Category: Human Sexuality

by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia.News

It’s a strange thing, being talked about.

The House of Bishops meets this week to do just that…to talk about “us” LGBTI Christians.

They do so without one openly gay or transgender bishop in their midst – this is the House not the College of Bishops, and yet they are going to decide what they are going to do with “us”.

I personally can’t think of another institution in the modern-day world that would be able to get away with this, but of course, the Church has been getting away with such practices for time in memoriam.

It comes on the back of a rather unpleasant document that sort to name and shame loyal Christians for having the courage to be openly gay.  No thought of course to our safety, or indeed to the pastoral implications of what they did.  I know that many within GAFCON are more than aware that some of us have had acts of homophobic violence perpetrated against us already this year…but I suppose they just think that is par of the course.

So they’re going to talk about “us” without “us”.  The one thing we have been asking them not to do.

We’re told to trust “them”.

I for one will definitely pray for “them” as “they” meet.

The problem is that the whole debate is now framed about “them and us”, divided groups differentiated by our sexuality and gender.

All we want is to be treated as an inclusive pronoun – “we”.

To be equal members of the Body of Christ, not second class citizens, where we’re appreciated as a community to be embraced and loved rather than a problem to be solved.  Goodness knows most of us have had enough rejection and pain already.

So we have to hold our breath and wait – and hope that when our ears burn, it is because the Holy Spirit is at work and that truth and grace are being spoken and heard.

by the Rt Revd Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Given the Latin title, Via Media, of this site, it seems appropriate to be typing my latest contribution from Rome. I’ve just started on my way back from a conference that has spent a lot of its time wrestling with tough questions about Christians and sex. More specifically, I’ve been the Anglican speaker at an international symposium on what we are learning to call new monasticism.

Across much of the world, and in many denominations, we are beginning to see signs of fresh interest in the living of life as part of a community whose members are joined by formal promises and mechanisms of mutual accountability. Archbishop Justin has himself gone on record as saying that a recovery of these forms of life is a necessary condition for the wider revival of the church. These new communities are breaking fresh ground in many ways: they are often ecumenical, do not all live together, and aren’t single gender. Within the communities that lie within the ambit of the Roman Catholic tradition however, one of the biggest victories has been to achieve the recognition of Religious Orders that have relaxed the traditional vow of celibacy sufficiently to allow those who are married to join.

The question as to whether there is a place in the Religious Life for those who are committed to the vows of marriage is not a new one. St Francis of Assisi faced it eight centuries ago and came up with the notion of a Third Order, which existed alongside and in addition to the separate orders he had founded for celibate men and women. It was open to people in all walks of life and responsibilities who wished to follow Jesus after his example, in an ordered and accountable life. It’s probably fair to say that the wider church, both in Francis’s day and for centuries after, has been happy to see such efforts confined to the fringes.

Even where theology fails to support it, there is a recurrent tendency among Christians in many cultures to see celibacy both as a higher calling and as a legitimate requirement to be imposed on an individual prior to them being allowed to fulfil their vocation. One of the arguments that the emerging new Catholic communities have had to combat is the fear that having women, and married people of both sexes, holding positions of authority within them, would undermine the position of the celibate male priesthood, first in the community itself, then in the wider church. Two days of hearing stories from a variety of deeply holy men and women, many of them relatively young, has brought home to me what a huge step they have taken in gaining support for their wider view of monasticism.

The fruits of their efforts are clear to see. Mission work is greatly enriched by its being undertaken by groups mixed in sex and status. Pastoral work benefits from the wider perspectives available. Couples already vowed to each other are able to make a joint commitment that both will then strive to help the other achieve. Children are brought up in ways that offer a prophetic example to the wider world. A witness is given that the path of lifelong sanctification is not just for that special few who do not have other ties to bind them, but is open to all Christ’s brothers and sisters.

My time among the representatives of these emerging communities in Rome has magnified the respect I already had for what they are doing, often in the most difficult contexts of modern urban life. Yet it has also made me more open to the suspicion that there may be aspects of my own Anglican tradition and my personal faith that remain culturally conditioned to similar views about sex and celibacy, even where both our theology and the evidence of the lives God blesses in his service, that is in front of our very eyes, would deny it.

 

by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia.News and Appointed Member of the Archbishops’ Council (1999 – 2004)

      

“You’ve asked the wrong people!”

I still remember the silence that fell in the Archbishop’s Council after the comment from one of the archbishops following my presentation of “The Listening Programme” research.

We looked at each other and then one brave archdeacon piped up – “No, she hasn’t…we all know it’s true, we just don’t like admitting it!”

