updated Wednesday morning, Thursday morning and afternoon and Friday morning
Official reports: General Synod – Summary of Business Conducted on Tuesday 12th February 2008 AM.
General Synod – Summary of Business Conducted on Tuesday 12th February 2008 PM
These include links to audio recordings of most of the items.
Church Times
Day two: Tuesday
Terms of service: Synod votes down moving parsonages to dioceses
The Times
Church ‘land grab’ thrown out by synod by Ruth Gledhill
Synod rejects proposals for £4bn vicarage ‘land grab’ by Ruth Gledhill (basically same story as the one above)
Clean up your ‘human pollution’, Archbishop of Canterbury tells gambling trade by Ruth Gledhill
Guardian
Synod calls on minister to scrap planned casinos by Riazat Butt
Telegraph
Church vows to tackle Bible shortage by Jonathan Petre
BBC
Synod rejects vicarage owner plan
Daily Mail
Church tells Brown to ditch plans for Las Vegas style super-casinos
Christian Today
Archbishop of Canterbury slams casinos in Synod debate by Maria Mackay
Church Society
General Synod Report 12 February 2008
Tuesday’s main business was consideration of the clergy terms of service legislation which came back from the revision committee. This is the legislation to introduce common tenure, a uniform set of conditions for all clergy. Synod appeared to have little problem with the general principle, but the proposal to transfer ownership of much clergy housing to new diocesan parsonage boards was strongly opposed and was effectively killed by one amendment. This was carried in each of the three houses of synod by the following votes.
|
for
|
against
|
abstained*
|
|
| bishops |
14
|
9
|
5
|
| clergy |
100
|
57
|
4
|
| laity |
84
|
79
|
4
|
Following this vote the committee responsible for steering the legislation through synod withdrew all the clauses about the ownership of clergy housing and as a result there will be no changes to the current arrangements.
Later Synod debated gambling and casinos and passed the following motion by 258 votes to 4 with 9 recorded abstentions.
That this Synod, gravely concerned that the total national spend on gaming has risen in each year over the past four years from £4 to £40 billion:
a) endorse the public opposition expressed by church leaders to the introduction of regional and large casinos, and encourage local churches to participate in local authority consultations on plans for new casino applications;
b) declare its support for programmes of education, research and treatment undertaken with the aim of checking the growth in problem gambling, and request the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to invoke the powers granted by the Gambling Act 2005 to introduce a statutory levy on the gambling industry to fund such programmes;
c) call upon Her Majesty’s Government to monitor the addictive effects of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals and to seek an international framework for a code of conduct on internet gambling; and
d) call upon the Mission and Public Affairs Council to report back to Synod by February 2009 on measures being taken by the churches to combat the detrimental effects of gambling in various forms.
The final item of business was a debate on the availability of bibles in churches at the end of which the following motion was carried overwhelmingly.
That this Synod, believing in the importance of Scripture, desire that anyone entering a church building or attending a church service should have easy and unfettered access one of the versions of the Bible referred to in the note by the House of Bishops on Versions of Scripture dated 9th October 2002 or one of the versions of the Bible that may be used by virtue of the Prayer Book Versions of the Bible Measure, and would request all dioceses to take steps to give effect to this desire in their churches.
* Synod has introduced electronic voting and this allows members to record an abstention as well as a vote in favour or against.
“Following this vote the committee responsible for steering the legislation through synod withdrew all the clauses about the ownership of clergy housing and as a result there will be no changes to the current arrangements.”
Sorry Peter, does this mean *all* of Common Tenure has been withdrawn or just the part which vested parsonages in the DPBs?
His Grace the Archbishop’s comments on Sharia has sent us back many years. At this time we need our Archbishop to concetrate on uniting the anglican communion.
In any case in the same breadth His Grace would have also asked that the Saudi Government allow free worship in their land as Muslims are allowed to worship freely in England, Italy and Greece – countries with strong christian presence.
I do not understand why one needs to record an abstention. Abstention is not taking part in the vote, it should not really be used for recording that one is undecided or ‘not really happy but uncomfortable about voting against’.
If you don’t want something to happen then you should vote against it.
In reply to Justin Lewis-Anthony all that has been withdrawn are the proposed changes to the ownership of clergy housing. Everything else to do with common tenure went through.
Today’s front page lead in the Telegraph is fascinating: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/13/nsharia113.xml News watchers will have noticed that both Telegraph papers have been moving strongly to support an extreme conservative position in their handling of the Anglican crisis and Rowan in particular. Jonathan Petre has acknowledged this “slant” and has mainly managed to keep the news value of his stories high – particularly with some good scoops from the Southern Cone. Quoting certain Synod voices recently came close to misrepresenting the position and the report of the Rowan’s speech thus in the FIFTH paragraph: “While the vast majority rallied to his defence… Read more »
We have horse race betting, football pools and the Lottery (churches and cathedrals are very happy to receive Lottery funding). It would be interesting to know why Synod felt so strongly about casinos. Was there any logic to the debate or was it the usual puritanical reaction to people enjoying themselves? All human activity is open to abuse – sex, drugs, drink, food, as well as gambling. Opposing new casinos isn’t the answer to the problem.
Thanks for letting us know Peter; I suppose half-good news is still good news.
“That this Synod, gravely concerned that the total national spend on gaming has risen in each year over the past four years from £4 to £40 billion.” Sorry, but this is complete nonsense. If the amount spent is the amount lost, then £4bn is more or less the right number for four years ago. That amount has not risen by a factor of 10 in four years. £40bn looks like the amount wagered, not the amount lost. The comparison is meaningless. Which is not to say there is no problem – there is – but try to get the numbers… Read more »
Episcopal priest here, trying to make sense of all this! In the vote cited, there are only some 160 clergy…? Is this all the priests that showed up at Synod (vs. 14 bishops?), or is this a subdivision? I guess what I’m interested in is – how many CoE priests are there?
blessings to all..
Very nerve-wracking for me here on the other side of the pond to venture to disagree with Martin Reynolds about the the Telegraph/Daily Mail campaign against ++Rowan, but while that group may “expect to win,” I see their maneuvering as defensive. Surely Royal circles are far more displeased with the attempts of Canon Dr. Sugden et. al. to forcibly overthrow the position of the Archbishop of Canterbury via something called GAFCON? To cover their tracks, a campaign against the Archbishop may well be necessary, but one finds it hard to believe that many in the Establishment sympathize with the latest… Read more »
Fr Craig
General Synod has close to 200 lay members, 200 clergy members and 53 bishops. Unlike the US General Convnetion the General Synod does not have alternate members so the number of members present is always somewhat less than the total number because of illness, other commitments etc. Some may have abstained without going into the chamber to record this.
So for 161 clergy and 167 laity to take part in the vote is actually quite good. The number of bishops is rather low.
Thanks, Martin Reynolds, for exposing the absolute vacuity of the Telegraph piece. The bile of the letters received is unimpressive. Rowan Williams was merely rehearsing the respectable though controverted tradition of a “pluralist State”; his incautious reference to Sharia made him a victim of media spin and mob hysteria; most of the letters are an expression of this hysteria.
One thing missing from your synod reports for Tuesday is the brief speech made by Elaine Storkey during the debate over the Ecclesiastical Offices (terms of service) Measure, helpfully flagged by Jody on Fulcrum. This can be found by going to the last audio link on this page: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/gsfeb080212am.html, and skipping forward 56 minutes for the full debate (Storkey’s contribution is at 1hr 6mins). She basically defends herself against a rather zealous exegete of 1 Cor 6, who would have the CofE set up its own structures for dealing with employment disputes rather than see its employees take recourse to… Read more »
I do not understand why one needs to record an abstention. (snip) Posted by: Wilf on Wednesday, 13 February 2008 at 9:42am GMT These were new gadgets, introduced for the first time at Synod on Monday; so not everybody was used to them – and this was the very first vote they were used for. But there is perhaps another reason for recording abstentions. Detail of the voting is to made available, so each synod member’s voting record will be public. It may be that some members will have been in a debate, and heard or even taken part in… Read more »