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Category: Governance

  • The Archbishop and the Ballot Box: Why 2026 Will Be a Critical Year for the Church of England

    by Nic Tall, National Co-ordinator of Together for the Church of England

    When future church historians look back at 2026 and judge what most shaped the direction of the Church of England in that year, two factors will stand out. The first is clear: the arrival of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, the first woman to hold that role. The second will be the outcome of a critical election in autumn 2026, to the General Synod, which will influence the decisions made in the Church until 2031.

    They are not unrelated. Mullally’s term as Archbishop will largely overlap with the next General Synod, given that her retirement from post will have to take place by Spring 2032 at the latest. While the broad, perhaps too broad, role of Archbishop encompasses far more than being President of the Synod, there is much that the Synod can do to confirm or constrain the policy programme of the national Church that the Archbishop wishes to advance. The flip side of that is the influence of what the Archbishop says when she speaks in a Synod debate.

    The new Archbishop will go through a confirmatory election on 28th January, the only church election this year whose outcome is guaranteed. She will take on a role that brings with it much symbolic power and influence, but less direct power to change the Church than some might think. It is not like being the CEO of a big company, able to hire and fire at will and where a decision in the boardroom is seamlessly rolled out with the rest of the organisation expected to fall into line. The Church of England does not, in itself, exist as a legal entity. Rather it is an umbrella term for a collection of legally independent organisations – National Church Institutions, dioceses, parishes, church schools, theological colleges, religious communities and more. They all have their own systems of governance, a reminder that the most important unit of the Church is the local parish church where 99% of the action happens. But the options available to local churches are determined by national policy – how money is allocated, the safeguarding systems to be followed, what you can do with historic church buildings, and much more besides. How that national context is shaped is very important for mission and ministry in the parishes.

    This brings us to the less certain election of 2026, the General Synod elections, taking place between August and October, in every diocese and for both clergy and lay seats. Elections will be tight, decided by just a few votes one way or the other. I personally know several people on the current Synod who were elected by a majority of just one vote. The current Synod is finely balanced between those who want a more conservative church and those who want a more progressive and inclusive one. This outlook feeds through into many policy areas. One is safeguarding, where more conservative members lean towards keeping church safeguarding ‘in house’ while the progressives are more willing to consider a fully independent system.

    The finely balanced nature of the current Synod is one reason that many policy areas have become stuck, with decisions either fudged or left unimplemented amid calls for more discussion, more advice and more kicking things into the long grass. The extent of independence of safeguarding structures is one area, the mechanism for distributing money from Church Commissioners is another. The clearest example of this impasse is found in Living in Love and Faith where, despite three major votes in favour of progress, the House of Bishops has found ever more inventive ways of delaying the inclusion for LGBT+ people that the majority in the Church want to see. The February 2026 Synod may see the conclusion of the LLF process, but the underlying issue of whether the Church can bring itself to recognise and celebrate the dignity and blessedness of same sex relationships will remain. How that will be managed in future will depend heavily on the outcome of the 2026 General Synod elections.

    So it’s clear that 2026 is a moment of potential change for the Church of England, with a new Archbishop at the helm and a new General Synod waiting to be elected. By the end of the year, we will have a clearer picture of the direction the Church could be taking, and the scope of what might be possible up to 2031. Although many may not realise it, just where that window of opportunity begins and ends is very much in the hands of ordinary members of the Church. Many able to vote in the General Synod elections will not get round to doing so; turnout among the laity is usually only around 50%.

    I have already said that the General Synod elections are often decided by just a few votes. Who forms the electorate? The voters are the members of local Deanery Synods, which by chance also happen to be up for election this year, in the Spring of 2026. Deanery Synods are not usually seen as the most exciting of groups, although they can be a good local forum for sharing experience. But their influence over the composition of General Synod later in the year cannot be over-estimated. Every parish elects at least one person, often more, to the Deanery Synod and many vacancies are left unclaimed. If you care about the direction of the Church, standing for Deanery Synod at your Annual Parochial Church Meeting is one way to make a difference.

    Together for the Church of England works for a more inclusive, diverse and equitable Church. We believe that a national Church with the cure of souls for everyone who lives in the parish should strive to include as many as possible in how it works. Our work focuses on governance, helping to set the rules, processes and structures that determine the freedom that local churches have to be a Christian presence in their communities. We are working with Inclusive Church and others to support candidates who want to stand for election to General Synod, offering advice and guidance through the process. There are local diocesan Together networks across the country, and many of them are holding in person meetings this January so inclusive Christians in your area can meet each other. The local networks are not only important in organising for the Deanery Synod and General Synod elections in 2026 but are also a great way to have solidarity with inclusive Christians in your diocese. If you care about the future direction of the Church, contact your local co-ordinator and be a part of the network. You can also subscribe to the national Together mailing list, an easy way to be kept informed of what is happening. As we look ahead to whatever 2026 will bring, let’s look ahead together, work together and follow Christ together.

  • The Wholly Unnecessary Split in the Anglican Communion: A View from ‘Down Under’

    by Revd Dr Keith Mascord, a Canadian-born Australian. He is retired – most recently from managing the NSW multi-faith prison chaplaincy team. He is an Anglican priest assisting at St John’s Anglican Parish in Taree, in country NSW, and an academic who taught philosophy and pastoral theology at Moore Theological College in Sydney. He is an advocate, and a co-founder of the LGBTIQ+ support group – Equal Voices Australia. He traces his intellectual and spiritual journey in a now completed set of three books: A Restless Faith (2012), Faith without Fear (2016) and An Honest Faith (2025)

    It was a deeply disturbing moment when, on 16 October 2025, a communiqué was posted by Gafcon (the Global Anglican Futures movement) which declared, ‘The future has arrived.’ In what, effectively, was an attempted coup, the Anglican Communion – founded as a fellowship of independent dioceses in 1867 – was declared to have been overtaken by Gafcon. In its own words, ‘We have not left the Anglican Communion. We are [my emphasis] the Anglican Communion.’ ‘Gafcon is [now] leading the Global Anglican Communion.’

    These are audacious claims. The argument of the communiqué was that the formerly constituted Anglican Communion had ‘failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion,’ and, as a result, its four instruments of communion (the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates Meeting) were being replaced by just one – the Bible.

    My discomfort with this news was heightened by discovering where this communiqué had been penned – in Sydney – and by whom. Though signed by Rwanda’s Archbishop Dr Laurent Mbanda, its wording was, I’m informed, a combined effort by a number of the movement’s leaders and ‘founding fathers’ including the former Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen. Peter was my Archbishop during his tenure. Before that, he was my employer, principal and colleague at Moore Theological College where I taught for fifteen years all up. I thus have more than a little interest in what is happening, along with a degree of insider/outsider perspective.

    Hermeneutics

    A few things stood out for me in the communique. The first was the critical role of hermeneutics, which is the science or art of interpretation. The communiqué cites the abandonment of the inerrant Scriptures as the reason for earlier calls for repentance, and for now withdrawing from communion with ‘revisionist’ Anglicans.

    The more I think about it, the more startled I am by this. When I was a student and, later, a lecturer at Moore, only some of the faculty subscribed to inerrancy, with most preferring infallibility or trustworthiness. Not all of the current faculty at Moore adhere to inerrancy. The same applies at the similarly conservative Ridley College in Melbourne.

    Some years ago, at a School of Theology at Moore College, a student publicly asked Archbishop Peter, ‘Don’t you think it is time we gave up on inerrancy?’ Peter’s reply: ‘No, we must not give up on it because of what it safeguards.’ It is a telling reply, which implies an acknowledgement of inerrancy’s weakness as a position. It certainly is that. On the one hand, inerrancy is an unprovable and un-Biblical faith position, especially in the absence of the Bible’s original documents (the autographs), if indeed there ever were such. On the other hand, inerrancy is easy enough to disprove. Anyone who has read and studied the Bible for any length of time, with even a little knowledge of Biblical scholarship, is likely to have encountered inaccuracies, contradictions, anachronisms, contrasting and revising theologies, remnants of polytheism, doubtful claims to authorship, and much more.

    Not so plain sense

    Exacerbating this hermeneutical hurdle is Gafcon’s insistence on a ‘plain sense’ reading of the Bible. The communique is insistent that the Holy Bible must be ‘translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.’ Neither the communiqué, nor the Jerusalem Declaration from which it draws, explains the meaning of these terms. With respect to a plain sense reading, one could well ask, ‘Whose plain sense reading?’ Is it the plain sense reading of an ancient reader, for example, someone well versed in the mythology of those days and of the Bible, and thus not likely to be differentiating between the mythical and the literal? Or is it what seems to be the plain sense to a 21st century reader influenced by modernist and, before that, Lutheran tendencies to read the Biblical stories as straightforwardly factual – including the Adam and Eve, Noah, Patriarchal, Exodus and Conquest stories, which we’ve good reason to believe are mythical and/or legendary.

    Returning to the notion of inerrancy, and yoking it to a plain sense approach, what might a Gafcon Anglican make of St Paul’s apparently plain sense understanding of Genesis 1-3, where an initially deathless and vegetarian creation (Gen 1:26, 27) has death introduced to it by the sins of Adam and Eve? If, as I surmise, ‘canonical’ has been added to ‘plain sense’ to prioritise the interpretation of Scripture by Scripture, this doesn’t help. In fact, it sharpens the conundrum. A plain sense, canonical reading of Romans 5:12-19, which also takes account of how these verses have been understood historically/consensually, flies in the face of current scientific understandings of human and animal origins.

    These are hard and important questions to ask of Gafcon’s hermeneutic. It is questions like these that sent me on a quest to find a hermeneutic that might more helpfully and honestly illuminate the Scriptures. In time, this led me to a hermeneutic, which perhaps surprisingly is not dissimilar to the Second Temple Judaic hermeneutic employed by Jesus and the authors of the New Testament, a way of appropriating Biblical texts, which, in principle, is responsive to new information and experience. I spell this out in detail in Faith without Fear (2016) and An Honest Faith (2025).

    Hard lessons still to be learnt

    Looking back, I am not aware of having been guilty of intellectual or moral failings in this long quest to find improved ways of reading and understanding the Bible. Nor do I think that increasing numbers of evangelical scholars have been irrational or immoral in employing or revising their hermeneutic to arrive at what they consider better conclusions about same-sex marriage. There is therefore no need, I believe, for repentance on their or my part.

    There is, however, more than enough reason for repentance for the two and more millennia-long misunderstanding and mistreatment of our precious LGBTIQ+ siblings. And, tellingly, it is hermeneutics or Biblical interpretation which has been a significant culprit in this abuse. Almost all of the great theologians of the church have, in one way or another, accepted what they took to be plainly taught in the Bible. They have allowed Scripture to interpret Scripture. They have come to similar, now historic, and apparently consensual conclusions. In doing this they have reasoned that women are inferior to men (Luther), that women are ‘defective and misbegotten’ (Aquinas), that they have been ‘born to obey’ and not to lead, with the leadership of women ‘an unnatural monstrosity’ (Calvin). They have, moreover, interpreted Leviticus and St Paul to imply that homosexuality condemns those who rebelliously choose it to be given over to passions that are satanic and to lives that are diabolic, such that they are worse than murderers (Chrysostom), with a vice believed to be ‘an un-paralleled enormity’ (Luther), so unnatural and so evil that they deserve to be banished ‘from all shelter of the church’ (Tertullian). And that is just a sampling of historic Christianity’s vitriol.

    Sadly, some of these ideas linger in dioceses aligned with Gafcon, with Sydney Anglicans still stubbornly restricting the ministry of women, and some African dioceses perpetuating views not dissimilar to those mentioned above. Happily, however, views like this are in retreat with most Anglicans, certainly here in Australia, and including Gafconites. They may not be willing to admit it, but their revised understandings have not been solely guided by their espoused hermeneutic. They have, in fact, had their readings and understandings modified by encounters with equally capable female leaders and preachers and by the thoroughly natural and healthy lives of our LGBTIQ+ fellow citizens. They’ve seen that the children of gay parents are doing as well psychologically and socially as children brought up more traditionally. They’ve witnessed the joy experienced by same sex couples when mutual love can come to full flowering in the blessing of marriage. They’ve seen the deep piety and strong faith of their LGBTIQ+ fellow Christians. They know that arguments against same-sex marriage are weakening, that Moses probably didn’t write Leviticus, that the exegesis of key Pauline passages is contested, that the hermeneutic they’ve relied upon ‘because of what it protects’ is fragile. They know all this, or should. And, deep down perhaps, they know or suspect that their ‘you must repent’ rhetoric is a log in their own eyes preventing them from seeing that it is they who need to repent, at the very least for the disrespect and hubris involved in failing to acknowledge the integrity, love and sincerity of those with whom they differ.

    In writing this article, I reached out to a number of the high profile leaders of the Gafcon movement, including the board of Gafcon-Australia, all but one of whom had taught, worked, or been trained at Moore Theological College. The exception was trained at Ridley. I sought to engage them with the ideas that are now expressed in this article. I was seeking to better understand their movement. Sadly, not one was willing to engage. Was it fear? Was it pride? Was I being cancelled? I don’t know. I will keep trying. My hope and prayer is that Gafcon’s attempted takeover will fail, that the resultant disunity, suspicion and silencing will cease, and that true and humble Christian fellowship will return, strengthened by a willingness to keep learning together.

     

     

  • What Does it Mean to be Anglican in a Post-colonial Communion?

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

    A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Atlanta, Georgia, with a remarkable group of people for a conference entitled ‘Living Postcolonial Anglicanism: Prospects for a Polycentric Anglican Communion’, hosted by Episcopal Divinity School, and run by two of the foremost postcolonial Anglican scholars, Kwok Pui-lan and Ian Douglas. It is not to overstate matters to say that it was one of the most remarkable events I have ever been to in any Anglican Communion space, not least because of who was – and who wasn’t – there, and what was – and wasn’t – central to discussion.

    This was a gathering that pulled no punches, and which was determined to move beyond the tired, hackneyed arguments around the Communion that have plagued Anglican debates for far too long. The voices in the room were far more female, far more indigenous, far less white, than at any discussion of the Anglican Communion I had ever been to before. Sex and gender were discussed but were anything but pivotal to conversations. Instead, what was at the heart of the gathering was a serious paying of attention to the things that continue, untested and unchallenged, to poison our common life as Anglicans – power, racism, colonialism and re-colonialism, empire, Englishness, lazy stereotyping, authority, money, and silenced voices. Central, too, was a determination to show that Anglicanism was no longer – and had not been for a long time – synonymous with Englishness (either ecclesiological or colonial), and that something new had been birthed, whether the Church of England wished to recognise it or not. And that something is not merely based on opposition or conflict – it is based on doing the work of decolonising and the recognition of a postcolonial reality.

    I should say that, as a white Englishman, I was in the minority – the serious minority. Indeed, at times I felt that I was being asked to justify why I should even be in the room, given the damage that the Church of England has done – and continues to do – to Communion relations. I understood that impulse, even if I felt somewhat conflicted about it. It was a strange experience being the ‘representative’ (unofficially, I should add, but certainly symbolically) of a church in which I frequently feel myself to be an outsider – frankly, in many Church of England spaces I feel like an intruder, an embarrassment, a queer aberration, and many queer people will know the feeling of being exiled that many of us carry around with us. It was uncomfortable then to have the tables turned, and at times I felt somewhat discomfited by the role I was playing in conversations and the way my words landed, with all the hidden context they carried.

    Yet being discomfited is a position that English Anglicans, particularly white men, need to get more acquainted with, if we are to play any useful part in the future of the Communion. So too is a commitment to intersectionality for those of us who remain beyond the bounds of the normative in the Church of England. This is particularly true in a church which offers courses in Anglicanism (both in England and more widely) in almost none of its theological colleges, despite claiming the role of ‘mother church’. Our arrogance is astonishing – yet so all-pervasive that we don’t notice it.

    It has always intrigued me that the Anglican Communion has an official office of representation at the United Nations. I have never really understood how there can be an Anglican Communion position on anything, really, given we are interdependent and autonomous churches in fellowship (of varying degrees) with one another. Yet this conference gave me some hope that there might be a different kind of Communion in the future, one able to tolerate polyphony and indeed embrace it, allowing voices to be heard in the corridors of power that might otherwise be excluded or marginalised.

    So much talk about the Anglican Communion in recent years has focused on shifting power – on re-colonising, establishing new loci of authority and power rather than questioning the whole premise of power itself. Of course, it’s easy as someone who is part of a church which has historically held that power to call for radical divestment of it rather than its assumption by another location, yet I do think that is the only possible future for Anglicanism – whatever ‘Anglicanism’ might be. Our attempts at structural reform have remained endlessly Canterbury-focused, and hence both Church of England-infused and ultimately centralising. Moving to a rotating presidency of the Anglican Consultative Council, for example, is hardly a radical move, and nor is any change to the Communion that leaves a White English bishop as its spiritual head. It does little for the Anglican Communion, and it does little for the Church of England either – not least any attempt to understand its role and identity in twenty-first century secular England.

    Yet the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans and GAFCON have hardly offered change in any serious philosophical way – instead it’s just been a shifting of power from A to B. It’s a failure of ecclesiology, and it’s a failure to really interrogate the colonial mindset that finds new formulations in the contemporary era, including in the queerphobic and racist narrative that suggests that the ‘Global South’ (an unhelpful term, as discussed here by Phil Groves, one whose vagueness is the key to its utility in abstract discussion) has a single and entirely negative view of LGBTQIA people.

    The way that the Church of England should engage with questions around same-sex relationships in the Anglican Communion remains complicated by the refusal to squarely face the colonial history. In any engagement with other provinces on sexual or gender justice, the living spectre of colonialism remains, meaning that the Archbishop of Canterbury – and by extension, English bishops – cannot speak to other bishops of the Communion on a level playing field, because we have refused to address the power imbalances that still exist. This is our fault – and it is entirely within our grasp to tackle it. We just choose not to, shifting chairs around on the Titanic instead. That there were queer, Black Anglican voices in the room from the ‘Global South’, for whom navigating these realities was anything but abstract, should not have been a surprising fact – but it was, given the way the powers-that-be in the Communion so often self-select and silence.

    English Anglicans have a lot to learn from our Communion friends, if only we would listen. I can attest to the fact that that listening can sometimes be hard, and can challenge our ecclesiological, missional, and ministerial assumptions. It is going to require us to change. Yet if we are not willing to listen, the lip service we pay to the Communion – however much we tinker with the structures – will do very little to change how and who we are. We can stick our fingers in our ears and pretend that Anglicanism is the same as the Church of England, and that we have nothing to learn from a global movement that is no longer ours to control – but we will deservedly be laughed out of town.

    There will always, I think, be a tension between unity and diversity in the Anglican Communion. There will also always be a tension in the ecclesiology, theology, and self-understandings of a global Communion. From my experience of this conference, it is polycentrism and a commitment to postcolonial living which offer a rich, enticing, fruitful way forward. Recognising the other as Anglican is the first step. Whether we are willing to embrace this shift in our mindset in England is, of course, another matter – whether we can afford not to is an open question.

     

  • Cries of Suffering: A Response to ‘The Nature of Doctrine and the Living God’

    by Mike Higton, Professor of Theology and Ministry at Durham University

    The Faith and Order Commission’s recent document on ‘The Nature of Doctrine and the Living God’ (GS Misc 1429) is not, in my judgment, a particularly helpful contribution to the endless Living in Love and Faith process. I fear that, however good the intentions behind it, it will

    • perpetuate the strange detachment from the history of theological and ethical debate in the church that seems to characterise the current LLF process;
    • encourage the House of Bishops to misconstrue their role in that process and to misunderstand the key questions that face them;
    • encourage them once again to downplay the centrality that LGBTQ+ voices should have for them in this context; and so
    • prolong the harm that the whole process continues to do to LGBTQ+ people.

