Category: chaplaincy

Faith and the City

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My grandfather would not have approved. A former church warden of a large market-town parish church, he voted Tory at every opportunity, and would have seen the Church’s critical examination of urban life – Faith in the City – as the latest example of its waywardness. Every day he awaited the arrival of his copy of The Daily Mail, which he embraced as a comfort blanket for all his favourite prejudices. He waved the paper at me energetically when it earnestly condemned various speakers in the televised General Synod debate on nuclear deterrence in 1983. (He had less to say about the owner of The Mail’s enthusiastic admiration of Hitler back in the 1930s). When I argued with him about the valuable work of the post-war Labour Government he was quick to reply that those politicians were “different”. I very much doubt he said that at the time.

As I commented earlier this year, 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Faith in the City, and several small celebrations have been held. Most of us attending the one in Sheffield were north of 60, with Alan Billings, one of the original commissioners and a speaker at the conference, being in his 80s. I wasn’t altogether clear why the event was taking place on the same weekend as General Synod, but perhaps it reflects the Church of England’s limited interest in questions of urban theology and action. More than one speaker noted that in the twenty years after the report there was considerable activity by the CofE in the cities. However, the last 20 years have told a different story.

I was in the middle year of my undergraduate degree, living in Hull, when Faith in the City hit the presses. Alan told us that the Cabinet had leaked the report to the right wing press, enabling its publication to be met with claims of Marxism and a Church failing to attend to its primary task. While many in the Church supported the report, I recall a parishioner in the rural parish where my parents lived asking: “what about the rural areas – where’s the support for us?” I’ve no doubt that those comments were widespread in rural communities.

It felt in the 1980s that the Church of England could still occupy that strange land of “critical solidarity” with the institutions of which it was also a part. Not easy, but it was also the decade in which Archbishop Runcie dared to pray for the dead on both sides at the Falklands Memorial Service in 1982, saying that: “a shared anguish can be a bridge of reconciliation; our neighbours are indeed like us”. Mrs Thatcher was not pleased. In 1984, the Church led by Runcie consecrated David Jenkins as the bishop for Durham. Once again, the Church supplied the right-wing press with oodles of content to bolster its appetite for righteous indignation. My grandfather had gone to glory by that stage but he would have enjoyed the temporal exasperations of the tabloid press.

Looking back is not always a good idea. The seeds of change were already planted in the Church of England of the 1980s. Fewer vocations; difficulties in recruiting to inner-city parishes; a world changing as a rate of knots. However, I’m less certain that those around at the time could have envisaged how radical the changes would become, and the number of parishes that would be forced to merge. The unwinding of Anglicanism’s commitment to provide every church with a parson; a parsonage and burden of finance that could be borne, has happening at a dizzying pace. Volunteers have vanished and the struggle to maintain a meaningful presence has intensified.

It isn’t all doom and gloom. The church I assist at once a month has rallied without any jazzy new initiatives from the centre. Speaking with the organist (a working farmer) he told me that they had got down to an attendance of 10 on a typical Sunday morning. Now it’s at 30. Why? He put it down to the loving pastoral care of a Reader, who made some simple improvements to worship but – perhaps most importantly – helped keep the service at the same time every Sunday. Sometimes it is Morning Prayer and at others, Holy Communion – but the people come nonetheless. In the cities there are also signs of renewed interest in Christianity, with a more diverse population bringing fresh energy to places of worship. The context of Faith in the City has changed – but faith is to be found nonetheless, and the questions raised 40 years ago remain relevant today.

What remains constant, however, is the need for deep listening, authentic presence, recognition of transience and journey, and genuine collaboration. As one of us concluded, “It has to be ‘we’ if we are to make a difference”.

William Temple Foundation blog, 21 May 2025

War with Trolls

Chris Swift2 Comments

Norway is a country of stunning beauty which experiences, for some of the year, either endless light or total darkness. I can’t quite imagine what winter must be like here, with deep cold as well as an absence of the sun. In summer it is awash with light, at all hours. Perhaps the drama of this experience accounts for the great composers and poets who have come from Norway.

