The Bishops' Report on Same-Sex Relationships

What can I say about the House of Bishops' long awaited report published yesterday, Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations?

I share the sense of disappointment expressed by many (not only gay Christians) who have taken to social media in the past hours. We had dared to hope that the bishops would be more courageous, less risk averse. After the careful shared conversations about human sexuality across the country, after all the emphasis on listening to the experience of gay people, we had glimpsed the possibility of genuine progress in the theological and ethical understanding of same-sex relationships. We had looked for a new liturgical and pastoral practice that would recognise our LGBT friends and colleagues as beloved sisters and brothers. We had longed to celebrate their full participation as clergy and laity in the life of the church.

We hoped for these things, not as a matter of expediency or political correctness, but because we believed they were right in principle. That's to say, right as a matter of good biblical interpretation, good theology, good science, good morality and good pastoral awareness, not to mention a sense of history, an awareness of culture and a longing for justice. I've argued the case for committed, covenanted same-sex relationships in a number of blogs here, here, here and here. I don't know that I have much to add.

So why blog yet again on this subject? With feelings running high and the prospect of a febrile debate in the General Synod next month, I don't want to raise the temperature. But here are some thoughts on where we are as a national church just now.

It's clear that the bishops were not agreed about what line the statement should take. Whatever reservations we have about the report, it's refreshing to see this recognised. (It's tempting to infer that the debate may have been sharp at times: the online text of the report I have in front of me speaks of "the conclusion of the Shard Conversations" (para 26).) So because there was a spectrum of views in the House of Bishops, their approach is described as "provisional".

Nevertheless there is nothing provisional in the principal recommendation for the way forward. This is that there should be "no change to ecclesiastical law or the C of E's existing doctrinal position on marriage and sexual relationships". The status quo is unambiguously retained. So many hopes dashed at a stroke. Is it worth reading any further? Well yes, out of fairness to the bishops who ask that their report is read as an entirety. So even if it's with a heavy heart, let's proceed.

The Bishops want to commission new work in four areas: (a) establishing "a fresh tone and culture of welcome and support" for LGBT people; (b) producing "a substantial new Teaching Document on marriage and relationships"; (c) giving clear "guidance for clergy about appropriate pastoral provision  for same sex couples" and (d) providing new guidance "about the nature of questions put to ordinands and clergy about their lifestyle". These are the themes they particularly draw to the attention of the General Synod when it debates the report in February. I want to comment on them in reverse order, for reasons that will become clear.

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(a) Questions put to ordinands and clergy about their lifestyle (paras 44-55)
This may seem a small point compared to the first three, but it isn't. It betrays an attitude in the church that should seriously worry us. I mean the prurience that needs to scrutinise the mores and sexual habits of the church's office-holders. It's true, as the bishops argue, that the clergy by virtue of their public role are "exemplary disciples". The ordinal does indeed spell this out. But there is a very Anglican reticence about probing too deeply into personal lives, in Elizabeth I's great phrase, "making windows on to men's souls". In any other profession such scrutiny would be both unacceptable and illegal. It makes no difference that this will now be applied to all ministers, not just gay clergy. When I was ordained, my bishop and I spoke candidly during the retreat. But while he stressed how essential it was for a priest to live in a morally responsible way, there was nothing like this. If I were contemplating ordination today, I'm not sure I'd want to go through with it if it meant this degree of intrusion into matters that belonged to the bedroom. 

There is a real risk, I think, to the affection, warmth and trust that ought to exist between bishops and their clergy. Trust especially. In a grown up community, especially a Christian one, there should be a presumption that office holders are behaving responsibly and ethically until there is evidence to the contrary. Trust creates confidence; suspicion erodes it. No-one should be subject to this embarrassing process. Statutory safeguarding checks are all that should be necessary if we want to build up humane, spiritual capital in our relationships within the church. The last thing we should be doing is sowing the seeds of suspicion or defensiveness that micro-management and excessive scrutiny always lead to.

