Reform News March 2009 (abridged)


General Synod

There was a Christ-honouring debate on the uniqueness of Christ. The motion itself was fairly mild:

That this Synod request the House of Bishops to report to the Synod on their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain’s multi-faith society, and offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and of none.

However, what brought the debate alive were the contributions from members who told their stories of how they had been converted from their previous beliefs to faith in Jesus. You can read Chik Kaw Tan’s speech on the Reform web site. It was good to see other Reform members contributing as well. As a result, most attempts to amend the motion were roundly defeated. The only amendment to succeed simply commended the background paper which Martin Davie had prepared for the House of Bishops on this subject. This paper is a thrilling historical exploration of how the doctrine of Christ’s uniqueness has been expressed by Christians through the ages. Unfortunately it is spoiled towards the end by implying that God could have chosen to save people other than through Christ if He had wished. Nevertheless, overall the motion is very helpful; it will hopefully generate useful material to aid our witness in multi-faith environments, and it was passed overwhelmingly.

 

Women Bishops

The second debate where our prayers were answered concerned the legislative proposals for women bishops. In one sense it was a strange debate in that it was never going to decide anything. All that it was designed to do was to send the legislative package off to the Revision Committee to be worked on. So even if you were opposed to women bishops, you might still vote in favour of sending the proposals to the Revision Committee since it is only there that any changes can be introduced. What mattered in the debate was that lots of people should register their disquiet with the proposals and ask for better provision for those who were opposed to this innovation. That was precisely what we got.

As you may recall from previous newsletters, there were two major problems with the legislative proposals:

  1. Where a parish has theological difficulties with the oversight of a woman bishop, the provision of alternative oversight through a ‘complementary bishop’ would only be through a Code of Practice. It would not be written in to the Measure itself.
  2. A decision about whether to delegate oversight – and if so, in what areas – would be left to the diocesan bishop.

In other words, the legislative provision for opponents was very uncertain. In the debate, speaker after speaker said that these legislative provisions were inadequate. The Archdeacon of Berkshire pointed out that the House of Lords had itself said that the legal status of Codes was uncertain. In my speech, I made the point that the proposals left opponents feeling that their ministries were merely being tolerated by the wider church, rather than encouraged to flourish. At the end of the debate, the Bishop of Winchester asked whether the Revision Committee would be able to consider major changes to the legislation and not feel bound by the vote which took place at the previous meeting of the General Synod. In replying to the debate, the Bishop of Manchester said he could give that assurance. The vote to send the proposals to the Revision Committee was 281:113 in favour. The size of the dissenting vote was a clear indication of the unease felt by Synod.

 

Reform Evidence to the Revision Committee

The next stage of proceedings is that the Revision Committee will take evidence (which has to be in by 16th March) and, guided by a Steering Group, will start the process of changing the legislative proposals. This will take them at least a year, so the first report to Synod will not be before next February, and may not be until July 2010. I submitted evidence on behalf of Reform on Tuesday 3rd March, following a discussion at the Reform Council on 25th February. This re-stated our view that it was inappropriate to change the church’s position on this subject, but since General Synod had asked for proposals to be formulated, there were a number of areas where provision would have to be made if we were to feel that our ministries had a future in the Church of England. In particular, alternative oversight would need to be guaranteed for parishes in the areas of confirmation services, pastoral care, discipline, appointments, clergy review procedures, and pastoral reorganisation.

Our evidence made it clear that such oversight could only be guaranteed if it were provided in statute and did not depend on the discretion of a diocesan bishop. We further argued for making statutory provision for individuals where their views differed from those of their parishes.

As a result of the debate, the future now looks more hopeful than it did. Two other developments have bolstered this view. The first was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Presidential address to the General Synod where he said that the different views on this issue were ‘not going to go away’ and that we needed to find structural solutions. The second was the news that proposals are being developed for the House of Bishops which promote the idea of ‘networks’ or ‘communities’ which could then come under the oversight of ‘Episcopal visitors’. There are some similarities here to the way religious communities already operate in the Church of England. In our evidence to the Revision Committee, we did not propose any particular structural solution but simply noted the Archbishop’s view that structural solutions were necessary and that different proposals for special dioceses or religious communities could provide a way forward.