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Category: Issues in Human Sexuality

  • All About LLF: the February Synod Debate

    by Felicity Cooke, a lay member of General Synod for Ely Diocese, a former member of the Leicester Working Groups, and a trustee of  Together for the Church of England

    There seems to be some confusion still about what happened at General Synod on 12th February 2026, three long years after the beginning of the journey of Living in Love and Faith (LLF) through General Synod. So here’s an attempt to explain it, from someone who was in the room. A reminder that what’s under debate are two moves towards a fuller welcome for lesbian and gay couples: first, accepting that clergy, ordinands and those exploring their call to ministry can be in same sex civil marriages (they can already be in same sex civil partnerships) and, second, permitting the use of the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) in standalone services. These Prayers were commended by the Bishops back in 2023 but can currently only be used in existing services.

    The motion

    At Synod, we were presented with a Motion from the Archbishop of York which affirmed what had been clear for some months: ‘that the LLF Programme and all work initiated by the February 2023 LLF Motion and subsequent LLF Motions will conclude by July 2026’. The Motion in full read as follows:

    That this Synod:

    (a) recognise and lament the distress and pain many have suffered during the LLF process, especially LGBTQI+ people;

    (b) affirm that the LLF Programme and all work initiated by the February 2023 LLF Motion and subsequent LLF Motions will conclude by July 2026;

    (c) thank the LLF Working Groups for their committed and costly work, which will now draw to a close with the conclusion of this synodical process;

    (d) commend the House of Bishops in establishing the Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group and Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Pastoral Consultative Group for continuing work.

    After nearly five hours of debate on the Motion and on eight amendments, the unamended Motion was passed by Synod by a vote in all three Houses:

    For Against Abstained
    House of Bishops  34 0  2
    House of Clergy 109 62 10
    House of Laity 107 70  9

    That’s interesting because it showed a very clear majority in favour in all three Houses.

    But in favour of what? The end of LLF, or a new beginning?

    To answer that, we first need a diversion into Synodical procedures, as set out in our Standing Orders.

    Doing the numbers

    Before we all voted, a member moved a ‘procedural motion’ asking for a ‘counted vote of the whole Synod’. That was rapidly followed by another member calling for a ‘vote by Houses’. If 25 members stand to support this, it happens. And they did. A ‘vote by Houses’ has often featured in LLF debates and it always trumps a ‘counted vote of the whole Synod’. It means that each House votes separately, so it gives a clearer picture of who thinks what – and as names are registered with votes, that goes to the level of individual voters.

    But this particular procedural motion also makes it harder to pass anything because the motion or amendment must pass in all three Houses, meaning that the main reason to ask for a vote by Houses is if you want it to fail.

    Here’s an intriguing question: what would the result have been if the initial call, for a counted vote of the whole Synod, had succeeded? This is one of the interesting points about that whole long afternoon in Church House. When we put together the results of the three Houses, they show an overall vote in favour of 65.6%, with 34.4% opposed. Is it an irony that this is a bigger margin than in any of the previous successful LLF votes in February 2023, November 2023 and July 2024? Context is all important in thinking about that question.

    Autumn 2025: stalling

    Let’s go back to last October, when the House of Bishops issued a statement which was a precursor of the motion brought to Synod last month. This statement articulated the view of the House that LLF had essentially ground to a halt. Working groups had been set up to advise on process and procedure for the PLF to be used in ‘standalone’ (or ‘bespoke’) services. Meeting in Leicester, these groups had argued for such freedom to use the PLF to be accompanied by ‘protections’ for those who did not wish to do so. But these protections, characterised as ‘Delegated Episcopal Ministry’ (DEM), could not be accepted by the House of Bishops. DEM would mean that a diocesan bishop could ‘delegate’ some of their role to other, more conservative, bishops. But all (or almost all) of the bishops, whether inclusive or conservative, found DEM unacceptable. For some, such provisions were not enough: for others they went too far.

    In addition, the bishops decided that ‘in principle … both bespoke service and clergy same-sex marriage would need formal synodical and legislative processes to be completed before they could be permitted.’ So the PLF can still only be used in a regular service, not a special one.

    The immediate response amongst inclusive or progressive groups and individuals was of deep disappointment. It seemed that years of work both inside and outside Synod were to be abandoned. Over the years since LLF started in 2017, there have only been two small pieces of movement: the permission to use PLF in existing services and jettisoning Issues in Human Sexuality. That’s not much for countless hours spent in debates, discussions and working groups, not to mention an estimated total expenditure on the LLF process of £1.6 million.

    Throughout autumn 2025, arguments were pitched from all sides, some wanting the bishops to embrace a more positive agenda, others to call a halt to everything which Synod had voted for in 2023.

    The responses from those holding inclusive views included powerful sermons from the Deans of Southwark and Canterbury, as well as an Open Letter led by Inclusive Church (IC). In the press release accompanying that Open Letter, IC said:

    The Living in Love and Faith process has shown that the majority of the Church of England, clergy and laity alike, now long for a Church where LGBTQ+ people are fully welcomed and celebrated. Many want to see their grandchildren able to be married in church, their trans family members affirmed, and their Church reflect the generous heart of God.

    The letter was signed by nearly 7,000 lay and clergy people, from 3001 churches across the Church of England.

    Things became particularly intense in November 2025, when the legal advice offered to the House of Bishops was published as the paper GS Misc 1432. Many times in the last few years there had been calls from conservatives for the full legal advice and we were assured that this paper offered the same advice that the bishops had been given before. Not everyone agreed with the paper’s legal interpretation; see for example here.

    Yet another meeting of the House of Bishops took place in December, considering this legal advice and some theological papers. In mid-December, in another powerfully expressed sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, the Dean of Bristol asked the bishops where, among them, were  ‘those who will stand up against legalism, who will expedite processes for standalone services and lifting the ban on clergy entering same sex marriages?’

    2026: the waiting game

    But the bishops did not rise to her challenge. Their January Statement repeated and endorsed the position expressed in October.

    And so we entered yet another waiting game; what would be the actual motion to come to Synod in February? When it arrived in the Synod documents there was deep disappointment, even hostility to the thrust of the motion. The ‘apology’ in clause (a) seemed lacklustre and insincere (as one speaker in Synod said in the debate on the unsuccessful amendment to change this, ‘sorry means you won’t do it again’). As for clause (b), the idea that the LLF Programme could conclude by July 2026 was a slap in the face not only for all the members of the Leicester working groups who had sent a strong message to the bishops to act on their proposals, but to those in Synod who had voted in favour of the motions on LLF passed in February and November 2023 and July 2024. There was deep suspicion about the new working groups which the House of Bishops intended to set up – clause (d) – not only about the terms of reference detailed in GS 2426, but in its proposed membership and how members were to be appointed. There was a widespread feeling that the voices of the normally silent majority had been ignored.

    February: voting for further movement

    Yet, as I explained at the start of this blog post, in February the House of Bishops Motion was passed by a larger majority across the whole of Synod than any other previous LLF motion.

    How did this come about? Perhaps even those most dedicated of Synod watchers would be defeated by a detailed account of the eight amendments which were debated, and fell, during those five hours of debate. In brief, these were an amendment to make the apology more meaningful and sincere, an amendment to acknowledge theological diversity amongst LGBTQI+ (sic) people, one calling on the bishops to apologise for not taking legal advice and thus falsely raising hopes, one to remove the clause bringing the LLF process to a halt, another to allow a conscience clause on the use of the PLF in standalone services, another to remove the clause setting up the new working groups, one to add a means by which the Leicester working groups would be asked to provide a foundation for the work of the new working groups, and finally an amendment asking that the new working groups be organised so as to ensure that a majority of the members would be in favour of standalone services and full inclusion of clergy in same sex civil marriages, with regular reports on progress to Synod. Some of these amendments sought to strengthen the Motion, some sought either to weaken it or even render it meaningless.

    As would eventually happen with the main motion, there were calls for votes by Houses. Each of these amendments fell in the House of Bishops and (for the most part) in the other Houses too. So, given the dissatisfaction with the main motion and the disappointment, if not despair, at the events of the previous six months, what led to its approval?

    It was an odd motion because, as you can see in clause (d), Synod was only ‘commending’ something which the bishops were going to do anyway. They did not need synodical approval. But if Synod rejected the motion, the setting up of more working groups could mean the work was delayed or even abandoned. It would give scope for bishops who were uncomfortable with the proposed scheme of work to argue that it wasn’t needed.

    The initial response of Together for the Church of England, and its supporters, had been to vote against the motion, unless it proved possible to amend it. Another option would be to abstain, to demonstrate the despair with which it was being received. But it became clear that those who were opposed to the LLF process, who were unwilling even to give room for the PLF, were prepared to vote it down. Those of different views knew that putting in amendments could at least give a chance to air their views. Knowing the balance of opinion in Synod (unrepresentative as it is of opinion across the wider Church) the pragmatic decision was to vote in favour, unless the motion was amended so as to make it toothless. That way, at least some work continues.

    Over the course of the debate, the most powerful speeches were those from clergy in faithful and committed same sex relationships, some going back many decades, who spoke of their reactions to the various statements by the bishops; statements which seemed to have lost sight of the real people whose lives go on being affected by this.

    And now?

    Because their motion has passed, the House of Bishops now has a significant majority decision from Synod to support the continuation of the LLF legacy. As I’ve shown, this majority is the largest in any LLF vote across the years from 2023 to now. LLF may be over, but there is a new beginning. The challenge to the bishops is therefore to bring about meaningful change through the ‘Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Working Group’ and ‘Relationships, Sexuality and Gender Pastoral Consultative Group’. Let us hope that the memberships of the two groups are appropriately filled with those whose goal is to not to obstruct the change which so many ordinary people in the Church wish to see with all their hearts.

  • Leaving in Love and Faith?

    by Nic Tall, National Co-ordinator of Together for the Church of England

    I am writing this piece in Church House, the morning after a five-hour debate on Living in Love and Faith (LLF). As with many lengthy debates, the interpretation of what was agreed and what happens next can be unclear. The public understanding and the reporting by the press has not been helped by the Church House Comms team not having any prepared statement ready in the aftermath of the debate explaining the context and nuance of what happened; one has now been issued. As a result of this void, some of the headlines, such as the BBC’s “Church of England abandons proposals for same-sex blessing ceremonies”, were eye-catchingly negative but also quite wrong. As someone who was in the chamber for the debate, and involved in much of the discussions behind the scenes leading up to it, I offer this to help understand what really happened.

    The House of Bishops had brought forward a motion that did four things. First, there was an apology for all the distress and pain caused during the LLF process, especially to LGBTQIA+ people. Next was a statement that LLF would draw to a close, although I will unpack what that means later. Third was thanks to all those involved in the work of the LLF process. Finally, and most substantially, Synod was asked to commend the House of Bishops’ proposal for what would happen next.

    The Archbishop of York, in presenting the motion, stated how this was a way forward around which the House of Bishops could cohere. That would be important as many of the areas of further work, particularly around clergy equal marriage and standalone services of blessing using the Prayers of Love and Faith, would need the House of Bishops to get behind them if they were to progress.

    For the first clause, the apology, there were several amendments seeking either to strengthen this or to change its focus. The move to strengthen the apology came from Charlie Baczyk-Bell, who in a powerful and emotional speech expressed a direct call from LGBTQIA+ people underlining the failings so far of LLF and the need to acknowledge the ongoing damage to LGBTQIA+ people. While none of the amendments regarding the apology passed, it was encouraging that there were bishops who were moved to vote in favour of strengthening the apology. I know from speaking with some bishops in Church House that the apology offered in the motion is genuine.

    The second clause was a change of methodology, but not of direction. It effectively said that the grand project known as LLF, begun in 2017, would draw to a close. It was not saying that the underlying issues had gone away, nor that no further work would be done, something that only became clear in the final clause. Living in Love and Faith had sought to address LGBTQIA+ inclusion, the measures that could be passed to advance it and the provision necessary for those of a traditional outlook as a result. This has made the process rather heavy and cumbersome, with forward movement in one area stalling because of work in others not being ready. In trying to deliver a whole package of measures together, LLF has buckled under its own weight. This clause in the motion is not, as the press have inaccurately claimed, the end of work towards inclusion. Rather it acknowledges that LLF has run its course, that some measures have passed and others will be taken forward through different, more focussed routes. This has the advantage that some of the most controversial ideas on provision for those opposed to inclusive change are not baked into proposals. The Bishop of Chelmsford spoke in the debate to make clear that it was these divisive measures, such as Delegated Episcopal Ministry, which had made the full package approach of LLF unacceptable to the Bishops, and that future plans would not be dependent on such major structural changes that would undermine our ecclesiology.

    We should not forget that, through LLF, since 2023 we have had commended liturgy of blessing those in a committed same-sex relationship for use in regular services. Some would argue that this liturgy is also available for clergy to use in other contexts under canon law. Following a Private Member’s Motion to Synod, there has also been the withdrawal of the controversial Issues in Human Sexuality document as pastoral guidelines to which clergy have to sign up, something on which the Together on General Synod group led the way in July 2025.

    The third clause thanking members of working groups for their work was uncontroversial, the fourth – detailing the way ahead – being the main point of substance. Before this debate, the point we had reached was there are two outstanding items of business. The first is equal clergy marriage: those in a same-sex marriage currently cannot receive a licence to minister or go into the vocations, training and ordination process. The second concerns questions around the full use of the Prayers of Love and Faith, in particular whether they could be used in “standalone” services.

    The proposal from the Bishops was to continue that work under a newly-formed group. When papers for Synod first came out, many pushed back at this, seeing it as yet another working group, meaning yet more delay. However, there is a subtle difference this time around, as the group will be more focussed on specific issues and tasked with bringing proposals back to the House of Bishops on how to get things done. The papers before Synod had already outlined some options, such as making amendments to the Canons to allows clergy to marry freely. Those of us advocating for inclusive change recognise that the Bishops want to do this with substantial due process, giving any changes the most secure legislative underpinning as possible. If this can be achieved, then the accompanying inclusive change will stand on secure foundations.

    The fact is that, if we want to definitively allow clergy equal marriage, we will require change to the canons. That in turn requires a working group that can evaluate the options, draw up papers and recommend how it could be done. There will then need to be a body, in this case the House of Bishops, to sponsor that change to the canons and present it to General Synod. And then General Synod will need to go through the legal process to ensure the legislation is sound, well drafted and enacts the policy that Synod is wanting to see. That may sound lengthy and laborious, and it will be, but it is also how deep, enduring change is best constructed and embedded into our common life.

    After five hours of debate, we reached a point where all amendments brought were rejected (some by greater margins than others) and we voted on the original motion as brought by the House of Bishops.

    Inclusive members within the Chamber had a choice. We could vote for the motion, and for the journey towards greater inclusion to continue. We could abstain, explaining separately the rationale behind this choice. Or we could vote against and completely undermine any pathway towards deliverable outcomes. That could mean the cessation not only of the LLF process but of any future work on LGBTQIA+ inclusion, for years to come.

    We came into Synod with many on the inclusive side being very uncomfortable in voting for the motion. Over the week, the choice became clearer that we either supported the Bishops in continuing work, or we came alongside conservative voices who wanted it to stop altogether. The key factor in the inclusive group swinging heavily behind work continuing was testimony from LGBTQIA+ members, particularly clergy, that while this had been deeply painful for them they wanted us to keep going. Some courageous and heartfelt speeches from Claire Robson, Rachel Mann, Matt Edwards and others were profoundly moving; do watch them on the Church House YouTube record if you can. I continue to be in awe of the patience and faithfulness of LGBTQIA+ Christians who have every reason to turn their back on the Church, yet persist in solidarity with each other and keep following Christ despite the hostility and pain they are often shown. Speaking as a straight ally, they are an inspiration to me.

    The final motion was passed with 65.6% in favour, indicating a strong mandate for the work to continue. There have been four major LLF debates so far (February 23, November 23, July 24 and this one), and this margin of support is the largest we have seen yet. What needs to happen now is for the House of Bishops, who supported the motion with none voting against, to own this and drive it forward. We have learnt much through LLF, but we need to take that learning and translate it into action. Then it will be for the General Synod to take recommendations and pass them, so that more barriers to full inclusion can be dismantled.

    It will not however be this set of General Synod members who will make those decisions, because there is a General Synod election in late summer this year. Those who long for inclusive change, and hear the call from our faithful LGBTQIA+ Synod members to keep going, need to organise for those elections. Together for the Church of England and Inclusive Church are in partnership on this; do follow us on social media, subscribe to our newsletters and check our websites for more ways to do this. Together has diocesan networks across the church who are organising for the elections. More information on what will be happening and how you can make a difference will be released over coming weeks and months. If we can extend the inclusive membership in Synod, which is already substantial, then the work guaranteed by this most recent vote on LLF will be able to deliver so much more. A more inclusive, diverse and compassionate church is possible, and the way to achieve it is clear. The question is whether the broad inclusive majority in the church can step up and seize the moment.

  • What is Anglican Sex Anyway?

    by Revd Canon Neil Patterson, Vice-Dean of Bristol Cathedral and Chair of Together for the Church of England

    Everyone knows that the Church of England likes arguing about sex, but in all our recent debates we have been curiously reluctant to define what it actually is. This matters, because there are different answers, and what the Church is telling individual couples is quite different depending on the answer to this question. To make some progress, we need to go back a few decades…

    The ‘Higton Motion’

    The 1987 debate on sexuality has become somewhat mythologised in the history of the subject, though there are people still around, indeed on Synod, who were there. By comparison, I am relying on the Proceedings and contemporary reports, and recognise the limitations of that. However, it is significant that the motion Synod passed was not that originally proposed by the Revd Tony Higton, which had received a record number of 168 signatures in the time between the July and November groups of sessions. As submitted, his motion read:

    ‘This Synod reaffirms the biblical standard, given for the well-being of society:

    • that sexual intercourse should take place only between a man and a woman who are married to each other;
    • that fornication, adultery and homosexual acts are sinful in all circumstances;
    • that Christian leaders are called to be exemplary in all spheres of morality, including sexual morality, as a condition of being appointed to or remaining in office;

    and calls upon the Church to show Christ-like compassion to those who have fallen into sexual sin, encouraging them to repent and receive absolution, and offering the ministry of healing to all who suffer physically or emotionally as a result of such sin.

    Although not the only element of the motion, the speeches of Higton and his supporters, combined with his document Sexuality and the Church which had been distributed, as if a Synod paper, to all members, make it clear that his major aim was to push the bishops to purge the church of gay clergy.

    It seems that the Bishops were prepared for this. The House of Bishops minutes for the 1980s are now public at Lambeth Palace Library, but mostly do not reveal much, being a bare record of decisions taken. However, in October 1987 they had noted the impending Higton debate, and recorded the proposal of their own Standing Committee that the House should propose as an amendment the following, much milder, text:

    ‘This Synod affirms the Christian tradition that sexual intercourse is only appropriate within marriage; requests the House of Bishops, in the light of the advice it receives from the BSR [Board of Social Responsibility] Working Party, to report to the Synod in due course on issues to do with homosexuality; and calls on all Christians to be exemplary in all spheres of morality including sexual morality.’

    In the event, perhaps following discussion with multiple parties, what actually appeared, following a long speech from Archbishop Robert Runcie which reads as fence-sitting even by his standards, was a detailed amendment by the Bishop of Chester, replacing Higton’s text with the following:

    ‘This Synod affirms that the biblical and traditional teaching on chastity and fidelity in personal relationships is a response to, and expression of, God’s love for each one of us, and in particular affirms:

    • that sexual intercourse is an act of total commitment which belongs properly within a permanent married relationship,
    • that fornication and adultery are sins against this ideal, and are to be met with a call to repentance and the exercise of compassion,
    • that homosexual genital acts also fall short of this ideal,
    • that all Christians are called to be exemplary in all spheres of morality, including sexual morality, and that holiness of life is particularly required of Christian leaders.’

    As well as the generally milder language, it is important to note that this amendment, presumably agreed by the bishops ahead of the debate, drew a distinction between ‘sexual intercourse’ proper to marriage and ‘homosexual genital acts’ as a different category. Traditionally the former refers to the entry of a penis into a vagina, the necessary act for the consummation of a marriage or the act of adultery (and the reason President Bill Clinton famously felt able to deny doing it with ‘that woman, Miss Lewinsky’). I will return to this distinction, though I will abbreviate the latter unlovely expression to ‘HGAs.’

    That was not the end of the matter – an amendment to the amendment was offered by the Revd Dr P.R. Forster, as he then was (subsequently himself the Bishop of Chester) to add to the bishops’ clause three, ‘and are likewise to be met by a call to repentance and the exercise of compassion’, supported by a speech emphasising the pastoral angle of the whole debate. There was almost no debate, +Chester being neutral and Higton supportive in single sentences, and the amendment to the amendment was made, seemingly without much fuss. And it was this text, proposed by the Bishop of Chester and amended by Forster, which the Synod went on to pass by an overwhelming majority, with lasting effect. The Forster amendment is important, because it eliminated the subtlety of the original bishops’ text (which could be read as seeing gay sex as a lesser, but tolerable, thing than married ‘sexual intercourse’) in favour of a moral equivalence to ‘adultery and fornication.’ (The latter term, incidentally, appeared to be taken as read without any debate about what exactly it might include). Other amendments were also debated but rejected.

