Is there a quorum in the House of Bishops?

Posted on September 4, 2025 by fluff35

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’!

Posted in General Synod, Living in Love and Faith | Tagged | 2 Comments

July 2025 General Synod: money talks

Posted on July 19, 2025 by fluff35

I returned home from Synod on Tuesday evening; I wasn’t drafting this while I was there, as there was just too much else going on, and once I was back I had lots to catch up on from other parts of my life, but maybe that’s to the good as I’ve had more time to process it all. So, here we go, and I’m sorry it is so long, but there was a very full agenda, even without the fringe meetings (most of which I won’t talk about here). I’ll come to the specifics of some debates later, not in order of scheduling but as they fit into my reflections, so skip ahead if you like; but first, some general thoughts.

When I go out to various deaneries around my (relatively wealthy) diocese, the main concern expressed to me is their experience of more and more vacant, or only partly-funded, posts for ordained ministers in their benefices. This is not helped by the number of vocations to ordained ministry having fallen, so that we are a long way even from replacing those who retire. In Hereford, we were told by its bishop, some benefices have been without a priest for 4 years. 

In relation to this, at the moment a number of contradictory positions exist and these kept coming up across very different presentations and debates at Synod. These include:

The narrative of lots of money (in particular, the success of the Church Commissioners’ investments, up 10.3% in 2024 and funding an increase of £430 million in spending between 2026 and 2028), versus a narrative of crisis (nearly all dioceses now in deficit).

The narrative of declining numbers of church members versus a (new and not yet tested) narrative of a ‘Quiet Revival’ of new people – especially young men – coming in.

The narrative of Doing More Things (driven by the Vision & Strategy for the 2020s, with its key phrases of “becoming a church of missionary disciples”, “mixed ecology” and “younger and more diverse”) because the answer is doing more mission and praying more. I don’t hear much from the other side of that, but would suggest that the one who brings us to God is … God. St Paul wrote “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor. 3: 6-7). So, what happens when the growth doesn’t follow the planting and watering? Has the focus on numbers gone too far?

On that theme, I know it’s becoming standard to ask for ‘more theology’, at least in the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process, but please can we have ‘more theology of prayer’? Once we reach the point that someone can say ‘in churches where they prayed for half an hour a week for growth, there was a 6 per cent annual rise in attendance’ I think we need to step back and reflect. In the Church Growth presentation, I felt very uneasy about the very mechanistic views some expressed, which seemed to me more akin to magic: You do the Thing, you get the Result. Just like that. And if you don’t get the Result?

This Synod brought plenty of good money news, for example about increasing clergy stipends, and improving investment in housing for retired clergy. This all relates to the increasing recognition that the main factor depressing the numbers of those offering themselves for ordination is not Covid, nor the new process of discernment they go through, nor the discussions of sexuality, but fears around clergy well-being.

And then there was more money talk in the final Synodical stage of the Redress Scheme for those who have suffered as victims and survivors of church abuse. The Scheme will be non-adversarial, person-centred and trauma-informed. Some present at Synod seemed most worried about whether they would be blamed if they reported but nobody listened to them. I was pleased that Synod passed the amendment proposed by Bishop Julie Conalty, so that those who have already received some help under the Interim Support Scheme will not have those payments deducted from any award made under the Redress Scheme; this is about showing generosity. An excellent point from Revd Jenny Bridgman extended the image of The Body Keeps the Score to the body of the Church: the Body of Christ. As a Church we carry the weight of what we now know happened.

On bodies and our proper use of them, I was of course very involved in the penultimate agenda item, the end of using Issues in Human Sexuality in the discernment process. The speech I gave made the point that, despite not having been intended to be used in this way for candidates for ordination, in some dioceses its malign empire has expanded into covering lay ministry as well; so this is something that concerns all who minister in the C of E. Only a couple of members seem to have voted to keep the document in use, everyone else having come together to bin it. The motion was amended so that the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy will be used as an interim point of reference before the bishops offer us a new guide. GPCC does not have an unhealthy fixation with sex, but covers far more aspects of a person’s integrity. It’s perhaps the first time progressives and conservatives have agreed on anything to do with our sexuality, so that was indeed something to celebrate, but it’s too early to say that the use of Private Members’ Motions like this one from Revd Mae Christie – proposed by Paul Waddell because she was moving house on the day it was scheduled – is the way to go on LLF. It’s for the House of Bishops to make the calls.

This debate on binning Issues was not the focus of this Synod, and one of my conclusions from last week is that the much-reported ‘battle’ between conservatives and progressives around sexuality really isn’t where the main problems lie. No, that’s back to money again. Of course it is. This wasn’t only about stipends and redress. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21) was mentioned in debates, maybe more than once. It’s hard to remember just how many times it came up because it was a very Groundhog Day sort of Synod, with four formal and many informal items on the agenda in which we had much the same discussion about money and whether the best way of deciding how to spend it is to put as much as we currently do into a central scheme to which dioceses make bids, or letting the dioceses have more to put into local parishes. The ‘Hereford motion’, passed by many dioceses and aimed at moving money from the central funds into the local, was amended by the Bishop of Sheffield, and the way the amendments were laid out meant that the other amendment, from the Bishop of Bath & Wells, was not able to be taken – that was the one I had intended to support, suggesting that 1% of the increase in value in the endowments should go to the dioceses to support ordinary parish ministry. Incidentally, the Sheffield amendment only just passed in the House of Laity, 87 yes, 83 no and 9 abstentions.

That’s a lot of bishops making – or trying to make – amendments, so maybe this is the point to mention the Ros Clarke Private Member’s Motion asking the House of Bishops to have an independent review of how they work. I’m on record expressing my unease about the secrecy of their processes but had I been called to speak I’d have pointed to improvements there, with them having resumed publishing their Minutes. And I would have reinforced the point made by another speaker, that bishops are individuals not some monolithic structure of a ‘House’. I think Bishop Paul Bayes put that very well here, writing in 2017 when there was also anger with the bishops. On the Private Member’s Motion, after some debate there was a motion to move to Next Business and I supported that because I couldn’t see how anything more being said could be helpful; Next Business only just passed, as if the 16 abstentions had voted ‘No’ then the debate would have continued.

