ViaMedia

Year: 2025

  • A Heavy Yoke: Selina Stone on Power

    I wanted to review Selina Stone’s new book, published today, on Via Media News, because this is such an important and accessible reflection on themes which are currently being discussed widely in our churches, particularly as we continue to reel from awareness of sexual and other forms of abuse: the themes of power, leadership, trust and success. While her approach is a theological one, Stone rightly points out that theology is expressed in practice and can be shaped and distorted by our personality and prejudices. And that was where I found her book was especially valuable, because she challenges each of us to face our own power in order to understand just where it is held, and how it can be abused.

    Stone writes from the Pentecostal tradition, but everything she discusses applies equally to other denominations. Leaders’ use of the church for their own ends is only made possible by the cultures in which they function and the Christian theology they can call on; certain theologies encourage particular power dynamics which increase the chances of spiritual abuse. In a comment which reminded me of the objections some individuals make when required to do safeguarding training, she notes that “Christians … imagine that there is no need to be trained to understand sexual harassment, toxic behaviour and racist abuse, since these are ‘worldly concerns’; instead, apparently, we simply need more Bible studies” (5). And, for those of us who are at least able to recognise abuse outside the Church, she argues that we need to do far more to understand what happens inside. Using Matthew 5’s “You’ve heard it said… but I say”, she invites churches “to critically engage with the traditions they have inherited” (11).

    I particularly appreciated Stone’s dissection of the current tropes of “disagreeing well” (31) and “servant leadership” (26), the second of these identified as virtue signalling, since it can disguise the immense power such a leader may wield over others, feigning service while keeping all the power. Stone uses the example of Jean Vanier’s abuse of nuns and lay women, which also leads her to explore the danger of concepts of spiritual fatherhood and of marriage imagery when talking about spiritual union.

    The chapter on the potential of preaching in grooming a congregation to accept abusive behaviour takes as its text a sermon by Mike Pilavachi, where he used the story of Jacob and Laban to argue that God sometimes sends toxic and abusive people into our lives because… He loves us. As a Black lay woman, Stone also knows all about churches “where white married couples occupy the highest rungs of power”, noting that the concerns of the “little people” were only properly heard after Matt and Beth Redman spoke out about Pilavachi.

    Another case study is that of SPAC Nation, whose wealthy leaders told young people to give them more money, including from selling their own blood, because this would become the seed of the church and would enable them to become rich too. To encourage this behaviour, SPAC nation drew on scripture about sacrifice and obedience. Here, Stone shows how we are still too quick to assume that dominance and numerical growth are evidence of success; and focusing on God as “Almighty” can stop us seeing how God can also be breath, or possibility.

    A further section focuses on John Smyth’s abuse, which was supported by specific readings of the Cross and theologies of atonement focused on God’s wrath. Here, Stone draws on the resources of Black female and womanist theologians, and on their interpretations of the “power in the blood”. After showing the different ways in which oppressed groups have drawn on this theology, she concludes that “God does not delight in the shedding of our blood, any more than he did in the torture and murder of Jesus” (106).

    She also explores the meaning of unity, uncovering the ways in which the word can be used to push the less powerful to remain silent so that the dominant group is able to continue as before, with any expression of disagreement being silenced as a threat to unity. But the price for unity should not be paid by those “who are already forced to carry burdens too heavy for them” (86). She asks what it really means to love each other, as opposed to merely tolerating those with whom we disagree.

    This is a book which fully grasps the complexity of power. When writing on the power of vulnerability as an element of good leadership, Stone shows how controlling leaders can pretend to be vulnerable as a technique to make others reveal their own stories, and also shows how the term “vulnerable adult” can be used to suggest that the survivor is somehow the cause of the abuse. She is very aware of body theology, particularly when analysing Vanier’s views on touch, which dangerously ignored boundaries and power. She contrasts Vanier with Jesus, who knows his power and what it is for, and always waits for consent.

    What is most challenging of all is when Stone turns from the shocking cases which have become familiar to us in the last decade or so and makes us look at ourselves, at “the wolf who might be within us” (13). For this, the most important chapter is the final one, on discernment. Here I remembered what I found most powerful in recent safeguarding leadership training: the Social GGRRAAAACCEESSSS. Taken from a social science context, these emphasise that we are all disadvantaged in some contexts and privileged in others, based on who we are. The long list used in C of E safeguarding training covers: gender, geography, race, religion, ability, accent, age, appearance, class, culture, education, employment, ethnicity, sexuality, sexual orientation, spirituality, and “something else”.

    Stone looks at discernment in the sense of a community and an individual working out how best to use their gifts in ministry, but also considers its less obvious aspects, such as knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, and recognising the spiritual influences behind people’s actions. She argues that we can’t ever spot every abuser and we don’t even know what we ourselves may be capable of doing. This is not made easier when we are not taught how to discern. Even within a church community we need to recognise the sense of something being “off”, perhaps from taking seriously our own bodily reactions. A church is which is a healthy space will have a sense of community, of making space for others, of leadership which does not control but develops other people. It will understand the importance of accountability and cultivate a culture of reflection.

    This is a clear, confident theological and personal appeal for a better understanding of power; I hope it will find its way on to the recommended reading sections of all diocesan safeguarding training materials.

     

     

     

  • The Ten Parish Eucharistic Benefice

    by Michael Hampson, a published author devoting his early retirement from parish ministry to producing practical resources for busy clergy and lay-led congregations, beginning with the weekly lectionary resource Sunday Scriptures for Reading Aloud, ssra.uk

    The Ten Parish benefice is coming – and it is sustainable. All it needs is people, and liturgy. We have both. All we lack is a decent liturgy book. So let’s make one.

    Oh, and there’s that word ‘eucharistic’. Let’s talk about that too. Spoiler: no lay presidency involved.

    Let’s start in Wales

    In the middle of a piece in Church Times nine days ago, surrounded by all the obvious and noisy things that people want to say about the new Archbishop of Wales, the three paragraphs that really matter are sitting quietly, waiting for their moment. “Between 2020 and 2023, Monmouth diocese underwent the pastoral reorganisation of 121 parishes into 16 ministry areas.” That’s an average of 7.5 parishes per Ministry Area. It’s page 2 in the print edition, or at this link online (where the three paragraphs are split into five).

    The Ten Parish Benefice – with a single priest – is coming. Wales has been honest about it, and made it explicit. But it’s coming in England too, in cities, towns and villages alike. Most people just haven’t admitted it yet.

    To quote very roughly – twice – from the gospel reading (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2012.49-56&version=NRSVA) that followed two days later, this is where we really should be reading the signs of the times. And it might be divisive, rather than peaceful, to say so. But if we take a deep breath and actually prepare for it – rather than turning a blind eye, or running around in ever-decreasing circles – we really can stop being so afraid.

    The Ten Parish Benefice has existed in corners of England already for well over a decade. Almost everyone’s trying to deny it. Save the Parish (www.savetheparish.com) can see it coming, but think that empowering parishes with information about legal rights, and trying to wrestle money from the powerful to the weak, will stop it happening. We can wish, but sadly, while justice may be on their side, I don’t think justice is going to prevail over the vested interests of the powerful. The Five-Ten-Fifteen-Twenty Parish Benefice is coming regardless. But Christ is Risen and the Holy Spirit is amongst the people, and that’s on top of God the Father being God the Father, and from time to time there’s even a priest in the benefice, so what exactly is supposed to be the problem?

    It was easier when we had some resources. When there was a Book of Common Prayer (BCP) in every parish church in every village (and a King James Bible and a bell, wasn’t that the official minimum list?) the churchwardens could keep the show on the road perfectly well in the absence of a priest; indeed that was both their right and their duty, and we trust was also their joy. Problem solved – even in a ten-parish benefice. Until the end of 1999, the Alternative Service Book (ASB) was just as comprehensive, better laid out and in (fairly) modern language – the entire Church of England in one hand – and the same principle applied: anyone could open it and keep the show on the road. And now, just when we need it the most, we have nothing. Common Worship (CW) is a scattering of loose papers that have blown away in the wind. Even most clergy (and *cough* most bishops) can’t find their way around the main volume, and most of what you need isn’t in there anyway. And the Ten Parish Benefice is coming. But don’t panic. It can be done.

    To the north of England

    When I started in a four-parish benefice in 2012, I maintained a pattern of services in every parish every Sunday, and very soon even persuaded three of the four to ensure that the service was at the same time every Sunday. With help from retired clergy, the vast majority of services were eucharistic. I did persuade myself that four was the limit, and five would be impossible. Six years later, I was actively negotiating to combine the four-parish benefice with the neighbouring benefice of six churches, to form a combined united benefice of ten, and for this I had the agreement in principle of all four parishes, and the departing half-time incumbent of the six, in order to proactively secure the future of the benefice before any less-considered alternative was imposed upon us. So what had we learned during those years that made the impossible seem possible, not only to me, but to four contented, and indeed enthusiastic, PCCs?

    Those paragraphs in the Church Times article conclude, “It wasn’t possible for every church to have their own vicar, because we don’t have enough vicars.” But all four parishes in that four-parish benefice knew they had a vicar, because they had learned how to make the model work.

