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Tag: homophobia

  • The Failure of Living in Love and Faith: a Glimpse of the Blindingly Obvious

    by David Nixon, a recently retired priest and Area Dean, a Prebendary emeritus, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Exeter University

    I have just experienced what my sister has always termed a GBO – a Glimpse of the Blindingly Obvious. In other words, blindingly obvious for everyone else except for the one who experiences it, for whom it comes as a penny-dropping moment, another useful phrase. The risk of sharing this with you is that it’s only me for whom this is interesting or startling or revelatory, and everybody else says: “Yep, uh-hah”. But I’m going to take that risk, just in case.

    And the GBO is this: that the failure (and it really ought not to be called anything other than this) of the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) project or process is linked very closely to a particular view of the Church, and its purpose, and thus to an underlying contemporary ecclesiology. I am not saying that there is no prejudice within Church circles about LGBT+ people, no homophobia (a better term would be heteronormativity, that ranking of heterosexuality as ‘better’) out of which spring some of the opposition to LLF; rather, I am saying that alongside these things, beneath them, runs a way of thinking about Church which made and makes progress with LLF almost impossible. This would explain the ability of well-meaning bishops to issues words of condolence, as if on the passing of a dear mutual friend, at the same time as ensuring that LGBT+ people continue to feel as if they are travelling steerage on the ecclesial equivalent of the Titanic. The ecclesiological predisposition of many bishops (and others) means that to act in full favour of LLF would run counter to how they perceive the task and the role of the Church of England now, and so would land them in an uncomfortable contradiction. Better to ditch LLF progress than to have to admit that the ecclesiology might be faulty. To use another image, the bishops’ ecclesiological garment risks being called out as illusory, nothing more than the emperor’s new clothes, whose vanity is always pricked by one of the children, the ‘small ones’. A minor act of infanticide might be worth the opprobrium. Let me explain more fully.

    To be slightly fairer to LLF, by comparison to Issues in Human Sexuality (1991) and the 1998 Lambeth resolutions, having a liturgy to bless same-sex couples as part of an existing act of worship in church and the pastoral letter from bishops in 2026 is a remarkable (albeit slow) achievement. Often overlooked however is the theological process of LLF, which is even more surprising, so much so that this in itself justified a pause if not a halt. One of the many criticisms of Issues is that it positioned differently the voices and experiences of LGBT+ people and those of doctors, psychologists and biologists, so that the latter group were regarded as experts commenting on the lives of others. Later reports ameliorated this to some extent, but the control of the House of Bishops over the debate, and the terms of the debate, remained rigid. Bishop Gene Robinson’s comment on the Lambeth Commission which produced the later Windsor Report in 2004 remains apposite: imagine, he suggested, a commission about sexism composed only of men, or one about racism with no Black people, yet it was deemed acceptable for a commission about sexuality to have no gay or lesbian representatives. By contrast, LLF foregrounded the lives of a range of LGBT+ people, alongside sociological and cultural analysis (‘Paying attention: What is going on?’) within a more expansive theological framework. More technically, this was nearer to the inductive method of Liberation Theology, working from human experience to interpret doctrine, rather than setting out a universal scheme to be imposed deductively on every given situation. The risk, perhaps intended, perhaps not fully understood, was that by contrast to previous reports and commissions, the bishops might lose control of the process.

    And then there are the bigger ecclesiological issues.

    The direction of travel at present in the Church of England is towards a public theology based on discipleship rather than citizenship. This contrasts the Church as a counter-cultural reality not answerable to secular demands with an institution engaged with a pluralist, secular state aiming for the common good underlying universal human principles. Church priorities summarised as ‘simpler, humbler, bolder’ emphasise the growth of numbers of disciples through missionary endeavour, and set a variety of targets. The language of ‘disciple’ and ‘mission’ abounds.

    Superficially, there is nothing to argue with here: who would not want the Church to grow, to become more diverse, and for parishes to be revitalised? Yet a modicum of reflection suggests that this is very Church-centric, institutionally and structurally focussed, and that the parishes and disciples are there to maintain and support the Church as an organisation. There is little here about creating and sustaining loving and compassionate communities which engage the wider world in uncertain times, little also about the Kingdom of God as a purpose and goal, and of the Church as a means of helping to deliver this. Public theology as primarily outwardly focussed, beyond the Church and into (for example) the worlds of work, study and leisure is much diminished. And so ultimately the ministry which the Church envisages and for which it forms its clergy is also diminished. The upshot of this is that the Church becomes an end in itself, another institution (like the Post Office?) whose main task is itself – reputation, growth, survival. This is actualised in the work of the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB), whose large grants from central funds to cash-poor dioceses are made on the basis of numerical growth and clergy performance management.

    This ecclesiology is weak on two fronts: there is a misinterpretation of both incarnation and eschatology. The concept of Jesus as both human and divine always means that a division of the world into secular or sacred space is flawed, and we have the discomfort of living overlapped in both places, or of being ‘degrounded’ as Judith Butler says. The temptation at a time of greater secularisation, of loss of Church authority and influence, of scandal and financial threat is to withdraw to apparent safety; but as Bonhoeffer insists in his Ethics, there is ‘nowhere to retreat from the world’. It is again Bonhoeffer who points up the eschatological weakness of a Church that appears to be ‘only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself’ (Letters and Papers from Prison). It is not simply the paucity of vision that cannot see beyond its own bounds (an advance parochialisation), but a failure to glimpse the transformations of the Kingdom, and an attempt to restrict God. If the Church is at the centre, God is at the margins, and a neo-colonial mindset seeks to assert control over God too.

    How does this relate to the failure of LLF? A Church focussed internally may mean it is reluctant to engage in the messy territory of human sexualities, not least when there is the scandal of abuse, and deep and acrimonious divisions of opinion. At worst, this can become a reiteration of the purity/pollution trope, in which the disciples who are to be sought and nurtured are there to form a model community of idealised heterosexuals, where all those who fall outside quite a narrow definition are not only unwelcome, but also serve to establish where those boundaries lie – you may think I am caricaturing here, but look at the photos on the Church of England website about Weddings. The Church as counter-cultural institution means that it does not have to follow the direction of society in terms of accepting different sexualities, and rejecting these may be a marker of belonging to an alternative ecclesial reality.

