I have been reading Ghost Ship in which Azariah France-Williams addresses institutional racism in the Church of England. Azariah’s book has further opened my understanding of how the system, the institution and its magisterium, control the mindset and parameters within which movements for equality and justice, for BAME people, women, the disabled, and LGBTIQ+ people are inhibited. Azariah’s book has had an inspiring effect on my understanding of what Changing Attitude England has to do now in relation to the Living in Love and Faith process. I have had an awakening in retirement.
At the centre of the book is an intermission, a conversation Azariah had in 2010 with Rose Hudson-Wilkin, then Vicar of Hackney and now bishop of Dover. I came to know many bishops between 1995 and 2015 when I was Director of Changing Attitude, in addition to the bishops I already knew both before and after training to be ordained. In the later years I noticed that something happened to the priests I knew who subsequently became bishops. They were still friendly to me, their gay priest friend, but as members of the magisterium, they became anything but friendly, adopting far too easily and quickly the group think (or ‘collegiality’ as they like to put it) of the House of Bishops. This was not true of many of the bishops I knew from earlier in my life.
I wonder how today’s bishops process their experience of and feelings about their LGBTIQ+ personal friends, clergy, and brother and sister bishops. All of them bar one seem to operate within the ‘collegiality of bishops’ mode. All bar one fail to speak publicly about their commitment to radical inclusion and full equality for their LGBTIQ+ clergy.
LGBTIQ+ people testing their vocation, seeking ordination, pursuing a theological training, and those recently ordained, do so in a Church still requiring clergy to adhere to Issues in Human Sexuality, which allows sexual intimacy for lay people but not for clergy. If partnered, civil partnered and married clergy conform to the vows made to their bishop, they will be abstaining from sexual intimacy. If they are not abstaining (and I hope they are not) then we are all colluding in the dishonest stance of the bishops and clergy.
Supposing a bishop was to be interviewed today for a book addressing homophobia, transphobia and LGBTIQ+ concerns. How would they respond to questions?
Gay Bishop: “I think that what you see is heterosexuality presented as normal, and if that is presented as normal then it means that I am not normal, you are not normal. It means that LGBTIQ+ people are not normal. We’re outside the frame of normality. Homophobia and the abuse of LGBTIQ+ people physically damaged us, psychologically and emotionally scarred us. Homophobia may not have physically damaged heterosexual people but it psychologically and emotionally scarred them and their children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren’s generation. It has passed down almost as if it’s in the DNA.”
Pro-gay Bishop: “One of the things I’m repeatedly told is that I’m too forthright. I am told this by heterosexual people and interestingly I’m told this by LGBTIQ+ people. LGBTIQ+ people who think I am rocking the boat so I shouldn’t be so forthright. If toning it down means be quiet, I will not be quiet. I will not be silent. I will speak as I see it. I think that I have a responsibility to speak as I see it and I’m not afraid.”
What I have learnt
Wouldn’t we all like to hear of groups of radical bishops abandoning collegial responsibility and committing themselves to a radical transformation of the place of LGBTIQ+ people in the Church of England? They have all, bar one, sold out. Azariah notes that when Stephen Cottrell, now Archbishop of York, was bishop of Chelmsford, he said in a speech to General Synod, “The leadership and ministry of the C of E no longer looks like or adequately reflects the diversity or creativity of the community it serves … It directly affects our credibility as a national church and our mission.” Later in the speech Stephen said that the church “may not be guilty of racism. But it is time to be clear and honest with ourselves, there is still racism in our Church. It is high time we woke up out of our sleep and realise we are guilty of complacency and neglect.”
Archbishop Stephen is one of only three bishops who replied to both of the letters Changing Attitude sent to thirty-six bishops. In both letters he wrote that he is “determined to speak positively about the (LLF) process, cherishing and celebrating the place of LGBTI people in the church.” In the second letter he concluded by saying that he hopes that when the LLF process returns to the General Synod, he trusts that the six Pastoral Principles “will help us hold a debate where all can contribute without fear.”
I know that Archbishop Stephen is one of the bishops most understanding of LGBTIQ+ people and most actively committed to transforming our place in the church, but this transformation is not going to happen as a result of a debate in the General Synod, even under the guidance of the six Pastoral Principles, even if people can contribute “without fear.” Isn’t having to write that in itself a shocking indictment of the homophobic culture of the Church?
Fear is present among LGBTIQ+ people in the church. It is present every day in the apologetic way people write about themselves and their desire for change. I have come to the conclusion that we have to create a radically different critique of Christian attitudes to LGBTIQ+ people and develop a narrative that is “ours” and not “theirs”. We LGBTIQ+ people don’t fully understand what the church does to us, how we allow the church to other and oppress us. We tolerate discrimination and abuse. We don’t yet understand that we, because of who we are in our gender and sexuality, have the authority and power to change the dynamic. This is about us, this is our issue. For decades we have been subject to the authority and control of the House of Bishops and the various groups and reports and processes they have initiated, including LLF. The bishops are still in control of the outcome of LLF and it is time for us to set out to challenge their assumption that they have the authority to determine our place in the church.
Take back control
We have become habituated to a life in the Christian Church that denies us recognition and respect. The magisterium says God, or the Bible, or Christian orthodoxy and tradition, or the Church, do not respect the self-identification of LGBTIQ+ people. We, LGBTIQ+ people and allies, forced to justify different interpretations of the Bible, now have to tell the magisterium that not everything in the Bible is to be respected, especially not claims concerning what the Bible teaches about LGBTIQ+ people.
The history of the Church of England in responding from the 1950s onwards to a developing gay (initially), and subsequently lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer understanding of the identity of significant minorities in the global human population is a history of the institution dealing with us as a group to be investigated, analysed, and required to explain and justify who we are. LLF continues this dynamic.
For seven decades the bishops have taken to themselves the right to decide who we are and what we are allowed to be and how we are allowed to function in the Church, lay or ordained. And still we play along with this, suppressing what we know about ourselves, playing the Church game according to Church rules. I have been edging my way towards saying “we refuse to conform to your rules any longer.” That is what re-launching Changing Attitude England is doing – refusing to play by House of Bishops’ rules.
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