In this podcast we look at some articles from the past week or so, covering atheism, the problem with tax and the welfare state, the Church of England and the women’s world cup, the war in Ukraine, and the case of Lucy Letby. We finish with a reflection from Mark 5, about Jesus restoring a demon-possessed man.
Also available as an audio podcast via your favourite podcast provider.
Satanism has been in the news lately, with a generally positive piece in the BBC last month. I thought it would be interesting to compare the values of the Satanists with the values of the hierarchy of the Church of England.
Given what has happened in recent weeks, has the time come for orthodox believers and churches to leave the Church of England? In this video I give my thoughts on this question. Also we have some news and a reflection about the Railway Children.
In this podcast we look at events happening in the Church of England and think about whether this means ‘game over’. How should orthodox Christians respond?
Everyone has been talking about institutional racism recently – even the Church of England. A recent government report caused controversy by finding no evidence of widespread institutional racism in the UK. In this video I take a deeper look at the Church of England to see where problems might like.
I should point out there’s a huge amount more that I could (and maybe should) have said. For example, a few years ago, orthodox Anglican provinces came together to form GAFCON because they were unhappy with the direction of the Church of England (and many Western Anglican churches) on sexuality, as well as other ethical issues.
These days, Western liberal Anglican churches are in the minority compared to the majority of Anglican churches around the world who tend to be more firmly orthodox.
Should I stay or should I go now? Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble And if I stay it will be double
I’m a member of a Christian group on Facebook where we discuss … Christian stuff. Current events from a Christian perspective, all that sort of stuff. One topic which gets discussed with depressing regularity is whether evangelicals should leave the Church of England. Just this morning, yet another thread was posted because someone has written an article about why sound evangelicals should quit the CofE.
I am finding these discussions more and more wearisome. It’s not because I strongly agree or disagree with the premise, but because I think so much of the time the discussion misses the point. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer when it comes to leaving the Church of England – it’s complicated. But I think the discussion often seems to focus on a few things (e.g. relating to false teachers) when I think there are other issues which get missed.
Every time we have the discussion I feel like I don’t have the bravery to say what I think. So I’ve decided to write this blog post to put down what I believe. I think blogging is probably a better medium for hashing out ideas, Facebook is good for quick discussions but it’s really not conducive to thinking things through.
I am called to preach the gospel
For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!
1 Corinthians 9:6
I believe God has called me to be a pastor-teacher – someone who is set apart to proclaim the gospel. Various denominations use different words for this, e.g. the word ‘priest’ (which I wrote about a few years ago). But we all recognise that the calling of a pastor-teacher is to proclaim the gospel.
Do you accept the Holy Scriptures as revealing all things necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?
Will you be diligent in prayer, in reading Holy Scripture, and in all studies that will deepen your faith and fit you to bear witness to the truth of the gospel?
Will you lead Christ’s people in proclaiming his glorious gospel, so that the good news of salvation may be heard in every place?
I could answer ‘with the help of God, I will’ wholeheartedly to each question. I am called and ordained as a minister of the gospel in the church of God. That is my primary calling, it is what I’m here to do.
And when I say ‘here’, I really do mean, ‘here’. One of the things about being an Anglican is that you are called to a particular place, to a particular parish. You have a particular duty to proclaim the gospel to the people who live within your parish boundary. It’s a duty and an honour to be commissioned to serve the people of a particular parish. I think it’s a real strength of the Anglican church actually, in a disconnected age we stand against it and say: I am here for this people in this place. Not just the rich ones, or the ones who have white-collar jobs, or who’ve been to university.
So my primary calling is to preach the gospel. Why do I start with this?
I’m not called to save the Church of England
I am called to proclaim the gospel, not to save the Church of England. Sometimes I think you could get from the discussion that our primary calling was to save the Church of England. Other times, I think it’s assumed that they are one and the same thing. I do not believe this is the case.
Saving the Church of England seems to be at the moment to be largely about politics. I appreciate that any organisation, large or small, will have an element of politics about it. It is right for Christians to go into politics – I talked a bit about that here. But I think, by and large, those who are called to preach the gospel should not get caught up in politics.
