It’s been quite a week in the Church of England – and it wasn’t even General Synod… I’d had a call from the Radio 4 Sunday programme to speak about the delay in bringing in stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples (since mid-December, it has been possible to use the prayers for this in existing services, but not on their own). I was happy to explain that, as confirmed by the Lead Bishops for Living in Love and Faith, the current situation is that these can’t happen until the Pastoral Guidance and Pastoral Reassurance documents are published. Well, not exactly happy: I was one of those who voted in November for the House of Bishops to consider going ahead with this, and when Synod passed this amendment it was clear that we did so because we wanted the stand-alone services now, on a trial basis. But when the House of Bishops ‘considered’ it following the Synod vote, they decided not to go ahead yet.

This ‘brief’ then expanded when the week began with an unexpected development: one of the two new Lead Bishops for LLF, Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley who – only a week before – had met representatives of the various conservative and inclusive groups, resigned from that role. Her resignation was about the appointment of a new ‘Interim Theological Advisor to the House of Bishops’. But it wasn’t about the person, or his conservative theology, or that he’d published online a now-deleted piece which doesn’t read well when the message from the LLF bishops has so far been to reset the tone and calm down. And someone should have warned him that deleted articles can be easily found, because online nothing really disappears. 

So, yesterday morning, I was on the Sunday programme with Ian Paul, who chose to ignore the facts by suggesting that it was all about the views of the person appointed. The pressures of a radio interview meant I could not come back when Dr Paul said of the newly-appointed Theological Advisor ‘Helen-Ann Hartley did make him an issue’.

No, she didn’t. Dr Paul doesn’t seem to have read Bishop Helen-Ann’s resignation letter, where she said she had decided not to continue due to ‘serious concerns relating to the recent process of appointing an Interim Theological Advisor to the House of Bishops’ (my italics: all documents referred to in this blog post are collected here on the Thinking Anglicans site). It is clear that one element of this lack of process was that neither Lead Bishop was involved in the appointment, something that was reinforced by her fellow-Lead Bishop, Bishop Martyn Snow, when he too made a statement about the terms for him remaining in this role: ‘the Co-Lead Bishops for LLF must be involved in the appointment of future Theological Advisers (we were not involved in the recent process)’ (again, my italics). Both Lead Bishops are concerned about ‘process’.

So what was this ‘process’? On the Sunday programme, Ian Paul assured us it was all entirely standard. Before answering that question, let’s step back and look at the job description which is, after all, where any appointment process starts. 

I don’t know how widely the job was advertised, but Simon Sarmiento on Thinking Anglicans traced it to something called the ‘Priest-Theologian Network’. It included this: 

The post-holder will need to be able to contribute significantly to theological and pastoral work on LLF and will need to command the respect of the very wide diversity of stakeholders with an interest in this matter. The post-holder will form part of the core team working on LLF, working closely with +Helen-Ann Hartley and +Martyn Snow as the episcopal leads on LLF.

So it’s a job which is explicitly tied closely to LLF. The new Interim Theological Advisor is clearly intended to be part of the ‘core team’, and as ‘a small working group to develop ideas’ has been set up under the LLF umbrella to look at ‘Pastoral Provision’ he will surely be part of that. ‘Pastoral Provision’? I think this is what used to be called Pastoral Reassurance – how to deal with situations which may arise when using the Prayers of Love and Faith – as well as considering whether structural changes are needed, like having bishops who have said they will never use the Prayers and who will therefore be considered acceptable for ordaining priests who also won’t. The membership of that ‘small working group’ has not yet been announced, although its existence was made public in December; I am told by the LLF team that there are still names to be added, and one of them will clearly be Helen-Ann’s successor, and another – now – the extra Theological Advisor asked for by Bishop Martyn.

So, back to the appointment procedure. There was a job ad. It went out, although I don’t know whether it just went round a network, or was public. I’m told CVs were sent in. I don’t know who did the shortlisting but again those comments on ‘process’ make it clear that the Lead Bishops were not involved. According to Bishop Robert Innes, the Chair of the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC), it culminated in an interview by a panel on which he was joined by two clergy members of FAOC, and William Nye, the Secretary-General of the Church of England and of General Synod. There’s no indication of who those two clergy members were, or how they were selected.

Why Mr Nye? Good question: maybe the most important question of all. From my own experience, Mr Nye is in every ‘room where it happens’, whether or not the list of those in a group includes him. Here, it is interesting that Bishop Martyn’s list of provisos for continuing in his own role as Lead Bishop includes ‘The Secretary-General will need to appoint a second Interim Theological Adviser to the House of Bishops’. The Secretary-General? Just a moment: I thought, from Bishop Robert’s public statements, that this was an appointment by FAOC? Who is making the decisions here?

In traditional Church of England ‘move away, nothing to see here’ style, in an interview reported in the Church Times Bishop Robert insisted of the new theological advisor that ‘He is an adviser among other advisers, and advisers come from an appropriately diverse array of positions’. 

But there’s only one Advisor to the House of Bishops at the moment, even if there may very shortly be two. There have been questions raised about why the bishops even need theological advice; they’re bishops, right? As for FAOC, it is a group of theologians, a mix of bishops and clergy with, currently, one lay person, which ‘writes theological resources and reports, to support the church’s work’. The pattern seems to be that someone asks them for a report, they go away and produce one a few years down the line, as they all have ‘day jobs’ – except for their Secretary, and that is the other role of the Theological Advisor to the House of Bishops. So for example, The Gospel, Sexual Abuse and the Church was published in 2016 after the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding asked for it to be produced. And then the documents seem to disappear from mainstream discussion, languishing on the website. It’s a pity, really, after all that work. 

It’s clear that someone – the Archbishops? William Nye? The House of Bishops? – has been working overtime since last Monday to put the LLF train back on the rails again. And with an announcement imminent as to who replaces Bishop Helen-Ann and who is added on as another Interim Theological Advisor/Secretary (presumably appointed with a transparent process that involved both Lead Bishops for LLF), it looks like another very full week until Friday, when the Synod paperwork comes out. As that needs to include the documents for two sessions on LLF, one of which was going to be the ‘commitments’ document setting out the personal commitments the two Lead Bishops want to make about the next stages of the process, and one of those is no longer in the job, this could be interesting.