The electronic voting results from this month’s General Synod are now available online and are linked below.
LLF voting
The proposed amendments and the original motion from the LLF debate are in Order Paper V.
Final motion (as amended by 67) Item 11
Amendments to Item 11
Item 44
Item 45
Item 51
Item 52
Item 53
Item 54
Item 55
Item 56
Item 57
Item 58
Item 59
Item 60
Item 61
Item 62
Item 64
Item 65
Item 67
Item 68
Other electronic votes
Item 10 (motion on Cost of Living)
Item 69 (amendment to motion on Governance Review)
Item 502 (final approval of Amending Canon No. 42)
Item 506 (final approval of the Diocesan Stipends Funds (Amendment) Measure)
Item 514 (amendment to the Draft Diocesan Stipends Funds (Amendment) Measure)
Item 521 (amendment to the Draft Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure)
Item 523 (That clause 2 stand part of the Draft Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure)
Item 530 (amendment to the Draft Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure)
Just looking at those who voted on the final motion, a reminder that the vote passed in all three Houses (Bishops, Clergy and Laity) with 57% in favour, 41% against and 2% abstaining across the Synod. Looking at some of the constituencies and demographics within Synod, the Catholic Group (traditional catholics who opposed women’s ordination) largely voted against (3 in favour, 26 against, 3 abstained). Women voted in favour (124 for, 48 against, 4 abstained), as did visibly UKME members (19 for, 16 against). HTB and other church planters were largely against (3 for, 17 against, 1 abstain). Archdeacons largely… Read more »
I think what was clear is that LLF and the Bishops’ Proposal failed to gain any consensus at all. The Church is completely divided on the issue of gay marriage, and the only realistic way forward out of the logjam is to accept that division as a reality, and seek the alternative of accommodating plural consciences, along some kind of lines like the Scottish precedent. Otherwise we face another 5 or 10 years of attrition and rancour, if the Church of England stays intact that long. Fundamentally LLF and the Bishops have failed to forge a consensus on gay marriage,… Read more »
I think we should only support ‘conscience’ variation if it means everyone who wants it can celebrate their wedding in their own parish church. Nobody should have to migrate. The couples’ conscience and ability to celebrate their wedding among neighbours and friends should be paramount. I get fed up with all the talk about the conscience of clergy: they are servants. I know they don’t like that, but they are. Their conscience should be secondary to that of the flock they serve – within the overall framework set by the church. If they don’t like that then we need some… Read more »
Your position, then, is that the clergy should do and say what they’re told to do and say by the people who pay their salaries, irrespective of whether they believe it to be right or wrong. That’s not what most people want in their clergy, I suggest, and not how most people in employment expect to be treated.
No
Firstly, clergy are not employees.
Theologically they are shepherds whose calling is to put the welfare of their flock ahead of their own. That means that they should put the conscience of their flock ahead of their own, so long as that is within the envelope of possibilities allowed by the church. So, if a couple wants prayers for their wedding and the church has allowed such prayers then, by vocation, the couple’s minister should oblige
If that isn’t acceptable then some structural separation is the way forwards.
I’m sorry, Kate, but I disagree, despite travelling some way with you in the points you put across. In the interests of full disclosure, I am a priest, but I am also a survivor of pretty awful bullying and harassment from lay leaders whose view is the clergy are servants who are there to do as they’re told. We can theologise about servant ministry, point out that Christ came to serve not to be served, and say clergy should follow that example, whether or not we subscribe to the model of an ‘alter Christus’. But I am first and foremost… Read more »
Clergy must act in the interests of their parishioners. If they (clergy) think SSM is not in the interests of their parishioners then they should not facilitate it.
If I think I need an operation and the surgeon thinks it is not necessary I cannot expect the surgeon to just do it on the grounds they are there to serve me.
The surgeon isn’t a correct analogy. It doesn’t have the shepherd dynamic.
And within a church, the church decides the envelope of what is and isn’t right. Within that envelope, for a wedding the consciences of the couple outweigh that of the servant priest so long as they don’t ask for anything outside the bounds of agreed doctrine.
The idea that the conscience of the couple outweigh that of the clergy is your invention.
There is no theological or other basis for such a claim.
You’re suggesting, then, that a minister who honestly believes that he may be doing irreparable damage to someone should go ahead? Not what we want in our clergy, I suggest. On the Last Day are they to say “I was only obeying orders”? I think not. However, I take it t be your position that since, at the moment, holy matrimony and blessing of civil unions for same-sex couples are not within the envelope of possibilities allowed by the church, then clergy should consider themselves bound not to offer such prayers, whatever their own conscientious position? Or does the compulsion… Read more »
Your first sentence is well made, Kate. A parish church is meant to be available for people to get married in if they live in that parish. It’s an aspect of being the Church for the nation, the national church (well… English nation at least). So yes, I agree. If a gay or lesbian couple wish to be married in their own parish church, where they live, in the town where they’re known, and in some cases where they have visited in childhood and baptisms and friends’ weddings and funerals… then they should most certainly be allowed to be married… Read more »
“any argument that it only passed because of those on Synod without an electoral mandate does not hold” Many thanks for that analysis. Of the 199 members of the house of clergy, 21 are archdeacons, 4 are co-opted MOD/Prison Service dignitaries. Many are in receipt of stipends or pensions. Many are on common tenure, so lack the independence of freeholders. They are ‘elected’ from miniscule franchises (under Canon H(2): assistant bishops, archdeacons, beneficed clergy, those clergy in possession of a licence, and those clergy on deanery synods who have PTOs – that last category presumably excluding a large portion of… Read more »
Most members of the public are relaxed and okay about gay marriage and gay sexuality. Most people in the pews (ranging from those who attend church weekly to those who attend less often, and who make up 96% of total church membership) will reflect the range of views now held in society. Because church membership is weighted towards the elderly, the positive views on gay sex may be less widespread than among the young, but in this moderate central core of the Church, there is likely to be a traditional English view of fair play, live and let live, and… Read more »
Thank you so much for that, Susannah. That is most helpful. I think that some years ago Andrew Brown noted that the house of laity (which had blocked women bishops) tends to be stacked with partisan types because of the manner in which it is ‘elected’ (sic.). It seems to me that the manner in which the houses of clergy and laity are elected/selected amplifies partisanship, and it is the partisanship inculcated in party seminaries and worked out in Synod which has tended to increase the toxicity of the Church (I mean in terms of often generating more heat than… Read more »
Thank you. I agree that anyone in a parish who has been baptised, and especially if they have been confirmed, should be entitled to a say in the life of the Established Church. It remains the Church they were baptised into. Being a ‘National Church’ is different to being some protestant sect or denomination. There is a contract with the Nation. The Church is for *all* the nation.
