Tomorrow, [27 March 2025] five new bishops will be consecrated in the Church of England. It should be a moment of celebration, a sign of the Church’s ongoing mission. But beneath the surface, there are tensions that reflect the divisions within Anglicanism today.
Four of these new bishops support maintaining—or even tightening—the Church’s exclusion of LGBTQ+ people. Two will serve in dioceses where there are no affirming bishops at all. One has been appointed specifically because they do not recognise two of the others as bishops. There is a real possibility that four will break communion with the one who might ordain married gay people. And one of them has, in the past, likened the Bishop of London’s leadership to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
What does this say about where we are as a Church? About the way we make decisions, the fears we hold, and the kind of leadership we choose to uphold?
Read it all at Sanctum Scotia
