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Tag: theological training

  • Theological Colleges: Being a Community in the Midst of Disagreement

    by Revd Mark Vasey-Saunders, Centre Head of St Hild Sheffield and author of Defusing the Sexuality Debate (SCM, London, 2023) 

    One of the places where the current Church of England debate over sexuality is being felt quite acutely is in theological colleges. Ordinands may come into training from churches with a variety of different views, and their wider support networks may include people who are heavily involved in the debate. This means that ordinands may be faced with questions from friends and family like ‘where does College stand on this?’ or ‘what teaching are you being given on sexuality?’ where the expectation is that, if the College is not aligned with the ‘correct’ position, the ordinand should distance themselves from them in some way. They will have sponsoring bishops whose views are likely only now becoming clear (and some of whom may have acted politically within the debate in ways that are coming under intense scrutiny.) This can leave ordinands feeling very vulnerable if their bishop (who has the authority to agree or disagree to their ordination) holds a different view than them. For some ordinands towards the end of their training they may already have a curacy set up, but this will have been agreed before the vicar and PCC would have discussed how they want to respond, and views on sexuality may not have come up. Some churches may have since announced they will be using the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF). Others may have announced they will be diverting their share to the Ephesian Fund.

    On top of all this external pressure, ordinands will have their own views. Some will have very clear and decided views already, but these may have been formed before they began their theological training. Part of any educational process is to unlearn some of your earlier assumptions, and this places such ordinands in a difficult position (whether they are progressive or conservative) – do they resist the theological training they are given if they feel it might undermine some of their previous certainties, or embrace it, accepting the risk that this might change them in a way their wider support networks might find difficult? Some will never have given questions of sexuality serious thought before, and are now having to explore these questions in a highly politicised environment. All of this tends to put pressure on theological college communities, which can feel like pressure cookers at the best of times, with students wrestling with the stresses of constantly being assessed whilst going through a process of ministerial formation that often exposes areas of vulnerability and doubt.

    I work within St Hild College, which is a non-residential community training people full-time or part-time for ministry mainly in Lincoln and the three Yorkshire dioceses of Sheffield, Leeds and York. I’ve asked two of our students (names have been changed), who would take different positions on sexuality, to give their reflections on being part of the college community at this time:

    Andrew writes:

    I am entering my third and final year of theological training prior to ordination and have spent the last two years at college. As such, with the initial synod vote on the Prayers of Love and Faith coming in the February of my first year of study, this debate has, in one sense, dominated my time at college. I hold to a conservative theological position regarding gender and sexuality, and arrived at college having journeyed alongside friends who have been exploring these questions in their own lives, and having already done significant theological reflection myself in this area.

    I have found college to be a relative silo in the midst of these wider discussions in the Church of England. I have had the opportunity to re-explore more progressive approaches to gender and sexuality on their own terms through study and through conversations with other ordinands and students. I am thankful for the insight this has given me as I now feel more confident that I am able to explain progressive arguments in their own terms, rather than as a caricature. I have learnt how to better communicate my theological convictions in a way that makes it easier for me to be heard and understood by those who do not share my convictions. Similarly, I think many of my fellow students who hold to a more progressive theology are better able to articulate the conservative argument.

    I think this has been possible due to the relatively unique nature of St Hild as a “scattered” college community. By having lectures on only one day of the week, and not living in a relatively closed community, there isn’t the build-up of pressure around hot button issues that I have heard can occur in residential colleges. This potentially also allows for more direct conversations; we aren’t going to bump into each other tomorrow morning on the way to chapel or beginner’s Greek after a particularly sharp conversation the evening before. Further to this, we are all in our own parishes. Our conversations are divorced from many immediate pastoral situations. We are, in many ways, able to extract ourselves from our pastoral contexts for a day, discuss theoretically with others, and then return to our parishes.

    The most fruitful result of these conversations has been the mutual realisation and agreement that gender and sexuality is merely the presenting fruit of a more fundamental disagreement. I have been encouraged by several conversations that I have had with fellow ordinands who are as liberal as I am conservative, where we have mutually agreed that to truly respect each other we need to acknowledge the deep differences between our understandings of who Jesus is, what he calls sin, and what redemption and salvation look like in the lives of Christians. Not just this, but also that there are significant, potentially mutually exclusive, differences in our basic philosophical and theological presuppositions regarding the nature of God and revelation. This has been accompanied by a mutual dissatisfaction with what we perceive to be the position of the House of Bishops: that these are minor disagreements  and really we can ‘all just get along.’ This feels disrespectful of both of our theological positions, underestimates the differences in how we believe we need to respond pastorally to those most deeply affected by questions of gender and sexuality in our respective communities, and by downplaying all of this is increasing the division we perceive in the church, not reducing it.

