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Tag: General Synod

  • All About LLF: the February Synod Debate

    by Felicity Cooke, a lay member of General Synod for Ely Diocese, a former member of the Leicester Working Groups, and a trustee of  Together for the Church of England

    There seems to be some confusion still about what happened at General Synod on 12th February 2026, three long years after the beginning of the journey of Living in Love and Faith (LLF) through General Synod. So here’s an attempt to explain it, from someone who was in the room. A reminder that what’s under debate are two moves towards a fuller welcome for lesbian and gay couples: first, accepting that clergy, ordinands and those exploring their call to ministry can be in same sex civil marriages (they can already be in same sex civil partnerships) and, second, permitting the use of the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) in standalone services. These Prayers were commended by the Bishops back in 2023 but can currently only be used in existing services.

    The motion

    At Synod, we were presented with a Motion from the Archbishop of York which affirmed what had been clear for some months: ‘that the LLF Programme and all work initiated by the February 2023 LLF Motion and subsequent LLF Motions will conclude by July 2026’. The Motion in full read as follows:

    That this Synod:

    (a) recognise and lament the distress and pain many have suffered during the LLF process, especially LGBTQI+ people;

    (b) affirm that the LLF Programme and all work initiated by the February 2023 LLF Motion and subsequent LLF Motions will conclude by July 2026;

    (c) thank the LLF Working Groups for their committed and costly work, which will now draw to a close with the conclusion of this synodical process;

    (d) commend the House of Bishops in establishing the Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group and Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Pastoral Consultative Group for continuing work.

    After nearly five hours of debate on the Motion and on eight amendments, the unamended Motion was passed by Synod by a vote in all three Houses:

    For Against Abstained
    House of Bishops  34 0  2
    House of Clergy 109 62 10
    House of Laity 107 70  9

    That’s interesting because it showed a very clear majority in favour in all three Houses.

    But in favour of what? The end of LLF, or a new beginning?

    To answer that, we first need a diversion into Synodical procedures, as set out in our Standing Orders.

    Doing the numbers

    Before we all voted, a member moved a ‘procedural motion’ asking for a ‘counted vote of the whole Synod’. That was rapidly followed by another member calling for a ‘vote by Houses’. If 25 members stand to support this, it happens. And they did. A ‘vote by Houses’ has often featured in LLF debates and it always trumps a ‘counted vote of the whole Synod’. It means that each House votes separately, so it gives a clearer picture of who thinks what – and as names are registered with votes, that goes to the level of individual voters.

    But this particular procedural motion also makes it harder to pass anything because the motion or amendment must pass in all three Houses, meaning that the main reason to ask for a vote by Houses is if you want it to fail.

    Here’s an intriguing question: what would the result have been if the initial call, for a counted vote of the whole Synod, had succeeded? This is one of the interesting points about that whole long afternoon in Church House. When we put together the results of the three Houses, they show an overall vote in favour of 65.6%, with 34.4% opposed. Is it an irony that this is a bigger margin than in any of the previous successful LLF votes in February 2023, November 2023 and July 2024? Context is all important in thinking about that question.

    Autumn 2025: stalling

    Let’s go back to last October, when the House of Bishops issued a statement which was a precursor of the motion brought to Synod last month. This statement articulated the view of the House that LLF had essentially ground to a halt. Working groups had been set up to advise on process and procedure for the PLF to be used in ‘standalone’ (or ‘bespoke’) services. Meeting in Leicester, these groups had argued for such freedom to use the PLF to be accompanied by ‘protections’ for those who did not wish to do so. But these protections, characterised as ‘Delegated Episcopal Ministry’ (DEM), could not be accepted by the House of Bishops. DEM would mean that a diocesan bishop could ‘delegate’ some of their role to other, more conservative, bishops. But all (or almost all) of the bishops, whether inclusive or conservative, found DEM unacceptable. For some, such provisions were not enough: for others they went too far.

    In addition, the bishops decided that ‘in principle … both bespoke service and clergy same-sex marriage would need formal synodical and legislative processes to be completed before they could be permitted.’ So the PLF can still only be used in a regular service, not a special one.

    The immediate response amongst inclusive or progressive groups and individuals was of deep disappointment. It seemed that years of work both inside and outside Synod were to be abandoned. Over the years since LLF started in 2017, there have only been two small pieces of movement: the permission to use PLF in existing services and jettisoning Issues in Human Sexuality. That’s not much for countless hours spent in debates, discussions and working groups, not to mention an estimated total expenditure on the LLF process of £1.6 million.

    Throughout autumn 2025, arguments were pitched from all sides, some wanting the bishops to embrace a more positive agenda, others to call a halt to everything which Synod had voted for in 2023.

    The responses from those holding inclusive views included powerful sermons from the Deans of Southwark and Canterbury, as well as an Open Letter led by Inclusive Church (IC). In the press release accompanying that Open Letter, IC said:

    The Living in Love and Faith process has shown that the majority of the Church of England, clergy and laity alike, now long for a Church where LGBTQ+ people are fully welcomed and celebrated. Many want to see their grandchildren able to be married in church, their trans family members affirmed, and their Church reflect the generous heart of God.

    The letter was signed by nearly 7,000 lay and clergy people, from 3001 churches across the Church of England.

    Things became particularly intense in November 2025, when the legal advice offered to the House of Bishops was published as the paper GS Misc 1432. Many times in the last few years there had been calls from conservatives for the full legal advice and we were assured that this paper offered the same advice that the bishops had been given before. Not everyone agreed with the paper’s legal interpretation; see for example here.

