Ian Paul published a long blog in response to Richard Coles’ ‘honest reflections’ in a Times article published on April 17th.in the context of Richard’s retirement from parish ministry. Ian felt as though he ought to respond in the second person, writing to Richard rather than writing about him. He felt this because they are fellow clergy in the Church; they have taken the same vows, and to that extent share the same call to ministry, and so surely ought to be able to talk to each other, and not (as many seem to these days, he noted) talk about each other.
I am writing here about Ian’s blog. I am also a fellow clergy person, have taken the same vows, and shared the same ministry. Unlike Richard, I have not had with Ian “some unusually respectful exchanges online about the C of E and the vexed question of sexuality—unusual in the sense that people like us, sitting at different ends of the debate, don’t often have that kind of exchange.” I have had frequent conversations with other people in various contexts and in particular with Andrew Goddard and others in my time as Director of Changing Attitude and subsequently in retirement.
There is no reason why I shouldn’t talk directly with Ian but, as he did, I’m posting a much less personal communication, a blog. Like Ian, I want to go public in order to comment critically on what Ian wrote. If Ian would like a personal conversation with me, he is welcome to get in touch.
I want to write in response to Ian because he raises questions that affect me deeply and intimately as a gay man, a priest who is gay and partnered and in love and retired from active ministry.
The Coronavirus Pandemic and human intimacy
Writing about the closure of church buildings during the pandemic, Ian says that “as bodily creatures, we find there is no substitute for physical gathering.” As a gay man with a body, I find there is no substitute for physical gathering with those who have been my partners and lovers. Physical presence and intimacy is essential for the health and well-being of humans and for the expression of love and care. We were restricted in the pandemic by the lockdown that for a period made only virtual presence possible. Lesbian and gay people’s lives are depleted by the idea that Biblical texts can be used to impose sexual abstinence for life on same-sex couples.
Deference - memories of clergy status
Ian wonders why clergy still have a privileged status in the community and are recognised and, to some extent at least, still held in regard and treated with some kind of deference today. Ian can claim this possibility as a member of a dominant group – white, male, heterosexual, articulate, licensed by a bishop. I share some of these characteristics but not all – I am gay and not licensed, for example. I do not have a “privileged status in the community” akin to Ian, nor to Richard, for that matter.
Deference? Why would any Christian priest following Jesus think that deference is a thing to be valued in the first place, and its loss one of the reasons for church-going decline?
Ian suspects the remaining recognition he and Richard enjoy “is due to ‘a deep cultural memory’ at a time when fewer and fewer people have any connection to church.” But, he says, cultural memories fade and eventually drop off the edge of a cliff, as the next generation don’t own the memory that their parents had. Ian thinks the memory comes from a time when clergy did exercise actual authority, because “they stood for something that people did in fact believe was true. They made claims about transcendental, spiritual reality which shaped people’s lives. When you believe things, with confidence, it changes everything.” I am seventeen years older than Ian, almost a generation earlier, long enough ago to remember seeing a bishop wearing gaiters. Despite that, although I had respect for the clergy I knew, by the time Ian was born, I did not believe that clergy stood for something that was literally true. I knew I was gay and I knew that what the clergy in theory taught about homosexuality was both untrue and not required of gay clergy.
Viable churches today
Ian writes that the churches that are viable — growing in numbers and income — tend to be conservative, punchy, fundamentalist in matters of scripture, rigorous in matters of doctrine.
I have never thought that being ‘viable’ as a Christian community was an essential teaching of Jesus, let alone a fundamental gospel value against which ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in the church in any era can be judged. Nor have I ever thought that churches that reflect and embody a Christian culture and spirituality similar to mine are preferred because they reflect my values – as Ian clearly does of his Christian culture.
Ian itemises his valued priorities: congregational growth over decades (he means numerical growth – there are other, gospel ways in which growth is measured). He thinks numerical growth is an obvious prime value and derides the “large sections of the C of E [that] see the growth and multiplication of congregations as unnecessary or impossible…” I am a member of this large section. I don’t see growth as unnecessary or impossible. I see it as natural when a congregation lives with wisdom and insight about Jesus, his teaching and way of living with others in unconditional love.
