LLF: Moving Forward as One Church

Posted on June 24, 2024 by fluff35

For those who don’t have the time or the inclination to read the latest document and the latest motion arising from Living in Love and Faith, which come to Synod in July – both in the 31-pages of GS2358 – here’s my summary and some initial thoughts. Let me say at the outset that I note that both CEEC and the Church Society have come out against GS2358. No surprises there? Well, I had thought that the basic suggestion – delegating some episcopal roles to bishops seen as ‘sound’ – was landing quite well in the conservative evangelical constituency, but of course there are still some who want a complete ‘firewall’ between progressives and conservatives. Conservatives have not moved away from the ‘same-sex relationships, whether committed and faithful or not, are sin and we can’t bless sin’ approach; while we hear a lot at the moment about a change in ‘tone’, that could simply be because some things aren’t being said in the public domain. Interestingly, CEEC are also unhappy because there is no guarantee that the proposed system will be used ‘indefinitely’. They want something ‘permanent’, so GS2358’s message about what is being called ‘a period of discernment’ isn’t going to wash with them. 

So, the detail. The latest document is subtitled ‘moving forward as one church’. That suggests that the bishops have ‘heard’ those of us who don’t want to split the church, and who reject the CEEC proposal for two churches separate in everything (except electing people to General Synod, belonging to the pension scheme and having access to church funding). There are some good words: ‘proportionate’ (which sounds right to those of us who see what’s proposed as very tiny indeed, but will be heard differently by those who think this is the end of Christianity in the Church of England); ‘symmetrical’ (an acknowledgement that those progressives in dioceses which are very conservative also have theological convictions which should be respected). There is acknowledgement that Synod has already voted in favour of change; this is ‘building on previous work and decisions taken by the General Synod and the House of Bishops’. Yes indeed, after all the hours of debate of the last few years, we did, indeed, make decisions. I am even more relieved not to be on any of the Working Groups. Their work, the document says, will continue, with extra bishops added in. 

The motion being brought in July is all about ‘testing the mind of Synod’ as to whether the approach outlined – and it is only ‘outlined’, with many repetitions of how it needs more work – could ‘enable the implementation of LLF’ (p.4). Odd phrasing, that, without it being clear what ‘LLF’ means here; the book, the resources, the survey on how these were used in parishes, the subsequent motions in General Synod? The document hopes that this can be done in such a way that the chance of a legal challenge under the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963 (pp.9-10) is reduced. Let me just say there, come on, people, you know someone will feel they have to do this, whatever you do to reduce the chances. The proposals ‘will require constructive and wide engagement as they are developed in detail’ through ‘ongoing engagement and consultation’; there’s ‘a lot of detail still to be worked through’ (p.2).

So what is actually envisaged? Standalone services for Prayers of Love and Faith, with a period of ‘discernment’ for three years (or, depending which bit of the document you read, for ‘at least three years’ (p.6)). During this period there would be annual monitoring of who is using them. That’s not the end of ‘discernment’; there’s a mention of the ‘initial discernment period and beyond’. Diocesan synods are also to be consulted, probably twice, between now and July 2025 (p.14). Those PCCs and priests who want to use the standalone PLF would have to give a theological rationale for their position. It looks like the incumbent decides, but we’ve been told before that good practice would be for the PCC to vote as well.

In the same period of ‘discernment’, there would be ‘specific and defined delegation of episcopal ministry’ in which both sides can ask for a bishop ‘whose ministry in conscience [they] are able to receive’. And there’s some attempt to think about ‘a nationally led regional model’ (p.7) here, rather than a postcode lottery. But is this episcopal ministry ‘extended’ or ‘delegated’? And what do those words really mean, outside Church-speak? We have ‘specific and defined delegation’ (p.2), ‘extended (delegated) episcopal ministry’ (p.6), ’symmetrical extended episcopal ministry’ and ‘extended (delegated) episcopal ministry’ alongside ‘shared/extended episcopal ministry’ (p.18). What is important here, though, is that the ministry remains legally with the diocesan bishop; no flying bishops (as with women’s ministry) here. Like those wanting to use the PLF, those wanting ‘pastoral provision’ from a different bishop would also have to give a rationale, and applications for this provision would be monitored. I am sure that templates will be produced so that nobody actually has to write an essay on ‘why this parish isn’t happy with our confirmation candidates being confirmed by that bishop’.

There is also a proposed Independent Review Panel for those who don’t find all this works. I’m not sure what the running total is for just how much LLF has cost, but it’s proposed that the members of the Review Panel will be paid (unlike the 2014 Declaration Independent Reviewer at present; p.21). There will be an Interim panel first, because the envisaged Independent Panel may need to be set up with legislation – a Canon or a Measure – meaning that it can’t be set up until July 2026 at the earliest (p.21).

And that’s not all. Faith and Order Commission is to be asked to do more work ‘on the nature of doctrine’ (‘How it changes or develops’, p.5). This is because, the document suggests on p.10, while LLF started out as being about sexual ethics, then shifted to be about ecclesiology or liturgy, it is now about how we change doctrine and whether one doctrine (marriage) can be interpreted differently within the church. Well, we manage to interpret doctrine differently in other areas, so that sounds fair enough. How long for this FAOC work to be completed? That’s not clear. We were told at an earlier meeting that four FAOC documents will be arriving a couple of days before the July Synod, so there’s something else to add to the mix. [addendum, July 4th: that didn’t happen as it was thought the documents need more work so they won’t be with us until nearer the February 2025 Synod]

What about clergy in same-sex civil marriages? You’ll recall that the Church of England currently thinks that same-sex civil partnerships are OK for clergy because there isn’t any sex in those, while same-sex marriages are not OK because they must involve sex. I know: it could only happen in the Church of England. When will clergy be allowed to marry their same-sex partners? This is a very real question for many clergy, both those who have lost their licences because they married, and those who are in relationships and want to know what options are open to them. In a church which so values the fidelity and commitment of a marriage, this endless delay is, quite simply, cruel. 

The timetable in GS2358 suggests that the decision will be made by the House of Bishops in January 2025 with ‘the fullest possible detail’ on that proposal to be presented to the February 2025 General Synod (p.5). That’s interesting as it suggests this is purely the Bishops’ decision. But don’t hold your breath for February, because from the FAOC work ‘a possible outcome could be a timetable for the removal of restrictions on clergy entering same-sex civil marriages’ (p.11). Another timetable; no more than that. February is described as when ‘progress’ is presented to Synod ‘for implementation at the July meeting’ (p.11). So that’s February 2025 and July 2025 down as yet more painful Synodical work on this. As someone who started work on it in 2017, I see the ten-year anniversary approaching before we get anywhere much.

