EFFORTS to remove obstacles to ministry by working-class people received a firm backing from the General Synod a 12 months after the topic was highlighted by a personal member’s motion.
The Bishop of Barking, the Rt Revd Lynne Cullens (Southern Suffragans), delivered a presentation, reflecting on an example of prejudice which she had previously written about within the Church Times (Comment, 1 March 2019). The example involved a “very evidently working-class” woman wearing leopard-print leggings and Ugg boots who had not been recommend for ordination due to her presentation and perceived working-class background — despite having the ability to articulate a passionate personal faith, and a sincere and informed vocation to ministry.
Social and economic background data on ordination suggested that much had modified to support working-class vocations and training, but there was more to do to level the playing field, Bishop Cullens said. She urged the Synod to embrace the gifts of all people, but emphasised the continued institutional neglect of working-class vocations, which “leaves a stain on the Church”.
Members were shown a movie concerning the project to spice up working-class vocations.
Bishop Cullens reiterated that this work was each a “Kingdom and a missional imperative”, raising up leaders who higher represented the communities that they served. The Church must not contribute to the alienation felt by many in Britain, but, as a substitute, model working-class leaders at every level, so that everybody could see themselves there.
The Synod had unanimously endorsed Fr Frost’s motion last 12 months, and now it must back that up by approving the national strategy taking shape today, Bishop Cullens said.
She closed with a story a few single mother-of-three who had struggled for years to get through discernment, ordination, and a curacy, amid quite a few obstacles and ignorance — but who had eventually been called to be the Bishop of Barking.
Members responded with a sustained round of applause. “This work is about seeing the entire person,” she said — about letting working-class people thrive within the Church without having to “leave behind who they’re”.
The Bishop of Chester, the Rt Revd Mark Tanner, knew that this issue mattered to the Synod, given their unanimous support of Fr Frost’s motion. It also mattered to him, as someone from a working-class background. He grieved that his grandfathers couldn’t have been given a voice within the C of E of their day, and said that he was determined to vary that now. Listening to those voices had shaped the paper before the Synod, even once they were frustrated and alienated, he said.
“We heard those frustrations around discernment, vocations, housing, leadership progression — around a cultural disconnect where you never fully feel you belong.” But his team also had heard hope and optimism concerning the Church’s becoming more accessible in “necessary but all-too-small steps” — a latest advisory group and higher data. Ultimately, higher representation was the largest change needed. “Like attracts like, and enables people to see themselves within the vocation they’re exploring.”
The motion was about all working-class people, no matter ethnicity, gender, or age. “Please don’t end up playing off one group against one other,” Bishop Tanner said. “We must not allow our faith to be recruited as an agent for division.”
Geoff Crawford/Church TimesThe Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Dr Joanne Grenfell, backed the motion
No one should should trade their accent or their community to flourish within the Church and witness to Christ, a carpenter from Nazareth.
The Revd Alex Frost (Blackburn) recalled his time running an Argos store, coping with customers who desired to speak to someone “higher up”, despite the fact that he was the manager. He was “delighted” that the Church had run along with his motion, and particularly that other working-class ministers had told their stories. Members must pressure their dioceses to participate and to let all voices be heard, he said. “Working-class Christians outside of this chamber, go and tell your story.”
The Revd Aneal Appadoo (co-opted) expressed his gratitude to the Synod for supporting the motion the previous 12 months. He spoke of his own experience of classism through the brand new texts and literature that he had been expected to read while training as an ordinand. He said that members mustn’t confuse a scarcity of a level with a scarcity of intelligence, and called on the Synod to lower the barriers to entering ministry.
Jane Rosam (Rochester) welcomed the motion, but highlighted the financial barriers related to training. She was pleased with her certificates from agricultural college, although her archdeacon had been less impressed, she said. She had been in a position to buy a laptop and printer for her training through funding, but had seen others struggle with these costs. “We are at a time when we want lay ministry greater than ever.” She had needed to pay for her own cassock, and had found a winter cloak too expensive to buy, she said. She concluded by saying that she didn’t feel that lay ministers were valued by the Church.
The Revd Adam Beaumont (Bristol) spoke of his diocese, which, he said, was “deeply invested” in supporting their working-class communities. Addressing bias should be on the forefront, he said. He also spoke of retired clergy who were unable to get back on the property ladder. “This motion can only strengthen the Church,” he concluded.
The Revd Chantal Noppen (Durham) said that complex realities were barring people from looking for their vocation. “Embedded snobbery and Orwellian elitism” put pressure on people. “Love, value, and welcome people as we’re.”
The Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Dr Joanne Grenfell, backed the motion and praised the “databased approach”. But, could they “please stop talking about estates”, she pleaded. In her background, an estate was either a automotive with an enormous boot or a “posh place to go grouse shooting”. “It wasn’t how we saw where we live; people say you reside in a village, but on an estate, like grouse.” Poverty in rural Suffolk was disguised by beautiful countryside, but was still very real, she said. “And there’s nothing that appears like that type of estate.” She urged “accuracy and nuance of language” in the continuing work on this project.
