ViaMedia

Category: Human Sexuality

  • Press release from the General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group and from Inclusive Groups

    During last week’s General Synod, the chair of the debate on the Living in Love and Faith process rightly noted that it’s not a question of who claps loudest, or for longest. Nor is it a question of how many people sign a petition: none of us wants to start yet another ‘petition war’. But as those leading the various inclusive groups which have been involved in LLF as ‘stakeholders’, some of us meeting with various members of the LLF team over the years, we feel compelled to state our position after Synod’s votes in February and in November to move forward with using the Prayers of Love and Faith.

    The following press release has been agreed by inclusive groups after discussion among their members, trustees or steering groups.

    20 November 2023

    We welcome the decision of General Synod to endorse the proposal of the House of Bishops to authorise the Prayers of Love & Faith for public use, including the trial use of standalone services under the Bishop of Oxford’s helpful amendment, and to continue the wider work of pastoral guidance and provision.  This continues the hopeful direction of travel set by February’s historic vote towards greater inclusion of LGBTQIA+ members of the Church of England.

                Of course, many of us would wish for much greater steps, much sooner, including equal marriage in church.  And we are also saddened by the hostile and negative manner in which many have engaged with the process, including the simplistic use of Scripture and appeal to narrow legal points. We look to the House of Bishops to issue new pastoral guidance for ministry, as agreed by Synod last February, and hope this will make generous space for LGBTQIA+ clergy to marry at their discretion, and for priests whose marriages are recognised in their own Province to be given PTO for England.  We also look forward to engaging with the formal process for permanent authorisation of the Prayers under Canon B2, whereby all dioceses will be drawn into the consultation.  The fuller discussion of all the issues involved can only be better for the integrity and honesty of the Church in all its diversity.

                Our response to that diversity is now inspired by the beautiful concluding speech of the Bishop of London, noting that whilst she was now excluded from others’ tables, they were not excluded from hers, and that if she were to be found with those shut outside the door, she expected to find Jesus there.  We hope to speak for many shut out until now, among whom Jesus is found, and like Bishop Sarah, we look to a table from which none are excluded.

                In that spirit we are committed to continued work in partnership with the House of Bishops and all across the spectrum of the Church of England, to seek the broadest possible space, including pastoral provision for those opposed to change, that does not impair the unity of the one Church under God for all people.

    Signatories:

    General Synod Gender & Sexuality Group, Revd Neil Patterson and Professor Helen King

    Affirming Catholicism, Revd Dr Hannah Cleugh

    Affirming Catholics in Synod, Jacqueline Stamper and Margaret Sheather, co-convenors

    Changing Attitude England, Revd Colin Coward MBE and Revd Robert Thompson

    Church for Everyone, Revd Dr Nicholas Bundock and Revd Augustine Tanner-Ihm

    Clergy Consultation

    Diverse Church, Jade Irwin

    Equal, Revd Nigel Pietroni

    The Evangelical Forum on General Synod, co-convenors Simon Friend, Ven. Nikki Groarke and Ven. Malcolm Chamberlain

    House of Rainbow CIC, Revd Jide Macaulay

    Inclusive Church, Fr Dan Barnes-Davies

    Inclusive Evangelicals, Revd David Runcorn and Revd Jody Stowell

    Modern Church, Professor Elaine Graham

    MoSAIC, Very Revd Joe Hawes and Revd Trevor Wyatt

    OneBodyOneFaith, Luke Dowding and Revd Jo Winn-Smith

    Society of Catholic Priests, Fr. Ian Gomersall, Provincial Rector

    Student Christian Movement, Revd Naomi Nixon

    Women and the Church, Revd Martine Oborne

  • The Dam Has Broken: Synod and Beyond

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

    There is a moment each morning, as most of the world slumbers, and the deep night seems to be all pervasive, that a tiny, almost imperceptible dot of light can be just about glimpsed on the horizon. Slowly, but surely, the hints of dawn make their presence known – gently, yet increasingly convincingly, until the light warms, and the day begins. And there is no going back.

    There will, surely, be much noise made about what happened at the General Synod this week – much both-sideism, much hand-wringing about the narrowness of the vote, many angry words spat with venom and fury. Yet despite all the noise, all the anger, all the foaming at the mouth – indeed, despite many frustrations from many of us about the ever-so-limited step forward that these blessings are – something has happened. That something is tiny, almost imperceptible, yet it is there on the horizon, and it heralds a new dawn that cannot, however many tricks are played, however many legal actions taken, be turned back. Something has changed – the ceiling has a crack in it, and grace is seeping through. God is on the move, and is calling us all to follow.

    For those of us who are LGBTQIA, observing the debate this week was a bruising experience – more so even than February’s sessions – with language and behaviour that was so far over the queerphobic line as to be utterly unacceptable in any other forum except the one we claim is dedicated to the Lord of love. A particular low point was the use of the phrase ‘target on the back’ of clergy not wanting to use the prayers – not only is it a completely ludicrous, fearmongering, and demonstrably false suggestion that such clergy will be at risk of legal challenge, it is a deeply distasteful thing to make light of such imagery in a world where LGBTQIA people genuinely face violence and hate, not least in parts of the Anglican Communion. Twenty years ago Gene Robinson was ordained bishop whilst wearing a bullet-proof vest, because he really did have a target on his back – loose language like this is well below the dignity of a bishop and should have no place in the silly games of Synod. Let’s be absolutely clear: you don’t get spat at in the street, or stabbed to death, for being a conservative evangelical – and the attempts to invert the reality of victimhood from so many in the Synod chamber was disgusting.

    Of course, there was ultimately no need for this week’s session to take place – the reality being that whether the motion had passed or not, the prayers would likely have been commended and the Pastoral Guidance brought forward. In choosing to bring this motion to Synod – however asinine its content – the bishops made yet another in a series of unforced errors, and allowed the February debate to be rehashed in an even nastier way than before. Listening to speech after speech, it became clear that very few of our opponents had anything to say about the amendments they spoke to, but instead wanted merely to do down the lives and loves of, and yet again ‘other’, LGBTQIA people. What they wanted to do was revoke even the moderate progress of February – and with it, the apology to LGBTQIA people for the way we’ve been treated.

