Welcome to this third episode of Unadulterated Love. I’m Colin Coward, a contemplative activist priest.
Two weeks ago I sat in the public gallery at Church House Westminster in London to observe the first day of the General Synod debate on the House of Bishops’ motion following completion of the Living in Love and Faith process. The debate continued the next morning, lasting 8 hours in total.
I’ve spent the time since processing my experience of the debate, the outcome, and the reactions of both progressive and conservative leaders and organisations, I began to realise that I am being seen, that we progressives seeking justice and equality are being seen by conservatives, as unhealthy agents contaminating the Church.
CEEC
The Church of England Evangelical Council posted a video featuring a number of conservative evangelicals. They are arguing, it seems to me, for a new tribal enclosure, a protected space in the Church of England, where they can be protected from contamination by people like me, from LGBTQIA+ people in general, married lesbian and gay couples in particular, and those who agree to bless and marry same-sex couples in their churches.
If the proposed enclosure for those opposed to equal marriage were to be accepted, this new, protected, anti-contamination enclosure would be added to the existing tribal enclosure for misogynists, those priests and people opposed to the ordination of women. The Church would then have two separate enclosures for people who do not wish to be contaminated – those opposed to the ordination of women and those opposed to the marriage of gay and lesbian couples. Both categories are perceived to be contaminants to the purity of God’s creation as revealed in the Bible.
GSFA
More recently the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches issued a statement about the Church of England’s decision to recognise same-sex unions. They also require an uncontaminated space in which to operate, free from those nasty contaminated married gays. They see themselves as called to be ‘a holy remnant’. This calling does not allow them to be “in communion” with those provinces that have departed from the historic faith. We have taken the path of false teaching. They will no longer recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as the “first among equals”, leader of the global Anglican Communion.
The GSFA Primates will work to provide oversight to orthodox dioceses and networks of Anglican churches to ensure that the faithful who find themselves in revisionist territory receive uncontaminated pastoral oversight, guidance and care. They are creating an international safe space free from contamination by married gay couples and the churches who marry them.
The more the homophobic Anglican Primates, bishops and leaders pontificate about the un-Biblical horrors of equal marriage, the more LGBTQIA+ Africans are targeted within their churches and societies, abused from the pulpit, physically and emotionally attacked, denounced, humiliated, arrested, imprisoned and murdered. The Church of England Evangelical Council and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican leaders and their allies in other Provinces are directly responsible for this evil, wicked state of affairs. There is nothing in the Bible or in the Christian tradition of my youth on which prejudice against and abuse of LGBTQIA+ people can be justified.
As I thought about this state of affairs I realised that the dynamic I had first imagined it, was wrong, inverted. I thought of LGBTQIA+ people as contaminating the Church with the Church of England Evangelical Council and Global South Fellowship and their bishops needing to be protected from us. It dawned on me that in reality, they are the contaminants and we, the so-called revisionists, the progressives, are in truth reactive agents, cleansing agents, not contaminants at all.
Reactive Cleansing Agents
We are actually the active ingredients necessary to cleanse the Church from those advocating misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and racism, those who fuel the systemic prejudice and abuse that contaminates the Christian Church.
The most important active cleansing agent is of course Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, manifestation of and witness to the unconditional, infinite, intimate love of God. Jesus was indeed the active agent of transformational energy and love in his living and dying. In earlier periods of my life this was the Jesus I knew and experienced. Tragically, scandalously, Jesus’s presence and energy as the transformational agent of life in all its fulness is now being actively suppressed by those who claim to be his orthodox followers and practitioners.
These extremes of prejudice against women and LGTQIA+ people present in today’s Church were not present in the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties of the last century. But as society moved in one direction, towards the recognition of prejudice and abuse and need for equality in law, the Anglican Church has moved in two directions. Some have moved in the same direction, towards justice, equality and full inclusion while others have move towards prejudice and the creation of separate enclaves. The Christian landscape has changed dramatically in other ways, in the way the Bible is used, with the growth of fundamentalism, literalism and the use of proof texts quoted out of context to justify prejudice.
In the course of my life the whole social landscape has changed in most societies, at first in reaction to the effects of the Second World War and changing moral values and latterly by the effects of globalisation, the internet and the ubiquitous availability of mobile phones.
In the last four decades the landscape has changed for LGBTQIA+ people, initially for the worse in response to the AIDS pandemic and subsequently transformed thanks to the evolution of the Gay Pride movement and mass communication.
And in my lifetime the landscape of Christianity has changed, from the visionary new awareness and prophetic, visionary insights of the twentieth century to the backlash growing in intensity from the nineteen nineties onwards.
The Church has become an almost intolerable place for me now, as a person with deep, passionate spiritual, contemplative and activist roots. Where once the culture was open, generous, energised, progressive, it has become increasingly intolerant, conflicted, unhealthy. For those like me who have endured this from the inside, the only hope for the protection of my personal spiritual health has been to leave and seek nourishment from other sources – sources that are not actually other, but the source of the divine Other, the Mystery, the sheer beauty of love and goodness - available from an infinite variety of sources in Creation, but tragically, not necessarily from a church near you. The Church has become repellent to those it wishes to attract and evangelise and convert – convert to what? Ignorance, prejudice and discrimination?
Misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic prejudice turns God into a tyrant, not the God of Jesus the Christ, of deepest compassion and unadulterated, unconditional love.
Jesus often taught in the freedom of the outdoors, in the open air in open spaces. And when teaching indoors, he was mostly to be found either with those considered undesirable by the establishment or in conflict with the establishment. What did his disciples make of this? Well, we know from what happened after Jesus’ death. What do today’s seekers after a contamination-free zone make of this?
Me, I prefer life in the open air, breathing freely, expansive, healthy, energised, alive, discovering life in all its fulness. It takes a lot of insight and courage to free ourselves from the toxic, unhealthy culture of institutions that corrupt the vision of God.