Henrik Ibsen is Norway’s celebrated playwright and the author of the world’s most frequently performed plays (after those of Shakespeare). Ibsen is highly critical of clergy and what he sees as the inhuman demands of upholding a certain kind of Christian Orthodoxy. As an outstanding dramatist, Ibsen crafts his plays to reflect and expose the failings of key institutions and how individuals strive to live authentic lives despite the ingrained failures and disappointments arising from the unattainable expectations of society. As Ibsen reflected from his Norwegian context: “To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul”. His plays go a long way to identify some of these trolls.

“the tragic poets and dramatists, such as Ibsen, those who seem to understand something like holiness, and that life’s real question, ‘the psycho-moral dilemma’, as Arthur Miller calls it, is not ‘How do I feel about God?’ but ‘What dealings have I with God?’, not as a concept but as the leading character in the unfolding drama”.

Goroncy, J. A. (2006). Bitter Tonic for our Time–Why the Church needs the World: Peter Taylor Forsyth on Henrik Ibsen. European journal of theology, 15(2).

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, during my time away I have been reading Hanna Reichel’s After Method: queer grace, conceptual design, and the possibility of theology. It is not a quick read, but one that has captivated my attention and provided lucid language to describe and interrogate issues in theology I have long experienced, but not always found the framework to express. At its heart this concerns the tensions, and illegibilities, between systematic theology and constructive theology. To illustrate this let me describe some correspondence from many years ago, which relates to something I experienced in ministry and wrote about previously: neonatal loss. From time to time I have been asked to baptise a baby that has died, or was alive only briefly, assisted by significant medical intervention. As I explored this and what it means, theologically, I came across a note in Common Worship written by the illustrious octogenarian (as of yesterday) and onetime Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christ Church, Oliver O’Donovan. O’Donovan, a former professor of systematic theology, writes: “You cannot baptize someone who is dead”.

From the standpoint of systematic theology this is consistent with Scripture; the history of Church doctrine; and the practice of the Church’s ministry. Well, it is and it isn’t. As I discovered when researching this topic, the Church in its history has found ways round this situation to preserve doctrine and meet the pastoral needs of parents. This creativity lead to the creation of “resurrection chapels” where an apparently deceased child could be handed to a priest, who then disappeared into a chapel, and came back saying that the baby had miraculously been resurrected for a moment, baptised, but then – alas – died. This enabled the veneer of orthodoxy to be preserved while meeting the earnest and sincere needs of parents. In a desire to sustain a credible doctrinal position the Church tolerated these kinds of “work arounds” but failed to allow the realities of human experience to interrogate the substance of systematic theology itself.

The core problem, it seems to me, is that the attempt to uphold a systematic understanding of faith at all costs results in a punished humanity and a pedestrian God. A theological educator said to me some years ago, with an evident sense of relief, that he was so glad they’d abandoned the use of “case studies” in the seminary where he taught. Tales from the frontline of Christian living can be very inconvenient for certain kinds of theology. Preaching at Evensong in an Oxford college, I happened to mention a pastoral call I’d received in the early hours of that day from the northern hospital where I worked. The Master thanked me afterwards for bringing in some “réalité”. It amused me that a French word was required to express the real life that had intruded into the college chapel. The question arises, what kind of theology emerges when human life is stripped out of the equation? For some key critical commentators it is theology devoid of “the messiness of incarnation and real peoples’ lives”, which makes it difficult to imagine what use it is to the people orthodoxy claims to be at the centre of God’s mission.

Monstrous Theology

Chris Swift1 Comment

Over the centuries theologians have defended the continuation of slavery; National Socialism in Germany; and the creation of Apartheid. This is only to reference some of the most obscene and horrific examples of the countless ways in which theology has been corrupted. The Bible pillaged for verses to undergird human atrocities, deprivations of dignity and squalid efforts to impose conformity.

In a recent performance of Esther’s Revenge during the Leeds Lit Festival I was reminded once again of this disturbing truth. Esther – played by Bola Atiteba – entered her trial, in the setting of Leeds Minster, holding a Bible. While she clutched it close for much of the performance, it was never cited. No verses were read, yet its silent presence reminded the audience that the Good Book has been used to justify wickedness and, simultaneously, to inspire those who oppose everything that diminishes human life.

The monstrous abuse of Scripture, to enable the destruction of others, has been going on from at least the time its oral state was transformed into text. I have recently started reading Hanna Reichel’s fascinating new book After Method: queer grace, conceptual design, and the possibility of theology. It begins with the question as to whether we need better theology, responding in part to Kevin Garcia’s provocatively titled Bad Theology Kills. As Reichel puts it:

“I baulked at how the church hierarchy in Argentina had been hopelessly complicit in the dictatorship. Had their theology not protected them from the seductions of power and fear, even saw in their survival a greater good over the lives that they abandoned and betrayed?”

Reichel, H. (2023). After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology. Presbyterian Publishing Corp.

Reichel’s words are an encouraging affirmation of what I have long believed as a chaplain. Theology should be written in intensive care, not behind the walls of ivy-clad colleges. Charles Taylor puts it succinctly in his seminal work, A Secular Age, when he laments the tendency of the Church to be ‘excarnational’. For Taylor, many theologians have failed to live up to their promise because they have driven the discipline into their heads at the cost of embodied experience and learning. This has promoted theologies that have ignored the human cost of beliefs legitimated by centres of power and education.

Heading this blog is a photograph of an installation – ‘Beast’ – by the American artist Matthew Angelo Harrison. It is featured in the inaugural exhibition of PoMo, the new gallery of modern art in Trondheim, Norway. The beast is encased in a block of polyurethane resin: like a prehistoric creature preserved in amber. However, Harrison’s work is a monster of our own time, created and immersed in acrylic only last year. Attempting to photograph such an object is not easy. Wherever I was standing, my reflection was captured. Perhaps that was Harrison’s intent. We can look at the otherness of the terrifying but make little effort to identify our own complicity in its creation. As Reichel puts it, bad theology is always at work in the creation of ‘us-and-them’ myths that strive to legitimate monstrous deeds. There are those who might think that the easy answer is to dump theology as a whole. However, disposing of words won’t abolish the things to which they refer. Theology – good theology – will always be needed, because human beings will never cease to contest questions about ultimate purposes, what is sacred, and how we treat one another as we seek to determine our destiny.

Power & Glory?

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I am reading Pat Baker’s latest instalment in her retelling of aspects of the Trojan War, in which the experiences of women are foregrounded. In The Voyage Home male power is also observed, and the restrictions of high office are described. On a superficial level, the acquisition of power implies the ability to choose – to do what you wish. In reality, people in power often find themselves constrained by all kinds of weighty expectations. In the Church, a vicar might have a wide scope for action and strategic choice, especially if leadership involves and respects the wishes of others. For a diocesan bishop, even before assuming office, the diary will already be full of duties and obligations which it is simply ‘expected’ (or required) that the bishop will fulfil.

In her book Baker imagines Agamemnon arguing with Queen Clytemnestra on his return home:

“You’ve had power for the last ten years. How easy have you found it?” He sees her look away. “No, you see? It doesn’t solve everything, does. it? In fact, it’s bloody amazing how many things you can’t do with power”.

In the New Testament, Paul quotes Jesus saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”. Looking at the life of Christ, and his ministry over three years, the paradox was that his power appeared to lie in the inability of the world to offer him anything he wanted. The whole of the temptations in the wilderness serve to confirm this refusal to be suborned. Standing before Pilate, Jesus suggests that he isn’t the one who is powerless. Pilate’s power comes from somewhere else – he’s a delegate, not a free agent. Jesus may be the captive, but he exercises the refusal to collude in the compromise that could secure his freedom – at a price.

