Jesus was processing his life of human experience and emotions and relationships with exactly the same resources as you and I process our lives and experience. One difference between us (not the difference between divine and human nature) is that our experience, if we are Christians, is processed through the constructs of theology and faith that evolved following Jesus’ death and have been evolving ever since. We are programmed in a way Jesus wasn’t.
In September, five members of Changing Attitude England met in a London garden one afternoon to explore our beliefs about God. I had circulated a position paper beforehand setting out my thoughts as a framework for our conversation. The five of us who met in the garden, plus one, wish to extend the conversation we began by organising an open event on 2nd March 2024 at St Andrew’s Short Street, Waterloo from 10.00 to 16.00 when we hope many of you will bring your own experience to the gathering, exploring our understandings of God in our human awareness and vision raised by the question What kind of God do we believe in?
Prejudice, abuse, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, are not and can never be Christian fundamentals. Life in all its fulness and God’s unconditional, infinite, intimate love have become fundamentals for me – revisionist fundamentals – for the formation of a healthy personal spirituality and faith and for the evolution of a non-abusive Church. They underpin all progressive movements towards justice, equality and full inclusion, the contemporary foundations of a movement rooted in God who is ontologically, in essence, a revisionist. Revision is integral to the nature of that which we name God.
There are, within specific cultural and social frameworks, specific bodies that have been regarded as particularly vile: those of a particular sex, race, religion, tribe, sexual orientation, disability or age. “Powerful Christians have regarded as abhorrent not merely the bodies of women but the bodies of many other perceived ‘others’, for example Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, people of colour, heretics.”
We live in a culture where prejudice, fundamentalism, abuse, and discrimination, although still prevalent, are less and less acceptable or tolerated as healthy attitudes towards other members of the human race. It becomes more and more difficult for people to maintain their commitment to and involvement with an institution, a Church, that continues to be so ambivalent about justice and equality for every member of the human race, a Church that is still so hostile to me and people like me, to my LGBTQIA+ brothers and sisters, people with integrity and faith and a deep spirituality regardless of their gender or sexuality or who they sleep with and make love to.
On Friday afternoon, 3rd November, thirty four representatives of progressive organisations seeking the full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people in the Church of England met with the Archbishop of Canterbury on the top floor of the Lambeth Palace library. It was the most significant meeting I have yet attended in England representing a turning point in the decades-long movement towards achieving the full and equal inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people in our church – all of us passionate about the Church of England, its life and health, and the damaging effect of continuing conservative homophobic prejudice and abuse.
Can the hierarchy of the Church of England take us deep into the black hole, with courage deep enough to lead us into the unimaginable white hole through and beyond into an experience and reality named resurrection? I wish Synod would bring coherence and finality to a process that began with a profound vision, a radical new Christian inclusion, and with a trust that bringing people together would gradually transform and melt differences in the context of Christian love and prayer.
The Christian Church needs to engage with the question: “In what ways did Jesus rely on the contemporary orthodox, traditional Jewish teaching and doctrine contained in the Hebrew scriptures and worship and in what ways did he challenge them?” More importantly, it needs to understand what “life in all its fullness” means in reality for every human being and learn how to live and communicate this transformational truth.
