Presumption of Guilt: The Church’s Flawed Case Against Bishop George Bell
by Ruth Hildebrandt Grayson
with an Introduction by Keith Clements
GEORGE KENNEDY ALLEN BELL, Anglican Bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958, is revered nationally and internationally as a pioneer of the ecumenical movement and a peacemaker. Forming a bond with theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he assisted the resistance to Hitler, aided refugees and supported imprisoned conscientious objectors, and courageously opposed indiscriminate area bombing as a war crime.
Bell is celebrated in the Church of England calendar on 3 October every year, the anniversary of his death. But in 2015 his reputation was ruined overnight by a single posthumous allegation of abuse over 60 years earlier. The allegation was initially upheld by the Church, without proper investigation and with no opportunity for a defence. It was based on the civil law conclusion ‘balance of probabilities’ in a case that never went to court. Following further thorough investigation, the Church finally acknowledged its serious failings in handling the affair, but full restitution of Bell’s name is yet to be achieved.
With a thoughtful introduction to the global importance of Bell’s legacy by renowned scholar Keith Clements, this book is based on Ruth Hildebrandt Grayson’s collection of letters and articles (both published and unpublished) written in the course of the campaign for justice and the clearing of the late bishop’s name. It attempts to make sense of this sorry saga by placing it in the context other historical cases, contemporary trends and well-publicised flaws in handling of abuse within the Church.
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Historian Ruth Hildebrandt Grayson is the older daughter of Franz Hildebrandt, a close friend of the late Bishop George Bell. Her family, together with many others, owes its existence to Bell’s lifesaving work with and for refugees from Nazism during the Second World War.
June 2025, PB, 98pp, 229x152mm (6×9″) 978-1-7397551-1-9
UK £9.99, US$13.99, €11.99, CAN$18.99, AUS$20.99
Ruth Grayson’s penetrating and perceptive analysis of the Bishop George Bell affair is a remarkable story of tenacity and integrity. This is a forensically astute and gripping account of one of the most egregious and scandalous travesties in the Church of England’s safeguarding processes in modern times. Grayson’s book reaffirms the complete vindication of Bishop Bell, while also holding up a mirror to the shoddiness, hubris and coverups at work in the current hierarchy of the Church of England.
– Rev Professor Martyn Percy, Aberdeen
In this valuable book, Ruth Grayson sets out many of the dimensions of what became a significant public controversy lasting several years. Altogether, her study yields a severe judgement of what the Church of England has become in a later age.
– Professor Andrew Chandler, biographer
It is stirring to be reminded of the link back to Bonhoeffer, Niemöller, and the Confessing Church and it is hard not to wonder what they would have made of the rush to judgement and defenestration of George Bell and his reputation.
– Lord David Alton, who delivered the 2023 Bell Lecture
The rush to judgement on the basis of presumption rather than evidence is one aspect of the continuing failure of the Church of England to handle cases of sexual abuse justly and with due process. The Bishop Bell case is a prime example, as Ruth Hildebrandt Grayson argues in this book.
– Janet Fife, co-editor of Letters to a Broken Church