Both clergy and parishioners, Penner says, can be either perpetrators or victims of abuse and harassment. Photo: Gordenkoff
Across the Anglican Church of Canada, governing bodies from the national to the diocesan level are in the process of reviewing, updating and in some cases introducing for the first time sexual misconduct policies.
The ecclesiastical province of the Northern Lights—which covers, roughly, the country’s three Prairie provinces as well as most of the Canadian Arctic—falls into this last group, says Karen Webb, chancellor of the ecclesiastical province and a member of the Anglican Journal’s editorial board. Some of its dioceses also lack policies, but may not for much longer; the province will be requiring its dioceses to show it their policies where they have them, Webb says, and where they don’t, it will be using all the leverage it has to get them to create one
Meanwhile, the ecclesiastical province of Ontario has struck a task force and the ecclesiastical province of Canada (which covers Atlantic Canada and part of Quebec) has a policy that other provinces have been learning from. At the national level, Chancellor of General Synod Canon (lay) Clare Burns has been working on drafting an updated version of General Synod’s current sexual misconduct policy, which dates to 2005—a process General Synod committed itself to in 2019.
One factor behind this trend, Webb says, is a major cultural shift in Canadian society’s perspective around sexual misconduct. Where sexual comments and propositions were something she and her friends were expected to laugh off in her college days, she says, the younger generation is calling for much more scrutiny and accountability in these matters. As a result, she says, she and other chancellors across the church are working to understand and respond to the demands of a world that expects the church to be able to protect its members more diligently.
Similar work is being done elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. From Sept. 5-10 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, members of the Anglican Communion’s International Safe Church Commission met with Anglican leaders from around the world. The goal, said the Rev. Luke Chigwanda, general secretary of the Anglican Council of Zimbabwe, in a video released on the council’s YouTube channel Sept. 20, was for the commission “to empower and equip Anglican church leaders on how to make our Anglican churches safe places,” including the implementing of systems to prevent abuse. It builds on years of work by the commission, which was founded in 2016.
The policy Northern Lights is drafting includes a concerted effort to address one particular type of case: when a priest who has some form of complaint or record on their file involving sexual impropriety moves to another parish or diocese where that element of their past is unknown. In the past, bishops have not always passed on that information to the leadership in their new posting; in fact, one way dioceses have historically dealt with problematic staff was to remove them from where the problem happened and send them somewhere else to start again. But dioceses have a duty to disclose such information about staff who transfer, Webb says, so appropriate steps can be taken to watch for any further reports or signs of misconduct in the staff member’s new workplace—otherwise they’re just passing on a problem, what some call “throwing a dead cat over the wall.” Northern Lights’ new policy will put that duty in writing.
“There may be a reason […] we’re going to give him or her—almost always a him—a second chance,” she says. “But you’ve got to let us know. Not telling us—how are we supposed to do anything useful? If you don’t tell us, that’s throwing the dead cat over the wall.”
Webb says she has seen people transferred into the province who likely fit the bill. She thinks the practice is part of a tendency in the church toward reluctance to acknowledge incidents when they happen. “We’re not supposed to have this kind of thing happen to us. Aren’t we better than that?” she says.
Leaving incidents unspoken can sometimes come from an impulse on the part of leaders to preserve the church’s image as a place where people can feel safe, says Webb. But any hidden incidents will eventually come to light and in the process cost the church both the image of a safe institution and the public’s trust that it will be open and honest when things do go wrong.
Burns says the goal of the General Synod policy revision, a draft of which was presented to CoGS in November 2023, has been to align the policy with the maturation of society’s and the church’s understandings of sexual misconduct and unacceptable behaviour.
“The policy is supposed to also have an educative purpose so that we identify what has changed,” she says. Beyond just laying out the circumstances under which someone can be punished, it is also meant to be used in training staff on what is and is not acceptable behaviour.
The draft policy, says Burns, strives for accountability, consistency and “a procedure that a complainant and a respondent can rely on … so the people who are exercising the power of investigation have a clear model of how they are supposed to conduct that. Because the church wants to be transparent.”
The new General Synod policy will cover national office staff and volunteers plus members of General Synod itself and associated bodies such as CoGS and its various committees. General Synod is not able to mandate specific requirements for the misconduct policies of individual dioceses or provinces; each jurisdiction of the church is responsible for laying out its own—something often complicated by the fact that resources are limited in remote areas. And dioceses are not always able to simply copy the policy used in another region either, partly because secular law in each province can differ with respect to sexual misconduct and partly because church governance can vary from one diocese to another.
While provinces have no more power than the national church to compel their dioceses to draft their own policies, Webb says what they can do is strongly recommend that every diocese create one or update their existing one. Likewise, provinces and dioceses can collaborate with one another to work toward uniformity of policy and to share good ideas so that each policy is strengthened by all of their efforts.
