ViaMedia

Year: 2021

  • LGBT Stories – Can Conservative Evangelical Churches Ever Change?

    by Anne Dannerolle, Church Minister of Hull Community Church (soon to become Oasis Church Hull) and East Yorks Regional Ambassador for Inclusive Church

    The day I stood up to tell our church congregation in Hull that we were opting in for same-sex weddings, back in 2018, I felt a mixture of thankfulness and dread. I had a picture of my head above a parapet and wondered if it would be shot down in flames, and if my brief stint as church minister was about to come to an end. Was I about to split the church, and what would happen next?

    Hull Community Church had once been a very typical conservative evangelical church in the 1990s. One of the ‘new’ style churches it appeared informal, fun and exciting. There was certainly a buzz about the place when I arrived as a student, with a newfound faith and desire to get stuck into a local church. There was a great sense of family and community, but underneath the modern appearance, there were also deeply held conservative views and a purity culture to follow. But in the late 1990s, a number of community projects grew out of the church, and with these came a change in thinking. The church grew less conservative in its views, and more open and loving and accepting.

    In 2015, I was asked to become the church minister, after having headed up the community work of the church for 10 years. But I was becoming increasingly torn about being silently affirming instead of openly vocal about my support for the LGBT+ community. Like many church ministers I stuck my head in the sand and pretended that by staying neutral, I could serve and love everyone. I remember reading the words of Desmund Tutu and being haunted by the truth of them, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality”.

    In the summer of 2017, I felt that God was kicking me off the fence, and asking me to stand up and be honest. Not long afterwards, Lucy Gorman from the local LGBT Christian Fellowship asked if we would host Steve Chalke at the church for him to share his story about inclusion – we were the only church in Hull willing to have him speak, with a big enough room to meet in. That took us on an eight month journey of conversations with the church and bringing people’s stories into the light. We encouraged the church to read widely, and listen and talk respectfully together. While Biblical interpretations did have an importance, in truth it was people’s stories that made the real difference. Seeing God at work challenged people’s preconceived ideas and led to deeper relationships and understanding.

    And then came the day. As an independent church, the decision was ours to make. The trustees and leadership team agreed that the church would opt in for same-sex weddings and become fully and openly inclusive. And it was time for me to stand up and deliver the news. If you’re interested, you can take a listen to the talk I gave.

    Listening back now does make me cringe. Some of my language and understanding still had a way to go, and you can hear the nervousness in my voice. But it was a key moment in our journey, and unforgettable for me.

    Afterwards, two people came to tell me they were leaving the church, which was a moment of real sadness, but the church did not split. The most memorable conversation though was with a young woman who came to tell me that she was gay. She said it was the first time she had felt safe to say that aloud in a church. The thing was, this young woman had been in my home, babysat my kids, walked my dog, eaten meals together, and been part of the family. Why hadn’t she felt safe to tell me before? Why didn’t she know I would have loved her?

    It brought home to me in the starkest possible way that even though I believed I was loving, inclusive and safe, I wasn’t. Being silently affirming was simply not good enough. Not for a group of people who had suffered so much at the hands of organised religion. I needed to be bold enough to speak aloud words of affirmation and support. Love looks like being valued, affirmed and celebrated, not just accepted and tolerated.

    Since then I have heard hundreds of heart-breaking stories, and I now believe that the most important work of my life has been to take the church to a place of being openly and vocally inclusive. I know I have a long way to go, and this is not the end of the journey.

    This week, we will be announcing to our church congregation that we are joining the Oasis Church network. We have been in conversation for a while with the church, so they know it’s coming. We will no longer be Hull Community Church, but Oasis Church Hull. We’re proud to become part of a church network that is fully inclusive in every way. This is  embedding irreversible change into the church, meaning that we can never go back to being a conservative evangelical church, no matter what. It gives a safety net by being part of something bigger, and we’re excited about this new step.

    Sometimes change in church feels like an impossible mountain to climb. But Steve Chalke said when he came to Hull in 2017 that it’s like a slow tide. There’s only one way it’s coming in, and it isn’t going away. Change is coming, slowly, too slowly, but I live in hope that in my lifetime our LGBT community will be valued and celebrated in every way in our churches. I can only say that I am sorry we didn’t vocalise it sooner.

    And thank you for not giving up on church. We need you, more than we know. Without everyone being a part, we are not whole. Only when include, love, affirm and celebrate every human being in our midst will we see God’s kingdom come alive here on earth.

  • LGBT+ Stories – The Trauma of Abusive “Healing” Ministries

    by the Revd Canon Timothy Goode, Rector of St Margaret’s, Lee, Disability Adviser to the Diocese of Southwark, Member of Archbishop’s Council and Co-Chair of MOSAIC

    Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honour.’ (Psalm 8 verse 5)

    My relationship with the Church of England has always been a complex one, built as much on a vision of what the Church of England could aspire to be, as much as to what the Church of England presently is, or was in the past.

    As someone who passionately wishes for the full participation of the LGBTI+ community within the church, as I do for all who are marginalised by the church, I was deeply moved by the recent testimonies on Via Media, from those who have been on the receiving end of conversion therapy and who so generously shared their appalling experiences at the hands of a church that purports to articulate the immeasurable love of God for them.

    However, I was caught utterly on the back foot, when I found, whilst reading the testimonies, that my acknowledged feelings of solidarity and empathy swung uncontrollably into what felt like deeply unchartered territory, as I found myself sobbing; not tears that well up when one hears of injustice or when one feels righteous anger, but sobs of unprocessed pain and suffering.

    It felt like a scab was being brutally torn off revealing a deep wound underneath, which was crying out to be acknowledged and engaged with.  I initially felt shame and deep guilt that these testimonies had unearthed such suppressed feelings of confusion, embarrassment, diminishment and hurt.

