Can you Save the Parish while sidelining Scripture?
If Save the Parish is going to do what it says on the tin, how can it treat the Church of England’s traditional teaching on marriage and sexual morality as a secondary issue?
Save the Parish (StP), founded in 2021 “to sustain a thriving, cradle to grave, parish system with well-trained clergy”, has just launched its manifesto for the elections this autumn to the C of E’s governing body, the General Synod
The StP manifesto says the group has “a conscious policy of agreeing to disagree about all other matters”, which include the C of E’s deeply divisive arguments about sexual morality in the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process, its Net Zero drive, and the Church Commissioners’ £100m Project Spire slavery reparations scheme
StP recognises “that many among our number feel passionately about some, or all, of these important issues and many of our candidates will be standing with other Synod groupings at the same time”
Marcus Walker himself voted for the private member’s motion at the July 2026 General Synod, which expressed “delight in the lives and ministries of LGBTQIA+ people in the Church of England” and stated that “committed, faithful, intimate same-sex relationships” can be “entirely compatible with Christian discipleship and ministry”
Fortunately, a majority of the bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, vetoed the motion, proposed by Professor Helen King, a lay member for Oxford Diocese. Had it passed, it would have set the established Church on the path towards changing its traditional teaching on marriage and sexual morality. A majority of the clergy and laity voted for it but it fell because it needed to pass in all three Houses of Synod
Walker is in favour of gay marriage. During a General Synod debate on LLF in November 2023 he echoed the statement former Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, made at his party’s conference in 2013 – “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”
Had StP been in existence when I was a C of E vicar from 2000 to 2019, much of what it now says would have resonated with me. I witnessed and experienced the growing culture of centralised managerialism that has so undermined parish ministry and demoralised frontline clergy. StP’s description of the way in which diocesan bureaucracies have bloated in recent years certainly chimes with my recollections as minister of a small parish church in a South Yorkshire commuter village.
The manifesto stated: “One diocese has grown from 69 employees in 2014 to 134 in 2025 (and only 8 of the increase were safeguarding officers). Many are overstaffed, employing an average of 1 person at HQ to 3.5 parochial clergy. In some cases this has slipped over the 1 to 1 mark: one diocese, for example, employs 82 FTE [full-time equivalent] staff but only 72.8 stipendiary parochial clergy. For reference, the average for the rest of the charity sector is 1 to 8.”
But unless a local Anglican church preaches sound biblical doctrine, how can it “save the parish” it is supposed to be serving? The C of E’s doctrine is clear on marriage and sexuality morality. Canon B30 of the Church’s rules, headed “Of Holy Matrimony”, affirms categorically that the heterosexual definition of marriage and the exclusive place of sexual love within marriage are not secondary issues:
“The Church of England affirms, according to our Lord’s teaching, that marriage is in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side, for the procreation and nurture of children, for the hallowing and right direction of the natural instincts and affections, and for the mutual society, help and comfort which the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.”
If a parish church resolutely refuses to uphold “our Lord’s teaching”, what ultimate good can it do to its local community? How can it offer eternal salvation to lost souls if it has a “conscious policy” of treating primary biblical priorities like marriage and sexual morality as matters on which professing Christians can legitimately disagree?
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire
