Another commissioning service (Yes, another one!) took place on 24 July at St Helen’s Bishopsgate. A previous commissioning service took place at All Souls Langham Place on 12 July when the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) commissioned twenty “alternative spiritual overseers”, 18 men and 2 women. The St Helen’s event looks like a pseudo-ordination in which seven young men were “commissioned”.
A 26 minute video recorded after the event begins with a long introduction by the Rector, Revd William Taylor. He is followed by sixteen interviews with various articulate bishops, clergy and laity, These people are unilaterally setting themselves apart as a separate church, a church that condemns those like me who are committed to enabling LGBTQIA+ people to achieve full, equal and unconditional access to the rites and resources of the Church of England.
An alternative, exclusive pseudo-church
What both commissioning events are doing is creating an alternative church structure that abandons elements of orthodox, traditional Anglicanism their leaders have never believed in to create a rival system opposed to a direction they believe the Church of England taking, towards affirming same-sex relationships and marriage. They believe this trajectory will enshrine “new” doctrines and practices that are contrary to elements the conservatives claim to be orthodox, traditional and Christian.
Conservative evangelicals adopt this position because they believe they have a Christian faith that is exclusive to them, something that non-believers do not have, something that is superior not only to atheism but to other forms of Christianity and more generally, to religious beliefs that do not conform to their prejudices. Their faith is reliant on a literalist, fundamentalist reading of the Bible. The Bible is their ultimate authority and they give to themselves the status of having an exclusive, unquestionable access to the mind of God.
Those participating in both commissionings and the leadership of the CEEC hold to an archaic version of Christian faith and teaching that advocates as a fundamental idea their prejudice against and the abuse of certain categories of people because of our gender, our sexuality, our desires and our loves. Their Christianity is a pseudo-version of the truth and teaching of Jesus, a version designed to impose and maintain their prejudice.
LLF and General Synod
Tragically from my perspective, the arguments being advanced from all sides in General Synod for a fully inclusive, united, broad church are a betrayal of the Christian Gospel, the teachings of Jesus and the Christian faith which has inspired and infused me since my earliest years.
Western liberal democracies have gradually freed themselves from and overcome the poison of unhealthy attitudes, teachings and prejudices about LGBTQIA+ people. Majorities in these societies have relatively rapidly overcome their internalised anxieties, homophobia and transphobia. The Church of England and all Christian denominations similarly have to overcome the embedded prejudice that results in systemic abuse if they are to become humane, creative, healthy bodies of people, manifesting divinity in creation, in every person and in all of life.
Changing Attitude
I had almost forgotten what the vision of Changing Attitude is – to radically change attitudes, the attitudes of the Christian Church, “their” attitudes and “our” attitudes. The transformation required is urgent, radical, dramatic, possibly impossible, a transformation required by the kingdom building activities of those called to embody the life and practice of Jesus the Christ.
Christian Vision
The Christian vision and narrative that was developing in the first half of the twentieth century, continuing the evolution of enlightenment thinking, was the invisible but palpable essence of my childhood experience and faith. For the first five decades of my life the Church continued to evolve and unfold a creative, experiential awareness of the divine energies at large in creation. For three and more decades, since the 1987 Higton Synod resolution, 1991’s “Issues” and 1998’s Lambeth 1.10, the CEEC and those committed to commissioning new, independent “overseers” claiming to be orthodox, traditional Anglicans are laying the foundations for a new, abhorrent, un-Christian, poisonous, abusive, prejudiced condemnation of LGBTQIA+ people and in particular, the blessing of same-sex relationships.
Intuitive, Experiential Christian Faith
When we are lost in the doing of something, intuitively unaware, THEN we may be most, or more fully, in the presence of the Mystery, the Divine, the Sacred, the Holy, with the metaphors, dreams, visions, parables, stories, dramas, novels, art, and creation itself, communicating truth.
We human beings, absorbing and generating goodness, love, wisdom and truth by our breathing, are open to and communicators of the transforming of life, whatever our religious or spiritual affiliation or practice. I detect a decline in the way in which we human beings and our human cultures are attuned to the holiness of life, becoming less conscious, less aware of this sacred, divine presence. There are many varieties of body practice and mindfulness going on, but less awareness of the depth and presence within our Self. Whether we are conscious of this or not, our bodies continue to process, mentally, physically, chemically, consciously and unconsciously, the nourishing, enriching goodness, love and creativity that is the essence of living life in all its fullness. Goodness, love, wisdom, consciousness and self-awareness, these are the creative, energy-generating essences of life, all life, the humane human life characterised by Jesus’ teaching and preaching, by his example, by his living and self-giving and dying. Jesus is not about dogma and doctrine, orthodoxy and tradition, challenging those who are addicted to the rules, the controlling authorities with their Bible-based disgust of those who fail to follow their selected teachings and rules.
The Choice
In his recently published novel The Choice, Michael Arditti put these words into the mouth of the widow of a bishop, explaining her husband’s faith to their daughter, a priest, who asks her why he didn’t resign if he had lost his faith:
“Precisely because he was honourable. It wasn’t as simple as losing faith. The older he got, the harder he found to believe in God, but he never stopped believing in the idea of God. Paradoxes puzzle me, but I remember him saying that the concept of a creative, loving, moral God was humanity’s greatest achievement.”
I haven’t lost my faith, but my trust in the experience of divine presence of a creative, loving and moral God has been dramatically undermined by the relentless determination of conservative Christians to argue for belief in a God who, to me, is hostile, abusive, prejudiced and homophobic. My faith is recovering and every fibre of my being tells me that the god constructed by conservative evangelical members of CEEC and the congregations at All Souls Langham Place and St Helen’s Bishopsgate is not the God of my experience, inspired by my generation of Christians, followers of Jesus of the Gospels.
Closets of Power
In a book bought for £1 on a stall in Devizes Market Hall, Queer in America: Sex, the Media and the Closets of Power by Michaelangelo Signorile, published in 1994 and drawing on his experience as a member of ActUp, he writes of his time at Syracuse University studying journalism:
“I socialised in a gay environment. All of my friends were gay, and much of my life revolved around exploring my sexuality and exploring the rich gay culture I’d been denied. With distance, I realised how corrupt my church was. It wasn’t preaching love and respect – it was ordering its members to hate and exclude. So much of the madness I had lived through for twenty years was caused by the church’s teachings on homosexuality. I discarded Roman Catholicism entirely. However, I would always retain my spirituality.”
CEEC, All Souls and St Helen’s are closets of power, dangerous closets of power, dedicated to abusive belief in a homophobic, transphobic god. I have more than retained my spirituality despite the hostile anti-Christian movements in the Church determined to impose their homophobic God on the rest; my spirituality is more deeply embedded and energising than ever. Unlike Signorile, I haven’t discarded my Anglican faith, though it has been deeply tested and in the years since Lambeth 1998.
My faith is immersed in my daily contemplative experience of the presence of the creative, loving God, the God I encountered in the people who worshipped at St Barnabas Southfields. Changing Attitude’s campaigning vision of the God of Jesus Christ, the God of radical new Christian inclusion, lives on in me and in all those working for a far more dramatic engagement against the forces of darkness, prejudice and abuse in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion represented by the newly commissioned ‘alternative spiritual overseers’.