In our church, we’re currently working through 2 Timothy on a Sunday morning. Recently we had the passage which included 2 Tim 2:4, “No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.” The lesson here for me is that we need to keep the main thing as the main thing – we need to focus on preaching the gospel, to please our commanding officer – Christ. It is, after all, his church.
I’m also struck by the need of the hour: looking round at the state of the nation, what we desperately need as a country is revival. What we need more than anything is for people to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and believe. It was reported recently that CofE churches had a usual Sunday attendance of 854,000 people – that’s about 1.25% of the population. About 5% of the UK population goes to church regularly across all denominations. To put that the other way round, 95% of people don’t go to church regularly.
We need to reach the unreached as a matter of urgency. The one thing we don’t need is to spend hours of our time debating the church’s view of sexuality in Living in Love and Faith, for example. (As a number of people have put it, we need these discussions like we need a hole in the head!)
The priority of preaching the gospel
I’m not saying that all evangelicals should abandon the Church of England, or that everyone should stay! Far from it. I’m saying that there are more important things than leaving or staying in the Church of England. I think the question we should be asking is not whether we should stay or leave, but rather – what does faithfulness to God look like? How and where does he want us to proclaim the gospel?
Clearly there is much good work going on in the CofE. There are many churches where the gospel is being proclaimed and people are coming to faith and being discipled. That’s fantastic. I’m also very aware that there is a huge mission field in that many Church of England churches don’t hear regular Biblical preaching. I grieve for the many Christians seeking to be faithful but who are not being fed regularly with sound teaching.
There are also a number of opportunities in Church of England churches which are unique, for example the link with church schools, as well as opportunities for ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ services. I appreciate that the Church of England has a role in civic life which offers many opportunities for proclaiming the gospel.
However, that is not the whole picture, and this is where I want to talk a little about my own experience.
The Church of England is hindering the gospel
I’m not talking about the national picture here. I just want to talk about my experience as an ordinary ‘run of the mill’ member of the clergy in an ordinary church. I obviously don’t want to go into all the ins and outs of my experience. However, I can say that the diocese and particularly bishops have made it very difficult for me individually, and (in my opinion) the church. I / we have had to deal with dishonesty, bad faith, and some behaviour which I would consider manipulative and bullying. Like I said, I cannot go into all the details here.
Our church is not in a wealthy area. If a diocese decides to cut clergy numbers, as ours has, we can’t simply find the money to fund one ourselves. To an extent, we are at their mercy – and they know that.
This wouldn’t be such an issue if it hadn’t all become politicised. Conservative evangelical churches are often seen as ‘the problem’. I’ve heard of one church in our diocese, for example, who were told during a vacancy if they appealed to have alternative oversight from Rod Thomas, they’d only be offered a half-time post. This is the kind of political game that gets played all the time.
The gospel can be preached… but, more and more, it can only be preached if you’re prepared to play the political game. Perhaps this is why several clergy from this diocese have left over the past couple years – I can think of at least five or six off the top of my head. As I said above, I believe my calling is to preach the gospel – not to get enmeshed in church politics.
Where can I preach the gospel?
In the end, the fundamental question is – where is God calling me to preach the gospel? For me, I believe that God called me to this town to proclaim the gospel. The bishop did not agree. At the end of the day I felt that I had no choice but to disobey him (but, I believe, obey God) and remain here. That meant that once my curacy finished, I stopped receiving a stipend (i.e. a wage) and we were told we would need to vacate our house.
Fortunately we were able to come to an arrangement to continue living in our house as paying tenants. God has been very gracious in providing for us in all sorts of ways. And I have been granted Permission to Officiate, which essentially means I am able to continue ministry in our church (with permission of the vicar and PCC).
But I don’t want to dwell on what happened to me, so much as the principle. God’s call to preach the gospel came first. The Church of England, although in principle ordaining me to preach the gospel, actually stood in the way of it when it came to the crunch.
And this is really what I want to contribute to the whole staying / leaving the CofE discussion: I don’t think it can simply be reduced to a matter of principle. I’ve held various opinions over the years, but at the end of the day it came down to whether I would be obedient to the call of God to preach the gospel in a particular place.
