Recent comments on the Thinking Anglicans website made very dogmatic assertions about doctrine in the Church of England. There is another, entirely different basis on which faith can be formed, a path that subtly infused my consciousness, creating freedom. Love is the essence. God is love. Love changes everything. St John got it. Jesus got it. The Christian teachers and writers and theologians who inspired and enthused and infused me got it.
I would like to be part of a Church that is evolving spiritually, theologically and culturally, intentionally responding to the movements of our time: the climate crisis, poverty, war, abuse, the transformation of the place of minorities and those against whom prejudice is expressed. I would like a Church that is growing, maturing, overcoming prejudice, committed to radical new Christian inclusion more than it is committed to growth in numbers and income – AND is committing resources to this ambitious Christian vision.
In the period of my lifetime, I have witnessed a movement in church and society from reliance on interior to exterior authority. This movement has happened because of changes that have taken place that have increased human anxiety and insecurity at the same time as we have become more scientific, more aware, more person-centred, more able, potentially, to diagnose and heal physical and emotional disturbances to our bodies and psyches. Externalised authority and awareness has become dominant in the Christian Church today over and against our internal intuition and wisdom.
There is something very unpleasant going on in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion since 1998 that leaves me feeling increasingly conflicted and abused emotionally and spiritually – assaulted by dogma and doctrine and a cruel, ruthless God. This is where the rich, creative, inspiring Christian heritage of my first five decades has brought me; deep disagreement about my sexuality, my priesthood, my membership of the Church of England, my theology and my spiritual vision. It has become more and more difficult to live with this - and it gets worse.
I have never believed in the God believed in by the Church of England Evangelical Council, the HTB hierarchy and the Anglican Global South majority – never. After seventy years in which time our ideas about God have continued to evolve, the regressive, authoritarian, dogmatic, supposedly orthodox, traditional theology and teaching still dominates the conservative evangelical mindset of the Church of England Evangelical Council and the Global South majority of the Anglican Communion.
Institutional religions and the institutional Church are finding this evolutionary step, the call to listen to everything until it all belongs together and we are part of it, very difficult to imagine, let alone adjust to and integrate in its teaching and practice. Sexuality, gender, inequality, economic injustice, the climate crisis, how people function and malfunction, emotionally, physically and spiritually, the well-being of our planet and environment, globalisation, artificial intelligence and the manipulation of what we take to be reality, dysfunctional political and spiritual leadership, are all requiring us to make sometimes massive adjustments to our lives in faith.
Any authoritarian system of morals, whether it ascribes authority to God or the Church (or the Bible), if it is accepted uncritically, depends on the Super-ego. It is opposed to the Christian principle of using eyes and ears to learn for oneself. Both Ego and Super-ego must grow up and forsake infantile fixations.
