Why we can’t have the Prayers of Love and Faith after all
The Church of England has finally published the theological papers and legal advice that the House of Bishops saw before its October meeting. At that meeting, the bishops gave in to the inevitable and concluded that they weren’t going to be able to go any further without going through the proper legal processes. Just what was in the papers that led to this about-face?
The papers consist of three theological papers produced by the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC) and one legal paper produced by the Church of England’s Legal Office.
The Nature of Doctrine and the Living God
This first paper addresses the question of what doctrine even is, and, consequently, whether it can be changed. It arrives at the definition that doctrine is ‘communally authorised knowledge about God warranted by the Holy Scriptures’ (p.22). In other words, doctrine is the teaching that arises out of us reading Scripture together to discover what God has revealed about himself. Because doctrine is “communally authorised”—the church agrees on it together, rather than as individuals—it is also “communally regulative” (p.38), meaning everyone in the church is then bound by it. That’s how it is supposed to work: the Church reads Scripture together to learn about God, and then we all believe and teach what we have received from Scripture.
That’s not how it works in practice, though. It’s increasingly the case that a large number of bishops, presbyters, deacons, and laypeople do not believe or teach the doctrine of the Church of England. We are soon to have the third Archbishop of Canterbury in a row who does not believe the doctrine of the Church of England when it comes to marriage, sexuality, and identity. Many of the church’s teachers do not see our doctrine as “communally regulative,” and have spent a lot of time, energy, and money trying to get around the need for it to be “communally authorised.” When it comes to doctrine, at times the Church of England feels like Israel in the days of the Judges, when Israel “had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.”
The bulk of the paper is taken up with answering the question of whether doctrine can ‘develop.’ Some will admit that the Church of England’s teaching is and has always been clear on these matters, but nevertheless want to see it develop and move on. The Faith and Order Commission caution against even using the language of development, as it connotes “unidirectional progress and improvement. The report instead sets out how doctrine is the dynamic understanding of the living God, with possibilities of wider or narrower formulations as the community discerns together.” (p.2)
In other words: we worship a dynamic, living, infinite God, and it is expected that our understanding of him and his nature may shift over the ages as we study Scripture together. We shouldn’t, however, assume that shifts in our understanding of God are always a good thing: it is as possible for our understanding to regress and to get lost down rabbit holes as it is for it to progress.
The conclusion to the report is helpful:
The debate we are having within the Church of England is not about the doctrine of marriage alone, or in the abstract. The notion of the dynamic nature of doctrine, especially when it comes to responding to new developments in culture and society, requires constant vigilance and attention to Holy Scripture, in the light of the tradition of the church’s reading of its sacred texts. Careful discernment about which parts and themes of Scripture are most pertinent to the issue being addressed and which reading of those texts best expresses the mind of Christ in the Church is required, so that the Church remains faithful to what it has received and while it proclaims the faith afresh in each generation. (p.47)
For doctrine to shift, the Church as a whole needs to be convicted by Scripture that the change is warranted, and the Church as a whole is then bound by the change. That’s not what the proponents of LLF/PLF were attempting; they wanted the freedom to teach something different to the rest of us and to have liturgy contrary to the teaching of the Church as a whole. This paper shows that that’s not how it works.
The Doctrine of Marriage and the Prayers of Love and Faith: Texts and Contexts
This second paper deals with what it terms ‘symbolic actions’, i.e. actions that communicate something when they are performed a certain way in a certain context. If we pray a prayer of blessing for a same-sex couple in a public service, what will that communicate about what God believes about their relationship? The report is clear that what we do and what we say mean something. And it may have a different meaning from what we say we intended. That’s relevant, because those proposing the services of blessing say that they want to be allowed to bless certain aspects of a relationship—their mutual commitment, love, faithfulness etc.—but not others, such as any sexual intercourse the couple may be having.
The trouble with that, according to the paper, is that we cannot always control how other people interpret what we are doing. We may intend to say one thing, and people hear something entirely different. If they hear something that is contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England, then we have inadvertently taught something contrary to the Church of England. The Faith and Order Commission is stark in its warning that the risk of such miscommunication is high when it comes to the Prayers of Love and Faith.
FAOC are clear that the reason that there are long procedures and safeguards around the authorisation of liturgies is precisely because they communicate and enact the Church’s teaching. Theoretically, every member of the Church should be able to take part in every service of the church, because our liturgy expresses our doctrine. That is questionable at the best of times, but is obviously not the case when it comes to PLF, a set of prayers that are explicitly acknowledged to be unacceptable to a massive proportion of the Church of England.
Ministerial discretion under Canon B 5 is bounded by canonical and legal responsibilities. While incumbents are granted liberty to lead prayers suitable to local pastoral contexts, this liberty is not equivalent to doctrinal independence. The question, then, is whether the use of the PLF by individual clergy results in a de facto change of doctrine at the local level. Even when the prayers are not formally authorised by General Synod, their use in public worship by ministers of the Church, using a text commended by the House of Bishops, communicates a message that may be difficult to confine within pastoral terms alone. (p.23)
Even a carefully worded theological preface—such as that at the beginning of services of marriage or ordinations—would likely not be enough to keep services of blessing within the doctrinal lines (p.27).
The report stops short of concluding that there is no way to use the PLF in a way that is faithful to the teaching of the Church of England, but the questions it raises are serious and weighty enough to make it impossible to see a way forward for them. We should be prepared to hold the line that what we say and do communicates meaning, and such meaning must be consonant with our formal teaching.
