In Depth:  Susie Leafe

Susie Leafe

‘We are very glad that you are there, spearheading the campaign to encourage the truth and we know that it is very difficult and you are in the deep end, I promise that we will pray for you … that the Lord may help us not just maintain the unity but stand on the truth, one should not be lost for the other..’

These were some of the words of encouragement that one bishop, who serves in a country where Christians cannot evangelise or pray in public, wanted to send to his brothers and sisters in the Church of England.

Susie Leafe

‘Gilbert and Sullivan, P.G. Wodehouse and Alan Ayckbourn in concert couldn’t have written a better farce’, was how one incumbent expressed his concern over the recent Pastoral Guidance on trans issues from the Church of England’s House of Bishops.

The saga began in 2017, when General Synod asked the bishops, ‘to consider whether some nationally commended liturgical materials might be prepared to mark a person’s gender transition’. Simultaneously, Synod rejected the suggestion of considering ‘the substantial theological and pastoral issues raised’.

Susie Leafe

In The Book of Common Prayer, the Collect, or special prayer, for the Third Sunday in Advent asks God to: ‘Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight.’

Like so much of Cranmer’s liturgy, a great deal of wisdom is packed into just a few words. We are reminded of John the Baptist preparing the way for the first coming of the Lord Jesus and of our responsibility to proclaim the second. We are reminded to pray for our ministers and to pray for ourselves. We are reminded that there is a judgment to come and that the verdict of that judgment is the only one that matters. It is good to ponder these things.

Susie Leafe

In France and Italy farmers are seeking permission to shoot wolves, and in Norway animal rights activists are boycotting lamb in protest at the limited cull of wolves that their government has allowed.

Last night, I watched Jamie Oliver cooking lamb over an open fire in the southern Italian mountains. He was helped by a traditional shepherd and shepherdess, who said the recipe had to be simple, ‘because of wolves destroying the flock. You can’t leave the herd for a second.’

Susie Leafe

‘We will proclaim Christ faithfully to the nations!’ was the rallying cry of the 1,950 or so delegates at GAFCON 2018 (Jerusalem, 17-22 June), but it was more than a slogan; it was a declaration of intent.

GAFCON is not a conference where people come to moan about the state of the church – instead it is a place where those facing persecution and pressure to conform are reminded of the gospel and inspired to return to their ministry with new zeal. It does that because it lives up to what it says on the tin: it is a Global, Anglican, Futures CONference.

Susie Leafe

The English are very good at saying, ‘Sorry’. We say ‘Sorry’ for the weather, ‘Sorry’ when we sneeze, or ‘Sorry’ when someone else bumps into us.

In fact I have a friend who is so English that he even apologises for saying ‘Sorry’!

Susie Leafe

Those who have been following recent events in Anglicanism will have noticed two competing narratives at play. Both claim they are looking for a new Reformation:

‘… the Canterbury Primates Meeting, held earlier this month, shows once again that the Anglican Communion is in urgent need of a new Reformation.’ – Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, Chairman of the GAFCON Primates

Susie Leafe

Last month the National Centre for Social Research put out a press release entitled, ‘Record number of Brits with no religion’. It went on to say that, ‘The decline in religious affiliation is hitting the Church of England particularly hard’.

It is true that the proportion of those who claim allegiance to the Church of England has halved since the start of the 21st century and, of those who are still clinging on, more than half are over 65.

Susie Leafe

Last week I was called by a producer from Radio 5, asking me to comment on a new report that claimed: ‘For every one person brought up with no religion who has become a Christian, 26 people brought up as Christians now identify as Nones (having no religion).’ To the radio producer this was clear evidence that Christianity was on a losing wicket and we’d be all out before tea.

I asked him to send me the report before I commented and, for a change, what I found there was both encouraging and challenging. Mark Twain is reported to have said: ‘Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable’, so it is with some trepidation that I recommend reading the report, The ‘No- Religion’ Population of Britain, and the survey on which it is based. However, I think they offer a helpful insight into the backgrounds of those with whom we seek to share the Good News.

Susie Leafe

I believe John Piper said: ‘Emotional blackmail says, “If I feel hurt by you, you are guilty.” There is no defence. The hurt person has become God. His emotion has become judge and jury. Truth does not matter. All that matters is the sovereign suffering of the aggrieved. It is above question. This emotional device is a great evil.’

I presume that we are all guilty of such thinking at times. It is too easy to allow our emotions to be the arbiter of the truth about our relationships, and when this happens chaos ensues. It can happen in families, amongst friends and even in churches.

Susie Leafe

‘It’s Friday, it’s five o’clock… it’s Crackerjack!’ are words with which many generations of English children are familiar. Words which inevitably heralded the start of 30 minutes of comedy, confusion and games involving cabbages, which ended with the distribution of the much-prized propelling pencils.

There is a similar sense of inevitability, if not pleasure, about the Church of England’s calendar: it’s February, it’s General Synod… it’s time to talk about sexuality. Again.

Susie Leafe

By the time you read this Anglicans will be observing the season of Advent. Given the momentous events in the USA and the decisions that await our own General Synod in the New Year, I suspect this will be an Advent season in which we will be caused to think deeply upon the issue of governance.

Many of us, reading a lesson at a Carol Service, will have struggled with the challenge of getting our mouths around the words ‘Augustus’, ‘census’, ‘Quirinius’ and ‘Syria’ all in the same sentence. But it is a verse that in fact reminds us that thinking deeply on issues of governance at the time of Jesus’ birth is nothing new.

Susie Leafe

There have been a lot of headlines about the Church of England in recent weeks.

Many open letters have been written, a celibate gay bishop has been paraded, and even Church meetings in Tunbridge Wells have got a mention. I don’t think it is just the lack of real news during the ‘silly season’ that has caused it. No, it is also the fact that the Shared Conversations about Scripture, Sexuality and Mission are officially over, and the time has come to make a decision. And there is no easy answer.

Susie Leafe

The General Synod of the Church of England is drawing to a close as I write.

In fact, it officially came to an end last Saturday night but since then the majority of members have been cloistered in Shared Conversations about Sexuality, Mission and Scripture. I say the majority, because some have disappeared home and others, including myself, have been here but have refused to take part in the process because of the fundamental flaws in the way that they have been designed.

Susie Leafe

I’m involved at General Synod and sometimes there is a sense in which you realise that the decisions that are being made have the potential to transform the lives of others (for good or ill). And yet there is such a disconnect in time and place, culture and value systems, between Synod and the local parish that it is very hard to bring the two together.

Each Sunday, and throughout the week, our ‘little’ parish church goes about its business. At the core of our congregation is a diverse bunch of people, brought together by the irresistible pull of God’s saving grace and the fact that we’ve ended up living in this particular part of Cornwall.

Susie Leafe

Boundaries are a big deal. Donald Trump has proposed a ‘Great Wall of America’ between the US and Mexico.

In Europe the functioning, or otherwise, of the ‘Schengen Area’ is the greatest challenge that the EU has faced in a while and, of course, we all anticipate that 2016 will bring a referendum on our membership of the European Union, which again will be largely focussed on the merits and demerits of freedom of movement of capital, people, goods and services across borders. We could go on.

Susie Leafe

The Church of England has elected their new General Synod, which will deliberate and legislate for the Church until 2020.

As the results of the elections came through, there was much talk as to who had ‘won’. Lists of new members were scrutinised, their potential allegiances to liberal or conservative causes were discerned where possible, and statements were made that sounded rather like politicians after a General Election.

Susie Leafe

In 1995 the Irish rugby authorities commissioned a song to unite players and supporters from all four provinces of Ireland as they played as one team in the Rugby World Cup.

No doubt we’ll hear the resulting song on numerous occasions over the coming weeks:

Susie Leafe

Historians may look back and see June and July 2015 as something of a watershed in the life of the Church of England.

The events perhaps speak for themselves. Senior female clergy called for liturgy which refers to God as ‘she’; the then Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church was invited to preach at Westminster Abbey, despite her unorthodox theological statements; the Revd Jeremy Pemberton took his bishop to the employment tribunal for refusing to grant him Permission-to-Officiate because he had entered into a same sex marriage; the Bishop of Buckingham gave evidence at this tribunal, stating that the doctrines of the Church of England were ‘lousy’; Bishop Richard Inwood, who had refused to grant the licence, defended his action, but said it was the timing of the marriage that was a problem, not the act itself; Canon Michael Smith announced that he was looking forward to ‘welcoming and affirming the LGBT community from our city and beyond and saying a short prayer and a blessing as they begin their [Gay Pride] parade’ and proceeded to do so with much fanfare and media interest; and, in the wider Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the USA changed the definition of marriage to remove any mention of gender in their canons and have authorised liturgy to be used for same sex marriages.

Susie Leafe

On Tuesday 5 May there was a very subdued press conference, in a back room at Lambeth Palace, at which it was announced that Rod Thomas, vicar of Elburton Parish Church in Plymouth, chairman of Reform and a member of General Synod, had been appointed to be the new Bishop of Maidstone. No frills. No fanfares. In fact, you may have missed it altogether.

The appointment of a conservative evangelical bishop in the Church of England was long overdue. The last complementarian evangelical, Wallace Benn, was appointed 17 years ago and it is nearly three years since he retired. The gap was not unexpected. A report by the Church of England in 2007, called Talent and Calling, highlighted the lack of conservative evangelicals in senior leadership positions. The opportunities to deal with it existed – there have been 75 opportunities for a diocesan bishop to appoint a complementarian to assist them since that report was accepted by General Synod and every single time the opportunity has been missed, or rejected.

Susie Leafe

There has been much comment on the detail of the House of Bishops ‘Pastoral Letter’ in advance of the coming general Election.

It is a 52-page document which, despite claims to the contrary, appears to set out a political manifesto. After some initial hype, the response has been somewhat lukewarm, with many challenging the credibility of the Church of England with regards to such matters.

Susie Leafe

‘Thanks be to God’, as us Anglicans like to say, two brand new Conservative Evangelical Anglican churches have opened in the last few months: one in Salisbury and another in Guildford.

Both have been started under the auspices of the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE) where they join a good number of other churches already identifying with AMiE’s remit and, wonderfully, there are many more churches in the pipeline.

Susie Leafe

Our dear brother John Richardson went home to glory this year. As a writer, he is a loss to this column, but his ministry has myriad legacies. Not the least amongst them is the annual Junior Anglican Evangelical Conference (JAEC) which took place in September.

The ‘Junior’ refers to the delegates – they are all people with less than seven years in ordained ministry, with some who are only just embarking on that path. It was wonderful to be there to see men and women from all over the country gathered to explore together their future ministry, in pursuit of John’s oft repeated goal – nothing less than the evangelisation of England.

Susie Leafe

On July 13, in anticipation of the vote of the York General Synod on women bishops the next day, the Archbishop of Canterbury took to the airwaves via the medium of The Andrew Marr Show. He declared that: ‘theologically the church has been wrong not to ordain women as priests and bishops over the centuries’.

In those few words Justin Welby isolated himself from, as I would see it, the teaching and practice of the Lord Jesus and the apostles as well as the understanding of the Church Fathers and the thinking of the best theologians of the centuries since.

Susie Leafe

Reactions to the announcement of new guidelines for Church of England Schools on countering homophobic bullying have perhaps been predictable. On the one hand you have those who declare the guidelines themselves homophobic and on the other there are those who believe they will prevent Christian children expressing biblical views in the playground.

The Church of England finds itself, once again, in the eye of a storm. Stonewall may have been key advisors for this report but you only have to look at the comments on Justin Welby's interview with the gay news service, Pink News, to see that many people will not be satisfied until there is wholesale change in the church's teaching. But these are not just issues for the Anglican Church. How do Christians learn to live in a country that is no longer shaped by Christian values?

Susie Leafe

The Church of England’s governance is more democratic than many would have you believe.

No significant change to the liturgy of the Church of England can take place without the approval of a majority of the 44 diocesan synods. But the system is complex; representatives to diocesan synods are elected from the deanery synod representatives, who are, in turn, elected by their congregation. This complexity is one of the reasons that evangelicals tend to be under-represented in the governing structures of the church.

Susie Leafe

In my youth we enjoyed the old game of seeing how many people we could squeeze into a Mini.

Little did I know how useful those skills would be when trying to organise ReNew, a new conference for conservative evangelical Anglican leaders that took place last November.