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  • Cries of Suffering: A Response to ‘The Nature of Doctrine and the Living God’

    by Mike Higton, Professor of Theology and Ministry at Durham University

    The Faith and Order Commission’s recent document on ‘The Nature of Doctrine and the Living God’ (GS Misc 1429) is not, in my judgment, a particularly helpful contribution to the endless Living in Love and Faith process. I fear that, however good the intentions behind it, it will

    • perpetuate the strange detachment from the history of theological and ethical debate in the church that seems to characterise the current LLF process;
    • encourage the House of Bishops to misconstrue their role in that process and to misunderstand the key questions that face them;
    • encourage them once again to downplay the centrality that LGBTQ+ voices should have for them in this context; and so
    • prolong the harm that the whole process continues to do to LGBTQ+ people.

    It also happens to be a document in which my own name appears, several times. It was only when a friend emailed me about it last week that I discovered I had been presented as one of a chorus of theologians whose work supposedly confirmed the document’s account of doctrine, and of the role of the bishops in maintaining it – but that I had been made part of that chorus only by way of a selective and, to my eye, somewhat misleading reading of my work.

    Measured against the real harms being done to LGBTQ+ people by the stalled LLF process, this misappropriation of my work is of course an entirely trivial matter, and wouldn’t by itself warrant a lengthy public response. It does, however, present me with a particular angle from which to assess the limitations of the document, and an opportunity to caution others to take it with a pinch of salt.

    What is this document?

    Back in June 2024, the ‘LLF: Moving Forward as One Church’ document (GS 2358) posed some questions on behalf of the House of Bishops to ‘the Theological Adviser(s) to the House of Bishops and the Faith and Order Commission Episcopal Reference Group (FAOC ERG)’ (§43), asking

    how do we, as a church, develop or change our doctrine? Is it possible to hold multiple doctrines simultaneously, in order to respond in the most gracious and pastoral way possible, even when this is messy or incoherent? Is it possible for there to be a range of interpretations of one doctrine? (§41)

    GS Misc 1429 is a response to that request: it says that ‘It is the product of work by the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC) and the Episcopal Reference Group (ERG), with support from the theological advisers to the House of Bishops. It is shared with the House of Bishops in the name of FAOC’ (§3). (I should acknowledge, by the way, that I served on FAOC myself from 2010 to 2022, and was vice-chair from 2016.)

    The conclusion that the document draws about the nature of doctrine, presented as a summary of the work of numerous theologians (including me), is that ‘doctrine is true knowledge about God consonant with Holy Scripture that is communally authorised and communally regulative’ (from the Executive Summary).

    The document does not, however, simply present this argument in the abstract. Rather, it argues for it in order to say something about the role of bishops in decisions about doctrine in the church. It argues that the bishops

    are given the task outlined … by theologians from Hooker to Higton, and so many in between, to discern whether anything put forward as wholesome doctrine is either ‘grounded in the Holy Scriptures’ or … ‘agreeable to said Scriptures’. (§158)

    The proper exercise of this role will, to be sure, involve ‘a dialogical process between the House of Bishops and the General Synod’ (§162) and so be ‘a process of communal discernment that leads to an agreement about what the community authorises as sacred doctrine’ (§163, my emphasis). In other words, although ‘the House of Bishops play a special role in doctrinal formulation owing to their function as teachers of the faith … they hold that role in dialogue with the other houses of the General Synod’ (§164). Nevertheless, within this communal and dialogical process, the bishops have ‘a central role in discerning the faithfulness to Scripture of any doctrinal formulation’ (§160, my emphasis). And the document’s final sentence sets out more fully the nature of this role:

    Careful discernment about which parts and themes of Scripture are most pertinent to the issue being addressed and which reading of those texts best expresses the mind of Christ in the Church is required, so that the Church remains faithful to what it has received … while it proclaims the faith afresh in each generation. (§174)

    FAOC’s reply to the House of Bishops leads up, therefore, to this account of the bishops’ role. Faced with a development that may amount to a change of doctrine (or may not – the document provides little help in deciding what does or does not count as doctrine), the bishops are to test that development against Scripture – and the heart of that testing will involve both a determination of which ‘parts and themes’ of Scripture are most relevant, and a determination (carried out, it seems, by securing a majority in Synod) of which interpretations represent ‘the mind of Christ in the Church’.

    To explain why I think this is an unhelpfully limited account (and why I do not think my own work supports it) I need to explore in more detail the argument of the document, noting along the way some of the things that strike me as strange about it.

    Is your journey really necessary?

    The first odd thing to note about this paper is simply that its authors felt that, in response to the Bishops’ request, the thing they most needed to do was to argue at considerable length that doctrine should be ‘consonant with’, ‘grounded in’ or ‘agreeable to’ Scripture.

    That would make sense, of course, were this point hotly disputed, so that it was worth devoting extended labour to securing it before moving on – but that is not the case, as the document acknowledges. The authors insist that

    It is crucial to reiterate that the present disagreement about the content and use of the [Prayers of Love and Faith] is not over whether or not Holy Scripture plays the determinative role in doctrinal formulation expounded above, but how it does so. (§168, emphases added)

    And this is a point that has been made numerous times before in the debate. Right back in 2020, for instance, the initial Living in Love and Faith book discussed at some length the way in which the church’s disagreements were shaped by differing attitudes to Scripture, but within a shared commitment to Scripture’s authority.

    (The book can be found on the LLF website, for which a free account is needed; once logged in, the whole thing is available for download. I was part of the group that produced this book, and that I was, in particular, part of the group that initially worked on the material that became Part Four, including the chapter on the Bible.)

    At one point (pp. 295–297), Living in Love and Faith sets out seven different ways of thinking about Scripture that are identifiable in the church’s disagreements about sexuality and marriage (and it is worth noting that the differences between them go much deeper than their selection of different ‘parts or themes’ to prioritise). The book argues that two of them (one at each extreme of the spectrum it has painted) are ‘beyond the mainstream of the church’s conversation about the Bible’s authority and purpose’ (p. 298), but that the remaining five (which between them could cover many people on all sides in the debate) share a number of features, including:

    • a commitment to the diligent reading of the Bible as God’s instrument for training in holiness and love, and instructing us for salvation;
    • a determination to attend to the way the words of the Bible run;
    • a desire to have their consciences formed by the dynamics of those words;
    • a conviction that Christ stands at the centre of the Bible; and
    • a belief that the Bible’s deep purpose is to unite us with Christ
    • and to draw us into Christlike love for God and neighbour. (p. 298)

    Now, there is obviously material here for considerable ongoing controversy. People occupying any one of the ‘voices’ that the LLF book lays out might not regard those occupying some of the other voices as having a plausible or acceptable account of what consonance with Scripture involves. But the book argues that

    All of them are determined to be obedient to God’s purposes in giving us the Bible, as they understand those purposes. They can’t simply be divided up into those who are trying to be obedient to God’s voice and those who are not. (p. 299)

    All of them, in other words, are already committed to the idea that the church’s teaching should be ‘consonant with’, ‘grounded in’ or ‘agreeable to’ Scripture. Disagreement has arisen not because they dispute that, but because they understand that consonance, grounding, or agreement in different and incompatible ways. (And for more on this, see my 2020 paper on ‘Disagreement about the Bible’, available in the online ‘LLF library’, which explores further the nature of our disagreements about the ‘how’ of Biblical authority.)

    In the light of all this, however, there is something distinctly odd about the present FAOC document saying so little about how Scripture can or should play a determinative role in the formulation and doctrine, and so much about whether it should play such a role.

    And that brings me to my second point.

    Balance or imbalance?

    The second oddity about the document is the way in which its attempts at balance falter.

    There are clear indications (such as the sentence quoted earlier from §168, about all sides agreeing that ‘Holy Scripture plays the determinative role in doctrinal formulation’) that the document’s analysis is meant to provide even-handed background assistance to the bishops rather than taking sides on the issue at hand. In particular, the description of the nature of doctrine that the document offers is meant to work for all sides.

    There are, however, a few ways in which that attempt at balance slips.

    The first is a tiny point, which only becomes telling in view of the larger examples that follow. In the course of a discussion of Brooke Foss Westcott, the authors say

    Rowan Williams, reflecting on Westcott’s contribution, comments that Westcott, despite frequent labelling of him as ‘liberal’, is fully committed to the Scriptures as the source of faith and doctrine. (§76)

    Notice that little word ‘despite’. The impression a reader might get from that one word is that the authors either endorse or do not see the need to avoid the idea that being ‘liberal’ does not normally go with being ‘committed to the Scriptures as the source of faith and doctrine’. Yet they are quoting from Williams’ chapter on Westcott in Anglican Identities (London: DLT, 2014), in which Williams is both

    pleading for a recognition on all sides that the word ‘liberalism’ is complex and slippery, and that, despite the angry polemic of the right, there is no single ‘liberal agenda’ to be written off as apostasy

    and arguing positively that Westcott’s form of liberalism is entirely bound up with his ‘endlessly patient attention to the detail of Scripture’. It would be fairer to say that Westcott is the kind of liberal he is, in Williams’ account, because of his commitment to Scripture.

    There’s a second point later on, almost as small, but similarly telling in the light of the broader shape of the document. When, in §140, the authors summarise what all the theologians they have covered (including me) are supposed to have said about doctrine, they say, ‘Holy Scripture is the repository of God’s revelation of that truth, and thus the foundation of all doctrine.’ Here, it is that word ‘repository’ that snags. It has not appeared in any of the discussion before that point in the document, but it is used here to nail in place the account of Scripture that has (supposedly) emerged from the whole foregoing discussion. And it is a word that, at least to my ear, echoes ways of talking about Scripture that are much more common amongst conservatives than amongst liberals or progressives (to use those familiar but inadequate labels). I’ll say some more about this below.

    It is, however, a passage very close to the end of the document that gives me most concern on this question of balance. The authors of the FAOC document sketch the position of some (indeed, they say ‘many’) in the debate who believe that Scripture clearly rules out the proposed changes to the doctrine of marriage, and who believe that arguments to the contrary necessarily involve rejecting ‘the perspicuity of Scripture: the conviction that those things a Christian is required to know, believe, and observe are available to all in their reading of Scripture’ (§172).

    The authors give the whole of §§171 and 172 and a significant part of §173 over to expounding the view of these ‘many’. Those who disagree with them (who are, note, not described as ‘many’) are then granted only a sentence, and no part of that sentence sets out what forms their own commitment to the authority of Scripture might take, or what response they might offer to the claim that they reject Scripture’s ‘perspicuity’. The implicit suggestion is not that people in this latter group have their own firm commitment to the authority of Scripture but different understandings of the way in which that authority works; it is, rather, that they don’t have much at all to say on the matter. Once again, the impression is subtly given that the authors of the FAOC document know what to say about conservative commitment to the Bible, but are somewhat nonplussed when it comes to speaking authentically about other sides in the debate.

    It is in that context that we might think again about the apparently unnecessary effort that this document expends on establishing that doctrine should be consonant with Scripture. That effort reinforces the impression that, whatever might be said explicitly to indicate otherwise, the question of whether Scripture is determinative for doctrine really is the point at issue – and that the bishops’ task might be to hold fast against changes championed by people who aren’t really serious about the Bible. That impression may well be inadvertent – I rather suspect that it is – but it seems to me quite palpable.

