Questions surround the governance of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, the conservative evangelical flagship church in the City of London, after its Church of England Rector suggested that delegated episcopal oversight was tainted by false teaching.
St Helen’s is under the delegated oversight of the ‘flying’ conservative evangelical Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Rob Munro, who is an assistant bishop in the Diocese of London. But the only reference to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet on the St Helen’s website is in its complaints policy under the whistleblowing section.
The complaints policy offers no explanation about the Bishop of Ebbsfleet’s relationship with the St Helen’s Parochial Church Council, its governing body.
In an address on responding to false teachers in the Church of England to the St Helen’s staff team on September 10th, Rector William Taylor quoted the Apostle Paul’s instruction to Titus, his delegate on the Greek island of Crete in the AD 1st Century, as recorded in the New Testament:
‘Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them,’ (Titus 3v10 – New International Version).
Mr Taylor argued that because the House of Bishops’ Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process on human sexuality promoted false teaching, faithful churches and ministers should dissociate themselves from the bishops. After LLF ran into legal difficulties over the authorisation of dedicated services of blessing for same-sex couples, the General Synod voted to bring the process to an end last February.
Mr Taylor told St Helen’s staff workers: ‘There can be no closer spiritual tie with a false teacher than allowing them to select your future leaders, train your new church workers, ordain your new deacons and presbyters, and install your new incumbents.’
In an apparent criticism of Bishop Munro, who was consecrated by former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, in 2023, and in October 2025 congratulated Sarah Mullally on her nomination as next Archbishop, Mr Taylor declared: ‘It is quite simply impossible to fathom how a person could get consecrated by a group of bishops who are engaged in any way with the LLF process to move it forward or could welcome an archbishop who is instrumental in driving forward the whole LLF process.’