I had just spent the previous three months going around the country conducting focus groups amongst people on the margins, and asking them how they perceived “the Church”.  It had brought up some painful truths – that we were seen as an institution that did a lot of good but was always after people’s money!  We were aloof, out of touch, in love with tradition, old in demographic and patriarchal in mindset…I could go on.  The most memorable photo that someone had picked out when looking for an image that reminded them of the Church of England was a dinosaur in a denim jacket.  It spoke for itself really.  Another showed a picture of 1960s patriarchal bliss, a “perfect family” where everyone “knew their place”.

I had begged for 30 minutes to be able to present the findings, and had been given 10 – just before the end of the meeting.  It was squeezed in as an inconvenient interruption to the important business on the agenda.  I remember asking myself what on earth I was trying to achieve.  The answer?  I felt I needed to hold up a mirror and try and get the Church hierarchy to see itself as others saw it.  Not an easy task!

As the same archbishop went on to tell me a few months later – “Jayne, I know my clergy, I know what they’re facing – I read their prayer letters!”  I remember looking at him with great fondness and answering with as much love and kindness as I could: “You’re a great bloke, and I’d love to be able to go down the pub with you and have a pint – but you’re still the Archbishop!  Do you really think people tell it to you as it is?!  When you go into a church it’s always full!  People are happy and positive – it’s not like that all the time!!”

This same archbishop had moments before just shared his vision for the Church – both in terms of how he saw it currently at that time, and how he envisioned it could be.  I remember listening with quiet tears rolling down my face, trying to hide them as I knew everyone else was feeling so positive about such an upbeat appraisal.  Towards the end of the discussion I had been asked – “Jayne, are you OK?” I had gulped and said:

“Well I think you belong to a different Church to the one I belong to!  The one I’m part of loses 50,000 children a week, has buildings falling down, has clergy who are overstretched and demoralised, has a really negative image amongst the general public – and the saddest thing of all is that we seem to have our fingers in our ears, and our hands over our eyes – and no one wants to see it as it truly is!”

The response?

A smile, and then those memorable words – “I think we all need a cup of tea!”

Fifteen years on, not much has changed – we’re still drinking tea!

The recent You Gov poll results clearly show that less than half of GB adults believe the Church of England is there for anyone who wants to go to Church, and yet we confidently have it asserted that “the Church is there for anyone at any time”.  Try telling that to a young gay couple who want to get married!

Could we have asked the “wrong people”?  Perhaps.  You see, this survey asked the young as well as the old, those of no faith as well as those of faith.  In truth, we asked everyone – not just those within the Church, who often see things just as we would like them to (ie as we do).  We asked those on the margins of the Church and those who no longer want to be part of it, we asked those who used to go and those who have never been.

What did we find?

That there is a stark contrast between what people think on the “inside” to what people think on the “outside”.

Have we got the courage and humility to listen to them – or is it time for another cup of tea?

By the Rt Revd Paul Bayes,  Bishop of Liverpool

“That’s what politics is about, Philip; love and anger.”
Neil Kinnock to Philip Gould, 1992

“That constant humiliation to survive. If you’re not angry about it, what kind of person are you?”
Ken Loach, 2016

“Don’t mourn, organise!”
Joe Hill (to a friend before he was executed), 1915

What motivates people to make a difference? What motivates people to return, day after day, in the face of discouragement and misunderstanding and opposition, to make a difference again? And to keep on making a difference until things are different? How do we find the strength inside?

The road to justice and holiness begins from our own front door. If as a Christian I believe I am beloved of God, and if I believe God made me the way I am, then my jumble of emotions, desires, longings and hopes is God-given and capable of redemption. From there the journey begins, the journey to change the world inside and outside. Kieran, one of the leaders of “Open Table”, our LGBT congregation in Liverpool, told me this week of a saying they have there: “Come as you are. Be as you are. Leave differently.”

All this is true. But the Christian tradition has often suspected anger, excluding it from this vision of the whole of life redeemed, expecting disciples to amputate it or repress it or ignore it, at any rate to suspect it and fear it, to regret it and deplore it and certainly not to listen to its voice and amplify its cry. There is a story of one of the saints of early monasticism, in the desert of northern Egypt, who kept a stone in his mouth for many months “until he learned to speak without anger”.

For much of the church and much of the time, to be angry has been the same as to be immature. In such a view anger must be bottled up, we must hedge the heart before we speak; the only thing that matters in our conversation is argument, dispassionate argument. In such a view argument is what makes a difference, argument is what moves and changes people, only argument. After argument there can be no room for feeling, only argument moves the world and the church family along, we were born to argue and then to submit to the better argument. Let’s keep everything cool and cerebral; after all, didn’t Jesus say that the angry would be subject to judgement (Matthew 5:22)? The heart is above all things deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9) – so let’s strangle it, in particular shrivel its terrible twin faces of anger and desire.