    But reflecting on my response now, I feel immense gratitude to those who shared their shocking testimonies of conversion therapy, as they also unearthed the as yet unprocessed suffering that I had experienced when on the receiving end of abusive unconsented forms of ‘healing’. These had taken many forms and contexts, but all had involved the use of physical restraint and a need for my collusion. My unwillingness to play ball had on each occasion been met with projected responses of anger and rejection; so that my inability to walk unaided became my fault, put down to my lack of engagement and my lack of faith.

    I thought I had worked through these abusive experiences so that they no longer had a hold on me. Reading these testimonies revealed that, despite the support that I have received, these experiences still have the power to resurface and catch me unawares.

    I don’t want to equate my own experience of abusive ‘healing’ ministry as a disabled person with the harrowing conversion therapy experienced by the LGBTI+ community. However, each experience matters, and each experience matters before God.

    Both practices invite us to explore how it is that we as Christians can still equate a loving compassionate God with the shocking outcomes of these practices; how the reasons and means of conversion therapy can ever justify ‘the fruits’ of our actions. For it is the very fruits of these actions – the diminishing, the suffering, the pain, the anger, the rejection – that have led me to conclude that the theology that underpins it is deeply flawed and profoundly unhealthy.

    St Matthew states that ‘a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.’ (Matthew 7.18) If conversion therapy and abusive ‘healing’ causes such bad fruit, as we read in these shocking testimonies, then St Matthew’s metaphor should cause us to question both the action and the theology that underpins and motivates such an action.

    Maybe the time is right to join with what feminist theologians have been doing for decades, and critically explore and re-evaluate the biblical writers’ assumptions and unconscious biases. For example, when we read the bible through the perceptive and lived experience of disability, we may notice the biblical writers use of impairments as metaphors for sin, doubt, and unbelief, which in turn point to an understanding of perfection that is rooted more in Plato and Aristotle than the Body of Christ.

    This does not sit comfortably with the risen body of Jesus Christ, a physical body that is healed but not cured, whose open wounds are a visceral and vital part of the resurrected body, drawing us into Christ’s fullest humanity. Maybe through the risen body we are being encouraged to acknowledge, own, and ultimately love and celebrate our God given diversity.

    Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, writes that disabled people are often used by the Gospel writers to beef up Jesus’ credentials, showcasing his divine powers.

    “When Jesus meets people with disabilities, he fixes them and that’s a sign that he is powerful,” she says. “That relegates people with disabilities to just being there to show the power of God. They’re not really real characters or real people who have feelings and needs and personalities. That pushes them to the margins of the story.”

    All groups, whether it be LGBTI+, race, disability, gender, neurodiversity, to name but five, who continue to be viewed and treated as ‘less than’ by sections of the church, find that they are being consistently pushed to the margins of the story; and yet it is in the very margins of the story that Jesus so often to be is found.

    We therefore should not be surprised that the graceful embrace of the sacrificial ministry of all who have shared their experiences of conversion therapy have reached far beyond the LGBTI+ community. Their brave and harrowing testimonies have opened the door for other marginalised groups to share their stories of abuse and diminishment, offering the possibility of true healing and hope to so many, including myself, who have suffered abusive ‘healing’ ministries within the church; drawing us all towards the ultimate truth, that we are each loved, that we are each unique and precious in God’s sight, that we are each fearfully and wonderfully made.

    As the psalmist sings:

    ‘…what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honour.’ (Psalm 8. Verses, 4-5)

  • Church Leader – Are You Helping or Harming?

    by Jayne Ozanne, Member of General Synod, Director of the Ozanne Foundation and Chair of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition

    The “debate” around the need to ban “conversion therapy” has attracted more than its fair share of fake news and scaremongering, particularly by those who want to continue to “help” LGBT+ people become something that they believe God finds more acceptable.  According to Julian Mann (Christian Today, June 21st 2021) my work to ensure that these degrading and harmful practices are banned will mean that “Christian pastors could be banned from saying the Lord’s Prayer with same-sex attracted people”.

    This type of reporting inevitably feeds the narrative that certain Christians are now facing their own special form of “persecution”, which not only bolsters their sense of identity as God’s “chosen remnant” but also helps them justify why they are so beleaguered and vilified.  This narrative attracts many Christians who are eager to find support for the contentious views they hold, but it comes at a considerable cost – as it alienates an increasing number of Christians who wish to find more common ground.

    There is one significant truth, however, that those who subscribe to these views consistently side-step.  This is becoming increasingly apparent to both Christians and non-Christians alike.  Indeed, the media are now also beginning to highlight it by asking repeated questions which those who are wedded to defending their right to “pray the gay away” refuse to answer. And the question?  Why will you not acknowledge or address the mounting evidence of the deep psychological harm that you have caused and are still causing so many LGBT+ people, particularly young LGBT+ people?

    Medical professionals are clear; international institutions such as the UN are clear; hundreds if not thousands of senior faith leaders are clear; and now the UK government itself is clear – “conversion therapy” is harmful and must be banned in order to protect LGBT+ people whose lives are being damaged and destroyed by it.  Just how many more lives need to be lost before people decide to take this on board?

    Of course, Jesus never caused anyone harm.  Indeed, quite the opposite – he had very strong words to say to those who cause “any of these little ones to suffer” (Matt 18:6).  Indeed, his whole ministry was characterised by showing unconditional love and compassion to those who were hurting and who had been judged unacceptable by the religious leaders around them.

    I have recently run a series of testimonies on my blog site, Via Media, by LGBT+ Christians documenting the years of abuse they have suffered at the hands of church leaders.  The Bishop of London has called them “texts of terror” before going on to ask church leaders to recognise the harm that they are causing.  There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of stories just like them.  LGBT+ Christians being repeatedly told that who they are is unacceptable, that they did not have enough faith to be “healed”, that more often than not their problem lay with their primary relationships – such as with their parents – and so added yet more pain and anguish to those already hurting.  All had suffered rejection, most had had to leave their churches, all spoke of the mental toll it had had on them – often with quite harrowing results.

