LLF: it’s long, complex, and fails LGBTI Anglicans

LLF: it’s long, complex, and fails LGBTI Anglicans

Has the LLF process and the material published this week risen to this challenge? No. The House of Bishops continue to demonstrate an ability to maintain control of the process and to avoid responsibility for change. The bishops are taking sole responsibility for overseeing the next stage of the process and for bringing proposals to General Synod in 2022. Nothing will change then unless the bishops agree change is essential. This will not happen unless individual bishops break rank. I challenge members of the House of Bishops who claim to be fully supportive of LGBTI people to publicly dissent from this process.

Living in Love and Faith in a Systemically Abusive Church

Living in Love and Faith in a Systemically Abusive Church

The Living in Love and Faith book is to be published on 9 November 2020 just weeks after the publication of three devastating reports about safeguarding failures and abuse in the Church. Despite the progress in understanding made in the previous reports about homosexuality contemporary C of E practice and culture is still shockingly abusive and homophobic. Many people are implicated in abuse or in covering up abuse to protect the reputation of bishops and senior clergy and of the church. The LLF report must be judged by the degree to which it recognises the systemic culture of prejudice and homophobia in the C of E and makes recommendations to deal with this effectively and speedily.

Christian wisdom for the Covid-19 epidemic

Christian wisdom for the Covid-19 epidemic

God the Mystery of Unconditional Love pervades all human life and experience. We are infused with the divine, immersed in the divine presence, the love, energy, passion, compassion, and intuitive, innate wisdom that is the invisible, mystical essence of creation in evolution. A model Christian response to the Covid-19 crisis would endeavour to nurture our inner resources inspiring us open to the flow of divine energy within and between people, nourishing our capacity to love unconditionally, openly, compassionately and creatively, filled with real presence.

Living in Love and Faith - what are we missing, what are we not understanding?

Living in Love and Faith - what are we missing, what are we not understanding?

On Tuesday in General Synod, seven members of the Living in Love and Faith Co-ordinating Group presented an insight into the work of LLF. Radical Inclusion is what the Archbishops committed the church to. What exactly does radical inclusion mean? Has LLF agreed an understanding? I don’t think LLF corporately has the insight, the wisdom or the courage to discern the difference between healthy integrated, emotionally literate and mature, open hearted human beings and conflicted, defensive, closed, somewhat addicted human beings. LLF has failed to acknowledge and explore what are now the commonly held ideas in society about sexuality, gender, God and Jesus. This Jesus that gets talked about in Synod was a profoundly healthy, integrated, deeply self-aware, unconditionally open and loving human being endowed with wisdom, insight, truth, clarity, anger and justice who knew how to make time for himself and for God and time for others, intimate time for others.

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.

Living in Love and Faith – a doomed project

Living in Love and Faith – a doomed project

Prof Helen King and the Revd Canon Dr Judith Maltby , both involved with the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process, have written about it on the ViaMedia web site. They wonder where the project is going after publication of the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Statement on Civil Partnerships. The archbishops’ minimalist apology and the failure of the College of Bishops to withdraw the Pastoral Statement have severely undermined their confidence in the collective ability of the bishops to learn from LLF.

Love, honesty, openness, courage and integrity please, bishops

Love, honesty, openness, courage and integrity please, bishops

The latest issue of Private Eye carries an article about bishops in the Church of England. It opens with comments about the recently published guidelines on heterosexual civil partnerships and moves on to comments about the Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt Revd David Urquhart. Private Eye says there are those in Birmingham diocese who question his own unusual domestic relationships. The guilty party in all of this is the bishops themselves, collectively, with one or two honourable exceptions. Some of them argue forcefully for what they claim are Biblical teachings that result in rank dishonesty and prejudice about LGBTI people in the Church of England. They are responsible for enforcing a closeted life on otherwise honourable, loving, deeply pastoral, and gifted people.

How to confront a hypocritical and abusive institution

How to confront a hypocritical and abusive institution

On Monday, Jayne Ozanne, a member of the General Synod and campaigner for LGBTI equality, talked about “the deep levels of hypocrisy that exist among certain church leaders” and said she believed it’s time to end this hypocritical charade, time for honesty and plain straight speaking. I believe it is time to force the Church of England to face the truth, confronting Archbishops and bishops and the people who control the levers of power in the institution with the truth directly from the inside.

The 40th anniversary of a feral priest’s priesting

The 40th anniversary of a feral priest’s priesting

Forty years ago today I was ordained a priest by Bishop Mervyn Stockwood in Southwark cathedral. I have never marked the anniversary of my priesting before. This year I’ve become acutely aware that I am unable to mark the anniversary in the traditional way. What does it mean for me to be a priest now - a priest unable to preach, lead worship or preside at communion?

Jesus: the Evidence; Channel 4, April 1984

Jesus: the Evidence; Channel 4, April 1984

In April 1984 Channel 4 broadcast three one hour long documentary programmes titled Jesus: the Evidence. Three of the issues addressed in the programmes were that Jesus never called himself God in the Gospels; that the titles attributed to Jesus in the Gospels (e.g. ‘Son of God’) were not in fact used during his lifetime; that Jesus, as a Jew, was hardly likely to have claimed to be God. I find myself wondering how many Church of England clergy still believe that Jesus thought of himself as divine, the Son of God. How many think that Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives are historically true? How many think the resurrection narratives in the four gospels are accurate historical accounts of an event that happened?