For me, there are some ‘banging one’s head against the desk’ moments in all this. For example, on p.5 the statement that there’s the need for ‘the nature of our disagreements … still to be more fully understood’ while recognising that ‘different views are held with integrity’. As someone who has had a conservative colleague on Synod tell me to my face that I know perfectly well ‘what the Bible says’ but that I wilfully choose to pretend I don’t: come on, LLF team, get real. As I said at the start of this post, one of the points coming through much more strongly now is the need for arrangements which are ‘symmetrical’, rather than assuming only one ‘side’ has a conscience that needs to be protected. Interestingly, though, I have never heard the ‘progressive’ side ask for its own bishops, its separate confirmation services, or anything like that. I’ve said before that I’m perfectly happy to take communion from anyone ordained in the Church of England, without asking questions about their beliefs on women’s ministry, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, or anything else. I accept that those with whom I disagree hold their views with integrity. But I am less convinced that they feel the same about me. Maybe that’s where the work needs to be done.

Posted in equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, marriage | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Removing the fiction: wrangling bishops

Posted on June 15, 2024 by fluff35

I was on Street Pastor duty last night. It was a late one, and my bedtime reading as I wound down in the early hours with some camomile tea was the raft of papers released yesterday ahead of the main information dump for July Synod – I know, that sounds sad, but when else am I going to get on top of them? That was when I found out that my blog post earlier this week was premature, at least in part. I mentioned there the February 2024 Synod Questions 167, on trust and the House of Bishops, and 66 and 67, where we heard of ‘a task and finish group … to explore how the work of the House of Bishops could be more transparent’.

Well, there’s now a result from the various questions that have been posed by me and by others.

GS Misc 1387 is the interim report of the House of Bishops Transparency Group, and references not just those Questions, but two others from February Synod: 173-174. Both of these were asked by people at the more conservative end of the C of E spectrum. One was focused on what the questioner called the ‘misuse of standing orders to keep meetings of the House of Bishops, a house of this publicly accountable Synod, a secret’ while the other asked for the House’s voting figures to be made public. It’s always fun to find areas where those of us who disagree on other things are on the same side. Like Questions 66-67, 173-174 reflect concerns that there is some legal advice on the Living in Love and Faith agenda which is being kept hidden from the rest of us; that view, which typically comes from conservatives, has been expressed in Synod and also at meetings of the House of Laity. My own view on this is that the legal advice you get depends largely on which lawyer you ask. But I’d missed the point that, in his written response to Questions 173-174, the Archbishop of York gave the Terms of Reference of this small group and its membership – rightly involving Andrew Atherstone, whose piece on the House of Bishops I referenced in my earlier blog post. The first ToR concerned improving ‘in particular transparency of the way the House works’. Yes!

There’s a question which this raises for me: February 2024 generated a total of 225 questions taking up 95 pages of text, and that of course is not including the information given in the various supplementary questions, which is found on the YouTube recordings and then in the full transcript. With so much information, how is anyone supposed to join up the dots, read between the lines, and work out what is going on? I find Questions increasingly unhelpful: yet they are the one place where anyone can try to find answers.

I asked in my last blog post whether the Standing Orders of the House of Bishops should be amended so that meeting in private – their usual practice – was given as the norm. And this isn’t just my thought; it’s what is now proposed in GS Misc 1387. As the cover note states, ‘The House will continue to meet without public attendance and will amend its standing orders to be honest that it is doing so, removing the fiction of public participation in Standing Order 13.’ Nice language, that: ‘removing the fiction’. Good to clarify that.

As for publishing full minutes, something else which concerns me, the first recommendation is that these should be made available after the following meeting formally approves them. That could be quite a delay, because officially the House of Bishops only meets in May and December, although there seem to be zoom meetings in between those. The second recommendation is that formal legal advice or advice from the Faith and Order Commission (and other such advice) which goes to the House of Bishops should be issued to General Synod. But, other than the legal advice, ‘Papers to the House of Bishops should continue not to be published’. Both of these recommendations will come into play for an experimental period.

The interim report makes a case for confidentiality – obviously – where personal information is being shared. It also suggests that ‘being vulnerable and having honest private conversations, where [leadership teams] can be present and curious with each other’ is a Good Thing. That makes me wonder about how difficult it is to be honest with each other in the Church of England at the moment. It’s one thing to say that we respect our different theological convictions, but it’s quite another to say what you believe or who you are when you know you are going to attract criticism; and when you are the one without the power, and the person to whom you are speaking has all the power.

There’s also an excellent point made in this report about the risks of ‘key decisions happen[ing] outside the formal processes’. In the Living in Love and Faith process, there are sometimes mentions of meetings that were not announced, and I often wonder just where decisions really are made.

The House of Bishops meetings will generate minutes, not a transcript. There is much detail given in the report about the principles used in writing these Minutes, including the number of pages of Minutes for four meetings dated as 15-17 May, 30 Oct-1 Nov, 9 Oct 2023 and 29 Nov 2023. I am rather confused about that, and about how it relates to the stated norm of meeting in May and December, but assume those are the two normal meetings and two bonus zooms. But the answer to February 2024 Synod’s Question 175 gave a total of nine House of Bishops meetings in 2023. So maybe that statement that ‘The House of Bishops meets in May and December outside of General Synod’ needs updating to clarify just when they meet.

Up until now, we’ve often relied on press releases published by Comms immediately after each meeting. These are so devoid of content that, when they are posted on sites like Thinking Anglicans, they attract no comments whatsoever. The interim report notes that these press releases ‘tend to be bland and factual’. I approve of the honesty of this assessment; that ‘b’ word has been widely used of these short statements. I also liked the very detailed list of the types of paper which go to the House, and the remark that the House may want ‘to have a particularly difficult wrangle over an issue where it wants space to be honest and vulnerable’.

As for the admission of the public, the conclusion is not to do this, but to be honest about that. In considering the possibility, the report goes into welcome detail about the logistics; should meetings all be on Zoom and available to all, but how would that work in the different venues used and would it end up with all meetings having to be in London, which is clearly not the right way to proceed? If there is a physical meeting, how would tickets be allocated, where would people sit, what security would have to be put in place? Would the solution be to allow in some members of the press?

I was interested in the comment that ‘The House of Bishops seeks to be consultative and conversational – that is, not relying on set-piece debates where the result is often pre-determined, but enabling more informal conversations in which bishops are free to share ideas in a safe environment and often to change their minds from the beginning of the meeting to the end.’ What is the contrast being made here? What is the unheard ‘unlike…’? Because I would be very disturbed to be told that Synod has set-piece debates with a pre-determined result, and that nobody there has ever changed their mind!

One other anomaly is addressed – acting diocesan bishops (where a diocese is in vacancy – something which currently applies to one in seven dioceses) attend, may speak, but have not been allowed to vote either at the House of Bishops or at Synod, but changes to legislation will be proposed to allow them to do this. Another good move. Overall, this makes GS Misc 1387 an encouraging document; so long as these changes really are put into place, and so long as they ‘stick’ rather than being abandoned entirely after a trial period. And, in the process of reading the reflections of the working group, we learn a little more about how the House of Bishops functions; one new thing I learned from this interim report is that the Secretary General ‘attends and may speak’ at the House. I wonder what sorts of intervention come from those who are not bishops?