The theology product
Ian maintains the primary common denominator denoting successful, growing - and failing, shrinking congregations - is theology. “Those trimming faith to fit in with culture have tended to shrink, and those offering a “full-fat” faith, vividly supernatural, have tended to grow.” The Church of England Richard loves, he says, is of ‘liberal sympathies’ and ‘of broad inclusion’. This Church fails because it has a strong tendency to ‘trim faith to fit in with culture’. In Ian’s logic, British culture was very different 30 years ago from what it is now, so if the Church fitted with culture then, why does it still fit with (the same) culture now? Ian seems unable to recognise that both Christian culture and secular culture have evolved and changed dramatically in thirty years. Evolution and change is a constant in creation, human life and culture. I’m not sure Ian’s logic is easy to follow. Does he think theology doesn’t evolve and that numerical growth is the only measure by which Christian success can be evaluated? Ian prefers today’s ‘contemporary’ theology, a rehash of elements of reformation theologies that, combined with new evangelical technologies and styles of presentation, achieve ‘success’ among a particular demographic.
Ian says the question of which theology ‘we prefer’ raises a stark question. Which matters most: my own ‘preferences’; or the call of God? What astonishes me, reading this, is that Ian thinks it is easy for any human being to distinguish between our own ‘preferences’ and the ‘call of God’. The thought of hubris comes to mind.
We are living through an era of evolution when people are subject to acute anxiety, insecurity and uncertainty, a period of rapid change that creates neuroses and addictions, varying from mild to acute. Today’s ‘successful’ brand of Christianity and theology offers certainty and security. It may be a successful re-branding of Christianity but it doesn’t engage me spiritually.
Guilt and zealousy
Ian says he quite often has conversations with friends who were once zealous evangelicals, but for whom their faith has now ‘matured’ and ‘broadened out’ as a result of which they have embraced an inclusive engagement with other traditions. He asks them: ‘What brought you to faith?’ and they comment on the enthusiasm, the clarity, the conviction, and the challenge of the evangelical faith they encountered. Then he asks ‘And where you are now—how are people coming to faith there?’ There is often an embarrassed silence, says Ian. He thinks this is a characteristic of opting for the Church that we ‘prefer’ rather than working for a Church that has a future. The embarrassed silence proves Ian right and his friends wrong.
Quoting William Temple’s truism, Ian says the Church exists for the benefit of those who are not yet its members by proclaiming confidently the faith of Jesus, so that trust and new life in him might become a reality. We all, lay and ordained, share in the priesthood of Jesus by offering to God those who come to faith as a result of our ministry, testimony, and life of service. “But that can only happen if ordinary members of the Church of England learn how to express their faith and live it out—in what feels like an increasingly hostile culture—and are willing to invite their friends and colleagues to ‘come and see’ for themselves.” That is happening in some places, says Ian, but mostly not in places that have ‘liberal sympathies’ and would prefer to avoid ‘zealous devotion’.
As a member of the ‘liberal sympathies’ set I am guilty of avoiding ‘zealous devotion’. I avoid zealous devotion because it often comes in a package that includes offensive, hostile, prejudiced attitudes to gender and sexual identities that are variants from the heteronormative majority. Ian’s teaching is clear that those who are transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and intersex and believe these identities to be God-given are not living according to the will of God as clearly expressed in the Bible. There is no place for me in Ian’s Church. He holds an extremist view of Christianity and theology that is hostile to any form of radical new Christian inclusion.
Same-sex relationships
Ian says he is aware that, since he is not gay, he has a different kind of interest in the question of gay relationships from Richard, but this still “touches on some pretty central questions of faith, culture, and the future of the Church, so it is not unreasonable for me to comment.”
Ian says Richard claims that those who believe in the Church’s doctrine of marriage as a lifelong union between one man and one woman ‘are shaped by a conservative reading of Scripture’. Ian asserts “that Scripture consistently rejects all forms of same-sex sexual relationship is recognised by reputable scholars across the whole spectrum of ethical and theological views” and lists several authorities to support his claim. Ian ignores the fact that hundreds of other reputable scholars both dispute this and argue theologically for a radically different, authentic, Biblical, Christ-like, transformative, radically inclusive understanding.
It is an issue of biblical authority for Ian, and despite much “well-intentioned theological fancy footwork to the contrary, it is difficult to see the Bible as expressing anything else but disapproval of homosexual activity” - Ian is quoting Diarmaid McCulloch, a friend to be trusted. Few ‘serious’ commentators see the texts as anything but clear and consistent. Well thanks, Ian, for dismissing the integrity and wisdom of myself, my many friends, and the wisdom of tens of thousands of others, in denying us any authority as Christians over our identities, faith and experience of God, let alone the theologians who do not read the clobber passages or the overall teaching of the Bible as “expressing anything else but disapproval of homosexual activity.”
