Why Be C? Why Conservative Evangelical Anglicans Should Still Pass 'Resolution C'

The Background

In 1977, at the conclusion of the second National Evangelical Anglican Congress, resolution J6 of the Nottingham Statement declared,

We repent of our failure to give women their rightful place as partners in mission with men. Leadership in the Church should be plural and mixed, ultimate responsibility normally singular and male.

At the time, that represented the majority position of Anglican evangelicals. They recognized that women had not been allowed a proper role in the church in the past — but then neither had the laity in general. These were still the days of the clergy ‘one man band’.

They were also prepared to involve women in local church leadership at every level.

But they reserved ‘ultimate responsibility’ to the male. And although it was not spelt out in the Nottingham Statement, this was undoubtedly because of a general mood amongst Anglican evangelicals at the time that the New Testament in general, and the Apostle Paul in particular, taught that point of view.

Well, of course, things have changed a lot since then. In 1992, the General Synod of the Church of England approved the ordination of women as priests. And although working out the details has proved difficult, there is no doubt that women bishops will soon follow.

Yet there are still evangelical Anglicans today who hold to the position of the majority in 1977. And — officially at least — they are recognized as having an ‘honoured’ position in the Church of England. So provision has been made for them and will probably be made in the future.

The irony is, however, that very few evangelical churches have made us of this provision, which not only creates occasional problems locally, but weakens their argument for continuing provision in the future.

Resolutions A and B

The legislation to introduce women priests took the form of a Measure — a legal document drawn up by General Synod but approved by Parliament. This provided that in any given parish, the Parochial Church Council could pass one or both of two Resolutions.

Resolution A provided that, “this parochial church council would not accept a woman as the minister who presides at or celebrates the Holy Communion or pronounces the Absolution in the Parish.” Resolution B stated, “this parochial church council would not accept a woman as the incumbent or priest-in-charge of the benefice or as a team vicar for the benefice.”

From an evangelical viewpoint, it was Resolution B that more specifically preserved the position of Resolution J6. A leadership team could include women, but the incumbent, priest in charge or team vicar would be male.

Resolution A was more relevant to the Anglo-Catholic position, where it would be unacceptable for a woman to celebrate Holy Communion. Nevertheless, from a ‘political’ point of view, it proved wise to pass both resolutions in any given parish rather than just one, regardless of one’s views about the administration of the Lord’s Supper.

‘Resolution C’

However, the 1993 legislation including an extra provision, presented as an Act of Synod. This did not have the legal force of a Measure, but it laid down the ground rules by which the Church of England has largely operated since then.

The 1993 Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod allowed a PCC to petition the diocesan bishop for episcopal duties to be carried out by a bishop opposed to the ordination of women — a petition which popularly became known as ‘Resolution C’.

The Act originally envisaged three possible forms of provision. The first would be a local, diocesan, arrangement. This still prevails in the Diocese of London, where the Bishop of Fulham carries out these functions. The second was a regional arrangement, where several dioceses would nominate someone together. The third was the appointment of Provincial Episcopal Visitors, or so-called ‘flying bishops’, as ‘suffragans’ of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

And in fact it is this scheme of flying bishops which has proved the most popular and enduring. But this has also caused problems for evangelicals.

Anglo-Catholicism and the PEVs

From the outset the Provincial Episcopal Visitors have been exclusively Anglo-Catholics, generally of the ‘highest’ sort in terms of churchmanship. (Indeed it is significant that three of the bishops appointed under the Act of Synod subsequently joined the Anglican Ordinariate, set up by the Pope as a way of entering into communion with Rome.)

One argument for this arrangement has been that almost all the Resolution C parishes are Anglo-Catholic. But — not surprisingly — one of the arguments heard amongst evangelicals against passing ‘Resolution C’ is that it would mean accepting an Anglo-Catholic bishop, and indeed this is generally what has been offered when this has happened.

Why Be C?

Yet despite this limitation, there is still a strong case to be made for evangelical parishes who remain in the tradition of the 1977 Nottingham Statement to pass not only Resolutions B and A, but also ‘Resolution C’.

