In a recent blog I questioned whether numerical growth in the Diocese of London should be taken as a model for the whole Church of England given the high level of institutional homophobia and prejudice in the diocese. The successful model exemplified by HTB and HTB plants incorporates teachings that result in the abuse of LGBTIQ+ people, abuse which mostly goes unreported and is not being dealt with by the diocesan hierarchy. I have subsequently been told that the statistics I used showing London as the only diocese demonstrating growth cover a period of thirty years and that recent statistics show other dioceses are growing with London showing a decline in numbers.
My prime concern, however, is the way that the systemic presence of homophobia and prejudice against LGBTIQ+ people creating abusive situations is not being recognised, let alone dealt with in the Diocese of London, or in the Church of England nationally. Why is the Church so unable to recognise homophobia and prejudice and so unwilling to deal with the effect of this abusive, damaging culture?
Ed Shaw, a church pastor in Bristol and part of the team of the Living Out group, recently published Purposeful Sexuality. Ed was a member of Living in Love and Faith Pastoral Advisory Group and two other members of Living Out participated in different working parties. Ed’s ideas about LGBTIQ+ people as revealed in his book can be taken as typifying the ethos of Living Out. They demonstrate the theology and experience of people who have internalised a punitive version of God found in salvation theology. It is the hold of this theology on the Church of England, forcefully presented by the Church of England Evangelical Council, that explains in part the inability of senior leaders in the Diocese of London to recognise, let alone deal with, the systemic homophobia, transphobia and prejudice that characterises the diocese. It is also the prime theological strand used in the Living in Love and Faith book, thus negating much of the potential of LLF to act as a catalyst for transformation in the Church that might enable a new radical Christian inclusion to be imagined and created – which is why Changing Attitude England has asked the Archbishops to define clearly the content of their radical new inclusive vision.
Ed Shaw believes we all have uniquely damaged sexualities having spoken, he says, to many people who struggle to feel that any of their sexual feelings are good, or to confidently distinguish what sexual behaviour is right or wrong because of what was cruelly done to them by others. I can only think Ed’s belief that all humans have uniquely damaged sexualities is the result of the Christian culture that has deeply influenced him. I was inducted into an Anglo-Catholic church from the age of three when I attended kindergarten Sunday School. My personality and my Christian upbringing is dramatically different from Ed’s. I never doubted my awareness from the age of twelve that I was gay, nor my intuition that God created me gay, loved me as a gay youth, and would never judge me. I have never believed in a God who judged me because of my sexuality. The difference between my experience as an adolescent in 1957 and Ed’s much later experience in conservative evangelical churches helps explain both why the Living in Love and Faith process is necessary in today’s church and also why it will fail to resolve the conflict between guilty and non-guilty LGBTIQ+ Christians.
It appears as if Ed’s life as a Christian has evolved within a shockingly damaging, abusive and prejudiced ‘Christian’ culture. As a result of this he believes in the idea that ‘all gay people must be single and celibate for life.' He comes across as a gay man who thinks his sexuality is broken and damaged. He does not understand that God is love and we are closer to God when we love. He has developed the strange (to me) idea that gay people have a sexuality so that we can understand how God feels when people reject him (God). He does not actually advocate changing a person's sexuality, but his message of the requirement to repress our sexual feelings and desires is unhealthy and potentially very damaging.
Sexuality, he says, has been created by God solely for the purpose of marital union. In Genesis 2 we “have gate-crashed the first ever wedding. Human sexuality is clearly in play right here at the beginning of human history, before anything at all had gone wrong.” “In the very beginning the first man (Adam) meets the first woman (Eve). The immediate result is the first love poem ever written (v. 23)” which “leads very quickly on to the very first marriage and sexual union (v 24). In the beginning, boy meets girl. They fall in love at first sight, get married straight away and experience the joy of sex - it's like Romeo and Juliet, but with a slightly happier ending.” This argument shows no understanding of evolutionary history over a period of some 13.7 billion years. It imagines that Genesis is an accurate account of creation in which Adam and Eve arrive, formed from dust, and immediately avail themselves of the ceremony of marriage that God has already provided.
Ed continues: “And this would seem to be human sexuality working as it was made to work by God himself – to draw two people of opposite sex into the lifelong union that is marriage. The Bible makes it clear that, right from the perfect beginning of life on this planet, sexuality is there for marital union.”
Those of us who dare to enjoy sex in our youth, dare to enjoy sex outside marriage, dare to enjoy sex as LGBTIQ+ people, married or unmarried, are inflicting on God pain time and time and time again, according to Ed, because of our sexual unfaithfulness. This idea, of course, arises from infantile, ignorant Christian teaching and creates guilty, neurotic, unhealthy and often abusive personalities. Where does the Church of England think the many examples of abusive clergy and lay people identified in recent decades have come from? They arise from this increasingly pervasive brand of what is not, in truth, Christianity.
In his first book Ed showed clear signs of being a self-hating gay man trying to justify hating himself because he is 'not God's best'. In this new book he seems to have moved to a more liminal set of justifications to support his position, such as [gay people] have a sexuality that we are banned from expressing so that we can share in God's pain of rejection and appreciate God more, quoting Ezekiel 16.1 - 19.
Ed is just one example 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 Living in Love and Faith book and course would not be necessary but for their deep influence within the Church of England, in the hierarchy and in every diocese. Neither would the Living in Love and Faith process be necessary if the Church of England had a clear understanding of theologies and philosophies and contemporary social wisdom that embody wisdom leading to healthy, creative, loving human relationships and identities.