2011 debate on lay representation - background paper 1

In 2011 General Synod returned to the issue of the lay franchise in the government of the Church of England.

Two background papers were published. This post summarises the first, GS 1843A, by Mr Clive Scowen for the Diocese of London. The second, GS 1843B, is by William Fittall, Secretary General of General Synod, and will be considered in a separate post. (Links are to .pdfs)

The motion said:

'That this Synod request the Business Committee to commission a thorough review of how the House of Laity of this Synod and the houses of laity of diocesan synods are elected, particular consideration being given to whether the electorate should be some body of persons other than the lay members of deanery synods.'

The background paper sets out the argument. It is a novel in the debate on lay representation in that it is grounded on a structural difficulty in deanery synods, rather than on voting per se. 

The core argument is that:

(1) It impossible to adopt a scale of representation which enables fair representation of larger parishes on General Synod and diocesan synods without at the same swamping the PCCs of those parishes with deanery synod members and risking the domination of deanery synods by a few large parishes.
(2) It is highly questionable how representative deanery synod members are of their parishes or their electoral rolls.

With thanks to Mad Priest

(This latter point has been made often and extensively. It is inevitably true when the body is statutorily necessary and functionally hobbled).

Thus, the paper asserts, if we removed from deanery synods the function of electing diocesan and general synod members, the deaneries could reshape themselves in ways that would greatly enhance their efficacy.

This is not proven. Deanery synods will still have the same, optimistic and largely vacuous and discretionary functions as set out in law. But if substantive functions were legally specified and separated from diocesan synod purview as appropriate to the scale of the deanery (subsidiarity) it may well prove a valuable element in the running of any diocese. Despite all the weaknesses and shortcomings deanery synods have proved resilient and even popular.

Which, of course, leaves the question of the electorate for diocesan and General synod members.

The paper suggests two possible options:

1) A new electoral college for each deanery

In effect, more or less recreating the current electoral system, but separating it from deanery synods.

Pusillanimous (1) by Anja Marais

Or 2) One person, one vote.

Only in the Church of England could this option be described as 'radical'.

Universal suffrage was achieved in 1928 in the UK. (Women could vote for their representatives in the Church in 1919.) Is it really radical in  2011 to suggest that the Church adopt a system we take for granted in almost all other setting?

And the paper then set out the problems and difficulties as explored in 1993. Pusillanimous!

But at least the issue has been put back on the table.

How we got here (briefly)

The Church of England didn't create its current, wrong headed, voting arrangements for the laity by accident.  It took a lot of negotiating, compromising and conniving to arrive at such an unnecessarily complicated and inappropriate arrangement.

The Provinces of theChurch of England

The process of formally associating the laity with the clergy in the government of the Church of England can be traced back to the 1830s. The first phase led, through several recognized but informal meetings of laity with the clergy, to the creation of Church Assembly. The (all clerical) Convocations of York and Canterbury met, usually separately, twice a year. By the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act , 1919, Parliament enabled the Synods to meet together, and with a house of laity, to comprise the Church Assembly.

Pressure to reform Church Assembly came after the second world war. In the course of the reform of Canon Law (much underrated, in my opinion, in the modernization of the Church) two things became obvious. First, that the mechanism of formal consultation between the separate parts of the Church Assembly was cumbersome, inefficient and an utter waste of time. Second, that the Church's ultimate goal of acquiring powers over it own doctrine, worship and clerical discipline would only be possible if the laity had a bigger say in the decision making of the Church.

Since the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts the Church of England has been separating itself from the state, though at the speed of continental drift. One thread of this separation has been to move away from the idea that the House of Commons was, in theory and practice, the effective voice of the laity in Church affairs. Some MPs, in particular those most engaged with Church affairs, remained reluctant to let this go. But if they were to relinquish the role it would not be to an assembly wholly dominated by the clergy.

In 1952 the Convocation of York discussed the idea of a General Synod but no action followed. In the Spring session of the Church Assembly of 1953, Mr George Goyder proposed,

'That the Assembly respectfully requests the Archbishops to appoint a Commission (including representatives of the Convocations) to consider how the Clergy and Laity can best be joined together in the synodical government of the Church, and to report' Church Assembly Report of Proceedings, 1953, p. 89.

The motion was passed by a large majority and was 'gladly accepted' by the Archbishops. Seventeen years then passed before General Synod met.

