Suspicion and fear

Posted on October 24, 2023 by fluff35

In my previous post I mentioned that point where we found out the conservative groups were down to meet the LLF team before the House of Bishops met on 9 October, and the progressive groups after. As, in the end, nothing we said seems to have made any difference to the unexpected ‘pulling the B2 rabbit out of the mitre’ at that meeting of the House, maybe there wasn’t anything sinister going on with our invitations. Or maybe there was, but the key thing was not when we were down to meet the LLF team, but when the conservatives were? But there’s something else which has since occurred to me: it’s the revealing readiness in my mind, and in the minds of the others in the progressive groups, to assume that something is wrong about having all the conservative groups scheduled to meet before the bishops and all the inclusive groups after. Should we call that ‘the hermeneutic of suspicion’? It’s churchy language, at least.

I can now add another example of how suspicious and fearful we currently are. On Friday night, I was having my first attempt at reading GS2328, but in dodgy light on a small screen. When I came to 2.1.1 of the draft Pastoral Guidance, on ‘Making transparent decisions locally’, I thought that it meant that any occasion when the Prayers are to be used in a normal service would have to be notified in advance: the wording is that the incumbent’s decision to use them should be discussed with the PCC and the wider congregation and “made known ahead of time”. So I tweeted “so, if the vicar is going to use the Prayers of Love and Faith during the Sunday service, they are advised to put out a warning in advance?! We don’t routinely pre-warn about who is preaching or which intercessions or Eucharistic prayer we are using or what the hymns are…”

Re-reading the next day, in better light on a larger screen, I concluded that I’d read this wrong, so put up a further tweet, “may have misread a section of that very long GS2328. The phrase I took to mean announcing before a service that the Prayers would be in use was ‘made known ahead of time’. Maybe it just means ‘ahead of anyone actually asking for the Prayers’? My apologies if so.” Because I want to get this right; although I’m not yet sure that I have done so. Here’s the screenshot of the relevant section.

What interests me was how willing people were to accept my initial (mis?)reading suggesting that ‘health warnings’ would be issued ahead of using the Prayers in any normal service. In tweets and messages, some people reminded me that there are parishes where they do indeed announce who is preaching at each service, or who is presiding. Personally, I don’t think it should matter; preaching isn’t a celebrity performance and I certainly don’t attend for the preacher. Who’s presiding, though, that’s something else – in a situation where some people in a parish or a team won’t accept communion from a woman, telling them that the Revd Susan Smith is presiding means they can go elsewhere. Personally, I think that’s very sad, and I also wonder how far it goes; in my own parish there used to be someone who would not even take the Host (consecrated by a man) from a woman communion assistant, although he would take the chalice from a woman. I asked him why but the explanation didn’t go beyond how he just wasn’t happy about it.

Beyond that, though, the way a suggestion of a health warning ahead of any use of the Prayers was seen by many as perfectly likely reflects the low expectations which are set by GS2328. It’s all about fear; conservative fear that – to give just one example – a lay member of the church will be picked on at work because they belong to a congregation that won’t use the Prayers. Or, to give another example, that people coming for the Prayers will wear clothes that look too wedding-y. Or that churches – apparently allowed to design their own not-a-marriage-really certificate, may include symbols that look too wedding-y (“Such certificates must not suggest or imply in their wording or design that they commemorate or are proof of a marriage” in 1.3.4: imagine the drafting of that sentence… ‘ooh, add “or design” because even if the wording is OK there may be a picture of a cake’).

All this reflects the prevailing mood. Any sense of joy, of celebration, of welcome, of blessing, has now disappeared. In its place there’s just a combination of conservatives trying to present this as gaining the maximum possible protection from a Bad Thing (in their words, ‘blessing sin’): and progressives convinced that any crumb they are given will be hedged around to make it as depressing as possible. In this climate of increasing fear, where is the faith that sets us free?

Posted in equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith, marriage, preaching | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

Going to the stake: Living in Love and Faith as Synod approaches

Posted on October 22, 2023 by fluff35

Many of us on Synod and beyond are spending the weekend ploughing through the 108 pages of GS2328, the update on where the bishops now are, which contains versions of the three documents promised after February’s motion passed. GS2328 is an odd read, not least because there was some radical change between the College of Bishops in September, which was going with allowing stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex relationships immediately (under Canon B5a), and the House of Bishops on 9 October, where some sort of ‘saviour moment’ led to an entirely new direction, B2 authorization, meaning that no such services can yet happen, only the use of the special Prayers in services which are already happening, so presumably the usual Sunday Communion and Evensong services. That there has been this late-in-the-day change is acknowledged in GS2328 Annex E, “there has not yet been time to incorporate fully the implications of the House’s decision to move to B2 authorization for the standalone service”.

I do wonder about this. It came out of nowhere. It wasn’t mentioned at the three days of September I spent in the Living With Difference groups and, as I’ve commented elsewhere, we were specifically told not to trust the ‘saviour moment’ where someone comes up with something that’s new and therefore hasn’t been properly thought through. It wasn’t mentioned at the stakeholder meetings at the start of October; it just turned up on 9 October. 

I’ve been to two of these stakeholder meetings, as a representative of General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group. In GS2328, we are told in Annex G that “One of the successful features of the Living in Love and Faith Process so far has been the broad and deep engagement with stakeholders across the Church and beyond, both to listen to what their concerns and hopes are, and to manage those concerns actively. That engagement will become even more important as we move into the implementation period.” The format is that one or two members of an organisation come along, with maybe two or three organisations are combine, to sit with members of the LLF team and be briefed and then discuss what is going on.

But I’m not fully convinced that attending as a stakeholder is really worth it; specifically, it’s a funny sort of “broad and deep engagement” when the Great Plan is not even mentioned at a meeting. 

