Category: Good Disagreement

After the Apology – What Next?
by the Revd Canon Giles Goddard, an LGBT member of the co-ordinating group for the Living in Love and Faith project

It’s been a pretty tumultuous and painful week. All sorts of people have been affected. A friend of mine was deeply upset by the Statement (I won’t call it ‘Pastoral’), both because of the way it seemed to speak to heterosexual couples outside marriage – she had never heard the Church’s current position expressed with such coldness – and because of its calamitous effect on the Church’s mission.

My own feelings were of betrayal – betrayal of process and of my personal position as an LGBTI+ member of the Church who is deeply committed to preaching a gospel of welcome, not fear, and who wants the Church to speak from a position where nobody is treated as an outsider.

I have heard a great deal of contrition from the College of Bishops and from the Archbishops and I am grateful for that. I hope it will help us to move on. But I also have a strong sense that the underlying causes for the publication of the Statement have only just begun to be addressed. I have had very recent conversations with bishops who remain dismayed by the Church’s way of being: still, deep down, dominated by a world-view which feels white, male and patriarchal in its teaching on sexuality and relationships. Women still find it hard to be heard. There is still a huge problem with BAME representation. There is only one out LGBTI+ bishop.

The deep regret about the publication of the Statement, and the acceptance of responsibility by the Archbishops, is welcome.

But I wish the apology had said more to truly acknowledge the effect of the tone and content. I wish the Statement could have been withdrawn. I fully understand that it simply expresses the Church’s current position, but it does so in such a horrible way. Perhaps the fact that it is still there points up even more urgently the huge task ahead of us: it’s like a heap of manure in the middle of the road that we will have to continue to walk past until we can find a way of removing it.

I am very concerned about the way this will impact on the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process. I am anxious about the hopes placed in it, almost as though LLF is a panacea that will get us out of jail free. It ain’t gonna happen like that! LLF is hard work, demanding real commitment and real openness across the board. It’s about relationships, and love, and joy, and gift, and all the things so conspicuously absent from the Statement.

So, what now?

I think there are at least four things that need to happen.
1. We need to know what the Bishops’ commitment to the LLF process actually means. On Wednesday the College of Bishops was divided into small groups, and in those groups people were encouraged to speak openly and truly about their feelings and about where they are on these issues. I understand that many groups produced good and honest conversations. Will they enable and encourage that to be replicated across Synod and the Dioceses in the coming year?
2. To do that, we need a substantive debate at the July Synod. One of the reasons for the rejection of GS2055 was the perception that it was completely top down. The House needs to trust Synod to have a constructive conversation, having used the LLF materials in small groups, so that the process can be commended to the whole Church by the House of Bishops and the General Synod. If that doesn’t happen, it’s hard to see how it can bring about any meaningful change.
3. LLF needs to be owned by the whole Church, conservative and progressive. I have been linked with the process since the start, and through it I have developed a better and deeper understanding of 1 Corinthians 12.21: ‘The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I do not need you.’ I am working again with Andrew Goddard, with whom some readers of this blog will remember I had a correspondence many years ago. We are friends. We want to find ways for each other to flourish in the Church, in accordance with the Pastoral Principles. We need to hear that from conservatives and progressives: it is better to walk together than apart. What will the cost of that be, to both sides? And how do we acknowledge honestly the pain and damage which the current situation is causing?
4. When LLF is launched, in June, it needs to be launched with generosity and humility from those in leadership. The resources which are on their way are, in many ways, remarkable. Many people have been extraordinarily generous with their time and their selves, being willing to participate in films about their lives and faith, writing and speaking honestly in an attempt to help the Church move on. They deserve our thanks and our honouring.
LLF is about relationships and about how we try to live in love and faith. As I write this I am on my way to media training in preparation for its launch. My earnest prayer is that, when it finally does emerge into the light of day, the Church’s message is along these lines:

We commit to listen, and to learn, and to share with one another. We know that we cannot continue as we are. The Gospel is too precious for us to keep hurting it as we have. We are, as a Church and as faithful Christians, on a journey. We aren’t sure where we will end up: but we trust God and ask for the Spirit’s help in travelling together.

Then, perhaps, we will begin to discover what ‘radical, new, Christian inclusion’ looks like. Perhaps we will begin to be able to speak with as much integrity about gender, marriage, sexuality and relationships as we are beginning to be able to speak about the other huge issue of the day, climate change.

I know that many readers of this blog are hoping for much more, much more quickly, from the Church. I share those hopes and, having been working on this for 25 years, I have many times nearly reached the point of opting out. I wish we could have had these conversations twenty years ago.

Many have asked me why I continue with LLF.

My answer is simple: because I really don’t see another way forward, other than the endless back and forth that we have been stuck with for so long, or a deep and hurtful split.

This feels like our last, best hope for a better Church and so I am doing all I can to try to help that to happen. I am grateful for all the prayers for those of us directly in the process: and pray that, as LLF is rolled out, we will all begin to learn and speak better of Jesus, of God’s love, and of the Spirit.
January 31, 2020
What Will Happen to the Church of England and Anglicans in 2020?

by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of Via Media and Director of the Ozanne Foundation

In a word or two – not very much!

