B2 or not B2, that is the question
A bishop breaks cover to attack the C of E's tortured implementation of gay blessings, but will anyone listen?
Hello! First up, I have to acknowledge that what is unquestionably the biggest church news story of the week year is unfortunately not getting mentioned in this newsletter. The cardinals of the Catholic Church, in a flagrant lack of respect for The Critical Friend’s publication schedule, decided to elect a new pope after I’d written today’s newsletter but before it hit your inboxes. I didn’t have time to junk it all and start from scratch, so I’m afraid you’ll have to pretend you’ve never heard of Pope Leo XIV until next time.
Instead, we’re returning to our favourite topic - gay blessings in the Church of England. Just as the church announced there would be no final vote on the remaining package of reforms until February next year, a leading evangelical bishop has come out with a lengthy and sustained attack on the process his fellow bishops are using to try and introduce the Prayers of Love and Faith. Will this change anything or is it all too late?
Then we do dip into the ongoing conclave (yes, it’s still ongoing in Critical Friend world, no white smoke yet) and the ructions a freewheeling Trump is causing American Catholics. Lucky there is not about to be an American pope to further complicate the picture there, eh?
And finally, we have some answers to shenanigans at Bangor Cathedral now that two reviews into it have been partially published - but what does it all mean?
Then there’s my latest podcast (the forgotten gospel of grace for shame) and a heap of links to interesting church news stories from around the web, including this week why does the media ignore the persecution of Christians, a church sealed up for over a century while it awaits the Second Coming, and a breakthrough in the deer carcass story in the New Forest.
B2 or not B2, that is the question
There has been some interesting interventions in the Church of England’s rumbling debate over same-sex relationships. The official Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) process has a minor update, but before we get into that, a bishop has made a quite major attack on the whole journey.
The Bishop of Guildford Andrew Watson is an evangelical and conservative on sexuality, but a relatively moderate one. He’s long been known to be opposed to the PLF, but has not played a huge role so far in the debate. But without much ado, he’s now published an essay which very directly criticises the approach of his fellow bishops and calls for a fundamental reset of the entire process.
Watson begins by arguing that existing pastoral accommodation to same-sex couples - for instance allowing gay clergy to enter civil partnerships - had already tested the limits of flexibility within existing doctrine before the Living in Love and Faith project even began, and so coming up with further reforms was “difficult to imagine”.
The church historically has set great store by coming to a common mind before making decisions, Watson argues. However, requiring absolute unanimity would be logistically impossible and give excessive influence to individuals. Hence many churches, including the Church of England, have landed on super-majorities as a compromise. For instance, the conclave currently underway in Rome requires a two-thirds majority for one candidate before they can become pope. And the General Synod must find two-thirds majorities in all three houses of Laity, Clergy and Bishops before it can change doctrine or liturgy, Watson notes:
‘A relatively high bar, as supporters of the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate experienced, at times all too painfully; but a standard set to preserve the church’s unity and to discern the promptings of God’s Spirit, so far as humanly possible, through the inevitable controversies that would otherwise threaten to tear the church down the middle.’
At this point we do regrettably have to return to the minutiae of Anglican canon law. Earlier on in the LLF process Canon B2 was presumed, Watson writes, to be the pathway through which any reforms would be passed. To paraphrase, Canon B2 says the synod can approve new services as long as they get two-thirds supermajorities in each house, and they don’t contradict the church’s doctrine “in any essential matter”. Canon B2 is the standard way in which new forms of service are introduced in the C of E. Indeed, at its most recent meeting the House of Bishops discussed using Canon B2 to introduce a new liturgy to mark a proposed ‘Festival of God the Creator’, Watson notes.
But, he argues that when it was realised there was not a two-thirds majority in the Laity and Clergy for the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF), Canon B2 was bypassed and instead the various elements of the PLF package was split up and rammed through synod one by one via simple majorities. The “theological and legal integrity” of Canon B2 has been “trumped by expediency in a way that has significantly dented trust in the House of Bishops’, Watson concludes.
This got the progressives their prayers, but it did more than just damage trust in the bishops’ integrity, he suggests. It also undermined the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC), the church’s theological advisory group, and it raised the prospect of a messy legal challenge from conservatives falling not on the bishops but on an individual vicar using these dubiously-approved new prayers. It also galvanised the Alliance, the umbrella group for conservatives opposed to the PLF. Until this original sin of the PLF project is fixed, trust cannot be restored, Watson says:
‘The recently mooted idea that the liturgy surrounding a proposed ‘Festival of God the Creator’ should go through the full B2 process whilst the most controversial and divisive liturgy in a generation (or more) should bypass it, highlights the point more starkly, and is extremely hard to defend.’
He goes on to says the status quo (opt-in PLF as Sunday extra prayers only) might be sustainable for many conservatives, but the introduction at some point of standalone services of blessing which more closely resemble ersatz gay weddings, and letting gay vicars marry their partners would cross the rubicon for good. This would amount, for many conservatives, to a de facto change of marriage doctrine and thus be unacceptable.
Now this interpretation might be disputed by the other side, who continue to mostly insist that even the standalone PLF and ending the ban on gay vicars marrying would still be tolerable pastoral flexibility within an unchanged doctrinal envelope. But this is irrelevant - if a substantial minority of the church believe they are in ‘first-order’ dispute with the rest, then a first-order breach is there, whether the majority agree or not (a view endorsed by FAOC’s own report on disagreement, incidentally).
Conservatives are also not wrong to fear that their convictions will only be grudgingly tolerated, and that not indefinitely, Watson writes. As evidence he cites the parallel story of those opposed to women’s ordination - yes they have their handful of flying bishops, but there are fewer and fewer regular appointments of traditionalists to ordinary bishop posts and howls of protest whenever one is suggested (see the Philip North story in last week’s newsletter):
‘The fear is therefore that history will repeat itself with the far greater number of open evangelicals who are fully egalitarian when it comes to women’s ministry but retain a historically orthodox understanding of marriage. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that that concern is already making a significant dent in ordinand numbers, especially from evangelical backgrounds, fuelled by the current polarisation and uncertainty: a real worry for a Church which is so strongly dependent on the life and energy of the evangelical movement to help foster evangelism, church planting and vocations.’
Coming into land, Watson argues the solution must be to return to good old Canon B2 - the way discerning the mind of the church and implementing contentious reforms was supposed to happen. Liberals will immediately cry that this is a coded way of trying to rip up the PLF entirely, given the extreme unlikelihood of getting two-thirds’ backing in the synod (as required by Canon B2). But, just because a process might lead to an outcome you don’t like doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the wrong process.
Also, if you read Watson’s essay carefully, it’s pretty clear what he personally would accept. He doesn’t actually want to roll back the clock to January 2023 and chuck all the PLF into the dustbin of history. He implies that he actually wants to freeze the current situation and leave it at that. Retain the PLF as a pastoral accommodation for regular Sunday services only, on an opt-in basis for liberal churches, and go no further. But, abandon efforts to introduce the quasi-wedding standalone services, and retain the existing prohibition on gay vicars getting married too.
He also makes a plea for more creative flexibility, noting that much of what we take for granted in the C of E today (two provinces with their own archbishops but sharing one synod, diocesan bishops sharing power with junior suffragan bishops, royal peculiars subject to the monarch not bishop etc) were introduced partly to cover over differences and tensions historically. Why not explore some similar changes today? Introducing some more “ecclesiological anomalies” might seem radical but in time come to be part of the furniture, Watson cautiously proposes.
So, that’s what Watson says. What does it all mean? I think it is significant (hence going into this much detail) as it’s yet another crack in the now tottering facade of episcopal unity. When the PLF saga began in early 2023 the bishops pretty much swallowed their disagreements and united around the proposals. The first vote in synod was 36 in favour and only four bishops against. But over time, as it’s become clear the liberal majority intends to push forwards despite its lack of a supermajority and despite the constitutional and legal hurdles, a growing number of bishops have been peeling away.
It’s one thing to vote against a motion at synod, but to publish a 26-page booklet outlining why your brother and sister bishops are wrong - and even accuse them of putting expediency before integrity - is quite another. Everyone knows Watson is an evangelical and opposed to same-sex marriage; indeed, he voted against the very first version of the PLF in February 2023. But he’s not a headbanger nor has he publicly aligned with the Alliance before. He’s a centrist open evangelical, and he is reflecting a broader sense of disquiet within that constituency I suspect.
