ViaMedia

Author: Jayne Ozanne

  • God (he/she/they, him/her/them)

    by the Revd Dr Ellen Clark-King, Dean of King’s College London

    Thirty years ago, when I was at theological college, it was considered radical to use anything other than male language for God in liturgy and preaching. The fact that it is still considered radical thirty years on is testament to how little value the church places on this form of inclusivity.

    In a decade when gender is being questioned on so many sides we still obscure the reality of a non-gendered God behind our exclusive use of male names and imagery for the divine. There are three reasons I consider this a critical fault in the church’s worshiping life and which mean I will continue to use female language for God myself, not exclusively but frequently.

    Firstly I use this language because it is the only way I know to be faithful to the God I experience as Creator, Beloved and Indwelling Spirit. It is the only way I know to be true to Jesus Christ as the one who reveals God as valuing and loving all people with indiscriminate passion. I cannot be a priest and not share the God I know as fierce mother as well as gentle father, as sister as well as brother, as indwelling all human beings regardless of gender.

    The second reason I feel so strongly is because it is a social justice issue for all people. When we refuse to see the sacred in women’s bodies, whether cis or trans, we fail to truly value women’s bodies. When we deny the feminine in divinity we deny the divinity in the female – as theologian Mary Daly said decades ago ‘When God is male then male is God.’ The #Metoo movement shows us where that leads, as does the annual count of femicides in the UK, where a woman is killed by a man about once every three days.

    And the third reason I do this is because I am a woman. I’m a privileged woman – white, educated, middle class, straight and cis gender. But I know what it’s like to grow up and never hear my God spoken of as she or her. I know what it’s like to never, ever see my body reflected in an image of the divine. I know what it’s like to have been told, by women as well as men, that you might as well ordain a dog as ordain a woman. And frankly, it sucks! Language matters. It’s not a triviality, it’s at the core of how we humans see ourselves and one another.

    We live in a world where women continue to be the poorest of the poor. Where female foetuses continue to be aborted in far greater numbers than male foetuses. Where trans women of colour are killed in shocking numbers across the globe. This will not be miraculously put right if we start using female as well as – not instead of, as well as – male language for God. But it will never be put right if we don’t.

    We should also remember that there is another form of gender that we need to include in our divine language. We need to make sure that our siblings who are trans, gender queer or non-conforming, and those who are intersex, can see themselves in the image of the God who includes, embraces and transcends all human definitions of gender. The same God who loves and treasures every human person regardless of their gender or sexual identity. God is they, as well as God is he and God is she.

    And to those who counter that Jesus himself was content with male language for God, please remember that he lived as a man of first century Palestine as well as being God incarnate. He was a person of his time as well as of eternity. The language he used was the patriarchal language of his culture and age, even though in his life and actions he broke down social barriers to welcome, teach and learn from women. Jesus did manage to sneak in a few references to God in female terms – as the woman who finds her lost coin as well as the shepherd who finds his lost sheep, as the mother hen who broods lovingly over Jerusalem.

    Jesus also called on us to be open to the Spirit leading us into all truth. And one of those truths is the strikingly recent recognition that women are of equal worth, value and ability to men. We’ve come a long way from the church in the 10th century that was still actively debating whether women had souls. We’ve even come a long way from the church of the 1980s when only men could represent Christ at the altar. But we still have a long way to go.

    Where would we be as a church, where could we go, if we opened ourselves to the unsettling delight of the Spirit as she dances though each one of our bodies and finds in each of us an image of the most holy God? Let us refuse to impede this dance with language that distorts the divine dancer and belittles 50% of her human dance partners.

    TL:DR  God is not male so broaden your pronouns.

  • Earth Accuses Earth: Responding to Cancel Culture

    by Jayne Manfredi, an ordinand at the Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham and a contributor to BBC R4 Thought for the Day

    I think that God is calling me to be a peacemaker, which is really annoying because what I’ve wanted to do for most of my life is fight people. My younger self was not so much conflict averse, as conflict enthusiastic. I revelled in rage because I felt that life had dealt me some crummy hands and by God someone was going to pay for it. Now, as I take a breather and enjoy a sit down, a nice cup of tea and a biscuit in the middle years of my life, I see that God has worked a kind of miracle in me. I do hate it when God does that.

    It’s been coming on for a while. In my first year of ministerial training, I posted a silly photo of myself on Twitter, wearing a cassock and a stupid grin, with a caption from 1 Timothy 2:12:“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” The juxtaposition was an obvious joke to the people who had followed me for some time. Unfortunately, the tweet went viral and that was when my problems began.

    ‘THIS PERSON IS A DISGRACE,’ quote tweeted one Catholic priest. Other outraged people proceeded to bombard my mentions with further accusations, questioning everything from my personal morals to my suitability to be ordained, my poor theology and exegesis, my respect for God, the bible, the church, my husband and myself. Out of the avalanche of notifications, the odd poisonous phrase leapt out like shrapnel: ‘Woke Whore.’ ‘Stupid bitch.’ ‘Devil sucker.’ One man threatened to report me to my Archdeacon. I shouldn’t be allowed to continue training. The church leadership needed to discipline me.

    If their intention was to make me question my behaviour, then it backfired. Being piled-on in this manner rarely creates the environment necessary for the discomfort of self-reflection. I felt attacked so I behaved defensively, stubbornly entrenched in my own righteousness, complete with a newly acquired victim mentality that stridently declared, ‘Poor me. Why are the internet men being so mean?’ This allowed no room for personal accountability or growth or for taking a step back and looking at the situation dispassionately and with sagacity.

