I am more angry today about the Church of England’s more than sixty years of attempting to sort out its attitude to LGBTIQ+ people than I have been in thirty years of active involvement.
Just days after the Church of England published the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) book and posted accompanying resources online, the Church of England Evangelical Council posted a thirty minute professionally produced video on their website. The video had clearly taken weeks to film and edit. Jason Roach who introduces the video was a member of the Co-ordinating group responsible for LLF. A number of other participants in the core LLF process appear in the video. They had determined their stance to LLF before the book was published. If the Church of England concedes any ground to LGBTIQ+ people, they threaten to form a third or fourth Province, so effectively creating a schism in the Church. In their appeal at the end of the Living in Love and Faith book, the bishops strong hope is that people will engage with the book together with those who have different perspectives and lived experiences. The CEEC had already decided to set conditions in advance of seeing the book that threatened the safety of LGBTIQ+ participants.
Today Christian Concern has posted a video on YouTube presented by The Wilberforce Academy's Ben John. I don’t know what Ben’s role is in the Academy, but it is integral to the work of Christian Concern . The video uses clips from the official Living in Love and Faith Introductory video, pausing after each section to allow Ben John to comment. His attacks on and abuse of those who appear in the video is disgusting and possibly actionable. It has already been reported as a hate crime. The video is also being promoted by Anglican Mainstream. Both Christian Concern and Anglican Mainstream have members on General Synod.
Two friends of mine, Revd Tina Beardsley and Sara Gillingham, have been committed to the LLF process. Both also called out the abusive, unsafe dynamic of the LLF process when they resigned (in Tina’s case from the Co-ordinating Group) and withdrew (Sara). ANY process examining LGBTIQ+ people and our experience in contemporary society in the way the Church of England is doing is abusive. Both wrote about their decisions in article published by the Church Times. The bishops and others responsible for the LLF process were warned in advance that it was abusive and unsafe.
In 2020 any process that seeks to examine the lives and identities of LGBTIQ+ people is intrinsically abusive. Twenty, thirty and forty years ago this wasn’t understood. Today, as my friends in the Church have said repeatedly, I am sick of having my life dissected by the Church, forensically examined, and attacked by bodies such as the CEEC, Christian Concern and Anglican Mainstream. They are a poison in the Body of Christ. I have participated in conversations across difference for nearly thirty years. I’m relieved not to have endure further homophobic attitudes and abusive language.
These organisations have now fatally sabotaged the LLF process. It cannot go ahead in the way proposed because they have made it transparently impossible to guarantee peoples’ safety. I pointed out in a recent blog that the bishops have taken sole responsibility for overseeing the next stage of the LLF process and for bringing proposals to General Synod in 2022. Well, bishops, how are you going to handle this? A group of us will be writing to those bishops who claim to support LGBTIQ+ members of the church challenging them to answer the question in a way that responds to our urgent expectation of real change and transformation. This will not happen unless individual bishops break rank with the expectation of collegial responsibility. I challenged again members of the House of Bishops who claim to be fully supportive to publicly dissent from the process.
Our challenge, those of us who are LGBTIQ+ and our supporters, is to confront the bishops with the impossibility of making their vison work and ask them what their plan B is. It is unsafe for any LGBTIQ+ person to take part in a group where members of the three conservative evangelical networks are going to be present. People have been asking whether we would advise them to take part. The advice is now clear – absolutely not.