Church of England Archbishop resigns over child abuse scandal

On November 12 Justin Welby resigned over his mishandling of a child abuse scandal. Welby was the Archbishop of Canterbury i.e. the highest priest in England. Welby had served in that post since 2013. Ten years is about the average to serve as Archbishop of Canterbury. At 70 his retirement was not long off anyway. But he has stepped down from his post a little prematurely.

Welby comes from an unusual background for an Anglican bishop inasmuch as his putative father was a Jewish refugee from Germany who shifted to the United Kingdom in the 1930s. Justin Welby was raised as a Christian. He went to Eton and then Cambridge University. His stellar education was not unusual among high-ranking Church of England clergy a generation ago. What is uncommon about Welby is that after university he became an oil trader. He spent 10 years in that sector and was a multimillionaire. He spent some of his career in Paris and speaks flawless French. It was only in his 30s that he felt the vocation to be a clergyman. He could easily live on a modest priest’s salary of GBP 30,000 per annum because he had all his money from his time in the oil sector.

Justin Welby married young and had two children. He is fairly liberal within the Church. He had no objection to the ordination of females or to same-sex marriage. He has shown a demagogic devotion to the Black Lives Matter movement.

As Archbishop, Welby angered many by allowing clergymen’s and clergywomen’s salaries to fall so low. Many church buildings are in a poor state of repair. Despite that, he splurges million on hiring diversity advisers. He seems to think the Church is a far-left propaganda unit and not there to evangelise for Christianity.

Justin Welby held forth on BLM and on penury. He played to the far left gallery. But he was strangely silent on the mass murder of children in utero. Welby does not consider the human rights of girls and boys a moral issue. He showed cowardice when he failed to take a stand against the ultimate child abuse.

Well into middle age Welby discovered that his father was not his mother’s husband. He was conceived as a result of an extramarital affair. He took this in his stride.

The scandal that brought Welby down

In the 1970s a barrister named John Smyth attended the Iwerne Camps. The Iwerne Camps were Christian holiday retreats for boys aged 13-18 from the United Kingdom’s most expensive private schools. Boys who went to these camps did fun activities as well as Bible study and prayers. John Smyth was not a priest, but he was a very active lay member of the Church of England.

Mr. Smyth would question boys about their behaviour, pressuring them to admit to sins and agree to caning as expiation. He delivered brutal beatings with a bamboo cane, causing severe bleeding, claiming it spared them punishment in the afterlife.

John Smyth was born in Canada to British parents in 1941. He returned to the UK as a child. After Cambridge University he was called to the bar. He thrived in criminal practice. Indeed, he was made a Queen’s Counsel. Being made a QC is a distinction conferred on only 10% of barristers. He lived in Winchester. This small city contains one of the United Kingdom’s most illustrious schools: Winchester College. It is an all-male and all-boarding school. It is the one that Rishi Sunak attended. Smyth offered to help any boys at the school who wanted legal careers, and he would provide this counselling gratis. Winchester College was only too happy to accept his assistance.

Mr. Smyth was married and had four children. He had no criminal record. He was soon made a junior judge. He appeared to be a pillar of the community. As he had an ultra-respectable pedigree there was no ground for suspicion.

Boys from Winchester College who wanted to deepen their Christian faith were sometimes invited to Smyth’s house. Smyth would ask whether they had done anything iniquitous and if they ever felt lust. If they admitted that they did, then they were informed that they must be purified by pain. John Smyth would take them to his garden shed for a thorough beating. His garden shed was soundproof so his neighbours would not hear the shrieks.

Through the 1970s and up until 1984 Smyth volunteered at the Iwerne Camps. They were run by Church of England priests and a few teachers from the top independent schools. Smyth was a welcome presence, and he had his qualities. But rumours leaked out. Parents happened to see their sons in a state of undress after the camps and saw some of them had suffered cuts and bruises on the posterior. Questions were asked. Boys also told each other what had befallen them.

Reports were sent to Church of England bishops. A bishop is a senior church leader in charge of hundreds of priests. Winchester College was also informed of what Smyth had been doing. In 1984 they told him he was not welcome on their premises ever again. They asked him to desist from contacting their pupils.