A priest, or presbyter, in Anglican theology, receives his lawful authority to minister from the bishop (see Article XXIII). Ths is not the same as his ministry being an extension of that of the bishop (as is often mistakenly claimed by bishops). The Chief Shepherd of the shepherds is Christ (1 Pet 5:4). Nevertheless, the one in lawful authority over the presbyter is the bishop.

For this reason, the bishop is also the one who determines the membership of the body of presbyters under his lawful administration. He decides who should belong to that group, has the authority to call them together and can address them as a body who all relate to him as well as to one another.

However, when it comes to the ordination of women, whilst our disagreements can be charitable, those who hold to the position of the Nottingham Statement would disagree with admitting women as incumbents, team vicars and priests-in-charge and therefore would (and do) find themselves sometimes in awkward company (and, to be fair, vice-versa).

Nevertheless, in its wisdom the Church of England has provided a ministry from bishops who do not ordain women for those whose PCCs will pass the necessary Resolutions. This means that whilst, as members of the wider Church of England, the clergy of those parishes must be prepared to rub along with those with whom they disagree, they can be ministered to, and can occasionally gather with, those who share their convictions about the membership of the ministry.

Other things being equal, therefore, it would surely make sense for clergy to avail themselves of this provision, to gather under a bishop whose understanding of ministry they share and to gather with clergy whom they regard as properly occupying the leadership roles they exercise.

Indeed, if there were evangelical ‘flying bishops’ available, my suspicion is that traditionalist evangelical churches would have flocked to do this — which the cynical may suggest is exactly why they have not been provided. But still it remains the case that if you don’t ask you don’t get, and traditionalist evangelicals have not asked! On the contrary, they have treated the role of the bishop as almost an irrelevance, which may be one reason why no bishop of their persuasion has been appointed since 1997 — and he retired in 2012!

A Plea for C

Personally I have been advocating for years that parishes which designate themselves as Conservative Evangelical ought to pass Resolution C. This is not a ‘protest’ against their existing bishop. This is not a rejection of him and his ministry. It is an act consistent with what we claim to be our theology of ministry and with the way in which the Anglican church puts that theology into practice.

There are other reasons as well as those I have outlined above. A ‘C’ parish is in a stronger position when there is a vacancy or interregnum. I am afraid it is not unknown for bishops to use such occasions to push parishes in a more ‘central’ direction. The patrons legal rights of presentation are suspended, the parish representatives lose their veto, merger with a less conservative parish is proposed and a ‘suitable’ candidate is sought. Often the PCC finds itself ill-informed or lacking in resolve. But where it is a ‘C’ parish, the ‘C’ bishop steps in and provides support and a counter-balance to the bishop’s power.

We must also think about the future. Conservative Evangelicals have been pushing hard for ‘proper provision’ when legislation introduces women bishops. But if they won’t make use of the present provision why should anyone take them seriously? And what makes them think they will be able to persuade their PCCs to act some time in the future when they are not willing, or perhaps able, to persuade them to act now?

Yes, there are problems with the Resolution C provision, but they are partly of our making. And above all ‘C’ in this case stands for ‘consistency’.

Contrary to what many people assume, however, there is still time, and therefore reason, to act. A parish needs only a few weeks to complete the legal processes necessary to pass the Resolutions. If enough evangelical parishes did it now, it would send a clear message to those framing the new legislation (which will not come in before the middle of 2015) and it would create a united front amongst traditionalist evangelicals.

By contrast, the longer this is left, the more likely it is that the future will be full of unpleasantness and conflict. Let us act charitably, let us act lawfully, but let us act now.

Why be ‘C’? Because we need to be consistent, determined and effective.

(Feel free to download and reuse this in any format you like for the furtherance of the aims it sets forward. Credit should be © Revd John Richardson, 2013)

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The Night of Nights

This brings tears to my eyes every time I read it, but especially so tonight, knowing that 69 years ago, young men of my dad's generation were reading it and wondering what the following day would bring for them - if anything.

It is the message from Colonel Sink to the men of the 101st Airborne Division, who were about to embark from airfields embedded amongst the quiet villages of South East of England to be dropped in Normandy ahead of the Allied invasion which would save the world from darkness.

Was it in vain?

****************

MEMORANDUM:

Soldiers of the regiment: June 5, 1944 - D-DAY

Today, and as you read this, you are en route to that great adventure for which you have trained for over two years.

Tonight is the night of nights.

Tomorrow throughout the whole of our homeland and the Allied world the bells will ring out the tidings that you have arrived, and the invasion for liberation has begun.

The hopes and prayers of your dear ones accompany you, the confidence of your high commanders goes with you. The fears of the Germans are about to become a reality.

Let us strike hard. When the going is tough, let us go harder. Imbued with faith in the rightness of our cause, and the power of our might, let us annihilate the enemy where found.

May God be with each of you fine soldiers. By your actions let us justify His faith in us.

Colonel Robert Sink Regimental Commander, 506th P.I.R, 101st Airborne Division



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A Thought from CS Lewis on the Vote in the House of Lords

At the moment, then, of Man's victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely `natural'—to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. (CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man)

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Sermon: "The Beginning of Wisdom"

Here is a link to a page with the George Seamer Memorial Sermon I preached a couple of weeks ago at St Giles' church, which is in an interesting part of Derby. (It's on our website because I know how to get stuff posted there!)

The sermon is an overview of 'wisdom' - it's place in the Bible and in our lives. I'm sketching out some ideas I've been working on and developing, so it is posted here as a reflection of that process.

George Seamer, incidentally, was a clergyman who went through a difficult time at St Giles', but left a legacy of evangelical ministry which thrives to the present day (so I'm told).

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Email to a Young Minister on a Strategy for the Church of England

Dear N

I’m sorry to have taken so long to get back to you. But thank you for your question, which I will try to answer.

By the way, have you actually read A Strategy that Changes the Denomination? In there, I have given my own ‘potted history’ of post-war Anglican Evangelicalism, some of which is based on memory, and sketched out where I think we went wrong.

Part of the problem with ‘Keele’, I believe, is that it became a legend in its own lifetime (or at least, the lifetime of those who were there or whom it represented). Keele, according to the legend, was evangelicals ‘coming in from the cold’, opting to be part of the Church of England. But more than that, it was evangelicals achieving ‘maturity’ through ‘acceptance’ — not only would they be part of the Church of England, but the Church of England would make space for them.

What seems to me to have been lacking both then and subsequently, however, is any clarity as to what this acceptance was supposed to achieve. In 1995 a chap called Charles Yeats organized a symposium and subsequently published a book titled Has Keele Failed? This was in the wake of the founding of Reform and was deeply critical of that. But it is interesting when the book turns to the question of how one might say that Keele has succeeded. Yeats writes,

... a final judgment on Keele is impossible so soon after the Congress. Thirty years is hardly a long time in the life of the Church of England, and not a long enough period to expect to make radical changes ... (8)

So Yeats on the one hand sets up the notion of ‘radical changes’ (without specifying what they would be) and then says, ‘It’s too early to expect them, only thirty years on.’

Well, here we are forty-six years on and still waiting, but one reason why I think we are still waiting for the radical changes to result from Keele is that they were never envisaged or specified at the time! Or at least, the only ‘radical change’ was that evangelicals would accept, and seek acceptance within, the Church of England. In that, they have succeeded to a considerable degree, but of course it is an empty victory.

A few years ago, I was at a meeting called by an evangelical bishop to take counsel with evangelical leaders. He observed at the outset that although evangelicals were far more numerous at every level in the Church of England, the ethos of the institution remained resolutely Liberal Catholic. He wondered why this was so, but my answer would be, at least in part, that there has never been a coordinated intention to make it anything else.

However, I would also argue that it is pointless just trying to make the church more ‘evangelical’ — if by that we mean holding to a theology which makes certain assumptions and manifests itself in a certain church culture.