That financial discussion is one manifestation of the division between  SMIBB – which stands for Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board – and the parish. The Bishop of Blackburn challenged claims of such a division by saying that, without the SMIBB funding outlined here, his diocese’s parishes would suffer and, of course, like most binaries it’s never as simple as all that. Like its predecessor, Strategic Development Funding, for which a full list of the projects funded is here, SMIBB works by people putting in bids for funding. I’ve witnessed for myself the reaction in a diocese when a bid is not approved; so much work goes into writing these, and of course some people are better than others at bidding. It reminds me of when I chaired a panel giving funding to libraries to preserve and catalogue books and papers in danger of deteriorating further. Some places wrote perfect bids. They even employed someone just to write them. Others, with unique materials to save, couldn’t produce such wonderful bids. So we worked with them, and we made allowances where necessary.

Another topic which kept coming up was racial justice, including Project Spire, featuring from the Archbishop of York’s opening presidential address onwards; Project Spire involves £100 million agreed as coming from the Church Commissioners to invest in projects with “communities affected by historic transatlantic slavery”. Some members of Synod still challenge the evidence of the need for this, and there was much unease this time around about the reduction in funding for both racial justice and disability; we kept hearing that the racial justice funding had only ever been intended to be for the short term, but also that there is money, just in a different area of the budget. I am not sure what to believe here, but I am disturbed that the Lead Bishops for racial justice had not been consulted in advance. Racial justice and disability are such important areas yet appear to be so easy to cut.

Alongside the central funding/local funding split, there’s a related one which is between national and diocesan. What should be the same over the whole Church of England, and where should dioceses have flexibility in applying national policy in order to take into account their local context?

When we apply this national/local distinction to Living in Love and Faith (LLF), there has been an attempt to find out how views differ between dioceses, by having diocesan consultations with diocesan synods. We heard more about this in a fringe meeting. It has not been a smooth process, as dioceses have decided to adapt the set questions, or even not to hold a consultation. Only 17 have so far held one. This was never intended to be comparable to what happened with, for example, women bishops in 2014, where dioceses were given a set motion on which to vote (all voted in favour). Instead, in these ‘consultations’ dioceses were asked how far they had engaged with the LLF resources, and whether parishes would use the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF); this is a particularly difficult one to measure unless everyone is asked the same thing.

London was asked “If the bespoke PLF are introduced alongside this form of pastoral reassurance, do you think your church would: opt in to pastoral reassurance/not opt in to pastoral reassurance as not needed/not opt in to pastoral reassurance as not sufficient/I don’t know.” The problem with that is simply that “this form” is not clear at all yet; the ‘Delegated Episcopal Ministry’ in which bishops agree to delegate their authority, for example for a particular ordination service, appears to have very few supporters.

Oxford was asked “What is your view of the current pastoral reassurance provisions for those unable to accept PLF?”  It wasn’t clear what “current” means, and this was raised at the meeting. This clarification was added: “For the purposes of this questionnaire, Pastoral Reassurance means: 

•Bishops’ Statement 

•Independent Panel 

•Local Schemes for provision of ministry 

•Ongoing conversations nationally”

The fact that only 79 people answered the question – rather than the 92 or 93 answering the earlier questions – may suggest that this wasn’t clear enough. For the record, 47% were Firmly Against or Against, with 28% In Favour or Strongly in favour. I am wondering there why one was a “Firmly” and the other a “Strongly”. And there is no way of knowing whether those who are not happy with the various aspects of Pastoral Reassurance are always the ones who aren’t happy with the proposed provisions; it’s perfectly possible that those who welcome the PLF don’t much care for the specifics of Reassurance suggested for those who disagree. Oxford was asked for “your view of the use of Prayers of Love and Faith” but did that mean the current use in existing services, the proposed standalone/bespoke services, or both? For the record 43% were some sort of “Against” and 46% “In favour” of whatever they thought they were voting on.

Back to the national, although I suspect some churches don’t use the Calendar, I found surprisingly interesting the item of Liturgical Business at this Synod. This was to add two new items to the Calendar, which give us opportunities to work alongside other Churches who have already introduced the Festival of God the Creator or a Commemoration of the 21 Martyrs of Libya. There were powerful comments made on how we construct sacred time and how the liturgical year relates to our individual journeys of faith. This was the item which did most for my own faith.

Martyrdom brings me to another central theme: war. It featured in Brigadier Jaish Mahan’s moving address on living with a land war in Europe and the complexity of the Middle East; in the various stages of legislation being passed so that chaplains will be licensed by the Archbishops rather than having to go through the process each time they move diocese; and in the address from the Archbishop of Jerusalem with his chilling image of food distribution in Gaza as “the Hunger Games”. Requests to have an extra agenda item on the Middle East were resisted; that was disappointing.

There was so much more at this Synod, and I haven’t even mentioned the breakfast, lunchtime and evening Fringe meetings (Synod never stops), but that will do for now. Do ask me about anything I’ve missed. And now we wait for February; unless there’s a last-minute decision to meet in November. I wonder why we can’t just have a Zoom Synod for any legal items which need to be considered; February is a long time away and leaves only one more Synod before the 2026 elections.

Posted in General Synod, Safeguarding | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Implementation? Another week, another Living in Love and Faith statement 

Posted on July 5, 2025 by fluff35

General Synod meets from 11 July. Living in Love and Faith (LLF) is not included in the agenda, but that will do nothing to stop it lurking in the background of many other agenda items. Alongside the various papers issued for the presentations and debates that are scheduled, there is a document giving an upbeat LLF update, suggesting that everything is ticking along. Is it?

This blog started as a way of giving people a flavour of what it was like doing the Diocesan Shared Conversations, the residential meetings in 2015-17 that tried to bring Church of England people with different convictions about sexuality and identity together to talk. When I read through my earliest blog posts, there’s a mix of optimism and trepidation in my words. Ah, the naivety of (relative) youth! Then came the General Synod debate of 2017 where the Synod refused to ‘Take Note’ of the report the bishops produced; and that refusal led to a rapid regrouping of the House of Bishops and the proposal to produce a ‘teaching document’ which eventually became Living in Love and Faith – a long book, a course, various podcasts and videos. 

When I came into all this, in 2015, I was simply a member of the church whose academic work was on the history of the body and therefore thought she had something to contribute. I offered my time, and the offer was accepted. I had no idea just how much time that would be. In 2017, for that notorious debate, I was in the Church House visitors’ gallery watching it all unfold – or, perhaps, ‘unravel’ would be a better word. Then I was asked to join the History Working Group of LLF and I agreed, which meant a lot of meetings, writing, and commenting on drafts. In 2021, as what had become the LLF ‘journey’ or ‘programme’ continued, I stood for and was elected to General Synod.

