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Tag: GS2328

  • You Are Already Blessed: A Letter to the Church of England

    **published in conjunction with the Campaign for Equal Marriage**

    by Anna Lawrence, a writer, editor and educator based in Birmingham. She blogs at Five by Three

    Dear Church of England,

    While you decide whether or not you can bring yourself to bless me and the woman that I love, I just wanted to reassure you.

    We are already blessed.

    I have tried to do things your way, ever since I was a child. I tried to pray away the gay. I locked up Gay Me in the attic and married a man. (And guess what? He was gay too, but that’s another story.) I tried giving what I coded as “TGT” – The Gay Thing – a little back room in my head where I allowed myself to go for restricted visits and tried to imagine it being ok to be me. I tried repressing it entirely, banning books and songs and thoughts and people and places – anything that made me feel expansive and alive and open to the possibility of being my full self. I decided I must live like an anchoress within my marriage, choosing to be walled in, throwing myself at Church God in the confines of a cell, hoping that the pressure would squeeze something good and wise out of me. Guess what? It didn’t work. Church told me I was not ok and I believed it, and Church held the door wide open for shame, self loathing and depression. They corroded me and told me that my children would be better off without this mad mother who threw herself at walls and begged for inspiration. Better dead than gay. Church did not come and sit with me and light a candle in that darkness. Church was too busy bickering about the likes of me to notice.

    Still.

    When Church did not look for me, I went looking for what Church calls “God” in other places. I tried out other names that didn’t set off tripwires: my Knowing, my Unknowing, my Beloved, Source, Loving Presence. This Love – huge as everything and intimate as breath inside my lungs – did not wait for me to step over your threshold. Love met me at Greenbelt, in feminist theology, in poetry, in friends who brought me brownies when I was bereaved. Love met me in meditation, lying under soft blue blankets at the Buddhist Centre, noticing the feelings in my toes. Love met me in podcasts – Tara Brach, Kristin Neff and Cynthia Bourgeault – where women (knowing we live first and last and only in our bodies and not as talking heads in committee rooms) invited me to practise Loving Kindness, Self Compassion, Centering Prayer.

    Love works with and through the therapist who asks me to place a hand over my heart, to hum low and long to calm this frightened, fragile animal.

    The Beloved does not forget me. Again, again, again, She re-members me, remakes me from the parts Church tried to split apart, as if sexuality were something to be cut out and dropped into a jar, like an inflamed appendix.

    This Love is Chrysalis, holding the gloop of me that had been caterpillar but doesn’t yet have wings: the what-was and what’s-here and what’s-not-yet.

    The thing – The Gay Thing – I thought so long a curse has turned out to be a Blessing. Church equivocation – “nah, I’m sorry, we’re not sure ALL of you belongs”- sent me looking elsewhere. It turns out that I was already found.

    Love lives in our home – our ordinary life of lunch boxes and putting bins out and making whole what has been badly broken. We are learning – slowly, imperfectly – to be hospitable to all the spiked defences in ourselves and in each other, and to welcome back the parts we sent away. Love is here in rift and in repair.

    I’m not sure yet if I’ll give Church another go. I keep trying, and have been welcomed by warm and lovely people who have conducted “illegal” ceremonies for people like me. They know that Church has got it badly wrong. I begin to put my weight through Church again. And then Church says out loud that you’re not sure about blessing me and you need to discuss it. And I think about the woman who I love and I’m not sure why I’m putting myself through this once again.

    I have realised I do not want your blessing.

    Instead I find it in a mychorrizal network of people who pay kind attention, who are rooted in Source, whose nourishment moves through nodes of connection. I throw myself into the dirt and mess, resting in the dark where things grow best, and call on Love – this fierce, wild Presence – to meet us where we’re wounded,  where we wound, to meet us where we make and think and play.

    And here’s the thing: after everything you’ve done and said, and left undone, unsaid, I can’t bring myself to give you my blessing. But whether I decide to welcome you or not – each of you who makes up Synod, deciding what to do with all the tricky ones like me – each of you is already welcomed, regardless. You, like me, are loved from the inside out.

    You are already blessed.

