Updated
This press release was issued earlier today.
House of Bishops Response to the Independent Reviewer’s report on See of Sheffield.
The full text of the press release is copied below the fold.
Also published today is The Five Guiding Principles: A Resource for Study. This document is described on the CofE website thus:
The Five Guiding Principles had a crucial role in the Church of England’s decision in 2014 to open its three orders of ministry – bishops as well as deacons and priests – to all, without reference to gender. They provide basic parameters to help Anglicans with different theological convictions on this matter continue to relate to each other within one church, and are expected to be affirmed by every candidate for ordination in the Church of England.
The Five Guiding Principles: A Resource for Study has been developed by the Faith and Order Commission of the Church of England following requests for resources in this area from – among others – those responsible for theological education.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have said: “This resource will be invaluable not only to the Implementation and Dialogue Group but to all bishops, clergy and laity in thinking about what the Five Guiding Principles mean in our ministry and the life of the Church.
“This document is not intended to be the last word on the theological implications of the Five Guiding Principles. It is intended to contribute to the dialogue the Church needs.”
Update
Forward in Faith issued a statement in response to this: The Five Guiding Principles:
Forward in Faith is grateful for the announcement of the House of Bishops’ acceptance of the recommendations made by the Independent Reviewer in his review of the nomination to the See of Sheffield.
We welcome the publication by the Faith and Order Commission of The Five Guiding Principles: A Resource for Study. We hope that widespread study of this booklet will prevent recurrence of the misrepresentation of the Five Guiding Principles that occurred in 2017.
We welcome the appointment of a group, chaired by the Bishop of Rochester, to review what has been done to inform and educate clergy and laity about the 2014 settlement, distil examples of good practice, and provide further resources. We trust that all who have accepted membership of this group are now committed to upholding the House of Bishops’ Declaration, including the Five Guiding Principles.
We also welcome the appointment of Sir William Fittall to succeed Sir Philip Mawer as the Independent Reviewer, and wish to express our thanks to Sir Philip for his work. Having played an important part in the process that resulted in the 2014 settlement, Sir William is well qualified to take over the role of defending it.
† TONY WAKEFIELD
The Rt Revd Tony Robinson
ChairmanLINDSAY NEWCOMBE
Dr Lindsay Newcombe
Lay Vice-Chairman
Full text of House of Bishops press release:
Following the publication of Sir Philip Mawer’s independent review into the nomination to the See of Sheffield, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have announced the formal response from the House of Bishops.
In a joint statement, on behalf of the House, they said:
We remain very grateful to Sir Philip Mawer for his detailed, thoughtful and authoritative review which the House of Bishops has read carefully and discussed at its meeting in December. The House of Bishops whole-heartedly accepts all four of the recommendations from this review and wishes to put on record its thanks to Sir Philip for his work.
As we stated in September 2017 at the time of publication, we reaffirm our commitment to the vital principle of mutual flourishing as the Church and will endeavour to maintain the bonds of peace and affection and live God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ, even amid difference on questions on which Christians may ‘disagree Christianly’. The House of Bishops believes that working to the recommendations from Sir Philip’s review will help us to put this into action.
When we wrote to Sir Philip to ask him to undertake this review, our first concern was whether the Church had done enough to inform and educate clergy and laity about the 2014 settlement and the effect of the House of Bishops’ Declaration within it. We regret that, as Sir Philip concluded, not nearly enough was done to create an understanding of what the Declaration and Settlement would mean in practice. Sir Philip’s recommendation to form “a group with balanced membership to review what has been done; distil examples of good practice within dioceses; and provide resources to help dioceses, deaneries and parishes, and theological training institutions to engage in further consideration of the issues” has led us to establish an Implementation and Dialogue Group. The Bishop of Rochester has agreed to Chair this group, with the support of the Bishop of Aston. As Chair of the Steering Committee in charge of the draft legislation to enable women to become bishops that the Synod approved in 2014, Bishop James will bring significant experience to the Implementation and Dialogue Group along with others who sat on the Steering Committee with him. We have taken very seriously the call from Sir Philip to make this a diverse and balanced group and are pleased that the following people have agreed to sit on this group:
- The Rt Revd James Langstaff, Chair – Bishop of Rochester
- The Rt Revd Anne Hollinghurst, Vice-Chair – Bishop of Aston
- The Rt Revd Jonathan Baker – Bishop of Fulham
- The Rt Revd Rod Thomas – Bishop of Maidstone
- Miss Debbie Buggs – member of the House of Laity
- The Revd Canon Dr Emma Percy – Chair of WATCH
- The Revd Dr Rosemarie Mallett – member of the House of Clergy
- The Revd Dr Emma Ineson – Principal, Trinity College Bristol and member of the House of Clergy
- The Revd Dr Philip Plyming – Warden, Cranmer Hall Durham and member of the House of Clergy
- The Ven Michael Everitt – Archdeacon of Lancaster and member of the House of Clergy
- Canon Elizabeth Paver – Vice-Chair of the House of Laity
In his third recommendation, Sir Philip invites the Faith and Order Commission to ‘examine the theological challenge which has been posed to the 2014 Settlement’. The House of Bishops agreed in December that this work would be essential to the Implementation and Dialogue Group and we are grateful to FAOC for producing The Five Guiding Principles: A Resource for Study which is available online from today and in print from Church House Publishing later this month. This resource will be invaluable not only to the Implementation and Dialogue Group but to all bishops, clergy and laity in thinking about what the Five Guiding Principles mean in our ministry and the life of the Church.
This document is not intended to be the last word on the theological implications of the Five Guiding Principles. It is intended to contribute to the dialogue the Church needs. The Faith and Order Commission may produce further reflections in due course.
Sir Philip also recommended that the Secretary General should review the lessons to be learned from the nomination process, addressing in particular how the national Church institutions support the nomination process, and the nominee for a see. The Secretary General has begun work on this review. Sir Philip also made a number of detailed recommendations relating to the working of the Crown Nominations Commission, which he suggested should be taken forward alongside or as part of the implementation of the parallel report from Professor Oliver O’Donovan and others on the theology of the CNC’s work. We accept this recommendation too, and Sir Philip’s points will be developed in the implementation plan for Professor O’Donovan’s review. We hope in following the recommendations in Sir Philip Mawer’s report we will go some way to realising the commitment that we have to maintaining the highest possible degree of communion, while contributing to mutual flourishing, across the whole Church of England.
We are indebted to Sir Philip Mawer, not just for this review, but also for serving as the Independent Reviewer over the past 3 years. Over this period he has published three reviews and answered many other queries around the Five Guiding Principles. As the first person to take on this new role in 2014 he has established the role of Independent Reviewer and brought to it unwavering commitment, great experience and much wisdom. As Sir Philip’s term of office draws to a close, we are delighted to announce that Sir William Fittall will succeed him as Independent Reviewer from February 2018. Sir William was Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council from 2002 until 2015 and brings to this role the experience of being Secretary General during the discussions in Synod around the 2014 settlement and the House of Bishops’ Declaration. We are grateful to Sir William for taking on this role and are confident that he will continue Sir Philip’s good work.
+Justin Cantuar:
+Sentamu Ebor:
So on the very day in the UK that we celebrate 100 years of universal suffrage, the Church of England produces a report reiterating the legitimacy of discrimination against women, as a position which all those ordained in the church must respect. It’s worth recalling that, despite the involvement of numerous Anglican lay women and men, and also some clergy, in the fight for women’s right to vote, the vast majority of Bishops remained silent or were opposed, even supporting the imprisonment and forced feeding (or release and subsequent arrest) of suffragettes who went on hunger strikes. Archbishop Randall Davidson,… Read more »
It misses the mark in so many ways. 1. Education was never the problem, so the call for more education is insulting. 2. It does not acknowledge the problem of how women and girls are to flourish with a bishop who does not see them as priests and equals in the Image of God. 3. It does not acknowledge the glaring problem of the Mawer Report – that it barely represents the voices of women, and not by name, while it went on and on about North. This omission is so egregious that the report lacks credibility. It’s a man’s… Read more »
The problem with British constituency politics is that parties or ideologies which have the support for more than one voter in 600 but less than about one voter in three get no seats; PR at a national level would give seats or representation to ideas which have very little support at a constituency level but when summed up justify something. The issue with bishops is that hardline “no women, it’s all invalid” does not have a majority, or anything like it, in any single diocese. There isn’t some regional tendency: it’s a minority position everywhere. What the appointment of Philip… Read more »
A “balanced” group is an interesting concept. If you compare to the balance of views among church members/attenders/adherents/self-identifiers generally this group is anything but balanced.