And that’s where I still am. With my history, both with the production of the LLF resources and then on one of the earlier LLF Working Groups, I probably know as much about the history of LLF as anyone. But I still find out that there is information I had missed. 

That was the case again today.

On the Stories and News section of the official LLF page, there’s another update on LLF, dated 2 July. What’s new in this? How does it differ from the document sent out to Synod members last month? Well, first, personnel. We knew from a previous statement that Dr Nick Shepherd, the programme director (the central staff person holding it all together) is going to move to another role in September with Revd Helen Fraser taking over. She starts in August – but, as I noted in my last blog post, she is only seconded until March 2026. What does that say about what is envisaged after the February 2026 General Synod meeting? But there’s more now. The latest update confirms that, after the resignation of Bishop Martyn Snow, there won’t be another Lead Bishop for LLF. That’s accompanied by a reiteration of the point that the responsibility for forming “clear integrated proposals” to present to the House of Bishops now rests only with the Programme Board (chaired by the Archbishop of York), and that the House of Bishops with Synod then decides on “the formal basis and implementation of any proposals”. “Implementation”: I shall return to that shortly.

The second new thing is rather less easy to see. We are told that the LLF working groups are “continuing to meet”. In May 2024, those were set up as three groups – Pastoral Guidance, Prayers of Love and Faith, and Pastoral Provision. By November 2024, there were four: Prayers of Love and Faith, Pastoral Reassurance, Bishops’ Statement and Ministry and Vocation Guidance. The shifts in there – for example, from provision to reassurance – could comprise a blog post in themselves. It was always obvious that the remits of the groups were going to overlap but – new information for me! – if you click on the link at the foot of the 2 July page, you’ll see that these groups “continue to meet collectively, rather than in individual working groups”. That means a group of 34 people! “Continue”? When did that begin? I’ve seen no discussion of it. When did they merge? What’s the rationale? Did I miss something?

The third new point from the 2 July news story is around the “diocesan consultations” which are still happening; at least, in some places. Oxford held its consultation last month. We didn’t use the video recorded specifically for these consultations by Bishop Martyn, as it was deemed irrelevant now that he’s left and when nobody seems interested in the ‘Delegated Episcopal Ministry’ idea for ensuring conservatives could be provided with bishops sufficiently conservative to be acceptable in confirmations and ordinations. So we weren’t following the consultation template there. Despite an attempt by a conservative member of diocesan synod to move ‘Next Business’, those of us who were present did however follow the template by filling in a sheet answering questions on subjects like our familiarity with the LLF resources (ha!), how much they had been used in our church, and – quoting the form used in Oxford here – “What three words describe your feelings about participating in this conversation today?” (those who couldn’t make the meeting were not, as far as I know, given this sheet). We’ll see the results of that exercise later in the coming week. The 2 July announcement tells us more about these consultations elsewhere. It includes the information that some dioceses have now postponed previously-scheduled consultations; others are conversing but not consulting, so are giving no feedback. And that is apparently all fine, although these consultations were billed as giving the wider church a chance to participate before the House of Bishops next meets in October. 

What’s happening here? In this latest update, there’s a recognition that “challenges” have been identified in “holding these [diocesan consultations] consistently”. They certainly have. It’s not just that they aren’t happening everywhere. As different dioceses asked different questions – for example, “your view of the use of Prayers of Love and Faith” or “Use of Prayers of Love and Faith in your church” – it is unclear how any of the material coming out of these consultations can be used.  The original plan was to use Mentimeter, to generate word clouds with the words most mentioned in the ‘three words’ exercise appearing in the largest font. In Oxford, that didn’t happen, because it wasn’t clear that everyone would be able to use the tech. The word clouds idea has backfired, for example in the highly divided diocese of London, where there was so obviously a message shared among conservatives that words including ‘unapostolic’, ‘unholy’ and ‘uncatholic’ should be entered into the system. ‘Unbiblical’ would have made it to the top as well, except that some member(s) typed it as ‘un biblical’ instead. 

And what about implementation, led by the House of Bishops? That’s where all this falls down. There really isn’t any. The C of E page on “The LLF journey so far” states that, after the General Synod vote in February 2023, LLF moved “from ‘listening’, to ‘discerning’ and now to ‘implementing’”. The problem is that it hasn’t. 

In the list of things Synod stated in the successful motion in February 2023, have we really done enough on (a), to “lament and repent of the failure of the Church to be welcoming to LGBTQI+ people and the harm that LGBTQI+ people have experienced and continue to experience in the life of the Church”? Just as a straight ally, I think not. 

How have we done on (b), “continuing to embed the Pastoral Principles in our life together locally and nationally”? Well, for starters, I see no lasting improvement in tone; not when a diocesan synod member in London can use “demonic” as one of their chosen three words in the diocesan consultation. 

As for (c), “commend the continued learning together enabled by the Living in Love and Faith process and resources in relation to identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage”, I really don’t see that we are learning anything we didn’t know about each other already. We sincerely believe this: you sincerely believe that. Is that “learning together”? 

And then (d), “welcome the decision of the House of Bishops to replace Issues in Human Sexuality with new pastoral guidance”; as we know very well, Issues is still in place in the discernment process, 34 years since it was written, even though it was not produced to be part of discerning whether someone could be accepted for ministry training, or whether they could be ordained. The “decision” was taken but, more than two years on, it hasn’t been ‘implemented’. 

And then there’s (e), “welcome the response from the College of Bishops and look forward to the House of Bishops further refining, commending and issuing the Prayers of Love and Faith described in GS 2289 and its Annexes”. No: while the Prayers were commended at the end of 2023 they remain unavailable for anything outside a section of an existing service. 

This means that (f), “invite the House of Bishops to monitor the Church’s use of and response to the Prayers of Love and Faith”, remains irrelevant because although there’s now a ‘tag’ on A Church Near You where churches can say whether or not they are happy to welcome same-sex couples for these prayers, the standalone services are not supposed to happen, even though we were told at the time of the material being commended that it was just a matter of setting up a system to do this ‘monitoring’.

