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n the various critiques of my motion i had various requests to spell out what i meant by intimate or whether the words can be were a hint that some sorts of intimacy were ok and others weren t while i was not going to engage with these voices as it would mean having the debate a month before synod is scheduled to engage in it it was useful to see what people were talking about in the supporting paper i submitted as part of the process of bringing a pmm gs 2455a i concentrated on this motion as a pastoral statement that offers an opportunity to acknowledge the debt we owe to so many of our sisters and brothers by recognising them as disciples of christ who offer faithful service in parishes and in the running of our national church and who speak out for christ in the world because if we don t think partnered lesbian and gay people are christian disciples just what are we saying it doesn t take much effort to realise that the motion echoes the language of the debates on the ordination of women with the 1975 no fundamental objection motion on women as priests i was surprised that some conservatives immediately resisted my wording on the grounds that they do object because of course if you think that there is a fundamental objection you just vote against as happened in 1975 synod can say no fundamental objection as a majority statement i believe that we should have started the living in love and faith process with a similar general motion on the principle if the majority view is that christians can t be in committed faithful intimate same sex relationships then can we at least be honest about that ah yes intimate conservatives are uneasy with my use of that word remember this is the church of england where for clergy same sex civil partnerships are fine unless you are being considered as a bishop although in southwark diocese their statement of needs the view of the diocese on what they are like and what they are looking for in a new bishop includes encouragement for lgbt priests in a same sex relationship or civil partnership to apply however clergy in same sex civil marriages are not officially able to apply for other posts based on some idea that the civil partnerships don t include sex whatever is meant by that and civil marriages do my supporting paper addresses our understandable reluctance to name body parts in my academic life i strongly support teaching children the names of their parts and using these rather than family euphemisms which can be unhelpful if there is a case of abuse as well as in seeking medical advice so it s always a bit weird entering the c of e bubble in which even down there is considered rather risqué in the supporting paper i quote the helpful response of archbishop sarah to a synod question three years ago referring to the living in love and faith programme llf has always tried to recognise that the expression of sexual intimacy between two people cannot be reduced to a small set of defined actions that s right intimacy means different things to different people and it involves far more than our body parts the generative and the erotic are not necessarily the same thing think not only of our passions and our feelings but also of the intimate care lovingly given when one person is sick or even dying and their partner cares for them because i shall be taking part in synod online it won t be me who presents the motion but now that the supporting paper and the formal response to it have both been published i m perfectly happy to explain more of the carefully chosen wording used for example can in can be entirely compatible because just as in some opposite sex relationships there can be damaging abusive power dynamics going on in a committed same sex relationship or to put it another way some gay people can behave as badly as some straight people i am less willing to engage with those who offer a series of what abouts what about incest what about throuples that sort of thing it s amazing what some people think is relevant to a very simple motion and i d point them to the end of my supporting document where i quote the llf book which asks us to consider the picture of two people taking a lifelong journey on which they learn to love and be loved and in the process learn more of god s love that s what it s all about share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in crown nominations commission general synod living in love and faith tagged bishops higton motion homosexuality intimacy ordination of women rowan williams sexuality southwark diocese statement of needs terry louden 4 comments going quiet working towards a new bishop posted on may 24 2026 by fluff35 i m writing this after chatting with some our congregation after the service this morning and finding out that there s much curiosity but very little knowledge about how we appoint bishops as our bishop s farewell service is on 31 may i anticipate more questions will come up about that process so thought i d preempt some of those here but first it s over two months since i last posted here and readers may be wondering whether i am still alive well that s a good question after the february general synod i had a meeting of ministry development board i was elected from synod to this and then immediately travelled up to edinburgh to the royal college of physicians rcpe to speak at the launch of their new exhibition rag full talk here starting 8 minutes in text summary here i always like doing events with the rcpe not least because one gets to talk to all sorts of doctors and to learn lots of things which are very useful for a historian of the body indeed in my talk i asked if anyone in the audience was working on a particular topic and someone who was doing just that came up for a chat afterwards while i was away i had an irritating sore throat of the kind which felt like it would develop into a cold or maybe laryngitis but not enough to stop me enjoying the trip and the experience this sore throat however went nowhere but a week or so after that i developed an increasingly annoying cough i started wondering if this was bronchitis the nhs website told me that i wouldn t be prescribed antibiotics until i d had the symptoms for a couple of weeks but i felt somehow uneasy so went to my gp he listened to my lungs heard coarse crepitations as when talking to the rcpe i learn new things by going to the gp he told me this was borderline pneumonia that i had a tiny bit of wiggle room before taking antibiotics but that he recommended hitting the drugs as a matter of urgency meanwhile total rest for 4 6 weeks that s a long time and to save you asking yes i had the anti pneumonia jab when it was offered to me three years ago i respect my gp s knowledge not just of bodies in general but of my medical history in particular so i obeyed not that i had much choice i was already feeling really exhausted so i took the antibiotics cancelled everything in the calendar spent 4 weeks sleeping or reading light detective fiction and recovered but that was over a month of doing very little the one thing i had to do vacancy in see committee when i say i cancelled everything in the calendar there was one exception and that was the oxford vacancy in see committee visc this is the group which starts the process of finding a new bishop and as a member of general