ViaMedia

Category: IICSA

  • IICSA, ‘Living in Love and Faith’ & Lockdown 3.0

    by Prof Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and member of Living in Love and Faith project

    Lockdown 3: how’s it going for you? I’m finding it far worse this time around.

    Living with uncertainty is never easy, and it’s particularly difficult when things appear to be going backwards rather than forwards. Where I am, church buildings reopened: then closed again. Raised hopes were dashed. When the pandemic started, there was an institutional as well as a personal tendency to look on the bright side: in the Church of England, to focus on the numbers clicking on our online services and the inclusion of those for whom physical church is a step too far in some way. Now, the optimists are focused on the vaccination programme, and enthusing about using some cathedrals to deliver this.

    Personally, I’m poised between optimism and pessimism (which I’d call realism) here. I accompanied an elderly neighbour for her jab. The leaflet given out says “two doses will reduce your chance of becoming seriously ill” and tells you that the date for the second dose will be written on the card stapled to the leaflet. Of course, it isn’t, because all that changed after these leaflets had gone to press, and so she doesn’t know when she will be given the second dose. The leaflet isn’t the most encouraging of documents, as it also says “We do not yet know whether [the vaccine] will stop you from catching and passing on the virus.” But at least that’s honest.

    In the Church of England, we are also living with uncertainty about two issues: abuse, and inclusion in terms of sexuality and gender. And I’m not sure that we have honesty in either area. Our pandemic lockdown is difficult because it has no end date, no clarity as to its exit strategy. This vagueness can be excused, because we don’t understand the situation we’re in, but it’s not easy to live with it. But what about the Church of England responses to the IICSA report and the publication of Living in Love and Faith. Do we have an exit strategy?

    In the case of IICSA, since the October publication we’ve had plenty of expressions of shame and of frustration. The 19 January House of Bishops claims “progress towards independent oversight for Safeguarding” but doesn’t share with all the rest of us – who aren’t bishops – what that progress is. Like outbreaks of the virus, pockets of abuse keep appearing. It’s clear that managing these pockets locally, at diocesan level, didn’t work. A church version of ‘track and trace’ can follow offenders’ careers from diocese to diocese, showing the connections between outbreaks of abuse. We still wait for the ‘lessons learned’ review into the actions of Jonathan Fletcher being carried out by the independent Christian charity thirtyone:eight, the most recent date revised as ‘not before January 2021’. For those who have survived abuse, there is clearly frustration at the lack of progress.

    LLF, to my mind, invites a parallel between our discussions of sexuality and gender, and our attempts to make sense of the uncertainty we feel due to Covid-19. While our government exhorts us to “Follow the science” on the virus, scientists don’t agree on what that may be; partly because it’s all too soon to know, but also because ‘science’ isn’t one huge entity and they come from different disciplines within it. The over-simplification of “Follow the science” feels rather like “The Bible says”. Neither leads to agreement.

    While LLF has a timeline, an exit strategy, it is increasingly unlikely to work. 2021 was supposed to be when we were ‘learning together’. Some dioceses were out of the starting gate immediately, with presentations from bishops at diocesan synods. As I noted in something I wrote for Modern Church, the LLF book uses the past tense for the pandemic, as they thought that everything would be sorted on the Covid-19 front before publication. At publication, more realism emerged; Bishop Paul Butler said to his diocesan synod that “We really hope that these LLF groups will be able to be done face to face and realistically this is more likely to be possible post Easter.”

    But is even that realistic? The website for LLF anticipates midweek small groups, a Lent series, or away days; engagement with the resources by PCCs, deanery and diocesan synods and clergy conferences. How is any of that supposed to happen, if we won’t all be vaccinated until Easter, or November, depending on which press release you read; even assuming that vaccination is enough to allow groups to meet? With events still being cancelled – last week, Glastonbury, scheduled for late June – or rescheduled – the new Bond movie postponed again, from April to October – is the timeline realistic?

    However, as Bishop Paul also noted, “We are asked to feedback our discernment nationally by November next year.” The LLF page states that “Engagement will need to be during 2021 so that processes of discernment and decision-making can take place in 2022.”

    So, rather than delaying discussion of the resources yet again, isn’t it time for some online options to be offered? They would first need to be trialled to make sure that they are safe – not in Covid terms, but in safeguarding terms – for all participants. I’m not convinced that Zoom is the best way to have these conversations, not least because anyone can record a meeting, even by pointing a camera at the screen.

    The lack of an exit strategy for lockdown is depressing, but understandable. The lack of an exit strategy, of a clear timeline and goals, for responding to IICSA is depressing, and there seems no reason for it. As for LLF, the planned timeline simply feels impossible as things stand. Are the episcopal Recovery Group (covering Covid-19) or the Next Steps Group (covering LLF) facing up to any of this? Some honesty here would go a long way in managing our uncertainty.

  • LLF: Please Break the Silence, Bishops

    by Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge and ordinand at St Augustine’s College of Theology 

    How long must I bear pain in my soul,
        and have sorrow in my heart all day long? (Psalm 13)

    Since LLF was published just a few weeks ago, the calls for a safe space for discussion has become louder and louder, not least given a number of videos, and associated justificatory articles, which many have seen as representative of the erasure, belittling and downright abuse that LGBTQI people have become accustomed to as members of the Church of England. Despite the promises made about ensuring the pastoral principles are adhered to, it appears that bishops are determined not to even mention ‘LGBTQI’ in their statements, aiming instead to talk in vague generalities about ‘different lived experiences and theological understandings’. Beneath this, it has become abundantly clear that, not only are our senior leaders  still missing the point when it comes to power dynamics and structural oppression, but that this is a fundamentally unsafe enterprise even for those in power.

    LLF has asked LGBTQI people to make ourselves vulnerable, so we can listen to those of other ‘theological understandings’, and thus find a way forward as a church. Putting aside the simple fact that a threat of schism (as made in the CEEC video) is hardly ‘listening’, many LGBTQI people are willing to do just as the bishops ask, despite the personal cost. Yet what has become absolutely clear in recent weeks is that the LGBTQI members of the House of Bishops who are not out are themselves terrified to speak out – and that their straight colleagues are giving them no public cover. If they are not feeling safe, then how on earth are the rest of us supposed to? If the pastoral principles are the key to this, then why do they only apply to the clergy and laity – and not the bishops? Is this really what a safe space looks like? And if not, then are we really happy to live in a church driven by fear?