    And the response from those who were responsible for their pain?

    The truth is that the overwhelming response from these church leaders has been to shout even more loudly in the media about their “right” to continue causing such trauma and harm.  No one has seen fit to apologise.  No one has stopped and reflected on the serious safeguarding issues that have been presented. They have no plausible answer to the harm that they have caused and continue to cause, save to ignore the evidence and condemn the messengers instead.

    The worrying thing is that this is sadly all too familiar – indeed, the Bible is full of such stories.

    Israel constantly ignored their shortcomings and dealt with the prophets who confronted them with the evidence of their wrongdoings by ignoring them, and worse.  They vilified them, they mocked them, they berated them, and they even killed them.  It is a strategy as old as the hills, but one which always has the same outcome –the people who ignore the warnings end up facing the full force of God’s judgement.

    So, it is time to say “enough”!

    Enough of the excuses.  Enough of the spiritual abuse.  Enough of the hardness of heart.  Real people are being hurt and it is being caused – and condoned – by those who preach a message of love, which now sounds hollow and false.  Interestingly, it seems that evangelical Christians have some form in this area.

    Take the so-called “smacking ban”, where the Evangelical Alliance and the Christian Institute decided to “stand up to the government” and campaign to be allowed to discipline their children.  This was yet another example of Christians being oblivious to the damage – in this case physical harm – that they were causing.  They believed their God-given right to uphold scripture over-ruled any evidence of the pain and trauma they were causing, despite mounting evidence from professionals to the contrary.

    If there is one thing Jesus was clear about, it was the need to stand up to religious leaders who defined themselves by what they were against rather than what they were for, who spent their time putting burdens on other people’s backs that they could not carry, and who prided themselves with the fact they thought they were more righteous than anyone else.

    Interestingly, it was those “in the world” who formed the crowds that thronged around Jesus because of the love and compassion that he exuded, which was magnetically attractive – and in stark contrast to the hypocritical piety of the religious leaders, who seemed to think they knew the bible better than Jesus did!

    So no, neither I nor anyone else are seeking to ban the Lord’s Prayer.  I am however seeking a ban on any religious practice that is focused on an individual with a predetermined outcome that tells them that they cannot be anything other than heterosexual or cis-gendered.  This includes any prayer that causes someone to suppress or hide who they intrinsically are and more often than not causes them to feel deeply ashamed about who God has made them to be. In contrast, I welcome and encourage any prayer or spiritual guidance that creates a safe space for people to explore who they are and come to a point of peace about how they have been created.  How they then chose to live out their life, in the knowledge of this truth, is quite another story – and one that Jesus promises to accompany us on so that we have fulness of life.

    So please join me in praying that God will open the eyes of all those who have been the cause of so much trauma and pain to so many LGBT+ people over the years – that they will be humble enough to recognise the harm that they have done and courageous enough to admit it and apologise for it.

    This article was originally written as a Right of Reply to an article about Jayne by Julian Mann for  Christian Today

     

     

     

  • LGBT Stories: It’s Time for Action!

    by the Revd Canon Simon Butler, Prolocutor for the Province of Canterbury and Vicar of St Mary’s, Battersea

    As I write, we are preparing to meet at General Synod for the last time before the elections this summer. Everyone is acutely aware that, among the ‘to do’ items for the incoming General Synod in November, will be the “what next” for the Living in Love & Faith Project. Across the church, people will be preparing to stand and vote with their view about how far the Church should go in respect of its inclusion of LGBTI+ people.

    Like many readers of this blog, I have read the distressing and harrowing stories provided by numerous contributors in the past few weeks. Because of my national role, I get approached by individuals with similar stories of pain, rejection and cruelty at the hands of other Christians. These sources of information convince me that, whatever else may or may not change in the coming years, we must take to heart the words of Bishop Sarah from this week’s earlier blog and address the issues of coercion, secrecy, harm and control. If we don’t, the Church of England will continue to be perceived as being on the side of abuse and maltreatment, rather than with the Lord who brings good news to the poor and comforts the broken-hearted.

    So far, so good. But this article is aimed directly at those of you who read these articles, nod in agreement, share them on Facebook, and think that is enough. To the keyboard warriors out there, it’s time to act.

    This Tuesday past I was able to see the first two episodes of a fascinating documentary series on BBC4 called Philly D.A. In 2017, Larry Krasner, a progressive, reforming human rights lawyer, managed to get himself elected to the most powerful offices in the City of Philadelphia, the District Attorney, responsible for prosecutions in one of the most divided, crime-ridden cities in the US. Since then he has set about dismantling a system that, while seeking to protect the public by sending more and more people to prison, at the same time caused immense suffering for the most marginalised communities, mainly poor, young black people. Having spent a career on one side of the court room, defending people, he realised it was time to try and change the system by getting himself elected. Taking on vested interests, including some extremely wise, sensible people who had been moulded by the system and worn down by ‘the way things are’ into accepting its culture of casual cruelty, he has found himself with the power and ability to start again. It will prove fascinating to see how things turn out in the remaining episodes.

    Some of us who have been battling on, seeking to change the culture of the Church of England, feel worn down by it. Maybe we have become a little too comfortable in accepting that ‘the way things are’ is acceptable, or explainable. What we need, at least those of us who feel that the Church of England still has a future in being a vessel for the good news of Jesus Christ, is some more Larry Krasners, some more people fired by righteous anger, a new infusion of energy from those who are not yet worn down. We need people to serve on General Synod who are committed to changing the status quo, and all the negative cultural things that Bishop Sarah mentions, which prevent everyone who wants to belong to our church from flourishing, including I would want to say those who are conservative on sexuality matters.

