Like racism, heterosexism is not merely a matter of personal prejudice; it is a system, constructed historically through a whole set of discourses and practices, into which we have been socialised. But rather than reflect critically upon how this system came to be, and whose interests it serves, the LLF report takes it largely for granted: this, it proclaims, rather over-confidently, is ‘Christian marriage’. In this respect, the treatment of history offered in LLF is regrettably weak.
Following the posting of the CEEC film and the Christian Concern video, members of the Christians for LGBTIQ+ Equality Facebook group expressed their fears that the risk of becoming involved in encounters with “those who have different perspectives and lived experiences” was too great. Alex Clare-Young, a member of the LLF Co-ordinating Group, asked the Facebook group members what safe space and safeguarding doer any ongoing LLF process would look like for them. Some of us have come to the conclusion that it may not be possible to guarantee safety. We propose that LGBTIQ+ people and our allies should have our own conversations in safe spaces facilitated by LGBTIQ+ community members. There we can discuss how to achieve the full, radical inclusion we long for.
This is the opening section of a chapter from the book I’ve nearly completed. Re-reading it this morning, I realised that my theology - my vision of God - is entirely absent from the Living in Love and Faith book. The theology of the book is exclusively Salvation Theology. My theology has evolved over the past sixty years but my roots are still in what I intuited at the age of fifteen, an intuition that was confirmed three years later when Honest to God was published. I offer this as a commentary on the failures of the LLF book and the present College of Bishops, whose theology, based on LLF, is conservatively naive.
An inclusive pro-LGBTIQ+ group including gay and straight members has written to thirty four bishops known to be supporters of LGBTIQ+ people. Our initiative was motivated by the videos posted, one by the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) and another by Christian Concern supported by Anglican Mainstream. We need to know whether a core of bishops is able to express public support for the full equality of LGBTIQ+ people in ministry and relationship in the Church of England including permitting those going forward to selection for ministry and for licensed Readers and clergy to marry same-sex partners, conduct same-sex marriages in church and bless marriages and civil partnerships, with the same parameters as apply to opposite sex marriages.
I am more angry today about the Church of England’s more than sixty years of attempting to sort out its attitude to LGBTIQ+ people than I have been in thirty years of active involvement. Today Christian Concern has posted a video on YouTube using clips from the official Living in Love and Faith Introductory video, pausing after each section to allow comments attacking and abusing some of those who appear in the LLF video. It is disgusting, possibly actionable, and has already been reported as a hate crime.
I am haunted by the question - How? How do we change society, the church, and above all, ourselves? How do we do this when we are all to some degree locked in to thoughts and patterns of behaviour that I at least find it very difficult to escape from. What we need is what churches and religions are supposed to offer – spiritual wisdom and nourishment rooted in the human capacity to access and assess truth and teach people how to internalise the divine, sacred, spiritual qualities of life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