When invites were issued to this latest round of stakeholder meetings, those with ‘inclusive groups’ were originally scheduled for 10 October. But the House of Bishops’ meeting to decide precisely what was coming to Synod had been fixed for 9 October, making it look like the meetings were to try out what the House eventually decided. From the Church of England grapevine, however, it then turned out that the ‘conservative groups’ were all meeting the LLF team before that House of Bishops meeting. So, what they said could feed in to the decision, but what we said would only be a reaction? I wrote to the LLF team to ask what was going on. We were told that the purpose of the meetings was to “enable the core team to meet with groups ahead of the General Synod meeting in November, to listen well to the different concerns and hopes of each group, and to help shape the presentation of the LLF material at Synod, particularly tonally and pastorally. We are keen to hear your views in order to help us prepare well for General Synod, rather than to input directly into the meeting of the House of Bishops.” While appreciating the speed of the LLF team’s response, this didn’t entirely add up in terms of meeting dates, so we accepted their revised invitation to attend before rather than after the House of Bishops met. In the end, some of us couldn’t change our calendars, meaning that some inclusive groups met before 9 October, others after. Perhaps there was nothing sinister at all going on, but we have learned to be so suspicious of behind-the-scenes sneakiness that we see it even when it perhaps isn’t there. Or, perhaps, it is…

But going back to that statement about what the meetings were supposed to be for, I am now wondering how anything that happened in the stakeholder meetings helped “prepare well” for Synod. As for the “tonal and pastoral” presentation of LLF material at Synod, I suppose the proof of the pudding will be what happens on 13 and 14 November. The “tonal and pastoral” level of GS2328 is hardly impressive. You thought Issues in Human Sexuality was tone-deaf? Just try the various documents provided here.

Yet GS2328 lists among the many more areas of work needed “Stakeholder engagement and liaison”. That there is still much work to be done has been a continuing refrain in the last year or so of the ‘LLF journey’, even though the LLF ‘roadmap’ stops dead at July 2023. Even though by February 2023 the total cost of the LLF process – staffing, expenses, publications – was already £994,071, I suspect it’s all just under-resourced; so there’s nobody to update the website? According to Annex G, further work means not only implementing what is already stated, more work on the new Pastoral Guidance’s section on clergy and lay ministers (shorthand for ‘Can people in ministry be in same-sex civil marriages without losing their permission to work?’) and maybe or maybe not developing “formal structural pastoral provision”; there’s also yet more work on “singleness, celibacy/chastity, friendship, human identity” (what, more on friendship, beyond the bizarre Covenanted Friendship thing, which to my knowledge nobody was even asking for?). You may well wonder why the House of Bishops didn’t devote its time to these topics over the past six years, and the only answer that I can come up with is – because they hoped it would all go away. But there’s only so long you can keep your head in the sand.

One of the most optimistic pages in GS2328 is the timeline for what happens between now and November 2025, when the stand-alone services of blessing for same sex couples are supposed to return to Synod for a vote under Canon B2; which requires a two-thirds majority in all three houses, something clearly unreachable under the current Synod. So, is this all set up to fail? In which case, why are we wasting time on it? Do we have to stick with the B2 route, or could we, even at this late stage, reinstate the original plan: to have a trial period of using the services and then a return to Synod to vote on them? And there’s another thing. The final approval of the Prayers – the session of Synod at which they will, presumably, just be voted down – is November 2025. Bearing in mind how the timeline has slipped already, with people expecting July 2023 to be when things were sorted out, and then revising that to November 2023, and now to an even later date, does this mean another round of General Synod elections dominated by this unresolved issue which is so damaging to so many? For how long are faithful LGBTQIA+ members of the church supposed to wait for the very small step of blessings; blessings which no church will be compelled to offer?

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

The ‘saviour moment’?

Posted on October 10, 2023 by fluff35

When I wrote about being in the most recent offshoot of the Living in Love and Faith process – the optimistically-named ‘Living with Difference’ – I began by hoping that there was some sort of way through, some ‘Click boom’ moment which nobody had previously considered, by which those who are never going to reach compromise could find a mutually-acceptable way forward. But, after the group started its meetings, I took on board a point made to us by one of the facilitators; not only that this ‘saviour moment’ wasn’t going to happen, but that it positively should not happen, because any such suggestion would not have been properly tested.

So you can imagine my surprise yesterday, when what emerged from the House of Bishops was just such a ‘saviour moment’. Instead of the option considered in some detail at the Living with Difference meetings, and at the subsequent meetings with ‘stakeholders’, of a period of trying out the blessings under Canon B5a – where the archbishops would authorise them – and then seeing if the trial period could be transformed into permanence with Canon B2 and its required two-thirds majorities … the Bishops announced that they were going to commend the Prayers of Love and Faith for use in existing services but delay their use in stand-alone services – because these might look like weddings?? – and instead ask the dioceses for their approval for this before bringing such services to Synod under Canon B2 in 2025.

What’s going on? How does this fit with what the facilitators told us about good process? Where did the ‘B2 decision in the life of this Synod’ proposal come from and has it been fully thought through? I don’t have the information needed to answer those questions. I can see how this answers people who want Synod to have more of a say in what comes into being, but is that what this is about?

On the plus side, I’ve heard that people can use the Prayers with same sex couples right now. The Church of England has some very flexible patterns for a ‘service of the word’ which could easily incorporate the Prayers alongside some appropriate readings and hymns. Something similar could happen with a Eucharistic service. And, whether or not the eventual B2 vote went through Synod, the Prayers would remain ‘on the books’.

So, would a B2 vote go through? At the moment, it seems unlikely. On the basis of voting figures from February 2023, there is no chance, particularly in the House of Laity. That makes it look like we are being set up for failure. Is that what is going on? Yet CEEC has condemned yesterday’s announcement, suggesting that they are not happy either.

What is still completely unclear is what sort of ‘structural differentiation’ – if any – the Bishops are willing to consider for those conservatives for whom any words of blessing uttered in the vicinity of a committed same-sex couple are unacceptable because they could be construed as ‘blessing sin’. If those who want structural differentiation were offered something that met their requirements, would they then agree to vote for the stand-alone services? Is that the idea? But surely they would not, because in their understanding of the situation they would still be supporting ‘blessing sin’. There is a letter being sent to bishops from diocesan evangelical fellowships, presumably – from its repetition of key phrases like ‘compelled to resist’ – written by CEEC, which includes a statement that signatories would not allow bishops who have even expressed support for the prayers – note, expressed support, not necessarily uttered the words themselves – to preach, preside, confirm, or ordain in their churches. They would not receive communion from such a bishop, or even receive communion alongside them.

This statement about communion reminds me of some recent church history. In the early 1980s, the topic dividing Synod was how to deal with people in a marriage in which one of them had been divorced. Marriage in church for such people (only if the Bishop gave his permission), had been debated in 1978 but the motion was lost in one House, the House of Clergy. It was sent to dioceses, with no clear result, and then returned to Synod in February 1981. (This time frame does make me wonder how the Prayers of Love and Faith are supposed to go out to the dioceses and back again in two years) But this wasn’t just about marriage: one question was, could such people receive communion? Here, the dioceses took a clearer, more supportive, line. The Right Rev Kenneth Skelton, Chair of the Marriage Commission, noted that ‘to receive Communion is a sign that the person continues to be a member of the Church; it is not a sign of personal righteousness’.

So, offering communion to couples in this situation was not to be interpreted as a sign that the church approved of the divorce. Nobody at that time was announcing that their own chance to receive communion should be set aside because a divorced person was kneeling at the altar rail with them. Yet, according to some conservative evangelicals, they are unable to receive communion in the vicinity of a bishop who supports prayers being used with committed same-sex couples. I just don’t get it.

Personally, I will take communion from anyone ordained in the Church of England or in their own church. And I will value it, and I will feed on the body of Jesus, and I will give thanks for being included in the scandalous generosity of the heavenly feast. While I am probably never going to understand the many dimensions of the Eucharist, I think I stand more chance there than in trying to understand the House of Bishops.

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

Waiting for bishops

Posted on October 3, 2023 by fluff35

So, I was asked once again, ‘Where are things now on LLF and prayers of blessing for those in committed same-sex relationships, as voted for in the February Synod?’ 

I should say at the outset that there are very few people who ask me that. In my church (the parish church, middle of the road, robed choir, mostly quite an old congregation – and I too have my bus pass now) there are almost no enquiries about this particular aspect of my life, and the last time I was asked and answered, the response was a frustrated cry of ‘Oh for goodness sake they’re not still going on about that??’

But those who ask deserve an answer. The trouble with answering questions like this is that, at the moment, everything I do comes with some sort of confidentiality alert. I’ve survived all three meetings of the Living with Difference subgroup, which are billed as feeding into the meetings of the College and the House of Bishops. I don’t think that anything there, in a room containing various people from either end of the spectrum of views on same sex relationships, came as a surprise. The meetings were run with the usual mix of everyone sitting in a circle and being asked to say something, chats in pairs, chats in pairs which then become fours, and so on. The rules were St Michael’s House Protocols – so, ok to share what is said but not to attribute anything – but those were quickly changed to a wider ban on saying very much at all. 

I think I am safe to repeat things I myself said: so, at one point we were asked to go back and come up with some responses in the subgroups formed in the previous meeting, of conservative/middle/progressive (all those labels could of course be challenged), but I asked what seemed to have been an unanticipated question – could I change groups? Much hilarity and enthusiastic gestures of welcome from the conservatives. It was good to have a moment of humour and, indeed, a reminder that we can change. No, I explained, I wanted to be in the ‘middle’ group because I was experiencing such a bad fit between my Synod existence (motions, amendments, standing orders, Canon law etc) and my normal church existence (nobody sees what was passed at February Synod as an issue). So I had a spell in the ‘middle’, and it felt fine. 

Then yesterday I had another meeting in London, this time as a representative of one of the ‘stakeholder groups’. Assorted inclusive groups were meeting members of the LLF team, and then today assorted conservative groups do the same. It’s a repeat of the meetings from a year or so ago, only with some different configurations of groups. Once again we were told to observe confidentiality. I can see why, because the LLF team wanted to have our reactions to various things which may or may not be presented to Synod in November. However, as the House of Bishops doesn’t meet until 9 October, and hasn’t yet made up its collective mind about how it will take forward whatever was discussed in the College of Bishops, everything remains only a possibility. There are things bishops, or at least archbishops, can do without Synod, and there are things which need to come back to Synod.

You don’t need to break confidentiality to know what sort of ‘things’ are under discussion at the moment because they’re not new: how best to move forwards, what are the implications of various Canons that could be used, how are everyone’s consciences to be honoured, what – if any – compromises would be acceptable? Words like ‘orthodox’ continue to be weaponised. Different views of ecclesiology continue to be displayed. What makes someone a member of the Church of England? Can we even recognise each other as fellow Christians, let alone fellow members of the Church of England? Can we see Christ in each other?

So there you have it. I think the bishops realise that they need to implement the decision of February Synod, but are not sure how best to do that. We were able to give the LLF team our ‘red lines’ and no doubt the conservatives will do exactly the same, although I’m still not clear how the different sorts of conservatives – traditional Catholics, conservative evangelicals, charismatic evangelicals – who disagree on so many fundamentals somehow manage to find common ground on this issue. Is it even the same issue, when for some it’s about needing the universal Church to move forwards all at once (and where do the Pope’s latest statements fit in that?), while for others it’s a ‘first order issue’, for others it’s about ‘Creation’ and for others it’s the thin end of a wedge which includes any ‘sexual intimacy’ (do they all define that the same way?) outside opposite-sex marriage, or even polyamory, incest and bestiality?! My guess is that far more unites the inclusive evangelicals and affirming Catholics and that group so underrepresented in all these meetings, the moderate middle. We are united in a vision of increasing inclusion focused on the Christ whose arms are spread wide to draw us all to Himself, in love and in welcome.

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

Two meetings down, one to go: Living with Difference

Posted on September 15, 2023 by fluff35

“Two meetings down, one to go” is pretty much all I am allowed to say about the meetings of the Living with Difference group which has been convened in the spaces between the College and House of Bishops making their decisions on what happens next with the Living in Love and Faith process. 

It’s never a lot of fun spending hours in a room where things are said which are one group’s truth but which cause pain to another group who have come to a different understanding of truth. This is no exception. But it’s nothing new. Having had the experience of being a latecomer to the St Hugh’s Conversations means I’ve already heard most of what people have to say, and indeed often it’s the same people. I still remember the feeling of nausea I experienced when I first realised that a group had been meeting informally for years to discuss how to split up the Church of England; that may sound melodramatic, but once you start to get into the technicalities of separate bishops or provinces or selection processes, so that those who can’t support any same-sex relationships are insulated as far as possible from those who do, then that’s what it feels like to me. 

Being at the St Hugh’s Conversations also means that I have learned to listen respectfully when I have wanted to challenge what is said. It’s too late for any challenges now. People have reached their positions; although that doesn’t stop them repeating these again. The question is simply how we can move on. I went in to these latest meetings hoping for what’s been called the ‘saviour moment’, when something new turns up on the agenda and is seized upon as the solution: I now accept that this isn’t going to happen, and nor should it, as such a new ‘something’ would not have been properly evaluated.

The group assembled for Living with Difference has been described by one contributor to Thinking Anglicans as made up of “Professional and quasi professional Anglican Christians”. Well, it’s fair to point out that there’s a lack of people from your average Anglican congregation. There have been questions asked about how we were chosen: I have no idea. As one of the group pointed out, in the press release we were all given a label, an affiliation, but most of us could have been given very different labels from other groups in which we serve, other roles that we hold. There is less representation than I was expecting from those who’ve previously been involved in the LLF process, but that hasn’t been important. What matters more is that we are all, in different ways, ‘informed’. 

Some of those in the room have set out their stalls very clearly over the last few years. In its formal response to the proposals in January this year, the Church of England Evangelical Council asked again for “a permanent structural rearrangement resulting in visible differentiation”, and repeated the call for “differentiation” after the February vote. Some in CEEC have engaged in LLF, others less so, but even CEEC had its version of the LLF course, with added advice to help its members navigate possible conversations in a diverse group. As an educator myself, it interests me that participants were warned by CEEC that the course would be different from other courses they had taken, not least because “It will introduce a range of different views for you to consider and discuss and evaluate for yourself rather than presenting one viewpoint” (CEEC Engaging with Living in Love & Faith: Guidance for course participants, p.1). If there’s only one possible viewpoint, it is clearly theirs. This looks like a reference – a negative one – to what, for me, was one of the highlights of the LLF book: its recognition of seven different possible positions on Biblical authority which Christians hold. But the CEEC course warned its readers that “it is important not to be intimidated by claims concerning ‘increasing numbers of Christians’ rejecting this or ‘ongoing scholarly discussions’ and ‘different conclusions’” (p.25). So once again, there’s only one acceptable position and, despite frequent calls for ‘more theology’ made by those who would like to delay any change, scholarship is disparaged.

As I can’t talk about what has been happening in the last two meetings, I’ve decided here to go back to that query about whether all in the room have a sense of “your average Anglican congregation” and, indeed, of what it is to be in the Church of England. I’ve been in quite a few Church of England congregations over the years; I’ve also had a period when I didn’t belong to any congregation, as the institution just felt such a damaging place to be. But your average Anglican congregation is, I believe, a mixture. Those who have interrogated their faith and those for whom faith is a gift. Those who attend because they are deeply involved in the life of the church, and those who are fed simply by being there. Those who experience church as a foretaste of the Kingdom, and those who are hanging on by their fingernails. They may attend that particular church because something – the youth work, the musical tradition, the theological views of the minister – gels with them, or they may attend because it’s the nearest church to them, or because they are committed to the Church of England’s parochial ecclesiology. 

And this variety is not just in one place – it’s also valid across time. The simplest way to show that is to take myself as an example. My earliest Sunday School experiences were in an evangelical church, St Paul’s Howell Hill, which I came to realise was known locally as having pretty well declared UDI from the diocese. I went through the Explorers and Pathfinders programmes, learned a lot of Bible verses, experienced some minor bullying (around not coming from a wealthy family) and won a lot of Bible translations as prizes for learning verses. That made me realise that translations differ, and that this matters. As a young teenager in the youth group, I had my first experience of the Holy Spirit, singing in tongues (and I can’t sing in the first place). 

I then moved to my parish church, because they were starting a youth group from scratch, and it meant I wouldn’t need to rely on lifts from parents to get there and back. As well as being on the committee running the youth group, I went to an adult Bible Study Group and was soon on the PCC, followed very swiftly by Deanery and then Diocesan Synod. I was also spending time in London at All Saints Margaret Street (where, a long time before, my grandfather had been a chorister), travelling there and back with a school friend who would eventually be ordained, would work at Walsingham, and would then leave the C of E over the ordination of women. It was at ASMS that I had my second powerful experience of the presence of God, at a point in the liturgy of the Triduum.

I continued to attend my very ordinary parish church, but joined the Church Union (that, in case you’ve not met it, is an Anglo-Catholic organisation). A few years later, I moved from being opposed to the ordination of women to being a supporter. And then there was my first stint, in my 20s, of about seven years on General Synod, during the years that saw the Higton motion, and the legislation for women as deacons and then as priests, where I was a member of Catholic Group because, despite being the outlier on women’s ministry, that’s where I felt most at home.

I worked for the best part of a decade in a college formed from one Anglican and two Roman Catholic teacher training institutes; because I wear a cross, when I went for coffee at the Roman Catholic staff room the catering staff called me ‘Sister’. It was there that I began a ministry of preaching.

For the last twenty years, I’ve been at my market town parish church, eventually becoming an authorised lay preacher as well as leading many nurture courses; but for many years I was also in a Baptist home group, and for some months in a prayer group at the church in the next parish. I am a Street Pastor, and most of those in our town are from a local independent church, an offshoot of the Baptists. Before we married, my husband and I did HTB’s The Marriage Course at that independent church, and then we ran it in our parish church.

None of this, I believe, is all that unusual. We don’t live in silos, and thank God that we don’t. The breadth of the C of E has enriched my life, and my faith. Maybe that’s why I want to preserve the maximum unity within the C of E, so that at different seasons of their lives people can draw on the spiritual riches which we offer to all, without walls and without prejudice. I strongly believe that we need each other, and that we can hold together those who choose to offer the Prayers of Love and Faith and those who do not, just as we hold together those with different understandings of what Communion is; indeed, our published orders of service offer options based on those understandings. Now, I believe, is the time for our bishops to continue what was begun at the February Synod; to be bold, generous, hopeful and kind, and to seek a more Christlike church while preserving unity as an important value.

Posted in equal marriage, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Being back in the room

Posted on September 5, 2023 by fluff35

(One UPDATE 8 September)

As my friends know, I’m a fan of Hamilton, which has that great song about ‘being in the room where it happens’. While my previous post here, on the various dates leading up to the November Synod announcements/presentation/debate (no idea yet which of these it will be) on Living in Love and Faith, was in still in draft, I received an email from the admin team of LLF inviting me to be one of those in the ‘facilitated conversations’ happening across three days in September. These have since been renamed ‘Living with Difference’, although one person I know has decided to call them ‘Living Indifference’ instead (this is the same person who calls LLF ‘Living in Lies and Falsehood’…). Yes, in the church and beyond there is still considerable scepticism about the process with which we’ve been engaged since 2017. And we have to be aware of that.

The invitation was confidential, so I didn’t change the blog to incorporate it. It came as a surprise, as I had heard on the grapevine that people had already been invited, something confirmed by the 1 September Church Times story which mentions a briefing note circulated to members in July. I was asked in mid-August, so I clearly wasn’t on the ‘A’ list, but that’s OK; after my long journey with LLF, it is good to be in this particular ‘room where it happens’.

The full list of names will shortly be made public (UPDATE – since I wrote this, it is now here): but as we are under the St Michael’s House Protocols (also physically signed-up-to as part of the Shared Conversations) and we are ‘private’ but not ‘secret’ – hardly secret when there was a press release in early August about the meetings – there seems to be no objection to me now saying that I am involved. We meet for the first time on 7 September.

I am still not clear about how the different groups meeting in September relate to each other, although I am guessing that the meeting of the episcopal Steering Group for LLF on 30 August explains why our first meeting is on 7 September. As the original press release said, our meetings feed into the College and House of Bishops.

So back to Hamilton. The song has all sorts of relevance to what is happening at this stage of LLF. It even includes the line “Hate the sin, love the sinner”. And “When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game”; the Living with Difference group includes a better balance than the LLF presentation at July Synod did, between different sorts of ‘conservative’ and different sorts of ‘inclusive’ Christians.

What happens in ‘the room where it happens’ is that a deal is struck. Is that finally going to happen? “And how you gonna get your debt plan through? – I guess I’m gonna have to finally listen to you.” Is that what the Living with Difference group is about – listening? That’s certainly a focus of the St Michael’s House Protocols. Seems like we’ve done a lot of that already, in preparing the LLF resources, in doing the course, in the small group work in Synod. And there will be group work in the three meetings to which we are committed, with highly-experienced facilitators in the room with us; does that mean we will be taken through exercises like those used in the Shared Conversations and beyond to help us think through what lies beneath our differences, and to understand trust? The exercise where one person describes an image and the other tries to draw it? The fruit and chocolate one? Is it still worth making the point that apparent differences may conceal shared beliefs? In Hamilton, the deal depends on each side emerging feeling that they “got more than [they] gave”. For me, the plan for some very subdued prayers with couples who have contracted a civil relationship is already giving up a lot; yet I recognise that for some ‘conservatives’ even that is a step too far. Can we all emerge from the room feeling we got more than we gave?

As the song says,

No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens

No one really knows how the parties get to “Yes”
The pieces that are sacrificed in every game of chess
We just assume that it happens
But no else is in the room where it happens

My God, In God We Trust
But we never really know what got discussed
Click boom! Then it happened
But no one else was in the room where it happened.

Thought, or perhaps prayer, for Thursday: Click boom!

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The autumn of Living in Love and Faith

Posted on August 16, 2023 by fluff35

(updated 18 August, 1 September, 28 October and 18 November)

One of the issues in the Church of England at the moment is transparency, or rather the lack of it. As of this morning, the ‘LLF Journey’ page on the main Living in Love and Faith website is still stalled at July 2023. What follows is my attempt to update that. When I do review visits either of theological colleges or of universities, I always ask for a chart showing which group reports to which group, to get a sense of where accountability lies. I would love to do this for the current stage of LLF, but that isn’t possible yet. Instead, we are heading into autumn with a new configuration, and I’m thinking of the fruit-less tree which was the original LLF logo, until it was replaced with a stained-glass window…

So: we’ve had the Next Steps Group, the Implementation Groups, and now we have more groups. There is currently something called the Steering Group, which comprises the bishops who chaired the Implementation Groups: Bishop Sarah Mullally (Co-Chair), Bishop Philip Mounstephen (Co-Chair) Bishop Debbie Sellin, Bishop Sam Corley, Bishop Robert Atwell, Bishop Rosemarie Mallet, Bishop Andrew Watson and Bishop Jackie Searle. This will be meeting twice in August and twice during September. The dates are 25th August, 30th August, 18th September and 26th September. Then they meet again on 11 October and on 6 November.