    Cancel culture is a contested phrase, which I’m defining here as the collective shaming of people who have committed a perceived offence, often for the reward of social credit. What started out as a valuable way for marginalised people to hold institutions and powerful individuals to account has mutated into a pernicious form of internet justice, online sabotage and mass shunning. It’s a blight that is not restricted to any one political leaning or community, and at its absolute worst, it manifests as large-scale, unrelenting bullying which can have devastating consequences. It is an abysmal way to treat people and as Christians, we should be taking no part in it.

    To add insult to injury, we are told that cancel culture is not a thing. It doesn’t exist. As someone who has been at the centre of several attempts to ‘cancel’ not only my online output, but my ministerial vocation, I can tell you that it absolutely does. The fact that the attempt was unsuccessful does not in any way negate the impact these incidences have had upon my mental health. The people who participated in the bullying or complained about me to my Bishop would probably frame it as merely holding me to account, or – that ubiquitous and obnoxious phrase – calling me out, when in reality, the goal was entirely punitive.

    I’ve been finding parallels with the story from John 8:1-20 concerning the adulterous woman and her accusers and contemplating it as a teaching about the politics of judgment, rather than the injustice of someone wrongly accused. Indeed, Jesus does not exonerate this woman; he doesn’t tell her that she’s blameless or even that she’s forgiven. This is a story about how we deal with sin when we are all sinners. When you understand that, you realise that this story isn’t about the woman at all; it was always about the people throwing stones.

    I fear we’ve become a church that is addicted to public condemnation. We delight in citing Jesus’ example of turning tables over in righteous fury as a justification for our own rage. We criticise anyone who doesn’t express the same level of outrage as us and dismiss their appeals to nuance and mercy by denouncing them as too privileged to care, or too centrist, or too complacent. Rage, when well-directed has its place, but regularly feeding off anger in an orgy of outrage is not what Jesus told us to do.

    I am wary of the cleansing seduction of giving in to my anger because my own outrage is an ocean that I dare not swim in; to just dip my toe from time to time feels spiritually draining. These are well traversed waters from my past and they are dangerous and unfathomably deep. To wallow in even the shallows is to risk drowning. I ration my outrage and take sips when I need to. I will never again use it to drown out the humanity of anyone else.

    Jesus talked far more about mercy than he ever did about rage, so if we’re going to turn tables over, we need to sometimes be willing to use them to shield those who are hated and despised, as well as the ones for whom there is no cost in loving. My faith is in a God who died but was resurrected and to follow Him is to believe that no one is beyond redemption. It’s to accept the inconvenient truth that even the most awful sinners are worth more in His sight than their worst moments. This is a God who shields sinners from stones, offers them a fresh start and empowers them to sin no more; not because they are threatened, shunned or shamed into it, but because they know they are loved.

    It’s offensive to me that God extends grace to people whom I find repugnant. It goes against every unwritten rule I’ve absorbed about fair play, and yet. If I want to receive that gift of grace myself, can I do no less than to extend it to everyone else? There’s something liberating about admitting that I am a sinner too, and we are all but creatures of the mud. Some scholars have pondered that when Jesus bends down in front of the crowd holding stones, what he writes in the sand is earth accuses earth. God is the ultimate judge. Not me. Not you. When the heady rush of condemnation takes hold, we cast ourselves as judge. Earth accuses earth. We miss the redemptive power of loving the hated, because we are far too busy looking for stones to throw.

     

  • Bishops: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!

    by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia.News, Director of the Ozanne Foundation and Member of General Synod

    Silence is a killer.

    Taking the “I don’t want to rock the boat, so I won’t say anything” approach to life only ever emboldens perpetrators and leaves victims undefended and open to abuse.

    Which is why we need our leaders to have the moral courage and backbone to say what they think, no matter who they offend or disappoint, or how many friends they might lose in the process.

    It’s what we’ve witnessed this week when governments have demanded  Russian oligarchs “come off the fence” and say what they think about their friend, Putin’s, strategy regarding Ukraine.  We’ve seen it with certain football managers, and we’ve even seen it at the Met Opera in New York, where Russian soprano Anna Netrbko was dropped because of her failure to speak out and distance herself from the Russian President.

    You see, you cannot sit on the fence for ever – you will ultimately be called on it.

    And so it is with our House of Bishops, most of whom appear to have taken a vow of silence over where they each stand on issues to do with LGBT+ matters.  Issues affecting 1000s of LGBT+ people’s lives, their friends’ & families’ lives and millions of non-church goers in their diocese.

    So why do they stay so precariously perched?

    Well their reasons seem so laudable: “they don’t want to split the church” (please note, it’s already split!), they want “to be a bishop for all those in their diocese” (really? have they bothered to ask whether their LGBT+ members think they are a bishop who understands what they are going through?) or they “don’t want to add to the problems in the Anglican Communion” (as if their decision would really have that much impact!).

    Perhaps the truthful reason is that they don’t want the aggro of having to deal with some of the really vocal, nasty and vociferous homophobic and transphobic members in their midst.  Bottom line, they don’t want to appear to be “unsound” to certain clergy, or indeed even their peers.  Perhaps they are scared of the consequences? Or maybe they erroneously think that somehow by staying silent everyone will in fact think they are “everyone’s bishop”.

    I hate to break it to them, but do they really think we are that stupid?

    The only people who get hurt by their silence are young LGBT+ people (as well as those who are not so old) growing up in conservative churches where they are constantly told that who they are is unacceptable and that they must therefore deny themselves, “take up their cross” (which their heterosexual leaders never will) and change. No, not for them the joy of love and intimacy – they must never ever experience the gift of giving love and being loved by another human being.

    Of course, most bishops take their stance from their homes where they celebrate wedding anniversaries, where their children are asking them to Christmas dinners and where their happy family memories are dsiplayed in photo frames around their homes and on their desks.

    Bishops, we need you to come out!

    We need you to have the moral courage to say what you really think, to come off the fence (which is a pretty uncomfortable place to sit anyway) and stand firmly on one side or the other.  Then we can start to have some respect for you – even if we disagree with you, for we will know you have the courage of your convictions to state what you truly believe and why.

