This is the text from the sermon from the 2025 Forward in Faith Festival, 10th May 2025.  The sermon was preached by the Rt Revd Jonathan Baker, Bishop of Fulham.

Words from this morning’s Gospel reading from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St John,

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

You will all know by now – at least I hope you will, because you will have studied it in Lent using the excellent material put out by your Society clergy and bishops – that this year is the 1,700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the First Ecumenical Council held in the year 325AD. 318 Fathers of the Church, mostly bishops but with a few others among them, gathered under the guidance of, and led by, the Holy Spirit, to put down the heresy of Arius, who said of the Son of God ‘there was when he was not,’ and to profess the catholic faith, that Jesus Christ is fully divine, consubstantial – of one and the same substance – with the Father. And a little over a week ago, on a damp day but one which did not dampen our spirts, I stood, along with some 70 pilgrims, Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, on the shores of a lake just outside the centre of present-day Nicaea in western Turkey, close to the ruins – now emerging from the slowly receding waters of the lake -  of what many archaeologists now agree is the very site of the palace and church of Constantine where the Council was held. You can imagine the tingle which ran up and down my spine. And, yes, this is why you indulged me with that little bit of Greek at the beginning of this sermon because, in very Orthodox fashion, daily, in prayer and when simply meeting for the first time, again and again those words rang out in our company – Christos anesti! He is risen indeed!

And this is also why my heart skipped when I heard that our new Holy Father had taken the regnal name of Leo. Bear with me a moment. The pilgrimage (and what a blessing it was) in which I shared last week and the week before did not just take us to Nicaea, but to many more locations of deep significance in the life of the early Church, among them the sites of the other great ecumenical Councils – Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon – 381, 431 and 451AD.

What was the golden thread running through these early Councils? How can we tell their story in a way such that a theme emerges? Well the answer which I suggested to the pilgrims was this. The Fathers of the Councils were trying to answer a question, a question which Jesus himself puts to the disciples, a question which Jesus puts to us, and which is surely the most important question we can ponder every day of our lives. St Matthew and St Mark record Our Lord asking the disciples, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Peter gets it, of course, and says to Jesus, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God; and through the teaching of the Councils Peter’s answer – not revealed by flesh and blood, you’ll remember, but by the Father in heaven – is as it were unpacked, the truth of which it speaks is ever more fully and beautifully revealed, the inexpressible mystery expressed. Jesus is one with us and one with God, fully human, fully divine; He is one divine person, such that His Blessed Mother can truly be called the theotokos, the God-bearer or Mother of God; He is one person in two natures, those two natures existing without confusion, change, division or separation.

Why does all this matter, matter so much? The Council Fathers were not playing metaphysical games or setting puzzles to frustrate theological students or weary congregations. In seeking to answer the Lord’s own question, they were responding too to those other words of St Peter’s which we have heard this morning – ‘You have the words of eternal life.’ This is not a comment simply about words spoken. No, Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, is eternal life, and in knowing Him and being united with Him by baptism and in the Eucharist, he shares eternal life with us: he brings us the gift of salvation; He saves. And as the great Father of the Council of Nicaea St Athanasius – whose feast we kept on pilgrimage – taught so memorably, Jesus can save us, Jesus can give us eternal life because, only because, He is fully divine, consubstantial with the Father and fully human, consubstantial with us; for the unassumed is unhealed.

So back, briefly, to Leo. The first Pope Leo is one only three – four if we include St John Paul II – who is called ‘the Great.’ He was Pope at the time of the fourth great Council we have been thinking about, that Chalcedon – and on pilgrimage we visited the church which now stands on the site of that Council, and the cathedral church of the present-day Metropolitan of Chalcedon. Pope Leo did not attend the Council – he sent legates from Rome to represent him – but he did compose a text, known as his Tome, which was crucial to the orthodox teaching on the incarnation which the Council espoused. And in his preaching, and not least on a whole sequence of sermons preached on Christmas Day he returned again and again to the truth of the incarnation: ‘He who is true God is also true man,’ he said, ‘and there is no lie in either nature.’ And he never failed to draw out the consequences of this teaching for us. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘makes in Himself the beginning of a new creation’ – and that new creation is ours, our humanity is made new, even as Christ’s humanity, perfectly united with the Godhead yet not subsumed, overwhelmed or annihilated by it, is now made glorious in his resurrection and ascension into heaven.

So my heart indeed leapt a little at the new Pope’s choice of name, his choice to follow after the example of later Popes Leo, no doubt, not least the last to bear that name, but surely not forgetting Pope St Leo the Great; and may Pope Leo XIV be given the grace to teach and expound the faith of the undivided Church, as well as to be a true shepherd of God’s people.

Well there is so much more to be said but as St John the Evangelist has it, ‘you cannot bear it now.’ Two points in conclusion.

The first is this very obvious one. As we gather as Forward in Faith, in this Nicaea anniversary year, and in the springtime of the ministry of a freshly chosen successor of St Peter, we do so mindful that we come to renew our commitment to catholic like and catholic faith in our own church, in the corner of His vineyard where God has planted us, in his always good but mysterious purposes, and where we are invited to respond to the one who has Follow me, who speaks to us the words of eternal life. We must go on repeating – because it some quarters it seems it is still not heard – that our convictions about the character of the ordained ministry of the Church flow from our rootedness in what the Church has received and handed on – Scriptures, creeds, ministry, each referenced in that great contemporary Church of England text, the Declaration of Assent.

But second: to end this sermon, as I must, with the Gospel. ‘Therefore, many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, ‘This is hard saying: who can listen to it?’ What was this hard saying, what were these words of eternal life, spoken by the Lord just before our passage began, and which the disciples, or some of them, could not receive? They were of course His teaching about the Bread of Life. ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.’ The Fathers of the Councils knew that the mystery of the incarnation touches intimately on the mystery of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, which once more we come to kneel and receive this afternoon. For this sacrament is no mere token; no. In receiving it we receive the living Word of God, we receive the life of heaven itself, and that heavenly live infuses and suffuses us and radiates through us and beyond us that we too may be a blessing to the world. As St Cyril, Patriarch not of Rome but of Alexandria, who presided at the Council of Ephesus and ardently defended Our Lady’s title of theotokos, wrote –

When we approach the sacramental gifts…we receive not mere flesh – God forbid! – but the personal, truly vitalising flesh of God the Word Himself.

So let us hasten to receive so inestimable a gift, and may all the holy pastors, confessors and doctors of the Church pray for us, for Pope Leo, and for the unity and mission of Christ’s people everywhere.

Lord to whom shall we go; You have the words of eternal life.

Amen.

Women and the Church (WATCH) has just launched its campaign to bring motions before all diocesan synods calling for the end of the 2014 settlement; a settlement with no specified time limit and with a framework at its core which provides a home in the Church of England for those who are opposed to the ordination of women to the priesthood and to the episcopate.

It is important to note that the nature of the Church of England’s provision for those conscientiously opposed is such that it explicitly references the roles of the wider Anglican Communion and indeed of the church universal. This is demonstrably, therefore, a matter of ecclesiology rather than of gender per se.

While such opposition represents a minority viewpoint in the Church of England, it reflects the practice of by far the greater part of the church universal. As a result, we should in fact be defined by being in favour of something – the practice of the church universal, inspired by the Holy Spirit and representing something much bigger than any of us can claim for ourselves in England – rather than being opposed to something.

The Bishop of Croydon, one of those who sat on the committee which devised the Five Guiding Principles underpinning the settlement, said to those assembled at the recent WATCH conference held to launch the campaign: “I think in honesty we also thought that as society changed and as views became more open-minded among growing numbers of younger men and women, the culture of the Church would change like the culture of the wider society.”

Given that we are only just over a decade on from the settlement being put in place, and mutual flourishing is in its infancy, such attitudes do not bode well for any settlement emerging for evangelicals from their opposition to the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF). What are they, and others, to make of the promises made to Anglo-Catholics, which some appear so keen to renege on so soon after those commitments were made?

In an age in which we are being encouraged to emote, what about the feelings of those scores and scores of Society priests – many of them young – who put themselves forward for ordination to the priesthood in the Church of England under the settlement only to be met with a campaign calling for their removal after such a short elapse of time? Does their well-being count for less simply because their theological views do not conform to the spirit of the age?

