Beyond reproach

The torturously complicated process to choose the new Archbishop of Canterbury is losing the faith of one half of the church

Hello! This week we are returning to the slow-moving and mind-numbingly bureaucratic procedure the Church of England is working through as it inches towards choosing Justin Welby’s successor as Archbishop of Canterbury. But even selecting the committee which then selects the committee which then selects the archbishop is mired in controversy and murky chaos. Is the C of E at risk of losing the trust completely of its conservative wing in its botched attempt to fill the most important job in the whole institution?

Unfortunately, for unforeseeable reasons outside of my control, I ran out of time yesterday to write anything else beyond this one story, so I’m afraid The Critical Friend is a little shorter than usual and lacks its final flurry of links also. Normal service will resume next week - thanks for your patience.

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Beyond reproach

Anglican Conservatives are getting a bit hot and bothered about the process to choose the next Archbishop of Canterbury. To explain why I’m afraid we are going to have to delve quite deep into some arcane church processes, but stick with me and I’ll see you through to the interesting bit.

We’ve rehashed the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) which makes the appointment before, so I won’t tire you with the full details again. The critical bit is one peculiarity of the Canterbury CNC. Unlike every other CNC, a few years ago the rules for Canterbury were changed to include five representatives from churches in the Anglican Communion. This was a nod to the fact that the ABC is not just the head of the Church of England, but also the figurehead for tens of millions of Anglicans from every other continent too, and perhaps they might have a view on who this person should be.

However, to avoid the Canterbury CNC becoming too large, three local reps from the Diocese of Canterbury were dropped to make room for the new international seats. So while a standard CNC features both archbishops, six members elected from the General Synod and six members elected from the local dioceses (total of 14 members), the Canterbury CNC now features a lay chair (this time round it’s the former head of MI5!), the Archbishop of York, one other bishop elected by the House of Bishops, six synod members, five international Communion reps, and just three local Canterbury reps (a total of 17 members).

Now the bit we are concerned with is that local contingent from Canterbury, cut in half to accommodate the new international reps. Those three members are being chosen from another committee (I know, I know), called the Vacancy in See Committee (VISC). Now, I have to admit that until the last few weeks I had assumed that VISCs were drawn up once a vacancy arose (i.e. in this case after Justin Welby resigned in November). It would be odd to keep a committee whose sole purpose was to manage vacancies for the many years in which there was no vacancy after all.

But I was, not for the first time, wrong! For the regulations specify that in every diocese at all times there must be a VISC. Who is on these eternal VISCs I hear you cry? Well: all bishops in the dioceses, the cathedral dean, two archdeacons, the diocese’s General Synod members (both clergy and lay), and the chairs of the houses of clergy and laity in the diocese’s separate local synod.

They all sit ex officio. Then there are elections from the diocesan synod members to choose an additional number of people - (it can be any number, but at least two have to be clergy and two lay) from the diocese. And the Bishop’s Council (yet another separate institution in each diocese) can also just choose up to four other people of their choosing to supplement the elected lot.

So that’s the VISC. The elected members serve for the duration of the three years of the diocesan synod term, and then must be re-elected. And for most of the time for that three years they never meet, because there is no vacancy and therefore nothing to do. But when a diocesan bishop moves on (suffragan (junior) bishop vacancies are filled by a much simpler process with no VISC or CNC), the VISC finally springs into action.

First, it meets to prepare a Statement of Needs, which is basically the job spec for the new bishop, what kind of figure the diocese is looking for. Then it elects from among its own membership six people to serve on the CNC which will choose the new bishop.

Although, in Canterbury, as we’ve seen, that figure is cut in half to just three. And to further complicate matters, there is a dizzying array of requirements for these local VISC-to-CNC reps. You can’t choose any suffragan bishops, and only one from the other senior staff (archdeacons, dean, other lay diocesan officials). Half of those elected have to be lay, as well. But to add even more layers of complexity, the VISC rules were tweaked as recently as last month when new regulations were approved by the General Synod. Now, you cannot have two people sitting on a VISC who come from the same church or parish. That counts for the ex officio members too, so for instance a lay worshipper at the cathedral cannot be elected because their dean already sits ex officio. And, if your vicar wins election unopposed to one of the clergy seats, you cannot be chosen even if you stack up hundreds of votes because you attend the same church.

When Welby announced his intent to resign in November, there was already a Canterbury VISC in place, elected back in 2022. However, its term elapsed at the end of 2024, while Welby did not legally end his term as ABC until 6 January. So managing his vacancy, drawing up the statement of needs and then electing three members should have been the job of a new VISC elected in January by the Canterbury diocesan synod.

Or, should it? Because the regulations state that once a VISC has begun working on a vacancy, its membership should remain consistent to the completion of the process, even if the elected members’ terms technically elapse in the middle. So, if the 2022-24 VISC managed to hold a meeting before the end of the year, that composition of members should have carried over through to handing over to the CNC this spring.

In January it was announced that the Canterbury VISC process had indeed begun in December, which would seem to suggest that the old VISC had to carry over into 2025 to finish its work and elect three from among its members to the CNC. However, the Diocese of Canterbury wentahead and elected a brand new VISC in January anyway (although there were six vacancies among its lay members, presumably because not enough folk stood).

But wait! A third VISC then emerged from the murk. It has been decided, for reasons which remain unclear, to not use either the 2022-24 VISC or the new 2025-27 VISC. Instead, a third VISC will be elected with the sole job of running the current post-Welby vacancy. Once the new ABC was chosen, it will dissolve and the 2025-27 VISC takes over again. The website of the diocese states that this new VISC is being formed “following a formal direction from the Archbishop of York”, which would seem to imply it wasn’t their decision but one taken by the national hierarchy.

This is, at the very least, a bit odd. When the 2025-27 VISC was elected everybody knew there was a vacancy coming as Welby had long since announced his intention to stand down. So it’s very strange to choose a VISC which (unusually) knows for certain there is a job to do, and then when said vacancy arises as expected, ditch it and go through the rigmarole of choosing a brand new VISC.

But, one critical difference between the two 2025 VISCs, is that the second one was elected after February’s General Synod meeting. And so it became the first VISC in the church to be elected with the new regulations in play: only one person can sit on a VISC per parish. And, similar provisions stand for the three people chosen from the VISC to the CNC - they also can’t come from the same church or parish. And, and, there is another new stipulation: at least one of those sent on to the CNC must be a lay woman and one must be female cleric.

Because Canterbury has such an unusually small delegation sent from its VISC to the CNC (three rather than the usual six), the maths starts to break down. Half of the contingent must be lay, but with only three members you round up, which means two of the three will be lay. And if one must also be a female cleric, this has the presumably unintentional effect of barring all male vicars in the Canterbury VISC from being chosen to sit on the CNC by default.

And this is where some conservatives have started to smell a rat. The conspiracy theories are out in force - have some shadowy liberal elements in the national church tried to stitch up the process by demanding a new VISC be formed under the post-February regulations in an effort to influence the people who filter through to sit on the Canterbury CNC? The elections to the third and final Canterbury VISC took place earlier this week, and although the results have not yet been announced already rumours are flitting about over certain conservative candidates who got ruled out because of the overlapping membership requirements.

Bear in mind, that the membership of CNCs has already become a febrile point of contention in recent years after two processes (for Carlisle and Ely) broke down because no candidate could get the support of two-thirds of the committee. There’s lots, lots, lots more detail on all of this in previous newsletters, but the upshot is that the whole CNC procedure has become poisoned by the gay blessings saga. The liberals are convinced that conservative synod members elected onto the CNC are stalling the process and refusing to back anyone insufficiently orthodox on sexuality.

There’s limited if any evidence for this, but because CNCs are confidential and all members sworn to secrecy, nobody really knows what goes on during the discussions. All they can tell is that four of the six pairs of members from the synod have voted against the Prayers of Love and Faith and so they fill in the gaps according to their darkest worries.

The bishops brought a package of reforms to the last synod in February to try and break through the logjam, a combination of abolishing the secret ballot inside CNCs and tweaking the majority rules to make it easier for a candidate to get appointed even if they can’t get the magic ten votes out of 14. To save time I’ll just quote from my newsletter from then explaining what happened:

“On the whole, pro-PLF synod members were in favour of the changes, while anti-PLF types were against. If you were a liberal you tended to see these as small-scale sensible tweaks to make it easier for CNCs to come to a decision and prevent minority groups from abusing the procedure. If you were a conservative you tended to see a malign conspiracy by the hierarchy to stick their thumb on the scales and execute a naked power grab against the clergy and laity.”

And so the CNC reforms brought by the pro-PLF Bishop of London were reliably voted against by the conservatives in synod, while any counter-proposals brought by anti-PLF members were voted down by the liberals. In the end nothing passed and the system remains as it was.

Both sides are convinced the other faction is weaponising the CNC to try and gain tribal advantage. And when the prize is appointing the literal head of the church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is it such a stretch to imagine your devious opponents might also stoop to stitching up the complicated procedures in voting for the committee which then votes for some of the CNC members?

Personally, I remain unconvinced. Contrary to the presumptions of many, by far the majority of people in the C of E are in it for good reasons. Even those whose theological positions you despise, they tend to be people acting in good faith trying to do what is right. There are, of course, some very notable exceptions but I do believe it remains true of the majority.

And, as ever, cock-up triumphs over conspiracy. It’s almost never a plot cooked up in smoke-filled rooms, but just cack-handed efforts pushed through without thinking about the consequences. Is it that hard to believe that when pushing through the new rules for VISCs and CNCs nobody thought through how the maths would inevitably break down with the unusually small three-person contingent sent by Canterbury? As much as, say, the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell would no doubt love his next archiepiscopal colleague in Canterbury to be pro-PLF like him, I find it hard to believe he is maliciously ripping up the rules on purpose to try and stitch up the VISC membership. After all, it only provides three of 17 members, and you still need to get to two-thirds for any candidate to win (that’s 12 votes).

I would, however, agree with some of the evangelicals pointing out more judiciously that it is unwise given the breakdown of trust for the Canterbury VISC process to be so chaotic and irregular. With the church gripped by factional infighting at every turn and rampant suspicion, it’s not enough that things are done fairly, but they must also be seen to be fair by all sides. To be “beyond reproach”, to coin a phrase.

As evangelical vicar and theologian Andrew Goddard, who has been tracking the VISC situation for a while, says in his latest blog, even once we move beyond the election issues (I haven’t even got time to go into the questions about how the Single Transferable Vote system can work here), there remain a litany of complications and awkwardnesses about the way the church is going about the ABC appointment. The very day the new special one-off VISC is announced, the diocesan leadership will have to convene on Zoom to choose one of its freshly-elected members as chair and decide whether they wish to appoint additional members. This is a legitimate process but one which obviously gives enormous power to the local hierarchy to appear to subvert the expressed democratic will of the diocese. As Goddard notes, anyone thus appointed by definition either did not stand in the election that literally just happened, or stood but was rejected by the electorate.

And then once the VISC membership is finally settled, because of the delay in electing a third committee so late in the day they are only going to have a matter of days to meet in person and then immediately move on to electing the magic three who get to sit on the CNC (in order to meet the CNC deadline of getting started in April). Normally a VISC will have been convened for years before it has to swing into action, and even then it has an earlier meeting to draw up the statement of needs (a chance for everyone around the table to get to know each other and where they all stand on things) before reconvening and electing the three CNCers.

But for this VISC, Goddard reports it was due to meet the very day after the election results were announced and crack on. The results were due… on Tuesday. As in Tuesday 25 March, three days ago. And yet no results have been announced by Canterbury. Nobody knows why yet. Has the complicated electoral system collapsed under the strain? Is someone trying to legally challenge the results? Are they just huddled in a bunker somewhere at diocesan HQ trying to cobble together a media strategy to deflect the expected furore from conservatives?!

All in all, it’s kind of a shambles. This is by far the most important election the C of E holds, the first time it’s done this since 2012, and even choosing the committee which chooses some members of the other committee is proving almost impossible. As Goddard concludes:

“Given the serious failures that have already come to light in the way that Canterbury diocese has handled the crucial processes relating to the VISC it is concerning that there remain real possibilities of further problems. These could result in an unrepresentative group of three being chosen through a process with questionable democratic credentials to serve on the CNC and/or further loss of trust in the processes both within the diocese and the wider Church of England.”

Now all this could be - and no doubt will be by some - dismissed as the sour grapes or conspiratorial grumblings of conservatives worried they are losing control of the process. As I have already said, I find it hard to believe in a bad faith attempt by liberals to subvert the VISC election for factional gain. But what is clear is that an election and appointment process of this magnitude must not simply be above board, it must be accepted as above board by all sides if it is to carry the church with it.

After all, if you’re a liberal who is already convinced themselves that for years now the unreconciled anti-PLF CNC members have been illegitimately blocking any progressive candidates from becoming bishops, does it not become easier and even morally justified for you to fiddle with the system in the other direction? If the hated conservatives have already broken the unspoken truce over not factionalising appointments, you’d be foolish to try to maintain the high ground, right?

And then if you’re a conservative, you already are convinced that the bishops and liberal hierarchy have deliberately skirted around proper synodical procedure and the C of E’s doctrine in introducing the PLF, so is it that much of a stretch to believe they might also try to stick a thumb on the scales of the CNC behind the scenes? And if they’re doing that, then you’d be foolish not to mobilise your own constituency to try and gum up this dodgy VISC/CNC along tribal lines, stymieing the dastardly plans of the other side.

And that’s how both sides could, in theory, talk themselves into bending if not breaking the non-partisan nature of the appointments process, simply because they assume the other guys are already a long way down this same road. If either side comes to believe the process is dodgy, even if it actually is entirely above board, the whole thing is in jeopardy.

If a pro-PLF name emerges from the CNC in the autumn at the end of their deliberations (as I and most people expect it will), of course some of the conservatives will hate it. But what would be most corrosive to the fragile C of E is if they don’t just dislike the choice, but they believe the person to be illegitimate. Evangelicals very clearly fell out with Welby towards the end of his tenure, but nobody questioned his right to be in the job. If the process of choosing the head of the church is widely believed to be corrupt by one faction then we really are up a creek without a paddle, and full-blown schism comes one step closer.

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Spiritual, but not religious: What do people actually believe these days?

The non-religious are an ever-increasing segment of the population, in the UK, the United States and across the Western world. But what do they actually believe, and indeed not believe, in? In this classic episode from the MOLAD archive we’re joined by evangelist and author Glen Scrivener to discuss the different spiritualities we encounter, especially among younger generations. Are all non-believers Richard Dawkins style naturalistic atheists, or is there a more complex and contradictory set of belief systems out there for those who don’t call themselves Christians? How should the church’s outreach shift to reflect the contemporary mores of Gen-Z and the pick-and-mix spiritualities they often espouse? And are modern social movements, whether ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ functioning like religions without creeds?

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That’s all I had time for this week - a full-size Critical Friend will appear next week God-willing! Thanks for reading.