In the life of this General Synod member, it’s one of those weeks where there’s a pause. The papers for Synod are due out on Thursday 26 June, and there will then be a slightly frenzied period of reading, and of formulating Questions to send in by the deadline of 1 July. I’ve already sent in two Questions (we are not allowed any more per member) so I can relax a little there. Until the Synod papers are issued, while we have some idea of which items will be debated, we don’t know much more. One of the first papers I read is always the report of the Business Committee, on how they decided what to cover this time – there has to be a balance between legislation (our core job) and other matters of importance to the Church or the nation. As I write this, I’ve half an eye on the international news: it is still unclear whether the ceasefire that was supposed to happen today between Iran and Israel is in place, or not, and I can’t see how the synod agenda is going to manage to adjust to whatever happens there, although the Archbishop of Jerusalem is supposed to be in attendance. He spoke to us remotely in 2023, after the October 7 attacks. These messages from the rest of the Anglican Communion are very helpful for us; the view of daily church life in Estonia that we were given at the last Synod meeting was chilling.

In view of what is happening in Ukraine, Gaza, Israel and Iran, the endless in-fighting at Synod seems even more pointless than usual. But one thing we do know, as we wait for the papers, is that there is no progress on the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) front. We have not yet found out who is replacing Bishop Martyn Snow as Lead Bishop, nor who is replacing Nick Shepherd, the hardworking programme officer. I assume that news, too, will come later this week [update: it did, here https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/living-love-and-faith/stories-and-news/update-living-love-and-faith-staff-team], when a programme board meeting of LLF is scheduled. Meanwhile, C of E Comms focuses on the ordination services being held in many dioceses last weekend and next weekend, with its #NewRevs campaign (I do have a problem with the campaign’s focus on ordained ministry at the expense of lay ministry, but that’s another blog post).

No progress on LLF has an impact on the vocation and ordination processes. Not surprisingly, those of us who think we should go ahead with standalone services of blessing for committed same-sex couples, using the Prayers of Love and Faith, still think they should go ahead; they have been commended by the bishops, on an opt-in basis, so that no church or incumbent has to use them if they don’t think that’s appropriate. And when they were initially permitted, for use in existing services, there was just a plea not to use them outside those services until some sort of registration process had been set up so that their usage could be recorded, so it does seem odd many months later that this has all stalled. Equally unsurprisingly, those who think that the prayers are blessing sin still think they would be blessing sin if they used them, so they won’t. Stalemate, although not exactly ceasefire.

The July agenda is, however, going to include one item that is LLF-related.

While the LLF process was happening, Synod was not allowed to debate any motions expressing a view on the topics it covered. This was supposed to be so that local conversations could take place within a sort of ‘pause’; a ceasefire, if you like. So a Private Member’s Motion from Revd Mae Christie calling for the decades-old document Issues in Human Sexuality to be removed from the vocation process just sat in a corner humming quietly to itself. It was never intended to be a document to which those seeking ordination would have to give their assent; it says itself that it was written to ‘promote an educational process’ and it’s not entirely clear how it took on a very different role. Issues occasionally raised its voice in the formal Questions process. At the start of 2023, Mae asked when it would stop being used and was told that the hope was that it would cease to be used ‘by July 2023’. It’s still there. And when Synod passed motions which, at the time, members thought had actually moved things on towards LGBTQIA+ inclusion, those stated that Issues would be replaced; in February 2023 all three Houses of Synod passed one which ‘welcome[d] the decision of the House of Bishops to replace Issues in Human Sexuality with new pastoral guidance’. But it’s still there.

And now that Private Member’s Motion is on the agenda. It has been put in for the last morning of the residential meeting, so who knows whether it will be debated, or whether it will be ruled out of time in some way. Going by my own diocese’s Diocesan Synod, it’s possible that there will be a procedural motion to move to next business, so nothing will happen.

It’s also possible that the official position on LLF will be moving towards a ‘pause’. [update: This is supported by Nick Shepherd’s successor, Revd Helen Fraser, being seconded from her current role only until March 2026] I have written here before about the concept of a pause. It’s not unlike a ceasefire. The trouble with this one is that we aren’t talking about ‘issues’ here: we’re talking about people. People who want to share their lives with someone they love. People who know they still can’t be married in church, but who want to enter into a civil marriage rather than a civil partnership. At the moment, clergy who marry are subject to ‘discipline’ from their bishop and can’t move to new posts, so that’s a loss to the Church of trained, experienced priests. People already in same-sex marriages are not supposed to be trained or ordained: but if they contract a civil partnership instead, that’s apparently fine. We’ve been discussing human sexuality for decades, and the LLF process has been going on since 2017.

And I still hear people saying ‘Oh it’s not about sexuality really, it’s all about our different ways of reading the Bible’. That’s been said for so… many… years. It was the starting point of the Shared Conversations process – which is when I began this blog in, gasp, 2015. Ten years, just there. It was clear even when the Shared Conversations produced their first resources that there have always been different ways of reading the Bible. Focusing on what unites us, rather than than what divides us, we find our deep need to wrestle with this rich set of documents and to seek God through that wrestling.

But… ten years. Maybe I should be having an event to celebrate. Although, what is there to celebrate? One of the questions at our diocesan synod consultation was on the lines of ‘How familiar are you with the LLF materials?’ and when I said, very, I was involved in producing some of them so that makes about 8 years of familiarity, I had the feeling that those on my table weren’t able to grasp just how many hours and days and weeks of my time that has involved.

At this stage, a ‘pause’ isn’t going to get us anywhere, either as individuals invested in the process, or as a church.