ViaMedia

Category: Establishment

  • The Mid-Atlantic Anglican: Leaks from the CNC WhatsApp Group

    by Anon.

    In what was an unforeseen and dreadful oversight, with an investigation and lessons learned review now pending, the Editor of The Mid-Atlantic Anglican was accidentally included on the new confidential WhatsApp Group for the CNC to nominate the next Archbishop of Canterbury. The exchanges quickly found their way to the editor of Via Media, who is now able to share with readers a partial transcript of those on the call. The CNC is chaired by Jonathan Evans (Lord Evans of Weardale) who takes the WhatsApp name Evans Above.

    Evans Above – Right, can I just check we have all signed the confidentiality and conflict of interest agreement?

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – I will circulate these. Orally.

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 1 – We have written a prayer for our diocese at this crucial time in the life of our diocese…

    Elected General Synod Member One – Oh God…

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 1 – No, no! It begins very differently. We have gone for something much more inclusive. Here you go…

    “Dear Lord, Please send us someone much like your own Dear Son. Except we also need somebody who would have got along very well with Herodians, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Romans, Gentiles, Peasants, Temple Traders, Anti-Fishing lobbyists, Just-Stop-Nard/Oil protesters, and people outside Palestine-Galilee who were foreign. Because we can’t afford to alienate anyone. Please also make sure that your nominee, your servant, is nice to gay people and equally nice to people who are anti-gay. Likewise on gender, and in general, just a nice chap [probably? delete?] without opinions and preferences except on things that we all agree on, like Methodism. But please, God, don’t send us someone who has spoken up on Brexit, because we have a lot of Reform voters in Margate, and we don’t want to alienate them. Who lives and reigns with you in unity with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God. Now and Forever, Amen”.

    Elected General Synod Member Two – Lord have mercy…

    JD Vance – I am with POTUS. We are sick and tired of the Episcopal Church bailing out the CofE and providing all the funding for your pathetic little Lambeth Conferences, NATO (Northern Anglican Theology Outfit) and propping up bankrupt Anglican Provinces outside the USA like Canada. Losers! Time to stand on your own two feet. You haven’t got any cards. You are in a very bad position.

    Ebordom [Cottrell] – Can we get on with business? I am currently touring the country teaching about the Lord’s Prayer.  The reception has been amazing.  Hardly any protests, boycotts, petitions, awkward questions from the media… Seriously, I had forgotten what it was like to be a bishop.

    JD Vance – Yeah, but I heard Newcastle gave you a miss! Hah! You gotta love Cancel Culture.  I also heard your talk about “forgive us our debts”. You can forget that! You owe us, Big Time. You don’t have any cards. You are not in a good position. We are going to impose 20% tariffs on your churches. Stop ripping us off and stealing our churchgoers.

    Evans Above – Veep, how are you even on this call?

    JD Vance – I have clearance and we’re paying for the call, and META runs the whole WhatsApp platform. Check in with Zuckerberg.

    Evans Above – …Er….

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 2 – Perhaps we could think about possible names?

    JD Vance – No names!! We stick with orange as the authorised colour. POTUS likes it. That is what Americans want. Suck it up, losers!! If you don’t like it, you can always deselect York and do your own vanilla thing there.

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – Er, but there is no vacancy for York. At least not today. We have lots of other vacancies to fill. Orange is not on our list of criteria. Though I agree vanilla is.

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 2– Can we please get on and nominate someone?

    Evans Above – William?

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – No. All names are subject to clearance and vetting by senior Lambeth Palace staff and others not on this call. Anyway, I have a list of people who have been ruled out already. You cannot include them.

    Norfolk Nodder [Graham Usher] – I haven’t seen that list…

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – It doesn’t concern you. The list is confidential to the people who drew it up. You are not on the list to see the list.

    Elected General Synod Member One – We all agree that the candidate must be LLF compliant, which means that they are signing up for a Decade of Delaying. I have written a prayer for this a bit like the one we just heard from the Local Canterbury CNC:

    “Dear God, Please help us just to keep going with these important discussions, but please also make sure that we never actually get anywhere. Deliver us from the time of trial, decision, or any point of closure. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for never, ever and never, Amen…”.

    It might need some tweaking. What do you think?

    JD Vance – Just like your Decade of Evangelism! All noise, no action.

    Elected General Synod Member Two – Much as it pains us to admit this, but yes, that is exactly what we need. Words, but no actions. That is actually very Anglican. Americans don’t understand this. The whole point of proper Anglicanism is to avoid making decisions if there is reform to deal with or residual discord to resolve. Other denominations have dissenters. We don’t allow them in our tent. They get expelled so they can go off and make up their own churches.

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 3 –  Can we have a woman?

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – In principle, a woman could be considered. But otherwise, no – not the right time.

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 3  – Says who?

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – The other committee considering the names.

    Norfolk Nodder [Graham Usher] – Who is in that committee?

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – You are not on the list of people allowed to know that.

    Ebordom [Cottrell] – Graham, neither am I. So I share your pain.

    Evans Above – Are there any other names to float, or rule out at this stage?

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – Perhaps I could say that anyone with a tricky safeguarding record cannot be considered. By this I don’t mean anyone with a skeleton in the cupboard or some historic allegation against them. We can manage that sort of thing. What we don’t want is anyone who goes against what we tell General Synod to vote for. It is vital we keep all the safeguarding away from external scrutiny or any independent professional regulation. That is non-negotiable. Anyone who flirts with secular oversight of the CofE is ruled out. If we are to maintain control of the CofE, LamPal and CHW, we have to have an ABC who is under our control. That is what we agreed.

    Evans Above – Er, actually William, that is not in the written criteria drawn up.

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – Obviously not. These are the higher-level clearance criteria for the other committee that meets and that are only vetted by the Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council, the Secretary of the General Synod, and the CEO of the CofE.

    Local Canterbury CNC  – …Er, so who exactly are these ‘Three Wise Men’?

    Elected General Synod Member Two – It’s actually just one person, isn’t it William? Perhaps you could reveal that this mystery triumvirate is in fact…

    Local Canterbury CNC  – Ooh, I like the sound of this. It’s very Trinitarian isn’t it? Three persons in One Godhead, indivisible in nature and substance, yet three distinct modes of being, all powerful, all knowing, and in charge of everything…

    Elected General Synod Member One – ? …sounds heretical to me. Or maybe just an unaccountable autocracy in the hands of some mysterious triune being…?

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – Strictly speaking it is just one person running the CofE, not three different people. If you want to be Trinitarian about it, you could say three personas in One Ultimate Godhead. That is orthodox, I believe.

    Evans Above – I am struggling to make sense of this group. It seems that some of you won’t accept anyone with an opinion on LLF, Brexit, etc. Some of you just want a person who is nice and compliant and does as they are told by the people who are actually running the CofE. Is that right?

    JD Vance – Sounds fine to me. It’s what America voted for.  No time-wasting committees. Chainsaw Hour! Musk Rules!

    Evans Above – I see. So, what is the CNC for?

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 2 – Yes, I was wondering that.

    Not-Yet-Ennobled [NYE, William] – Well, for the sake of appearances, it is for appearances’ sake. It has to look like a consultation. But it obviously can’t be. I mean, look at the mess CofE dioceses have got into going down the road of voting. Carlisle, Ely…deadlocked! If you give people a democratic say you won’t get anything done. But everybody knows that is the whole aim of Anglicanism anyway, so there’s no point having a democracy that delivers this kind of indecision, when we’ve already set up the CofE to be run like that.

    JD Vance – Exactly! Look, losers, gotta go as I’m due on another call. But can you make sure you start using the Trump Authorised Blibel in future? It has alternative translations that you don’t find in your woke bibles like the NRSV, NIV and all those other versions that suppress the Real Truth. The translators who worked on the text are all from the Top Trumps’ Bible College, and these biblical scholars are the best in the game. The Trump Authorised Blibel tells it like it is:

    “If at first you don’t succeed, declare the result void and vote again until you finally win.” (Epistle of Robert to the Bruces).

    “The love of money is a beautiful thing.” (Song of the Apprentice).

    “God rewards all those who seize power.” (Epistle to Capitol Hill).

    “Blessed are coup-makers, for they shall reign.” (Jesus, Q-Anon source).

    “Just screw unto others who screw unto you.” (Book of Tariffs).

    “God bless President Donald.” (Floridasians).

    “Behold, he hath hushed the Stormy.” (Acts of Daniels).

    “I desire loyalty, not sacrifice.” (Revelations).

    “Vengeance is mine, saith POTUS.” (II Teslaonians)

    Evans Above –  Er…are these verses actually in the Bible? And isn’t your Blibel printed in China, so subject to 50% more tax?

