The flawed tactics of orthodox Anglicans on General Synod was unfortunately evident in the controversy on same-sex blessings on Monday. The Church of England’s parliament voted by narrow majorities within the Houses of Clergy and Laity to offer the House of Bishops a mandate to push ahead with standalone services for same-sex couples.
The motion also gave the bishops a transparent mandate to ditch Issues in Human Sexuality, the 1991 teaching document that stipulates that homosexual clergy should live celibate lives. C of E revisionists are pushing for brand spanking new Pastoral Guidance that can allow clergy to enter into same-sex civil marriages.
Canon Andrew Cornes, a retired conservative evangelical vicar in Chichester Diocese, tried to get an amendment passed that might have prevented the bishops from ditching Issues in Human Sexuality before latest rules had been published.
Canon Cornes’s amendment fell in all three Houses of Synod; by 23 votes to 11 with five abstentions within the House of Bishops; by 97 to 93 with two abstentions within the House of Clergy; and by 93 to 90 with three abstentions within the House of Laity.
Why was the Cornes amendment ill-judged? Arguably for 2 reasons:
First, if a Synod member moves an amendment to a motion that she or he disagrees with, that strongly implies that if the motion is duly amended, its defects are rectified and subsequently it becomes acceptable.
But the plain reality was that Canon Cornes, a former director of coaching at All Souls Langham Place, the conservative evangelical flagship church in central London, is opposed on principle to standalone services of blessing for same-sex couples. So, he was never going to vote for the motion, amended or not, and the revisionist majority knew that.
Secondly, the amendment was certain to fail. In every vote on the same-sex blessings since Synod first approved them in February 2023, the narrow revisionist majority has prevailed and it was never likely he could persuade any revisionists to back his amendment. They know his stance and so they knew on this instance that his aim was to maintain the restriction on clergy from stepping into same-sex civil marriages.
Another example of poor tactics from the orthodox side got here from Canon Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe’s in Oxford. Speaking against the motion in the controversy, he said he had recently given an address on the General Convention of the orthodox Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which broke away from The Episcopal Church (TEC) of the United States in 2009 over sexual morality.
Canon Roberts said ACNA was “vast in number, vibrant, growing but at the identical time I used to be conscious that elsewhere in America there was one other assembly – The Episcopal Church”.
He continued: “Those two Churches are completely divided. That could occur here and what we’re about to determine if you happen to vote in favour of this motion could catapult us in that direction.”
Why did Canon Roberts think that might play with revisionists on Synod? Again, they’ve consistently shown that they are usually not prepared to simply accept any slowing down of the bus towards full LGBT celebration within the C of E.
Many of them couldn’t care less whether the likes of Canon Roberts jump off the bus. And they know that the parallel with ACNA and the C of E is removed from exact. They know that if St Ebbe’s Oxford were to depart the C of E, its congregation would lose their church constructing on which in 2017 they spent tons of of 1000’s of kilos on a refurbishment project designed by classical architect Quinlan Terry.
Whilst there have been legal disputes over the ownership of church buildings between ACNA and TEC, US courts have by and huge ruled that the buildings belong to the local parishes. In the cases of clergy and congregations leaving the legally established C of E, church buildings would indisputably belong to the Church Commissioners and the local diocese.
The split of orthodox churches from the C of E which Canon Roberts threatened would involve much more disruption than the ACNA congregations experienced, difficult though their departure from TEC was.
The C of E’s bishops are promising opponents of same-sex blessings some sort of delegated episcopal oversight. But the issue with that’s within the word “delegated”. An orthodox bishop operating in a diocese could be accountable to the revisionist diocesan bishop.
That just isn’t the sort of unpolluted break which ACNA has achieved from church leaders whom orthodox Christians would regard as false teachers.
So, orthodox Anglicans within the C of E are faced with the identical alternative as their counterparts within the US. They can either get off the bus or try to vary the direction of travel. But, given the revisionist bishops’ resolve and the repeated mandates they’re getting from Synod, the within strategy is looking increasingly unviable, not helped by the poor opposition tactics in the most recent debate.
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based within the UK.