And yet, and yet. We know that the Bible makes more room for anger (and of course desire) than this. The Lord Jesus does not seem to have been ashamed of his anger, when he cleared the temple or when he healed the man with a withered hand or when he spoke hard and straight truth to the Pharisees (John 2:13ff, Mark 3:1ff, Matthew 23:15ff). The writer of Ephesians was unafraid of anger, and distinguished it clearly from sin (Ephesians 4:26f).

No, anger is not sin – though of course anger is seen in scripture as potentially dangerous and as in need of care. James, echoing a recurrent theme in the Hebrew bible, exhorts his readers to be “slow to anger” as God is slow to anger (James 1:19, Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm and Proverbs passim). But the scriptures make room for the slow heart, for slow and real anger just as much as for passionate desire.

So what motivates people to make a difference? What motivates people to return, day after day, in the face of discouragement and misunderstanding and opposition, to make a difference again? And to keep on making a difference until things are different? Love and anger.

In his marvelous question-and-answer “Catechism of Christian Doctrine” (1985) the Roman Catholic theologian Herbert McCabe writes this:

Q: What is courage?
A: Courage is a disposition of our feelings of aggression which inclines us, characteristically, to face up to and deal with difficulties and dangers for the sake of doing what is good: a courageous person is neither over-aggressive nor timid; is angry about the right things at the right time and is prepared to suffer patiently when it is necessary and even to die for the sake of justice or in witness to the gospel…
Q: How do we exercise the virtue of courage?
A: We exercise the virtue of courage principally in energetic struggle on behalf of the poor and the weak and on every occasion when we have to face hostility and danger for the sake of justice and the gospel.

In short, as McCabe says in his book “On Aquinas“ (2008): “Courage is the virtue by which our aggression is reasonable” (p167). And in every deep and deep-felt conversation in the world and the Church, our aggression needs to be reasonable. Not strangled, but strongly present. And reasonable.

I write this for a purpose – to combat poor practice in the Church. The poor practice is this; that people whose inner and outer lives are deeply impacted by an issue, and who become angry as a result, are discounted precisely because of their anger. This has been the age-old fate of women in the West, and the fate of any oppressed group, and it is the fate of many LGBT people in the Church today. The advice from the men at the top (and they usually are men, and they are always at the top) is the old, infuriating, demeaning advice: “Calm down, dear”.

Calm down, and clam up. Don’t feel what you feel, or at least don’t express it. Behave. Let’s hear an argument, not a cry. Deny your deepest pain, and your deepest love. Instead play our game, our arguments-only game, our game that believes people only really exist from the neck up; calm down, dears, because your game is not legitimate, and we have decided that, and we are always right.

In the face of this old and cold advice I want to offer an even older, warmer, Biblical encouragement to those on the edge in the churches, and in this season to LGBT Christians in particular: be warmly angry, be hot with anger, but do not boil away.
Be warmly angry, but do not boil away. Feel what you feel, and turn the feeling to strength. Don’t mourn, organise. Let the person you are in God speak out, so that your own desires and your own anger become the engine for a just world.

Come as you are. Be as you are. Leave differently. Love differently. Bring your heart’s desire to bear on the life of our community. Make yourself heard, and if people like me act as if we know you better than you know yourself, then set us to rights, tell us the truth, motivate and stir and provoke us to know your anger as you know it.

And then, please, for all our sakes, exercise your courage, the virtue by which your aggression becomes reasonable. And bring your courage to bear on the councils of the church. And share facts and logic and truth and history and perspective, and (yes, of course!) argument. But never lose your anger, even after you’ve let it blow through you as the sun goes down, and refused to allow it to consume you. Bring your next-morning anger, your tempered anger, your reasonable passion, the truth of how you feel, and contribute it to the whole community, which desperately needs to listen to it.
Make a difference. Return, day after day, in the face of discouragement and misunderstanding and opposition, to make a difference again. Keep on making a difference until things are different.

And thank you for bearing with us still, and for enriching our half-awake lives, and for waking us up further. And thank you most of all for the passionate word of Christ that you have received and that you – and only you – can speak forward into our church’s symphony today, a word of the heart, the word of love and anger.

The Rt Revd Paul Bayes is Bishop of Liverpool and has written about his views on same-sex relationships in Journeys In Grace and Truth

by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia.News

I must admit I am worried – really worried.

There appears to be some deep malaise at the heart of Western politics, which many appear to recognise and yet few know how to diagnose let alone cure.