    Silence is not always a bad thing – sometimes it signals serious intent to listen, to engage, to leave room for differing views that don’t need a referee. Christ’s own silence before his accusers was an act of resistance in itself. But silence is not always a virtue. In the past few weeks, the silence from the House of Bishops has been deafening. Very few LGBTQI people are calling for bishops to present combative opposition to those amongst their number who are threatening schism, or those who suggest ‘same-sex attracted’ Christians are trying to divide the church. But for so many bishops, including LGBTQI bishops and those known to be supporters, to say nothing when there is so much hurt amongst some of the most vulnerable in our communities, is extraordinary.

    This silence leaves open the marketplace for insidious voices to continue to work a dynamic of oppression against LGBTQI people. We are told that we should be more ‘gracious’, as though attacks on our very personhood, identity, and, indeed, on the ones we love, are something we should discuss politely over a cup of tea. We are told that our ‘issue’ is being debated and that we shouldn’t ask for too much. We are told that there might be a few changes around the edges but we shouldn’t ask for marriage – often by straight, white men who are able to return, without any knowing looks of disapproval, to their own wives and children. It is very easy to throw stones when one faces no risk, in a system where one’s own privilege is deeply entrenched.

    We are told that we shouldn’t be asking for ‘special treatment’, when such ‘special treatment’ is simply to be able to enjoy the very things that straight people take for granted. It appears to me that an overwhelming majority of straight people do not want to understand what being LGBTQI is like in the church. Very few of us want anything other than what straight people already have – I would have rather more time for the argument that we should wait for marriage if heterosexuals also declared a moratorium on their own marriages to ‘give the church time to make up its mind on this issue’.

    LGBTQI people, like any oppressed group, find ourselves in a deeply pernicious environment, where false equivalences are made between genuine oppression and theological disagreement, where we are expected to model perfect behaviour in the face of abuse, where our identity is fair game for ‘discussion’, where our commitment to scripture is consistently questioned, where our integrity is dismissed, where our arguments are wilfully misrepresented, where our experiences are discounted or trivialised, where we are described as an ‘ideology’, where we are continually spoken about not with, where the bishops who are supposed to be upholding this ‘safe space’ feel neither safe enough to speak out, nor brave enough to even mention us by name – and, indeed, sack clergy for entering into same-sex civil marriages.

    It is in this kind of environment that LGBTQI people are successfully gas-lighted, belittled, delegitimised, scapegoated. This is what structural violence looks like, however ‘gently’ or ‘generously’ it is expressed. Silence in this kind of environment is not neutral – it is participation in sin.

    Life outside the Church would be so much easier, particularly for those of us who have grown up in a world where being LGBTQI is no more interesting than being tall or short.  The miracle is that LGBTQI people are still coming to church, still offering themselves for ordination, still loving the church.

    We’ve had report after report; we’ve had the facilitated conversations; now we have LLF. We’ve been told time and time again that it’s worth it.

    If we are to put an end to this cycle of violence, then our chief pastors need to look in the mirror and ask – what am I doing?

  • LLF – That Video, Those Principles & a Call for a Public Inquiry

    by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia, Member of General Synod and Director of the Ozanne Foundation

    I made myself sit down and watch the Church of England’s Evangelical Council’s “Beautiful Story” video yesterday, which, like reading the massive tome Living in Love and Faith, I have been steeling myself to do as I knew it would need both a high level of resilience and courage.

    The opening notes of synthesised music immediately acted as a trigger – taking me back to those large packed worship spaces, where we are all carried along on a wave of professional modern music that lulls us into believing that we are safe, we are loved and that we are in God’s presence.  

    It was a world I was so utterly familiar with – a world where I had, to use Rosie Harper’s term from her recent Via Media blog, been “groomed” as a young impressionable Christian.

    It was a world where I believed without question that those “up front” are always right, for they are our ordained leaders “appointed by God” (oh yes, and bishops) to lead us into all truth and righteousness.

    Their teachings – like the interviews in The Video – sound so reasonable, so plausible.  Indeed, to think otherwise would be to question Truth itself. 

    I couldn’t help thinking of the parallels with the many Trump supporters who are currently living under what the rest of the world believes to be a false sense of reality, fervently believing that the election has been rigged and that Trump is indeed the True President.  What’s more, no matter how much you try and tell them otherwise, they are so “sure of their truth” that anyone challenging them “must be working for the other side” – that is, for the devil himself!

    Many friends have asked me: “Why don’t you just switch the film off, walk away from this mess, stop putting yourself in a place that hurts and wounds you so much?”  The answer is because I am committed, I’d even say called, to work for a world where not one more young LGBT+ person will go through what I had to suffer.  I do not want another LGBT+ Christian to have to sit under this “oh so reasonable sounding teaching” and contemplate killing themself, because they can see no other way out.

    So, at long last we have a 30-minute piece of evidence that clearly sets out the harmful teaching to which many evangelical churches are subjecting their congregations – including their LGBT+ congregants – to.  Please just stop and think for a minute what it must feel like to be a young LGBT+ teenager growing up in these churches, wondering who they can trust with the knowledge that they are “different”, that they are, heaven forbid, gay or bisexual or trans and being asked to watch this.  Here are leaders you have been brought up to revere, that everyone around you admires and respects, telling you that being in an intimate relationship with someone you love is wrong and sinful.  Here are “role models” clearly stating that it’s absolutely fine and normal to be single and celibate for your whole life, as that is what Jesus did and what he calls those of us who are not heterosexual to do. (Editor’s note – we are not Jesus!).

    The pressure this sort of teaching puts people under is enormous.  It comes from those in authority at the front, with no hint that there may be other senior Christian leaders – even evangelicals – who think differently. They just say “this is The Truth”.  End of. Full stop.

    Make no mistake about it, Church of England, this sort of teaching is wrong, harmful, dangerous and must be stopped.  What is it going to take?  Another young person deciding to take their life? Another set of statistics and reports that tell you what you already know but refuse to admit, that you cannot try and appease all sides in this debate?

    Seriously, I have absolutely no idea why church leaders, including bishops, do not see what their inability to act is doing to the vulnerable in their care.  This constitutes gross negligence, which future generations will look upon with disgust and ask how we let it all go on, on our watch, for so long without anyone blowing the whistle or anyone caring enough to intervene.

    That is why I believe the time has finally come to call for an independent inquiry into the harmful practices and rhetoric that LGBT+ people are being subjected to in our society, and by certain religious groups in particular.  It needs to be led by a QC who can hear the evidence of the trauma that people have gone through, and continue to go through, by those in positions of influence and authority over them.

    The Church of England seems to believe that it has dealt with this by creating a set of six Pastoral Principles.  My personal view is that that process, just like the Living in Love & Faith (LLF) process, was highly flawed in its conception, its objectives and in its membership.  Despite repeated interventions on the floor of Synod, calling out the fact that there were a lamentable number of LGBT+ people with the right experience engaged with the process, the Church of England proceeded – deaf to any of this input, and arrogant in its assumption that “it knew best”.  The project is now in the court of public opinion – and the verdict is deafening.  They should have listened!  But that is not, sadly, a skill that many in the central structures seem to have.  

    I mean, who would put a group together that was primarily tasked with providing safeguarding proposals, which had a membership weighted towards those perpetrating the very harm we were trying to protect people from?  No wonder they didn’t want to come up with anything other than “principles” or “guidelines”, to do otherwise would risk a whole plethora of Clergy Discipline Measurers against their friends and colleagues!  We needed something that had teeth, that would hold people to account, with clear consequences for when they crossed the line.  Instead we got “guidelines”, which can be interpreted in any number of ways and so does not set a clear safeguarding standard.

    However, the sad fact is that these principles are all that we now have for now.  So perhaps we should try and measure “The Beautiful Story” video against them?

    Prejudice – from its opening words to its close, the film shows a deep-seated prejudice towards LGBT+ people, particularly LGBT+ Christians, and indeed to anyone who holds a different view.

    Silence – the video says absolutely nothing about what other faithful Christians believe, particularly LGBT+ Christians, even though many fronting the film have been part of the LLF process and are more than aware of what other Christians believe and teach.

    Ignorance – it shows absolutely no understanding of the harm they are creating, nor of the mental health consequences of the teachings they are commending.

    Fear – the whole teaching is wrapped in a fear of admitting that they might be wrong

    Hypocrisy – goodness, there is so much I could write here, but perhaps the starting point is how can someone who has been an active member of the LLF co-ordinating group, and who is tasked with rolling it out in his diocese, be the front person of this film? How can bishops who are tasked with ensuring the roll-out across their dioceses of the LLF resource be seen to say “this is the only way of reading Scripture”?

    Power – I don’t think these church leaders have an inkling of the power they hold over younger people in their care.  There is sadly an air of “assumed privilege” from most of the speakers, which comes from a deep internal belief that they are the only ones to take Scripture and Christ seriously.

    So where do we go from here?

    Well the Church of England has proved itself completely incapable of protecting the most vulnerable – one just needs to look at the recent IICSA or Adi Cooper reports to recognise this.  That is why we must look to another more senior source of power – which is why an independent inquiry is needed.

    Meanwhile, like Trump supporters living in their alternative reality, many in churches that revere the “Beautiful Story” will continue to believe that the secular world is “the enemy”, that only they “have the truth” and that Jesus is coming soon.

    It is clear that these people cannot and will not change their minds, so it is high time that the bishops stepped up to the plate and laid out clear safeguarding rules and regulations to protect those in their care.

    The key question, to which we need an answer, is why don’t they?

  • LLF – Power, Fear & Our Inability To Do The Right Thing

    by the Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham, Member of General Synod and Trustee of the Ozanne Foundation

    Barak Obama has written the first volume of his memoirs.  In a fascinating interview about A Promised Land he speaks to David Olusoga about America and how change and progress happen. In many ways it is a very hopeful story. He identifies some central fault lines in the country’s history: slavery, treatment of Native Americans, internment of Japanese POW’s after W2 and he names them as their Original Sins. Then he tracks the progress and why he feels hope.

    There is a long list including the Abolitionists, Suffragettes, the Union Movement, LGBTQ activists. As each step forward is taken there remain people who sincerely believe in slavery, patriarchy etc……but……once the country had decided what is right they are disempowered. In other words it is not possible to change everyone’s mind, but it is possible to do what is right.

    Interestingly a change in America’s gun laws is not yet on that list. Why? Because of power. The gun lobby wields so much power that even the good guys like Obama were not able to do what is to clearly right.

    Reading Living in Love and Faith (LLF) made me realise that LGBTQ reform in the Church of England is our “Gun Law” point. Slowly, inch by inch we have progressed. There is still huge racism in the Church, but we name it and admit that it is wrong. Women are not remotely equal. There was for example not a single female clergy candidate for the election to Archbishops’ Council last week. The rules however have changed and the wrong has been named.

    What is stopping us from doing the right thing with regards to LGBTQ people?

    We don’t do it because – like with the gun lobby – we are afraid. Afraid of the power that some at the far right extreme purport to wield. But is it true?  Do they really have so much power that we continue to collude with institutional homophobia because we are afraid?

    Undoubtedly even before Covid-19 the Church of England was facing an existential challenge. Numbers were plummeting, both attendance and income. The scariest statistics were in the collapse of young people’s engagement with “church”.

    Somehow the story we told ourselves was that the only place where there was any hope for growth was in the “HTB model churches”. This was a far easier sell as we got a new Archbishop who had been groomed in that world. Sorry if you don’t like the word “groomed”, but in a way it is compassionate. The avowed intent of the hierarchy of the top private school ‘Bash Camp’ world was to equip these boys for high office in the church and in the country.

    I can see how good it must feel – as if they have all the power. That easy manner. That self-deprecating, but entitled way of occupying centre stage. It must be true. They are the only hope of the survival of the Church of England. Even to suggest otherwise is to betray the church I love.

    But we urgently need to challenge this myth of power. In the area where I live the most catastrophic collapse in numbers and giving have been in churches that have lurched to the right.

    As LLF has now landed I suppose we need to respond, although part of me just wants to yawn and reference ‘Groundhog Day’. Here is my reply anyway:

    This is a valiant effort to try and keep the Church of England together. It makes a very deep mistake in its conception. A pink and fluffy middle ground is neither moral nor achievable . Dr Adi Cooper a senior national social worker and academic, has just published her Oxford Diocese commissioned report on the murder of Peter Farquhar.

