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.
The mood, the environment, the culture of the Church of England in the decade from my teenage years (the nineteen sixties, by when I’d known I was gay for five years) to the nineteen nineties, was a good place in which to be gay. The whole of my being, my intuitive, experiential, feeling, creative, idealistic, introverted self, discovered that I was in a gay friendly environment despite that me also knowing that homosexuality was taboo and disapproved of by God. I now live in a spiritually depleted, hostile environment of endless battles, reports, reboots and ‘process’.
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.
Changing Attitude England works in the context of an always evolving faith in God, ‘True God’ and in the essence of Jesus’ life and teaching. we will continue to pursue its vision of a God of unconditional, infinite, intimate love and of Jesus who says “I have come that you may have life, life in all its fullness” (John 10.10); of the Archbishops’ commitment to “a radical new Christian inclusion”. The Church of England’s focus must be turned towards nurturing the essence of God’s unconditional, cosmic love in the hearts, bodies, minds and souls of all human beings. This is Jesus’ message, the truth of creation revealed in the Gospels, embodying a God of compassion, empathy, and unconditional Christian, universal love.
A gathering for progressive, inclusive, catholic, evangelical, contemplative, holistic, hopeful, maybe-Christians seeking transformation and justice within God’s unconditional, infinite, intimate love. It will be a mainly Christian gathering of mainly Anglican people from all walks of life. So far as is possible it will be a dogma- and discrimination- free zone exploring healthy living and spiritual life focused on love, goodness, wisdom, compassion, truth and justice
Six of us will be resourcing the day: Revd Dr Tina Beardsley, Revd Colin Coward, Rev David Page, Revd Dr John Seymour, Professor Helen King and Revd Robert Thompson.
Five of us met in September in a London garden for a conversation about what we believe. We are all advocates for justice in the Church - equality regardless of gender, sexuality, race or ability.
We will begin the day by reprising our garden conversation – do we share the same convictions about the essence of God?
We will spend time in small groups where our own stories and experience can be shared, leading into a plenary session to gather our wisdom and develop a shared narrative
Our focus will be on the seamless unity of love and goodness within the universe, in creation, evolution and human experience
I asked the other five members of the group resourcing the conference to write a brief autobiography by way of introducing themselves to you. You will find them below. But first, some personal reflections.
I have known Tina for nearly fifty years since we were ordinands together at Westcott House, Cambridge. David I have known since 1991 when we were both members of the newly formed Southwark Diocese Lesbian and Gay Support Network. John I first met in the early days of Changing Attitude when he was a member of the Bristol group. My friendship with Helen and Robert is more recent, dating from the Living in Love and Faith era. All of them embody Christian faith and vision in ways that inspire me. They give themselves, body and mind, heart and soul, to their Christian faith in ways that have turned their own lives upside-down and are turning the world of the Church of England upside-down.
Robert has inherited a church building turned upside-down by his predecessor, Andrew Foreshew-Cain and is turning parts of the Diocese of London upside-down. He is committed to a Lent fund-raising walking programme that is exhausting to read about. Helen has developed the ViaMedia blog founded by Jayne Ozanne into a vital tool of knowledge and wisdom drawing on a multitude of contributors. She is also heavily involved as an Oxford Synod member and both she and Robert are members of General Synod. Tina’s life journey has been transformative, both for herself and for those who have travelled with her. Her courage, her experience of parish ministry and hospital chaplaincy, her contribution to writing about and communicating the experience of trans people, all are remarkable. Tina balances my avant-garde spirituality with a deep commitment to and knowledge of the catholic mystical tradition. John’s evolution from hospital doctor through curacy, school chaplaincy, and theological college to parish priest in a London suburban parish combined with his intellectual depth gives him a range of coal-face experience that is tackling the challenges facing the Church of England in the most practical ways possible – bringing coherence and new life to a parish. John also remembers the things I forget! David is married to Howard, both are ordained. David with a PTO, represents for me all that should be totally normal and uncontroversial about being a happily married clergy couple. That’s what their life together in Winchelsea is like, Winchelsea being about as far as it’s possible to get from the episcopal oversight of Chichester. David has proved to be an evangelical bedrock of faith and wisdom for me for over thirty years.
Christina (Tina) Beardsley has served in parishes, and in healthcare chaplaincy where she began to write and teach about practical theology. Her earlier doctoral research was about the Victorian Romantic preacher, FW Robertson, who abandoned biblical literalism for a generous Liberal Anglicanism – the tensions we’re addressing in this conference are not new! Tina attended dance and movement classes for two decades as a way of addressing her gender identity, and embodiment in prayer has been a longstanding interest. Tina has co-authored/edited a trilogy of books about trans people in the life of the Church, the latest being Trans Affirming Churches: How to Celebrate Gender-Variant People and Their Loved Ones (2020).
Colin Coward founded Changing Attitude in 1995 following a career in architecture prior to being encouraged to offer himself for ministry by the combined efforts of the Basingstoke Team Ministry, building on foundations laid by Southwark Diocese’s South Bank Religion. His work for justice and equality for LGBTQIA+ people was recognised in 2014 when awarded an MBE. The work of Changing Attitude expanded following the 1998 Lambeth Conference. Groups were established in Kenya, Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Colin continues to be involved with justice for gay men in many African countries. Having retired in 2015 he resumed campaigning activities in 2017, expanding them to include the transformation of Christian attitudes that create an environment of theological naivety and prejudice on the basis of gender, sexuality and race.
Helen King is a member of General Synod where she is vice-chair of the Gender & Sexuality Group. She is Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University and writes on the history of medicine and the body. She grew up in an evangelical church experiencing charismatic revival, and since then has mostly worshipped wherever her parish church was, although with spells in more Anglo-Catholic environments. She is an authorised lay preacher in Oxford diocese and has led house groups. She sees inclusion as a single agenda based on love. A member of the Movement for the Ordination of Women and currently a trustee of Women and The Church (WATCH), she took part in the Diocesan Shared Conversations and was then invited to be one of the larger team working on the resources for Living in Love and Faith. Since 2015 she has blogged on https://shared-conversations.com/.
David Page was born and raised in the West Midlands, brought up as an Anglican, drifting away from the church in his teens He studied History at university and embarked upon a teaching career. All this was thrown up in the air when he fell in love with Howard and got involved in the charismatic renewal movement through Fountain Trust. David trained for ministry at St John’s College, Nottingham and ministered in three evangelical parishes in Southwark Diocese. In the ‘90s he became part of the steering group for the diocesan LGBT support network and, when Changing Attitude was formed, served as the first chair. David and Howard now live in Winchelsea in East Sussex where they organise the local NGS garden openings. David still engages in some Sunday ministry in country parishes round about and recently served two terms as Winchelsea’s mayor.
John Seymour felt a life-long call to work for other's wholeness leading him through a wide variety of roles and experiences. Originally a hospital doctor, his conversion to Christianity drew him to live as part of a lay community at St Paul's Cathedral and then to train for ordained ministry. Following a curacy in the East End of London, John worked as a school chaplain in Ealing for eight years, pioneering a Christian approach to education drawing on classical Greek, early Christian and liberation movement methods. He taught mission and contextual theology at St Augustine's College of theology for two years and is now guiding the renewal of a parish that had been stuck in a destructive cycle of internal conflict, applying family systems theory. John led the strategy to amalgamate Changing Attitude and LGCM and was responsible for the launch of OneBodyOneFaith. His work in education resulted in his doctoral thesis offering a Christian theology of education in a Critical Realist framework.
Robert Thompson is at present the Vicar of St Mary's Kilburn and St James', West Hampstead where he is also the chair of the Sherriff Centre, a community project based at St James' church. Robert is at present also a member of General Synod of the Church of England. In this context he has been an advocate of LGBTQIA+ affirmation and inclusion as well as for those who have suffered from abuse in Church of England communities. For most of his ministry Robert has worked as a Healthcare Chaplain in the NHS. He has also served as a Labour Councillor in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and chaired the Grenfell Recovery Scrutiny Committee.
Changing Attitude England’s event at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo next Saturday could not be more timely. Tickets are still available. Please join us. We need a day of reflection and new vision more than ever.
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/changing-attitude-england/life-in-all-its-fullness/e-zmqolb
General Synod LLF debate curtailed. We are trapped by the Conservatives and the failure of the House of Bishops to stand up to them and pursue a radical new Christian inclusion with courage. The pursuit is futile when it seeks to resolve differences in the Church between a powerful, male, demanding, abusive, rule-based, sin-hating, dogmatic, punitive Omni-God (for such is the god adhered to by CEEC) and a God of unconditional, infinite, intimate love, the God of Jesus, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and Paul. The two Gods are not compatible. Trying to achieve agreement between the 20% believing in the Omni-God and the 80% believing in the God of Jesus is impossible.
The Church of England is having the greatest difficulty catching up with attitudes to the role of women and the place of LGBTQIA+ and black and brown people in Christianity, and to attitudes to belief in God, to a transformation from belief in God as a person or being, an entity, to an equally ancient spiritual tradition of God as Mystery, as the essence of life and energy, of primary human values and experience that lay the foundations of love, truth, goodness, health, wisdom and justice.
Trans people will be participating in the Changing Attitude England’s conversation at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo on 2nd March as we pursue the ‘deeply Christian’ vision of ‘Life in all its fullness’, by which we mean, at the very least, ‘treating each person as a unique individual of inherent worth.’
When the Church endows Jesus with a divine nature and magical powers and his followers with spiritual powers way beyond anything we are capable of, the result is fantasy faith, the belief that God has and will intervene to short-circuit human emotions and experience. That’s where conflict in the faith of the Church of England resides today.