Posted in General Synod | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Transparency, trust and bishops

Posted on June 13, 2024 by fluff35

I’ve been silent on this blog for a while. Partly that’s because I haven’t been involved in the three Working Groups which have been meeting to discuss various facets of the ongoing Living in Love and Faith discussions (even though others I would label ‘the usual suspects’ have). And partly it’s because I’ve had a lot of other things to do, not least the planning and last-minute decisions around a book which is going to the printers at the end of this month. 

On the task of those Working Groups, I had thought that the Archbishop of York, as chair of the ‘Programme Board’ overseeing the three groups, would have said something, but perhaps he does that behind the scenes. Instead it’s the Bishop of Leicester, the one remaining ‘LLF bishop’, who wrote an article for the Church of England Newspaper on ‘LLF: Unity matters – it really matters’. It’s an odd title; why say it ‘really’ matters, which to me feels like saying ‘this matters’ may sometimes mean it doesn’t really matter? It reminds me of the worship song chorus ‘We really want to thank you Lord/We really want to bless your name’. Why not call the piece simply ‘LLF: Unity really matters’?

In that article Bishop Martyn talks about ‘a remarkable coming together of General Synod members’ in the Leicester residential for all three Groups held over the Eurovision weekend. The list of names of those on the Groups is public and not everyone in them was a General Synod member; but maybe only members went to the residential? He asks ‘how are we going to remain united while also being honest about our differences?’ That isn’t a new question, of course. I’m not a theologian, so I shall leave it to others to say whether they found his reflections on unity in connection with the Trinity, and with the divine and human nature of Jesus, helped with this question. He concludes that we need ‘Three spaces in one Church’, but that there are different views on how firm the boundaries between those spaces should be. I don’t think that’s deliberately a riff on the Trinity, where surely there are no boundaries, but anyway, I am not convinced this makes sense in terms of how most congregations work. 

Does any of this give those of us outside the current discussions any sense of what is coming to Synod in July? While I am not involved, I am one of the representatives of different groups who attend ‘stakeholder’ meetings, and more of these were held last month. And as I am on Synod I know the timetable. 

So… Synod papers will come out on 19 June. After that, some discussion papers from the Faith and Order Commission will be signed off on 2 or 3 July and sent on to Synod members. Just a little heads-up to those who aren’t on Synod – we meet from 5-9 July, there’s the General Election on 4 July, and there’s a meeting of the House of Laity before Synod starts so some of us need to head up to York early for that. Not much time for reading papers but we’ll do our best. I feel for those who are trying to juggle Synod membership with full-time jobs or with caring responsibilities.

On 12 June the House of Bishops met in person to decide what to bring to Synod. We have a (short) press release. It’s so short that I am reproducing it here:

The bishops heard updates on the developing proposals from the Living in Love and Faith Programme Board and working groups which represent a variety of theological convictions, traditions and views on sexuality and marriage.

Following a wide-ranging debate, the House of Bishops voted clearly in favour of the proposals being explored further and discussed by Synod which meets in York next month.

Earlier in the day the full College of Bishops met and heard directly from members of the LLF working groups who reflected a strong desire from across the range of views to remain together as one church despite differences.

The end of the first sentence is interesting, in terms of the gradations implied. I have a ‘theological conviction’, you have a ‘tradition’, that person over there just has a ‘view’? I know I am clutching at straws here, but with so little to go on, ‘voted clearly’ becomes interesting. I read it as meaning that there was a vote, and it wasn’t close. But we don’t have the figures (unless of course they are leaked, as so much else has been).

I am not sure that this short statement is what we would expect after what we were told in the rather fuller notes issued from the House of Bishops’ previous meeting, in May. There, we were told,

Bishop Martyn Snow expressed his thanks for the constructive, gracious, and generous atmosphere of the recent residential weekend undertaken by the LLF working groups who came together in Leicester. The Bishops encouraged the Programme Team and LLF working groups to continue their work before outlining a more detailed proposal to the College and House of Bishops in June.

So, ‘a more detailed proposal’ for June; yet in the June meeting report, the proposals are plural, there’s nothing about detail, and they are ‘being explored further’. By whom? Where? Don’t know.

The trouble here is that many people who have a strong interest, of whatever kind, in what comes out of the House of Bishops and in what goes to Synod, are left none the wiser by these statements. More generally, there seems to have been a reversion to the very vague style of public pronouncements from House of Bishops meetings. On the Church of England website, the relevant page doesn’t have all the ‘notes’, let alone the ‘summaries of actions and decisions’ from House of Bishops meetings. Reports from earlier House of Bishops meetings are not collected on this page, although they can still be found on the press releases page.

If we go back a little further, the House of Bishops page has decisions from March 2024, but with no voting figures on anything that is described as having been ‘approved’. We read that the Bishop of Leicester ‘set out the process for taking forward the Synod discussions on Living in Love and Faith’; interesting wording, as shouldn’t that be ‘decisions on Living in Love and Faith’? We have made some! In March we were also told there that the House ‘looked forward to further updates and decisions in May’. ‘Decisions’ again? Yet I don’t see any in the report of the May meeting.

Going back still further, the report of the House’s decisions made at the December 2023 meeting, when there was some further kerfuffle before the Prayers of Love and Faith were formally commended, does include some voting figures; but in other areas around LLF we simply have ‘No decisions were taken… No decisions were taken… No decisions were taken other than to agree to a small working group.’

So without leaks, it’s still a mystery what the House of Bishops thinks.

Of course, Living in Love and Faith isn’t the only item on the July Synod agenda. There is also a ‘Report from the Wisdom of Trust Working Group’. This is a rather mysterious group, part of the ‘Transforming Effectiveness Programme’ (does anyone outside the inner circles know what this is?), and many of us heard about it for the first time at the February 2024 Synod in response to Question 167, which was about the lack of public trust in the Church of England. I do wonder if it also relates to the answers to Questions 66 and 67, where we heard of ‘a task and finish group … to explore how the work of the House of Bishops could be more transparent’.

Trust… transparency… like unity, these are topics which matter (indeed, ‘really’ matter). And in all these sets of notes or summaries of their meetings, the Bishops’ first action after agreeing the minutes of their previous meeting remains a discussion of whether or not to invoke Standing Order 14 so that they can meet in private. Noting that ‘Secrecy breeds distrust’, last year Andrew Atherstone published an excellent piece on this, summarising a previous debate in the 1970s on the (lack of) transparency of these meetings. He pointed out that there was a brief period when meetings took place in public, but the use of SO 14 became the norm by 1983. He noted the parallels between the Standing Orders of General Synod and of the House of Bishops; except that Synod never uses its power under Standing Orders to remove the public, while the House of Bishops does so – every single time.

Bishops maintain their secrecy, something which seems very strange when the call for transparency and honesty has never been stronger. They always use SO 14. It can be worded as voting ‘in favour of meeting on this occasion in private’ (my italics). But since they always meet in private, I wonder whether a more honest approach would be to amend the standing orders so that it’s clear that this is the case? I would love to know in what circumstances they would now choose to meet in any other way. Since the location of these meetings is not announced, it hardly seems likely that hordes of church members are clamouring at the door on the off-chance that they will be allowed in. Andrew called for ‘A thorough review of House of Bishops procedures’ because ‘transparency builds trust and trust is at the heart of healthy ecclesial relationships’. I agree, here and everywhere else.

