Mutual Flourishing or Repeating Our Mistakes?
A Response to Together in Love and Faith
Published originally on ViaMedia.News
I was delighted to read the proposals from the Bishop of Oxford summarised in the Church Times (4 November) and to hear him speak about them further on Radio 4 (details of all media engagements here). I had begun to fear that the Church would remain too timid publicly to extend to those in same sex relationships the love and welcome extended to those in heterosexual relationships.
Looking at the first four of +Steven’s proposals in Together in Love and Faith, the second is to give “freedom of conscience to clergy and ordinands to order their relationships appropriately”. This would at last allow us to move on from the 1991 Issues in Human Sexuality document which was only prepared as a “discussion document” but which subsequently – and astonishingly – acquired the status of “holy writ”, even though the Preface stated “We cannot expect all to agree with our conclusions”. Yet when, in July 2022, Revd Mae Christie asked the question at General Synod, “When and by what mechanism was Issues in Human Sexuality formally written into the Selection Criterion of the Church of England?”, she received the following reply from the Bishop of Chester in his capacity of Chair of the Ministry Council:
We do not have a record of the date or the mechanism by which Issues in Human Sexuality was formally written into the former Selection Criteria. Unfortunately, since the information is not readily available it could not be obtained within the time-frame available for responding to Synod questions.
I was a founder member of Inclusive Church in the wake of the Jeffrey John debacle in Oxford diocese before the days of civil partnerships and same sex marriages. The “freedom of conscience” which +Steven is now proposing was the hallmark of our endeavours and, over two decades later, we have made no progress to date. I had rather feared that such a provision had been lost entirely in the pressure to regularise same sex marriage.
Looking at +Steven’s proposals 1-4 together, I am taking it that clergy should be among those who are able to turn to the Church to solemnise their own same sex marriages in Church. I am not quite sure that this is crystal clear.
However, there may also be a legal difficulty with the proposal for solemnising singe sex marriages in Church, whether for clergy couples or lay, which only rarely enters into LLF discussions. The CofE website Your Church Wedding makes clear that “Although same-sex marriage legislation has changed, it remains the case that it is not legally possible for same-sex couples to marry in the Church of England”.
The reason for this prohibition is that, in 2013, when the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act was enacted, the then-Archbishops (Williams and Sentamu) were so bitterly opposed to it that the Government went massively out of its way to appease them by including a “quadruple lock”. This was intended to “safeguard” the CofE against any attempt by any future Government to unscramble the legislation to allow such marriages in CofE Churches. Savi Hensman has discussed this on the Equal website.
Bishop Steven’s proposals 5-7 are a different matter; they concern the provision of a platform for those clergy who oppose single sex marriage in approximately the same way as has been done for those who opposed the ordination and consecration of women. I am afraid my sympathies lie with the suffragans in the Oxford Diocese who are not in agreement with this, because that framework has at its heart a central dilemma. While the Five Guiding Principles state that “the Church of England is fully and unequivocally committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender”, at the same time they make “pastoral and sacramental provision for the minority within the Church of England who are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests”. How is it possible to do both? More than that, this arrangement apparently allows the Church to “maintain the highest possible degree of communion and [also, and at the same time, contributes] to mutual flourishing” (House of Bishops Declaration 2014; GS Misc 1077). Whether Synod would be prepared to accept such a flawed notion a second time remains to be seen.
Another aspect of this arrangement in relation to women as priests and bishops is that it did not emanate from the Church in the first place but very definitely was imposed upon the Church by Parliament in 1992; Judith Maltby’s 2011 chapter in Mark Chapman, Judith Maltby and William Whyte (eds) Established Church: Past, Present and Future explains this. Having been established in 1992 this arrangement was, in effect, replicated in 2014.
By 2014, however, the attitude of Parliament was totally different. It was the Government, rather than the Church, which introduced the Lords Spiritual (Women) Bill in 2014. This was specifically to allow new women bishops to leapfrog over their male counterparts in order to speed up the process of appointing women to the House of Lords. Indeed, debates in both Houses reflected their view that discrimination against women was not to be tolerated any longer in the Mother of Parliaments. All indications are that nowadays Parliament is as opposed to discrimination on these grounds as it is to discrimination against women.
On the Sunday programme on 20 November, Ben Bradshaw, MP assured listeners that Parliament could well take an interest in the matter of gay clergy and laity if the Established Church continues to remain out of step with the people of this land. Mr Bradshaw was a very effective Parliamentary operator on the matter of women bishops and I am sure he would be as effective this time.
Further, these arrangements in respect of women have allowed pockets of discrimination and, in some cases, bullying and downright rudeness to persist, which grieve and may damage all women (lay and ordained) who experience and even hear about them. This is why a mediation service had to be set up. Those who are “unable to receive the ministry of women as priests or bishops” can still be elected to the Crown Nominations Commission, there to impede the nomination of women as Diocesans. If similar arrangements persist, the same discrimination would be likely to occur in respect of those candidates in civil partnerships and same sex marriages.
I would beg the Bishop of Oxford to bow to what seems to be the majority view in his own Diocesan House of Bishops and not to propose another fault line which will involve many of the same people and parishes and is likely to have many of the same effects. He might also reflect upon the costs of supporting specific bishops for the relatively few parishes which are already provided with Episcopal Oversight in these straitened times.
Finally, the Established Church should perhaps be asking itself whether it can yet again propose a framework which would rely on carve-outs from one of the most important and effective pieces of legislation in recent times, The Equality Act (2010). It might also bear in mind that discrimination of any kind is essentially against the tenets of our Christian beliefs as has been made abundantly clear in the recent work on race and disability, for example. The Church perhaps needs to examine the justification for continuing to go out of its way to facilitate discrimination on grounds of either gender or sexuality.
The first four proposals from +Steven are permissive rather than directive; that should offer latitude enough.