TRADITIONAL Christian teaching on sexual morality is a safeguarding risk to young people. That was the anti-free-speech trick shamelessly played by self-styled ‘progressives’ at the meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod in Westminster last week.

The five-day Synod was dominated by the Bishops’ botched attempt under their ‘Living in Love and Faith’ project to push ahead with ‘standalone’ or ‘bespoke’ services of blessing for same-sex couples after civil marriages.

At the Synod meeting in February 2023 it looked as if the Bishops were about to authorise such services when a majority of members voted for them. But after nearly three years of internal wrangling about the precise legal route to authorising dedicated gay blessings, the Bishops issued a statement last January. They said standalone services legally required a two-thirds majority in each of the three Houses of Synod; Bishops, Clergy and Laity. Despite overwhelming support in the House of Bishops, the February 2023 motion had got through with quite narrow majorities in the Houses of Clergy and Laity, so gay wedding celebrations could not go ahead in parish churches after all.

The Bishops’ botch-up hung over the February 2026 General Synod like the stench from a blocked Victorian lavatory in a church hall. The ‘progressives’ were seething.

The Revd Canon Stuart Craddock, a clergy member from Lincoln Diocese, led the charge, submitting this written question to the House of Bishops in advance of the Synod meeting: 

Read it all in The Conservative Woman