Smothered by security blankets

Yesterday I listened to Sunday Worship on BBC Radio 4. It was marking Holocaust Memorial weekend and came from the West London Synagogue. The service remembered not only the Nazi genocide of Jews in the 1940s, but also the genocide of Armenians early in the century, of Rwandans in the 1990s, of Bosnian Muslims in Sebrenica, the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China today. The final reading was what most struck me. It was from Heinz Heger’s book – The Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps. I had known about the Nazis making Jews wear yellow stars. I'd not known about how they used triangles in concentration camps: with yellow triangles for Jews, brown for Roma, and pink for homosexual men (see Wikipedia) "Jews, gypsies and homosexuals were the prisoners who suffered most frequently and severely the tortures and blows of the SS and the Kapos. They were described as the scum of humanity who had no right to live on German soil and should be exterminated. But the lowest of the low in this scum were we, the men with the pink triangle. May they never be forgotten, these multitude of dead, our anonymous immortal martyrs" (based on the account of Josef Kohout, a Holocaust survivor).

Today I'm remembering my best friend from university. He was gay. He died a few weeks ago. He was a lovely and talented man, and a man of faith. He was never allowed to be married to the man he loved by the Church he served. And he still wouldn't have been - in spite of there recently having been a much trumpeted report from our bishops and archbishops. It was seen as a step forward - as indeed it was in that it proposed prayers of blessing for all committed partnerships including after same-sex civil marriages. It also was accompanied by a forthright apology: "“We have not loved you as God loves you, and that is profoundly wrong. We affirm, publicly and unequivocally, that LGBTQI+ people are welcome and valued: we are all children of God.” 

Linus, www.peanuts.com

Personally I was disappointed by the compromise, although I of course understand the awkward place in which the bishops found themselves, on the tightrope between literalists and liberals, and between the global north and south. I seem to remember Pope Francis once talking about how important it was for churches to be appropriate to their local societies. I can't find the quote but I think he wasn't arguing for moral relativism, just stating the obvious that science alters our understanding of the world. However it takes time for that understanding to spread. Yet in my search I came upon this resonant quotation: "I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security." It seems to me that the Church of England is too anxious to cling to its own security. It's common for a child to have a crisis when her/his security blanket has worn out to a mere scrap of a rag.

The House of Bishops (their collective title) were between a rock and a hard place. I'm not sure whether their collective response isn't a fudge. If so, it's par for the course for the CofE. "There are some among us who will be perturbed because they believe that these developments do not reflect the way of Christ as they understand it. Some will see these developments as steps along a continuing journey. Some will feel we have gone too far. Some will feel we have not gone far enough." A fair summing up, but the trouble with fudge is that it's not sustaining in the long term. And someone pointed out that an apology only rings true when you stop the hurt you're inflicting. It's time we repented fully of our part in anti-Gayism, which found its ugly flowering in the concentration camps. So I hope our church resumes the journey towards equal marriage pretty quick before we get bogged down in the mud for another six years.  

'Tis most ignobly done

Very reluctantly, I return to a subject about which I have blogged a few times before. I'm provoked to do so by a Sunday morning disturbed by BBC4's Sunday programme. The final item was an interview with a senior bishop and the general secretary of GAFCON (which stands for Global Anglican Future Conference). I gathered that the latter organisation, a sort of international conservative ginger group, had produced a briefing paper for the Church of England bishops who are meeting this week to talk about the Shared Conversations which have been held over the past year and a half to talk about the Church's attitude to same-sex marriage and thus to members of the LGBT community. From the radio interview I learned that this paper had been widely publicised and it named gay clergy and non-clergy and those who were deemed to have transgressed against Lambeth resolution 10:1, a statement about teaching and practice of sexual ethics within the Church.

By now I sense my non-church readers saying, "You what? What are you going on about?" Which I understand. To put it politely it seems arcane and irrelevant. In the end, I forced myself to look at the GAFCON document, and to my mind it is arcane but also distasteful. To put it simply, it creates an easily accessible and well advertised list of gay men and women serving the Church. It is true these folk don't hide their sexuality, but it is the clear intention of the document to expose them to condemning conservative eyes. The Church of England is a surprisingly tolerant church. For example many clergy on the conservative end of the spectrum often failed to wear the prescribed clothes for taking services or to observe the rules about saying services every day in church. But they didn't get into trouble as a result. Church rules change - usually because custom has changed, or because society has changed.

