The management and leadership theorist Peter Drucker opined that culture always “eats strategy for breakfast.” General Synod is a veritable breakfast buffet that meets for several days commencing Monday. Expect little but status theatre and windy speeches from loyalists. Dissent and grumbles will be muted, and the propaganda machine will be cranked to optimum strength. (Everything is fine and going according to plan; the media, public and people in the pews couldn’t be more wrong!). General Synod gatherings now resemble some elected assembly in a totalitarian one-party communist state (pre-1989) or a theocracy, in which autocratic bishops and their advisors reign supreme.

Therefore, the Church of England’s safeguarding tragedy will continue for the foreseeable future. The majority of those in leadership seeking to eliminate the problem are probably not consciously seeking to silence victims of abuse and expel them. This is, primarily, the CofE’s corporate subconscious at work – the sick soul of an institution that knows that it cannot talk about mission and pastoral care whilst it bears the shame, stigma and stench of such sinful corruption.

However, it calculates that it is easier to try and mute or pacify the noise of victims. Or, failing which, whisper softly in PR briefings to the media and amplify faux empathy to General Synod loudly. By such courses, they hope to get away with more inaction and indecision.

Yet everyone knows the leadership is not really listening to victims. The leadership just want you to think they are engaging. But to be clear, the corporate subconscious at work in the hierarchy of power is aided and abetted by the lawyers, officers, PR advisors, and ecclesiocrats who act wholly consciously and choose to hide in the shadows, concealing their malicious intent. This is deliberate and calculated.

The delay in the redress scheme for victims of abuse announced a few weeks ago was entirely predictable. There have been eight years of indolence so far, and quite frankly, the rumour of some falling leaf in a foreign forest would be enough reason to trigger another delay. Any excuse for deferral would do just fine, and the much-delayed Makin report provided the perfect cover to kick the long-overdue reparation to victims into the long grass again.

The architects of these tactics are destroying the Church of England in the process, which means trust and confidence in the leadership sits in an ever-deepening slough of negative equity. There can be no recovery from this.

 Independence – Meaning and Truth

Despite the hierarchy of the Church of England being held in contempt by the wider public for their handling of safeguarding, even now, no lessons are being learned. The motion to General Synod next week invites them to “affirm its commitment to greater independence in safeguarding in the Church of England”. Those are weasel words.

“Affirm”? Really? Or is this to be an actual decision? As for “greater Independence”, this really does sound like the Colonial Office in India lecturing Gandhi in the 1930s, and telling him to get back into his box. Independence? Yes, but not yet; we decide when and what that looks like – not the people demanding it. As for those other colonies in the Caribbean, well, we can let them have some devolved government, but not actual independence. Otherwise we won’t be in charge anymore. This is precisely what the Church of England means by “greater independence”: just a bit more freedom for the masses, but the ecclesiocrats will still be in control.

Bishops have come under considerable pressure over safeguarding in recent years. They are expected to act without fear and favour and are subject to critical scrutiny in relation to their conduct in this sphere, especially from the media. In the absence of statutory regulation of the Church of England, the General Synod is being asked to adopt a new approach to operational governance, practice, and disciplinary scrutiny in safeguarding, which would create a fully independent body.

Independence means that the body and its members must behave objectively, impartially, and consistently, without conflict of interest, bias, or undue influence—in other words, independently. Independent oversight and scrutiny are not simply institutional designs. The independence of a safeguarding regulator from the Church of England can be assessed by addressing three questions:

1. Is the regulator legally independent? Is it a body legally separate from the institution and hierarchy it oversees and polices, with duties, powers and responsibilities clearly set out in statute law? (NB: It can be funded by the CofE, without the church dictating policy, practice, process and outcomes, etc – as other professions have).
2. Can the regulator, in practice, always proceed to investigate and act in a case without seeking permission from, or the approval of, the hierarchy of the Church of England?
3. To whom is the independent body and its senior staff accountable, and how and by whom will their work be assessed and appraised during their appointment?

The independent external professional scrutiny and regulation required in Church of England safeguarding differs entirely from the internally commissioned and managed audits (such as those that are or were conducted by Ineqe or SCIE), or any internal monitoring bodies that the Church of England has already set up. To be clear, these audits are not independent. The Archbishops’ Council pay Ineqe, and the decision about which churches and what cases to examine are left to the diocese to decide. That is setting your own homework and then telling a third party how they can mark it.

