Colin’s piece is transparently honest.
I am always wary of people who wear sunglasses on the top of their heads. Do they stop the brain being enlightened?
Yes, it is also a fashion item amongst some runners (e.g. Josh Kerr), to actually wear them over their eyes, and they wonder why they get tripped and fall. More seriously, these debates are so vague. There are many separate issues, which are not necessarily related, yet seem to be often conflated. ordination of women headship, the wife has to obey the husband sinfulness or not of homosexual preferences sinfulness or not of active homosexual lifestyles sinfulness or not of a million other choices blessings of committed homosexuals church marriage of homosexuals ordination of homosexuals damage done by fixating on… Read more »
Masses? It? Really? In the UK? Not sure what your point is. Are you in favour of equality between men and women, or against it, or consider they are equal but different and one of them (the male) has to be head? A question, the answer to which I have no idea – In modern CoE weddings, how many brides use the words ‘obey’ ? Princess Diana did not, and I thought it had been phased out over the last 50 years. Do any complementarian Anglican priests insist on it, and refuse to marry if the bride does not promise… Read more »
Nigel, here in Canada our 1959/1962 revision of the Book of Common Prayer removed the promise to obey. So no authorized English-language liturgy in the Anglican Church of Canada has included that promise since 1962.
However, some jurisdictions have authorized material from other provinces, which may or may not include this promise. Also, some indigenous communities continued to use older translations of the BCP into their own languages (since translations of the 1959/62 book were not immediately available).
The TEC prayer books’ marriage service initially contained the “obey” promise for women. It was removed in the 1928 prayer book and continued to be omitted in the 1979 prayer book.
For my part I find male headship a very unpleasant idea. I’m sure you’re right that its presence in Anglicanism puts some people off – on the other hand it seems that the idea fails to put off members, even female members, of other powerful religious groups, so unequivocal rejection of it might not make spreading our form of Gospel that much easier
It’s about the authority given to scripture. St Paul was against women speaking in church which some conservatives take to mean that they cannot take any leadership position, although there were husband and wife leaders for example in the church in Rome, hence complimentarianism. But others would agree that women such as Mary the mother of Jesus were leaders and that St Paul was dealing with a particular issue in newly created gentile faith communities, such as the way we might deal with something new in our society and put in place boundaries around it to exercise some sort of… Read more »
I have read LLF – all 480 pages of it. Inevitably, given the strength of Evangelicalism in today’s CofE, it devotes most of its pages to studying the Bible – to the point where at times ‘all things necessary for salvation’ is made to do the sort of heavy lifting alien to all but sola scriptura Anglicans. In view of this, I wonder why some are so dismissive of it. Have they read it? If it has a weakness (and remembering that it is a discussion document), it is surely not in its treatment of Scripture, but in not paying… Read more »
That’s interesting. As Rowan Williams remarked, we need a sense of the Church past – if only not to be unduly panicked by the Church present. There was a time when the first five centuries were essential to Anglican self-understanding. But now?
I have often thought theological resources could profitably be expended on taking up where the classical Anglican theologians left off and attempting to fashion a fresh Anglican understanding of reformed Catholicism esp in engagement with the theological legacy of Vatican 2 and the fruits of the various Ecumenical dialogues of the last 60 years with Roman Catholics, Lutherans, reformed, Orthodox. But I’m not optimistic. Is there the desire? and frankly the theological resources, to undertake it?
That tradition of articulating such an ecclesiology, which arguably ran from Charles Gore through to Michael Ramsey, seems to have run into the sand, despite a few more recent attempts, notably by Stephen Sykes. English Anglicanism is now so disparate as to defy definition, even if we had the energy.
John Paul II’s papacy was characterised by attempts to roll back Vatican 2. Since when some of the more thoughtful reflections on a ‘reformed Catholicism’ have come from Rome. It’s a shame if we no longer have theologians of weight – as in the Rowan/Ratzi dialogues.
