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Category: Culture and Faith

  • Persona non grata: an Unwelcoming Encounter at All Souls, Langham Place

    by Anon.

    Today, at lunchtime, I embarked on a short walk to All Souls, Langham Place, with the hopeful intention of attending their 12:00 service—a Commissioning of Overseers for alternative spiritual oversight within the Church of England, followed by a light lunch.

    Unfortunately, what awaited me was not the spiritual solace I had expected but rather an unanticipated and disappointing encounter. As I stepped through the church’s historic doors, I was abruptly informed that my name was not on the list, making me ineligible to join the service. To make matters even more depressing, the staff turned cold and unwelcoming.

    This unexpected denial left me deeply disappointed. All Souls had effectively deemed me persona non grata.

    Today’s incident shows a definitive shutting of the doors to listening to one another by the Conservative Evangelical faction, which is sad, especially when it even extends to random Anglicans and passers-by. It highlights not only a rather sorry state of ecclesial affairs more broadly but, more importantly, a concerning aspect of CEEC’s modus operandi. I struggle to see it in any other way than as building a fortress within the Church of England. No analogy comes to mind other than that resembling a Trojan Horse.

    As a faithful Anglican, I was eager to gain first-hand experience of their service. Although I do not agree with the conservative evangelical position in relation to the LLF debate, we are members of the same church, and what better way to express my commitment to staying together, despite our differences, than by attending their service and being with my fellow Anglicans?

    The organisers’ decision to restrict access based on an invitation list seems antithetical to the inclusive and welcoming spirit that should characterise a place of worship, especially one within the Church of England. It is hard to see how this is not, in addition, illegal. If anything can be said about the Church of England’s policies based on today’s encounter, it is that they are far from universally applied, and CEEC seems to follow its own rules, not ones to which I am accustomed.

    This raises important questions about the nature of hospitality and openness within the ‘conservative’ circles. While logistical concerns and safety protocols may necessitate certain measures, it is crucial that they do not alienate or exclude those genuinely seeking engagement and spiritual connection, within the boundaries of respect and consideration for all attendees. But I struggle to see how I could offend anyone by simply being there and praying together? Unless, of course, my very being is deemed offensive.

    As I reflect on this experience, I hope that CEEC, along with their overseers (listed here, with some of them also having been on the panel to select them) whom I did not get a chance to congratulate, take a closer look at their approach to inclusivity, and that the Bishops of the Church of England will step up to protect and preserve the Church.

    May the doors of our church be wide enough to welcome all who need love and friendship.

    May its threshold be no stumbling block to young or old.

    May this church be, for all who enter, the doorway to Your eternal kingdom.

    Such is the Church of England, my spiritual home, and it is such an understanding of our unity and ecclesiology that I will fight to preserve.

    Your faithful sibling in Christ.

  • Between Meaning and Despair: A Generous Faith

    by Canon Giles Goddard, Vicar of St John’s, Waterloo

    Extracts from Generous Faith: to be published on 28 June 2024

    Advent is the dawn of the Christian year. A season of light, starting four weeks before Christmas, not long after the clocks have gone back and the nights have drawn in. That first Advent, a dark November in 2009, I was trying to get used to the space. To find the light in the murky gloom. We held services and sang Advent carols: ‘Christ, be our light, shine in our hearts, shine in the darkness’. There was an Advent wreath that had four candles, three purple, one pink, and one in the centre, white. It was placed on a little table by the High Altar, and we lit one candle every week to symbolise the weeks before the arrival of the Christ Child.

    When I go down to the river I watch the waters running to the sea and the cormorants perched on pleasure cruisers, their wings stretched out to dry, looking like crucifixes. I wonder what Wordsworth would think if he was transplanted today to Westminster Bridge. Waterloo and the South Bank, a mile from the Square Mile, inundated by the tidal surge of consumption. The rush of rush hour, crowds crossing Waterloo Bridge in the twilight, I had not thought greed had undone so many, the alienation, the loneliness.

    Between the early 1980s and the turn of the century the churchyard was part of Cardboard City, a temporary home for people without homes: tents were head to head across the grass, fires at night flickered on the gold mosaic on the side of the church:

    ALL MAY HAVE IF THEY DARE TRY A GLORIOUS LIFE OR GRAVE

    Developers now buy and sell land at millions of pounds per acre and wrestle with residents and councillors to produce yet another tower to overtop the forest already crowding around us. Bus drivers press the secret combination to use the special bus drivers’ toilets. Street drinkers piss behind the tombs.

    At an early meeting of the Church Council, packed into a meeting room of the hostel next door as we had no rooms in the church, I asked them about their hopes and dreams.

    ‘What’s your vision for the future? What do you think this church should be?’

    There was a silence.

    ‘We’re a friendly church,’ said Holly eventually. ‘You know that, darling, don’t you.’

    ‘Indeed you are,’ I said. ‘But what else are you? What kind of message do you want us to offer? What do you want people to find when they come to us?’

    A silence.

    ‘Not sure,’ said Elaine. ‘We’re doing OK, aren’t we?’

    ‘Is that all we can hope for?’ I asked. ‘Is that why we’re here?’

    When the Bishop granted me my licence as Priest in Charge of the parish, I thought I knew what my task was: to produce results. To renew the church and to reduce the suffering of people in need. But I had a deep fear that it would all turn out to be a waste of time and energy. There were many times when I went into church and felt that for all the work and effort and imagination and dreaming, nothing really changed. The congregation remained fragile and diminutive and their painful insecurity seemed close to the surface and unassuageable.

    It felt as though I was locked in a battle between meaning and despair, between love and hate. A cosmic battle between God and the Devil and a personal battle with the demons whose especial task was to undermine me. It seemed to be a battle against shape-shifting enemies. The inertia and destructiveness of tradition. The insidious and overwhelming power of class, race and privilege. The muddied hopelessness that I saw so often in the faces of people I spoke to – drinkers ground down in the churchyard with their brittle laughter, people who appeared in church who had been struggling for most of their lives with abuse or addiction. The stolidness of the buildings I had inherited, which defiantly resisted the work of the spirit. I remembered the words of the prophet Isaiah:

    A voice says, ‘Cry out!’

    And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’

    All people are grass,

    their constancy is like the flower of the field.

    The grass withers, the flower fades,

    when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;

    surely the people are grass. (Isa. 40.6)

    St John’s is built on the tidal plane at the heart of London, only protected from flooding by the Thames Barrier. Sea level rises will put this part of the city at risk; salt water could quickly inundate these streets that have been reclaimed from tidal mud. The threat of global disruption is increasing and the fragility of the city is becoming more and more apparent. What seems lasting is fleeting. We are here for a moment and then we are gone.

    I am part of an institution that has a history going back nearly five hundred years, since Henry VIII promulgated the Act of Succession in 1534. A history of dark and light, times of oppression and times of transformation, an arm of the state at times and at others a critical friend. Notorious, now, as an institution that fails to welcome marginal groups and is still a long way from being fully inclusive and affirming.

    I became the priest of a church that has been here for nearly two hundred years, and, climate change permitting, could be here for another two hundred. Sometimes I wondered what I could do to help it last so long – and at other times I wondered whether it even deserved to survive.

    I soon began to understand that people washed up at St John’s with a suitcase-full of reasons. Some came to use the loos that nestled in the vestry by the High Altar. Some came because they were passing and wanted to nip in to say a prayer – often they were young and from a Catholic country where popping into church is more commonplace. Some came to see the building and to check out the architecture or the gaunt picture of the crucified Christ above the altar. Many came because they were musicians, playing in orchestras or singing in choirs.

