ViaMedia

Category: General Synod

  • Archbishops’ Council: Reset Required

    by Gilo, co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and also co-creator of the House of Survivors website. He also writes post-modern hymns.

    This past week saw the Deputy Safeguarding Lead Bishop say on social media: “Today the church is less accountable. To remove, at short notice, the strongest independent voices holding the CofE to account for its safeguarding failings makes us look resistant to robust scrutiny and challenge – which, of course, we are.” And in a BBC interview shortly afterwards: “I don’t entirely trust the church, even though I’m a key part of it.”

    Bishop Julie Conalty is correct in her assessment, and sadly one of the few bishops with sufficient spine to say it publicly.

    Many questions arise from these comments. Did Archbishops’ Council alert DSAs (Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors) prior to the sacking of the ISB statement? Were DSAs across dioceses given any time to prepare for victims’ and survivors’ confusion and distress? I know one wasn’t. I alerted him about forty minutes prior to the release of the statement. Steve Reeves and Jasvinder Sanghera had been given less than an hour’s notice before the statement went up on the Church of England website. They urged Archbishops’ Council for time to prepare the survivors in their care; they urged the Council to think about possible impact. They were told no. So in desperation they reached out to alert a few people quickly so we could contact several others in very vulnerable situations as quickly as possible. I rang and gently told one survivor what was coming as I knew that it could be devastating for them to find out suddenly in this impersonal way by the Archbishops’ Council. Several DSAs later commented that they were appalled that *good* safeguarding had to happen in this unofficial and ad hoc way and that it was necessary for the two ISB members to act fast in the face of such recklessness by the national Church.

    The heads of this Council are the two Archbishops. Why are they not ‘stepped back’? Could they face clergy disciplinary measures? They and others on the Council have presumably done C4 safeguarding training and Senior Leadership training and should be fully aware of the danger of their reckless conduct. They would know that many survivors speak of the ‘re-abuse’ we experience from the Church’s own treatment of our disclosures.  Such misconduct would not be ignored if done by clergy without mitres. Will the Lead Bishop, Joanne Grenfell, act? Will Alexander Kubeyinje, Director of the National Safeguarding Team, act? But an NST Director who is reported to have told the Survivor Advocate that she is “too survivor focussed” is unlikely to see through a lens other than the matrix provided by his controllers. And a Lead Bishop who has remained largely invisible and inaudible since appointment is unlikely to tackle misconduct by her seniors.

    I met with a senior figure this week, a bishop and his team, to ask for help in preparing CDMs for the heads of Archbishops’ Council on the following grounds

    • disregarding safeguarding policy
    • jettisoned lessons learnt
    • putting comms strategy above safeguarding
    • disregard for survivors in acute situations
    • putting back the work of DSAs, and safeguarding across the wider Church, by years
    • ignoring basic Christian principles, or perhaps ‘conduct unbecoming of a clerk in Holy Orders’

    It is bewildering how a group of very senior people who have the running of the Church in their hands could agree to go along with such unsafe practice. The placing of strategy above the needs of survivors in acute and precarious situations is particularly egregious.

    Why are those in governance willing to destroy what is left of their Church’s credibility in this way, and what is the motivation? Who in the Council ‘advises’ (or instructs) them to jettison ‘lessons’ they tell us in their many published ‘Lessons Learnt Reviews’ have been learned, and to abandon good practice? Two figures in public office have overarching power and prestige in this institution. This affords them the freedom to turn to this advisor and say clearly “No, you are tearing a hole in the hull of this Church’s credibility and your direction in these matters makes the Church look delinquent.” In this disastrous sphere of the Church’s life where so much coverup and corruption from the past still needs facing, where there has been so much complicity with unethical activity, and where much honesty and healing is required – how much more credibility capital are the Archbishops willing to burn protecting disastrous advice?

    Everyone knows the answer to the question ‘Who’, but nobody really understands the ‘Why’. The Secretary General to the Archbishops’ Council is also the Secretary General to the Church of England. Why is one éminence grise allowed to wield such enormous and unaccountable power through a web of tetrarchies across the national Church? Why is such obvious systemic harm to the very soul of the Church allowed to continue? Why is cruelty permitted to permeate through the safeguarding structures of the national Church? There is an evolved culture of ‘learned helplessness’ ° across the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and all the National Church Institutions (NCIs) which manifests itself in a polite but ruthless pillar-to-post systemic cruelty. Ask those survivors in urgent situations of crisis where repair and financial aid is needed not next month or next year, but last week. These survivors know this culture horribly well. They are the recipients of its ongoing harm.

    The scandal of Archbishops’ Council’s misconduct last week is as serious as it gets at the top of the Church. There must now be questions in Parliament to the Second Church Estates Commissioner from MPs about the misgovernance of the Church of England. Synod members must find a way to bring real and shining anger to the orchestrated State Flower Festival with its absurd safeguarding presentation that the forthcoming Synod appears to be set to experience. Not mere exasperation or frustration… but real anger and a sense of revulsion.

    Both Archbishops must own their misconduct. There must be serious accountability. And serious repentance.

     

     

    ° indebted to Carl Chambers for the phrase ‘learned helplessness’

     

  • Trust and Transparency – it’s Time for Change

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington and a consultant to the LLF Implementation Pastoral Guidance Working Group

    Every so often, it’s no bad thing for institutions to take a step back and ask themselves some searching questions about the state of things. How are we perceived? Where might the obvious and less obvious issues lie? What are we doing well, and what are we doing not so well? To what extent are we achieving what we hope to achieve and where can we do better?

    It feels to me that the Church of England is well overdue this kind of stock take. We seem to be an institution quite heavily invested in (at least what we think are) contemporary theories of management and leadership, yet it seems fascinating that we don’t – at least publicly – invest in the quite simple forms of self-critical review that would really help us in our mission and ministry.

    A particular example of where things quite simply are not going well for us in the Church of England is in the area of transparency. Transparency is absolutely key to effective institutions – and this is ever more the case. It’s a complicated business – we might think that we are being transparent, yet if the perception is that we’re not, then we have a problem. Transparency is linked to so many other things – questions of transparency cast light on how decisions are being made, and who makes them, and also say something about who we are, or who we believe that we are, as a church. An institution that lacks transparency might be superficially strong and ensure power stays in certain hands, but this is no serious way to go about business, and is simply building up trouble for the future. I fear this is the track we are currently on.

