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Category: Issues in Human Sexuality

  • Time to be Civil about Marriage

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

    Well, here we go again then.

    In the next few months – in an eerie echo of the same months exactly a year ago – the Church of England will once again be asking small groups to sit down and discuss queer people’s lives and loves. Despite the fact that the draft Prayers of Love and Faith have been sitting ready to go for almost a year, and despite the fact that an almost final draft of the Pastoral Guidance permitting clergy equal marriage has similarly been sitting ready to go for almost a year, the feet-dragging nature of the church’s response to love has once again been on full display. If in doubt, set up a subgroup, and so here we are, with yet more subgroups, asking exactly the same questions, and promising a solution by July.

    It would be a foolhardy House of Bishops that suggested a further delay in July – many LGBTQIA clergy and their allies are close to civil disobedience, along with an increasing recognition by a number of bishops that the current situation is not only untenable but deeply unjust. Yet it is clear that the sticking point on much of the negotiations is not the Prayers of Love and Faith, and their ‘legal route’, however much noise is being made about this by rather tiresome bloggers, but clergy discipline. The real nub of this is whether faithful, committed, partnered clergy can enter what they personally believe to be, but what the church corporately does not yet receive as, marriage, and whether the church is empowered to continue to ask prurient and weird questions about their bedroom antics.

    It does sometimes appear to be the case that those doing and promoting the work on LLF have forgotten that there are actually (despite everything) LGBTQIA people in the church. When the Programme Board was first announced, there was not a single (out) LGBTQIA person on it, and similarly you needed a microscope to find the LGBTQIA people in the small groups (something which has been, to some degree, mitigated thanks to some of us spotting it!). For all the warm words and the ‘apology’, the mode of operation of the Church of England has resolutely not changed on all this; it’s frankly not good enough, and it’s rather grating when compared to the way other minoritized groups are increasingly treated. There seems to be a wilful determination to keep LGBTQIA people out of the frame, and hence to condemn the process to an endless procession of unforced errors. LGBTQIA people remain, apparently, acceptably ignored.

    There are plenty of us LGBTQIA folk who are really willing this process, and its leadership, to succeed, despite everything – yet we are treated as though our involvement would somehow infect it with queerness. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but in seriousness there needs to be a step change in the way the Church of England engages with us if it is to gain even a modicum of trust. People like me would be perfectly happy to look over press releases and point out the obvious issues, and indeed people far more qualified and senior than me, who are themselves ‘openly’ LGBTQIA (a term reserved, it seems, almost solely for the church in the modern world), should be invited to be part and parcel of the decision-making processes rather than merely advising it from the side-lines. There remains far too much being done about us, and not with us, and until that changes, the Church of England is displaying that it has learnt precisely nothing about its institutional queerphobia.

    Which brings us back to clergy marriage. From all the whingeing and whining, you’d think that the people this most matters to are those who oppose ‘sexual intimacy’ (as yet undefined) amongst queer people, but perhaps we might just reset the dial and remember that the key stakeholders here are queer people themselves. We have heard the usual delaying clarion call of ‘we need to do more theology’ on this time and time again, and we have heard all the handwringing about the conscience of bishops, yet we have – it appears – infrequently actually listened to and thought about the impact of the current pernicious, institutional and structural violence of the current position of the church for actual, real live, queer people.

    The level of pastoral ineptitude and lack of practicality found in the House of Bishops’ ‘Pastoral Guidance’ [sic] issued on Valentine’s Day 2014 is rivalled only by the disgraceful way that this has been implemented over the past decade. Absolutely no recognition has been given to the fact that the distinction between Civil Partnerships and Civil Marriage is not present in every jurisdiction, leading to clergy in Europe, for example, facing a choice between basic next of kin rights and their licences. Clergy from Anglican provinces overseas or our other communion partners, where equal marriage is not only permitted but required for clergy in same-sex relationships, have been prevented from offering their ministry in the Church of England in an extraordinary display of arrogant inflexibility on behalf of ‘mother church’. It is interesting, of course, that it’s only the queer married clergy who are blocked, and not the straight clergy, including bishops, who have been doing the marriage services – you really don’t have to look far for institutional queerphobia.

    Yet, finally, it seems that this pernicious nonsense is about to end, and not before time. There is now a clear way forward that brings the Church of England back to a position more true to itself – generous hospitality. We appreciate that we are not all going to agree on whether same-sex unions are marriage or not, perhaps for some time, yet we are part of a church and a communion in which a variety of perspectives are held entirely within the mainstream.

    In many ways, this is just a case of recognising facts. As yet – and it is only a matter of time – the Church of England corporately does not recognise the essence, dare I say sacramentality, of the marital in same-sex marriages. That’s actually where the distinction lies – not between the civil and the church (the marriage-matrimony idea), but in the anatomy of the participants. There are also, however, a number of queer clergy who want to enter into such a vowed state that is recognised as such by the State, and indeed by many churches that presently come to a different conclusion about this than appears to be the case in the Church of England. Some of them will want to do that in a civil ceremony, and others before God (indeed, in ceremonies in which God can actually be mentioned) in a church where such marriages can be celebrated.

    Neither of those options changes anything about the Church of England’s own position on what it holds to be marital. Clergy are not entering into marriage lightly – they’re doing so because they believe it to be part of their growth in holiness. The church has accepted – and indeed encouraged – clergy entering into Civil Partnerships, and the result of making a similar decision on marriage is absolutely no different from the church’s perspective, given the Church of England institutionally continues to refuse recognise such marriages as full fat marriage. The only difference it will actually make is to queer clergy – and it’s about time that happened, and the cruelty ended.

    Incidentally, this is not about press-ganging into marriage. For traditionalist Society clergy who are worried they might be forced to marry their same-sex partners, this is plain and simple scaremongering nonsense, often delivered to you by hierarchs in order to scare you into playing ball. Nobody is being forced into same-sex marriages, queer or otherwise, but the option is simply being put on the table. If in conscience clergy don’t want to take it, then that’s up to them – that’s the benefit of generous hospitality. Nothing has been said about civil partnerships being taken off the table, and the whole point of this exercise is surely to be expansive, and not close things down.

    And yet there are a number of ‘conservative’ bishops who continue to rail against this hospitality, and whose consciences ‘must be respected’ (again, interesting how it’s only ever one way, isn’t it). They won’t license or ordain clergy in same sex marriages, whatever the church decides, they say – and again, fascinating to see that they are unlikely to apply any restrictions to clergy from elsewhere who officiate at such marriages, but only on the queers in them. Their ongoing threat of a postcode lottery is holding the whole thing up, and they’re once again holding us to ransom. And it is all an argument built on sand, because as they like to remind us, the Church of England hasn’t changed its doctrine of marriage – and as is entirely obvious, the Church doesn’t recognise the marital in marriage between people of the same sex. It’s a house of cards, and needs calling out.

    It is high time for the Church of England to return to a sense of balance and proportion, to focus on the pastoral and not the disciplinary, and to actively find ways to enable and release its clergy into the world so badly in need of the Gospel message. We have failed – disastrously – at doing this for queer clergy in the last ten years, and at last we have the opportunity to change that. We don’t agree – maybe we never will – on marriage. But we can, surely, agree on the primacy of the Gospel. It really is as simple as that.

