ADVOCATES of “full inclusion” of LGBTQ+ people within the Church have reacted with dismay to the House of Bishops’ decision that stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples and the reconsideration of rules that bar the clergy from stepping into same-sex marriage will probably be subject to further synodical processes.
The decision was taken at a gathering of the House of Bishops at first of last week, but was announced only on Wednesday, after details were leaked to the press (News, 17 October).
“I’m barely shell-shocked,” the associate vicar at St John the Divine, Kennington, in Southwark diocese, the Revd Dr Charlie Bączyk-Bell, said on Thursday.
He said that bishops who supported greater LGBTQ+ inclusion had not shown “courage of their convictions”, and had been influenced by “threats of schism and removal of cash” by the Alliance, a network of church groups against developments led to by the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process.
On Thursday, the Church Times reported on a document produced by the Alliance which urged clergy to pass a resolution through their PCCs pledging to disengage from various Church of England structures if stand-alone services or clergy same-sex marriage were permitted (News, 16 October).
Dr Bączyk-Bell suggested that bishops had “accepted the Alliance narrative” that proceeding with the LLF process necessitated structural change within the Church of England reasonably than “calling their [the Alliance’s] bluff”.
The previous day, the Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Dr Joanne Grenfell, told the Church Times that bishops had felt that the “price” of further changes was “too high”.
“Delegated episcopal ministry” — which might probably have involved latest episcopal structures within the Church of England — was regarded as reassurance for individuals who opposed further changes, she said.
This would have gone further than the present arrangements for parishes that didn’t accept the ministry of girls priests and bishops, she said, and included “separating out much of our discernment processes”.
“I feel that looks like a step beyond what we’ve got around women’s ministry,” she said, and could be “something we couldn’t ever row back from.”
But the choice didn’t mean that bishops, including her, who wanted change, weren’t “absolutely still committed to working for change and for doing that with LGBTQI brothers and sisters”, she said.
THE situation facing clergy who enter same-sex civil marriages is one which directly concerns Dr Bączyk-Bell, after he married this 12 months. The current situation is “logically and theologically absurd”, he said.
“I even have a licence, and got married while holding that licence; so I can proceed to specific priestly ministry, but I can’t get one other job. There’s something theologically bankrupt about this, as either I’m a fitting person to exercise pastoral ministry, or I’m not; I don’t think I is usually a fitting person until such a time as I apply for a special job.”
People who were married to a same-sex partner were blocked from the discernment process, he said, whereas those that got married while in post weren’t, although the latter had knowingly broken rules while the previous won’t have come to faith until after they were married.
Bishops, he said, had refused to recommend that individuals in this example get divorced, “because they don’t need to encourage divorce”, and the effect of the choice announced on Wednesday was to “bake in something which they’ve all agreed is unacceptable and ludicrous and unfair”.
Dr Grenfell said that it was “unconscionable to think that we wouldn’t allow [clergy same-sex marriage], on condition that it’s a legal possibility inside the law of England”.
Asked what she would do if a priest in her diocese entered right into a same-sex marriage, she said that, “in terms of individual situations, I feel these items are best done privately, not on the general public stage, because these are people’s lives.”
Before making a call, bishops considered a paper on clergy same-sex marriage prepared by the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC). It has not yet been published, however the Church Times has seen a duplicate.
It outlines “rest of discipline” as an option: “In this scenario, diocesan bishops, as a gaggle or by individual discretion, would ordain and (re)license people in same-sex civil marriages despite the stress this could create between doctrine and discipline.”
This option “carries the best risk for discipline to depart from doctrine, potentially leading to legal challenges and increased confusion over such matters”, the paper concludes.
“It wasn’t feasible for the House of Bishops as an entire to vote for that sort of free-for-all option,” “not least” since it meant that their clergy wouldn’t be protected against legal challenges, Dr Grenfell said.
The House of Bishops’ chosen option — to recommend that clergy be allowed to enter into same-sex marriage provided that a Measure and an Amending Canon were carried by the General Synod — wouldn’t require a two-thirds majority, but only a straightforward majority, she said.
Dr Grenfell acknowledged that the House of Bishops’ decision to require the approval of stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples to be subject to a Canon B2 process, which requires two-thirds majorities, would effectively prevent their coming into use.
Bishops “realise that’s the truth of the method, and that is the truth of the voting patterns in Synod”, she said.
Dr Grenfell also suggested that the excellence between using the Prayers of Love and Faith in scheduled and “bespoke” services was not an enormous one, and noted that baptisms took place during other services and individually, but were still the identical rite.
Dr Bączyk-Bell acknowledged that there have been pragmatic reasons for taking the plan of action on which the House of Bishops had settled.
“If I were a liberal bishop, I’d probably look out and say: ‘My diocese has no money, and no one’s coming to church. I can’t afford a schism, and there are only a few gay clergy who’ve told me they need to get married, and there appears to be relatively little appetite for these Prayers of Love and Faith, not least because they’re not actually marriage. What do I sacrifice here with the intention to survive?’” he said.
But this, he suggested, was missing the purpose: “I don’t think they’ve yet recognised that is as a correct justice issue. I feel they primarily see this as a political issue.”
IN An announcement on Wednesday, the national director of the Church of England Evangelical Council, Canon John Dunnett, said that it was “helpful that the House of Bishops has acknowledged the theological and legal impediments to stand-alone services and clergy same-sex marriage”.
Canon Dunnett, who’s a signatory of previous letters and statements issued by the Alliance, said that the Bishops’ decision “doesn’t in any way indicate that the House has resolved to not progress things further. This, after all, due to this fact leaves many questions unanswered and concerns unresolved — whatever your view of Living in Love and Faith.”
The chair of Together for the Church of England, which campaigns for “full inclusion and equality” with regard to LGBTQIA+ people, Canon Neil Patterson, said on Wednesday that the choice reflected a “lack of theological and missional imagination”.
It was, he said, “very sad to see that after eight years since General Synod began the LLF process, and over two for the reason that clear votes of February 2023 in favour of allowing services for same-sex couples, the Church can issue a press release which makes no direct reference to LGBTQ+ people in any respect”.
Canon Patterson said that “as a substitute of a readiness to have a good time the graces that flow from human love, we’re offered a series of cautious procedural moves.”
The House of Bishops, nevertheless, “stays open to further moves under the processes they’ve outlined”, he said. He expressed the “hope that we are going to then see renewed unity amongst the bishops to support LGBTQ+ people, and the faithful relationships that sustain us, within the lifetime of the Church”.
