Returning from a General Synod meeting in York with a story to write, I once typed "The Church of England yesterday decided", and fell immediately into a profound sleep over my laptop. I was entirely sober at the time. It's just the effect that synod has; and I'm beginning to wonder whether this isn't part of its real purpose.
The General Synod now meets only twice a year. This week it's in Church House, in Westminster. In theory it is there to make the decisions that parliament can no longer be bothered with about the Church of England; but in fact it's a device to make decision-making more or less impossible.
Some Christian churches can't make decisions because they don't have decision-making bodies. The Baptists are the best example of this. Some can't make big decisions because they think that all the interesting ones were made by about 787 AD. That would be the Orthodox – although they do in fact meet in synods to discuss other matters. The Roman Catholics don't believe in democracy as a form of church government, but the bishops gather every century or so to make decisions too large even for a pope.
But the Church of England can't even decide whether it wants to make decisions. The arguments about women bishops that will take up much of this week illustrate the point very well, because what the opponents deny is that the synod should ever be capable of deciding who is or isn't a bishop. For that matter, they don't believe that the synod should decide who is or isn't a priest. So what appear to be wrangles about what decision to make are in fact disputes about whether to make a decision at all.
Speaking as a neurotic procrastinator myself, I see all the attractions of synodical government. It may be especially attractive to a contemplative temperament, but it also has charms for nerds and other basement dwellers. There is a way in which people who fiddle with their computers when they should be using them have a lot in common with synodical Anglicans. I would much rather update the operating system on my smartphone than use it to make a difficult phone call.
But sometimes the phone calls just have to be made. This week's voting on women bishops is one example; and it is, obviously, a case where the whole church needs to be involved. But there are an awful lot of decisions that could be pushed down to a much lower level. In practice, they usually are. The synod follows what churches do on the ground about policies like the remarriage of divorcees, and it really owes its existence to the refusal of thousands of parishes to use only the Book of Common Prayer that parliament authorised.
But there are still huge questions that it doesn't deal with at all. David Keen, a vicar in Yeovil, published on his blog last week a simple graphic showing the general trend of church statistics since 1989:
"It's a sea of negative numbers, north and south, urban and rural, pretty much wherever you look. The majority of dioceses have lost over a fifth of their membership in 20 years. That's a fifth of the income, a fifth of the ministers (because everyone's a minister), but strangely, not 1/5 of the parishes. In eight diocese the figure is higher than 30%. This is arterial bleeding, not a minor scratch."
You can't blame this on liberalism, out-of-touch conservatism, or anything else that's simple.
The Diocese of London, which has actually shown a 17% rise in church attendance over these years, is more liberal as well as more conservative than almost everywhere else.
The Diocese of Southwark, which covers London south of the river, is to my eyes indistinguishable in its clerical make-up from the other half. But it has lost 15% of its membership.
The synod failing to talk about the practical consequences of this slide is like obsessing about the wallpaper on my phone when the problem is that it won't make calls at all.
There is no shortage of theoretical discussion or sniping at the other side for everything, which is mostly what the synodical parties do.
But the synod is the wrong place for much of these discussions, because what seems clear from the research is that churches grow or shrivel at an individual level, in ways that have lots to do with the personality of their priests and the attitudes of the congregation and almost nothing to do with theology.
What's needed is a straightforward discussion of the administrative and organisational changes needed to respond to the slide.
That doesn't happen partly because to do so would be to admit too much reality.
The problem with a synod that looks as if it might be able to make decisions is that its mere existence becomes a hindrance for other people to make them, and an excuse for not making them at all.