The Church of England’s General Synod meets virtually from 1300 yesterday until 1530 on Wednesday. The papers are available here.
Video recording of the morning’s proceedings
Video recording of the afternoon’s proceedings
Order paper 2 – details of the morning’s business
Order paper 3 – details of the afternoon’s business
The morning’s business started with a presentation from the Archbishop of York on Vision and Strategy, based on this paper: A Vision for the Church of England in the 2020s, ‘Christ centred and Jesus shaped. Simpler, humbler, bolder’. This is accompanied by A theological reflection on our emerging vision and priorities, ‘Salt for the earth, light for the world’ by Stephen Croft, Bishop of Oxford, and by this summary.
The other morning business was the Cathedrals Measure which received final approval.
Reports from members and the press
Stephen Lynas A change gonna come
Andrew Nunn Simpler, Humbler, Bolder
Church Times Synod: cathedral governance put on a new footing
Typically Stephen Cottrell’s vision for a more diverse church embraces disability, age and race but ignores anything remotely controversial like
embracing immigrants or offenders. And of course LGBTI people don’t get a mention in there.
You should know by now, Kate that there’s an implicit embargo on affirming objectified groups of people (like migrants, offenders, the unemployed, those on state benefits etc) because the priority is to keep the cash coming in on the collection and the volunteer base motivated – and that won’t happen if the Express and Mail readers who make up the majority of C of E activists don’t like it. As most parish priests will tell you, it’s endemic and not simply restricted to the Shires, the Home Counties and the South coast. When I was a curate in the former… Read more »