shared conversations

Living in Love and Faith: A Guide for Members of General Synod

Living in Love and Faith: A Guide for Members of General Synod

The Living in Love and Faith process has evolved from the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution 1.10 that committed the church “to listen to the experience of homosexual persons”, via, in July 2011, the House of Bishops review of its 2005 Pastoral Statement on civil partnerships. From this they set up a Working Group on Human Sexuality chaired by Sir Joseph Pilling resulting in the ‘Pilling Report’ that proposed the Shared Conversations. The outcome of 23 years of an evolving process is a report to General Synod that is no longer focused on listening to us, or on civil partnerships, or even on a radical new Christian inclusion for LGBTIQ+ people, but listening to our lament, fear and pain. Changing Attitude is determined to ensure they hear our anger, frustration, and determination to achieve justice and equality for LGBTIQ+ people within God’s unconditional love manifest in Jesus the Christ.

LGBTI+ and Church of England Teaching Documents – a history

LGBTI+ and Church of England Teaching Documents – a history

I wrote this document in July 2018 before the proposed teaching document had been renamed Living in Love and Faith. I have made minor amendments but otherwise left it unchanged. I wrote this history of the teaching documents published by the Church of England to demonstrate to myself why I was feeling so angry in 2018. I was angry because, following Pilling and the Shared Conversations, a further delay of three years was being engineered by the House of Bishops who still lacked the guts to confront the human sexuality of LGBTI+ people and the need to radically include us as equals in the Church.

The decadence of the Church of England

The decadence of the Church of England

A recent book review opened my mind to the possibility that the current state of the Church of England might viewed as decadent. By decadent, I mean subject to decay, characterised by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decay or appealing to self-indulgence. The trauma affecting the Church of England, holding it captive to the past, a trauma continues to have a deep psychological hold over the church, is homosexuality. By examining the period of over sixty years from when the Church of England first began to deal with homosexuality, I want to show how the disagreements that were visible from the start are the same as those now being tackled by the House of Bishops’ process to formulate a new teaching document.

Bishops’ Reflection Group on Sexuality – what can we do?

Bishops’ Reflection Group on Sexuality – what can we do?

We LGBTI people have to live into the transformative freedom which comes from being immersed in God’s infinite, unconditional, intimate love. We are not going to transform ourselves or the church unless we embody this divine reality. The tyrannical, abusive God who many still worship has to be condemned to history as the source of prejudiced, toxic opinions and practice. Until we release ourselves from the tyranny of magical thinking, fundamentalism, co-dependence on abusive authority, we are not going to find the freedom, confidence and vision that will release energies to transform the place of LGBTI people in the Church of England and the parts of the Anglican Communion where tyranny reigns.