George Bell Group Decries “Disgraceful” Conduct of ++Welby & +Warner

The George Bell Group under the name of its Convenor, Andrew Chandler, has issued a statement calling for the Church of England clearly to declare the late George Bell innocent of accusations of sexual abuse.

I urge reading the statement itself as quoting from it would not do it justice.  I will say that, especially when one considers the English penchant for understatement, the statement is very strongly worded.

Further, Mr. Chandler calls out Archbishop Justin Welby and the current Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, in no uncertain terms.  And their conduct as well as the conduct of others in the George Bell matter is “disgraceful” indeed.

Again, read the statement.

Historians Rebuke Justin Welby’s “Dangerous and Irresponsible” Smear of George Bell

I am very glad to see that six very reputable historians have taken Archbishop Justin Welby to task for his smearing of George Bell.  Please read their entire open letter to Welby, but skipping to their conclusions...:

We state our position bluntly. There is no credible evidence at all that Bishop Bell was a paedophile….  We state this after reviewing all that is known about his character and behaviour over many years….  We note, and emphasize, that there was never so much as a whisper of such an allegation in his lifetime. It is the testing of accusations which shows the integrity of a society, not the making of them. [If you heard wild applause, that may have been me. – Ed.]

There is today no cloud at all over Bishop Bell. Nobody employing credible critical method could think otherwise. Two of us are biographers of former Archbishops of Canterbury and we all acknowledge the many difficulties and pressures which any archbishop must face, not least in a position which Archbishop Lang once called ‘incredible, indefensible and inevitable’. None of us may be considered natural critics of an Archbishop of Canterbury. But we must also draw a firm line. The statement of 15 December 2017 seems to us both irresponsible and dangerous. We therefore urge you, in all sincerity, to repudiate what you have said before more damage is done and thus to restore the esteem in which the high, historic office to which you have been called has been held.

Kudos to these scholars for this excellent statement.

As for Justin Welby, he has become rather isolated in this matter.  His smears reflect more on him than on George Bell.  And that is as it should be.

An Episode from the Smearing of George Bell

Others have followed the slanderous injustice done to the late Bishop George Bell by the Church of England.  So I will defer to them.  The ashes of Archbishop Cranmer is one who has done yeoman’s work on this matter.  Another I must praise is (You might want to sit down now.) the Dean of Christ Church Martyn Percy.  Some readers might remember I am not exactly a fan of him.  But I must give credit where credit is due, and his article in Christian Today is revealing and courageous.

This slice of life from the Dean is particularly revealing:

On the October 21, 2015, I had been rung by the then Secretary-General of the Archbishops' Council and of the General Synod of the Church of England, Sir William Fittall. It was Fittall who told me, over the phone, that a 'thorough investigation' had implicated Bishop George Bell in an historic sex-abuse case, and that the Church had 'paid compensation to the victim'. Fittall added that he was tipping me off, as he knew we had an altar in the Cathedral dedicated to Bell, and that Bell was a distinguished former member of Christ Church.

Fittall asked what we would do, in the light of the forthcoming media announcements. I explained that Christ Church is an academic institution, and we tend to make decisions based on evidence, having first weighed and considered its quality. Fittall replied that the evidence was 'compelling and convincing', and that the investigation into George Bell has been 'lengthy, professional and robust'. I asked for details, as I said I could not possibly make a judgement without sight of such evidence. I was told that such evidence could not be released. So, Christ Church kept faith with Bell, and the altar, named after him, remains in exactly the same spot it has occupied for over fifteen years, when it was first carved.

And good on Christ Church Oxford for that.  But shame on the Church of England.  From this episode we see the sorry smear they were engaged in: telling people they had “compelling and convincing” evidence against Bell, but without revealing it, and now we know that evidence was very far from convincing.

Yet, on the basis that flimsy, puffed-up evidence, George Bell’s good name was trashed and removed from a number of monuments and institutions.  One may suspect there were motivations behind this, such as posterior covering, that had little to do with evidence.

People are pushed to resign over truly “compelling and convincing” allegations of sexual abuse and rightly so.  People who smear good men, even good dead men, on the basis of flimsy evidence and uncorroborated allegations should resign as well.