The call of the Church is to proclaim to the world the praises of God who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Pet 2:9). And it is to this end that we should draw all our efforts. Furthermore, this is the calling of the whole church. And here is where I think Keele went fundamentally wrong, for at the back of the ‘Keele’ mentality was the acceptance of a church with not only different cultures and different theologies but different missions.

We see this in the way the ‘Five Marks of Mission’ have gained easy acceptance in the Church’s official thinking, for what they do is allow you to perm a selection — “You’re doing ‘proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom’ through your parish mission, we’re doing ‘safeguarding the integrity of creation’ through our green scheme for the churchyard. Yipee, we’re all doing mission!”

But of course we’re not all doing evangelism — we’re not all proclaiming the God who called us out of darkness into light.

The Keele error, in my view, was to accept this diversity rather than to challenge it. The measure of success was the ‘acceptance’ of evangelicalism in the institution, but the price of success was to become ‘acceptable’. And as you will know, ‘acceptance of variety’ is a core institutional value in the Church of England.

What I am offering, by contrast, is a strategy with one specific aim: more evangelism. Indeed the ultimate aim is an evangelizing church in every place. Actually I believe we can settle for nothing less. But in any case it is a clearer, and different, strategy from that presented at Keele.

To achieve this, however, we have to do more than just do it ourselves (though we have to do that!). In the past I have been assured that all we need to do is “Preach the gospel, brother!” (I won’t tell you who said that to me in a public meeting when I suggested more political engagement, but I remember it well.)

In the diocese of Sydney they have preached the gospel, but they have also guarded the institution. I believe that is what we need to learn to do here, and that is the ultimate aim of the Junior Anglican Evangelical Conference. I am reminded of the title of Stott’s commentary on 2 Timothy, Guard the Gospel. But our guarding of the gospel requires us to guard that through which the gospel is proclaimed — and according to 1 Peter (and the rest of the epistles, surely?) it is the Church.

In many parishes to this day, the gospel is not proclaimed in the terms specified in 1945, that call for conversion. If you become an Anglican minister, you accept that you cannot preach the gospel in someone else’s parish. Therefore unless you do something about the lack of gospel preaching in some other way, you are accepting that people in that parish will not hear the gospel from an Anglican church.

That is where I think Keele went wrong. That is what I’m trying to help put right.

With best wishes

John
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Why the Devil?

For some reason, I’ve recently been very conscious of the devil and his works — not all of them, but enough to give a sulphurous feeling to the air (almost literally at times). As well as the particular issues involved, this has also made me think about what the devil actually is and that old chestnut, why there should be a devil at all.

For some of the time, this has taken place in the context of studying and teaching the biblical Wisdom literature, where of course the devil has a part to play in the story of Job, where he appears as ‘the Satan’ or, to use a more literal translation, ‘the Challenger’.

And it is this idea of the devil as ‘the Challenger’ that I will take as a starting point for some tentative thoughts.

What, for example, does the devil ‘challenge’? At very least, it would seem that he challenges the character of God in his relationship with the human race. Thus, in the case of Job, it is the challenge that any regard a person has for God is built on God’s protection towards them:

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. ¹⁰ “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. ¹¹ But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” (Job 1:9–11, NIV84)

The accusation is that Job’s (and, by implication, every other person’s) love of God is a ‘cupboard love’, based on what they get from him.

Similarly, in Genesis 3 we also find a ‘challenge’ regarding God’s relationship with humanity:

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4–5, NIV84)

According to the serpent, God’s threat is empty and his motive is self-interest.

But then we must recall that the serpent is God’s creature. As Genesis 3:1 explicitly says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.” And this raises (or certainly ought to raise) the fundamental question: why would God make a creature (the serpent or the Satan) that would apparently put at risk his own work?

Now here is where, in some people’s eyes, I will slip over into blasphemy, for I admit to having sympathy for the concept of ‘necessitarianism’ (of which the American philosopher Norman Kretzmann was something of an advocate).