  • A Sum Total of Nothing: The Prayers of Love and Faith Return to Synod

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

     

    Well, here we go again. Another set of consultations, conversations, demands that LGBTQIA people make themselves vulnerable, another set of raised hopes, quiet promises, and damned hard work, and…well, nothing. Nothing at all.

    It is almost unfathomable, yet entirely predictable, that we have ended up exactly where we started. This November Synod, where we had been told significant progress would be brought forward, what we are being given is absolutely sod all. Please don’t mistake this for hyperbole – I am speaking in simple factual terms. Nothing has changed. This is nothing, warmed up and then cooled down again, and presented as radical inclusion.

    Not only are we presented with a sum total of nothing, but we are back talking in the way some of us had hoped was now history. The Synod papers have next to nothing positive to say about LGBTQIA people, and we are back to the despicable language of both-sides-ism that the ‘apology’ (which has shown itself to be utterly meaningless) suggested we might have finally grown out of. The motion being presented has inexplicably returned to the language of pain ‘on both sides’, as though there is even a remotely comparable situation for LGBTQIA people and those who oppose us having even private prayers.  The motion doesn’t even mention us – we are once again at best an abstract issue, and at worst simply erased. It is hard to take any other message from this that they wish we didn’t exist, and they don’t really care that we do. We are ‘less than ideal’ (with very uncomfortable echoes of the Higton motion in 1987) – our lives are clearly, in the bishops’ view, a blight on the life of the church.

    The motion states, too, that we are in a ‘period of uncertainty’: we are not, a clear decision was made in February and the House of Bishops is actively choosing to frustrate its clear purpose. There is talk of ‘implementation’. Where, precisely, is this implementation?

    We have been told that we are not to see the results of the Pastoral Guidance until 2025! The bishops are attempting to impose two more years of Issues in Human Sexuality blighting the lives of LGBTQIA clergy, preventing married people from getting ordained, and handing coercive control over our loves and lives to the meanness and lack of imagination of episcopal discipline. The cruelty of this – a decision imposed by an (allegedly) entirely straight House of Bishops on LGBTQIA clergy, with ever-present calls for us to be patient. Enough. We have been patient enough – over thirty years of patience.

    It is a bare-faced lie to say that there is no draft guidance – I have seen it, and it has been presented to the House and College of Bishops. Very substantial votes in favour of change have been registered amongst the bishops. So what exactly is going on? We need to be told specifically what needs to be done for it to be brought back, and we need it to be brought back in February 2024 for final sign off at the very latest. We need, too, for Issues to be rescinded immediately, at this November Synod. As a wise priest friend said to me: what the bishops have done may be legal, but it is not honest. Bishops, it is time you remembered the wording of our ordination vows. Our obedience is not without caveats.

    The commended prayers are – extraordinarily – a backward step. They quite literally amount to no more than our being able to pray for the gays in the intercessions of a regular Evening Prayer – and nothing more. The accompanying document makes it clear that the prayers can be used privately or ‘only in acts of worship where Prayers of Love and Faith are not the principal focus or form’ (and the guidance bizarrely suggests that nonetheless we ought to warn our parishioners in advance in case they want to avoid the beastly homosexuals!). This means that the commended prayers serve no pastoral purpose whatsoever – absolutely nothing has changed. I repeat, nothing – the commended prayers change nothing. So out of years and years of patient work, all we can do is pray for people like we already could do, and now we are specifically banned from holding special services for them. This is a scandal and the General Synod must demand that this ridiculous, offensive, unacceptable stipulation is removed if this motion is to be passed.

    And finally, the accompanying document for discussion in Synod has gone against the express will of Synod by entirely errantly eliding the ‘doctrine of marriage’ (for which we might look to Canon B30) and ‘the place for sexual intimacy’. Laying aside the fact that the bishops have still not actually defined what that means (itself rendering Issues utterly meaningless), the press release from the Church of England contains within it a lie – stating that ‘Synod also voted for no change to the doctrine of the Church of England around marriage and sexual intimacy.’ No, it objectively and absolutely did not, and nor did it agree that the doctrine of marriage included the assertion that ‘marriage between one man and one woman’ is the ‘proper’ place for sexual intimacy.

    The bishops accepted (including alleged ‘affirming’ bishops) – foolishly, as we told them, time and time again – an amendment that stated that Synod ‘endorse[s] the decision of the College and House of Bishops not to propose any change to the doctrine of marriage, and their intention that the final version of the Prayers of Love and Faith should not be contrary to or indicative of a departure from the doctrine of the Church of England’. Synod also rejected two further amendments that stated that ‘sexual intercourse as an expression of faithful intimacy belongs within marriage exclusively’ (motion 44) and a motion that required ‘instructions making it clear that [the prayers] should not be used so as to indicate or imply affirmation of sexually active relationships outside Holy Matrimony or to invoke God’s blessing on such relationships’ (motion 68). Synod therefore specifically did not vote for no change on sexual intimacy when presented the opportunity to do so, and nor is there anything in our doctrine that supports the claims made that sexual intimacy and marriage are one and the same thing.

    Whoever drafted, or is ultimately responsible for, the press release and the paper accompanying the Synod motion is attempting to pull wool over the eyes of Synod and the wider church. Throughout the process, we have had long and fruitful conversations about teaching and doctrine, development and refinement, and yet here we are presented with a blunt and dishonest summary.

    Yet why are we surprised? The level of backroom deals, conservative backchannels, central church dishonesty, wink-wink nudge-nudge antics, power-play, poisoning with fear, secret promises, (arch)episcopal grandiosity, and silly letter writing has finally won out. It is now fascinating to see that the sad cabal of bishops who ‘dissented’ ultimately didn’t even want LGBTQIA people to get – nothing at all anyway!

    Well, the bishops should not be allowed to get away with it. The ‘affirming bishops’ need to take a stand, publicly, now. LGBTQIA people have spent quite long enough being the sacrificial lambs on the altar of unity – bishops, find some courage and speak for us, and that right soon. And frankly the ‘oh we don’t really know’ bishops need to recognise that that kind of fence-sitting has never been a Christian virtue, and most certainly is not now. We are real people whose lives are being wrecked by your indecision and refusal to look us in the eye. We carry the image and likeness of God in us, and you are marring God’s image when you slam the door in our faces.

    We have had enough. We have been taken for granted in Synod, and you should know, bishops, that you are no longer guaranteed inclusive votes based on private assurances. You are called to ‘serve and care’ for your whole flock, and that includes us. You are called to have a ‘special care’ for ‘the outcast and those who are in need’, speaking ‘for those who have no other to speak for them’. It is time to do so – and it is time to end this sham once and for all.

    You offered us bread but gave us a stone. You still have time to knead the dough.

