Grey Spaces: Searching Out the Church in the Shadows of Abuse

Churches around the world have been confronted by shame and culpability in widespread revelations of child sexual abuse. In this book, Jeffrey Driver, who has served the Australian Anglican Church as both a diocesan bishop and archbishop, explores some of the underlying cultural and theological influences that may have predisposed the possibility of abuse, as well as the defensiveness and cover-ups that sometimes followed. The first responses of most churches to the revelations of abuse were, of necessity, mostly structural and programmatic. Recognizing the institutional temptation to do only enough to settle a crisis, Jeffrey Driver calls for something different from the churches. Drawing on the imagery of Holy Saturday, he encourages a deeper journey of reflection and change, for churches and church leaders to linger reflectively in the grey spaces of loss and shame long enough to hear the voice of God addressing them through the vulnerable and the wounded once more, calling the church back to itself and into a deeper, humbler relationship with the world it is called to serve.

Jeffrey W. Driver was the Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide, Australia, for eleven years, and before that, the Bishop of Gippsland. In retirement, he is a research scholar with the University of Divinity in Melbourne and acting Principal of Newton College in Papua New Guinea.