    She said: ‘The policies of the Church of England regarding homosexual practice and the approach to sexuality and relationships continues to put people at risk because it forces people to hide, lie and become vulnerable to exploitation.’

    LLF is simply not an adequate response to this ongoing fault line in the Church. As with slavery or apartheid, so long supported by warped readings of the bible, we will have to reach a point where we see that these sincerely held theologies are profoundly wrong.

    We cannot hope to change the hearts and minds of people who think that being homophobic is their God given right. What we can do is be bold in naming it as shamefully wrong.

    In other words the time has come to do what is right.

    If we wait till we all agree that time will never come and meanwhile on a daily basis God’s children are being hurt, shamed, driven to the point of suicide and beyond. It is not sustainable to preach a God of love and allow this state of affairs to continue.

  • LLF – Waiting for Godot

    by Prof Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and member of Living in Love and Faith project

    So it’s over. The resources are published, the initial reactions registered.

    In the run-up to publication, there was the usual speculation on social media that this was all about “kicking things into the long grass”. Some were trying to guess the conclusion of the book as ‘let’s all reflect on this some more’, while others pointed out that we already knew this was how it would end, because the press release had said the resources only “initiate a process of whole Church learning and engagement, within a clear timeframe, that will contribute to the Bishops’ discernment of a way forward”.

    This, as Colin Coward has reminded us, is also how previous reports on LGBTQI+ questions have also ended. But LLF even starts with it: the page 3 ‘stunner’ is that LLF “offers no recommendations or guarantees of an agreed way forward for the Church in relation to human identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage”.

    So, what now? Or to put it another way, how long have you got?

    When I googled that phrase I was interested to find that it features as a “way of saying that you don’t want to talk or think about something”. And I wonder: are all these words, all these videos and podcasts, these exhortations to talk, paradoxically saying that the Church of England doesn’t want to talk about human sexuality?

    For those not in the LLF process, the last few years, waiting for the resources to be completed, have definitely been about not talking. “Waiting for LLF’ has meant not tabling at General Synod the Hereford Diocesan Synod motion asking for services of prayer and dedication for same-sex couples, and not issuing lists of resources for schools; the bishop who chairs the National Society Council said at the July 2019 General Synod that he “will await the publication of the Living in Love and Faith resources before considering next steps”. A similar answer was given to four questions on gender transition and Differences of Sex Development (DSD) at the February 2019 General Synod.

    Wait… wait… wait.. wait. And now the waiting ends: only to usher in another period of waiting.

    How many will use this waiting time to read the resources and to talk? I am sure that people will want to watch the videos of people who have views on sexuality different to their own: personal stories are always engaging. But will we really talk among ourselves as we wait?

    We are being asked to talk at all levels of the C of E from the House of Bishops to the deaneries and parishes: to “engage with this book and its accompanying resources and, as far as possible, do this together with those who have different perspectives and lived experiences” (p.420). Personally, I wouldn’t want to sit down with those whose “different perspectives” mean that they regard my sexuality as unacceptable; is this really a safe thing to do, in a church shown by IICSA and even more recently by the independent review into the horrific crimes at Maids Moreton to be a very unsafe place for those who aren’t heterosexual? Remember, this is a church in which most gay and lesbian bishops aren’t open about their sexuality. The Maids Moreton review notes that “Attitudes towards sex and sexuality” contributed to what happened there. And, still within my own diocese, a recent story on Oxford churches described how a discussion on sexuality turned out to be a talk on how the only option for a gay Christian was celibacy.

    Read the resources: yes. Talk about them in church groups: maybe not.

    There are also a lot of resources to use: a 468-page book, videos, podcasts, an online library. Does anyone have the time or the heart for this? There are so many resources that the Church Society has already said that it will be issuing its own “summaries and critiques of it all” for those who can’t face reading the report or watching the videos. The Church Society’s view is that this is “about the authority and sufficiency of God’s word”, about what happens “if we take the Bible seriously”.

    Not for the first time, I wonder what the point of three years spent working on LLF was; asking the church to engage with the materials, and then finding that the Church of England Evangelical Council instead recommends their own free 229-page book Glorify God in your Body (2018) and its study guide. Apparently “It covers all this ground, in a faithful and biblical way.”

    Hey, people. Don’t suggest to me that LLF isn’t ‘biblical’ or ‘Doesn’t take the Bible seriously’. It is, and it does. Of course it is and of course it does. It states that the Bible has “the central place in our accounts of how we hear the voice of God” (p.274): “God speaks to the world through the Bible” (p.276).

    Following on from the Shared Conversations resources, LLF acknowledges that one of the underlying questions that makes discussing sex so difficult is precisely that we don’t agree on how to read the Bible. It lays out the different approaches: the textual, historical and canonical contexts. It goes through the ‘clobber texts’. It fully acknowledges that we need to read the Bible, while accepting that there are – and always have been – different ways of doing this.

    LLF recognises that, in the C of E, we all need to realise that our readings of Scripture are partial, and come from our privilege as (mostly) “white, male, middle-class, affluent, and Western”: “if privileged readers want to be challenged to recognize their own partial perspectives, and to see how those have shaped their reading and thinking, and to be enabled to read and think past them, it makes sense to engage seriously with reading and thinking from the margins” (p.328).

    However, there aren’t any examples in the LLF book of such reading from the margins: as I said many times during meetings and in emails, while queer hermeneutics is mentioned and queer readings are mentioned as a concept which could cause “a transformative shock” (p.338), there isn’t a single example given of a queer reading of the Bible. If you aren’t aware of how differently the Bible was read in the past, try looking at the Church Fathers on Song of Songs.

    Saying that LLF isn’t ‘biblical’ is simply shorthand for prioritising one way of reading the Bible. One of the good things about LLF is the acknowledgement that this isn’t good enough.

    Already on social media I’ve encountered a number of LGBTQI+ people saying that they won’t be reading the LLF materials; maybe not until they are feeling stronger, maybe not at all. That’s hardly surprising, after the bruising they’ve already had from Christians or churches.