We see it in the current US Presidential Debate, which seems to have descended into some form of X-rated TV reality show, akin to a final show down in a “Celebrity Big Brother” or “I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here”…save this time there is no Davina, Ant nor Dec to jump in and save the day.

We see it in the after-quakes of the UK Brexit debate, and the various bullish responses from our European Union colleagues.

We hear of it following MEP scuffles in back rooms, or with would-be party leaders who have their offices vandalised.

What on earth is happening?

Where has decorum gone?

Where is common decency and respect?

Call me old-fashioned, but where is honour and virtue?

In an age of 24/7 media we seem to be living in plethora of real-life sitcoms, where enormous egos and highly professionalised spin machines seek to relativize truth and twist the facts to suit their own agendas.

At the heart of all this I fear are some rather dark age-old forces…and yes, I believe they are spiritual.

Their name?

That is the subject for another blog – perhaps next week – but for now I will just ask some obvious questions:

• Why are Christian Republicans still choosing to stand by a man whose conduct is far from Christian?

• Why are these same Republicans so blindly set on protecting Trump “at any cost”, despite almost daily revelations that show the true tenure of his character?

• Why was Diane James unable to secure the moral authority to lead her party, despite being elected by her own party members to do so?

• Why did Angela Eagle have a brick thrown through her constituency office, and then find herself being forced to stand down from the Labour leadership race?

Indeed, one could almost ask “Why is it that strong women are seen as a “problem” but strong men are seen as “born leaders”?”  Personally I believe there is a link – but to name it would get me labelled sexist.

There-in lies the rub – we are told never to call a spade a spade.  We are told not to label people as being what they undoubtedly are as they might sadly be offended – even if it is the truth.

The Church is a Master at this.  That’s why we seem to live in a slightly Twilight Zone, where the rest of the world looks on and wonders what on earth we’re up to.

So maybe it’s time to just speak the truth?  To cut through the fudge?  To stop the politics and the shenanigans, and say things as they really truly are:

We, the Church, are on the whole found to be institutionally sexist – despite finally allowing women onto the top table.  Yes, we are also institutionally racist, institutionally homophobic and er, yes, largely middle class.  We’re also pretty bad at dealing with disability, especially mental illness. We like to think we are there for everyone – but we want people to join us on our terms, and sadly that just doesn’t cut it in today’s diverse society. The age of deference is dead – a spade is most definitely just a spade!

Now that would be quite a day!  For the Church to actually be seen to lead the way in all truth…not spin it!

Who knows, maybe then we would be seen to have rediscovered our moral character, and maybe people would start listening to what we have to say?

by the Revd Jody Stowell, Vicar of St Michael and All Angels, Harrow Weald

Ever since I was little, I have had the paradoxical desire both to be ‘part of the crowd’ and to be ‘the centre of attention’.  I seemed to be a discombobulating mix of Extrovert and Introvert.  I loved being on stage, taking part in school productions and joining drama classes; acting seemed to draw these conflicting desires together, as the mask of the persona was able to draw the sting out of being the centre of attention and allow me to be visible without the inconvenience of being ‘seen’.  However, ask me to give a talk or debate in class and I was a immediately a hyperventilating blob on the floor.

The last thing I ever thought I would be, is a Vicar, part of whose very job is to be visible, be seen and be authentically herself, and the journey that got me here is another story for another day.

But recently I was given pause to ponder the sometimes excruciating calling of being visible.

Over the last few years I’ve been pretty vocal in the campaign to see women become bishops in the Church of England, but I’ve also had the luxury, as a woman priest, of being in a local context where my day to day ministry is pretty ‘normal’, and I don’t have to think too hard about being a woman and a priest.  But the other day I found myself in a quite different context, where, I was quite literally the only ordained woman present (and I was surprised how weird this felt), where we ‘gentlemen’ were welcomed, and where it clearly made a certain male priest visibly uncomfortable to process down the aisle together, like I might have girl germs, or his standing next to me would somehow mean he would have to accept that I exist. Although there were some who saw my discomfort and were kind to me, which helped, it’s been a while since I’ve had to put up with those kind of shenanigans.

It reminded me of the importance of showing up, of just being present, of being visible, of acting like you have a special remit to exist, even when you’d rather blend into the background.  I didn’t choose to be particularly radical that day, I didn’t choose to be clearly visible and stick out like a sore thumb.

What I did choose, was to show up.

In the Christian faith the call to ‘show up’ is rooted in the theology of the Incarnation.  We have a God who shows up: from the visitations to Hagar, Abraham and Moses, in desert, tent and burning bush, to the womb of Mary and the messiness of childbirth.

