from Anglican Futures
In 2017, Bishop Martin Morrison of the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa (REACH SA) was one of those who travelled to NE England to consecrate the Rt Revd Jonathan Pryke, a long-standing curate at Jesmond Parish Church. It was claimed that this radical action was necessary because it would allow Pryke “to provide ongoing episcopal ministry to Jesmond Parish Church, related churches and proposed new churches in a more sustainable way.”
Now, Jonathan Pryke is alive and well, but still Bishop Martin Morrison has had to twice return to the United Kingdom, in 2025 and 2026, in order to lay his episcopal hands on seven men each time and ‘ordain’ [1] them to the diaconate.
This 16,000 mile round-trip was necessary because of a forseeable fly in the ointment of the claimed, “more sustainable way” – namely, the Bishop of Newcastle, in whose diocese Pryke serves. The Rt Revd Christine Hardman, and her successor the Rt Revd Helen-Ann Hartley, have made it very clear that while the Rt Revd Jonathan Pryke may be validly, if irregularly, consecrated, he was not at liberty to offer any episcopal ministry within the Church of England without their permission. In other words, should Pryke have laid his episcopal hands on any one of these fourteen men he would very quickly have found himself disciplined by his actual diocesan bishop. That this was not a vain threat, became clear when Bishop Tim Wambunya was disciplined for his involvement in non-church of England ordinations in 2024.
For the same reason, orthodox retired Church of England bishops, who wish to remain in good standing with the diocese in which they reside, cannot offer any kind of episcopal ministry beyond that which their diocesan allows. Instead, the most the Rt Revds Rod Thomas, Julian Henderson, Pete Broadbent, Henry Scriven and Keith Sinclair can do, to support orthodox churches, is to join the ranks of presbyters offering to mentor clergy through CEEC’s ‘Alternative Spiritual Oversight’ scheme.