    A retreat to comfort and security (nostalgia even) is understandable, but we are called to so much more than this. Allied to a desire to take charge again of the LLF process, it is hardly surprising that given this predominant ecclesiology LLF has not fulfilled its aims.

    If there is room for hope here, it lies in the continuing rhetoric of a public theology of citizenship, where pastoral care is delivered because there is need, where schools and communities are supported simply because they are there, where lay people and clergy say their prayers within and on behalf of their parishes because they are centred on a God of love, compassion and mercy.

    Although a citizenship model of public theology is probably more favourable to LGBT+ people, there is hope too in the internal contradictions of the contemporary discipleship policy. There is an admirable wish for the Church to be more attractive to families and young people at the same time as a recognition that the Church’s position towards LGBT+ people is deeply off-putting (Pilling Report 2013). Same-sex marriage in a civil context has been available since 2013 so that today’s ‘young people’ have come of age knowing nothing different, and so find it difficult to understand why this is problematic in the Church of England. Parishes reflecting the rich diversity of the communities they serve is again an excellent aspiration, but in terms of LGBT+ people, this can still mean being less than fully included. The Church rightly supports stable long-term committed relationships but explicitly withdraws this support for non-heterosexual marriage.

    The hope is that such weight causes the structure to wobble or topple. I would caution against any thought of ‘the final big push’ over the barricades – rather it is the unwelcome but necessary task of LGBT+ people and their supporters (the cost of our discipleship) to keep saying clearly that present policies are like the emperor’s new clothes: threadbare. Or at the risk of mixing metaphors, like a Jenga tower, from which each piece is being gradually removed.

     

    [I am grateful to Canon Mike Williams for his insights about public theology, but the link to LLF is entirely my own thinking.]

  • The Alliance and the Bishop of Oxford

    by Canon Dr Phil Groves, a parish priest and convenor of the Anglican Peace and Justice Network. His PhD is on Anglican Missional Ecclesiology and he was the Facilitator for the Listening Process in the Anglican Communion and Director of Continuing Indaba.


    ‘The Alliance’ has written another letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and once again the tone portrays them as the arbiters of orthodoxy. In this letter they make it clear that they will remain within the Anglican Communion while effectively becoming a separate church – a new province – in England.

    They give the impression that it is the Church of England which will be isolated from the theologically uniform Global South, and so from the Anglican Communion itself, while they will be welcomed with open arms. They accuse the Archbishops of Canterbury and York of ‘Western elitism’ in ignoring the views of the Global South and claim they are the ones striving for unity.

    My own bishop – the Bishop of Oxford – has written a response. In it he refers to the consensus at Lambeth 2022 which was to accept different views on sexuality and to walk together. He criticises the Alliance for not mentioning the persecution of LGBTIQ+ people in parts of the world where the [Anglican] church has given its support.

    Replying to Bishop Steven, the Alliance has emphasised its opposition to the persecution of LGBTQIA+ people, but they also make clear their commitment to be in full communion with Provinces at the heart of GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) – including provinces such as Nigeria and Uganda which have promoted and rejoiced in laws that have deepened the criminalisation of LGBTQIA+ people and their allies. The members of the Alliance feel compelled to break with those who bless the union of people of the same sex, but not to break communion with those who rejoice that freedom of speech and freedom of association have been removed from those seeking to defend some of the most vulnerable people in their societies. The Alliance says it is ‘deeply concerned about the persecution of LGBTQIA+ people’ and they emphasise that their affirmation of Lambeth I.10 includes a clear repudiation of all homophobia. I don’t doubt their sentiment, but they are still aligning with church leaders who have praised laws that potentially imprison people for even being suspected of being gay.

    The letters from the Alliance frequently talk about the ‘Global South’ representing 75% of Anglicanism. This is an extremely misleading claim. It may be that 75% of Anglicans live in the Global South, but even in one diocese, let alone one parish, there is always diversity. When the Alliance talks about ‘the Global South’ they seem to mean an organisation, GSFA, that according to its leader is defined by doctrine not geography. The GSFA has 8 Anglican member Provinces from a total of 31 provinces with Global South Anglicans. The GSFA has excluded or alienated most of the Global South provinces, and has been a cause of division.

    The Bishop of Oxford is right to point out that, if the Alliance is in partnership with 75% of Anglicans in the socio-economic Global South, then that includes being in partnership with Anglicans who have steadfastly opposed GAFCON and GSFA and with those who are deliberating change. In the terms set by the Alliance, many of them are not ‘orthodox’. The Bishop of Oxford is aware of this because the Diocese of Oxford has a partnership with the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman in South Africa, where prayers for those in same sex unions have recently been approved.

    And a further new partnership challenges the charge that the Church of England is failing to listen to Anglicans in the Global South. This week, the Bishop of Oxford announced the launch of a new link with the Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

    Archbishop Howard Gregory – the Diocesan Bishop of Jamaica and the Archbishop of the West Indies – entered the partnership well aware of the progressive stance of our Bishop and of many in our Diocese. The partnership is for all in both dioceses, not just with those who self-proclaim themselves to be ‘orthodox’. His diocese also has theological diversity and we will find common ground and real challenges. He has chosen to partner his complex diocese with our complex diocese, fully aware of the range of views we have here and the direction of travel under the leadership of our bishop.

    In contrast with the Archbishops of Nigeria and Uganda, Archbishop Howard has followed on from his predecessor – Archbishop John Holder of Barbados – and bravely squared up to the homophobia in West Indian culture and law. Far from being in thrall to ‘Western elites’, the Archbishop is seeking the repeal of the British colonial penal code.

    The place of the West Indies in the story of GSFA is illustrative of power struggles across the Communion. The South to South encounters of the 1990s were intended to enable a post-colonial Anglican voice to emerge, but in the late 1990s some of the leadership partnered with Western conservatives who were seeking support for their opposition to women bishops and a clear stance on human sexuality. Following the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and up to his retirement in 2009, the Archbishop of the West Indies, Drexel Gomez, was at the heart of these partnerships. However, his lead role in that organisation alienated him from the bishops in his province. They had their own partnerships with dioceses around the world, including TEC, and they did not necessarily support his views. He was spoken of as ‘representing’ them, but he had no mandate to do so.

