Following the recent College and House of Bishops, once again there were various ‘stakeholder’ meetings at Lambeth Palace Library last week, this time with the new LLF lead bishops, Helen-Ann Hartley and Martyn Snow, who – in the meeting I attended (one of three with ‘inclusive’ group reps) – disarmingly opened by telling us that they hadn’t volunteered for the role. Well, who would? After the meetings we received a note thanking us for our ‘time, engagement and honesty’, and the promise of more meetings to come (no dates offered yet).

I went to the second of these January meetings, representing General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group. There were no documents circulated in advance and we were told simply that this was ‘a chance for you to meet the new lead bishops, +Helen-Ann Hartley and +Martyn Snow, and the new Programme Manager Nick Shepherd and an opportunity for them to update you on their approach to LLF going forward’.

Perhaps some of us attending thought this would mainly be a getting-to-know-you session, but there was rather more than expected on the ‘going forward’, which was heard by many of us instead as ‘going backward’. Reflecting on my notes, it’s hard to know whether or not that is the case. 

The format of each meeting was that one of the bishops led for about 10 minutes, and then we responded, with the bishops coming in to answer or clarify. At both the Wednesday meetings, the key words offered in that brief introduction were ‘reset’ – that the church needs to ‘reset’ the LLF process because the debates in Synod have all become so shouty and polarised – and ‘settlement’ – that we need some sort of way of ‘living well with difference’. Neither are great words, as the bishops themselves acknowledged. ‘Reset’ is supposed to be about the tone of the debate, not the ‘direction of travel’. The use of ‘settlement’, of course, carries all sorts of very dodgy historical and contemporary vibes. Is it supposed to make us think of the Elizabethan Settlement? Conservative Evangelical reminders that ‘settlement’ was the word used by the Archbishop of York at the February 2023 Synod gloss over the point that he didn’t just come up with the word on his own; he was repeating a word introduced into the debate by conservatives, who repeated it several times. Vaughan Roberts used ‘mediated settlement’, Ed Shaw ‘negotiated settlement’, and the Bishop of Guildford ‘those settlement discussions’. The February speeches are all online here. The language of ‘settlement’, we were told last week, had been welcomed by the College and House of Bishops. I can see why: it is a lot less scary than ‘structural differentiation’, even if we don’t know what it means.

But ‘reset’ and ‘settlement’ are just words. Words depend on context. They can be used by someone who has one meaning in mind, but play out very differently with some who hear them. They reassure some and upset others. If ‘reset’ was supposed to be about resetting the tone, fine, but whatever our beliefs on this matter of blessing those in committed same sex relationships, we’ve all now sat through many hours of hearing people say things we found offensive; I’m told that we’ve had 25 hours of this just in the 2023 Synod meetings. Those memories will not be wiped out now.

The message that came across at the third meeting with inclusive groups, on Thursday, was different; the result of the other LLF lead bishop doing the intro? ‘Reset’ was not the focus, while instead of a ‘settlement’ per se those present were told about something called the ‘commitments’ (not mentioned at the meeting I attended on Wednesday). The plan is for the lead bishops to bring these to Synod in February, and it is these in turn which will apparently ‘form the basis for a settlement that allows as many people as possible to remain within the Church of England’; that wording comes from an article the lead bishops published in the Church Times a few hours after the third meeting ended.

One of the problems I had in processing what happened last week was trying to tie together what those of us in the three groups heard, and this Church Times piece which was already in press when we met, but was not mentioned. The bishops say there that they want a church in which ‘different views are not just accepted, but honoured’. That ties together with another speech made at the February 2023 Synod, by the Bishop of Oxford, who stated ‘I know that the Church of England will continue to need the Conservative Reformed tradition moving forward and that tradition will continue to need the wider Church.’ I wonder. I have benefitted from the broad church in my own life, but what about the conservative members who want a settlement and who have come up with a long, detailed list of ‘what do we need’, a list which uses the words orthodox/orthodoxy 30 times? How can they ‘honour’ our views, those of us who do not meet their definition of ‘orthodoxy’, which is all about same sex relationships? Do they think they need us at all, apart from the financial aspects which feature in the CEEC list: ‘clergy pensions, DAC’s, Church Commissioners investment’?

One thing that we gained from the meeting – although there would have been more time-efficient ways of communicating it – was a sense of a revised timeline. Forget the chart in GS2328 setting out the work for each quarter of each year; that’s all gone. Now we are talking about an outline of what a settlement would look like, to come to July 2024 Synod, then a further stage in February 2025. 

In our meeting with the lead bishops, we were told again that the House of Bishops has a clear majority in favour of change and a clear majority in favour of stand-alone services. And the voting figures in the public domain support that.

Following the Bishop of Oxford’s successful amendment in November, the House did indeed – as Synod asked them to do – return to the stand-alone services using the Prayers of Love and Faith at their December meeting. But the decision recorded there was still not to use stand-alone services on a trial basis, and it seems that the archbishops – not the House – were the driving force in this decision. So now it looks like there will be no trial. Perhaps the idea is that, by 2025, traditionalists will be so happy with their ‘settlement’ that they will allow the Prayers through with a two-thirds majority. Or, of course, not. There can be no guarantee. And as yet there remains no clarity as to what such a settlement would look like. By agreeing that services would be opt-in with nobody expected to go against their conscience in offering or not offering them, I thought we had already made a settlement, but that is not enough for conservatives, who want to separate themselves from the rest of the church. Let’s see what comes to February Synod; the papers are expected on 9 February.