Actually, I think sometimes obeying our ordination vows might necessitate leaving the Church of England. I was really struck by Philip de Grey-Water when he left his position as the vicar of Fowey parish church, but started up Anchor Church in Fowey. He was commissioned by the bishop to preach the gospel in a particular place, and he still is (although no longer as part of the Church of England). To my mind that shows a commendable commitment to the place and people.
It’s not abandoning the flock
One of the verses which gets brought up in these discussions frequently is John 10:13: “The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.” This is often applied to those who leave the Church of England. I don’t think this is fair.
In my own case, my own course of action has been determined by care for the sheep. If the Church of England are not going to provide for someone to take care of the sheep, who is? Our average Sunday attendance is about 120, give or take a few. Our parish size is around 25,000 – possibly more. Less than half of one percent of people in our parish come to church. Who’s going to preach the gospel to them? All the diocese are interested in doing is cutting back clergy numbers. There is some funding available, although – as I said – there’s a fair element of church politics involved in that.
I’m committed to serving the people here, I’m committed to helping people grow in faith. I’m committed to praying for a wonderful act of God to bring many to repentance and faith. I’m preaching the gospel. I’m not leaving.
A few concluding thoughts
What gets to me about the stay / leave discussions about the Church of England is that people talk about it like it’s an academic issue. Like it’s as simple as “I’ll stay until they kick me out!”, or “Come out and separate from the false teachers!” Life is rarely that simple, and I hope my story here has helped to illustrate that.
I hope that, as an evangelical constituency, we can learn to treat each other with gentleness and grace. And I hope and pray that we can commit, wherever we are, whatever situation God places us in, to preach the gospel to his glory.
I recently talked a little about Vicky Beeching’s book – Undivided – and why I think it is dangerous for the church. I stand by what I said there – but, at the same time, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and I think there are reasons to be grateful to Vicky Beeching. In particular, I think the book exposes the truth in two ways:
1. It exposes the truth about people.
One of the things which has really come home to me over the last month is the lack of depth and theological understanding in the UK church. It is pitiably weak in certain quarters.
Vicky’s story is a powerful one, for sure – but in a church which knew the Scriptures and the gospel, it wouldn’t have made a dent. My heart weeps for the many faithful Christians who will read this book and be swayed by it. Why are they swayed? Because they do not know the Scriptures deeply enough. This has something which I have hitherto only suspected – but Vicky’s book has brought into painfully to light.
There’s an intriguing moment at the end of John 6:
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you – they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.’
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
It’s interesting that Jesus doesn’t dilute his teaching to make it easier for people to follow him. The words he speaks are “full of the Spirit and life”. If you want to follow him, you must follow it all – or it will be worth nothing. Vicky Beeching’s book – and the question of gay marriage in general – exposes people for who they really are: are they followers of Jesus, who take up their cross and follow, however hard it may be? Or will turn back and no longer follow him at this point?
Joshua said to the people of Israel as they entered into the Promised Land: “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Josh 24:15). We are at the point where the church has to choose whom it will serve – the gods of equality, sexual liberation and personal fulilment – or the God of the Bible. It cannot be both.
That said, if people do not know the Scriptures deeply enough, then they do not entirely have themselves to blame:
2. It exposes where the church has gone wrong.
If the church had been teaching the faith as it should have been, there would be no problem. I’ve been realising, however, that the church has not been teaching the faith – in particular, I think the church has failed in catechesis: teaching a basic systematic understanding of the faith. This is where I think many evangelical churches fall down – they preach the Bible week by week, which is vital, but neglect other things which are vital. I talked about this a little when I started my New City Catechism series.
In particular, I think the church has lost the understanding of sin that was so key at the Reformation: the idea that sin is pervasive and infects everything – our desires, our minds, our wills, everything. Too often people have a fairly weak view of sin as ‘bad things we do from time to time’. Children are often taught that kind of understanding to begin with, but sadly it seems that many adults never move beyond it. I know this from personal experience – I think for many years I saw sin as being something I did rather than something more fundamental, a matter of the heart. As Jesus said in Mark 7:21 “it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come”. We’re not sinners because we sin – we sin because we are sinners. Because our hearts are wicked and corrupt, we bring forth the fruit of sin.
