The Church of England is having the greatest difficulty catching up with attitudes to the role of women and the place of LGBTQIA+ and black and brown people in Christianity, and to attitudes to belief in God, to a transformation from belief in God as a person or being, an entity, to an equally ancient spiritual tradition of God as Mystery, as the essence of life and energy, of primary human values and experience that lay the foundations of love, truth, goodness, health, wisdom and justice.
Trans people will be participating in the Changing Attitude England’s conversation at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo on 2nd March as we pursue the ‘deeply Christian’ vision of ‘Life in all its fullness’, by which we mean, at the very least, ‘treating each person as a unique individual of inherent worth.’
When the Church endows Jesus with a divine nature and magical powers and his followers with spiritual powers way beyond anything we are capable of, the result is fantasy faith, the belief that God has and will intervene to short-circuit human emotions and experience. That’s where conflict in the faith of the Church of England resides today.
We have to find a way of pouring the energy of the groups campaigning for justice and equality for all in the progressive coalition and in the lives and energies of individual LGBTQIA+ people and our allies into the parishes and congregations, churches and cathedrals, where the Mystery of unconditional, infinite, intimate divine love manifest in the life and teaching of Jesus is celebrated despite the years of attrition.
One morning, forty-five years ago, kneeling in silence, I decided to take a risk – to live more fully “as if” my understanding of God was true, to live into a faith that I knew about experientially but that my cognitive self wasn’t convinced by. I decided to live “as if” the vision of God and the teachings and practice of Jesus that I had been ordained to teach and proclaim really were true and effective in people’s lives.
We need to get this toxic theology out of the Church
The theology and behaviour of the Anglican Church is intolerable
Clinging to faith is increasingly problematic
The Church is making the faith less and less attractive with a theology that messes people up
Bad theology is in the bloodstream of the Church
Passionless sex is very problematic
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.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have been bullied by conservatives into abandoning their commitment to create a radical new Christian inclusion. This information was given yesterday to one of the meetings held in the Lambeth Palace Library as part of the new phase of the Living in Love and Faith process.
My latest blog dwells of John narrative of the crucifixion. It is John alone who adds the detail of the seamless tunic (or undergarment) woven in one piece to his narrative. It is the symbol of what God is revealing and doing. Jesus, in John’s understanding, is saying, “In the new order there shall be no schism, but you shall be one and you shall love one another and be woven together from above.