Only the commendation of the Prayers of Love and Faith for use in existing services: that really isn’t a lot to show for all this time, money and energy. This isn’t ‘implementation’. The faithful, committed same-sex couples who have stuck with the church for so long; the people who long to have their legal relationship formally recognised and celebrated by their congregation, family and friends; those who have been forced to choose between their civil marriage and their vocation to ministry; they all deserve so, so much better than this.

Posted in General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, Shared Conversations | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Ceasefire?

Posted on June 24, 2025 by fluff35

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.

Posted in equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, Shared Conversations | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Another one bites the dust: resignation, LLF … and murder?

Posted on June 7, 2025 by fluff35

updated (bits in bold) 15 June 2025

Friday 6 June was ‘interesting’, in the ‘may you live in interesting times’ sense. I wasn’t at home but my phone kept registering messages. The first was drawing my attention to the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) having issued their 20-page guide to their members attending diocesan synods where the Living in Love and Faith proposals will be on the agenda. Shortly after that, a friend passed on the news (from Facebook; when did bishops start using this as the way to announce anything?) from Bishop Martyn Snow of his resignation as lead bishop for Living in Love and Faith. He had only been in the role for 18 months, after an induction complicated by the Bishop of Newcastle – appointed as the inclusive to balance his conservatism – withdrawing from her role, and nobody replacing her. And then in the afternoon we had the statement from the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London, thanking Bishop Martyn and stating that those diocesan consultations will continue.

That’s quite a lot of upheaval. I am not going to speculate on why Bishop Martyn left, or why he did so now, and would only note that his short statement attempted to close off such speculation, ending “I hope it may yet be possible to reach such an agreement, but I don’t think that can happen under my leadership. I will not be making any further comments.” It may or may not be significant that the Programme Director, Nick Shepherd, had already announced that he is moving to a different section of the Church of England central structures, after over three years in his role. 

Instead, I’m going to focus here on that 20-page CEEC guide for diocesan synod members. As is usual with CEEC documents, some of it takes the ‘If they say that, you say this’ format; we saw the same thing in the 2021 General Synod elections, where CEEC guidance for candidates included “suggested answers to difficult questions” and where those standing were told to “sound as if you are a practising member of the Church of England, that you are an Anglican!” The document goes through the materials produced by the centre and sent to dioceses, page by page, saying where the authors don’t agree with them. I didn’t seen anything new here. By page 14, we move to “points to make” and yes, they’re the same ones we have discussed endlessly at General Synod, the same ones on which innumerable blog posts have been written. One area that may be new to people who haven’t sat through General Synod debates is perhaps the “9 theses” on marriage which claim to find a “stable core to the doctrine of marriage”. These are laid out more fully in a document, GS Misc 1407, with which I find it hard to agree; for example it takes Adam and Eve considerably more seriously than I would, it interprets ‘one flesh’ more narrowly, and it really plays up marriage as “an icon of the relationship between Christ and the Church” in a way that makes plenty of assumptions about gender.

The idea of consulting the dioceses is not new. It happened with, for example, the marriage of divorced people in church, and with the ordination of women. But there won’t be a diocesan vote on a set form of words. There won’t be ‘votes’ at all. Indeed, the CEEC guidance for its members in diocesan synods encourages them to make sure that this stated intention of the consultations is strictly followed: members are urged “Please challenge any idea of a vote, a show of hands, or other indications to establish the ‘mind’ of the Synod, since the resources offered do not adequately address the substantive issues involved (i.e. people would be voting ‘in the dark’).” 

So, no vote, but there is going to be some indication of whether people think the basic proposals are good: the two key areas of LLF being fought over at present are around having separate Prayers of Love and Faith services using the resources commended by the House of Bishops 18 months ago, and on allowing clergy to be in same-sex civil marriages. At the moment, clergy can’t, but they can be in same-sex civil partnerships; to the world outside the church, that may look odd, but the C of E gets around this by saying that there isn’t any sex in civil partnerships; and, I suppose, logically, that there has to be sex in marriages? 

But that isn’t where the LLF team are looking for responses. Instead, it was originally planned that the dioceses would use an online system called Mentimeter so that members can respond anonymously to two main questions:

  • “What is your view of the use of Prayers of Love and Faith (suggested scale 1 firmly against, 2 against, 3 no particular view, 4 in favour, 5 strongly in favour)
  • What is your view of Pastoral Reassurance provisions for those unable to accept PLF (same scale as above)?”

I think these are doomed to receive unhelpful answers. On the first, if you think the PLF are kind of weak and inadequate and what you want is equal marriage, you could give them a low score, but if you think they are the work of the devil and will lead us all to hell you’d give them the same score. And are we answering on the prayers as currently used in existing services only, or on the proposal for separate services?

At Oxford diocese’s meeting on 14 June, there was a paper sheet to fill in rather than the use of Mentimeter – and I’ve heard of another diocese where this was the case. We began with two of our bishops doing a double act around John 4, the discussion between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, as an example of a respectful conversation. After we had done our two 15 minute sessions of discussion round our tables, there was also a vote on whether or not to include one of the questions on the sheet (“What is your view of the current Pastoral Reassurance provisions for those unable to accept PLF?” – the question was kept, although of course people could choose not to answer it) and, more significantly, a member moved ‘Next Business’ which, if passed, would have meant that the sheets were all left blank. This motion for Next Business was defeated by 54 votes to 33, with 12 abstentions. Perhaps having got up early to get to Diocesan Synod by 9.15, people wanted to feel that they had been able to do something in that time. Or perhaps the basic point that we had been asked to have this consultation by the bishops was foremost in people’s minds.

As Oxford’s experience suggests, the Pastoral Reassurance question is particularly hard to answer. It’s the term that covers a range of extra provisions intended to make those who aren’t happy with the PLF feel that they can still stay in the C of E (so it’s a one-way reassurance). But the proposed version of this in the papers sent to Synod members from the centre – Delegated Episcopal Ministry – is pretty much dead in the water already. Bishops don’t find it fits with their view of their roles. Liberals think it is giving away too much, for too little. The CEEC 20-page guide includes “an absolute rejection of DEM as adequate provision/assurance”. So why give our views at all? This is presumably why, in my diocese, we were told in advance that the agenda sub-committee “will keep this plan under review until the day that the Diocesan Synod takes place” and, at the meeting itself, we also discovered that the plan to open with the LLF video update had been dropped because it was out of date. 

