From Rolling Heads to Restored Relationships

A Tribute to Gustavo Gutierrez: The Father of Liberation Theology

May 3, 2025

Published by Castor on May 7, 2025

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How Transforming Our Concept of Justice Could Influence Our Approach to Church Growth

By Angela Sheard

In our life together in the Church of England, we seem to have arrived at the convergence of multiple failures in our processes of safeguarding, leadership and governance. The details of these have been much rehearsed elsewhere and I believe do not need repeating here – I’m more interested in our collective response to what has happened. Perhaps the most telling example of this came in Justin Welby’s first public speech since announcing his resignation in the House of Lords. He said, “The reality is that there comes a time if you are technically leading a particular institution or area of responsibility where the shame of what has gone wrong – whether one is personally responsible or not – must require a head to roll. And there is only, in this case, one head that rolls well enough. I hope not literally!”[1]

Literal beheading may not have been on the cards, but I think it’s worth reflecting on the implications of using this language. For me it evokes the image of a monarch from centuries past holding absolute power and lopping off the heads of those who present a threat by infringing in some serious way the law of the land. As a response to wrongdoing, beheading is an extreme form of punishment that seeks justice (we might imagine) through the suffering and death of the guilty party. It is a form of retribution which seeks to correct an injustice by exacting vengeance for a crime that has been committed. Although capital punishment is thankfully no longer an option in the UK, I think that retributive justice is still very much alive in our collective imagination. We often speak of seeking justice for the victim of a crime or their family: this process tends to require a binary identification of a perpetrator who is in the wrong and a victim who is in the right. An appropriate punishment is then sought for the perpetrator that “fits” the crime and so brings justice as a “reward” to the victim.

One problem with this approach to justice for us as Christians is that Jesus clearly speaks out against it. In his Sermon on the Plain from Luke’s Gospel for example, he says “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” This teaching cannot be understood within a framework of retributive justice, as Jesus seems to advocate responding to wrongdoing (including personal harm) not with punishment for the perpetrator but with mercy. Jesus’s approach focuses on the relationship between perpetrator and victim: in response to wrongdoing he asks, how can right relationship be restored here?[2]

Jesus advocates for not retributive but restorative justice. This is a process of honest truth-telling, mutual apology, healing and forgiveness (the letting go of the wish for a better past).[3] As we seek to respond as a church to the multiple crises which are now befalling our common life, I think it’s very important that we examine our collective consciences to understand which framework of justice underpins our responses to these tragic events. This is not to make a judgement about the “right” course of action – in fact, I think that with a restorative justice framework this is much less clear than if we are settled on simple retribution. Restorative justice rejects the simple binaries of good/evil, victim/perpetrator, reward/punishment. The exercise of restorative justice thus requires collective discernment: we need to create space in the church for open dialogue in which we embrace ambiguity, doubt and healthy differences of opinion, in which we make special effort to empower and listen to unheard voices. We also need to accept that the restoration of right relationship in situations of oppression and abuse will be a long, difficult and painful task. It will require us to challenge our assumptions about the status quo, as we uncover some of the wounds that it has created.

At this point you might be thinking: what does all this have to do with church growth? I previously wrote a mischievous piece about why the Church of England needs an anti-growth coalition. I cited references to ‘growth’ referring to economic growth without redistribution through society, as promoted by former Prime Minister Liz Truss in her mantra, “Growth, growth, growth”. George Monbiot and other critics have pointed out that this kind of pro-growth model would result in the transfer of yet more power to the wealthiest in society. Although the promise is that everyone stands to gain from this kind of economic growth (that a rising tide lifts all boats), in reality it functions as a threat to those who already go without in our unequal society. Turns out, we’re not all in the same boat after all.

In a similar way, retributive justice could be seen as a threat masquerading as a promise. The promise is that justice will be served to the victims – but the threat is that the already powerful will use retribution to maintain an unequal status quo. I think that the identification and elimination of a guilty party can serve to over-simplify the problems we face and their potential solutions. This approach avoids the need for honesty, accountability, apology, healing and forgiveness that is essential if we are to restore right relationship – and it also avoids a confrontation with how power is distributed and used across the church in the first place. In other words: get rid of Justin Welby, and we can point to something definitive that we have done as a church to “solve” the problem, thereby reducing the possibility of radical changes to the status quo.

In contrast, a restorative justice approach focuses on the quality of our relationships. This could be a helpful focus not only in response to injustice in our church, but also in response to concern around our numerical and financial decline. Both retributive justice and our dominant concept of church growth simplify complex problems in dangerous ways, promising so-called solutions which I believe are actually threats to our common life. Both of these approaches ultimately maintain disparities of wealth and power that benefit the few over the many. If we choose to focus instead on the quality of our relationships, we threaten this status quo and those who benefit from it; and in the process, we open the door to a new and different way. Sarah Mulally, the Bishop of London, has recently written an excellent piece about what this might look like in relation to accountability, process and management within our structures of leadership and governance.[4]

A focus on the quality of our relationships may seem dangerous: dangerous in the case of restorative justice because of the vulnerability that self-examination and repentance requires, dangerous in the case of church growth because it requires abandoning our frantic efforts to escape decline and death. Both of these scenarios include the added danger of difficult conversations about the way forward which require patience, careful listening, tolerance of uncertainty and much else besides.

However, I think that Jesus calls us to dangerous ministry both in his teaching and his example. He calls his followers to reject wealth, power and violence no matter what the consequences may be. He prioritises healing and forgiveness even at the point of his own state-sanctioned execution, which itself was an act of retributive justice that aimed to maintain power and control within the Roman Empire. His resurrection was a vindication of his ministry, and as people baptised into his body by the Spirit we are called to embrace the difficult work of doing the same. If we can turn away from our desire to see some more heads roll, we will be true witnesses to Christ in a world that seems hell-bent on retribution, renewed in our collective determination to destroy the enemy. Now more than ever, we must try to love our enemies (in the church as much as in the world) and make changes to our common life which enable us to reimagine and restore our relationships with one another.

Angela Sheard is Anglican Tutor at The Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, where she trained for ordination. She served her curacy at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.