For the vast majority of Anglicans both here in England and further abroad, the year ahead is likely to be one that is focused on the daily challenges of witnessing Christ to a world that needs to hear the Good News of Jesus more than ever before. It’s a task with which we Christians have been grappling with for many years, and this year is likely to be no different to any other.

Unlike the Revd David Baker in his article that responds to this precise question in Christian Today (Jan 2^nd 2020), I do not believe 2020 will be shaped by answers to questions relating to Church discussions on sexuality. Instead, I believe it will be shaped by whether we, the Church – in all our various denominational forms – can become known for the love that we profess to preach.

Interestingly, I doubt that very few churchgoers across the Anglican Communion have actually ever heard of the Church of England’s Evangelical Council or indeed of GAFCON. They will, however, have heard of the challenges their vicar faces in meeting the needs of the poor in their area and the growing inequality that exists between those who “have” and “have not” in their neighbourhood.

If they are in England, they will most likely know that their church has much in common with the other public services in their area that have been starved of investment and are struggling to cope with increased demand. Many will be concerned at the aging nature of their congregations and their diminishing ability to pay their parish share. Some will feel they have been raising this problem for many years with a central structure that they feel is not listening to their predicament, or who are ignoring their difficulties because they do not want to face the reality that the “system is broken”. Others will be excited about the calling that God has placed on their hearts but will be struggling to see how they can follow it with all the other demands that are being placed on them.

What I believe will unite the majority is a deep frustration with church politics that seems to “get in the way” of their mission. Many have no idea why the Church of England doesn’t practice what it preaches and allow its doors to be open wide enough for everyone to feel welcomed and celebrated.

If there is one thing that I do foresee happening in 2020, it is a major show down between the hither-to-silent laity and their leaders, particularly in conservative churches. Personally, I think many clergy are likely to be in for quite a shock – particularly in terms of the reactions from their younger members – when they finally come clean about where they stand on certain issues.

(As an aside, do you know where your own vicar stands on the issues that matter to you most? Why not resolve to ask them directly this year if you haven’t already done so?)

So, what will happen to the Church of England in 2020?

It will continue much as it has always done to live in the grey world of compromise, otherwise known as trying to hold in tension as broad a set of views on any particular topic as possible. Some may feel they have to leave as they cannot accept that others hold differing views to them with just as much sincerity and depth of belief. They will not be the first to leave nor the last, for this is a trait that has been going on for centuries. However, the vast majority will continue “like a mighty tortoise” (as the parody of Onward Christian Soldiers states) “…treading where we’ve often trod”.

Tortoise or no tortoise, the direction of travel on various issues is clear.

We will continue to speak out for the poor and the marginalised, challenging those “who have” to open their hearts and their wallets to those “who have not”. We will continue to be the hands, ears and feet that seek to serve and support those around us who need practical help, or someone to talk to. We will continue to use our considerable investment power to influence large multinationals and hold them to account over their climate change commitments. We will continue to try and hold those in power to account, including in our own internal church structures.

Most of all, we will continue to love without question – without caveats or exception clauses. And we will move to ensure that no one is ever excluded from celebrating the love that they have found and wish to commit to with regards to their significant other.

And what of the Anglican Communion in 2020?

God quite literally knows.

Institutions by their very nature are man-made, and the Anglican Communion is no exception. It is out of most of our hands as to what happens.

But whatever does happen two things are certain – the God of Love will continue to be worshipped and the Good News of Jesus will continue to be shared.

Happy New Year!

January 6, 2020
A Tale of Two Kitties

by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of Via Media and Director of the Ozanne Foundation

I have recently been adopted by two kittens – brothers born on September 27^th. I decided to resist the temptation of calling them Boris and Jeremy – to be fair, neither are good names for a cat – and have instead called them Oscar and Louie. One after my paternal grandfather, in memory of my late father who died in September, and the other after a giant LGBT+ hero of the faith, Louie Crew Clay, who died on November 27^th – the day I brought them home.

Despite being born just minutes apart they are strikingly different – just as I’m sure both Oscar Ozanne and Louie Crew Clay would have found themselves to be. These two kittens may be brothers, but that’s where the similarities end. They play with different toys, rest in different places, like different food. They chase each other endlessly around the house, lie in wait for each other, fight and go for each other’s jugulars. And then, when it’s all over, they lie down together, snuggle up and go to sleep. They won’t be separated – you see, they’re brothers.

Of course, it’s got me thinking.

They each seem to see the world very differently. Louie – who was taken away from his mother a little too early and was then returned because the owner decided she wanted a female rather than a male cat – is very cautious. He spent his first few days finding the best places to hide and wouldn’t let me anywhere near him. He’s come around, of course, as it’s amazing what love can do – along with a continual supply of his favourite cat food. Oscar on the other hand couldn’t have felt more at home from the moment he came out of the cat box – confident, strong and with a sense of entitled privilege, he immediately requisitioned my armchair and pillow.

So why am I sharing all this?

It strikes me that after a week which has torn so many within our nation apart, which has shocked and scared and wounded and surprised so many, it’s time we learnt how to live with each other a bit better – especially those who see things rather differently to the way we do.

It may be too soon to be reflecting on all of this, but I for one have been saddened at the way that people have jumped to see the worst rather than the best in each other. They have been quick to pass judgement, to impugn the motives of those they hardly know – on all sides. They have gone for the jugular, bitten deep and hard, with a hope that it would wound and hurt – and frequently it does. They have lain in wait ready to jump and pounce, but without the expectation that at the end of the day they will curl up together, finding support from each other as they share the same bed, our nation.

As it happens this is the first time in a long time that I’ve found myself in a mothering role, otherwise known as the “responsible adult”. I have reflected that it’s impossible to choose who I prefer between my two little men – I love them both equally. Yes, they show their love and affection to me in very differing ways – one will sit on my lap, the other will show me his tummy – but love me they undoubtedly do. To be honest, I don’t really mind how they choose to express this, the important thing is that it is completely natural and not forced – for the moment I try and make them do something they are unhappy with is the moment their purring ceases. The connection is lost.

Just like us – from Stanford in C to Matt Redmond’s Heart of Worship – we each connect differently with the way we seek to worship our Creator God. We all know this, but why are we so (excuse the pun) catty about it? Why do we take it out on those who prefer a different way of expressing their love and adoration for our God?

Wouldn’t it make life so much easier if we could just learn to accept that we are intrinsically different? That we see the world differently. That we interact with the world differently. That we worship and express our love for our Creator differently.

Could we not find a way of recognising the good in those around us, rather than lying in wait to jump on those who hold – in all good conscience – a different understanding of how we can each just “be”? Yes, we can of course disagree, we can argue, we can even go for the jugular at times. But at the end of the day, wouldn’t it be so much more peaceful if we all just could curl up together and go to sleep?

For we’ve brothers (well, and sisters of course) – born of the same flesh and sharing the same lineage.

And perhaps most importantly, loved equally and unconditionally by our Father/Mother God.

December 18, 2019
A Call to “Take Sides”!
by the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool and Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

In an increasingly polarised and angry West it may seem perverse to say that we need to be clear about taking sides. Surely the work of civilised people, and in particular of those who follow the Prince of Peace, is to avoid taking sides – to work instead at bringing all sides together and seeking consensus, agreement, emollience? Surely that would be the pastoral thing to do? And the Church is primarily a pastoral entity – isn’t it?

In “Liberating God”, his remarkable study of “Private care and public struggle”[1], Bishop Peter Selby has wise and prophetic things to say about this understanding. He writes of the default setting of our pastoral care, which is crystallised in words such as “attentiveness”, “empathy”, “caring”, “openness”, “a non-judgemental attitude” – and of course he knows and emphasises the value of all these things, especially as they apply to individual care for the hurting. But he also says that if this is all we do, and all we think we are for, then we may be missing a vital contribution to the public square.

We may indeed be missing something of what our Scripture and our tradition calls us to. And so he regrets that:

“The minimising of pain and the reduction of tension do not appear as one side of an argument, to be balanced against the possible value that disturbance may have.”

He continues:

“…we should at least consider a new aspect of the pastoral relationship. This aspect involves making pastoral care not only listening but also a taking of sides.”

This week a new biography of one of my predecessors as Bishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard, was published. Called “Batting for the Poor”, it is written by Professor Andrew Bradstock[2]. It tells the story of a privileged young man, a sporting hero, who was changed and indeed radicalised by his conversion to Christianity and by his immersion in Scripture and in the life of the underprivileged, first in East and South London and then here in Liverpool. In short it tells the story of a man who was led to take sides.

Despite the accusations which were laid against Bishop David of political naïveté and of flirting with Marxism, Andrew Bradstock writes: “Sheppard had carefully avoided direct involvement in party politics while in Woolwich and Liverpool…”. But he then goes on: “Sheppard said he ‘would certainly accept the label of Christian socialism – which doesn’t always mean commitment to one particular programme.’” [3]

As I read this I was led to consider how bishops speak today, how language has changed over the years since Bishop David lived in the house where I now live.

Times change.

Ours is an overheated climate in more ways than one, with every political party ready to throw accusations of partisanship at anyone who speaks into the public square. In such an election climate it’s all too easy for people to misspeak, throwing verbal fuel on a pretty hot fire, producing more heat than light.

It would be better then to look for the fruit of thought, or in another image to identify the political compass which people try to follow, and which they invite others to follow in the particular currents and channels of each person’s own life and commitments. And a powerful and relevant example is to hand.

In their excellent joint letter for the General Election, published earlier this week, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York speak strongly of the need for prayer and respect for our politicians, for unity and for courtesy in public discourse, and very rightly so.

But their letter is also crystal clear as to the Christian imperative:

“…we must put the vulnerable and those on the edges of society first … That includes justice for the oppressed, protection for the persecuted, and a commitment to combat climate change and adapt to its effects. It also includes a just economic system, open and encouraging to aspiration and ambition, supportive of those who struggle.”

It does not seem to me that Bishop David Sheppard would find anything here with which to disagree. Certainly I agree with it. The Church follows its Lord who took the side of the poor. Taking sides need not mean taking up labels, but it must surely mean taking Jesus seriously.

My own public statements on this election are few, and very brief, but I believe they stand in the tradition lived out by Bishop David decades ago, the tradition mapped out by our Archbishops this week.

For better or worse I have chosen to express them on Twitter, and they stretch to three tweets. They constitute a pale echo of the stand taken by Bishop David and by Archbishop Sentamu and Archbishop Justin. But here they are:

Let me say again what I say in every election: if you’re a Christian, then (after praying, reading and learning) cast your vote in the way that you believe will help the poorest most. ?#Election ?#ChooseLife

Electing: six suggestions in two tweets.
1. Pray, read and think before you choose.
2. Seek the truth. It can still be found, even if it is harder to find nowadays. Dig.
3. Vote. It’s not true that they’re all a shower, not true that your vote will make no difference. Vote.
1. Vote in such a way as to help the poorest most.
2. Vote for a government – it’s not a referendum, not a presidential election.
3. Resist those everywhere who stir up fear of others, Antisemitism, Islamophobia.
I commend these simple ideas to you – in the hope that they might help you at the moment when, whatever side you choose to take, you take sides; that is, for the moment when you vote.

© 2019 +Paul Liverpool

[1] SPCK 1983

[2] SPCK 2019

[3] “Batting for the Poor”, p.274
November 25, 2019
Unity or Truth?

by the Very Revd Dr David Ison, Dean of St Paul’s, Member of General Synod and Vice-Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

I was talking with a church leader the other day who lamented that they kept getting criticised by Christians who accused them of valuing Unity above Truth.

This is a variant of the ‘good disagreement is bad disagreement’ argument, which goes:

as Christians we must agree on the Truth of the Christian Gospel –

but we don’t agree on what we think are fundamental Christian truths –

therefore we cannot be in Unity, and saying that we can disagree yet live together in Unity is dishonest.

One of the subtexts of this argument is the question of how Truth is defined and who defines it? The call to believe ‘biblical truth’ is a demand to share my particular view about ‘what the Bible says’; the call to ‘believe what the Church has believed in every place and time’ begs the question of how the Church is defined and who assesses its history; the call to use reason and experience requires defining what assumptions you start with and whose experience you’re talking about.

Another subtext is the question of belonging.

To adapt Grace Davie’s sociological question about faith: do you believe first and then find a group that you agree with, or do you find a group to belong to first and adopt the views of that particular group over against others? Can you change your mind and still stay in your group? How do individuals and the group check that what they believe is Truth, compared with the views of others and the realities around them?

These are all big questions, which politicians as well as religious believers are grappling with. How far can you follow your conscience, your view of the Truth, in politics or faith, without getting expelled from the party? Do you swallow hard and vote for what you don’t like because you think Unity is more important? Or do you exit on a point of principle?

If you have a propositional view of Truth, a binary and credal approach (‘true or false, believe or not?’) then you’ll want to know that you and others are in propositional step with each other as the basis for Unity, and expel others from your party.

But in Christian thinking, Unity is not uniformity, and the joy of the Christian Gospel is that it’s not propositional, but relational. It’s not about believing all the right things about God and salvation (‘even demons believe – and shudder’, James 2.19); it’s putting your trust in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and being his disciple.

The great diversity of the Christian Church is its strength: it requires us to look at ourselves through the eyes of other disciples, to help us answer the question as to whether we follow the one who is the Truth (the Way and the Life), or follow rather the gospel according to ourselves. We need one another’s criticisms and questions, in a spirit of openness and humility, in order to be faithful to the Word who is Truth. We aren’t made to be uniform, but to be united in Christ.

That’s why the Eucharist is central to Christian faith: we share the sacrament of Jesus Christ, and we are united to one another through him. Whatever boundaries we draw around Christ’s table are provisional, because they’re our boundaries not His. Our denomination may not be ‘in communion’ with other Christians or churches, but we’re all in communion with Jesus Christ nonetheless, and therefore with each other. Like it or not. Our Unity is based on the Truth of God’s saving love for us in Jesus Christ.

Unity or Truth? It’s both, of course; not as defined by us, but by God’s love for us in Christ.

In the words of the Percy Dearmer hymn I was singing in St Paul’s the day I wrote this:

Jesus, who our sorrows bearest, all our thoughts and hopes thou sharest,

thou to us the truth declarest; help us all thy truth to hear.

Lord, in all our doings guide us; pride and hate shall ne’er divide us;

We’ll go on with thee beside us, and with joy we’ll persevere!

October 25, 2019
An Anglican Communion at a Crossroads?
by the Very Revd Dr David Ison, Dean of St Paul’s and Vice-Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

On holiday recently I read a book I was sent last year. It’s called The Anglican Communion at a Crossroads – The Crises of a Global Church, by Christopher Craig Brittain and Andrew McKinnon (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018). It doesn’t look exciting (no pictures, even on the cover!), but is very helpful in understanding what’s going on in the Anglican Communion as it approaches the Lambeth Conference 2020 – and maybe too how we can re think ways we handle social and political conflict more generally.

Drawing on over a hundred interviews, the authors look at the last twenty years of conflict in the Anglican Communion, quoting senior church figures worldwide (mostly bishops), and looking in detail at the schism that occurred in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in 2008 which led to the establishment of the Anglican Church in North America.

There’s lots of interesting stuff here. It emphasises how complex is what’s going on – it’s not just ‘biblically faithful conservatives’ versus ‘enlightened liberals’. The conflicts within churches are being shaped by globalisation and communications technology, which make the tensions between the global and the local ever harder to manage, right across every aspect of our world from immigration to the environment, as well as about our understandings of sexuality.

Two examples to consider. Brittain and McKinnon found some truth in the argument that support for gay Christians in some Anglican churches of the Global North may lead to persecution of Christians by Muslims in Africa and elsewhere, but that political and economic divisions were seen by Anglican leaders as rather more powerful in fuelling Christian-Muslim conflict. More than that, being outspokenly anti-gay was seen as a necessary response to competition from independent Pentecostalist churches which were winning converts by portraying Anglicanism as a compromised church. And the authors also quoted an African bishop who hosted two delegations of visiting Anglicans to his diocese, groups of other Christians who were rejected by some of his churches because they either ordained women or ordained homosexuals; one Anglican delegation was from east Africa and one from South Africa – neither was from the Global North.

The reality is complex.

The Anglican Church is divided on many issues and at many levels, from local parishes to the worldwide Communion. Geographical boundaries have broken down, as cheap travel and communications have made it possible for bishops from South America or elsewhere in the Global South to give support to disaffected groups in the Global North.

And conflict has focused on sexuality as opposed to doctrine or the ordination of women, because new technology has made it possible: there was no internet in 1992 when the Church of England voted to ordain women as priests. Would the Pittsburgh schism have happened without the support of the internet? And how long will it be before ‘affirming churches’ in the Global North (or South) create a GAFCON-style network of their own?

Internal division within churches is perhaps more open in the Global North (hence the Church of England’s Learning in Love and Faith initiative), but none of us are good at handling it. Brittain and McKinnon’s study of Pittsburgh’s schism, and their musings on the Diocese of Sydney’s (lack of) relationship with most of the Australian Anglican Church, underline the need for reflection on the issue. They offer some analyses of why three current strategies to bring unity in the Communion aren’t working.
- The GAFCON strategy of being ‘biblically faithful’ depends on claims by a few to have the authoritative view (‘what the Bible says’), while suppressing internal divisions and disagreements by focusing on one issue (sexuality), in order to avoid classic Anglican disagreements between catholics and evangelicals (e.g. about lay people presiding at eucharistic services).
- The sentimental view of ‘the Anglican family’ with its historic ‘bonds of affection’ (and Brittain and KcKinnon quote a bishop’s image of ‘a bowl of spaghetti’ to describe the entangled links between Anglicans). These links struggle to survive when faced with groups who seek to disentangle tangled strands into straight lines, using the bible (GAFCON) or a conciliar synodical process (American Episcopalian Anglicans) as alternative sources for their authority, reacting against neo-colonial links with Canterbury.
- Attempts to find a mid-way between full communion and federalism by setting up managerial structures (e.g. the Anglican Consultative Council or the Primates’ Meeting), or proposing an Anglican ‘covenant’, have also been less than successful.
So, where are we going, in a binary-thinking digital and post-Brexit world?

GAFCON draws its power from opposing the acceptance of same-sex relationships, and defines the ‘other’ as unfaithful to the Christian gospel, in good sectarian fashion. But, just as history teaches us that a common enemy unites different groups, so it tells us that without that enemy then underlying tensions and divisions will re-emerge. So if part of the Anglican Church splits away, it will then itself split, because Anglican conservative catholics and evangelicals disagree about so much – it’s what they’re against that brings them together into a common alliance. Hence the importance for them of having sexuality as their powerful uniting issue, and why they will not accept compromise by seeing it as anything less than a first-order issue of true faith.

Let’s take a view that’s wider still: what can Anglicans learn from the Church universal in how it handles local diversity and common faith?

As the New Testament shows, from Acts chapter 6 onwards the church universal has faced divisions. Sectarian splits over the centuries have gone along with the use of an external enemy (e.g. Anglicans versus Roman Catholics) to hold internal dissidents in check. But over the last century or more, the Church universal has made messy, halting and yet real progress towards greater ‘communion’, in two ways.

One is by working together in mission across denominational boundaries, in common commitment to Jesus Christ. The other is by building local, national and international relationships to bring people closer together, which has included dialogue to help understand and ameliorate issues which have caused division, as well as setting up some structures (e.g. the World Council of Churches) which have provided a focus for meeting and for growing a common sense of purpose.

The most successful results of this have not been major projects for structural unity, or new ecumenical councils, but work towards greater ‘communion’ while recognising the integrity of local and national churches (and Christians of all sorts) in their particular callings.

This is a much healthier recipe for building up the Church universal, and its mission to a diverse and broken world, than trying to seize on a common enemy as a strategy for repressing dissent. It’s a good recipe for building up the Anglican Communion too. It also chimes with the views of both Jesus and Paul: ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get’ (Mathew 7.1-2); ‘Who are you to pass judgement on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand’ (Romans 14.4).

Brittain and McKinnon’s book title puts the Anglican Communion at a ‘Crossroads’. Which other road might we follow, whether or not we’re Anglicans, and how might we refute the binary thinking of our modern globalised age?

Well, we might with our fellow-Christians begin with our shared desire to follow Jesus Christ and be centred on him, and not sit in judgement on those with whom we disagree. We could base our unity, not on a written founding document or declaration, but on our relationship with the incarnate God who loves us equally. And we might just learn to define ourselves by what we’re for, not what we’re against, and refuse to think of people as ‘the other’ – not only in relation to matters of faith, but to all our fellow-humans, standing up against the exclusion and nastiness of our current age, so that together we live out the gospel of the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Brittain and McKinnon’s book concludes with a question to leaders of the Anglican Communion, which we could broaden into a question for each and all of us. Will the voices calling us to ‘walk apart’ and end the experiment we’re making to live with difference (whether it’s in the Anglican Communion, the Christian Church, our political divisions or in the human race itself) continue to strengthen? Or can we redefine the crises we face into the challenge to follow the shared purpose and end to which God is calling us (mission, love, mutual service) and so transform the world in the image of Christ?
September 21, 2019
Are We to be Doomed by Intransigence?

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

Whether or not Albert Einstein actually said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” I think we can all agree that in the most part this sentiment holds true.

That said, perhaps a better, more accurate saying actually might be “if you want a different result then you have to try a different approach”.

Certainly President Trump and the Democrats could learn this, and arguably Theresa May and her Brexit deal too (we’ll find out soon enough!).

One thing is clear though, simply repeating the same rhetoric over and over again is not likely to unlock any deadlock or move people nearer to finding a solution that is acceptable to the majority.

While many would love for the content of what is being said in various key debates to change, the first thing that normally needs to be addressed is that of the debate’s tone. Hence the constant talk of “good disagreement” – not as an endpoint, but as a way of working together towards trying to find one.

Anyone who heard President Trump lambasting the Democrats for not agreeing on his demands for a border wall, and laying the blame for any deaths of children in custody firmly at their feet, will understand I am sure what I mean.

He has stormed out of meetings, he has shouted at reporters, he has made what many would see as outrageous claims – but the one thing he has not done is modelled any form of “good disagreement”. Or compromise. For to do so would be seen as weakness, or so it seems he believes.

This is “stubborn hard man” diplomacy – which most of us learnt earlier in our childhood rarely works.

Intransigence it seems can be rather infectious, affecting both sides of the pond. Indeed, our very own Prime Minister has been accused of the same tactic.

However, at least in her case she has brokered a deal with all 27 EU nations, and appears to be trying to address some of the concerns expressed over the backstop. Perhaps most importantly, her tone – whilst firm – has been far more respectful and as such a much better model of “good disagreement”. Who can forget her willingness to sit, listen and answer hours of questions in the chamber back in mid-December – a model that perhaps her counterpart in the US would do well to heed?

Intransigence, of course, is not the sole purview of politicians.

We see it constantly in various polarised debates across society – not least in matters concerning the sexuality debate within the Church.

I would suggest we had a perfect example of it last week.

A letter signed by some 100+ clergy within a large diocese of over 1500 clergy, which criticised their bishop for a letter he himself had sent a few months before. Their complaint? That he had failed to mention things that they felt he should have said, and that he had said things that they felt he should not have said (despite it being completely in line with the current House of Bishops guidelines). Their “overriding concern”, or so they said, was that it implied a certain “direction of travel” in the diocese – even though it was a direction that the Archbishops themselves had committed the whole Church to undertake.

Ironically it beautifully proved why the bishop’s letter was needed in the first place!

Of course the hard truth is that their letter said nothing new. It was the same intransigence that we have seen throughout this whole debate. Yet again they chose to ignore the fact that – as the House of Bishops have themselves stated – there is a wide body of opinion on this matter. Yet again they failed to engage with the critical issue of pastoral care for the LGBTI community and the significant harm that has been caused by their teaching. Yet again they threatened to go elsewhere if their demands weren’t met.

What struck me most however was the letter’s tone.

It’s a tone that many are now becoming all too familiar with.

It’s a tone that has the veneer of seeming gracious and kind, yet has veiled threats at its heart. An iron fist in a velvet glove. “Stubborn hardman diplomacy” that gets us nowhere.

It’s a standoff.

Or should I say a very Mexican standoff?

Where (according to Wikipedia) “no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory. As a result, all participants need to maintain the strategic tension, which remains unresolved until some outside event makes it possible to resolve it.”

So what could this outside event look like I wonder?

Well, it’s very difficult to speak for either the US or UK situations, but I wonder whether in the Church it will be when the congregations of these clergy start to stand up to them and say “Not in my name!”

Ideally of course they would follow this up with action – such as choosing to stop their financial assistance, and perhaps instead divert it to an inclusive church organisation.

The good news is that we know that there is an inevitably about this particular “standoff”. For research has shown there is a younger generation of Christians that are growing older by the year who hold a completely different view on this issue to their older leaders.

It is purely a matter of time.

Sadly there is the burning question about how many lives will be traumatised before this time comes to pass…but the answer to that is of course in our hands.

My answer to the very Mexican standoff that we are currently experiencing is therefore that we pray that the voices of those in the pews will become louder over the year ahead, and that they will vote with either their feet or their wallet against letters sent in their name.

January 14, 2019
Toxic Debates & Disagreement

by Erika Baker, Convener of the Christians for LGBTI+ Equality Facebook Group

Our current polarising Brexit debate shows us what happens when politics does not include the notion of Good Disagreement, and when winning at all cost comes at the price of demonising those who don’t agree with us, and even lying about them.

Getting close to people, truly understanding their concerns and not demonising them is the only solution to the clash of civilisations Jayne Ozanne highlights so well in her latest Via Media post. As long as we divide people dismissively into ‘Remoaners’ and ‘Brexshitters’, or into con-evos and liberals, whereby both words are devoid of any real meaning beyond “disagrees with me on something important”, we will only increase the level of mutual misunderstanding, suspicion and dislike for each other. Without breaking down our own resistance to giving up our beloved stereotypes, we will never get to that holy grail of Good Disagreement. That state where we respect each other’s views and, even if we don’t agree with them, stop fighting each other with such corrosive passion.

That said, Good Disagreement in itself is not anything tangible. It’s a frame of mind, a way of engaging with people. Of itself, it is not a solution to anything. In our LGBTI+ debates, we absolutely must find a way of developing an attitude of Good Disagreement before we can begin constructive conversations about what it is we are disagreeing about and how we can find a solution.

Our Brexit debacle, the decades leading up to it and the way it currently plays out in our politics teaches us something else: If one side in a political debate is completely disenfranchised and feels powerless, the only outcome is resentment, increasing hostility towards “the others” and a semi?permanent sense of victimhood. Good and durable political outcomes can only be achieved when all participants have an equal voice in the process, when compromise has been sought and found, and when people feel that everyone’ s interests have been taken seriously.

For our LGBTI+ conversations this means that while we can learn to understand why each side holds their views, and why each side can hold them with genuine love and faith, we simply cannot leave it there. We cannot just stay at the table, accepting that it is difficult.

Living side by side in acceptance of difference is impossible while one side experiences genuine discrimination, in law and in every day Church life. The disenfranchised people in that unequal conversation are never going to accept that they must continue not to have genuine agency in their lives and that they must live out the consequences of other people’s theology while their own is simply dismissed.

It is not possible for the Church as a whole to welcome the “good” LGBTI++ people who believe that God calls them to celibacy and to force the other LGBTI++ people to accept reduced lives that are not aligned with their understanding of God’s will for their lives. There can be no genuine mutuality when only trans people who don’t seek to transition are fully accepted into the fold. There can be no genuine welcome for intersex people while churches define the status of a person born with a variety of sex characteristics as ‘disordered’.

It is not possible for us LGBTI++ people and for our allies to accept that those who disagree with us have the unilateral right to make the rules that govern our lives.

Mutual Flourishing, that other holy grail developed during the Women Bishops debate, is only possible when both sides are genuinely equal and can freely disagree with each other. Our debate can only be solved when competing theologies are officially given equal status and when all legal constraints are removed. Yes: removing all legal constraints and permitting equal marriage for lay people and clergy is not the end point. It’s the baseline without which no peace will be possible.

That’s why I don’t hold with the idea that we must always accept that we may be wrong. It is not credible to expect that happily married gay people who know God’s grace in their lives will suddenly be persuaded that they should have suffered loneliness and self-hatred instead.

It is not credible to expect that trans people who have found wholeness and healing in transitioning will be persuaded to believe that living with constant gender dysphoria would have been what God wanted from them.

And it is not credible to expect intersex people to accept the violation inflicted on them by doctors, and to accept the verdict that they are disordered.

Nor is it credible to expect that gay people who believe that God asks all gay people to lead celibate lives, and who live up to that belief with great courage, faith and personal struggle, will suddenly come to believe that their efforts were misguided.

We and our allies on both sides of this conversation have all grappled with the topic of gender, sexuality and Scripture deeply for years, and none of us with a genuine stake in the debate are likely to come to a different conclusion.

The attitude of Good Disagreement is needed to help us to recognise why people believe what they believe and respecting that. It is not about winning a battle and beating the other side into submission. Rather, it is about recognising that all of us, on all sides of this debate, are living out our lives in faith and trust in the same loving God. And that we are each answerable to God for our own lives and choices. We can take the risk of allowing others to live differently.

Once we commit to an attitude of Good Disagreement , we can finally create a Church that enables genuine mutual flourishing for all.

December 7, 2018
Is Agreement Over-Rated?

by the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool

In 2012 Rowan Williams published a collection of lectures under the title “Faith in the Public Square”. They are significant contributions to a whole range of issues, and each lecture was spoken in the expectation that there would indeed be a public square within which they would be heard.

Even in 2012 this was a debatable proposition, and it’s yet more so now. The public square is splintering and is being replaced with a series of echo-chambers within which people build up their own micro-solidarities, and from which they issue manifestos aimed at others, not in the room, who disagree with them.

We risk abandoning the public square for a series of private circles who never meet directly. Recent actions of the US President are an example of what I mean. He attended remembrance-related meetings in France at which statements about nationalism were made by the French President in his presence. He seems to have said nothing about them publicly in the presence of his peers, preferring to launch Twitter broadsides against President Macron later from the safety of the White House.

This sort of behaviour is rooted in human emotion, and in particular in fear and aggression. Today, blame for it is usually laid at the door of the social media platforms. But the temptation to avoid the hard work of meeting other people, and instead to pillory them from a safe fortress, is far older than Facebook and Twitter.

This fragmentation of the public square leads to bad disagreement.

By contrast I myself believe in the possibility, and now and again the reality, of good disagreement. Within the Anglican family I strongly stand with those, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who commend good disagreement and work towards it within the churches and the Communion and who see it as a potential gift of the Church to the world, a potential gift of our community to the splintered public square.

But good disagreement is not easy, and not comfortable. For disagreement to be good it must first be recognised as disagreement, and faced as disagreement, and worked through as disagreement. This recognition and facing and work should not be confused with another task – trying to dissolve disagreement by producing a synthesis with which all may agree. This is often a commendable aim and it works well when a problem is simple.

But some problems are not simple. They are wicked.

As Wikipedia will tell you, “A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term “wicked” here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil. Another definition is “a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point”. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.”

The present turmoils in the UK over Brexit are suitably wicked. They demonstrate once again, as if the matter needed demonstration, that you can’t please everyone and that attempting to do so pleases no one. And yet decisions must be made and conclusions reached, preferably by people in the room together. But this is not what is happening, with a Cabinet from which new people are resigning daily and occasionally hourly.

So what should be the disposition of people in the nation – and in the churches – who face wicked problems together, in the splintered public square, with the intention of working towards good disagreement? Well, Jimmy Cagney knew.

Asked about the art of performance, the great Hollywood star summed up his working philosophy in the words at the head of this article: “Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and tell the truth.” There’s a lot to be said for this way of being.

“Find your mark…” Cagney is speaking of the bits of tape, stuck to the floor of a film set out of the camera’s sight, which tell the actor where to stand if he or she is to be properly lit and placed. In the movies it helps to find your mark, to know where you stand. And not only in the movies.

The great Jesuit peace campaigner Daniel Berrigan, imprisoned many times for nonviolent civil disobedience, used to say “know where you stand – and stand there”.

Good disagreement demands transparency about what people think and what they want to see done. Bad disagreement, the sort of disagreement we’re seeing in the Conservative Party over Brexit, involves threatening to leave the room, or actually leaving the room, and replacing conversation with articles in newspapers, open letters, leaked statements and the like.

Threatening to leave a room strains and splinters the public square, but it also gets you noticed. As the US political commentator David Frum said in last week’s “Atlantic” magazine, speaking of the Republican Party: “In politics, it’s very often the people nearest the exits who claim the most attention”. By contrast good disagreement involves remaining in the room, finding your mark and then seeing who else is there.

“…look the other fellow in the eye…” Especially when facing wicked problems, human connection matters. It is harder to objectify or demonise someone if you face them across a table. Miraculous, rabbit-from-the-hat solutions are unlikely (though with God all things are possible), but surprising convergences and unlikely alliances can emerge from conversations in the room. The partnership between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness in Northern Ireland stands as an example from the political world of what can happen when people stay in the room and eyeball one another.

Bad disagreement emerges when people do not look one another in the eye – in other words when the elephants stand unchallenged in the empty room, when a jaunty and distant politeness takes the place of an honest conversation.

“…and tell the truth.” A frustrated diplomat once said that the people he was meeting “do not think what they feel, do not say what they think, and do not do what they say.” Bad disagreement emerges when people for whatever reason – fear, confusion, ulterior motive – do not tell the truth to themselves or to others.

To tell the truth is to make yourself vulnerable, because you could be wrong. Anyone who faces another in a room of disagreement should be saying to themselves, as well as to the other, the words that Oliver Cromwell spoke to the Scottish Church Assembly: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken”. Or as the Marxist Rosa Luxembourg put it: “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently”.

But at any given moment it helps conversation if you communicate what you believe to be true, even though you’re open to a change of mind. And the truth is not always sharp and clear. Communicating an honest confusion is better than communicating a false clarity. It helps then to remain in the room with others, and openly to share the truth you have to share. To do so is to move either towards understanding and agreement, or towards understanding and good disagreement.

Agreement is lovely, if it is indeed agreement; the end of a journey and not a fudged waymarker on the road to a quiet life. Too often however, in the words of my friend Shannon Johnston the retired Bishop of Virginia, “Agreement is over-rated”. Cheap, hasty, quiet-life agreement is over-rated. It closes down the conversation. It puts an end to the meeting in the room. And in the end it breaks, and returns us to the remote and tribal mud-slinging that marks our political discourse in these days. By contrast good disagreement is a disenchanted but human possibility, demanding patience and forbearance, from which divine surprises may indeed emerge.

Find your mark, look the other person in the eye, and tell the truth.

To do so is to contribute to the building of the public square once again. In the splintered, fractious social and political climate in which we are compelled to live today, surely by God’s grace this is the least we can do together.

November 16, 2018