The bishops themselves have said that they will be publishing a ‘theological reflection’ in October and had asked for more money during the process to purchase this theological advice. This in Itself is an admission that they have not yet done their theological homework thoroughly enough and have been tapping people along in the meantime. But to justify all the resources and time spent on this issue to date they will have to come up with something novel just to maintain some cloak of unity which seems to be top of their agenda. No doubt there will be something for… Read more »
I’m old enough to remember when Evangelicals were a minority, often ignored, prone to being anxiously defensive and suspicious of free enquiry. I don’t see that among many in that tradition today.
What a strange remark.
The argument is that the appearance of the words at slightly different points in the manuscript and the apparent contradiction between them and the permission for women to speak found elsewhere in the Epistle suggests that they were not part of the text as it originally stood, so may lack authority
It is strange that a word usually reserved for analysing a set of reliable data points is used both to interpret scripture and question the original source. Totally illogical.
The second meaning in the OED is “To alter or enlarge (a book or writing) by insertion of new matter; esp. to tamper with by making insertions which create false impressions as to the date or character of the work in question.” with a first quotation from 1612, and shown as still current. (The obsolete first meaning is “to polish”, which is basically what the Latin means.)
The mathematical sense is number 6, first recorded in 1796, and its statistical variant (“To interpolate a number or a table of numbers”) in 1882.
The word is used in reference to non-original material in a text. It is perfectly coherent to interpret a text in such a way that part of it appears to be unoriginal and therefore lacking whatever authority it would, were it original, have. An absolutely standard procedure of Biblical and other scholarship. It’s about identifying the original source, questioning it being another matter
Sadly I learned a very long time ago to be VERY careful who, in a church community, I shared personal things, such as my sexuality, with – and I’m a simple married straight, who happily keeps my private life to myself! There seems to be an obsessive interest in other people’s private lives in some parts of the church – a kind of sanctified voyeurism such as Nigel Goodwin refers to and, often associated with ‘male headship’ type extreme charismata which insists we have to conform to a pre-set hierarchical structure in which there is no room for the slightest… Read more »
I am reminded that Smyth was very strong on male headship, very strong on promoting his heterosexuality and the vigour and frequency of his coitus, and fascination with masturbation. How many of the beatings were a consequence of confession of sexual matters?
To me those are very clear warning signs – bragging about sexual performance suggests an inadequate ego needing an affirmation, and I’ve known other obsessive males (including one clergyman) who flaunted their supposed masculinity. “Macho isn’t mucho”.
One one occasion I walked into a church whose leaders were becoming embroiled in ‘male headship’ to be greeted, straight out with “Why are you still unmarried at your age?” Having struggled to accept my God – given (or imposed) celibacy, that did not get a particularly Christ like response.
By ‘natural’, I take it you mean a literal one? On a personal level I would agree – that if I were to betray my wife with another woman there is something seriously wrong with my profession of faith. But then, it also seems that ‘others may…..’ from various recorded church scandals! I don’t like people pushing into my own private and legitimate affairs, particularly when they assume some kind of moral superiority. It seems to be a favourite pastime of some evangelical Christians, not just on sexual matters but on other, far less serious issues which are no less… Read more »
‘Natural’ I think means what someone coming to the text with normal background information in his mind would understand by it. Sometimes it is natural to read a text non-literally. ‘Their hearts were aflame’ perhaps is not naturally read as about combustion. I don’t see how one’s personal attitude to marriage affects the reading here. This text is surely about the legal and economic status of marriage as those things played a part in ordinary lives at the time. It’s interesting in that Paul claims to know about the marital status of the others and almost assumes that these matters… Read more »
When Victoria Matthews was our bishop here in Edmonton, she intentionally set aside major amounts of time to spend personally with the youth in the diocese, including one on one conversations. In the context of this positive relationship, she also had an eagle eye for clergy vocations, and approached a number of young people about this. The result is clear: a good proportion of the younger clergy working in our diocese are there because of Bishop Victoria.
Ian Paul and his ilk have a morbid obsession with gay sex. That’s probably one of the reasons fewer people want to enlist and be ordained in such a strange organisation.
