DELAY to the House of Bishops’ final decision on the following steps within the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process (News, 16 December) has been criticised by campaigners on each side of the argument.
The national director of the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC), Canon John Dunnett, said that the statement issued by Church House on Tuesday “reads like an admission of ‘Groundhog Day’.”
LLF was “eroding the collegiality of the House of Bishops and their ability to steer”, he said, and called for the Bishops to “either halt the project” or reconsider proposals for structural changes to the Church of England.
A type of “delegated episcopal ministry” to supply reassurance to opponents of the changes brought by LLF were rejected by the Bishops at their meeting in October (News, 15 October, 17 October).
Canon Dunnett was one in every of the administrators of the Alliance network who wrote to members of the LLF programme board prematurely of Tuesday’s meeting, urging them to stick with their October decision.
That letter also suggested that the Alliance would “don’t have any option but to return” to campaigning if efforts were made to create a “clearer pathway towards same-sex marriage for clergy”.
“Another week, one other Alliance threat, and one other failure to make decisions by the House of Bishops,” said the Revd Dr Charlie Baczyk-Bell, a General Synod member and the writer of Queer Holiness (Books, 22 July 2022), .
“Kicking the can down the road only harms LGBTQIA people further. It is well beyond time for the House to stop talking and begin doing.”
Dr Baczyk-Bell, Associate Vicar of St John the Divine, Kennington, within the diocese of Southwark, previously told the Church Times that, owing to his decision to enter right into a same-sex civil marriage last yr, he couldn’t move from his current appointment.
“I actually 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,” he said.
On Thursday, he said that the trail ahead for the Bishops was “perfectly easy: follow through on clear synodal decisions, permit stand-alone services, end the cruelty over married queer clergy, get on with it.”
Of Tuesday’s decision, Dr Baczyk-Bell said: “It’s yet one more tragic failure of leadership and one which does violence to the Body of Christ. No amount of handwringing or warm words will take that away.”
On Friday, the Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Dr Joanne Grenfell, said that she “approached Tuesday’s meeting of the House of Bishops with the voices of LGBTQI+ colleagues and friends on my heart.
“So many have written to me to ask that the House of Bishops doesn’t forget that our work is just not just a part of a church process, but fundamentally affects their lives and people of their family members,” she said.
The Bishop quoted a recent sermon by the Dean of St Edmundsbury, the Very Revd Joe Hawes, through which he called on the Bishops to act (News, 15 December)
Decisions “can’t be paused or stalled”, Dr Grenfell said: “There are matters of justice that need attention now, particularly around ordinands and clergy in same-sex marriages.”
In Tuesday’s statement, the Archbishop of York said that the Bishops still intended to bring proposals to the General Synod in time for its February meeting.
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