C. E. Lord OBE

Dear Mr Taylor,

I write in response to the extract from your sermon preached at St Helen’s Bishopsgate on 10 September 2026, subsequently published under the title “Responding to false teachers in the Church of England”.

I do so from several connected positions. I am the City of London Corporation’s appointed representative in relation to its patronage of St Peter upon Cornhill, of which you are Rector and which is held in plurality with St Helen’s Bishopsgate. I am also a candidate for election to the General Synod and a trustee of OneBodyOneFaith, a Christian charity working for the full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people in the Church.

I do not presume to speak for the Corporation as a whole, but its patronage and my formal responsibilities give me a legitimate interest in your understanding of the Church of England, its episcopacy, and the obligations arising from the offices you hold within it.

Your sermon raises questions that cannot properly be confined to the internal life of St Helen’s. They concern your relationship with the Church of England, the authority under which you hold office, the position of the other parish entrusted to your care, and the participation of members of your congregations in the Church’s synodical government.

You preach with formidable certainty. But certainty is not, by itself, evidence of truth. It can also prevent us from recognising the assumptions we have brought to Scripture, the limitations of our interpretation, and the possibility that faithful Christians reading the same texts may reach different conclusions.

In this instance, your certainty appears to conceal profound biblical, ecclesiological, and institutional contradictions.

Your charge against the bishops

In the published extract, you say:

“There can be no closer spiritual tie with a false teacher than allowing them to select your future leaders, train your new church workers, ordain your new deacons and presbyters, and install your new incumbents.”

You present this as the necessary application of St Paul’s instruction in Titus 3:10–11 concerning a “divisive person”. The unmistakable implication is that bishops who supported Living in Love and Faith, or some of the pastoral provision arising from it, are false teachers from whom faithful Christians must separate.

This is an extraordinarily grave charge. To call a bishop a false teacher is not merely to disagree with their judgement. It is to question the authenticity of their Christian ministry and to warn others against receiving their teaching or spiritual authority.

Yet you do not, in the extract, identify which bishops you mean, distinguish between their differing positions, or establish precisely what each has taught that warrants this condemnation. “The bishops” become a single undifferentiated category.

That is manifestly unfair. The bishops have never held a uniform position on LLF. Some supported greater inclusion. Some supported limited pastoral provision while maintaining the Church’s existing doctrine of marriage. Some opposed the proposals. Some changed their minds. By February 2026, the General Synod had agreed to halt the existing LLF programme and defer further work. Whatever one thinks of that outcome, it is not intellectually honest to speak as though every bishop had jointly promulgated a settled revision of Christian doctrine.

Which bishops, specifically, do you accuse of being false teachers? What precise teaching places each of them outside the boundaries of legitimate Christian belief? What process have you followed before making that judgement publicly? Have you approached them, listened to their reasoning, and warned them as Titus requires? Or have you pronounced judgement on an entire House of Bishops because its members have not adopted your interpretation and your preferred course of action?

Does Titus say what you claim?

Your interpretation of Titus 3 is far from self-evident.

The passage begins by calling Christians to be obedient, ready for every good work, peaceable, gentle, and courteous towards everyone. Paul then warns against “stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law”, because they are unprofitable and worthless. Only then does he address the person who causes division.

The Greek word traditionally rendered “heretic” did not yet carry all the later doctrinal and institutional meaning that it subsequently acquired. In this context, it can refer to someone who is factious, divisive, or determined to create a party around their own position.

That ought to make every preacher approach the passage with humility. It cannot simply be assumed that the “divisive person” is always the person with whom the preacher disagrees.

Indeed, the passage might be applied in the opposite direction. Who is causing division: bishops attempting, however imperfectly, to hold together Christians with deeply conflicting convictions, or a priest declaring those bishops to be false teachers, repudiating their spiritual authority, encouraging withdrawal from their processes, and seeking alternative structures of episcopal oversight?

I am not suggesting that unity requires silence or that bishops must never be challenged. St Paul himself challenged St Peter directly in Galatians. But Paul did not conclude that Peter’s error automatically invalidated his apostolic ministry or required the creation of a rival church. Correction took place within the fellowship of the Church.

Nor does the New Testament present the preservation of unity as a secondary concern. Paul implores Christians to maintain “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). He describes the Church as one body whose members cannot say to one another, “I have no need of you” (1 Corinthians 12:21). Romans 14 requires Christians to make room for disagreement over contested questions of faith and practice, warning them not to pass judgement on the servants of another.

Acts 15 presents a Church faced with profound disagreement about Scripture, tradition, identity, and moral obligation. The response was communal discernment, testimony, argument, and council. It was not for one congregation to proclaim itself the faithful Church and dismiss those who disagreed as apostate.

