PROPOSALS to reform the CNC should have included its current members, and imputations about the unfairness of the process were off the mark, some observers of Wednesday’s House of Bishops meeting said (News, 18 September).
On Thursday, the longest-serving central member of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), Christina Baron, criticised the bishops for not consulting CNC members before drawing up proposals.
“The way in which these proposals came forward without any consultation, without even any notice, has made all the elected members of the CNC very angry,” Ms Baron said.
The message to CNC members seemed to be, she said, that their work “is not respected, is not valued, that we are not taken seriously”.
The proposals were developed by the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, as chair of the six-person Advisory Group for Appointments and Vocations, and were approved, with some reservations, at the House of Bishops meeting on Wednesday.
Ms Baron, a CNC member since 2017, said that there were “lots of things that could be improved” about the process.
She favours removing the secret ballot, and reducing the majority needed for a nomination — both proposals put forward by Bishop Mullally. But the way in which the proposals had come forward “without consultation” meant, she thought, that it would be harder to get the General Synod to approve them.
“The proposals have succeeded in uniting the elected members in their dismay, anger and unhappiness with the House of Bishops and with the committee that’s written this report,” she said.
Difficulties in securing agreement in the CNC lie behind the proposed changes, after recent failures to appoint new Bishops of Carlisle and Ely. In the paper setting out the proposals, Bishop Mullally wrote that it was “widely considered that National Church politics may be impacting CNC processes” (News, 12 September).
This was reiterated during Wednesday’s debate: “Let us please acknowledge that LLF is at the centre of this,” the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, said, referring to the Living in Love and Faith process that has introduced blessings for same-sex couples. Opponents of these have threatened to develop a “parallel province” in the C of E (News, 27 June).
Asked whether she thought that the current disagreements in the Church were affecting the nominations process, Ms Baron said that she thought that “LLF was at the back of a lot of our minds a lot of the time, and will be until the Church of England has come to a settled view.”
Ms Baron emphasised that, although serving on the CNC was a “privilege”, it was also hard work and extremely time-consuming; but it felt as if this wasn’t being recognised by the Bishops.
“I’m not complaining about the burden: I’m saying ‘Hey, we’re working hard: how about saying thankyou?’” she said.
In her closing remarks on Wednesday, Bishop Mullally confirmed that the next stages of consultation would include CNC members.
ON FRIDAY, a former Bishop of Willesden, the Rt Revd Pete Broadbent, suggested that the reforms were using “the pretext of increasing diversity” for a “power grab by the Archbishops”.
After Wednesday’s debate, Bishop Mullally said: “There is a lack of diversity on the CNC, including gender, race, and theology, which has led to a loss of trust in the process.
“Restoring trust will require the process to be competent, consistent, full of integrity, and compassionate. Ultimately, we need to restore confidence in this discernment process under God.”
But, on Friday, Bishop Broadbent wrote on the Thinking Anglicans blog that “a more diverse episcopal House (and College) is a really important goal,” but “I’m not sure you can get there by this mechanism without addressing the failures of the bishops on safeguarding, on LLF process, on ‘strategy’.” He also referred to “bullying that takes place within the House”.
Of the current central members of the CNC, elected in July 2022, seven are women, and only one is UKME/GMH (of minoritised-ethnic/global-majority heritage).
Among the total of 12 who were elected in July, two are no longer members: one has been ordained, and is therefore no longer able to represent the House of Laity, and another as resigned. Both were UKME/GMH. Their departure has brought the proportion of white members up from 75 to 90 per cent.
In the General Synod in July, changes were agreed so that, if there was going to be no UKME/GMH presence at a CNC meeting, someone could be co-opted (Synod, 12 July).
In addition to six central members — one from each of the pairs, and split equally between members of the Houses of Laity and Clergy — six representatives from the diocese also sit on the CNC, together with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.
Of the six diocesan bishops nominated since the most recent election of central members, five have been white, and one UKME/GME. In total, four have been men, and two have been women.
In her opening remarks on Wednesday, Bishop Mullally said that the Archbishops’ Secretary for Appointments, Stephen Knott (News, 6 January 2022), had asked her to relay to the House of Bishops troubling feedback that he had received about trust in the current process.
“People routinely ask him: ‘Will this be a fair process for me? . . . Is it worth submitting papers? Can you assure me that this is really a process of discernment?’”
Mr Knott’s reply, she said, was to say: “I hope and pray that it is, but my fear is that it is not.”
Mr Knott couldn’t be at the meeting himself because he was enjoying a “well-earned break”, Bishop Mullally said.
The observers at the meeting included almost all of the suffragan bishops, and several current and former CNC central members and Church House employees and members of the public.
One observer, who did not want to be identified, spoke to the Church Times of being shocked by Bishop Mullally’s relaying of Mr Knott’s comments, and suggested that they risked leaving the Church with a less diverse bench of bishops. “He’s undermining the very reason for being of the CNC. Instead of promoting the flourishing of all of the Church of England, he’s saying to potential bishops: ‘Don’t bother, mate.’”