Gay sex comes up unprompted as a topic for discussion far more often on TA than it does on Ian Pauls blog. At times there seems to be an unspoken rule that any comments thread which goes over 50 entries ends up talking about sex, no matter what the original subject matter.
Ian Paul wants a moratorium on discussion over gay sex. I agree with him. Just allow gay people to be married in Church and the evangelical obsession with sex will evaporate.
We all know that Ian is against equal marriage. I don’t get why we need to comment on that; it’s a given. Meanwhile, the vast majority of his post is about as different subject. It would be nice if we could have a discussion about the other (rather pressing) issues he covers in this post (issues that are just as urgent for us here in Canada, I might add) without constantly steering for the rut we so often fall into.
Tim, I do so agree. But hurling familiar reproaches about sexuality at people we should actually be working alongside requires less reflection/thought, and I suppose produces some sort of feeling of rectitude. Is this what we are called to?
Of course legal gay marriage does exist in UK, just not in church. Indeed getting married without benefit of clergy also seems to be gaining serious ground in hetero community. It says much for their committed faith that so many gays would settle for as little as a church blessing.
Legal marriage of same-sex couples exists in church in the UK, just not in the CofE. The Scottish Episcopal Church solemnises same-sex marriages, as does the Church of Scotland, the URC and Methodists. The BUGB is in the position of not barring membership to those churches that solemnise same-sex marriages but forbids ministers who are in such marriages. I’m sure there are others I’ve missed.
The problem with that comment is that, yet again, the matter under discussion is shut down. Ian Paul’s article says nothing really about sex; he notes that LLF is still under consideration. It is said that men think about sex very frequently – one questionable ‘study’ found the measure to be every seven seconds. Even so, most people manage a civilised productive life which does not revolve around sex every moment of the day. If only C of E commentators could do as well as the average bloke then we might be able to stick to topic and – for… Read more »
Clergy who entered Civil Partnerships were expected not to think about sex at all. This was to assuage evangelicals and their ilk whose obsession with sex knows no bounds. Ian Paul may want to write about numerical decline. But has he considered that his own views about sex may have contributed to the Church’s ridiculous image?
Ian Paul may want to write about numerical decline. But you want to talk about sex. Yes, we get it. Maybe we should pick a neutral topic, like, say, the use of guitars in worship?
You can’t even give your standard derogatory comment about the musical instrument that is one of the great joys of my life without mentioning sex. Have you heard of Mr. Dick and King Charles’ head, by any chance?
Your question carries its own prejudice I am afraid. I do not subscribe that the sum total of the Church’s “image” is “ridiculous”. In so far as it is, have you considered how the tendency of some within the Church always to turn everything into something to do with sex somewhat diminishes us? Ian’s piece draws our attention to something important but you are unable to engage with it. You might be in danger of your interlocutors thinking you are of an “ilk” of your own tribe.
Ian Paul’s analysis here is a reminder that projected future clergy numbers have typically been overestimated. The From Anecdote to Evidence work suggested that hoped for numbers and planned for numbers were even more optimistic than the supposedly realistic projections. With these numbers there quickly will be fewer retired priests to fill gaps and some significant thought should be put into how to avoid breaking parish clergy and parishes and to what deployment and support will look like over the next ten years. How will vacancies be managed as cover resources reduce? How will posts be filled if clergy simply… Read more »
Stacy
22 days ago
I do think the discussion about ratio of clergy to diocesan staff is important and not discussed enough. I would be for diocesan staff taking on work done in administration, HR, governance and finance for the parishes, freeing the lay and clergy resources to do ministry, however, that is not what the staffing has done. Rather it is huge numbers of staff providing more guidance, instruction, training, and pressure on local churches to do more while the resources are funded at the diocesan staff levels rather than in the parish. If a business was structured this way, with in essence… Read more »
You make a very valid point . If I am going to give to a charity I also always want to look at their admin costs in comparison with what they say they do…. I wonder what the total cost of the diocesan structure is to the C of E or is it another opaque statistic? And is the Charity Commission not interested in things like that? Or does the fact that there are so many little individual charities mask this? Also what are the in house costs of these structures with the people directly employed in each diocese and… Read more »
I remember having a mini personal crisis when working in the charity sector years ago and realising that so little was classed in the accounts as ‘administration’, and that most of us in what looked like administrative roles were classed as part of the delivery of the core missions of the charity. It’s always a tricky balance and easy for sectors of an organisation to become bloated because of something new the leadership of an organisation becomes overly obsessed with – there always seems to be a hidden pot of money somewhere to fund these things generously…I don’t think the… Read more »
She produced projections based on a number of illustrative scenarios. One of which, as it happens, gave figures pretty close to what’s in the Ministry statistics tables that were published in July 2025 (and referred to in an answer to a July Synod question).
