The Crown Nominations Commission is now interviewing candidates. This was done for the first time last week, when candidates for Bradford were interviewed. This was announced by the Archbishop of York at General Synod in February this year, but we failed to pick it up at the time. The Archbishop’s statement is included in the Report of Proceedings: Volume 41 No.1 (February 2010) (pages 97 and 98). I have copied it below the fold. My thanks go to the Archbishops’ Senior Appointments Adviser for drawing my attention to this.
I have described the full process for appointing diocesan bishops here.
There is also a very useful Briefing for Members of Vacancy in See Committees prepared by the Archbishops’ Appointments Secretary which also describes the process, although this has not yet been updated to include the interviews.
Crown Nominations Commission
The Archbishop of York (Dr John Sentamu): I would like to make a statement about the work of the Crown Nominations Commission and the role of interviews in the discernment process.
Longer-serving members of the General Synod will be aware that consideration of the role of interviews as part of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) process has been ongoing since 2002. The report Working with the Spirit (GS 1405) recommended that the CNC process should not include interviews but, when the Synod debated the report, it requested that the candidates considered at the second CNC meeting should be interviewed before a vote is taken.
In July 2003, my predecessor Archbishop David Hope made a statement explaining the decision of the Commission’s central members not to implement this at that time but gave an undertaking that they would continue to keep the issue under review.
In 2007, at the end of their period of service, the then central members reviewed their position and again decided not to introduce interviewing at that time. The debate was left open-ended, however, in order to allow the ‘new’ central members of the CNC to pursue discussions, if necessary. At the July 2008 group of sessions I indicated that the central members of the CNC would make a decision either way about interviews and inform Synod at the February 2010 group of sessions.
The existing group of central members, during their two-and-a-half years of service, have continued to monitor the discernment processes of the CNC and, taking into account the views of diocesan members, have decided to pilot the introduction of interviews. Candidates will also be asked to make a presentation and to give a homily. The central members will make a report to Synod in two years’ time with an evaluation of this new step in the process.
The central members were very clear that an interview will be but one step in the discernment of who might be called to a particular see. As members of Synod are aware, there are a number of other stages, including the nomination of candidates; the work of vacancy in see committees and the two Appointment Secretaries in determining the needs of the diocese; the role of the Crown and Her Majesty’s Government; the paperwork provided by candidates and the deliberations of the Commission itself; the individual’s consideration of the position and then the election of the candidate; the confirmation of the election and, where the candidate is not already in episcopal orders, his consecration. These are all significant stages in the discernment process and it is important that the interview does not dominate that process.
The interviews will be held at the second meeting of the Commission. As members of the Synod are aware, there are a number of episcopal vacancies currently under consideration and, having reviewed the stages of the vacancy in see process, it has been decided that the first see to be considered under these arrangements will be Bradford in the autumn of this year.
Am I right in thinking that there are fun and games with some diocesan processes because vacancy in see committees include General Synod members – and there aren’t any GS members at the moment?
David
GS members retain their ex officio membership of other bodies until the new synod is inaugurated, so the problem is not as bad as you suggest. But the Bradford meetings were brought forward to avoid this sort of problem.
Despite the recommendation of the whole approach to senior appointments by General Synod, one has to wonder whether anyone but the very ambitious will ever be appointed to high office in the Church of England again. Would Mervyn Stockwood have been appointed if this system had pertained at the time; or even Michael Ramsey? If we are going down this path why don’t we go the whole hogg and elect our diocesan bishops, as is done in other parts of the Anglican Communion? What’s so wrong with that?
Nothing wrong with it at all. I think it would be a very good idea.
Richard Franklin has a very good point. Makes you think would we have had Mervyn Stockwood and Michael Ramsey ? Seems unthinkable not to have had them –each in his own special and inimitable way. Am I just naive in hating the idea of ambitious ministers ? And ideas of so-called ‘high offfice’ ? Surely our only ‘ambition’ should be for some kind of holiness in loving and living within our own uniqueness and creativity, loving and receiving others as Christ does. High office — look out for the most modest and overlooked, the most generous spirited, ones in all… Read more »
A few years ago – 1986, in fact, Lord Longford wrote a book entitled – The Bishops – A Study of Leaders in the Church Today. The then Anglican bench was full of colourful characters – like, Runcie, Habgood, Leonard, Sheppard, Montifiore and Jenkins – to name but a few. I would think it would be very difficult to write a similar book on today’s bench of indistinguishable clones. The present lot look very monochrome to me. Although, not personally in favour, maybe a smattering of women bishops might well add a little fizz and colour to a very dull… Read more »
Bishops always were appointed, of course. It is difficult to know whether the Holy Spirit can work better through a democratic process. Has any study been done that shows that elected bishops are better than appointed ones? If the present English Bench is more monochrome than previous ones, perhaps it is precisely because the system of appointment has been opened up.
