ViaMedia

Category: Good Disagreement

  • Time for the Church to Take Transparency Seriously

    Dr Sharon Jagger is a researcher and lecturer in Religion at York St. John University

    As a feminist researcher, I have spent several years exploring the experiences of women priests in the Church of England. It has been my privilege to talk in depth with 27 ordained women, at different stages of their careers and from different traditions in the Church. Through their experiences I have learned a great deal about women’s relationship not just with the priesthood but also with the institution of the Church.

    Perhaps you feel that this topic is over, and that – given the Church’s need to provide serious responses to institutional racism and calls for equality and inclusion for LGBTQ+ people – we should just move on. The Church of England settled on a structural compromise allowing two positions to be supported: we are ordaining increasing numbers of women, and at the same time structurally accommodating those who oppose women in the priesthood. This may seem like a contradiction, but after 30 years the worms are safely in their cans.

    But my research shows that women priests still face significant challenges and barriers in the Church because of their gender. The structural arrangements put in place in 1992 were flagged at the early stages of their implementation as unsatisfactory and discriminatory (see Monica Furlong’s edited book, Act of Synod, Act of Folly). The structure that limits women’s ordained ministry in the Church was agreed to be open ended and even permanent, but it by no means provides a resolution. The debate is merely in stasis.

    Most parishes support women’s ordained ministry, but some remain unable to accept women priests or bishops, and are led by male clergy who believe the priesthood is a male role. The Church has formal arrangements that allow such parishes, for theological reasons, to request oversight from gender traditional bishops and make a case for male-only priestly ministry (these arrangements were updated in 2014 when women were able to become bishops). After consultation, Parochial Church Councils (PCCs) may vote on a resolution like: ‘This PCC requests, on grounds of theological conviction, that arrangements be made for it in accordance with the House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests’. The number of parishes with such resolutions currently stands at 590 (figures are for 2021), a steady increase on previous years.

    These arrangements may be well-known to some but they are not well understood across the Church. My research also suggests there is a ‘quietness’ around the continuing division on women in the priesthood – a silence partly guided by the notions of ‘good disagreement’ and ‘mutual flourishing’. Whilst I argue there is a need for the Church to re-consider its arrangements because of the harm done to women in the priesthood, a more specific and urgent problem has developed.

    A recent Twitter thread has highlighted – not for the first time – the ongoing concern over lack of transparency in parishes that have voted for the above resolution. This conversation caught my interest because it chimes with stories ordained women shared with me in my research. The Twitter post argues that a significant number of churchgoers are unaware of their own church’s position regarding women’s priestly ministry, since it is not always made public on websites and through other communications. Newcomers may not be made aware of the views held by the leadership, and how that affects practices in their church. Indeed, they may not even realise that divisions in the Church regarding women’s ordination still remain.

    My research confirms there is often a lack of transparency. One ordained woman told me a painful story about her journey to priesthood that stalled late in the process when she learned that the vicar of the church where she worshipped was a member of Forward in Faith (an umbrella organisation that opposes women’s priesthood), and would not support her vocation. Despite this knowledge being crucial for her formation and the discernment and selection process, as she pursued her call to the ministry there was never any explicit explanation given by her vicar of his theological objections to women’s ordination. This silence meant she had to start the process again, after joining a different church which wholeheartedly supported the ordination of women. Such practices do not conform with the Church’s 2014 commitment, that ‘the Church of England is now fully committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender.’ (Guiding Principle 1)

    To complicate and expand this further, even ordained women do not always know where male colleagues stand. Another woman priest I interviewed describes one clergy colleague who does not accept the priesthood of women as ‘wonderful’ and ‘supportive’, but that ‘you would know nothing of the position he takes from anything he says or does.’

    This avoidance of openly discussing theological views and policies on women’s ministry may be a lingering legacy of the division women’s ordination caused in 1992, when the Synod finally voted in its favour by the tiniest of margins in the House of Laity. An Anglo-Catholic woman priest, another interviewee in my research, believes there remains unresolved division that still causes anxiety, resulting in withdrawal and reluctance to continue the debate on both sides. She says:

    People tend to be quite quiet about it because the experience of women’s ordination was quite traumatic, whichever side you were on . . . only talking about things obliquely . . . rather than open debate. Or you know only after the third gin and tonic . . . It’s both a curse and a blessing.

    The quietness is a blessing because it allows women clergy to get on with their ministry without being the perpetual focus of disagreement. But it is a curse because the current arrangements become crystallised without proper scrutiny, discrimination is hidden, and women may feel unsure of their status in parts of the Church. Not knowing whether a church or its leadership oppose women’s ordination is disempowering. It restricts agency and it disrupts an individual’s ability to choose an appropriate worship environment. I speak from experience: it is a shock to learn by chance that the church leader expected to have a hand in your human flourishing believes your gender determines what you can and cannot do and makes decisions accordingly. Lack of transparency is fundamentally unethical.

    The Twitter thread goes on to suggest some solutions: Parishes that vote for the above resolution should publish their position clearly and visibly on their websites, and the Church should publish its own easily accessible national list. Some of this information is available in various places on the internet. Forward in Faith, for example, provides a list of parishes it supports in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. But one must know where to look and be aware that even though there is little open debate, there are places in the Church where women’s ordination is not accepted.

    Theological beliefs that exclude women from leadership and ordained ministry profoundly affect women’s material, emotional, relational, psychological and spiritual experiences of church life. Transparency is the very least the Church should require where beliefs about gender, and policies and practices that flow from these beliefs, curtail women’s futures and their flourishing.

     

     

     

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  • Women Bishops: The Legacy of Baroness Howe of Idlicote (8 February 1932-22 March 2022)

    by April Alexander, member of General Synod 2000-2021; Church Commissioner 2008-2018; member of Crown Nominations Commission 2013-2018

     

    Obituaries to Lady Howe saluted her well-known feminism, but few mentioned her Anglicanism.  For those of us who have worked for the ordination of women, however, Elspeth Howe is remembered with love and gratitude because, as a vice-president of WATCH (Women and the Church), she voiced in the House of Lords our joys and fears over the Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure (2014) and the Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015.

    It is timely to look again at those joys and fears to see whether they have been realised.