The Exercise of Discipline and Clergy Exemplarity in the Church of England: The Case of Same-Sex Civil Marriages
Despite the Church of England’s clear teaching on marriage and sexuality, could the Church change the rules to allow clergy to go ahead and marry same-sex partners anyway? The answer is: not easily.
Three possible paths are explored. The first would involve changing Canon B 30, Of Holy Matrimony. It makes sense that this would open the door, because if our teaching changes to include same-sex couples within the definition of marriage, then there is no contradiction in clergy being in same-sex marriages. This path is rejected out of hand, “because the motion passed by General Synod in February 2023 indicated the mind of this General Synod was to ‘endorse the decision of the College and House of Bishops not to propose any change to the doctrine of marriage.’” (p.23)
Several canons, as well as both the New Testament and the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy, place an expectation on clergy to live morally exemplary lives. The second pathway explored in the paper would involve removing this expectation from our law, or at least altering it to state that it doesn’t include clergy marriages.
The paper rules this out as a possibility: “Insofar as same-sex civil marriages would indicate endorsement of something God does not authorise in Holy Scripture, and in fact licenses sexual activity that is expressly forbidden in Holy Scripture, they are incompatible with the requirement of clergy exemplarity. As has been said before, accepting a call to ordained ministry involves accepting that some options are unavailable to the clergy. Same-sex civil marriage is one of those cases” (p.43)
The third pathway explored is the “relaxation of discipline” by diocesan bishops, a policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ in effect. Such a scenario would see nothing change in law or teaching; some bishops would just turn a blind eye to lawbreakers. Such a scenario would see a complete break between doctrine and discipline: the Church would be saying one thing in its teaching and something contradictory in its discipline. There’s another word for that: hypocrisy.
The paper is clear that changing Canon B 30 would be the ecclesiologically safest route. It is, however, the route that General Synod has explicitly told the bishops not to do. Be on the lookout for attempts to argue that some kind of ‘pastoral accommodation’ should be made in individual cases. Such a policy would be to disapply discipline in practice. Some will argue for it, though, and we should have these papers to hand, ready to argue that doctrine and discipline must always remain in lockstep.
Legal advice
Last up is the legal advice from Rev’d Alex MacGregor, Head of the Legal Office. There have been immense rows about legal advice throughout this process and—credit where it’s due—the bishops have honoured their promise to publish it this time.
Two questions are discussed: how standalone services of PLF might be authorised, and how clergy and ordinands might be permitted to enter same-sex civil marriages.
When it comes to the question of authorisation, it says nothing that we didn’t already know. There are three ways of doing it: Canon B2 (a full legislative process), Canon B5a (experimental authorisation by the archbishops), and Canon B5.2 (commendation for the House of Bishops to be used at the discretion of clergy). Canon B2 would be “the most secure way of bringing bespoke services into use” (p.58). The trouble with Canon B5a is that such authorisation must be done with a view to bringing it back to General Synod to be put through a B2 approval process at a later point. Canon B5.2 (commendation for individual discretion) is how the prayers to be used in existing services have been promulgated. The advice is that such commendation confers no legal or canonical authority, as it is effectively no more than an expression of episcopal opinion. Such commendation, therefore, does not resolve the question of whether using the prayers is lawful, particularly when a significant minority of the bishops are of the opinion that it is not.
When it comes to permitting clergy to marry their same-sex partners, it is even more complicated. It’s complicated because it is not a simple matter of changing Canon B30 and saying ‘go for it.’ We’ve known that since Jeremy Pemberton challenged the Church of England in tribunals several times between 2015 and 2018, and lost every time. The court judgements repeatedly spelled out how clear the church’s teaching is, and how evidently a same-sex married cleric contravenes that teaching.
The advice from the Legal Office is that changing this would involve several pieces of legislation to change multiple canons, change the Book of Common Prayer, overrule ecclesiastical common law, and even “repealing references to dominical teaching” from Canon B30. In other words, if we want to change what we teach about marriage, we can’t even say that our teaching is based on the teaching of Christ. That’s how far this departs from our current teaching. Is it any wonder that the bishops are saying in the subtext that none of them even wants to attempt this legislative package?
The other route examined whether bishops could grant a canonical dispensation to allow such marriages. This would be akin to the existing power in Canon C4.5 to allow the ordination of those who are divorced and remarried whilst their former spouse still lives. The comparison is not straightforward, however, as the “[e]xisting powers of canonical dispensation do not permit the doing of things which are contrary to the Church’s doctrine; they permit doing things which are not normally permitted as being contrary to good order or that otherwise require regulation. To provide for a power of dispensation to permit the doing of something that was contrary to doctrine would be a novel departure in canon law of the Church of England” (p.68). It would stretch things so far as to break the internal consistency of the canons.
Finally, the paper addresses the same question as that addressed above in the FAOC papers: whether bishops could choose to turn a blind eye to clergy and ordinands in same-sex marriages. Whilst bishops have a large degree of latitude and discretion, they are not permitted to simply do whatever they want. “What it plainly is not lawfully open to a bishop to do is to declare that no clergy in his or her diocese will face discipline if they enter into a same sex marriage. First, such a statement would amount to an abrogation of the bishop’s canonical duties… Secondly, it is not even in the bishop’s gift to grant such a dispensation.”
Conclusion
Now that we have the full content of the theological and legal papers, it is quite easy to see why the House of Bishops made the decision that they made in October to stop trying to shove everything through by episcopal fiat. Those of us opposed to the whole project have been saying for years now that they can’t do what they’re attempting to do, and they certainly can’t do it in the way they’ve been attempting to do it. These papers only confirm what we’ve been saying all along.