    Yet another meeting of the House of Bishops took place in December, considering this legal advice and some theological papers. In mid-December, in another powerfully expressed sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, the Dean of Bristol asked the bishops where, among them, were  ‘those who will stand up against legalism, who will expedite processes for standalone services and lifting the ban on clergy entering same sex marriages?’

    2026: the waiting game

    But the bishops did not rise to her challenge. Their January Statement repeated and endorsed the position expressed in October.

    And so we entered yet another waiting game; what would be the actual motion to come to Synod in February? When it arrived in the Synod documents there was deep disappointment, even hostility to the thrust of the motion. The ‘apology’ in clause (a) seemed lacklustre and insincere (as one speaker in Synod said in the debate on the unsuccessful amendment to change this, ‘sorry means you won’t do it again’). As for clause (b), the idea that the LLF Programme could conclude by July 2026 was a slap in the face not only for all the members of the Leicester working groups who had sent a strong message to the bishops to act on their proposals, but to those in Synod who had voted in favour of the motions on LLF passed in February and November 2023 and July 2024. There was deep suspicion about the new working groups which the House of Bishops intended to set up – clause (d) – not only about the terms of reference detailed in GS 2426, but in its proposed membership and how members were to be appointed. There was a widespread feeling that the voices of the normally silent majority had been ignored.

    February: voting for further movement

    Yet, as I explained at the start of this blog post, in February the House of Bishops Motion was passed by a larger majority across the whole of Synod than any other previous LLF motion.

    How did this come about? Perhaps even those most dedicated of Synod watchers would be defeated by a detailed account of the eight amendments which were debated, and fell, during those five hours of debate. In brief, these were an amendment to make the apology more meaningful and sincere, an amendment to acknowledge theological diversity amongst LGBTQI+ (sic) people, one calling on the bishops to apologise for not taking legal advice and thus falsely raising hopes, one to remove the clause bringing the LLF process to a halt, another to allow a conscience clause on the use of the PLF in standalone services, another to remove the clause setting up the new working groups, one to add a means by which the Leicester working groups would be asked to provide a foundation for the work of the new working groups, and finally an amendment asking that the new working groups be organised so as to ensure that a majority of the members would be in favour of standalone services and full inclusion of clergy in same sex civil marriages, with regular reports on progress to Synod. Some of these amendments sought to strengthen the Motion, some sought either to weaken it or even render it meaningless.

    As would eventually happen with the main motion, there were calls for votes by Houses. Each of these amendments fell in the House of Bishops and (for the most part) in the other Houses too. So, given the dissatisfaction with the main motion and the disappointment, if not despair, at the events of the previous six months, what led to its approval?

    It was an odd motion because, as you can see in clause (d), Synod was only ‘commending’ something which the bishops were going to do anyway. They did not need synodical approval. But if Synod rejected the motion, the setting up of more working groups could mean the work was delayed or even abandoned. It would give scope for bishops who were uncomfortable with the proposed scheme of work to argue that it wasn’t needed.

    The initial response of Together for the Church of England, and its supporters, had been to vote against the motion, unless it proved possible to amend it. Another option would be to abstain, to demonstrate the despair with which it was being received. But it became clear that those who were opposed to the LLF process, who were unwilling even to give room for the PLF, were prepared to vote it down. Those of different views knew that putting in amendments could at least give a chance to air their views. Knowing the balance of opinion in Synod (unrepresentative as it is of opinion across the wider Church) the pragmatic decision was to vote in favour, unless the motion was amended so as to make it toothless. That way, at least some work continues.

    Over the course of the debate, the most powerful speeches were those from clergy in faithful and committed same sex relationships, some going back many decades, who spoke of their reactions to the various statements by the bishops; statements which seemed to have lost sight of the real people whose lives go on being affected by this.

    And now?

    Because their motion has passed, the House of Bishops now has a significant majority decision from Synod to support the continuation of the LLF legacy. As I’ve shown, this majority is the largest in any LLF vote across the years from 2023 to now. LLF may be over, but there is a new beginning. The challenge to the bishops is therefore to bring about meaningful change through the ‘Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group’ and ‘Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Pastoral Consultative Group’. Let us hope that the memberships of the two groups are appropriately filled with those whose goal is to not to obstruct the change which so many ordinary people in the Church wish to see with all their hearts.

  • Safeguarding: How Can We “Learn Lessons” From the Read Sisters’ Case?

    by Professor Helen King, lay member of General Synod, Oxford Diocese


    When, in July 2025, the details of Revd Anne-Marie Ghosh’s emotional and physical abuse by her former husband were published by a Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal, the Church Times (8 August 2025) reported that a spokesperson for the diocese involved – Coventry – had said “The diocese acknowledges that there are learning points.” The Tribunal had observed “We trust lessons will be learned” (paragraph 51). It is a disturbing case because Ghosh – the adult victim – was the one who had a CDM brought against her, a CDM which this Tribunal dismissed.

    “Lessons will be learned” – four words, but do they mean anything? Here I want to ask a question: how is the wider church supposed to learn these lessons, if reviews are not made public?

    The Read sisters: asking a question

    A month before the details of the Ghosh tribunal were published, I had become aware of the case of the Read sisters. This broke in a 17 June story on the BBC news site and was followed up by the Church Times on 20 June. A Lessons Learned Review (LLR) had been carried out into the abuse they suffered as children in the 1950s and 1960s from a group formed of their GP father, a female Sunday School teacher (later to become a churchwarden) and the curate (later to become a canon). The father, Robert (Bob) Read died in 1996, and the Sunday School teacher, named in the Church Times as Mary Wairing, in 2015. The then-curate is still alive.