    Of course, there are other bishops who really do need to heed the call to “come out – wherever they are”.

    The scandal here is not that we have gay bishops in the House of Bishops, but that we have gay bishops who do not feel safe enough to come out within the House of Bishops.

    Ironically, the percentage of bishops who feel “safe enough” to be out is far lower it seems than the percentage of LGBT+ Christians (33%) who say they feel “safe enough to be out” to everyone in their local church.  Goodness, if a bishop doesn’t feel safe to be out – how on earth does he/she expect a young LGBT+ teenager to feel safe?!  It beggars belief!

    What’s more, it undermines their authority.  Most in the LGBT+ community know who these LGBT+ bishops are.  More accurately, most know who their partners are!  And yet we’re all sworn to secrecy.

    This must change.  Is there no shame amongst those who expect the rest of us to bear the brunt of the conservatives ire, who hide behind us being open and transparent about our lived experience?

    It makes me so angry, for as always, again, it is the young and the undefended – those least able or equipped to bear the weight of this – who are left to plead their own cause.

    I have just conducted some research in Hungary and the Caribbean, the results of which will be made public shortly.  The findings are horrific.  They show the impact of living in a culture where the only acceptable way of being is to be heteronormative and cis-gendered.  The level of attempted suicide and self harm amongst the LGBT community is astronomical.

    But it is the fact that young LGBT+ people are totally undefended – that those closest to them, who they trust, their parents, teachers, religious leaders and doctors are the ones who are the most likely to tell them they must change and become straight.  It’s heart-breaking.

    That’s why we need these cultures to change.

    And it must start with our bishops.

  • Being Bisexual in Church — a Balancing Act

    by Will Moore, an ordinand at Westcott House and the author of the forthcoming book ‘Boys Will Be Boys, and Other Myths: Unravelling Biblical Masculinities’ 

    Bisexuality is often forgotten in heated debates about sexuality. It turns common stagnant thinking on its head. It is the sexual orientation that doesn’t fit neat categories of gay and straight.

    Traditionally, bisexuality has been considered as attraction to both men and women or, more recently to anyone on the gender spectrum. Being bisexual inherently resists simplistic classification. It is a balancing act with so many factors simultaneously at play, being lived out in a different shape by every individual.

    This leads to many myths and misconceptions: bisexuals are ‘greedy’; bisexuals are ‘just going through a phase’; bisexuals ‘don’t really exist’. When bisexual people like me hear these ignorant bi-phobic phrases, we experience bi-erasure.

    The Church of England’s principal authorised teaching document on sexuality, published in 1991, describes bisexuality as ‘ambiguous.’ It goes on to say ‘bisexual activity must always be wrong for this reason, if for no other, that it inevitably involves being unfaithful’. There is an assumption here that bisexual people cannot hold back their emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction and are always left unsatisfied. According to the Church of England, bisexuals experience greedy, lustful and uncontrollable sexual attraction.

    Really? Just because bisexual people might have the capacity to fall in love with people of different genders, it does not mean that they are proportionally attracted to more people, or that they have more sexual desire that needs fulfilling. This teaching document paints bisexuals as immoral, adulterous beasts, challenging God’s creational order.

    Surely the Church has moved on since 1991? Regrettably, not.

    There has been some supplementary (but not authoritative) material since, most recently Living in Love and Faith, but this document, Issues in Human Sexuality, remains the official teaching of the Church of England.  At this February’s General Synod, the Bishop of London was pressed on these paragraphs which derogatively address bisexuality. She dismissively responded that the document is ‘thirty years away’ from now. It may be, but as a new ordinand, I have, within the last year, had to assent to live within its guidelines.

    Many, like me, will have agreed through gritted teeth, hurt by words that refer to people like us. As a bisexual man, I must assent to the premise that I am myself ‘ambiguous’ and will be ‘inevitably […] unfaithful’ for simply being who God created me to be. Further, by consenting to live like this, I am concurring with what follows. It recommends heterosexual marriage, abstinence, and even counselling as ‘guidance’ for bisexuals. These sound dangerously like conversion therapy, something that General Synod, as well as the British Government, has promised to ban. Ours is a tragic love story of dedication to the Church.

    Could I, perhaps, as a bisexual, keep up appearances in the Church? After all, I am in a relationship with a woman. A priest told me in an early conversation about my calling that as an LGBTQ+ person in the Church I should be prepared to struggle. Whether that was an affectionate warning or a menacing threat, I am still unsure. But many months later, an official in the discernment process assured me that because I am ‘in a heterosexual relationship’ (which, of course, I am not, since I am still bisexual), my sexuality would be less of an issue. They seemed to think my sexual orientation drastically altered depending on whom I was dating.

    Heterosexual people do not lose every ounce of attraction to others when they enter a relationship, and it is no different for bisexuals. At times I have painfully prayed to God to be either gay or straight, rather than something in-between. But my supposed ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ parts do not become compartmentalised, one erased and the other flourishing, depending on the gender of the person whom I am committing to.

    For many years, I was worried about being in a relationship with a woman. Would I lose my self-identity as bisexual, as I would at least appear to conform to what the Church and heteronormative society required? Surely, I would be playing the act of a straight man, despite my bisexuality? Would I also forfeit my right to identify as bisexual within the LGBTQ+ community?

    At the time, I thought that dating a woman was conforming, giving power and legitimacy to the traditional, often harmful, sexual ethics of the Church. I had unconsciously succumbed to myths about bisexuality that I had disapproved of for so long. I felt like I needed to be with a man in order to be truly fulfilled as an LGBTQ+ Christian. And, if that was the case, was I becoming the ‘ambiguous’ and ‘inevitably unfaithful’ person the Church told me I intrinsically was?

