As I read an article in the Guardian yesterday about Kehinde Andrews, the UK’s first Black studies professor, I wondered what effect it would have, in the context of the Living in Love and Faith process, if I replaced all the references to black with LGBTIQ+. Here is a very abbreviated version of the article. What effect does this have on you?
In November 2020 a pro-LGBTIQ+ group wrote to thirty two bishops known to be supportive of LGBTIQ+ people. Eleven replied. We have written a second letter, this time to thirty five bishops, reminding them of the questions we asked in the first letter. We believe the LLF is primarily yet another attempt to resolve the conundrum the Church of England has been trying to find a way out of for two decades or more. We have asked the bishops a second time - are you prepared to ensure that when the LLF process returns to Synod in 2022 you will take responsibility for tabling proposals that enact the Archbishops’ commitment to radical inclusion?
Homophobia is woven through Christianity’s culture, teaching and practice, unnoticed. When the Living in Love and Faith process was announced I warned that it was simply a further delaying tactic but people wanted to believe in the process and the commitment made by the Archbishops to radical inclusion. Now I warn that when it is brought to Synod in 2022 nothing radical will be proposed. Instead there will be a further period in which the implications of the current process will be re-processed and digested. The purpose of the campaign that the re-created Changing Attitude England group is conducting is to engage creatively with the bishops in the hope that by the time they bring proposals to Synod in 2022 they will understand that if they do not address equal marriage in church and equality for clergy and lay ministers, we will be really angry, and they will know why.
At the end of November 2020 we wrote to thirty two bishops known to be supportive of LGBTIQ+ people in the Church of England following the publication of videos by The Church of England Evangelical Council and Christian Concern. Ten bishops responded, twenty two didn’t reply. A summary of the responses is included here. We are about to send a second letter to the thirty four bishops.
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.
