Fifteen years ago on Thursday: a Welsh thought about Living in Love & Faith
I’m slogging my way through the Living in Love & Faith book — slogging less because it’s long, and more because it’s struck me so far as a bucket of cold water pretty successfully thrown over passion (which leaves me admiring the mutual-flourishing-attempt politics of it all, but wet). The Sub-Dean of Christ Church’s comment that “I can barely summon any energy to read it[;] I feel no life in it, no Spirit” resonated with me.
I’ve tried to keep myself interested by highlighting some of the terribly Anglican phrases in it (“There are, perhaps, other kinds of literature better suited than a book like this to capturing the passion and the pleasure of [sex]” (LLF, p. 79)), but even that only keeps one going for so long. This ennui’s an odd sensation given that I have a stake in all of this.
I’d like to hope I’ll write something more coherent and comprehensive about my response to LLF after I’ve read it all. But that issue of “having a stake in it” struck me today when I came across Dr Charlie Bell’s justifiable outrage at the video response to LLF from Ben John / Christian Concern.
As with the CEEC video, I’m not overly bothered by the content of the Christian Concern video as a contribution to the debate, as the intellectual and emotional meta-narratives offered don’t strike me as convicting. The tone in the Christian Concern video is little short of nasty, however; and there’s no soft piano music.
But these two videos do seem to me a valid contribution to the LLF discussion, because they’re within the breadth that LLF embraces, and express more or less the current formal teaching of the Church of England on one of the central issues — namely that “marriage between a man and a woman , held together by promises before God and the wider community, is the only proper context for a sexual relationship” (LLF, p. 256).
Which takes me back to the issue of having a stake in it.
For a gay man in a relationship, one stands under the judgement of that formal teaching in the Church of England. Those who wish to condemn you do so supported by the teaching of the Church. And no matter how understanding, welcoming or inclusive parish churches and chaplaincies may be, that formal teaching makes you wrong and them right; you are included only insofar as you are informally indulged, and you may be formally excluded as soon as anyone wishes to do so.
And that’s a hard place to be, and a hard place from which to contribute to a conversation. You don’t just get wet; you get wounded.
In the Church in Wales, these issues are also live ones. However, as somebody who straddles the border, I’ve been very conscious of the difference I have felt for a long time now in Wales when engaging with these issues (and even when simply trying to live a Christian life), because of something that happened fifteen years ago on Thursday.
On 26 November 2005, the Bishops of the Church in Wales, said the following:
The Bishops of the Church in Wales recognise that its members hold a wide range of views on a variety of ethical, social and theological matters. One such issue is the Church’s approach to homosexuality.
For some time, we have recognised that there are honest and legitimate differences on this subject. The church needs to engage prayerfully in this debate with humility, generosity of spirit, reflection on biblical witness, mature thought and careful listening. The harsh and condemnatory tone, which at times has coloured this debate, is unacceptable.
We uphold the traditional Anglican emphasis on Scripture read in the light of reason and tradition. We recognise that the interpretation of Scripture is in itself an area of divergence among Christians. We are at pains to emphasise the need to respect one another and remind the Church that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God. Sexuality is only one aspect of a person’s humanity.
As with many issues there, exists a wide range of Scriptural interpretation within the Christian church. On same-sex relationships we acknowledge that the following fairly reflect the range of views held within the Church in Wales.
• Some people, reading the Scriptures with integrity, reach the conclusion that the only proper context for sexual activity is marriage between a man and a woman in life-long union. Homosexual practice of any kind is therefore rejected.
• Others, reading the Scriptures with integrity, adopt a more sympathetic understanding of homosexuality, but would not at present wish the Church to sanction homosexual practice.
• Others, reading the Scriptures with integrity, conclude that orientation and practice are to be distinguished and that the Church can welcome same sex relationships provided they are celibate.
• Others again, reading the Scriptures with integrity, conclude that the Church cannot dismiss as intrinsically disordered permanent and committed same-sex relationships; they believe that through their internal mutuality and support, these bring creativity, generosity and love into the lives of those within them.
• Others, reading the Scriptures with integrity, conclude, in the light of a developing understanding of the nature of humanity and sexuality, that the time has arrived for the Church to affirm committed homosexual relationships.
The challenge and call of our discipleship is to live, worship and work together in all our diversity. Rejecting all forms of stigmatisation we commit ourselves to listening to people whose sexual orientation may be different from our own.
I remember speaking to the then Bishop of Bangor, who I believe to have been the lead author on behalf of the Welsh Bench, about the statement. He wasn’t terribly Vatican II in many ways, but he rooted the statement in an understanding of the sensus fidelium, and the impact on the teaching ability of the Bishops of there blatantly being no consensus fidelium.
As a 25 year-old, I took the statement to mean that the teaching of the Church in Wales was no longer that “the only proper context for sexual activity is marriage between a man and a woman in life-long union.” Indeed, I took the implication of the flow of the bullet points to be that sexually-active “permanent and committed same-sex relationships” could be avowed and accepted, even if they could not be blessed. In short, the formal teaching of the Church no longer made me wrong and them right. I was no longer included only insofar as I was informally indulged, and could not be formally excluded as soon as anyone wished to do so.
Now then, the actual dynamics have been less secure than that, and the statement itself can be read to say less than the 25 year-old took it to say. But it has made the ground on which I stand in Wales feel much more secure than English soil. Here, the “creativity, generosity and love” that I know — these have also been seen and named and encompassed by my Bishops. All of that has made it possible to contribute to discussions from a place of security — as opposed to doing so from, formally speaking, a place of sin, or even heresy, which is the burdensome place from which some of my English friends still speak. After fifteen years, that has a liberating impact on the soul. Holy ground beneath doesn’t burn your bare feet.
And it is not nothing, cf. English episcopal silence, to have had Bishops say, all those years ago, that “the harsh and condemnatory tone, which at times has coloured this debate, is unacceptable.”
