Unusually, with the next General Synod not until February, last Wednesday Synod members received the four key documents on Living in Love and Faith (LLF) which the House of Bishops had been sent before their 15 October meeting – the meeting now widely read as having ended the LLF process by not proposing any more steps towards LGBTQIA+ inclusion. That ending does not come as much of a surprise, because when the current Programme Director, Helen Fraser, was announced, her secondment to LLF was only until March 2026; and that would fit with LLF bowing out at the February Synod. The writing was already on the wall. Because I was involved in one of two meetings with key bishops – one with Together trustees, the other with the Alliance – we saw these four documents a week ahead of the rest of the church. I’ve now had time to read them again and, to help those who are bracing themselves to do the same, I offer this document-by-document reading.
What are the issues?
The issues under discussion remain the standalone Prayers of Love and Faith services (the preferred terminology is ‘bespoke services’, but I resist this because there’s no suggestion of a make-it-up-as-you-go-along service, simply the existing PLF resources in a separate service) and clergy in same sex civil marriages. Note, nobody here is talking about same sex marriages in church.
What are the documents and who wrote them?
There are four documents: 12 pages of September 2025 Legal Advice (although the link address gives November 2025, so it isn’t clear whether it is exactly as issued to the bishops) and three documents from Faith and Order Commission (FAOC), a group of theologians – many of them bishops – which works with a Theological Adviser, currently Revd Dr Casey Strine, and his deputy, Dr Guido de Graaff. These are long documents: 47 + 34 + 54 pages. What is, of course, missing from them is any sense of the real people for whom this is not an exercise in definitions and history and logic, but part of the pain or the joy they experience in their daily lives.
The Legal Advice was written by Revd Alex McGregor, Head of the CofE’s Legal Office. I do wonder what the status of this is, compared with the other legal advice that we have seen. “Advice from the Legal Office” was referenced for example in GS2346, which Synod saw in February 2024. I would be interested to learn whether any of the new Legal Advice is really new; the annexes to GS2346 seem to have it all already.
None of the other documents has an author, because they come from FAOC, but from switches of style – at times giving the reader quite a jolt, as in The Exercise of Discipline, paragraphs 125 and 128 – it’s clear that they weave together contributions from different people. So, on to the documents, first of them that Legal Advice.
Legal Advice
What does this say on the two key topics? First, on Prayers of Love and Faith, the Legal Advice strongly supports the lengthy process of Canon B 2 as the “most secure way of bringing bespoke services into use”. “Most secure” means “least likely to be challenged in law”. B 2 involves various stages going through General Synod and stating that the services don’t depart from the “doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter”. These stages, which would involve securing two-thirds majorities in the Houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity, were already clear before this document came out (I wrote about that here) and would take until at least February 2028 to put into practice.
An alternative would be Canon B 5, which is what has been used to commend the existing PLF for use in a regular service. Canon B 5 only needs the House of Bishops to ‘commend’ material. When the existing commendation of PLF in regular services happened at the end of 2023, the House voted 24:11, with 3 abstentions, to commend them. The Legal Advice document states that something commended in this way does not have “any canonical or other legal authority” and is simply the opinion of the bishops, and the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963 could be used to start proceedings against any cleric using the material. The Legal Advice is that it is “unlikely that an accused who uses a commended form of service will be found to have acted unlawfully” but using such a service if not all bishops agree is more iffy.
The clear message is: B 2 is safer if you don’t want to have proceedings brought against you.
Second, on clergy in same sex civil marriages, here too a possible route through CofE structures is given, but this time only simple majorities would be needed in Synod. I would draw attention to the point in paragraph 29, on whether a different route would be to change Canon B 30 (Of Holy Matrimony). Mr McGregor comments “I have not yet seen FAOC’s thinking on this”. Here is one of the big problems with the LLF process; each document depends on another document and the endless delays as more has been sent off to FAOC for discussion have not helped. Back in July 2024 Synod voted to send more money over to fund FAOC’s work. Did it make any difference?
Possible parallels with what happened with divorce and remarriage are rejected. Somehow the “one man with one woman” part of Canon B 30 trumps its other phrase, “a union permanent and lifelong”. So marrying divorced people while the former spouse is still alive is OK but that doesn’t help with same sex civilly married people.