People in several dioceses have commented to me that attendance from representatives of conservative churches is patchy unless there is something like LLF on the agenda. That’s no accident. While the CEEC election campaign in 2021 urged candidates “From now, make every effort to engage with your electorate at deanery and diocesan level!” the policy has since changed. See another CEEC paper from February 2024, on “impaired fellowship”, which advises members on how to take part in diocesan structures, including synods, as follows: 

“It would be wise to maintain engagement/presence in deanery and diocesan synods where there are strategic reasons for doing so – but individuals might feel it is appropriate to retreat from anything that is simply ‘being part of things’. Individuals will need to decide whether to step down from holding such positions such as Area Dean or membership of bodies such as Finance Committees and Diocesan Patronage Boards.”

The same document suggests not making any diocesan newspaper available in their churches and – really, you couldn’t make this up – “arriving at Diocesan Synod after worship has finished”.

So it was interesting to see who showed up for Oxford on 14 June. I thought I may be late arriving as I don’t drive and it would take about 2 hours of assorted modes of transport with all the risks of failed connections, but I wondered if others may be late by choice? In the event, a kind person who wasn’t even going to the meeting gave me a lift, and most people were there for the whole of the morning. Although as ‘worship’ was a couple of songs and our usual Dwelling in the Word Bible reading practice, there’s not much there that a CEEC member could find difficult.

Back to DEM. If not that, then what? The CEEC 20-page briefing makes “a plea for structural rearrangement”. “Rearrangement”, eh? What does that cover? My first reaction was to think about the deckchairs on the Titanic. So is this “rearranging” the parishes of the C of E so that they all vote on whether to be in the ‘we will never accept that God can bless a same-sex relationship’ camp or the ‘really, what’s the problem, this isn’t even church marriage, it’s just praying with two people in a committed relationship’ group? By page 15 we find out more: CEEC wants the legal right for clergy to “be ordained, licensed and overseen by orthodox bishops” (can I just say here, the use of the language of ‘orthodox’/ ‘not’ is very unhelpful since there are many of us whose theology is entirely ‘orthodox’ on matters like the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, but who don’t see what this has to do with LLF?).

“Rearrangement” goes further than clergy. CEEC want the legal right for confirmations and licensing of wardens to be carried out by “an orthodox bishop” (yes, that word again). They want vocations for both ordained and licensed lay ministry to go through a “pipeline” “that supports their orthodoxy not questions/erodes it”. They want “a secure and guaranteed provision of orthodox bishops going forward”; so what’s that, then, a quota for the appointments made by the Crown Nominations Commission, regardless of what each diocese puts in the statement of needs it produces before a new diocesan bishop is chosen? And, of course, CEEC want “orthodox churches and clergy to have full access to C of E assets, resources and opportunities (e.g. SMMIB funding)”; that’s Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board, and we are talking very, very large sums of money. None of this is new. My Synod colleague Nic Tall analysed CEEC thinking on this from 2016 onwards, in a piece for Via Media. 

And finally, murder. That 20-page CEEC document asks the question, is LLF “Credal or not?” Bearing in mind that the document observes that “tone matters” and that members should be “careful in the use of language”, I was shocked to see that the argument about whether we need to discuss sexuality even though it’s not mentioned in the Creeds is expressed as: there are “plenty of things not mentioned in the Creeds but upon which we would not be willing to accept any level of disagreement (e.g. murder)”. That little analogy turns up twice in CEEC’s document (pp. 5 and 17). Um, hello, is it “careful” to use as your sole example of something not mentioned in the Creeds but upon which there must be complete agreement… murder? Even before we get to debates about war or punishment which involve killing someone, are you saying that you believe it’s fine to mention murder when you are talking about two people in a committed loving relationship?

We don’t live in love and faith, but we do indeed live in interesting times.

Posted in Living in Love and Faith | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Living in parched places: February 2025 General Synod

Posted on February 16, 2025 by fluff35

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.

Posted in General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, Safeguarding | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Option 3 or Option 4? No, it’s Option 3.5

Posted on February 14, 2025 by fluff35

So, for anyone who was wondering how my making-my-mind-up went for the Safeguarding debate at this February Synod, here’s an update.

Discussion of safeguarding at Synod began with the debate on the Makin Report on Monday, where I moved an amendment to the motion with almost unanimous support. The original motion struck me as very very bland: ‘That this Synod, repenting of the failures of safeguarding in the Church of England detailed in the Makin report, ask those in leadership roles across the Church of England to redouble work to implement best safeguarding practice in line with national policies and guidance, and note the further and forthcoming reforms set out in GS 2376.’

The amendment I succeeded in adding was, at the end, to insert:

(b) at the specific request of victims and survivors of John Smyth QC, recognise that the institutional failure to enact adequate disciplinary process means that this and other cases cannot simply be labelled ‘historic’ as they have continuing effects on the lives of those victims and survivors who suffer the consequences of the prolonged cover-up by the Church of England.

That was accepted and became part of the motion. So far, so good, acknowledging victims and survivors and their continuing re-abuse as yet more safeguarding failures come out – which they do.

But what of the main safeguarding debate, which happened the next day, where the original motion was to adopt Option 4? That’s another story. I hadn’t been intending to speak in the debate, but I was sufficiently disturbed by the amendment proposed by Philip North, the Bishop of Blackburn, to stand to respond, and I was called. At that point, we’d all received many letters and documents with legal advice, and had been offered and accepted opportunities to attend zoom briefings. This was a complicated debate with lots of ‘this item can only be considered if the previous item fails/succeeds’. The ‘friendly amendment’ suggesting a switch to Option 3 was rejected. It was clear from the debate, and from chats with other members, that many of us were still conflicted, hearing from our dioceses and from INEQE audits that there is much excellent practice coming from the highly qualified and experienced Diocesan Safeguarding Officers – but also aware of ‘the optics’ of ignoring the widespread view that we have shown as a church that we can’t mark our own homework. Both Options 3 and 4 included independent scrutiny of safeguarding, which is clearly needed, not least as the ‘Independent Safeguarding Board’, the ISB, was closed down as not being what the church had apparently intended it to be. Lots of warning signals there about rushing into things, but also about how ‘independent’ can mean different things to different people.

