The number of ordained local ministers (OLMs) in the Church of England may have passed its peak, with 300 OLMs serving today compared to 500 a decade ago. Yet there are other parts of the Anglican Communion where ordained local ministry has only very recently been introduced: in Ireland, for example, the OLM were ordained in 2019. Noel Cox's study of the ecclesiology of ordained local ministry is therefore very timely. Previous book-length treatments of OLM (such as Heskins and Torry, Ordained Local Ministry (2006), and Bowden and Francis, Ordained Local Ministry in the Church of England (2012)) focused on case studies, history, theological reflection and analysis of ordained local ministry's effects in the parish. Cox takes a different and ambitious approach. He places his examination of OLMs within a wider conspectus of Anglican ministry, in particular its history, theology and ecumenical significance.
OLMs are clergy who have been called from a local congregation and return to serve that congregation after training and ordination. For Cox, what may be a pragmatic solution to providing clergy on the ground raises profound theological questions. Is an OLM ordained as a priest of the Church or as a priest only of a particular church? If the latter, is that a defect of intention sufficient to raise doubts as to whether their ordination is valid? From the start, Cox explains that he will focus his discussion of OLMs on the experience of the Church of England – but there are also some references to the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, where Cox himself currently ministers as a priest.
Chapter 1 provides a historical overview of ordained ministry in the Church. This succinctly covers Catholic and Anglican theologies of holy orders, including the papal bull Apostolicae Curae (1896), which declared Anglican orders null and void. Chapter 2 examines the theme of authority as it has developed in the decentralised Anglican Communion, while Chapter 3 discusses some different forms of ordained ministry, including non-stipendiary ministry and the permanent diaconate. The context thus set, OLMs are introduced in Chapter 4. Here, there is little about the 50-year history of OLMs in the Church of England to place them within the detailed historical context of the previous chapters. Instead, we are taken directly to the principal questions which the book raises: do OLMs necessarily entail a blurring of the distinction between ordained and lay? Do they constitute a step towards congregationalism? Is it right that a category of clergy should have distinct processes for selection and training?
Chapter 5 goes on to underline the uncertainty and inconsistency which Cox sees in the status of ordained local ministry, arising from a tension between the universality of priesthood and the local nature of ordained local ministry. Chapters 6 and 7 return to more general ecclesiological questions, principally regarding the ordination of women and ecumenical relations. In Chapter 8, Cox teases out the implications of these several threads, although his suggestion that the tensions in the ministry of OLMs are potentially ‘even more problematic than the difficulties raised for the Anglican communion by divisions over the ordination of women or practicing homosexuals’ (p 114) has not been the experience of the Church of England.
Ecclesiastical lawyers will want to test the assertions in this book by examining relevant legal texts. Cox attaches much significance to the argument that, while the rite of ordination is the same for OLMs as for other clergy, their licences are to a different form of ministry. In the Church of England, however, OLMs’ licences are usually worded identically to other non-stipendiary ministers. Nor does any Canon treat an OLM differently from other non-stipendiary clergy. Furthermore, some of Cox's questions about OLMs are raised because ‘it remains unclear what would happen were an OLM to move outside their home parish, benefice, or deanery’ (p 58). That may be so in provinces which have only adopted ordained local ministry in the past year or two. In the Church of England's decades of experience with this form of ministry, however, this bridge has been crossed many times. As an inspection of Crockford reveals, scores of OLMs have become non-stipendiary ministers, stipendiary curates and even incumbents – a process governed either by diocesan quasi-legislation or by episcopal decision. I also query how novel are the ecclesiological questions raised by ordained local ministry. For example, there is a long history of Benedictine monks ordained to serve in the community to which they have taken a lifelong vow of stability; likewise, in former centuries, Anglican college fellows and schoolmasters were ordained to serve in their college or school chapel. These seem, ecclesiologically, very like OLMs, and have been generally and uncontroversially accepted in the Church. All of this evidence could be used to add further support to Cox's happy conclusion at the end of the book, namely that OLMs are ‘fully priests and deacons of the universal church’ (p 117).
As OLMs are called and serve locally, it might have seemed most obvious to study them close up: the practicality of ordained local ministry, its effectiveness in the parish and so on. Cox's more imaginative approach in this book is rather to step back and to look at OLMs through a wide-angle lens, asking the difficult questions arising from apostolic tradition, ecumenical reception and authority in Anglicanism. Just as Cox insists that an OLM's priesthood must be universal, his own work is not narrowly restricted to the particular situation of the OLM. It gives a generous grounding in universal questions of ecclesiology, with OLMs presented as a case study within that wider discussion. The result is a book which provides plenty of context even for those who are not familiar with Anglicanism: such a reader would be introduced not only to the questions Cox asks about ordained local ministry but also to many of the principal issues for Anglican ecclesiology today.
