The debate on same-sex blessings at this week’s deeply divided General Synod in Westminster showed that members, each orthodox and revisionist, are refusing to be institutionally managed.
That was clear within the failure of the managerialist approach by the Church of England’s recent lead bishop on the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process on marriage, sexuality and gender identity.
Despite his best efforts to present himself because the champion of church unity, the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, couldn’t persuade the Synod to back his motion “to welcome the further work carried out on Living in Love and Faith and the give attention to reconciliation and bridge constructing”.
He wanted members to be positive about his proposal to bring back to their meeting in July “a set of commitments through which the entire Church can proceed to pursue the implementation of the motions previously passed by Synod on Living in Love and Faith”.
His ten broad commitments circulated to Synod members, with headings starting from “humility and repentance” to “breadth” and to “communion and unity”, had the three-fold aim of “cultivating unity so far as possible; enabling as many as possible to remain throughout the Church of England; and equipping the Church’s mission to the nation”.
But Synod voted to water down his motion. On Monday, members voted for an amendment from the Rev Joy Mawdesley, a revisionist clergy member from Oxford Diocese, to take out the word “welcome” and as an alternative merely “note” the commitments and the give attention to bridge constructing.
She said Bishop’s Snow commitments represented “a reset of the controversy”.
“For a few of us, that will feel like an unwelcome slowing down of the controversy from all that happened at Synod last 12 months. It seems to me that these are commitments that lack commitment. We do not know what we’re welcoming,” she said.
Synod voted to adjourn the LLF debate on Tuesday so Bishop Snow’s motion was not voted on however it almost actually would have fallen had there been a vote. After watering it down, the revisionist majority would then have poured it down the sink. The orthodox weren’t particularly obsessed with it either.
Revisionists are frustrated that the LLF process has now develop into bogged down within the legal difficulties over authorising the standalone services of blessing for same-sex couples, which they see as a step on the option to full gay weddings in C of E churches. They don’t want to listen to discuss bridge constructing; they need to see the gay wedding limousine cross the bridge as soon as possible.
Bishop Snow voted for the introduction of the blessings, called Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF), on the General Synod in February 2023 but abstained on the motion encouraging “the House of Bishops to proceed its work of implementation” on the sessions in the next November.Â
He joined Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in abstaining. Even though Archbishop Welby voted for the services the primary time around he said he wouldn’t personally use them due to his role within the worldwide Anglican Communion where the overwhelming majority of Churches oppose same-sex blessings.
Other bishops modified their minds during 2023. The Bishop of Sheffield, Pete Wilcox, the Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, the Bishop of Rochester, Jonathan Gibbs, and the Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, voted for the services in February but against them in November.
The LLF process went on for six years before the primary 2023 vote. The suite of resources to tell the controversy was published in 2020. Surely no bishop would claim even privately that she or he was bamboozled into supporting the services?
The bishops who’ve maintained a consistent position for the standard teaching of the Church on marriage and sexual morality are: the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, Paul Williams; the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson; the Bishop of Lancaster, Jill Duff; and the Bishop of Islington, Ric Thorpe.
Bishop Snow during Synod questions and in his speech on the LLF debate stressed his promise at his ordination as a bishop to advertise the unity of the Church. That is actually necessary within the Anglican tradition.
The intercessions at Holy Communion based on the 1662 Book of Common Prayer include a prayer that the Lord would “encourage continually the universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity and concord”. The intercessions also include the prayer that “all they that do confess thy holy Name may agree in the reality of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love”. So, Anglicans are called to wish that the Church can be united in biblical truth.
The traditional sexual ethic remains to be held as biblical truth by the vast majority of Christians and church denominations around the globe. There is a word for the mentality of a comparatively small group of individuals in a declining denomination in a Western country who decide to reject the Christian consensus the world over and down the centuries and that’s “sectarian”.
Though individuals are liable for their very own spiritual and moral decisions, very arguably a revisionist-majority Synod now could be the fruit of what bishops and their parish clergy have and haven’t been teaching in C of E churches for the reason that sexual revolution of the Nineteen Sixties took hold within the Western world.
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
