ViaMedia

Author: Jayne Ozanne

  • LLF – Power, Fear & Our Inability To Do The Right Thing

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

    Barak Obama has written the first volume of his memoirs.  In a fascinating interview about A Promised Land he speaks to David Olusoga about America and how change and progress happen. In many ways it is a very hopeful story. He identifies some central fault lines in the country’s history: slavery, treatment of Native Americans, internment of Japanese POW’s after W2 and he names them as their Original Sins. Then he tracks the progress and why he feels hope.

    There is a long list including the Abolitionists, Suffragettes, the Union Movement, LGBTQ activists. As each step forward is taken there remain people who sincerely believe in slavery, patriarchy etc……but……once the country had decided what is right they are disempowered. In other words it is not possible to change everyone’s mind, but it is possible to do what is right.

    Interestingly a change in America’s gun laws is not yet on that list. Why? Because of power. The gun lobby wields so much power that even the good guys like Obama were not able to do what is to clearly right.

    Reading Living in Love and Faith (LLF) made me realise that LGBTQ reform in the Church of England is our “Gun Law” point. Slowly, inch by inch we have progressed. There is still huge racism in the Church, but we name it and admit that it is wrong. Women are not remotely equal. There was for example not a single female clergy candidate for the election to Archbishops’ Council last week. The rules however have changed and the wrong has been named.

    What is stopping us from doing the right thing with regards to LGBTQ people?

    We don’t do it because – like with the gun lobby – we are afraid. Afraid of the power that some at the far right extreme purport to wield. But is it true?  Do they really have so much power that we continue to collude with institutional homophobia because we are afraid?

    Undoubtedly even before Covid-19 the Church of England was facing an existential challenge. Numbers were plummeting, both attendance and income. The scariest statistics were in the collapse of young people’s engagement with “church”.

    Somehow the story we told ourselves was that the only place where there was any hope for growth was in the “HTB model churches”. This was a far easier sell as we got a new Archbishop who had been groomed in that world. Sorry if you don’t like the word “groomed”, but in a way it is compassionate. The avowed intent of the hierarchy of the top private school ‘Bash Camp’ world was to equip these boys for high office in the church and in the country.

    I can see how good it must feel – as if they have all the power. That easy manner. That self-deprecating, but entitled way of occupying centre stage. It must be true. They are the only hope of the survival of the Church of England. Even to suggest otherwise is to betray the church I love.

    But we urgently need to challenge this myth of power. In the area where I live the most catastrophic collapse in numbers and giving have been in churches that have lurched to the right.

    As LLF has now landed I suppose we need to respond, although part of me just wants to yawn and reference ‘Groundhog Day’. Here is my reply anyway:

    This is a valiant effort to try and keep the Church of England together. It makes a very deep mistake in its conception. A pink and fluffy middle ground is neither moral nor achievable . Dr Adi Cooper a senior national social worker and academic, has just published her Oxford Diocese commissioned report on the murder of Peter Farquhar.

    She said: ‘The policies of the Church of England regarding homosexual practice and the approach to sexuality and relationships continues to put people at risk because it forces people to hide, lie and become vulnerable to exploitation.’

    LLF is simply not an adequate response to this ongoing fault line in the Church. As with slavery or apartheid, so long supported by warped readings of the bible, we will have to reach a point where we see that these sincerely held theologies are profoundly wrong.

    We cannot hope to change the hearts and minds of people who think that being homophobic is their God given right. What we can do is be bold in naming it as shamefully wrong.

    In other words the time has come to do what is right.

    If we wait till we all agree that time will never come and meanwhile on a daily basis God’s children are being hurt, shamed, driven to the point of suicide and beyond. It is not sustainable to preach a God of love and allow this state of affairs to continue.

  • LLF – Patience & Pain

    by the Venerable Peter Leonard, Archdeacon of the Isle of Wight and Chair of OneBodyOneFaith

    How long are LGBT+ Christians expected to carry the painful emotional cost of being part of an unsafe church?

    After a break of some 12 years I returned to the Greenbelt Festival in the early 2000s as a newly out gay Christian. I attend a session by a then well-known progressive Church of England Bishop who was talking about human sexuality. In the session he said that LGBT+ Christians should have patience with the church. I said that whilst I understood this, he needed to recognise that it was those of us who identified as LGBT+ that had to bear the painful cost of this patience. He responded by saying that I knew the situation and if I didn’t like it, I could always leave.

    November 2020 and after years of reports, General Synod debates and shared conversations, Living in Love and Faith is published and yet another two-year process begins. The heavy and painful cost of this still rests with LGBT+ Christians. As Chair of OneBodyOneFaith, we have taken the line all through the LLF project of recognising some people will want to engage with this and others will not. That some will see it as a way to move forward and others will see it as another tactic to marginalise and exclude. As an organisation we seek to support those who fall into either category.

    Having supported the project, I now find the thick book sat on my desk staring at me and I am unable to pick it up and read it. This is not a critique of the material itself but rather a snapshot of what I am feeling and why.

    There is a huge issue for me about just how safe this process will be for those of us who are LGBT+. I attended a session with other guests and some of the team who put the LLF material together this last week to introduce it. It was of course online but as I ‘entered’ the online room and looked around I found my anxiety levels increasing. I was in a space with those who have been architects of reports, statements and social media posts that have sought to exclude me and criticise me and my faith as a result of my being an openly gay partnered man. I do not doubt the sincerity of The Bishop of Coventry or his team in trying to create a safe space, but it was simply not safe, and I question whether it can ever be. In these groups I bring more than a theology or an idea or issue, I bring myself. I bring myself, my faith and my loved ones into a space where they can be dissected, examined, and condemned. I am a confident, out gay man with a senior position in the church and despite this here I was in an online room with significant anxiety.

    My inability to see how this can be a safe process was underlined a couple of days later when the Church of England Evangelical Council released a 30 minute video called ‘The Beautiful Story’ in which they use very thin theology and some unhealthy arguments to condemn and judge LGBT+ Christians in an inappropriate and condemnatory way. This included members of the group who have worked on the LLF material clearly indicating that they have no intention of listening or engaging at all and thus undermining the whole process. The negative and abusive impact this video has had on a large number of LGBT+ Christians has been significant.

    In addition to feeling unsafe I feel patronised.

    Throughout the LLF process and in the meeting this week I have heard members of the LLF describe many times the incredible journey they have been on (although clearly not those in the aforementioned video!). I am delighted that they feel this way. For those of us outside it has been and remains deeply costly and painful. Additionally, many, many of us, both LGBT+ Christians and others, made this journey years ago. I have done it; I have worked through what my faith and sexuality mean. I recognise myself as created and beloved by God. I see my sexuality as a gift from God, I am glad I am gay and wouldn’t want it any other way! Yet I am expected to enter into that costly and painful process yet again just because the church has kept kicking the can down the road. I am glad some people feel able to do that – I am not sure that I do.

    The world currently faces the worst health crisis in a generation. We are having to deal with a situation none of us could have imagined. The Church is having to adapt in ways we never imagined. My inbox has never had so much in it and my diary has never been so full. I am dealing with levels of unprecedented anxiety in people. Right now, the world needs the church to be offering a better narrative, to be offering hope. That is a challenge, but it needs to be our priority and I see very many Christians, including LGBT+ Christians offering that hope. What the world does not need is for the Church to be making judgemental statements about sex or to be seen to be entering yet another long and protracted conversation about it – it looks very much like ‘Nero fiddling while Rome burns’.

    So that is where I am with it. That may change but I can’t see it happening anytime soon. I have tried my best to be hopeful and engaged but I also need to take care of myself, my loved ones and the people I seek to serve as a priest.

    So that comment I made to the Bishop at Greenbelt some 20 years ago still stands. The painful and personal cost of this process is still being born by LGBT+ Christians.

    And yes, we still have the option to leave but for some bizarre reason God seems to want me to remain. God seems to want me and my wonderful partner of nearly 14 years to be here as part of a loving and affirming parish and diocese. God seems to want me to worship with a diverse bunch of people on an island off the South coast of England. God seems to want me to serve with the fantastic, diverse trustees and members of OneBodyOneFaith in empowering LGBT+ Christians and advocating for change. God seems to want me to see the change which is happening at parishes across the country where people are affirmed and loved whoever they are, a change which the House of Bishops seems unable to see or to acknowledge.

    God seems to want me to be part of a community of Hope. That really is a beautiful story.

  • LLF – Waiting for Godot

    by Prof Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and member of Living in Love and Faith project

    So it’s over. The resources are published, the initial reactions registered.

    In the run-up to publication, there was the usual speculation on social media that this was all about “kicking things into the long grass”. Some were trying to guess the conclusion of the book as ‘let’s all reflect on this some more’, while others pointed out that we already knew this was how it would end, because the press release had said the resources only “initiate a process of whole Church learning and engagement, within a clear timeframe, that will contribute to the Bishops’ discernment of a way forward”.

    This, as Colin Coward has reminded us, is also how previous reports on LGBTQI+ questions have also ended. But LLF even starts with it: the page 3 ‘stunner’ is that LLF “offers no recommendations or guarantees of an agreed way forward for the Church in relation to human identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage”.

    So, what now? Or to put it another way, how long have you got?

    When I googled that phrase I was interested to find that it features as a “way of saying that you don’t want to talk or think about something”. And I wonder: are all these words, all these videos and podcasts, these exhortations to talk, paradoxically saying that the Church of England doesn’t want to talk about human sexuality?

    For those not in the LLF process, the last few years, waiting for the resources to be completed, have definitely been about not talking. “Waiting for LLF’ has meant not tabling at General Synod the Hereford Diocesan Synod motion asking for services of prayer and dedication for same-sex couples, and not issuing lists of resources for schools; the bishop who chairs the National Society Council said at the July 2019 General Synod that he “will await the publication of the Living in Love and Faith resources before considering next steps”. A similar answer was given to four questions on gender transition and Differences of Sex Development (DSD) at the February 2019 General Synod.

    Wait… wait… wait.. wait. And now the waiting ends: only to usher in another period of waiting.

    How many will use this waiting time to read the resources and to talk? I am sure that people will want to watch the videos of people who have views on sexuality different to their own: personal stories are always engaging. But will we really talk among ourselves as we wait?

    We are being asked to talk at all levels of the C of E from the House of Bishops to the deaneries and parishes: to “engage with this book and its accompanying resources and, as far as possible, do this together with those who have different perspectives and lived experiences” (p.420). Personally, I wouldn’t want to sit down with those whose “different perspectives” mean that they regard my sexuality as unacceptable; is this really a safe thing to do, in a church shown by IICSA and even more recently by the independent review into the horrific crimes at Maids Moreton to be a very unsafe place for those who aren’t heterosexual? Remember, this is a church in which most gay and lesbian bishops aren’t open about their sexuality. The Maids Moreton review notes that “Attitudes towards sex and sexuality” contributed to what happened there. And, still within my own diocese, a recent story on Oxford churches described how a discussion on sexuality turned out to be a talk on how the only option for a gay Christian was celibacy.

    Read the resources: yes. Talk about them in church groups: maybe not.

    There are also a lot of resources to use: a 468-page book, videos, podcasts, an online library. Does anyone have the time or the heart for this? There are so many resources that the Church Society has already said that it will be issuing its own “summaries and critiques of it all” for those who can’t face reading the report or watching the videos. The Church Society’s view is that this is “about the authority and sufficiency of God’s word”, about what happens “if we take the Bible seriously”.

    Not for the first time, I wonder what the point of three years spent working on LLF was; asking the church to engage with the materials, and then finding that the Church of England Evangelical Council instead recommends their own free 229-page book Glorify God in your Body (2018) and its study guide. Apparently “It covers all this ground, in a faithful and biblical way.”