    A vicar in every parish

    I ran PCC meetings like they were house-groups. In the smaller parishes the PCC was like a full congregation meeting anyway. After a year or two, I realised “minutes and matters arising” could bog down the meeting early on, so I put “mission and ministry” as a standing agenda item before “minutes and matters arising”. I now realise the agenda was similar to those parishes that have a short service before PCC, except that we were having a short house-group meeting first, to discuss where we were up to as a parish, that month. They knew they had a parish priest. They knew they were cared for. And they knew it would continue the same, even if they were one of ten. I prioritised this as the heart of my ministry. It was the way I kept in touch with all the key lay folks. I held the larger churches’ PCCs monthly (so they would only take an hour, which delighted everyone); the others every six or eight weeks. The people are the resource: a PCC run like this is where you meet the people, and help keep the church joyful, focussed, and full of life.

    A weekly Sunday service in every parish

    BCP provided a straightforward model that made a weekly Sunday service sustainable in every parish even in the absence of the vicar: it mandated that the layfolk (specifically the churchwardens) would lead the service; and within its covers, it provided everything they would need to do so; ASB was just as comprehensive. Mandating, encouraging, and supporting the layfolk to lead the service should be just as straightforward in 2025 as it was in 1662; the only tragedy is that we haven’t had a decent practical liturgy book for the last 25 years.

    Making the liturgy sustainable across four parishes began with the Sunday morning readings. BCP gave us collect, epistle and gospel for every Sunday, clearly set out, easy to find, but in archaic language and in solid blocks of text. ASB gave us the same, with improvements to layout, and readings in a mixture of RSV and three paraphrases: the Jerusalem Bible, the New English Bible, and the Good News Bible (under its earlier name Today’s English Version, TEV). Common Worship gives us nothing. Every lay person in the church is dependent on the vicar, and every vicar is dependent on a paid subscription, and even then has to choose week by week from a bewildering list of unexplained (and to most, incomprehensible) options, and then choose a translation, and then source the readings, and then print them out, and then distribute them to the lay folks, and then… what on earth have we done?

    I have spoken to two of the people involved in compiling the programme: one about the multiple errors I had spotted (which Synod later had to correct – it turned out that they knew about them but angrily blamed others in the group on a partisan basis); and one who was blissfully unaware that CW deviates at all from Revised Common Lectionary, when CW actually deviates from RCL more than any other implementation of the three-year cycle anywhere in Christendom.

    When I started, the four parishes were subscribing to the independently-produced Redemptorist Anglican Mass Sheets, but those didn’t have our patronal festivals or harvests, and more and more often I was producing sheets locally to replace the ones that arrived from Redemptorist, and ssra.uk began to evolve: ultimately an all-new implementation of the three-year lectionary, in an all-new translation; first just for us, now for the whole church.

    I added to this a locally-produced service book, and placed one in every church, with just the parts you need, but all the parts you need, including a good selection of triple-kyrie confessions, all the collects, introductions to the Peace, seasonal prefaces, eucharistic and post-communion prayers, seasonal blessings; 55 pages in all, including all our local patronals and harvests, in a user-friendly format and a top-quality binding. Other clergy look at it jealously. I would like to offer something similar to the wider church. I wrote a week ago by email to the relevant copyright holders; I await acknowledgements and replies.

    Power to the people…

    This service book made my job easier from week to week, but the question hanging in the air is how it became empowering for the laity. And here lies the final element in making the Ten Parish Benefice sustainable. We can make the resources. We also have to let the people use them.

    There are two realistic options for a meaningful weekly liturgical Sunday service in every parish in the absence of a priest: antecommunion, and Holy Communion by Extension. People often don’t want to gather at a different time or on a different day. So the lay-folks can read antecommunion – that’s the communion service as far as the Peace. It qualifies as “a service of the word”. It maintains continuity with the liturgy of the benefice, and the worldwide church both catholic and ecumenical. It’s a substantial biblical and prayerful liturgy, sustaining for regulars, and welcoming for newcomers. Every parish can do this. All they need is a decent lectionary (ssra.uk) and a decent liturgy book (watch this space).

    …for the Ten Parish Eucharistic Benefice

    Cherry Vann, the new Archbishop of Wales, says, “at least with [the Monmouth] model every church gets a eucharist at least once a month, some of them get twice a month, some of them get four times a month.”

    If they can have a priest that often, that’s great; and they should. But there’s absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t have communion every Sunday in between as well.

    That’s the point of Holy Communion by Extension.

    If you read the official 2001 House of Bishops statement on Communion by Extension, it is clear that it took a lot to get anything at all past a group encompassing bishops with eucharistic theology doggedly protestant – almost anti-eucharistic – as well as sky-high catholic. But churches throughout the land keep the reserved sacrament. Using the reserved sacrament to give communion to the people when the parish priest is away is normal practice in the Roman Catholic church, and quite probably therefore in many Roman-rite parishes in the Church of England as well, courtesy of the infinite elasticity of Canon B5, under which every Roman-rite parish, and every totally non-liturgical charismatic-evangelical parish, survives.

    The model envisaged in 2001 – that some poor soul has to go to early communion somewhere and rush fresh sacrament to the Communion-by-Extension parish (as if nobody else owns a car or an alarm clock) is bizarre and surely undignified in comparison to giving the people communion from the reserved sacrament. In the four-parish benefice, the two parishes that had never reserved before immediately understood the etiquette to be kept around reserving the sacrament and worked out an appropriately dignified regime.

    Most liturgies of Communion by Extension go to great lengths to ensure that no part of the service looks like what might clumsily be called ‘the consecration’, lest the laity become ‘confused’. The House of Bishops 2001 text allows a version of the institution narrative to be read at the beginning of the service only, and one other vaguely-eucharistic bible passage to be chosen, to be read later, in place of the eucharist prayer. This is like replacing a joyful hymn of praise, and centuries of carefully-crafted expression of all that surrounds the eucharistic mystery, with some sparse early draft jottings on the subject, ‘lest the laity become confused’ by what they see and hear. I say, don’t be so utterly patronising. The laity will most certainly not be ‘confused’ by a simple explanation such as this, at the offertory: “In the absence of our vicar (who is leading a service elsewhere this morning), we bring gifts of bread and wine which have already been present on the altar at an earlier service of holy communion led by our vicar. We remind ourselves now of the words which will have been used at that earlier service.” Our Anglican theology rightly acknowledges the eucharist to be a mystery, and best expresses that mystery in the words that we have agreed to use together, from the Book of Common Prayer to Common Worship. What better than to remind ourselves of those words as we participate in the very particular mystery that is Communion by Extension, a service that expresses our unity with our benefice and our parish priest, as well as each other and the worldwide and eternal church; not ‘saying’ those words in the particular way that the president said them, just – um – reminding ourselves of what was said. The eucharist is a mystery anyway; the laity understand that Holy Communion by Extension is somehow different, but somehow also participating in one and the same. Feel free to go sit in an ivory tower and tie yourself in a knot over this, while one ten-parish benefice crumbles, and this one thrives. Our laity are not confused; they are prayerful, grateful, and fully understand that they are in the presence of the profound mystery of the eucharist.

    Whether any part of our vast, powerful, and wealthy church hierarchy will capture any part of this vision, I simply cannot know. Our bishops, our General Synod, our liturgical commission, and our diocesan offices, have brought us to where we are. A challenge lies ahead, and it isn’t clear that the needs of ordinary parishes are high on the agenda; they just get combined into ever-larger benefices, and left to sink or swim. So lobby where you can; and in the meantime, maybe take Canon B5, and the fact that nobody’s looking, and step out and do what needs to be done. SSRA.uk is there to help – promote it where you can. Perhaps a liturgy book will follow soon; and in the meantime, for collects at least – handy tip – it’s page 268 onwards in Canada.

    The Ten Parish Eucharistic Benefice is possible. As far as I can tell, so far, it’s either this, or it’s nine (or ten) empty churches. Which will it be?

     

     

     

  • Bleeding While Leading: A Theological and Leadership Reflection

    by Revd Dr Augustine Tanner-Ihm, Lead Minister of Saint Nicholas Church, Kingsway, Manchester

    Introduction: The Wounded Healer

    To lead while bleeding is to embody the paradox of Christ crucified and risen. It is to stand at the altar with wounds still fresh, to proclaim resurrection while still buried under the weight of systemic injustice. This reflection is not just theological—it is incarnational. It is the story of a Black, queer curate in the Church of England, navigating a decade of racism, homophobia, classism, and xenophobia, first as a layperson and then as a clergyman. The Church, which should be a place of refuge, has often been a crucible of suffering. The Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), knowing that the journey would end in betrayal, rejection, and death. To lead while bleeding is to walk that same road, not toward triumph, but toward truth.

    The Master’s Tools and the Architecture of Oppression

    Audre Lorde’s prophetic insight—”The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”—speaks directly to the ecclesial structures that perpetuate exclusion. The Church of England, with its colonial legacy and hierarchical governance, often uses tools forged in whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity to assess vocation and worth. These tools are not neutral. They are instruments of gatekeeping. My rejection from a parish post in 2020, citing discomfort with my ethnic background in a “monochrome white working-class” parish, is a stark example of how these tools operate. The rejection was not about theology or capability—it was about race. It was about maintaining the architecture of comfort for the dominant culture.

