Another weekend, another article in the Guardian’s Saturday supplement that opened a new window in my mind. The article was written by Jodie Chapman. Chapman was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness, a world of faith she believed was normal. She never questioned the truth or morality of the Bible stories she was told. They were her version of “normal”. Her faith was only challenged when she began reading novels.
Reading George Orwell’s 1984 in her early 20s was a watershed moment; she was introduced to “doublethink” and “thoughtcrime”, ideas she had until then accepted as normal. The story of Winston, who knows the truth and yet must conform for his own survival, opened a door she had never dared to touch. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale opened another door, showing the danger of a patriarchy that positions itself as beneficial to women. Later, reading Beloved by Toni Morrison left her so angry she had to put the book down to compose herself. It confirmed her doubts about the Bible stories she had been told: How could a powerful god stand by and watch evil, cruel things happen and not feel compelled to intervene? How, I ask myself, does the Church of England stand by and allow LGBTQIA+ people to be abused, justified by reading stories from the Bible?
In Chapman’s first novel, Another Life, Anna is cast out of her religion for the sin of no longer believing. Oh Sister, her second novel, explores the struggles of three women within the confines of a doomsday patriarchal religion based heavily on the Witnesses. The world in which these three women live in her novel had been her definition of normal.
Followers of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and Christian Scientists as well as Trump-supporting conservative Christians in the USA all profess to be Bible-based, Bible-believing Christians. The theological ground on which they stand and their interpretation of the Bible and their beliefs about God are derived from their Biblical fundamentals and result in attitudes, ideas and beliefs that are to me, dangerous and unhealthy – un-Christian. They result in belief in Linda Woodhead’s Omni-God.
The window Chapman’s article opened in my mind thinks my Anglican version of Christianity is more healthy, orthodox and rational than the versions espoused by minority sects and absolutely more healthy than the version espoused by Republican supporters of Donald Trump. Doublethink, thoughtcrime and patriarchy are antithetical to the essence of my Christian faith. Books like Adrian Thatcher’s Vile Bodies and Linda Woodhead’s naming of Omni-God confirm that as a member of the Church of England, I belong to a denomination that still holds to ideas about God that are untrue because one way or another they enshrine doublethink, thoughtcrime, patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and racism.
Developing a post-abusive theology
One of the challenges yet to be faced by the Church of England is to work out what hitherto acceptable characteristics of God have to be rejected as we develop a post-abusive theology. We have to un-know hitherto valid, orthodox, traditional, Biblical ideas about God because they are not Christian. Since adolescence I’ve lived in a state of non-conviction, a state of living “as if” fundamental values and qualities I believed to be true were also the essence of Christian faith. This has always seemed to me to be a very Anglican mode of Christian belief.
Is this what God is like?
The big existential I am faced with now, and I think we are all faced with, progressives and conservatives and everyone in between and beyond is: Is this what God is like? It’s an uncertainty question, traditionally a very authentic Christian position. Another way of framing the question: If God is like what the Bible says about God, which parts of the Bible about God do we select? Is God like Jesus? Is God like Jesus’ life and teachings, his birth and death and resurrection, his relationships? Or is God like the one who sometimes behaves so abusively in the Hebrew Scriptures?
Redemption Song
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, for none but ourselves can free our mind.”
Last Friday BBC4 had an evening of programmes related to Bob Marley and The Wailers. Redemption Song is haunting me and is another element prompting this blog. Listening to Bob Marley’s canon helps me free my mind just as reading novels helped to free Jodie Chapman’s mind. We in the Church of England are very, very slowly freeing ourselves from mental slavery, the attachment to theologies and understandings of the Bible that enslave us. We need urgently to emancipate ourselves, to learn our redemption theologies anew.
Christianity is living in an era of catch-up – catching up with the theological and social and spiritual developments that date from the 1960s and the post-war era and easrlier. 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. Our formulations of belief in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Bible have changed and continue to evolve. The change is dramatic. Conservatives really feel it and fear it. The problem for the majority progressive movement in the Church is that we don’t feel it in the same way, we’re not quite sure what has changed and what it means. Prophets feel the change. Bob Marley felt the change, deeply. The prophetic movement is always active, often ignored or not seen for what it is. How dare a Rastafarian ganja smoking dreadlocked Jamaican have a prophetic message for us?!
Freeing the Church of England from Mental Slavery 1 – The Coalition of Twenty Organisations
One of the most positive results of the Living in Love and Faith process has been the formation of a Coalition of Progressive organisations and networks that now numbers twenty groups. The groups are:
Affirming Catholics in Synod, Changing Attitude England, Church for Everyone, Clergy Consultation, Campaign for Equal Marriage, Diverse Church, General Synod Gender and Sexuality Group, House of Rainbow, Inclusive Church, Inclusive Evangelicals, Modern Church, Mosaic, One Body One Faith, Open Table, Ozanne Foundation, Progressive Christianity Network, Student Christian Movement, Society of Catholic Priests, Synod Evangelical Forum, Women and the Church (I hope I haven’t missed any out.)
Thirty four people, representatives from nearly all these groups, were present at the meeting in Lambeth Palace Library with the Archbishop of Canterbury on 3rd November 2023. The meeting had an impact. It affected all of us who were present. It was the first time we had met in person. It was the first time people had expressed their desires, ambitions and emotions about our inclusive vision for a progressive Christianity directly to the Archbishop.
Freeing the Church of England from Mental Slavery 2 – General Synod
General Synod meets from Friday. On Monday afternoon, 26th February, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, Bishop of Leicester will move GS 2346 Living in Love, Faith and Reconciliation in a session to be continued on Tuesday morning from 09.30 to 11.30. GS 2346 “outlines ten draft commitments through which the whole Church can continue to pursue the implementation of the motions previously passed by Synod on Living in Love and Faith.” “Undergirding all of this is a commitment to a process that seeks to carefully listen – even where we disagree - to the many voices, holding a variety of positions, in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, including those of LGBTQI+ and GMH people.” Is this debate likely to free the CofE from mental slavery? No. The only sign of hope is Bishop Martyn’s recognition that the vast majority of people in the Church of England really do yearn for LGBTQI+ people to be accepted, loved and valued for who we are. I’m sure the vast majority do yearn for that, but their yearning is blocked by the overriding commitment to respect the voices of those who vehemently disagree.
The twenty groups in the Coalition are represented on General Synod by individual members of Synod and, when it comes to the LLF process, by the General Synod Gender and Sexuality Group. The Coalition vision is inclusive but not yet quite fully formed or visible. Full inclusion means full equality and inclusion for women, black and brown people, those with disabilities, those subject to abuse, as well as for LGBTQIA+ people. There is always more work to be done but real progress has been made.
Freeing the Church of England from Mental Slavery 3 – Parishes and Congregations
What has yet to be achieved is the conversion of Bishop Martyn’s belief that the vast majority of people in the Church of England really do yearn for LGBTQI+ people to be accepted, loved and valued into a visible reality in the majority of parishes and congregations. I’m not sure how this is going to be done. A strategy is needed. We need more than the valuable network of Inclusive churches developed by Inclusive Church and more than the growing network of worshipping groups developed by Open Table.
Freeing the Church of England from Mental Slavery 4 – A Movement
Changing Attitude England’s Life in all its Fullness event on 2nd March 2024 at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo, is an opportunity for people seeking new visions of God to share experience and dream of ways in which this gathering could be the beginning of a movement drawing together the energies of the Coalition groups, the majority of parishes and congregations and the enthusiasm of individuals to spread the good news – the time for “doublethink” and “thoughtcrime” in Christianity is over. None but ourselves can free our mind!
Book your place now for Life in All its Fullness – tickets from £5 to £30 – pay what you can.