    JD Vance – You can’t put a price on God’s Word!! Anyway, these verses are all Alternative Translations, dumb-ass! Most are from original Q-Anon texts suppressed by your church! You can read more of them on our Biblical Truth Social media platform. The CofE needs to stop being pro-woke and realise the biggest threat to the CofE are the people inside it who have made you so weak! You need an ABC who gets rid of them!

    Ebordom [Cottrell] – Er, perhaps I can say here that the CofE is in good heart, and morale never higher. There’s a lot of excitement and anticipation about the next ABC. The CofE is growing… [fact-check?…do we have any evidence…?].

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 3 –…Seriously?

    Ebordom [Cottrell] – We are also eliminating financial debts across dioceses by closing churches, merging parishes, employing fewer clergy yet getting even more money out of our congregations. Most dioceses are set to break even in the next decade (NB: no promises).

    Elected General Synod Member Two – Archbishop, are you actually OK or on some kind of prescription medication at the moment? Or just having a funny turn?

    Ebordom [Cottrell] – I am fine – never better! Look, we are fully behind the Save the Parish movement and all it campaigns for. But there are now just going to be a lot fewer parishes to save in the next few years, so it will be much easier. We are sacrificing the many for the few. That’s how we can save the parishes and save on parishes.  It’s sacrificial. I am just channelling the Spirit of 1940 and the Battle of Britain here:

    “Never have so many owed so much to so few.”

    That is how the quota system works in our diocese and everywhere else in the CofE! Churchgoers across the realm can then finally say:

    “This was their finest hour.”

    Evans Above –  ….then again, this might be our darkest hour. God only knows what the dawn might bring…

     

  • On Being Conservative

    by Charlie Bell, Fellow in Public Theology and Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge, and Associate Vicar of St John the Divine, Kennington, in the Diocese of Southwark

    Labels are a dangerous thing. We spend a lot of time worrying about them – they’re a marker of identity, both our own and others’, and we fling them around rather haphazardly, often to our peril. Identity itself is always a contested thing – we like to own our own, yet we are also never short of labelling others to suit our own purposes. It’s a great way for us to confirm our prejudices – we are X, and they are Y – X is good, Y is bad, and by constantly reinforcing this, through the power of language, we can ensure that our virtue, and their lack of it, is writ large. Some words take on that meaning within our enclosed groups – think Republican or Democrat in the US – and some are rather more obviously imbued with a meaning specifically derived from how a group has decided to construct its identity. Chief amongst these, in the church and the world, must be the words liberal and conservative – and depending on one’s particular point of view, each of these might be seen as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

    They’re not the worst labels out there, of course. In the church, we hear silly monikers like ‘revisionist’ or ‘orthodox’ thrown around as though they are not politically loaded weapons, and I cannot be the only one who is so bored of hearing them that each time I do I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. The use of ‘orthodox’ (and its never-spoken-but-obviously-meant opposite number, heterodox) to describe one’s position on sexuality is so ludicrous that it’s not worth spending any time worrying over, however ‘winsome’ its proponents might think it is, and frankly it’s rather embarrassing that, in this anniversary year of Nicaea, it continues to be used even by some bishops. Get a grip – not least of history and doctrine – folks. Rather than worrying about those kind of insult-based identity markers, though, it is worth thinking a little more carefully about the ones we probably use the most – liberal, and conservative. Are they fit for purpose?

    The word ‘liberal’ has an interesting history, not least depending on whether there is a capital L involved or not. That’s a history found within and without the church, and its meaning is far more complex than ‘in favour of LGBTQIA affirmation’ might suggest. In many ways, though, liberal is used in the church more as a term of opposition than as a term of distinctive identity in its own right – to be ‘liberal’ is to not be conservative. Being ‘liberal’ on women’s ministry, being a ‘liberal Catholic’, being a ‘liberal’ on matters of same-sex and gender relationships, is ultimately making it clear what you are not, which is – I would suggest – that one is not steeped in unquestioned cis-heteronormative patriarchal understandings of the Gospel which are entirely unfit for purpose. So, in a sense, whilst I’m quite happy to be called liberal in some ways, I’m not sure that I entirely fit the bill if that term is used in its fullest sense, and nor do I think its use as a catch-all for all things is helpful (for example, it seems to surprise some people that I might be able to hold both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ views on different things, and that there is not a single shopping list of liberal causes to which we all sign up).

    But seeing ‘liberal’ as a term of opposition brings us to the much more interesting word: ‘conservative’. Its use is manifold, and it’s often worn as a badge of pride. On occasion I would like nothing less than to be known as ‘conservative’. Yet I think it is well overdue a revisit, because by allowing particular groups to own it, we allow them to set the narrative of our ecclesial conversations and, in doing so, to determine what it is that ought to be conserved. Conserving things – and choosing which things take the primacy in being conserved – is by no means as simple as is often made out. That is absolutely the case within the church. Our failure to name that – and to ask precisely what and why something deserves to be conserved – is very much at the root of many of our current problems. I think it’s about time we did something about that.

    At the moment, those things which reward you with the name ‘conservative’ appear, rather conveniently, to fit into the unthinking, unflinching, culture-infused patriarchal bucket that I described earlier. No women in ordained ministry; no gays in dog collars; no this, and no that. Yet many in this ‘conservative’ camp seem entirely happy to jettison much else that we might think needs to be conserved. The Eucharist becomes ‘inherited’ worship, and can be jettisoned at will. The established nature of the Church of England no longer matters, and can be ignored. The concept of the creeds being the foundation of orthodoxy is terribly old hat. The idea of our church being primarily the chaplain to the nation, its role not as purity cult but as local, embedded community of faith, can all be thrown away in the name of some fatuous idea of doctrinal unity relating to the gays. Catholic order – not least catholic, diocesan episcopacy: binned. Baptism of infants: not too sure about that. ‘Those forms of worship authorised or allowed by canon’: not on your nelly. Any basic semblance of being in historical continuity with the messy reality of the church in this land: no need.

    I’ve spent a fair bit of time recently talking to people outside the Synodical bubble about the future of the Church of England – people who think us being there is important, even if they might not see themselves as terribly involved in the political struggles of the church. One thing that has really surprised but also encouraged me is that the church that they – almost universally – want to see is the church that has been gifted to us down the ages. They don’t actually want pop-concert-church, or whatever faddy nonsense is the most recent recipient of the magical money pot that will surely solve all our problems. They really, really don’t want a church that is willing to bin everything it has been gifted. And they really do want a church that looks like the Church of England which they imagine might still have a role to play as an established church – one whose parishes are embedded in their communities, one where there is good, theologically informed, preaching, one where the forms of service are recognisably ‘church’, one where the poorest and the most vulnerable are put front and centre, one where the church can be a blessing to everyone in the community rather than to a select few, one which appears to have its head screwed on and isn’t endlessly reactionary, one that is – frankly – just bog standard Church of England.

    It seems to me that that this is all actually rather conservative. It’s conservative, because it conserves something of the essence of the Church of England that the neo-puritans currently assaulting our church structures and its very nature are trying to do away with in the name of ‘conservatism’. It isn’t going to be perfect, and there is going to need to be room for the messiness of church life that has characterised the Church of England since earliest times. But it is a thinking conservatism – a conservatism that asks first ‘what, why, how’, and then gets to work.

    So I’m going to own that ‘conservative’ title a little more from now on, because to the outside world, those of us denounced as ‘liberals’ by malcontents within General Synod are really the conservatives. We want the Church of England to continue as the established chaplain to the nation that it has been for centuries. We want the Church of England to simply be the Church of England. That will mean some changes – changes that will allow it to fulfil that role better into the future. It will mean interrogating our prejudices and asking how the Holy Spirit might be calling us to proclaim the faith afresh in this generation. Yet it is through doing that, and not holding onto the comfort blanket of conserved externalities, that we might conserve the essence of the great gift that is our church. The fight to do so is more than worth it.

  • Halcyon Daze? Nostalgia in the Memory of the Church

    by Martyn Percy, Professor of Religion and Culture at the University of St. Joseph in Macao and Provost-Theologian at Ming Hua College, Hong Kong and Research Professor of Theology at Institut für Christkatholische Theologie, University of Bern, Switzerland. His The Crisis of Colonial Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England is just published by Hurst.

    Once upon a time, nostalgia was not just a longing for the past, but a potentially fatal disease. First used as a medical term in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the context of Swiss soldiers and mercenaries, it referred to (nostos is the Greek for homecoming, and algos is a word for pain). Or rather, a sickness for order and things being put back where they once were or belonged. Nostalgia, in this sense, is not a benign sentiment, but an anxiety caused by displacement and dislocation. However, nostalgia is also a dangerous emotion that can lead to self-imprisonment through false memory.

    For those who speak nostalgically of the Church of England and wider Anglican Communion, the debt to the nostalgia narrated by the British Empire and the unity provided by the service of imperialism are obvious. Even recently, Bishops could be heard to speak with wistful admiration of a denomination stretching from Malagasy to Mongolia, from Sweden to South Africa, from India to Tasmania, and from the United Kingdom across the whole of the Americas. The London office for the Anglican Communion also invests in this narrative. Such nostalgia paints a rose-tinted picture of global coverage, as though the extent of the Church of England were akin to every community having a local post office.

    The reality is quite different. Coverage across the Anglican Communion is patchy, and it is increasingly difficult to understand how, in terms of compatibility, coherence, and commonality, the various components constituting this church can claim the label ‘Communion’. Even if the term is used, many who use such language no longer mean the same thing. Furthermore, others regard the term as problematic – either a dangerous fiction or a disingenuous description. ‘Anglicanism’, it seems, is increasingly a term of ascription that is contested and divisive.

    Nostalgia is a vehicle that tries to carry a community through the uneasy conditions of modern and contemporary life and the politics of fear and anxiety. However, it is unlikely to be able to carry any meaningful freight going forward.  The challenges of the present now require a large dose of realism. Otherwise, fantasies and wishful thinking will be mistaken for vision.

    Is there any way past this nostalgic pathology under which the Church of England labours? The only way through this is likely to be rooted in harsh realities. Across the global Anglican Communion, the days when directives from the Church of England freighted authority and power are long gone.

    We live in a post-colonial age. Honesty and clarity about the past can only help. Otherwise, amnesia and myth-making memory will reign unchecked. The roots of the Anglican Communion and the Commonwealth arise from the British Empire, which was driven by trade, consumerism, military action, conquest and imperial expansionism.  This was primarily an English project in which the Church of England served as a legitimating spiritual arm for an empire, capitalising on the territorial expansion, giving it an aura of global territorial catholicity.

    Yet, at present, the Church of England is run by a tiny elite operating a model of leadership that is a hybrid of monarchy and autocracy. Any democratic accountability is strongly resisted and, as clergy and laity repeatedly find, the will of the people barely counts for anything. Like grumbling serfs, however, congregations are nonetheless expected to fund a hierarchy that is aloof, never liable or culpable, and operating as a law unto itself

    With the appointment of a new Second Estates Commissioner there may be an opportunity for a significant change – one that will snap the Church of England out of its self-induced coma. Marsha de Cordova (MP for Battersea) was the confirmed choice. It took almost 100 days for the government to find an appointee, the longest time lag since 1832.

    Perhaps the lengthy lacuna of 2024 reflects the ambiguous nature of the role. In the past, the Second Estates Commissioner has functioned as an apologist for the Church of England when faced with questions and scrutiny from Parliament. But the present demands a different approach, namely making the Church of England accountable to parliament, church members, taxpayers and voters.

    Marsha de Cordova attends a church run by the Holy Trinity Brompton network, which has recently taken the lead in secessionism over the Church of England’s slow, gradual embrace of equal marriage. Yet Marsha has previously served in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions) (Disabled People). She also served on the Work and Pensions Select Committee and the Petitions Committee.

    It would be hard to find any MP who could, in conscience, act as a parliamentary apologist for the Church of England in the 21st century, with its position being so clearly anomalous and democratically indefensible. With clergy having few employment rights, and LGBTQ+ clergy still discriminated against, it is hard to imagine the Church of England hanging on to its powers and privileges in the next ten years.

    Most citizens expect equality and accountability from their institutions as a prerequisite for trust. Moreover, serious questions must be asked as the number of paid-up members of the church has effectively fallen off the cliff edge—and there is no sign that this decline is temporary. These questions relate to the fitness and role of an established church in one nation, yet within a devolved union of three nations (and Northern Ireland).

    Meanwhile, there are hardly any – indeed, no – examples of the much-vaunted new models of the church making a net contribution to their diocese for the investments they have received.  It is impossible to find one of these new strategic initiatives of the Archbishops’ Council paying its way. Ordinary parishes are funding a fetishised experimentalism that is not subject to any scrutiny, fiscal accountability or even much in the way of legally authorised protocols.

    Meanwhile, stipendiary clergy numbers are set to fall to around 5,000 by 2034. January 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of Reform and Renewal, the much-vaunted strategy document of the Archbishops’ Council. In 2014, General Synod and the Church of England were promised more clergy, more churches, growth and a major turnaround in fortunes. Not one target has been met. In fact, the decline has accelerated.

    If the Archbishops’ Council were a company’s board of directors, the shareholders would have passed several votes of no confidence by now. Indeed, were this a school, it would be in special measures. But the Archbishops’ Council has no accountability. A recent public survey shows that public confidence in ordained ministry has collapsed in just a few decades, as its senior leadership are no longer believed or trusted inside the church, let alone outside. The recent report commissioned by the Archbishops’ Council on the very subject of trust and trustworthiness ran out of time in debate, but not without members of General Synod expressing their lack of trust in the same report’s origins, methodology and political aspirations. That’s right, nobody trusted a report from the bishops that was all about trust.

    Some churches are now breaking away and conducting their own bespoke versions of licensing and ordination. This has been slowly gestating since the 1992 Act of Synod, which sought to appease those aggrieved at the decision to ordain women to the priesthood. Long before Burger King adopted their most famous slogan – “have it your way” – the Church of England turned its reliable set menu into a proverbial buffet car. Take it or leave it, the customer is king.

    The new Estates Commissioner will only be able to be a credible respondent for the Church of England in parliament when it can be demonstrated that bishops are to be held accountable to ordinary secular employment laws and legal provisions on gender, sexuality, data protection, and safeguarding. At present, this is an established church lecturing the world on human rights yet having secured legal opt-out provisions under the Human Rights Act (1997).  This is unconscionable.

    The current situation of weak autocracy is arguably the worst of all worlds. As there are no operational conflicts of interest policy or register of interests amongst the highest echelons of the Church of England’s leadership, concealment of malice, malpractice and incompetence is relatively straightforward. Those who try to speak out will quickly be frozen out – the church created its own ‘cancel culture’ centuries ago. This is an organisation that really knows how to bully its people. It can be brutal.

    The Archbishops’ Council secretariat recently replied to a question put to the previous Second Estates Commissioner, Andrew Selous MP, in December 2023.  In the response from Lambeth Palace, the Church of England’s most senior officer explained there are no plans for independent external review or performance management of the Church of England’s treatment of victims.

    Furthermore, the Secretary General added, supporting victims of abuse in the longer term should be a burden carried by the taxpayer. The invoice for abuses perpetrated by the Church of England should be forwarded to HM Treasury. Ironically, the same body that gives millions of pounds back to the church through Gift Aid.

    Such hubris is breathtaking.  Yet the ruling culture of bishops, courtiers, Synod lawyers, and ecclesiocrats remains unaccountable, mercurial and aloof. Nothing of this can be defended in any democratic parliament in the 21st century. Reform cannot come quickly enough.

     

     

  • Crown Nominations Commission Back in the Firing Line

    by Anthony Archer, former member of the General Synod and the Crown Nominations Commission

    There has never been a shortage of armchair commentators on the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), which started life in 1976 as the Crown Appointments Commission (CAC), a belated recommendation of the 1970 Chadwick Commission Church and State.  In its early years it was lambasted for nominating men in grey suits. When I pointed out that its first handiwork was the nomination in 1977 of Hugh Montefiore to Birmingham, I was reminded that one swallow doesn’t make a summer!

    In the 1980s and 1990s evangelicals (in those days a broad group) moaned about the few nominations being made of episcopal candidates of their flavour. Such redoubtable CAC central members of the day as Viscountess Brentford merely retorted, ‘show us the candidates.’ But the process developed, and the years of Tony Sadler as Archbishops’ Secretary for Appointments gave way to the significant period of service of Caroline Boddington. Paperwork and due diligence improved. General Synod introduced interviews, against the initial advice of the then archbishops. The preferment process generally became more robust; not that every diocesan bishop would necessarily participate by putting names forward.

    Radical change is not a feature of the CNC process. Most has been change imposed from outside. Gordon Brown could not see how a son of the manse should have any involvement in the process. The convention was changed, such that only one name was sent to Downing Street, although it took General Synod some years to catch up with its standing orders. The Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 was a meaningful change, and its provision is soon to be extended.

    But throughout, the process received regular comment, mostly negative, almost certainly because of its perceived secrecy. Yes, it is confidential, as most appointments processes should be, but there is a difference between transparency of process and confidentiality of deliberation.

    And then we come to the current situation, the CNC 2022-2027 quinquennium  (central members are elected by General Synod for five years). I was privileged to serve from 2005-2007 and from 2017-2021. In all, including Dover, I have served on 18 CNCs. We have never failed. Why should we? The Church of England, a very flat organisation structurally, is stuffed with talent, and since 2014 that talent pool for episcopal appointments has theoretically doubled in size. No CNC ever failed until Hereford in 2014. It is probable that that CNC could not agree a second name, which was then fatal to the entire process. But it was possible to meet again quite quickly, and the nomination was resolved. The failure with Oxford in 2015 was more complex. Much got leaked about it. It was not edifying. A dysfunctional CNC apparently managed to promote two women candidates during final voting, neither of whom achieved the required majority of votes. Quite why they were invited for interview, I don’t know. But it was painful, not least for the candidates in question, as it is now.

    What are we witnessing now that has changed? Over the years, the General Synod has managed to elect a ‘balanced ticket’ of central members, more or less. Of six members, two have tended to be evangelical, two liberal catholic, and two traditionalist. Discernment should not be on party lines (the issue at stake here), but diversity of tradition in the central members helps eliminate criticism. The change today is a hugely more polarised General Synod, arguably more right wing (if that is the right term) than the extended 2015-2021 Synod. The new arrangements for electing CNC central members in pairs have not produced the result hoped for. Tribalism has become acute. Of the six ‘pairs’ of central members, fully four consist of members who are either conservative evangelical or traditional catholic. They tend to work together. The CNC arithmetic requires a candidate to obtain 10 votes (out of usually 14). If such a candidate does not find favour with the conservatives, it means that there are always four votes against such a person. That candidate may be a woman and/or hold views supportive of the introduction of LLF prayers (possibly indicative of a view on equal marriage). It requires only one of the diocesan members to side with this group for the candidate to fail. If no other candidate who has been interviewed can secure ten votes, the commission fails entirely. Two have now failed in the space of a year: Carlisle and Ely.

    The bishops (most of them) are incandescent with rage, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was his concern during the 2012-2017 CNC quinquennium which led to the magisterial report of Revd Professor Oliver O’Donovan, Discerning in Obedience. But General Synod failed to implement the key recommendations, the abolition of secret voting, and lowering the bar if, after successive rounds of voting, the CNC cannot agree.

    Which takes us to the recent House of Bishops meeting at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. Arriving at the Porter’s Lodge, I was one of the ‘members of the public’ granted a ticket to observe the meeting. A first for anyone. We gathered in an entrance hall. The College of Bishops (all the bishops) had earlier been meeting and had had its own session on the CNC crisis.  They were overrunning.

    We were shepherded in to what was to become a House of Bishops meeting (the diocesan bishops and some elected suffragans). The venue was a large hall. Nothing could have been less like a synod meeting. A hundred or so bishops seated at round tables, most in shirt sleeves, giving the impression of the latter stages of a wedding breakfast, with the bottles of wine (actually water) running out. There was a high table. The Bishop of Winchester presided, in dress-down. The Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council was immaculate, chinos, sports jacket and tie. The mandatory legal beagle sat impassive.

    We were welcomed. Heads turned. Never before had a meeting of the House of Bishops had to cope with outsiders (at least apart from formally appointed observers). Some five members of the current cadre of CNC central members were present. Four current or former members of the General Synod were there, only one of whom (me!) was a former central member of the CNC. A lay representative of the Ely CNC came. Two members of the press braved the journey to Oxford (best to come by train and walk), being representatives of The Times and the Church Times. The  Church Times devoted a full page to the report, almost missing its deadline for print. The Times was to follow up on its earlier piece in the week with the headline “Church crisis after ‘alarming failure to nominate bishops’.” The BBC website also picked the story up.

    And so, the debate began. It had been called for by some bishops under standing orders, a kind of emergency debate. It was informed by a paper which outlined some solutions to the problems, which had been circulated to General Synod members ahead of the meeting, but which hadn’t been discussed with the current CNC central members. The Bishop of London (in proper clerical dress) introduced the business, an assured and purposeful performance. There were amendments. There always are in General Synod business and in the Houses. Submitting one guarantees you are called to speak. The Bishop of Oxford wanted the House to emphasise its ‘regret’ at the state of affairs. Agreed on a show of hands. The Bishop of Rochester wanted to slow things down: more time for consultation. But he was seen off: this was just kicking the issues into the long grass. What else could be learned that is not already known? He gathered 13 votes in favour of his amendment, but there were 24 against. The Bishop of Oxford then returned with his second amendment. If the CNC fails to agree, leave it to a panel (for example) of archbishops and the five most senior bishops to send a name to the Prime Minister. Well, that would have been red rag to the General Synod bull, likely to be interpreted as an episcopal power grab. It was defeated, but only by 14 votes to 19. To be fair to the Bishop of Oxford, he was just suggesting a pragmatic solution, a last resort process which would concentrate the minds of the members of the CNC.

    And so, we returned to the main motion, amended by the insertion of ‘regretting’ and the deletion of ‘acknowledging.’ What was really happening? At one level, the House of Bishops was doing what it had to under SO3 of its standing orders (don’t get me started). Although it cannot command the General Synod, the proposals it brings to Synod are persuasive, usually.

    A key theme of the debate was whether the House was bringing proposals that merely addressed the symptoms (the failure of the CNC to nominate) or whether it had really dealt with the underlying causes. The Bishop of Bath and Wells took up this theme. But he didn’t seem to acknowledge what was clear from the paper informing the motion, namely a complete failure of some recent CNCs to ‘discern’ a candidate (although some nominations, such as Peterborough and Exeter seemed to have been plain sailing). The meeting saw an impassioned speech from the Bishop of Dover, angry that certain CNC members will only vote for people who ‘interpret the Gospel my way.’ There were some heartfelt contributions from the Bishops of Stepney, Taunton, Peterborough, and Derby. The latter had had to face predictable comment in the Lords recently during the passage of the Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill. The Bishop of Gloucester also spoke. It was not lost in the public gallery that more women were called in the debate than men.

    We know (the CNC has become very leaky recently because members and candidates are angry) that certain CNC members are voting purely on tribal lines. We have seen this before, but only now has this faction had the influence to thwart nominations. Frustratingly for them, and a mercy for the Church of England, they do not have the numbers to nominate ‘their own person,’ although they have tried successively. But what they have already achieved (which is wicked) is to provoke some candidates no longer to allow their names to go forward in the present climate.

    The Bishop of London summed up. The motion was convincingly  carried by 27 votes to nine, with three abstentions. The nine votes were assumed to be some of those who voted for the earlier Rochester amendment. Proposals (still to be worked on) will come to General Synod in February 2025, to include removing the secret ballot at CNCs, changing the threshold when the commission can’t agree, and giving the presiding archbishop an additional vote, if needed.

    The battleground will be the secret ballot. It is frankly dishonest to vote to shortlist a candidate who you know you will not vote for at the final meeting, but who otherwise meets the criteria. Worse is the fact that members can block a candidate while being able to deny the fact due to the secret ballot, having possibly made positive comments about the candidate in open discussion. I’ve witnessed this, but not in an environment where it made a material difference to the outcome. There were times during my CNC years when we initially looked as if there might not be 10 votes for a candidate. What did we do? We discussed it. We explained (maybe not all of us) why we had voted as we had, and we listened to others as to why they had voted for another candidate. We reached agreement and voted again. Simple, honest, transparent, prayerful discernment. But it doesn’t suit those who come with their own agenda. And when they are called out they complain that someone has leaked confidential information about this or that CNC.

    General Synod has been here before, but this time it’s serious. The Church of England in general, and the CNC in particular, look a laughing stock to the nation. It should know what it has to do.

     

     

  • Can Parliament Permit Church of England Clergy to Marry Same-Sex Couples? Should it?

    by Professor Iain McLean, FBA FRSE, Professor Emeritus of Politics, Oxford University and a fellow of Nuffield College. As a Quaker, he was a consultant to Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) for their lobbying on the ‘Alli amendment’ (to the Equality Act 2010, permitting faith communities to conduct civil partnerships) and on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013

    (the second in a series of four. based on a presentation to the June 26th Symposium on Same-Sex Marriage in the Church of England organised by Sir Ben Bradshaw and Jayne Ozanne)

    On 21 March 2023, Ben Bradshaw MP (Lab., Exeter) introduced a Ten-Minute Rule Bill ‘to enable clergy of the Church of England to conduct same sex marriages on Church of England premises in certain circumstances’. It was co-sponsored by parliamentarians from the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Green parties (no nationalists; the bill would apply in England only). Introducing it, Mr (now Sir) Ben Bradshaw stated that it had the support of Sir Tony Baldry (former MP (Cons, Banbury) and Second Church Estates Commissioner). He also stated that

    My preference—and, I imagine, that of most colleagues—would be for the Church to do this itself….The main motivation in introducing it is to encourage the bishops to stick to the commitments and timetable agreed by February’s Synod and resist any delay or backsliding at the next Synod in July.

    The current Second Church Estates Commissioner, Andrew Selous, responded

    [I]t is necessary to respond to the Bill in my capacity as Second Church Estates Commissioner because it seeks to usurp the role of the democratically elected General Synod of the Church of England, as well as to remove the freedom of the Church of England to decide its own doctrine, a freedom that members from all parts of this House champion for religions and beliefs all over the world and one that we should therefore apply equally to the Church of England (Hansard, Commons, 21 March 2023).

    Earlier, in response to an Urgent Question, he had said:

    In order to change canon law on the doctrine of holy matrimony, there has to be a two-thirds majority in the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy and the House of Laity of the General Synod, which is itself a devolved body of this Parliament, and the vast majority of whose members are elected. There is not currently a two-thirds majority in the General Synod to change canon law on the doctrine of holy matrimony (Hansard, Commons, 24 January 2023).

    … although he modified this answer two days later to say

    the advice I was given then was by the Church legal office, and I was yesterday asked to make a small clarification. A simple majority in each of the three Houses of the General Synod could suffice to pass a measure and amending canon to change the definition of marriage in ecclesiastical law, but circumstances could also arise in which two-thirds majorities in the House of Bishops and the House of Clergy would be needed, and, as with all authorised forms of service, a two-thirds majority in each House would be required for the approval of the Synod as a form of service for the marriage of a same-sex couple (Hansard, Commons, 26 January 2023).

    A Ten-Minute Bill is purely expressive speech. Mr Bradshaw’s bill received a first reading without a division, but is tabled for its second reading on a day when Parliament will not be sitting. Nevertheless, the matter remains of current interest. The General Synod of the Church of England meets in July and November 2023. The agenda for July contains no such proposed Measure. If the Synod declines to introduce a Measure to permit those clergy who so wish to conduct same-sex weddings in their churches, can Parliament intervene with a Private Member’s Bill, which unlike a Ten-Minute Bill receives substantive debate? And should it?

    Can Parliament intervene?

    It certainly can. The orthodox doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty maintains that Parliament remains supreme, even when it has delegated authority to bodies such as the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, and the General Synod of the Church of England. Since delegating authority to what is now the General Synod in 1919, Parliament has intervened in the doctrine of the Church of England, most notoriously in the ‘Prayer Book controversy’ of 1927-8. Twice, the House of Commons turned down the Church of England prayer book, on the grounds that it was too close to Roman Catholicism. The decisive majority included Calvinist MPs from Scotland and Ulster. They could vote, because of parliamentary sovereignty, even though it was an England-only matter.

    The doctrines of the Church of England have less protection from Parliamentary interference than do those of the Church of Scotland. Both Parliament and the courts interfered with the doctrines of the Kirk, the former by the Patronage Act 1711 and the latter in various court judgements culminating in the Free Church case (Bannatyne v. Overtoun [1904] AC 515). In 1711 Parliament enacted a right for lay patrons to nominate ministers. In 1904 the judicial House of Lords awarded all those assets of the large United Free (UF) Church of Scotland that had come from the former Free Church to the tiny continuing Free Church, on the grounds that

    the Establishment principle and the Westminster Confession were distinctive tenets of the Free Church; that the Free Church had no power, where property was concerned, to alter or vary the doctrine of the Church; that there was no true union …; and that the appellants were entitled to hold for behoof of the Free Church the property held by the Free Church before the union in 1900.

    To forestall any repetition, the Church of Scotland and the UF Church, who were merging, obtained a remarkable abnegation of Parliamentary sovereignty in the Church of Scotland Act 1921 c.29 (‘An Act to declare the lawfulness of certain Articles declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual prepared with the authority of the General Assembly of the Church.’). These Articles Declaratory, drafted by the General Assembly, trump any statutes that might conflict with them.

    This ancient history illustrates two bad ways of interfering with religious freedom. Both 1711 and 1927-8 were instances of what is now called the ‘West Lothian Question’, in which a measure affecting only one part of the UK is enacted against the majority vote of members from that part. The majority of Scots MPs voted against the 1711 Act. The majority of English MPs voted in favour of the Prayer Book. And the courts would not now presume to wade in to identify the fundamental tenets of a religion and use that as a basis for assigning property. Are there, though, any good grounds for parliamentary involvement in religion?

    Should it?

    There are two main arguments against introducing a bill to permit C of E clergy to solemnise same-sex marriage, and two main arguments in favour.

    The first argument against is that what is delegated should stay delegated. By delegating authority to the Church of England, Parliament extricated itself from what had been very time-consuming and messy arguments about, for instance, divorce, the Roman Catholic presence in England, and marriage to a deceased wife’s sister. The second argument against is that espoused by Andrew Selous above: that intervention would ‘remove the freedom of the Church of England to decide its own doctrine’.

    The first argument in favour of intervention is that a purely permissive measure cannot be detrimental to religious freedom. On this argument, individuals have freedom; organisations, not so much. In its zeal to protect the religious freedom of clergy opposed to same-sex marriage, the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013, it is argued, tramples on the religious freedom of clergy supportive of same-sex marriage. As noted in the Ten Minute debate, various denominations have opted in under the 2013 Act or its Scottish equivalent, in all cases permissively. Both Acts protect the conscience of those unwilling to conduct same-sex marriages when their faith group has decided to be open to them.

    The second argument is that the Church of England is for some purposes an agent of the state. Ever since 1753, when it was granted a monopoly of marriage in England & Wales (except for Quakers and Jews, who are still treated differently), it has regulated property and succession rights on behalf of the state. All parish clergy act as registrars – a civil function – when they officiate at a wedding. In addition, they have a common-law duty to marry parishioners, and couples have a common-law right to ask to be married in the parish church of either of them. However, as the Explanatory Notes to the 2013 Act make clear:

    Subsections (4) and (5) provide that any duty of a member of the clergy of the Church of England or the Church in Wales to solemnize a marriage does not extend to same sex couples. In addition, any corresponding right of parishioners to be married by such clergy does not extend to same sex couples. The effect of this is that the common law duty on the clergy of the Church of England and the Church in Wales to marry parishioners is not extended to same sex couples.

    Examples…

    A man lives next door to a Church of England parish church and wishes to get married there. He is getting married to a woman. Neither of them has ever attended services at the church or professes to be Christian. He speaks to the vicar who agrees to marry the couple, given his legal duty to marry parishioners.

    A man who lives next door to a Church of England parish church wishes to get married there. He is getting married to a man. Both of them regularly attend services at the church and are committed Christians. He speaks to the vicar who has to refuse to marry the couple, since it would not be lawful for him to do so and the legal duty to marry parishioners does not extend to same sex couples.

    For a text presumably drafted by civil servants and/or parliamentary drafters, this seems unusually forthright.

    The ‘quadruple lock’ inserted in the 2013 Act at the request of conservative denominations contains a couple of tumblers that are unique to the Church of England. They are section 1 subsections 3-5:

    (3) No Canon of the Church of England is contrary to section 3 of the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533 (which provides that no Canons shall be contrary to the Royal Prerogative or the customs, laws or statutes of this realm) by virtue of its making provision about marriage being the union of one man with one woman.

    (4) Any duty of a member of the clergy to solemnize marriages (and any corresponding right of persons to have their marriages solemnized by members of the clergy) is not extended by this Act to marriages of same sex couples.

    (5) A “member of the clergy” is—

    (a) a clerk in Holy Orders of the Church of England, or

    (b) a clerk in Holy Orders of the Church in Wales.

    Subsection (3) is declaratory, and nobody’s religious freedom would be impaired by its repeal. The effect of repealing subsections (4) and (5) would be to remove the anomaly highlighted in the Explanatory Notes.

    I conclude that a Private Member’s Bill to repeal these subsections would be a simple way of granting parliamentary approval of the consciences of clergy who wish to conduct same-sex marriage, while preserving all the protections already in the 2013 Act for clergy who do not. If such a bill won parliamentary time (which requires at least the tacit consent of the government of the day), the votes on it would be classically ‘conscience’ matters and no party would be expected to whip its members. Unlike in 1927, however, Scottish and Northern Irish members should not vote.

  • Equality, Parliament, and the Established Church:  Some Recent Close Encounters

    Revd Canon Dr Judith Maltby is Chaplain, Fellow and Dean of Welfare of Corpus Christi College, Reader in Church History in the University of Oxford, and a member of the General Synod of the Church of England

    (the first in a series of four: based on a presentation to the June 26th Symposium on Same-Sex Marriage in the Church of England organised by Sir Ben Bradshaw and Jayne Ozanne)

    In February 2023, the General Synod of the Church of England debated and passed by a sizeable majority a paper from the House of Bishops which is intended to move the needle in a positive direction towards equality for LGBT+ people.  Such reform impacts on laypeople and clergy active within the Church but also on the wider public the Established Church seeks to serve, chiefly through the parochial system and sector chaplaincies. This wider public turn to the Church for food banks, youth work and elder care and at key ‘life events’, or ‘occasional offices’ of baptism, marriage and funerals. Marriage, of course, is at the heart of the issue. The House of Bishops’ proposals to Synod in February were the result of a lengthy six-year process known as Living in Love and Faith. I know it was a lengthy and careful process – I was a member of one of LLF’s working groups.

    In February, before Synod, a group of about a dozen cross-party Parliamentarians met with Archbishop Justin. It was, according to the Guardian and Telegraph, a heated meeting, at which Parliamentarians ‘threatened’ disestablishment if the Church did not change its position to allow equal marriage. The Telegraph reported that ‘the Archbishop of Canterbury has vowed that he will not be told what to do by MPs over blessings for same-sex couples’. Later that month, while at the global Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Ghana, the BBC reported that the Archbishop spoke of being ‘“threatened with parliamentary action” in an attempt “to force same-sex marriage” into the Church of England’.

    There is a lot of alleged ‘threatening’ going on by MPs as well as the implied criticism that Parliamentarians were somehow out of line to take a genuine interest in how the Established Church serves the nation. I would like to put the Archbishop’s remarks into historical context in terms of the relationship between Parliament and the Established Church of England. I am principally a historian of the 17th century, but you will be relieved that I only want to go back about 30 years to another significant equality issue in which Parliament and Church interacted: the ordination of women to the priesthood in the early 1990s and the consecration of women as bishops in the 2010s.

    In 2011, I co-edited a collection of essays with two other Oxford colleagues, called The Established Church:  Past, Present and Future.  The book came out of a day conference on the same topic. I am a cradle Anglican but moved to England from the United States in 1979 to begin doctoral studies and have lived here ever since. In my 20s and even into my 30s, I thought Church Establishment to be frankly bizarre – who wouldn’t coming from abroad? But over the years, I have become a ‘critical convert’ to it. The day conference came about because whenever I heard a bishop on the radio defending establishment, I wanted to dis-establish it. Surely, there were more robust and creative ways to understand the public good of Establishment than the tired truisms that get trotted out. That is what we set out to do, though not all the contributors were of one mind on the subject.

    My own chapter looked at gender and Establishment. The research was prompted by an exchange in Synod in 2010, rather like the one I started with, between the new Second Church Estates Commissioner, Tony Baldry, MP and the then bishop of Durham, Tom Wright. Baldry, characteristically, gave Synod some nuanced and honest advice that the Commons would look dimly on a measure to consecrate women as bishops that was discriminatory – that is, that treated bishops who were women differently than bishops who were men. Tom Wright, in his last speech before resigning his see, attacked Baldry in the chamber, claiming that he had said (which Baldry had not) something like ‘the political winds were blowing this way, and so the church had better get in line’. With rhetorical flourish, Wright said: ‘The day the Church ceases to be able to say we must obey God rather than human authority will be the day it ceases to be the Church.’ His remarks were greeted by thunderous applause in the Synod chamber as it is a statement, on face value, pretty much impossible for any Christian to disagree with.

    As I said, this exchange was the motivation for my own chapter in the book. I had a sense, although I had never explored it in detail, that the creation of Provincial Episcopal Visitors (or ‘Flying Bishops’ as they have come to be known) was the result of pressure from the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament, as it was not part of the Synodical Measure that passed Synod in November 1992.

    Some of you, like me, will remember that momentous vote in 1992 in General Synod, approving the ordination of women to the priesthood.  The 1992 Measure certainly did not treat women priests equally with their male counterparts. It:

    • Exempted women clergy from any protection provided by the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act
    • Created Resolutions A and B ‘to protect’ parishes from women clergy
    • Explicitly excluded women from the episcopate
    • Guaranteed that no bishop would be ‘forced’ to ordain women
    • Provided financial provision to ‘compensate’ male clergy who felt they needed to leave the Church because of the ordination of women to the priesthood

    You might think that that was quite enough compromise and ‘protection’ for opponents.

    And you might also be thinking, there is no mention whatsoever here of Flying Bishops – an invention entirely without historical precedent to address an issue on which Anglicans were not of one mind. There is a very, very long list of things about which Anglicans are not of one mind, but never before has an episcopal sub-structure been created to meet the needs of a particular theological constituency.(1)  And what a dangerous precedent it set for dealing with disagreement as we now see attempts to apply the model to other theological disputes.

    Where did this theological and ecclesiological innovation come from? Well, Parliamentarians, I hate to tell you, it came from you. Hours spent on Hansard, which in 2010 had the slowest search engine I’d ever come across:  there it all was in the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Committee, a committee of both Houses, whose job it is to decide whether a Synodical Measure is ‘expedient’ to go to the Commons and Lords for approval.

    A cross-party group of MPs, chiefly Frank Field, Simon Hughes, Patrick Cormack, and John Selwyn Gummer pushed for even greater concessions to those opposed to the ordination of women than were already in the Measure. In fact, the vast majority of time spent by the Ecclesiastical Committee in 1993 was on how to provide even more ‘safeguards’ for those opposed to women in the priesthood. Such involvement by Parliamentarians was entirely appropriate, as Frank Field maintained, as it was part of their:

    … function as parliamentarians … to protect the interests of constituents who may be adversely affected by a [Church] Measure …. we are quite rightly … much concerned with, and will no doubt spend much time on, how the position of minorities is protected.(2)

    Going back to this material recently to prepare this piece, I was struck by the extensive use by Parliamentarians in the early 1990s of ‘safeguarding’ language – that male clergy might somehow be ‘victims’ of some sort of ‘abuse’ merely by the existence of women clergy. It is very chilling language now in the light of the recent series of catastrophic and real safeguarding failures in the Church that are piling up. But in the early 1990s, while Bishop Peter Ball was committing terrible abuse, somehow it was women priests who were seen as the people from whom other Church members needed ‘safeguarding’.

    The bishops, I’m afraid, caved in to this Parliamentary pressure and these ‘threats’ and produced the Act of Synod of 1993, putting it in place for the Ecclesiastical Committee to deem it expedient for the Measure to go to Parliament for a vote in October and November 1993. The Measure passed handsomely – 10:1 in the Commons and 7:1 in the Lords – and several hours of parliamentary time was set aside for debate. Thanks to the Ecclesiastical Committee, even more ‘safeguarding’ was provided and the equality of women clergy even more eroded. Both Field and Hughes spoke in the debate in the House, proudly outlining how the Ecclesiastical Committee had been key in the creation of Flying Bishops.

    I have time to touch only briefly on women in the episcopate, but we can see significant culture change from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. MPs used Early Day Motions from the early 2000s onwards to raise the question, with increasing impatience, of when the country can expect the Established Church to have women bishops. In their remarks, MPs often praised the public good provided by the Church’s parochial system and the women priests who were serving the wider community through it.

    Reflecting on this history challenges any notion that Parliamentarians taking an interest in the affairs of the Established Church is in anyway improper or unusual in the modern era. In the early 1990s, Parliamentarians ensured there was even more discriminatory provision against women priests and gave us Flying Bishops. By the early 2000s, MPs were repeatedly raising questions about the exclusion of women from the episcopate of the Established Church. You will remember the outcry in the Commons when the Measure narrowly failed to achieve a two-thirds majority in the House of Laity in 2012.   As the Church of England obsesses with its narrative of decline and lack of relevance, it is ironic that when the members of the public legislature of the country actually take an interest in the Church because they believe it to matter, such interest is perceived as ‘interference’ and ‘threatening’. In a way, I agree with Frank Field when he said it was their function as Parliamentarians:  ‘… to protect the interests of constituents who may be adversely affected by a [Church] Measure’.(3)

    In 1993, the ‘interests of constituents’ were understood to mean providing yet more discriminatory measures against women. In the past 20 years or so, the attention of MPs to ‘the interests of [their] constituents’ is about promoting equality in the way the Established Church orders its life and serves the wider community. The modern relationship of Parliament and the Church of England is more complicated than accusations of ‘threatening’ behaviour support.

    Notes
    (1) See Judith Maltby, ‘One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, but Two Integrities?’ in Monica Furlong, ed, Act of Synod or Act of Folly?: Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod 1993 (SCM Press, 1998).
    (2) Reports of the Ecclesiastical Committee, p. 64 (19 April 1993).
    (3) Reports of the Ecclesiastical Committee, p. 64 (19 April 1993).
    Further reading
    Judith Maltby, ‘Gender and Establishment:  Parliament, “Erastianism” and the Ordination of Women 1993-2010’ in Mark Chapman, Judith Maltby & William Whyte, eds, The Established Church:  Past, Present and Future (T&T Clark, 2011).

  • Conscientious Objection

    Questions of Conscience (5)

    by Rachel Muers, Professor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers)

    The annual International Conscientious Objectors’ Day commemorates and supports those who refuse compulsory military service. Objection to military service is the modern paradigm for ‘conscientious objection’. Indeed, conscientious objection may be equated with pacifism, so that the argument about whether conscientious objection is justified shades into the debate about whether war can be justified.

    Historically, however, the question of conscientious objection is not about a specific ethical issue, but rather about the deeper question of the relationship between an individual’s convictions and the state’s requirements. The starting point for conscientious objection is saying no to a specific demand, but it points to a wider conviction – that a person cannot hand over her responsibility for moral or religious judgement to an external authority. Objection to military service is a paradigm for conscientious objection, not just because pacifism is a well-established ‘minority report’ in Christian ethics – but also because military service requires one to place oneself fully at the disposal of the state. It is not a coincidence that objection to swearing oaths, particularly oaths of allegiance, is another major context in which conscientious objection arises. An oath of allegiance, after all, is also a ‘giving over’ of oneself to authority – and though the main objection to it from the earliest conscientious objectors mainly arose from Christ’s command not to swear, there was also a deep and frequently-expressed concern that oaths of allegiance were linked to political and religious violence.

    In English law, conscientious objection arises initially in the confrontation between nonconformists – including, but not only, members of what became the ‘historic peace churches’, such as Quakers – and a state anxious to secure the loyalty of its subjects. From the seventeenth century onwards, we see a long and often tortuous process of negotiation around the provisions the state was able or willing to make to legalise conscientious objection. This was a negotiation not just about what constitutes an acceptable range of opinions, but more fundamentally about what it takes to be recognised as a full member of the national community.

    For example, the specific words ‘conscientious objection’ first appear in English law in the title of an 1838 Act, designed to allow Quakers and Moravians to take up elected local offices without swearing the prescribed oaths. The preamble to the Act refers to the ‘conscientious scruples’ of members of these groups – a puzzling eccentricity, obstinately maintained by minority communities. The problem is that these scruples, when they come up against the law, have effects ‘to the manifest detriment of themselves and their fellow subjects’ – and the Quakers and Moravians will accept that detriment rather than swear an oath. Fortunately, in this case to accommodate them will cause ‘no mischief or inconvenience’, so an alternative process is found, and the wheels of local government continue to turn.

    Notice here that from both sides, the nonconformists and the state, conscientious objection was framed in terms of community membership and religious identity. It was Quakers and Moravians, and elsewhere Separatists and other named groups, who, collectively, maintained and were identified with the conscientious objection. What looked like eccentric ‘scruples’ when they cropped up in isolation – refusing to swear an oath in order to take up the post you were elected to – were recognised as belonging to part of a coherent religious framework and a way of life.

    This points to a wider meaning of conscientious objection, at least as it was framed by early objecting communities. Conscientious objection was not just about refusing a constraint or being in charge of one’s own destiny; it was about being free for and in the service of Christ. The objector’s refusal – I will not obey the state – was grounded in an affirmation – I will follow the call of Christ.

    Does this make the conscientious objector more or less difficult to deal with than the common-or-garden objector, the person who simply finds the provisions of the law inconvenient? On the one hand, we might think that it makes the conscientious objector impervious to reason. If she thinks she is obeying a higher law, a calling from God that is at odds with what most other people (including most other Christians) perceive, she will never be persuaded that she is wrong. Our only options will be either to accommodate her scruples, if accommodation doesn’t cause too much ‘mischief or inconvenience’, or to exclude her, if it does.

    The Quaker social scientist Constance Braithwaite, however, offers another perspective on the religious conscientious objector and her faith. For Braithwaite, conscientious objection is both ‘a reminder to all governments and parliaments that they are not infallible’ and an affirmation that a person ‘must act according to [their] own conscience, even though it is fallible [my emphasis]’. Put in a religious context, conscientious objection is thus a way of saying that both the state authorities and the individual objector are open to divine judgement. The objector claims freedom to seek and follow the leadings of God – which might require her to change, or admit that she was wrong – and in doing so, she reminds the powers that be that they might have to change, or admit that they were wrong. Another way to read conscientious objection, then, is that it holds open a space for future change beyond what we can currently imagine as part of the conversation – just as those engaged in the tortuous negotiations of earlier centuries could not imagine a future in which nobody was forced to swear an oath.

     

     

  • This is No Time for a Soft Drink!

    by the Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham and Trustee of the Ozanne Foundation, and Rt Revd Dr Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham

    Since the Gloucester Report of 1979 there have been many special C of E consultations on homosexuality. Each had its finer points and limitations.

    The latest, Living in Love and Faith, included some moving testimony for anyone who had not actually ever met a gay person before, if indeed there is anyone like that out there. It also proposed some excellent Pastoral Principles for difficult conversations in Church, that would work as well for an argument with the choir as a discussion of sexuality. Good fruitful conversations “acknowledge prejudice, speak into silence, address ignorance, cast out fear, admit hypocrisy and pay attention to power.”

    Has the LLF process actually done these things? And if it has, why has its rollout been so scrappy and contentious? Perhaps the honest result was too hot to handle, and the only way the bishops thought they could keep control of their emerging situation was to come up with a fudge. The problem with fudge is that it’s ambrosia to fudge lovers, but an improbable solution to a war between diabetics and sugar junkies. The bishops’ cunning plan might just annoy everyone equally on all sides, and land them up where they started.

    Perhaps there’s something about the whole way marriage equality has been framed in the Church of England that has trapped it in a destructive infinite monkey cage? Wittgenstein said the reason his early work stalled and led nowhere was that “a picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” The fantasies and fictions the Church of England has indulged in for years about marriage may have driven a self-destructive narrative to vanishing point. Jesus’ paradigm for marriage has been treated as though it were a definition for all time, and it can’t bear the weight.

    Step outside the ecclesiastical goldfish bowl and an entirely different perspective dawns. The wreck and the pottery diver who looked as though he was perpetually sitting on the toilet are only pretend — decoration to make the fish think they were living au naturel not in a tank.

    Last Thursday at the Oxford Union, three bishops spoke in support of the motion that “this house supports same sex marriage in the Church.” Despite the President’s best endeavours, no Catholic or Anglican bishop could be found to speak against. Of course not. Who would want to go down as “the homophobic bishop”? The Union needed to supply two opposition speakers who made it plain they did support same sex marriage, but wanted the motion voted down on the technicality that people should not expect to get married in Church any more than get a driving licence there. Two speakers sincerely believed gay marriage was wrong. One told us that God was discriminatory and sent those who follow the Bishop of London to hell. The other took us back to Nazi Germany, like Basil Fawlty when a guest complained about a prawn cocktail. The motion was carried by 181 votes to 41. It would seem that gay marriage is unthinkable for people who believe there is something wrong with being gay, but for those who see it as a natural aspect of being human it was obvious.

    This being the case, the only choice for a solution now, even a provisional one, would be to facilitate mutual understanding and tolerance, along the lines of the Archbishop’s observation at Lambeth last year that there are churches who could not survive if they didn’t conduct same sex weddings, whilst others could not survive if they did.

    But this is where the Pastoral Principle of paying attention to power kicks in. There is an extraordinary imbalance in the way power is being used here. Some gay people want to marry on conscience grounds, whilst others object, also from conscience. Much as those supporting equal marriage would like it to be allowed in church, they realise this would be intolerable to some who oppose it. Of course nobody would ever be forced to conduct a same sex wedding. What couple would want that anyway? That is an acceptable compromise. St Paul commends such an approach in Romans 14. However, this understanding is not reciprocated. Not only do opponents find it intolerable to conduct gay weddings in Church, but they insist on blocking anyone else from doing that. Thus they hijack the integrity of those with whom they disagree, often deploying threats of schism and bankruptcy which feel like blackmail.

    So what about synod this week?