    In writing this, I know that there will be people who immediately get defensive and angry that their best intentions are being questioned. There are hundreds of good and serious people in the church – from bishops to church employees – who are doing their best and doing so with integrity. As a church, we have to move away from our current position, where any challenge is taken as a personal attack – and perhaps, too, those of us who do find the church’s lack of transparency increasingly frustrating need to find new ways of addressing our concerns. But what seems clear, from even the briefest of surveys of those who express frustration at the way the church is currently run, is that part of the problem is that there is nowhere to address those concerns – and any concerns that are expressed fall on deaf ears and, frequently, slammed doors. One of the reasons, perhaps, why the sessions of Questions at meetings of General Synod are so fraught is that this can feel like one of the few places where such concerns can be spoken and, sometimes, heard.

    Combined, then, with this lack of transparency, is a sense of almost total, paralysing powerlessness amongst ordinary churchgoers and clergy. It is absolutely the case that many now speak of ‘the church’ as though it is an entity which does things to them, rather than of which they form a part. And who can blame them?

    Many years ago, well before I was ordained, one of the little games I liked to play was to try to get to the bottom of who, precisely, was issuing statements as ‘the Church of England’. ‘The Church of England said X’ was a common refrain, and one that was as meaningless then as it is now. It was surprisingly difficult to find out the answer on occasion – it still is. Yet how, and why, has this situation been allowed to continue?

    I’m not a fool – I understand that there is the need for occasional careful comms management, and that there is a complexity to some decision-making which can pass a mere curate like me by. Yet our lack of transparency is not an occasional concern – it’s our regular modus operandi. Decisions made and communicated by ‘the church’ are more often than not mired in some kind of mystery – and with little opportunity for constructive feedback or comment. There seems to be an almost iron-willed refusal to let the light into these decision-making processes, and whilst there are always leaks about what is ‘really going on’, this is quite simply an inadequate way of running any institution – and certainly one that is built on the foundation stone of truth. We need only look to the last few weeks to get a glimpse of this reality. And the institution’s far-too-frequent use of silence is deafening – and dangerous – as is the refusal to put our hands up when we get things wrong.

    The thing is, until we admit that there is a problem, nothing is going to change. I know that it’s frustrating for senior people to hear irrelevant nobodies like me carping on about the problems in the system, but just on occasion, it might be worth listening to us – and I’m not alone. It’s without doubt that the Anglican Twittersphere is – just on occasion – a hellhole, but might we not start to ask questions about why that is? Institutions in which people feel empowered do not have senior leaders taking to social media to raise concerns. There is a genuine problem, here, and it’s time people who can started to do something about it.

    As a church, we need to commit ourselves to undertaking a serious spiritual health check. For all the warm words, our church culture is still one of deference – albeit not necessarily one in which that deference is traditionally oriented. We are expected to have decisions made about us without us, and not to complain about them. We are expected to wait for statements about issues of genuine concern – sometimes for months – and then be grateful for the scraps that are issued. We are expected to simply accept new and bewildering funding formulas rather than play any serious part in their design. We are expected to trust and respect an institution – but those two things are, quite properly, earned.

    Of course, this will all likely be dismissed as the complaints of an awkward nobody. Yet I truly believe that if we don’t do this, then the current period of bloodletting in the church is not going to simply fade away – although the church might. The risk, of course, is that the more transparent we are, the clearer it will become that our structures are not fit for purpose, that our accountability leaves a lot to be desired, that our laity and parish clergy – far from being empowered – are frequently left raging against a machine that doesn’t appear to either hear or care about them. But that is a risk worth taking, because most of us who are frustrated by how things are want the church to be better, not destroyed.

    It takes courage to name a problem if you’re in charge – much easier to buy into the Emperor’s new clothes. If we are truly committed to being a safe and healthy church, it’s time to drop the comfort of denial and get on with building something better.

  • In Conscience?

    Questions of Conscience (4)

    by Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    Acting according to theological conscience is the calling of all Christians and must be respected. But I can’t help suspecting that the phrase ‘in conscience’ (just like its cousin ‘for the sake of unity’) is being used more and more in Church of England circles to legitimise bigotry. And, when we hear it, alarm bells should ring.

    As Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a national campaign group for equality for women in the Church of England, I want to speak out against discrimination of all kinds. But in particular against women who, comprising two thirds of churchgoers, are in the unique position of being a ‘minoritised majority.’

    The truth is that about half of all human beings are born with XX chromosomes and about half are born with XY chromosomes. Another truth is that some human beings are born with a particular sexuality, just like some human beings have a particular skin colour. We must stop discriminating against women and LGBTQ+ people. It is not only unjust to discriminate, it is also what I would call unGospel. If Jesus teaches us anything, it is that there are no human beings who are lesser or greater than any other human beings. In the Kingdom of God, the first is last and the last is first. Equality is at the very heart of the gospel.

    One of the things that annoys me most in this whole debate is that people like myself, who stand against discrimination, are often decried as ‘liberals’ who are happy to go along with anything and just suck up the whole of modern culture. This is not true. There are plenty of things in modern culture that I’m firmly against. They are things like pride, abuses of power, arrogance and manipulation. They are things like promiscuity, debauchery, exploitation and unfaithfulness. And we see these things in men and women, and in people of all types of sexuality. And these are the things where the Church has something important to speak into modern culture, because these are the things that are causing huge damage to people and our relationships. On the other hand, we need to be speaking up for humility, collaboration, and honesty; and for relationships that are committed, healthy, respectful and faithful.

    In Jesus’s times, the Pharisees could not ‘in conscience’ allow healing on the Sabbath, because scripture said this was not permitted. They could not allow an adulterous woman to be shown mercy, because the scriptures said she must be stoned. They could not eat or associate with the Gentiles, because scripture clearly told them to keep themselves separate and holy. But Jesus healed on the Sabbath, seeing that loving and healing people overrode the need to keep to the letter of the Law; he rescued and redeemed the adulterous woman, despite recognising that she had sinned. And the Holy Spirit blew apart the long-held scriptural understanding that Jewish people could not be brothers and sisters with Gentiles.

    When I was appointed last October as Chair of WATCH I thought that I only had the bandwidth to speak up about discrimination and sexism against women in the Church and I would focus my energies solely on this. But I have found that I cannot challenge discrimination against women without, at the same time, challenging discrimination against other human beings.

