ViaMedia

Category: Marriage

  • Playing the Victim

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

    There is often a very British reticence to ‘victimhood’. Whether it’s the stereotype of the stiff upper lip, or the willingness to ‘keep calm and carry on’, we are not known as a nation of victims. ‘Stop whingeing and get on with it’, as my school teachers used to say – and in the main, we do. ‘Playing the victim’ gets us less sympathy, and is far more likely to make us enemies.

    It has been interesting, then, to see the pernicious and yet all-pervasive narrative of victimhood seeping its way through some parts of the Church of England in recent months. In the wake of the bishops of the church putting forward a proposal that removes the impediment to us blessing a same-sex couple in the same way that we might bless a car or a plant pot, many of those for whom this would apparently be the ‘one step too far’ moral outrage have turned up the volume on their campaign to tell bishops about just how hurt they are by the whole thing.

    It remains surprising, of course, that there are people who cannot bear the idea of compromise and who appear to believe that agreeing to disagree on whether we can bless other people’s relationships will destroy the very foundations of their Christian faith. It’s important to distinguish, I think, between those who hold to this view quite genuinely, however bizarre many of us might find it, and those who are weaponizing it in a last gasp as they see their iron grip on power falter.  The former group are those whose worries and fears need to be listened to – and insofar as they are genuine, addressed. The latter – through their campaign – are doing their best, inadvertently, to ensure that this will not be the case.

    Not a day seems to go by without yet another asinine and misleading ‘question’ or statement being released on the Church of England Evangelical Council’s Twitter feed. To save the delicate stomachs of some readers who would prefer not to trawl the whole thing, here are some highlights. We have been told (several times) that the bishops are ‘denying’ the faith ‘due to cultural pressure’; we have had some very bizarre selective scriptural quotes from Revelation; we have had the usual claptrap about the fact that something legal advice specifically states is not a change of doctrine is, in fact, a change of doctrine; we’ve heard nonsense about how the changes coming are ‘theologically compromised and pastorally confusing’; and that old chestnut, the ‘lifestyle’ choice, is back with a vengeance. None of this is new – much of it is dishonest.

    Yet whilst these repeated tropes are tiresome and often – quite frankly – silly, the worst to come out of the campaign is the barefaced attempt to present those who are attempting to roll back Synod’s decision as ‘victims’. Let’s be absolutely clear about this suggestion – it is utterly ridiculous, and not only ridiculous, but insulting. For years there has been a conservative stranglehold on the policies of the Church of England, with bishops apparently too scared to say what they really think until they leave office, and a tacit acceptance that unity is quite reasonably built on the backs of queer people. At last, that wicked, immoral consensus is crumbling. It is staggering how shameless those who have fought against any liberation for queer people are now being.

    We are told that the introduction of voluntary, opt-in prayers of blessing are an existential threat to those who choose not to offer them. We are told that it is unacceptable that those who say LGBTQI people should be celibate will now have to admit to it. We are told that any compromise position, any opportunity to offer anything whatsoever to queer people, is an act of victimisation towards conservative evangelicals. We are told that it is imperative that queer clergy must not be sexually intimate and must be punished if they are, and that this is the red line. Blithe nonsense about cancel culture abounds; misrepresentation of facts, and of the reality of power structures, is front and centre. It is scandalous. As a recent Tweet from the CEEC campaign apparently unironically stated, ‘we are for respecting people, even when we disagree on theological conclusions’ – perhaps it’s time to put that into action, folks.

    The thing is, the Church of England and its hierarchy should be willing and able to challenge this ratcheting up of confected terror, rather than imbibe it and be scared by it. The Church of England has produced something rather valuable in the Pastoral Principles, yet there seems to be precious little recognition of how these relate to this recent campaign. There is little point having these principles written down if they are not going to be put into practice – and it is about time some leadership was shown and people held to account. Yet as ever it is queer people who are told to calm down and have warmer hearts.

    The apology to LGBTQI people from the House of Bishops is not worth the paper it’s written on if nobody is willing to stand up for us. Since the Synod vote, little to no comment has been made on how those of us who are LGBT face discrimination on a constant basis from wider society, let alone from the church. LGBT people face genuine and real oppression and are openly victimised, targeted and discriminated against. Trans people are murdered across the world, year by year. Gay young people in parts of sub-Saharan Africa are taken out of their homes and killed. I do not understand why there is such an oppressive and overwhelming silence on this issue. If we’re looking for real victims in all of this, a good place to start – for example – would be the queer folk of Uganda. Yet a month’s wait for anything – at all – to come out of Lambeth (and there is still nothing out of the Anglican Communion Office or GAFCON) in response to the Archbishop of Uganda’s blasphemous support for criminalisation of LGBTQI people is hardly the ‘speaking into silence’ that the Pastoral Principles demand. It’s simply not good enough, and if this is the trajectory, then the feigned apology is nothing more than an insult.