I gather that by the time I read the document its numerous inaccuracies had been corrected or footnoted. Even so, in one footnote about which I knew something the original inaccuracy had merely been amended into an innuendo starting "According to some reports...". A simple look at the organisation in question's would have been enough to confirm its pastoral and supportive nature. I hesitated about whether I should say anything and in the end decided to write to some bishops, in order to make it clear that although my background and theology is, I suspect, near to the tradition of GAFCON, not all of us feel the same about this issue.

Some of what I wrote follows:

"Personally I no longer hold the view I once maintained, I’m ashamed to say, that homosexuality is a sin against nature and against God.  I believe that arose from a too simple reading of the Bible out of its context.  Having witnessed the pain and alienation of LGBT friends both within the family of the Church and on being forced to leave, I don’t believe it was right.  I’m grieved that, having led the way in the decriminalization of homosexuality in the last century, the Church of England nevertheless persists in inflicting its own form of punishment on its homosexual members, I suppose in God’s name.  The damage done to such people (including my friends) is generally severe in its effect and unloving in its intention. 

"I trust you as bishops will dismiss the GAFCON document.  It seems to me inappropriately political, not becoming of a Christian conversation.  It also seems unacceptably personal.  The excuse of it being “evidence” or already being in the public domain is disingenuous.  It appears that even the journalistic courtesy of informing people was not observed.  The speculation concerning individuals’ private lives was far from Christian.  Indeed the whole document seemed above all to lack that most excellent gift of charity.  (I’m aware by the way that lack of charity has not been a one-way street, and appreciate the Archbishops’ wisdom in resisting the impatience of pressure groups from both sides.)

"I simply want to make it clear that not all conservative evangelicals agree with the line which GAFCON represents.  I would like to celebrate, both personally and as a Church, genuine lifelong vows of commitment of heterosexual and homosexual couples.  I want to affirm Christ-like self-giving love."

Let me add my usual final caveat. I am not a theologian. Don't be persuaded on this or any other issue by me. Listen to the still small voice within. It is entirely possible that I may be mistaken, but not, I believe, in upholding the overwhelming imperative of love.

To my friends (part 1)

When I survey the wondrous cross

on which the Prince of Glory died;   

my richest gain I count but loss,

and pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,

save in the death of Christ, my God;

all the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to his blood.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,

or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

that were an offering far too small;

love so amazing, so divine,

demands my soul, my life, my all.                                                         

              Isaac Watts

This blog is very much my own reactions to things going on in my life, or in the news, or sometimes both. This post is particularly so. It’s written in the light of good friends who have been severely wounded, both themselves and their children. It’s written after news reportage of the Church of England’s House of Bishops’ Pastoral Guidance on Same Sex Marriage, published somewhat ironically on St Valentine’s Day, and after discussion of it on the Sunday Programme on Radio 4.

What follows is not a criticism of the archbishops whose names are appended to the guidance and both of whom I greatly admire. I understand they have an impossible course to follow, and I understand that the guidance is a holding position while the two years’ consultation of November’s “Pilling Report” on Human Sexuality takes place. And I understand the dilemma the bishops found themselves in between the Church’s “official” teaching on the subject and the more “progressive” approach of the Pilling group.

Neither is this a theological essay. I’m not the theologian of my family! I suppose it’s no profounder than a personal cry of the heart. What follows is, I hope, self-explanatory.

Dear Emma and Angela

It was really good to meet you on Friday. Of course Father Dom had told me a bit about you and what you were wanting. What he told me was clearly true. You are a remarkable pair. And in the few years of your relationship your love has withstood what many don’t experience in a lifetime. I think it was you, Ange, who said you’d tried to find something bad in your love, like something that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, or like tasting salt when you’ve asked for sugar in your coffee, in what you have. And you couldn’t find it.

You asked what Jesus would have thought of you two. That’s a very good question, but probably an impossible one, because time-travelling that perfect, utterly loving Lord into the present is beyond us. I don’t think he would have refused to welcome you, that’s for sure. However let me approach it differently. I was listening to Kathryn Scott’s beautiful version of Isaac Watts’ When I survey the wondrous cross, the greatest of all hymns, this morning – beautiful! I was struck by how wonderfully and impossibly aspirational it was, like so much of the best worship. (Charles Wesley reportedly said he would give up all his other hymns to have written this one.) Watts intended it be sung during communion. It is a highly devotional response to the sacrificial love of Christ.