    His retirement coincided with the meeting of the ACC in Jamaica in 2009. I was privileged to meet all the bishops from West Indies that week and several of them told me that they had been lobbied by Western conservatives (including one from the Diocese of Oxford) telling them who to elect as their Archbishop so they could preserve continuity with the Global South. By a huge majority they ignored the advice and elected a radical alternative – Bishop John Holder.

    I knew Bishop John well. In 2006 I had just been appointed Facilitator for the Listening Process on Human Sexuality in the Anglican Communion and he sent me a copy of his training manual for all clergy in his diocese. He did so because one of the four sessions was aimed at enabling his clergy to face their homophobia, and change. He was not bowing to any Western elite; it was the conclusion of his deep engagement with Scripture and the result of his deep listening to the experience of LGBTIQ+ people (as mandated in Lambeth I.10).

    When the Bishops of the West Indies chose him as Primate, they did so in order to break with the organisation that the Alliance calls the ‘Global South’ and to ensure that they were part of an Anglican Communion that included TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada.

    This pattern was often repeated across the Communion. I saw it in Ghana, Tanzania, Southern Africa and elsewhere and so when the GSFA tried to divide the Bishops at the 2022 Lambeth Conference by encouraging dissent through the signing of a document demanding universal conformity with Lambeth I.10, only a tiny proportion of bishops from the Global South signed up. Not one bishop from the West Indies signed it.

    Calling the GSFA ‘the Global South’ is deliberately confusing. Because it is an organisation that is defined by doctrine not geography, people may be surprised to know that the breakaway Anglican Church in North America is a member! Yet the vast majority of Anglican Provinces in the socio-economic global south are not.

    All this does not mean the partnership between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and the Diocese of Oxford will be easy. Jamaica has been struck by a deadly hurricane almost immediately after the announcement of the link and this calls for us not only to seek money to help but also to ask hard questions about our responsibility for the environmental crisis engulfing the world. We will also be required to examine our place in the horror of chattel slavery. One of the historic patrons of one of my churches was a slave owner – my guess is that slave-trade related patronage runs deep within our diocese. Effective partnership is going to be uncomfortable for all of us.

    This new partnership indicates that the Anglican Communion has a healthy future. We will need to face difficult conversations with openness, honesty, and humility, but we will benefit from those as we walk with Christ.

  • Lovingly Hated

    By Anon., on behalf of the Oxford Safe Churches team

     

    The summer after my first year at university I listened to hours of sermons telling me I was going to hell.

    I was already painfully familiar with these words and hearing them from an Oxford church was by no means surprising. As is often the case, these accusations of ‘sexual immorality’ and ‘going against God’s will’ came from a church with a greeting sign at its doors: ‘All are welcome’.

    Lovingly hated. That’s how I like to refer to it. The way some of these “Christians” so completely oppose my queer identity and relationships. Yet, in the same breath, they will tell me I am loved and considered worthy by the same God they believe would send me to hell. Unless of course I renounce every aspect of this ‘deviant identity’ and mould my innermost being to fit into their idea of acceptable behaviour.

    Conversation therapy happens all the time in churches. It’s not always a dramatic exorcism, sometimes it’s disguised as ‘meeting for coffee’. And then the people you look up to and respect will reveal what they’ve believed from the very beginning: that there is no space for queer identity in their view of Christianity. That you need to renounce this  ‘same-sex attraction’ or, if you can’t, be forced to pursue a life of celibacy.

    The worst part about being judged and shamed by churches, is that it can happen when you least expect it. From the same people who drew you in with their free dinners and flashy events; in the same places you once felt safe and seen. You can be torn apart at a moment’s notice. This only happens because churches intentionally hide what they believe about LGBTQ+ identity and relationships in order to draw people in.

    “Okay, we get it, some churches don’t accept you… but why are you so focused on them? Can’t you just move on to other places?” I wish I could just move on, but no.  Firstly, their words and actions cut deep. Secondly, moving on leaves no trace of what these places actually believe and practice behind closed doors. Each year, freshers are sucked into churches that ‘welcome’ them and leave them vulnerable to spiritual abuse. Out of concern, because I would never want anyone to go through what I’ve seen happen to others, I felt an obligation to make everything public.

    Hence, I put in hours of work over my summer ‘break’ listening to those sermons over and over again. Each damnation was transcribed and carefully put together in a report to prove that certain Oxford churches are not in fact ‘loving and welcome to all’. But that this love has conditions. Even though it’s excruciatingly obvious to anyone who even remotely looks, or loves, like I do, I had to prove this was happening. I had to show freshers which churches could be seen as safe, and which have hidden beliefs to be wary of.

    Oxford Safe Churches. Pages and pages of testimonies, research, affiliations, references, sermons, and anything else that gives any indication of what an Oxford church believes about LGBTQ+ identity and relationships. There was a lot to put in that report. And it was awful.

    And what was the response from our Bishop of Oxford? The same Bishop so celebrated for his support of same-sex marriage in the Church of England in his 2022 booklet, Together in Love and Faith. Silence. Even the slightest acknowledgement of what we wrote would have been enough to know we have someone on our side. Yet, in the light of everything we reported, all the horrible testimonies, there was no response.

    In fact, in that booklet, the last we heard from Bishop Steven, he insists we don’t ‘assign blame to individual clergy or churches’ and should avoid the ‘emotive language of abuse’. But how can we possibly move past the shame and trauma that LGBTQ+ people have felt in the church without acknowledging it for what it is? The Oxford Safe Churches Project has now written to him. Clergy and churches who are responsible for spiritual abuse have the responsibility to repent of that. To take accountability and be transparent about what they believe. If not, it seems the Church of England cares more about protecting its image than protecting vulnerable people.

  • Polluted Ground or Holy Ground? Going Forward to the November Synod

    by the Very Revd Dr Mandy Ford, Dean of Bristol

    I trained alongside men who did not believe that I could be a priest. We were friends, we learned together, we prayed together, we drank gin together. But as our period of training came towards its end and we were about to move to our new dioceses, I started asking the question of them, “When I celebrate the Eucharist, do you think Jesus will turn up?”

    The best of them were honest. Quite simply, the answer was “no”. The Church of England did not have the right, apart from the universal church, to ordain me.

    I’m still here. The Vicar of Dibley jokes have faded. No-one is surprised to see a woman at the altar or conducting a funeral any more. Yet, female colleagues still have to endure being abused or criticised because of their hair colour, tattoos, fashion sense, parenting choices or simply for existing.

    Perhaps I’ve grown more compassionate over time, but I don’t think I’ve ever confronted someone with the question, “Do you think I’m going to hell?”. But as a gay woman in a civil partnership, I probably know the answer.

    My response is the same. I’m still here.

    When we stand on polluted ground, as the theologian James Alison describes it, we do not have to allow ourselves to be poisoned.

    Alison, drawing heavily on Girard’s anthropology of the victim, points us to Jesus. When Jesus was accused by the authorities, he remained silent. When he returned to face those who had abandoned or persecuted him, he did not retaliate. Jesus would not set the cycle of violence spinning round again. He stood on polluted ground but he did not spread the poison around.

    This is a tough space to stand.  Polluted ground can easily become toxic. Misogyny and homophobia become internalised as self-loathing, low self-esteem or victimisation without us noticing.

    What would it feel like to stand on holy ground instead?

    My experience of holy ground is closely tied to my experience of vocation, in coming to mature faith as an adult, in the call to ordination, in my relationship.

    In those things I experience being beloved as a child of God and if I look around, it becomes easier to see others as my sisters and brothers in Christ.

    I have been thinking about the Chamber of General Synod as a toxic space, as polluted ground. Instead, I ought to take off my shoes before I enter.

  • ‘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.

  • Don’t Preach. Just Don’t.

    by Chrissie Chevasutt, ‘Outreach and Development Worker with Transgender, Intersex and Non-binary People’, for St Columba’s Oxford. They have lived and worked in the city for 33 years, across a wide spectrum of churches, and in varied roles, thus having a unique perspective on church history and practices over that period

    I’ve been the Outreach and Development Worker with Transgender, Intersex and non-binary people at St Columba’s United Reformed Church in Oxford since 2022, and I wrote about my role here. When I started in this work, I described it as “a prophetic act, a ministry of social justice and an expression of God’s outrageous love for the marginalised and oppressed.” I have been making connections, publicising what I do, and hearing people’s stories. And I have been becoming aware, even more, of how much work there is that needs to be done, in Oxford and beyond. The Oxford Safe Churches project just underlines that.

    I attended St Aldate’s Church in Oxford for many years. It’s a parish church with a large student membership and describes itself on the front page of its web presence as somewhere you can “feel right at home”. Really?

    That doesn’t seem to apply if you are LGBTQIA+. One of the sermons given at the church which was preserved online makes that very clear: ‘The Truth Will Set You Free’, link to the audio here. Full transcript here. I’ve mentioned it before but here I want to say rather more about it. It was given by Simon Ponsonby; I don’t know exactly in what year, except that it is definitely pre-Covid. The sermon summarises nearly 20 years of campaigning against LGBTQIA+ people, their dignity, equality, rights and spiritual freedom, by him and by the previous Rector, Charlie Cleverly, for which there is much evidence, all readily available online. Letters, articles in the press and media, both local and national, all confirm the deep prejudice towards us of this church’s leadership.

    I’ve described on my blog how I am both angered and wounded deeply, by Simon Ponsonby’s abuse of power in this sermon, and I have for the last few years been ministering to many of those he has damaged, wounded and broken by his attitudes, beliefs and homophobic campaigning and preaching, which both produced and resulted from this sermon.

    It’s hard to know where to start with the academic, intellectual, scholarly, theological, and pastoral reasoning in the sermon. A key factor to me seems to be the tone; Ponsonby presents himself as the oracle or avatar of the divine message; ‘absolute truth’. There is no sense of humility or self-reflection on his part, either upon his own very limited understanding or his own deeply sinful nature; he has not pursued all the way that conservative evangelical notion of the human heart (even his own), being wicked and deceitful and bent towards pride.

    One last glaring dissonance which jars heavily upon many listeners who are either LGBTQIA+ or allies, to the extent it leaves one almost stunned in unbelief, is the chasm between Simon’s tone of voice and delivery, and the words he uses to describe us. I was dumbfounded on first hearing this sermon, and have had to go back and study it, several times over, to understand how such a gulf could exist in a person’s lack of self-awareness, and to try to find an explanation for it.

    Simon’s tone is calm, measured, and oozes compassion. This draws the listener and audience in because it soothes them, making them believe this is God’s heart of compassion, being reflected by the preacher and teacher. Part of this tone is his continual refrain in both introduction and conclusion, of ‘We love you.’ Easy to say, but the content of the sermon gives the opposite message.

    I know the preacher well, perhaps better than many. In every other sermon I have heard him preach I know this to be a genuine and authentic reflection of his heart but I am so shocked and sickened by this sermon and its content that I have had to question whether in this case the compassion is real, or feigned.

    While his voice oozes compassion, his words drip hatred, judgement, condemnation, exclusion, and rejection towards us as LGBTQIA+ people. Simon demonizes us and pathologizes us, pouring shame upon us; all in the name, and supposedly for the glory, of God.

    The sermon is divided into three parts, of roughly equal length, and they, to a large degree, depend upon each other for their integrity, or rather lack thereof. Each informs and builds the argument of the other. In each part – history, theology, and psychology – he indulges both flawed science, history, and experience to substantiate his argument, whilst his reasoning in each is deeply flawed, if not deliberately and intentionally skewed to favour his presupposed starting point. He offers snapshots of history, wrenched out of their true context, to prove the ‘gay lobby’ was a bullying, manipulative and destructive force against Christian morality and belief.

    He points the finger at the ‘liberalism and relativism’ of modern theology, informed by both science and human experience, labelling it ‘a pick and mix’ of whatever truths you choose to believe, but fails to see that he is indulging exactly this ‘pick and mix’ approach to truth in his own versions of history, theology, and psychology. He quotes from a particular selection of work from these disciplines, without giving his hearers any sense of how limited a selection this is. He claims that he “sets some facts straight” but there is no indication that these are not objective facts. It is a shameless hypocrisy of the worst possible kind, because he is using his failure to apply academic, intellectual, scholarly rigour and discipline to the arguments he presents as ‘absolute truth’, and he is doing so, in order to exalt his own authority as a theologian, preacher and teacher and stigmatise, demonise, pathologize a vulnerable and already oppressed group.

    His approach to other academic disciplines reminds me of what’s known in psychological analysis as the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is when someone who assumes themselves to be an expert or authority in one field, science, or discipline, believes they are therefore an authority in other sciences or disciplines.

