This post will be updated as the meeting proceeds.
The Church of England’s General Synod is meeting this weekend. The timetable is here, the agenda is here and the papers are here.
Live video etc
All sessions are streamed live on YouTube and remain available to view afterwards. Links have been provided in advance.
There is an official X/Twitter account.
Order papers
Notice papers
Questions Notice Papers
Business Done
Official press releases
Press reports and comment etc
The Guardian
Independent
Church Times
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Anglican Communion News Service
Looking at Notice Paper 7 – there is an additional sitting at 9pm on Sunday evening – to debate the Archbishops’ Councils’ Annual Report and/or the Annual Report of the Archbishops’ Council’s Audit and Risk Committee.
Thanks for spotting that; I’ve amended my post.
There’s also a completely new item of business (also in notice paper 7), a debate on a response to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. As yet there is no announcement of when this will be taken.
Update: it will be taken on Tuesday morning.
The Church of England’s “Abuse Redress Measure” should be renamed to something more trauma-informed and survivor-centred — such as:
“Redress for Church of England–Related Abuse Measure.”
This isn’t just a technical detail. Language matters. A title that starts with “Abuse” centres trauma instead of healing. Survivors deserve to be seen not as what was done to them, but as people actively seeking justice.
This change would honour survivors, clarify Church accountability, and show that the Church is truly listening. Let’s get this right — in name, as well as in action.
I’m tired of that tired argument about not second guessing God on the timing of death. We do it constantly,
Thank you. It has never been so clear to me that much medical treatment is interfering with the timing of death.
The considerations are complex: how do you open up a path to assisted dying without putting some people in a position where they feel or actually are coerced to decide to die? But I accept that is a practical, implementational point whereas the ABY was discussing the issue in principle. God has graciously given us free will, and so when he begins to call us home it is perhaps consistent with that gift that we should be able to choose a good path to get there. Practically, though, the church should intensify its involvement with the hospice movement. If we… Read more »
My worry about the Assisted Suicide Bill is that it can lead to what I call a “Rubbish Disposal approach to Life”, where people are no longer valued as human beings but treated as easily disposable Rubbish. The opportunity to die could easily become a duty to die. It could easily open the door to another Harold Shipman situation, without proper legal Safeguards. and with no exemptions for the Hospices who would be expected to provide Assisted Suicide, it would be against the Christian Principles many of these Hospices were set up and against the Charitable legal basis of many… Read more »
I just watched the presidential address by Stephen Cottrell.and it left me disappointed, deeply alienated and more than a little angry. Stephen Cottrell is opposed to terminally ill people having the right to end their suffering. He said explicitly that this was a decision for God alone. But Stephen Cottrell had not a single word to say about the mass assisted dying occurring in.Gaza. Assisted dying by means of incineration, starvation and deliberate murder of civilians waiting for food. He had nothing to say about the bombing of hospitals, the torture and murder of medical.staff the deliberate destruction of essential… Read more »
Thank you. I think that we need to be a little more explicit about why it is that the ‘impunity’ is going on. It isn’t merely because of the astonishing range of tactics used by the proxy state committing the ‘impunity’ to bait, coerce, encourage and threaten legislators, officials and mainstream journalists in the West to provide active or tacit support to the ‘impunity’ and those committing it. It is more especially because there is a large electoral block in the US which is entirely behind that proxy state, and there is a significant overlap between certain forms of Christianity… Read more »
Thank- you Froghole. You are so good at the longer view. And in the press today- guess what- the Israeli military admit to making an ‘error’ over their latest massacre of children. I’m tempted to ask whether that means they think they did not kill enough…. But Synod and our government are carrying on regardless
