The church has a growing reputation as a safe place for LGBTQIA+ people of faith. In September 2022 it received a gift of an altar frontal in the form of the Progress Pride flag, which had been removed following a complaint from outside the diocese; the present petition was for a faculty to authorise its introduction.
Nine objections were received. In interlocutory decisions (reported as [2023] ECC Lei 1, [2023] ECC Lei 2 and [2023] ECC Lei 3), the court had decided that two objectors were ‘interested persons’ within the meaning of rule 10.1 of the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015. The petitioners objected to those two objectors retaining that status. One objection was dismissed. However, the other objector had resigned as a priest in the Church of England; and in the light of his failure to respond to the petitioners’ application to remove him as an objector, he was held to lack any reasonable concern in the matters to which the petition related, and the decision that he was an interested person was set aside.
In the context of the Duffield questions, the court agreed that the proposal could not be said to cause harm to the significance of the building. The ordinary presumption of things remaining as they are would therefore apply. The court considered the provisions of Canon F2 para 2:
The table, as becomes the table of the Lord, shall be kept in a sufficient and seemly manner, and from time to time repaired, and shall be covered in the time of divine service with a covering of silk or other decent stuff, and with a fair white linen cloth at the time of the celebration of the Holy Communion.
While agreeing that the Progress Pride flag was a sign of welcome for people from the LGBTQIA+ community and was not a political symbol, it was a secular contemporary emblem and not a Christian emblem. The ‘decent stuff’ referred to in Canon F2 para 2 referred to material that was readily associated with ecclesiastical heritage that pointed towards, or maintained the focus on the celebration of the service of Holy Communion. It was clear that there was not a unified belief that the proposed altar frontal achieved the message of oneness in Christ which is part of the essence of the service of Holy Communion. The petition was on the basis of drawing to the communion table one group within the Anglican communion (albeit a marginalised one). It was therefore inherent in that objective that not all were represented in the design and the call to draw near. The petition was dismissed.