    Whatever happens the bishops, leading from behind the sofa, have engineered a situation where it matters very little what the synod actually thinks. Perhaps everybody can agree, after more than 44 years of discussion about homosexuality, that the least satisfactory thing to do now would be to kick the can further down the road yet again. There’s a sense that the bishops now know the right thing to do, but feel they can only manage what is politically expedient. Some might call that a failure of leadership, what the RAF used to call “lack of moral fibre”.

    The spectre of disestablishment hovers over the whole debate. Hensley Henson is said to have observed to a former Archbishop of Canterbury after the 1928 Prayer Book debacle, “I imagine your Grace has found that a lifetime habit of steering around difficulties rather than facing them has scarce prepared you for such a time as this.”

    Back to the future?

  • Queen Elizabeth II – Our Modern Day Saint?

    by Jayne Ozanne, Founder of ViaMedia, Director of the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT+ Lives and Member of General Synod.

    We Anglicans no longer canonise saints – at least not since the English Reformation in the 16th century – but maybe it is about time that we did!

    There are of course various definitions of what it takes to be a saint, but all agree that it is someone who has led a holy life and who has been an inspiring model of what it means to be a Christian.  Surely there is no better example than our late Queen, who is arguably the best known Christian in living memory and one of the few people of faith who has had a truly global impact.

    We have heard much in recent days about her rock like constancy borne out through a life of service.  If we are honest, I think one of the reasons why so many of us revere and respect her so much is that deep down most of us know that we could not and would not have chosen to do what she did – to give herself to her people and serve us no matter what the cost.  We know that she saw this work as fulfilling a sacred vow, which she understood to be a unique and lonely calling given to her directly by God.  But even so, no one can doubt the cost that it must have meant to her nor the exemplary way in which she chose to execute her duties over 70 long years.

    For she did not get special dispensation for being born into her position – there was no secret route to God to help her through the inner turmoil she must at times have felt when battling with the question that so many of us face, namely “Why me?”.  Her famed constancy came from her faith, and this faith came from recognising – and accepting – the hand of God in her Accession.

    Many have spoken about their unsettling concern about this being an ending of an era.  It is as if we fear that with her passing, the protective covering she seemed to embody for us as a nation is now lost.  By “covering” I mean that fact that, independent of where each of us as individuals stood with God, she at least stood firm and was our “go-between” with the Divine.  The Christian church has a word for this – it is a priest who intercedes for us, as she did for us as a nation.

    Through her quiet but firm Christian witness, through her many Christmas messages and other timely interventions, we were never left in any doubt from Whom she drew her strength.  Whilst making space for those of all faiths and none, she always pointed to the one person who helped guide her own decisions and was never afraid or ashamed to talk about Him, Jesus.  It was the most effective form of sincere Christian witness that our world has witnessed – and in her own indomitable and understated way, it was never ever too much but always heartfelt and sincere.

    In 2006, on her 80th birthday, I wrote to thank her for her inspiring servant leadership and lamented the fact that I wished others in senior positions of leadership within the Church of England could be so bold.  I rather thought that my letter had been lost or overlooked, as unlike others I appeared to receive no official response acknowledging receipt of my letter– as I understood the convention to be.  However, a couple of months later I was surprised to see a letter with her crest in my letter box and was delighted to receive a personalised response from her Senior Correspondence Officer, saying that the Queen had asked her to thank me for the assurance of my prayers.

    The truth is that the Queen has throughout her life used her position of privilege to share her faith and point people to the source of her inspiration.  She did so in a way that won the world’s respect and allowed us all to know from whom she drew this strength.  Perhaps more importantly though, she has ensured that her very act of living has been a constant witness to the God she sought so hard to serve.  It was that that we grew to love and respect, independent of our attitudes to religion, and it is for this reason I return to the idea of her being a Modern Day Saint.

    I am sure, given her well-recognised humility, she would balk at the idea.  But can I suggest that instead of referring to her, as some have suggested, as Queen Elizabeth the Great we rather think of her as Queen Elizabeth the Saint?

    And at may at a very minimum, and in the time honoured Anglican tradition, we may at least want to consider adding her to the list of people that we commemorate throughout the calendar year…

  • Pageants, Progress & People – The End of an Era?

    by Jayne Ozanne, Founder of ViaMedia, Chair of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition and Member of General Synod

    On Sunday I shall be incredibly “proud” (in the best LGBT+ tradition of the word) to take part in the Queen’s Jubilee Pageant as part of a small group of “contemporary” LGBT+ figures who have been asked to carry a giant rainbow flag in the parade.  We will feature in the 1970s section of the pageant, a decade chosen in order to honour those who took part in the first ever Pride March 50 years ago – some of whom will also be taking part on Sunday.

    Not all LGBT+ people who were approached wanted to participate in this event – most notably my friend Peter Tatchell, who has made his views very clear in a recent article for The Guardian.

    Whilst I respect Peter’s views, I must admit I am saddened that he is not taking part because this People’s Pageant (as it is being called by the organisers) marks one particular thing that has underscored the seven decades of Her Majesty The Queen’s reign.  It is the one thing that we cannot take for granted, but which the British Public have I believe embraced.  It can be summarised in one simple word: Progress.

    We are not where we were 50 years ago, thank God.

    As we walk down Whitehall, through Admiralty Arch and up the long red road that leads to the Palace, we will be met by tens of thousands of people who will, I anticipate, be cheering us and waving us on our way.  That would have been utterly inconceivable 50 years ago – indeed even arguably 25 years ago, when we were still in the dark days of Section 28.  But today the majority of the British public are keen to celebrate diversity and embrace difference.  Indeed, many are far more attuned to the pain that discrimination has caused for most now know a friend, a family member, a neighbour or a workmate whose life has been scarred by prejudice.  To borrow a phrase from the late President Nelson Mandela, it has been ‘a long walk to freedom’ and I for one believe we should stand tall, mark it and celebrate it.  For all freedoms are hard won and none are totally secure, as we are seeing with the advancement of far-right politics that is sweeping through the Western world.

    Which leads to a question that I have been asking myself over the past few days – what, I wonder, would the crowd’s reaction be if those of us holding this enormous rainbow flag were followed directly behind by the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury?

    Interestingly, I seem to have got my answer as I heard the crowd outside St Paul’s Cathedral react to the arrival of the Prime Minister at the Service of Thanksgiving.  In case you are unaware, many booed.  It was quite an audible and a seemingly unprompted reaction. Crowds, as we know, can react in three ways – they can cheer, they can remain silent, or they can boo.  The latter is rare and is usually only invoked when people want to show their profound disapproval of a situation they believe is deeply wrong.

    I do not need to rehearse why the public might currently want to boo the Prime Minister given the ongoing Party-gate saga.  However, were he perhaps to be positioned behind us in the pageant, I am convinced that the crowd’s reaction would be doubly vociferous – given his recent attempt to backtrack, without explanation (or indeed apology) on his one primary commitment to the LGBT+ community, that of promising to ban “conversion therapy”.  Whilst it may have found its way back into the Queen’s Speech last month, this was only partly and grudgingly so – as we sadly have now had confirmed, those who most need the ban are to be excluded from it.  It makes no sense at all and is one of the main reasons behind the fact that the UK have plummeted in its ranking on international LGBT+ rights.

    So, what if we were to be followed by the Archbishop of Canterbury?

    Well, quite apart from the fact that many would, I think, be unaware who this man in a colourful cape and a pointy hat might be, those who do recognise him would I think fall silent for – let’s be honest – the Church of England remains very publicly opposed to LGBT+ people.  Yes of course there are wonderful examples of parish churches trying to make us welcome – but many of the British public now know someone who has been rejected from having their wedding in church, and others are aware of the rejection their friends have faced when coming out to Christian relatives and friends.  Silence might, in fact, be too optimistic – I fear that it would only take a few to start being vocal (as they were with the Prime Minister) and the rest would probably follow suit.

    So why am I labouring this point?

    Because whilst it is clear that Britain has made significant progress over the past 70 years, in truth these institutions and administrations that are there to serve the people have yet to catch up.  Unless they do so soon, they will I believe seriously risk undermining the trust people have in them and as a result risk their very future.

    Am I the only one, I wonder, who senses that we are coming to the end of an era?  For all that Buckingham Palace might want us to start to embrace “succession planning” I can’t help thinking that significant changes lie ahead in the not too distant future – particularly for the established Church.  No institution has an indubitable right to exist, and the Church of England is no exception.  Despite all the church planting and mission focused plans we might have, I just can’t see institutional religion being something the British Public are going to be keen to embrace in the years ahead – certainly not if it remains a place of discrimination, prejudice and pain for those who so many of the public care about.

    Is that progress?

    Time alone will tell.