It took a brave dissenter to defy the cosy consensus on the Church of England’s General Synod over ditching the Bishops’ teaching document that officially prevented practising homosexuals from being ordained.
Debbie Buggs, a lay member for London Diocese, was the lone voice against the motion calling for candidates for ordination now not to be required to conform to Issues in Human Sexuality.
Conservatives voted for the private member’s motion as amended since it replaces Issues, which the House of Bishops put out in 1991, with “an interim requirement of living consistently with the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy (GPCC)”.
The Church of England said after Synod members meeting in York near-unanimously passed the motion on July 15: “The motion doesn’t alter the Church’s doctrine or canonical requirements, which remain in place …
“The interim use of the GPCC ensures that expectations for clergy conduct remain clear and grounded within the Church’s wider understanding of ministry as a public and representative calling.”
Presenting the motion, Paul Waddell, a lay member for Southwark Diocese, reminded Synod that when it voted to permit services of same-sex blessings within the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) debate in February 2023, it also voted to ditch Issues.
“Nearly two and a half years ago, this Synod voted to bin off Issues in Human Sexuality, replacing it with recent pastoral guidelines. Here we’re, though, still waiting, still probably not agreeing on what’s in and what isn’t,” he said.
He told members: “I work in surgery in operating theatres. When we wish to remove something malignant, we wish to accomplish that causing the least possible damage to the remainder of the human body. So, what’s being proposed today is a surgical removal of Issues without affecting all the opposite things to which we hold in our teaching or getting bogged down within the things that we’re at loggerheads over.”
He appealed to each revisionists and conservatives: “Progressive friends, such as you I need to vary the Canons (the C of E’s rules) in order that we get equal marriage but that’s not a part of this motion. Conservative friends, unlike you I need to vary the Canons in order that we get equal marriage but that’s not a part of this motion.”
Canon Vaughan Roberts, Rector of the conservative evangelical St Ebbe’s in Oxford, spoke in support of the motion, saying he found the language in Issues “uncomfortable” and thanking Waddell thrice.
He was in a position to back the motion as amended because Issues was being replaced by the GPCC. “Simply a vacuum wouldn’t have helped,” he said. “It would have added to large conflict and the danger of an unholy chaos and a breakdown of catholic order.”
He concluded: “So the proposal which shall be amended I believe gives us a possibility, Synod, to vary the tone of this debate and are available together and support something that we are able to all surely get behind.”
His speech got sustained applause. Synod duly accepted the amendment moved by the Rev Jenny Bridgman of Chester Diocese to switch Issues with the GPCC.
Debbie Buggs, nevertheless, refused to affix the love-in. She attends the conservative evangelical St Helen’s Bishopsgate within the City of London and is a voting member of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) tasked with nominating the following Archbishop of Canterbury.
Called to talk after the chair asked if any member desired to oppose the motion, she said Synod had been “promised” that the LLF process was a package made up of three elements – standalone services of same-sex blessing, recent clergy conduct rules, and orthodox Anglicans being given their very own bishops under transferred episcopal provision.
Buggs’s argument is backed up by the statement in November last yr from the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, who was then the lead bishop for LLF. He said in a video that opponents of standalone services of same-sex blessing would find a way to “request spiritual and pastoral oversight from one other bishop”.
She slammed the bishops for refusing to permit “a measure of transferred episcopal oversight which might have been helpful for individuals who regard themselves as orthodox believers within the Church of England, those that proceed to consider the holy apostolic teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ”.
She said ditching Issues without proper provision for orthodox Anglicans was “a sticking plaster, not a surgical removal”.
Her speech earned a trickle of applause.
Whatever the merits of the argument for replacing Issues with the GPCC, Buggs surely did the orthodox Anglican cause a big service by defying the consensus on this occasion.
By insisting on transferred episcopal provision and refusing to interact in congratulatory speeches to Synod revisionists determined to ditch the Christian sexual ethic and alter the C of E’s definition of marriage, she signalled her own determination to maintain up the resistance.
Will her fellow conservatives follow her example within the battles ahead or will they develop into hooked on cosy consensus?
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
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