THE election of the brand new Archbishop of Wales, the Most Revd Cherry Vann, is “one other painful nail within the coffin of Anglican orthodoxy”, the Archbishop of Rwanda, Dr Laurent Mbanda, chair of the Gafcon Primates Council, has said.
In a press release issued on Friday, he said: “By celebrating this election and her immoral same-sex relationship, the Canterbury Communion has again bowed to worldly pressure that subverts God’s good word. . . We must confront serious error that compromises God’s glorious and authoritative word on human sexuality.”
A press release was also issued by the Anglican Convocation in Europe (ACiE), which is a component of Gafcon and includes amongst its bishops the Revd Stuart Bell, consecrated in 2023 with primary responsibility for Wales, where he had been a cleric in Aberystwyth (News, 31 March 2023).
In response to Archbishop Vann’s appointment, Bishop Bell and Bishop Andy Lines (the top of ACiE) said that it had “come as a disappointment to most of the faithful followers of Jesus who remain within the Church in Wales. They had hoped and prayed for a pacesetter of the Church who would at the least be orthodox in Christian belief and lifestyle. . .
“We have no real interest in commenting on or criticising Bishop Cherry as an individual, by all accounts she is incredibly competent. . . The issue is that Bishop Cherry, from her teaching and lifestyle, has shown consistently that she holds to a unique understanding of the Christian faith from that held by faithful Anglicans down the ages.”
Both statements invited Anglicans in Wales to hitch the Gafcon movement.
Archbishop Vann has been in a civil partnership with Wendy Diamond since 2015 (News, 1 August), and so they have been in a relationship for greater than 30 years. She told a Pride service at St John’s, Cardiff, in 2021 that her appointment as Bishop of Monmouth in 2020 “wouldn’t have happened even just a few years ago.
“Thanks to people down the years who’ve spoken out, who’ve challenged the institution and who’ve had the courage to be unashamedly who they’re, the Church has modified and is changing as an increasing number of individuals come to see that love is love, faithfulness is faithfulness, regardless of the myriad ways in which is expressed.”
She told the Nation Cymru podcast in 2020 that she had hidden her sexuality “for a protracted, very long time as numerous gay clergy do, and as numerous people sitting within the pews do. I hid it out of fear. It was a really fearful place to be, and it felt also quite disingenuous.
“I felt as if I used to be being forced to cover a considerable a part of who I’m for fear of being thrown out of the Church, for fear of ending up on the front page of a neighborhood newspaper, a fear of losing friends.”
Being “an out gay person with a partner” was “probably doing as much, if no more, than I might achieve if I were to be an open campaigner on the topic”, she said.
It was a sentiment repeated to The Guardian this week. “It happens that I’ve lived in a time that’s meant that I’m a trailblazer, but I’m not a campaigner,” she said. “I’m not someone to be on the market on a regular basis but I do seek to be true to what I feel God’s asking of me.”
In 2021, the Church in Wales Governing Body passed a Bill allowing same-sex couples to have their civil partnership or marriage blessed in church, for a trial five-year period. (News, 10 September 2021).
Archbishop Vann told The Guardian that she didn’t “personally feel the necessity to get married in church”. She said: “Gay marriage in church is inevitable, I feel: the query is when. There are people who find themselves very opposed, and as leader, I even have to honour their position, which is theologically grounded. It isn’t my job to push something through that will alienate an excellent proportion of clergy.”
She told the BBC this week that she had “worked hard with those in my very own diocese who’ve struggled with these characteristics of mine, and we’ve got come to a extremely good understanding”.
As Archbishop, she faces in numerical decline. One mathematician has suggested that the Church in Wales — which reported 26,000 worshippers in 2018 — has an “extinction date” of 2038 (News, 27 May 2022). Between 2012 and 2022, the variety of stipendiary clergy fell by 83 per cent.
On Monday, the Vicar of St Philip and St James, Whitton, within the diocese of London, the Revd Kate O’Sullivan, spoke warmly about her experience of Archbishop Vann during her time as a parish priest within the diocese of Monmouth, where she served within the Mid Torfaen and Tredegar Park ministry areas.
Archbishop Vann was “a genuinely kind and caring person”, she said. “I felt there was nothing I couldn’t say to her, which isn’t the case with every bishop.” She had been impressed with Archbishop Vann’s leadership in Monmouth, within the wake of the inquiry carried out after the long absence and subsequent retirement of Bishop Richard Pain (News, 17/24 December 2021). Trust had been rebuilt, she said.
This was only one aspect of an inheritance in Monmouth which had not been an “easy route” into episcopal ministry, Mthr O’Sullivan suggested. Archdeacon Vann had also had to steer through the Covid-19 pandemic, the transition to Ministry Areas, and the death of the beloved Archdeacon of Monmouth, the Ven. Sue Pinnington.
The transition “wasn’t easy”, entailing the lack of structures that had been in place for lots of of years, Mthr O’Sullivan said. But Archdeacon Vann had managed it “rather well”, with pastoral care.
“I feel that’s the foundation of her ministry,” she said. “I never consider her as a profession priest. Obviously, she has done extremely well, but in the beginning she is a deacon and a priest, over and above the rest.”