Independent oversight will be more effective if the body can make short-, medium-, and long-term decisions free from ecclesiastical and episcopal interference. This will also help ensure that in the future, bishops, dioceses, cathedrals, and churches can avoid being blamed for any unpopular decisions. The current situation is one where the Church of England sets and marks its own safeguarding homework.

If the General Synod adopts Option Four, it must wholeheartedly welcome and adopt – the whole church, including bishops and senior officers – becoming subject to an entirely independent body with proper powers of scrutiny, oversight and penalisation in the event of safeguarding failures and abuses. Independence cannot mean the Church sets its homework, and then selects hand-picked third parties to mark and grade it.

Reviewing the Future

Having recently edited the special edition on safeguarding in the Church of England for the Journal of Anglican Studies (vol. 22. issue 2., CUP), it has quickly become its’ most-read volume and had thousands of reads for an academic journal. In terms of impact, that is hugely significant. It was abundantly clear from all contributions to the edition that in safeguarding:

1. The leadership does not have the capacity and necessary intelligence to lead and deliver truth and justice, or support and redress.
2. The leadership has no desire to change, and the hierarchy is mired in gross incompetence, hubris, dishonesty, and even corruption.
3. Reform cannot come from within the church and so will have to be robustly imposed from without, by parliament or some other means.

Having recently witnessed allegations and disclosures of grave abuses in the safeguarding process, which were then forwarded to all members of the Archbishops’ Council and at least four diocesan bishops, I confirm that none acted. This is not even recent. It is now: the present. They do nothing. They seem oblivious to the irony of the power in their deliberate inaction.

So if, or rather when, a safeguarding abuse was or is perpetrated by their colleagues – clergy, church officers, etc – then reporting the abuse will always be met with silence. Put another way, the likes of Brain, Makin, Tudor, Smyth and Pilavachi – and all those who will doubtless follow in their wake – will always happen without real consequences.

John Banville, writing of the abuse scandals that have engulfed the Roman Catholic Church for many decades, noted that “everyone knew, but no-one said…I have heard no-one address the question of what it means, in this context, to know” (‘A Century of Looking the Other Way’, New York Times, 22 May 2009).  The Church of England knows its own failures and corruption too. Yet it chooses silence, indifference and amnesia. 

Remember, the problem is not the abuse, per se. The problem is that you know about it. The hierarchy don’t want to know about it, and they don’t want you to know about it either. So, they will keep trying to change the subject, hoping you forget the problem and the unresolved scandals. That is why General Synod is not really being offered an option for independence in safeguarding. The authors of that option for debate know perfectly well that independence will eventually be watered down to mean “third party”, and that everything in the future will remain under the protective and coercive custody of the bishops and ecclesiocrats.

Why? Because the system is devised to protect the system. The structures in place are meant to protect the church and its unaccountable leaders. If the church or senior church leaders are the perpetrators of the abuse (whether actual or of the process in operation or alleged), the structures will move to muted default mode, and the victims will be kept at arm’s length and denied justice.  Forever.

Whatever General Synod votes for next week, the Redress Scheme, Interim Support Scheme and safeguarding in general must now be taken out of the hands of an unelected and unaccountable episcopacy and ecclesiocracy. The hierarchy will not let this happen, as the money (lawyers’ fees, etc.), legal power, and ultimate authority would strip the leadership of its sense of ecclesiastical elitism and entitlement to presiding.

Only external intervention will now resolve this. The Church of England’s leadership has proven to lack the will and capacity to act with integrity, wisdom, and honesty in this sphere. There is certainly no moral courage. Victims must, therefore, hope for redemption and redress to be delivered by another means, externally, knowing it won’t ever come by any initiative from within the Church of England.

No new incumbent in Lambeth Palace has any hope – let alone a prayer – of reinvigorating the church until the prevailing structural culture of the hierarchy is identified, challenged and removed. That would be a time-consuming, expensive task and a Herculean vocation requiring some considerable stamina, resolve, effort, and energy. There are no candidates fit for such work.

That is why the best hope for the next Archbishop of Canterbury is an interim external appointment focussed exclusively on the cultural revolution now urgently required to address and resolve this abusive structural stasis. Unless the next incumbent at Lambeth Palace can achieve that change, in the inimitable words of Peter Drucker, culture will continue to “eat strategy for breakfast.”

The Revd. Canon Professor Martyn Percy is the author of The Crisis of Global Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England (Hurst Books, 2025). He is the Provost-Theologian for the Anglican Province of Hong Kong and teaches at the University of Saint Joseph, Macao. He is a Research Professor at the Institut für Christkatholische Theologie at the University of Bern and also serves as Canon Theologian in the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe.