THE Church of England is “not at the point of separation yet” over sexuality issues, the bishop leading the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) implementation says.
Speaking on the Church Times podcast, the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, says that “the vast majority” of people he has spoken to about the issues dividing the Church — including blessings for same-sex couples, the restrictions on clergy entering same-sex marriages, and provision for opponents of the changes — “do not want separation”.
“I think it’s really important to say that that is the starting point,” he says: “that the Church should remain one; and yet we’ve got to understand the depth of our disagreement.”
Bishop Snow has written a booklet, Can We Imagine a Future Together? Intercultural lessons for living in love and faith, in which he portrays the disagreements over LLF in stark terms, and attempts to chart a route forward.
“We all want the best — and yet we profoundly disagree,” he writes. “So, what now? What I am offering in this booklet is a middle way between the ideal that we long for and the reality that we experience.”
In his interview with the Church Times, recorded last Thursday, Bishop Snow sets out his vision for a “seasonal approach” to LLF. “I think we are entering another new season now, and this is the moment to bring in some learning from some other fields, where there are also big disagreements.”
In the booklet, Bishop Snow suggests that there are lessons to be learnt from “interculturalism”: an approach to cultural difference which encourages interaction between people of different cultures.
This is different, he writes, from “simply endorsing every view going”, or co-existence without meaningful dialogue, but also distinct from what might be termed an “assimilationist” approach, in which one expects others to eventually agree with a single, predominant view.
It is a topic on which Bishop Snow has written before (Comment, 3 May 2024). He draws on his experience both as a bishop in one of most diverse cities in the UK, and in missionary work: he was born in Indonesia, where his parents were missionaries, and early in his ministry worked for the Church Mission Society in West Africa for three years.
A culturally diverse upbringing and extensive travel shaped his approach to theology, leading him to the realisation that “so many of the questions that we ask come out of our own context,” he says.
This has made him “much more open to realising that, actually, my own way of thinking, my own beliefs, have to be held with a degree of humility. They have come out of my particular context and what shaped me.
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“I can still be quite firm about what I think is right and wrong, and what I think is the right approach. But I also want to be open to what others are saying, understanding that they come with those different questions. So, I think, from a theological point of view, that that made me more willing to think that, as a Church, we can find a way of living with difference on this.”
Bishop Snow’s views on marriage and sexual ethics are no secret: he writes in the booklet that he holds “a traditional understanding of marriage as a lifelong union of one man and one woman”.
These views have not changed, but he speaks of “learning a huge amount” throughout the LLF process, particularly as the bishop in charge of its implementation. “I’ve been deeply affected by many of the conversations that I’ve had, and I mean that very genuinely: I’m not just saying that because it sounds like the right thing to say,” he says.
In the booklet, Bishop Snow suggests that other lessons that can be learnt from intercultural dialogue include the value of sharing food and exchanging gifts. “Even if we can’t countenance seeing someone else’s theology as a gift, we can still see the person as a gift and remain open to the other sort of gifts they may have to give to us and to receive from us,” he writes.
So, are LLF lunches rather than General Synod debates the way forward? “You know, I would quite like that,” he says. “I think there is something so powerful about sharing food together. My own experience is that you have very different sorts of conversations over food, particularly if you cook it together.”
The structure of Synod debates, which frames fundamental questions as votes that can be won or lost, is not necessarily helpful in the LLF process, he suggests.
“The model of Synods that we have do force these binary decisions on us.” For this reason, “all sorts of other approaches” have been used throughout the LLF process, including small-group discussions. It is a “struggle”, however, to bring all of these together “into a place where decisions can actually be made” — and, at the end of the day, decisions have to be made.
One of the current hold-ups is the lack of a decision by the House of Bishops on whether to remove the current restriction on clergy entering into same-sex marriages — despite documents that were leaked to the Church Times in 2023 and suggested that there were majorities in both the House and the College of Bishops in favour of such a change (News, 26 October 2023).
Discussions in the House of Bishops continue, informed by theological work from the Faith and Order Commission. Bishop Snow says that he remains “confident” that a decision will be made “before too long”.
In the mean time, consultations in dioceses are continuing. Bishop Snow is anxious that these “don’t just mirror what’s gone on at General Synod, because some of the conversations at General Synod have been very painful”.
He continues: “We’re all, I think, in one sense or another, operating out of a place of pain,” although he is aware that, “for LGBTQI+ people, it’s a very different sort of pain from that of those who, in conscience, can’t use the Prayers of Love and Faith.”
In the booklet, he acknowledges that, in meetings with groups on both sides, there is “a power dynamic which is not always easy to articulate”, and that it “governs what is and what isn’t said, how it is said, and how it is received. I do my best to acknowledge this, but it is complex, and I know that I often get it wrong.”
Questions of power have become more prominent in discussions of LLF in recent months. In January, Bishop Snow said that the next phase of the process required “serious attention to issues of power” (News, 31 January).
Does the encouragement to listen to other views, and seeing these as a gift, become easier when one already occupies a position of power in the Church? Bishop Snow acknowledges that this “may well be right”, but, in his view, it is “not wholly the case”, because, for many bishops, the LLF process had personally been costly, and the stakes remain high.
“There are plenty of bishops who feel very, very strongly about this, and I think I would go so far as to say that I’m pretty sure there are some bishops questioning their position in the Church of England.”
But there are also many bishops who are “not strongly of one view or another”. As with the wider Church of England, it is this “middle section” that the Church sometimes fails to recognise, he says.
After a vote in February last year, in which the General Synod opted for more time for substantive proposals on LLF to be developed, Bishop Snow pledged to engage in “shuttle diplomacy” between those of opposing views (News, 28 February 2024).
A year on, and several evolutions of working groups later, part of the “new season” he is proposing is a shift from the “purely listening mode” and asking the question “whether you can actually live with this”.
One of the possibilities is a model of “delegated episcopal ministry”, in which parishes whose designated bishop took a contrary position could request oversight from another bishop in the region who shared the parish’s view.
The Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) announced in February that it “cannot support” the plans for delegated episcopal ministry. The group’s national director, Canon John Dunnett, has said that this ministry would allow for “contradictory understandings of marriage and sexual ethics in the Church of England, and it will be impossible for an orthodox understanding to flourish in that space”.
Canon Dunnett also said that the current proposals for delegated episcopal ministry would mean that parishes could still legally receive oversight from a bishop who did not share their position on LLF, and that it did not guarantee separate provision for ordination training and appointments.
Bishop Snow resists the idea that there is a simple solution to these issues which will please everyone. “If there were, I’m absolutely convinced we would have found that before now,” he says.
Perhaps, he suggests, it was time for a different approach, inspired in part by the philosopher Gillian Rose’s notion of the “broken middle”. “Rather than looking for the quick solution, I think maybe we are called to stand in this brokenness,” Bishop Snow says.
And he remains hopeful that the CEEC, along with the Alliance group, with which it is associated, might be willing to try delegated episcopal ministry, to “live with it for two, three years or so, and then assess it and see, actually, is it working or not?”
The same applies to those on the other side of the argument, he says. “I’m very aware that we are making a huge demand in saying ‘Please be patient, please let us try and put this pastoral reassurance into place for conservatives before even thinking about pushing on to any further developments.’”
He agrees that the effect of the outcome of diocesan consultations might be a clear message that “this isn’t going to work”, and, in that case, he would have to think again about the way forward. Bishop Snow hopes, however, that people will at least give some consideration to his vision of the next steps.
He hopes that the analogy of interculturalism, which runs through his new booklet, proves to be pertinent when it comes to the importance that people place on the Church of England’s remaining one body despite disagreements about sexuality. After all, he says, there are not many who would suggest that a society should fracture on the basis that it contains different cultures.
Instead, society looks for ways of living with, and taking strength from, difference, he says. “The Church should be setting an example in terms of how we live together in the face of disagreements.”
Can We Imagine a Future Together? is published by Church House Publishing and is available to buy here.
Listen to the full interview with Bishop Snow here.