It is striking that Christians have a God who not only shows up, but does so first and foremost in the same way as everyone else ‘shows up’.  God’s investment in being human and in being born, validates human presence as a vehicle of expression. We all show up on this planet through the birthing process and this is therefore our remit to show up and more than that, to be counted.  Jesus’ birth is our Christian justification for proclaiming that everyone deserves a voice and an invitation to the table.  There are some in this world who have this as an automatic privilege, the incarnation gives permission to those without this.

I often experience great privilege in my own human experience, I’m white, educated and have a secure home.  But in the situation I experienced above, it took relatively little to start to make me think that I’d made a foolish mistake in turning up, that perhaps I should have known that the invitation was simply a nicety and intended to be declined.  How much more difficult for those whose experience is a much more explicit exclusion.
Jesus of course, crashes the party, uninvited and unwanted. His very presence in our world shows us that there is great power in simply being present in a place.  His unapologetic arrival should give us courage in those spaces where we are unwanted.

Our presence means that people cannot ignore our existence.  Being present means that people have to deal with the reality and not the imagined or perceived person.
Outside of the church, as Christians, this can mean being invested in showing up at places where ‘God’ is a dirty word.  To be present in certain political arenas which would rather have religion as a privatised activity.  To speak into issues of food poverty, disability allowance and financial inclusion as if we had a right to.  Our very presence in these places indicates that we believe God is interested in these things.

Within the church, this challenges us both to be those who seek to invite the ‘other’, to look around the room and notice if everyone is ‘people like us’ and change the dynamic, but also to take courage and show up in the places where we suspect we are not fully welcome.  In the church, lack of welcome is still the case for women, even with the reality of women bishops, for BAME people, how much more the case for LGBT+ who quite understandably have no idea where they fit.

As we negotiate our way forward with conversations regarding sexuality in the church, we can’t underestimate the importance of gay people simply being present, as someone recently said to me, to ‘stay in the room’.  For those of us who are not gay, we must not underestimate the courage it takes to show up.

One of the prayers before communion says ‘Be present, be present, Lord Jesus Christ, our Risen High Priest, make yourself known in the breaking of bread’.  Presence and being known sometimes means the wounding, or breaking, of our self.  We have a call, every Christian, to be present in this world and in the Church.  It is sometimes at high cost.  It is always divine.

Picture of a Photo Negative of the Shroud of Turin

by the Very Revd Dr David Ison, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral

The Church of England is working to increase vocations to ordination by 50%, including making them more diverse. This is most obvious in relation to ethnic origin, where there is a tiny percentage of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic priests, even compared to the rather larger per cent of BAME church members. But it’s also visible in relation to young women, where some of the evangelical churches providing younger male ordinands don’t support women who feel called to leadership and service through ordination because of complementarian views of the role of the sexes based on biblical interpretation not shared by the rest of the Church of England.

There have been efforts to encourage and work for more vocations among BAME people and young women, to redress the imbalance and encourage priestly diversity. Much of the problem comes from inbuilt discrimination in a Church which still allows legal discrimination against women and which has belittled the equal humanity, ministries and gifts of women and ethnic minority people for centuries.

But there’s another area where attitudes to diversity in ministry are unenlightened – in relation to gay people. This is normally hidden; but an article by Vicky Beeching in The Guardian on 5^th September opened a window, not only onto the dilemmas facing young gay Christians feeling called to be ordained, but also the unkindness and hostility with which they can be treated. Beeching’s article was honest in expressing doubts, shared by many she knows, about offering for ordination in a Church which tells her that, while committed same-sex celibate relationships are OK, her belief that gay Christians can marry is wrong and is a problem for ordination. If, however, she embraces celibacy then she could be ordained; a policy which, as she points out, is for many ‘a cruel and unhealthy strain on their partnership that straight clergy couples don’t have to face’.

What do you do when you’re gay, don’t feel ‘called’ by God to celibacy, but do feel ‘called’ to offer yourself to the Church for ordained ministry? Does that mean you’ve got it wrong? That’s what was being said to all women feeling a call to priesthood until very recently in the Church’s history. And it was 25 years ago that Issues in Human Sexuality stated that, although the Church’s teaching might not allow it, gay people might in good Christian conscience live in a committed relationship as part of their Christian discipleship – but not if ordained.