    Conversion Therapy: A Theology of Violence

    On 6 August, the Church Times reported that New Wine has formally apologised to me for the abuse I endured during a 2013–2014 internship. This included forced participation in a “LIFE Ministry” group aimed at “setting people free from homosexuality.” This was not pastoral care: it was spiritual violence. It was a theology of erasure. Luke’s Gospel offers a counter-narrative. In Luke 7, Jesus says to the woman who anoints him, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” He does not demand she change her identity. He affirms her dignity. The apology from New Wine, while necessary, came after years of silence and dismissal. This confession echoes the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), where religious leaders pass by the wounded. It was the outsider who stopped, who saw, who healed.

    Kinship and Betrayal: Not All Skinfolk Are Kinfolk

    The African American proverb “Not all skinfolk are kinfolk” painfully captures the reality that solidarity is not guaranteed, even among those who share racial identity. Within the Church, Black and Asian clergy have sometimes perpetuated homophobia, aligning with conservative theology that excludes LGBTQIA+ siblings. The same theology which held them in chains of oppression they use to oppress the queer people. Something that many liberationists had to realize is that we are not free until everyone is free. This betrayal is reminiscent of Judas, who shared bread with Jesus but still handed him over. In Luke 22, Jesus says, “But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table.” To be betrayed by those who look like you, who worship beside you, is a unique kind of crucifixion.

    Formation and Fragmentation at Theological College

    My experience at theological college was not one of formation, but one of fragmentation. Theological colleges are meant to be places of discernment and growth, yet they often replicate the very systems of exclusion they claim to challenge. Time and time again I get pastoral emails, calls and invitations to coffee from people in theological college struggling because of racism. The Gospel of Luke begins with Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), a song of reversal: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” Formation must be rooted in this radical reordering—not in conformity to oppressive norms.

    Psychological Safety and Leadership Development

    Psychological safety is a shared belief that people can express themselves without fear of reprisal. In church leadership, this is essential for fostering trust, collaboration, and authenticity. Research by Dr. Amy Edmondson and others shows that teams with high psychological safety perform better and experience less burnout. The Church of England’s Living Ministry research highlights the importance of wellbeing, especially in the face of systemic challenges. Clergy wellbeing must be supported through leadership development that prioritizes emotional health, vocational clarity, and relational support.

    Rejection, Anxiety, and the Fear of Homelessness

    I have been rejected from over 15 curacies and 14 roles post-curacy. I have watched friends receive parishes and roles without even applying. If I do not find a role by Christmas, I will be homeless and without a job. As someone who grew up in homeless shelters, this reality is terrifying and anxiety-inducing. At 35 years old, I believed I would be leading or helping to lead an evangelical fresh expression or pioneering something new to help people come to know Jesus. Instead, I find myself fighting for survival in a system that claims to be built on grace but often operates on exclusion.

    Resurrection and Hope

    Despite the trauma, I continue to serve faithfully. My story echoes that of Zacchaeus (Luke 19), a man rejected by society but embraced by Jesus. Zacchaeus responds with restitution, giving back what was taken. The Church must do the same. Apologies are not enough. There must be structural change, reparative justice, and a reimagining of vocation that includes all bodies, all identities.

    Conclusion: A Theology of Hope

    To bleed while leading is to live in the tension of Holy Saturday between death and resurrection. It is to believe, like the women at the tomb, that the story is not over. The Church must become a place where wounds are not hidden but honoured, where leadership is not sanitised but sanctified through suffering. May the Church of England dismantle its house not with the master’s tools, but with the carpenter’s—tools of justice, mercy, and truth. May it become a place where all are welcome at the table, not just tolerated in the pews. And may those who bleed while leading find not just healing, but resurrection.

  • In the Beginning: Sex, AIDS, Judgment and the Church of England, 1986-1991

    by Professor Helen King, an authorised preacher in Oxford Diocese and an elected lay member of General Synod

     

    As soon as I typed this title, I could see what is likely to happen. That allusion to Genesis is going to bring out the usual comments about how it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve; the assumption that Adam and Eve were “married”; and no consideration at all of the questions raised by scholars like Diarmaid MacCulloch about whether there was any sex at all in the mythical Garden of Eden. So be it. I want to look back at an earlier period of our history, well before Living in Love and Faith began in 2017, and to ask how far that history is still influencing our discussions.

    I’m writing in the aftermath of this July’s Synod’s near-unanimous decision to end the use of Issues in Human Sexuality and replace it with Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy in the process of vocational discernment. Issues was published in 1991, as a “Statement by the House of Bishops”. As the paper supporting Synod’s recent debate, GS 2413A, noted, Issues was never intended to be used in the process of discernment and ordination. It used some very strange terminology which seemed to date to the 1950s, with much of that period’s thinking. It included not only the assumption that someone bisexual must by definition be incapable of a faithful relationship, and advocacy of conversion therapy, but even the hope that in time homosexuality could cease to exist, if science could “eliminate that orientation in future generations by genetic engineering” (paragraph 4.4). And now this “Statement” has not only been recognised as misguided and toxic but has also been removed from the role it had come to play in the discipline of Church life.

    But before we celebrate, let’s remember that there’s an influential booklet that’s even older than Issues: Sexuality and the Church, aka The Higton Report, published in 1987. My copy last came to the top of the pile of books on my desk back in 2017, when I wrote this. Where Issues was a “Statement”, Sexuality and the Church looks somehow more formal; its subtitle is A Report to General Synod and, as it bears the embargo stamp which was used in those days when documents were sent out to Synod members (embargoed until 29 October 1987, so two weeks before Synod met) it looks like an official part of the Synod paperwork. Looking back, I find this confusing. It’s not an official Synod document, unlike Issues which carried a GS identifier (GS Misc. 382). The Higton Report was printed not by Church House but by “Action for Biblical Witness to Our Nation”, a charity run by Tony Higton and his wife. I can’t remember, thinking back, whether it came with other Synod mailings or arrived separately; perhaps the latter. But there’s some boundary-blurring going on in the way the booklet is presented.

    I want to reflect on my reading of the document when it was published, when as a Synod member I made some notes in the (very tiny!) margins, but also to look at it from my perspective now. Some of it seems very much of its time, but there is much that is still being repeated or – more dangerously – lies behind what is actually being said out loud.

    Synod and sex in 1986-87

    So let’s backtrack to 1987, when I was on Synod as one of the five youngest members. Who was I, in 1987? I was a sexually inexperienced straight cis-woman who had recently completed a PhD on ancient medicine. Despite my research interests, I initially found Synod’s apparent obsession with sex, with who is doing what with whom, somewhat alarming. I had spoken in a debate in November 1986, when I successfully had “virginity” replaced by “pre-marital chastity” in a motion around Victoria Gillick’s campaign to prevent doctors prescribing contraception to under-16s without parental consent. My rationale here was that “virginity” was a loaded word, rather too technical; my research had made me aware of the complex cultural history of what counts as “virginity”, and of the concept of “technical virginity” when someone has avoided penis-in-vagina sex but has enthusiastically experienced pretty well every other option that exists. It was because of this that I preferred the term “chastity”, focusing on an attitude rather than a (disputed) female body part. Clearly, I wasn’t afraid of standing up in debates of this kind.

    Tony Higton’s Private Member’s Motion became available for signatures at the July 1987 Synod. Did I sign it? I don’t remember. It’s perfectly possible that I did, because I would have been interested in such a debate. As Higton tells us proudly in the Introduction to Sexuality and the Church, “168 members signed it during the four days of the Synod, more than for any other Private Member’s Motion, which means it took priority for debate at the next Synod”. The Report says it is “background material” to the imminent debate, which could be a deliberate misrepresentation, presenting it as an official document which formed part of the PMM. While these days we are urged to write such supporting documents with a maximum of four pages, this ran to 79 pages. I’d add that the label “Report” is misleading, as it wasn’t really a “report”, but a collection of essays by an all-male line-up:  Higton, David Holloway (on Synod’s Standing Committee at the time), Gordon Wenham and David Wright, with a reprinted piece by two psychologists, John Green and David Miller.

    The Higton Report is clearly out to shock its gentle synodical readers and have them clutching their pearls. In the first essay in the booklet, Higton tells us of a visit to the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) office at St Botolph’s Church in London where, among other things, he found leaflets describing various sexual practices and how best to prevent AIDS while doing them; he calls these sexual practices  “homosexual acts” but those he names here have nothing intrinsically homosexual about them. I’d never even heard of some of them before; whoever would have thought Synod debates could be a source of my sex education? Higton’s assumption seems to be that heterosexuals have access to a far more limited sexual menu, as well as having far less sex; he positively luxuriates in detailing how much sex per hour can be had in “the baths”. Today, we still hear claims about “the homosexual lifestyle” which are shorthand for assumptions about inevitable promiscuity, which are somehow supposed to be absent from “the heterosexual lifestyle”. Here and elsewhere, Higton’s statistical claims are, frankly, a mess; when he discusses rising abortion rates in young girls he can only see this as evidence of promiscuity among (heterosexual!) teenagers, rather than considering that some of these pregnancies may have been the result of girls being exploited by much older men. He really doesn’t get the relationship between power and sex.

