After Smyth, after Makin – how does evangelical culture need to change?

The Makin Review into the horrific abuse carried out by John Smyth was always going to send shockwaves through the Church of England – and the evangelical world both within that denomination and beyond it. Smyth – QC, church reader and sadist – abused at least 115 children and young men over a period spanning some 50 years. Some later attempted suicide.

The report does not hold back. The victims’ accounts are harrowing; the failures of successive CofE leaders – including many evangelicals – from the top down are exposed. Makin could not be clearer: conservative evangelical culture facilitated Smyth’s abuse. His brutal proclivities were an open secret among a faction within the church who could have acted – but didn’t. The institution, its beliefs and reputation, were more important than the individuals being abused.

Accountability is crucial

So what’s next? Can Smyth’s victims meaningfully begin a new chapter? It could be more challenging than it needs to be given the time it’s taken for the first (and only, at the time of writing) resignation to happen.

Anglican Futures director Susie Leafe says accountability must mean resignations or removals. It took four days for the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to resign – despite being called out in the report for knowing about the abuse in 2013 and failing to act.

His resignation statement said: ‘I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church.’ The message would have been so much clearer had he resigned sooner.

Welby is far from the only individual criticised by Makin: the report is littered with the names of many others who failed. Survivors are calling for more resignations.

Leafe adds: ‘Until people guilty of serious wrongdoing, or covering-up the wrongdoing of others, lose their positions of influence, there will be little incentive for the worst offenders to actually embrace a change of culture, as opposed to endlessly talking about tinkering with process.

'Transparency requires the culture of often high handed silence to end.’

Welby himself acknowledges how the review ‘exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth’.

As Nick Howard says, in a recent TGC blog in response to the Makin Review: ‘The loss of earthly reputation can be frightening to contemplate. But God calls his people to live for his glory, which we do by seeking first his kingdom (not our own organisation’s fame) and his righteousness.’

Safeguarding culture: all change?

Leafe warns there will be no improvement to our safeguarding culture without accountability and transparency. ‘Accountability in this context means three things,’ she explains. ‘First, is to recognise the danger of what Philip North described as “hidden power, opaque structures of power” and “Ill-defined patterns of accountability”.

‘Networks that cannot credibly show that they are accountable to those other than themselves should cease operation; and if they will not do that, evangelicals should cease to support and patronise them.

‘Second, the various groupings and networks of reformed evangelicalism must stop prioritising harmonious relationships with one another over harm done to victims of the culture. That means the groups, organisations and networks need to be willing to name and call out bad behaviour when they see it in other parts of what can often appear to be an untouchable evangelical web of individuals and organisations all dedicated to protecting each other.’

Makin illustrates this pattern in his report. He cites, for example, letters between church leaders that revealed ‘a fear that Iwerne beliefs and culture will be challenged and potentially damaged by [Smyth’s] abuse becoming known’.

Darren Moore, pastor of Chelmsford Presbyterian Church warns of particular challenges for parachurch organisations: ‘There are searching questions about oversight and how decisions are appealed. People who achieve much are left to trust, as if they couldn’t fall. This is unloving to them as well as others.

‘Also, it means when we hear accusations we test them. In the current climate, claims of innocence may be ignored because it’s felt that too many cries are not heard. Everybody needs a fair hearing.’

Despite claims to the contrary, not much in terms of safeguarding within the conservative evangelical culture has changed in recent years. But is there commitment to change? John Dunnett, CEEC National Director, says: ‘Our expectation is that the CofE will take onboard and make the relevant changes needed to make churches safer for all.’

Makin is concerned that even now, the CofE as currently constituted cannot guarantee that robust safeguarding policies are in place. Earlier this year, Professor Alexis Jay recommended all safeguarding responsibilities be removed from the CofE and handed to independent bodies. Self-policing has not worked.

Safeguarding best practice: a golden thread

Makin puts it like this: ‘Safeguarding best practice is achieved by there being a “golden thread” of safeguarding throughout the organisation with “safeguarding made everybody’s business” ’– from top down.

He delineates its components thus: ‘A robust and systematic quality assurance process, that includes independent scrutiny, audits and learning reviews, would also be in place, to provide challenge and support to those responsible for safeguarding practice' – along with a culture of transparency and with ‘continuous learning’.

During the 50+ years review period, the CofE had, notes Makin, ‘very little of this best practice or a suitable structure in place’. The message could not be clearer: radical change is necessary. As Dunnett points out: ‘The Makin review will hopefully make this more of a reality [across] the length and breadth of the country.’

en asked several conservative evangelical leaders and safeguarding experts what this should look like in practice.

Jon Barrett has been Associate Pastor at Knighton Evangelical Free Church, Leicester since early 2023, and was previously a CofE minister for 16 years. He says we cannot afford to allow safeguarding to be seen as the designated safeguarding lead’s sole preserve. ‘There is a need’, he adds, ‘for whole congregations to corporately own a culture of safeguarding as part of what it means to be a “one-anothering” church family.