dr.primrose
22 days ago
I have never run across any advocacy for complementarianism in TEC — if it exists at all, the number of proponents must be quite small. One of the stranger (in my opinion) outcomes of this doctrine that I’ve run across was the personal experience of Beth Allison Barr, described in her book “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth” (2021). Barr has a Ph.D. and is a full professor at Baylor University. Her husband was at the pertinent time an assistant pastor at a Southern Baptist church. The church taught a very conservative form… Read more »
Barr’s book is fascinating and depressing. There seems to be a substantial component of (particularly US) evangelicalism where extreme patriarchal ideas beyond anything supported by the Bible have been promoted to a touchstone of orthodoxy. The need to establish boundaries for who is “in” and who is “out” has always been present in Christianity, but evangelicalism seems more keen than most on making these boundaries hard even when a handful of years ago they were not. Abortion is a classic example.
Francis James
20 days ago
I see speculation from Cathy Newman that Rachel Treweek is hot favourite for ABC job – news which has drawn predictable ire from Ian Paul.
He isn’t the only one. What do you think will happen to the CofE if Gloucester or Chelmsford or Dover is appointed. Three way schism? And the Anglican Communion? What if Gloucester or Chelmsford or Dover goes along with Giles Fraser’s request, that the new ABC should, within seven days of appointment, conduct a same sex marriage service in Westminster Abbey?
I think we would find out that threats of schism are a lot easier than actual schism. The upshot would be more like the departures to the ordinariate, and less like the Disruption. Some will leave, but most objectors will fulminate but ultimately accept the new normal, just as they have in the SEC and the Kirk.
Oh well. Solid, reliable, respectable, heterosexual, able bodied (in so far as I know), same gender as at birth, white, and married to a priest. What more could the establishment want? The only thing missing is ‘spouse, own money’ (though I have no insider knowledge on that one!) – well done, Sir Humphrey…
Colin’s piece is transparently honest.
I am always wary of people who wear sunglasses on the top of their heads. Do they stop the brain being enlightened?
Yes, it is also a fashion item amongst some runners (e.g. Josh Kerr), to actually wear them over their eyes, and they wonder why they get tripped and fall. More seriously, these debates are so vague. There are many separate issues, which are not necessarily related, yet seem to be often conflated. ordination of women headship, the wife has to obey the husband sinfulness or not of homosexual preferences sinfulness or not of active homosexual lifestyles sinfulness or not of a million other choices blessings of committed homosexuals church marriage of homosexuals ordination of homosexuals damage done by fixating on… Read more »
The Catholic and Muslim masses seem OK with it
Masses? It? Really? In the UK? Not sure what your point is. Are you in favour of equality between men and women, or against it, or consider they are equal but different and one of them (the male) has to be head? A question, the answer to which I have no idea – In modern CoE weddings, how many brides use the words ‘obey’ ? Princess Diana did not, and I thought it had been phased out over the last 50 years. Do any complementarian Anglican priests insist on it, and refuse to marry if the bride does not promise… Read more »
Do traditional Islamic weddings involve marriage vows? My understanding was that they do not.