    Those who are promoting the CEEC campaign and its messages need to take a long, hard look at themselves. A false narrative of victimhood – a genuine ‘playing the victim’ – is not only a tactic that flies directly in the face of the Pastoral Principles, but one that flies directly in the face of our belonging to Jesus Christ. And the leaders of our church need to step up and speak into what is going on here, instead of running scared. Doing so behind closed doors is not enough – we are being publicly attacked day after day, and there is nothing whatsoever being said to support us.

    Queer people have put up with ‘just getting on with it’ for too long – and we’re being taken advantage of. Just because we don’t constantly play the victim doesn’t mean we’re not hurting. Many – most – of us are. We’re living in a church that tolerates and doesn’t love us, and now we’re living in a church that is willing to tacitly accept that – once again – we’re the problem. We still do not matter – we are still an issue.

    It’s time – in fact, it’s well beyond time – for our leaders to practise what they preach. We’ve been hung out to dry quite long enough.

  • Freedom of Conscience: Sauce for the Gander?

    Questions of Conscience (1):

    opening a new series of posts offering reflections on this theme

    by Canon Giles Goddard, Vicar of St John’s, Waterloo and a consultant to the LLF Implementation Pastoral Reassurance Working Group

    We are hearing a lot about freedom of conscience at the moment. Some who oppose the introduction of Prayers for Love and Faith (PLF) are seeking assurances that they will be free to act according to their conscience, or that they will not be required to act against their conscience. In an open letter on 10th Feb 2023 the Archbishop asked the forbearance of the Diocese of York “as the work is done to ensure that freedom of conscience is properly respected.”

    The appeal to conscience is often seen as an ultimate moral arbiter, particularly among those who would resist what they see as innovations. Readers of this blog may remember ‘Cost of Conscience,’ an organisation which was vocal in the earlier years of this century in opposition to the ordination of women. Conscience is much cited amongst those opposed to abortion.

    I was glad to be asked to write something for Via Media on the subject, not least because I have been drawn back into the Living in Love and Faith process as a consultant to the Pastoral Reassurance Working Group. So I have been reflecting on and reading around the nature of conscience, and what status it might have in current discussions about ethical and liturgical practice within the Church of England.

    The word ‘conscience’ is an elision of two Latin roots; con and scio: meaning something like ‘knowing with’ or ‘knowing alongside.’ Conscience tends to be focused inwards, towards the actions of the self. According to philosopher Alberto Giubilini, there are in the history of philosophy four predominant understandings of conscience: it can be seen as a faculty for self-knowledge and self-assessment, or as having an epistemic function in the sphere of morality, or as a motivational force, or as a set of self-identifying moral beliefs. Within the Anglican tradition it is, according to this very helpful lecture by Revd Dr. Michael Hull of the Scottish Episcopal Church, “that God-given capacity that allows us to adjudicate the rightness of our action and also to show, fully, our integrity to God.”

    In other words, conscience is not the absolute arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. It is the human capacity to identify, to ourselves, what we understand to be the right course of action in an ethical context. Thomas Aquinas recognised that conscience may err. John Calvin saw conscience as a battleground: “the enemies who rise up in our conscience against his Kingdom and hinder his decrees prove that God’s throne is not firmly established therein.”   The dictate of conscience is based on a number of factors: for Christians, on the Word of God, yes – but also on reason, experience and the culture and communities within which we live.

    Thus conclusions reached according to conscience can be diametrically different. Those who are willing to carry out abortions would often appeal to their consciences in so doing, taking into account their duty as medical professionals and their responsibilities to their patients. Others will not carry out abortions, citing conscientious objection as sufficient ground for refusal.

    Similarly, in relation to PLF, radically different conclusions are supported by appeals to conscience. Many who have or who would wish to offer prayers of blessing for same sex couples would be clear that they are acting in accordance with their conscience. My own reading of scripture, reason and tradition, as well as experience, leads me to the clear conclusion that I would be acting against my conscience in refusing to seek God’s blessing on a same-sex relationship.  Others, notably conservative evangelicals, appeal to conscience in rejecting PLF, reading the same scriptures I read but drawing very different conclusions.

    Conscience can also confuse. Huckleberry Finn famously feels that he has acted against his conscience when he helps slave Jim to escape from his aunt:

    The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last … it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven.

    The appeal to conscience by conservatives seems to me in any event to be a distraction from the core discussion, for at no point during the entire LLF process has any suggestion been made that anyone opposed would be required to offer prayers of blessing. Nor has any suggestion been made that their position in the Church of England would be in any way compromised by a refusal to offer PLF.

    What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, though. It is very possible to imagine a situation where a priest and a PCC may wish to offer Prayers of Love and Faith within a Diocese or Area where the bishop is opposed. What then? Do we need safeguards in place to ensure that the freedom of conscience exercised by a progressive priest does not undermine their place in the Church of England? Alternative episcopal oversight?

    This from Alberto Giubilini:

    Far from being a conversation-stopper, conscience can only find its proper place in philosophical and in public discussion if its philosophical and psychological aspects are teased out, defined and assessed. Appeals to conscience can only be part of philosophical, political, and legal discussion if they are seen as the start, not the end of discussions.

    As we move forward in the conversations about pastoral reassurance, perhaps an initial step will be to note that conscience is not, of itself, an arbiter of right thinking. The Living in Love and Faith process has, over six years, carefully unpicked the theological, scriptural, experiential and historical complexities of human relationships, sexuality and God’s love.

    It’s quite clear that it is not going to be easy to square the circle, but I hope that we can recognise that the appeal to conscience is no less straightforward than anything else in this process.

     

     

     

  • Equal Marriage – 1928 Style

    Revd Canon Dr Judith Maltby is Chaplain, Fellow and Dean of Welfare of Corpus Christi College, Reader in Church History in the University of Oxford, and a member of the General Synod of the Church of England.

    One of the things that struck me forcibly during the February 2023 debate on Living in Love and Faith at General Synod was the repeated reference to the ‘doctrine of marriage’, as though this was a constant and fixed set of ideas throughout time. In the debate, only Revd Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes challenged this assumption.[1]  Another striking theme, for the more punitively minded, was how bishops might be disciplined for their apparent departure from orthodoxy.

    All this was a response to the modest proposals brought to Synod by the House of Bishops, proposals emerging out of the six-year long Living in Love and Faith process. The bishops maintain that their proposals do not alter the ‘doctrine of marriage’. Marriage remains, in the words of canon B30, ‘a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman’. (Elephant in the Room Warning: except when it isn’t ‘permanent and lifelong’ – but we are steadfastly refusing to talk about that.) Opponents, however, challenge this claim from the bishops.

    I found myself feeling a bit sorry for the bishops as a group: from my ten years on the Crown Nominations Commission, I know the great emphasis we as a Church place on ‘Leadership’. Yet when bishops exercise even a smidgen, all hell breaks loose. Do we want our chief pastors to develop their thinking based on theological reflection and pastoral encounter and then exercise some ‘Leadership’ about it, or not?

    As with most things, we’ve been here before.

    Edward Lee Hicks (1843-1919) was Bishop of Lincoln from 1910 to his death in 1919. He is not a well-known figure in Anglican history. Hicks had the misfortune to follow Bishop Edward King – a figure of such devotion in certain traditions of the Church of England that he has a day in the calendar (8 March). In addition to his legendary pastoral devotion to his diocese, especially to the rural poor, King may have been the first Church of England bishop openly to wear a mitre since the Reformation  – yes, a mitre! – a pretty commonplace practice now even amongst some of the most evangelical on the episcopal bench,  such as the Bishop of Lancaster and the former Bishop of Blackburn. In the late nineteenth century, however, wearing a mitre was a Massive Thing, and at the instigation of the Church Association (an ancestor of the Church Society), King was prosecuted for all manner of now-unexceptional Anglican liturgical practices, such as lighting candles in daylight and making the sign of the cross at the blessing. The statue honouring King in Lincoln Cathedral celebrates his transgressive liturgical behaviour rather gleefully.

    Hicks was also transgressive in his thinking but about something – and here I speak as a good High Church woman – considerably more important than tat. He was a member of the Commission in the early twentieth century revising the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which in the end became the 1928 ‘deposited’ Prayer Book. Parliament, as readers of this blog no doubt know, refused to approve the book, causing a Church/State crisis that was still talked about in wounded tones when I arrived in England as a graduate student in 1979. Nonetheless, from the late 1920s onwards, the revised book was probably used more in the public worship of the Established Church than the 1662, in an impressive collective act of episcopally-sanctioned grassroots passive resistance throughout the Church of England.

    Hicks was committed to equality for women and in 1912 became president of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage, a group working to put laywomen on the same footing as laymen in Church councils. Over many years on the Commission to revise the Book of Common Prayer he worked to have the word ‘obey’ removed from the marriage service and replaced with equal vows for the couple – as Common Worship does. He argued further for the use of 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings in place of Ephesians 5 to avoid any suggestion that the wife is not her husband’s equal. An unscientific sample (that is, my own 30+ years of officiating at marriages – oops – Holy Matrimony[2]), 1 Corinthians 13 is very popular – I’ve never had a request for Ephesians 5. In the end, Hicks got his reform – his change in the ‘doctrine of marriage’ – with the option to have equal vows included in the 1928 Prayer Book provision. Needless to say, no woman would be forced not to vow to obey.  I hope that the irony of that last sentence is not lost on anyone.

    Change, as we are seeing with LLF, is incremental in the life of the Church. The 1928 Prayer Book made no provision for the exchange of two rings – another liturgical expression of the equality of the couple and included the ‘giving away’ of the bride – both changes in Common Worship. I have spent some time trying to track down when two rings become the norm in England but have failed – there is a Master’s thesis topic waiting for someone! Despite neither the English or American 1928 Prayer Books making provision for it, the doyen of mid-twentieth century Anglican liturgists, Massey Shepherd, suggested that exchanging two rings was becoming ‘frequent’ in the American Episcopal Church in the 1950s.[3]

    Nothing exists in a vacuum, and it is important to place the ‘obey’ debate of the 1910-20s in its historic context alongside not only women’s wider political and educational rights, but their inclusion in new Church governance structures, such as Parochial Church Councils and the forerunner of the General Synod, the Church Assembly. Laywomen were excluded from these new bodies. The opponents to equal vows did not use the language of complementarianism but that of good old-fashioned inequality and subordinationism. In the first decades of the twentieth-century, vocal opposition to equal vows came largely from the Anglo-Catholic quarter, based on a clear assumption of the inequality of the sexes. Athelstan Riley told the Church’s National Assembly in 1930 that:

    … in 1923 when the cry of equality between the sexes was at its height, a short measure was pressed putting husband and wife on an equal footing – a cruel and wicked act. There was and could be no equality in matters of sexual morality between men and women. It had pleased God to create a profound inequality; in temptation, in the results of sin to the individual [pregnancy out of wedlock?] … and eventually to society at large.[4]

    It is good to be reminded what a new kid on the block complementarianism is in the gender debates.

    Overshadowed by King, Hicks deserves to be better known. Most importantly for our current discussions of LGBT+ inclusion, the beginning of his theological change on the ‘doctrine of marriage’ had been brought about, in the best Anglican way, by pastoral encounter:  a young couple, whose marriage he was to solemnize, requested the omission of ‘obey’ and that the bride not be ‘given away’ by her father. Hicks’ diary records his puzzlement at the request, but it clearly started him thinking. The year, dear reader, was 1914.[5]

    In the early 20th century, an Anglican bishop was promoting the view that marriage – or Holy Matrimony as we now apparently must call it – was a union of equals and he managed to move the needle in terms of the Church’s expression of doctrine in its public liturgy. How many members of the General Synod realize what a departure from the 1662 Prayer Book’s ‘doctrine of marriage’, equal vows, not being ‘given away’, and the exchange of two rings, expresses? Heaven forbid, that pastoral encounter should be divorced (I choose that word deliberately) from the shaping of doctrine and pastoral practice.

    References:
    [1] General Synod 9 Feb 2023 (at c 3.22).
    [2] The House of Bishops’ paper on LLF, GS2289, argues that the civil understanding of marriage has departed from the Church’s for the first time by Parliament’s introduction of equal marriage in 2013. This is a remarkable statement, given the bishops’ statement that ‘Holy Matrimony is between one man and one woman for life’ and the fact that British people have been able to divorce and re-marry multiple times for decades (see p. 10).
    [3] Massey Hamilton Shepherd, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary (OUP, 1955), pp. 301-303.
    [4] Cited in Timothy Willem Jones, ‘Love, Honour and Obey?  Romance, Subordination and Marital Subjectivity in Interwar Britain’ in A. Harris and T. Jones, eds, Love and Romance in Britain, 1915-1970 (Palgrave, 2014), p. 130; an exceptionally good article on the ‘obey’ question in the Church of England. Jones notes that several interwar clergymen reported not using asymmetrical vows before the introduction of the alternative service (p. 128). See also his splendid book, Sexual Politics in the Church of England 1857-1957 (Oxford, 2013).
    [5] See The Diaries of Edward Lee Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln 1910-1919 (Lincoln Record Society, 82, 1993), p. 89 and Graham Neville, Radical Churchman:  Edward Lee Hicks and the New Liberalism (Oxford, 1998), p. 169.

  • Hot Cross Bunnies & Religious Freedom

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

    Hot Cross Bunnies & Religious Freedom

    Salted caramel and chocolate hot-cross buns – have you tried them yet?  I think they’re divine!

    As I indulged in my first one earlier this week, I caught myself thinking “Why hasn’t anyone ever thought of making these before?” A couple of days later, on listening to a heated debate on Radio 4’s Today programme, I realised why. Evidently, this culinary delight is a complete sacrilege to many as they believe we are tampering with some of the crown jewels of baking! How dare someone change the traditional recipe, which has been around since the 14th century! I restrained myself from making the “hot cross bunny” joke, and chose instead to shout at the radio “Oh come on – why can’t you just have both?  For goodness’ sake, let us decide – we’re the ones who are paying!”

    Because, of course, this should be a ‘matter of choice’ – which, if there is an added ethical or spiritual dimension to that choice, becomes a ‘matter of conscience’. I would suggest that every decision we make that has a values dimension to it is a matter of conscience. Do we act in a proper and legal way? Do we respond in a kind and loving manner? Do we choose the godly or ungodly path? That is, unless the choice is taken away from us by those in power who believe they know best, as they see themselves as custodians of truth, and so make the choice for us.

    You will by now no doubt have guessed where I am going with all of this – although I don’t for one moment want to equate the dilemma of choosing hot-cross buns with matters that are causing those of us in the LGBT+ community, as well as those beyond, such deep pain and upset, especially in the Church. However, my overall point stands – the role of conscience in our lives is critical to all values-based decisions we make. By definition, it plays a significant role in our spiritual lives too. That is why it has been the central tenet of our Anglican ecclesiology since we were formed in 1534 over a matter where conscience could not play a role. However, by and large we have found a way of accommodating virtually all views since then – as long as we adhere to the historic Creeds and the 39 Articles. Hats, beards, contraception, marriage after divorce, the role of women, whether clergy wear robes, whether we confirm children, whether we refuse people communion, whether we rebaptise adults (some of which aren’t meant to happen, but we turn a blind eye to them anyway!). It is the Church of England’s hallmark for which we have been known throughout the ages.

    That is, until recently.

    For some reason – neither articulated nor openly debated – the powers that be have not seen fit to allow us to adopt the glaringly obvious solution around the debate on same-sex marriage by making it a matter of conscience. I’m constantly told that ‘there aren’t the numbers in the House of Bishops’ to allow same-sex marriage – but we’re not asking for numbers as we are not asking people to change their view. Rather, we are asking them to respect the role of conscience in this matter and so allow those of us who hold a different view to them (which, notably, is a sizeable majority of Anglicans according the The Times’ You Gov poll), to be able to proceed with it.

    Instead, we are being forced to accept something that many of us believe is biblically and morally wrong. None of us who hold that God wants to bless same-sex relationships will ever “believe” they are right – so instead we are being made to “put up” with their intransigence. They continue to hold us all to ransom, becoming increasingly brazen in their actions – such as withholding parish share and setting up separate ‘deanery chapters’. One just has to listen to the tone of their rhetoric to hear how cold and self-righteous they have become. It does really rather feel like the bullies have taken over the playground, and we’re all meant to just sit back and watch. I’m not sure what they think they are achieving – for they must know by now that they aren’t going to change our minds?

    The greatest irony is that some of them are now trying to employ a “freedom of religion” argument, citing Articles 9 and 10 of the 1998 Human Rights Act, without recognising the sheer hypocrisy of what they are doing or saying. For it is our “freedom of religion” that they are trampling all over, it is our right to worship and practice our faith in accordance with our conscience within our parish churches that they are restricting. I’ve made this point several times, including at the government’s International Freedom of Religion or Belief conference last summer, but they seem so ensconced in their bubbles of unconscious bias that they just can’t (or won’t) see it.

    This constant refusal to allow those of us who believe, in all integrity, that Scripture, tradition and reason supports a Church of England that wishes to marry those of us of the same-sex, is sheer stubbornness. It is not biblical, it is not rational, it is not founded in tradition and therefore, by definition, it is clearly not Anglican.

    I know an increasing number of faith leaders around the Communion now see this – which is why their provinces have moved forward and allowed a plurality of views on the grounds of conscience.  They also see the legalistic manner in which some continue to hold the rest of the Church to ransom.

    Most importantly, God sees.

    The fascinating question is, I think, what is God doing through all this? I for one believe that God is in fact moving us all out into the public square – for can we truly see the masses returning to our churches given all the scandals, abuse and hypocrisy that they have witnessed over recent years?  I believe there is a growing cry of “Ichabod” being heard within the Church of England – which for those who don’t know is a word used in 1 Samuel 4, meaning that “the glory of God has departed the temple”.  That is a topic for another blog, but perhaps is a rather fitting note to end with, and to reflect on as we approach Holy Week.

  • 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.

  • Blackburn: What We Still Don’t Know

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

    Surprise, surprise – there actually is dissension in Blackburn about the Church’s proposed appointment of a bishop who does not ordain women and did not vote in favour of General Synod’s recent decision to allow the blessing of same sex couples.

    When Philip North was nominated as the new Diocesan Bishop of Blackburn in January, there was some surprise that the announcement was apparently greeted by universal joy among female clergy – given that North does not accept that the Church of England has the authority to ordain women as priests and is therefore not sure that these women can consecrate the bread and wine in services.

    It has now come to light that there are in fact a number of clergy with concerns about the nomination, but we have not heard from them publicly because they are worried about speaking out.

    One vicar, Rev Dr Rebecca Aechtner, who ministers in Scotforth, says she has sometimes been accused of being ‘shouty’ and ‘a feminist’ simply for raising concerns about how women are treated in Church.  Nonetheless, as the only ordained woman elected to Bishops’ Council, she continues to raise ‘serious concerns about how women clergy will be protected and about people being evaded when voicing those concerns.’

    And now, in addition, there are others in the diocese who have concerns about the nomination, given that Bishop Philip abstained in the recent vote at General Synod to permit clergy, if they so choose, to bless same sex couples, and the other bishop in the Blackburn diocese, Jill Duff, voted against.

    With regard to Bishop Philip’s position on women’s ordination, there is still no clarification about the practical outworkings for the diocese – such as which candidates Bishop Philip is willing to ordain as priests. Will this be all male candidates or just male candidates who don’t affirm women’s ordination? And who will ordain female candidates and male candidates who don’t want to be ordained by a non-affirming Bishop?  It would also be good to know what, if any, provisions will be made for clergy and parishes who don’t want to be overseen by a bishop who doesn’t fully affirm women’s ordination. If the situation were the reverse, with an affirming diocesan Bishop being appointed, then parishes who don’t fully accept women’s ordination would have the right for extended episcopal oversight. But there’s no current provision in Church law for the opposite to happen.

    I’m told by senior clergy in the diocese that there was a consultation with clergy and parishes before the nomination of Philip North as a diocesan bishop in which clergy said they did not want a non-affirming Bishop, but they also said they did want Bishop Philip.  This is not logically a feasible request but was taken as support for the nomination.  Details of the consultation have not been published but it does not seem that efforts were made to take readings on the potential appointment with clergy in safe spaces – where people could raise concerns without this being observed by and known to their future boss. Indeed, clergy who have not indicated their wholehearted support have been described as being wilfully disobedient to authority.

    My own opinion is that, given that there are a number of clergy in the diocese, both female and male, who are uneasy with what the nomination signifies and may lead to, it would seem appropriate that the process should be paused, at least until proposals have been made about the practical outworkings of the appointment and these have been consulted on.

    It is not only a disgrace but, frankly, dangerous if we are creating a culture in our Church where people feel unable to speak out. The campaign group, Women and the Church (WATCH), that I chair has recently got together with the Student Christian Movement to launch a new campaign called #honestchurch which calls on churches to be clear and transparent about the limits they put on women’s ministry and also how they welcome people from the LGBTQIA community.  Jesus famously said, ‘What you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.’ Secrecy and coverups are an anathema to our faith.  Let’s give women and men in Blackburn a safe space to say what they really think.

  • Born-Again Virginity?

    by Prof Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and member of General Synod

    The World Health Organisation’s 2018 statement on “Eliminating virginity testing” argued that “the term ‘virginity’ is a social, cultural and religious construct with neither medical nor scientific basis” and that virginity testing is a violation of human rights because “the appearance of a hymen is not a reliable indication of intercourse and there is no known examination that can prove a history of vaginal intercourse.”

    “A religious construct”… yes, indeed. And it was clear from speakers in the Living in Love and Faith debate at the February General Synod that virginity is back on the agenda, at least in some parts of the Church of England. This is part of the attempt to argue that lesbian and gay people must never have sexual relationships, which involves promoting alternatives: for life. What do women – and the word only tends to be used of women, men preferring “celibate” – mean when they claim the status?

    Those asserting their virginity seem to come from the evangelical tradition. If you want to start from the Bible, then the key passage is probably Deuteronomy 22.13-21 on what happens if a man fails to find “evidence of virginity” in his bride. The woman’s family are supposed to demonstrate this “evidence” to the elders of the city, and they “spread a cloak” out to show the blood of defloration. This is a deadly serious business. The woman can be stoned to death if no “evidence” is shown, this being a culture in which not only a man found with a betrothed virgin but also the woman herself can be killed if discovered; in her case, because she did not cry out for help.

    There’s a Catholic dimension too, of course: the Virgin Mary. Julia Kelto Lillis has pointed out that the Church Fathers operated with the full range of models of the female body that existed in the ancient Mediterranean; so, some believed in the hymen, others didn’t. Mary’s body could be regarded as “closed” without this having to mean an intact hymen. Even where the hymen was considered a real thing, its reliability was open to challenge. In the fifth century CE, in his City of God (1.18), St Augustine noted that checking for virginity could destroy the hymen:

    A midwife, suppose, has (whether maliciously or accidentally, or through unskilfulness) destroyed the virginity of some girl, while endeavouring to ascertain it: I suppose no one is so foolish as to believe that, by this destruction of the integrity of one organ, the virgin has lost anything even of her bodily sanctity.

    So what do statements today that someone is a ‘virgin’ actually mean? If it means “not having had sexual intercourse”, then what counts as ‘sex’? The CEEC ‘What to write to your bishop’ guidance states its objection to the same-sex relationships in which some of the bishops’ prayers are intended to be used, on the grounds that these “will often be sexually active”. As well as noting that this implies some won’t be – so are these somehow OK with CEEC? – I remain confused as to what “sexually active” means.

    Conservative evangelicals want to affirm sex as only between a man and a woman, married, in a lifelong relationship. Of course, that ‘lifelong’ has already bitten the dust after the acceptance that some people can be married in church despite a previous divorce. Somehow, being in a church where this could happen – if the conscience of the minister allowed them to do such a thing – was not enough to make conservatives feel that they would be damaged by their proximity to such behaviour. Yet the Prayers of Love and Faith are thought a step too far.

    To support this “only between a man and a woman”, Genesis is widely cited: the myth of Adam and Eve. If it’s all about being (potentially) fruitful and (potentially) multiplying, then as the only sex which is (potentially) procreative is penis-in-vagina sex – the WHO’s “vaginal intercourse” – where does that leave same-sex sex? Why is any sexual “activity” between two men or two women of any interest or relevance? In the traditional Christian morality with which many of us grew up, not “going all the way” didn’t really count as sex. That recalls that much-quoted line from the coming-of-age comedy Clueless (1995), “Dionne’s virginity went from technical to non-existent”. Is same-sex sex any different?

    Perhaps it’s not about hymens, or even bodies, at all. True virginity, as Basil of Ancyra argued and John Chrysostom underlined, was the virginity of the soul: “Virginity can be lost even by a thought” because there are those who are “virgins in the flesh, but not in the spirit”. The hymen did not guarantee spiritual virginity. Is this the virginity which those who announced their status at Synod had in mind?

    You can’t see spiritual virginity. As for physical virginity, there’s a long history of faking it. From the ancient Mediterranean onwards, medical texts describe constrictive ointments to tighten the vagina, the insertion of containers filled with fish blood, or even ways to create a new hymen. Today, virginity restoration surgery is advertised online. Hymen reconstruction, as well as vaginoplasty, is popular in Iran and in Korea, where in 2017 24% of the world’s plastic surgery was being carried out. Vaginoplasty is known as “princess surgery”; the claim is that your man will treat you like a princess. In Guatemala, where hymenoplasty is called “intimate surgery”, it thrives despite the opposition of both the state and the Catholic church.

    I want to be fair: there are real benefits to these surgeries, in that they allow women to survive within the insane structures in which they have to live. In cultures where virginity is the only way for a woman to be respected, “virginity restoration” can save not just reputations but lives, giving some women a second chance. Promoting virginity also has value; showing it’s fine to be a virgin can help prevent people feeling under pressure to enter relationships.

    But there are strange things happening in some churches today. The Christian idea of spiritual virginity is being revisited, to suggest that a woman who has survived sexual violence, or has admitted and been forgiven for sexual activity outside marriage, can still be a virgin in her soul. Vilma Conner published Born-Again Virgin: How to transform your life from promiscuity back into purity in 2009. As for physical virginity, in November 2022 April Ajoy, who co-hosts a podcast on American Evangelical Christianity, tweeted:

    During Purity Week at my Christian college, one preacher bragged about seeing God restore girls’ hymens to make them physical virgins again. Then they gave us purity pledge cards that included the following: I am a (circle one): A. Virgin B. Secondary Virgin. Fun times.

    She had in mind people like Kris Vallotton, a leader in Bethel Church, who in 2012 claimed that God can replace the hymen: “We OFTEN get testimonies from women sharing that God restored their virginity including restoring their hymen! I have heard 100s of these testimonies!!!”

    Virginity – a construct with “neither medical nor scientific basis” – is most definitely back on the agenda. Physical, or spiritual? More importantly: God, or idol?

  • 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)

  • All About Power: General Synod and the LLF Debate

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

    The General Synod of the Church of England is a strange beast, and this week was no exception. Most of us don’t pay an enormous amount of attention to it most of the time, but this week felt different. This week, our lives and loves were up for debate – once again. And whilst the outcome was – to my mind – a positive, albeit small, step for LGBTQIA+ people in the life of the church, the debate gave us an insight into far more than that.

    In 2017, the bishops were asked to bring something back to Synod that might prove acceptable to the majority, and that might model a better approach to same sex relationships. In many ways, they have done precisely what they were asked to do – their offering ‘passed’. Yet one thing that they – corporately, although there are individual shining examples – cannot be accused of is being courageous. It is absolutely true that the numbers from this synod – a body that is entirely unrepresentative of the wider church, most particularly given the ludicrous method of electing lay representatives – suggest that equal marriage would not have secured the required 2/3 majority in all three houses, a stipulation that Parliament must surely look to change in the coming years. Yet a refusal to even debate it, whatever the result of the vote on the prayers – a refusal backed by the House of Bishops – is frankly pathetic.

    For at the heart of the debate in the chamber, and the endless faux outrage outside, was the outworking of power, and a refusal to dare to let go of it. For years, a relatively small, yet vocal and uncompromising minority have spent their time holding us all to ransom. The motion in front of Synod was one that offered a compromise, that enabled people to hold different views and follow their consciences. It is fascinating – in that light – that the majority wasn’t any larger. The reality is that many people who oppose same sex marriage don’t just oppose it – they oppose anyone being permitted to disagree with their point of view, their theological or Biblical interpretation. This is all about power.

    We saw this in the scandalous employment of endless delay tactics at Synod, whether by appeals to process or the crass disingenuity of some of the amendments tabled. Up popped the same group of people, time and again, to try to bring down any possibility of change and to try to kick this into yet longer grass. Synod, on the whole, saw through this, but it cast a shadow on proceedings in quite a significant way. ‘Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one,’ as we hear in St Matthew’s Gospel. There is no moral get-out on truthfulness – we cannot simply ignore the need to be honest in the small things in order to serve The Truth™. That is not how Christianity works, and I hope those who stood up in an attempt to subvert Synod might reflect a little on how that looked from the outside. The intervention by the Second Estates Commissioner, Andrew Selous MP, was also somewhat unusual – shall we say – in suggesting that the real victims were the conservative MPs who felt unable to speak out in public. This argument is tired and false victimisation is not a good look. Finding it difficult to express a view is not the hard bit; having your entire lives discussed by other people as a matter of abstract debate just might be. Giving up power, too, is hard.

    Many have said that the Church of England is obsessed with sex. I might modify that a little bit – from the outside, the Church of England’s General Synod seems to be obsessed with other people’s sex lives. It was embarrassing to watch, and at times quite infuriating, most particularly when hearing the spurious nonsense that suggested gay people having sex would ruin opposite sex marriages. Sorry, folks, but you’ve ruined marriage quite enough by yourselves – it ain’t us who have increased the divorce rate – and are your relationships really that fragile?! Someone even stood up to say their entire engagement would be rendered a waste of time if gay people were allowed to have sex. Give me strength.

    Of course, this was all because the bishops were remaining silent on sex outside of marriage, and several speakers told Synod that this was an outrage. Well, might I remind those members of Synod who appeared terribly upset about that, that they are the very people who have stopped us even having the conversation about Equal Marriage. You cannot complain that the bishops have to find some kind of pastoral accommodation outside of marriage when you won’t allow the conversation on marriage. But then, they know this already. As I say, it’s all about power.

    There were some key takeaways from the debate. The first was that this Synod, to a large degree, found good in same-sex relationships – for the first time. At last we can face down the usual claptrap about how same-sex relationships, with or without ‘sexual activity’ (whatever that is), are bad in the ‘settled mind’ of the church. They aren’t. It’s over. Issues is gone (or at least soon will be).

    Secondly, the amendment that passed was a total waste of everyone’s time and effort. In effect, it did absolutely nothing – it endorsed the decision of the bishops not to bring same-sex marriage to the chamber on this occasion (unsurprising, albeit absurd), and endorsed their intention (a strange turn of phrase) that the prayers shouldn’t be ‘contrary to or indicative of a departure from the doctrine of the Church of England’. Given that the bishops made that explicit in their accompanying paperwork and given that this is required anyway under canon law, this amendment is totally pointless. Neither did it restate the current position on marriage (and amendments seeking to do this comprehensively failed), nor does it bind any later synod. I suppose the phrase commonly used is ‘virtue signalling’.

    Thirdly, those who oppose same-sex relationships should be careful what they try to amend for. Whilst it might have been a great play at delaying tactics – winsome even – it rather takes the wind out the sails when Synod votes down the wrecking amendments. The final amendment, seeking once more to police the bedroom, was particularly nasty, and there was a delicious pleasure in watching it sink beneath the waves. Synod did not agree with the proposer that the prayers ‘should not be used so as to indicate or imply affirmation of sexually active relationships outside of Holy Matrimony or to invoke God’s blessing on such relationships’. That’s rather unfortunate for those seeking to make the new Pastoral Guidance another prurient, sex obsessed, holes-ridden, tool of oppression.

    So here we are. We can finally, as a church, catch up with God in blessing same-sex relationships. We can finally recognise the role of conscience in debates in which different perspectives have been reached with integrity and with due attention to scripture. And we can finally see the light coming through the ever-so-slightly open door to Equal Marriage.

    This is the beginning and not the end. This Synod, as divisive and tiresome as some of the debate was, has done what no Synod previously has ever been able or willing to do.

    The next step is Equal Marriage, because try as you might, you cannot hold back the justice of God.