‘Safeguarding needs to be promoted from the front by church leaders and reinforced with policies and procedures that are legally compliant and both implementable and implemented.’

Moore points out that while organisations might have the best safeguards – they need to be put into practice, with meaningful accountability. He says this needs, ‘among other things, a doctrine of sin and accountability. People are often surprised that a hero of faith who did wonderful things might do bad things and refuse to believe it’.

As a denomination, Moore says the English Presbyterian Church is learning that ‘these problems are common to all denominations and that it’s foolish to think that we are better or immune’.

Graham Nicholls, director of Affinity, says: ‘Reformed independent churches need to avoid pride and complacency as if we are immune to similar dangers. Sadly, we are just as prone to overlooking abuse.’

He stresses the need for a Biblical culture – a culture where the leaders’ priority is ‘taking care of the flock, not of themselves; and where the culture is gracious, generous, humble, willing to listen to criticism, and with robust processes when they are needed for dealing with complaints of all kinds against church leaders’.

Blind spots

Effective safeguarding will not tolerate ‘blind spots’. For instance, Jon Barrett says that, in some evangelical circles particularly, there can be an anti-woke paranoia that can tend to see safeguarding as ‘either a left-wing “nanny state” imposition or as secular authorities meddling in church family life’.

He adds: ‘In some churches there may be a predisposition to suspend all critical judgment and always to think well of people, or to overemphasise the theological truth that “if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation” – resulting in best practice and legal requirements getting overridden.’

Kay Morgan-Gurr, a disability and additional needs consultant, highlights blind spots in the context of grooming and issues of trust. ‘Those who abuse can groom their way into leadership,’ she says, ‘and even have a large platform due to grooming all who follow them – not just those they abuse … even if you think they are your friend and believe they couldn’t do such things, the proper processes should still be followed.

‘You may have been groomed too.’

Another blind spot is, in Morgan-Gurr’s view, ‘not trusting anyone vs a safe environment’. She explains: ‘This is not about seeing all people as a potential abuser (as I’m often told). This is about not having a space where abuse can grow behind closed doors and closed minds. It’s showing love by preventing abuse where possible and dealing with reports of abuse in a timely manner.’

Tomorrow’s evangelical leaders

Safeguarding and accountability must be considered today as crucial issues for the spiritual leaders of tomorrow. Dunnett comments: ‘While no local church has this fully sorted, it is noticeable that most local churches are engaging well in building a safer culture. But for the CofE as a whole, one of the outstanding issues is the need to embrace a national level of external scrutiny.’

‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Darren Moore answers his own rhetorical question: ‘Yes. Tomorrow’s leaders need to have [safeguarding] included in their training and to look at it theologically. Also, to not do that Protestant thing of over-protesting and swinging too hard the other way. Faithful discipleship is not abuse. Arguably it’s abusive to be too hands off. So we need to carefully define our terms.’

Susie Leafe would like to see it become obligatory that before anyone is employed in churches, platformed, published or given any other position of power or authority, they must complete a ‘full, frank and clear statement of information as to what (and how) they knew about any historic safeguarding cases or related issue’.

They should, she adds, be asked to state ‘what they did with that knowledge, along with an assurance that they are not in possession of any unreported information about unknown or ongoing cases’.

She proposes that the statements be ‘held centrally by an independent safeguarding professional empowered to cross-reference them, report in the event that subsequently available information reveals them to be less than truthful, receive any concerns and deal with any risks identified’.

‘A refusal to comply would be deemed to render the individual sufficiently suspect for them to be refused the role’, Leafe adds. Her proposition dovetails nicely with Makin’s 27 recommendations for the CofE, which include that safeguarding guidance should carry a new declaration to facilitate disclosure of an individual’s ‘prior knowledge’ of allegations of abuse, perpetrated by individuals or within institutions. This, he recommends, should be included in the Church’s Safer Recruitment Practice Guidance.

History shows that silence is not always golden; but accountability is. A case, perhaps, for a ‘gold standard’ for safeguarding and accountability across the evangelical church and its networks?

The FIEC were approached for comment but said they were taking time to read and consider the report first.

Click here for full coverage and analysis of the Makin Report.

Help and support If you or anyone you know is affected by the Makin Report in any way, help is available via:
FearFree Support. Contact: nicky. gahagan@fearfree.org.uk telephone 07436795205 (TuesThurs)/helpdesk 01793 317482 during working hours;
Safe Spaces helpline on 0300 303 1056 and safespacesenglandandwales.org.uk;
Samaritans helpline 116123;
The National Association for People Abused in Childhood helpline 0808 801 0331 www.napac.org.uk/