Hi Tom,

Thank you for responding to the article and for your kind words in your final paragraph.

We believe that Church Society is at fault in the Stephen Sizer scandal regardless of the questions surrounding his membership of the society. Church Society has a very broad mandate: its aim, according to its website, is "to reform and renew the Church of England in biblical faith." For that reason, it comments publicly on significant developments in the Church of England – even when clergy who aren't Church Society members are responsible for those developments. That is what "contending to reform and renew the Church of England in biblical faith" entails.

How much more, then, should Church Society take action (e.g. make a public statement, seek to influence lay leaders, mobilise other evangelical organisations to take action etc) when a *conservative evangelical* C of E vicar is bringing evangelicalism and Anglicanism into disrepute because of his well-publicised antisemitic conduct?

If it is right for Church Society to criticise bad developments within the C of E caused by liberal clergy (who by definition are not members of Church Society), surely it is even more appropriate for Church Society to criticise bad developments caused by a leader within its own constituency (regardless of whether he's currently a member of Church Society)?

Stephen Sizer's antisemitism was widely discussed in conservative Anglican circles from 2012 onwards (this Archbishop Cranmer article is one example: https://web.archive.org/web/20150505212023/http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2012/07/why-does-south-east-gospel-partnership.html). His antisemitic conduct was even more notorious from 2015 onwards. Church Society said nothing until July 2020.

For all those reasons, let me say again, as clearly as possible, that we believe that Church Society is at fault in the Stephen Sizer scandal regardless of the questions surrounding his membership of the society.

We have shown in the article that Church Society leaders knew about Stephen Sizer's antisemitism from at least 2015 onwards, and yet they did nothing. That helps to explain why conservative evangelicalism as a whole turned a blind eye.

Thanks again for responding to the article.