It was lawful for teachers to cane their pupils in independent schools until 1998. Therefore, was Smyth legally in the clear? As he was not a teacher, and the caning was not even in school this defence of providing school discipline was not available to him. He was not even punishing them for the breach of rules. Usually, it was for a thought crime. Moreover, the beatings he inflicted were severe than anything meted out in schools at the time. A headmaster would cane a very, very recalcitrant pupil with a maximum of six strokes over the clothes. Smyth was giving a child many times that in a single session and on the bare skin. An educative beating seldom drew blood, but Smyth’s always did.

Mr. Smyth was patently guilty of serious assaults and maybe even grievous bodily harm. The Church of England and Winchester College did not inform the police or social services about the irrefragable proof of Smyth’s crimes. But Smyth felt the heat. It was noised in his hometown of Winchester that he had assaulted boys. It is unclear whether his actuation was sexual or sadistic or possibly both.

The attitude was that the Church must not be left with egg on its face. As Smyth had agreed to stay away from the Iwerne camps and Winchester College then no more would be said. Nobody wanted a fuss. The Church and the college believed that to have him prosecuted would mean that the sordid story would get into the press. They did not want their good names dragged through the mud.

Smyth insisted that he was a zealous Christian. He had only done his best to purge the boys of their iniquity. The Bible says ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ i.e. if you do not use a stick enough to beat a child then the child will turn bad.

In 1984 Smyth emigrated to Zimbabwe. The newly independent country had just emerged from conflict. Money was pouring in, and it was an optimistic time. The massacres in Matabeleland were largely ignored by the media. Smyth went into legal practice there and prospered.

The Church of the Province of Southern Africa is the Church of England’s sister church in Zimbabwe. There is the Anglican Communion which is made up of all those church organisations that are analogues of the Church of England and practise its form of Christianity. These include the Church of North India, the Church of South India, the Church of Pakistan and so forth.

In Zimbabwe, Smyth threw himself into Anglican activities. He was accepted as a volunteer at Christian camps for boys. His abusive behaviour soon recurred. The Church of England authorities were possibly not even aware of where he had gone.

Eventually, Smyth moved to Cape Town, South Africa. Once again, he volunteered to work with teenage boys. He also advocated for a group that was opposed to homosexuality. John Smyth died in 2018. He never faced justice.

The abuse by Smyth came to light in the 2010s. He refused all requests for interviews. A British journalist followed him in Cape Town with a cameraman and asked him questions.

Justin Welby volunteered at the Iwerne camps when he was an undergraduate. He knew Smyth and they sent each other Christmas cards. Welby maintains he had not the faintest idea there was anything untoward about Smith at the time.

When Welby became archbishop in 2013, he was informed that Smyth was a serial child abuser. Welby said he was shocked and horrified. He was told by his staff that the police had been informed. Despite this, the police never even asked to interview Smyth.

But Justin Welby was seen to have taken insufficient action. Some people said that Welby ought to step down as a mark of his contrition. He was interviewed days before his resignation. He stated that he had given some thought to tendering his resignation but concluded that there was no need. He unreservedly apologised to the victims However, he noted that the abuse by Smyth ended in the Church of England in 1984. Welby only became archbishop 29 years later.

Canterbury is the religious capital of England. That is because St Augustine built the first church in the country there. The local magnate welcomed him in the Dark Ages. Augustine’s little wooden church was rebuilt in stone. It was expanded and expanded. It is now the largest place of worship in the British Isles.

Canterbury is a small city 100 km from London. By law, it is a low-rise city to allow the cathedral to be visible from a long distance.

The Archbishop of Canterbury resides in Lambeth Palace, London. He travels to Canterbury only a few times a year.

The Archbishop officiates at very important ceremonies such as royal weddings, funerals and coronations.

Four names have been noised as possible replacements for Welby. All are white but one is a woman. My hunch is the Church of England shall select a female. Perhaps she is the best candidate. Another point is that the Church will want to move on. It was a male who committed the abuse and males who failed to deal with it adequately. The Church is very politically correct now. The Church has had a bad news story. Appointing a woman to the See of Canterbury will be seen as a good news story.

The Prime Minister is presented by the Church with two nominees for the post of Archbishop of Canterbury. The PM then advises the monarch on which one to appoint. The Monarch always always follows prime ministerial advice.