    I want to reiterate, therefore, what the document itself says, even if it later manages to undermine itself: ‘the present disagreement … is not over whether or not Holy Scripture plays the determinative role in doctrinal formulation’. I say that as someone very firmly on the affirming or progressive side of this debate – someone who wants not just stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples, but equal marriage, and much else besides. And I am convinced that this is what the church is required to do by the gospel of Jesus Christ, as that gospel is revealed to us in Scripture. I believe that the refusal to take this path is disobedient to the gospel and disobedient to Scripture. And I believe that those on the conservative side who oppose these moves misread Scripture and misunderstand the nature of its authority.

    I might of course be wrong about any or all of that, but if you want to convince me that I am wrong, you would be foolish to spend any time at all trying to establish that our teaching as a church should be consonant with Scripture, because I already agree with you about that. Much better to save your breath for a conversation – likely to be much richer and much more complex – about how Scripture’s authority is to be understood. And that is a topic on which no story of a neat consensus stretching down the centuries, and no neat delineation of the task before the bishops, is going to work.

    (For a little more on all this, see a blog post I wrote a couple of years back on ‘Disagreement, conscience and harm’.)

    Consensus on the nature of doctrine?

    The bulk of the FAOC document (§§7–146) consists of summaries of the work of a variety of theologians: Aquinas, Hooker, Newman, Westcott and Ramsey, and a selection of more recent figures from Kevin Vanhoozer to me. We are brought in as witnesses who are all, together, presented as giving our support to a particular account of doctrine and its relation to Scripture:

    doctrine is true knowledge about God that is revealed by God. Holy Scripture is the repository of God’s revelation of that truth, and thus the foundation of all doctrine. (§140)

    I for one, however, do not recognise my own work on doctrine in this formulation.

    The authors of the document draw on my book The Life of Christian Doctrine (Bloomsbury, 2020). I explain in the introduction to that book that it was written while I was myself heavily involved in the Living in Love and Faith process (p. 9); I describe myself as ‘someone hoping and working for the Church to change its stance towards people in same-sex relationships, and for it to confirm the unreserved inclusion of trans people in all areas of its life.’ (p. 9), and explain that the book was written, in part, to explore some of the background issues about doctrine that the LLF debates about those matters had thrown up.

    I explain:

    These debates are, for instance, often framed as taking place between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘revisionists’, but I explore in this book an account of the doctrinal tradition in which that distinction doesn’t make sense – or at least an account in which it can’t be of primary importance. More generally, I ask what work doctrinal theology can contribute in a situation in which there is little agreement about what constitutes a good doctrinal argument – little agreement about the kinds of evidence that should be appealed to, about the weight that those appeals should have or about the forms of argument that might be telling. This book is in part an attempt to understand how to argue well in such a context, and what good – if any – such argument might be capable of doing. (p. 10)

    There are several divergences between the account I offer in the book and the ‘consensus’ that I am supposed to support. I can only offer brief indications of those divergences here, leaving out the case I build for my claims by engaging with Scripture, tradition, and reason, and the arguments I offer against alternative accounts – but I hope it will be enough to explain why I can’t endorse the FAOC document’s summary.

    I have already mentioned my discomfort at describing Scripture as the ‘repository’ of revelation. I make the case in my book that doctrine does not simply summarise or articulate the truths that can be found lying ready to hand in Scripture. I therefore do not think that the key hermeneutical differences involved in our present debates are simply disagreements about ‘which parts and themes of Scripture are most pertinent’. The ways in which Christians read – on all sides of the debate – are much more deeply entangled with and shaped by the patterns of their imagination and practice, and by their deep construals of the nature and plot of scripture, and so are much more deeply various, than such formulations suggest.

    I would also find it difficult, without some serious qualification, to describe doctrine as ‘knowledge about God’. I argue in the book the more apophatic claim that

    For Christians to grow in knowledge [of God] is for them to grow together in their imagination of the love of God for them – their grasp of its breadth and length and height and depth. It is for them to grow in knowledge of the God-imaging love to which they are called, discovering the wisdom that will enable them to live that love out in the midst of all the relationships – local, political and cosmic – in which they find themselves. Knowledge of God consists in this deepening knowledge of love, and any supposed knowledge of God that does not take this form is simply fatuous. (p. 104)

    Doctrinal statements and doctrinal theology can, I argue, play an important role in guiding and supporting this knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I can say that doctrine itself is ‘knowledge about God’.

    But perhaps my biggest difficulty with the summary I am supposed to support is its blunt assertion that doctrine is ‘true knowledge of God’ – and not just that but true knowledge ‘revealed by God’. Perhaps the most obvious difference between my work and the FAOC document is that I write with a much stronger sense of the fallibility and failures of the church, and I extend that to my estimate of the church’s doctrinal inheritance. I write that

    Doctrinal theology … is involved in the reproduction of the life of the church. Yet the life of the church is always broken, always distorted, always sinful. Whatever true knowledge of God is embodied in the life that any Christian community lives, it is always mixed with ignorance, with misunderstanding and with the deliberate refusal of knowledge. The life of the church is a series of always failing experiments in the knowledge of God. If doctrinal theology helps to reproduce the life of the church, it will be helping to reproduce all of this failure – all of the exclusions and imbalances of power, all of the forms of harm that mar the church’s response to God’s love. (p. 4)

    The authors of the FAOC document do briefly notice this aspect of my account (see the second paragraph that they quote in §136), but it quickly vanishes from sight. A large part of my book is, however, devoted to exploring how the Spirit works to convict the church of its sin (including those sins woven into its doctrinal theology), and to teach the church to know more of the truth. It is an account of the necessity of ongoing penitent change in the church’s doctrinal teaching.