The Revd Robb Sutherland (Leeds) recalled how misplaced he had felt at his Bishops’ Advisory Panel, let alone at theological college and the Synod. “If you possibly can’t see yourself being a part of something, then you definately can’t be a part of that,” he warned. There needed to be support for people on the primary steps of their vocations journey, and right through to varsity.
The Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, the Ven. Dr Rachel Mann (Manchester), recalled an everyday refrain while testing her vocation: “We don’t know what you’re going to say next.” She had not been trained into middle-class patterns, and her overly attentive radar for “BS” still caused issues. Working-class people needed to be drawn into senior leadership, but in addition middle-class people in Church needed to be trained to not be “freaked out by like people like me”.
She had had little or no prejudice from working-class Christians over being transgender, compared with the backlash that she had often had from middle-class churchgoers. “Don’t consider all working-class persons are bigots and racists, but do [believe they] offer a disrupted, Christlike perspective.”
The Revd David O’Brien (Blackburn) spoke of his upbringing by a single mother of six, with an alcoholic father. He was now a vicar in Blackpool, within the tenth poorest parish in the entire Church of England. The cure of souls meant that even people like him, who couldn’t have imagined ever being a Christian, let alone a priest, must not have any barriers to God or his ministry, he said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed the work on working-class vocations, and thanked Fr Frost and Bishop Cullens for his or her leadership. The Church must proceed listening to those with working-class experience, and recognise that a scarcity of education didn’t denote a scarcity of ability or calling, she said. There still remained barriers, and financial pressures still deterred candidates for ordination, she warned. About 27 per cent of the UK workforce often worked evenings and nights, she said, but such shift staff were currently excluded from most vocations.
The Revd Claire McArthur (Coventry) said that the Church had been her sanctuary during a working-class childhood marked by domestic abuse. “We grew up slightly feral, left to our own devices; all attended our local comprehensive.” She had worked from the age of 14, and, by 28, had been a senior leader on the BBC. Yet, when she felt a call to ministry, she needed to get a reference from HR to substantiate that she would deal with studying. She had wrestled with impostor syndrome, crying after every meeting together with her vocations adviser, but had learned to adapt. She knew some clergy who had been forced to melt their accent with elocution lessons, or challenged for wearing hoodies and trainers. “I do know that I’m a great priest. We will not be an issue to be solved: we’re a present.”
The Bishop of Dover, the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin (Canterbury), said that it was shocking that the Church was still having this conversation in 2026. “We have simply not learned from the past,” she said: this issue had been wrestled with not less than 40 years before, within the Faith within the City report. She didn’t like the thought of “lowering the barriers”: working-class people didn’t need the standards dropped for them, they might “reach that height”. What was needed were the appropriate, flexible goalposts, which allowed the Church to value what everybody delivered to the table. Go back to your dioceses and ask yourself whom might God be calling, she urged members. “We need everybody within the room and on the table.”
Andrew Gray (St Edmundsbury & Ipswich) welcomed the motion, but asked whether there could be enough stipendiary posts after encouraging latest working-class people into ministry. Far too many positions advertised today were house-for-duty, he warned. “We are drifting into an expectation clergy will probably be voluntary. Are we going to place our money where our mouth is?”
The Revd Captain Nicholas Lebey CA (Southwark) had learnt “a lot” from working-class communities in his previous position as a youth employee, and had seen “God move so powerfully”, he said. The C of E was often perceived as a middle-class establishment, and this needed to vary, he said. He urged those from middle-class and working-class backgrounds to work together.
The motion was then carried. It read:
That this Synod:
a) note the unanimous support given by this Synod in February 2025 to the Private Member’s Motion brought by the Revd Alex Frost calling for a national strategy for working-class vocations and ministry, and recognise that Synod has already agreed to “Commit itself to taking the obligatory steps to boost up a latest generation of lay and ordained leaders from estates and working-class backgrounds in any respect levels within the church” when agreeing to GS 2345 (point 5 within the motion);
b) welcome the consultation work that heard from working-class ministers, each lay and ordained, across the Church of England, acknowledging their voice and that the Church can and must do higher to receive their ministry, each now and in the long run;
c) call on the House of Bishops to deal with structural and cultural barriers to the flourishing of working-class ministers and their ministry in any respect levels, acknowledging the intersections with other underrepresented groups;
d) encourage the national church, dioceses and training institutions to totally adopt the usage of the of the recognised socio-economic background (SEB) data questions as an aid to monitoring progress on class representation;
e) endorse ongoing engagement with working-class ministers and other stakeholders for continuing the strategy development and the creation of a latest advisory group to oversee this, reporting to the Ministry Development Board (MDB).
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