The silence from conservative evangelicals in Sheffield Diocese over the appointment of the radically revisionist Rev Leah Vasey-Saunders as suffragan Bishop of Doncaster is mysterious.
Following the announcement of her appointment last week, Anglican Ink reported that she presided at a Holy Communion service under a revolving ‘Gaia’ installation when she was vicar of Lancaster Priory in Blackburn Diocese.
Under her leadership Lancaster Priory hosted the ‘Queering the Dream’ exhibition featuring artwork by the American neo-Marxist activist, Rev Dr Angela Yarber, during LGBT Pride month in June 2022.
In her announcement speech in Doncaster as Bishop-designate she signalled her intention to campaign for the revisionist stance on human sexuality: ‘I’ve always been drawn to walk alongside the people we easily overlook – ordinary, “unlikely” people. People who’ve been told they’re not the right kind of people because of race, class, sexuality, disability or age. And yet they’re exactly the people God so often chooses. I’ve seen them become leaders, ministers, preachers, prophets. Part of my call as bishop will be to keep creating space for them.’
Sheffield Diocese includes one of the largest Church of England churches in the UK, Christ Church Fulwood in south-west Sheffield. In a diocese with a usual Sunday attendance of under 11,000 out of 1.3 million people in South Yorkshire, this conservative evangelical church gets around 1000 worshippers through its doors on a usual Sunday.
Yet its vicar, Rev Johnny Dyer, has so far not commented on the appointment of Mrs Vasey-Saunders after Anglican Ink tried to contact him through the Fulwood church office. Christ Church Fulwood has a history of public campaigning against revisionism in the C of E. In the 1990s, its then vicar, the late Rev Philip Hacking, was chairman of the conservative evangelical network, Reform.
Two other conservative evangelical clergy who have led parish plants from Fulwood in Sheffield Diocese, Rev Chris Tufnell, priest-in-charge of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, and Rev Ed Pennington, minister of Christ Church Endcliffe, a now thriving church with a significant number of young people, were also contacted but have so far not commented. Mr Tufnell is a regular presenter of the daily Christian reflection on GB News.
Rev Pete Jackson, vicar of St Andrew’s Kendray, a parish church near Barnsley which Christ Church Fulwood has supported with finance and personnel, was contacted but has also not commented. Mr Jackson is the author of an evangelistic book, Things we all have in common, published by 10 of Those in 2022.
Because of its opposition to the ordination of women, Christ Church Fulwood comes under the delegated episcopal oversight of the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Dr Rob Munro, who is an honorary assistant bishop in Sheffield Diocese. He was asked about the new Bishop of Doncaster’s radically revisionist agenda, but he has not commented either.
None of these ministers could be described as a retiring introvert. So why the silence?
One possible explanation is the precedent set by militant feminists in Sheffield Diocese whose campaign in 2017 against Philip North, the Anglo-Catholic Bishop of Burnley, who had been appointed Bishop of Sheffield, led to his decision to withdraw. The Crown Nominations Commission swiftly appointed its second-choice candidate as Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, then Dean of Liverpool.
It is understandable that conservative evangelicals in Sheffield Diocese would not want to be associated with the kind of behaviour that Philip North, currently Bishop of Blackburn, described as ‘the highly individualised nature of the attacks upon me (which) have been extremely hard to bear’.
But a polite public statement explaining their concerns about the potential impact of Bishop Vasey-Saunders’s revisionist agenda would not be on a moral par with the aggressive campaign against Philip North, surely?
Could they not make clear that they are not campaigning for her withdrawal as Bishop of Doncaster? Could they not express their respect that the decision has been made by due process? But what is to stop them expressing their concerns that her spiritual and moral agenda would be potentially damaging not just to their churches and ministries but to other churches in the diocese?
If fear of disciplinary consequences is deterring conservative evangelical incumbents in Sheffield from putting out a polite, measured, public statement, the fact that no action was taken against any of the clergy who took part in the campaign against Philip North is surely germane here?
Bishop Wilcox has expressed his enthusiasm for the spiritual credentials of his suffragan-to-be as he sees them: ‘I am absolutely delighted by Leah’s appointment! I thank God for calling to our Diocese a gifted, missionary disciple of the Lord Jesus, who is passionate about the proclamation of the Gospel and about the transformation of human lives and communities, and all creation, in anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God.’
Do Sheffield conservative evangelicals agree with Dr Wilcox that the spiritual message Mrs Vasey-Saunders would be promoting as Bishop of Doncaster is one that definitely leads to eternal salvation in the coming Kingdom of God?
Julian Mann, a former vicar in Sheffield Diocese, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire, UK.