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Author: Helen King

  • The Body We Are Becoming: Ecclesiology, Safeguarding and the Common Life of General Synod

    by the Revd Robert Thompson, Vicar St Mary’s, Kilburn & St James’, West Hampstead; host of Open Table, London; member of General Synod

    Walking together requires more than making space for disagreement.

    Earlier this week I had the privilege of drafting, on behalf of more than eighty members of the Houses of Clergy and Laity of the General Synod, a letter to the Presidents asking them to exercise their powers under the Church of England’s Fringe Meetings and Displays Policy to withdraw approval for the proposed fringe meeting People Change: Sexual Identity Transformation and its associated exhibition stand before Synod meets in York. This fringe and stand involve speakers from groups who claim to change people’s sexual attraction.

    This letter, shared here, simply asks constitutional, safeguarding and governance questions about the presence of the meeting and the exhibition stand. It is my understanding that only the Archbishops as Presidents can intervene in a situation in which many members believe that the common life of General Synod itself is at stake.

    As I found myself drafting that letter, however, I became increasingly convinced that the questions it raises go beyond what is constitutional or political. While our debates about sexuality take place, what is General Synod becoming?

    Ecclesiology: what is our body?

    The real issues are ecclesiological. While that word can sound like an abstract branch of theology, every decision the Church makes about authority, safeguarding, worship, disagreement and belonging reveals something about what it believes the Church itself to be. Ecclesiology is the shape our common life takes. So the question before us goes beyond whether one particular fringe meeting should proceed. It’s about the kind of Body we are becoming, and how our understanding of the Church shapes the way authority is exercised, disagreement is held and every baptised Christian is enabled to participate fully in the common life of Christ.

    I write not only as the lead signatory to the letter but also as a priest of the Church of England who is also gay and in a partnership. In September, we celebrate our 18th year together. I do not simply accept my sexual orientation, nor have I merely made peace with it after years of struggle: I receive it with gratitude as one of God’s gifts. It has shaped my vocation, enlarged my compassion and deepened my understanding of the Gospel. It has taught me something about exclusion, dignity, grace and the Christ who is so often encountered among those whose place within the community has been questioned. I believe that my priesthood has been enriched, not despite being gay, but partly because of the particular experiences through which God has formed me. That has been further intensified by being in a long-term loving relationship.

    Dignity and participation

    Over recent days I have also heard from a significant number of sibling queer clergy and lay members of General Synod. Not all of them agreed about the best response to this situation; not wanting to write a letter, or wanting stronger language or a different strategy. Yet beneath those differences one theme emerged with striking consistency. Several people told me that the approval of both this fringe meeting and, particularly, the accompanying exhibition stand had left them questioning whether they could arrive in York with the same sense of safety, dignity and belonging as every other member of General Synod. They spoke not in the language of ideology but of participation: whether they could enter the shared spaces of Synod without anxiety, contribute freely to debate and trust that their very presence would not itself become the subject of debate. Those are not peripheral concerns. They go to the heart of whether Synod is experienced as an expression of the Church’s common life. Quite simply, can they move through the shared life of General Synod, its worship, corridors, exhibition spaces, cafés and informal conversation, without reasonably experiencing themselves as the object of theological intervention?

    I understand these concerns because, for me, this is not an abstract discussion. On two previous occasions at York I left General Synod early and completed my work online after being approached by individuals who asked whether I wanted to “become a Christian”. I have no reason to doubt that those conversations were offered sincerely or prayerfully. Nevertheless, they fundamentally altered the way in which I experienced Synod. Instead of simply participating in the Church’s discernment, I found myself unexpectedly defending the legitimacy of my own faith, vocation and ministry within the very community whose life I had come to share. Those encounters were fleeting, but they have remained with me because they revealed how easily the culture of the Church can fail to reflect the theology the Church professes.

    It was through that lens that I first read in the list of fringe meetings the title People Change: Sexual Identity Transformation. My first reaction was not anger but sadness. I come to General Synod expecting robust disagreement. I expect to hear arguments that I believe to be profoundly mistaken. I expect to debate legislation, doctrine, mission, finance, worship and ethics with people whose theological conclusions differ radically from my own. All voices belong in Synod. That is part of the discipline of belonging to a Church that has chosen not to divide.

    But I am a person, not an abstract theological point. What troubles me is the impression that the person God has called to priesthood and elected to General Synod is, by virtue of who I am, someone who ought fundamentally to become somebody else. That moves the discussion from debating ideas to experiencing sibling members themselves as the object of transformation.

    One way of testing whether this is truly an ecclesiological principle, rather than a special plea about sexuality, is to ask the same question of any other group already gathered within the Body of Christ at General Synod. Replace the phrase “sexual identity transformation” with the identity of another group of Synod members – women priests, disabled Christians, or Christians from particular ethnic communities – and ask whether the Church would regard such a fringe meeting or exhibition stand as raising questions about its common life.

    As members of General Synod we are bishops, clergy and lay people who worship together, receive the Eucharist together and seek together to discern the mind of Christ. The quality of that common life is one of the principal concerns of ecclesiology.

    Matters of Policy

    The Fringe Meetings and Displays Policy requires organisers to abide by the General Synod Members’ Code of Conduct, the House of Bishops’ safeguarding policies and the University of York’s own policies on freedom of speech and equal opportunities. It reserves to the Business Committee and the Presidents the right to refuse space where they judge that a fringe meeting would be contrary to the ethos of the Church of England, damage its reputation or be inconsistent with House of Bishops’ safeguarding guidance.

    By including displays, it covers all those informal spaces in which members meet, converse, encounter one another and seek together to discern the mind of Christ. Ordering those spaces, too, is part of the Church’s ecclesiology.

    If we look at General Synod’s own previous decisions, in July 2017 Synod overwhelmingly endorsed the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy, affirming that gay conversion therapy “has no place in the modern world”, is “unethical”, “potentially harmful” and “not supported by evidence”. It also called upon the Church to be sensitive to contemporary expressions of gender identity and called upon the Government to ban conversion therapy. Whatever theological disagreements remained – and remain – they did not prevent Synod reaching institutional conclusions about practices which it believed to be harmful. Those commitments now form part of the context within which later administrative decisions should properly be made.

    Nor is the 2017 motion the only relevant context. Through the Living in Love and Faith process the Church has repeatedly acknowledged the hurt experienced by LGBTQIA+ people and has commended prayers which include a corporate lament and repentance for the ways in which they have been treated in the life of the Church. Those prayers represent an institutional recognition that our common life has, at times, failed to reflect the dignity of those who are already members of the Body of Christ. That acknowledgement should surely inform the way we order our common life today.

    One of the gifts of Christian ecclesiology is that it teaches us to begin not with categories but with calling. Before we are anything else, we are those who have been baptised into Christ and called into his Body. We remain women, men, trans, gay and straight, disabled and non-disabled, people of every race and culture. None of those realities disappears. Yet the Church’s first question is never simply, “Who are you?” It is, “To whom do you belong?”

    Some readers may nevertheless object that Christianity is, after all, a religion of transformation. Of course it is. Every one of us is called to repentance, to holiness, to become more fully conformed to Christ, the One into whose death and resurrection we have been baptised. It is not a movement away from the person whom God has called into discipleship, but the fulfilment of that calling in Christ. The call to holiness is not a call to erase the self but to allow the self to be transfigured by grace.

    This conviction lies at the heart of Paul’s ecclesiology in the First Letter to the Corinthians. In chapter 12 Paul reminds the Church that it is not simply an association of people who happen to share certain beliefs. In the Body of Christ, and every baptised member is indispensable to its life. Those members of the Body who appear weaker are indispensable, and those parts that seem less honourable are to be treated with greater honour. Paul’s point is not merely that diversity should be tolerated. It is that our primary identity rests not in ourselves but in our incorporation into Christ. Ecclesiology begins not with agreement but with baptism.

    That, I suggest, is the theological framework within which the present controversy should be understood. The issue is not simply how General Synod manages disagreement. The issue is whether the structures, decisions and culture of Synod reflect the reality that we already belong to one another because we belong to Christ. Because our meetings are set in the context of prayer and worship, the culture of Synod matters every bit as much as its procedures, because it is part of the Church’s public witness to the Gospel.

    Safeguarding

    And what about safeguarding? The Fringe Meetings and Displays Policy allows intervention if “the subject matter of the fringe meeting or display, or the presence or other involvement of any person at the fringe meeting or display, would be inconsistent with the guidance issued by the House of Bishops on matters relating to the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults”. This is because safeguarding belongs to the Church’s common life; it, too, is an ecclesiological practice. It is one of the ways in which the Body of Christ learns to honour the dignity, vocation and belonging of every one of its members. More than that, safeguarding is not simply about protecting vulnerable people. It is about protecting the integrity of the Body of Christ.

    Impaired communion

    There is another irony which has increasingly struck me as I have reflected on these events. Some of those associated with the theological movements represented by this fringe have, for reasons of conscience, already decided that they cannot always share fully in the sacramental life of General Synod. They absent themselves from Eucharists at which they cannot receive Holy Communion or recognise the ministry of those presiding. I respect the seriousness with which those convictions are held, even though I profoundly disagree with them. Yet they also expose the deeper ecclesiological question before us. If we have become accustomed to forms of impaired communion within our sacramental life, we should be especially careful not to deepen those fractures within the wider common life of Synod.

    Paul returns to these themes in 1 Corinthians 11, where his concern is not simply the manner in which the Eucharist is celebrated but the failure of the Christian community to discern the Body. Too often those words have been heard solely in relation to the sacramental bread and wine. Yet Paul’s rebuke is directed equally towards a community whose divisions prevented it from recognising the Body of Christ present in one another. Eucharistic theology and ecclesiology cannot be separated. The tragedy of General Synod is that we are becoming accustomed to living with forms of impaired communion and sometimes mistake that impairment for normality.

    Does our culture as a General Synod help us to discern the Body of Christ more faithfully in one another, or does it make that task more difficult?

    My hope is not that General Synod becomes a place without disagreement. Such a Church would almost certainly have ceased to listen to the Holy Spirit. My hope is that it becomes a place where disagreement is so held within relationships of trust, generosity, humility and mutual dignity that nobody needs to wonder whether there is a place for them at Christ’s table.

    Every Synod should leave us more deeply conformed to the Body of Christ that we proclaim ourselves already to be. If a decision instead leaves existing members questioning whether they truly belong within that Body, or whether they are regarded primarily as people who ought fundamentally to become somebody else, then the Church’s own policy on fringes and display stands asks precisely the right questions. Is this consistent with the ethos of the Church of England? Is it consistent with the House of Bishops’ safeguarding guidance? Does it build up or diminish the common life of the Body?

    In this instance, they should now be answered. The issue before General Synod is not simply what it chooses to debate. It is what, by those debates and by the way they are conducted, General Synod is becoming, as the Body of Christ.

  • GAFCON and CEEC

    by Canon Dr Phil Groves, who was a CMS Mission partner and lecturer in theology at St Philip’s Kongwa in Tanzania. He served at the Anglican Communion Office for 10 years. He has attended two Lambeth Conferences, three Primates’ Meetings and four ACCs. He has a PhD on Partnership in the Anglican Communion and is Vicar of the parishes of Cuddington and of Stone, Dinton and Hartwell. He is dyslexic and a member of the Church of England’s Neurodiversity Working Group

    Robert Thompson is right to point out that the recent alternative Anglican ordinations of seven deacons raises questions of church order.

    Of course this raises questions for the Church of England, but it is the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) that is in the frontline of the issues raised by this and by the GAFCON movement more widely.

    To understand the problem for CEEC, it is worth considering not only the three questions asked by CEEC’s National Director John Dunnett in a letter from the GAFCON 26 conference in Abuja in March but also Andrew Atherstone’s criticisms of the ‘alternative ordinations’.

    First, it is necessary to chart the major changes for GAFCON.

    Major Changes for GAFCON

    GAFCON was formed in 2008 as a renewal movement for the Anglican Communion for those who believed that churches of the Communion that blessed gay unions and accepted gay clergy should be removed from it. To do this they set out to redefine Anglicanism as a confessional church. They wrote and released their own confession – called the Jerusalem Declaration – unique because of its clause on human sexuality. The argument goes that, if we have one confession, we will all walk together without division.

    In October the GAFCON Primates declared themselves to be the Global Anglican Communion (GAC) and called for compete disengagement from the formal Instruments of Communion – the ACC, Primates’ Meeting, Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

    Following this, the March GAFCON 26 Conference was being watched carefully. The BBC had noticed that it had been heralded that the GAFCON Primates Council would elect a ‘primus inter pares’ of their own to rival the Archbishop of Canterbury; it was waiting for a big news story. But that did not happen. Instead, the GAFCON Primates appointed a ‘Global Anglican Council’ as a body to ‘provide spiritual and strategic oversight for the Communion’. 

    The ‘Global Anglican Council’ is made up of three categories of people: Primates[i], Advisors, and Guarantors. The propaganda has it that the GAFCON Primates handed over power, but this raises two points. First, they are still on the Council and they have retained the right to remain on it even if they retire as Primates. Secondly, it is right to ask who has taken on power and the answer to that is interesting.

    The Primates

    Only four of the seven Primates are from churches recognised as being in the Anglican Communion: Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, and Chile. The others are the Primates of the breakaway Anglican Churches in Brazil and North America, along with the Primate of REACH-SA. The General Secretary is also listed as a Primate and he too is very influential.

    Within this group of churches, there are different positions on women’s ministry. The provinces of Rwanda and Uganda were among those who led the way on women’s ordination and on the empowerment of women in male-dominated societies. The Anglican Church in North America is split and has decided not to have women bishops. The others are all against women in leadership and the collective decision is for there to be no women bishops in GAFCON/GAC churches.

    The Advisors

    The Archbishop of Sydney is one of the five Advisors. Sydney Diocese has a semi-autonomous place within the Anglican Church in Australia as a bastion of reformed theology. Three of the other Advisors have strong connections to Sydney; one is a former Archbishop of Sydney who now oversees the Diocese of the Southern Cross, which has only 9 churches all in other Australian Dioceses. The Diocese of Sydney also has close links to the Bishop of the Church of Confessing Anglicans Aotearoa/New Zealand with only 20 churches. Bishop Andy Lines of the Anglican Network in Europe is also closely aligned to Sydney – ANiE shares the same complementarian theology as Sydney and regards itself as ‘Reformed’.

    When you know that REACH-SA and the province of Chile are both very closely aligned with Sydney Diocese, you can detect a very powerful bloc.

    The final Advisor is Bishop Yassir Eric who is said to be the ‘Presiding Bishop of EKKIOS’. Ekkios is a ‘province in formation’ that is dedicated to the non-geographic discipleship of Muslim Born Believers. They do not appear to have a single church. Their online presence is limited to an AI generated website with no content except a link to a Facebook page with 22 followers and one post in 2026, and a YouTube channel with no content.

    The Guarantors

    The chair of the Guarantors is former Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola. He is joined by two businessmen: Mr Olayinka Fisher from Nigeria and Mr Emmanuel Kampouris from the USA.

    There is no reason why ordained Ugandan and Rwandan women could not have been among the ‘Guarantors’. This does not look like an oversight; it looks like a deliberate policy.

    The Council and Power

    Power in GAFCON/GAC has decisively moved towards:

    • Those churches who have never been part of the Anglican Communion and never will be.
    • Churches that assert complementarian theology.

    The inclusion of the Bishop from EKKIOS – a church not only without a single actual congregation, but also without an effective online presence – says something about what counts as a valid church.

    All this becomes important in the relationship with the CEEC.

    CEEC and GAFCON/GAC

    Up to now, the leadership of CEEC has wanted to be part of the GAFCON movement as well as the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA), but they have questions around whether they are welcome or whether there is one big obstacle in the way.

    In his letter from GAFCON 26 John Dunnett asked three questions that expressed his disquiet at the direction of travel. I quote these in full:

    • First, what is not clear is how, and if, the launch of GAC will have a direct impact or relevance for those of us contending within the Church of England (we do however remain grateful for the ongoing commitment of GAFCON to support those contending within the C of E as well as those who have felt compelled to leave).
    • Second, I noted that the stage was dominated (perhaps even exclusively?) by men. This of course might reflect various cultural sensitivities, but if GAC is to be truly global then this needs to be addressed.
    • Finally, it continues to remain unclear how GAFCON and GSFA might relate going forwards. It is to be hoped that the launch of GAC will not exacerbate differences between them.

    I have been waiting to see if there is a public reply to these excellent questions, but nothing has been forthcoming. We can only speculate, based on the membership of the Council which was announced after the close of the conference and from the action in the alternative ordinations.

    1. What impact will the launch of GAC have for CEEC?

    The Abuja Affirmation calls for ‘principled disengagement’ and ‘constitutional disconnection’ from the Instruments of Communion – including the Archbishop of Canterbury. This means it is not going to be possible to remain within the Church of England and be part of GAFCON/GAC.

    The direction of travel of GAFCON/GAC seems to be away from the core aims of CEEC. John Dunnett is right to be concerned.

    1. Male Domination

    I fully support John Dunnett’s comments over the exclusion of women at GAFCON 26. The future looks even worse. For a start, all the members of the Global Anglican Council are men and most of them men who oppose women in leadership in the church. There will not be any room for significant leadership from women in GAFCON given the power dynamics in the Council.

    The line in CEEC is that there can be disagreement on women’s ministry because, unlike LGBTQI+ inclusion, it is not a creation and salvation issue. However, the Diocese of Sydney (and those influenced by Sydney) has a historic commitment to complementarianism where they have consistently argued that male headship and equality in difference is both a creation and salvation issue.

    John Dunnett would do well to heed the warning of Bishop Emily Onyango from Kenya, a member of the original 2008 GAFCON theological group, who describes the current GAFCON as ‘patriarchal’. 

    1. GAFCON/GCA and GSFA

    It must be a huge frustration when your allies are divided and this is the case for John Dunnett as he considers the relationship between GAFCON/GAC and GSFA.

    The GSFA is an attractive prospect for CEEC because they are firm on human sexuality but seeking to engage with the Anglican Communion. This is why they are now unacceptable to GAFCON/GAC.

    The problem is that GSFA will be reduced to 11 provinces in the Anglican Communion – some of those very small. No one can argue that they are even a majority of Anglicans in the Global South, let alone a majority in the Anglican Communion.

    GAFCON/GAC and the Alternative Ordinations

    We are once again very grateful to Andrew Atherstone for his article on the alternative ordinations. He is concerned by them.

    A GAFCON/GAC bishop – a bishop from REACH-SA – flew in overnight to ordain seven men in secret. Their names are not released, the sponsoring churches are unnamed and questions as to safeguarding and supervision are unanswered.

    Andrew’s account of the ordinations last year was generally positive, saying they had ‘launched a grand experiment’ and that they had made a ‘bold beginning’. His account of this year’s repeat is different:

    • Last year he found it regrettable that the event was not publicised and the names not released: this year he comments that ‘transparency over ordinations is essential.’
    • Last year he acknowledged that all of the deacons were men, but only in a response to a blog I wrote on this site: this year, in a challenge to the organisers, he directly asks why no women were ordained.
    • Last year he regretted the need for intervention from abroad: this year he is clear that ‘English problems need English solutions’.

    Andrew is right – transparency is essential. GAFCON/GAC is so focused on doctrinal orthodoxy that accountability is not part of the story. The recent history of John Smyth and the Fletchers should make us very afraid.

    The GAFCON/GAC direction towards complementarianism is writ large in these organisations. He claims that a REACH-SA Bishop could ordain women to the permanent diaconate. He is actually wrong: REACH-SA do not ordain women – they ‘make’ deacons. ‘Lady Deacons’ can read the Bible in public worship, teach children and assist in leading singing while lay men can preach, and even, in certain circumstances, baptise and preside at the Lord’s Table. In the polity of REACH-SA, deacons are not ordained.

    His third concern is the way geographic boundaries are crossed. The original Church of England in South Africa bishops were themselves ordained by bishops from the Diocese of Sydney, so it is unsurprising that such boundaries are regarded as immaterial. The GAFCON/GAC model will not accept that ‘English problems need English solutions’.

    Problems ahead for the CEEC

    The likelihood is that GAFCON/GAC will seek to grow by including other churches that adopt the Jerusalem Declaration. We know that the geographic element of church is low on the priority list from the promotion of the ‘presiding bishop’ of EKKIOS to the Council.

    The Confessing Anglican Church is another church seeking membership of GAFCON/GAC. It has adopted the Jerusalem Declaration and their Archbishops were in Abuja. The Secretary General of GAFCON is to speak at their September synod.

    Why should this be a concern for the CEEC? The CAC has a lot of churches in India, but also around the world and it has a UK diocese. The UK ‘diocese’ has very few churches, but a significant social media reach through their UK Bishop Cei Dewar. Bishop Dewar is closely associated with the Tommy Robinson movement: he led the prayers launching the Unite the Kingdom rally last year.

    Bishop Dewar will have no problem in signing the Jerusalem Declaration and it is hard to see the grounds on which GAFCON would reject his church.

    The CEEC is an organisation that will not want to be linked – however distantly – with Tommy Robinson. His abusive appeal to ‘Christian Nationalism’ will be anathema to CEEC.

    The Core of the Problem

    The problem is that GAFCON/GAC basis itself on a false ecclesiology. The Bible does not support the idea that unity comes from doctrinal conformity any more than through institutional discipline (the GSFA model).

    Chrisitan unity is through relationships. Our relationships with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the relationship of love that binds us in our differences. This is what Jesus and Paul both argued for in the Scriptures. This is what GAFCON/GAC ignores.

    John Dunnett and Andrew Atherstone are asking the right questions. They should be concerned.

    [i] The GAFCON/GAC General Secretary Bishop Paul Donison is listed as a ‘Primate’ indicating a place of influence and power.

  • Alternative Ordinations and the Fracturing of the Church

    by the Revd Robert Thompson, Vicar St Mary’s, Kilburn & St James’, West Hampstead; host of Open Table, London; member of General Synod

    I was brought up in rural north of Ireland, in the Church of Ireland. The Anglicanism that formed me was shaped much more by conservative evangelicalism than by Liberalism or Catholicism. My faith was nurtured not only by Anglicans but by Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and other Christians whose commitment to Christ was sincere and transformative. I have known the gifts of charismatic renewal, evangelical preaching and faithful discipleship across denominational boundaries.

    Yet my own spiritual home ultimately became the inclusive Catholic tradition of the Church of England. In making that journey, I have been deeply influenced not only by Anglican Catholicism but also by the wider Catholic tradition and by Orthodoxy. I have been drawn to their profound sense of stillness before the mystery of the God in Jesus Christ, their sacramental vision of creation, and their conviction that the material world, the human body and human relationships are places where God’s presence is revealed. At their best, these traditions hold before us a deeply positive vision of human dignity, grounded in the mystery of the Incarnation itself.

    That theological vision has shaped my ministry. It has taught me to seek Christ in other people, to work for reconciliation between divided Christians, and to recognise the dignity of those of other faiths and of none. In the diverse communities of Kilburn and West Hampstead, where people of many cultures, faiths and backgrounds live alongside one another, this is not simply a theological conviction but a practical necessity. Seeing the image of God in one another, and seeking the common good together, lies at the heart of how I understand Jesus in his portrayal in the Gospels and how I am called to follow.

    I found within the inclusive Catholic tradition of the Church of England a vision that was sacramental, rooted in tradition, intellectually serious, socially engaged and capacious enough to hold profound difference. That breadth has always seemed to me one of Anglicanism’s greatest gifts.

    Perhaps that is why a recent article by Andrew Atherstone, examining a further seven Church of England candidates ordained by bishops of the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa, troubles me deeply [1]. Whatever one’s views on Living in Love and Faith, this is now very clearly no longer simply a debate about sexuality. It is a debate about the nature of the Church itself. The Church of England has always contained disagreement. Catholics, evangelicals and liberals have often disagreed vigorously, sometimes painfully. Yet we remained committed to a common life. We worshipped together, discerned together and ordained together because we recognised that the Church belonged not to any one party or tradition, but to Christ. What Atherstone describes is not an isolated event. Alternative discernment processes, alternative training pathways and alternative ordinations are gradually creating parallel structures of authority. A Church that ceases to trust its own common life inevitably begins to fragment into competing constituencies, each accountable primarily to itself.

    As someone who has spent much of the last few years campaigning for greater independence and accountability in safeguarding, I understand why institutions can lose trust. Institutions sometimes fail. But the answer to institutional failure cannot simply be the creation of alternative institutions whenever we dislike the direction in which the wider body is moving. That path leads not to renewal but to separation.

    My ministry today is exercised in Kilburn, one of the most diverse communities in the country. Here questions of poverty, housing, mental health, migration, loneliness and community cohesion are not abstract policy concerns but daily realities. Our neighbours are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, people of other faiths and people of none. They come from every continent and speak dozens of languages. In such a place, Jesus’ commandment takes on a particular urgency: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself” [2]. The neighbour is not the person who agrees with us. The neighbour is the person God has placed beside us. That is true within the Church as much as it is beyond it.

    When I look at the challenges facing our communities, I find it difficult to believe that the pursuit of theological purity is the primary calling of the Church. The Gospel repeatedly directs our attention towards reconciliation, justice, mercy and the building of communities in which people can flourish together. The New Testament consistently presents unity not as an optional extra but as a gift and calling. Writing to a divided Church in Corinth, St Paul insists that “the body does not consist of one member but of many” and that “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.” [3]. Diversity is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be embraced within the life of Christ. That biblical image poses a challenge to every party in the Church. If the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”, neither can evangelicals say it to Catholics, nor Catholics to liberals, nor liberals to evangelicals.

    There is a further irony here. The alternative ordinations described by Atherstone are themselves a response to Living in Love and Faith and, more specifically, to the Church’s willingness to commend prayers for same-sex couples who have entered civil marriages. Yet at precisely the moment when some conservatives are constructing alternative systems of discernment, training, ordination and oversight, the Convocations of Canterbury and York, the historic assemblies representing the clergy of the Church of England, are being asked to approve revised Professional Guidelines that remain heavily focused on the conduct of individual clergy, including questions of relationships, marriage and sexual behaviour.?

    Mine is not an argument about discipline. It is an argument about consistency. One side of the present debate is concerned with the regulation of personal conduct. The other concerns the creation of parallel ecclesial structures. One addresses the lives of individual clergy. The other concerns the visible ordering of the Church itself. The development of alternative structures is neither private nor unseen. It is deliberate, organised and public. It is announced in conferences, websites, public statements and ordination services. Whatever one’s views on Living in Love and Faith, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that these developments raise profound questions about the Church’s common life and common order.

    The question becomes even more pressing in the light of the revised Professional Guidelines currently before Convocation. The Guidelines remind clergy that they serve under the authority of the bishop and commit themselves through the Oath of Canonical Obedience. They state that clergy should “respect and abide by the regulations or requests of the bishop of the diocese in which they serve” and insist that “unless and until a law is changed, the existing law must be kept.” The Guidelines are also intended to assist in determining whether conduct meets the standards required of a clerk in holy orders [4]. As a gay priest, it is difficult not to notice the contrast. Considerable energy is devoted to regulating the intimate lives and relationships of clergy, while far less attention appears to be given to the public construction of alternative structures of discernment, ordination and oversight.

    Historically, Anglicanism has sought to hold together right belief, right conduct and right order. Yet contemporary debates often seem to focus overwhelmingly on the first two while paying remarkably little attention to the third. As a result, many clergy will inevitably ask whether the Church’s concerns are being applied consistently. If we devote enormous energy to questions of personal conduct, should we not also devote equal attention to developments that reshape the structures through which we discern vocation, exercise ministry and express communion? The revised Guidelines remind clergy that they are called to promote peace and reconciliation in the Church and in the world and to strive for the visible unity of Christ’s Church [5]. That aspiration seems difficult to reconcile with the emergence of structures whose purpose is increasingly to create a church within a church.

    Of course there are moments when conscience demands resistance. There are times when the Church must reform. Yet Anglicanism at its best has always sought to hold together what others would separate. It has understood that living faithfully with disagreement is often harder, and more Christian, than walking away.

    The question before us, then, is larger than Living in Love and Faith. Can the Church of England remain a Church broad enough to contain genuine theological difference, or are we becoming a federation of tribes, each constructing its own structures whenever disagreement becomes uncomfortable? I still believe the Anglican instinct is the right one. We need one another because none of us alone possesses the whole truth. The tragedy of our present moment is not that we disagree. Anglicans have always disagreed. The tragedy is that we increasingly seem to doubt that disagreement can be held within a common life.

    In the seventeenth chapter of St John’s Gospel, on the night before his death, Jesus prays for his disciples “that they may all be one” [6] It is a prayer not for uniformity but for communion; not for agreement in every matter but for a unity rooted in the love of God. That prayer remains unfinished. It is a calling entrusted to every generation of Christians. Once we cease to believe that Christ can hold together people with whom we profoundly disagree, far more than a debate about sexuality is at stake. We risk losing confidence in the very prayer of Jesus himself. More profoundly still, we risk losing confidence in the God whose creative love is capable of holding together difference itself, the God who creates, sustains and reconciles all things.

    Notes

    1. Andrew Atherstone, “More Alternative Anglican Ordinations”, Law & Religion UK, 15 June 2026.
    2. Mark 12.30–31.
    3. 1 Corinthians 12.14, 21.
    4. Draft Professional Guidelines for the Clergy, Convocation of Canterbury FS(26)4, June 2026, especially sections 1–3 on clergy discipline, canonical obedience, episcopal authority and the obligation to observe existing law. Convocation is the historic representative assembly of the clergy of the provinces of Canterbury and York and is responsible for agreeing the Professional Guidelines for Clergy.
    5. Draft Professional Guidelines for the Clergy, paragraph 3.5: clergy are called to “promote peace and reconciliation in the church and in the world” and to strive for “the visible unity of Christ’s Church”.
    6. John 17.21.

  • Bruised Reeds and Mustard Seeds   

     by the Revd Jody Stowell, Vicar of St Michael and All Angels, Harrow Weald and member of General Synod

                                                          

    The book above has come out of a number of years of struggle and frustration as a parish priest of a smaller church. In the introductory chapter I describe it as a ‘passion project’ and that has been what it is, with bells on! I am utterly convinced that the value, worth and endeavour of smaller churches is one of the most underestimated resources in the Church today, and particularly in the Church of England. Current obsessions with growth in numbers and finance often land squarely on the shoulders of local parish priests and their congregations. My desire for the book is that those who find themselves reading it are uplifted, encouraged and above all feel less isolated and alone in their call to lead, serve in or attend a smaller church.

    The well-being, particularly of clergy has been on my heart for a long time. I’ve had to attend to my own well-being in my ministry, and I know what it is to wrestle with the very real need of finances for a church to function, and the small numbers of congregation who are living in a cost-of-living crisis and who, even if they weren’t, would be unable to pay the standard cost of ministry, which covers the cost of the vicar, including pension, housing and training, as well as more general mission costs of the diocese, and which in my diocese is over £105k. It’s hard to carry the weight of seeing the mission of God through the lens of increase and growth, attendance and finance. Clergy and congregations often find themselves focusing on how to reach the biggest growth, rather on what the Spirit is calling them to.

    The book talks of what ‘small’ means. This is often the first question I get asked, I suspect because many would like my definition not to include them! One way to alleviate anxiety around being a small church is to deny that it includes you. The definition of ‘small’ used in the book is fairly wide and generous, focusing more on the idea of ‘Smaller Church Energy’, and the charisms that are inherent to smaller church communities; for example, nimbleness, attentiveness to the Spirit and belonging.

    I then explore issues around anxiety, aiming to offer comfort and challenge. We inhabit an institution which is highly anxious, and anxiety transmits. When anxiety drives an institution, we can end up with solutions which are about soothing the anxiety that comes from financial insecurity, rather than being a church able to catch unexpected glimpses of the Spirit in places and through people that are undervalued, unseen, invisible in both the institution and the nation. The solutions, programs and conferences offered can act like a drug, a form of self-medication against the anxiety, but which can’t last. So the anxiety is passed on until it often lands on the parish priest to deliver the shiny initiative that will somehow save the Church of England. No wonder clergy are leaving ministry early, often sick, stressed and disillusioned.

    But the smaller church is a gift. Even as we name the challenges, there is a golden thread running through Scripture of God illuminating the places that are weary, marginalised, vulnerable, fragile and small. Bruised reeds and mustard seeds, or Bethlehem the littlest clan. God is drawn to these places, and they are also the places from whence God comes. These places are not simply to be ‘done to’ – to be helped and ‘resourced’ from bigger and better entities – but are also places which can help the anxious institution lay down its anxiety rather than passing it on. Such places can resource their bigger neighbours and teach them how to be faithful in the face of a multiplicity of temptations to focus on success in numerical terms.

    I’ve chosen to dedicate one chapter to clergy well-being, not because I think it is only the clergy who are impacted by this institutional anxiety and obsession, but because they are often the ones who hold the anxiety from ‘above and below’.  Clergy do need to set a tone, or tell the story about who they are again and again to their communities. It is very easy for congregations to be demoralized and anxious themselves. They know that money is required to keep going, and the threat of closing smaller churches can lead to an expectation that somehow their vicar can ‘fix it’. And this is a dangerous place for clergy to be. Edwin Friedman, who wrote on leadership, warns

    The position that is most dangerous to a leader’s health is what I call the “togetherness position,” in which the leader feels responsible for keeping a system together. Such leaders are most likely to suffer burnout, function badly, or suddenly die when forces pulling in opposite directions have stretched their capacity to hold things together to its breaking point. (Friedman, Location 4015)

    Sadly, it can be literally life-threatening not to deal with our institutional anxiety issue.

    There is also a requirement for clergy to choose boundaries and non-anxious responses. In our parishes, we do actually have quite a lot of autonomy. One of the challenges that I offer in this chapter on clergy well-being is for clergy to resist the narrative and begin to be catalysts themselves for the unsticking of this institution that we not only work for, but love, because it is to this part of the Body of Christ that we are called.

    I finish with a chapter which offers some ways forward, although I’m careful not to be offering the ‘quick-fix’ to soothe the anxiety! As this is quite a new conversation, there are not necessarily models to copy, and the reality of smaller church is that it is rightly contextual, even hyper-contextual – and so ‘off the peg’ doesn’t work so well in our places. All offerings will necessarily need re-contextualizing in a new place. However, there are a couple of pathways that are being explored and I offer three of these for pondering. The hope is that this lifts the debilitating fog of isolation that stops us from thinking well, and helps us to recognise that there are others (I would argue most of us!) who are trying to navigate this strange land. One of the pathways being offered, by Bishop Guli to Chelmsford Diocese, is Travelling Well Together. It is undefensive and honouring of the realities of local small parish churches. We are told that

    For the foreseeable future, there will be no more diocesan initiatives outlining common approaches to mission and evangelism. Rather, we are seeking to tip the traditional organisational hierarchy on its head, to enable and empower local churches and worshipping communities to discern for yourselves what it means to be God’s people in your particular part of the world (Chelmsford, 2023).

    Bishop Guli challenges her diocese that, when a community is under threat, something of which she has first-hand experience, it has three choices: fight, flee and take the consequences or strengthen the inner life. She chooses, for herself and the church, the third option and I will leave you with an excerpt from the book on this:

    ‘However, [strengthening the inner life] is not an easy way. Our anxiety is still something we need to own and understand. And that anxiety may not be entirely erased because the external narrative has changed in one area of the institution. So, if we are not given a strategy from the central institution, then we potentially have no one to blame for our failure to live up to the image of success that we still hold. There is no focus to receive, and therefore soothe, our anxiety. If we tried the strategy and it didn’t work, then it is ‘their’ fault. If there is no strategy other than strengthening that inner life, getting closer to God, being faithful in the ministry to which we are called, then that is our responsibility. This is a good thing! It is not easy, but it is not hard in the way that being told to control things outside of our control is hard. It is hard in the way that tilling the earth is hard work, that picking fruit is hard work, that listening well is hard work, that making up a spare room for a guest is hard work. There is satisfaction, rather than frustration.’

  • ‘Evangelical and Inclusive’ – Renewing the Heart of the Tradition

    by David Runcorn, a convenor of the Inclusive Evangelical network and the author of Love means Love – same-sex relationships and the Bible (2020).

    A collection of studies and stories about evangelical faith and belief will be published on 28 April. Evangelical and Inclusive – a future and a hope is significant because it is written by evangelicals who support the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people and their relationships in the life of the church. Their purpose is more than a revisiting of the familiar arguments. For the Inclusive Evangelicals (IE) network the present conflicts are laying bare the need for a renewal of evangelical belief and identity and set the debates within the wider picture of evangelical history and its development.

    The book is not a manifesto, campaign statement or systematic study of faith and doctrine. It is telling a story that is still in the making. The approach is broad. Chapters trace the history and development of this tradition, including its global context. The relationship of faith, culture and mission is explored. Issues of scripture and doctrine are illustrated, for example, through a discussion of the theology of the atonement – so central to evangelical faith.

    ‘But are they really evangelical?’

     The book starts with a very familiar question in the evangelical world. ‘If there’s one thing that defines evangelicals’, writes Mark Vasey Saunders, ‘it’s holding strong opinions over who is and isn’t an evangelical!’ This has painful relevance for the growing number of evangelicals who hold inclusive convictions. We are often told we are not (or are no longer) real evangelicals.

    The evangelical wing of the church has grown remarkably over the last fifty years. In the Church of England its influence now extends to all aspects of its life and leadership. There are good gifts in this. However, over the same period, the oversight of its extensive organizations, networks and resources has increasingly fallen under the leadership of its more conservative wing. That is why, in the current debates, the loudest voices from this part of the church have been strongly conservative ones. This gives a misleading impression of what has always been a diverse and developing faith.

    The Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) was founded by John Stott in 1960 to represent and co-ordinate the varied expressions of Anglican evangelicalism. However, in 2014 the CEEC changed its constitution to require members to specifically affirm male-female marriage as God’s ‘unchangeable standard’. The evangelical group on the Church of England’s General Synod and Diocesan Evangelical Fellowships fell in line, along with other groups and organisations. This immediately excluded many who call themselves evangelicals by any historic understanding of the name, but who hold inclusive convictions on sexuality. Theological discussion became narrowed. As well as drawing in the boundaries of membership, the change made a certain belief on human sexuality the test of Christian orthodoxy – something completely unknown in the Bible and the historic creeds and councils of the church. We have now reached the point where the deciding factor in almost every decision or appointment in the church is being determined by declared views on this issue.

    The rapid growth of the IE network after its launch two years ago made clear what we already knew – that there is a significant presence within evangelical churches of those with more open convictions, a desire for more exploratory understanding, and a more hospitable and open expression of a faith which had become too centred on the hard binary lines of evangelical/liberal, biblical/unbiblical, right/wrong.

    All of which means that the CEEC (and the related ‘Alliance’ network) cannot claim to be faithfully representing this historic tradition and its life in today’s church. 

    Evangelicals and the Bible

    The debates over sexuality have been challenging evangelicals to re-visit their understanding of how the Bible speaks to us today. The commitment to the scriptures as our unique authority and guide does not mean that views have never changed, nor that our understanding of what is taught there has not developed. Within our tradition, the unsettling process of re-examining, repenting and re-interpreting even long-unquestioned Biblical convictions, under the compelling of the Spirit and in the light of contemporary questions, is a familiar task. Indeed, our own understanding of scripture requires it. Unless we are willing to do this, we risk only reading the Bible in a kind of ancient time warp. Faith becomes inflexible, dogmatic and unable to respond to new contexts.

    Our twenty-first-century church is facing this challenge as we explore the gift of human identity and relationships. Specifically, we need a hermeneutic with which to translate ancient texts, conditions and concepts into the challenges faced in contemporary life. An example is the repeated claim made by those arguing for a traditional understanding of marriage, that the creation story in Genesis chapter two is a ‘definition of marriage’. This imposes on the text of a richly poetic, ancient wisdom story a very modern and quite literal meaning. To claim we read here God’s definite, eternal, universal ordering of human belonging and relating is to fail to attend to the literature before us, and therefore prevents us from faithfully discerning what story is actually being told, then and now.

    Women and Men

    The evangelical world has yet to become a place where women are fully respected and treated unambiguously as equals. ‘The distrust of women’s voices is hard baked into many women’s experience of evangelicalism’, writes Kate Massey in her chapter, Being a woman and evangelical. By contrast, inclusive evangelicals are committed to offering spaces of mutual welcome where, as Kate writes, ‘we practise and develop more equal ways of engaging with one another, thus hearing and better appreciating one another’s struggles and receiving one another’s wisdom’.  (1)

    In his careful critique of the issues raised by the recent abuse scandals that have unsettled the evangelical world (and beyond), Paul Roberts outlines important challenges to male identity and approaches to leadership in what remains a heavily man-centred tradition. He is concerned at the non-consultative style that presently characterises the leadership of parts of this tradition. By contrast, IEs ‘affirm modes of Christian leadership and management of power based on a New Testament model, that is collegial, consultative, diverse and accountable. The inclusion of a diversity of leadership voices, irrespective of sex or sexuality, is crucial in expressing this model in the present day in order to make the church a safer place.’

    Unity and Conflict

    Simon Butler came out fully as gay in a speech in General Synod. For some years he held one of the most senior roles there – an election he accepted ‘to try to keep the Church of England honest about its sexuality in its senior places’. The sexuality debates there changed him. ‘While evangelicals were arguing about ‘first order’ and ‘second order’ issues,’ he writes, ‘I found myself believing more and more that the unity of the church was the central biblical issue at stake. To deny that unity, to refuse to accept a fellow disciple, is a fundamental and grievous sin’. Nikki Groarke agrees. She describes her experience of managing deep conflicts in Synod and in her ministry as an Archdeacon. She challenges the language of ‘fighting for a cause rather than collaboration’, and the extensive use of emotive videos, letter campaigns and threats to withhold money. She calls her present position ‘optimism with a broken heart’ (Nick Cave). The pain of standing in the midst of this disagreement is deep and costly. Inclusive Evangelicals have a high view of unity. We seek to walk alongside, not apart from, those who disagree with us. The gospel teaches us this is not an issue over which to divide.

    Good fruit

    The most significant, challenging and hopeful voices in the book are from those within the LGBTQ+ community.

    A number of writers share their journeys as gay, lesbian or transgender Christians in the evangelical church. The stories of shaming, excluding and harming make for painful and challenging reading, but their message contains remarkable calls to faith.  

    Baptist minister Rachel Humphrey calls her chapter, How being Gay made me a better evangelical. She insists that LGBTQ+ Christians have grown in faith even through adversity and exclusion. ‘When banned from the worship group, or from praying in public, we continued to worship and in that process we discovered that God was with us in this place too, and thus our faith has continued to grow and develop and mature. My faith isn’t the same as it used to be before I came out. It’s better. By every measure people might use – integrity, confidence, mental well-being, effectiveness in getting things done – it’s more meaningful, more honest, more scriptural, and – more evangelical.’ She insists that evangelical churches are the poorer for excluding the gifts, wisdom and faith of these fellow disciples of Christ. Of course this is so, for in the body of Christ ‘the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you!”’ (1 Corinthians 12.21).

     In Good Fruit Alex Huzzey shares stories of inclusive churches that are growing and flourishing despite opposition and without the benefit of the support and resources readily available within (conservative-led) evangelical networks. ‘In the last few years, a new generation of LGBTQ+ inclusive churches has emerged, retaining recognizably evangelical and charismatic approaches to scripture, worship and evangelism, and most importantly thriving on it.’

    Here is a vision for the renewal of a gifted but much conflicted tradition in the church. This book is written for Christians within the evangelical world who want to understand their own historic tradition better. We have written for those seeking to engage further with the theological and biblical basis for inclusive faith. Evangelical and Inclusive is offered in respect and friendship to evangelicals who, though disagreeing to varying degrees, are open to continuing the conversation. It is offered to those in the wider church who wish to understand better this creative, often perplexingly intransigent, yet life-giving tradition.

    It is offered in faith – for a future and a hope.

    Notes

    1. The issues are explored further in : https://www.inclusiveevangelicals.com/post/male-and-female-he-made-them-celebrating-one-humanity-equal-and-different

     

     

  • When the Music Fades: the Soul Survivor Generation

    by Dr Lucy Sixsmith, Research Fellow in English at St John’s College, Cambridge and author of When the Music Fades

    To understand Soul Survivor, I think you need to know about the shirts. This will sound trivial; I realise that. Soul Survivor, from 1993 until 2019, was an organisation running summer festivals in the charismatic evangelical tradition, for teenagers and young adults. It also became (and still is) a church in Watford. The founder, leader and constant on-stage presence at Soul Survivor festivals was Mike Pilavachi, and you could tell he was Mike Pilavachi by his interesting shirts.

    Mike always wore a particular style of multi-coloured shirt at the summer festivals, a West African dashiki rebranded as a trademark shirt for a Greek British youth leader at a substantially white middle-class British summer camp. My youngest brother remembers the shirts being on sale in the Soul Survivor marketplace, not as dashikis, with their own cultural history, but as Mike Pilavachi shirts. There was a Soul Survivor tradition of Mike’s Bad Karaoke; one year he sang ‘I’m too sexy for my shirt’ to ten thousand teenagers. In vulnerable moments, during preaching, he’d sit down on the edge of the stage, like it was just Mike and his youth group, one hand plucking at the patterned central panel that makes a dashiki distinctive.

    In 2023, when survivors came forward and the Church of England’s National Safeguarding Team investigated allegations of emotional abuse, inappropriate relationships, wrestling, and massaging, those shirts must have seemed convenient to the people choosing pictures for news articles. For any story about this latest scandal, there was a picture with an eye-catching shirt.

    Part of what I mean here is that Mike Pilavachi was a persona. A trademark shirt can be like a costume which sets the wearer apart as someone not quite like everyone else, someone likably independent, a bit of a character. A multi-coloured trademark shirt at a Christian summer youth festival belongs to a world which is not quite real. Brighter, warmer, cartoon-like, more fun, more vibrant: the holiday atmosphere of a Christian summer youth festival offered what we used to call a ‘mountaintop experience’ in charismatic circles. Kids looked forward to Soul Survivor partly as a place to have fun and partly as a place to encounter God, and Mike performed the role of lovable overseer, buffoonishly whole-hearted.

    The mythology of Soul Survivor was that everything was done in chaos by faithful amateurs and it only came together because it was God’s idea. Consequently, Mike Pilavachi seemed less like a celebrity and more like everyone’s friend. I didn’t notice that the myth didn’t match the way Soul Survivor had become a model for youth ministry across the country. If it was God, it must be good. So I joined those crowds all through the noughties, from the age of fourteen to twenty-one or so, and always thought of Soul Survivor as a healthy benchmark, a useful compare-and-contrast when other charismatic movements drew out my scepticism.

    In 2023, while the National Safeguarding Team investigated Mike Pilavachi’s immediate relationships with colleagues and interns, I found myself wondering about the whole entire thing. Clearly, there were investigations that needed to be made, stories that needed to be heard or held respectfully, in that smaller circle of direct impact; but there were also questions to think through for those of us who were just there, one among ten thousand, thinking it was all fine. What made us so cheerfully overlook the clues to Mike’s behaviour that seemed plain and obvious with hindsight? If it was God on the move at Soul Survivor, as people were still saying it was, how could it have been God in public and not God in private? Could it be that the public aspect was good while the private aspect was cruelly manipulative, that the one was healthy and the other was not? Was it good for all those thousands of kids to have sat at Mike Pilavachi’s feet?

    And what was I going to do with all the worship songs that now sounded off-key? There were so many songs that came out of Soul Survivor about humility and brokenness, about kneeling at the foot of the cross, about decreasing and bowing down, and I couldn’t sing them any more, having learnt that the songwriters were not just humbling themselves but being humbled by their own mentor, pastor, and employer. Which led to a rather pressing question, if not the most weighty one I was asking: if I couldn’t face singing any worship songs any more, what on earth was I going to play for my own local congregation in the worship time that coming Sunday morning?

    That question—the question of what am I going to do now about all those surrender songs—was the starting point for writing a book called When the Music Fades: Power, Surrender and the Soul Survivor Generation. It is a book about and for all of us who have been confused—for anyone who has been fighting through a process of questioning charismatic evangelical spirituality. If I have needed to find space to think things through, there must be lots of other people out there, similarly perplexed. When the Music Fades is an attempt to provide space, for people who are still in church, people who are now out of church, and people who are somewhere in between.

    Soul Survivor is central to the book, but the book is not just about Soul Survivor. I had questions about charismatic practice, before 2023: about power dynamics, and coercion, and the temptation of putting on a show, and the difference between evangelism and bullying, and false promises, and relentless positivity, and how tiring it all is. The book is about all these things, and especially about navigating these things in teenagerhood, when you have barely learnt how to be a person yet, but you’re all the more eager to take on the duty of sharing Jesus with the world. The news about Soul Survivor, after all, was especially confronting because Soul Survivor was for teenagers. Soul Survivor had seemed so normal, so grounded, a well-balanced alternative to megachurch-style hype. Some charismatic leaders, I started to realise, I’d never trusted in the first place. I just had the habit of looking up to them, wanting their approval. I trusted Soul Survivor.

    For former Soul Survivor kids, I hope, When the Music Fades will be an opportunity to feel heard, even though it’s me doing the talking. Since it’s a book about being in the crowd, it claims that whoever was in the crowd matters. When we are talking about big churches and big movements, somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts: the story of Soul Survivor, and whether or not Soul Survivor was a ‘God thing’, is not actually as interesting to me as the individual stories of every single person who ever attended Soul Survivor, with all the good things and bad things, the hard times, ordinary day-to-day and moments of hope. We went to Soul Survivor and believed we were supposed to be history makers and a revival generation and all that, and then, probably, we felt bad about not managing it, and then we had to figure out how to do basic adulthood, which is challenging enough.

    My biggest dream for the book is that those former history makers might feel recognised and valued. But I also hope, maybe, that a few church leaders might read it and realise that we took them seriously. We didn’t realise it was just a summer holiday, colourful shirts, a mountaintop. We took them at their word.

    And that had consequences, and it might be worth thinking about, and it might be worth doing things differently next time.

     

    When the Music Fades: Power, Surrender and the Soul Survivor Generation by Lucy Sixsmith (Canterbury Press, £16.99) is available from the Canterbury Press website and all good bookshops.

  • All About LLF: the February Synod Debate

    by Felicity Cooke, a lay member of General Synod for Ely Diocese, a former member of the Leicester Working Groups, and a trustee of  Together for the Church of England

    There seems to be some confusion still about what happened at General Synod on 12th February 2026, three long years after the beginning of the journey of Living in Love and Faith (LLF) through General Synod. So here’s an attempt to explain it, from someone who was in the room. A reminder that what’s under debate are two moves towards a fuller welcome for lesbian and gay couples: first, accepting that clergy, ordinands and those exploring their call to ministry can be in same sex civil marriages (they can already be in same sex civil partnerships) and, second, permitting the use of the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) in standalone services. These Prayers were commended by the Bishops back in 2023 but can currently only be used in existing services.

    The motion

    At Synod, we were presented with a Motion from the Archbishop of York which affirmed what had been clear for some months: ‘that the LLF Programme and all work initiated by the February 2023 LLF Motion and subsequent LLF Motions will conclude by July 2026’. The Motion in full read as follows:

    That this Synod:

    (a) recognise and lament the distress and pain many have suffered during the LLF process, especially LGBTQI+ people;

    (b) affirm that the LLF Programme and all work initiated by the February 2023 LLF Motion and subsequent LLF Motions will conclude by July 2026;

    (c) thank the LLF Working Groups for their committed and costly work, which will now draw to a close with the conclusion of this synodical process;

    (d) commend the House of Bishops in establishing the Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group and Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Pastoral Consultative Group for continuing work.

    After nearly five hours of debate on the Motion and on eight amendments, the unamended Motion was passed by Synod by a vote in all three Houses:

    For Against Abstained
    House of Bishops  34 0  2
    House of Clergy 109 62 10
    House of Laity 107 70  9

    That’s interesting because it showed a very clear majority in favour in all three Houses.

    But in favour of what? The end of LLF, or a new beginning?

    To answer that, we first need a diversion into Synodical procedures, as set out in our Standing Orders.

    Doing the numbers

    Before we all voted, a member moved a ‘procedural motion’ asking for a ‘counted vote of the whole Synod’. That was rapidly followed by another member calling for a ‘vote by Houses’. If 25 members stand to support this, it happens. And they did. A ‘vote by Houses’ has often featured in LLF debates and it always trumps a ‘counted vote of the whole Synod’. It means that each House votes separately, so it gives a clearer picture of who thinks what – and as names are registered with votes, that goes to the level of individual voters.

    But this particular procedural motion also makes it harder to pass anything because the motion or amendment must pass in all three Houses, meaning that the main reason to ask for a vote by Houses is if you want it to fail.

    Here’s an intriguing question: what would the result have been if the initial call, for a counted vote of the whole Synod, had succeeded? This is one of the interesting points about that whole long afternoon in Church House. When we put together the results of the three Houses, they show an overall vote in favour of 65.6%, with 34.4% opposed. Is it an irony that this is a bigger margin than in any of the previous successful LLF votes in February 2023, November 2023 and July 2024? Context is all important in thinking about that question.

    Autumn 2025: stalling

    Let’s go back to last October, when the House of Bishops issued a statement which was a precursor of the motion brought to Synod last month. This statement articulated the view of the House that LLF had essentially ground to a halt. Working groups had been set up to advise on process and procedure for the PLF to be used in ‘standalone’ (or ‘bespoke’) services. Meeting in Leicester, these groups had argued for such freedom to use the PLF to be accompanied by ‘protections’ for those who did not wish to do so. But these protections, characterised as ‘Delegated Episcopal Ministry’ (DEM), could not be accepted by the House of Bishops. DEM would mean that a diocesan bishop could ‘delegate’ some of their role to other, more conservative, bishops. But all (or almost all) of the bishops, whether inclusive or conservative, found DEM unacceptable. For some, such provisions were not enough: for others they went too far.

    In addition, the bishops decided that ‘in principle … both bespoke service and clergy same-sex marriage would need formal synodical and legislative processes to be completed before they could be permitted.’ So the PLF can still only be used in a regular service, not a special one.

    The immediate response amongst inclusive or progressive groups and individuals was of deep disappointment. It seemed that years of work both inside and outside Synod were to be abandoned. Over the years since LLF started in 2017, there have only been two small pieces of movement: the permission to use PLF in existing services and jettisoning Issues in Human Sexuality. That’s not much for countless hours spent in debates, discussions and working groups, not to mention an estimated total expenditure on the LLF process of £1.6 million.

    Throughout autumn 2025, arguments were pitched from all sides, some wanting the bishops to embrace a more positive agenda, others to call a halt to everything which Synod had voted for in 2023.

    The responses from those holding inclusive views included powerful sermons from the Deans of Southwark and Canterbury, as well as an Open Letter led by Inclusive Church (IC). In the press release accompanying that Open Letter, IC said:

    The Living in Love and Faith process has shown that the majority of the Church of England, clergy and laity alike, now long for a Church where LGBTQ+ people are fully welcomed and celebrated. Many want to see their grandchildren able to be married in church, their trans family members affirmed, and their Church reflect the generous heart of God.

    The letter was signed by nearly 7,000 lay and clergy people, from 3001 churches across the Church of England.

    Things became particularly intense in November 2025, when the legal advice offered to the House of Bishops was published as the paper GS Misc 1432. Many times in the last few years there had been calls from conservatives for the full legal advice and we were assured that this paper offered the same advice that the bishops had been given before. Not everyone agreed with the paper’s legal interpretation; see for example here.

    Yet another meeting of the House of Bishops took place in December, considering this legal advice and some theological papers. In mid-December, in another powerfully expressed sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, the Dean of Bristol asked the bishops where, among them, were  ‘those who will stand up against legalism, who will expedite processes for standalone services and lifting the ban on clergy entering same sex marriages?’

    2026: the waiting game

    But the bishops did not rise to her challenge. Their January Statement repeated and endorsed the position expressed in October.

    And so we entered yet another waiting game; what would be the actual motion to come to Synod in February? When it arrived in the Synod documents there was deep disappointment, even hostility to the thrust of the motion. The ‘apology’ in clause (a) seemed lacklustre and insincere (as one speaker in Synod said in the debate on the unsuccessful amendment to change this, ‘sorry means you won’t do it again’). As for clause (b), the idea that the LLF Programme could conclude by July 2026 was a slap in the face not only for all the members of the Leicester working groups who had sent a strong message to the bishops to act on their proposals, but to those in Synod who had voted in favour of the motions on LLF passed in February and November 2023 and July 2024. There was deep suspicion about the new working groups which the House of Bishops intended to set up – clause (d) – not only about the terms of reference detailed in GS 2426, but in its proposed membership and how members were to be appointed. There was a widespread feeling that the voices of the normally silent majority had been ignored.

    February: voting for further movement

    Yet, as I explained at the start of this blog post, in February the House of Bishops Motion was passed by a larger majority across the whole of Synod than any other previous LLF motion.

    How did this come about? Perhaps even those most dedicated of Synod watchers would be defeated by a detailed account of the eight amendments which were debated, and fell, during those five hours of debate. In brief, these were an amendment to make the apology more meaningful and sincere, an amendment to acknowledge theological diversity amongst LGBTQI+ (sic) people, one calling on the bishops to apologise for not taking legal advice and thus falsely raising hopes, one to remove the clause bringing the LLF process to a halt, another to allow a conscience clause on the use of the PLF in standalone services, another to remove the clause setting up the new working groups, one to add a means by which the Leicester working groups would be asked to provide a foundation for the work of the new working groups, and finally an amendment asking that the new working groups be organised so as to ensure that a majority of the members would be in favour of standalone services and full inclusion of clergy in same sex civil marriages, with regular reports on progress to Synod. Some of these amendments sought to strengthen the Motion, some sought either to weaken it or even render it meaningless.

    As would eventually happen with the main motion, there were calls for votes by Houses. Each of these amendments fell in the House of Bishops and (for the most part) in the other Houses too. So, given the dissatisfaction with the main motion and the disappointment, if not despair, at the events of the previous six months, what led to its approval?

    It was an odd motion because, as you can see in clause (d), Synod was only ‘commending’ something which the bishops were going to do anyway. They did not need synodical approval. But if Synod rejected the motion, the setting up of more working groups could mean the work was delayed or even abandoned. It would give scope for bishops who were uncomfortable with the proposed scheme of work to argue that it wasn’t needed.

    The initial response of Together for the Church of England, and its supporters, had been to vote against the motion, unless it proved possible to amend it. Another option would be to abstain, to demonstrate the despair with which it was being received. But it became clear that those who were opposed to the LLF process, who were unwilling even to give room for the PLF, were prepared to vote it down. Those of different views knew that putting in amendments could at least give a chance to air their views. Knowing the balance of opinion in Synod (unrepresentative as it is of opinion across the wider Church) the pragmatic decision was to vote in favour, unless the motion was amended so as to make it toothless. That way, at least some work continues.

    Over the course of the debate, the most powerful speeches were those from clergy in faithful and committed same sex relationships, some going back many decades, who spoke of their reactions to the various statements by the bishops; statements which seemed to have lost sight of the real people whose lives go on being affected by this.

    And now?

    Because their motion has passed, the House of Bishops now has a significant majority decision from Synod to support the continuation of the LLF legacy. As I’ve shown, this majority is the largest in any LLF vote across the years from 2023 to now. LLF may be over, but there is a new beginning. The challenge to the bishops is therefore to bring about meaningful change through the ‘Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group’ and ‘Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Pastoral Consultative Group’. Let us hope that the memberships of the two groups are appropriately filled with those whose goal is to not to obstruct the change which so many ordinary people in the Church wish to see with all their hearts.

  • Sex and the Homilies

    by Revd Canon Neil Patterson, Vice-Dean of Bristol Cathedral and Chair of Together for the Church of England

    It feels like some sort of recognition for this blog, and perhaps even this author, to be quoted in an official Question at General Synod, even if the Question is not particularly friendly. For those unfamiliar with the custom, at each General Synod a large number of written Questions are submitted by members. They cover a wide range of the Church’s work, and although some are ruled ‘out of order’ as not being factual or asking bodies which are not responsible to Synod, they are an impressive aspect of accountability in the Church of England. When I first joined Synod, the initial answers were read out fresh, giving an opportunity for quick thinkers to ask a Supplementary that was occasionally interesting, but too often point-scoring. Now both Questions and written Answers are released a few days in advance, and there are fewer pointless Supplementaries. There is still a performative aspect to the whole business, and Synod always runs out of time before all Questions are covered. In recent years LLF has generated very many Questions at every group of sessions.

    The February 2026 Questions included this:

    The Revd Dr Patrick Richmond (Norwich) to ask the Chair of the Ministry Development Board:

    Q228    Given that the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy now serve as a primary document for discernment and discipline, what consideration has been given to the definition of ‘sexual intercourse’ used therein? Specifically, if the term is understood in the narrow sense of biological coitus, as recently argued by the Revd Canon Neil Patterson [https://viamedia.news/2026/01/24/what-is-anglican-sexanyway/] what assessment has been made regarding how the Guidelines reflect the Church’s wider authoritative teaching—such as that in the Book of Homilies warning against ‘all unlawful use of those parts ordained for generation’—and what steps are being taken to ensure that candidates and clergy understand the wider scope of the conduct to which they are committing?

    The Bishop of Chester to reply as the Chair of the Ministry Development Board:

    The replacement of references to Issues in Human Sexuality (“Issues”) with the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct for the Clergy (“the Guidelines”) in the discernment process does not create new obligations for candidates and clergy and nor does it make the Guidelines a primary document for discernment and discipline. The primary documents for discernment are the Qualities for Discernment used before a candidate comes to a discernment panel and the Qualities for Formation, using during training for ordinands. Reference is made to the Guidelines within these processes.

    The primary documents for discipline are set out in the statutory grounds within the Clergy Discipline Measure and the proposed Clergy Conduct Measure.

    As was emphasised by Synod in July 2025 when they called upon the House to replace Issues with the Guidelines, and emphasised again by the House when they decided to make the requested change, no aspect of the Church of England’s theological or ethical understanding of matters relating to sexuality has been changed by the decision to refer to the Guidelines in the process of vocational discernment and training for ordained ministry. Moreover, the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy do not in themselves establish or extend the law, though they do point to the law. They seek to provide a framework for behaviour that reflects the highest standard to which all clergy should aspire.

    Readers will see that the Answer rather sidesteps the Question, and the session ran out of time so Dr Richmond did not have the opportunity to ask a Supplementary. He did not contact me before referring to my previous blog, but here follows an attempt to respond more directly to his interesting Question than did the Bishop of Chester, building on the comments by Helen King in her blog.

    First, why does the Question refer to the Homilies, and perhaps indeed, what are they? The Homilies are a set of sermons, some published in 1547 and others under Elizabeth I, on a range of subjects, intended to be read by clergy who were not able to compose their own sermons, many setting out distinctly Reformed teaching for the new Church of England. I don’t consult my copy as regularly as Dr Richmond may, but the full texts are easily found. I will come on to their status in a moment, but we might first note that I think the reason for appealing to them is that neither Scripture, the Canons of the Church of England, or the authorised liturgies of the Church of England (whether the Book of Common Prayer or Common Worship) offer any direction about specific sexual acts. Indeed, I don’t think there are any direct references to particular sexual acts in the Canons or the liturgies at all. Even Scripture, whilst including the texts about different sexual relationships explored in depth in the Living in Love & Faith book, does not really offer any detail on what happens with particular body parts. Injury to male genitals may disqualify a man from full participation in worship at the Temple (Leviticus 21.20), and draws particular punishment upon a woman causing it (Deuteronomy 25.11-12), and of course there are many references to circumcision. But what happens sexually is not described, and I assume this is the reason for resort to the Homilies as a source of authority. This is far from a ‘wider authoritative teaching’ of which the quotation is a mere sample.

    Before going on to the authority of the Homilies, though, it is worth checking just how little the quotation says. It comes from one of the 1547 Homilies, given on the title page of my copy as ‘Against Whoredom and Adultery’ although at the start as ‘Against Whoredom and Uncleanness.’ As it turns out, the single sentence quoted in the Synod Question is the only one which specifically refers to body parts, and is probably the only such sentence in the whole Homilies (I confess, I have not searched them all). It occurs near the start when the homilist explains that adultery covers not only marital unfaithfulness, but also ‘all unlawful use of those parts ordained for generation.’ This was of course exactly what the General Synod motion passed in 1987 did not say. Even in the Homilies, which – as I shall explain below – are not generally squeamish in their language, the expression is somewhat euphemistic. But I suggest we can paraphrase ‘those parts ordained for generation’ as ‘the human reproductive organs’ in order to be both modern and clear.

    So, this immediately prompts a reflection. Much intimate activity between couples, of whatever sexes, does not involve the reproductive organs at all, at least not of both parties. In particular, as Helen King and others have explained with great clarity, the clitoris is not a reproductive organ but appears to exist solely to create sexual pleasure. And for that we all, especially those who have one, may thank the good Lord for his generous provision. What about ‘unlawful use’? Well, at the time of the Homily, a number of possible uses were outlawed by the Buggery Act 1533, which prescribed punishments for “the detestable and abominable vice of buggery committed with mankind or beast,” subsequently interpreted by the courts to mean penetrative sex between men, or bestiality, respectively. Today bestiality is regarded as an animal welfare offence, but unlawful use of the reproductive organs between people is defined by the Sexual Offences Act 2003, based on accepted principles around age and consent. No-one in the current debates in the Church of England is arguing for the right of the clergy, or anyone else, to disobey these laws.

    Of course, many will read the expression ‘unlawful’ in the Homily as referring to the ‘laws of God’ but that produces an immediately circular argument. Where are these to be found, for members of the Church of England? In Scripture, the Canons, the liturgy, and perhaps the 39 Articles. And as we have noted, those do not help us reach clarity. Perhaps if a Homily Against Buggery had been written (plausible enough) that would solve it, but it is no more evident than Jesus’ clear and transparent teaching on same-sex relationships. But the 39 Articles do bring us back to the Homilies, even if, as I have pointed out before, the Court of Arches declared some time ago that the Declaration of Assent has relativised their position as a doctrinal authority. But it is there, in Article 35, that we find the Homilies declared to ‘contain a good and wholesome Doctrine’ and suitable to be read in churches.

    No doubt there are still some clergy who read out a Homily from time to time. Most congregations I know would have quite a shock. They follow a fairly consistent pattern, assembling relevant Scripture texts around the theme, reinforced with robust Tudor rhetoric, and that against Adultery is broken into three parts to be useable as a sermon sequence. Whoredom is ‘filthy, stinking, and abominable’ ‘…neither is there a nearer way to damnation than to be a fornicator and an whoremonger’. It draws people away from ‘virtuous studies and fruitful labours’ to ‘carnal and fleshly imaginations.’ It is more repetitive than anything. And it is asserted, rather than shown, that adultery and fornication produce sorrow and poverty in this life, as well as eternal punishment.

    The most disturbing passage, however, occurs when the Homily, like many others, chooses to draw on the then-commonplace knowledge of the ancient world, commending as ‘godly acts’ the laws of various ancient states against adultery or whoredom (not very precisely distinguished). The argument is ‘even pagans thought it wicked.’ But the Homily glories in the various forms of mutilation or capital punishment inflicted by ancient societies – eyes cut out, a thousand lashes, women having their noses cut off to be visibly shamed for life, hands cut off, or death, by stoning, burning or beheading. The ‘Locrensians, Arabians, Athenians, with such other’ are commended for their barbaric laws. In a world where such punishment is associated with only the most violent forms of Islamic extremism, it is difficult to take the Homilies seriously as a source of moral guidance for today’s Church. They have to be interpreted, and once interpretation begins, outcomes are contested, as we all know well.

    So, to repeat the argument made before, the formal teaching of the Church of England does not give us a clear answer on the questions of sexual ethics that are currently the subject of such controversy. Many wish they did, and will no doubt continue to petition the bishops to offer clear answers to matters better judged in context and in private. But, even if they have not shown outstanding strength in setting a positive direction forward, perhaps the bishops will be able to achieve the easier task of resisting calls for easy answers, and allow us to grow into a wiser and less judgmental Church.

  • The Cost of Calling: Then and Now

    by the Rev’d Chantal Noppen – National Coordinator of the Inclusive Church Network, North-East based Anglican Priest and member of General Synod for Durham Diocese

    Seventeen years ago, a woman priest was told she would receive zero maternity pay because she might “take the money and run.”

    The assumption was clear: motherhood made her suspect. Her vocation was conditional. At no point in her three years of training had anyone from her diocese spoken to her about maternity provision, even though she had given birth to a baby in her second year of training and was pregnant when she was ordained deacon.

    As she began her curacy: “The first thing the Diocesan Secretary told me was that I would receive my full stipend throughout my maternity leave. I was delighted by the simplicity and generosity of this which I felt reflected my own commitment and a relationship of trust between clergy and Diocese. However, the next day he called me back and said he was very sorry but having consulted with other Dioceses we did in fact have a standard maternity policy which had been adopted from ‘standard business practice’.

    “What this meant was that I received no maternity pay at all. The ‘standard policy’ he referred to (but had 24 hours earlier been completely unaware of) meant that as I had been an ’employee’ for less than 12 months at the time of the leave, I was not entitled to any maternity pay. A clause designed to stop people exploiting maternity pay in the business world perhaps – but a slap in the face when you’ve just given your whole life to God and the service of God’s church in ordination. I was not an employee. Did anyone really feel I was going to take the money and run?”

    Because she had been an actual employee while training part-time for ministry, she was fortunate enough to qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay. Those training full-time were not in this position.

    Two years ago, I co-authored an independent audit of diocesan maternity provision across the Church of England. The report documented inconsistency, opacity and, in some cases, failure to implement the national guidance issued four years earlier. Over 100 recommendations were made. Some dioceses have since improved their policies. That is genuinely welcome.

    But the deeper question remains: what does our system reveal about the actual value of women? The woman whose experience opens this story writes “I felt like as a woman my job was to do it all – to prove it could all be done. It never crossed my mind at the time to ask for more help, better provision or new ways of doing things.”

    At General Synod I asked about the financial provision behind our theological commitments. From 2019–2023 the Church Commissioners spent on average £497,000 per year on stipend and working costs for the four Provincial Episcopal Visitors, plus £67,500 annually in housing costs. The same body provides no funding specifically in support of the ministry of ordained women.

    The only national funding stream directed toward women’s development in 2023 was £73,000 from the Women’s Continuing Ministerial Education Trust, administered by the Archbishops’ Council, not the Commissioners, and available to lay, ordained or religious women, in both the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church. This Trust is independent, and the CofE’s direct involvement is purely through some MinDiv support administratively. So we’re actually looking at over £550,000 versus nothing.

    Budgets are theology with spreadsheets.

    For thirty years we have structurally underwritten dissent. We have not structurally underwritten parity. We safeguard the inequitable status quo and struggle to raise up The Other. Justice isn’t cushioned.

    The maternity audit showed similar asymmetry at diocesan level. National guidelines were issued in 2020, yet implementation varies widely. In some dioceses maternity provision is clearly communicated and proactively managed. In others it depends on local interpretation, overstretched individuals or informal knowledge. While I have not done a similar audit on menopause policies and support, I have heard anecdotally that the same is true there. With the added aspect of the menopause being a far more uncomfortable topic to discuss openly, whereas women having babies is a bit more ‘acceptable’ to acknowledge.

    Policies may exist on paper, but the support to implement them and accountability if they are not, is missing. When I transferred part of my maternity leave as shared parental leave to my partner, whose NHS employer processed it smoothly, my diocese nearly failed to implement its own policy. Papers were misfiled. Approval came ten days before the transition was due. This stress was entirely avoidable.

    These are not dramatic scandals. They are accumulations of inequitable cost. They create stress at moments when clergy are already stretched.

    There is also what we do not measure. We lack robust national data on how many women are steered towards self-supporting ministry, house-for-duty posts, or part-time roles that in practice require full-time emotional and pastoral labour. We know this pattern exists. We hear it repeatedly. But without data, the system remains conveniently deniable.

    Part-time pay rarely equates to part-time expectation.

    Culture compounds structure. Male clergy often receive visible parish care when they become parents (or just arrive in a parish). Women encounter suspicion about their commitment. During maternity leave, some are strongly discouraged from maintaining friendships within their congregations, creating isolation at precisely the moment community is most needed. Add neurodivergent literalism or rigid interpretations of “boundary,” and what might be intended as good practice becomes damaging exclusion.

    None of this is catastrophic in isolation. Together, it is exhausting. It impacts mental health and well-being, and constantly adds burden and cost to day-to-day existence.

    It would be easy to frame this as resentment. It is not. It is about reciprocity.

    When women were first ordained, significant institutional resource was provided for those who could not accept that development. Generous financial settlements were negotiated. Housing was provided. Pensions protected. Some left for Rome. Some later returned. The Church absorbed that cost and continues to do so.

    Women, meanwhile, continue to have to argue and negotiate for clarity around maternity provision diocese by diocese, to have to justify childcare, part-time ministry, and shared leave. Women have absorbed the cost. We’ve been constantly treated as second rate and have to prove ourselves continually in a way that men are not required to.

    If we believe women are equally called, then structural equity is not an aspirational extra. It is an ecclesiological necessity.

    The 2024 audit prompted some positive changes. Several dioceses revised policies before publication. Others have committed to clearer communication and better provision. Scrutiny can work. Transparency and accountability work.

    But transparency must go further. We need national data on patterns of deployment. We need honest examination of whether women are disproportionately steered into precarious or under-remunerated roles. We need systems that do not rely on personal resilience, goodwill, or quiet endurance.

    Motherhood is not a deviation from priesthood. Shared parenting is not radical. Women’s bodies are not a pastoral inconvenience. Gender is not a spiritual failing.

    The question is no longer whether change is possible. It is whether we have the will to pursue it beyond the minimum required to avoid embarrassment.

    We often speak of mutual flourishing. Mutuality requires reciprocity. Flourishing requires investment.

    If our financial structures still cushion objection more consistently than they sustain embodiment, what does that reveal about whose vocation we are most anxious to protect? Who do we more value?

    That is not a rhetorical question.

     

     

  • The Failure of Living in Love and Faith: a Glimpse of the Blindingly Obvious

    by David Nixon, a recently retired priest and Area Dean, a Prebendary emeritus, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Exeter University

    I have just experienced what my sister has always termed a GBO – a Glimpse of the Blindingly Obvious. In other words, blindingly obvious for everyone else except for the one who experiences it, for whom it comes as a penny-dropping moment, another useful phrase. The risk of sharing this with you is that it’s only me for whom this is interesting or startling or revelatory, and everybody else says: “Yep, uh-hah”. But I’m going to take that risk, just in case.

    And the GBO is this: that the failure (and it really ought not to be called anything other than this) of the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) project or process is linked very closely to a particular view of the Church, and its purpose, and thus to an underlying contemporary ecclesiology. I am not saying that there is no prejudice within Church circles about LGBT+ people, no homophobia (a better term would be heteronormativity, that ranking of heterosexuality as ‘better’) out of which spring some of the opposition to LLF; rather, I am saying that alongside these things, beneath them, runs a way of thinking about Church which made and makes progress with LLF almost impossible. This would explain the ability of well-meaning bishops to issues words of condolence, as if on the passing of a dear mutual friend, at the same time as ensuring that LGBT+ people continue to feel as if they are travelling steerage on the ecclesial equivalent of the Titanic. The ecclesiological predisposition of many bishops (and others) means that to act in full favour of LLF would run counter to how they perceive the task and the role of the Church of England now, and so would land them in an uncomfortable contradiction. Better to ditch LLF progress than to have to admit that the ecclesiology might be faulty. To use another image, the bishops’ ecclesiological garment risks being called out as illusory, nothing more than the emperor’s new clothes, whose vanity is always pricked by one of the children, the ‘small ones’. A minor act of infanticide might be worth the opprobrium. Let me explain more fully.

    To be slightly fairer to LLF, by comparison to Issues in Human Sexuality (1991) and the 1998 Lambeth resolutions, having a liturgy to bless same-sex couples as part of an existing act of worship in church and the pastoral letter from bishops in 2026 is a remarkable (albeit slow) achievement. Often overlooked however is the theological process of LLF, which is even more surprising, so much so that this in itself justified a pause if not a halt. One of the many criticisms of Issues is that it positioned differently the voices and experiences of LGBT+ people and those of doctors, psychologists and biologists, so that the latter group were regarded as experts commenting on the lives of others. Later reports ameliorated this to some extent, but the control of the House of Bishops over the debate, and the terms of the debate, remained rigid. Bishop Gene Robinson’s comment on the Lambeth Commission which produced the later Windsor Report in 2004 remains apposite: imagine, he suggested, a commission about sexism composed only of men, or one about racism with no Black people, yet it was deemed acceptable for a commission about sexuality to have no gay or lesbian representatives. By contrast, LLF foregrounded the lives of a range of LGBT+ people, alongside sociological and cultural analysis (‘Paying attention: What is going on?’) within a more expansive theological framework. More technically, this was nearer to the inductive method of Liberation Theology, working from human experience to interpret doctrine, rather than setting out a universal scheme to be imposed deductively on every given situation. The risk, perhaps intended, perhaps not fully understood, was that by contrast to previous reports and commissions, the bishops might lose control of the process.

    And then there are the bigger ecclesiological issues.

    The direction of travel at present in the Church of England is towards a public theology based on discipleship rather than citizenship. This contrasts the Church as a counter-cultural reality not answerable to secular demands with an institution engaged with a pluralist, secular state aiming for the common good underlying universal human principles. Church priorities summarised as ‘simpler, humbler, bolder’ emphasise the growth of numbers of disciples through missionary endeavour, and set a variety of targets. The language of ‘disciple’ and ‘mission’ abounds.

    Superficially, there is nothing to argue with here: who would not want the Church to grow, to become more diverse, and for parishes to be revitalised? Yet a modicum of reflection suggests that this is very Church-centric, institutionally and structurally focussed, and that the parishes and disciples are there to maintain and support the Church as an organisation. There is little here about creating and sustaining loving and compassionate communities which engage the wider world in uncertain times, little also about the Kingdom of God as a purpose and goal, and of the Church as a means of helping to deliver this. Public theology as primarily outwardly focussed, beyond the Church and into (for example) the worlds of work, study and leisure is much diminished. And so ultimately the ministry which the Church envisages and for which it forms its clergy is also diminished. The upshot of this is that the Church becomes an end in itself, another institution (like the Post Office?) whose main task is itself – reputation, growth, survival. This is actualised in the work of the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB), whose large grants from central funds to cash-poor dioceses are made on the basis of numerical growth and clergy performance management.

    This ecclesiology is weak on two fronts: there is a misinterpretation of both incarnation and eschatology. The concept of Jesus as both human and divine always means that a division of the world into secular or sacred space is flawed, and we have the discomfort of living overlapped in both places, or of being ‘degrounded’ as Judith Butler says. The temptation at a time of greater secularisation, of loss of Church authority and influence, of scandal and financial threat is to withdraw to apparent safety; but as Bonhoeffer insists in his Ethics, there is ‘nowhere to retreat from the world’. It is again Bonhoeffer who points up the eschatological weakness of a Church that appears to be ‘only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself’ (Letters and Papers from Prison). It is not simply the paucity of vision that cannot see beyond its own bounds (an advance parochialisation), but a failure to glimpse the transformations of the Kingdom, and an attempt to restrict God. If the Church is at the centre, God is at the margins, and a neo-colonial mindset seeks to assert control over God too.

    How does this relate to the failure of LLF? A Church focussed internally may mean it is reluctant to engage in the messy territory of human sexualities, not least when there is the scandal of abuse, and deep and acrimonious divisions of opinion. At worst, this can become a reiteration of the purity/pollution trope, in which the disciples who are to be sought and nurtured are there to form a model community of idealised heterosexuals, where all those who fall outside quite a narrow definition are not only unwelcome, but also serve to establish where those boundaries lie – you may think I am caricaturing here, but look at the photos on the Church of England website about Weddings. The Church as counter-cultural institution means that it does not have to follow the direction of society in terms of accepting different sexualities, and rejecting these may be a marker of belonging to an alternative ecclesial reality.

    A retreat to comfort and security (nostalgia even) is understandable, but we are called to so much more than this. Allied to a desire to take charge again of the LLF process, it is hardly surprising that given this predominant ecclesiology LLF has not fulfilled its aims.

    If there is room for hope here, it lies in the continuing rhetoric of a public theology of citizenship, where pastoral care is delivered because there is need, where schools and communities are supported simply because they are there, where lay people and clergy say their prayers within and on behalf of their parishes because they are centred on a God of love, compassion and mercy.

    Although a citizenship model of public theology is probably more favourable to LGBT+ people, there is hope too in the internal contradictions of the contemporary discipleship policy. There is an admirable wish for the Church to be more attractive to families and young people at the same time as a recognition that the Church’s position towards LGBT+ people is deeply off-putting (Pilling Report 2013). Same-sex marriage in a civil context has been available since 2013 so that today’s ‘young people’ have come of age knowing nothing different, and so find it difficult to understand why this is problematic in the Church of England. Parishes reflecting the rich diversity of the communities they serve is again an excellent aspiration, but in terms of LGBT+ people, this can still mean being less than fully included. The Church rightly supports stable long-term committed relationships but explicitly withdraws this support for non-heterosexual marriage.

    The hope is that such weight causes the structure to wobble or topple. I would caution against any thought of ‘the final big push’ over the barricades – rather it is the unwelcome but necessary task of LGBT+ people and their supporters (the cost of our discipleship) to keep saying clearly that present policies are like the emperor’s new clothes: threadbare. Or at the risk of mixing metaphors, like a Jenga tower, from which each piece is being gradually removed.

     

    [I am grateful to Canon Mike Williams for his insights about public theology, but the link to LLF is entirely my own thinking.]