Guest Post: The Gospel Comes with a PR Consultant…

From time to time, a combination of events, relationships, the things I’m reading, and wondering about, combine to make me think I want to do a guest post, or even write something myself. The recent publication of the Makin Review – and I would strongly recommend if even with no other reason than hearing the vital and painful voices of the survivors, that folk read it – has led to a flurry of comment. I present below an anonymous guest post that brings a perspective from a brother in Christ, that I hope will be heard…

 

 

In 2020 it was reported that the Titus Trust – which ran the Iwerne camps at the heart of the John Smyth abuse scandal – had hired a PR consultant, one that specialises in ‘crisis PR, litigation, and reputation management.’ Reputations matter, and the Titus Trust was willing to pay an awful lot to protect theirs.

 

They matter so much, in fact, that ‘reputation’ or ‘reputational’ can be found twenty-seven times in the Makin Report. Time and again the reader is informed that the horrific cover-up was carried out – at least in part – to protect the reputation of Iwerne and the wider conservative evangelical constituency. A few examples serve to illustrate this…

 

P.62 [note the internal referencing system of Makin – good for verifying things]

P.82 

P.95 

I could list more, but the damning point is self-evident. For a moment though, let us step back from the Makin Report and look more broadly on this idea of reputational management. I am neither a part of the CofE, nor ever a part of the Iwerne camps. But I have spent time in this constituency. At university I was very involved at one of the flagship evangelical Anglican churches. I got to know big names in this world, and attended my share of Iwerne recruitment afternoon teas, and talks or events run by their staff and speakers.

 

At this church, itself led by a Iwerne old boy, reputations mattered. The ‘right sort’ were looked after: given attention, extra roles, and interest from senior leaders. The ‘wrong sort’ were disregarded, often with disastrous spiritual effects. I saw many spiritually confused students tossed by the wayside. I myself muddled along as a misfit in this system. I’d grown up in a good church, but not the right kind [Ed – non-Anglican] of church (I was pushed to attend a local Anglican church plant in the holidays, rather than my home church of eighteen years. I declined, to disapproval.) I’d attended a very good [Ed – Ofsted is not the point here] school, but not the right kind of school (only a Lymington school? For shame!) I wasn’t the right sort, and as such I was very much on the outside. But if you were the right sort, you were fast tracked. If you were the right sort, you were of interest to the Senior Minister (we spoke only once during my degree, a brief greeting in passing in the street.) If you were the right sort, you were awarded prestigious (unpaid) internships in the church, or training years with Titus Trust in Oxford, or one of the other big Anglican churches. It’s the ‘right sort’ who went on to the ‘right’ seminaries, to train for ordination and carry on the mission.

 

And all the while this machine kept whirring, damage limitation occurred. The reputation was protected. Accusations against the church leadership were quashed, concerns about summer camp leaders quietly shut down. Even those who questioned the behaviour or culture in the church (female students, for example, could volunteer in the kitchen, but couldn’t formally help with packing away chairs post-service) were managed out, some even being moved on to other churches.

 

Reputations matter. In these conservative evangelical circles, they can work to your advantage. If you’re the ‘right sort’ then you’ll go far. But what can’t be allowed is for reputations to be tarnished: the work must go on, because the work is essential!

 

The mission of Iwerne was evangelising future leaders, not just of the church but of society more widely. Such lofty ambitions not only justified their narrow focus on certain elite schools but also legitimised (to many) their decision to bury certain “harmful” stories. The reputation had to be protected because the work was too important.

So too my university church. We were often told that, as students at one of the best universities in the country, we had a duty to use our God-given gifts in paid ministry, and the church was uniquely placed to act as a “training school” for three years. They saw their job not as a local church family, but as a finishing school for the right sort. And the reputation had to be protected, for their work was simply too important.

 

Much of the response to Makin seems to have followed this principle, reflecting earlier cases such as the response to the 31:8 Jonathan Fletcher review. The reputation is safeguarded, either through silence, or through a a few select and very limited statements that legally protect individuals and institutions, even if they don’t quite present the whole truth. After all, reputations matter and so the truth can – like those poor souls who suffered at the hands of the likes of Smyth and Fletcher – simply be disregarded, right?

 

Writing in the Spectator last week, Isabel Hardman made a wonderfully astute observation.

