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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 CEEC, Creed, delegated episcopal ministry, Diocesan Synod, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, Prayers of Love and Faith, sexuality | 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 Archbishop of York, Crown Nominations Commission, Fr Alex Frost, John Smyth, women priests | 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 General Synod, Safeguarding | 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 blessing, delegated episcopal ministry, Faith and Order Commission, Prayers of Love and Faith, same-sex marriage, theology | 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.

Posted in Safeguarding | Tagged abuse, Bible, Blackburn Cathedral, David Tudor, John Smyth, Mike Pilavachi, Peter Ball, soul survivor | Leave a comment

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 Adrian Thatcher, difference, Diocesan Synod, General Synod, House of Bishops, Parliament | 1 Comment

Farewell August: time for the Church of England to wake up?

Posted on August 29, 2024 by fluff35

I’ve never really understood ‘Church August’. ‘Church January’? ‘Church post-Easter’? Sure: the rhythm of the Christian calendar means that there are points when everyone needs some down time after a burst of particularly intense activity.

But in August, for purely secular reasons, so much comes to a complete halt. School holidays, although in this county the structure of the year has changed so there is not such a long break as there was when I was growing up. Parliament goes into recess, and so does the Church of England. Despite the myth that academics ‘have the summer off’, Church August is far more radical than ‘academic August’ is for a university lecturer, where people have to meet their research deadlines; the admissions processes happen in response to the A-level results; reading lists and so on have to be readied for the new term; and re-sits for the summer exams have to be graded. In the C of E, its national bodies don’t meet, but this year, it hasn’t exactly been a quiet month, with ongoing sexual abuse scandals, fuelled now by the BBC revealing the events at Blackburn Cathedral. The discovery of a six-figure payout there, and the fallout from it, certainly made this a busier August than anyone was expecting. The statements issued – ‘truly sorry’… ‘huge strides’… ‘must learn’ – were the same old, same old.

Locally, in my current church, August always means that the choir is away for the whole month, spending at least a weekend supporting a cathedral with their music because their choir is away too – the knock-on effect of Church August. Of course, the individuals who comprise the choir aren’t away for a whole month, and anyway the demographic is such that they are more likely to be taking actual holidays at a time of year when the children are all back at school and prices fall. Nevertheless, no choir. When I first came to this town, I was also in a Baptist home group, and that stopped for August, but they had the excellent idea of having a merged ‘group of groups’ for that month, recognising that not everyone goes away, and some people very much need and value that contact with others.

But even if people do go away, it isn’t for the whole month. This isn’t France! The tradition of closing down for a month makes sense in an agricultural economy where everyone is needed to help with the harvest, or in an industrial centre in a hot country where a factory needs to shut down so that maintenance on its equipment can happen, or where it is better to close completely than have people doing manual work in very high temperatures. But in a market town in Oxfordshire? In a national church?

Our August shutdown here hasn’t been as dramatic in 2024 as in some previous years. Care home communion continued. Some groups met. There was a special ‘Love Your Church’ service to appreciate the various groups and individuals who keep the show on the road. Under our new vicar, after a long vacancy and with lots on which to make decisions, we even had a meeting of the PCC (a friend commented, surely there’s something in the Bible that says you can’t do that??). Sub-groups put in their reports, the treasurer sent in the accounts, and attendance at that meeting was much as usual.

Nationally, it’s another matter. One of the discoveries made in the ongoing research which the abuse survivor Gilo carried out was that a claim made to him, that William Nye could not have been at a particular reputation-management meeting in August 2016 because he always takes his holiday at that time of year… was false. Maybe he does take his holiday then, but the records clearly showed he was at that meeting. When things are tricky, here as in the Blackburn Cathedral story, maybe the August shutdown doesn’t apply. However, the continued silence about the release of the long-overdue Makin report (1563 days late and counting) suggests that in some cases that such a shutdown is very convenient indeed.