Recently in our church we’ve started using Order Two communion – the order in Common Worship (the standard CofE liturgy) based on the Book of Common Prayer. The confession has generated a bit of discussion, and it struck me that it’s the understanding of sin which is under question. (I should say that I minister in a conservative evangelical church which has had a strong Bible-preaching ministry for forty or more years!) I’m not saying this to criticise the church, but rather I think it illustrates that even among solid evangelical churches there has been a failure to adequately teach the faith which can leave believers exposed when error comes in. If people are rocked when they read Vicky Beeching’s book – or, more personally, when a close friend or family members ‘comes out’ – then it shows the church has not properly equipped them.
We as a church have often focussed so much on the ‘nice’ bits of the faith – worship and praise, the love of God, etc – that we’ve neglected the important doctrines of sin, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, hell, etc.
One of the things I’d like to see – as an Anglican – is a revival of the theology of the Book of Common Prayer. I honestly think the church wouldn’t be in half the mess it is if the prayer book had been retained as the staple diet of the church – or its theology, at least. Common Worship (released in 2000, which almost every church uses now) waters down so much of the gospel content that you can bend it to almost any theology. In our midweek communion service we’ve been using Order Two for nearly a year now – and it’s like balm to my bruised soul: I am free to be just exactly who I am before God – a sinner who is saved by grace, nothing more, nothing less. Hallelujah!
My wife had an interesting perspective on this – she grew up on Common Worship (or its precursor) – and didn’t really understand communion. She made the comment to me that the communion service suddenly became much clearer when using the Prayer Book style service. The BCP communion preaches the gospel in a way that Common Worship doesn’t.
What happens now?
I think there are reasons to be grateful, and reasons to be confident. Now that Vicky Beeching’s book – amongst other things – have exposed the truth, we can do something about it. I feel that for too long in this country we’ve been muddling along as a church, saying a few nice ‘Jesus’ things where appropriate but staying in the shallows, theologically speaking. That won’t work any more.
What this country needs is a revival, and a revival will not happen without people who are committed to living out Jesus’ teaching in every area. People who are willing to take up their cross and follow him. People who are willing to stand up and be counted.
This has been the case before in previous generations – as I mentioned when I talked about the hymn O Jesus I have promised. It can be so again. I think God often allows these things to happen to purify the church – to turn halfhearted people either out of the church, or move them to obey him in a more wholehearted way.
A wholehearted church can make a big difference – I was encouraged earlier today to read Ian Paul’s post on revival – Christianity eventually became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire by growing at around 3.42% per year. That’s not a huge amount – and yet it changed the course of history.
So what practical difference should we make as a church? Many things, of course! But in practical terms, in broad brush stroke terms, what I’d like to see is:
Pastors and teachers who are trained properly and able to teach their congregations the faith. I only realised the value in theological training after spending three years at theological college – I’m so glad the CofE made me do it, otherwise I’d probably have said “I’ve got the Bible, I’ve got a commentary… now let me at it! No need for this academic stuff!” Any church serious about growth needs to invest in the quality of its theological education. Putting down deep roots into the Scriptures and theology are essential for surviving testing times – and only people who have those deep roots can help others to gain them.
A renewed commitment to church planting. I am heartened that so many churches seem to be talking about church planting at the moment. I was talking to someone recently who said that the best way of reaching people is by planting a church – if the church in the UK is serious about reaching the unreached, we need to be serious about planting new churches. I was taught at college “Growing churches are church planting churches” – and I think this is true. The UK needs more churches.
Above all, we should have confidence in the glorious truth of the gospel – that we have a God who saves sinners, and even today is still drawing men and women to himself. I was reading a book yesterday – Matt Lee Anderson’s book on questioning – and in the chapter I read last night he said that the purpose of questioning is to fasten our minds on the truth. There is an objective truth out there, and we are only deluding ourselves if we deviate from it. This is what our society is finding out the hard way is it tries very hard to write out the fact of God’s truth. We as Christians know God’s Word, his truth, and we should be confident in proclaiming it as we know it is the way that God transforms lives and societies.
I finish with the words of Paul to his protege, Timothy, his charge which I look to to describe my ministry and I think are appropriate here:
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage – with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather round them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
A few years ago we preached through 2 Timothy, and it struck me then that it is one of the most prophetic books in the Bible – it describes our situation exactly in the church at the moment. And yet, the solution is the same: preach the gospel. Let’s have confidence in doing just that.