  • On the Exchanging of Friendship Bracelets; or: The Bishops are Asking us to Lie

    by Matt Drapper, an author who writes about church and queer culture. His book ‘Bringing Me Back To Me’ is an autobiographical look back at his experiences of Conversation Therapy Practices and homophobia within Christianity and his journey towards healing from trauma

    Imagine you have two friends, who are Christian women, who love their church and each other and you hear they have become engaged. Later, you are invited to a church service at which the couple, who have been recently married at a civil ceremony, will be blessed and their love for each other celebrated before God and the gathered congregation of their friends and family. You’ve dressed up for the occasion, written a card emblazoned with hearts and even brought a pocket full of confetti just in case they decide to take photos after the blessing. You’ve already heard of the couple’s disappointment; they cannot be married in the church with a traditional ceremony, and it feels a pity to have their blessing taped onto the end of a regular Sunday morning service, however you know this will be a wonderful celebration with family and friends. Except, when the minister stands up to pray, she describes the women’s relationship as “friendship” and instead of rings, they exchange friendship bracelets.

    The minister knows. The couple know. The gathered friends and family know. You know, this is an opportunity to come before God for a blessing on the relationship and civil partnership or marriage of a couple who love one another, but who have been denied the opportunity to be married in the church building they love (a right granted to straight couples simply for living in the catchment area of the parish.) However, everyone has (at the request of the House of Bishops and the Church of England Lawyers) been asked to lie and say they are just celebrating a friendship.

    For context, I’m referring to the documents recently released for General Synod which detail the ways Churches will be allowed to use the Prayers of Love and Faith. These prayers were ostensibly designed for the blessing of same-sex relationships, but, due to the inclusion of the phrase “with no change to the doctrine of marriage” in an amendment passed in February, have seemingly had their entire purpose removed from them, and worse, replaced with an encouragement to pretend they are something else entirely.

    One example of the prayers which some churches will be enabled to offer, begins with a promise of love and commitment, but ends with just friendship.

    For lifelong peace
    God of all grace,
    friend and companion,
    look with favour on N and N
    as they journey together through life. Deepen their love
    and strengthen their wills
    to honour the commitment they have made,
    that they may continue
    in lifelong faithfulness and friendship to each other; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
    All Amen.

    To what “commitment they have made” is this prayer referring? The Guidance offered for use of the prayers states: “Pastoral preparation with the couple should cover the fact that the service is not a marriage, or a Thanksgiving for Marriage, or a Service of Prayer and Dedication after Civil Marriage.” And yet, the blessing of a civil ceremony or marriage is exactly what these prayers have been asked for, and prepared for. No one was asking for a new form of pinky-swearing with our best friends and a promise to love them forever and ever and ever.

    “They are roommates,” used to be the whispered code for an Uncle or Aunt known to be living with their gay partner, back in the day. “They were good friends,” suggest descriptions below paintings of historical possible queer love in museums. And now the Church of England is asking us to use the same veiled language, whispered, between evening prayers.

    As if it were not enough that the latest Guidance of the Use of Prayers of Love and Faith (and its accompanying Theological and Pastoral Introduction to the PLF) consistently use the words “holy” and “ideal” to describe straight presenting marriage, suggesting an “unholiness” and “less than ideal” to same-sex partnerships, and as if it were not demeaning enough to describe the Prayers of Love as Faith as “Prayers on the Way” (on the way to what?), the Guidance appears to be asking Ministers, Couples, Friends and Family to be intentionally deceptive before each other and before God. I would go so far as to say, The House of Bishops are asking us to lie.

    We have spent our lives being told our relationships are not Holy. This new document enforces this feeling in some of the most unhealthy language I have ever heard. They may have swapped out the word “sin” for “unholiness”, and not aimed it at us directly, but they should say what they really mean, if they are proud of it. Call us sinners, please.

    In describing their purpose, the guidance continues: “The PLF fall short of affirming a couple’s entire way of life as made Holy by God, and blessed as a marriage service would do…The PLF do not seek to simulate marriage or pretend that our Church has made a decision to extend marriage to same-sex couples.” The Theological document could not be clearer. PLF is not to be used as a celebration of same-sex relationship. And yet, what else are they designed for? Throughout the recent documents, they are consistently described as celebrating friendship. Are we to believe the women’s football team will be using the prayers to bless their bonds? Are we to understand the men’s mental health support group will be showing up for a blessing over their budding friendships? Is this a blessing for besties?