On the positive side, you could argue that closing down so much for August makes it possible for national Christian festivals to happen. We’ve only been to two of these in our time: New Wine and Greenbelt. New Wine wasn’t in August, but happened at the end of July. Greenbelt was last weekend. I don’t do tents and I am insecure without running water and loos, and although the spouse nobly rented a top-notch caravan with its own shower and loo for New Wine, I wasn’t very happy and the stress levels of moving this vehicle out of a muddy field put quite a strain on our relationship! As for Greenbelt, we stayed in a hotel. Yes, I know, that’s a cheat, but do I care? Tomorrow we begin our local not-Christian festival, BunkFest, which sees thousands (I do not exaggerate) of people descending on to the open space behind our house. It marks the end of summer, but it is a wonderful community experience focused on various types of music and dance. Like church, BunkFest has become more family-friendly over the years. Like church, it relies on volunteers and on donations. Unlike church, it doesn’t have to worry about buildings.

And on Monday, it’s September again. The church creaks back into what passes as life, more vibrant in some places than others. Courses start up, taking their cue from the academic year beginning again, dioceses offer training, and so on. Buffeted between the patterns of the parliamentary year and the academic year, is it any wonder that the structure of the Christian year – still in Trinity season until the end of October, but with Creationtide starting on 1 September – is not always understood by those in the C of E?

What does all this mean for the ongoing implementation of Living in Love and Faith? July Synod seems a long time ago now, but the Faith and Order Commission is writing various documents for the bishops, with the intention being that decisions on stand-alone services will come to February Synod (there isn’t a November Synod this year, I suppose because the work from FAOC couldn’t be done in time for the bishops to meet and discuss it before such a meeting). The Programme Board will meet in September and will, I understand, have fortnightly meetings thereafter, and I assume we will find out which bishops have been added to the various working groups. That’s some serious fast-tracking, maybe compensating for Church August when, as far as I know, even these working groups didn’t meet, which seems odd when they are supposed to be presenting all sorts of items in February and we know that December will be largely knocked out by ‘it’s Advent’ and the first part of January by ‘we’re recovering after Christmas’.

Other bits of the national C of E will also be starting quickly. The Appointments Committee meets on 2 September, so the people who send out emails to members from Synod Support had to write to us on 14 August to give us notice of this. Ministry Council meets on 9 September and usually sends the papers (a substantial pile of these) just a week before the meeting, so perhaps those will arrive on 2 September too. It’s my birthday so I won’t be getting to them immediately, if that happens. I also have a book being published on 5 September and various activities planned around that; life. It happens, regardless of the Church of England.

Posted in Living in Love and Faith, Safeguarding | Tagged Blackburn Cathedral, Faith and Order Commission, General Synod, Makin Review, Prayers of Love and Faith | 1 Comment

The c-word: what happened in those London churches?

Posted on July 29, 2024 by fluff35

And so it goes on; ‘it’ being the reaction in one section of the Church of England to what are called “the faithless LLF proposals”, produced by the “unorthodox” House of Bishops, aka our “compromised leadership”, etc etc. This really does drag on, and it is only too easy to forget that Synod has consistently voted in favour of some movement. Not equal marriage, but some acknowledgement of the faithful relationships of the lesbian and gay couples in our church, relationships acknowledged by the state. While the opposition to using the very bland Prayers of Love and Faith in stand-alone services, and to allowing clergy to enter same-sex civil marriages, comes from various different strands of the Church of England, all the quotes above originate in the conservative evangelical tradition: specifically, the 24 July commissioning “of leaders” service which happened at St Helen’s Bishopsgate.

Let’s backtrack for a moment. That service followed another “commissioning”, this time of the first set of “alternative spiritual overseers” (ASOs) by the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) on 12 July at All Souls Langham Place. The c-word seems to be doing a lot of work here. The 24 July “commissioning of leaders” looked initially like it was part 2 of those events, with the video from St Helen’s Bishopsgate stating, “Yesterday’s commissioning is the second of its kind”. But that’s confusing, because 24 July wasn’t about commissioning ‘overseers’ at all. So, “second of its kind” in the sense of ‘second action by those who believe gay relationships are sin’, rather than ‘second batch of ASOs’?

Perhaps not. Among the riches of YouTube you can find the commissioning service for George Diwakar on 30 August 2023, also held at St Helen’s Bishopsgate. If you have other things to do today, well, you could watch the short intro here. In the full version, the rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, William Taylor, talks about “the failure of the leadership in the Church of England”. Recommended for training by the Church of England and trained at Oak Hill, George, we are told, decided to “press pause” on ordination and instead to be “commissioned as a minister of God’s word” to serve at St Helen’s Bishopsgate, under the New City Deanery Chapter. (What’s that? It’s a new thing: 11 clergy from 7 churches in a self-appointed alternative deanery structure set up to “differentiate” these clergy from the bishops in the Church of England who are “decisively departing from the word of God on a matter of salvation”). George talks about losing the sense of security of the C of E pathway but says how much better it is not to worry about having to answer to God for being ordained by somebody “who was turning against God’s word”. The final prayers of the service ask that Bishop Sarah may be given “courage to stand and to come back to your word”. Mutual flourishing, anyone? The vimeo version of this service uses as its key image the kneeling George with various leaders laying hands on him (4 mins 26 seconds in). It does look a lot like an ordination. And we are told that George will be followed by others “waiting in the wings”.

Oak Hill, by the way. Still not within the Durham Common Awards framework, despite more than one Periodic External Review (PER) since 2016 challenging its refusal to join, and despite the message from reviews that this requires “serious and urgent attention”, and so making this college ideally placed to be the theological college of choice for those who want to keep themselves pure from the rest of the Church of England. As an added bonus for those parts of the church uneasy about women in ministry, as the March 2022 PER noted, “Most students are white, male, and educated. Currently there is 1 female ordinand and 15 female students overall (14%)”. But Oak Hill is perhaps not staying as pure as all that; in April 2024 they announced that they were taking the plunge into Common Awards, not least because their validating university, Middlesex, will end its relationship with them at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.

The person who talks us through most of the 24 July video is again William Taylor, who was also listed in the 12 July order of service as someone to be commissioned as an ASO at a later date. There’s no indication that he has been commissioned in between the two services. So he is clearly ‘in’ the ASO-making group; otherwise, one may well wonder whether the two services were being organised by slightly different groups?

Back to that 12 July service at All Souls Langham Place. This was about “commissioning” their own selection of ordained men and women (not many women, just two out of 20 – because, of course, conservative evangelicals are one of the groups in the Church of England which doesn’t agree that women can be ordained). Some are priests, some are bishops. It was a CEEC-run event; not an Alliance-run event, and that is interesting when the Alliance – a broader “informal partnership of leaders from networks within the Church of England” includes the CEEC but also includes traditional Catholics. Maybe not everyone in the Alliance was quite so happy about this “commissioning”.

The commissioned ASOs are an interesting bunch. Mostly retired men, mostly from the South, from Canterbury province rather than York. All White. One of the ‘overseers’ is the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, who is already a ‘flying bishop’, one of those appointed to offer episcopal oversight to those in the C of E who hold the theological conviction that women cannot be priests or bishops. I’m not sure how the role overlap is supposed to work.

Another is Bishop Rod Thomas, an ex-flying bishop, as from 2015 until his retirement in 2022 he was the Bishop of Maidstone. He started out in the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. He has said he left because of “the destructive effect it has on families”, and it gave him “a lifelong love of the tolerance you find in the Church of England”. Tolerance, eh? We may be defining that differently.

Bishop Rod entered the Church of England via Emmanuel Church, Wimbledon (ECW). That’s, shall I say, an unfortunate link, bearing in mind that the former vicar there, Jonathan Fletcher, is not a model for good safeguarding (the intro to the 12 July order of service made it clear that the ASOs are committed to “working within the Church of England’s safeguarding framework”). Indeed, Fletcher was identified as a model of “gross abuse of power”, to quote the thirtyone:eight report on him issued in 2021. Bishop Rod has stated that he began going to ECW a year before Fletcher arrived – so that would be 1981 – and left in 1991, but stayed part of Fletcher’s ‘preaching group’; he has said that he knew about what Fletcher was doing in 2018 and left the preaching group in the following year. Last month, Fletcher was charged with historical sex offences for the period 1973-1999.

I am not linking Bishop Rod to safeguarding failures; indeed, he offered to resign as Bishop of Maidstone, if Archbishop Justin Welby felt he had acted inappropriately, but the Archbishop declined to accept the resignation. But it is worth pointing out that ECW, where his faith was formed, was a church where what thirtyone:eights called the “celebration of masculine Christianity” was “embedded in the lives of many”, and where “the culture of leadership on a pedestal” meant that abuse was not reported for fear of “the impact on the wider community if behaviours were exposed”.

The conservative evangelical world is a tightly-knit one, where networks overlap and where the same names turn up over decades. When the Fletcher situation was in a particularly difficult phase, in April 2019, Rod Thomas and William Taylor were two of the four ordained ministers who wrote to the regional coordinators of their network to let them know that Fletcher no longer had Permission to Officiate: and the letter mentioned how “Jonathan … continues to be held in great affection by many”. I do wonder what level of abuse it takes before the affection wanes.

Back to the “commissioning”. The order of service suggests it was done by the congregation, who all stretched out their hands to the candidates “as a sign of prayer and commissioning”. In contrast, for the later service on 24 July, there are images of the candidates with selected hands being laid on them, like this one. Looks rather like a confirmation to me? Or maybe an ordination?

In the flurry of statements after the 12 July event, I felt that CEEC was giving us a certain amount of ‘Nothing to see here. Move along’. “Overseer” Bishop Henry Scriven “didn’t see it as massively a big deal”. A similar downplaying came from the ‘LLF bishop’, Bishop Martyn Snow, interviewed on Radio 4; it is just “an alternative support structure”, one of many. The CEEC statement “stressed that the liturgy is neither a service of ordination nor consecration”. Oh that’s all right then…

But come on, this is disingenuous. And it’s not even consistent because, alongside that, there was also the claim that the July 2024 Synod vote on LLF represented “milestone day”. I’m not convinced by that either – surely such a milestone, such a crossing, happened when the Prayers of Love and Faith were formally commended by the bishops in December 2023, or at one of the many – so many – debates on LLF we’ve been through in the last four years? GS2328 – an “overview of the progress made in implementing what was agreed at the February 2023” Synod, debated in November 2023 – was a “watershed for many” according to the CEEC, wording also quoted in the document outlining the background to the service.

How many watersheds can you have? Which milestone is the one that makes the difference? Surely if you believe that all relationships between people of the same sex are sinful, then – getting classical here for a moment – the Rubicon was crossed a while back, not least with the bishops commending the Prayers of Love and Faith to be used in existing services. To me, the July 2024 Synod debate felt more like groundhog day. And the recent statements about both the 12 July service and the one on 24 July make if very clear that they were scheduled to happen whichever way the Synod voted in July; the 24 July video includes Charlie Skrine talking from York General Synod the day after the LLF debate had taken place. “Overseers” had been chosen, venues booked: it was all planned at that point.

Which brings me back to that 24 July service at St Helen’s Bishopsgate. This was not about overseers, but about seven men, described in the publicity as “young”, who were publicly commissioned for church leadership. So it is more like the events of 30 August last year. On the video about the 24 July service, Jon Tuckwell describes them as having been “carefully selected and trained for ministry”. When I first heard that I wondered if the “overseers” (or the selection panel who chose them) were involved. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve wondered whether these are all men who, like George Diwakar, have been in the selection and training process of the Church of England but have decided not to be continue in that process – perhaps seven of the 78 whose names were behind a letter sent by “Orthodox Ordinands” in October 2023. In that letter, they said they “anticipate[d] fracturing across the Church of England”; well, of course they did, because the plans for ‘fracture’ already existed and the “overseers” official announcement was in early December. This was not a spontaneous fracture.

What sort of church leadership are these seven men entering? The service on 24 July was definitely not an ordination (the video mentions the need, though, to “provide a pathway for full ordination” and “in due course ordination services”, and conveniently the “overseers” include various bishops who could ordain…) and they were commissioned as lay people.

But now it gets confusing. What sort of lay ministry are they in? If it’s Licensed Lay Ministry, there’s a formal process for that which involves your bishop – it isn’t something churches make up as they go along. There’s a formal process of regular ministerial development reviews. There are other types of lay ministry which are authorised rather than licensed but, again, the bishop is part of the process. There are also “Recognised Ministries” where the parish is responsible for the selection, recognition and training, and these need a person as named supervisor, as well as regular reviews.

I’m not the only one confused here. Anglican Futures has listed ten questions about the 24 July service, here. Specifically, the Anglican Futures team raise issues around canon law, and also think that the video about this service misrepresents the position of the CEEC.

If I am right and the selection and training of these first seven men happened, like that of George Diwakar, in mainstream C of E practices, that doesn’t work with the statement on the video that “Another selection panel is being formed for selecting more men and women. St Helen’s will now only send people forward” through this new route. So that’s just one church – a very large one, sure, but just one – opting out of the C of E selection processes? Where will these people be trained? Who will pay for them?

“And women”, eh? What I heard as the rather arch tone used here was also interesting. St Helen’s only has women on the team as Women’s Workers or a Youth Worker or a children’s worker (by the way, George Diwakar is listed as “Associate training”. Not sure what that means). The church has a complementarian theology. Yet the young men commissioned are – according to William Taylor’s video – apparently going to be leading “informal church family meals at which bread is broken and the death of the Lord Jesus is remembered” (not communion services, oh no, what with them being lay not clergy) in the churches that St Helen’s has planted. Do women do this too, I wonder? Or would the women selected for this new sort of ministry only be allowed to work with women and children? What about an all-women “informal church meal”; could women break bread at that? And how do the traditional Catholic members of the Alliance think about this, in terms of sacrament?

So, is there anything to see here, or just a group of like-minded people officially designating some of their friends as people to whom they can go for a pastoral conversation (12 July) and a parish-level event (24 July)?

It’s hard to tell. It could be a damp squib: it could be the initial step that leads to schism, the first stages of a new province (except, of course, that would need parliamentary legislation – it is not a matter of saying ‘Hello, we are a new province’). Will any bishop or archbishop challenge what happened at All Souls Langham Place and at St Helen’s Bishopsgate?

But there’s one more thing I observe here. Those who are involved are also – as far as I know – continuing in the ‘LLF process’. Isn’t that rather odd, when they are very clear that there is no compromise that will ever be acceptable to them? Even after his retirement, Bishop Rod Thomas was a member of the “Next Steps Group”, one of the many different stages of this process – and yet here he is, becoming an ‘overseer’. John Dunnett of CEEC was part of the ‘facilitated group discussions’ in September 2023 (so was I) and he is one of the members of the Pastoral Provision group of the current Working Groups. He has unequivocally called for ‘differentiation’. The Alliance folk at those September meetings insisted on such separation from everyone else, even while the liberal/progressive folk were trying to find ways to make them feel able to stay in the C of E; for example, by being willing to go for an ‘opt-in’ system where parishes have to agree to offer the Prayers of Love and Faith, rather than having it as the norm, which would have put the onus on those who want to opt out. John stated at the end of 2022 that the “level of security that is needed for orthodoxy to flourish permanently within the Church of England” requires either a ‘Third Province’ where liberals can be put, or having “a new province for orthodoxy”. We went through all this Third Province thing over the ministry of women, and it went nowhere.

So is it any wonder that all these discussions go round and round, when they have in them people who are happy not just to be prominently associated with public events that aim at separation, but to host them and speak at them?

