‘The scale and severity of the practice was horrific. Five of the 13 I have seen were in it only for a short time. Between them they had 12 beatings and about 650 strokes. The other eight received about 14,000 strokes: two of them having some 8,000 strokes over the three years. The others were involved for one year or 18 months. Eight spoke of bleeding on most occasions (“I could feel the blood splattering on my legs”, “I was bleeding for three-and-a-half weeks”, “I fainted sometimes after a severe beating”)… Beatings of 100 strokes for masturbation, 400 for pride, and one of 800 strokes for some undisclosed “fall” are recorded.’
I chose to open with this quote so nobody can be under any doubt why Justin Welby has resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury. The quote is from 1982. That’s how long this has been going on. Back then senior figures within the evangelical movement, which ran Varsity and Public Schools holiday camps, held an inquiry into whether one of their leaders, John Smyth, was systematically abusing boys and young men in their trust.
Their answer was an unambiguous yes. Should they do anything about it? Their answer was no. ‘I thought it would do the work of God immense damage if this were public,’ said David Fletcher, the leader of the Iwerne Trust. Smyth offshored his sin to Africa. Up to 100 more boys were abused; one died in mysterious circumstances.
Fletcher went on to be the rector of St Ebbe’s, the leading conservative evangelical church in Oxford. The author of the report was the vicar of Round Church, the leading conservative evangelical church in Cambridge.
To understand the enormity of this scandal, you must understand the enormity of the project of which the Varsity and Public Schools holidays was the major part: the taking of bright boys from elite public schools and universities and training them in theology and leadership to transform the Church of England. In their stated ambition to change the Church they have been astonishingly successful. Name a major evangelical church in the country, and you will likely find at least one of their leaders has been through these camps. Bishops, too, among them the now departing Archbishop of Canterbury himself.
Not just an attendee, in adulthood Justin Welby was a dormitory monitor and a speaker at the camps. After Smyth moved to Zimbabwe, he also sent money to support his project and continued to exchange Christmas cards with him. He says he did not know what was going on.
Maybe. Or maybe not. But he lived with Mark Ruston who conducted that report in 1982. Welby is reported as having had a ‘grave’ conversation with him about Smyth in 1978. He was also warned about him in 1981. He may not have known. But the entire world he moved in knew.
This was all long before Welby’s failures to act in 2013, when the allegations were formally brought to his attention as Archbishop. It’s these failures which triggered the Makin Review. This report shows his inaction meant that neither the police nor South African authorities were adequately briefed to stop Smyth potentially continuing his abuse up until his death in 2018.
So many people knew. Makin holds that ‘on the balance of probabilities, it is the opinion of the reviewers that it was unlikely that Justin Welby would have had no knowledge of the concerns regarding John Smyth in the 1980s in the UK’. That is why this scandal has exploded the way it has.
This is not an attack upon my evangelical friends and colleagues, especially those who have been let down – and, in some cases, brutally abused – by shepherds who should have been willing to lay down their lives for the flock. I know that wolves have been masquerading as shepherds in all parts of the Church.
But for this awful situation to be redeemed the only honourable thing was for Justin Welby to resign.
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