ViaMedia

Category: Human Sexuality

  • Mike Pilavachi: The Elephant in the Room

    by Augustine Tanner-Ihm and Jonny Masters. Augustine is Team Curate at St James & Emmanuel, Didsbury, Manchester and winner of the 2020 Theology Slam: Jonny works to ensure the voices of young people shape decision-making in the charity sector and is married to Alex, his husband.

    Jonny Masters begins with a personal reflection:

    I imagine Mike Pilavachi would make a self-deprecating joke about the title of this article, and then belittle someone else in an even more severe way, back when he was front and centre at Soul Survivor festivals. I’d probably have laughed.

    When I think back and remember laughing at Mike’s insults to other leaders on stage at Soul Survivor my soul curdles a little inside. Was I complicit in long-lasting abusive behaviour? 

    Lord, have mercy.

    The situation regarding Mike Pilavachi has been widely discussed in Christian media and by the evangelical Christian community on Twitter/ X. The impact of Mike’s actions, first reported by The Telegraph last year, has rippled deeply in the hearts of those who had previously felt positive about his ministry. Now, tainted by confirmed allegations of sustained abusive behaviour, many Christians have been questioning their experiences of the Holy Spirit at Soul Survivor Watford, and Soul Survivor festivals. Youthscape have written an excellent article for youth workers to process the situation. It is also full of wisdom for others indirectly impacted by Mike’s actions. Premier Christianity have released a great podcast investigating Mike’s actions. However, in all the discussion and conversation (though at the time of writing not all podcast episodes have yet been released), the condemnation and the concern, there has been a silent elephant in the room.

    Sexuality.

    Mike’s actions, particularly massages, have a sexual edge to them. We need to acknowledge this as a Church. A well-respected Christian man spent time massaging young men, sometimes on his own bed. This caused immense harm to young Christians who had taken time and space to serve God. Could our overwhelming silence of decades regarding sexuality be bearing rotten fruit? Could the way we treat LGBTQ+ people be causing harm? Could our interpretation of Scripture be harmful? We would suggest yes, yes, and yes. The silence surrounding homosexuality and the wider LGBTQ+ community that has lasted decades in most evangelical churches has echoed profoundly in the conversations surrounding Mike’s actions. Yes, Mike’s controlling behaviour has been roundly condemned, celebrity culture in the church has been critiqued, but we have seen very few people raising their hands (or should that be heads above the parapet?) to ask how silence around sexuality could lead to such actions.

    It seems like Mike found a line that he would not cross and went as close to it as he could. Mike’s moral compass, informed by the evangelical charismatic Church, allowed his actions to go as far as they did, but no further. Mike’s understanding of morality in relation to sexuality consisted of clear, boundaried, actions. The boundary was sex. As far as we know, Mike committed no overtly sexual acts with another person. However, the pattern of intimate physical contact with young males raises the question of whether the acts he did commit may have offered some form of sexual gratification.

    Mike’s behaviour is considered abusive and has led to disciplinary measures. How can a well-respected, celebrated, man of faith go so far wrong?

    Silence. That would be the short answer. Let’s explore what we mean by that.

    The evangelical wing of the Church has not wrestled adequately with the question of human sexuality. It has placed it in a box. Mike, trapped in the box, banged loudly on the sides of the box and caused himself and those he loves considerable harm. Perhaps we need to think about human sexuality differently. Excuse the pun, but we need to think outside the box.

    When we look at the broader implications of conservative culture and its handling of sexuality, it’s essential to consider the wider context in which figures like Huw Edwards, Phillip Schofield, Mike Bickle, Mark Bailey, and Revd Mike Breen operate or have operated. It’s critical to clarify that the specific “downfall” or scandalous behaviour attributed to these individuals varies greatly, and in some cases, public allegations or confirmations of misconduct might not exist. Therefore, discussing their personal faith, alleged scandals, or impacts without verified evidence could be misleading and potentially harmful. Instead, the discussion will pivot towards the systemic issues within certain evangelical communities that have broader implications.

    The conservative purity and evangelical culture, noted for its often-stringent views on sexuality, has had profound effects on individuals within these communities. These views are often implicit and rarely spoken about or open to challenge. This culture, which sometimes harbours dangerous homophobic theology, can create environments where individuals feel compelled to suppress their true selves. This suppression can lead to significant psychological distress, strained relationships, and in some tragic cases, self-harm or suicide.

    This culture of silence seems to have spread because the church is not talking about a very important thing; the behaviour of Church leaders whose sexuality is not admitted because it does not conform to the ideal they are promoting. Mike Pilavachi is a man who has attempted to follow Christ and listen to His Spirit for many years. Thousands of young people have come to know Jesus Christ because of his ministry. But sadly, many people were harmed during his ministry too. His controlling and coercive behaviour played a large part in this. However, the reluctance of the wider church to challenge the potentially toxic theology he believed and preached regarding sexuality also needs to be considered. Many of our charismatic evangelical churches, organizations and groups, have ignored the elephant in the room. A wise question to ask would be, “Did we as a community enable Mike to do this to young men because of the potentially toxic theology we have preached or sometimes chose not to engage with?”

    The theology often preached within some conservative evangelical circles advocates for a strict adherence to traditional gender roles and sexual abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage. This approach can lead to harmful practices such as conversion therapy, which has been widely discredited and condemned by medical and psychological associations worldwide for causing significant harm to LGBTQ+ individuals. The Church of England has also condemned the practice of conversion therapy.

    Conservative evangelical environments can also be fertile ground for abusive behaviours to be masked or excused under the guise of spiritual authority or correction. When leaders or influential figures within these communities fall from grace, it often prompts a period of reflection and questioning among their followers. However, the systemic issues that enabled such falls remain entrenched and difficult to address without a fundamental shift in theology and practice.

    Quotes from individuals who have experienced harm from these cultures often speak to the profound sense of betrayal and loss. They may have felt a deep connection to their faith and community, only to find themselves ostracized or harmed when their true selves were revealed or when they questioned the status quo.

    The path forward requires a re-evaluation of the teachings and practices that have led to such harm. It calls for a theology that embraces love and acceptance over judgment and exclusion. It is a theology which allows Christians to be open and honest with one another. There is no shame in mistakes – that is the joy of the gospel because of Jesus Christ. This shift is not just about preventing the “downfall” of prominent figures but about creating a faith community that uplifts and supports all its members, regardless of their sexuality or gender identity.

    In conclusion, while individual scandals may capture public attention, the deeper issue lies in the theological and cultural practices that contribute to systemic harm. Addressing these issues requires courageous conversations, openness to theological thinking, and a commitment to love and respect as core principles of faith.

    It’s time to address the elephant in the room.

  • Restarting the Conversation About Equality for Women in the Church of England

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

    A couple of years ago I was talking with a bishop about the LLF debates and he sighed and said, ‘Well, at least we’ve sorted women.’ I’ve got to say this is one of the most offensive things a bishop has ever said to me.  I let it go at the time – it was on a zoom call with about 50 other clergy – but I felt angry for everyone in the Church who currently has to accept discrimination against women, even though we believe that it is right and true to the Gospel that women should be treated equally with men.

    As the decades go by, now three, since women were ‘allowed’ to be priests, it seems that discrimination has been hard-wired into the Church and even talking about equality for women feels taboo.  We welcome and promote female priests and church leaders but we also welcome and promote those who don’t accept them and their ministries.  And, under the merry banner of ‘mutual flourishing,’ everyone is happy.  But are they?  And perhaps more importantly is this truly the model of the Kingdom proclaimed by Christ?  Are we going to live with discrimination against women in our Church forever?

    On Saturday 20 April 2024 Women and the Church (WATCH) is pleased to be sponsoring the Not Equal Yet Conference at St John’s Church Waterloo.

    This will be an opportunity for women and men to come together and explore what it means for both women and for the future of our Church, if we choose to continue discriminating against women.

    The lead speaker at the Not Equal Yet conference will be the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, who said recently, ‘In 2024, 80 years after the first woman was ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion, women are still having to step aside from many roles and continue to be humiliated by a Church that tells us on a daily basis that our ministry is still “in reception.”’ At General Synod in July last year, speaking of the arrangements made in 2014 to enable women to be bishops on the condition that those who did not accept them were ‘protected,’ she said, ‘The women bishops thing ain’t working – and we are paying the price…’  Bishop Rose also asked in a recent sermon, ‘If God entrusted women to carry the living Word, will he not also entrust us to bring good news to the oppressed?’