Posted in General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, Safeguarding | Tagged All Souls Langham Place, CEEC, Emmanuel Church Wimbledon, Jonathan Fletcher, Justin Welby, Oak Hill, Orthodox Ordinands, Rod Thomas, St Helen's Bishopsgate, William Taylor | 5 Comments

Milestone Day or Groundhog Day?

Posted on July 10, 2024 by fluff35

July Synod is over. Another long meeting, which was extended by having a separate meeting of the House of Laity before ‘Synod proper’. This time around, we had earlier starts (8.45), shorter meal breaks, and one evening session scheduled to 21.45 with another to 22.00. This meant that it was very difficult to manage to queue, eat, and make it to one of the many fringe meetings scheduled outside the formal business. It felt very rushed and I’m tired. Ironically, one of the debates was around a diocesan synod motion on rest periods for the clergy. Wellbeing; excellent, but could Synod members be treated a little more gently?

The agenda had plenty of legislative business (which is core to what we do) along with debates on topics including the human dignity of disabled children, and food banks/the social security system. As usual, these ‘outward-facing’ debates meant stories could be told, and expertise shared. I’m just not so sure what happens as a result of them. The disabled children debate was harrowing, focused on support for those who have been told their child is likely to be born with disabilities, and for those who need help throughout the child’s life – including when that child grows up. I had to have a session sitting on the steps looking at the lake after some of the pain I heard in that debate.

Safeguarding featured strongly, with a private member’s motion on Soul Survivor; the whole motion ended up being replaced after the words ‘That this Synod…’, with what seemed to me a far less useful call from the Lead Safeguarding Bishop to let the Archbishops’ Council be the body deciding what to do when the report already commissioned by Soul Survivor from Fiona Scolding KC lands in a month or so’s time. Then there was an update on safeguarding independence (basically a holding motion with the detailed analysis of the options for different new bodies delayed until February) and a further motion moving on the legislation for the Redress Scheme.

And then there was Living in Love and Faith. As usual, this featured heavily in Questions. I think we all felt sorry for the current lead LLF bishop, +Martyn Snow, as he answered supplementary question after supplementary question: no you can’t see the legal advice given to the House of Bishops because it wasn’t all written down, it was given orally, you’ve seen everything we could share with you in writing in the papers you have for Monday’s debate, no that’s all there is, as I just said, that’s all there is… and on and on it went. Together on General Synod, which brings together those working for LGBTQIA+ inclusion as well as for all other areas of inclusion, had made the decision not to submit any Questions, both because there’s quite enough else happening on LLF and because the small staff team would be better off spending time on the process and not having to write answers to Questions which are much the same as those at all the earlier meetings of Synod since 2021.

Living in Love and Faith was also the subject of a formal presentation to Synod, with a panel of six members of the various Working Groups telling us what happened at the Leicester meeting, a meeting which some people regard as a real step forward in spending time listening to each other and in coming up with the idea of ‘delegated episcopacy’ as a way forward, but which others regard in rather less optimistic terms. Listening to the presentation, I had the usual sense of LLF déjà vu. I’ve been sitting in rooms and eating breakfast with people with whom I disagree since I did the Diocesan Shared Conversations – and started this blog – in 2015. And here we still are. There was the opportunity for (more!) questions but I didn’t get any sense of new information emerging.

Clearly there was an issue with those at Leicester not recognising the documents that went on to the College of Bishops as being a fair reflection of their work. Leicester was never designed to produce a document for the CoB to consider, though, so it isn’t easy – without having been at either meeting – to know just how/by whom the draft from Leicester was changed before the CoB, which then rejected it so that the version that went on from the CoB to the House of Bishops was closer to the Leicester suggestion. These events were the subject of formal Questions and of the informal questions at the next LLF event: an informal fringe meeting with the current lead LLF bishop +Martyn Snow.

