Anglican Mainstream

By Ed Beavan, Church Times

THE Bishop of Ripon & Leeds, the Rt Revd John Packer, has rejected claims by the Unite trade union that bullying among the clergy is “rife”.

The allegation is based on figures released by the union, which says it deals with 150 cases of bullying among the clergy a year. Unite currently has 2500 members in its faith-workers branch, the majority of whom are ministers of religion.

Last month, the union backed the Revd Mark Sharpe in his case against the diocese of Worcester. Mr Sharpe said that he had been the victim of a four-year campaign of harassment in the Teme Valley South benefice (News, 18/25 December). Unite described the benefice as “toxic” (see below).

Rachael Maskell, a national officer at Unite, said that cases of bullying among the clergy they were dealing with were becoming nastier, “to the point of criminal activity.

“Clergy are becoming seriously ill as a result of bullying, and some even suicidal. We want to see the Church being pro-active in stopping these cases in the first place, but there is a denial there’s an endemic problem.”

She said that bullying ranged from verbal, physical, and even sexual harassment, and called for a compre­hensive new system to be brought in. The clergy should be granted the same employment rights as secular workers.

The Revd Gerry Barlow, a former Baptist minister who chairs the faith-workers branch, said that he had heard of several cases involving bishops. One example was the with­drawal of clergy licences “as a whole­sale way of getting rid of clergy be­fore common tenure is introduced”.

When he had worked on the Unite helpline four years ago, it received three calls a fortnight from clerics; this had gone up to three a week.

Mr Barlow said that Unite wanted to see the clergy remaining as office-holders; but they should be given all the benefits of employees. He called for an independent grievance pro­cedure to be introduced for all church denominations. The current system in the Church of England was “too in-house. . . The last thing bishops are is objective.” The Clergy Discip­line Measure left clerics feeling “utterly smashed up”, and was a significant cause of stress.

But Bishop Packer, who chairs the Church of England’s Deployment, Remuneration, and Conditions of Service Committee, said that he did not believe bullying was “rife”.

He asked for the scale of the issue to be kept in perspective. “With over 27,000 licensed ministers active in the Church, the number of cases is a very small percentage.

“As in any human institution, bullying can occur,” he said. The Christian Church “is based on trust, which can break down”.

Bishop Packer said that when there were reports of bullying the Church of England took them “very seriously”. He also pointed out that Unite had been involved in the production of the C of E booklet about harass­ment, Dignity at Work, which had proved very helpful.

Bishop Packer said that moves to change the clergy’s status to that of employees had been resisted by the General Synod, as most of the clergy valued the flexibility of being an office-holder.

“The Clergy Terms of Service legislation, which has received Royal Assent and comes into effect next January, gives legal entitlements and rights which are equal to those in section 23 of the Employment Rela­tions Act.” This would give the clergy greater security. As for the removal of priests’ licences: “We are not aware it has happened at all.”

CHURCHGOERS and members of the clergy formerly in the Teme Val­ley South benefice in Worcestershire have hit back at claims by its former Rector, the Revd Mark Sharpe, who said he experi­enced a four-year campaign of harassment.

Mr Sharpe, who resigned from the benefice with effect from 7 Sep­tember, but has been on sick leave since April 2006, is taking the diocese of Worcester to an employ­ment tribunal.

After a visit to the parishes, the Bishop of Worcester, the Rt Revd John Inge, said that he met more than 50 parishioners (some of whom are pictured above) and was im­pressed by the “gracious and dig­nified manner” in which they had coped with the “dreadful allegations about their parishes being ‘toxic’”.

He said that every priest apart from Mr Sharpe in the past 20 years had come forward “to testify vigor­ously” to the good character of the people.

“These priests know the place and its people very well, and speak with authority of their deep affection for their friends and experiences in the Teme Valley.”

Three former Teme Valley clergy and two who are currently min­istering in the area praised the people in the benefice, which is made up of six villages.

One of them, the Very Revd Richard Lewis, a former Dean of Wells, was invited to be Associate Vicar of the benefice in January 2006 during Mr Sharpe’s illness. In his letter to the Church Times (1 January), he said that, during his time there, he “found only kindness and friend­ship, concern and care”.

A former Rector, the Revd Martin Reed, said that he wondered whether Mr Sharpe “was talking about a different parish, because that wasn’t my experience at all”. 

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