    In February this year, I went to a meeting at St Martin in the Fields on the night of the first day of General Synod. In this church, a large number of LGBTQ+ people and allies had gathered to eat together, to encourage each other and to pray for each other – in the light of the LLF conversations and votes that were to take place that week and that affected them so greatly. As I sat there, surrounded by these people, I found myself moved by the depth of brokenness and pain that washed around me. It was like these people had somehow been made to feel that, within the Church, they were the lowest of the low, some kind of detritus, a sort of lower order that was having to fight even for the right to exist in the Church, let alone to be recognised as equal to others, to the entitled. As I silently took all this in, I felt a sense that this was where Jesus was – that Jesus was in that place with those people who saw themselves at the bottom of the pile, despised by many and, at best, tolerated by others.

    Once again, I knew that the very heart of the gospel is equality. That Jesus came to raise up the lowly and to bring down the proud. We are all human beings. It doesn’t matter whether we are men or women or what sexuality we have. The important thing is how we treat one another and discrimination, whether in so-called conscience or not, is not what Jesus wants.

    It is time to repent and to lament how we have treated women, LGBTQ+ people, people of colour, those who are disabled and others, and now to embrace a new culture in our Church where we truly see every human being as no lesser and no greater than any other. Jesus came to break down barriers between us and to bring unity. But he also called for tough choices to be made, and this is why he was so critical of the Pharisees. He wanted people to follow him and to help him bring in the Kingdom of God by following him. But those who, as he saw it, were blind and hard of heart could not help in that ministry.

    Jesus says to his followers, ‘I am the vine and you are the branches.’ He wants us all to be part of the vine, but he also recognises the need for pruning some branches. We want to be a healthy Church rooted in Jesus – so let’s say a clear no to the Pharisees, no to things like pride and promiscuity. And yes to all people being free to live their God-given lives to the full and to use their God-given gifts to the full, respecting how God has made us, male and female and of varying sexuality. And rejoicing in our wonderfully diverse humanity.

     

     

     

  • Killing Fear and Freeing Conscience: Charting the Way Forward for our Life Together

    Questions of Conscience (2)

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington and a consultant to the LLF Implementation Pastoral Guidance Working Group

    Fear – especially confected fear – is never the answer to anything. We have seen that in so many different ways the church has gotten things wrong over the years, whether it is from the hushing up of grotesque abuse, to the way non-white, non-het, non-cis, non-male, non-wealthy, and disabled voices have been silenced, to the current impasse over sexuality that we might – finally – be seeing a way through. Where love is, there is God; where fear is, and certainly where that fear has been whipped up and used as a political tool, as a tool of power, there isn’t much God.

    As we look towards the conversations over the future of the Church of England’s engagement with LGBTQI people, I think we need to be ever alert to where fear is dwelling, and more importantly, where fear is being sown. Power is a complicated beast, but it is never far away from where we find that fear. And a fear that is sown for political gain is a dangerous, nasty, brutish thing. It is the antithesis of the Gospel.

    Which brings me to conscience, because an awful lot has been made of it in recent months, and yet the whiff of fear and power has never been far away. And it’s time it was called out.

    When we entered the Synod process in February, there was no such thing as ‘Pastoral Reassurance’ on the agenda, but as we look towards July – and further – this rather benign-sounding phrase has become very much front and centre in our way of finding how to live with one another if queer people get to form loving relationships that might just be offered God’s blessing. In the first instance, I don’t think we should beat about the bush – ‘Pastoral Reassurance’, in this context, means allowing for the consciences of those for whom the blessing of particular forms of love is a step too far. That is all well and good, though it is interesting that the consciences of LGBTQI people have essentially been ignored for the last fifty years in the church! We are where we are – and it’s encouraging to see conscience back on the agenda. But what has happened at the same time is a campaign, primarily – and shamefully – led by the Church of England Evangelical Council, who misleadingly represent themselves as the only evangelical voice. but one that has been promoted elsewhere too – albeit more quietly and subtly – that has made it clear that any appeal to ‘conscience’ is very much one way. And it’s not on.

    We’ve seen this in public comments about what ‘the doctrine of marriage’ is – arguments that present a fait accompli without showing any working, and without any willingness to recognise the reality of decisions made in Synod to bin Issues and move on, let alone enter sensible conversations about conscience for those of us who remain banned from intimacy with our loved ones. The ‘doctrine of marriage’ is clear, unambiguous, settled, complete, we are told, and thus there can be no blessing of sexually active same-sex/same-gender relationships without destroying that doctrine. The two-pronged attack, then, continues – one particular type of conscience must be respected, and yet still there must be no sex or intimacy for the gays. Absolute nonsense about bishops’ (and others’) ordination vows and the rest of it is being flung around the social media landscape, and yet a quiet, calm, serious reflection on what actually happened at Synod, and what doctrine actually is, makes it very clear that this is – frankly – rubbish.

    So let’s get a couple of things straight, as it were, before we entertain any more of this culture of fear and of one-sided narratives.

    The first – and most obvious –  is that the ‘doctrine of marriage’ is not static. Indeed, marriage itself as a construct is not static and it is totally ludicrous to argue that doctrine hasn’t developed to respond to changing cultural and societal realities. Similarly, it is by no means clear that the ‘doctrine of marriage’ as it is currently formulated inevitably forbids sexually active same-sex/gender relationships – in fact, there is a very strong argument that the opposite is true, not least in the mind of Synod. General Synod passed an amendment that supported no change in ‘the doctrine of marriage’ – foolishly in my mind, given it is clear that the only purpose of the amendment was to enter into the kind of tiresome power games we’re now seeing, however benign some bishops naively appear to have seen it to be. Yet Synod then roundly rejected the following wrecking motion that attempted to create Guidance that ‘include[d] instructions making it clear that they should not be used so as to indicate or imply affirmation of sexually active relationships outside Holy Matrimony or to invoke God’s blessing on such relationships.’ To reiterate, that fell – and it fell handsomely, with only one diocesan bishop in favour and every house convincingly voting against. For all the hot air and blether by those who are determined to hold us all to ransom to any one particular understanding of ‘doctrine’, Synod itself has offered a rebuke. Good try, as it were – but not quite good enough: a case of shooting oneself in the foot, perhaps.