Prominent in the early stages of the WATCH campaign is much talk of discrimination and of harassment. On the former, I have long wondered what this entails in practice. Given that supporters of WATCH and of The Society tend to operate in different parts of the Church of England, what is being alleged and with what evidence? Is it really traditionalists who are discriminating against female clergy? How precisely are we doing that and from which positions of authority? Could it be that discrimination in reality comes from other quarters?

On the latter, if there is any evidence of anyone in the Church of England is harassing any other individual then that should be reported immediately and acted upon. If the alleged perpetrator is a member of clergy, then the arrangements in place for clergy discipline should

be invoked. Without evidence being provided and without formal reporting of allegations, there is a danger that highly generalised comments become a means of undermining those of a different theological position.

The Chair of WATCH went much further when referring to the Five Guiding Principles and spoke of “the requirement for all clergy to say that they accept the current discrimination effectively silences women, which is an act of violence.” I simply cannot view a set of principles advocating tolerance of different, well-grounded, theological perspectives as being in any way “violent” – quite the opposite.

What is becoming clear is that safeguarding is being ‘weaponised’ and that this is being done on two different levels. Firstly, there is an elision being made between traditionalist witness, whether evangelical or catholic, and safeguarding risk. Secondly, the assertion is being made that men in general are a safeguarding problem. That used to be known as sexism.

I read that, for safeguarding reasons, the Archbishop of York is no longer welcome to speak in a major church in his province – Newcastle Cathedral – as part of his Lord’s Prayer tour later this year. I imagine that many supporters of the ordination of women to the priesthood and of the introduction of the PLF would not have had this brave new world in mind when they committed to those reforms.

We are being presented with a choice. One option is a monochrome state run church, claiming to become more “open-minded” as it closes down other theological perspectives and “changing with society” as it subjects itself to the whims of the political class; whose priorities are assisted dying today and some other profanity tomorrow.

The other is a vibrant national church, celebrating Christianity as a revealed religion and embracing unashamedly the Cross and the Empty Tomb both as a physical reality and as great symbols of God’s love for us. We are called to acclaim: “All for Jesus, all for Jesus, this the church's song must be, till, at last, we all are gathered, one in love and one in thee.”

Tom Middleton

Director of Forward in Faith

4th April 2025

The catholic movement recently celebrated the consecration of Fr Luke Irvine-Capel as the fourth Bishop of Richborough. This means that each of our three Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEVs), all appointed within the last three years, has a further 15 to 20 years of active ministry to offer in their catholic witness in the Church of England. You could quite reasonably think that, on the basis of these appointments, mutual flourishing is alive and well, so why not move on and talk about something else?

Yet I write this the day before Women and the Church (WATCH) holds its conference ‘Not Equal Yet’ and feel compelled to explain our position. In preparation for that conference, Georgia Ashwell, one of WATCH’s trustees, has written a piece, which is available on the WATCH website. It is titled ‘The Theology of Taint and other misogyny in the Church of England’. You might think that matters cannot get any worse after a title like that, but the article’s first sentence mentions the Tate brothers and the second violence against women.

If this is the taster for the conference, I wonder what WATCH’s supporters can say and do on the day to take their arguments any further forward. Merely to call for an end to the 2014 settlement, and the expulsion of all of us from the Church of England as supporters of that settlement, would seem positively timid.

I thought that it would be worthwhile trying to say something about what we stand for, while in no way seeking to undermine any other tradition in the Church of England, nor calling for anyone’s expulsion from this or any other church.

We are all challenged by the words of Our Lord recorded in St John’s Gospel in the Farewell Discourse following the Last Supper – “That they may be one”.  The call for unity across our various churches will inevitably produce different responses and even different understandings as to its meaning. There is some inevitability to that. In a sense, it explains why such dominical words needed to be said in the first place.

Whatever our response, we need to take Jesus’s injunction seriously. And it hardly needs me to remind readers that ecumenical initiatives, particularly those following Vatican II, have taken the call for unity very seriously indeed. This includes the Church of England, whose Five Guiding Principles recognise the integrity of the ecclesiology we embody.