Nigel, here in Canada our 1959/1962 revision of the Book of Common Prayer removed the promise to obey. So no authorized English-language liturgy in the Anglican Church of Canada has included that promise since 1962.
However, some jurisdictions have authorized material from other provinces, which may or may not include this promise. Also, some indigenous communities continued to use older translations of the BCP into their own languages (since translations of the 1959/62 book were not immediately available).
The TEC prayer books’ marriage service initially contained the “obey” promise for women. It was removed in the 1928 prayer book and continued to be omitted in the 1979 prayer book.
For my part I find male headship a very unpleasant idea. I’m sure you’re right that its presence in Anglicanism puts some people off – on the other hand it seems that the idea fails to put off members, even female members, of other powerful religious groups, so unequivocal rejection of it might not make spreading our form of Gospel that much easier
I imagine there are more people put off by the quality of Anglican coffee and crockery than are put off by male headship in the CofE.
Crockery is a thing of the past in our little congregation. Still something somewhat lovable about the coffee though
That is up to them!
It’s about the authority given to scripture. St Paul was against women speaking in church which some conservatives take to mean that they cannot take any leadership position, although there were husband and wife leaders for example in the church in Rome, hence complimentarianism. But others would agree that women such as Mary the mother of Jesus were leaders and that St Paul was dealing with a particular issue in newly created gentile faith communities, such as the way we might deal with something new in our society and put in place boundaries around it to exercise some sort of… Read more »
I have read LLF – all 480 pages of it. Inevitably, given the strength of Evangelicalism in today’s CofE, it devotes most of its pages to studying the Bible – to the point where at times ‘all things necessary for salvation’ is made to do the sort of heavy lifting alien to all but sola scriptura Anglicans. In view of this, I wonder why some are so dismissive of it. Have they read it? If it has a weakness (and remembering that it is a discussion document), it is surely not in its treatment of Scripture, but in not paying… Read more »
I believe the church historians felt their views had been sidelined in LLF..
That’s interesting. As Rowan Williams remarked, we need a sense of the Church past – if only not to be unduly panicked by the Church present. There was a time when the first five centuries were essential to Anglican self-understanding. But now?
I have often thought theological resources could profitably be expended on taking up where the classical Anglican theologians left off and attempting to fashion a fresh Anglican understanding of reformed Catholicism esp in engagement with the theological legacy of Vatican 2 and the fruits of the various Ecumenical dialogues of the last 60 years with Roman Catholics, Lutherans, reformed, Orthodox. But I’m not optimistic. Is there the desire? and frankly the theological resources, to undertake it?
That tradition of articulating such an ecclesiology, which arguably ran from Charles Gore through to Michael Ramsey, seems to have run into the sand, despite a few more recent attempts, notably by Stephen Sykes. English Anglicanism is now so disparate as to defy definition, even if we had the energy.
John Paul II’s papacy was characterised by attempts to roll back Vatican 2. Since when some of the more thoughtful reflections on a ‘reformed Catholicism’ have come from Rome. It’s a shame if we no longer have theologians of weight – as in the Rowan/Ratzi dialogues.
The bishops themselves have said that they will be publishing a ‘theological reflection’ in October and had asked for more money during the process to purchase this theological advice. This in Itself is an admission that they have not yet done their theological homework thoroughly enough and have been tapping people along in the meantime. But to justify all the resources and time spent on this issue to date they will have to come up with something novel just to maintain some cloak of unity which seems to be top of their agenda. No doubt there will be something for… Read more »
I’m old enough to remember when Evangelicals were a minority, often ignored, prone to being anxiously defensive and suspicious of free enquiry. I don’t see that among many in that tradition today.
I feel a rush of nostalgia!
Mischievous! My point was that most Evangelicals have moved out of the biblicist ghetto. Tell it not in Gath, but some have even become Catholic.
‘Let women keep silent’ is regarded by some as an interpolation
Is this a crossword clue?
Interpretation? Translation? Exasperation?
Interpolation outside of available data is always problematic.
What a strange remark.