    No.

    We know what it is.

    It is what it is.

    In the most outrageous sample from the Guidance, it is suggested as an image: “The minister may pray over rings worn by the couple (but) to avoid the impression that the service is a marriage service, rings are not given or exchanged.” Pardon? The minister knows, the couple knows, the friends and family gathered know what this service is for and what the prayers for the rings mean. Yet, the House of Bishops and Church Lawyers are asking us to pretend we don’t understand. To lie about it to each other and in front of God.

    The Guidance is also clear on another point: you cannot offer the blessings to people who are still going through an unsettled divorce. Why not? If it is a blessing for buddies, for two roomies who get on really well? Make it make sense.

    As a gay man who grew up in a Christian household, and then in evangelical Christianity, I was taught to whisper about my sexuality. I was told by my family, “You cannot Be Gay at home.” I was told by my church, “You will lose your leadership role if you are openly in a Same-sex Relationship.” Better to keep these things hidden, wrapped up in shame, secret, pretend to be something you are not. Queer Christians recognise a lie for what it is: Shame, Denial, Pretence.

    Asking ministers, couples, friends and families to lie to each other and before God is a sure way to invite destructive poison into a congregation. Is this really the best they can offer us?

  • ‘That Which He Has Not Assumed Is Not Redeemed’: Jesus, Sexuality and GS2328

    by John Seymour, a priest in the Diocese of London who recently completed doctoral studies in practical theology and education at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society

    Jesus of Nazareth: fully human, fully God?

    I want to start with what, for many of us, may be an uncomfortable question. It’s one which we gloss over in our affirmations of the full humanity of Jesus. Did he have something which we would today call a sexuality? It may feel awkward or irreligious to imagine the God-man Jesus getting a spontaneous erection, masturbating for pleasure or relief, or indulging a sexual fantasy, but it is difficult to make sense of some of his encounters without Jesus being a human being with a sexuality.

    Many women had a strong affection for him, such that they provided for his material needs (Luke 8.1-3). He was able to understand the power dynamics at work in the life of the woman caught in adultery (John 8.2-11). Taken in context, it is interesting to ponder what kind of metaphor might be at work in the Samaritan woman’s retort, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep” (John 4.11). It is difficult for me at least not to suppose a sexual dimension to the intimacy of the beloved disciple reclining on Jesus’ breast (John 13.23) and the only disciple for whom Jesus cried was Lazarus: “see how he loved him!” (John 11.35).

    If human sexuality is to be redeemed then, on a Patristic understanding, Christ must have had a human sexuality. The quotation which starts this blog is taken from a letter from Gregory of Nazianzus to Cledonius, a priest he had oversight of. Gregory is addressing the Apollinarian controversy, and the suggestion that rather than having his own intellect, Jesus’ mind was replaced by the Godhead or Logos. Gregory’s humour is incisive:

    “If anyone has put his trust in him as a man without a human mind, he is really bereft of mind, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which he has not assumed he has not healed, but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved.” (Epistle 101)

    That which is united to the Godhead is saved. In the sacrament of baptism, the believer is joined to Christ (Galatians 3.27; Romans 6.3-6), body, mind, soul (to use Gregory’s term), and with these, his / her / their sexuality, whatever that sexuality may be (and it seems to me that the spectrum represented by asexuality is included here). Sexuality is, then, a salvation issue. If our sexuality is not assumed it is not healed; and if we are not joined with Christ in every part of our humanity, we are not saved.

    The red lines of GS2328

    What does this say to our current debates? In the press conference of 20 January 2023 ahead of February’s synod, the Archbishop of York said, “We’re saying this is a good place to be where we can live together with our disagreements and fully acknowledge and welcome into our church LGBTQI+ people.” The implication was that the salvation issue had been addressed for LGBTQIA+ people: with the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF), the Church of England had created a sufficiently generous theological space in which we could enjoy the fulness of life as Christians that comes with integration of body, mind, soul and sexuality within the church’s understanding of what it means to be human.

    However, with the release of GS2328 and the events that led to that paper, the Church of England now really is not in a “good place” in relation to the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people. In its theology and the practical inferences drawn from it, the House of Bishops is communicating the same homophobic bias which led to the defeat of GS2055 in February 2017. It is painful to see that the investment made by many in the LLF process over six years, one that was costly, sacrificial, and often altruistically motivated, has borne so little fruit: the Church of England has moved backward in its inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people.

    Let me explain. I didn’t believe that the draft Prayers of Love and Faith presented in February 2023 provided for the welcome of LGB people, as the prayers did not affirm same-sex relationships through offering a blessing of a marriage or civil partnership, or indeed, of the substance of a relationship for a same sex couple.

    The ‘goods’ GS2328 claims it wishes to affirm arise from a motivation which derives at least in part from sexual attraction. Rather than accept and affirm this, GS2328 attempts to dissect sexual attraction from an innate, abstract sexuality by separating same-sex sex from the goods of same-sex relationships. There is continuity here with the tendency to affirm Jesus’ humanity whilst glossing over his sexuality as something real: GS2328 wants to recognise the goods of this category of relationship while erasing the actual part that human sexuality plays in producing them. In doing so, GS2328 simply betrays a homophobic theology. Any prayer which takes as its starting point separation of being human from being sexual communicates a commitment that is at odds with belief in the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ and is consequently hostile to LGB identity and to LGBTQIA+ people.

    That theological ‘red line’ drawn between being human and having a sexuality has now changed and moved. Arguably, in the February 2023 proposals, the red line was brought to synod intentionally blurred, with the prospect of that blurred line being affirmed at the November 2023 synod. Examples of this blurring include synod in February choosing (contra Higton 1987) not to assert that sexual intimacy could only take place in marriage, and not to assert that relationships outside of marriage could not be blessed (both of these were the subject of amendments that failed). Despite this, what has returned to synod in November with GS2328 is a well-defined red line. Whatever else that line might be, it is a dividing line between being human and being sexual. The prospect now is of that line becoming fixed in 2025. The line makes a false division between what is assumed by Christ and what is not.

    The Canon B2 route and a choice between homophobic theologies

    In the press release relating to the papers for synod, bishop Sarah is quoted as saying, “a majority of people would like to see a change in the Church of England’s approach to same-sex relationships. Based on what the Church has told us, no change is not an option.” Yet the last-minute adoption of a Canon B2 process for approval of PLF as a stand-alone service has proven to be enabling of a minority position. As a result of the intervention in the House of Bishops’ process, there are two outcomes that are possible in 2025:

    • The least negative for LGBTQIA+ people is that the Canon B2 process, with reference to the dioceses and then a vote in Synod requiring a two-thirds majority in each house, affirms the proposed PLF and underlying rationale. With this, a homophobic theology (articulated in the Pastoral Guidance and reflected in PLF) would be formally adopted by the CofE as the basis for ‘affirming’ the relationships of LGB people.
    • The other possibility that opens up – and this seems quite likely as an outcome with the current composition of synod – is that, whatever the dioceses say, PLF are felt to have significant doctrinal implications which synod is not minded to affirm. With this, not only the stand-alone PLF but also the PLF prayers due to be commended for use in existing services would fall, as being incompatible with Church of England doctrine.

    Whilst inadequate, the proposals of February 2023 offered a route to an incarnational faith which is saving for LGBTQIA+ people. In contrast, GS2328 offers options between theologies for LGBTQIA+ people, both of which deny the gospel of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.

    It seems to me that GS2328 therefore heralds something of a pastoral crisis, as it tells me and my LGBTQIA+ siblings that the Church of England is not a safe place for us and that we are not welcome. It is also the occasion of a crisis in what the church is willing to transmit by way of salvation. With the decision to pursue a Canon B2 route, synod is set to determine whether or not LGBTQIA+ identities and lives may be joined with Christ’s and with this, to make a judgement on whether or not we may be saved. With the current politics of the Church of England, it looks like we are going to be damned to hell.

    Perhaps as they gaze over that precipice, the bishops might reconsider how closely they are willing to draw the line around who is saved and who is not. Synod has said that the bishops are not constrained by a doctrinal issue. In light of that, they need our prayers as they weigh their decision, as their own souls may be at risk in their judgment.

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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