As for clergy who are already in same sex civil marriages, the Legal Advice states that “in principle” different bishops could take a different approach to this. But it has to be on a case-by-case basis, rather than announcing that in their diocese no such clergy shall face discipline.
So, as we are back on to whether same sex marriage is ‘marriage’ in the sense the Church understands it, and whether a couple in such a marriage would be in breach of church doctrine, we need to move on to the theological papers.
Full disclosure, for non-theologians like me, these were very heavy going. But if read along with the general vibe of the Legal Advice, namely that concern about what happens “unlawfully”, I think there’s a clear message being pushed.
The Nature of Doctrine and the Living God
So… my take-home from this is the phrase “communally authorised and communally regulative”, as in “doctrine is true knowledge about God consonant with Holy Scripture that is communally authorised and communally regulative”. The word “communally” features 28 times. “Communally regulative” also comes up in the final document to be discussed here.
The Nature of Doctrine tries to explain how “for many people” marriage doctrine is a first order issue (for many people, though, it isn’t). It tries to have its cake and eat it by accepting that much depends on “how texts are selected and interpreted” but also that it is possible to decide “which parts and themes of Scripture are most pertinent and which reading of those texts best expresses the mind of Christ in the Church”. On the rest of the document, I’d just say two things: first, it’s very odd to start with Aquinas, Hooker, and Newman, and then to focus on a group of more recent theologians and second, that there is a lot about Scripture but nothing on Jesus, the Word of God to whom Scripture points.
“Communally authorised” obviously feeds into the story that standalone PLF require Canon B 2 processes. All the way through the last few years, there has been uncertainty as to what needs to go to Synod and what the House of Bishops can do on its own. The message of all these documents, when taken together, is that the bishops are not feeling that they can make decisions, other than the decision to pass it back to Synod. But is Synod representative of the Church of England as a whole? Is it sufficient as the “community” doing authorisation?
The decision to commend the PLF at all is described as a “contested decision” and links to one of the other FOAC papers on the “judgment of the House at that time”. That paper is:
The Doctrine of Marriage and the Prayers of Love and Faith: Texts and Contexts.
As someone trained in social anthropology, I found this interesting, although on one of the working groups I was on I had already seen a lot of it (this does make me wonder why this final version took so long to appear). It argues that meaning – the nature of what we believe – comes out not just in words (like the PLF) but in symbolic action. Back on that working group we read a lot about whether a standalone PLF service could include couples wearing white, or having flowers and confetti, or exchanging rings. Basically it’s all about how to stop a standalone PLF looking like a wedding.
There are some fleeting appearances (mostly in the footnotes) of the service for Prayer and Dedication after a Civil Marriage, commended under Canon B 5, which many people think is the nearest thing to a standalone PLF. In that service, the notes say no rings can be given or received. So why not just say the same for a standalone PLF? Is it enough, asks the paper, to say of a standalone PLF ‘this isn’t a wedding’, or will people assume it is? It gets a bit silly at times. Oh dear, what if wearing white was banned, surely that would have to include traditional wedding garb for e.g. African or Indian weddings? This is a possibility raised by this document. So we are really supposed to imagine same sex couples, banned from wearing white, considering going the full sari instead?
As this paper moves along, it comes to the conclusion that it isn’t really about symbolic actions. It’s about whether PLF are a departure from doctrine “in any essential matter”. And also about the claim that commendation from the House of Bishops – as used for the PLF in existing services – carries “the highest risk of challenge once enacted”.
In the final pages of this document, the writer(s) finally admit that it is also about sex. If we bless a same sex couple, are we saying that “same-sex sexual expression” is not “morally problematic”?
And finally, the longest one of all, the snappily entitled The Exercise of Discipline and Clergy Exemplarity in the Church of England: The Case of Same-Sex Civil Marriages.
It self-describes as “technical and lengthy”. Yes. It refers across to the Nature of Doctrine paper and the importance of “communal authorisation” and how that then becomes “regulative”. It’s nice to see two papers which appear to have been written in tandem. This one is all about the possible routes for ordaining and relicensing people in same sex civil marriages. The basic point is that we can’t, because marriage is only one man and one woman, but there is more sense here than in the other papers that we have no consensus on reading the Bible, what we think clergy exemplarity is, or … what to do next.
