Hidden in plain sight: Soul Survivor again

Earlier this week there was a surprising announcement from Soul Survivor Watford of their new senior pastor. On X/Twitter, @needs_light tweeted that the person appointed is Simon Nicholls, a former Soul Survivor employee in a range of roles, and a former Soul 61 gap year student. What’s surprising about that? Simply this: that an earlier statement had been clear that they were ‘seeking to recruit somebody from outside of our church so as to bring in fresh perspectives’. Hmm. It’s an odd way of defining ‘outside’. Both the statement and the announcement were screenshot and shared by @needs_light, but neither of them now features on the Soul Survivor Watford website.

None of that is a good look.

I was interested in who Simon Nicholls is, not least because of a very positive comment on X/Twitter from a current member of his congregation, so did a quick search online. It took me only seconds to find the programme from a 2018 Soul Survivor festival on issuu, here. At that point, I lost all interest in Simon Nicholls, because in the brochure I found this on p.73:

WHY IS MIKE SO MEAN TO PEOPLE ON STAGE?

One of Mike’s quirks is that he likes to tease his friends and that means he often makes cheeky remarks about them on stage. Please don’t be offended! Mike’s being affectionate rather than mean; we promise you he only ever teases someone who knows that he loves them.

There’s quite a lot else in the brochure which I found bizarre; for example, the handy section on p.70 on ‘How to pray for physical healing’ which insists that you must address the organ (for an eye problem, ‘Speak to the eye’); tell the pain ‘very firmly to “Stop it,” in Jesus’ name (but remember you don’t need to shout!)’; repeat as necessary ‘as many times as you are both comfortable with’). I am not comfortable with any of this as something to encourage, but maybe I am just in the wrong tradition.

But nothing really beats that paragraph on Mike being ‘so mean’, but being mean is how you show you love someone – if you’re Mike.

In a blog post about celebrity culture in the church published on the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence site this week, Laya Watters noted how she had ‘dismissed my fears, putting it down to the pantomime comedy and trusting those in power and proximity to hold [Mike Pilavachi] accountable’. Those commenting when I shared the ‘Why is Mike so mean?’ link on X/Twitter also talked about how they had tried to ignore their own reactions to his behaviour, but also noted that the way such behaviour had been presented in Soul Survivor as a model of leadership had affected them in their later experience of churches; the toxicity lingered, distorting their perceptions. Others observed that the presence of this paragraph in the brochure suggested that there must have been complaints – but that those who could have acted on them had chosen instead to sweep them under the carpet. The option of telling him to stop doing it? Was that even considered?

The list of business to be considered at the next meeting of General Synod, in July, at last has this item on its agenda:

The Revd Robert Thompson (London) to move:

‘That this Synod, being deeply disquieted at the continued controversies over the actual independence of Safeguarding structures within the Church of England, does not accept that an internal Church inquiry into the allegations of abuse and cover-up within the Soul Survivor network is either sufficient or right in principle. It accordingly calls upon the Archbishop’s Council to commission, on agreed terms of reference with survivors, a report into those allegations from an independent King’s Counsel without delay.’

I was one of those who signed the motion, moving it up the list of those submitted. It was first available for signatures in September 2023. A year after that, the initial internal inquiry reported, its conclusion being that the safeguarding concerns were ‘substantiated’; Pilavachi’s abusive behaviour was recognised as ‘an embedded pattern’. Since then, Soul Survivor have set up an independent review being led by the excellent Fiona Scolding. Questions remain: when Pilavachi’s behaviour was so well-known that a jolly little dismissal of it was appearing in the festival brochures, why wasn’t it called out earlier?

Augustine Tanner-Ihm and Jonny Masters wrote a powerful piece about the theologies of sexuality that enabled Pilavachi to flourish: you can read it here. Jonny Masters commented at the beginning of this, ‘When I think back and remember laughing at Mike’s insults to other leaders on stage at Soul Survivor my soul curdles a little inside. Was I complicit in long-lasting abusive behaviour?’

Maybe the best place to hide really is in plain sight.

Opening the jar, carrying the load

There’s a lot of Stuff swishing around in the Church of England right now. The focus at the moment may be on the composition of the latest groups which have been set up, comprised of people with different views being invited to discuss aspects of implementing Synod’s decisions; for various reasons, including making sure more LGBT people are among the members, public announcement of who is in these groups has been delayed but is now imminent [UPDATE: announced 8 May). But, once again, as someone involved in the Living in Love and Faith project for a very long time, I am reminded that we seem to have forgotten that the resources of this project exist. For example – and very relevant when one of the current questions is about the different ways that standalone services of blessing could happen – how bishops ‘have a particular role in determining the liturgies that can be used in the Church of England’ (LLF book, p.319). That is a useful reminder that, even though ‘Listening to the voice of God is a task for the whole Church’ (LLF book, p.329), it doesn’t really matter who is in which group, when for much of the way forward it’s the bishops who will have to decide.

All this reminds me of the myth of Pandora’s jar; the jar with ‘Do Not Open’ written on it. Pandora opened it, regardless, and out came all the evils of this world; diseases and hard work and suffering. Only Hope remained inside.

When we started the project of writing the resources for Living in Love and Faith, back in 2017, there was a conscious choice made not to offer ways forward at that stage. It was all about helping people to think through some of the issues around relationships, marriage and identity. It was an invitation to examine ourselves (LLF book, p.4) and to open a period of discernment (LLF book, p.424 – the final page) which would lead the Church of England into ‘making whatever decisions are needed for our common life regarding matters of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage’ (LLF book, p.420). We were keeping the lid on.

Now, however, and particularly in the last year or so of Synod votes and yet more working groups, the lid has come off. Somehow LLF has become a gateway to all the questions which have been around for many years but which we’ve managed to ignore, or at least largely ignore. Perhaps that’s the logical consequence of moving away from the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture in which the vicar lived with ‘a lodger’ and everyone looked the other way. But there’s far more going on now, and not just an acknowledgement that openness is better than secrecy.