    Which brings us back to conscience. Conscience has a good, long, honourable, Anglican history to it. Rigid, self-righteous, unimaginative definitions of doctrine have frequently brought people to the tribunal or the stake; imaginative, careful, thoughtful, conscience-respecting understandings of doctrine have led not only to healthier churches but amongst other things to the great leaps in ecumenism of the past century.

    So as we look ahead, we have the opportunity, and I would argue the obligation, to commit to two things. Both are absolutely central to finding a way forward in which we can live in harmony with one another, however uncomfortable we might find it. We need, all of us, to commit to freedom of conscience and – concurrently – freedom from fear. And I mean genuine freedom of conscience – a recognition that others have consciences in just the same way that we do, that others are not trying to destroy the church, that others are wanting to find ways to live together, that others might have something to add rather than simply take away. That we might not have all the answers, and that entry into conversation requires just that – genuine conversation. That we don’t own the Church of England, its doctrine, or – really – anything at all.

    But the respecting of conscience will not come if we are unwilling to lay down the sowing and promotion of fear. If we fail to do that, it will kill us as a church. If we fail to take that risky step of being willing to see Christ in those with whom we fundamentally, utterly, totally disagree, then we will not only fail in what we have to do, but we will fail in our fundamental calling as followers of Christ.

    Time will tell as to whether we are able – or rather, willing – to offer those with whom we disagree the courtesy of mutual recognition. Time will tell, too, whether we are willing to let go of the fearmongering. And time will tell, I might suggest, whether we are thus willing to grow more into the likeness of Christ – or recast Him in our own – rather narrow, rather dull, rather limited – image, instead.

  • Freedom of Conscience: Sauce for the Gander?

    Questions of Conscience (1):

    opening a new series of posts offering reflections on this theme

    by Canon Giles Goddard, Vicar of St John’s, Waterloo and a consultant to the LLF Implementation Pastoral Reassurance Working Group

    We are hearing a lot about freedom of conscience at the moment. Some who oppose the introduction of Prayers for Love and Faith (PLF) are seeking assurances that they will be free to act according to their conscience, or that they will not be required to act against their conscience. In an open letter on 10th Feb 2023 the Archbishop asked the forbearance of the Diocese of York “as the work is done to ensure that freedom of conscience is properly respected.”

    The appeal to conscience is often seen as an ultimate moral arbiter, particularly among those who would resist what they see as innovations. Readers of this blog may remember ‘Cost of Conscience,’ an organisation which was vocal in the earlier years of this century in opposition to the ordination of women. Conscience is much cited amongst those opposed to abortion.

    I was glad to be asked to write something for Via Media on the subject, not least because I have been drawn back into the Living in Love and Faith process as a consultant to the Pastoral Reassurance Working Group. So I have been reflecting on and reading around the nature of conscience, and what status it might have in current discussions about ethical and liturgical practice within the Church of England.

    The word ‘conscience’ is an elision of two Latin roots; con and scio: meaning something like ‘knowing with’ or ‘knowing alongside.’ Conscience tends to be focused inwards, towards the actions of the self. According to philosopher Alberto Giubilini, there are in the history of philosophy four predominant understandings of conscience: it can be seen as a faculty for self-knowledge and self-assessment, or as having an epistemic function in the sphere of morality, or as a motivational force, or as a set of self-identifying moral beliefs. Within the Anglican tradition it is, according to this very helpful lecture by Revd Dr. Michael Hull of the Scottish Episcopal Church, “that God-given capacity that allows us to adjudicate the rightness of our action and also to show, fully, our integrity to God.”

    In other words, conscience is not the absolute arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. It is the human capacity to identify, to ourselves, what we understand to be the right course of action in an ethical context. Thomas Aquinas recognised that conscience may err. John Calvin saw conscience as a battleground: “the enemies who rise up in our conscience against his Kingdom and hinder his decrees prove that God’s throne is not firmly established therein.”   The dictate of conscience is based on a number of factors: for Christians, on the Word of God, yes – but also on reason, experience and the culture and communities within which we live.

    Thus conclusions reached according to conscience can be diametrically different. Those who are willing to carry out abortions would often appeal to their consciences in so doing, taking into account their duty as medical professionals and their responsibilities to their patients. Others will not carry out abortions, citing conscientious objection as sufficient ground for refusal.

    Similarly, in relation to PLF, radically different conclusions are supported by appeals to conscience. Many who have or who would wish to offer prayers of blessing for same sex couples would be clear that they are acting in accordance with their conscience. My own reading of scripture, reason and tradition, as well as experience, leads me to the clear conclusion that I would be acting against my conscience in refusing to seek God’s blessing on a same-sex relationship.  Others, notably conservative evangelicals, appeal to conscience in rejecting PLF, reading the same scriptures I read but drawing very different conclusions.

    Conscience can also confuse. Huckleberry Finn famously feels that he has acted against his conscience when he helps slave Jim to escape from his aunt:

    The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last … it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven.

    The appeal to conscience by conservatives seems to me in any event to be a distraction from the core discussion, for at no point during the entire LLF process has any suggestion been made that anyone opposed would be required to offer prayers of blessing. Nor has any suggestion been made that their position in the Church of England would be in any way compromised by a refusal to offer PLF.

    What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, though. It is very possible to imagine a situation where a priest and a PCC may wish to offer Prayers of Love and Faith within a Diocese or Area where the bishop is opposed. What then? Do we need safeguards in place to ensure that the freedom of conscience exercised by a progressive priest does not undermine their place in the Church of England? Alternative episcopal oversight?

    This from Alberto Giubilini:

    Far from being a conversation-stopper, conscience can only find its proper place in philosophical and in public discussion if its philosophical and psychological aspects are teased out, defined and assessed. Appeals to conscience can only be part of philosophical, political, and legal discussion if they are seen as the start, not the end of discussions.

    As we move forward in the conversations about pastoral reassurance, perhaps an initial step will be to note that conscience is not, of itself, an arbiter of right thinking. The Living in Love and Faith process has, over six years, carefully unpicked the theological, scriptural, experiential and historical complexities of human relationships, sexuality and God’s love.

    It’s quite clear that it is not going to be easy to square the circle, but I hope that we can recognise that the appeal to conscience is no less straightforward than anything else in this process.

     

     

     

  • Equal Marriage – 1928 Style

    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.

