My initially involuntary involvement with the Church of England (I was ‘sent’ to kindergarten Sunday school at the age of four in 1949) was fortuitous. My personality found a safe home in the Christian culture of my local church. The church taught me, in a traditional Sunday School way, about God and Jesus through learning stories about Jesus from the Bible. The ethos of the church was High Church Parish Communion but failed to instil in me an allegiance to Anglo-Catholic ritual or teachings. It’s just what my church happened to be – processions, servers, incense, ritual – things that appealed to a gay youth. The experience of life in this congregation gave me the freedom, or I took to myself the freedom, to develop belief in my own way, rejecting teachings that were hostile to my sexuality. I never had a conversion experience or “gave my life to Jesus”.
The result of this immersion in a congregation with two particularly gifted priests and many gifted lay members had a great, unasked for influence on me. The church had a freedom that allowed my innate sense of who I was and my intuition about what made sense in Christian teaching to develop. My experience of being an integral member of a congregation who lived according to their Christian convictions gave me the confidence to trust my faith intuitions. I became a committed Christian without knowing it, by immersion in their experience, feelings and values. I was a believer who had stronger convictions about what Christian teachings didn’t make sense than about the teachings that had to be believed and adhered to because that’s what the Bible said and that’s what God required and that’s what’s written in the Bible and rehearsed in the creeds – let alone that this was what the institution required.
The Church happened, fortuitously, to be in the diocese of Southwark. There were clergy around me who were already deeply influenced by radical theology and the liturgical movement. I was infected with the buzz of the new and newly-possible. It made intuitive sense to me. I lived with the conviction of how ‘doing’ Christianity this way, with increasing lay involvement and openness of liturgical forms, transformations happened – and this is what Christianity was all about – the transformation of lives.
Time passed and my intuitive, innate, experiential faith flourished. My sexuality was increasingly recognised, first at St Michael’s Basingstoke, then at Westcott House, then the Lesbian and Gay Clergy Consultation and eventually, the Southwark Diocese Lesbian and Gay Support Network. The Church published or suppressed reports about my sexuality, to no effect, and eventually the bishops published Issues in Human Sexuality, a document worthy only of being ignored. Despite this, thirty three years later, the inadequate little booklet still survives, waiting to be replaced by something that will still be inadequate. The new teaching document will be upheld as the Church of England’s guide to my life as a gay man, teachings that I’m unlikely to prioritise when, as a gay man, I’ve always known what I wanted and fancied (even if I haven’t always found it) despite the Church of England’s homophobic anxieties. The Church was, of course, lavishly furnished with gifted, inspiring, spiritually wise, gay priests at the time.
2024, LLF, Next Steps
So here we are, 2024, in the shadow of the July meeting of General Synod and the passage of the latest Living in Love and Faith motion by narrow vote margins by Houses in General Synod - and I have become a homeless and rootless person in the institution, BECAUSE I am still rooted in the innate, intuitive, experiential faith that evolved quite naturally in the earlier decades of my life.
My argument is that in the period of my lifetime, I have witnessed a movement from reliance on interior authority to exterior authority. This movement has happened because of the changes that have taken place that have increase 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. The result is a Church culture that is detrimental to the ethos of my youthful Christian wisdom, a culture that nurtured and affirmed and helped me internalise and trust my innate spiritual energies.
I was a largely inactive member of the post-war movement that led to Stonewall and to LGBTQIA+ people witnessing to our own experience, knowing for ourselves how human cultures needed to change. I knew for myself what the healthier, more Christ-like pattern of faith looked like, at least for this gay man. But in the Church of England, we are stuck in a conflict between those who understand that all human relationships are vulnerable and fragile, needing the support of our families, friends and communities for them to survive and thrive, gay or straight, versus a tribal minority who want to impose their version of Biblical and Divine authority . . . on us . . on the transgressive LGBTQIA+ minority. It has become, for me, a conflict between my ultimate, authentic, intuitive truth about myself versus their God’s ultimate truth.
My experiential faith, open, cosmic, complex, intuitive, contemplative, evolving, rooted in ‘life in all its fullness’ faith struggles to find any kind of home in today’s Church. Maybe this is just a ‘Colin’ problem. Maybe not.
