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Author: Helen King

  • Leading, Following, or Forgetting? The Church and the World

    by Felicity Cooke, a member of General Synod and a trustee of WATCH. She writes here in a personal capacity.

    The Church approaches issues of equality, diversity and inclusion within the cultural and social context of secular society, where law and regulation prescribe a framework for human behaviour, however faulty that behaviour may be. For the Church, there is the additional dimension of theology and scriptural teaching, and principles which may seem clear in a societal context become more complex once differing theological beliefs come into play. There was a time when churches argued that slavery was justified on the basis of scriptural interpretation. In time this was seen to be mistaken and Christians came to believe that slavery was wrong. Slavery still exists but the Church no longer teaches that it is justified; instead, it takes part in the fight to end it. This also applies to racial injustice and race discrimination, in part legacies of slavery: the Church has challenged itself to right these wrongs, on theological grounds.

    So far, so consistent: movements in secular society have been mirrored in the Church, and sometimes even – as Mark Chapman showed – led by the Church. But in the 21st century we are seeing scripture called upon to maintain what secular society has come to recognise as discrimination and injustice, in relation both to the position and treatment of women, and the status and treatment of LGBTQ+ people in the Church. In both cases, the accommodation given to those who do not accept the ordained ministry of women is defended on theological grounds, as is different treatment of LGBT+ people, with some groups within the Church making a virtue of rejecting secular progress towards inclusion, instead presenting themselves proudly as ‘counter-cultural’.

    Currently, both racial justice and sex and sexuality injustice are being supported from the Bible. Of course there are no easy answers to this paradox, and meanwhile the different views easily become entrenched, and immoveable. The outcomes for both women and LGBTQ+ people are painful and detrimental.

    The Church has different ways of attempting to mitigate these differences. The 2014 Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests (GS 1076) introduced the ‘Five Guiding Principles’. These were devised prayerfully by a group holding a range of views on the ordained ministry of women and were intended both to confirm that the ‘Church of England is fully and unequivocally committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender, and holds that those whom it has duly ordained and appointed to office are the true and lawful holders of the office which they occupy and thus deserve due respect and canonical obedience’ (Guiding Principle 1): and,  at the same time, to affirm those who could not accept the ordained ministry of women. Guiding Principle 5 went on to make ‘pastoral and sacramental provision’ for this minority. The aim? To maintain ‘the highest possible degree of communion’ and to contribute to ‘mutual flourishing’ in the Church.

    In similar vein, the LLF exercise was accompanied by the formation of the ‘Pastoral Principles’, which set out ‘how the Church of England can live well together within the parameters of its current position on marriage and the different deeply held convictions that individuals and churches hold on these matters.’ Church members are encouraged to take a course on how to put the principles into practice, and do better at understanding other points of view, and belief.

    We have Guiding Principles, and Pastoral Principles, and in case these do not work as we hope they will (and they do not), then we are constantly enjoined at General Synod to find better ways to ‘disagree well’. Most recently, General Synod was introduced to the ‘Difference’ course, ‘a course that explores what it means to follow Jesus in a complex and divided world, seeing transformation through everyday encounters.’ The intention is for participants to find ways, as we hear God’s call, to cross divides, navigate disagreement, practise forgiveness and risk hope.

    But I have a question. Do these principles, guidance and courses help those who suffer real pain (and worse) as a consequence of the beliefs and behaviour of those who disagree about their lives and how they live them, about their calling and their vocation? If we look at those original Five Guiding Principles then the answer to that must be, for the most part, no. Women in both lay and ordained ministry continue to experience exclusions, discrimination and sexist behaviour. The LLF process, for which the Pastoral Principles were written, is yet to be completed, but there is evidence that for some positions have calcified, while others refuse even to engage with the resources.

    Are we to be left simply with the idea that we can ‘disagree well’ when people continue to suffer the consequences of disagreement? Is this the best we can do? If we embrace beliefs and behaviour in the Church which are rightly condemned in the secular world, what does that mean for anyone whose face (or body) does not fit with the white, male, cis-het, non-disabled norm? If the Church is prepared to accommodate what in the secular world is clear discrimination, and if being ‘counter-cultural’ actually creates a huge gulf between those who come to church, and those who do not, and between those who in the church who are fully inclusive and those who actively exclude others, then we have only ourselves to blame for falling numbers and incredulity expressed at what it apparently means to be a Christian.

    Using biblical teaching both to justify the fight against racism and the right to discriminate between women and men, LGBT+ and straight makes no sense either to the ordinary person in the pew or to the ordinary person in the street. The Church is out of step, and all the principles and exhortations to disagree well will not bring us to be the fully inclusive, loving, compassionate church which Christ longs for us to be.

     

  • It’s Not Just About the Bible

    by Mark Chapman, Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of Oxford and Vice-Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon. Mark is currently writing a book on the history of the Church of England and homosexuality.

    When the LLF process was announced, four ‘working groups’ were set up, looking at the Bible, theology, history and the social and biological sciences. Looking at the LLF book now, though, it’s striking just how little history it contains. We worked hard during the long drawn-out process to produce some solid resources, but these were scarcely used. At the first or second meeting our convening bishop – not himself a historian and now retired – asked us if we would like to disclose our views about same-sex marriage. We politely refused. Most historians, perhaps rather naively, still like to believe in something like objective truth. We all got on very well and left others to have their fights.

    And it was the biblical group that seemed to be most inclined towards belligerence. Of course, good Anglicans will want to see the Bible as containing all things necessary to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ but that says nothing about how to use the Bible in ethical debate. As a historian, I was rather keen to point out to people who were wound up about the few passages of scripture apparently outlawing male sexual activity that, aside from a few general principles about love, the Bible was hardly ever used by Anglicans in discussions about sexual morality until the 1970s.

    Before then, sexual ethics was all about natural law. The arguments were very simple: the natural order of the universe was for there to be men and women. Their sexual organs fitted together and every other form of sexual activity was therefore disordered. Furthermore, the point of sex was to procreate, which required the institution of marriage, which for most of history was a set of financial transactions between families rather than anything particularly Christian.

    The problem with natural law, however, is that it changes as the understanding of nature changes. As soon as there is a recognition that some people are naturally attracted to people of the same sex, what the early sexologists called ‘inversion’, then the whole natural law defence comes tumbling down. And by the 1940s a substantial number of people accepted this – even in the church. As a young ordinand wrote in a letter to the journal Theology in 1952:

    Is homosexual concubinage to be treated purely and simply as an unio illicita like fornication and those who practise it to be judged as ‘living in sin’ and to be deprived of the sacraments of the Church? If so, what are we to say to those who profess to be congenitally homosexual?

    This letter led directly to the commissioning of work from the Church’s Moral Welfare Council on the ‘problem of homosexuality’. The report clearly identifies homosexuality as a natural condition, meaning that it was wrong to punish people for ‘doing what comes naturally’. Homosexuality could not be cured like some sort of physical disease.

    This work led to the Church of England being the principal agent behind the momentum that led to the Wolfenden Report and the subsequent decriminalization. Writing in 1970, one commentator observed:

    there would be truth – especially political truth – in the claim that the established Church is the putative father of ‘the permissive society’.

    Similarly, Peter Wildeblood, the Daily Mail journalist jailed in 1954 for committing acts of indecency could write:

    I had always thought of the Church as the last stronghold of prejudice and had never found an occasion for praising it for its courage in controversial matters; yet here, from Church House, came an attack on the law which was as broad-minded, clear-headed and brilliantly argued as one could wish.

    That said, in the 1950s the Church expressed no desire to adapt its own teachings: ‘Homosexual acts are sins against God, whether or not they are crimes against the State’. The argument was again based on the ‘unnatural use of non-complementary organs within a relationship which is not that of a man and woman’. Christian ‘inverts’ should consequently seek to ‘accept their condition, and by seeking to sublimate their sexual lives in socially useful ways achieve personal fulfilment’. That, of course, is no surprise for the early 1950s, but celibacy and sublimation for all now seem both ludicrous and potentially dangerous.

    And that’s presumably why, from the 1970s, people started replacing a discredited natural law theory with the even flimsier method of resorting to proof texting Scriptural passages ripped out of context. It is clear that the Church was way ahead of much of the wider society in the 1950s and 60s. But it then stalled and forgot what Kenneth Ingram, one of its more forward-thinking authors wrote in 1940, as he envisaged Sex Morality Tomorrow. His words even seem remarkably biblical:

    the love-motive is the only legitimate basis on which a positive sexual morality is likely to be built. Wherever there is love, wherever the desire is genuinely mutual, there can be no immorality in sex. … Love is the test of sexual morality. Sex divorced from love, whether it occurs in a union which is officially designated as lawful marriage or not, belongs to an altogether lower level.

     

  • To Love and to Cherish… According to our Beliefs and Lifestyles

    by Stephanie Pywell, Professor of Law and Social Justice at The Open University Law School

    The last 20 years have seen a very significant increase in the number of couples who opt to have celebrant-led wedding-style ceremonies that have no legal effect. This post outlines some of the findings from my empirical research into weddings and related ceremonies, including evidence that traditional forms of wedding ceremony no longer meet couples’ needs.

    The main statute governing weddings in England and Wales is the Marriage Act 1949, which states that marriages must be solemnised in one of five ways: in Anglican churches or registered places of worship for all other religions, according to Jewish or Quaker usages, or on civil premises (register offices or, since 1995, ‘approved premises’). This gives rise to a religious/secular dichotomy: officiants at weddings on religious premises are likely to follow a specified liturgy or form, while Superintendent Registrars conducting ceremonies on civil premises may not include any material that is ‘religious in nature’. Leaving aside the fact that my 2017 survey of registration officers found that there is no consensus as to what ‘religious in nature’ means, there is no obviously appropriate form of wedding ceremony for couples whose religious or other beliefs do not coincide.

    And, of course, there are some couples who cannot, for a range of reasons, marry in a religious ceremony that reflects their faith. Legislation expressly prohibits the Church of England and the Church in Wales from conducting same-sex weddings, and other religious groups must opt into, rather than out of, solemnising marriages for such couples. Similarly, some religious groups’ officiants might decline to marry people who are divorced or transgender. For many couples, therefore, a religious wedding ceremony is unavailable.

    These gaps in provision are, increasingly, being filled by ‘wedding celebrants’, who conduct what the Court of Appeal has termed ‘non-qualifying ceremonies’. Of the 287 respondents to my 2020 survey of independent wedding celebrants, which was supported by the Wedding Celebrancy Commission, two had started to practise in 2003, with single-figure numbers starting each year until 2011, and over half – 154 – having started in 2017–2019. The number of ceremonies conducted by respondents had risen from around 1,100 in 2015 to around 2,800 in 2019, and my best estimate is that the total number of ceremonies conducted by celebrants in England and Wales was around 9,500 in 2019.

    Between 80 and 95% of couples who chose ceremonies led by respondents were either already married to one another at the time of the ceremony, or intended to marry after it. After conducting a pilot study, I offered respondents a choice of 18 reasons why couples had opted for celebrant-led ceremonies. The most popular option, thought to have applied to about 1,400 couples, was a desire for a ‘person-centred ceremony that reflected their beliefs, personalities and lifestyles’.

    It is notable that all the elements of ‘beliefs, personalities and lifestyles’ are plural because, in today’s multi-cultural society, there are many couples where the partners have different beliefs. Anecdotally, a registrar told me in 2018 that many couples who have civil wedding ceremonies would ‘like to include the Lord’s Prayer – just in case’, and lamented the fact that the law prohibits this.

    Independent celebrants, on the other hand, can offer any blend of religious, spiritual, cultural or themed elements that the couple request. One independent celebrant described a ceremony involving a Catholic prayer, rituals including presenting flowers to a statue of the Virgin Mary, a lasso, a Mexican exchange of coins, and drinking alcohol during the ceremony – the drink was ‘Mexican and also formed part of their love story, as they were drinking this when they met’. A Jewish–French ceremony had incorporated ‘sharing a cup of wine, seven blessings, smashing of the glass and the signing of a certificate by the many “temoins” (French groomsmen)’. Another respondent had conducted ‘two fusion weddings combining atheism (bride) and Jewish traditions (groom) incl circling, Hebrew prayer and jumping on the glass’. One respondent had conducted a Hindu-inspired wedding – for which ‘a Mandap had been built and the ceremony content contained all the elements of a traditional Hindu wedding, interspersed with explanations for those attending not of the Hindu faith’ – in a marquee, following their wedding in the local Anglican church. An event conducted jointly by a celebrant and a Hindu priest had taken place at a hotel: ‘This ceremony had lots of rituals in line with Hindu faith and traditions. I then did a version of the British vows, ring blessing and ring exchange.’

    In 2020, the Law Commission issued a Consultation Paper including provisional proposals to regulate wedding officiants. This framework could potentially enable the Government to allow independent wedding celebrants to apply to be authorised to officiate at legally binding weddings. The Commission is due to publish its recommendations this summer.

    The consequences, if any, remain to be seen, but it is clear that the current law governing weddings does not reflect the needs of many members of the society it is designed to serve.

  • Living in Love and Faith: The Ozanne Foundation Responds

    Organisations as well as individuals have been invited to share their response to the LLF course, materials and process by 30 April 2022.

    Here is the response of the Ozanne Foundation.

    We write to share our thoughts and reflections on the LLF process and our hopes for the “next steps”.

    1. Overview of LLF

    Whilst we recognise that the LLF was originally conceived as a “necessary step” towards a more inclusive and just Church of England, we question whether the time and money that has been invested in it has been worth the significant harm that it has caused.  This is not least because of the time that it has taken – indeed it is now over five years since the archbishops promised a “radical new Christian inclusion”, a promise that had originally brought hope to so many and yet has now faded to become yet another example of “words not action” for the LGBT+ community.

    It is therefore of no surprise that during the intervening years – where open debate has been stymied within the General Synod and discussions around LLF have been heavily managed – that positions on both sides have hardened.  Sadly, as always, those this has impacted the most are the LGBT+ community, particularly those growing up in certain conservative settings.  Same-sex relationships are still not recognised, our LGBT+ priests are still asked to sign “Issues”, our LGBT+ youth are still taught that they must deny themselves any physical intimacy for life, even if it is lawfully recognised – severely impacting their mental health.  There continues to be no admission of the harm that conservative theology can inflict on those in their “care” and, perhaps most worryingly, there has been little desire by bishops to challenge or chastise those who inflict such harm, allowing them to continue their practices with impunity.  This can be evidenced by the various public letters that many conservatives have signed stating their desire to continue to practice “conversion therapy” and the increasingly hostile rhetoric towards trans people.  Conservative networks and many conservative churches and individuals continue to threaten schism and to withdraw funding, holding their dioceses to ransom.  Meanwhile LGBT+ people, their friends and families have continued to leave quietly – dismayed and disheartened by the lack of any real or meaningful progress.  What is more, we see no evidence that the national conservative networks have engaged with LLF.  Instead, they have publicly promoted the use of their own materials, including the “A Beautiful Story” video, to shore up their positions and underline their homophobic/transphobic doctrine.

    What is most worrying are the stories that we have heard from those LGBT+ church goers who were brave enough to take part in the LLF discussions.  Few found them safe spaces, and most wished afterwards that they had not taken part – even senior LGBT+ clergy.  The Church of England’s “good disagreement” strategy serves only, it seems, its heterosexual cisgendered members, with little thought for those who are most affected by these discussions.  Despite repeated calls to avoid giving equal weight to views on either “side” of the “debate”, given the significant power imbalance that exist and the clear evidence of harm that one side inflicts on the other, the Church of England has continued to push a strategy of “balance”.  In so doing it has lost the trust and respect of a large section of the general public, who look with incredulity at the way the LGBT+ community continue to be treated by a religious organisation whose central message is meant to be that of love and justice.  We are seen, rightly, as hypocrites!

    1. What Next?

    We recognise that we sadly cannot undo the damage that has been done, but we can – we hope – ensure that the next step is one that will lead to concrete decisions, actions and equality.  We cannot continue to objectify and problematise LGBT+ lives, for this has gone on long enough.

    It is clear to most that the only possible way forward is to allow some form of accommodation for those who wish to recognise LGBT+ faithful loving relationships.  This step is now well overdue.  We are well beyond creating a “middle ground” of sanctioning “just” blessings and must now move without delay to a Church that offers marriage to all living in England.  We already have a proven model for accommodating this while respecting individual consciences with the way we have managed marriage after divorce.

    At the same time, however, we are deeply concerned about the continued abuse of LGBT+ people, particularly young LGBT+ people within conservative churches, and the homophobic teaching that they are made to endure, which leads to self-hatred, shame and internalised homophobia – let alone rejection and alienation from their families and friends.  Research shows that this has a significant and lifelong impact on their mental wellbeing and can lead many to consider or indeed to attempt to take their lives.  This spiritual abuse must stop.  For too long the Church of England has turned a blind eye to this abuse and have let the brave testimonies of those who have spoken out go unheeded and unheard.  This lack of resolve to tackle the damage done by conservative theology is deeply inconsistent with the Church’s developing understanding and practice of the importance of safeguarding for vulnerable people and continues to make the Church of England vulnerable to the charge of complicity in abuse.  We therefore urge the Church of England to move swiftly to adopt the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT+ Lives’ “Safeguarding Principles to Protect LGBT+ Lives” agreed in March 2022 at a conference sponsored by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

    We hope that you will find these reflections useful and await with interest the publication of a set of proposals from the House of Bishops regarding the way forward, for action is now long overdue.

    Yours sincerely

    Very Revd Joe Hawes, Chair, Ozanne Foundation

    Jayne Ozanne, Director, Ozanne Foundation

    April 27th 2022

  • All Change: What Next for Living in Love and Faith?

    by Scot Peterson, Lecturer, Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Scot’s research focuses on issues of constitutional history, including particularly the relationship between religion and the state

    Now that Eastertide has commenced, Living in Love and Faith approaches the end of its initial stage, and a decision about church policy has become inevitable. The outcome will be a policy with widespread impact. The Church of England’s leaders have sheltered behind an invalid understanding of marriage as an unchanging institution and have resisted change through a sequence of conversations and study groups. But change is coming.

    The Debate over Same-Sex Marriage

    In 2013 my co-author Iain McLean and I published a book intended to inform a broader debate about same-sex marriage. In it, we argued that marriage is a legal institution that structures human relationships, allowing, for example, the partners to inherit without a will. It is also a religious institution (considered a sacrament by some), which has historically involved more or less consent by women. Its religious aspect has sometimes treated spouses equally but has also at times treated women as subordinate to men, even to the extent that they became property. Despite arguments to the contrary, over its centuries of development marriage has never been a fixed relationship or a static institution, and it continues to change.

    The broader discussion about same-sex civil marriage, which we wanted to address, began with a ‘listening exercise’ by the coalition government in 2010. Then, in March 2012, the Home Secretary (Theresa May) and the Minister for Equality (Lynne Featherstone) launched a twelve-week consultation about how (not whether) to afford same-sex couples access to civil marriage. The government issued its response to the consultation in December of that year, and parliament enacted legislation on 17 July 2013. The first same-sex marriages took place in March 2014.

    Church and State

    In the 2012 consultation the government responded to the Church of England’s argument that by permitting same-sex civil marriage the government would weaken the religious establishment.?A change in who could be married for civil purposes would, the church claimed, complicate the meaning of marriage (which it claimed had been fixed for centuries). The Church of England was also somewhat misleading in arguing it had supported civil partnerships, when in fact most bishops had opposed them even when they were celebrated by members of other religious denominations. In response to the church’s objections to same-sex marriage, the government imposed a quadruple lock: (1) ensuring that no minister or religious organization would be required to perform or recognize same-sex marriages; (2) requiring religious organizations to affirmatively seek authorization to solemnize such marriages; (3) barring discrimination claims against religions or individuals who refused to perform such marriages; and (4) making a change in the Church of England’s canons, which must be initiated by the church, a prerequisite for any change in church practice. The quadruple lock remains in place: only the church can change it, and it puts the church firmly outside the centre of the legal marriage regime, as one participant in a broader process, rather than as the one defining it.

    The current consultative process in the Church of England on these matters, Living in Love and Faith, follows a series of Shared Conversations launched at the time of the first same-sex weddings in 2014. After the Shared Conversations, which lasted for two years, Synod rejected  a report recommending that the church not re-visit its position on same-sex marriage (the House of Clergy voting against, 100-93). In response, the bishops appointed another study group, which developed a curriculum of podcasts, training materials, videos and even a book, to encourage conversation on the issues of marriage, faith and sexuality in an even-handed way. The curriculum was released in November 2020 (during the pandemic). Groups have been meeting, including virtually, to discuss those materials, and feedback from participants is due to close at the end of April. Further reflection will take place, with the House of Bishops (once again) offering options on how to proceed at General Synod in February 2023, nine years after the first Shared Conversations launched.

    Choosing Policy

    A decision has become inevitable, and the outcome will be public policy. It will not necessarily affect all of the public, but the Church of England, as the established church in England, retains special status in matters such as baptisms, funerals, and marriages. Political science distinguishes between ways of making these kinds of ‘political’ decisions.

    One way is not to decide at all: to leave a matter to the market or to individual preferences. We call this spontaneous ordering. Not deciding is not an option in the current process; however, because the quadruple lock remains in place, even this is a decision. A second way of making decisions is through consensus. The UK cabinet makes decisions in this way, with a full discussion, after which all members come to agreement. This happens after a prime ministerial ‘summing up,’ in which he or she articulates the sense of the meeting. (Arm-twisting may be involved.) So far arm-twisting has not worked in this matter. Finally, there is voting, which always fails to seamlessly aggregate preferences and which necessarily leads to one side feeling it is the loser, perhaps quite acutely.

    Living in Love and Faith seems aimed at achieving some form of consensus. This is highly unlikely given the response rates that are currently available, and the intensity of preferences on both sides, which can lead to unrepresentative results (in both directions!). Moreover, the pandemic has made it possible for the losing side to claim it was unfairly disadvantaged. However, spontaneous ordering remains an option. While it is a temptation for the central church to decide important questions like these, local congregations may be better placed to understand the nuances of their members’ preferences. Indeed, the Living in Love and Faith conversations may have greatly improved that understanding, irrespective of the responses. Thus, the best option may be for the church to allow variation among congregations, with many not performing same-sex wedding celebrations but with others doing so, when their members, clergy and PCC agree. In this way the church may preserve unity by allowing for diversity of belief within the structure of the national church.

  • Trans Figured: Experience Trumps Theory

    by Sophie Grace Chappell, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University. Her two most recent books are Songs For Winter Rain, a poetry collection, and Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience.

     

    (an extract from her forthcoming book, Trans Figured)

    I hope to get a wider audience with this book than a philosophy professor might normally expect for most of her writings. But who knows: you yourself, dear reader, might have read some of my more conventional writings in philosophical ethics. (My much more conventional writings in philosophical ethics.) And if you have, you may know this about me as a philosopher: that I think experience trumps theory almost everywhere. Let me say a little bit about why.

    One of my favourite philosophers is Bernard Williams.[1] At the outset of his writing career, Williams took for his own “a phrase of D.H. Lawrence’s in his splendid commentary on the complacent moral utterances of Benjamin Franklin: ‘Find your deepest impulse, and follow that’” (1972: 93). Thirty years later he added, when looking back over his career, “If there’s one theme in all my work it’s about authenticity and self-expression… It’s the idea that some things are in some real sense really you, or express what you and others aren’t…. The whole thing has been about spelling out the notion of inner necessity.”

    Yes, that; very much that, about me and transgender. “I just want to,” but in capitals. An inner necessity, a need to be authentically and above all openly who I actually am, and to be known as who I am by those around me, and accepted and, yes, loved, even so. That is exactly what it’s all been about.

    However, that doesn’t mean that I have a theory of transgender to offer. I tend to steer away from philosophical theories of anything, at least in those parts of philosophy that aren’t best understood as handmaids of science. But even in science, I think the real truth of things often resists systematisation. (And what is being transgender but resisting systematisation?)

    I am never quite sure what a theory of anything outside strict science is supposed to do. Ever since Plato’s Meno philosophers have been saying, and rightly so of course, that the point of philosophy is to change right belief into knowledge: into a state where you don’t just think true things, but also understand, deeply, why they are true. Fine. But is it obvious that constructing a philosophical theory always helps with this? Can we really not have a deep understanding, and an explanatory understanding, that (for example) murder is at least typically and maybe always wrong, or that love is usually a good thing, or that flowers are generally beautiful, or that paedophilia is profoundly wrong, until we have a philosophical theory’s kind of explanation of why this is so? Why is some set of words, arranged in propositions with inferential relations between them, the sole kind of explanation that we need to understand the goodness of love or the badness of murder? For most ethical cases, that seems to me an oddly inappropriate picture of understanding and explanation. In ethical matters understanding can be verbal and articulate, but quite often it isn’t at all; oftener still, the propositional bit isn’t the only bit—and not the most important bit, either. And likewise for explanation: explanations don’t have to be verbal, and often are better if they’re not. (Think of explaining how to do something—by doing it.)

    Science limns the structure of reality, as Quine says in Word and Object. Sure it does, at least if it’s any good. But so does poetry, if it’s any good. There isn’t just one correct way to grasp the deep structure of things. There are lots, because there are lots of things that we might call “the deep structure of things”. Propositional structures are great for the understanding, but experience matters too, and experience is no less cognitive for being, sometimes, non-discursive and not expressible in propositions. All these general considerations about theorising apply in the particular case of transgender: here too it should be experience first, theory later—if at all. In Nietzsche’s famous words, “the will to system betrays a lack of integrity”.

    In any case, and also with particular reference to transgender: trans people don’t owe cis people, or anyone else, an explanation of why they’re who they are. No more than gay people do, for instance, or black people or Jewish people, or any other historically stigmatised minority. Our right to exist as transgender people is not conditional on our being able to prove it, by demonstrating the truth of something called “gender ideology” (our gender ideology, that is, not the rest of society’s). The onus of proof is not on us transgender people at all. It is on those who want to exclude us. By what right do they discriminate against us? By what right do they demonise us, marginalise us, gaslight us, ridicule us, patronise us, in ways that no one would accept for a minute of any other minority?

    We shouldn’t be refused admission to society until we’ve won some abstract rhetorical cage-fight, or arrived at a philosophical theory of transgender that is “satisfactory” (to whom?). Our right to be ourselves, without apology and without explanation, is simply not up for discussion, any more than anyone else’s. We don’t get kindly admitted to equal status once we have satisfied our critics. Like everyone else, we have equal status from the start.

     

    [1] For more from me on Bernard Williams, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-bernard/.

  • The Invisible Privilege of Being Voiceless in the Church: Creating a Platform for Bisexual Christians

    by Hattie McInerney, a second-year Theology and Religion PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham

    In 2019, when writing my Master’s thesis, I decided to interview 10 university students who identified as Christian and LGBQ+. Personal and thought-provoking, these interviews gave me a real insight into how queer Christians navigated their faith lives, both in their home churches, and on their university campuses.

    During my research I discovered Carol Shepherd’s work Bisexuality and the Western Christian Church: the first time I’d read an academic, theological piece that focused purely on bisexuality. It led me to reflect on my own personal experiences, as a Christian with faltering faith, and someone who had been questioning their sexuality for a long time. I was keen to know more. Diving further into the bisexual Christian field, I was surprised to see only a small handful of names turning up. Why wasn’t there more research in this area? Why were bisexual Christian voices smothered so deeply under the experiences of lesbian and gay Christians? Why did some texts, proud to reference bisexuality on their covers, then fail to mention it even once within their work?

    These questions, alongside the fantastic interviews I’d hosted with some bisexual participants, spurred me on when identifying a topic for my PhD. I decided to explore every nook and cranny of Church of England attitudes, policy and paperwork: what exactly did the Church have to say about bisexuals?

    It was then that I was introduced to Issues in Human Sexuality.

    Don’t get me wrong, I was aware of Issues beforehand, but I certainly couldn’t say I’d read it cover to cover. Looking further into the text led me to discover Section 5.8, a neat paragraph of 119 words arguing bisexuality’s ambiguity, labelling bisexuals as ‘inevitably unfaithful’, capable of redemption only through heterosexual marriage or by seeking some form of professional help. At the November 2021 General Synod, it was vehemently stated that this passage does not encourage conversion therapy, but the call for bisexuals to ‘seek their truth’ and to gain ‘inner healing’ through counselling says otherwise.

    The Church’s most recent sexuality publication, Living in Love and Faith, was released in November 2020. The 400+ page document takes an awful lot of tree to say very little at all, and if anything demonstrates the lack of clarity surrounding what today’s Church actually thinks of human sexuality. Has the Church really progressed? 31 years since the release of Issues, ordinands are still expected to assent to a document that calls those in the bisexual community confused, frisky individuals needing help.

    As I continued to examine policy, I began to think back to my MA interviews, alongside my own personal experiences. I only returned to church in September 2021, and one month prior to this, I became happily engaged to my male partner. When considering my positionality in this project, I began to face a roadblock. Many methodologies in qualitative research argue a strong ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ position for their researchers, but where did I fit in? Male-only relationships throughout my life, a slightly broken relationship with the Church after leaving the ordination process during my MA; how could I call myself a Christian, when sometimes I felt God and I were constantly on different paths to one another? How could I call myself bisexual, when despite the gender of my attractions not mattering to me, I only ever seemed to end up in ‘straight’ relationships? I consistently found myself floating in the grey space between inside and outside, unsure of exactly where I’d fall.

    For my PhD, I have so far spoken to ten participants; six identifying as bisexual and Christian, and four who worked on Living in Love and Faith. These interviews reveal the disparities between those who are involved in policy and documentation processes within the Church, and those who experience what it’s like to live as bisexual Christians; and let me tell you, their experiences are far from those promiscuous and ambiguous lives depicted in Issues. Whilst not wanting to give away all my research, one key point from a bisexual Christian has really stood out: that bisexuals experience a truly invisible privilege in the Church.

  • Is the Conversion Therapy Ban a Muddle? A Response to Angela Tilby

    by Vicky Brett,  a member of the House of Laity at General Synod and a Lay Pioneer with the Church of England serving the LGBTQIA+ community in Peterborough

     

    In the Church Times (8 April 2022), Angela Tilby reacted to the recent U-turns by the government on conversion therapy with regard to trans people. Here, Vicky Brett, the mother of a transgender child, responds to some of Angela Tilby’s statements.

    “The conversion therapy sometimes urged on gay people by conservative Christians is a very different matter from the kind of listening and exploratory counselling that should surely be the norm for pre-pubescents wanting to change gender”

    Angela Tilby’s article stokes people’s fears with misinformation. Here, she tries to criticise conversion therapy for gay and lesbian people while defending it for young trans people. But those attending a gender clinic already receive counselling from trained, experienced clinical psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists!

    Having experienced both this and ‘conversion’ therapy, I can say the two could not be further apart. A trained therapist does not tell you what to think or what to do or who you are – they allow you the freedom to explore and question and understand yourself and your situation. They do not force or coerce you to transition or to not transition. In contrast, the ‘Christian’ conversion practices we experienced held not one jot of freedom or exploration – we were told repeatedly that we were evil and going to hell, that being transgender or supporting someone was wrong, that my child was a sexual pervert, that we were bad parents, subjected to yelling and prayer to remove demons. Pressure was applied by removing our ability to work or serve in the church, and eventually we were asked to leave. During this time my child took an overdose, but by God’s grace they were resuscitated in A & E. The church’s response to the overdose was complete silence: no apology, no concern, not even an offer to pray – as far as they were concerned, we got what we deserved. Conversion ‘therapy’ is not therapy, it is abuse.

    “among American adolescents, trans services are being accessed far more often by teenage girls than boys, because of … ‘peer’ or ‘social’ contagion”

    Leaving aside that the American and UK situations may not be the same, blaming peer pressure may not explain everything. Girls may find puberty more difficult, not least because of society’s negative attitudes to menstruation. But in a gender clinic, this will all be addressed. Alternatively, remarks like Tilby’s may be just plain old sexism, the idea that girls need protecting because they are weak and vulnerable and don’t know their own minds and can’t think for themselves. We could look at this the other way round. Under the age of 24 only one-third of transitions are male to female and two thirds female to male. Over 24, it’s four out of five male to female and only one in five female to male (ignoring non-binary). Why are trans women only transitioning so much later in life? Is it the extra dose of hatred and hassle they seem to be subjected to by society?

    “things were very different in my childhood; I was a tomboy … But nobody thought this particularly odd”

    But being a tomboy has nothing to do with being transgender! Playing with a particular toy, having particular interests is gender expression – who you are on the outside, how you fit with gender stereotypes. Being transgender is about who you are on the inside. A girl might refuse to wear skirts – but still know she is a girl.

    A transgender child would say ‘I am a boy’ not ‘I want to play with boys’ things’. They might still want to play with dolls’ houses and wear pink (gender stereotypes), as some boys also do. But they would insistently, persistently and consistently reject the notion that they are a girl and get annoyed, upset or distressed when people ‘get it wrong’ or when their body does not match their internal view of what it should look like.

    Tilby implies that it was easier to be free to experiment in her day; maybe this was true for girls like Enid Blyton’s ‘George’, but it was certainly not for boys! A boy would never go to school or a pub wearing a dress when I was young: he would be beaten up! Nowadays some boys feel safer to dress in a non-conforming way and wear make-up – in safe spaces.

    Children can recognise their gender by ages two to three. Transgender adults often report their first public acknowledgment of who they are was before the age of seven. Gender Clinic waiting lists are measured in terms of years, not weeks. Puberty blockers are only given to some children, and only after extensive counselling, to allow the child additional time to think and process before the potentially traumatic experience of puberty kicks in. Cross-sex hormones are given only to a select few over-16s, and no surgery is done pre-adulthood. If a child first voiced their trans identity at seven, this means they would have to be insistent, persistent and consistent for nine years before even hormones would be prescribed.

    “Keira Bell … recently detransitioned and sued the Tavistock on the grounds that she was too young, at 16, to give consent to the hormones that would lead to a double mastectomy”

    12 mothers sadly died while giving birth at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust; medical mistakes do happen, but we need to work to fix them rather than insist that the 5,000 women who need their services each year should just stop having babies.

    The Keira Bell case was tragic; a young, troubled girl who mistakenly believed that transitioning would solve all her underlying problems. The case led to a temporary pause on work at the clinic. To me, this was completely wrong. Gender clinics need a lot more funding and staff to enable them to handle the case load, and pausing services just increased waiting times. There is already a four-year waiting list and 11% of trans people go abroad for treatment or buy their hormones over the internet because they cannot access treatment here. We shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water!

    Trans people deserve healthcare too, and healthcare decided between them and their doctors, not by uninformed politicians and Christians.

  • In Search of the ‘Optimal’

    by Grace Davie, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Exeter and co-editor (with Lucian Leustean) of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (2021)

    I was delighted to respond positively to the invitation to write a piece for Via Media – a chance to put my own thoughts in order. Too often invited to ‘take sides’, I want to explore ‘optimal’ as opposed to right or wrong answers to complex questions. Of course, there are principles that we need to respect, but even these should be debated with courtesy, and much, in my view, depends on asking the right question in the first place.

    Take, for example, the question of ‘establishment’. I have listened to arguments both for and against as if this was a black and white issue; but it cannot be so, given the weight of history. Like it or not, we have inherited a model from the past, meaning that we will feel its impact whatever we do. This does not mean that the present situation is immutable.

    What then is the best way forward in a society that is both increasingly secular and increasingly diverse? Is there any place for establishment in this mix?

    The Church of England is a ‘weak’ established church (no doubt about that) with a distinctive past – one of partial rather than total monopoly in a country that has housed significant religious minorities for centuries not decades. There are important positives in this combination: such a church has opportunities denied to more dominant equivalents. It is better placed to welcome rather than exclude, and to encourage rather than to condemn; deployed wisely, it can foster the maintenance of a tolerant and pluralist society. Specifically, it has the potential to promote and to sustain a constructive conversation about faith (of all kinds) at the centre of our society, an ever more necessary task. The goal in this respect is to extend privilege rather than remove it; to level up, rather than down.

    The parish raises both similar and different issues. Here again, is an inherited model but one that is ‘too big for itself’. How can the parish system (effectively a public utility) be sustained without the equivalent of a church tax?

    No one has spoken more eloquently of this model than Matthew Parris (The Times, 19 November 2021). His position is clear: ‘I don’t believe in God. But I love the Church, pay my subs to All Saints in Elton, sing hymns and delight in the Testaments Old and New’. The perceived ‘dangers’ are variously personified: the archbishops; diocesan plans; charismatic churches in general; church planting in particular; the new vicar and so on. The tone in the lengthy comments below the article is unforgiving, but none of them articulates the crucial point: this is a spectrum, not a zero-sum game. Many of us – whatever our churchmanship – can empathise with elements of Matthew Parris’ article, never more so than at the turning points in life. But all of us know that doing nothing will lead, as night follows day, to empty and decaying churches – hardly a good look.

    Rehearsing the same arguments over again won’t help. What might move the situation on is a clear analysis of what exactly we want to keep from our historical legacy and what can go? Quite a bit if only we could agree on priorities.

    Circumstances, moreover, alter cases – sometimes in unexpected ways. At one and the same time, COVID-19 has not only revealed the significance of church buildings for countless individuals (by no means all of them churchgoers) but vastly stimulated the online alternatives. Reactions to lockdown varied: some rejoiced in new-found freedoms; others mourned the loss of the familiar, physical as well as liturgical. Most hovered somewhere in between.

    Two points need careful underlining. The first addresses quality. Even a glance at what is on offer reveals that both in-person worship and its online equivalents are enormously varied, and that both can be good and less good. They are, moreover, complementary. Joining a Europe-wide service for Ukraine in early March, including the Anglican chaplaincies in both Moscow and Kyiv, was a deeply moving experience and necessarily online. Of course, this didn’t replace the fervent and continuing prayers of parishes up and down the land, but it most certainly enhanced that effort.

    Secondly, and finally, the new normal. ‘They (the congregation) are not coming back’ is a constant refrain. But a similar reticence is felt all over society; it is foolish to think that what is happening in the world of work, healthcare, leisure, and shopping will not be happening in the churches. None of us are where we were in 2019, nor will we be in the foreseeable future. We must aim for what is optimal. A carefully-planned and locally-based mix of in-person and online worship must be encouraged both within the parish and beyond it. Easier said than done, I know: but we have to start somewhere.

  • No Sex, Please? Remembering the Higton Debate

    by Terry Louden, Hon. Canon of Portsmouth and of Cape Coast, Ghana; member of General Synod, 1985-90; Permission to Officiate, Diocese of Portsmouth, where he has served in parochial ministry since ordination in 1975

    The Church of England has a long history of pronouncing on sex. Back at the November 1987 group of sessions of General Synod, the Revd. Tony Higton, then a parish priest in Essex, moved a Private Members’ Motion about sexual morality. The motion’s prime purpose was to condemn homosexuality in general; as Higton’s own speech made clear, the particular individuals he wished to target were gay clergy and ordinands and their ‘immoral practices’. The motion, amended substantially by the Rt. Revd. Michael Baughen, Bishop of Chester, was passed overwhelmingly. I was a member of Synod at the time and spoke to an amendment in my name. More on that later. First, some context.

    In 1987, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, and had just won her third General Election. Her moral compass rarely veered from the conservative. HIV/AIDS was still prevalent, as was the accusation of a ‘gay disease’. Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which made illegal the promotion in schools of a gay lifestyle, was under discussion, and became law in 1988. The association of homosexuality with paedophilia was still being made, especially by the tabloid press, as was the charge that homosexuals were naturally promiscuous. So at Higton’s instigation, and in full view of the media, the Church of England was playing out a national debate. As Higton said in the debate: ‘The eyes of the world are on us today’.

    Through its senior bishops, the Church had generally supported the efforts to decriminalise sex between consenting men, which was secured in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. This prompted a growing debate within the Church about sexual morality and particularly the welcome (or the lack of it) the Church should offer to gay people. The 1979 report, Homosexual Relationships (the ‘Gloucester Report’), was prepared for General Synod but was seen as too liberal and was widely ignored.

    In 1986, the House of Bishops commissioned another report (the ‘Osborne Report’) which, for the first time, considered the views of gay people. It was very unfortunate that the work of the Osborne committee was trumped by the Higton debate. While Osborne reported to the House of Bishops in 1989, that report was suppressed until 2012. However, the Osborne group’s working methods can be seen in the current LLF process.

    The Baughen amendment, like Higton’s original wording, asserted that the biblical standard for sexual intercourse is in the context of a permanent married (i.e. heterosexual) relationship; that fornication, adultery and homosexual genital acts fall short of this ideal; and that holiness of life, especially in the sphere of sexual morality, is required of Christian leaders. But it was more temperate in its wording, omitting Higton’s call for clergy falling short of the ideal not to be appointed or to be removed from office.

    There was the air of a witch-hunt around at the time.

    Thirteen members of Synod made substantial contributions, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie; the Bishop of London, Graham Leonard; the Bishop of Chichester, Eric Kemp; Bishop Baughen; Dr. Peter Forster, Baughen’s successor at Chester; the Revd. Malcolm Johnson and the actor, Frank Williams. New insights were scarce in the debate. The Bishops of London and Chichester did take an important stand against the persecution of gay clergy, and in his speech, the Archbishop of Canterbury, often accused of indecision, said ‘I want to insist that to be homosexual by nature is to be a full human being, that homosexuals have human rights like the rest of us’.

    I put down and was invited to speak to an amendment in my name. This proposed that Christians should follow the teachings of the Early Fathers, Tertullian, Clement, Cyprian, Jerome and John Chrysostom, who advocated celibacy and virginity as the Christian ideal, because ‘an orderly sex life is inferior to no sex life at all’.

    What was this about? When I was ordained in 1975, after three years at a theological college with a significant number of gay men, I remember my training incumbent, the late Bill Sargent, of blessed memory, saying to me ‘The Church of England is far too interested in what goes on in people’s bedrooms’. What he was criticizing was the prurience of certain parts of the C of E as well as its concern with personal morality at the expense of social and corporate sinfulness. So that was one of the reasons for my obscure amendment – to remind Synod members that there were issues more important than sexual morality.

    Another reason was that by drawing attention to the teaching of the Fathers as part of Tradition based on Scripture, and showing their proposals to be unworkable in practice, I was trying to demonstrate that Scripture and Tradition by themselves cannot provide detailed answers to all modern ethical issues. If we cannot be bound by Tradition, should we be bound by the Scriptures?

    There was little reaction to what I said. I delivered my speech seriously and dead pan. But Synod members in the late 1980s were not known for their sense of humour! What I said was misunderstood and ignored, though not entirely. The late Bernard Levin, a secular Jew with much sympathy for the Church of England, mentioned me in his Times column the following day. And the Sunday Times sent a journalist all the way to the Isle of Wight to interview me and my wife about my supposed advocacy of celibacy.

    Sadly, by the time the journalist had returned to London with his copy and his photos the world had moved on, and the profile was never printed.