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In the Church of England things are not always what they seem to be. Indeed the public perception of its character rarely corresponds to the reality of its working. To the religious affairs correspondents of national newspapers the Church is essentially a part of the English establishment and is usually dealt with in terms of its relationship with the monarchy, the Prime Minister or Parliament. Such a view is supported by images which the media project: royal weddings, archbishops in purple at state banquets, and bishops orating in the House of Lords. And there is shock, almost amounting to a sense of treasonable activity, if the Church is seen criticising Government policy, abandoning the old Prayer Book or making ancient parish churches redundant. Yet, contrast ing with this view, is that of many ordinary churchgoers, involved perhaps marginally in the business of 'Synodical Government'. To them the Church appears as committed to an experiment in popular democracy. Elections are held and energetically contested, votes are taken in deanery and diocesan synods, and reports come down of critical debates in the General Synod. It is easy to conclude that, for the first time, policy is being made at the grassroots. A little knowledge, however, of the way the Church of England actually works makes it clear that both these perceptions are false. Ancient and complex institutions have a way of disguising who it is that exercises influence within them and sometimes even those who are closely involved in their business cannot see the wood for the trees. These are critical times for Anglicanism, and now more than ever there is need of an informed and critical account of the state of the Anglican Communion in general and the Church of England in particular. It is not easy for any individual churchman to write such an independent survey in his own name for inevitably it will point to matters which are not for our comfort and it must extend to deal with personalities. It is therefore a fortunate circumstance that there exists a longstanding custom that each edition of Crockford's directory should have an anonymous Preface in which Anglican affairs are subjected to the scrutiny of a writer who is given complete independence. And now that the routine events of the year are dealt with by that urbane voice of the ecclesiastical establishment, the writer of the Preface to The Church of England Year Book, there is scope in Crockford for something wider-ranging and more trenchant.

In search of Anglicanism
In the summer of 1988 the Lambeth Conference, the ten-yearly gathering of the bishops of the Anglican Communion, will meet in Canterbury. It will work in four sections devoted to 'Mission and Ministry', 'Dogmatic and Pastoral Matters', 'Ecumenical Relations', and 'Christianity and the Social Order'; and it will doubtless issue predictable and wholly unmemorable statements on all these topics. But overshadowing all its other concerns will be a larger question about the nature and future of Anglicanism itself. Normally this is a subject which the bishops would seek to avoid or dispose of with the usual platitudes about 'unity-in-diversity' and 'mutual responsibility and interdependence' but this time it will not go away so easily. The action of certain provinces in ordaining women to the priesthood and the likelihood that they will soon consecrate a woman to the episcopate will force a closer definition of what kind of ecclesial communion Anglicanism is and what kind of authority it claims to exercise.

The truth is, however, that Anglicans have never been happy with questions which require them to set out a coherent doctrine of the Church. At their Reformation in the sixteenth century they were distinguished not so much by a doctrinal confession or an ecclesiology as by a strong adherence to the notion of national independence. When the two English provinces of the Latin Church of the West assumed a separate existence this was effected by giving to the secular ruler a supreme jurisdiction in ecclesiastical affairs. Indeed a defence of this Royal Supremacy became the mark of the first apologists for the church of England and a true ecclesiology was somewhat slow in developing. When it did emerge, principally in the writings of John Jewel and Richard Hooker, it had a distinctive character: it sought to avoid mere Erastianism and Popery or sectarianism by finding its authority in scripture as this was interpreted In the life and practice of the undivided Church of the first four centuries of the Christian era. Such a conservative ecclesiology, with its great stress on the institution of episcopacy and the independence of the local church, came to be recognised by other Christian denominations as a distinctive Anglican position, and there was wide respect for the achievement of Anglican scholars in their chosen field of patristic studies. It is such an ecclesiology which still underlies Anglican public statements and which has become the basis on which ecumenical discussions, such as those of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, proceed.

Yet it may be honestly questioned whether such an ecclesiology is understood or even accepted by most Anglicans today. Perhaps it never was. The various traditions or parties in the Church of England have always lived in a quite remarkable intellectual isolation from each other and it is on the doctrine of the Church that there has been the least meeting of minds. Anglican Evangelicals have, for example, paid little attention to ecclesiology, except to deny the assertions of others. So what in the past has kept the Church of England together, with its clergy and members even establishing a reputation for the way in which different traditions of churchmanship can coexist? There seem to have been four factors at work. Pre-eminent has been the state establishment. Whether or not there is any justification for the state to exercise control over the Church, it has at least allowed men and women of differing ecclesiologies to five within an authoritative system. Governments have been concerned to avoid partisanship in religious affairs and they have usually worked to prevent any one group from dominating the national Church. Secondly, there has been the uniting effect of the Book of Common Prayer, a liturgy of considerable literary power. Though it was possible to have different theological interpretations of the texts there was a common liturgical language which became part of the cultural heritage of all Anglicans. Thirdly, there was a common ministry and ordination in the practice of which all joined. Its claim that it represented primitive usage could be accepted by all the traditions. But perhaps most important of all the factors was the conservative theological tradition of the English universities with their strong links with the Church of England. Even into the mid-twentieth century it was received opinion among continental Protestant theologian that Anglican academics lived in a world of their own and set up a firm resistance to the kind of biblical criticism which was commonplace in European theological faculties. English scholars tended to do their theology through a study of church history and it was hard to deny that most of their work was done within the usual Anglican assumptions about the authority of Scripture and the normative character of patristic usage.

An English descent
It is not sufficiently realised how far the Anglican Communion is heir not to any particular doctrine or ecclesiology but to past practicalities of life in the Church of England. Indeed in its origins it was simply the Church of England as it followed the movement of English people overseas. When great empires fade as political powers they leave their images behind in churches which preserve their cultural ethos and mark the extent of their expansion. Thus the story of Anglicanism is closely paralleled by that of the British Empire. At first there were chaplaincies on the American continent and in the West Indies but soon a vast growth as the Church followed the flag into Asia, Africa and the Pacific. All were under the direct authority of the mother-church. It was only with the formation of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States in 1784 that Anglicanism took a new departure. It allowed the creation of a new national Anglican church which took to itself supreme authority to order its own doctrine, ministry and liturgy. At first the implications for Anglican ecclesiology were scarcely recognised. The new church remained heavily dependent on English usage and its members were thought of as a repository of Englishness amid the rapidly changing America of the nineteenth century. Gradually other churches in other former colonies followed the American way of independence and by the 1930s an Anglican Communion had come into existence as a family of independent churches. But what, apart from their English descent, did hold together these autonomous bodies, each of which had assumed full power to alter its doctrinal formularies, change its practice of ministry and, if it chose, unite itself with some non-Anglican church?

