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Author: Helen King

  • Missing, Between Synods

    by Professor Helen King, lay preacher in the Diocese of Oxford, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender and Sexuality Group

    This is a funny old month. It started with what many members regarded as one of the worst Synods yet, and is ending in gloomy cold wet weather which makes those five very full days seem like a long time ago. So much at Synod was left unanswered, unresolved, and now here comes August – the month when the Church of England, along with other churches, seems to stop. In my parish, the choir has the month off, and the various groups take a pause from their activities. Sunday services remain otherwise unaffected, and we pray for those on their holidays, not always thinking of those who for whatever reason remain at home. At national level, too, it all stops: no more meetings of the assorted councils which run the Church of England until September.

    But maybe that’s not entirely the case; maybe the Archbishops’ Council meets, otherwise I am not sure how to understand the response from the Bishop of Stepney to a Question in July about the review published by the Independent Safeguarding Board just before it was dissolved – the Spindler report into the handling of the case of Mr X. She said that the outcome of a July meeting of the National Safeguarding Steering Group would be presented to the Archbishops’ Council (Q.108 here) and, since the Spindler report was expecting a response within 4 weeks, her response wouldn’t make much sense if the Archbishops’ Council won’t say anything until September. The most recent meeting of that NSSG listed online is dated 11 April 2023 (!) and I am not aware of any list of dates when the Archbishops’ Council meets or any record of what it does at its meetings.

    And that’s part of the feeling of ‘missing’. We don’t know who is meeting, we don’t know what they are discussing and we don’t know who makes the decisions. And yet here we are with – apparently – nothing happening.

    The contrast with the time at Synod couldn’t be greater. Synod feels frenzied, this July particularly so with both Living in Love and Faith and Safeguarding on the agenda, and with some days timetabled until 10 p.m. It’s all so intense: the two sessions of Questions, where various bodies of the C of E respond to questions sent in by Synod members, attracted a record number of questions – 237 – many of them, too, around those timetabled presentations on LLF and Safeguarding. The press release on the LLF presentation summarised it as ‘Synod members scrutinise work since February vote’ but I would hardly call listening to a presentation ‘scrutinising’. In answering one of the Questions on the LLF documents, the Bishop of Lichfield assured us that ‘we are working to bring draft guidance to the November meeting of the General Synod’ but then in the LLF presentation itself the Bishop of Guildford cast doubt on that timetable. So, even within the July Synod, it all depended on how you interpreted what was said.

    On the key topics of the July Synod, we kept hearing answers on the lines of ‘We don’t know but it may all be clear by Sunday’ or ‘We don’t know but we are working on it’. In fact on Sunday, the day of the Safeguarding presentation, the general atmosphere of mistrust came to a head. The presentation was due to have been by the members of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) but changed because the Board had just ceased to exist. The two members of that Board who were no longer able to present to us were in the public gallery and, after some convoluted attempts to find an appropriate standing order, were allowed to address us briefly. It remained unclear what had gone wrong and how it had been decided that the Board should cease to exist.

    And the confusion didn’t stop when we went home from Synod. In the days immediately afterwards, both Meg Munn and Maggie Atkinson published their own statements about what went wrong with the ISB. Then Archbishops’ Council met, and later on 20 July it was announced that Professor Alexis Jay, who had led IICSA, was going to come in to develop proposals for a fully independent safeguarding structure. Clearly, she hadn’t been approached the day before. Was this the plan all along? Who invited her to take this role?

    Thinking back to Synod, for me the low point was the attempt by Gavin Drake to bring to debate his motion asking for an independent inquiry into our Safeguarding structures. It failed, due to a requirement for a 75% majority to suspend the relevant standing order (SO 8 (1)). This was one of the many technical points which Synod members have to grasp. The standing order states that “Where a member in his or her private capacity tables a motion arising out of business specified in the agenda, the motion is to be subject to the time allowed in the agenda for the consideration of that business.” But the agenda had ‘timed business’ – business which has to start at the time specified – and this standing order meant that Gavin’s motion ran out of time. Many members of Synod were not in the debating chamber and so could not vote to suspend it and thus to allow his motion to be discussed, and there was no warning bell to bring them back in. And then Gavin resigned: a real loss to the House of Laity.

    As my fellow member for Oxford diocese, Mark Bennet, has commented, “The 75% rule is there for a reason, of course, but given the extraordinary circumstances, the instinct of so many members of Synod to deal with the issue rather than leaving it hanging had a great deal to commend it. There is now anger not addressed which will spill over into November and perhaps beyond.”

    And that’s the problem. Much is unresolved. Much remains unclear. We don’t meet again until November – a ‘bonus’ meeting, as usually we manage with two residential meetings, in February and July. Is the hope that all the upset, the confusion, the mistrust of July will have been forgotten by November? I somehow doubt it. And my own hope is that the many unanswered questions will be remembered rather than falling into the black hole of the month when everything stops in the Church of England.

  • Equality, ‘headship’ and authority: drawing the line in schools and churches

    by Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    It should go without saying that all schools in this country want to teach children that all people are equal and should have equal opportunity. And it is important that schools should do this, as young people may be picking up other messages in society, in their home lives and from religious leaders.

    A couple of weeks ago I was at a Church of England school giving a talk to a group of sixth formers, who were studying Religious Education for A level, about gender equality and how equality is at the heart of the Christian faith. The class was a mixed group of boys and girls, Christians, Muslims, and others of other faiths or none.

    After the talk, I opened the floor for questions and was a bit shocked when one boy put up his hand and said, ‘It’s God’s will that men should be in authority over women.’ A couple of boys sitting next to him smirked and a number of the young people shifted in their seats uncomfortably. I challenged what he was saying, arguing that scripture can be and has been interpreted this way, but it also can and should be interpreted differently. Christian or Muslim, I strongly believe that it is God’s will for us to all see each other as equal – that there is no one lesser or greater than ourselves.

    The boy pushed back, quoting scripture, and explained why he believed women need to be controlled by men. I saw the teacher give him a look, but I calmly responded to his questions, giving alternative interpretations to the scriptures he referred to. He and I could have continued back and forth all day, but I tried to involve others who might have different opinions.

    At the end of the class, when the young people had gone, I had a chat with the teacher. She said that it is a problem that some young people are being taught by faith communities that it is men’s role to lead and women’s role to submit to that leadership. She said that in RE, a few years ago, she would have given some input about the interpretation of different texts regarding gender in scripture and then allow the students to discuss in small groups. She says she can no longer do this, as it causes so much upset and abuse. Another RE teacher I later spoke to about the experience confirmed that, more and more, boys are goading girls at school that they are the superior sex.

    As Chair of WATCH, a campaign group for equality for women in the Church of England, and as a vicar in West London, I spend a lot of time arguing that equality is at the heart of the Gospel and that we shouldn’t be discriminating against people on grounds of sex or other protected characteristics. WATCH calls for an end to the institutional discrimination, whereby it is still permissible for parishes to advertise just for a male vicar or to refuse the authority of a female bishop. Personally, it troubles and upsets me that our church is divided and some priests won’t receive communion from others because they are female and some of my colleagues don’t believe women should be vicars or bishops, or even preach (other than to women and children.)

    Nonetheless, I had not realised that the theologies that underlie these positions, especially headship (or ‘complementarian’) theology, are having such an impact on young people – at least, as evidenced by my visit to that Church of England school.

    Recently there has been some discussion about whether schools, particularly Church of England schools, should be teaching children about the ‘white supremacy pyramid’ and systemic racism. Some dioceses already recommend using the ‘pyramid’; for example, Derby. Whether this is a good idea or not, we all accept that schools should be teaching that it is not right for anyone to consider themselves greater or lesser than anyone else on the grounds of skin colour. But what about gender? How should schools respond to young people who are being taught in mosques or churches that men need to have power over women? Not only is this situation unpleasant and offensive for girls to contend with in schools, it is also dangerous. There is much evidence that in cultures that teach and accept male privilege over women there are higher levels of violence against women and girls, than in cultures which promote equality between the sexes.

    The day before my school visit, I was in York at General Synod and had a number of conversations with Conservative Evangelical Christians while I was there. I was campaigning, along with the Student Christian Movement, for an ‘Honest Church’ where, if we are going to continue with institutional discrimination against women, then we should at least be transparent about this, and churches that limit women’s roles should be clear about their position. Talking to one man, he admitted that his church says nothing about its headship theology on its website, but he said that they do teach headship theology in the church at least once a month, so anyone going to the church for any length of time should soon realise this. When I heard this, I thought that this was probably a good thing so that at least people knew the situation and could choose whether this church was for them or not. But now, having gone into the school, I am not so sure.

    Religious leaders have a lot of power and influence, especially over younger people, and headship teaching is possibly being accepted without any critical analysis or any acknowledgement of alternative approaches. As a result, some men may be hearing that they need to control women; indeed, that it is their role to show authority over women. I’d like to see the Church of England give a clear edict to our schools that it is not God’s will that one sex should have authority over the other. But, given that we allow this teaching in our churches and that we state in recent legislation that we want such churches to flourish, then that currently seems impossible.

    And the goading, or worse, seems set to continue.

     

     

  • Learning Lessons? Leading a Church Where Abuse Has Happened

    by Revd Canon Mark Bennet, Team Rector in the Thatcham Team and member of General Synod

    I reviewed a book a while back for the journal Practical Theology. Written by Gail Cafferata, and based on research mainly in the US, it was called The Last Pastor: Faithfully Steering a Closing Church. It was about how to close a church well, and what happens to people and buildings and resources and memories afterwards. Published in 2020, strangely it appears not yet to have appeared on the reading list of any course I am aware of in Church leadership – in spite of the fact that there are in fact many people who do close churches, and closing them well is very much better than closing them badly. If it is a common task – and Cafferata contacted over 130 pastors in five different denominations – then why are we not intentionally learning lessons from those who wear the T-shirt? It is an example of the learning we don’t want to do – we’d rather be (against the trend) growing churches and doing exciting things rather than attending to what is actually in front of many of us.

    None of us want to face a major safeguarding issue in our context – my own context is a parish. But if we do face such an issue, it would be good to have some deep research which goes beyond crisis and reputation management. Within six months of taking on my role of Team Rector I had to deal with two situations involving two different youth leaders in the parish, one of whom ended up spending time in prison. I mentioned an outline of my issues in a speech at the July 2023 General Synod in the debate on safeguarding reviews. ‘Lessons learnt’ is a term used all the time in these reviews, but I mentioned in passing the learning we apparently don’t want to do, about treating victims and survivors well over the long term. But my main focus (which the Church Times missed in its Synod report) was on the learning we haven’t even thought of doing: about the impact on, and care of, communities in which abuse has happened. When it happened to me, I had no body of learning to which I could refer to guide me in my unexpected and unwelcome new context.

    I hope that such experiences have a low incidence, but over time even a low incidence of scarring and damage unhealed can start to have a substantial impact, as cases mount up. Do you know what it feels like to face the prospect of doing youth work in the face of the “younger and more diverse” agenda when there has been a double betrayal in the parish? That has been one of my questions, but if the damage is low incidence, we must note also that our contexts of ministry are very diverse. Not many will have a single church building serving a parish of over 25,000 people. So I was arguing at Synod that we need, as a church, to capture, consolidate and reflect on the learning from the contexts where abuse has happened, so that people like me have resources which have a chance of mapping onto something like their own situation if the worst happens to them. It may be that reviews are the wrong tool for this work and that ongoing intentional research would capture the learning and the stories more effectively.

    What I do know is that if no-one is learning, then mistakes will be made – and no-one has yet put themselves out to learn from me and my experience. It is hard work to be the pastor of a congregation in which abuse has happened. In many cases it seems to divide the community between those who believe the stories are true, and those who would defend a “good person” or the reputation of the church. My journey covered five years, conflict, unexplained decisions and judgments and a serious case review encompassing the church and two schools (I was chair of governors of one – not, as it happens, a church school). The impact lasted for longer than that. Just to illustrate some of the questions which arose for me over this extended period:

    How do you preach over time: are there problematic Bible passages?

    How do you negotiate your relationship with local schools where you are a governor and parents are getting their best information from the local newspaper?

    How do you deal with newspaper stories in those community contexts?

    How do you manage a PCC which knows little of the story? And Churchwardens likewise?

    How do you manage a team when some can know things that others do not?

    What are the considerations about continuing the youth work in the parish (other partners may be involved)?

    How do you survive the incorrect comments and factually inaccurate narratives which emerge in your community when you can say nothing to challenge them?

    How do you cope with being called “paedo” in the street or in a public place?

    The demands and pressures of being embedded in a community where abuse has happened over a considerable period are not comms issues, or problem solving, or even sometimes actually safeguarding issues – they are issues of relationship and trust, and at heart are pastoral issues. As I mentioned in my speech, a community can be strongly divided, with emotion running high – as a work context, it can be demanding and at times relentless.

    I hope I never face the same issues again – my learning is of little use to me. But it could be of huge value to an unknown colleague facing some of the same challenges in a different context. What do we lose by putting ourselves out to learn the lessons?

     

  • Giving Up Sex? What Macrina Tells Us About Choosing Celibacy

    by Professor Morwenna Ludlow, a historian, theologian and priest, specialising in historical theology. She is Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Exeter and Canon Theologian at Exeter Cathedral

    On 19 July, Anglicans remember Macrina and Gregory of Nyssa. Their family story reminds us of the richness and complexity of early Christian practices of marriage and celibacy. Gregory’s biography of his sister Macrina tells that she was engaged in her early teens. When her fiancé died before they could be married, Macrina promptly declared herself a ‘widow’ and dedicated her life to celibacy—first on her own, but eventually turning her whole household into a community for celibate women. This community included her mother Emmelia who, we are told, would have preferred to be a nun herself but agreed to the marriage arranged for her. She had ten children. Macrina was the eldest; the second child, Basil of Caesarea, lived for a while as a celibate in a small community of men in the grounds of the family estate. Basil later founded an important monastery at Caesarea (where he was Bishop) and his monastic “Rule” was an important influence on both eastern and western monasticism (via Cassian and Benedict). Macrina and Basil’s younger brother Gregory married, but was a widower by the time he was elected Bishop of Nyssa. He was supportive of his siblings’ monastic projects and several of his writings address the spiritual graces and challenges of a life of voluntary celibacy.

    Why do I think that we need to reflect on celibacy now? First, because it was celibacy, not marriage, that was counter-cultural in the early church. An arranged marriage was the way those with property ensured its orderly transfer to the next generation. Aristocratic, wealthy or middling families (whether Christian or not) married their daughters off at the age of around 12 to 14. The marriages of Christians were frequently blessed by a priest, but a Christian marriage service was very slow to emerge, especially in the west. To judge from grumpy sermons on the subject, Christians’ weddings would have been difficult to distinguish from others’. We have many stories of Christian women and men rejecting their families’ expectations to marry, instead taking up a life of celibacy dedicated to prayer and service of God. Those who chose to reject marriage in this way could easily paint themselves as taking up a Christian stance against their society—even if it was a society in which most people were Christian. Their decision to choose celibacy was frequently met with incomprehension and suspicion, not least because it often diverted wealth away from influential families to the church.

    Secondly, this decision in favour of a life of celibacy was not understood narrowly as ‘giving up sex’. Voluntarily celibate men and women saw themselves as following a calling to dedicate their whole lives to God. Whether they pursued this alone, in small groups or a larger community, they were dedicated to a life ordered by regular prayer and the singing of the psalms. Their lives were marked by simplicity in food and dress. For Macrina, this certainly meant giving up the comforts of her aristocratic upbringing. For the orphans she took into her community, or the homeless men who were trained in Basil ’s monastery, it meant a more stable life and a better diet. Many monks and nuns took up a life of regular work as well as prayer, working either for their community (growing vegetables, making clothes and so on) or serving the poor and sick who came to them.

    To be clear, there was a very strong strain of early church theology which was suspicious of the body, fearful of sexual desire and keen on the strict preservation of sexual purity (especially for women). But this was never the whole story and many monks and nuns were sexually experienced. Some were widows/widowers. Some married couples individually joined celibate communities after producing ‘an heir and a spare’. Very many people were sexually active outside marriage and some of these later turned to voluntary celibacy. Augustine of Hippo wrote about his concubine and son with great affection. This was not a period of his life which he repudiated in any straightforward sense; his relationship was even condoned by his pious Christian mother until such a time as she had found him a suitably aristocratic wife.

    Thirdly, and most importantly, this kind of celibate life was voluntary. Holy men and women were praised for their choice—a choice often made against the wishes of their families and friends. Macrina is a good example of this. It is true that these men and women often felt their calling as a kind of compulsion. Many, like Augustine, undertook it after deep and long struggles. Those called to ministry today might recognise that grappling in response to a calling. In time, celibacy was expected of priests and bishops (in the west) and bishops (in the east). But even if celibacy was experienced as a challenging call imposed by God and connected with a call to ministry, it was never required by the church of certain sets of people simply because of the way they were born. Indeed, there is clear evidence of rules designed to prevent certain people being pressurised into celibacy. Families were not to send a young girl off to a nunnery against her will. Husbands or wives could leave a marriage to pursue a life of celibacy, but only with the agreement of their spouse; if they did leave their marriage, they could not force their husband or wife to join a community of celibates too. This is not of course to say that these rules weren’t broken. The hierarchical society meant that women and slaves were vulnerable to cooption (and there were rules forbidding slaves to join communities without their masters’ permission). But the point is that the Christian doctrine of celibacy clearly taught that it was a voluntary dedication of one’s whole self and one’s whole life to God and a rejection of society’s pressure to accumulate wealth, improve one’s status and pass both down to the next generation.

    So was this just a fourth-century development in response to the coming together of Christianity and the Roman Empire? Ordered patterns of voluntary celibacy clearly predate Constantine. The earliest texts of Christianity witness to two kinds of leaders: the settled hosts of ‘house churches’ and others, like Paul and the disciples who travelled with Jesus, who were itinerant preachers and teachers. These wandering apostles were probably the first Christian voluntary celibates. Out of their practice grew more formalised traditions, like the wandering pairs of celibate men and women in the Syriac tradition (some scholars argue that very early narratives like the Acts of Paul and Thecla preserve a folk memory of this). In other words, the earliest evidence of consistent forms of Christian voluntary celibacy come from outside, or on the fringes of, the Roman Empire, well before the Empire was Christianised.

    A common Protestant narrative sees the Constantinian period as beginning all kinds of decline in the church and the Protestant Reformation did indeed criticise the corruption of monastic institutions and reverse the expectation of priestly celibacy. But those following Protestant tradition today have to grapple with the fact that Paul declared that it was ‘well’ for the unmarried and widows to remain unmarried as he was and that voluntary celibacy was one ‘particular gift’ among others (1 Cor. 7:7-8, 25). Early Christians reflected deeply on Scripture when teaching about voluntary celibacy. Works like Gregory of Nyssa’s On Virginity are heavily indebted to 1 Cor. 7, advocating integrity in whatever life is chosen. Arguably, the early church’s favouring of celibacy is more Pauline and more biblical than the Reformation’s declaration that celibacy and marriage were of equal value. In any case, early Christian celibates constantly expressed their calling in biblical terms, most vividly the idea that celibacy was a marriage with the heavenly bridegroom: just as each Christian was held to be the uniquely-loved adoptive son and heir of God through baptism, so each voluntary celibate—whether a man or woman—became the uniquely loved bride of Christ. They expressed this relationship using imagery from the Song of Songs, the parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13) and other New Testament texts (e.g. Matt. 9:15/Mk 2:19/Luke 5:34; John 3:29; 2 Cor. 11:2-4; Eph. 5). In other words, the biblical use of marriage as a symbol for salvation was not just used to validate earthly marriage; it was also—and I would argue was more emphatically and regularly used—as a model for the relationship of each celibate to their heavenly spouse.

    Early forms of Christian celibacy were varied. They were adapted to suit individual settings and cultural contexts. But they were united by a strong sense of a voluntary, permanent setting aside of one’s Iife for God, a commitment which was symbolised for women and men as a wife’s devotion to her heavenly husband. Just as marriage was based in both Jewish and Roman law on consent, celibacy was grounded on a voluntary commitment.

    Those modern Christians who demand celibacy for same sex couples may think they are defending the Christian doctrine of marriage. In fact, they are ignoring the doctrine of celibacy. Their position is unchristian, it is unbiblical, and it is unkind.

     

    Sources/further reading
    Brock, Sebastian P and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, eds., Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, paperback (Berkeley (CA); Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 1998).
    Brock, Sebastian, The Luminous Eye.  The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Cistercian Studies Series 124 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1992).
    Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
    Clark, Gillian. Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Life-Styles. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008).
    Elm, Susanna. Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)
    Ludlow, Morwenna. The Early Church. (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009).

     

  • Marriage Law in England and Wales – Some Reflections

    by Revd Dr Helen Hall, Nottingham Trent University and Professor Javier Garcia Oliva, Head of Law, University of Manchester

    (the third in a series of four: based on a presentation to the June 26th Symposium on Same-Sex Marriage in the Church of England organised by Sir Ben Bradshaw and Jayne Ozanne)

     

    Marriage Law in England and Wales-Current Framework and Proposed Reform

    Jurisdiction

    • Marriage law (and family law more generally) in England and Wales is distinct from that in Scotland.
    • This is not a recent development arising from devolution, but due to the agreement prior to the Act of Union, according to which Scotland would be permitted to keep its own legal system.
    • The analysis below relates exclusively to England and Wales, except where otherwise indicated.
    • Although Anglicanism was formally disestablished by the Welsh Church Act 1914, for the purposes of marriage law, the Church in Wales largely continues to operate as an established Church.
    • However, it should be noted that disestablishment means that the Church in Wales has no power to amend the civil law framework. It is completely dependent on Parliament in this regard.

    Current Framework

    • For historical reasons, there are four distinct routes to a legally binding marriage:  Anglican Marriage; Quaker and Jewish Marriages; Civil Marriage; and Other Forms of Religious Marriage where a faith group has opted-in (hereafter referred to as “Opt-In Marriages” in this paper).
    • Marriages outside of these four categories are not illegal in the sense of being prohibited, but they will NOT create a legally binding marriage in English/Welsh law.
    • Marriages which take place in other jurisdictions are ordinarily treated as creating a legally binding marriage in England/Welsh law, provided that they were legally valid according to the rules of the State in which they were celebrated.
    • Opt-In Marriages are performed by an authorised person, but must take place in a building registered for religious worship.
    • This means that there is no provision for Humanist marriages, nor any scope for faith groups which do not meet in a registered building, either because they lack sufficient members and money, or because their practices involve worshipping at home or in outdoor settings.

    Problems with the Current Framework

    • As a headline, it is unduly complex and bureaucratic.
    • Some parties to non-binding religious marriages are unaware that they have no legal protection until their relationship breaks down. It is only at that point that they learn that they were simply cohabiting, and are, therefore, entitled to no financial relief.
    • Individuals for whom English/Welsh is a second language are at increased risk of confusion.
    • Local decision making on opting-in may add to the confusion; it is not always enough to ask what faith community performed the ceremony, e.g. a Muslim marriage or a Sikh marriage might or might not be legally binding, depending on whether the community in question had opted-in.
    • A significant number of non-legally binding religious marriages are taking place. This leads to unequal outcomes should the relationship break down, or one of the parties die without leaving a will. It can also trap vulnerable people in abusive relationships, especially women. The lack of access to financial relief may make it very difficult for a person to leave their partner, if they have no housing and are economically dependent. The situation is exacerbated still further if they are from a cultural background which stigmatises separation, and their families and friends are unable/unwilling to offer support.

    Proposals for Reform

    • The Law Commission has proposed significant reforms:

    1)         Regulation of the Officiant instead of the venue (i.e. an end to the need to celebrate Opt-In marriages in a registered building).

    2)         Universal rules for ALL weddings

    • Couples would be able to give notice of their intended wedding online, and to choose the registration district where they would then be interviewed by a registration officer.
    • Notice of upcoming weddings would be published online so that the information was accessible to the wider community.
    • There would be great accommodation of the diversity of beliefs e.g. It would be possible to have a religious ceremony in a venue other than a place of worship and without having to incorporate prescribed words into the ceremony. It is suggested that there should also be an option for couples of different faiths to have a religious ceremony led by an interfaith minister that contains aspects of each of the couple’s beliefs. Finally, the rigid division between civil and religious marriages would be axed, allowing couples to have some religious elements, such as hymns and prayers, incorporated into their civil ceremony (as long as the ceremony remained “identifiably civil”.)

    Implications for Same Sex Marriage and the Church of England

    • This does not directly impact on same sex marriage and the Church of England, but there are a number of indirect implications.

    1)         This supports McLean’s thesis of “marriage” being a legal institution offered and regulated by the State, even though it may choose to delegate the ceremonial and administrative elements to third parties, including faith groups.

    2)         Respecting the diversity of beliefs present in contemporary society is a key element of the proposals, and no denomination would be forced to offer marriage ceremonies to all comers on an equal basis. It would clearly violate Article 9 of the ECHR and the rules of statutory interpretation, if any legislation enacted on the basis of the Law Commission proposals were interpreted as requiring all Anglican clergy to offer same sex marriages, or demanding that Roman Catholic priests and Orthodox Rabbis perform wedding ceremonies for non-Catholic/Jewish atheists or members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster.

