If I Told You, What Would You Do?’ is a suite of accessible materials and resources, including a series of seven videos with more than 50 people reading the words of survivors, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby and the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell. Survivors have also produced original artwork and music, which is being made available. Well, the thanks is really for you Ms Stein, and to your colleagues, for the substantive efforts you have made! The choice of the word apostasy in the title is deliberate and it forces us to consider how we (and the ten story tellers in the book) cope with access to new challenging information that is not catered for in an existing faith paradigm from the past. The typical story told by several of the contributor authors is the way that access to books and education had affected them profoundly. It opened their minds to the possibility of change and a way out of the narrow sectarian views which had dominated their thinking, sometimes over decades. Several of our authors discovered a new breadth in their spiritual outlook through access to post-graduate university studies. Accessing a privileged academic route is, of course, one path out of narrow perspectives, but sadly, such study is available to only a tiny minority. It is, in fact, hard to imagine any research student in theology (or any subject) not being decisively changed by seminars, exchange of academic papers and attendance at learned specialised conferences. This academic way of doing theology, one which constantly asks questions and lives with uncertainty, is, sadly becoming vanishingly uncommon in today’s Church. If ever the culture of free inquiry, which is embedded into the university research process, is outlawed from the wider Church, journeys of the kind and recorded in some of the stories in this book will be impossible. Some of the journeys of creative discovery as recorded in this volume would never have been able to start, let alone arrive successfully at a new destination. In February, General Synod members were denied the opportunity to debate the ISB (News, 2 February; 6 February). Patently, such a debate must take place at York in July, when those responsible for the current débâcle can be held to account.” Apologies for the length of the following which is offered (I hope) as providing a clearer picture of the position of the Diocese of Oxford and the Bishop in relation to the future respective positions of the Dean and Bishop. These were the Diocese’s proposed responses (subject to approval by the Oxford Diocesan Synod) in November 2022 to the governance review, emphasising the Dean’s Cathedral role being independent of the Governing Body, unlike as at present:

The Church recognises the devastating impact on survivors who suffer harm within a church context. It remains a deep source of grief and shame that as a Christian Church, such abuse represents a clear failure to live in ways that glorify God and honour Christ. It is committed to the continued value and potential of interconnected relationships within the Joint Foundation; One might be critical of the slow pace of change, and even perhaps of the naivety of the ISB members; sometimes they appeared to be talking a better game than they delivered within the complex and tangled institution that is the CofE. The legislation should, I think entail the establishment of a regulator. The powers of the regulator could be analogous with those of the Information Commissioner. The main problem would then be one of finance and, as I see it, the regulator could be funded partly via a government grant and partly by a levy on institutions with safeguarding obligations (plus fines).

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The reason for annexing the regius Divinity chair to the 5th prebend (plus the rectory of Ewelme) in 1617 and the regius Hebrew chair to the 6th prebend in 1632 was money. The stipends of the chairs were too slender to support their respective office holders. Similar expedients were adopted with other university positions (in 1840 the Lady Margaret chair was switched from Worcester to Christ Church for reasons of convenience as well as cash). By the time the pastoral theology chair was created in 1848 and the ecclesiastical history chair a decade later, and by which time stipends had been evened out under the terms of the Cathedrals Act 1840, it was thought that annexing chairs to stalls increased their ‘dignity’. This explains what happened in 1995: it was an attempt to preserve prestige for the Church (even though Henry Mayr-Harting was/is RC), and not to break all connection with the cathedral, as happened in 1959 when Godfrey Driver (who had been Cuthbert Simpson’s deputy and, arguably, superior as a Hebraist) agitated successfully for the severance of the connection on the grounds that there were not enough clerical Hebraists of sufficient stature (Driver’s father, Samuel, had himself held the Hebrew chair, and his ‘Westminster’ commentary on Genesis is still worth reading). What we can do of course is explain in different ways, to others who actually have functioning hearts and souls. It’s important not to overwhelm them, but to continue to provide simple reasoned cross referenced arguments to set out the basis of our experience. In fact that is what I believe is being done here and in other places too. Let’s keep it up. Under the Synod’s election rules, when a casual vacancy occurs within two years from the last ‘general’ election, instead of there being a by-election, the votes in the general election are recounted after eliminating the person who (in this case) is no longer a suffragan bishop and any of the unsuccessful candidates who indicate that they no longer wish to stand. In the constituency for southern suffragans in October 2021 there were ten candidates, of whom five (including John Perumbalath) were elected and five were unsuccessful. The five unsuccessful candidates were:

Revd Hayns may be one of those subject to investigation by a full and proper Christ Church Review: it is not nice, especially when one emerges the other end with the allegations unsustained, but nevertheless harmed. JG Personally, I have huge confidence in Meg because of the competence that she brings and the wide range of expertise from, you know, other fields she works in. I recognise that the issue of her chairing is not yet resolved and I can only say that there are some really deep and detailed conversations going on at the moment that are constructive that we hope will mean that we can make progress in the next week or two. It will be noted that the bishop admits (i) that the process for appointing Meg Munn had been handled had “not been right”, and (ii) that the issue of her chairing the ISB was “not yet resolved”, adding that she hoped progress could be made on that “in the next week or two.” That was nearly 4 weeks ago now and there has been no announced resolution of the issue, so it appears that Meg is still in post. in the context of a long-running dispute with the former Dean [Martyn Percy]” there had been “mismanagement and/or misconduct in the management and administration of the charity. This is because the trustees have not (a) managed the charity’s resources responsibly;(b) ensured that the charity is accountable.”

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I am of those (many as I understand it) survivors and whistleblowers of Church related abuse who has categorically refused any of the extensive information and data that I had previously shared with Maggie Atkinson & Jasvinder to go anywhere near Meg Munn in whom I have zero confidence based on my historic interaction with her. Readers of this blog will recognise the signs and symptoms of narcissism. Individuals with severe narcissistic personalities in leadership have had plenty of exposure on this and the other side of the Pond. I need not name examples, except to note that despite continuing uncovering of significant moral and other failures, they still believe wholeheartedly in their own narrative and are not dissuaded in carrying on their crusades to regaining power whatsoever. Titus charitable trust was formed many years ago. Basically it was designed to assist leaving Iwerne’s baggage in the past as an insurance against John Smyth’s misdemeanours catching up with them in the future, and their having to pay for his crimes.