And that wasn’t the end of it, merely the foreplay before the main event, yet another LLF debate on Monday afternoon, with 5 hours allocated. The motion was to support the timetable of what comes to which meeting of Synod (a timetable which extends for several more years), and to ask the House of Bishops to allow ‘standalone’ services using the Prayers of Love and Faith and to oversee more work on the doctrine of marriage – which may eventually lead to clergy being allowed to be in same-sex marriages. The Pastoral Reassurance – that’s the arrangements for those who think any use of the Prayers of Love and Faith with a committed same-sex couple is ‘blessing sin’ – would be reviewed over three years to see just who is asking for this Reassurance and how it’s all going. The paper behind the motion includes a section on what could offer Reassurance – basically, bishops delegating some roles to other bishops who are more acceptable to the conservative evangelicals and others who aren’t happy with any change here. There really wasn’t much direct reference to the details of this paper in the debate.

Unlike previous debates, and contrary to rumours beforehand, this one only generated two amendments. One was about allocating more money to the theological work which is going on between now and February – when it all comes back to Synod again – and the other was a proposal to delete a clause agreeing that the infamous Issues in Human Sexuality – used in selection for ordained and (in some dioceses) also lay ministry – should be replaced by a combination of the Pastoral Guidance, the Bishop’s statement (I wonder if that apostrophe was put in the wrong place on our agenda?) and a Code of Practice for pastoral provision. The first amendment passed easily: the second was rejected. For those wanting to lose that clause, the issue seemed to be that unless Synod saw the three documents named, we wouldn’t know if we wanted to abandon Issues or not. I was very struck afterwards by chatting to a Synod member who said he was born in the year Issues came out – 1991. That’s a seriously old document, with all its dated language about homophiles and its dated assumption that bisexuality is incompatible with fidelity. And, as speakers in the debate pointed out, it was never written to bear the weight which was subsequently placed on it.

I wasn’t called to speak in the debate, but what I wanted to say relates to something the Archbishop of York said at the end of it; “Synod, after what has I think for all of us felt like 18 months of trench warfare on this issue, I just wonder whether the time has come to put down our rifles and could I suggest a little game of football in no man’s land?”

I wanted to read out these phrases: A matter of life and death; Trench warfare; Legislative schism; A hotch-potch kind of schismatic thing; There will be mayhem.

I then intended to point out that none of them was from the current LGBTQIA+ inclusion debate; no, they were all used in Synod’s 1981 debate on women. Because I believe that these other times when we have strongly disagreed are relevant. Those who were called mentioned some; +Sarah mentioned the ordination of women, Revd Brenda Wallace the remarriage in church of divorced people. The are all areas where we have made different sorts of limited pastoral provision, all areas where we live with difference in the interests of the unity of the church. This isn’t new.

In the press release it issued after the debate, the Church of England Evangelical Council called the debate ‘Milestone Day’. Really? Wouldn’t that have been the day at the end of 2023 when the Prayers of Love and Faith were commended for use in existing services? If I’d spoken, I would have commented on the call from the CEEC for a ‘doctrinal firewall’ on the question of LGBTQIA+ inclusion; a sort of theological asbestos. I wanted to remind Synod that – although it took a while to realise this – asbestos is lethal. Its dangerous qualities would affect those of us on both sides of the wall. Do we need more walls? Are walls the best way to show Christ to the world? I believe that Christ came among us to break down walls, not to put more up.

Finally I wanted to make the point that what we have lost in our current discussions seem to be, first, actual gay people and their lives, and second, any sense of joy around what happens when a gay or lesbian person finds love. The ‘love’ has fallen out of Living in Love and Faith. Paraphrasing the Archbishop of Canterbury on why we needed to pass that motion on the human dignity of disabled children, our reluctance to move on damages not only the church, but the society in which we live. When we speak out for justice, the world hears the gospel message. Our beloved lesbian and gay siblings already suffer homophobic attacks and, in some parts of the world, face the death penalty for being themselves.

I continue to believe that the church needs to say a clear ‘yes’ to affirming and celebrating their faithful and committed loving relationships.

