EFFORTS to remove obstacles to ministry by working-class people received a firm backing from the General Synod a year after the subject was highlighted by a private member’s motion.
The Bishop of Barking, the Rt Revd Lynne Cullens (Southern Suffragans), delivered a presentation, reflecting on an example of prejudice which she had previously written about in the Church Times (Comment, 1 March 2019). The example involved a “very evidently working-class” woman wearing leopard-print leggings and Ugg boots who had not been put forward for ordination because of her presentation and perceived working-class background — despite being able to articulate a passionate personal faith, and a sincere and informed vocation to ministry.
Social and economic background data on ordination suggested that much had changed to support working-class vocations and training, but there was more to do to level the playing field, Bishop Cullens said. She urged the Synod to embrace the gifts of all people, but emphasised the continued institutional neglect of working-class vocations, which “leaves a stain on the Church”.
Members were shown a film about the project to boost working-class vocations.
Bishop Cullens reiterated that this work was both a “Kingdom and a missional imperative”, raising up leaders who better represented the communities that they served. The Church must not contribute to the alienation felt by many in Britain, but, instead, model working-class leaders at every level, so that everyone could see themselves there.
The Synod had unanimously endorsed Fr Frost’s motion last year, and now it must back that up by approving the national strategy taking shape today, Bishop Cullens said.
She closed with a story about a single mother-of-three who had struggled for years to get through discernment, ordination, and a curacy, amid numerous obstacles and ignorance — but who had eventually been called to be the Bishop of Barking.
Members responded with a sustained round of applause. “This work is about seeing the whole person,” she said — about letting working-class people thrive in the Church without having to “leave behind who they are”.
The Bishop of Chester, the Rt Revd Mark Tanner, knew that this issue mattered to the Synod, given their unanimous support of Fr Frost’s motion. It also mattered to him, as someone from a working-class background. He grieved that his grandfathers could not have been given a voice in the C of E of their day, and said that he was determined to change that now. Listening to these voices had shaped the paper before the Synod, even when they were frustrated and alienated, he said.
“We heard those frustrations around discernment, vocations, housing, leadership progression — around a cultural disconnect where you never fully feel you belong.” But his team also had heard hope and optimism about the Church’s becoming more accessible in “important but all-too-small steps” — a new advisory group and better data. Ultimately, better representation was the biggest change needed. “Like attracts like, and enables people to see themselves in the vocation they are exploring.”
The motion was about all working-class people, regardless of ethnicity, gender, or age. “Please don’t find yourself playing off one group against another,” Bishop Tanner said. “We must not allow our faith to be recruited as an agent for division.”
Geoff Crawford/Church TimesThe Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Dr Joanne Grenfell, backed the motion
No one should have to trade their accent or their community to flourish in the Church and witness to Christ, a carpenter from Nazareth.
The Revd Alex Frost (Blackburn) recalled his time running an Argos store, dealing with customers who wanted to speak to someone “higher up”, even though he was the manager. He was “delighted” that the Church had run with his motion, and especially that other working-class ministers had told their stories. Members must pressure their dioceses to take part and to let all voices be heard, he said. “Working-class Christians outside of this chamber, go and tell your story.”
The Revd Aneal Appadoo (co-opted) expressed his gratitude to the Synod for supporting the motion the previous year. He spoke of his own experience of classism through the new texts and literature that he had been expected to read while training as an ordinand. He said that members should not confuse a lack of a degree with a lack of intelligence, and called on the Synod to lower the barriers to entering ministry.
Jane Rosam (Rochester) welcomed the motion, but highlighted the financial barriers associated with training. She was proud of her certificates from agricultural college, although her archdeacon had been less impressed, she said. She had been able to buy a laptop and printer for her training through funding, but had seen others struggle with these costs. “We are at a time when we need lay ministry more than ever.” She had had to pay for her own cassock, and had found a winter cloak too expensive to purchase, she said. She concluded by saying that she did not feel that lay ministers were valued by the Church.
The Revd Adam Beaumont (Bristol) spoke of his diocese, which, he said, was “deeply invested” in supporting their working-class communities. Addressing bias must be at the forefront, he said. He also spoke of retired clergy who were unable to get back on the property ladder. “This motion can only strengthen the Church,” he concluded.
The Revd Chantal Noppen (Durham) said that complex realities were barring people from seeking their vocation. “Embedded snobbery and Orwellian elitism” put pressure on people. “Love, value, and welcome people as we are.”
The Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Dr Joanne Grenfell, backed the motion and praised the “databased approach”. But, could they “please stop talking about estates”, she pleaded. In her background, an estate was either a car with a big boot or a “posh place to go grouse shooting”. “It wasn’t how we saw where we live; people say you live in a village, but on an estate, like grouse.” Poverty in rural Suffolk was disguised by beautiful countryside, but was still very real, she said. “And there’s nothing that looks like that kind of estate.” She urged “accuracy and nuance of language” in the ongoing work on this project.