    The Read sisters’ case disturbed me, not least because it was clearly stated in reports that the LLR would not be published. I therefore submitted the following Question to the July 2025 Synod:

    On 17 June the BBC and then the Church Times reported on the production of a safeguarding Lessons Learned Review into the allegations of abuse as young children of Jenny, Wendy and Christina Read by their father, a female Sunday School teacher and a male curate at a church in the Northeast. The father and the Sunday School teacher had a sexual relationship. The Church Times reported that as part of the Terms of Reference, the LLR would not be published. In view of the grave seriousness of the alleged sexual offences involved, which were reported to three bishops, and in view of the fact that the victims have waived their right to anonymity, how will the learning from this Lessons Learned Review now be taken forward to inform safeguarding practice?

    The Bishop of Stepney replied in her role as Lead Bishop for Safeguarding:

    The report was commissioned by the Diocese concerned, with terms of reference designed to consider how that Diocese may learn lessons in relation to its practice in responding to this case, and the appropriateness of responses by anyone to whom allegations and concerns were raised within the Diocese. The reviewer provided the Diocese with five recommendations / areas of learning. As is the norm, the Diocese has responded to these recommendations and, with oversight from its DSAP (Diocesan Safeguarding Advisory Panel) has already implemented steps which will help inform safeguarding practice. (my emphasis added)

    Given that numerous other LLRs commissioned by dioceses have been made public to benefit learning throughout the whole church, such as the LLR into the tragic events in Stowe and Maids Moreton in my own diocese – Oxford – why restrict the Read Sisters LLR to a few individuals in York Diocese? As people move between dioceses, should any review be restricted to one diocese?

    It was not, in fact, the Terms of Reference that restricted the LLR to York Diocese; after the sisters themselves repeatedly asked for the reason, the mysterious answer was given that “more than one complainant” had requested it not be shared internally or externally.

    One of the sisters, Jenny Heimerdinger, was at the York Synod in July but I was not aware of this until I returned home; she subsequently made contact and we have spoken on Zoom. She also brought to my attention the interviews in which the sisters had been involved, on BBC Look North, from 17 June 2025 and 18 June 2025, and on ITN News at 10 on 14 July 2025.

     

    Reporting abuse: from bishops to reviews

    The three Read sisters had another three surviving siblings and the family, with the other abusers, formed a very close-knit group, functioning almost as a sect in which Jenny and her siblings were kept apart from secular influences such as pop music and were discouraged from forming any friendships outside the family and church. The abuse was ritualistic and sadistic, and some of it took place in the church building. The sisters reported the abuse to a bishop in 1993, and to the then-Archbishop of Canterbury as well as another bishop in 2003; and to a third bishop in 2005. The third bishop presided over the diocese in which the former curate, by this time retired and with PTO, was then living. The abuse was also reported to IICSA in 2019 and the former curate was arrested in 2020 but no action was taken by the police due to insufficient evidence. One of the sisters was then put in touch with the York safeguarding team and funding for psychotherapy was arranged by them and has subsequently been partially provided under the national Interim Support Scheme. The York team advised the sisters to make Subject Access Requests to the various dioceses involved; the results indicate that no action was ever taken or any record made of their complaints in the former curate’s files.

    Following an internal and ineffectual Lessons Learned Review by the diocese where the former curate was living, York commissioned a further independent Lessons Learned Review in 2021, which was released to the sisters in October 2024. The reviewer appointed by York, Simon Bass, appears to be a sole operator trading as Church Safeguarding Consultancy (CSC) and, although he previously worked at Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS, now rebranded as Thirtyone:eight), there is no evidence that he had carried out any other independent reviews; the CSC website only states that the company has “undertaken several such reviews”. As a company CSC is, according to Companies House, now “dissolved” as a result of compulsory strike-off, the result of failing to fulfil its legal obligations, though the CSC website continues to be active. In 2016-17, when he set up CSC, Bass was also the independent chair of Blackburn Diocese’s Safeguarding Management Group, and he was one of the project team members for their Past Cases Review 2 in 2021. I wonder if this constitutes a conflict of interest.

    Commissioned from Bass in 2021, the York LLR was dated October 2023 so it is not clear why its release was delayed until a year later; did someone mentioned anonymously in it cause the delay? When one of the Read sisters met the Archbishop of York in January 2025, at that point he had not been given the LLR for reasons of “data protection”. When the other sisters met him in May, he had been allowed to see it at their insistence. He has given a formal apology for the abuse, though not for the mishandling of their case.

    The sisters are unimpressed by the report; its factual errors, its many typos, and its significant redactions including the removal of around 10% of the paragraphs make it incomprehensible in large measure. On these shortcomings, two sisters entered the complaint procedure which, following what seems to be questionable interference by HR, has now been stuck at Stage 3 since April 2025. Meanwhile, they themselves have given permission for the LLR to be shared.

     

    Taking it to the national team

    After the July 2025 Synod, on 12 August I wrote to the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding, Bishop Joanne Grenfell, to follow up on her answer to my question. I commented that at that stage, “I have resisted writing anything public about this case but the basic point, that an LLR can be carried out without any sharing of the ‘lessons’ beyond a small circle, does seem something that should be shared.”

    Bishop Joanne asked Julie O’Hara to respond, as Deputy Director for Learning and Development in the National Safeguarding Team; in her previous post, Julie was the lead Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor for York at the time when the Terms of Reference for the Read LLR review were drawn up.  She had accepted the sisters’ factual corrections to the initial draft of the Terms of Reference – but the Report shows that the original faulty ToRs were used. Following Bishop Joanne’s intervention, Julie and the national Director of Safeguarding, Alex Kubeyinje, replied very quickly. Their combined response was that LLRs/SPRs “should be published” but not if there were “challenges in sharing the full report due to potential identification of individuals”. In such cases an executive summary could be shared.

