In early November 2026 Inclusive Church published We Are Here, a report based on responses received from thirty-four LGBTQIA+ people, twenty-two lay and twelve clergy, who served on General Synod during the last five years. At the same time, analyses of the election results for the new General Synod were undertaken and published by Andrew Goddard and Tim Wyatt. The IC report and the two analyses make for sober reading.
Synod Election Results Analysed - Andrew Goddard for Psephizo
Andrew Goddard’s survey ends with a summary concluding “that revisionists have again likely secured a small majority among the clergy but that the House of Laity is too close to call. It seems likely the laity are more conservative than before.”
Andrew says:
“This outcome must raise serious questions about the wisdom of bringing the questions left unresolved at the end of PLF back into this new Synod. The fact that even among the clergy the revisionist majority is unlikely to reach as high as 55:45 means that standalone services now have no chance of passing given the need for 2/3 majority in every House. And any other significant changes will face major obstacles.”
Synod Election Results Analysed - Tim Wyatt for Living Church
On Living Church, Tim Wyatt concludes that liberals have fallen significantly short in the elections, registering around 61 percent, short of the two-thirds majority required to pass contentious legislation.
In the House of Clergy there are now 98 liberals, 75 conservatives, and 20 whose position could not be ascertained. In the House of Laity, analysis of election addresses suggest there are 83 liberals, 88 conservatives, and 22 whose affiliation remained unclear leaving the progressive wing with around 54 percent.
In the House of Bishops, Tim says there appear to be 17 liberals, 14 conservatives, and another eight whose position is ambiguous. At best, the liberal bishops have a maximum strength around 64 percent, short of the two-thirds majority required.
“Progressives have at best merely maintained their position and may even have lost some ground compared to the 2021–2025 synod they are replacing. This suggests there is no realistic hope of permitting same-sex blessings in standalone services, let alone rewriting the C of E’s canons to permit same-sex marriage.”
Blessings may still be offered to same-sex couples during regular worship services.
Inclusive Church Report on the last Synod
At the same time Inclusive Church published We Are Here, a based on responses received from 34 LGBTQIA+ people, 22 lay and 12 clergy, who served on General Synod during the last five years,
2026 - February
The Report concludes with a review of what happened in the final of the last Synod.
In February 2026, Synod was being asked by the House of Bishops to bring the Living in Love and Faith programme to a conclusion. A motion recognised and lamented the distress and pain many had suffered, especially LGBTQIA+ people. It thanked those who had worked on the process and established new structures to continue work on relationships, sexuality and gender. It left many of us wondering what it meant to acknowledge the distress and pain many had suffered while the questions that had caused it remained unresolved.
LGBTQIA+ people were members of the body making the decisions, part of the Church whose future was being discussed, wanting to belong within it without having to deny or apologise for who they are.
2026 - July
A Private Members motion tabled by Helen King offering a relatively modest pastoral affirmation of the dignity and worth of LGBTQIA+ people was amended and ultimately defeated in the House of Bishops by just two votes. This was a devastating outcome for many LGBTQIA+ Synod members and their allies.
“After years of participation, compromise and assurances that our voices had been heard, it was difficult not to ask what that listening had actually changed.
“How many more times would we be asked to wait, to compromise, to trust the process and to absorb the hurt when it failed to deliver?
“Many of us hoped that, even where theological differences remained, there could be a shared commitment to affirming our dignity and recognising the place of LGBTQIA+ people within the Church. The vote exposed just how fragile that hope remained.
“It deepened a breach of trust that had been growing over many years. The language of unity and walking together is hard to hear when some of us continue to experience the cost of that unity in our own lives.”
What Next?
The Inclusive Church Report and the two analyses of General Synod results indicate that the two-thirds majority required in all three House of Synod to make the changes necessary to achieve full equality for LGBTQIA+ people in the Church of England is not achievable. Full equality for me means equality in ministry and relationships, passing legislation allowing the celebration of equal marriages in church, blessing lesbian and gay couples, celebrating the relationships of lesbian, gay and bisexual clergy and laity.
As a result of the outcome of the General Synod elections progress any significant change towards full equality for LGBTQIA+ people is impossible to achieve for at least the next five years.
That leaves me in a very despondent state. For six decades, from the 1960s and 70s onwards, there has been slow but steady progress towards equality for LGBTQIA+ people in society and in the church. For the next five years nothing can be changed that will affect those seeking to have their life-long committed relationship blessed and solemnised in their parish church.
What will happen to the clergy who are married or in a civil partnership or who want to marry? What will happen to those who are married or in a civil partnership and want to move on? They will be vulnerable to the attitude of their bishop and especially vulnerable when their otherwise supportive and protective bishop retires. It will be impossible for them to follow a vocational calling to a new parish or another diocese.
Elections in five years’ time will result in a Synod even more hostile to the radical new full inclusion once vainly promised by Archbishops. We will end up with a church further dominated by conservative evangelical charismatic Biblical literalist fundamentalists supported by financial wealth and the success of the HTB Revitalisation Trust. The culture of institutionalised homophobia will be further strengthened.
Hope lies in the mid-term elections in the USA which show that the Trumpist MAGA movement, to which leaders of the conservative evangelical charismatic Biblical literalist fundamentalist movement are allied, is no longer ascendant. Change is possible. The movement towards a decadent version of Christianity might also be reversed. But it won’t change unless there is a movement within people.
The result, without an active movement for change, will be a further divided, dishonest, corrupted church. A growing number of people will wander away from the church and many more will reject Christianity without entering the building. There will be a further loss of healthy spirituality and wisdom, a loss of potential ordinands and a loss of healthy, deeply spiritual wisdom people.
What hope for radical new inclusion?
Who is going to maintain the vision and energy required to achieve radical new inclusion and equality for LGBTQIA+ people – including equal marriage? We the people. The congregations and laity and clergy and leaders who already fully welcome LGBTQIA+ people and couples and celebrate publicly our lives and relationships, blessing them publicly in church, wanting to perform same-sex marriages.
The interface and engagement between me, my consciousness and my body energy and my emotions and thinking and everything else in time and space, consciousness of the environment, society, my brothers and sisters and all living beings and the evolutionary history within the dynamic of life in all its fullness – who will hold the memory of this and weave new life from it?
People working together, manifesting real presence.
Let us do something about it.
Let us change attitudes.
Changing Attitude and Unadulterated Love
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