Just when you’d have thought that the dust had settled from Dr Ros Clarke’s Private Member’s Motion calling for an independent governance and culture review of the House of Bishops, finally the minutes appear from the May 2025 meeting of the House; so, now, we have a glimpse of how they were thinking about their response to the PMM ahead of the Synod meeting in July at which it was debated. The stated purpose of the PMM was to restore trust in the House, but it allowed people of different views to blame the bishops for not doing what they would like them to do. One online commentator, Michael Hayden, noted before Synod met, ‘It’s surely unthinkable that they would vote against the motion, which in itself would say an awful lot.’

When it came to it, though, there wasn’t a vote, so bishops didn’t need to make any decision on how to vote. Instead, Synod voted to move to Next Business, a procedural motion which can avoid showing the extent of any division. However, we can see from the published results of the Next Business motion that this would have gone the other way if those who decided to abstain had instead voted ‘Against’, thus continuing with the debate and moving towards a vote on the motion itself. But even more interestingly, while we can see that four bishops voted in favour of Next Business, with two against and 13 abstentions, we also discover that there were only 19 bishops voting. There is of course a fourth voting option – simply, not to vote – but my bishop-spotting ability, while improved considerably in the last four years of Synod membership, didn’t allow me to detect any taking this option. Neither the dress-down style of York Synods nor our inability to see who is taking part by Zoom helps here.

Compared to some of the voting figures for July, 19 was mildly impressive. In several counted votes, the number of bishops was in the low teens, although for the motion on redistribution of funds 32 of them were there and voting.

When I was on Synod back in the last century, there were frequent calls of ‘Is there a quorum in the House of Bishops?’ I recall that happening during the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final, shown in one of the hall of residence lounges in the days before iPads and smartphones. I was there; I can bear witness to preponderance of bishops in front of the TV. I don’t know what the system was then, but today there’s a rota to ensure there is always a quorum in the House. But, for the voting on the Clarke PMM, that’s not the point. What I want to know is: where are the bishops? I know we all need to go to the loo and find refreshments, and that not everyone is in the debating chamber at any point, but really? A motion about the House of Bishops, but only 19 of them vote?

There are in theory 53 bishops on General Synod. Not all are diocesans; some are elected from the suffragan and area bishops, and they can vote. But some sees are vacant, with an acting bishop, and those acting bishops can attend Synod but currently have no voting rights. There are moves afoot to change this; the House of Bishops minutes for May 2024 include, as part of their own work on increasing the transparency of the House, the intention “To remove the current legal prohibition on acting diocesans from voting in the House.” In my view, the Clarke PMM was not necessary, because the bishops have already got the point that the House is not sufficiently open to scrutiny, and the 22 pages of minutes from May show that there’s listening happening already.

And how has that work on allowing acting diocesan bishops to vote been going? Apparently it is… going. By March 2025, the House of Bishops minutes give us “9.2.1 Noted the importance of progressing the work on ensuring that Acting Bishops could vote in the House and General Synod. The Bishop of Dudley was progressing this with lawyers.” 

I don’t know how or why the Bishop of Dudley was given this job but, bearing in mind the repeated request of conservatives in the Living in Love and Faith debates to see “the legal advice”, I’d like to know a bit more about this. But the minutes from May 2025 don’t mention the lawyers; they pass the responsibility on to the Houses of Clergy and Laity. Maybe that’s what the lawyers said? This is what we now have:

“5.4 The BISHOP OF DUDLEY briefed the House on work being done to allow acting diocesan bishops to vote in both the House and the General Synod. Acting Bishops were approved and lawfully entitled to exercise episcopal functions in their diocese, but are not lawfully members of the General Synod or House of Bishops and therefore they as individuals and their diocese are left without a vote during often lengthy vacancies. Changing this required an amending Canon; this could be done swiftly with the support of Synod – but could become a partisan debate. He was therefore engaging with the Houses of Clergy and Laity to explain the issues and take matters forward.” 

An amending Canon; was that the legal advice? I think I could probably have given that advice myself. So, until acting diocesan bishops can vote, we are not going to get anywhere near 53 bishops voting. 

Meanwhile, back in the House of Bishops, the May 2025 minutes show that they addressed the Clarke PMM within the context of a paper they had received called ‘Making the House work better’. As is the usual format of House of Bishops’ minutes these days, what we can read are isolated comments from unnamed bishops. For example someone noted “That the House should take the PMM seriously”; someone (else?) “There was a case for a review, providing it was multi-disciplinary”; also “That the House needed to focus on building accountability and transparency”. The Bishop of London, who had presented the paper, noted “The work would proceed as set out in the paper.”

But here’s the problem. The paper was written for the bishops so we have no idea what constitutes “the work”. The agenda for the July House of Bishops meeting includes a ten-minute item, “Review of culture and governance of the House of Bishops: update”, so maybe more will become clear when the minutes for that meeting are eventually approved and published.

There are all sorts of other comments about the House in the May 2025 minutes: the Bishop of London’s observation that the House doesn’t always find the right balance “between working formally as a legislative body as a House of Synod and working more informally as an episcopal leadership providing prayerful discernment”; a comment on LLF, attributed to the Bishop of Leicester, that “the House was increasingly facing the choice of whether to lead or be led” and another comment, this one attributed, that the function of the House “had changed as a result of the Living in Love and Faith process and the pandemic”. 

What I think has changed is something else. The House of Bishops had, for whatever reason, reached a stage in which they felt that expressing collegiality could only be done by voting the same way. In the 2017 Take Note debate which kicked off the LLF process, all the bishops voted in favour of ‘taking note’ of their widely criticised Report, GS2055 Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations, which offered a vague “radical new Christian inclusion” to lesbian and gay Christians; all but one, and he had simply pressed the wrong button. 

Since then, the chains have loosened again. Now we are all aware that the House of Bishops contains a range of views, just like the wider church it serves. And somehow, that is hard for some people to hear. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it; they are individuals, people, and I am glad that they feel able to say what they think in their meetings as a House. The negative side of it, however, is when church members say that they want – or even that they can’t flourish without – a bishop who thinks as they do. People are complex. Bishops are complex. There’s never going to be a bishop who, in their views on sexuality, poverty, the Trinity, establishment, marriage, racial justice and the theology of atonement is ‘just like you’!