    In its original wording, Higton’s PMM began by asking Synod to reaffirm “that sexual intercourse should take place only between a man and woman who are married to each other” (interestingly, the other Canon B30 phrase, “for life”, didn’t feature because this was all about sex, not about marriage). The motion condemned “fornication, adultery and homosexual acts” as “sinful in all circumstances”. This assumed that everyone understood the term “fornication” to mean the same thing, which it doesn’t. The motion was passed in an amended version, in which the fornication – still undefined – and adultery occupied one clause, with a separate clause using the more specific phrase “homosexual genital acts [my italics]”, which incidentally would mean that at least one of the “homosexual acts” named by Higton would be entirely blameless, no genitals being involved.

    The original PMM also asked Synod to affirm that “Christian leaders are called to be exemplars in all spheres of morality, including sexual morality as a condition of being appointed to and remaining in office”. That is a precursor of the wording of Issues. And that may have been the main intention; to drive out any ordained men (remember this was pre-ordination of women) who were homosexual. During Higton’s speech in the November 1987 debate, this was certainly his main focus. However, Higton’s PMM was amended to “all [my italics] Christians are called to be exemplary in all spheres of morality, including sexual morality, and that holiness of life is particularly required of Christian leaders.”

    Throughout the Report there’s a not-entirely-convincing attempt to do the “hate the sin, love the sinner” thing. The original wording of the PMM ended with a call for “Christlike compassion to those who have fallen into sexual sin” but also for “the ministry of healing to all who suffer physically or emotionally as a result of such sin”. I assume we are talking “conversion therapy” there; but it didn’t make it to the motion as passed.

    Sex in the time of AIDS

     As Higton notes in his section on visiting the LGCM office, the Terrence Higgins Trust was sending mailings to Synod about AIDS, and it’s AIDS which is clearly one of the main drivers of the PMM. Its first mention is on page 4 of the Report. While accepting that it could be spread by any form of sex, Higton claimed it is spread “primarily by sexual promiscuity”. I noted in the margin of my copy, “So far.” He insists (again) that “homosexuals tend to be more promiscuous than heterosexuals”. David Holloway’s chapter goes further and blames the spread of AIDS on the Church’s failure to speak out on homosexuality.  Demonstrating a dangerous ignorance he writes that, except for “a very small number of cases”, he does not think mother to child transmission, nor “contaminated blood”, are relevant. I wrote in the margin, “these 2 points [church silence/AIDS cases increasing] are not related.” 

    And here we come to another aspect of how my life in 1987 intersected with these debates. As someone with an interest in the history of medicine, I had been following the emergence of HIV/AIDS since 1981 and I clearly remember a friend who had just returned from the USA telling me about the news stories that were emerging there in the earliest days. But in 1987, I was also undergoing tests for a familial blood condition, and at the time of the Higton debate I was seeing some of the panic at first hand. During tests at St Thomas’s Hospital, some of my blood was spilled and the staff went into the sort of official protective drill that leaves the patient terrified. While Higton’s “primarily” may have been accurate at the time, I thought it was still unhelpful to make out that sex was the problem when there were so many other possibilities.

    Memory is a funny thing. I knew that Synod had also debated a report (GS 795) from the Board for Social Responsibility on AIDS; indeed, I remember speaking in that debate, from my experience of my own blood condition, reflecting on the unhelpful emerging terminology of the “innocent” victim. Another speaker, Dr Jim Somervell, talked about being a surgeon with the risk of pricking oneself on equipment during an operation. But until this week, I hadn’t remembered that this was on the day before the Higton debate (yes, November 1987’s Synod was quite the experience). With AIDS and the Higton Report featuring on consecutive days, the spectre of the first of these very clearly hung over the second. How could it not?

    How far can you go?

     The question of what counts as “sex” is something on which I’ve written before, so I won’t go into graphic details here. But in the margin of my copy of the Higton Report, responding to Holloway’s chapter’s characterisation of “the Biblical tradition” being that “full sexual relationships are exclusively for heterosexual marriage”, I wrote “does this imply ‘partial sexual relationships’ are OK?” I was reminded of this last week when reading an account of the trial for rape and sexual assault of Chris Brain of the now infamous, but once thought to be missionally cutting edge, Nine O’Clock Service, where his “open relationship” with his wife meant that everything other than “full sex” – those words again – was considered fine; at least, by him.

    Looking back on this now, I am again struck by our doomed attempts to divide physical pleasure into neat categories of what is acceptable and what is not, carrying on the proud tradition of the medieval penitentials. Even the heterosexual/bisexual/homosexual division doesn’t work for everyone. From the “How far can we go?” questions which I remember from church youth clubs, to supposedly adult relationships, we seem incapable of getting away from these imagined categories and lists. Full/not full… Acceptable/going too far… Can a kiss be just a kiss? How long should a hug last? As if these things can easily be quantified! Assumptions about these categories also hover behind the convenient fiction that civil partnerships don’t involve “sex” and so are OK where civil marriages are not. Our attempts to construct classifications mean that we miss the big picture of what relationships are about: equality, consent, fidelity, commitment.

    The wrath of God?

     So where does this lead us? Of course, the title of this blog post is misleading because 1986 and the debate stimulated by Victoria Gillick’s campaigning, followed closely by the AIDS and Higton debates, and then Issues, were not ‘the’ beginning; Christian churches had been failing to come to terms with human sexuality for a long time. But something was happening in those five years. In the early days of AIDS, with the level of fear matched with the level of ignorance, the Church of England’s statements of the 1950s and 1960s, when “the Church was in many ways ahead of much of the wider society”[1] in supporting decriminalisation of homosexuality, were forgotten. Led by the evangelical wing of the Church, the general panic about HIV/AIDS was used not only to support the view that homosexual promiscuity was the underlying cause of the pandemic, but that HIV/AIDS was God’s judgement, sent to punish gay men.

    Anthony Petro, author of After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (2015), noted that the conservative right supported the “wrath of God” approach to HIV/AIDS because they were already convinced that the 1960s had led to “an epidemic of sexual immorality”. He observes that it was in the mid-1980s – the era of Gillick/Higton – that mainstream Christian writers in national USA magazines like Christian Century and Christianity Today called for attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis. That’s not to say that all Christians thought the disease was the result of “the wrath of God”: responses differed. But research has shown that, in some quarters, the idea persists that HIV/AIDS is not the result of people’s behaviour but is God’s judgement on homosexuals; as, for example, in a 2011 study of a Christian university in Nigeria.[2]

    I suspect that these ideas of judgement continue to lie beneath some people’s approaches to Living in Love and Faith today. HIV/AIDS continues to feed into the language of homophobia. Staying with Nigeria, in 2021 the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Henry Ndukuba, described homosexuality as a “deadly ‘virus’” or as “a Yeast that should be urgently and radically expunged and excised lest it affects the whole dough”. The language of the virus cannot avoid evoking HIV/AIDS. The Nigerian Anglican Church is of course part of GAFCON, but Archbishop Justin Welby wrote to criticise the language used by Ndukuba. And it was the same Archbishop Ndukuba who was predictably quick to condemn the Church in Wales for appointing Cherry Vann as their new Archbishop, calling on church members “to denounce, reject, condemn and expel the rebels in our midst”.

    I believe that we should recognise how the debates of the past, with the language of disease, surgical excision and judgement, continue beneath the surface even today. We can ask for “more theology” as much as we like, but there is far more going on here than simply theology, and it needs to be named.

     

     

    Notes

    [1] Mark Chapman, ‘Living in Love and Faith: The Failure of History’ in Theo Hobson and John Inge (eds), Created for Love (2025), p.85.

    [2] Surveys such as this, carried out in a Christian university in Nigeria in 2011, try to break down these views by the sex, age and educational level of the respondents.

  • Sexuality Issues and the Church’s Theology Problem

    by Savitri (Savi) Hensman. She has been an activist for decades for LGBT+ and wider inclusion in churches and society, at times holding leadership roles in key organisations. She has also written extensively on such matters, including newspaper articles and the book Sexuality, Struggle and Saintliness: Same-Sex Love and the Church, Ekklesia, 2015. She is a British Sri Lankan lesbian.

    Signing up to Issues in Human Sexuality, an outdated 1991 House of Bishops statement, will no longer be required of everyone seeking ordination in the Church of England, General Synod has decided. This document had long been used to block people in committed, physically intimate same-sex partnerships from being Church of England ministers or to force them into secrecy.

    It is an important, if modest, step forward, as this has been replaced by Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy, which is at best ambiguous and still leaves many lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI)+ Christians at risk of having their vocations stalled. Its many provisions include: “The clergy should set an example of integrity in relationships, and faithfulness in marriage. Marital infidelity is regarded as ‘unbecoming or inappropriate conduct’ for the purposes of the Clergy Discipline Measure. The House of Bishops’ Marriage: A Teaching Document (1999) clearly affirms, ‘Sexual intercourse, as an expression of faithful intimacy, properly belongs within marriage exclusively.’” While some same-gender couples may regard themselves as married, especially if their relationship has been legally marked or religiously celebrated, not all would agree.

    Removing Issues from the discernment practice does at least move us from an apparent obsession with a single topic, and in the process removes assumptions which were confused, offensive or both; for instance that it is impossible to be bisexual and in a faithful monogamous relationship. And there are hopes that the withdrawal of Issues as a core document will remove an obstacle to becoming a more loving and welcoming church, though there is still a long way to go.

