Bishops refused to call for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign because they were thinking about their own promotion prospects, one senior church figure believes.
Justin Welby, who had been in post since 2013, stepped down after a report was published that showed the Church covered up sexual abuse by John Smyth, a barrister who led Christian summer camps.
The report, by Keith Makin, said Smyth might have been brought to justice had Mr Welby formally reported it to police when he was installed as archbishop. Instead, Smyth died aged 75 in South Africa in 2018, while still under investigation.
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Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, the bishop of Newcastle, was the only one to call publicly call for Mr Welby to step down from the top job, after it was also revealed he had donated money to Smyth on missions in Zimbabwe.
She believes no one else followed suit because bishops are choosing not to call out senior leaders within the Church, as they hope to be the person to succeed him in the top job.
Bishop Helen-Ann told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: “Silence speaks in many ways. Some are silent, perhaps because they see themselves as succeeding to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury.
“Others are fearful of being reprimanded and rebuked because I know that colleagues have received letters similar to mine, which are quite heavy in tone.
“So I think genuinely they’re motivated by a fear of just keeping their heads down and not feeling able to speak out.”
Bishop Helen-Ann said she was “motivated” to speak out because “anybody reading the Makin report would be rightly horrified by its contents and the role of senior clergy in covering up the abuse”.
“I thought I would be joined by colleagues who I knew privately were discerning that it was probably the right thing for the archbishop to resign.
“And I think it’s a great disappointment to me that when I called for that publicly, I was indeed a lone voice.”
Mr Makin, who authored the report “has blown the lid off of a lot of [the] dysfunction” within the Church, Bishop Helen-Ann said.
She believes colleagues are used to “keeping their heads down and getting on with the job at hand”.
Justin Welby resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury on Tuesday. Pic: Reuters
“But there are times when a prophetic voice is needed and we do have to stand up. And I think also fear in silence can be complicit with some unhealthy theologies that I think are at the heart of church life over many decades, which tend to problematize things like gender and sexuality and ethnicity.”
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In the wake of Mr Welby’s resignation, her colleagues did begin to speak out.
The Church’s deputy lead bishop for safeguarding said it is “not a safe institution” in some ways – and that others may need to step down.
The Church did not want to add to the Bishop of Newcastle’s comments.