These questions include not just the ‘presenting’ ones – should there be formal services to bless a couple in a same sex committed relationship, just as there are for straight couples who have had a civil service, and should couples where one or both are clergy be able to have civil marriages – but many, many more: back to the LLF book, what is the role of the bishop? And on it goes. What is the church? On what areas should there be consistency between dioceses? Should clergy be held to different standards from laity? Should the standards applied to clergy also be applied to lay people in leadership roles? What roles count as ‘leadership’? What is the relationship between the church and the world? Who makes decisions in the Church of England? How does the Church of England relate to the Anglican Communion? What does ‘blessing’ mean? What is marriage and is it the same as Holy Matrimony and does that matter? How can someone who thinks any relationship between two people of the same sex is a sin belong to a church where such relationships are honoured? And older questions are being revisited: can people who believe women priests are priests, and people who think that’s impossible, be in the same church? At what point does having ‘two integrities’ become schism?

In the ancient Greek myth, Pandora was explicitly told not to open that jar. But she did anyway, and there are obvious links with some readings of the Eve myth. As so often, it’s all the fault of women… In the analogy I am drawing here, a key difference is that we should have opened this jar properly before, because the questions which have come out are central to our faith and should not have been shut away. And Hope? Does that still remain in the jar? The more delays there are to the process, the more many of us start to lose hope.

And last week it struck me very powerfully how all those questions – everything that jumps out into the world once you take the lid off – are somehow to be carried by those who simply ask the church to bless their committed relationships. So I want to say: this is a heavy load to bear. And it’s being placed on just a few people, who in some cases are people who’ve already been badly damaged by others in the church. This never about ‘issues’; it’s about people.

Jesus is coming, look busy: onwards with Living in Love and Faith?

There used to be bumper stickers with the message, ‘Jesus is coming – look busy!’ Leaving aside the dodginess of that idea – and here I’d mention the Archbishop of York’s counter-argument, Do Nothing to Change Your Life: Discovering What Happens When You Stop – it does look like the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process is getting very ‘busy’. Last time I blogged here I was speculating about what I assumed was the imminent announcement of the membership of the three ‘not (just) the usual suspects’ groups to which, back in March, members of Synod were invited to offer their time. In fact, it turns out that those groups are still not finalised. At today’s stakeholder meetings we were told that this may happen at the end of next week, which will be after the first meeting of each group. 

So yes, that’s why I’m writing: because we’ve had some more stakeholder meetings. This time by zoom – cheaper, and more convenient, especially for those who have the temerity not to live within an hour of London. This time, no bishops present, just those of us representing various inclusive groups, and the two very busy and very helpful staff members of the Living in Love and Faith team. 

Why no bishops, I asked in the meeting I attended, bearing in mind that it’s the House of Bishops which has to make the decisions on what to bring to General Synod? Of course the staff will update them, but being in the room with us has a very different vibe. Did any bishops meet with the conservative stakeholders? No idea. For today’s meetings (three that I know about, with inclusive groups) the answer was that today clashed with some meeting of the archbishops with all diocesan bishops. When I was told that, I thought it was weird – surely such a meeting would already be in the diary before this one was fixed? Thinking about it, maybe not. I have no idea whether archbishops and diocesans meet regularly, but it is possible that this is also related to the use of the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) and to the question of the place of episcopal conscience, which is something we were told today is being considered by a Faith and Order Commission (FAOC) subgroup. Or then again, maybe it isn’t anything to do with that. As is so often the case, we don’t know and nobody is telling us.

Going back to December, published notes from the House of Bishops – we don’t get those very often! – tell us that they set up ‘a small working group’ to develop ideas around how the bishops could function when they don’t agree what ‘pastoral reassurance/ formal structural pastoral provision’ should look like. Or, to put it in simpler terms, what sort of arrangements would be enough to keep within the fold most of those who don’t think the Church of England should either bless same-sex relationships in ‘stand-alone services’, or allow clergy and lay leaders to be in same-sex civil marriages. That was the only time we’ve heard anything about such a working group. What did it do? Anything?

Now, we are still waiting for information on those three new ‘not (just) the usual suspects’ groups who’ll consider the same questions as usual, but hopefully this time more focused on process. We heard new information today: that the membership of each will include some representative/s from FAOC, and also that the other members won’t just be from Synod. That seems rather odd; why not? All varieties of the Church of England are represented at Synod so why bring in people who are not members? If you are going to do so, then why not have an open call for such people (there wasn’t one)? Ours not to reason why. There was also a suggestion that the full membership of the groups will not be published. Why not?

However, at the same time, as we heard in today’s stakeholder meetings, FAOC is running four of its own groups, around unity and the nature of the Church, what ‘Holy matrimony’ and ‘marriage’ mean (this one has been going round and round for a while now), clergy in same-sex marriages, and the conscience of bishops (this one is about whether some bishops could make their diocese a no-go area). None of those are new questions. FAOC is, to put it politely, not known for its speed. I’m not even sure why some theological questions are put to FAOC and others aren’t, or who decides to call them in. Its members are appointed by the archbishops, but who knows how that works? We were assured that the documents produced by these FAOC groups don’t need to go back to the full committee for approval so there won’t be delays.

What else? The main information-sharing was around the processes envisaged from now until February 2025, when there will be ‘Further discussion on proposal seeking approval of any legislative processes’. The three slides shared had a lot of coloured boxes, and a lot of words. They will soon be shared with us so we can pass them on.* We commented on the procedure here: clearly they weren’t created overnight, so why couldn’t they be shared in advance to give everyone a fair chance of getting their heads around it all? We heard that the new Programme Board only met on Monday so they couldn’t be shared until after that; but hello, it’s Wednesday.

The overall impression from the coloured boxes is of busy-ness; lots of different groups having to complete their part of the process to pass it on to the next group. The word ‘indicative’ features heavily. We know the bishops have been having ‘indicative votes’ at their meetings for a while now, to get a sense of how they divide but without it being binding in any way.

Having seen a fair number of earlier versions of a timetable like this, I am well aware of how easy it is for the timing to slip. Where the current timetable differs from other recent versions is in the incorporation of the FAOC groups; an extra area of possible slippage. FAOC’s involvement was mentioned in the documents we saw in February, although not in the Implementation Plan on a Page, in GS2346, p.20. But things have moved on from these documents in many areas, not least the abandoning of the ‘two Lead Bishops’ model in favour of a team with a single ‘Lead Bishop’.

Let’s just remind ourselves of what is currently on the table: a proposal for stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples (it is already possible to have these in an existing service) and ending the refusal to allow people in same-sex marriages to be ordained, or clergy in same-sex marriages to have licences. Those who disagree think that there is some way that the Church of England can be divided so that they feel insulated from all of this, which they consider to be sinful. But how would that work? This is really what the next months are about. The aim, we were told today, is ‘a workable solution with maximal support’.

Next stage? Apparently another set of stakeholder meetings in May, a month which also features a House of Bishops meeting (18 May). In June, a College of Bishops meeting (12 June). And Synod in July. More groups, more votes. I know I’m not alone in feeling very, very tired. But the busy-ness getting to a solution is necessary for everyone within the Church of England, and in particular for those most directly affected.

*addendum: these are now out there in the public domain, with a comment to the effect that things change and so they may not be correct for much longer

Surviving Soul Survivor

I want to start with a disclosure. While I think I had at least heard the clever title, I knew nothing about Soul Survivor until the early 2000s. I had assumed it was some sort of cult thing, probably to do with the End Times; I hadn’t realised it was part of the Church of England. Then I found out that someone I know well had not only been to the festivals, but had been part of the community in Watford for a year. Like so many others involved, they have found the recent publicity around Mike Pilavachi very disturbing, and have needed to rethink what happened to them. While I am relieved that people are now feeling able to talk in public about their experience, and that these include major figures like Matt and Beth Redman, I am not convinced that the deeper questions are yet being asked. 

In the latest episode of the Soul Survivors podcast in which the Redmans’ film ‘Let There Be Light’, released yesterday, is being discussed, ‘the Church’s culture of silence’ was flagged up. Beth Redman talked about the situation where ‘You can’t stay but you can’t say’. That will ring bells with so many people who have left churches and can’t tell their former congregations what the reason really is. Matt also talked about the difficulty of saying anything at all when you suspect your concerns will be swept aside rather than taking seriously. Why do people find it so hard to walk away from coercive control? All of that is very important. 

But what isn’t being discussed enough is the theology that made all this possible. The interviewer asks how those who received ‘prophetic words’ from Mike are supposed to process all this. Mike coming up with ‘a word from God’ appears to have been something that had to be accepted, regardless. That would have been a good opportunity to talk about churches in which prophecy is given this role. Maybe, as Matt says, ‘God was doing amazing stuff’ but with a compromised character at the middle of it all; or maybe people saw what they wanted to see, felt what they were encouraged to feel. Further disclosure: I have had the experience of watching, live and close-up, a Christian healer/prophet supposedly causing a leg to grow, and while others may have seen a miracle, ‘amazing stuff’, to me it looked like a change in the position of the pelvis so that the leg appeared longer.

The fact that Soul Survivor was a youth movement based on festivals is of course a key factor. The Church of England can come across as dangerously open to anyone who can achieve the feat of improving its age profile; just look at the Nine O’Clock Service, finally being investigated. Here, as with Soul Survivor, the ‘ordain first, ask questions later’ approach came badly unstuck.

One question which the film and the podcast raise concerns how we cope psychologically with disappointment. It reminds me of something I first encountered as a social anthropology student in the 1970s: cargo cults (good summary, from 1959, here). These were a feature of some societies in Melanesia where missionaries had turned up with the offer of Christianity. Converts wondered why the missionaries had all the wealth, but it wasn’t reaching them. One theory they came up with was that there were pages of the Bible which hadn’t been shared with them. They developed their own rituals to divert the aeroplanes which were bringing in goods for the missionaries, so that they would get the trade goods, the cargo. But – as with those who claimed this week’s eclipse signalled the Rapture – nothing happened. So they needed to regroup. Millennial cults that set a date for the arrival of the goods, or for the return of Jesus, or whatever, have to find a way of adjusting to disappointment. Was there an error in calculating the date? Were those waiting for the goods just too sinful to receive them?

The attempt to pull something back from disappointment here seems to be, as Matt says, to insist that ‘there’s been so much good through Soul Survivor’. Rather than focusing on what went wrong, on how complaints were ignored, to look at the good, to find ‘beauty’ in those who offer their help to bring light to the situation. 

But it disturbs me when I hear that we should ‘surrender’ our need to understand what was going on, that we ‘release to the Lord’ any quest for a disciplinary process. So many people spoke to those with authority and were ignored… Matthew 18 gets quoted – a one-on-one challenge followed by bringing in a third person to the private conversation, and then bringing it to the church. Is using the Bible in this way appropriate here? Do we really expect a young person to enter a one-on-one conversation with the person who thinks wrestling them is fine?

The interviewer asks the Redmans, ‘What would you like to see happen next?’ Matt notes the lack of any discipline. I’d second that. Discipline of who, exactly? Mike Pilavachi should, in my view, never be allowed to enter ministry again. His MBE should be returned. His 2020 award from the Church of England for services to evangelism, ditto. But what about those who ignored complaints for so many years? Matt and Beth refuse to say anything about those people other than that ‘silence is very painful when you are a survivor’. What about the ‘senior leader’ in London, mentioned on their video? Personally, I think the trustees need to apologise, and that senior leader should be open about what happened, and why they chose to do nothing.

The podcast ended with the offer of calling Premier Lifeline if you found what was discussed disturbing. I hope the people on that phone service are recommending that callers contact the police or the NST rather than simply praying with them. And I hope that the theological work on what happened is going to begin.

Not the Usual Suspects

It’s rare in my experience of the Church of England to find myself quoted by those higher up the food chain. When I was called to speak at the July Synod, I observed that ‘Notice Paper V – which sets out the financial implications of each item of business – mentioned £175,000 for residential conversations around LLF’. It turned out that I was right to assume this meant the LLF team was planning to convene yet more groups, but meeting for longer than the usual isolated days. I also asked that, when these new groups were put together, they wouldn’t consist just of ‘the usual suspects’ – speaking, of course, as a ‘usual suspect’.

That wording seems to have struck a chord. It’s included in the 8 March letter from +Martyn Snow which went to all members of General Synod and was published on the Living in Love and Faith website (incidentally, don’t try getting your information from the LLF Timeline as it ends in July 2023, I assume not from ill-founded optimism but because there’s still not enough staffing to have it updated).

Now, I’m not naïve. I’ve been around for long enough to know that it’s unlikely anything I say can influence anyone here. Instead, it’s more probable that the LLF team had already realised that this Synod has been functioning for long enough, and has endured enough hours of work on LLF, that there are plenty of members who have something to contribute at national level, and who have not yet had the chance to do so. Some of those will have valuable experience of leading LLF groups at local levels; others will have been involved in similar sorts of discussion in a work context. As we move forward on the slow process of implementing Synod’s decisions, we all need their input.

The 8 March letter invited members to put their names forward to join three groups, each to be chaired by a bishop. These groups are:

Pastoral Guidance Working Group 

Pastoral Reassurance Working Group 

Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) Working Group 

I suppose they could all be controversial in their different ways. But it’s the second of these which looks trickiest. Its task is ‘to draft an outline proposal for the minimum structural provision that is both necessary and proportionate’. What does that mean? I’ve never cared for ‘structural’ as it makes me think of the conservative calls for a separate ‘province’, a non-geographic one alongside the geographic ones of York and Canterbury.

The words ‘minimum’ and ‘proportionate’ have been used before. At the July Synod, it was a conservative, the Bishop of Guildford, who championed ‘proportionate’. In proportion to what, though? To what is actually supposed to happen next: the replacement of ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’ (over 30 years out of date), so that clergy and lay leaders in same-sex marriages can remain in post in every diocese, plus the availability at some churches of standalone services to bless a couple in a committed same-sex relationship? To me these seem tiny (compared to having such couples married in church) but to others they seem enormous (‘blessing sin’, I understand, being their preferred terminology). Or, in proportion to the results of the various votes on motions and amendments taken in Synod, or in proportion to how many in the C of E want this to happen (who knows? by which survey should we decide)?

As for ‘necessary’; is that ‘necessary for everyone to stay in the C of E’ or ‘necessary so that the maximum number – but it can never be everyone – feels that they can stay in the C of E’? Thinking about this in the aftermath of the resignation of the Rector of Liverpool over the ‘institutional homophobia’ of the CofE, which is very public evidence that those leaving are certainly not just those who reject any change to the current situation, makes it clear that that even with the status quo not everyone feels able to stay.

When LLF started off, back in 2017, the process was led by Dr Eeva John. She is now Vice-Chancellor of the Episcopal University of South Sudan, having formerly been chair of the trustees of its funding body. Since she left, the pattern became that two bishops were in charge of the process. Who is now going to make the decisions about what the new groups discuss, and decide? The 8 March letter clarified this, sort of. There is (or is to be?) a Programme Board to which the groups report. It will include the one remaining Lead Bishop for LLF, +Martyn Snow, but someone else will chair it. The timetable? Here I can expand a little on the letter because I know people who have been invited to join the groups (no, I haven’t – this ‘usual suspect’ is off the case!); three meetings by zoom before a residential meeting in mid-May. Then the bishops meet again. And in theory something is put to July Synod.

I appreciate that it takes time to put the new groups together. People will have been on holiday and not responded; if someone says ‘no’ then it will have been necessary to find someone who says ‘yes’ while still keeping a balance (I hope!) between lay and clergy, women and men, northern province and southern province, gay and straight, while ensuring racial diversity. But it’s been a long wait. And as we continue to wait, not just for the information on group membership but even for the publication of the information on who is heading the Programme Board, it’s hard to know how this latest iteration of LLF groups can produce something by July. There will be the issue of members getting to know each other and building up trust in each other and in the process. 

Once again, there’s the question of ‘red lines’. Many of us who are on the inclusive/liberal end of this feel that we’ve already gone as far as we can go on this; we would prefer the CofE to accept same-sex blessings (at the very least) as the default situation, with an ‘opt-out’ choice for those priests who don’t feel they can offer such a blessing – rather like the current situation for priests who, in conscience, are not comfortable marrying a heterosexual couple where one or both partners is divorced with a former partner still living. But we have accepted ‘opt-in’, and probably a more complex process of this in which both the incumbent and the PCC have to agree to do this. 

Other than the extreme proposals from CEEC, with separate everything (except for Synod membership and access to funding), I still don’t know what we can do to ensure that those who disagree with stand-alone blessings and same-sex married clergy and lay leaders still feel they can stay in the CofE. For those who think this is ‘blessing sin’, it’s hard to see how anything can sufficiently insulate their priests and people from the rest of us in such a way that our presence would not alarm them. And it doesn’t help that we are in a situation of growing unease with the existing situation with women priests and bishops, in which those who would not accept being ordained by a bishop who has previously ‘laid hands on’ a woman (in the church this has a rather different meaning to normal conversation) are able to have a different bishop at their ordination. As Christine Allsopp has just reminded us, when women became bishops there were subtle changes to the wording around them so that ‘extended’ oversight became ‘alternative’. Who is going to watch out for those sorts of subtle but damaging shifts of language?

There is one other set of meetings which has been announced: further ‘stakeholder group’ meetings, for the first time by Zoom, in mid-April. Similar meetings will happen again in May. These are where representatives of the networks and groups of both the conservative and inclusive kind meet the LLF lead bishops and staff team but they appear to be more one-way than previously, the purpose announced being ‘so that we can update you on the process and progress moving towards July’.

‘Process and progress’. I hope that the membership of all the groups – process – can be announced at last. Progress? I hope so. Is the end really in sight?

Next business, anyone? LLF, Synod, February 2024

 So what happened there? You may well ask. A debate on LLF stopped by the procedural motion to move to Next Business… is that a further kicking of the proverbial can down the unending road, the road which we somehow ‘walk together’ even when we don’t?

Before answering that, it’s important to note that there really is a change of tone in the speeches on LLF made to Synod. Partly, of course, that’s about who is called; some speakers just create a very bad atmosphere, for whatever reason. Partly, I suspect, it’s that the real feelings people have are moving a little further under the radar. But partly, for some at least, there’s a real attempt to be more careful with our language,

It was clear that the lead LLF bishop is trying to shift the mood towards ‘reconciliation and bridge building’, as the motion before us stated. But that motion, as I said at the start of my speech, leaves much unclear, not least who is actually in charge of the LLF process after it has lost its two previous lead bishops and its theological advisor at the same time, and recently one of the two current lead bishops, while also replacing one of the two staff members. It didn’t help that the lead LLF bishop sent out an email shortly before Synod to say that the 10 Commitments listed in one of the documents sent to us weren’t actually the commitments that would be made. So the motion was asking us to welcome the proposal for a series of commitments rather than the Commitments as published. This immediately made it difficult to know how to take any speech in the debate which referred specifically to the published text of those Commitments listed! 

Other than an improved tone, the debate was much as usual (Groundhog day anyone?). I had noticed that Notice Paper V – which sets out the financial implications of each item of business – mentioned £175,000 for residential conversations around LLF, which sounded to me like a re-run of the Shared Conversations, which is where this blog started back in 2015. But there was nothing about these in the paper circulated nor in the amendment which told me my instinct was correct. I mentioned this in my speech. No formal response but, for what it’s worth, I think this would be a good idea, and a conversation with someone on the LLF team suggests it will happen.

All five amendments were put forward by those at the traditionalist/conservative end of the church. The first, to ‘note’ rather than ‘welcome’ the work on LLF since last time around, was passed because most people there, of whatever persuasion, were not enthusiastic about the motion. The second, which wanted to insert the statement that ‘many’ would say that ‘some of the issues raised are not matters on which they can simply agree to disagree’, was defeated. This was a vote by Houses, and it was interesting that the overall numbers voting suggests that around 30 members weren’t voting at all. Traveling? Ill? Not wanting to have their names registered on one side or the other? Remember, these counted votes lead to the publication of a list of how everyone voted.

The third amendment wanted to strengthen the motion by adding ‘and welcome the greater emphasis on openness and transparency’. Again, lots of enthusiasm for that regardless of what our position is on inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people.

The fourth asked for ‘a settlement based on legally secure structural provision’. It was defeated in all three Houses. The language keeps shifting here, so it is difficult to know if we are all talking about the same thing. The Bishop of Leicester talks about ‘minimum’ provision for those who believe they need it; those who can’t ‘agree to disagree’ are on record as asking for something I could never call ‘minimal’: separate bishops, DDOs, theological colleges, ordinations… oh, and safeguarding. Yes, just when we are moving towards independent safeguarding. In the debate, the Bishop of Guildford suggested replacing ‘minimal’ with ‘proportionate’ structural provision. What does that mean? What proportions are we talking about there? How do you even do that?

Or – but this seems unlikely when it is this particular bishop proposing it – is this saying that having entirely optional, opt-in use of the resources of the Prayers of Love and Faith which respects the consciences of incumbents and PCCs is really tiny and doesn’t merit the division of everything in the Church of England apart from General Synod and the pension fund?

After amendment 4 failed, the motion for Next Business was proposed and passed on a counted vote of the whole Synod. To get to that stage had required all sorts of conversations behind the scenes, but those of us involved on the inclusive side were encouraged that many of a more traditionalist persuasion were also interested in cutting the debate before we reached yet another Big Vote which would only end unpleasantly. The votes on the amendments provided evidence of how that would go. 

There has since been a press release which is essentially ‘watch this space’. The promise is to come to the July Synod with something ‘concrete’; not least for the sake of those who still wait for stand-alone services, I pray that this will happen.

Questions of fornication

Another General Synod starts tomorrow. My bag is packed, which is just as well as I have to give a talk on Street Pastors and a report to Deanery Synod before I leave. I think I am on top of all the papers – even those which only arrived yesterday – and I feel for those who are in full-time work and have to juggle all this.

One set of papers which arrived yesterday was the list of answers to the Questions submitted, available here. I see that issues around Bible translation are still being raised. Is this in the vain hope that they are suddenly going to change people’s minds in our discussions of sexuality? I rather think that ship has sailed. 

The first example is Question 37 from Mrs Rebecca Cowburn (Ely), addressed to the Chair of the House of Bishops but being answered by the one remaining LLF Lead Bishop, Bishop Martyn Snow. This is about translating ancient Greek. She asks: 

Q.37 What steps, if any, has the House of Bishops taken to consider the findings of the research undertaken by the Revd Andrew Cornes, as outlined in his speech to General Synod in February 2023 (Report of Proceedings 2023 – General Synod February Group of Sessions, pp 161-162) and their application to the ongoing work of the House of Bishops on Living in Love and Faith and, in particular, the conclusion drawn from his findings that, to quote (page 162, para 4), “When Jesus used the word translated as porneia, all Jesus’s hearers would have assumed that he included homosexual sex”?  

This refers to Andrew Cornes saying in his speech to Synod that he had been researching for a book on this for the past seven years; it doesn’t seem to have been published yet, and an online search just revealed a quoted ‘personal communication’ making the same claim, in a book by one of his friends. The passage to which he was referring is the list of sinful thoughts that come out of the heart, in Matthew 15:19.

The answer offered by Bishop Martyn is: 

Research by a whole range of scholars was considered extensively in the first phase of the Living in Love and Faith project, by both the Biblical Studies Group and by the History Group. There is no settled and definitive judgement on whether Andrew Cornes’ view is right, and the exact meaning of porneia and what it includes continues to be disputed and is commonly translated with the generic term ‘sexual immorality’. You can find reference to this in the LLF book p. 247.

Before going any further, it made me very happy to see that a point I made to Bishop Martyn and others at a meeting – that we have the LLF resources but we sometimes seem to forget they exist – has been taken on board! 

However, the question seems to be eliding two things: what Jesus said – what was then translated into Greek as porneia – and what porneia itself means. And the answer doesn’t really address the question.

A related issue comes up in one other Question, Q89 from Mr Luke Appleton (Exeter), asking the Chair of the Faith and Order Commission:

Q.89 What is the Church of England’s current definition of fornication?  

People don’t ask little questions like that unless there is a whole lot going on behind them. I’d be rather tempted to say that most of us currently don’t use the word, but the response from the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe is instead:

The Church of England does not keep a formal list of definition of terms. The LLF book and resources explore in detail the passages where we find the term as a translation for the original Greek word (pp. 137; 141; 246-252; 283-294. The LLF hub has additional detail on historical understandings of sexual immorality.

The LLF book gets another reference! Celebration time! 

Let’s have a look at those references, though. ‘Fornication’ isn’t in the index to the LLF book but searching pdfs clearly helped whoever composed this answer. P.137 isn’t particularly relevant. P.141 is a reference to the Higton motion of 1987. 

Pp.283-94 is the LLF book’s section on the ‘clobber texts’, including 1 Corinthians 6.9-11 which in many translations has ‘fornicators’ (Greek pornoi) alongside thieves, the greedy, and drunkards – funnily enough, they don’t seem to turn up in Questions, and the same is true of the opening section of 1 Corinthians 6 on taking fellow-Christians to the civil courts. 

But the LLF commentary on this and other ‘clobber texts’ instead focuses on two more groups in this list of those who won’t inherit the Kingdom: the malakoi (literally ‘soft’) and arsenokoitai (literally ‘male-bedders’, a word found nowhere else but echoing ‘men who lie with men’ in Leviticus 18.22), translated in the NRSV as ‘male prostitutes’ and ‘sodomites’. It doesn’t take much work to find out that there are many different understandings of both the Old and New Testament references in their different cultural contexts. But the arrangement of the list of non-inheritors suggests that ‘fornicators’/pornoi are one group, and malakoi and arsenokoitai are other groups (whatever the words mean), rather than those two being sub-categories of fornicator.

This is, of course, Paul not Jesus, so it doesn’t help when considering what Jesus would have included under whatever word ended up being translated as porneia.

For that, and for Andrew Cornes’ original claim, we can turn in the LLF book to pp.246-52, the section on ‘Jesus’ teaching on marriage’ which includes “The term porneia covers a range of sexually immoral practices but can refer more specifically to prostitution, fornication, unchastity, forbidden marriages and, metaphorically, to worshipping any but the one true God”. The passage in question is Matthew 15:19 (Mark 7.22).

Picking up that important point about metaphorical usage, I suggest that those who want to understand the term should refer to Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, ethics and political reform in Greek philosophy and early Christianity (University of California Press, 2003), on ‘what constituted immoral sexual behaviour from an early Christian perspective, what shaped its irregularity, and why fornication had a lurid glow’ (p.19). This is a highly important book, hailed by the classicist Amy Richlin as being ‘among the dozen most important books on the history of sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean’.

On p. 20 Gaca writes:

porneia in the biblical sense of ‘fornication’ should not be confused with porneia in the non-biblical sense. Biblical porneia refers to acts of sexual intercourse and reproduction that deviate from the norm of worshipping God alone. Porneia as ‘fornication’ requires Biblical monotheism to be intelligible as a sexual rule, insofar as sexual intercourse and procreation are fornicating, and forbidden, by virtue of not being dedicated to the Lord alone.’ In the non-Biblical sense, porneia would be ‘prostitution’.

I can’t compress such a rich study into a blog post, but a key point is that she identifies the position that marriage and making love exist only for reproduction as a Pythagorean approach, not the general view of ancient Mediterranean societies. For her, fornication is specifically heterosexual: ‘men and women engaging in sexual intercourse outside of God’s ordinance system’ (124). This would include heterosexual married sex with a polytheistic spouse (158).

So, if I were answering Synod Questions:

Q.37: While the House of Bishops awaits the eventual publication of the research of Revd Andrew Cornes, it is aware of far more research on the meaning of porneia, including that of Professor Kathy Gaca on the importance of distinguishing between Biblical and non-Biblical uses of the word.

Q.89: The word ‘fornication’ is not in common use today, and users should be aware that in its original Biblical context porneia/‘fornication’ was about heterosexual, not same-sex, activity.

One down, one to go: the LLF appointment saga continues

While last week was quite a week in the Church of England, this week is proving just as complicated. And it’s still only Tuesday… After last week’s shenanigans, late on Monday afternoon came the announcement of a second Interim Theological Advisor, Revd Canon Dr Jessica Martin. Full disclosure: I know Jessica because, like me, she was a member of one of the subject-based groups whose work fed into the Living in Love and Faith resources. I was in ‘History’, she was in ‘Social and Biological Sciences’. Her pedigree with Church of England sexuality discussions goes back before that, to the 2013 Pilling Report, to which she wrote the Prologue; while the full document can for some reason no longer be found on the CofE website, her text can be read here. She asked me to read drafts for two of her books and I was happy to help. I listened online when she gave the Bampton Lectures, now published as The Eucharist in Four Dimensions: The meanings of communion in contemporary culture. As a result I asked her to contribute a blog post to Via Media, which she did here; and very thoughtful and challenging it is, too. Before I met her, back in 2016 I wrote about how impressed I was by her Pilling Prologue, which I described then as a ‘shimmeringly beautiful, profound and prophetic introductory essay on the idolization of desire, which somehow cuts through all the episcopal circumlocutions and pettiness of attempts to categorise and condemn pleasure’. So, great appointment. But… I still have questions.

Yesterday’s announcement of this appointment managed to carry ‘quotes’ from ‘the Archbishops’, Bishop Robert Innes as chair of FAOC, and both new Interim Theological Advisors. Strangely, nothing there from the one remaining Lead LLF Bishop. ‘The Archbishops said: “In the last week, there has been a lot of public commentary about the appointment of the Interim Theology Adviser to the House of Bishops”’. Quite so. There was also the usual comment about ‘negative tone… especially on social media’. Well, Archbishops, give us something positive to report, something which shows that there is transparency and honesty in your processes, and something which is good news for the LGBTQIA+ people to whom you keep expressing repentance while doing so little to put that into action!

My first is: why wasn’t the new Lead Bishop for LLF announced at the same time? The absence of a name can only make people suspect that it’s proving very difficult to find someone to take on this job. And that’s problematic, if the intention is still to bring the ‘Commitments’ document to Synod later this month, as from what was said last month that document is very much a piece of work of the two Lead Bishops. As we know all too well from the safeguarding fiascos, rushing into something can lead to serious problems further down the line, so a delay may be the right thing. But it will be interesting to see whether there is a change of plan in what comes to Synod.

And my second is (again): how about process? There is much that we still don’t know about the appointment of the first of the two Interim Theological Advisors. What was the full job ad? Was it advertised beyond being circulated on the Priest-Theologian Network? (and, while we’re at it, what is that anyway?) Why was Bishop Robert Innes the one who has spoken for the initial result of that process, when the other Lead Bishop for LLF, Bishop Martyn, said in his statement that it was William Nye who needed to appoint a second Advisor? All we can reasonably surmise is that Bishop Martyn had a say in Jessica’s appointment, unlike with that of the other Advisor. Who appointed Jessica? FAOC, Bishop Robert, William Nye, the Archbishops? Was she on the original shortlist (as a theologian with experience of Pilling and of LLF thus far, she would seem to me to have been an outstanding candidate)? 

This being the Church of England, sadly, we will probably not be given the answers. I thought there was a glimmer of hope in relation to transparency when the House of Bishops decided to issue more than the usual anodyne paragraph after each of its meetings and, after the November and December meetings, indeed it did. But there is nothing about their January meeting beyond these few lines in the press release from the College of Bishops:

Following the meeting of the College, members of the House of Bishops held a short meeting to discuss Living in Love and Faith in more detail and looked forward to the lead bishops, Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley and Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, further developing a paper for General Synod next month.

We’ll just have to wait until Friday, to see the papers for Synod. I suppose we could just have ‘Presentation by the Lead Bishop(s) for LLF’ as an item.

Processing the process: LLF continues

It’s been quite a week in the Church of England – and it wasn’t even General Synod… I’d had a call from the Radio 4 Sunday programme to speak about the delay in bringing in stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples (since mid-December, it has been possible to use the prayers for this in existing services, but not on their own). I was happy to explain that, as confirmed by the Lead Bishops for Living in Love and Faith, the current situation is that these can’t happen until the Pastoral Guidance and Pastoral Reassurance documents are published. Well, not exactly happy: I was one of those who voted in November for the House of Bishops to consider going ahead with this, and when Synod passed this amendment it was clear that we did so because we wanted the stand-alone services now, on a trial basis. But when the House of Bishops ‘considered’ it following the Synod vote, they decided not to go ahead yet.

This ‘brief’ then expanded when the week began with an unexpected development: one of the two new Lead Bishops for LLF, Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley who – only a week before – had met representatives of the various conservative and inclusive groups, resigned from that role. Her resignation was about the appointment of a new ‘Interim Theological Advisor to the House of Bishops’. But it wasn’t about the person, or his conservative theology, or that he’d published online a now-deleted piece which doesn’t read well when the message from the LLF bishops has so far been to reset the tone and calm down. And someone should have warned him that deleted articles can be easily found, because online nothing really disappears. 

So, yesterday morning, I was on the Sunday programme with Ian Paul, who chose to ignore the facts by suggesting that it was all about the views of the person appointed. The pressures of a radio interview meant I could not come back when Dr Paul said of the newly-appointed Theological Advisor ‘Helen-Ann Hartley did make him an issue’.

No, she didn’t. Dr Paul doesn’t seem to have read Bishop Helen-Ann’s resignation letter, where she said she had decided not to continue due to ‘serious concerns relating to the recent process of appointing an Interim Theological Advisor to the House of Bishops’ (my italics: all documents referred to in this blog post are collected here on the Thinking Anglicans site). It is clear that one element of this lack of process was that neither Lead Bishop was involved in the appointment, something that was reinforced by her fellow-Lead Bishop, Bishop Martyn Snow, when he too made a statement about the terms for him remaining in this role: ‘the Co-Lead Bishops for LLF must be involved in the appointment of future Theological Advisers (we were not involved in the recent process)’ (again, my italics). Both Lead Bishops are concerned about ‘process’.

So what was this ‘process’? On the Sunday programme, Ian Paul assured us it was all entirely standard. Before answering that question, let’s step back and look at the job description which is, after all, where any appointment process starts. 

I don’t know how widely the job was advertised, but Simon Sarmiento on Thinking Anglicans traced it to something called the ‘Priest-Theologian Network’. It included this: 

The post-holder will need to be able to contribute significantly to theological and pastoral work on LLF and will need to command the respect of the very wide diversity of stakeholders with an interest in this matter. The post-holder will form part of the core team working on LLF, working closely with +Helen-Ann Hartley and +Martyn Snow as the episcopal leads on LLF.

So it’s a job which is explicitly tied closely to LLF. The new Interim Theological Advisor is clearly intended to be part of the ‘core team’, and as ‘a small working group to develop ideas’ has been set up under the LLF umbrella to look at ‘Pastoral Provision’ he will surely be part of that. ‘Pastoral Provision’? I think this is what used to be called Pastoral Reassurance – how to deal with situations which may arise when using the Prayers of Love and Faith – as well as considering whether structural changes are needed, like having bishops who have said they will never use the Prayers and who will therefore be considered acceptable for ordaining priests who also won’t. The membership of that ‘small working group’ has not yet been announced, although its existence was made public in December; I am told by the LLF team that there are still names to be added, and one of them will clearly be Helen-Ann’s successor, and another – now – the extra Theological Advisor asked for by Bishop Martyn.

So, back to the appointment procedure. There was a job ad. It went out, although I don’t know whether it just went round a network, or was public. I’m told CVs were sent in. I don’t know who did the shortlisting but again those comments on ‘process’ make it clear that the Lead Bishops were not involved. According to Bishop Robert Innes, the Chair of the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC), it culminated in an interview by a panel on which he was joined by two clergy members of FAOC, and William Nye, the Secretary-General of the Church of England and of General Synod. There’s no indication of who those two clergy members were, or how they were selected.

Why Mr Nye? Good question: maybe the most important question of all. From my own experience, Mr Nye is in every ‘room where it happens’, whether or not the list of those in a group includes him. Here, it is interesting that Bishop Martyn’s list of provisos for continuing in his own role as Lead Bishop includes ‘The Secretary-General will need to appoint a second Interim Theological Adviser to the House of Bishops’. The Secretary-General? Just a moment: I thought, from Bishop Robert’s public statements, that this was an appointment by FAOC? Who is making the decisions here?

In traditional Church of England ‘move away, nothing to see here’ style, in an interview reported in the Church Times Bishop Robert insisted of the new theological advisor that ‘He is an adviser among other advisers, and advisers come from an appropriately diverse array of positions’. 

But there’s only one Advisor to the House of Bishops at the moment, even if there may very shortly be two. There have been questions raised about why the bishops even need theological advice; they’re bishops, right? As for FAOC, it is a group of theologians, a mix of bishops and clergy with, currently, one lay person, which ‘writes theological resources and reports, to support the church’s work’. The pattern seems to be that someone asks them for a report, they go away and produce one a few years down the line, as they all have ‘day jobs’ – except for their Secretary, and that is the other role of the Theological Advisor to the House of Bishops. So for example, The Gospel, Sexual Abuse and the Church was published in 2016 after the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding asked for it to be produced. And then the documents seem to disappear from mainstream discussion, languishing on the website. It’s a pity, really, after all that work. 