Susannah I think that the elderly are not necessarily as conservative as perhaps you think they are. In my 25 years of parish ministry I tended to find that the wisdom of years gave older people a far more tolerant worldview than some much younger people who could be quite dogmatic. It’s a common myth that older people are not much interested in sex; maybe that’s true for some but I know several septuagenarians married and single who say they enjoy an active sex life. As ever with the CofE, it is so poe faced about a fundamental human desire.… Read more »
It’s wonderful! (Speaking as someone who will be 70 in about ten weeks’ time. Then again, my sweet wife is 21 years younger than me). And I agree with you that many older people I’ve met seem to have had the rough moralistic edges knocked off them through life’s experiences, and (maybe recognising how short life really is) wish people well if they can find some happiness. It’s just that surveys seem to suggest that statistically the young are more accepting of gay sex than the old – maybe because they have grown up in a different culture. Who knows?
Not just CofE. In the UK I would say that many catholics have a similar attitude too
Interesting to analyse the voting for Jayne Ozanne’s proposed amendment.
Bishops who supported her amendment:
Just 1 – Steven Croft (Oxford)
Bishops who abstained:
Vivienne Faull (Bristol)
Martin Gorick (Dudley)
Olivia Graham (Reading)
John Inge (Worcester)
John Perumbalath (Liverpool)
Martin Seeley (St Eds and Ipswich)
Graham Usher (Norwich)
I’m a bit disappointed about a few gay-affirming priests who abstained (I won’t name names, but they are there).
Bishops who opposed:
33
Just to be clear, this is the voting on the amendment to consider Equal Marriage in July, number 64.
Thanks Simon, yes – to replace the clause about reviewing the blessings in 5 years time with a report back this July ‘to end discrimination’ and bring proposals to provide for equal marriage in church. Note also these same opposing and abstaining bishops (minus John Inge who did not vote at all) also voted against Andrew Cornes’ call to endorse the present doctrine on marriage, and make sure the blessings don’t contradict or depart from that doctrine. In addition to the bishops above, the following bishops voted against the Cornes amendment: Michael Beasley (Bath and Wells) Christopher Chessun (Southwark) Stephen… Read more »
There are various reasons for people voting differently on this than one might expect. For example, when campaigning FOR the consecration of women as bishops it was important to avoid any lost vote which might be seen as closing the issue for an interval. The Bishops knew before Synod (since they had already voted) what their arithmetic would be. Synod arithmetic is definitely, but not decisively, pro change. Also the vote on this amendment ensures that the issue will be live for the next Synod elections, and people pro change (and you will see my own voting record which is… Read more »
Orthodox Christians will never accept the slur that orthodox biblical teaching is dangerous or unsafe or should be placed in the same category as obvious evils such as hating people or considering some people of lesser value than others.
These slurs have be called out for what they are. Such speech is saying that which is good is actually evil.
Hum …
Is belief in conversion therapy into the categoria of “orthodox biblical teaching”?
If so, “orthodox biblical christians” are “snake oil sellers”.
Conversion therapy is not orthodox biblical teaching.
Thanks.
I asked because a friend of mine, a member of the first Baptista Church in Lisbon, an evangelical (so he says), thinks “pray the gay away” has sound biblical basis.
The only conversion known to the New Testament is conversion to faith in Christ.
Peter, what are you responding to on this thread?
I’m delighted to learn you think the comment is superfluous.
I look forward to your future comments on this site being devoid of slurs against conservatives.
Peter, your comment has no relationship with the linked data about synod voting and does not respond to any of the comments here about that. That’s all I am asking about. Genuinely curious to know what you’re actually trying to say.
A general comment is that these voting lists, giving, in respect of every electronic vote, the figures (and names) by houses, would indicate to those who did not follow the actual proceedings in Synod that all the votes were counted votes by houses, pursuant to Standing Order 37(4). It is useful to have this breakdown in order more readily to see how the bishops, clergy, and laity respectively voted, but it is important to note that a number of these votes were not votes by houses but counted votes of the whole Synod pursuant to SO 37(3). The seven votes… Read more »
[… continued] Significantly, however, the outcome of the vote on Wednesday morning on item 530 (a proposed amendment to clause 15 of the draft Miscellaneous Provisions Measure to provide that where a benefice is vacant, the power of the incumbent to dedicate land for a highway would be exercisable by the priest-in-charge or, if there is not one, the bishop at the request of the PCC), which was carried on a counted vote of the whole Synod, would have been different had there been a counted vote by houses with the same people voting. The bishops opposed the amendment 3-13… Read more »