Posted in equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, Safeguarding, Shared Conversations | Tagged Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop of York, Bishop Martyn Snow, Shared Conversations, soul survivor, wellbeing | 1 Comment

July Synod 2024: one more sleep

Posted on July 4, 2024 by fluff35

Usually when I go to the July Synod I take up the offer of a lift with one of the other Oxford members. It’s useful to chat through the agenda, and just to catch up. But this time we have a House of Laity meeting before ‘Synod proper’ begins so I asked for a room the night before, to make sure I’m there for it. However, the train journey hasn’t exactly been uneventful.

It’s the cross country service, which takes ages but means I don’t need to wrestle my case across London, up and down lots of stairs. But we had an ‘incident’, of which more shortly.

Last night I accepted the invitation to speak at another deanery synod in my diocese on ‘How does General Synod work?’ and felt supported by the members of that synod who assured me of their prayers for the days ahead. This morning, I had a couple of ‘hope it goes well’ messages, one from someone who is nothing to do with the church and the other from a friend at church: ‘Hope you’ll be very conscious of God being with you all the time in the next 5 days’.

Thinking about that, I’ve been gazing at the passing countryside, reflecting on what I saw and what it could say to me about this Synod session. I noticed a very small bridge between two fields separated by a stream: a bridge which isn’t even visible until you are quite close to it. I saw sheep getting on with ‘safely grazing’. I thought again about yesterday, when we had a walk not far from our home, which involved dropping in on a local church where the electoral roll is 8 people, but which operates a mission of hospitality to local walkers, with a loo, tea-making facilities, and home-made cakes. On our journey the train is now passing industrial buildings with no current use. And the clouds are becoming larger, and darker, as we travel north.

Which brings me to the ‘incident’. While we were waiting for our departure from Birmingham, there were suddenly shouts and banging. A man was upset, and kept saying ‘I’ll f***ing annihilate them’. This was at one end of my carriage. There had already been something going on in which a person was ‘detrained’ but the Birmingham transport police had dealt with that. People on our train drew their attention to what was now going on. There was a lot more shouting and clearly some people on the train were very frightened (me, I’m a street pastor, I’ve seen this sort of thing before).

Various police and other rail staff talked to the man. He had a ticket, so they couldn’t remove him for not having one – I got the impression that they’d rather hoped he didn’t, because that would give them grounds to take him off and the train could continue on its way. The ‘discussion’ went on, and on (30 minutes of this). By then, some passengers were – not surprisingly – getting upset about the train connections they’d miss. Several of us were wondering when it would be safe to go to the loo, as the one in the opposite direction has been out of action all journey, but the shouting man was between us and the other loo.

Eventually the train manager – a reassuring and efficient woman – spoke to the man. She led him through to an area where there was luggage and bicycle space and installed him there on his own. His luggage – 5 bags of it – went back and forth during all this. On one of his trips through the train with a bag, he announced that we were all his supporters, that he was ‘Sheffield steel’, and that he was travelling to see his goddaughter.

Now, I know I’m already tired, that this has been a long journey, and that I’m reading too much into this. But still. Does this say anything to the Synod agenda?

We’ve been travelling for a long time on LLF. The various meetings I’ve been at, the documents I’ve read, have done to death that metaphor. Moving forward as one church, the direction of travel, ‘we need to walk this through’, is it the end of the road or the beginning?

On that journey, there is the occasional ‘incident’: there tends to be one speech which is really hurtful. This train incident appeared frightening, but was somehow defused by a calm person, in the course of which we learned something of the shouty man as a person, not as a problem. At the time, I wasn’t sure about her action, but it proved to be correct. Many of us were delayed in getting to the destination to which we were committed, but he made it to the place he needed to be. And we’ll get there soon. Are the letters about LLF issued in recent days similar to this ‘incident’ and can we find a way to stay on the LLF train, together?

Posted in General Synod, Living in Love and Faith | Tagged Journey metaphor | Leave a comment

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July Synod 2024: one more sleep

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