By what authority?
It is this question of authority within the Anglican Communion which has exercised the mind of virtually every Lambeth Conference since the first one in 1867, and their repeated attempts to define an answer are a measure of the uncertainty which existed and still exists. In the early days of the conferences it was usual to draw up lists of 'fundamentals' from which no church could vary if it wished to remain in communion with the others. The most celebrated of these lists was the so-called Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1886 and 1888: the use of the canonical Scriptures and the historic Catholic creeds, the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, and the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Yet by the mid-twentieth century there was a growing realisation that such statements of fundamentals were wholly inadequate as a way of defining the terms of communion. Not only were they capable of a wide variety of interpretation but most threats to Anglican ullity stemmed from disagreement about the meaning of tile fundamentals themselves. The point was well illustrated by Professor Stephen Sykes's important (but ultimately unsuccessful) book The Integrity of Anglicanism (1978). In emphasising many different sources for Anglicanism he became the leading exponent of the notion of 'dispersed authority'. Sykes welcomed the fact that the Communion no longer had a specific confessional identity and that it exhibited a wide variety of opinion and usage. In a modern up-date of the old formula lex orandi lex credendi he sought to find the essence of Anglican unity in a common tradition of worship based on the Book of Common Prayer. The function of the consultative bodies of the Anglican Communion he thought of in terms of a complex process of gathering the many and various sources of authority to discover a common mind. Yet despite the great influence which it has had, Sykes's extensive theorising about the nature of Anglican authority is unconvincing. The liturgical tradition to which he points and on which he bases so much is fading as fast as the Cheshire Cat's smile and he utterly falls to deal with the concrete reality of having to reach decisions in a divided and troubled communion. At least his book illustrates well the reluctance of Anglicans to admit that authority has any location and their refusal to allow any central authority, whether primate or synod, to encroach on the absolute independence of the national churches. His book had the valuable function of throwing the problem into sharp relief; it did little to provide any answers to it.

Lambeth 1978: an unimpressive conference
Perhaps the signal example of the failure of Anglicans to deal with the question of authority was that of the Lambeth Conference of 1978. It is now generally admitted that it was poorly prepared for, indifferently led, and heavily under the influence of consultants who had not themselves thought through the ecclesiological implications of the advice which they gave. The least satisfactory performance of the whole conference was that of the section chaired by Bishop Patrick Rodger and concerned with 'The Anglican Communion and the Worldwide Church'. Clearly influenced by the work of Professor Sykes, it attempted to identify various factors in the maintenance of Anglican unity but in fact did little rriore than rely on the old 'fundamentals', and in particular the standard of worship in the prayer-books and the use of the threefold ministry. In practical terms it had nothing to say beyond recommending a loyal relationship to the Archbishop of Canterbury as 'the freely recognized focus of unity' and respect for the statements of past Lambeth Conferences. Such a feeble effort was trenchantly criticised by the Board for Mission and Unity of the General Synod in January 1983. They drew attention to the unhappy fact that virtually all the factors which the 'Rodger' statement cited as making for unity were in fact the very matters on which Anglicans were divided. With such poverty in ecclesiological thinking the conference fell back on the usual platitudes about

living with diversity until Professor John Macquarrie came to their rescue with the notion of a 'hierarchy of truths' and the need to draw a distinction between those matters which 'made' the Church and those matters which could 'unmake' the Church. This was, in fact, nothing more than a reintroduction of the idea of 'fundamentals' under different language, and still offered no adequate test of what was to be accounted fundamental and what not. When the fathers of Vatican II had used the same phrase they had made it clear that the hierarchy of which they spoke existed within the total context of the Church's faith and order, and was not an invitation to regard any parts of the Church's traditional teaching or practice as disposable. But Professor Macquarrie's suggestion was eagerly seized upon by a conference faced with the accomplished fact that some Anglican provinces, acting on their own authority, had admitted women to the priesthood. The bishops could not be unaware that this break with the universal tradition of both East and West and the teaching of all the sixteenth-century Reformers had placed at risk the relationship of full communion between the provinces and was likely severely to compromise ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. But, given the fait accompli and on the basis of there being a hierarchy of truths, they decided to make no decision at all. They burked the ecclesiological issue and fixed their minds on the legal right of each province to act according to its own canons; they contented themselves with lofty exhortations that each side in the dispute over women-priests should respect the convictions of the other. Yet in one respect they had made a decision, and one which was to affect the very nature of Anglicanism. They had consecrated the notion of an ever-increasing Anglican diversity and the obligation of all provinces to 'accept', at least in the sense of co-operating with, anything decided by a particular province. It now remains to be seen whether there will emerge any determinable parameters to Anglican diversity. The substantial failure of the conference was exemplified In the closing address of Archbishop Coggan. In an extraordinary manner he dismissed the notion that there could be any authority in the Anglican Communion which could speak for all the provinces. He rejected the idea that the Archbishop of Canterbury might be an Anglican patriarch; he rejected the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and even a Doctrine Commission as able to exercise any authority within the Communion. Indeed he had no positive suggestions at all and contented himself with remarking that Anglicans did not like rigid definition and that some good might come out of disagreement. And so on this unhelpful note but amid expressions of mutual regard the conference ended. It had never faced the possibility that a notion of authority so obscure in conception and so imprecise in its exercise might in fact be no authority at all.

Stands England where it did?
It must be clear to all that the 'Englishness' of the Communion is not what it was. It is easy now to forget how recently the English diocesan bishops dominated the proceedings of Lambeth conferences, and even in 1968 it was apparent enough to provoke some mild protests from other bishops. Until the Second World War American Episcopalians deliberately affected English ecclesiastical styles and their seminaries were staffed with a high proportion of English academics. Indeed Anglican theology was done for the most part in English universities, and notably at Oxford and Cambridge. Generations of priests throughout the Communion were brought up on the textbooks of English theologians and their theological colleges were closely modelled on Cuddesdon, Mirfield, Ridley and Westcott House. Many African dioceses were ruled by expatriates who looked to the mother-church for guidance in doctrine and churchmanship. But the postwar era has seen a rapid decline in this English predominance. The fading of Britain's power in the world, together with the poor record of the Church of England in pastoral matters, has had its effect. With the spread of American influence and the natural desire of African and Asian dioceses to break with their colonial past and develop their own indigenous styles, there has been an undeniable shift away from 'Englishness'. Now there is even suspicion of the Church of England and talk that it wants to 'own' the Anglican Communion and that it is unwilling to accept its status as just one national church among others. Yet the hard question remains: without its English style what does keep the Communion together?

The case of the disappearing book
No change in Anglicanism during the last thirty years has been more remarkable than the virtual disuse of the prayer books based on the English Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps some of the national churches had a parallel tradition based on the Scottish liturgy but even here the same considerations apply. In England within a generation the Book of Common Prayer has been virtually eliminated by services which are in theory only permissible alternatives to it. It may well be that there were good and valid reasons for all the churches to produce modern liturgies, and many of them are by no means as bad as their detractors would suggest. Certainly in Africa there was real need to have a liturgy which was truly indigenous. But nothing is more apparent than Anglicanism's break with its liturgical past, and any attempt to define Anglicanism by reference to its tradition of worship is now on very insecure ground. It sometimes said that the new Anglican services have a 'family resemblance' but this may be only a reflection of the common forms of the ecumenical liturgical movement. Certainly it does not take a very close examination to detect that the liturgies have distinct doctrinal differences from each other. This would indicate that they are not so much a factor for unity as a sign of increasing diversity.

Focus of unity?
In a denomination the ecclesiology of which has been so uncertain there has been a basis for confidence in the existence of an episcopal ministry which claimed to be identical with that of the ancient and undivided Church. And, distinct from matters of theory and interpretation, episcopacy has the advantage of being a practical, working system. Indeed in describing the denomination as 'Episcopal' or 'Episcopalian' other churches have rightly detected that the Anglican understanding of unity is closely related to the ministry of their bishops. It is true that episcopacy has been variously understood by the different traditions of Anglican churchmanship but all ministers have submitted to its authority and received an ordination which was acknowledged in all parts of the Communion. It is a cause of real grief to Anglicans that Roman Catholics have in the past refused to recognise the validity of their orders. They regard the reasons given for this refusal as unsound and they welcome signs that Rome is reconsidering its position and may be ready to accept that Anglicans have a place among those churches which have retained the historic ministry. Thus, to propose a variation from the traditional practice of episcopacy is always to strike at the heart of Anglican self- understanding and to create deep divisions. Discussions of the nature of episcopacy are ones which Anglicans find difficult to handle in a theological way. At once basic differences in ecclesiology emerge and it would seem that the matter can only be resolved by the victory of one side over the other. Yet the last twenty-five years have seen repeated attempts to modify the Communion's traditional practice. For this plausible reasons are given. To insist strictly on episcopal ordination will inhibit schemes for union with non-episcopal churches and seem like raising matters of church order above agreement in matters of faith and mission. To confine the episcopate to males only, as has been the invariable practice In all the episcopal churches, is to have discrimination at the heart of a ministry which should be one of reconciliation and should represent the unity of all humankind in Christ. And so the episcopal ministry, which we are repeatedly told is the focus of ecclesial unity, has become a focus for Anglican disunity. The consecration of a woman to the episcopate would thus bring to the surface the divisions which are always latent in Anglicanism and call in question the one institution which hitherto all have been able to acknowledge.

A theology in retreat
Perhaps, however, the most significant change is the decline of a distinctive Anglican theological method. in a magisterial study of the great divines of the seventeenth century H. R. McAdoo identified this as giving attention to Scripture, Tradition and Reason to establish doctrine. The context of such theological study was the corporate life of the Church and the end was to deepen its spirituality and forward its mission. Such a view of theology still appears in official Anglican reports and in archiepiscopal addresses. But the last real exponent of classIcal Anglican divinity was Archbishop Michael Ramsey whose many scholarly studies represent a last stand before the citadel fell to the repeated assaults of a younger generation of academics. The essential characteristic of the new theologians lies in their unease in combining the role of theologian and churchman, and their wish to study both scripture and the patristic age without reference to the apologetic patterns of later Christianity. None will dispute that this is a legitimate aim for an academic who wishes his specialty to take its place alongside others in a modern secular university, but it is important to recognise the gap which has opened up between the method of modern academic theology and that of the classical Anglican search for an authority in the sources of faith. Increasingly theologians are expressing doubt as to how far either Scripture or the teaching of the patristic writers can be used to prescribe modern doctrine or church practice. Here the work of Professor D. E. Nineham has been of great influence. In his numerous writings he has stressed the distance between the world of thought in which the New Testament was written and that of our own day, and he finds that first-century Christians had views about the universe, history and literary forms which we cannot share and which cannot be translated into our own situation. And in similar style Professor M. F. Wiles has questioned the relevance of the doctrinal formularies of the first four centuries for the modern Church. In their apprehension of the mystery of God the patristic writers were men of their own day and their definitions cannot be prescriptive for those of us who have to live in an entirely different world of thought where quite new questions are being asked of Christians. In particular the modern theologians are ready to open up for discussion the doctrine of the Person of Christ. Such a distancing of the modern Church from what had been regarded as its prescriptive sources clearly has serious consequences for Anglican ecclesiology, and this has been helpfully set out in Mr J. L. Houlden's book Connections (1986).

The Church and the theologians
It is doubtful whether such views, explicitly stated, are acceptable to most modern Anglicans. In 1976 the Doctrine Commission, under the chairmanship of Professor Wiles, produced a report in which some of its members advanced such ideas. Archbishop Coggan, who had nothing if not a good political sense, judged that it would be divisive and unacceptable to the General Synod. The document was never debated and the commission was reconstituted with a new membership. Yet the movement in theology which it represented was not thus to be set aside. English faculties of theology are now part of an international scholarly enterprise which has moved steadily apart from the churches. Even where theological scholars are priests or rmn'sters there is a tendency to bridge the gap between their work on early Christianity and their participation in the present life of the Church by a downgrading of the value of Christian tradition. The most notable casualty has been the study of ecclesiastical history which appears now to have a low priority on the agenda of theological faculties. If Anglicans once did their theology through a study of the historical experience of the Christian community that seems no longer to be the case, and the notion is in eclipse that the spirituality or the teaching of the era from the Fathers to the Reformation has anything to offer the modern Church. What is most definitely discouraged is any form of denominational history. While such a tendency is understandable in theological faculties in modern universities, its effect is most notable in Anglican theological colleges which have now trained a whole generation of priests with a minimal knowledge of classical Anglican divinity or its methods. Clergy without a sense of there being some authority in the historic experience of the Church may well come to think that theology is the latest fashionable theory of theologians.

The Provinces and the Communion
It s now clear that this weakening of the distinctive character of Anglicanism is beginning to have its effect on the coherence of the Communion. Though it is usual to speak of the Anglican 'provinces' this is to give the false impression that there is a single Church of which the provinces are sub-divisions. The real fact is that there is a loose association of independent national churches with some weak consultative bodies which attempt to ensure agreement in faith and order and advise on common action. Seasoned observers at meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council know that the level of theological and ecclesiological discussion is not high and their most notable characteristic is the way in which the representatives of the churches come with opinions already formed. It is usual for such meetings to issue statements insisting that their authority is only moral and persuasive, and this is indeed necessary since the churches are accustomed to take as little notice of what is decided as they do of the recommendations of Lambeth Conferences. Anglican provinces, increasingly lacking a common mind, tend to look inwards for the formation of opinion and to the concerns generated within their own societies. Having full canonical power to make changes they develop a strong disposition to put into effect what a local majority wishes and then expect the rest of the Communion to follow suit. The issues of the ordination of women to the priesthood provides a cogent illustration of this point. When it was first proposed to the ACC meeting at Limuru in 1971 it was in terms of allowing the small diocese of Hong Kong in special circumstances to be allowed a dispensation from the usual practice. But a plea for tolerance easily passes into a demand that others should conform, and as certain provinces from the prosperous First World began to ordain women it was not long before the Church of England in particular came under attack because it did not receive the ministrations of these women priests. In 1983 this culminated in an imperious speech from Archbishop 'Ted' Scott of Canada before the General Synod of the Church of England in which he soundly berated it for not accepting a decision in which it had not been consulted and to which it had not given its consent. And since that time the Archbishop of Canterbury has been receiving the usual expressions of 'pain' and 'hurt' that the Church of England has not yet conformed to the amon of these provinces.

Holding the Churches in unity
At the seventh meeting of the ACC in Singapore In April 1987 the delegates sought to grapple with what they perceived to be the failure of the consultative bodies of the Communion, and they considered the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates' Meeting, and the Consultative Council itself. They did this in the light of the high probability that certain provinces were at the point of consecrating a wornan to the episcopate with all the consequences that this would have for the unity of the Communion and the future of ecumenical dialogue. In true Anglican style the Singapore meeting was much better at analysing the problems than offering solutions. They were right to point to the affection with which the holder of the office of Archbishop of Canterbury is held but less than realistic to ignore his actual powerlessness. He has no right to intervene in any province's internal affairs; he can advise and warn but his worldwide journeys have the disadvantage that everywhere he goes he is an honoured guest. It is easy to see what he is shown and to hear only the opinions of the predominant party. There is even a danger that a pleasing personality like Dr Robert Runcie may give an impression of approbation for a local church's stances which is positively misleading. The council's criticisms of the Lambeth Conference were particularly cogent. It is too large and costly; its meetings are infrequent; and it has a disproportionately large number of bishops coming from certain countries. It has acquired a reputation for being badly prepared for and serviced, and its recommendations are increasingly disregarded. The Primates' Meeting is useful for an exchange of information but its members lack the authority to make major recommendations in matters of faith and order. It thus becomes clear that if there is to be a 'central body' with a clear responsibility for Anglican coherence it will have to be a reconstituted Consultative Council; it will have to meet more frequently, have an adequate secretariat and the assistance of theologians and other experts. It seems probable that there will h ave to be some self-denying ordinance by which the provinces agree that certain matters shall not be decided locally but only after a common mind has been established among the churches. Finding a constitution for a new kind of Council will not be easy but it is perhaps not too much to say that the future of Anglicanism in the world Christian community depends on its being achieved.

