On Thursday, the Guardian published an article about Kehinde Andrews, 37, the UK’s first Black studies professor who help found the first Black studies programme in Europe at Birmingham City University. As I read the article I wondered what effect it would have, in the context of the Living in Love and Faith process, if I replaced black with LGBTIQ+ in the article. Kehinde described how he found himself “falling into whiteness” – emulating the behaviour and interests of his white friends – when he was young. I found myself at the same age “falling into heterosexuality” – emulating the behaviour and interests of my straight friends. Here is an abbreviated version of the article in which I have replaced black with LGBTIQ+. What effect does this have on you?
“I visited post-1967 law reform Britain, where an informal system still oppressed gay people. We’ve neglected the alternative spaces – and then we wonder why everything’s gone wrong. The absence of those spaces has led to unrealistic expectations and demands of equality from Churches that are fundamentally opposed to change. For instance, that the heterosexual, cis-gender-dominated Church will support equality movements such as LGCM and Changing Attitude when historically they have often been hostile to or suspicious of LGBTIQ+ political expression.
“LGBTIQ+ consciousness is something we have never really achieved. Individualism and self-interest have allowed exploitative forces to co-opt local LGBTIQ+ elites and enablers to do their dirty work. The LGBTIQ+ studies course is an attempt to create such a consciousness. He is sceptical – scornful, even – that it is a place from which to struggle for LGBTIQ+ equality.
“We’re trying to colonise the Church of England. Churches are fundamentally conservative spaces that need to be dragged into handing their rich resources to LGBTIQ+ campaigns. It is a high-friction process. The Church isn’t going to change. We need to learn how to pull levers outside the “bubble”.
“He blames himself and his peers for not raising awareness of LGBTIQ+ history and activism in Christianity. I came up at a time when I had access to all this stuff. So, one of the things that we’re trying to do is bring back this education to get LGBTIQ+ radical thought out in our words.
LGBTIQ+ people, he believes, are relieved to have a representative in these debates – and to be given facts and tools with which to argue their points when these debates come up in their own lives. He gets to talk about ideas - it is his version of “colonising the media”.
“He speaks with passion, but also exasperation at the false promise of change in a Church that he believes is structurally hostile to LGBTIQ+ emancipation. Moments of raising awareness, such as Gay Pride events and flying rainbow flag are too often hollow diversity. They may make the number of LGBTIQ+ people in the Church rise, but do nothing to make the Church operate in a more equal way. Real change cannot come from elite, conservative heterosexual, cis-gender spaces, no matter how well populated with LGBTIQ+ people, because such spaces are fundamentally antagonistic to change.
“This also means that, no matter how high you climb, little changes. You get into these places and it’s terrible. I’m a gay member of Synod. Great. I’m still gay. Churches are some of the most heterosexist institutions that exist and, the further up the hierarchy you go, the worse it gets.
“It is not just individuals or managers who are to blame. The nature of these spaces means they can change us, creating toxic environments of competition where we are struggling over each other to get to the top. He wants to focus his energy on the grassroots, providing an account of society from an LGBTIQ+ radical perspective.”
Rosie Harper wrote a powerful article for the Via Media Blog today. She says “Living in Love and Faith has died a death and we ‘d best give it a quiet burial. I hear that it is proving very difficult to find LLF champions for the proposed discussions around the country. I have yet to meet anyone who would turn up to such a group. Gay people themselves have had years and years of generous and self-revelatory discussions. It’s no longer a big deal, but they really, really don’t want to discuss it in public. Stop pretending. LLF has died.”
If LLF really has died, then the work for radical transformation of Christian teaching and attitudes remains to be undertaken by those prepared, like Kehinde Andrews, to invent ways of confronting the new reality by motivating LGBTIQ+ people and our mass of allies to show the bishops how blind they are to the new reality.