Always Hope

So, the deed is finally done, less than 2 years after the embarrassing collapse of the original proposal, the Church of England's General Synod has voted to open the ranks of the episcopate to women for the first time. Years of anxious wrangling appear to be coming to an end, as the new rules will surely be speedily approved by Parliament and then nodded through the final stages by the same Synod, before its term of office expires next year. I'm in favour of this, I always have been, and though for the most part I respect and value those who hold a different view, I'm sure this was the right decision. I don't have anything to add to the many comments already made on the rightness of it, only a few reflections on what we might learn by observing what happened on Monday: We learned that General Synod hasn't improved since 2012.  Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first. We wouldn't be talking about this if the Synod had not failed, in 2012, to pass a ...

18 Church of England Bishops have s igned an open letter criticising the Government's proposed cap on benefits. The 18, who all sit in the House of Lords apart from Truro's own Tim Thornton, who is Chair of the trustees of the Children's Society, say they have a "moral obligation" to speak out. It's a brave move by the Bishops to speak out in a way that is hardly going to get much popular support - the benefits cap is likely to be a popular policy out in middle England. And why not? If Bishops don't speak on behalf of those who no-one else cares about, then who will? But are they actually right? What the 18 are actually proposing is more subtle and constructive than it might at first appear, something that will elude the commentators who this week will inevitably castigate the Bishops for bleeding-heart liberalism. In fact they are not opposing the cap as such, but John Packer, Bishop of Ripon & Leeds, has tabled five amendments which aim reduc...

So, Rowan Williams didn't step sideways to Durham, as I hoped he would. Instead the lately-maligned Crown Nominations Commission has made the very interesting choice of Justin Welby , Dean of Liverpool.  I don't know him personally (I did meet him once, when he was an ordinand at Cranmer Hall and I was just a stripling, but it's just possible he won't remember that), but his biography , read carefully, reveals the following: 1. He forged a career in the oil industry before ordination. This is unusual among Bishops, who are mostly cradle clergy. While that too has its advantages, it means they have little direct experience of leadership and management outside the church. 2. He has risen through the ranks of the clergy, as we might expect, but his ministry has been of the hands-on leadership type, not in the backroom bureaucracy or the corridors of power.  His time as the director of Coventry's ministry of reconciliation is a particular highlight in a CV wh...

Belated congratulations to Nick Baines , who was last week announced as the next Bishop of Bradford . In the world of Bishops this counts as an upgrade, since when he moves from Croydon to Bradford he will be in charge of a Diocese for the first time. Nick is one of the Bishops of choice for Anglican bloggers , being a blogger himself and a regular on Twitter. I'm aware that what I'm about to say may look hugely hubristic , but I'm going to say it anyway. I think that the appointment of a blogging Bishop to a senior post can only be a good thing. Nick is one of the very few Bishops who have a) shown any interest whatsoever in web-based media, b) had anything of interest to say once online, and c) successfully engaged with the digital world without saying anything inept enough to earn himself unflattering news headlines. Most of his colleagues haven't even got to a), and those who have, generally fell down at b) or c). That isn't to say that he hasn't made ...

Bishops are a perpetual source of fascination to Anglican blogs, and Always Hope is no exception. Yesterday the appointment of a new Diocesan Bishop was announced , that of Christopher Chessun to Southwark. See Nick Baines's blog for the insider view on this. This excited some comment, but not a great deal of heated debate, in fact the excitement level hardly twitched the needle of the blogs and mews media. The notice follows the standard pattern for these announcements - a potted biography of the new Bish, with some compliments from a reliable colleague. In Bishop Chessun's case, surely the most interesting thing this reveals is that he has an identical twin. For those outside the Diocese of Southwark, there was the temptation to think that he might be just a teeny bit dull. But how much of what a good minister does is really that exciting, after all? The new man at Southwark has been a curate, canon, rector, archdeacon and area bishop. He has simply got on with his ministry ...