    The question remains of why a booklet meant to encourage study and discussion and (in its own words) “which we do not pretend to be the last word on the subject” should have been given this central role in the Church’s life for a third of a century. One may also ask why, when on various sexuality-related and other issues clergy are allowed to be guided by conscience, this remains a sticking point. The answers may shed light on weaknesses not only in Church attitudes to sexuality, gender and diversity but also in theological approaches which underpin practice more broadly, including Christian witness and pastoral care at times of crisis.

    The puzzling persistence of Issues as a central text

    Why was Issues given such a central role? Clearly not because it reflected cutting-edge theology. What might be described as modern Christian thinking on sexuality – though largely rooted in the Bible and tradition – dates back at least to 1914.[1] Since then, a huge volume of theological books and articles which might be classified as affirming have been published. Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Reformed, from multiple continents: the list keeps growing. Even if we only include documents produced or commissioned by official church bodies or written by bishops, other senior denominational figures or professors, a strong case has long been made for allowing freedom of conscience to those who think it right to celebrate committed, self-giving love.

    Indeed, in the two decades before Issues, three official C of E working party reports had been produced, all of which were undecided or argued that same-sex partnerships were not always wrong. These were not however acted on or, in some cases, even released publicly. And just a few years after Issues, the former chair of the drafting group, ex-Bishop of Salisbury John Austin Baker, a distinguished theologian, publicly changed his mind. In Homosexuality and Christian Ethics, a lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1997 which was subsequently published, he wrote:

    “Both heterosexual and homosexual partners can say that the bonding they have experienced, the joy in physical intimacy and the special value each attaches to the other, have been powerful factors in helping them to become better people. The fruit of the Spirit has grown in that soil; they have come in some degree nearer to Christlikeness. In short, through the sharing of sexual love they have been the grace of God to each other.”

    Priests in such relationships could show how a homosexual orientation could be used for good. Baker could not see “that married heterosexual clergy have the right to deny their homosexual brothers and sisters the potential spiritual blessing of a sexual relationship when they themselves enjoy that blessing.” The difference was emphasised between such partnerships, based on “self-denial and self-discipline for the sake of the other,” and contemporary patterns in which people moved from one relationship to another never finding what they sought, with magazines, films and TV portraying sex as merely for fun.

    Yet though Issues in Human Sexuality had a limited original purpose, was disavowed by one of its key creators and became swiftly outdated, it was given a key place in the process of deciding who would be ordained. I do not pretend to be objective nor to be able to state with certainty the underlying reasons. But I will share some suggestions; and concerns which may arise, as Britain and the wider world face intense challenges.

    Love, mercy, justice and Church of England theology

    The debate on sexuality in churches over the past half-century or so has sometimes been presented as a clash between Christianity as long understood and modern thought, in which the church should either stand firm or embrace progress, depending on one’s perspective. Yet those of us with very different positions are influenced by various strands of contemporary culture as well as Scripture and tradition, whether or not we recognise this – and we are not only affected by culture, but help to shape it.

    I believe that the Holy Spirit can be at work among people of all faiths and none; and that discerning and celebrating this, and working with other people of goodwill for humanity, are important tasks for Christians today. But it should also be recognised that, historically, many were led by faith to work alongside their neighbours for greater LGBT+ and wider equality in society. Meanwhile aspects of wider culture have sometimes undermined, rather than fuelled, the quest for inclusion.

    One of these is the tendency to treat some types of people as mattering less, though everyone is equally made in the Divine image and invited to citizenship of God’s realm on earth. The New Testament indicates that, from the earliest days, the tendency to lord it over others, or align with those of higher status and power, and temptations to violence or exclusion, have been problems among Christ’s followers. This intensified as churches sought, or aligned with, worldly empires. The C of E’s wealth and closeness to the British state, while bringing positive aspects in terms of cultural receptivity and social responsibility, have also made it harder to see through – and resist – exploitation and oppression of various kinds alongside subtler kinds of inequity.

    Despite various false trails and dead ends, the mid-twentieth century brought major advances in worldwide recognition of the value of universal human rights, international law governing armed conflict, democracy and freedom. This was inconsistently applied and often thwarted; yet across continents, there was a mood of hope and a drive towards equity, including on grounds of gender, race and sexuality. This was both encouraged by, and fed into, theology. There was a rediscovery of the radical nature of the Gospel and aspects of ancient Christianity.

    This influenced the C of E in important ways. Yet even senior figures who favoured inclusion were often hesitant, partly because of powerful opposition. Many failed to grasp that, important though it was to be sensitive to those who felt unsettled by change to hierarchies based on identity, thwarting someone’s calling on that basis was even more serious. Forward-thinking leaders may also have assumed that the climate would long remain favourable to greater inclusivity, hence a sometimes-glacial pace of change would do no great harm, especially since women, minorities and working class people were used to being marginalised. But that was not to be.

    Rapid economic, technological and social change followed, bringing huge wealth to some but fragmentation and uncertainty to many others. In England, there was a backlash against advances in equality, in part orchestrated by prime minister Margaret Thatcher, as people’s feelings of insecurity and hunger for belonging were channelled in unhealthy ways, though there was also mutual care and solidarity. Sections of the media also used the HIV/AIDS epidemic to stoke prejudice. “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay,” Thatcher declared in October 1987, in the lead-up to negative policy and legal change. This backward shift was reflected in the C of E, including the infamous “Higton Debate” at General Synod in the following month. More “conservative” leadership had an impact at home and beyond (though of course religious and political conservatism, or indeed anti-inclusive radicalism, do not always go together).

    The gap between academic theology and materials aimed at a wider audience – often simplistic in approach to the Bible as well as non-affirming – was growing. Those passionately opposed to greater inclusivity were largely better-organised, more determined and stronger on communication. Some managed to portray themselves as championing non-Western Anglicans, despite an important and growing body of work from Christians of global majority heritage making the case for greater inclusion. Things became markedly worse at, and after, the 1998 Lambeth Conference, especially as some C of E leaders embraced a theology of “unity” at home and abroad which required repeated concessions to those who threatened schism if inclusivity was taken too far.

    The tendency to intellectual conformity, or treating specific views on sexuality and gender identity like a test of orthodoxy, could be found among some affirming Christians too, making dialogue harder still. Even worse, some appear to argue that, because the law now allows same-gender couples to marry and this is socially acceptable, a church closely aligned to the state should do likewise, as if it were right to endorse marginalisation and even criminalisation of minorities if and when the government of the day held that stance.

    Nevertheless, despite church politics and a national swing towards the far right and fear of the “other,” advances continued towards respect for diversity on various fronts. However, some C of E members have absorbed a worrying view of biblical faithfulness, in which passages can be plucked out of historical and theological context and an interpretation imposed which is meant to go unquestioned. In addition, self-giving intimacy by life partners may be spoken of dismissively as a kind of indulgence, rather than, at best, a call to embrace the discipline as well as joy of love and die to the old self trapped in selfishness or conformity to social pressure, instead growing in Christlikeness.

    This is not to say that everyone who is non-affirming refuses to address key issues thoughtfully. But the approaches most widely popularised by religious leaders and media tend to lack nuance or recognition of the possibility of being wrong. This is an abandonment of a rich heritage in Anglican and wider church circles in which the interplay of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience help Christians to discern what love requires in various settings. Jesus’ own teaching and example, as portrayed in the Gospels (e.g. Matthew 7.12-20, 12.1-14, Mark 12.28-34) are too often disregarded. So is the work of some of the most influential early Christians in drawing on their heritage of faith with the aid of faith, rather than turning fossilised fragments into weapons or being trapped as in amber.

    Amidst an upsurge in authoritarianism and scapegoating, this is dangerous. With welcome exceptions, inclusive Anglicans communicate largely with one another or a theologically well-educated few.

    Moving forward amidst uncertainty

    The removal of Issues as a key document, amidst other advances (even if patchy and painfully slow at times), opens up opportunities to move forward further, which will require sustained efforts at local, regional and national level. Some people may understandably focus their efforts on inclusion solely on this challenge.

    Yet the wider task is also important: that of reviving popular awareness of aspects of Christian history and theological developments which although largely forgotten do not deserve to be. Bridging the gaps among those with different kinds of knowledge, based on scholarship, experience, prayerful reflection and dialogue, is an important task amidst competing social pressures, in a troubled world.

    Involving large numbers of people connected with this Church, in revisiting how love, mercy and justice-seeking can be put into practice now, in LGBT+ inclusion and beyond, is challenging yet may be vital. Alongside attentiveness to immediate concerns, an ecumenical and international outlook may assist us here.

     

     

    [1] This was when Pavel Florensky wrote The Pillar and Ground of the Truth.

  • No First Reading – Four Circumcisions Instead

    by Michael Hampson, a published author devoting his early retirement from parish ministry to producing practical resources for busy clergy and lay-led congregations, beginning with the weekly lectionary resource Sunday Scriptures for Reading Aloud, ssra.uk

    Yesterday morning at church, we had four circumcisions. Plus a weird growth on a ligament. This all happened where the first reading should have been.

