What is ‘synodality’ and what is ‘a synod?’
The word ‘synodality’ is not commonly used in the Church of England, or throughout the wider Anglican Communion. Turning for a moment to the Roman Catholic Church, in 2016 the Dicastery for Promising Christian Unity proffered the following helpful definition:
Synodality is a fundamental quality of the Church as a whole. As St John Chrysostom said: ‘“Church” means both gathering [systema] and synod [synodos]’. The term comes from the word ‘council’ (synodos in Greek, concilium in Latin), which primarily denotes a gathering of bishops, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, for common deliberation and action in caring for the Church. Broadly, it refers to the active participation of all the faithful in the life and mission of the Church.Footnote 3
Conversely, the word synod is commonplace in the Anglican Communion as referring to the governing and/or legislative assembly of a particular church. The ‘Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion’Footnote 4 record that:
15.9 Bishops, clergy and laity of a church share authority in synodical government;
and that:
16.4 Leadership and authority should be exercised in an accountable manner, within the episcopal and synodical structures of a church, with respect for others in authority and with regards for the common good and the dignity, rights, needs and gifts of all.
From this we might distinguish ‘synodality’ as being a quality of Church, from ‘synod’ as being a deliberative council of the Church.
Early synodical governmentFootnote 5
A particular characteristic of the early church in England was that whilst the country was divided into several Kingdoms, the Church itself was united as one. Consequently, when the early councils met, they were national councils.
One such gathering took place at Hertford in 673. In his Ecclesiastical History,Footnote 6 the Venerable Bede records the meeting took place in accordance with the custom laid down by Canon law:
In the third year of Ecgfirth’sFootnote 7 reign, TheodoreFootnote 8 summoned a council of bishops together with many teachers of the church who knew and loved the canonical institutions of the fathers.
The gathering at Hertford was a ‘truly national English Synod’Footnote 9 being the first time in which the English Church had come together to deliberate and act as a single body.
The Church, and by extension her councils, had a unifying effect upon the country. In perhaps what is the first instance of the use of churchyard regulations, the biographer and historian Peter Ackroyd notes that:
In the graveyard remains of great ladies in the seventh century, from Kent and Wessex, from Mercia and East Anglia, there is a much greater uniformity of ornament. The various regions of the country were slowly coming together. A single English Church seemed to require a single nation as its stage.Footnote 10
Whilst on occasion the councils of the respective provinces met separately, it is noteworthy that when they conducted legislative business in the form considering draft canons, these were passed in identical form in both provinces.Footnote 11
The Convocations of Canterbury and York came into existence under the Plantagenet kings of the twelfth century as a means to obtaining consent in relation to taxation. Whilst primarily concerned with fiscal matters – as distinct from synods on matters of doctrine and polity – over time the two merged so as to form the representative bodies of clergy in each province exercising the functions of the early synods.Footnote 12 During the Reformation, the hitherto freer reign of the Convocations to legislate by Canon was curtailed by the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533. This provided that the clergy were not to meet in assembly otherwise than in response to the King’s writ and that no canons, constitutions or ordinances were to be passed that were ‘contrary or repugnant to the King’s prerogative Royal’ – both provisions of which are still in force today.Footnote 13 The Convocations enjoyed a substantial degree of legislative freedom in the highpoints of the Elizabethan settlement,Footnote 14 before falling into disuse during the Civil War and the tyranny that ensued thereafter. Following the Restoration, they became active again, before falling into almost complete abeyance until the mid-1850s, where public interest in church affairs grew once more.Footnote 15
Modern synodical governance
The modern authority for synodical governmentFootnote 16 is set out in various pieces of primary and secondary legislation. The Canons provide that ‘The government of the Church of England under the King’s Majesty, by archbishops, bishops, deans, archdeacons, and the rest of the clergy and of the laity that bear office in the same, is not repugnant to the Word of God’.Footnote 17 Canon H 1 – Of the General Synod and the Convocations – provides the power of the Convocations to legislate by Canon shall vest in the General Synod of the Church of England.Footnote 18 The power to enact other legislation, such as Measures and secondary instruments, is devolved from Parliament under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919.Footnote 19
It is worth observing that whilst the General Synod employs supreme legislative competencyFootnote 20 within the Church, it is still a devolved legislature. As Professor Doe acutely observes:
In the wider context of the civil constitution, however, General Synod’s legislative competence is not supreme. First: whereas parliament’s legislative supremacy is conceived as having a political origin, that of General Synod is derived from a legislative act of the Sovereign in Parliament.Footnote 21
So whilst the intention of synod is a coming together of the church – its authority to do so is derived from Parliament which is fundamentally (at least in modern times) a secular body.
The composition of the General Synod is set out in its Constitution which forms schedule 2 of the Synodical Government Measure 1969. It consists of three houses of bishops, clergy and laity joined together. Article 2 of the Constitution provides that the membership of Upper and Lower Houses of the Convocations shall form the House of Bishop and House Clergy, and the House of Laity shall be elected in accordance with the Church Representation Rules.Footnote 22 Membership of the Convocations is set out in Canon H 2 and H 3. The Upper Houses consist of all diocesan bishops of the relevant province, the Bishop of Dover,Footnote 23 the Bishop to the Forces, and five suffragan bishops from the Province of Canterbury and four suffragan bishops from the Province of York, each elected by and from among the suffragan (and other working) bishops in the particular province. In addition, other persons in episcopal orders who are members of the Archbishops’ Council and the Chair of the Diocese Commission, if in episcopal orders, are members as of right.
Membership of the Lower Houses is a little more complicated, being the result of a system of elections from different constituencies. In short, clergy are elected from amongst the deans, chaplains of His Majesty’s Armed Forces, designated religious communities, and then proctors (i.e. all other clergy) are elected in numbers proportionate to the number of clerical electors in each diocese. Most of the members are beneficed clergy with the intention, if not always the result, that a breadth of churchmanship and views are represented in the whole House.
The House of Laity is a single national body, the members of which must be actual communicants. They are elected in proportion to the number of persons on electoral rolls in the diocese concerned – but with the addition of a ratio of 70:30 (or as close as possible) between the provinces of Canterbury and York.Footnote 24 The total membership of the Synod is 478, made up of 53 bishops,Footnote 25 208 clergy, and 217 laity. A number of ex officio posts are held, predominantly in the House of Laity,Footnote 26 although there are four reserved for clergy.Footnote 27 Eleven non-voting ecumenical representatives are entitled to attend and speak, as well as three representatives from Deaf-Anglicans Together.
Functions of the General Synod
The Synod usually meets twice a year, albeit on occasion a third group of sessions is called either on account of business to transact or to open the new quinquennium. The functions of the Synod are to (a) pass legislation on matters concerning the Church of England and (b) to consider and express its opinion on any matters of religious or public interest.Footnote 28 It is perhaps no accident that in drafting the Constitution the requirement to pass legislation came before that of considering matters of religious interest. The Synod is primarily a legislative body, not a deliberative one. A balance between these two roles is for the most part maintained, although periods of dominance of one type of business are not uncommon. At the time of writing the Synod is about to enter an incredibly busy legislative phase, with draft Measures touching upon clergy discipline,Footnote 29 national church governance,Footnote 30 redress for victim of abuse,Footnote 31 and pastoral re-organisation of parishes.Footnote 32
Two points are worth noting in the context of synodality. The first is that the Synod conducts its business using the Westminster Parliamentary model. Procedures are governed by the Standing Orders, and the chamber, whilst not physically delineated as such, maintains a tricameral feel – notably with the bishops tending to sit en bloc at the front. Whilst most decisions are reached by a simple majority of the members of the whole Synod, the Standing OrdersFootnote 33 provide both that certain decisions must have the assent of all three houses,Footnote 34 and that members may require this on any substantive matter.Footnote 35 As has previously been observed by an eminent member of this colloquium:
The ability to require a Division by Houses is obviously crucial from the point of view of the ability of the House of Bishops to prevent the Synod taking decisions of which the House, in its role as guardian of the Church’s teaching, cannot approve. But it equally confers an effective veto on the Houses of Clergy and Laity as well – reflecting the historic requirement for the ‘consent’ of the Lower Houses of Convocation.Footnote 36
The effect of this procedure is that motions can be lost, even where a majority of those present vote in favour, due to it failing in one house.Footnote 37 It can also disclose the strength of feeling of a particular house on a given issue. During the debate on the Living in Love and Faith process at the November 2023 group of sessions an amendment to the motion (moved by a member of the House of Laity) that asked the House of Bishop to ‘ensure transparency and openness as further debates take place and decisions are made in relation the Living in Love and Faith’ was lost by a large margin in the House of Bishops, lost by a small margin in the House of Clergy, but carried in the House of Laity.Footnote 38
Synod also contains ‘groups’ based primarily along churchmanship or theological lines – for example the Catholic Group, the Evangelical Group on Synod (EGGS) and the Open Synod Group. That said, it is not uncommon for members to belong to more than one group.Footnote 39 Whilst none of these groups could not properly be considered to be ‘parties’ in the political sense of the term – voting records show that on the whole they vote together. The Bridge ReportFootnote 40 noted that:
The groupings reflect the fact that in one sense the Church of England itself is a coalition of (as indeed are most if not all other churches). Within it are to be found different strands of churchmanship. These are united in a common profession of faith … but differ both in worship and other ways. They have some positive features; for example they provide for their members a source of information and advice a forum for discussion with generally like-minded people, and a means of mutual support … They are unacceptable when they set partisan concerns above the good of the wider Church. In the minds of all should be the admonition of St Paul to the Church at Corinth not to engage in party Spirt (1 Corinthians 3).