Ian names Bernadette Brooten in support of his argument. Her book Love Between Women is accepted as a definitive book on Paul and Romans 1.26. After exhaustive and detailed analysis she concludes that Paul was condemning same sex sexual activity between women. She then exhaustively analyses whether he was doing so for theological or cultural reasons. She definitively concludes that his condemnation was based on the culture of the time and not on theology. She finishes the book by saying that as it is based on culture and culture has changed so much in two thousand years that his prohibition cannot apply today.
Ian’s Biblical anthropology
Ian then attacks Richard directly and brutally. He denies Richard’s claim that ‘Same-sex relationships are just like everyone else’s, a fact so obvious it cannot be denied’. It is not true, he says categorically. Ian knows the truth. Patronizingly, he says there “is no doubting that gay relationships offer the kind of companionships, intimacy, solace and assurance that other relationships do, and you have expressed this with moving eloquence.” Ian is an essentialist:
“But same-sex relationships, in comparison with other-sex marriages, eliminate bodily difference (and therefore also do away with well-established psychological differences between men and women), eliminate the structural possibility of procreation, and fundamentally reorganise our anthropology. Identity is no longer established by bodily form as male and female, but by our pattern of inward desires and orientations. This inward turn has been a long time gestating, but has been brought to full flower by the strange combination of the rise of the internet (so that we can relate to people in completely disembodied ways) and the dominance of the affective in cultural discourse.”
Ian really thinks the rise of the internet has brought this reorganisation of anthropology to full flower “so that we can relate to people in completely disembodied ways.” This is both ignorant and stupid. Calling it a “reorganisation of anthropology” is claiming that Ian knows exactly what Biblical anthropology is, that Jesus and Paul (or maybe only Paul, in Ian’s case) knew this Biblical anthropology, and that it has stood unchanging and unchanged for two thousand years.
Ian’s arrogant, ignorant teaching must be challenged because he is highly influential in conservative evangelical circles as a member of General Synod with a fearless courage to express his opinions forcefully however obnoxious their effect on those who disagree with him. Indeed, this probably justifies Ian’s arrogant, categorical absolutism about his judgement of the sexual, intimate, loving, creative lives of those following the call of God in other ways.
Ian patronises Richard and trivialises his deep relationship with David, his deceased partner. Ian says that on the one hand, Richard (along with many others) ‘cannot believe that relationships that are open to grace and holiness and healing can possibly be contrary to the will of God.’ Yet, says Ian, “the consistent teaching of Scripture, including the teaching of Jesus (who, like Paul, shared Jewish rejection of ‘sexual immorality’) and its consistent reading across the Church down the centuries, says something different.”
“We have to decide whether we discover the truth about ourselves by looking to what God has said to us in scripture, in Jesus, and in theology, or by looking at our own convictions about ourselves. At one level, this is a false dichotomy—but when the answers are so diametrically opposed, as they are here, we have to decide which is our primary authority in telling us the truth.”
Ian has found in the Bible something that is not there – answers about human gender and sexuality, relationships and intimacy. They are not there. Ian posits a false dichotomy and invents a whole dogmatic theology from his use of the Bible as true according to his evaluation.
From Ian’s personal (not universally accepted) interpretation of Scripture, Ian tells Richard he is wrong to “claim that you are not really welcome in Church, or if so, only as a second-class citizen.” Ian knows Richard is wrong because he has other gay friends who say something different. These friends “do accept the call of Jesus, the teaching of Scripture, and the discipline of the Church, and so live single, celibate lives (though in the context of vital friendships). These gay friends of Ian disagree with Richard, and in fact often find those arguing for change in the Church’s teaching the most hostile to them. In other words, they are victims of people like Richard and myself and the millions of LGBTQIA+ people who share our convictions.
Ian has gay friends “who have discovered the possibility of living out of the reality of being human, made in the image of God, as male or female, and not primarily as straight, gay or something else, and have married and had children. Many of these are church leaders, theological educators, and key voices in this discussion.” Ian has a binary reality conviction. There are no shades of difference in what God has created. We are all straight and all either male or female and can all marry and have children, and those who accept this version of reality have key voices in the LLF discussion.
Many churches have much work to do, says Ian, so that gay people really are made to feel welcome but they will not conflate their welcome with affirmation of a particular way of living. They will not welcome people who refuse to accept that they are misguided heterosexuals. Richard and I are not “misguided heterosexuals.” I will not feel welcome in a church that patronises me, accepts me conditionally and may want to offer me a form of conversion therapy to change me into something more acceptable to them. Ian thinks that God calls and equips us to live differently in all sorts of ways, including changing our gender and sexuality to conform to God’s universal will.
Proof of God’s universal will
Ian believes he has proof that this is God’s universal will. Ian is “not aware of a single denomination or national church which, having changed its understanding of marriage, moving away from the consistent teaching of Scripture and affirming same-sex relationships as on a par with male-female marriage, has done anything other than accelerate in its decline.” There – Ian has demonstrated with a flourish that he is absolutely, incontrovertibly right.
Ian has one more axe to grind, an observation about power and influence. He says people like Richard exercise the considerable ‘soft’ power of someone with prominence in the media who has position, and influence, and a voice that many people listen to. “Such people”, Ian thinks, are totally unrepresentative of the “orthodox” majority who, despite having the ‘hard’, institutional power of someone in charge of an organisation, do not exert the same influence. This is unfair.
Get your statistics right
In his blog, Ian says he finds it striking that, whilst probably (probably!) only about 1.8% of the population are gay and those who have legally requested a change in their recognised gender number fewer than 6,000 to date and same-sex marriages are only around 1.5% of all marriage, yet these issues dominate our cultural narrative. Probabilities and numbers matter, Ian – truth and lies matter. The Office of National Statistics records that an estimated 2.7% of the UK population aged 16 years and over identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual in 2019, an increase from 2.2% in 2018. The proportion identifying as heterosexual or straight decreased from 94.6% in 2018 to 93.7% in 2019. 6.3% do not identify as heterosexual.
By contrast, says Ian 9% of our MPs in Parliament are LGBT+ and more than 12% of senior leadership in the BBC. Apparently this is still not enough for LGBTQIA+ people, says Ian. He bewails that “our entertainment seems to be dominated by this issue; think of the number of gay presenters in the mainstream media.” LGBTQIA+ people might feel frustrated and marginalised in the C of E, says Ian, but we are with the dominant voices in our culture. Let me add another statistic for Ian. At least 12% of the bishops in the Church of England are lesbian, gay or bisexual. We are everywhere, even in Ian’s Church of England. Is the Church as attractive to this unsatisfied, rampant desire identified by Ian of LGTQIA+ people to be present everywhere, even in the sacred places of British culture. Does Ian want the Church of England to be cleansed of our presence? What programme does Ian propose to achieve this end?
Freedom to be phobic and prejudiced
Ian wants school chaplains to be authorised to ‘explain’ to pupils the homophobic, transphobic, misogynist version of the Church of England teaching on marriage. Homophobic, transphobic, misogynist ordinands in training need the freedom to express their belief in the Church’s current ‘traditional, orthodox’ doctrine. Ian wonders what Richard would do were he to find himself in a parish where the theological tradition is one of those that ‘tend to be conservative, punchy, fundamentalist in matters of scripture, rigorous in matters of doctrine’, where the vicar is one of those evangelicals? Keep well away, is the answer, for the sake of your spiritual, emotional and physical health and well-being. In that context, wonders Ian, how would Richard use his voice, his power, and his influence? He might use it, as I do, among all those healthy, creative, loving people, untroubled by the neuroses of the Church. Indeed, I know that is exactly what Richard already does.
The natural law argument
Writing for ViaMedia News recently, Mark Chapman, Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of Oxford and Vice-Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon pointed out “to people who were wound up about the few passages of scripture apparently outlawing male sexual activity that, aside from a few general principles about love, the Bible was hardly ever used by Anglicans in discussions about sexual morality until the 1970s. Before then, sexual ethics was all about natural law. The arguments were very simple: the natural order of the universe was for there to be men and women. Their sexual organs fitted together and every other form of sexual activity was therefore disordered. Furthermore, the point of sex was to procreate, which required the institution of marriage, which for most of history was a set of financial transactions between families rather than anything particularly Christian. The problem with natural law, however, is that it changes as the understanding of nature changes. As soon as there is a recognition that some people are naturally attracted to people of the same sex, what the early sexologists called ‘inversion’, then the whole natural law defence comes tumbling down. And by the 1940s a substantial number of people accepted this – even in the church.”
Is Ian Paul stuck in the first half of the last century?
I recommend you to read Richard’s opinions for yourself in his book The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss
To pursue a vision of the Church where LGBTQIA+ people will be welcomed and loved unconditionally you might like to join Changing Attitude England on Facebook.