The American Church: a study in change
The problems of modern Anglicanism are highlighted by the case of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Among the American churches it is a very small denomination but it has a prestige beyond its size because of the social standing of its membership. To become an Episcopalian has traditionally been a sign of upward mobility in American society. In the 1950s English visitors were impressed by the vigour of the Episcopal Church which seemed to reflect its nation's new confidence as a world power. It had full congregations and its members were generous in their financial contributions. Certainly there were weaknesses. Many of its bishops seemed to have been chosen as administrators and pastoral activists and few of them had any particular qualification as theologians. Indeed the church often gave the impression of being spiritually shallow with much of its preaching devoted to the propagation of 'American' values. It was thus a body which proved highly vulnerable to the rapid liberalisation of middle-class opinion in the 1960s, and many of its younger clergy and seminarians were deeply affected by the radical ideology of the universities of that era. Within a short time the Episcopal Church acquired a strong party for liberal causes, among them a movement for the ordination of women. It was an issue which conservatives found difficult to handle, given the untheological character of Episcopalians and the strength of current opinion about civil rights and sexual equality. Faced by a vociferous campaign, a cautious Presiding Bishop tried to set the debate within the wider context of the unity of the Anglican Communion but in 1974 he found himself confronted with a deliberate act of defiance when three retired bishops ordained certain wornen to the priesthood in a service which was clearly uncanonical and irregular. The uncertainty with which the House of Bishops handled the situation led to a critical vote in the General Convention at Minneapolis in 1976 when a motion that women should be eligible for all three orders of ministry was passed by a very slender majority. If six votes had been cast differently it would have failed. But by 1978 over 90 women had been ordained as priests. The Episcopal Church thus acted unilaterally with less than a two-thirds majority in its House of Bishops and a bare majority in its House of Deputies.

The making of the liberal ascendancy
The consequences for American Anglicanism were momentous, and have not been sufficiently understood in the Communion at large. At the Consultative Council at Singapore in 1987 the American delegates sought to present a reassuring picture of the state of their church. It was said that the issue of the ordination of women was no longer causing serious difficulty; only twelve dioceses did not have women-priests; and the numbers in the breakaway Anglican churches were very small. Unfortunately they did not tell of the methods by which this effect had been achieved or the change in the character of their church which they had involved. It is clear that the major casualty has been the comprehensiveness of the Episcopal Church. In

out of the church. Except in a few dioceses dissenting clergy were denied diocesan office and vetoed for the episcopate. Within a short time the commanding heights of the church were occupied by the liberal party. And the result is obvious to those who have spent some time in the United States, though it may not be readily appreciated by senior English bishops on carefully arranged short visits. The liberal ascendancy has transformed the younger clergy of the Episcopal Church into a national force for radical secular causes. The number of ordinands from the Catholic and Evangelical traditions of Anglicanism has diminished and been replaced by men and women of a remarkable uniformity of outlook. The Episcopal seminaries are centres of a liberalising theology which bears little or no resemblance to traditional Anglicanism; training in the spiritual life is widely discounted and few seminaries have any daily corporate prayer; the sexual mores of both staff and students appear to have broken with the standards usually associated with the Christian ministry. It is significant that Evangelicals have for the first time felt it necessary to establish a separate seminary for their own ordinands.

This liberal ascendancy among the bishops and influential clergy has undoubtedly caused severe tension in the Episcopal community. It has produced styles of leadership and a content of preaching which are deeply unwelcome to the traditional laity, and there has been withdrawal of financial contributions. It has led to the marriage discipline of the church being relaxed to the point where the American pattern of divorce and remarriage is the norm for both clergy and laity. The Episcopal Church has a rapidly changing membership with conservatives withdrawing and liberals from other denominations, notably from the Roman Catholic Church, joining. Perhaps the most difficult position has been that of the traditional clergy. Many felt a great loyalty to Anglicanism as they had understood it: they had no desire to join a schismatic church nor did they wish to become Roman Catholics; many had some sympathy for the ordination of women if it could have been established with ecumenical consent or at least by a consensus within the Anglican Communion. Most have endeavoured to keep their heads down and rnake their parishes enclaves of an older kind of Anglicanism. Indeed the real strength of the American church today lies in the fine achievement of certain of its great parishes rather than in the quality of its leadership. Significant was the election in 1985 of Bishop Edmond Lee Browning of Hawaii to succeed the deeply respected John M. Allin as Presiding Bishop. Though Bishop Browning has the reputation of a pastoral man who would like to allay tension in his church his early addresses leave no doubt that the primacy of the American Church has now come to a deeply committed libral who may well be expected to press on with the consecration of a woman to the episcopate no matter what the consequences for the Anglican Communion. Indeed there is even a possibility that a woman may well be elected before the Lambeth Conference of 1988 under a special procedure which allows consent to be obtained at a meeting of the General Convention.

Lambeth 1988: dealing with crisis
It now remains to be seen how the Lambeth Conference of 1988 will deal with an issue which threatens to have such critical implications for the future of Anglicanism. Not only would women-bishops make the episcopate itself a cause of disunity but those whom they ordained, men as well as women, would be unacceptable to many. At a time when the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission is making such encouraging progress towards a reconciliation of the two communions there is no doubt that this new question about Anglican orders would be a setback which some would regard as irretrievable. Pope John Paul II in a frank correspondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned against the raising of new obstacles. Doubtless there will be some from the provinces which have already ordained women who will see these disadvantages as a necessary consequence of the pursuit of an important principle and who will refuse to be restrained by the objections of non-Anglican churches. Those of us who are regular readers of the writings of Bishop John S. Spong of Newark will be aware of the type of mind which sets no store by tradition and has scant regard for the ecumenical process. Bishop Spong's interpretation of Anglican comprehensiveness is that everyone should do what seems right to him in conscience and that everyone else should accept it. It is not hard to describe his views as ecclesiologically simplistic and basically sectarian and a recipe for the destruction of Anglicanism as a meaningful communion. On the other hand there will be those like the Bishop of London who would regard the consecration of a woman-bishop without a wider ecumenical consent as so serious a breach of Catholic order that it would dissolve the terms of communion. Bishop Graham Leonard has recently been severely criticised for offering to take into his episcopal care a priest and congregation which had been excluded from the Episcopal Church. It Is not necessary here to go into the rights and wrongs of that particular case. What is important is the larger question which it raises: how far can a province go in changing its practice unilaterally while still demanding that other churches and other bishops should observe the strict rules of episcopal collegiality? In Dr Leonard's view the Episcopal Church's treatment of its minority who held to the traditional practice of American Anglicanism justified his action. His colleagues in the English House of Bishops disagreed with him almost to a man, and in this they demonstrated the determination of the bishops of the Communion to maintain episcopal collegiality no matter what the cost in terms of theological and ecclesiological coherence. The statements issued by the ACC meeting at Singapore in 1987 would seem to indicate the manner in which the ordination of women issue will be handled. Behind a screen of talk about unity-in-diversity there will be an attempt to secure a general recognition of women-priests throughout the Communion but there will be counsels of caution and pastoral sensitivity on the issue of women-bishops. It may be, of course, that by the summer of 1988 the consecration of a woman will already have taken place. But no one should underestimate the capacity of a Lambeth Conference to take its real decisions by doing nothing. It is clear that this important meeting ought to be supported by the prayers of Anglicans.