What Bishop Philip proposed was a ‘3.5’, adopting Option 3 but with the intention of eventually moving towards Option 4. Typical Anglican via media? Sensible compromise? Dog’s dinner? It isn’t clear. What we had here was one of those ‘saviour moments’ of which I have been warned to be very cautious. In a complex and heated debate, someone proposes a new way through, which hasn’t been thought about much before, which wasn’t on the table (maybe for very good reasons) but which suddenly seems like a good idea.

I was disturbed at the way 3.5 was presented. The message was that, if we went with the amendment, we could have the system proposed in Option 3 “now, not in several years time”, straightaway, at once – the wording of Bishop Philip’s speech – whereas Option 4 will take longer to set up. But that’s misleading: we can’t; even Option 3 will take maybe two years to set up. It seems to me very odd to propose that we do one thing while investigating another. How is that fair to those professionals who work for us, who are left without knowing what the eventual ‘destination’ is? The Lead Safeguarding Bishop made it clear that either 3 or 4 represented more of a direction of travel. I am tired of the endless journey images used in our church and we had some more in this debate, with the idea of the destination being Leeds but we are going there via Manchester; I’d just ask here, but how do we know whether the connections will work?

And of course at the heart of all this should be victims and survivors. They are not of one mind – why should they be, as some have had good experiences within their diocese, with better treatment than they have had from the national church and its officers? One of the arguments for Option 4 was that of consistency; rather than having such variation across the country. Over the course of the debate, I moved towards Option 4, not because of the optics but because of the consistency argument.

The motion was amended to be about 3.5. And now we wait to find out what that really means…

Posted in Shared Conversations | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Trusting in Love and Faith? A January 2025 Update

Posted on January 21, 2025 by fluff35

Another day, another LLF-related meeting… I’ve been to many of these over the years, several with whichever bishops were designated ‘lead bishop’, and one memorable gathering with Justin Welby when he was Archbishop of Canterbury. There’s usually a cup of tea (various interesting flavours) and a biscuit, although even those are not guaranteed. 20 January was unusual, not just because the quality of the food offerings was much higher – the 5 pm start had brought out olives and stuffed peppers and hummus and quiche – but also for its timing, on the same day as, and immediately after, the House of Bishops (HoB) had met. Above all, though, it was noteworthy because Archbishop Stephen Cottrell was present along with the sole current ‘lead bishop’, Martyn Snow, and the current staff member in charge, Nick Shepherd, with one of his assistants. And, unlike the former Archbishop of Canterbury, he listened.

The meeting was to allow those of us who are trustees of Together to hear what had happened at the HoB. So, were the improved food offering and personnel accompanied by improved progress? Ah, there’s the rub. We had what Archbishop Stephen rightly called ‘a robust and friendly conversation’. But the topic was that the planned timetable for LLF has been changed, after an unexpected intervention from the ‘liberal’ bishops, proposing a delay. A delay? But aren’t these precisely the women and men who are arguing for change?

The previous plan – and we’ve seen many, many ‘timetables’ already, all of them superseded within a few months – was to have a ‘presentation with questions’ in February, but no decisions; those would all be coming in July. These decisions would put into action the previous July’s Synod vote to allow the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) to be used in standalone services, reflected at that time in headlines like ‘CofE green-lights standalone services for same-sex blessings’. But it turns out that the lights weren’t really green. While the working group to move this along has come up with, for example, a process of registering to use them so that their reception could be monitored over a three-year trial period (I’m not entirely sure what they think they’ll discover from this monitoring), there still needs to be more action before they can happen. Yet we’ve also been told – from the top – that there is no reason why such services can’t happen already, it’s just that we’ve been asked to wait for the registration process. On, or off? Green, or amber? It is hard to know. Meanwhile, no decisions in July; they will be delayed until a future Synod. And the clock ticks towards the end of the current 5-year period of Synod’s life, with elections coming around again in August 2026.

So why are the very bishops who most support change wanting that longer time frame, which would quite possibly mean that the next set of Synod elections is even more dominated by the two questions of whether same-sex committed relationships can be blessed using the PLF in a special service, and whether people in same-sex civil marriage can be considered for training for ministry (and, if already ordained, can go on working for the church if they marry)? The answer is that they feel we need to extend the time frame because we’ve made this a complicated process in which documents like the PLF guidance depend on other documents, which in turn depend on others, and on theological papers about pretty well anything that comes up – not just what marriage is, but what we think makes us a church, what episcopacy is, whether and how doctrine can change, etc etc. For example, on the questions around those in discernment or who are ordained who marry their partners, this is what the current Vocations and Ministry group is considering; they can’t do any more at present because their work depends on the theology papers being written by ERG, and members of the groups haven’t seen these papers, but have only had presentations on their contents. Having seen various drafts – not of the theology papers, but of the other documents – when I was on an earlier working group in Autumn 2023, and before yesterday’s meeting, it’s clear that some such drafts are more advanced than others, and that some really haven’t shifted much since I first saw them. One thing which we need right now is to share these, and the theological papers, properly, and at yesterday’s meeting we were assured that many will be made available to us in the papers for February Synod. As someone pointed out at the meeting, this does often sound like delaying tactics; do we really need to start all this theology from scratch, mandating the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC, of which many of us were blissfully unaware until recently) to produce a paper, when we are well aware that Anglicans in other churches have thought about these things before and have written documents about them? FAOC has a history of finding it hard to reach consensus, which is why in the past they’ve also issued ‘minority reports’. Apparently ERG (which is basically the bishops on FAOC) has been writing some of these documents to try to make progress. 

So, getting back to why there is a delay, if July Synod was offered only part of this ‘package’, and did not have all the theological documents, it is reasonable to argue that its deliberations would be open to the charges of ‘but we don’t yet know how this would relate to the other stuff involved’ and/or ‘but what is the theology of … whatever’, and no decisions would be possible. And it seems to be that which the ‘liberal’ bishops are trying to avoid by waiting until all the papers are finalised.

A key area which we raised with those in the meeting is Delegated Episcopal Ministry (DEM), which has morphed from ‘pastoral provision’ in which offering oversight from bishops other than one’s diocesan was all based on relationships and trust, to become something far more structural and formal involving local groupings of dioceses with plans for which bishop would look after those who were unhappy with the diocesan because that diocesan did/did not approve of or did/did not themselves use the PLF. The concern here is obviously that this moves a little closer to the Third Province separation desired by some conservatives. The Archbishop noted that in some dioceses it would be very simple to work out who offers episcopal ministry to whom, but in others it would need something more. We were told that the HoB now thinks that DEM is a significant change in doctrine and so needs… more theological work! It is very important that Synod members see these plans for themselves. As we’ve been told throughout that changes would be ‘proportional’, it does seem extraordinary to create a whole new structure of dioceses just so that the PLF – already in use in existing services – could also be used in standalone (now being called ‘bespoke’) services.

