{"id":6930,"date":"2010-01-04T10:39:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T15:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=6930"},"modified":"2010-01-04T10:39:29","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T15:39:29","slug":"bullying-bishops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/bullying-bishops\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullying bishops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I thought it was just a Canadian problem; <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/8439005.stm\" target=\"_blank\">apparently not<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Bishops have got a lot nastier&#8221;, says the Reverend Gerry Barlow, chair of the faith workers branch of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unite_the_Union\" target=\"_blank\">Unite<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Unite says the bullying frequently comes from superiors within the church who may be under financial pressure.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A bullying case can go on for a long time&#8221;, says Terry Young, a former minister who runs the helpline.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re picked on for everything they do wrong, so in the end the person runs around terrified. You see these people unsupported, driven into depression and a nervous breakdown.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Barlow said: &#8220;Bishops can treat people shamefully. The most common experience is a priest gets called in for a pastoral chat, to &#8216;see how things are going&#8217;, within half an hour he&#8217;s telling you he&#8217;s going to fire you or take your licence away&#8221;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Anglican church is being run like a business: rather than being shepherds, bishops have become executives, more preoccupied with the well being of the organisation than the people in it.<\/p>\n<p>A far cry from a more humble view of the role of bishop: to be a slave of slaves.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update: Ruth Gledhill has more on this <a href=\"http:\/\/timescolumns.typepad.com\/gledhill\/2010\/01\/bullied-or-not-bullied-just-one-of-the-questions.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought it was just a Canadian problem; apparently not: &#8220;Bishops have got a lot nastier&#8221;, says the Reverend Gerry Barlow, chair of the faith workers branch of Unite. Unite says the bullying frequently comes from superiors within the church &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/bullying-bishops\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2031],"class_list":["post-6930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican-angst","tag-anglican-angst"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}