    Other people, including several who have written for Via Media before (click on their names to read more), will address other aspects of discrimination against women in the Church of England:

    • Revd Canon Prof. Mark Chapman, Vice-Principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon and Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of Oxford, will ask whether it is appropriate for the Church of England, as the Established Church with its 26 seats in the House of Lords, to go on discriminating against women.
    • Dr Sharon Jagger, Senior Lecturer in Religion York St. John University, will reference her recent research that shows how lay women are diminished by the arrangements that limit their roles and discourage vocations.
    • Theo Hobson, author and theologian, will ask whether the arrangements limiting women’s ministry in the Church have brought more division than unity – with some clergy, including bishops, not receiving communion from others, including from the Archbishop of Canterbury because he has ordained women.
    • Revd Naomi Nixon, CEO of the Student Christian Movement, will reference the Honest Church Campaign which calls for transparency about the limits that some churches put on women’s roles.
    • Prof. Alex Fry, sociologist at Bournemouth University, will speak about recent published academic research which shows that the theological arguments used to limit women’s ministry are principally ‘system justification’ arguments made by those benefiting from ongoing discrimination.
    • Dr Jeremy Clines, Chaplain, University of Sheffield, will speak about ‘the unseen cost’ of discrimination; how the well-being of women is affected by living and working in an institution that discriminates on the grounds of sex, even if they accept this.

    Discrimination has always existed in the Christian Church – despite Christ proclaiming that there should be no first and no last, if we live the way God wants us to live. Arguments have been made from scripture and tradition to support all kinds of discrimination, including apartheid in South Africa and the Klu Klux Klan in the US – which are now seen universally as wrong, including in the Church.

    WATCH is a campaign group that wants to see a Church where all people are treated equally and we hope that the conference will free people to start having conversations that question the legitimacy of discrimination against women and to see that it is unjust, untrue to the Christian message and unsafe.

    Why does this matter so much?  Aren’t there more important things we should be worrying about?

    Women are constantly told there are things which are ‘more important’ than equality for them.  But accepting injustice not only distorts the Gospel, it is damaging.  There are women and girls and men and boys all over the country attending churches that teach either directly or indirectly that women need to be under the authority of men and this needs to be recognised as wrong and frankly dangerous.  It also makes it impossible for the Church to play an authentic role in standing up for much-needed gender justice in other parts of the world.

    We hope that the Not Equal Yet Conference will be an important milestone in finally bringing discrimination against women to an end in the Church.

    Book your place – in-person or online – through this link.

  • Finding a Way Through: February 2024

    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

    Well, there goes another General Synod.

    It has been rather a strange year. It feels like a long time since many of us yearning for change thought that we might finally be getting there – or if not ‘there’, exactly, then somewhere along the road from here to there. February 2023 saw the first glimmer of light for LGBTQIA people shine through and yet time after time, Synod after Synod, archepiscopal intervention after archepiscopal intervention, attempted rollback after attempted rollback, backdoor dealing after backdoor dealing, there seems to have been a concerted and rather ill-tempered determination to ensure that any semblance of progress is snatched away from us. It is fascinating that there is a ‘clear will of Synod’ until that clear will isn’t what some people appear to want – again, and again. The mantra of ‘just keep asking the question until you get the right answer’ is beginning to get just a tiny bit tiresome.

    So where do we find ourselves after yet another debate?

    Well, in the first instance, we find ourselves all pretty sick to the back teeth of the endless meddling of unnamed authorities in the process. It was enormously refreshing to hear the courageous voice of the Bishop of Newcastle make reference to this reality, and it is about time that whoever it is – and we all have our suspicions of the various parties involved – that keep sticking their noses in, trying to subvert the process, however well intentioned, just stop. It is becoming increasingly clear that the LLF Implementation leadership has had too many cooks, some in purple and some in suit and tie, and that the broth is at continual risk of being spoiled. Now is the time to step back – the trust in many in leadership is gone, and others, including the Bishop of Leicester, need to be allowed to get on with the job without endless interference and politicking.

    Secondly, there was a welcome change in the nature of the debate and – frankly – the behaviour of many of those involved in it. This might seem somewhat unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but as a gay person looking in, this was the first time that I didn’t feel physically sick, or seething, when hearing some of the speeches. There was the usual casual misrepresentation, and the occasional veering into discussion of ‘issues’ rather than people, but in general this debate did seem – at last – to be veering into decent human conversation. Only time will tell if this continues.

    And thirdly, it now seems very clear both where the bounds of the future direction are being drawn, and what that means for the church. Whilst there were howls of disquiet that the idea of ‘cannot agree to disagree’ and the need for ‘legally secure structural provision’ did not garner anything like majority support, nonetheless that is a fact – they did not, and they have not, consistently. What is needed now is a move away from the double-edged sword of ‘victimhood’ and threat that irresponsible organs such as the CEEC have used to date. If you choose to threaten to exclude yourself because you cannot live with disagreement, when there is clear disagreement, and you cling to demands for ‘my way or the highway’, then you are getting awfully close to being a bully. Nobody is forcing you out – you are choosing to exclude yourself because you cannot accept you might be wrong, or the reality – that we simply cannot agree on this. We see your false binary – and we challenge it.

    So it really is about time we named this tactic for what it is. ‘Give us X or we won’t stay in the church’ is not a negotiation – it is a bare, naked threat.  When it is done by people who appear dead set on ensuring those of us who want to find some kind of compromise are stopped from doing so, then that threat becomes very malign indeed. It is not the only way – and you, we, all of us, know it.

    Which brings us back to Synod. It was a very good thing that the Leicester paper was not voted through, because hidden amongst the concerning hints of rollback was the idea that it was only once ‘conservatives’ got their full structural change that standalone services or clergy marriage might be considered. Synod clearly and unambiguously voted that idea down, and it really is time to put it to bed. ‘Structural provision’ is simply not going to happen, and far too many of those who have been arguing for it have been doing so in bad faith, because the reality is that they wouldn’t accept anything remotely acceptable to the wider church and hence just want to delay, delay, and eventually throw their hands up in the air and say ‘this was all just too hard, let’s not bother’, binning the implementation of Synodical decisions at the same time. The sooner we name that, and move on to genuine, serious, engaged negotiations, the better.

    Many of us advocating for change are more than willing to come to the table and have already compromised a great deal, but there needs to be a starting point of good faith, genuine negotiation from those who oppose the Prayers of Love and Faith, and a recognition that it is now beyond time to implement the clear will of Synod, much as the Bishop of Leicester has indicated. Simply shouting ‘legally secure structural provision’ doesn’t, frankly, do the trick, and is getting tiresome. For many – me included – these are questions not just about these prayers, but about a fundamental threat to our ecclesiology. Casting our ecclesiology aside and creating a ‘pure’ church within a church in order to appease those who will never really be appeased is not a good strategy. Suggesting that we can remain in any serious way ‘one church’ whilst having ‘legally secure structural provision’ is a demonstrable nonsense.

    So – let’s sit down and work out how we can move forwards. If you are a reasonable conservative who opposes these prayers on theological grounds, we can and want to work with you to enable you to flourish in the same church as us. We want to ensure you have pastoral provision that allows you to feel valued and loved – pastoral provision which, incidentally, has been cruelly withheld from so many LGBTQIA people for years. You do not have to buy into the lie that structural provision, with bishops out of communion with one another, special ordinations, confirmations, theological colleges, pseudo-provinces, and the rest of it, is the only answer – it isn’t, and it’s not going to happen. It just isn’t. We want you to feel supported, and we want to build each other up in the faith – and we can make this happen if we’re willing to put our minds to it, and ignore the extremes.

    That’s the challenge, and that’s the direction of travel. There is a way through if we are willing to find it. Let’s learn to be the Church of England again, together.

  • Estates Evangelism: Justice on the Margins

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

    At this February General Synod I had hoped to speak in support of Bishop Philip North’s motion on the topic of Estates Evangelism. I didn’t get called to speak, but I didn’t lose heart because everyone who did speak, did so with empathy, kindness and consideration for people living and working on our most troubled estates. I get so much enthusiasm for ministry when I hear people discussing and focussing on a loving gospel response to serve the poor and to call out injustice.