Certainly it will tend to exclude those who simply do not like putting themselves forward and indicates a change of ecclesiastical culture not everyone will feel comfortable with. Whether the results are better, I suppose, only time will tell. I hope however there will be an archiepiscopal and ,indeed prime ministerial ,”encourager* who might bring able but humble types to the notice of the appointments commission.
“Bishops always were appointed, of course”
I suppose they weren’t in the Early Church?
It is always healthy for lay persons to play a key role in a democratically elected bishop. The fact that the Church of England “appoints” rather than seeks active participation by lay people in the selection of candidates for bishops is something that needs to be addressed. It is always better for lay people in a given diocese to have a major role in selecting and ELECTING their own bishops. We need to change many things in Roman, Anglican and Orthodox methods of selecting and electing bishops. The old ways are just not working.
I don’t think they had bishops in the early church –elected or otherwise.
My understanding is that the Scriptural evidence points to terms which simply meant overseer and elder – much like the synagogue system of the time. Indeed, according to one RC priest I’ve read, there were churches directed, in the pastoral epistles, to choose the episkopos, the overseer for themselves. There wasn’t an order from Jerusalem, Paul, Peter or the Emperor as to who that was to be. In the end, however, I believe looking to ancient ways and means is a mistake. Democratic methods of governance were known – to an extent – but were also known to have fallen… Read more »
Laurence: there were bishops in the Early Church, of course! Being devoted to patristics as we Anglicans all not doubt are, I’m sure this was a slip of the keyboard.
Perhaps you were wondering about the earlier stage, that of the Apostolic Church?
My suggestion was that the monarchical and top-down appointed episcopate was not the early model, and that perhaps now we should re-examine it.
In New Zealand, any synod member may put forward a nomination for the new bishop of a diocese. The nominatiion has to be seconded by another member. Provided the nominated person agrees to be put up for the task, their name then has to be accepted by the official Nominators as a possibility. Cndidates are then interviewed individually to assess their particular gifts, and to ensure that they are willing to serve as a bishop in the Church. If the response is positive, then votes are taken in Diocesan Electoral Synod. The leading contender’s name is then circulated to the… Read more »
To return to the matter of the appointments process, the reason I flagged this up is that there may be very good candidates around who are simply not willing to go through the elaborate process of selection now in place. Why should someone content in their present job want to put themselves through it? It’s not just a matter of someone bringing “able but humble types to the notice of the appointments commission” as Perry Butler put it, they have to be willing to put their heads on the block, to fill up long forms, make ‘presentations’ and now be… Read more »
Ambrose of Milan was made bishop by the acclamation of the people. I can’t think of a single bishop in the Church of England who would stand a snowball’s chance in hell of attaining office by this means.
Yes, Mark I was thinking, along the lines, that Jesus didn’t found a religious body – with or without bishops. Would nt you say ? So I don’t think we have to been tied down to current practices at all. I realise anglicans probably will as episcopacy has been fetishized increasingly since the innovations of the Oxfor Movement. But I think episcopacy has failed us. The priamtes of the anglican communion and other bishops ahve behaved in the most appalling way. I can just see the Church Times entry 100 years from now, in their column that looks back at… Read more »
“Just imagine ! — what form would church take, say, in the aftermath of an environmental or nuclear catastrophe, where all life would need to go back to basics ?”
Don’t have to – I’ve read _A Canticle for Leibowitz_. (We keep the bishops, by the way, and send them into outer space…)
Yes, Laurence, of course I basically agree with you: I cannot see how encouraging self-important people in purple shirts to be yet more pompous has anything to do with Jesus. Did the rot set in with the Oxford Movement, though, I wonder? I think bishops in England were principally offshoots of the ruling class certainly since the Norman invasion, when they became a useful arm of the new order. The interesting thing is, that the bishops were basically scions of the aristocracy, whose values they reflected, until the late 18th c, then became more upper middle class in the 19th… Read more »
Sorry for intervening, Father Ron, but if you’re talking about the NZ church, I think the procedure is that it is the members of General Synod, either in session or by mail, who have to give their consent. Another important thing is that the whole process in NZ (and in Scotland, where bishops are chosen by diocesan synod) is confidential up until the poll is confirmed. The current bishop of Christchurch’s election was leaked (reportedly by pro-Sydney types) and +Victoria did not comment, of course. For the same reasons put forward here, though, I cannot commend the American-style electoral process… Read more »
Thanks for that Mark. I think there is much in what you say. Leaves me with a sense that it is not a history to take much pride in. I suppose that means, back to the sermon on the mount and to the seed growing secretly ? And Bonhoeffer in word and deed; and the novels of Marilynne Robinson and Niall Williams. And yet, John V Taylor, Michael Ramsey, Trevor Huddleston were outstanding. Now there, I have cheered myself a bit. The Churches in this process of being stripped down, of transition towards what ? Becoming leaner as we lose… Read more »