AMONG the Michaelmas ordinations in cathedrals across the country last weekend, a particularly significant event occurred in Oxford. It involved five ordinands — three deacons and two priests — who declined to be ordained in the usual way by the Bishop of Oxford, Dr Steven Croft, or any of his area bishops, because of the Bishops’ public advocacy for the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF).
After a pre-ordination retreat at St Mary’s Convent, Wantage, the five candidates were ordained in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, by Dr Graham Tomlin, a former Bishop of Kensington, supported by their new congregations. The whole diocese was invited, and the service, with its dignified liturgy and choral tradition, was live-streamed on the cathedral’s YouTube channel. It was a celebratory event, as all ordinations should be, made possible through the generosity of Dr Croft himself.
A similar “alternative” ordination took place last September, in a parish church near Oxford. On that occasion, four candidates were ordained (two deacons, two priests) to assistant curacies in the diocese. The ordaining bishop, at the request of Dr Croft, was the Rt Revd Tim Wambunya, originally consecrated in Kenya and soon to be the new Bishop of Wolverhampton (News, 30 August).
Taken together, these seven new curates, ordained in 2023 and 2024, are serving parishes in Burford, Chesham, Gerrards Cross, Henley, Newbury, Oxford, and Witney. Their number is likely to increase next year. These new clergy are on the diocesan payroll, hold licences from the Bishop of Oxford, and are integrated with their wider curacy cohort through ministerial training (IME2) arranged by the diocese. But they are out of fellowship with their bishops.
DR CROFT is one of the most outspoken in the House of Bishops on the subject of marriage, but is always generous towards those who disagree with him. In his carefully considered position statement, Together in Love and Faith (2022), which has been heavily promoted throughout Oxford diocese, he acknowledges that some clergy and parishes believe the trajectory of the House of Bishops to be “a departure from the plain teaching of Scripture and the essentials of the faith” (News, Comment, 4 November 2022).
He proposes, therefore, that, to keep the Church of England together, “a differentiation of ministry and oversight” is necessary. Indeed, Dr Croft insists that this provision is “vital”. The alternative ordination service in Christ Church Cathedral last weekend is a cautious experiment in that direction. It seeks a way for all ordinands to flourish in the diocese, even those out of step with the diocesan hierarchy, and is a model of generosity and pastoral care for other dioceses to follow.
A sizeable number of ordinands are in a similar situation. The network Orthodox Ordinands, launched in February last year, is a grass-roots movement bringing together people at different stages of the ordination process, from discernment through to their title curacy (News, 23 February). It is a diverse network of women and men, Charismatics and conservatives, Catholics and Evangelicals, but all united in their distress at the House of Bishops’ advocacy of PLF.
There are currently 200 in the movement, and it is growing every month. Provision has been made for seven of them in Oxford diocese — but what about the other 193? At the latest count, they are spread across 38 of the Church of England’s 42 dioceses.
In other dioceses, where ordinands have asked for alternative provision to be made, they have been strongly rebuffed. The episcopal response can best be characterised as “My way or the highway.” Tales of ordinands’ being browbeaten by bishops and other senior diocesan clergy are, sadly, commonplace.
But the “Orthodox Ordinands” have declared emphatically that they are not seeking to cause trouble or play ecclesial politics. Their focus is on joyfully serving in their parishes, and their desire to be ordained by a bishop who does not advocate the PLF agenda is a matter of deeply held theological conscience and conviction.
To be asked to bend or break your conscience on ordination day puts ordinands in an impossible situation. Some have lost their curacies as a result, and had to seek another diocese, or have felt pushed out of the Church of England altogether. Others have submitted to ordination, but in a spirit of lament. What should be a day of rejoicing becomes a day of deep anguish.
Meanwhile, others who sense the call of God to ordination decline to enter the discernment process at all, because they have no confidence that provision will be made for them when the day comes. This situation is untenable. It is a bitterly cruel way to treat ordinands, who are one of the Church of England’s most precious resources.
NO ONE yet knows the final shape of the negotiated Church of England settlement to emerge from the current PLF ferment. At the very least, it will require alternative provision for ordinands which is not dependent on the generosity of individual bishops, but is offered in every diocese. If there is to be any hope of a breakthrough in the current impasse, bishops need to demonstrate a willingness to cede some of their power and prerogatives concerning ordinations and licences.
There are many creative possibilities. For example, it has been standard practice, for centuries, for candidates to be ordained in one diocese on behalf of another diocese by Letters Dimissory. This solution was used in Oxford diocese in the 1950s when ordinands and bishops found themselves at loggerheads over another matter of conscience: not marriage, but priesthood and its ritual implications.
Evangelical ordinands were sent by successive Bishops of Oxford (Kenneth Kirk and Harry Carpenter, both strict Anglo-Catholics) to the Bishop of Rochester (Christopher Chavasse, an Evangelical) for ordination to curacies back in Oxford diocese. It was a practical solution that enabled those ordinands to flourish. The ecclesiological sky did not fall in. It would be easy to reinstate this practice immediately.
Another possibility, without the need to change our current canons, is for a diocesan bishop to ordain a team of unpaid “episcopal chaplains”, who are then deployed as curates to other dioceses, where they are funded by their local congregations. They would hold a licence and title post in one diocese, but serve most of their time in another. With the good will and generosity of the bishops on both sides of the diocesan border, this also could be introduced immediately.
Church of England pathways of discernment, training, ordination, deployment, and funding will look very different in the post-PLF future from how they look at present. The 20th-century patterns that we have taken for granted are in the melting pot, and PLF is a powerful catalyst accelerating those changes.
But ordinands do not have time to wait for that new future to be agreed. While the national negotiations continue, temporary provision for ordinands is required immediately in every diocese. By the time the General Synod gets round to its next substantive PLF debates, next July, the Petertide ordinations will already have occurred — and, all the while, ordinands are left in limbo. Urgent episcopal action, building on last weekend’s experiment in Oxford’s cathedral, is needed now.
The Revd Dr Andrew Atherstone is Tutor at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and Professor of Modern Anglicanism in the University of Oxford.
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