It took a brave dissenter to defy the cosy consensus at the Church of England's General Synod over ditching the Bishops’ teaching document that officially prevented practising homosexuals from being ordained.
Debbie Buggs, a lay member for London Diocese, was the lone voice against the motion calling for candidates for ordination no longer to be required to agree to Issues in Human Sexuality.
Conservatives voted for the private member’s motion as amended because it replaces Issues, which the House of Bishops put out in 1991, with “an interim requirement of living consistently with the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy (GPCC)”.
The Church of England said after Synod members meeting in York near-unanimously passed the motion on July 15: “The motion does not alter the Church’s doctrine or canonical requirements, which remain in place …
“The interim use of the GPCC ensures that expectations for clergy conduct remain clear and grounded in the Church’s wider understanding of ministry as a public and representative calling.”
Presenting the motion, Paul Waddell, a lay member for Southwark Diocese, reminded Synod that when it voted to allow services of same-sex blessings in the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) debate in February 2023, it also voted to ditch Issues.
“Nearly two and a half years ago, this Synod voted to bin off Issues in Human Sexuality, replacing it with new pastoral guidelines. Here we are, though, still waiting, still not really agreeing on what’s in and what isn’t,” he said.
He told members: “I work in surgery in operating theatres. When we want to remove something malignant, we want to do so causing the least possible damage to the rest of the human body. So, what is being proposed today is a surgical removal of Issues without affecting all the other things to which we hold in our teaching or getting bogged down in the things that we’re at loggerheads over.”
He appealed to both revisionists and conservatives: “Progressive friends, like you I want to change the Canons (the C of E’s rules) so that we get equal marriage but that’s not part of this motion. Conservative friends, unlike you I want to change the Canons so that we get equal marriage but that’s not part of this motion.”
Canon Vaughan Roberts, Rector of the conservative evangelical St Ebbe’s in Oxford, spoke in support of the motion, saying he found the language in Issues "uncomfortable” and thanking Waddell three times.
He was able to back the motion as amended because Issues was being replaced by the GPCC. “Simply a vacuum would not have helped,” he said. “It would have added to huge conflict and the danger of an unholy chaos and a breakdown of catholic order.”
He concluded: “So the proposal which will be amended I think gives us an opportunity, Synod, to change the tone of this debate and come together and support something that we can all surely get behind.”
His speech got sustained applause. Synod duly accepted the amendment moved by the Rev Jenny Bridgman of Chester Diocese to replace Issues with the GPCC.
Debbie Buggs, however, refused to join the love-in. She attends the conservative evangelical St Helen’s Bishopsgate in the City of London and is a voting member of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) tasked with nominating the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
Called to speak after the chair asked if any member wanted to oppose the motion, she said Synod had been “promised” that the LLF process was a package made up of three elements - standalone services of same-sex blessing, new clergy conduct rules, and orthodox Anglicans being given their own bishops under transferred episcopal provision.
Buggs’s argument is backed up by the statement in November last year from the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, who was then the lead bishop for LLF. He said in a video that opponents of standalone services of same-sex blessing would be able to “request spiritual and pastoral oversight from another bishop”.
She slammed the bishops for refusing to allow “a measure of transferred episcopal oversight which would have been helpful for those who regard themselves as orthodox believers in the Church of England, those who continue to believe the holy apostolic teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ”.
She said ditching Issues without proper provision for orthodox Anglicans was “a sticking plaster, not a surgical removal”.
Her speech earned a trickle of applause.
Whatever the merits of the argument for replacing Issues with the GPCC, Buggs surely did the orthodox Anglican cause a significant service by defying the consensus on this occasion.
By insisting on transferred episcopal provision and refusing to engage in congratulatory speeches to Synod revisionists determined to ditch the Christian sexual ethic and change the C of E’s definition of marriage, she signalled her own determination to keep up the resistance.
Will her fellow conservatives follow her example in the battles ahead or will they become addicted to cosy consensus?
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
