I have two books on the shelf in front of me that reflect my ambivalent neurotic, experience of God and the Church; one is “The God We Never Knew” by Marcus Borg and the other is “The God We Already Know” by Henry Morgan. I value and respect both authors and both books. Which one of them is correct? Because in today’s Church of England that is an articulate, confident, argumentative group that demands obedience to the God they already know. I’m not a member of that tribe. For me, both titles are, of course, correct. My whole life of faith has been one of living with innate confidence in my awareness of God as ultimately loving and compassionate. At the same time in y life of faith I have never escaped the possibility that this God might not be true, might not exist, and this is also a natural state of affairs. Without doubt, the bullies, abusers and control freaks take over the asylum.
The Past
We, members of the Church of England, we English Christians, do not believe in the same things about God because we are a “broad” Church that is inclusive and tolerant of difference because we came into being as a result of a not quite reformation movement and we our genes are composed, primarily, of immigrant stock. These origins can exacerbate our natural human propensity to anxiety to the point where, unsettled by their insecurity, some of us opt for a puritan strand of faith, demanding conformity to Biblical teaching and the unchanging, orthodox, traditional teaching of the Church (as specified by Jesus in his teaching and recorded in the New Testament).
“We” believe variously in the prime, unquestioned authority of the Christian doctrine and teaching that evolved in 30CE and 50-60CE and 70-100CE, 100-120CE, 120-200CE, 200-300CE, 300-400CE, and so it continued (didn’t it?), an unquestionable, authoritative, continuous line of development that continued to evolve (if sometimes, somewhat violently and dramatically), in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries into the 21st century. And here in the twenty-first century, we find ourselves differing about the basics of Christian faith and sometimes dramatically over the essence of Jesus’ teaching or Biblical teaching or Christian teaching. Well, maybe you don’t – but I do.
The Living in Love and Faith process shows us that attempting to formulate a contemporary Biblical Christian teaching about human sexuality and the possibility of God sanctioning same-sex love and marriage is proving to be a game changer and potential Church schism maker. And all this follows the failed attempt to formulate a united, agreed teaching on gender and the place of women in the ordained ministry of the Church as modelled by Jesus and authorised (or not) by God. And this creates a further problem, because we can’t talk about God easily within the Church family either because there are multiple different contemporary ways of imagining God (or of avoiding imagining God).
The Bible, the New Testament narratives, the teaching and theology and orthodoxy of the Church never had the kind of dominant, dogmatic, exclusive authority and truth for me that it as today for “orthodox” “conservative” “traditionalists”. I thought that was the whole point of the Church of England. It wasn’t just broad or generously tolerant, it was positively affirmative whatever degree of faith or lack of confident faith you might have. I was given confidence in my childhood church to trust my own experience and intuition, a confidence that dispelled by fears that as a result, God might be angry with me, or, being an Anglican God, just a tad mildly upset.
The Present
Visit a Church of England church today in a town or city and the first thing you might be greeted by is a TV monitor. The monitor might, if the church has a very aware incumbent, communicate something about the culture and vision of the Church, the unconditional love of God, contemporary spiritual and secular anxieties and issues, resources for a personal faith, a welcome offering a free response. Or it might set out to convince you that by joining this group of Christians you will find the answer to all your problems by getting to know Jesus. Or, if the incumbent is not very aware, you might be offered a list of services, a list of posts in the congregation they are desperate to fill, and a tedious account of their safeguarding policy.
In a country church you are more likely to find the parish magazine, a guide of some sorts to the history of the building and interesting artefacts you will find in the church, a report on the desperate state of the fabric, especially the stonework, roof and wiring, and a plea for donations (to be put in the box on the wall).
In the porch or inside the church you are guaranteed to find a notice board or panel giving copious information about safeguarding, what the church policy is, minutes of PPC meetings agreeing it, the name of the safeguarding officer and contact details, and of the diocesan safeguarding policy and contact details. The message is that we, the Church of England, are taking safeguarding really seriously because safeguarding is a big issue for the church and that is because the church has slowly come to recognise that abuse is a big issue. What the C of E has yet to recognise is that abuse is a deeply embedded systemic problem in the Church of England. You will not be told that the Archbishops and the Archbishops’ Council have repeatedly failed to respond effectively to safeguarding failures and have yet to publish key reports on particular cases. What I learn every day is that the whole Church is corrupted by abusive practices and that bishops and archdeacons and others are highly skilled, trained in ways to avoid hearing about or responding to please for help from victims of abuse. Every member of the Church of England is, consciously or (mostly) unconsciously infect by and/or affected by this abusive systemic culture. Read Robert Thompson on Twitter, read the books published in recent years.
The Church and those of us who are members of it need safeguarding from the institution, from its abusive culture and practice, abusive leaders, abusive norms reliant on Biblical teachings and traditional, orthodox theology. I have experienced the Church of England over the past three decades as having become an increasingly unhealthy and unhappy place for me. Many of my friends and past colleagues have abandoned the Church in this time, deriding the superficial, naive worship, songs and teachings and hostility to their faith that is being rolled out from the centre. Church has become a superficial, abusive environment in general, living a fantasy faith and life. This is as true for those who identify as progressive or middle of the road as much as it is for conservatives and those who claim the high ground of being orthodox, traditional, biblical believers.
I visit churches in the hope of finding inspiration and wisdom, of finding something, anything, that communicates the essence of Christian love, truth and faith as I have experienced and known it through earlier periods of my life. There have been notably few places where love, God’s unconditional, infinite, intimate love, is the first truth the church wants to communicate. The Church of England seems to have lost its awareness of the essence of Jesus’ teaching as it has more and more desperately attempted to respond to a dramatic decline in numbers and the impact of contemporary expectations in a secular, humanist society that people of colour, women and LGBTQIA+ people are recognised as of equal worth and will be granted the equality of status necessary for human health and well being as well as being integral to Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom of God.
The Future
The environment of the Church of England has become toxic for many. My message for those seeking balm for their souls, spiritual inspiration and the fiery energy of God’s transformative creative and evolutionary mystical presence is – don’t seek it here. I’ve been wondering what the implications are for Changing Attitude England’s campaign, founded thirty years ago, to work for equality for LGBTQIA+ people. The vision that inspired its formation then is no longer adequate to today’s culture and crisis. A movement is needed, a movement that connects and resources the thousands of people in our churches who long for a better, deeper, more Christian, safer, more visionary conviction that God is in essence the infinite, intimate, unconditional love that is universally manifest in all creation and in the spirits and hearts and souls of every cherished human being.
A second instalment will follow, when I find the courage and can organise my dreams and thoughts.