My text for today comes from the Guardian, Review magazine, book section, 29th June 2024, pp 52 and 53, the final paragraph:
“If you keep describing people as ‘you’, you are distancing yourself. In other words, not getting too involved. [Anita Desai] wanted to get at the tenuousness of life, a deceptively modest ambition within which lies a much greater truth: that we are not as bound to our circumstances as we may like to believe. “Well, what does one have? Just a few threads to hold one. After that, memories. Which may or may not be quite true.”
This is taken from an article by the journalist Emma Brockes about the conversation she had with the novelist Anita Desai, 87, shortlisted for the Booker prize three times, who has just published a novella: Rosarita. quoted by Emma Brockes in an Observer review of Desai’s latest novel. Desai wanted to get at the tenuousness of life, a deceptively modest ambition within which lies a much greater truth: that we are not as bound to our circumstances as we may like to believe.
“Well, what does one have? Just a few threads to hold one. After that, memories. Which may or may not be quite true.”
I’m nine years younger than Desai. I too, am driven by a desire to get at the tenuous of my life now, driven by an ambition which is anything but modest – which God does the Church of England believe in? – because my heart tells me there’s a greater truth inside me and that I, priest and activist, am not as bound to contemporary circumstances as the Church would like me to believe.
I am not signed up to any particular Christian dogma, doctrine or tradition. I have my roots and I have preferences but I have never wanted to identify with a specific group.
I am signed up to the desire to become more fully alive, living with the belief that life in all its fullness is what living is all about, feeling alive, grounded, earthed, enriched by the experiences of life and the people I share life with, trusting my intuition and emotions, becoming myself by coming to know myself and the God my Christian faith introduced me to better.
Which God?
This is the question the Church of England isn’t really asking itself at any level. It’s the question five of us pursued, myself, Robert Thompson, Helen King, David Page and Tina Beardsley in Robert’s vicarage garden last year.
I believe existentially and intuitively. Our bodies know, my body knows, heart, mind, guts and soul. To the degree to which my body, our bodies, know, and we are conscious, self-aware of what our bodies know, to that degree we are living experientially, closer to ourselves and closer to the God we already, instinctively, intuitively know, more in the presence of God because living more ‘in the present’, living with our breathing, living in our heart’s pulse, our lungs filled, our belly and guts enriched, our minds flowing with wisdom, conscious, aware, reflective, our whole being compassionate, enriched with love and goodness.
God at Synod
Which God of the many varieties of belief about God is going to achieve success at the General Synod psychodrama otherwise known as the Living in Love and Faith process when Synod meets in York on Friday? Living in Love and Faith is that glorious oxymoron dreamed up by the same team what gave us a radical new Christian inclusion, evolving now into “unity trumps every other aspect of God’s priorities’.
If you take a look at the lists of blogs posted on the invaluable Thinking Anglicans website, it’s going to be the Omni-God who turns up in force, His team (He’s definitely a He with a capital H) have released various versions of their dogmatic, Canon-law bound God, hostile to the other Gods in the running for dominance at Synod.
Or will it be the ‘nice’ God of the cosy Church of England of comfort and reassurance, flower arrangers, afternoon teach, sandwiches and cake, members of the adoration of vestments, vicars and bishops.
Also represented, tentatively, will multi-God, the elusive, subtle, mysterious, mystical, inclusive and progressive.
GS 2358 LLF: Moving Forward as One Church
This paper provides a handy, thirty-one page, easy to read reference guide to the conversations being held about God at this Synod and for the next five years, when, in 2029, a report on the period of discernment will be published, considerations of learnings and theological appraisal considered, further legislative measures to accompany these exciting developments will be introduced. It’s good to know that we have only five years to wait before further exciting episodes of the Synodical Process will add variety and complexity to this unique CofE quest – exclusive to bishops, Living in Love and Faith specialists and addicted members of General Synod.
Which God does GS 2358 opt for?
Is General Synod going to opt for the God whose essence is defined with clarity in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation and everything in between, compiled with unquestionable authority and evident in proof texts giving the answers to any and every question, confirmed over the centuries by tradition and reason and the Christian authority of doctrine, dogma and Canon Law – the Omni-God?