Bishop Martyn wanted to make clear that he had not voted for the change in timetable; suggesting that he did not agree that there was the risk of ‘catastrophe’ in July if not all documents were ready. This, we were told, was a ‘recalibration’. But as every other timetable has not been met, why, I wonder, should we believe that this one will be? One answer may be that having the Archbishop of York personally involved to the extent that he was yesterday can only be helpful.

When the documents come to Synod, it will be instructive to see if LGBTQIA+ people themselves are visible. Back in Autumn 2023 the working group I was in asked for a sense of joy and welcome for LGBTQIA+ people but that has disappeared even more. It’s all about structures and rules and a complete lack of trust. We noted yesterday that only conservative consciences are taken seriously in the DEM model, with conservative priests being ‘protected’ from being in a diocese with liberal bishops and conservative bishops being ‘protected’ from liberals. We observed that, no matter how many theological papers are written, some conservatives will never agree with them.

Meanwhile, despite the changes to the previous plan, the decision to send some of the documents to Diocesan Synods immediately after February 2025 Synod remains in place. The documents will come with questions like ‘does this seem a helpful way forward?’ and the LLF team seems to think that the answers will have some benefit. I’m not sure what; in principle, of course, we should consult more widely, but looking at the history of past consultations it can end up as a mess, with some dioceses just answering the set questions and others passing contradictory following motions. The Archbishop in particular is keen on this consultation. But as those papers will only be about PLF, with nothing on clergy and same-sex marriage, I am not convinced that there is any point; even if the papers come with quiche and olives.

Posted in General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, marriage | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

David Tudor: the lessons we should have learned already

Posted on December 17, 2024 by fluff35

Another day, another safeguarding mess. And another independent safeguarding review “to ensure lessons are learnt from this case” (Church of England statement on David Tudor, 15 December).

I’d like to make one very simple point: that the lessons needing to be learned are ones of which we were already very well aware. 

The David Tudor saga is horrible. It concerns the grooming and abuse of girls, police involvement, and various ‘church law’ involvement: the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure, use of the Clergy Discipline Measure and a tribunaI which – decades after the first reports, a six-month prison sentence and a five-year suspension from ministry – finally prohibited Tudor from ministry for life. The tribunal report details the whole account of Tudor’s actions alongside his attempts to minimise what he did (“He was looking for a soulmate”. Funny way of going about that). Perhaps this case gives us more insights into the amount of truly grubby stuff that comes across the desk of a bishop or archbishop. As with the recent Blackburn Cathedral case, there’s a strong element of ‘Our hands were tied: although we knew what was going on, there was nothing else we could do to stop the perpetrator’. 

Here are just three of the lessons which should be learned, all of which have already been highlighted, again and again, in previous reviews of safeguarding failures.

We are easily taken in by charm. Character evidence always features in these tribunal accounts. Sometimes, the report makes it clear that those comprising the tribunal were not convinced. Notoriously, of course, Peter Ball produced character references from a range of the great and the good, including the current King. Mike Pilavachi was “just Mike”, big and cuddly and quirky. The 2024 tribunal noted that Tudor was supported by “a large number of people [who spoke] to his success in invigorating the church, leading its growth and presenting a flourishing message”. So that’s all right then. Before the tribunal, the dominant story seemed to be of the long period of his suspension while investigations took place, presented as the unfair victimisation of a “well respected” leader. The Facebook page for the local paper gave the same message: “a true gentleman”, “the best vicar ever” and so on. 

Following on from that, and closely related to it, the second lesson is that, so long as you fill the church, it’s all fine. Think Soul Survivor, again. Think Nine O’Clock Service. As one of the locals interviewed in 2022 said of Tudor, “He had [the church] packed to the rafters every week and now the same community is losing out. Lots of people are very upset.” So long as you pack them in, is anyone going to listen to victims? And how do you raise a doubt about someone who is perceived by many as “the best vicar ever”? As the legal team for one of the survivors notes, he “has enjoyed a long and successful career in the Church despite the Church’s knowledge of his abuse of young girls”. Success, eh? Even when the church authorities know about the dark side of that charming personality, success in filling the pews can lead to career benefits.

Keep quoting the Bible. Notoriously, of course, this was one of the methods used by John Smyth. In the long-suppressed 1983 Ruston Report, Mark Ruston noted that “Scriptures used commonly were: Hebrews xii.5-11, 2 Samuel vii.13, St Luke xii.47 and many ‘spare the rod’ and ‘fathers and sons’ verses in Proverbs”. Ruston was not entirely rejecting these; it was more about how they are interpreted so that, among other things, for the Smyth situation “the fathers and child verses do not apply”. Except, of course, that they did, for Smyth’s own children, who do not seem to have been of any interest to those in the church who worked so hard to cover up the abuse of other boys. There’s a hint of this abuse of the Bible in the descriptions of David Tudor’s actions; the File on 4 report included a survivor talking about Tudor hitting her while quoting Bible verses as she performed sexual acts. What is there about violence, sex and the Bible?

So, no new ‘learning’ there. But I want to end with something else which is coming out in responses to the Tudor case; the issue of what happens to known offenders. This has not yet been addressed in the media, although some people have clearly been horrified by the revelation that it is possible to work as a priest while being forbidden to go near children; from 2008 Tudor had been the subject of a safeguarding agreement that meant he could not go into schools, or be alone with children. While this was in force, the subsequent appointment of Tudor as an area dean does seem particularly strange. What doesn’t seem to be acknowledged is that many churches are already working with situations like this. There are people – clergy and lay – with histories as abusers and offenders, sexual or otherwise, and there has to be a plan to manage this. That will involve, for example, a written agreement, a group to support the offender, and the keeping of notes. The person may need to sign to agree, for example, that they will “stay away from areas of the church where children or young people meet”. Southwark Diocese has this guide for such situations.