A newer feature is the emergence of single-issue coalitions that seek to draw support across churchmanship lines, for example Save the ParishFootnote 41 and The Alliance.Footnote 42 The second aspect to note is that each House may meet separately – and the House of Bishops often does – meeting roughly six times a year, sometimes for 2–3 days at a time.Footnote 43 This reflects the dual role of the diocesan bishops, not only as leaders of the local church but also as guardians and teachers of the apostolic faith in the whole Church.
In the 2004 film Mean Girls, ‘the plastics’ are a teen royalty who set the trends, outlook and ethos of the school and influence the less popular students. They begin adored, but end up ostracised. Much like this, the ‘setting apart’ of the House of Bishops from the other houses has come under scrutiny in recent times with calls for more transparency in the work of the outside sessions of the General Synod.Footnote 44 A shift in dynamic and power has occurred away from the episcopate to the inferior clergy and laity.
Anglican Communion: Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
Brevity does not allow a full-scale examination of all of the Synods of the Anglican Communion. For the most part, unsurprisingly given their history, they mirror the system in the Church of England. However, an example from the Pacific highlights a ‘walking together’Footnote 45 approach to decision-making at the regional level which differs from the English approach/tradition. The Anglican Church in New Zealand has its origins in the nineteenth century with the arrival of missionaries and thereafter grew into formal structures under the direction of George Augustus Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand from 1841 to 1869.Footnote 46
In 1992 the General Synod/Te Hinota Whanui adopted a revised constitution, which provided an opportunity for each of Māori, European, and Pacific ways of working. The tikanga (meaning way, style, or cultural model) was designed to allow for an equal partnership in the decision-making processFootnote 47 and to encourage greater dialogue. Smaller than its English counterpart at roughly 120 delegates, membership of General Synod consists of delegations of bishops, clergy and laity (see note 51) drawn from each of the Five Hui Amorangi of Te Pihopatanga o Aotearoa, from each of the seven dioceses in New Zealand, and from the Diocese of Polynesia.Footnote 48
It has general powers to make ‘all such regulations’ provided they are not inconsistent with its ConstitutionFootnote 49 and is required to establish tribunals for the purposes of deciding all questions of Doctrine and Discipline.Footnote 50 It is inhibited, however, from making any changes to the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures,Footnote 51 the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal or the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.Footnote 52 For a measure to be passed by General Synod, it must receive the support of all houses and all three tikanga.
Historically the procedure of the Synod has been based on the Westminster parliamentary model. In recent times, however, the need to find a consensus around highly contentious subjects has forged a new way of operating. The preference has been to use a caucus model of delegates going into groups with the intention of negotiating a settlement rather than forcing a vote. Any member at any time can call for a caucus and formal business is paused. The process was heavily used during the debates on human sexuality and whether or not to bless civil same-sex marriage. The system is particularly adept for the Polynesian order whose approach culturally is one of ‘talanoa’ (discussion) rather than debate.
Conclusion
Does the General Synod of the Church of England model the quality of being synodical? Going back to the Principles – whilst bishops, clergy and laity of the General Synod do share in authority, it is not an equal share. Nor perhaps should it be. The Principles remind us that leadership and authority appear not just within synodical structures but with episcopal structures as well. The bishops are set apart for a reason – to teach and to lead. One could observe that the division of members into Houses, the use of adversarial debates and voting does not exhibit the synodality quality being ‘a whole church’ as it will always lead to disagreement. Equally, the New Zealand experience, dealing with complex issues in the manner of consensus has proven successful.
If that is the case, why does the Synod continue to base itself on the Westminster model? An answer, perhaps, lies in the creation of the Church of England out of schism. In the break from Rome, and the centuries that followed throughout the tyranny of the post-Civil War period and beyond, the Church has been marked not by agreement, but by disagreement. As Canon Professor Mark Chapman observes:
‘What emerged was a system established not on the fact that people agree; instead it quickly became that place where people who disagreed with one another came together to try to make decisions. Synods were necessary precisely because of the disunity of the church.’Footnote 53
Can a sense of synodality nevertheless be found in disunity? One could argue that it can be. It is overly simplistic to say that the adversarial nature of proceedings causes disagreement. The Church has a long history of deciding matters through argument, debate, and division (in the sense of voting). Synodality is to be found in the fact that the whole Church is bound by the decision, as much as the manner of its making. What perhaps is different now is the lack of willingness (sometimes) of one side to accept the result of the Synod’s deliberations – particularly as the modern Church grapples with changing societal norms. This in turn heightens disagreement.
Going back to Bede’s account of the Synod of Hertford, when clergy had been assembled, Archbishop Theodore charged them to ‘observe diligently all those things which were conductive to the unity and peace of the church’. Perhaps each session of the General Synod should open with this account being read, and the members – be they bishops, clergy or laity – giving their accord to these principles.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on a paper delivered to the Twenty-Third Colloquium of Anglican and Roman Catholic Canon Lawyers, ‘Canon Law and Synodality’, meeting at the Pontifical University of St Thomas of Aquinas, The Angelicum, Rome, 24–27 September 2024. A version of this article was originally published in edition 206 of the Newsletter of the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland and is published here with the permission of the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
