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Tag: Archbishop of Canterbury

  • Beyond Jay: Here’s What the Response Group and Synod Need to Do for a Safer Church

    by Gilo, hymn writer, co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and co-creator of the House of Survivors website

    Three diocesan bishops seek my take, with varying degrees of regularity, on developments in the Church of England’s safeguarding and response to survivors. I’m careful to point out that any views I express are mine, mine alone, and do not represent those of any organisation or group. I neither seek nor receive any funds in the process. So the thinking expressed here is not the only viewpoint, nor necessarily the right one (if such exists). It is simply mine, in a field which is likely to be contentious in the forthcoming Synod.

    The three bishops have each asked what I think of the Jay report. In my view the Jay is undeliverable and, even if it were, would it necessarily result in something better than the current mess? Professor Alexis Jay has done the reverse of what she did in IICSA. The IICSA recommendations were limp and didn’t go far enough. Now she’s gone too far, and by proposing Org A she’s given CofE a possible excuse to slow down the crucial Org B. She is a political naïf, and in my view the recommendations in the Jay report arose perhaps as a form of psychological penance for not being ambitious enough in IICSA. I think this report will set the Church back, not move it forward. If you follow its course logically, then other institutions may seek Org A structures in the name of ‘independence’ and we’d end up with a multitude of safeguarding bodies creating further confusion. I think no amount of Org A, and no amount of expenditure on Org A (which would put current CofE safeguarding expenditure into deep shade) can stand in place of properly designed mandatory reporting in the statutory framework. This is the key. The best course of action the Church could be taking is banging loudly on Home Office doors to argue a case for an end to the ‘potemkin village’ Whitehall is wanting to create and instead to introduce effective mandatory reporting. Whitehall wants mandatory reporting in name only, in a watered-down version of the IICSA recommendation which was already itself a watery version.

    The Church has undoubtedly arrived at a car crash moment. Where does responsibility for this lie? Failed leadership. Synod must remind itself that failure at the heart of the axis of power, represented by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in conjunction with the Secretary-General, has brought the Church to such a desperate situation. Had they resolved their differences with the ISB in a transparent and safe way there would have been no need for the Jay report.

    Let’s turn to the much-needed Org B, which is where I believe focus must be directed. Org B, as an essential body for scrutiny and oversight and the all-important handling of complaints is urgently needed, and is long overdue. The Church must give such a body effective powers if it is to avoid creating another toothless tiger (NSP anyone?). At present I believe the power to place a diocese into special measures lies within the gift of the Archbishop. This happened memorably to Chichester Diocese under Rowan Williams. This is the kind of bite Org B requires. Not the set of rubber dentures which Archbishops’ Council and their NCIs will be looking to manufacture.

    And no veto by an Archbishop. It may well be that one of the places needing such Special Measures might be the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, alongside London Diocese which would seem a prime candidate for emergency action. London is not alone in being crashy, but it’s up there amongst the worst. We only need one diocese placed publicly into Special Measures and any other dioceses currently lagging behind in handling of cases or responses to survivors will tighten up their bootlaces in a weekend. The routine blanking and obfuscation that still persists in some quarters will quickly end.

    And above all it must end within the NST.

    Whatever shape the Archbishops’ Council eventually decides to give to a new shiny ‘independent’ model, the NST must be removed from the grip of the Secretariat. Its days as an arm of the legals and comms of Church House must end. If it is to have a positive future, it must be repurposed, retrained and given a new vision of itself, with independent management which involves survivors, with all our experience and narrative wisdom. The NST leadership must face their own cognitive dissonance squarely and courageously, and recognise that its deployment by Church House in various aspects of reputation management has been disgraceful and dishonest.

    Whatever happens, ‘Delay’ is likely to be the watchword. Delay by design, but also through incompetence and systemic dysfunctionality. One thing is for definite: the CofE must never again allow one individual to hold as much unaccountable power as is currently compressed into the office of the Secretary-General. He has presided over a rotten borough in the NCIs and puppet-stringed the NST to such an extent that it has become almost impossible for survivors to have much trust in the thing. But the problem is not William Nye alone; it’s the inherited system of which he is a part, albeit a big part. We must factor in too, the lack of leadership by the Archbishops, the Lead Safeguarding Bishop and the NST.

    The House of Bishops is an enfeebled house with a poor grasp of these things. What we’ve seen across the past decade is fewer than a handful of bishops speaking out. Alan ‘Elbows’ Wilson knew that any time the media approached bishops on matters ‘survivor related’’, the traffic would immediately be centrally controlled through Church House comms. He ignored this, and spoke directly to journalists without approval from the centralized machinery of the Secretariat. He was past playing safe games with the structure and was happy to be out on the edge speaking truth to its power. He doubtless took many a kicking but it never seemed to upset him. Julie Conalty has been a courageous voice too, often a lone voice highlighting particular aspects of corruption. But I suspect she’s marginalized by a structure which expects all bishops to stay blandly ‘on message’. She needs a few diocesans to step up and publicly support her when she dares to challenge the status quo.