    There will of course be others who will be invested in keeping things the way they are. They are extremely well-motivated to stand and serve our church on General Synod. But, without people who want to change the church standing for election to in the coming weeks, it is almost inevitable that things will remain the same, including the likelihood of yet more fudge emerging from Living in Love & Faith.

    For what it’s worth, despite the persistent cynics, I think the emerging vision for the Church of England – Simpler, Humbler, Bolder – offers a real chance for culture change. I know that we now have two Archbishops who long for it. But they, and all of us seeking re-election for Synod, need allies to encourage them and critics to hold their feet to the fire.

    As Krasner himself says, “Ultimately if you never break down the wall, you may have to go through the door, because there’s stuff going on on the inside that is hard to fix from the outside.”

    Stand for General Synod: we need you on the inside!

    If  you would like more information about how to stand for General Synod in your Diocese, please visit www.inclusivesynod or email synod@inclusive-church.org 

  • LGBT Stories: “Texts of Terror” – Are We Helping or Harming?

    by the Rt Revd Dame Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London and Chair of the LLF Next Steps Group

    The series of testimonies of LGBT Christians that can be found here are texts of terror.

    Vilified, self-condemnation, disgust, self-hatred, abominable, humiliated, contaminated, awful, worthless, lonely, suicidal. These are some of the words that are used to describe the impact of the behaviours of others on these courageous LGBT people who have shared their stories.

    They are texts of terror because of the unimaginable harm done and because these ‘others’ are Christians, believing to be acting in good faith.

    They are texts of terror that people, like myself, who have never had such experiences, need to read and take to heart. They are texts that call us to examine ourselves and the undercurrents of all our actions.

    Coercion or Compassion?

    One of the remarkable things about Jesus was that there was never even a hint of coercion in his teaching or actions. When two blind men sitting by the roadside shouted to Jesus for mercy, he asked them, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ (Matthew 20.32).

    That isn’t to say that Jesus didn’t teach. There are plenty of imperatives in the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Jesus gave the rich young ruler a clear challenge to sell all he had, give the proceeds to the poor and follow him. But he didn’t run after the man when he chose to walk away. Instead, he loved him.

    Jesus, of all people, knew how good the good news he had to share was. But this good news was offered, not forced. People were invited, not compelled. As David Walker writes, ‘love that is forced or coerced is not love at all.’

    Secrecy or Openness?

    So many of the stories speak of secrecy. Either the claustrophobic secrecy of hiding one’s own identity or sexuality. Or the secrecy within which victims were subjected to horrific coercive actions and words.

    Jesus led a public and exposed life. The only times, it seems, that he was ‘in secret’ was when he was alone with the Father in prayer.

    We are called to be people of the light, not of the darkness. This means being people who live openly, transparently. ‘Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.’ (Luke 12.3)

    Secrecy should ring warning bells. Why are we keeping a secret? What are we afraid of? What does it say about the community of which I am a part?

    Harm or Help?

    The mental, emotional, spiritual and even physical harm that is described in the stories is shocking. There can be no justification for acts that bring about harm. Jesus came to heal, restore and make whole. He released people from the captivity of mental and physical illness and spiritual oppression.

    Actions that cause harm must not be confused with the call to ‘deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow Jesus.’ Yes, we are called in different ways to share in the sufferings of Christ, but never to impose that suffering on others.

    As Christians we are called to liberate others – liberating people to live into the fullness of a life that can only be fully found by following Jesus.

    If our actions, however well-meaning, cause harm – distress, emotional, mental or spiritual anguish – we need to think again.

    Control or Trust?

    So how is it that we are tempted to behaviours that cause harm, that require secrecy and involve coercion? I wonder if they point to a need to ‘control’ – a control that holds up a mirror to our lack of faith in a God who is active and present in the life of every believer. A God who accepts, loves and seeks to save every one of us. A God who has promised, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to change each one of us from one degree of glory to another – that glory that is perfectly embodied in Jesus. That glory that is full of grace and truth.

    These stories call us to ask for greater faith – a faith that releases us to be compassionate not coercive, open not secretive, helping not harming, entrusting those in our care to the God who is already at work in us all and has promised to bring that work to completion.

     

     

  • LLF: Building the Bridge as We Cross It …

    by the Revd David Runcorn, theological teacher, author and Spiritual Director

    Living in Love and Faith is unique.

    I am not talking about the content. I mean it is unlike anything the Church of England has produced before to discern faith, doctrine and discipleship. This means we do not know how it will work out. We have not been here before. So, as someone put it, we are ‘building the bridge as we cross it’.

    Its (unplanned) conception, happened near the end of a long Wednesday in February 2017 when General Synod unexpectedly rebelled on a (usually routine) ‘take note’ vote on a House of Bishop’s report on marriage and same-sex relationships. But Synod voted not to take note. In response, the Archbishop called for a ‘radical new inclusion’ in the church and shortly after announced a new initiative to offer fresh ways of exploring the conflicted issue of human sexuality. Initially called a “Bishops Teaching Document”, it quickly morphed into something very different in content and approach. What eventually came to birth was Living in Love and Faith (LLF).

    Reading LLF reminds me of time I spent in the Samuel narratives a few years ago[1].  In that ancient world, national history was usually recorded in epic poems, centred on semi-divine leaders. Israel did something new. The Samuel narratives have been called, ‘post-heroic story telling’. The result is a text that is honest, subtle, vulnerable, non-triumphalist and undefended. Brueggemann calls it ‘survival literature’ because, by abandoning the familiar ways of speaking of and defining what is going on, it becomes a subversive narrative with the capacity to liberate. It frees God’s people to imagine themselves in radically new and adventurous ways.

    Western approaches to leadership are essentially ‘Heroic’ in mode, people who rise to the fore in times of crisis. They inspire, solve the ‘problem’ and achieve goals on behalf of everyone else. This is our secular and spiritual default mode in times of corporate anxiety. ‘Give us a king to rule us’ (1Sam 8.6).

    ‘Heroic Leadership’, by definition, requires everyone else to be helpless: ‘At its heart the traditional view of leadership is based on assumptions of people’s powerlessness, their lack of personal vision and inability to master the forces of change – deficits which can be remedied only by a few great leaders’ (Senge, 2010. p340). This leaves leader and led in an unhealthy, co-dependent relationship.

    More recent studies have been asking what post-heroic leadership might look like.  The conviction is that leadership is not something imported from outside or above but is found within – an expression of the whole community. It uses words like ‘collective’, ‘participative’ and ‘dispersed’. The approach is relational, communal, non-directive, collaborative and negotiated. It is embedded in the community’s story, history and vocation.  LLF looks very similar. Its approach is founded on a creative, trusting relationship between leading, facilitating and learning.

    Part of the challenge lies in our understanding of authority. And this also applies to our relationship to the scriptures. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed that while there are 613 commands in the Torah, ancient Hebrew had no word for ‘obey’. Modern Hebrew had to create a word for outright obedience. The Hebrew words shema and lishmoa express a call to hear, listen, attend, understand. Sacks suggested that God seeks from us ‘a greater virtue than obedience’ – more than submission or compliance. He seeks our responsibility[2]. A different understanding of authority is found here and what it asks of us. To discern what ‘follow’ means we must first hear, listen, attend and understand. English translations miss this by nearly always translating those words ‘obey’.

    In making narrative and story so central, LLF is faithfully following the example of scripture (and Jesus himself – Mark 4.34). ‘When Israel wanted to speak of her faith, she did not do it in moralistic terms, or through sociological surveys, or in conceptual essays – people simply told a story.’ (Peterson:1996, p87)

    This is unsettling for those expecting the bible to be a divine route map with unambiguous paths to follow and a clear destination. It challenges more directive styles, and a hierarchical approach to leadership.

    This tension is illustrated in the evangelical tradition where alongside an emphasis on external authority – bible, leaders, preaching – it has always encouraged personal witness to authentic faith. ‘Tell them your story – no one can argue with your experience’ was the advice at the church youth club. But what if the stories challenge the script?

    LLF challenges approaches to leading and learning at all levels of the church and in all its traditions. It is founded on the theological conviction that leadership is the vocation of the whole church. The stories there are essential for ensuring that a variety of voices, experience and testimonies are in the room.

    This is demanding. No part of the church’s life untouched.  But LLF is a work of extraordinary trust ‘that the Holy Spirit speaks through Scripture and the reflections of the whole people of God.’

    To those in leadership – national, local and all expressions between – LLF says: “Your task is not to take front stage, guarding received understandings, or ‘telling’ people what the truth is. It is to stand in the midst, to enable others to think, to be alongside them, to journey with and guide the discernment of the mind of God within that.”

    It has been said that effective leaders do not produce good followers. They produce good leaders – people and communities who are taking responsibility for the gifts and ministries that are theirs. The most motivated and energised communities are those where leadership is more clearly exercised, not less. There needs to be a wise hand on tiller and tasks. But rather than taking over, this leadership creates spaces for others to grow and flourish in the gifts and roles that are theirs.

    Now whilst it is true that leadership can be over-powering and controlling it is also true that ‘followers’ can be powerful and obstructive groups too. There are ways of making leadership near impossible.  I have long thought that the supposed crisis of leadership in our times is in part a crisis of ‘followership’. It is all mutual.

    LLF seeks to enable the emergence of biblically discerning and pastorally confident local Christian believers and communities, responsible and flourishing in the vocations that are theirs.

    So here’s to building bridges. To survival literature. And to the freedom of the whole people of God to imagine ourselves in radically new and adventurous ways.

    David Runcorn – author of Love means Love – the bible and same-sex relationships. SPCK, 2020.

    [1] Fear and Trust – God centred leadership. SPCK, 2011

    [2] Genesis: The book of beginnings. OUP, 2010. p45.

  • Making Ourselves ‘Other’

    by the Very Revd Nicholas Henshall, Dean of Chelmsford

    It is a privilege to respond to the Via Media series of moving and challenging reflections on LGBT+ Christians experience of the Church and the wider implications of that experience for the LGBT+ community, and for the identity of the Church as a genuinely inclusive culture. As a straight white male, I feel inadequate to the task. These are (in Thomas Merton’s phrase) conjectures of a guilty bystander, offered in the hope that together we can navigate the map of the new country faithfully, inclusively, and assured that Jesus takes us as we are because we can come no other way.

    In 1968 Pope Paul VI announced the infamous Catholic ban on artificial contraception. That came as a surprise. The aggiornamento of the Second Vatican Council was going into reverse. A young Catholic woman wrote later: “that was the day I took control of my own morality”.

    Over recent decades the drip feed of fearful intolerance about human sexuality has had an equally toxic effect. LGBT+ Christians have long since taken control of their own morality. Like the popular response to the Vatican ban, this is corrosive for all of us and gradually erodes the ability of the Church to be heard seriously on a wide range of ethical dilemmas. Why should anyone listen to the churches on major biblical issues such as the evil caused by borrowing and lending money at interest (about which the Bible says so much) when it seems incapable of addressing issues of human sexuality (on which the Bible as a whole says almost nothing, and on which Jesus is completely silent)?