PS A document for July Synod on the House of Bishops came out just after I had written this post, so there is a follow-up to this post here.

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

Hidden in plain sight: Soul Survivor again

Posted on May 16, 2024 by fluff35

Earlier this week there was a surprising announcement from Soul Survivor Watford of their new senior pastor. On X/Twitter, @needs_light tweeted that the person appointed is Simon Nicholls, a former Soul Survivor employee in a range of roles, and a former Soul 61 gap year student. What’s surprising about that? Simply this: that an earlier statement had been clear that they were ‘seeking to recruit somebody from outside of our church so as to bring in fresh perspectives’. Hmm. It’s an odd way of defining ‘outside’. Both the statement and the announcement were screenshot and shared by @needs_light, but neither of them now features on the Soul Survivor Watford website.

None of that is a good look.

I was interested in who Simon Nicholls is, not least because of a very positive comment on X/Twitter from a current member of his congregation, so did a quick search online. It took me only seconds to find the programme from a 2018 Soul Survivor festival on issuu, here. At that point, I lost all interest in Simon Nicholls, because in the brochure I found this on p.73:

WHY IS MIKE SO MEAN TO PEOPLE ON STAGE?

One of Mike’s quirks is that he likes to tease his friends and that means he often makes cheeky remarks about them on stage. Please don’t be offended! Mike’s being affectionate rather than mean; we promise you he only ever teases someone who knows that he loves them.

There’s quite a lot else in the brochure which I found bizarre; for example, the handy section on p.70 on ‘How to pray for physical healing’ which insists that you must address the organ (for an eye problem, ‘Speak to the eye’); tell the pain ‘very firmly to “Stop it,” in Jesus’ name (but remember you don’t need to shout!)’; repeat as necessary ‘as many times as you are both comfortable with’). I am not comfortable with any of this as something to encourage, but maybe I am just in the wrong tradition.

But nothing really beats that paragraph on Mike being ‘so mean’, but being mean is how you show you love someone – if you’re Mike.

In a blog post about celebrity culture in the church published on the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence site this week, Laya Watters noted how she had ‘dismissed my fears, putting it down to the pantomime comedy and trusting those in power and proximity to hold [Mike Pilavachi] accountable’. Those commenting when I shared the ‘Why is Mike so mean?’ link on X/Twitter also talked about how they had tried to ignore their own reactions to his behaviour, but also noted that the way such behaviour had been presented in Soul Survivor as a model of leadership had affected them in their later experience of churches; the toxicity lingered, distorting their perceptions. Others observed that the presence of this paragraph in the brochure suggested that there must have been complaints – but that those who could have acted on them had chosen instead to sweep them under the carpet. The option of telling him to stop doing it? Was that even considered?

The list of business to be considered at the next meeting of General Synod, in July, at last has this item on its agenda:

The Revd Robert Thompson (London) to move:

‘That this Synod, being deeply disquieted at the continued controversies over the actual independence of Safeguarding structures within the Church of England, does not accept that an internal Church inquiry into the allegations of abuse and cover-up within the Soul Survivor network is either sufficient or right in principle. It accordingly calls upon the Archbishop’s Council to commission, on agreed terms of reference with survivors, a report into those allegations from an independent King’s Counsel without delay.’

I was one of those who signed the motion, moving it up the list of those submitted. It was first available for signatures in September 2023. A year after that, the initial internal inquiry reported, its conclusion being that the safeguarding concerns were ‘substantiated’; Pilavachi’s abusive behaviour was recognised as ‘an embedded pattern’. Since then, Soul Survivor have set up an independent review being led by the excellent Fiona Scolding. Questions remain: when Pilavachi’s behaviour was so well-known that a jolly little dismissal of it was appearing in the festival brochures, why wasn’t it called out earlier?

Augustine Tanner-Ihm and Jonny Masters wrote a powerful piece about the theologies of sexuality that enabled Pilavachi to flourish: you can read it here. Jonny Masters commented at the beginning of this, ‘When I think back and remember laughing at Mike’s insults to other leaders on stage at Soul Survivor my soul curdles a little inside. Was I complicit in long-lasting abusive behaviour?’

Maybe the best place to hide really is in plain sight.

Posted in General Synod, Safeguarding | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Opening the jar, carrying the load

Posted on May 5, 2024 by fluff35

There’s a lot of Stuff swishing around in the Church of England right now. The focus at the moment may be on the composition of the latest groups which have been set up, comprised of people with different views being invited to discuss aspects of implementing Synod’s decisions; for various reasons, including making sure more LGBT people are among the members, public announcement of who is in these groups has been delayed but is now imminent [UPDATE: announced 8 May). But, once again, as someone involved in the Living in Love and Faith project for a very long time, I am reminded that we seem to have forgotten that the resources of this project exist. For example – and very relevant when one of the current questions is about the different ways that standalone services of blessing could happen – how bishops ‘have a particular role in determining the liturgies that can be used in the Church of England’ (LLF book, p.319). That is a useful reminder that, even though ‘Listening to the voice of God is a task for the whole Church’ (LLF book, p.329), it doesn’t really matter who is in which group, when for much of the way forward it’s the bishops who will have to decide.

All this reminds me of the myth of Pandora’s jar; the jar with ‘Do Not Open’ written on it. Pandora opened it, regardless, and out came all the evils of this world; diseases and hard work and suffering. Only Hope remained inside.

When we started the project of writing the resources for Living in Love and Faith, back in 2017, there was a conscious choice made not to offer ways forward at that stage. It was all about helping people to think through some of the issues around relationships, marriage and identity. It was an invitation to examine ourselves (LLF book, p.4) and to open a period of discernment (LLF book, p.424 – the final page) which would lead the Church of England into ‘making whatever decisions are needed for our common life regarding matters of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage’ (LLF book, p.420). We were keeping the lid on.

Now, however, and particularly in the last year or so of Synod votes and yet more working groups, the lid has come off. Somehow LLF has become a gateway to all the questions which have been around for many years but which we’ve managed to ignore, or at least largely ignore. Perhaps that’s the logical consequence of moving away from the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture in which the vicar lived with ‘a lodger’ and everyone looked the other way. But there’s far more going on now, and not just an acknowledgement that openness is better than secrecy.

These questions include not just the ‘presenting’ ones – should there be formal services to bless a couple in a same sex committed relationship, just as there are for straight couples who have had a civil service, and should couples where one or both are clergy be able to have civil marriages – but many, many more: back to the LLF book, what is the role of the bishop? And on it goes. What is the church? On what areas should there be consistency between dioceses? Should clergy be held to different standards from laity? Should the standards applied to clergy also be applied to lay people in leadership roles? What roles count as ‘leadership’? What is the relationship between the church and the world? Who makes decisions in the Church of England? How does the Church of England relate to the Anglican Communion? What does ‘blessing’ mean? What is marriage and is it the same as Holy Matrimony and does that matter? How can someone who thinks any relationship between two people of the same sex is a sin belong to a church where such relationships are honoured? And older questions are being revisited: can people who believe women priests are priests, and people who think that’s impossible, be in the same church? At what point does having ‘two integrities’ become schism?

In the ancient Greek myth, Pandora was explicitly told not to open that jar. But she did anyway, and there are obvious links with some readings of the Eve myth. As so often, it’s all the fault of women… In the analogy I am drawing here, a key difference is that we should have opened this jar properly before, because the questions which have come out are central to our faith and should not have been shut away. And Hope? Does that still remain in the jar? The more delays there are to the process, the more many of us start to lose hope.

And last week it struck me very powerfully how all those questions – everything that jumps out into the world once you take the lid off – are somehow to be carried by those who simply ask the church to bless their committed relationships. So I want to say: this is a heavy load to bear. And it’s being placed on just a few people, who in some cases are people who’ve already been badly damaged by others in the church. This never about ‘issues’; it’s about people.

Posted in Church of England and gender, Episcopal Teaching Document, equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, marriage | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Jesus is coming, look busy: onwards with Living in Love and Faith?

Posted on April 17, 2024 by fluff35

There used to be bumper stickers with the message, ‘Jesus is coming – look busy!’ Leaving aside the dodginess of that idea – and here I’d mention the Archbishop of York’s counter-argument, Do Nothing to Change Your Life: Discovering What Happens When You Stop – it does look like the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process is getting very ‘busy’. Last time I blogged here I was speculating about what I assumed was the imminent announcement of the membership of the three ‘not (just) the usual suspects’ groups to which, back in March, members of Synod were invited to offer their time. In fact, it turns out that those groups are still not finalised. At today’s stakeholder meetings we were told that this may happen at the end of next week, which will be after the first meeting of each group. 

So yes, that’s why I’m writing: because we’ve had some more stakeholder meetings. This time by zoom – cheaper, and more convenient, especially for those who have the temerity not to live within an hour of London. This time, no bishops present, just those of us representing various inclusive groups, and the two very busy and very helpful staff members of the Living in Love and Faith team. 

Why no bishops, I asked in the meeting I attended, bearing in mind that it’s the House of Bishops which has to make the decisions on what to bring to General Synod? Of course the staff will update them, but being in the room with us has a very different vibe. Did any bishops meet with the conservative stakeholders? No idea. For today’s meetings (three that I know about, with inclusive groups) the answer was that today clashed with some meeting of the archbishops with all diocesan bishops. When I was told that, I thought it was weird – surely such a meeting would already be in the diary before this one was fixed? Thinking about it, maybe not. I have no idea whether archbishops and diocesans meet regularly, but it is possible that this is also related to the use of the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) and to the question of the place of episcopal conscience, which is something we were told today is being considered by a Faith and Order Commission (FAOC) subgroup. Or then again, maybe it isn’t anything to do with that. As is so often the case, we don’t know and nobody is telling us.

Going back to December, published notes from the House of Bishops – we don’t get those very often! – tell us that they set up ‘a small working group’ to develop ideas around how the bishops could function when they don’t agree what ‘pastoral reassurance/ formal structural pastoral provision’ should look like. Or, to put it in simpler terms, what sort of arrangements would be enough to keep within the fold most of those who don’t think the Church of England should either bless same-sex relationships in ‘stand-alone services’, or allow clergy and lay leaders to be in same-sex civil marriages. That was the only time we’ve heard anything about such a working group. What did it do? Anything?

Now, we are still waiting for information on those three new ‘not (just) the usual suspects’ groups who’ll consider the same questions as usual, but hopefully this time more focused on process. We heard new information today: that the membership of each will include some representative/s from FAOC, and also that the other members won’t just be from Synod. That seems rather odd; why not? All varieties of the Church of England are represented at Synod so why bring in people who are not members? If you are going to do so, then why not have an open call for such people (there wasn’t one)? Ours not to reason why. There was also a suggestion that the full membership of the groups will not be published. Why not?

However, at the same time, as we heard in today’s stakeholder meetings, FAOC is running four of its own groups, around unity and the nature of the Church, what ‘Holy matrimony’ and ‘marriage’ mean (this one has been going round and round for a while now), clergy in same-sex marriages, and the conscience of bishops (this one is about whether some bishops could make their diocese a no-go area). None of those are new questions. FAOC is, to put it politely, not known for its speed. I’m not even sure why some theological questions are put to FAOC and others aren’t, or who decides to call them in. Its members are appointed by the archbishops, but who knows how that works? We were assured that the documents produced by these FAOC groups don’t need to go back to the full committee for approval so there won’t be delays.

What else? The main information-sharing was around the processes envisaged from now until February 2025, when there will be ‘Further discussion on proposal seeking approval of any legislative processes’. The three slides shared had a lot of coloured boxes, and a lot of words. They will soon be shared with us so we can pass them on.* We commented on the procedure here: clearly they weren’t created overnight, so why couldn’t they be shared in advance to give everyone a fair chance of getting their heads around it all? We heard that the new Programme Board only met on Monday so they couldn’t be shared until after that; but hello, it’s Wednesday.

The overall impression from the coloured boxes is of busy-ness; lots of different groups having to complete their part of the process to pass it on to the next group. The word ‘indicative’ features heavily. We know the bishops have been having ‘indicative votes’ at their meetings for a while now, to get a sense of how they divide but without it being binding in any way.

Having seen a fair number of earlier versions of a timetable like this, I am well aware of how easy it is for the timing to slip. Where the current timetable differs from other recent versions is in the incorporation of the FAOC groups; an extra area of possible slippage. FAOC’s involvement was mentioned in the documents we saw in February, although not in the Implementation Plan on a Page, in GS2346, p.20. But things have moved on from these documents in many areas, not least the abandoning of the ‘two Lead Bishops’ model in favour of a team with a single ‘Lead Bishop’.

Let’s just remind ourselves of what is currently on the table: a proposal for stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples (it is already possible to have these in an existing service) and ending the refusal to allow people in same-sex marriages to be ordained, or clergy in same-sex marriages to have licences. Those who disagree think that there is some way that the Church of England can be divided so that they feel insulated from all of this, which they consider to be sinful. But how would that work? This is really what the next months are about. The aim, we were told today, is ‘a workable solution with maximal support’.

Next stage? Apparently another set of stakeholder meetings in May, a month which also features a House of Bishops meeting (18 May). In June, a College of Bishops meeting (12 June). And Synod in July. More groups, more votes. I know I’m not alone in feeling very, very tired. But the busy-ness getting to a solution is necessary for everyone within the Church of England, and in particular for those most directly affected.

*addendum: these are now out there in the public domain, with a comment to the effect that things change and so they may not be correct for much longer

Posted in equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, marriage | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Surviving Soul Survivor

Posted on April 10, 2024 by fluff35

I want to start with a disclosure. While I think I had at least heard the clever title, I knew nothing about Soul Survivor until the early 2000s. I had assumed it was some sort of cult thing, probably to do with the End Times; I hadn’t realised it was part of the Church of England. Then I found out that someone I know well had not only been to the festivals, but had been part of the community in Watford for a year. Like so many others involved, they have found the recent publicity around Mike Pilavachi very disturbing, and have needed to rethink what happened to them. While I am relieved that people are now feeling able to talk in public about their experience, and that these include major figures like Matt and Beth Redman, I am not convinced that the deeper questions are yet being asked. 