    For whatever one’s theological perspective, this was surely not a debate that made the church proud, and yet despite the endless provocations and bad-faith acting, those arguing for these tiny steps forward showed grace in abundance. Those of us watching on could see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control bursting forth again and again. Judged by its fruits, there was no narrow majority in the debate’s outcome. Similarly, it is clear that the offensive and theologically abysmal accompanying paper GS2328 did not and does not reflect the mind of even the House of Bishops, let alone the General Synod, and can be immediately consigned to history as a vain attempt at influencing debate by those who have no business to do so.

    So where, in practical terms, do we find ourselves. Firstly, we know that the prayers will be commended within the next month or so – about time, and at last. The vicious conservative responses to Wednesday’s motion passing have managed to suggest that both nothing is happening, nothing has changed, and that the change is a great catastrophe, enough to wipe the Church of England off the map. Given the logical impossibility of this faux-outrage, it is probably best just to ignore them altogether – a great boon to one’s mental wellbeing.

    Secondly, we expect that the standalone services of blessing – the only real change in official practice here – will be authorised for use for an experimental period. There is absolutely no reason for this to be delayed beyond silly legal games, so this authorisation should happen as soon as possible, and we should get some clarity straight away as to when this will be.  This authorisation means that we can finally offer people a wedding-blessing-that-we-must-explicitly-make-clear-is-not-a-wedding-blessing, an idea so lacking in pastoral compassion that it surely cannot be taken seriously. What it means in practice is that we can finally offer people a service to celebrate their love, which seems rather uncontroversial to me. It’s a step in the right direction, so let’s embrace that direction in its fullness.

    Of course, there were speeches made at the General Synod which delighted in the idea that these standalone services might be removed in two years once the two-thirds authorisation of Synod fails, which it doubtless will. This gave, perhaps, a rather good glimpse into the utterly uncompromising and pastorally uninterested perspective of those who see their life’s mission as being the opposition of same-sex intimacy in the name of the Jesus who never utters a word about it. In the main, the bishops speaking recognised how pastorally inept this was, and I agree wholeheartedly with the Bishop of Chichester that once these services are introduced experimentally it would be a pastoral catastrophe to remove them – I cannot see this ever happening, and if it did, then we should simply disobey.

    So where do we go from here? Well in the first instance we must hold the bishops to account and get the commendation and authorisation undertaken without delay. We must, too, throw the pernicious Issues in Human Sexuality in the bin and get the Pastoral Guidance released before the end of the year, if at all possible – it is now a matter of simple cruelty and pastoral ineptitude that it is not published and put in place, and it is high time that clergy and ordinands in same-sex marriages should be freed to live out their God-given vocations. It is totally absurd that we will be able to bless forms of relationship yet not enter into them, and I cannot see that Issues is in place in anything more than name since Wednesday’s vote. Good riddance to bad – dangerous – rubbish.

    Secondly, let’s be clear that this is not the end – it is a stepping stone, and there is certainly no going back, but it is most definitely not the end either, and there is much careful and coordinated work to do. Marriage will be opened to people of the same sex, and it is now a question of when and not if. The development of our doctrine, and our reception of this, is inherently part of the way our church does its theology and lives its life, and is not in opposition to it. Our opponents have made it clear that they will not even grant us scraps, pay any attention to simple pastoral need, or allow us to live within our conscience, however much we wish to let them live within theirs. It is time for us – and particularly our bishops – to recognise that, to stop making excuses for them, and to stand firm against their threats and demands for (and attempts at) schism. They will stop at nothing to snatch everything away from us, and we need our bishops to stand alongside us, just as Bishop Sarah did in her summing up. Bishop Sarah, you will always be welcome at our table – not least because it’s not ours, but the Lord’s, and all of us come at God’s invitation. We do not write the guest list – we come as fellow pilgrims.

    And that’s the final thing that we must now work for. For far too long, bishops and LGBTQIA people have been at loggerheads with one another, each, perhaps, feeling in an impossible and difficult position. Finally, and not before time, some – even a majority – of our bishops have had the courage to draw a line in the sand and to say that yes, we, too, are part of the holy and broken body of Christ, in the same way as anyone else, and ‘being in communion’ is never something that should be weaponised. Yes, it has taken far too long. Yes, it is sometimes far too lukewarm. Yes, we will need to encourage them time and again. But the dam has broken and the secret is out – the bishops are with us. Let us never cease to remind them of this simple fact and learn to rebuild the trust that has all-too-often been lost.

    So now let us turn our minds to hope. The light is rising, and so – creakingly, tentatively, in the face of anger and opposition and flailing frustration – the dawn from on high is breaking upon us. Someday, our church will be led into the way of peace and find that its unity is a gift given, and not an idol created. And until then, let us see the water flowing from the right side of the Temple, however much others might deny it or try to stop it, and watch it making abundant life spring forth wherever it goes. All those to whom this water comes are saved and will say ‘Alleluia’, as the ancient hymn goes. That surely is our song, too.

  • Vile Bodies?

    by Adrian Thatcher, Honorary Professor in the Department of Religion and Theology, University of Exeter and a Trustee of Modern Church

    So now we know! While the authorization of same-sex marriages within the Church of England remains a distant dream, ‘Prayers of Love and Faith’ for same-sex couples are to be commended by the bishops next month for experimental use in stand-alone services. The Church of England Evangelical Council immediately announced that the proposals ‘depart from a biblical understanding of sex and marriage’.

    One of the main sticking points among conservatives throughout the churches is that ‘biblical understanding’ is unchanging. Was the CofE wrong, then, when in 2004 it changed its doctrine of marriage to permit, albeit ‘in exceptional cases’, divorce and what it called ‘further marriage’? Was it wrong to allow a widower to marry his late wife’s sister; or wrong in 1835 to prevent it; or in 1907 to allow it again, having faced down trenchant opposition from conservatives over several decades similar to the outbursts that have been heard in Synod this week?

    If biblical understanding is unchanging then employing and trading in slaves, killing Jews and crusading against Muslims is fine too. Ephesians is pretty explicit: ‘Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ’ (Eph. 6.5). Were Augustine and Aquinas right to deduce from scripture that slavery was instituted by God so that by it certain people could be blessed by learning the virtues of obedience and humility? Were white mainline Protestants biblically sound to invoke the curse of Canaan (Gen. 9.18-27) in summoning biblical support for the convenient prejudice that all black people were cursed?

    Who dares to recall that a favourite proof text of Christian slave owners was the parable of Jesus which illustrates the need for disciples to be watchful for the coming of the Son of Man by means of a slave owner meting out punishment to inattentive slaves, actually cutting one of them to pieces for misconduct (Luke 12.46)? The cutting open of the bodies of slaves by lashing and lynching was a common punishment during the Jim Crow years in the Protestant USA, and the next verse – ‘‘The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows’ (Luke 12.47) – offered a persuasive reason for doing exactly what the saying recommended. Being Christian and cruel is fine, authorized by Christ himself.

    This exegetical cruelty – the shameful shadow side of Christianity almost never acknowledged – persists in the present wranglings where scripture is utilized to reinforce cruel prejudice. It is nothing new. ‘His blood be on us and on our children’ (Matt. 27.25), cited Christians, as they hacked innocent Jewish people to death in the name of Christ. Martin Luther’s wicked text, On the Jews and Their Lies, is packed with biblical quotations. Yes, on the basis of scores of proof texts he advised that synagogues be burned, their books confiscated, their worship forbidden, and that they driven from Luther’s country. Yes, if this great Protestant Reformer could advocate these things on the basis of scripture, what confidence can we have in the siren cry, ‘sola scriptura’ heard all around the Anglican communion?

    The time has now come for an investigation into the prior historical and theological causes leading to this Anglican tolerance of prejudice and pastoral cruelty. Such an investigation will uncover that disturbing strand of the tradition that regards particular human bodies as inferior, disgusting, vile, ‘other’. This tradition would explain more than the disdain shown to LGBT people and their arrangements for living in love and faith. It would help to explain the terrible and world-wide abuse of children and vulnerable people by Christian leaders; why the churches covered it up; why racism is still endemic; why women still can’t be ministers or priests in most of the world’s churches; why spiritual abuse operates unchecked; why churches uphold marriage while ignoring the poor quality of life within many of them.

    My new book, just published, has begun this wider, deeper, and necessary investigation. Vile Bodies: The Body in Christian Teaching, Faith, and Practice uncovers an antipathy toward particular human bodies in much Christian theology. It vilifies them, whether the bodies of women, slaves, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, heretics, gays, heathens, people of lower classes. This tradition of thinking about and mistreating bodies is stubbornly entrenched in theology. It manifests itself whenever the church manages to get itself talking about bodies.

    Bridging the distance between biblical times and our own, Vile Bodies examines the psychological abuse of women compelled to see themselves as the downfall of the world; the futile attempts of holy men to deny their sexuality; the elaborate (and entirely biblical) justifications for owning slaves and enslaving whole peoples. It shows how mystical theology plundered the body’s senses in its forlorn attempts to soar above them in the soul’s search for God. It describes the elaborate manipulation of biblical texts to justify the persecution and killing of Jews, soon extended to justifying the crusades, enslaving millions, and colonizing whole peoples.

    Racism, sexism, colonialism, and homophobia follow from the theology that regards some bodies as superior, others as inferior or disgusting. A particular feature of such theology is that it requires self-delusion, constant repetition, the refusal of complexity, and the pretence that cruel and exploitative beliefs and practices are consistent with God’s will. At other times spiritual malpractice appears to be acknowledged (“We sincerely repent”) while the bad theology continues unabated. Alleged fidelity to scripture is substituted for real fidelity to Christ.

    An ‘unknowing’ of this tradition is an urgent task. The inoculation from self-criticism; the priority of apparent unity over the pursuit of truth; the abuse scandals and their concealment to protect the church’s ‘good name’; the hypocrisy that spins pastoral principles while at the same time undermining them; these are the demons awaiting exorcism from the body of the church.

    Vile Bodies: The Body in Christian Teaching, Faith, and Practice, is published by SCM Press on November 30th. Copies at a 20% discount can be ordered here.

  • Reclaiming Orthodoxy

    by Revd Ray Gaston, Team Vicar, S Chad & S Mark, Parish of Central Wolverhampton; Interfaith Advisor, Diocese of Lichfield; Associate Tutor, Ripon College, Cuddesdon

    In response to a recent Ad Clerum from the episcopal team in the Diocese of Lichfield (the diocesan is presently on Sabbatical) concerning LGBT+ chaplaincies, I wrote to the bishops about the use of the term ‘orthodox’ for the non-affirming position in relation to Equal Marriage. Like others, the diocese has set up these chaplaincies with the blurb on the diocesan website saying

    Chaplains available include those from an ‘affirming perspective’ and an ‘orthodox perspective’.

    In my letter to the bishops, I objected to the term ‘orthodox’ being exclusively appropriated for a position that is not required for creedal orthodoxy. I argued that the two positions are more correctly termed ‘affirming’ and ’non-affirming’, as that describes accurately how each position believes the church should respond to those Lesbian and Gay Christians who wish to express their sexuality within a loving monogamous relationship and seek the church’s blessing of that in a marriage rite. I explained that, as I saw myself as being both affirmative of equal marriage and the classic creeds, I didn’t see the two as mutually exclusive.

    I have yet to receive a response from them.

    But when I shared my letter publicly, I received hundreds of responses in support from both within and beyond the diocese. Alongside these came push back from those who argued that they were ‘orthodox’ and we weren’t. When pushed, some of these argued for an understanding of ‘orthodoxy’ that appeared to me to be at odds with classical Anglican understandings of the term and that would return us to Reformation debates about understandings of scripture between defenders of the Elizabethan Settlement and its Puritan critics. The Biblical scholar John Barton (1) has argued  that although these differences – seen to be represented in the debates between the Puritans and the primary theological defender of the Elizabethan Settlement, Richard Hooker – were often framed around church order (i.e. episcopal vs presbyterian forms of order), they also rested on serious differences in the understanding of Scripture and the role it plays in determining the boundaries of faith.

    At my ordination to the priesthood of the Church of England I affirmed several things necessary for the ordering of my calling as understood within the Church of England

    1. I took the oath of allegiance to the Sovereign affirming my acceptance of the church’s ‘national’ as well as Catholic character and its freedom from the authority of the Bishop of Rome
    2. I affirmed my canonical obedience to the Bishop of my diocese, accepting therefore the episcopal form of Church government agreed at the Elizabethan Settlement
    3. Finally I affirmed and declared my belief in ‘the faith which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear witness’.