    After the failure in the House of Laity in General Synod of the original 2012 Measure to allow women to be consecrated as bishops, in 2014 there was a determination not to allow the new and revised Measure to stumble at any point. It was Elspeth Howe who nevertheless asked further questions which forced the Archbishop of Canterbury (in 2013, Rowan Williams had been succeeded by Justin Welby) to address the rather embarrassing truth that discrimination against women would survive despite the indications to the contrary; indeed, such discrimination is actually embedded in the 2014 legislation and Guidance.

    To this day, parishes who want to may request from their Diocesan bishop – whether female or male – the episcopal oversight of an alternative bishop who will ‘protect’ the parish from ever having an ‘unacceptable’ Diocesan. In her speech to the House of Lords on 14 October 2014, Lady Howe asked whether the reverse would be the case. She pointed out that there were already parishes with a woman priest serving under a bishop who did not recognise her orders, and asked whether such a parish would be able to request the oversight of an inclusive bishop. The truthful answer would have been a plain ‘No’, as we have seen during the years since, but it was a fudge.

    Lady Howe also asked for reassurance that, despite all-encompassing nature of Clause 2 of the Measure, it was only the protected characteristic of gender from the Equality Act 2010 which would be overridden and not those characteristics relating to sexuality, marital status and so on. The Archbishop of Canterbury replied:

    As a matter of policy, the House of Bishops has advised that those in parochial appointments should act as though the [Equality] Act applied [to all protected characteristics other than gender]. This change is not a cloak for discrimination on sexuality, marital status, marital history or, for that matter, age (Hansard October 2014).

    This is also the answer I had been given in General Synod in July 2014 by the Chief Legal Adviser to the General Synod.  However, by the time she died, Lady Howe would have been forgiven for wondering why the debate on sexuality rumbles on, eight years after such a clear assurance, given in the House of Lords, by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

    Four months later, in February 2015, Baroness Howe spoke in the debate on the Lords Spiritual (Women) Bill which should have enabled new women bishops to ‘leapfrog’ over their male colleagues in being appointed to the Lords. In the event, of course, there have never been enough women to fill the places, and the provision lapses in 2025. She said:

    Given the great pleasure of seeing the first female bishop consecrated in the Church of England recently, it was sad to see that within a week the underlying divisions within the Church of England had begun to emerge once again…In October last year I asked the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury in this House whether archbishops would continue to consecrate all bishops in their respective Provinces. From his response and further debate in the other place I understood

    ‘that in the normal course of events, archbishops will consecrate all bishops but … there will be circumstances when an archbishop is ill or overseas’ (Commons 20/10/14; col 724).

    Then, he might delegate.

    Yet only one week after the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York (John Sentamu) had consecrated the first female bishop through the laying on of hands, he chose not to put his hands on the new Bishop of Burnley, although he was present at the time. He invited, as noble Lords will know, other bishops who were ‘acceptable’ to the new bishop to lay on hands in his place. There were only three such bishops. Thus, the contrast between the two services in that sense could not have been greater.

    This is still an important matter…. The archbishops [later] issued a statement that they would take each consecration on a case-by-case basis. Put simply, there are those in the Church of England who hold that once a bishop has laid hands on a female priest in ordination or on a female bishop in consecration he is no longer acceptable to consecrate members of the self-styled ‘traditional Catholic’ wing of the church. This is a notion of ‘taint’, however it is described by those who propose it.

    We should not forget that it has been a source of anguish among all women in the Church since alternative arrangements were introduced for ordination under the Act of Synod 1993.

    Readers should be aware that that the assurance quoted here by Lady Howe did not survive the passage of time. Citing not just the pandemic, but also ‘awareness of the sad reality that not all in the Church of England agree on issues of ordination’, the Archbishops issued another statement five years later on 20 July 2020. Rather than consecrating all bishops, they stated,

    We have agreed that the Metropolitan will normally ask another bishop to be the chief consecrator…From now on the Archbishops will ask three bishops to lay on hands with other bishops present and associating with the ordination but not in fact laying on their hands.

    From re-reading these debates, it is clear that assurances given even in the House of Lords, and even by the Archbishop of Canterbury, can turn out to be less than durable.

    What is also crystal clear is that Elspeth Howe had just the words to express the frustration and disappointment of the vast majority of women who had worked so hard for this legislation but who had no voice of their own in the legislature.

    May she rest in peace.

  • Strange Practices: Making Sense of the Church of England Today

    by Prof Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and member of General Synod

    I’m honoured to have been asked to take over Via Media for a couple of months and, like my predecessors as guest editors, Rosie Harper and Alan Wilson, I’ve invited a range of people, the majority of them new voices here.

    Among them, I’ve made a point of inviting some people from the academic world, including some who have recently finished, or who are working towards, higher degrees which involve researching the Church of England with the skills of different disciplines. Why? Because I’m interested in how we work with both experience and reason in making decisions in the church. Can we use our reason to think through a situation rather than giving a knee-jerk reaction? Can we appreciate that some of our key documents and some of our practices are the object of academic study – academic study which can teach us about ourselves?

    Sometimes, in church circles, I get the impression that being an academic makes me ‘a bit dodgy’. My BA was partly in Social Anthropology and my PhD applied its methodology to the ancient Greeks. Social Anthropology started out trying to understand what looked like ‘strange practices’ in non-Western societies: rituals, kinship arrangements, political systems. At University College London, one of the books in the Anthropology library was Fortescue’s The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described (1918). As a student, after spending many of my teenage years in a gathered evangelical church, I was exploring Anglo-Catholic sacramentalism in my own life, so I read Fortescue with interest. If you ever need to find out what to do at a ‘High Mass before a Bishop not in his own Diocese’, this is the book for you! But what was that book doing in the Anthropology section? It was there because the way sacred space is defined and used, and ceremonies are constructed, is the concern of anthropology, in our own culture as much as in others.

    Historically, understanding ‘strange practices’ often came with a colonial motive; to rule other people you needed to work out how to integrate their system with yours. I wonder if we do that in the church too; is our motive in trying to understand each other really to try to take each other over? Back in 2015, I took part in the Diocesan Shared Conversations. It was gruelling, not least because of the tension between hearing views which – despite my own broad church background – I found extraordinary, and meeting people with whom I profoundly disagreed but for whom I felt love and concern.

    Anthropology’s curious eye needs to be turned to what we think is entirely normal, taken-for-granted, in the Church of England. After a brief phase of ‘armchair anthropology’, where researchers sat at home and read about the people they were studying, anthropology has worked by ‘participant observation’; by living with the people you study. There’s a whole literature around whether you can do the anthropology of the people with whom you’ve grown up.

    Within the church, I suspect, we just don’t see how very weird we look. Maybe we should. Doesn’t this matter to mission? At the most basic level, our language is often opaque: even a church announcement of ‘Choral Evensong’ can confuse the congregation, because if the service is called Evensong and there’s a choir, isn’t it always Choral Evensong? At the November 2021 General Synod, the Archbishop of York responded to a question about churchy language by arguing that it should not be simplified, but rather explained. But … how long have you got?

    In his introduction to Ceremonies, Fortescue pronounced that there was rather too much genuflection around; that’s a churchy gesture involving kneeling on one knee and then standing, not to be confused with taking the knee, which is the same gesture in support of Black Lives Matter. Fortescue noted that “to a bishop – would not a low bow be more in accordance with the natural sentiment of modern people?” In the past, kneeling before rulers was normal, and if the bishop “reigns in the place of Christ” then bowing to him made sense: but this was 1918, and “now, in the world, such signs are dying out. To modern people they begin to seem a little Byzantine”.

    I’m an academic: I know that calling things ‘Byzantine’ or ‘medieval’ often shows a serious misunderstanding of history! But the point stands: how do others perceive what we do, as the world within which we are living continues to change? When do we change, and when do we not?

    In my twenties, my favourite hymn included “We pray thee too for wanderers from thy fold/O bring them back, good Shepherd of the sheep!” Back then, I knew who these wanderers were: campaigners for women priests. After hearing a talk by Dr Mary Tanner, I changed my position on this literally overnight, joining the Movement for the Ordination of Women the following morning. But I still remember the emotional appeal of being one of the pure ‘remnant’, the only ones who keep God’s commandments (Revelation 12:17). Although it’s the Seventh-Day Adventist Church who most focus on this verse, it’s quoted in Church of England contexts; we should “not be conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2). I often hear Christians today proudly asserting how ‘counter-cultural’ they are, but this usually means counter to a very limited set of aspects of contemporary culture.

    But our faith is based on God becoming flesh in a particular time and place, and in a particular person: Jesus. The incarnation calls us not to shun the world, but to engage with it; indeed, to love it. We are part of God’s world: we don’t stand outside it. God goes ahead of us and doesn’t wait for us to catch up with what the Spirit is doing.

  • Drawing the Line?

    by the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool and Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

    Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.[1]

    It’s not that long ago that the word “inclusive” used to irritate me. I saw it as a party slogan, rather like the use of “orthodox” or “godly” in other parts of our Church. It annoyed me, even as it nagged at me.

    This is because I hoped to rise above such divisive words. In particular, in my early days as a bishop I tried to inhabit a vacuum of opinion. I believed that this vacuum is the proper place for a bishop, the only place that a “symbol of unity” in the Church could possibly sit. Such a vacuum is certainly a good place to live if you want a quiet life: in space, no one can hear you scream.

    Well, over the years things changed for me. As with so many others in the long history of the Church, events and wounded people approached me and I came to know them, and they changed me. Now, as I approach my retirement, the place and voice of a disciple involves (to quote Dan Berrigan SJ as I so often do), “knowing where you stand, and standing there”.

    So I have done my best to say what I think about a whole range of things, including one or two which are contended in today’s church. I’ve tried to speak for, to make room for, the lives of people for whom there was no room in the past. Overall I’ve tried to set my compass by what the Roman Catholic Church has called the preferential option for the poor; what my predecessor David Sheppard called the bias to the poor.

    As I’ve done so there has been no shortage of people to tell me that by making this journey at all, I have fallen short of my discipleship in general and of my episcopal vocation in particular. I’m told that I have gone wrong in one or both of two ways: by being a heretic and/or by being a maverick.

    Those who think I’m a heretic usually write to me. They tend to be unrestrained in the use of their language. Many of them believe that my eternal destiny is at stake and that they need to help me with my salvation by setting me straight. From the tone of their letters they clearly believe that the job will best be done by shaming me into heaven, reminding me forcibly of my mistakes, inaccuracies, ignorances, underlining how offended they are by my words. I try always to reply to these letters and emails with thanks, but I have to say that none of them has yet succeeded in its aim. Shaming and anger are poor persuaders.

    Those who think I’m a maverick are usually more restrained in their style. They tend not to write but to speak privately, or to express themselves non-verbally, in the raising of an eyebrow of the rolling of an eye. They communicate more in sorrow than in anger. What a pity, brother, that from time to time you have so noisily flouted the agreed norms of polite Christian behaviour. How unfortunate that you seem to be questioning or resisting or pre-empting the necessarily slow deliberations of the Church. What a shame that you keep banging on about one or two issues, rather than spreading your indignations more carefully, seamlessly and evenly about the place. How sad that you’re so… well, untactful.

    For me, as for a number of my colleagues retired and serving in all orders of the Church, being seen as a maverick is unpleasant and unwelcome. Unwelcome, since our belief is that we live in the mainstream of discipleship and not on its margins. Making the option for the poor, being there for those on the edge of things, is the mainspring of our witness. But we ourselves do not wilfully seek to be on the edge of things. Still less do we want to be treated as a mildly tolerated presence on the edge, like pepper in a stew, piquant but mercifully optional.

    Anyway, as the year’s end approaches, and with around fifty days to go before my farewell service in Liverpool, I have been reflecting on this question: how have I, who used to be so annoyed by the word “inclusive”, come to be seen as an annoying maverick/heretic now?

    Perhaps it’s because I have entered in to a greater faithfulness to what I was taught about God and about his only-begotten Son. That at any rate is my hope and prayer.

    Here is a short passage from the Lutheran liturgical theologian, Gordon Lathrop. I read it years ago, and I quote it often:

    Draw a line that includes us and excludes many others, and Jesus Christ is always on the other side of the line. At least that is so if we are speaking of the biblical, historic Christ who eats with sinners and outsiders, who is made a curse and sin itself for us, who justifies the ungodly, and who is himself the hole in any system.[2]

    In the week of my forty-second Christmas as an ordained minister, I look again as a disciple to the paradox of the Incarnation. I look to the Infant of Days, to the scrap of humanity who couldn’t find a room yet who is fully God, who grew up to dine with sinners, to scandalise the religious, to die an unclean death outside the city. I look to him and I agree with Gordon Lathrop. Jesus is himself the hole in any human system of righteousness, and Divine righteousness is a gift given to those on both sides of any line. And I will live in this mystery with all the integrity I can muster.

    Another long-remembered thing. As a sixth-form student I read a book by Daniel Berrigan SJ, the US Catholic priest and peace protestor whose words I quoted above. The book was called “America is Hard to Find”. That book drew me into the peace movement, as a member of which I was honoured to have been arrested and held three or four times for standing or sitting in the wrong place, with Quakers and Catholics and Methodists and a few other Anglicans, acting as a heretic or a maverick over against the laws of England, when instruments of mass destruction were found on the streets, at Cruisewatch near Greenham Common, or at RAF Lakenheath, or in places where decisions were taken about the use of such weapons, such as 10 Downing Street (where in those days you could indeed stand or sit on the street outside). This has been a wellspring of my witness, and I remain glad that I stood there, although doing that too brought criticism to me.

    Perhaps all these criticisms are justified, perhaps one day I’ll grow up enough to understand them and to repudiate my life’s journey. Or perhaps not.

    In any case mine is far from being the unblemished journey of a saint or a prophet. It’s been full of twists and turns, mistakes and apologies, depressions and re-commitments. It has led me from a seat on the road outside 10 Downing Street to (briefly) a seat in the House of Lords, and many would say that sums up a road of contradiction and paradox and compromise and complicity.

    But as a result of that journey, I am more and more convinced that if we draw a line that includes us and excludes many others, then Jesus Christ is always on the other side of the line, among the people outside. I want to be there with Him. I have become unashamedly inclusive, for Christ’s sake.

    And on that road I hope to keep walking, through Christmas and through retirement and on into my own future, as part of the future of this broken and excluding world which needs Jesus so much.

    As I prepare to enter another chapter of my life and ministry, I commend the life of looking beyond lines to you all. I hope that you’ll walk on that road yourself, unafraid. God is with you. Have a blessed Christmas, and a happy and spirit-filled New Year!

    © Paul Bayes 2021

    [1] 1 Peter 3:14

    [2] Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology, pp. 64-5.

  • Blessings & Same-Sex Relationships

    by the Revd Dr Andrew Knight, Vicar of St Mary’s, Diocese of Chester

    It was the conversation I had been anticipating with some trepidation since beginning my ordained ministry. Two young Christian men, long-term partners, enquiring as to whether the vicar of their welcoming local church, would marry them, or at least bless a civil marriage. By virtue of their ordination, priests are enabled in their ministry to invite God’s blessing upon people, places and objects… from new vocations to homes, bibles to boats, the baptised and bereaved. Yet, the Church of England ties the priest’s hands preventing in any meaningful sense them being able to bless a permanent, faithful and fruitful same-sex relationship. Having negotiated the uncomfortable conversation, where issues of theology and legality sat uneasily alongside the Gospel of love, welcome and reconciliation, this incongruity was amplified days later when a clergy colleague shared how he had joyfully responded to the request to bless a couple of guinea pigs in a pet service… I didn’t ask if they were the same gender?!

    As priests we pray God’s blessing upon the church to enable it to be a blessing to the world, opening opportunities for divine intimacy and fruitfulness. Withholding blessing has therefore significant consequences for priests, church and community.  The crux of the issue is what we believe to be the nature and purpose of ‘blessing’?  I believe there are several dimensions to priestly blessing, which I’ll summarise here:

    Blessing is firstly a prayer. The US Episcopal Church understands the blessing of faithful same-sex relationships as a prayer: to thank God for the grace discerned in the couple’s lives; to ask for God’s continual favour; to manifest the fruits of the Spirit in their lives; and to commission the couple to bear witness to the Gospel.

    Blessing is also a commissioning: the invocation of the Holy Spirit to guide, empower and enable flourishing in a person’s life and ministry. For example, marriage is a new vocation to a permanent, faithful relationship where a deeper companionship and fruitfulness is commissioned.

    The Hebrew word for blessing berakhah is thanksgiving, our frequent response to receiving God’s blessing. This celebratory blessing is present in any marriage rite in response to the good gift of relationships.

    Blessing is pastoral care, originating in domestic settings where the covenantal relationship with God brought wholeness, peace and wellbeing to home and community.  The Church in Wales in proposing new blessing liturgy recognised it was “pastorally unsustainable for the Church to make no formal provision for those in same-gender relationships.”

    Blessing is a witness, allowing people to connect faith to their everyday lives. Same-sex couples who seek God’s blessing do not generally do so in order that a relationship can take place, or so they can have sex. Rather it is for them to bear public witness to the gift of their companionship in order to both ask for the community’s support and to seal their commitment under God.

    Blessings are exhortation – words of power that can elevate and encourage.  They, thus are cries of liberation, bringing light, truth and justice into dark places where suffering and discrimination has been hidden.

    Henri Nouwen’s concept of blessing is generous hospitality, allowing outsiders to connect with and enrich a worshipping community. This blessing requires vulnerability, empathy, authenticity and openness to the Holy Spirit in healing fragmented communities.

    Blessing as sanctification calls upon the Holy Spirit to transform us, such that we grow into the fullness of the redeemed life. Both heterosexual and homosexual Christian couples recognise the grace of God in their lives, in their mutual joy, love and companionship.

    As with the eucharistic bread and wine, blessing as consecration establishes a new reality and divine purpose. Through marriage the couple’s lives have a new trajectory and vocation, setting them apart to bear the fruits of, and be a witness to, God’s grace in the world.

    The language of ‘blessing’, however, becomes highly emotive when used in conjunction with ministry to gay and lesbian couples. In everyday language if someone ‘gives their blessing’ to something, the sense is they ‘approve’. Many may perceive that blessing a same-sex couple is simply public pronouncement of the Church’s approval of a way of life or sexual practice about which they are personally uncertain or reject. The Church communicates its beliefs through its liturgy, and the priest has a liturgical blessing role, encouraging, or essentially giving permission for, a specific movement in mission or ministry. Yet if blessing is withheld from same-sex couples because of a narrower perspective of blessing as ‘expression of doctrine’, we negate its multifaceted richness as I’ve described, and perhaps forget it is not us but Christ that is the source of all blessing.

    God’s desire to bless is not limited by our human boundaries of sacred and secular.  Nevertheless, the Church should recognise there are things we may not bless, such as weapons of war. It is perhaps easier to exclude blessing things which may cause harm, or destroy, or divide, but this is far from the nature of a loving, faithful relationship. A church may teach what kind of relationships might be considered worthy of blessing and which may not. Yet, the question is how do we draw the line, especially when there is limited theological consensus on same-sex unions?

    We may choose then to bless those things in which we either recognise God’s goodness and potential for fruitfulness, or that can be orientated towards God’s purposes for redemption. If so, by denying a blessing for a same-sex relationship do we suggest that there is no goodness or hope to be found in it? Many heterosexual marriages are far from what we might call ‘good’.  Whilst some see the blessing of same-sex couples as abandoning traditional biblical theology of sex and marriage, others would extend it, to include same-sex couples, as a matter of justice, generosity and mercy. Meanwhile, when same-sex couples approach a church, they are not looking for a judgement or teaching document but an empathetic welcome from a church with a human face. The Methodist Church recently asserted “There is a strong case that, if marriage is what the Methodist Church says it is, and is as wonderful as it says it is, this Church cannot remain true to the God of justice and love by continuing to deny it to those same-sex couples who desire it so deeply”.

    Several churches have moved to introduce permissive blessing rites for same-sex couples as a matter of theological and pastoral conscience for priests. I pray that we may not lose the opportunity to be the instruments of God’s blessing, and encourage LGBT Christians to capture the spirit of Jacob, who despite his difficult circumstances and against the odds, hangs on in there, wrestling with the angel until daybreak saying “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

     

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  • Making a Stand: From Kilroy to Synod

    by the Very Revd Joe Hawes, Dean of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich and Member of General Synod

    As a young gay ordination candidate I learnt the contested territory I was about to step into in the Church during a ministry experience scheme a year before my selection and training.

    The year was spent at a cathedral, a wonderful flourishing community where I learned much, made various mistakes and began to understand what ordained ministry might look like. It was 1987 and the infamous ‘Higton debate’ on General Synod was brewing. Like so many others, I experienced the casual homophobia of the tabloid press (remember the Sun article ‘How to spot if you’ve got a Gay Vicar’?) In my case the insecurity came not just from the knowledge that this was about people like me, but also from the proclaimed conservative standpoint of my bishop who was quite clear that questions would be asked of all ordinands whose sexual identities were in question.

    Into this febrile atmosphere came a request for me to join ‘Kilroy’ a daytime live audience show. Not quite Jerry Springer, but populist and opportunist nevertheless. I should have said no at once but the prospect of the lure of the television cameras was just too strong. In discussions with the researcher beforehand I was careful to stress the precariousness of my position, that there could be no question of being outed and that my future would be in question if I was. Solemn assurances were given, and fool that I was, I believed them. Faithfully I did my research about how different factions of the Church of England, represented on the cathedral Chapter, might feel about the vexed question. From the ebullient defiantly liberal Sub Dean (“What’s all the fuss about?”) through to the conservative Anglo Catholic Chaplain (“celibacy would be your only option…if it’s you we are talking about here?”) and on to the gentle, agonised Precentor (“Oh I just wish it would all go away”), I swiftly gained a comprehensive picture of the polarisation of the Church of England. On one thing, however, all were clear: “If, by any chance, any of this is relevant to you, for heaven’s sakes, don’t admit to anything: you are in a highly vulnerable position!” I should have listened harder!

    Came the day, and on the front row I sat – opposite members of LGCM (Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement), theologically conservative vicars and members of General Synod, hoping in vain that that I could escape any  notice. Of course, it was not to be. Perma tanned and implacable, Roger Kilroy-Silk honed in on me half way through the programme, which we had all been warned went out live without editing. “Now we have here today an ordinand, Joe Hawes, who is gay. So, Joe, do you feel at risk that you won’t be ordained?” I still remember the feeling of icy paralysis, knowing my family, my bishop, cathedral staff were all watching, all unaware (or so I thought) of ‘The Truth About Me’.

    Swallowing hard and denying my true nature on daytime television does not come high on the list of my ‘ must be repeated’ life experiences, but it is what I did. Expressions of pity and disbelief on the faces of fellow guests did little to dispel the feelings of guilt, shame, fear and embarrassment which accompanied me as I aimlessly walked the streets, not daring to return to the cathedral, a card from LGCM in my pocket. (“If you ever need to talk, phone us.”)

    I have recalled that day so many times in the intervening years.

    It was followed by a decision to embrace celibacy as I began training for ordination even though I didn’t much want to) – a decision soon set aside as on my first night at Theological College I met the man who would become my life partner. The subsequent years have been quite a journey where I have grown in confidence by his love as well as by good teaching and generous friendships, where I have learned from sound, inclusive and progressive theology that I was loved by God for who I am rather than in spite of who I am; where I have found a voice to try and speak without hatred but with passion about inclusion; found welcome and fellow feeling in generous inclusive parishes; to eventually finding three years ago that a senior appointment in the Church of England really is possible if your bishop is brave and inclusive enough; even if it meant negotiating a storm in a teacup of a certain senior Tory politician’s reaction to my appointment as a Dean (we have subsequently become good friends and I was honoured to conduct the funeral of his wife), until the recent inauguration of General Synod.

    Buoyed up by the good fellowship of LGBTQ members, I stood during the inaugural session of General Synod during Simon Butler’s powerful speech in silent witness to our LGBT sisters and brothers in Ghana who are soon to be in even greater risk of imprisonment and physical danger than they are at present.

    As I stood, I recalled that terrified young ordinand under studio lights in the summer of 1987. If that was how I felt then, then how must it feel to be LGBT+ in Ghana today?

    And as the years rolled back, I forgave myself, got over myself, set my very minor struggle in the context of the real danger faced by those in whom we stood in solidarity, and gave thanks for the liberty I enjoy, the task in which I share with other good people, and prayed the God who has been faithful to me to protect them and change the hearts of their government and Church.

  • Advent Reflections: Seeking Justice; Showing Mercy

    by Savitri Hensman, community worker, author of “Sexuality, Struggle and Saintliness” and LGBTI+ equality activist

    Advent is a season of eagerness and patience, yearning for change whilst feeling the uneasiness about what this might mean, for us as well as others.

    We are reminded that God’s love is bound up with justice (Isaiah 11.1-4, 42.1-4). We may cry out from the depths, longing for the day when we and our loved ones will be safe, that our oppressors will be punished and that we will finally be treated with dignity – yet all of us benefit from God’s readiness to pardon (Psalm 130, Luke 6.36-38). Forgiveness and redemption are on offer but personal and collective healing can sometimes be slow and painful.

    Thanks largely to my late parents, I grew up aware that faith, care and resisting injustice are all linked. I became involved in anti-racist activism in church and society in my teens and then from the age of about twenty on sexuality – after coming out as lesbian. I had to rethink some of my own prejudices (internalised or otherwise) and am grateful for those who were willing to challenge me in non-destructive ways, always going the extra mile (Matthew 5.41).

    I learnt the importance of persuasion and persistence as well as protest and that equality might not be achieved all at once. Changing institutions that are facing multiple pressures can be a complex process. Though living in England, my connection with Sri Lanka continued and, as the situation there deteriorated horrifically, I saw even more graphically what could happen when states and armed groups wielded too much power. I joined with others in defending human rights, even for people with views starkly different from mine.

    I discovered that others were more likely to listen if they felt at least partly heard and understood and that hurt and anger, if not channelled constructively, could get in the way of achieving goals. Even in the pre-internet era, the people who were most forceful, or willing to do most damage to those seen as oppressors, often won admiration, yet their tactics could backfire in the long term.

    Over the years too, including as a community worker and volunteer, I found out more about the hazards of unintended consequences. Life seemed messier, uncertainties greater, than when I was a child. Yet there were also moments of joy and major achievements by the movements of which I was part, reflecting I hope the Holy Spirit at work despite human errors and weaknesses.

    Edging towards LGBT+ equality in the Church of England

    Over the years, it has been encouraging to see a huge shift in views amongst both theologians of various denominations and ordinary Church of England members. There is far greater acceptance of committed, physically intimate partnerships between couples of the same sex or gender and recognition of gender diversity. It is excellent that so many churches, including some in the UK, have moved forward – but highly frustrating that progress in the C of E has been so slow and fragile.

    I understand why some people might want to demand complete parity with no exceptions so that, for instance, all parishes might be required to celebrate marriage for partners regardless of gender. But groups and networks such as the (currently inactive) LGBTI Mission and Equal have taken a different approach, which allows space for freedom of conscience within reasonable limits. I believe there are good reasons for this that are both pragmatic and value-based.

    Other UK-based churches which have moved further towards full inclusion have tended to do so on the basis of respect for conscience. I suspect it would have been nearly impossible for resolutions which took a different approach to have won enough votes at decision-making bodies. Allowing local discretion is also in line with national law, which in turn reflects international expectations around freedom of belief.

    Additionally, whilst I recognise the damage which non-inclusive beliefs can do, I fear that a purge of ordained and lay ministers not yet able to embrace full equality would be even worse. I would not want leaders who have been welcoming and caring towards me booted out because they interpret the Bible in ‘traditional’ ways or are still undecided.

    But I would like to see the archbishops and more diocesan bishops publicly recognise that for those of us who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)+ this is a generous stance, especially given the human cost of discrimination. And while leaders should maintain space for Christians who read Scripture and tradition differently on matters of sexuality and gender identity, favouring people who do not face discrimination and buying ‘unity’ at the cost of the excluded is in stark contrast to Jesus’ example and teaching (Mark 2.23-3.6).

    Three interconnected biblical themes often linked with Advent come to mind which might help the Church to move forward on this issue: justice as an outworking of love, equality and rejection of idolatry. Theologians have written libraries-worth of books on each of them, martyrs have sacrificed their lives: I believe it is therefore time to give these due weight in official pronouncements.

    It is unjust for people with plenty to hoard God’s generous gifts to humankind while others’ needs go unmet. This applies to both material goods (e.g. Isaiah 5.8-10, Luke 16.19-31) as well as freedom and dignity (Jeremiah 34. 8-17, James 2.1-12) – unless there are truly compelling reasons why some should be denied what others have. Many take it for granted that they can marry or be open about their gender without being prevented from being Church leaders. Those who nevertheless deny this to others should ask themselves searching questions

    And behaviour towards some people as if they were second-class Christians based on their identity (e.g. as working class, disabled, minority ethnic or LGBT+) is at odds with the radical equality of Jesus’ vision (Matthew 23:1-12, Luke 22.24-27).

    It can be tempting to treat mortals, institutions or concepts as objects of worship. Throughout history, unequal treatment of women and girls has done much damage, blatant and subtle. Yet most senior clergy seem reluctant to speak against theologies promoting male domination, which are harmful and can unintentionally foster idolatry. LGBT+ people who do not fit neatly into roles rooted in sexism are affected too.

    Such imbalances distort relationships with God and neighbour.

    Mercy is important; so is justice!

  • General Synod: What Would Compromise Look Like?

    by the Revd Neil Patterson, Director of Vocations & Ordinands in the Diocese of Hereford and Vice-Chair of the General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group

    A number of commentators, including Simon Butler, Helen King and Charlie Bell, have taken the polarised membership of the new General Synod as good evidence that only a path of listening and compromise is likely to yield progress in the intractable sexuality debate.  I want to go a little farther, and sketch out one possible line of movement, and comment on how it would represent compromise for both sides.

    You will not be surprised that my starting point is the so-called ‘Hereford Motion,’ passed by our Diocesan Synod in 2017, and parked on the agenda of General Synod, which calls on the Bishops to authorise a form of service for same-sex couples, whilst making it clear it would be wholly optional.  The basic concept had been talked about in all sorts of places, and I am glad to make clear here that it was not my idea to produce a diocesan synod motion (thank you, Kay Garlick, former Chair of the Business Committee!) nor did I propose it (thank you, Matthew Burns, Team Vicar of Leominster!).  But I did produce the wording, so feel a certain responsibility for the motion.

    Why would this be compromise for progressives?  In my experience we have varying approaches to campaigning and may see different points of principle as more critical, but most of us believe in the equality of opposite- and same-sex relationships as places for Christian discipleship.  And so the only really logical conclusion is to welcome equal marriage, with the admission of same-sex couples on the same basis, whether or not your theology makes it a sacrament (mine doesn’t).  So to accept a position in which same-sex couples (even if married in law) were only offered a limited liturgy would inevitably seem to put us in a second-class place.

    And this has bites on the ground.  One of the strongest examples to me has been that of a couple of musician friends, partners for over 20 years, first civilly partnered and now married.  Both have been church organists (one still).  They will over the years have played at hundreds of opposite-sex marriages, cheerfully welcoming brides and grooms (whose previous and subsequent connection to the church may have been zero) to exercise their right to marry in church.  Under the Hereford Motion proposal, they would at least to have been able to enjoy a public liturgical celebration.  But no banns, no register, no invocation of Cana of Galilee.  That is a compromise, and it hurts.

    But we can recognise how conservatives too would have to compromise to live with this situation.  At present there is of course considerable diversity of opinion, and to some extent practice, across the Church of England.  But it is still credible for conservatives to say that the official positron is that traditional marriage is the only norm for relationships.  And none of us should doubt that for some, this is as basic as other key doctrines of the faith.  If we were to make the Trinity optional, or declare readings from the works of Aristotle to be Scripture, I too would wonder whether this was really a Christian church.

    And it has a local impact, as I have discussed with conservative parish clergy.  If approached by a same-sex couple seeking to celebrate their marriage, they can currently say politely that the Church of England doesn’t do that (and the website will confirm it).  If we have an official service, the couple will know that the refusal is down to their, or their parish’s, conscientious beliefs.  They will have been ‘outed’ as conservative on sexuality, and the couple may simply dismiss them as homophobic.  In my experience even the most conservative Christians want to be welcoming, but are wrestling in their hearts with what they believe to be obedience to God.  That hurts too.

    And all of us, on whichever side, may be fearful that a decision of this sort will mean local division of every sort.  Will the PCC approve use of the service?  Will Julie resign if they do?  Will Greg resign if they don’t?  What about the church school Inclusion and Diversity Policy?  It will not be easy, and it may dislodge us from customary middle-class English evasion.

    The question of public liturgies is of course only one element of the debate.  But I set it out as an example of how the way forward may well involve no-one getting what they want, or even what they believe to be the most holy and true solution.  That seems to be the way, without exception, the Church of England does things.  And ideally there is usually an element of the settlement that can be interpreted by different sides to suit their own theologies, and I feel that’s not a bad thing.

    There is another reason, sharpened this week by the news of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent and seemingly fruitless meeting with the Archbishop and other senior churchmen in Ghana, where a proposed new law will criminalise LGBT+ people severely.  Whatever our fears, I firmly believe it very unlikely that any of us in the Church of England, conservative or liberal, LGBT+ or otherwise, face imprisonment for our identity or beliefs.  The joint statement by leaders of all the Synod groups in response to this threat of terrifying injustice may, sadly, be making little impact in Ghana.  But perhaps it is a sign that we are closer together than we realise, and can find a way forward.

    Revd Neil Patterson is writing here in a personal capacity.

  • General Synod – A Pragmatic View from the Middle Ground

    by the Ven Nikki Groarke, Archdeacon of Dudley and part of convening group for the Evangelical Forum on General Synod

    As I arranged to borrow a colleague’s academic gown, and rescued my crumpled white preaching bands from the depths of my cassock pocket, where they have been since the inauguration service of the last General Synod, (strange attire we clergy have to wear on this one-off occasion!), I reflected how different it feels this time to be heading off to London.  Different because I am not a synod-newbie, and have a clearer idea of what to expect and how it all works.  Different too because the experience of being a member of this body has changed me.  My understanding of the workings of the Church of England has deepened, I have been enriched through new friendships, and my views on some key issues under discussion have been modified, as I have engaged in dialogue, debate and process, both formal and structured, and informal in the bars and coffee areas around the edges.

    I am by nature an optimist, so I look forward to this group of sessions with faith and hope, honoured that the clergy of my diocese have entrusted me to serve in this way, and intending to do so diligently and prayerfully.  It is, however, hope tinged with sadness and frustration, that there are some amongst our elected colleagues, and from the ranks of synod groupies on social media, who would seek to divide and polarise us before we have even started.

    In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul begs his hearers to lead a life worthy of their calling and make “every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”  Unity in the body of Christ is not something we have to work to create, it is there to be maintained.  Indeed we are equipped through the Spirit to be built up in unity as we mature, as we know Jesus more fully and become like him.  Each of us has been given grace for this, Paul claims.  How I long to see that grace in evidence over these next five years.

    Society as a whole is becoming increasingly polarised.   Perhaps it’s the stress and isolation of a global pandemic, but it feels that extremists are ever more extreme, that any view held needs to be voiced with ever louder decibels, that anyone who does something disagreeable should resign instantly.  There is little room for careful conversation in any arena, and those who are hurting all too easily become casualties of word wars.

    As Christians we have been given grace to engage with differing positions more healthily.  Synod is not, as some have described it, a house of two main parties to which all must reveal their allegiance and swear their loyalty, but an elected body of Christ followers called to engage with maturity, humility and trust.  It’s easy to make assumptions about where people stand on certain issues, to categorise, judge, and pit us against ‘the other’.  But some of us don’t fit those boxes into which we are being pushed.

    I didn’t anticipate at the beginning of the last synod that I would deliver the opening speech in a key debate on sexuality and become associated with the ‘silent middle’.  I have no regrets, but what’s changed from that moment, when I stuck my head above the parapet, is that I am no longer silent, and somehow my willingness to be vulnerable seems to have enabled the middle to have a voice.

    It can take courage to hold the middle ground, and it’s not a comfortable place to be. Neither is it newsworthy or popular.  But standing in the middle often places you close enough to listen to ‘the other’. In the middle you perhaps hear more than those who shout from the extremes, where they have sometimes been driven by pain as well as passion.  From the middle you can engage in conversation and learning. You can grow.  You can change.  On the issue I spoke on then, I have moved a little further away from the centre.  I hope that many of us will change our stance on different things over the coming years. That’s not weakness.  It’s openness to learn and grow and change.

    So I will speak confidently from the middle during this synod whenever it feels appropriate, refusing to be categorised into a binary extremity.

    I am both an evangelical and inclusive and affirming of LGBT relationships. I am both passionate about saving the parish and believe we need to make changes at local church level, radically rethinking patterns of ministry to enable all churches to flourish.  I am convinced we need both local and central strategies for growth – most archdeacons are not out to close small churches, rather to enable them to flourish, and our diocesan appointment of a Dean of Smaller Churches is one way to do that, providing practical solutions in complex parishes.  We are in this together.

    The middle way will often be messy, compromise is rarely tidy – we’ve seen that in the way we have navigated other challenges within the church, such as the ordination of women.  But I would much rather have a win/win, both/and way forward with messiness and muddle, than remain stuck forever on issues where we will always differ.

    From the middle I will aim to navigate the decisions before us with principled pragmatism rather than pressured polarisation.  From the middle I will encourage other evangelicals to meet together as part of the Evangelical Forum in a safe space to reflect on synod issues, operating with a different model of being together than that of other evangelical gatherings on offer.  I will occasionally attend meetings of those groups described as the other ‘main party’, because I consider myself to be both orthodox and revisionist.

    And I will remind myself from time to time, that though the decisions taken at General Synod are hugely important, and we carry a weighty responsibility when we vote to make changes, or not, to the church we all love, we must not delude ourselves that we are representative of those who worship in our local churches week by week.  We are a quirky subset of the church, with time and inclination to participate in a highly structured, middle class, outdated governance structure which excludes some who would otherwise be involved, and does not even enter the consciousness of the majority.

    Many who are active in our churches only vaguely know that General Synod exists, they play no part in the election process, they only know we’ve made a controversial decision when it appears in the press. The alleged ‘substantial orthodox presence’ populating our churches is simply getting on with being church, trying their hardest to worship God in ways that are accessible to their neighbours and those they love.  They are serving their communities as best they can.  Some only start to care about same-sex blessings when their grandson introduces his male fiancé, others have gradually found the freedom to be themselves within the context of their congregation and openly identify as gay.  They want to save their parish, because they always have, not because it’s become a sexy slogan.  They are principled and pragmatic, and have been given grace to muddle through, mostly finding a middle way, compromising when they must to keep going, and living in the unity that is theirs to maintain.

    Let’s remember them, for it is they who will keep the Church of England alive and strong, not those of us debating its future in a stuffy chamber, or on social media.

  • On Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali’s Move to Rome…

    1. by Revd Trevor Wyatt, Vicar of Christ Church,  Bexleyheath and Co-Chair of MOSAIC 

    As has been widely reported in the media, Rt Revd Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, was recently received into the full communion of the Catholic Church by Monsignor Keith Newton on the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, and with the permission of the Holy See will be ordained to the Catholic priesthood for the Ordinariate at some point in the future. It was my privilege to be Ordained Deacon and then Priest by Bishop Michael in Rochester Cathedral at Michaelmas in 2000/2001.  It is a sadness to me that the Bishop who Ordained me has left the Church of England.  Bishop Michael has held many senior positions, has a fine theological mind and his leaving will be considered by many to be a deficit to the Church of England.

    It seems that a key reason for Bishop Michael leaving, as reported in an interview with the Telegraph is “a lack of teaching authority in Anglicanism, a lack of a sense of belonging to a worldwide church where everyone has to do things in step, rather than everyone doing whatever they want to do”.  In its governance structures the Church of England and the worldwide fellowship of Anglican churches (the Anglican Communion) has never had a centralised authority like the Papacy in the Roman Catholic Church that can amongst other things, provide a “clear teaching authority” that all are compelled to follow.  The founding fathers of the Church of England relied on a doctrine of provincial autonomy – the church was beholden to nobody but the King, and least of all to a Bishop in a foreign land.  The Anglican tradition has tended to eschew centralisation and see benefits where authority is mediated though a number of separate entities thus avoiding the dangers of tyranny and unchecked power.  Anglicanism has historically been committed to an approach to authority where its sources are dispersed through a number of different channels with the objective that they are mutually restricting and illuminating.  The timeless words of Lord Acton warn us that ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.

    Because the Anglican tradition has not had a “centralised authority” it has become the kind of church where people can more freely express their opinion about things.  The intellectual freedom to question the establishment, speak truth to power, challenge accepted norms and the status quo without being excommunicated is something that many Anglicans treasure.  Admittedly this doesn’t look too good in our media age of “sound bites” however the richness of working with different perspectives is arguably something to be celebrated rather than disparaged.  The history of the Church of England especially over the last two hundred years has been one of living with increasing diversity over a wide range of theological issues.

    During the nineteenth century the various ‘parties’ within the Church of England – the catholics, evangelicals and the so-called liberals became more visible.  The Catholic tradition was re-energised and led by the so called ‘Oxford movement’ including John Henry Newman, who of course went to Rome like Bishop Michael.   In the Church of England one could now be ‘Catholic’ or ‘Evangelical’.   However, differences don’t stop here.  Anglicans have always had different opinions about most ethical issues that one might care to mention.  When it comes to whether we can “go to war” and kill the enemy, there are ‘pacifists’ who believe that war is always wrong, and then there are those who support the ‘just war’ theory – that in certain proscribed circumstances it is ok.  Over the question of contraception, although it was overwhelmingly supported by the Lambeth Conference in 1930 a large minority of Bishops present disagreed with the majority.  When the Abortion Act was passed in October 1967 it is on record that Bishops of the Church of England voted both ‘for’ and ‘against’.  Although General Synod agreed to the Ordination of women as Priests back in 1992, and women as Bishops in 2014, many issues remain and we need to find better ways of living together with our differences over this so that both sides on this issue can flourish.  On marriage after divorce, the church allows clergy the right of conscience not to remarry divorced people.  The most recent example of difference has been the spectacle of two recent Archbishops, Carey and Williams,  taking opposing views on assisted dying.  When we come to the issue of the day – human sexuality – there are passionately held view on all sides and the church finds itself divided pretty much down the middle, if the most recent General Synod elections are anything to go by.

    If anything summarises Anglicanism in its classical form and in its history, it is living with diversity and difference – whether Catholic or Protestant, or over the many complex ethical issues about which we take different views.  In the future it is unlikely that there will be a ‘knock down argument’ or an ‘overwhelming consensus’ on many of these issues.

    It is perhaps ironic that just at the moment when Bishop Michael has moved to Rome, Pope Francis has formally launched a two-year global consultation process in the Roman Catholic Church, saying “. It seems highly likely that many of the questions about which Anglicans disagree will at the very least be debated in this consultation process e.g. women priests and human sexuality.

    In response to this diversity that is the sheer reality of things in the Anglican tradition, my deepest prayer and urgings are to encourage everyone on all sides to hold on to our shared identity in Christ above everything else, and to find ways of walking towards each other rather than walking away.  That we enter into the areas of tension and find ways of inhabiting uncomfortable places, disagreeing with each other in the kindest way possible and holding on to each other with bonds of love and affection.  I recognise immediately that staying and remaining requires sacrifice and has been at a huge personal cost to many, and that I speak as a white straight male whose lived experience is not directly affected as it is for so many others.  Not everyone will feel that they can keep with us, but I profoundly hope that most will.  Over the years the Anglican tradition has been wonderfully creative and resourceful in finding ways to hold different kinds of acknowledged, public disagreement within a framework of common life as one church, and one communion of churches.

    I for one hope we can find similarly creative ways through the current issues that threaten our common life.