To the clergy and staff of Christ Church, Thornton-le-Fylde.

To the Archdeacon of the Diocese of Lancaster.

To the Archbishop of York.

To the Archbishop of Canterbury.

To the Church of England, the Anglican Communion, and the population at large.

This morning my father (Piers Tuson) and I (Mark Tuson), both of this parish, were ordered to leave a Eucharist Service by Fr Damian Platt, in response to a privately whispered conversation regarding the content of the sermon being preached. The reason being that we - being sat alone in a wing of the nave of the church and out of earshot or line of sight of any other congregant - were posing a distraction. I noted that no other congregants had at any point turned their attention from the preacher to us. Fr Damian appeared to have been sat a few rows behind my father and myself (certainly not close enough to have heard our conversation) and his approach was characterized by an angry demeanour.

This is not the first time I have found myself on the receiving end of bullying behaviour from the said Fr Damian; in October 2023 I found it necessary to exclude myself from Christ Church and contact Archdeacon David Picken following an incident whereupon Fr Damian accosted me after a service and challenged me over occasional visits to the facilities during sermons. This necessitated Archdeacon David communicating directly with Fr Damian to inform him that such behaviour is inappropriate and unbecoming of a priest of the Church. Six months following this, I reintegrated myself into the congregation of Christ Church, and received no apology from Fr Damian; indeed, when I attempted to approach him to "clear the air", his response was grudging and graceless; a mere acknowledgement of my resumed presence in services.

Fr Damian's leadership of Christ Church has been wholly focussed on the superficial and the outward, ignoring the spiritual needs of the parish while exerting extreme effort to establish a presence in the community. He has shifted the purpose of services from the celebration and participation in Holy Mysteries to the hearing of over-long and incompetantly-delivered sermons, evidently based on a supposition that the congregation are all unlettered and uncatechized. He and Fr Peter Nunn have made it clear that all attention must be upon them during their sermons, and have both directly approached me with orders to remain silent and attentive during sermons.

To be clear: I am not a primary school pupil. I am a thirty-six-year-old adult with an academic record and a corpus of published works, qualified to teach to postgraduate level. My father Piers is not a primary school pupil. He is a sixty-eight-year-old adult with a lifetime's experience, occupying a significant role in a world-leading company. We are intelligent human being whose learning process includes active and interactive discussion. We have both been practising Christians for decades - since 2005 in my case; since 1986 in my father's. Never before in our respective pilgrimages as Christians have we encountered such an abysmal display of egoism. We are also both autistics (a fact of which Fr Damian has been aware for some years) with clinical depression and anxiety, and so to be ordered to leave in the way we were this morning can be taken in no way other than as a personal attack. It also is potentially illegal.

Under Fr Damian's leadership of Christ Church since 2015, old members of the congregation have left in droves, seeking spiritual nourishment elsewhere. I am also aware that he displaced an LLM, Phil Deegan, from our parish for preaching things that Fr Damian found personally distasteful - but which were within the scope of current Anglican praxis and belief. Fr Damian's own preaching is unedifying, uninspiring, and frequently even unintelligent. Not only this, but I also am aware that Fr Damian has had to be reminded by Archdeacon David Picken that the Eucharist Service must include the proclamation of the Holy Gospel, since for several weeks in 2025 he and those under his leadership omitted this.

That Fr Damian is not only allowed to continue unchecked in what appears to be the overt establishment of a cult of personality surrounding himself, but that he is rewarded for such behaviour - first by being made Area Dean and then by being made Canon (albeit a symbolic canonry of a fictional parish) - displays either ignorance or malice on the part of the Church authorities. I sorely hope it is nothing more than ignorance.

In short: I have not encountered Christ in this parish for several years. I have been attending services under sufferance, solely to participate in the Holy Eucharist. I am qualified to make this statement on behalf of my father Piers as well.

I wish to make it clear that I and my father commend Frs Paul Clemence and Derek Walmsley for continuing to preach and represent Christ successfully and faithfully, in spite of the hindrances presented by Fr Damian.

Thus, I state: Fr Damian Platt in unfit to be a priest of the Church. I discern him, through his various egoist behaviours, bullying, and his exclusion of faithful Christians from the central act of Christian worship, to be separated from the Body of Christ. I declare his attitude to be anathema, and pray that the Almighty and All-Holy Trinity guides him to a deeper faith, better becoming of a Follower of the Way and a member of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

I also notify the parish of Christ Church, Thornton-le-Fylde; the Diocese of Blackburn; and the Church of England that I am no longer a member of the Anglican Communion. BY THIS ACT I formally defect from the Church of England; I rescind my membership of the parish of Christ Church, Thornton-le-Fylde. I, Mark F P Tuson, make and ratify this statement on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, in the Year of our Lord 2026. I will not brook any entreaty to return except that it be with the promise of the installation of a priest who prioritizes the Holy Mysteries over the filling of seats and public image of the parish.

I am similarly qualified to make this assertion on behalf of my father Piers, who has stated his intent to ratify this statement for his own account.

I also notify you of my intent to make this letter public.

If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world. --St Athanasius.

Yours in Christ. Mark Francis Piers Tuson - Christian, former Anglican.