What to look out for at July's General Synod
A review of the papers
It’s almost time for the General Synod to meet again: this time in York, 11th-15th July. If you followed my coverage of the February group of sessions, it will be absolutely no surprise that I’ve been refreshing the relevant page on the Church of England website multiple times a day for the last couple of weeks to get my hands on the papers…
So what can we expect this time round? It’s a fairly full agenda, not helped by running out of time to cover multiple items in February. There is legislation to pass, liturgy to approve, and numerous arguments to have about money.
Living in Love and Faith (GS Misc 1418)
Getting this one out of the way first, there won’t be much to report about LLF/PLF this time round. It doesn’t even make it onto the agenda this time, being relegated to a fringe meeting on the Saturday afternoon. Even though Bishop Martyn Snow, Lead Bishop for LLF, has recently resigned, the senior leaders and the programme board are still hoping to pull something together to present in February next year.
That doesn’t mean that sexuality won’t come up, however: the very last item on the agenda is a Private Member’s Motion brought by the Rev’d Mae Christie, seeking to remove Issues in Human Sexuality from the discernment process for candidates for ordination. Issues in Human Sexuality is a teaching document from 1991, and since the late 90s/early 2000s, everyone going to a selection conference and everyone leaving a theological college to be ordained is supposed to have been asked whether they have read it and are content to live within its guidelines.1 It has been agreed as part of the LLF process that it will be withdrawn and replaced with a new statement from the bishops. Frustrated at the delay, those moving this motion want to pre-empt that by removing Issues from the discernment process now, without waiting for any replacement document. You’ll find very few people who won’t concede that Issues is outdated, especially in the language it uses, but to simply remove—rather than replace— it wouldn’t be a neutral act; rather, it would be a significant liberalising move.
Notable in this groups of sessions is how much time will be given to discussions around finance.
One of the items carried over from February is a Diocesan Synod Motion from Hereford Diocese (GS 2396A).
The motion calls for the redistribution of some £2.6b of funds from the endowment managed by the Church Commissioners back to dioceses in order to support parish ministry. This comes in the context of increasing criticism that the central church is prioritising funding pet projects instead of supporting ‘bread and butter’ parish ministry.
The difficulty in taking this item in July rather than February is that the Triennium Funding Working Group has just concluded its work on the budgets for the next 3 years, and the Commissioners have announced a massive commitment to fund a restructure in clergy pensions (more on that in a moment). The redistribution of funds called for in this motion would completely mess up all of that work, and require the finance managers to start over from scratch. That point was made at the time in February as an argument to not delay the debate, but delayed it was.
That isn’t just a hypothetical spanner in the works, either: if this motion passes on the Friday, the Standing Orders will literally prevent the Chair of the Archbishops’ Council Finance Committee from even moving the motion to approve the Spending Plans for 2026-28 on the Saturday.2
Look out for this as a tussle between the central church and those who want money to be spent at a local level.
The other big financial item comes in a Private Member’s Motion—laid by the Rev’d Canon James Blandford-Baker on clergy pensions (GS 2406A). Calls to reverse the 2011 watering-down of clergy pension provision have intensified in recent months, with over 700 signatories to a letter to the Church Times in March of this year. Those responsible for the central finances have heard the cries, and recently announced a massive package of support to address the issue. Those behind this motion, however, have opted not to withdraw it—partly to keep the conversation alive, and partly because the announced changes do nothing to address retirement housing, which is a significant financial stress for retired clergy.
The position of the national church, expressed in William Nye’s appended paper, is that to change the plan to take account of the extra bits in the motion would delay the whole project by many years, going against the principle of justice campaigned for. People will draw their own conclusions about the tactic of announcing a package that gives most of what is asked for, but not quite everything, a month before the debate, and then saying ‘if you want us to change the plan it’ll throw the whole thing off when we just want to get on with helping you’…
Another Private Member’s Motion is brought by Dr Ros Clarke, calling for a governance and culture review of the House of Bishops. The motion is considered in calling for a review that encompasses both governance and culture, in order to assess how the House of Bishops operates not just on paper but also in practice. A combination of safeguarding scandals and the LLF process have decimated trust in the bishops among many laity and clergy. I’m particularly interested to see how the Bishops respond in the debate. It’s surely unthinkable that they would vote against the motion, which in itself would say an awful lot. Will they seek to water it down, though? William Nye’s response paper is not entirely encouraging, as it arguably seeks to limit the scope of what constitutes ‘the House of Bishops’ and what is a matter of bishops acting collegially. Honestly, only in the Church of England would we start arguing over ‘what even is the House of Bishops?’…!
In legislative business, the Abuse Redress Measure (GS 2325B) comes back for final drafting and approval. The measure seeks to standardise the response and the redress offered to survivors of church-based abuse across the country. One of the biggest issues has been working out what qualifies as church-based abuse, and when the Church of England is responsible for the abuser/the abuse. See, for example, the complications around John Smyth being a Church of England reader, and the Iwerne camps being adjacent to the CofE, but the abuse identified in the Makin Review taking place in the context of Winchester College, a different organisation altogether. This measure sets up a redress body with a legislative framework for making those determinations.
In a slightly unusual move, the Business Committee is hoping to approve an entire piece of legislation in this one group of sessions, rather than bringing it back at least 2 more times: the Armed Forces Chaplains (Licensing) Measure. For decades, chaplains to the Armed Forces were licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. About 18 months ago, the lawyers pointed out that he arguably didn’t have the legal authority to do that, and so it was decided that they should be given PTO by the bishop of the diocese in which they are based. In practice, the MDO has concluded that that is too cumbersome a process for them to be able to move forces around with the agility needed. So it’s planned to go back to the Archbishop of Canterbury licensing them on a national basis, except this time with the legal authority to do so. Some bishops will be upset at the idea of the Archbishop unilaterally licensing clergy to serve in their diocese, but I suspect this one will still go through.
The liturgical business comes on the Sunday afternoon. Synod is being asked to add a Festival of God the Creator and a Commemoration of the Twenty-One Martyrs of Libya to the liturgical calendar. The paper acknowledges that it’s been at least 10 years since General Synod dealt with formally approving liturgy,3 and so the Liturgical Commission wants to give members a refresher on how the processes work ahead of a major revision of the calendar planned in the next 5-year term of General Synod (from summer 2026). Both the Festival of God the Creator and the Commemoration of the Libyan martyrs are being proposed because there is significant ecumenical support for them.
It’s long been an open secret that many DDOs and bishops refuse to even ask the question.
Only because the Prayers of Love and Faith weren’t put through the proper canonical processes, of course…