ViaMedia

Category: Human Sexuality

  • Let’s Disagree to Agree: Rwanda and Homosexuality

    by David Bagnall, Associate Rector of St John’s Episcopal Church, Edinburgh. Formerly chaplain of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, his PhD thesis examined the role played by language and discourse in generating new concepts of homosexuality in the Anglican Church of Rwanda

    One of the perishingly few points of general agreement within the sexuality controversies currently wracking the Anglican Communion is that everyone disagrees. Disagreement, as we all know, is at the heart of the issue – indeed, that’s the whole point. Put crudely, liberals, generally in the Global North, think that homosexuality is a God-given identity to be cherished and nurtured along with everything else that is sacred and holy; conservatives on the other hand, generally in the Global South, think that homosexuality is sinful and is a way of life chosen by fallen humans in defiance of God’s law and purpose. So far so simple: we disagree. Or so we might think…

    My research focuses on sexuality debates within the Anglican Church of Rwanda (ACR), and in particular on the role the Rwandan church has played within global sexuality controversies. Research in this area is continually fascinating, of course, but among the most startling of my findings has been the fact that, contrary to popular opinion (my own included), disputes regarding sexuality across the communion aren’t so much characterised by disagreement but rather by misunderstanding, or even miscommunication. My research focuses on debates between the ACR and the Church of England, and therefore involves interviewing many priests from both provinces about their experiences in discussions and dialogues, and time and again – to my surprise – interviewees report not so much disagreeing with their interprovincial colleagues but actually failing to understand them. Many priests I interviewed described such conversations as being deeply frustrating, with one CofE priest telling me that almost every conversation had been ‘a non-starter’, and a Rwandan Bishop noting that ‘there is no listening’ within the debates. Moreover, when asked about the nature of this frustration, members of both churches described it consistently in terms of a failure, not to agree, but even to understand one another. One CofE priest, for instance, told me of a conversation with a Rwandan friend regarding homosexuality in which his friend ‘couldn’t understand’ what it was that he was trying to describe, and that there was ‘a massive…difference’ in what they were each attempting to communicate. One CofE Bishop, too, told me that he felt that there was ‘a very big gap’ in understanding during conversations he’d had with Rwandans, and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams noted that such conversations seemed to him to be ‘a dialogue of the deaf’. One Rwandan priest, finally, commented that for this reason sexuality is ‘difficult to talk about’, and Bishop Nathan Amooti of Kigali, reflecting on such difficulties, concluded sombrely that ‘there’s no proper dialogue’.

    The reasons for these misunderstandings are multiple and complex, and are too lengthy to detail in a single blog post, but at their centre is the fact that there are wildly diverse meanings conveyed within the English word ‘homosexuality’ when used by different actors across the Anglican Communion. For British Anglicans – regardless of their opinions on the subject – my research reveals that the meanings and resonances conveyed in the word reflect its deep and entangled history of usage within the British Isles. It has roots in psychopathology, but contains insights from theology, politics, socio-cultural discourses, and even legal practice. It has resonances of everything from the Wolfenden Report to Virginia Woolf; from Stonewall to David Beckham’s sarong. In other words, the word ‘homosexuality’ has a particular and culturally contingent history within the UK, all of which is contained within and expressed by it when used by British people.

    By contrast, the word ‘homosexuality’ has a startlingly short history within Rwanda. In Anglican circles it first appears within interprovincial documents in the late 1970s, but is barely mentioned until it suddenly explodes into life during the mid-2000s, during which time the ACR established deep bilateral partnership with disaffected conservative American Anglicans. It was by means of this partnership that an astonishing wave of anti-homosexual literature entered the Rwandan Church and. once there. came to redefine and renegotiate native and organic understandings of what we would call homosexual behaviour. For, just as homosexuality has a rich and complex history of development within the UK, so does what we would call homosexuality have a correspondingly deep history of development within Rwanda, though of a different kind. Prior to the mid-2000s, the word used by most Rwandans to describe homosexual contact was mutinganyi which, as my research revealed, conveyed a very different meaning to the British word ‘homosexual’. The word ‘mutinganyi’ is rich in depth and meaning, but at its heart is the idea of the use of intimate same-sex sexual friendship and activity as a means to self-knowledge and mutual development. Crucially, too, the word has no sense of the pejorative about it and isn’t tied to any ideas of identity exclusive to heterosexual norms. To be a mutinganyi, then, was to be a person who had intimate relationships – both sexual and otherwise – with people of the same sex, but in a fashion that wasn’t at all prohibitive of heterosexual relationships. It’s difficult for us to conceive of how this could be the case, of course, but that’s because I’m describing the phenomenon in English and using words which, as we have seen, convey different meanings. The point at stake, then, is that sexuality itself has an utterly different history of development within Rwanda no less rich than our own, and which our own words are simply incapable of describing, at least in discrete terms.

    The problem is, however, that the word mutinganyi is hardly ever used in Rwandan Anglican circles in the present day, and has come to be replaced almost entirely by ‘homosexual’. The reasons for this are chiefly down to the extraordinarily pugnacious and virulent anti-homosexual discourse introduced into Rwanda by American conservatives in the mid-2000s, which itself has evolved and developed within Rwanda to become the ubiquitous language within which sexuality debates are currently couched. It is for this reason that homosexuality is perceived without exception within Rwanda to be both a novel and foreign phenomenon. Paying close attention to language-use and development reveals that, in a strict sense, it is. The meanings and resonances conveyed by the word ‘homosexual’ – forged in conservative circles within American Anglicanism – are indeed both novel and foreign to the organic understandings of sexuality detailed above, and the near-ubiquitous use of the word ‘homosexual’ within Rwanda has therefore come to obscure or even redefine such native understandings.

    The reason why all this matters, then, is that people like me – who care deeply about the dignity and welfare of gay people, and who long for the day when people of all sexualities can participate fully as equally members of the Body of Christ – need to watch our language. For in using words like ‘homosexual’ in interprovincial dialogues, progressives are constantly in danger of unwittingly colluding with conservatives by falling into conservative narratives of a so-called ‘Western agenda’. If we want to see a church that celebrates the rich diversity of sexualities and sexual orientations that God has created, then we must resist the temptation to see our own sexual categories as ubiquitous, and focus instead on celebrating and fostering organic and culturally contingent sexual epistemologies throughout the Anglican Communion. Doing this, of course, will require patience and a constant awareness of the particularity of our own discourse and the discursive traditions of others. It will require serious thought, too, and the wisdom to discern when the limits of our language precludes real mutual understanding. True agreement may be far off, of course, but at least we might start with true disagreement.

     

  • Playing the Victim

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington and a consultant to the LLF Implementation Pastoral Guidance Working Group

    There is often a very British reticence to ‘victimhood’. Whether it’s the stereotype of the stiff upper lip, or the willingness to ‘keep calm and carry on’, we are not known as a nation of victims. ‘Stop whingeing and get on with it’, as my school teachers used to say – and in the main, we do. ‘Playing the victim’ gets us less sympathy, and is far more likely to make us enemies.

    It has been interesting, then, to see the pernicious and yet all-pervasive narrative of victimhood seeping its way through some parts of the Church of England in recent months. In the wake of the bishops of the church putting forward a proposal that removes the impediment to us blessing a same-sex couple in the same way that we might bless a car or a plant pot, many of those for whom this would apparently be the ‘one step too far’ moral outrage have turned up the volume on their campaign to tell bishops about just how hurt they are by the whole thing.