The argument is that the appearance of the words at slightly different points in the manuscript and the apparent contradiction between them and the permission for women to speak found elsewhere in the Epistle suggests that they were not part of the text as it originally stood, so may lack authority
It is strange that a word usually reserved for analysing a set of reliable data points is used both to interpret scripture and question the original source. Totally illogical.
The second meaning in the OED is “To alter or enlarge (a book or writing) by insertion of new matter; esp. to tamper with by making insertions which create false impressions as to the date or character of the work in question.” with a first quotation from 1612, and shown as still current. (The obsolete first meaning is “to polish”, which is basically what the Latin means.)
The mathematical sense is number 6, first recorded in 1796, and its statistical variant (“To interpolate a number or a table of numbers”) in 1882.
The 1796 usage is, I think, just an application of the traditional usage to a statistical context, not a change of meaning
The word is used in reference to non-original material in a text. It is perfectly coherent to interpret a text in such a way that part of it appears to be unoriginal and therefore lacking whatever authority it would, were it original, have. An absolutely standard procedure of Biblical and other scholarship. It’s about identifying the original source, questioning it being another matter
Aah I’ve got it! 4 across ‘illogical’
Sadly I learned a very long time ago to be VERY careful who, in a church community, I shared personal things, such as my sexuality, with – and I’m a simple married straight, who happily keeps my private life to myself! There seems to be an obsessive interest in other people’s private lives in some parts of the church – a kind of sanctified voyeurism such as Nigel Goodwin refers to and, often associated with ‘male headship’ type extreme charismata which insists we have to conform to a pre-set hierarchical structure in which there is no room for the slightest… Read more »
Quite.
I am reminded that Smyth was very strong on male headship, very strong on promoting his heterosexuality and the vigour and frequency of his coitus, and fascination with masturbation. How many of the beatings were a consequence of confession of sexual matters?
I call it perverted.
To me those are very clear warning signs – bragging about sexual performance suggests an inadequate ego needing an affirmation, and I’ve known other obsessive males (including one clergyman) who flaunted their supposed masculinity. “Macho isn’t mucho”.
One one occasion I walked into a church whose leaders were becoming embroiled in ‘male headship’ to be greeted, straight out with “Why are you still unmarried at your age?” Having struggled to accept my God – given (or imposed) celibacy, that did not get a particularly Christ like response.
I think that this view of the disciples might come from a natural reading of I Cor 5:9
By ‘natural’, I take it you mean a literal one? On a personal level I would agree – that if I were to betray my wife with another woman there is something seriously wrong with my profession of faith. But then, it also seems that ‘others may…..’ from various recorded church scandals! I don’t like people pushing into my own private and legitimate affairs, particularly when they assume some kind of moral superiority. It seems to be a favourite pastime of some evangelical Christians, not just on sexual matters but on other, far less serious issues which are no less… Read more »
‘Natural’ I think means what someone coming to the text with normal background information in his mind would understand by it. Sometimes it is natural to read a text non-literally. ‘Their hearts were aflame’ perhaps is not naturally read as about combustion. I don’t see how one’s personal attitude to marriage affects the reading here. This text is surely about the legal and economic status of marriage as those things played a part in ordinary lives at the time. It’s interesting in that Paul claims to know about the marital status of the others and almost assumes that these matters… Read more »
Another interesting article by Ian Paul.
When Victoria Matthews was our bishop here in Edmonton, she intentionally set aside major amounts of time to spend personally with the youth in the diocese, including one on one conversations. In the context of this positive relationship, she also had an eagle eye for clergy vocations, and approached a number of young people about this. The result is clear: a good proportion of the younger clergy working in our diocese are there because of Bishop Victoria.
One person can make a difference.
You were lucky! Victoria was a great bishop, a gift to the church and the Anglican Communion. May the Lord raise up more like her.
Amen to that.
Ian Paul and his ilk have a morbid obsession with gay sex. That’s probably one of the reasons fewer people want to enlist and be ordained in such a strange organisation.