Today the Church of England unveiled a new document designed to help tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (‘HBT’ – because there aren’t enough acronyms already) bullying in schools. You can read the press release on that page, and the document itself is linked at the bottom.
Personally I find the document deeply troubling – although I (of course) agree that all bullying is wrong, I think the document is on the wrong track about the solution needed. The main problem I have is simply this: the document has an entirely secular view of what it means to flourish – which, for a church publication, is pretty awful. And, secondarily, it doesn’t really get to grips with a Christian response to LGBT pupils.
Let me write briefly about those two things.
What is human flourishing?
The document seems to make a lot of human flourishing. The Executive Summary (p5) says:
Church of England schools have at their heart a belief that all children are loved by God, are individually unique and that the school has a mission to help each pupil to fulfil their potential in all aspects of their personhood: physically, academically, socially, morally and spiritually.
This sounds like management speak. The language of ‘potential’ is one which is not taken from the Bible: fulfilling our potential sounds very ‘me-focussed’ – we are not here to fulfill our potential but to glorify God.
Jesus said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35) The real genius, if I may put it like that, of Jesus’ words is that we only find our true potential when we deny ourselves and take up our cross – when we die to ourselves, we find true life.
It’s precisely this kind of language which is absent from the CofE document.
The core of education in the CofE Vision for Education is “Life in all its fullness”, which is explicitly taken from John 10:10 (see page 10). The problem is, this is completely devoid of meaning if it is taken out of the context of John’s gospel. When Jesus said those words, he didn’t mean that he wanted everyone to have the kind of life they always dreamed of living, or have a good life whether they believed in God or not. As I explained in my post about mental health, this is God’s world. We only achieve “Life to the full” when we live in accordance with God’s will and his ways – in contrast with “the thief” who comes “only to steal and kill and destroy”. As Jesus said in the previous verse “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.” You can’t take ‘fullness of life’ as a principle and ditch the rest. It just doesn’t work!
The next page of the CofE document goes on (and I could pick many examples, but I will make this the last one): “At the heart of Christian distinctiveness in schools is an upholding of the worth of each person: all are Imago Dei – made in the image of God – and are loved unconditionally by God”. Again – one cannot talk about being made in the image of God without talking about the Fall, where we – as one of the CofE confessions puts it – “marred your image in us”. One cannot talk about unconditional love without talking about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins.
Quite frankly, all this is sub-Christian. This doesn’t even mention the basics of the gospel, let alone have a coherent theological framework.
Supporting LGBT pupils
On page 19, the report talks about supporting LGBT pupils. It says:
An important aspect of creating an inclusive school environment is the support offered to LGBT pupils. Many LGBT pupils do not feel supported at school and many report that they do not have an adult at school with whom to talk about being LGBT. This can impact on the mental health and wellbeing of pupils and it is therefore important that school staff members receive appropriate training to support young people. For many, coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or non-binary is a joyful liberation into full selfhood. However for others it can become a lens through which other issues of personal non-acceptance are magnified. Supporting pupils struggling to feel at home within themselves requires careful discernment and loving wisdom.
This paragraph does not read to me like it was written by someone who actually believes what the Bible (and the CofE – for the moment) teaches about marriage. Surely a Church of England school should have the confidence to believe and teach what the Church of England believes? As I said before about Tim Farron, God doesn’t simply give us arbitrary commands because he feels like it. God doesn’t want to spoil our fun, he wants to maximise our joy – which is why he gives us good rules to live by. Those who go outside of these rules are harming themselves.
Surely this has a big impact on how we offer support to young people. We can’t simply say that we’ll offer support to affirm children in whatever decisions they want to make on these issues. If we believe in the Bible, if we believe in what Christians have always believed, we have to say that we cannot affirm things which are against God’s will. And that’s what baffles and distresses me about this document – there is no gospel at all in it. There is not even a hint of a suggestion that God might want us to live in particular ways. Although it recognises that there may be different opinions about sexuality etc. in the school, it simply sides by default with the ‘affirming’ viewpoint.
This is simply not a Christian document.
Responding to bullying
I believe that children should not be bullied. I was bullied at school, I know many others who experienced the same – it can affect you well into adult life. Nonetheless, I don’t think this response is sufficient when it comes to bullying.
Jesus tells us that the second greatest command is to “love others as yourself”. He demonstrated what that meant in his own life. You can love people while strongly disagreeing with them – in fact, loving them sometimes requires you to disagree with them! (Ian Paul wrote a great blog post about this today.)
Jesus’ response to those who he considered sinful (i.e. everyone) was not to condemn: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17). Instead, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt 9:36). Jesus had compassion on those who were broken and hurting – but it was a compassion which led to transformation.
People who truly believe in the traditional Christian ethical teaching on marriage and sexuality should never bully anyone – because loving people is part and parcel of that same ethical teaching. But it is from love that we should boldly proclaim God’s way of living.
We live in strange times, where even defending the traditional Christian view of marriage can get you into hot water (see e.g. Tim Farron and Jacob Rees-Mogg for two examples lately – there are many others). Some people think that simply stating the case for Christian marriage is bullying!
What is incomprehensible to me is that the CofE should be encouraging its schools to essentially deny the gospel and contribute to a secular worldview which is leading to the demise of the CofE. Affirming children in sin is unloving, uncompassionate, and fundamentally unChristian. And the church should have no part in it. Rather, the church should be holding out the light of Christ to all, teaching children what it means to follow him.
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
It seems that there are some within the Church of England who like to make a big noise about ‘good disagreement’ when it suits them, but aren’t really committed to it. The sad case of Philip North over the last few weeks has exposed that. (If you don’t know any of the background, you can read about it on the BBC).
Many articles and analyses have been written about this subject, so I won’t waste my words here but get to the point. Good disagreement means more than simply ‘I will tolerate your presence so long as I never have to put up with you and I get my way all the time’. Most of the concerns around Philip North’s consecration as bishop were to do with ‘equality’ – ‘how, given the church’s march towards equality, can we have a bishop who doesn’t ordain women?’
The problem is, this does not take into account the views of Philip North (and others like him) on equality. Although he is coming from an Anglo-Catholic perspective – and I would differ substantially from him on many points – his objections to women priests and bishops would be based on similar ground to mine (as a complementarian): a Biblical anthropology of male and female, founded on Genesis 1-3 (which I talk a little about here) and explained further in the rest of the Scriptures. The point is not that we do not believe in equality – the point is that fundamentally our views of equality must be in submission to what God thinks equality is.
And herein lies the problem. Martyn Percy, and others, have a particular view of equality. Philip North, and myself, and others from our respective constituencies, have a different view of equality. That’s the thing. We disagree. Good disagreement requires disagreement, right? You can’t then go and say “well, seeing as my view is the correct one, we should ban anybody who has the opposite view…” That’s not what good disagreement is supposed to mean!
When the women bishops legislation was introduced in 2014, it was passed by synod with five guiding principles. All clergy in the CofE should agree with these principles. The basic idea is that the CofE has reached a “clear decision” that women can be ordained priest and bishop, and that all clergy should accept that decision – women ordained as such are lawful office holders – but the last two points say this:
Since those within the Church of England who, on grounds of theological conviction, are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests continue to be within the spectrum of teaching and tradition of the Anglican Communion, the Church of England remains committed to enabling them to flourish within its life and structures; and
Pastoral and sacramental provision for the minority within the Church of England will be made without specifying a limit of time and in a way that maintains the highest possible degree of communion and contributes to mutual flourishing across the whole Church of England.
The language of ‘mutual flourishing’ is important: as I understand it, this means “we disagree, but we don’t want to stifle the minority and give it every opportunity to flourish.” I don’t see how that fits with the hounding of Philip North. By all accounts he is committed to mutual flourishing and working with people who he had disagreements with – those who have worked with him in Burnley say that he is committed to women’s ministry. Philip North seems to understand good disagreement. I’m not sure his vocal critics do.
It seems to me that ‘good disagreement’ is a phrase which a lot of people like to use, but don’t really want to live with its consequences. Good disagreement means appreciating that other people might disagree with us quite fundamentally on some issues. When the CofE has formally gone down a road of good disagreement on this issue, what hope do we have when many clergy reject it?
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