None of this is easy. There will be people in a congregation who know more than others; there will be people who refuse to believe someone is not “a true gentleman” and “the best vicar ever”, even when that person is found guilty in court. Last year, on the Via Media News blog, I published a piece by Revd Mark Bennet about leading a church where something like this has happened. Perhaps now is the time to return to the questions he posed about the issues of relationships and trust, all listed here.

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Yet another autumn of Living in Love and Faith

Posted on October 16, 2024 by fluff35

I am running out of titles, as another year of the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process approaches its end; in last year’s autumn update I shared some of the dates but it has all become far more complicated with so many working groups now, so I won’t be doing that!

As the process continues to roll on, one of the next stages envisaged – mentioned in previous documents put before General Synod but now scheduled for February to July 2025 – is to have the dioceses discuss it. This is the context for the video which has been posted by the diocese of St Albans, made by the lead LLF bishop, +Martyn Snow. It’s a short summary of LLF to be shown to bring people up to speed. Not surprisingly, there have been mixed reactions.

But let’s focus on the main message, that the dioceses are to discuss it. What’s ‘it’ here? We don’t know yet. Standalone services of blessing? They are where +Martyn begins. I thought we’d already agreed in principle to start a three-year trial of those, but it doesn’t look like it. Churches “will be able to use the prayers” in this way “before too long”. How long is that, then? Will the dioceses be discussing allowing clergy in same sex marriages to keep their Permission to Officiate, and allowing people in such marriages to be ordained or licensed (because lay people in some dioceses are affected, as well as those testing a vocation to ordained ministry)? Or the pastoral provision, the system to give people who aren’t happy with their bishop’s position on all this the chance to relate to a different bishop for ordinations, confirmations, or whatever?

I have been told that what will come to diocesan synods may be the various drafts from the various current working groups, but as the diocesan synod meetings won’t be until February, that suggests that the drafts first have to go through the February Synod. I can’t begin to imagine what that meeting will be like. While Synod has made its decisions – yes, by narrow majorities, but by majorities nonetheless – there are still members who are emphatically saying that it’s all wrong and they will go on trying to block everything. So I assume we’ll have the usual debate that we have every Synod meeting, with the usual attempts at amendments and the usual votes followed by the usual objections. Traditionally – and I think this has been going on long enough to count as a ‘tradition’ – some members will stand up and ask for ‘the legal advice’, and others will insist that this is a change of doctrine and needs two-thirds rather than simple majorities. One of the pieces of work being done by the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC) and the theological adviser (or advisers) to the House of Bishops is precisely on changing doctrine, so that may help.

What is diocesan synod supposed to make of all this? In any diocesan synod, there are going to be members who have done the course, and/or read the book or watched the videos (IMHO, the best bit of the outputs of LLF): and there are going to be people who haven’t, because they know what they think, aren’t interested in hearing from those who have different convictions, or just had other things to do over the last few years. There are also people who did a different course commended by the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC), which is odd when there were also conservatives working on the official resources. There are, I suspect, also going to be members who had thought it was all sorted now, not least when we’ve had people from the conservative end of things announce that the ‘watershed’ had been reached over a year ago; December 2023, the commendation by the bishops of the Prayers of Love and Faith, was supposed to be the crossing of the line, as it accepts that a couple in a committed same sex relationship can come to church to be blessed.

We could step back from this and think about how it’s been in the past when something has been sent out to the dioceses for them to discuss it. This happened when marriage in church after divorce was being considered in 2002 (so remarkably recent…). In the summary prepared by the House of Bishops for Synod, GS1449, there were queries about whether cohabitation was the same as marriage, and it was the inclusion in marriage of “public vows before God and other people” which was singled out as the crunch point of difference (GS1449 p.4). Similar questions to those being asked now, about “does this contradict Canon B30?” (the one man and one woman for life canon) and the relationship between upholding principles and providing pastoral ministry, were in play. And of course the legal requirements for clergy and the issue of what would need an Act of Parliament or a Measure were thoroughly discussed.

GS 1449 has a handy annex (Annex 3) on what the dioceses came up with there. Some were worried about Canon B30: the legal officers gave their advice and unanimously agreed that “the proposals were consistent with the Church’s doctrine of marriage as reflected in the Canons” (p.3). The possibility of moving to universal civil marriage with a religious ceremony after it was – as it is now – raised by some. There was much discussion about the proposal for the diocesan bishop to decide on all cases; it was clarified that parish clergy had to make the decisions but could ask for the bishop’s advice. And there were questions about whether the church service should be different if one or both partners had been divorced; the report was clear that there should not be different marriage rites.

On the practicalities of how this referral to Diocesan Synods worked, they were given a report from a working party with two questions on which to vote: 

Do you accept the principle that there are circumstances in which a divorced person may be married in church during the lifetime of a former spouse?

Do you support the recommendations of the Working Party … as being the right way to proceed? If not, what do you consider to be the shortcomings of the recommendations?

The result? The principle was supported, but they couldn’t agree on how to proceed. 62% supported the bishops’ proposals. Some PCCs and deaneries also discussed it all, as did FLAME – Family Life and Marriage Education [1] – and the Mothers’ Union. Many comments were “mutually contradictory” (GS1449 p.38).

Some dioceses presented following motions or related Private Member’s Motions, or produced amendments – for example, calling for “consistency across CofE” (Chester – and note that this issue of local vs national also comes up in the new video); for a “form of service for the ending of a marriage” (Ely). London, which didn’t like the Working Party recommendations at all, passed a motion with seven different clauses. St Eds and Ips cancelled its vote due to Foot & Mouth.

So, assuming no more Foot & Mouth, how will these diocesan consultations be managed this time around? How do we avoid foot in mouth, where there is so much pain involved? If following motions etc are allowed, I think we can guarantee that CEEC will make sure its members put those forward in every diocese, rather like they already find members to present predictable Questions on LLF matters to many meetings of diocesan synods. Will there be formal, counted votes or a transcript of points raised? At General Synod, we have had the small group discussion format, with various levels of facilitation, alongside formal debates, and with chaplains on standby to handle the fallout.

I hope that someone is thinking about these issues, because after so many painful General Synod votes the last thing I want to experience is the diocesan equivalent. Maybe we could be radical; for example, will people be asked to do (made to do?) the Difference Course or something similar before coming to what could be a very difficult meeting?

[1] Adrian Thatcher addressed a FLAME meeting in 2003, on the theme of betrothal – his lecture is well worth reading.

Posted in equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment