The Church of England’s next Bishop of London faces the difficult challenge of sorting out the relationship between St Helen’s Bishopsgate and the ‘flying’ Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Rob Munro.
The episcopal oversight of this conservative evangelical flagship church in the City of London has come under the media spotlight after Rector William Taylor appeared to criticise Bishop Munro in an address to St Helen’s staff workers on September 10.
Bishop Munro oversees around 150 parishes across England whose Parochial Church Councils (PCCs) have passed the necessary resolution due to their ‘complementarian’ view of the role of men and women in the Church and their theological opposition to women bishops.
Asked about his relationship with St Helen’s, Bishop Munro told Anglican Ink: ‘I have had no official correspondence from either Rev Wiliam Taylor or the St Helen’s PCC, about this matter. I was told that St Helen’s had already previously declined the offer to receive my ministry prior to my consecration, although I did not inherit formal paperwork to that effect, and remain willing and able to serve any complementarian ministers and resolution churches that request my ministry.’
The Church Times reported on September 25: ‘The Rector of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in London, the Revd William Taylor, has characterised the bishops of the Church of England as “false teachers” and “clear heretics”, in a sermon published on YouTube last week.’
Mr Taylor argued that faithful churches and ministers should dissociate themselves from the C of E’s bishops because their Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process on sexuality promoted false teaching.
Apparently criticising Bishop Munro for congratulating former Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, on her nomination as Archbishop of Canterbury in October 2025, Mr Taylor said: ‘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.’
The fact that St Helen’s is officially under the delegated episcopal oversight of Bishop Munro is reflected in the complaints policy on its website, which refers to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet under the whistleblowing section.
But the complaints policy does not explain the Bishop of Ebbsfleet’s relationship with St Helen’s nor does he feature anywhere else on the church’s website.
St Helen’s is not commenting on its current relationship with Bishop Munro, an assistant bishop in the Diocese of London. But its PCC did vote to come under the oversight of Bishop Munro’s predecessor, Rod Thomas, the conservative evangelical Bishop of Maidstone who retired in 2022.
Bishop Thomas promoted whistleblowing policies in conservative evangelical churches in the wake of the scandal around Jonathan Fletcher, the serial church abuser unmasked by the Daily Telegraph in 2019. Fletcher was senior curate at St Helen’s from 1976 to 1981.
Fletcher was instrumental in launching the preacher training organisation, the Proclamation Trust, in the early 1980s, whose first chairman was the former Rector of St Helen’s, Prebendary Dick Lucas. In May, in a ‘trial of facts’ hearing at Kingston Crown Court in south London, a jury found that Fletcher ‘did the act’ on eight counts of indecent assault alleged to have taken place against a young man between 1973 and 1999. Fletcher did not face an actual trial because he had been diagnosed with dementia.
The St Helen’s whistleblowing policy says: ‘If the complaint is about serious malpractice or wrongdoing that is in the wider public interest (for example, a criminal offence or a breach of a legal duty), you can follow the complaints policy below or you may prefer to contact the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, or the Police or a whistleblowing charity, such as Public Concern at Work.’
So, the Bishop of Maidstone’s episcopal oversight of St Helen’s, delegated from the Bishop of London, appears to have transferred in theory to Bishop Munro, who was consecrated as Bishop of Ebbsfleet at Canterbury Cathedral in 2023.
The C of E’s Crown Nominations Commission had its first meeting on September 23 to select the new Bishop of London and is due to have a further meeting in November.
For the sake of the transparent accountability of the licensed clergy of St Helen’s Bishopsgate across its congregations and church plants, the new senior pastor of London Diocese faces the hard task of ensuring that Bishop Munro’s theoretical oversight, reflected in the church’s whistleblowing policy, becomes a practical reality.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire, UK.