School terms: For "muscular Christianity" read beatings and abuse
A new book sheds light on the savagery of a Christian abuser, writes George Pitcher. But he was the rule, not an exception
Andrew Graystone , who has worked for the Church of England and the BBC, has written a book called Bleeding for Jesus, which exhaustively investigates the abuse by barrister John Smyth of boys in his care, many of whom attended the Christian-based Iwerne camps.
Smyth savagely beat boys, often in the garden shed of his home in Winchester, claiming to be their Father God’s earthly proxy whose duty was to discipline them. Unsurprisingly, this abuse has caused lasting and irrevocable damage to its victims.
What is sadly also probably unsurprising is that the Church’s response to these assaults was less than expeditious when it learned of them in 1982. Smyth was quietly despatched to other lay ministries in Africa, where a boy in his auspice died in uncertain circumstances. Smyth himself died in 2018, uncharged with any offence.
More recently, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey had his licence to officiate temporarily revoked while alleged failings to investigate the matter on his watch were investigated. The current Archbishop, Justin Welby, who has worked as a “dormitory officer” at Iwerne camps, last year apologised to the victims.
Graystone has done well to shed light on another shameful chapter of Church abuse. But this is not a book review. I have worked alongside and with Graystone and admire his work. But I haven’t yet read his book.
Rather, what caught my ear was him talking about it this week on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show. There, he said that the response from the Church has been “pretty awful” and said of churches and Christian organisations: “It’s about their theology or culture or practices that allows terrible things to be done in their name.”
That last comment really intrigued me. Does the Church really allow child-abuse to occur in its name? That’s a very strong claim to make and it’s worth examining.
Sexually motivated
The first thing to try to do is to differentiate between different kinds of abuse. I asked Graystone whether he thought Smyth’s actions were sexually motivated. He told me that, by coincidence, he’d just spoken to a contact in South Africa who had encountered Smyth in Zimbabwe, who told him that Smyth’s abuse was “overtly sexual”.
As to the beatings in the shed in Winchester, Graystone adds the very good point that it may be easier for “boys to acknowledge they were involved in beatings that got out of hand - much harder for them to own that they were victims of a sexual predator.” But in the absence of testimony to the contrary, these have to be treated as beatings rather than sexual assaults.
Please understand that it’s no part of my purpose here to suggest that one form of abuse is in some way “better” than another. On the contrary, I think Graystone may have uncovered a far darker side of our contemporary culture than we have hitherto acknowledged, precisely because the attention has been on sexual abuse.
Sexual relations with a minor have been against the law arguably since the first age-of-consent law was introduced in 1275, which placed it at marriageable age at the time of 12. It hovered pitifully at this level until noble Victorian campaigners started to apply pressure that has seen it rise to the current age of 16 in the modern era in Britain.
By contrast, corporal punishment (beating) wasn’t outlawed in state schools until 1986 – and then one senses only reluctantly, because it followed a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 1982. That point is somewhat reinforced by the knowledge that it was banned in private schools in 1998 (England and Wales), 2000 (Scotland) and 2003 (Northern Ireland).
Grand public schools
This was the educational culture in which Smyth and so many like him thrived. During his period of abuse in England, his victims were from the grand public schools.
When I was sent away to board at one in 1968, I and the vast majority of my friends were routinely beaten, or “caned” as it was quaintly known. It can be argued that it was more about humiliation than the savagery that Smyth inflicted. But that’s surely only a question of degree. Is it only abusive if blood is drawn (see the title of Graystone’s book)? To be hit by a grown-up is only and precisely that.
And it’s a facet of our education system that has been not just tolerated but revered in British culture. The “celebrated” Victorian headmaster of Rugby School (to which strategically I failed by common-entrance exam as a 13-year-old), Thomas Arnold, introduced the template for manly discipline that generations of subsequent public-school staff rooms worshipped, including the introduction of the idea that prefects could cane junior boys, to save the masters the trouble.
My point here is that Smyth was a product of the system. Not an aberration; not a black sheep. He wasn’t a bad apple in the barrel of English public schools. Those schools really were (and are) the barrel. Smyth was the rule, not an exception.
I don’t advocate that Arnold’s statue at Rugby should be torn down, or there wouldn’t be a bust nor plaque left in any public schools that followed suit. But it’s worth remembering that Arnold endorsed and embodied the very idea that such schools are Christian institutions.
Smyth’s grotesque story is a consequence of that perversion known as “muscular Christianity”. He’s in the finest traditions of public schools. And the schools should own that.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest.