When my alarm goes off at 7 am, Radio 4 gives the news, and then a look at the Sunday newspapers. I was startled at hearing that the Telegraph is reporting that The Very Rev’d Jeffrey John, Dean of St. Albans is on the shortlist to become the next Bishop of Southwark.
Here is the article. My commentary is at the end.
An openly-homosexual cleric has been nominated to become a senior bishop, in a move that threatens to provoke a damaging split in the Church of England.
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM BST 03 Jul 2010
The nomination of Dr Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans, threatens to provoke a damaging split in the Church of England
A confidential meeting, chaired by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has approved Dr Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans, to be on the shortlist to be the next Bishop of Southwark.
He is understood to be the favoured candidate.
Dr John is a hugely divisive figure in the church after he was forced to stand down from becoming the Bishop of Reading in 2003 after it emerged he was in a homosexual, but celibate, relationship.
Promoting him to one of the most senior offices in the Church would trigger a civil war between liberals and conservatives and exacerbate existing divisions within the Anglican Communion.
Members of the Crown Nominations Commission, the body responsible for selecting bishops, will vote this week on whether Dr John’s name should now be put forward to the Prime Minister for final approval.
David Cameron has been made aware that Dr John is on the shortlist for the post and is understood to be supportive of such an appointment. Once the preferred candidate is rubber-stamped by Mr Cameron it is passed to the Queen for final approval.
In 2003, evangelical parishes warned they would withhold payments to central Church coffers if Dr John was consecrated as Bishop of Reading, before Dr Williams ultimately forced him to resign.
It is known that the Queen was “deeply concerned” by the rift.
Dr Williams and Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, who also sits on the commission, will face fierce criticism from the conservative wing of the Church if they allow Dr John to become a bishop.
Yet, at the commission’s last meeting, where Dr John was put on the initial shortlist of candidates for the Southwark job, neither archbishop blocked his name.
Liberals make up a majority of the commission and he is considered by many to be the outstanding candidate after a successful period in charge of St Albans cathedral.
The appointment of Dr John, who entered a civil partnership with his long term partner the Rev Grant Holmes in 2006, would mark a major victory for the pro-gay lobby in the Church of England, which has been disappointed at the lack of progress under Dr Williams.
Conservatives, on the other hand, would be incensed at the promotion of a cleric who has strongly argued for a more liberal attitude towards sexuality and is in a long-standing, though celibate, homosexual relationship.
Senior bishops led the opposition to his appointment in 2003, while African archbishops claimed that it would tear apart the Anglican Communion if an openly gay cleric was made bishop in the Church of England, considered to be the mother church.
The Communion has already begun to unravel following the appointment of openly gay and openly lesbian bishops in the US Episcopal Church.
This could shatter Dr Williams’ hopes of maintaining the fragile unity which currently exists in the Church.
While it would also upset evangelicals in the diocese of Southwark, the overwhelming majority of clergy in the diocese are believed to be very keen to have Dr John as their bishop.
He is well known in the diocese from his time serving as a canon at the cathedral before he moved to St Albans.
Regarded as an outstanding preacher and a champion of a more liberal reading of the Bible, he is considered to have enhanced his reputation at St Albans cathedral, which has seen its congregation grow under his leadership.
David Cameron is also expected to be favourable to the appointment as it would reflect the Conservative Party’s drive to shake off its “nasty party” image.
In an interview last year with Attitude, a gay magazine, the prime minister criticised the Church of England over failing to be more accepting in its attitudes to homosexuality.
“But I think the Church has to do some of the things that the Conservative Party has been through
I use the word “rump” deliberately.
ROTFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree with your analysis. The submission of John’s name cannot simply be a trial ballon, because that would get Rowan Williams nowhere with the conservatives and merely upset liberals (who would see it as yet just one more betrayal). I do think, however, that it distracts the conservatives from the issue of nominating a divorced, remarried man as a bishop. Consider John’s being on the shortlist a stalking horse…
But it makes it all the harder for Williams to put forth a gay bishop’s name in the future. John’s non-nomination will be seen as a victory by the conservatives (who will crow about having ‘defeated’ the move for a homosexual bishop). Church liberals will be all the more adamant that a gay person be nominated for bishop, and quickly.
But then, that’s par for the course of Rowan Williams, isn’t it? Short-term solutions that gain little advantage and ignore long-term strategy in moving the church forward. Williams is simply avoiding the fundamental (and fundamentalist) problems that are eating away at the Anglican communion’s membership. It’s not just Williams; his predecessors permitted fundamentalism to creep into the Church and pervert its teachings (especially in the Third World), and now they are reaping the whirlwind. Sadly, Williams is hardly the leader who could be expected to bring the Anglican communion back together again. His powers of persuasion and communication — not to mention his theological thinking — are weak. The Church needs someone who can step forth and say, “Here is a new statement of faith. Sign on.” I don’t know of anyone who could do that.
The submission of John’s name cannot simply be a trial ballon, because that would get Rowan Williams nowhere with the conservatives and merely upset liberals (who would see it as yet just one more betrayal). I do think, however, that it distracts the conservatives from the issue of nominating a divorced, remarried man as a bishop. Consider John’s being on the shortlist a stalking horse…
I did not consider this possibility. The Crown Appointments Commission and its staff are all sworn to deepest secrecy about its deliberations, and I do not believe that anyone involved would leak this information to Wynne-Jones.
While the Archbishop of York, a very Evangelical native of Uganda, objected to allowing divorced men or men whose wives had previously been divorced to be consecrated Bishops, in this diocese there is little or no pressure on the issue of divorce. And, of course, once the Crown Appointments Commission makes its choice, there is no mechanism for the wider Church to give its consent for the appointment of a Bishop. That’s another way in which the C of E, while pretending to be democratic through its Synodical government, is actually less democratic than the Episcopal Church.
I would disagree with you (cordially, of course) on the subject of Williams’ theological thinking. He is probably the best living Anglican theologian and, arguably, the best living Protestant one. The difficulty is this: his thoughts and writings are, at best, cloudy and at worst, opaque. Much of it is totally inaccessible to the “layperson on the Clapham omnibus”. On this issue (inclusion of lesbian, gay, and transgender ministry in the Church), he suffers from cognitive dissonance. He has previously (as a priest) expressed his support for such ministry, and (as a bishop) has ordained openly gay men to the priesthood. However, now, as Archbishop of Canterbury, he feels professionally obligated to hold one opinion privately and hold the exact opposite publicly. This does no good to his state of mind and must be very difficult for him to rationalise.
My opinion remains that there is no leak. The story is speculation and should not be taken seriously. While it is likely that Dr. John is on any shortlist that has been made up at the first meeting of the CAC, I would be astounded (yet quite pleased) if his name emerged from the second meeting (this afternoon through tomorrow lunchtime) as the choice to be forwarded to the Prime Minister and the Queen.
My sense is that this leak occurred exactly in order to create the stalking-horse issue.
The alternative is that someone is so angry about the possibility of John’s shortlisting (not even nomination, just the shortlisting) that this person decided to violate the confidentiality rules to destroy his chance of even being short-listed.