Gay sex comes up unprompted as a topic for discussion far more often on TA than it does on Ian Pauls blog. At times there seems to be an unspoken rule that any comments thread which goes over 50 entries ends up talking about sex, no matter what the original subject matter.
Indeed here we are, not 20 comments in, and we’ve got to gay sex from the demographic decline of CofE clergy. I rest my case.
Ian Paul wants a moratorium on discussion over gay sex. I agree with him. Just allow gay people to be married in Church and the evangelical obsession with sex will evaporate.
In other words, ‘Let me have my way and then we can stop talking’.
We’ve been talking about this for decades. Meanwhile ordinary people have stopped listening, voting with their feet.
We all know that Ian is against equal marriage. I don’t get why we need to comment on that; it’s a given. Meanwhile, the vast majority of his post is about as different subject. It would be nice if we could have a discussion about the other (rather pressing) issues he covers in this post (issues that are just as urgent for us here in Canada, I might add) without constantly steering for the rut we so often fall into.
Tim, I do so agree. But hurling familiar reproaches about sexuality at people we should actually be working alongside requires less reflection/thought, and I suppose produces some sort of feeling of rectitude. Is this what we are called to?
So will much of the church if you do.
And Gen Z and Gen Alpha might then start to take an interest, quite apart from their Millennial parents and soon to be grandparents.
I agree. The vast majority of UK people favour gay marriage – while the CofE has become obsessed over why they can’t have it.
Of course legal gay marriage does exist in UK, just not in church. Indeed getting married without benefit of clergy also seems to be gaining serious ground in hetero community. It says much for their committed faith that so many gays would settle for as little as a church blessing.
Legal marriage of same-sex couples exists in church in the UK, just not in the CofE. The Scottish Episcopal Church solemnises same-sex marriages, as does the Church of Scotland, the URC and Methodists. The BUGB is in the position of not barring membership to those churches that solemnise same-sex marriages but forbids ministers who are in such marriages. I’m sure there are others I’ve missed.
I meant to write England rather than UK, as I referred to CofE – Mea Culpa. Anyway what you wrote only reinforces stupidity of CofE position.
Then they’ll find something else to be against.
The problem with that comment is that, yet again, the matter under discussion is shut down. Ian Paul’s article says nothing really about sex; he notes that LLF is still under consideration. It is said that men think about sex very frequently – one questionable ‘study’ found the measure to be every seven seconds. Even so, most people manage a civilised productive life which does not revolve around sex every moment of the day. If only C of E commentators could do as well as the average bloke then we might be able to stick to topic and – for… Read more »
Clergy who entered Civil Partnerships were expected not to think about sex at all. This was to assuage evangelicals and their ilk whose obsession with sex knows no bounds. Ian Paul may want to write about numerical decline. But has he considered that his own views about sex may have contributed to the Church’s ridiculous image?
Ian Paul may want to write about numerical decline. But you want to talk about sex. Yes, we get it. Maybe we should pick a neutral topic, like, say, the use of guitars in worship?
I stay away from places where guitars are used because the ministers are usually very puritanical and prejudiced over matters of sexuality.
You can’t even give your standard derogatory comment about the musical instrument that is one of the great joys of my life without mentioning sex. Have you heard of Mr. Dick and King Charles’ head, by any chance?
Your question carries its own prejudice I am afraid. I do not subscribe that the sum total of the Church’s “image” is “ridiculous”. In so far as it is, have you considered how the tendency of some within the Church always to turn everything into something to do with sex somewhat diminishes us? Ian’s piece draws our attention to something important but you are unable to engage with it. You might be in danger of your interlocutors thinking you are of an “ilk” of your own tribe.
Most discussions in Synod over the last few years have been about sex. It’s all very peculiar. Why are evangelicals obsessed with it?
No—why are you obsessed with it?