The Revd Robb Sutherland (Leeds) recalled how out of place he had felt at his Bishops’ Advisory Panel, let alone at theological college and the Synod. “If you can’t see yourself being part of something, then you can’t be part of that,” he warned. There needed to be support for people on the first steps of their vocations journey, and all the way through to college.
The Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, the Ven. Dr Rachel Mann (Manchester), recalled a regular refrain while testing her vocation: “We don’t know what you’re going to say next.” She had not been trained into middle-class patterns, and her overly attentive radar for “BS” still caused issues. Working-class people needed to be drawn into senior leadership, but also middle-class people in Church needed to be trained not to be “freaked out by like people like me”.
She had had very little prejudice from working-class Christians over being transgender, compared with the backlash that she had often had from middle-class churchgoers. “Don’t believe all working-class people are bigots and racists, but do [believe they] offer a disrupted, Christlike perspective.”
The Revd David O’Brien (Blackburn) spoke of his upbringing by a single mother of six, with an alcoholic father. He was now a vicar in Blackpool, in the tenth poorest parish in the whole Church of England. The cure of souls meant that even people like him, who could not have imagined ever being a Christian, let alone a priest, must not have any barriers to God or his ministry, he said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed the work on working-class vocations, and thanked Fr Frost and Bishop Cullens for their leadership. The Church must continue listening to those with working-class experience, and recognise that a lack of education did not denote a lack of ability or calling, she said. There still remained barriers, and financial pressures still deterred candidates for ordination, she warned. About 27 per cent of the UK workforce regularly worked evenings and nights, she said, but such shift workers were currently excluded from most vocations.
The Revd Claire McArthur (Coventry) said that the Church had been her sanctuary during a working-class childhood marked by domestic abuse. “We grew up a little feral, left to our own devices; all attended our local comprehensive.” She had worked from the age of 14, and, by 28, had been a senior leader at the BBC. Yet, when she felt a call to ministry, she had to get a reference from HR to confirm that she would cope with studying. She had wrestled with impostor syndrome, crying after every meeting with her vocations adviser, but had learned to adapt. She knew some clergy who had been forced to soften their accent with elocution lessons, or challenged for wearing hoodies and trainers. “I know that I am a good priest. We are not a problem to be solved: we are a gift.”
The Bishop of Dover, the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin (Canterbury), said that it was shocking that the Church was still having this conversation in 2026. “We have simply not learned from the past,” she said: this issue had been wrestled with at least 40 years before, in the Faith in the City report. She did not like the idea of “lowering the barriers”: working-class people did not need the standards dropped for them, they could “reach that height”. What was needed were the right, flexible goalposts, which allowed the Church to value what everybody brought to the table. Go back to your dioceses and ask yourself whom might God be calling, she urged members. “We need everybody in the room and at the table.”
Andrew Gray (St Edmundsbury & Ipswich) welcomed the motion, but asked whether there would be enough stipendiary posts after encouraging new working-class people into ministry. Far too many positions advertised today were house-for-duty, he warned. “We are drifting into an expectation clergy will be voluntary. Are we going to put our money where our mouth is?”
The Revd Captain Nicholas Lebey CA (Southwark) had learnt “so much” from working-class communities in his previous position as a youth worker, and had seen “God move so powerfully”, he said. The C of E was often perceived as a middle-class establishment, and this needed to change, he said. He urged those from middle-class and working-class backgrounds to work together.
The motion was then carried. It read:
That this Synod:
a) note the unanimous support given by this Synod in February 2025 to the Private Member’s Motion brought by the Revd Alex Frost calling for a national strategy for working-class vocations and ministry, and recognise that Synod has already agreed to “Commit itself to taking the necessary steps to raise up a new generation of lay and ordained leaders from estates and working-class backgrounds at all levels in the church” when agreeing to GS 2345 (point 5 in the motion);
b) welcome the consultation work that heard from working-class ministers, both lay and ordained, across the Church of England, acknowledging their voice and that the Church can and must do better to receive their ministry, both now and in the future;
c) call on the House of Bishops to address structural and cultural barriers to the flourishing of working-class ministers and their ministry at all levels, acknowledging the intersections with other underrepresented groups;
d) encourage the national church, dioceses and training institutions to fully adopt the use of the of the recognised socio-economic background (SEB) data questions as an aid to monitoring progress on class representation;
e) endorse ongoing engagement with working-class ministers and other stakeholders for continuing the strategy development and the creation of a new advisory group to oversee this, reporting to the Ministry Development Board (MDB).
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