The February Synod, to be held in the newly refurbished Assembly Hall*, at Church House, Westminster, from February 26 to March 1, has a full and challenging agenda, with a substantial amount of legislative business, including clergy terms of service and marriage law, and a major debate on clergy pensions. There are two high profile private members’ motions on different aspects of issues in human sexuality. The agenda also offers outward-looking debates on Trident, criminal justice issues, and the effect of media standards on individuals and society.
Trident
The Synod debate takes place near the end of the three months’ period of public debate initiated by the Government’s White Paper on The Future of Trident, which will culminate in a debate in the House of Commons in March. The debate will be informed by the statement made by the Archbishop of Canterbury when The Future of Trident was published and by a submission from the Mission and Public Affairs Council to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. The motion raises serious questions about whether the Government is right to proceed in the way proposed, given the underlying ethical issues.
Criminal Justice
The debate gives the Synod the opportunity of considering the major challenges to the criminal justice system as a result of prison overcrowding and changes in the system of supervising offenders with the amalgamation of the prison and probation services. It takes place at a time of considerable public anxiety about dangerous offenders and anti-social behaviour. It highlights opportunities for Christian service and initiatives in the criminal justice system and in working with offenders in the community. The debate will be preceded by an address from Mr Phil Wheatley, Director General of the Prison Service, after which the Bishop of Worcester (the Bishop to HM Prisons) will move the motion for debate.
Schools
Lord Dearing’s report The Way Ahead: Church of England schools in the new millennium was approved by the Synod in 2001. Over the past five years, it has driven the Church of England’s schools strategy. The present debate will allow the Church to endorse further strategies for the development of its work with schools, up to 2011 when the Board of Education’s sister body, the National Society, celebrates its bicentenary. These initiatives include new developments in links between schools, and their parishes and wider communities. This is particularly timely, as the Education and Inspections Act (which comes into force this year) offers substantial new opportunities for the Church in education. This has triggered fresh public debate about faith schools and their admissions policies, and the debate gives the Synod an opportunity to engage in this.
Media Standards
The motion from the Lichfield Diocesan Synod arose out of concern that debate about standards of taste and decency in the media tended to be focused on personal choice rather than dangers and consequences. The increase of ‘reality television’ programmes has taken this debate to a new level of concern. The motion seeks to address concerns about media standards and their impact on individuals and society.
Issues in Human Sexuality
Two private members’ motions, from the Revd Mary Gilbert on lesbian and gay Christians, and the Revd Paul Perkin on civil partnerships, will be debated. They have collected the most signatures and will be debated on the Wednesday morning and afternoon of the Synod. The first motion seeks to clarify the position of lesbian and gay Christians in the Church, and the second motion is critical specifically of the House of Bishops’ statement on civil partnerships.
The House of Bishops has produced two factual notes as a background resource for the debates, in addition to the usual notes from the movers of both motions. In these it signals that a member of the House will be tabling substantial amendments on its behalf in the two debates. The last time that the Synod debated this subject was in February 2004, when it considered Some Issues in Human Sexuality: A Guide to the Debate.
Clergy Pensions
This debate is the culmination of a major consultation exercise within the Church on the report of the Archbishops’ Task Group Clergy Pensions: the Way Forward. The Synod is being asked to endorse the recommendations in the report now presented by the Archbishops’ Council, which reflects the results of the consultation.
Legislative Business
As regards new legislation, the principal items give effect to the recommendations in the Review of Clergy Terms of Service (the ‘McClean Group’). The draft legislation will introduce, in the form of ‘common tenure’, a new framework of rights and responsibilities under which both freehold and licensed clergy will hold office within the Church, as well as making significant changes in relation to clergy housing.
The draft Church of England Marriage Measure returns to Synod for its Revision Stage. The legislation will make it easier for people to get married in a particular church. The previous General Synod agreed in principle that the right to marry in a Church of England church should be extended to those having certain types of qualifying connection with the church in question. At the moment, people have a right to be married only in the church of the parish where they live or are entered on the church electoral roll.
The draft Dioceses, Pastoral and Mission Measure returns to Synod for Final Approval. This significant piece of legislation aims to improve the Church’s structures and processes in a way that will enable it to further its mission. In particular, it develops the process for diocesan re-organisation, at present to be found in the Dioceses Measure 1978, so that the Dioceses Commission can take a more proactive role and improve the prospects of bringing projects that are in the Church’s interest to a successful conclusion; it helps to simplify, devolve and make more flexible the procedures for pastoral re-organisation and closure of churches for regular public worship in the Pastoral Measure 1983; and it provides a new legal framework for mission initiatives.
Other business
The Synod meets just over a week after the end of the meeting of Primates of the Anglican Communion in Tanzania. The Archbishop of Canterbury will, on the first afternoon of Synod, brief the Synod on the outcome of that meeting by means of a Presidential Address.
There will be a debate on the next steps for implementing the Synod’s decision in principle to adopt a system of electronic voting.
There will be a presentation on Fresh Expressions, an initiative by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, which has been exploring new ways of developing the Church’s mission and presence in the community.
Note
*This will be the General Synod’s first meeting in the newly refurbished Assembly Hall. The renovation returns it to the original 1939 design of architect Sir Herbert Baker, with flat floor, reinstatement of Gallery up-lighters and replacement of 1970s broadcasting booths.
The floor of the Hall will be furnished with new chairs for all attendees, a new stage with improved disabled access and new tables for those working on the stage. Other improvements include new paint and carpet, improved acoustic design and audio provision and the introduction of improved communications.
Built in 1939, the Assembly Hall had been altered in 1958. These alterations included the provision of a dished floor and fixed seating, which had come to the end of its useful life by the time the current refurbishment was being planned. Audio-visual technology had been updated every decade but the current refurbishment allowed for a complete overhaul of the entire sound and communications infrastructure.
PRIVATE MEMBER’S MOTION
LESBIAN AND GAY CHRISTIANS (GS Misc 842A and B)
The Revd Mary Gilbert (Lichfield) to move:
11. ‘That this Synod acknowledge the diversity of opinion about homosexuality within the Church of England and that these divergent opinions come from honest and legitimate attempts to read the scriptures with integrity, understand the nature of homosexual orientation, and respect the patterns of holy living to which lesbian and gay Christians aspire; and, bearing in mind this diversity,
(a) agree that a homosexual orientation in itself is no bar to a faithful Christian life;
(b) invite parish and cathedral congregations to welcome and affirm lesbian and gay Christians, lay and ordained, valuing their contribution at every level of the Church; and
(c) urge every parish to ensure a climate of sufficient acceptance and safety to enable the experience of lesbian and gay people to be heard, as successive Lambeth Conferences in 1978 (resolution 10), 1988 (resolution 64), and 1998 (resolution 1.10) have requested.’
PRIVATE MEMBER’S MOTION
CIVIL PARTNERSHIPS (GS Misc 843A and B)
The Revd Paul Perkin (Southwark) to move:
13. ‘That this Synod, deeply concerned that
(a) in an understandable desire to remedy injustice and remove unjust discrimination, the Government’s Civil Partnership Act undermines the distinctiveness and fundamental importance to society of the relationship of marriage;
(b) the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Statement, while reiterating the Church’s basic teaching on marriage, has produced a recipe for confusion by not stating clearly that civil partnerships entered into under the CP Act would be inconsistent with Christian teaching;
(c) the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Statement has given to bishops the task of ensuring that clergy who enter into these partnerships adhere to church teaching in the area of sexuality without giving the bishops the clear means to do so; and
(d) by declaring that lay people who enter into such partnerships should not be asked about the nature of their relationship, in the context of preparation for baptism and confirmation, as well as for the purposes of receiving Holy Communion, the Bishops’ Pastoral Statement has compromised pastoral discipline at the local level:
declare its support for bishops, clergy and other ministers who continue to minister the godly discipline required by the scriptures and the canons and request the House of Bishops to set up a study of the ways in which that discipline is being applied and the implications thereof for future pastoral guidance and bring a report to Synod by the July 2007 Group of Sessions.’
The Telegraph reviews the coming week with the following article in today's paper:
Anglicans to review stance on gay clergy
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Church of England leaders are to re-examine their policy on civil partnerships following criticism that they have unwittingly given moral support to gay "marriage".
The House of Bishops issued guidance in 2005 allowing gay clergy to enter into such partnerships if they abstained from sex, arguing that this was compatible with its traditional teaching on marriage.
But a number of bishops have since complained they were misled by the Government about the true nature of the civil partnership legislation, which they fear has too many parallels with marriage.
They are angry that the Government, which claimed it had no intention of creating gay marriage, refused to give similar legal protection to that afforded by civil partnerships to brothers or sisters who share a home.
Moreover, some bishops were infuriated that at least one minister referred to civil partnerships as the equivalent to gay marriage, and a Government website briefly spoke of "wedding bells".
Although the bishops do not want to retreat from their guidance, they will tell the General Synod when it meets in London this week that they will "keep the matter under review".
They face a highly-charged debate on homosexuality on Wednesday when the Synod votes on two contrasting private members' motions, one liberal in tone and the other conservative.
The debates come just days after Anglican leaders gave the liberal American Episcopal Church seven months to prove that it had reversed its pro-gay agenda or face expulsion from the worldwide Communion.
The four-day Synod, which begins today, will debate a range of issues from the future of the Trident nuclear weapons to Church schools, but the motions on Wednesday will dominate the agenda.
The first, more liberal, motion, which has been tabled by the Rev Mary Gilbert, a Synod member from Lichfield, Staffs, urges the Synod to agree that homosexual orientation, as opposed to practice, "is no bar to a faithful Christian life".
The second motion, tabled by the Rev Paul Perkin, an evangelical, criticises the bishops' guidance on civil partnerships as a "recipe for confusion".
The guidance requires clergy entering into such partnerships to assure their bishops that they will remain celibate, and bars clergy from formally blessing couples in a civil partnership.
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