In the latest episode of the Soul Survivors podcast in which the Redmans’ film ‘Let There Be Light’, released yesterday, is being discussed, ‘the Church’s culture of silence’ was flagged up. Beth Redman talked about the situation where ‘You can’t stay but you can’t say’. That will ring bells with so many people who have left churches and can’t tell their former congregations what the reason really is. Matt also talked about the difficulty of saying anything at all when you suspect your concerns will be swept aside rather than taking seriously. Why do people find it so hard to walk away from coercive control? All of that is very important. 

But what isn’t being discussed enough is the theology that made all this possible. The interviewer asks how those who received ‘prophetic words’ from Mike are supposed to process all this. Mike coming up with ‘a word from God’ appears to have been something that had to be accepted, regardless. That would have been a good opportunity to talk about churches in which prophecy is given this role. Maybe, as Matt says, ‘God was doing amazing stuff’ but with a compromised character at the middle of it all; or maybe people saw what they wanted to see, felt what they were encouraged to feel. Further disclosure: I have had the experience of watching, live and close-up, a Christian healer/prophet supposedly causing a leg to grow, and while others may have seen a miracle, ‘amazing stuff’, to me it looked like a change in the position of the pelvis so that the leg appeared longer.

The fact that Soul Survivor was a youth movement based on festivals is of course a key factor. The Church of England can come across as dangerously open to anyone who can achieve the feat of improving its age profile; just look at the Nine O’Clock Service, finally being investigated. Here, as with Soul Survivor, the ‘ordain first, ask questions later’ approach came badly unstuck.

One question which the film and the podcast raise concerns how we cope psychologically with disappointment. It reminds me of something I first encountered as a social anthropology student in the 1970s: cargo cults (good summary, from 1959, here). These were a feature of some societies in Melanesia where missionaries had turned up with the offer of Christianity. Converts wondered why the missionaries had all the wealth, but it wasn’t reaching them. One theory they came up with was that there were pages of the Bible which hadn’t been shared with them. They developed their own rituals to divert the aeroplanes which were bringing in goods for the missionaries, so that they would get the trade goods, the cargo. But – as with those who claimed this week’s eclipse signalled the Rapture – nothing happened. So they needed to regroup. Millennial cults that set a date for the arrival of the goods, or for the return of Jesus, or whatever, have to find a way of adjusting to disappointment. Was there an error in calculating the date? Were those waiting for the goods just too sinful to receive them?

The attempt to pull something back from disappointment here seems to be, as Matt says, to insist that ‘there’s been so much good through Soul Survivor’. Rather than focusing on what went wrong, on how complaints were ignored, to look at the good, to find ‘beauty’ in those who offer their help to bring light to the situation. 

But it disturbs me when I hear that we should ‘surrender’ our need to understand what was going on, that we ‘release to the Lord’ any quest for a disciplinary process. So many people spoke to those with authority and were ignored… Matthew 18 gets quoted – a one-on-one challenge followed by bringing in a third person to the private conversation, and then bringing it to the church. Is using the Bible in this way appropriate here? Do we really expect a young person to enter a one-on-one conversation with the person who thinks wrestling them is fine?

The interviewer asks the Redmans, ‘What would you like to see happen next?’ Matt notes the lack of any discipline. I’d second that. Discipline of who, exactly? Mike Pilavachi should, in my view, never be allowed to enter ministry again. His MBE should be returned. His 2020 award from the Church of England for services to evangelism, ditto. But what about those who ignored complaints for so many years? Matt and Beth refuse to say anything about those people other than that ‘silence is very painful when you are a survivor’. What about the ‘senior leader’ in London, mentioned on their video? Personally, I think the trustees need to apologise, and that senior leader should be open about what happened, and why they chose to do nothing.

The podcast ended with the offer of calling Premier Lifeline if you found what was discussed disturbing. I hope the people on that phone service are recommending that callers contact the police or the NST rather than simply praying with them. And I hope that the theological work on what happened is going to begin.

Posted in preaching, Safeguarding | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Not the Usual Suspects

Posted on April 6, 2024 by fluff35

It’s rare in my experience of the Church of England to find myself quoted by those higher up the food chain. When I was called to speak at the July Synod, I observed that ‘Notice Paper V – which sets out the financial implications of each item of business – mentioned £175,000 for residential conversations around LLF’. It turned out that I was right to assume this meant the LLF team was planning to convene yet more groups, but meeting for longer than the usual isolated days. I also asked that, when these new groups were put together, they wouldn’t consist just of ‘the usual suspects’ – speaking, of course, as a ‘usual suspect’.

That wording seems to have struck a chord. It’s included in the 8 March letter from +Martyn Snow which went to all members of General Synod and was published on the Living in Love and Faith website (incidentally, don’t try getting your information from the LLF Timeline as it ends in July 2023, I assume not from ill-founded optimism but because there’s still not enough staffing to have it updated).

Now, I’m not naïve. I’ve been around for long enough to know that it’s unlikely anything I say can influence anyone here. Instead, it’s more probable that the LLF team had already realised that this Synod has been functioning for long enough, and has endured enough hours of work on LLF, that there are plenty of members who have something to contribute at national level, and who have not yet had the chance to do so. Some of those will have valuable experience of leading LLF groups at local levels; others will have been involved in similar sorts of discussion in a work context. As we move forward on the slow process of implementing Synod’s decisions, we all need their input.

The 8 March letter invited members to put their names forward to join three groups, each to be chaired by a bishop. These groups are:

Pastoral Guidance Working Group 

Pastoral Reassurance Working Group 

Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) Working Group 

I suppose they could all be controversial in their different ways. But it’s the second of these which looks trickiest. Its task is ‘to draft an outline proposal for the minimum structural provision that is both necessary and proportionate’. What does that mean? I’ve never cared for ‘structural’ as it makes me think of the conservative calls for a separate ‘province’, a non-geographic one alongside the geographic ones of York and Canterbury.

The words ‘minimum’ and ‘proportionate’ have been used before. At the July Synod, it was a conservative, the Bishop of Guildford, who championed ‘proportionate’. In proportion to what, though? To what is actually supposed to happen next: the replacement of ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’ (over 30 years out of date), so that clergy and lay leaders in same-sex marriages can remain in post in every diocese, plus the availability at some churches of standalone services to bless a couple in a committed same-sex relationship? To me these seem tiny (compared to having such couples married in church) but to others they seem enormous (‘blessing sin’, I understand, being their preferred terminology). Or, in proportion to the results of the various votes on motions and amendments taken in Synod, or in proportion to how many in the C of E want this to happen (who knows? by which survey should we decide)?

