CAMPAIGNERS are already preparing for the summer’s elections for the following General Synod, which, amongst other things, is predicted to vote in 2028 on stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples.
The national co-ordinator of Together for the Church of England, Nic Tall, said this month that the organisation was working in partnership with Inclusive Church (IC) to support candidates willing to make a public commitment “to equality for everybody, in any respect levels and roles throughout the Church, no matter disability, economic power, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, learning disability, mental health, neurodiversity, or sexuality”. It would also help electors to discover these candidates.
Inclusive Church (IC) reported in 2021 that 131 of its candidates had been elected to the Synod: up from 80 in 2015.
“It’s not at all times clear from what candidates say about themselves what their actual position is on some quite hot-potato issues like human sexuality and ladies’s ministry, and a few candidates who’ve more conservative views won’t make any reference to that or will talk about it only within the vaguest of terms,” Mr Tall said.
He advised voters studying election statements to keep in mind that “in the event that they don’t mention a problem you care about, don’t assume they might agree with you, and in the event that they do say something be very clear as to what they’re and aren’t saying.”
In 2021, the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) advised candidates to not “deal with controversial matters comparable to same-sex relationships/marriage”. The guidance also suggested that it is perhaps “wiser” to not refer, in its place, to human sexuality: “it is perhaps helpful to discuss listening positively to and respecting the views of others, even once we find ourselves disagreeing.”
Canon John Dunnett, the CEEC’s national director and the chair of the Evangelical Group of the General Synod, said last month: “Because candidates stand as individuals and never as members of any church ‘party’, our advice to them continues to be that they need to choose what is acceptable to say based on their very own local context. With specific regard to LLF [Living in Love and Faith], it’s regrettable that the continuing impasse implies that this issue could possibly be foremost in many individuals’s minds through the election campaign.”
The elections were “a key moment in our calendar”, he said. “As you’d expect, we will probably be working across all the dioceses to support candidates who stand for orthodoxy. Our goal is to make sure a powerful and representative orthodox Evangelical presence within the General Synod, in order that we may need a major voice on all of those essential matters.”
The elections were happening at “an interesting time for the Church of England”, Mr Tall said. The next Synod quinquennium can be coterminous with much of the archiepiscopate of Archbishop-designate Mullally, who will turn 70 in 2032. It is just once in every 15 years that deanery-synod elections — which because of happen within the spring — occur in the identical 12 months as a General Synod election.
Asked about concerns that elections can be dominated by questions on human sexuality, Mr Tall said that, while there have been matters on which a “broad consensus” existed, there can be “certain issues” where there was a alternative to make. “Sexuality and issues around LLF, whether we prefer it or not, will probably be something very much in front of individuals’s minds, partly since the House of Bishops has not been in a position to reach a settled position.” The Synod existed “for us to speak abut the things we don’t agree about”, he said.
In the approaching weeks, IC/Together can be identifying candidates through its diocesan network and attempting to ensure greater diversity, encouraging those that felt that the Synod was not somewhere that they belonged, he said. But it could first be attempting to encourage people “to grasp more that deanery synods really matter”. In 2021, some candidates had been elected by one vote.
Every three years, PCCs elect their lay representatives to the deanery synod. The number from each parish is set by a resolution of the diocesan synod no later than 31 December within the 12 months preceding the elections. This could be determined in various ways, for instance, in line with the variety of names on the parish’s electoral (larger churches having more deanery-synod members).
In recent weeks, some diocesan synods have considered amendments proposing a faster rate of increase by electoral-roll numbers. In Birmingham, this might have meant one additional representative for each 50 additional members of the electoral roll, with the overall capped at 12 quite than seven. Using this framework, St Luke’s, Gas Street, which is a component of the Holy Trinity, Brompton, network, could double its deanery-synod representatives to 12.
The Save the Parish (STP) campaign was launched just weeks before the 2021 Synod elections. The Revd Marcus Walker, who chairs STP and was one in every of its successful Synod candidates, said last month that it had calculated that not less than 150 of the members elected in 2021 were in sympathy with its vision.
STP’s hope this time was for “a much clearer sense of who we’re” and a more extensive campaign across the country, he said. What had begun as “4 of us WhatsApping” had grown right into a mailing list of three or 4 thousand people.
“Wins” through the current Synod included the passing of his amendment to the Governance Measure to make sure that specific regard be given to the cure of souls in poor areas, and the rise in Lowest Income Communities Funding, Fr Walker said. There was also a way that the narrative had modified.
“Five years ago, there was a sense that what was happening at parish and diocesan level was a natural disaster . . . [that] people have stopped coming to church; due to this fact, there isn’t a money. What has change into clear is that it’s a alternative. . . Questions of how money is spent . . . have risen hard up people’s agenda.”
He pointed to the proven fact that five other bishops had supported the bid by the Bishops of Hereford and Bath & Wells to see more of the Church’s wealth sent on to dioceses to support parish ministry.
Support for STP cut across more contentious issues, he said. “We have people on each side on the controversy who’re in a position to get along splendidly at our events.”
In 2021, representation of the Catholic Group within the Synod fell from 50 to 30 members. Anglo-Catholics elected included the Archdeacon of London, the Ven. Luke Miller, who, as one in every of only two traditionalist archdeacons in the entire Church of England, suggested that the Synod “desperately needs the direct experience I can bring”.
The director of Forward in Faith, Tom Middleton, said last month that the Catholic Group would campaign to keep up a powerful traditional Catholic presence within the Synod. It would “proceed to focus on the importance to the Church of England of the witness of the universal Church, particularly in its celebration of the sacraments gifted by God. Those sacraments include holy orders, holy matrimony, and the reconciliation of penitents.”
In recent years, members of the Catholic Group have joined forces with Evangelicals and “UK Global Majority Reps” under the umbrella of the Alliance, which has opposed the direction of travel on LLF and campaigned for the stand-alone services of blessing to be subject to further synodical processes. The Alliance includes the Revd Sarah Jackson, CEO of the Revitalisation Trust, and chair of the HTB Network on the Synod.
Candidates from churches within the HTB network will probably be standing and re-standing, the Church Times understands. Its leading part within the Alliance — which campaigned strongly, and apparently successfully, for the Prayers of Love and Faith to be subject to further synodical approval — marked a noticeable shift from a previous tendency to avoid “church politics”.
