A sequence of three events in the last three weeks has conspired to create turmoil in the Church of England resulting in a crisis that will be difficult to resolve. As a result of our contemporary inability to talk openly and honestly about the God we do and don’t believe in it may well be almost impossible to agree the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. The next Archbishop will need to have the most remarkable and combined gifts of courage, vision, prophecy, awareness and resolve.
I have never believed in the God believed in by the Church of England Evangelical Council, the HTB hierarchy and the Anglican Global South majority – never. After seventy years in which time our ideas about God have continued to evolve, the regressive, authoritarian, dogmatic, supposedly orthodox, traditional theology and teaching still dominates the conservative evangelical mindset of the Church of England Evangelical Council and the Global South majority of the Anglican Communion.
The events of the past two weeks, the meeting of General Synod in November 2023, the conduct of the entire LLF process and the incompetence of the Church to respond the victims of abuse and implement an effective Safeguarding system all demonstrate to me a Church that has none of the characteristics that communicated to me 60 years ago by practice and example what Christianity looks and feels like. Words were not needed.
Foundational Anglican Christian theology with its reliance on scripture, tradition and reason is responsible for creating and justifying a core theology, an edifice on which and within which abuse has been built. The edifice supports conservative Christian homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism, prejudice against other religions and cultures and particular categories of people.gy and culture that underpins abuse in the Church. Abuse has become systemic.
Fifty years ago I found Harry Williams in Heffers bookshop in Cambridge. In Harry’s books I found wisdom and truth, honesty and humanity, integrity and playfulness, that reinforced my courage to believe and the freedom to trust my own intuition. Among others. Harry gave me courage to believe disbelievingly.
Jesus was processing his life of human experience and emotions and relationships with exactly the same resources as you and I process our lives and experience. One difference between us (not the difference between divine and human nature) is that our experience, if we are Christians, is processed through the constructs of theology and faith that evolved following Jesus’ death and have been evolving ever since. We are programmed in a way Jesus wasn’t.
In September, five members of Changing Attitude England met in a London garden one afternoon to explore our beliefs about God. I had circulated a position paper beforehand setting out my thoughts as a framework for our conversation. The five of us who met in the garden, plus one, wish to extend the conversation we began by organising an open event on 2nd March 2024 at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo from 10.00 to 16.00 when we hope many of you will bring your own experience to the gathering, exploring our understandings of God in our human awareness and vision raised by the question What kind of God do we believe in?