Or will the multiplex God triumph? The God of today’s CofE has become the subject of tribal disagreements and conflicts. The elusive God of the mystics and contemplatives, the God Jesus had to escape from the crowds and his uncomprehending chosen followers by rising early and going off alone into the wilderness to experience, is having a hard time of it – but then, They always have. There are still rare, “break-out” places in the world where the God of life in all its fullness manages to flame outrageously despite the inability of the Church to take a risk on God, open to exploration and adventure, multiple-dimensions of experience, people drawn to a spiritual life, each and every one of us in our own way.
I grew up in a church and in a diocese that was flourishing thanks to the significant presence of gay people. The Christian Church has always flourished more adventurously and creatively because of the presence of gay people, queer people, LGBTQIA+ people. There are members of the community Jesus gathered and in the young communities of the early Church we might identify as LGBTQIA+, living and nurturing life in all its fullness, radical new Christian inclusion, and the transformation of lives. But I find it more difficult to form a picture of today’s Church of England in which creative freedom and adventure feature prominently. Fear of the future has become a systemic characteristic, anxiety about decline, finances, holding disparate essences together, moving forward as one Church, as GS 2358 tentatively puts it. I find myself living in a decadent, regressive era of Christianity, in Europe, the West, and the Global South, versions of Christianity have come to the fore, versions that were never part of my own Christian essence. It infects every congregation, every church, every parish, every priest and bishop, every element of the institution. I also see disconnected, isolated manifestations of healthy spirituality and Christian vision where rebellious, prophetic energies are at work: in the Open Table Network, Contemplative Fire, S Martin-in-the-Fields, St John’s Waterloo, St James Piccadilly, the Sheriff Centre/St James West Hampstead, Holy Rood House, the Franciscan communities, the Church in Wales and the Scottish Episcopal Church – place where sparks of fire are visible. The flames flicker everywhere, but they are not sufficiently seen or valued by the institution.
The God of Canon B 30
According to the arguments set out in statements issued by eleven bishops in Premier Christianity, The Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda, The Church of England Evangelical Council, The Alliance, and the well-known theologian and author who publishes as Psephizo, there is no place in the Church of England for any genitally sexually active gay men, never has been and never will be. Canon B 30 (of Holy Matrimony, Canon B 2, B 5 and B5A and the doctrines and rules of engagement enshrined therein prove the authority of God set out in the Holy Bible that excludes all those who are not exclusively identified as heterosexual men and women from engaging in sex or marrying a person of the opposite sex, allowed only a life-long union that begins, sexually, after their loving union has been sanctified in the rite of Holy Matrimony.
Yeah . . . but what about the God of same-sex love and gender fluidity?
It is, as I have already suggested, an unprovable truism that there have always been and always will be men and women in the Church who have been in love with and sexually active with other men and women, people who have been gender fluid, people who have followed the desires of their hearts and souls and given themselves to each other and to life in all its fullness.
There is something very unpleasant going on in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion since 1998 that leaves me feeling increasingly conflicted and abused emotionally and spiritually – assaulted by dogma and doctrine and a cruel, ruthless God. This is where the rich, creative, inspiring Christian heritage of my first five decades has brought me; deep disagreement about my sexuality, my priesthood, my membership of the Church of England, my theology and my spiritual vision. It has become more and more difficult to live with this - and it gets worse.
For me, something has to give here – because it has always had to give, ‘norms’ to be stretched and explored, love to be given and received – and blessed, officially or unofficially, by the unknown mysteries of God known only to our deepest selves, treasured in our hearts and souls. Either there is no place for me in the Church of England as life-long sexually active gay man or there has to be an agreement to change doctrine to encompass the reality of the creation in which we live in which same-sex attraction, desire and sexual expression is commonplace, holy and sanctified.
There is no alternative to a change of doctrine. This is where all the attention, energy and work must be focused. Do my brothers and sisters on Synod who understand and believe this have a common mind, heart and will to understand that ultimately there is no alternative.
“Well, what does one have? Just a few threads to hold one. After that, memories. Which may or may not be quite true.”