    It remains surprising, of course, that there are people who cannot bear the idea of compromise and who appear to believe that agreeing to disagree on whether we can bless other people’s relationships will destroy the very foundations of their Christian faith. It’s important to distinguish, I think, between those who hold to this view quite genuinely, however bizarre many of us might find it, and those who are weaponizing it in a last gasp as they see their iron grip on power falter.  The former group are those whose worries and fears need to be listened to – and insofar as they are genuine, addressed. The latter – through their campaign – are doing their best, inadvertently, to ensure that this will not be the case.

    Not a day seems to go by without yet another asinine and misleading ‘question’ or statement being released on the Church of England Evangelical Council’s Twitter feed. To save the delicate stomachs of some readers who would prefer not to trawl the whole thing, here are some highlights. We have been told (several times) that the bishops are ‘denying’ the faith ‘due to cultural pressure’; we have had some very bizarre selective scriptural quotes from Revelation; we have had the usual claptrap about the fact that something legal advice specifically states is not a change of doctrine is, in fact, a change of doctrine; we’ve heard nonsense about how the changes coming are ‘theologically compromised and pastorally confusing’; and that old chestnut, the ‘lifestyle’ choice, is back with a vengeance. None of this is new – much of it is dishonest.

    Yet whilst these repeated tropes are tiresome and often – quite frankly – silly, the worst to come out of the campaign is the barefaced attempt to present those who are attempting to roll back Synod’s decision as ‘victims’. Let’s be absolutely clear about this suggestion – it is utterly ridiculous, and not only ridiculous, but insulting. For years there has been a conservative stranglehold on the policies of the Church of England, with bishops apparently too scared to say what they really think until they leave office, and a tacit acceptance that unity is quite reasonably built on the backs of queer people. At last, that wicked, immoral consensus is crumbling. It is staggering how shameless those who have fought against any liberation for queer people are now being.

    We are told that the introduction of voluntary, opt-in prayers of blessing are an existential threat to those who choose not to offer them. We are told that it is unacceptable that those who say LGBTQI people should be celibate will now have to admit to it. We are told that any compromise position, any opportunity to offer anything whatsoever to queer people, is an act of victimisation towards conservative evangelicals. We are told that it is imperative that queer clergy must not be sexually intimate and must be punished if they are, and that this is the red line. Blithe nonsense about cancel culture abounds; misrepresentation of facts, and of the reality of power structures, is front and centre. It is scandalous. As a recent Tweet from the CEEC campaign apparently unironically stated, ‘we are for respecting people, even when we disagree on theological conclusions’ – perhaps it’s time to put that into action, folks.

    The thing is, the Church of England and its hierarchy should be willing and able to challenge this ratcheting up of confected terror, rather than imbibe it and be scared by it. The Church of England has produced something rather valuable in the Pastoral Principles, yet there seems to be precious little recognition of how these relate to this recent campaign. There is little point having these principles written down if they are not going to be put into practice – and it is about time some leadership was shown and people held to account. Yet as ever it is queer people who are told to calm down and have warmer hearts.

    The apology to LGBTQI people from the House of Bishops is not worth the paper it’s written on if nobody is willing to stand up for us. Since the Synod vote, little to no comment has been made on how those of us who are LGBT face discrimination on a constant basis from wider society, let alone from the church. LGBT people face genuine and real oppression and are openly victimised, targeted and discriminated against. Trans people are murdered across the world, year by year. Gay young people in parts of sub-Saharan Africa are taken out of their homes and killed. I do not understand why there is such an oppressive and overwhelming silence on this issue. If we’re looking for real victims in all of this, a good place to start – for example – would be the queer folk of Uganda. Yet a month’s wait for anything – at all – to come out of Lambeth (and there is still nothing out of the Anglican Communion Office or GAFCON) in response to the Archbishop of Uganda’s blasphemous support for criminalisation of LGBTQI people is hardly the ‘speaking into silence’ that the Pastoral Principles demand. It’s simply not good enough, and if this is the trajectory, then the feigned apology is nothing more than an insult.

    Those who are promoting the CEEC campaign and its messages need to take a long, hard look at themselves. A false narrative of victimhood – a genuine ‘playing the victim’ – is not only a tactic that flies directly in the face of the Pastoral Principles, but one that flies directly in the face of our belonging to Jesus Christ. And the leaders of our church need to step up and speak into what is going on here, instead of running scared. Doing so behind closed doors is not enough – we are being publicly attacked day after day, and there is nothing whatsoever being said to support us.

    Queer people have put up with ‘just getting on with it’ for too long – and we’re being taken advantage of. Just because we don’t constantly play the victim doesn’t mean we’re not hurting. Many – most – of us are. We’re living in a church that tolerates and doesn’t love us, and now we’re living in a church that is willing to tacitly accept that – once again – we’re the problem. We still do not matter – we are still an issue.

    It’s time – in fact, it’s well beyond time – for our leaders to practise what they preach. We’ve been hung out to dry quite long enough.

  • Two-Edged Scripture: Taking the Bible Seriously

    by Sophie Grace Chappell, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University. Her two most recent books are Songs For Winter Rain, a poetry collection, and Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience.

     

    Hebrews 4.12: Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

     

    Here are 5 bits from the Bible:

    In childbirth the woman will have pain (Genesis 3.16)

    Male and female created he them (Genesis 1.27)

    God hates shrimp (Leviticus 11.9-12)

    Homosexuality is an abomination (Leviticus 18.22)

    The she-bears (2 Kings 2)

    Evangelicals sometimes call the Bible “God’s instruction manual for life” or similar. This struck me as odd even when I was an evangelical myself (from about 1980 to about 1990), because on the face of it the Bible is nothing like an instruction manual. Rather, it’s a library of all kinds of different books: love poetry, hymns of praise, history books, origin myths and foundation tales, allegorical poems, philosophical reflections, proverbs, political tracts, forewarnings of judgement and apocalypse, shaggy-dog stories, and then the Gospels and the Epistles and Acts are each of them something different again. And in this library of books we see all sorts of things going on: shady dealings with goats in Genesis 29, religious genocide in Joshua 1 and 1 Samuel 15, rape and incest and murder in lots of places, hunger-strikes and dirty protests in Ezekiel, political debate in the books of Samuel, shipwrecks and trials and what we now call evangelism in Acts, straight theology in Hebrews and Romans, very strange eschatology in Revelation… and lots and lots of other things too.

    But here’s the thing: there is no obvious non-supernatural sense in which any of the writers of the books of the Bible thought that they were addressing us. When Paul wrote his letter to the Romans his intended audience was, well, the Romans—the Christian church in Rome in maybe 60 AD. When James wrote his Epistle he was addressing church communities of that time, communities that he’d lived in or visited, or had some pastoral responsibility for. The authors of Kings and Samuel and Chronicles thought they were writing the history of Israel, for the people of Israel in their own time. The author of Genesis, from where we get the lines about childbirth and about “male and female created he them”, were writing a foundation myth the point of which is to explain that things are the way they are because God made them that way. The authors of Leviticus, who give us the passages about shrimp and about homosexuality, were laying down a code of behaviour for a nomadic tribe which later (after the eye-wateringly violent conquest of the land of Israel by war, mass murder, religious persecution, and ethnic cleansing) settled down as a pastoral people.

