The Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, has published a ‘booklet’ called ‘Can We Imagine a Future Together?’ It begins with the TV programme, ‘Couples Therapy’ and ends with a ‘Love Letter to the Church’. In between Bishop Martyn puts forward, “a plea to reimagine the future of the Church of England.” [1]
For faithful Anglicans it offers little hope. This is because despite Bishop Martyn’s sincere desire to find a way forward, there is no ‘reimagination’ at all in this booklet - for at its heart, this is just the latest repackaging of ‘walking together'.
This time, the call to ‘walk together’ is framed around what can be learned from interculturalism. For those not conversant with the various theories of integrating different cultures, interculturalism replaced multiculturalism, which replaced assimilation. So, now rather than one culture dominating others (assimilation), or just celebrating all cultures equally (multiculturalism), interculturalism seeks to celebrate the different cultures while encouraging interaction between them. In short, interculturalism encourages people to view the differences between cultures as a ‘gift’[2]– something which when understood better will enrich your life rather than threaten it.
This is the lens through which Bishop Martyn views the future of the Church of England, which is perhaps unsurprising given that his last project before taking on the lead in implementing Living in Love and Faith, was to write a book called, ‘An Intercultural Church for a Multicultural World’.
To give him his due, Bishop Martyn acknowledges that there is not a,“direct equivalence between cultural/ethnic differences and sexuality,”[3] but he then goes on to say that, “culture has a direct effect on how we do theology, ethics, missiology and ecclesiology, as well as how we view our identity and relationships.” [4] In doing this, he gets very close to claiming that the different theological perspectives about the Prayers of Love and Faith are merely cultural. Accordingly, it is not surprising when his ‘gift’ to the Church is to offer an inter-cultural conversation rather than greater theological rigour.
Bishop Martyn should be admired for his persistence and his integrity. Since agreeing to co-lead the implementation of the Living in Love and Faith process, only to be left by the Bishop of Newcastle, after a few short months, the Bishop of Leicester has engaged in hundreds of hours of conversations, shuttling between different groups and seeking to keep the process on track.[5] It is hard to imagine how much anger, disappointment and stress he has absorbed and his response will be superficially attractive to many. Who wouldn’t want to imagine, “a new future, where we are kind and considerate to one another, loving and generous, witnessing as one body to the resurrection life of our Lord”?[6]
But it is the pragmatism of his approach of, “adaptive change,” [7] which will undermine the orthodox position and cause faithful Anglicans to tread carefully. Here are just four examples:
Firstly, separation hasn’t happened so separation is not needed
Bishop Martyn's fundamental assumption is that “We have not yet reached the point of separation – or even living in separate rooms.” [8]
On the one hand he is aware that, “some people have left the Church of England,”[9] but on the other he says he often hears, "from people in different positions on LLF that they are committed and want to stay in the Church of England."[10] It is the latter that grabs his attention because, as he says, “we haven’t yet reached the point of large-scale departures.”
Bishop Martyn is very dismissive about the new ecclesial structures that are being formed. It would have only taken a few seconds on the internet for Bishop Martyn to discover that the ‘Anglican Mission in England’, to which he refers in the booklet, is not a, “network,”[11] but one of three dioceses in the Anglican Network in England. Furthermore, while it may be true that the, “numbers are relatively small,”[12] there are currently about 100 active churches, with more being added each month.
Surely the reason Bishop Martyn is unwilling to be clear about the Anglican Network in Europe is that he does not want to be transparent about how many churches would need to leave for it to show that a ‘separation’ had taken place. This may be because he does not want to indicate the strength that would need to be mustered before he abandoned his project, or it may be because he cannot define that number, in which case his argument about the lack of large scale departures is meaningless.
Similarly, Bishop Martyn dismisses attempts at 'internal' separation. While the Ephesian Fund is not named, Bishop Martyn condemns, ".. rich Western churches (of different hues) offering support to poorer churches only if they agree to a certain doctrinal position. This is a form of imperialism and it needs to be named as such. And within the Church of England, there has at times been a similar lack of generosity. So I want to ask if true generosity would involve supporting churches with whom we disagree?"[13]
This approach to ‘separation’ creates an impossible situation for those who are seeking structural change in the Church of England. While people remain, the time for separation has not arrived, thus there is no need to provide for any separation. Yet, if they remain and seek to separate into their own de facto parallel province, they will be caricatured as ungenerous and imperialistic.
Second, people disagree about the nature of disagreement we are having, so those who say that it is a first order issue cannot be accommodated.
Twice, Bishop Martyn makes the point that the Church of England is divided on whether blessings for same-sex couples, and even same-sex marriage itself, is a first, second or third order issue. In other words – some believe it is a matter of apostolic importance, which would mean it could be considered to be un-Christian to take one view or another. Others believe it is a matter of church order, which would require some form of denominational separation. While others still believe it is ‘adiaphora,’ something over which the church should not divide.
In practice, however, this means that the Church of England will treat LLF as a third order issue during the 'season of discernment'. A season, which the Bishop of Leicester suggests may go on beyond his lifetime[14] or even longer, “But we are never going to agree on theology, so at the same time, let’s work on our relationships.”[15]
This creates another impossible situation for those who believe it is a first or second order issue. Unless the Church binds the consciences of those who think separation is unnecessary, no structural change is possible and if that is the de facto position a ‘de facto parallel province’ will not be sufficient.