The sections on clergy households and the tension experienced by spouses, children and lodgers of also having to follow the need to be “exemplary” is truly terrifying; thinking of some of the adults I know who were brought up in such households, I am surprised that any of them have remained sane.
In contrast to the Legal Advice, which didn’t see the relevance, this document also has a very lengthy section, paragraphs 94-144, on whether remarriage after divorce (for clergy or for anyone else) is relevant. One argument proposed is that such a marriage “departs from the historic understand [sic] of the doctrine of the church, but not in a way that consists of a departure from doctrine in an essential manner”. Much of the section rehearses the usual points about how to read the Bible. More than any other part of these documents, there are clearly different views in here and they can’t be reconciled. There’s “a case for”, “a case against” and “a further objection to” pastoral accommodation for same-sex civil marriage.
So there you have it. On my reading, risk, particularly the risk of legal challenge, is a theme of all the documents. Relaxation of discipline by some bishops is seen as carrying “the greatest risk for discipline to depart from doctrine”.
I do wonder whether all these scary risk comments were enough to make even some of the inclusive bishops think that they couldn’t go through with any of this. So what is left? While the 15 October statement included the assurance that “Prayers of Love and Faith, for use in regularly scheduled services, remain commended by the House of Bishops for use under Canon B5”, I read enough hints in here that such use of PLF in existing services is also risky, to suggest to me that the next stage will be to propose removing them too.
There is also an elephant in the room: Delegated Episcopal Ministry. This was the proposal for various aspects of bishops’ roles to be delegated to a different bishop, if the actual bishop were to be considered too progressive – or perhaps even too conservative – for someone being confirmed/ordained to accept confirmation/ordination by them, and there were various versions of this being suggested in different dioceses. It went too far for many, and not far enough for others. It would have entailed a Code of Practice to give “pastoral reassurance” to those who felt unable in conscience to live with whatever was decided. The October House of Bishops considered three possible versions of this, but threw them all out. No change = no need for a code of practice. So – as Andrew Goddard has suggested at the end of a blog post issued while I was finishing this piece – when push came to shove, was the nature of episcopacy felt more important even than the theology of doctrine or marriage, or the legal threats?
sharedconversations 
Objective and Informative. Thank you, Helen. It’s a shame that, notwithstanding the widespread affirmation of gay relationships in society and within the Church of England itself, the whole intent and resolve of these documents risks appearing to be partisan and seeks to lock down the (minority view?) status quo, even if it’s not what most people today actually believe. As you surmise, it is quite predictable that (on similar pretexts of legality) efforts may be made to reverse and remove even the PLF in regular services. It appears the majority beliefs of Synod count for nothing, and the legalities provide mandate for the conscience of a minority to be imposed on everyone else. In short: the use of existing legalities to perpetuate discrimination.
At some point, perhaps the democratic representatives in Parliament might be asked to consider whether this discrimination against the democratic will of the Established Church, and those it serves, might justify intervention and the removal of the 2/3rds rule on exceptional grounds because of the harm and discrimination being done to good and decent people, and the refusal to offer the ‘right of marriage’ to gay parishioners which is available to straight ones.
Such intervention would not be welcomed by all, but the domination of so many people’s consciences and the harm done to gay people is not welcomed either. Rather than democratic will being held hostage for 20 years in Synod, some way needs to be found to break the logjam. Parliamentarians almost all have LGBT friends, colleagues, neighbours, relatives, and there are also strong views on discrimination and democracy.
On discrimination, every person in a parish has the right to get married in their parish church… unless they are lesbian or gay, in which case they are denied and sent away somewhere else and told that doctrinally their devoted and precious relationships are offensive to God. Taking a different but maybe thought-provoking analogy with racial discrimination, no Parliamentarians today would accept that a black couple should be sent away from a ‘whites-only’ restaurant and told they should go and get food from the takeaway down the road.
For gay and lesbian Christians in devoted relationships, who want to be publicly blessed in their church before God (let alone married), telling them they can’t have what everyone else can have and sending them away is a bit like the black couple sent away to the takeaway.
