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Category: Culture and Faith

  • Two Things Which Really Matter

    by the Very Revd Dr David Ison, former member of General Synod, who next month retires as Dean of St Paul’s 

    This is my last blog as Dean of St Paul’s. After 43 years of stipendiary ordained ministry, it’s time to let go of doing in order to do more being. I’m glad to make space for a younger generation of Christians to have the opportunity and responsibility to lead Christ’s church into the future. And I’m hopeful for them, and even for the Church of England, because there are many wonderful lay and ordained Christians committed to following Jesus, and that’s what Christian churches need in order to face the many challenges and crises coming to a head for this country and for humanity across the globe as capitalism and imperialism reap what they’ve sown.

    Over the last four decades there are two key things which I’ve learned which I think are at the heart of what Christian faith, mission and ministry are about.

    The first is how to do church and mission in an increasingly pluralist and contested public space, where the narrative of ‘scientism’ (that the universe, however amazing, is meaningless) undermines spiritual as well as mental health and reasonable faith, leading to superstition and extremism. The Church has lost plausibility, made worse by its failures of safeguarding and its moral divergence from what many people regard as reasonable. The Church’s temptation is either to take refuge in dogma and draw hard boundaries around itself as ‘counter-cultural’, or to become just one interest group alongside others competing in the market-place for people and resources. The ‘Save the Parish’ movement is a belated response to a crisis which was known to be coming long before I trained for ministry in the 1970s, as the inability of many parishes to maintain numbers of laity and clergy and financial viability in the face of heritage building costs and other challenges has been predicted for over 50 years.

    My experience of what works in mission is fairly simple. It is to pray – to love God; to love our neighbours by serving them inside and especially outside the church; to love one another as a diverse group of disciples; and to do these things together, building a shared vision for a loving and serving church. Being people of spiritual integrity, living in the truth, welcoming other people without judgement (see Matthew chapter 7), meeting them in their personal and community needs – that’s what attracts people to the Christian gospel. In an incarnational faith, it’s Christian lives, not doctrines or techniques, that build the kingdom of God.

    I’ve never understood the emphasis in the Church of England’s ordination services on ‘proclaiming’ the gospel, as if it were passed on by megaphone. The third-century Christian writer Tertullian pointed out that the Christian community attracted people, even though it could mean persecution and death, because they could see the love which Christians had for one another and for others, and they wanted to be part of it. Proclaiming isn’t of value in itself: it’s drawing people into following Jesus (‘making disciples’) that matters, and love in action, not words, is at the heart of it. And thanks be to God that many churches and Christians do it!

    Jesus says to his would-be disciples, ‘you will know the truth and the truth will make you free’ (John 8.32). It’s that living in integrity that people respond to; and the heart of the Church’s problem is that it hasn’t been living in love and integrity. The inability of heterosexual men to cope with their own sexualities has led to the projection of those inner conflicts on to others including in the Church, impacting women and children in safeguarding cases, sexual and domestic violence, and ongoing legal and cultural discrimination against women and LGBTQ+ people. The Church’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture of official disapproval but covert acceptance of sexuality has had a huge impact on the lives and mental health of LGBTQ ordained and lay ministers, and has perpetuated a culture of dishonesty and lack of accountability which has allowed other abuses to occur, as seen for example in the surfacing of safeguarding cases over the last decade and the recent news around fraud in the Diocese of London. Whatever the outcome of the Living in Love and Faith process and debates in General Synod, the Church must end up with real love, truth and honesty at its heart, lest it continue to be seen by the rest of the world as hypocritically less moral than the majority of our society.

    The second main thing I’ve learned in ministry is that it’s about following Jesus. That sounds obvious! But it relates to the question of integrity. Years ago I wrote an article entitled ‘The Pharisees will always get you in the end’, making the point that the Pharisees are there in the gospels to show us what we as religious people can be like when our religion becomes more important than God and people. In his encounters with the Pharisees, Jesus subverts the dogmas of his day: healing on the sabbath, being unconcerned with purity laws, forgiving sinners without due process – he is focused on the person and their motivation and relationship with God, rather than on the expectations of others. Jesus is still challenging, but he gets to the heart while the Pharisees look at the outside; Jesus is concerned with holiness rather than purity, while Pharisees then and now confuse the two.

    The Diocese of London has for a number of years had as a unifying statement the concept of ‘Generous Orthodoxy’. It’s akin to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in that it allows Christians with very different views to agree on a slogan while not engaging with their real differences, with people putting differing emphases on the level of generosity and the content of what orthodoxy is. My experience of church politics in London and on General Synod has been of increasing power games over the last several years, based on churchmanship and dogma rather than on the reality of people’s lived Christian experience, with less powerful groups (including LGBTQ, Global Majority Heritage, disabled, women) being pushed to the margins, and a lack of integrity between what’s said and what is actually done in practice.
    There’s a tendency in the Church, following after the world’s culture, for extremism and division which does not reflect the love of God, and which is unbecoming to followers of Jesus and unattractive to Christians and non-Christians alike.

    My hope in Christ is that everyone matters equally in the Church, and that’s what the LLF process has been trying to pursue. I pray for the outcome to be love and to be really truthful, centred on people not dogma. The irony about so many of the arguments in church circles is that much of the language about judgement in the New Testament is about our actions and their outcomes, not concerned with our beliefs and doctrines: ‘by their fruits you shall know them’. I do wonder whether some who describe themselves as ‘biblical’ have really taken on board St Paul’s words on love in 1 Corinthians 13…

    When finally, in the words of a key fob my children gave me, I ‘get called to head office’, I don’t expect to be examined on my understanding of penal substitution, but on whether I truly loved God, and my neighbours as myself. That’s what really matters.

  • Gatecrashing God’s Party: Parish Ministry Today

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I love being a parish priest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Only this time it is worse.

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

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

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

  • Young Adults – The Missing Generation?

    by Annika Mathews, former Church of England Youth Council member and rep on General Synod

    Hi there, young adult Anglican speaking. Who’s that you ask? It’s me, but not just me, as there’s quite a number of us actually if you look more closely! We may seem like a ‘missing generation’ in the Church, but we do exist (including on ‘Anglican Twitter’). You’ll find several of us in the big resource churches or town centre churches which offer not just activities but also pastoral care tailored to us and our needs. Some smaller churches have some young adults too, but many lack 18-35 year olds. The national Vision and Strategy project quite rightly prioritises under-18s and their voices are starting to be heard; see the recent press release on this work given to the House of Bishops) But I believe that the 18-35 age range are just as important to engage, not least as emerging leaders in Church and society with much to contribute in action and word. Some of us will have recently come to faith and need adequate opportunities for discipleship and fellowship.

    At diocesan level, the picture is mixed. Some dioceses have very good provision for young people, including youth councils; for example, Worcester.  Vocationally, things are better. The ministry experience scheme runs for 18-30s and a few new monastic communities, such as the Tree of Life in Leicester, have been a success.

    Nationally, the situation is bleaker. The Church of England lags behind other denominations. Alongside their national engagement with young people, the Catholics have many religious communities holding events for young adults. The United Reformed Church, Orthodox and Pentecostal churches all organise national events for young people. The Methodists have a team engaging with young adults and asking their opinions on aspects of church life, including at their Conference. They run a popular annual event, 3Generate, for young people as well as supporting events like Cliff Fest.

    Yet the C of E used to have a Youth Council (CEYC). Known as its ‘best kept secret’, it was shut down a few years ago, though its memory lives on in this webpage. You can read more about that in the excellent article by Ed Cox here. CEYC had some good support (mostly by Mary Hawes, National Children and Youth Adviser and a few others in the Education Department), but was not allowed to advertise its events through main church comms and the allocated budget was limited.

    As a result, its reach was regrettably small, although like others I benefitted hugely from my time on it. I only found it by chance after seeing an advert for General Synod observers and duly being selected. I then ended up standing as a Youth Rep and joining the core team. Both being on Synod and attending the CEYC residentials helped broaden my knowledge of the diversity within the Church of England and enabled me to worship with and learn from those within completely different traditions to those I was used to. Most importantly, it gave me other young adults to worship with and connect to, as my ‘home’ church at the time had hardly any.

    Although it was never enabled to reach its full potential, the Youth Council occupied an important space in and outside the Church. I gained in leadership and speaking skills and my first months on the Youth Council solidified my desire to be confirmed. Others who attended found or fulfilled their vocational calling in a multitude of directions; some are now clergy. It gave young people a voice at General Synod through elected reps and also had a connection to some other denominations through event exchanges as well as a space on the British Youth Council. Most importantly, the events were run for young people by young people in a peer-for-peer model. With its demise, no national engagement with young people currently takes place.

    A new conference model similar to the Methodists’ provision for young people was briefly proposed but Covid and the restructuring of the NCIs ended that. When the youth reps left at the end of the quinquennium, there was a clear change in the responses given at Synod to questions about provision for young people in Synod representation and beyond. Compare the response to Question 1 from a Synod session in November 2020 (Q1) and those given to Questions 42 and 43 in February 2022. While a few young adults have been elected by dioceses, there are no youth reps anymore on Synod. Yet the Spirit is stirring. The Anglican Communion have just launched the Young Adult Theology project. A small group of young adult Anglicans in the UK meet, network and worship together occasionally online. There is a long running (though invite-only) group for Young Priest Theologians.

    The 2030 Vision and Strategy process includes the decision to ‘grow younger and more diverse’ so there is still some hope that the missing generation will not be forgotten but will be properly included in Church of England structures and decision making, not only as a tokenistic add-on or as staged representatives in church campaigns or staged photo opportunities, as sometimes feels the case (my photo was used to promote the Synod election campaign). Though there has been some great work done by those in the Education Department collating written responses from teenagers at schools on their hopes for the Church, and a few young people joined a fringe group to present their ideas at the February 2022 Synod, it is time to take things up a level and provide more opportunities for young people to interact with the rest of the Church at different levels of its structures (following appropriate safeguarding measures of course). The restructuring of the NCIs meant the loss of two jobs directly connected to young people: will there now be action by the national Church, as well by dioceses and parishes, to engage with young adults? We need to support ideas financially from a marketing and comms perspective to successfully reach the right people. One good place to start is through the National Church connecting more with chaplaincies at universities and colleges.

    National initiatives to engage young adults could include coordinating regional days for Anglicans from different church traditions to come together for fellowship and worship; organising or at least facilitating a pilgrimage or trip to a holy site, either in the UK or abroad – to a retreat house, Taizé or the Holy Land; a presence at Christian festivals like Greenbelt; and more observer and participatory opportunities for young adults on national Church bodies. In particular we need an accessible online space to advertise opportunities for young adult Anglicans; for example, chances to apply to be part of Churches Together Forum, or to steward at World Council of Churches events. I was fortunate to have these opportunities through becoming known on General Synod, but it shouldn’t only be ‘who you know’ which opens doors to these oportunities. We need inclusion, not exclusion. Including all young people (across a whole diversity of identities, a true representation of the body of Christ) is of paramount importance.

    Young people need to be seen as a priority now, valued for their gifts and personalities as well as the prophetic voice they bring to the Church. It will be too late when the Church realises that a dearth of under-35s now will spell a dent in the coffers of parish funds in 20 years’ time.

    Young adult Anglicans exist, and we are watching. We are already joining in with what’s happening on the ground and are keen to partner with the rest of the Church in broadening its reach to more millennials and Gen Z and amplifying their voices and participation in the Church. SOS. Church, listen and respond with urgency now!

     

     

     

  • Sharing in Privilege: Black and Collared

    by Revd Dr Augustine Tanner-Ihm, Team Curate at St James & Emmanuel, Didsbury, Manchester and winner of the 2020 Theology Slam

    During theological college, no one told me how differently I would be treated after I was ordained. As a Black man, I’m used to people seeing me as a threat to them. In stores personnel follow me around, walking next to cars people quickly lock their doors or if I’m near a white women she’ll clutch her handbag closer, thinking I’m going to rob her. I have become accustomed to being served the very last at bars and restaurants (I sure miss the app service!). Also, I have become accustomed to people thinking I’m not very clever and assuming I must be from a broken family and community background. Because I look this way, this has been my lived experience and probably the lived experience of many more people that share my amount of melanin.

    But ordination.

    At theological college, wearing clerical clothing was always associated with your church tradition. Even during the theological formation process, clothing seemed mostly pointless. We talked about whether it’s contextual for the setting and about its role for women in showing they are leaders in the parish; but that was all.  At no point duing our practical and theological formation did anyone explain how we would be treated as Black or Brown ministers. Maybe because there weren’t any black staff until my last few months of ordination training. And maybe because for my entire time at theological college there was no mention of how Black and Asian ministers experience different things. I don’t blame the leaders and tutors for not introducing us to these multicultural dynamics because their white worldview and their mostly white ministry were just not affected. Even though I trained at three theological colleges from a diverse range of Church Traditions, this never came up. But as a student, it affects me.

    On 4 July 2021, I was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England. I could finally wear the collar to show that I’m a member of the clergy. Within the first week of walking around the parish and the community of Manchester, I noticed something. When I waited in the bus queue, people let me on first. Instead of merely practising social distancing, people smiled at me and then looked down to the floor. Older white people gave me respect and instead of me calling Black aunts and uncles aunts and uncles, most of them treated me like an elder because of this ontological change. I never knew this ontological change would give me the parts of the experiences that my white siblings experience their entire life. My parish is mostly white professional people and the staff, besides one amazing Iranian woman, is white. Therefore, there just wasn’t anyone to tell me anything different about what would happen.

    My grandfather used to tell me all the time about how he was called a ‘boy’ by white folks his entire life. I remember telling him it’s different now. People don’t say that anymore. He told me it wasn’t different; even if people don’t say boy, their intent is still boy and not man. All my Baptist grandfather wanted is to be treated like a man: a man who worked hard and took care of 11 children, who owned his own business and house. But he never received the respect he deserved which manifested into distrust, disdain and hate for white people. Because of the life experiences I had, and my theological framework, I didn’t have the same valid feelings my grandfather had for white people. Ordination has changed me, or I should say it has changed the way people see me. I feel a little more comfortable going to the shop or going into a room with all middle-class white men because the collar has given me authority, gained me respect, because it signifies something. I’m not just another negro (as some would say) but I’m ‘Father’. I’m not a boy but a man. Sadly, it took a thin white collar to go from boy to man.

    I often wonder how many others experience this sort of change within their ministry. Who can help me understand; who can help with this theological and practical reflection? In my diocese, I have been blessed to have three UKME senior leaders. All are amazing priests and disciples of Jesus.  One leader directed me to reflect on the Biblical teachings of Peter. Therefore, I read and read and read 1st Peter and began to see that, as I continue in ministry, I cannot allow the collar to become my overall identity, but should allow wholeness and holiness to be what I strive for. Some may argue there is no separation but only semantics. But Archbishop Stephen always reminds us of our first call: to be disciples of the one who has died, who rose and who is coming back again. And as Saint Peter tells us, we are to be holy for he is holy. And that’s our call.

  • It’s Not Just About the Bible

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Strange Practices: Making Sense of the Church of England Today

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

    I’m honoured to have been asked to take over Via Media for a couple of months and, like my predecessors as guest editors, Rosie Harper and Alan Wilson, I’ve invited a range of people, the majority of them new voices here.

    Among them, I’ve made a point of inviting some people from the academic world, including some who have recently finished, or who are working towards, higher degrees which involve researching the Church of England with the skills of different disciplines. Why? Because I’m interested in how we work with both experience and reason in making decisions in the church. Can we use our reason to think through a situation rather than giving a knee-jerk reaction? Can we appreciate that some of our key documents and some of our practices are the object of academic study – academic study which can teach us about ourselves?

    Sometimes, in church circles, I get the impression that being an academic makes me ‘a bit dodgy’. My BA was partly in Social Anthropology and my PhD applied its methodology to the ancient Greeks. Social Anthropology started out trying to understand what looked like ‘strange practices’ in non-Western societies: rituals, kinship arrangements, political systems. At University College London, one of the books in the Anthropology library was Fortescue’s The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described (1918). As a student, after spending many of my teenage years in a gathered evangelical church, I was exploring Anglo-Catholic sacramentalism in my own life, so I read Fortescue with interest. If you ever need to find out what to do at a ‘High Mass before a Bishop not in his own Diocese’, this is the book for you! But what was that book doing in the Anthropology section? It was there because the way sacred space is defined and used, and ceremonies are constructed, is the concern of anthropology, in our own culture as much as in others.

    Historically, understanding ‘strange practices’ often came with a colonial motive; to rule other people you needed to work out how to integrate their system with yours. I wonder if we do that in the church too; is our motive in trying to understand each other really to try to take each other over? Back in 2015, I took part in the Diocesan Shared Conversations. It was gruelling, not least because of the tension between hearing views which – despite my own broad church background – I found extraordinary, and meeting people with whom I profoundly disagreed but for whom I felt love and concern.

    Anthropology’s curious eye needs to be turned to what we think is entirely normal, taken-for-granted, in the Church of England. After a brief phase of ‘armchair anthropology’, where researchers sat at home and read about the people they were studying, anthropology has worked by ‘participant observation’; by living with the people you study. There’s a whole literature around whether you can do the anthropology of the people with whom you’ve grown up.

    Within the church, I suspect, we just don’t see how very weird we look. Maybe we should. Doesn’t this matter to mission? At the most basic level, our language is often opaque: even a church announcement of ‘Choral Evensong’ can confuse the congregation, because if the service is called Evensong and there’s a choir, isn’t it always Choral Evensong? At the November 2021 General Synod, the Archbishop of York responded to a question about churchy language by arguing that it should not be simplified, but rather explained. But … how long have you got?

    In his introduction to Ceremonies, Fortescue pronounced that there was rather too much genuflection around; that’s a churchy gesture involving kneeling on one knee and then standing, not to be confused with taking the knee, which is the same gesture in support of Black Lives Matter. Fortescue noted that “to a bishop – would not a low bow be more in accordance with the natural sentiment of modern people?” In the past, kneeling before rulers was normal, and if the bishop “reigns in the place of Christ” then bowing to him made sense: but this was 1918, and “now, in the world, such signs are dying out. To modern people they begin to seem a little Byzantine”.

    I’m an academic: I know that calling things ‘Byzantine’ or ‘medieval’ often shows a serious misunderstanding of history! But the point stands: how do others perceive what we do, as the world within which we are living continues to change? When do we change, and when do we not?

    In my twenties, my favourite hymn included “We pray thee too for wanderers from thy fold/O bring them back, good Shepherd of the sheep!” Back then, I knew who these wanderers were: campaigners for women priests. After hearing a talk by Dr Mary Tanner, I changed my position on this literally overnight, joining the Movement for the Ordination of Women the following morning. But I still remember the emotional appeal of being one of the pure ‘remnant’, the only ones who keep God’s commandments (Revelation 12:17). Although it’s the Seventh-Day Adventist Church who most focus on this verse, it’s quoted in Church of England contexts; we should “not be conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2). I often hear Christians today proudly asserting how ‘counter-cultural’ they are, but this usually means counter to a very limited set of aspects of contemporary culture.

    But our faith is based on God becoming flesh in a particular time and place, and in a particular person: Jesus. The incarnation calls us not to shun the world, but to engage with it; indeed, to love it. We are part of God’s world: we don’t stand outside it. God goes ahead of us and doesn’t wait for us to catch up with what the Spirit is doing.