“I’m tempted to ask whether that means they think they did not kill enough”. Perhaps (but thank you). However, they usually claim ‘error’ whenever they get found out and the blowback in the Western MSM – which is itself very rare – forces them to make an ‘admission’ (the blowback is almost certainly stage managed in order to permit the MSM to ‘demonstrate’ that it is not as biased and/or dishonest as it actually is in fact). It is now extremely hard for the full extent of the depravity to be reported, because the territory (or ‘zone of interest’ as… Read more »
One other point. It is striking how many Western firms, especially tech firms, are alleged to have been involved in the ‘impunity’, whether actively or in an oblique manner: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5923-economy-occupation-economy-genocide-report-special-rapporteur (the author of this report has just been sanctioned by the US for her pains). Some of these firms are now deeply enmeshed in Western governments including (in the case of the UK) the NHS and MOD. These same firms are accelerating the utilisation of AI, including for the purposes of surveillance and military technology. It does not take a genius to work out that, in these ways, the application… Read more »
Failure to address what is happening in Gaza as well as the West Bank, especially given the UK state’s complicity and the impact on undermining international legal and ethical norms, is disturbing indeed. Perhaps this is an instance of confusion over whether Church allegiance to those in power should extend to watering down challenges over assisting (despite professed reluctance) in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. While few Christians in the UK would embrace dispensationalism, various forms of dominionism or other pseudo-Christian beliefs influential in the USA, the government of that country is seen as a key strategic ally… Read more »
“the government of that country is seen as a key strategic ally and the president as someone whom it is best not to offend” I think that is definitely the reason why the UK has taken the position which it has: it is the US-right-or-wrong, and is informed by the very great fear of what the US could quite easily do to the City (amongst other things) if the UK doesn’t do what is expected of it. As de Gaulle remarked: “why have you allowed yourselves be colonised by your former colony?” However, much the same can be said of… Read more »
What is Stephen Cottrell’s ( and the Church’s) view of unassisted suicide?
Hopefully, that it is always a tragedy into which distressed wounded souls all too sadly and frequently fall, people to whom Christians should seek to give support, love and encouragement to live. Perhaps a socialised temptation which becomes more and more likely for the vulnerable to accede to in one way of the other, as suicide becomes culturally normalised, accepted and deemed worthy of state funding. Suicide is always (however inevitable, forgivable, and understandable) an act of autonomous rejection of God’s sovereign gift of life. (Awaits pushback in the form of neo-pagan celebration of human choice and the autonomy to… Read more »
“Gift of life” always seems an odd expression in these debates. How many gifts come with such caveats attached?
No, I don’t agree that suicide is “always a tragedy into which distressed wounded souls……fall”. Sometimes it is a conscious and rational choice. My mother committed suicide because she had an incurable and degenerative condition and she was afraid of losing control over her own life and destiny. She was not a “distressed and wounded soul”, she was a strong and independent woman. Had the option of assisted dying been open to her she would not have committed suicide and would not have had to die alone, without family members who loved her very much. In a battlefield situation, with… Read more »
‘Silent about the suggestion’ – given it has been repeatedly denied by both the British government and the RAF but continues to be alleged again and again by people who for their own reasons either haven’t heard or don’t believe those denials, yet offer nothing in the way of any proof at all, it’s difficult to see what ABY is supposed to say?
https://aoav.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-UK-Royal-Air-Forces-surveillance-flights-over-the-Occupied-Palestinian-Territory-examined.pdf The report admits methodological difficulties. “it has been repeatedly denied by both the British government and the RAF” Two comments: (i) the old adage that you ‘should never believe anything until it has been officially denied’; and (ii) the celebrated response of Mandy Rice-Davies to James Burge in the 1963 trial of Stephen Ward with which you will, no doubt, be familiar. Also, the UK’s long-term record speaks for itself. For example, the official denials with respect to gross forms of ‘impunity’ in Kenya Colony were repeated ad nauseam by ministers and officials, although the credibility of the government’s… Read more »
Exactly. It’s pathetic.