Ian Paul’s analysis here is a reminder that projected future clergy numbers have typically been overestimated. The From Anecdote to Evidence work suggested that hoped for numbers and planned for numbers were even more optimistic than the supposedly realistic projections. With these numbers there quickly will be fewer retired priests to fill gaps and some significant thought should be put into how to avoid breaking parish clergy and parishes and to what deployment and support will look like over the next ten years. How will vacancies be managed as cover resources reduce? How will posts be filled if clergy simply… Read more »
I do think the discussion about ratio of clergy to diocesan staff is important and not discussed enough. I would be for diocesan staff taking on work done in administration, HR, governance and finance for the parishes, freeing the lay and clergy resources to do ministry, however, that is not what the staffing has done. Rather it is huge numbers of staff providing more guidance, instruction, training, and pressure on local churches to do more while the resources are funded at the diocesan staff levels rather than in the parish. If a business was structured this way, with in essence… Read more »
You make a very valid point . If I am going to give to a charity I also always want to look at their admin costs in comparison with what they say they do…. I wonder what the total cost of the diocesan structure is to the C of E or is it another opaque statistic? And is the Charity Commission not interested in things like that? Or does the fact that there are so many little individual charities mask this? Also what are the in house costs of these structures with the people directly employed in each diocese and… Read more »
I remember having a mini personal crisis when working in the charity sector years ago and realising that so little was classed in the accounts as ‘administration’, and that most of us in what looked like administrative roles were classed as part of the delivery of the core missions of the charity. It’s always a tricky balance and easy for sectors of an organisation to become bloated because of something new the leadership of an organisation becomes overly obsessed with – there always seems to be a hidden pot of money somewhere to fund these things generously…I don’t think the… Read more »
Clergy statistics: one of my former colleagues produced some projections (not predictions!) in 2016, publicly available here: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/ministry-statistics-in-focus-stipendiary-clergy-projections-2015-2035.pdf
She produced projections based on a number of illustrative scenarios. One of which, as it happens, gave figures pretty close to what’s in the Ministry statistics tables that were published in July 2025 (and referred to in an answer to a July Synod question).
I have never run across any advocacy for complementarianism in TEC — if it exists at all, the number of proponents must be quite small. One of the stranger (in my opinion) outcomes of this doctrine that I’ve run across was the personal experience of Beth Allison Barr, described in her book “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth” (2021). Barr has a Ph.D. and is a full professor at Baylor University. Her husband was at the pertinent time an assistant pastor at a Southern Baptist church. The church taught a very conservative form… Read more »
I have never run across any advocacy for complementarianism in TEC — if it exists at all, the number of proponents must be quite small.
I shouldn’t think that a surprise given the footprint of the present TEC within the spectrum of US denominationalism.
Barr’s book is fascinating and depressing. There seems to be a substantial component of (particularly US) evangelicalism where extreme patriarchal ideas beyond anything supported by the Bible have been promoted to a touchstone of orthodoxy. The need to establish boundaries for who is “in” and who is “out” has always been present in Christianity, but evangelicalism seems more keen than most on making these boundaries hard even when a handful of years ago they were not. Abortion is a classic example.
I see speculation from Cathy Newman that Rachel Treweek is hot favourite for ABC job – news which has drawn predictable ire from Ian Paul.
I wish she’d wear a proper clerical collar as her husband does.
He isn’t the only one. What do you think will happen to the CofE if Gloucester or Chelmsford or Dover is appointed. Three way schism? And the Anglican Communion? What if Gloucester or Chelmsford or Dover goes along with Giles Fraser’s request, that the new ABC should, within seven days of appointment, conduct a same sex marriage service in Westminster Abbey?
I think we would find out that threats of schism are a lot easier than actual schism. The upshot would be more like the departures to the ordinariate, and less like the Disruption. Some will leave, but most objectors will fulminate but ultimately accept the new normal, just as they have in the SEC and the Kirk.
Oh well. Solid, reliable, respectable, heterosexual, able bodied (in so far as I know), same gender as at birth, white, and married to a priest. What more could the establishment want? The only thing missing is ‘spouse, own money’ (though I have no insider knowledge on that one!) – well done, Sir Humphrey…