Last Sunday I decided to not to go, as has become my custom, to Southwark Cathedral’s 11.00 Choral Eucharist. Instead I took an Elizabeth Line train almost as far west as my Freedom Pass allowed – to Maidenhead - thinking I might walk to view Brunel’s graceful bridge over the Thames. It turns out Taplow station is a bit nearer the bridge but Elizabeth Line trains don’t stop there. Maidenhead turned out not to have the kind of idyllic town centre I was imagining. God had other reasons for sending me to Maidenhead, however.
Searching fruitlessly for a genuinely local café, I noticed a sort of modern church down a pedestrianised side road with a truly nasty skinny spire stuck atop an elongated pedestal. The church was St Mary’s Maidenhead, the doors were open, the 11am congregation had left half an hour ago but a couple of church members were still around. Extensive renovation and upgrading has taken place on what was an uninspiring post-war building to create a ‘functional’ space encompassing modern technology. The culture of the church is charismatic evangelical, and it is highly successful. There are three main services on a Sunday, each with its own large congregation; there are multiple groups for adults: Christianity Explored, Christian Foundations and Growth Groups, plus an International Welcome is extended. This is clearly an exemplary church modelling contemporary Church of England culture. It is successful, open all week, financially viable and attracting large numbers of people across a wide range of ages. Neither the building nor the worship style are my cup of tea.
A conversation about making Jesus known
I began what became a long conversation with one of the church members. He gave me an introduction leaflet. The church’s mission statement is to know Jesus and make Jesus known. I asked the member of the congregation which Jesus they were getting to know and make known - a cheeky question, I know. We had a conversation about the kind of Jesus the Gospels reveal. Unsurprisingly, we held very different ideas. Get to know his Jesus and everything falls into place; know mine, and challenges confront you. “Sell all you have, leave family behind, and follow me.” The church member was vulnerable, and I understood why a secure, reassuring Jesus was so important for him.
I moved the conversation on to sexuality. The churchy follows Biblical teaching on sexuality. I asked if he would like to quote all the places in the Gospels where Jesus teaches against homosexuality. Ummmmm, no, he couldn’t. How about gender, given the significant numbers of women involved with Jesus and Mary Magdalene being the first to witness the risen Christ? He said they hold women in the greatest respect and women lead lots of things but they are not allowed to lead or preach at the main services.
Soooo . . . St Mary’s Maidenhead maintains, according to my reading of the Bible and my model of Jesus, an abusive teaching about the role of women in church and abusive teaching about intimate relationships for LGBTQIA+ people.
I know it can be tough for anyone who happens to be present when I visit a church – but I’ve had enough of being the person enduring the discomfort every time I visit somewhere new and wonder what their attitude is to my sexuality. During the conversation, it was revealed that the Revd Sam Allberry had been on the staff a decade or so ago. Sam, you will recall, was a founder member of Living Out, a group built on the premise that “same-sex attracted Christians could live faithfully by embracing celibacy, finding their identity in Christ rather than in their sexuality.” Sam has recently been dismissed from and blacklisted by ACNA churches, dioceses and networks in the USA having admitted to an inappropriate relationship with a man.
Reflections on my encounter
On the train home, I pondered. Did I come all this way for this; to engage in conversation with a member of a charismatic evangelical town centre Anglican Church that practiced and preached the Biblical orthodox truth (according to their reading of the Bible and the inherited prejudices and false teachings that go with this tradition) that being actively homosexual is a sin and women have not been given authority by God to lead worship for a congregation of adults or preach to them?
If God does any leading of us at all in our lives, how curious that God had led me to this: to a conversation in which a man struggled hard, and successfully, to avoid saying anything about me that might offend or upset me, while I, knowing he was emotionally fragile, contained my growing frustration as I listened patiently and compassionately to him telling me what God thought in this church, where the mission was to know Jesus and make Jesus known, the homophobic, misogynistic, un-Christian, un-Godly, prejudiced, abusive Jesus of false teaching.
Another conversation - in Blackheath
Two weeks ago I’d done something similar. Walking home on Sunday evening from Westcombe Park station and passing St John’s Church, Blackheath at 17.55, I noticed that their evening worship was about to begin. I walked in, suspecting, rightly, that it is another charismatic, evangelical HTB style church. I sat at the back for fifteen minutes evaluating the welcome and the choruses and then decided it was time to go home. Instead, I fell into conversation with two men in the foyer, there to greet late arrivals. An hour later, feeling angry at being told I needed urgently to confess to God my sins of pride and intuitive arrogance, I walked out as the service ended.
The people who are so deeply attached to and persuaded by HTB conservative charismatic evangelical doctrine and prejudice have no idea how unhealthy, abusive and un-Christian their rigid “Bible-based” teaching and informal worship is. Despite knowing that I am going to encounter homophobic prejudice in these churches, mostly delivered with a smile and a cringing apology (though not at the Blackheath Church where the censure was barbed) I still worship regularly and always maintain my deep, daily, contemplative Christian prayer life; and I “go to church” most Sundays and engage there in person and online with other members of groups within the Church of England.
A decadentChurch
The Church of England is decadent. It fuels the success of these growing, church-planting networks because they are the answer to the church’s desperate congregational and financial decline. In prioritising this unhealthy, abusive version of what is becoming the dominant contemporary Christian theology, the C of E is enshrining abuse within more and more congregations. No wonder the hierarchy are incapable of dealing successfully with the safeguarding crisis. The hierarchy doesn’t begin to understand what it is about its teaching, culture and practice that fuels sexually and emotionally immature, inadequate and unhealthy personalities.
I write about this repeatedly because until the Church of England bishops and Synod understand how abusive this so-called Christian teaching is, the abuse will continue - and I want the abuse to end. I’m very happy to visit churches with different traditions and styles of worship as a sociological exercise. I am not prepared to tolerate for ever the silent, unspoken, unadvertised prejudice against people because of their gender or sexuality. It’s toxic, unhealthy, abusive, un-Christian, and ultimately, deeply damaging to the Gospel.
Changing Attitude and Unadulterated Love
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