    One of the things that struck me forcibly during the February 2023 debate on Living in Love and Faith at General Synod was the repeated reference to the ‘doctrine of marriage’, as though this was a constant and fixed set of ideas throughout time. In the debate, only Revd Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes challenged this assumption.[1]  Another striking theme, for the more punitively minded, was how bishops might be disciplined for their apparent departure from orthodoxy.

    All this was a response to the modest proposals brought to Synod by the House of Bishops, proposals emerging out of the six-year long Living in Love and Faith process. The bishops maintain that their proposals do not alter the ‘doctrine of marriage’. Marriage remains, in the words of canon B30, ‘a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman’. (Elephant in the Room Warning: except when it isn’t ‘permanent and lifelong’ – but we are steadfastly refusing to talk about that.) Opponents, however, challenge this claim from the bishops.

    I found myself feeling a bit sorry for the bishops as a group: from my ten years on the Crown Nominations Commission, I know the great emphasis we as a Church place on ‘Leadership’. Yet when bishops exercise even a smidgen, all hell breaks loose. Do we want our chief pastors to develop their thinking based on theological reflection and pastoral encounter and then exercise some ‘Leadership’ about it, or not?

    As with most things, we’ve been here before.

    Edward Lee Hicks (1843-1919) was Bishop of Lincoln from 1910 to his death in 1919. He is not a well-known figure in Anglican history. Hicks had the misfortune to follow Bishop Edward King – a figure of such devotion in certain traditions of the Church of England that he has a day in the calendar (8 March). In addition to his legendary pastoral devotion to his diocese, especially to the rural poor, King may have been the first Church of England bishop openly to wear a mitre since the Reformation  – yes, a mitre! – a pretty commonplace practice now even amongst some of the most evangelical on the episcopal bench,  such as the Bishop of Lancaster and the former Bishop of Blackburn. In the late nineteenth century, however, wearing a mitre was a Massive Thing, and at the instigation of the Church Association (an ancestor of the Church Society), King was prosecuted for all manner of now-unexceptional Anglican liturgical practices, such as lighting candles in daylight and making the sign of the cross at the blessing. The statue honouring King in Lincoln Cathedral celebrates his transgressive liturgical behaviour rather gleefully.

    Hicks was also transgressive in his thinking but about something – and here I speak as a good High Church woman – considerably more important than tat. He was a member of the Commission in the early twentieth century revising the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which in the end became the 1928 ‘deposited’ Prayer Book. Parliament, as readers of this blog no doubt know, refused to approve the book, causing a Church/State crisis that was still talked about in wounded tones when I arrived in England as a graduate student in 1979. Nonetheless, from the late 1920s onwards, the revised book was probably used more in the public worship of the Established Church than the 1662, in an impressive collective act of episcopally-sanctioned grassroots passive resistance throughout the Church of England.

    Hicks was committed to equality for women and in 1912 became president of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage, a group working to put laywomen on the same footing as laymen in Church councils. Over many years on the Commission to revise the Book of Common Prayer he worked to have the word ‘obey’ removed from the marriage service and replaced with equal vows for the couple – as Common Worship does. He argued further for the use of 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings in place of Ephesians 5 to avoid any suggestion that the wife is not her husband’s equal. An unscientific sample (that is, my own 30+ years of officiating at marriages – oops – Holy Matrimony[2]), 1 Corinthians 13 is very popular – I’ve never had a request for Ephesians 5. In the end, Hicks got his reform – his change in the ‘doctrine of marriage’ – with the option to have equal vows included in the 1928 Prayer Book provision. Needless to say, no woman would be forced not to vow to obey.  I hope that the irony of that last sentence is not lost on anyone.

    Change, as we are seeing with LLF, is incremental in the life of the Church. The 1928 Prayer Book made no provision for the exchange of two rings – another liturgical expression of the equality of the couple and included the ‘giving away’ of the bride – both changes in Common Worship. I have spent some time trying to track down when two rings become the norm in England but have failed – there is a Master’s thesis topic waiting for someone! Despite neither the English or American 1928 Prayer Books making provision for it, the doyen of mid-twentieth century Anglican liturgists, Massey Shepherd, suggested that exchanging two rings was becoming ‘frequent’ in the American Episcopal Church in the 1950s.[3]

    Nothing exists in a vacuum, and it is important to place the ‘obey’ debate of the 1910-20s in its historic context alongside not only women’s wider political and educational rights, but their inclusion in new Church governance structures, such as Parochial Church Councils and the forerunner of the General Synod, the Church Assembly. Laywomen were excluded from these new bodies. The opponents to equal vows did not use the language of complementarianism but that of good old-fashioned inequality and subordinationism. In the first decades of the twentieth-century, vocal opposition to equal vows came largely from the Anglo-Catholic quarter, based on a clear assumption of the inequality of the sexes. Athelstan Riley told the Church’s National Assembly in 1930 that:

    … in 1923 when the cry of equality between the sexes was at its height, a short measure was pressed putting husband and wife on an equal footing – a cruel and wicked act. There was and could be no equality in matters of sexual morality between men and women. It had pleased God to create a profound inequality; in temptation, in the results of sin to the individual [pregnancy out of wedlock?] … and eventually to society at large.[4]

    It is good to be reminded what a new kid on the block complementarianism is in the gender debates.

    Overshadowed by King, Hicks deserves to be better known. Most importantly for our current discussions of LGBT+ inclusion, the beginning of his theological change on the ‘doctrine of marriage’ had been brought about, in the best Anglican way, by pastoral encounter:  a young couple, whose marriage he was to solemnize, requested the omission of ‘obey’ and that the bride not be ‘given away’ by her father. Hicks’ diary records his puzzlement at the request, but it clearly started him thinking. The year, dear reader, was 1914.[5]

    In the early 20th century, an Anglican bishop was promoting the view that marriage – or Holy Matrimony as we now apparently must call it – was a union of equals and he managed to move the needle in terms of the Church’s expression of doctrine in its public liturgy. How many members of the General Synod realize what a departure from the 1662 Prayer Book’s ‘doctrine of marriage’, equal vows, not being ‘given away’, and the exchange of two rings, expresses? Heaven forbid, that pastoral encounter should be divorced (I choose that word deliberately) from the shaping of doctrine and pastoral practice.

    References:
    [1] General Synod 9 Feb 2023 (at c 3.22).
    [2] The House of Bishops’ paper on LLF, GS2289, argues that the civil understanding of marriage has departed from the Church’s for the first time by Parliament’s introduction of equal marriage in 2013. This is a remarkable statement, given the bishops’ statement that ‘Holy Matrimony is between one man and one woman for life’ and the fact that British people have been able to divorce and re-marry multiple times for decades (see p. 10).
    [3] Massey Hamilton Shepherd, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary (OUP, 1955), pp. 301-303.
    [4] Cited in Timothy Willem Jones, ‘Love, Honour and Obey?  Romance, Subordination and Marital Subjectivity in Interwar Britain’ in A. Harris and T. Jones, eds, Love and Romance in Britain, 1915-1970 (Palgrave, 2014), p. 130; an exceptionally good article on the ‘obey’ question in the Church of England. Jones notes that several interwar clergymen reported not using asymmetrical vows before the introduction of the alternative service (p. 128). See also his splendid book, Sexual Politics in the Church of England 1857-1957 (Oxford, 2013).
    [5] See The Diaries of Edward Lee Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln 1910-1919 (Lincoln Record Society, 82, 1993), p. 89 and Graham Neville, Radical Churchman:  Edward Lee Hicks and the New Liberalism (Oxford, 1998), p. 169.

  • Pressing ‘PAUSE’

    by Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, authorised lay preacher, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender & Sexuality Group

    Last week I saw the current Royal Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar. I hated it. In the first half I tried hard to find some positives, but by the interval I was convinced that this was an incoherent production which had managed to lose everything that really mattered. There were empty seats when the second half resumed, so it wasn’t just me and my friends who were unhappy. At the end, however, while most of us politely clapped – after all, the cast did their best in a production that failed to fly – several groups of under-20s enthusiastically stood and cheered. Part of the explanation for that was that some of them were Americans, and I know from seeing plays in America that standing ovation is the default setting rather than the exception. Part of it may just be that seeing a play in Shakespeare’s town is a very special experience. But it’s also likely that they saw something in this production which spoke to them, even though it alienated others. I’m not going to follow that thought any further here, into the context of different ways of ‘doing church’; maybe another day.

    One of the many ideas in the production which I thought didn’t really work was the projection of the word ‘PAUSE’ on the screen at the back after the assassination of Caesar. There followed a counted second-by-second two-minute pause in the action. I took that as a way of emphasising that one era had ended, and another was about to begin, but also as stressing that the assassins – the self-styled ‘liberators’ of the Republic – hadn’t worked out what to do next. Actually the pause lasted for longer than the timer stated, so it seemed rather pointless.

    Pauses are complicated. For most of us, the LLF process is currently in pause mode, although not for the bishops and others tasked with examining the implications of what was passed in February’s General Synod with a 57% vote in favour. And it’s certainly not in pause mode for those who were in the 43%. I’ve been criticised for continuing to ask of conservative evangelicals “In what would unity consist if your ‘settlement’ went ahead?” Rather than pausing to see what the bishops come up with, they are producing all sorts of ways to object, most recently the very sweet idea of a breakaway deanery chapter. This one seems to have been an own goal, leading to peak Anglican comments including “Were the biscuits mostly leftover custard creams?” and “Did they have the green cups and saucers?” but also raising serious questions around safeguarding.

    In a similar burst of words, there have been more comments than usual on a couple of recent posts on this site. Such discussions tend to happen in various Facebook groups or on Twitter, but since February that has changed. After a recent post, I decided to let those commenting have free reign, just to see what happened. Very quickly, the content of the comments became detached from the original post: people preached at each other, shouted at each other, expressed how injured and misunderstood they felt, and so on. I realised all I was doing was providing a place in which people could find targets for their anger. That didn’t feel helpful and it didn’t feel right. So I stopped my formal ‘approving’ of posts, and instead several of them tried to post to tell me I was biased (very funny, when I was blocking those of all views, and where the person had no idea what I was dealing with) or that I should be allowing ‘academic freedom’ (also funny, when nobody was offering any academic support for their views).

    Should I have stopped, or simply paused? Maybe I should have offered a ‘pause for reflection’ or a pause for thinking seriously about what a settlement would mean. I’m not convinced, though, that such a pause would have made a difference. And maybe that was the point of the Julius Caesar PAUSE – that, after it, things got worse, not better.

    Today we enter a week in which this blog will press ‘PAUSE’, not for two minutes, but for seven days. When I was being taught prose reading as a schoolgirl, I learned ‘the use of the pause’; knowing when a moment of silence before or after a word helped the listener to enter the meaning more deeply. Pausing can be powerful. In this Holy Week, however we mark it, can we all concentrate on the story we all share, and all tell: of a week two millennia ago which changed what it is to be human; of God who became one of us, who taught us how to live, who experienced the anger of those who did not share God’s vision of love and mercy, who was crucified and who rose again? PAUSE.

  • Hot Cross Bunnies & Religious Freedom

    by Jayne Ozanne, Director of the Ozanne Foundation, Member of General Synod and Founder of ViaMedia

    Hot Cross Bunnies & Religious Freedom

    Salted caramel and chocolate hot-cross buns – have you tried them yet?  I think they’re divine!

    As I indulged in my first one earlier this week, I caught myself thinking “Why hasn’t anyone ever thought of making these before?” A couple of days later, on listening to a heated debate on Radio 4’s Today programme, I realised why. Evidently, this culinary delight is a complete sacrilege to many as they believe we are tampering with some of the crown jewels of baking! How dare someone change the traditional recipe, which has been around since the 14th century! I restrained myself from making the “hot cross bunny” joke, and chose instead to shout at the radio “Oh come on – why can’t you just have both?  For goodness’ sake, let us decide – we’re the ones who are paying!”

    Because, of course, this should be a ‘matter of choice’ – which, if there is an added ethical or spiritual dimension to that choice, becomes a ‘matter of conscience’. I would suggest that every decision we make that has a values dimension to it is a matter of conscience. Do we act in a proper and legal way? Do we respond in a kind and loving manner? Do we choose the godly or ungodly path? That is, unless the choice is taken away from us by those in power who believe they know best, as they see themselves as custodians of truth, and so make the choice for us.

    You will by now no doubt have guessed where I am going with all of this – although I don’t for one moment want to equate the dilemma of choosing hot-cross buns with matters that are causing those of us in the LGBT+ community, as well as those beyond, such deep pain and upset, especially in the Church. However, my overall point stands – the role of conscience in our lives is critical to all values-based decisions we make. By definition, it plays a significant role in our spiritual lives too. That is why it has been the central tenet of our Anglican ecclesiology since we were formed in 1534 over a matter where conscience could not play a role. However, by and large we have found a way of accommodating virtually all views since then – as long as we adhere to the historic Creeds and the 39 Articles. Hats, beards, contraception, marriage after divorce, the role of women, whether clergy wear robes, whether we confirm children, whether we refuse people communion, whether we rebaptise adults (some of which aren’t meant to happen, but we turn a blind eye to them anyway!). It is the Church of England’s hallmark for which we have been known throughout the ages.

    That is, until recently.

    For some reason – neither articulated nor openly debated – the powers that be have not seen fit to allow us to adopt the glaringly obvious solution around the debate on same-sex marriage by making it a matter of conscience. I’m constantly told that ‘there aren’t the numbers in the House of Bishops’ to allow same-sex marriage – but we’re not asking for numbers as we are not asking people to change their view. Rather, we are asking them to respect the role of conscience in this matter and so allow those of us who hold a different view to them (which, notably, is a sizeable majority of Anglicans according the The Times’ You Gov poll), to be able to proceed with it.

    Instead, we are being forced to accept something that many of us believe is biblically and morally wrong. None of us who hold that God wants to bless same-sex relationships will ever “believe” they are right – so instead we are being made to “put up” with their intransigence. They continue to hold us all to ransom, becoming increasingly brazen in their actions – such as withholding parish share and setting up separate ‘deanery chapters’. One just has to listen to the tone of their rhetoric to hear how cold and self-righteous they have become. It does really rather feel like the bullies have taken over the playground, and we’re all meant to just sit back and watch. I’m not sure what they think they are achieving – for they must know by now that they aren’t going to change our minds?

    The greatest irony is that some of them are now trying to employ a “freedom of religion” argument, citing Articles 9 and 10 of the 1998 Human Rights Act, without recognising the sheer hypocrisy of what they are doing or saying. For it is our “freedom of religion” that they are trampling all over, it is our right to worship and practice our faith in accordance with our conscience within our parish churches that they are restricting. I’ve made this point several times, including at the government’s International Freedom of Religion or Belief conference last summer, but they seem so ensconced in their bubbles of unconscious bias that they just can’t (or won’t) see it.

    This constant refusal to allow those of us who believe, in all integrity, that Scripture, tradition and reason supports a Church of England that wishes to marry those of us of the same-sex, is sheer stubbornness. It is not biblical, it is not rational, it is not founded in tradition and therefore, by definition, it is clearly not Anglican.

    I know an increasing number of faith leaders around the Communion now see this – which is why their provinces have moved forward and allowed a plurality of views on the grounds of conscience.  They also see the legalistic manner in which some continue to hold the rest of the Church to ransom.

    Most importantly, God sees.

    The fascinating question is, I think, what is God doing through all this? I for one believe that God is in fact moving us all out into the public square – for can we truly see the masses returning to our churches given all the scandals, abuse and hypocrisy that they have witnessed over recent years?  I believe there is a growing cry of “Ichabod” being heard within the Church of England – which for those who don’t know is a word used in 1 Samuel 4, meaning that “the glory of God has departed the temple”.  That is a topic for another blog, but perhaps is a rather fitting note to end with, and to reflect on as we approach Holy Week.

  • One Church? Secrecy, Unity and Temptation

    by Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, authorised lay preacher, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender & Sexuality Group

    It’s a year ago this month that I took over as guest editor of this blog. My post on taking up the role focused on how, to those outside the church, we look like a very strange social group. Looking back, has that changed? I think not. If anything, it has got worse.

    Last month, we had the long-awaited Synod debate on the Living in Love and Faith process (also known as ‘5 years of my life gone’). After hours of debate and yet more small group work, the bishops’ proposals were amended and passed with 57% in favour, and yet all that has really changed is that some conservative evangelicals have announced they are “compelled to resist”. I assume that, ahead of their meeting today, the bishops have been working out the membership of the various groups who will redraft the not-yet-allowed Prayers of Love and Faith and will write the pastoral guidance to replace the much-maligned Issues in Human Sexuality. As I write this, it remains unclear what – if anything? – will be presented to the July General Synod.

    In that blog post a year ago I remembered being part of the Diocesan Shared Conversations process which the C of E went through in 2015 and feeling that “I was desperate to find a way in which we could live together with respect being shown to those who read the Bible and tradition differently.” Little did I know then that – in my role as vice-chair of the Gender & Sexuality Group on General Synod – I would be invited to join the St Hugh’s Conversations. Tentative feelers came my way shortly after I took over this blog. I was initially horrified to find that this group existed and that it had been discussing how to split the C of E. Not “a way in which we could live together” so much a way we could live apart, with some of us welcoming same-sex marriage and others rejecting it. It made me feel physically sick. Once I had googled the group – and found nothing, confirming how well the secret had been kept – I realised that I probably should have guessed someone somewhere had already been working on the options. Because the group was secret, I couldn’t discuss it with anyone outside it, and that made it feel even worse.

    I wasn’t able to attend their meeting immediately before the July 2022 General Synod so my first experience of St Hugh’s (other than reading the file of various documents batted back and forth over the years) was in November 2022. At that meeting it was agreed that the high level of secrecy no longer needed to be maintained, not least because published comments by both Bishop Steven Croft and Vaughan Roberts had made it clear that such a group existed; we were therefore free to refer to the group, but not to name its members or attribute anything said there. I mentioned it in passing in a blog post soon after, and my fellow participant Simon Butler also mentioned it in his open letter to the Bishop of Southwark. Nobody was very interested, other than the English Churchman (A Protestant Family Newspaper) which became quite excited (“secret conversations come to light”) and that story was picked up by Anglican Mainstream. The English Churchman asked the Church of England Evangelical Council what was going on and shared their (deliberately vague?) response:

    For several years, CEEC has been talking with both those who share our views and those who disagree on the topic of human sexuality. CEEC has explored, in a number of articles, the idea that visible and robust differentiation might provide a solution to the fundamental theological incompatibility that exists around this issue within the CofE.

    Other than Simon and me, I am not aware of anyone else who has revealed they are part of St Hugh’s – is that because the conservative evangelicals in the room are embarrassed to have been part of a ‘secret’ group? Such a worry about secrecy would seem ironic when they are in churches which are not transparent about their own policies on women in ministry or on LGBTQIA+ people; something SCM’s Honest Church campaign is highlighting.

    In his open letter, Simon commented that “The uniting spirit of the St Hugh’s Conversations is a desire to bring to a conclusion the battle over sexuality that has beset the Church since 1987 … We believe – at least tentatively – that now must be the time to find a settlement which will suit us all. I have come to agree with this position.” I am less persuaded. What would ‘differentiation’, a ‘settlement’, look like? More ‘flying bishops’, deals between dioceses, another Province within the Church of England? A bishop for any combination of views on women and on LGBTQIA+ people? What sort of ecclesiology is that? I’ve now asked three times at St Hugh’s, “In any such settlement, in what would unity consist?” And I still haven’t had an answer.

    Let’s just look at what one congregation, Vaughan Roberts’ church, St Ebbe’s Oxford, has now done. Oxford has four bishops, none of whom support the CEEC. Vaughan Roberts states that

    St Ebbe’s clergy have already declared that we are in impaired communion with the bishops in our diocese, which means that we will not welcome them to preach, confirm, ordain or conduct our ministerial reviews, and we will not take communion with them.

    No unity there, then. Not even taking communion ‘with’ a bishop? That’s not “impaired” communion – it’s no communion at all. Not having your ministerial review with your diocesan bishops? Surely this is already saying that they are not in the same church? I wrote about my suspicions here when I noticed that some General Synod members weren’t even willing to attend the service at York Minster with the rest of us. Again I ask: in what does our unity consist, even now?

    In a recent post on this site, Charles Read noted that the desire to have a bishop who agrees with you on everything is something new. It’s been pointed out many times that conservative evangelicals have managed to stay in the C of E while disagreeing with the decisions on women priests, women bishops, marrying people who have previously been divorced, allowing priests to be in civil partnerships …  Where women bishops are concerned, a congregation which won’t accept their bishop can have a ‘flying bishop’ instead. Would such a congregation refuse to take communion with a bishop who is a woman, or a bishop who has ‘laid hands on’ a woman in consecrating her as a bishop or in ordaining her as a priest? Would they listen to a sermon preached by a person who accepts that women can be bishops?

    And now CEEC has raised the stakes yet again. Just when we thought the issue was gay sex, and so long as you didn’t do anything sexual then you could still be accepted in their churches, now it’s not OK to be in a committed relationship with someone of the same sex, even if you’re not doing anything you think counts as sexual. So what does that mean for clergy in civil partnerships: a relationship which the C of E had been allowing on the grounds that it wasn’t sexual? In one of the many supporting Q and A documents they offer, CEEC reject even CPs: being in “covenanted relationships such as civil partnerships so long as they don’t engage in sexual intimacy” is forbidden because such relationships are still “based on a temptation”.

    When you think of how little time in a marriage is spent feeling temptation or in “sexual intimacy”, it does seem to me that the conservative evangelical view of the marriage bond is dangerously skewed. The most conservative approach of all, I think, is the one they reject: simply to rejoice in marriage as a faithful and committed relationship for two people to live in, and to open it to any two people who are willing and able to make the marriage vows.

  • Blackburn: What We Still Don’t Know

    by Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    Surprise, surprise – there actually is dissension in Blackburn about the Church’s proposed appointment of a bishop who does not ordain women and did not vote in favour of General Synod’s recent decision to allow the blessing of same sex couples.

    When Philip North was nominated as the new Diocesan Bishop of Blackburn in January, there was some surprise that the announcement was apparently greeted by universal joy among female clergy – given that North does not accept that the Church of England has the authority to ordain women as priests and is therefore not sure that these women can consecrate the bread and wine in services.

    It has now come to light that there are in fact a number of clergy with concerns about the nomination, but we have not heard from them publicly because they are worried about speaking out.

    One vicar, Rev Dr Rebecca Aechtner, who ministers in Scotforth, says she has sometimes been accused of being ‘shouty’ and ‘a feminist’ simply for raising concerns about how women are treated in Church.  Nonetheless, as the only ordained woman elected to Bishops’ Council, she continues to raise ‘serious concerns about how women clergy will be protected and about people being evaded when voicing those concerns.’

    And now, in addition, there are others in the diocese who have concerns about the nomination, given that Bishop Philip abstained in the recent vote at General Synod to permit clergy, if they so choose, to bless same sex couples, and the other bishop in the Blackburn diocese, Jill Duff, voted against.

    With regard to Bishop Philip’s position on women’s ordination, there is still no clarification about the practical outworkings for the diocese – such as which candidates Bishop Philip is willing to ordain as priests. Will this be all male candidates or just male candidates who don’t affirm women’s ordination? And who will ordain female candidates and male candidates who don’t want to be ordained by a non-affirming Bishop?  It would also be good to know what, if any, provisions will be made for clergy and parishes who don’t want to be overseen by a bishop who doesn’t fully affirm women’s ordination. If the situation were the reverse, with an affirming diocesan Bishop being appointed, then parishes who don’t fully accept women’s ordination would have the right for extended episcopal oversight. But there’s no current provision in Church law for the opposite to happen.

    I’m told by senior clergy in the diocese that there was a consultation with clergy and parishes before the nomination of Philip North as a diocesan bishop in which clergy said they did not want a non-affirming Bishop, but they also said they did want Bishop Philip.  This is not logically a feasible request but was taken as support for the nomination.  Details of the consultation have not been published but it does not seem that efforts were made to take readings on the potential appointment with clergy in safe spaces – where people could raise concerns without this being observed by and known to their future boss. Indeed, clergy who have not indicated their wholehearted support have been described as being wilfully disobedient to authority.

    My own opinion is that, given that there are a number of clergy in the diocese, both female and male, who are uneasy with what the nomination signifies and may lead to, it would seem appropriate that the process should be paused, at least until proposals have been made about the practical outworkings of the appointment and these have been consulted on.

    It is not only a disgrace but, frankly, dangerous if we are creating a culture in our Church where people feel unable to speak out. The campaign group, Women and the Church (WATCH), that I chair has recently got together with the Student Christian Movement to launch a new campaign called #honestchurch which calls on churches to be clear and transparent about the limits they put on women’s ministry and also how they welcome people from the LGBTQIA community.  Jesus famously said, ‘What you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.’ Secrecy and coverups are an anathema to our faith.  Let’s give women and men in Blackburn a safe space to say what they really think.