    Contemporary reports of the Higton debate, however, do not record it as a great moral victory for the conservative cause, but rather a successful defusing by the bishops of a divisive motion. In subsequent Synods, Higton and allies like David Holloway can be found persistently asking official Questions about the application of the resolution to clergy and especially ordinands, making it clear they believed the bishops were still insufficiently vigorous in excluding gay candidates. And whilst they may have been disappointed in the bishops’ rigour, it seems to me that the text of the motion passed influenced the subsequent Issues in Human Sexuality, where the freedom of conscience afforded to lay same-sex couples was not extended to the clergy. Issues also chose not to refer to HGAs, instead adopting “active homophile relationship,” a terminology almost as baffling as it is contentious.

    The distinction between sexual intercourse and HGAs remains significant, however. My sense is that in LGBTQ+ culture, it is accepted that ‘sex’ actually embraces a range of different things, all of which are probably HGAs, but which are different for different couples, with no simple equivalent of the normative status of ‘sexual intercourse’ (and, obviously, for each particular couple, none of anybody else’s business). I am sure lots of straight people will want to point out how varied and interesting their sex lives are too! But it is difficult to ignore the place of intercourse as the legally significant act for centuries, not least as the only sexual act which can lead to the conception of children, and so undoubtedly of primary moral significance.

    Why does this matter now? Well, as I explored in my last blog here, the 1995 debate on Something to Celebrate led to the 1999 Marriage: A Teaching Document which affirms among other things that “Sexual intercourse, as an expression of faithful intimacy, properly belongs within marriage exclusively.” It was this text in turn which was included (albeit only as a quotation, not a direction) in the 2012 Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy. If, like surely every strong conservative in the Church of England, we accept the importance of the 1987 motion passed by such a strong majority, making a clear distinction between sexual intercourse and HGAs, then it is clear that the Guidelines are entirely silent on the latter. This will obviously be of significance to all ordinands and clergy in same-sex relationships, since the Guidelines have recently replaced Issues in the discernment process, by uncharacteristically efficient action of the House of Bishops since the overwhelming passage of a Private Member’s Motion sponsored by Mae Christie at General Synod in July 2025. It is just possible that one or two of those who voted for it did not appreciate the full significance of the change.

    This remains important, because the Guidelines are in the process of revision, and a draft has now been published for discussion at the meeting of the Convocations immediately preceding General Synod, on Monday 9th February. The draft text introduces reference to civil partnerships, and wisely maintains silence on HGAs, quoting once again from Marriage: A Teaching Document.

    But those who have drafted the revision still seem to be trying to influence the ongoing debate on sexuality. Otiose references to Canon B.30 (at §7.8) and to the necessity of obeying law (at §8.3) will be read as unbalanced attempts to strengthen the hand of those who wish to act against clergy who have entered same-sex marriages. More seriously, §7.9 enshrines the 2014 House of Bishops statement on same-sex marriage into the Guidelines, but this is necessarily due for replacement on account of its reliance on Issues. No doubt the clergy in Convocation will be able to make their voices heard on these matters, and it seems unlikely that with the present balance of the House of Clergy the draft Guidelines will be endorsed unamended. The existing Guidelines were drafted by a wise and wide committee led by Prebendary David Houlding; from all I hear, such breadth was not sought on this occasion, and the consequences are evident.

     

  • In the Beginning: Sex, AIDS, Judgment and the Church of England, 1986-1991

    by Professor Helen King, an authorised preacher in Oxford Diocese and an elected lay member of General Synod

     

    As soon as I typed this title, I could see what is likely to happen. That allusion to Genesis is going to bring out the usual comments about how it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve; the assumption that Adam and Eve were “married”; and no consideration at all of the questions raised by scholars like Diarmaid MacCulloch about whether there was any sex at all in the mythical Garden of Eden. So be it. I want to look back at an earlier period of our history, well before Living in Love and Faith began in 2017, and to ask how far that history is still influencing our discussions.

    I’m writing in the aftermath of this July’s Synod’s near-unanimous decision to end the use of Issues in Human Sexuality and replace it with Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy in the process of vocational discernment. Issues was published in 1991, as a “Statement by the House of Bishops”. As the paper supporting Synod’s recent debate, GS 2413A, noted, Issues was never intended to be used in the process of discernment and ordination. It used some very strange terminology which seemed to date to the 1950s, with much of that period’s thinking. It included not only the assumption that someone bisexual must by definition be incapable of a faithful relationship, and advocacy of conversion therapy, but even the hope that in time homosexuality could cease to exist, if science could “eliminate that orientation in future generations by genetic engineering” (paragraph 4.4). And now this “Statement” has not only been recognised as misguided and toxic but has also been removed from the role it had come to play in the discipline of Church life.

    But before we celebrate, let’s remember that there’s an influential booklet that’s even older than Issues: Sexuality and the Church, aka The Higton Report, published in 1987. My copy last came to the top of the pile of books on my desk back in 2017, when I wrote this. Where Issues was a “Statement”, Sexuality and the Church looks somehow more formal; its subtitle is A Report to General Synod and, as it bears the embargo stamp which was used in those days when documents were sent out to Synod members (embargoed until 29 October 1987, so two weeks before Synod met) it looks like an official part of the Synod paperwork. Looking back, I find this confusing. It’s not an official Synod document, unlike Issues which carried a GS identifier (GS Misc. 382). The Higton Report was printed not by Church House but by “Action for Biblical Witness to Our Nation”, a charity run by Tony Higton and his wife. I can’t remember, thinking back, whether it came with other Synod mailings or arrived separately; perhaps the latter. But there’s some boundary-blurring going on in the way the booklet is presented.

    I want to reflect on my reading of the document when it was published, when as a Synod member I made some notes in the (very tiny!) margins, but also to look at it from my perspective now. Some of it seems very much of its time, but there is much that is still being repeated or – more dangerously – lies behind what is actually being said out loud.

    Synod and sex in 1986-87

    So let’s backtrack to 1987, when I was on Synod as one of the five youngest members. Who was I, in 1987? I was a sexually inexperienced straight cis-woman who had recently completed a PhD on ancient medicine. Despite my research interests, I initially found Synod’s apparent obsession with sex, with who is doing what with whom, somewhat alarming. I had spoken in a debate in November 1986, when I successfully had “virginity” replaced by “pre-marital chastity” in a motion around Victoria Gillick’s campaign to prevent doctors prescribing contraception to under-16s without parental consent. My rationale here was that “virginity” was a loaded word, rather too technical; my research had made me aware of the complex cultural history of what counts as “virginity”, and of the concept of “technical virginity” when someone has avoided penis-in-vagina sex but has enthusiastically experienced pretty well every other option that exists. It was because of this that I preferred the term “chastity”, focusing on an attitude rather than a (disputed) female body part. Clearly, I wasn’t afraid of standing up in debates of this kind.

    Tony Higton’s Private Member’s Motion became available for signatures at the July 1987 Synod. Did I sign it? I don’t remember. It’s perfectly possible that I did, because I would have been interested in such a debate. As Higton tells us proudly in the Introduction to Sexuality and the Church, “168 members signed it during the four days of the Synod, more than for any other Private Member’s Motion, which means it took priority for debate at the next Synod”. The Report says it is “background material” to the imminent debate, which could be a deliberate misrepresentation, presenting it as an official document which formed part of the PMM. While these days we are urged to write such supporting documents with a maximum of four pages, this ran to 79 pages. I’d add that the label “Report” is misleading, as it wasn’t really a “report”, but a collection of essays by an all-male line-up:  Higton, David Holloway (on Synod’s Standing Committee at the time), Gordon Wenham and David Wright, with a reprinted piece by two psychologists, John Green and David Miller.

    The Higton Report is clearly out to shock its gentle synodical readers and have them clutching their pearls. In the first essay in the booklet, Higton tells us of a visit to the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) office at St Botolph’s Church in London where, among other things, he found leaflets describing various sexual practices and how best to prevent AIDS while doing them; he calls these sexual practices  “homosexual acts” but those he names here have nothing intrinsically homosexual about them. I’d never even heard of some of them before; whoever would have thought Synod debates could be a source of my sex education? Higton’s assumption seems to be that heterosexuals have access to a far more limited sexual menu, as well as having far less sex; he positively luxuriates in detailing how much sex per hour can be had in “the baths”. Today, we still hear claims about “the homosexual lifestyle” which are shorthand for assumptions about inevitable promiscuity, which are somehow supposed to be absent from “the heterosexual lifestyle”. Here and elsewhere, Higton’s statistical claims are, frankly, a mess; when he discusses rising abortion rates in young girls he can only see this as evidence of promiscuity among (heterosexual!) teenagers, rather than considering that some of these pregnancies may have been the result of girls being exploited by much older men. He really doesn’t get the relationship between power and sex.

    In its original wording, Higton’s PMM began by asking Synod to reaffirm “that sexual intercourse should take place only between a man and woman who are married to each other” (interestingly, the other Canon B30 phrase, “for life”, didn’t feature because this was all about sex, not about marriage). The motion condemned “fornication, adultery and homosexual acts” as “sinful in all circumstances”. This assumed that everyone understood the term “fornication” to mean the same thing, which it doesn’t. The motion was passed in an amended version, in which the fornication – still undefined – and adultery occupied one clause, with a separate clause using the more specific phrase “homosexual genital acts [my italics]”, which incidentally would mean that at least one of the “homosexual acts” named by Higton would be entirely blameless, no genitals being involved.

    The original PMM also asked Synod to affirm that “Christian leaders are called to be exemplars in all spheres of morality, including sexual morality as a condition of being appointed to and remaining in office”. That is a precursor of the wording of Issues. And that may have been the main intention; to drive out any ordained men (remember this was pre-ordination of women) who were homosexual. During Higton’s speech in the November 1987 debate, this was certainly his main focus. However, Higton’s PMM was amended to “all [my italics] Christians are called to be exemplary in all spheres of morality, including sexual morality, and that holiness of life is particularly required of Christian leaders.”

    Throughout the Report there’s a not-entirely-convincing attempt to do the “hate the sin, love the sinner” thing. The original wording of the PMM ended with a call for “Christlike compassion to those who have fallen into sexual sin” but also for “the ministry of healing to all who suffer physically or emotionally as a result of such sin”. I assume we are talking “conversion therapy” there; but it didn’t make it to the motion as passed.

    Sex in the time of AIDS

     As Higton notes in his section on visiting the LGCM office, the Terrence Higgins Trust was sending mailings to Synod about AIDS, and it’s AIDS which is clearly one of the main drivers of the PMM. Its first mention is on page 4 of the Report. While accepting that it could be spread by any form of sex, Higton claimed it is spread “primarily by sexual promiscuity”. I noted in the margin of my copy, “So far.” He insists (again) that “homosexuals tend to be more promiscuous than heterosexuals”. David Holloway’s chapter goes further and blames the spread of AIDS on the Church’s failure to speak out on homosexuality.  Demonstrating a dangerous ignorance he writes that, except for “a very small number of cases”, he does not think mother to child transmission, nor “contaminated blood”, are relevant. I wrote in the margin, “these 2 points [church silence/AIDS cases increasing] are not related.” 

    And here we come to another aspect of how my life in 1987 intersected with these debates. As someone with an interest in the history of medicine, I had been following the emergence of HIV/AIDS since 1981 and I clearly remember a friend who had just returned from the USA telling me about the news stories that were emerging there in the earliest days. But in 1987, I was also undergoing tests for a familial blood condition, and at the time of the Higton debate I was seeing some of the panic at first hand. During tests at St Thomas’s Hospital, some of my blood was spilled and the staff went into the sort of official protective drill that leaves the patient terrified. While Higton’s “primarily” may have been accurate at the time, I thought it was still unhelpful to make out that sex was the problem when there were so many other possibilities.

    Memory is a funny thing. I knew that Synod had also debated a report (GS 795) from the Board for Social Responsibility on AIDS; indeed, I remember speaking in that debate, from my experience of my own blood condition, reflecting on the unhelpful emerging terminology of the “innocent” victim. Another speaker, Dr Jim Somervell, talked about being a surgeon with the risk of pricking oneself on equipment during an operation. But until this week, I hadn’t remembered that this was on the day before the Higton debate (yes, November 1987’s Synod was quite the experience). With AIDS and the Higton Report featuring on consecutive days, the spectre of the first of these very clearly hung over the second. How could it not?

    How far can you go?

     The question of what counts as “sex” is something on which I’ve written before, so I won’t go into graphic details here. But in the margin of my copy of the Higton Report, responding to Holloway’s chapter’s characterisation of “the Biblical tradition” being that “full sexual relationships are exclusively for heterosexual marriage”, I wrote “does this imply ‘partial sexual relationships’ are OK?” I was reminded of this last week when reading an account of the trial for rape and sexual assault of Chris Brain of the now infamous, but once thought to be missionally cutting edge, Nine O’Clock Service, where his “open relationship” with his wife meant that everything other than “full sex” – those words again – was considered fine; at least, by him.

    Looking back on this now, I am again struck by our doomed attempts to divide physical pleasure into neat categories of what is acceptable and what is not, carrying on the proud tradition of the medieval penitentials. Even the heterosexual/bisexual/homosexual division doesn’t work for everyone. From the “How far can we go?” questions which I remember from church youth clubs, to supposedly adult relationships, we seem incapable of getting away from these imagined categories and lists. Full/not full… Acceptable/going too far… Can a kiss be just a kiss? How long should a hug last? As if these things can easily be quantified! Assumptions about these categories also hover behind the convenient fiction that civil partnerships don’t involve “sex” and so are OK where civil marriages are not. Our attempts to construct classifications mean that we miss the big picture of what relationships are about: equality, consent, fidelity, commitment.

    The wrath of God?

     So where does this lead us? Of course, the title of this blog post is misleading because 1986 and the debate stimulated by Victoria Gillick’s campaigning, followed closely by the AIDS and Higton debates, and then Issues, were not ‘the’ beginning; Christian churches had been failing to come to terms with human sexuality for a long time. But something was happening in those five years. In the early days of AIDS, with the level of fear matched with the level of ignorance, the Church of England’s statements of the 1950s and 1960s, when “the Church was in many ways ahead of much of the wider society”[1] in supporting decriminalisation of homosexuality, were forgotten. Led by the evangelical wing of the Church, the general panic about HIV/AIDS was used not only to support the view that homosexual promiscuity was the underlying cause of the pandemic, but that HIV/AIDS was God’s judgement, sent to punish gay men.

    Anthony Petro, author of After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (2015), noted that the conservative right supported the “wrath of God” approach to HIV/AIDS because they were already convinced that the 1960s had led to “an epidemic of sexual immorality”. He observes that it was in the mid-1980s – the era of Gillick/Higton – that mainstream Christian writers in national USA magazines like Christian Century and Christianity Today called for attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis. That’s not to say that all Christians thought the disease was the result of “the wrath of God”: responses differed. But research has shown that, in some quarters, the idea persists that HIV/AIDS is not the result of people’s behaviour but is God’s judgement on homosexuals; as, for example, in a 2011 study of a Christian university in Nigeria.[2]

    I suspect that these ideas of judgement continue to lie beneath some people’s approaches to Living in Love and Faith today. HIV/AIDS continues to feed into the language of homophobia. Staying with Nigeria, in 2021 the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Henry Ndukuba, described homosexuality as a “deadly ‘virus’” or as “a Yeast that should be urgently and radically expunged and excised lest it affects the whole dough”. The language of the virus cannot avoid evoking HIV/AIDS. The Nigerian Anglican Church is of course part of GAFCON, but Archbishop Justin Welby wrote to criticise the language used by Ndukuba. And it was the same Archbishop Ndukuba who was predictably quick to condemn the Church in Wales for appointing Cherry Vann as their new Archbishop, calling on church members “to denounce, reject, condemn and expel the rebels in our midst”.

    I believe that we should recognise how the debates of the past, with the language of disease, surgical excision and judgement, continue beneath the surface even today. We can ask for “more theology” as much as we like, but there is far more going on here than simply theology, and it needs to be named.

     

     

    Notes

    [1] Mark Chapman, ‘Living in Love and Faith: The Failure of History’ in Theo Hobson and John Inge (eds), Created for Love (2025), p.85.

    [2] Surveys such as this, carried out in a Christian university in Nigeria in 2011, try to break down these views by the sex, age and educational level of the respondents.

  • Sexuality Issues and the Church’s Theology Problem

    by Savitri (Savi) Hensman. She has been an activist for decades for LGBT+ and wider inclusion in churches and society, at times holding leadership roles in key organisations. She has also written extensively on such matters, including newspaper articles and the book Sexuality, Struggle and Saintliness: Same-Sex Love and the Church, Ekklesia, 2015. She is a British Sri Lankan lesbian.

    Signing up to Issues in Human Sexuality, an outdated 1991 House of Bishops statement, will no longer be required of everyone seeking ordination in the Church of England, General Synod has decided. This document had long been used to block people in committed, physically intimate same-sex partnerships from being Church of England ministers or to force them into secrecy.

    It is an important, if modest, step forward, as this has been replaced by Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy, which is at best ambiguous and still leaves many lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI)+ Christians at risk of having their vocations stalled. Its many provisions include: “The clergy should set an example of integrity in relationships, and faithfulness in marriage. Marital infidelity is regarded as ‘unbecoming or inappropriate conduct’ for the purposes of the Clergy Discipline Measure. The House of Bishops’ Marriage: A Teaching Document (1999) clearly affirms, ‘Sexual intercourse, as an expression of faithful intimacy, properly belongs within marriage exclusively.’” While some same-gender couples may regard themselves as married, especially if their relationship has been legally marked or religiously celebrated, not all would agree.

    Removing Issues from the discernment practice does at least move us from an apparent obsession with a single topic, and in the process removes assumptions which were confused, offensive or both; for instance that it is impossible to be bisexual and in a faithful monogamous relationship. And there are hopes that the withdrawal of Issues as a core document will remove an obstacle to becoming a more loving and welcoming church, though there is still a long way to go.

    The question remains of why a booklet meant to encourage study and discussion and (in its own words) “which we do not pretend to be the last word on the subject” should have been given this central role in the Church’s life for a third of a century. One may also ask why, when on various sexuality-related and other issues clergy are allowed to be guided by conscience, this remains a sticking point. The answers may shed light on weaknesses not only in Church attitudes to sexuality, gender and diversity but also in theological approaches which underpin practice more broadly, including Christian witness and pastoral care at times of crisis.

    The puzzling persistence of Issues as a central text

    Why was Issues given such a central role? Clearly not because it reflected cutting-edge theology. What might be described as modern Christian thinking on sexuality – though largely rooted in the Bible and tradition – dates back at least to 1914.[1] Since then, a huge volume of theological books and articles which might be classified as affirming have been published. Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Reformed, from multiple continents: the list keeps growing. Even if we only include documents produced or commissioned by official church bodies or written by bishops, other senior denominational figures or professors, a strong case has long been made for allowing freedom of conscience to those who think it right to celebrate committed, self-giving love.

    Indeed, in the two decades before Issues, three official C of E working party reports had been produced, all of which were undecided or argued that same-sex partnerships were not always wrong. These were not however acted on or, in some cases, even released publicly. And just a few years after Issues, the former chair of the drafting group, ex-Bishop of Salisbury John Austin Baker, a distinguished theologian, publicly changed his mind. In Homosexuality and Christian Ethics, a lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1997 which was subsequently published, he wrote:

    “Both heterosexual and homosexual partners can say that the bonding they have experienced, the joy in physical intimacy and the special value each attaches to the other, have been powerful factors in helping them to become better people. The fruit of the Spirit has grown in that soil; they have come in some degree nearer to Christlikeness. In short, through the sharing of sexual love they have been the grace of God to each other.”

    Priests in such relationships could show how a homosexual orientation could be used for good. Baker could not see “that married heterosexual clergy have the right to deny their homosexual brothers and sisters the potential spiritual blessing of a sexual relationship when they themselves enjoy that blessing.” The difference was emphasised between such partnerships, based on “self-denial and self-discipline for the sake of the other,” and contemporary patterns in which people moved from one relationship to another never finding what they sought, with magazines, films and TV portraying sex as merely for fun.

    Yet though Issues in Human Sexuality had a limited original purpose, was disavowed by one of its key creators and became swiftly outdated, it was given a key place in the process of deciding who would be ordained. I do not pretend to be objective nor to be able to state with certainty the underlying reasons. But I will share some suggestions; and concerns which may arise, as Britain and the wider world face intense challenges.

    Love, mercy, justice and Church of England theology

    The debate on sexuality in churches over the past half-century or so has sometimes been presented as a clash between Christianity as long understood and modern thought, in which the church should either stand firm or embrace progress, depending on one’s perspective. Yet those of us with very different positions are influenced by various strands of contemporary culture as well as Scripture and tradition, whether or not we recognise this – and we are not only affected by culture, but help to shape it.

    I believe that the Holy Spirit can be at work among people of all faiths and none; and that discerning and celebrating this, and working with other people of goodwill for humanity, are important tasks for Christians today. But it should also be recognised that, historically, many were led by faith to work alongside their neighbours for greater LGBT+ and wider equality in society. Meanwhile aspects of wider culture have sometimes undermined, rather than fuelled, the quest for inclusion.

    One of these is the tendency to treat some types of people as mattering less, though everyone is equally made in the Divine image and invited to citizenship of God’s realm on earth. The New Testament indicates that, from the earliest days, the tendency to lord it over others, or align with those of higher status and power, and temptations to violence or exclusion, have been problems among Christ’s followers. This intensified as churches sought, or aligned with, worldly empires. The C of E’s wealth and closeness to the British state, while bringing positive aspects in terms of cultural receptivity and social responsibility, have also made it harder to see through – and resist – exploitation and oppression of various kinds alongside subtler kinds of inequity.

    Despite various false trails and dead ends, the mid-twentieth century brought major advances in worldwide recognition of the value of universal human rights, international law governing armed conflict, democracy and freedom. This was inconsistently applied and often thwarted; yet across continents, there was a mood of hope and a drive towards equity, including on grounds of gender, race and sexuality. This was both encouraged by, and fed into, theology. There was a rediscovery of the radical nature of the Gospel and aspects of ancient Christianity.

    This influenced the C of E in important ways. Yet even senior figures who favoured inclusion were often hesitant, partly because of powerful opposition. Many failed to grasp that, important though it was to be sensitive to those who felt unsettled by change to hierarchies based on identity, thwarting someone’s calling on that basis was even more serious. Forward-thinking leaders may also have assumed that the climate would long remain favourable to greater inclusivity, hence a sometimes-glacial pace of change would do no great harm, especially since women, minorities and working class people were used to being marginalised. But that was not to be.

    Rapid economic, technological and social change followed, bringing huge wealth to some but fragmentation and uncertainty to many others. In England, there was a backlash against advances in equality, in part orchestrated by prime minister Margaret Thatcher, as people’s feelings of insecurity and hunger for belonging were channelled in unhealthy ways, though there was also mutual care and solidarity. Sections of the media also used the HIV/AIDS epidemic to stoke prejudice. “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay,” Thatcher declared in October 1987, in the lead-up to negative policy and legal change. This backward shift was reflected in the C of E, including the infamous “Higton Debate” at General Synod in the following month. More “conservative” leadership had an impact at home and beyond (though of course religious and political conservatism, or indeed anti-inclusive radicalism, do not always go together).

    The gap between academic theology and materials aimed at a wider audience – often simplistic in approach to the Bible as well as non-affirming – was growing. Those passionately opposed to greater inclusivity were largely better-organised, more determined and stronger on communication. Some managed to portray themselves as championing non-Western Anglicans, despite an important and growing body of work from Christians of global majority heritage making the case for greater inclusion. Things became markedly worse at, and after, the 1998 Lambeth Conference, especially as some C of E leaders embraced a theology of “unity” at home and abroad which required repeated concessions to those who threatened schism if inclusivity was taken too far.

    The tendency to intellectual conformity, or treating specific views on sexuality and gender identity like a test of orthodoxy, could be found among some affirming Christians too, making dialogue harder still. Even worse, some appear to argue that, because the law now allows same-gender couples to marry and this is socially acceptable, a church closely aligned to the state should do likewise, as if it were right to endorse marginalisation and even criminalisation of minorities if and when the government of the day held that stance.

    Nevertheless, despite church politics and a national swing towards the far right and fear of the “other,” advances continued towards respect for diversity on various fronts. However, some C of E members have absorbed a worrying view of biblical faithfulness, in which passages can be plucked out of historical and theological context and an interpretation imposed which is meant to go unquestioned. In addition, self-giving intimacy by life partners may be spoken of dismissively as a kind of indulgence, rather than, at best, a call to embrace the discipline as well as joy of love and die to the old self trapped in selfishness or conformity to social pressure, instead growing in Christlikeness.

    This is not to say that everyone who is non-affirming refuses to address key issues thoughtfully. But the approaches most widely popularised by religious leaders and media tend to lack nuance or recognition of the possibility of being wrong. This is an abandonment of a rich heritage in Anglican and wider church circles in which the interplay of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience help Christians to discern what love requires in various settings. Jesus’ own teaching and example, as portrayed in the Gospels (e.g. Matthew 7.12-20, 12.1-14, Mark 12.28-34) are too often disregarded. So is the work of some of the most influential early Christians in drawing on their heritage of faith with the aid of faith, rather than turning fossilised fragments into weapons or being trapped as in amber.

    Amidst an upsurge in authoritarianism and scapegoating, this is dangerous. With welcome exceptions, inclusive Anglicans communicate largely with one another or a theologically well-educated few.

    Moving forward amidst uncertainty

    The removal of Issues as a key document, amidst other advances (even if patchy and painfully slow at times), opens up opportunities to move forward further, which will require sustained efforts at local, regional and national level. Some people may understandably focus their efforts on inclusion solely on this challenge.

    Yet the wider task is also important: that of reviving popular awareness of aspects of Christian history and theological developments which although largely forgotten do not deserve to be. Bridging the gaps among those with different kinds of knowledge, based on scholarship, experience, prayerful reflection and dialogue, is an important task amidst competing social pressures, in a troubled world.

    Involving large numbers of people connected with this Church, in revisiting how love, mercy and justice-seeking can be put into practice now, in LGBT+ inclusion and beyond, is challenging yet may be vital. Alongside attentiveness to immediate concerns, an ecumenical and international outlook may assist us here.

     

     

    [1] This was when Pavel Florensky wrote The Pillar and Ground of the Truth.

  • We Don’t Need More Theology: This is the Time for Action

    by Charlie Bell, Fellow in Public Theology and Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge, Associate Vicar of St John the Divine, Kennington, in the Diocese of Southwark, and member of the LLF Vocations and Ministry Working Group

    I will admit that talk of clergy discipline is not something that excites me terribly much. If we’re brutally honest, it’s not been something the Church of England has done a stellar job at in recent years – the ‘Clergy Discipline Measure’ often finding itself to be a tool of vexatious and politically motivated censure, or utterly toothless as a way to manage genuine clerical misdemeanours. We are told that the newly introduced ‘Clergy Conduct Measure’ is going to be much better, but the proof of the pudding – as ever – will be in the eating. Yet I think it is worth focusing in on discipline when it comes to clerical marriage because – it is clear – we have become so bogged down in endless debates about ‘the theology’ [sic] that we fail to see the wood for the trees.

    One of the thorniest issues which continues to perplex the House of Bishops is how to enable clergy to enter into marriages to people of the same sex or gender. Because it’s always good to speak the truth, let’s be honest here – it is the ‘how’ not the ‘whether’ that is now being debated, for a variety of extremely compelling reasons. There are clergy who can no longer minister because they’ve entered into a civil marriage – clearly absurd – and marriage to someone of the same sex or gender is now pretty much the only absolute impediment to ordained ministry, meaning that in the middle of a vocations crisis, we are turning to people whose vocations have often been affirmed through official church processes and saying ‘no, thanks’.

    It’s a total scandal – it’s cruel, it’s self-defeating, it flies in the face of the clear evidence that LGBTQIA clergy are often wonderful pastors, the vast majority of bishops agree that it is a pernicious and nasty witness, and most importantly, I think, it is utterly unnecessary. Yet for months (actually, for years) we have heard that boring, ridiculous, and inaccurate phrase, ‘we need to do more theology’ on this, whilst we keep slamming the door in the faces of queer people. Well, actually, we don’t need to.

    The call for theology has been an absolutely superb delaying tactic, of course, but it is ultimately irrelevant, because this is not really a question about doctrine at all – it is a question about discipline. It’s time we named that, and got on with it.

    I do appreciate that there are those who think that those of us pushing for a change in discipline are – in so doing – trying to subvert or change the doctrine, so let me be blunt about where many of us are coming from. I absolutely do believe that sacramental marriage should be opened to all couples. I absolutely do believe that God is already at work in queer marriages and that the church is doing itself a disservice in refusing to recognise this. I am absolutely committed to seeing the doctrine of marriage enlarged and – in being enlarged – enriched. All of that is no surprise.

    Yet I am also clear that this is not where we are at the moment in our decision-making processes (even if we are there in the minds and hearts of many churchgoers and clergy). Again, let’s be blunt. Canon B30 is in force. The Church of England’s current doctrine is that marriage is between a man and a woman (for life, by the way, but hey – let’s not be pedantic, right?). That is also the Church of England’s practice. In order to allow queer marriage in church, we would need to change Canon B30 (which, by the way, does not require a two-thirds majority in General Synod), and we would need to modify the liturgical provision (which does).

    All of this is not opinion, but objective fact. What is also objective fact is that clergy entering into something the church does not call marriage is not going to change any of that – it cannot. In other words, whilst clergy might enter into a covenant that the state calls marriage, the church does not and will not call it ‘the holy estate of marriage’ unless or until – God willing – it is open enough to hear what the Holy Spirit is calling it to do. Which means that there is no specific doctrinal change required to allow clergy to enter an institution which is not – in the eyes of the church – the holy estate of marriage.

    It is important to be absolutely clear about this, because much water has been muddied in this arena, often rather disingenuously. Now, of course, other churches (including other Anglican churches) might well recognise queer marriage as the bona fide ‘holy estate of marriage’, but we do not, yet, in the Church of England. So what is being talked about with clergy entering into this institution is ultimately a pastoral provision in its truest sense – a way of living effectively in the complex reality of the world in which we find ourselves as a church. It is also pastoral provision in a church that really does disagree on the goods present within queer relationships, and the way to order a holy life if we are LGBTQIA. It is, in other words, a way of enabling ministry in a complicated, messy, and unsatisfactory church. We have historically called the ‘complicated, messy, and unsatisfactory church’ the Church of England.

    Currently, clergy who enter a queer marriage cannot exercise new ministry; that means that they cannot be ordained or, if they are already ordained, that they cannot hold a new license – yet if they are currently licensed, they can continue under that license, which shows the absurdity of the situation. Why not? This derives from the so-called ‘Valentine’s Day Statement’ of 2014, where the House of Bishops hurriedly declared that being in a same-sex marriage was incompatible with ordained ministry. I understand that this was a response to an anxious Archbishop desperate to keep the ‘Communion’ happy at a meeting the following day, and leaning heavily on his fellow bishops – times were rather different then. Today, queer marriage rather than civil partnerships is the norm, and yet this nasty little Statement remains the be all and end all of the way we treat queer clergy hoping to gain some civil (not ecclesial) status for their relationship.

    Ministry Division claim (with questionable reasoning) that this Statement prevents people even entering the national discernment process, and bishops – rather timidly, I might add – point to it and mostly wring their hands when they are presented with a married queer ordinand or priest. Some bishops are courageous enough to find limited workarounds, but far too many – especially those on the ‘inclusive’ side – would rather privilege ‘collegiality’ amongst bishops over pastoral care for their queer clergy. It’s pretty scandalous, and eight years on from calls for ‘radical new Christian inclusion’ what we appear to have is ‘radically weak episcopal decision making’ paired with ‘radical obsession with “doing the theology”‘, when no such theology is necessary for a basic, practical decision.

    The thing that makes all this so frustrating is that this statement could simply be rescinded, or bishops could equally simply say that they are no longer abiding by it. If that happened, there is absolutely no impediment to queer married clergy being ordained or licensed. There is not a doctrinal case to answer, because this is not the holy estate of marriage. What, precisely, would change if clergy got married, except an end to the current pointless cruelty? What is the issue here? The only difference would be that clergy would be able to regularise their relationships in law (and please just educate yourself if you don’t know the legal differences and implications between civil partnerships and marriage). The church will not collapse. Queer clergy are already in relationships, and are already being ordained and licensed – I know, because I’m one of them. So what actually changes when we get married?

    I would urge us, then, to take a step back from this endless focus on ‘theology’. There is, of course, theology to be done – about living with doctrinal differences, about delegated episcopacy, about holiness of life and estate, about the meaning of ‘intimacy’ and ‘sex’ and ‘proper place’ and so on. But not one bit of this impacts upon whether clergy should face discipline for entering into an institution that the church does not recognise beyond being a legal entity. I have heard a number of times that seeing this as a disciplinary matter means that queer clergy will be upset the church has nothing good to say about their marriages. You know what? It’s baby steps. Perhaps let us keep our jobs, first?

    After years and years of LLF, and wasted time and lives, and persistent and pernicious cruelty meted out on queer people – particularly on those in ministry – it feels too easy. Yet it really is this easy – this is a matter of discipline, and the bishops have it in their power not only to resolve this, but to stop looking quite so silly at the same time. The current position is objectively ludicrous and cruel in equal measure. No more theology – it’s time for action, instead.

  • Surprise, Surprise: More Delay on Living in Love and Faith

    by the Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge, Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington and forensic psychiatrist

    There is a meme video online, featuring Cilla Black, singing the chorus to her famous ‘Surprise Surprise’. It’s usually in the context of poor customer service, or something else inevitable happening, and out bursts Cilla singing Surprise, Surprise! I wish I wasn’t quite so childish, but when the delay to LLF was announced yesterday, this was the first thing that came to mind. Because if the House of Bishops is one thing, it is predictable – predictably hopeless at doing what General Synod requires of them, again and again, to do. Predictably hopeless at getting on with it.

    Of course, the story behind the delay is a little more complicated than the rather cold press release made out. That press release was a classic of its genre – not a single word there apologising to General Synod members, let alone LGBTQIA people, about the delay. No recognition of how painful this will be. No compassion whatsoever. And, as ever, no context. So perhaps let’s dig into that a bit.

    Firstly, it is abundantly clear that there are forces at play – a blob, if you like – that are determined to slow down and ultimately frustrate any change. This blob is not the central team working on LLF, who are doing their darndest to make stuff happen. The blob isn’t even the official Alliance, who are simply determined to block everything everywhere. The blob is instead silly little bit part players, sitting on papers, stirring the pot, facilitating and fomenting delay. But the House of Bishops is not defenceless and passive in all this – and it is time for them to steel their nerves and force a decision.

    The delaying tactics are now being firmly targeted in the direction of clergy same-sex/gender marriage – the last piece in the jigsaw, and hence the thing to ensure is held up as long as humanly possible. The current clever ruse is endless calls for ‘more theology’. Leaving aside the fact that there is rather a lot of theology already done on this (and bishops might like to remember that this conversation has been had, in many places, including in other Anglican provinces),  and the fact that this is really a matter of policy rather than theology, these calls for more theology are now plainly nothing more than a delaying tactic. I am sick to the back teeth of being in meetings where nice, warm-smiled bishops say, ‘if only we could make a decision, but we need the theology to be done’. Can-kicking of the very best kind.

    There is such a level of dishonesty in all this, and the worrying thing is that – like the emperor’s new clothes – members of the House of Bishops seem utterly unwilling to publicly name it, even though in private no such qualms exist. The goal posts are being endlessly shifted; decision making is being tripped up time after time; intransigence is the name of the game, and each time it feels like we might be getting close to a decision, up pops another ‘reason’ that a decision must be delayed. It’s grotesque. And it’s sheer politics.

    So the reason that a delay in the process has been called is purely and simply because the House is endlessly putting off a decision on same-sex marriage for clergy. The Prayers of Love and Faith are sorted – already commended, in fact, and the ‘request’ not to do them in a ‘standalone service’ is only that, a request (and, of course, a ‘standalone service’ is a made-up nonsense anyway). There is a plan around delegating episcopal ministry – in my view, entirely unnecessary, but it seems this is where the bishops are ending up. But the House knows that this ‘delegated episcopal ministry’ will not get through General Synod unless and until clergy are permitted to enter into same-sex marriages and people in such marriages enabled to enter the vocations process (actually permitted, not some ridiculous ‘in principle’ decision) and the despicable Issues in Human Sexuality is rescinded. It is positive that the House recognises this. The problem is that they need to get on with making a decision – and they seem endlessly unable to do so.

    The thing is, everyone knows that there has actually already been a decision made on this! This is another depressing feature of the LLF process – we are told the sky is green, and despite the evidence to the contrary, everyone seems to nod along. For months we’ve been told that the Pastoral Guidance for clergy entering into same-sex marriage hasn’t been drafted – which is a lie. I know it’s a lie, because I commented on said draft. We are told that it’s just ‘theologians being theologians, and theologians take time’, and this is why papers haven’t been written. It’s simply not true – the truth is that the House, and the attendant blob, keep moving the goal posts.

    Some of you will have received the news with what might best be described as cold, hard, fury. I will admit that this is precisely how I feel. Some of you, however, might meet the news with a shrug of the shoulders, because of course this has happened. I share some of that feeling too. Let’s be honest, it is rather hard to have much faith in the House of Bishops, if any. That is not new.

    What is new, however, is that with this latest delay, the House of Bishops are getting dangerously close to being genuinely faithless. There is only so long that people can hold on to some kind of hope at things getting better, and I fear we are now at breaking point. Synod has spoken, a number of times, and the House has dawdled and engaged in handwringing. Enough is enough.

    What we need now is delivery. We don’t need more prevaricating, we don’t need more meetings, we don’t need more warm smiles, we don’t need more obfuscation, we don’t need more kicking it down the road, we don’t need more anxiety over numbers bleeding into disrespect for the lives and loves of LGBTQIA Christians. We don’t, indeed, need more theology. We need you to get on with it, for the love of God, and for the love of God’s people.

    The House of Bishops first needs to recognise that the way they are engaging in this process is ultimately a question of basic morality, and their approach is immoral. They also need to formally make two decisions – the first being to actively stop any further demand for ‘more theology’ or whatever other delaying tactic is in play, and the second is to corporately rescind the nasty, theologically desperate 2014 statement banning clergy from entering same-sex marriage (which, let’s remember, only a minority even agrees with, and which has essentially zero force beyond ‘good boy’ politics and could be ignored right now if a single diocesan bishop had the nerve), and make the positive statement that same-sex married clergy are a good and holy group of people, able to pastor beautifully and brokenly just like any others, and free them into this ministry. And this needs to be done this year. We all know the most recent piece of ‘theological work’ is nearing completion and a decision can then be made. The bishops need to make a commitment to it and do it.

    It is perfectly possible for there to be a November Synod. It is perfectly possible for them to do this. It would have been perfectly possible, indeed, for them to do this by July – but they baulked.

    Enough of this, now. It is no small wonder that people have lost trust in the bishops and don’t believe a word they say. You can hardly complain people don’t trust you if you endlessly break their trust.

    So, the only path forward is clear. Bishops, commit to a decision on clergy marriage on a specific date the moment the current iteration of ‘theological work’ is done, which we know is soon, and keep to that commitment, come what may. Call a November Synod, and implement that decision then. Put the package to a vote this year. Don’t feed us ‘in principle’ gruel on marriage – the moment this formal decision is made, licences should be restored, ordinands should enter training, and the House should corporately apologise for taking so long to get this done. Legally watertight measures can follow, if necessary, but practical action must be immediate.

    We, LGBTQIA clergy, have played by the rules for quite long enough now. Not a single thing of any substance has been done about the clearly non-canonical behaviours illustrated in the summer. Yet, after years and years of promises, still, capable, holy, decent LGBTQIA people are being barred from ministry and having their licenses smacked away from them because of prevarication and anxiety-laden avoidance. It is dangerously close to feeling more than a little malevolent.

    It’s decision time, folks. Bishops, respectfully, get on with it, now. You really can – but you need to choose to do so. If you don’t, you will turn crisis into catastrophe. And you will only have yourselves to blame.

  • The “Failure of the Church”: Why Waiting is Not Neutral

    by Revd Dr Charlie Bell, Fellow at Girton College Cambridge; Assistant Curate, St John the Divine, Kennington 

    ‘Lament and repent of the failure of the Church to be welcoming to LGBTQI+ people and the harm that LGBTQI+ people have experienced and continue to experience in the life of the Church’.

    So began the motion passed by the General Synod in 2023, in relation to the LLF project. Just look at the state of it now. According to Bishop Martyn Snow, in his recent video, ‘We’re still in the process of working with LGBTQI+ people to look at what that apology really means in practice’. So far, not much.