    More disturbing still is that the landscape and rhetoric have become increasingly contested. A decade ago, when I was an acting Archdeacon, my evangelical colleague asked me to put together some resources that we could make available to clergy for the blessing of same sex partnerships. We – and our Bishop – saw this as completely uncontroversial. That today we are formally not permitted to bless same sex couples seems astounding. The recent outspoken decision of a hundred Roman Catholic priests in Germany to defy the latest Vatican ban on blessing same sex couples is a standing rebuke to our own lack of courage here.

    In his 2006 collection, The Other, the Polish Nobel Prize winning journalist and commentator Ryszard Kapuscinski critiques the Western response to the non-European and says something absolutely crucial about what happens when we “other” people who are different. At best it harms both the other and the other-er. At worst it leads to genocide. Othering may have been theologically validated by parts of the Dutch Reformed church in South Africa, but excluding people on the grounds of taste and culture dressed up as principle is both common and deeply corrosive both for living faith and for wider community cohesion. So-called “conversion therapy” is an extreme form of othering, and responding with compassion is necessary but not sufficient, certainly for churches with a very uneven track record in their response to diversity.

    Once again, Jesus in the Gospels gives us startling counter examples. Jesus loves and welcomes the “other” (and those othered by Jesus’ own community): a Jewish tax collector; a pagan centurion and his boy; a Canaanite woman; and so on. Instead of judging them, he holds them up to others as examples for us to imitate. The exception here of course is when it comes to the religious elite. Most extraordinarily, Jesus others himself in extreme ways in order to stand with the other.

    Multiple pathologies hover around human sexuality among many Christians. These are inexplicable by reference to Bible, tradition or reason. Sexuality stirs up a much more visceral reaction. Some years ago a senior church leader said that he felt physically sick when people talked about homosexuality. That is not good theology!

    Why is sex the stumbling block? At what point did sexual identity and orientation become the touchstone of an entirely novel understanding of biblical orthodoxy?

    For western Christians, the double whammy of Original Sin (a doctrine unknown to patristic and orthodox theology, and – I would suggest – unknown to the Bible) plus the linking of that doctrine to genital activity have left a toxic legacy which constantly threatens our ability to have sane and faithful conversations about human sexuality. There is a related and consequent inability to recognise the damage we inflect on others. We still have a significant way to go to climb our way out of an Augustinian pessimism about sex, and indeed about human flourishing more generally.

    Pope Francis’ made a splendidly inclusive statement in the context of Black Lives Matter: “We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of human life.” Fantastic logic, but – as a comedian quipped recently on the radio – banning the blessing of same sex couples was not the obvious way to follow that up. And as a young woman involved annually in Pride, my youngest daughter has developed a wonderful sense of irony as year by year she faces fellow Christians (of rather different convictions) yelling at her that she’s on the road to hell. Really?

    It would be helpful if we were a bit more honest – that for most of us there is very little theology in our response to most issues in human sexuality, but rather a visceral response. At least the medieval church – hardly sympathetic to LGBT+ rights – recognised that there was very little in Scripture to support their position and largely resorted to arguments from natural law.

    In a beautiful comment recently on the BBC World Service a devout Moslem lesbian described the resolution of her own struggle with her sexuality. She came to the conclusion that because Allah did not make mistakes, Allah could not have made a mistake in making her. Those are words of deep reassurance that the Christian churches need to say unequivocally to all of those it has “othered” – not simply expressing a vague liberal tolerance of difference but insisting that all of us are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139) and intended by God. Our failure to see that is part of our own alienation.

    Traditional Christian moral teaching takes seriously both the sensus fidelium (i.e. what most Christians are thinking) and personal conscience. These have not been so obvious in contemporary Anglican discourse. The challenge of the experience of so many of those whom we have “othered” – so powerfully expressed in the Via Media testimonies about conversion therapy – suggests strongly that churches need to go rather further than therapeutic listening and have the boldness to embrace the “other” as the lost part of ourselves.

  • Apology without Change is Manipulation

    by the Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham, Member of General Synod and Trustee of the Ozanne Foundation

    Sometimes the synapses fire!

    I could never quite understand why repeated apologies from the Archbishop and other senior church figures made me mad. I probably ought to have been thinking how gracious and humble they were trying to be. This is surely the beginning of healing. But no! When they stood in front of the TV cameras or at General Synod offering yet another sometimes tearful apology it left me pretty cross.

    Then I saw this little phrase posted by the wonderful Maurice Tomlinson -a Human Rights lawyer and phenomenal LGBTI+ right warrior. It simply said: ‘Apology without change is manipulation.’ Zap went that little electrical impulse between two nerves. The synapse fired. That was it. I couldn’t get hold of the apology because I had heard it so often before and so little had changed. When I sat at General Synod listening to someone telling us they had no idea how deeply terrible things were and they were profoundly sorry – well I felt manipulated. Of course they knew! Survivors have been saying it for years. I’ve been saying it for years.

    Repeatedly, anyone who challenges the disconnect between promise and delivery is told ‘that was then, this is now. Things have changed’ But the witness statements say otherwise.

    Here on Via Media Jayne Ozanne has just run an extraordinary series of the personal testimonies of LGBTI Christians. The first person to describe their experience was Timothy and I have just gone back to read it again. The word ‘manipulation’ jumped off the page. The psychological abuse was made possible because of the spiritual abuse and Tim writes movingly about just how powerful, deep and life changing that was.

    Of course, we are manipulated in most areas of life, but there does seem to be a religious variant which is particularly pernicious. Within a faith setting it is quite easy to do great harm under the guise of doing good. Apology is supposed to be a good thing, especially when accompanied by then accepting responsibility. Contrition is the beginning not the end of the matter. What Jayne Ozanne is discovering as she works with the government to draft a bill on the banning of conversion therapy, is that there is a powerful lobby that both apologises, although mostly in a very half-hearted way, and makes a special case to be allowed to continue their abuse.