Re: Assisted dying. I gave up the priesthood two years ago. I know, I know, one’s theology may suggest that such a thing is impossible. The bishop who ordained me, the Rt. Revd. Geoffrey Rowell, told me on the night before the event – his first ordination as Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe – that the action was indelible and would change me ontologically. The Anglican Church of Canada, where I had become canonically resident by the time I decided to undo the step, is somewhat more pragmatic and even provides a pro forma statement for the “relinquishment of ministry”… Read more »
Thanks for this moving testimony that there is another way
I am angry that the “official church” is so uniformly opposed when so many clergy – and lay people – have different views. The case of people with dementia is difficult and needs careful, nuanced, solutions. Not slogans about what God wants. How dare they assume to dictate to us what God wants?
So the Archbishop opposes the Assisted Dying Bill on the grounds that God alone has authority over death. So how is it so many are killed in war? And how is it that he supports our armed forces who have killed people in so many places: Afghanistan, Iraq,etc etc…?
I have always despaired of the ABY, someone in the wrong place at the wrong time, especially since ++Justin’s abdication and his performance in Oxford vis-a-vis Martyn Percy. Where are the prophets of old ? Temple, Ramsey and even safe pairs of hands like Coggan? We are reaping the consequences of managerialism as against spirituality, pastoral ministry and plain common sense.
However the ‘performance’ of the ABY may be judged, I hope it may be taken into account that he has for the last seven months been wearing two mitres. Many feel that the cross to be borne by one ABC in being expected to ‘lead’ let alone ‘manage’ both the disputatious CofE and a fractious ‘Anglican Communion’ was too much when we had an ABC in post! A ‘poisoned chalice’?
I believe you are having what is commonly known as a ‘confusion of Stephens’. Cottrell was not in Oxford: that’s Croft – and Croft is still there. They may have been co-workers and co-authors earlier in ministry, and may well have exercised ministries in nearby places at the same or different times. But they are quite different characters. And neither of them has been Bishop of Ely or Bishop of Lincoln.
That is: Justin’s performance in respect of the Oxford calamity or Stephen’s? Stephen was actually Bishop of Reading within the O Diocese but I think he had left before M Percy became Dean
Just as a matter of interest, would you be able to name a single Diocesan Bishop who does not support our armed forces?
Although Christianity is very much a big deal in the US armed forces, this has not been the case in UK for many years, thus it was with some surprise that I read the address to synod by Brigadier Mahan. Cannot speak for the two junior services, but by the 1970s the Royal Navy had become largely secular, with those who were serious about any religion very much the exception. Interestingly the last First Sea Lord, who has just been court-martialled & dismissed the service for having an affair with a married junior officer, was one of those exceptions who… Read more »
Is it indeed the case that Christianity is still ‘very much a big deal in the US armed forces’? I can’t say for sure, but I would wager that, in some places at least, things are not what they were, even until quite recently, and this might reflect the rapid decline of Christianity in the US in recent years (see here for a newly published study: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/why-religion-went-obsolete-9780197800737?cc=gb&lang=en&#). By way of an example, a few years’ back (2017) I attended a service at the New Beginnings International Church at Wangford, just beyond the north perimeter fence at RAF Lakenheath (confusingly, there… Read more »
NP09 since when has the Scottish Episcopal Church been an ecumenical guest rather than a member of the Anglican Communion?
The Archbishop of York, in his introductions on Friday, correctly included Bishop Railton of the SEC with the other Anglican Communion Guests.
“There is an official X/Twitter account”
Why is a Christian church using a cesspit like X for anything? It is frankly hilarious for someone to on the one hand pass judgement over assisted dying, and on the other hand give credibility and revenue to actual fascists.
You can only judge it a cesspit if you use it.
Unfortunately all too many media outlets have traditionally been owned by people who are to say the least dubious (Murdoch, Rothermere, Lebedev, Barclay Bros, etc). As for the outlet formerly known as Twitter, provided that you block judiciously, & absolutely avoid engaging with trolls, you can enjoy a generally clear feed on your interests, with access to timely CofE related material by the likes of Martin Sewell (who has now decided to stand down from General Synod)