Action on “bespoke” same sex-blessing services and the launch of a network of delegated episcopal oversight intended mostly for conservative congregations will be delayed until at least November 2025, the Church of England’s bishops announced January 20. A decision on whether clergy can enter same-sex civil marriages will take even longer. As recently as last November, decisions by the bishops on all three matters had been promised in early 2025.
The announcement was followed three days later by the release of proposed guidelines for bespoke or “standalone” services and delegated episcopal ministry (called “pastoral reassurance”). Three theological papers by the church’s Faith and Order Commission about issues raised by the Living in Love and Faith process were released at the same time, as well a progress report from the Faith and Order Commission’s Episcopal Reference Group, and a 318-page annotated compendium of sources that concern the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage.
“It is abundantly clear that there are forces at play … that are determined to slow down and ultimately frustrate any change,” blogged the Rev. Charlie Bell, an academic and LGBT activist, on the day after the announcement.
“We don’t need more prevaricating, we don’t need more meetings, we don’t need more warm smiles, we don’t need more obfuscation, we don’t need more kicking it down the road, we don’t need more anxiety over numbers bleeding into disrespect for the lives and loves of LGBTQIA Christians. We don’t, indeed, need more theology. We need you to get on with it, for the love of God, and for the love of God’s people,” Bell urged.
The degree of theological scrutiny of the Living in Love and Faith process clearly seems unnecessary to some, but for others, it’s the natural result of a strategic decision made by the advocates of change in 2023.
Instead of following the Church of England’s standard practice for authorizing new liturgical texts (which would have required unattainable two-thirds majorities in General Synod), the bishops decided to recommend the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) for incorporation into regular worship services under the narrow terms of Canon B5, which allow clergy to make alterations to existing liturgies for pastoral reasons.
Such alterations are allowable only if judged to “be neither contrary to, nor indicative of any departure from, the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter.” This sets the stage for scrutiny by the church’s Faith and Order Commission, and especially that body’s Episcopal Reference Group (ERG), a body containing a roughly equal representation of conservatives and liberals that is charged with making recommendations to the bishops on matters affecting their ministry.
A progress report by the ERG released January 23 indicates that the path to approval for bespoke services and clergy in same-sex marriages will be very narrow, and largely dependent on how firm a distinction can be made between such services and discipline and marriage as understood by the Church of England, which remains firmly as it has always been: a union of a man and a woman.
The report says that doctrinal scrutiny must include “both text and context.” The rites that are currently recommended for use, they say, “do not characterize the relationship of any given couple as marriage and do not, therefore, impinge directly upon the doctrine of marriage. Nonetheless, the contexts in which the PLF might be used could impinge upon this doctrine. This contextual risk is likely to be higher in a bespoke (i.e., standalone) service than in any use of the PLF within existing services.”
“More time and reflection to consider different contexts and liturgical aesthetics would be needed, in consultation with the Liturgical Commission and the whole of the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC), before the ERG would feel confident to advise on the congruence (or otherwise) of the PLF in bespoke services with the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage,” the ERG adds.
The ERG report uses the metaphor of a doctrinal “envelope” to describe the consistent factors that have defined marriage in the Church of England (which it also outlines as nine theses). These include marriage being “the ‘one flesh’ union of a woman and a man” and “the proper context for sexual intimacy,” principles that many say are challenged by the proposed changes in liturgy and clerical discipline.
Some of these principles, the ERG says, have developed during the last century in ways that “have served to narrow the conceptual distance between an opposite-sex and same-sex couple’s relationship, considered ethically and theologically.” Such developments include shifting understandings of procreation within marriage and the primary meaning of marriage’s unitive good.
Its next step, the ERG says, is to
consider whether and how that doctrinal “envelope” has been altered or enlarged with the commendation of the PLF; whether it is now already a big enough envelope to accommodate some of the other changes that are sought by many within the Church (such as the use of the PLF in bespoke services and a change in discipline regarding clergy and same-sex marriage) or whether the Church would need an explicitly bigger doctrinal envelope for them; and to begin to consider what kind of size and shape “envelope” could be created if the Church discerned and resolved that it wanted same-sex marriage to be included therein also.
This discernment process, the ERG acknowledges, is complicated because
some believe the necessary adjustment [to allow bespoke services and clergy in same sex civil marriages] to be modest and to be following and flowing organically from an established trajectory in the Church’s moral, pastoral, and theological treatment of marriage over the last century or so; others believe such an “adjustment” would in fact be to tear the “envelope” of a God-given institution.
Ecclesiology, Unity, and Differentiation
The fact that advocates and opponents of the issues raised by the LLF process also differ over the kind of disagreement they have is a central issue probed by the first of the Faith and Order Commission’s working papers, Ecclesiology, Unity, and Differentiation.
After an opening section that elucidates the theological foundations of Christian unity, the paper uses a three-level distinction between types of disagreement set forth in a 2016 Faith and Order statement, Communion and Disagreement.
First-order disagreements, they say, affect “apostolic communion, the ability to recognize the other as in Christ or to recognize the other’s teaching as being within the bounds of apostolic faith and life.” In such cases, “formal, permanent, distinct separation is the appropriate response.”
Second-order disagreements affect “ecclesial communion, the ability to live together as one church.” In such cases, separate structures for doctrine, discipline, ministry, and sacramental life are needed, and churches with second-order disagreements normally relate to each other as ecumenical partners.
Third-order disagreements affect the “ability to cooperate fully in some aspects of mission and ministry,” and they may require “pastoral guidance, conscience clauses and codes of practice sufficient to manage ongoing disagreement,” so that those on opposing sides may continue to live together in one church.