     

     

     

     

  • Love Came Down at Christmas – For Some

    by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church in the University of Oxford; his book Sex and the Church: a History, is scheduled for publication in Autumn 2024

    Picture credit: Barry Jones

    Western society’s acceptance of homosexuality as one accepted variant in social relationships has been a breathtakingly fast process in comparison with most societal changes: it has been contained within my still not excessively venerable lifetime. Not surprisingly, the transformation has left some folk behind, for a variety of reasons, particularly those Christians for whom it disturbs particular views of biblical or ecclesiastical authority. It is easy for those who have got beyond such preoccupations to mock or belittle them, without realising the unexpressed depths of such negative feelings. Often that is because we (and they) do not know enough about the Christian past and what it contains. Here is one little story about the history of the Christian West and its homophobia.

    ‘Homosexuality’ is a very recently-coined word, the invention of a mid-nineteenth German/Hungarian journalist Károly Mária Kertbeny to describe what he regarded as a medically-defined behavioural disorder (another such disorder he named ‘heterosexuality’). While Kertbeny’s science now looks, well, mid-nineteenth century, his coinages have persisted to our own time when other nineteenth-century attempted word-inventions have fallen by the wayside; they have become central to some of the most bitterly-fought disputes in Christian Churches.

    Previously, the main Western Latin word for a variety of unusual sexual activities, some of which were between people of the same sex, was ‘sodomy’, a medieval coinage with an Old Testament reference. The word sodomia was popularised in the eleventh century by the reforming monk Peter Damian in his polemic ‘Book of Gomorrah’ (Liber Gomorrhianus). It was an inescapably negative theological term, on the analogy of the older Latin word blasphemia; thus Peter paired ‘sodomy’ with the sin of denying God, in the process ‘thinning and condensing’ the wrongdoing of the ill-fated biblical city of Sodom from malpractices that were originally much more various.

    Ivo Bishop of Chartres, Damian’s contemporary and the major influence on Western Christian canon law in his time, evolved the concept of ‘sins against nature’, in which same-sex acts were ‘always unlawful and beyond doubt more shameful than to sin by a natural use in fornication and adultery’; at least fornication and adultery were not active obstacles to the continuation of the species. All this marched in step with the developing Western Christian doctrine that marriage must necessarily involve the potential for reproductive sex. Any obstacle to reproduction was ‘against nature’, so the same acts committed between men and women, or solo masturbation, fell into the same category of sodomy.

    Most bizarre and extra-biblical of Western Christian claims about ‘sodomy’ was that the baby Jesus killed all sodomites, simply by being born in Bethlehem; he would not come into a world where there were people doing things ‘against nature’. This story is to be found in a couple of standard texts read or heard by the devout throughout the medieval West, and medieval England in particular. First was the thirteenth-century Latin anthology of saints’ lives by Archbishop Jacobus de Voragine known as The Golden Legend. Second was the Festial, a fourteenth-century compilation of vernacular sermons for English parish priests to use throughout the liturgical year, by an Augustinian Canon John Mirk, who drew much of his material from de Voragine. They cited authorities from the Early Church for their malevolent fable – Jerome and Augustine of Hippo – which is good evidence that it started life in learned and clerical circles before moving out to instruct the wider public.

    Distorting a remark in a sermon attributed to Augustine of Hippo, de Voragine and those echoing him claimed that at the birth of Christ all the ‘sodomites’ in the world had suddenly died, as committing ‘sins against kind’ [nature]. Christ delayed entering the world till they had all gone. Yet evidently this mass Christmas extinction proved not to be permanent, needing continuing vigilance from all right-thinking people. As I have explored the history of sex, gender and the family over two millennia of Christian history, I have noticed how casually medieval Westerners would allude to the Christmas sodomite massacre in writing about other spiritual matters. Moreover, the story has not been forgotten. The more unpleasant corners of the Internet persist in gleefully reminding the right-thinking of medieval Christ’s view of sodomy by repeating the tale, though anachronistically relating it to that nineteenth-century word ‘homosexuals’. I will not dignify such Internet sites by naming them, but if you want to try it for yourself, have a go at Googling ‘Christmas all sodomites died’.

    This is what modern Christians are up against as we struggle to come to a balanced view of how to deal with developments in sexuality over the last three hundred years: a background of fear and hatred based on clerical paranoia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We can do better than that, surely? Or we may have to order a new set of Christmas card designs.

     

    Further reading: M.D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, 1997), from whom comes that useful phrase ‘thinning and condensing’. For the original texts: R.W. Granger (ed. and tr.), Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: readings on the saints (Princeton NJ, 2012), legend no. 6. The Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ), citing Jerome as well as Augustine; S. Powell (ed.), John Mirk’s Festial (Early English Text Society 334-35, 2009, 2011), sermon no. 6, Nativity of Christ, citing Augustine.

     

  • Missing, Between Synods

    by Professor Helen King, lay preacher in the Diocese of Oxford, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender and Sexuality Group

    This is a funny old month. It started with what many members regarded as one of the worst Synods yet, and is ending in gloomy cold wet weather which makes those five very full days seem like a long time ago. So much at Synod was left unanswered, unresolved, and now here comes August – the month when the Church of England, along with other churches, seems to stop. In my parish, the choir has the month off, and the various groups take a pause from their activities. Sunday services remain otherwise unaffected, and we pray for those on their holidays, not always thinking of those who for whatever reason remain at home. At national level, too, it all stops: no more meetings of the assorted councils which run the Church of England until September.

    But maybe that’s not entirely the case; maybe the Archbishops’ Council meets, otherwise I am not sure how to understand the response from the Bishop of Stepney to a Question in July about the review published by the Independent Safeguarding Board just before it was dissolved – the Spindler report into the handling of the case of Mr X. She said that the outcome of a July meeting of the National Safeguarding Steering Group would be presented to the Archbishops’ Council (Q.108 here) and, since the Spindler report was expecting a response within 4 weeks, her response wouldn’t make much sense if the Archbishops’ Council won’t say anything until September. The most recent meeting of that NSSG listed online is dated 11 April 2023 (!) and I am not aware of any list of dates when the Archbishops’ Council meets or any record of what it does at its meetings.

    And that’s part of the feeling of ‘missing’. We don’t know who is meeting, we don’t know what they are discussing and we don’t know who makes the decisions. And yet here we are with – apparently – nothing happening.

    The contrast with the time at Synod couldn’t be greater. Synod feels frenzied, this July particularly so with both Living in Love and Faith and Safeguarding on the agenda, and with some days timetabled until 10 p.m. It’s all so intense: the two sessions of Questions, where various bodies of the C of E respond to questions sent in by Synod members, attracted a record number of questions – 237 – many of them, too, around those timetabled presentations on LLF and Safeguarding. The press release on the LLF presentation summarised it as ‘Synod members scrutinise work since February vote’ but I would hardly call listening to a presentation ‘scrutinising’. In answering one of the Questions on the LLF documents, the Bishop of Lichfield assured us that ‘we are working to bring draft guidance to the November meeting of the General Synod’ but then in the LLF presentation itself the Bishop of Guildford cast doubt on that timetable. So, even within the July Synod, it all depended on how you interpreted what was said.