    So even the bits of the Bible which are most like instruction manuals were not, in any non-supernatural sense, written as instruction manuals for us. (I don’t by the way have any problem at all with the notion of the supernatural. Not at all, unless it counts as a problem that I don’t think any “naturalist” yet has ever given a remotely plausible account of what “the natural” is.) Exodus tells us that the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law were given by God, via Moses, to the people of Israel in the wilderness in maybe 1000 BC. Matthew tells us that the Sermon on the Mount was teaching given by Jesus in maybe 27 AD to his twelve disciples and other followers at the time. In Romans and Corinthians and Ephesians we can see the moral and religious and spiritual teaching that Paul gave to those churches then, in maybe 55 or 60 AD. But none of it is, directly and immediately, directed at us.

    So how do we know when the Bible is stating a divine command that applies to us here and now?

    If some of the observations about the foundation of our world are to be taken as not just parts of the narrative, but also instructions for us, like the bits in Genesis about women having to suffer in childbirth and about humans being made both male and female, then how do we know which of these observations give us rules, and which don’t?

    And how do they give us rules? Is the fact that women suffer in childbirth something to preserve, as in nineteenth-century resistance to using new forms of pain relief? Or to remove, or mitigate? Is “male and female created he them” something that tells us that there are no transgender people? Or that there shouldn’t be? Or that everyone has a bit of male and a bit of female in them? Rebracket it and see how it looks then!

    It is not for nothing that our Hebrews text calls Scripture two-edged.

    Or take Leviticus: if some rules apply now (e.g. be merciful to the widow and the stranger), but other rules don’t (e.g. the ideas that menstruating women are unclean or that God hates shrimp), then how do we know which rules apply and which don’t?

    If some of the examples of behaviour that the Bible gives us are examples to imitate (e.g. David repenting of his murder and adultery when Nathan challenges him), and other are not (e.g. Solomon taking a thousand wives), then how do we know which examples we are commanded to follow and which we are not?

    And this is where we come to the last of my five bits, the she-bears. Because some evangelicals apparently think that Elisha’s action in using supernatural powers to massacre dozens of young people for mocking him sets an example that we should at any rate admire—maybe even imitate, if we can. And I couldn’t disagree more strongly about that if I tried.

    It’s not all right for spiritual leaders who, like Elisha, have been entrusted with prophetic powers by God, to use those powers to massacre 42 (or however many; it’s a suspiciously numerological number) troublesome youngsters. It’s REALLY not all right. To suggest that it is, is to endorse millennia of pointless and tragic religious murderousness, from the allegedly divinely-sanctioned religious genocide of Joshua 1, to the actions of the IDF against the Palestinians.

    If we want to talk about “taking scripture literally”, well—there is nothing in 2 Kings 2 that forces a preacher to read it as an endorsement of Elisha’s violence against the troublesome youth of Bethel. It could be read as “God gave Elisha this power as successor to Elijah—and the first thing he did with that God-given spiritual power, tragically, was abuse it—just as the Apostles did when they were confronted by Ananias and Sapphira.”

    I don’t want religion/ faith (especially not my own religion/ faith, Christianity) to be what it so often has been, a way of normalising and institutionalising and even ritualising individual or church or state violence. (We do the ethnic cleansing, then we get together and sing some happy-clappy worship songs, and then we feel okay about those nasty scenes we witnessed this morning in the killing fields.)

    That is the norm for homo sapiens: that we use religion to sanitise and legitimate what is ABSOLUTELY NOT okay, what actually cries out to heaven for vengeance. But for my part, I don’t want the Christian church to be like that. I want Christians to do what Jesus did, and renounce the whole awful cycle of human violence and human self-hypnotism that it’s okay to be like this. In which cycle, religion plays a prominent and deeply ugly part. Because it isn’t okay, it really really isn’t, and we have to stand against it, even if that means we end up on the Cross.

    To be clear, I don’t think this “How can we tell when Scripture is giving us a command?” question is unanswerable.

    My answer is this: I think that the church today has to trust itself to be what it is, the continuation of the very same story that the Bible tells, the story of a people whom God is calling to be like his son Jesus. Since we by God’s grace are part of that same story, we have the same right to disagree with the Biblical authors as we have to disagree with each other in the church today. If someone in the Bible sets an example or issues a command that our best and most careful moral reflection tells us is just wrong, then we are free to disagree with it. After all, “We have the Holy Spirit too”. God is at work in us today just as he was at work in the people who wrote the scriptures. What they say is always for us to reflect on, and we can often learn from it too: the Bible can and does change our moral viewpoint, and improve it. But sometimes—Joshua 1’s apparent presentation of religious genocide as God’s will—it is not just that we are right to disagree; it would be abominable not to disagree.

    Now it’s not just me saying this. I actually think that this is what everybody does, even evangelicals. Martin Luther does this. Calvin does this. But I think conservative evangelicals typically have a false self-understanding. They claim to be “simply obeying just what it says in the Scriptures”. My point is that they do no such thing. Nobody could, because there is no such thing as “just what it says in the Scriptures”. Nor is it a matter, as I’ve heard some say, of “letting the Scriptures interpret themselves”; they don’t, we have to apply our understanding and our powers of interpretation to them.

    So forget about “taking the Bible literally”. Think instead about taking the Bible seriously, and reading it reverently and attentively and intelligently. The first step in that is to look closely at what kind of text we’re actually dealing with in reading any book of the Bible. In almost every case, what we are dealing with is not an instruction manual. And even when it is, the instruction manual was not originally written for us.

    That doesn’t mean we can’t get instruction from the Bible. Of course we can. But we get it not by literalism, but by serious and careful thought and reflection.

    Above all, perhaps, it means this: we have to try and read the scriptures with Jesus, to read them as he reads them. So with the she-bears, we could point out the contrast between Elisha (and the Apostles in their treatment of Ananias and Sapphira) on the one side, and Jesus on the other: how in the whole of his prophetic career the sole casualties were one fig tree, some money changers’ tables, maybe a herd of pigs, and Jesus himself. Jesus was an extremely radical and an extremely unorthodox reader of the scriptures: witness his constant clashes with the Pharisees, “today this scripture is fulfilled in your sight”, “the stone that the builders rejected…”, and many other points where he presents a completely subversive reading of a well-known text.

    And in fact there is a place in the Bible where Jesus gives us an example which he seems to have intended to be set alongside Elisha’s example, and to demonstrate how it is possible to respond to mockery or criticism of what you take to be your prophetic role completely differently from how Elisha responds. The passage I’m thinking of here is Luke 9.51-56:

    And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elijah did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

    Martin Luther famously said that “We go to Scripture as the wise men went to the manger: to find Jesus in it.” I think that’s right. I think it’s also right that we can go to Scripture in Jesus’ company: and try to learn to read it, and to act on it—or against it—as Jesus did.

     

    (based on a sermon preached at All Souls’ Church Invergowrie)

     

  • Conscientious Objection

    Questions of Conscience (5)

    by Rachel Muers, Professor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers)

    The annual International Conscientious Objectors’ Day commemorates and supports those who refuse compulsory military service. Objection to military service is the modern paradigm for ‘conscientious objection’. Indeed, conscientious objection may be equated with pacifism, so that the argument about whether conscientious objection is justified shades into the debate about whether war can be justified.