    It’s this final point which is important for determining ‘orthodoxy’: ‘the faith which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the Catholic Creeds’. Those two aspects need to be seen together. The faith revealed in the Bible and set forth in the catholic creeds is the story of God’s creative, redemptive and sustaining threefold presence and nature amongst us – it is the story of God we hold in our liturgy. The Bible is a testimony to that story and the creeds present that story and wrestle with interpretations of it. The Apostles’ Creed is a summary of the story and the economy of salvation. The Nicene Creed is a setting of the boundaries for exploration of an understanding of God’s work, particularly in Jesus, and how we understand that. It also concentrates on the boundaries of understanding the immanent Trinity – the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. The Athanasian creed acts as a form of via negativa – via positiva dialogue in helping us understand the trinitarian nature of God, the incarnation of Jesus Christ and what that means and does NOT mean.

    The Bible, according to Article 6 of the Church of England’s 39 Articles, ‘containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation’. This is very important as it says that nothing that is not in the Bible may be demanded to be held to as determining faith. It does not mean that everything in the Bible and everything the Bible commands is necessary for faith. What is necessary for faith is trust in God and the story of salvation as presented in the creeds.

    In addition to that caveat, the Church of England also holds to the doctrine of Prima Scriptura not Sola Scriptura. This means that scripture is the primary source for our faith but not the only source, as alongside it there is also tradition and reason: what became known as the ‘Three Legged Stool’.

    The Creeds determine what we can read from scripture about the nature of God, God’s work in Jesus Christ and doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity. Creedal Orthodoxy does not allow Biblical Unitarianism or Christadelphianism, both of which are heterodox because of what they say or don’t say about Incarnation and the Trinity, although both would also claim to be deriving that from the Bible and the Bible alone. Our incarnational understanding of Jesus and trinitarian understanding of the nature of God are derived from scripture but are formed in the creeds through the dialogue of scripture with tradition and reason in the patristic church. The creeds are essential to setting the parameters of our understanding of the work of God given to us in the story of the Bible and restrict how scripture can be interpreted in this. Therefore the creeds are dealing with first order matters – how we understand the work of God in Jesus Christ and the nature of God as Trinity. The boundaries are set for our exploration of these matters and these are non-negotiable because they lie at the root of how we understand God at work in the world.

    Second order matters are related both to polity – how we should govern the church – and to ethics. These matters are debatable within the broad parameters of Christian Orthodoxy according to the classical Anglicanism that draws from Hooker. And this is where the debate on the doctrine of marriage should reside. There are different positions deriving from the dialogue of scripture, tradition and reason. The attempt to deny this by the non-affirming tradition is similar to the Puritans’ denial of Hooker’s argument that the Bible does not determine a particular church order over their assertion that it does. It is possible to explore marriage in this way and allow space for the expression of both affirming and non-affirming positions, seeing both as sitting within an orthodox Christological and trinitarian doctrine. In fact, some of the best arguments for equal marriage have been made by people drawing upon tradition and scripture and bringing them into dialogue with contemporary understandings of sexuality, to critique both liberal permissiveness and conservative exclusiveness for a renewed theological understanding of monogamous relationship as one path to holiness (2).

    The insistence that only the non-affirming position is ‘orthodox’ develops out of an understanding of orthodoxy that resides more within the Puritan strands of Christianity than classical Anglicanism. Defeated in the English Reformation, this Puritan strand then won out at the time of the commonwealth, only to be defeated again at the Restoration. In the modern world, it has been given a new lease of life with Fundamentalism, a form of reading scripture derived in North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a push-back against Biblical criticism. It seeks to narrow the more generous orthodoxy of the classical creeds by instituting new doctrinal bases (3) that go against the grain of centuries of diverse interpretive trends and understandings of exploring the Bible and instead flatten its meaning. It is a form of interpretation that denies swathes of tradition and interpretative frameworks for a cold and rigid reading of scripture that cannot hold up to serious scrutiny. If this becomes known as the true ‘orthodox’ approach, then we not only continue to marginalise our LGBT+ siblings in Christ but begin to move along the road of destroying our rich theological and interpretive heritage.

    References

    (1) John Barton, ‘Richard Hooker and Puritans: Of sundry things, in the light of reason’, Church Times 14 September 2014

    (2) See Eugene Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God (Blackwell 1999)

    (3) See for instance UCCF Doctrinal Basis and Evangelical Alliance Statement of Faith

  • Polluted Ground or Holy Ground? Going Forward to the November Synod

    by the Very Revd Dr Mandy Ford, Dean of Bristol

    I trained alongside men who did not believe that I could be a priest. We were friends, we learned together, we prayed together, we drank gin together. But as our period of training came towards its end and we were about to move to our new dioceses, I started asking the question of them, “When I celebrate the Eucharist, do you think Jesus will turn up?”

    The best of them were honest. Quite simply, the answer was “no”. The Church of England did not have the right, apart from the universal church, to ordain me.

    I’m still here. The Vicar of Dibley jokes have faded. No-one is surprised to see a woman at the altar or conducting a funeral any more. Yet, female colleagues still have to endure being abused or criticised because of their hair colour, tattoos, fashion sense, parenting choices or simply for existing.

    Perhaps I’ve grown more compassionate over time, but I don’t think I’ve ever confronted someone with the question, “Do you think I’m going to hell?”. But as a gay woman in a civil partnership, I probably know the answer.

    My response is the same. I’m still here.

    When we stand on polluted ground, as the theologian James Alison describes it, we do not have to allow ourselves to be poisoned.

    Alison, drawing heavily on Girard’s anthropology of the victim, points us to Jesus. When Jesus was accused by the authorities, he remained silent. When he returned to face those who had abandoned or persecuted him, he did not retaliate. Jesus would not set the cycle of violence spinning round again. He stood on polluted ground but he did not spread the poison around.

    This is a tough space to stand.  Polluted ground can easily become toxic. Misogyny and homophobia become internalised as self-loathing, low self-esteem or victimisation without us noticing.

    What would it feel like to stand on holy ground instead?

    My experience of holy ground is closely tied to my experience of vocation, in coming to mature faith as an adult, in the call to ordination, in my relationship.

    In those things I experience being beloved as a child of God and if I look around, it becomes easier to see others as my sisters and brothers in Christ.

    I have been thinking about the Chamber of General Synod as a toxic space, as polluted ground. Instead, I ought to take off my shoes before I enter.

  • Collateral Damage: How Unjust Treatment of LGBTQIA+ People Harms the Church

    by Ruth Harley, curate in the Watling Valley Ecumenical Partnership

    All names and some details have been changed to protect the identity of those whose stories are told in this article.

    Let me tell you about Mary. She’s a woman in her 80s, widowed several years ago. She has come faithfully to church every Sunday for her entire life. She organises the flower rota, and volunteers at the parent and toddler group. She makes the tea, and notices when the tea towels need washing. She comes to the Lent course and makes thoughtful contributions, and apologises that she can no longer help stack the chairs afterwards. She has many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and loves to talk about them. In short, Mary is a very ordinary Anglican. She is the sort of person without whom the church simply wouldn’t function, the sort of person who is part of the backbone of the C of E. She is also the sort of person who seems a million miles removed from LLF, General Synod, and conversations about sexuality and relationships. But she isn’t.

    When my partner and I got engaged, 7 years ago, Mary was among the first and most enthusiastic to congratulate me. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” she said, “Do you have a date for the wedding? And can I do the flowers? Please?” She had, naturally enough, assumed that we would get married in church. And so I had to gently break it to her that not only could we, as a lesbian couple, not get married in the church which Mary and I both loved and served, but also that for clergy marrying a same-sex partner at all was not an option. “But I do believe it will change,” I said. Mary looked me in the eye, and said, “But I won’t be here to see it.” It was the first time I cried about not being able to marry the woman I love.

    I think of Mary whenever people say of the conversation around the place of LGBTQIA+ people in the church: “But that’s not relevant here.” Usually they’re talking about a very ordinary parish church, typically middle-of-the-road with a predominantly older congregation: a congregation full of people like Mary. And I want to tell them – sometimes I do tell them – they’re wrong. It is relevant to Mary, and all the many faithful Anglicans like her, in ways which go far beyond flower arranging.

    Mary and I had many conversations after her initial shock at learning that the church she loved wouldn’t allow the people she loved to marry. Her dismay went far beyond the realisation that she would never do the flowers for our wedding. It was a profoundly destabilising realisation for her: the church to which she had given so much, which had been such a bedrock of her life, such a place of encounter with God, was not what she thought it was. She went on arranging the flowers, reading stories to the toddlers and washing the tea towels, praying each morning and evening and attending church each week, but something fundamental had shifted. The church which she had believed to be a place of abundant love and affirmation – a reflection of God’s unending love for all people – had revealed itself to be… not that.

    And it’s not just Mary, of course. There’s Brian, who invited his friend at work to something at church, and was shocked when his friend asked: “Will it be OK for me to come, as a gay man?” Brian had never considered that question before, but he suddenly realised he wasn’t sure of the answer. There’s Iris, who talks so proudly about her grandson George, but when she participated in her deanery’s LLF course (wondering what all the fuss was about) the couple next to her said quite casually “of course, being gay’s a sin” and she didn’t know how to tell them they were talking about her George. There’s Jean and Steve who struggled to support their daughter through the breakdown of her marriage, and weren’t sure what response they would get if they asked their vicar or their friends at church to pray for their daughter and daughter-in-law. So they kept quiet and struggled on alone. And there are so many more stories I could tell.

    There are people like Mary, Brian, Iris, Jean and Steve in every congregation. There is no part of the church which is untouched by how we treat LGBTQIA+ folks, either directly or indirectly. It is right, of course, that our conversations should centre the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people, who are most directly harmed by the church’s current policies and practices. But we shouldn’t forget the ‘ripple effect’ that harm has on others too. And nobody in church leadership should be claiming that it “isn’t relevant” in their context. It will be. It might just be that the Marys in your congregation don’t feel able to share their stories.

    That ‘ripple effect’ of harm to people who seem far beyond the scope of the questions raised by LLF should not come as a surprise. As Paul says: “if one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Corinthians 12.26). The church’s unjust and unloving treatment of LGBTQIA+ people is not only a cause of pain for those of us most closely affected, it is painful and damaging to the whole body. For someone like Mary, that pain is not only vicarious – the pain she feels because she see that I am treated unjustly – it is also the pain of realising that the body of which she is a part is damaged in ways she had not previously seen. Unjust treatment of LGBTQIA+ people damages the whole church, the whole body of Christ. It distorts the image of God which we present to the world. It is not just an issue for us and our allies, but for the whole church.

    Paul goes on, of course, to say: “if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it”. There will come a time when our suffering turns to rejoicing. When and how is still unclear, but that is the direction in which the Spirit is surely moving the church, however painfully slowly. I do still believe what I told Mary: that change will come, that my beloved and I will marry. But Mary won’t be there to do the flowers.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Same-sex Marriage and the Book of Common Prayer

    by Evan McWilliams; brought up in conservative evangelical non-conformity, he is now Associate Vicar at St Mary Abbots in Kensington

    The Form of Solemnisation of Matrimony, typically called the marriage service, is one of the chief delights of the Book of Common Prayer. Whether conducted in the original English or in one of its many period translations – I had occasion last year to declaim the preface in the French translation of 1665 – the elegant prose elevates even the simplest wedding to a stately, almost courtly, plane.

    Among the many conversations currently underway in the Church of England’s continuing LLF deliberation is the nature of any liturgical resources that would allow the blessing of same-sex relationships. What might such blessings sound like? What theological underpinning might be necessary to acknowledge the validity of those relationships and how, if at all, might this differ from marriage as the Church of England has understood it?

    With the Book of Common Prayer in hand, I cannot help but think that the theological question in particular already has an answer. Stable and legal same-sex relationships can and do already fulfil the causes for which marriage was ordained as outlined in our church’s official liturgy.

    First, marriage ‘was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.’ Some have argued that same-sex marriages, because they lack procreative potential, are invalidated. It is easy enough to point to the many couples who, by virtue of age or physical condition, cannot by their union produce children. Yet the Church does not refuse marriage to the infertile or the very old, nor does it denigrate their capacity to bring up children in the fear of the Lord. Nurture of children within a life-long, loving relationship is something many same-sex couples long for, and which many already perform.

    Second, marriage ‘was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication.’ What we acknowledge of opposite-sex couples, we ought to acknowledge of same-sex couples: that the temptation to abuse the gift of sex is tempered by the avowed stability of a marriage. Frankly, given how same-sex relationships are portrayed by some in the Church, one would think providing marriage as an answer to promiscuity might be rather higher on their priority list. Preventing same-sex couples from conceiving of their relationships as life-long and exclusive marriages actively promotes a flippant attitude towards sexual relations and fails to promote proper Christian continence.

    Third, marriage ‘was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.’ Though perhaps the most common reason given by opposite-sex couples desiring to marry, this final cause for which marriage was ordained is sometimes best observed among same-sex couples who persist in Christian belief and practice despite not being accepted by some in the Church of England. One may be forgiven for wondering why LGBT+ individuals continue to claim the name of Christ when many of their fellows refuse to acknowledge their belief. Continuing to believe, and to believe together as faithful Christians, sets same-sex couples apart from their opposite-sex counterparts whose relationships, regardless of their belief, are both named and supported by all wings of the Church.

    If the causes for which marriage was ordained can be fulfilled by same-sex couples, there is nothing to prevent the extension of marriage to them. In fact, such an extension would be to practice the theology the Church of England already functionally espouses; marriage is a life-long covenant between two persons intended for the growth in faith of a family, the tempering and channelling of sexual appetites, and for mutual support through good times and bad.

    The necessary theological groundwork for extending the umbrella of Christian marriage has already been undertaken in the context of the ordination of women to the priesthood. That the Creation narrative is no longer understood to set out the immutable subservience of women to men, and that St Paul’s teaching about male headship, both in the Church and the home, has been found to contain within it the germ of true equality should give sufficient building blocks for seeing same-sex marriage as not only a possibility but a necessity.

    The liturgical resources hitherto proffered for consideration, primarily concerned as they are with blessing individuals in relationship without explicit reference to the nature of those relationships, same-sex or otherwise, are not only inadequate but unnecessary. As an intermediate step they actively delay the inclusion of same-sex relationships in the liturgical life of the Church. Far better to recognise that marriage as the Church of England conceives it has room already for both same- and opposite-sex relationships.

    The best way to deal with same-sex relationships is to see them as part of the existing system of teaching set out by the historic formularies. Equal marriage is the only viable solution to the current problem the Church of England faces and if it can be performed in consonance with the noble language of our church’s finest liturgy, so much the better.

  • You Are Already Blessed: A Letter to the Church of England

    **published in conjunction with the Campaign for Equal Marriage**

    by Anna Lawrence, a writer, editor and educator based in Birmingham. She blogs at Five by Three

    Dear Church of England,

    While you decide whether or not you can bring yourself to bless me and the woman that I love, I just wanted to reassure you.

    We are already blessed.

    I have tried to do things your way, ever since I was a child. I tried to pray away the gay. I locked up Gay Me in the attic and married a man. (And guess what? He was gay too, but that’s another story.) I tried giving what I coded as “TGT” – The Gay Thing – a little back room in my head where I allowed myself to go for restricted visits and tried to imagine it being ok to be me. I tried repressing it entirely, banning books and songs and thoughts and people and places – anything that made me feel expansive and alive and open to the possibility of being my full self. I decided I must live like an anchoress within my marriage, choosing to be walled in, throwing myself at Church God in the confines of a cell, hoping that the pressure would squeeze something good and wise out of me. Guess what? It didn’t work. Church told me I was not ok and I believed it, and Church held the door wide open for shame, self loathing and depression. They corroded me and told me that my children would be better off without this mad mother who threw herself at walls and begged for inspiration. Better dead than gay. Church did not come and sit with me and light a candle in that darkness. Church was too busy bickering about the likes of me to notice.

    Still.

    When Church did not look for me, I went looking for what Church calls “God” in other places. I tried out other names that didn’t set off tripwires: my Knowing, my Unknowing, my Beloved, Source, Loving Presence. This Love – huge as everything and intimate as breath inside my lungs – did not wait for me to step over your threshold. Love met me at Greenbelt, in feminist theology, in poetry, in friends who brought me brownies when I was bereaved. Love met me in meditation, lying under soft blue blankets at the Buddhist Centre, noticing the feelings in my toes. Love met me in podcasts – Tara Brach, Kristin Neff and Cynthia Bourgeault – where women (knowing we live first and last and only in our bodies and not as talking heads in committee rooms) invited me to practise Loving Kindness, Self Compassion, Centering Prayer.

    Love works with and through the therapist who asks me to place a hand over my heart, to hum low and long to calm this frightened, fragile animal.

    The Beloved does not forget me. Again, again, again, She re-members me, remakes me from the parts Church tried to split apart, as if sexuality were something to be cut out and dropped into a jar, like an inflamed appendix.

    This Love is Chrysalis, holding the gloop of me that had been caterpillar but doesn’t yet have wings: the what-was and what’s-here and what’s-not-yet.

    The thing – The Gay Thing – I thought so long a curse has turned out to be a Blessing. Church equivocation – “nah, I’m sorry, we’re not sure ALL of you belongs”- sent me looking elsewhere. It turns out that I was already found.

    Love lives in our home – our ordinary life of lunch boxes and putting bins out and making whole what has been badly broken. We are learning – slowly, imperfectly – to be hospitable to all the spiked defences in ourselves and in each other, and to welcome back the parts we sent away. Love is here in rift and in repair.

    I’m not sure yet if I’ll give Church another go. I keep trying, and have been welcomed by warm and lovely people who have conducted “illegal” ceremonies for people like me. They know that Church has got it badly wrong. I begin to put my weight through Church again. And then Church says out loud that you’re not sure about blessing me and you need to discuss it. And I think about the woman who I love and I’m not sure why I’m putting myself through this once again.

    I have realised I do not want your blessing.

    Instead I find it in a mychorrizal network of people who pay kind attention, who are rooted in Source, whose nourishment moves through nodes of connection. I throw myself into the dirt and mess, resting in the dark where things grow best, and call on Love – this fierce, wild Presence – to meet us where we’re wounded,  where we wound, to meet us where we make and think and play.

    And here’s the thing: after everything you’ve done and said, and left undone, unsaid, I can’t bring myself to give you my blessing. But whether I decide to welcome you or not – each of you who makes up Synod, deciding what to do with all the tricky ones like me – each of you is already welcomed, regardless. You, like me, are loved from the inside out.

