ViaMedia

Author: Helen King

  • Lambeth: Colonialism, Power and Pawns

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, and Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington

     

    It’s fair to say that the Lambeth Conference hasn’t – I think – worked out quite the way the Archbishop wanted it to. For months – years, even – we were told that it would focus on the things we share in common, rather than digging the sexuality hole all over again. Much water has gone under the bridge since 1998, and the facts on the ground show that Lambeth I:10 is no longer a serious statement of how things are within the communion. That ship has sailed.

    Yet there it was – that pernicious and unhelpful 1998 resolution – back in view as the Archbishop released his Calls, for which one could vote yes, or ‘sort of yes’, but not ‘no’. And now the Lambeth Calls team – a seemingly impenetrable (and very male) group unable to answer simple questions like who finalised the calls, or did the Archbishop see them before publication – have had to strike the totally unnecessary and divisive ‘reaffirmation’ of Lambeth I:10 from the drafts. It didn’t have to be this way. Someone made the choice that it should be – and whoever that is (and we may never find out, given the disgraceful lack of transparency) should really take some basic lessons in crisis management and avoidance.

    Of course, we are where we are. We find ourselves in a place where the damage has mostly been done, yet only a naïve Anglican-watcher would believe that the story ends here. We await more manoeuvrings, more angry words and more kicking around of LGBTQI people as the political football they so conveniently and often are for the Church of England.

    Yet out of the ashes of this monumental bin-fire, some good has come. For once, LGBTQI people have heard bishops – yes, really – standing up for them. Strong, prophetic, pro-LGBTQI voices have come from across the pond, but also from provinces outside of the US and Canada. Even in our own Church of England, a number of bishops have also stood up and been counted. This is a most welcome sign, and one which I hope and believe will be reflected once again during the conclusion of LLF. Perhaps this is the turning point. That said, those bishops who chose silence – remember, silence is never a neutral position – have also cemented their place in the history books when this sorry saga is finally over. This was not a time for behind-the-scenes machinations – LGBTQI people, and their tears, need to be seen, acknowledged, loved. Not to even bother sympathising with the pain of LBGTQI people – whatever episcopal theological perspective is held – is inexplicable.

    Yet there have been two quite malign themes that have been flowing through the dialogue from those who oppose LBGTQI liberation. The first, which is quite simply not true, is that young people are drawn to churches with an oppressive view on LGBTQI people and marriage. There is absolutely zero evidence that this is the case, but – as usual – if you say it loudly, robustly and often enough, people start to believe it. The key thing, of course, is that even where these ‘conservative’ churches have more young people in them, that doesn’t account for the millions of kids and young people who don’t go to any church. Are we seriously arguing that they are more likely to attend a church which tells them that their queer friends – or they themselves – shouldn’t get married? That is likely to be about as welcome to them as sticking pins in their eyes. Only an inward-facing church would reserve its rejoicing for those who are already within the tent. Meanwhile, LGBTQI people (and increasingly their allies, friends, relatives) are failed and won’t come within a mile of a church, however good the music or lighting.

    But the second line that has been taken relates to colonialism. This one takes more unpacking but, once it is unpacked, the deeply unchristian and disingenuous ground beneath it begins to reveal itself.

    Noises have been made – and were made, during the recent discussions to nominate more people from around the communion to the CNC – that a western church favouring LBGTQI inclusion should not dictate to the rest of the communion. It has been for this reason – however well intentioned – that nobody (or at least, almost nobody) in the Church of England’s hierarchy appears to have felt able to say anything positive about LGBTQI people or their marriages. There is – and there should be – a real sensitivity to colonialist language and actions from those in the Church of England. Racism and colonialism remain deeply embedded in our church. The problem is that the recent solution at General Synod – strongly supported by the Archbishop of York – will do nothing whatsoever to address this.

    The reality is that the Anglican Communion – or rather, a Communion that claims ‘by right’ that the role of primus inter pares belongs to the Archbishop of Canterbury – is institutionally racist and colonialist. It doesn’t matter how many people you add to the Canterbury CNC (and please note, the point that the new members from the Communion won’t have a majority was trumpeted as good news, a deeply concerning example of white power not quite being given up): so long as the Archbishop of the Province of Canterbury inevitably remains the head (using that term with much caution) of the Communion, we are stuck. England rules the waves. The change was nothing more than deckchairs on the Titanic – not that you would have gathered that from the crowing in the aftermath of the General Synod debate.

    Both LGBTQI people and Anglicans from the Global South are being reduced to pawns in a nasty little English power struggle. The fact is that whilst the Archbishop has an inevitable Communion role, the Church of England has no leadership of its own. Yet what is also true is that whilst England holds the position it does in the Communion, there will always be the risk of colonialism. That’s not about LGBTQI people – it’s about the underlying structures and nature of the Communion itself. It suits those who oppose LBGTQI liberation to focus on the ‘Communion’ role of the Archbishop – but this is nothing whatsoever to do with the lives of ordinary Global South Anglicans – it is all about power. In this worst of both possible worlds, England is silent – and yet holds all the strings.

    TEC, Canada and the rest did indeed make a big stink about what happened with the Lambeth calls – as they should have. This was not because they were forcing their will on the assembly but because they were advocating for their queer disciples against a Call sprung upon them with no notice, and against which they could not vote. Bait and switch. Those who opposed them were welcome to disagree. The issue is that the President of the Lambeth Conference – the person who takes ultimate responsibility – is … the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s Colonialism 101. It is surely time for that to change – yet so often the English people calling ‘colonialism’ to beat down LBGTQI people are the same as those calling for the Archbishop’s primus role to remain. It is all about power.

    It is now time to call an end to the pitting of LBGTQI Christians against the Global South. We need a root and branch review of how we operate, and to reimagine the Communion for the twenty-first century. We must lay down our claim to power and instead move to a communion built on true equality, solidarity, friendship and companionship. Yes, people may leave – from all directions. But at least it will be built on honesty, and not on the backs of the oppressed.

    Ends, not means, as Kant once said. If we can’t do that as a church, then we cease to be a church at all.

     

     

  • Equal Marriage: The Argument Has Moved On…

    by the Revd Neil Patterson, Director of Vocations & Ordinands in the Diocese of Hereford and Chair of the General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group

    Readers of this blog may recall that in 2021 I wrote about the motion passed by Hereford Diocesan Synod in 2017 calling for services of prayer and dedication for same-sex couples, and the possible ways in which it might lead to a diversity of practice in the Church of England.  The idea has received a decent amount of comment, both positive and negative, but I returned from the recent General Synod at York wondering if everyone has now moved on to a different page.  Increasingly it feels as if everyone wants to talk about marriage, whether its unchangeability, or that it should be opened to same-sex couples.  There are many aspects to this, but I want to mention just three, and then consider where this may lead us as a Church.

    The first is that the social backdrop to our discussions has changed.  Same-sex marriage has only been a legal reality in England since 2014, and even when the Hereford motion was in the planning, it still seemed to at least some of us that same-sex relationships were not quite the same as marriages, whether from tradition or familiarity with the ‘similar-but-different’ civil partnerships.  Now, however, the language of marriage for same-sex couples – including the easy use of ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ – has become completely normalised in society and the media.  In itself that does not, of course, have any specific consequences for Christians judging what is right in the sight of God.  But it does mean that the existing rich Christian imagery of marriage as the form of permanent covenant, symbolising God’s faithfulness to his people, now appeals naturally as a way to express the faithfulness of Christian same-sex relationships.  And this is all the more so when, as in the gay male world, monogamous faithfulness can sometimes appear a minority option.

    The second related shift arises from reflections I have heard on the Hereford motion proposal.  On the one hand, there is a fear that in a politically difficult and divided Church, if it were to be approved, it would – like other settlements in the past – prove difficult to move on from, leaving same-sex partnered Anglicans in England trapped in permanent second-best.  On the other hand, precisely because it would seem unsatisfactory, the Church could be trapped in ongoing years of wrangling between those seeking, and those opposing, further change.  The official recognition (even if not ‘blessing’, as the motion makes clear) of a class of relationships outside marriage also raises wider questions.  Perhaps raising these questions is not the best way towards stability and the much-needed focus on mission and growth in the Church.  Both these two shifts of emphasis were evident in a fringe meeting at Synod of the Gender and Sexuality Group of those campaigning for change, and I write about them here to share the listening from that meeting and continue the dialogue.

    One of the benefits of General Synod, though, is the chance to talk with those from other viewpoints whom one knows through unrelated connections like (in my case) discernment work, or revising legislation.  Some of those I talked to are connected to the Church of England Evangelical Council, who have set out in public papers on their website their arguments against any recognition of same-sex relationships by the Church.  The striking thing, both from these conversations and their most recent film output, is that they do not see the compromise of some sort of service for same-sex couples as particularly helpful.  If the Church recognises same-sex sexual relationships in any way, then that is the conscience-invoking point for them.  Such relationships might as well be marriages as anything else, and indeed if they were marriages then this would avoid the complexity of recognising a different category of relationships, a category that would complicate expectations for opposite-sex couples.  Of course their strongest conviction is against any official recognition of same-sex couples at all.

    What does this mean for the outcome of the Living in Love & Faith process?  Well, it means that the bishops, meeting residentially three times in the autumn, probably have a headache.  But it may mean that, somewhat to my own surprise, the debate is shifting: it is not about how the Church of England will recognise same-sex couples, but about when it will allow equal marriage.  The headache, though, is how to make that possible for those of us who seek it (both for ourselves and for the Church) and those whose consciences will not allow it.  A helpful comment from one of my conservative colleagues was that, as a minister, he believed that he had a duty to teach that same-sex relationships were not only something undesirable which he would not want to do, or have in his church, but that they are positively harmful.  I disagree, obviously, but that is not going to make any difference to his convictions.  The challenge is to consider what degree of fellowship would be possible from such a stance with those of us adopting equal marriage.

    My sincere hope is that we can learn from the 1980s, when very much the same questions arose around the ordination of women, and spend fewer years struggling to find a solution which is comparably unsatisfactory for all concerned.  The controversy today about the draft Lambeth Call is also a reminder that whatever path we take, we do so against an established diversity in the Anglican Communion. Whatever contribution they make to the debates at Lambeth, I pray that the bishops of the Church of England will return to the task in the autumn renewed in the value of diversity, and ready to seek a way forward with imagination and vigour.

     

  • The Actual Value of Women

    by Chantal Noppen, a Team Vicar in North Wearside and a member of General Synod. She describes herself as a feisty, direct, urban priest with a heart for justice

    Last week at General Synod was interesting, affirming, frustrating and confusing, probably in equal parts. It’s a steep learning curve but I’m gradually starting to feel a little less at sea. I even found myself making not one, but two speeches on topics close to my heart, which I hope landed in the ears of those who most need to hear them!

    As I listened to the debate on how we fund and support those in training for ministry, whether it is for ordained or lay work, I found myself musing on my own experience and discovered I still have some residual anger and frustration about it. Things don’t change fast in the church, but change is needed. Before I knew it, I was on my feet requesting to speak…

    Here’s part of my story.

    I left home at 18. I am an only child, but I was pretty self-reliant financially and I juggled working alongside my undergraduate studies. I became the proud owner of a little Tyneside flat in Newcastle. By the time I’d got over the mountain of self-doubt and applied and then been accepted to train for ordination, I’d lived in my flat for six years. I’m not exactly cut out to live alone, nor was that a financial practicality, so I’d always had lodgers and I planned to rent the flat in its entirety while I was training, to cover the mortgage. I considered selling up but was reluctant to do that, as getting on the housing ladder is not something to throw away lightly.

    When I suggested that I should defer my training for a year to concentrate on saving up some funds to give me a buffer while I was away, the diocese assured me that this wouldn’t be necessary, and that they would support me if I were to lose my tenants. Then of course there would be the holidays and I could work in those, like many students do. It would all be fine: I shouldn’t worry.

    Of course, a few months in, I did lose my tenants and my diocese was unable to offer me financial assistance – the offer had of course only been a verbal one.

    So I applied for grants, many grants, for which I was mostly unsuccessful: too catholic for the evangelical ones, too female for the Catholic ones. Yet around me I could see male ordinands without my financial responsibilities being awarded grants to spend on books… or whatever they fancied really. It was not a comfortable reality.

    I was told that Oxbridge students are meant to agree not to take on jobs during term-time as their studies should, and would, demand their full attention. I then discovered that the church would also be claiming all my holiday time that first year, sending me on placements. So, no temping either. The Bible might encourage us not to be concerned about tomorrow, but the fear of the inevitability tomorrow will bring does somewhat overshadow today, especially if financial worries are at its root.

    It was through the grace of God, sheer stubbornness and a very generous friend that I managed, but it is not a time I look back on fondly.

    I share my story because not all ordinands are the same. We can’t assume that everyone has parental financial support, a well-earning spouse or savings squirrelled away. We can’t assume that none of them has financial responsibilities. If we want to become more diverse and genuinely open to those from more working class, self-sufficient backgrounds, this needs addressing.

    Alongside this, let’s also name the elephant in the room, and that is the pressure on women to be self-supporting, or simply to magic childcare out of thin air. If a woman is the breadwinner in their family, heading to training will have an immense impact on family finances.

    The Church of England need to be bolder and think bigger. Let’s stop just scratching the surface on how we assess the training, formation and growth we support and offer, and let’s stop kidding ourselves that one size can fit all. Let’s actually listen to the statistics and questions raised by groups such as WATCH. Listen to the stories and experiences of those from less stable middle-class backgrounds on the barriers to training. Why do we push people into self-supporting ministry or non-residential training; is it because it actually suits their skill-set and circumstances, or is it simply easier for the Church?

    Let’s ask, and listen, to the hard truths around why younger women aren’t coming forward. It’s not rocket science. What maternity support is actually in place; in reality, not just aspirationally? Young women ordinands will become young curates, with their biological clocks ticking down. Women need to know where they stand, and where they will stand, if they choose to have a family. Childcare is expensive, but surely we are past assuming that women will, and should, prioritise providing it themselves if they are called to something else?

    Be bold, invest and be transparent. Let’s not offer support we cannot provide but let’s really consider the options. No-one should have to experience the level of pressure, isolation and worry I did during training; handling the dismantling of my self and painful introspective navel-gazing was more than enough without that!

    Women, both lay and ordained, are worth investing in. We are, after all, literally a source of growth and potential. Please don’t underestimate, undervalue or ignore us.

     

     

     

     

  • An End to an Injustice: And the Start of a Campaign

    by Sorrel Shamel-Wood, Curate in the Diocese of Oxford

    This morning, Wednesday 6th July 2022, I presided at the altar for the first time. It was at the Church of St Mary and St Berin, Berinsfield – a 1962 daughter church of Dorchester Abbey – and, from my vantage point facing east*, it felt like heaven was breaking through. There were nineteen of us in attendance.

    In some ways, it felt very special and remarkable: after all, it was my first time in this privileged position, and of course women could not be ordained in the Church of England until I was seven years old, so it’s never something I’ve taken for granted. But in a different sense, it felt very normal: the midweek Wednesday eucharist is a staple part of the worshipping life of our team, and has been forever. Many priests have stood and celebrated behind that altar in the past sixty years and, down the road at Dorchester Abbey, they have done so for the past fourteen hundred. I pray they will continue to do so for many centuries after I have left.

    Readers of this blog will know that I almost didn’t get priested at all. In February, I wrote an article for Via Media detailing how my priesting was delayed because my husband had previously been married to someone else. Many ordinands are affected by the Canon C4 regulations (the rule that a faculty has to be granted in order for a person to be ordained who has remarried following a divorce, or whose spouse has remarried following a divorce). Our case was particularly nonsensical, though, because my husband is the one who was previously married to someone else, but he was already a priest when we married so could happily preside at the altar without any ramifications. The story was also reported by the Church Times. It gained attention from some significant people, and many people who read it were outraged and perplexed by the situation.

    Then, on February 16th this year, there was good news. I was in the early stages of labour when my bishop rang, but I didn’t mention this to him because I knew what the conversation was about and I didn’t want it to be delayed a moment longer. He was excited to tell me that the archbishops had agreed in principle to grant an exception to the three-year rule regarding Canon C4 faculties and, all being well and with the wind behind us, I should be able to be ordained at Petertide. I try not to over-interpret the coincidences that take place in the world around us, but it did feel to me that there was something meaningful in the fact that my baby and the good news about my priesting came at the same time.

    It’s difficult to express how thankful I am that I have now been ordained priest. But it has been a frustrating, bewildering and at times overwhelming experience. For a start, people who don’t even know my husband know that he was previously married to someone else, which is something deeply personal and difficult for him, despite the circumstances being relatively amicable and straightforward. We even had trolls who don’t believe in divorce attacking us on social media, being horrible about our wedding photos and my wedding dress.

    I’m not naturally a campaigner or change-maker in personality, and yet I found myself campaigning for changes to the faculty rules. (And if you are a member of General Synod who is reading this, do please support Revd Mark Bennet’s private members bill to revoke the Canon C4 regulation altogether). All this has caused me to realise that, if I’m capable of campaigning for a relatively small injustice that affects me personally, I can and must campaign on behalf of those who suffer infinitely worse injustices than we have experienced, and perhaps this is a new aspect of my calling that I hadn’t really anticipated.

    In a weird, microcosmic corner of social media we found ourselves in the spotlight for a moment and, if I’m entirely honest, I can see how that sort of thing could become quite addictive. It catered to the vainer, more superficial aspects of my personality which many priests have, and which women tend to be castigated for far more than their male colleagues, and which I’m not keen to encourage in myself because they distract from our real purpose of pointing people to Christ.

    So I am very happy to be at the end of this strange, frustrating journey. It has been painful at times, but also filled with encounters with good people and much grace. But of course, this is only the beginning of what I hope will be many decades of serving the Church, God’s world and God’s people. As I prepared for priesting, I was repeatedly struck by the words which the Lord once spoke to St Francis, “Francis, rebuild my church! It has fallen into ruin”. This morning, as we got the church ready for the service, the organist opened a window and the entire window frame fell out. We don’t really have the money to repair it. But spiritually, of course, as well as practically, the Church is facing huge challenges in our generation. There is a riding tide of secularisation to grapple with. A gospel that needs to be proclaimed afresh in a rapidly changing world. There are injustices to fight, within and without the church. There are broken people that yearn for God’s healing and lonely, hurting, lost people desperate to know God’s love. It is now that the real work begins.

     

     

    * The layout of the church was reversed at some point in its history during renovations, so the altar is next to the font where the entrance used to be.

     

     

  • Wanting to be One: The Rural Church Today

    by Claire Lording, Vicar of the Benefice in Pershore in the Diocese of Worcester and member of General Synod. Along with fellow parish priest Jo Stobart, she is standing as a ‘pair’ for election to the Crown Nominations Commission

     

    “I don’t like the countryside. It’s a soggy sort of place full of birds and animals wandering around uncooked.” Not my words, but those of Lady Bradley, a completely fictitious Victorian detective who graced our screens at the end of the last century. The truth is though that many people don’t like the countryside. Rural communities are too often misunderstood and defined by what can make them challenging places to live in. Yes, they can be beautiful places, but realistically they can also be isolating, hard to reach, lacking local amenities, ageing, home to stressed-out farmers, places of a variety of views including some very conservative opinions, and full of churches struggling to be Kingdom People with never quite enough volunteers or congregation. But they are also, most importantly, places where things can and do really happen.

    I’ve always ministered in rural communities and rural market towns and have never ceased to be thankful for the ‘can do’ attitude that these communities have had. The rural community has a deep sense of the value of relationships and of being immersed in the place that it is, so there is often a sense of simply getting on with life, inside and outside the Church. The seasons come and go and the community, as place and people, is still there, having weathered whatever storm or challenge has come its way. Not without cost or a sense of loss, but with a great degree of resilience. Perhaps in a rural environment where we see creation and the land around us grow, flourish and die, year after year, we have come to live with the reality of death and the possibility of resurrection and new life in a more natural way than others may experience.

    Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why in the rural places I’ve been there has never been an issue with the ordination of women to the priesthood, and then to the episcopate. Relationships really do matter in small communities, and it is these which count more than anything else because people are hopefully not anonymous folks down the road, but individuals with names and stories to share. Whether consciously, or unconsciously, people in rural communities are working at being one, knowing that this is how their community will continue and have the best chance of thriving.

    With all this experience, it shouldn’t have surprised me that, when the Living in Love and Faith course was launched, the parishes I work with would appreciate the opportunity to get involved. Not in huge numbers, but certainly enough to feel that we could contribute to the conversation. And what was most beautiful was the conversations we shared. People came with open minds and a sense of trust because the people round the Zoom screen or round the table were not complete strangers. Here were people from the same communities who were committed to listening to each other because that’s how we can best live together.

    There were differences of opinion and thinking as views were shared and we were always mindful of those not present, whose thoughts might have been more challenging in their conservatism. But those who were present remembered, at all times, that there was diversity on the screen or in the room. It was a privilege to see how some people moved from a place of having a deeply-held traditional understanding of marriage, to being insistent that everyone should be able to get married in Church, and what could we do about it? There was also real understanding of those who wanted to hold on to their traditionally held views about marriage; a sense that we will respect and honour each other, even when we don’t agree.

    There was a depth of compassion and a real desire to do more – to do everything we possibly could – for everybody in our churches and community, however they choose to identify themselves. This was the coming together of a group of people who wanted to be one, because they knew that God sees us as one and that we are so much better when we can be who we are meant to be in God’s sight, without fear or uncertainty.

    This was all wonderful and gave me great encouragement that the Church, in rural places and beyond, might be ready to take the next step to being more actively inclusive. Then we went a step further. After successfully using our new coloured lighting to light up Pershore Abbey tower in red, white and blue for the Platinum Jubilee, we had a community request to light our tower in the Pride flag colours. Not a problem, said the church! And then our social media volunteer put together a Pride display outside our community centre. Fantastic, said the church!

    Sharing in the LLF process, lighting a tower, or displaying a Pride flag are small and simple actions, but ones that shout out how forward-looking and inclusive the rural church and rural communities can be. They show that the Church can gently get on with the task of being open and welcoming to all. The rural Church may often be underestimated, but for the time being we will just get on being the best version of Church we know how to be.

  • Gatecrashing God’s Party: Parish Ministry Today

    by Jo Stobart, a parish priest in South Somerset. Along with fellow parish priest Claire Lording, she is standing as a ‘pair’ for election to the Crown Nominations Commission

     

    I was recently asked, ‘What has changed about your calling since you embarked on exploring a vocation to ordained ministry?’ It’s a question I found myself reflecting on again as I sat in Taunton Minster last weekend, watching our benefice’s curate being ordained priest. It’s almost five years since I made those vows myself. Although in ministerial terms that’s a blink of an eye, now seems a significant moment to pause and ponder the answer I gave to my original questioner.

    My first response was that I could never have predicted just how much I would love this role. If Buechner’s oft-quoted ‘The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet’ is true, then I am blessed to find myself at that sweet spot of intersection. I serve as Vicar in places that, alongside Fr Alex Frost’s parish, do a pretty good job of representing the breadth of the Church of England. Ilminster is a small market town in South Somerset and Whitelackington an outlying village.

    The Minster sits right at the heart of the town and generations of families are connected to the building by baptisms, weddings and funerals. The church still has a recognised place in the life of the town. Most of the children attend the Church of England First School and civic events regularly find expression through a church service. I’m often greeted in the main street with ‘Morning Vicar’. Parish ministry here looks remarkably ‘traditional’.

    But traditions change too. On the list of vicars in our Lady Chapel, dating back to the Norman Conquest, I’m the first woman incumbent. I’m still asked tentative questions about how I should be addressed (‘Jo? But Vicar’s fine too.’). People here would instinctively tick a ‘Church of England’ box on a form, but this connection now usually relies on the regular attendance of a parent or, more often, a grandparent. The story of Christianity is one that’s remembered as an echo through the generations.

    What this means is that doing the work of a parish priest doesn’t need to be ground-breaking to be innovative or ‘fresh’. Each day brings the opportunity to share our faith, potentially for the first time with that person, and Mary Lennox-like to open together the overgrown door of The Secret Garden. As well as sharing faith in traditional ways, as so many parishes up and down the country are doing so faithfully, we are blessed to have pioneers working on the margins. There are voices calling us to work alongside those of good will in the community on green issues, or the refugee crisis. Our churches, alongside other Christian communities here, run the town’s food bank.

    And at the heart of it all there’s the worship we offer to God. Sunday by Sunday we celebrate the Eucharist – when the mystery of God’s love in Christ is made present to us – and listen to Scripture – discerning words of hope that are for all people.

    I love being a parish priest.

    But my answer to that original question contained a second part, which on the face of it was more ambivalent. I said, ‘I’m less patient.’ While five years ago I had some sense of the way in which the Church of England might need to change, I didn’t feel the same urgency I do now. I’m not from a Christian family but as a child the Church of England nurtured my faith and, for all its flaws, is my home. I have worshipped across the breadth of our denomination and, whilst some of that breadth I find personally challenging, I remain committed to finding a way for our whole church to flourish. As one we should be sharing the joy of the Good News.

    Given half a chance, I’d spend all day reading a novel because stories give me life. So it won’t come as a surprise that my faith is profoundly shaped by the stories we encounter in Scripture – especially the parables that Jesus told. In those parables two themes particularly shape my life as a follower of Christ, and then as a priest.

    First, the faithfulness that God requires of us. The sowing of the seed with no sense of what the return will be. And second, the generosity and hospitality of the God we worship – a God who bids us welcome. It’s a picture of abundance, but in my day-to-day life too often I’m forced to see things through a lens of scarcity. Post-pandemic, the volunteers we don’t have, the funds we can’t find, the stipendiary ministry roles we need to reduce, the scale of the need we are facing in our community and the struggle to keep pace with that. Sometimes it’s hard to remember we’re serving a God who invites us to a party.

    I long for our church to recapture that vision of a party so good you want to bring all your friends along as well, the festival you’d climb the fences to get into. And perhaps that last Glastonbury-based allusion is the root cause of my impatience. We’ve been invited to the best headline act ever and yet we’ve built high fences all round it to keep others out. Whereas God goes out on to the streets to welcome everyone in, we’ve too often been a church that serves only the people who look and think like ‘us’.

    My sense is that those of us who might describe ourselves as either ‘Inclusive’ or ‘liberal’ can sometimes be perceived as lukewarm in our longing to make Christ known. Of course this isn’t true, but I think those of us who hold those perspectives need to tell in a compelling way the story of a God whose arms are open wide to all. A God whose invitations to the party are surprising and unsettling to the older brothers of the world. A God who delights in and loves each and every one of us.

    Five years on from ordination to the priesthood, I’m impatient for a church that tells that amazing story with one voice.

  • “Sickened by our own Magnanimity?”:   Good Disagreement, Bad Ecclesiology

    by Prof Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and member of General Synod

    As Living in Love and Faith moves towards its conclusion, are we heading for a typically Anglican situation in which everyone has to compromise: and nobody gets what they want? How will that feel?

    In the Introduction to a collection of essays she edited in 1998, Act of Synod – Act of Folly?, the late Monica Furlong told of a priest – a woman – who was asked by a Diocesan Director of Ordinands not to lay hands on one of the candidates at an ordination which she was attending. “Couched in terms of Christian charity and sweet reasonableness, this request that she must not touch the candidate was difficult to refuse, yet left a nasty taste behind it. My friend agreed, but says ‘I was sickened by my own magnanimity’”.

    There is indeed something physically sickening about being the one who has to say “Yes of course, that’s fine” when it’s your own gender identity – or your own sexuality – which is being rejected. The ordination of women as priests, and then their consecration as bishops, divided the Church of England. As with current debates about same-sex marriage, the depth and seriousness of the disagreement was acknowledged. As with same-sex marriage, no simple Bible verse could be located to back up women priests or bishops. Instead, the House of Bishops argued that women bishops represent “a proper development in proclaiming afresh in this generation the grace and truth of Christ”.

    Nausea may be positive: a natural part of the beginning of a pregnancy. Maybe the time has come to admit to nausea, while asking whether further waves of it are inevitable as Living in Love and Faith moves into its next phase. Here, as in many other ways, it’s so instructive to look at how the Church of England dealt with disagreement when women were ordained. When Synod passed by the required two-thirds majority the 1992 motion opening the priesthood to women, some male priests took the ‘compensation’ package built into the legislation. That cost the church around £27.5 million: I really can’t see that sort of arrangement happening again. And laity who did not accept women priests? For them, provision was initially made by enabling parishes to pass Resolutions A (women presiding at Holy Communion or giving the absolution) and/or B (women as incumbents, priests-in-charge or team vicars; the ‘headship’ roles). Since 2016, Parochial Church Councils can pass a Resolution placing them under the authority of a bishop who will not ordain women.

    Some potential priests who stayed were worried about having a valid line of ordination; had anybody laying hands on them ever ‘laid hands’ on a woman? (This has a very specific meaning in an episcopal church…) This could be seen as ignoring Article 26 of the Thirty-Nine Articles; the understanding that the unworthiness of the minister does not hinder the efficacy of the sacrament. Or is being a woman the sort of ‘unworthiness’ which is beyond the pale?

    After Synod passed the 1992 motion, the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament brought direct pressure on the Church of England to provide even greater ‘protection’ to opponents as the price tag for its approval. In contrast to the lengthy process of consultation of diocesan and deanery synods which preceded the ordination of women, in less than a year the House of Bishops cooked up the 1993 Act of Synod, adding in something that was not part of the original legislative package, Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEVs or ‘Flying bishops’). And it was not sent out for wider church consultation.

    The Church of England likes the principle of doing something new by presenting it as something old. So Beverley, a PEV for traditional catholic Anglicans, was imagined as continuing a suffragan see (originally created to help the Archbishop of York) which had lapsed in 1923. The other two, Ebbsfleet and Richborough, were newly created for the PEVs.  Creating sees is possible at any time by Order in Council. In 2015, a further PEV was appointed, this time for conservative evangelicals: the Bishop of Maidstone. His role is presented as an ‘honorary assistant bishop’ in – gasp – 14 dioceses (2019 figures); the other PEVs, too, work over a number of dioceses, thus breaking the link between a bishop and a geographical area which used to be key to our ecclesiology. So much for the bishop as a ‘focus of unity’.

    After the recent resignation of the Bishop of Ebbsfleet – now a priest in the Roman Catholic church – there is a consultation happening about replacing Ebbsfleet with a Bishop of Oswestry (a see created in 1888 but never filled) who would be a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Lichfield, “rooted in an individual diocese and diocesan college of bishops” rather than floating free.

    For many people in the Church of England, of course, none of this is relevant. They belong to a local church and they have no idea what a PEV is. From my experience, I would add that they also have little idea that same-sex marriages can’t happen in churches, that clergy are not supposed to have same-sex marriages, and that different dioceses operate different policies with regard to the sexuality and relationships of candidates for both licensed lay and ordained ministry.

    Where women’s ordained ministry is concerned, the ecclesiology and the key documents of the Church of England have been treated with disdain, or constructively stretched, according to your point of view. The 2014 Five Guiding Principles from the House of Bishops attempt to hold it all in a dizzying tension: “the Church of England has reached a clear decision on the matter” yet at the same time those who on theological grounds “are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests continue to be within the spectrum of teaching and tradition of the Anglican Communion”. That echoes the 2008 GS1710 Illustrative Draft Code of Practice, on those who refuse the ordained ministry of women as priests and bishops: “Their convictions are within the spectrum of Anglican teaching and tradition and are deserving of respect”.

    Spectrum is an interesting word. Many of us believe that gender and sexuality are also on their own spectrums. So is there a way that, on the current issues of marriage and ordination, we can repurpose those words from GS1710? In a 2018 study guide to the Five Guiding Principles, the Faith and Order Commission stated that “those opposed to the ordination of women should not characterize those in favour as caving in to the fashions of the age, and nor should those in favour stigmatise those opposed as supporters of discrimination and injustice”. Relevant to debates on sexuality, too?

    And from that same study guide:

    It does not require suspending my judgment that some theological views are wrong, or that some views that are wrong may be actively harmful. It does require that I do not take it upon myself to limit that perceived harm by seeking to restrict the participation of those who hold such views in the common life of our church… It may be tempting for the majority to think that, were the minority to leave or disappear, the ‘problem’ posed by their existence would be resolved and all the energy unfortunately required to manage it be liberated for more productive endeavours. It may be tempting for the minority to think that the more they can separate themselves from the majority and insulate themselves from its influence, the more secure their survival will be.

    Can this template from the ordination of women debates be applied to the current debate on human sexuality, or is the nausea – on both sides – just too much to bear?

     

    Further reading:

    Judith Maltby, ‘One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, but Two Integrities?’ in Monica Furlong (ed.), Act of Synod – Act of Folly (SCM Press, 1998)

    Judith Maltby, ‘Gender and Establishment: Parliament, “Erastianism” and the Ordination of Women 1993-2010’ in Mark Chapman, Judith Maltby and William Whyte (eds), The Established Church. Past, Present and Future (Continuum, 2011)

     

     

     

     

  • Living in Love and Faith? Insights from the Church of Scotland

    by Professor Paul Middleton, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Chester, and a Church of Scotland Minister

    Last month, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland passed legislation to permit its Ministers and Deacons to conduct and solemnise same-sex marriages. The legislation is permissive, and the rights of those Ministers who choose not to conduct same-sex weddings are protected in Church as well as Civil Law. While the Quakers, Scottish Episcopal Church, United Reformed Church and Methodists have already authorised same-sex marriage, and the Church in Wales last year agreed to bless such marriages, the Church of Scotland is now the largest denomination in the UK to do so. How might this move by the National (distinct from ‘Established’) Church in Scotland affect current discussions in the Church of England as it nears the end of the Living in Love and Faith process?

    In common with virtually every church around the world, the Church of Scotland has wrestled with questions of sexuality, and same-sex relationships in particular. Unsurprisingly, the Kirk originally took a strongly negative view, even initially opposing the setting up of the Wolfenden Committee. However, by the late 1980s, opinion became more divided, and some Ministers began offering services of blessings for same-sex couples. It is widely believed that conducting a blessing was the reason the Rev Margaret Forrester, one of the first women to be ordained, was never elected Moderator of the General Assembly.

    Assembly reports through the 1990s and 2000s held conservative and liberal positions on sexuality in tension as the Church declined to either reaffirm a traditionalist position or endorse more revisionist positions. This was typified in 2006 when the Church refused to ban Ministers from conducting same-sex blessings, but also refused to guarantee those who participated in such blessings could not be subject to disciplinary procedures.

    This uneasy truce was shattered in 2009 when a group of traditionalists challenged the decision of Aberdeen Presbytery to sustain the call of the Rev Scott Rennie, who was in a same-sex relationship, to Queen’s Cross Church. While Rennie was by no means the only Church of Scotland Parish Minister in a same-sex relationship, the action against the Presbytery brought the issue into the open, and began one of the most turbulent periods in the Church’s recent history. General Assembly sided with Aberdeen Presbytery, but agreed to set up a special commission to report on the legal and theological issues raised, while imposing a moratorium on ministers, boards, and courts of the church from making any further comment for two years.

    In 2011, the Special Commission offered the Church two trajectories; one affirming a ‘traditionalist’ approach to sexuality and marriage, which would end any future ordination of Ministers in same-sex relationships, the other a ‘revisionist’ path towards explicitly affirming the place of gay Ministers in the Church. Instead of advocating either path, the Commission allowed arguments for the two contrary positions to sit side by side in the report. While debates over sexuality often make claims about what is ‘biblical’ or ‘unbiblical’, in the report both sides of the argument were dominated by the interpretation of Scripture.

    The Church of Scotland holds that Scripture has a non-negotiable place as ‘the supreme rule of faith and life’, but it also fully embraces the insights of Biblical Criticism. Even ‘conservative’ reports from the 1980s and 1990s explicitly recognised that those equally committed to Scripture can reach different conclusions on this and other important issues. The main interpretative division between the two parts of the 2011 report was essentially over the difference biblical criticism makes to contemporary application. In 2011 the revisionist trajectory narrowly prevailed (56%/44%), but in all subsequent divisions confirming this trajectory from 2013 onwards, the vote has been consistently nearer to a 2:1 majority.

    In 2015, Assembly finally passed legislation to allow congregations to call Ministers in same-sex Civil Partnerships and Marriage. It recognised that a significant minority in the Church did not support this move. Their consciences are protected in what has become known as ‘constrained difference’, in which a variety of views and practices are held, respected, and protected within the Church of Scotland.

    What about the Church of England? Decades of inconclusive, aborted reports have not only entrenched already polarised positions, but have resulted in an increasingly intolerable tension between the theoretical ‘official’ position of the Church and the reality on the ground. Issues in Human Sexuality, the ‘official’ Bishops’ teaching statement, dates from 1991 and is an outworking of a conservative 1987 General Synod resolution. It states ‘clergy [as distinct from the laity!] cannot claim the liberty to enter into sexually active homophile [sic!!] relationships.’ However, the fact is that many are. Probably the most bizarre expression of this tension is that while Priests have been permitted to enter into Civil Partnerships since 2013, the Church of England (uniquely) persuaded itself that this was little more than an expression of ‘close friendship’. Unlike the Church of Scotland and the Church in Wales, the Church of England has never really acknowledged the presence of gay Priests, either to explicitly affirm their place in the Church or to enact disciplinary procedures against them. Moreover, in February’s General Synod, the Bishop of London effectively side-lined Issues by suggesting it was never designed to have an official place in the ordination process. A Private Members’ Motion from Rev Mae Christie has recently been tabled, asking ‘That this Synod request that the House of Bishops remove any requirements relating to Issues in Human Sexuality from the Vocations (Shared Discernment) Process.’

    The Church of England already lives with a tense and unacknowledged ‘constrained difference’. Living and Love and Faith appears to be preparing the ground for at least beginning the journey to officially recognising that there is theological and biblical integrity in a range of positions. For what it is worth, it seems to me that agreeing to live with constrained difference on sexuality is far simpler than the Church’s current compromise on women Bishops, since it is effectively recognising what is already the case.

  • Clearing the Slate: The Realities of a Declining Church

    by Fr Alex Frost, Vicar of St Matthews, Burnley and member of General Synod

    In my capacity as Vicar, St Matthew’s Burnley, I sometimes wonder how Urban Ministry is perceived or understood within the Church of England community. Particularly if you are not living in it daily as I do in my parish of over 17,000 people where only the tiniest of numbers attend church on a weekly basis.

    So, what is the perception versus reality in modern day Britain in 2022?

    Maybe one of the perceptions is that urban estates are simply full of lazy good for nothing spongers, who want everything literally on a plate, including food, fuel, and freebies. Maybe the perception is that these areas are full of uneducated layabouts who make their own bed and should lie in it, and if that bed happens to be sleeping bag outside Tesco’s, then it’s someone else’s problem and not theirs. Maybe there is a perception that urban deprivation is all made-up poppycock nonsense and propaganda to build an agenda against a political ideology; just an imaginatively-created fairy tale by the ‘Left’ to create political and social discontent.

    I think one of the key dangers faced by the Church of England with its aura and aroma of middle- to upper-class arrogance is that it takes the moral high ground by believing that throwing clergy and the commissioners’ cash at the problem, Christianity will burst into life like bluebells in greenbelt Surrey.

    The reality is that the pandemic has brought huge issues to Urban settings that already had huge issues long before COVID 19 was even a thing.  Many Urban estates and communities have been dealing with their own localised pandemic and were already rationing toilet rolls and petrol long before the cost-of-living crisis we are facing at present. For many families living at this sharp end of existence, life is simply about surviving from one day to the next. Trust me when I tell you the last thing many of these folks want is some Christians in the Marks and Spencer summer range rocking up on the estate with a ‘vision’ or a ‘plan’ to lead them into still waters whilst Matt Redman belts out 10,000 Reasons on the portable speakers.

    The reality is that our urban settings at times are very tough, at times they are very sad whilst at other times they are funny and joyful. In my past life as a stand-up comedian, I used to think hard about my material, but here on the estates the landscape is a hive of humour and hilarity. Often, it’s a case of ‘If we don’t laugh, we might die’. If we don’t laugh at one other, we might hurt one another. During the pandemic I have felt extremely blessed to walk alongside many of these incredible characters. I’m also very fortunate that I have been afforded the opportunity to give a voice to some of these people via my new book ‘Our Daily Bread’, published by Harper Collins North and out in October. At times the stories are harrowing and deeply upsetting, but underneath all the pain and hardship are some of the most resilient and faithful people you could wish to find.

    They are people that have gone way beyond ‘Been there, got the T-shirt’; they are people who been fully kitted out in a lifetime of challenge, poverty, and let-down. They are all people who have lost faith in ‘services’, politicians, and policing. These are communities who have had so little engagement with faith groups that they have never had the opportunity to discover a faith in Jesus because it’s never even been there as an option. Instead, they have experienced a creaking out-of-touch Church that in many cases only opens its doors to exude a complex fragrance of exclusive traditional theologies that’s as easily lost on newly-confirmed teenagers as it is on a single parent on benefits.

    So where is the hope? One of the great joys of an abandonment of estate ministry by the church is that slates have been cleared like that etch-a-sketch classic toy. The church has been dormant for so long in so many places, that few people know what it was even like, other than the trail of damage that has been left behind by homophobia, bigotry and intolerance. The joy can be found in a new ministry that truly reflects Jesus’ encouragement to love thy neighbour as thyself and serve the most needy.

    We have much work to do at St Matthew’s, Burnley, but our ministry through the pandemic has opened our church doors to a fragile and broken community. We have simply tried to serve, be that food, friendship or faith. Not too pushy, not too judgy, always inclusive, never exclusive, in the hope that our visitors might find something of worth: worth in themselves, worth in each other, worth in our church and in Jesus our redeemer.

    Wherever you are or whatever you believe about the cost-of-living crisis, I can tell you it exists, it is real. It is painful, it is traumatic and that’s what makes it necessary for our national church to do more in our urban settings. Just two sessions into being a newly-elected General Synod member reminds me that we are not doing enough. Only when we place the most marginalised people in our society at the heart of our church will we grow and make a difference. If we don’t, we face a church in palliative decline and our future could be terminal. That’s what is at stake: this is where we are, and for that we must truly repent.

     

     

  • Bishops Speaking Out: So Very Right and So Very Wrong

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


    This is my thoughtful quote of the week: ‘The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget – that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in.’ So said the wonderful Rachel Held Evans. Her prophetic voice did exactly that. It drew people in. Oh my, do we miss her!

    It’s easy to jump to a pious interpretation of this radical inclusivity of the gospel, but the truth is more incarnational than sacramental. Jesus includes real embodied people, not their notional ‘souls’ (whatever you imagine a disembodied soul might actually be!). Because there are prostitutes and beggars, refugees and tax collectors in Jesus’ life we can’t avoid the message our faith is giving us. That message, because it is embodied, can’t help but be political.

    When the policy of exporting refugees to Rwanda was first mooted, I thought it was a joke. It seemed so off the scale of normal morality that it couldn’t be true. More than failing to welcome the stranger amongst us, a code which most world religions hold dear, the proposal was to export them. It looks like a government-sponsored form of human trafficking. People who are in the most desperate need being sent against their will to a country they don’t want to go to. A country which for many will prove dangerous.

    As a country we badly need more people willing and able to work. The NHS, care services, farms, haulage, airports are all struggling to deliver. We need people, but not, it seems, refugee types of people. The layers of prejudice are astounding.

    All this stirred the hearts and consciences of our Archbishops and Bishops. They wrote a stiff letter which appeared in The Times on June 14th. I’m tempted to say: ‘What took you so long?’ Even Prince Charles pronounced before them. But yes, it was a good and helpful intervention, and yes, for some, this dose of gospel truth was offensive.

    As I write, we have seen a plane loaded with a mere handful of men stopped on the tarmac by the European Court of Human Rights. They are now saying it might be a year before another flight is attempted. The government is managing not only to be cruel and immoral but also ludicrous!

    I am left with a question: a question about this united action of the bishops. They understood that you don’t exclude people, you welcome them, and they knew that this was at the heart of the gospel. They were prepared to tolerate the consequent offence that some felt because they deeply believed that what they were saying was right.

    Why then can they do the right thing at a national level, but not within their own institution? If you are a gay priest and you get married you are excluded from any further preferment. If you are gay and married and feel the call of God to ordination you are excluded before you even get on to the first step. Many are put into the intolerable position of being asked to choose between the call of God on their lives and the person they love most deeply. Somehow the Church of England thought it was OK to embark on yet another cycle of study and discussion about the theological rationale for excluding people simply for being the people God made them to be.

    I know some folk defend Living in Love and Faith, but frankly it stinks. It stinks because it only exists because we have accepted the premise that discussing other people’s sexuality in order to determine whether they can be fully included is a legitimate thing to do. It is not. It is abusive and simply repeats the abuse that the church has perpetrated over the decades.

    Only this time it is worse.

    Worse because we’d reached a point where it looked as if change might happen, but maybe it never will. Worse because privately many and possibly the majority of bishops know what is the right, faithful, gospel-led thing to do, but remain silent. Worse because the way we exclude people is the primary cause for the collapse of numbers. Not the language we use or the music we play, but the way the Church spits out the people we love.

    I could have written the same article about excluding black people, or disabled people, or people with mental illness, or alas survivors of abuse. There is a long list because in so many areas we still get our sense of identity by who we keep out of the club. We know it’s not right, but somehow we can’t help it!

    Dear Bishops, why keep the good ‘you’ hidden? Why follow the crowd? You could have a rush of blood to the head and decide to tell one another what you really believe, and acknowledge that we have a huge gospel imperative to stop excluding anyone. That’s not only at a national level, but within the very heart of our church. In this past week you have rather magnificently conquered your fear of causing offence, for the sake of the gospel. You are still standing. It was OK. You can do it again. Take a long hard look at who is being excluded from our church and resolve to stop doing it…..for the sake of the gospel.