An Archbishop in toils
One may well feel great sympathy for the man whose office gives him responsibility for guiding the affairs both of the Anglican Communion and the Church of England. Robert Runcie has been Archbishop of Canterbury since 1980 and has already established himself as a notable holder of the primacy. He has intelligence, personal warmth and a formidable capacity for hard work. He listens well and has built up a range of personal contacts among clergy and laity far wider than that of any of his predecessors. His speeches and addresses are thoughtful, witty and persuasive. In the General Synod he has an ability to influence the course of debate which can be decisive for the success or failure of a motion. In spite of the lack of an adequate staff at Lambeth he has survived the work-load remarkably well with only occasional periods of exhaustion. In what must be the latter part of his primacy he has travelled extensively and has established himself as the friend and confidant of most of the leaders of world-Anglicanism. His influence is now probably at its height. It would therefore be good to be assured that he actually knew what he was doing and had a clear basis for his policies other than taking the line of least resistance on each issue. He has a major disadvantage in not having been trained as a theologian, and though he makes extensive use of academics as advisers and speechwriters, his own position is often unclear. He had the disadvantage of the intelligent pragmatist: the desire to put off all questions until someone else makes a decision. One recalls a lapidary phrase of Mr Frank Field that the archbishop is usually to be found nailing his colours to the fence. All this makes Dr Runcie peculiarly vulnerable to pressure-groups. In a rare synodical moment Of self-revelation he once described himself as 'an unconvinced Anglo-Catholic' though it is the latter part of that description which should not be taken too seriously. His effective background is the elitist liberalism of Westcott House in the immediate post-war years and this he shares with Dr John Habgood, the Archbishop of York. In particular it gives him a distaste for those who are so unstylish as to inhabit the clerical ghettoes of
Evangelicalism and Anglo-Catholicism, and he certainly tends to underestimate their influence in the spiritual life and mission of the Church. His clear preference is for men of liberal disposition with a moderately Catholic style which is not taken to the point of having firm principles. If in addition they have a good appearance and are articulate over the media he is prepared to overlook a certain theological deficiency. Dr Runcie and his closest associates are men who have nothing to prevent them following what they think is the wish of the majority of the moment.

The Church of England: the problems of decline
It was unfortunate for Archbishop Runcie that his going to Canterbury coincided with a period in which many of the tensions within the Church of England began to come to the surface. Soon he found himself having to deal with the challenge of the new theology to the traditional doctrinal formulations of the Church, with a scheme for a Covenant with the Free Churches which recreated old controversies about ecclesiology, and with
persistent demands that there should be a liberalisation of the stances on divorce, homosexuality and abortion. Basic to all these pressures was a belief in clergy and laity that some new departures were needed to arrest a decline in the influence of the Church which none could fail to recognise. Between 1960 and 1982 the rate of infant baptisms for each 1000 of the population fell from 554 to 347. Easter communicants fell from 2,339,000 to
1,674,000 and the annual number of confirmations from 190,713 to 84,566. It would thus appear that fewer than 5 per cent of the English population could be regarded as Anglican churchgoers and that there was a declining number even in that vestigial relationship which led them to use the Established Church for their rites of passage It could be reliably estimated that the usual Sunday attendance at all services was under one million and was probably exceeded by attendance at Roman Catholic worship. While prosperous suburban parishes were holding up well there was low morale in the countryside and in the old urban areas. In particular the Church of England was becoming more and more a middle-class community. This was to be seen not only in the character of those recruited to its ministry but in those who were selected to its synods. It has become a Church which reflects the attitudes of the bourgeoisie, both in its constant propensity to guilt and in its highly selective forms of liberalism. The gibe that the Church of England is now the SDP at prayer has enough truth in it to be uncomfortable. Though it remains the Established Church and keeps some of the trappings of its former position, few of its leaders, either clergy or laity, have attained eminence in public life; they are too narrowly the products of the system itself. A denomination with such great privileges and substantial endowments which has been so marginalised needs to do something more than entrench itself even more firmly into the attitudes of its remaining constituency.

Synodical Government?
It may seem to outside observers that the General Synod is at the centre of the government of the Church of England and that the struggles which occur in every group of sessions are to determine the Church's policy. Much of the criticism directed against the Synod is that it has monopolised power which was once better exercised by others. In a recent book The Synod of Westminster: Do We Need It? Peter Moore and others dealt caustically with the General Synod as part of a verbose and bureaucratic system which, so far from forwarding the Church's mission, actually wasted its resources and fractured its unity by continually introducing contentious issues. The authors noted a widespread hostility to a body which was dubiously representative of either clergy or laity but which undertook to govern the Church on their behalf. But what the criticism failed to understand is that for the most part the Synod is virtually powerless and consistently ineffective. Its strings are pulled from elsewhere. At least the members of the House of Commons have a Government which in extreme circumstances they can vote out of office and the daily operations of which they can influence. The General Synod, by contrast, finds itself faced with a government of the Church which is almost wholly independent of it. The irritation which many bishops feel at having to spend so much time at synod meetings, and their desultory contribution to its debates, is founded on their knowledge that nothing the Synod does has much effect on them, the administration of their diocese or the work of the leadership group within it. Most of the debates are for show. They are setpieces on reports from the various boards or commissions which have appended to them motions which, whether passed or amended, lead to no action at all. They provide the membership of the Houses of Clergy and Laity with opportunities for speeches and they are then forgotten or passed down to the diocesan synods 'for study'. In theory the Synod has considerable powers over the budget but the details of this are beyond the grasp of everyone except for a few financial experts who can usually be dealt with firmly by the official spokesmen. For a body which meets three times a year for periods of up to five days on each occasion and has a heavy weight of agenda papers, it Is disturbing that so very little is actually done. There is a thin stream of Measures, dealing mostly with minor administrative changes, and there are occasionally the excitements of proposed liturgical change. In fact during the seventeen years of the Synod's existence there have been few moments when the future of the Church hung in the balance.

Voices signifying very little
The ineffectiveness of the Synod is shown at every level of its operation. It is usual, for example, at its meeting for elaborate respect to be expressed for the contribution and opinions of the House of Laity. That House has a high sense of its dignity in representing the great majority of practising Anglicans, and it is an unwise clerical speaker who indicates that he thinks the laity less expert in theological matters than the clergy. Certain episcopal speakers, notably the Archbishop of Canterbury, are skilled in appropriating this lay conviction of their own wide experience. Yet behind the courtesies, what is the reality? The House of Laity is a set of men and women who are dubiously representative of anybody. They are not elected by all the people on electoral rolls but by the lay members of deanery synods. They have to be the kind of person with the time and disposition to serve on deanery synod, diocesan synod and General Synod and do the committee work involved in all these. They must be able to spend almost three weeks in the year in London or York. And the result is what might be expected. The members of the House of Laity are rarely in regular employment; they are professional people, the self-employed or retired; and many women among them are widows or clergy-wives. It is a system which makes it almost impossible for young people, working-class men and women, or those bearing responsible positions in business or public life, to participate. When such do become members of the Synod it is at great cost to themselves. The over-all result is a House which is not very impressive. It relies heavily on a few excellent speakers and its formidable small contingent of lay academics. In particular the laity's belief that they can deal with theological matters as competently as the clergy is grievously mistaken and often embarrassing. Certainly most members of the House find themselves overwhelmed by the mass of papers and reports sent to them and there is evidence in speeches that they have not been able to digest the matter adequately. It is evident that the Laity are essentially a reactive body; they respond not so much to argument as to appeals; and they have a disposition to vote for that which is recommended by the public leadership of the Church.

