Category: Human Sexuality

A Reflection on the Shared Conversations by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia.News

“It’s good to talk!”

The macho cockney voice of Bob Hoskins (pictured) encouraging men to pick up the phone (back then a landline almost certainly owned by BT) and talk still brings a smile to my face. It was one of the most successful consumer advertising campaigns of the 1990s, and upheld as the gold standard by all of us budding marketing executives. Aware that women were much more likely to talk than their bill-paying husbands, BT set themselves the daring objective of wanting to change attitudes towards communications. It worked! BT grew their business by £5billion over 5 years, despite already being the clear market leader with no significant competition

Key to this success was getting the BT Executive to understand that they weren’t actually in the telephony or technology business, but rather they were in the “reciprocated confidences” business. As the brilliant brand strategist, Norman Strauss, explained to them – they were in fact in the business of enabling an exchange of confidences between human beings, so leading to better communications and ultimately deeper relationships.
So, it’s good to talk – as many of us can testify following the Regional Shared Conversations.

I must admit I have been pondering why they have been called “shared” conversations, given that the whole exercise has been designed to keep them as confidential as possible. To be fair, understandably so given the sensitive subject matter and the need to protect those for whom this is a deeply personal issue. But shared? A conversation is by definition between more than one person (unless you have an unfortunate habit of talking to yourself), which of course is where the “sharing” takes place. But sharing that conversation further afield was never part of the agenda – quite the opposite in fact, all flipcharts were to be shredded and no report kept.

So I’d like to suggest that what this exercise was really all about was enabling “shared confidences” rather than “shared conversations”. Indeed, the whole programme had carefully been crafted to ensure that trust and confidence was built, so that eventually – when we were asked to form triplets to share our own personal stories – we had enough of a foundation to be open and vulnerable with each other. From all the feedback and reflection sessions that I am aware of this is certainly what people appeared to value the most. I would also suggest that this is when we heard each other the best, and where our conversations were most effective.

For me, it was in the sharing of confidences that we became fully human with each other – we could see (and hear) the Christ in each other, and we witnessed and treasured the vulnerability that worked as an invisible chord binding us each together. It was here that we spoke in the first person singular, rather than in the first person plural – where we interacted as precious individual brothers and sisters in Christ, with open hearts and minds. Our goal was not to change or challenge each other, but rather to understand and so respect each other.

Outside of the Shared Conversations I have noticed an increasing tendency amongst certain evangelicals to say that they don’t want to hear any more personal stories, but that they want to “just focus on what the bible says”. I hear this as code for “please let’s just be rational and non-emotional about this”. There appears to be a reluctance, despite the normal reliance on personal testimony in the evangelical tradition, to engage the heart in the pain and trauma of the out working of theological views. Instead they would like to take refuge in their “minds”, where they can safely and confidently stand on what they believe the bible clearly says.

The best proof I have of this is when I share my testimony, which I frequently do now, and explain how this issue has cost me virtually everything – including very nearly my life (twice!). People listen patiently and then say quite politely “thank you” before moving on. Hardly ever is there a pause to say how awful the story is, or how sorry they feel that I have been through so much pain. It’s as if they can’t possibly afford to do that because they will then be giving some ground, under no circumstances should their emotions sway them from the truth. They need to remain resolute in their belief and not allow any compassion or loving kindness to be shown.

I find this very sad, and if I’m truly honest deeply concerning. For any form of communication to be truly effective – be it with our creator God or with each other – we need to listen with both our hearts and our minds. We need to engage personally, in the first person, with the reality of those who Christ has placed before us – human beings, with human stories about their divine encounters, with divine revelations.

I therefore believe it’s not only good to talk – to share, to witness, to engage with each other – it’s essential! It’s what our relational God desires for us more than anything. For it is in sharing confidences with each other that we learn to see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. It is in sharing our stories that we realise that we are each just trying to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and our neighbour (even if we disagree with them!) as ourselves.

“The Theologians Have Only Interpreted the World…”:  Responding to Martyn Percy’s Critique of Renewal and Reform

by the Revd Canon Simon Butler, Prolocutor of Canterbury

Last week I attended my first meeting of the new Archbishops’ Council. We met for two days, first to establish relationships in preparation of five years’ working together, and secondly to begin to pick up the ongoing threads of the Council’s work, especially the programme of Renewal and Reform (R&R). This extensive programme of change – fostering vocations, developing discipleship, prioritising lay leadership, resourcing ministerial training, redirecting diocesan finance and simplifying our cumbersome legislation – seeks to respond to the reality of numerical decline that is projected to become precipitate in the coming years and to refocus the church on numerical and spiritual growth. It is an attempt to shift the institution of the Church in a missionary direction. In as much as there is a centre in the Church of England, R&R is the centre doing its bit to reverse that decline.

