I’m just back from a five-day Synod in central London. And, not for the first time, I’m wondering what the point of it all is. That’s exacerbated by being aware of some blatant attempts at manipulation, with the days and even hours before the meeting began being filled with last-minute messages to members and last-minute publication of press releases and blog posts designed to influence us. When we already had more paperwork than ever, and when many members were still struggling to get to grips with that, the arrival of even more reading matter just left many of us feeling confused – which was, maybe, why these things were sent or issued. I was elected as a member by my diocese and I shall stick with the task as long as the electors want me to represent them, but after many hours in the chamber I think I’m entitled to ask that basic question: what’s the point? When I am asked to give talks on how Synod works, I often suggest that the real question should be ‘Does Synod work?’ Here I am going to be as frank as possible about how I am feeling over all this.

Synod certainly has its moments. I have met some wonderful people committed to serving God in many walks of life. I’ve heard their stories. In the margins, in the tea room and the other seating areas, there are conversations in which we hear about each other’s churches, share ideas and experiences, and offer each other care. This is all rewarding but it’s not what we are there for.

General Synod is a legislative body. So, of course, we legislate. That means going through the various stages of Measures, in committees and in full Synod. We are also able to speak into the culture in which we are set, which is why we sometimes have debates on issues of actual relevance to the wider society which, as the Established Church, we are supposed to care about and serve. And we are there to consider changes in policy, and to direct the various bodies in the church to do things. Various business also comes to us from assorted church bodies, filtered through the Business Committee which tries to create a balanced and timely agenda. This time around, we had an excellent debate on Father Alex Frost’s Private Member’s Motion on working-class vocations and training (I declare an interest – I was one of the team that worked on this, which is why I was up on the platform next to Alex taking notes). That, of course, came from a member. An example of something which came from a church body would be the debate on sports and wellbeing ministry, in which I spoke and on which I have blogged on Via Media. The obsession with numbers, and with developing a ‘thing’ called sports and wellbeing ministry, was something I found disturbing, so I spoke about a simple initiative a local vicar has set up in his church as a response to his congregation and their lives.

Above all, and rightly after the long-awaited release of the Makin Report, this was the ‘safeguarding synod’. I have written separately about the Makin Report debate and the later, main debate on which option to adopt for safeguarding going forward. Other items at this Synod were relevant to this, not least the Clergy Conduct Measure.

This also turned out to be the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) synod: topical, because of course we’ve recently heard claims about how the last Liverpool CNC was run; we have the process to find the next Archbishop of Canterbury coming up; and two diocesan CNCs, Ely and Carlisle, have recently failed to decide on an appointment. CNC came up three times in the agenda: in a Report from the CNC about its work, then in a sequence of amendments to the relevant standing orders – some suggested by the bishops, others coming from members of CNCs – and in a further debate on the regulations for the Vacancy in See Committee. Each diocese has such a committee, a mixture of ex officio and elected members, and their number elects the six who will go forward to the CNC when their diocese is looking for a new bishop.

Those different CNC moments on the agenda demonstrated very clearly that everything – and I mean everything – has now become infused with the tensions around Living in Love and Faith (LLF), and whether the faithful relationships of gay and lesbian Christians are to be welcomed. The LLF item on Synod was a presentation with questions, because there is yet more delay, with more theology requested and the message being that this can’t possibly be done quickly because, to quote Bishop Robert, theologians are being asked to work with “shorter timetables than they feel comfortable with”. Right… And are lesbian and gay members of our church “comfortable”, as they wonder where the “radical new Christian inclusion” they were promised in 2017 has gone? The CNC moments also showed how the interweaving of even more elements – lack of trust in the bishops and in the archbishop(s) and continued unhappiness with the position of women in the church – makes the mixture even more explosive. This time around, those elements were intertwined with the other key issue: should Stephen Cottrell remain as Archbishop of York (ABY)? All of this, every bit of it, was connected. 

It is clear, not least from Ian Paul’s blog which came out in the flurry of pieces published at the start of Synod week, that conservatives regard Stephen Cottrell as a ‘false teacher’, because he supports blessings for people in committed, faithful, same-sex relationships. So they want him out. No Archbishops at all; an interesting situation. How would that work? Ian Paul stated clearly in this recent blog post that he would not share communion with Stephen Cottrell and had told him this in 2023, when it became clear that the Archbishop believes that sexual intimacy can take place in any relationship that is permanent, faithful and stable. When the ABY presided at the Eucharist before one of the days of Synod business, the most prominent conservatives were not in the room. They missed a very beautiful and moving service, a real highlight of the week for me, including an address by the Acting Primate of Canada, Archbishop Anne Germon. Such boycotts had become the norm with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, too. I hate such weaponizing of the Eucharist.

But the ABY is also the person who led the CNC which recommended John Perumbalath as Bishop of Liverpool, so an attack on that particular CNC process becomes ammunition in the attempts to make him resign too. A member of the Liverpool CNC had claimed that a woman on that CNC reported feeling coerced by the ABY when he made the CNC vote one more time when they could not reach a 10 out of 14 majority vote. That’s an odd claim, when one of the few things those of us who have never been on a CNC know about these meetings is that they often don’t make up their minds on the first vote. And John Perumbalath was then accused of sexual abuse of a woman and of harassment of a woman bishop, although nothing has been properly investigated so it’s impossible to know what to believe. 

This is all related to various of the proposed amendments to the standing orders governing CNCs which were before us at this Synod. One such amendment would give the Archbishop chairing the CNC an extra vote if the majority was not reached; so, this was a great time to suggest that Archbishops can’t be trusted. Another suggestion was that the secret ballot should be abandoned. Unlike any other appointments process I have encountered, on a CNC members’ votes are secret. Actually the whole process of a CNC, from who is on the shortlist to all the discussions within the meetings and the voting itself, is confidential. Members agree to this arrangement, which is why it was odd to have claims suddenly emerge (conveniently just before Synod met) not only that there was coercion on members of the panel but also that there were concerns at the CNC about John Perumbalath’s own safeguarding record.

In an interesting twist, Ian Paul had put in a Question to the 10 February Questions session of Synod about whistleblowing on the CNCs (Question 37 here). The answer was that there isn’t a whistleblowing policy for CNCs, although one will now be considered. But the deadline for submitting Questions was noon on 28 January, and the claims about coercion at the Liverpool CNC did not enter the public domain until after that, in the Channel 4 News piece at 7 pm. There’s probably an innocent explanation for this apparent coincidence.  

In the febrile days before and during the February Synod, the unproven claims about coercion of a woman on the Liverpool CNC combined with revisiting the David Tudor case made the ABY into someone who did not respect women, including ordained women, and led to a pile-in against him from women. I heard of various plans to boycott his Presidential Address; not to go in, or to enter but then to walk out of the chamber; to stand with one’s back towards him; to wear blue and sing the Magnificat; and so on. These plans eventually morphed into ‘wear a blue ribbon’ and of course the ABY wore one too. And we had some extra prayers in the middle of the Address, led by three different women, which felt rather odd as there was also time for prayer before it. 

Women scorned; women honoured… Women who have experienced being belittled, harassed and abused, whether that was the build-up of microaggressions to which the Bishop of London powerfully bore witness in one of her speeches, or a single shocking incident, came together with those who don’t trust ‘the bishops’.

One of the most contested suggestions brought to Friday’s debate on Vacancy in See Committee standing order changes proposed that those filling the six elected diocesan places on any CNC should include at least one lay and one ordained woman. While we heard that, since 2017, 25%  of CNCs included not a single ordained women among their members from the diocese (although they all included male priests), in Synod women from the conservative tradition said that introducing this change would be an insult and they didn’t need it. A prominent conservative man said that we should trust the democratic process; but one of the GMH coopted members, in a moving speech, asked why in that case we had agreed to coopt him as a response to our overwhelming whiteness? Was he just a token? Synod agreed to retain the proposed requirement for two places to be reserved for women, voting in favour in all three Houses.

Ah yes, votes by Houses: if you don’t want something to pass, you call for a counted vote by Houses. So, here, it was the conservatives wanting the vote by Houses. Such a vote makes it harder to win because you need a majority in every one of the three Houses and the House of Laity, in particular, tends to vote in a different way to the Clergy and Bishops. It’s a game, it’s allowed in the rules, and that’s all one can say. If you strongly think something should or shouldn’t happen, then you play it. But – hallelujah – all three Houses supported these reserved places for women among the diocesan reps.

The resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury after the publication of the Makin Report was finally achieved by an interesting alliance of the conservative Ian Paul, the liberal Robert Thompson and Save the Parish’s founder Marcus Walker: three male priests often working according to very different agendas, but united here by wanting the Archbishop out, for their own reasons. What we saw last week was a more complicated alliance, bringing in the issues around accepting or rejecting the full ministry of women. One speech made the point that recent CNCs have led to the appointment of more women; but others would note that those tend to be conservative women who are opposed to lesbian and gay inclusion. It’s complicated, and it will go on being complicated as alliances form and shift. 

Most depressing of all was a rumour that, in the main safeguarding debate, conservatives had been told to vote against the fully independent Option 4 because it could impose conditions they did not want to meet. Maybe it is just a rumour, but even the fact that it was circulating tells you everything you need to know about the lack of trust we still experience. At one of the zoom briefings I attended, a question was asked about whether the group chosen to run safeguarding if this Option was adopted would be ‘Christian’, and the answer given was that this would not be one of the criteria used. While knowledge of the church is obviously needed, Christian faith is not. That then plays into the view that we don’t want the values of the evil World being applied in the Church; Bishop Julie commented on this in a speech in which she said “We need to listen to God’s wisdom at work in the world”. I’ve also heard it said that we need to follow ‘Biblical standards of safeguarding’, whatever those are supposed to be. That is alarming when you remember that the prolific abuser John Smyth quoted the verses from Proverbs about fathers disciplining their children, and put himself in the position of a replacement father. One of the other effects of all those counted votes and votes by Houses is that the names of those voting each way will become public soon; unless, of course, they choose not to vote at all rather than show their electors what they think.

It’s a mess; it’s performative (something on which I agree with Ian Paul, and on which I even shook hands with him last week); so is there a point to Synod? Are we deluding ourselves when we see what we are doing as God-breathed in some way? With difficult and contested questions there will always be a plea for a short period of reflection or prayer before voting. We had that again last week and, as usual, it did nothing to make anyone more likely to accept the result of the vote. If we ‘win’ we give God the credit: if we ‘lose’ we blame the ‘opposition’. It’s rather like war, with each of the opposing forces claiming God is on their ‘side’. Are we a good advertisement for our faith? I do wonder whether Synod is finally broken.