I noticed phrases such as “my richest gain I count but loss”, “all the vain things that charm me most/I sacrifice them to His blood” and “demands my soul, my life, my all”. They were, I reflected, in the same vein and as radical as the demands that Jesus made to his contemporaries, about leaving, or selling, everything, about living like the birds, not worrying about the future, about observing every scintilla of the law, about absolute faithfulness to one’s spouse, about hating the members of one’s family, about taking up one’s cross daily and following him. We comfort ourselves with the assurance that they are poetic or Hebrew expressions, and that they must be taken in their context. That may well be true, but the fact is that most of us muddle through as best we may.

Sometimes, it seems to me, the Holy Spirit and the Word (i.e. Jesus’ words) come together and speak to a person in a specific way. For example, St Francis hears the call to abandon his life of luxury and takes to the road with nothing. Many others have heard a similar call. However it is a personal call. It’s not a demand made by an institution. In fact on the whole such personal calls are an embarrassment to hierarchies, whether of church or state. When the institutional Church starts to make the demands which only Christ who knows our hearts can make, it oversteps its competence. Forgive me if my history is ill-founded, but when the Church used its power to instigate the Crusades as a Christian duty it got it wrong.

There have been times in history when, for example, the Church allowed marriage for its presbyters, others when it demanded celibacy, and now in this country we have two patterns of priestly ministry. I’m married; Father Dom may not marry. In the Church of England divorcés were once barred from ministry, but now are accepted without a qualm. Once, women were excluded from the priesthood; now the C of E is on the way to what was the original (in my view!) pattern of women in leadership. In the C of E there was a time not long ago when vicars were not allowed to conduct a wedding for people who had been divorced, only a blessing after a civil ceremony. Remember Charles and Camilla? There was even a time when living together before getting married was “living in sin”. Now the Church tolerates it and is just grateful when cohabiters decide to tie the knot.

It’s tough then that those who are naturally attracted to others of their own gender should be faced with such a hard line, as your Church and mine follow. Two days ago, the Bishops and Archbishops in my Church issued “pastoral guidelines” for clergy about same sex marriage. Clergy are reminded that under canon (Church) law they may not themselves marry someone of the same sex, although they may be in a civil partnership provided they remain celibate within it. When the Equal Marriage Act comes into effect in March, of course, under Statute Law they will not be allowed to conduct a marriage ceremony for a gay couple. They are reminded that they may not formally bless a couple after a civil partnership ceremony nor after a same-sex wedding, although a “more informal kind of prayer” is permissible.(Not that you need to know all that! It's just on my mind at the moment and it's partially relevant.) 

Understandable though this all is in light of the current unresolved controversy within the Church (based mainly around a handful of hotly debated proof texts in the Old and New Testament, which I know you have looked at carefully), to my gay friends it perpetuates a rigidly negative message – which unsurprisingly strikes them as homophobic, despite the repeated assurances of love with which the Pastoral Guidance is replete. I understand them feeling less loved, less accepted and positively excluded by the Church which claims to represent Jesus Christ on earth. I wonder if the mistake we are making as the institutional Church is to demand that members of the LGBT community make sacrifices, about which the rest of us devoutly sing but fail to demand of ourselves. It strikes me that Jesus alone has the prerogative of making demands on anyone. When he walked the earth, he called for different sacrifices from individual followers.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9.57ff) 

I can’t find it in myself to say that you must give each other up or sacrifice the comfort and love that you find in each other. I think that only the Lord Jesus could make such a demand, which he would do through His Spirit and through your consciences. Not me; not any church. However having talked to you, I have no doubt that that your love is genuine, as real as mine and my wife’s, and that your commitment to each other is “for better for worse” – you’ve proved that! – and that it’s lifelong. I can see that you nurture each other’s faith. You’re good for each other. I know you don't want to get married yet, but you want to make a formal commitment to each other and to God and you’d like to have the commitment publicly blessed. You didn’t choose your orientation. In fact I know it has been an agonizing struggle, especially for you, Angela. I believe your love is a good thing, a gift. It's generous; it's unselfish. I can’t refuse to ask God to bless it. Somehow we shall find a way.

God bless you and keep you.

Michael  

PS Have you seen this moving video of the star Ellen Page speaking on Valentine’s Day? The tension and emotion as she speaks is visibly tangible, isn’t it? And she expresses her (and so many others’) pain and hope so well. I think everyone should watch it. Brave girl.