It’s clear that someone – the Archbishops? William Nye? The House of Bishops? – has been working overtime since last Monday to put the LLF train back on the rails again. And with an announcement imminent as to who replaces Bishop Helen-Ann and who is added on as another Interim Theological Advisor/Secretary (presumably appointed with a transparent process that involved both Lead Bishops for LLF), it looks like another very full week until Friday, when the Synod paperwork comes out. As that needs to include the documents for two sessions on LLF, one of which was going to be the ‘commitments’ document setting out the personal commitments the two Lead Bishops want to make about the next stages of the process, and one of those is no longer in the job, this could be interesting.

Resets, settlement, commitments and explorations… A further update on LLF

Following the recent College and House of Bishops, once again there were various ‘stakeholder’ meetings at Lambeth Palace Library last week, this time with the new LLF lead bishops, Helen-Ann Hartley and Martyn Snow, who – in the meeting I attended (one of three with ‘inclusive’ group reps) – disarmingly opened by telling us that they hadn’t volunteered for the role. Well, who would? After the meetings we received a note thanking us for our ‘time, engagement and honesty’, and the promise of more meetings to come (no dates offered yet).

I went to the second of these January meetings, representing General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group. There were no documents circulated in advance and we were told simply that this was ‘a chance for you to meet the new lead bishops, +Helen-Ann Hartley and +Martyn Snow, and the new Programme Manager Nick Shepherd and an opportunity for them to update you on their approach to LLF going forward’.

Perhaps some of us attending thought this would mainly be a getting-to-know-you session, but there was rather more than expected on the ‘going forward’, which was heard by many of us instead as ‘going backward’. Reflecting on my notes, it’s hard to know whether or not that is the case. 

The format of each meeting was that one of the bishops led for about 10 minutes, and then we responded, with the bishops coming in to answer or clarify. At both the Wednesday meetings, the key words offered in that brief introduction were ‘reset’ – that the church needs to ‘reset’ the LLF process because the debates in Synod have all become so shouty and polarised – and ‘settlement’ – that we need some sort of way of ‘living well with difference’. Neither are great words, as the bishops themselves acknowledged. ‘Reset’ is supposed to be about the tone of the debate, not the ‘direction of travel’. The use of ‘settlement’, of course, carries all sorts of very dodgy historical and contemporary vibes. Is it supposed to make us think of the Elizabethan Settlement? Conservative Evangelical reminders that ‘settlement’ was the word used by the Archbishop of York at the February 2023 Synod gloss over the point that he didn’t just come up with the word on his own; he was repeating a word introduced into the debate by conservatives, who repeated it several times. Vaughan Roberts used ‘mediated settlement’, Ed Shaw ‘negotiated settlement’, and the Bishop of Guildford ‘those settlement discussions’. The February speeches are all online here. The language of ‘settlement’, we were told last week, had been welcomed by the College and House of Bishops. I can see why: it is a lot less scary than ‘structural differentiation’, even if we don’t know what it means.

But ‘reset’ and ‘settlement’ are just words. Words depend on context. They can be used by someone who has one meaning in mind, but play out very differently with some who hear them. They reassure some and upset others. If ‘reset’ was supposed to be about resetting the tone, fine, but whatever our beliefs on this matter of blessing those in committed same sex relationships, we’ve all now sat through many hours of hearing people say things we found offensive; I’m told that we’ve had 25 hours of this just in the 2023 Synod meetings. Those memories will not be wiped out now.

The message that came across at the third meeting with inclusive groups, on Thursday, was different; the result of the other LLF lead bishop doing the intro? ‘Reset’ was not the focus, while instead of a ‘settlement’ per se those present were told about something called the ‘commitments’ (not mentioned at the meeting I attended on Wednesday). The plan is for the lead bishops to bring these to Synod in February, and it is these in turn which will apparently ‘form the basis for a settlement that allows as many people as possible to remain within the Church of England’; that wording comes from an article the lead bishops published in the Church Times a few hours after the third meeting ended.

One of the problems I had in processing what happened last week was trying to tie together what those of us in the three groups heard, and this Church Times piece which was already in press when we met, but was not mentioned. The bishops say there that they want a church in which ‘different views are not just accepted, but honoured’. That ties together with another speech made at the February 2023 Synod, by the Bishop of Oxford, who stated ‘I know that the Church of England will continue to need the Conservative Reformed tradition moving forward and that tradition will continue to need the wider Church.’ I wonder. I have benefitted from the broad church in my own life, but what about the conservative members who want a settlement and who have come up with a long, detailed list of ‘what do we need’, a list which uses the words orthodox/orthodoxy 30 times? How can they ‘honour’ our views, those of us who do not meet their definition of ‘orthodoxy’, which is all about same sex relationships? Do they think they need us at all, apart from the financial aspects which feature in the CEEC list: ‘clergy pensions, DAC’s, Church Commissioners investment’?

One thing that we gained from the meeting – although there would have been more time-efficient ways of communicating it – was a sense of a revised timeline. Forget the chart in GS2328 setting out the work for each quarter of each year; that’s all gone. Now we are talking about an outline of what a settlement would look like, to come to July 2024 Synod, then a further stage in February 2025. 

In our meeting with the lead bishops, we were told again that the House of Bishops has a clear majority in favour of change and a clear majority in favour of stand-alone services. And the voting figures in the public domain support that.

Following the Bishop of Oxford’s successful amendment in November, the House did indeed – as Synod asked them to do – return to the stand-alone services using the Prayers of Love and Faith at their December meeting. But the decision recorded there was still not to use stand-alone services on a trial basis, and it seems that the archbishops – not the House – were the driving force in this decision. So now it looks like there will be no trial. Perhaps the idea is that, by 2025, traditionalists will be so happy with their ‘settlement’ that they will allow the Prayers through with a two-thirds majority. Or, of course, not. There can be no guarantee. And as yet there remains no clarity as to what such a settlement would look like. By agreeing that services would be opt-in with nobody expected to go against their conscience in offering or not offering them, I thought we had already made a settlement, but that is not enough for conservatives, who want to separate themselves from the rest of the church. Let’s see what comes to February Synod; the papers are expected on 9 February.