ViaMedia

Tag: Southwark

  • The Luxury of Marriage

    by Helen King, lay member of General Synod for Oxford Diocese and Editor of Via Media 

    That Southwark Diocese invitation to couples with ‘healthy’ marriages to come away to a luxurious hotel for a weekend to strengthen their marriage further… It’s been doing the rounds on social media and attracting a range of comments, from outrage at ‘healthy’ to surprise at the gap between ‘luxurious’ and the values of the gospel, to suggestions that the ad makes it sound like a swingers’ weekend, to questions about the weird typo where the hotel is described as ‘near’ without saying ‘where’. Since I wrote this blog post this morning, Anna and the Comms team from the Diocese have generously responded to the various complaints (including the typo) saying on X/Twitter “We recognise that some of the language used was clumsy and unhelpful.” All credit there.

    Full disclosure: I write this as someone who took the Marriage Course in 2004 and who has subsequently co-led it. I think it’s a very good course (OK, there are some cringeworthy moments, but they’re the exceptions) and my husband and I both found it very useful in different ways. When he saw the Southwark invitation and its typo, he did wonder whether the omission of the venue was to stop those of us who’ve done the Marriage Course showing up in the hotel bar and staging a really high quality argument in the style of Session 2 ‘Resolving Conflict’.

    Now, I’m not in one, but I entirely understand that clergy marriages are particularly challenged. I don’t know if that’s worse, or better, or just different in the situation where both partners are clergy, but maybe the modified four sections of the Marriage Course are adjusted according to that further potential dynamic. It is interesting, though, that the Southwark version is led by two couples where the man is the clergyperson. I wonder whether the national version also allows couples where both are clergy, or where the woman is the clergyperson, to be leaders?

    When we ran the marriage course, it was explicit in the course materials that this was for ‘couples’; whether or not they were married was not an issue. That is still stated here: “The Marriage Course is for couples who are married or have been living together for more than two years”. However, other websites put it differently. HTB’s site has “designed to help married couples invest in their relationship and build a strong marriage” (online course and in person). Has this been tightened up since we took the course?

    Time for an even fuller disclosure: we weren’t married when we took the Marriage Course. The Pre-Marriage Course wasn’t available locally so we asked the local independent church (offshoot of a Baptist church) if it would be OK to join and they couldn’t see why not. After all, my husband has been married before, just not to me… and it was my idea to do it, since marrying for the first time in one’s late 40s is quite a step to take. And Session 6 is on ‘Good Sex’. Well, there we are. If you aren’t doing the practicals, you can at least get up to speed on the theory elements.

    And the issue of sex brings me to the most disturbing point. When we ran the Marriage Course here, there weren’t any lesbian or gay couples in our church who wanted to take part. Had there been, we would have welcomed them. But the helpers, who served and cleared up the meal, by chance included lesbian and gay people, and they could watch the videos on the big screen. They didn’t raise any objections, and they said they found it all very helpful,

    But, as usual in the current state of the Church of England with its claims for a “radical new Christian inclusion” which don’t play out on the ground, there’s a significant group of people who are excluded from the Southwark Diocese weekend: clergy in same-sex civil partnerships or marriages. Clergy same-sex marriage is of course currently deemed Not OK, and those clergy who have entered such marriages are told they won’t be licensed to minister once they leave their current job. This has already deprived the church of people in good and faithful (and ‘healthy’?) relationships, who are good priests. But those in CPs are, of course, at least officially, supposed to be fine, because there’s no sex in CPs – at least, not according to the Church of England. So maybe it wouldn’t be a smart move to offer people in CPs the Marriage Course ‘Good Sex’ session. But that’s only one of the seven sessions, and the Southwark Diocese weekend is just doing four out of seven.

    So, would a clergyperson in a (perfectly valid) same-sex civil partnership be allowed to attend the Southwark ‘luxurious’ weekend where their ‘healthy’ relationship could be strengthened further?

    Apparently not. This suggests that the word ‘healthy’ is doing two different jobs: it’s making the point that, if your marriage is in difficulty, you should be looking for help from someone who specialises in this situation rather than rocking up to the luxurious hotel, but it also seems to be carrying the suggestion that only straight relationships can be ‘healthy’.

    When the exclusion of same-sex couples was stated on  X/Twitter, my fellow Synod member Benjamin John commented “But clergy can’t enter same sex marriages”? I asked him whether he would support those who enter same sex CPs having “events like this to help strengthen the relationships of such clergy?”

    He replied, “No”.

    Well, there you have it. Lesbian and gay and same-sex attracted clergy, the Church of England fully and explicitly recognises your civil partnerships, entered into according to the law of the land but also in faith and hope and commitment, but you can’t attend a weekend to help keep your relationship strong – and at least one member of Synod wouldn’t support anything that was of benefit to your relationship.

     

     

     

  • Dear Bishop Christopher… An Open Response to my Diocesan Bishop after his Address to Southwark Diocesan Synod

    Dear Bishop Christopher… An Open Response to my Diocesan Bishop after his Address to Southwark Diocesan Synod

    by Simon Butler, former member of Archbishops’ Council and member of General Synod 2005-2022

    Dear Bishop Christopher,

    First of all, I want to express my gratitude for your remarks at Diocesan Synod. I read them at a distance in New Zealand where I am currently travelling and was grateful for the clarity with which you spoke. It is important now that all bishops join the rest of the Church of England in saying exactly what they think about human sexuality. Otherwise Living in Love and Faith would be a dead letter.

    I want to thank you for the way in which you have quietly and often publicly affirmed the ministry of LGBT+ clergy and lay people in the diocese. You have, in many ways, fulfilled the call we gave you in the Diocesan Statement of Needs at your appointment in relation to sexuality. I declare an interest: the drafting was my work! Thank you for your faithfulness here.

    Being Bishop of Southwark has always been about herding cats – our clergy are outstanding in their passion and commitment, conservative and progressive alike – and you have gone as far as you possibly can – and as far as your conscience will allow – to appoint and encourage LGBT+ clergy in their ministries. You have been a pastoral bishop to us all, even if that has been frustrating for some colleagues who have wanted you to go further, and faster. After all, this is Southwark!

    Your address to the Diocesan Synod was, as ever, the words of a pastoral bishop in the best tradition of Anglican Catholicism. I was not therefore surprised by a phrase I’ve heard you use before: “I do not expect to see the marriage canons changed in my lifetime.” It is something you often say, and it has served you well in Southwark, because it avoids you having to say what you think about same sex marriage. It does have the sense of being a politician’s answer, however, but one that I have often thought was both clever and perceptive. Only recently have I come to disagree with you, and from a surprising direction.

    I have been privileged to take part in a series of – until recently – entirely confidential series of discussions called the St Hugh’s Conversations. They began between Conservative Evangelicals and some progressive bishops, but have in the past three years broadened to include some conservative bishops, and those, like me, who want to see change to the current teaching on sexuality changed (it is worth noting that the majority of members are senior members of General Synod, who have an eye to getting things through our decision-making bodies). Despite our profound differences as members, we have agreed we can now identify ourselves individually and share themes. During the Conversations, we have listened to one another with great respect and affection, particularly to the concerns of conservative colleagues who remain deeply concerned about any change to the current position, including the one you advocated in your address.

    The uniting spirit of the St Hugh’s Conversations is a desire to bring to a conclusion the battle over sexuality that has beset the Church since 1987. None of us – conservative, progressive, LGBT+ or those who prefer to identify themselves as same-sex attracted – want to see our fragile unity further fractured, or the harm we do to one another as Christians continue its toxic tone. We believe – at least tentatively – that now must be the time to find a settlement which will suit us all. I have come to agree with this position.

    To that end, I am very sorry to say that I think your proposals outlined at Diocesan Synod fall short of such a settlement. I think that to preserve the maximum amount of unity by virtue of an incremental settlement through a liturgy of blessing same sex relationships (including marriage, I assume?) is a mistaken, if understandable, episcopal desire to kick the can down the road on same sex marriage. You will expect a progressive like me to say that, but what has been a stunning development in the St Hugh’s discussions is that conservatives can see a church which accommodates such a development. There is a growing unanimity that – noting how painful it would be for conservatives in the Church to agree to such a development – a Church which allows same sex marriages to be solemnised, while at the same time making provision for those who cannot agree to such a development (which in their mind goes some way beyond the sort of conscience clause you propose), is the best way ahead. We need to make fair and just provision for both sides here if we are to reach the possibility of a settlement. Only in the St Hugh’s Conversations have such possibilities been aired and a fragile consensus sensed.

    It is easy to see what provision for progressives would look like – an inclusive version of the marriage service. But what do conservatives want? To be honest, my sense is that there is not agreement here yet among them – like women bishops’ opponents, they are an alliance between impossibilists (who baulk at any change and would prefer an even more conservative settlement than the current position of the House of Bishops), those who want a very firm and clear boundary at every level of church life and governance (as laid out by the Church of England Evangelical Council, and something akin to a new Province), and those who are somewhere in between. It is not clear to me what their settled position is, and I sense it is not clear to them either! But it is much more than a conscience clause for opting out – rightly, in my view, they want some assurance of a future honoured and secure place in the Church.

    Questions of ‘provision’ will stir strong emotions among bishops (and many women clergy too) who have to deal on a daily basis with the settlement we have made on women in the episcopate. It is not hard to see why such steps will fill episcopal hearts with dread! But, as you and I have shared with women colleagues the tortuous pain of the women in the episcopate synodical journey, I regrettably have concluded that likelihood of inadequate provision, which I firmly believe that what you propose in your Synod address offers conservatives and progressives, will lead to another round of politics, campaigning and rancour. Such an incremental approach may well appeal to some in the College of Bishops, but in the wider Church I think the College risks not reading the signs of the times adequately.

    I once agreed with your ‘politician’s answer’ and thought it clever and necessary. But I am afraid now a politician’s answer won’t do. Living in Love and Faith has taught us to be clearer, rather than avoiding the elephant in the room. I want to know whether you are able to offer your support to an extension of the doctrine of marriage to same-sex couples or not. And I think you owe it to the process to give it.

    By all means, if your answer is ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ then please make that a little more clear. But if you do, then I ask you to consider that your solution risks the very unity you wish to preserve, and condemns the Church to another round of politics, electoral games and harm. It offers nothing to conservatives and not a great deal to progressives. I think it just offers a way for bishops to avoid biting the necessary bullet rather than working to the maximum unity we can achieve where everyone – in a deeply broken Church – comes away feeling, if not happy, then secure and free to minister according to their conscience.

    My prayers are assured for your next meeting with episcopal colleagues in the College.

    Your brother in Christ,

    Simon