Necessitarianism basically says that God does some things because he has to, and the problem with this is obvious because it suggests that God is constrained, when we would normally take the notion of ‘God’ as requiring an absolute freedom.

Even in Scripture, however, we find the acknowledgement that there are some things God cannot do. James, for example, writes that, “God cannot be tempted by evil” (1:13), and that is because this would be contrary to God’s character.

As I understand it, though, ‘necessitariansim’ goes beyond this in saying that there are not only things God cannot do, but things he must do, even though this is still on the basis of his character, rather than because he is constrained by outward circumstances.

Now in the case of the Satan, my speculations (for that is what they are) start with the suggestion that the creation of a self-image of God (as described in Genesis 1:26-27) involves a moral hazard. That is to say, the act of bringing human beings into existence brings with it the possibility of evil. And certainly the text of Genesis 1-3 would seem to bear this out, for Genesis 2 quickly invokes a moral risk:

¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Gen 2:16-17, NIV 84)

Furthermore, we need to recognize the vast significance of this development, for until God creates anything there is (presumably) no moral hazard at all. God ‘as God’ is good. And although (according to the doctrine of the Trinity) God ‘as God’ is also relational, the relationships within the godhead are always and only good.

Yet (presumably) God’s goodness is also always real. It is not that, in the absence of an alternative, God lacks any opportunity to be anything other than good — a sort of ‘goodness by default’. He actually is the good God we experience as his creatures.

When God creates, however, then the possibility exists of the ‘not good’, for that which is ‘not God’ in its essence may, presumably, be ‘not God’ in its nature. In short, precisely because God is truly good (not just ‘good by default’, good because there is no alternative), that which is ‘not God’ may be evil.

The possibilities, however, depend on what God creates. If it is — say — a rock, then the potential for ‘evil’ is actually non-existent. A rock falling on my head may be unfortunate for me, but it is hardly immoral on the part of the rock. But even a sentient creature may lack the true capacity for evil. I am sure that my cat has a form of consciousness – dim and partial, no doubt, but real none the less. Yet when the cat catches a mouse and toys with it, I do not rush to ‘judgement’. The cat is just doing what cats do.

No, it requires something which has a higher character than a rock, or even a cat, for true evil to exist. And it is therefore significant that, according to Scripture, we are made in God’s image, for this means that we can therefore display a character not just like that of our creator, but contrary to his own. We can be evil precisely because he is genuinely good.

But then the question arises, which are we? Are we good, or are we evil? And here again I invoke, albeit it very tentatively, the notion of the Challenger, for as the first chapter of Job shows, if God behaves towards us according to his own character, the nature of our relationship with him is always questionable.

According to the Satan, Job’s unimpeachable character is only such because God takes care of him. But why would God do anything else? It is in the character of God to love us, to care for us, to protect us. Yet as the Satan says, “Does Job [in that case] fear God for nothing?” (1:9).

At this point, however, I must try once again to stress the profound nature of what is involved.

It is significant, I think, that even atheists generally think we live in a moral universe. There is a certain paradoxicality to this, insofar as atheists are also fond of telling us that the universe is morally indifferent. But they are, I think, right to recognize that with the kind of consciousness and freedom we self-evidently possess comes moral responsibility. This is a property which creatures of a certain kind possess by their very nature. We are moral in a similar way (according to Genesis 3:22) to that in which God is moral.

But as I suggested at the outset, our ‘morality’ brings with it a moral hazard. Like God, we possess the knowledge of good and evil. Unlike God, we can break the wrong way. Yet why would we, provided God is to us entirely according to his own character?

Thus the question is (potentially) always there. God might say, as he does of Job, “Have you considered my servant ... he is blameless and upright, fears God and shuns evil.” And the Challenger might reply, “Does he fear you for nothing?”

To move beyond this, the challenge must move from the theoretical to the real. And therefore — dare I suggest this? — the Challenger must (of necessity) be real, not theoretical. Hence the devil, perhaps.

Well, that is my first attempt at some thoughts. I hope you, the reader, will understand I am trying out some ideas. But I hope you will also feel it is worth the effort. Perhaps in the light of any responses I will be able to improve on what I have presented here.

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New Proposals, New Flying Bishops?

One of the things that first struck me when I initially read the legislation to introduce women bishops that failed last November was the absence of any mention of the convictions of the bishop who would provide ‘alternative oversight’.

“Surely,” I thought to myself, “Some mistake. The consequences could be nonsensical, with a bishop who did believe in women’s ordination ministering to congregations and clergy who didn’t, as the result of a petition made precisely on the basis of that about which they disagreed!”

Well, as we now know, it turned out to be no mistake at all, but rather a ‘deliberate oversight’, behind which lay an intention to detach the beliefs of bishops from the content of the legislation.

For some, this was because they saw no need. Thus the view was expressed that for evangelicals ‘any bishop would do’, provided he were a man. For others, it was, I fear, the result of a genuine antipathy to the doctrine, and a further means by which it was hoped the doctrine would be encouraged to die out.

In the end, it was this, as much as anything, which led to the defeat of the Measure. And as I sit here this morning, I can’t help feeling ‘good job too’. Living with a bad law may be harder than living without any law at all.

Now, however, we are seeing new proposals, and one interesting feature of them is the recognition that, when it comes to episcopal oversight, conviction matters on this issue.

The report urges that future legislation reflect the principles of simplicity, reciprocity and mutuality. This is what it says about reciprocity:

35. Reciprocity will mean that the majority and the minority, while each believing the other to be in error in relation to this particular issue, will nevertheless accept that they can rejoice in each other’s partnership in the Gospel and remain within one Church despite differences of conviction about gender and holy orders. There will be a willingness to cooperate in mission and ministry.

But then it develops this principle in an important direction:

38. The outworking of reciprocity will also mean that those who cannot receive the priestly or episcopal ministry of women should not be the only ones for whom special arrangements should, in some circumstances, be made. [...]

40. In dioceses where the diocesan bishop does not ordain women it will be particularly important that a bishop who is fully committed to the ordained ministry of women is given a role across the whole diocese for providing support for female clergy.

In other words, the new proposals embody the principle I observed to be explicitly lacking from the old (although I also observed at the time that it was there in terms of making a provision for women clergy). In future, episcopal ministry will look for coherence between the views of the bishop and the views of the clergy when it comes to female clergy. In every diocese, they will be ministered to by a bishop “fully committed to the ordained ministry of women”.

This is to be done, however, on the basis of reciprocity. This is the ‘special arrangement’ in the hypothetical situation that the diocesan does not ordain women. But what about the reciprocal situation where the diocesan does? Then there will be the provision of episcopal ministry by a bishop who doesn’t — presumably.

If this were strictly reciprocal, then according to the proposals it would mean that every diocese would contain a traditionalist bishop, since it is proposed that:

39. Once the Church of England has admitted women to the episcopate either the diocesan bishop or a suffragan bishop of the diocese should therefore be willing to ordain women to the priesthood. There should no longer be any dioceses where none of the serving bishops ordains women as priests. (Emphasis original)

However, even I am willing to concede the difficulty of this. Therefore the solution is obvious: there will continue to be a supply of traditionalist bishops who minister across diocesan boundaries to congregations and clergy who, as at present, adopt the traditionalist position.

Oddly enough, this looks very much like the existing PEV (Flying Bishop) scheme, but that is currently due for the chop in 2015.

Watch, therefore, this space.

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Women Bishops and Anglican Priorities

Coming back from a couple of days break, I have finally got around to beginning to read the House of Bishop’s report, GS 1886, on the next stages in the legislation to introduce women bishops.

Let me say first of all, even doing this fills me with a sense of terrible weariness. OK, the majority of the Church of England’s legislature wants to have women bishops — indeed, probably the majority of its active members wouldn’t mind. But why can’t we find a way that accommodates more positively a group who, whilst they may be in the minority amongst modern Anglicans, are standing by the tradition of the ‘catholic’ Church?