(b) Guidance for clergy about appropriate pastoral provision for same sex couples (paras 36-43) 
At present clergy "may pray informally with same-sex couples" but there is no authorised or commended form of worship to follow a civil partnership or marriage. In practice, what clergy may offer such couples is far from clear. It is similar to the position thirty years ago with regard to prayer following civil marriages where a partner had been divorced. At that stage the church was not clear, in the light of its teaching that marriage is a permanent relationship, what it believed about the remarriage of divorced people. It then seemed odd to imply through a public act of liturgical prayer that the relationship was, after all, one that God could at least live with. But faith can be paradoxical at times. The law of the church was later revised to permit the solemnisation of such marriages in church (though not all clergy are willing to preside at them).

The position with regard to same-sex relationships is precisely the same and the bishops recognise this. But this time they are not proposing services that are authorised or commended. This implies a high degree of ambivalence. Certainly, guidance is essential if the clergy are not to find themselves breaking the law. But since the traditional teaching of the church is that both remarriage after divorce and same-sex relationships are disallowed, why are the bishops so much more wary this time than they were before? There seems to me to be a clear precedent in issuing public prayers that can be used with those who ask for them while the church takes the time it needs to work out a new moral framework for its pastoral practice. As we know, liturgy and prayer inform how we think and believe and what we do. I'd say this was important not just in our ministry to LGBT people but also to help the church itself reflect on its own spiritual and liturgical practice.

(c) New teaching document on marriage and relationships (paras 34-35)
No-one is going to question the need for this. The bishops set out a list of issues to be covered, including "the significance of community and relationships of all kinds in human flourishing", the role of single people, a theological exploration of friendship, and the meaning of marriage in society, family and the church. But then we hit a clear constraint. The penultimate entry in the list is to "reaffirm our current doctrine of marriage as between one man and one woman, faithfully, for life".

In an agenda of exploration and enquiry, this statement is disappointing. It begs the very question that has given rise to this report in the first place, and that is crying out for theologians, ethicists and church leaders to give attention to. The final item is "to explore the distinction that has opened up between the state's conception of 'equal marriage' and the Church's doctrine of Holy Matrimony". Might the document be open to the discovery that as a covenanted relationship between two persons before God, the state's conception and the church's doctrine might turn out to be the same?

(d) Establishing a Fresh Tone and Culture (paras 29-33)
It's good that the church's welcome to and support for those in same-sex relationships is placed first. The bishops recognise the importance of asking how LGBT people experience the church. I don't doubt the sincerity of everyone (well, almost everyone) who says that they want the C of E to be a generous, inclusive place, whatever they believe about same-sex relationships. The problem is, as the bishops acknowledge, that acceptance and welcome can sit uneasily alongside judgmental attitudes which, if not expressed, are still present.

I wanted to invert the order of these four themes because that way round shows that despite their best intentions, the bishops fall right into this trap. Whatever they say about the goodness of LGBT relationships, there is always a big "but", stated or implied. When you read their priorities starting at the other end, it's hard to see how the text reads as anything other than this "but" in the cautious attitude it takes towards LGBT people. Questions about lifestyle, guidelines for the clergy, a new teaching document all imply that gay people are a problem that needs to be solved rather than adult responsible men and women who are flourishing in relationships they are asking the church both to affirm and celebrate. Of course we all look for "a fresh tone and culture", but only complete acceptance and mutuality in the church will achieve this. This is precisely what is missing in this document. It's not surprising that so many LGBT friends and colleagues are angry.

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The bishops have an important section devoted to theological method (paras 56-66). To reflect on this would double the length of this blog so it must be for another time. It treads a wary path between two approaches. On the one hand, they want to affirm the fidelity and mutuality of stable same-sex relationships and recognise how the changing social context brings fresh insights. On the other hand, they are clear about the need to uphold the traditional teaching of the church, not least because the unity of the church must always matter to Christian people (and bishops are meant to be the guardians of unity). They recognise the legitimacy of diversity in Anglicanism, and also its ethos of "reserve", not imagining that there can full and certain knowledge of anything this side of the grave. I would have said that these two aspects of our church's self-understanding offer precisely the mandate the bishops are looking for to proceed in a more confident, less hesitant way.

We have been here before, many times: contraception, remarriage after divorce and the ordination of women were all once regarded as unthinkable departures from the church's teaching. They were all debated vigorously, often with great heat and sometimes with bitterness. But each time, the church's teaching proved to be larger than we had imagined, capable of including within it the new dimensions each development brought. In particular, marriage did not cease to be marriage because the divorced were permitted to remarry.

The same has been proved true now that the state permits people of the same gender to marry. Far from subverting marriage, it affirms it! History tells me that I can be confident that there will come a time when LGBT relationships are fully accepted, integrated, honoured and celebrated in the sacramental and pastoral life of the church. Then, the great institution of marriage will at last be truly "equal" without discriminating between straight and gay people. I may not live to see it (though I hope I do). But the momentum is unstoppable. And I see in it nothing less than the act of God's Spirit. I'd like to see beyond the timidity of the bishops' report to what I suspect many of them also acknowledge and even welcome.

One final thing. Since the bishops have told us that they were not all agreed about the position they adopted, may we have a minority report from those who dissented? The bishops have already found that there is nothing to fear from open, candid debate. Why not let it happen publicly? I am sure that the whole church will respect them all the more. Next month's Synod will be a good place to start. 

Meanwhile, as the church goes on talking to itself about sex, the world stops listening and starts burning. 

That Infamous Headline: a Question from Schooldays

Have we ever seen a more infamous headline in a British daily paper?

I mean the Daily Mail's front page on Friday 4 November. It was the day after the three High Court judges ruled that the government was bound by law to gain the consent of Parliament before invoking Article 50 and triggering Brexit. As we all know, it lined up mugshots of the three judges above the headline "Enemies of the People".

In a blog (here) the same day I spelled out what I thought was at stake in the High Court's ruling and the Prime Minister's rush to appeal it: respect for law, governance and parliamentary democracy. Many have defended the judges and many have dissented. Fair enough. Testing judgments is what legal process is for. But if you are going to dissent, it needs to be done intelligently. It's not enough to denounce, attack and stamp your foot. The Mail seems to me to be wilfully perverse in just not "getting" it. For this case in law has nothing to do with Brexit itself, whether Britain should or shouldn't leave the EU. It has everything to do with the legal process by which the referendum decision to leave is achieved. This, said the judges, was a matter for Parliament, not the Executive alone.

So the Mail's headline is based on the false premise that by interfering with the referendum Brexit vote, the judges were guilty of meddling in politics. But it's worse than that. To denounce them as "enemies of the people" is an offensive slur on their integrity and professionalism. They know the boundaries of the law's competence better than anyone. Straying beyond them in the High Court to play politics would be unthinkable. And if the judges have acted as enemies in upholding the role of Parliament in the Brexit process, that's tantamount to asserting that Parliament too is the enemy. If I were a parliamentarian, whatever my party or position on Brexit, I would be extremely angry.

This amounts to an implied attack on the independence of the judiciary. A free press is at liberty to disagree with judges just as it's free to dissent from politicians. But once it goes beyond that and starts saying, in effect, that the judgment should have found for the government because that was its business, the independence of judicial scrutiny is entirely subverted. The reality is that in the British Constitution, Prime Minister, her Executive and the Crown itself are all subject to the law of the land. It's the job of the judiciary to clarify what that law is. That's what the judges were doing as conscientiously as they knew how.

The Daily Mail has in the past won awards for its reporting and investigative journalism. So let's not disparage what the Mail has achieved just because we're at odds with it (not for the first time). But that doesn't excuse serious lapses of judgment. Cheap headlines like this are unworthy of a responsible paper. They don't clarify, they aren't truth-seeking, they don't foster serious debate and they don't help us to "disagree well" to use the Archbishop of Canterbury's phrase. All they do is to raise the temperature and fuel mistrust. They are more at home in regimes where the judiciary is in the pockets of dictators or powerful paylords, not in constitutional democracies like ours. "Enemies of the People" may achieve a dramatic effect (who will forget it?) but it's meretricious and unprincipled.

Now, the editor of the Daily Mail is Paul Dacre. I was at school with him in the 1960s: I think we were exact contemporaries. A writer rang me up a while ago to ask if I remembered him from schooldays. I replied that I hadn't known him well, but I did have a clear memory of one thing: his prowess on the rugby pitch. How I envied sporting ability like his! I was the clumsiest rugby player you ever saw and no better at cricket. Those who won their colours were like gods to me. I imagined there was nothing they could not and would not achieve in life. And becoming editor of a national newspaper is indeed a pretty big achievement.

You may have got the impression that he and I went to a typical public school where old-fashioned values were shaped by the classics, chapel services, corporal punishment, the playing field and the corps.  Well it wasn't like that at all. True, it was an independent (day) school where we did study classics and did play rugby. But our school had been founded by far-seeing and enlightened men in the early nineteenth century in pursuit of a vision for society shaped by utilitarian ideas and free of religious ideology. In the prep school I found myself in Bentham House. That says it all. For Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), virtue in a society meant "the greatest happiness for the greatest number". It has proved to be a profoundly influential idea throughout the English-speaking world thanks to the writings of John Stuart Mill.

Because of this, my parents decided to send me there. My father and mother were a mixed marriage of non-observants, Anglican and Jewish. They believed religion was a source of division and conflict in the world, and wanted their children educated in a liberal environment free of religious obligations and loyalties. (How ironic that it was at school that I found my Christian faith as a teenager, or rather, it found me. God moves in mysterious ways.) They wanted us to be good citizens of a world where religion, politics and ideas were debated in a tolerant way that was not afraid of diversity, and instead of invoking dogma, looked for understanding. They wouldn't have put it in quite that way. But it's what they were feeling for.

I realise how much I owe to that education. It's true that for a while, the conservative evangelical Christianity I'd embraced threatened to eclipse the liberal outlook I'd been formed in. I'm grateful that by the time I was ordained in the 1970s, I was able to see things in a larger context. I began to understand that if humanity is to survive, let alone flourish, we must all learn to live as adults in a world of religious, political and ideological differences. It's not that there's no place left for conviction or passion. It's how we express them and embody them that counts, and (just as important) how we listen to other people's passion and conviction. It's part of finding our place in the world where tolerance, understanding, generosity and trust are everything.

This was the school both Paul Dacre and I come from. So you'll see why Friday's headline poses a question for me. If our school influenced me in the ways I've described, I'm wondering how it influenced him too. For the editor of the Daily Mail presides over a paper that seems to me to have taken on Friday a rather different approach to the week's events from the one I'd thought he and I were schooled in. "Enemies of the People" is just not the way his education and mine taught us to do business. It tried to help us learn that we don't scream with rage or impugn one another's integrity; instead, we listen and try to understand; we argue it out, and if we differ it's without rancour. There's no place in the public discourse of a civilised society for shrillness. It brings no credit to a responsible newspaper that claims to be proud of our British values and ways of doing things.

So because I'm interested in human nature (it's my job to be), I'm intrigued by what motivates the thinking of this powerful and able man who for so long has sat at the helm of the Daily Mail. Perhaps my old school contemporary will tell us how his mind works nowadays, half a century after he and I parted company for the last time.

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Immigration: a view on the ward

We've been in London for a while to be with a close elderly relative who was suddenly taken into hospital. This was not where we had planned to be during June, but it was of course right to be here at this testing time for her and for the family.

But being in London for a couple of weeks has given me the unexpected chance to reconnect with my home city. I've thought of myself as a North-Easterner for many years because it's where we have lived for much of our working life, and it's where we have chosen to make our permanent home. God willing, we hope one day to die there. But I'm a Londoner by origin and you can never take London out of a Londoner. And as Dr Johnson famously said, when you are tired of London, you are tired of life.

I didn't need to be reminded that London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world. But it's one thing to know it, quite another to experience it from the inside. Maybe it doesn't strike Londoners as worth remarking on any more: they (by which I mean those who live and work here) are simply used to hearing every language under the sun spoken on the bus and tube, in city street and corner shop, in the workplace, school and church and across th garden fence. 

But although I've frequently come back to London throughout my life, I don't think I've been exposed to it in quite this way before. And this cosmopolitan diversity has struck me forcibly this month, not least in the hospital we've been visiting. True there were plenty of immigrants in the 1950s and 60s too - not only people from Commonwealth countries but also Europeans like the German-Jewish war refugees who had settled in north London where I lived. My mother's family belonged to this community, as I've written before, and it was perfectly normal for British children brought up in that milieu to be bilingual. I was lucky enough to be one of them until I stopped speaking German the day I started school. I suppose I must have felt in an obscure way that it didn't do to speak German in public less than a decade after the end of the war. But I soon regretted losing my fluency in that language, one of the things I hope I may put right again in retirement.

What's remarkable is not the prominence of immigrant communities in a great city. Having lived and worked in Coventry and Sheffield for several years, both highly diverse vibrant cities and proud of it, it was strange to find myself in the more monochrome (i.e. "whiter" Anglo-Saxon) environment that I found when we went back to North East England, even if the strongly internationally-minded University of Durham partly made up for it. No, it's the sheer "reach" of geographical, ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural diversity that now characterises London. It has become home to every race and culture on the planet, a market place of global possibilities and opportunities. 

And yet, as someone whose provenance this great city is, I still recognise it as "my" place. That's not about loving it - I think part of me fell out of love with the blandness of suburbia's net curtains and privet (though that's changed too now, much for the better) and with the over-stimulation and hectic pace of big-city life. Gridlocked in London traffic on the top deck of a bus that is going nowhere I could lose the will to live. Instead we have opted for the more tranquil lifestyle of the rural north and its warm, genuine communities that have made us so welcome there. Well - no doubt personal temperament comes into things. Millions of people wouldn't live anywhere else but London, and why should they if they love it here? It's one of the world's great cities.

No, what I mean when I say that I still "recognise" it is that rather to my surprise, the "soul" of London does not seem to me to have changed vastly as a result of the huge transformations that have altered almost every aspect of its visible face. (I realise as I write this that some my not feel the same way.) This is still the UK's proud capital city. There is a familiarity about walking the streets and parks, visiting churches and museums, travelling by public transport. You may not understand what the people around you are saying to one another (and sometimes to you!) or speaking into their mobile phones. But to me at least, far from feeling alienating, it is all just part of the unending and marvellous variety of London life. London has always been that way. Cities should be places for all people to belong to. London is spectacularly successful in this respect.

Back to the hospital ward. My relative is being cared for by an excellent team of NHS professionals for whom nothing is too much trouble. Very few of them are native Brits. Some are from other EU countries, though the majority on her ward at least seem to come from outside Europe. In the febrile atmosphere of the EU referendum campaign, it doesn't do to ask too many personal questions about how many are EU migrant workers, or have permanent residence, or are naturalised UK citizens. In an important way, that isn't the point. What impresses me is how this team of men and women, working so well together, exercising such good care of their patients, are a harmonious microcosm of an incredibly diverse world. 

The other day I spoke to the ward housekeeper who is from Latin America. She has lived in the UK for many years and one of her children was born here. She is a warm, kind woman who loves what she does. She has a strong Latino accent, a wry sense of humour, a bent for philosophy, and well developed political antennae. We spoke about the EU referendum. She hadn't made up her mind which way to vote, though the consequences not only for herself as an immigrant but for the NHS that she cared deeply about were weighing heavily in her thinking. 

I came away thinking: what a gift such a person is to our health service and to our country. Wherever would the NHS be without many thousands of such good people? Where would our local authorities and social services, our schools, businesses and transport be? Immigration is good for a nation. It's a sign of how attractive our country is, and indeed, how flourishing not just economically but in a hundred other ways that help people flourish. We should be proud that so many want to come to the UK. And proud of the success London and other cities have made of creating wholesome international communities that embrace diversity as one of God's gifts to humanity. 

And how much we have to learn from those who make their home among us! They give us the chance to have our horizons stretched, to travel across the globe in mind and imagination to hear other perspectives and gain fresh insights. "If you never travel, you think mother is the only cook" goes a Bantu proverb. What's more, I'm finding that London is a friendlier city than I remember it being half a century ago. Is this thanks to those who have come from other lands to live and work in our country? I wouldn't be surprised.  

The much admired Jo Cox MP, so terribly murdered this week, said in her maiden speech in Parliament last year: "Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration, be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us."

Of course we can turn our back on them and go on living in the nostalgic fantasy-world we islanders are prone to. But it isn't real life. And to turn our back on our fellow human beings is fundamentally an act of self-hatred. So open your eyes to the teeming life of this great city and see the rainbow world as it really is. This is the London, indeed the Europe of today and tomorrow. Embrace it. Welcome it. Love it. For God's sake, who so loved the world.