The Church of England’s Vision and Strategy
The Church of England website has pages and pages of information about vision, strategy, mission, ministry, etc., etc. The CofE has a vision, One vision. It is, in two sentences, to be a Church for the whole nation which is Jesus Christ centred, and shaped by, the five marks of mission. A church that is simpler, humbler, bolder. This simpler, humbler, bolder Church has a vision strategy that is Jesus Christ centred and shaped . There is a page about funding strategic mission and ministry.
In the summer of 2022, the national Church agreed and announced its 2023-31 spending plans. These plans include the creation of Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI), which is to enable the strategic priorities and the bold outcomes of the Church of England’s Vision and Strategy for the 2020s.
SMMI is an ongoing commitment over nine years. The vast majority of this funding will go directly to dioceses to advance their plans for the Vision and Strategy in local parishes and communities across the country, called the Diocesan Investment Programme.
A second stream of People and Partnerships Funding will supplement the direct investment provided to dioceses to frontline mission and ministry, with the intention to address key gaps the Church as a whole is facing to deliver the Church's Vision and Strategy and includes a small level of grants in the form of partnership, innovation and research funding.
There is a Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board that distributes the SMMI funding on behalf of the Archbishops’ Council. The Board also tracks the effective delivery and impact of existing funded mission projects across the country.
There are pages of this stuff and some diagrams to explain the multiple complexities of this complex programme. It reads like something that would be beautifully spoofed on an 18.30 Monday to Friday Radio 4 comedy programme. This is part of ‘Colin’s problem’ with today’s Church of England. It is so far removed from the kind of Christian life and vision that inspired me in my earlier years. It leaves my head addled and confused. What’s it all about? Why is the language so business and control dominated? (Well, we know the answer to that question – ++JW).
And here’s a funny thing; General Synod and the House of Bishops (and presumably the Archbishops’ Council, dark heart of all these plans and strategies) are spending vast amounts of time dealing with the Living in Love and Faith process (which is supposed to be sorting out an honoured, equal place for LGBTQIA+ people in the Church of England) and vast amounts of time dealing shockingly ineffectively with deeply personal, historic and contemporary issues of abuse and safeguarding in the CofE.
And somewhere else in the firmament, beyond the visible failures of General Synod to hold the Archbishops to account for failures to deal with systemically abusive clergy, failure to respond to the victims of abuse, and failures of safeguarding, the LLF process drags on and is unlikely to have created a fully equal and inclusive culture for LGBTQIA+ people before I die. And somewhere in the firmament, millions of pounds are being thrown at creating new congregation, and re-creating old congregations, in the image of Holy Trinity Brompton.
The Marshall Plan
Andrew Graystone described at length one such vision and meta-scheme strategy in an article published by Prospect magazine in March 2024. . Andrew describes the contribution being made by hedge fund manager Paul Marshall. Paul is apparently on a God-driven mission to transform the religious fabric of the nation – and has the money to do it.
Through his Sequoia Trust Marshall funds the Centre for Cultural Witness (CCW), run from an office in Lambeth Palace, first principal Graham Tomlin, later made bishop of Kensington. The Sequoia Trust is chaired by Marshall with his wife and son among the trustees. In the year to mid-2022 it dispensed some £80m in charitable giving and its net assets stood at £417m. It gave £10m to the Church Revitalisation Trust (CRT) and £1m to HTB. Marshall has put huge sums into the creation of the Church Revitalisation Trust, “to further the church-planting activity which was previously undertaken by Holy Trinity Brompton”—a “plant” is a new or fundamentally re-invigorated worshipping community. HTB, the CRT and the Alpha course share their offices and many of their senior staff. The trust’s plan is “to plant City Centre Resource churches in key cities across England and Wales that will become hubs for resourcing, planting and regeneration within their dioceses and communities.” To achieve this, it will “recruit and train clergy and leaders... worship leaders, youth pastors, children’s workers, operations directors and social action workers”, to be deployed in a franchised network of newly planted churches.
Dean of Revitalisation for Southwark Diocese
In January 2024 the Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Revd Christopher Chessun appointed the Revd Charlie Lamont to the new role of Dean of Revitalisation for Southwark Diocese. Charlie Lamont was at the time Senior Minister of St Andrew’s Church in Wimbledon, a church I am familiar with from my youth. There, Charlie formed “a Christ centred family that welcomes anyone in through our doors, defined by our authentic love for one another and our pursuit of Jesus and his kingdom.”