But not without criticism. Most trenchantly, Professor Martyn Percy, the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, writing for Modern Church, has attacked R&R as based on “secular reasoning, business-think, spiritual zeal and passionate intensity”, lacking in “ecclesial comprehension, spiritual vision and theological depth.” He describes the church R&R attempts to create as a “Zombie church”.

The space allotted to Via Media articles doesn’t allow for a full response to Martyn’s criticisms. His insight merits proper consideration, once the regrettable polemics have been acknowledged. In this short article, however, it seems appropriate to offer a more balanced perspective as a critical friend of R&R.

Professor Percy is undoubtedly correct to say that there are insights from the secular and business world present in R&R. There are also undoubtedly passionate, committed Christians with a zeal for mission and evangelism, lay and ordained, committed to the work. None of this should surprise anyone. It is difficult to understand how this should present a concern to Martyn, whose own ministry as a Principal of a theological college and now as a Dean of a Cathedral, will have and will require all of these elements in the mix of institutional life.

Had such insights been all that Renewal and Reform was about, as it seems Martyn wants to claim, we should naturally be anxious. Were there no understanding of the nature of the breadth of the Church of England, were there no prayerful and contemplative elements, were there no theological commitments driving the work, then perhaps we ought to be worried.

But this is palpably not the case. To witness Archbishop Justin at work in Lambeth Palace will see him in a praying, thinking, reflective community of leaders and advisers is to see it challenged. Initial experience of the Archbishops’ Council (including theologians, parish priests, lay leaders and mission practitioners, and a variety of appointed members whose experience and commitments are grounded in the reality and breadth of the Church of England), does not suggest this is a body to be easily-steamrollered into a sort of City-driven groupthink. And the House of Bishops, whose own lack of university-based theologians does highlight the never-wider gap between the Church and the Academy across which Professor Percy speaks, nevertheless are more aware than most of the cultural and missiological challenges facing the contemporary Church of England and the need to speak the Good News of Jesus Christ with many and varying voices in our society – from healthy, vibrant parishes to imaginative “Fresh Expressions.”

So there is plenty of that which Professor Percy claims is absent in Renewal and Reform and I am hopeful in the coming months we shall see a more explicit theological narrative and spiritual resourcing. These are there already; but I agree with Martyn that it needs to be more visible and, for many, it needs to be seen to be driving the agenda more. If Renewal and Reform can help us all to dream dreams and to catch a vision for the work of the Spirit in the life of the Church, and to help us to live the “hope that is set before us” it will have done all it sets out to do. Good communication, however, is essential.

What cannot be doubted is that Renewal & Reform is a huge cultural change in a Church whose approach to change can be generously described as ‘leisurely’. What I hope its detractors and its supporters can share in is a commitment to the first of the words in its title – to Renewal. Whether or not the statistics stack up, whether or not the decline of the Church of England is imminent, we can all share in a desire to see the Spirit at work transforming lives and communities. The Holy Spirit changes lives and hearts before the Spirit changes institutions. As my sub-title suggests, those whose primary commitment is theology and those whose primary commitment is institutional change, could both be helpfully reminded that change – sanctification to give it a more theological slant – is at the heart of what we long for. Perhaps we can unite around that.

by the Right Revd Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

Back in my days as a vicar, some time in the mid 1990s, we had a very good piece of mission work going on in my parish. Ten years or so later a term was coined and popularised for such activities: they were to be called Fresh Expressions of Church. Bestowing a name, as a parent on a child, or as a researcher identifying a new phenomenon or object, doesn’t only reflect identity, it helps establish it. If the term Fresh Expression had been around at the time, we would have understood better what our activity was about, and maybe how to help it grow and develop to its maximum potential. And I could more easily have fended off the occasional church council member who grumbled that all these people didn’t seem to be coming along to the traditional Sunday morning services.

Naming things matters. And at the moment one of the key new names on the Church of England block is “good disagreement”. Its birthplace can be found in the process of Shared Conversations that lies at the heart of the C of E’s attempts to respond to the deeply divided views around LGBT Christians and their place in the church. It’s a useful term to identify that there can be a meaningful (perhaps even transformative) outcome to a conflict that does not involve either one side winning or the achievement of a largely agreed compromise. Yet a name that applies to only one specific circumstance carries an inevitable weakness. If good disagreement is only defined in relation to sexuality, then our attempts to develop it as a concept, even for use in that specific case, will be limited. Can we take the notion away from its origins and nurture it in ways that will give it strength, perhaps by finding examples of where, like my 1990s parish, we can discover we’ve already been doing it, before the name was invented?

Over the last three or so years I’ve done quite a few rounds of media interviews on the topics of migration and refugees. The subjects are emotive, and after every set of TV and radio appearances I could guarantee a little wave of angry, and often abusive, emails. Quite early on, resisting the temptation to make a sharp or witty response, and avoiding the desire simply to bin them, I decided that any that had a name and address to respond to, and that managed to include at least one point of view amid the abuse, would get a courteous reply that attempted to engage with their viewpoint. What happened next surprised me. In up to half the cases I then got a second email, almost always deeply apologetic for the tone of the first. My views on the subject matter didn’t change hugely, but they became better informed and more understanding of why people might with integrity differ from me. It was clear that in many cases their perceptions of me had also changed significantly, because I’d taken the time to respond. And their views too were becoming more reasoned and reflected.

What I am contending is that even such a limited process as this goes beyond a simple combination of courtesy and agreement to differ. What was happening was that me and my correspondents were ceasing to be ciphers for our views and attitudes, and becoming real human beings to each other. A very basic level of relationship was being forged. Relationship lies at the heart of our Christian Faith. The Father sent his son rather than a rule book, and sent him that we might have a life changing and life building relationship with him here and now. Our doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that relationship is central to God’s own self. Good disagreement, whatever the topic, is in its essence relational. It represents the conclusion of a process in which the other has been met as a fellow human being and Christian, even if we might still think that they hold views incompatible with both our sense of the canon of scripture and the trajectory of God’s Kingdom.

Applying that to this January’s meeting of Anglican Primates convinces me that it was precisely the depth of relationship, forged by the efforts of Archbishop Justin in visiting each of them in their own provinces, sustained by worshipping and loving together at Canterbury, and upheld by those surrounding them in prayer, that enabled all bar one of them not just to remain through the process but to make an explicit commitment to continue in fellowship. It seems to be what has happened for a large majority of participants at the regional Conversations. The immediate challenge is how to incorporate that relation building process into the July General Synod, recognising that what is possible in smaller groups becomes much more complex in large gatherings. But the wider challenge is, I believe, to develop an understanding of what Good Disagreement means which can take us far beyond the presenting problem within whose crucible the term was forged.

Exclusive Article by The Very Rev Dr David Ison, Dean of St Paul’s for Christian Today article “The Church Must Repent of “Second Class” Treatment of Gays, Anglican Leaders warn Primates” by Ruth Gledhill

(Reproduced here by permission)

The Anglican Communion Primates’ meeting – over 30 Archbishops meeting in private from 10^th January in Canterbury – has hanging on it the hopes and fears of millions of Anglicans around the world. And the key question is whether, with their divergent views about human sexuality, they can find a way to be reconciled and to live together in one communion – or not.

I think there are two vital underlying issues which will determine what the outcome of all this is going to be.

The first is whether doctrine or people come first. Those in favour of same-sex relationships major on people and their experience, with an emphasis on love, which they then bring to their interpretation of the scriptures; those who are opposed begin with the question of truth, and deduce from the scriptures how people ought to live. Both those who affirm same-sex relationships and those who disagree with them have important perspectives to bring, but both run the risk of accusing the other of not being a ‘real Christian’, losing touch with pastoral care and compassion.

The Church is not a body defined by rules and dogmas, but a fellowship of diverse people joined together by faithfulness to following Jesus Christ. It will not stay together where principle – whether for or against – becomes more important than our shared bond in the Body of Christ. You can see this where conservatives assume that lesbian, gay or transgender church members and those who accept them are not properly Christian at all, and where those in favour of gay relationships regard those opposed as uncompassionate and unchristian. The challenge for the Archbishops is to encompass in themselves our human diversity in Christ and allow that God is big enough to cope with the diversity which we find uncomfortable and hard to comprehend.