    Some came to find what they could, seeking a way to heal their pain, to deal with the damage of their early lives – or damage from their treatment by the churches they had grown up in – or because they had fallen out with God but could not silence the whisper of the Divine in their hearts.

    People came to pray and sing and eat morsels of unleavened bread, they came with an ache acknowledged or unacknowledged, they came with hunger, sometimes hunger unknown, they came to seek, they came in fear, they came in hope.

    They asked me questions about faith and God. I was often unsure how to answer. Was I flawed or fraud? Or both? The quietly benevolent façade I presented felt like a stage set, all columns and pediments and reliability and niceness. It was hard to know where the public merged into the private. I listened to the questions and a big part of me wanted to cry: ‘Please don’t trust me, it’s not worth the risk, I am acting a part that the institution demands of me.’

    I was already aware of one problem with being the vicar: often when I tried to be of help, the boundaries I tried to set were pushed and pushed until I had to call a halt, so my original intentions were undermined and I felt worse than useless.

    The Church of England felt like an unsafe world where I was accepted only conditionally, on sufferance. The self I had constructed over many years from earliest childhood felt tenuous, a uniform, a product I had developed so I could do the work I thought I had to do. There were times when it felt as though the whole thing was about to collapse, when even my presence at St John’s was under threat.

    I had an atavistic fear of being found out. Impostor syndrome? Perhaps. The fear that the curtain would be drawn back and everyone would see the little old man working the machinery. The self I presented to the church and the world was as the good gay, the honest broker, the safe pair of hands. I tried to hide the toxic bifurcation between public and secret which stirred and bubbled beneath the surface. I was not always successful.

     

  • PRIDE: More than Sparkling Spandex

    by the Very Revd David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury

    In 2009 Barack Obama sealed June as ‘Pride Month’.  These events are now as common across the UK as apple fayres or carnivals of Olde. PRIDE is mainstream. The elements of protest and political rally have gone in favour of community celebration – perhaps still with a little more edginess and ostrich feathers than your average festival.

    The badge is still the rainbow PRIDE flag with its origins in the stories of San Francisco gay liberation. The flag provokes strong reactions. Some people of faith remind us that pride is a deadly sin as if LGBTQIA+ people have more monopoly on that than others.

    I grew up in N. Ireland in a flag culture. Flags united and divided communities. They added colour to life and made visible in the public arena the aspirations which people held privately. Working in cathedrals has taught me a lot about flags used in services as banners of identity. The ultimate intensity of these symbols is the Military Standard (not technically flags) which carry the weight of full regimental identity. Some call them sacramental. PRIDE and the PRIDE flag carry intense meanings which allow many to rally around and others to oppose.

    A colleague here displays a Progress Pride flag on their office window out onto our Precincts. We get periodic complaints about this suggesting it is discriminatory, inappropriate and that we are supporting the ‘gay agenda’. Often complaints are intemperate. We’ve had individuals storming into the office requiring us to remove the flag with diatribes of anti-LGBTQIA+ venom.

    Much has changed since I attended my first PRIDE in the 1980s.  LGBTQIA+ equality is no longer a minority concern. Laws, institutions and families are more inclusive. However, I also see that not far under the surface remain fears and hates which bubble up.

    My partner and I walked along a beach with the dog, holding hands, whilst a group sniggered, offered low-level abuse and the derogatory names. I sit on a train in civvies going up and down to London and I hear prejudicial hate-filled talk about LGBTQIA+ people. We’ve sat in curry houses with groups of tertiary level students being horrible. I’ve had reports of people who will not come to worship if I am preaching. I sit in meetings where LGBTQIA+ people are tolerated.  How often have I visited a parish having to explain I do not have a wife but a civil partner and then – stony silence.

    These experiences, whether verbal abuse or that chilly atmosphere or that silence, still provoke anxiety in me as to what hurt might happen next. Hate crime remains under-reported by LGBTQIA+ people yet it is still rising despite all the protections in a more inclusive society.

    We still need PRIDE even just as a community festival. It makes us visible. Despite footballers or celebrities, visibility is still an issue. PRIDE insists that it is possible to be an inclusive community where the needs and rights of everyone do not diminish the needs and rights of others. A PRIDE rainbow flag flown on town halls, hospitals and fire stations, schools and even some places of worship says ‘we are here’, ‘you are welcome’ and ‘there is still work to do’.

    Social media and politics remind us that lurking not far under the surface are views and emotions for harm rather than for good. No amount of training or education seems to really deal with this sea of dystopian sludgy sin. We now know from brain analysis that our ancient (sometimes described as monkey) brains have signals that travel much faster than other brain signals. These trigger flight, fight and fear responses long before more reasoned responses. This brain is much less malleable than the rest of the brain which is much more able to learn from experience.  This old brain is the hardest place for grace and redemption to reach. Many prejudices emanate from such visceral instincts. This does not justify such prejudices but it means that addressing them is a life’s work.

    As LGBTQIA+ people we too make this painful journey – we are still learning what ‘generous Christian inclusion’ fully means in us rather than listening to the prejudice that can rise in our own hearts and minds as well as with others. This is a spiritual and psychological locus which makes for shame that impacts negatively our self-esteem. Of course, for Christians our safe identity is in Jesus Christ as children of God. There is security from that belonging when ‘sticks and stones’ have sought to do us harm. However, if in church or family or community our sense of genuine inclusion is not reinforced but instead questioned, rejected or filtered through visceral prejudice, then our ability to live out the good news of our identity in Christ is hampered. PRIDE is a counter-balance to the undermining pressures we still too often experience.

    It’s great that many PRIDE celebrations include ‘Christians at PRIDE’ groups made up of LGBTQIA+ people and allies. However, can we imagine most local churches present at PRIDE, generously inviting people to the gospel and life amidst the rainbow people of God, protecting those still harmed by hateful words and actions?

    We’d need a church which is genuinely safe enough with the ability to nurture everyone and address the fears that rise from our prejudicial depths. Even as the glitter and the glamour of PRIDE cheers us to a smile, these celebrations remind the church that there is a very long road still to travel.

     

     

  • An Introduction to God as Child

    by Graham Adams, Tutor in Mission Studies, World Christianity and Religious Diversity at Luther King Centre for Theology and Ministry, in Manchester

    To enter God’s alternative kingdom (a realm where the world is turned upside-down), Jesus tells us to ‘become like little children’. I wonder whether this is not only because the realm itself has a childlike quality to it, but because the one who shapes it also does. But despite increasing appreciation of the need for a variety of metaphors to reflect the fullness of God’s mystery, most of our metaphors remain essentially adult (father, mother, parent, judge, king, midwife, etc). Perhaps we are so conditioned by the prevailing power of ‘adultness’, along with the other ways in which ideologies become idols, that our childlike imagination has been constrained.

    In my new book, God the Child, I am therefore not searching for a cute or innocent vision of God, as though to focus on Jesus’ early years. Nor is it about replacing all adult metaphors, but adding to them, and in some respects destabilising them. Its primary purpose is to ask what happens when we give focused attention to childlike metaphors – and how this can shape our sense of the world, both the world as it is and the world as it might become.

    In particular, it examines the questions of God’s omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience, in order to draw out different childlike emphases – namely, the smallness of a child’s hand, present in and receptive to all belittled experiences and overlooked potential; the seeming weakness of a chaos-event, which nevertheless initiates disproportionate change, messing with the rules of our adult games in pursuit of deeper justice; and the curiosity of the horizon-seeker, empathetically yearning for greater understanding of diverse experience, making friends across borders, and encouraging us to do the same.