That means that a gay, lay person feeling a call to priesthood is in the same position as a Roman Catholic heterosexual, because they have to deny themselves ever having an intimate exclusive relationship if they are to be ordained a priest. That creates either an absolute bar to gay people who are not also called to celibacy offering for ordination, or else a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture in which people don’t tell the truth about who they are and what they do. No wonder gay people feeling called by the Church to explore ordination look at this and wonder what it means for them. They see gay people in partnerships in ministry, some openly and some not, some acknowledging celibacy and others not, and agonise about what they would have to go through, whether they are really able to exercise ministry or not, and the inconsistency of the Church which, if Hilton’s position is strictly followed, would deny ministry to any gay clergy not willing to make a commitment to celibacy, and which for some gay Christians means ending relationships which the Church has allowed them in good conscience to have as lay people.

The blogger Adrian Hilton aka ‘Archbishop Cranmer’ responded to Beeching’s article with a scathing article which belittled her and the dilemma about vocation she exposes, accusing her of ‘selfish obsessions’, ‘wailing in the Guardian’, and being unwilling to accept Christianity’s ‘harsh rigorism’, anguish and sacrifice.

It’s not just that Hilton’s article lacks the compassion which he calls for in his final paragraph. It’s not only that it misrepresents Beeching by using the term ‘selfish ends’, when her article is making a plea, not for her personally, but for all gay Christians who want to serve Jesus Christ and would like – in response to the Church’s need – to have their sense of vocation to priesthood fairly treated, but don’t have confidence that it will be.

Hilton’s article is a good illustration of what Beeching is talking about: although he calls for sacrificial vocation, he doesn’t show the corresponding compassion called for 25 years ago in Issues. He doesn’t seem to understand that gay people not only face a level of public interest in their situation, but that the Church itself has been inconsistent over the issue, and told people to hide their sexuality or their beliefs. The case of Nicholas Chamberlain to which Hilton refers is a case in point: he became a bishop with his situation known privately but not publicly, and didn’t make it public until he feared it would be made so without his consent. He was appointed while not being publicly gay, whereas Jeffrey John who had been honest about his situation by being in a civil partnership and was likewise in a celibate relationship was forced to step down from ordination as a bishop, even though he meets Hilton’s criterion for being able to exercise ministry. How is that going to encourage gay Christians to respond to the Church’s call?

The irony of Hilton using the moniker ‘Cranmer’ is of course that the genuine Archbishop Cranmer got secretly married, breaking his vow of celibacy, and hid his wife in a cupboard when required until his objective of legalising clerical marriage was attained….

That’s why we need a process of growing trust and openness so we can face these things with honesty and compassion. In interfaith dialogue one of the key ways in is to treat your dialogue partners with respect, and to look for the best in what they say rather than look for the worst and how to attack where you disagree.  There are many conservative in theology who are unconditionally compassionate for gay people in the Church, and vice-versa; and such compassion comes, not through duty or in theory, but through empathising with the situation of others.

Most of us will have had to make significant sacrifices in our discipleship of Jesus Christ: if we remember what that meant for us, and the pains they caused us, then we can stand alongside those who grapple with them now. But belittling Christians different from us is no way to encourage a strong and diverse set of vocations for the Church’s ministry.

by Pete Jermey, LGBTI Christian

Last month Justin Welby made some much publicised remarks at the Greenbelt festival about the Church of England’s attitude towards gay relationships. He stated that the church needed to love and embrace everyone, including those who see gay relationships as deeply wrong. This bold statement of inclusion was written up in the press as “hug a homophobe”, but this begs the question – is everyone who opposes same sex relationships homophobic?

This is an easy one. The answer is clearly “no”.

Homophobia can be defined as a fear/hatred of gay people. Whereas it is true that there are a great many Christians who *do* fear or hate gay people, there are also many more who, for example, oppose same sex marriage, but are not afraid or hateful towards gay people.

We all have irrational fears. I am afraid of spiders, snakes and colossal statues. I can remember going swimming as a child and seeing someone in the pool who had a limb missing. I felt fear – it was not something I had seen before and it made me feel uncomfortable. Homophobia is no different to these other fears. Although it may be harder to admit to than a fear of heights or clowns, it is still just a gut reaction to something that unnerves us. Acting out of fear can be a great survival mechanism – staying away from snakes could save my life – but it can also have a very negative impact on the object of our fear. If my mum had organised a petition to have the limbless person banned from the pool it may have made her son more comfortable, but at great cost to the other.

At the time of writing a Christian news website has the headlines “Christian Colleges dominate list of absolute worst for LGBTI students”, “Vicar likens homosexuality to child abuse” and “Leading conservative Anglican says Church of England must split to stop *contagious* gay marriage”. Additionally the site carries the story of the Bishop of Grantham who, although he has embraced the C of E’s requirement of celibacy for gay people, is under fire from some conservatives simply for admitting his orientation.

