The Most Important Irrelevant Thing You've Ever Done

One of the delights of the unexpected BBC comedy series Rev was the appearance of the phrase ‘Deanery Synod’ in the first episode, perhaps the first (indeed only) occasion it has cropped up in a work of televisual fiction, a bit like the word ‘soteriology’ a couple of weeks later. On Monday I was at Deanery Synod, for what the Rural Dean described as ‘probably the most important Synod debate any of you have taken part in’ which, considering the vote we eventually reached had no legal status at all and was binding on nobody, says something about how important Deanery Synod usually is.
We were discussing the consecration of women to the episcopate. Of course the Church of England’s national General Synod has already voted for women to be made bishops, but now each diocese is being called upon to support or reject that stance and to debate what is called a ‘following motion’. This is the interesting bit. The two Archbishops and the bishops advised the General Synod that parishes which can’t accept the ministry of a woman bishop (largely conservative Anglo-Catholic ones) should have the right to be looked after by a male alternative written into the legislation; that is, the authority of such male bishops should come from the Church as a whole, rather than being delegated by individual local bishops. Basically the General Synod said to the episcopate (by a narrow margin) ‘Naaah’, and voted to support establishing a ‘Code of Practice’ by which deputy bishops would be allowed to look after the ‘anti’ parishes only at the sayso of individual diocesan bishops. The ‘Code of Practice’ doesn’t actually have anything in it at the moment. The ‘antis’ were flabbergasted at what amounted to a complete breach of the promises to protect them made when the Church voted to ordain women priests in 1992. Perhaps those promises shouldn’t have been made. But they were, and knowing many people on that side of the debate who aren’t lunatics or bigots, I feel rather sympathetic. The ‘following motion’ is basically the bishops’ way of making General Synod think again. It calls for alternative bishops to be provided for ‘anti’ parishes directly by the legislation, not by delegation from this or that local bishop.
The debate was dire. We had two speakers, one from Women And The Church (who was male) and one from the anti-women priests brigade Forward in Faith. The former was dismissive and tendentious, the latter bizarre: he had a DVD to play (the sound wouldn’t work so he had to talk us through it) which compared the Anglo-Catholic ‘antis’ to the Bengal tiger, ‘beautiful and endangered animals which need their own reserves where they can breed and flourish’. It was so cringeworthy I could barely look up. We were divided into discussion groups and the laypeople I was with seemed to agree strongly with whatever was said, by anyone, whether it was ‘These people who are against women bishops should just leave and become Roman Catholics’ or ‘We must do what we can to preserve and honour the Catholic heritage of the Church of England’. In the end we decided by only two votes to support the following motion – the clergy were much more strongly in favour than the laypeople. Of course our vote is only there for the information of the diocesan synod anyway, and that’s where the decision will actually be made.
I came out of the church where the meeting was being held and for some minutes completely lost my car. In fact, I lost the entire street it was in. That’s how exciting it was.