    It didn’t matter who was there. Young families. First time visitors. People who had been coming for a month or two. Gen Z students who expect trigger warnings. Suddenly, without warning, there it was: four circumcisions and a weird growth on a ligament. There was all manner of weird physiological stuff following on from the four circumcisions, actually. In an ordinary church, on an ordinary Sunday morning.

    They weren’t actual circumcisions, obviously. Just a polite elderly reader at the lectern who might as well have gone to the lectern and said ‘penis’, ‘foreskin’, and ‘ritual genital mutilation’. Four times. With no context and without warning. Why do we put up with this?

    I have spent so long in the SSRA lectionary and translation (Sunday Scriptures for Reading Aloud, ssra.uk) that I have forgotten how simply dreadful, and unfit for purpose, are the Common Worship (CW) lectionary, and the regular translations (in this case NRSV), compared to the enormous (and almost universally untapped) potential that the three-year Sunday lectionary actually holds.

    A small percentage of churchgoers may be so used to the word ‘circumcised’ that they only heard ‘Hebrew as opposed to Gentile’ when they heard it yesterday; or perhaps 75% of them are so bored by the standard of the public reading of scripture in their church that they can be relied upon not to be listening at all. But it’s no excuse. This will not do. We should not be using this word in public worship any more than we should be using the words penis, foreskin, or ritual genital mutilation in regular Sunday worship. There is no excuse. SSRA is not the first scripture translation to euphemise this word; and the precedent of avoiding passages that address the first-century Christian circumcision controversy directly in contemporary lectionaries has already been set (you will not find any version of the Sunday three-year cycle that includes Saint Paul’s frustrated wish that circumcision enthusiasts recircumcise themselves and accidentally castrate themselves in the process [Galatians 5.12]). The question of whether the ritual surgical removal of the foreskin from the penis is necessary for Christian salvation is not one that was worrying people in the pews of the average Church of England church yesterday morning; neither does the unnecessary surgical removal of the foreskin from the penis serve effectively, for most contemporary listeners, as a touchingly beautiful metaphor for salvation in Christ. It is time to select a different passage of scripture for the lectionary – there are only so many slots available – or find a different way of translating this one. As for preaching about the first-century controversy around keeping the Mosaic law: the controversy was also expressed around the food laws, also well-documented in the lectionary, and these are surely a more appropriate example for use on a Sunday morning. In 2025, you need to prepare well when approaching the circumcision texts even for a small bible study session; you don’t know what personal issues people bring, what surgical history or personal trauma surrounds the specific issue, that you just don’t know about – and why is the penis suddenly a legitimate subject for discussion anyway, and can we move on quickly now please, before I call the safeguarding officer. Seriously.

    If you want to remind yourself just how dreadful yesterday’s reading was, it’s here. I still can’t easily parse verse 15, ending in ‘it’, or verse 17 (what substance?). I know I could if I tried, but this was supposed to be a text read aloud from the lectern to a mixed congregation, not a written comprehension exercise for a year 11 class.

    Circumcision made a brief appearance three weeks ago, when the original catholic version of the three-year lectionary (Lectionary for Mass, LFM) hinted at Saint Paul’s frustration, by saying that circumcision is irrelevant (Gal 6.14-18). Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), and the CW lectionary based on RCL, demanded the whole explicit chapter. SSRA opted to start Colossians a week early instead.

    This juggling of epistles is not unusual. RCL/CW epistle and Old Testament readings are quite typically two or three times the length of the equivalent LFM readings. As a consequence, the RCL/CW epistle is often a week or two out of sync with the LFM epistle. And as another consequence – an unintended consequence – almost all RCL/CW churches choose to have only two readings instead of three. The RCL editors had hoped that, by making the readings longer, they would ensure that people heard more scripture; the actual consequence is that people in RCL/CW churches have a much poorer diet of scripture than they would have had otherwise. SSRA corrects that error, with a classically Anglican approach, taking the best of the catholic original and the best of the RCL (protestant) adaptations – far too many details to list here – but click through the last two or three weeks (start at https://ssra.uk/?20250727) and you find readings from Colossians, that instead of sounding culturally alien and incomprehensible (or even offensive or triggering), are as attractive and accessible to readers and hearers alike as any that you will find anywhere in scripture. It’s just a case of paying attention to the context.

    “Where other translations are offered primarily as study texts, or to be read alone at home, the SSRA translation is offered specifically for reading aloud… [The hearer should be] drawn in by the reading – without needing a printed text – even on first hearing. …aims to deliver the full meaning of each passage in language which is clear, timeless, dignified, and, where appropriate, even poetic.”

    And the original listed aims: “encourages more confident participation in the public reading of scripture by more readers; encourages a greater appreciation of the public reading of scripture by more hearers; offers all three readings, to establish familiarity with more than 400 key passages of scripture across a three-year cycle, for an investment of just five minutes of the Sunday gathering each week; compatible with thousands of lectionary-based resources in print and online for sermons, prayers, children’s work and more; a complete Sunday lectionary solution for busy clergy and lay-led congregations; ideal for ordinary local churches on ordinary Sunday mornings; takes all the hard work out of finding, choosing, printing and distributing the Sunday morning scripture readings.”

    There has been a nagging condemnation of SSRA’s inclusive language policy on the Church Times letters page for the last few weeks, specifically the way SSRA avoids calling the Holy Spirit ‘he’. A writer this week asserts that while the Holy Spirit is indeed not male, unless we continue to refer to the Holy Spirit as ‘he’, we all risk committing the heresy of representing the Holy Spirit as a mere impersonal force, so apparently the pronoun ‘he’ for the Holy Spirit must remain in consistent use regardless. I stand corrected! But there will always be a reason not to change. There will always be a reason to do nothing, a reason to turn down the invitation to the banquet, a reason to pass by on the other side, a reason to say that doing nothing is somehow safer, wiser, more sensible, less trouble. But sometimes, the time has come to do something; the time has come to make things better. The church is in a mess in so many ways. I just thought: let’s at least get the bible readings sorted out. I had the right mix, at the right time, of pastoral experience, technical skills, opportunity, motivation, and academic background (psychology, philosophy, linguistics, theology), and here’s the result. Click, share, use.

    The three-year print editions of SSRA were released this spring. The Home Paperback edition is already in its third printing. All three editions are now available on Amazon, but it is cheaper to buy direct at ssra.uk/shop. You can see SSRA in use at Llandaff Cathedral here: https://www.youtube.com/live/gPHxNLZqG0k?t=1615s

     

     

  • Jagged Edges: Where Safeguarding Overlaps with the Trust Deficit

    by Professor Helen King, an authorised preacher in Oxford Diocese and an elected lay member of General Synod

    (picture credit: BBC/Yourkevich)

    ‘Trust’ is currently one of Synod’s key words. As part of the formal agenda, we’ve recently had a presentation and a report on why we don’t trust each other. At the July 2025 General Synod the papers included a further one on the progress of this work, which includes developing “trust and trustworthiness repair strategies”. That paper told us that the Trust Task Group, working with a reference group and a theologian (thus avoiding from the outset the question ‘where’s the theology for this’?), has decided to cancel one of its surveys, originally planned to produce some quantitative data, simply because it’s so blindingly obvious what the results will be.

    From what I’ve been reading recently, I wonder how far this trust deficit is related to the series of safeguarding disasters with which we have to live: from IICSA to Smyth to Soul Survivor to the Nine O’Clock Service with, along the way, the prime-time TV airing of The Sixth Commandment bringing to a far wider audience what happened in Stow and Maid’s Moreton. One of the many items on the agenda at the July General Synod this year was the Final Drafting and Final Approval (the capital letters are there because this is a piece of legislation) of the Redress Scheme for victims and survivors of church abuse. The Redress Scheme is person-centred and trauma-informed; it is not an adversarial process, because repeatedly having to tell one’s story is retraumatising. It now has to go through Parliament before an opening date can be announced, and information and updates can be already seen on the House of Survivors site.

    As one of the supporting documents for the Redress Scheme sent to Synod notes, “The Scheme’s development has been overseen by a project board which included representation from victims and survivors, and which has heard from a broader group of voices on a survivor working group.” Survivors have been involved at every stage.

    In another arena, a friend of mine, Maff Potts, set up the Camerados social movement, which has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. The movement is all about the importance of ‘People and Purpose’ and Maff has now published a book telling stories from that first decade. Camerados reverses the usual service or charity model of helping others, and instead recommends “Ask someone who is struggling to help you”. This is a powerful model, and I think the involvement of survivors in designing the Redress Scheme can be seen in these terms.It’s now very clear that survivors can and do help everyone else.

    Here, I want to introduce a resource from another group of survivors; a resource which needs to be better known and which has made me think about trust. Produced in the Newcastle Diocese, this is Jagged Edges: A New Stations of the Cross. I was thinking about Jagged Edges in the Redress debate last week, when Revd Jenny Bridgman mentioned Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, a classic on how trauma goes on affecting the body and the brain. She suggested that the body of the Church also keeps the score; that our responses are continuing to be affected by what IICSA and subsequent reports of abuse have told us about ourselves. Even those of us who are not victims and survivors of church abuse – and in every debate on the subject at Synod there seem to be more speakers saying that they too have been through this – are in some way traumatised by what we now know. Is that affecting our capacity to trust each other in other areas of church life?