    Bishops must stop being cowed, stop colluding with toxic culture. They must learn to get over their fear of receiving ‘heavy shepherding’ from one or other of the Archbishops when they speak out of turn. If an Archbishop arrives on your door to bully you into submission to the rules of purple enclosure – then stand up to him. If you stick your head above the parapet, you will be marginalised. Learn to embrace this. The likelihood is that this or that particular bit of funding for your diocese will be squeezed. It’s been indicated to me that this is quietly how the culture of collegiate control operates. So the purple enclosure stays on message and lets any missives be handed out by a Lead Bishop who to all intents and purposes seems mostly missing in action as far as survivors are concerned. When a bishop dares to go off-piste and makes an authentic comment, they experience the polite scowl of the institution. But if enough speak out, especially from the top of the Lead trio, then the toxic culture might begin to change.

    Successive lead bishops have discovered they have nothing but rubber levers to work with! The real levers, those of power and any real change, are held by Archbishops’ Council which in turn is heavily controlled by a shadowy Secretariat. The wheels turn slowly because everything is hardwired to move slowly. Just as the structure is hardwired to protect hierarchy and itself. One of the bishops who listens to me recently asked me what I consider to be the three main obstacles to progress. In my view, these are:

    (1) centralised and dysfunctional power which rules an unchecked empire with disastrous consequences. Look at the handling of the ISB members and the way they were closed down at an hour’s notice.

    (2) siloed mindset of the bishops who occupy a ‘me and my diocese’ headspace. There is little public collegiate expression of responsibility and far too much collegiate fear.

    (3) the transparency gap. Too much of the structure is wedded to reputation management and used to hiding stuff. The institution has failed to grasp that transparency is the best route to salvaging reputation.

    I want to end on a positive note, because the picture is not all gloom. Some dioceses have made huge strides. I’ve been supporting one survivor in recent weeks. We sent an initial letter of disclosure to the relevant diocese, and I advised that we should hopefully expect a response within 48 hrs. The reply came within 15 mins! And was hugely positive. Not only did the diocese agree to therapy costs immediately but they are also meeting us in the home geography of the survivor’s town rather than expecting us to make the journey cross-country. The bishop also sent a positive response as soon as he could. I believe dioceses must continue to retain responsibility for the deliverance of good safeguarding and positive response to survivors. And dioceses that are operating out of a handbook that should have been jettisoned a decade ago should be placed into the equivalent of an ambulance that Org B will need to have on standby for just such an eventuality.

     

     

  • The Bishops must be Bolder and Braver on Gaza

    by Dr Jonathan Chaplin, a Fellow of Wesley House, Cambridge and a lay member of Ely Diocesan Synod*

    Two weeks ago, Archbishop Welby reversed his earlier refusal to meet prominent Palestinian Christian leader, Revd Dr Munther Isaac, on account of the fact that Isaac had shared a platform with Jeremy Corbyn at a pro-Palestinian rally in London. For the first time, he also used the word ‘condemn’ of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. These are important steps in a much-needed rebalancing of the Church of England’s official stances on the Gazan catastrophe.

    But there is more to do. Since October, the House of Bishops has issued three statements on the war, most recently in February. Coming from the appointed teachers of the established Church, they deserve a respect which must include critical scrutiny. Many elements of these statements are commendable, but they fall short on two fundamental counts.

    First, while the bishops eventually made clear their ‘moral’ disapproval of the Israeli military campaign, they fail explicitly to name Israeli actions as violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes.

    At this point there can be no doubt on the matter. As early as late October, a public letter from British lawyers to the UK government – now signed by 1100 – made clear that, even then, there was ample evidence of multiple specific violations of many international laws by the Israeli state. Months later, the extent and severity of these violations has expanded enormously. In January, the International Court of Justice delivered the extraordinary ruling that Israeli actions were ‘plausibly genocidal’, ordering Israel urgently to take all measures to prevent that outcome (which it has ignored).

    The horrifying scale of deaths and injuries has been amply reported, resulting from recklessly disproportionate and indiscriminate Israeli bombardments. Almost all Gazan hospitals are destroyed or dysfunctional. 80% of the population has been displaced and are barely surviving in catastrophically inhumane conditions while still under military assault. Well over 50% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or flattened, meaning most Gazans will have nowhere to return when the fighting stops. 90% of educational institutions, numerous churches and mosques and irreplaceable cultural sites have been damaged or destroyed, and much agricultural land has been rendered useless. Many Gazans now face starvation due to continuing drastic Israeli restrictions on the supply of humanitarian aid – another war crime – and official bodies have reported that children are already dying as a result.

    None of this can remotely be justified under Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’, a phrase repeatedly but uncritically invoked by the bishops. As Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, observes, a state cannot invoke this right against a territory that it is belligerently occupying. Israel is not bound by some iron necessity to inflict this level of devastating collective punishment on defenceless Gazans. International law demands that Israel find other ways to protect its citizens against Hamas and retrieve its hostages.

    It is not enough for the bishops merely to express ‘moral’ disapproval of such criminal acts, since this is easily dismissed as a subjective judgment that can be legitimately contested. If what is happening in Gaza is to be truthfully described, these acts must be named as publicly verifiable and culpable breaches of international law.

    Second, the bishops’ statements fail to convey anything like an adequate recognition of the larger historical and political context of sustained Israeli oppression of Palestinians, since at least the 1967 illegal occupation. That complex history is, of course, read through radically different lenses. But there is ample verifiable evidence to support the bishops’ issuing a much fuller acknowledgement of the scale, intensity and recent harsh escalation of Israeli state oppression of Palestinians, which the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem in 2021 named as amounting to ‘apartheid’.

    The House of Bishops urgently needs to speak more bravely into a calamity in which Britain is itself deeply implicated historically. It will thereby send a much more credible message of Christian solidarity to the people of Gaza who have felt abandoned by many western churches.

    *an edited version of a speech in support of Dr Chaplin’s private member’s motion at Ely Diocesan Synod on 9 March 2024, seconded by the Revd James Shakespeare (Rural Dean, Cambridge South). The motion, which was carried narrowly, calls on the House of Bishops to issue a much stronger statement on Gaza that they have so far.

  • Archbishops’ Council: Reset Required

    by Gilo, co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and also co-creator of the House of Survivors website. He also writes post-modern hymns.

    This past week saw the Deputy Safeguarding Lead Bishop say on social media: “Today the church is less accountable. To remove, at short notice, the strongest independent voices holding the CofE to account for its safeguarding failings makes us look resistant to robust scrutiny and challenge – which, of course, we are.” And in a BBC interview shortly afterwards: “I don’t entirely trust the church, even though I’m a key part of it.”

    Bishop Julie Conalty is correct in her assessment, and sadly one of the few bishops with sufficient spine to say it publicly.

    Many questions arise from these comments. Did Archbishops’ Council alert DSAs (Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors) prior to the sacking of the ISB statement? Were DSAs across dioceses given any time to prepare for victims’ and survivors’ confusion and distress? I know one wasn’t. I alerted him about forty minutes prior to the release of the statement. Steve Reeves and Jasvinder Sanghera had been given less than an hour’s notice before the statement went up on the Church of England website. They urged Archbishops’ Council for time to prepare the survivors in their care; they urged the Council to think about possible impact. They were told no. So in desperation they reached out to alert a few people quickly so we could contact several others in very vulnerable situations as quickly as possible. I rang and gently told one survivor what was coming as I knew that it could be devastating for them to find out suddenly in this impersonal way by the Archbishops’ Council. Several DSAs later commented that they were appalled that *good* safeguarding had to happen in this unofficial and ad hoc way and that it was necessary for the two ISB members to act fast in the face of such recklessness by the national Church.

    The heads of this Council are the two Archbishops. Why are they not ‘stepped back’? Could they face clergy disciplinary measures? They and others on the Council have presumably done C4 safeguarding training and Senior Leadership training and should be fully aware of the danger of their reckless conduct. They would know that many survivors speak of the ‘re-abuse’ we experience from the Church’s own treatment of our disclosures.  Such misconduct would not be ignored if done by clergy without mitres. Will the Lead Bishop, Joanne Grenfell, act? Will Alexander Kubeyinje, Director of the National Safeguarding Team, act? But an NST Director who is reported to have told the Survivor Advocate that she is “too survivor focussed” is unlikely to see through a lens other than the matrix provided by his controllers. And a Lead Bishop who has remained largely invisible and inaudible since appointment is unlikely to tackle misconduct by her seniors.

    I met with a senior figure this week, a bishop and his team, to ask for help in preparing CDMs for the heads of Archbishops’ Council on the following grounds

    • disregarding safeguarding policy
    • jettisoned lessons learnt
    • putting comms strategy above safeguarding
    • disregard for survivors in acute situations
    • putting back the work of DSAs, and safeguarding across the wider Church, by years
    • ignoring basic Christian principles, or perhaps ‘conduct unbecoming of a clerk in Holy Orders’

    It is bewildering how a group of very senior people who have the running of the Church in their hands could agree to go along with such unsafe practice. The placing of strategy above the needs of survivors in acute and precarious situations is particularly egregious.

    Why are those in governance willing to destroy what is left of their Church’s credibility in this way, and what is the motivation? Who in the Council ‘advises’ (or instructs) them to jettison ‘lessons’ they tell us in their many published ‘Lessons Learnt Reviews’ have been learned, and to abandon good practice? Two figures in public office have overarching power and prestige in this institution. This affords them the freedom to turn to this advisor and say clearly “No, you are tearing a hole in the hull of this Church’s credibility and your direction in these matters makes the Church look delinquent.” In this disastrous sphere of the Church’s life where so much coverup and corruption from the past still needs facing, where there has been so much complicity with unethical activity, and where much honesty and healing is required – how much more credibility capital are the Archbishops willing to burn protecting disastrous advice?

    Everyone knows the answer to the question ‘Who’, but nobody really understands the ‘Why’. The Secretary General to the Archbishops’ Council is also the Secretary General to the Church of England. Why is one éminence grise allowed to wield such enormous and unaccountable power through a web of tetrarchies across the national Church? Why is such obvious systemic harm to the very soul of the Church allowed to continue? Why is cruelty permitted to permeate through the safeguarding structures of the national Church? There is an evolved culture of ‘learned helplessness’ ° across the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and all the National Church Institutions (NCIs) which manifests itself in a polite but ruthless pillar-to-post systemic cruelty. Ask those survivors in urgent situations of crisis where repair and financial aid is needed not next month or next year, but last week. These survivors know this culture horribly well. They are the recipients of its ongoing harm.

    The scandal of Archbishops’ Council’s misconduct last week is as serious as it gets at the top of the Church. There must now be questions in Parliament to the Second Church Estates Commissioner from MPs about the misgovernance of the Church of England. Synod members must find a way to bring real and shining anger to the orchestrated State Flower Festival with its absurd safeguarding presentation that the forthcoming Synod appears to be set to experience. Not mere exasperation or frustration… but real anger and a sense of revulsion.

    Both Archbishops must own their misconduct. There must be serious accountability. And serious repentance.

     

     

    ° indebted to Carl Chambers for the phrase ‘learned helplessness’

     

  • Unity and the Myth of Neutrality

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

    There is no such thing as ‘neutral’ when it comes to our treatment of other people.

    This is, of course, an obvious truth – one accepted for generations and across thousands of different particular circumstances. Refusing to take a position when it comes to the dignity of others is not morally neutral – it comes with a moral cost. Silence in the face of oppression is complicity.

    Yet this seems to be something that people in the church – whether bishops, other clergy, or lay people – seem far too often to be unable or unwilling to accept. For years, with a few notable exceptions, the church has lagged behind in matters of social justice – acting not as a spur to change or even issuing a call to action, but instead bringing up the rear. Yet we have told ourselves, far too often, that to take a position instead and risk losing ‘neutrality’ is to do a disservice to our role in the world. We convince ourselves that silence is a moral good – often in the name of ‘unity’. Indeed, we convince ourselves that neutrality is possible.

    There is so much wrong with this position that it seems almost embarrassing to engage with it. Taking a step back and looking in at the church from the outside, it becomes increasingly clear why nobody wants to hear anything from us. It is not only our open hostility to things the world takes as read that makes us irrelevant. Our ‘neutrality’ on matters of human dignity entirely compromises our ability to speak out and be listened to as well.

    Silence is one end of the spectrum. A refusal to say anything, of course, is nonetheless a very clear statement. Silence means ‘we don’t have your back, and we draw an equivalence between “both sides”’. It means ‘we don’t care enough about you to stand up for you’. It means ‘you don’t matter’. It means ‘we will protect the institution of the church whilst using you as collateral’.

    Yet silence is only one part of the problem. Alleged neutrality is, in a sense, far more pernicious. And that false sense of neutrality seeps into every aspect of church life. We have seen it in the ‘both-side-ism’ of Living in Love and Faith, and we see it still in the conflation of the vulnerability of LGBTQI people with the vulnerability of those taking a self-professed conservative viewpoint. We see it in false equivalence between the ‘concern’ to keep conservatives in the church and the need to be ‘pastorally sensitive’ to LGBTQI people. Enough with the patronising claptrap. Enough with the falsehoods. We are barred from ministry; our loves are called ‘ungodly and devilish’; our lives are pruriently pored over; we are condemned to second-rate tolerance – at best. We are bleeding LGBTQI people from our church. There is no equivalence here – we don’t want to push anyone away from the Table, we simply want to take our rightful place, each of us created in the image of God just as much as straight people. We want the church to see what is already blessed by God.

    Yet within the church, we have departed so far from the reality of life that people live day to day that we have created our own ‘churchy’ culture that replaces real life with cis, heterosexualist fantasy. And far too many of us participate in it, LGBTQI or otherwise. We give it credence – we tell ourselves and each other how ‘brave’ it is for bishops and others to speak out in even lukewarm terms about LGBTQI people. We dance around ‘the issue’, and we ‘keep our heads down’ so as not to cause trouble.

    One of the most depressing things I’ve noticed in recent weeks is how many self-identifying LGBTQI clergy – and, worse, our allies – seem to have been conditioned into believing that the most we should hope for is the scraps under the Table. I have sat with clergy who fear being ‘too pro-same-sex marriage’ despite living with their partner, who have bought so heavily into the need for ‘balance’ and ‘neutrality’ that they are willing to disown the love of their life in the process. I have been told it’s a ‘step too far’, and that ‘well, we have managed OK’. ‘I’m not sure the church is in that place just yet.’ ‘These things move in long time frames.’ ‘We need some more theology’. ‘Let’s not rock the boat too much’.

    It’s about time to take the blinkers off. The life-giving power of the Gospel is not about ‘privately managing’. ‘We’ might have managed so far, but since when has the church been a church for those already in the institution, those already in the know who can have a ever-so-secret civil partnership ceremony in church, against the rules but allowed with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge. How have we gotten ourselves to a place where we – as LGBTQI clergy and those who profess to be our allies – will not be honest? Much criticism has been levelled at the bishops – and much of that is entirely valid – yet where is the ground-swell of truth-telling from clergy on the front line? Why are we so timid? Have we really drunk the ‘unity’ Kool-Aid, a ‘unity’ that is simply a false neutrality that tramples over queer people in the process?

    The time has come for us to get off the fence – bishops, clergy, laity – everyone. The time has come for us to stop pretending there is something called ‘neutral’, and to call it out. There is nothing neutral about the current position of the Church of England as pertains to LGBTQI people – nothing whatsoever. In refusing to bless our relationships, it says there is nothing good in them – that we are unable to reflect the love of God in the same way that heterosexuals are. It says that we are somehow, innately, disordered. We are ‘less than’. Our love and its human expression is something that needs to be ‘excused’, something we should be slightly embarrassed about.

    There is no neutral position on same-sex relationships – but there is cowardice. And it needs to be called out – in bishops, in clergy, in laity – in ourselves. Yet we continue to let people get away with it. We tolerate their warm words that lead to no action. We nod when we hear talk of ‘unity’, buying into the absurd suggestion that bishops create it and that Christ demands it at any cost – even the lives of LGBTQI young people. We call people supportive who won’t lift a finger to actually support us. We keep quiet in order to ‘keep the peace’. We deny the image of God in others – and far too often ourselves as well.

    No more of this nonsense. It is time for the cycle to be broken. Our mission, our faith, our truth, our love, our relationships, our whole being depends on us loosening the shackles that continue to bind us, and our minds. The church can – must, surely – start to say what we believe it should say. But it’s not going to do it on its own – and if, as members of this church, we aren’t willing to play our part, then what are we for?

    The Archbishop of Canterbury, and other bishops, may be willing to continue to construct the alternative reality of ‘neutrality’ and silence when it comes to the human dignity of LGBTQI people, but we do not have to accept this as the only way. It is not. It has never been so, whatever we have become used to believing that we believe. Rather, let us become the church he speaks of – excepting this issue – as wanting to become:

    ‘We acted rightly, we spoke clearly, and we loved generously and we believed faithfully’.

    It is high time that this became true for our approach to LGBTQI people, our lives and loves, just as much as it is for anything else. To refuse to make it so is surely to cavort and collude with faithlessness, dishonesty and – ultimately – oppression.

    If you sit on the fence too long, it becomes rather uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s time to offer a reminder of that simple fact – and time for the church to become the beacon of hope it is called to be.

  • A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: A Reprise

    by Revd Dr William Lamb, Vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College

    In 2005, Marilyn McCord Adams, the then Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, preached a University Sermon at St Mary’s entitled A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.

    Taking as her text Leviticus 19.2, ‘You shall be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy’, Adams lamented the Church of England’s ‘record of foot-dragging equivocation’ in its treatment of LGBTQ+ persons: ‘in my judgment, the stubborn refusal of our Church to engage in imaginative thinking about human sexuality has not only cemented some illogical ideas and bad theology. It has produced patterns of institutional abuse towards gay and lesbian Christian generally and coupled homosexual clergy in particular’.

    Adams was writing in the context of the introduction of civil partnerships for same-sex couples and the decision of the House of Bishops that ‘clergy of the Church of England should not provide services of blessing for those who register a civil partnership’.

    She drew some intriguing parallels with a significant innovation in the Western church at the time of the English Reformation when clergy were allowed to marry. She pointed out that when clerical marriage was introduced in the sixteenth century, this innovation proceeded slowly. Henry VIII was particularly resistant to the idea of clerical marriage. He ordered bishops to conduct secret investigations to identify married clergy to deprive them of their benefices. In 1539, clerical marriage was criminalized. Only gradually did it become more accepted in the Church of England. Adams observed: ‘Given its dicey theological and legal history, you might expect present-day champions of heterosexual marriage to show more sympathy for those whose partnerships now face like challenges.’

    With the introduction of equal marriage in 2013, the House of Bishops issued guidance (which was rather insensitively published on Valentine’s Day 2014), stating that ‘it would not be appropriate conduct for someone in Holy Orders to enter into a same sex marriage, given the need for clergy to model the Church’s teaching in their lives’. A number of clergy, who have married, have faced various forms of disciplinary action – many have been deprived of a licence or permission to officiate. Recent press coverage of the plight of the Revd Mpho Tutu, who was refused permission to officiate at her godfather’s funeral, provides a ready example of the kind of intimidation and harassment suffered by LGBTQ+ clergy.

    In the course of recent decades, the Bishops have continued to adopt a strategy of ‘foot-dragging equivocation’. Noting that the subject of sexuality, with its deeply entrenched views, would best be addressed by a series of Shared Conversations, these discussions led to the publication of a report in January 2017 which recommended no change in the Church’s policy. General Synod refused to take note of this report. In response, the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke of a need for a ‘radical new Christian inclusion’ and suggested a new teaching document about marriage and sexuality. This led to an extended process of further discussion under the title of Living in Love and Faith.

    A substantial report was published, but it made no recommendations at all. While the previous report recommended no change, this report set out to make no recommendations. Of course, the real question is whether there has been any real movement in generating a consensus about where the Spirit of God might be leading the church at this time, but a significant consequence of this detailed and extensive work is that the House of Bishops can no longer claim that there is a need for ‘further study’. That has happened, and now the problem for them is that they have nowhere left to hide.

    My own view is that three things need to happen in the course of the next twelve months: first, the House of Bishops need to accept that their 1991 report, Issues in Human Sexuality, no longer expresses the mind of the church. Although this ‘study document’, produced by the House of Bishops, was quickly advertised as ‘the Church’s teaching’, it was never approved by the General Synod. More recently, Synod has invited the House of Bishops to reflect on the fact that this report alludes positively to forms of conversion therapy, even though Synod has explicitly rejected conversion therapy. The document was drafted before the development of civil partnerships and equal marriage – about which it therefore has absolutely nothing to say. One can no longer take seriously the demand of the House of Bishops that those presented for ordination in the Church of England should abide by Issues. More importantly, casuistical interpretations of this text, sometimes with the encouragement of DDOs and the collusion of Bishops, have not served to create healthy and open discussions around sexuality and ministry. In my view, based on 20 years of working in theological education, this has not served the task of formation well. It has generated a culture of fear and anxiety for LGBTQ+ clergy and lay ministers. We can do better than this.

    Secondly, it is now evident that the Bishops’ current policy of disciplining clergy who have married their same-sex partners is received with a combination of puzzlement and increasing alarm by the general public, including Members of Parliament. At the recent Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury recognised that there were profoundly different perspectives within the Anglican Communion about equal marriage, each the fruit of patient and faithful wrestling with scripture:

    For the large majority of the Anglican Communion the traditional understanding of marriage is something that is understood, accepted and without question, not only by Bishops but their entire Church, and the societies in which they live. For them, to question this teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries would make the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For many churches to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence

    For a minority, we can say almost the same. They have not arrived lightly at their ideas that traditional teaching needs to change. They are not careless about scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature. For them, to question this different teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries is making the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack. For these churches not to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence.

    The Archbishop underlined that all had an honoured place in the life of the Communion. Nevertheless, the measured tone of these words is hard to reconcile with the way in which clergy who have married their same-sex partners have been treated. There is a more general principle at stake here. We need to address the fact that the number of marriages in church has declined significantly over the last fifty years. At a time when more children are born outside marriage than within it in the United Kingdom, how might we reverse that decline? It seems extraordinary that the Bishops believe that they can promote the gift of marriage by investing time and energy in an undignified campaign against a small number of clergy simply for getting married to their same sex partner. The Bishops’ policy is unedifying, unjust and completely counter-productive.

    Finally, although some of its members tell me that the numbers in General Synod will not add up in order to change the marriage canons of the Church of England at this stage, it may be possible to chart a way forward by offering prayers of dedication after a civil marriage. A change in the marriage canons would require legislation and the consent not only of General Synod but also Parliament. The existing form of prayers of dedication after a civil marriage are commended for use by the House of Bishops.

    The Bishops might issue a revised form of prayers. They might even choose to test the mind of Synod in February (although the risk of another public and rancorous argument will hardly be edifying). Personally, I believe in equal marriage, not because I am a liberal, but because I take seriously the traditional teaching of the Church. I believe that faithfulness and commitment matter. They make a difference. In learning to love in the context of a faithful and committed relationship, we learn to love as God loves us: ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health….’

    In the course of the twentieth century, questions of sexual ethics in the life of the Church were dominated by the issue of divorce and remarriage. The Church has made some accommodation for the remarriage of divorcees in recent decades, initially producing An Order of Prayer and Dedication after a Civil Marriage. At the same time, the Bishops insisted that there was no change to the Church’s official teaching that marriage was a lifelong union between a man and a woman. Although this provision has been characterised by a gentle, if untidy, pastoral pragmatism, I suspect that the Bishops might fruitfully adopt a similar strategy within the next twelve months to acknowledge the recent changes to civil marriage.

    This would be a relatively modest development and I am conscious that the overwhelming majority of people in my congregation would expect much more. Practically speaking, so long as the process was freed from the shackles of ecclesiastical lawyers (who occasionally need to be reminded that they are the servants of the church and not its masters), this could probably be achieved with a commendation from the House of Bishops. Such a development has already been adopted in the Church in Wales (in this case with the approval of its Governing Body) without generating much controversy.

    Just as ‘conscience’ clauses exist for ministers and parishes who might object to the remarriage of divorcees, similar clauses could be introduced for ministers and parishes who might object to equal marriage. As the Bishops discern the way forward, I have little doubt that ‘conscience’ will play a vital role in the process of discernment. One of my predecessors as Vicar of the University Church, John Henry Newman (1801-1890), wrote extensively about the importance of conscience. He regarded conscience as the voice of God speaking in the depths of our soul. Famously, in his later years, in a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, he wrote about those ‘extreme cases in which Conscience may come into collision with the word of a Pope’. Newman wrote, ‘if I am obliged to bring religion into after dinner social toasts, I shall drink – to the Pope, if you please – still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards’. Whatever his views about same-sex relationships might have been (and I have no doubt that they would have differed from mine), Newman understood that the conscience imposes an obligation – that personal integrity dictates a fundamental human duty to hear the interior voice of our conscience and to follow its demands. He learned this insight from one of the great moral theologians of the Anglican tradition, Bishop Butler (1692-1752). As the Church finds a way of negotiating the pastoral provision for the blessing of same sex relationships, it will be important for us to keep in view the role of conscience (on both sides of the argument) and to ensure that no-one is made to act against their conscience.

    The Bishops have an unenviable task as they meet over the next few months – and I shall certainly keep them in my prayers. But I will pray that they might begin to show a little courage. At some stage, the Church of England needs to stop talking and start making some decisions. When Professor Adams ended her sermon at St Mary’s almost twenty years ago, she made no bones about her Christian commitment or her love of the Church. My hope is that we can continue to recognise the commitment and faithfulness of one another, even though at times we may disagree:

    I voice these challenges as an insider, who loves the Church because Jesus loves her, because she is the home of the sacraments, and because she is one of the few remaining institutions devoted to rearing people in the knowledge and love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. I intend my critique to be constructive, pressed in the conviction that repentance and reform are good for the body politic as well as the individual soul. I do it also with thanksgiving for those gay and lesbian Christians whose courage, love and commitment is already shaping – without much help and with considerable institutional hindrance – patterns of holy living. Like truth in all its forms, the witness of their integrity will eventually prevail (Marilyn McCord Adams, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life).

     

  • Lambeth: Colonialism, Power and Pawns

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

     

    It’s fair to say that the Lambeth Conference hasn’t – I think – worked out quite the way the Archbishop wanted it to. For months – years, even – we were told that it would focus on the things we share in common, rather than digging the sexuality hole all over again. Much water has gone under the bridge since 1998, and the facts on the ground show that Lambeth I:10 is no longer a serious statement of how things are within the communion. That ship has sailed.

    Yet there it was – that pernicious and unhelpful 1998 resolution – back in view as the Archbishop released his Calls, for which one could vote yes, or ‘sort of yes’, but not ‘no’. And now the Lambeth Calls team – a seemingly impenetrable (and very male) group unable to answer simple questions like who finalised the calls, or did the Archbishop see them before publication – have had to strike the totally unnecessary and divisive ‘reaffirmation’ of Lambeth I:10 from the drafts. It didn’t have to be this way. Someone made the choice that it should be – and whoever that is (and we may never find out, given the disgraceful lack of transparency) should really take some basic lessons in crisis management and avoidance.

    Of course, we are where we are. We find ourselves in a place where the damage has mostly been done, yet only a naïve Anglican-watcher would believe that the story ends here. We await more manoeuvrings, more angry words and more kicking around of LGBTQI people as the political football they so conveniently and often are for the Church of England.

    Yet out of the ashes of this monumental bin-fire, some good has come. For once, LGBTQI people have heard bishops – yes, really – standing up for them. Strong, prophetic, pro-LGBTQI voices have come from across the pond, but also from provinces outside of the US and Canada. Even in our own Church of England, a number of bishops have also stood up and been counted. This is a most welcome sign, and one which I hope and believe will be reflected once again during the conclusion of LLF. Perhaps this is the turning point. That said, those bishops who chose silence – remember, silence is never a neutral position – have also cemented their place in the history books when this sorry saga is finally over. This was not a time for behind-the-scenes machinations – LGBTQI people, and their tears, need to be seen, acknowledged, loved. Not to even bother sympathising with the pain of LBGTQI people – whatever episcopal theological perspective is held – is inexplicable.

    Yet there have been two quite malign themes that have been flowing through the dialogue from those who oppose LBGTQI liberation. The first, which is quite simply not true, is that young people are drawn to churches with an oppressive view on LGBTQI people and marriage. There is absolutely zero evidence that this is the case, but – as usual – if you say it loudly, robustly and often enough, people start to believe it. The key thing, of course, is that even where these ‘conservative’ churches have more young people in them, that doesn’t account for the millions of kids and young people who don’t go to any church. Are we seriously arguing that they are more likely to attend a church which tells them that their queer friends – or they themselves – shouldn’t get married? That is likely to be about as welcome to them as sticking pins in their eyes. Only an inward-facing church would reserve its rejoicing for those who are already within the tent. Meanwhile, LGBTQI people (and increasingly their allies, friends, relatives) are failed and won’t come within a mile of a church, however good the music or lighting.

    But the second line that has been taken relates to colonialism. This one takes more unpacking but, once it is unpacked, the deeply unchristian and disingenuous ground beneath it begins to reveal itself.

    Noises have been made – and were made, during the recent discussions to nominate more people from around the communion to the CNC – that a western church favouring LBGTQI inclusion should not dictate to the rest of the communion. It has been for this reason – however well intentioned – that nobody (or at least, almost nobody) in the Church of England’s hierarchy appears to have felt able to say anything positive about LGBTQI people or their marriages. There is – and there should be – a real sensitivity to colonialist language and actions from those in the Church of England. Racism and colonialism remain deeply embedded in our church. The problem is that the recent solution at General Synod – strongly supported by the Archbishop of York – will do nothing whatsoever to address this.

    The reality is that the Anglican Communion – or rather, a Communion that claims ‘by right’ that the role of primus inter pares belongs to the Archbishop of Canterbury – is institutionally racist and colonialist. It doesn’t matter how many people you add to the Canterbury CNC (and please note, the point that the new members from the Communion won’t have a majority was trumpeted as good news, a deeply concerning example of white power not quite being given up): so long as the Archbishop of the Province of Canterbury inevitably remains the head (using that term with much caution) of the Communion, we are stuck. England rules the waves. The change was nothing more than deckchairs on the Titanic – not that you would have gathered that from the crowing in the aftermath of the General Synod debate.

    Both LGBTQI people and Anglicans from the Global South are being reduced to pawns in a nasty little English power struggle. The fact is that whilst the Archbishop has an inevitable Communion role, the Church of England has no leadership of its own. Yet what is also true is that whilst England holds the position it does in the Communion, there will always be the risk of colonialism. That’s not about LGBTQI people – it’s about the underlying structures and nature of the Communion itself. It suits those who oppose LBGTQI liberation to focus on the ‘Communion’ role of the Archbishop – but this is nothing whatsoever to do with the lives of ordinary Global South Anglicans – it is all about power. In this worst of both possible worlds, England is silent – and yet holds all the strings.

    TEC, Canada and the rest did indeed make a big stink about what happened with the Lambeth calls – as they should have. This was not because they were forcing their will on the assembly but because they were advocating for their queer disciples against a Call sprung upon them with no notice, and against which they could not vote. Bait and switch. Those who opposed them were welcome to disagree. The issue is that the President of the Lambeth Conference – the person who takes ultimate responsibility – is … the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s Colonialism 101. It is surely time for that to change – yet so often the English people calling ‘colonialism’ to beat down LBGTQI people are the same as those calling for the Archbishop’s primus role to remain. It is all about power.

    It is now time to call an end to the pitting of LBGTQI Christians against the Global South. We need a root and branch review of how we operate, and to reimagine the Communion for the twenty-first century. We must lay down our claim to power and instead move to a communion built on true equality, solidarity, friendship and companionship. Yes, people may leave – from all directions. But at least it will be built on honesty, and not on the backs of the oppressed.

    Ends, not means, as Kant once said. If we can’t do that as a church, then we cease to be a church at all.