How should we pick our bishops

The Church of England has a unique method of appointing senior bishops. But that method is coming under strain.

The task of selecting a new diocesan bishop falls to the Church Nominations Commission. This is a group made up of six representatives elected by General Synod, six representatives from the diocese in question, and the two Archbishops.

Before the CNC can kick off its process, the Vacancy in See Committee of the Diocese draws up a statement of the needs and the qualities the ideal candidate will posses, and this is translated by the Archbishops advisers into a profile.  The CNC then pull together a list of potential candidates, interview and make their decision. Formally, this takes the form of a proposal to the Prime Minister who makes the appointment based on their delegated power from the King in whose name all episcopal appointments are made. By convention, however, the PM no longer has an active role and accepts the proposal from the CNC.

In true CofE fashion, the system is designed to identify a candidate who carries widespread support (or perhaps just a sufficient level of toleration), so the CNC must reach a two thirds majority in favour of a single candidate.

This is different from the way most of the Anglican Communion manages episcopal appointments. In the US, Nigeria and Australia, the clergy of the diocese vote in what is essentially an open election. In the Church of Uganda, the House of Bishops discuss candidates from a preferment list and select appointments for vacant sees. In Scotland and Australia, it falls to the House of Bishops to make appointment if there is a failure in the diocesan process.

No method is immune from potential problems. 

There has been criticism of the lack of diversity among the bishops of the US Episcopal Church (too pale and male) which is difficult to deal with when open elections are used, although concerted efforts in recent years have made progress in that area. 

In Uganda, the closed appointment process has proved vulnerable to accusations of corruption. It has become common for episcopal appointments to be followed by legal cases in which claims are made that due process has not been followed. The lack of transparency makes it difficult to demonstrate compliance with the process and to defend such claims. 

In the Scottish Episcopal Church the fall-back mechanism kicked in for the appointment to the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney when the diocese failed to appoint. The bishops made the appointment, but it could hardly have gone worse, with complaints and recriminations after the church's first female bishop was appointed to the church's most conservative diocese. The crisis has dragged on for over a year and Bishop Anne Dyer is currently suspended pending a tribunal which she is vigorously defending.

The Church of England’s method has another problem. What if the CNC becomes sufficiently divided that it becomes impossible to reach a two thirds majority for any candidate. What happens if one issue dominates the agenda such that half the group demand a candidate take one position to secure their votes while the other half demand the opposition position must be taken to win their votes. And what if a blocking minority becomes sufficiently convinced of the righteousness of their cause that they refuse to accept any compromise candidates. The answer is deadlock. And there is nowhere else to go.

Bishop Stephen Conway, Bishop of Lincoln

And so we turn to the announcement that the CNC has been unable to reach conclusion on a candidate for the post of Bishop of Ely.

Ely is a diocese with a population of just under a million people. A vacancy arose when Stephen Conway moved to Lincoln in July 2023. So the diocese has been without a permanent episcopal leader for 12 months already. Now that the CNC has failed in its duty, there is no prospect of finding a new permanent post holder until the middle of next year at the earliest.

This is not the first time the CNC has failed. It failed to appoint a bishop for Carlisle in December 2023 and before that they failed to appoint a new bishop for Oxford in 2015. The concern now, with two failures in quick succession, is that the division is structural and so failures like this will simply be the norm.

We should caveat that the CNC meets in strict secrecy, so it is possible that there are other reasons for the failure in this case, but sleuths have looked at the membership of the CNC and it seems pretty likely that this sort of split is the reality. In response the Archbishops said that they will now have to look at “the implications of this decision on the Church of England more generally” which is not very subtle code from the man who chaired the failed meetings. Mouse thinks this means he is asking whether the CNC is now broken.

Given the uniqueness of the good old CofE’s approach to episcopal appointments, one conclusion could be that the system now has been captured by factionalism and needs reform.

Sadly, controversy is nothing new when it comes to episcopal appointments. In recent times, the CofE hierarchy has had a commitment to keeping all wings of the Church represented at senior levels, not only in light of the famous 'five guiding principles' that were part of the compromise package that allowed the legislation on women bishops to pass. This set out a formal commitment that all within the Church should be enabled to 'flourish' at all levels. Before that formula, however, there was always an intent to bring through senior senior appointments from all wings.

There was controversy in 2014 when Philip North was selected for Sheffield Diocese in the face of opposition within the diocese from those who felt a Diocesan Bishop who opposed the ordination of women was not suitable. The result was a rather unpleasant period of wrangling, which begged the question whether the five guiding principles were dead, before Fr North stood down from the appointment before ever taking it up. Interestingly there was no such argument when he was later selected for Blackburn.

Others questioned the process which resulted in the selection of Tim Dakin for Winchester. His time there ended in unprecedented scenes as he 'stood back' then resigned after his Diocesan Synod threatened to pass a vote of no confidence in him. Questions were asked about his suitability for the role from the outset, partly as he had not been a suffragan bishop or even served as a parish priest before, and it begged the question whether his selection was largely political. There is no question it was a highly surprising appointment.

The issue of Diocesan appointments is rather pressing. Hot on the heels of the failure to appoint anyone to the post at Ely we have CNC decisions due for Coventry in September, Truro in October, Durham in November and a second attempt at Carlisle in March 2025. If the deadlock cannot be broken shortly, we will be in somewhat of a pickle.

There is risk in every direction with any attempt at reform, so perhaps a sensible first step is a comprehensive review of the process. Not one intended to reach a recommendation for change, but one intended to set out the options, benefits and drawbacks so that a wider discussion can be held. What we cannot do is sit in a political stalemate where no senior appointments are possible.

Some reforms could be made relatively quickly and easily. A fall-back process could be introduced, whereby the House of Bishops or the Archbishops intervene in the event that the CNC cannot reach a decision or are given a casting vote. The majority required could be reduced by a single vote, likely to be sufficient to break the deadlock in the current situation, since the two thirds majority from a group of 14 could fairly be read as either 9 or 10. Or the voting system changed to one which forces a decision, such as a single transferable vote. But more radical changes should also be considered.

Perhaps the most pressing need is to get our house in order in the next 18 months when Justin Welby reaches retirement age and the CNC will have a big decision to make. It is bad enough for a diocese to be deprived of permanent leadership. But to fail in the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury would be a crisis of a different order of magnitude. For that appointment, General Synod changed the rules in 2022 to introduce representation from the worldwide Anglican Communion, bringing a whole new dimension to the potential political machinations.

UPDATE: As has been pointed out in the comments, in provinces where bishops are elected within their diocese there is typically some kind of electoral college. In addition, there is usually some form or ratification required by their archbishops or wider house of bishops. Mouse simplified the message for the sake of brevity but perhaps oversimplified. Hopefully it doesn’t change the substance of the point.