    On the key topics of the July Synod, we kept hearing answers on the lines of ‘We don’t know but it may all be clear by Sunday’ or ‘We don’t know but we are working on it’. In fact on Sunday, the day of the Safeguarding presentation, the general atmosphere of mistrust came to a head. The presentation was due to have been by the members of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) but changed because the Board had just ceased to exist. The two members of that Board who were no longer able to present to us were in the public gallery and, after some convoluted attempts to find an appropriate standing order, were allowed to address us briefly. It remained unclear what had gone wrong and how it had been decided that the Board should cease to exist.

    And the confusion didn’t stop when we went home from Synod. In the days immediately afterwards, both Meg Munn and Maggie Atkinson published their own statements about what went wrong with the ISB. Then Archbishops’ Council met, and later on 20 July it was announced that Professor Alexis Jay, who had led IICSA, was going to come in to develop proposals for a fully independent safeguarding structure. Clearly, she hadn’t been approached the day before. Was this the plan all along? Who invited her to take this role?

    Thinking back to Synod, for me the low point was the attempt by Gavin Drake to bring to debate his motion asking for an independent inquiry into our Safeguarding structures. It failed, due to a requirement for a 75% majority to suspend the relevant standing order (SO 8 (1)). This was one of the many technical points which Synod members have to grasp. The standing order states that “Where a member in his or her private capacity tables a motion arising out of business specified in the agenda, the motion is to be subject to the time allowed in the agenda for the consideration of that business.” But the agenda had ‘timed business’ – business which has to start at the time specified – and this standing order meant that Gavin’s motion ran out of time. Many members of Synod were not in the debating chamber and so could not vote to suspend it and thus to allow his motion to be discussed, and there was no warning bell to bring them back in. And then Gavin resigned: a real loss to the House of Laity.

    As my fellow member for Oxford diocese, Mark Bennet, has commented, “The 75% rule is there for a reason, of course, but given the extraordinary circumstances, the instinct of so many members of Synod to deal with the issue rather than leaving it hanging had a great deal to commend it. There is now anger not addressed which will spill over into November and perhaps beyond.”

    And that’s the problem. Much is unresolved. Much remains unclear. We don’t meet again until November – a ‘bonus’ meeting, as usually we manage with two residential meetings, in February and July. Is the hope that all the upset, the confusion, the mistrust of July will have been forgotten by November? I somehow doubt it. And my own hope is that the many unanswered questions will be remembered rather than falling into the black hole of the month when everything stops in the Church of England.

  • Killing Fear and Freeing Conscience: Charting the Way Forward for our Life Together

    Questions of Conscience (2)

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

    Fear – especially confected fear – is never the answer to anything. We have seen that in so many different ways the church has gotten things wrong over the years, whether it is from the hushing up of grotesque abuse, to the way non-white, non-het, non-cis, non-male, non-wealthy, and disabled voices have been silenced, to the current impasse over sexuality that we might – finally – be seeing a way through. Where love is, there is God; where fear is, and certainly where that fear has been whipped up and used as a political tool, as a tool of power, there isn’t much God.

    As we look towards the conversations over the future of the Church of England’s engagement with LGBTQI people, I think we need to be ever alert to where fear is dwelling, and more importantly, where fear is being sown. Power is a complicated beast, but it is never far away from where we find that fear. And a fear that is sown for political gain is a dangerous, nasty, brutish thing. It is the antithesis of the Gospel.

    Which brings me to conscience, because an awful lot has been made of it in recent months, and yet the whiff of fear and power has never been far away. And it’s time it was called out.

    When we entered the Synod process in February, there was no such thing as ‘Pastoral Reassurance’ on the agenda, but as we look towards July – and further – this rather benign-sounding phrase has become very much front and centre in our way of finding how to live with one another if queer people get to form loving relationships that might just be offered God’s blessing. In the first instance, I don’t think we should beat about the bush – ‘Pastoral Reassurance’, in this context, means allowing for the consciences of those for whom the blessing of particular forms of love is a step too far. That is all well and good, though it is interesting that the consciences of LGBTQI people have essentially been ignored for the last fifty years in the church! We are where we are – and it’s encouraging to see conscience back on the agenda. But what has happened at the same time is a campaign, primarily – and shamefully – led by the Church of England Evangelical Council, who misleadingly represent themselves as the only evangelical voice. but one that has been promoted elsewhere too – albeit more quietly and subtly – that has made it clear that any appeal to ‘conscience’ is very much one way. And it’s not on.

    We’ve seen this in public comments about what ‘the doctrine of marriage’ is – arguments that present a fait accompli without showing any working, and without any willingness to recognise the reality of decisions made in Synod to bin Issues and move on, let alone enter sensible conversations about conscience for those of us who remain banned from intimacy with our loved ones. The ‘doctrine of marriage’ is clear, unambiguous, settled, complete, we are told, and thus there can be no blessing of sexually active same-sex/same-gender relationships without destroying that doctrine. The two-pronged attack, then, continues – one particular type of conscience must be respected, and yet still there must be no sex or intimacy for the gays. Absolute nonsense about bishops’ (and others’) ordination vows and the rest of it is being flung around the social media landscape, and yet a quiet, calm, serious reflection on what actually happened at Synod, and what doctrine actually is, makes it very clear that this is – frankly – rubbish.

    So let’s get a couple of things straight, as it were, before we entertain any more of this culture of fear and of one-sided narratives.

    The first – and most obvious –  is that the ‘doctrine of marriage’ is not static. Indeed, marriage itself as a construct is not static and it is totally ludicrous to argue that doctrine hasn’t developed to respond to changing cultural and societal realities. Similarly, it is by no means clear that the ‘doctrine of marriage’ as it is currently formulated inevitably forbids sexually active same-sex/gender relationships – in fact, there is a very strong argument that the opposite is true, not least in the mind of Synod. General Synod passed an amendment that supported no change in ‘the doctrine of marriage’ – foolishly in my mind, given it is clear that the only purpose of the amendment was to enter into the kind of tiresome power games we’re now seeing, however benign some bishops naively appear to have seen it to be. Yet Synod then roundly rejected the following wrecking motion that attempted to create Guidance that ‘include[d] instructions making it clear that they should not be used so as to indicate or imply affirmation of sexually active relationships outside Holy Matrimony or to invoke God’s blessing on such relationships.’ To reiterate, that fell – and it fell handsomely, with only one diocesan bishop in favour and every house convincingly voting against. For all the hot air and blether by those who are determined to hold us all to ransom to any one particular understanding of ‘doctrine’, Synod itself has offered a rebuke. Good try, as it were – but not quite good enough: a case of shooting oneself in the foot, perhaps.

    Which brings us back to conscience. Conscience has a good, long, honourable, Anglican history to it. Rigid, self-righteous, unimaginative definitions of doctrine have frequently brought people to the tribunal or the stake; imaginative, careful, thoughtful, conscience-respecting understandings of doctrine have led not only to healthier churches but amongst other things to the great leaps in ecumenism of the past century.

    So as we look ahead, we have the opportunity, and I would argue the obligation, to commit to two things. Both are absolutely central to finding a way forward in which we can live in harmony with one another, however uncomfortable we might find it. We need, all of us, to commit to freedom of conscience and – concurrently – freedom from fear. And I mean genuine freedom of conscience – a recognition that others have consciences in just the same way that we do, that others are not trying to destroy the church, that others are wanting to find ways to live together, that others might have something to add rather than simply take away. That we might not have all the answers, and that entry into conversation requires just that – genuine conversation. That we don’t own the Church of England, its doctrine, or – really – anything at all.

    But the respecting of conscience will not come if we are unwilling to lay down the sowing and promotion of fear. If we fail to do that, it will kill us as a church. If we fail to take that risky step of being willing to see Christ in those with whom we fundamentally, utterly, totally disagree, then we will not only fail in what we have to do, but we will fail in our fundamental calling as followers of Christ.

    Time will tell as to whether we are able – or rather, willing – to offer those with whom we disagree the courtesy of mutual recognition. Time will tell, too, whether we are willing to let go of the fearmongering. And time will tell, I might suggest, whether we are thus willing to grow more into the likeness of Christ – or recast Him in our own – rather narrow, rather dull, rather limited – image, instead.

  • Pressing ‘PAUSE’

    by Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, authorised lay preacher, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender & Sexuality Group

    Last week I saw the current Royal Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar. I hated it. In the first half I tried hard to find some positives, but by the interval I was convinced that this was an incoherent production which had managed to lose everything that really mattered. There were empty seats when the second half resumed, so it wasn’t just me and my friends who were unhappy. At the end, however, while most of us politely clapped – after all, the cast did their best in a production that failed to fly – several groups of under-20s enthusiastically stood and cheered. Part of the explanation for that was that some of them were Americans, and I know from seeing plays in America that standing ovation is the default setting rather than the exception. Part of it may just be that seeing a play in Shakespeare’s town is a very special experience. But it’s also likely that they saw something in this production which spoke to them, even though it alienated others. I’m not going to follow that thought any further here, into the context of different ways of ‘doing church’; maybe another day.

    One of the many ideas in the production which I thought didn’t really work was the projection of the word ‘PAUSE’ on the screen at the back after the assassination of Caesar. There followed a counted second-by-second two-minute pause in the action. I took that as a way of emphasising that one era had ended, and another was about to begin, but also as stressing that the assassins – the self-styled ‘liberators’ of the Republic – hadn’t worked out what to do next. Actually the pause lasted for longer than the timer stated, so it seemed rather pointless.

    Pauses are complicated. For most of us, the LLF process is currently in pause mode, although not for the bishops and others tasked with examining the implications of what was passed in February’s General Synod with a 57% vote in favour. And it’s certainly not in pause mode for those who were in the 43%. I’ve been criticised for continuing to ask of conservative evangelicals “In what would unity consist if your ‘settlement’ went ahead?” Rather than pausing to see what the bishops come up with, they are producing all sorts of ways to object, most recently the very sweet idea of a breakaway deanery chapter. This one seems to have been an own goal, leading to peak Anglican comments including “Were the biscuits mostly leftover custard creams?” and “Did they have the green cups and saucers?” but also raising serious questions around safeguarding.

    In a similar burst of words, there have been more comments than usual on a couple of recent posts on this site. Such discussions tend to happen in various Facebook groups or on Twitter, but since February that has changed. After a recent post, I decided to let those commenting have free reign, just to see what happened. Very quickly, the content of the comments became detached from the original post: people preached at each other, shouted at each other, expressed how injured and misunderstood they felt, and so on. I realised all I was doing was providing a place in which people could find targets for their anger. That didn’t feel helpful and it didn’t feel right. So I stopped my formal ‘approving’ of posts, and instead several of them tried to post to tell me I was biased (very funny, when I was blocking those of all views, and where the person had no idea what I was dealing with) or that I should be allowing ‘academic freedom’ (also funny, when nobody was offering any academic support for their views).

    Should I have stopped, or simply paused? Maybe I should have offered a ‘pause for reflection’ or a pause for thinking seriously about what a settlement would mean. I’m not convinced, though, that such a pause would have made a difference. And maybe that was the point of the Julius Caesar PAUSE – that, after it, things got worse, not better.

    Today we enter a week in which this blog will press ‘PAUSE’, not for two minutes, but for seven days. When I was being taught prose reading as a schoolgirl, I learned ‘the use of the pause’; knowing when a moment of silence before or after a word helped the listener to enter the meaning more deeply. Pausing can be powerful. In this Holy Week, however we mark it, can we all concentrate on the story we all share, and all tell: of a week two millennia ago which changed what it is to be human; of God who became one of us, who taught us how to live, who experienced the anger of those who did not share God’s vision of love and mercy, who was crucified and who rose again? PAUSE.

  • One Church? Secrecy, Unity and Temptation

    by Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, authorised lay preacher, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender & Sexuality Group

    It’s a year ago this month that I took over as guest editor of this blog. My post on taking up the role focused on how, to those outside the church, we look like a very strange social group. Looking back, has that changed? I think not. If anything, it has got worse.

    Last month, we had the long-awaited Synod debate on the Living in Love and Faith process (also known as ‘5 years of my life gone’). After hours of debate and yet more small group work, the bishops’ proposals were amended and passed with 57% in favour, and yet all that has really changed is that some conservative evangelicals have announced they are “compelled to resist”. I assume that, ahead of their meeting today, the bishops have been working out the membership of the various groups who will redraft the not-yet-allowed Prayers of Love and Faith and will write the pastoral guidance to replace the much-maligned Issues in Human Sexuality. As I write this, it remains unclear what – if anything? – will be presented to the July General Synod.

    In that blog post a year ago I remembered being part of the Diocesan Shared Conversations process which the C of E went through in 2015 and feeling that “I was desperate to find a way in which we could live together with respect being shown to those who read the Bible and tradition differently.” Little did I know then that – in my role as vice-chair of the Gender & Sexuality Group on General Synod – I would be invited to join the St Hugh’s Conversations. Tentative feelers came my way shortly after I took over this blog. I was initially horrified to find that this group existed and that it had been discussing how to split the C of E. Not “a way in which we could live together” so much a way we could live apart, with some of us welcoming same-sex marriage and others rejecting it. It made me feel physically sick. Once I had googled the group – and found nothing, confirming how well the secret had been kept – I realised that I probably should have guessed someone somewhere had already been working on the options. Because the group was secret, I couldn’t discuss it with anyone outside it, and that made it feel even worse.

    I wasn’t able to attend their meeting immediately before the July 2022 General Synod so my first experience of St Hugh’s (other than reading the file of various documents batted back and forth over the years) was in November 2022. At that meeting it was agreed that the high level of secrecy no longer needed to be maintained, not least because published comments by both Bishop Steven Croft and Vaughan Roberts had made it clear that such a group existed; we were therefore free to refer to the group, but not to name its members or attribute anything said there. I mentioned it in passing in a blog post soon after, and my fellow participant Simon Butler also mentioned it in his open letter to the Bishop of Southwark. Nobody was very interested, other than the English Churchman (A Protestant Family Newspaper) which became quite excited (“secret conversations come to light”) and that story was picked up by Anglican Mainstream. The English Churchman asked the Church of England Evangelical Council what was going on and shared their (deliberately vague?) response:

    For several years, CEEC has been talking with both those who share our views and those who disagree on the topic of human sexuality. CEEC has explored, in a number of articles, the idea that visible and robust differentiation might provide a solution to the fundamental theological incompatibility that exists around this issue within the CofE.

    Other than Simon and me, I am not aware of anyone else who has revealed they are part of St Hugh’s – is that because the conservative evangelicals in the room are embarrassed to have been part of a ‘secret’ group? Such a worry about secrecy would seem ironic when they are in churches which are not transparent about their own policies on women in ministry or on LGBTQIA+ people; something SCM’s Honest Church campaign is highlighting.

    In his open letter, Simon commented that “The uniting spirit of the St Hugh’s Conversations is a desire to bring to a conclusion the battle over sexuality that has beset the Church since 1987 … We believe – at least tentatively – that now must be the time to find a settlement which will suit us all. I have come to agree with this position.” I am less persuaded. What would ‘differentiation’, a ‘settlement’, look like? More ‘flying bishops’, deals between dioceses, another Province within the Church of England? A bishop for any combination of views on women and on LGBTQIA+ people? What sort of ecclesiology is that? I’ve now asked three times at St Hugh’s, “In any such settlement, in what would unity consist?” And I still haven’t had an answer.

    Let’s just look at what one congregation, Vaughan Roberts’ church, St Ebbe’s Oxford, has now done. Oxford has four bishops, none of whom support the CEEC. Vaughan Roberts states that

    St Ebbe’s clergy have already declared that we are in impaired communion with the bishops in our diocese, which means that we will not welcome them to preach, confirm, ordain or conduct our ministerial reviews, and we will not take communion with them.

    No unity there, then. Not even taking communion ‘with’ a bishop? That’s not “impaired” communion – it’s no communion at all. Not having your ministerial review with your diocesan bishops? Surely this is already saying that they are not in the same church? I wrote about my suspicions here when I noticed that some General Synod members weren’t even willing to attend the service at York Minster with the rest of us. Again I ask: in what does our unity consist, even now?

    In a recent post on this site, Charles Read noted that the desire to have a bishop who agrees with you on everything is something new. It’s been pointed out many times that conservative evangelicals have managed to stay in the C of E while disagreeing with the decisions on women priests, women bishops, marrying people who have previously been divorced, allowing priests to be in civil partnerships …  Where women bishops are concerned, a congregation which won’t accept their bishop can have a ‘flying bishop’ instead. Would such a congregation refuse to take communion with a bishop who is a woman, or a bishop who has ‘laid hands on’ a woman in consecrating her as a bishop or in ordaining her as a priest? Would they listen to a sermon preached by a person who accepts that women can be bishops?

    And now CEEC has raised the stakes yet again. Just when we thought the issue was gay sex, and so long as you didn’t do anything sexual then you could still be accepted in their churches, now it’s not OK to be in a committed relationship with someone of the same sex, even if you’re not doing anything you think counts as sexual. So what does that mean for clergy in civil partnerships: a relationship which the C of E had been allowing on the grounds that it wasn’t sexual? In one of the many supporting Q and A documents they offer, CEEC reject even CPs: being in “covenanted relationships such as civil partnerships so long as they don’t engage in sexual intimacy” is forbidden because such relationships are still “based on a temptation”.

    When you think of how little time in a marriage is spent feeling temptation or in “sexual intimacy”, it does seem to me that the conservative evangelical view of the marriage bond is dangerously skewed. The most conservative approach of all, I think, is the one they reject: simply to rejoice in marriage as a faithful and committed relationship for two people to live in, and to open it to any two people who are willing and able to make the marriage vows.

  • The Unholy Alliance

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

    Alliances are the bread and butter of politics. Whether it’s formal coalitions or back room deals, nobody who plays the politics game can ever truly pretend to keep their hands clean. The Church of England is no exception – not least since questions of sex and marriage have now become the latest political football. It’s easy to sink into a deep frustration about the fact that – yet again – LGBTQI+ people are forced into being the means and not the ends of yet another political fight, but there is one alliance which really needs to be called out for the extremely destructive force it might become, for all concerned and for the whole church. For it is becoming clearer and clearer that ‘traditionalist’ catholics – those who oppose the ordination of women as priests and bishops – are, at least in their official pronouncements and ecclesial bodies – joining forces with conservative evangelicals and pretending to present a unified front. It’s politically expedient, for now – but it’s theologically incoherent and ultimately inept and, unless traditionalists are careful, they are going to end up in a very sticky position.

    Because the reality is that, despite their apparent agreement – that ‘the sacrament of marriage’ is for man-woman only (ignoring, conveniently, the ‘lifelong’ element which is usually attached to that) – their theological rationale and indeed entire conception of marriage is fundamentally different. It is, incidentally, fascinating to see which hill people are willing to die on – I can’t imagine the evangelicals of years-gone-by being so willing to call marriage a sacrament! It is, presumably, the lack of actual agreement that leads to the theological thin-gruel found in the rather embarrassing trad-cath-con-evo paper that stands up to very little scrutiny yet which is ‘wholly endorsed’ by the traditionalist bishops. They might come to the same conclusion, but the working is very, very different – and it’s extraordinary dishonest to suggest otherwise.

    The key element here that most demonstrates the lack of agreement is the question of whether gay sex – even gay relationships (in fact, even gay celibate friendships, as the most recent iteration of the CEEC’s charming advice suggests) – is a salvation issue. That is, does this damn us to hell or not. And the truth is that whilst the CEEC and their heavies think that it is and that it does, the vast majority of traditionalists do not. Traditionalists, in the main, see this as a doctrinal issue of catholic order – one that may indeed even change in the wider church at some point, but which the Church of England has no authority to change unilaterally (whether one buys that particular argument is for another day). Many traditionalist priests I speak to are sick and tired of the political alliance that has been formed, because they are longing to find ways to be pastorally accommodating to same-sex couples while holding to a ‘traditional’ doctrine of the sacrament itself.

    And we really need to name the elephant in the room, because as Christians, particularly if we are in public ministry, we are called to truth, not to so-called ‘discretion’ which is ultimately a lie. That elephant is that there are plenty of traditionalist clergy having sex with men – often in committed and loving relationships. And this matters because if some traditionalist clergy are in relationships, and are having gay sex, they need to be able to justify this theologically, or stop doing it – or the whole thing is a sham. We bring everything to God – and thus we must bring everything to our theology. ‘Pastoral accommodation’ is personal – and theological. And it is utterly theologically impossible to hold this perspective together with the conservative evangelical argument about a ‘salvation issue’ – even if it is politically useful. Ends very rarely justify means – particularly when those means sow dishonesty and mistruths.

    And before there are the usual howls of faux-outrage and disgruntlement that someone could ‘say such a thing’ about traditionalist clergy – enough, already. I have been to many an event where traditionalist clergy partners are very clearly visible. I’ve been on pilgrimages where they’re sharing rooms. I’ve sat opposite traditionalist clergy with their boyfriends at supper who are quite open – provided it’s not too open – that they’re in a sexual relationship. I have traditionalist friends for whom this is their normal lived experience. Don’t tell me it’s not happening – we see it with our own eyes. It’s not an opinion – it’s a fact.

    Now don’t get me wrong – I’m delighted that trad clergy have found boyfriends, partners, whatever you want to call it – though please do try to avoid the euphemistic and ultimately hypocritical nonsense about lodgers and ‘special friends’. But what drives me absolutely round the bend is the hypocrisy.

    We don’t live in a tweedocracy of the Edwardian era, where everything was terribly nudge-nudge wink-wink, and clergy had their secret clandestine affairs with young men. The current situation is not only infantilising to the clergy and partners involved; it patronises the laity, it is clericalist in the most unappetising way, and it is ultimately a potential safeguarding risk. Dancing around the issue, refusing to be honest and open, is as potentially dangerous as it is pathetic.

    Now before I get accused of painting with too broad a brush, of course I accept and recognise that there are plenty of traditionalist clergy who abhor this kind of clandestine rubbish. That applies both those who would demand celibacy of gay clergy and those who would hope for some change in practice, in doctrine, or even – dare I say – in welcoming same-sex marriage in churches. But the traditionalist bishops have made a big mistake in pretending that there is a singular ‘Society’ perspective on this, as has the traditionalist leadership in the church’s political sphere, because they risk making hypocrites of the whole enterprise by looking to politics rather than theology. And traditionalists can do better than that.

    If traditionalists are going to oppose same-sex marriage on catholic grounds, then they are going to need to face the question of sex head on and find some answers. If you’re going to stop same-sex couples getting married – the Christian normative place for sex – then you either have to demand celibacy of all same-sex couples – yourself included – or you need to do the theological work to think about why sex outside of marriage might be theologically acceptable.

    That latter task – talking about sex in a theologically sensible way – is one that the church corporate needs to get its teeth into as the Pastoral Guidance is drawn up, given the refusal of the Church of England to take what is ultimately the more conservative option and open marriage up to people of the same sex, and hence keep sex within marriage. The traditionalist camp can either bury their heads in the sand and pretend they’re best mates with the CEEC, or they can be honest and play their part in actually talking about the issue at hand.

    Of course being honest and grappling with this, recognising there isn’t a single view or narrative, isn’t going to be easy – but the cross isn’t meant to be easy. Courage, friends – let your yes be yes and your no be no. Your integrity demands it.

  • Learning from history: LLF and the ordination of women

    by April Alexander, Member of General Synod 2000-21; Church Commissioner 2008-18

    (Editor’s note: this article is based on letters originally published in the Guardian (7 February 2023) and Church Times (3 February 2023). They are reprinted here both to underline the point that there is a long history behind the LLF debate, and to draw out the parallels – and warnings – that can be drawn from the processes that eventually led to the ordination of women)

     

    Among the comments about the House of Bishops document debated at the February General Synod were many which implied that the anti-discrimination campaign for gay priests in the Church of England began about a decade ago.

    That is not the case. It began in 1987 when Tony Higton’s private motion was debated at General Synod declaring that homosexuality, adultery and fornication are “sinful in all circumstances”. The matter had not been discussed in General Synod before that, although there were around 400 Anglican clergymen in the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement at the time. It is probably true to say that many congregations were oblivious and, according to Jeffrey John, the future Archbishop of York did not trouble himself at all about it.

    Synod passed the motion not as originally worded but in another, only slightly less draconian, version stating that “fornication and adultery are sins against this ideal” – the ideal of sexual intercourse being something “which belongs properly within a permanent married relationship” – and “that homosexual genital acts also fall short of this ideal, and are likewise to be met by a call to repentance and the exercise of compassion”. Terry Louden, who spoke in the debate, has noted that “There was the air of a witch-hunt around at the time.”

    In the wake of these discussions the Rochester Group was set up, which published a Discussion Document suggesting that, while homosexual acts were acceptable for lay people, clergy should abstain. The discussion document, despite its status, was not discussed in Synod but this central new requirement for the clergy had not only become– apparently – part of the doctrine of the Church, but ordinands and clergy were required to sign up to it as Issues in Human Sexuality. A recent question in General Synod elicited the surprising information that there was no record anywhere of Synod or the House of Bishops having decided this or agreed to it.

    In 2003 Jeffrey John was offered the Bishopric of Reading and conservative evangelicals in the Oxford Diocese secured his withdrawal from the post through the then-Archbishop of Canterbury. This prompted the foundation of Inclusive Church which has struggled since to achieve affirmation, gratitude and love for the very many gay priests in the Church of England.

    Now, after the February 2023 debate, there is to be another ‘Pastoral’ group to consider whether it is yet possible to love and affirm our gay priests and whether the time is right to dispense with the intrusive questioning of ordinands which turns out never to have had the blessing of General Synod at all. So far, the issue has run for nearly forty years; it has caused misery to many and detriment to the Church. Many would consider there is very little to discuss but the Archbishop was far from unequivocal recently on the matter and meanwhile it stands as an extra hurdle for gay priests being considered for the Episcopate.

    Another of the many issues raised by the LLF debate is the relationship between the Church of England and Parliament; between the established church and the law of the land. MPs are currently demanding that the Church should allow the marriage of same sex couples in CofE churches. Sir Tony Baldry even outlined the way in which Parliament could impose the will of MPs and peers by “introducing a Private Member’s Bill with the effect of permitting Church of England priests to marry same-sex couples” (Church Times 7 February 2023).

    Here, it is worth remembering the history of the ordination of women in which Parliament also had a keen interest. In 1992, the General Synod passed a relatively simple measure to allow women to become priests, but not to impose them where a parish wanted to maintain the then-established position of appointing only male priests. That did not satisfy the Ecclesiastical Committee (a joint committee of MPs and peers) of the time and they demanded “protection” and “safeguarding” against women priests for those who “needed” it, by means of an Act of Synod. The church had no alternative but to oblige – and complicated arrangements were agreed whereby conservative evangelical and Anglo-Catholic parishes could opt out of the new regime and elect not to appoint women priests or to consider them for posts.

    Worse than this, because neither Conservative Evangelicals nor the Catholic wing could “trust” their Diocesans who supported and even ordained women as priests, the Act of Synod dictated that there should be not one but two categories of Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEVs) (“flying bishops”) to provide Episcopal oversight for them: one category for the Conservative Evangelicals and another for the Catholics. A particular stipulation for the Catholic wing was that, in order to remain in communion with their Catholic flocks, such bishops could neither ordain women nor receive the Eucharist from them. More than that, neither they, nor their flock could receive the Eucharist from any bishop who had laid hands on a woman in ordination. One such Anglo-Catholic was recently consecrated bishop separately from his three colleagues (one of whom was female) for this reason. The two services took place at different times on the same day, 2 February 2023, both in Canterbury.

    These divisions within the C of E have not only survived but increased in intensity. That was the reason why legislating for women as bishops took so long and was so difficult – and the reason why we have so few women bishops today (25% of newly appointed diocesan bishops after seven years).

    Similar but not identical divisions are also evident today with regard to same-sex marriage; dissenters have become emboldened over the last thirty years and they insist not just that same-sex marriage cannot take place in church but that the relationship of same sex couples cannot be blessed there. This is despite the fact that same sex marriage in church can occur in our neighbouring Anglican Provinces of Scotland and Wales. These dissenters are largely on the evangelical wing and have huge support from some churches in the Anglican Communion worldwide, although by no means all.

    It is interesting to speculate whether, had parliamentarians left the church to its own devices in 1992, it would be in a very different position now. The examples of the Act of Synod, the provisions made around women bishops, and the continuing discrimination that have resulted are very relevant to consider at a time when some conservatives are calling for “structural differentiation”.

     

    Further reading

    Judith Maltby, ‘Gender and Establishment: Parliament, “Erastianism” and the Ordination of Women 1993-2010’ in Mark Chapman, Judith Maltby and William Whyte (eds), The Established Church. Past, Present and Future (Continuum, 2011)

  • Being Invisible While Anglicans Debate Marrying Same-Sex Couples

    by Savitri Hensman, author of  “Sexuality, Struggle and Saintliness” and LGBTI+ equality activist, writer and involvement coordinator

    In February 2023, the Church of England’s General Synod voted to welcome a proposal by bishops for optional prayers for blessing same-sex couples, though weddings were not on offer. Also a much-criticised document which was used to ban married gays from ministry – Issues in Human Sexuality – was to be scrapped. This was a modest but significant step towards greater inclusion of LGBTQI+ people, though far from enough (1).

    There were strong negative reactions from those most opposed to change, in the UK and parts of the wider Anglican Communion; the Communion had been mentioned at various points in the debate, mainly with regard to the hazards of moving forward. Church of England leaders were accused of putting Western cultural above biblical values and some challenged the Archbishop of Canterbury’s fitness to chair the Communion, though many think existing structures outdated in any case. Following Synod, at an Anglican Consultative Council gathering in Ghana, Justin Welby made a rather defensive speech, criticising secular British culture and MPs’ warnings about parliamentary consequences if equal marriage in church did not go ahead, but indicating that those in favour of greater inclusion also sought to follow Scripture.

    In recent debates, LGBTQI+ people of Global Majority Heritage (GMH) have, I think, been mainly invisible, except occasionally as victims of (now and then protestors against) homophobia and transphobia (2). This seems strange, partly because there are a lot of us, who may be affected in multiple ways by the changes which are proposed or resisted. What is more, some have influenced shifts in churches and society. Each has a unique experience and perspective; the dangers of sweeping generalisations about categories of humans should, by this point in history, be clear. However, there may be areas of common ground among many, if not all.

    I am a British Sri Lankan lesbian, born and baptised in what was then Ceylon. I arrived in this country in the ‘60s as a small child but remained a citizen for the first three decades or so of my life and am still connected. My late partner was of Jamaican descent, my family and friends are from diverse backgrounds. My late parents were active in Asian and wider Southern theological circles. I agree with some “conservatives” that many affirming Church of England members underestimate the importance of the Anglican Communion – but I draw entirely different conclusions.

    Like Anderson Jeremiah, the Communion I know is far from homogenous. And, echoing Jarel Robinson-Brown, the notion of a “liberal” West pitted against a “traditionalist” South is simply untrue, though slavery and colonialism alongside other kinds of injustice have influenced patterns of oppression and resistance.

    With some Synod speakers, I fear for Nigerian Anglicans’ safety. But many already face horrific violence because they are LGBTQI+ or on religious grounds, despite church leaders there inflaming hatred of LGBTQI+ people and bishops here repeatedly stalling moves towards inclusion. Murderous fundamentalists will keep persecuting Christians while this bolsters their own power. Given my own island’s blood-soaked recent history, I understand concerns about increasing the vulnerability of those for whom one cares. Yet, as also pointed out at Synod, some of those seeking affirmation of their love are themselves refugees. And I believe that consistently upholding compassion and human rights for all, and challenging fundamentalism and inequality, offers the best hope of overcoming violent division.

    Justice, mercy, human and Divine love

    In the mid-twentieth century, Lambeth Conference gatherings proclaimed that all people were equally the objects of God’s love and urged support for human rights; affirmed that all Scripture must be interpreted in the light of Christ; and acknowledged “our debt to the host of devoted scholars who, worshipping the God of Truth, have enriched and deepened our understanding of the Bible, not least by facing with intellectual integrity the questions raised by modern knowledge”.

    Such ideas did not simply emerge from an enlightened (or degenerate) West. Struggles against slavery and colonialism, as well as the Holocaust, had helped to demonstrate the dangers of treating some people as less than fully human, while rebels across the world strove for freedom, humanity and greater equality. And a version of Christianity distorted by the interests, and norms, of the rich and powerful in the West had been deeply damaging, though the Good News sometimes shone through nevertheless. Diversity in sexuality and gender identity in some countries was sometimes seen as a sign of heathen backwardness.

    Sometimes biblical passages were used to “prove” God’s backing for inequity or even cruelty, ignoring the Bible’s broader emphasis on justice and mercy and God’s presence in and with the marginalised, as well as Jesus’ bold challenge to religious leaders who disregarded human need and emphasis on the law of love. At the same time, “reason” and “experience” were also sometimes harnessed in oppressive ways, a reminder of the risks of over-confidence that one possesses the full truth. Narrow nationalism and uncritical allegiance to the state has also often been disastrous.

    I remember how, in South Africa and the USA, numerous supporters of racist segregation were convinced this reflected their faithfulness to the Bible. Selective use of Scripture and tradition was also used to underpin economic oppression and women’s subjugation – and, evidence increasingly indicated, not offering LGBTQI+ people the same opportunities to grow spiritually in faithful, self-giving relationships. When I was young, organisations such as the World Council of Churches and Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians helped create space for anti-racist and more broadly liberatory theology to be shared and developed.

    In different parts of the South, churches took varying paths, especially when social tensions heightened and scapegoating intensified. As in the West, bishops did not represent everyone, though there have been inspirational figures like Desmond Tutu. Sometimes anti-LGBTQI+ laws and norms left over from colonial times were enforced with fresh vigour, at times with backing from institutional churches. Yet creative thinking has also gone on, often exploring how to respond to God’s call, amidst multiple inequalities and divisions, to build a world where all are valued.

    Following God, not culture

    When I came to Britain, men could be jailed for gay relationships. GMH people in the West, and ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka, have often faced prejudice from neighbours and mistreatment from the state.

    Cultures and states do not deserve absolute allegiance, though God can sometimes work through these. The liberatory thread running through the Bible, despite human fallibility, offers more; and openness to the Spirit in seeking a more loving, merciful world. LGBTQI+ GMH Christians, among others, have useful insights to offer.

     

    References

    (1)Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex – but please note that this term is used broadly for a range of people who, across cultures and history as well as on an individual basis, might describe themselves in varying ways, some of which might not be easily translated into English.

    (2) This may include people of African, Asian and Latin American descent or descended from the original peoples of North America or Australasia, who make up most of the world’s population. Some people prefer other terms, such as ‘people of colour’. On various aspects of diversity, I am fairly flexible about the terms or sets of initials used to describe me, if not too rude!