I realise there are an awful lot of structural problems in the world right now. Horrendous diplomatic failures with the USA currently, climate crisis and all ensuing symptoms, ongoing terror in the West Bank and the devastation of Gaza, to name just a few. Perhaps in the light of all of those things, I find myself deeply disturbed by the removal of end-to-end encryption for UK users of many Apple products. I am only just beginning to grasp the potential far reaching consequences of that sort of thing, looking at the political world stage as outlined above. I will no doubt explore this more in a future post, but for now here’s an article outlining the current situation for the UK: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/apple-pulls-data-protection-tool-instead-of-caving-to-uk-demand-for-a-backdoor/
In the meantime, back on planet Church of England, rather than managing to galvanise ourselves to address any of the world challenges above effectively, we remain stymied by systemic injustice among ourselves. Why we think that this is in any way a fitting offering to a world in turmoil from a Church that prays to God who we say we believe is a) deeply compassionate and b) always engaged with reality, I do not know.
One of the massive glaring structural injustices in the Church of England continues to be the inequality between men and women. I can’t communicate the situation any more effectively than Liz Shercliff has in her blog post below, which will take anyone all of 2 minutes to read. So here it is, with a key quote at the top of it for anyone not wanting to follow the link:
“…The Church is not committed to mutual flourishing, other than as a way of silencing women by throwing us a few scraps and expecting us to be grateful. If women in places of governance dare to ask for actual equality, they are dismissed.”
https://www.womenandthechurch.org/blog/c0p9nbaqh8hvfnjvfngz1umf3vypvb
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Liz Shefcliff says ‘But safeguarding issues do not arise from nowhere’. I could not agree more. I recently attended a Diocesan Safeguarding Course for those seeking Permission to Officiate. Although I fully support the importance of both this training, and the work of Safeguarding Teams & Officers. I know from personal experience as a psychotherapist working with victims of abuse just how totally devastating abuse of all kinds can be. But I was aghast at the superficiality of the training. At one point one of the safeguarding team delivering the training told us that we were ‘all good people’! I blurted out ‘But are we?!’ The assumption seemed to be that we belonged to a different human race from the people who end up being abusers. I find this ‘othering’ very disturbing. The fact is that the human race is the nastiest species/life form on the planet, and the dark side of human nature, which includes the capacity to inflict horrendous sexual, physical, psychological abuse on others, and ourselves, exists in each one of us. All religions, Christianity included, exist to help us face and own up to our dark side, and find ways of addressing it. Safeguarding training needs to ask of us the question, ‘what are we seeking to guard ourselves from, and why do we all have a dark side, and how best can we seek to understand it and deal with it?’. I listened to Gwen Adshead, Forensic Psychiatrist at Broadmoor, give the Reith Lectures. She said that given the ‘right’ circumstances, we are all capable of abusive behaviour. Safeguarding training should help us know and understand this side of ourselves.
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I also listened to Gwen Adshead. How illuminating that was! Totally agree Paul. Thanks for commenting.
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