synod i am automatically on this because we are a very large diocese it s a huge committee 49 members when we began to meet i volunteered for the smaller and for me more interesting statement of needs subgroup this is the group that produces a picture of the diocese and a first attempt at thinking about what we are looking for in a new bishop this meant pretty well weekly meetings for several months with the draft statement of needs going back and forth to the main visc and for some predictable sections being revised over and over again we all brought in our particular areas of interest or knowledge so i was involved in drafting sections including those on education diversity human sexuality the knowledge economy ai and women s ministry but all of us commented on everything like the rest of us i was profoundly grateful to the diocesan church house staff who found the figures we needed as well as to our chair who held it all together and to the staff member who designed the different pages the result of our labour is this document 72 pages which may well seem like overkill there came a point at which it was already so long that it seemed churlish not to include a bit more on some topics the statement of needs also incorporates results from another subgroup which was responsible for the consultation in the diocese in general and reflects the work of a third subgroup which focused on prayer fortunately all of our meetings had a zoom option indeed i had already needed to attend an earlier meeting on zoom from a hotel room which was difficult as at that one i had been asked to present a paper on one section of the statement of needs it s challenging doing this without a sense of the room the whole process of the visc seemed to be done in a rush with drafts of documents inevitably coming just before a meeting this is not unique to oxford dioceses are lined up in the queue and the deadlines are fixed centrally the sheer amount of work needed from those on a visc isn t apparent until the thing starts be warned if you are on one and on to the crown nominations commission the day after my diagnosis before the antibiotics had been given any sort of a chance i attended the visc remotely for the meeting in which the six diocesan representatives for the crown nominations commission cnc are elected you can t vote unless you are present at the meeting either in person or online i was feeling very ill but at least on mute my coughing could not be heard to my great surprise i was one of those elected which meant attending the commissioning service which followed the result through my screen and appearing on that screen in the official photo of the event as a result of this it all felt rather unreal but it is real so now my diary is taken up with the cnc alongside the 6 elected diocesan reps a cnc has 6 national reps originally these were elected from general synod as pairs so that only one of each pair had to attend a particular cnc but for various reasons those broke down and now some of the remaining national reps have to take part in all the cncs and there seem to about 6 cncs a year the two archbishops bring the membership up to 14 we are issued with many many documents some of them already in the secure online site and far more to come i am used to academic job searches where there may be 70 or so applicants for one post but the amount of paperwork per applicant is far more here by the time we get to october when the interviews happen there will have been many many days of reading because this is not like a secular appointments process but is about discerning who is being called to the office of bishop in the coming week we have the online discerning well together session i think this was formerly known as anti bias training and then the following week the national and diocesan reps meet together for the first time the details of a visc are confidential you ll note that i ve only shared the information that is in the public domain in the statement of needs or on the diocesan website and have written about processes common to all dioceses rather than moving into details of who said what in meetings whereas the election from visc to cnc is done online cncs operate with another level of confidentiality to the point where the eventual votes on which candidate to select as bishop are done by writing on a piece of paper and handing it in at a general synod meeting we voted to continue this secrecy within the meetings acknowledging that this means a person could speak one way in a cnc meeting but then vote in a different way something which seems very odd to me on our cnc we have already signed a data protection and confidentiality agreement as for the rest of the proceedings everything is confidential i understand that it is at the june meeting that we all swear the oath as a member of the crown nominations commission i promise as an obligation of such membership not to divulge to any outside person information about this commission s proceedings or about any person it has considered for the appointment or about others who have been the source of its information neither during my membership nor afterwards i also undertake not to make copies of any of the papers provided to delete all digital copies of papers held on various devices and to return all hard copy papers to the archbishops secretary for appointments at the end of the commission s meeting that s clear enough silence will fall share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in crown nominations commission general synod tagged bishops crown nominations commissions discernment vacancy in see committee 4 comments five guiding principles and two key issues for the church recognising the wiggle room posted on march 16 2026 by fluff35 make no mistake as the date of archbishop sarah mullally s enthronement in canterbury cathedral draws closer the world of social media is currently as vile as it can get along with the c of e which has discerned her call to this role she faces a barrage of accusations of heresy and even apostasy try defending her and you just act as a magnet for the hatred all this is happening over thirty years after women were first ordained to the priesthood and despite the five guiding principles calling us to mutual flourishing and due respect and canonical obedience towards those who are true and lawful holders of the office which they occupy in this blog post i would like to reflect on the reception of women s ordained ministry while noting some parallels with where the church of england is on sexuality after the living in love and faith llf years a topic which forms the theme of this whole blog for women s ordained ministry we have the five guiding principles hereafter the 5 gps endorsed in 2014 as part of the package for the synodical measure to open episcopal ministry to women and addressing the variety of differing convictions on this matter and the key document is the house of bishops declaration on the ministry of bishops and priests discussions about women and about sexuality are similar in that they are about bodies and about who holds the power as well as being about how we read the bible in what follows i m going to focus on one of the other official documents about the 5 gps to see if and how that helps us when we are thinking about ho...
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