    Historically, however, the question of conscientious objection is not about a specific ethical issue, but rather about the deeper question of the relationship between an individual’s convictions and the state’s requirements. The starting point for conscientious objection is saying no to a specific demand, but it points to a wider conviction – that a person cannot hand over her responsibility for moral or religious judgement to an external authority. Objection to military service is a paradigm for conscientious objection, not just because pacifism is a well-established ‘minority report’ in Christian ethics – but also because military service requires one to place oneself fully at the disposal of the state. It is not a coincidence that objection to swearing oaths, particularly oaths of allegiance, is another major context in which conscientious objection arises. An oath of allegiance, after all, is also a ‘giving over’ of oneself to authority – and though the main objection to it from the earliest conscientious objectors mainly arose from Christ’s command not to swear, there was also a deep and frequently-expressed concern that oaths of allegiance were linked to political and religious violence.

    In English law, conscientious objection arises initially in the confrontation between nonconformists – including, but not only, members of what became the ‘historic peace churches’, such as Quakers – and a state anxious to secure the loyalty of its subjects. From the seventeenth century onwards, we see a long and often tortuous process of negotiation around the provisions the state was able or willing to make to legalise conscientious objection. This was a negotiation not just about what constitutes an acceptable range of opinions, but more fundamentally about what it takes to be recognised as a full member of the national community.

    For example, the specific words ‘conscientious objection’ first appear in English law in the title of an 1838 Act, designed to allow Quakers and Moravians to take up elected local offices without swearing the prescribed oaths. The preamble to the Act refers to the ‘conscientious scruples’ of members of these groups – a puzzling eccentricity, obstinately maintained by minority communities. The problem is that these scruples, when they come up against the law, have effects ‘to the manifest detriment of themselves and their fellow subjects’ – and the Quakers and Moravians will accept that detriment rather than swear an oath. Fortunately, in this case to accommodate them will cause ‘no mischief or inconvenience’, so an alternative process is found, and the wheels of local government continue to turn.

    Notice here that from both sides, the nonconformists and the state, conscientious objection was framed in terms of community membership and religious identity. It was Quakers and Moravians, and elsewhere Separatists and other named groups, who, collectively, maintained and were identified with the conscientious objection. What looked like eccentric ‘scruples’ when they cropped up in isolation – refusing to swear an oath in order to take up the post you were elected to – were recognised as belonging to part of a coherent religious framework and a way of life.

    This points to a wider meaning of conscientious objection, at least as it was framed by early objecting communities. Conscientious objection was not just about refusing a constraint or being in charge of one’s own destiny; it was about being free for and in the service of Christ. The objector’s refusal – I will not obey the state – was grounded in an affirmation – I will follow the call of Christ.

    Does this make the conscientious objector more or less difficult to deal with than the common-or-garden objector, the person who simply finds the provisions of the law inconvenient? On the one hand, we might think that it makes the conscientious objector impervious to reason. If she thinks she is obeying a higher law, a calling from God that is at odds with what most other people (including most other Christians) perceive, she will never be persuaded that she is wrong. Our only options will be either to accommodate her scruples, if accommodation doesn’t cause too much ‘mischief or inconvenience’, or to exclude her, if it does.

    The Quaker social scientist Constance Braithwaite, however, offers another perspective on the religious conscientious objector and her faith. For Braithwaite, conscientious objection is both ‘a reminder to all governments and parliaments that they are not infallible’ and an affirmation that a person ‘must act according to [their] own conscience, even though it is fallible [my emphasis]’. Put in a religious context, conscientious objection is thus a way of saying that both the state authorities and the individual objector are open to divine judgement. The objector claims freedom to seek and follow the leadings of God – which might require her to change, or admit that she was wrong – and in doing so, she reminds the powers that be that they might have to change, or admit that they were wrong. Another way to read conscientious objection, then, is that it holds open a space for future change beyond what we can currently imagine as part of the conversation – just as those engaged in the tortuous negotiations of earlier centuries could not imagine a future in which nobody was forced to swear an oath.

     

     

  • In Conscience?

    Questions of Conscience (4)

    by Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    Acting according to theological conscience is the calling of all Christians and must be respected. But I can’t help suspecting that the phrase ‘in conscience’ (just like its cousin ‘for the sake of unity’) is being used more and more in Church of England circles to legitimise bigotry. And, when we hear it, alarm bells should ring.

    As Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a national campaign group for equality for women in the Church of England, I want to speak out against discrimination of all kinds. But in particular against women who, comprising two thirds of churchgoers, are in the unique position of being a ‘minoritised majority.’

    The truth is that about half of all human beings are born with XX chromosomes and about half are born with XY chromosomes. Another truth is that some human beings are born with a particular sexuality, just like some human beings have a particular skin colour. We must stop discriminating against women and LGBTQ+ people. It is not only unjust to discriminate, it is also what I would call unGospel. If Jesus teaches us anything, it is that there are no human beings who are lesser or greater than any other human beings. In the Kingdom of God, the first is last and the last is first. Equality is at the very heart of the gospel.

    One of the things that annoys me most in this whole debate is that people like myself, who stand against discrimination, are often decried as ‘liberals’ who are happy to go along with anything and just suck up the whole of modern culture. This is not true. There are plenty of things in modern culture that I’m firmly against. They are things like pride, abuses of power, arrogance and manipulation. They are things like promiscuity, debauchery, exploitation and unfaithfulness. And we see these things in men and women, and in people of all types of sexuality. And these are the things where the Church has something important to speak into modern culture, because these are the things that are causing huge damage to people and our relationships. On the other hand, we need to be speaking up for humility, collaboration, and honesty; and for relationships that are committed, healthy, respectful and faithful.

    In Jesus’s times, the Pharisees could not ‘in conscience’ allow healing on the Sabbath, because scripture said this was not permitted. They could not allow an adulterous woman to be shown mercy, because the scriptures said she must be stoned. They could not eat or associate with the Gentiles, because scripture clearly told them to keep themselves separate and holy. But Jesus healed on the Sabbath, seeing that loving and healing people overrode the need to keep to the letter of the Law; he rescued and redeemed the adulterous woman, despite recognising that she had sinned. And the Holy Spirit blew apart the long-held scriptural understanding that Jewish people could not be brothers and sisters with Gentiles.

    When I was appointed last October as Chair of WATCH I thought that I only had the bandwidth to speak up about discrimination and sexism against women in the Church and I would focus my energies solely on this. But I have found that I cannot challenge discrimination against women without, at the same time, challenging discrimination against other human beings.

    In February this year, I went to a meeting at St Martin in the Fields on the night of the first day of General Synod. In this church, a large number of LGBTQ+ people and allies had gathered to eat together, to encourage each other and to pray for each other – in the light of the LLF conversations and votes that were to take place that week and that affected them so greatly. As I sat there, surrounded by these people, I found myself moved by the depth of brokenness and pain that washed around me. It was like these people had somehow been made to feel that, within the Church, they were the lowest of the low, some kind of detritus, a sort of lower order that was having to fight even for the right to exist in the Church, let alone to be recognised as equal to others, to the entitled. As I silently took all this in, I felt a sense that this was where Jesus was – that Jesus was in that place with those people who saw themselves at the bottom of the pile, despised by many and, at best, tolerated by others.

    Once again, I knew that the very heart of the gospel is equality. That Jesus came to raise up the lowly and to bring down the proud. We are all human beings. It doesn’t matter whether we are men or women or what sexuality we have. The important thing is how we treat one another and discrimination, whether in so-called conscience or not, is not what Jesus wants.

    It is time to repent and to lament how we have treated women, LGBTQ+ people, people of colour, those who are disabled and others, and now to embrace a new culture in our Church where we truly see every human being as no lesser and no greater than any other. Jesus came to break down barriers between us and to bring unity. But he also called for tough choices to be made, and this is why he was so critical of the Pharisees. He wanted people to follow him and to help him bring in the Kingdom of God by following him. But those who, as he saw it, were blind and hard of heart could not help in that ministry.

    Jesus says to his followers, ‘I am the vine and you are the branches.’ He wants us all to be part of the vine, but he also recognises the need for pruning some branches. We want to be a healthy Church rooted in Jesus – so let’s say a clear no to the Pharisees, no to things like pride and promiscuity. And yes to all people being free to live their God-given lives to the full and to use their God-given gifts to the full, respecting how God has made us, male and female and of varying sexuality. And rejoicing in our wonderfully diverse humanity.

     

     

     

  • On Conscience

    Questions of Conscience (3)

    By the Rt Revd Philip North, who will be installed as Bishop of Blackburn on 24 June

    Philip

    In the heart-stoppingly beautiful 21st Chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus asks Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?’

    As the Lord speaks, Peter is simultaneously rebuked, forgiven and restored. The night before Jesus’ death, Peter had acted out of fear and prioritised personal safety, conformity and transient popularity over faithfulness to Jesus. Three times he denied Jesus and then wept over his own sin. That sin is now erased as he declares, ‘Yes Lord, you know I love you,’ and so places Jesus back at the centre of his life.

    Amongst so much else, this is a story that can help us to understand the power of theological conscience. Political dialogue revolves around opinions, views and policies; transient things that can be adapted according to changing cultural trends and perspectives. Conscience is much deeper than that. It is about placing obedience to revelation ahead of personal popularity, political expedience or cultural conformity.

    That means it is in the very nature of conscience to be misunderstood and even mocked and derided, as Peter learned. By definition it makes no sense to those who have not placed their faith in that revelation. It is foolish, even offensive.

    And that is why conscience is the lifeblood of the Christian tradition. It is why the apostles and early martyrs preferred grotesque and agonising deaths to apostasy. It is why Athanasius and the opponents of Arius spurned career and popularity and lived with exile and oppression in order to stand by the truth of the Incarnation. It is why Margaret Clitherow, Hugh Latimer and the other martyrs of the Reformation were stoned, burnt, hanged, drawn and quartered. It is why Martin Luther could do no other. All placed their obedience to revealed truth ahead of the easy path of conformity and popularity.

    Nor is theological conscience the unique preserve of the conservative. In the tortured debates around sexuality that every single denomination within Christendom is now enduring, there is informed theological conscience on both sides. That is precisely why it is so painfully difficult.

    Because conscience is, by its nature, non-negotiable. Yes of course we must explore and probe conscience to ensure that its theological basis is secure and in line with scripture and tradition. Yes of course, we must be ready to probe the boundaries of conscience and push it as far as it will go for the sake of good relationships and the unity of the church. But to force a fellow Christian to break theological conscience is to imperil their soul.

    That is the depth and profundity of theological conscience. And the debate around the Living in Love and Faith proposals cannot end well unless we understand that. We may not agree with each other’s convictions. We may indeed find them offensive, threatening or reprehensible. But surely it is the duty of every Christian to protect the consciences of their brothers and sisters in Christ.

    Of course this does not resolve the LLF conversation. In fact it makes it rather harder. But it does set some ground rules for the debate.

    First, we need to appreciate that those with whom we disagree are not just expressing personal views but are speaking from faith-informed conscience. Allowing for the integrity of a fellow Christian’s conscience is not the same as agreeing with them. But in an increasingly secular world, Christians need to stand as one in defending each other’s rights to hold theological convictions that may be unpopular or misunderstood in the wider sphere. If we cannot do that, then religious freedom itself will be increasingly under threat.

    Second, we must at all costs avoid weaponizing a culture that does not understand faith in order to advance a theological cause. For example, the sloppy labelling of those who have conscience objections to doctrinal change as ‘homophobic’ or ‘bigoted’ in order to shame them publicly or frighten them into silence breeds resentment rather than reconciliation.

    And third, we need to resolve this within our own structures. For example, for Christians to campaign for the state to use its power to overrule the consciences of fellow Christians by forcing doctrinal change upon the Church would be to set a profoundly dangerous precedent. It would signal to the world that conviction rooted in faith no longer matters. It would be akin to Peter denying the Lord.

    Peter broke conscience, but saw his error and was restored in love to the Lord’s company. Perhaps for us also, a proper appreciation of the nature of conscience will help us to find a deeper restoration in the Lord Jesus and a richer assurance of his love for his wounded church.

  • Killing Fear and Freeing Conscience: Charting the Way Forward for our Life Together

    Questions of Conscience (2)

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington and a consultant to the LLF Implementation Pastoral Guidance Working Group

    Fear – especially confected fear – is never the answer to anything. We have seen that in so many different ways the church has gotten things wrong over the years, whether it is from the hushing up of grotesque abuse, to the way non-white, non-het, non-cis, non-male, non-wealthy, and disabled voices have been silenced, to the current impasse over sexuality that we might – finally – be seeing a way through. Where love is, there is God; where fear is, and certainly where that fear has been whipped up and used as a political tool, as a tool of power, there isn’t much God.

    As we look towards the conversations over the future of the Church of England’s engagement with LGBTQI people, I think we need to be ever alert to where fear is dwelling, and more importantly, where fear is being sown. Power is a complicated beast, but it is never far away from where we find that fear. And a fear that is sown for political gain is a dangerous, nasty, brutish thing. It is the antithesis of the Gospel.

    Which brings me to conscience, because an awful lot has been made of it in recent months, and yet the whiff of fear and power has never been far away. And it’s time it was called out.

    When we entered the Synod process in February, there was no such thing as ‘Pastoral Reassurance’ on the agenda, but as we look towards July – and further – this rather benign-sounding phrase has become very much front and centre in our way of finding how to live with one another if queer people get to form loving relationships that might just be offered God’s blessing. In the first instance, I don’t think we should beat about the bush – ‘Pastoral Reassurance’, in this context, means allowing for the consciences of those for whom the blessing of particular forms of love is a step too far. That is all well and good, though it is interesting that the consciences of LGBTQI people have essentially been ignored for the last fifty years in the church! We are where we are – and it’s encouraging to see conscience back on the agenda. But what has happened at the same time is a campaign, primarily – and shamefully – led by the Church of England Evangelical Council, who misleadingly represent themselves as the only evangelical voice. but one that has been promoted elsewhere too – albeit more quietly and subtly – that has made it clear that any appeal to ‘conscience’ is very much one way. And it’s not on.

    We’ve seen this in public comments about what ‘the doctrine of marriage’ is – arguments that present a fait accompli without showing any working, and without any willingness to recognise the reality of decisions made in Synod to bin Issues and move on, let alone enter sensible conversations about conscience for those of us who remain banned from intimacy with our loved ones. The ‘doctrine of marriage’ is clear, unambiguous, settled, complete, we are told, and thus there can be no blessing of sexually active same-sex/same-gender relationships without destroying that doctrine. The two-pronged attack, then, continues – one particular type of conscience must be respected, and yet still there must be no sex or intimacy for the gays. Absolute nonsense about bishops’ (and others’) ordination vows and the rest of it is being flung around the social media landscape, and yet a quiet, calm, serious reflection on what actually happened at Synod, and what doctrine actually is, makes it very clear that this is – frankly – rubbish.

    So let’s get a couple of things straight, as it were, before we entertain any more of this culture of fear and of one-sided narratives.

    The first – and most obvious –  is that the ‘doctrine of marriage’ is not static. Indeed, marriage itself as a construct is not static and it is totally ludicrous to argue that doctrine hasn’t developed to respond to changing cultural and societal realities. Similarly, it is by no means clear that the ‘doctrine of marriage’ as it is currently formulated inevitably forbids sexually active same-sex/gender relationships – in fact, there is a very strong argument that the opposite is true, not least in the mind of Synod. General Synod passed an amendment that supported no change in ‘the doctrine of marriage’ – foolishly in my mind, given it is clear that the only purpose of the amendment was to enter into the kind of tiresome power games we’re now seeing, however benign some bishops naively appear to have seen it to be. Yet Synod then roundly rejected the following wrecking motion that attempted to create Guidance that ‘include[d] instructions making it clear that they should not be used so as to indicate or imply affirmation of sexually active relationships outside Holy Matrimony or to invoke God’s blessing on such relationships.’ To reiterate, that fell – and it fell handsomely, with only one diocesan bishop in favour and every house convincingly voting against. For all the hot air and blether by those who are determined to hold us all to ransom to any one particular understanding of ‘doctrine’, Synod itself has offered a rebuke. Good try, as it were – but not quite good enough: a case of shooting oneself in the foot, perhaps.

    Which brings us back to conscience. Conscience has a good, long, honourable, Anglican history to it. Rigid, self-righteous, unimaginative definitions of doctrine have frequently brought people to the tribunal or the stake; imaginative, careful, thoughtful, conscience-respecting understandings of doctrine have led not only to healthier churches but amongst other things to the great leaps in ecumenism of the past century.

    So as we look ahead, we have the opportunity, and I would argue the obligation, to commit to two things. Both are absolutely central to finding a way forward in which we can live in harmony with one another, however uncomfortable we might find it. We need, all of us, to commit to freedom of conscience and – concurrently – freedom from fear. And I mean genuine freedom of conscience – a recognition that others have consciences in just the same way that we do, that others are not trying to destroy the church, that others are wanting to find ways to live together, that others might have something to add rather than simply take away. That we might not have all the answers, and that entry into conversation requires just that – genuine conversation. That we don’t own the Church of England, its doctrine, or – really – anything at all.

    But the respecting of conscience will not come if we are unwilling to lay down the sowing and promotion of fear. If we fail to do that, it will kill us as a church. If we fail to take that risky step of being willing to see Christ in those with whom we fundamentally, utterly, totally disagree, then we will not only fail in what we have to do, but we will fail in our fundamental calling as followers of Christ.

    Time will tell as to whether we are able – or rather, willing – to offer those with whom we disagree the courtesy of mutual recognition. Time will tell, too, whether we are willing to let go of the fearmongering. And time will tell, I might suggest, whether we are thus willing to grow more into the likeness of Christ – or recast Him in our own – rather narrow, rather dull, rather limited – image, instead.

  • Freedom of Conscience: Sauce for the Gander?

    Questions of Conscience (1):

    opening a new series of posts offering reflections on this theme

    by Canon Giles Goddard, Vicar of St John’s, Waterloo and a consultant to the LLF Implementation Pastoral Reassurance Working Group

    We are hearing a lot about freedom of conscience at the moment. Some who oppose the introduction of Prayers for Love and Faith (PLF) are seeking assurances that they will be free to act according to their conscience, or that they will not be required to act against their conscience. In an open letter on 10th Feb 2023 the Archbishop asked the forbearance of the Diocese of York “as the work is done to ensure that freedom of conscience is properly respected.”

    The appeal to conscience is often seen as an ultimate moral arbiter, particularly among those who would resist what they see as innovations. Readers of this blog may remember ‘Cost of Conscience,’ an organisation which was vocal in the earlier years of this century in opposition to the ordination of women. Conscience is much cited amongst those opposed to abortion.

    I was glad to be asked to write something for Via Media on the subject, not least because I have been drawn back into the Living in Love and Faith process as a consultant to the Pastoral Reassurance Working Group. So I have been reflecting on and reading around the nature of conscience, and what status it might have in current discussions about ethical and liturgical practice within the Church of England.

    The word ‘conscience’ is an elision of two Latin roots; con and scio: meaning something like ‘knowing with’ or ‘knowing alongside.’ Conscience tends to be focused inwards, towards the actions of the self. According to philosopher Alberto Giubilini, there are in the history of philosophy four predominant understandings of conscience: it can be seen as a faculty for self-knowledge and self-assessment, or as having an epistemic function in the sphere of morality, or as a motivational force, or as a set of self-identifying moral beliefs. Within the Anglican tradition it is, according to this very helpful lecture by Revd Dr. Michael Hull of the Scottish Episcopal Church, “that God-given capacity that allows us to adjudicate the rightness of our action and also to show, fully, our integrity to God.”

    In other words, conscience is not the absolute arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. It is the human capacity to identify, to ourselves, what we understand to be the right course of action in an ethical context. Thomas Aquinas recognised that conscience may err. John Calvin saw conscience as a battleground: “the enemies who rise up in our conscience against his Kingdom and hinder his decrees prove that God’s throne is not firmly established therein.”   The dictate of conscience is based on a number of factors: for Christians, on the Word of God, yes – but also on reason, experience and the culture and communities within which we live.

    Thus conclusions reached according to conscience can be diametrically different. Those who are willing to carry out abortions would often appeal to their consciences in so doing, taking into account their duty as medical professionals and their responsibilities to their patients. Others will not carry out abortions, citing conscientious objection as sufficient ground for refusal.

    Similarly, in relation to PLF, radically different conclusions are supported by appeals to conscience. Many who have or who would wish to offer prayers of blessing for same sex couples would be clear that they are acting in accordance with their conscience. My own reading of scripture, reason and tradition, as well as experience, leads me to the clear conclusion that I would be acting against my conscience in refusing to seek God’s blessing on a same-sex relationship.  Others, notably conservative evangelicals, appeal to conscience in rejecting PLF, reading the same scriptures I read but drawing very different conclusions.

    Conscience can also confuse. Huckleberry Finn famously feels that he has acted against his conscience when he helps slave Jim to escape from his aunt:

    The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last … it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven.

    The appeal to conscience by conservatives seems to me in any event to be a distraction from the core discussion, for at no point during the entire LLF process has any suggestion been made that anyone opposed would be required to offer prayers of blessing. Nor has any suggestion been made that their position in the Church of England would be in any way compromised by a refusal to offer PLF.

    What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, though. It is very possible to imagine a situation where a priest and a PCC may wish to offer Prayers of Love and Faith within a Diocese or Area where the bishop is opposed. What then? Do we need safeguards in place to ensure that the freedom of conscience exercised by a progressive priest does not undermine their place in the Church of England? Alternative episcopal oversight?

    This from Alberto Giubilini:

    Far from being a conversation-stopper, conscience can only find its proper place in philosophical and in public discussion if its philosophical and psychological aspects are teased out, defined and assessed. Appeals to conscience can only be part of philosophical, political, and legal discussion if they are seen as the start, not the end of discussions.

    As we move forward in the conversations about pastoral reassurance, perhaps an initial step will be to note that conscience is not, of itself, an arbiter of right thinking. The Living in Love and Faith process has, over six years, carefully unpicked the theological, scriptural, experiential and historical complexities of human relationships, sexuality and God’s love.

    It’s quite clear that it is not going to be easy to square the circle, but I hope that we can recognise that the appeal to conscience is no less straightforward than anything else in this process.

     

     

     

  • Consent, Power, and BDSM in Theological Research

    by Dr Karen O’Donnell, Director of Studies at Westcott House Cambridge where she teaches Worship and Liturgy. She also teaches Gender and Christian Theology for the Divinity Faculty, University of Cambridge. She has published widely in trauma and feminist theologies.

    As a feminist theologian, the two contexts in which I find myself thinking about consent are in discussions about sex and in conversations about the ethics of research. As a theologian interested in trauma, discussions around sexual consent are often wrapped up with distressing accounts of rape and sexual abuse where consent was not sought, not given, or not meant if it was given. In the context of theological research, however, discussions around consent are often quite perfunctory. Students often consider the ethical questions around consent to be a hoop to jump through, to get their projects approved by the ethics committee. It’s fascinating that these two discussions of consent are so different; in one, consent is paramount and there is much discussion around the insufficiency of consent as a category for good, ethical sex. In the other, consent is the signature on a piece of paper allowing the researcher to begin.

    What might it mean to bring the concerns around the in/sufficiency of consent for good, ethical sex, into dialogue with theological empirical research?

    Theology has been tangled up with desire, sex, and penetration for centuries. In the work of the late Marcella Althaus-Reid we find the explicit recognition that ‘theology is a sexual act’.  She writes:

    Theology is a sexual ideology performed in a sacralising pattern: it is the sexual divinised orthodoxy (right sexual dogma) and orthopraxy (right sexual behaviour); theology is a sexual action. Theologians, therefore, are nothing else but sexual performers… [1]

    When it comes to empirical theological research, too, theology is a sexual act; specifically, it is an act of BDSM.[2] Here, I specifically want to draw a parallel to a BDSM scene between a dominant and a submissive. This might seem an unlikely parallel to draw but I think it is an important one. Christianity has an entwined relationship with power, both positively and negatively. In a postmodern age, where we are more attentive to power dynamics, abuses of power, and the ways in which the church has been complicit with such abuses, we must reflect carefully on our relationship with power. Whilst reflecting on this through the lens of BDSM might be uncomfortable, it creates a dissonance that offers a helpful interruption and opportunity to reconsider what we take for granted in terms of power. It’s also a great opportunity to learn from a community that has wrestled carefully with both issues of consent and power dynamics. Some researchers have even suggested that there is a spiritual dimension at play in BDSM itself!

    So, imagine the theological research interview as a BDSM scene: theology is the dominant discourse, making the theologian the ‘dominant’. The dominant/theologian sets the parameters of the scene/interview. They have a significant amount of power within the scene (and likely away from it too). The submissive/research participant has to trust that the dominant/theologian will do what they have said they will do and will not stray from the previously proscribed limits. The dominant/theologian engages in the scene to get their (research) needs met.

    Central to many experiences of BDSM is the concept of power or, more precisely, an unequable distribution of power between those engaged in the act. But this power is fluid, dynamic and difficult to pinpoint. Of course, the person in the dominant role holds plenty of power. However, this is not the only place where power lies. The submissive often has plenty of power too.[3] One submissive notes: ‘I’m the one who decides what will happen… how it will happen… how far it will go. I call him master but it’s my needs that are being met.’[4]

    In the BDSM community, the ethical model of consensual BDSM participation has long been a topic of discussion. Among BDSM practitioners and advocates, consent is of primary, nearly summary, ethical import.[5] Within the BDSM community, the giving of consent is largely understood not as a onetime thing but as something negotiated before an activity takes place and also as an ongoing, relational dialogue. The use of safewords to slow down or to completely end a scene represents this ongoing relational dialogue of consent. Consent is seen as an ongoing conversation respecting all parties and drawing on the wisdom of all those involved.

    What does this mean for seeing the empirical theological research act as a manifestation of a BDSM scene? Imagine a theological research interview in which the researcher and participant negotiated what the scene would look like beforehand; where the limits of the research interview were agreed and a safeword put in place to guard those limits.

    Imagine a theological research interview which recognises the power of the submissive/research participant, as the one holding the answers the dominant/theologian wants. How would the power of the submissive/research participant shape, allow and restrict the direction of the research interview?

    Imagine a theological research interview where the primary concern of the dominant/theologian was not the meeting of her research needs but the pleasure and satisfaction of the submissive/research participant. What would it mean to put the pleasure and satisfaction of the research participant first, even before the gathering of research data? What might it mean to ensure that there even was pleasure for the submissive/research participant in the course of theological empirical research?

    A crucial part of the dominant role is providing aftercare to the submissive, recognising the intense sensations and emotions the submissive has experienced. What would such aftercare look like in the context of a theological empirical research scene that has potentially stripped the submissive/research participant bare and exposed them intimately to the dominant/theologian? Imagine building aftercare into such a research scene.

    This praxis of consent requires hard work on the part of the dominant/theologian to develop their attunement and empathy to the verbal and non-verbal cues of the submissive/research participant. This praxis of consent requires a shift into the language and attitude of invitation and hospitality in which the needs and pleasure of the other are primary, driving forces such that, in the aftermath, gratitude might flow in both directions. We might consider this mode of conversation as a potential gift to some of the challenging conversations currently taking place within the church. What might it mean to put the needs and pleasure of the other first in conversations around same-sex relationships for example? Or to aim for dialogue in which power dynamics were disrupted so thoroughly that gratitude—and indeed pleasure—might flow in both directions? Years ago, Rowan Williams made the point that the opposite of intolerance was not tolerance but rather hospitality. This is paramount in theological research design, but it is also essential in the lives of Christians in the church.

    Notes
    [1] Marcella Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2000), 87.
    [2] BDSM is an acronym for bondage, domination, sado-masochism and refers to a sub-culture in which BDSM is the dominant (pardon the pun) driving force. Whilst often associated with sexual activity, it can be non-sexual in nature. Whilst some people live out BDSM as a lifestyle, often other people participate in BDSM activities for short period of time – these are called ‘scenes’. Scenes will be carefully negotiated and consented to, with clear safe words that can be said to pause, slow down, or stop activities completely. The BDSM community has worked hard to establish clear boundaries and guidelines around its activities. This work has not been helped by the publication of BDSM-inspired popular fiction such as 50 Shades of Grey which disregard much of the careful work around consent that the BDSM community has undertaken. I wouldn’t normally reference a Wikipedia page but this one is excellent!
    [3] Gary W. Taylor and Jane M. Ussher, “Making Sense of S&M: A Discourse Analytic Account,” Sexualities 4, no. 3 (2001): 299.
    [4] Taylor and Ussher, 299.
    [5] Joseph J. Fischel, Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2019), 37.

  • Equal Marriage – 1928 Style

    Revd Canon Dr Judith Maltby is Chaplain, Fellow and Dean of Welfare of Corpus Christi College, Reader in Church History in the University of Oxford, and a member of the General Synod of the Church of England.

    One of the things that struck me forcibly during the February 2023 debate on Living in Love and Faith at General Synod was the repeated reference to the ‘doctrine of marriage’, as though this was a constant and fixed set of ideas throughout time. In the debate, only Revd Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes challenged this assumption.[1]  Another striking theme, for the more punitively minded, was how bishops might be disciplined for their apparent departure from orthodoxy.