    Eventually, I realised that simply being bisexual was anti-normative in itself. I was already muddying the waters by using such a label, whoever I might be dating. To be in a relationship with my partner who happens to be a woman, and yet still identify as bisexual, is just as disruptive to heteronormative hegemony. By looking straight but not actually being so, I wasn’t conforming. I was doing the opposite. It was liberation, not betrayal.

    We humans live and love with our whole selves. We must acknowledge Christ’s calling in all of life. This means paying attention to the nuance and uniqueness of each individual. We can no longer assume that being heterosexual and cisgender are normative. God’s glorious creation of human sexuality is much more complex than that. The rainbow of life is broad and colourful. It includes bisexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, and more, along with those who are married, cohabiting, divorced, widowed, or single. There are so many voices that have not been heard. They may be considered messy and muddled, yet they are authentic expressions of genuine life experiences. Listening to them uncovers the breadth and diversity of God’s creation.

    Too often, however, we overlook the uniqueness, even queerness, in every single person. The Church needs to acknowledge and appreciate all those balancing in the betwixt and between whose voices are lost.

    After all, my story is one of balance. This can be difficult and painful and sometimes equilibrium isn’t achieved. As an ordinand, I come into the Church of England bursting with hope for the future, but still laden with the burden of wounds that our Church has inflicted, and still does, on many minorities. As a bisexual Christian, I balance what I really am with what the Church wants me to be.

    All I can say is that I am here, a bisexual Christian who God made and called me to be, in the Church that I love. At times I have been ignored and insulted. I have felt detached from Christian communities. Even the institutional Church within which I am training for priesthood carries in high regard hurtful words about people like me.

    But as bisexuals continue to live out our lives authentically, I hope we will increasingly be known and understood better – whether we are in relationship with someone of the same gender, a different gender, or no one at all. The more we are listened to, the more myths are dispelled. The better we are understood by our beloved Church, the less weighty the burden of balancing our bisexuality will feel.

    To my fellow bisexual Christians: keep balancing and stay upright. Speak out, be heard, stay safe, and be brave. Your voice is important. God hears you and loves you. Soon, I pray, the Church will too.

  • Profile: Burn Out, Exclusion and the Church of England

    by the Revd Canon Valerie Plumb,  Area Dean for Rural Mission and Development in the Diocese of Oxford and elected member of General Synod

    I have spent nearly two years living and working remotely. This has been and remains a challenging situation for all involved in my household. It’s vitally important to make sure that all who are still medically shielding are not forgotten.

    The government is desperately attempting to bring back ‘normal’ but nothing has really changed for the clinically vulnerable community. Now they are living in more fear and with a growing sense that they simply don’t matter any more.

    ‘Shielding’ and what it was all about seems to be fast dropping out of our vocabulary. Society is increasingly divided between mask wearers and non- mask wearers. Being pro and antivax is becoming a hot point for feelings and conversations.

    In reality those who medically shield have no choice. Choosing life over potential death seems a no-brainer.

    We who continue to shield begin to slip into the shadows and learn to live in what feels like a second-class level of existence. My biggest fear is that the church succumbs to the same mindset.

    In November 2021 Archbishop Justin Welby declared in a General Synod inaugural president’s address ‘it’s not Christian to exclude’. It was a powerful address. As an elected member I heard that speech, and the rest of General Synod in the following days, online, but was unable to debate, vote, share in group work or even offer my maiden speech should I be called. This felt an awful lot like being excluded.

    I felt so upset and outraged by the whole experience that I began to question it. This inaugurated months of ping pong correspondence with the Synod’s Business Committee.

    By the February 2022 group of sessions I was delighted to hear that they had become fully hybrid. I was even able to offer my maiden speech. It addressed the importance of ensuring that remote working isn’t considered ‘not good enough’. It went down well.

    I am one of many clergy across the country who are still working remotely. Not all of us have been supported in the same way. My Area Bishop and Archdeacon completely understand my situation. They support and acknowledge the seriousness of my need to shield whilst strongly validating my mission and ministry in these extraordinary circumstances. Others have not been so lucky.

    Some people think that church isn’t proper church unless it’s in a building. Somehow, ministering to each other via zoom isn’t as valid as in person. It’s not the same, but it’s more a case of just being different rather than less. Thank goodness God is still God!

    The pressure on those who continue to work from home remains extremely intense. It has led to some experiencing burnout because of a need to repeatedly validate their work. Even now I still get folks asking me ‘When I am coming back to work?’ Ironically, throughout this whole pandemic I have continued to lead services, chair meetings, train LLM’s, oversee ordinands, participate in discussions, interview people, lead retreats and even attend General Synod. I have been there pastorally for others. This sounds an awful lot like full time work to me!

    During this uncharted time in history we have learnt to travel a new landscape. We must use this opportunity to learn and understand all we can and use that knowledge to prepare for future journeys.

    Some decisions made by the C of E during this pandemic have brought panic and pain to vulnerable people. They have over burdened those trying to make local choices. Now we seek a better and brighter future. Let’s not forget those ones who are not yet able to put it all behind them.

    It’s personal. I suffer from an immunological disorder requiring strong immunosuppressive medication. Shielding has been my only option. Covid 19 could bring a potentially deadly reaction. Even those I live with have had to change their lives accordingly. Last week my God-daughter finally sold her car having she lost her job because of the risk to me.

    This journey has been hard, but it doesn’t feel wasted. I often think of Henri Nouwen’s words ‘Who can take away suffering without entering it? The great illusion of leadership is to think that a man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.’ Deserts can be interesting places to live, but being in them changes you.

    Through all the trials and tribulations I have felt blessed with a constant sense of how precious life really is. Seeing this from the sharp end has encouraged me to live life to the fullest. It has created a purer sense of soul freedom that is beginning to show in my ministry.

    This sudden and deep awareness of humanity’s fragility has allowed me to see how important it is for people to see their priests’ vulnerabilities. It shows they are real and accessible, but most importantly it shows them a God who blesses all people no matter what shape they come in. Churches are as vulnerable as individuals. Archbishop Justin’s November address acknowledged “our failures in safeguarding, in racism and the way we treat those with disabilities.”

    It’s profoundly necessary for the church to recognise and cherish many different coloured sparks of holiness that come from those who bring difference to the holy table.

    I leave the last word to a former Archbishop, Dr. Rowan Williams, who in conversation with me about illness once said ‘Val, I want you to always remember that God never wastes anything, and in your suffering, you will learn new skills and he will direct where and when to use them’ 

    Guess what, he was right. Now let’s acknowledge this as a church!

  • Will They Ever Come Back…?

    by Rt Hon Sir Tony Baldry, who was MP for Banbury (1983 – 2015), Second Estates Commissioner (2010 – 2015) and Chair of the Church Buildings Council (2015 – 2019)

    Before the pandemic, if one asked for statistics about church attendance, you would probably have been told that on average 3.5% of the population of England regularly attended Church of England services and another 3.5% attended several times a year such as Christmas, Easter and some other occasions.

    Some 7% or so of the population and then in addition there would be those who came to church during the year for weddings, funerals and baptisms.

    The pandemic has caused regular church goers to “self-certify” themselves as being members of the congregation by providing parish administrators with their email addresses so they can be emailed the Zoom link for when the services, such as Sunday Evensong take place by Zoom.

    That is good news.

    A far better, more accurate and more immediate record of those who consider themselves to be members of a church congregation that any parochial electoral roll ever succeeded in showing.

    The bad news is that the other 3.5%, those who came to church occasionally, seem in large part to have given up coming to church at all.

    Obviously, like everything in the Church of England, I will quite rightly be told that every church is different, and that one should be careful not to generalise but I would be prepared to wager that it is now rare for most churches to see worshippers whom they would not consider to be regular members of the congregation, and whose email details they don’t have on record for Zoom services.

    And weddings and baptisms in church seem to have tailed off dramatically.

    There are all sorts of reasons why I suspect the other 3.5% have stopped coming to church.

    • They’ve got out of the habit during the time that churches were completely shut.
    • They do not feel sufficiently strongly about coming to church whilst it is still mandatory to wear face masks, and
    • They are not keen to come to church when they are not able to socialise and meet friends and neighbours after services.

    Reconnecting with these Easter, Christmas and a few times a year church goers, must be a very real priority once the worst of the pandemic has passed.

    We should make a special effort to invite as many friends, neighbours and missing faces to Easter Sunday services in earl April and services to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in early June.

    The evidence suggests that once people stop the habit of going to church, even if that is only a few times a year, visits get increasingly rare or stop altogether.

    Zoom has been a wonderful boon during the pandemic by keeping regular congregations but as soon as possible, we need to reengage with the other 3.5% and more widely who had, pre-pandemic come to church from time to time.

     

  • MI5, Exclusion & The Church of England

    by the Revd Canon Dr Phil Groves, former Director of the Anglican Communion Office (2006 – 2016) and Associate Rector Wychert Vale Benefice 

    I don’t think like a normal person – my brain works differently. I am remined of this every day, not just in what I can do, but also because most people just can’t seem to see the world how I see it. I see solutions to problems they think are impossible, but often, because I can’t spell, they think the ideas I have must be stupid.

    I am dyslexic.

    Dyslexia, and Autism are forms of neurodiversity. Our brains function differently to most people. It is not better or worse, just different. I see some things clearly that you cannot. You see things clearly that I cannot.

    Dyslexic people are a hidden minority and just like every other minority we are victimised and dehumanised. If you think that is a bit strong – wake up.

    Just think about this. 14% of the UK population are UKME and everyone knows that it is a sign of injustice that they make up 25% of the prison population, a sign of systemic racism. Only 10% of the UK population is dyslexic but according to the best research between 30% to 40% of the prison population are dyslexic. Just take that in. Either dyslexics are wired to be criminals or something is very wrong in our society.

    Discrimination against neurodiverse people is subtle and complex, but it is very powerful. It can be very well meaning and it begins from when we go to school.

    Put yourself in the position of a parent of a child you suspect might be dyslexic and click on the NHS website entry on dyslexia. It will tell you that dyslexia is a ‘specific learning difficulty’. As a parent you will focus on the word difficulty and then ‘problem’ that occurs 4 times in the first section. Depressingly you will discover that your child will have a ‘life long problem’. Admittedly, there is the occasional mention of something positive, but what is heard is that dyslexics need support, special software, and help in the workplace.

    This reflects how our society understands dyslexia: it is a problem. We dyslexics hear that we are a problem and that our society would be better off without us.

    Dyslexia is a problem for children because our school system is built around the thinking process of the dominant group. Most dyslexics will tell you that for them school was a place of shame. Our inability to spell our names or neatly present our work was made worse by the fact that our verbal reasoning showed we were clever. The only reason for the mess we handed in on paper must be that we were lazy and our work was paraded to the class as the example of carelessness.

    School for dyslexics can just be too much. We are asked to pass exams designed for the majority society. School for some can be like conversion therapy for LGBTI+ people. We are made to feel ashamed for not being ‘normal’. Things that our teachers think should come easy to us are a constant fog, while concepts and problems seem so easy to solve, but even our teachers can’t understand the answers. We are rarely tested on our strengths. Creativity, empathy, and problem solving are difficult to test: spelling and rapid-fire numeracy are easy. If you are great at spelling, you cannot imagine the horror of being asked to swap papers with another child to mark only to be taunted by your failure in the playground.

    There is a different story. Made by Dyslexia believes ‘in the game-changing power of Dyslexic Thinking. After all, everything from the light bulb to the iPhone, the aeroplane to the motor car, was invented by a dyslexic mind. And our skills are vital in shaping the future too.’

    There they will discover that MI5 is specifically recruiting dyslexics and people on the autistic spectrum to build neurodiverse teams, because teams with diversity of thought are much stronger than teams where everyone thinks the same.

    MI5 lives out 1 Corinthians 12. Paul tells us that all are to be valued and everyone has a role to play in a healthy society. We don’t all need to be the same.

    And what about the Church of England?

    Since launching the Clergy Dyslexia Forum in the Diocese of Oxford we have discovered just how many clergy identify as dyslexic. We think it is at least 15% and it may be as many as 20% in our diocese, and in one of the four episcopal areas all the incoming curates are dyslexic. Having begun to speak of my dyslexia in sermons and elsewhere, I have discovered just how many of our congregations here in this benefice are dyslexic. They have come to me quietly and often never told anyone else: they are ashamed of their ‘problem’ and work hard to ‘overcome’ it. I believe that we are sitting in every pew in every church in the country.

    When I ask them about why they come to church – especially a church that places such an emphasis on writing – there is a common answer: Jesus loves us, even if the church does not. It is the same answer I have heard from Indigenous people in North America, LGBTI+ people across the world and women in misogynistic churches in male dominated societies. When we hear the gospel, we identify as the outcastes who Jesus embraces and we know we are loved.

    But what about in the leadership of the Church of England?

    The Church of England is facing up to the exclusion of UKME people in senior posts and at the same time working out what ‘Radical Inclusion’ means for LGBTI+ people. There are not enough, but there are UKME bishops and UKME people in other senior roles. There is one out partnered gay bishop, but there are also gay and lesbian archdeacons and cathedral deans. I have tried hard, but I can find only one openly dyslexic person in a senior role – the Bishop of London. We are absent unnoticed from the leadership of the Church of England.

    This is not about representation, our absence from power means that problem solving is limited to one way of thinking. The MI5 insight of the importance of diversity of thought is being ignored in the Church. More importantly, we are failing to be the church envisioned by Paul. We ought to worry when MI5 is more closely aligned to Pauline ecclesiology than the Church of England.

    How does it work?

    What I have discovered is that when I am open about my dyslexia the response is one of compassion. It is assumed I am asking for support and what software I require or how I can overcome my difficulties. I may be told that there are some amazing dyslexics out there, but I am never then asked how I can bring my skills to the table. I can hear the mental note being made – this person has a problem and needs helping, not this person has a gift that we need.

    When I talk to dyslexic clergy, I discover that when applying for jobs some have been encouraged not to be upfront and open about their dyslexia because they are told that it will potentially harm their application. Apart from being illegal and immoral, this plays into the sense of shame that is a very powerful part of the dyslexic experience.

    Again and again, it is this word shame that is raised by dyslexic clergy. We do not feel worthy of senior roles and we constantly fear being caught out as imposters. We need to listen to 1 Corinthians 12:

    Those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honourable we treat with special honour.

    God has put the body together, giving greater honour to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.

    The church needs to listen to this too. It is time to open the discussion on the inclusion of neurodiverse people in the church and society.

  • Banning Prayer?

    by Jeremy Marks, Founder of Post-Courage and Winner of the Colin Blakely Lifetime Achievement Award

    “In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realise your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”   Mother Teresa (vaticansite.com)

    One of the most controversial aspects of the proposed Ban “Conversion Therapy” legislation concerns the notion of “banning prayer”.  To some people it can feel like the beginnings of persecution for Christians! But is it?

    As an evangelical Christian (in the sense that I believe knowing Jesus, studying his teaching and living according to his words is Good News) I am ALL for prayer!  If only sincere prayer from the heart played a bigger part in all of our lives. . . !

    However, I have learned through nearly 50 years of life as a Christian (30+ in full time ministry) that prayer is much more about listening than speaking… learning to listen to God above all and being willing to learn.

    I love the story of Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s reply to a journalist, years ago, when he asked her how she prays?

    “I listen” replied Mother Teresa.

    “Oh?” replied the journalist, clearly interested. “And what does God say to you?”

    “He listens too” she replied.

    This made me laugh. Because I have to say that this is exactly how I find prayer to be. Long ago I came to realise the foolishness, the short-sightedness, of bringing a list of prayer requests to God, to ask for needs to be met. . . that God understands far better than I do anyway!  I began to change my prayers to something more like, “So what do YOU think I/we/they need Lord?”

    I also discovered in this process what a wonderful sense of humour God has.  Like the day when I observed in my prayers (a little self-indulgently) “Lord sometimes I wonder if I have any true friends who really care about me? Nobody ever seems to ring or contact me unless they are in trouble or need something!”  Quick as a flash I “heard” God reply, “Whatever makes you think you are so special?  Nobody ever turns to me unless they want something, or they are in trouble – and I am GOD”. I must admit I burst out laughing, and then sheepishly replied, “I see what you mean.  I cannot complain, can I?”

    So it follows that when praying for others, I realised that listening to them and coming to a place of deep empathy comes first, comes second, and comes last! As someone once observed, “God gave us two ears and one mouth, so let us use our ears and mouth in those proportions!” Learning to walk alongside those who feel lonely, marginalised, and misunderstood (as Jesus did) is what prayer is all about. But never starting with assumptions as to what a person needs or wants, then boldly launching into ardent prayer, which can do far more harm than good!  To be sure, it certainly has its effect, but often in totally the wrong way!

    Humility is the foundation stone for all prayer, I have found.

    Regrettably there are some evangelical Christians who believe that a few Bible texts can be applied to everyone, in a superficial one-size-fits all way. I can accept that when it comes to a verse such as “All have sinned and fall short of the grace of God”.  (Romans 3:23) But they don’t seem to believe that it is necessary to learn about the complex issues of human sexuality, before they just sally forth and pray triumphantly that God will “deliver”, say a gay person, from their same-sex desires and make them heterosexual.  Such people can be among the worst culprits for arming their prayers with a cocktail of prejudices and undisguised agendas that demand change, then push those assumptions into a vulnerable person’s life, like a lethal injection, causing incalculable damage.  Consistently I have seen this to be the most pernicious and toxic form of prayer imaginable.

    The better way, I have found, is to pray for wisdom as to how to help and comfort somebody.  More and more I discover that when I do so, and then trust in the Holy Spirit to guide me as I make a response, I am amazed at what comes out of my mouth.  So are the people who listen to my response, who often go on their way rejoicing. It really is such a privilege to listen and pray for God’s wisdom to be revealed.

    When Jesus taught about prayer it’s fundamental premise was about changing the person praying NOT about trying to change another person, the one you are praying for, however well-intentioned!  Just consider the Lord’s prayer for starters. It is impossible to pray that in a “me-centred” way.  The Lord’s prayer is only about me in the context of my relationship with God – as Father God, as provider of all my needs, as protector and guide, as minister of forgiveness, grace and empowerment.

    So, I’m all for prayer when it is informed and appropriate, coming from a place of empathy. But there’s nothing that undermines the quality of prayer more than crass assumptions that say more about the pray-er’s ignorance and prejudices than about the person seeking support.  If “banning prayer to change people’s sexuality” results in persecution of those kinds of Christians, then I can see that there is good reason for it!  The law is given to protect people from abuse and harm.

    Just in case there are any readers who feel that I have just invalidated their prayer life with dismissive comments, may I just share something else about my own prayer life that I hope might restore the balance.

    Many years ago, I got stuck in my prayer life. With my heart full of huge concerns for other people’s dire needs and seemingly intractable situations, I not only felt overwhelmed but also frustrated! I couldn’t see how a good God needed any input from me at all when God can perfectly well what heartbreak there is and what needs to happen. Gradually I realised that God has put us on this earth to be His/Her/Their eyes, ears, and arms to reach out, and feet to take us to help others in God’s name. And that this sense of partnership with God is what the Christian life is all about.

    ­­One b­­­­usy day, burdened with­­­­ huge concerns for myself as well as others, I sat down for a few moments and wrote down everything I could think of there and then, that I would have prayed about if I’d had the time and faith to do so. Then added “God’s To-Do List!” at the top. Then I got on with my day. That piece of paper quickly became buried in my paperwork pile and re-surfaced when I was looking for something else about 6 weeks later. I stopped for a moment to glance through the list and was astounded to see that almost everything on that list had been resolved in one way or another and that in most cases I had completely forgotten that I had listed them. Moreover, the resolutions had come in all kinds of ways, most of which I would never have thought of.  So, I concluded that sharing our hearts and concerns with God is valid and important. Then we can leave these things with God and one way or another resolution comes. Because when we are motivated by love our prayers can indeed be very powerful in all the best ways… and they won’t get us into trouble with the law either. It is not the sort of prayer that can be banned!

    “I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I’m supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I’m praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.” – Mother Teresa 

  • Another Injustice in the Church of England? Surely not!

    by the Revd Sorrel Shamel-Wood, 2nd year curate who is about to go on maternity leave…

    On Christmas morning, my husband presided at the Eucharist and I deaconed beside him. It was at one of the churches where I serve as curate: a beautiful, thriving church in rural Oxfordshire and it was a privilege to be there. It was also a painful and nonsensical experience because my husband was helping out at the church because I am not allowed to be ordained priest. I am not allowed to be ordained priest because my husband has been married before.

    Canon C4.3 of the Canons of the Church of England states:

    Subject to paragraph 5 of this Canon no person shall be admitted into holy orders who has remarried and, the other party to that marriage being alive, has a former spouse still living; or who is married to a person who has been previously married and whose former spouse is still living.[1]

    According to this canon, I should never be able to be ordained, because my husband’s former spouse is still living. It doesn’t affect his ministry, even though it’s his divorce, because he was admitted into holy orders long before we met. However, there is a caveat to this canon, the aforementioned paragraph 5, which states that a Diocesan bishop “may grant a faculty for the removal of this impediment… in accordance with directions given from time to time by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York acting jointly”.[2] Thus, despite the fact that I have married a divorcee, I could still be ordained priest if a faculty is granted.

    The current Archbishops’ guidance is that “they will not normally consider an application for a faculty where the current marriage is less than three years old” since “the current marriage should be stable and well established”.[3] My husband and I married on July 31st 2020, as soon as the pandemic restrictions allowed us to do so. I was ordained deacon on the 14th July 2020. According to the current guidance, we cannot be granted a faculty until July 2023.

    It is my contention that this guidance needs to change and to consider individual cases rather than impose an artificial and legalistic time limit. The current guidance is pastorally insensitive and has very little theological basis.

    The easiest thing in my case would have been to delay our marriage until after I was priested, and indeed I was placed under considerable pressure to do so. However, I refused to delay our marriage for several reasons. Firstly, my husband is American and he couldn’t have worked in the UK without a spousal visa. He serves as an Oxford college chaplain, a job he loves and to which he feels deeply called. To put my calling in front of his, and to insist he did not work for two years until I was priested, was something I was not prepared to put him through. It would have been profoundly selfish and un-Christlike. Secondly, despite being a progressive Christian I am committed to the Church’s teaching that the best place for sex is within marriage. For me, following the Church’s teaching on this issue was more important even than following my vocation, which is one of the greatest and deepest joys of my life. I felt that as adults in our thirties, delaying our marriage by two years would be a course of action that lacked integrity and actually, the Diocese was effectively pressuring us towards the path of temptation and sin. Furthermore, I’m thirty-four years old: I knew that there was not a great deal of time on our side to establish our marriage and start a family. I’m beyond delighted that we are now expecting a baby in the next few weeks. Do the Archbishops genuinely think that our marriage lacks stability? I suggest that a half an hour conversation with my husband and me would be all that was needed to demonstrate quite the opposite: we are the love of each other’s lives, a source of mutual support without which we would struggle to thrive amidst the intense pressures of ordained ministry.

    Choosing my marriage over my ordination to the priesthood has caused immense psychological stress and a great deal of pain. Watching the rest of my cohort being priested while I was left behind was especially difficult. However, I am also keenly aware that my situation is one of considerable privilege. If I were gay, then I would not be able to marry and be priested in the Church of England ever, at all. The frustration and turmoil that has beset the first years of my ministry would last a lifetime. The pressure to be secretive, to lie to my bishop, to be trapped in a compromised position, would be greater and in my opinion, unavoidable. And of course, if I had been born half a century earlier, as a woman I would never have been able to fulfil my vocation to ordained ministry at all.

    The guidance surrounding Canon C4.3 is a small issue in the greater scheme of things, despite the pain it has caused me and my husband personally. But I hope that, as the Church of England engages in wider conversations about relationships, gender and marriage there will be space for it to be reconsidered. Because, frankly, the Church of England’s current preferencing of bureaucracy and legalism over integrity and pastoral sensitivity is tearing good people apart.

    [1] The Canons of the Church of England https://www.churchofengland.org/about/leadership-and-governance/legal-services/canons-church-england/section-c

    [2] Ibid.

    [3] Sending Candidates to BAP: A Guide to the Selection process  https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/Sending%20Candidates%20to%20BAP.pdf p.11

  • Why I’m ‘Crossing the Severn’…

    by the Revd Andrew Lightbown, former member of General Synod and soon to be Canon Residentiary at Newport Cathedral in the Diocese of Monmouth.

    I am about to leave the Church of England. In fact, I am going to “Cross the Severn” to take up a post in the Church in Wales. I am leaving with a sense of real excitement but also a sense of sadness.

    Leaving the Church of England is proving to be a bitter-sweet experience. I need to make it clear that I am not leaving because I can no longer take the Church of England any more but because of a genuine sense of calling to a particular job, amongst particular people, in a particular place. It is this sense of particularity that has historically always been so important to my understanding of what it means to be a member of the Church of England.

    The Church of England has always been my church. It baptised me, confirmed me, married me (although not in that order) and ordained me. The Church of England has been there for me, and in my family, in good times and in bad, as well as in the so-called ordinary times. I will always be grateful for the ministry of the Church of England.

    The Church of England through the ministry of all the baptised has been kind and compassionate to me. It has held my hand when it needed holding, offered a hanky when the tears have flowed, baked a cake and cooked a lasagna when comfort food has been required, fed me week by week through word and sacrament, raised me up when I have felt low, and brought me down to earth when I have risen above my station. It has done for me what the church has needed to do for me, from a place of love, tolerance, and inclusion. The Church of England has taken this particular Christian seriously, enabling me to take the particularity of the other seriously.

    Sadly, tragically, I feel that the Church of England is losing something of its historic focus on the particularity of people in community. It feels as though the church has become overly anxious, and in its anxiety has become increasingly generic, doctrinal, and stressful. It feels, and I know many out there in C of E land are inherently distrustful of feelings, as though the Church of England has developed a Messiah Complex, in the process forgetting that all that is required of us is to scatter the seed in the faith and hope Kingdom will grow, without us ‘knowing how,’ (Mark 6, 26 -27).

    My other feeling, or perhaps, observation is that the Church of England has become increasingly transactional, where the (bitter) fruits of such transactionality are doctrinal narrowness combined with a love of all things strategic.

    Our doctrinal narrowness, of course, finds its fullest expression in the ongoing discussions around sexuality, where the relentless pursuit of assumed doctrinal purity fails to respect the God given particularity of specific individuals and their right to take their place as full and equal members within the life of the church, which can only be affirmed through the liturgy of the church. There really can be no rights separate from rites. To pretend otherwise, to seek to hide behind generalised and shallow notions of niceness, changes in tone and culture, is to commit liturgical and ecclesial hypocrisy.

    Other churches, our sister churches both within British Anglicanism and the wider reformed tradition, have come to this conclusion, so why is it that the Church of England seems so unwilling to come to similar conclusions? Do we have a superior claim to divergent understandings of scripture, tradition, reason and experience – in other words theology?

    The problem with our strategies, and the strap lines and numbers which seek to animate them, is that they risk becoming so dominant, and domineering, that they again undermine the particular. I think there is a real and significant danger that the obsessive focus on strategy will end up undermining the very things that it seeks to promote: mission, evangelism, and growth in both number and in holiness.

    The Church of England needs to be far more cautious in its use of numbers, for there is a danger that we simply become that which we choose to measure. Then, when that doesn’t work, the result will be more stress, more anxiety, and a self-perpetuating narrative of yet more blame and yet more failure. We need to sit lightly to, perhaps even let go of, magic and mythical numbers, for they serve no useful purpose.

    I am not naïve enough to think that my new church, the Church in Wales, will be problem-free. Of course it won’t, but as I depart, hopefully in peace, my hope and prayer for the Church of England is for a renewed focus on the particular. Particular people, in particular places have particular needs. The church’s strategy should be essentially bottom up, incarnational, inclusive and above all particular. It must trust that the seeds that have been sown will grow, even though we may well ‘know not how.’

    It’s time to let go of the Messiah Complex, transactional and generic strategic models, and the pursuit of doctrinal purity. All of these only serve to increase anxiety, stress, and the exclusion of others from the fold.