Helen King ViaMedia.News Jagged Edges: Where Safeguarding Overlaps with the Trust Deficit
Martin Gorick The Observer By reforming its position on sexuality of clergy, Church of England welcomes everyone
Richard Scorer Surviving Church The Matt Drapper Settlement. Damages awarded to plaintiff in ‘exorcism’ case.
Helen King ViaMedia.News July 2025 General Synod: money talks
Professor King notes in her second piece that in Oxford diocese some benefices have been in interregnum for two years. If it is any reassurance, I have been around many dioceses where vacancies have continued for *far* longer, or have simply been left vacant indefinitely with scant likelihood of any appointments being made. For example, at Great Stourton in Lincoln diocese, I was informed that the benefice had been vacant since the turn of the century, with absolutely no prospect of any appointment being made. She also notes that “Requests to have an extra agenda item on the Middle East… Read more »
Thanks Froghole. Opinions were divided over whether or not it would be useful to have a debate on the Middle East. It could have become a complete embarrassment; outside the C of E I have met Christians who think the conflict there is a sign of The Rapture approaching and so welcome it, and who knows? Perhaps there are members of the Synod who think that? It never fails to surprise me what my fellow members think about history, science, psychology… I remember at a previous York meeting hearing a speech about how there isn’t a climate emergency. One could… Read more »
Thank you very much for your reply. If a debate had occurred then it would surely have been right for those holding views ‘against the current’ to air them. It would then have exposed the toxins which may exist within the Church to public scrutiny. It might indeed have forced such people to confront the moral implications of such deranged views. If there are people within the Church who cleave to premillennial dispensationalism (which itself has dire implications for a certain group resident in the Holy Land if it fails to convert to Christianity prior to the ‘rapture’) then such… Read more »
I tend to agree that the church ought to make a clear position regarding Gaza. Whether it makes any practical difference is open to debate, but David Lammy seems to be making strong statements. My worry is that uninformed or naive statements are made, or statements which are so anodym that they are mere words. Or they are calls for this or calls for that which are only useful for self congratulation. I found Stephen Flynn’s behaviour in the HoC utterly reprehensible, it was only to bolster the SNP.. Which leads me to – if the CoE spoke authoritatvely and… Read more »
For a different view on Lammy, one widely shared by many (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/23/this-is-not-action-mps-respond-to-david-lammy-condemnation-of-israel), note this exchange between Kit Malthouse (Con. NW Hants) and Lammy earlier this week: Malthouse: “Like others in this House, I am frankly astonished at the statement of the Foreign Secretary. At a time when we have got daily lynchings and expulsions on the west bank, and dozens being murdered as they beg for aid, I am just beyond words at his inaction—and, frankly, complicity by inaction. He said himself that there is a massive prison camp being constructed in the south of Gaza and he knows that… Read more »
You purport to have an extensive knowledge in a lot of areas, Mr Goodwin. Can you explain your animus against Stephen Flynn and the SNP, and why you think his behaviour in the HoP was reprehensible? Do you think he has no genuine concern for the people of Gaza?
Synod as it is currently set up could not achieve a meaningful debate about the crisis in Gaza, let alone come up with a statement that would resonate outside synod. That of course lets the bishops off the hook, with synod mute there is no chance of any of the Lords Spiritual going rogue in parliament with the moral purpose of a second George Bell.
Why could the Synod ‘as it is currently set up’ not achieve a ‘meaningful debate about the crisis in Gaza’ or produce a ‘statement that would resonate outside Synod’?
Oh come on. Just look through what happens at Synod so-called debates, which are carefully controlled to be nothing of the sort. Then consider whether anyone outside the CofE (the vast majority of the population) cares two hoots what CofE or Synod thinks about anything.
The format of General Synod debates isn’t conducive to discussing a conflict with roots going back thousands of years, with emotions running high on all sides. It’s simply too complex an issue for short, time-limited speeches and interminable points of order. And few of the participants will be well informed about all the nuances.
