In 2017, Bishop Martin Morrison of the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa (REACH SA) was one of those who travelled to NE England to consecrate the Rt Revd Jonathan Pryke, a long-standing curate at Jesmond Parish Church. It was claimed that this radical action was necessary because it would allow Pryke “to provide ongoing episcopal ministry to Jesmond Parish Church, related churches and proposed new churches in a more sustainable way.”
Now, Jonathan Pryke is alive and well, but still Bishop Martin Morrison has had to twice return to the United Kingdom, in 2025 and 2026, in order to lay his episcopal hands on seven men each time and ‘ordain’ [1] them to the diaconate.
This 16,000 mile round-trip was necessary because of a forseeable fly in the ointment of the claimed, “more sustainable way” – namely, the Bishop of Newcastle, in whose diocese Pryke serves. The Rt Revd Christine Hardman, and her successor the Rt Revd Helen-Ann Hartley, have made it very clear that while the Rt Revd Jonathan Pryke may be validly, if irregularly, consecrated, he was not at liberty to offer any episcopal ministry within the Church of England without their permission. In other words, should Pryke have laid his episcopal hands on any one of these fourteen men he would very quickly have found himself disciplined by his actual diocesan bishop. That this was not a vain threat, became clear when Bishop Tim Wambunya was disciplined for his involvement in non-church of England ordinations in 2024.
For the same reason, orthodox retired Church of England bishops, who wish to remain in good standing with the diocese in which they reside, cannot offer any kind of episcopal ministry beyond that which their diocesan allows. Instead, the most the Rt Revds Rod Thomas, Julian Henderson, Pete Broadbent, Henry Scriven and Keith Sinclair can do, to support orthodox churches, is to join the ranks of presbyters offering to mentor clergy through CEEC’s ‘Alternative Spiritual Oversight’ scheme.
Professor Andrew Atherstone attended the REACH SA/ ReNew ordinations in 2025 and 2026 and has written at length about them both (2025 and 2026 ), for the Law and Religion online forum. He ventures that, “Alternative structures are steadily being built within the Church of England,” in which these ordinations are a, “significant plank.” Notwithstanding this positive take on the events, Atherstone make three very fair criticisms.
Lack of transparency
“Ordination is a public event, marking entrance into a public ministry. Candidates must therefore be open to scrutiny by the wider church and their ordinations should not be confidential. There might be rare exceptions to this rule, in nations under oppressive anti-Christian regimes where new clergy risk their lives, but this hardly applies in England…. At the ordination service, the name of each ordinand was announced as they were presented to the bishop, but nothing about the churches in which they serve. If their training incumbents were present – which perhaps they were not – they were deliberately inconspicuous and impossible to identify. This reticence is not healthy or sustainable in the long term. Full transparency over ordinations is essential. It would be better for the new deacons and their training incumbents, if they are confident in their actions, to be publicly announced and face the consequences.”
Lack of women
“All fourteen new deacons, in 2025 and 2026, are men in their 20s or early 30s, though ethnically diverse. During the latest ordination service, all three Scripture passages were read by women, and the deacons’ wives joined their husbands on the platform for the post-ordination prayer. But no women were ordained. Why not?”
Lack of accountability
“Given the demands of ministry at home, he (Morrison) flew in from Johannesburg on the day of the ordinations and flew home the following evening – a new style of ‘flying bishop’. But it is difficult to have oversight of 14 deacons from a distance of over 5,000 miles [it is in fact nearly 8,000 miles]. Flying visits are not sustainable. Morrison is therefore aiming to appoint formal REACH representatives in England, to act as his delegates, which will help as a temporary measure.”
To those concerns, one could add:
Lack of canonical clarity
From what Andrew Atherstone writes, it appears that, despite the fact that REACH SA do not actually ‘ordain’ deacons, these fourteen deacons are canonically resident in REACH SA and accountable to Bishop Martin Morrison under the canons of REACH SA. If this is the case, should one of them transgress, the only canonical response would be for the complaint to be made to REACH SA. Putting aside the practicalities of conducting a disciplinary process across the far reaches of two continents, it is quite possible that the cultural and canonical expectations of ministry in South Africa and England may differ. A problem would potentially arise if a decision is made in South Africa which does not sit well with the deacon’s incumbent or the church in which they are serving. It would be very strange for the English incumbent to accept the decision of a foreign bishop, but it would be even more bizarre if the English incumbent is able to over-rule the bishops’ episcopal authority over the deacon.
The complications of Bishop Martin Morrison providing, “formal REACH [SA] representatives in England, to act as his delegates,” are enough to drive a canon lawyer crazy.
It is the fact many involved would suggest these matters are irrelevant that is most concerning, suggesting as it does an understanding of Anglican ecclesiology that is unique in the history of Christendom.
Lack of presbyteral ordinations
In 2025, Atherstone wrote:
“Next year it is expected that Bishop Morrison will return to ordain them as presbyters. In a Church of England context, they will not exercise any of the functions reserved for the clergy – such as Baptisms, Weddings, and Holy Communions – but will pastor and teach the Scriptures as lay people. Why then get ordained? Their primary rationale is that it connects them with global Anglicanism and gives their ministries a form of public recognition.”
In 2026, he had to report:
“It was initially anticipated that the seven deacons ordained by REACH in 2025 would be ordained as presbyters in 2026, but all have paused the process. This is not a sign of cold feet, but of their desire to wait in hope for Church of England bishops to come to their aid.”
The reality is that the ReNew Alternative Selection Pathway has hit the same buffers as Jesmond’s attempt to find an episcopal “sustainable way”. Those who remain in the Church of England cannot separate themselves from the oversight, discipline and Ordinary jurisdiction of their diocesan bishop.
As Andrew Atherstone noted in 2025, the REACH SA deacons serve in their local churches as lay people. If they preach regularly they should hold a licence from their diocesan bishop, which some might suggest would indicate the existence of the very relationship with the bishops of the Church of England that these men were trying to avoid. Such a request would, however, not require the bishop to recognise their ordination, which allows diocesan bishops to turn a blind eye to the irregular ordinations.
It would, however, be a different matter all together if one of these men were ordained as a REACH SA presbyter by Bishop Martin and undertook presbyteral ministry in a Church of England parish. For the reasons given above, the REACH SA presbyter themselves would be outside the disciplinary procedures of the Church of England but their incumbents are not. The first time such a presbyter officiated at a wedding or presided at Holy Communion, without the formal permission of the diocesan bishop, it would put their incumbent at risk of discipline. It is therefore not just the deacons but their incumbents who have reason to wait.
Lack of an ‘English’ solution
Atherstone suggests that the issues of accountability and canonical clarity might be overcome by an “English solution.” He writes, “These new deacons view themselves as Church of England loyalists who are glad to receive ordination by REACH as a last resort and an emergency provision, but are looking to Church of England bishops to step forward with a better solution.”
Yet, the need for a “better solution” has been discussed for more than thirty years. Indeed, the Rt Revd Jonathan Pryke’s incumbent, Revd David Holloway, addressed the Reform Conference on the very topic in 1996. The real issue is that despite decades of thought, no “better solution” has been put forward, other than Anglican Futures suggestion of a Non-Geographical Diocese of the Church of England (NoGeoDoCE). This was rejected by the orthodox on the basis that the Archbishop of Canterbury would still remain the Primate. Yet, despite attempts to persuade the House of Bishops of the need for a Third Province, the House of Bishops have consistently rejected any form of additional episcopal oversight and more and more are coming to the conclusion that a Third Province is nothing more than a unicorn made of fairy dust.
Lack of a future
Atherstone describes these ordinations as a “temporary provision” or a “holding pattern.” It could just as easily be said that for most these ordinations are a ‘dead-end’. It is true that a few loyal men will be protected, by being given long-term paid roles within large fortress churches, such as St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, where the need for presbyteral ministry is minimal. In such places, and in the congregations they fund, the ambiguity surrounding their ordination and canonical residence will be overlooked, with all the related dangers such opacity brings.
Others, less favoured, will eventually find themselves faced with the dilemma, of what to do when they come to the end of their informal ‘curacy’, and the English solution has not been found. They will then have to make the same decision as their forebears, for there is a long tradition of avoiding diocesan bishops by diaconal ordination outside the Church of England. Eventually, each of these individuals has had to decide whether to remain in the Church of England and therefore be ordained by a Church of England bishop or leave the Church of England to serve in the Anglican Network in Europe or leave Anglicanism all together.
To give them their due, even ReNew recognises the potential dead-end in their plan. Those with ears to hear will recognise a number of caveats in the way they describe their ‘pathway’:
“There is now a clear pathway right up to and including ordination as ‘missionary clergy’ by REACH South Africa, an Anglican province whose orders can be recognised within the CofE (although there is no guarantee of this).”
Or as journalist, Tim Wyatt explained in a recent substack:
“Yes, you can go through the ReNew panel, you can spend a few years studying at Cornhill, and in a future summer you could even get ordained deacon by the REACH-SA bishop on one of his jaunts up from South Africa. But none of that changes the fact that until and unless you can reconcile yourself to working with the actual bishops in the C of E with the PLF in place, you will never be able to be a real C of E vicar.
And when there is a growing, evangelical, conservative, independent but still Anglican denomination literally right here ready to welcome, ordain and deploy you, this curious ersatz ordination workaround — just so you can sort-of pretend to minister in a church you consider to be theologically bankrupt while not actually deigning to accept its ordination — makes even less sense.”