    This perception has only increased for me since the July 2024 Synod. The conversations mentioned above initially took place in April 2022. Even then, at the very start of the discussions about PLF, both these self-described liberal ordinands and I knew that legally protected forms of differentiation, as defined by those who would need it, such as transferred episcopal oversight, would now be a necessity. (Though we did not have the precise language at the time.) It is frustrating that, to an outside observer, similar conversations and acknowledgments would not appear to have been forthcoming from the House of Bishops or at General Synod. This is essential not only for the wider Church of England, but also for colleges such as St Hild. The conversations across the breadth of tradition and theology in St Hild that make it a unique place is highly dependent on there being a breadth of tradition and theology amongst ordinands. Unless the House of Bishops take seriously the need for suitable, legal, provision these conversations will quietly cease, not because ordinands don’t want to have them, but because there will not be ordinands of different theological convictions around to have them.

     

    Ben writes:

    There are few things more dangerous on the motorway than a theological debate taking place at 70mph. This is the temptation, however, at 7am on a Monday morning when driving to St Hild Sheffield. With three students in the car, two of whom are Church of England Ordinands, the subject of Prayers of Love and Faith has come up multiple times. Whether it’s the interpretation of scripture, or the drama of a synod debate, there is often something discuss, and each of us in the car holds a different opinion. (Pray for us ordinands when we think this is where we should get our excitement.) There have been no motorway accidents thankfully, but I have learnt that sometimes what it is most important to remember is that we are sharing the same car. Safety for all means keeping your eyes on the road, not scoring a point in the current debate, however heated it’s got. This principle has also applied to discussions of PLF outside of the car too.

     For myself, I have grown up in evangelical churches but also come to a broader view on the issue of LGBTQ+ inclusion than I had 15 or some years ago. For me the question over same sex blessings is not a “first order” or “salvation” issue, and I am happy to let the issue sit with the conscience of each individual. I am also convinced that churches need to be a genuinely safe space for any LGBTQ+ individual who walks through the door.

    While studying, I have found discussing these issues with other students from different perspectives to be hugely beneficial. Conversations have always been respectful and constructive, with nobody’s views being dismissed out of hand. At times, the college has provided guided conversations with updates on PLF too, where tutors with differing opinions have set a tone of understanding and provided context to the debate. As ordinands, questions as big as these do create worry about our future ministry and where we might fit into the Church of England. Many of us will not have publicly declared a position on these debates before, or been asked to make decisions which will change how our church members and communities will see us. I found sharing these worries with other ordinands to be reassuring, especially as we are all still finding our feet. Also, having tutors who can help calm some of these worries and address the wilder speculations on where the church might be heading is essential. This is just as beneficial for those still working out their opinion on PLF, and for those who feel stuck in the middle of the debate, simply worried that a church they love is about to tear itself apart.

     For me, if holding Christian unity over this issue means anything, it means that we must see those with a different view as still loved by God, and accept that God may still be speaking to others, even if they seem to be heading in a different direction to ourselves. A college with a diverse range of students with differing views has been a vital way to model this in a safe environment. My biggest fear in all of this are the calls for structural differentiation of ordinand training, which may create a college environment where ordinands never meet someone from the other side of the debate. After all, once you arrive in a parish, no church is going to hold a uniform view on this either, and the world certainly won’t. If we can’t speak to each other civilly about issues of sexuality, what hope does the church have of speaking to the world?  Similarly, if formation and training is to be a place where we can be made more like Christ, there has to be the possibility that we might get something wrong at times and there needs to be grace for trainees to change our minds.

     

    The St Hild experience may not be the same for all Theological Colleges. The fact that ordinands have been prominent signatories to various statements within the ongoing LLF debates demonstrates that in some places ordinands have felt their very ability to continue training for ministry to be threatened by developments in the wider church. As Andrew notes above, there is something peculiar about the nature of a non-residential college that both creates enough security and sense of shared community to allow vulnerability and genuine conversation and allows enough space for tensions to dissipate. It is part of the nature of theological training to allow and encourage debate and reflection however, and to this extent I suspect that these sorts of experiences are true of many of the Church of England’s TEIs.

    It’s important not to romanticise the kind of discussions both Andrew and Ben describe above as valuable parts of their training. These are costly conversations, and there have been times where that has been felt keenly by the community as a whole. Students with passionate convictions on either side may at times have to carefully weigh up the costs of speaking openly to both themselves and the wider community, and find themselves self-editing or remaining silent as a consequence. Some students are deeply vulnerable in ways others aren’t, and in ways that may not be immediately clear to those around them – not least because when the topic of discussion is sexuality, some students will find themselves the ones being discussed. Staff must carefully weigh up how to frame teaching in these areas in order to allow students of any and all convictions to engage with the strongest exponents of positions they may find offensive or personally threatening, whilst maintaining a safe learning environment. All of this in the knowledge that if they get the balance wrong, and students feel they are being attacked, or a particular view is being forced on them, then the reputational damage to the College can be immense.

    Creating a space where people can learn means creating a space where people feel vulnerable (even if that vulnerability is simply the admission of your own ignorance). But creating a space where people can be vulnerable carries the risk that people can be hurt. To borrow Ben’s metaphor of debating while driving at 70 mph, we want everyone in the car to hold an awareness of the inherent riskiness in what they are doing. The really dangerous thing is for people to not feel that they are in danger. To not have the conversations and pretend none of this stuff matters very much. Or to have the conversations without much awareness that some outcomes will dramatically affect all the occupants of the car you’re driving in.

    There is an extent to which having difficult conversations with a high awareness of risk is what the wider church needs to learn to do. LLF was originally conceived as an invitation to engage in learning together. But in many places LLF courses weren’t run. The difficult conversations didn’t happen. But when we avoid the difficult conversations we don’t avoid risk. We’re just not aware of it. As I reflect on Andrew and Ben’s experience of difficult conversations and what they’ve learnt from them I find myself feeling hopeful for the future of the church. Neither of them have massively changed their mind on these questions through their time at college. But they’ve learned and grown through the conversations they’ve had, and they’ve become a lot more used to talking to people they disagree with and still recognising them as brothers and sisters in Christ. Ultimately, having had difficult conversations once, they are likely to see the value of doing it more in the future and helping to build a church where having difficult conversations is normal.

    We need to get used to church not being a comfortable place. Because, for some people, it never has been.

     

  • Sharing in Privilege: Black and Collared

    by Revd Dr Augustine Tanner-Ihm, Team Curate at St James & Emmanuel, Didsbury, Manchester and winner of the 2020 Theology Slam

    During theological college, no one told me how differently I would be treated after I was ordained. As a Black man, I’m used to people seeing me as a threat to them. In stores personnel follow me around, walking next to cars people quickly lock their doors or if I’m near a white women she’ll clutch her handbag closer, thinking I’m going to rob her. I have become accustomed to being served the very last at bars and restaurants (I sure miss the app service!). Also, I have become accustomed to people thinking I’m not very clever and assuming I must be from a broken family and community background. Because I look this way, this has been my lived experience and probably the lived experience of many more people that share my amount of melanin.

    But ordination.

    At theological college, wearing clerical clothing was always associated with your church tradition. Even during the theological formation process, clothing seemed mostly pointless. We talked about whether it’s contextual for the setting and about its role for women in showing they are leaders in the parish; but that was all.  At no point duing our practical and theological formation did anyone explain how we would be treated as Black or Brown ministers. Maybe because there weren’t any black staff until my last few months of ordination training. And maybe because for my entire time at theological college there was no mention of how Black and Asian ministers experience different things. I don’t blame the leaders and tutors for not introducing us to these multicultural dynamics because their white worldview and their mostly white ministry were just not affected. Even though I trained at three theological colleges from a diverse range of Church Traditions, this never came up. But as a student, it affects me.

    On 4 July 2021, I was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England. I could finally wear the collar to show that I’m a member of the clergy. Within the first week of walking around the parish and the community of Manchester, I noticed something. When I waited in the bus queue, people let me on first. Instead of merely practising social distancing, people smiled at me and then looked down to the floor. Older white people gave me respect and instead of me calling Black aunts and uncles aunts and uncles, most of them treated me like an elder because of this ontological change. I never knew this ontological change would give me the parts of the experiences that my white siblings experience their entire life. My parish is mostly white professional people and the staff, besides one amazing Iranian woman, is white. Therefore, there just wasn’t anyone to tell me anything different about what would happen.

    My grandfather used to tell me all the time about how he was called a ‘boy’ by white folks his entire life. I remember telling him it’s different now. People don’t say that anymore. He told me it wasn’t different; even if people don’t say boy, their intent is still boy and not man. All my Baptist grandfather wanted is to be treated like a man: a man who worked hard and took care of 11 children, who owned his own business and house. But he never received the respect he deserved which manifested into distrust, disdain and hate for white people. Because of the life experiences I had, and my theological framework, I didn’t have the same valid feelings my grandfather had for white people. Ordination has changed me, or I should say it has changed the way people see me. I feel a little more comfortable going to the shop or going into a room with all middle-class white men because the collar has given me authority, gained me respect, because it signifies something. I’m not just another negro (as some would say) but I’m ‘Father’. I’m not a boy but a man. Sadly, it took a thin white collar to go from boy to man.

    I often wonder how many others experience this sort of change within their ministry. Who can help me understand; who can help with this theological and practical reflection? In my diocese, I have been blessed to have three UKME senior leaders. All are amazing priests and disciples of Jesus.  One leader directed me to reflect on the Biblical teachings of Peter. Therefore, I read and read and read 1st Peter and began to see that, as I continue in ministry, I cannot allow the collar to become my overall identity, but should allow wholeness and holiness to be what I strive for. Some may argue there is no separation but only semantics. But Archbishop Stephen always reminds us of our first call: to be disciples of the one who has died, who rose and who is coming back again. And as Saint Peter tells us, we are to be holy for he is holy. And that’s our call.