    In 2021 I was part of a religious cost-of-living crisis piece for the BBC News. It was viewed by 12 million people, and led to an outpouring of love and affection which has affected my life and my ministry forever, so it’s no surprise that I supported +Philip’s  motion at Synod because, if we don’t do something now, then when will we?

    There were other matters of justice, particularly racial justice, discussed at this Synod too. The contributors offered heartfelt stories and inspiring words and there was a huge consensus that calling out injustice should be the heart of what we do as a church. Calling out injustice means discussing many emotive topics and I am reminded that injustice comes in many forms, including colour, race, sexual identity, disability and class.

    Returning to Estates Evangelism, St Matthew’s Burnley – where I’m the vicar – serves a number of challenging estates. Through the outstanding support of my colleague and Associate Priest Rev Kat Gregory Witham, we have created a new worshipping community called Fun Church. Fun Church is like Messy Church only the difference is that it does get very very messy, with squabbling, fall-outs, swearing, and tantrums, and that’s just the parents! Rev Kat, with an outstanding team, created this for families, and around 40-50 kids attend on a weekly basis. We heat the huge church, do some crafts, we do some singing and we feed them their tea. We have drop-ins, we offer food support, mental health support, weekends aways, and trips out.

    When I was telling somebody this, they were like ‘Brill, that’s amazing, are you an HTB church or are the Church Army involved?’ To which I replied, ‘Outside of the stipends we get nowt, zilch, zero from the Church of England’. All our funding comes from grants or charities and benefactors and fundraising, but the truth is we get nothing from the central Church. In fact the reality is we have to pay £30,000 a year in parish share for the privilege so we are doing our bit to support the Diocese. That’s not a criticism of the Diocese, but of the paralysis that is passed on by the processes placed upon estate churches that bind us to the national strategy to pay parish share.

    And so I want to add to the amazing voices at Synod, for the many estate churches that get on with doing what they are doing, with the millstone of money and debt preventing them from doing more. I want to speak up for the churches that refer individuals to Christians Against Poverty but are crippled by their own financial woes and yet carry on to a pathway to oblivion. And I want to speak up for clergy making the best of what sometimes can feel like an impossible situation. I also want to raise a cheer for the clergy who literally can’t cope, for the priests and deacons who are hanging on by a thread. For Ministers and Pastors who risk the sustainability of their own respective ministries, who jeopardise their own wellbeing, because of exhaustion, depression, worry and stress. And I want to give a voice for churches that serve in the most challenging places, who give their time in blood, sweat and tears, who are running churches at a loss but somehow keep going, to serve the most vulnerable places in our society. And to speak up for the families I come into contact with, who are literally picking up and eating the crumbs from under the table.

    After the ravages of Covid 19 and after the savage way in which the cost of living crisis has taken away people’s dignity, aspiration and zest for life, I want to ask: if not now, then when, Church of England?

    I truly believe that the growth of the Church of England will not come by producing a definition of fornication, or even by blessing same-sex unions; something, by the way, which I fully support. It won’t come in the calling out the wolves from the sheep. It can and it will come only from serving on the margins, by calling out the injustices of social and financial deprivation, and by walking in the footsteps of Jesus in the darkest of places.

    Growth will come where ministers are not shackled by carrying the weight of so much expectation with so little resource, but are instead enabled to offer more than soup and a sandwich, a prayer and a blessing. It will come if we can offer a radical distribution of the extraordinary and sometime repulsive wealth that is within the Church of England, wealth that will enable churches and church leaders to challenge injustice. The Church of England needs to fight for an end to foodbanks and to stop celebrating soup kitchens as great bastions of pastoral care; instead giving us the tools to stir, not just soup, but hearts and minds. The church should enable us to make a difference, and should hold those in power accountable to make a cultural change to how we serve the poor in mind, body and spirit.

    Churches do make a difference; they offer wonderful Christian witness. But they are so often held back by financial woes and lack of opportunities. I hope and pray that the motion passed at Synod leads to change and makes a difference to how much support is offered to our estates. The motion provides a route map to recovery, a route map to growth: what is important now is we all travel in the same direction.

     

     

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

     

     

  • To be Evangelical is to Challenge ‘Orthodoxy’

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Notes

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

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

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

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

  • More than Theology? How Beliefs About Women’s Ordination are Socially Rooted

    by Dr Alex Fry, Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Health and Illness at Bournemouth University and author of Gender Inequality in the Ordained Ministry of the Church of England: Examining Conservative Male Clergy Responses to Women Priests and Bishops*

    Part I: Why bother with the social sciences?

    The Christian tradition has an extensive history of seeking wisdom wherever it may be found. Before science as we now know it emerged, natural philosophy was the attempt to understand the natural world. This was a task regularly taken up by Church leaders and theologians, underpinned by the conviction that the world was God’s and could tell us about Him. In fact, this is something Paul indicates in Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…” (NIV). True enough, Paul writes immediately after that sin has darkened the minds of humans so that they reject God’s revelation in creation. However, for the Christian this is surely not true. They recognise that the world is created by God. Whilst that does not mean that they are sinless, they cannot be entirely blind to God’s revelation in creation if they believe, along with the Psalmist, that it reflects His glory (Psalm 19:1).

    As historians will tell you, confidence that we can discover God in His world has, since the Reformation, led to the development of modern scientific inquiry. And this theological enterprise was the catalyst for many of our now taken-for-granted scientific discoveries. Believing that the world was created and explorable led to discoveries of order and rules within it. We call these regularities. This seems pre-empted in Genesis 1; God creates an orderly world, separating day and night as well as sky and sea. Commanding Adam to name the different animals in creation invites humanity to recognise and work with this order. Adam could categorise the different species because God created them with patterns that enabled Adam to distinguish between, say, a cow and a sheep.

    The biblical vision of creation sees the entire created world as very good (Genesis 1:31). Hence all of creation, not merely human souls, is redeemed by God (Romans 8:22). In other words, Christians are not at liberty to fall into the trap of dualism, separating the created, ordered world from the spiritual reality of God. Such dualism is more Platonic or Aristotelian than Judaeo-Christian.

    But what does any of this have to do with what Christians believe about women’s role in the Church? Well, human beings are a part of that creation, created with regularities. As with the rest of the created world, how humans think and behave – and why – is something that can be studied. So we can inquire where our beliefs about women’s ordination – a hotly contested and divisive topic – come from. How are they affected by our wider environment?

    Recognising regularities and patterns does not mean reducing human beings to mere processes. Being made in the image of God includes a level of consciousness and free will which means that our thoughts and actions are not predetermined by the world around us. Rather, we are influenced by it. Nor should the establishment of regularities be used disingenuously, as a vehicle of oppression. This has happened historically when there has been a naivety about the social, cultural and political forces that influence scientific inquiry, leading to its distortion and misuse. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are, regrettably, clear windows into the implications of such distortion of the intellect. The Holocaust, slavery, and the subjugation of women as legal property are just three painful examples, believed at the time to be rooted in a natural order. Sometimes the Church has been caught up in these kinds of evils; there are hard lessons to be learnt if such sins are to be resisted in the future.

    Academia is not perfect, because humans are not. There must be room left for evidence-based doubt and the humility to re-think previous conclusions when new data requires it. This is a prerequisite of any advancement in knowledge. Equally, healthy scepticism mustn’t give way to corrosive cynicism. The erosion of trust with society’s institutions (albeit sometimes understandably) can fuel conspiracy theories where the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bathwater. Rationality demands that we follow the evidence, however inconvenient or contrary to our presumptions.

    Social science in academia is a very broad area that consists of many evidence-based disciplines. There has been a heightened awareness of some of its branches with the public conversation often turning to disagreements over ‘identity politics’. Owing to the soundbite culture of much of our media, social scientific theories and concepts are often inadequately articulated and badly understood outside academia. There are many attacks on straw men as a result.

    My own research on clergy attitudes to women spans sociology, social psychology and historical analysis. In what follows, I will unpack the theories and concepts I drew on from these disciplines and explain the light they shed on clergymen’s attitudes towards women’s ordination in the Church of England. Much of my argument rests on demonstrating how the attitudes of clergymen reflect regularities (or patterns) in human behaviour that we know a lot about because they have been evidenced and re-evidenced time and again. My participants’ characteristics, behaviours and thinking reflect several regularities that have been identified across decades and continents. Because these clergymen mirror with great consistency what we already know about human beings, studying these affinities allows me to speak meaningfully about the social causes of clergy gender attitudes.

    Part II: What are clergymen’s attitudes towards women?

    My recent book, Gender Inequality in the Ordained Ministry of the Church of England, explores the social origins of attitudes towards women’s ordination held by theologically conservative male clergy. By ‘attitudes’ I mean beliefs, emotions and behaviours towards something, in this case women priests and bishops. By ‘theologically conservative’ I mean clergymen in the evangelical and traditional Anglo-Catholic wings of the Church. My analysis also involved looking at participants’ broader gender attitudes to contextualise their theology on women’s ordination in light of their attitudes towards women more generally. I spoke with 13 Anglo-Catholics, 14 charismatic evangelicals and 14 conservative evangelicals. Participants were initially sought via their involvement with tradition-specific networks, including Forward in Faith (traditional Anglo-Catholic), New Wine (charismatic evangelical) and Reform (conservative evangelical), but I also interviewed those recommended to me by participants as being in their tradition-specific network of clergy.

    All interviews took place with clergy serving in one specific diocese, chosen as a microcosm of the Church of England, including urban, suburban and rural areas, and large numbers of parishes reflecting each of the Church’s traditions (including those not explored in the book). I also kept interviewing clergy until I was getting the same answers from interview to interview within each tradition (otherwise known as data saturation). This is unsurprising given that clergy within each tradition tended to have similar educational backgrounds, went to the same theological colleges, and move in the same social and professional networks. One would anticipate a significant degree of similarity within a given network on a subject that has received much discussion and rehearsal of theology.

    The microcosmic nature of the diocese and the data saturation are additional factors that allow me to make representative claims about clergymen from these traditions beyond the diocese in question. However, there are caveats, such as cases where the sharper, more reactionary elements of participants’ gender attitudes are curtailed, for example in dioceses where conservative traditions have a stronger presence. In other words, my findings are likely to be generally true across the Church of England but not necessarily in every minute way.

    Of course, attitudes towards women’s ordination differed by tradition and, to a more limited extent, within each tradition. Overall, traditional Anglo-Catholics resisted the move because: the efficacy of women’s sacramental ministry was in question; the Roman Catholic Church is yet to ordain women; and the apostolic tradition has (supposedly) always been male. These clergymen are typically comfortable with women deacons but reject the validity of women priests and bishops. Conservative evangelicals have no issue with ordaining women per se but do not believe they should lead or teach men in church contexts, on the basis of passages like 1 Timothy 2: 11-15. Charismatic evangelicals, by way of contrast, tend not to oppose women’s ordination to any part of the Church’s ordained ministry, seeing evidence of women leading God’s people in the Bible as well as contextual factors explaining away any apparent gender conservatism in the New Testament.

    Those amongst the traditional Anglo-Catholic and conservative evangelicals who rejected the validity of women’s ordination as priests and their consecration as bishops regularly evidenced prejudicial attitudes. Here, I am using a well-tested psychological definition of prejudice rather than assuming that a conservative theology must, by definition, always be sexist.

    This definition of prejudice begins with Gordon Allport’s work in The Nature of Prejudice from the 1950s (with roots going back to the 1930s). Over the decades it has been tested and refined with a collection of newer research celebrating its success. In essence, prejudice (or sexism when it is gender-related) has three components: rejection of and hostility towards others from ‘outgroups’; faulty generalisations (or caricatures) about these outgroups; and rejection of evidence that would undermine these faulty generalisations.

    Since the 1990s a body of research has shown that this is only half the picture when it comes to women. The type of prejudice identified by Allport and verified by many others is a form of hostile sexism, but there is another type called ‘benevolent sexism’ (I prefer ‘indirect sexism’). Such sexism can appear positive on the surface but actually undermines conceptions of women’s competence (e.g., the belief that all women need a man’s protection as the allegedly weaker sex). Hostile sexism is present amongst traditional Anglo-Catholics and both forms of sexism amongst conservative evangelicals. Charismatic evangelicals often evidenced some elements of hostile sexism, but their attitudes fall short of meeting the full psychological definition.

    In essence, my participants’ gender attitudes result from what I term intersecting social strata. This is the simple idea that a series of social factors converge to shape gender attitudes. What do these intersecting social strata look like for theologically conservative clergymen?

    The term self-esteem gets used a lot in pop psychology, and we tend to assume we know what it is but can struggle to define it. Self-esteem is a sociometer; it helps us to understand the extent to which we feel valued. We all pursue self-esteem in various ways, sometimes healthily, sometimes not. Research shows that, when our self-esteem becomes threatened – when the sources of our positive evaluations are in question – we can react negatively towards the group perceived to be threatening our self-esteem.

    The sources of our self-esteem are rooted in the social groups we most identify with. For my participants this was other male clergy in their particular Anglican tradition. Groups united by a shared identity also tend to seek reasons for bolstering the status of that group in the pursuit of self-esteem. This is especially true with groups of higher social status. This regularly leads to forms of discrimination towards and undue generalisations about those who do not share this identity. As I’ve already pointed out, faulty generalisations form prejudice.

    Those I interviewed were typically: from middle-class families; well-educated at school level (e.g., possessing a private education); attended Russell Group universities, particularly Oxbridge (including prior to ordination training); white; and, of course, male. Whilst a small minority did not fit this description in its entirety, the groups as units clearly do. The dominant characteristics impact the group culture as one would expect. Crucially, group norms are adopted by those within it. This means that the values, expectations etc of that group are ‘owned’ by its individual members. In fact, the eminent historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued that male clergy reaction against increasing gender equality stems from the reduced hegemony that they have traditionally enjoyed or would expect to enjoy by virtue of belonging to a group endowed with the power of leadership.

    I argue that the source of threatened self-esteem for conservative evangelicals and traditional Anglo-Catholics is the advent of women priests and bishops. Significant amounts of data show the roots of sexism – chiefly stereotyping – lie in self-esteem threats to one’s social group and, in these groups, there is the desire to maintain high levels of self-esteem via group belonging, with women – especially clergywomen – as the object of prejudice in this case. Most of those interviewed had also opted into networks established to oppose the ordination of women as priests, making it the cornerstone of their social group.

    This alone goes a long way in explaining the origins of participants’ sexism, but other factors bolster it. One is the regularity and quality of contact with clergywomen. Limited contact with outgroups serves to reinforce prejudice because the stereotypes about them remain largely unchallenged. Research shows that, for contact to reduce prejudice, it must be willing and ongoing, with in and outgroups having equal status, and being supported in their contact by relevant authorities. The two groups must have some co-operative dependency upon each other and must seek common goals. Such contact rarely occurred amongst the Anglo-Catholics and conservative evangelicals I interviewed.

    Another factor is one’s gender schemata. These are mental frameworks that many of us develop in childhood to interpret any information we receive about gender throughout our lives, often leading us to neglect information that doesn’t correspond to the assumptions we pick up early in life. The conservative evangelicals interviewed possessed sex-typed schemata; these are more traditional and stereotypical beliefs about men and women. The traditional Anglo-Catholics did not provide much evidence of their schemata. This can be explained by the fact that heterosexuals are more likely to have such schemata and around half of the Anglo-Catholics I interviewed were gay.

    But what about theological hermeneutics? There are multiple ways of approaching biblical texts and, even if we don’t realise it, we all make hermeneutical choices when interpreting the Bible. The conservative evangelicals interviewed were influenced by US evangelical writings, especially by Wayne Grudem and John Piper. This led to a hermeneutic that was neither entirely plain meaning (sometimes thought of as literalistic) nor entirely contextualised in light of the Bible’s historical and cultural contexts. This makes it much easier to read passages like 1 Timothy 2 and conclude that women should not lead men in the Church. Such hermeneutics are favourable to conservative evangelicals, aiding their pursuit of self-esteem and being congruent with their existing gender schemata. Similarly, Church tradition is handled selectively by the traditional Anglo-Catholics who tended to ignore insights from biblical scholarship and Church history indicating the presence of female apostles.

    It should be noted that such processes are subconscious and so awareness of these factors influencing participants’ gender attitudes are unrecognised by them. Of course, by bringing them to light there is the possibility that this could change. Also worth bearing in mind is that reduced contact between these clergymen and women priests and bishops can be unhelpfully encouraged by those whose theology leads to rejecting them precisely because of their theology, making them retreat into the networks that reinforce their gender attitudes.

    That leaves us with the charismatic evangelicals. Why have they not evidenced the full criteria for sexism? This can be explained via three means. First, their own gender schemata are androgynous, meaning that their assumptions about what it is to be a man or a woman are more flexible than traditional and stereotypical. Second, the quality of contact they have with clergywomen reflects the types of contact that undermine prejudice, noted above. Third, their gender attitudes can be explained by the fact that their particular Anglican tradition has an extended history of female leadership, even before the ordination of women, meaning that the presence of women priests and bishops was not a threat to their social group. They thus also feel more comfortable with hermeneutics that would allow for the conclusion that women may be ordained as priests and bishops.

    Naturally, there are more theological questions to be asked and answered in light of all of this information and I cannot unpack them all here. Nevertheless, these will receive attention in a follow-up book I am writing for a specifically Christian audience, with the aim of helping church leaders and interested lay people reflect on all of this theologically and in practical ways.

     

    *The e-book can be bought with 45% off with the discount code ADJF45, currently available until April 2024. The paperback is due for release in 2025.

  • Safeguarding: When Good Reviews Go Bad

    by Andrew Graystone, who uncovered the abuses by John Smyth in a series of reports on Channel 4 News in February 2017; he continues to advocate for victims of church abuse, and speaks regularly with survivors of John Smyth.

    There have now been seven public reviews of the activities of John Smyth – or eight if you count my own book, Bleeding for Jesus. The first was Operation Cubic, which was conducted by Hampshire Police, and ended with a referral to the CPS. Then, after the revelations were made public, the Scripture Union commissioned a review into its own involvement. A review was conducted for Winchester College, where Smyth groomed many of his victims. The Titus Trust has held two reviews – one into Smyth’s abuses and a second, by the safeguarding agency ThirtyOne:Eight to conduct a review of its internal culture. The Advance network of independent churches carried out its own investigation, which focussed particularly on the involvement of its former leader PJ Smyth, who is John Smyth’s son. And finally, we await the arrival of the Makin Review, which was commissioned by the Church of England.

    As someone who has reluctantly become something of an expert on John Smyth’s abusive career, I have participated in all of these reviews. Aside from taking a huge amount of time, this has given me some insight into how such reviews are conducted, and what makes them effective or ineffective.

    It is worth remembering that one reason why there were so many reviews into the one narrative is that the key agencies at the centre of the case refused to work together on a single inquiry.

    Speaking to Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News in April 2019, Archbishop Justin Welby explained that only a joint inquiry would be effective. “Unless you can get everyone in, you’re never going to get anywhere near the truth.” Nevertheless, having failed to persuade everyone to participate, the Church of England eventually commissioned its own review. That review – scheduled to last nine months – has now lasted five years, and there is still no date for its publication.

    It is worth rehearsing the gloomy history of delay and obfuscation in this inquiry.  The Church of England’s intention to hold an inquiry was first announced by the then Bishop for Safeguarding, Peter Hancock, on the morning after Smyth died in August 2018. By then Smyth’s abuse had already been in the public domain for almost 18 months. Justin Welby had been aware of it for over five years (discounting earlier knowledge, which he first denied, but now admits.) The first formal complaint had been made to the Church of England six years earlier. And of course many key figures in the church, some of them at the highest level, had carried the knowledge for a staggering thirty-five years.

    Even so, the inquiry was not formally launched for a further twelve months. It was scheduled to last nine months, meaning that it would be published in May 2020. Since then there have been no less than six announcements that the inquiry was going to be late. In every case, survivors were promised that it was imminent. In January 2022, survivors and General Synod were told that the first drafts would be presented in April 2022. They weren’t. Then General Synod members were told that it would be published in the Autumn of 2022. Of course it wasn’t. The National Safeguarding Team has stopped making announcements about the timetable.

    There are two important questions. Firstly, what has caused the seemingly endless delay?  Secondly, why does this matter?

    Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, the second of three “Lead Bishops” to preside over the review so far, told Synod that “There have been significant delays due to COVID and the exceptionally high volume of information.” Blaming the pandemic is convenient, but disingenuous. The review was already well behind schedule before lockdown was imposed. In any case, very little of the work has been done face to face. Blaming the unexpected amount of evidence is a nonsense too. What on earth was the church expecting? They knew when they started that there were over 100 victims, four decades of history, and scores of witnesses to hear from. If they were taken by surprise by the “high volume of information” it can only be because they weren’t paying attention to what the victims and others had been telling them.

    The core problems that have caused the delay are quite different. They are:

    1) An insufficiently experienced reviewer. Perhaps Keith Makin will yet turn out to have been an inspired choice for this important role. We have not been told by what process he was given the job. He had never previously conducted a review on anything like this scale. He had held senior social work management posts, and had been an Independent Scrutineer for local authorities, but he had little forensic experience, and nothing that would seem to prepare him for such a complex case. He also had little experience of the church’s structures and processes.

    2) Lack of resources. The church decided that the task of reviewing a case lasting over forty years with more than a hundred victims could be handled by one part-time reviewer contracted for just two days a week, with a part-time assistant. This is far less resource than you would expect in comparable reviews. Of course it is not Mr Makin’s fault that he was given such inadequate resources for such a huge task. The church either didn’t recognise the scale of the review it was launching, or simply didn’t care. For example, the review was launched without the necessary GDPR arrangements in place. It was seven months out of a scheduled nine before interviews could be recorded and transcribed. Staggeringly, the necessary privacy notice was not issued until a full year later. On the same day that the Smyth Review was announced, the church announced another review, this time into the child rapist Revd Trevor Devamanikkam. That case – though no less serious – had just one perpetrator and one known victim. Yet it was set up with the same timetable and resources. Perhaps the church was simply not thinking clearly about what it was doing. Or perhaps the prime motivation for launching these reviews was just to be able to send out a press release saying that it was doing something.

    3) Lack of purpose, drive and consistency in the commissioning body. The church still appears to have little idea about how reviews work. They don’t seem to be able to distinguish between a review, an inquiry and an investigation. To this day it remains unclear who wants the Makin Review, why they want it and why it needs to be done in a timely way. As usual, nobody even knows what will happen to the report. Will it be read by bishops? Debated at Synod? Or just sit online somewhere for a few weeks before it is lost?

    4) Lack of oversight. Best practice for a review like this is to appoint an independent accountability body, separate from the reviewer and the commissioning body, whose task is to monitor the progress and scope of the review. That body might include interested parties, including representative survivors. When Thirty-One:Eight reviewed the abuses of Smyth’s fellow-abuser Revd Jonathan Fletcher, just such a body was appointed. They were able to provide assurance about the independence and thoroughness of the review, and also added their own statement to be read alongside it. Makin has not had this advantage. He has had no one asking him what is going on (with the exception of dogged Smyth survivors who take it upon themselves to do so informally). He has had no one asking him awkward questions about such crucial areas as record-keeping, confidentiality, resources or timescale. And when (or if) the review is published, there will be no one independent to give it an imprimatur. It will be, effectively, an undefended reviewer saying ‘This is how I see things.’ I fear that the lack of an independent scrutiny body is going to be particularly awkward over the next few months, if those who find themselves criticised by Mr Makin decide to cut up rough.

    So there are several reasons why this review has struggled from the start, and why it is so shockingly delayed. But why the rush anyway? Conducting reviews is a lucrative business. The author of an earlier church review reported privately but proudly that he had bought a London flat with the proceeds. In 2019 the NST themselves inadvertently leaked Mr Makin’s day rate – at that stage, it was £650 per day. The Church of England has been extremely chary about revealing the overall cost of the Makin Review. Bishop Jonathan Gibbs was asked about this directly twice in General Synod questions in November 2022. He would only say “There is always a financial cost associated with any Independent Review, however this must be balanced with establishing the truth and listening to the voices of victims and survivors.” Synod members might feel they have a right to greater clarity.

    Why does all of this matter? Well, first, because the delay makes the review weaker. In the time between the disclosure of Smyth’s abuse twelve years ago in 2012 and the publication of the inquiry (2024? 2025?), some key figures have conveniently died. They include Smyth himself, who consequently managed to escape justice from the church, as well as the criminal courts. Revd David Fletcher, who probably did more than anyone else to enable Smyth’s career of abuse, has also died. Others have retired, or will do so before publication, placing them beyond the effective reach of the church’s disciplinary measures.

    In the course of writing my book, I approached a number of senior clergy who were implicated in the failure to stop Smyth’s abuse. In several cases they said they weren’t willing to speak to me until the Makin review was complete. That was now several years ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury gave assurances that if any currently serving church officers were found to have failed in their safeguarding duties, they would be investigated and disciplined whilst the review was in progress. To my knowledge only two very junior clergy have been sanctioned, and one of those was long retired. My book, published in October 2022, identified nine currently serving bishops who appeared to have failed in their safeguarding duties. They include Archbishop Justin Welby. Have any of them been disciplined?

    The delay also matters because there are two over-riding reasons to hold such an inquiry. The first is to restore confidence in the church. The hope is that the inquiry will draw a line under a terrible episode. Ideally it would show that the church did not make any mistakes in its handling of disclosures of abuse, but that’s unlikely to be the case. The alternative is that the inquiry should demonstrate that, even though the church made mistakes, it will not do so again. Lessons have been learned; processes have been changed; staff have been retrained or removed.  This is the basis on which trust can be rebuilt. But for that trust to be rebuilt, the process of the review must itself be sound. If there is any suspicion, justified or not, that the church has not been fully transparent, then the measure of trust will decline instead of increasing. If there is any hint that the church has tried to avoid, delay or manipulate the publication, it will do itself more harm than good. As things stand, those suspicions are hard to avoid.

    In this case, the process of the review has served to diminish, not enhance, trust in the church’s safeguarding practices. The review itself has been marked by delay, mismanagement, amateurism, poor communications and obfuscation. These are the same characteristics that allow abusers like Smyth to operate. However good the text of the Makin review is, if and when it is eventually published, no one who has watched the national church’s handling of the process will be able to say with confidence “This could never happen again.”

    The second reason to hold such an inquiry is for the sake of the victims. It is a vital part of the church acknowledging that it made mistakes. Only when the church recognises this publicly is it possible for victims to begin to rebuild their lives, and even in some cases to forgive. If the church, by its acts or by its omissions, allows victims to imagine that it might still be hiding facts, or avoiding facing up to the truth, then instead of healing, victims are re-abused by the process.

    For what it’s worth, I think publication of the Makin Review into John Smyth is still a long way off. Even if the first draft of the text is complete, there is a long way to go before publication. Parts of it have been seen by a number of Smyth’s victims, but it has not yet begun the lengthy representation process known as ‘Maxwellisation’. In other words, anyone who is referred to critically in the text will have a right to read it, and respond to what they perceive as factual errors. This isn’t going to be quick. There are likely to be many people on the wrong end of Mr Makin’s pen. Many of them will call in lawyers. Those who are unfamiliar with the process of reviews may not realise that before a text is published there can be endless legal battles over what it can or can’t say. The church is almost continually waging these battles with reviewers. Given that one of the individuals criticised for his failures over Smyth is almost certainly going to be Archbishop Welby, I would be surprised if the report is published before his retirement is announced.

    When it is published, what can we expect? Will anyone take responsibility for the largest abuse scandal in the Church of England for a century by offering their resignation? I doubt it. Will there be sanctions for those who enabled Smyth to abuse, or failed to act on what they knew? There’s no precedent for that. Will the report be debated by General Synod? I don’t suppose so. What then? I imagine there will be the usual apology from Lambeth Palace, posted on a website somewhere. Such apologies are now so familiar that I could have a good stab at drafting it for them. Then it will be business as usual for the church. If there is another John Smyth out there, and to my certain knowledge there is, he will surely breathe a sigh of relief.

    The scope of the Makin Review was always limited. For instance, it doesn’t look into Smyth’s time in Africa, where most of his abusing occurred. Nor will it look at the influence of the Iwerne network in the Church of England, nor the theological drivers that motivated the cover-up of his abuse over three decades.

    We are on to our third Lead Bishop and our fifth Director of Safeguarding since the review was announced. Synod and Archbishops’ Council are hopelessly distracted. In the absence of an independent supervisory group there is little support or accountability for Mr Makin, and little pressure to get his work over the line. What if he has found himself out of his depth in the scale, detail and politics of the process? In the meantime, he is earning handsomely from the delay – although that hasn’t prevented him from taking another role as Independent Scrutineer for the London Borough of Croydon. Perhaps most significantly, a significant number of senior church leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, have good reason to want the review to continue indefinitely.

    Perhaps there is another way forward. The Church could acknowledge that the Makin process has broken down. Given that there have been seven reviews and a book, a barrister could be appointed with two months to produce a digest of what is known so far.  There would be unanswered questions, but they could be identified as such. Without such a breakthrough, my own growing expectation is that the review will never be published.

  • Plotting the Division of the Church of England

    by Nic Tall, member of General Synod and Secretary of the General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group

    If you have been paying attention to the church press recently, you will have a sense of grumblings from conservative parts of the church, disgruntled over prayers of blessing for same sex couples. You may have noticed pronouncements about an “Ephesian Fund” or “alternative spiritual oversight” and wondered what’s going on.

    To help explain current movements within the church I will carefully plot the path that has brought us to this point. This reveals a consistent plan to partition the church which stretches back over years. Does that sound far-fetched? I’d ask you to look at the evidence and decide for yourself.

    This plan to divide the church, with conservative parishes refusing to share resources with the wider church and turning priests and parishes away from the care of their bishop, goes back to 2016. In the aftermath of the struggle to prevent women becoming bishops, some conservatives who opposed equality for women in the church looked to the issue of sexuality as the next place to oppose progressive values.

    A discussion document titled “Guarding the Deposit” was prepared for the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) in October 2016. It considered what would happen if there were moves to support equal marriage or blessing of same sex relationships in the church, and concluded that there would need to be “visible differentiation and division within the Church of England”. The envisaged division took the form of partition within the church, with both affirming and non-affirming Christians remaining within the church but divided into separate provinces. Provinces, in the Anglican Communion, are usually geographic: these wouldn’t be. They would overlap geographically but have separate episcopal oversight.

    Following October 2016, the General Synod had a busy time debating same sex relationships. February 2017 saw the famous “take note” debate, when a paper from the House of Bishops was rejected by Synod. This led to Archbishop Justin Welby declaring “we need a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church”. That response would be explored through a new project, Living in Love and Faith (LLF), producing a suite of resources available and inviting the whole church to explore the issues. LLF would take a few years to gather together these resources, but a sense that they might usher in progressive change was clearly concerning some.

    It is in this context that the CEEC, following that 2016 paper, began to take those ideas about how to divide the church more seriously. CEEC began to prepare for creating conditions where they could be put into practice.

    At its annual Council meeting in January 2019, the CEEC agreed to increase its capacity, seeking to raise extra funds, employ staff and refine options for “visible differentiation”. Until this point its annual income was around £35k, most of which was paid in a grant to a theological consultant. In 2019/20 income doubled to £100k and by 2021/22 it had increased to £176k. The January 2019 meeting also looked ahead on strategic and tactical concerns for the 2020 General Synod elections, another sign of long-term political planning.

    Having resolved to significantly increase capacity in preparation for the debates over LLF, the next part of the plan was to expunge any moderate evangelicals who harboured sympathy for those in same sex relationships. So, at the July meeting of General Synod, the Evangelical Group on General Synod (EGGS) amended its basis of faith to include conservative statements on marriage, sexuality and gender identity. This effectively removed inclusive evangelicals, leading to a split in the constituency.

    Freed up from any internal resistance that would have come from those inclusive evangelicals, the CEEC’s Council meeting in January 2020 prepared to make bolder steps. The first priority on its plan for 2020 was “Visible differentiation for the sake of biblical orthodoxy: development of Permanent Provision options and proposals from Council; development of Principled Protest; liaison across the evangelical constituency.” It also sought to focus on the 2020 General Synod elections, organising locally through Diocesan Evangelical Fellowships (DEFs). The Report and Accounts from 2019-2020 show that further plans were developed to encourage and support evangelical bishops to “be distinctive”. The intention to create division within the church was starting to take shape, using the sexuality debate as a wedge issue and strengthening links across the evangelical constituency, through local diocesan networks and bringing evangelical bishops on board. This was the first time that “principled protest” had been seen as part of the strategy.

    On 26th July 2020 the CEEC published the report “Visibly Different”, 104 pages long and expanding the themes of “Guarding the Deposit”. It spent time working in detail through the proposal for “a provincial way forward”, creating a third province which would be separate from the rest of the church but geographically coterminous. Whether liberal or conservative Christians would be deposited into this third province was a moot point; the critical part of the plan was structural differentiation, with conservatives remaining in the Church of England and enjoying all the financial benefits of doing so.

    While the CEEC was drawing up detailed plans for structural division within the church, the LLF project had been steadily developing its suite of resources for the wider church to explore issues around sexuality and relationships, and these were published on 9th November 2020. Six days later, the CEEC unveiled a 32 minute video entitled “The Beautiful Story”, including content from three bishops. This video undermined the content of LLF, presenting just one perspective, and a deeply conservative one at that. It concluded with John Dunnett, Chair of EGGS, issuing a call: “the General Synod elections in summer of 2021 are massively important and evangelicals need to be thinking now about whether they might be a good candidate”. So instead of engaging in open and honest debate with LLF, the agenda was only to focus on conservative perspectives; no others were worth discussing. It was also linked directly to maximising the political outcomes of the 2021 General Synod election.

    Moving into 2021, the CEEC looked to expand its capacity further to support its plans, employing paid staff for the first time, appointing an administrator in January, National Director in April and a Communications Director in November. In July the CEEC/EGGS National General Synod Elections Team published their guidance for conservative evangelical candidates in a document not intended for public release, but soon leaked. Candidates were assured that the local DEF would make sure “orthodox evangelicals” would vote for them in any case, so election statements should be aimed at another set of voters: those from the “middle ground”. Candidates were advised to conceal their views on same sex relationships, women’s ordained ministry or abuse within the church, but instead “as much as possible, sound as if you are a practising member of the Church of England”. “Sound as if”? On sexuality the advice was “it might be that it is wiser not referred to… talk about listening positively to and respecting the views of others, even when we find ourselves disagreeing.” A further private document on how to handle hustings meetings was distributed, again maintaining the policy of concealing their true views on sexuality and women’s ministry.

    Supported by the resources and organisation of the CEEC, not to mention this deliberate concealment of challenging views on sexuality and women’s ministry, conservative evangelical candidates performed well in the elections. The results saw many independent candidates displaced, along with a reduction in traditional catholic representation, although inclusive candidates supported by Inclusive Church maintained good numbers. Contrary to the CEEC campaign, Inclusive Church had a deliberate policy of transparency, publicly promoting a list of candidates who had signed up to a broad inclusion statement so voters would have clear information to base their decisions.

    With the new General Synod formed in November 2021, the subject of same sex relationships was bubbling away under the surface, but with the LLF materials out for use in the dioceses there was little coming directly to General Synod for discussion. The 2022 Council meeting of the CEEC reiterated the strategic priority linking LLF to differentiation, maintaining a policy that pursued division with sexuality as a wedge issue.

    Later in 2022, the momentum for change from LLF began to build, with feedback from those having done the LLF course indicating a majority wish for liturgical affirmation of same sex relationships. The House of Bishops held meetings to decide a way forward, with much speculation on the direction they would choose. In this atmosphere John Dunnett, Chair of EGGS and at this point Strategy Director of CEEC, issued a document outlining the CEECs position following LLF. The stance was to oppose any change whatsoever, effectively dismissing the whole LLF project and the ignoring the majority in the C of E who saw a place for some change to better accommodate LGBTQIA+ people. However, if that were not possible “differentiation will become an immediate necessity”. Three different options for visible differentiation were explained, with the preferred model involving “the rearrangement of episcopal oversight, dioceses and provinces.” Liberals would be given the option of opting into a “third province”, with conservatives retaining the remainder of the Church of England and relationships with the Anglican Communion.

    Which brings us to the eventful year of 2023. In January, the House of Bishops brought forward proposals for the blessing of those in same sex relationships and new pastoral guidance to replace Issues in Human Sexuality. On 9th February, Synod passed a vote in all three Houses to welcome these proposals, giving the House of Bishops a green light to proceed. This was the signal for the conservative plan to divide the church to move up a gear. Within a week a slick, pre-prepared video titled “We Love the Church of England” was rolled out. It voiced a hope for unity, but also stated that no compromise was possible. The solution presented was “structural rearrangement”, alleged to be desired by those liberals “preaching a false gospel”. Without such an arrangement it was predicted that “we’re going to tear the Church of England right down the middle.” At least five speakers in the video were based in churches that do not accept the ordination of women, and were therefore from the tiny minority of Church of England parishes (less than 5%) who hold to that view. The entanglement between historic opposition to the ministry of women and a wish to divide the church over sexuality was still evident.

    On 16th March 2023 the CEEC issued a statement that it was “compelled to resist” the direction approved by Synod, and called on conservative clergy to sign a declaration to join them. The declaration made no mention of visible differentiation, seeking to draw in as many conservative supporters as possible without spelling out the radical plan of partitioning the church.

    At the same time as stoking up fear among its conservative evangelical constituency, claiming that Synod’s decision would be “extremely distressing for evangelicals in this country”, the CEEC began to forge alliances with other groups. On 7th July, on the eve of the next General Synod meeting, a long letter raising complaints about the LLF process was published, with additional signatories from the Traditional Catholic group on synod (Anglo-Catholics opposed to the ordination of women), New Wine, the HTB Network, Church Revitalisation Trust and Myriad. Traditional Catholics coming on board was no surprise, as they had also opposed the Synod vote in February and had often sided with conservative evangelicals to oppose progressive proposals in the church. However, the inclusion of some charismatic evangelical church planting networks, particularly Holy Trinity Brompton, was a new addition. It had sometimes been assumed that HTB preferred to keep any reluctance around same sex relationships under the radar, given the diversity of views present within its congregations, as demonstrated earlier in the year by letters to the Church Times from LGBT+ affirming Christians who were HTB members.

    But the involvement of HTB and its Church Planting charity The Church Revitalisation Trust (CRT) would now go far beyond being a co-signatory to a letter. On 13th July 2023 a company called “AZ Alliance Ltd” was registered with Companies House, with a stated nature of business being “activities of religious organisations”. The two named directors were originally Sarah Jackson (Chief Executive Officer of the CRT) and Jago Wynne (Vicar of Holy Trinity Clapham, part of the HTB network of churches), with John Dunnett (National Director of CEEC) appointed as a third director in September.

    The involvement of personnel linked to HTB would continue, with former HTB Vicar Nicky Gumbel joining John Dunnett, now National Director of the CEEC, at a meeting in Cairo of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GFSA) in October 2023. Gumbel (recently awarded the CBE for ‘services to the Church of England’) was recorded as attending on behalf of “Alliance UK”, while the meeting of conservative Anglicans issued a statement with the priority of “re-setting the communion according to its biblical and historic roots”. The statement went on to add “We all know and lament that our Communion has entered into a deep darkness of rebellion to the truth of God’s word.”

    In spite of the campaigning by the CEEC to stir up dissent, the General Synod met again in November 2023 and once again voted in all three Houses of Synod to continue the work on LLF, including the consideration of standalone services of blessing for same sex couples. With the CEEC having failed to derail the LLF process, two days after the vote they launched the “Ephesian Fund”, closely followed by plans to create alternative structures of spiritual oversight. These announcements were two pillars of the long-planned structural differentiation, except that they were informal in nature. The Ephesian Fund relied on the fact that payment of Parish Share or Common Fund to the diocese is purely voluntary and cannot be enforced. The aim is that any money entering the fund will only be paid to dioceses with a legal restriction attached; namely that the money can only be passed on to churches committed to a “biblical faith”, meaning those who refuse to use the Prayers of Love and Faith. It is a mechanism to begin the financial division of the church. Arrangements for alternative spiritual oversight would move all discretionary relationships with the diocesan bishop on to an alternative person, such as a retired bishop holding conservative views. While there is no way for a priest or parish to informally absent themselves from legal relationships with the bishop and diocese – such as safeguarding responsibilities – it is intended to undermine the relationship with the diocesan bishop as far as legally possible. These arrangements are currently being described as “a temporary provision which will support evangelicals until a settlement based on structural provision is made available”, a provision which is hoped would be “permanent”.

    So, following two votes in General Synod affirming the PLF, and the direction of travel on LLF moving beyond the CEEC’s red line of no change, the plan for division has now been unilaterally declared, seeking to separate the Church of England as far as possible, without formal legal provision agreed through due synodical process.

    And here is the most recent piece of the jigsaw, showing the extent to which the plan is being pursued. Rather than waiting for disgruntled churches to contact the CEEC and enquire about the financial and oversight arrangements now being developed separately from normal C of E practice, there is a proactive campaign seeking to recruit churches to this split. A proactive campaign with a deep involvement of The Alliance, Nicky Gumbel and the Church Revitalisation Trust (CRT; as of December 2023, renamed the Revitalise Trust).

    I have been passed a document from a church leader dated 11th December which had been distributed to all of their church members. The document states that the leader and his wife had been wondering whether to leave the Church of England due to “the blessing of sin” and “allowing in false teaching”. However, the leader then tells of being approached out of the blue to be recruited to join the Alliance:

    Out of the total blue I had an email setting up a phone call with Nicky Gumbel. We are not the sort of people who use our connections to position ourselves near influential people. Though he knows one or two of us from this church, we do not know Nicky Gumbel personally.

    Nicky phoned to ask what we were thinking of doing post-General Synod in November, and having listened to our dismay and despair, he then shared what he is doing through the Alliance. We are going to share this with you now, but what we would also add is that following a call with Nicky, we also had an hour’s call later with further updates on some of the detail of the Alliance with the CEO – Rev. Sarah Jackson – of the Church Revitalisation Trust, which is the active agent leading the bringing together and forward motion of the Alliance.

    Nicky Gumbel talked to us about his vision to open the Alliance to churches to join.

    The vision is to partner nationally by gathering 3000 Anglican churches across the nation, all biblical and all committed to orthodoxy, and together probably representing more than 50% of all English Anglicans. The Alliance will seek to stand in unity as one for orthodoxy.

    NG and the Alliance are working behind the scenes to develop legal protections for orthodox clergy, orthodox ordinands and training institutions, they are already working out how to offer orthodox Bishops to provide biblical oversight to clergy and churches, amongst a range of other developments.

    It’s all fairly live and quite new, but it was important for us to hear that the Alliance are seeking to ensure that spiritual oversight will be offered by orthodox Bishops, thereby giving spiritual safety for clergy and parishes who cannot “walk together” with false teaching and false practice.

    This document was being circulated to the members of the church on the same day that The Alliance wrote to the House of Bishops, asserting that they “are committed to working together with others in the Church of England to enable a flourishing of the whole church for generations to come. We want to do all we can to avoid years of more infighting in our divided church.” However, their actions show that, far from wanting the flourishing of the whole church and a way out of infighting, behind the scenes there is proactive action to split the church, part of a plan for division stretching back years.

    The revelation of the CRT as a central element in driving the plan for division is also striking. The CRT has been the beneficiary of tens of millions of pounds of central church funding, delivered through the SDF fund in various church planting schemes. In their answer to Question 32 at the July 2021 Synod, the Archbishop’s Council estimated that between 2014 and 2020 this funding amounted to roughly £50m for projects led by the CRT or for which they were a partner. That the CRT has received such large sums of central church funding to develop its network of church plants, but is now preparing to use that network to divide the Church of England, is a betrayal of the faith placed in them by the wider church.

    The CEEC and the Alliance know that the formal structural changes they seek can only happen with a legal underpinning agreed by the General Synod. This is very unlikely to happen, particularly in the current General Synod where a 2/3rds majority in all three Houses would be challenging to achieve on such a controversial plan. Having failed to prevent the introduction of the Prayers of Love and Faith, sought by a majority in the church, and aware that formal structural provision is not currently likely, the remaining option is to divide the church as much as possible through informal means. These informal means are designed to make the split that they seek a de facto reality as much as is possible, such that formal legal recognition will seem a straightforward way out of the impasse. The aim of proactively recruiting a quarter of parish churches and half of the church’s members shows the ambition, perhaps hubris, behind the plan.

    I hope this article has documented the long-term factional planning to split the Church of England and alerts the overwhelming majority of church members committed to unity to resist it.

     

     

  • Agree or Disagree: I’m Still in Communion with my Bishop

    Fr Thomas Sharp is Succentor at Southwark Cathedral, and Parish Priest at St Hugh’s Bermondsey. He is Coordinator of the Young Anglican Theology Project, a Third Order Franciscan, and a member of the Provincial Council of the Society of Catholic Priests.

    When I was at University, one of our lecturers tried to impress on us just how chaotic and disputatious was the early Church. He had us gather in a seminar room, and argue about anything we could think of, so long as it generated plenty of theological insults. It was great fun, if rather a culture shock from the polite University discourse in which we were trained.

    My favourite ‘Christian insult’ was ‘How dare you forsake your Baptism?’ Screamed at the top of one’s lungs. The charge is weighty, vital.  And it helps that ‘forsake’ and ‘baptism’ are immensely satisfying words to spit at a colleague in the classroom.

    The patristic tendency of Christians to levy the charge that opponents have forsaken their baptism has given way in recent years to the charge that they have forsaken communion. Breaking or impairing communion is the ecclesiological offence-du-jour on a range of issues. It remains the great obstacle of ecumenism.

    But the two charges amount to the same thing. Communion flows from our baptism. We are in communion with one another by virtue of the fact that we are baptised into one body. To declare then that communion is broken is, simply, to make a fundamental statement too about baptism, that the sacrament, too, has in some way been broken.

    I have not always agreed with my bishops. Very occasionally, I have thought it might be easier if I could perhaps put myself under a different bishop more closely aligned with my views.

    Feelings of alienation, frustration, and misunderstanding within the Church are not, however, a consequence of broken communion, or a cause of it. They are fundamentally a consequence of our common fallenness – and so point to the grace by which they and we must all be saved.

    The doctrine of salvation by faith and not works renders communion an objective reality: it gives us confidence. In the darkest days of the Reformation, when it seemed that the Church really thought communion was simply about assenting to the decrees of councils and authorities, their blasphemy was to render salvation subjective. They made it seem that salvation rested on nothing firmer than whatever the latest power bloc or prelate thought I should be burned over should I disagree. Under such rule, communion depends on whatever is going on in head of the one who sits in judgment. And hell’s maw yawns open – apparently, not for forsaking God, but for standing up to an earthly ruler, whose mind might change tomorrow. What sinking sand on which to build one’s faith.

    This is a caricature of pre-Reformation thought, of course, but salvation by grace is our safeguard against that caricature becoming real. It defends us against the temptation to put our faith not in God but in earthly councils and secular alliances. Salvation by works says that there’s something you can do to be in with the right crowd or in the right place to earn the mercy of God. But salvation by faith  proclaims healthily and firmly our sinfulness, our inability to save ourselves. It plants our trust firmly on the ground of God’s grace.

    No human being can be righteous enough to earn salvation: it is given through the grace of faith. No human can earn what God gives them – either through ‘right-thinking’ or ‘lifestyle’ -for God gives it freely, as unmerited gift. No human can be good and wholesome enough to merit the blood of Christ: it is medicine shed for the sick.

    My point is this: no Christian minister, no bishop or priest can be stainless enough to earn the pastoral ministry. It is given through the grace of faith. No bishop, no pastor, can teach infallibly (at least, I hold this as an Anglican): each is fallen and saved by grace. No communion with a bishop is so subjective as to depend on what they think about any number of things, or even what they teach or do. If they claim the blood of Christ and confess the Triune God, if they call upon God in their distress for the mercy revealed on the cross, then they are Christians and we are in communion. I do not choose them: Christ died for them.

    When the Bishop of London declared in her speech to General Synod that all members of the Church would be welcome at her table, one might be tempted to see it as a statement of flagrant liberalism, theologically lax if well-intentioned. But I took it as a clear and conservative planting of episcopal feet on a firm foundation: the communion of the baptised which is God’s graceful gift to the Body of Christ.

    My own diocesan Bishop urges us ‘to continue to speak well of each other,’ and again some might be tempted to dismiss this as a well-meaning aspiration. But to speak well of one another, even when we disagree, is to resolve defiantly and determinedly (and against the odds) not to impugn the blood of Christ by which we and they (whoever ‘they’ may be for us) have been saved. By baptism we have been incorporated into one body. If we insult or injure one another, it is that one body – the body of Christ – which we are injuring.

    I did not choose my fellow Christians, those who are called with me to the supper of the Lamb.

    I have not chosen my Bishops, and they have not chosen me. We have been gifted to one another by divine providence and God’s mercy.

    I did not choose the body of which they and I are a part, and I have not built it – for it is God who builds it and elects members to it and feeds it.

    I am tempted, when I disagree with them and any number of my fellow members of the Church, to declare us ‘out of communion’, to insult and write them off.

    But then the Spirit’s voice accuses me: ‘How dare you forsake your baptism?’