    Although it has the full support of the Bishop of Newcastle, Jagged Edges is not a clergy-led project. It was created by survivors David Creese, Peter Locke and Sarah Troughton and combines David’s poetry, Sarah’s linocut prints and Peter’s music. All the resources are available on one website, here, including audio of the music and the poems and a video of a presentation given by the contributors and their editor, Maggi Creese, in the Moral Injury Webinar Series hosted by the International Centre for Moral Injury at Durham University. Like an earlier Newcastle Diocese creative project on abuse, “If I told you, what would you do?”, this is all free to download and use.

    As that Durham University Centre explains, this is about trust: “Moral Injury involves a profound sense of broken trust in ourselves, our leaders, governments and institutions to act in just and morally ‘good’ ways”. Moral injury not only feeds into the current Synod debates on trust, but also underlies the Private Member’s Motion considered in July about whether the House of Bishops should “urgently submit itself to an independent culture and governance review” (for the record, we did not vote on this but decided instead to move to Next Business).

    The focus of Jagged Edges is on repairing relationships in the Church; while embracing anger and pain in the “wounded heart” of the Church, the tone is generous. The resources are best used slowly, and absorbed gradually, as – with this reader at least – they connect viscerally. There are reflections included, which can be used by an individual reader or in a group, The exploration of abuse through the experience of Jesus draws on Michael Trainor’s 2014 book The Body of Jesus and Sexual Abuse. Even the process of lino printing replicates abuse: cutting into the sheet, covering it with ink – “shame, guilt and self-condemnation” – hiding it under a sheet or paper then applying pressure to reveal the image. Traumatic events affect memory; details are clear, but the narrative order breaks down. That is just as true of the differences between the gospel accounts of the days leading up to the Cross.

    While the poems start from and explore the original Greek of the descriptions of the events leading up to the Passion of Christ, the resources go up to the Resurrection with an image of Jesus and Peter healing their relationship on the beach as they begin to repair broken trust. As Jagged Edges says, “It is not a matter of finding the right way to say ‘sorry’ so that we can all ‘move on’. It is about discerning what it would mean to do as Jesus instructs Peter when he says ‘Feed my sheep’.”

    When I was working with a spiritual director, she advised me to keep on asking the question, “Where are you being fed?” We need to be fed if we are to feed others. As we not only listen to survivors, but learn from their wisdom, is this the re-set we need in the trust debate?

    The exhibition of the Jagged Edges material will be at Newcastle Cathedral from 1 October.

  • Liturgical Business? Canon B2, the Calendar, and Prayers of Love and Faith

    Sammi Tooze is a member of General Synod, a member of the Liturgical Commission, and the diocesan contact for Together in York Diocese

    When General Synod meets later this week, we find ourselves dipping into the canonical waters of Liturgical Business. This will be the first piece of formal Liturgical Business many of us will have participated in, as it’s the first occasion this Quinquennium that it’s found itself on our agenda. The proposal before Synod will be to add two entries to our Common Worship Calendar: a Festival of God the Creator and a Commemoration of the Twenty-One Martyrs of Libya.

    But why the Calendar, and why only two additions? One of the treasures of our Calendar is the framework it offers us for spiritual journeying, a pilgrimage of heart and mind through the spiral of the liturgical year. As we follow the cycle, we encounter God and God’s story, and are changed by it. In the Calendar, we also encounter the stories of saints – days intentionally set aside to remember holy people who have gone before us in faith. On their appointed days, we not only recall their names but reflect on how their journey of faith, in all its joys and challenges and messiness, inspires and shapes our own lived-faith today.

    So who decides which holy people appear in our Calendar? Roughly every ten years, the House of Bishops requests that the Liturgical Commission reviews and revises the Calendar. It is widely recognised that at this point in time, the Calendar is ready for revision, in part to review gender and racial balance, but also to discern any people who have departed this life long enough to now be considered. In order to be included in the Calendar, a person must have died at least 50 years previously – unless they are a martyr – which is why people like Florence Li Tim-Oi, Desmond Tutu and the late Queen are unable to be considered under the current rules. Having said that, the guidance issued in February 2025 under GS Misc 1409 reminds us of the flexibility we have with local commemorations, offering opportunity for each of us to integrate people such as these locally to enrich the spiritual lives of our communities.

    Back to July’s Synod. GS 2408 notes that

    The Commission resolved in May 2023 that … preparatory work is undertaken to enable a substantial revision of the Common Worship Calendar in the next synodical quinquennium

    and:

    Another part of this preparatory work for a more in-depth revision of the Calendar is the current ‘pilot’ item of liturgical business … This item will reintroduce Synod to the procedures of liturgical business after a period of ten years, which will be in itself a helpful learning exercise.

    Why is this a “learning exercise”? Because, ever since the Common Worship Calendar was created as an alternative to the Calendar in the Book of Common Prayer, any revision must be done as Liturgical Business under Canon B2. This Canon is used for any liturgical material created where an alternative provision already exists, and the current Synod has not been exposed to such a situation.

    And it’s this which is the key distinguishing point between what we will be doing with the revision of the Calendar, and the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF). In the case of the PLF, this is a new resource, created specifically because no alternative material exists. It therefore doesn’t need to go through a B2 process in the same way as the Calendar, simply because it is not being offered as an alternative to existing liturgical material. There simply aren’t existing worship materials to which the PLF are an ‘alternative’.

    In the early stages of developing the PLF, there were many canonical routes presented as options to either ‘authorise’, ‘commend’ or ‘approve’ the PLF material. It was concluded that the House of Bishops would commend the material under Canon B5, initially to be used within existing regular acts of worship. So, when the House of Bishops commended this material for use across the Church of England, this was a clear statement that they do not present us with a departure from Doctrine.

    The use of B5 rather than B2 is important, because under a B5 process there is no requirement for a two-thirds majority vote in the three Houses of Synod. To amend the Common Worship Calendar, B2 is needed, and so we need those majorities and therefore that full synodical process of Liturgical Business.

    Synod has voted for the PLF also to be used in ‘bespoke’ or ‘standalone’ services – in fact, the suggestion of bespoke services was made after the original LLF vote took place, at a point when Synod was of the understanding that this vote would enable the resources to be used in their entirety. One objection being raised is whether a bespoke service may ‘look’ more like a wedding. Would that make it be a departure from Doctrine, requiring a B2 process and thus a two-thirds majority vote in all three Houses? It is worth reminding ourselves of one key thing here. Neither the existing commended PLF resources, nor the proposed bespoke services, have any rubrics relating to these aesthetics – what people ought to wear, who to invite, how the church may be decorated, whether bells are rung or flowers held. This means that the suggestion that a bespoke service may ‘look’ different to a regular act of worship incorporating PLF is difficult to understand as a reasoned argument, as even in a regular act of worship a couple may invite friends to celebrate with them, and may choose to dress in a certain way. And, of course, the prayers themselves are just the same; the material for a bespoke service simply offers a structure by which the already commended material can be used. Theologically these blessings are the same; it’s just that one is pre-timetabled, and the other isn’t. In itself, a bespoke service does not suggest anything more of a departure from doctrine than does a regular service where the PLF are used.

    With this in mind, with the material already commended demonstrating that it is not a departure from Doctrine, we can be confident too that bespoke services will meet the same requirements. So, noting that they are not offering an alternative to an existing resource, we do not need to use precious synodical time and resource to put them through a Canon B2 process. Synod has voted for the PLF to be used in ‘bespoke’ services too, and they can continue to be offered under Canon B5 as commended material by the House of Bishops.

     

     

     

  • There’s Another Church Abuse Crisis That’s in Every Congregation, and Very Much Closer to Home

    by Sally Hope, a writer with a specialism in faith, feminism and domestic abuse. Sally is the creator of the Always Hopeful Programme, and her latest book No Visible Scars is a recovery journal for Christian women who have experienced domestic abuse

    “I don’t believe in God anymore” I angrily declared, two weeks after I’d left my husband.

    It was a lie. I’ve known God as a real, tangible presence since I was a small child. I remember feeling comforted by God at night when I was five years old and scared of the dark, and when I was a lonely young teenager away from my family for the first time. I had stories of answered prayer, of God’s intervention in my life. I could no more stop believing in God than I could stop believing that the sky is blue. The problem was, I hadn’t been aware of God’s presence lately, and while I believed God existed, I felt abandoned and angry. I didn’t want to believe in God.

    What I really meant was, “I believe in God, but I have lost faith in God.”

    Hanging on the wall of my lounge was a collage of family photographs, made for me by my sister. Nestled among the pictures of my husband and my children were words from Psalm 37, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” It was ironic that these words were woven through my nearest and dearest, because the only desire of my heart was quite simple: a happy, peaceful family. I had “delighted myself in the Lord”, but I did not have the happy family I desired. I was bitter. Looking around church, I saw happy normal family after happy normal family. I didn’t feel like I was asking for the earth. Why then, had God given my friends at church the only thing I really desired, but not me? Why had I been given a husband who would spend our 13-year marriage abusing me and my children?

    God, I had decided, was a God who makes promises, but does not keep them.