    I have heard Simon preach many, many times, and he always rejects the liberal theology and theologians of the last thirty years, often men and women of far greater intellectual, academic, and scholarly rigour, research, and theological depth than his own. They are seen as irrelevant because he is preaching ‘absolute truth’ and they are preaching lies.

    But that repeated insistence that ‘We love you’, simply does not wash, it is meaningless, after we have been so cursed by his authority, power and words.

    Why does he do this? He, like so many of his tribal mates, genuinely believes that by converting gay and LGBTQIA+ people to being straight, he is saving us from hell.

    We clearly see here homophobia being embedded, maintained, and perpetuated in a parish church. It is homophobia which is using erroneous history and psychology to destroy young and vulnerable LGBTQIA+ lives. I have watched young LGBTQIA+ people, caught in cycles of shame, despair, self-hatred and self-harm, even suicidal ideation, after being subject to this type of ministry. I was one of them once. This sermon is spiritual abuse.

    Did Ponsonby ever stop to think that within his congregation, listeners to his sermon, there might by young church members who are LGBTQIA+?!

    If Jesus is our model of ministry, it is plain, simple, and so easy to see in the gospels, that his whole ministry was built around breaking shame from people’s lives, to restoring the oppressed and marginalised back into community, that they might flourish. The contrast I am seeing and hearing between Ponsonby’s ministry here, and that of Jesus, is so far apart, that I can only label this sermon as a manifest evil.

    It is God’s loving kindness that leads us to repentance. No threat of hell, or fear of hell can draw us into the loving heart and mind of God. No theology of judgement, condemnation, exclusion, and separation, as Simon so espouses in his sermon, can reveal God’s perfect love.

    It is grace, love and truth that leads us to repentance. I offer Simon that grace, love and truth and I urge him to make a full and public repentance and attempt some kind of apology and restitution to his victims. If he has moved on from his beliefs here, then he needs to publicly clarify what his new beliefs are. Yet his recent teaching in the St Aldate’s podcast series ‘Unscripted’ suggests he has not moved far at all.

    What scares me the most? It’s that the church applauds the preacher for this sermon…

     

     

     

     

     

  • Keeping Students Safe: the Oxford LGBT Students Safe Churches Project

    by Chrissie Chevasutt, ‘Outreach and Development Worker with Transgender, Intersex and Non-binary People’, for St Columba’s Oxford. They have lived and worked in the city for 33 years, across a wide spectrum of churches, and in varied roles, thus having a unique perspective on church history and practices over that period.

    As part of my work in the city of Oxford, working with the transgender, Intersex, and non-binary community, I work alongside and with many LGBTQIA+ students. The stories I hear from them are constant, consistent, and repeated many times over. They experience spiritual abuse and religious trauma in some of the city’s churches. They are traumatised, and often suffer many secondary conditions; deep emotional, mental, social, relational, and spiritual wounding, some of which can work itself out in psychosomatic physical illness, chronic anxiety, and struggles with mental health.

    These same churches – who would describe themselves as ‘conservative’ – then add to the students’ pain by teaching that all their struggles are because they are gay, bi, trans, or queer. These churches and leaders refuse to accept that the judgement, condemnation, exclusion, and separation, sometimes even damnation, that flows from their lips, hearts and pulpits might be the cause. The consequence of their theology, preaching and teaching is to inflict guilt and shame upon many vulnerable young lives. From this, withdrawal and isolation are a common experience for students who are driven away from church and God.

    Self-loathing, self-hatred, despair, and shame can cause self-destructive behaviours and compulsions, almost impossible to control or contain, from eating disorders and self-harm, to suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and sadly, suicides.

    All this poison flows from the systematic homophobic theology that emerged from post-WWII USA. It’s a theology undergirded by the threat of hell.

    This theology is grounded in the claim that those who enjoy same-sex relationships are indulging sexual immorality, drawing on a Christian fundamentalist and biblical literalism that leads from 1 Corinthians 6 v9, through Ephesians 4 v17-19, 5 v3-5, to the eternal damnation of Revelation 21 v7-8.

    I was recently approached by a student who felt forced to leave a church where this theology was being preached. Even after 18 months in the church, they had no idea this was the theology of that church. They are in a same-sex relationship, their partner already badly wounded by a conservative evangelical church. They were told this church they’d started to attend was ‘youth friendly, progressive and liberal, welcoming everybody’.

    Confirming this, another three students have told me separately how they had shared within their student fellowship group meetings that they are gay, and in same-sex relationships. None of this appeared to trouble the group, or the student pastors, some of whom are paid church staff. On the contrary, they felt loved and affirmed by everyone present.

    (Most of the older members of the Christian LGBTQIA+ community in Oxford, however, know this church to have a long history of campaigning against LGBTQIA+ people’s dignity, equality, rights and freedom.)

    This pastoral policy of conservative evangelical churches marketing themselves as ‘Everybody Welcome’, in order to draw in as many students as possible, may make them ‘successful churches’ but only by hiding their homophobic theology and pastoral policy, a practice which is deceitful, disingenuous and dangerous, and potentially fatal to vulnerable young lives. We know that the incidence of self-harm, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts are far higher amongst LGBTQIA+ youth, and this increases again amongst LGBTQIA+ youth from Christian fundamentalist homes, families, churches, and faith backgrounds.

    It appears certain city churches now hold a policy of strict silence over their staff, of not saying anything about gender or sexuality that might go public. They realise that, if they are known to hold homophobic theology and pastoral policies, they will lose many of the students who flock through their doors.

    In September 2022, Bishop Steven published his proposal, outlining his theology for equal marriage: Together in Love and Faith. I read it and was impressed and blessed, until I got to page 46. The LGBTQIA+ Christian community has absolutely no doubts about the courage and compassion of Bishop Steven, in becoming the first bishop to put forward a proposal for same-sex marriage. We feel both indebted to him and want to protect him from the storm he faces from those clergy in his diocese who disagree.

    Many of us, however, have grave doubts about his commitment to protecting us, especially in the matter of our Safeguarding within his churches. There are doubts over his own history and proximity to colossal Safeguarding failures that have had tragic out-workings.

    On page 46, Bishop Steven repeatedly expresses extreme reluctance to place responsibility for the spiritual abuse of LGBTQIA+ people upon individual clergy or churches. This is a red flag waving right here, threatening effective Safeguarding of LGBTQIA+ people in his own Diocese.

    After being approached by the student who had felt forced to leave the ‘welcoming’ church that had been their spiritual home for the previous year and a half, on account of the attack upon their same-sex relationship, I began to research further. I discovered an audio recording of a 45-minute Sunday sermon on homosexuality.

    It is without a doubt the worst homophobic teaching I have heard in 43 years of church life. It is an appalling distortion and manipulation of history, theology, and psychology, used by a priest, to deliberately stigmatise, pathologize and demonise LGBTQIA+ people.

    This sermon was applauded by the church.

    This is exactly why the students’ Oxford Safe Churches Project had to happen. We have a Bishop who supposedly stands for us, but won’t stand with us and protect us; so, who will?

    Students who are driven away from church have nowhere to go. They know they will not get a fair hearing from the church’s Safeguarding Officers, many of whom will hold similar beliefs to the church’s leadership, and they have zero confidence in many of the denominational or Oxford Diocesan Safeguarding structures and current practices. The evil of Pilavachi in Soul Survivor, and the Church of England’s total failure in safeguarding young people there, has destroyed what little faith they may have had in any safeguarding process with which they might have otherwise engaged. They know they will most likely suffer further abuse and retraumatising in any internal safeguarding process they enter.

    In March 2022, I met with one of the university transgender reps, who represents both their college and the LGBT Student Society. They happened to be profoundly Christian, in faith and character. One of the subjects we wrestled with was the knowledge we both shared, of students getting badly damaged, and spiritually abused, in some of the city’s conservative churches. We both felt we could not call out the damaging churches, and that whoever dared to do so might be subjected to character assassination for attempting such a daunting task.

    When we met again at the beginning of this year, our hearts and minds had totally changed. Both of us had seen, in just that one year, too many students being wounded by homophobic, transphobic theology and pastoral practises. The suffering and pain in those lives, and even in our own, led us to conclude we could longer tolerate this happening on ‘our watch’.

    Together we wrote up a proposal for the Oxford University Student LGBT Society (of which, as a mature student in the city, I’m a member), to begin a project to signpost safe churches and flag up churches we knew where students were being broken.

    This was unanimously passed at the end of Easter term, and plans developed for the project.

    A team of students has laboured right through Summer term and the summer holidays, sending out questionnaires to 30 of the main city churches, collecting testimonies, researching churches’ history in archives online. From this they are collating all their information into a simple traffic-light-coded review, to assess which churches might be safe, and which are potentially damaging for queer students.

    Their passion, desire, and objective is to stop freshers getting sucked into churches who promise welcome, but inflict spiritual abuse. Most of them have been through this themselves, or seen friends whose student life in Oxford has suffered irreparable damage. They know this is a war over students’ lives and souls. They have paid a heavy price doing this research, which for most of them is triggering, traumatising and affects their mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. They are watched over by professionals in the university, clergy from various denominations and non-ordained pastoral workers like myself.

    The project has gone live in time for Freshers Fayre. Its bottom line is to save young lives; literally. They know their time in Oxford is short, but they are determined to leave a lasting legacy, that might see more churches becoming fully affirming at best, and at the least, force conservative churches to become honest, transparent and open about their core theology, pastoral policies and practises for their LGBTQIA+ potential members.

    They believe the Oxford Safe Churches Project has the power to achieve both those aims.

     

     

  • Trust is a Hard Thing to Come by Right Now…

    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

    Of all the things that the revelations and revolutions of recent years have impacted upon, trust must surely be front and centre. Whether it is in the societal recognition that trust needs to be earned rather than merely assumed, or the endless, devastating examples of where trust has been so badly abused and misused, no part of society can claim exemption from the new reality in which we live. Those in positions of responsibility are no longer simply blessed with the trust of others, however uncomfortable that might feel, and protestations fall on the deaf ears of a society that knows it has had its fingers burnt.

    The trouble with trust is that once it’s broken, it’s so much harder to rebuild. The Church – not only but certainly including the Church of England – is a place where that trust has, in so many places, been broken, and is also a place where so many in authority seem to be smarting from that very fact, blinking in the sunlight and disoriented by the new world which it reveals. We hear it as a constant theme in debates about safeguarding – extraordinarily in some places about, even, the need for it, and across the board in a failure of recognition by those who hold authority and responsibility that those to whom they are making promises find those promises hard to believe. ‘We are acting in your best interests’ quite simply no longer cuts it, and nor do the rather unedifying tantrums of authority figures that appear all too frequently when great assertions and promises are not believed or taken at face value. Not only has the trust gone, but the people who need to listen to why this is the case, rather than complain that it is the case, don’t seem – in the main – to be willing to do so.

    In the Church of England, our church culture does not help things. The church, by nature, is hierarchical – and in many ways, that isn’t a problem in and of itself. Yet in recent years whilst we’ve seen increasing examples of the toe-curlingly embarrassing ‘call me Dave’ attitude creeping in to episcopal communications and engagements (the church, once again, being around fifteen years behind the Conservative Party), the reality is that this is little more than window dressing. For all the guff, we retain a hierarchy in the church that is fundamentally unnecessary – a hierarchy that shows very little introspection about what is rightly hierarchical, and what is not. The endless lack of transparency and accountability in many parts of our leadership is not of necessity part of the life of the church – it is a failure of our common life. Of course, it is easier to wear jeans and a tee-shirt and talk about your favourite football team, but the reality is that, for all this window dressing, the unhelpful power imbalances that sit at the heart of the way episcopacy is lived out in the twenty-first century Church of England remain. And it doesn’t need to be so.

    To address those imbalances would take more than a few hundred words, and I would argue should be front and centre of the discussions of the College and House of Bishops as they move forward. The issues are not insurmountable, yet whilst there remains a centralising, fortress mentality, nothing will change. The reality, of course, is that if it were to change, then everybody would benefit – bishops included. It remains a stain on our church fabric that nobody seems willing to lift the lid for fear of what they might uncover.

    The College of Bishops meeting this week, and on their agenda must be – although, of course, we mere humble workers in the vineyard are not told – the proposed outcome of the Living in Love and Faith project. There are, of course, too many groups from which to choose that have faced a total breakdown in trust with church authorities, but one of them must surely be LGBTQI people. It has become increasingly clear to me, as someone who has been involved in recent discussions on the Pastoral Guidance, that we are not suffering from a trust deficit – we are suffering from a total lack of trust in church authorities from LGBTQI people. And, frankly, for good reason.

    For years, LGBTQI Christians have been led up the garden path, misled, openly lied to, faced broken promise after broken promise, and lobbed on the bonfire of unity, treated as means and not ends in the dirty world of church politics. In conversations with bishops, I have heard disbelief and hurt expressed when I suggest to them that their words are worth very little to so many LGBTQI people who have – frankly – seen it all before, and are yet to be convinced any change is coming. There seems to be a collective outrage when LGBTQI people express hurt and caution, which is far too frequently cast by those in power as cynicism and prickliness (with more than a dash of unconscious homophobia dwelling in those kind of characterisations).

    Now it’s certainly true that many of those currently in purple are different individuals to those who have previously let us down so badly, but there is a real need for some corporate responsibility to be taken and some introspection undertaken as to why this mistrust remains. The faces may be different, but many of the structures remain the same, and throughout this process LGBTQI people have been treated – unconsciously or consciously – as political footballs, our lives and loves used as bargaining chips in the endless debates around unity (which are really about money, buildings, pensions, and power). A failure to see – or recognise – this doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Burying one’s head in the sand, or saying ‘just trust me’, doesn’t work. In short, where’s the evidence we should do so?

    Many promises have been made to LGBTQI people – publicly (‘radical new Christian inclusion’) and privately – about what will be decided (about – not with – us) in the coming weeks. These promises have been made in what purports to be a genuine, well-intentioned, honest way, alongside an apology for the way we have been treated in the past. All of that means very little unless something is actually delivered, and actual change occurs. We are all pretty much done with hearing nice things said.

    The ball is now in the court of the College and the House of Bishops. LGBTQI people, despite our reservations and our painful memories, have been cajoled into placing our trust in this process. Some LGBTQI people cannot bring themselves to trust that anything will change – and who can blame them? Others, me included, do believe that, at last, change is on the horizon, and the bishops will finally have the courage of their convictions – for that is what it is – to do what they know to be right, and to open the windows of the stuffy misery that is institutional homophobia and transphobia. This is their chance to prove that we’re not just naïve.

    Yet let’s make no bones about this – if these meetings end up with no change being made, no freedom for LGBTQI Christians to follow their consciences, no light being let in, no acknowledgement of the queer holiness that seeps out of LGBTQI Christians and enlivens the body of Christ, then we will enter into a time of crisis out of which it will be nigh on impossible to ever regain the trust of LGBTQI people – within and without the church. This really is ‘it’, and the stakes could not be higher.

    Now is the time for our leaders to deliver. Let us pray for our bishops to have the courage to begin the rebuilding of trust – and in so doing, to start rebuilding the church for whom they are called to care.

  • This is No Time for a Soft Drink!

    by the Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham and Trustee of the Ozanne Foundation, and Rt Revd Dr Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham

    Since the Gloucester Report of 1979 there have been many special C of E consultations on homosexuality. Each had its finer points and limitations.

    The latest, Living in Love and Faith, included some moving testimony for anyone who had not actually ever met a gay person before, if indeed there is anyone like that out there. It also proposed some excellent Pastoral Principles for difficult conversations in Church, that would work as well for an argument with the choir as a discussion of sexuality. Good fruitful conversations “acknowledge prejudice, speak into silence, address ignorance, cast out fear, admit hypocrisy and pay attention to power.”

    Has the LLF process actually done these things? And if it has, why has its rollout been so scrappy and contentious? Perhaps the honest result was too hot to handle, and the only way the bishops thought they could keep control of their emerging situation was to come up with a fudge. The problem with fudge is that it’s ambrosia to fudge lovers, but an improbable solution to a war between diabetics and sugar junkies. The bishops’ cunning plan might just annoy everyone equally on all sides, and land them up where they started.

    Perhaps there’s something about the whole way marriage equality has been framed in the Church of England that has trapped it in a destructive infinite monkey cage? Wittgenstein said the reason his early work stalled and led nowhere was that “a picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” The fantasies and fictions the Church of England has indulged in for years about marriage may have driven a self-destructive narrative to vanishing point. Jesus’ paradigm for marriage has been treated as though it were a definition for all time, and it can’t bear the weight.

    Step outside the ecclesiastical goldfish bowl and an entirely different perspective dawns. The wreck and the pottery diver who looked as though he was perpetually sitting on the toilet are only pretend — decoration to make the fish think they were living au naturel not in a tank.

    Last Thursday at the Oxford Union, three bishops spoke in support of the motion that “this house supports same sex marriage in the Church.” Despite the President’s best endeavours, no Catholic or Anglican bishop could be found to speak against. Of course not. Who would want to go down as “the homophobic bishop”? The Union needed to supply two opposition speakers who made it plain they did support same sex marriage, but wanted the motion voted down on the technicality that people should not expect to get married in Church any more than get a driving licence there. Two speakers sincerely believed gay marriage was wrong. One told us that God was discriminatory and sent those who follow the Bishop of London to hell. The other took us back to Nazi Germany, like Basil Fawlty when a guest complained about a prawn cocktail. The motion was carried by 181 votes to 41. It would seem that gay marriage is unthinkable for people who believe there is something wrong with being gay, but for those who see it as a natural aspect of being human it was obvious.

    This being the case, the only choice for a solution now, even a provisional one, would be to facilitate mutual understanding and tolerance, along the lines of the Archbishop’s observation at Lambeth last year that there are churches who could not survive if they didn’t conduct same sex weddings, whilst others could not survive if they did.

    But this is where the Pastoral Principle of paying attention to power kicks in. There is an extraordinary imbalance in the way power is being used here. Some gay people want to marry on conscience grounds, whilst others object, also from conscience. Much as those supporting equal marriage would like it to be allowed in church, they realise this would be intolerable to some who oppose it. Of course nobody would ever be forced to conduct a same sex wedding. What couple would want that anyway? That is an acceptable compromise. St Paul commends such an approach in Romans 14. However, this understanding is not reciprocated. Not only do opponents find it intolerable to conduct gay weddings in Church, but they insist on blocking anyone else from doing that. Thus they hijack the integrity of those with whom they disagree, often deploying threats of schism and bankruptcy which feel like blackmail.

    So what about synod this week?

    Whatever happens the bishops, leading from behind the sofa, have engineered a situation where it matters very little what the synod actually thinks. Perhaps everybody can agree, after more than 44 years of discussion about homosexuality, that the least satisfactory thing to do now would be to kick the can further down the road yet again. There’s a sense that the bishops now know the right thing to do, but feel they can only manage what is politically expedient. Some might call that a failure of leadership, what the RAF used to call “lack of moral fibre”.

    The spectre of disestablishment hovers over the whole debate. Hensley Henson is said to have observed to a former Archbishop of Canterbury after the 1928 Prayer Book debacle, “I imagine your Grace has found that a lifetime habit of steering around difficulties rather than facing them has scarce prepared you for such a time as this.”

    Back to the future?

  • Time to Step Up and Take the Heat: Allyship or Cowardice?

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

    Over the last few days the official Twitter account for the Lambeth conference has sprung into action again with various quotes from bishops – and other well-meaning contributors – about how excellent the whole experience was, all starting with “I’m giving thanks for the Lambeth Conference…” But it’s fair to say that the Lambeth Conference was not without controversy.

    One of those delights came well before the ill-fated attempts to include Lambeth I.10 and its homophobia into proceedings: it was the denial of invitations to spouses of bishops who happened to be of the same sex. While all active bishops were invited, with their spouses, this hospitality wasn’t extended to same-sex spouses.

    The former Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, spelled it out just in case we hadn’t got the drift: ‘it would be inappropriate for same-sex spouses to be invited to the conference’. And that was that.

    Despite pressure to relent (and, dare I say, repent), the Archbishop of Canterbury and his acolytes remained firm – no same-sex spouses allowed. Of course, this created a huge headache for the University of Kent, and it is somewhat inconceivable that that body would want to host another conference in the future that took such a rabidly and visibly homophobic position in who it invites, let alone in what it discusses. All, as ever, in the name of unity; and all, ultimately, damaging and somewhat pointless. In the end, a number of same-sex spouses were invited and housed – free of charge – by the university, there was a pride march and the presence of the same-sex spouses was celebrated by those present who didn’t find the need to throw gay people under the bus for the sake of spurious unity claims.

    The official homophobia, however, does not come without cost. The husband of the Bishop of Toronto put it acutely, and painfully:

    “I’d been out for 30 years. This was the first time I had been subject to such discrimination since then, and it felt very personal. I felt like a teenager having to navigate my sexuality all over again.”

    Hardly the life in all its fullness that the church claims to offer, however hospitable individual bishops and their spouses, and the university, might have been.

    And yet this sorry (and entirely avoidable) episode highlighted something which, as we move towards February and whatever is ‘offered’ by the bishops, becomes ever more important – the idea of good allyship. The sad reality is that, for all the warm words, the church is lagging behind on this in a very big way.

    Allyship is not that difficult to understand, or even to support, at least in principle. Put simply, it requires those who are not victims of oppression to stand shoulder to shoulder, in solidarity, with those who are. It requires them to recognise their own power and privilege, and use it to build up, rather than cast down. It requires them to listen, rather than find the need to talk all the time. It requires them to amplify the voices of the voiceless.

    And yet it comes at a cost, and time and again we have seen that those who profess the warm words are infrequently willing to take the fall. It requires allies to take just a hint of the heat that the oppressed might feel, and yet we know – from bitter experience – that allyship becomes a performative dance rather than a concrete reality. The time for this charade to end is now.

    It’s not only in the structural oppression of LGBTQI people that this matters – it matters too for the continued oppression of people of colour, of women, of the disabled, and of anyone who faces ongoing hostility, however benignly disguised, of the institutional church. Yet a very brief glimpse over the recent history of LGBTQI oppression shows a huge number of examples of where allyship is ‘this far, but no further’ – the point of ‘no further’ so often aligning with the point where it might demand a real cost from alleged allies.

    To return to the Lambeth Conference, it is a scandal that straight people who call themselves allies were willing to participate in the openly exclusionary spouses programme, whether as speakers or as participants themselves. There are surely exceptions to this – those who were public about their discomfort but felt better able to challenge the oppression within rather than without, or those who went having openly consulted with their LGBTQI counterparts. But in reality, how often did this happen?

    We see it, too, in the way that ‘supportive’ straight people far too often drop back at the last moment, before it might cost them the honorary canonry in a cathedral, or a place at the top table, or the ‘respect and thanks’ of the diocesan bishop. We see it when straight ‘allies’ at a diocesan conference are willing to miss sexuality off the list of things of which the church should repent, because it’s ‘too difficult’. Too difficult for who, exactly?

    And we see it in the writing of bishops who – whilst unusually willing to actually have an opinion on this – nonetheless ‘commit to abiding by whatever decision is made’ on LGBTQI people by their colleagues. So far, but not too far. LGBTQI people are important, but not that important.

    Little of this is genuine allyship – it is a willingness to be brave just up to the point where you might have to face the consequences, and at that point to throw LGBTQI people back in the lions’ den. However it is dressed up – as a need to be a ‘focus of unity’ [sic], as respect for due process, as wanting to ‘work more from the inside’, or as the need for ‘more time’ – all of these have another name: cowardice. And this is a moral cowardice built squarely on the backs of LGBTQI people – a cowardice with consequences.

    Now that’s not to say there aren’t serious and genuine allies in the church, who are willing to go to the wall for their oppressed friends. But it is a call to those who profess to support us to look into their own hearts and ask whether they are really willing to take the fall for us? Are they willing to educate themselves? Are they willing to take our place when the disciplinary is launched or when licenses are threatened? Are we really worth it?

    Just imagine if bishops were committed to being true allies. Imagine if the Archbishop of Canterbury was. Imagine how prophetic it would be if actions actually aligned with words.

    Allies are the way that battles are won, that systematic oppression is dismantled and that life changes for those at the receiving end of oppressive structures. Allies are those who come alongside and who recognise that the imago Dei in each and every person demands a response, and not just nice rhetoric. Allies are those who might encourage the LGBTQI clergy who have ‘managed OK’ and who don’t want to ‘rock the boat’ to raise their heads above the parapet and be counted too.

    Rhetoric and words mean very little, if we’re not willing to see them through. The test is coming for those who profess to be true friends of LGBTQI people. Will you rise to the challenge? We – and surely God too – are watching.