    I am bored writing about LLF. I am sure you are bored hearing about it. And yet here we are, almost two years on from that motion, and we have moved … effectively nowhere. Yes, some prayers have been commended – which was ‘looked forward to’ in that first motion – and that was a real step forward (although, of course, it really just formalised what was already happening in many parishes). But it happened nearly a year ago now, and although the prayers have been approved as a ‘standalone service’ we are being asked to wait to use them until a ‘registration process’ has been set up. Meanwhile, there have been a love-in residential, endless variations on working groups (with precious little new output), and various half-promises made. Folk wanting some progress for LGBTQIA+ people have given of their time and energy again and again. But in terms of actual change brought about for LGBTQIA+ people, let’s be frank – since that motion, there has been effectively nothing. Zero. Nada.

    This is enough of a disgrace in itself that the endlessly dithering House of Bishops should hang their heads in shame. Yet let’s be absolutely up front and frank here – that is not the half of it. Let’s not pretend: we know that there have been votes amongst the bishops to enable clergy to enter same-sex marriages, and those of us in the process know that Archbishop Justin’s comments on sex being for marriage do indeed reflect the general position of the House and College. Against that background, though, the required withdrawal of the nasty little Issues in Human Sexuality (a withdrawal required, let us remember, all the way back in February 2023), still has not happened – which is completely unacceptable. Similarly, all those in the LLF process know that clergy same-sex marriage is a question of when and not if – such has been said to us by staff, by bishops. The idea it won’t happen is ludicrous – and if that does become the plan, then there is no benefit to dragging it out any longer. Yet still, no decision is made – and we are treated like fools, again, and again, and again.

    Indeed, forty-four bishops called for this decision to be implemented ‘without delay’ in November 2023. Funny definition of ‘without delay’, right, a year on – and with the endless can-kicking, wasted time, and – frankly – wasted vocations.

    Because this isn’t an abstract issue. We have potential ordinands, whose call has been blocked by the absolute impediment that they have fallen in love with someone and have formalised it in law. Similarly, bishops are refusing to license clergy in same-sex marriages, all in the middle of a vocations crisis and the scandal of endlessly overworked clergy. Cases from the Diocese in Europe, where some countries don’t provide the option of civil partnerships, show quite how small-minded, absurd, and nasty this policy is in practice. In some places, bishops are quite inexplicably – and viciously – refusing to license lay people in civil marriages to people of the same sex or gender too. Even Issues in Human Sexuality didn’t go that far.

    So we clergy can pray prayers of blessing for others in such relationships but not enter into them ourselves? Similarly, clergy from other provinces of the Anglican Communion in same-sex marriages cannot minister in the Church of England, but clergy from these provinces who have celebrated such a marriage can? What a load of ecclesiological – and queerphobic – nonsense that is. The whole thing is a rotting ulcer at the heart of our church’s polity – and still, nothing is done. Where is the courage? Where, frankly, is our pastoral heart? How long, O Lord? Why is it that we are so expendable – so worthless – so detested? We asked for bread, were promised a stone – and even that is still withheld.

    The truth is, though, that there has been work done, ‘progress’ on LLF – it’s just that this work has nothing whatsoever to do with LGBTQIA people. LLF is no longer about them – about us. It is about those, a small but rich and powerful minority, who wish to exclude them from parts of church life based on their sexual orientation. It has become yet another tool of the powerful over the vulnerable. Just like Jesus always wanted.

    This is not new. Those who ‘couldn’t accept’ the ordination of women as priests and deacons got a nice pay-off as they swam the Tiber. In today’s arguments over other people using prayers and other people getting married, once again the sole focus has been on those who oppose the majority position. Look back over the reams of papers, debates, and ‘solutions’ suggested for our current predicament – how many of them actually mention, let alone prioritise, LGBTQIA people? Hint: not many.

    Those of us in favour of LGBTQIA inclusion seem to be bending over backwards to ensure those who think we aren’t even Christians should be given absolutely everything they claim they need so that they are not stained by our queerness. Adverts from inclusive churches speak of the need for ‘support’ for those who feel ‘disappointment, discomfort, or distress’ about the use of the Prayers of Love and Faith. While it’s surely good that PCCs are discussing where they stand on their use, and complete honesty about this will help people decide whether a church is for them or not, it’s all very one-sided. Meanwhile, there is precisely nothing about the actual LGBTQIA people about whom this project was supposed to be.

    The entire project has become disproportionate without ever moving anywhere near the ‘radical new inclusion’ promised at the outset. All we are doing now is yielding to threat upon threat from the ‘Alliance’, which has a much louder bark than its bite, and in the process chucking more and more LGTBQIA people onto the pile that says: ‘not important enough’. We appear willing to be agents of injustice to protect the powerful who now claim they are being oppressed. It would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

    Christians and their churches are known by how they treat their weakest members. Jesus said something about that somewhere. The Church of England is standing at a precipice where it must decide whether it really wants to be known for creating a system that looks after the privileged, or whether it actually wants to embed and live the apology to LGBTQIA people that it so far only claims to believe in.

    This time of treating LGBTQIA people like collateral chaff cannot continue. If the bishops do not have the courage to permit us to enter into same-sex marriages and continue to live out our vocations – vocations that have been acknowledged and affirmed by the church – then it is time for them to admit that. This includes every serving Church of England bishop – every single one of whom, at present, agrees to implement the 2014 voluntary agreement. Similarly, if they want to continue the nonsense of ‘yes at Evensong, no at a standalone’ when it comes to the Prayers of Love and Faith, so be it. If that is the church they are proud to lead into the future, then they should own it.

    That is, of course, the church they currently lead. Waiting is not neutral – it is ongoing structural violence. Deciding not to decide is a decision – a decision to support ongoing injustice, and to say, through their actions, that we are not worth the hassle of making oneself unpopular with one’s sibling bishops. Neither handwringing nor can-kicking, nor hoping it will all go away, nor endless agonising about how difficult it all is, is a Christian virtue.

    And until a single bishop is willing to name this injustice, and then actually act justly, then they can – frankly – keep their apologies.

  • Cooking with Love and Faith

    by Nic Tall, member of General Synod and National Coordinator of Together for the Church of England

    The General Synod has met again. Once again, it has debated the current stage of Living in Love and Faith (LLF), once again the plans to move forward have been approved in all three Houses of the Synod, and once again this permission to proceed still has a significant minority of Synod in opposition to the proposals.

    One aspect of the debate was the selection of metaphors used in speeches – Fortnum and Mason port and Stilton hampers, Argos flat pack furniture, LLF being like a bus with some on board and others feeling run over. One metaphor which came up in several speeches, all opposed to the proposals, was that it wasn’t “oven ready”. That the phrase was used several times implies co-ordinated comms work from conservatives literally speaking from the same centrally pre-prepared text. “Not oven-ready” expresses a concern that there hasn’t been enough work done, that proposed pastoral guidance needs more time and more consultation before it is fit for purpose, and we should stick with Issues in Human Sexuality until its replacement.

    Since coming home from the debate, I have been thinking through the questions of process and this culinary metaphor, and I have been comparing the LLF process to baking bread. We have been following a recipe, collecting and mixing ingredients, kneading the dough, stepping back and leaving it to rise for a while, before returning to knock it back, squeezing the air out, more pushing, pulling and stretching before leaving it to rise again. A good baker knows that a time of proving before further kneading helps the structure and flavour of the bread, but repeat that process too often and you ruin it.

    Before I talk about how we have been cooking the bread of LLF, I want to think about how the House of Bishops prepared the meal that is Issues in Human Sexuality.  I recently spoke with someone who was in the room when Issues was written.  It was a document purely created by the House of Bishops, who we should remember at that point included no women and no openly LGBT+ people. There was no Programme Board, no working groups, no consultation with stakeholder groups or involvement with the wider church at all. The entire process came from the House of Bishops discussing among itself and then putting out its thoughts as a teaching document, not intended as the policy statement that Issues later became. The preface stated “We cannot expect all to agree with our conclusion and, indeed, in our discussions we encountered a wide variety of opinions… It is our hope that this Statement – which we do not pretend to be the last word on the subject – will do something ‘to help forward a general process, marked by greater trust and openness, of Christian reflection on the subject of human sexuality’”. Issues was cooked by a small group of episcopal chefs, and was not intended to be the final meal. More than thirty years since it was first served up it now become stale and few find it appetising.

    Given the lack of process leading to the half-baked Issues, what has been happening in the kitchen to cook up its replacement? LLF began with panels of experts gathering to compile material around theology, biblical studies, history and more which formed the LLF book, videos, podcasts and course. These were then made available to the whole church to study, discuss and pray about. From late 2020 through to mid 2022, all policy work was paused while the resources were used at the grassroots in parishes, benefices and deaneries. In the baking metaphor, this was a period of the LLF dough being left to rise. Then there was a consultation, the largest in the C of E’s history, capturing the feedback of over 6000 who took part in the course and following up with focus groups to drill down deeper into grassroots opinion. The results were a majority wanting liturgical affirmation of same-sex relationships, a quick decision so everyone knew where they stood and a strong desire for the church to remain together.

    Through the autumn of 2022, the House of Bishops developed their proposals, which were modest but deliverable and brought to General Synod in February 2023. Synod welcomed the proposals through a vote passed in all three Houses. There has since been further work considering refinement and implementation, including consultation with stakeholder groups, small working groups and facilitated conversations bringing together people with very different theological convictions, in-person talks with representatives from different constituencies, theological input from the Faith and Order Commission, legal support from the Church of England’s Legal Office and a further substantial debate in General Synod in November 2023 affirming the ongoing direction of travel. There have been a ‘Next Steps Group’ and a ‘Moving Forward’ video.

    In preparation for the July 2024 Synod, there were different working groups, more stakeholder consultations, a Programme Board, further meetings of the College and House of Bishops and more input from FAOC. And then at the most recent Synod a third major vote has yet again passed in all three Houses to affirm the ongoing direction of travel. We can safely say that the LLF dough has been thoroughly kneaded, shaped and proved. When we compare the many years and wide consultation of the LLF process to the short bishops-only cooking up of Issues, we can be sure that we are in a much better place that will be more widely owned by the whole church once this dish comes out of the oven.

    We also have to remember who the chefs are in preparing this meal. The commending of liturgy and the issuing of pastoral guidance is the responsibility of the House of Bishops.  When Issues was published, it did not require Synodical approval; it was a document from the Bishops. Its replacement will also not need the approval of Synod. The House of Bishops have been much more sensitive this time around in ensuring wide consultation and involving people outside their number. The new pastoral guidance will not be something created in a closed room by a small group of outwardly straight men and then passed down from on high. It has been a collaborative process, with the bishops supported by Synod, FAOC, stakeholders, the Legal Office and all our parishes and deaneries who invested time with engaging.

