‘Trust and Trustworthiness within the Church of England’ report offers some advice about how the Church of England might turn out to be trustworthy again, nevertheless it also warns: “Occasionally all these efforts to reset the culture, values and behaviours are still inadequate and the institution may fail over time to recuperate. Roy Lewicki (2017) has called this the Humpty Dumpty syndrome. As the nursery rhyme tells us: All the King’s horses and all of the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. In these grave circumstances a public sector organisation is commonly broken up, merged into other departments or relaunched as a separate structure with a special remit. In the private sector, a business may not recuperate from the impact upon its fame.”
There is actually deep theological division throughout the Church of England, and the flexibility, benevolence, integrity and predictability of leaders could also be briefly supply, but one thing on which everyone can agree is that there’s eggshell wherever you step.
Susie Leafe is director of Anglican Futures, which supports orthodox Anglicans within the UK.
