Adrian Thatcher’s latest book, Vile Bodies: The Body in Christian Faith and Practice (2023. SCM Press), has just been published. The title is a bit of a turn-off and the price is a challenge, but a pre-publication offer persuaded me to order a copy. It turns out to be a ‘must buy’ for me, powerful from the first page:
“Far too many human bodies have been imbued with a sense of disgust in Christian teaching, and this teaching continues to revile (‘re-vile’) them” “The apostle Paul referred to his own ‘vile body’ (Phil. 3.21 KJV).” “The all-powerful idea in the Christian tradition that the human body, and especially the female body, is vile – that is, disgusting and shameful – has had an incalculably negative influence on millions of people past and present.”
There are, writes Adrian, within specific cultural and social frameworks specific bodies that have been regarded as particularly vile: those of a particular sex, race, religion, tribe, sexual orientation, disability or age. “Powerful Christians have regarded as abhorrent not merely the bodies of women but the bodies of many other perceived ‘others’, for example Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, people of colour, heretics.”
He has come to see how “religious beliefs in all traditions are intrinsically connected with violence of many kinds and towards many people. It has been a most uncomfortable discovery which, in the main, Christians do not want to make for themselves, and congregations do not want to hear.”
That last comment is on page 3. I reached page 47 this morning, and began making notes for this blog, re-reading the opening pages, spurred into recognising that violence towards vile bodies my experience of recent events, made conscious in an even more intense and shocking way by the book. Adrian identifies, names and describes what I have also slowly come to perceive as the incredibly unhealthy, misguided, abusive, damaging culture of so-called mainstream contemporary ‘Christian’ teaching, theology and practice.
The LLF Lambeth Palace Library meeting
I understand better now some of the reasons as to why the meeting between members of the Progressive Coalition, the Archbishop of Canterbury and his staff at the Lambeth Palace Library was so tragic. There were bound to be tensions when members of the Coalition, meeting as a group for the first time, did so in the context of a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury for the first time. We might have guessed that the Archbishop was meeting with conservative evangelicals from CEEC in the morning. The Archbishop and his staff might have known that the morning meeting would not be easy and that scheduling two meetings on the same day might not be a good idea. What we only discovered towards the end of our meeting was just how hostile and angry the morning meeting had been, and we only discovered this because the Archbishop lost his cool. That was a perfectly understandable emotional response to what had been, in the morning, a manifestation of the worst excesses of people “imbued with a sense of disgust in Christian teaching” (to quote Adrian), teaching that reviles certain human bodies. All of us in the room in the afternoon were also people infected to some degree or another with “the all-powerful idea in the Christian tradition that the human body, and especially the female body, is vile – that is, disgusting and shameful.”
No wonder the Archbishop was angry and defensive and no wonder some of us at that moment became more critical and hostile. I was distressed and shocked to experience such an unhappy, polarised moment. It may also have been a catalytic moment, the moment when the realisation slowly dawned that this wasn’t just about ‘us’ or ‘them’, but about decades of failure in the Church of England and two millennia of failure, abuse and disgust in the Christian tradition. This is what six decades of reports and documents and currently, LLF, are dealing with; or, in the case of LLF, not dealing with.
November General Synod
The three day session of the General Synod meeting earlier in November was characterised by the same powerful ‘Christian’ teaching that bodies, women’s bodies and LGBTQIA+ bodies, are vile and disgusting. As I wrote in the previous blog, watching Synod from the public gallery at Church House was an unpleasant experience, made uncomfortable by the hostile attitude of those sitting around me. We live in a culture where ‘Christian’ prejudice, fundamentalism, abuse, and discrimination make it more and more difficult for people to maintain their commitment to and involvement with a Church that is still so hostile to me and people like me and to my LGBTQIA+ brothers and sisters. This continues to be extremely bad for our psychological, emotional, mental, physical and spiritual health.
How did this culture develop?
In my lifetime of experience, the Church of England has not always been dominated by Christian teaching imbued with a sense of disgust in the way that it is now, teaching that continues to revile. I was not impacted by such teaching at the age of 11 when I first fancied another boy. A series of three weekends I attended aged 21 led by Canon Derek Tasker, the DDO and Gwen Rymer, Southwark Diocesan Youth Officer was imbued with deep contemplative spirituality and a robust approach to ‘real’ life. Male friendships in church were unproblematic. I began my first relationship at Westcott House aged 32 and formed deep friendships with gay ordinands at Ridley Hall. My first incumbent was gay, the youth worker was lesbian, half the junior clergy in the deanery were gay (and half the incumbents). The reports, published and unpublished, written prior to the Higton Synod motion in 1987, were generally thoughtful and wisely written, notably 1989’s unpublished Osborne report. The Higton motion, before amendment, was a reaction to the growing secular campaign for LGBTQIA+ equality. From the 1990s onwards, the Mary Whitehouse sense of Christian disgust at vile bodies increased until today the whole church is infected with the virus, culminating in the Shared Conversations, Living in Love and Faith, the Lambeth Palace meetings and the November General Synod. Every CofE member living in the twenty-first century in Western European society is infected by the unhealthy virus, the sense that our human bodies are contaminated by the original sin of being sexual. To some degree, every member of the Church of England is infected through the liturgy, teaching, theology and culture of today’s Church.
Vile Bodies
For those with enough money and interest in vile bodies to buy Adrian’s book, there you will find an analysis and a resource that will help you understand the deeply damaging, unhealthy, prejudiced, notionally ‘Christian’ culture in which we live. The ‘vile bodies’ culture has become so normalised that it infects us all, every congregation to some degree, including those openly identifying as open, welcoming and inclusive. It will take time and a great deal of work to reprogramme ourselves, let along the wider church, to overcome the theology, integral to the Living in Love and Faith book and every element of the LLF process, shockingly manifest at the Lambeth meetings and in General Synod. In study, prayer, conversation and personal life, we have work to do. Contemporary Church of England attitudes, practice, theology and life are having a corrosive, negative effect on me, my spirituality and prayer life, my construct of Christian faith, my emotional confidence and security and my will to pursue transformation. We are all affected.