by Julian Mann, Anglican Ink
(Image: Wikimedia Creative Commons)
Questions surround the governance of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, the conservative evangelical flagship church in the City of London, after its Church of England Rector suggested that delegated episcopal oversight was tainted by false teaching.
St Helen’s is under the delegated oversight of the ‘flying’ conservative evangelical Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Rob Munro, who is an assistant bishop in the Diocese of London. But the only reference to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet on the St Helen’s website is in its complaints policy under the whistleblowing section.
The complaints policy offers no explanation about the Bishop of Ebbsfleet’s relationship with the St Helen’s Parochial Church Council, its governing body.
In an address on responding to false teachers in the Church of England to the St Helen’s staff team on September 10th, Rector William Taylor quoted the Apostle Paul’s instruction to Titus, his delegate on the Greek island of Crete in the AD 1st Century, as recorded in the New Testament:
‘Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them,’ (Titus 3v10 – New International Version).
Mr Taylor argued that because the House of Bishops’ Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process on human sexuality promoted false teaching, faithful churches and ministers should dissociate themselves from the bishops. After LLF ran into legal difficulties over the authorisation of dedicated services of blessing for same-sex couples, the General Synod voted to bring the process to an end last February.