    My experience is not unique. Christians experience domestic abuse at the same, if not higher levels than the rest of society.[1] One in four of us will be abused by an intimate partner at some point in our adult lives. How many women are in your church? Try to picture those women. For every 20 women quietly sitting in your pews, five of them will be experiencing domestic abuse, mostly secretly, silently, feeling stigma and shame. Hiding it, like I did for thirteen years. Many of them will eventually walk away from their faith altogether as a result.

    I didn’t lose my faith. I don’t know why but I know it was certainly not because of anything I did. Over the next three or four years I experienced the God who shows up, and won’t go away no matter how much you rail and spew your anger. The God who leaves behind the ninety-nine to pursue the one. The God who loves relentlessly, outrageously, who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. In that time I questioned everything I had ever believed, my religion fell apart, but my God clung onto me as I rebuilt both my life, and my faith.

    Christian domestic abuse victims face unique challenges. In the majority of cases their faith and the abuse they experience are inextricably linked. Abusers will use spiritual abuse as a means of controlling their victims, making the victim feel as though a challenge to the abuser is a challenge to God. Abusers shoehorn themselves into God’s place in the lives of their victims, and often use biblical texts and Christian doctrines to justify their abuse. All victims of abuse find it difficult to leave an abuser but the added element of spiritual abuse, along with negative attitudes to divorce and the importance placed on two-parent families within Christian culture, can create another barrier for Christians. When we do leave, the way our faith has been weaponised against us invariably leads to a full-blown deconstruction of our beliefs, and if our abusers have managed to drive a wedge between us and God we can be resistant to God’s voice and tender care.

    As a Christian woman I found the strenuous journey of recovery lonely. I received excellent support from secular support agencies, found some levels of connection with other survivors in peer support groups, but always felt that none of them had the answers to the burning questions I was left with in relation to my faith: “Why did God allow it to happen to me?” “Is it okay for me to get divorced?” “Do I have to forgive my ex-husband? And if so, what if I can’t?” Worse, they saw my faith as part of the problem, not as part of the solution.

    Whilst secular support workers didn’t “get” my faith, my Christian peers didn’t “get” my experience of domestic abuse. I was told to repent of my own part in the abuse, urged to drop the charges against my husband, and made to feel less like an equal and valuable member of my church, and more like a project, a failure, and someone to be pitied, or worse: judged. I walked the path to recovery with Jesus by my side, but I longed to walk it with other Christian women who understood and connected with my pain.

    It’s now 12 years since I left my husband. My faith is stronger than it’s ever been, my relationship with God more loving and beautiful than I ever could have imagined. As I grew in strength I began to support other survivors of abuse; I volunteered at my local women’s refuge, and after a while I got a job there, running peer support groups for survivors both in the refuge and in the community. In the course of my professional life, I met other Christian survivors, listened to them ask the same questions I asked, saw them experience the damaging disconnect from God that I once felt, saw some of them leave their faith behind altogether and others struggle to rebuild, all the time deeply hurt and often broken all over again by the poor response from their churches.

    I do not know why God broke through my anger, hurt and broken-ness to help me rebuild my faith, when other victims don’t seem to experience that same divine healing. But I know that when I ask God, God’s reply is, “what are you doing now to bring my outrageous love to those women? Where are you in their journey of recovery?” I am grateful that God walked that journey with me but, more than anything, I wish other Christians had.

    So, I took the lessons I learned during my own recovery, along with my professional knowledge and experience of running support groups to create a peer support programme for Christian women. Never again should a Christian woman have to recover from domestic abuse on her own. My Always Hopeful Programme is now run online, via Zoom by Restored, a charity dedicated to supporting survivors of abuse and equipping churches to do the same. It’s also being run as a face-to-face peer support programme in a slowly growing number of churches in the U.K. Participants tell me it’s been a key part in their journey to wholeness. There is no substitute for face-to-face peer support and I would love it if every survivor was able to find an Always Hopeful Programme running in a church near them.

    I also realised, from my own experience working with survivors, that not everyone will find the courage to join a support group. There can be lots of reasons why women won’t join an Always Hopeful Programme, from fear or social anxiety to simple logistics of childcare or not being able to find a programme near to them. So, for those women who cannot attend an Always Hopeful Programme, I wrote No Visible Scars, which will be published on 17 July 2025. ‘No Visible Scars’ is an individual recovery guide for Christian women that seeks to help the reader work through those questions in order to “work out their own salvation” (Philippians 2:12) in the light of their experience of abuse.

    The Church has so much to offer to victims of abuse. It is often part of the problem but it could, and should, be part of the solution. We are called to care for the hurting, to defend the oppressed and to seek justice. Always Hopeful [2] and No Visible Scars are there to help the church accompany the women in every congregation who are victims of domestic abuse.

     

    Notes:

    [1] A 2018 study by Restored in partnership with the University of Leicester and Coventry University found that 25% of Churchgoers (across all denominations)  reported experiencing domestic abuse in their CURRENT relationship, and 42.2% reported experiencing at least one abusive behaviour in any intimate relationship (past of present) during their adult life. There have previously been studies by both the Evangelical Alliance and the Methodist Church that have found that rates of domestic abuse in churches is similar to that of the national average. Nationally 1 in 4 women will experience Domestic Abuse.

    [2] To run an Always Hopeful Programme at your church:
    online information here and     with free webinars at 12 noon, Monday 14 July [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/finding-hope-when-everything-seems-hopeless-tickets-1306878471689] or 7 pm Thursday 21 August [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/finding-hope-when-everything-seems-hopeless-tickets-1306883225909]

  • Alternative ‘Anglican Ordinations’ – A Crucial Question

    by Canon Dr Phil Groves, who was a CMS Mission partner and lecturer in theology at St Philip’s Kongwa in Tanzania. He served at the Anglican Communion Office for 10 years. He has attended two Lambeth Conferences, three Primates’ Meetings and four ACCs. He has a PhD on Partnership in the Anglican Communion. He is dyslexic and a member of the Church of England’s Neurodiversity Working Group.

    Andrew Atherstone’s account of the ‘ordination’ – more on those quotation marks later – of seven ‘missionary clergy’ as deacons by Bishop Martin Morrison of the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa leaves a crucial question unasked and unanswered.

    Andrew is impressed and excited by the event. These ‘seven deacons’, he says, ‘have launched a grand experiment, designed to stress-test a prototype pipeline’. We are told this is a ‘bold beginning’.

    There are many things we are not told. We don’t know anything about the seven, except that they have had extensive training and would not accept an ordination pathway through the Church of England. We don’t know where they are serving, or if they are paid or self-funding. We don’t know to whom they are responsible for safeguarding. The Church of England authorities were given one day’s notice. Only 150 were present – presumably to limit the danger of a leak.

    In contrast to the openness and publicity around the ordination season in the Church of England, this is all so cloak and dagger – why? No one was going to rush in and stop the event. No one would be arrested.

    However, the crucial question neither asked nor answered by Atherton is if all of them were men. And what is not said in his blog about gender is vital for the future of the movement.

    This is relevant to those quotation marks around the word ‘ordination’. We are told that ‘the service was entirely under the auspices of REACH SA’, but the Handbook of Procedures of REACH SA is very specific: deacons are not ordained – they are ‘made’. By ‘ordaining’ deacons Bishop Morrison has broken with the polity of his church. Deacons remain laity in REACH SA; they are ‘made’ not ‘ordained.’

    REACH SA is clear on this distinction because women as well as men can be ‘made’ deacons even though it is not permissible for them to lead worship, or preach in church services (unless all present are women). Women cannot be ordained in REACH SA.

    In the polity of REACH SA, full-time ‘lady-workers’ may become ‘lady deacons’, following lengthy training and discernment and as such they will be able to be ‘used (sic) to read lessons, lead the singing or assist in other ways during Church services.’ There is no requirement in the Handbook that men who want to be deacons are in full-time ministry.

    This is in stark contrast to lay men who may be used to lead services, preach, and, in exceptional circumstances, to conduct a Baptism service or a Holy Communion service. Get your heads around that: ‘lady deacons’ can only lead the singing, lay men can baptise and preside.

    Ordination is only for men as presbyters. As presbyters they are leaders in the church.

    REACH SA seeks to reassure us that the reasoning behind this ‘is not an issue of chauvinism or dismissiveness or even unfair discrimination but arises out of theological reflection on God’s order in His world and Paul’s instructions to Timothy (1 Timothy 2:11f).’ The readers of this blog are unlikely to be convinced. It is by the fruits that we know them, not by fine words, and the result is misogyny.

    The question that Andrew Atherstone seems to avoid asking or answering is whether this action is simply about objections to the changes under LLF, or whether it reflects a deeper desire for a church that also removes women from any form of leadership.

    I suspect that there is an internal agenda in play here. This is not just a step on the journey for a unified movement, but perhaps a statement of intent from a branch of that movement seeking to control the internal agenda of the Alliance. There are those who seem to want the emerging church to define gender roles on complementarian principles. REACH SA considers this a first order issue just as much as their opposition to equal marriage, and so must those supporting these ‘ordinations’.

    I can’t see how any deacons of REACH SA can be in full communion with any women priests and bishops even if they agree on equal marriage.

    This leads me to wonder where this leaves those who would have once described themselves as ‘open evangelicals’ who are open to women in leadership, but not to equal marriage. Are they being pushed to the side?

    I can’t see how this alliance can hold.