For our own part, and I have no issue in recognising that other approaches exist, we place a high value on apostolic tradition and the practices of the great churches of the West and of the East. Our position is based on a deep respect for, and an understanding of, the sacramental foundations of those churches, and even more fundamentally a recognition that such practices stem from what we confess to be the divinely inspired Universal Church.

For others to have a different perspective on these issues is part and parcel of life, but simply to dismiss two millennia of Christian witness just because some of its aspects do not sit comfortably with contemporary Western society raises serious questions as to the nature of the Church and its history. What is our understanding of the Church’s history in the period before the mid-twentieth century? What role has the Holy Spirit played throughout that history? Are only developments of the last handful of decades viewed as worthwhile?

It is only by grappling with such questions and by thinking through the role to be played by the Church of England in the wider Church that we can begin to appreciate the basis for our Christian beliefs and what our profession of faith in one holy catholic and apostolic Church requires of us.

The Church of England’s various traditions retain a vitality that can nurture and deepen discipleship in a way which other churches can sometimes only envy. However, an element of humility is required. The Church of England is but one small corner of God’s Church.

In Vincent of Lerins’s words: “All possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.” That is what catholicism means, that is the route to unity, and that is our guard against the tyranny of personality driven beliefs.

The Evangelist goes on to record in the Discourse: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

St Joseph’s Day, 2025

As the Trustees of Forward in Faith, we warmly congratulate the Venerable Malcolm Chamberlain on being appointed as the Bishop of Wakefield. We wish him a long and fruitful ministry in that role. We know that Society clergy in the See of Wakefield will work productively with the new area bishop in the Church’s mission to all the people of that See.

Given that the Bishop-Designate’s immediate predecessor, Bishop Tony Robinson, served as a Society bishop and ministered to Society parishes across the Diocese of Leeds, the appointment leaves a gap in the episcopal ministry provided to Society parishes in the northern province. We stress that this issue is not a matter for the Diocese of Leeds to resolve.

It is important to note in this context that the number of parishes currently under the Bishop of Beverley amounts to approximately 140, covering 11 dioceses and comprising approximately 110 ‘serving’ clergy (retired clergy holding permission to officiate are in addition to that number). This is more than many other Church of England bishops and, at such a high level, is simply too many for pastoral and sacramental oversight to be provided adequately.

We look forward to the Archbishop of York establishing arrangements for an additional serving Society bishop to minister to Society parishes in the northern province so as to rectify the current imbalance.

Such a move would be in keeping with the 2014 settlement, as codified by the text of the House of Bishops’ Declaration, and also with the conclusions reached in the Dioceses Commission’s February 2019 review of the Provincial Episcopal Visitors’ (PEV) Sees – a report which was signed off by representatives of the range of Anglican traditions.

May St Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, pray for us.

The Society and Forward in Faith welcome the announcement that His Majesty the King has approved the nomination of Fr Luke Irvine-Capel SSC, currently the Archdeacon of Chichester, to the See of Richborough, with pastoral and sacramental oversight for Society parishes in the eastern half of the southern province of the Church of England.

The Right Reverend Jonathan Baker, Chairman of The Society's Council of Bishops, said: "I extend a warm welcome to Fr Luke to the Council, and assure him of the support and prayers of the Society bishops as he prepares to become the Bishop of Richborough."

The Right Reverend Paul Thomas, Chairman of Forward in Faith, said: "I have no doubt that Fr Luke will teach and promote the Catholic Faith across the See of Richborough with dynamism and good grace, enriching the life of the See in so doing."

Fr Philip O'Reilly, on behalf of the Richborough parishes, said: "It is wonderful to be able to welcome Fr Luke to the See of Richborough, and we greatly look forward to his ministry among us."

Fr Luke Irvine-Capel said: "It is a great honour to accept this nomination, and I undertake to serve the Richborough parishes as their bishop prayerfully and faithfully."

The date and venue for Fr Luke’s ordination to the episcopate have yet to be confirmed. They will be made publicly available as soon as they are available.

Please pray for Fr Luke, and for his family, as he prepares for episcopal ministry.