The Diocese of Southwark, like so much else in the Church of England, is infected by the contemporary. Archbishops’ Council approved, corporate institutional “success-speak”. The diocese:
“has a vision for growth that is Christ centred and outward focused. Working together with the Archdeacons, Charlie will focus mainly on the growth, vitality and wellbeing on churches that have smaller regular attendance figures. He will play a key role in the creation and delivery of a two-year transformation programme that is focused on helping to revitalise parishes.”
“We know that there is a huge amount creativity to be found amongst our smaller churches,” said Charlie. “I’m looking forward to working with parishes from a wide range of traditions to help focus on Gospel ministry, unlock the potential that the local church has in building the kingdom of God, and help them to discover new life and possibilities in growing deeper and wider in Jesus.”
“He has revitalised St Andrew’s Wimbledon and he will now use his expertise to work alongside parishes in their own renewal.”
This role will be initially funded separately by the Southwark Vision Development Fund.
Charlie - the disgrace of clergy in civil partnerships
Charlie Lamont contributed a chapter in God's Church for God's World: Faithful Perspectives on Mission and Ministry published in 2022 offering essays and testimony from Evangelical Anglicans ahead of the Lambeth Conference 2022 that explore both the current state of Anglicanism and the future of Anglicanism in the UK. It claimed to answer the question: What is really going on inside the Church of England? An honest, behind-the-scenes look at the Church of England in the twenty-first century, Here is an excerpt from Charlie’s chapter:
“As I say, for mission (the question of sexuality is) not an issue, but it is for doctrine, and the church has to stand on solid doctrine. That is because, in our training and our discipleship, we have to have a firm foundation in Scripture. The minute that’s lost, which it is in practice, we have an issue. The wider church as it is, four churches in my locality have same-sex couples leading them – ordained people who are living with people of the dame sex and they are in civil partnerships. That’s a disgrace. That’s a disgrace from a church discipline point of view, it’s a disgrace to the gospel, because what it is saying is that we are not upholding holiness; but it’s also saying that we are not upholding church doctrine. So, as I say, in practice we’ve lost something. They tell you off if you don’t wear robes at Communion, though recently that’s changed; they’ll tell you off if you don’t wear robes at the Communion rail, but they won’t tell you off if you are living with a same-sex partner or in a civil partnership that looks like a marriage. So in our hierarchy, we are completely hypocritical, and that means we’ve lost trust in all oversight.”
For Charlie it is a disgrace that in four churches in Wimbledon there are (or were in 2022) lesbian and gay priests living with their partners in civil partnerships, partnerships that look like a marriage. And because of this, people like Charlie, people who are the beneficiaries of the whole thrust of the Archbishops’ Council’s mega-bureaucratic schemes and the wealth of people like Paul Marshall, are re-making the Church to eradicate people who for decades provided, with others, the spiritual, mystical, theological breadth and depth of the diocese of Southwark. My foundations were laid by people like these same-sex couples. In many parishes LGBTQIA+ clergy are still laying deep spiritual foundations. But the quality of Christian life and ministry offered by my friends and allies in the Church is no longer understood, let alone valued. One by one, congregations are being taken over and rebranded.
I’ve written enough. A new orthodoxy that claims to be traditional orthodoxy has taken over. It is scandalously well-resourced and unafraid of speaking out and challenging those like me whose experience and spiritual roots are very different. Every week Thinking Anglicans posts blogs and articles providing information about the desolation the Church of England is undergoing in a dubiously successful attempt to halt the decline in numbers.
My closest friends have either abandoned the Church of England or ask me repeatedly why I’m still so involved, so addicted. It’s because the Holy Spirit (if conservatives will allow me to claim as personal an access to the movement of the Spirit they claim exclusively for themselves) – the Holy Spirit hasn’t let me go – or I haven’t let go of the Spirit – it’s a mutual, two way relationship. People seeking the depths of an interior path to the sacred, divine heart of their being and bodies and of the cosmos will not find many well-funded centrally-resourced ‘strategies’ in the CofE. They are still around, people of great wisdom, truth, compassion and depth. But you have to hunt to find them – they are a diminishing, vital gift. And here I am, still rooted in my innate, intuitive, experiential faith.