The least persuadable part of the General Synod is the House of Clergy. Over the past seventeen years it has consistently refused its consent to measures which would have changed the character of the Church; and it has thereby become an object of some irritation to the establishment. There are regular campaigns to remove the requirement of a two-thirds majority in each House when alterations are proposed in the doctrine or liturgy of the Church or in its relations with other ecclesiastical bodies. Yet it can hardly be doubted that the clergy would be even more troublesome to the liberal ascendancy if the House were more representative of the parochial clergy. It is true that every diocesan clergyman has a vote directly for the General Synod but these elected proctors account for only 180 members of the House against a total of 250. Apart from six elected university proctors and two members of religious orders the rest come from 'constituencies', the members of which are appointed by bishops or by the Crown. No fewer than 43 members of the House are archdeacons, there by a system which allows the archdeacons in each diocese to nominate one of their own number. The fifteen Deans and Provosts are generally taken to be an assured bloc of votes for liberal causes. From 1987 there will be a new 'constituency' to represent women-deacons. Without these 'fancy franchises' the diocesan clergy would provide an even larger body of resistance. These are priests who bear major responsibility for local pastoral care and who may perhaps be said to speak for their laity as much as any indirectly chosen lay member of the Synod. It will be upon their shoulders that the immediate impact of divisive change will fall. Their convictions, their hopes and fears deserve better than to be dismissed by bishops and laity as mere conservatism.

The Standing Committee of the General Synod
If then the Synod itself is so ineffective, who does direct f it and decide when its authority shall be used to further a particular policy? It might be thought that the real power of initiative lies with its Standing Committee, which prepares the agenda, makes appointments to boards and committees, and possesses in its Policy Sub-Committee a set of persons specifically charged to advise on the direction and priorities of the Synod's work. A widespread belief in the importance of the Standing Committee is attested by the vigorous competition which goes into the election of its eight members from the House of Clergy and its eight members from the House of Laity. Yet these elected members report their almost complete powerlessness. Over against them is a solid bloc of ex-officio members: the two archbishops who act as chairmen, two church estates commissioners, and four chairmen of boards, usually bishops. In theory the elected members, with the two prolocutors and the chairman of the House of Laity, ought to be able to determine the business of the committee, but this is emphatically not so. The meeting is large and the proceedings formal; the room is filled with officials and observers of various kinds. It is never made clear who decides on the items of the agenda but these are so crowded and directed to matters of detail that discussion of policy is impossible. Business comes from the various boards and their reports have to be passed on to the Synod no matter what their quality or usefulness. It is said that the first principle of good government is to separate policy decisions from routine business. The emasculation of the Standing Committee lies in the consistent breach of this principle and the control exercised over its business by its chairmen, its officers and the staff of the various boards. Like the ordinary members of the Synod their elected representatives on the Standing Committee are largely reduced to the position of having to react to other people's initiatives. This effect is most clearly seen in the case of the Policy Sub-Committee. The body which is given responsibility for discussing policy in fact never does so. We hear reports that even at their residential meetings the members are faced with papers so loaded with detail that they find themselves being treated as a working-party preparatory to the main committee. When the permanent officials are unable to summon up sufficient dense matter, the practice is for the archiepiscopal chairman to cancel the meeting.

A case of Yes, Minister?
It is a belief almost universally embraced by members of the Synod that the real power lies with the Church House bureaucracy and in particular with Mr W. D. Pattinson, the Secretary-General. Yet devoted viewers of the television programme Yes, Minister will know that senior civil servants have aims which are not the same as those of ministers or politicians. Mr Pattinson is an ubiquitous figure in the Church of England. He is seen in his black jacket and striped trousers at virtually every service or ceremony or meeting. His knowledge of what is going on at every board, committee or cabal does nothing to dispel the notion that he is 'a man of secrets'. Yet the fact is that he is not so much a power-broker as an immensely dedicated and hardworking civil servant, and he presides over a group of administrators who are equally diligent and often hard-pressed. Much of Mr Pattinson's time is spent in attempting to see that complex business is carried through as expeditiously as possible with the limited resources available to him. It is doubtful whether he and his senior colleagues are personally sympathetic to the policies of the liberal establishment but they have to work with all parties and like good civil servants they have a healthy respect for those who exercise real power. Mr Pattinson's influence is thus not on the formation of policy but on the manner of its execution. He is adept at advising on procedures, suggesting names, and outmanoeuvring troublesome groups or dissident individuals. His presence at most committees, his often decisive contribution to discussions, and the air of conspiracy with which he imparts perfectly well-known information have given him the reputation of a wire-puller which is not wholly merited. If anything his fault lies the other way: in allowing the Synod to become bogged down in the complexity of its business and thereby preventing it from doing the things which it was originally intended to do.

The House of Bishops
If then synodical government is so ineffective, where does influence lie? The reality is that beside the system of synods, with their elections, debates and votes, there exists another system of episcopal executive authority, the characteristics of which are deference, patronage and self-recruitment. It is the influence of the House of Bishops which over the last five years has increased and is now increasing. Though the diocesan bishops often give the impression of being harassed and overworked men, oppressed by their engagement diaries and their piles of correspondence, their actual power and patronage are recognised by all their clergy. In most dioceses, behind the facade of Bishop's Council, synod, boards and committees, there exists a wholly unelected group, usually called 'the staff meeting', which actually runs the diocese. It consists of the diocesan, the suffragans, the archdeacons and other officials, and it unifies executive action. While a new bishop may find himself working with people appointed by his predecessor, he will nominate all new members of the group, and with them will make all major decisions and exercise most patronage. The elaborate system of episcopal references which governs appointments in the Church of England is in fact operated by such groups. Only the existence of private patronage prevents them having a monopoly in determining the work which shall be given to the clergy. It was once a laudable custom that a bishop would seek to preserve among his senior colleagues a balance between the various churchmanships but this is now increasingly disregarded and bishops appoint suffragans of opinions like their own. A long episcopate will thus leave behind a leadership group in a diocese which will have considerable influence in the appointment of his successor. It is not difficult for a reasonably determined bishop to mould the character of his diocese, and it is an observable fact that there is a correlation between the way a diocesan synod votes and the views of its bishop. It is sometimes said that in the Church of England there is a 'creative tension' between synodical authority and episcopal authority but the notion severely over-rates the role of a body as occasional as a synod and under-rates the effectiveness of the groups which actually administer the affairs of the dioceses.

The Crown Appointments Commission
With episcopal influence on the increase it becomes all the more important that the Church of England should possess an adequate way of appointing its bishops. The summer of 1987 will see the tenth anniversary of the coming into operation of the Crown Appointments Commission, and those interested in the location of power in the Church must give careful attention to a body which has virtually created the present diocesan episcopate. With it things are most certainly not what they purport to be. In 1977 by an agreement with the then Prime Minister, Mr James Callaghan, a commission of members of the General Synod was set up to propose names for appointment to diocesan bishoprics. This followed a period of agitation for the Church to be given 'a decisive voice' in such appointments. It was known that Archbishop Coggan was uneasy at what he feared would be a diminution of the Archbishop of Canterbury's position as the Prime Minister's chief adviser, and the composition of the new commission was carefully devised. The two archbishops were to be members ex officio and each was to act as chairman when a vacancy in his own province was under consideration. Three members were to be elected by the House of Clergy and three from the House of Laity. On each occasion they would be joined by four persons elected by the Vacancy-in-See committee of the diocese concerned. Special arrangements were to apply when an appointment was to be made to one of the archbishoprics. The Commission was to be serviced by the Archbishops' Patronage Secretary and the Prime Minister's Patronage Secretary and its meetings were to be strictly confidential. it was agreed that it should propose two names in a preferred order to the Prime Minister who could either choose one of them or call for further names.