    So here, for instance, I affirm divine smallness –

    God is small. Small enough to be in the spaces which we neglect. The spaces we forget. The cracks. The hollows. The hideaways. Where broken toys are lost. Where the little can squeeze, either for some sense of safety, or because the giants have backed them into a corner. God is small enough to be in the margins, places of shame which are vast yet overlooked, or sites of new beginnings, ridiculous in their insignificance, but from where surprises and transformations emerge or burst, or resurrect…

    Here we greet, or are greeted by, God the Child: small enough to give value to every instance of brokenness and every site of recreation, in their very unnoticed-ness.

                  (God the Child pp.28, 31)

    Paying attention to ‘sites of smallness’ can help us not to romanticise childness; not to ignore the many real struggles of children’s experience, such as abuse, neglect, hunger, violence, lack of agency, and so on – and similarly, not to ignore adults’ pain with regards to childness: child loss, pregnancy loss, childlessness, memories of childhood traumas and so forth. God the Child, in a sense inarticulate in the face of such anguish, offers a different kind of solidarity in the midst of what might be overlooked. At the same time, I acknowledge that I am selecting certain traits – much as we select certain traits for our vision of divine adultness – and giving them a positive meaning. Of course, ‘chaos’ is not always creative or constructive – it pulls down and overthrows, just as the child Jeremiah was commissioned, in addition to building and planting – so I recognise that these ideas can be experienced in different ways. But so can our adult metaphors.

    It was also important that, in addition to the adult prose of a theology book, some of it should be expressed more playfully, creatively and poetically. Ultimately, though, I think I’m not only striving for a rediscovery of our own childlike imagination, but seeking to uncover something of God’s childlike imagination – again, this is not to romanticise it, as though to overlook the struggles of real children or any who are belittled, but to understand that such imagination does two things. God’s childlikeness not only faces the world as it is – what I call ‘the colonial matrix of adult power’, which ‘schools’ us, or conditions us, into accepting prevailing norms and patterns as inevitable – but also dares us to envisage the world as it might become. This is aided by other liberative theologies which stretch and enrich it – like Black theology, disability theology, and queer theologies. They help to expand on the location of God the Child, in solidarity with all who are belittled; the agency of God the Child, struggling against systems which disable it; and the transgressiveness of God the Child, moving across borders.

    These possibilities are gathered together in this re-working of a familiar prayer –

    God, our heavenly Child,

    May you be praised in all creation!

    May your imaginative scribbles of a new world come into being,

    May your dreams and visions be fulfilled on earth.

    May we give and receive, inspired by your open hand, until everyone has what they need.

    May we change our minds, learn and forgive, as you show us how to let go.

    May you fly a kite that guides us, caught up in the breath of hope, towards better horizons.

    May you show us how to rage against what is unfair and cruel, until these things crumble.

    For your chaos-power, your glorious imagination, and your wonder-full dream of new creation fill us with hope and determination,

    Now and always, Amen

    (God the Child, p.122)

  • Time to be Civil about Marriage

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge; Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington 

    Well, here we go again then.

    In the next few months – in an eerie echo of the same months exactly a year ago – the Church of England will once again be asking small groups to sit down and discuss queer people’s lives and loves. Despite the fact that the draft Prayers of Love and Faith have been sitting ready to go for almost a year, and despite the fact that an almost final draft of the Pastoral Guidance permitting clergy equal marriage has similarly been sitting ready to go for almost a year, the feet-dragging nature of the church’s response to love has once again been on full display. If in doubt, set up a subgroup, and so here we are, with yet more subgroups, asking exactly the same questions, and promising a solution by July.

    It would be a foolhardy House of Bishops that suggested a further delay in July – many LGBTQIA clergy and their allies are close to civil disobedience, along with an increasing recognition by a number of bishops that the current situation is not only untenable but deeply unjust. Yet it is clear that the sticking point on much of the negotiations is not the Prayers of Love and Faith, and their ‘legal route’, however much noise is being made about this by rather tiresome bloggers, but clergy discipline. The real nub of this is whether faithful, committed, partnered clergy can enter what they personally believe to be, but what the church corporately does not yet receive as, marriage, and whether the church is empowered to continue to ask prurient and weird questions about their bedroom antics.

    It does sometimes appear to be the case that those doing and promoting the work on LLF have forgotten that there are actually (despite everything) LGBTQIA people in the church. When the Programme Board was first announced, there was not a single (out) LGBTQIA person on it, and similarly you needed a microscope to find the LGBTQIA people in the small groups (something which has been, to some degree, mitigated thanks to some of us spotting it!). For all the warm words and the ‘apology’, the mode of operation of the Church of England has resolutely not changed on all this; it’s frankly not good enough, and it’s rather grating when compared to the way other minoritized groups are increasingly treated. There seems to be a wilful determination to keep LGBTQIA people out of the frame, and hence to condemn the process to an endless procession of unforced errors. LGBTQIA people remain, apparently, acceptably ignored.

    There are plenty of us LGBTQIA folk who are really willing this process, and its leadership, to succeed, despite everything – yet we are treated as though our involvement would somehow infect it with queerness. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but in seriousness there needs to be a step change in the way the Church of England engages with us if it is to gain even a modicum of trust. People like me would be perfectly happy to look over press releases and point out the obvious issues, and indeed people far more qualified and senior than me, who are themselves ‘openly’ LGBTQIA (a term reserved, it seems, almost solely for the church in the modern world), should be invited to be part and parcel of the decision-making processes rather than merely advising it from the side-lines. There remains far too much being done about us, and not with us, and until that changes, the Church of England is displaying that it has learnt precisely nothing about its institutional queerphobia.

    Which brings us back to clergy marriage. From all the whingeing and whining, you’d think that the people this most matters to are those who oppose ‘sexual intimacy’ (as yet undefined) amongst queer people, but perhaps we might just reset the dial and remember that the key stakeholders here are queer people themselves. We have heard the usual delaying clarion call of ‘we need to do more theology’ on this time and time again, and we have heard all the handwringing about the conscience of bishops, yet we have – it appears – infrequently actually listened to and thought about the impact of the current pernicious, institutional and structural violence of the current position of the church for actual, real live, queer people.

    The level of pastoral ineptitude and lack of practicality found in the House of Bishops’ ‘Pastoral Guidance’ [sic] issued on Valentine’s Day 2014 is rivalled only by the disgraceful way that this has been implemented over the past decade. Absolutely no recognition has been given to the fact that the distinction between Civil Partnerships and Civil Marriage is not present in every jurisdiction, leading to clergy in Europe, for example, facing a choice between basic next of kin rights and their licences. Clergy from Anglican provinces overseas or our other communion partners, where equal marriage is not only permitted but required for clergy in same-sex relationships, have been prevented from offering their ministry in the Church of England in an extraordinary display of arrogant inflexibility on behalf of ‘mother church’. It is interesting, of course, that it’s only the queer married clergy who are blocked, and not the straight clergy, including bishops, who have been doing the marriage services – you really don’t have to look far for institutional queerphobia.

    Yet, finally, it seems that this pernicious nonsense is about to end, and not before time. There is now a clear way forward that brings the Church of England back to a position more true to itself – generous hospitality. We appreciate that we are not all going to agree on whether same-sex unions are marriage or not, perhaps for some time, yet we are part of a church and a communion in which a variety of perspectives are held entirely within the mainstream.

    In many ways, this is just a case of recognising facts. As yet – and it is only a matter of time – the Church of England corporately does not recognise the essence, dare I say sacramentality, of the marital in same-sex marriages. That’s actually where the distinction lies – not between the civil and the church (the marriage-matrimony idea), but in the anatomy of the participants. There are also, however, a number of queer clergy who want to enter into such a vowed state that is recognised as such by the State, and indeed by many churches that presently come to a different conclusion about this than appears to be the case in the Church of England. Some of them will want to do that in a civil ceremony, and others before God (indeed, in ceremonies in which God can actually be mentioned) in a church where such marriages can be celebrated.

    Neither of those options changes anything about the Church of England’s own position on what it holds to be marital. Clergy are not entering into marriage lightly – they’re doing so because they believe it to be part of their growth in holiness. The church has accepted – and indeed encouraged – clergy entering into Civil Partnerships, and the result of making a similar decision on marriage is absolutely no different from the church’s perspective, given the Church of England institutionally continues to refuse recognise such marriages as full fat marriage. The only difference it will actually make is to queer clergy – and it’s about time that happened, and the cruelty ended.

    Incidentally, this is not about press-ganging into marriage. For traditionalist Society clergy who are worried they might be forced to marry their same-sex partners, this is plain and simple scaremongering nonsense, often delivered to you by hierarchs in order to scare you into playing ball. Nobody is being forced into same-sex marriages, queer or otherwise, but the option is simply being put on the table. If in conscience clergy don’t want to take it, then that’s up to them – that’s the benefit of generous hospitality. Nothing has been said about civil partnerships being taken off the table, and the whole point of this exercise is surely to be expansive, and not close things down.

    And yet there are a number of ‘conservative’ bishops who continue to rail against this hospitality, and whose consciences ‘must be respected’ (again, interesting how it’s only ever one way, isn’t it). They won’t license or ordain clergy in same sex marriages, whatever the church decides, they say – and again, fascinating to see that they are unlikely to apply any restrictions to clergy from elsewhere who officiate at such marriages, but only on the queers in them. Their ongoing threat of a postcode lottery is holding the whole thing up, and they’re once again holding us to ransom. And it is all an argument built on sand, because as they like to remind us, the Church of England hasn’t changed its doctrine of marriage – and as is entirely obvious, the Church doesn’t recognise the marital in marriage between people of the same sex. It’s a house of cards, and needs calling out.

    It is high time for the Church of England to return to a sense of balance and proportion, to focus on the pastoral and not the disciplinary, and to actively find ways to enable and release its clergy into the world so badly in need of the Gospel message. We have failed – disastrously – at doing this for queer clergy in the last ten years, and at last we have the opportunity to change that. We don’t agree – maybe we never will – on marriage. But we can, surely, agree on the primacy of the Gospel. It really is as simple as that.

  • The Long and Complicated History of Church Debates over Sexuality

    by Dr Laura Ramsay, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Bournemouth University. Her book, Sexuality and the Church of England, 1918–1980, is scheduled for publication in summer 2024.

    Recent debates in General Synod about ‘Living in Love and Faith’ have resoundingly confirmed that the Church of England is racked by deep disagreements over issues of sexuality. It is struggling to find its way towards a resolution that might enable those with opposing perspectives to move forward together. But Anglicans know that these are not new arguments or divisions. The Church has been wrangling with disputes about its approach towards same-sex relationships for many decades. The first clear sign of this was in 1974, when the Synod’s Board for Social Responsibility (BSR) appointed a working party to study the matter, which was chaired by John Yates, the Bishop of Gloucester (1975–91). The working party’s report, Homosexual Relationships: A Contribution to Discussion (1979), also known as the Gloucester report, refused to accept that all people had an “unqualified moral right to sexual self-expression” but cautiously proposed “that there are circumstances in which individuals may justifiably choose to enter into a homosexual relationship with the hope of enjoying a companionship and physical expression of sexual love similar to that which is to be found in marriage”.

    Such claims were thought to be so controversial that the BSR initially delayed publication and only agreed to this on condition that a statement of its own critical observations about the report was included as an appendix. The BSR also forestalled its discussion in Synod by arguing that more time was needed to digest the report and ensure the debate was “Christian, charitable, instructive and informed”.

    Yet, by the time the Gloucester report came before Synod in February 1981, tensions were running high and factions had formed on opposing sides of the debate. Members introduced various amendments and motions in a desperate attempt to force Synod to make a judgment about ‘winners’ and ‘losers’—to either endorse or condemn the Gloucester report’s views on same-sex relationships. Faced with these pressures, Synod decided to sidestep all efforts to force its hand. By a considerable majority, it voted to simply ‘take note’ of the Gloucester report and leave the matter open for further discussion.

    For many on the outside who are looking in at these internal controversies, it appears the Church has largely been chasing its own tail on this issue, and from this perspective it seems reasonable for them to assume that its views on sexuality have always been static and have always lagged behind those of wider society. Indeed, some speakers in recent Synod debates have similarly claimed that Church teaching about sex has always been at odds with culture (and, therefore, they argue that now is also no time for change).

    For a long time, historians agreed with such claims, largely assuming that the Churches had a limited role in the making of modern ideas about sexuality. Influenced by traditional theories about secularisation, most histories of sexuality tended either to ignore the influence of religion (and instead focused on the impact of secular ideas emerging from the fields of science, medicine, and the law), or they portrayed religion as a chief antagonist that fought against the forces of social change. However, such historical assumptions have since been overturned by a new body of scholarship which shows that Christian commentators (and sometimes institutions) actually helped to lead and drive developments in British sexual culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

    My new book, Sexuality and the Church of England, 1918–1980, further enriches our understanding through its original, academic study of the Church’s role in historical processes of sexual permissiveness and religious decline. It provides an archivally rich account of the Church’s institutional grappling with matters of sex, relationships, marriage, birth control, and same-sex attraction across a long and previously underexplored chronology. I tell the story of how, despite intense internal disagreements, for much of the twentieth century the Church acted as a powerful social, cultural, and political force for shaping attitudes towards sex and morality, particularly in the years before the expansion of state welfare.

    Up until the late 1970s, British experts, policymakers, and campaigning groups generally wanted to know the opinions of the Established Church on sexual issues. They took its ideas seriously, and were willing to be guided by its views at least to some extent. In this period, the Church’s views on sex were led by its moral welfare organisations, which were designated as a centre for research, education, and expertise about sexual relationships, both on behalf of the Church and of the nation. These groups were frequently at the forefront of sexual and social changes in Britain—they made proactive moves to influence the attitudes of the Church, the state, and society by popularising new understandings of sex and desire and outlining up-to-date Christian approaches towards responsible, autonomous, sexual citizenship.

    Perhaps less surprisingly, Sexuality and the Church of England, 1918–1980 also uncovers a long and complicated history of Anglican disagreements and difficulties in decision-making about issues of sexuality, leading up to the beginnings of the Church’s contemporary impasse. In doing so, it points towards some of the underlying reasons why these divisions have proved so difficult for successive generations of Anglican thinkers to resolve. Historically speaking, disputes and tensions were built-in to the very nature of Anglican sexual politics. As Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945–61, put it, “in the Church of England and throughout the Anglican Communion we jealously guard the freedom of people to have their own opinion and express it”.

    For this reason, questions of sexual morality were not regarded as definite issues on which the Church could speak with one voice or formulate an official policy. Instead, the Church sought to function as an agent of mediation and compromise in contentious debates about sexuality. Due to its deep-seated awareness of the intensity of disagreements existing both inside and outside of its membership, the Church consistently found ways to reconcile conflicting viewpoints and build towards a consensus broad enough to unite Anglicans across a range of churchmanship.

    Up until the furore over the Gloucester report, the Church’s historically established technique of mediation had worked well and allowed it to construct compromises and mid-positions on issues of sex and relationships. But, by the late-twentieth century, Anglican viewpoints had polarised and become entrenched. This presented new challenges for the Church, which it struggled to overcome. Previously, the Church’s national legislative assemblies had not been considered an essential forum for the discussion of sexual issues, but now these spaces were transformed into a key site of deliberation and confrontation. This development meant that, while the Church had previously experienced greater room to act flexibly and hold together a range of conflicting perspectives, it was now increasingly pushed towards committing itself to more definite pronouncements about sex and morality.

    By the late-twentieth century, the Church’s former ability to construct mid-positions and accommodate a range of perspectives (even at the cost of producing some quite ambiguous statements about sexuality) was increasingly constrained. Previously, there had been at least an implicit acceptance of the Church’s role as an agent of compromise and mediation, even if the intricacies of Church policymaking were not fully understood by the general public, campaigners, or even some Anglicans, who occasionally wrote to Church leaders requesting greater clarity on matters of Christian sex teaching. For much of the twentieth century, such complaints caused few problems and could usually be assuaged with a brief explanation about the complexity of Church viewpoints. As Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of York (1956–61, later, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1961–74) explained to one correspondent, it was not possible or desirable to “formalise” ecclesiastical support about sexual issues “on which the Church, as such, has not, and cannot have, an official line”.

    Yet, by the late 1970s, with the escalation of internal splits and the rise of a new cultural climate that increasingly demanded more precise and committed approaches towards issues of sexual identity and relationships, Church leaders struggled to present vague, diverse, or undecided Anglican approaches in the ways they had done previously. The situation was further exacerbated by the intense media publicity surrounding the Gloucester report, with internal and external critics applying increasing pressure to settle the conflict by picking just one side of the argument. But this was completely at odds with the Church’s established means of operating by holding opposing views in tension and seeking to avoid further polarisation of attitudes. `

    After the 1981 Synod debate, Church strategy faltered quite dramatically. For some internal critics, the Gloucester report had conceded too much ground to the so-called “propaganda” of gay activists. These commentators criticised the Gloucester report’s re-reading of Scripture and tradition and firmly argued that the Church should not change its sex teaching to suit contemporary mores. Meanwhile, the Church was also increasingly criticised by gay campaigning organisations who had once considered the Church a powerful ally. While these groups had previously looked to secure Church support for their campaigning initiatives, they now hit back by publicly attacking the Gloucester report’s views as “patronising,” “woefully misinformed,” and lacking in “faith, hope and charity”.

    Even though the Church remained committed to its historically established strategies of reconciliation, the intensification of internal splits and skirmishes between moral campaigners and gay rights organisations only served to attract negative publicity, and the Church lost control of its former ability to contribute to national debates about sexuality. In turn, the Church became a target of critics and lobbyists who could no longer comprehend its apparent inability to move forward decisively. With that, the Church’s former means of operating as an agent of compromise and consensus was largely forgotten and its long tradition of thinking flexibly about issues of sexuality (even when this inevitably involved a challenging and painful process of reconciling conflicting perspectives) became lost to history.

  • Some Are More Equal Than Others

    by the Venerable Christine Allsopp, archdeacon emeritus of Northampton, exercising a retirement ministry in the Diocese of Oxford

    As the actual date of the 30th Anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood approaches, I have been going through the jumbled collection of papers, scattered through several file boxes, that relate to the 1990s. In one box I found the texts of the presentations that I had given prior to the 1992 vote in General Synod; presentations given to several parishes, to deanery synod, and to a religious community.

    In them I describe how I became convinced of the rightness of women’s priestly ministry long before I felt a personal call: “The process began when I realised with a shock the similarities between George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ and the Church of England. The unjust position of women in the Church of England is like that of the animals who discover that while all are equal, some are more equal and others!”

    For me, the role of women in the church was a justice issue. So I quoted Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s words to his provincial synod: “The Bible is quite clear that the divine image is constitutive of humanity irrespective of gender. I cannot have struggled against an injustice that penalises people for something they can do nothing about, their race, and then accept with equanimity the gross injustice of penalising others for something they can do nothing about, their gender.”

    I argued that the Church of England had, unlike the Church in South Africa, lost the opportunity to lead the way against discrimination in our own society. Instead of being at the forefront of the fight against discrimination we were limping along behind, with the inevitable accusation that the church was merely following secular society. Nevertheless we could and should have a prophetic role as part of the universal church. Sadly, with some notable exceptions, church leaders often avoid confronting injustice; the prophetic role is inevitably uncomfortable.

    In the months following the vote in General Synod in 1992, I was focused on preparing for my priestly ordination and in moving to a new post. I was hardly aware of the implications of the Act of Synod hurriedly introduced by the House of Bishops to General Synod in 1993 to give more “protection” to those opposed. Yet over the years that followed, its language became subverted in a way not unlike changes in Animal Farm’s Seven Commandments. Wording that had a clear meaning was quietly altered to mean something quite different. “Extended Episcopal Oversight” as exercised by Provincial Episcopal Visitors (Flying Bishops) became “Alternative Episcopal Oversight”; “the integrity of differing beliefs and positions concerning the ordination of women” became “the two integrities”.

    In 2005 I was appointed as an archdeacon and later the same year I was elected to General Synod. I experienced a sense of déjà vu when the same arguments that had been used against the ordination of women as priests were repeated as arguments against their consecrations as bishops. Women were referred to as a problem to be dealt with rather than a gift to be valued. I did not remain on General Synod for the final vote. I am not certain that I could have voted for the Five Guiding Principles that  replaced the Act of Synod, although I can understand why those that did so were weary, and anxious finally to have women as bishops.

    Since then, the language of the Five Guiding Principles has often kept women quiet. All ordinands are required to affirm them before ordination, as if the Declaration of Assent and Oaths to the Bishop and the Sovereign were not enough. The Principles begin by asserting that the Church of England is “fully and unequivocally committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender”. All three orders of ministry may be open to us, but there are altars where we are forbidden to preside, posts for which women may not apply. Women continue to be underrepresented at Bishop’s Staff level and underrepresented among leaders of large churches. Nearly ten years after the first woman became a bishop, only seven out of forty-two diocesan bishops are female. While all are equal, some are more equal than others.

    Thirty years on from those first ordinations to the priesthood, what has changed? “Women seem to be getting angrier” observed a bishop to me recently. Anger, or at the very least, frustration, may be understandable reactions to the injustice of a church that still treats a male model of ministry as a norm. Bishops still appoint, and need, Advisors for Women’s Ministry to flag up areas of concern. There are more women in non-stipendiary ministry and fewer women in incumbency roles than men. It is not clear whether the non-stipendiary route is through choice, or whether more accommodation to ensure that roles are possible alongside family responsibilities would encourage more women into stipendiary ministry. How are all women clergy, whether single or married, expected to flourish alongside those who do not accept that we are priests?

    Not all women clergy feel angry or frustrated, and even those that do admit to these feelings can also speak of the great sense of fulfilment that their calling brings to them. Nevertheless, anger can be used productively if it results in challenges to a culture in the Church of England that for too long has avoided dealing with the injustices in the treatment of its women clergy. For we follow the One who challenged the norms of his society in his engagement with women; who was sufficiently angry to challenge the everyday practices in the Temple by overturning tables.

    I am looking forward to attending the Not Equal Yet Conference organised by WATCH (Women and the Church) on 20th April 2024.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Posing a Problem: Not Equal Yet

    by Ruth Harley, curate in the Watling Valley Ecumenical Partnership

    “When you expose a problem, you pose a problem.” So writes Sara Ahmed in her book Living a Feminist Life. Ahmed is talking about that phenomenon, well known to many of us, by which the person who names a problem within an institution, group or culture, becomes seen as the source of the problem. It happens to black people exposing racism, to women exposing misogyny, to disabled people exposing ablism, to LGBTQ+ people exposing homophobia and transphobia, indeed to any person naming a dynamic to which the institution would prefer to remain oblivious.

    It happens to women when we expose misogyny and sexism in all sorts of places: in the academy, which is Ahmed’s context, in the workplace, in our communities, our families and, yes, in our churches. It is so much easier to say that the problem is these uppity women who won’t shut up and be grateful for what they’ve got, rather than to confront the underlying and persistent inequalities which they are naming. (“Easier for whom?” we might ask.)

    To say, 30 years on from the ordination of the first women as priests in the Church of England, that women are still not equal yet in the church is to expose a problem. But it is also to state a fact. The statistics back it up: in the most recently available set of ministry statistics, just 33% of stipendiary clergy are women, and women continue to be under-represented in senior roles, with just 7 women out of 42 diocesan bishops. Women’s experiences back it up too, though that hard-won knowledge and wisdom is rarely afforded the respect or consideration it is due.

    Indeed, that women in the Church of England are not equal yet is enshrined in the legislation of the church, in the form of the House of Bishops Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests (GS Misc 1076) which, among other things, introduced the Five Guiding Principles. There are churches in which women are prohibited from presiding at the altar. There are no churches in which men are prohibited from presiding at the altar. We are not equal yet.

    But to say that, to state that women are not equal yet (in this and so many other ways) will always attract a hostile response. Why can’t we just be grateful for what we’ve got? Why do we have to make everything about gender? What about the feelings of those who can’t or won’t accept our ministry? Why can’t we just be kind?

    This is exactly the sort of response Sara Ahmed predicts: “When you expose a problem, you pose a problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away if you would just stop talking about it, or if you went away.” But of course, that is not true. If we never spoke about it, the problem would still remain. But those who are unaffected by the problem would be allowed to preserve the privilege of their obliviousness. They would not be confronted with the problem. The problem would persist, but the burden would be carried only by those who do not have the luxury of being able to choose to ignore it: in this case, women.

    So we must speak. We must say what we know to be true. Women are not equal yet in the Church of England.

    And we must say other things we know to be true too. Women are made, equally with men, in the image of God. The subjugation of women is not the will of God. The body of Christ is damaged when women are not able to exercise their God-given gifts and vocations. The fact that women are not equal yet is not just a problem for women, but for the whole church. And it is not only an ethical problem, but also a theological and ecclesiological one.

    Women are not equal yet. And that is a problem. Like any problem, it will not be solved by being hidden away. It can only be addressed by being brought into the light, spoken about openly and without fear. The Not Equal Yet conference organised by WATCH, aims to do just that: to state openly that women are not equal yet. And to ask what we, as a church, are going to do about it.

    We have to be able to have that conversation, however difficult or painful it might be. To expose a problem is to pose a problem. But I would rather pose a problem, than persist in the lie of pretending that there is no problem here to be exposed.

    It is obvious already from conversations online and offline that even to have the conversation, even to state the truth that women in the Church of England are not equal yet, evokes angry and defensive responses from some. That should not deter us. As Jesus said: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And as Gloria Steinem said: “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”

    Exposing the truth of women’s inequality in the church is a vital step toward ending that inequality. And a church in which women and men are equal, a church which reflects the equality of people of all genders in God’s sight, is good and liberating news for all.

    To expose a problem, to pose a problem, is hard. It is hard to make ourselves so exposed by admitting the truth: that we are not equal yet. The naming of truth is hard and holy work. And it is necessary work, in order to live ever more fully in the way of Jesus, who was never afraid to name the hard and exposing truths of injustice, and in order to bring God’s church ever closer to embodying the justice of God’s kingdom.

     

     

  • Response to the ‘Letter from Seven Bishops’: A Theology of Inclusion

    by Fr Alex Frost, Vicar of St Matthews, Burnley and member of General Synod

    After reading the recent document around the Doctrine of Marriage and today’s sequel by seven Church of England Bishops, I wanted to ask myself: Am I, and others like me, wrong in all this? Have I been hoodwinked by a bunch of liberal-minded weirdoes who have all simultaneously jumped on a bandwagon of inclusion? Have I just been swept along in a sea of rainbow-coloured waters with an ever-increasing empathy towards vegetarians and vegans and people who have partners of the same sex? Has this heterosexual, former new romantic, a man married in a registry office, sexually active with a son before marriage, just bought into the narrative of same sex attraction and inclusion for all? Have I been led astray by a plethora of heretical charlatans acting in the inclusive name of Jesus Christ; have I been secretly deceived by leaders of the wrong pack rather than the shepherds of the sheep?

    Well, I decided to investigate a little further and started at the Church of England website A place to belong, which opens with an encouraging and opening proclamation: We all want our churches to be places of welcome for all, and indeed we believe that church communities are only whole when they include everyone.

    Knowing that not to be true, after some unpleasant placements as a pre-ordination candidate, I decided to look elsewhere as is my academic freedom to do – and just as was the Bishop of Newcastle’s decision to step back from her role as a LLF Lead Bishop. Of course, all the assumptions and points raised by the seven Bishops come from a place of integrity. I don’t for a minute doubt that they believe that what they write is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I understand that they think the biblical texts are true, the word of God, and that if they are the word of God they are to be unquestioned and to be implemented at all times and in all circumstances. I get it, I get it, I get it!

    But of course, one of the problems our church has is that we don’t all come to faith at the same time, with the same experiences, with the same blind assurance of literal belief in the Bible that the authors of the recent publication share. Many people turn to faith in times of sadness, uncertainty, disappointment, or hardship. I’m not sure how many new followers of Christ become Christians out of untold joy and happiness in their lives. That’s certainly not been my experience in my nearly 9 years as a man in Holy Orders. I also think people in our society are encouraged to challenge, debate, consider different views of opinion. They just will not accept that, to become part of this or that denomination, this faith or that religion you must sign up to a ‘you must believe this, or you can’t come in’ model, unless of course they have been indoctrinated to literal interpretation of what truth is from a very young age. Which raises a question… Is liberal Christian simply a heretical entry into church from the secular world? Or is it a legitimate gift from God, wanting to use the full talents and gifts of academic thinking beyond the traditional and conservative evangelical narrative?

    Where might myself and more conservative thinking theologians share some common ground, then? Maybe in agreeing that many problems in the world are because of people turning away from Christ, or not even knowing Jesus, which is very much the case in many of our secular schools. Maybe we share some common ground in that we both want our relationships to be loving, kind, trustworthy, honest, faithful, and lifelong. Maybe our common ground is that we both love Jesus and his church, and we will do all we can to preserve it and stay together. Maybe our common ground is that we all find it deeply upsetting that now we seem angry and apathetic, like many estranged brothers and sisters and families. Maybe the best theological advice we can give, not only to our Bishops but to one another, is to be kinder, more tolerant and to work towards a ‘settlement’ that recognises difference in the house of God, in the name of God.

    Maybe we have to ‘reset’ to a place of unequivocal agreement, that we love one another and that he loves us. Surely the common ground is that we all know what Jesus’ primary commandment was: to love one another, despite evidence I have witnessed to the contrary. But despite those failings our language should and will reflect that commandment, always, because when it doesn’t it steps out of the minimum entry requirement to follow Jesus. For millions of Christians, the words of the Bible are literal, and for millions of Christians they are not, and so we have a square that will never fit the circle. That should not mean condemnation for fellow Christians but, as in the secular world, I do believe a path forward will only be found in a way of compassion and compromise. Glimpsing eternity through a virgin bride or groom, is quite a scary and un-inclusive thought; quite poetic and romantic, but sadly not realistic. Many people can’t live up to the expectation which some theologians set before them. Gay people, certainly gay Christians, can’t conform to the doctrinal narrative laid down before them and nor should they have to. And nor should they be threatened with the assurance of eternal damnation. Many people have turned away from, or ignored, a journey of faith because it appears cruel, mean-hearted, misogynistic, intimidating. Or, even worse, they have first-hand experiences of those things.

    I don’t ever want Christians who believe something with integrity and assurance to be made to do something or accept something they don’t want to do. But I also don’t want these people to stop others doing something which they want to do, which they want to do with the utmost, honesty integrity and in good faith. If people think my desire to embrace and celebrate same sex relationships and a fully inclusive agenda comes from a place of heresy, or even from the devil, I can’t convince you otherwise and I’m sorry. But I write in Jesus’ name, as a devout Christian, but from a place of difference. A place that witnesses addiction, death, violence, and torment daily, yet a community still loved by Jesus although he is sadly unknown to many of them. Through our outreach we have become a bit of a haven, to the broken, the lonely and the lost. They have been devoured by the wolves and, somehow, they have landed at our door. Their restoration comes through acknowledgment of their experience and struggles, and there is a building of trust. The boundaries many of them hold are in a place far removed from the ideology of biblical narrative that is set in stone as the one they must adhere to. Their starting point for Christian healing and wellbeing comes from a place of acceptance and they can come as they are. Illiterate, ravaged by life, criminals, destitute, and lost.

    It is my view that Christianity will thrive once more in our country when we turn our faces towards the marginalised, by restoring them by a practical theology rather than a doctrinal theology. In restoring others in this way, it is my prayer we may restore ourselves in the process.

     

     

     

     

  • To be Evangelical is to Challenge ‘Orthodoxy’

    by Canon Dr Phil Groves, a parish priest who was a CMS Mission partner in Tanzania and worked at the Anglican Communion Office for 10 years as the Facilitator for the Listening Process in the Anglican Communion and Director of Continuing Indaba. His PhD is on Anglican Missional Ecclesiology. He is dyslexic and is exploring advocacy for neurodiverse people.

     

    ‘Orthodox’[1] has become the chosen title for those seeking to reaffirm that marriage is only between one man and one woman for life. The implication is that those of us who are who are affirming and inclusive are unfaithful to the tradition of the church, to the gospel, and to God.

    Evangelical institutions have often had statements of faith, which traditionally have majored on the scriptures and salvation. Such statements are now seen to be insufficient, with new clauses defining marriage as only between a man and a woman for life being added to defend ‘orthodoxy’.

    I suspect that there are three intended outcomes from inserting and emphasising these new clauses on sexuality. Firstly, it is hoped they will protect institutions from encroachment by those who have a different view. Secondly, to ensure evangelical unity in order to form wider alliances with Anglican provinces and organisations across and outside the Anglican Communion. It also cements the idea that the doctrine of marriage is a first order issue: a salvation issue.

    These clauses – beyond any others – have become the key test of ‘orthodoxy’. Those of us who support equal marriage are being told we are not ‘orthodox’ and we are not evangelicals.

    This trend began at GAFCON in 2008, with The Jerusalem Declaration. The radical proposal at the heart of GAFCON is that Anglicanism should reject its entire history and deny its identity by endorsing a confession in order to secure unity. We have formularies and we are defined by the multitude of prayerbooks, but Anglicans have always resisted all creeds other than the Catholic Creeds.

    The Jerusalem Declaration followed traditional lines for evangelical declarations of faith but included the following statement as a ‘tenet of orthodoxy’:

    We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.

    It is this statement that was recently added to the CEEC’s Basis of Faith. It has seemed to engender a sense of unity across the different evangelical tribes – generally described as open, conservative, and charismatic – but it holds issues for evangelicals that will not be easy to overcome in the long term and redefines evangelicalism in a way that may make it unrecognisable to me.

    A key issue that will continue to blight evangelicalism as it relies on statements of faith is legitimate disagreement. According to the Jerusalem Declaration, there are many things the ‘orthodox’ can disagree about, but deciding the difference between legitimate and illegitimate disagreements is often a political decision rather than a theological one.

    A so called ‘legitimate disagreement’ that has caused problems in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) has been around male ‘headship’. ACNA has sidestepped the issue with accommodation through ‘dual integrities, but some within the movement regard ‘complementarianism’ as an essential, first order, issue. Within GAFCON political expediency has led to the Diocese of Sydney – which once would not compromise on male leadership – forming alliances with the Provinces of Uganda, where women have been ordained since the early 1980s and Kenya and where they have women Bishops. In England one wonders why we needed a Bishop of Maidstone when women bishops are now counted among the ‘orthodox’. For many conservative evangelicals male headship has gone from being a defining issue to one where there can be legitimate disagreement.

    Within the wider GAFCON movement it seems also to be legitimate to disagree on the deep criminalisation of LGBTI+ people. I have no doubt that most CEEC members will agree with Sean Doherty’s condemnation of the anti-gay laws passed in Uganda. Doherty does not mince his words; he says ‘Following the example of Jesus therefore means standing against the criminalisation of sexual sin, rather than supporting it’, which sounds like it is a first order issue with implications for salvation. However, nowhere does he condemn the Church of Uganda which advocated for the law and which rejoiced at its passing. These laws in Uganda and also in Nigeria are horrific and target some of the most the most vulnerable people in the world. The Church of Nigeria is absolutely clear that the very same statement adopted by CEEC from the Jerusalem Declaration demands action to criminalise all LGBTI+ people and their public allies. While CEEC members may interpret the clause differently, they seem to be seeking alliances with the Churches of Nigeria and Uganda despite this difference. The deep criminalisation of LGBTI+ people seems to be a valid area for legitimate disagreement.

    Difference is also tolerated between those who oppose conversion ‘therapies’ and those who argue that they should be defended. The trustees of CPAS responded to Prayers of Love and Faith by endorsing the Evangelical Alliance’s (2012) ‘Affirmations on Sexuality’. This affirmation includes support for conversion therapy and, following widespread concern, the trustees removed it from their website and made clear their opposition to such therapies. Immediately they were criticised by Martin Davie, a theological consultant for CEEC, who defended the right of organisations to offer change counselling. In a previous post on this site I pointed out that the main so-called therapy regularly promoted by such groups is known as ‘reparative therapy’ which relies on unbiblical – indeed, I would say, antibiblical – pseudo-Freudian theories of sexual drive. Such therapies have been abandoned by Freudians because of the damage they cause. The evangelicals who champion reparative therapy are the last ones contending for the Freudian understanding of the root of sexual desire for someone of the same gender. This appears to be another area where difference is legitimate.

    In addition to its Basis of Faith, CPAS has a document page entitled Outworkings of the Faith. Clause 6 uncompromisingly defines marriage as a ‘life-long covenant between one man and one woman’ with a reference to Malachi 2:13-16 which says: ‘The man who hates and divorces his wife, does violence to the one he should protect’. CPAS is at least consistent in placing its condemnation of divorce and remarriage on a par with the condemnation of same-sex unions, but others are not. Unlike CPAS, CEEC regards divorce and remarriage as having precedent in the Scriptures and so remarriage while a former spouse is still living is allowable. Again, an area where disagreement is allowed.

    Advocates for the clauses that rule out support for equal marriage will find clever ways to justify why disagreement over the issues above is legitimate while disagreement over this one issue is not. However, this drive for ‘orthodoxy’ it defines evangelicalism in an exclusive way that I find impossible to relate to. As evangelicalism focuses on guarding the gospel it ceases to be about proclaiming the gospel and challenging ‘orthodoxy’. For me, the power of evangelicalism has been in challenging tradition.

    All my evangelical heroes are marked by being unorthodox and driven to challenge tradition and bring liberation.

    John Wesley, often seen as the first Anglican evangelical, set the example. His early commitment to orthodoxy led him to harsh self-righteousness. Embracing the warming embrace of the Holy Spirit opened his eyes to Romans 8, and he realised he was saved from the law of sin and death. He felt the need to break out of the institutions and, as a consequence, he engaged with the oppressed, supported abolitionism, and championed women preachers. Wesley’s evangelicalism was defined by being unorthodox and liberating.

    His opposition to slavery was taken up by the abolitionists who were regarded as wilful violent perverters of the sacred texts by those who quoted the Bible in support of their profiteering from the horrific abuse of human beings.[2] Even though they were at the heart of the British institution, The Clapham Sect were never accused of being orthodox: they were liberators.

    Josephine Butler took up the cause of emancipation from slavery, this time for women enslaved in prostitution. Her evangelical faith led her to campaign for feminist causes that inspired others to join her campaign for equal suffrage, and for children and adults forced into prostitution.[3] Her catchphrase, ‘God and one woman make a majority’, marks out her opposition to orthodoxy. She may have been on her own in human terms, but if she was on the side of God the orthodox were a minority.  Her ministry was marked by liberation.

    Butler, along with Elizabeth Fry, was a woman who found in her evangelical faith the ability to speak up in a male-dominated world. Another of my heroes is Bishop James Theodore Holly was an African-American man who found the same confidence in the same source to speak in a white-dominated world. In 1874, he became the first Anglican of African descent to be a diocesan Bishop in the Anglican Communion and he attended the 1878 Lambeth Conference. For him, liberation was not a gift of white people, but a right to be claimed by all people. His passion for liberation was backed by a commitment to changing the world, and brining liberation.

    My more recent heroes include John V. Taylor. UK evangelicals know him for his ground-breaking book on the Holy Spirit, The Go-Between God, but as a leader of CMS, Taylor recognised the value and depth of African traditions. He challenged the orthodox understanding that African music and dance were satanic. I witnessed the liberating effect in the 1980s on young leaders such as the future Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, when I was a member of his evangelism team. We travelled around the Diocese of Madi West Nile distributing traditional musical instruments so worship could be enculturated. In 1975, John V. Taylor also anticipated the ecological crisis in his prophetic book Enough is Enough, calling for a radical response to Western greed. He was a visionary prophet and a voice of liberation.

    During my time in Uganda, I met another of my evangelical heroes: Bishop Festo Kivengere. Kivengere was famous for resisting the violent regime of Idi Amin with a message of love. His eloquent preaching put him on a par with Billy Graham and his commitment to justice brought him close to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In the 1950s, Kivengere was brought to Tanganyika by Australian missionaries to work as a school teacher. He found them complacent in the face of racism. On the trains, he and his family travelled third class while the missionaries luxuriated in first class where no black Africans were allowed. His experience of revival made him aware of gender equality. His preaching on gender equality in turn brought him into conflict with orthodox missionaries, who banned him from preaching in their churches. So, like Wesley, he preached in the market place. His theology left an indelible print on the church in Dodoma and around, which is why the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, one of the liveliest evangelical dioceses in the Anglican world, has resisted GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans. As a bishop in the early 1980s he carried through with his commitment to the empowerment of women, defying his synod and the Lambeth Conference by ordaining women to the priesthood because it was clear the Holy Spirit was with them. Kivengere’s story is one of liberation.

    He was not alone. Many of the key players in the East African Revival strove for the empowerment of women. This is true today, and exemplified by the great Ester Mombo. As a theological educator, Mombo has ensured top-class theological education for East Africn women as well as men. This means that across East Africa, and especially in Kenya, there are theologically educated women leaders. GAFCON tried to stop women being elected as bishops in Kenya, but true evangelical courage won out and the glass ceiling has been cracked, if not yet completely broken. This has huge implications in the fight against FGM and gender-based violence. Mombo is a relentless force for liberation.

    I am not suggesting that any of these heroes would have embraced equal marriage, but that as evangelicals they were all driven to challenge ‘orthodoxy’. Their lives and ministries were marked, not by signing declarations of faith, but by bringing liberation despite resistance from those representing ‘orthodox’ readings of the Bible.

    It is no accident that evangelicals have been at the forefront of liberation and created real change if Jesus is their inspiration.

    Jesus was never ‘orthodox’. His ministry was defined by his confrontation with orthodox leaders quoting the Scriptures and standing on tradition. He identified his ministry in releasing captives, bringing sight to the blind, and identification with the oppressed. He shocked the orthodox who expected him to endorse the rich as blessed by God and to engage in theological dialogue with the learned.

    He spoke angrily of the hypocrisy of the orthodox teachers and discussed theology with foreign women that no orthodox rabbi would even talk to informally. He did not observe the rules on ritual cleanliness, mixed with untouchables, and declared that he was free from the rules on the Sabbath.

    John the Baptist was shocked by the unorthodoxy of Jesus so he sought confirmation that Jesus was the chosen one.[4] In response Jesus did not send back a signed commitment to a statement of faith; rather, he responded by testimony to the signs of liberation.

    The evidence of allegiance with God in the world is not confessional orthodoxy – it is that ‘the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor’.

    I cannot see these signs of liberation in the move to tighten up confessional formulations of evangelical institutions. What I see are alliances with those who are driving the deepening criminalisation of LGBTI+ people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. I see limitations being placed on the ministry of women. I see protection being given to those who continue to promote so-called conversion therapy, with all the harm we know such therapies have had.

    I am ceasing to see the evangelical faith that inspired me in churches that have become obsessed with something they see as an ‘issue’ and which I understand as human complexity. For me, this evangelical ‘orthodoxy’ seems to be embracing law as the solution to sin and death.

    If traditional marriage can only be defended by guarding institutions and not by lives and acts of liberation, I fear it may not be of the Holy Spirit.

    Great evangelical leaders have always made stands against orthodoxy. Now is the time to choose the path of liberation.

     

    Notes

    [1] In this essay the words ‘orthodox’ and ‘orthodoxy’ refer to the use within Anglican evangelical statements and do not refer to the Eastern Orthodox Church. For further discussion see Paul Roberts, On the use and abuse of the term ‘orthodox’.

    [2] Richard A Burridge, ‘Being Biblical? Slavery, Sexuality, and the Inclusive Community’, 22nd Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Lecture.

    [3] Helen Mathers, ‘The Evangelical Spirituality of a Victorian Feminist: Josephine Butler, 1828–1906’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 52.2, April 2001, pp. 282 – 312.

    [4] See R.T. France, Matthew – Tyndale NT Commentary (IVP) p.192.