Conservatives claim that declining numbers in progressive congregations are the result of progressive, non-Biblical, non-orthodox, non-traditional, non-creedal formulations of Christianity. I claim that declining numbers are due to people abandoning the Church because people think traditional theologies are no longer believable.
We need to get this toxic theology out of the Church
The theology and behaviour of the Anglican Church is intolerable
Clinging to faith is increasingly problematic
The Church is making the faith less and less attractive with a theology that messes people up
Bad theology is in the bloodstream of the Church
Passionless sex is very problematic
Jesus was processing his life of human experience and emotions and relationships with exactly the same resources as you and I process our lives and experience. One difference between us (not the difference between divine and human nature) is that our experience, if we are Christians, is processed through the constructs of theology and faith that evolved following Jesus’ death and have been evolving ever since. We are programmed in a way Jesus wasn’t.
There are, within specific cultural and social frameworks, specific bodies that have been regarded as particularly vile: those of a particular sex, race, religion, tribe, sexual orientation, disability or age. “Powerful Christians have regarded as abhorrent not merely the bodies of women but the bodies of many other perceived ‘others’, for example Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, people of colour, heretics.”
Do gay people contaminate the Church of England? This question has been haunting me since I learnt yesterday that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York seem to have accepted the resignation of the Revd Andrew Hammond, Chaplain at St John’s College, Cambridge, openly gay and appointed as chaplain to the General Synod by the Archbishops last year. Andrew offered his resignation as a result of homophobic reactions to his contribution to the act of worship at Synod on Tuesday morning, part of an act of worship themed round humility. Andrew’s key point was that humility is the opposite of the sin of pride. The Gay Pride movement is using the word as the opposite of a sin that produces humiliation and shame.
Ian Paul published a long blog in response to Richard Coles’ ‘honest reflections’ in a Times article published on April 17th.in the context of Richard’s retirement from parish ministry. I have written a response to Ian, edited and improved with the help of Changing Attitude England’s steering group. want to go public in order to comment critically on Ian’s thinking. He raises questions that affect me deeply and intimately as a gay man, a priest who is partnered and in love and retired from active ministry.
We are all implicated in the systemic abuse of people within the Church of England because we, the Church, have become infected to a greater or lesser degree by our inability to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy ideas about God, healthy and unhealthy theologies, healthy and unhealthy readings of the Bible, healthy and unhealthy practices and teachings. The Church will not begin to overcome the effects of this unhealthy, abusive culture until it is able to examine with clarity exactly what is healthy and unhealthy in today’s Christian teaching and practice.
Ed Shaw, a church pastor in Bristol, part of the team of the Living Out group, and a member of Living in Love and Faith Pastoral Advisory Group has recently published Purposeful Sexuality. Ed’s ideas about LGBTIQ+ people as revealed in his book demonstrate the theology and experience of people who have internalised a punitive version of God found in salvation theology. Ed is just one among thousands of people in the Church of England who either share his theology or are intimidated into accepting this false, dangerous theology by powerful conservative networks in the Church. The LLF book and course would not be necessary but for their deep influence within the Church of England, in the hierarchy and in every diocese.