A 7 August press release told us that ‘invitations have been issued’ to three more ‘facilitated conversations’ in September. This seems to have passed under the radar of many people. But the list of those invited is still not published, maybe they haven’t all replied. What’s the purpose of these conversations? So that those at the table can offer their ‘insights and reflections’: ‘we are seeking to listen to people’s hopes and concerns and to ensure that they are satisfied that their views have been taken into consideration’. Those invited ‘will bring a wealth of knowledge from prior involvement in the LLF process, as well as a range of lived experiences’; some, presumably, will have been through the full 6+ years of LLF, others only the more recent stages. ‘Range of lived experiences’ is presumably a way of saying that – in contrast to those on the platform at the presentation on LLF at the July 2023 Synod – some of them will be LGBTQIA+. It would be good if lay people – the majority of the church! – are better represented than on the Implementation Groups. On the Pastoral Guidance Implementation Group, for example, there were 10 bishops, 9 clergy, one lay man and one lay woman: on the Prayers of Love and Faith Implementation Group, 7 bishops, 7 clergy and one lay man. The dates for the meetings of this brand new ‘facilitated conversations’ group are 7th, 12th and 28th September.

Then on 3 October and 10 October various organisations (‘stakeholder groups’) have been invited to send a couple of representatives to meet with the ‘core staff team’ of  Bishop Mark Wroe, Mark Betson and Georgie Morgan. The stated aims are to listen to stakeholders, and to influence how the LLF material is presented to the November Synod; so, the focus is on Synod, not on what the bishops discuss when they meet. The invitations to ‘inclusive’ groups include GSGSG, OneBodyOneFaith, Inclusive Church, MOSAIC, Diverse Church, Modern Church, WATCH, Student Christian Movement, Church for Everyone, Synod Evangelical Forum, Inclusive Evangelicals, Affirming Catholics in Synod, Society of Catholic Priests, Affirming Catholicism. Changing Attitude (England), Ozanne Foundation, and Equal.

Originally, the ‘conservative’ groups are scheduled for 3 October: ‘inclusive’ groups for 10 October. This has now been recognised as, potentially, a problem because there is a House of Bishops meeting on 9 October. And it is expected to be the one at which whatever is going to be presented to the November Synod will be agreed and signed off by the bishops. Having those with one perspective meeting the core team before that, and those with another perspective only after the House of Bishops has done whatever it intends to do at that early October meeting, does not seem to treat both groups on equal terms. As a result, as of 18 August, there is now an alternative opportunity for the ‘inclusive’ groups on 2 October.

And then there are the bishops, of course. There’s a College of Bishops (all bishops including suffragan and area bishops) from 18-21 September, a further House of Bishops meeting from 30 October-1 November, with General Synod meeting from 13-15 November. 

Why do these dates matter? Simply because, in the interests of transparency, many of us would like to know how and by whom decisions will be made on what to bring to General Synod. Is the LLF tree about to bear fruit? At the July meeting, we had one bishop telling us that November would definitely be when the bishops brought something to us, and another bishop telling us that he doubted this would be possible. The intense timetable of meetings encourages me to think that something is happening, but for now we remain largely in the dark when it comes to the details. I hope this blog post brings a little light, and please do correct me if any of the details are not correct!

And, in the further interests of transparency, later blogs I’ve posted on this site describe – but are as yet unable to explain – what happened between the September College of Bishops and the October House of Bishops, when what appeared to be the proposed way forward was changed. Now we have a motion for November Synod, which will no doubt be subjected to amendments from all over the spectrum of belief. But – and this is why I have decided to do a further update to this blog – there’s now another date to add in, between the 30 October-1 November House of Bishops, and the Synod meeting.

That date is 3 November. Representatives of all the ‘inclusive groups’ – the stakeholders – are invited to a meeting with the LLF staff team and the Archbishop of Canterbury. I assume representatives of ‘conservative groups’ also have their meeting. Since representatives will of course be discussing with their groups what they are expecting from this meeting, it’s clearly not entirely confidential. For the sake of keeping this post as accurate as possible, I am therefore mentioning it here (NOTE: I later blogged on it here). Unlike the Living with Faith conversations, no mention has been made of St Michael’s House Protocols or the even more strict confidentiality imposed on us at those meetings. And people outside the various ‘groups’ need to know that the Archbishop has taken this initiative. After that, as per my original comments on the timetable, there will be the LLF Steering Group on 6 November. And then, as far as I know, nothing – or, at least, nothing formal – until November Synod.

And after November Synod? I understand that the House of Bishops meets on Zoom on 29 November and 12 December, with the next residential College of Bishops on 18-19 January. So perhaps the Prayers of Love and Faith will be available for use after 12 December. And then we can look forward to the February Synod…

Posted in Episcopal Teaching Document, General Synod, Living in Love and Faith | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

July 2023 Synod in annotated tweets

Posted on July 12, 2023 by fluff35

(Updated 13 July after the release of Meg Munn’s statement and then Maggie Atkinson’s statement)

Tweets in italics, connecting prose not… This blog started out as focused on sexuality and the church, but evolved to cover safeguarding too, not least because they are connected; something I explored in 2020 on another platform, here. This reflection is based solely on the safeguarding issues, although there was plenty more at this Synod that took my breath away; not least, 

Highlights (lowlights?) of that Synod, in addition to the ‘find the standing order’ episode, must be the man who said we should drive our cars more and fly more because God has climate change under control, and the man who said his parish shouldn’t ever contribute to redress for victims and survivors of abuse because nobody has ever been abused at his church *and they never will be*.

The ‘find the standing order’ episode refers the extraordinary (even by C of E standards) scenes on Sunday afternoon as members of Synod conferred in little groups around the debating chamber to find a standing order that would allow Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves, recently removed as Independent Safeguarding Board members, to address Synod. When such a way was found, it was excellent to hear them, and they came across to me as committed, passionate, and professional. We didn’t hear from the third member, Meg Munn, brought in to replace Maggie Atkinson after data security issues, although she was present. I heard comments afterwards to the effect that if only we had heard from Meg then we’d have heard a very different story; the implication was that this story would put the Archbishops’ Council into a better light. But then on Thursday morning, the day after we all staggered home exhausted from trying to combine the different accounts we were given over the course of the Synod meeting, Meg Munn’s resignation followed on the heels of Synod member Gavin Drake’s resignation, and she gave the Church Times information which does not increase our trust in the Archbishops’ Council, commenting for example that ‘the Archbishops’ Council has been slow to listen to those with organisational and safeguarding expertise’ and that ‘they failed to support me as Chair in developing plans for phase 2 of the ISB, indeed the Archbishop of Canterbury actually undermined me.’ Her statement also challenged the low output of the ISB and the inadequacy of the plans for moving to a phase 2, the fully-independent stage which was supposed to follow. As ever, the C of E spokesperson who initially commented on this news story trotted out the old ‘there are lessons to learn’ line. There certainly are.

On the final day of Synod, I tweeted that as Synod

continues on its final session, I think back to what I asked in the first debate on Friday: including my comment on #transparency, that I have no idea what was going on with the ISB sackings. And I still don’t.

This was based on something I contributed to the first debate of the meeting, the one on the Agenda (on the Friday YouTube recording at 1.07.00). After mentioning an item not placed on our Agenda, the Private Member’s Motion calling for an independent review into Soul Survivor, and thus making it clear that safeguarding was on my mind, I spoke about what I called ‘the agenda underneath the Agenda’, the issues of transparency, accountability and trust. On transparency, I asked ‘What is going on?’ and added ‘I’m hoping during this Synod I’m going to find out.’

Well, I didn’t. And I still haven’t.

The Archbishop of Canterbury blamed the disgraceful one hour’s notice before the 21 June announcement of the ISB dissolution – something which added to the trauma for many survivors who only found out when the announcement was made – was to give time for Synod papers to be issued. And then, the Archbishop disagreed with the Archbishops’ Council and wasn’t sure what he was allowed to say about what happened at it, but gave us the new information that neither Archbishop agreed with its decision #transparency #accountability #trust

I tried to make sense of this ‘the Archbishops didn’t agree with the AC’ alongside the other statement that the decision was unanimous. I decided that perhaps the decision to sack Jas and Steve was unanimous but the appalling timing wasn’t. Who knows? Somebody, presumably, does. But they’re not telling. I noted I’m still being told that I haven’t heard all sides of the story. I still don’t know what happened on 21 June: did the AC meet then or earlier? If the archbishops wanted a delay why wasn’t there one? I’ve also been told that the platform party *did* want Jas and Steve to speak but had to work out how to enable this. True? And I have a question about what the vision was for Phase 2 that Phase 1 had developed when the ISB was stopped.

Since Meg Munn’s full statement came out, I can attempt an answer to the very last question here – there were, apparently, plans, but they ‘lack[ed] necessary detail’. Or, if we go with Maggie Atkinson’s statement, the ISB which has been closed down was already trying to be Phase 2.

I supported Gavin Drake’s attempt to have a Following Motion on the Archbishops’ Council decision, and to place this after the discussion of the Archbishops’ Council Annual Report, something needed because the safeguarding slot was a ‘presentation not based on a report’ and so not open to following motions (yes, Standing Orders are sometimes very odd). But after some more invocation of standing orders it was not put to Synod for voting and something similar happened when Martin Sewell tried to put something in during the final item on the revised code of practice for safeguarding reviews: Once again proper discussion of safeguarding is closed down in the C of E Synod. A lot of people voted against ending this debate on the code of practice for reviews but the chair wasn’t willing to e.g. impose a one minute speech limit to hear more voices. All I wanted there was to continue the debate even with a one minute speech limit. The chair and vice chair of the House of Laity did too.

Picking up something another member said, I noted that The phrasing of “making the C of E less bad” is very accurate but very depressing as a way of thinking about what Synod does.

And so I go on… What I didn’t get called to ask in the debate on the Archbishops’ Council: on progress against the IICSA recommendations. “Can you refer me to where I would find the latest update on each recommendation and the action taken to date?” So on Thursday I asked the Chair of the House of Laity and the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding that question, and the former is on the case. Wouldn’t a simple table noting what we were asked to do, how we did it and who is responsible for making sure we do the rest, go a long way here?

I was interested, though, that the most read-tweet I made over Synod wasn’t any of these. It was one that came out of hearing a number of upbeat speeches on the lines of, ‘if we just pray even more/have more faith, God will send us more people and they’ll bring in more money and we won’t have to worry about how we are going to continue despite increasing reliance on the Church Commissioners’ pot, increased diocesan deficits, and falling numbers of regular givers with no increase in the amount they are giving’. I suddenly realised that this variant of a prosperity gospel isn’t feeling right to me. So I raised my fears in a speech and then wrote on Twitter: How to be unpopular at @synod. Having seen again the evidence of continued decline in giving, ask “Is there a point when we start to ask whether the poorer church is what God is calling us to be? This is a serious question. Is anyone thinking about this or are we asked to put our fingers in our ears and hum – and pray??” No answer given.

The comments on this tweet were supportive, referencing the post-Constantinian church and the possibility that we are going to need to redesign all our models of ministry. I would love to know that I’m not alone in the C of E in wondering whether we are clinging on to an image of church at a point where God is calling us to think outside the box. Maybe if we could move away from our current culture of deference, our lack of transparency and of accountability, and our inability to trust each other – and for parishes and dioceses to trust each other – we could find a new way to be the Body of Christ and to serve each other, and our nation, more effectively? Because it’s in the love and care shown in local manifestations of ‘church’ that my hope lies.

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The Independent Safeguarding Board: a ‘reset’?

Posted on June 25, 2023 by fluff35

It has been an exceptionally confusing week for those of us who work with or who are concerned about safeguarding and redress. An announcement was made about the funding of the Redress Scheme, and was immediately followed by an announcement that the two remaining members of the Independent Safeguarding Board were being sacked. It remains unclear what will be on the agenda for the July General Synod, where ‘safeguarding’ features; will this be an anodyne presentation with carefully-managed questions from the floor, or something more real? As the fall-out from the decision by the Archbishops’ Council to end the ISB continues, and as the former members – who were appointed by a proper process rather than being selected in some opaque fashion, and who have gained the confidence of many survivors – are putting their side of the story through social media, the official line seems to be that this was only Phase 1 of ISB; the ISB wasn’t independent; and this is just a ‘reset’. 