    3)         The Church of England (and indeed all faith groups) would have to decide how to respond to the possibility of its clergy being involved in interfaith ceremonies, or providing “religious elements” of a civil ceremony, where the parties to the marriage were of the same sex. Given the scope for considerably increased flexibility in respect of wording and ceremonies, it is easy to see how Anglican clergy could be effectively “performing” same sex marriages hosted by a friendly neighbouring denomination, or conceivably even in the context of a civil ceremony, depending on how the “identifiably civil” part was interpreted. The church would have to decide how it wanted to respond to this.

    4)         With a much freer wedding economy, couples would have far greater scope to have a religious/Christian backdrop to their ceremony without going to the local parish church.  Consequently, if the Church of England wanted to continue to encourage weddings as potential opportunities for evangelism/outreach, and source of income, then it would do well to ponder how excluding same sex couples would affect perceptions of Anglicanism and Anglican marriage.

    • It must be stressed that not all proposals of the Law Commission become law, and even those that do often undergo substantial transformation before being enacted.
    • There is a considerable pressure for reform of wedding law, particularly in light of some recent high-profile litigation in relation to a woman seeking some mechanism to obtain financial relief when leaving a non-legally binding religious marriage. The conclusion of the appellate court was that neither divorce nor nullity could help. For the reasons outlined above, the vulnerability of people in this situation means that there is now an urgent reason to overhaul an idiosyncratic and piecemeal system which has been evolving in a haphazard fashion since the eighteenth century.
    • The collateral implications of all of this for same sex marriages in an Anglican setting are indirect, but very significant.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Can Parliament Permit Church of England Clergy to Marry Same-Sex Couples? Should it?

    by Professor Iain McLean, FBA FRSE, Professor Emeritus of Politics, Oxford University and a fellow of Nuffield College. As a Quaker, he was a consultant to Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) for their lobbying on the ‘Alli amendment’ (to the Equality Act 2010, permitting faith communities to conduct civil partnerships) and on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013

    (the second in a series of four. based on a presentation to the June 26th Symposium on Same-Sex Marriage in the Church of England organised by Sir Ben Bradshaw and Jayne Ozanne)

    On 21 March 2023, Ben Bradshaw MP (Lab., Exeter) introduced a Ten-Minute Rule Bill ‘to enable clergy of the Church of England to conduct same sex marriages on Church of England premises in certain circumstances’. It was co-sponsored by parliamentarians from the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Green parties (no nationalists; the bill would apply in England only). Introducing it, Mr (now Sir) Ben Bradshaw stated that it had the support of Sir Tony Baldry (former MP (Cons, Banbury) and Second Church Estates Commissioner). He also stated that

    My preference—and, I imagine, that of most colleagues—would be for the Church to do this itself….The main motivation in introducing it is to encourage the bishops to stick to the commitments and timetable agreed by February’s Synod and resist any delay or backsliding at the next Synod in July.

    The current Second Church Estates Commissioner, Andrew Selous, responded

    [I]t is necessary to respond to the Bill in my capacity as Second Church Estates Commissioner because it seeks to usurp the role of the democratically elected General Synod of the Church of England, as well as to remove the freedom of the Church of England to decide its own doctrine, a freedom that members from all parts of this House champion for religions and beliefs all over the world and one that we should therefore apply equally to the Church of England (Hansard, Commons, 21 March 2023).

    Earlier, in response to an Urgent Question, he had said:

    In order to change canon law on the doctrine of holy matrimony, there has to be a two-thirds majority in the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy and the House of Laity of the General Synod, which is itself a devolved body of this Parliament, and the vast majority of whose members are elected. There is not currently a two-thirds majority in the General Synod to change canon law on the doctrine of holy matrimony (Hansard, Commons, 24 January 2023).

    … although he modified this answer two days later to say

    the advice I was given then was by the Church legal office, and I was yesterday asked to make a small clarification. A simple majority in each of the three Houses of the General Synod could suffice to pass a measure and amending canon to change the definition of marriage in ecclesiastical law, but circumstances could also arise in which two-thirds majorities in the House of Bishops and the House of Clergy would be needed, and, as with all authorised forms of service, a two-thirds majority in each House would be required for the approval of the Synod as a form of service for the marriage of a same-sex couple (Hansard, Commons, 26 January 2023).

    A Ten-Minute Bill is purely expressive speech. Mr Bradshaw’s bill received a first reading without a division, but is tabled for its second reading on a day when Parliament will not be sitting. Nevertheless, the matter remains of current interest. The General Synod of the Church of England meets in July and November 2023. The agenda for July contains no such proposed Measure. If the Synod declines to introduce a Measure to permit those clergy who so wish to conduct same-sex weddings in their churches, can Parliament intervene with a Private Member’s Bill, which unlike a Ten-Minute Bill receives substantive debate? And should it?

    Can Parliament intervene?

    It certainly can. The orthodox doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty maintains that Parliament remains supreme, even when it has delegated authority to bodies such as the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, and the General Synod of the Church of England. Since delegating authority to what is now the General Synod in 1919, Parliament has intervened in the doctrine of the Church of England, most notoriously in the ‘Prayer Book controversy’ of 1927-8. Twice, the House of Commons turned down the Church of England prayer book, on the grounds that it was too close to Roman Catholicism. The decisive majority included Calvinist MPs from Scotland and Ulster. They could vote, because of parliamentary sovereignty, even though it was an England-only matter.

    The doctrines of the Church of England have less protection from Parliamentary interference than do those of the Church of Scotland. Both Parliament and the courts interfered with the doctrines of the Kirk, the former by the Patronage Act 1711 and the latter in various court judgements culminating in the Free Church case (Bannatyne v. Overtoun [1904] AC 515). In 1711 Parliament enacted a right for lay patrons to nominate ministers. In 1904 the judicial House of Lords awarded all those assets of the large United Free (UF) Church of Scotland that had come from the former Free Church to the tiny continuing Free Church, on the grounds that

    the Establishment principle and the Westminster Confession were distinctive tenets of the Free Church; that the Free Church had no power, where property was concerned, to alter or vary the doctrine of the Church; that there was no true union …; and that the appellants were entitled to hold for behoof of the Free Church the property held by the Free Church before the union in 1900.

    To forestall any repetition, the Church of Scotland and the UF Church, who were merging, obtained a remarkable abnegation of Parliamentary sovereignty in the Church of Scotland Act 1921 c.29 (‘An Act to declare the lawfulness of certain Articles declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual prepared with the authority of the General Assembly of the Church.’). These Articles Declaratory, drafted by the General Assembly, trump any statutes that might conflict with them.

    This ancient history illustrates two bad ways of interfering with religious freedom. Both 1711 and 1927-8 were instances of what is now called the ‘West Lothian Question’, in which a measure affecting only one part of the UK is enacted against the majority vote of members from that part. The majority of Scots MPs voted against the 1711 Act. The majority of English MPs voted in favour of the Prayer Book. And the courts would not now presume to wade in to identify the fundamental tenets of a religion and use that as a basis for assigning property. Are there, though, any good grounds for parliamentary involvement in religion?

    Should it?

    There are two main arguments against introducing a bill to permit C of E clergy to solemnise same-sex marriage, and two main arguments in favour.

    The first argument against is that what is delegated should stay delegated. By delegating authority to the Church of England, Parliament extricated itself from what had been very time-consuming and messy arguments about, for instance, divorce, the Roman Catholic presence in England, and marriage to a deceased wife’s sister. The second argument against is that espoused by Andrew Selous above: that intervention would ‘remove the freedom of the Church of England to decide its own doctrine’.

    The first argument in favour of intervention is that a purely permissive measure cannot be detrimental to religious freedom. On this argument, individuals have freedom; organisations, not so much. In its zeal to protect the religious freedom of clergy opposed to same-sex marriage, the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013, it is argued, tramples on the religious freedom of clergy supportive of same-sex marriage. As noted in the Ten Minute debate, various denominations have opted in under the 2013 Act or its Scottish equivalent, in all cases permissively. Both Acts protect the conscience of those unwilling to conduct same-sex marriages when their faith group has decided to be open to them.

    The second argument is that the Church of England is for some purposes an agent of the state. Ever since 1753, when it was granted a monopoly of marriage in England & Wales (except for Quakers and Jews, who are still treated differently), it has regulated property and succession rights on behalf of the state. All parish clergy act as registrars – a civil function – when they officiate at a wedding. In addition, they have a common-law duty to marry parishioners, and couples have a common-law right to ask to be married in the parish church of either of them. However, as the Explanatory Notes to the 2013 Act make clear:

    Subsections (4) and (5) provide that any duty of a member of the clergy of the Church of England or the Church in Wales to solemnize a marriage does not extend to same sex couples. In addition, any corresponding right of parishioners to be married by such clergy does not extend to same sex couples. The effect of this is that the common law duty on the clergy of the Church of England and the Church in Wales to marry parishioners is not extended to same sex couples.

