Church Society director Lee Gatiss has been exonerated in relation to allegations of dishonesty in the midst of accusations of antisemitism against the organisation.
Gatiss has ‘the full confidence and total support of Church Society’s council and staff,’ the group added. The announcement came following allegations made against Church Society (CS) recently.
One allegation resolved
A statement from CS Chairman Andrew Towner said: ‘One of those allegations was of dishonesty against our Director, Lee Gatiss. We are pleased that this has now been resolved. Following our own review, Church Society Council consider that the complainants, Nick Howard and James Mendelsohn, have not provided compelling evidence to substantiate their accusations of dishonesty. The complainants have responded to indicate that they do not wish for an independent third-party review, which we offered to commission.’
He added: ‘The other aspect to the allegation concerns toleration of alleged antisemitism from someone who used to be a member of Church Society. Church Society utterly repudiates antisemitism, as our Director wrote in a blogpost, along with all other forms of racism, as abhorrent to the gospel and offensive to God. We were willing to have the allegations concerning Church Society’s relationship with Stephen Sizer considered by an independent third party, due to their seriousness, but that offer has also been declined.’
The statement, issued on behalf of the CS Council, continues: ‘We therefore want to make it clear that our Director, The Revd Dr Lee Gatiss, continues to have the full confidence and total support of Church Society’s council and staff. The delay in making this public statement was simply caused by our willingness and desire to look carefully at the claims and to be open to independent external scrutiny. We very much regret the time gap between the accusations in November 2020 and this exoneration, and wish to emphasise again, that at no point should our willingness to engage with external review have been taken to indicate or assume any suspicion of guilt.
No confidence
Nick Howard said: ‘What Revd Towner omits to say in his 1 April letter to Church Society members is that we rejected Church Society’s offer of an independent investigation because Revd Towner wouldn’t tell us who the investigator would be. This meant we had no confidence that the investigation would be truly independent, as we explained in our letter in last month’s edition of Evangelicals Now. We were offered a judicial process in which the defendants (Church Society and Revd Dr Gatiss) would choose their own judge and would not reveal the judge’s identity to their opponents in advance. Where is the justice in that process? We consider the “exoneration” spoken of by Revd Towner to be a travesty of true justice.’
Responding to this Church Society said: ‘We made the offer of a review in good faith, and did not pursue it further when Nick Howard and James Mendelsohn wrote that they “do not think further investigation by an independent appointee is necessary in this case.” As such, we did not discuss with them the terms of an investigation nor possible independent investigators. We find their ongoing accusations of dishonesty and manipulation entirely baseless.’
