equality

Is Christianity losing its sense of morality or finding new vision?

Is Christianity losing its sense of morality or finding new vision?

Many in the Church of England are involved with movements and campaigns for justice and equality: for women, LGBTQIA+ people, black and ethnic minority people, those living in poverty, the abused, those denigrated and despised as unwelcome and unwanted immigrants. All these campaigns and movements are transforming our moral universe despite the resistance of many in the Church. Progress towards creating a healthy Church, working towards the full equality of all creation, rooted in the Jesus essence of life in all its fullness is the vision of the progressive, spiritual, prophetic, evolutionary movements working constructively together.

Poll shows CofE majority support equal marriage for LGBTQIA+ people

Poll shows CofE majority support equal marriage for LGBTQIA+ people

A YouGov poll, commissioned by the Ozanne Foundation shows that a majority of members of the Church of England now support equal marriage for lesbian and gay couples despite the Church of England’s refusal to allow equal marriage or blessings in church. Changing Attitude England has been campaigning for the full equality of LGBTQIA+ people in the Church of England since 1995. The findings of the YouGov poll brings greater urgency to the need for equal marriage and ministry in the Church of England after more than four decades of exploration and study.

Collegiality and Tutufication

Collegiality and Tutufication

Canon Mark Oakley has coined a new word, saying “we need a brave Tutufication of the Church, allowing bishops more creativity, freedom of speech and honesty about what they believe, with a commitment to never let religion compromise justice.” I believe the entirety of the Church of England needs a far more radical ‘Tutufication’. For a start, the Church needs bishops who with the courage and independence of mind to individually Tutuficate themselves. Today’s House of Bishops is composed of men and women with none of the Christian conviction, courage, radicalism, independence of mind, freedom of heart and soul, playfulness and energy that fuelled Desmond Tutu and transformed people open enough to respond to his proclamation of God’s unconditional love, energy, truth and justice.

Finding the voice of LGBTIQ+ people and allies in the LLF conversations

Finding the voice of LGBTIQ+ people and allies in the LLF conversations

People are reporting on Facebook groups that their parish has already held a meeting or series of meetings to engage with the Living in Love and Faith course material. Many more report that parishes will be holding meetings to work through the course in the Autumn. It will be all too easy for us to engage with the material without raising a basic question. The LLF process and the material which has been published assume an equal validity between those who argue for a transformation of teaching and practice leading to full equality for LGBTIQ+ people and those who argue from the Bible and the clobber texts against equal marriage and sexual intimacy for clergy. I propose that we find the courage to challenge the material at a basic level.

Finding confidence in a radical vision of faith, sexuality and gender

Finding confidence in a radical vision of faith, sexuality and gender

We are faced with a number of challenging realities at the moment, spiritual, national and global, from the after effects of Brexit to the realities of the climate crisis and the Covid 19 pandemic. Dealing with LLF and the Church of England’s inability to allow LGBTIQ+ people to determine our own agenda and develop the space I, for one, expect the Church to create for us, adds to the emotional and psychological disturbance. John Pavlovitz’s account of his own transforming journey to recognise that LGBTIQ+ people also require equality in Church and Kingdom is a restorative stimulus to faith in my own radical vision.

I repeat: The Church of England is systemically abusive

I repeat: The Church of England is systemically abusive

Transgender and Intersex friends of mine and the wider Transgender and Intersex networks to which they belong are angry at the way they feel the LLF process abused them. The serious concerns reported repeatedly by some have not been taken onboard. From my liminal place in relation to the Church of England my perspective is clearly at odds with those who are committed to the protection and preservation of the institution. I do not see best practice or the highest interests of LGBTI+ people being upheld.

A Christian Vision of Seamless Reality

A Christian Vision of Seamless Reality

Tucked away at the end of this blog is the revolutionary dynamite that was inspired by an article in the Guardian Review on Saturday 18 May 2019. Only a seamless vision of creation, evolution, Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the risen Christ, son of God, can hope to radically transform our relationship with our planet, the universe, our brothers and sisters in every continent of every race and gender and sexuality, overcoming our addiction to the defence of prejudice and difference.

Unconditional Love – a New Year Resolution for 2019

Unconditional Love – a New Year Resolution for 2019

We can become too easily (and understandably) trapped in the binary, good and evil, us and them, loving God and punitive God dynamic on which the dualistic faith of conservative traditionalist Christians is founded. It’s New Year Resolution time: and for me it’s renewed decision time. Do I – do we – opt for and choose to construct from our interior conviction and from the Biblical evidence – a God of unconditional love who is entirely and unconditionally for creation and evolution and for us, we the diverse human community living on planet earth?

Christian LGBTI+ Equality - a strategy for change

Christian LGBTI+ Equality - a strategy for change

The hierarchy of the Church of England is currently engaged in a three year process to write an Episcopal Teaching document, recently renamed Living in Love and Faith: Christian teaching and learning about human identity, sexuality and marriage. This document is not being written in response to the goals pursued by LGBTI+ Christians. It continues the attempt to resolve the conflict between ‘orthodox’ and ‘revisionist’ tribes in the church. The conviction, passion, identity and experience of LGBTI+ Christians is submerged under the needs of the institution to pursue a less than radical Christian synthesis. The establishment needs to be educated by us into what a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church means in reality, based on good, healthy, flourishing relationships and a 21st century understanding of being human and of being sexual.

Something is dramatically wrong with the C of E

Something is dramatically wrong with the C of E

My view of what is so dramatically wrong with the Church of England is that it fears teaching people about God, the God of whom Eckhart wrote: “God created all things in such a way that they are not outside himself, as ignorant people falsely imagine. Everything that God creates or does he does or creates in himself, sees or knows in himself, loves in himself.” Mutual Flourishing, Shared Conversations, and Five Guiding Principles are attempts to maintain fundamental, endemic, systemic, un-Godly, un-holy theology and discrimination. Mutual flourishing is a great quality, but a tertiary quality compared with the quality of the divine, holy, ‘isness’ of God, that of God, infinite and unconditional, awe-full and awe inspiring, love pouring out and love immersing, in all of creation and evolution. What I think is really, fundamentally and dramatically wrong about the Church of England is that it’s just not getting God.