ViaMedia

Category: Ecclesiology

  • Where’s My Bishop?

    by the Revd Robert Thompson, Vicar St Mary’s, Kilburn & St James’, West Hampstead; host of Open Table, London; from 2021-26, member of General Synod

    “Your Father who sees in secret…” (Matthew 6.4)

    The gospels record Jesus speaking often about the relationship between the hidden life and the public life. Again and again Jesus calls the disciples towards integrity, where what is true before God increasingly becomes visible in the way we live before one another. “Your Father who sees in secret…” is not an invitation to secrecy, but a reminder that the God who knows us most deeply also calls us to become people of truth.

    General Synod has its own discipline of accountability. Our debates are public and preserved on YouTube. Our speeches are public. Our votes are public. Then, a week or so after each meeting of Synod finishes, for every vote where a formal count has been requested, a list of who voted for, who voted against and who abstained is also made public. That is not an administrative detail but a substantive expression of accountability. Those of us entrusted with teaching and governing the Church exercise that ministry publicly and we are answerable to the Church we serve.

    For the July 2026 Synod, the lists of those who voted and in what way were published on 23 July. Helen King brought to Synod a Private Members’ Motion on the Christian dignity of those of us who are LGBTQIA+ followers of Jesus Christ, and the defeat of this motion, as amended, by a mere three votes in the House of Bishops has already attracted criticism. The voting patterns of our bishops have especially caused much criticism. People have been asking, “How did my bishop vote?” And now it is possible to see.

    Here, however, I want to focus not simply on how bishops voted, but on what the votes reveal about the Church and the episcopacy itself.

    For seven years the Living in Love and Faith process has invited the Church to “walk together”. We have listened to one another’s stories. We have studied Scripture. We have repented of the harm caused to LGBTQIA+ people. We have created the Prayers of Love and Faith, and allowed them to be used with same-sex couples in existing church services. Like the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7.24–30), many LGBTQIA+ Christians feel they are invited to be grateful for crumbs rather than welcomed to the table itself. The Prayers of Love and Faith have brought real pastoral good. Yet many still experience them not as full recognition but as permission to gather the crumbs which are left over. Ordinands and clergy in relationships, civil partnerships and same-sex marriages still live with uncertainty, and the Church remains unable to articulate a settled pastoral vision, let alone a theological one. This debate was therefore about much more than sexuality.

    The first amendment to Helen King’s motion, proposed by Jamie Harrison, restated where we are after the February vote to set up another working group and would largely have continued the present post-LLF process as one not too dissimilar to that which we have experienced in those last seven years. But Synod declined that route.

    The debate then moved to Christopher Dalliston’s amendment. Helen King has described that amendment – which she supported – and its purpose here. Where Jamie Harrison’s amendment asked whether the process should continue, Christopher Dalliston’s amendment asked a much deeper question: what kind of Church do we already believe ourselves to be? It was not primarily about sexual ethics but about ecclesiology. Christopher invited Synod to affirm that all baptised, believing and faithful people, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ; to delight in the lives and ministries of LGBTQIA+ people; and to recognise a legitimate range of theological conviction across the Church. This last point was a conscious attempt to respond to concerns heard from those who are not willing to affirm what the original motion, and the amendment, described as “committed, faithful, intimate same-sex relationships”. This amendment passed in all three Houses. Only then did the amended motion – the same wording as the Dalliston amendment – fail in the House of Bishops.

    The figures deserve careful attention. The House of Bishops has fifty-three voting places. At the time of the vote seven diocesan sees were vacant, and ‘acting bishops’ are not allowed a vote. Perhaps five bishops were unavailable because of illness, suspension or having stepped back from ministry. That left forty-one bishops who could reasonably have been expected to participate. The recorded votes were 11 in favour, 14 against, 4 abstentions, leaving twelve bishops with no recorded vote. Even allowing for two or three bishops on duty in the House of Lords on that day, and one who may be on sabbatical before taking up his appointment, nearly a fifth of those who might reasonably have participated left no recorded vote. Some may have had entirely understandable reasons and perhaps will explain them to those in their diocese. But the numbers still matter, when the difference between those in favour and those against was a mere 3 votes.

    For LGBTQIA+ Anglicans these debates are not abstract constitutional exercises. They concern our relationships, vocations, ministries and families. As a gay priest, I found this high number of non-recorded votes deeply sobering. Not because I presume to know anyone’s motives, but because when questions touch the heart of your vocation, the absence of a recorded position is itself something you notice. Episcopal leadership is also about being willing to be counted. Yet I suspect that observation only scratches the surface. The more interesting question is this: what do we and our bishops believe episcopacy is for?

    One result prompted particularly searching conversations among LGBTQIA+ clergy. Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury, voted against the amended motion. That surprised many queer colleagues because it sat in tension with the pastoral experience some of us have had of Sarah’s ministry. I have no wish to speculate about the reasons. But the contrast raises an important theological question. Do we and do bishops sometimes believe that the office they hold necessarily requires a distinction between the convictions they carry pastorally and the positions they feel able to express publicly?

    Before Synod began, I wrote on behalf of colleagues about the presence at York of campaigning organisations whose activities many LGBTQIA+ members and allies experienced as hostile. My concern was never about silencing disagreement. It was about creating the conditions in which the whole Church could genuinely discern together. In their written response, Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, agreed that the exhibition stall should not be permitted, while allowing the associated fringe meeting to proceed. The distinction rested on one activity being public and the other being regarded as private. Yet the fringe meeting had already been advertised in the official General Synod fringe programme and published on Synod’s public website. The boundary between public and private proved far less straightforward than it first appeared. That, perhaps, is another reminder that the distinction with which this essay began is never as neat as we imagine. It is also one of the deepest responsibilities of an episkopos to help the Church discern not only where those boundaries lie, but when they have ceased to illuminate the truth and begun instead to obscure it. Perhaps that is why one of the most moving moments of this Synod came when Nicholas Chamberlain, the Bishop of Grantham, spoke publicly about his own life as a gay man. It mattered because truthfulness itself became a pastoral act. In that moment episcopal leadership was expressed not through institutional management but through honest witness.

    The Greek word episkopos means an overseer, one who watches over the Church. A bishop is not simply an institutional governor or constitutional referee. A bishop is called to discern where the Holy Spirit is leading God’s people, to teach the faith, to guard communion and to keep before the Church the horizon of the Reign of God which is both embodied and fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Unity matters profoundly. But the purpose of episcopal ministry is not simply to preserve communion. It is to enable the Church to become more fully what, in Christ, it already is. The calling of an episkopos is not simply to keep the Church together. It is to help the Church recognise more clearly the Reign of God already breaking into the life of the world, to help the Church see that reign of justice and peace more clearly and to proclaim and embody it as Christ’s Body.

    But we and the bishops were not simply being asked to affirm the dignity of LGBTQIA+ people as an ethical question. We were being asked a theological question, to affirm what baptism already declares: that LGBTQIA+ Christians are already full members of the Body of Christ, their lives and ministries being offered as gifts to the whole Church. That is why the bishops’ response matters so much. The question before them was not simply ethical but theological. It asked whether the House of Bishops could distinguish questions of sexual ethics from the prior ecclesiological claim made in baptism.

    Earlier this year I found myself asking, ‘What kind of Church are we becoming?’ This Synod has led me to ask a related question: what kind of bishops are we forming? The two questions cannot be separated.

    Let me be clear. This is not an argument that every bishop should have voted as I would have wished. Episcopacy is not measured by agreement. It is measured by faithfulness. My question is a different one. What understanding of episcopal ministry leads so many bishops to conclude that, on one of the defining pastoral and theological questions of our generation, leaving no recorded public position is the most faithful exercise of their office?

    Jesus called his disciples not simply to preserve what already existed, but to proclaim that the Reign of God had drawn near. That remains the calling of every Christian. It surely remains the calling of every bishop.

    After seven years of Living in Love and Faith, perhaps the question is no longer simply: ‘Where’s my bishop?’

    The deeper question is this: What kind of Church do we believe Christ is calling into being—and do our bishops feel free to lead us towards it?

  • 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.