Justin Welby has resigned over the John Smyth sex, physical and psychological abuse scandal. Welby was not directly involved in the abuse but he knew about it and almost certainly covered it up to protect the institution and his cronies, although he has denied the cover-up and pleaded incompetence instead.
Other heads in the Church of England should probably roll but the ecclesiastical old boys’ network is undoubtedly circling the wagons.
Much as I have disagreed with Welby’s performance during his tenure, I feel rather sorry for the man. Based on his experience as an oil executive, he has tried to run the church as a business, and it hasn’t worked because the church is not a business.
Welby tried to bring reconciliation between irreconcilable parties by telling each what they wanted to hear, earning him the mantle of hypocrite rather than reconciler.
Who will go – and deserves to go – next, I wonder. The Pope?
From here:
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, resigned Tuesday after an investigation found that he failed to tell police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it.
Pressure on Welby had been building since Thursday, when release of the inquiry’s findings kindled anger about a lack of accountability at the highest reaches of the church.
“It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024,” Welby said in the statement announcing his resignation. “I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England, which I dearly love and which I have been honored to serve.”
Helen-Ann Hartley, the bishop of Newcastle, said Monday that Welby’s position was “untenable” after some members of the church’s national assembly started a petition calling on him to step down because he had “lost the confidence of his clergy.”
But the strongest outcry had come from the victims of the late John Smyth, a prominent attorney who abused teenage boys and young men at Christian summer camps in Britain, Zimbabwe and South Africa over five decades. Andrew Morse, who was repeatedly beaten by Smyth over a period of five years, said that resigning was a chance for Welby to start repairing the damage caused by the church’s handling of historical abuse cases more broadly.
“Welby was not directly involved in the abuse but he knew about it and almost certainly covered it up to protect the institution and his cronies, although he has denied the cover-up and pleaded incompetence instead.”
David, you are calling the man a liar. That cannot be right. Consider emending your text. Yes, I mean that.
Agree. The threshold for judging him to be a liar, rather than gracefully accepting his confession of incompetence, should be beyond possibility, beyond even plausible, but that closer to what is necessary for a verdict of guilt in a matter near being criminal. That is, beyond a reasonable doubt.
The BBC seems to be under the impression that Welby is bending the truth somewhat:
And from the Makin report:
From NBC:
Welby knew about the coverup in 2013. That’s not incompetence, it’s acquiescence and participation.
According to the 251-page report released last week, people who knew of John Smyth’s abuse in the early 1980s include prominent Evangelicals, e.g. Hugh Palmer, Michael Green, and George Carey … (Daniel Silliman, “Church of England Leaders Kept Evangelical Beatings Secret”, Christianity Today, November 12, 2024).
Gavin Ashenden thinks Welby is lying – and incompetent. Go to time 4:00.
WHAT EVERY BISHOP, not just Cantuar, should be thinking about:–
https://www.churchofengland.org/…/independent-review… It is very long, and includes the names of clergy involved in one way or another over decades.
TWO of these named clergy, MARK RUSTON and MICHAEL GREEN, were not just personally known to me, but significant in my life.
1. When my late husband and I were waiting to be married, he, coming out of Methodism not Anglicanism, was confirmed by the Bishop of Ely. That happened in 1961 in the Round Church in Cambridge. We settled on the Round as a compromise between his old church and Holy Trinity, where I had been nourished up in the Cambridge Pastorate founded by Charles Simeon.
2. Our Pastor was MARK RUSTON, an exemplary, fruitful man who preached so as to edify young graduates who were not new converts, but were seeking to grow in grace.
3. He became our personal friend.
4. We were married in the summer of 1962 in the Round Church by my Father. It was a special experience for him too, since in 1937 he was offered that parish as his first, but had refused it.
5. In 1976-77 when we were in Cambridge on sabbatical, with two young children, he was still Vicar and running a tight ship, including a flourishing child-friendly family service.
6. I believe that the whole Report shows that, commissioned as he was to do a real investigation, and subsequently reporting in 1982, MARK was consistently doing his best to take JOHN SMYTH out of circulation, but there was no effective mechanism within the C of E to implement his recommendations. “Church officers and others were made aware of the abuse in the form of a key report in 1982 prepared by the Reverend Mark Ruston. The recipients of that report participated in an active cover-up to prevent that report and its findings – including that crimes had been committed – coming to light. There is no excuse or good explanation that justifies that decision. Different – and
we strongly suspect better, for subsequent victims – outcomes would have followed had appropriate reports to the police and other statutory authorities been made then.”
7. MICHAEL GREEN never countenanced any form of immorality on his watch, in St. Aldate’s Oxford, or anywhere else.
8. He became our honorary assistant at Holy Trinity Vancouver when he moved here. He was desired by very many churches of various stripes, but we secured him and ROSEMARY because our Rector made the right moves in relation to the Diocese of New Westminster. Extraordinary growth ensued, necessitating our move to our present premises.
9. They became our personal friends.
10. He encouraged ROGER SIMPSON & URSULA to come and minister to us.
11. He backed to the hilt our refusal to compromise with any public and official promotion of vice in the Church of Jesus Christ.
12. This refusal became our still-unaltered Holy Trinity policy.
I believe that I’d go to the stake for the integrity of either of these two men.
I am praying that this C of E cataclysm will lead to some real repentance & reform in the Anglican Church of Canada. Our Church is in drastic decline, a handful of years away from extinction, having effectively parted company in sex-ethics with the whole Church Catholic spread out in time & space.
Mt. 5:27-32: https://www.linkedin.com/…/mt-527-32-dr-priscilla-turner/
https://www.linkedin.com/…/books-print-shorter-writing…/
Excellent information, Dr. Turner, thanks!
Many thanks for your encouragement. I’ve been dealing with this whole Anglican mess, as Christian and scholar, for well over 30 years now. It means everything to me to be useful.
I ought to mention that David kindly hosts all the books of which I am author/part author in free downloadable .pdf form here: https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/dr-priscilla-turner/