    How can this be? How can you recognise the harm and at the same time argue to perpetuate it? Because…. apology without change is manipulation. The apologies we have been hearing over the past few years do not move on to taking responsibility and of course never will because they dump all the responsibility on God. I find quoting scripture and ‘the will of God’ or even ‘the love of God’ as your reason for ongoing abusive behaviour grotesque. It was ever thus. Scripture has been used to legitimise other abuse. Capital punishment, beating children.

    The extent and depth of damage done by conversion therapy stands alongside sexual abuse is now public and there is no choice but to apologise. Yet still nothing changes. I am still waiting to meet a survivor who hasn’t regretted their disclosure and the very same people who apologise are lobbying the Government to allow them to continue to ‘pray away the gay’ because it is part of their belief and as such should be protected.

    It is therefore apparent that the reason there has been so little change is that so few hearts have changed. Could this be because over the centuries, little by little we have replaced the God that Jesus loved with a monster. A God who is more interested in controlling than loving and who holds onto power rather than giving it away. In other words, we have done to God what the Romans did to Jesus. His God was too challenging and so we redesigned him, and we have done it so effectively that some Christians honestly believe that they are doing God’s work when they shame and humiliate and terrorise people whose identity they will not accept.

     

    I have recently retired and have been finding it rather difficult to go to church. I can shape a sort of faith, but at the moment even the sweetest and most open church still breathes trouble. The language of the hymns or songs, the architecture, the deference, the division between those who know about God and those who don’t. This is very sad. I know some wonderful people whose faith is strong and a has shaped in them a beautiful character. However, as I hear or read yet another survivor tell their story I am left with the feeling that at the heart of institutional religion there is a God shaped void, or worse than that a man shaped God.

    Much of my energy and time over the past years has been spent trying to be part of the change, and I am 100% behind Jayne’s work. Conversion Therapy is an abuse which needs to be stopped. I am less certain that our institution has the capacity or the desire to be born again. There has been a gradual and powerful move towards theological certainty and uniformity and it is pretty much the sort of domination that John Smyth and his cronies were aiming for. In many ways it was the theology that enabled such terrible spiritual abuse.

    Unless we learn from the past we will continue to be manipulated in to repeating it.

     

     

     

     

  • Banning Conversion Therapy Must “Focus on the Victim Not the Perpetrator”

    by the Right Reverend Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

    The General Synod debate on Conversion Therapy was easily one of the hardest it fell to me to chair. We were allowed something like 75 minutes in which to deal with the substantive motion, several amendments and even one amendment to an amendment. So many members wanted to speak that it was vital not to lose sight of the thrust of the motion amid the practical issues of moving of amendments, motions for closure, and voting. When I came to leave the chamber, I could hardly move for members wanting to thank me for having managed the debate with pace, clarity and good humour. Not everyone was happy; there are always some who think a balanced debate is one where half of the speakers are advocating their particular view, and the other half cover all remaining possible views. But, outshadowing the process, was the outcome. Synod called for a ban on Conversion Therapy by massive majorities in all three Houses.

    It has taken a while for the proposal to go further, but in the recent Queen’s Speech, opening the new session of Parliament, the UK government has given a clear commitment to progressing matters. When the debate on the Speech took place in the House of Lords, I took the opportunity to remind Parliament of the Synod vote and was delighted when the government minister responding to the debate, Baroness Susan Williams, endorsed my comments.

    Progress, but not as yet victory. The government have continued to send out mixed messages, saying there will need to be consultation before legislative proposals are formed. Consultation, of course, but that has all too often been a phrase used to excuse foot-dragging. We are never going to achieve legislation that everyone agrees is perfect, especially when balancing potentially conflicting human rights. Sometimes we need to just get on with things, and make any necessary changes later, in the light of experience.

    So, if there’s going to be consultation, let’s make it as short and snappy as we can. In which spirit, let me offer a couple of starter points, to see if we can get the conversation going. I’ve shown my theological working, but you do not need to agree with all my beliefs in order to engage with the rest of the argument.

    First, let’s focus on the victim not the perpetrator.

    As Mary’s wonderful song, the Magnificat, illustrates, our God does not side with the powerful but with the weak and outcast. He is the God who seeks remedy for the oppressed not protection for the strong.

    In the nineteenth century, when Parliament raised the Age of Consent to 16, it did so in the teeth of considerable opposition from members who were worried that their attraction to young girls would land them in trouble, for failing to distinguish a 14 year old from a child of 16. If the children featured in their conversation at all, it was as temptresses, looking to lure unwary older men into criminality. It never occurred to them that the onus to ensure their proposed partner was of age fell on them, and if in doubt, to refrain.

    If the consultation on Conversion Therapies (and I confess I’d rather call it Conversion Abuse, rather than dignify it with medical terminology) spends too much time and effort on trying to define exactly how far a perpetrator can go, or what procedures they can use, before breaking the law, then we will have lost that vital victim centrality. We need to focus on the wounding not the weapon. What matters in a victim centred approach to law is the severity and durability of the harm done, not whether that damage was done by prayer, hypnosis or psychological techniques.

    There is now a massive pile of evidence to support how damaging these abuses are in general. When it comes to the particularities of an individual trial and conviction, the discretion of judges to sentence at an appropriate level provides ample scope to distinguish between levels of severity of abuse. Let it remain the responsibility of those who wish to carry out “therapies” to ensure their actions will never cause harm.

    Secondly, consent is only consent if informed and freely given.

    At the heart of the Gospel lies the love of God, shown fully in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This love, freely given, invites every person to respond equally freely. Love forced or coerced is not love at all.