When this is our reputation amongst Christians, is it any wonder that the world sees the church as homophobic, even evil?

Of course, just because the headlines suggest prevalent aggression towards gay people does not mean there aren’t genuine and rational concerns here. What if you don’t believe LGBTI people can be genuine Christians? What if you do believe being gay to be as grave a sin as abusing children? What if you are worried that homosexuality seems to be spreading as if it is a disease?

Even if the church were able to end homophobia within itself, these concerns would still be there. Ending homophobia will not end the tensions, but there is an alternative. I think the church’s problem with gay people is not one of having irrational fears or genuine concerns, but one of withholding irrational love.

Scripture calls us time and time again to “love the enemy/alien in our midst” (Leviticus 19.33-34, Ruth 1.16-18, Ezekiel 47.21-23, Matt 5.38-48, Matt 25.35-40, Rom 12.9-21, etc), even if to do so is against our best interests – even when it costs us.

This is not the sort of “love” that comes in green ink, with the word “abomination” in CAPITALS, but the sort of love that has a positive impact on the welfare of the individual. This love is perhaps best seen in the parable of the Good Samaritan (which, given the bitter rivalry between Jews and Samaritans, seems perfectly analogous to Christian-LGBTI tension). The Samaritan’s love for the Jew cost him time, money and, almost certainly, reputation. Missing entirely from the tale is the part where the Samaritan berates the Jew for his “bigoted” religious views or the part where the Jew has to lie about his nationality as a prerequisite to receiving mercy. In contrast to that of the Samaritan, the faith of the religious leaders fails to result in mercy and is, therefore, useless. In God’s kingdom mercy is valued more highly than being right.

What if Christians took the call to irrational love seriously enough that Christian colleges were actually the best for LGBTI students, because they were the ones that loved and valued all students? What if theologians who oppose same sex marriage chose their words so as to value LGBTI people, rather than assassinate by connotation? What if the GAFCON chose to believe those who claim to be celibate and gave the benefit of the doubt to the rest of us?

Irrational love isn’t doing your best not to fear/hate someone. Irrational love is feeling those emotions, but helping the person anyway.

by the Rt Revd David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

A few weeks ago, in the middle of an afternoon social event for retired clergy and their companions, I noticed a small number of people had wandered out of the house and were standing just outside the front door.  The weather being unusually damp for Manchester(!) the house was fairly packed, but the reason for their exodus was not overcrowding.  This particular group of guests came into that most modern category of social pariahs; they were the smokers.  They had understood, without a word being spoken, that their welcome did not include the ability to light up in my hall, dining room or study.

The notion of “welcome” is rightly finding its way to the centre of current discussions of Anglican theology.  It’s a good, strong and soundly biblical concept.  It takes us well away from the politically fashionable but profoundly unwelcoming notion of “tolerance” – a word that it’s worth remembering the bible uses only occasionally, and then in a deeply negative context.

The verb “welcome” sets up a distinction between its subject, “the welcomer”, and its object, “the one being welcomed”.  In the ubiquitous road signs, “Anytown welcomes careful drivers”, for example, there is a clear sense that the one issuing the welcome is both a separate entity from the one being welcomed and may also determine the limits and boundaries to that welcome.  Yet for Christians, what must come first and be paramount is God’s welcome, made flesh in Christ.  The nails that once held Jesus on the cross now fix God’s “welcome” sign to the doors of heaven, from where none can displace it.  It’s a welcome with no condition attached other than that we accept it and allow both it and him to transform our lives.

The Church, as God’s church, should seek to place no greater limitation on its welcome than Christ himself does.  When we welcome, that welcome is not simply ours but is our attempt to convey God’s own welcome to others.  Moreover, in our initiation liturgy, something beautiful happens.   We say to the newly baptised, “We welcome you into the fellowship of faith; we are children of the same heavenly Father; we welcome you.” From the moment of baptism the ones being welcomed have changed into those who are no longer guests but fully part of the “Body of Christ”.  They are now numbered among all who proclaim and incarnate God’s welcome, not simply the recipients of it.  We cannot claim the right to say to those welcomed in baptism, “This is our house; you are welcome, but only on our terms”, any more than they can demand to impose the same requirement on us.

Yet as we move from the Church as a metaphysical entity to more local expressions, from denominations to house groups, that welcome will necessarily be constrained in various ways.  The particular boundaries to welcome of the Church of England are set out succinctly in the Oaths and Declarations made by clergy prior to taking up any new ministry.  They put forward the delicate balance between our inheritance of faith and the requirement to proclaim it “afresh” in the new and previously unimagined circumstances of each and every generation.  We who must personally make the oaths and subscribe the statements are not required to interpret them in any more specific way.  Much is properly left to our own consciences and integrity, as we are challenged to live out and issue our welcome within our local circumstances.

More locally, we have, in the Diocese of Manchester, churches that offer a particular welcome to those who need or want to worship in languages other than English.  We have churches that hold activities that especially welcome those with dementia.  And of course we have the full range of Anglican churchmanship across the piece.  What our welcome can’t do is offer everything, to everyone, everywhere, all the time.  Some very specific welcomes, for example to those whose names appear on the Sex Offenders Register, may need to be particularly tailored to the most appropriate environments.

These constraints however are entirely missional.  More specifically they are about how we configure ourselves for mission in our own immediate situation, recognising that the missional contexts of others will differ from and, by God’s grace, complement ours.  To this end we might seek to embrace the notion of “mutual flourishing” that respects the welcome that others are able to give to those we do not ourselves reach.

“Welcome” then, is an extremely valuable concept, well worth further exploration.  The key is to remember that it belongs first to God and then to the whole of the baptised.  We may need to tailor it to our specific missional context, but in doing so we do well to keep in mind and in prayer those who are living out God’s welcome in other places, yet are joined in Christ with us.

Cartoon by Peter Steiner – Man Standing At the Gates of Heaven

by the Rev Canon Simon Butler, Prolocutor of Canterbury

Have you ever had that experience of profoundly disagreeing with someone while at the same time finding yourself drawn to their character and personality in friendship? At the same time, have you ever discovered that, despite a person you know being completely in tune with your values, your politics and your theology, they still drive you up the wall?

The nature of human friendship, attraction and dislike are profoundly mysterious. So often they transcend the divisions that characterise human society and the church. Recently, as a result of the Shared Conversation process in the Church of England, I have found new or renewed friendships through encounters I have had with those I profoundly disagree with. The reason these relationships emerge is of considerable interest to me, not only as a psychological phenomenon of my life to be analysed and explored (why do I particularly enjoy the company of those I disagree with?), but as a spiritual gift to my own Christian discipleship to be received and celebrated (what is it that God is giving to me in this particular relationship?).

Difference is, of course, the everyday reality of Church of England parish life. Unless we live in a very particular sort of ecclesiastical bubble, or only ever engage with people we think are ‘like us’ in a particular way, our congregations generally contain people who have a wide range of theological, political and other values. Being a parish priest is about negotiating that diversity, finding the places of unity and harnessing both for the mission of the local church (being a bishop, I guess, is about doing these things in spades!). You find yourself, or at least I do, allowing growing relationships with people shaping your view of, and your attitude to, the positions they take on a whole set of matters. You don’t lose your own convictions, but you find them tempered, refined or nuanced by friendship, shaped by your own vocation to serve them, to seek their good and sometimes humbled by a kind of generous faith in Christ that you only can aspire to. Relationships like these are wonderful to me: they help me to understand others and give others a much better chance of respecting and valuing your own point of view. What strikes me from 20 years of incumbency is that Church of England parishes are increasingly unique as places where genuine disagreement can be expressed and as such – in the context of mission – they are a powerful witness to Jesus Christ.

In the current charged atmosphere in the Church, and at a time of national uncertainty, the gift of such friendship-across-divisions is becoming less common, and not necessarily for the well-being of either church or society. It is very easy in the world of social media to engage without relationship and to react without any real knowledge of what makes a person tick or to assume that what you understand by a comment is what they mean: theological colleges will soon be offering a course entitled courses in ‘The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: The Exegesis of Facebook Postings’! It is also increasingly common to polarise into sectional interest or to be driven by anger that diminishes the opponent without allowing for the possibility of relationship to shape the encounter and to allow unexpected conclusions and new directions to emerge. The slogan language of “revisionist” and “homophobe” also has the same overtones. It’s lazy dog-whistle stuff when used without relationship. Such loaded and potentially painful words are sometimes legitimate – don’t get me wrong – but they really only ought to be used, and they genuinely only can be heard, in the context of relationship.

Too often we now talk at each other in the Church and we model our communication on the tactics of the pressure group or the online world. We take our view of our brothers and sisters in Christ from the editorial slant of Anglican Mainstream, Thinking Anglicans or whatever particular blog or angry Facebook posting has interrupted, or upset the equilibrium of, our day. It’s profoundly unbiblical, rather depressing and, as I write this, rest assured I see my own faults all too clearly. If we spent as much time working at our relationships as we do finessing our biblical interpretation, theological arguments or composing that brilliant Tweet of riposte, surely the mission of the Church would be better served?

“See how these Christians love one another”. There is really no other game in town.

Photograph of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness