An open letter to Justin Welby

Dear Justin,

It was with heavy hearts that we read the long-awaited Makin report at the end of last week. It was, as it must be for anyone reading it, a painful experience, as horror after horror was exposed. For many of those directly involved in the events of the 1970s and 80s, those horrors have already ended at their death, to be subject to the endless mercy – and eternal justice – of the Lord.

For many of those, including John Smyth himself, that death came after 2013.

In 2013, by your own acknowledgement, you were aware of the horrific abuse perpetrated by John Smyth. You described this as ‘disclosable’, meaning, we assume, that the police should be informed. And yet you did not inform the police, nor ensure that anyone else had informed them. That is a serious failure of safeguarding, which in this instance ensured that prosecutions which might have taken place did not, and now, cannot.

More than this, in 2017, you offered publicly to meet with the victims of John Smyth, to hear their stories and understand their needs. Failure to follow up on this caused further pain and trauma to these people who had already suffered and continue to suffer so much. This is another failure of safeguarding, in which the needs of victims must be prioritised.

In addition to this, it is our understanding that another failure of safeguarding occurred while you were Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, in which a retired priest who was a convicted sex offender, continued to minister while the complainant was barred from the cathedral.

These failures of safeguarding would be sufficient for ANY ordained person to be suspended and investigated. If they were proved to be true, we would expect the person to be immediately removed from their post. If the person had safeguarding responsibilities in that post, those must of course be transferred to someone else with immediate effect.

In the absence of any authority with the power to suspend you, we can only urge you to submit yourself to the equivalent. That is, remove yourself from duties with immediate effect, undergo an investigation, and act on the outcome. With immediate effect, somebody else must also take over your responsibility for safeguarding within the whole Church of England.

Or alternatively, you should resign.

The Church of England is, quite rightly, being judged by the world because of this case. It is horrific that such abuse could ever have been committed by a church officer. It is horrific that it was not reported to the police by other church officers who knew about it more than 40 years ago. And it is unconscionable that the most senior cleric in the church today, with official responsibility for safeguarding, knew about the abuse over ten years ago and failed to report it then.

You are now, personally, bringing the Church of England into utter disrepute. You can no longer continue to represent the Church in the public sphere or the political sphere. Your words can no longer be trusted and your moral standpoint is hollow.

A year ago, we both indicated (when asked by you in a meeting with a number of others) that we thought you should resign because of your failure of leadership with respect to the Prayers of Love and Faith. Your recent public acknowledgment that you no longer believe the Church’s teaching on sex and marriage makes that failure all the more serious. We still think that this issue alone is sufficient to require your resignation. But we wish to be clear that, no matter what your views or ours happen to be on sex and marriage, the safeguarding issues listed above are more than serious enough to call for your resignation on that matter alone.

Resignation of this post is, we acknowledge, a hard thing to do, but to resign now may be your greatest act of service to Christ and his church.

Rev Dr Lee Gatiss, Director of Church Society

Dr Ros Clarke, Associate Director of Church Society