Thank you Interested Observer. You and Cynthia have put the issues exceptionally well. The Bible has nothing in it to support, theologically, slavery, yet it assumed that slaves exist, in both Old and New Testaments, with no judgements about whether ‘slavery’ was right or wrong. We now know that owning other people, not giving rights to a section of the human race is morally indefensible. The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa was able to produce a theological argument for racism. There is no theological justification for making ANYONE a second class citizen. The 2010 Equality Act is also quite… Read more »
“Elliott Arenson in the US has written an excellent easy to read book called “Mistakes were made, but not by me”.”
I have that book. I agree with your recommendation, and would recommend it to everyone interested in failures of decision-making and governance.
And the patriarchy has identified the next ‘independent reviewer’ – another man. Indeed, not just another man but one handpicked by the archbishops, not for his independence but, they say, because of his understanding of the Archbishops’ Council.
What makes an independent reviewer independent? Is it the title? Is it a personal commitment to independence – which Sir William might possess in abundance? Or does it require someone whose background is substantially different, someone able to bring a fresh perspective?
The former Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council as the Independent Reviewer! What a hoot! Have the Archbishops taken leave of their senses? Ah well, whom the gods would destroy ….
Having read this new document quickly, I find it very disappointing and it does not seem to offer any hope of a solution. It does at least say ‘mutual flourishing cannot be a zero-sum game in which the flourishing of some can be imagined as coming only at the cost of the diminishment of others’, but that is exactly what happens to women priests forced to serve under a non-ordaining diocesan. What would be the point of appointing a non-ordaining diocesan? Would it be to create a ghetto of ecclesiological purity to which traditionalists would move and from which women… Read more »
The lesson we all need to learn from the sorry tale of the Diocese of Sheffield is that when the Diocesan profile is written during an episcopal vacancy that it MUST say that the new Bishop should ordain women. I understand that in Sheffield it was felt that this was so obvious is didn’t need saying. It does. This arose in another Diocese in the C of E in 2015. When it was suggested in the Vacancy in See committee that it needed to be put in the Diocesan profile that the new Diocesan should ordain women, there was an… Read more »
Post-North, no diocese is going to even consider appointing someone who won’t ordain women, no matter how intricate their argument that they can hold this position and still support women priests in their diocese. Most dioceses will use the profile to exclude any non-ordainer from the short-list. But what if they by some implausible sequence of events short-listed and went on to appointed someone who won’t ordain women? Then the media and political reaction, both inside and outside the church, would make both the nominee’s and the diocese’s position impossible. Justin Welby completely misjudged the mood of both Parliament and… Read more »
The church reached s decision about how to enable women to become bishops. The 5GP are part of the arrangements. Mutual flourishing means traditionalists can expect more than toleration. Their position must be treated with honour and respect, as an entirely legitimate theological view reflecting majority opinion within the great traditions of West and east. Traditionalists ought to be able to be free from discrimination in the appointments process, and just as eligible for senior posts as any other. As long as at least one Bishop in the diocese will ordain women, there’s no need for the Diocesan to do… Read more »
No, Londoner, you (and I fear the HoB) just don’t get it. It’s not about functionality but about ontology. The reason a SSWSH bishop won’t ordain women is that he doesn’t believe women can or should be priests, even if he is required by the 5GPs to accept that they are true and lawful holders of their office.
Therefore, such a bishop appointed to a diocesan post requires all the women priests in that diocese to swear canonical obedience to him, even though he doesn’t believe that they are priests at all. What’s mutual about that sort of flourishing?
I find it interesting that the original House of Bishops Declaration ran to just 8 pages of text. The resulting Forward in Faith “Advice to Parishes” comprised 32 pages, and this latest official publication is over 60 pages, to say nothing of almost 300 pages in Sir Philip Mawer’s 3 formal reports, and extensive media articles with differing interpretations of the Declaration. The Declaration served its purpose in being an integral part of the “deal” which has enabled the entry of women into the episcopate. (The fact that the Archbishop felt it necessary to deny to parliament that there was… Read more »