We don’t need to feel sorry for the world’s powerful men and women. They live in gilded worlds and, somewhere along the line, they have chosen this way of life. Chosen it by standing for election, amassing wealth, or by electing not to exercise the ability to resign or abdicate. The example of Jesus reminds us that real power, sacred power, lies elsewhere. For Pope Francis it was important that the shepherds bore the scent of the sheep. This is not remote ‘flock management’ but a spirit of service that sees the shepherd in the heart of the fold. I believe that while this is spiritually significant it is also essential for theology to be useful. A priest cannot be everywhere, but a priest can touch closely many different spheres of life. In chaplaincy in the NHS I experienced it in the wide variety of people with whom I would speak in the course of a week. A CEO; mortuary staff; the delivery suit; the grieving; someone celebrating their 100th birthday; a nurse taking a moment to pause on ICU. Theology is about a God in relationship with everyone, and the power to listen to people in a wide range of settings expands our understanding of God, and the divine purpose for the world which God’s infinite love brought into being.

God in the City

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In the late 1980s I spent a year as a youth worker in the Isle of Dogs. The youth club operated in the crypt of Christ Church, and catered for local children up to the age of 11. Although I’d lived and studied in Hull, this was the first time I worked in an urban context. At that time much of the East End was undergoing the transformation from urban poverty to city banks and their associated wealth. Sparkling new buildings were springing up alongside docks where once no one had wanted to live. I was told that in those days taxi drivers had refused to drive into the island at night. During the 1980s the two communities, old and new, lived together uneasily. Some in the increasingly expensive gated estates, others in the council housing that was yet to be sold.

In my new role as Director of Leeds Church Institute I am once again reflecting on the relationship of ‘faith and the city’. Incidentally, it’s exactly 40 years since the report with that title was published by the Church of England, to be met with the ire of Mrs Thatcher and many other conservative voices. In the mildest of possible forms, perhaps this was the C of E’s modest response to the influence of liberation theology – the school of praxis and thought which arose chiefly in the favelas of Latin America. However, one of the criticisms of the report was its lack of a significant and developed theology to frame its analysis and recommendations. A subsequent publication, Theology in the City, responded to this criticism, partly arguing that the alleged lacuna arose from the misunderstanding of the more implicit theological approach Faith in the City had embodied.

During a year in Argentina I read Gutierrez’s classic work Teología de la liberación. Living in Córdoba and Buenos Aires, I grew more and more aware of the particular dynamics of city living, with rich and poor living cheek by jowl. A few metres apart, but separated in their different worlds by steel and security. Cities concentrate divisions in way often unseen in more rural settings. Gutierrez inspired a way of thinking that reflected his conviction, based on a liberative hermeneutics of the Bible, that God has a preferential love for the poor. This understanding led many followers of liberation theology to locate themselves alongside the poor, exhibiting a commitment to share and to learn before even considering the option to teach.

After years in which the power of the Church was used to contain and constrain liberation theology, the Pontificate of Francis marked a sea-change of significance. Rather than beginning with doctrine and only seeing the world through its parameters, Francis favoured attention to concrete situations and experiences as the place from which theology emerged. This was reflected most keenly in his persistent interest in the wellbeing of the poor and his sometimes stern address to the world’s wealthy and powerful (be they institutions or individuals).

The Church cannot abandon the city, because every city is its people. If cities shelter some of the poorest people in society then God’s preference and presence cannot be ignored. As a chaplain in Leeds for 16 years I was privileged to meet the whole spectrum of city dwellers although, poverty and illness being what they are, those encounters were weighted towards the most marginalised people in Leeds. In the conduct of funerals funded by the hospital (due to lack of means and/ore relatives) I visited homes whose meagre furnishings reminded me that, ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions’. It would seem that when the balance favours the rich, with wealth removing many of the burdens of everyday life, the opposite end of the scale descends; as the weight of poverty, exclusion and injustices mount, one on top of another. As Francis wisely knew, a rich Church will never be sufficiently open to allow God to use it as a means to rectify and redress the fundamental injustices of the city. As he declared shortly after coming into office: “How I would like a church that is poor and for the poor”.

Exposed

Chris Swift1 Comment

I’m not the kind of Christian who likes public witness. The sort of knocking-on-doors Christianity; or a beach mission; or even telling my “faith story” in a service feels embarrassing and uncomfortable. There are probably lots of reasons for this, which it would be tempting to dismiss with an air of Anglican superiority.