The Church of England’s disagreement about the ordination of women falls, the commission says, between the second and third levels, leaving the Church of England with an “intra-ecclesial communion, [with] degrees of communion within one church.” This disagreement, the paper judges, is relevant and instructive in adjudicating the conflict over LLF in some ways. But it is also different, being more narrowly focused on matters of ministry and sacraments, with those on both sides having a clear consensus about the kind of disagreement it is.
Most supporters of same-sex blessings, the commission says, view the matter as a third-order disagreement, one that “only concerns the contours of lower-order teaching, discipline, and discipleship, leaving the apostolic faith as defined in the ecumenical creeds and the basic Christian ethic of love for God and neighbor entirely unaffected.”
But opponents generally believe it is much more serious. For some it is a first-order issue, because “the belief that God can be petitioned to bless same-sex unions is outside the bounds of apostolic faith altogether.” Others view it as a second-order disagreement, though not as one (like the ordination of women) that concerns sacraments and ministry directly. While they believe that those on both sides of the LLF disagreements share the apostolic faith, they think that ecclesial communion is impaired when one church “teaches two profoundly different standards” for living out that faith.
This inability to agree over the kind of disagreement the church is having, the commission says, helps to explain why the debate about it has been so heated.
Those in favor of the PLF have sometimes been frustrated with those opposed not only because they disagree on the substance of the debate, but also because they (themselves on the whole assuming it is a third-order disagreement) cannot understand why those with a different perspective regard it as so very significant (such that it must require ecclesial separation); while those who are opposed to the PLF have likewise been frustrated with those who are in favor not only because they disagree on the substance but because they (themselves on the whole assuming it is a first or second-order disagreement) cannot understand why others seem so casual and hurried about something so very serious.
The commission suggests that the church’s next step on the LLF conflict should use “the language of provisionality,” which means “acknowledging that what we propose to do may be mistaken, may be insufficient, may be unnecessary, may be unstable, may be temporary.” In terms of pastoral reassurance, this means “putting arrangements in place that are modest, scale-up-able, and reversible (though sufficiently sure for confidence,” and acknowledging that such arrangements will be “ecclesiologically anomalous.”
This “time of uncertainty,” the commission says, could be resolved in three ways. The church could come to “substantive, consensual agreement” on blessing same-sex unions. It could determine that the differences over this are third-order matters, sufficiently monitored by conscience clauses and a code of practice. Or it could determine that the differences are so serious that “it is not possible in the long run to bear with this deep disagreement within one undifferentiated ecclesial structure.”
“It is a failure of Christian love for one side to declare what kind of disagreement is being experienced by the other. It must surely be the case that those who disagree with a given decision are themselves determinative of what kind of disagreement is in view, not the content majority,” the paper adds.
Episcopal Conscience and Types of Marriage
Two shorter theological papers from the Faith and Order Commission address issues that have surfaced in deliberation about delegated episcopal ministry and changes in the church’s discipline to allow clergy to enter same-sex marriages. Both papers, to some degree, make problems of solutions that have been proposed as compromises.
Episcopacy and Conscience explores the degree to which individual bishops are bound to the “collegiate conscience” articulated by their consensus. It explores the ways in which conscience is explicated in Scripture and the Anglican formularies, and conscience’s unusual status as “an individual possession” that also assumes “a collective process of moral discernment.”
Serious disagreement within the church, the report says, threatens “relational collegiality,” and individual bishops bear pastoral responsibility for people whose personal views on controverted matters are different from their own. While “no individual bishop’s conscience is … simply personal,” there is also ambiguity about the authority of synodical decisions in the Church of England, which leads to “the inconsistent application of discipline over matters of conscience from diocese to diocese.”
Structural differentiation (like the proposed system of delegated episcopal ministry) is designed for situations where there is conflict between the individual consciences of a bishop and a member of the clergy for whom he or she has pastoral responsibility. While there are advantages to differentiation, the paper warns, “the price of settlement is high.” Plans for differentiation, the report says, “need to prove themselves necessary in their detail and in their proportion inviting sparing and careful use.”
The paper Holy Matrimony, Civil Marriage, and Same-Sex Marriage examines whether Christian marriage (or holy matrimony) can be easily distinguished from civil marriage. This claim has been advanced by some advocates of changing the Church of England’s “pastoral guidance” to allow clergy to enter same-sex civil marriages.
It figured prominently in legal guidance shared with General Synod in January 2023, which argued that:
there is a good case for saying that the institution of Holy Matrimony and the institution of civil marriage are now distinct … The two definitions are mutually exclusive and this can be seen as having resulted in there now being two different institutions by the name of “marriage.”
The paper notes that the relationship between Christian and civil marriage has been understood in different ways over time, and it outlines different classic and contemporary accounts of the goods of marriage, particularly in relation to committed relationships between same-sex couples. The paper covers similar ground to the ERG progress report, while also stating more fully the case for same-sex marriage made by theologians like Rowan Williams and Robert Song and probing issues related to the pastoral care of transgender people.
On the specific question of Christian and civil marriage, the paper notes that the sacramentality of marriage was deemphasized in the Church of England during the Reformation period, when its roots in the created order and identity as an “honorable estate” came to the fore. The words marriage and matrimony are used interchangeably in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the Church of England has consistently recognized civil marriage as marriage since it became possible by a parliamentary act in 1856.
The Rt. Rev. Robert Innes, chair of the Faith and Order Commission, noted in his official summary of the paper that the commission “expresses skepticism that a clear distinction between holy matrimony and civil marriage can withstand scrutiny.” Given the ERG’s conclusion that the Church of England’s consistent doctrine specifies that marriage is the “‘one flesh’ union of a woman and a man” and “the proper context for sexual intimacy,” the path to allowing clergy to enter same-sex civil marriages seems very narrow indeed.
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and also writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.