Third, the issues that divide the Church are more fundamental than LLF – so the Church shouldn’t separate over LLF
Bishop Martyn describes the situation well when he says, “There are also disagreements about the nature of biblical authority authorship and inspiration, which arguably are more fundamental than the specifics of morality.” [16] One could add that there are disagreements about the nature of God and the means of salvation, but they too find their roots in the different ways people understand the Scriptures.
Bishop Martyn may himself hold a higher view of Scripture than many in the Church of England, but it appears that he accepts the permanent co-existence of a range of opinions on such issues to be inevitable.
“Personally, I believe that the only thing we can do, is to take our time discerning what category of disagreement this constitutes (hence the question ‘can we imagine a future together’), and during this time commit to engaging with one another across difference, i.e. work with the model of interculturalism and learn how to ‘love our enemies.’… This is a season of discernment.”[17]
In 2021, when the Living in Love and Faith book was published, Anglican Futures analysed the way LLF treated the Scriptures in three blogs entitled Hearing the Voice of the Lord (1,2 &3), which concluded,
“But there is also a wrong kind of endless deferral of meaning, which in the final analysis is no more than a stubborn refusal to acknowledge what the Lord Jesus, the Word of God, the Shepherd of his sheep, says to us by the agency of the prophets and apostles. Within the Church, says the exalted Christ by his apostle, there are those who are ‘always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth’ (2 Tim. 3:7). After decades of reports, discussion and circling around questions of marriage, relationships and sexuality, it is not unfair to ask whether LLF is, in fact, a prime example of this dynamic at work….
… The pressing question for orthodox Anglicans is whether, it is therefore, in reality, facilitating listening to, and toying with, the voice of strangers. If this is the case, we must sadly conclude that, not least in the way it encourages us to engage with Holy Scripture itself, the Church of England as an institution is silencing the voice of its only Head and Shepherd. It is wielding not the sword of the Spirit (Heb. 4:12), but the sword of its own beheading.”
Without an agreed understanding of the nature and authority of the Scriptures, the voice of the orthodox will only ever be one voice among many. Moreover, any appeal to the need to submit to the Word of God will be interpreted as taking an 'assimilationist' mindset, something which the Bishop of Leicester says, "bears little resemblance to what we see in the New Testament and early church where we find a rich diversity of approaches to church life."[18]
Faithful Anglicans should therefore not be surprised when their desire to sit under God's word is ignored and pragmatic decisions are taken to increase the diversity of practice in the Church.
Fourth, this is not new.
In the final analysis, Bishop Martyn’s love letter to the Church has no answers, he concludes by saying.
“Yet, I am also realistic, knowing that this side of heaven, the church will never be perfect, never be pure, never have true justice. This side of heaven, we must live in hope – longing that one day we will sit together at the table in heaven.”[19]
Despite his protestation that his call for, “ a season of discernment”[20], “is not a simplistic plea to ‘agree to disagree’ on these questions”[21] , it is in fact all that is left to be done.
In the past this "season of discernment' has been described as ‘good disagreement’, shared conversations’, ‘gracious reconciliation’, ‘walking together’, ‘mutual flourishing’, ‘faithful innovation’, ‘radical Christian inclusion’, and ‘pastoral provision for a time of uncertainty’. But at the end of the day, each of them is just another manifestation of the same thing - the overriding acceptance of plural truth, which in effect is a rejection of all things orthodox.
This blog explained the problem when analysing the 2024 incarnation of plural truth, described by Archbishop Justin Welby as the ‘variable geometry of unity’:
"His quest for unity has led the Archbishop to a position where the ultimate expression of holiness is a Church which holds together completely contradictory positions on fundamental issues, on which the bible speaks clearly...
...But this perspective completely rejects an orthodox understanding of the Scriptures – denying the historic, catholic, biblical understanding of creation, salvation and the eternal relationship between Christ and the Church. It is a conclusion that has been soundly rejected in the strongest terms by the majority of the Anglican Communion – represented by GSFA and Gafcon - and also by the Church of England Evangelical Council.”
It is perhaps ironic that in an attempt to sell the merits of interculturalism, the Bishop of Leicester has in the end championed 'a season of discernment' during which 'plural truth' must be accepted. This is an imperialistic worldview, which swallows up all other perspectives and has been rejected by the majority of the Anglican Communion.
The good news for faithful Anglicans is that even as the Travelator continues, they are not alone. Gafcon 2025 begins this week and anyone can sign up to watch the livestream here.
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Footnotes - quotes are from 'Can We Imagine a Future Together' by Martyn Snow, Church House Publishing, 2025
[1] Page 12
[2] Page 39
[3] Page 13
[4] End note 11 – p13/p63
[5] Page 5
[6] Page 23
[7] Page19
[8] Page 5 and Page 20
[9] Page 20
[10] Page 20
[11] Page 20
[12] Page 20
[13] Page 47
[14] Page 23
[15] Page 46
[16] Page 45
[17] Page 45
[18] Page 42
[19] Page 61
[20] Page 45
[21] Page 12
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