    And this account of sin, conviction and repentance shapes what I say about the role that bishops might play in processes of doctrinal change – giving my account a tenor rather different (it seems to me) from that of the FAOC document.

    That document does, admittedly (in §138), quote substantial parts of a paragraph from The Life of Christian Doctrine that, in full, reads as follows:

    As with all other forms of doctrinal theology, however, this episcopal work of encouraging, amplifying and resourcing [a summary of the description I had just set out of the teaching role of bishops] cannot be undertaken alone – and that is especially true in relation to the work of challenging erroneous teaching. As with all other forms of doctrinal theology, the work of bishops needs to be embedded within processes of ongoing listening and re-construal, in which there is a real possibility of their being led to see differently by the challenge of others. Bishops are enabled to play their role as teachers by being members of communities of conversation and exploration that can encourage them, resource them and challenge them – and especially by being members of communities that can read scripture with them, and inspire them to read it differently. In particular, their ability to ‘uphold sound and wholesome doctrine’ will be directly proportional to their ability to hear the call of God in cries, encounters and improvisations – because those are the means that the Spirit characteristically uses to draw the church deeper in to the sources of its faith. (p. 238)

    And it is true that my point in this paragraph was in part, as the FAOC document suggests, to acknowledge that bishops are indeed granted a role in our polity as gatekeepers of doctrinal change – but it was also to point to the conditions under which that role can properly be exercised. And what I say here, if read in the context of my wider argument, does not simply amount to saying that they should be in dialogue with the wider church as represented by the other houses of General Synod, seeking some kind of majority or consensus, and it does not let me rest content with the descriptions that the FAOC document gives of the bishops’ proper recourse to Scripture.

    The line in the paragraph quoted above about ‘cries, encounters and improvisations’ refers back to, and summarises, a lengthier discussion earlier in the book. In this context I want to draw particular attention to what I say about ‘cries’:

    God’s call reaches this church through cries…. Most sharply, the call reaches the church through cries of suffering – cries from those injured, marginalized, erased, ignored or forced into passivity by the existing patterns of this church’s speech and action. These may be the cries of those who are already visibly part of the life of this church; they may be the cries of those on or beyond what are currently thought of as its edges – but wherever they come from, these cries break in on the church’s present life, posing questions and demanding re-evaluation. Can they do justice to the lives from which these cries emerge? (p. 223)

    Crucially, attending to such cries – and learning to walk with those whose cries they are – can and should transform how we read Scripture. I had earlier said that

    The reading practices to which the church is called, and which doctrinal theologians are to accompany, are practices of reading while walking. That is, they are practices of re-reading in the light of the new situations, the new encounters and the new relationships into which the Spirit leads scripture’s readers. Above all, they are practices of re-reading in the company of those who suffer and are oppressed, those who are marginalized and excluded, those who are harmed by the church’s present settlements. They are practices in which those in positions of hermeneutical power and privilege sit at the feet of those who read from the margins, to listen, to learn, to accompany and in time to converse. The Spirit can open the eyes and ears of readers more fully to scripture, and enable them to hear, see and dwell in the word of God more richly, by means of these situations, encounters, relationships and conversations. If doctrinal theology is to play a role here, it will be by keeping the church to this kind of reading and walking, by holding open space for the conversations that emerge, and by exploring the challenges and suggestions that are generated by those conversations. (p. 169, emphasis added)

    I am not trying to intervene here in some zero-sum game between attention to Scripture and attention to experience. I argue at length in the book that this does not make any sense at all as a way of describing our hermeneutical options. My argument is, rather, that the heart of Scripture is opened for us only as together we journey with Christ in the power of the Spirit, and in no other way – and that we should turn away from any account of Scripture’s meaning, of its ‘parts and themes’, or of the proper approaches to its reading, that can be offered in abstraction from that journeying.

    In other words: I don’t want it supposed that I give my support to a picture of the bishops’ role in guarding the doctrinal teaching of the church that has them testing what they hear from the wider church against a Bible that they already know how to read quite well enough, having learnt to read it outside the company of those whose lives, whose relationships, and whose futures they are discussing. I don’t think that any such picture can do justice to the nature of the journey on which we are called together into the knowledge of God; I don’t think it does justice to the nature of the Scriptures that we have been given by God to accompany us on that journey; and I don’t think it does justice to the nature of doctrine.

    Is it possible to hold multiple doctrines simultaneously?

    I say all this not because I expect to change anybody’s mind – though I hope, of course, that I might. I offer in its favour various arguments, exegeses of scripture, and readings of a range of ancient and modern theologians, but I know that all of those arguments, exegeses and readings are contested. I therefore don’t necessarily expect the authors of the FAOC document to agree with me, but I do want to establish that the supposed consensus marshalled in that document is not quite as neat as it is made out to be. And whilst I accept that I’ve only spoken about my own case, I’m fairly sure that closer attention to several of the other figures covered would indicate that they, too, don’t sing in perfect unison on these matters.

    In particular, the voices gathered in the document don’t all say the same things about the authority of Scripture, and neither do Anglicans more generally. I’m not sure how to distinguish between ‘dogma’, ‘doctrine’ and ‘teaching’ (a point on which the document declines to pronounce – §51), but I suppose you could say, without too much danger of misunderstanding, that there are indeed different doctrines of Scripture in circulation amongst us, and that this has long been the case. Some might resemble the views outlined at the end of the FAOC document, with their focus on the perspicuity of Scripture; others might resemble mine; others will be different again – but whatever their precise character, there is no doubt that the church is and has long been marked by deep and intractable difference in this area.

    But that brings me to the final oddity that I find in this document. The bishops asked whether it is possible for the church to hold multiple doctrines simultaneously – and yet that is a question that this document doesn’t even attempt to answer. The authors could have got somewhat further, however, had they dug back, not into general accounts of the nature of doctrine like mine or those of the other theologians they have mustered, but into earlier formal discussions of this very question by Church of England bodies, including discussions carried out by the commissions to which FAOC is a successor. I find it odd that this report is so detached from that earlier history of Anglican discussion.

    The authors could, for instance, have looked back to the 1938 report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Doctrine, Doctrine in the Church of England – a report commissioned precisely ‘because the tensions between different schools of thought in the Church of England were imperilling its unity and impairing its effectiveness’ (William Temple, ‘Chairman’s Introduction’, p. 4), and so long in the making that even the LLF process looks short by comparison. They could have looked at the succession of documents that the re-formed Doctrine Commission produced from the 1970s to the 1990s – including Christian Believing: The Nature of the Christian Faith and its Expression in Holy Scripture and Creeds (1976), Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith (1981), We Believe in God (1987) and many more – all of which deal with questions of doctrine, and explore the nature and limits of difference in the church.

    Perhaps most pertinently, however, they could have looked back to the 1968 report on Subscription and Assent to the 39 Articles, produced by the then newly re-established Archbishops’ Commission on Christian Doctrine – and in that report they would have found the question about the permissibility of deep differences in Anglican approaches to Scripture already posed and discussed. The report describes those deep differences unflinchingly, but argues that this variety can indeed be held within the life of the church. And this wasn’t one of those reports that vanished from view the moment it was published; it initiated the revision of the Declaration of Assent made by all deacons, priests and bishops, which ensured that the promises they all made would leave room open for this variety to persist in the church. It is not the least strange aspect of the current debate that we seem to have lost touch so completely with even quite recent episodes in our history.

    It is not that I think there are easy answers to find in this history, or any insight that will suddenly cut through all the tangles that we face. Greater attentiveness might, however, help protect us from the temptation to deceptive neatness – a neatness that irons out difference, flattens out history, and somehow always manages to squeeze out the voices of those already marginalised within the life of our church as it is. I fear that FAOC, in its desire to provide assistance to the bishops, has slipped into purveying precisely that kind of neatness.

  • A Response to “The Doctrine of Marriage and the Prayers of Love and Faith: Texts and Contexts: a Report of the Faith and Order Commission” (GS Misc 1430)

    Fr Thomas Sharp is a priest theologian based in the South East of England and is also Provincial Secretary of the Society of Catholic Priests

    This was the second report which briefed the House of Bishops before they made their decisions in October about Living in Love and Faith (LLF). This is another extraordinary document, with which I imagine many of the members of the Faith and Order Commission will not have been entirely content. At least, I hope they would not be.

    Its purpose is to determine ‘whether and how the Church’s public use of these prayers coheres with, realises new boundaries for, or departs from its established teaching on marriage’ (§1). It does not do this, as we shall see. But it does present a case, or perhaps more accurately talk around the assumption, that the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF) (let alone equal marriage) would constitute a departure from the traditional doctrine of marriage. It does this around four general themes:

    1. public perception and theological significance of the PLF;
    2. ecclesial condoning of “life choices”;
    3. disagreement and liturgical diversity;
    4. the Church’s traditional teaching on marriage.

    1) Public Perception and Theological Significance

    The primary concern is not theological. It is about what we are seen to do. In §5 a distinction is established, between private prayers and public prayers, which is ‘not merely practical but theologically significant’. What is meant by this is that private prayers are less likely to be misinterpreted as condoning or blessing something which we actually think is bad and do not think should be blessed or condoned. Whereas, ‘In the setting of public worship, it is impossible to escape the reality that the use of the PLF is liable to be received, however unintentionally, as ecclesial endorsement of the relationship being blessed’ (§14, cf.§24). The primary problem is public perception, that people should misunderstand us and think we are blessing and approve of queer people, when in fact we are not and do not. This is not in fact a theological consideration, but a practical one of public perception.

    The argument gets stranger. A distinction is drawn between regular services and occasional ones. ‘Regular services,’ we are told, ‘carry a high presumption of normativity and significance.’ Yet ‘Bespoke services,… by their out-of-the-ordinary nature will also suggest a high level of normativity’ (§15). So it is hard to see what distinction is being drawn here.

    The essential point of the first section of the Report is that, whatever liturgical provision is offered for same-sex couples, it will be interpreted as a marriage by people at those services and by the Anglican Communion and wider society (§§26,28). Although ‘Many would maintain that audience perception does not in itself determine doctrine’ (§32), ‘The weight of audience reception, then, may tip the balance from pastoral care into apparent [doctrinal] contradiction’ (§30). And we are reminded twice that ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’ (§§29,34). In other words, liturgy should mean what we say it does, but it doesn’t, and in fact it does mean what people attending the liturgy or talking about it on ‘social media responses or press headlines’ think it does (§32). This argument is repeated in §§66-68 in the context of a discussion of the importance of published liturgy.

    There is much concern also in §27 about the clergy and lay leaders who will be affected by the ‘symbolic resonance and precedent of a prominent public LLF service’. It is not made clear what that means. It is a strangely evasive paragraph. Presumably a gay bishop and their partner using the prayers. But, of course, that would never happen, would it.

    2) Ecclesial Condoning of “Life Choices”

    After concerns about whether we might be seen to be blessing same-sex relationships, next is the question of whether the Church is condoning same-sex couples and their ‘life choice/s’. This overtly homophobic phrase of long standing is used at both §11 and §14.  We are told that there is agreement ‘that God’s blessing may be prayed for over persons and intentions without necessarily affirming all aspects of a relationship or life choice’ (§11). It is apparently entirely possible to bless a same-sex couple without blessing in any way any part of their life together. If this seems strange, we are reassured that, ‘The Church has long provided public prayers in circumstances of moral or pastoral ambiguity’ (§19). Here, you might be forgiven for thinking that a door was maybe being opened to permitting a liturgy which also allowed for moral ambiguity (however much it feels unreal to suggest that this aspect of my life and identity might be any more morally ambiguous than a straight person’s). But that door is rapidly slammed shut.

    The Report gives short paragraphs to deal with the supposed arguments of unidentified and unreferenced ‘supporters of the PLF’ in a way which suggests that they/we may not have been in the room at the time. These supporters ‘point to analogous liturgical acts which mark without enacting and bless without endorsing every moral dimension of the context’, like civic services and memorials (§33). If we bless at civic services and memorials without being seen to condone every aspect of what we are blessing, can we do the same here? Computer says no. ‘In these contexts, there are some fairly set cultural expectations within which the Church can navigate at such commemorative events’ (§33). Apparently, we are meant to understand that that could not possibly also be true for using the PLF, although that is not worked out for us. Indeed, so prone to confusion with marriage must the PLF be that clear differentiation from marriage would require ‘clarity of liturgical differentiation’ and ‘the willingness of Church leaders to undertake sustained theological communication’ (§35). Now, I enjoy a public lecture as much as the next theologian, but even I think that would be overkill before a church service.

    Apparently, just telling people that it isn’t a legal wedding, as clergy I know have done who have used PLF so far, would still leave everyone confused. I am unconvinced. LGBTQIA+ people know that the Church is ambivalent towards us, and if we don’t know anything we assume that the Church is actively hostile. But these arguments are rehearsed again in §§81-83 and §86, just to make sure you heard them if you happened to be reading quickly before a meeting. The “theological question” is then summed up in terms which appear entirely out of the blue, unconnected as they are to the argument in the rest of the Report:

    Theologically, the question posed by the public use of the PLF is not primarily about whether God’s grace is available to all. It is about how the Church responds lovingly to the hope of those who come before God and desire to show forth their praise in thanksgiving for what God has given them. (§88)

    Is it? It hasn’t felt like that’s the theological question in this theological briefing. There’s nothing about the hope of those who come before God to give thanks to God. Perhaps they left that bit out. And if we are morally ambiguous and not-to-be-condoned then it is hard in any case to see what there is to give thanks for to God in Church. Our evil ways? What a strange thing to say.

    3) Disagreement and Liturgical Diversity

    The Report deals in some depth with how liturgical diversity has been handled in the Church of England in the past. The liturgical text is not a ‘narrow prescription’ but rather ‘a framework capable of bearing diverse theological interpretations’ (§42). This is presented as maybe a good thing, though in that section on how the public received liturgy it seemed to be a bad thing. There is a delightfully idealistic statement that Canons A5 and B5 ‘protect the liturgy from becoming an instrument of theological partisanship and ensure its function as a shared act of worship grounded in common faith’ (§43). Perhaps the authors are wilfully unaware of the many parishes and network churches in the Church of England which never or almost never use authorised liturgy, even if technically they perhaps do something which could be defended as a Service of the Word. The Catholicisation of the liturgy in Common Worship has not been accepted throughout the Church of England, and A5 and B5 have not ensured liturgical unity. Why would we expect them to now? Comments commending the ‘structured plurality’ of ‘theological sensibilities and liturgical styles’ in the deployment of different Eucharistic prayers (§45) and reminding us that prayers are not ‘neutral containers into which new meanings may simply be poured’ (§47) do not accord with the reality of the breadth of theological positions on the eucharist which are now accommodated by Common Worship’s diversity of prayers (if Common Worship or the Book of Common Prayer are used at all in a parish or network church).

    There is then a rather confusing but impressive argument about the Ritual Controversy and the tension between ‘prescription, rubric, and enactment’ (§§50-57). It seems to be strongly implied that, unlike other times when there have been debates and movements for change, we are somehow walking into this without proper discernment. But if the gruelling process of LLF which has lasted for the entirety of my training and ordained ministry was not discernment, I don’t know what discernment would look like.

    Suddenly the Report raises the tone, almost comically, warning us:

    Episcopal guidance becomes critical: without clear episcopal teaching and supervision, the national coherence of liturgical practice – and the doctrinal witness it sustains – may be compromised. (§60)

    It is precisely in the act of translating these prayers into public worship that the theological and doctrinal stakes become most acute. (§85)

    I think that we are intended to hear the warning that the national coherence of liturgical practice may be compromised with the same concern as a warning that the hull of our submarine might be compromised. However, this is not how it lands. It is hard to get upset about the stable door needing shutting when the horse is galloping gaily away over the horizon.

    And the Report is quite direct that this is in fact the reality:

    The Church’s embrace of liturgical diversity has hitherto been sustained by theological agreement on the central matters of faith. Where disagreement has existed – on baptism, the Eucharist, or the nature of ordination – it has generally been held within a framework of authorised texts and common structures. (§63)

    This is an extraordinary admission, given the picture presented that the PLF risked tearing up a unified doctrinal-liturgical fabric. In fact, on minor and unimportant issues, not at all central in any way, like baptism, the Eucharist or Holy Orders, we already disagree. And that is apparently fine. However, we are reminded, lest again a door towards living with disagreement be opened to us, that:

    If liturgical practice is allowed to diverge from doctrinal principle, then the Church’s claim to be a confessing body – one that worships according to what it believes may be placed in jeopardy. (§64)

    Jeopardy. Well, as much as I would like everyone to be of one mind, the Report has already said that disagreement and divergence has happened over central issues, and the Church is still one body with one head, however many times we have disagreed, done different things, or even gone our separate ways. This just reads strangely, along with the warning that suddenly liturgical difference is something about which we should now be terrified into inaction, now that LGBTQIA+ people are involved. This aspect of the report reads like an attempt to create panic where no panic is necessary. Or, if it was necessary, it was probably necessary over the past 40 years, when our present liturgical divergence was taking root.

    (4) The Church’s Traditional Teaching on Marriage

    Do you remember that the purpose of this Report was meant to be to work out whether the PLF departed from the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage? You could be forgiven for having forgotten, having worked through all of this. The so-called “traditional doctrine of marriage” is first stated at §38, though this is only to establish how much this conflicts with the PLF which ‘suggests at least a degree of ecclesial affirmation of the relationship’ (§37). That the authors believe that the PLF constitute a departure from the “traditional doctrine of marriage” is not explored, only the implications of this finding.

    The unchallenged assumption that the unchanging doctrine of marriage in the Church of England is and has always been that it be between one man and one woman for life runs throughout the Report. At §22 and in footnote 9, a reference is made to GS Misc 1407, which was the Episcopal Reference Group’s paper on marriage and its accompanying compendium of sources. The compendium is interesting in that it gives a useful overview of the ways in which the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage and human sexuality has changed a lot, even as the Church has professed not to change our teaching or doctrine, only our pastoral practice. This change is now normal.

    We do not actually believe (as a Church) that marriage is between one man and one woman, or if we do we certainly have not believed that unchangingly or traditionally. The Lambeth Conferences of 1888 and 1988 came to exactly opposing conclusions about polygamy. We also do not actually believe (as a Church) that marriage is for life, given that remarriage of divorcees is now routine in the Church of England, and not reserved to the ‘exceptional circumstances’ envisaged by Marriage in the Church After Divorce (2003). It now seems only in really exceptional circumstances that marriage of heterosexual couples after divorce is ever denied.

    I certainly have never heard of public penance being done by heterosexual divorcees to make clear that the Church does not condone their remarriage before their service of thanksgiving. But the Report uses divorce as an example of another ‘morally ambiguous’ situation which the church does not bless (§19). It is made clear in the liturgy, apparently, that what is offered to divorcees is not a blessing. But I have never known that service to be referred to in any terms other than as a ‘wedding blessing’.

    Conclusion

    This Report is frustrating, and disturbing. It presents the PLF as something of a worst-case scenario, with the potential to detonate the hitherto integral liturgical unity of the Church of England. However, it is not balanced. It is not theologically consistent. And its arguments are at times obfuscatory and self-referential. It does not evaluate whether the PLF are consistent with the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage(s). But it does make it appear as fait accompli that the PLF are inconsistent in a way that suggests that the House of Bishops has no freedom to exercise their episcopal prerogative to authorise them. As such, this was a confusing and at times needlessly offensive Report to read.

  • What Have the Bishops Done?

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

    Where do we find the doctrine of the C of E? One answer to that question is: in our liturgy. That is why huge significance has been placed on liturgical texts which have been, or may be, authorised as part of Living in Love & Faith. The claim is often dignified by repetition of the phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi (‘the law of praying is the law of believing’) but this is not found in any formally authoritative source. The situation is in reality a bit more complicated. It might seem to an innocent observer that the 39 Articles of Religion (1571) are a statement of the Church of England’s doctrine. But by the later 20th century it was recognised that these were the product of a particular time and concerns. So, instead, the Worship and Doctrine Measure 1974 enabled the adoption of the Declaration of Assent used at every clergy licensing. This recognises the Articles (alongside the Prayer Book and Ordinal) as ‘witness’ to the faith found in Scripture and set out in the Creeds, and requires the new minister to recognise them as ‘inspiration and guidance’ – but no longer as a decisive statement of faith in every one of their details. It is this understanding which has been recognised in the law of the Church of England by the Court of Arches.[1]

    This absence of a straightforward statement of doctrine, and the reality that an appeal to Scripture only generates competing interpretations, has meant looking to approved liturgical texts as evidence for what the Church does or does not believe, a pattern encouraged by the 19th century era of litigation around liturgical controversy. This is reinforced by the circular theological position set out in the liturgical part of the 1974 measure and the Canons; that various bodies (Synod, Convocations, ordinaries) may authorise liturgical texts which “are neither contrary to, nor indicative of any departure from, the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter.” In the absence of any clear test of what that doctrine is, and the lack of any workable legal means to apply a test, the authorisation of a text is effectively evidence that its content does conform to the doctrine of the Church.

    Curiously, many of those opposed to change have argued at various points that, because any change to the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality would be a change in doctrine, this would require the use of the full Synodical process for approving liturgy under Canon B2. This is similar to the legislative process with first, revision, and final stages, and two-thirds majorities required in each House. This was what happened, for example, when the new Eucharistic texts in Common Worship were agreed in the late 1990s, as these are alternatives to the Prayer Book service of Holy Communion. However, all that Canon B2 provides is a mechanism for Synod to approve texts which are (in its opinion) “neither contrary to, nor indicative of any departure from, the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter” – the test referred to above. The Canons do not include a concept that the doctrine of the Church of England ever actually changes in any essential matter, only that it is expressed differently. So neither the ordination of women as priests and bishops in 1994 and 2014 respectively, nor acceptance of the remarriage of divorcees from 2002, were a change in doctrine (which would imply, perhaps, rewriting the Creeds or redefining the canon of Scripture) but merely reorderings of our common life. Even if Synod were to endorse same-sex marriage, this would only confirm that it was “neither contrary to…..” (you know the rest!)

    I am writing whilst the LLF process is still very much underway, and it is increasingly clear following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent podcast interview that it will help everyone if the House of Bishops could achieve some more clarity about what they believe they are doing. Contrary to what it may seem, however, they have done more than argue and procrastinate. Last December they commended the Prayers of Love & Faith as resources for use in regular services, together with a statement denying that these constituted any change in doctrine, or of teaching on sex. I agree that they are not a change in doctrine, but they are a change. In response to the legalisation of civil partnerships in 2005, the then House of Bishops declared that “clergy…should not provide services of blessing for those who register a civil partnership”[2] and on the introduction of same-sex marriage in 2014, repeated the instruction, “Services of blessing should not be provided.[3] Whereas now they have very clearly commended a set of prayers that may be used with those who have formed a civil partnership or same-sex marriage.

    Officially, of course, there is some hairsplitting, that the Prayers do not provide ‘services of blessing’ and so somehow this is not a contradiction. I don’t think anyone is convinced. Even when they are simply used in existing services, the PLF invite a minister to name the specific couple involved, and there are prayers asking God to bless them. And ironically the inclusion of different prayers for covenanted friendships clarifies the matter – because covenanted friendships are explicitly stated to be non-sexual and non-exclusive, that makes it clear that the main Prayers are for what we might try to gloss as one’s ‘central personal relationship.’ The associated Guidance fortunately makes it clear that it is not appropriate, with the PLF as with marriage couples, to ask intrusive questions about the intimate expression of any such relationships.  The Guidance also includes warnings that services should not imitate Holy Matrimony, whilst wisely noting that particular dress and associated trimmings are varied and subject to a range of cultural assumptions.  Since the distinctive mark of Holy Matrimony (as opposed to legal marriage in England today) is that it is between a man and a woman, we do not really need this warning, as the PLF are explicitly for same-sex couples.

    I shall return to the question of what sort of movement in the teaching of the Church on personal relationships this represents below, but first want to be clear about the status of the texts. They are commended by the House of Bishops for use by ministers in their discretion under Canon B5, meaning that the House has determined that they are (guess what!?) “neither contrary to nor &c.” This formula of commendation was devised in the 1980s to introduce new seasonal liturgical material in Lent, Holy Week & Easter (1986), The Promise of His Glory (1991) and much more since, on the basis that if a specific text had been approved under either Canon B2 or B4, that would have become the only permitted text, and stifled the liturgical freedom to devise seasonal services according to local need and custom. I have seen the argument both that this was different from the Prayers of Love & Faith, because it was not controversial, and that texts commended by the House of Bishops have no particular standing in law. Neither of these is true.

    Both Lent, Holy Week & Easter and The Promise of His Glory were presented to General Synod in the form of drafts in reports from the Liturgical Commission, for a ‘take note’ debate. In both cases the motion was passed by show of hands (meaning the level of support was not recorded) and it is possible that there was only modest interest from Synod (in the latter debate someone successfully challenged whether the House of Bishops was quorate!) Nonetheless, elements of the proposed texts were resisted and, more significantly, on both occasions speakers rose to object directly to the proposed method of commendation by the House, arguing that as the new books restored ceremonies which had been deliberately abolished at the Reformation, a full canonical process of approval should be followed. The ‘take note’ format also allowed the Liturgical Commission to go away and revise the texts including responding to comments in Synod, and the texts were then published without Synod having any opportunity to express a view on the final version. Though even then sex was more exciting than liturgy (as in the Higton debate of 1987) it was not without differences of opinion on both content and process. As for the standing of the texts from a legal viewpoint, both have been cited in faculty judgments in support of the acquisition of e.g. processional candlesticks and incense apparatus, as these are envisaged by their rubrics.[4] Although the exact impact of the decision must remain unclear until tested in court, the Prayers of Love & Faith commended by the House of Bishops do say something, as much reaction seems to confirm, even if we are still trying to work out what.

    Allow me a diversion. Readers who are familiar with Yes, Prime Minister may remember the episode in which Prime Minister Jim Hacker is manipulated into appointing a don from Sir Humphrey’s old college as Bishop of Bury St Edmunds in order to ease the latter’s retirement plans. At one point he is presented with an alternative candidate who has strong opinions on matters of public morality – abortion, teenage pregnancy, gambling. Hacker protests that those are matters about which he is trying not to have a policy (by implication, because they are too difficult and controversial) and Bernard Woolley, the Private Secretary, pedantically responds, “Yes, he is against your no-policy-policy” and so he is ruled out, and Sir Humphrey’s plan advances another step.

    It seems to me that perhaps there is some hope that the Church of England is moving, more perhaps by accident than design, to something of a ‘no-policy-policy’ on sexual relationships, in spite of the strong voices who oppose this. Besides anything else, any clear policy is going to have to draw some uncomfortably explicit lines around particular sexual acts, and it is difficult to imagine this turning out anything other than laughable. In other words, it might be that we reach a position where the Church responds to particular circumstances, both locally on an individual basis and commenting on national trends, but finally gives up pretending that the public role of Christianity is to define who is allowed to have sex with whom, as if anyone were really listening to that any more. And this would then be much like our wise resistance to absolute rules on war and peace, or how people spend their money, or the benefits and risks of the AI revolution. And we could get on with worshipping and serving the God who redeemed us in Christ, and whose world needs his love so much.

    References:

    [1] In the case of in Re St Alkmund, Duffield [2013] Fam 158, paras 24(a)-26

    [2] House of Bishops statement on civil partnerships, https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/house-of-bishops-statement-on-civil-partnerships-2005.pdf, §17

    [3] House of Bishops Pastoral Guidance on Same-sex Marriage, https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/house-of-bishops-pastoral-guidance-on-same-sex-marriage.pdf §21

    [4] In Re. St John the Evangelist, Chopwell [1995] Fam 254 and subsequent judgments adopting Chancellor Bursell’s reasoning.

     

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

    Questions of Conscience (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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