PS A very good explanation of why the guidance hurts so badly is here: http://www.acceptingevangelicals.org/2014/02/bishops-ban-clergy-from-same-sex-marriage/#comment-3852

Reflections in the light of day

© National Geographic

The Church of God usually deals with a rather long time-frame. Last week the Church of England met the temporality of politics in which "a week is a long time", including a number of politicians pontificating (an activity usually reserved for popes) about its affairs and issuing thinly veiled threats against it in view of its recent inexplicable entry into madness, as its failure to agree about women bishops was regarded. Even the Prime Minister upbraided it to get "with the programme" - though I wonder whether he had actually read, let alone understood, the Draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure [item 501] - or if 99% of the MPs had for that matter. (I'm sure he'd have approved to the reference to civil partners in it, if he had.) It must be frustrating for governments, once they have devolved powers to a body, to find them being used in an uncongenial way. But, as the saying goes, as you make your bed, so you must lie on it.

However there you go. The media, including the blogosphere, have had a field day. Even my small last piece had an extraordinary circulation, which I am at a bit of a loss to account for. It seems it may have provided first aid for some of the women, not least priests, who were reeling from the blow that Tuesday had inflicted. It was, I must say, a long week for me, and though I longed to move on I kept chewing the matter and the debate over. This post might, I think, be an attempt to find some sort of resolution in my own mind, so that tomorrow I can back to business as normal.

I was surprised to find that my disappointment over the vote was not shared by everyone. I think at least one of our local clergy thought the measure was not sufficiently clearly defined, and therefore didn't offer enough protection for conscientious objectors. Perhaps if the Code of Practice which every diocesan bishop would have been required to draw up to “respect” the sincere requests of parishes and vicars who found themselves unable to accept the ministry of a woman bishop had been clarified beforehand (or at least the minimum requirements of a code) rather than the simple obligation to have a code, some of the fears might have been allayed. My listening to the debate, however, revealed that a lot of the argument was about the principle (or doctrine) of women in church leadership, which had already been agreed upon, rather than about the practicality of safeguarding the "traditionalists". I do understand that in fact producing specific safeguards is easier proposed than achieved. A previous attempt was felt to create second-class female bishops. 

Another of my reflections was regret that we would have been even further out of step with the most ancient churches, like the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches, who of course have only male priests. One of the clearest demands Jesus made of his followers was that they should be "one", i.e. unified; and one of the scandalous results of either outcome would be to deepen divisions in what likes to be regarded as the Christian Church. Of course, it may be too that those who long for another Council to continue Vatican 2's work may in time be rewarded and the Catholic Church may change.

A friendly theologian came to lunch on Saturday and I blithely expected him to confirm my half-baked impressions. Sadly he was more cautious about my interpretations of the evidence! He pointed out that actually there's a lot about submitting in the New Testament, such as submitting to the authorities, children submitting to parents, wives to their husbands - "and each submitting to the other," I pointed out. "Indeed," he agreed urbanely! - and even the Son submitting to his Father. There was, he reckoned, a structure of authority within Creation, reflecting the Trinity. I may not have got it exactly right, as by now my carefully constructed universe was rocking! Reflecting on it later, it occurred to me that there's an essential difference between voluntary submission and institutionalised submission. There's a world of difference between saying, "Choose to submit yourselves..." and "You have to submit...". In fact, submission is of its very nature a voluntary attitude. And to be blunt, it seems to me to be a precarious business to argue from the nature of the Trinity, which to me at least it is an incomprehensible mystery. 

He also took me to task over the meaning of the word, head (kephalé), the part of the anatomy, when I argued that we overlay it with meanings of superiority, such as head honcho, head teacher, head man. The Bible, said I, places the will and the centre of motivation lower down the body than the head. "Hmm," he said sceptically. And Jane told me to smile and stop giving him indigestion!

Afterwards I reflected, "What has all that to do with leadership in the Church?" After all, doesn't the Church have a very different view of authority, although you might not think it with all the medieval paraphernalia of power, from chunky rings and princely robes to "enthronement"? How I long, by the way, for a bishop to say, "It shall not be so with me. I know it will at first be a shock to you, but I am not going to go in procession with my outriders"! Our model of authority is Christ, the slave on his knees serving, not lauding it. And don't we see women exercising the spiritual and natural gifts, including leadership, throughout the New Testament church, including apostleship and eldership? In fact, it seems to me we make these terms too technical and too restricted. After all, they are trying to describe functions in a new sort of body which has never existed before with the limited palette of the language of a patriarchal society. This is the new Temple. "This is what is happening, some hosting, some prophesying, some teaching, some leading, some healing etc etc." All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. And it may be, may it not, that he empowers a woman with oversight (episkopé)? 

It struck me that he was quite Elizabethan in his emphasis on the importance of hierarchical stability  - but then so was my revered Shakespeare. The enormity of Macbeth's crime is that he has murdered the King. 

"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope

The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence

The life o' the building!" It is a return to chaos (confusion) or anarchy. And that is most to be feared. Yet it also occurs to me that the great conservative evangelical of the 17th century, another of my great Englishmen, who uttered one of my all-time favourite sayings, "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken", was not afraid to contemplate the unthinkable for the sake of justice. We may think history proved him mistaken, but actually parliamentary democracy owes Oliver Cromwell a great deal.

St Mary Magdalene Church, Bruges

To give him his due, I’ve painted our divergence in rather starker terms than he would recognise. I don’t think he’d be troubled by women bishops…. But I think he didn’t want me to write off those with different views from mine too dismissively. It’s possible that he (or I) may be mistaken – but, of course, I'm still sure I’m right! I return to the radical nature of Jesus' mission. In Tom Wright's words, "The resurrection of Jesus is the only Christian guide to the question of where history is going. Unlike the ambiguous 'progress' of the Enlightenment, it is full of promise — especially the promise of transformed gender roles.... The promise of new creation, symbolised by the role of Mary Magdalene in the Easter stories, is the reality." 

So then I went to church on Sunday morning and, I assume, joined with tens of thousands of others in confessing, 

“Most merciful God,

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

we confess that we have sinned in thought, word and deed.

We have not loved you with our whole heart.

We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.

In your mercy, forgive what we have been,

help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be;

that we may do justly, love mercy,

and walk humbly with you, our God,”

which seemed very apt in the light of the previous week's emotions.

There was time before lunch to watch BBC's The Big Questions with Nicky Campbell - which I confess to not having watched right through before. It happened to be on... Women Bishops. (How grateful the BBC must have been to have a home news story which took the spotlight off itself!) I'm not sure how many of the participants in the debate were in a state of grace at the beginning, but it didn't take a minute for the gloves to come off in one corner at least. 

My friend Sally Hitchiner was in one of the front rows and was admirably restrained, even when invited to speak. Like me she was very disappointed by the vote, and she was hurt by some of the other participants' doubting of her priesthood. I have to say in terms of graciousness the antis (i.e. anti the measure) won the debate. I understand how hurt the pros were. But, as Sally demonstrated, you didn't need to be full of bile and insult to make your point. You didn't, Rev Pitcher, have to go red and wag your finger at those who disagreed with you. It wasn't necessary to tell the rather nice, articulate Zoe Ham that she was a misogynist. She clearly wasn't. As for the Speaker's Chaplain slagging off the other side as Biblically illiterate, that was simply rude and untrue. If I'd been a disinterested spectator, the fury of the pro-women troika on that side of the studio would have had two effects: one, to make me doubt the validity of their argument; and two, to put me off the Christian message of love. It was Marshall McLuhan who said, "The medium is the message." If you appear to hate your fellow-Christians who differ from you, what's your good news mean? It will, I thought, take a more skilled mediator than Peter Hitchens to bring this issue to a satisfactory resolution. Fortunately, in Justin Welby we have just such a man, perhaps with Sally Hitchiner to advise him!

It will too take all his leadership skills to repair the damage, not to the Church's image - because that doesn't matter -, but to its witness to both the love and the justice of God. It would be worse than sad if Parliament took it into its muddled head to tell the Church - or any other faith group - how to organise its affairs. It is equally sad that, as it stands, the Church's prophetic voice has been compromised by not having its own house in order.

I trust and pray that the issue will be visited again soon and an arrangement which accommodates all consciences is arrived at. I hope we will stop labelling each other and be one. Maybe something better will emerge from all this travail. Impossible? Well, it won't be long before we hear again the familiar story of ultimate encouragement, which starts with a faithful unassuming woman and includes the statement, "For nothing will be impossible with God," and includes Mary's great song of faith and freedom, the Magnificat, 

BBC The Nativity

"And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty."

Amen – or do I mean Ah... men :-( ? Sisters, don't lose hope.