As for ‘necessary’; is that ‘necessary for everyone to stay in the C of E’ or ‘necessary so that the maximum number – but it can never be everyone – feels that they can stay in the C of E’? Thinking about this in the aftermath of the resignation of the Rector of Liverpool over the ‘institutional homophobia’ of the CofE, which is very public evidence that those leaving are certainly not just those who reject any change to the current situation, makes it clear that that even with the status quo not everyone feels able to stay.

When LLF started off, back in 2017, the process was led by Dr Eeva John. She is now Vice-Chancellor of the Episcopal University of South Sudan, having formerly been chair of the trustees of its funding body. Since she left, the pattern became that two bishops were in charge of the process. Who is now going to make the decisions about what the new groups discuss, and decide? The 8 March letter clarified this, sort of. There is (or is to be?) a Programme Board to which the groups report. It will include the one remaining Lead Bishop for LLF, +Martyn Snow, but someone else will chair it. The timetable? Here I can expand a little on the letter because I know people who have been invited to join the groups (no, I haven’t – this ‘usual suspect’ is off the case!); three meetings by zoom before a residential meeting in mid-May. Then the bishops meet again. And in theory something is put to July Synod.

I appreciate that it takes time to put the new groups together. People will have been on holiday and not responded; if someone says ‘no’ then it will have been necessary to find someone who says ‘yes’ while still keeping a balance (I hope!) between lay and clergy, women and men, northern province and southern province, gay and straight, while ensuring racial diversity. But it’s been a long wait. And as we continue to wait, not just for the information on group membership but even for the publication of the information on who is heading the Programme Board, it’s hard to know how this latest iteration of LLF groups can produce something by July. There will be the issue of members getting to know each other and building up trust in each other and in the process. 

Once again, there’s the question of ‘red lines’. Many of us who are on the inclusive/liberal end of this feel that we’ve already gone as far as we can go on this; we would prefer the CofE to accept same-sex blessings (at the very least) as the default situation, with an ‘opt-out’ choice for those priests who don’t feel they can offer such a blessing – rather like the current situation for priests who, in conscience, are not comfortable marrying a heterosexual couple where one or both partners is divorced with a former partner still living. But we have accepted ‘opt-in’, and probably a more complex process of this in which both the incumbent and the PCC have to agree to do this. 

Other than the extreme proposals from CEEC, with separate everything (except for Synod membership and access to funding), I still don’t know what we can do to ensure that those who disagree with stand-alone blessings and same-sex married clergy and lay leaders still feel they can stay in the CofE. For those who think this is ‘blessing sin’, it’s hard to see how anything can sufficiently insulate their priests and people from the rest of us in such a way that our presence would not alarm them. And it doesn’t help that we are in a situation of growing unease with the existing situation with women priests and bishops, in which those who would not accept being ordained by a bishop who has previously ‘laid hands on’ a woman (in the church this has a rather different meaning to normal conversation) are able to have a different bishop at their ordination. As Christine Allsopp has just reminded us, when women became bishops there were subtle changes to the wording around them so that ‘extended’ oversight became ‘alternative’. Who is going to watch out for those sorts of subtle but damaging shifts of language?

There is one other set of meetings which has been announced: further ‘stakeholder group’ meetings, for the first time by Zoom, in mid-April. Similar meetings will happen again in May. These are where representatives of the networks and groups of both the conservative and inclusive kind meet the LLF lead bishops and staff team but they appear to be more one-way than previously, the purpose announced being ‘so that we can update you on the process and progress moving towards July’.

‘Process and progress’. I hope that the membership of all the groups – process – can be announced at last. Progress? I hope so. Is the end really in sight?

Posted in equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, marriage | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Next business, anyone? LLF, Synod, February 2024

Posted on February 27, 2024 by fluff35

 So what happened there? You may well ask. A debate on LLF stopped by the procedural motion to move to Next Business… is that a further kicking of the proverbial can down the unending road, the road which we somehow ‘walk together’ even when we don’t?

Before answering that, it’s important to note that there really is a change of tone in the speeches on LLF made to Synod. Partly, of course, that’s about who is called; some speakers just create a very bad atmosphere, for whatever reason. Partly, I suspect, it’s that the real feelings people have are moving a little further under the radar. But partly, for some at least, there’s a real attempt to be more careful with our language,

It was clear that the lead LLF bishop is trying to shift the mood towards ‘reconciliation and bridge building’, as the motion before us stated. But that motion, as I said at the start of my speech, leaves much unclear, not least who is actually in charge of the LLF process after it has lost its two previous lead bishops and its theological advisor at the same time, and recently one of the two current lead bishops, while also replacing one of the two staff members. It didn’t help that the lead LLF bishop sent out an email shortly before Synod to say that the 10 Commitments listed in one of the documents sent to us weren’t actually the commitments that would be made. So the motion was asking us to welcome the proposal for a series of commitments rather than the Commitments as published. This immediately made it difficult to know how to take any speech in the debate which referred specifically to the published text of those Commitments listed! 

Other than an improved tone, the debate was much as usual (Groundhog day anyone?). I had noticed that Notice Paper V – which sets out the financial implications of each item of business – mentioned £175,000 for residential conversations around LLF, which sounded to me like a re-run of the Shared Conversations, which is where this blog started back in 2015. But there was nothing about these in the paper circulated nor in the amendment which told me my instinct was correct. I mentioned this in my speech. No formal response but, for what it’s worth, I think this would be a good idea, and a conversation with someone on the LLF team suggests it will happen.

All five amendments were put forward by those at the traditionalist/conservative end of the church. The first, to ‘note’ rather than ‘welcome’ the work on LLF since last time around, was passed because most people there, of whatever persuasion, were not enthusiastic about the motion. The second, which wanted to insert the statement that ‘many’ would say that ‘some of the issues raised are not matters on which they can simply agree to disagree’, was defeated. This was a vote by Houses, and it was interesting that the overall numbers voting suggests that around 30 members weren’t voting at all. Traveling? Ill? Not wanting to have their names registered on one side or the other? Remember, these counted votes lead to the publication of a list of how everyone voted.

The third amendment wanted to strengthen the motion by adding ‘and welcome the greater emphasis on openness and transparency’. Again, lots of enthusiasm for that regardless of what our position is on inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people.

The fourth asked for ‘a settlement based on legally secure structural provision’. It was defeated in all three Houses. The language keeps shifting here, so it is difficult to know if we are all talking about the same thing. The Bishop of Leicester talks about ‘minimum’ provision for those who believe they need it; those who can’t ‘agree to disagree’ are on record as asking for something I could never call ‘minimal’: separate bishops, DDOs, theological colleges, ordinations… oh, and safeguarding. Yes, just when we are moving towards independent safeguarding. In the debate, the Bishop of Guildford suggested replacing ‘minimal’ with ‘proportionate’ structural provision. What does that mean? What proportions are we talking about there? How do you even do that?

Or – but this seems unlikely when it is this particular bishop proposing it – is this saying that having entirely optional, opt-in use of the resources of the Prayers of Love and Faith which respects the consciences of incumbents and PCCs is really tiny and doesn’t merit the division of everything in the Church of England apart from General Synod and the pension fund?

