ViaMedia

Category: Mental Health

  • ‘The Bible is Clear’, Consent & ‘Conversion Therapy’

    by the Revd Canon Dr Phil Groves, former Director of the Anglican Communion Office (2006 – 2016) and Associate Rector Wychert Vale Benefice 

    In the public debate over ‘conversion therapy’ the leaders of evangelical powerhouses such as the Evangelical Alliance and the Church of England’s Evangelical Council have sought to maintain space for people to receive ‘non-coercive’ counselling and prayer for those seeking to live in accordance with their beliefs. They cite freedom of religion and spread stories about people being denied the right to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Religious freedom is said to be at stake.

    What I don’t see is any engagement with the damage to evangelical theology done by advocating such change orientated therapies.

    ‘The Bible is clear’ has become a mantra of institutional evangelicalism as exemplified by the response to the Evangelical Alliance to proposals to ban conversion therapy:

    ‘The teaching of the Bible is clear that sexual activity is restricted to monogamous marriage between one man and one woman. For Christians who hold to this biblical teaching, it is essential that those who experience same sex attraction are free to pursue and receive support to help them live in accordance with their beliefs.’

    If ‘the Bible is clear’ defines reality then it must follow that ‘same sex attracted people’ can find fulfilment in singleness or in heterosexual marriage.

    Plenty of Biblical scholars have questioned whether ‘the Bible is clear’, but they have been unconvincing to those who represent evangelicalism. However, in rejecting such claims evangelicalism needs to face up to just what it is endorsing.

    No one claims the Bible has anything to say on the kind of ‘support’ that might be needed by people who are convinced by the clarity of the Evangelical Alliance’s message and who know themselves not to conform.  So what kind of therapies are they keen to support?

    The Evangelical Alliance is clear that they oppose the use of electric shock treatment and rape as methodologies, and this is important because while they are clearly criminal here, the rape of lesbians in particular is common in Africa and our African Anglican allies need all the support they can get to have the laws that enable horrific abuse to be removed.

    However, they continue to support non-coercive therapies, without specifying just what they are.

    The most common ‘therapy’ that has been adopted by Christian groups is so called ‘reparative therapy’. Reparative therapy was developed by Freudian analysts and was based on assumptions that sexual drive is learnt in childhood and adolescence through desire for the more distant parent. Gay men (and Reparative Therapy focused almost exclusively on gay men) were understood to be closely attached to their mothers and have distant or absent father figures for whom they developed sexual desire. The remedy was to develop an extremely close male to male bond between male analyst and client. These relationships broke all the norms of distance and clients were rewarded for good behaviour, such as sexual fantasies and sexual encounters with women, and reprimanded for bad behaviour as the therapist became the father figure.

    The British Psychoanalytic Council only finally repudiated such analysis in 2012.

    The academic literature that informed that decision explored the abuse often inflicted by therapists on clients and the damage done to clients. ‘Talking therapies’ were understood to be harmful to clients and society as a whole. Clear policies of discrimination barring LGBT people from training as analysts was eventually put in the past.

    Of course, the people who came for psychoanalysis did so of their own free will – they were not forced into it. Except they were. They were persuaded of their own deviancy by a culture that portrayed heterosexuality as pure. They were easy to persuade that their failure of attachment to their father was real and at the heart of the problem. They were open to forming a bond with an analyst who often thrived on the power.

    During the 1990s Christian organisations promoting change orientated therapies latched on to these Freudian solutions especially with the formation of National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), founded by Charles Socarides, a leading Freudian analyst, and Catholic therapist Joseph Nicolosi.

    Their views were promoted by Anglican Mainstream and the Latimer Trust in a book published in 2007 entitled God, Gays and the Church. The book also promoted other ways of avoiding ‘same-sex attraction’ such as praying to the saints and most specifically the use of John Henry Newman as a ‘spirit guide’. Yes, the Latimer Press published a book promoting the use of prayers to the saints. However, it was the discredited Freudianism of Socarides and Nicolosi that dominated the text.

    Evangelical Christianity became the standard bearer for Freudian assumptions about sexual attraction, while often labelling progressives as Freudians (oh, the irony).

    Have things changed?

    Well, a key player in the campaigns to stop the banning of change therapy is The Core Issues Trust and it continues to reference reparative therapy as a key component of what they call Change Orientated Therapies. They don’t make people aware that it is outdated Freudianism, but the Director of CIT, Mike Davidson, is shown proudly standing by Joseph Nicolosi who was absolutely clear about the therapy he was promoting.

    Institutional Evangelicalism has become the last bastion of support for the 20th Century Freudian understanding of what it understood as deviant sexuality. ‘The Bible is clear’ is the mantra, what actually is being endorsed is an outdated Freudianism.

    It cannot be healthy for evangelical theology.

  • LGBT+ Stories – The Trauma of Abusive “Healing” Ministries

    by the Revd Canon Timothy Goode, Rector of St Margaret’s, Lee, Disability Adviser to the Diocese of Southwark, Member of Archbishop’s Council and Co-Chair of MOSAIC

    Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honour.’ (Psalm 8 verse 5)

    My relationship with the Church of England has always been a complex one, built as much on a vision of what the Church of England could aspire to be, as much as to what the Church of England presently is, or was in the past.

    As someone who passionately wishes for the full participation of the LGBTI+ community within the church, as I do for all who are marginalised by the church, I was deeply moved by the recent testimonies on Via Media, from those who have been on the receiving end of conversion therapy and who so generously shared their appalling experiences at the hands of a church that purports to articulate the immeasurable love of God for them.

    However, I was caught utterly on the back foot, when I found, whilst reading the testimonies, that my acknowledged feelings of solidarity and empathy swung uncontrollably into what felt like deeply unchartered territory, as I found myself sobbing; not tears that well up when one hears of injustice or when one feels righteous anger, but sobs of unprocessed pain and suffering.

    It felt like a scab was being brutally torn off revealing a deep wound underneath, which was crying out to be acknowledged and engaged with.  I initially felt shame and deep guilt that these testimonies had unearthed such suppressed feelings of confusion, embarrassment, diminishment and hurt.

    But reflecting on my response now, I feel immense gratitude to those who shared their shocking testimonies of conversion therapy, as they also unearthed the as yet unprocessed suffering that I had experienced when on the receiving end of abusive unconsented forms of ‘healing’. These had taken many forms and contexts, but all had involved the use of physical restraint and a need for my collusion. My unwillingness to play ball had on each occasion been met with projected responses of anger and rejection; so that my inability to walk unaided became my fault, put down to my lack of engagement and my lack of faith.

    I thought I had worked through these abusive experiences so that they no longer had a hold on me. Reading these testimonies revealed that, despite the support that I have received, these experiences still have the power to resurface and catch me unawares.

    I don’t want to equate my own experience of abusive ‘healing’ ministry as a disabled person with the harrowing conversion therapy experienced by the LGBTI+ community. However, each experience matters, and each experience matters before God.

    Both practices invite us to explore how it is that we as Christians can still equate a loving compassionate God with the shocking outcomes of these practices; how the reasons and means of conversion therapy can ever justify ‘the fruits’ of our actions. For it is the very fruits of these actions – the diminishing, the suffering, the pain, the anger, the rejection – that have led me to conclude that the theology that underpins it is deeply flawed and profoundly unhealthy.

    St Matthew states that ‘a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.’ (Matthew 7.18) If conversion therapy and abusive ‘healing’ causes such bad fruit, as we read in these shocking testimonies, then St Matthew’s metaphor should cause us to question both the action and the theology that underpins and motivates such an action.

    Maybe the time is right to join with what feminist theologians have been doing for decades, and critically explore and re-evaluate the biblical writers’ assumptions and unconscious biases. For example, when we read the bible through the perceptive and lived experience of disability, we may notice the biblical writers use of impairments as metaphors for sin, doubt, and unbelief, which in turn point to an understanding of perfection that is rooted more in Plato and Aristotle than the Body of Christ.

    This does not sit comfortably with the risen body of Jesus Christ, a physical body that is healed but not cured, whose open wounds are a visceral and vital part of the resurrected body, drawing us into Christ’s fullest humanity. Maybe through the risen body we are being encouraged to acknowledge, own, and ultimately love and celebrate our God given diversity.

    Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, writes that disabled people are often used by the Gospel writers to beef up Jesus’ credentials, showcasing his divine powers.

    “When Jesus meets people with disabilities, he fixes them and that’s a sign that he is powerful,” she says. “That relegates people with disabilities to just being there to show the power of God. They’re not really real characters or real people who have feelings and needs and personalities. That pushes them to the margins of the story.”

    All groups, whether it be LGBTI+, race, disability, gender, neurodiversity, to name but five, who continue to be viewed and treated as ‘less than’ by sections of the church, find that they are being consistently pushed to the margins of the story; and yet it is in the very margins of the story that Jesus so often to be is found.

    We therefore should not be surprised that the graceful embrace of the sacrificial ministry of all who have shared their experiences of conversion therapy have reached far beyond the LGBTI+ community. Their brave and harrowing testimonies have opened the door for other marginalised groups to share their stories of abuse and diminishment, offering the possibility of true healing and hope to so many, including myself, who have suffered abusive ‘healing’ ministries within the church; drawing us all towards the ultimate truth, that we are each loved, that we are each unique and precious in God’s sight, that we are each fearfully and wonderfully made.

    As the psalmist sings:

    ‘…what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honour.’ (Psalm 8. Verses, 4-5)

  • Church Leader – Are You Helping or Harming?

    by Jayne Ozanne, Member of General Synod, Director of the Ozanne Foundation and Chair of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition

    The “debate” around the need to ban “conversion therapy” has attracted more than its fair share of fake news and scaremongering, particularly by those who want to continue to “help” LGBT+ people become something that they believe God finds more acceptable.  According to Julian Mann (Christian Today, June 21st 2021) my work to ensure that these degrading and harmful practices are banned will mean that “Christian pastors could be banned from saying the Lord’s Prayer with same-sex attracted people”.

    This type of reporting inevitably feeds the narrative that certain Christians are now facing their own special form of “persecution”, which not only bolsters their sense of identity as God’s “chosen remnant” but also helps them justify why they are so beleaguered and vilified.  This narrative attracts many Christians who are eager to find support for the contentious views they hold, but it comes at a considerable cost – as it alienates an increasing number of Christians who wish to find more common ground.

    There is one significant truth, however, that those who subscribe to these views consistently side-step.  This is becoming increasingly apparent to both Christians and non-Christians alike.  Indeed, the media are now also beginning to highlight it by asking repeated questions which those who are wedded to defending their right to “pray the gay away” refuse to answer. And the question?  Why will you not acknowledge or address the mounting evidence of the deep psychological harm that you have caused and are still causing so many LGBT+ people, particularly young LGBT+ people?

    Medical professionals are clear; international institutions such as the UN are clear; hundreds if not thousands of senior faith leaders are clear; and now the UK government itself is clear – “conversion therapy” is harmful and must be banned in order to protect LGBT+ people whose lives are being damaged and destroyed by it.  Just how many more lives need to be lost before people decide to take this on board?

    Of course, Jesus never caused anyone harm.  Indeed, quite the opposite – he had very strong words to say to those who cause “any of these little ones to suffer” (Matt 18:6).  Indeed, his whole ministry was characterised by showing unconditional love and compassion to those who were hurting and who had been judged unacceptable by the religious leaders around them.

    I have recently run a series of testimonies on my blog site, Via Media, by LGBT+ Christians documenting the years of abuse they have suffered at the hands of church leaders.  The Bishop of London has called them “texts of terror” before going on to ask church leaders to recognise the harm that they are causing.  There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of stories just like them.  LGBT+ Christians being repeatedly told that who they are is unacceptable, that they did not have enough faith to be “healed”, that more often than not their problem lay with their primary relationships – such as with their parents – and so added yet more pain and anguish to those already hurting.  All had suffered rejection, most had had to leave their churches, all spoke of the mental toll it had had on them – often with quite harrowing results.

    And the response from those who were responsible for their pain?

    The truth is that the overwhelming response from these church leaders has been to shout even more loudly in the media about their “right” to continue causing such trauma and harm.  No one has seen fit to apologise.  No one has stopped and reflected on the serious safeguarding issues that have been presented. They have no plausible answer to the harm that they have caused and continue to cause, save to ignore the evidence and condemn the messengers instead.

    The worrying thing is that this is sadly all too familiar – indeed, the Bible is full of such stories.

    Israel constantly ignored their shortcomings and dealt with the prophets who confronted them with the evidence of their wrongdoings by ignoring them, and worse.  They vilified them, they mocked them, they berated them, and they even killed them.  It is a strategy as old as the hills, but one which always has the same outcome –the people who ignore the warnings end up facing the full force of God’s judgement.

    So, it is time to say “enough”!

    Enough of the excuses.  Enough of the spiritual abuse.  Enough of the hardness of heart.  Real people are being hurt and it is being caused – and condoned – by those who preach a message of love, which now sounds hollow and false.  Interestingly, it seems that evangelical Christians have some form in this area.

    Take the so-called “smacking ban”, where the Evangelical Alliance and the Christian Institute decided to “stand up to the government” and campaign to be allowed to discipline their children.  This was yet another example of Christians being oblivious to the damage – in this case physical harm – that they were causing.  They believed their God-given right to uphold scripture over-ruled any evidence of the pain and trauma they were causing, despite mounting evidence from professionals to the contrary.

    If there is one thing Jesus was clear about, it was the need to stand up to religious leaders who defined themselves by what they were against rather than what they were for, who spent their time putting burdens on other people’s backs that they could not carry, and who prided themselves with the fact they thought they were more righteous than anyone else.

    Interestingly, it was those “in the world” who formed the crowds that thronged around Jesus because of the love and compassion that he exuded, which was magnetically attractive – and in stark contrast to the hypocritical piety of the religious leaders, who seemed to think they knew the bible better than Jesus did!

    So no, neither I nor anyone else are seeking to ban the Lord’s Prayer.  I am however seeking a ban on any religious practice that is focused on an individual with a predetermined outcome that tells them that they cannot be anything other than heterosexual or cis-gendered.  This includes any prayer that causes someone to suppress or hide who they intrinsically are and more often than not causes them to feel deeply ashamed about who God has made them to be. In contrast, I welcome and encourage any prayer or spiritual guidance that creates a safe space for people to explore who they are and come to a point of peace about how they have been created.  How they then chose to live out their life, in the knowledge of this truth, is quite another story – and one that Jesus promises to accompany us on so that we have fulness of life.

    So please join me in praying that God will open the eyes of all those who have been the cause of so much trauma and pain to so many LGBT+ people over the years – that they will be humble enough to recognise the harm that they have done and courageous enough to admit it and apologise for it.

    This article was originally written as a Right of Reply to an article about Jayne by Julian Mann for  Christian Today

     

     

     

  • LGBT Stories: “Texts of Terror” – Are We Helping or Harming?

    by the Rt Revd Dame Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London and Chair of the LLF Next Steps Group

    The series of testimonies of LGBT Christians that can be found here are texts of terror.

    Vilified, self-condemnation, disgust, self-hatred, abominable, humiliated, contaminated, awful, worthless, lonely, suicidal. These are some of the words that are used to describe the impact of the behaviours of others on these courageous LGBT people who have shared their stories.

    They are texts of terror because of the unimaginable harm done and because these ‘others’ are Christians, believing to be acting in good faith.

    They are texts of terror that people, like myself, who have never had such experiences, need to read and take to heart. They are texts that call us to examine ourselves and the undercurrents of all our actions.

    Coercion or Compassion?

    One of the remarkable things about Jesus was that there was never even a hint of coercion in his teaching or actions. When two blind men sitting by the roadside shouted to Jesus for mercy, he asked them, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ (Matthew 20.32).

    That isn’t to say that Jesus didn’t teach. There are plenty of imperatives in the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Jesus gave the rich young ruler a clear challenge to sell all he had, give the proceeds to the poor and follow him. But he didn’t run after the man when he chose to walk away. Instead, he loved him.

    Jesus, of all people, knew how good the good news he had to share was. But this good news was offered, not forced. People were invited, not compelled. As David Walker writes, ‘love that is forced or coerced is not love at all.’

    Secrecy or Openness?

    So many of the stories speak of secrecy. Either the claustrophobic secrecy of hiding one’s own identity or sexuality. Or the secrecy within which victims were subjected to horrific coercive actions and words.

    Jesus led a public and exposed life. The only times, it seems, that he was ‘in secret’ was when he was alone with the Father in prayer.

    We are called to be people of the light, not of the darkness. This means being people who live openly, transparently. ‘Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.’ (Luke 12.3)

    Secrecy should ring warning bells. Why are we keeping a secret? What are we afraid of? What does it say about the community of which I am a part?

    Harm or Help?

    The mental, emotional, spiritual and even physical harm that is described in the stories is shocking. There can be no justification for acts that bring about harm. Jesus came to heal, restore and make whole. He released people from the captivity of mental and physical illness and spiritual oppression.

    Actions that cause harm must not be confused with the call to ‘deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow Jesus.’ Yes, we are called in different ways to share in the sufferings of Christ, but never to impose that suffering on others.

    As Christians we are called to liberate others – liberating people to live into the fullness of a life that can only be fully found by following Jesus.

    If our actions, however well-meaning, cause harm – distress, emotional, mental or spiritual anguish – we need to think again.

    Control or Trust?

    So how is it that we are tempted to behaviours that cause harm, that require secrecy and involve coercion? I wonder if they point to a need to ‘control’ – a control that holds up a mirror to our lack of faith in a God who is active and present in the life of every believer. A God who accepts, loves and seeks to save every one of us. A God who has promised, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to change each one of us from one degree of glory to another – that glory that is perfectly embodied in Jesus. That glory that is full of grace and truth.

    These stories call us to ask for greater faith – a faith that releases us to be compassionate not coercive, open not secretive, helping not harming, entrusting those in our care to the God who is already at work in us all and has promised to bring that work to completion.

     

     

  • Making Ourselves ‘Other’

    by the Very Revd Nicholas Henshall, Dean of Chelmsford

    It is a privilege to respond to the Via Media series of moving and challenging reflections on LGBT+ Christians experience of the Church and the wider implications of that experience for the LGBT+ community, and for the identity of the Church as a genuinely inclusive culture. As a straight white male, I feel inadequate to the task. These are (in Thomas Merton’s phrase) conjectures of a guilty bystander, offered in the hope that together we can navigate the map of the new country faithfully, inclusively, and assured that Jesus takes us as we are because we can come no other way.

    In 1968 Pope Paul VI announced the infamous Catholic ban on artificial contraception. That came as a surprise. The aggiornamento of the Second Vatican Council was going into reverse. A young Catholic woman wrote later: “that was the day I took control of my own morality”.

    Over recent decades the drip feed of fearful intolerance about human sexuality has had an equally toxic effect. LGBT+ Christians have long since taken control of their own morality. Like the popular response to the Vatican ban, this is corrosive for all of us and gradually erodes the ability of the Church to be heard seriously on a wide range of ethical dilemmas. Why should anyone listen to the churches on major biblical issues such as the evil caused by borrowing and lending money at interest (about which the Bible says so much) when it seems incapable of addressing issues of human sexuality (on which the Bible as a whole says almost nothing, and on which Jesus is completely silent)?

    More disturbing still is that the landscape and rhetoric have become increasingly contested. A decade ago, when I was an acting Archdeacon, my evangelical colleague asked me to put together some resources that we could make available to clergy for the blessing of same sex partnerships. We – and our Bishop – saw this as completely uncontroversial. That today we are formally not permitted to bless same sex couples seems astounding. The recent outspoken decision of a hundred Roman Catholic priests in Germany to defy the latest Vatican ban on blessing same sex couples is a standing rebuke to our own lack of courage here.

    In his 2006 collection, The Other, the Polish Nobel Prize winning journalist and commentator Ryszard Kapuscinski critiques the Western response to the non-European and says something absolutely crucial about what happens when we “other” people who are different. At best it harms both the other and the other-er. At worst it leads to genocide. Othering may have been theologically validated by parts of the Dutch Reformed church in South Africa, but excluding people on the grounds of taste and culture dressed up as principle is both common and deeply corrosive both for living faith and for wider community cohesion. So-called “conversion therapy” is an extreme form of othering, and responding with compassion is necessary but not sufficient, certainly for churches with a very uneven track record in their response to diversity.

    Once again, Jesus in the Gospels gives us startling counter examples. Jesus loves and welcomes the “other” (and those othered by Jesus’ own community): a Jewish tax collector; a pagan centurion and his boy; a Canaanite woman; and so on. Instead of judging them, he holds them up to others as examples for us to imitate. The exception here of course is when it comes to the religious elite. Most extraordinarily, Jesus others himself in extreme ways in order to stand with the other.

    Multiple pathologies hover around human sexuality among many Christians. These are inexplicable by reference to Bible, tradition or reason. Sexuality stirs up a much more visceral reaction. Some years ago a senior church leader said that he felt physically sick when people talked about homosexuality. That is not good theology!

    Why is sex the stumbling block? At what point did sexual identity and orientation become the touchstone of an entirely novel understanding of biblical orthodoxy?

    For western Christians, the double whammy of Original Sin (a doctrine unknown to patristic and orthodox theology, and – I would suggest – unknown to the Bible) plus the linking of that doctrine to genital activity have left a toxic legacy which constantly threatens our ability to have sane and faithful conversations about human sexuality. There is a related and consequent inability to recognise the damage we inflect on others. We still have a significant way to go to climb our way out of an Augustinian pessimism about sex, and indeed about human flourishing more generally.

    Pope Francis’ made a splendidly inclusive statement in the context of Black Lives Matter: “We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of human life.” Fantastic logic, but – as a comedian quipped recently on the radio – banning the blessing of same sex couples was not the obvious way to follow that up. And as a young woman involved annually in Pride, my youngest daughter has developed a wonderful sense of irony as year by year she faces fellow Christians (of rather different convictions) yelling at her that she’s on the road to hell. Really?

    It would be helpful if we were a bit more honest – that for most of us there is very little theology in our response to most issues in human sexuality, but rather a visceral response. At least the medieval church – hardly sympathetic to LGBT+ rights – recognised that there was very little in Scripture to support their position and largely resorted to arguments from natural law.

    In a beautiful comment recently on the BBC World Service a devout Moslem lesbian described the resolution of her own struggle with her sexuality. She came to the conclusion that because Allah did not make mistakes, Allah could not have made a mistake in making her. Those are words of deep reassurance that the Christian churches need to say unequivocally to all of those it has “othered” – not simply expressing a vague liberal tolerance of difference but insisting that all of us are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139) and intended by God. Our failure to see that is part of our own alienation.

    Traditional Christian moral teaching takes seriously both the sensus fidelium (i.e. what most Christians are thinking) and personal conscience. These have not been so obvious in contemporary Anglican discourse. The challenge of the experience of so many of those whom we have “othered” – so powerfully expressed in the Via Media testimonies about conversion therapy – suggests strongly that churches need to go rather further than therapeutic listening and have the boldness to embrace the “other” as the lost part of ourselves.

  • Banning Conversion Therapy Must “Focus on the Victim Not the Perpetrator”

    by the Right Reverend Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

    The General Synod debate on Conversion Therapy was easily one of the hardest it fell to me to chair. We were allowed something like 75 minutes in which to deal with the substantive motion, several amendments and even one amendment to an amendment. So many members wanted to speak that it was vital not to lose sight of the thrust of the motion amid the practical issues of moving of amendments, motions for closure, and voting. When I came to leave the chamber, I could hardly move for members wanting to thank me for having managed the debate with pace, clarity and good humour. Not everyone was happy; there are always some who think a balanced debate is one where half of the speakers are advocating their particular view, and the other half cover all remaining possible views. But, outshadowing the process, was the outcome. Synod called for a ban on Conversion Therapy by massive majorities in all three Houses.

    It has taken a while for the proposal to go further, but in the recent Queen’s Speech, opening the new session of Parliament, the UK government has given a clear commitment to progressing matters. When the debate on the Speech took place in the House of Lords, I took the opportunity to remind Parliament of the Synod vote and was delighted when the government minister responding to the debate, Baroness Susan Williams, endorsed my comments.

    Progress, but not as yet victory. The government have continued to send out mixed messages, saying there will need to be consultation before legislative proposals are formed. Consultation, of course, but that has all too often been a phrase used to excuse foot-dragging. We are never going to achieve legislation that everyone agrees is perfect, especially when balancing potentially conflicting human rights. Sometimes we need to just get on with things, and make any necessary changes later, in the light of experience.

    So, if there’s going to be consultation, let’s make it as short and snappy as we can. In which spirit, let me offer a couple of starter points, to see if we can get the conversation going. I’ve shown my theological working, but you do not need to agree with all my beliefs in order to engage with the rest of the argument.

    First, let’s focus on the victim not the perpetrator.

    As Mary’s wonderful song, the Magnificat, illustrates, our God does not side with the powerful but with the weak and outcast. He is the God who seeks remedy for the oppressed not protection for the strong.

    In the nineteenth century, when Parliament raised the Age of Consent to 16, it did so in the teeth of considerable opposition from members who were worried that their attraction to young girls would land them in trouble, for failing to distinguish a 14 year old from a child of 16. If the children featured in their conversation at all, it was as temptresses, looking to lure unwary older men into criminality. It never occurred to them that the onus to ensure their proposed partner was of age fell on them, and if in doubt, to refrain.

    If the consultation on Conversion Therapies (and I confess I’d rather call it Conversion Abuse, rather than dignify it with medical terminology) spends too much time and effort on trying to define exactly how far a perpetrator can go, or what procedures they can use, before breaking the law, then we will have lost that vital victim centrality. We need to focus on the wounding not the weapon. What matters in a victim centred approach to law is the severity and durability of the harm done, not whether that damage was done by prayer, hypnosis or psychological techniques.

    There is now a massive pile of evidence to support how damaging these abuses are in general. When it comes to the particularities of an individual trial and conviction, the discretion of judges to sentence at an appropriate level provides ample scope to distinguish between levels of severity of abuse. Let it remain the responsibility of those who wish to carry out “therapies” to ensure their actions will never cause harm.

    Secondly, consent is only consent if informed and freely given.

    At the heart of the Gospel lies the love of God, shown fully in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This love, freely given, invites every person to respond equally freely. Love forced or coerced is not love at all.

    The harrowing stories of those damaged by attempts to change their sexuality usually begin in the victims’ early or mid teens. Pressure from parents, or from church leaders, has all too often played a major part in them feeling they have to change. The procedures to which they are exposed are then often led by those same individuals who have applied the pressure. There is a deep irony in the fact that the voices who argue most stridently that a teenager cannot give consent to life changing gender therapies, in the highly controlled and monitored environment of the NHS, are often the very voices who believe that same teenager can give free and informed consent to Conversion Therapy, in the far less transparent and accountable environment of a prayer meeting or attempted exorcism.

    Putting it bluntly, I struggle to see how any child judged not old enough to make an informed and free enough judgment to place a cross on a ballot paper can be considered capable of giving informed consent to attempts to change their sexual feelings, outside of a setting at least as managed and monitored as that provided by public health services.

    Finally, we don’t have to get everything right in a piece of legislation prior to publishing a Bill. Parliamentary process allows many opportunities to reflect and consider, and for those interested to lobby for amendment to this or that clause. Even when a Bill becomes an Act, it doesn’t have to be the last ever word on a subject. If a law is not working well enough, it can readily be amended or repealed. Meanwhile, whilst we fail to press on with draft legislation, young people are continuing to suffer abuse disguised as therapy. Their harm is real and immediate. For their sakes we need to make this consultation both short and to the point.

  • “Another Way is Possible….”

    by the Revd Nick Bundock, Team Rector of St James & Emmanuel, Didsbury

    I just want you to re-read that phrase again because it’s really important.

    Another way is possible. 

    I’m able to say that not as a theologian theorising about some future destination as yet unreached.  I say it as one sent out over the boundary wall, as someone who has been to the future and has come back onto these pages to tell you what it actually looks like. I have become part of a new way of being the whole people of God and I want to share that with you.  I’ve come on here to tell you that the stories of failure, hurt and exclusion on these pages don’t need to be put on a repeat loop.

    I say ‘tell’ when actually I mean ‘show’.  My skill with words is insufficient to tell, so I want to show you what the future looks like through a series of images.  These are pictures that contrast sharply with the lived experience of those brave and wonderful LGBTQ+ siblings who have shared on these pages the horrific stories of malpractice and hurt.  These images are all I have to offer.  I cannot undo the wrongs that have been recounted on this blog, but I give what I can: hope.

    This is hope borne of my own failure as a priest and church leader; the suicide of Lizzie Lowe in 2014.  I come onto these pages not as an heroic white knight but as a repentant sinner, as one snatched as though through the flames.  When I look at these images, as I sit here and type, I feel myself overwhelmed by the grace of God.  Having been at the centre of a tragedy I am now privileged to be part of a radical and loving community of believers here in Manchester.  We’ve crossed over the boundary wall and I’m only coming back here to tell you that there is plenty of room for everyone on the other side.

    As you look at the photographs that follow, I invite you to dwell on them for a moment.  Notice the expressions on people’s faces.  Notice the poses, the position of each person relative to another.  These are, of course, all pre-covid and that in itself is a source of emotional content, pay attention to that too.  All of these images were taken on Easter Day 2019 by photographer Hannah Beatrice, I want you to notice one thing above everything else: the joy.

    I’m not sure what first brought Adelaide and Kathryn (centre) to St James and Emmanuel but they are newly married and very much in love.  Old and young, white and black hands reaching out to other hands in joyful unity.  Nobody in this image is arguing about the meaning of Romans 1!

    I have just said the words ‘The Peace of the Lord be always with you’ and the community is living out that peace as ministers of reconciliation.

    This photo reminds me of Paul’s words to the Corinthian church, ‘All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…’ (2 Cor 15:18). This, my friends, is what reconciliation looks like when robed in flesh.  What a contrast to the mean, thin theology of exclusion that has imprisoned so many churches – ironically a kind of anti-evangelicalism.

    The second photo shows me with Augustine Ihm, who is soon to be a curate here at St James and Emmanuel (subject to visa).  Again, notice the joy, notice the harmony of black and white, young and old.

    The penultimate photo shows a long-standing member, Mike (left) who has joined me in moving from a conservative to an affirming position.  He has his arm around one of our many Iranian members (right).

    One of the miracles of inclusion is that once you make a community safe for the LGBTQ+ community you find that other minority groups feel safe in your church.  Heck, I feel safe in my church these days.  Since we became inclusive we’ve baptised nearly two-hundred Iranians and Kurds at St James and Emmanuel and many have stories of miraculous conversion.

    In my final photo, Paul is reading us a prayer he has written.  Paul lived in a sheltered community with other adults with learning difficulties.

    Paul died this year and is deeply missed.  I don’t know why we now have a community of adults with learning difficulties.  All I know is that we didn’t have one before we welcomed our LGBTQ+ friends into our church.

    —–

    I want you to see in this small selection of photographs a picture of hope.  The Church has perpetrated a great harm upon our LGBTQ+ siblings, but another way is possible and, more importantly, it’s possible for even previously ambivalent or hostile communities to enter this new emancipation – we did.

    I remember a conservative member, just before he left the church in horror at our move to inclusion, warn me that St James and Emmanuel would become like Jerusalem in Ezekiel 10.  The Spirit was grieved and would leave us and take us into exile for our sins.  What I have joyfully discovered – the paradigm shift is so profound I can still barely understand all its implications – is that we were in exile and it’s Lizzie’s death that has led us back to Jerusalem.

    Over the past year we have founded the Church for Everyone movement as a place to share the Good News of inclusion and reconciliation and to share practical insights and good practice.  Not just in the area of sexuality but also race, gender, disability and age.  We’d love to include your stories so that alongside the exposure of genuine hurt, misery, manipulation and abuse we can also begin to chart our way to a better future.  My vision for the Church of England is that it be a Church for Everyone.

    I don’t want a future where people have to point to one or two inclusion successes but to an entirely new way of being God’s people spread from one corner of the land to the other.   My aim is for St James and Emmanuel to simply disappear into a sea of inclusive and loving churches where love means love and inclusion is the rule rather than the exception.  Perhaps that’s something we can do together?

    I’ve read Annie’s story, Peter’s story and those of Kate, Yve, Stephen, Jamie and all the others and here I address them personally.  I’m so sorry about what has happened to you and I’m also sorry that I haven’t addressed your stories directly.  I hope that my reflection and response is helpful.  I am both a penitent – I’ve been part of the problem and I acknowledge the harm and pain I’ve caused you, but also a bearer of hope – it’s your emancipation into the full life of the Church that will become its salvation and it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing to behold when it happens.

    For more information about Lizzie Lowe please visit https://stjamesandemmanuel.org/beyond-inclusion/

     

  • Justin’s Story – “I was taught to hate the very ones who loved me”

    by Justin, a survivor of conversion therapy who was nearly crushed under the shame but is now a minister in training

    Like many others, I was once that lively, passionate, charismatic Christian. I stood out, I was bold and courageous, but like many others there was something deeply hidden and shameful about me (or so I thought). I was gay.

    Being ‘born again’ at 17 in an evangelical charismatic church had seemed natural to me. I’d known I was attracted to men before this but I’d never known what to do about it, so when Jesus came along it felt like this was it – salvation, escape, life in all its fullness! I spent five years as that lively, passionate, charismatic Jesus firebrand until a monster re-appeared from the deep to the surface of my life.

    I couldn’t believe it. Me, the pioneer, still had this ‘thing’? (I couldn’t even say ‘gay’ at the time).

    I had secretly hoped that God would have healed me in this new ‘born again’ life but it just didn’t happen. I shared with close Christian friends and church leaders alike and I became ‘project Justin.’ The order of the day was ‘conversion therapy!’  Charismatics believed wholeheartedly in God’s power, but also Satan’s ability to corrupt too. It was clear that I had been corrupted, so deliverance, to them, was what I needed.

    My journey wasn’t a summer camp or an ex-gay ministry but rather two people who specialised in deliverance, which meant they could get the “gay demons” out of me. From the age of 22 through til about 28, every three months or so I would stay for a weekend in this couple’s house for my sessions. Each session we talked, from childhood to present seeking to find the places where Satan might have infiltrated my life. If I’d had sex, we had to name the person and pray to be delivered from the demons they may have passed onto me. At first, I was excited. I genuinely thought that this would be the answer. It was only after time passed that I began to realised how torturous it was becoming.

    My biggest feeling was shame.

    Every session digging up shame, making me feel it, relive it, leaving with it. God wasn’t doing anything! The more I tried to engage with this ministry the greater my sexual desires grew; it wasn’t doing anything at all! In desperation I went along with everything. First I was taught that my Mum was to blame; then my dad; then, my childhood (which was, on the contrary, actually very happy). I was taught to hate the very ones who loved me and to view all the good I had as rotten and bad.

    It was torture. It completely screwed me up.

    After six years I gave up and left this ministry, having been told I couldn’t be delivered because I wasn’t willing to change! But the thing was that though I left it, sadly it never left me. The God I loved hated me; it felt like he hadn’t lift a finger to help. So, I left him too – if he hates me, I hate him. The family I thought loved me were to blame for all of this, so on the hate list they went! And of course I was on that list too. I despised myself. Whether you call it “Conversion therapy”, “Deliverance ministry”, “pray the gay away”, or whatever else – it ripped the life out of me and left me as a dead man walking.

    I had no hope at all. Justin ‘the project’ became Justin ‘the problem,’ and a big one at that!

    Church was no longer home, family was no longer home, nowhere was safe anymore! What a lie I had been sold! And sadly, this is a lie a lot of my LGBTQIA+ friends get sold too. But it so obviously causes greater harm than good – in some cases suicide can be the result! It needs to stop!

    The good news is that it can, but it’s going to be a long hard struggle.

    I have now returned to my faith, I’m a minister in training, God in his grace has been transforming me and ‘project Justin’ who became ‘problem Justin’ is now ‘loved and affirmed Justin!’ And I have accepted God’s call to rid this world of such practices and so I have to speak out. I have to speak out about the silence, the theological grooming and the quack psychological techniques that always lead to shame and self-rejection.

    Yes, we want the government to ban conversion therapy, but I also want the church to listen to us, to hear us, to see that bespoke charismatic packages of deliverance are the torture devices of hell, the equivalent of medieval thumb screws!

    I don’t just want a ban but a real heart cry of “sorry” to come from within evangelical charismatic circles for what they have done as they have operated under the radar. We must continue to fight and stand together against this. We are loved, we are affirmed, we are accepted, and we have a future in our faith communities.

     

     

     

     

  • Peter’s Story – Conditioning Causes Shame & Self-Hatred

    by Peter (a pseudonym), a survivor of conversion therapy 

    Why do people seek out Conversion Therapy and prayer/deliverance ministries?

    For me, I did because I thought it could ‘correct’ my sexuality. It is only with hindsight that I now know it was the most destructive thing I could have done to myself.

    I was brought up within an evangelical church in South London. My entire childhood was all about going to church on Sundays and learning all about the Bible and its stories. I realised that I was different from other boys at the age of five. I had no word for it but I knew that something was not the same. No one ever mentioned homosexuality to me, but they did promote chastity until marriage and the importance of the ‘nuclear family’ – husband as the head of the house, the wife as the submissive helper and nurturer and then the children.  I was conditioned to believe that this was entirely normal. And that is what the church was very good at, conditioning. It was all in the subliminal messaging that all of us Sunday school children received and then watching our parents and other adults in the church trying to live this out. I had nothing to measure it all against.

    We were always told that we were to be ‘in the world but not of the world’. I took this to mean that the world was an evil place but all church people were’ intrinsically good’. I guess I took this to an extreme as I was growing up especially when I started to realise that I was gay.

    When HIV and AIDS was first spoken about in the early 1980’s I was 12 and knew I was gay. The churches response was that ‘these people’ were pure evil and they deserved what was coming to them. It was also obvious that this was the attitude presented by the media and by society as a whole. For me it was a perfect storm. My awakening sexuality became completely tarnished by attitudes of the church, the place where I felt safe and where I got my spiritual identity from.

    For instance, I can remember being told that gay men were no better than paedophiles and people who practiced bestiality and necrophilia. I couldn’t be gay, I simply couldn’t.

    Shame crept in and stayed there for a very long time.

    The outworking of all this is that I became a classic people pleaser. I had to lead prayer meetings and get as involved as much as I could in the church. I needed people, and God, to like me. I took it too far. I utterly hated myself. I was always on high alert meaning that I over compensated all the time. I was always paranoid thinking that I couldn’t ever present a ‘gay persona’ to people. I was constantly checking my mannerisms and always filtering. The result being that I was always exhausted, even when I wasn’t doing anything. I no longer do any of these things since coming out but the fatigue still remains.

    I originally came out in 2004 at the age of 32. In one sense it was a relief to finally be authentic but in another sense it was the foreboding start of a dark journey to try and correct my sexuality.  It was suggested that I go and seek conversion therapy  which I did. I felt very uncomfortable with going to the sessions and quickly made up my mind that this wasn’t for me. Thank God I did because I don’t know what the outcome would have been and how it would have impacted on my already delicate mental health.  Years later after becoming an atheist and coming back to Christ in my early 40’s I had some deliverance and prayer ministry. I saw this as a last resort to finally correct something that had bugged me for my entire life. Of course, I had been conditioned into believing that my sexuality was broken from a very early age so I had no hesitation into thinking and believing that prayer ministry was right for me.

    The funny thing about all of this is that I never told the prayer ministers that I was gay. I told them that I had had gay experiences in the past and that I regretted my past sexual behaviour with men. In reality I didn’t regret it at all but the need to be liked and accepted was paramount.  I was so full of shame, guilt and fear that I thought they would judge me for being gay if I had told them and that I would be thrown out of the ministry centre.  I only felt validated when people liked me and admitting that I was gay to the prayer ministers filled me with utter dread so I told them that it was all in the past even though in reality it wasn’t.

    In my head I had separated my orientation from my sexual behaviour. I simply could not be honest with myself, however hard I tried. I received prayer ministry and deliverance for having had gay sex in the past and still had various ‘sexual demons’ prayed out of me even though they never prayed directly for my homosexuality in that current moment.

    All the shame and self-hatred got much worse when I was going through this.

    I can safely say that it didn’t work. Having conversion therapy and prayer ministry made all my problems much worse. My mental health was shot to pieces. Years of lying to myself and other people had tipped me over the edge. It has caused deep depression, PTSD, an anxiety disorder, suicidal ideation and panic attacks. I am currently seeing an excellent therapist and I’m glad I sought help for this. I am working through my issues and I am finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

    Even thinking or writing about this time is still exceedingly painful. I feel deeply ashamed that I went through with it and bringing it up again has been very difficult for me. My primary hope for writing this is for people to understand some of the short and long term effects. It was all so coercive and I still feel ashamed that I agreed for it to happen to me. Of course, at the time I was in agreement because all I wanted was to be accepted by the wider church community. It was so important for me to be liked by people in the church and very difficult to know when things were going too far.

    I guess what I’d like people to realise is that the shame runs very deep and it takes time to heal. It is only now that I’ve begun this healing process that I’ve been able to forgive everyone involved, and define myself in others way than as a ‘victim’.

    In short, good mental health and safeguarding policies within church settings are of paramount importance. This is why a complete ban on conversion therapy with no exemptions is needed. All LGBTQ+ people’s lives are way too precious to be messed around with.

     

  • Lesbians, Sex and the Church of England

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

    I could see that the bishop was going red, and as he did so nervous giggles spread across the Synod Chamber.  I stood, pan faced, at the speakers’ microphone and said: “I’m deadly serious, bishop.”

    The Church of England’s Synod Question Time is supposedly an opportunity for General Synod members to raise questions of the various Chairs of the Church of England’s Boards and Councils and is one of the few mechanisms available for us to try and hold these senior leaders to account.

    It was February 2017 and I had just asked the Chair of the House of Bishops, or more precisely the bishop tasked with overseeing the Church’s work on sexuality and gender identity matters, the following:

    “Bishop, given we understand that the Anglican Communion might break over “it”, that the Church of England faces a split over “it” and I cannot get ordained because of “it”, what actually is “it” for a lesbian like myself?”

    Of course, I didn’t get an answer.

    You see, we don’t tend to really think about lesbian sex within the Church of England, dare I say we don’t really tend to think about lesbians at all!  Most of the focus has, I’m sorry to say, been on the supposed sex acts between our gay brothers in Christ.  That is undoubtedly because both Old and New Testament have a few lines of text about certain sex acts, which sadly are normally taken completely out of context and are frequently mistranslated.  Sparing the fact that anal sex is far more prevalent amongst heterosexuals than homosexuals, what the Bible is clear about is that there is absolutely nothing that focuses specifically on the whether the love between two people of the same sex is right or wrong – that is, unless you think of that between David and Jonathan.

    Today is Lesbian Day of Visibility, and I believe it is right and indeed necessary to stop and think about the plight of lesbians within faith communities, and sadly what so many have had to endure through the ages.

    Lesbianism is not a new thing – it has just been far more covered up, due to cultural taboos and the dominance of patriarchal power structures that have subjugated women throughout the ages and kept them “in their place”, or worse, just out of sight.

    In some ways I think many have, like Queen Victoria, just not considered the fact that women might be attracted to each other.  Men may have been far more aware, not least I fear to say because of the prolific amount of online porn (evidently, many men find it more satisfying to see two women together than to watch another man having sex).

    Be that as it may, faith communities have not, it seems, really thought through their stance on lesbianism.  It is just “tucked on” to their position on all LGBT+ people, mostly informed by their position on gay men – the “L” is just another letter in the LGBTQI alphabet.

    So, what is “it”?

    In trying to force this question in Synod, I admit that I was trying to get the Church of England to see how utterly futile and meaningless their internal discussions actually are about sexuality.  Can we really boil down the whole of the future of the Anglican Communion to how two people choose to express their love for each other?  If that really is the case, then I would argue that what we should be focusing on is the actual love between two people – the fact that they have deep feelings for each other and have decided that they have found a life mate who they want to commit to, cherish and honour.

    For centuries, lesbians have had a stark choice.  For most, they could either stay as spinsters (the archetypal “maiden aunts”) tasked with either looking after aged parents or (if they were lucky) hiding behind the fact that they dared to have their own career; or they could enter into heterosexual marriages and just “put up” with it.  This happened and still happens at great cost. The “just putting up with it” has sadly led to years of marital rape, or worse, forced rape – and sadly has led to some taking the only way out they know, that of tragically taking their own lives.

    Many churches still teach that that is “the best way forward”, with many advocating that LGBT+ people should enter into mixed-marriages, little thinking of the significant harm this does – to both parties.  On the one side you have someone who is having to endure a sexual act that they do not desire, the other because they are not experiencing the sexual desire that they deserve.

    It is a pitiful state of affairs, but all too common – trapping both parties in a misery of hell.

    Moreover, worse stories are now coming to light – particularly, sadly, within the minority ethnic religions.  Here a lesbian’s plight is far more dangerous – with an untold number being subjected to “corrective rape”, often by family members, in order to try and “make” them straight.  Few, understandably, will ever speak out about this for fear or shame.  Even fewer will try to seek justice – they have been traumatised enough already, and they are all too aware of the state’s appalling record of getting any convictions.

    So, what should we do?

    Well one of the critical things, I believe, is for more lesbian women to become far more visible and to speak out about their experiences.  That is why I am so keen to support #LesbianVisibilityWeek.  We need to find new ways of profiling good role models, who can challenge stereotypes and show that we, women who are attracted to women, exist everywhere – in all cultures, age groups, social structures and backgrounds.  We are a force to be reckoned with and we will not be silenced.

    As for defining what is “it”…

    …well, I shall await an answer from the House of Bishops on that.  For, as I said, so much seemingly seems to rest upon it – even the future of the Church of England!