    Hey, people. Don’t suggest to me that LLF isn’t ‘biblical’ or ‘Doesn’t take the Bible seriously’. It is, and it does. Of course it is and of course it does. It states that the Bible has “the central place in our accounts of how we hear the voice of God” (p.274): “God speaks to the world through the Bible” (p.276).

    Following on from the Shared Conversations resources, LLF acknowledges that one of the underlying questions that makes discussing sex so difficult is precisely that we don’t agree on how to read the Bible. It lays out the different approaches: the textual, historical and canonical contexts. It goes through the ‘clobber texts’. It fully acknowledges that we need to read the Bible, while accepting that there are – and always have been – different ways of doing this.

    LLF recognises that, in the C of E, we all need to realise that our readings of Scripture are partial, and come from our privilege as (mostly) “white, male, middle-class, affluent, and Western”: “if privileged readers want to be challenged to recognize their own partial perspectives, and to see how those have shaped their reading and thinking, and to be enabled to read and think past them, it makes sense to engage seriously with reading and thinking from the margins” (p.328).

    However, there aren’t any examples in the LLF book of such reading from the margins: as I said many times during meetings and in emails, while queer hermeneutics is mentioned and queer readings are mentioned as a concept which could cause “a transformative shock” (p.338), there isn’t a single example given of a queer reading of the Bible. If you aren’t aware of how differently the Bible was read in the past, try looking at the Church Fathers on Song of Songs.

    Saying that LLF isn’t ‘biblical’ is simply shorthand for prioritising one way of reading the Bible. One of the good things about LLF is the acknowledgement that this isn’t good enough.

    Already on social media I’ve encountered a number of LGBTQI+ people saying that they won’t be reading the LLF materials; maybe not until they are feeling stronger, maybe not at all. That’s hardly surprising, after the bruising they’ve already had from Christians or churches.

    The take-home message of LLF is that the bishops “do not agree on a number of matters relating to identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage … Most pressing among our differences are questions around same sex relationships, and we recognize that here decisions in several interconnected areas need to be made with some urgency” (p.422).

    “Urgency” is the right word. People are being belittled, damaged, rejected right now. Talking about these matters is not enough. For me, the most important question is how these “decisions” will be made.

  • Living in Love & Faith – My Journey

    by Rt Revd Christopher Cocksworth, Bishop of Coventry and Chair of the Living in Love and Faith project

    I am very grateful to be asked to contribute to Via Media and to share some thoughts on Living in Love and Faith shortly after its publication.

    I’m writing this a week before the launch itself and, perhaps as you can imagine, my anxiety levels are steadily rising. By the time you read this, LLF in its several forms – book, course, films, podcasts and online library – will have been released, with all sorts of assessments in its wake. You may well have formed your own view, though I’m hoping people will hold their final judgement until they’ve engaged in some way with the range of material in its different forms, and also given the whole lot a chance to do the work it’s intended to do. I certainly don’t want to try to sell LLF to you or to cover over any of its faults that you’ve spotted already, and all of us will be able to find many, I’m sure. Rather, I’d like to share something of my experience of living with this project over these last years, and trying to so with love, faith and – yes – hope.

    I had a load of mixed emotions when I was asked to chair LLF’s Coordinating Group back in 2017. As much as I sensed, in fear and trembling, the scale of the challenge that it would involve, there was something about it that struck chords with me and the experiences that God had led me through. Academically, I’ve long been interested in how different people and perspectives can be held together by seeing that which is of Christ in each other and hearing that which is of the gospel in each other’s position. In ministry, I’ve been called to Coventry to share its remarkable story of peace and to live out something of the prophetic words spoken by the then Provost in the BBC’s 1940 Christmas service broadcast to the nations from the ruins of the Cathedral’s bombed out remains.

    ‘What we want to tell the world is this: that with Christ born again in our hearts . . . We’re going to try to make a kinder, simpler, a more Christ-child-like, sort of world in the days beyond this strife’.

    Well, although I soon discovered that simplicity was a virtue LLF would find difficult to embody (everything we discussed together was layered in complexity), I came to see that it was a very great opportunity to build a kinder and more Christ-child-like Church for the sake of the world; and that it would need to be rooted at every moment in the simplicity of the Coventry prayer – ‘Father, forgive’.

    About mid-way through the project, I encountered the work of Hartmut Rosa, a German sociologist who contends that our relationships in the modern world have become mute and that we have become deaf to each other, indeed to the world itself. He describes the need to overcome the alienation many people experience that can lead to a sense of ‘every day despair’ or even hostility. He proposes that we can do so by engendering resonance between people in their deep identity and dearly held views, and so be at greater peace in the world. These are the final words of Resonance, his weighty book on the subject:

    ‘A better world is possible, and it can be recognised by the central criterion, which is no longer domination and control, but listening and responding.’

    That helped me to understand better what I’d seen happening as around forty very different people with diverse life experiences and various – and often conflicting – views and beliefs met and worked, spoke and wrote, ate, drank and prayed together over many demanding days. I could see that a deep listening was taking place in each of us and that we were responding to each other, to what we felt, thought, believed, hoped and prayed for, listening and responding together to scripture and the theological tradition. Listening and responding to God. And that seemed to me to be the responsibility of LLF – to allow us, difficult as it can be, and it was really difficult most of the time, to listen to each other, to ensure that we had heard well and that we had truly allowed each other’s voice to be heard, and to respond in love, faith, and with hope.

    I’ve learnt a lot about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage over these years, and my prayer is that the LLF resources will help those who make use of them to travel their own long and rich journey of learning through them. I’ve learnt a lot about myself as well – about, as the Pastoral Principles put it, my ignorance, prejudices, hypocrisy and fears, as well as my failures to give silence a voice and attend to my own use of power. But it’s been the opportunity to come to know other Christians more deeply, to see into their lives and to understand better their strongest convictions and highest hopes that will have been the abiding gift of these last years for me.

    Those colleagues are too numerous to name but I will – if I may – mention three: Alex (a gift to LLF from the URC), who is trans, Giles (a contributor to Via Media and Vicar of St John’s Waterloo), who is gay, and Jason (an Adviser to the Bishop of London and former curate at Christ Church, Mayfair), who is straight. As members of the LLF Coordinating Group, we’ve worked closely together. We must have spent hundreds of hours in meetings together right up to the launch. I know they have given many more hundreds of hours to our common task, shaping texts, framing films, creating podcasts, arguing and contending, listening and responding. I also know something, though only the surface, of the cost they have had to bear in our endeavours, and I worry that the price they have been asked to pay will have risen since the launch. I have seen Christ in them and heard the gospel through them.

    Yes, we have further to travel along the way of Christ’s truth. We are not done with our listening to God and discerning how we faithfully respond to God. But this I know: we belong together because we belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

  • Scripture & Sexuality – Taking Nothing For Granted

    by the Ven Nikki Groarke, Archdeacon of Dudley, Member of General Synod and Co-Founder of the Evangelical Forum on General Synod

    At the beginning of this year I took for granted that I would be able to worship in church freely, socialise with friends, spend time with my family, run my first marathon and be able to tie up my own shoe laces. To take something for granted, according to the dictionary, is “to assume that something is true without questioning it”, or “to never think about something because you believe it will always be available or stay exactly the same”.

    A global pandemic impacting us in the UK from March, and a broken shoulder impacting me personally from the end of September have changed pretty much everything about life – nothing is the same as it was this time last year. Things I never thought about have become unavailable to me overnight, assumptions about my life, abilities and entitlements have been deeply challenged. I have been forced to think about how day-to-day living is experienced by those with physical impairment or chronic pain in enlightening ways, and hopefully have grown in wisdom as a result … though I have mainly been frustrated and impatient rather than graciously stoic about the fact that I can’t run 5k let alone a marathon, and although I can now dress myself, those boot laces remain in the ‘impossible with one hand’ category.

    Over a longer period a similarly diverse and unexpected combination of factors have caused me to reflect on how much of my church tradition’s teaching on sexuality I had hitherto taken for granted. Assumptions I had never questioned have been challenged, concepts I had never really thought about because some things always stay the same and are unchangeable began to trouble me, to gnaw away at my previously rock-solid stance.

    My journey through the ‘silent middle’ in the debate on same sex relationships, articulated in a speech to General Synod in February 2017 has continued.  I would now describe myself as a gradually more confident ally. I think differently since I have ventured to question and explore with an open and undefended mind, and hope I have grown in wisdom and understanding through discovering the rich contribution LGBTI sisters and brothers bring to God’s church. Sticking my head above the parapet when invited to speak in ‘that debate’ had a much more significant impact than I could have ever imagined, leading to fascinating conversations, opportunities for engagement and some enriching new friendships, and significantly, a deeper love for God, and for the Bible. 

    My evolving perspective resulted sadly in a parting of ways with EGGS (the Evangelical Group of the General Synod), as along with others I felt I could not, with integrity, remain part of a group which defined evangelicals in terms of their views on sexuality. A new “Evangelical Forum”, of which I became a founding member, is attempting to offer a different way of meeting together as evangelicals on Synod. We will aim to provide a hospitable space for conversation, reflection and fellowship, where conscious of our oneness in Christ and his command to love each other, we undertake to listen in love, speak with kindness and understand with open hearts.

    This is going to be so important as we begin this month to engage in Synod and then across the whole church with the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) materials which aim to help the whole Church to learn how relationships, marriage and sexuality fit within the bigger picture of a humanity created in the image of God.  Commenting on the House of Bishops’ decision to proceed in the autumn of 2020, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said on 25/6/2020:

    “The LLF resources are about vital matters which affect the wellbeing of individuals and communities. That is why it is important for the Church to move ahead with publishing the resources as soon as possible. ….  They will help the Church to live out its calling to be a people who embody the reconciliation of Christ as together we explore matters of identity, sexuality and marriage.”

    It’s envisaged that learning and engagement with the materials will over the next couple of years move to discernment and decision-making.  I really hope and pray that right across our structures and people, from synod to parish, from bishop to youth group member, from Mothers’ Union stalwart to fresh faced ordinand, we will take nothing for granted as we commit to learning together. I long for a church in which it is good to explore and question openly, from a place of acknowledging our common calling as children of a God who loves us, whether we be gay or straight, evangelical or liberal, catholic, charismatic or any other tradition, reflective practitioner or learned academic.

    At some point, when discernment leads to decision making, we will clearly not all be in agreement, which is why we have careful synodical processes to navigate. But that is still a way ahead. For now, at the end of this year in which so much of what we thought to be unchangeable has been stripped away, I dare to hope we can approach this opportunity differently. Of course, we hold on to truth with integrity, but perhaps that truth might be as simple as, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”.

    My journey towards a more inclusive interpretation of scripture has speeded up as I have realised that Jesus loves my gay and lesbian friends and colleagues too, and that the Bible surprisingly “tells me so” – I don’t have to ditch it to embrace a theology which welcomes rather than condemns a loving, intimate relationship between two people of the same sex. This has been liberating for me as an evangelical, and I am indebted to Marcus Green and David Runcorn, whose books The Possibility of Difference and Love Means Love have helped me grapple with some of my preconceived notions.

    I am resolved to take nothing for granted, other than that it is possible to live in love and faith, as we journey together through the next stage of this long process. But I am committed to speaking out in support of those whose very existence has been challenged for far too long, and committed to doing this as an evangelical, loved by God, and tentatively trying to love those who find my changing views a challenge, embodying reconciliation with them.

    I’m happy to walk and talk with any who want to prepare for LLF hitting Synod through creative conversation. However, at least for the next few weeks, I will need to ask you to tie my boot laces before we venture out!

  • Uphill Struggles and the Road to Peace

    by the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool and the Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

    One positive side-effect of the first lockdown was that I began regular exercise again, and I’ve kept it going. Every other day I jog (candidly it’s more of a shuffle) for 2.5K around the streets here.

    There is only one fairly steep hill, which takes some will power to climb. Half way up the hill it’s easy to consider giving up. The hill is called Church Road (I know this story sounds like “Pilgrim’s Progress”, but I promise I’m not making it up).

    Church Road takes you up, past the church hall where the Beatles first played together, and past the churchyard with a grave which was the inspiration for “Eleanor Rigby”, and on to the house where the present Rector lives, who played Father McKenzie in the recent movie “Yesterday”.

    These facts might well help you in a trivia quiz (you’re welcome), but none of them makes the hill any easier. And by the time I reach the top I’m usually gasping for breath. It’s just at that point of maximum tiredness that I pass the parish church’s war memorial, facing the road at the top of the hill, with its simple message “Peace”.

    Peace is a word with many meanings, but in my experience any peace worth the name comes after a climb. No climb, no peace. In this Remembrance season that is surely clear.

    In his book “The Cost of Discipleship” Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of cheap grace and costly grace, the cheap grace that causes us to sleep spiritually, and the costly grace that assuredly calls us forward on the path of discipleship. In a similar way you might speak of cheap peace and costly peace.

    Cheap peace exists, for what it’s worth. I could choose to suspend my run and instead to experience a peaceful moment at the bottom of the hill. The problem with doing that its that I’m no longer exercised, and I’m not one step closer to home. Alternatively I can face the exertion and climb the hill and pass the war memorial and receive its message of peace, and run on.

    Speaking of the leaders of his own time the prophet Jeremiah was moved to say: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14)

    Jesus on the other hand came to his disciples there in the upper room, where the doors were locked for fear of the Jews, and he showed them his serious, indeed his mortal, wounds; and as a wounded and risen person he said “Peace be with you”. (John 20:19)

    Cheap peace comes at the foot of the hill, where wounds are not taken seriously, on the near side of conflict. And costly peace is to be found where the seriously wounded One lives and breathes and blesses, on the far side of conflict.

    It will not do to settle for cheap peace at the bottom of the hill, certainly not for those who follow the Prince of Peace. When I was a parish priest in High Wycombe in the 80s, and also one of the national co-chairs of Christian CND, I preached at the town’s Remembrance Day service, to an audience including senior USAF and RAF service people from the local bases, as well as some from the peace movement. At the end of the service someone drew me aside and said: “Well, Paul, it wasn’t easy, but you managed to get away without offending anyone today”. 

    I was profoundly depressed. It was evident that I had chosen words which had not reflected the truth as I understood it. It was evident that my discipleship itself had fallen short. I’m still looking for the bit in the Gospels where someone says to our Lord: “Well, Jesus, it wasn’t easy, but you managed to get away without offending anyone today”.

    Of course there is nothing to be gained by giving gratuitous offence, and of course patience and compassion and self-control and endurance are virtues in the Christian way. But when a community seeks real peace, it is only to be found after the most profound exertion, and in the midst of honest speech and honest listening, and if necessary of honest and clearly-expressed disagreement.

    To say that honest speech and honest disagreement matters is by no means to state the obvious.

    As I write the “shenanigans” following the US election are ongoing, as the result is awaited and the President rages. Television commentators are interrupting the speeches of their own President to tell their listeners that he is not speaking the truth.

    As I write the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine movements, and even the insane fantasies of the QAnon conspiracy, continue to gather adherents in the UK – for some, joining them seems so much easier than climbing the hill of truth and walking on the stones of evidence.

    The Coronavirus has squeezed our common life hard, and it has revealed fault-lines which continue to open. In the words of the Authorised Version of the Bible: “…judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter”. (Isaiah 59:14)

    In such a world Christian people are surely called to exert themselves, and to seek the hard peace which is found at the summit of the hill. It is not enough to stay at the hill’s foot, where the grass is long and where we can agree with everyone, or at least agree to differ, and where the vulgar sound of struggle is pleasantly distant.

    This is surely true in every part of our common life, as a church as well as in the nation.

    Will we confront the lies in the public square which I have mentioned above, and take a stand for the truth, even if it means we will not get away without offending anyone today?

    Within the Church will we exert ourselves to climb the hill to where the grass is shorter, and finally to address and not to postpone matters of contention, as for example in the area of human sexuality and relationships which hurts and marginalises and silences so many?

    And in all these things will we be enabled by God’s grace to reach together for the costly peace which comes on the far side of a renewed honesty and a renewed public courage?

    I can only hope.

  • Wise Leadership: Needed Now More Than Ever!

    by the Ven Elizabeth Adekunle, Archdeacon of Hackney

    Our leadership matters now more than ever, as we look to our leaders to steer us through these choppy and unpredictable waters. The world has been faced with grave uncertainty because of Covid-19 and there are questions around how leaders manage the effects of a pandemic they cannot control. We have seen first-hand the legislative decisions that leaders across the world have made in response to the spread of the virus, and this has led to comparisons about effective leadership.

    In addition to this uncertainty, the world watched on their screens the murder of George Floyd during lockdown and the subsequent protests and stories of injustice and discrimination that emerged. Despite lockdown many felt empowered by ‘Black Lives Matter’ to protest and to ask leaders to confront and address the racial discrimination within our structures and institutions.

    If this was not enough uncertainty, add to the list the future leadership of the United States. The turnout of voters this year has vastly surpassed the number who voted in the 2016 election. One reason for the increase is likely, in part, to the gradual expansion of voting rights but another more important reason, relates to the desperate desire for good judgement and wise leadership in an environment that seems overwhelmingly divided. The likelihood is that we will know the results later today and the outcome of this contested presidential election may well lead to anger, frustration and violence.

    How our leaders lead and implement change in this moment in time, affects us in ways that leadership has not dealt with in recent history. It seems crucial therefore that our leaders have the right tools to take on this immense level of power and responsibility.

    The bible offers key teachings, not only about the dangers of the allure of leadership, but about wise affective leadership. The Hebrew scriptures aptly refer to these books as Wisdom Literature. These five books deal precisely with our human struggles and real-life experiences. Armed with prayer and quiet reflection, within these pages we see nuggets and insights in to how to be wise. For example, Proverbs 8:12 says “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion.”

    In the New testament we see the practical application of such leadership in the mission and service of Jesus; in his trial and death. Jesus exhibits a counter-culture style of leadership that is not based on ego and progression but rather on humility and integrity. A list of qualities and characteristics can be found in the nine Fruits of the Spirit; all of which help to develop wise judgement.

    Biblical teachings are ongoing tools in an unpredictable world, in which God’s reflective wisdom is needed during times of trial and times of temptation, so that leaders do not pretend. The 1662 book of Common prayer offers these wise words:

    “Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness; and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain the same by his infinite goodness and mercy”.

    Wisdom can and should be nurtured, for wisdom brings good judgement, altruism, a perspective beyond the individual and an understanding of the power that leadership can wield, both positive and negative. Leadership can bring out the best and the worst in those who step up to the challenge. Therefore, recognising this and holding in tension these extremes is crucial for good clear judgement.

    In a world that demands immediacy and is often unreasonable and unwilling to see the opinion of others, or indeed the bigger picture, or the longer view it takes wise leadership not be to seduced by those that shout the loudest, or miss the voices of the ‘least of these’ and the crucial discernment process that comes from listening to others and learning from others.

    Nelson Mandela in his biography Long Walk to Freedom equated a great leader with a Shepherd, Mandela said, “He stays behind the flock, letting the nimblest go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind”.

    To lead wisely means to recognise that one does not have all the answers and cannot and will not know everything. Wise leadership involves a collective group of people with different gifts and skills in which different people at different times, depending on their strengths, or ‘nimbleness’ come forward to steer the group in the best direction. Mandela’s metaphor also hints at the strength and agility of a group that does not have to wait for and then respond to a command from (the front), the one in charge. That kind of agility is more likely to be developed by a group when a leader conceives of his/her role as creating the opportunity for collective leadership, as opposed to merely setting the direction that all should follow.

    Wise leadership can be counter-cultural, in fact a leader may represent traits that are the opposite of what the world has been trained to see its leaders do and say. There are times when great leadership means letting go of what others, including one’s seniors, perceive one’s actions ought to be as a leader. Jesus is a good example of this. Wise leadership will inevitably involve God’s commandment to love and an understanding of the long view.

    The wise leader understands that purposeful work is essential to human dignity and human flourishing and the immediacy of the short-term solution often does not create lasting impact.

    Let us pray therefore that we will have the courage to recognise and appoint wise leaders that can contemplate the long view and hold them to account in order to make the world a fairer more just place


    Archdeacon Liz will be in discussion with Cardinal Tagle on November 2nd 2020 for the first of the Autumn Westminster Abbey lecture series on ‘Wise Leadership’. The talk will be available on YouTube shortly.

    https://www.westminster-abbeyorg/abbey-events/lectures-and-talks/2020/november/religion-nurture-wisdom

  • Covid, LLF and the Power of “Lived Experience”

    by the Revd Canon Timothy Goode, Rector of St Margaret’s, Lee, Disability Adviser to the Diocese of Southwark and Member of General Synod

    ‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God’.[1]

    On the 8th October Radio 4’s Moral Maze explored the concept of ‘lived experience’ and agreed that, taken solely on its own, ‘lived experience’ is an unreliable position for moral authority, as it leaves itself open to manipulation by our unconscious and conscious biases.

    However the panel admitted that when matched with rigorous and careful reflection, drawing into a deeper empathy with those with similar narratives, ‘lived experience’ acquires a legitimate moral agency that has the power to change attitudes and transform lives.  The program concluded that ‘Lived Experience’ speaks particularly powerfully when it states that ‘there is only so much we can do unless we have a voice at the table.’

    Within this context ‘lived experience’ becomes a plea from the powerless to the powerful. Compare Donald Trump’s recent responses to his ‘lived experience’ of Covid-19 to the rallying cry from the ‘lived experience’ of disabled people. ‘Not about us without us’ becomes a direct plea to the powerful to listen and respond to the narratives of those who are being disabled by the very people who hold power and influence.

    Although the Church of England’s new teaching document ‘Living in Love and Faith’ reflects on the lived experience of many within the LGBTI community, am I alone in wishing that the writers of LLF had had the opportunity, before going to publication, to hear and reflect on the lived experiences of the powerless in this pandemic?  For this pandemic is robbing many of the very action that is the LLF’s elephant in the room, namely physical intimacy.

    People with serious underlying health issues have had to shield from their sexual partner, mirroring the lived experience of many for whom this is their daily existence. Others have found themselves geographically separated from their sexual partner due to lockdown. As previously stated in Savi Hensman’s Via Media blog on “life without closeness” this pandemic has forced us to step back from embracing or shaking hands, all but robbing us of a vital part of our humanity and that loss has hurt us profoundly.

    It is within this context that I have been reflecting on my recent lived experience of being shielded, cut off physically from family and friends, and in particular having to live socially distanced from my wife for two weeks at the beginning of lockdown.

    As a physically disabled person I experience physical intimacy as a gift of immense grace. To offer myself completely to my wife, emotionally, spiritually and physically; for that offer not only to be received but desired and for that offer to be reciprocated in kind, has been for us a perpetual manifestation of God’s love and grace. For to offer oneself so completely to another is an act of risk and vulnerability, one which opens us to the possibility of rejection and immense hurt, but also the possibility of profound transformation and healing.

    Being desired so completely by my wife has confirmed and affirmed that I am fearfully and wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God. Physical intimacy continues to be for us a gift and vital sign of the vulnerable, selfless and graceful love of God.

    Bernie and I do not have children and our sexual relationship is not open to the procreation of children and yet there is nothing about our experience of physical intimacy that in anyway falls short of God’s purposes, but rather continues to be an ongoing sharing of grace that has drawn us both into a deeper and closer relationship with each other and with the incarnate God; the Word made Flesh; the Risen Body, both fully divine and fully human that invites us to gaze upon the open wounds of Christ and respond ‘My Lord and my God’.[2]

    That two weeks at the start of lockdown, when self-distancing denied both of us the possibility to be physically intimate, afforded me the gift of a glimpse of what the Church of England demands of clergy living in loving committed same sex relationships.

    For the Church to demand that others are denied the experience of physical intimacy; to deny the possibility of offering oneself completely – emotionally, spiritually and physically – to the one they love and to deny that offer being reciprocated – all whilst denying them and their life partner a covenantal relationship with God, is to deny the graceful action of God and to fall desperately short of God’s purpose. 

    It is the action of a powerful Church, selecting and predisposing particular passages of scripture to the judgmental pronouncements of the powerful over the powerless. In doing so ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’ has all but robbed LGBTI clergy of a vital part of our shared humanity and it has hurt them and the Church profoundly.

    Many Christians respond with ‘you cannot bless a sin’ and I agree with them.

    ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’ has not been a blessing for the Church of England, because it has denied God’s graceful action and therefore colluded with sin. ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’ has brought about serious safeguarding issues which the church can no longer ignore; for its pronouncements deny and abuse God’s purposes within loving relationships, profoundly impacting on the mental health of so many LGBTI Christians and denying the opportunity for the church to be for them a sacred place of safety and sanctuary.

    My ardent prayer is that through the upcoming publishing of LLF and the conversations that ensue, the Church becomes a blessing rather than a barrier for LGBTI Christians, a Church that truly listens and responds to the lived experiences of the powerless, transforming fully into the Body of Christ, leaving no one behind –  a true agent of God’s grace, living out the Gospel clarion cry:  ‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God’.

    [1] The First Letter of St John, Chapter 4, verse 7

    [2] Gospel of John, 20 verse 28

  • Collusion, Hypocrisy & the Greasy Pole to Success

    by Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge and ordinand at St Augustine’s College of Theology

    For those with ears to hear, the past few weeks have highlighted a very clear theme in the abuse scandal in the Church of England, whether that be in the IICSA report or the Diocese of Oxford’s review into the murder of a gay churchwarden of a ‘conservative’ church: it’s almost a truism – to quote Oxford’s review, ‘while people continue to feel forced to hide or lie about their sexuality, they can become vulnerable to exploitation’.

    The topic has been covered in an excellent blog by Prof Helen King on this site, yet the silence from the Church of England’s authorities is deafening. The Bishop of Oxford may have said that this was a ‘clarion call for improvements to our work on LGBTI+ inclusivity’, yet where have the great statements of repentance been from the House of Bishops?

    Same-sex spouses continue to be excluded from the Lambeth Conference, and meanwhile there hasn’t been a peep of recognition from the wing of the Church that would align itself with these ‘traditional’ views, with the usual woe-is-me ‘bullying’ accusations made yet again and again against people who honour the humanity of LGBT people. 

    It really is time for this to change.

    The lying, silence, dissembling and wink-wink nudge-nudge way of ‘managing’ homosexuality in Church circles is not only embarrassing, but a grave sin. It moves the church into a place of hypocrisy and collusion, and it is one we are far too willing to tolerate.

    After writing my last blog, I was told by a priest that it was a virtue to ‘tolerate hypocrisy’. By no means is this true – and what is more this is fundamentally different to recognising and living with paradox and different theological positions.

    We live in a Church that thrives on hypocrisy – where ordinands are told not to ‘rock the boat’ by being ‘too vocal’ about being LGBT, and where clergy have ‘special friends’ or ‘lodgers’. This pressure to dishonesty thus forms the backdrop for being LGBT in the Church, and it is hardly a surprise that such a culture can be manipulated by those who are looking for vulnerabilities in the system. That an elderly gay man was abused and murdered is not a shock – it is the inevitable result of a culture of lies.

    Anyone who is young, gay and in the Church has lived this reality; I am quite sure that other LGBT people similarly face the consequences of this culture. All of us know of the inappropriate clergy, the unacceptable taking of liberties that are just the right side of ‘explainable’, and the abuse of power by those in authority. Not being straight makes this whole structure a lot more threatening – not only because of the threats of ‘disclosure’ that can be made against you, but also because there is a deeper underlying culture of ‘being gay in the Church’ that is deeply damaging, and is directly the result of the tyranny of silence and lies.

    This culture is like something from the 1950s, where never a word is spoken about ‘the love that dares not speak its name’, where gay clergy form elaborate pretences and where public intimacy is frowned on and sex commodified. LGBT people are thus made both victim and perpetrator, and the culture continues to level its destruction. This culture blurs the line between acceptable and unacceptable, producing and hiding perpetrators of abuse.

    Of course, some clergy, like many others in society, need a level of discretion in consideration of elderly relatives or similar, such is the history of homophobia in this country (aided and abetted by the Church of England) – this is not the issue. Clergy who are not in this position and yet still deny their partners, or describe them as ‘special friends’, are, however, colluding in the toxic Church culture – as are leaders telling LGBT people to hide, or to ‘be careful about’ their true selves. We even have senior theological educators who actively sponsor and head up organisations that recommend heterosexual marriage to ‘same sex attracted’ people’ – and we wonder why we have a problem?

    Yet here is the Catch 22 – those who are honest end up losing their licences or being thrown out, whilst those who hide and collude climb up the greasy pole of promotion. This is the very culture that the actions and words of our bishops and other leaders are perpetuating. Power, lies, fear and opacity are a heady cocktail – and it is high time the church took some responsibility for sponsoring this scandal.

    Yet there is a desperation not to deal with this issue – how often have we heard that speaking out, or even simply being honest, will ‘embarrass the bishop’ or ‘bring the institution into disrepute’? Bishops seem very willing to talk about this issue and urge change over lasagne, yet are far too often silent at the Lord’s Table. Yet their silence and collusion, and that of those who continue to promulgate this culture of hypocrisy, is not only wrong, but sinful – abuse, threats and dishonour continue apace.

    Perceived unity is not more important than keeping people safe and treating them as human beings. The word ‘traditional’ cannot be used to cover evil. Any senior cleric reading this might want to ask themselves – have I done enough? Indeed, have I colluded, and what am I going to do about it?

    In Poland this last weekend, LGBT people – yet again the target of vicious hatred, abuse and oppression by a populist state – protested outside church property and called for an end to the church. The Polish Roman Catholic hierarchy have taken the side of the oppressor, and colluded with the state. In the UK, the state is light years ahead, yet the Church of England continues to sponsor and collude in a culture of hypocrisy.

    The only reason people aren’t protesting outside our buildings is because they’ve stopped listening – we are an irrelevance. The secular world has grasped the nettle and respected the dignity of LGBT people.

    There have been enough reports – it’s about time we started to listen to them, because until we do that, we are stopping the people’s ears and participating in dishonour.

  • Church of England – Please Mind the Gap!

    by Anne Foreman, Member of General Synod, Trustee of the Ozanne Foundation and former National Youth Adviser for the Church of England

    “If elected I will serve with the interested of parishes always in mind….”  So said my election address for the Church of England’s General Synod in 1999.  Now, as I approach my final few months on General Synod, having served on it for two very different Dioceses I have come to the conclusion that the gap between Synodical Structures and Pastoral Parishes is wider still.  The central structures have come up with a plethora of initiatives, such as Renewal and Reform, Simplification, Mission Shaped Church, Strategic funding for Resourcing and Planting new church communities, Estates Ministry, Everyday Faith.   However, questions need to be asked about how these fine sounding initiatives actually connect with existing neighbourhood schemes of care, advocacy and support? What is more, it often seems to be forgotten that parishes run on shoestring budgets, unlike the eye watering budgets behind these national projects!  The relevance of such initiatives to parishes is questionable and so the gap remains.  A gap brought sharply into focus by the response of the Institutional Church to Covid-19. 

    In parishes you do what you can, where you are.  So, for the thousands of people going about their business of loving God and their neighbour there appeared to be little understanding at a national level of the impact of closing churches.  The physical building of the church, whether in a rural or urban setting, is often the focus from which service to the community springs and sustenance for its worshipping community sought. Suddenly it was not to be available. Despite lockdown first appearing on the scene in mid-March, it was not until the 9th September that anything like an empathetic recognition of the impact on community life by church closures came from the Archbishop of Canterbury, where he said…”worship is the work of God – not a social gathering – and gives the strength to love and serve.”  At last we had something that was more than a set of bureaucratic responses to matters of heart and soul.  I’m sure I’m not alone in finding that the many imaginative and creative ways of being church locally during this Pandemic has been in spite of national directives, (sorry guidelines), rather than in response to them.

    Though General Synod representatives in our diocese work hard to communicate to parishes through contact with their deaneries, it’s a bit of an uphill task to enthuse people about stuff that does not appear relevant to the day to day concerns of their own parish life.  Concerns that have increased rather than diminished during this Pandemic.  Parish share still has to be found, Annual Meetings  still need to happen, faculties still have to be applied for.  Small wonder that the General Synod Report isn’t high on the Deanery Synod Agenda! 

    In the main I think it’s due to time scale.  Although the internal workings and time scale of the Church may make sense to us in our synodical, gathered state, when we scatter…..when we go back to our parishes and out into the real world…..”to live and work to His praise and glory….” then the snails pace of action simply baffles people.  People, whether they be people in the pews or people on the fringe of church life, they simply don’t understand why things take so long. Structural  requirements render the gap too wide to be able to capture imaginations, let alone hearts, for Christ.

    Measures at General Synod may have to be debated, supported by voting and enacted nationally, but they are lived out and implemented locally, through local relationships whose foundation is trust and loving God and neighbour.

    Of course some General Synod stuff is actually highly relevant, in particular for example that arising from the Simplification Agenda, designed to make Parochial Church life easier. For instance the enabling of joint Councils for small Parochial Church Councils – sounds great and will be welcomed, but the legal rigmarole involved in making it happen is far from simple!  If the disciples on the road to Emmaus had been given some structural synodical stuff to read I don’t think for a moment that their hearts would have burned within them.!

    Or take the long awaited publication of the Living in Love and Faith, LLF, materials.  Good people have worked long and hard, consulted widely and produced high quality materials.  And yet….and yet….it’s going to be another couple of years of conversations before any conclusions are reached, or not.  Dr Eeva John spoke of the need for scholarly work to connect with lived experience.  Speaking now as a former youth worker, for many (not all) young people, their lived experience includes sex.  While LLF conversations carry on we have a generation of young people who think the church just doesn’t get it as far as sex is concerned. We have a generation of young people for whom sex has become an alternative leisure activity.  So how then is the church to connect with them to model relationships, including same sex relationships, of fidelity, loyalty, kindness, delight and respect if it continues to say that marriage between a man and a woman is the only place that any physical expression of love or desire can happen, or indeed that sex is purely for procreation?

    When I was still supervising full time Youth Workers and they were faced with a difficult issue  I would ask….”how and in what way will your decision enhance the lives of the young people you work with and for…”.? But that was then, and now for me the question is…..”How and in what way will the mission of the church be enhanced by the existing structures of the Church of England?”  The heart of the church beats in local communities and synodical structures need to uphold and strengthen the local.  More attention needs to be paid to minimising the gap between those structures and life as it is lived locally.