Zimbabwean Simukai Chigudu, arriving at Oxford in 2013, was surprised to discover the ghosts of Zimbabwe’s colonial past all around him. None haunted Oxford more than Cecil Rhodes, who had been a student at Oriel College. Oxford replicated the culture of ‘Saints’, St George’s College, Harare where he had been schooled – colonialism there had never really ended. It was a historical mass that bent everything around its gravity. Simukai began to question the strange place he occupied in this contorted world. He realised he was both complicit in the colonial project the university represented as well as being alienated and angered by it. Simukai was shedding, in the UK, the world view he had been inducted into at ‘Saints’ but wasn’t quite sure what he should replace it with.
Then, on 9 March 2015 a student at the University of Cape Town hurled a bucket of shit at the statue of Cecil Rhodes in Cape Town. That event was the catalyst as a result of which Simukai became a leader in the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, a collective demanding that the statue of Rhodes on the facade of Oriel College be taken down and housed in a museum. The collective thought they were making progress on their aims when Oriel College pledged to launch a six month listening exercise to gather evidence and opinions to help decide on the future of the statue. But a mere six weeks later the college reneged on this pledge, stating that it would not remove the statue of the imperialist on the grounds that there was overwhelming support to keep it. It was later discovered that Oriel stood to lose £100m in gifts from donors if it was to take down the statue. Four years later Simukai experienced shock, anger and rage as he watched the video of the brutal torture and murder of George Floyd at the knee of police officer Derek Chauvin in the USA. Later, the heads of all the Oxford Colleges – every one of them white – wrote an open letter claiming they stood in solidarity with Black students and affirming their commitment to equal dignity and respect. The Guardian’s Gary Younge observed that white people periodically “discover” racism with great self-indulgence but precious little self-awareness.
Homophobia is similarly woven through Christianity’s culture, teaching and practice in the way that colonialism is woven through British culture. Homophobia and colonialism continue to reside in both cultures, unnoticed.
The Archbishops of the Church of England stated their commitment to a new radical inclusion following the February 2017 Synod and we all assumed this meant a new radical inclusion of LGBTIQ+ people in the Church. But the Archbishops and bishops don’t understand how the Church is infected by homophobia from top to bottom. We who pray and have long campaigned for radical equality don’t understand how the systemic homophobia in the Church affects us and our attitude to change.
People thought we were making progress when the Shared Conversations were announced and people thought we were making progress when the House of Bishops report GS 2055 was voted down in Synod and people thought we were making progress when the Archbishops announced their radical conversion. When the Living in Love and Faith process was announced I warned that it was simply a further delaying tactic but people wanted to believe in the process and the commitment made by the Archbishops. Now I warn that when it is brought to Synod in 2022 nothing radical will be proposed. Instead there will be a period in which the implications of the current process will be re-processed and digested.
Two thirds of the bishops we wrote to in November 2020 didn’t reply to our letter. Few of the eleven who did reply understood how systemic homophobia works in the church and how unaware they are of the effect it has on them. The LLF process cannot be trusted and cannot work because the bishops cannot see what the problem is, even now, after two years of dedicated work on the LLF project. Those involved in the project who had eyes to see and ears to hear either resigned or were in despair at the end, feeling they had been abused.
The purpose of the campaign that the re-created Changing Attitude England group is conducting is to engage creatively with the bishops in the hope that by the time they bring proposals to Synod in 2022 they will understand that if they do not address equal marriage in church and equality for clergy and lay ministers, we will be really angry, and they will know why.
But more importantly, we hope that you reading this blog will be awakened to the challenge we face to get the bishops to understand the effect of systemic homophobia in the Church and what the commitment to a radical new inclusion means. We want a group of angrily motivated and creative, visionary, passionate, prophetic LGBTIQ+ people and allies to be present at the 2022 Synod ready to hold the bishops to account. They have eighteen months in which to learn the lesson that they and we are haunted by the presence of homophobia in the way we use the Bible and the way we think about LGBTIQ+ people.
Simukai experienced shock, anger and rage when he witnessed the murder of George Floyd followed by the open letter from the heads of Oxford Colleges committing themselves to equal dignity and respect. I experience shock, anger and rage when I read some of the replies from bishops and remember that two thirds of them didn’t even reply.
[I want to apologise to the Bishop of Bradwell, the Rt Revd John Permubalath, who in the previous blog was listed among the bishops who had not replied to our letter. He had indeed replied at length, and positively, in an email, copied to me.]