    Does this apply to the Read sisters’ LLR? In the LLR, the identity of the curate is not given, apparently for legal reasons; and it states that no other allegations against him were ever made. But this contradicts information given to the sisters and, as the case of David Tudor shows, identifying an abuser by name can lead to other victims and survivors being empowered to come forward. The abuser of the sisters is known to have gone to work in N. Rhodesia/Zambia immediately following his involvement with the children; in view of John Smyth’s move to Africa, with support and funding from some Church of England priests, this deserves more attention.

    The combined response from senior officers of the NST continued:

    In some cases, it seems that only the recommendations from a review are shared. In such cases, as you have identified, it can be difficult to understand the rationale and indeed there are various reasons why a full review might not be published. These can include the wishes of victims and survivors, or situations where the reviewer did not follow the agreed terms of reference, making wider sharing inappropriate. When the NST has not commissioned the review, NST colleagues may also not have full visibility into the decision-making process around publication.

    They concluded that only the commissioning diocese could comment. But we know that the three sisters wish the LLR to be shared.

     

    Keeping it local: what makes a case ‘national’?

    The lack of sharing does seem very odd. Lessons Learned Reviews (LLR) have now been renamed Safeguarding Practice Reviews (SPR) but the whole point of them remains to identify how the church, as a national body, can stop making the same mistakes. But that, of course, depends on how and with whom their findings and recommendations are shared.

    In this case, no part of the Read sisters’ LLR was shared even with the NST until one of them sent it to them in summer 2025. The response to me from Bishop Joanne and the senior NST members also stated that “The case you refer to was never seen as a national case”[1]. Why not? With three bishops and an Archbishop involved and an alleged abuser moving around the country and, indeed, overseas, it seems to be far more than a diocesan matter. Although the Terms of Reference of the Read sisters’ LLR did indeed state that the review was only about those within York Diocese to whom “allegations and concerns” had been raised, this did not rule out York sharing information with other dioceses and explicitly stated that information was to be shared with the chair of DSAP, NST and local safeguarding bodies – which did not automatically happen.

    The Read sisters’ LLR itself says “it is recognised that other dioceses hold material”. There were discussions in 2021 about York doing a joint review with the diocese where the former curate was living, but they declined. Here again it is worth comparing this situation with an ongoing case, that of abuse by David Tudor, where a review has been “jointly commissioned by the National Safeguarding Team, and the dioceses of Chelmsford and Southwark”.

    Furthermore, the letter I received from Bishop Joanne stated that NST “does require all completed reports to be shared with them and will see this one”. So, while it can’t be published and was commissioned by a diocese and not by the NST, NST “sees” it. Sees it and then what…? The senior members of the NST ended their letter to me by referring to the ongoing thematic review of the last five years [2] of LLRs, noting “we are hopeful that the themes will be learning that we can share publicly”. That leaves me asking: whyever would they not be?

     

    [1] Bishop Joanne, in giving me permission to quote or share her reply, noted that the definition of a “national” case needs work.

    [2] I would be interested to know precisely what dates are to be covered by this review.

  • 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.

  • A Response to “The Exercise of Discipline and Clergy Exemplarity in the Church of England: The Case of Same-Sex Civil Marriages: A Report of the Faith and Order Commission” (GS Misc 1431)

    Fr Thomas Sharp is a priest theologian based in the South East of England and is also Provincial Secretary of the Society of Catholic Priests

    This was the third report which briefed the House of Bishops before they made their decisions in October about Living in Love and Faith (LLF). It purports to explore theological issues relating to three possible ways by which clergy in a marriage to a person of the same sex might be licensed in the Church of England. It also purports to explore what it means that clergy are called to an exemplary life, and what implications there might be for licensing married people who currently would need a civil partnership in order to be licensed.

    The Report claims to do all this whilst ‘not endeavour[ing] to resolve those differences, either finding for one side or making clear a previously unknown path to consensus’ (§214). It does this by almost entirely sidelining the views and voices of LGBTQIA+ people, presenting a viewpoint significantly informed by North American Evangelicalism as if it were a balanced presentation of Anglican variety. Of the 24 modern theologians engaged with in this report (Gregory Nazianzen and George Herbert are the other two theologians included):

    • 100% are white
    • 96% are white men
    • 83% are straight or in opposite sex marriages
    • 46% are North American
    • 12% are ex-gay / same-sex-attracted identifying evangelicals
    • Only one person, at 4% of the whole, is an affirming gay Anglican with a partner.

    The one affirming gay Anglican contribution cited is from Jeffrey John, in a book which was published in 1993 when I was two years old.

    This report does not meaningfully engage with the theology produced by or read by LGBTQIA+ Anglicans, or people who hold an inclusive theology. Simply directing us to the LLF Resources does not constitute theological engagement (§100). This report is not balanced or representative. It should not have represented itself as being such.

    However, it is lengthy and technical, and gives a very good sense of being comprehensive, even whilst it utterly fails to present or even really take into account the voices of those most affected by its subject matter. This is a shamefully inadequate Report whose omissions (wilful or otherwise) have potential to mislead its readers.

    In order to make this meandering and confusing report more intelligible, my response to it comes under six headings:

    1. Make doctrine a moving target
    2. “Communal regulation”, discipline and toxic theologies of power
    3. Are the clergy a special case?
    4. Leading us to think we are talking about sex whenever marriage is mentioned
    5. Despite divorce, we really do still hold to the traditional doctrine of marriage
    6. Disempower the Bishops

    This is a report which overwhelms by the sheer variety of arguments it includes. Here, I cannot deal with them all, particularly the biblical section and its lack of meaningful engagement with LGBTQIA+ readings of important texts.

     

    1 – Make doctrine a moving target

    The FAOC Report on Doctrine defined doctrine as: ‘true knowledge about God that is communally authorised by warrant in the Holy Scriptures and is, therefore, communally regulative’ (GS Misc 1429, §146). However, in this report, that simple definition varies. Early on, ‘authorised by warrant in the Holy scriptures’ is watered down and communal regulation does not appear: ‘Doctrine… is true knowledge about the living God, grounded in or agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, that the Church of England determines by a process of communal authorisation’ (§8).

    Later, elements of both are mixed as doctrine is ‘true knowledge about the living God that is communally authorised and communally regulative’ (§84 & §212). But the scriptures seem to have vanished. On one level this might be a symptom of speedy or sloppy drafting. However, on another, it could be understood as an attempt to give an impression of a clear definition of what doctrine is and how it operates in these arguments, without being willing to be pinned down to any actually clear definition. This sort of slipperiness and unclarity of meaning runs throughout the report.

     

     2 – “Communal regulation”, discipline and toxic theologies of power

    A theological high point comes in §§12-17, when the heresy of Donatism is dealt with and it is concluded that individuals and the wider church can have confidence in the sacramental ministry of a minister, even if they err in doctrine. However, as the report proceeds to outline a theology of discipline, it is unnervingly one-way, authoritarian and entirely lacking in awareness of the operative theologies of power which have led to both the abuse crisis in the worldwide Church and the failure of the Church of England itself to respond meaningfully to abuse.

    The report links discipline with discipleship, and it is established with reference to The Homilies that ‘it is imperative to think of discipline in both its proactive, formative sense and also its reformative and punitive senses in order to understand it fully’ (§17). This is good, but the formative is not really considered. It is the reformative and punitive senses of discipline with which this report is interested, i.e. what sledge-hammers the bishops can hit us with, whether it be for our benefit or to teach us a lesson.

    A survey then follows of reformative discipline as described in the liturgies of ordination of deacons, priests and bishops in Common Worship and the BCP. It entirely lacks any meaningful awareness of the fact that the power to discipline can be incredibly dangerous, despite the liturgy enjoining the bishop to use their authority: ‘not to destruction, but to salvation; not to hurt, but to help’ (§24). The vocation of a bishop ‘to minister discipline, but with compassion’ leads to a reminder that even a compassionate bishop may also need to punish: ‘it may be that such a response is the compassionate one’ (§27). But there is no awareness in the report that hurt and destruction, i.e. abuse, may result from such episcopal behaviour.

    The rather odd concept of “communal regulation”, which I explored (and we were all no doubt confused by) in the liturgical context with reference to the report on Doctrine, reappears. Apparently, the vow made by bishops to ‘accept the discipline of this Church, exercising authority with justice, courtesy and love’ (§29) is when a bishop puts themselves under “communal regulation”. What is entirely overlooked is the significance of justice, courtesy and love in the exercise of that ministry by any individual bishop, or the College or House of Bishops as a whole.

    The same blinkered focus is apparent in the report’s reading of the latter part of the consecration prayer:

    Further on the Archbishop prays, ‘Give him humility, that he may use his authority to heal, not to hurt; to build up, not to destroy’, a reference to 2 Cor 10:8 and 13:10. The emphasis, like in the rephrased declaration, is on the corrective and reformative aspects of discipline.

    It takes deliberate one-track thinking to fail to spot the critique of punitive authoritarian power in this prayer. Punitive authority is the focus of this report. That seems to be what “communal regulation” actually means.

    This disturbing theology of power in the report comes out strongly when clergy families are considered. Canon C26’s injunction to the minister to order their life and their family’s lives in a manner ‘that provides a wholesome example and pattern to the community’ (§36) is presented uncritically. Though the duty to order our family members’ lives is ameliorated since the phrase ‘as much as in him lies’ is interpreted to remind us of ‘the limitations of any individual to determine the behaviour of other family members in all times and places’ (§37). But it is crystal clear that “communal regulation” should be exercised in the home as well, mostly I imagine over wives and children, but over clergy husbands and extended family as well. This is not a theology of power which a responsible theologian simply states uncritically.

    There is a hint that this dangerous and toxic theology of power might be applicable in wider discipleship (“heavy discipling” is one euphemism for spiritual abuse and grooming, after all). The report notes, again uncritically, the linguistic or etymological links between spiritual discipline, church discipline and discipleship: ‘The complementary relationship between spiritual discipline and church discipline would indicate the broad range between the proactive, formative and the condemnatory, punitive ideas that inhere in the single word discipline’ (§43). Tellingly, throughout this passage, the role of the ‘authority figure’ as the exerciser of discipline in its various forms is emphasised.

    Finally, the image of a doctor prescribing medicine from Gregory Nazianzen’s second Oration is used to support this broader deployment of discipline (§46). This is particularly unfortunate and ironic. Gregory wrote his second Oration shortly after his ordination, having fled his post because he did not think he was able to bear the weight of the pastoral duty imposed upon him. He writes in a manner which emphasises the importance and weightiness of pastoral care, almost to an absurd extent. This is an apologia for his belief that he should not be entrusted with such authority to discipline. It is not a suggestion that every bishop and priest should start prescribing punitive medicine.

    This isn’t a funny theological blooper. Rather, it reveals just how far the compilers of the report were not aware of the issues of power underlying the texts with which they engage. Bishops might well read Selina Stone’s A Heavy Yoke: Theology, Power and Abuse in the Church (London: SCM Press, 2025) before they decide that this is the sort of power in relation to God’s people which they want to define themselves as having. If they do, they need to deploy it in all areas of their episcopal ministry and equally on all people in the church, not just LGBTQIA+ people. Gregory, given the choice, ran away from it.

     

    3 – Are the Clergy a Special Case?

    In order to answer this question, the report presents a bewildering array of arguments, many of which are specious or based in unreality. I shall try here to present this torrent of uncompleted ideas in a way which is moderately digestible.

    First, the report argues that ‘The broadest possible jurisdiction one can conceive for church discipline includes baptised Christians on an electoral roll in the Church of England’ (§48). You might think we were about to get a sense of how “communal regulation” applies in the community of the baptised. But this is passed over, moving on to a discussion of Lay Ministers (§49). It seems simply to be accepted that discipline is not something which touches the baptised who are not licensed. This is unsatisfactory and inconsistent with the theology of discipline presented thus far.

    This gap in the argument means that the next argument, that clergy are held to a ‘higher moral bar’ than the laity (§50), seems to arise solely by virtue of ordination. No argument is offered to justify the statement that due to the ‘exceptional nature of holy orders’ the church ‘expects a public transparency about many aspects of life, including areas in which lay Christians are afforded the ease of privacy’ (§50). This is an unreasoned distinction from the privacy afforded to the laity which is presented as self-evident. And should then the bishop, as even more exceptional than the priest, be required for example to publish their bank statements on the diocesan website? There is no theological substance here.

    A strange argument is presented about the call for clergy ‘to witness by example against the norms of the culture in which they sojourn’ (§53). It is not stated directly, but we are used to this sort of homophobic gaslighting, which argues that we are not to be in ‘normative alignment with the shifting sands of cultural values’ (§52), those shifting values being a fictional secular society which is a nirvana of inclusion for LGBTQIA+ people. That secular inclusive society against which the church is called to witness is fiction and a foil. Society is deeply homophobic, even as it is deeply misogynistic and racist still. Homophobia in the Church is in lockstep with the homophobic abuse and discrimination we experience in the secular world every day. It’s not countercultural, it isn’t cool, and it isn’t a witness.

    The distinctive witness of clergy to procure the good conduct of children and their spouses is considered again in the context of this cultural witness. This is passed off masterfully with the sentence: ‘Modern assumptions about the alignment of private, domestic space with public order differ significantly from the assumptions in [the pastoral epistles]’ (§59). It is odd that the report should accept women’s lib and contemporary appreciation of children’s dignity and autonomy so easily after all the handwringing about being counter-cultural. If applied to LGBTQIA+ people, it is simply not clear why the same counter-cultural discipline would not be applicable to women, children and those in clergy households, and no arguments are made.

    The report advances an argument that the vocation to ordained ministry is a ‘whole-life dedication’ which makes it ‘difficult, if not impossible, to separate the moral from the exemplary imperative in a life conceived as a form of witness’ (§64). This is an extraordinary argument for an Anglican to advance, especially as it is essentially the root of the argument for clerical celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church. If ordination is ‘whole-life dedication’ to God, then heterosexual marriage and dedication to another person also should be inappropriate for the clergy.

    Then the report argues that we must take particular account of the perceptions of outsiders.

    The pastoral epistles… even specify that the exemplar ‘must be well thought of by outsiders’ (1 Timothy 3:7). It behoves us to consider the same in the 21st century just as it was commended in the 1st century. In practice, it is inescapable.

    This is blunt application. And it is hard to see why this argument for not ordaining or licensing those in same-sex marriages would not also hold for women, immigrants, disabled people and people who are racialised. Their ordination, as they will tell you, also prompts push-back and elicits ableist, racist and misogynistic abuse and even scandal. And yet again there is no considered argument in the report about why this problem of perception should only apply to LGBTQIA+ people.

    There then is yet another strange argument: that allowing clergy to marry their same-sex partner would ‘alter the context in which Christian exemplary witness is offered and point to the fragmentation within wider society of a consensus on the nature of marriage and sexual intimacy.’ This is simply delusional. There is no fragmentation in secular society on the issue of sexual intimacy. Rather, there is general agreement in secular society that the place of sexual intimacy is no longer anything to do with marriage. Indeed, for even the majority of conservatives in the Church (at the level of operative theology rather than theory) the question is really about what sexual intimacies you enjoy before marriage and which ones you save for your spouse. Again, cultural witness is set up as a straw man, in which resistance to LGBTQIA+ people is supposedly the keystone holding up the Church’s moral witness.

     

    4 – Leading us to think we are talking about sex whenever marriage is mentioned

    In §68 the report acknowledges that clergy households where a couple are in a civil partnership can be exemplary, but it is not clear why those in a same-sex marriage would not be. And in §70 the report acknowledges that things are hard for Christian couples in civil partnerships, but there is no sense that the writers of the report are aware of how the Church’s approach following the 2005 pastoral statement also impacts the broader Christian family gathered around the couple.

    At the heart of the problem here is that the report refuses to say plainly that a same-sex marriage has no more presumption of sexual activity than a civil partnership. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 inserts s.12(1-2) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which disapplies the requirement that same-sex couples consummate their union in order to have a valid marriage. In law, there is no expectation that a gay couple who are married will be having sex, any more than there is for a civil partnership.

    The failure to acknowledge this amidst all the handwringing is one of the largest and most uncomfortable omissions of this discussion of “clergy exemplarity”. The readers of the report are left with the false impression that marriages mean gay sex while civil partnerships mean gay celibacy. This is a false impression. If clergy can be exemplary as civil partners, living a sexually sacrificial life for the Church, there is no reason why they could not also do the same as a married couple. There is no difference in terms of sexual activity between civil partnership and same-sex marriage.

    Indeed, the report stresses that ‘none of what follows intends to draw into question the current provision’ for clergy in civil partnerships. ‘It is nonetheless notable that if a pastoral accommodation is agreed [to enable the same clergy to get married] this may mean that provision [of episcopal guidance] for same-sex civil marriages and same-sex civil partnerships are different from one another’ (§93). However, given that neither involve sex, it is not at all obvious why this should be the case. Yet again, a spectre of something completely new and different is created without specifying any real difference, theological or otherwise.

     

    5 – Despite divorce, we really do still hold to the traditional doctrine of marriage

    The report twists logic to the point of breaking in order to advance two arguments: (i) that the bending of the doctrine of marriage which took place in order to enable the marriage of divorcees with a spouse still living is not analogous to any bending of doctrine required to enable same-sex couples in a civil marriage to be licensed; and (ii) that in any case, despite permitting the marriage of divorcees, we do actually still hold to the traditional doctrine of marriage, that it is between a man and a woman for life. Fair warning: your head will hurt trying to follow this meandering thread.

    We are told that same-sex marriage is in no way the same kind of thing as the marriage of divorcees. ‘While there are clearly similarities between the two, an argument that they are identical does not seem sustainable. Therefore, the logic used to support adding Canon C 4.5 [enabling the licensing of clergy in a second marriage] cannot be a precedent’ (§96). But no reason is given for this judgment that the two are not identical. Indeed, both marriages are a statement of the traditional doctrine, except for one thing: either the gender of the parties, or the “one man and one woman for life” bit.

    Perhaps an analogy could be constructed instead. We are told that ‘Theological reflection should always begin with scripture’ (§99), a statement which will come as a surprise to anyone versed in theological reflection as practiced in Church of England theological colleges. After this we are told that:

    It is true that Holy Scripture does not include explicit precedent for a faithful, stable, permanent same-sex relationship. Similarly, one might observe that ‘Scripture’s teaching on homosexuality is sparse and ambiguous and it is highly questionable to what extent we can derive from it any application to the ethical issue of gay relationships as it faces us today. (§99)

    This is not an argument routinely advanced by LGBTQIA+ people today, who find precedent for our relationships and identities throughout scripture. But the report entirely ignores our love for and valuing of scripture, referencing a group of mostly American straight Evangelicals talking about LGBTQIA+ people (and also referencing Jeffrey John). Unlike divorce, which does exist in scripture, LGBTQIA+ people’s lives and relationships are portrayed in the report as absent from scripture, so without precedent, so without theological existence.

    The report then charts the progress, from the Lichfield Report (1978) to the early 2000s, of the idea that a marriage can end such that a person can marry someone else. This includes: (i) the rejection of sacramental understandings of marriage and (ii) doctrinal clarifications (or developments) that marriage’s being for life was not an essential part of a marriage’s nature, only an ideal (§§111-118).

    We supposedly have arrived at a relatively straightforward conclusion: there cannot be ‘a complete analogy’ (§118) with the marriage of divorcees. However, the argument continues, now in the context of divorce and in what sense clerics’ lives are meant to be exemplary.

    The report notes (referring to St Paul and St Augustine) that marriage was itself a pastoral accommodation in the first place to the ideal of celibacy. It suggests that, when considering making pastoral provision for same-sex couples in marriages, ‘one might contend that such an approach has parallels – though inexact ones’ (§120) with the Pauline and Augustinian accommodation of marriage. However, again, it is not clear why these parallels would not be exact. A thing is not the ideal for sexual ethics, but we make accommodation for it. Why the distinction?

    The section §§122-128 duplicates the arguments of §§52-60, sometimes verbatim, about culture and exemplarity. Again, this feels like an attempt to create an illusion of a coherent argument by repeating material rather than referencing it. On the other hand, it could simply be a drafting oversight.

    The argument seems to be that the pastoral epistles are contextual and culturally referential. They represent an attempt to work out what conduct should be required of the clergy in their own day, in order to be an example of godly life (§124). And so, scripture requires us to consider what holy life looks like today.

    Insofar as the Church of England aims to support and assist those who enter holy orders with the long work of forming and fashion their lives for a visible, grounded holiness, it can only deal in the on-the-ground realities of living as an ordained person in the contemporary culture in which they sojourn. This approach follows the scriptural lead: Paul’s example in the Holy Scriptures indicates it is impossible to think about the exemplary call without considering the context in which Christian witness occurs. (§126)

    A rare, positive conclusion is reached: that it might be possible to think about exemplarity in a way which refers to shifts in understandings of what being exemplary might mean, and in a way which is also biblical.

    Therefore, the argument that clergy in a same-sex marriage may be exemplary invokes cultural context – not in any way omitting theological rigour in preference for an appeal to contemporary culture, but as a move necessitated by Holy Scripture. (§127)

    However, the argument quickly moves off again in another direction, this time truly mind-boggling. The authors of the report wish to underline that the ‘call to celibacy’ may lead ‘same-sex attracted persons’ to opt for a ‘covenanted friendship[] or celibate civil partnership’. By analogy, we are reminded that ‘similar options have always been available to anyone who is divorced with a living spouse’ (§133).  Some choose to remain celibate after a divorce ‘since their remarriage would be a stumbling block to those holding to indissolubility for marriage’ (§133). An argument is being made that because some divorced people decide to remain celibate, that is an option open to LGBTQIA+ people too.

