Forty-fifth anniversary
This is not the blog I intended to write today. It is a blog motivated by the experience I had when meditating on Monday morning and after reading, in the afternoon, Ian Paul’s latest blog. As I meditated yesterday morning, feeling emotionally unsettled, I realised that conversations with various friends over the past week had stirred a memory inside me, a memory that now surfaced. Next Tuesday, 30th September, will be the 45th anniversary of my priesting. I’m not going to celebrate this significant milestone as other priests might, by presiding at a carefully prepared and choreographed Eucharist somewhere significant – I can’t because I’ve been without a bishops’ licence or permission to officiate for twenty years. This, thanks to Nick Holtham who decided that I’d betrayed him by posting something true about him and the policy he had developed for blessing same-sex relationships when he was vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields with the full support of the PCC and staff. Yes, St Martin’s was one of many churches in London and elsewhere in England that were blessing the relationships of gay couples twenty years ago. As a new bishop who had been swiftly silenced for writing a pro-gay article The Times, Nick was angry because I wrote the truth.
Ian Paul
Later on Monday afternoon I got around to reading Ian Paul’s latest blog and posted a comment about it on Thinking Anglicans.
Ian wrote that:
“that the Church of England actually has a very well developed and settled position on marriage and sexuality.”
However this simply is not the case. Neither is it the case that “the church catholic in every time, every culture, every tradition, and every branch for as long as it has existed has held a settled view.” What marriage is and therefore what the Christian theology of marriage is has constantly, always evolved. What marriage is now isn’t what it was 50, 100, 1,000 years ago.
Ian asked his readers to check Canon C26 which tells clergy that they need to uphold the orthodox teaching about marriage and then check out the Ordination liturgy in which all clergy make a public vow saying they believe this teaching of marriage as being a lifelong union between one man and one woman. Ian needs to check out how many clergy are now in a civil partnership or equal marriage, how many have blessed those in a civil partnership or equal marriage in a secular setting or in church, how many bishops accept and affirm those of their clergy who are in a civil partnership or married or have blessed these relationships, and how many bishops, serving or retired, are in a same sex relationship.
Ian is absolutely right about the level of dishonesty operating amongst bishops and not only those seeking to bring change. He concludes by saying that Jesus is the true leader of the Church, not any bishop. The question that has repeatedly confronted me as I’ve travelled around the Islington area of London Diocese for the past three months is this – which Jesus? Which Jesus are people being taught to follow and encouraged to worship – because often it’s not the Jesus of the Gospels. Adolescent is the level of maturity at which the Church of England finds itself when it comes to finalising (as Ian thinks) decades of discussion about my sexuality. It has yet to overcome the addictive, infantile fantasy stage.
Ken Leech
Fortuitously, I’m reading “Doing Theology in Altab Ali Park” (2006) by Ken Leech at the moment, found on the shelves of the library at St Saviour’s Priory. I reached page 39 on Monday – homosexuality. In the 1990s Ken was working for a project attached to St Botolph’s, Aldgate. I’m going to quote at length:
“Since the early 1970s the pastoral care of homosexual persons has been a central part of the ministry of St Botolph’s. While it has never been a ‘gay church’, lesbian and gay people have been welcomed, often at periods when this has not been the case in other churches. Blessings of same-sex unions were common at St Botolph’s long before they became a matter of controversy in the Anglican Communion as a whole. Malcolm Johnson has been quite open about this, and has said that, during his time as rector of St Botolph’s, he blessed around three hundred same-sex unions, and possibly more. In the interests of honesty and truth, it is important to emphasise that such blessings have been taking place for some time, both here and elsewhere, and we are only now beginning to talk about what it all means – and this is, in fact, the right way round. Practice precedes theory, theology is the second step.”
“[Theology] is always a reflection on events, struggles, dilemmas, pastoral practice, without which it cannot exist. So it is often right that we act first and reflect afterwards, trying to make sense of what we are already doing, perhaps revising our positions in the light of experience and criticism.”
Ken continues his thoughts over the page:
“Everyone with intelligence and close knowledge of the Church of England knows that blessings of same-sex unions have been happening for many years, and the churches where they are happening are well known, not least to the press. Everyone with close knowledge also knows that the Church of England has been ordaining ‘practising’ homosexuals for many years, and that such people have often had long and distinguished careers as parish priests, members of the staff of what is now called the Division of Ministry and other parts of the General Synod bureaucracy, bishops’ chaplains, and so on. Yet bishops and others speak as if this were not the case. In this climate of dishonesty and denial, it is difficult to have a sensible dialogue. The situation will probably get better, but only because groups and individuals will force the issue, often endangering their own future in the Church by doing so. Bishops, unless they are retired, tend to follow later. We should not be surprised at this. People are appointed bishops partly because they are believed – usually rightly – to be ‘safe’ and to support the current line of duplicity. However, being ‘yes men’, they will usually change as the climate changes and allows, or even compels, them to do so. This places a heavy responsibility on local groups to keep up the pressure and to speak the truth, in season and out of season.”
Ken wrote this twenty years ago. Twenty years later, some priests and bishops, active and retired, still prefer to stay in the closet and are discrete about their sexuality, intimidated by the continuing relentless campaign pursued by Ian Paul, careful to share their personal lives only with people they can trust because Ian Paul in particular continues to hound gay men in the Church. Some clergy opt to transfer their ministry to the Church in Wales or the Scottish Episcopal Church knowing they will escape the hostile conservative evangelical anti-gay brigade and find bishops in the mould of Richard Holloway, mature and wise enough to know that openly gay clergy, known and actively trusted by their bishop, are the least likely to cause problems or manifest abusive behaviours.
It's difficult to believe that significant moves are not going to be made in the next two years towards changing the marriage canon and at the very least allowing same-sex clergy couples to marry and the blessing of same-sex couples to be celebrated in church. Ian Paul’s statement “that the Church of England actually has a very well developed and settled position on marriage and sexuality” is totally untrue and dishonest. The Church of England’s position on sexuality has for a long time been duplicitous, has aways been complex and open to diversity, and is now in disarray (as the bishops well know - and if there are any bishops that don’t know, they are living in profound ignorance of the culture of the church to which they have been called to serve). They lack emotional intelligence and close knowledge of the Church of England.
Reading Ian Paul’s blog through again, I found myself wanting to ask him three questions: “Which century are you living in?”; “Which God are you worshipping?” and “Which Jesus are you following?”