The debate on same-sex blessings at this week's deeply divided General Synod in Westminster showed that members, both orthodox and revisionist, are refusing to be institutionally managed.
That was clear in the failure of the managerialist approach by the Church of England's new lead bishop on the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process on marriage, sexuality and gender identity.
Despite his best efforts to present himself as the champion of church unity, the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, could not persuade the Synod to back his motion "to welcome the further work carried out on Living in Love and Faith and the focus on reconciliation and bridge building".
He wanted members to be positive about his proposal to bring back to their meeting in July "a set of commitments through which the whole Church can continue to pursue the implementation of the motions previously passed by Synod on Living in Love and Faith".
His ten broad commitments circulated to Synod members, with headings ranging from "humility and repentance" to "breadth" and to "communion and unity", had the three-fold aim of "cultivating unity as far as possible; enabling as many as possible to stay within the Church of England; and equipping the Church's mission to the nation".
But Synod voted to water down his motion. On Monday, members voted for an amendment from the Rev Joy Mawdesley, a revisionist clergy member from Oxford Diocese, to take out the word "welcome" and instead merely "note" the commitments and the focus on bridge building.
She said Bishop's Snow commitments represented "a reset of the debate".
"For some of us, that may feel like an unwelcome slowing down of the debate from all that happened at Synod last year. It seems to me that these are commitments that lack commitment. We don't know what we are welcoming," she said.
Synod voted to adjourn the LLF debate on Tuesday so Bishop Snow's motion was not voted on but it almost certainly would have fallen had there been a vote. After watering it down, the revisionist majority would then have poured it down the sink. The orthodox were not particularly enthusiastic about it either.
Revisionists are frustrated that the LLF process has now become bogged down in the legal difficulties over authorising the standalone services of blessing for same-sex couples, which they see as a step on the way to full gay weddings in C of E churches. They do not want to hear talk about bridge building; they want to see the gay wedding limousine cross the bridge as soon as possible.
Bishop Snow voted for the introduction of the blessings, called Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF), at the General Synod in February 2023 but abstained on the motion encouraging "the House of Bishops to continue its work of implementation" at the sessions in the following November.
He joined Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in abstaining. Even though Archbishop Welby voted for the services the first time around he said he would not personally use them because of his role in the worldwide Anglican Communion where the overwhelming majority of Churches oppose same-sex blessings.
Other bishops changed their minds during 2023. The Bishop of Sheffield, Pete Wilcox, the Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, the Bishop of Rochester, Jonathan Gibbs, and the Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, voted for the services in February but against them in November.
The LLF process went on for six years before the first 2023 vote. The suite of resources to inform the debate was published in 2020. Surely no bishop would claim even privately that he or she was bamboozled into supporting the services?
The bishops who have maintained a consistent position for the traditional teaching of the Church on marriage and sexual morality are: the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, Paul Williams; the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson; the Bishop of Lancaster, Jill Duff; and the Bishop of Islington, Ric Thorpe.
Bishop Snow during Synod questions and in his speech at the LLF debate stressed his promise at his ordination as a bishop to promote the unity of the Church. That is certainly important in the Anglican tradition.
The intercessions at Holy Communion according to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer include a prayer that the Lord would "inspire continually the universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity and concord". The intercessions also include the prayer that "all they that do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love". So, Anglicans are called to pray that the Church would be united in biblical truth.
The traditional sexual ethic is still held as biblical truth by the majority of Christians and church denominations around the world. There is a word for the mentality of a relatively small group of people in a declining denomination in a Western country who choose to reject the Christian consensus across the world and down the centuries and that is "sectarian".
Though individuals are responsible for their own spiritual and moral choices, very arguably a revisionist-majority Synod now is the fruit of what bishops and their parish clergy have and have not been teaching in C of E churches since the sexual revolution of the 1960s took hold in the Western world.
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