What to make of that? I don’t know who came up with the word ‘reset’ – it has now been used in public by two members of the Archbishops’ Council, the Archbishop of York and Ian Paul, so I suspect it’s their officially-recommended term – but these are people, not a computer!

Well, the document setting up the ISB exists. It is here. While it confirms the point that what we had until last week was only ever Phase 1 (a phase envisaged as going up to the end of 2023), and addresses the problem of deciding how independence can work when a body is funded by the organisation from which it is supposed to be ‘independent’, it does raise some questions.

For example, it states that ‘There are existing models for a wholly independent charitable body to handle safeguarding. Exploring a variety of models, and assessing their applicability, will be undertaken in Phase 2.’ It also notes that ‘The proposed Independent Safeguarding Board would accompany the church in shaping the tasks in Phase 2 and deciding how they can best be delivered’ and ‘it is recommended that the work streams of Phase 2 be approached through a co-production methodology’.

How is any of that development going to happen when the Phase 1 version of the ISB has been dissolved, and in such a fashion? Who, now, designs Phase 2? What has been learned in Phase 1?

The document also discusses in a useful way the difference between executive and advisory functions and, when it tells us what the ISB – in both phases – was supposed to do, it offers an excellent aspiration for what could exist: ‘An independent body will have considerable moral authority. It has the power to blow the whistle publicly and expose resistance or backsliding on the church’s part. But there are many contexts where friction and resistance from the church could undermine the independent body. What is needed is a structure which the church may put in place, but which it cannot frustrate.’

Precisely. But the way that Phase 1 has been ended doesn’t make me more confident that Phase 2 will be such a structure. 

Finally, it’s a useful document in its identification of how to reach real culture change on safeguarding. Alongside the level of ‘independence’, these four points are worth keeping in mind when we are eventually told what Phase 2 is going to look like:

Alertness to disparities of power becomes instinctive in all relationships

Group-think and tribalism are challenged effectively from outside the “club”

Responsibility is clearly attributed and shared

Systems respond to failures by holding those responsible to account and changing to prevent recurrent failures

Posted in Safeguarding | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Too many adjectives?

Posted on June 22, 2023 by fluff35

One of my husband’s pet hates when we eat out is when a menu has too many adjectives, to the point that you almost lose sight of what it is you’re eating: ‘smoky deep-fried maple-cured lightly chopped British bacon’, that sort of thing. There are – of course – even websites like this one which can help you plump up your menu.

Here’s a little Church of England example from the just-released document GS2303, Implementation Work for Living in Love and Faith, which sort of is and sort of is not on the agenda for the July 2023 Synod (more on its status later): it announces itself as a paper which ‘outlines the update presented to General Synod in July 2023’ (which seems odd when the meeting hasn’t happened yet). In paragraph 20, 

There was also a commitment to provide a generous pastoral response which is loving and celebratory to those who are in life-long monogamous same-sex committed relationships

Now I can see what they are doing there. It goes with paragraph 12, which comes from a different one of the three ‘implementation groups’ which have been working on all this since February. Paragraph 12 tells us that the various groups are considering ‘in which situations the Prayers of Love and Faith will be recommended for use and what conditions may be imposed on them, such as that they may only be used with those whose relationship is demonstrably faithful, exclusive and permanent’.

So those four adjectives qualifying the word ‘relationships’ are trying to capture that combination of conditions.

But here’s a question. Do those who preside at marriages of straight couples check out where their relationship stands on these qualities? How do you ‘demonstrate’ that your relationship ticks the boxes, particularly if you are in the minority of couples who haven’t entered a physical relationship yet? Who is doing the checking?

I’m assuming that ‘in life-long monogamous same-sex committed relationships’ is Church code for those who entered civil marriage or civil partnership a while ago and now want the church to bless this. But if you would like to be married in church, can’t because that’s not allowed, and so ask for prayers immediately after your civil ceremony, are you still allowed to have these prayers?

Then there’s that ‘life-long’. How do you know your marriage is life-long? Maybe the word ‘intended’ should be in there somewhere. As many have pointed out, the claim that the only real marriages are those ‘between a man and a woman, for life’ already encounters a problem when faced with people who marry after a previous divorce. The Church of England allows them to marry in church, after interviews with the vicar, and also allows vicars who literally the ‘for life’ to refuse to marry a couple like this.

Perhaps the most interesting throwaway line in GS2303 is in paragraph 27. This says that one of the three ‘implementation groups’, the Pastoral Reassurance group, are ‘considering structural approaches where they are congruent with the Pastoral Principles, where they maximise mutual working together and seek the Gospel imperative for the Church to be one’. I had understood that the bishops were very much opposed to the calls for ‘structural differentiation’ being made by conservative evangelicals, whether these were for separate bishops, a separate province, their own theological training and their own ordinations. Yet here is the ‘s’ word. Somehow, in the topsy-turvy world of the Church of England, where ‘next steps’ means standing still and ‘implementation’ means not doing anything, ‘differentiation’ is about being united.

Finally, is GS2303 actually on the agenda for July? We are told that it’s not ‘part of the formal Group of Sessions (and therefore [does] not form part of the Agenda)’. This means it is not covered by Standing Orders. We are told that there will be a Notice Paper about it, and it will be ‘explained’ when we get to York. Yet the original published Agenda included ‘Living in Love and Faith’ with GS2303 as the supporting document. The item is scheduled for the Saturday afternoon, after a diocesan synod motion on prisoner rehabilitation. Assuming that motion would take a maximum of an hour and a half, that would mean 15.45-19.00 for LLF, which suggests there’s more happening than the Bishop of London summarising the 38 pages of GS2303, most of which in any case are the revised, very bland, prayers to use for covenanted friendship, God’s blessing, or a household or family.

The Business Committee’s report on the agenda says that the item is ‘a presentation and opportunity for questions’. I shall certainly have some of those…

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