Isabel is spot on. This is not just a structural issue, it is a theological one. The prioritisation of reputation management centres the human agent, and the human activity, subordinating God’s own role. Without this ministry, or that church, people group x or y will simply go unreached, and the mission will falter!

 

How woefully small a view of God we must hold if we believe that to be true for a second. The notion that souls would not be saved, churches would not be built, and missions would never have been undertaken if WE had not acted in our specific way is laughable. It is the wonderful promise of Jesus himself to his apostle Peter that: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt 16:18.) For those who proclaim a protestant theology, it would be utterly perverse to subvert that proclamation. “You are Peter, and on this rock you will build your church…” For whose name would that church proclaim? Whose reputation would that church promote? “Iwerne will build Iwerne’s church?” Put like this, such a statement is not only laughable but blasphemous.

 

Yet a church, or a ministry, concerned above all things with the management of its own reputation will subtly shift the Gospel out of the centre. With the wonderfully good news of a God who so loved the world that he willingly sacrificed his one and only Son for the sake of sinners like you and me moved just out of the centre ground, well, we are able to play a little loose with the truth, able to bury inconvenient stories, or ignore wounded sheep.

 

This is a theological issue with two major implications. Firstly, as Isabel Hardman identifies: such a perspective subordinates God to sinful humanity. The men (primarily) who manage these ministries are in charge, and the Lord should take a back seat and be grateful these noble folk have set aside the promise of glorious secular careers to carry on the work. But secondly, it simply adds to the message of the Gospel. You mustn’t just believe in Christ: you must be of the right sort to do so. You must engage with the right and approved churches to do so. You must acknowledge Mr. X and Rev. Y to be good eggs to do so. You don’t? oh, well we’re not sure how sound you really are…

 

This theological perspective is predicated on the ends justifying the means: we seek to influence influential people for the saving of souls. But when that presupposition justifies the concealment of the truth, the rejection of humility or the active support of vile abuse, then it effectively declares that the God of the universe needs our plans and purposes to be able to reach these influential people. If we truly believe in the sovereignty of the Lord, why would our next leaders come from just a handful of schools or churches? It is a fundamentally pragmatic theology, not a biblical one.

 

Such a twisted theology ought to be called out for what it is: toxic in its very nature and antithetical to the Gospel of Christ.

The Gospel does not need a PR Consultant. Why?

“For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved.“

– 1 Corinthians 1:18

 

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As well as the above, this anonymous blogger raised some interesting questions – which I [Tom, for the avoidance of doubt, the editor and runner-er of this blog] will continue to ponder as a non-Anglican now part of a Church of England church. It is offered/retained in this Guest Post in the spirit of a recent blog post.

One final question as I close. As they see a House of Bishops abandoning biblical teaching on sexuality and marriage, conservative evangelicals within the ‘Alliance’ in the Church of England are establishing a new and “separate” province within the CofE but protected from leaders with liberal theologies. Many of those involved in this project have been named outright in the 31:8 report into Jonathan Fletcher, or in Makin. Many of those involved in this project had knowledge of concerns raised at Christchurch Durham (concerns which have yet to be addressed by any within or without the church) or were involved in the rapid restoration of Christchurch Fulwood’s former minister to a ministry role at St Helen’s Bishopsgate, despite his cover-up and failure in handling a serious safeguarding incident in his own church. How then, with such figures involved, can we have any hope that this new province will be a safe place for the vulnerable and the hurt? How can we trust that safeguarding will be strictly observed, that concerns will be heard and responded to? Or will we simply get more of the same, more reputation management, more of ‘the right sort’ leading the charge? Christ promises that He is a safe place for all those who are weary and heavy-laden, all those who are ravaged by wolves and cast down by the powers of this world. If our systems and structures don’t provide that for the sheep, then I fear that the glorious Gospel we claim to preach will only still be pushed off-centre to make space for our own names, and our own reputations.

I’d point to a few other things to read around this.

• IVP Guest Post: Penal Substitution is the Antithesis of Spiritual Abuse [Ed. – a guest post at work that I think teases out some of the complexity of this issue]
• A blog post – Thinking Carefully about Spiritual Abuse. And, perhaps, some other thoughts.
• Psalm 55 – malice and abuse are present in God’s own city.
• A Book review – Celebrities for Jesus, by Katelyn Beaty. A prescient book worth reading to try and think about some of the issues at play in evangelical culture.
• A simple comment – Don’t Keep Secrets (This is actually a blog post)