For many, what mattered most about the Church of England’s winter meeting of General Synod was a beginning, and an end.
It was the start of the ministry of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, who became the first woman to preside over the synod when she gave her opening address on February 10. It also brought the formal end of Living in Love and Faith (LLF), the nine-year project of exploration and reform on same-sex relationships.
Mullally, although not a figure entirely without controversy to some survivors of abuse and some theological conservatives (particularly in the Global South), was warmly received at the synod and given a standing ovation when first welcomed by the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell. “A chief nurse will make a good chief shepherd,” he said, in a reference to her first vocation, when she rose to become England’s youngest-ever chief nursing officer.
Mullally’s address was in keeping with her background as a civil servant and bureaucrat, a masterclass in understated institutional hedging. She methodically name-checked almost every part of the sprawling behemoth that is the Church of England, and was careful not to nail her colors to any particular masts.
Yes, there are serious challenges facing the church, Mullally said, adding all the right things about safeguarding, trust, and scrutiny, as well as global instability and social injustice closer to home. But, she opined, there are also “green shoots of hope,” and she firmly believes that “the best is yet to come.”
She made sure to thank Cottrell for holding the fort during the long Canterbury interregnum, and was even more careful to compliment the synod, assuring members they would have a truly vital role to play in the church’s future.
Mullally mentioned the Anglican Communion, spoke about big churches and small churches, and thanked both safeguarding professionals and the victims and survivors of abuse. She hailed both the breadth of traditions and diversity of worship within the Church of England, and she praised unity. Let’s challenge each other, she urged, but always with kindness.
Discerning what she really believes her role to be was not easy, but beneath the bromides lay the outlines of an archiepiscopate focused on stability and consensual, unshowy leadership. In what may have been a veiled swipe at her predecessor Justin Welby’s fondness for splashy new things, Mullally said her role was not to “develop new programs and initiatives” but to instead simply be a “shepherd” who worked in partnership with others.
“When the wind and the waves are rocking the boat, I recognize my responsibility to focus on Christ, who calms the waters,” she said. “I pray that I am able to approach this ministry with calm, consistency and compassion—as we seek to be what the church has for so long been: a stable presence in an unstable world.”
The debate a few days later on LLF was considerably less calm and steady, even though the House of Bishops had announced in October that it would be winding down. First started back in 2017 with a promise of seeking a “radical new Christian inclusion,” the project has foundered in recent years.
Last autumn, after belatedly returning to legal and theological advice, the bishops concluded they could not progress any further without undergoing full synodical procedures that require a two-thirds supermajority. As such, a majority did not exist for further liberalization in this synod, and they decided—somewhat reluctantly—to turn the page on LLF.
Cottrell, and other bishops who spoke during the marathon five-hour debate, were fairly candid about their disappointment at how things at turned out and apologized for marching liberals up the hill, only to be unable to deliver most of the changes they desired.
But the bishops insisted this was not a total failure—they had managed to introduce for the first time official prayers of blessing for LGBT couples to be used during church services. Cottrell also argued that they had learned to be more honest about their disagreements in the future rather than hiding division behind a veil of faux consensus.
But this attempt to put a brave face on the end of LLF found mostly short shrift among both conservative and liberal members on the synod. A string of LGBT and progressive speakers spoke bitterly about their betrayal by the bishops, who had raised hopes for fuller inclusion, only to then retreat behind weasel words and legal advice.
Even Cottrell’s efforts to frame this story as equitably as possible incensed liberals, who furiously denied there was an equivalence of pain on all sides. The conservatives, they argued, might be sore about having their theological convictions threatened, but gay vicars remained legally barred from marrying their partners.
This did not stop a plethora of conservatives rising to denounce what little the bishops had delivered through LLF. For every liberal who proposed amendments to the bishops’ motion, which would have restarted the project, there was a conservative attempting to steer the church back in a traditionalist direction.
In truth, the supposed end of LLF is something closer to a rebranding. While work under the LLF banner will end, the bishops have already pledged to establish a new Working Group on Sexuality, Relationships, and Gender, which will continue the conversation. Fresh elections for the synod are on the horizon in the fall, raising for liberals the tantalizing prospect of securing a two-thirds supermajority.
In the end, amendments from both the conservative and liberal wings (and even a rare one with cross-party support) were all voted down, and the bishops’ original motion was passed relatively comfortably, 252-132. LLF is dead—and long live the Working Group on Sexuality, Relationships, and Gender. The divisive and bruising culture war that has fractured the C of E looks set to roll on for several more years yet.
Sexuality was not the synod’s only cause of disagreement.
Deep disagreements over Project Spire also surfaced. This highly contentious scheme is set to use £100 million from the church’s endowment fund to make targeted investments in the Caribbean and Africa as recompense for the church’s historic entanglement in the slave trade. The hierarchy is plowing ahead, despite widespread hostility to the scheme and regulatory challenges, all of which were aired several times on the floor of the synod.
Slightly more progress occurred on another perennial bugbear: safeguarding. After a vote last year to outsource safeguarding operations to an independent arms-length body (in the wake of a slew of damaging abuse scandals and plummeting trust), the synod was given more detail about how this will be achieved.
The plans were broadly welcomed, with some reservations, although it will be years before the highly technical and complex arrangements can be made (and local safeguarding teams embedded in dioceses and cathedrals will remain formally under their bishops’ employment regardless).
The legacy of another abuse scandal at the charismatic evangelical megachurch Soul Survivor Watford hung over another item on the agenda. Synod rubber-stamped tougher regulations and oversight over non-parish church plants like Soul Survivor after a damning review into the abuse perpetrated by its founding pastor, Mike Pilavachi, concluded the church had been too free from ordinary Anglican structures.
A long-awaited reform to how clergy can be disciplined edged closer to implementation as well. The new Clergy Conduct Measure had received unanimous approval last year, but it was knocked back by the Parliamentary committee tasked with approving all synodical legislation.
Suitably cowed, synod endorsed a targeted amendment of the bill along the lines requested by Parliament—ensuring all disciplinary tribunals of clergy will meet in public by default—before sending it back.
There were also debates on fiscal matters, with some members attempting to reduce (or even eliminate) “stole fees” charged for marriages, funerals, and baptisms in a radical show of generosity. A separate discussion considered the sufficiency of churchwide support for the poorest parishes.
Because not everything had to be incredibly serious, there was still time for a debate about the importance of using sustainable, local, and seasonal foliage for parish flower displays.
Tim Wyatt is a freelance church news journalist in the UK, and the author of The Critical Friend newsletter on Substack (tswyatt.substack.com).