Why, therefore, should your application of Titus be accepted as definitive while these other biblical models are set aside?

The disputed texts on sexuality

Your argument also depends upon treating your understanding of sexuality as the only interpretation that takes Scripture seriously.

That is not the case.

There are faithful, learned, prayerful Christians who believe that the biblical passages commonly invoked in this debate do not address loving, mutual, committed, and covenanted same-sex relationships as we understand them today. They point to questions of translation, historical context, exploitation, idolatry, status, power, and the forms of sexual conduct familiar to the ancient world.

They do not necessarily claim that St Paul positively contemplated or endorsed a modern same-sex marriage. They ask whether the conduct he condemned is identical to the relationships now under discussion. That is a legitimate hermeneutical question, not evidence that they have rejected biblical authority.

Other Christians place greater emphasis upon the fruits by which teaching is known. They ask whether a relationship produces fidelity, patience, kindness, self-control, mutual service, and sacrificial love. They contrast those fruits with the shame, despair, concealment, family rejection, damaged mental health, and spiritual alienation that have too often resulted from the Church’s treatment of LGBTQIA+ people.

Still others understand the trajectory of Scripture as one in which people previously thought to be outside God’s covenant are repeatedly discovered to have been embraced by grace. The early Church’s inclusion of the Gentiles did not come about because the existing texts were irrelevant, but because the Church was compelled to read them again in the light of the Holy Spirit’s activity in lives it had not expected to affirm.

You may reject those arguments. But you cannot simply make them disappear by applying the label “false teacher”. Nor does repeating that your own position is “biblical” establish that no other faithful reading is possible.

Your certainty needs to be shaken by the possibility that you may be wrong.

That is not an argument for theological relativism. It is an argument for Christian humility. We all see through a glass darkly. No preacher, congregation, network, or party possesses the whole counsel of God in isolation from the rest of Christ’s body.

Your relationship with episcopal authority

The Church of England does not teach that its bishops are infallible. Clergy owe canonical obedience only in things lawful and honest. Bishops may be challenged, their decisions may be opposed through proper processes, and their teaching must be tested against Scripture and the Church’s doctrine.

But episcopal authority is not an optional administrative arrangement that a rector may accept when convenient and reject when it proves uncongenial.

You hold office as a priest of the Church of England. St Helen’s and St Peter upon Cornhill are Church of England parishes. Their legal identity, ministry, patronage, appointments, and governance exist within the Church’s episcopal and synodical order.

Canon C 18 describes the diocesan bishop as the chief pastor and principal minister of the diocese, entrusted with maintaining sound doctrine, discipline, unity, and peace. Canon C 14 sets out the canonical obedience owed by clergy. The authority of Scripture within Anglicanism is exercised alongside the historic formularies, the episcopate, and the synodical life of the Church.

Your position appears to reduce Anglican order to this: the bishop possesses authority for as long as the rector agrees with the bishop’s interpretation of Scripture. Once the rector declares the bishop a false teacher, the rector may seek another bishop, including one from outside the province, who shares the rector’s conclusions.

That is congregationalism with selectively imported bishops. It is not a coherent account of Church of England ecclesiology.

Is St Helen’s still part of the Church of England?

In 2023, you said that St Helen’s was in “broken partnership” with the House of Bishops. You claimed that the bishops had “walked away from the true Church of God”. You announced that your PCC had paused financial contributions, that clergy and ordinands were withdrawing from episcopal processes, and that you were exploring alternative oversight involving overseas bishops.

At the same time, you said that you wished to secure the future of this ministry “within the Church of England”.

Your latest sermon intensifies the contradiction. If accepting a bishop’s involvement in leadership, training, ordination, or appointment is an impermissible spiritual tie with a false teacher, what spiritual and ecclesial relationship do you believe still exists between St Helen’s and the Church of England?

Do you recognise the (acting) Bishop of London as your diocesan bishop?

Do you accept her lawful authority in relation to your ministry and the parishes committed to your care?

Do you regard clergy ordained by bishops who supported LLF as validly ordained?

Do you recognise their celebration of the sacraments?

Do you regard other Church of England parishes in the Diocese of London as churches with which St Helen’s remains in Christian communion?

If you answer no, then in what meaningful sense do you continue to belong to the Church of England?

If you answer yes, your categorical language about avoiding spiritual ties with false teachers requires substantial qualification.

Synodical participation

The same contradiction arises in relation to synodical government.

Members of St Helen’s are legally entitled, if otherwise qualified, to seek election to deanery, diocesan, and General Synod, and many of them do. I do not question that legal entitlement.

I do question the moral and ecclesial coherence of them exercising it whilst also accepting your argument.

Standing for Synod is not a form of separation from the Church’s teachers and structures. It is intimate participation in their governance. Synod members deliberate with bishops, vote alongside them, determine the Church’s legislation, shape its doctrine and liturgy, influence its allocation of resources, and participate in decisions affecting appointments, ministry, and mission.

If accepting the bishops’ role in selecting, training, ordaining, and installing leaders is too close a spiritual tie, how can it be consistent for members of St Helen’s to seek authority within the same synodical system?

Is the position that St Helen’s will not receive the authority of the wider Church, but will nevertheless seek to exercise authority over it?

Will candidates associated with St Helen’s state plainly in their election addresses that their Rector considers bishops who supported LLF to be false teachers? (I have read them, they don’t).

Will they disclose whether they recognise the spiritual authority of the bishops alongside whom they are seeking to govern?

Will they accept the legitimacy of synodical decisions when those decisions do not accord with the St Helen’s position, or is Synod legitimate only as a vehicle through which that position might prevail?

Political organisation within Synod is perfectly proper. What is not proper is to use the Church’s representative institutions while denying the ecclesial legitimacy of the people and structures with whom those institutions require one to share governance.

It begins to resemble an attempt to exercise power without accepting mutual accountability.

St Peter upon Cornhill

These questions also matter specifically for St Peter upon Cornhill.

St Peter’s is not simply an appendage of St Helen’s. It is a parish with its own history, legal identity, patronage, and place in the civic and ecclesiastical life of the City of London. The City Corporation’s patronage responsibilities are exercised within the constitutional order of the Church of England.

If you no longer accept the authority of the diocesan bishop or the legitimacy of the Church’s processes for training, ordaining, licensing, and appointing ministers, that has potential implications for the parish and its patron.

The Corporation and those acting in connection with its patronage are entitled to understand whether the Rector of St Peter’s regards himself as fully subject to the lawful order of the Church in which that patronage exists.

We are also entitled to ask whether the breadth of the Church of England is reflected in the ministry offered at St Peter’s, including in its ministry to LGBTQIA+ people who live in, work in, or visit the City.

Those people are not an ideological problem to be solved. They are members of Christ’s body, made in the image of God. Many have remained faithful to the Church despite having been treated as subjects for judgement rather than people from whom the Church might receive wisdom, holiness, and grace.

What good news does your ministry offer them, beyond celibacy, renunciation, or the suppression of relationships which may embody profound fidelity and love?

Do you listen to LGBTQIA+ Christians who describe the fruits of their lives and relationships, or are their testimonies excluded in advance by your interpretation?

The choice before you

I do not argue that you must abandon your convictions in order to remain in the Church of England. The Church has continued to make substantial space for those holding a traditional position on marriage and sexuality, frequently at great cost to LGBTQIA+ people.

But remaining within a church necessarily involves recognising that church as a church. It entails some degree of communion, mutual accountability, and willingness to live with decisions one has opposed. It does not allow one party to claim all the rights of membership while declaring the rest of the body spiritually illegitimate.

You therefore face a choice.

You can remain within the Church of England and acknowledge that its bishops remain Christian bishops even where you believe them to be seriously mistaken; that questions of sexuality do not permit the wholesale excommunication of those who disagree with you; and that episcopal and synodical authority cannot be accepted only when it produces your preferred outcome.

Alternatively, if you truly believe that the bishops are false teachers who have left the true Church, that communion with them is spiritually impermissible, and that their ordinations and appointments cannot safely be received, intellectual and ecclesial integrity point towards departure. You should take those who share your convictions with you and establish or join a church whose doctrine and polity you can accept in good conscience.

What is not sustainable is the position you appear currently to occupy: repudiating the bishops’ spiritual authority while retaining the status of a Church of England incumbent; constructing alternative systems of oversight while occupying Church of England parishes; withholding participation when it entails accountability, but encouraging participation when it offers influence; and denouncing the wider Church while seeking to exercise power within it.

Your sermon demands that others choose between truth and institutional compromise. You must be prepared to apply the same demand to yourself.

I therefore invite you to respond publicly and directly to these questions. Not by repeating that your position is biblical, but by explaining why your interpretation of Scripture should be treated as uniquely authoritative; why your use of Titus cannot equally be applied to your own divisive conduct; what authority you believe the bishops still possess over your ministry; in what sense St Helen’s remains part of the Church of England; and how participation by your congregation in synodical government can be reconciled with your injunction against close spiritual ties with those you have declared to be false teachers.

The Church deserves clarity. So do the patrons and people of St Peter upon Cornhill. Above all, LGBTQIA+ Christians, whose lives and relationships are discussed so confidently from your pulpit, deserve something more than condemnation clothed in the language of biblical certainty.

Yours sincerely,

Charles Edward Lord