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.