    Examples…

    A man lives next door to a Church of England parish church and wishes to get married there. He is getting married to a woman. Neither of them has ever attended services at the church or professes to be Christian. He speaks to the vicar who agrees to marry the couple, given his legal duty to marry parishioners.

    A man who lives next door to a Church of England parish church wishes to get married there. He is getting married to a man. Both of them regularly attend services at the church and are committed Christians. He speaks to the vicar who has to refuse to marry the couple, since it would not be lawful for him to do so and the legal duty to marry parishioners does not extend to same sex couples.

    For a text presumably drafted by civil servants and/or parliamentary drafters, this seems unusually forthright.

    The ‘quadruple lock’ inserted in the 2013 Act at the request of conservative denominations contains a couple of tumblers that are unique to the Church of England. They are section 1 subsections 3-5:

    (3) No Canon of the Church of England is contrary to section 3 of the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533 (which provides that no Canons shall be contrary to the Royal Prerogative or the customs, laws or statutes of this realm) by virtue of its making provision about marriage being the union of one man with one woman.

    (4) Any duty of a member of the clergy to solemnize marriages (and any corresponding right of persons to have their marriages solemnized by members of the clergy) is not extended by this Act to marriages of same sex couples.

    (5) A “member of the clergy” is—

    (a) a clerk in Holy Orders of the Church of England, or

    (b) a clerk in Holy Orders of the Church in Wales.

    Subsection (3) is declaratory, and nobody’s religious freedom would be impaired by its repeal. The effect of repealing subsections (4) and (5) would be to remove the anomaly highlighted in the Explanatory Notes.

    I conclude that a Private Member’s Bill to repeal these subsections would be a simple way of granting parliamentary approval of the consciences of clergy who wish to conduct same-sex marriage, while preserving all the protections already in the 2013 Act for clergy who do not. If such a bill won parliamentary time (which requires at least the tacit consent of the government of the day), the votes on it would be classically ‘conscience’ matters and no party would be expected to whip its members. Unlike in 1927, however, Scottish and Northern Irish members should not vote.

  • Equality, Parliament, and the Established Church:  Some Recent Close Encounters

    Revd Canon Dr Judith Maltby is Chaplain, Fellow and Dean of Welfare of Corpus Christi College, Reader in Church History in the University of Oxford, and a member of the General Synod of the Church of England

    (the first in a series of four: based on a presentation to the June 26th Symposium on Same-Sex Marriage in the Church of England organised by Sir Ben Bradshaw and Jayne Ozanne)

    In February 2023, the General Synod of the Church of England debated and passed by a sizeable majority a paper from the House of Bishops which is intended to move the needle in a positive direction towards equality for LGBT+ people.  Such reform impacts on laypeople and clergy active within the Church but also on the wider public the Established Church seeks to serve, chiefly through the parochial system and sector chaplaincies. This wider public turn to the Church for food banks, youth work and elder care and at key ‘life events’, or ‘occasional offices’ of baptism, marriage and funerals. Marriage, of course, is at the heart of the issue. The House of Bishops’ proposals to Synod in February were the result of a lengthy six-year process known as Living in Love and Faith. I know it was a lengthy and careful process – I was a member of one of LLF’s working groups.

    In February, before Synod, a group of about a dozen cross-party Parliamentarians met with Archbishop Justin. It was, according to the Guardian and Telegraph, a heated meeting, at which Parliamentarians ‘threatened’ disestablishment if the Church did not change its position to allow equal marriage. The Telegraph reported that ‘the Archbishop of Canterbury has vowed that he will not be told what to do by MPs over blessings for same-sex couples’. Later that month, while at the global Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Ghana, the BBC reported that the Archbishop spoke of being ‘“threatened with parliamentary action” in an attempt “to force same-sex marriage” into the Church of England’.

    There is a lot of alleged ‘threatening’ going on by MPs as well as the implied criticism that Parliamentarians were somehow out of line to take a genuine interest in how the Established Church serves the nation. I would like to put the Archbishop’s remarks into historical context in terms of the relationship between Parliament and the Established Church of England. I am principally a historian of the 17th century, but you will be relieved that I only want to go back about 30 years to another significant equality issue in which Parliament and Church interacted: the ordination of women to the priesthood in the early 1990s and the consecration of women as bishops in the 2010s.

    In 2011, I co-edited a collection of essays with two other Oxford colleagues, called The Established Church:  Past, Present and Future.  The book came out of a day conference on the same topic. I am a cradle Anglican but moved to England from the United States in 1979 to begin doctoral studies and have lived here ever since. In my 20s and even into my 30s, I thought Church Establishment to be frankly bizarre – who wouldn’t coming from abroad? But over the years, I have become a ‘critical convert’ to it. The day conference came about because whenever I heard a bishop on the radio defending establishment, I wanted to dis-establish it. Surely, there were more robust and creative ways to understand the public good of Establishment than the tired truisms that get trotted out. That is what we set out to do, though not all the contributors were of one mind on the subject.

    My own chapter looked at gender and Establishment. The research was prompted by an exchange in Synod in 2010, rather like the one I started with, between the new Second Church Estates Commissioner, Tony Baldry, MP and the then bishop of Durham, Tom Wright. Baldry, characteristically, gave Synod some nuanced and honest advice that the Commons would look dimly on a measure to consecrate women as bishops that was discriminatory – that is, that treated bishops who were women differently than bishops who were men. Tom Wright, in his last speech before resigning his see, attacked Baldry in the chamber, claiming that he had said (which Baldry had not) something like ‘the political winds were blowing this way, and so the church had better get in line’. With rhetorical flourish, Wright said: ‘The day the Church ceases to be able to say we must obey God rather than human authority will be the day it ceases to be the Church.’ His remarks were greeted by thunderous applause in the Synod chamber as it is a statement, on face value, pretty much impossible for any Christian to disagree with.

    As I said, this exchange was the motivation for my own chapter in the book. I had a sense, although I had never explored it in detail, that the creation of Provincial Episcopal Visitors (or ‘Flying Bishops’ as they have come to be known) was the result of pressure from the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament, as it was not part of the Synodical Measure that passed Synod in November 1992.

    Some of you, like me, will remember that momentous vote in 1992 in General Synod, approving the ordination of women to the priesthood.  The 1992 Measure certainly did not treat women priests equally with their male counterparts. It:

    • Exempted women clergy from any protection provided by the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act
    • Created Resolutions A and B ‘to protect’ parishes from women clergy
    • Explicitly excluded women from the episcopate
    • Guaranteed that no bishop would be ‘forced’ to ordain women
    • Provided financial provision to ‘compensate’ male clergy who felt they needed to leave the Church because of the ordination of women to the priesthood

    You might think that that was quite enough compromise and ‘protection’ for opponents.

    And you might also be thinking, there is no mention whatsoever here of Flying Bishops – an invention entirely without historical precedent to address an issue on which Anglicans were not of one mind. There is a very, very long list of things about which Anglicans are not of one mind, but never before has an episcopal sub-structure been created to meet the needs of a particular theological constituency.(1)  And what a dangerous precedent it set for dealing with disagreement as we now see attempts to apply the model to other theological disputes.

    Where did this theological and ecclesiological innovation come from? Well, Parliamentarians, I hate to tell you, it came from you. Hours spent on Hansard, which in 2010 had the slowest search engine I’d ever come across:  there it all was in the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Committee, a committee of both Houses, whose job it is to decide whether a Synodical Measure is ‘expedient’ to go to the Commons and Lords for approval.

    A cross-party group of MPs, chiefly Frank Field, Simon Hughes, Patrick Cormack, and John Selwyn Gummer pushed for even greater concessions to those opposed to the ordination of women than were already in the Measure. In fact, the vast majority of time spent by the Ecclesiastical Committee in 1993 was on how to provide even more ‘safeguards’ for those opposed to women in the priesthood. Such involvement by Parliamentarians was entirely appropriate, as Frank Field maintained, as it was part of their:

    … function as parliamentarians … to protect the interests of constituents who may be adversely affected by a [Church] Measure …. we are quite rightly … much concerned with, and will no doubt spend much time on, how the position of minorities is protected.(2)

    Going back to this material recently to prepare this piece, I was struck by the extensive use by Parliamentarians in the early 1990s of ‘safeguarding’ language – that male clergy might somehow be ‘victims’ of some sort of ‘abuse’ merely by the existence of women clergy. It is very chilling language now in the light of the recent series of catastrophic and real safeguarding failures in the Church that are piling up. But in the early 1990s, while Bishop Peter Ball was committing terrible abuse, somehow it was women priests who were seen as the people from whom other Church members needed ‘safeguarding’.

