Knowing the end from the beginning

Even the bishops accept there is a crisis in how new ones are appointed, but are their proposed reforms actually going to solve anything?

Hello! Regular readers will know there is a slow-burning crisis of confidence in how the Church of England appoints (or more regularly, fails to appoint) new bishops. This has finally burst out into the open, with the bishops themselves now proposing some major changes to how the highly contested and increasingly partisan process works. Will this calm things down or raise the temperature further?

Next, we briefly explore if the time is approaching when the government may consider ejecting the C of E’s bishops from the House of Lords, and why people find it so hard to come up with convincing defences of their presence in the first place. Then we dive into succession planning - with Justin Welby’s retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury approaching, who might replace him in the top job, and how on earth should this be decided? And finally, what does the church have to do with the Grenfell Tower disaster and the lessons society should be learning from that devastating catastrophe?

There’s …