    The take-home message of LLF is that the bishops “do not agree on a number of matters relating to identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage … Most pressing among our differences are questions around same sex relationships, and we recognize that here decisions in several interconnected areas need to be made with some urgency” (p.422).

    “Urgency” is the right word. People are being belittled, damaged, rejected right now. Talking about these matters is not enough. For me, the most important question is how these “decisions” will be made.

  • Collusion, Hypocrisy & the Greasy Pole to Success

    by Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge and ordinand at St Augustine’s College of Theology

    For those with ears to hear, the past few weeks have highlighted a very clear theme in the abuse scandal in the Church of England, whether that be in the IICSA report or the Diocese of Oxford’s review into the murder of a gay churchwarden of a ‘conservative’ church: it’s almost a truism – to quote Oxford’s review, ‘while people continue to feel forced to hide or lie about their sexuality, they can become vulnerable to exploitation’.

    The topic has been covered in an excellent blog by Prof Helen King on this site, yet the silence from the Church of England’s authorities is deafening. The Bishop of Oxford may have said that this was a ‘clarion call for improvements to our work on LGBTI+ inclusivity’, yet where have the great statements of repentance been from the House of Bishops?

    Same-sex spouses continue to be excluded from the Lambeth Conference, and meanwhile there hasn’t been a peep of recognition from the wing of the Church that would align itself with these ‘traditional’ views, with the usual woe-is-me ‘bullying’ accusations made yet again and again against people who honour the humanity of LGBT people. 

    It really is time for this to change.

    The lying, silence, dissembling and wink-wink nudge-nudge way of ‘managing’ homosexuality in Church circles is not only embarrassing, but a grave sin. It moves the church into a place of hypocrisy and collusion, and it is one we are far too willing to tolerate.

    After writing my last blog, I was told by a priest that it was a virtue to ‘tolerate hypocrisy’. By no means is this true – and what is more this is fundamentally different to recognising and living with paradox and different theological positions.

    We live in a Church that thrives on hypocrisy – where ordinands are told not to ‘rock the boat’ by being ‘too vocal’ about being LGBT, and where clergy have ‘special friends’ or ‘lodgers’. This pressure to dishonesty thus forms the backdrop for being LGBT in the Church, and it is hardly a surprise that such a culture can be manipulated by those who are looking for vulnerabilities in the system. That an elderly gay man was abused and murdered is not a shock – it is the inevitable result of a culture of lies.

    Anyone who is young, gay and in the Church has lived this reality; I am quite sure that other LGBT people similarly face the consequences of this culture. All of us know of the inappropriate clergy, the unacceptable taking of liberties that are just the right side of ‘explainable’, and the abuse of power by those in authority. Not being straight makes this whole structure a lot more threatening – not only because of the threats of ‘disclosure’ that can be made against you, but also because there is a deeper underlying culture of ‘being gay in the Church’ that is deeply damaging, and is directly the result of the tyranny of silence and lies.

    This culture is like something from the 1950s, where never a word is spoken about ‘the love that dares not speak its name’, where gay clergy form elaborate pretences and where public intimacy is frowned on and sex commodified. LGBT people are thus made both victim and perpetrator, and the culture continues to level its destruction. This culture blurs the line between acceptable and unacceptable, producing and hiding perpetrators of abuse.

    Of course, some clergy, like many others in society, need a level of discretion in consideration of elderly relatives or similar, such is the history of homophobia in this country (aided and abetted by the Church of England) – this is not the issue. Clergy who are not in this position and yet still deny their partners, or describe them as ‘special friends’, are, however, colluding in the toxic Church culture – as are leaders telling LGBT people to hide, or to ‘be careful about’ their true selves. We even have senior theological educators who actively sponsor and head up organisations that recommend heterosexual marriage to ‘same sex attracted’ people’ – and we wonder why we have a problem?

    Yet here is the Catch 22 – those who are honest end up losing their licences or being thrown out, whilst those who hide and collude climb up the greasy pole of promotion. This is the very culture that the actions and words of our bishops and other leaders are perpetuating. Power, lies, fear and opacity are a heady cocktail – and it is high time the church took some responsibility for sponsoring this scandal.

    Yet there is a desperation not to deal with this issue – how often have we heard that speaking out, or even simply being honest, will ‘embarrass the bishop’ or ‘bring the institution into disrepute’? Bishops seem very willing to talk about this issue and urge change over lasagne, yet are far too often silent at the Lord’s Table. Yet their silence and collusion, and that of those who continue to promulgate this culture of hypocrisy, is not only wrong, but sinful – abuse, threats and dishonour continue apace.

    Perceived unity is not more important than keeping people safe and treating them as human beings. The word ‘traditional’ cannot be used to cover evil. Any senior cleric reading this might want to ask themselves – have I done enough? Indeed, have I colluded, and what am I going to do about it?

    In Poland this last weekend, LGBT people – yet again the target of vicious hatred, abuse and oppression by a populist state – protested outside church property and called for an end to the church. The Polish Roman Catholic hierarchy have taken the side of the oppressor, and colluded with the state. In the UK, the state is light years ahead, yet the Church of England continues to sponsor and collude in a culture of hypocrisy.

    The only reason people aren’t protesting outside our buildings is because they’ve stopped listening – we are an irrelevance. The secular world has grasped the nettle and respected the dignity of LGBT people.

    There have been enough reports – it’s about time we started to listen to them, because until we do that, we are stopping the people’s ears and participating in dishonour.

  • World Without End…?

    by the Bishop of Buckingham, Rt Revd Dr Alan Wilson

    On 13 August 2012 ministry took a new path for me. A journalist had alerted me to untoward goings on in Sussex. Young peoples’ lives had been damaged. The Church shied away from taking proper responsibility. Survivors felt they were being treated as an embarrassment, sidelined then blocked.

    As a result, my colleague Revd Rosie Harper and I were invited to meet some of the people concerned and listen to their stories. When all is said and done the Church is a pastoral organisation. It exists to bring the grace and truth of Christ to a generation within its care. This calling had been massively betrayed, and I felt ashamed of the Church I represent.  Things had to change.

    More and more people were getting in touch. Very often what they craved was someone to listen to their story and take it seriously. I realised that very often the most healing thing was truth about what had actually happened and, above all, honesty.

    One emerging common theme shocked us. Male or female, high or low, recent or not, every person we listened to told us things had got worse for them after they reported.