    The bishops, I’m afraid, caved in to this Parliamentary pressure and these ‘threats’ and produced the Act of Synod of 1993, putting it in place for the Ecclesiastical Committee to deem it expedient for the Measure to go to Parliament for a vote in October and November 1993. The Measure passed handsomely – 10:1 in the Commons and 7:1 in the Lords – and several hours of parliamentary time was set aside for debate. Thanks to the Ecclesiastical Committee, even more ‘safeguarding’ was provided and the equality of women clergy even more eroded. Both Field and Hughes spoke in the debate in the House, proudly outlining how the Ecclesiastical Committee had been key in the creation of Flying Bishops.

    I have time to touch only briefly on women in the episcopate, but we can see significant culture change from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. MPs used Early Day Motions from the early 2000s onwards to raise the question, with increasing impatience, of when the country can expect the Established Church to have women bishops. In their remarks, MPs often praised the public good provided by the Church’s parochial system and the women priests who were serving the wider community through it.

    Reflecting on this history challenges any notion that Parliamentarians taking an interest in the affairs of the Established Church is in anyway improper or unusual in the modern era. In the early 1990s, Parliamentarians ensured there was even more discriminatory provision against women priests and gave us Flying Bishops. By the early 2000s, MPs were repeatedly raising questions about the exclusion of women from the episcopate of the Established Church. You will remember the outcry in the Commons when the Measure narrowly failed to achieve a two-thirds majority in the House of Laity in 2012.   As the Church of England obsesses with its narrative of decline and lack of relevance, it is ironic that when the members of the public legislature of the country actually take an interest in the Church because they believe it to matter, such interest is perceived as ‘interference’ and ‘threatening’. In a way, I agree with Frank Field when he said it was their function as Parliamentarians:  ‘… to protect the interests of constituents who may be adversely affected by a [Church] Measure’.(3)

    In 1993, the ‘interests of constituents’ were understood to mean providing yet more discriminatory measures against women. In the past 20 years or so, the attention of MPs to ‘the interests of [their] constituents’ is about promoting equality in the way the Established Church orders its life and serves the wider community. The modern relationship of Parliament and the Church of England is more complicated than accusations of ‘threatening’ behaviour support.

    Notes
    (1) See Judith Maltby, ‘One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, but Two Integrities?’ in Monica Furlong, ed, Act of Synod or Act of Folly?: Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod 1993 (SCM Press, 1998).
    (2) Reports of the Ecclesiastical Committee, p. 64 (19 April 1993).
    (3) Reports of the Ecclesiastical Committee, p. 64 (19 April 1993).
    Further reading
    Judith Maltby, ‘Gender and Establishment:  Parliament, “Erastianism” and the Ordination of Women 1993-2010’ in Mark Chapman, Judith Maltby & William Whyte, eds, The Established Church:  Past, Present and Future (T&T Clark, 2011).

  • Let’s Disagree to Agree: Rwanda and Homosexuality

    by David Bagnall, Associate Rector of St John’s Episcopal Church, Edinburgh. Formerly chaplain of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, his PhD thesis examined the role played by language and discourse in generating new concepts of homosexuality in the Anglican Church of Rwanda

    One of the perishingly few points of general agreement within the sexuality controversies currently wracking the Anglican Communion is that everyone disagrees. Disagreement, as we all know, is at the heart of the issue – indeed, that’s the whole point. Put crudely, liberals, generally in the Global North, think that homosexuality is a God-given identity to be cherished and nurtured along with everything else that is sacred and holy; conservatives on the other hand, generally in the Global South, think that homosexuality is sinful and is a way of life chosen by fallen humans in defiance of God’s law and purpose. So far so simple: we disagree. Or so we might think…

    My research focuses on sexuality debates within the Anglican Church of Rwanda (ACR), and in particular on the role the Rwandan church has played within global sexuality controversies. Research in this area is continually fascinating, of course, but among the most startling of my findings has been the fact that, contrary to popular opinion (my own included), disputes regarding sexuality across the communion aren’t so much characterised by disagreement but rather by misunderstanding, or even miscommunication. My research focuses on debates between the ACR and the Church of England, and therefore involves interviewing many priests from both provinces about their experiences in discussions and dialogues, and time and again – to my surprise – interviewees report not so much disagreeing with their interprovincial colleagues but actually failing to understand them. Many priests I interviewed described such conversations as being deeply frustrating, with one CofE priest telling me that almost every conversation had been ‘a non-starter’, and a Rwandan Bishop noting that ‘there is no listening’ within the debates. Moreover, when asked about the nature of this frustration, members of both churches described it consistently in terms of a failure, not to agree, but even to understand one another. One CofE priest, for instance, told me of a conversation with a Rwandan friend regarding homosexuality in which his friend ‘couldn’t understand’ what it was that he was trying to describe, and that there was ‘a massive…difference’ in what they were each attempting to communicate. One CofE Bishop, too, told me that he felt that there was ‘a very big gap’ in understanding during conversations he’d had with Rwandans, and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams noted that such conversations seemed to him to be ‘a dialogue of the deaf’. One Rwandan priest, finally, commented that for this reason sexuality is ‘difficult to talk about’, and Bishop Nathan Amooti of Kigali, reflecting on such difficulties, concluded sombrely that ‘there’s no proper dialogue’.

    The reasons for these misunderstandings are multiple and complex, and are too lengthy to detail in a single blog post, but at their centre is the fact that there are wildly diverse meanings conveyed within the English word ‘homosexuality’ when used by different actors across the Anglican Communion. For British Anglicans – regardless of their opinions on the subject – my research reveals that the meanings and resonances conveyed in the word reflect its deep and entangled history of usage within the British Isles. It has roots in psychopathology, but contains insights from theology, politics, socio-cultural discourses, and even legal practice. It has resonances of everything from the Wolfenden Report to Virginia Woolf; from Stonewall to David Beckham’s sarong. In other words, the word ‘homosexuality’ has a particular and culturally contingent history within the UK, all of which is contained within and expressed by it when used by British people.

    By contrast, the word ‘homosexuality’ has a startlingly short history within Rwanda. In Anglican circles it first appears within interprovincial documents in the late 1970s, but is barely mentioned until it suddenly explodes into life during the mid-2000s, during which time the ACR established deep bilateral partnership with disaffected conservative American Anglicans. It was by means of this partnership that an astonishing wave of anti-homosexual literature entered the Rwandan Church and. once there. came to redefine and renegotiate native and organic understandings of what we would call homosexual behaviour. For, just as homosexuality has a rich and complex history of development within the UK, so does what we would call homosexuality have a correspondingly deep history of development within Rwanda, though of a different kind. Prior to the mid-2000s, the word used by most Rwandans to describe homosexual contact was mutinganyi which, as my research revealed, conveyed a very different meaning to the British word ‘homosexual’. The word ‘mutinganyi’ is rich in depth and meaning, but at its heart is the idea of the use of intimate same-sex sexual friendship and activity as a means to self-knowledge and mutual development. Crucially, too, the word has no sense of the pejorative about it and isn’t tied to any ideas of identity exclusive to heterosexual norms. To be a mutinganyi, then, was to be a person who had intimate relationships – both sexual and otherwise – with people of the same sex, but in a fashion that wasn’t at all prohibitive of heterosexual relationships. It’s difficult for us to conceive of how this could be the case, of course, but that’s because I’m describing the phenomenon in English and using words which, as we have seen, convey different meanings. The point at stake, then, is that sexuality itself has an utterly different history of development within Rwanda no less rich than our own, and which our own words are simply incapable of describing, at least in discrete terms.

    The problem is, however, that the word mutinganyi is hardly ever used in Rwandan Anglican circles in the present day, and has come to be replaced almost entirely by ‘homosexual’. The reasons for this are chiefly down to the extraordinarily pugnacious and virulent anti-homosexual discourse introduced into Rwanda by American conservatives in the mid-2000s, which itself has evolved and developed within Rwanda to become the ubiquitous language within which sexuality debates are currently couched. It is for this reason that homosexuality is perceived without exception within Rwanda to be both a novel and foreign phenomenon. Paying close attention to language-use and development reveals that, in a strict sense, it is. The meanings and resonances conveyed by the word ‘homosexual’ – forged in conservative circles within American Anglicanism – are indeed both novel and foreign to the organic understandings of sexuality detailed above, and the near-ubiquitous use of the word ‘homosexual’ within Rwanda has therefore come to obscure or even redefine such native understandings.

    The reason why all this matters, then, is that people like me – who care deeply about the dignity and welfare of gay people, and who long for the day when people of all sexualities can participate fully as equally members of the Body of Christ – need to watch our language. For in using words like ‘homosexual’ in interprovincial dialogues, progressives are constantly in danger of unwittingly colluding with conservatives by falling into conservative narratives of a so-called ‘Western agenda’. If we want to see a church that celebrates the rich diversity of sexualities and sexual orientations that God has created, then we must resist the temptation to see our own sexual categories as ubiquitous, and focus instead on celebrating and fostering organic and culturally contingent sexual epistemologies throughout the Anglican Communion. Doing this, of course, will require patience and a constant awareness of the particularity of our own discourse and the discursive traditions of others. It will require serious thought, too, and the wisdom to discern when the limits of our language precludes real mutual understanding. True agreement may be far off, of course, but at least we might start with true disagreement.

     

  • The Foundations for Ecclesial Instability: the Rock on the Sands

    by Martyn Percy, a Fellow of King’s College London and Harris Manchester College, Oxford 

    What is the connection between an obscure piece of research commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1990s and the current crisis in the Church of England? The research, mostly conducted by academics with particular involvement from the George Mason University Centre for Global Policy, grew out of earlier research conducted by Ted Gurr at the University of Maryland via the ‘State Failure Task Force’ under the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), later led by Monty Marshall. Gurr and Marshall identified the common ‘problem set’ of issues that were the grounds – shaky or quicksand – that gave rise to instability.  Today, this research finds its practical outcome in the PITF – the Political Instability Task Force.

    Instability is hardly a new problem for churches. Persecution, doctrinal disputes, scandals and heresies have all resulted in some shaking of the foundations.  Moreover, the New Testament itself, and the teachings of Jesus, are often consumed with questions of stability. Jesus’ parable of the houses built on rock or sand, or the more agricultural motifs centred on deep-rooted plants, fruitfulness and growth come to mind. In one sense, the entire basis of Christian faith rests on the paradox of forfeiting security and stability for a life of instability and uncertainty…in order to gain safekeeping. After all, what else is a vocation other than living out risk with no guarantees or assurances.

    That said, we do make these choices for God as individuals. But I may only say ‘yes’ to God as myself. I cannot commit another person to my ‘yes’, however much I hope and pray that they may share the same affirmation. But what happens when, instead of us choosing instability and learning to live with it, this interloper arrives uninvited, and is communal and countrywide? My personal negotiation with instability is one thing. Social and political instability, however, is of a different order. When the foundations of societies are shaking, how do we know if this is an episodic quake that will pass, or something more damaging that will reduce even the strongest foundations to rubble and dust?

    The PITF drew on over a hundred global instability ‘problem cases’ from 1955-2011. The researchers identified several categories of state failure:

    1. Revolutionary and Ethnic wars (emerging from civil strife).
    2. Genocides and Politicides (often rooted in perceived inequalities).
    3. Adverse Regime changes (arising from or leading to civil war).

    The PITF were interested in the common denominators and the cultural, social, climatic and political factors that gave rise to instability which tipped into revolt, revolution and/or violence. Why do regimes suddenly topple, and governments that were elected get swept away like political debris? Readers will have their own view as to whether there is sufficient civil strife in society at the moment to trigger some sort of revolution. I doubt it, though the risks are markedly higher than at the end of the 20th-century, and the current grammar of dissent and protest is perhaps comparable to what was witnessed in the 1960s.

    How might a ‘Polity Instability Task Force’ assess the wobbling churches of late modernity?  For sure, money, sex and power – that unholiest of trinities – afflicts all mainstream denominations. Consider the history, data and the internecine ecclesial wars, and try and name any exceptions. There are internal wranglings and unease over lack of money and its unequal distribution, the method of ‘taxing’ congregations, and how the revenues are spent; over same-sex relations, scandals on clergy and sexual abuse, divorce and remarriage, and gender; and balancing democracy, leadership, management and compliance.

    The original State Failure Task Force was alive to the social, political and cultural conditions that precipitated regime changes. In ecclesiology, the equations are no less complex, but they are slower to resolve. One might say that the major regime changes in ecclesiology are the East-West Schism and the Reformation. But in truth, smaller versions of these global ruptures occur in every generation, some resulting in permanent rifts and then further extended fragmentation.

    However, the cultural ground in which the foundations of mainline denominations sit is no longer stable. The emergence of meritocracy, less deference, mass mobilisation, greater individualism and consumerism in expressions and preferences all conspire to render this ground unstable and shifting. Mapped on to a global scale, sexuality, power and money quickly become enmeshed in North-South, First-World/Developing-World rivalries, with ethnicity and the legacy of empire and exploitation fuelling the complexity. Peter Turchin’s fine End Times (Allen Lane, 2023), explains how regimes rise and fall, and what it is about forms of control and the exercise of power that makes some types of governance especially susceptible to implosion or overthrow. Putin’s foray into Ukraine throws some light on how political disintegration gains traction when power is challenged, and elites lose their authority under the weight of their failures and ensuing disenchantment.

    It is Turchin who also coined the term cliodynamics – Clio being the muse of history in Greek mythology, and dynamics simply the study how and why change takes place over periods of time. Using mathematical models, a cliodynamic approach can predict expansion and retraction in economies, state collapse or implosion, social discontent and even civil wars. While not a perfect science, it can explain how and why institutions and societies disintegrate.

    So, what would cliodynamics and an ecclesial Polity Instability Task Force make of the Church of England at this moment? Several observations are apparent, and will create the conditions for instability:

    1. Major shifts away from more open electoral systems to ones that are more closed, authoritarian and managed systems of control produce boredom and detachment, festering resentment, and may result in speculative conspiracy theories (e.g., we know where all the money goes…).
    2. Elitism, whether it is quasi-monarchical or some ontologised managerialism, will result in a larger critical mass resenting the hierarchies and its powers of rule and decision-making. A lack of accountability, transparency, integrity and humility will also produce calls for regime-change.
    3. Loss or rapid erosion of devolved local powers, assertions of control (e.g., adopt the strategic vision) and penalties for daring to dissent will create a groundswell for secession, in which the exercise of despotic power will only produce tensions between central control mechanisms and those meant to comply.
    4. The collapse of the central governance, unable to manage external complexities and challenges, and unable to fund, manage and resource internal systems of order and control, will tend to question the capacity of the ruling elite to hold authority, power and any ability to govern.

    You might like to ponder how this all fits together with the Church of England and its leadership, and the grass roots. Here the Save the Parish movement is both a symptom and cause of widespread ecclesial dis-ease with the current regime. It has quickly won widespread support, largely due to growing fears over plutocratic-despotic episcopal leadership.

    A plutocracy is a society ruled and controlled by a handful of people who hold great wealth and income. The term combines Greek ploutos (wealth) and kratos (power).  Plutocracy is not a political philosophy so much as the name for a malaise, with the term first coined in English in the 1630s – times of Laudian and Stuart periods of governance, a decade before our own Civil War. The unaccountable and divine right to govern was the issue at stake, over and against the calls for proper democratic structures and political accountability.

    The term plutocracy is normally used critically and pejoratively to warn against an adverse and undesirable social context. Plutocracies are regimes distracted by their own fears and vanities, and quickly lose sight of social responsibility and the causes of poverty and inequality.

    Furthermore, whether left-wing or right-wing, plutocracies can ferment class division and conflict, and encourage individualistic wealth accumulation through competition for resources, replacing subsidised costs that were hitherto allocated on a needs-must basis into an economy of competitive bidding between those who are struggling. Plutocracies can go further, and insist that bids for essential subsidies and funding support now conform to the objectives, vision and goals of the regime and its elites.

    Now, nobody is suggesting for a moment that Bishops or Diocesan Secretaries have great personal wealth through their ecclesiastical preferment. The modern ecclesial plutocracy is more subtle. Diocesan HQ’s, Finance Committees, the Church Commissioners and the National Church Institutions have become the new quasi-baronial powers, whilst the ordinary person in the pew and the local parishes have seen their tax demands (i.e., parish share contributions) grow, whilst accountability and transparency over expenditure has declined.

    In short, demands by the centre for more money paired with less democratic accountability will eventually produce movements like Save the Parish. The elites demanding more and more while giving less and less are perceived to be bureaucratic plutocrats, spending money (not their own, but rather that of the people, laity and churches) on speculative projects and visions rather than supporting local clergy and ministry in parishes.