    All this was a response to the modest proposals brought to Synod by the House of Bishops, proposals emerging out of the six-year long Living in Love and Faith process. The bishops maintain that their proposals do not alter the ‘doctrine of marriage’. Marriage remains, in the words of canon B30, ‘a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman’. (Elephant in the Room Warning: except when it isn’t ‘permanent and lifelong’ – but we are steadfastly refusing to talk about that.) Opponents, however, challenge this claim from the bishops.

    I found myself feeling a bit sorry for the bishops as a group: from my ten years on the Crown Nominations Commission, I know the great emphasis we as a Church place on ‘Leadership’. Yet when bishops exercise even a smidgen, all hell breaks loose. Do we want our chief pastors to develop their thinking based on theological reflection and pastoral encounter and then exercise some ‘Leadership’ about it, or not?

    As with most things, we’ve been here before.

    Edward Lee Hicks (1843-1919) was Bishop of Lincoln from 1910 to his death in 1919. He is not a well-known figure in Anglican history. Hicks had the misfortune to follow Bishop Edward King – a figure of such devotion in certain traditions of the Church of England that he has a day in the calendar (8 March). In addition to his legendary pastoral devotion to his diocese, especially to the rural poor, King may have been the first Church of England bishop openly to wear a mitre since the Reformation  – yes, a mitre! – a pretty commonplace practice now even amongst some of the most evangelical on the episcopal bench,  such as the Bishop of Lancaster and the former Bishop of Blackburn. In the late nineteenth century, however, wearing a mitre was a Massive Thing, and at the instigation of the Church Association (an ancestor of the Church Society), King was prosecuted for all manner of now-unexceptional Anglican liturgical practices, such as lighting candles in daylight and making the sign of the cross at the blessing. The statue honouring King in Lincoln Cathedral celebrates his transgressive liturgical behaviour rather gleefully.

    Hicks was also transgressive in his thinking but about something – and here I speak as a good High Church woman – considerably more important than tat. He was a member of the Commission in the early twentieth century revising the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which in the end became the 1928 ‘deposited’ Prayer Book. Parliament, as readers of this blog no doubt know, refused to approve the book, causing a Church/State crisis that was still talked about in wounded tones when I arrived in England as a graduate student in 1979. Nonetheless, from the late 1920s onwards, the revised book was probably used more in the public worship of the Established Church than the 1662, in an impressive collective act of episcopally-sanctioned grassroots passive resistance throughout the Church of England.

    Hicks was committed to equality for women and in 1912 became president of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage, a group working to put laywomen on the same footing as laymen in Church councils. Over many years on the Commission to revise the Book of Common Prayer he worked to have the word ‘obey’ removed from the marriage service and replaced with equal vows for the couple – as Common Worship does. He argued further for the use of 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings in place of Ephesians 5 to avoid any suggestion that the wife is not her husband’s equal. An unscientific sample (that is, my own 30+ years of officiating at marriages – oops – Holy Matrimony[2]), 1 Corinthians 13 is very popular – I’ve never had a request for Ephesians 5. In the end, Hicks got his reform – his change in the ‘doctrine of marriage’ – with the option to have equal vows included in the 1928 Prayer Book provision. Needless to say, no woman would be forced not to vow to obey.  I hope that the irony of that last sentence is not lost on anyone.

    Change, as we are seeing with LLF, is incremental in the life of the Church. The 1928 Prayer Book made no provision for the exchange of two rings – another liturgical expression of the equality of the couple and included the ‘giving away’ of the bride – both changes in Common Worship. I have spent some time trying to track down when two rings become the norm in England but have failed – there is a Master’s thesis topic waiting for someone! Despite neither the English or American 1928 Prayer Books making provision for it, the doyen of mid-twentieth century Anglican liturgists, Massey Shepherd, suggested that exchanging two rings was becoming ‘frequent’ in the American Episcopal Church in the 1950s.[3]

    Nothing exists in a vacuum, and it is important to place the ‘obey’ debate of the 1910-20s in its historic context alongside not only women’s wider political and educational rights, but their inclusion in new Church governance structures, such as Parochial Church Councils and the forerunner of the General Synod, the Church Assembly. Laywomen were excluded from these new bodies. The opponents to equal vows did not use the language of complementarianism but that of good old-fashioned inequality and subordinationism. In the first decades of the twentieth-century, vocal opposition to equal vows came largely from the Anglo-Catholic quarter, based on a clear assumption of the inequality of the sexes. Athelstan Riley told the Church’s National Assembly in 1930 that:

    … in 1923 when the cry of equality between the sexes was at its height, a short measure was pressed putting husband and wife on an equal footing – a cruel and wicked act. There was and could be no equality in matters of sexual morality between men and women. It had pleased God to create a profound inequality; in temptation, in the results of sin to the individual [pregnancy out of wedlock?] … and eventually to society at large.[4]

    It is good to be reminded what a new kid on the block complementarianism is in the gender debates.

    Overshadowed by King, Hicks deserves to be better known. Most importantly for our current discussions of LGBT+ inclusion, the beginning of his theological change on the ‘doctrine of marriage’ had been brought about, in the best Anglican way, by pastoral encounter:  a young couple, whose marriage he was to solemnize, requested the omission of ‘obey’ and that the bride not be ‘given away’ by her father. Hicks’ diary records his puzzlement at the request, but it clearly started him thinking. The year, dear reader, was 1914.[5]

    In the early 20th century, an Anglican bishop was promoting the view that marriage – or Holy Matrimony as we now apparently must call it – was a union of equals and he managed to move the needle in terms of the Church’s expression of doctrine in its public liturgy. How many members of the General Synod realize what a departure from the 1662 Prayer Book’s ‘doctrine of marriage’, equal vows, not being ‘given away’, and the exchange of two rings, expresses? Heaven forbid, that pastoral encounter should be divorced (I choose that word deliberately) from the shaping of doctrine and pastoral practice.

    References:
    [1] General Synod 9 Feb 2023 (at c 3.22).
    [2] The House of Bishops’ paper on LLF, GS2289, argues that the civil understanding of marriage has departed from the Church’s for the first time by Parliament’s introduction of equal marriage in 2013. This is a remarkable statement, given the bishops’ statement that ‘Holy Matrimony is between one man and one woman for life’ and the fact that British people have been able to divorce and re-marry multiple times for decades (see p. 10).
    [3] Massey Hamilton Shepherd, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary (OUP, 1955), pp. 301-303.
    [4] Cited in Timothy Willem Jones, ‘Love, Honour and Obey?  Romance, Subordination and Marital Subjectivity in Interwar Britain’ in A. Harris and T. Jones, eds, Love and Romance in Britain, 1915-1970 (Palgrave, 2014), p. 130; an exceptionally good article on the ‘obey’ question in the Church of England. Jones notes that several interwar clergymen reported not using asymmetrical vows before the introduction of the alternative service (p. 128). See also his splendid book, Sexual Politics in the Church of England 1857-1957 (Oxford, 2013).
    [5] See The Diaries of Edward Lee Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln 1910-1919 (Lincoln Record Society, 82, 1993), p. 89 and Graham Neville, Radical Churchman:  Edward Lee Hicks and the New Liberalism (Oxford, 1998), p. 169.