At the moment I’m reading Doris Kearns’ Team of Rivals, the massive tome on which was based Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln. One thing I have gathered early on is that whilst Lincoln was opposed to slavery, he was passionately concerned for the union, cognizant of the intentions of the founding fathers expressed in the Constitution and sensitive to the convictions of Southerners. Hence his political approach to slavery was that it should be contained, with the expectation that it would die out, rather than fought with the aim of enforced abolition.

Some may find this shocking, but Lincoln was weighing one set of considerations against another, and we ought not to forget that when it came, the civil war led to more American combat deaths than all subsequent conflicts (including two world wars, Korea and Vietnam) put together.

Let us then consider our own situation. The great need before us is the evangelization of the nation — or at least, that was considered to be the case in 1945 when the Church of England published the report Towards the Conversion of England. Actually, our actions since then have hardly supported this contention and it is only recently that the Church has turned its attention in any systematic way towards growth – and that has been partly under the pressure of decline, which is hardly a pure motive for evangelism anyway.

To look at what we have done since 1945, one might conclude that the needs of the hour have successively been the revision of Canon Law, the revision of the liturgy, the ordination of women priests, the preservation of the global Communion and the consecration of women bishops. This is where the time and energy has gone, whilst hovering in the wings is the issue of same-sex relationships.

The Great Commission, “Go and make disciples”, is surely the Church of England’s ‘Great Omission’ in practical terms. Nevertheless, those with a true vision for the Church ought to keep it at the forefront of their thinking and planning.

It could also, however, be seen as the overriding principle which ought to allow us to hold together our difference in the interests of jointly pursuing a higher goal. We ought not to forget, furthermore, that unity is itself a ‘value’ — not ‘unity at all costs’, of course, as the pro-women bishops lobby have been quick to vocalize in recent months, but certainly unity in Christ and unity in truth. And ‘the truth’ is what seems to have eluded us on the women bishops issue, with some in the Church adamant that the truth lies in one direction, whilst others are equally adamant it lies in the opposite direction.

The classic ‘wisdom’ of liberalism is that truth does not lend itself to binary categories. But there are factors about the women bishops issue which make the acceptance of a ‘sliding scale’ approach difficult. Is a woman bishop a bishop or not? Nevertheless, the Church of England has tried to adopt a ‘sliding scale’ approach, which until now has worked reasonably well — or at least, has not been the key factor holding us back from the conversion of England.

This is why I (and I suspect there are others like me) would like to see the issue resolved as soon as possible with as much commitment as necessary to take all the members of the Church forward together. Unfortunately I think that calls for some wiser heads and more diplomatic hearts than currently seem to be driving things. Nevertheless, we can keep hoping for this and urging others to keep it in mind.

If reservations about women bishops are something that will eventually die out, and which can meanwhile be ‘corralled’ in a number of other ways, why should those in favour fear making strong provision for those who hold the minority view?

The answer seems to be that this would concede ‘too much’. I suspect, however, that one of the reasons why the minority so mistrust the policy makers for the majority on this one is that they are deeply suspicious of what will come next.

What they do not see is the conversion of England finally assuming the priority it ought to have had for the last sixty-eight years. They do not see a legislature champing at the bit to get this out of the way so that we can get down to evangelism. If they did, there might be a bit more trust in the cries to “Trust us!”

Rather, what they see and fear is a repetition of what happened after 1945, only worse — a Church sidetracked by its internal concerns and deaf to the call of its Master: Go, baptize, teach to obey. Perhaps if that were a shared priority there might be more of a shared acceptance.

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St John's, Nottingham, Conference on Diocesan Church Growth Strategies

Not sure how I missed the fact that this was going on, but thanks to Thinking Anglicans, I found that St John's College, Nottingham (my old alma mater)has been hosting a conference on church growth strategies in various dioceses.

Haven't had the remotest chance to read through the material yet, but there is a blog summary here at the Opinionated Vicar blog, which I hope to wade through!!

Surely this is VASTLY more important than most of the other stuff that takes up bloggers' time?

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