No amount of legalities can erase the discrimination and offence – not just to gay people but to all their friends – and current legalities may well be defying what Synod and at least half the Church may want and believe. The law at this point becomes a mechanism of oppression. Law can be good, but it can also be misused to harmful effect.
Meanwhile, we have God-given consciences, we have compassion, we have the example of Jesus who championed the marginalised, and expanded what the law rigidly said to open it up to the Spirit and the imperatives of Love. It is so easy to forget, in all this legalese, that what we are talking about is the tender, protective, committed, decent, costly, caring devotion of gay and lesbian people for the people they love. It is not primarily about sex. It is about love.
And the outcome of these grand legal documents is to lock in the theological vilification of these devotions of love, and to perpetuate an oppression, imposed by arguably a minority, on everyone else. I believe Jesus would say, ‘Look! These people want to love like you others, and can be a blessing to their community, and I’m trying to teach you that love comes first above all, and by the way, when I said marriage was between a man and a woman, I said that because it was the only kind of marriage people culturally understood, and it is wonderful, but what I was trying to say was how precious it is to be faithful, and if people today have expanded and extended that platform for love to gay and lesbian people, then like when I expanded what people could do on the sabbath, and so much more of my expansive teaching that deepened the ancient laws to draw in the Spirit and the primacy of Love… are you not willing to believe that my Spirit may be flowing Love into these relationships… and that Love is who God is? If marriage is so good for stable relationships of fidelity, what possible harm does it to to extend it to others? Stop boxing God in with your exclusions. Let love expand and open your hearts to the decency of devoted lives, given to each other, and given to God. All your lives should be devotions of dedicated love. That’s what devoted gay lives are as well.’
This ocean of words in these documents seems hardly to mention Jesus or Love.
Instead it provides a mechanism for exclusion and discrimination, and the domination of consciences by one group’s conscience alone. That group – of to be clear, devoted Christians as well – has been offered respect for their consciences, and right to opt out of church blessings. But they are unwilling to allow the same right of conscience for the half of the Church of England (or more) who affirm gay love and relationships.
That’s why LLF will run and run, even if it’s formally ended. Its issues will not go away. The thing about oppression that is unjust and does people wrong, is that it often has the opposite effect to the outcome it wants and thinks it’s achieved. Because it just makes people stronger. We’ve seen that happen politically over the past century. What we’re talking about is decency and love, not legal technicalities. It’s people’s precious, decent lives. Lives lived with God. People loved by their friends. At a meeting of Together (Peterborough) this week, one of the moving things was the support of LGBT+ allies. Straight themselves, they hurt for those they value and respect who – not through choice but the way God has made them – happen to be gay, or lesbian. The Church is not only offending gay people.
These rather grandiose legal documents risk (through their intent and effects) alienating many people, and making the Church come across to decent, loving folk as a kind of ghetto, stockaded in by rigid dogma, and that old old mistake (so often called out by Jesus) of surrounding themselves by law to safeguard their piety, but failing to realise that all along what really mattered to God was that we opened our hearts to compassion and love.
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I should add that your very clear overview can be usefully read alongside Peter Collier’s excellent overview over on Via Media:
https://viamedia.news/2025/11/08/where-does-the-house-of-bishops-currently-stand-on-the-use-of-prayers-of-love-and-faith-some-reflections/
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Indeed so (I am the editor of Via Media and we have some more pieces on the FAOC papers coming next week)
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‘What is, of course, missing from them is any sense of the real people for whom this is not an exercise in definitions and history and logic, but part of the pain or the joy they experience in their daily lives.’
Thank you, Helen. That omission is also glaringly obvious in the Andrew Goddard piece you reference.
‘The sections on clergy households and the tension experienced by spouses, children and lodgers of also having to follow the need to be “exemplary” is truly terrifying; thinking of some of the adults I know who were brought up in such households, I am surprised that any of them have remained sane.’
As a person who was brought up in vicarages, with parents with a strong sense of the need for the ‘vicarage family’ to be exemplary, I think your worries for the sanity of the children of such homes are fully warranted. (And of course vicarages themselves—which in those days were virtually public buildings—don’t help.)
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