George Goyder is, in my view, the hero of this story. He was a businessman, a leader of the Evangelicals in the House of Laity, and he stuck to his vision through forests of committees and commissions.  He was included to make dramatic claims and to see lay participation as the solution to an all-out assault on the Christian heritage of the country. He was convinced that the Holy Spirit worked through the whole church, not merely through the clergy.  He knew the challenges he faced. After four years as a member of the Synodical Government Commission he stated that he

became convinced that [outright synodical government] was impractical because of people [clergy] who would resist and resent any attempt to interfere with a body [Convocation] in which they exercised considerable prerogatives which they valued, and rightly so.' Church Assembly Report of Proceedings, 1958, p. 338.

At that point it looked as though all was lost. But the mood changed and there were more committees, commissions, reports, compromises, debates, and votes. Defenders of clerical privilege began to feel on the back foot.

In the end a mishmash of competing principles were squashed together into one scheme set out by the Hodson Commission report (government by synod, Synodical Government in the Church of England. (C.A. 1600) 1966))

It was this commission which insisted on indirect elections. The report stating that members were

firmly convinced that direct parochial election must be sacrificed at diocesan level in order to introduce effective synodical government ...' p. 50.

The rationales offered included:

• That when the Anglican-Methodist unity proposals had been referred to the parishes there had been evident confusion
• That parishes were too varied to meet the desire for reasonable uniformity in the lowest level of the electorate
• That consultation with parishes all too often meant receiving the views of the incumbent

The central challenge to this proposal was that as a consequence

'... any kind of representation in the affairs or consultation of the main body of the Church by the parishes and congregations disappeared.' Valerie Pitt, Church Assembly Report of Proceedings, 1966, p. 594

The challenge was never answered.

This topic is going
to be tough to illustrate

There was one more step which has had a lasting detrimental effect. The Hodson Report had wanted to make ruri-decanal conferences (now Deanery Synods) an effective part of the structure of local government of the Church. It proposed that the business of the Diocesan Synods should be considered beforehand by the Deanery Synods. This would have given the opportunity for significant and sustained contributions to debate. But - with no announcement, explanation or discussion - the word 'beforehand' was dropped from the Measure. As a result Deanery Synods were emasculated. They were left with just one substantive statutory role: to elect the members of Diocesan and General Synod.

At some point a bureaucrat, bishop or church lawyer took it upon themselves to quietly and arbitrarily shift the balance of power in local church government and no-one noticed, or no-one spoke up. Shame on them.

Time lines and responsibility

Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini, Primate of Rwanda

It is useful to be reminded that the present row did not begin with the authorisation of services of blessing of the union of homosexual couples in 2002 in New Brunswick, nor with the consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003 as Bishop of New Hampshire.



Sexuality (the role of women in the church, women's ordination and consecration, birth control, divorce and remarriage, as well as homosexuality) has been a subject of conflict throughout the whole of the last century. Conflict over the use and application of Scripture took its present form with the development of critical methods from the 1840s. Both battle grounds are as old as the church and endemic to it.



One timeline of events in the divisions in the US is here, written from a conservative perspective. However it omits to mention the dates of the first intrusions into US Anglican jurisdiction from other Anglican provinces. This is from the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) site:

In 2000, Archbishops Emmanuel Kolini ( Province of Rwanda) and Moses Tay (Province of South East Asia) consecrated the Rev. Chuck Murphy and the Rev. Dr. John Rodgers as missionary bishops to the U.S. At a gathering in Amsterdam on July 28 of the same year, the Anglican Mission in America was formalized as a missionary outreach charged with fulfilling the Great Commission through church planting. Four additional bishops were consecrated in Denver in 2001 by Archbishop Kolini and Archbishop Yong Ping Chung (Archbishop Tay’s successor who served as archbishop until his retirement in February 2006).

These things are important. Events - and how we forget or continually reiterate certain events - are key elements in telling the story of Anglicanism, shaping its present by the way we reshape the past.

The telling of history helps in the attribution of blame in order to make them look bad and us look good. It helps to shift responsibility for our actions on to the uncomplaining shoulders of the past. It also traps us into certain courses of action. We understand our own faith in the terms we have inherited and embody it by aligning ourselves with particular strands in history. By that identification we preclude certain possible choices and are predisposed to others. Inevitably.

I wish to assert and argue that we are all responsible for our own actions and share responsibility for the actions of those groups with which we align ourselves whether or not we have any control over them. It doesn't seem much, put like that, but in my experience accepting responsibility can be rare in the church (as in wider society). (A plea for greater social responsibility - in a slightly different meaning of the word - in church, academia and media is here.)

It is also important, I think, for the interpretation of events and the telling of our story to remember that no-one acted first. Every step has its predecessors: the choices that we make are based on what we know, or believe we know, about the past. On the other hand we are judged by what follows.

Thanks to Get Religion, and this story in particular, for the links.