TWELVE MONTHS LATER

We published the article “Taylor, Sizer & Hamas” one year ago yesterday. The article examined a serious failure of leadership on the part of Rev William Taylor of St Helen’s Bishopsgate in the City of London. He had been informed that Rev Dr Stephen Sizer, a pastor in a church network which he led, had sought to divert church funds to Viva Palestina, a non-Christian organisation closely associated with the terrorist group Hamas. However, Rev Taylor not only declined to take action against Dr Sizer, he also revealed to Dr Sizer the identity of the whistleblower who had supplied us with the documentary evidence.

Legal Threat
Following the article’s publication, Dr Sizer instructed his solicitors to write to all three of us [the two authors, plus Lee Furney, the publisher], threatening to sue us. Dr Sizer’s representatives told us that unless we withdrew the article and made a public apology, “our client will have no option but to issue immediate proceedings for an injunction and damages, and aggravated damages for defamation and costs.” We received several of these letters between December 2021 and April 2022. 

Responding to the letters via our lawyers cost us more than £7,000, a bill that we knew would vastly increase if Dr Sizer followed through on his threats to take us to court. In spite of the pressure (which also included a threat from a trustee of Dr Sizer’s organisation to complain to James Mendelsohn’s employer), we refused to change the article, because it is necessary, entirely accurate, and we retain the written evidence to prove it.

Under English law, there is a twelve-month time limit, starting from the date of publication, to commence proceedings for defamation. Despite his repeated threats, Dr Sizer has not commenced proceedings, and we have not changed a single word in the article. Although this stressful experience is not something we would ever have chosen, readers can know that our article has safely withstood the scrutiny of legal objections being raised and exhaustively answered.

Response from St Helen’s
As for William Taylor, the article has been brought to the attention of the churchwardens of St Helen's Bishopsgate. One of them was approached in person and also sent a full briefing note, which he shared with other members of the St Helen’s Standing Committee. He then wrote, “St Helen’s doesn’t propose to take any further steps in relation to these historic matters. Additionally, having spoken to William, he also does not propose to take this further.” Shockingly, St Helen’s sees no need for Rev Taylor to apologise either for turning a blind eye to Dr Sizer’s attempt to divert funds to Viva Palestina, or for disclosing to Dr Sizer the identity of a whistleblower. A church that is not prepared to admit its leader's mistakes will soon turn into an unsafe place for those seeking truth and justice.

It is telling that St Helen’s seeks to minimise the offence as 'historic': the Sizer scandal is no more historic than either the Smyth or the Fletcher scandal. Following Thirtyone:eight's independent report on the latter, one would hope that by now St Helen's understands that unaddressed wrongdoing in the past causes enduring harm and often necessitates present-day actions.

Whistleblowing and Safeguarding
The churchwarden was asked to respond to the specific allegation that Rev Taylor had disclosed a whistleblower’s identity despite a clear plea for confidentiality. He claimed that “Everyone already knew who the whistleblower was.” Since the churchwarden was not himself involved in the discussions at the time, this excuse must have been supplied to him by Rev Taylor. We dispute this assertion. Whistleblowers do not insist on strict confidentiality if their identity is already known – an obvious point, reinforced by the distressed emails sent to us by the whistleblower on discovering Rev Taylor had disclosed everything to Dr Sizer. That action was an appalling betrayal of trust. Rev Taylor should not be allowed to evade accountability on the basis of a false claim that the whistleblower’s identity was already known outside the network’s few senior leaders.

It is worth restating that when Dr Sizer sought to divert hundreds of pounds from his church’s mission fund to Viva Palestina, it was already public knowledge that Viva Palestina's leader had handed over large sums of money to the terrorists of Hamas! We would rightly expect front page headlines if a Roman Catholic priest attempted to send church funds to a money-running outfit tied to Al Qaeda. A responsible network leader would never overlook such a glaring red flag in a pastor’s conduct – let alone reveal a whistleblower’s identity to that pastor. Rev Taylor’s failure of leadership regarding Dr Sizer is compounded by the fact that he has been unwilling to apologise for it since our article was published a year ago.

It should be emphasised that the St Helen’s churchwarden didn’t challenge any of the facts in our article. We therefore view the churchwarden’s response as evidence that St Helen’s is unwilling to practise what it has preached about safeguarding. A church that only applies safeguarding principles when it is convenient is a church that hasn’t yet fully embraced those principles. 

Ongoing Gospel Partnership Between Rev Taylor and Dr Sizer
Stephen Sizer is the only conservative evangelical leader we know of who has attempted to divert church money to an organisation with a track record of funding terrorists. Yet Rev Taylor has mistreated those calling for justice and, for more than ten years, has consistently refused to censure Dr Sizer, saying instead, “I personally see no justifiable grounds for breaking gospel partnership with Stephen.” Are we the only British evangelicals who find this totally unacceptable?

Rev Nick Howard, Pastor, Good Shepherd Anglican Church, New York City

James Mendelsohn, Senior Lecturer, UWE Bristol Law School