CLERGY who deny the Virgin Birth or the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ will be tried as heretics under a new measure voted on yesterday at the General Synod of the Church of England.

The measure could also be used to try clergy who preach liberal doctrines on homosexuality from the pulpit.

More than 150 lay synod members met separately at the synod at Church House, in Westminster, Central London, yesterday to discuss ways of bringing unbelieving clergy to book. The synod’s house of laity voted by 121-35 for heretic clergy to go on trial.

An earlier attempt to put clergy on trial for breaches of doctrine was defeated narrowly at the synod last July.

Although the laity have no power as a house to push the measure through on their own, they are understood to have the support of the bishops.

Margaret Brown, an Anglican Catholic traditionalist from the Chichester diocese, put a motion before the laity making it possible to try clergy on doctrine grounds alone.

Clergy suspected of error would be reported by parishioners to their bishops, who would investigate them and, if action was deemed necessary, would bring them to trial before a tribunal of bishops, theologians and laity, chaired by a legally qualified person.

Ultimately, a heretic clergyman or woman could be removed from office — in effect defrocked. But a bishop could also dismiss a complaint as malicious or frivolous.

The bishops are understood to be sympathetic to the call from the laity, and heresy trials are expected to come back before the synod in 2006.

The timing is significant because this year the present five-year synod, which operates along parliamentary lines, draws to a close and a new synod will be elected.

Sources said that the new synod was likely to be more evangelical and conservative than the present one, reflecting the Church’s swing to the right over sexual and other issues.

The new synod — even in the house of clergy — is thought more likely to accept heresy trials for doctrinal error than the present synod was last July.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was among those who supported the measure when it was defeated in the house of clergy by four votes.

Mrs Brown said that heresy trials had been thrown out in July because the measure had also included means of addressing ritual and ceremonial matters, meaning that evangelicals were afraid that the Catholics would use it to force them to wear dog collars in church, while Catholics were afraid that the evangelicals would use it to stop them wearing their elaborate vestments.

She said: “It is far far worse if we have a clergyman or clergywoman in the pulpit and they are preaching heresy and do not believe in the tenets of the faith, the Virgin Birth, bodily Resurrection of Christ and all the other tenets of the faith.

“What is faith if we do not preach Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ glorified? We will not get far in winning souls for Christ which is what we should be doing all the time.”

She continued: “We must have clergy who believe the Gospel.”

The Church of England’s doctrine is set out in the Scriptures, the teachings of the Church Fathers, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal and the Creeds.

DENIAL OR DOUBT OF DEFINED DOCTRINE

1 Archbishops have traditionally been vulnerable to charges of heresy. Thomas Cranmer, the Prayer Book author, was burnt at the stake in 1556 after he renounced his beliefs in transubstantiation and papal supremacy

2 Heresy is derived from a Greek word meaning “choice”. It means the formal denial or doubt of any defined doctrine

3 As the early Church developed, heresy came to be applied to any theological error

4 The Roman Catholic Church makes a distinction between formal and material heresy. The former is wilful, the latter refers to heretical doctrines held “in good faith”

5 Heresy is not the same as apostasy, which means the abandonment of the faith

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