    But now it is down to the House of Bishops to complete the process by putting it in the oven to bake. That is their job, and it is not for the rest of us to interfere. Neither will it help if we insist on continually opening the oven door to check how it’s getting on. Too many cooks will only spoil the meal.

    So, once the well-prepared dough of LLF that we currently have has been properly baked, brought out and left to cool, I hope we will be able to gather together to enjoy the breaking, sharing and eating. And I hope that will be around one table, where all are called, including our LGBTQIA+ family members who are usually only offered crumbs under the table. I hope also that our more conservative family members will also be at the feast around the one table, and not feel that they have to sit in another room apart from the rest of us.

    I hope that shared meal comes very soon, as many in the church, especially LGBTQIA+ people, are hungry and are needing to be fed.

  • Essential Doctrines, Essential Hierarchies

    by David W. Congdon, senior editor at the University Press of Kansas. His most recent book, Who Is a True Christian? Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture, is available now from Cambridge University Press.

    For outsiders like me trying to make sense of the Church of England’s recent Synod debates over Living in Love and Faith (LLF), the official church resources on identity, sexuality, relationships, and marriage, and the corresponding Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) that are seeking to make the church a more inclusive space without changing canon law, the last half-year has been rather bewildering. With another General Synod coming up on 5–9 July, the bishops are once again preparing for another round of debates over the church’s relationship to LGBTQ+ persons.

    The conversations are of interest to me as an American, not only because of my affiliation with the Episcopal Church, but because I wrote about the Church of England’s views on trans identity in my recent book, Who Is a True Christian? Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2024). I devoted one section of my book to the way Anglican theologians—especially Oliver O’Donovan and N. T. Wright—connected trans identity to gnosticism, showing how their rhetoric has influenced, however unintentionally, American evangelicals and far-right conservative activists. I argue that conservative Anglicans and American conservatives form a “discourse coalition,” meaning they participate in a shared discourse that associates transgender persons (and LGBTQ+ persons more generally) with heresy.

    O’Donovan’s views were given official sanction in the 2003 Church of England document, Some Issues in Human Sexuality, and one significant aspect of the LLF materials is the effort to replace the theological certainty of the old guidelines with a new approach “marked by provisionality and humility, recognising that we are in a time of corporate not-knowing, where mystery remains as to our humanity and how we are to live our lives in a world that we do not always understand, and where God often acts in surprising ways” (GS2328, LLF Annex H, 4). This in itself is something worth celebrating—but many internal tensions remain.

    While the attempted association of trans identity with gnosticism was problematic for a number of reasons—including a misunderstanding of both gnosticism and gender dysphoria, among other things—I was most interested in the way it assumed an ahistorical and timeless understanding of doctrine and ecclesial identity. Gnosticism, if such a term has any meaning, referred to various ancient sects that understood God to be so transcendent that a demiurge was necessary to bridge the infinite Most High with the finite cosmos. Once unmoored from its original historical setting, with its corresponding metaphysics, a term like “gnosticism” quickly becomes a rhetorical weapon that one can use against almost anyone and anything that one wishes to brand as “anti-Christian.” And that is precisely what has happened in North America, and especially the United States.

    The conservative political theorist Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) claimed that gnosticism is “the essence of modernity,” while the Canadian Presbyterian pastor Philip J. Lee asserted in his Against the Protestant Gnostics (1987) that gnosticism is essential to American Protestantism. In 1992 the conservative Presbyterian scholar Peter R. Jones published The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age, where he blamed gnosticism for environmentalism, feminism, and homosexuality. More recently, American evangelical theologian Peter Leithart warned of “invasive Gnosticism” in the government prohibitions against transgender discrimination. The Catholic natural law theorist and Princeton University professor Robert P. George declared in 2016 that all modern social liberalism stems from gnosticism. The atheist and right-wing activist James Lindsay attributes all “woke” identity politics, especially LGBTQ+ identity, to gnosticism. This past week, conservative evangelical radio host Erick Erickson published his new book, You Shall Be as Gods: Pagans, Progressives, and the Rise of the Woke Gnostic Left.

    While Church of England leaders no doubt want nothing to do with this bigoted, antiliberal rhetoric, my concern here is, in part, to highlight the danger of letting our theological concepts run free of any historical context. Moreover, it is not enough to keep our “heresies” grounded in history; we also need to keep our “orthodoxies” historically rooted as well. And this is where the current LLF runs into trouble.

    The supplementary annexes for GS2328 include explanations of the thought process behind the new guidelines, including the theological rationale. A consistent theme throughout is demonstrating how the new PLF remains consistent with Canon B5’s requirement that “all variations in forms of service and all forms of service used under this Canon shall be reverent and seemly and shall be neither contrary to, nor indicative of any departure from, the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter” (emphasis mine). If the definition of “essential matter” seems impossibly vague, the bishops and clergy readily acknowledge as much. Annex A points out that the words “in any essential matter” were included in the Church of England (Worship and Doctrine) Measure 1974 (No. 3, Section 4), and that there was a proposal to omit these words on the grounds that they “seemed otiose and it would be difficult to decide what matters were essential.” Indeed! In response, the Revision Committee for the Measure retained the phrase on the grounds that “if they were omitted it became equally difficult to determine what issues were or were not contrary to or indicative of any departure from the doctrine of the Church of England” (Annex A, #19). This makes little sense, however, since the mere word “essential” hardly gives any guidance on what doctrines count as essential. It only empowers those in the church to fight about it. A further explanation stated that these words “enable the Synod to make small changes in matters which are regarded as doctrinal, provided that the essential doctrines of the Church of England are safeguarded” (Annex A, #20)—a circular claim if there ever was one.

    Annex A seeks to reassure the conservative wing by stating in a matter-of-fact manner: “We consider that the essential doctrines of the Church of England are safeguarded” (Annex A, #25). What counts as an “essential doctrine”? The question naturally follows from the wording of the Worship and Doctrine Measure, and yet we look in vain for any guidance. The LLF documents all assume that the “doctrine of marriage” is one of these essential doctrines, but the grounds for this assumption remain opaque. The Theological Rationale in Annex H acknowledges that some in the General Synod view marriage as “a secondary matter, because it does not touch essential beliefs as reflected in the creeds,” but then responds to this by saying, “we disagree.” If asked about which doctrines are essential, the average Anglican would almost certainly point to the Nicene Creed, where of course we will find nothing pertaining to marriage and sexuality. Even the Thirty-Nine Articles mention marriage only in the context of stating that priests are permitted to marry (Art. 32). So on what basis do the other bishops and clergy make marriage as essential to the church as the doctrine of incarnation?

    Even if we allow for marriage to be an essential doctrine, the alterations and adjustments to this doctrine make it difficult to sustain the conviction that the essence has not changed. Annex H provides a rather remarkable history of the ways the “doctrine of marriage” has been modified, in what it says are admittedly “significant” ways. These include accommodating divorce and remarriage, removing the claim that marriage is a “remedy for sin,” embracing the use of contraception, and allowing for couples to live together in sexual union before committing to marriage. Perhaps most important is “the move away from the primacy of procreation and increasingly making room for the expression of sexuality as a good” (Annex H, 7). Procreation is one of the three “goods” of marriage as defined by Augustine of Hippo in his famous treatise on the matter. If this does not count as an essential change in the doctrine of marriage, it is hard to know what does. Another significant change is the ethical requirement of “consent, both to the marriage and within marriage,” which broke with the patriarchal paradigm of marriage as a property transaction toward a recognition of both spouses as equal agents. As a result, “marital rape is now recognised and condemned, in law and in the church, which again marks a significant change in how sexuality, marriage, and gender relationships are conceived of” (Annex H, 8). Significant, but apparently not essential.

    The authors of Annex H correctly observe that “teaching on marriage does not just reflect theology and Scripture, but the interaction of theology and liturgy with wider cultural mores, whether consciously, or not” (Annex H, 8). This recognition that culture and history play an indispensable role in constructing and interpreting the teachings of the church sits in uneasy tension with the notion of “essential doctrine.” Even the most essential doctrines, like incarnation and trinity, are not immune to cultural and historical changes. The metaphysical assumptions of even the most conservative Anglicans today are radically different from those held by the bishops who gathered at Nicaea in the fourth century. Our creeds and doctrines give the illusion of being in unchanged continuity with the past because we say the same words (though even this is not technically true, since we are working in translation), when the reality is that the historical context, including our assumptions about divinity and our mental picture of the cosmos, gives these words a substantially different meaning.

    To their credit, the authors of Annex H acknowledge the problem I am raising here: “Some have asked, quite appropriately, whether routine accommodation/provision then becomes a de facto change in doctrine. The challenge has some weight: doctrine is not simply produced by official pronouncements but in an iterative process of dialogue between conceptual formulation and embodiment in practice.” Their response to this question is to claim that “pastoral accommodation” has always been part of the church, and—here is the crucial point—they do not want to give up “on the idea of a proper or fuller configuration of relationships altogether” (Annex H, 17).

    Put another way, the Church of England leadership still wants to say there is a normative way to be human—a “proper” or “full” form of life that is superior to other forms that deviate from this norm. Without saying so, the bishops still hold on to a moral hierarchy, much like Augustine and others throughout church history. The only difference is they have switched out who is at the top of the hierarchy. For Augustine and most everyone in the ancient church, unmarried celibate Christian men were at the pinnacle of the moral ladder. Today’s Church of England places straight monogamous married Christians at the top. The ladder is a lot longer now and accommodates many more people in the higher rungs than it used to, but there is still a ladder.

    We are now in a position to understand what is essential about essential doctrines. The essence is not any particular doctrine or interpretation of doctrine. As we have seen, these can change in quite drastic ways without apparently violating the “essence.” Instead, the essence is the normative hierarchy itself that places some Christians closer to the divine rule than others. If there is a universal truth to be found here, it is this: whenever churches talk about “essential doctrines” or “essential matters,” they are constructing the rhetorical framework for reinforcing social hierarchies.

    “At the beginning of the twentieth century,” according to the Living in Love and Faith book, “the Church of England still had a clear, global hierarchical structure that stretched across much of the world” (Chapter 7, 147). Much has changed since then. But if the emphasis on “essential doctrine” is any indication, a certain nostalgia for “a clear, global hierarchical structure” remains.

    Living in Love and Faith represents genuine progress in the Church of England. But if the goal is to create the conditions for a more just and equitable commonwealth, then it is not enough to change the church’s essential doctrines. The church needs to rethink its adherence to the essence itself.