Unlike their more hardline Alliance brethren, middle of the road evangelicals probably could find a landing zone which provided some kind of accommodation for gay couples - they tend not to be all or nothing, my way or the highway types. Few are keen to launch into schism, provided their own churches are not compelled to offer quasi-marriage services to same-sex couples. But they have become increasingly frustrated by the procedural shenanigans of the bishops and the bending of synodical rules and canon law to try and squeeze the PLF and associated reforms through.
Much like Christopher Landau’s proposed solution (discussed in the newsletter a few weeks back), Watson appears to be genuinely trying to find an Anglican fudgy middle way compromise. The conservatives let the liberals have some form of blessing for gay couples, but in return the liberals have to come back within the fold of existing doctrine and submit to its boundaries.
The difficulty is that even this would perhaps be too much for many of the conservatives in the Alliance, who have been marched up the hill of ‘victory or schism’ and now would be reluctant to troop back down and concede even half of what the progressives have already won. And, likewise, it would be difficult for many of the liberals to accept either, as it would appear to roll back the minimal concessions they’ve already got and would stamp out the expectations they’ve always had that they’ll soon get much more (gay vicars allowed to marry and standalone services of blessing). Both sides have been radicalised during the trench warfare of the past two and a half years, and neither will come out of their bunkers easily to meet in no-man’s-land and agree a truce.
On one level, nothing Watson is writing is anything the bishops haven’t heard from other evangelical voices before. But it’s a lot easier to stick your fingers in your ears and press on when the complaints about due process and constitutional integrity are coming from hardline conservative clergy you already dislike, and who are themselves pushing forwards with an obviously illicit ‘parallel province’. Why should we listen to them complaining about Canon B2 and two-thirds majorities, when they’ve just dreamt up their own ordination process and are planning lay presidency at the Eucharist?
But when the same arguments come from one of your own, a sober-minded bishop with no history of being difficult or partisan and a scrupulous record (as far as I know) of ecclesiastical probity, it should be harder to just shrug it off. We know at least one non-conservative bishop shares Watson’s concerns. The Bishop of Bath and Wells Michael Beasley made a speech at synod last year saying that while he supported the PLF he could not do so at any cost, arguing the bishops must return to the proper synodical authorisation process (i.e. Canon B2) given the new liturgies did impinge on marriage doctrine.
Are there others like him in the shrinking pro-PLF majority in the House of Bishops? Other bishops who, however much they might like the idea of letting gay people be blessed in church, don’t want to do so without the two-thirds majority consent of the synod and the necessary legal processes? Others who might be swayed by Watson’s thoughtful and reasoned essay?
We don’t know yet, but tracking to see if any more bishops can be peeled away from the PLF over constitutional rather than purely theological arguments will be an interesting task over the next 12 months.
In many ways, the bishop leading the PLF, the Bishop of Leicester Martyn Snow, is very similar to Watson. A centrist-minded evangelical, Snow is open that he instinctively opposed the prayers on theological grounds at first. However, he has taken on the job of trying to bring them in to land, respecting the narrow 55%-ish majority for them on synod. He does believe that there is a narrow window where the PLF can be reconciled with the unchanged doctrine of marriage, and that simple ‘commendation’ by the House of Bishops rather than the Canon B2 procedure is the right way to get this done.
In good timing, Snow has just popped up with an update on the PLF project this week. There are three remaining areas of work: standalone (now confusingly rebranded by the C of E as “bespoke”) services, the ban on gay vicars getting married, and provision for conservatives. Snow and his team have produced some surprisingly high quality materials in this update, including a video and two glossily-designed pamphlets. For those nerds like me (and, if you’re reading this, you too) who have been following the drama for some time, there’s not much new information in them.
Snow rehashes the usual stuff about learning to live with our disagreements, being open to listen to each other and discerning if God is leading us to place where we can limp along together. The only really interesting bits are in the fact that FAOC is now working on all three streams, and until they’re done neither the bishops nor synod will be voting on anything.
We have known for a while that FAOC are exploring to what extent letting gay clergy enter civil marriages while also ministering in a church which teaches marriage is for opposite-sex couples only is theologically possible. But they are also looking at the standalone/bespoke services, and whether offering gay couples a ceremony of blessing outside of regular worship, which may include wedding-like elements such as rings or long white dresses, contravenes that same marriage doctrine.
And, we now know they’re also digging into the proposals for Delegated Episcopal Ministry (DEM). This is the offer from the bishops to the conservatives that any parish unhappy about the PLF can request a like-minded conservative bishops from elsewhere is brought in to oversee them rather than their pro-PLF actual bishop. What might this change, if brought in, mean for episcopacy in the C of E, FAOC is wondering.
With a lot on their plate, FAOC are going to need some time to figure this all out and provide their advice to the bishops, and so Snow revealed what has previously only been hinted at - none of this will get resolved this year. Instead, the timetable reveals that over the summer and into the autumn there will be a church-wide consultation via diocesan synod meetings. Then, by October, FAOC will report back to the House of Bishops, who will then discuss this over the autumn. In December the bishops will vote on what to move forward on, and then it will all come to a final decision in February 2023 at the synod.
So, presuming this timetable doesn’t slip yet again, it will be a full three years after the first vote on the PLF in February 2023 before the synod is given the chance to finally implement (or reject) the plans. And even then, that’s not the end of the matter as what they will be approving (or rejecting, but probably approving) will be the beginning of a three-year ‘period of discernment’. After using the standalone services and DEM for three years, we will then have to have another conversation about how it’s all gone and whether we want to enshrine this all permanently.
You’ll notice no mention of Canon B2 here - so far, there are no plans to use that synodical two-thirds route to approve the standalone services. But it remains an open question if the church will return to Canon B2 in February 2029, when the three year trial period has ended, and try to permanently write the PLF into church law for good.
It’s easy to mock the delays, but I would suggest it’s actually to Snow’s immense credit that he’s prepared to pump the brakes and slow things down. Ever since he took on the PLF job halfway through the process, he has shown an admirable willingness to try and think things through properly rather than be governed by fear of a liberal backlash. Yes, it’s of course absurd that only now are we bothering to check in with our theological advisors on FAOC to see if our plans might contradict our doctrine - clearly this should have been done long, long before the bishops brought anything to synod back in 2023.
But at least Snow has belatedly realised this mistake and is prepared to wait for FAOC on all three strands - DEM, standalone services and gay marriage for vicars - before coming to the synod with a final offer. This has earned him some brickbats from the liberals who complain he’s dragging his feet, but it is the right thing to do and will give the synod the information it needs to make a proper, final decision.
So far, it seems most likely that that final decision in February 2026 will be to go ahead with standalone services, some kind of DEM and, probably, letting gay clergy get married. Given we are still in the realms of simple 50% majorities required, there has been - tested over many, many, votes - a stable if razor-thin majority for moving forward. But once we launch into that three-year discernment period, things became more unpredictable. In the summer and autumn of 2026, there will be elections and the make-up of the synod in both clergy and laity could change dramatically.
Maybe it will become more liberal as progressives angered by the blocking tactics of the conservative minority come out in force? Or maybe the conservatives will hold onto their healthy 45%-ish bloc, believing that they just need to tough out three years and then they can permanently jettison the PLF when it comes finally to a Canon B2 vote? Or maybe the conservative vote will collapse if large numbers of Alliance-aligned churches leave the C of E in protest at a pro-PLF final vote in February, leaving the synod to be taken over by the liberals?
Lots and lots of unknowns, but one thing is for sure - we will still be talking about the blessed Prayers of Love and Faith for years and years to come.
Waiting for white smoke
As I write this on Thursday afternoon, the cardinals locked into the Sistine Chapel for the Catholic Church’s papal conclave have taken two votes without yet finding their own two-thirds majority. Black smoke rather than white has poured from the chimney, disappointing the crowd crammed into St Peter’s Square. Incidentally, the BBC has a fun piece looking in detail at the smoke signals during conclaves, which it turns out are now governed by some quite fancy tech to get the right colour rather than just trusting to damp or dry straw as they used to.
In another update to centuries-old tradition, the Vatican is even switching off its phone signal so that any cheeky cardinals who smuggled their phones into the conclave cannot contact the outside world (nor receive info sent in to them from beyond the walls).
The cardinals normally vote twice a day, and recent history suggests they take a day or two to take stock and figure out who are the leading candidates before boiling down to actually picking someone and coalescing around the winner. Although it remains, as I wrote last week, very difficult to predict what will happen, the conclave could conclude fairly soon and we’d have a new pope by Monday. Or maybe it will drag on?
There’s been plenty of these, but if you’re looking for a list of possible contenders here’s another one with some newer names I’d not come across before. It’s fun trying to figure out which of these might be the Cardinal Benitez from Conclave the film.
And I also enjoyed reading how Francis’s final wish before he died was that one of his special Popemobiles (open-topped vehicles used when he visits places) be refitted as a mobile health clinic with everything needed for frontline treatment in a warzone, and sent to Gaza. Unfortunately, the delivery cannot happen until Israel re-opens access to humanitarian aid which they are currently blocking in an attempt to starve Hamas (and the two million Palestinians living in the strip) to defeat.
We have touched on the fractures and tensions within American Catholicism a number of times in recent newsletters, but the cat was really set among the pigeons when Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as pope last week. The picture was - astonishingly and for reasons I still cannot fathom - then re-shared by the official White House accounts on social media, and came just days after he’d joked to reporters that the next Supreme Pontiff and Bishop of Rome should be… him.
Unsurprisingly, this bit of trolling went down with the Catholic faithful like a cup of cold sick. The bishops of New York state wrote on Twitter:
“There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr President. We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St Peter. Do not mock us.”
The very high profile progressive Jesuit priest James Martin said:
“Even though I find this deeply offensive, I will presume that Mr Trump meant this light-heartedly. But imagine the incandescent outrage, the swift condemnation, and the individual and joint protests from the US bishops if this had been done by Joe Biden or Barack Obama.”
Even Trump-friendly prelates such as the conservative Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan have criticised the post. American Catholicism has long been a hotbed of traditionalism, which has fostered not only a strong anti-Francis faction but also a growing closeness to Trumpism. There are even some more renegade priests and bishops who have started to build a kind of Catholic-flavoured cult around the dear leader (see March’s gathering at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as one example).
But as all who follow Trump find out sooner or later, he doesn’t care about you. He only cares about himself. He will happily cultivate Catholic support for his own ends, but have no compunction to then chuck the faithful under the bus for a few cheap laughs on Twitter. That’s a lesson the toadying vice president and Catholic convert JD Vance has yet to learn, however, as he has inevitably defended his boss’s joke.
And when the furore erupted, Trump effortlessly switched into outright lying mode, saying on Monday that the “fake news media” had whipped up the whole shebang and ordinary Catholics in the pews were big fans of his trolling:
“I had nothing to do with it. Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the Pope, and they put it out on the internet. Give me a break. It was just, somebody did it in fun. It’s fine. Have a little fun, don’t you?
You mean they can’t take a joke? You don’t mean the Catholics, you mean the fake news media. Not the Catholics, they loved it.”
Making progress in Bangor
We last covered Bangor Cathedral in the Church in Wales in March, after news broke that two investigations had been ordered by the Bishop of Bangor, who is also the Archbishop of Wales, Andrew John. There was at the time very little clarity on what exactly were the concerns, except that they related to safeguarding in some way.
Bangor had already been under scrutiny after in an extremely unusual move it was put under the charge of the freshly-ordained diocesan secretary Sion Rhys-Evans (effectively the chief executive of the Diocese of Bangor, the senior lay figure in the diocese’s leadership team). And then Rhys-Evans was mysteriously off work for almost a year without explanation, before leaving for good in December, again without explanation.
Now, both investigations have been completed and summaries of their findings (but not the full reports) published. First, the Visitation ordered by John. Visitations are a power all bishops have to, rarely, sweep in and poke around a cathedral to see what’s happening. Ordinarily, cathedrals are run fairly independently of their diocesan authorities and the bishops, and cathedral deans jealously guard this historic freedom. But, a bit like when a school goes into special measures, when things really hit the fan the bishop can order a Visitation and the cathedral has to submit.
The terms of reference for the Visitation were very broad. The investigators appointed by John were to look into the “culture, language and behaviours exhibited by clergy, employees, officers and volunteers”, the “quality of Christian faith and holiness in the cathedral”, how strong “professional and personal boundaries” were between colleagues, and the supervision by the senior leadership of other members of the chapter (the clergy employed to run the cathedral).
The summary published does not have any detail on what was told to the investigators in their dozens of interviews, but instead jumps straight to their recommendations. These are:
The next Dean of Bangor should not hold any other diocesan roles, it’s a full-time job.
An acting dean with strong authority should be quickly appointed to “steady the ship” while a permanent appointment is made. And more clergy should be appointed to the chapter which is understaffed, full stop.
A lay person should be elected to chair the chapter, rather than the dean automatically being chair.
More trustee training for the chapter (the cathedral is a registered charity and chapter members are by default the trustees) to improve their financial and governance scrutiny.
Appoint a chaplain to oversee the choir and ensure its members (some of whom are not Christians) conduct themselves appropriately.
‘Create a culture of respectful communications’, in an effort to ‘eliminate unkind and inappropriate’ messages.
The other report came from the independent Christian safeguarding agency ThirtyOneEight. They were given very similar terms of reference. They concluded:
The cathedral relied too heavily on informal structures and lacked contracts or code of conducts for staff, who also did not have a good grasp of procedures and policies. As a result there was a risk of junior staff being bullied by their superiors and children/vulnerable people being more vulnerable to abuse.
Safeguarding concerns were always referred to the Church’s national safeguarding team in the absence of a trusted local designated safeguarding lead on the ground.
The chapter failed in their duty to properly oversee or challenge the running of the cathedral, leaving a void of authority. Safer recruitment policies were not always followed when hiring.
John’s letter announcing the investigation was over serious safeguarding issues sparked fears the choir would be disbanded and was potentially confusing or even misleading.
Most significantly, the reviewers reported finding incidents of
“Inappropriate language”
Excessive alcohol consumption
Bad language and humiliating banter used in front of younger choir members
“A culture in which sexual boundaries seemed blurred, and to some promiscuity was acceptable”
Private WhatsApp groups where members of the cathedral community passed around negative and “wholly inappropriate” remarks about others
Homophobic comments being made and not challenged
The recommendations were fairly prosaic, mostly around better embedding safeguarding in the cathedral’s workings (standing agenda items, prominent on the website etc). Job descriptions and contracts for all lay paid staff were also needed, along with codes of conduct for staff and volunteers, DBS checks (kind of mind-blowing a church institution in the 2020s is not yet doing this), and risk assessments for things like the choir, toddler groups, alcohol usage and social media accounts.
John has issued his own statement responding to these two reports, noting the criticisms would be “hard to hear—but they must be faced if we are to move forward with integrity”. He has asked one of his archdeacons to chair an implementation group which would aim to put into practice all the recommendations within three months. There would also be a second group to oversee this and the recruitment of a new dean.
“We shall commit ourselves to the work of repair, of rebuilding trust and of creating a healthier culture—together. While this has been a sobering time, it also offers us opportunity for change.”
There’s plenty here that is concerning - a Christian worshipping community which appears to have struggled with bullying, excessive drinking culture, and sexual promiscuity. And that’s on top of all the institutional issues around a lack of a grip on safeguarding and a dysfunctional and absent leadership group. In light of this it seems like it was a serious error of judgement for John to appoint his own diocesan secretary as a newly ordained curate to job-share as the acting dean, and then to leave the cathedral leaderless for most of 2024 with that job-sharing acting dean on leave.
But to his credit, he has promptly ordered independent investigations and published the findings, and seems committed to cleaning up the mess speedily. As I think I’ve mentioned before, it is possible to discern through the endless flow of these stories some incremental progress being made by UK church institutions.
It’s not linear and nor is it uniform across denominations, but you do get the sense that we are gradually getting a better handle on how to address these problems fairly and transparently. There is now a pretty well-established playbook: appoint an independent reviewer, issue statements and updates transparently as far as possible, and focus not just on institutions and policies, but also culture. Open the books, let in the sunlight, be ready to accept outside critique.
There are common threads between more minor reviews like this in Bangor (which will no doubt be forgotten by the wider church within a few months) and the bigger ones we’ve all heard about and can’t stop talking about: Smyth, Pilavachi, Fletcher and the rest. The stories are depressing, but it is heartening that they are coming out and now being handled better and better each time. Through painful repetition and trial and error churches are getting a little better at this stuff.
In a perfect world all churches and cathedrals would be paragons of virtue and home to healthy, kind, loving cultures. Given that is not, and never will be, the case, the next best thing is that when these kind of issues emerge the leaders responsible for them tackle it promptly and openly. A couple of decades ago it’s hard to believe an Archbishop of Wales taking these complaints from his cathedral about bullying, unkind messages, a drinking culture or lack of safeguarding processes very seriously. If they did, they’d probably try to handle it all in-house on the quiet. Now, there’s a playbook to follow and, more importantly, an expectation from most in the church that the playbook will be stuck to.
It might not feel like it, but that is progress.
Shame, honour & the gospel: Recovering what we’ve missed
Is there an element of the gospel which we’ve forgotten about? That Jesus came not to just to deal with the guilt of our sin and forgive that, but to deal with the shame of being sinners and to cover that too. In this episode we dig into the differences between shame-honour cultures and guilt-forgiveness cultures. So-called honour killings, when family members murder their own kin to end their supposed shaming of the family, baffle and repulse us in the West, and yet Jesus came to a context in first century Judaea which was profoundly honour-based. How can we re-examine the gospel message he brought in this light to see what our profoundly individualistic culture in the West might have missed? And, are things starting to shift in both secular society and the church in recent times, as we drift towards a new form of shame-honour culture driven by cancellation and public shaming via social media?
Quickfire
The increasingly liberal United Reformed Church has issued a statement responding to the UK Supreme Court’s ruling on the biological definition of ‘woman’ in UK equalities law. They don’t explicitly criticise the judges’ conclusions, but do “lament” that the ruling will have a negative impact on trans people, already a vulnerable and marginalised group in society.
The Supreme Court in the United States are apparently signalling their openness to America’s first ever religious school funded by public money. Until now the constitution’s separation of church and state had meant no public schools could have a religious foundation, but Oklahoma is trying to sign off on a Catholic school, independently run but funded by taxpayer cash. This is being opposed in the court by various groups, but in oral arguments the conservative majority of justices apparently seemed sympathetic to the charter school’s case.
We have discussed in previous newsletters the thorny question of why reports of persecution against Christians around the world receives relatively sparse media coverage. This good feature by Premier Christianity looks into the question more deeply, with some fascinating conclusions.
The international humanitarian aid agency Christian Aid is to undergo a huge restructuring, cutting almost half its jobs and pivoting to funding local partner groups rather than maintaining its own country offices. By the end, Christian Aid will be mostly funneling its donors’ money to locally-run groups, rather than delivering much aid directly itself. The charity has insisted the decision was not primarily driven by the UK government slashing its aid budget earlier this year, but admit that aid is playing a smaller role in global affairs than previously and Christian Aid must adjust accordingly.
A Surrey church built by a Victorian sect has been closed off since 1901 and ordered to remain shut until the Second Coming. A Catholic Apostolic Church was built in 1839 in Albury by a local magnate who had joined the movement (which still exists today, albeit in much smaller form and very fragmented). However, when the local Albury movement fizzled out the church was sealed in pristine condition, and a caretaker hired to maintain the grounds and keep out interlopers until Jesus returns. It’s still there today, the BBC reports.
The Standard is jumping on the whole quiet revival bandwagon and has a surprisingly lengthy piece exploring the growth of “hipster Christianity” among London’s trendy young things. The reporter ventures to a little-known church attracting Gen Zers where the vicar wears trainers while delivering his TED talk-style sermons to a crowd of thousands, before some Coldplay-esque worship music. You probably won’t have heard of it - it’s called HTB. To be fair, the reporter then moves on to another achingly cool London church which has lots of young folk attending - a massive multi-site charismatic evangelical Anglican church called SAINT (yes, all caps), which was… planted by HTB.
The Bishop of London Sarah Mullally (who leads the C of E’s healthcare policy work) has described the revelation that the assisted dying bill would save the NHS money by killing off its chronically ill patients as “chilling”. The government has published its impact assessment of the legislation, which is in the middle of its parliamentary process, revealing it expects the law would cut costs overall. Mullally said the church would oppose any change in the law which would “put the vulnerable at risk rather than working to improve access to desperately needed palliative care services.”
The police have arrested a man in connection with a spate of dead animals being left outside churches around the New Forest. The unnamed 47-year-old was arrested on two counts of criminal damage and ten counts of religiously aggravated criminal damage, after dead lambs and deer carcasses were deposited outside places of worship.
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