Thinking Anglicans

Opinion – 5 February 2025

Colin Coward Unadulterated Love What is the relationship in the CofE today between parishes and the hierarchy?

Martin Sewell and Stephen Trott Surviving Church General Synod and Safeguarding Reform

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FearandTremolo
FearandTremolo
5 hours ago

One of the interesting things Colin says is that “The system for electing at deanery level members of diocesan synods and of the General Synod Houses of Clergy and Laity is not working”. And y’know what? I’ll bet you £10 that you couldn’t find five people in your church that could tell you how one would get elected to General Synod.

Of course, my own anecdotal experience is very much that people in the parishes also don’t enormously care what General Synod is up to, but that’s very much the question Colin’s asking.

Nigel Goodwin
Nigel Goodwin
4 hours ago

Not a lot to argue about in the Sewell/Trott report.

But…what happened to apostolic succession, laying on of hands, and all that stuff?

[I am not at all personally saying that Bishops are special, I am only saying that some Anglicans consider them special, and consider the church is, in that domain of power and authority, different to secular organisations.]

Pam Wilkinson
Pam Wilkinson
Reply to  Nigel Goodwin
37 minutes ago

is the apostolic succession and “all that stuff” not part of the question Colin Coward is asking more broadly as “What kind of God do people believe in?” There is no consensus on the answer to that question. He is surely right that the “problems of governance” of the Church are not likely to be effectively solved whilst that situation continues. The Church has no clear purpose – which surely makes effective governance improbable, if not impossible? The goal of a commercial organisation might legitimately be to make as much money as legally possible. Decisions (which include decisions about public… Read more »

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