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Tag: race

  • 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.]

  • A Heavy Yoke: Selina Stone on Power

    I wanted to review Selina Stone’s new book, published today, on Via Media News, because this is such an important and accessible reflection on themes which are currently being discussed widely in our churches, particularly as we continue to reel from awareness of sexual and other forms of abuse: the themes of power, leadership, trust and success. While her approach is a theological one, Stone rightly points out that theology is expressed in practice and can be shaped and distorted by our personality and prejudices. And that was where I found her book was especially valuable, because she challenges each of us to face our own power in order to understand just where it is held, and how it can be abused.

    Stone writes from the Pentecostal tradition, but everything she discusses applies equally to other denominations. Leaders’ use of the church for their own ends is only made possible by the cultures in which they function and the Christian theology they can call on; certain theologies encourage particular power dynamics which increase the chances of spiritual abuse. In a comment which reminded me of the objections some individuals make when required to do safeguarding training, she notes that “Christians … imagine that there is no need to be trained to understand sexual harassment, toxic behaviour and racist abuse, since these are ‘worldly concerns’; instead, apparently, we simply need more Bible studies” (5). And, for those of us who are at least able to recognise abuse outside the Church, she argues that we need to do far more to understand what happens inside. Using Matthew 5’s “You’ve heard it said… but I say”, she invites churches “to critically engage with the traditions they have inherited” (11).

    I particularly appreciated Stone’s dissection of the current tropes of “disagreeing well” (31) and “servant leadership” (26), the second of these identified as virtue signalling, since it can disguise the immense power such a leader may wield over others, feigning service while keeping all the power. Stone uses the example of Jean Vanier’s abuse of nuns and lay women, which also leads her to explore the danger of concepts of spiritual fatherhood and of marriage imagery when talking about spiritual union.

    The chapter on the potential of preaching in grooming a congregation to accept abusive behaviour takes as its text a sermon by Mike Pilavachi, where he used the story of Jacob and Laban to argue that God sometimes sends toxic and abusive people into our lives because… He loves us. As a Black lay woman, Stone also knows all about churches “where white married couples occupy the highest rungs of power”, noting that the concerns of the “little people” were only properly heard after Matt and Beth Redman spoke out about Pilavachi.

    Another case study is that of SPAC Nation, whose wealthy leaders told young people to give them more money, including from selling their own blood, because this would become the seed of the church and would enable them to become rich too. To encourage this behaviour, SPAC nation drew on scripture about sacrifice and obedience. Here, Stone shows how we are still too quick to assume that dominance and numerical growth are evidence of success; and focusing on God as “Almighty” can stop us seeing how God can also be breath, or possibility.

    A further section focuses on John Smyth’s abuse, which was supported by specific readings of the Cross and theologies of atonement focused on God’s wrath. Here, Stone draws on the resources of Black female and womanist theologians, and on their interpretations of the “power in the blood”. After showing the different ways in which oppressed groups have drawn on this theology, she concludes that “God does not delight in the shedding of our blood, any more than he did in the torture and murder of Jesus” (106).

    She also explores the meaning of unity, uncovering the ways in which the word can be used to push the less powerful to remain silent so that the dominant group is able to continue as before, with any expression of disagreement being silenced as a threat to unity. But the price for unity should not be paid by those “who are already forced to carry burdens too heavy for them” (86). She asks what it really means to love each other, as opposed to merely tolerating those with whom we disagree.

    This is a book which fully grasps the complexity of power. When writing on the power of vulnerability as an element of good leadership, Stone shows how controlling leaders can pretend to be vulnerable as a technique to make others reveal their own stories, and also shows how the term “vulnerable adult” can be used to suggest that the survivor is somehow the cause of the abuse. She is very aware of body theology, particularly when analysing Vanier’s views on touch, which dangerously ignored boundaries and power. She contrasts Vanier with Jesus, who knows his power and what it is for, and always waits for consent.

    What is most challenging of all is when Stone turns from the shocking cases which have become familiar to us in the last decade or so and makes us look at ourselves, at “the wolf who might be within us” (13). For this, the most important chapter is the final one, on discernment. Here I remembered what I found most powerful in recent safeguarding leadership training: the Social GGRRAAAACCEESSSS. Taken from a social science context, these emphasise that we are all disadvantaged in some contexts and privileged in others, based on who we are. The long list used in C of E safeguarding training covers: gender, geography, race, religion, ability, accent, age, appearance, class, culture, education, employment, ethnicity, sexuality, sexual orientation, spirituality, and “something else”.

    Stone looks at discernment in the sense of a community and an individual working out how best to use their gifts in ministry, but also considers its less obvious aspects, such as knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, and recognising the spiritual influences behind people’s actions. She argues that we can’t ever spot every abuser and we don’t even know what we ourselves may be capable of doing. This is not made easier when we are not taught how to discern. Even within a church community we need to recognise the sense of something being “off”, perhaps from taking seriously our own bodily reactions. A church is which is a healthy space will have a sense of community, of making space for others, of leadership which does not control but develops other people. It will understand the importance of accountability and cultivate a culture of reflection.

    This is a clear, confident theological and personal appeal for a better understanding of power; I hope it will find its way on to the recommended reading sections of all diocesan safeguarding training materials.

     

     

     

  • 30 Years, 40 Years: And Not Equal Yet

    by Chris Polhill, one of the first women to be ordained in the Church of England, and author of Through the Gateways of a Garden (2024)

    This September I celebrate 40 years in ministry, first as a Deaconess, then ordained deacon three years later. Seven years after that, I was one of the first women to be ordained priest in the Church of England. So, those quick at maths will see that I have been a priest for 30 years. These anniversaries have left me very reflective about the Church of England.

    To the outsider we can look as though all is well for women in this church. Women are priests, bishops, deans, and one of the three ‘top’ posts, Bishop of London, is a woman. So the CofE looks like an equal opportunities employer, but it is not. Indeed it is exempt from parliament’s Equal Opportunities Act, and this conceals the minefield that has left me reflective, despondent, angry and not quite seeing the way ahead.

    In November 1992 I joined many others standing outside Church House in London while the Church of England General Synod debated and voted on whether the C of E should ordain women as priests. The legislation had already been debated in diocesan synods and passed with a substantial majority, so it was now coming for the main vote at General Synod, needing a two-thirds majority in each of the three Houses: Laity, Clergy and Bishops. Outside the building with us were many journalists from all over the world. I was interviewed for an Australian radio station, and many others contributed to newspaper reports. Women and men from theological colleges stood with a banner saying ‘Waiting’. We sang; we hoped that this time it would be different from the vote in the 1970s; we prayed. And the vote was in favour of women as priests in all 3 Houses by more than the required two-thirds majorities. We sang outside with joy, while inside it was received in silence to respect those who were against the result. “Vicars with knickers” was the Sun’s headline next day.

    We were very firmly told by our bishops that we were not to celebrate as the pain of those who had lost the vote was so great.

    1993 was a difficult year and it was hard to believe that the Church of England had made a positive decision to ordain women. The talk among clergymen seemed to be around how many of their congregation would leave if their woman deacon was ordained priest. Colleagues, my own among them, changed from being positive about women priests to seeing us as a problem. Their feelings, now that women as priests was a real possibility, did not match their thinking when it had only been an idea. “Gut-lag”, we called it. The old boys’ network in both the church and parliament got together and the House of Bishops was focussed on keeping as many clergy from leaving as they could. According to the press, about 1000 had threatened to leave, some taking their congregations with them. The Church agreed to compensate those who left with large sums of money. The Roman Catholic church agreed that married men from the CofE could serve with them as priests, though all who took this path had to go through some further training.

    There are two extremes in the CofE among those who were then, and still remain, against women as priests. There are those who are waiting for the pope to decide about women before they can accept it; this despite the fact that the CofE was formed as a departure from Rome and from having to accept the pope’s decisions. At the other extreme are those who see the Bible’s instructions about male headship as paramount. The pressure from parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee was for legal safeguards for those opposed to women, and in consequence the CofE is the only province in the Anglican communion that has legal provision for those who will not accept women as priests. The other provinces managed the issue pastorally. The House of Bishops agreed with those who said that they could not accept a bishop who ordained women as priests, and that they were ‘tainted’ by having done so. This led to bishops representing each end of the argument being consecrated, and some diocesan bishops choosing only to ordain deacons so that they could remain a focus for unity in their diocese. I was told this would be a short-term arrangement, but it is a fixture still. This changed the nature of being a bishop, as bishops were never before selected by theological flavour, as it were. I keep having fanciful ideas of poems and bishops and flavours…

    I am seriously angry that the bishops of the time agreed with the idea that ordaining women tainted the bishop who did so. It is very suspect theology. Look at it this way, if a bishop said to a Black man, ‘I’m sorry, but ordaining you will affect me so that I can’t ordain white men as I usually do, they just wouldn’t accept me, and no, I wouldn’t receive communion from you because, for me, only white men can be priests.’ He would rightly be called out for the appalling racism he had expressed, yet put woman instead of Black man, and men instead of white men, and that is exactly what the CofE is practising. Men who think this are still being ordained. No-one seems to acknowledge the misogynistic sexism that the house of bishops agreed to and continues to agree to in the Church of England.

    The Ecclesiastical committee enabled further delays by talking of expediency. Yes, Synod had voted for women as priests but was it an expedient time?!!! However, come 1994, after many letters to MPs, women were ordained and we did celebrate. I was ordained priest in St. Albans Abbey on 23rd April 1994, and St. Albans diocese had a magnificent celebration 30 years on. I loved it. Smiling women led the service in the Abbey, and many people were there to celebrate as it had been well advertised. I caught up with some friends from long ago. It was very different in the diocese where I have served for the last 25 years though, Lichfield. We were prayed for at the clergy conference.

    In the intervening years I, along with many other women, got on with the job and kept my head down. This 30 year anniversary, however, has caused me to revisit the decisions that were made and wonder why they are still there. I would like to see the House of Bishops wake up to what was agreed then; to see the damage it has done to the office of bishop, and to stop making bishops for specific groups. I was shocked to discover we still accept men for ordination who do not think women can be priests, when there are other denominations they could more justly serve. I would love to see the CofE for once lead the society we allegedly serve, in exposing and wiping out misogyny and sexism from every area of life, so women and men can work together as partners in serving the gospel.