‘A big problem that hasn’t been addressed adequately‘
Carol Penner, director of theological studies for Conrad Grebel University
College at the University of Waterloo and a former Mennonite pastor, has extensively researched abuse issues and feminist theology. She calls sexual misconduct in churches and seminaries “a big problem that hasn’t been addressed adequately.” She also notes abuse in Christian institutions is “not a one-way street:” church leaders can be victims of abuse and harassment as well as perpetrators.
For her part, Webb recalls false allegations made last year against Bishop William Cliff, then bishop of the diocese of Brandon, which nearly ended his career. She says the church has a duty to uphold the fundamental presumption of innocence until guilt is proven, and with that in mind, she says, she and others in the province of Northern Lights will be working to ensure the final version of the procedures they draft is fair to both the complainant and the accused in incidents of sexual misconduct. The guiding principle is to balance mercy with a serious-minded approach to ensuring even small signs of concern are appropriately documented and followed up.
Much of what needs to be in a policy—and for that matter much of best practice on preventing sexual misconduct problems in general—is actually very simple, says Webb. No one should be meeting with parishioners behind closed doors, for example. Meetings should take place with somebody else within earshot. Though some of these measures may seem unnecessary to some, they can be critical, she says.
While sexual misconduct by leaders happens everywhere, Penner believes that other institutions have done a better job at addressing it than churches. Professional associations, for example, tend to be more open and straightforward about advertising their sexual misconduct policies and how to make a complaint, she says.
Andrea Gunraj, vice president of public engagement at the Canadian Women’s Foundation, says some environments may have greater abuse prevalence and risk for groups victimized most often: women, girls, LGBTQ+ people and children. These can include the military, schools, workplaces—and churches.
“As a lifelong church member, I have seen movement in the right direction in churches and denominational bodies,” she says. “I have also seen resistance to change that is both disappointing and ungodly. I have hope that voices of Christ-loving changemakers and advocates are breaking through. Those in leadership have to support them and do all they can to break institutional cycles of abuse.”
Penner says while there is a perception that the culture of how churches respond to sexual misconduct allegations has changed, “I don’t think it’s changed. There’s a perception there that it’s easier now to lay a complaint. It’s not easy. Nothing has changed in the church to make it easier … I think what has changed is the awareness of congregations that that’s not acceptable behaviour.”
Those who make allegations often face backlash, Penner says. “They are vilified, they’re blamed, they’re not believed. They rarely can stay in their congregation because they are ostracized.” Many parishioners refuse to believe allegations against a minister, she adds.
Within churches, Penner says, traditional patriarchal attitudes can play into why sexual misconduct is not reported. “The pastor has an aura about them that if they say, ‘This is okay,’ it must be okay. Sexual misconduct often is reported over a decade after it happens because people have to get away from the pastor.”
“Often sexual misconduct in the church is couched in love language,” she adds. “It’s harder to recognize it as abuse when someone’s saying, ‘I care for you. I’m concerned about you and you’re a special person.’”
Another difference Penner identifies between how church and secular institutions respond to sexual misconduct is the importance laid on forgiveness in Christian teachings. She adds, “I think the church has to have mercy and grace and say, ‘We love you. We still want you as a member of our body. But you can’t be a leader anymore.’”
Many churches cannot weather sexual misconduct allegations, Penner says. In some cases churches have closed down after accusations are made against clergy. “The whole congregation feels betrayed,” Penner says. “The whole congregation goes through a long journey of healing: ‘Can we trust our next minister? Can we trust any minister?’
“This erosion of trust has implications financially because people stop giving. It has implications for volunteers: ‘I don’t want to be volunteering in an organisation that supported that.’ … The congregation is convulsed with conflict, because a lot of people support the minister and some people support the victim. Everyone is mad about how it was handled and everyone’s fighting about it.”
The strongest response the church can have to sexual misconduct, Penner says, is transparency and proper investigation. Attempts to protect the institution by covering up abuse cases are not just counterproductive, she adds, but place more people in harm’s way.
In her own conversation with the Journal, Burns acknowledges many of the issues Penner and Gunraj raise.
“I agree that over time, institutionally, the church has not dealt with these matters well … [but] I will say that in my personal experience having served as a chancellor and a vice chancellor well on 20 years, I have never seen a misconduct matter covered up,” she says. However, she adds, there are times when the church or its representatives have been made aware of an issue before it came to public attention but failed to act because no one involved was willing to go forward with a complaint that would have kicked off a formal process to intervene.
The goals of the national office’s new policy, she says, include making it easier both for people to bring complaints and for leaders, where there is some factual basis, to start investigations on their initiative, even if no complainant has come forward.