The other, even more vital, issue is that of how we deal with difference. The sexuality divide focuses the big question facing the whole of humanity, which underlies other huge topics the Primates are dealing with (whether religious persecution, the safeguarding of the vulnerable, people trafficking or the treatment of refugees). How do we treat people who are different from us? The forces of Daesh in Syria seek to eradicate difference and make everyone else like them, through violence and the threat of death; extremist political parties see immigrants as a threat; leaders make themselves lifelong rulers by destroying those opposed to their control of power.

Will the threatened splits and walk-outs happen – or can the Primates model something different? Does the truth belong to one side, are there two incompatible truths – or are we servants of one God with something to learn from each other in order to become the one Body of Christ in love?

My hope is that the Primates will offer not only the Church but also the whole world the real Christian hope of how we can live together in difference without destroying the other. That means accepting that none of us own the full truth, and that we find God’s truth through being committed to live in relationship with one another.

My fear is that they will follow the world rather than Christ, and give up on one another.

May God help our Archbishops, and us: and may we in our own lives and prayers work to love those who are different from us, and love those who find it hard to love us.

“Bravo Martyn Percy!  I salute your for your thoughtful, prophetic and brave statement of the reality that we now find ourselves in as a Church.  Your call for meaningful acts of repentance for the Church’s woeful response to homosexuality worldwide is beautifully timed, coming as it does ahead of the all important Primates meeting in January.”

That said, I can’t help wonder if his contribution will prove “helpful?  I suppose it rather depends on who he perhaps is intending to help..

I would offer that virtually everyone I know – from all sides of this complex and painful debate – believe that the status quo is unsustainable and that significant change is inevitable, indeed many would say long overdue.  The critical question though is how we manage this change.  The process is key, and that is where the rub lies.

Sadly we have for too long had what can at times seem like “trench warfare” between the two sides of the debate.  Both feel hurt and misunderstood and as a result, both are becoming more and more defensive in their thoughts and actions.  Martyn very accurately points out that the pain on these two sides is not equal, and he rightly calls for greater recognition of the inequality and imbalance of power in the current debate – we LGBT Christians are bringing our very selves to the debate, not some ideology we happen to sincerely believe in.

What’s more, we have sorely missed national champions who will speak out for us.  There have been some notable exceptions, such as the Bishop of Buckingham and the Bishop of Salisbury, but on the whole there has been far too much fear and dare I say cowardice (hiding behind the excuse of an idol called “unity”) that has inhibited our leaders from leading.

As a result many within the LGBT Community have little faith, or indeed respect, for the Church leaders who are supposed to be their shepherds.  Instead a significant number feel that they have often been overseen by people with incredibly sharp teeth who have often caused yet even more heartache and pain.

So is this “helpful” to the LGBT Community? Absolutely, it starts to show us that people understand the injustice we face and are prepared to stand up for truth and the gospel.

Is it “helpful” to how things will progress?  Well sadly I fear his calls for repentance will fall on deaf ears.  I too have challenged the Archbishop about the need for some significant acts of repentance for the way in which the Church has treated the LGBT community.  In my opinion the Shared Conversations process that we are currently undergoing will be of little value unless this happens – as angry hearts will only be speaking to deaf ears.

It would take an incredibly brave and humble Archbishop to now act on Martyn’s advice.  I would like to think that Justin, of all the men of God I know, might be able to do this – but I somehow fear that given the gauntlet has been thrown down publicly he will be hesitant to be seen to pick it up…and so an important opportunity will be lost.  Martyn may well have had more chance to have his call heeded if he had tried to do this privately – perhaps he did?

For the sake of those who are deeply suffering the outworkings of such a cruel and misguided interpretation of scripture as many currently believe, we need desperately to resolve this issue.  Our young in particular need to be protected from the dangers of conservative theologies that teach them to hate who they have been created to be.  How will this change?  Not by trench warfare sadly, but by looking to build understanding between the differing groups and so paths of reconciliation.  That’s why I so passionately believe in Good Disagreement.

Does Martyn’s essay help this?  Well he is definitely showing the courage to speak the truth – the question is whether he is speaking it lovingly enough for the right people to hear.  I personally would beseech them to do so, so that we might therefore find a way of building trust and understanding between all sides….only time will tell.

Read the whole essay Sex, Sense and Non-Sense for Anglicans and the press release.