I am inclined naturally to a reflective and tentative articulation of faith. I don’t believe I have all the answers. “Now we see in a mirror dimly”. I have no doubt, for a host of reasons, that my faith is fractured and partial. It feels fuller and more complete when it is located within a community of faith, bringing many different experiences of God, past and present, under a single roof. Others have natural – and undoubtedly, spiritual – gifts for giving personal testimony. I don’t hesitate to say that this can be both inspiring and has a place within the life of faith. But we are not all created to be the same.

Hence, it was with some trepidation that I went along with the Gospel Streets Urban Pilgrimage in Leeds last week. Led by the admirable Lighthouse community, based in St George’s Crypt under the pastoral care of Jon Swales, the pilgrimage snaked though the streets of Leeds on a sunlit Thursday morning. Jon had a monk-ish aura wearing a cassock alb, and speaking passionately about the City while reading the Gospel of Mark. People stared at us. One passing youth shouted: “You’re all evil; you lot”.

What did it achieve?

For the thirty odd of us participating there were the kind of side-on conversations that people walking to the same destination often share. I met many people I hadn’t encountered before. Members of the Lighthouse community were with us, and it ended with a service of Holy Communion in the Crypt. We were present in spaces where religion is either excluded or extreme; the places where the more you consume the more you matter, and where street preachers tell the world that “the end is nigh”.

Our pilgrimage was less confrontational and more measured. The worst excesses of capitalism were described beside the city’s banks. People damaged by an urban environment that rejects them walked with us in a spirit of solidarity and purpose. Jon asked people sitting and reading in the sunshine of Mandella Gardens if they wouldn’t mind him speaking for a while (sooo Anglican!) and breaches of international law were mentioned by the war memorial.

I’m not sure what we achieved. A statement was made – it was enacted. In the pilgrimage through Lent, we reminded ourselves and anyone who cared to listen, that God is present in the city. That the Church is (or should be) a shelter from the storms of life and a community that is restless and longing for the Kingdom. Where people who have been rejected find a home, and where earthly power is reminded of its place.

It is absurd
to retell here what
happened there,
far away and far ago
when the idiot healed
and said, and wept
and left. A broken
nonsense in the febrile
world of expectation.

Holding Still

Chris Swift1 Comment

Over the past few days I drafted a blog, as I do most weeks. It was largely a litany of despair about the state of the Church of England and the nadir of leadership and direction to which we appear to have sunk. Today is the final Sunday in the Church’s liturgical year, but it might also feel like the dying days of a once great institution. Perhaps, if its demise would ensure more people’s safety and sanity, there will be those who think that extinguishing the final embers would be an act of kindness for all concerned. The Church has failed in one of its primary obligations – but I cannot quite abandon the idea of what it might be.

Instead of a dismal diatribe about the Church’s failings (mine included) I have decided to take a different tack. The “idea of what it might be” includes resurrecting the often unseen but invaluable work of spiritual and pastoral care. In early 2020 I was looking for a poem to accompany some reflections for a retreat, but couldn’t find anything that would fit. Given this sad lacuna in English Literature I decided to pen my own verse and, for better or worse, I offer it on this final Sunday of the year as the slightest intimation of what at its best has been, and might still be, in the life of the Church’s sacramental pastoral care.

Holding Still

This work of holding;
of the the task of being
still, in order to hear.
To shift weight without

disturbance; to keep
the hushed, spare –
space; the silence into
which another speaks.

It is not nothing;
this attending and
anointing; this taking
and bearing and blessing.

To touch what has died
with the strength of love;
to see in ashen form the
hope of resurrection.

The image at the head of this blog is a photograph of a ceramic sculpture by Antonia Salmon, entitled “Holding Piece”

A Theology that Connects

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The image at the head of this blog, entitled “the death struggle”, was painted by Edvard Munch. The struggle depicted is not primarily that of the person dying, who cannot be seen, but is found in the faces of those expressing their grief. In some measure, in their bereavement, they are beginning to grapple with an altered reality. Very often the faces and experiences of both the unwell, and those who care about them, are remote in the work of theology. In health care chaplaincy in particular, the vast majority of theological reflection and writing is done by the professionals, not by the people undergoing the experiences of illness. This is why a recent article by Professor Graeme Smith is interesting. It draws on evidence from research into the experiences of seafarers who have received ministry from chaplains. Entitled “A theology of chaplaincy from below”, it explores the sailors’ narratives to make the argument that the recipients of chaplains’ care are people who produce of a theology of their own.

It is true that there is a very limited range of material which elicits and explores the experiences of people who receive chaplaincy care. Even when it does happen, it is often filtered through the voice of the chaplain, describing the chaplain’s perception of how people have responded to what has been offered. Equally, a large proportion of what is gleaned is framed as “customer satisfaction” rather than theological insight. The reasons for this are clear, as the secular employers of many chaplains are much more comfortable with these kinds of metrics than with data from a field of study and information with which they may be unfamiliar: theology. Graeme Smith is also right in identifying a suspicion of theology and religion, which may make the use of material framed in this discipline a matter of contestation and doubt.

Smith also analyses of the chaplains’ responses to questions about their theology and purpose. Here he finds that their theology of chaplaincy is both brief and vague. The chaplains would speak about a “ministry of presence” and might expand that to include reference to “incarnational theology”. While I am familiar with this style of response from chaplains I think it would be accurate to note that health care chaplains might also add theodicy and ethics. Similarly, in recent years, some military chaplains would be able and willing to articulate their theology in relation to the growing field of “moral injury”. Perhaps one of the systemic issues Smith identifies in his work has developed as a result of greater inter-faith working. While this is excellent and valuable it may have inclined teams to focus on their areas of common concern and diminished some of the deeper exploration of theology within a particular faith.

While the notion of “being there” in chaplaincy has been a widely accepted trope for professional spiritual care, the COVID-19 pandemic placed that concept under considerable pressure. Being there added to the risk factors of caring institutions. One more body out and about on the wards, or in care homes, added to the risk of the virus being brought into the setting. Was being there essential? As it emerged over time, there were marked differences between chaplains ministering at a distance and those still able to be a physical presence in the hospital or care home. While it might be possible to interpret the incarnation as the needless burdening of Mary and Joseph, with pain and cost to come, God-at-a-distance and God-among-us represent theologies that are worlds apart. Good things did happen at a distance, but it appears that the presence of the chaplain in places of acute loss and suffering had an altogether different quality and consequence.

“It must be very difficult for chaplains who are not able to go into their home and schemes, because I’ve experienced that for retirement living, really not the same. It’s really not the same. Chaplaincy is hands on, face to face and I’m very conscious at least I’ve been able to do, and that must be frustrating for others who have not been able to”.

Swift, C. (2020). Being There, Virtually Being There, Being Absent: Chaplaincy in Social Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Health & Social Care Chaplaincy, 8(2).

Without doubt chaplains could do more to articulate and develop the theologies of their ministry. Megan Smith sees this as essential in order for chaplains to sustain their identity and not get wholly absorbed into the institutional paradigms of the places in which they serve. Further, she argues that a simplistic interpretation of incarnation as “being Christ to others” often fails to take full account of all the dimensions inherent in the incarnation. For example, the Word made flesh has a prophetic, critical and challenging edge, which may not be understood or expressed in the ministry of chaplains. At the same time, there can be a misperception that the chaplain comes to bring theology into the institutional setting, while not taking proper account of the possibility that theology is already there – waiting to be encountered.

In my role as a chaplain I have never doubted the importance of theology in what I do, or for the context of a large and complex institution. Theology asks unusual questions and stimulates debates which often lie silent within the discourses of the spiritual. Accessing the theology of the recipients of care is not always easy, but I agree that it is necessary. This is not only for the benefit of chaplains and those to whom they offer care. I have long said that the place where theology is written is very significant. Theology written in intensive care; during a pandemic; in A&E; or from a prison cell, speaks from a place where the tidiness and safety of doctrinal certainty often buckles under the messy complexity of living. The work of Jens Zimmermann on incarnational humanism might offer one route to finding a fuller account of the incarnation as a basis for a theology developed by everyone caught up in a community defined by common characteristics. This might be NHS patients; military personnel; or a community of seafarers. It is significant that Zimmermann finds in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the prisoner-theologian, the epitome of this approach to theology, where the Christ comes to fulfil our humanity:

“because Christ died for our true humanity, the Christian works for the common good in society as best as possible under any given circumstances”.

Zimmermann, J. (2016). Bonhoeffer’s incarnational humanism. Theologica Wratislaviensia, (11 Dietrich Bonhoeffer na 500 lat Reformacji), 73-86.

Shameless

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Many businesses have compliance officers. It is the responsibility of these members of staff to ensure that a firm complies with all the legal and regulatory requirements laid upon it. However, I am going to suggest that there is a different understanding of compliance which is a significant dimension in the various scandals that have come to light in recent months. Whether it is the Post Office, or the entire system of politics and health care provision, in the case of contaminated blood, something has led seemingly intelligent and responsible people not only to fail to act, but to actively work to suppress concerns and continue with dangerous treatments for which other – safer – options were available. What has led these people to comply with behaviours and a culture they knew to be wrong?

Organisations are very good at suppressing criticism. Even when there are good policies and procedures for raising concerns, unspoken influences shape the course of action people feel able to use. For example, without overwhelmingly compelling evidence – and other willing witnesses – the balance of power sits with management. Managers organise rotas; authorise annual and compassionate leave requests; they write appraisals and references. Suggesting that something is wrong means that a manager has allowed something to happen under their watch; been so ill-informed as to be unaware; or are directly complicit in some aspect of a negative culture. In all circumstances it is a risk to whistleblow, whatever paper assurances exist in corporate policies. Even if nothing negative happens at the time, managers may salt away their feelings about the employee and save their retribution for a future time when their action, and past events, can no longer be connected.

Sometimes chaplains fail to recognise these dynamics and express their views with naive candour. I have known several chaplains over the past couple of decades who decided to raise a concern directly with a CEO or organisational chair. This may be no bad thing, but it can irritate all the managers they have cut out between their organisational position and the top of the chain. Perhaps, in the spirit of naval chaplains, the chaplains regard themselves to be the equal of whoever they happen to be addressing. In some cases they have not even bothered to voice their concerns internally but, in the first instance, have gone to an external party. This kind of behaviour was picked in early drafts that led to the NHS England chaplaincy guidance of 2003, Caring for the Spirit. At one point there was text to the effect that chaplains could offer critical insights about an organisation, so long as this did not come as a surprise to that organisation. In other words, chaplains should escalate things internally before writing to their bishop etc..

The problem with internal escalation is that it can be stimied in a number of ways. I have seen on many occasions how the legitimate concerns of a chaplain have been reinterpreted and dismissed while, at the same time, subtle changes may have been made quietly in the background. While it is good that a chaplain’s observations might help put things right, it may also have marked the chaplain out as a troublemaker as far as management was concerned. Organisations possess a gravity that bends behaviour towards various degrees of compliance.

Watching the recent questioning of the former Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells, I was struck by the complete absence of shame in the testimony. There were tears; apologies; and a lot of regret that she had been poorly advised, but no shame. This was an organisation that persecuted and prosecuted its own staff; trusted a faulty software programme more than people; and defended its wrongful actions long after it was clear that reasonable doubt existed about Horizon. At least one person caught up in these horrors committed suicide, and many others were falsely imprisoned. Surely the person who sat at the top of such an organisation, receiving an enormous salary and bonuses, would be ashamed to say they were in charge? Yet that was not the impression given during the testimony.

“A certain kind of shame is valid in its proper context. If you do something morally wrong – steal a colleague’s idea or make a promise you don’t intend to keep – you should regret it, feel guilty, even ashamed of your actions. That’s not unhealthy. It might lead you to apologize and might prevent you from doing it again”.

This Leadership Motivation Is Toxic. Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Do It by Erica Ariel Fox, Forbes Magazine 5 December 2022

All this suggests that the training and formation of senior managers gets so invested in processes and operating systems that some of the core humanity of leadership gets left behind. In the case of the Post Office, the voices of staff working in the branches were given remarkably little weight. To meet financial targets, and defend an eye-watering investment in Fujitsu, people were simply thrown overboard. If that isn’t something a leader should feel ashamed about, then our selection and development of leaders needs a serious overhaul.

Good Lord, Deliver Us

Chris Swift1 Comment

Management is an integral part of all organisations. It existed long before it was much spoken about or, indeed, became a field of study and development in its own right. Modern general management was introduced into the NHS following the Griffiths Inquiry in the mid 1980s. It paved the way for streamlining NHS processes and enhancing accountability which – eventually – even incorporated chaplaincy within its structures. Since then, in many organisations, I have witnessed and experienced the power of good management to exclude waste and improve efficiency. However (and there was always going to be an ‘however’!), there is plenty of evidence that contemporary management and executive leadership is far from perfect. Perhaps the instantaneous and seemingly universal response to Mr Bates v. The Post Office arises to a significant extent from the resonance of this story with many people’s experiences of institutional behaviour.

When I reflect upon my own professional journey there have been several key points when I have found myself in disagreement with a majority view. This is very inconvenient because, being naturally inclined to a quiet life, feeling compelled to express contrary views is time-consuming and energy-sapping. Often it requires detailed work to elucidate arguments and marshal the evidence that suggests – at the very least – that there is more than one way of looking at something. ‘Group-think’, especially when the leader’s views are clear and unequivocal, is far too easily generated in an environment which is unwelcoming of dissent. Over the years this is something I’ve observed in many contexts, including those of a research ethics committee and in church settings. The latter may be especially susceptible when the charisma of a Bishop is invested in a particular approach. Criticism of the approach can all too easily be perceived as criticism of the person.

It seems to me that a primary flaw in the case of the Post Office, and in many other institutions, is an inability to require a perspective 180° away from the one holding sway. For example, when a surprising number of post office staff were accused of fraud, and many maintained their complete innocence and were supported by local communities, why didn’t someone at a senior level think the unthinkable: what if they were right and Horizon was wrong? It isn’t difficult to speculate why a supplier might be reticent about admitting faults with a service it had provided. System error can be very costly and damage reputations (leading to even more adverse financial impact).

It would appear that often, as in the case of the Post Office, even independent reviews can encounter opposition if their findings differ from the dominant narrative of the organisation. When in leadership in health care chaplaincy I called on numerous occasions for an independent review of the operation of the Hospital Chaplaincies Council (HCC). There were many reasons for this, not least indications that something was wrong in the core operation of this Church of England quango. Eventually a review took place under Dame Janet Trotter, which concluded that the HCC was “too large and cumber­some for its purposes” and should be dissolved. Its findings were not welcomed by everyone and consequently the report was criticised from several quarters. However, the Hospital Chaplaincies Council no longer exists.

In leadership there is always more you could know, and the data will only ever be partial. Having a healthy appreciation of the gaps – the dark matter – is a key component in grasping the gravity of a situation. Being alert to seemingly insignificant anomalies can lead to the early detection of systemic failures. Simply closing ranks and moving into denial will only work for so long. Eventually, as the case of the Post Office demonstrates, you come up against the tenacity and determination that bends back into shape the distorted reality that huge resources have attempted to impose.

A wise leader doesn’t only want to hear the view of the majority. In 1 Kings chapter 22 we learn how King Jehoshaphat wasn’t content with the homogeneous advice of 400 prophets: ‘Is there no other prophet of the Lord here of whom we may inquire?’ Micaiah had the wisdom to make himself scarce when he knew the King wanted to hear from all the prophets. Micaiah was’t going to fall in line with the rest, and this would eventually earn him a slap and see him thrown into prison. Micaiah had the same inconvenient trait demonstrated by Mr Bates – he wouldn’t sign off on something he knew to be wrong.

“But Micaiah said. ‘As the Lord lives, whatever the Lord says to me, that I will speak.'”


I Kings 22:14 NRSV