    It also happens to be a document in which my own name appears, several times. It was only when a friend emailed me about it last week that I discovered I had been presented as one of a chorus of theologians whose work supposedly confirmed the document’s account of doctrine, and of the role of the bishops in maintaining it – but that I had been made part of that chorus only by way of a selective and, to my eye, somewhat misleading reading of my work.

    Measured against the real harms being done to LGBTQ+ people by the stalled LLF process, this misappropriation of my work is of course an entirely trivial matter, and wouldn’t by itself warrant a lengthy public response. It does, however, present me with a particular angle from which to assess the limitations of the document, and an opportunity to caution others to take it with a pinch of salt.

    What is this document?

    Back in June 2024, the ‘LLF: Moving Forward as One Church’ document (GS 2358) posed some questions on behalf of the House of Bishops to ‘the Theological Adviser(s) to the House of Bishops and the Faith and Order Commission Episcopal Reference Group (FAOC ERG)’ (§43), asking

    how do we, as a church, develop or change our doctrine? Is it possible to hold multiple doctrines simultaneously, in order to respond in the most gracious and pastoral way possible, even when this is messy or incoherent? Is it possible for there to be a range of interpretations of one doctrine? (§41)

    GS Misc 1429 is a response to that request: it says that ‘It is the product of work by the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC) and the Episcopal Reference Group (ERG), with support from the theological advisers to the House of Bishops. It is shared with the House of Bishops in the name of FAOC’ (§3). (I should acknowledge, by the way, that I served on FAOC myself from 2010 to 2022, and was vice-chair from 2016.)

    The conclusion that the document draws about the nature of doctrine, presented as a summary of the work of numerous theologians (including me), is that ‘doctrine is true knowledge about God consonant with Holy Scripture that is communally authorised and communally regulative’ (from the Executive Summary).

    The document does not, however, simply present this argument in the abstract. Rather, it argues for it in order to say something about the role of bishops in decisions about doctrine in the church. It argues that the bishops

    are given the task outlined … by theologians from Hooker to Higton, and so many in between, to discern whether anything put forward as wholesome doctrine is either ‘grounded in the Holy Scriptures’ or … ‘agreeable to said Scriptures’. (§158)

    The proper exercise of this role will, to be sure, involve ‘a dialogical process between the House of Bishops and the General Synod’ (§162) and so be ‘a process of communal discernment that leads to an agreement about what the community authorises as sacred doctrine’ (§163, my emphasis). In other words, although ‘the House of Bishops play a special role in doctrinal formulation owing to their function as teachers of the faith … they hold that role in dialogue with the other houses of the General Synod’ (§164). Nevertheless, within this communal and dialogical process, the bishops have ‘a central role in discerning the faithfulness to Scripture of any doctrinal formulation’ (§160, my emphasis). And the document’s final sentence sets out more fully the nature of this role:

    Careful discernment about which parts and themes of Scripture are most pertinent to the issue being addressed and which reading of those texts best expresses the mind of Christ in the Church is required, so that the Church remains faithful to what it has received … while it proclaims the faith afresh in each generation. (§174)

    FAOC’s reply to the House of Bishops leads up, therefore, to this account of the bishops’ role. Faced with a development that may amount to a change of doctrine (or may not – the document provides little help in deciding what does or does not count as doctrine), the bishops are to test that development against Scripture – and the heart of that testing will involve both a determination of which ‘parts and themes’ of Scripture are most relevant, and a determination (carried out, it seems, by securing a majority in Synod) of which interpretations represent ‘the mind of Christ in the Church’.

    To explain why I think this is an unhelpfully limited account (and why I do not think my own work supports it) I need to explore in more detail the argument of the document, noting along the way some of the things that strike me as strange about it.

    Is your journey really necessary?

    The first odd thing to note about this paper is simply that its authors felt that, in response to the Bishops’ request, the thing they most needed to do was to argue at considerable length that doctrine should be ‘consonant with’, ‘grounded in’ or ‘agreeable to’ Scripture.

    That would make sense, of course, were this point hotly disputed, so that it was worth devoting extended labour to securing it before moving on – but that is not the case, as the document acknowledges. The authors insist that

    It is crucial to reiterate that the present disagreement about the content and use of the [Prayers of Love and Faith] is not over whether or not Holy Scripture plays the determinative role in doctrinal formulation expounded above, but how it does so. (§168, emphases added)

    And this is a point that has been made numerous times before in the debate. Right back in 2020, for instance, the initial Living in Love and Faith book discussed at some length the way in which the church’s disagreements were shaped by differing attitudes to Scripture, but within a shared commitment to Scripture’s authority.

    (The book can be found on the LLF website, for which a free account is needed; once logged in, the whole thing is available for download. I was part of the group that produced this book, and that I was, in particular, part of the group that initially worked on the material that became Part Four, including the chapter on the Bible.)

    At one point (pp. 295–297), Living in Love and Faith sets out seven different ways of thinking about Scripture that are identifiable in the church’s disagreements about sexuality and marriage (and it is worth noting that the differences between them go much deeper than their selection of different ‘parts or themes’ to prioritise). The book argues that two of them (one at each extreme of the spectrum it has painted) are ‘beyond the mainstream of the church’s conversation about the Bible’s authority and purpose’ (p. 298), but that the remaining five (which between them could cover many people on all sides in the debate) share a number of features, including:

    • a commitment to the diligent reading of the Bible as God’s instrument for training in holiness and love, and instructing us for salvation;
    • a determination to attend to the way the words of the Bible run;
    • a desire to have their consciences formed by the dynamics of those words;
    • a conviction that Christ stands at the centre of the Bible; and
    • a belief that the Bible’s deep purpose is to unite us with Christ
    • and to draw us into Christlike love for God and neighbour. (p. 298)

    Now, there is obviously material here for considerable ongoing controversy. People occupying any one of the ‘voices’ that the LLF book lays out might not regard those occupying some of the other voices as having a plausible or acceptable account of what consonance with Scripture involves. But the book argues that

    All of them are determined to be obedient to God’s purposes in giving us the Bible, as they understand those purposes. They can’t simply be divided up into those who are trying to be obedient to God’s voice and those who are not. (p. 299)

    All of them, in other words, are already committed to the idea that the church’s teaching should be ‘consonant with’, ‘grounded in’ or ‘agreeable to’ Scripture. Disagreement has arisen not because they dispute that, but because they understand that consonance, grounding, or agreement in different and incompatible ways. (And for more on this, see my 2020 paper on ‘Disagreement about the Bible’, available in the online ‘LLF library’, which explores further the nature of our disagreements about the ‘how’ of Biblical authority.)

    In the light of all this, however, there is something distinctly odd about the present FAOC document saying so little about how Scripture can or should play a determinative role in the formulation and doctrine, and so much about whether it should play such a role.

    And that brings me to my second point.

    Balance or imbalance?

    The second oddity about the document is the way in which its attempts at balance falter.

    There are clear indications (such as the sentence quoted earlier from §168, about all sides agreeing that ‘Holy Scripture plays the determinative role in doctrinal formulation’) that the document’s analysis is meant to provide even-handed background assistance to the bishops rather than taking sides on the issue at hand. In particular, the description of the nature of doctrine that the document offers is meant to work for all sides.

    There are, however, a few ways in which that attempt at balance slips.

    The first is a tiny point, which only becomes telling in view of the larger examples that follow. In the course of a discussion of Brooke Foss Westcott, the authors say

    Rowan Williams, reflecting on Westcott’s contribution, comments that Westcott, despite frequent labelling of him as ‘liberal’, is fully committed to the Scriptures as the source of faith and doctrine. (§76)

    Notice that little word ‘despite’. The impression a reader might get from that one word is that the authors either endorse or do not see the need to avoid the idea that being ‘liberal’ does not normally go with being ‘committed to the Scriptures as the source of faith and doctrine’. Yet they are quoting from Williams’ chapter on Westcott in Anglican Identities (London: DLT, 2014), in which Williams is both

    pleading for a recognition on all sides that the word ‘liberalism’ is complex and slippery, and that, despite the angry polemic of the right, there is no single ‘liberal agenda’ to be written off as apostasy

    and arguing positively that Westcott’s form of liberalism is entirely bound up with his ‘endlessly patient attention to the detail of Scripture’. It would be fairer to say that Westcott is the kind of liberal he is, in Williams’ account, because of his commitment to Scripture.

    There’s a second point later on, almost as small, but similarly telling in the light of the broader shape of the document. When, in §140, the authors summarise what all the theologians they have covered (including me) are supposed to have said about doctrine, they say, ‘Holy Scripture is the repository of God’s revelation of that truth, and thus the foundation of all doctrine.’ Here, it is that word ‘repository’ that snags. It has not appeared in any of the discussion before that point in the document, but it is used here to nail in place the account of Scripture that has (supposedly) emerged from the whole foregoing discussion. And it is a word that, at least to my ear, echoes ways of talking about Scripture that are much more common amongst conservatives than amongst liberals or progressives (to use those familiar but inadequate labels). I’ll say some more about this below.

    It is, however, a passage very close to the end of the document that gives me most concern on this question of balance. The authors of the FAOC document sketch the position of some (indeed, they say ‘many’) in the debate who believe that Scripture clearly rules out the proposed changes to the doctrine of marriage, and who believe that arguments to the contrary necessarily involve rejecting ‘the perspicuity of Scripture: the conviction that those things a Christian is required to know, believe, and observe are available to all in their reading of Scripture’ (§172).

    The authors give the whole of §§171 and 172 and a significant part of §173 over to expounding the view of these ‘many’. Those who disagree with them (who are, note, not described as ‘many’) are then granted only a sentence, and no part of that sentence sets out what forms their own commitment to the authority of Scripture might take, or what response they might offer to the claim that they reject Scripture’s ‘perspicuity’. The implicit suggestion is not that people in this latter group have their own firm commitment to the authority of Scripture but different understandings of the way in which that authority works; it is, rather, that they don’t have much at all to say on the matter. Once again, the impression is subtly given that the authors of the FAOC document know what to say about conservative commitment to the Bible, but are somewhat nonplussed when it comes to speaking authentically about other sides in the debate.

    It is in that context that we might think again about the apparently unnecessary effort that this document expends on establishing that doctrine should be consonant with Scripture. That effort reinforces the impression that, whatever might be said explicitly to indicate otherwise, the question of whether Scripture is determinative for doctrine really is the point at issue – and that the bishops’ task might be to hold fast against changes championed by people who aren’t really serious about the Bible. That impression may well be inadvertent – I rather suspect that it is – but it seems to me quite palpable.

    I want to reiterate, therefore, what the document itself says, even if it later manages to undermine itself: ‘the present disagreement … is not over whether or not Holy Scripture plays the determinative role in doctrinal formulation’. I say that as someone very firmly on the affirming or progressive side of this debate – someone who wants not just stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples, but equal marriage, and much else besides. And I am convinced that this is what the church is required to do by the gospel of Jesus Christ, as that gospel is revealed to us in Scripture. I believe that the refusal to take this path is disobedient to the gospel and disobedient to Scripture. And I believe that those on the conservative side who oppose these moves misread Scripture and misunderstand the nature of its authority.

    I might of course be wrong about any or all of that, but if you want to convince me that I am wrong, you would be foolish to spend any time at all trying to establish that our teaching as a church should be consonant with Scripture, because I already agree with you about that. Much better to save your breath for a conversation – likely to be much richer and much more complex – about how Scripture’s authority is to be understood. And that is a topic on which no story of a neat consensus stretching down the centuries, and no neat delineation of the task before the bishops, is going to work.

    (For a little more on all this, see a blog post I wrote a couple of years back on ‘Disagreement, conscience and harm’.)

    Consensus on the nature of doctrine?

    The bulk of the FAOC document (§§7–146) consists of summaries of the work of a variety of theologians: Aquinas, Hooker, Newman, Westcott and Ramsey, and a selection of more recent figures from Kevin Vanhoozer to me. We are brought in as witnesses who are all, together, presented as giving our support to a particular account of doctrine and its relation to Scripture:

    doctrine is true knowledge about God that is revealed by God. Holy Scripture is the repository of God’s revelation of that truth, and thus the foundation of all doctrine. (§140)

    I for one, however, do not recognise my own work on doctrine in this formulation.

    The authors of the document draw on my book The Life of Christian Doctrine (Bloomsbury, 2020). I explain in the introduction to that book that it was written while I was myself heavily involved in the Living in Love and Faith process (p. 9); I describe myself as ‘someone hoping and working for the Church to change its stance towards people in same-sex relationships, and for it to confirm the unreserved inclusion of trans people in all areas of its life.’ (p. 9), and explain that the book was written, in part, to explore some of the background issues about doctrine that the LLF debates about those matters had thrown up.

    I explain:

    These debates are, for instance, often framed as taking place between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘revisionists’, but I explore in this book an account of the doctrinal tradition in which that distinction doesn’t make sense – or at least an account in which it can’t be of primary importance. More generally, I ask what work doctrinal theology can contribute in a situation in which there is little agreement about what constitutes a good doctrinal argument – little agreement about the kinds of evidence that should be appealed to, about the weight that those appeals should have or about the forms of argument that might be telling. This book is in part an attempt to understand how to argue well in such a context, and what good – if any – such argument might be capable of doing. (p. 10)

    There are several divergences between the account I offer in the book and the ‘consensus’ that I am supposed to support. I can only offer brief indications of those divergences here, leaving out the case I build for my claims by engaging with Scripture, tradition, and reason, and the arguments I offer against alternative accounts – but I hope it will be enough to explain why I can’t endorse the FAOC document’s summary.

    I have already mentioned my discomfort at describing Scripture as the ‘repository’ of revelation. I make the case in my book that doctrine does not simply summarise or articulate the truths that can be found lying ready to hand in Scripture. I therefore do not think that the key hermeneutical differences involved in our present debates are simply disagreements about ‘which parts and themes of Scripture are most pertinent’. The ways in which Christians read – on all sides of the debate – are much more deeply entangled with and shaped by the patterns of their imagination and practice, and by their deep construals of the nature and plot of scripture, and so are much more deeply various, than such formulations suggest.

    I would also find it difficult, without some serious qualification, to describe doctrine as ‘knowledge about God’. I argue in the book the more apophatic claim that

    For Christians to grow in knowledge [of God] is for them to grow together in their imagination of the love of God for them – their grasp of its breadth and length and height and depth. It is for them to grow in knowledge of the God-imaging love to which they are called, discovering the wisdom that will enable them to live that love out in the midst of all the relationships – local, political and cosmic – in which they find themselves. Knowledge of God consists in this deepening knowledge of love, and any supposed knowledge of God that does not take this form is simply fatuous. (p. 104)

    Doctrinal statements and doctrinal theology can, I argue, play an important role in guiding and supporting this knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I can say that doctrine itself is ‘knowledge about God’.

    But perhaps my biggest difficulty with the summary I am supposed to support is its blunt assertion that doctrine is ‘true knowledge of God’ – and not just that but true knowledge ‘revealed by God’. Perhaps the most obvious difference between my work and the FAOC document is that I write with a much stronger sense of the fallibility and failures of the church, and I extend that to my estimate of the church’s doctrinal inheritance. I write that

    Doctrinal theology … is involved in the reproduction of the life of the church. Yet the life of the church is always broken, always distorted, always sinful. Whatever true knowledge of God is embodied in the life that any Christian community lives, it is always mixed with ignorance, with misunderstanding and with the deliberate refusal of knowledge. The life of the church is a series of always failing experiments in the knowledge of God. If doctrinal theology helps to reproduce the life of the church, it will be helping to reproduce all of this failure – all of the exclusions and imbalances of power, all of the forms of harm that mar the church’s response to God’s love. (p. 4)

    The authors of the FAOC document do briefly notice this aspect of my account (see the second paragraph that they quote in §136), but it quickly vanishes from sight. A large part of my book is, however, devoted to exploring how the Spirit works to convict the church of its sin (including those sins woven into its doctrinal theology), and to teach the church to know more of the truth. It is an account of the necessity of ongoing penitent change in the church’s doctrinal teaching.

    And this account of sin, conviction and repentance shapes what I say about the role that bishops might play in processes of doctrinal change – giving my account a tenor rather different (it seems to me) from that of the FAOC document.

    That document does, admittedly (in §138), quote substantial parts of a paragraph from The Life of Christian Doctrine that, in full, reads as follows:

    As with all other forms of doctrinal theology, however, this episcopal work of encouraging, amplifying and resourcing [a summary of the description I had just set out of the teaching role of bishops] cannot be undertaken alone – and that is especially true in relation to the work of challenging erroneous teaching. As with all other forms of doctrinal theology, the work of bishops needs to be embedded within processes of ongoing listening and re-construal, in which there is a real possibility of their being led to see differently by the challenge of others. Bishops are enabled to play their role as teachers by being members of communities of conversation and exploration that can encourage them, resource them and challenge them – and especially by being members of communities that can read scripture with them, and inspire them to read it differently. In particular, their ability to ‘uphold sound and wholesome doctrine’ will be directly proportional to their ability to hear the call of God in cries, encounters and improvisations – because those are the means that the Spirit characteristically uses to draw the church deeper in to the sources of its faith. (p. 238)

    And it is true that my point in this paragraph was in part, as the FAOC document suggests, to acknowledge that bishops are indeed granted a role in our polity as gatekeepers of doctrinal change – but it was also to point to the conditions under which that role can properly be exercised. And what I say here, if read in the context of my wider argument, does not simply amount to saying that they should be in dialogue with the wider church as represented by the other houses of General Synod, seeking some kind of majority or consensus, and it does not let me rest content with the descriptions that the FAOC document gives of the bishops’ proper recourse to Scripture.

    The line in the paragraph quoted above about ‘cries, encounters and improvisations’ refers back to, and summarises, a lengthier discussion earlier in the book. In this context I want to draw particular attention to what I say about ‘cries’:

    God’s call reaches this church through cries…. Most sharply, the call reaches the church through cries of suffering – cries from those injured, marginalized, erased, ignored or forced into passivity by the existing patterns of this church’s speech and action. These may be the cries of those who are already visibly part of the life of this church; they may be the cries of those on or beyond what are currently thought of as its edges – but wherever they come from, these cries break in on the church’s present life, posing questions and demanding re-evaluation. Can they do justice to the lives from which these cries emerge? (p. 223)

    Crucially, attending to such cries – and learning to walk with those whose cries they are – can and should transform how we read Scripture. I had earlier said that

    The reading practices to which the church is called, and which doctrinal theologians are to accompany, are practices of reading while walking. That is, they are practices of re-reading in the light of the new situations, the new encounters and the new relationships into which the Spirit leads scripture’s readers. Above all, they are practices of re-reading in the company of those who suffer and are oppressed, those who are marginalized and excluded, those who are harmed by the church’s present settlements. They are practices in which those in positions of hermeneutical power and privilege sit at the feet of those who read from the margins, to listen, to learn, to accompany and in time to converse. The Spirit can open the eyes and ears of readers more fully to scripture, and enable them to hear, see and dwell in the word of God more richly, by means of these situations, encounters, relationships and conversations. If doctrinal theology is to play a role here, it will be by keeping the church to this kind of reading and walking, by holding open space for the conversations that emerge, and by exploring the challenges and suggestions that are generated by those conversations. (p. 169, emphasis added)

    I am not trying to intervene here in some zero-sum game between attention to Scripture and attention to experience. I argue at length in the book that this does not make any sense at all as a way of describing our hermeneutical options. My argument is, rather, that the heart of Scripture is opened for us only as together we journey with Christ in the power of the Spirit, and in no other way – and that we should turn away from any account of Scripture’s meaning, of its ‘parts and themes’, or of the proper approaches to its reading, that can be offered in abstraction from that journeying.

    In other words: I don’t want it supposed that I give my support to a picture of the bishops’ role in guarding the doctrinal teaching of the church that has them testing what they hear from the wider church against a Bible that they already know how to read quite well enough, having learnt to read it outside the company of those whose lives, whose relationships, and whose futures they are discussing. I don’t think that any such picture can do justice to the nature of the journey on which we are called together into the knowledge of God; I don’t think it does justice to the nature of the Scriptures that we have been given by God to accompany us on that journey; and I don’t think it does justice to the nature of doctrine.

    Is it possible to hold multiple doctrines simultaneously?

    I say all this not because I expect to change anybody’s mind – though I hope, of course, that I might. I offer in its favour various arguments, exegeses of scripture, and readings of a range of ancient and modern theologians, but I know that all of those arguments, exegeses and readings are contested. I therefore don’t necessarily expect the authors of the FAOC document to agree with me, but I do want to establish that the supposed consensus marshalled in that document is not quite as neat as it is made out to be. And whilst I accept that I’ve only spoken about my own case, I’m fairly sure that closer attention to several of the other figures covered would indicate that they, too, don’t sing in perfect unison on these matters.

    In particular, the voices gathered in the document don’t all say the same things about the authority of Scripture, and neither do Anglicans more generally. I’m not sure how to distinguish between ‘dogma’, ‘doctrine’ and ‘teaching’ (a point on which the document declines to pronounce – §51), but I suppose you could say, without too much danger of misunderstanding, that there are indeed different doctrines of Scripture in circulation amongst us, and that this has long been the case. Some might resemble the views outlined at the end of the FAOC document, with their focus on the perspicuity of Scripture; others might resemble mine; others will be different again – but whatever their precise character, there is no doubt that the church is and has long been marked by deep and intractable difference in this area.

    But that brings me to the final oddity that I find in this document. The bishops asked whether it is possible for the church to hold multiple doctrines simultaneously – and yet that is a question that this document doesn’t even attempt to answer. The authors could have got somewhat further, however, had they dug back, not into general accounts of the nature of doctrine like mine or those of the other theologians they have mustered, but into earlier formal discussions of this very question by Church of England bodies, including discussions carried out by the commissions to which FAOC is a successor. I find it odd that this report is so detached from that earlier history of Anglican discussion.

    The authors could, for instance, have looked back to the 1938 report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Doctrine, Doctrine in the Church of England – a report commissioned precisely ‘because the tensions between different schools of thought in the Church of England were imperilling its unity and impairing its effectiveness’ (William Temple, ‘Chairman’s Introduction’, p. 4), and so long in the making that even the LLF process looks short by comparison. They could have looked at the succession of documents that the re-formed Doctrine Commission produced from the 1970s to the 1990s – including Christian Believing: The Nature of the Christian Faith and its Expression in Holy Scripture and Creeds (1976), Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith (1981), We Believe in God (1987) and many more – all of which deal with questions of doctrine, and explore the nature and limits of difference in the church.

    Perhaps most pertinently, however, they could have looked back to the 1968 report on Subscription and Assent to the 39 Articles, produced by the then newly re-established Archbishops’ Commission on Christian Doctrine – and in that report they would have found the question about the permissibility of deep differences in Anglican approaches to Scripture already posed and discussed. The report describes those deep differences unflinchingly, but argues that this variety can indeed be held within the life of the church. And this wasn’t one of those reports that vanished from view the moment it was published; it initiated the revision of the Declaration of Assent made by all deacons, priests and bishops, which ensured that the promises they all made would leave room open for this variety to persist in the church. It is not the least strange aspect of the current debate that we seem to have lost touch so completely with even quite recent episodes in our history.

    It is not that I think there are easy answers to find in this history, or any insight that will suddenly cut through all the tangles that we face. Greater attentiveness might, however, help protect us from the temptation to deceptive neatness – a neatness that irons out difference, flattens out history, and somehow always manages to squeeze out the voices of those already marginalised within the life of our church as it is. I fear that FAOC, in its desire to provide assistance to the bishops, has slipped into purveying precisely that kind of neatness.

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

    by Anon.

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

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

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

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

    Elected General Synod Member One – Oh God…

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

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

    Elected General Synod Member Two – Lord have mercy…

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

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

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

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

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

    Evans Above – …Er….

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

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

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

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

    Evans Above – William?

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

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

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

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

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

    It might need some tweaking. What do you think?

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

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

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

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

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 3  – Says who?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “God bless President Donald.” (Floridasians).

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Local Canterbury CNC Rep 3 –…Seriously?

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

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

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

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

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

    “This was their finest hour.”

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

     

  • The Anglican Communion Reps on CNC

    by Canon Dr Phil Groves, a parish priest and former convenor of the Anglican Peace and Justice Network. His PhD is on Anglican Missional Ecclesiology and he was the Facilitator for the Listening Process in the Anglican Communion and Director of Continuing Indaba.

    Now we know who is to represent the Anglican Communion on the CNC, I hope that commentators from the BBC and other news organisations will stop saying that they will be a conservative block who will oppose any woman as Archbishop of Canterbury. It has always been obvious that this will not be the case.

    I remain unconvinced that this appointment process is sustainable in the long term, but it has given us an excellent diverse group of Anglicans who may be able to enhance the discernment process. They will not stop someone being chosen as Archbishop just because of their gender.

    In a previous post I speculated as to who would be chosen and I was wrong about all the individuals. I said at the time that I had no inside information. However, I was right that the requirement that all of them were recent members of the ACC meant that all would at least be comfortable with their partnership with provinces who had women bishops and even Primates, as well as with those provinces which celebrate the permanent and faithful relationships of their LGBTQI+ people, even if they themselves disagree, even strongly disagree, with equal marriage.

    It looks like on this I was right.

    I said that the Anglican Communion representatives may be more progressive than the C of E delegation. They may well be if we widen the definition of progressive to the key issues of climate activism, gender equality, gender justice, and the defence of minorities, for example Palestinian minorities – I suspect I am right on that as well.

    So, while the list of names is different to that which I put forward, my general point stands. Whoever guided this process did an excellent job. They had to balance all kinds of things and in the end two key decisions made all the difference. One thing I missed was that Canon Isaac Beach is Maori and so the obvious choice as an indigenous person. That was pretty bad and I apologise to him and to you all. I was also wrong about which person would be chosen for the primate seat: either Archbishop Mndolwa of Tanzania or Archbishop Hosam Naoum of Jerusalem would have been a great choice, as they are both wise leaders with deep faith. I suggested Archbishop Mndolwa, but they went with Archbishop Naoum.

    I have met a couple of the people chosen, but from reading their profiles this is what I hope they can bring to the CNC:

    I hope Canon Isaac will bring energy to the CNC with his entrepreneurial vision. I imagine him like Steven Bartlett on Dragons’ Den challenging the candidates to inspire him with a vision. His focus will be on combating the climate emergency. This will be so healthy in a process that might otherwise be bogged down by one issue, and one issue alone. The existential threat to humanity is climate and to have someone in the room reminding the CNC that there is a bigger world out there is absolutely vital.

    I hope that the very presence of Archbishop Naoum in the room will demand engagement on the next existential threat – the proliferation of devastating wars around the world. If the CNC does not stop to pray for the people of Palestine and Israel they will be letting us all down. Any applicant will need to be clear on how the Archbishop of Canterbury can prompt the conscience of the nation and the world in the face of horror, not only in Gaza, but also in Sudan, Myanma, Ukraine and elsewhere.

    I have never met Rev Prof Grace Nkansa Asante, but again she seems a terrific choice. Ghanaian Anglicanism is deeply catholic and it took much longer for women to be ordained there than in the evangelical heartlands of the East African Revival. She must have been convinced of her calling and patient for the church to recognise her. What really excites me is that she is a professor of economics. I hope that her very presence will force the CNC to consider economic justice. Our last two archbishops have spoken with clarity on this and our hope must be that the next will do also.

    The representative of the Americas is an interesting choice. Joaquín Philpotts is from Buenos Aires in the Anglican Province of South America. It is assumed that the Province of South America is conservative but, in reality, it is a complex entity. Previous Primates of the Province of the Southern Cone, such as Archbishops Maurice Sinclair and Greg Venables, were driving forces in what was then simply called the ‘Global South’, but not all in their provinces were convinced of the line they took. Archbishop Zavala of Chile had strong links to the Anglican Church in North America, but with Chile as a separate province, the commitment of the Province of South America to GAFCON and the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans has not been clear cut, with the present primate attending the most recent Primates Meeting.

    My hope is that Joaquín Philpotts will bring the perspective of those Anglicans who are in a tiny minority. Being an Anglican in places like Argentina is often a very deliberate choice. I find that such Anglicans have a very clear understanding of our Anglican identity. They have to explain it to their friends and family who will often be Roman Catholic or Pentecostal. I have learnt so much of what it is to be Anglican from my sisters and brothers in South America, the Philippines, Mozambique, Japan and Korea. I hope Joaquín’s presence will require the candidates to be clear on just what it means to be Anglican in an ecumenical context.

    The last Anglican Communion representative is Bishop Mary Stallard of Llandaff. Some people raise the question of why three relatively small provinces get the same representation as the numerous huge provinces of Africa. It is a valid question. My answer would be that these small provinces are disproportionally affected by the Church of England. Archbishops of Canterbury have a tendency to forget that they are not the Primates of the British Isles – or even the UK. They need reminding. In 2010 Archbishop Rowan accepted the offer to welcome the Pope to the UK at an event in Edinburgh. Lambeth Palace never even stopped to think this might be odd, and the Scottish Episcopal Church was not consulted. The Archbishop of Canterbury was seated among the dignitaries and the Primus among the congregation. I was told at the time that it set back ecumenical relationships in Scotland. Archbishop Justin took it on himself to intervene when the Bishop of St David’s posted inappropriate Tweets. He pre-empted the Archbishop of Wales. The Archbishop of Canterbury needs to remember they are the Primate of the Church of England. It may sound odd, but my hope is that the Bishop of Llandaff will remind the candidates to focus on England in partnership with our neighbours and not act as a superior power.

    We all know that many people will focus on one issue as the CNC looks to appoint an Archbishop of Canterbury. I don’t even need to say what that issue is. My hope is that the Anglican Communion Representatives will enable the English members of the CNC to see a wider vison.

    I hope that those seeking to lead the Church of England will be challenged to demonstrate entrepreneurial ambition. I hope they will recognise the inconvenient truth that climate change is an existential threat. They will have the courage to campaign for peace and confront economic injustice. I hope they will be open to understanding Anglican identity from the perspective of those who deliberately choose to be Anglicans and that they recognise that the primary role of the Archbishop of Canterbury is to lead the Church of England.

    If the Communion representatives can lift the eyes of the electors above and beyond a single issue, no matter how dominating and divisive that issue is, they will have done us all a great service.

  • Share and Share Alike? Living in Love and Faith and Funding the Church of England

    Professor Helen King is an authorised preacher in Oxford Diocese and an elected lay member of General Synod

    (picture credit: BBC/Yourkevich)

    In her review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Lower than the Angels in the London Review of Books for 6 March, Lucy Wooding observed that, ‘Few things expose the potential for illogicality, hypocrisy and cruelty within the Christian tradition more clearly than its attitude to sex.’ Put sex and money together, and you’re into a whole new league; and that’s where some dioceses already are.

    The Church of England operates with a model of giving which, depending on your diocese, is called ‘parish share’, ‘parish offer’ or ‘common fund’. It’s not the most exciting topic – although if you’ve been to a meeting of deanery treasurers you’ll have seen the passions it can arouse – but it’s essential to keeping the show on the road. The money that comes in pays the costs of clergy but also the costs of running the diocese, and of training future clergy. My own diocese, Oxford, explains it here. Parish share works differently in different dioceses, but the principle is simple: there is a formula usually based on a church’s electoral roll and weekly attendance, taking into account factors such as being in a poorer area, and this is used to divide up the overall cost. In my diocese, this is then sent to different deaneries, and they use their knowledge of the local situation to pass those costs on to individual parishes. By paying parish share, we are ensuring that the work of the church reaches into every community. We are supporting each other.

    Only that’s no longer the case. For the last few years some churches have decided that they don’t want to fund the wider Church of England in their diocese – they only want to fund churches with whom they agree. Quite who makes this decision is not always clear, and I shall return to that. There are also different situations here; some such churches simply withhold part of their parish share, others funnel it through a further body on the understanding that their money won’t go to the wrong sort of church.

    Wrong sort of church? This is exclusively about one issue; yes, the one which has taken over pretty well every debate at General Synod… the Prayers of Love and Faith, commended for use in existing services with same-sex couples wanting to be blessed in their civil relationship.

    Some parishes have signed up to something called the Ephesian Fund. Resisting charges of ‘blackmailing the dioceses’ it says it is actually making it possible for those who are unhappy to pay their parish share, and recasts that ‘wrong sort of church’ view by saying that it is ‘fuelling orthodox ministry’. Last September the stated aim was to see 500 churches paying their parish share through this fund. Its patrons are CEEC/New Wine/Living Out people (with a GAFCON UK person among their trustees) and the aim is that the money that may have funded ‘sin’ – which is what same-sex faithful relationships are classified as being, in the conservative evangelical world – can instead be diverted to help only ‘local churches that are committed to biblical faith and have signed up to the Ephesian Fund basis of faith.’ That’s the same as the CEEC basis of faith, including ‘We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family.’ CEEC put out a podcast on the role of the Ephesian Fund last October, on how ‘the direction of travel’ with LLF had made some people nervous about paying their parish share.

    It’s a bit odd, when parish share isn’t exactly being used to fund ‘sin’; a same-sex couple asking for the Prayers of Love and Faith doesn’t get a cheque. Behind the slogan of wanting to be sure your money is being used for ‘gospel purposes’, the established system of poorer parishes being subsidised by wealthier parishes is being transformed into helping only our mates. This hasn’t happened with, for example, second marriages for divorced people, or the ordination of women as priests. As far as I know, no church refuses to pay its parish share because the money may support another church in the diocese where there is a woman incumbent.

    This is made more complicated when some dioceses have a parallel scheme, like the Oxford Good Stewards Trust, set up in 2021, not only before the Church of England Evangelical Council came up with the Ephesian Fund idea, but also before the Living in Love and Faith process had got as far as offering prayers to use with same-sex couples. OGST has the same statement of faith as CEEC and the Ephesian Fund. It is entirely open about how it exists ‘to enable parishes to make their contribution to Diocesan work and ministry collectively with like-minded churches rather than directly with the Diocese or through their own Deanery’. ‘Like-minded churches’: our mates. While a vicar may have a ‘mind’, I am not sure that most churches do; they contain people with different views on all topics, and personally I think that’s healthy. If a church uses OGST, some, or all, of the parish share goes to the Trust and then they send it in to the Diocese, I assume with strings attached. I have no idea how that works; is there a list of ‘like-minded churches’? OGST also takes donations from individuals – well, why wouldn’t they? – and has a list of projects to which you can donate. These are almost all about funding an extra minister in a church – I can think of plenty of churches who would love one of those – although one of the projects is rather different, as it includes funding a man to work at a theological college ‘with a distinctive focus on promoting and resourcing the use of biblical Greek in Christian ministry’.

    The Charity Commission gives the total income for the OGST in the year ended 31 December 2023 as £448,099. Those levels of money sound serious, although in the world of CofE finance they are not so significant (Oxford diocese receives over £19,000,000 from parish share).

    It’s quite hard to understand what is happening here, other than some sabre-rattling. The thing about a common fund is that it’s common – it’s not that some five-pound notes are labelled as having come from a particular church within your diocese. It’s just one pot.

    Making this even more muddled is the point that some parishes are not diverting what would have gone to parish share into either a local or national scheme that targets only the right kind of churches; instead, some parishes are not paying their parish share in full. This has consequences. If you don’t pay in full, your parish ceases to be eligible for various discretionary diocesan funds, so this strategy could hurt you more than anyone else, but I suppose that would count as a fair sacrifice to make in order to uphold your principles. There are of course also parishes which can’t pay their share in full, because they just don’t have the money. In some deaneries, other churches are encouraged to meet that shortfall locally so that the total for the deanery as a whole can be reached – which can also have the result that the deanery is eligible for an early payment discount. Win-win: we’ve done this in my deanery. But would other churches be willing to pay more to compensate for one in the deanery that has the money but refuses to play ball? I somehow doubt it.

    What does this look like in action? Let’s turn to a specific example. At the March meeting of Oxford’s Diocesan Synod I put this question in to the Chair of the Diocesan Board of Finance:

    How many churches in the diocese are placing limitations on how their parish share contributions can be used, by withholding parish share, donating through the Ephesian Fund or similar third party, or through a special arrangement with the diocese, such that their contributions cannot be used to support all churches and clergy in the diocese? How much money is affected by these arrangements?

    His response was: There are some questions of interpretation in the interests of answering this question precisely but our best estimate would be that 4 parishes in 2024 placed limitations on how their parish share contributions could be used. For these four parishes the total allocation was £689,536, and the amount actually paid was £498,198, leaving a shortfall of £191,339. In 2025 the number of churches has already risen to 5, with a shortfall expected to be around £300,000. The number of parishes paying part or all of their parish share through the Ephesian Fund or Oxford Good Stewards Trust is currently 11.

    In responses to supplementaries, the Chair clarified that uncertainty over how many parishes are opting out of the usual way of paying parish share, or not paying at all, is one reason why the diocese can’t forecast how much will be needed from parishes next year. I note from the Oxford Diocese accounts that the 2023 future plans included ‘Manage the impacts of Living in Love and Faith.’ In those same accounts, the risks identified include ‘Significant under payment of Parish Share’. For 2023 the parish share receipts of £19,060,000 represented 94.5% of the total apportioned (2022: 95.2%). Some of those not paying in full, as I’ve said, were simply unable to raise the money.

    Looking at the detailed breakdowns of parish share allocation and payment for each deanery in my diocese, I note that, for 2024, there’s a parish where only 74.5% of the allocated share was received. That is Great Chesham, mentioned in the supplementaries to my question. They were supposed to have paid £238,811. What has happened there is interesting, and although it has been mentioned in the local and national press it deserves to be more widely known, not least because of the questions of process it raises. So, based on some of the documents that are in the public domain, here goes…

    Great Chesham covers seven churches. On 10 April 2023 the Guardian reported that ‘The PCC voted last month in favour of withholding the [parish share] payment but must rerun the process after failing to comply with church rules.’ They don’t specify which rules, but that doesn’t sound good. The minutes for the 30 April 2023 ADCM (Annual District Church Meeting) of St Mary’s with St John’s Bellingdon, chaired by Revd Edward Bowes-Smith, included a finance report with the information that the DCC and PCC were ‘considering pausing the Parish Share to the Diocese’. The impression was given that there would be a pause until July at which point the money ‘can be paid over depending on what the Review decides’. This Review Group acknowledged that there were ‘different views about the Parish share’. It was not clear whether the 280 members of the electoral roll had been consulted. A question raised at the ADCM was ‘How can we still be giving monthly without everyone being notified of this?’ The response was that the monthly donations were being ring fenced while the Review Group was meeting. The minutes do not record how this was being done.

    After that ADCM, a story published by The Christian Institute on ‘CofE’s leadership has abandoned ‘the true Gospel of Jesus Christ’ by blessing same-sex partners’ made reference to Great Chesham’s PCC being about to vote to pause its parish share payments and quoted Bowes-Smith alongside John Dunnett of the Church of England Evangelical Council.

    In the following month, on 17 May, the APCM (Annual Parochial Church Meeting) of the parish of Great Chesham was held, also chaired by Bowes-Smith, as the Rector of the whole group of churches. 55 parishioners attended. It doesn’t look like the parish share pause was a specific agenda item; the minutes make no mention of it until the item on ‘Rector’s Thoughts’. Here, at last, there is specific mention of the elephant in the room, described as ‘the Church of England’s potential change in doctrine with the proposal to introduce Same Sex Blessings’. The parish clergy had said they would not conduct these blessings and ‘The PCC are happy to support the Clergy in exercising their conscience’. That, of course, is fine; it has been clear from the beginning of this process that no clergyperson has to use the prayers if they are not happy to do so. But how does the PCC pausing parish share ‘support’ clergy consciences? The minutes do not explain this, and instead the Rector mentioned the issues around how the parish share was divided between the Districts.

    It’s clear from the minutes that those present were well aware that there was more to this than how parish share is divided between churches, and that some took advantage of the opportunity to ask questions following the ‘Rector’s Thoughts’. Someone said that it was ‘inappropriate’ to have decided to pause paying parish share before the approval of the minutes of the 22 March PCC meeting at which a paper had been circulated with the interesting title ‘Supporting our Clergy and Reflecting Together on the Implications of February’s General Synod’s Motion on Same Sex Blessings: Clergy, Wardens and Treasurer’s Note’. I assume that ‘inappropriate’ action illuminates the claim of failure to follow ‘church rules’. Another person raised the point that PCC minutes were not accessible at the same time to all PCC members, meaning some knew about ‘the e-mail vote to pause the Parish Share while others didn’t’.

    An e-mail vote? Perfectly valid between PCC meetings, but conveniently this protects those who don’t want others to see how they are voting. And what were the figures in this vote? We don’t know. There are questions raised by this voting which apply more widely; returning to the Ephesian Fund, the stories they share on their website involve a PCC deciding to pay parish share to the Fund after consulting the congregation, and a PCC deciding and then informing the congregation. Whose church is it? Where do the PCC, the Annual Meeting, the electoral roll and the congregation as a whole fit in?

    Someone else at the Great Chesham APCM offered the thought that ‘Whilst it is acceptable for Clergy not to undertake Same Sex Marriage Blessings this should not result in Parish Share payments being withheld and non-engagement with the Bishop.’ So, those present were certainly not unanimous: and I couldn’t have put this point better myself.

    The specific view of one of the seven churches, Emmanuel, was also presented at that APCM: that ‘In 1 Cor 6: 9 -10 Paul teaches about those who will not inherit the kingdom of God 6 (unrepentant sin); it is difficult to endorse a Church teaching which is endangering people’s eternal fate’, so we should not ‘partner’ with those who are doing this. Their vicar Edward Millais announced that ‘if it became necessary, [he would] be willing to stop his salary and move from his house’. Emmanuel is linked to CEEC and also to ReNew. ReNew operates under the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration with these relevant points: ‘matrimony is the lifelong union between one man and one woman, and sexual relations outside that context are sinful in God’s eyes’ and adds that no ‘eldership/oversight’ roles are possible for women. ReNew writes of ‘a readiness to stand their ground in the face of opposition’. As I write this, Emmanuel are currently advertising for a ministry trainee, their ad clarifying not just that the applicant needs to be an evangelical, but that they must be in ‘wholehearted agreement with our Christian ethos, doctrines and beliefs which include the Church of England Evangelical Council’s Declaration of Faith and Additional Declarations, as well as the PCC’s 2015 resolution affirming a traditional biblical understanding of marriage (Hebrews 13:4,7)’. Emmanuel does not put DCC minutes on the website, and nor does the wider group of Great Chesham publish its PCC minutes, so the impetus for, and content of, this resolution must remain unclear.

    Also represented in the response of those present to the ‘Rector’s Thoughts’ was the deanery perspective – that Great Chesham withholding money would cause other churches in the deanery to suffer. Indeed. One of those present proposed a motion that the PCC should ‘rescind its vote to pause payment of the Parish Share until the work of the Finance Review Group is completed in July’. This was defeated: 20 voted for the motion, 45 against with 6 abstentions (if there were only 55 parishioners and the rector present, this doesn’t add up, so I assume that 55 excluded the various clergy?).

    So what happened in that review work and what decision was made in July? I don’t know. But on the accounts for 2023 the treasurer stated that ‘We overcame the great uncertainty surrounding our relations with the Diocese on our Parish Share’ meaning that ‘We are well resourced financially to weather any continued uncertainty surrounding the Church of England’.

    Well, that’s lovely for Great Chesham. But the shortfall has to be made up by other parishes, and it may be rather less lovely for them.

    Those churches who want to stay pure by not funding ‘sinful’ churches – defining ‘sinful’ purely in terms of how they treat those in same-sex relationships – seem to be content to serve on local and national church bodies alongside the members of such churches; to have their vicarages maintained and their clergy’s pensions paid with money which has come from such churches; and to receive funding from the national church without asking questions about its origins. Like some in their congregations, I would simply acknowledge that there is a diversity of belief and practice in the Church of England, on this and on much else, and that the current situation – nobody has to use the Prayers of Love and Faith unless they want to do so – already provides enough protection for consciences.

     

  • Halcyon Daze? Nostalgia in the Memory of the Church

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

  • Rounding up Sheep or Assembling Cats? Governance in the United Reformed Church and the Church of England

    by Revd Chantal Noppen, elected member of General Synod and National Coordinator, Inclusive Church

    This summer, I had the privilege of attending the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church (URC) as an ecumenical representative. Coming directly from the Church of England’s General Synod, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the two experiences. This reflection offers a personal perspective on these two governance structures, focusing on their inclusivity, decision-making processes, and overall atmosphere. I have had a URC friend read it and their response has added some more comments, included in italics. I’d also like to make it clear that I love being on General Synod and value it immensely; these observations should not detract from that.

    Preparation and Initial Impressions

    Although I had limited prior knowledge of the URC, my background at the Cambridge Theological Federation introduced me to aspects of their worship and governance. I knew the URC had been more progressive in ordaining women, promoting lay leadership, and affirming LGBTQIA+ individuals, but I was curious about how their General Assembly would compare to the Church of England’s General Synod.

    Integration and Inclusivity

    If I were to sum up the URC’s General Assembly in one word, it would be ‘integration’. The URC makes a concerted effort to include diverse voices in their decision-making processes. This integration is evident in everything the assembly does, from the language used in worship to the application of technology and resources. The assembly had a noticeably more racially diverse, age-broad, and disability-aware approach than what I have observed elsewhere. Although there were no visible BSL interpreters, the effort to ensure inclusivity and accessibility was apparent. I have since learned that BSL signers have been provided in the past, but as feedback confirmed no-one was using them, it wasn’t economically sensible to continue. I am confident however that this expense would be willingly covered if the need arose.

    Unlike the Church of England, where youth engagement often feels more like a goal than a reality, the URC directly integrates young people into their assemblies. In the Church of England, we often talk about wanting to ‘hear the voice of young people’ and offer various schemes and projects focused on engaging them, but I’ve yet to be convinced that we are truly committed to this, as it would require a significant shift in the status quo and power dynamics. At the URC assembly, young people are fully present and just as involved and listened to as anyone else. They speak for themselves and are heard as confident, competent members of the assembly.

    More than any other aspect, this stayed with me as a valuable lesson for us in the Church of England, where changing the status quo often meets resistance. I hope the URC recognises the incredible resource they have in these young people and continues to invest in them generously.

    Decision-Making Processes

    One of the most striking differences between the two bodies is the decision-making process. At the URC Assembly, moderators invite members to use coloured cards to quickly gauge opinions on a topic. If there isn’t clear support, the topic is simply dropped. This method contrasts sharply with the Church of England’s lengthy debates over minor wording changes, which can often feel like filibustering. Additionally, the URC’s use of real-time updates on motion wording helps maintain clarity during discussions and is incredibly helpful from an accessibility point of view.

    It was fascinating to see and hear disagreements and alternative views being shared, considered, and decided upon in real time. The speed with which business and policy are addressed seemed far ahead of the CofE. However, the decisions themselves somehow felt a bit less weighty – perhaps because of the more informal feel.

    It would be naive to assume that the URC membership is homogeneous in its opinions; this is certainly not the case. However, there appears to be a strong sense of loyalty to the whole, especially when contrasted with the divisive rhetoric currently present in the Church of England. I later learned that when the topic of same-sex marriage, particularly regarding ministers, was raised, discussions reached an impasse – having already been rather vicious and damaging. Three opposing and distinct, yet valid, views were upheld. Rather than allowing this stalemate to cause further hurt, the URC imposed a seven-year moratorium on formal debates about the topic. This pause created space for personal conversations built on relationships, and when the topic was eventually revisited, it was able to be passed without adding further major trauma. As I understand it, the discussion in the 1990s was incredibly fraught and messy. It is also worth noting that the eventual conclusion of General Assembly was it should be a locally made decision, not one decided centrally. This is remarkably similar to what the CofE is trying to move towards around the introduction of PLF, that is being pushed back against as ‘too much’ from conservative wings.

    Reflecting on this, I can’t help but think of the Church of England’s experience with the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) resources, which were intended to foster open, respectful dialogue. Despite this opportunity, it feels as though we have fallen short. It’s not a simple matter, but one wonders how different things might be if the whole of the Church of England had actively engaged with these resources, focusing on listening and learning rather than defensiveness and division. Where might we be now if that had been the case?

    Leadership and Hierarchy

    Another notable difference is the URC’s approach to leadership roles. Unlike the Church of England, where positions such as bishops and archdeacons are permanent promotions, the URC appoints leaders for a fixed term before they return to regular ministry. This practice seems to reduce the emphasis on personal ambition and status, fostering a model of ministry more focused on service than career advancement.

    I learned that both the URC and the Methodist Church have broad memberships that include individuals with more evangelical or conservative views as well as those with more liberal perspectives. However, the influence of these groups differs from that in the Church of England. It often seems that substantially more resources and support are directed toward the conservative end of the spectrum in the CofE than in the middle. While I have no hard data to hand, it’s a widely acknowledged observation within the church community.

    Key Differences and Similarities

    Both the URC and the Church of England face similar challenges, such as resource allocation and ministerial support. However, the URC’s more collaborative and less hierarchical structure allows for a more unified approach to these issues. However, there was the same complaint about regional variances and unilateral diocesan policies leading to inconsistencies and a lack of equity.

    There is no electronic voting system at Assembly, so there is no way to track who has voted which way on specific items. I can see pros and cons to this, but it matches the overall emphasis on unity and shared investment in the URC. The Church of England is far more individually led and used to spotlighting specific voices and leaders. This is even demonstrated by the close-up camera shots of speakers with their names and numbers on the screen, as opposed to the topic being discussed. Apparently when electronic voting was tried it was a disaster. All critical votes that may be contentious are conducted by secret ballot, there were just none on this year’s agenda.

    The URC is substantially smaller and younger than the Church of England, which is reflected in a number of ways. I found the general atmosphere of pragmatic evolution to be quite inspirational, demonstrated in various initiatives, including the development of the iChurch resource to assist local churches with website development and database management—tasks that many churches struggle to manage internally.

    Personal Reflections

    My experience at the URC General Assembly was eye-opening. While I appreciate the Church of England’s structured approach and accountability mechanisms, I believe we could benefit from adopting some of the URC’s practices, especially those that foster unity and reduce unnecessary debate. However, the practice of offering the opportunity to ask clarifying questions of a motion and its report before it is debated was a simple but incredibly useful nuance. As our understanding and appreciation of neuro-divergent thinking grow, this approach would provide some much-needed clarity to discussions that I think all would benefit from.

    I found myself repeatedly impressed by the diversity of voices heard at General Assembly and the genuine lack of one or two people speaking at every possible opportunity. Speakers are not called by the chair; they simply head toward the mic when they wish to contribute. When a chair does offer gentle intervention, it seemed to be met with respect and acceptance, which is not always true of General Synod.

    However, during one discussion, an older gentleman made a rude, dismissive, and judgmental comment about the ordering of households and relationship statuses. I was saddened to hear it and surprised that it wasn’t challenged on the floor or from the podium. While I’ve heard worse or similar at Synod, I had come to expect better from my reformed peers, so that was rather disappointing. I know that I was not alone in this surprise and shock, and have been encouraged to hear specific pastoral support and follow-up was provided.

    Throughout General Assembly, times of worship and Bible study were woven more integrally than the bookend approach favoured at Synod. However, I think some of this is due to logistical differences and different expectations of worship. The theme of innovation that ran through the worship was especially interesting to consider from the perspective of a creatively minded Anglican who often operates ‘out of the box’, intentionally or otherwise. This often feels like an uncomfortable place to be and is a stark contrast to the reformed mindset that has evolution in its DNA and change written into its foundation.

    The final Bible study, led by Lisa Adejai from Christian Aid, captured much of what I had been reflecting on while also shifting my focus to the “now, next, and so then.” Her core message was an invitation to reimagine, reorder, and renew—a timely encouragement for someone like me, emerging from a challenging period of ministry.

    Lisa spoke passionately about the reordering of power that Jesus calls us to, urging us to broaden our horizons and reach out to the marginalized, challenging assumptions, and refusing to accept the status quo. She referenced a Ghanaian phrase meaning “go back and get it,” highlighting the importance of understanding our past to move forward effectively. As I consider the church’s ongoing discussions around racism, misogyny, homophobia, gender discrimination, and more, I’m struck by our struggle to truly acknowledge our mistakes and commit to doing better. Jesus’ commandment to love God, our neighbour, and ourselves remains central—if we truly lived by this love, our decisions and actions would bear more meaningful fruit.

    Lisa concluded by asking, “What is God calling you to reorder? What power are you being called to give away, share, or amplify in others? Where are you being called to reimagine?” These are questions worth sitting with in every church meeting, as we remain open to God’s guidance and transformation.

    Conclusion

    In case this all feels a bit ‘rose-tinted’, during more direct conversations, I heard some firsthand experiences of how the URC had fallen far short of their intentions and stated priorities around gender justice and pay/benefits provision. While both institutions can seek to silence dissenting voices, which often happen to be those of women, addressing this will perhaps happen more quickly in the smaller organisation. Attending Assembly also helped bring into focus the additional privilege and pressure we have as the state church. Do we consider this as well as we could, or do we prefer to use it as a prop and shield rather than an opportunity to catalyse society?

    I came away from General Assembly simultaneously in awe of certain aspects, like the integration of young people, the principle of taking a consensus and simply not discussing items that didn’t gather enough support, but also feeling a deep sense of relief that the system I “belong” to is a bit more clearly structured. I’m grateful for the transparency of our voting system and the possibility for there to be accountability and questions put to members over their voting decisions. I am heartened that, despite different approaches, both systems allow for a range of views to be presented but that no single person, or incredibly loud minority, can dictate, block or derail votes.

    I greatly valued the opportunity to gain insight into how another denomination is navigating contemporary issues. I think there is much we could learn from each other and I look forward to working more closely with reformed colleagues in the future.

  • Safeguarding: Who is in Charge?

    by ‘Graham’

    In the Wilkinson Review of the Independent Safeguarding Board, 30 November 2023, I was quoted as follows:

    “Everything in the Church of England falls between two stools. You’ve got the NSP, the NSSG, the SRG, the NST, the Archbishops’ Council, the House of Bishops, the Lead Bishop, Lambeth and individual dioceses and it allows everyone to say, ‘Well, it’s actually not my job,’ and decision after decision in the Church of England is made without anyone in control, without anyone saying, ‘Come on, enough’s enough.’” (Para 317).

    I was reminded of these words when reading about the shenanigans in Blackburn. There were multiple interested parties, multiple attempted interventions, but at the end of the day a process was undertaken that allowed a person to sue, and receive a payment. Nothing worked. There was no process, no policy, no disciplinary procedure, no forum, that allowed a comprehensive investigation and justice (whichever way it went) to be seen to be done.

    And I reflect on what all the bodies that I listed in the Wilkinson Review actually do. Who reports to whom? And who can make decisions? Where is the “Head of Safeguarding” (no such role exists) to ensure that fair process, natural justice and competence are delivered?

    Because everything falls between two stools; in fact, many more. And frequently it is not the Church of England who actually do anything. The Jonathan Fletcher Review: an outside agency, 31:8, appointed not by the CofE but by Emmanuel, Wimbledon. The Pilavachi case: an outside agent, Fiona Scolding KC, has been appointed by Soul Survivor. The Titus Trust Reviews: an outside agency, 31:8 again, appointed by Titus. The Scripture Union Review: an outside agent, Gill Camina, appointed by, guess who, Scripture Union. The investigation into Iain Broomfield, who led the Iwerne camps from 1987-2000, well, no one knows what happened there, and a group of alleged victims put out a stinging rebuke. Where was the Church of England in all of these?

    We know the CDM is largely discredited, but it is worth noting that in the cases of Jonathan Fletcher, Iain Broomfield, the fellow in Blackburn and Mike Pilavachi it is extremely unclear what process was undertaken under CDM, and justice was “not seen to be done”, certainly in the eyes of victims. The process that was in place, was not fit for purpose. “Learning Lessons Reviews” (a misnomer if there ever was one) have been replaced by “Safeguarding Practice Reviews”: toothless, neutered, never debated by General Synod. I mention them as it is telling that not a single Safeguarding Practice Review has been commissioned in the 13 months since they were approved in July 2023. Despite the pleading of the ISB11, and the continuous flood of abuse revelations, the CofE does not have a single current Review (Makin was under the old regime).

    Let us look at the ISB. Who was responsible for the flawed (it is claimed) Terms of Reference? Who was responsible for the paucity of resources? Who was responsible for the sudden closure? I will leave readers to look at the Wilkinson Report for some of the answers to those, but the cynical outside observer sees parties ducking and diving, and denying responsibility.

    The Makin Review is my biggest bugbear, as a victim of John Smyth, and as the victim who came forward almost 13 years ago. We still have no answers, no justice, no closure and I have written many times about that. But, I ask again and again, who is responsible? NST say it is an Archbishops’ Council commissioned review, and independent, so they cannot intervene. The AC say that oversight was delegated to NST. Does the NSP have a view? No idea. Does the NSSG have a view; no idea. Have the Lead Bishops ever taken an interest? Well, Joanne Grenfell has never replied to or even acknowledged a single email I have sent her. General Synod? Well, lots of questions, faux outrage, but nothing is done. Do the paymasters care? I shudder to think of the cost of lawyers to date, yet alone the payments to Keith Makin: and am outraged, incandescent, in the contrast with support for victims when the Redress Scheme is further delayed. So, the Makin Review can drift on at enormous expense, 1555 days late (as I write) and no one “owns it”, no one has held his feet to the fire, no one has taken responsibility.

    And where do victims go ? I am also quoted in the Wilkinson Review as follows:

    “….that there had been a number of circumstances in the last seven years where they had needed somewhere to go and had needed an independent body that provided oversight, authority and power within the Church of England…..” (para 260.2).

    As no one is “responsible” for the Makin Review, I have nowhere to go. No one to complain to. No one who will intervene. The ISB might have provided this for us, though I suspect had they intervened they would have been accused of exceeding their brief. But even the ISB lifeline was taken from us, and of course from Mr X and the ISB 11.

    What do I ask for? That the multiple layers of safeguarding bureaucracy are consolidated. The relationship between the NST, NSSG and NSP must be clarified. The responsibility for safeguarding which falls between General Synod, Archbishops’ Council, House of Bishops, all those myriad bodies, must be clarified. I would hope and pray that this can be an eventual outcome of the deliberations by Professor Alexis Jay. Though I add, the Response Group appears to be a toothless “talking shop”. The Chair, Lesley-Anne Ryder, has refused to engage with victims. Their consultation received feedback from just 11 victims: surely that reflects the lack of confidence and trust in the process. The ISB took almost two years to gain the trust of damaged, nervous, traumatised victims. Does the Response Group even want to gain our trust?

    The final thing I ask for is a prophetic voice. Someone to stand up and say “Enough is Enough”. It is not coming from the hand wringing Archbishops. It is not coming from the invisible Lead Bishops. It is not coming from the incompetent NST. I could not even name the Chair of the NSP and NSSG, neither body having crossed my path, over seven years after the Channel 4 exposé. Where is the leadership, the vision, the ambition? Where is the person who “gets it” and can blend a ruthless drive for change, and a compassion that will gain the trust of victims? A “Head of Safeguarding” might not be appropriate, but where in these plethora of organisation would they even sit?

    Until then, everything will fall between two stools. We have no Makin Review. There is paralysis over Christ Church, Oxford. There is chaos at Blackburn. The ISB has gone. The Lead Bishops are silent (as is Lambeth and “victims come first” Welby: yeah, yeah, yeah). General Synod is impotent. NST are dysfunctional.

    And victims are left by the side of the road.