Thank you, Froghole, and I am sure that good qualifications for being on General Synod include unease with C of E governance. Synod’s primary role is of course legislative and when it moves into its other role of pronouncing on matters of the day it can easily move beyond its competence. I often recall a debate in London many years ago with all the spotlights turned on for the benefit of the various TV companies filming proceedings. A speaker proclaimed ‘The eyes of the world are upon us!’, at which point all the spotlights were turned off. Synod can demonstrate… Read more »
Not to have a debate in order to avoid embarrassment doesn’t sound that different to a cover-up: we don’t do the right thing because we don’t want people to know how sick we are. But I’m not questioning that Helen King is right that this was the reason. I agree with Froghole about the seriousness of the C of E’s relative silence on Gaza. Stories now of starvation and shootings. Are we going to look back on this in future as we now do on Bergen-Belsen? And meanwhile the church argues about whether God does or doesn’t approve of same… Read more »
Helen King reports Synod was told ‘ ‘in churches where they prayed for half an hour a week for growth, there was a 6 per cent annual rise in attendance’. I presume there were control groups in whichever study this comes from: one set praying for growth 15 minutes a week, one set not praying for growth, and, just out of interest, one set praying for the roof to be fixed. Difficult to know without a data set if 6% is statistically significant but I’m pretty sure the people reporting the results didn’t know either. Was this serious? Have they read… Read more »
Well…I’m not going to argue that there’s a causality at work here in some kind of direct mechanistic sense. But…I wonder if there’s a correlation between communities which A. have a broad sense of conviction about the power of prayer, and B. the commitment to get on and do it, and C. the phenomenology of being active, intentional and attractive enough as communities to welcome and integrate new members. I’m pretty sure that there may well be a causal connection between A. Churches not being intentional about witness and evangelism, B. Not praying about it and C. finding that the… Read more »
I’d have thought ‘C’ is probably most relevant. Very likely churches that are ‘active, intentional and attractive’ are ones more likely to pray for growth; it is their activity &c however, which is driving any increase. I suspect that churches that spend 30 mins a week praying for growth have all sorts of other things going on aimed at growth. Without isolating all the various factors that might be involved even reporting this sort of thing is pointless. You’d need a control group of churches praying for growth as their only missional activity to have results that might be relevant;… Read more »
as something of a statistician, I agree! confounding is another problem. Ever seen the story of beer and diapers? https://tdwi.org/articles/2016/11/15/beer-and-diapers-impossible-correlation.aspx i do not believe any story which uses statistics until I can read the original work and evaluate whether proper statistical procedures have been used. Take recent reports about maternity care and ethnic minorities. Is it the colour of the skin? Or poverty? Or health? Or diet? Or propensity to issues like diabetes? Brown skin or black skin? or the hospital? Or location of hospital? I do not disbelieve the idea that those with black (or brown) skin rceive worse… Read more »
Didn’t Jesus say pray to the Lord of the Harvest? It’s not magic or even statistics, but it is good theology.
But, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins, would you really choose to travel in an aircraft designed according to theological principles rather than in one designed according to scientific ones?
The 6% annual growth figure implies compound growth of 574% over 30 years. Few CofE churches have grown nearly six-fold since the mid-nineties, perhaps suggesting that few have consistently prayed for growth throughout those 30 years, or that the study was based on a small sample. More likely, it was conducted over the years since the conclusion of the pandemic. Between 2021 and 2023 overall growth was around 13%, with a further 1.5% in 2024, for an average annual growth rate of about 5%. This is consistent with the italicised quote below and indicates only a marginal difference between the… Read more »
I spent my Saturday (12th July) watching the Synod live stream on YouTube, following the debate on the Bishop of Hereford’s proposal. I then spent Sunday in despair at the pearl-clutching and ladder-pulling-up attitude of those who already benefit from the system and who were unwilling to trust that Parishes know what works best for the grass roots. People aren’t coming into ministry because the jobs at the end of it are generally only part-time, poorly funded yet with the massive responsibilities of multi-parish benefices and communities who expect them there 24/7. All the time Dioceses are denied the funding… Read more »
Vivienne you summarise the situation beautifully. The thing that I found so dispiriting about ministry was the way the hierarchy tried to infantilise me as a man in my fifties. I was expected to swallow some absurdly silly mission initiatives without question. The CofE’s problem is not just about recruitment but also one of retention.
I had the temerity to ask about the rate of suicide among the clergy; there was an emphatic ‘nothing to see here, move along’.
Bishop Gorick misrepresents the nature of ‘welcome’ for LGBTQ+ people. It’ll take an awful lot more to make queer people feel welcome in the CofE. There’s a certain hubris in speaking for a community that he doesn’t identify as belonging to.
Fr Dean. I am not sure what you mean by ‘misrepresents’ and I genuinely want to understand. I am part of an extensive inclusive network within which there are many LGBT+ folk who share the view that that happened at Synod was significant and suggests a way forward and so feel positive and hopeful about it. What, for you, would have made this a more appropriate expression of what happened – or at least more sensitive to those who have most at stake in all this? Thank you.