The situation the Church of England is now in.
The situation in which the Church of England finds itself as a result of the vote on the amended House of Bishops motion on Living in Love and Faith is a peculiar one.
In its official sources of doctrine, the Church of England maintains unchanged the traditional beliefs of the Christian Church as a whole, based on the teaching of the Bible:
a) That marriage is between two people of the opposite sex, that the sole legitimate place for sexual intercourse to take place is within marriage thus defined, and that any form of marriage or sexual activity outside these parameters is sinful.
b) That sinful activity needs to be addressed through repentance, absolution and amendment of life.
c) That those who are ordained ought to be living lives of visible holiness.
However, the result of November’s Synod vote is going to be that the House of Bishops will commend prayers of blessing for use in normal church services for those in same-sex marriages and/or sexually active same-sex relationships and with also authorise experimental ‘standalone’ services to mark such marriages and relationships. This liturgical provision will not contain any call for those in such marriages and relationships to repent of them, to receive absolution and to amend their lives so that they are in conformity the Church’s teaching.
In addition, it seems almost certain that the House of Bishops will institute a change in the Church of England’s existing practice which will mean that those who are in same-sex marriages and/or same-sex sexual relationships will be permitted to be ordained. This will mean that lives of visible holiness in relation to marriage and sexual conduct will no longer be a pre-requisite for ordination.
The result of these changes will be that as a result of the action of the majority of the bishops the Church of England will be a Church that still upholds beliefs a, b and c above in terms of its official doctrine, but will have ceased to uphold them in its practice.
The question I want to address in the remainder of this paper is how conservative Christians in the Church of England who continue to uphold the traditional Christian beliefs listed above should relate to their bishops in this new situation.
Why it is right to remain in the Church of England.
One solution would of course be to leave the Church of England entirely and so not to have to deal with its bishops at all. There are those who contend that faithful ministers and lay people in the Church of England should do just that. The Church of England, they argue, has become unsound and therefore faithful Christians ought to leave an either join orthodox Anglican jurisdictions, such as the Anglican Mission in England, or one of the Evangelical Free Churches. Good people have made the decision to do this and their decision, made in good conscience, ought to be respected. However, arguably, this is not the only decision that can rightly be made.
The reason for this is powerfully set out by Nigel Atkinson in his recent paper ‘Asleep in the cavern of enchantment: The Church of England in 2023.’ He writes:
‘In the Church of England there are still souls who believe and trust in Jesus. And it is an honourable thing to stay and try and minster to them even as we call for the Church to come back to a sound mind. And I think this because you may remember that after the Reformation began to take hold in England some radical, purist, Puritans arose in the Church. And they began to argue that the Church of Rome was an apostate, fallen Church. That everyone, everyone, who lived and died in the Church of Rome were Papists and when they died they all went to hell. And therefore, the argument went, the Reformed Church of England should abolish anything that smacked of the Papacy. Or that reeked of medievalism. Naturally they had the Bishops of the Church in mind as they were the obvious residue and hang over that remained in the newly minted Reformed Church of England.
But Hooker took a different view. He was reluctant to consign everyone who lived and died in the Church since the year 700 AD to 1517 to everlasting perdition and woe. And he said: No. Those who lived and died in the Church of Rome were not papists but ‘our Fathers’. And surprisingly Luther took the same line. He argued that in the apostate Roman Church the real Church still existed.
Where did she exist? And the answer that came back was that ‘she lurked beneath the folds of that garment of many colours, which the hand of superstition had woven and embellished for her…she slept in that cavern of enchantment, where costly odours and intoxicating fumes were floating around to overpower her sense’.
The language is undoubtedly extravagant, but the point is an unanswerable one. Hooker and Luther are both saying that in the Church of Rome the true Church still existed. She has always existed. She was always there, hidden and overpowered, lurking and sleeping no doubt; but ever present.
And surely the same is true for us.’ [1]
Why the issue of alternative episcopal oversight arises.
If people do choose to remain in the Church of England for the reasons set out by Atkinson, the first thing they need to understand is that be in the Church of England’s ecclesiology all members of the Church are automatically ‘in communion’ with their diocesan bishops and with any suffragan bishops acting under his or her authority.
There is no precise official definition of what being ‘in communion’ with a bishop means, but in broad terms it means two things. First, it means accepting in principle the spiritual and legal authority of a particular bishop as a bishop of the Church of God possessing jurisdiction over the clergy and laity in a particular place. Secondly, it means being willing to receive their exercise of episcopal functions such as preaching, teaching, ordaining, confirming, baptising, celebrating Holy Communion, licensing ordained and lay ministers, and exercising ecclesiastical discipline.
If someone rejects all of these two forms of being in communion with regard to a particular bishop then they are out of communion with them. If, however, they are willing to accept some of these two aspects of being in communion but not others, then their communion with the bishop in question still exists but is impaired in the sense of being limited (as when we say that someone has ‘impaired movement’). The term ‘impaired communion’ means exactly the same as the term ‘impaired fellowship’ since both ‘communion’ and ‘fellowship’ are translations of the same Greek word koinionia used in New Testament passages such as Acts 2:42, 2 Corinthians 13:14 ands 1 John 1:3.
For conservative Christians the current situation in the Church of England raises the issue of impaired communion with a bishop because from the earliest days of the Church a key part of the role of the bishop has been to uphold orthodox Christian belief and practice and to oppose and prevent any deviation from these.[2]
This understanding of the bishop’s role is expressed in the Church of England’s normative 1662 Ordinal in the question asked of someone about to be consecrated bishop: ‘Be you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word: and both privately and openly to call upon and encourage others to the same?’ Unless the candidate is willing to answer: ’I am ready, the Lord being my helper’ they cannot be consecrated.
The tradition of the Church from Patristic times onwards has also been that Christians should not remain under the oversight of bishops who have failed uphold orthodoxy in faith and practice. Ideally such bishops should be deposed and replaced after due ecclesiastical process, or, if that does not happen, faithful Christians should simply find themselves an alternative bishop.
For example, referring to bishops as ‘priests’ Cyprian writes as follows to Christians in Spain:
‘Nor let the people flatter themselves that they can be free from the contagion of sin, while communicating with a priest who is a sinner, and yielding their consent to the unjust and unlawful episcopacy of their overseer, when the divine reproof by Hosea the prophet threatens, and says, ‘Their sacrifices shall be as the bread of mourning; all that eat thereof shall be polluted; ‘ (Hosea 9:4) teaching manifestly and showing that all are absolutely bound to the sin who have been contaminated by the sacrifice of a profane and unrighteous priest. Which, moreover, we find to be manifested also in Numbers, when Korah, and Dathan, and Abiram claimed for themselves the power of sacrificing in opposition to Aaron the priest. There also the Lord commanded by Moses that the people should be separated from them, lest, being associated with the wicked, themselves also should be bound closely in the same wickedness. ‘Separate yourselves,’ said He, ‘from the tents of these wicked and hardened men, and touch not those things which belong to them, lest you perish together in their sins.’ (Numbers 16:26) On which account a people obedient to the Lord’s precepts, and fearing God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful prelate, and not to associate themselves with the sacrifices of a sacrilegious priest, especially since they themselves have the power either of choosing worthy priests, or of rejecting unworthy ones.’ [3]
Similarly, Augustine writes ‘We should not obey those bishops who have been duly elected, if they commit errors, or teach or ordain anything contrary to the divine Scripture.’ [4]
In the same vein Luther writes that:
‘….wherever there is a Christian congregation in possession of the gospel, it not only has the right and power but also the duty – on pain of losing the salvation of its souls and in accordance with the promise made to Christ in baptism – to avoid, to flee, to depose, and to withdraw from the authority that our bishops… and the like are now exercising. For it is clearly evident that they teach and rule contrary to God and his word… it is a divine right and a necessity for the salvation of souls to depose or avoid such bishops … and whatever is of their government.’ [5]
The reason for this ancient tradition is very simple. The bishops are the shepherds of Christ’s flock. If they attempt to lead the flock in the wrong direction, they lose any genuine authority (see Article 13 of the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration) and need to be replaced with someone who will take the flock in the right direction instead. What this tradition means for conservative Christians in the Church of England today is that they should (a) seek the deposition and subsequent replacement of the bishops who have support the illegitimate innovations described at the start of this paper, or (b) seek alternative episcopal oversight.
It would be possible for them to attempt bring about (a) using the 1963 Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure, but going down this avenue is unlikely to prove successful. No such case against a bishop has ever been attempted and the political pressure to dismiss such a case would be enormous.
This leaves (b) and here it has to be noted, first of all, that there is no legal way for churches and ministers in the Church of England to unilaterally break all ties with their diocesan bishop. Under Canon C.18 a diocesan bishop has what is known as ‘ordinary jurisdiction’ in their diocese. This means that everyone in the diocese comes under the oversight of the diocesan bishop (and by extension any suffragan bishop he or she appoints) and this oversight cannot simply be repudiated by a minister or a parish.
This means that the only way in which option (b) would be legally possible would be with the agreement of the diocesan bishop who would grant another bishop permission to exercise alternative episcopal oversight in his or her diocese.
How alternative episcopal oversight might be provided.
One way this agreement might come about would through an agreement across the Church of England as a whole for the establishment of an agreed national scheme for alternative oversight.
Read it all at the Reflections of an Anglican Theologian