It is this system which by the summer of 1987 has chosen for all but eight of the forty-three sees which corne within its competence, and it may now be useful to examine its working. It is not at all easy for an outsider (or even an ordinary Synod member) to know what goes on in it. Its business is kept elaborately secret and its members are required to take precautions to see that the day and place of their meeting is not known. Its annual report is presented by Professor J. D. McClean with that air of judicial impartiality and deliberate lack of information which has made him the leading lay figure in the new liberal ascendancy. The impression is given of a dispassionate body, working confidentially to eliminate any embarrassment to those being considered, seeking men whom they may promote on ability alone, and gathering information by diligent consultation. Much is made of the welcome which the permanent members offer to the diocesan representatives. In 1986 a group of 'three wise men', Lord Blanch, Professor Henry Chadwick and Mr Oswald Clark, were asked to comment on the working of the system. Their report is a synodical masterpiece and a case study in the failure of even very distinguished members of the General Synod to see the wood for the trees. They concentrated on the minutiae of procedure and wholly failed to ask the real questions. Who in fact does manage the system and what kind of an episcopate has it created? For it is clear to the members themselves that behind the secrecy, the mandarin officials, and the elaborate consultations, a complex power-game is being played out with momentous consequences for the future of the Church of England.

The meetings of the Commission take place over two days. On the first two patronage secretaries produce dossiers of persons, usually as many as fifteen, who are to be considered. The names have been suggested by a variety of sources, the archbishops, other bishops, members of the commission and (more recently) by the dioceses themselves. The secretaries will have visited the Vacancy-in-See committee and made their own soundings in the locality from people whom they think influential. It quickly becomes apparent what great power rests with the secretaries: they compile the list of candidates, they report on the result of their soundings, and they produce extracts from reports on the men being considered. Until recently they did not divulge the sources of their information. The secretaries have a privileged position. To question whether their assessments are fair or adequate is 'bad form' and at once countered from the chair. It is never made clear how the list of names has been arrived at nor how far it has previously been discussed with the archbishops. Much of this first day is spent in 'discarding' names, and for some there is such sparse information that this was their inevitable fate from the beginning. It is on the second day, when only four or five candidates remain, that the dynamics of the group come into operation. The role of the archbishops is now crucial. Their status, the authority which comes from their wide knowledge of the work of individuals, and their professed concern for issues wider than those of a single diocese give them a decisive influence in directing discussion, though they are careful not to declare their preference at too early a stage. Much of the debate is carried on by the elected members. In the commission of 1982-7 the three clergy and three laity appeared to have been elected to represent the three traditional parties of Catholic, Evangelical and Liberal, but the significant fact was that the 'Evangelical' members sided consistently with the Liberal ones to prevent the appointment of Catholic-minded bishops. It is, in fact, easy to veto candidates. The negative opinion of a majority of the elected members is enough to lead to a name being discarded and even the strongly voiced objection of a single person can lead to the same effect. The commission of 1982-7 was unfortunate in possessing one member who indulged in destructive character assessments of individuals who displeased him and who affected close knowledge of diocesan opinion though this rested on little which could be called impartial. He should not have been allowed the influence which he undoubtedly exercised. It is sometimes said that the decisive voice is that of the diocesan representatives, and it is true that if they combine to refuse a man he has no chance of further consideration. But since the recommendation is that a diocese should be represented by men and women of differing viewpoints it is usually not difficult for a chairman to steer enough of their votes in the right direction. The main problem with diocesan members is their predilection for someone who already has episcopal experience and thus for a suffragan bishop, himself once the appointee of a diocesan bishop.

What kind of bishops?
The reality of the Crown Appointments Commission has been, at least over the past five years, a predominant influence of the two archbishops, exercised with the aid of the Liberal and 'Evangelical' members. With the arrival of Dr Runcie and Dr Habgood at Canterbury and York there were in the two archbishoprics men who shared the same basic outlook and worked closely together to create a new kind of episcopate. The result has been a virtual exclusion of Anglo-Catholics from episcopal office and a serious under-representation of Evangelicals. There have been Evangelical appointments, though often from the more liberal wing of the movement. In the past it was thought the way of wisdom in a comprehensive Church to have the leading clergy of the different traditions of churchmanship among the bishops. Even in the days of Evangelical or Anglo-Catholic predominance there was no policy of marginalising those of different opinions. The present discrimination is sometimes explained as a policy of appointing 'central' candidates rather than 'party' men but it must be a matter of legitimate doubt whether Liberals are so central to the life and spirituality of the Church of England or whether they are foremost in its mission. One thing cannot be doubted: the personal connection of so many appointed with the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. A brief biographical study will reveal the remarkable manner in which the careers of so many bishops have crossed the career of Dr Runcie: as students or colleagues at Westcott House and Cuddesdon, as incumbents or suffragans in the dioceses of St Albans or Canterbury, or as persons working in religious broadcasting at a time when he was chairman of the Central Religious Advisory Committee of the BBC and IBA. There is indeed no more fertile recruiting ground for the new establishment than Broadcasting House. Though one may accept that an archbishop should have an influence on appointments, it is clearly unacceptable that so niany are the protegés of one man and reflect his own ecclesiastical outlook. Those who speak so glibly of the Crown Appointments Commission as designed to allow 'the Church' to have a decisive voice in appointments should ask themselves some pertinent questions as to whose voice the commission does actually represent.

The Prime Minister and the bishops
There has recently been much speculation in the Press, aided by some inspired leaks from members of the Crown Appointments Commission, about the role of the Prime Minister in the appointment of bishops. The fact is that Mrs Thatcher has always acted in complete conformity with the terms on which the Commission was set up. If anything, her office has been over-ready to co-operate with the archbishops and disinclined to challenge the names proposed even in the face of constant complaints that the system was producing an unbalanced episcopate. Only in a few instances where the Commission overreached itself and would have brought into the House of Bishops one of the shriller exponents of the opinions of Dr Spacely-Trellis had the second name proposed been preferred. Indeed the degree to which 10 Downing Street has come under the influence of Lambeth Palace is shown in the curious case of the appointment of Deans, which has not yet come under the aegis of a synodical commission. There is no more consistent body of liberal stalwarts than the inhabitants of deaneries, though some of them are of the old 'Church and State' variety. They are largely recruited from former members of the staff of Church House and Broadcasting House with the addition of some archdeacons who have come up through their local diocesan establishments. One does not doubt that they were selected after the usual consultations and after advice was sought from the diocesan bishop and Lambeth. Indeed it cannot be said that most, or even many, deans are obviously the kind of people whom the present Prime Minister would choose. One can only offer some advice to the patronage secretary at 10 Downing Street by suggesting that too much reliance on the opinions of the local establishment may well lead to the vetoing of men who would be well qualified for a cathedral ministry. It could be a justification of Crown patronage in the present circumstances that it worked to preserve a comprehensive Church rather than placed yet more power in the hands of those who already have too much.