    The recent debacle over the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) has, for many churchgoers, and quite a number of onlookers, become an indicative sign of a leadership that is plutocratic, despotic and certainly elitist. Indeed, as a model of quasi-monarchical episcopacy, it has been high-handed and anti-democratic. Hiring and firing staff at will; asserting the independence of the ISB some days when it suits the regime to say so, yet on other days treating ISB staff as a subordinate body of subjects with few rights. It suggests a capricious use of power and authority.

    However, since the ISB ‘experiment’ cost Archbishops’ Council at least £500,000, Save the Parish would presumably like us all to know that this money could have been better spent. Or at least this expenditure could and should have been debated. Yet that could only have been achieved through greater democratic accountability, proper scrutiny and auditing, deliberation and examination.

    The Archbishops’ Council does not want that level of transparency. Whoever was in control of ‘Operation ISB’ no longer thought that independent oversight of safeguarding was in their interests or suited other objectives, so they shut it down. Charles I was against fiscal transparency and democratic scrutiny too, and the rest, as they say, was (tragic) history.

    Here we run into the opacity of those who control the money and the power, and are skilled in using the antediluvian structures which provide the reasoning for not being transparent and accountable (i.e., “it is too complex to explain…”; “we’ll need to think about that and then get back to you at our next meeting within the cycle…”; and “that probably needs to be looked at by a different committee…”). We’ve all been on the receiving end of such tropes. Some of us are also fluent in the language.

    The ecclesial scenario sketched above entirely corresponds to the findings of the PITF for the CIA in the 1990s. The Church of England, or rather its leadership, is on the brink. It has been whittling away at the democratic instruments such as General Synod for some time, turning what should be a proper auditorium for debate and deliberation into a theatrical spectacle more akin to party political bread and circus.

    Yet quite suddenly, serious and searching questions over the meaning and interpretation of the word ‘independent’ in safeguarding governance have now called into question the entire direction, structure and running of an ecclesial regime.  The stance of the two ISB board members was simple. They stood up for genuine independence, and advocated for victims of abuse – so they lost their jobs.

    Rather like the solitary ‘Tank Man of Tiananmen Square’ (June 5th 1989) they simply stood in the way of the prevailing power and would not be moved. Yes, they still lost – swept away by the force, assertion and power of a regime in control. But this time we have all been able to witness this action against them, and come to realise it was an action against us all. We have observed a brave act of defiance and the morally-principled and rightful exercise of disobedience. The regime expressed its regret, but has not apologised – indeed told us their actions were necessary and beneficial for our progress. But such assurances from the regime no longer carry weight or conviction; nor do they sound authentic.

    Like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, ecclesial communications and assertions no longer correspond to reality. Serious disenchantment has set in. Real questions are being asked. As with any regime, it finds itself on the brink when its citizens have to choose between unwavering loyalty and compliance – or the dangerous acts of dissent that might be involved in expressing a free mind that seeks better alternatives.

    At the moment, the regime remains in power, controlling the money, media and message. But something stronger than sullen resentment has been born out of this ongoing safeguarding omnishambles. Some now sense a change of mood and some real determination that there must be serious reform and wholesale revolution. True, it will take a lot to raise General Synod from its habitual torpor. And the agenda for the gathering and the set-piece speeches still evidence a politburo in full control of the party conference and the messaging to wider membership. Yet the ennui it breeds is undeniable.

    The Polity Instability Task Force are examining a growing corpus of evidence. There are some significant signs indicating winds of change. The Spirit blows where it wills.

  • Archbishops’ Council: Reset Required

    by Gilo, co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and also co-creator of the House of Survivors website. He also writes post-modern hymns.

    This past week saw the Deputy Safeguarding Lead Bishop say on social media: “Today the church is less accountable. To remove, at short notice, the strongest independent voices holding the CofE to account for its safeguarding failings makes us look resistant to robust scrutiny and challenge – which, of course, we are.” And in a BBC interview shortly afterwards: “I don’t entirely trust the church, even though I’m a key part of it.”

    Bishop Julie Conalty is correct in her assessment, and sadly one of the few bishops with sufficient spine to say it publicly.

    Many questions arise from these comments. Did Archbishops’ Council alert DSAs (Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors) prior to the sacking of the ISB statement? Were DSAs across dioceses given any time to prepare for victims’ and survivors’ confusion and distress? I know one wasn’t. I alerted him about forty minutes prior to the release of the statement. Steve Reeves and Jasvinder Sanghera had been given less than an hour’s notice before the statement went up on the Church of England website. They urged Archbishops’ Council for time to prepare the survivors in their care; they urged the Council to think about possible impact. They were told no. So in desperation they reached out to alert a few people quickly so we could contact several others in very vulnerable situations as quickly as possible. I rang and gently told one survivor what was coming as I knew that it could be devastating for them to find out suddenly in this impersonal way by the Archbishops’ Council. Several DSAs later commented that they were appalled that *good* safeguarding had to happen in this unofficial and ad hoc way and that it was necessary for the two ISB members to act fast in the face of such recklessness by the national Church.

    The heads of this Council are the two Archbishops. Why are they not ‘stepped back’? Could they face clergy disciplinary measures? They and others on the Council have presumably done C4 safeguarding training and Senior Leadership training and should be fully aware of the danger of their reckless conduct. They would know that many survivors speak of the ‘re-abuse’ we experience from the Church’s own treatment of our disclosures.  Such misconduct would not be ignored if done by clergy without mitres. Will the Lead Bishop, Joanne Grenfell, act? Will Alexander Kubeyinje, Director of the National Safeguarding Team, act? But an NST Director who is reported to have told the Survivor Advocate that she is “too survivor focussed” is unlikely to see through a lens other than the matrix provided by his controllers. And a Lead Bishop who has remained largely invisible and inaudible since appointment is unlikely to tackle misconduct by her seniors.

    I met with a senior figure this week, a bishop and his team, to ask for help in preparing CDMs for the heads of Archbishops’ Council on the following grounds

    • disregarding safeguarding policy
    • jettisoned lessons learnt
    • putting comms strategy above safeguarding
    • disregard for survivors in acute situations
    • putting back the work of DSAs, and safeguarding across the wider Church, by years
    • ignoring basic Christian principles, or perhaps ‘conduct unbecoming of a clerk in Holy Orders’

    It is bewildering how a group of very senior people who have the running of the Church in their hands could agree to go along with such unsafe practice. The placing of strategy above the needs of survivors in acute and precarious situations is particularly egregious.

    Why are those in governance willing to destroy what is left of their Church’s credibility in this way, and what is the motivation? Who in the Council ‘advises’ (or instructs) them to jettison ‘lessons’ they tell us in their many published ‘Lessons Learnt Reviews’ have been learned, and to abandon good practice? Two figures in public office have overarching power and prestige in this institution. This affords them the freedom to turn to this advisor and say clearly “No, you are tearing a hole in the hull of this Church’s credibility and your direction in these matters makes the Church look delinquent.” In this disastrous sphere of the Church’s life where so much coverup and corruption from the past still needs facing, where there has been so much complicity with unethical activity, and where much honesty and healing is required – how much more credibility capital are the Archbishops willing to burn protecting disastrous advice?

    Everyone knows the answer to the question ‘Who’, but nobody really understands the ‘Why’. The Secretary General to the Archbishops’ Council is also the Secretary General to the Church of England. Why is one éminence grise allowed to wield such enormous and unaccountable power through a web of tetrarchies across the national Church? Why is such obvious systemic harm to the very soul of the Church allowed to continue? Why is cruelty permitted to permeate through the safeguarding structures of the national Church? There is an evolved culture of ‘learned helplessness’ ° across the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and all the National Church Institutions (NCIs) which manifests itself in a polite but ruthless pillar-to-post systemic cruelty. Ask those survivors in urgent situations of crisis where repair and financial aid is needed not next month or next year, but last week. These survivors know this culture horribly well. They are the recipients of its ongoing harm.

    The scandal of Archbishops’ Council’s misconduct last week is as serious as it gets at the top of the Church. There must now be questions in Parliament to the Second Church Estates Commissioner from MPs about the misgovernance of the Church of England. Synod members must find a way to bring real and shining anger to the orchestrated State Flower Festival with its absurd safeguarding presentation that the forthcoming Synod appears to be set to experience. Not mere exasperation or frustration… but real anger and a sense of revulsion.

    Both Archbishops must own their misconduct. There must be serious accountability. And serious repentance.

     

     

    ° indebted to Carl Chambers for the phrase ‘learned helplessness’