“I have come that you may have life, life in all its fullness” John 10.10
One change in the Church of England’s attitude to LGBTQI+ people is now urgently required if we are to experience the bliss of life in all its fullness.
Marriage equality. The Church of England doctrine of marriage must be changed. Lesbian and gay couples need to be able to marry in church. The relationships of many same sex couples, lay and ordained, married, in a civil partnership, living with their partner, must be given legal protection.
There is an urgent need for an active campaign in the Church of England to achieve the radical, full inclusion in ministry and relationship of LGBTQI+ people.
My sense of urgency has been heightened by the announcement that OneBodyOneFaith (OBOF) is to be wound up as a charity and its assets disbursed.
OneBodyOneFaith winds up as a charity
OneBodyOneFaith was created through the amalgamation of LGCM (The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement) and Changing Attitude in 2016 (I think). LGCM and CA were both very active campaigning organisations. Members of the LGCM and CA boards became members of the OBOF board. CA members soon discovered that CA’s campaigning zeal was unwelcome – and left.
The decision by to wind the organisation up leaves the Church of England with no organisation campaigning for the radical, full inclusion in ministry and relationship of LGBTQI+ people, the objective stated by Changing Attitude before it was absorbed, along with LGCM, to form OBOF.
A member of OBOF sent me the email circulated to OBOF members: “An important update on the future of OneBodyOneFaith & AGM 2026”. At the online AGM on Saturday 24 October at 10am, the membership will be asked to consider a formal resolution required as part of the process of winding up the charity. The OBOF board wants the AGM to be an opportunity to come together: to honour those who have gone before us, to recognise everything this movement has achieved and to begin looking towards what comes next.
There are many people today who were members of CA and LGCM but are not members of OBOF but should rightly be honoured today. I am not a member of OBOF but I have applied to attend the AGM in order that Changing Attitude’s continuing vision can be represented. I anticipate that my application will not be accepted. I hope other OBOF members who attend will voice Changing Attitude’s vision.
Where might the OBOF assets find a home?
The email announces that the organisation may be coming to an end, but the work is not. The intention of the Board is:
“to use the resources OneBodyOneFaith has remaining to give that work the strongest possible future. We are talking with other organisations about how elements of our work can continue and how our assets can be used for the benefit of LGBTQ+ Christians. OneBodyOneFaith will distribute the remaining assets to one or more charities with compatible objects that are better placed to support and campaign for LGBTQ+ Christians.”
OBOF is, of course, an ecumenical organisation and in the Church of England there are other groups working for change on behalf of LGBTQIA+ people and our allies. With OBOF winding itself up, any remaining goals and values inherited from LGCM and Changing Attitude will be lost as well (though Changing Attitude England lives on actively in Birmingham and quietly as a Facebook group). Together for the Church of England is a registered charity but isn’t an organisation with an open membership. It isn’t yet functioning at diocesan level as an organisation actively campaigning for the radical, full inclusion in ministry and relationship of LGBTQI+ people. I have been in contact with the Together representative in the Diocese of Southwark but there is as yet no active membership group. Open Table provides support for the wounded and vulnerable through gathering for worship, an open, visible, supportive presence, but it isn’t a group campaigning for change. There is Inclusive Church, but it isn’t a membership organisation nor is it a campaign group.
The House of Bishops is the problem
Elections have just taken place for the Houses of Laity and Clergy in the General Synod. The House of Bishops doesn’t have an election! At the Synod meeting in July when Helen King’s Private Member’s Motion was debated, the Houses of Clergy and Laity voted in favour of the amended motion and the House of Bishops voted against.
The House of Bishops is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. In a quarter of dioceses there is no bishop because the bishop has retired or been suspended or resigned. There is a lengthening delay in the CNC queue making new appointments.
A campaign to change the House of Bishops
I have been arguing for some time that the House of Bishops has to be the focus of an effective campaign to achieve equal marriage in church. The House of Clergy successfully blocked the House of Bishops proposed plan several years ago. The House of Bishops is going to block any proposal to change the marriage canon. Therefore, we have to work to change the House of Bishops – not its composition – that’s almost impossible – but to change the mind and attitude of individual bishops. This was the model followed by the Southwark Diocese Lesbian and Gay Support Network founded in 1991 and by the Changing Attitude diocesan groups following the Southwark model.
The God I believe in, the God richly represented for me in the Southwark 1960s to 1980s South Bank Revival, the God of mystery and interiority, silence and uncertainty, unconditional and infinite, intimate love, this God has become an all too rare presence in the Church of England. The Church of England is driven by an understandable desperation to survive – survival in increasingly precarious circumstances as the number of people worshipping regularly continues to decline.
We, LGBTQIA+ people and our allies, have to educate our bishops, to restore their backbones and wisdom and give them courage to approve a change in the marriage canon that will end the secrecy, colluded in by some bishops, of the many loving, stable, faithful relationships enjoyed by so many members of the Church of England.
Changing Attitude and Unadulterated Love
I’m deeply grateful to those of you who have donated to my GoFundMe appeal. Donations to develop my work through Changing Attitude and Unadulterated Love, no matter how small, make a significant difference for me and can be made to my GoFundMe account.