    In 2013 Pope Francis saw the Church as a field hospital. Imagine a field hospital in which all the wounded soldiers leave more shot up than they were when brought in. That couldn’t be entirely their fault.

    I was comforted in July 2013, though, by our new archbishop’s recognition of the problem. He apologised and seemed to understand the systemic dimension of our failings as he articulated for General Synod “a profound theological point. We are not doing all this – we are not seeking to say how devastatingly, appallingly, atrociously sorry we are for the great failures there have been, for our own sakes, for our own flourishing, for the protection of the Church. We are doing this because we are called to live in the justice of God and we will each answer to him for our failures in this area”.

    Time passed by. Budgets for training and advisers began to grow. I was encouraged.

    In 2015 our archbishop told us “We failed big time, we can do nothing other than confess our sin, repent and commit ourselves to being different in the years ahead.”

    Time passed by. A new project was in the air, collaboratively developed with survivors — “Safe Spaces”

    2017 seemed less hopeful. News broke of John Smyth’s sadistic abuse of teenage boys whose trust he had betrayed as he blighted their lives. But at any rate the Archbishop was still sorry. We were told he “apologises unequivocally and unreservedly to all survivors.”

    January 2018 saw preliminary hearings of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse. Rightly, our Archbishop had lined up the Church for early examination, a brave and honourable act.

    And when the atrocious Chichester tale was revealed, giving substance to what we had heard on 13 August 2012, we were as sorry as he:

    “You can apologise and apologise to survivors, and I would want to put on record again — I don’t know how to express it adequately — how appalled I am and ashamed I am of the Church for what it did.”

    Time Passed by.

    More money was spent, training improved and Safe Spaces underwent a reboot and would soon start for real. That was the good story. We continued to hear not so good stories from survivors, all of whom wished they never had reported to Church authorities.

    We wrote a book, taking survivor experience seriously across a very broad spectrum of church abuse. We tried to understand the roots and cultural context of our failures, and proposed a fresh approach. It was mentioned by enough survivors for IICSA to call for material from it as evidence in 2019.

    When our archbishop read the latest IICSA report last week, he was still sorry not only for what had happened but for the Church’s failure to respond pastorally.  “We cannot and will not make excuses, and I must again offer my sincere apologies to those who have been abused.”

    After 8 years of sorry, then, from our Archbishop at least if not others, how do I feel about the post-IICSA future?

    I am encouraged to see that our new Archbishop of York whom I like and respect very much as a former close colleague, is sorry too. He said on national radio how shocked he was by the report. Rosie pointed out he’d known about what was in it for years.

    He replied personally “Shocked to read it again, Rosie. I suppose what I’m saying is I hope I’ll never stop being shocked and distressed until we have changed. I am in a position to really help make that change. I am determined to do so. And quickly.”

    I am sure he will be supported, as will survivors, by Rt Revd Jonathan Gibbs, the Church’s new safeguarding bishop. Not only in General synod, but in a really helpful Religion Media Centre IICSA report briefing with survivors and advocates, Jonathan clearly demonstrates fresh commitment to drive change at every level.

    Oh, and Safe Spaces actually started, albeit with a few learner driver’s kangaroo jumps, on 29 September 2020.

    I return to Archbishop Justin’s words in 2012. But… How long O Lord?

    Jesus said “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

    Martin Luther King said “It is always the right time to do the right thing.”

    Rosie and I have met many survivors, courageous and wise people, who have often tolerated years of being ignored, patronised, lied to and blamed. They feel they have been going round and round in circles for ever.

    After multiple forced apologies from a surprisingly small selection of bishops, a few training and cosmetic changes have happened at vast cost. Dr Josephine Stein reminds us this all dwarfs provision for survivors. Then somehow all the regret ends up back the too-difficult box…  until the next shameful revelation.

    As it was in 2012, is now…. and ever shall be? world without end? Really?

  • Why the Church of England Must ‘Connect the Dots’ – IICSA and LLF

    by Prof Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and lay preacher in the Diocese of Oxford

    Life in 2020 has been very much about uncertainty. I’m not just thinking about the pandemic.

    In narrower Church of England terms, in 2020 we’ve waited for two very important documents to be released: last week, the IICSA final report on sexual abuse of children in the Anglican Church, and in early November Living in Love and Faith (LLF), delayed from spring 2020. This delay changes the original sequence of events. Now it’s October: IICSA, then November: LLF.

    What’s the connection?

    While a member of LLF, I was one of those who asked over and over again for IICSA to be taken into account in the documents being produced. Yet the last LLF draft I saw still gave the impression that the questions such abuse raises were not really LLF’s concern. Yet you’d think some sort of liaison would be useful between these two large and costly processes – costly in terms of both money and emotional pain.

    The extensive IICSA transcripts mentioned LLF twice on 1 July 2019, but only in passing. “The church has also been confronting issues concerning its teaching on human sexuality” said Nigel Giffin QC, representing the Archbishops’ Council. In his second witness statement to IICSA, the Archbishop of Canterbury had stated “I am informed by Mr Tilby that these [LLF] resources will be reviewed by the NST before they are finalised to ensure that they sufficiently address safeguarding related issues”.[1] I have no idea whether that review happened. Did anyone join the dots? The error in the IICSA final document, the claim that LLF – described as a “large scale teaching document around the subject of human sexuality” had been published in 2019 – suggests not.

    I think the two documents are more closely related than the failure of an internal Church process to join forces with IICSA would suggest, and that the links need to be better understood.

    In the Executive Summary of the IICSA final report, we read that: “Deference to the authority of the Church and to individual priests, taboos surrounding discussion of sexuality and an environment where alleged perpetrators were treated more supportively than victims presented barriers to disclosure that many victims could not overcome.”

    What were, or are, these ‘taboos’?

    Let’s go back to Fiona Scolding at the IICSA inquiry into Chichester Diocese, on 5 March 2018. She asked, “How far did the reaction of some within the church to homosexuality possibly inhibit the reporting of child sexual abuse?” DI Wayne Murdock, involved in the Peter Ball case, made it clear that “one of the factors that influenced his view of the public interest in bringing a prosecution was the risk that some church witnesses would be exposed as homosexuals in court. That would, in his words, have seen their roles within the church effectively finished.” As Murdock put it: “I believe that the issue of homosexuality had a detrimental effect in encouraging witnesses and potential complainants within the church to come forward” (IICSA, 23 July 2018).

    So homophobia within the church deterred the reporting of sexual abuse.

    When Fiona Scolding was interviewing the Bishop of Chichester, Rt Revd Dr Martin Warner, on 14 March 2018, she asked: “Do you not think that the Church’s difficulty in coming to terms with the complexity of self-identity when it comes to sexual orientation may have contributed to the misapprehensions you have identified because, you know, certainly amongst conservative individuals, homosexuality is seen as sinful?”

    He answered “Yes.” She then asked, “The idea of civil partnerships is seen as anathema and the idea of getting married within the church is anathema. Do you think the church may have, albeit unwittingly, contributed to that by its approach to sexual orientation in the past?” Bishop Warner replied: “I think there has been contribution from the church on this”. He went on to talk about how covering up homosexuality contributed to a culture in which sexual abuse was also kept secret.

    On 24 July 2018 Fiona Scolding, interviewing the former Archbishop, Lord Carey of Clifton, proposed that: “The church was so uncomfortable in dealing with and managing same-sex relationships that it didn’t really have an understanding of what was an appropriate same-sex relationship and what was an inappropriate same-sex relationship.”

    Finally, at the 11 July 2019 IICSA hearing, Archbishop Justin Welby was asked whether “there is sufficient openness about  human sexuality in the church now so that there is, and can be, proper debate and discussion with victims and survivors and proper work on minimising risk within the church?”

    He responded, “Yes. I think there is far more openness than there was. I think the Living in Love and Faith Project has enabled a culture of transparency in ways that didn’t exist before.”

    When I re-read that, I was taken aback. Openness? A culture of transparency? Really?

    I don’t get the impression that there’s any less fear now of being ‘exposed’ as gay. Rt Revd Nicholas Chamberlain, the Bishop of Grantham,[2] remains the only out, gay, partnered bishop. If people still think their roles within the church would be “effectively finished” if their sexuality were known, that shows that the church is still not a safe place.

    That has implications for safeguarding as well as for LGBTI+ people in all roles in the church. Despite the impression given in the key cases explored by IICSA, sexual abuse is certainly not only about men abusing boys: far more such abuse involves men and girls, or men taking advantage of their power to abuse women who know that nobody will believe them. The church’s history of secrecy, pretence and denial is one of the reasons why the terrible harm revealed by IICSA happened.

    We need to join up the IICSA evidence of why sexual abuse was not reported, and the opportunity LLF offers to understand how the church continues to fail those who are not ‘pale, male, stale’ – and straight.

    Refusing to acknowledge that, in the words of Stonewall, “Some people are gay. Get over it” has contributed to the shameful history of abuse in the Church of England.

    [1] Graham Tilby: former National Safeguarding Adviser. NST: National Safeguarding Team.

    [2] On the reactions to his coming out, I recommend Grace Davie and Caroline Starkey, ‘The Lincoln letters: a study in institutional change’, Ecclesial Practices, 9 (2019), 44-64.

  • Safeguarding, ‘Reabuse’ and LGBT People

    by the Revd Canon Simon Butler, Prolocutor of the Province of Canterbury and member of the Archbishops’ Council

    Last Tuesday was perhaps the most shameful day in the history of the Church of England for hundreds of years. Forensically, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) catalogued the personal and institutional generational failures which led to the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults by people in trusted positions in the Church. Whilst many say that the failure to address this issue over decades amounts to ‘reabuse’, some even saying that it is worse than the sexual offences once committed, none of us can escape the responsibility that this has taken place on our watch and that we have the duty to put it right. Some are even calling for a Truth and Reconciliation process like that of post-apartheid South Africa. It’s an idea worth exploring.

    I was struck therefore by a forceful response to what seemed to me to be sincere statement of sympathy for survivors and victims of sexual abuse by Bishop Sarah Mullally from one of her priests in the Diocese of London. Father Robert Thompson described Sarah’s words on Twitter as ‘virtue signalling vacuousness’, pointing out that he has raised 4 safeguarding concerns with the Diocese of London concerning the treatment of LGBTI+ church members in some evangelical and charismatic congregations and has not had a proper response to any one of them. Lest this should seem like special pleading from him (or me) for a particular group within the life of the Church of which we are part, we should note that the IICSA report makes specific what we have known for a long time: that our hypocrisy and dishonesty about sexuality has without doubt contributed to the culture in which sexual (and I would say) emotional and spiritual abuse has been allowed to exist.

    To be fair, however, we must not assume that being LGBTI+ in and of itself makes one a vulnerable adult in safeguarding terms. Still, for as long as I can remember I have had to listen to simply dreadful stories emerging from certain evangelical and charismatic churches, usually when a church member comes out or refuses to toe the line taken by ‘the leadership’ (which usually means the clergy). They find themselves silenced, removed from every ministry and leadership role, and generally treated like pariahs. The failure of many of these congregations to be able to discuss matters of sexuality or to live with diverse opinions has wreaked a dreadful emotional toll on many LGBTI+ church members and has contributed to what can only be described as a culture of fear, the subtle and overt withholding of love or placing conditions on it, and silencing of dissent. It is, by any stretch of the imagination, a form of abuse. 

    Some within the tradition have felt uncomfortable about this for a long time. David Runcorn, a long-standing and respected Evangelical theological educator and spiritual director, has attempted to provide an Evangelical theological narrative based on openness, generosity (including to those who take a conservative view) and pastoral care. His recently-published Love Means Love addresses these concerns with an eirenic spirit that is admirable and biblical, although as a straight man he cannot necessarily summon the sense of righteous anger that those of us who see the damaged lives that have resulted do. Other evangelicals within General Synod, effectively kicked out of the Evangelical Group in General Synod (EGGS) for simply wanting to explore a line similar to Runcorn’s, have coalesced into a new group in which a different, honest expression of dissent can be aired, within a caring atmosphere far different from the stifling atmosphere of EGGS which, over my twelve years as a member, became increasingly reminiscent of a Soviet-style party meeting. It gives me no pleasure to admit I often felt afraid. Father Thompson notes the way in which especially some large churches in this tradition use their financial clout to exert leverage over dioceses: do what we want, or else, is the message.

    The tragedy for the Church of England is that there is much within evangelical and charismatic traditions that the rest of the Church of England desperately needs. Missional zeal, social justice and deep personal faith were once the hallmarks of Evangelicalism, things that attracted me to Christian faith, even if these days I feel excluded from the evangelical tradition. Ever the optimist, I remain hopeful that the tradition most committed to the theological concepts of personal sin and repentance can see the beam in its own eye instead of projecting it onto its LGBTI+ members and their friends. Some of those most urging change in the Church’s traditional position are senior evangelical bishops who have come to see that for themselves.

    In the meantime, we await the publication of Living in Love and Faith. I am committed to the process, more perhaps than many sceptics among the LGBTI+ community in the Church. But even I want to sound a word of warning. As we engage with scripture, science, theology and much more in the months ahead, we must not forget that, within parts of the evangelical and charismatic wings of our church, brothers and sisters face emotional and spiritual abuse. Conservatives and hard-liners within these traditions will want to focus on the intellectual issues – many will immediately want to rebut anything that smacks of a chink in the wall. But we must hold them and the wider church to account for this often unacknowledged abuse that is being inflicted in the name of “truth” and “sound doctrine” – including persuading those like Bishop Sarah who are I think very sensitive to issues of abuse that this is unfinished safeguarding business. I urge her and other bishops to take seriously the sort of allegations and concerns that Father Thompson has raised. There are plenty more where they came from.

    We must not forget those who are most vulnerable to bad religion and who remain at risk of the ongoing abuse that has shamed the church so obviously in recent days, and continues to do so where so-called ‘truth’ silences love. As I said at Archbishops’ Council recently, any defence of the gospel or the church that sees that as more important than protecting the vulnerable will lead us back to the place we are being shamed into leaving hopefully once and for all. Ironically, the evidence of such abuse is the clearest example of why the theological position held by conservatives is biblically untenable. 

    By your fruits you shall know them.

  • Resignations, Dysfunctionality and the House of Bishops

    by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia, Director of the Ozanne Foundation and Member of General Synod

    I resigned from my Bishop’s Council this week.

    The decision has been a long time coming – I’ve felt I’ve been hitting my head against a brick wall over our failure to prioritise the poor and disadvantaged, especially given we are such a rich diocese, for years. In fact, I’ve been banging the drum since I got onto Council five years ago. Interestingly, even though we constantly rated serving the poor in our diocese as a “the top priority” during our discussions, it rarely seemed to make the cut into any paperwork . In virtually every meeting I can remember I have had to remind those in authority of the commitments we had agreed as a Council.

    I realised things would never change when after one Diocesan Synod meeting I was told, when the priority yet again failed to be mentioned to those gathered, that it was because it was too long to fit on the slide! All rather ironic given that we’d just had a report that emphasised the real issue in our diocese was that of “hidden poverty”!

    In truth, I know I was as tired of banging my drum as Council members were of hearing it.

    So, eventually, it got to the point where I felt that the best way for them to hear me was by my absence. You see, sometimes leaving is the only way left for people to be heard….

    Since I resigned, I’ve been reflecting on why it is so difficult for those in the central Church or Diocesan structures to hear what those outside or on the fringes of the Church see as completely obvious. It came into sharp focus again this week with the IICSA report which stated what so many of us have been saying for some time now – that we need a completely independent safeguarding system in the Church in order for it to be fully functional.

    I have decided that the real problem is that our boards and councils are populated by mostly white, mostly male, mostly middle class and mostly middle aged (and that’s being kind) people who all hold virtually the same world view – and who are incapable of recognising that there is legitimacy to any other view other than their own. Because they all end up endorsing each other, they confirm their own legitimacy, and nothing therefore ever changes.

    That’s why we find it difficult to embrace those from other backgrounds – those that are different to the monochrome “norm” that the Church of England has built into the warp and weft of its very foundations. You just have to look at the make up of General Synod to see what I mean.

    It is why we’ve an appalling record on nearly every measure of diversity – we are seen by those “on the outside and margins” as racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic. We are outrageously bad at dealing with people with differing abilities too. Although it’s “not good show” of course for us to admit this in public.

    And what does this “monochrome” system result in? Well, I won’t be popular in saying this, but I believe this ultimately results in the single most critical problem for us as a Church. It’s the real root of most of our problems, which few are prepared to admit let alone publicly name – it is that we have a leadership structure that is, I’m afraid to say, deeply dysfunctional. It seems our House of Bishops operates like a boys public school, with prefects and head boys who whip the younger boys (and they are of course mostly boys!) into line. It may seem like the body that so many aspire to, but once you’re there you get sucked into colluding with a system that few feel able to break free from. Although thankfully, there are some brave individuals who do.

    It is interesting to question why so few have called this out publicly over all these years?

    Especially given that to many of us on the outside and fringes this dysfunction is plain to see. We have bishops leading double lives, which no one seems to bother about or challenge. We have bishops preaching one thing and practicing another, particularly when it comes to the way in which they treat LGBT+ clergy in their midst. We have bishops who lament safeguarding failures, but whose own record is pretty poor. It all leads to a postcode lottery, which everyone knows about but no one does anything about because they (we?) have all got too much to lose…or worse, that they don’t think that somehow anyone will notice.

    But we do, and we all know. The charade was up a long time ago.

    It’s just like my own experience with Bishop’s Council – no one can be bothered to bang the drum any more. We are resigned to letting it all continue, with no one rocking the boat.

    But time is running out. Many are tiring of this game. And they’re leaving.

    So much so that soon the primary problem won’t be the fear of people rocking the boat, but rather the fear of ensuring that there are still people who are prepared to sail in it!

    So reform is needed – and it needs to start at the top.

    The House of Bishops is about to release resources for the Church of England to engage with over sexuality. What they seem to have failed to see (again!) is that the vast majority of people in the pews made up their minds about LGBT issues long ago….what they’re waiting for is for the House of Bishops to finally do so themselves. And to do so in a way that has some credibility.

    So it’s time the House of Bishops had an OFSTED inspection. They need to turn the mirror on themselves and take a long hard look at what they see. They need to be honest about their dysfunctionality, their divisions and their double standards.

    Miracles can happen – and with God’s grace this might just be one of them. Goodness knows we need it!