    The report then asks why many opt instead for further marriage. ‘There are surely a number of reasons – but it is hard to escape the conclusion that one reason will be because the church teaches sexual intimacy belongs within marriage and they wish to respect that’ (§134). This is frankly bizarre. On one level it is hard to believe that anyone has ever seriously made this argument. People who are divorced remarry because they want to remarry. The serial monogamist is not making a prophetic declaration that the place for sexual intimacy (with each of their sexual partners) is within marriage. This is utterly bizarre. However, this is advanced as an example of an argument in which an analogy might be possible for extending marriage to same-sex couples who are having sex, in order to affirm the church’s teaching that the place for sex is within marriage.

    However, this argument is so preposterous that it is hard to believe that it would ever be made by anyone who actually wanted to convince the reader that same sex marriage might be a good thing. The analogy with divorce makes it absurd. If the report was seriously offering a positive argument for marriage equality, it would simply argue that the place for sex should be within lifelong marriage. And that would be an argument that many LGBTQIA+ people do actually make.

    That positive argument is finally made, almost in passing, along with an equally easily missed reference to the possibility that same-sex couples who are married might not necessarily actually be having sex:

    While it is true that a same-sex marriage – which one cannot be certain is sexually active, but for those who want to affirm same-sex relationships offers a faithful, stable, and permanent context for sexual intimacy – does present challenges to the church’s teaching on sexual intimacy, which restricts it to heterosexual marriage, there is a case that a same-sex marriage offers a model that is exemplary in our society. (§138)

    But you could have been forgiven for missing those significant points as they flew past.

     

    6 – Disempower the Bishops

    In my response to GS Misc 1430 on marriage, I noted the high emotional tone of some of the language, which seemed aimed at making the episcopal readers less inclined to exercise their episcopal prerogative. We have seen how this report might well have the same effect, but by mystifying the reader in a barrage of confusingly arrayed arguments.

    However, the sections considering the possibility that the bishops might permit clergy, who currently need to be in civil partnerships in order to receive a license, to simply get married, and that they might just decide not discipline them, do sow fear. They do this by foretelling legal uncertainty and legal challenge in a manner that suggests the bishops would be taking a course of action which could be described as courageous.

    The ideal, surely, for all of us, is that we might come to one mind, with sufficient majorities to pass legislation which pleases everyone. However, if this is not possible, the report acknowledges that it is possible ‘for the diocesan bishops to exercise their discretion in responding to a situation that raises such questions about doctrine and practice being in tension’ (§82). This is a very odd way to frame episcopal discretion which arises from the tortured logic of ‘communally regulative understanding of doctrine’ (§84) which is rehearsed again. Far more sensible would have been a simple statement of the long-established episcopal discretion which exists for a bishop to administer their diocese as they see fit. A survey of the legal and historical as well as ecclesiological grounding for this would have been particularly interesting. But I suspect it would have shattered the illusion of a church held together by its ‘communally regulative understanding of doctrine’.

    The report notes that the House of Bishops could decide to relax discipline across the Church of England. ‘This would constitute a form of communal regulation – but only of one constituent house of the General Synod’ (§190). The argument is framed to evaluate every option for episcopal action through the lens of the ‘communally regulative understanding of doctrine’. Since that concept presumes that only maximum agreement can be acceptably communally regulative, this essentially paralyses the bishop from acting in their diocese.

    It is a masterful, if strangled, conceptual power grab. So the House of Bishops as a whole cannot act because they are only one house of Synod (§190). The bishop in their diocese cannot act because this ‘would also put the approach in tension with the idea that discipline operates on a communally [sic] regulative manner’ (§192).

    Indeed, with the concept of ‘communally regulative understanding of doctrine’, the bishop is rendered powerless, and the bishops as a House are disempowered utterly. They are responsible for discipline. But they cannot exercise their prerogative when it comes to discipline. Which begs the question, what is the point of a bishop? It is a line of reasoning which only works if you remain committed to the ‘communally regulative understanding of doctrine’ and wilfully ignore 2000 years of ecclesiological theology on the role of the bishop in their diocese.

    But, lest the bishops assert their prerogative, we are told that individual bishops inhabiting their role ‘carries the greatest risk for discipline to depart from doctrine, potentially resulting in legal challenges and increased confusion over such matters’ (§197). This argument is repeated in §213 as the last paragraph of the report, just to make sure the bishops were left with a dose of panic. Peter Collier KC has taken the teeth out of this legal threat pretty convincingly. Like many of the arguments advanced in this report, it is not real.

    The bishops should not be afraid to lead, to minister and to administer. Conservative bishops have done so, interpreting doctrine more tightly in some areas and more loosely in others as fits their own beliefs about what it means to be a shepherd of Christ’s flock in their diocese. Inclusive bishops should be similarly empowered. And the House of Bishops as a whole should not let its freedom to act be utterly dissolved into communal regulation. The bishops are not merely an upper rubber-stamping chamber for the secretariat and the Synod as a whole. For this reason, above all the others, this report must not become enshrined in Church of England thinking. What it risks is a functional Presbyterianism, a synodality which is not Anglican, and a House of Bishops who are ordained and consecrated to be shepherds of Christ’s flock, but who find themselves powerless to do anything meaningful in fulfilment of that calling.