Churches Weekly Newsletter - No.144, 22 January 2023
I spent much of Tuesday this week on two Safeguarding courses: one with the diocese, the other with the county education department. Compulsory and time-consuming, yes, but far from just box-ticking: these were valuable reminders of the need to listen hard, and very well, to people who might be being seriously mistreated by others; of the importance of paying utmost attention at all times to those around us who are especially liable to be ignored and misunderstood - or abused. This insight comes from the secular world but I think it agrees entirely with the overarching spirit of our Judaeo-Christian scriptures: that God’s heart is especially for those who society treats as outsiders, and that God would have us demonstrate that in our life of faith.
Then came the news that the Church of England‘s bishops have rejected demands to allow clergy to conduct same-sex marriages, but will be proposing to next month’s General Synod that same-sex couples will be able to come to church for a blessing after their civil marriage or civil partnership ceremony. Alongside this, the bishops apologised to LGBTQI+ people for the “rejection, exclusion and hostility” they have faced in churches and the impact this has had on their lives.
Thus, among all the reactions which followed, the one which stood out and impacted me most was one from a friend of a priest-friend of mine who, on ‘coming out’ as gay had been so appallingly treated by his congregation and poorly supported by his ecclesiastical seniors that he, in anguish and at great cost, quit church ministry (and has since reinvented himself as an independent celebrant). This friend responded to the bishop’s double-edged statement by saying,
“It’s a text book abusive relationship. ‘We love you, we’re sorry, it’s your own decision to make us treat you like this’ … ‘We love you, we’re sorry, we promise that next time it will be different’… It never is and they never stop hurting people and breaking promises to lovely trusting people who deserve better.”
The bishops urged all congregations in their care to welcome same-sex couples “unreservedly and joyfully” as they reaffirm their commitment to a “radical new Christian inclusion founded in scripture, in reason, in tradition, in theology and the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it – based on good, healthy, flourishing relationships, and in a proper 21st Century understanding of being human and of being sexual”.
This statement came at the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and this whole episode invites our prayer that the churches will develop a culture that doesn’t see faith as a war to be won, but as a world to be explored; that doesn’t regard ‘different’ people as enemies, but as people to be loved.
For some Christians this debate may seem like an irrelevance compared to some of the other pressing issues of our day. But for many others it cuts to the quick, it is a raw subject reaching to the core of who they are. I’m especially aware of the pain suffered by the many LGBTQI+ Christians who feel unwelcome in both the communities which they ought to be most at home: the church, with all its “rejection, exclusion and hostility”, and the gay community which is understandably wary about Christians. To be rejected by those closest to you must be agonising to bear.
I am glad to say that in our congregations there is already welcome towards those of different sexualities, but we are some distance from the highly-charged politics of Synod.
Is it time to admit that this is not a ‘debate’ which must be ‘won’ on micro-points of scripture, but rather that a culture of “radical new Christian inclusion” can only be achieved when we practice scripture’s overarching spirit of being attentive to those usually ignored, when we learn to listen hard to those usually misunderstood, and especially, when we stand with and for those we realise are being abused?
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