After amendment 4 failed, the motion for Next Business was proposed and passed on a counted vote of the whole Synod. To get to that stage had required all sorts of conversations behind the scenes, but those of us involved on the inclusive side were encouraged that many of a more traditionalist persuasion were also interested in cutting the debate before we reached yet another Big Vote which would only end unpleasantly. The votes on the amendments provided evidence of how that would go. 

There has since been a press release which is essentially ‘watch this space’. The promise is to come to the July Synod with something ‘concrete’; not least for the sake of those who still wait for stand-alone services, I pray that this will happen.

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

Questions of fornication

Posted on February 22, 2024 by fluff35

Another General Synod starts tomorrow. My bag is packed, which is just as well as I have to give a talk on Street Pastors and a report to Deanery Synod before I leave. I think I am on top of all the papers – even those which only arrived yesterday – and I feel for those who are in full-time work and have to juggle all this.

One set of papers which arrived yesterday was the list of answers to the Questions submitted, available here. I see that issues around Bible translation are still being raised. Is this in the vain hope that they are suddenly going to change people’s minds in our discussions of sexuality? I rather think that ship has sailed. 

The first example is Question 37 from Mrs Rebecca Cowburn (Ely), addressed to the Chair of the House of Bishops but being answered by the one remaining LLF Lead Bishop, Bishop Martyn Snow. This is about translating ancient Greek. She asks: 

Q.37 What steps, if any, has the House of Bishops taken to consider the findings of the research undertaken by the Revd Andrew Cornes, as outlined in his speech to General Synod in February 2023 (Report of Proceedings 2023 – General Synod February Group of Sessions, pp 161-162) and their application to the ongoing work of the House of Bishops on Living in Love and Faith and, in particular, the conclusion drawn from his findings that, to quote (page 162, para 4), “When Jesus used the word translated as porneia, all Jesus’s hearers would have assumed that he included homosexual sex”?  

This refers to Andrew Cornes saying in his speech to Synod that he had been researching for a book on this for the past seven years; it doesn’t seem to have been published yet, and an online search just revealed a quoted ‘personal communication’ making the same claim, in a book by one of his friends. The passage to which he was referring is the list of sinful thoughts that come out of the heart, in Matthew 15:19.

The answer offered by Bishop Martyn is: 

Research by a whole range of scholars was considered extensively in the first phase of the Living in Love and Faith project, by both the Biblical Studies Group and by the History Group. There is no settled and definitive judgement on whether Andrew Cornes’ view is right, and the exact meaning of porneia and what it includes continues to be disputed and is commonly translated with the generic term ‘sexual immorality’. You can find reference to this in the LLF book p. 247.

Before going any further, it made me very happy to see that a point I made to Bishop Martyn and others at a meeting – that we have the LLF resources but we sometimes seem to forget they exist – has been taken on board! 

However, the question seems to be eliding two things: what Jesus said – what was then translated into Greek as porneia – and what porneia itself means. And the answer doesn’t really address the question.

A related issue comes up in one other Question, Q89 from Mr Luke Appleton (Exeter), asking the Chair of the Faith and Order Commission:

Q.89 What is the Church of England’s current definition of fornication?  

People don’t ask little questions like that unless there is a whole lot going on behind them. I’d be rather tempted to say that most of us currently don’t use the word, but the response from the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe is instead:

The Church of England does not keep a formal list of definition of terms. The LLF book and resources explore in detail the passages where we find the term as a translation for the original Greek word (pp. 137; 141; 246-252; 283-294. The LLF hub has additional detail on historical understandings of sexual immorality.

The LLF book gets another reference! Celebration time! 

Let’s have a look at those references, though. ‘Fornication’ isn’t in the index to the LLF book but searching pdfs clearly helped whoever composed this answer. P.137 isn’t particularly relevant. P.141 is a reference to the Higton motion of 1987. 

Pp.283-94 is the LLF book’s section on the ‘clobber texts’, including 1 Corinthians 6.9-11 which in many translations has ‘fornicators’ (Greek pornoi) alongside thieves, the greedy, and drunkards – funnily enough, they don’t seem to turn up in Questions, and the same is true of the opening section of 1 Corinthians 6 on taking fellow-Christians to the civil courts. 

But the LLF commentary on this and other ‘clobber texts’ instead focuses on two more groups in this list of those who won’t inherit the Kingdom: the malakoi (literally ‘soft’) and arsenokoitai (literally ‘male-bedders’, a word found nowhere else but echoing ‘men who lie with men’ in Leviticus 18.22), translated in the NRSV as ‘male prostitutes’ and ‘sodomites’. It doesn’t take much work to find out that there are many different understandings of both the Old and New Testament references in their different cultural contexts. But the arrangement of the list of non-inheritors suggests that ‘fornicators’/pornoi are one group, and malakoi and arsenokoitai are other groups (whatever the words mean), rather than those two being sub-categories of fornicator.

This is, of course, Paul not Jesus, so it doesn’t help when considering what Jesus would have included under whatever word ended up being translated as porneia.

For that, and for Andrew Cornes’ original claim, we can turn in the LLF book to pp.246-52, the section on ‘Jesus’ teaching on marriage’ which includes “The term porneia covers a range of sexually immoral practices but can refer more specifically to prostitution, fornication, unchastity, forbidden marriages and, metaphorically, to worshipping any but the one true God”. The passage in question is Matthew 15:19 (Mark 7.22).

Picking up that important point about metaphorical usage, I suggest that those who want to understand the term should refer to Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, ethics and political reform in Greek philosophy and early Christianity (University of California Press, 2003), on ‘what constituted immoral sexual behaviour from an early Christian perspective, what shaped its irregularity, and why fornication had a lurid glow’ (p.19). This is a highly important book, hailed by the classicist Amy Richlin as being ‘among the dozen most important books on the history of sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean’.

On p. 20 Gaca writes:

porneia in the biblical sense of ‘fornication’ should not be confused with porneia in the non-biblical sense. Biblical porneia refers to acts of sexual intercourse and reproduction that deviate from the norm of worshipping God alone. Porneia as ‘fornication’ requires Biblical monotheism to be intelligible as a sexual rule, insofar as sexual intercourse and procreation are fornicating, and forbidden, by virtue of not being dedicated to the Lord alone.’ In the non-Biblical sense, porneia would be ‘prostitution’.

I can’t compress such a rich study into a blog post, but a key point is that she identifies the position that marriage and making love exist only for reproduction as a Pythagorean approach, not the general view of ancient Mediterranean societies. For her, fornication is specifically heterosexual: ‘men and women engaging in sexual intercourse outside of God’s ordinance system’ (124). This would include heterosexual married sex with a polytheistic spouse (158).

So, if I were answering Synod Questions:

Q.37: While the House of Bishops awaits the eventual publication of the research of Revd Andrew Cornes, it is aware of far more research on the meaning of porneia, including that of Professor Kathy Gaca on the importance of distinguishing between Biblical and non-Biblical uses of the word.

Q.89: The word ‘fornication’ is not in common use today, and users should be aware that in its original Biblical context porneia/‘fornication’ was about heterosexual, not same-sex, activity.

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