Elections, diversity, and safeguarding on General Synod agenda
by Pat Ashworth, Church Times:
Members will meet virtually over two days on 23 and 24 April.
THE General Synod will have some soul-searching to do when it meets for two days next week on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 April.
The chief business of Saturday afternoon is the report Responsible Representation, from the Crown Nominations Elections Review Group. The Synod will be asked to endorse its recommendations on the handling of elections of members to the Crown Nominations Commission and diocesan vacancy-in-see committees, and the steps that it proposes to ensure a diverse representation of views, ages, and traditions on these bodies.
The report acknowledges the General Synod to be “overwhelmingly white, middle-class and able-bodied”. It declares: “Our sincere belief is that change is necessary and if aspects of this report do not make for uncomfortable reading, we shall have failed to convey the strength of our deliberations.”
It identifies a change of culture as “essentially needed . . . most notably in the General Synod, but also more widely in the Church, so that our primary concern — both individually and corporately — is the flourishing of others: putting their needs and well-being ahead of our own”.
Politics, it says, “becomes destructive when it becomes a factionalism that works to divide the Body. Our reflections also cause us to question the existence of the lay/clergy divide in many of our electoral processes and specifically in elections to the CNC.”
One recommendation of the in-depth report is that one election should be held in which members of both Houses vote across the pool of the clerical and lay candidates, and that constraints are applied to the Single Transferable Vote system, such that the first three clergy representatives and the first three lay representatives are elected.
It says: “In the context of Synodical elections — from nominations, through voting, to the role of those chosen — too often it seems that partisan views may have weighed more heavily than genuine commitment to the vitality of the whole body of Christ, across its full breadth and legitimate diversity.”
The review group notes that it was only at the very end of its deliberations that the Black Lives Matter movement came to prominence: “It nevertheless provides a particular context to the conclusion of our work and brings into sharp focus the issues of diversity highlighted throughout our report.”
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