    The harrowing stories of those damaged by attempts to change their sexuality usually begin in the victims’ early or mid teens. Pressure from parents, or from church leaders, has all too often played a major part in them feeling they have to change. The procedures to which they are exposed are then often led by those same individuals who have applied the pressure. There is a deep irony in the fact that the voices who argue most stridently that a teenager cannot give consent to life changing gender therapies, in the highly controlled and monitored environment of the NHS, are often the very voices who believe that same teenager can give free and informed consent to Conversion Therapy, in the far less transparent and accountable environment of a prayer meeting or attempted exorcism.

    Putting it bluntly, I struggle to see how any child judged not old enough to make an informed and free enough judgment to place a cross on a ballot paper can be considered capable of giving informed consent to attempts to change their sexual feelings, outside of a setting at least as managed and monitored as that provided by public health services.

    Finally, we don’t have to get everything right in a piece of legislation prior to publishing a Bill. Parliamentary process allows many opportunities to reflect and consider, and for those interested to lobby for amendment to this or that clause. Even when a Bill becomes an Act, it doesn’t have to be the last ever word on a subject. If a law is not working well enough, it can readily be amended or repealed. Meanwhile, whilst we fail to press on with draft legislation, young people are continuing to suffer abuse disguised as therapy. Their harm is real and immediate. For their sakes we need to make this consultation both short and to the point.

  • Trigger Warning!

    by the Venerable Peter Leonard, Archdeacon of the Isle of Wight and Chair of OneBodyOneFaith

    Have you noticed how often this warning appears on social media posts or blogs in recent years? A friendly statement that there may be material which can ignite a past issue or make an old wound start hurting again. I am relatively tough and generally don’t pay much attention to these, partly because I assumed I haven’t experienced some of the things which far too many of my LGBTQ+ siblings have.

    I have been reading the Via Media posts on conversion therapy and have experienced the horror and revulsion that many of you will have at how the church has abused so many for so long. I shared one of these, ‘Peter’s Story’, on Facebook. Within a very short space of time, I received lots of comments from friends offering support and care because I had gone through such an awful experience. I realised with horror (and emotion that people were so caring) that people assumed the Peter referred to was me! I quickly responded that it wasn’t my story but, in the end, took the post down to stop any further confusion. It was then that a cold realisation crept over me, and I went back and re-read Peter’s story.

    It was not my story, but it wasn’t that different to my story. I didn’t believe I had gone through any form of “conversion therapy”, even though I grew up and spent many years in churches where I regularly heard that being gay meant you would burn in hell, that you were dirty, evil and perverted and God hated you. I knew I was gay but couldn’t accept it so sought help and was offered prayer ministry in a couple of different settings. People commanded demons to leave me but of course nothing changed, except I developed a deep self-loathing of myself and who I was. A legacy of emotional and spiritual damage which into my fifties I am still working through. This prayer ministry was not a consistent experience of course, it was a few isolated incidents between the ages of about 15 and 27, but what was consistent throughout that time were the prayers I said, no pleaded, for myself on my own because I thought I had to. The prayer ministry I sought to do to myself to get rid of the homosexual thoughts and urges and make myself straight. The conversion therapy I sought to exercise on myself because I believed I had no other choice if I wanted to be accepted, loved and fulfil the calling to ordained ministry which I had.

    The evil of conversion therapy comes in many different forms.

    Prayer which is offered seeking to change someone’s sexuality is conversion therapy. It is damaging and it is abusive. The fact that I continued to try this prayer for myself because I believed I had to doesn’t make it less abusive or less damaging. It is a direct result of the teaching and the homophobia I experienced within the Church of England. I have always assumed I had not undergone conversion therapy – I was wrong – I have but it was dressed up as prayer and the abusive atmosphere I found myself in forced me to continue to hurt myself even when the perpetrators had ceased to actively hurt me themselves.

    I am currently working with a counsellor and the legacy of shame and damage which this experience has left me with forms a significant part of that work. I hadn’t realised the extent to which it has impacted me because at the time I chose to do it. I wasn’t coerced into it other than the fact that I thought I had no choice if my family, my friends, my church and indeed God were going to accept me, if I wasn’t going to become an outcast. I, and many others in my position, were and are sadly still presented with a twisted version of the gospel. There are too many places where lives are still being damaged and where the name Jesus Christ is used as judgement, condemnation and for psychological harm instead of for love, acceptance, and freedom to be the people God created us to be. There are too many people who still need trigger warnings.

    Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbour as you love yourself. We celebrate a God who exists in Trinity, and we are called to trinitarian relationships. Called to love God by being the people God created us to be, called to love others by offering them our authentic selves and called to love ourselves by accepting and nurturing who we are, including our sexuality. It is only then that we are living as Jesus commanded us to live.

    Anything done to try and change someone’s sexuality, including prayer, is conversion therapy. It is abuse and needs to end now. It is without doubt another serious and significant safeguarding issue for the church and any and every time I discover it going on I will report it to the diocesan safeguarding team, and I would encourage anyone else to do the same. It has no place in the church and is contrary to the gospel of love we have in Jesus Christ.

    Thank you to those of you who have shared your stories on here or in the press. Thank you to those of you who are campaigning hard to ensure that ALL forms of conversion therapy are banned. We know that all of this comes at a personal cost, and we are grateful.

    If like me you are finding the conversation about conversion therapy, which includes abuse masquerading as “prayer ministry”, triggering let me share how I am coping:

    1. I’m talking about it – to God in prayer, to a counsellor and to trusted friends. OneBodyOneFaith of which I am Chair is currently working with the Ozanne Foundation to pull together a list of counsellors/therapists who can offer help and support to LGBT+ Christians. Look out for this resource or please be in touch if you can help.
    2. I’m campaigning and calling for this evil practice to be banned.
    3. I’m listening to myself and taking a break from it when I need to.
    4. I’m doing my best to love myself and in doing so to love God and love others.

    The Psalmist says that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” – we are also “queerfully and wonderfully made”. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!