    You are already blessed.

  • On the Exchanging of Friendship Bracelets; or: The Bishops are Asking us to Lie

    by Matt Drapper, an author who writes about church and queer culture. His book ‘Bringing Me Back To Me’ is an autobiographical look back at his experiences of Conversation Therapy Practices and homophobia within Christianity and his journey towards healing from trauma

    Imagine you have two friends, who are Christian women, who love their church and each other and you hear they have become engaged. Later, you are invited to a church service at which the couple, who have been recently married at a civil ceremony, will be blessed and their love for each other celebrated before God and the gathered congregation of their friends and family. You’ve dressed up for the occasion, written a card emblazoned with hearts and even brought a pocket full of confetti just in case they decide to take photos after the blessing. You’ve already heard of the couple’s disappointment; they cannot be married in the church with a traditional ceremony, and it feels a pity to have their blessing taped onto the end of a regular Sunday morning service, however you know this will be a wonderful celebration with family and friends. Except, when the minister stands up to pray, she describes the women’s relationship as “friendship” and instead of rings, they exchange friendship bracelets.

    The minister knows. The couple know. The gathered friends and family know. You know, this is an opportunity to come before God for a blessing on the relationship and civil partnership or marriage of a couple who love one another, but who have been denied the opportunity to be married in the church building they love (a right granted to straight couples simply for living in the catchment area of the parish.) However, everyone has (at the request of the House of Bishops and the Church of England Lawyers) been asked to lie and say they are just celebrating a friendship.

    For context, I’m referring to the documents recently released for General Synod which detail the ways Churches will be allowed to use the Prayers of Love and Faith. These prayers were ostensibly designed for the blessing of same-sex relationships, but, due to the inclusion of the phrase “with no change to the doctrine of marriage” in an amendment passed in February, have seemingly had their entire purpose removed from them, and worse, replaced with an encouragement to pretend they are something else entirely.

    One example of the prayers which some churches will be enabled to offer, begins with a promise of love and commitment, but ends with just friendship.

    For lifelong peace
    God of all grace,
    friend and companion,
    look with favour on N and N
    as they journey together through life. Deepen their love
    and strengthen their wills
    to honour the commitment they have made,
    that they may continue
    in lifelong faithfulness and friendship to each other; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
    All Amen.

    To what “commitment they have made” is this prayer referring? The Guidance offered for use of the prayers states: “Pastoral preparation with the couple should cover the fact that the service is not a marriage, or a Thanksgiving for Marriage, or a Service of Prayer and Dedication after Civil Marriage.” And yet, the blessing of a civil ceremony or marriage is exactly what these prayers have been asked for, and prepared for. No one was asking for a new form of pinky-swearing with our best friends and a promise to love them forever and ever and ever.

    “They are roommates,” used to be the whispered code for an Uncle or Aunt known to be living with their gay partner, back in the day. “They were good friends,” suggest descriptions below paintings of historical possible queer love in museums. And now the Church of England is asking us to use the same veiled language, whispered, between evening prayers.

    As if it were not enough that the latest Guidance of the Use of Prayers of Love and Faith (and its accompanying Theological and Pastoral Introduction to the PLF) consistently use the words “holy” and “ideal” to describe straight presenting marriage, suggesting an “unholiness” and “less than ideal” to same-sex partnerships, and as if it were not demeaning enough to describe the Prayers of Love as Faith as “Prayers on the Way” (on the way to what?), the Guidance appears to be asking Ministers, Couples, Friends and Family to be intentionally deceptive before each other and before God. I would go so far as to say, The House of Bishops are asking us to lie.

    We have spent our lives being told our relationships are not Holy. This new document enforces this feeling in some of the most unhealthy language I have ever heard. They may have swapped out the word “sin” for “unholiness”, and not aimed it at us directly, but they should say what they really mean, if they are proud of it. Call us sinners, please.

    In describing their purpose, the guidance continues: “The PLF fall short of affirming a couple’s entire way of life as made Holy by God, and blessed as a marriage service would do…The PLF do not seek to simulate marriage or pretend that our Church has made a decision to extend marriage to same-sex couples.” The Theological document could not be clearer. PLF is not to be used as a celebration of same-sex relationship. And yet, what else are they designed for? Throughout the recent documents, they are consistently described as celebrating friendship. Are we to believe the women’s football team will be using the prayers to bless their bonds? Are we to understand the men’s mental health support group will be showing up for a blessing over their budding friendships? Is this a blessing for besties?

    No.

    We know what it is.

    It is what it is.

    In the most outrageous sample from the Guidance, it is suggested as an image: “The minister may pray over rings worn by the couple (but) to avoid the impression that the service is a marriage service, rings are not given or exchanged.” Pardon? The minister knows, the couple knows, the friends and family gathered know what this service is for and what the prayers for the rings mean. Yet, the House of Bishops and Church Lawyers are asking us to pretend we don’t understand. To lie about it to each other and in front of God.

    The Guidance is also clear on another point: you cannot offer the blessings to people who are still going through an unsettled divorce. Why not? If it is a blessing for buddies, for two roomies who get on really well? Make it make sense.

    As a gay man who grew up in a Christian household, and then in evangelical Christianity, I was taught to whisper about my sexuality. I was told by my family, “You cannot Be Gay at home.” I was told by my church, “You will lose your leadership role if you are openly in a Same-sex Relationship.” Better to keep these things hidden, wrapped up in shame, secret, pretend to be something you are not. Queer Christians recognise a lie for what it is: Shame, Denial, Pretence.

    Asking ministers, couples, friends and families to lie to each other and before God is a sure way to invite destructive poison into a congregation. Is this really the best they can offer us?

  • ‘That Which He Has Not Assumed Is Not Redeemed’: Jesus, Sexuality and GS2328

    by John Seymour, a priest in the Diocese of London who recently completed doctoral studies in practical theology and education at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society

    Jesus of Nazareth: fully human, fully God?

    I want to start with what, for many of us, may be an uncomfortable question. It’s one which we gloss over in our affirmations of the full humanity of Jesus. Did he have something which we would today call a sexuality? It may feel awkward or irreligious to imagine the God-man Jesus getting a spontaneous erection, masturbating for pleasure or relief, or indulging a sexual fantasy, but it is difficult to make sense of some of his encounters without Jesus being a human being with a sexuality.

    Many women had a strong affection for him, such that they provided for his material needs (Luke 8.1-3). He was able to understand the power dynamics at work in the life of the woman caught in adultery (John 8.2-11). Taken in context, it is interesting to ponder what kind of metaphor might be at work in the Samaritan woman’s retort, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep” (John 4.11). It is difficult for me at least not to suppose a sexual dimension to the intimacy of the beloved disciple reclining on Jesus’ breast (John 13.23) and the only disciple for whom Jesus cried was Lazarus: “see how he loved him!” (John 11.35).

    If human sexuality is to be redeemed then, on a Patristic understanding, Christ must have had a human sexuality. The quotation which starts this blog is taken from a letter from Gregory of Nazianzus to Cledonius, a priest he had oversight of. Gregory is addressing the Apollinarian controversy, and the suggestion that rather than having his own intellect, Jesus’ mind was replaced by the Godhead or Logos. Gregory’s humour is incisive:

    “If anyone has put his trust in him as a man without a human mind, he is really bereft of mind, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which he has not assumed he has not healed, but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved.” (Epistle 101)

    That which is united to the Godhead is saved. In the sacrament of baptism, the believer is joined to Christ (Galatians 3.27; Romans 6.3-6), body, mind, soul (to use Gregory’s term), and with these, his / her / their sexuality, whatever that sexuality may be (and it seems to me that the spectrum represented by asexuality is included here). Sexuality is, then, a salvation issue. If our sexuality is not assumed it is not healed; and if we are not joined with Christ in every part of our humanity, we are not saved.

    The red lines of GS2328

    What does this say to our current debates? In the press conference of 20 January 2023 ahead of February’s synod, the Archbishop of York said, “We’re saying this is a good place to be where we can live together with our disagreements and fully acknowledge and welcome into our church LGBTQI+ people.” The implication was that the salvation issue had been addressed for LGBTQIA+ people: with the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF), the Church of England had created a sufficiently generous theological space in which we could enjoy the fulness of life as Christians that comes with integration of body, mind, soul and sexuality within the church’s understanding of what it means to be human.

    However, with the release of GS2328 and the events that led to that paper, the Church of England now really is not in a “good place” in relation to the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people. In its theology and the practical inferences drawn from it, the House of Bishops is communicating the same homophobic bias which led to the defeat of GS2055 in February 2017. It is painful to see that the investment made by many in the LLF process over six years, one that was costly, sacrificial, and often altruistically motivated, has borne so little fruit: the Church of England has moved backward in its inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people.

    Let me explain. I didn’t believe that the draft Prayers of Love and Faith presented in February 2023 provided for the welcome of LGB people, as the prayers did not affirm same-sex relationships through offering a blessing of a marriage or civil partnership, or indeed, of the substance of a relationship for a same sex couple.

    The ‘goods’ GS2328 claims it wishes to affirm arise from a motivation which derives at least in part from sexual attraction. Rather than accept and affirm this, GS2328 attempts to dissect sexual attraction from an innate, abstract sexuality by separating same-sex sex from the goods of same-sex relationships. There is continuity here with the tendency to affirm Jesus’ humanity whilst glossing over his sexuality as something real: GS2328 wants to recognise the goods of this category of relationship while erasing the actual part that human sexuality plays in producing them. In doing so, GS2328 simply betrays a homophobic theology. Any prayer which takes as its starting point separation of being human from being sexual communicates a commitment that is at odds with belief in the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ and is consequently hostile to LGB identity and to LGBTQIA+ people.

    That theological ‘red line’ drawn between being human and having a sexuality has now changed and moved. Arguably, in the February 2023 proposals, the red line was brought to synod intentionally blurred, with the prospect of that blurred line being affirmed at the November 2023 synod. Examples of this blurring include synod in February choosing (contra Higton 1987) not to assert that sexual intimacy could only take place in marriage, and not to assert that relationships outside of marriage could not be blessed (both of these were the subject of amendments that failed). Despite this, what has returned to synod in November with GS2328 is a well-defined red line. Whatever else that line might be, it is a dividing line between being human and being sexual. The prospect now is of that line becoming fixed in 2025. The line makes a false division between what is assumed by Christ and what is not.

    The Canon B2 route and a choice between homophobic theologies

    In the press release relating to the papers for synod, bishop Sarah is quoted as saying, “a majority of people would like to see a change in the Church of England’s approach to same-sex relationships. Based on what the Church has told us, no change is not an option.” Yet the last-minute adoption of a Canon B2 process for approval of PLF as a stand-alone service has proven to be enabling of a minority position. As a result of the intervention in the House of Bishops’ process, there are two outcomes that are possible in 2025:

    • The least negative for LGBTQIA+ people is that the Canon B2 process, with reference to the dioceses and then a vote in Synod requiring a two-thirds majority in each house, affirms the proposed PLF and underlying rationale. With this, a homophobic theology (articulated in the Pastoral Guidance and reflected in PLF) would be formally adopted by the CofE as the basis for ‘affirming’ the relationships of LGB people.
    • The other possibility that opens up – and this seems quite likely as an outcome with the current composition of synod – is that, whatever the dioceses say, PLF are felt to have significant doctrinal implications which synod is not minded to affirm. With this, not only the stand-alone PLF but also the PLF prayers due to be commended for use in existing services would fall, as being incompatible with Church of England doctrine.

    Whilst inadequate, the proposals of February 2023 offered a route to an incarnational faith which is saving for LGBTQIA+ people. In contrast, GS2328 offers options between theologies for LGBTQIA+ people, both of which deny the gospel of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.

    It seems to me that GS2328 therefore heralds something of a pastoral crisis, as it tells me and my LGBTQIA+ siblings that the Church of England is not a safe place for us and that we are not welcome. It is also the occasion of a crisis in what the church is willing to transmit by way of salvation. With the decision to pursue a Canon B2 route, synod is set to determine whether or not LGBTQIA+ identities and lives may be joined with Christ’s and with this, to make a judgement on whether or not we may be saved. With the current politics of the Church of England, it looks like we are going to be damned to hell.

    Perhaps as they gaze over that precipice, the bishops might reconsider how closely they are willing to draw the line around who is saved and who is not. Synod has said that the bishops are not constrained by a doctrinal issue. In light of that, they need our prayers as they weigh their decision, as their own souls may be at risk in their judgment.