The Liberal Establishment feels its strength
The appointments of the last ten years are now beginning to have their effect in the formation of the Church's policy. Synod-watchers have begun to take it for granted that there will be a wide gap between the voting pattern of the bishops and that of the clergy with large majorities among the former for liberal causes. Whereas in the early days of the Synod the House of Bishops played a relatively minor role, now as its character has become more consolidated it has begun to take initiatives and even put pressure on the Synod to adopt particular courses. Inded the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned us to expect a much higher profile from the House. Notable was their attempt to obtain a new marriage discipline with the bishops giving permission for the remarriage of divorced persons. More recently they procured the withdrawal of the 'McClean' report suggesting ways of dealing with the conscientious objections of those who could not accept the ministrations of women-priests. Increasingly the Bishops are asserting their rights as the guardians of the doctrinal formularies of the Church, though few of them perhaps could be regarded as eminent theologians. A sign of the times is the increasing isolation of the diminishing number of AngloCatholic bishops. Many of them are now older men moving towards retirement and their resistance to the liberalisation of the Church is becoming somewhat weary. Most exposed of all is Dr Graham Leonard, the Bishop of London, whom the Press love to portray as the Archbishop Lefebvre of the Anglican Communion. He has not always been particularly adroit in the presentation of his case and he has a predilection for popish ecclesiastical outfits but all this should not obscure the simple fact that his ideas on faith and order place him securely in the mainstream of Anglicanism. A series of small books which seek to offer a modern spirituality based on a traditional theology makes him one of the few bishops able to speak to those who feel the spiritual emptiness of so many Church publications. More precarious is the position of the group of Evangelical bishops. They represent a growing constituency in the Church with many strong parishes and an increasing proportion of ordination candidates. Their unease with the theological liberalism of many of their colleagues is manifest but they hesitate publicly to distance themselves from them. It could be wished that some of the really able men among them such as Bishop Michael Baughen of Chester and Bishop John Taylor of St Albans would exhibit a stronger Evangelical presence. The majority of the present episcopate is not strident in its policies and many are genuinely pastoral men. They have indeed been considerably irritated by the pastoral insensitivity and intemperate partisanship of Bishop David Jenkins of Durham, and many of them have come to see that the appointment of a man of such imprecision of mind and expression under the guise of being a theologian was a minor Anglican disaster. The controversies which he has initiated have revealed the highly ambiguous position which many bishops hold on central matters of doctrine, and this they would prefer to avoid. The report by the House of Bishops in 1986, The Nature of Christian Belief, was a highly self-conscious and ambiguous document, designed to defend their orthodoxy and yet revealing the latitude which some bishops expected for themselves. Most diocesans are, of course, not concerned with such abstruse matters. Their liberalism is in practical matters and they give the impression of having stumbled into it rather than having thought it through; they are going along with what they think is majority opinion. Of course when the controversies become rough and prospect of schism comes into view there is much backtracking. But deep in the liberal mind is a conviction that with a little procrastination and an application of pastoral 'sensitivity' the changes which they propose can be forced through. That there may be issues of fundamental principle at stake is not a notion readily understood. It is continually discounted by Archbishop Habgood, the leading theological relativist among the bishops. It thus seems likely that the time is near when the House of Bishops will throw its full weight behind the movement for the ordination of women to the priesthood. Opposition to this among the bishops has now been marginalised and the House can now proceed with the assurance that only a few (and that a diminishing number) will refuse to co-operate. It begins to look as though the Archbishop of Canterbury has now overcome his fear that there might be a substantial withdrawal of clergy. His clear change of stance would indicate that he now thinks the damage can be contained and that it is necessary in the interests of the Anglican Communion at large and to satisfy what he conceives of as majority opinion in the Church of England.

The real agenda
It is, of course, possible that a preoccupation with particular issues may obscure the Church's real needs in an increasingly difficult situation. The times are perhaps hard for the communication of the Christian Gospel and there is clearly no simple formula for winning the English people back to the faith of Christ but there are certainly areas of the Church's life which need urgent consideration. They are matters on which all Anglicans can be united rather than divided.

The Rural Mission. Perhaps the most serious problem of all is the future of the Church of England in the countryside. A hundred years ago the heart of the pastoral work was in the rural communities where in virtually every village there was a parish church and a church school with a priest resident among the people. The life of the local church was an important contribution towards the identity of the community. Now, at a time when most other denominations have largely withdrawn from the rural scene, the Church's ministry is beginning to struggle badly. The English countryside is a place quite different from what it was only twenty-five years ago. There are fewer people working on the land and village schools, shops and bus services are under constant threat. By a misguided policy, based on the so-called 'Sheffield Report', the Church has progressively stripped its manpower from the countryside, and now a few priests are spread thinly over the parishes. In a diocese like Lincoln the number of villages which have to be cared for by one man represent an impossible task if a real pastoral ministry is envisaged. Houses and glebe have been disposed of and teams of clergy work valiantly each Sunday to provide services for small congregations. Yet the closure of an ancient parish church, when so much else has been withdrawn, would be a serious moral blow to the village, and there is ample evidence of the value to a rural community of a caring and spiritually minded pastor. At a time when there is so much discussion of a ministry to the inner cities there is urgent need for new thinking about the rural ministry and new encouragement for the clergy and lay people involved in it.

Problems in the City. Of course, like the nation at large, the Church does have to face the dereliction of the older urban areas with their high unemployment, poor housing and a population largely alienated from that other Britain which is prosperous and secure. It is a sign of hope that Anglicans have produced a report as challenging and informative as Faith in the City. Yet it has little for our comfort. The Anglican presence in the inner cities is relatively small and weak, and the fine and sacrificial work done by the clergy there is with only a few in a vast, unchurched population. If there is a Christian presence it is often mainly represented by the Roman Catholic Church, and it is in co-operation with them that we have to plan any strategy. The work in Liverpool of its two bishops is an earnest of what can be achieved. The Church of England's Urban Fund has now been established and it should soon have a substantial endowment not only from the Church Commissioners but from dioceses, parishes and private contributions. It is irnportant that this money be properly used. Many will be concerned that it should not be spent on projects which simply duplicate the government's provision of social services, nor must it become the modern equivalent of charity by which well-meaning outsiders come into the city to do things for its inhabitants. It must be used to draw out a sense of local community and to encourage local leadership and self-help. It is understood that the Church must care for the whole man or woman and cannot confine its mission to the purely evangelistic but it may be that a sense of Christian community is not the least gift which the Church can bring. It must certainly try to evolve new forms of worship and ministry appropriate to those in considerable personal and economic deprivation.

Black People in the Church. One important result of Faith in the City has been a new concern for Black people in the life of the Christian communities. Many citizens of African or Caribbean origin have a background in countries with a strong Anglican presence, and it is a deeply disturbing fact that some do not believe themselves to have been made welcome in English parishes. There has been a rapid increase in the number of independent local churches which are Black-led and which reflect in their worship the style and preferences of the Black communities. But in the case of many young people there has been a progressive alienation from any kind of religious practice. In a recent debate in the General Synod the members listened with dismay to stories of neglect and perceived rejection at the hands of white congregations. An unwise decision of the Standing Committee not to set up a Commission for Black Anglican Concerns, as had been recommended by Faith in the City, was greeted with outraged protests by Black opinion. It would, however, be over-simple to ascribe this uneasy relationship merely to white racism in the churches, and such accusations cause real distress. The majority of white Anglicans are not racists; they are middle-class men and women who do not find it all that easy to understand or mix with working-class people, whatever their colour. Most churches have a style of worship and a content of preaching which quite unconsciously reflect white, middle-class attitudes and concerns. The differences are not so much ones of colour as of class and culture, and the real problem is to increase common understanding. One side needs to abandon suspicion and a tendency to instant accusation and the other side needs to exercise its imagination. It is greatly to be hoped that the new sub-committee of the Standing Committee will work on some constructive suggestions, to eliminate any kind of discrimination, whether conscious or unconscious, and to point to ways by which Black and White people can be one in Christian love and fellowship; they must be more than a body for the detection and articulation of grievance. There is certainly an urgent need for a quite new deal for Black people in the Church, for new styles of worship and for the fostering of Black vocations to the ministry. And it is possible that in such new approaches we may take the first steps towards rescuing the Church of England from its present suburban captivity and making it once again a Church for the English people.

Preface to Crockford's Clerical Directory 1987-1988