I’ve been silent on this blog for a while. Partly that’s because I haven’t been involved in the three Working Groups which have been meeting to discuss various facets of the ongoing Living in Love and Faith discussions (even though others I would label ‘the usual suspects’ have). And partly it’s because I’ve had a lot of other things to do, not least the planning and last-minute decisions around a book which is going to the printers at the end of this month. 

On the task of those Working Groups, I had thought that the Archbishop of York, as chair of the ‘Programme Board’ overseeing the three groups, would have said something, but perhaps he does that behind the scenes. Instead it’s the Bishop of Leicester, the one remaining ‘LLF bishop’, who wrote an article for the Church of England Newspaper on ‘LLF: Unity matters – it really matters’. It’s an odd title; why say it ‘really’ matters, which to me feels like saying ‘this matters’ may sometimes mean it doesn’t really matter? It reminds me of the worship song chorus ‘We really want to thank you Lord/We really want to bless your name’. Why not call the piece simply ‘LLF: Unity really matters’?

In that article Bishop Martyn talks about ‘a remarkable coming together of General Synod members’ in the Leicester residential for all three Groups held over the Eurovision weekend. The list of names of those on the Groups is public and not everyone in them was a General Synod member; but maybe only members went to the residential? He asks ‘how are we going to remain united while also being honest about our differences?’ That isn’t a new question, of course. I’m not a theologian, so I shall leave it to others to say whether they found his reflections on unity in connection with the Trinity, and with the divine and human nature of Jesus, helped with this question. He concludes that we need ‘Three spaces in one Church’, but that there are different views on how firm the boundaries between those spaces should be. I don’t think that’s deliberately a riff on the Trinity, where surely there are no boundaries, but anyway, I am not convinced this makes sense in terms of how most congregations work. 

Does any of this give those of us outside the current discussions any sense of what is coming to Synod in July? While I am not involved, I am one of the representatives of different groups who attend ‘stakeholder’ meetings, and more of these were held last month. And as I am on Synod I know the timetable. 

So… Synod papers will come out on 19 June. After that, some discussion papers from the Faith and Order Commission will be signed off on 2 or 3 July and sent on to Synod members. Just a little heads-up to those who aren’t on Synod – we meet from 5-9 July, there’s the General Election on 4 July, and there’s a meeting of the House of Laity before Synod starts so some of us need to head up to York early for that. Not much time for reading papers but we’ll do our best. I feel for those who are trying to juggle Synod membership with full-time jobs or with caring responsibilities.

On 12 June the House of Bishops met in person to decide what to bring to Synod. We have a (short) press release. It’s so short that I am reproducing it here:

The bishops heard updates on the developing proposals from the Living in Love and Faith Programme Board and working groups which represent a variety of theological convictions, traditions and views on sexuality and marriage.

Following a wide-ranging debate, the House of Bishops voted clearly in favour of the proposals being explored further and discussed by Synod which meets in York next month.

Earlier in the day the full College of Bishops met and heard directly from members of the LLF working groups who reflected a strong desire from across the range of views to remain together as one church despite differences.

The end of the first sentence is interesting, in terms of the gradations implied. I have a ‘theological conviction’, you have a ‘tradition’, that person over there just has a ‘view’? I know I am clutching at straws here, but with so little to go on, ‘voted clearly’ becomes interesting. I read it as meaning that there was a vote, and it wasn’t close. But we don’t have the figures (unless of course they are leaked, as so much else has been).

I am not sure that this short statement is what we would expect after what we were told in the rather fuller notes issued from the House of Bishops’ previous meeting, in May. There, we were told,

Bishop Martyn Snow expressed his thanks for the constructive, gracious, and generous atmosphere of the recent residential weekend undertaken by the LLF working groups who came together in Leicester. The Bishops encouraged the Programme Team and LLF working groups to continue their work before outlining a more detailed proposal to the College and House of Bishops in June.

So, ‘a more detailed proposal’ for June; yet in the June meeting report, the proposals are plural, there’s nothing about detail, and they are ‘being explored further’. By whom? Where? Don’t know.

The trouble here is that many people who have a strong interest, of whatever kind, in what comes out of the House of Bishops and in what goes to Synod, are left none the wiser by these statements. More generally, there seems to have been a reversion to the very vague style of public pronouncements from House of Bishops meetings. On the Church of England website, the relevant page doesn’t have all the ‘notes’, let alone the ‘summaries of actions and decisions’ from House of Bishops meetings. Reports from earlier House of Bishops meetings are not collected on this page, although they can still be found on the press releases page.

If we go back a little further, the House of Bishops page has decisions from March 2024, but with no voting figures on anything that is described as having been ‘approved’. We read that the Bishop of Leicester ‘set out the process for taking forward the Synod discussions on Living in Love and Faith’; interesting wording, as shouldn’t that be ‘decisions on Living in Love and Faith’? We have made some! In March we were also told there that the House ‘looked forward to further updates and decisions in May’. ‘Decisions’ again? Yet I don’t see any in the report of the May meeting.

Going back still further, the report of the House’s decisions made at the December 2023 meeting, when there was some further kerfuffle before the Prayers of Love and Faith were formally commended, does include some voting figures; but in other areas around LLF we simply have ‘No decisions were taken… No decisions were taken… No decisions were taken other than to agree to a small working group.’

So without leaks, it’s still a mystery what the House of Bishops thinks.

Of course, Living in Love and Faith isn’t the only item on the July Synod agenda. There is also a ‘Report from the Wisdom of Trust Working Group’. This is a rather mysterious group, part of the ‘Transforming Effectiveness Programme’ (does anyone outside the inner circles know what this is?), and many of us heard about it for the first time at the February 2024 Synod in response to Question 167, which was about the lack of public trust in the Church of England. I do wonder if it also relates to the answers to Questions 66 and 67, where we heard of ‘a task and finish group … to explore how the work of the House of Bishops could be more transparent’.

Trust… transparency… like unity, these are topics which matter (indeed, ‘really’ matter). And in all these sets of notes or summaries of their meetings, the Bishops’ first action after agreeing the minutes of their previous meeting remains a discussion of whether or not to invoke Standing Order 14 so that they can meet in private. Noting that ‘Secrecy breeds distrust’, last year Andrew Atherstone published an excellent piece on this, summarising a previous debate in the 1970s on the (lack of) transparency of these meetings. He pointed out that there was a brief period when meetings took place in public, but the use of SO 14 became the norm by 1983. He noted the parallels between the Standing Orders of General Synod and of the House of Bishops; except that Synod never uses its power under Standing Orders to remove the public, while the House of Bishops does so – every single time.

Bishops maintain their secrecy, something which seems very strange when the call for transparency and honesty has never been stronger. They always use SO 14. It can be worded as voting ‘in favour of meeting on this occasion in private’ (my italics). But since they always meet in private, I wonder whether a more honest approach would be to amend the standing orders so that it’s clear that this is the case? I would love to know in what circumstances they would now choose to meet in any other way. Since the location of these meetings is not announced, it hardly seems likely that hordes of church members are clamouring at the door on the off-chance that they will be allowed in. Andrew called for ‘A thorough review of House of Bishops procedures’ because ‘transparency builds trust and trust is at the heart of healthy ecclesial relationships’. I agree, here and everywhere else.

PS A document for July Synod on the House of Bishops came out just after I had written this post, so there is a follow-up to this post here.